25144	----	None 
33650	----	_New West Indian Spiders._ BY NATHAN BANKS. BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, VOL. XXXIII, ART. XLI, pp. 639-642. _New York, November 21, 1914._ [Transcriber's Note: Words surrounded by tildes, like ~this~ signifies words in bold. Words surrounded by underscores, like _this_, signifies words in italics.] Article XLI.--NEW WEST INDIAN SPIDERS. BY NATHAN BANKS. The following new species were found in the course of an examination of material in the American Museum of Natural History collected by Dr. F. E. Lutz and Mr. Charles W. Leng in Cuba and by Dr. Lutz in Porto Rico. The types are in that institution. ~Mecoloesthus signatus~ n. sp. Cephalothorax pale, with black median mark, wider at head; sternum reddish or yellowish. Abdomen pale, with a black median stripe, narrowed near middle, not reaching anterior end where there is an oblique stripe, and a basal spot each side, also an apical spot each side, and the basal pleura show an oblique dark stripe. These marks are made up of small spots, more or less connected. The venter shows a narrow, median black stripe followed by a round spot, some distance before the spinnerets. Femora reddish, blackish near tip, and a white band at extreme tip; tibiæ dark, with a broad, white band near tip; rest of legs paler. Eyes in two groups, three each side (subequal in size) on a distinct elevation; A. M. E. minute, close together, and as high as upper edge of A. S. E. Abdomen elongate, cylindrical, spinnerets apical; legs very long; vulval area corneous, yellow, concave behind, but little swollen. Length; ceph. 1 mm.; abdomen 2.5 mm.; femur I, 12 mm.; femur IV, 10 mm. From Naguabo, Porto Rico, March. No. 21669, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. ~Callilepsis grisea~ n. sp. Cephalothorax reddish brown, clothed with white hair; black in eye-region; mandibles reddish brown; legs yellowish, darker on anterior tarsi and metatarsi, a dark band on middle of tibiæ III and IV and these metatarsi rather dark; sternum yellowish brown, darker on sides; abdomen grayish white above and below, above with a median basal blackish streak, a dark streak on each anterior pleuron and a dark streak each side toward apex, and two blackish spots above spinnerets, latter brownish. Cephalothorax narrow; eye-rows short and far apart; P. M. E. slightly oval, about three diameters apart and much closer to the larger P. S. E.; legs moderately long, very hairy or bristly, and with stout spines especially on femora III and IV; tibiæ I and II with three spines beneath, one at base, one at middle, one at tip, metatarsi with basal spine only; metatarsi and tarsi scopulate beneath; hind legs more numerously spined; sternum once and a half longer than broad, pointed behind, narrowed in front; abdomen fully twice as long as broad, sides subparallel. Length 6.8 mm. From 12-1/2 kilometers south of Pinar del Rio, Cuba, September. No. 21670, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. ~Wulfila pretiosa~ n. sp. Pale yellowish. Cephalothorax with a greenish stripe each side, a greenish mark over groove, and two faint lines back from P. M. E.; mandibles with a greenish vertical line in middle. Abdomen with dark greenish or nearly blackish stripe each side reaching to middle, a spot behind it, and a large median spot above spinnerets, four small dark dots in mid-dorsum; legs with faint dark spots at bases of many spines on femora and tibiæ. Cephalothorax narrow in front, A. M. E. hardly more than diameter apart; about as close to the very much larger A. S. E. Posterior eye-row nearly straight, the eyes equal and as large as A. S. E., P. M. E. about two diameters apart, and about as far from P. S. E. Legs long and slender, first and fourth pair about equal, all with stout spines on femora; tibiæ and metatarsi I and II each with two pairs of very long spines, none at tips. The black hair on tips of maxillæ, lip and mandibles is very prominent. Abdomen twice as long as broad. Length 4.5 mm.; leg I, 8 mm. From San Carlos Est., Guantanamo, Cuba. October. No. 21671, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. ~Wulfila immaculata~ n. sp. White or pale yellowish throughout, unmarked; the eyes on black rings, the claws black, and the anterior edge of the vulva reddish. The A. M. E. small, but little more than their diameter apart, about twice as far from the plainly large A. S. E., P. M. E. nearly three diameters apart, and only about two diameters from the P. S. E. Mandibles with only fine hairs; legs long, and very slender, the first pair more than twice as long as the body, all with very long, slender spines, and fine hairs. Abdomen nearly twice as long as broad; vulva shows two reddish marks in front, and behind is a large indistinct cavity. Length 3 mm.; leg I, 7.5 mm. Type from 7 kilometers north of Viñales, Cuba, September, No. 21687, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. Paratypes from Cabanas, Cuba, September; Naguabo, Porto Rico, March; and Mona Island, Feb. Nos. 21672 and 21682 to 21686, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. ~Bathyphantes semicincta~ n. sp. Cephalothorax dull yellowish, a marginal dark seam, eyes on black spots; mandibles dull yellowish. Legs pale yellowish, femora and coxæ more whitish, tibiæ and patellæ I and IV tipped with black. Sternum yellowish, margined with dark. Abdomen above gray, with scattered white spots and larger black patches; a basal black spot each side, and two others each side toward tip, the last larger and extending down on sides to near the spinnerets; a large, oblique, dark spot on pleura, and one near base; venter with a large, median blackish spot, concave in front, dark on sides of genital groove. Legs I and II very long, much longer than others, all with many long, fine but stiff, hairs and some erect bristles on tibiæ, a long one at top of each patella above and one near middle of tibia above. Length 1.8 mm. From 7 kilometers north of Viñales, Cuba, September. No. 21673, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. ~Epeira gundlachi~ n. sp. Cephalothorax, legs, sternum, mandibles, and palpi whitish; tarsi, and sometimes metatarsi, slightly infuscated; sternum sometimes more yellowish, no markings. Abdomen white above and below. Eyes small; posterior row recurved, subequal in size, the P. M. E. one half nearer to each other than to the S. E. and about three diameters apart; the four M. E. make a square; A. S. E. smaller than other eyes, close to P. S. E., fully as far from A. M. E. as these from each other. Legs with many fine white bristles, and a few black spines, two on inner side of femur I near tip, no spines in front nor below on femora, nor below on tibiæ I and II, a few above on tibiæ and patellæ, the tarsus plus metatarsus I about as long as tibia plus patella I. Sternum sub-triangular, a little longer than broad, pointed behind. Abdomen fully one and a half times longer than broad, roundedly projecting behind the spinnerets, no higher at base than at spinnerets, and broadest at about middle of length. Length 3 mm. From 12-1/2 kilometers south of Pinar del Rio, Cuba. September. No. 21674, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. Related to group of _E. mormon_ and _E. peckhami_ by shape of abdomen and vulva. ~Misumessus echinatus~ n. sp. Male: Cephalothorax yellowish, with about fifty small reddish-brown spots scattered over surface, from each of which arises a short, but very stout spine; the marginal seam is reddish. The legs are pale with spots similar to those on the cephalothorax, many of which have a bristle or spine; no marks on the tarsi, but tibiæ and metatarsis are twice banded with reddish. The coxæ and sternum are pale. The abdomen is rather whitish above, with two rows of five reddish spots near middle, and elsewhere with many reddish dots, from many of which arise short, stout spines like those on the cephalothorax, pleura with red spots; venter with two reddish marks near base, beyond genital furrow with transverse white and black spots; some red around the pale spinnerets. The A. S. E. rather larger than usual; P. M. E. about three diameters apart, about as close to the P. S. E. Legs long and slender, tibia I with four pairs of spines beneath, the longest but little longer than the width of the joint. The male palpal organs show a very long stylet curved over two times around the bulb. Length 2.5 mm. From Cerro Cabras, near Pinar del Rio, Cuba. September. No. 21675, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. ~Olios bicolor~ n. sp. Male: Cephalothorax, palpi, sternum, and most of legs yellowish; abdomen dark brown; metatarsi dark, tibiæ infuscated; mandibles reddish brown; tips of male palpi dark. Cephalothorax with several dark lines; a median one reaching to groove, a short one from each P. M. E., one from S. E. curved and then extending toward groove, four or six lateral dark lines; two dark lines on mandibles. A. M. E. rather more than diameter apart, about as far from the somewhat smaller A. S. E.; P. S. E. equal to A. S. E., P. M. E. much smaller than A. M. E., fully two and one half diameters apart and as far from the slightly larger P. S. E. Male palpi figured. Length 10 mm.; ceph., 4.6 mm.; femur I, 5 mm.; tibia I, 3.7 mm. Type from Desecheo Is., Feb., No. 21688, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. Paratypes from San Juan, Porto Rico, February; Desecheo Isl., Feb., and Mona Isl., Feb. Nos. 21676 to 21681, Dept. Inv. Zoölogy. EXPLANATION OF PLATE. Fig. 1. Mecoloesthus signatus, abdomen and vulva. " 2. Callilepsis grisea, vulva. " 3. Bathyphantes semicincta, side of abdomen. " 4. Wulfila pretiosa, vulva. " 5. Olios bicolor, palpus beneath. " 6. Misumessus echinatus, palpus. " 7. Wulfila immaculata, vulvæ of two specimens. " 8. Epeira gundlachi, top and side outline of abdomen, and vulva. " 9. Olios bicolor, palpus above. [Illustration: NEW WEST INDIAN SPIDERS.] PUBLICATIONS OF THE American Museum of Natural History. The publications of the American Museum of Natural History consist of the 'Bulletin,' in octavo, of which one volume, consisting of 400 to 800 pages and 25 to 60 plates, with numerous text figures, is published annually; the 'Memoirs,' in quarto, published in parts at irregular intervals; and 'Anthropological Papers,' uniform in size and style with the 'Bulletin.' 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17099	----	[Illustration: The Sea Lay Sparkling in the Sunlight. _Frontispiece_.] The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea OR The Loss of The Lonesome Bar By JANET ALDRIDGE Author of the Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas, The Meadow-Brook Girls Across Country, The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat, The Meadow-Brook Girls in The Hills, The Meadow-Brook Girls on The Tennis Courts THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York Made in U.S.A. Copyright MCMXIV _By_ THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY CONTENTS I. A DELIGHTFUL MYSTERY II. WHAT CAME OF A COLD PLUNGE III. HARRIET HAS A NARROW ESCAPE IV. A QUESTION OF POLITICS V. THE ROCKY ROAD TO WAU-WAU VI. AT HOME BY THE SEA VII. A SUDDEN STORM VIII. A NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN NIGHT IX. A SURPRISE THAT PROVED A SHOCK X. SUMMONED TO THE COUNCIL XI. A REWARD WELL EARNED XII. MYSTERY ON A SAND BAR XIII. A STRANGE PROCEEDING XIV. A VISITOR WHO WAS WELCOME XV. TOMMY MAKES A DISCOVERY XVI. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE XVII. WHEN THEIR SHIP CAME IN XVIII. FIREWORKS FROM THE MASTHEAD XIX. SAILING THE BLUE WATER XX. OUT OF SIGHT OF LAND XXI. AN ANXIOUS OUTLOOK XXII. IN THE GRIP OF MIGHTY SEAS XXIII. WAGING A DESPERATE BATTLE XXIV. CONCLUSION CHAPTER I A DELIGHTFUL MYSTERY "I think we are ready to start, girls." Miss Elting folded the road map that she had been studying and placed it in a pocket of her long dust coat. There was a half-smile on her face, a merry twinkle in her eyes. "Which way do I drive?" questioned Jane McCarthy. "Straight ahead out of the village," answered Miss Elting, the guardian of the party of young girls who were embarking on their summer's vacation under somewhat unusual circumstances. "It's the first time I ever started for a place without knowing what the place was, or where I was going," declared Jane McCarthy, otherwise known as "Crazy Jane." "Won't you pleathe tell uth where we are going?" lisped Grace Thompson. Miss Elting shook her head, with decision. "Do my father and mother know where we are going?" persisted Grace. "Of course they know, Tommy. The parents of each of you know, and I know, and so shall you after you reach your destination. Have you everything in the car, Jane?" "Everything but myself," nodded Jane. The latter's automobile, well loaded with camping equipment, stood awaiting its passengers. The latter were Miss Elting, Jane McCarthy, Harriet Burrell, Grace Thompson, Hazel Holland and Margery Brown, the party being otherwise known as "The Meadow-Brook Girls." "Get in, girls. We'll shake the dust of Meadow-Brook from our tires before you can count twenty," continued Jane. "If Crazy Jane were to drive through the town slowly folks surely would think something startling had happened to her. Is there anything you wish to do before we leave, Miss Elting?" "Not that I think of at the moment, Jane." "Oh, let's say good-bye to our folks," suggested Margery Brown. "I have thaid good-bye," answered Grace with finality. "We'll give them a farewell blast," chuckled Jane. With that she climbed into the car, and, with a honk of the horn, drove down that street and into the next, keeping the horn going almost continually. As they passed the home of each girl the young women gave the yell of the Meadow-Brook Girls: "Rah, rah, rah, Rah, rah, rah! Meadow-Brook, Meadow-Brook, Sis, boom, ah!" It was shouted in chorus at their homes, and as the car passed the homes of their friends as well. Hands were waved from windows, hats were swung in the air by boy friends, while the older people smiled indulgently and nodded to them as the rapidly moving motor car passed through the village. "I think the town knows all about it now. Suppose we make a start?" suggested Miss Elting. "We haven't therenaded the pothtmathter yet," Tommy reminded her. "Nor the butcher, the baker and the candle-stick maker," answered Harriet Burrell laughingly. "How long a drive have we, Miss Elting?" "Four or five hours, ordinarily. Jane undoubtedly will make it in much less time, if she drives at her usual rate of speed. Straight south, Jane. I will tell you when to change." The faces of the girls wore a puzzled expression. They could not imagine where they were going. Miss Elting had made a mystery of this summer vacation, and not a word had the girls been able to obtain from her as to where they were to go: whether to tour the country in Crazy Jane's automobile, or to go into camp. Tommy declared that it was a perfectly delightful mythtery, and that she didn't care where they were going, while Margery on the contrary, grumbled incessantly. The start had been made late in the afternoon. The day had been cloudy. There were even indications of rain, but the girls did not care. They were too well inured to the weather to be disturbed by lowering skies and threatening clouds. In the meantime Jane McCarthy was bowling along to the southward, throwing up a cloud of dust, having many narrow escapes from collisions with farmers' wagons and wandering stock. They had been traveling about two hours when the guardian directed their daring driver to turn to the left. The latter did so, thus heading the car to the eastward. "I think I begin to understand," thought Harriet Burrell aloud. "What ith it that you underthtand?" demanded Tommy, pricking up her ears. "You know where we are going, don't you?" "I can make a close guess," replied Harriet, nodding brightly. "Oh, tell uth, tell uth," begged Tommy. Harriet shook her head. "I couldn't think of it. Miss Elting wishes it to be a surprise to you." "Well, won't it be jutht ath much of a thurprithe now ath it will be thome other time?" argued Grace Thompson. "Perhaps Harriet just imagines she knows. I do not believe she knows any more about our destination than do the rest of our party," said the guardian. "But why worry about it? You will know when you get there." Jane stopped the car, and, getting out, proceeded to put the curtains up on one side, Harriet and Hazel doing the same on the opposite side. The storm curtain, with its square of transparent isinglass, was next set in place to protect the driver from the front, the wind shield first having been turned down out of the way. "Now let the rain come," chuckled Jane, after having taken a quick survey of their work. "Yes; it is nice and cosy in here," answered Miss Elting. "I almost believe I should like to sleep in here during a rainstorm." "Excuthe me," objected Tommy. "I'd be thure to get crampth in my neck." "She would that," answered Jane laughingly, starting the car and a moment later throwing in the high-speed clutch. The party was not more than fairly started on the way again when the raindrops began pattering on the leather top of the car. "There it comes," cried Jane McCarthy. "Sounds like rain on a tin roof, doesn't it?" The downpour rapidly grew heavier, accompanied by lightning and thunder. The flashes were blinding, dazzling Jane's eyes so that she had difficulty in keeping her car in the road. It was now nearly evening, and an early darkness had already settled over the landscape. There was little hope of more light, for night would be upon them by the time the storm had passed. True, there would be a moon behind the clouds, but the latter bade fair to be wholly obscured during the evening. Despite the blinding storm that masked the road, and the sharp flashes of lightning that dazzled the eyes of the driver, Crazy Jane McCarthy went on driving ahead at the same rate of speed until Miss Elting begged her to go more slowly. Jane reduced the speed of the car, though so slightly as to be scarcely noticeable. The guardian smiled but made no further comment. Being shut in as they were, they would have difficulty in getting out were an accident to befall them. All at once, however, Jane slowed down with a jolt. She then sent the car cautiously ahead, this time driving out on a level grass plot at the side of the road. There she shut down, turned off the power, and, leaning back, yawned audibly. "Whoa!" she said wearily. "Why, Jane, what is the matter?" cried Miss Elting. "Like a sailboat, we can't make much headway without wind. As it happens, we have no wind on the quarter, as the sailors would say." "I don't understand." "She means the tires are down," explained Harriet Burrell. "Yes. I told Dad those rear tires were leaking, but he declared they were good for five hundred miles yet." "Can't we patch them?" queried Harriet. "We can," replied Jane, "but we aren't going to until this rain lets up a little. Please don't ask me to get out and paddle about in the wet, for I'm not going to do anything of the sort." Jane began to hum a tune. Her companions settled back comfortably. It was dry and cosy in the car and the travellers felt drowsy. Jane was the only really wide-awake one. Margery finally uttered a single, loud snore that awakened the others. The girls uttered a shout and began shaking Margery, who pulled herself sharply together, protesting that she hadn't been asleep for even one little minute. "That ith the way thhe alwayth doeth," observed Tommy. "Then thhe denieth it. I'm glad I don't thnore. Ithn't it awful to thnore, Mith Elting?" "Having too much to say is worse," answered Jane pointedly. "The storm has passed. Let's get out and fix things up. Harriet, will you help me? Miss Elting, if you will be good enough to engineer the taking-down of the side curtains and the lowering of the top I shall be obliged. We shan't need the top. We aren't going to have any more rain to-night, and I want all the light I can get, especially as we are going over strange roads. Have you been this way before?" "No, Jane, but I have the road map." "Road map!" scoffed the Irish girl. "I followed one once and landed in a ditch!" "That ith nothing for Crathy Jane to do," lisped Grace. "Right you are, Tommy," answered Jane with a hearty laugh. "Just as I thought, the tires, the inner tubes, are leaking around the valves. We shan't be able to do much with them, but I think we can make them hold until we get in. I'll have some new inner tubes sent out to us. By the way, are we going to be where we can send for supplies and have them delivered?" questioned Jane shrewdly. "Oh, I think so," was Miss Elting's evasive answer. "Aren't you glad you found out?" chuckled Harriet. Jane grinned, but said nothing. The work of patching the two inner tubes occupied nearly an hour before the tires were back in place and the car ready to start. Harriet, in the meantime, had lighted the big headlights and the rear light. "All aboard for Nowhere!" shouted Jane. The girls again took their places in the car, which started with a jolt. "Is it straight ahead, Miss Elting?" "Yes." "I hope you know where you're going. I'm sure I don't," remarked Jane under her breath. They had gone but a short distance before the driver discovered that which displeased her very much. The lights on the front of the car were growing dim. Her companions noticed this at about the same time. "The gas is giving out," exclaimed Jane. "Isn't that provoking? With us it is one continuous round of surprises." "What are we going to do?" questioned Margery apprehensively. "Just the same as before: keep on going," replied the Irish girl. "I've driven without lights before this. I guess I can do it again. I can see the road and so can you." "Please reduce your speed a little," urged Miss Elting. The driver did so, for Jane was not quite so confident of her ability to keep to the road as she would have had them believe. "There comes some one. Please stop; I want to ask him a question." A farmer on a horse had ridden out to one side of the road, where he was holding his mount, the horse being afraid of the car. Miss Elting asked him how they might reach the Lonesome Cove. The girls were very deeply interested in this question as well as in the answer to it. They had never heard of Lonesome Cove. So that was to be their destination? They nudged each other knowingly. The farmer informed Miss Elting that the Cove was about eight miles farther on. "Take your third right hand turn and it'll lead you right down into the Cove," he said. "It's a pretty lonesome place now," he added. "Yes, I understand," replied the guardian hurriedly, "but we know all about that. Thank you very much. You may drive ahead now, Jane." Jane smiled and started on. "I keep watch of the turns of the road. You pay attention to your driving exclusively," added Miss Elting. "And, girls, you keep a sharp lookout, too." "Where ith thith Lonethome Cove?" questioned Tommy. "I don't like the thound of the name." "You will like it when you get there," answered the guardian. "But I said I would not tell you anything about it. Time enough when we reach there. You shall then see for yourselves. You are going too fast, Jane." "I'd like to reach there some time before morning. The road is clear and level. I'm going only twenty miles an hour, as it is. That's just a creeping pace, you know," reassured Jane. "Yes, I know," answered the guardian, with a shake of her head. They continued on, but without much conversation, for Jane was busy watching the road, her companions keeping a sharp lookout for the turns. They had already passed two roads that led off to the right. The next, according to their informant, would be the one for them to take to reach the Lonesome Cove. "Here is the third turn," announced Jane finally, bringing her car to a stop. The highway on which they had been riding was shaded with second-growth trees, as was the intersecting road. The latter was narrow; but, from Jane's investigations, she having stepped down to examine it, it was hard though not well-traveled. "Have you been here before, Miss Elting?" "No, Jane; I have not. Go ahead and drive carefully, for I hardly think it a main road." "It's a good one, whether it is a main road or not." They moved on down the side road, and, gaining confidence as they progressed, Jane McCarthy let out a notch at a time until she was traveling at a fairly high rate of speed. Their way wound in and out among the small trees and bushes that bordered the road, the latter narrowing little by little until there was barely room for turning out in case they were to meet another vehicle. However, there seemed little chance of that. The motor car appeared to be the only vehicle abroad that night. The road now was so dark that it was only by glancing up at the tops of the bordering trees, outlined against the sky, that the driver of the car was able to keep well in the middle of it. She was straining her eyes, peering into the darkness ahead. "How far?" demanded Jane shortly, never removing her gaze from the trees and the roadway. "We must be near the place. Surely it cannot be far now," answered the guardian. "I thought we should have seen a light before this." "We're coming into the open," broke in Jane. "I'm glad of that. Now we needn't be afraid of running into the trees or the fences, if there are any along the track. I can't make out the sides of the road at all. I--" A sudden and new sound cut short her words. The girls, realizing that something unusual was occurring, fell suddenly silent. The roadway beneath them gave off a hollow sound, as if they were going over a bridge. The fringe of trees had fallen away, while all about them was what appeared to be a darkened plain or field. Yet strain their eyes as they would, the travelers were unable to distinguish the character of their surroundings, though Harriet Burrell, with chin elevated, had been sniffing the air suspiciously. "I smell water," she cried. "Tho do I," lisped Tommy. "But I don't want a drink." Jane began to slow down as soon as the new sound had been heard. The car was rolling along slowly. For some unaccountable reason the driver put on a little more speed. Then came Jane McCarthy's voice, in a quick, warning shout: "Here's trouble. Jump, girls! Jump! We're going in!" They did not know what it was that they were going into, but not a girl of them obeyed Jane's command. Margery half-arose from the seat. Hazel pulled her back. "Sit still, girls!" commanded Miss Elting. "Stop the car, Jane!" The driver shut off and applied the brake. But she was too late. The automobile kept on going. The roadway underneath it seemed to be dropping away from them; for a few seconds they experienced the sensation of riding on thin air; then the car lurched heavily forward, and, with a mighty splash, plunged into water. A great sheet of solid water leaped up and enveloped them. "Everyone for herself!" cried Harriet Burrell. "Jump, girls!" This time they _did_ essay to jump. Before they could do so, however, they were struggling to free themselves from the sinking car, the water already over their heads. CHAPTER II WHAT CAME OF A COLD PLUNGE Five girls and their guardian struggled free from the sinking motor car and began paddling for the surface. All knowing how to swim, they instinctively held their breath when they felt the water closing over them. Fortunately for the Meadow-Brook Girls, the top had been removed from the car, else all would have been drowned before they could have extricated themselves. Jane had the most difficulty in getting out. She was held to her seat by the steering wheel for a few seconds, but not so much as a thought of fear entered her mind. Crazy Jane went to work methodically to free herself, which she succeeded in doing a few seconds after her companions had reached the surface. "Thave me, oh, thave me!" wailed Tommy Thompson chokingly. There followed a great splashing, accompanied by shouts and choking coughs. About this time Jane McCarthy's head appeared above the water. She took a long, gasping breath, then called out: "Here we are, darlin's! Is anybody wet?" "Girls, are you all here?" cried Miss Elting anxiously. "Call your names." They did so, and there was relief in every heart when it was found that not a girl was missing. But they had yet to learn how they happened to be in the water. The latter was cold as ice, it seemed to them, and their desire now was to get to shore as quickly as possible. Which way the shore lay they did not know, but from the looks of the sky-line it was apparent that they would not be obliged to go far in either direction to find a landing place. "Follow me, girls," directed the guardian. "We will get out of here and talk about our disaster afterward. Harriet, please bring up the rear. Be sure that no one is left behind." The splashing ceased, each girl starting forward with her own particular stroke: Tommy swimming frog-fashion, Margery blowing, puffing, and groaning, paddling like a four-footed animal. "Oh, help!" she moaned. "I'm glad I'm not tho fat ath you are," observed Tommy to the puffing Margery. "That will do, Tommy! Buster is quite as well able to take care of herself as are you. I've touched bottom! Here we are, girls. Oh, I am so glad!" "Where ith it? I can't thee the bottom." "Stop swimming, and you'll feel it," suggested Jane, who, having reached the shore, waded out of the water and ran, laughing, up the bank. "My stars, what a mess!" One by one the others emerged from the cold water and stood shivering on the beach. "Wring out your clothes," directed Miss Elting. This, some of them were already doing. Margery sat down helplessly. Harriet assisted her to her feet. "You mustn't do that. You surely will catch cold. Keep moving, dear," ordered Harriet. "I can't. My clothes weigh a ton," protested Margery. "Buthter thinkth it ith her clotheth that are heavy," jeered Tommy. "It ithn't your clotheth, Buthter; it'th you." "Make her stop, Miss Elting. Don't you think I am suffering enough, without Tommy making me feel any worse?" "Yes, I do. Tommy, will you please stop annoying Margery?" "Yeth, Mith Elting, I'll thtop until Buthter getth dry again. But I'm jutht ath wet at thhe ith, and I'm not croth." "Girls, we have had a very narrow escape. I dread to think what would have happened had that automobile top been up. We should give thanks for our deliverance. But I don't understand how we came to get in there, or what it is that we did get into," said the guardian. "I know. It wath water," Tommy informed her. "It wath wet water, too, and cold water, and--" A shivering chorus of laughs greeted her words. Some of the girls began whipping their arms and jumping up and down, for all were very cold. "Can't we run?" asked Harriet. "Yes, if we can decide where the water is, and where it isn't," replied Miss Elting. "Suppose we find the road? We can run up and down that without danger of falling in." "It is just to the left of us; I can see the opening between the trees," answered Harriet. She moved in the direction she had indicated, "Here it is. Come on, girls." The others picked their way cautiously to her. Harriet started up the road at a run, followed by the others and accompanied by the "plush, plush, plush!" of shoes nearly full of water. Tommy sat down. "What are you doing on the ground?" shrieked Margery, as she stumbled and fell over her little companion. "Why don't you tell me when you are going to sit down, so that I won't fall over you?" "You wouldn't, if you weren't tho fat." "Tommy!" broke in Miss Elting. The whole party had come to a halt, following Margery's mishap. "I beg your pardon, Mith Elting. I forgot. Buthter ithn't dry yet. What am I doing? Yeth, I'm bailing out my thhoeth. Ugh! How they do thtick to my feet. Oh, I can't get them on again!" wailed Tommy. "What a helpless creature you are," answered Harriet laughingly. "Here, let me help you. There. You see how easy it is when once you make up your mind that you really can." "No, I don't thee. It ith too dark. Help me up!" "Take hold of my hand. Here, Margery, you get on the other side. We three will run together. Everyone else keep out of our way." "Yeth, becauthe Buthter ith--" Tommy, remembering her promise, checked herself. The three started up the road at a brisk trot. Reaching the main road, Harriet led them about, then began running back toward the water. "Look out for the water," warned Jane shrilly, after they had been going for a few minutes. But her warning came too late. Harriet, Tommy and Margery had turned to the right after reaching the open. The three fell in with a splash and a chorus of screams. The water was shallow and there was no difficulty in getting out, but the girls now were as wet as before, and shivering more than ever. At this juncture the guardian took a hand. She directed them to walk up and down the road in orderly fashion, which they did, shivering, their teeth chattering and the water dripping from their clothing. Reaching the main highway the guardian turned out on this, walking her charges a full mile in the direction they had been following before turning off into the byway. "This part of the country appears to be deserted," she said. "I think we had better return. In the morning we will try to find some one." "Thave me!" moaned Tommy. "Mutht we thtay here in our wet clotheth all night?" "I fear so. What else is there for us to do?" "But let uth get our dry clotheth and put them on," urged Tommy. The girls laughed at her. "Our clothes are down under the water in the car, darlin'," Jane informed her. "Of course, they are soaked," reflected Miss Elting. "I do not think so. The chest on the back of the car is water-proof as well as dust-proof," said Jane. "If it weren't water-proof the things in it would get soaked every time there was a driving rainstorm. No; our other clothing is as dry as toast. You'll see that it is when we get it." "Yes, when we do," groaned Margery--"_when_ we do!" "It might as well be wet," observed the guardian. "We shan't be able to get it out. Do you think the car is ruined, Jane?" "It's wet, like ourselves, Miss Elting. I reckon it will take a whole summer to dry it out thoroughly. I've got to get word to Dad to come after it." "What will he say when he learns of the accident, Jane?" questioned Harriet. "Say? He will say it served the old car right for being such a fool. My dad has common sense. He will have another car up here for us just as soon as he can get one here. By the way, Miss Elting, how much farther do we have to go?" "I don't know, Jane. I hope it isn't much farther. How far do you think we traveled after meeting the man?" "Five miles, I should say." "And he told us that the third turn-off would lead us to Lonesome Cove, did he not?" "He did, but he made a mistake. This is Wet Cove." "And a lonesome one, too, even if it isn't _the_ Lonesome one," chuckled Harriet. "Then we cannot be so very far from our destination. I am sure this isn't the place. We haven't come far enough. Why didn't we think of that before we turned into this road?" "If I knew where you wanted to go, I might be better able to answer that question," reminded Jane. But the guardian was not to be caught in Crazy Jane's trap, though it was too dark to reveal the quizzical smile that wrinkled Miss Elting's face. "I am not sure that I know myself, Jane," was her reply. "You fully expected to find some one here, did you not?" teased Harriet. "I might say that you looked to find a number of persons here?" "We won't discuss that now. Do you wish to spoil the little surprise that I have been planning for you?" "If this is your surprise, I don't think much of it," declared Jane bluntly. "Nor can I blame you," agreed Miss Elting. "But this is not the surprise." "Maybe if we wait we will fall into thome more pondth," suggested Grace. "Ith your thurprithe ath wet at thith one wath?" "I admit your right to tease me, Tommy," laughed the guardian. "Come on, everybody!" urged Harriet. "We must walk briskly and keep it up. That will be the only way to keep us from catching cold as a result of our wetting." Having paused for a moment to discuss their situation the girls began tramping once more. As the hours dragged along all became weary and drowsy. Their joints were growing stiff, too, which condition was not improved by the chill of the night air. Most active of all the party was little Tommy Thompson, who skipped along, talking incessantly. Margery was scarcely able to keep up with the party. Twice she leaned against a tree, closing her eyes, only to fall to the ground in a heap. Harriet, though nearly as tired and footsore as her companions, summoned all her will power and trudged bravely along. Had the Meadow-Brook Girls not been so well seasoned to hardship, serious results might have followed their unexpected bath in the chill waters, followed by their exposure to the searching night wind. But they were healthy, outdoor girls, as all our readers know. The first volume of this series, "THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS UNDER CANVAS," told the story of their first vacation spent in the open, when, as members of Camp Wau-Wau in the Pocono Woods, they served their novitiate as Camp Girls, winning many honors and becoming firmly wedded to life in the woods. When that camping period came to an end Harriet and her companions, as related in "THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS ACROSS COUNTRY," set out on the long walk home, meeting with plenty of adventures and many laughable happenings. It was during this hike that they became acquainted with the Tramp Club Boys and entered into a walking contest against them, which the Meadow-Brook Girls won. Our readers next met the girls in "THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS AFLOAT," a volume which contained the account of their houseboat life on Lake Winnepesaukee. It was there that they again outwitted the Tramp Club, who took their defeat good-naturedly and by way of retaliation aided the girls in running down a mysterious enemy whose malicious mischief had caused them repeated annoyance. Then, as their summer was not yet ended, the Meadow-Brook Girls accepted an invitation from Jane McCarthy to accompany her on a trip through the White Mountains, all of which is fully set forth in "THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS IN THE HILLS." It was there that they met with a series of mishaps which they laid at the door of an ill-favored man who had vainly tried to become their guide. The disappearance of Janus Grubb, the guide who had been engaged by Miss Elting during their mountain hike, and the surprising events that followed made the story of their mountain trip well worth reading. And now, once more, we find the Meadow-Brook Girls ready to take the trail again wherever that trail might lead. At the present moment, however, it did not look as though Harriet Burrell and her friends would reach their destination in the immediate future unless it were nearer at hand than they thought. Not once during the night did the moon show her face, though about two o'clock in the morning the clouds thinned, the landscape showing with more distinctness. The girls, when they walked down to the shore, saw a sheet of water covering several acres. Leading down to the water was a pier that extended far out into the little lake or pond, whatever it might be. Harriet, Jane and Miss Elting walked out to the far end of the pier. Harriet pointed to the end of the pier as she stood above it. "It has broken down," she said. "No; I think not," answered the guardian. "I think, too, that I understand what this is. It is an ice pier. Ice is harvested from this pond and carried up over that sloping platform and so on to the shore or to conveyances waiting here. But how narrow it is. How ever did you manage to keep on the pier until you reached the end, Jane, dear?" "I really don't know, Miss Elting," replied Jane, evidently impressed with the feat she had accomplished. She leaned over and peered into the water to see if she could find her car. It was not to be seen. Dark objects, floating here and there about the surface, showed the girls where part of their equipment had gone. Harriet was regarding the dark objects with inquiring eyes. "I wish we had a boat," said Miss Elting. "We could gather up our stuff. We can't afford to lose it." "We don't need a boat. Jane and I will get it out. What do you say, Jane?" answered Harriet. "I don't know what you have in mind, darlin', but I'm with you, whatever it is." "You and I will go in after the things." "You don't mean it!" exclaimed Jane. "And in this cold water. Br-rr-r!" "No; you must not do that," objected the guardian. "At least not now." "What is it you folks are planning?" questioned Hazel, who, with Tommy and Buster, had joined the party at the end of the pier. Jane explained what Harriet had proposed. Margery's teeth began to chatter again. "My--my weak heart won't stand any more," she groaned. "Don't ask me to go into that horrid, cold water again. _Please_ don't!" "You won't feel the cold once you are in," urged Harriet. "No. I didn't feel it the other time, did I?" "What? Go in thwimming," demanded Tommy. "I wouldn't go in that water again for a dollar and fifty thentth; no, not for a dollar and theventy-five thentth." Tommy began backing away, as though fearing the others might insist and assist her in. Suddenly she uttered a scream. "Thave me!" yelled Tommy. They saw her lurch backward; her feet left the pier; then came a splash. Tommy Thompson had gone over backward and taken to the water head first. CHAPTER III HARRIET HAS A NARROW ESCAPE "Thave me! Oh, thave me!" Tommy had turned over and righted herself before rising to the surface. When she did appear she was within a foot or so of the pier. Her little blonde head popped up from under the water all of a sudden, and in that instant she opened her mouth in a wail for help. Tommy's companions were fairly hysterical with merriment. Tommy yelled again, begging them to "thave" her. "I'll save ye, darlin'," cried Jane, throwing herself down and fastening a hand lightly in Tommy's hair, whereat the little girl screamed more lustily than before. "Lend a hand here, my hearties. The darlin' wants to be saved. We'll save her, won't we?" Jane shouted in great glee. "Of course we will," answered Harriet. She leaned over the edge of the pier, Jane raising the little girl until the latter's shoulders were above water; Harriet got hold of her dress and worked her hand along until she had grasped Tommy by the ankles. "Let go!" yelled Tommy. She meant for Harriet to release her feet, but instead Jane McCarthy released her hold on Tommy's shoulders. The next second Tommy Thompson was standing on her head in the pond with Harriet Burrell jouncing her up and down, trying to get her out of the water, but taking more time about it, so it seemed, than was really necessary. Every time Tommy's head was drawn free of the water she uttered a choking yell. There was no telling how long the nonsense might have continued, had not Miss Elting thrust Harriet aside, resulting in Tommy's falling into the water and having to be rescued again. Tommy was weeping when finally they dragged her to the pier and wrung the water out of her clothing. "Now, don't you wish you were _fat_?" jeered Margery. "If you had been, they couldn't have lifted you and you wouldn't have fallen in again." "Fat like you? Never! I'd die firtht," replied Tommy. "But I may ath it ith. I'm freething, Mith Elting." "Get up and go ashore. Hazel, will you please see that Grace doesn't sit down on the cold ground?" Hazel Holland led the protesting Tommy along the pier to the shore, where she walked the little girl up and down as fast as she could be induced to move, which, after all, was not much faster than an ordinarily slow walk. The others of the party remained out at the end, walking back and forth and waiting until the coming of the dawn, so that they might see to that for which they had planned by daylight. At the first suggestion of dawn, Harriet plunged into the pond without a word of warning to her companions and began gathering up and pushing bundles of equipment toward the shore. Jane and Hazel were not far behind her. Then Miss Elting, not to be outdone by her charges, plunged in after them. Margery, shivering, turned her back on them and walked shoreward. "'Fraid cat! 'fraid cat!" taunted Tommy, when she saw Margery coming. "I'm no more afraid than you are. You're afraid to go into the water. The only way you can go in is to fall in or be pushed!" "Am I? Ith that tho? Well, I'll thhow you whether I am afraid of the water. I dare you to follow me." Tommy fairly flew down the pier; then, leaping up into the air, jumped far out, taking a clean feet-first dive into the pond, uttering a shrill little yell just before disappearing under the surface. But all at once she stood up, and, by raising her chin a little, was able to keep her head above water. "Hello there, Tommy, what are you standing on?" called Harriet, puffing and blowing as she pushed a canvas-bound pack along ahead of her. "I don't know. I gueth it mutht be the automobile top. It ith nithe and thpringy." "Please stay there until I get back. I wish to look it over. If you can, I wish you would find the rear end of the car, so I may locate it exactly." "What have you in mind, darlin'?" asked Jane, with a quick glance at Harriet. "I'm going to try to get our clothes. The trunk is strapped and buckled to the rear end, is it not?" "Yes." "Tell me just how those buckles are placed; whether there is also a loop through which the strap has been run, and all about it." "How should I know?" "You put the trunk on, didn't you?" "Surely, but I can't remember all those things, even if I ever knew them." "Jane, you should learn to observe more closely. Most persons are careless about that." Harriet began swimming toward the shore with Jane. "Thay! How long mutht I thtand here in the wet up to my prethiouth neck?" demanded Grace Thompson. Her feet seemed to be very light. They persisted in either rising or drifting away from the submerged automobile top. Tommy kept her hands moving slowly to assist in maintaining her equilibrium. "Wait until I return, if you will, please," answered Harriet. "Thave me! I can't wait. Here I go _now_!" She slipped off and went under, but came up sputtering and protesting. Instead of remaining to mark the sunken car, Tommy swam rapidly to shore. She found Harriet, Hazel and Jane sitting with feet hanging over the pier talking to Miss Elting. The four were dripping, but none of them seemed to mind this. The sun soon would be up, and its rays would dry their clothing and bring them warmth for the first time since their disaster of the night before. "Do be careful," Miss Elting was saying when Tommy swam up, and, clinging to the pier with one hand, floated listlessly while listening to what was being said. "What's the matter, Tommy? Couldn't you stand it any longer?" asked Harriet. "My feet got tho light that I couldn't hang on." "She means her head instead of her feet," corrected Margery. "I think I had better go after the trunk now," decided Harriet. "I wish you would let me go with you," urged Jane. "No; two of us would be in each other's way. You folks had better stay here and wait. There will be plenty to do after I get the trunk ashore, provided I do. We must have all our outfit together by sunrise, for we have a day's work ahead of us. Want to get up, Tommy?" "Yeth." Harriet reached down and assisted Grace, dripping, to the pier. Then she slipped in and swam in a leisurely way to the sunken automobile, which she located after swimming about for a few moments. The next thing to do was to find the rear end of the car. This was quickly accomplished. Harriet took a long breath, then dived swiftly. It seemed to her companions that she had been gone a long time, when, finally, the girl's dark head rose dripping from the pond. She shook her head, took several long breaths, then dived again. Three times Harriet Burrell repeated this. At last, after a brief dive, they saw the black trunk leap free to the surface of the pond. The Meadow-Brook Girls uttered a yell. Harriet had accomplished a task that would have proved to be too much for the average man. Down there, underneath the water, crouching under the backward tilting automobile on the bottom of the pond, she had unbuckled three stubborn straps, rising to the surface after unbuckling each strap, taking in a new supply of delicious fresh air, then returning to her task. Before the Meadow-Brook Girls had finished with their shouting, cheering and gleeful dancing, the black luggage had drifted some distance from the spot where it had first appeared. So delighted were they with the result of Harriet Burrell's efforts that, for the moment, the others entirely forgot the girl herself. But all at once Miss Elting came to a realization of the truth. Something was wrong. "Harriet!" she cried excitedly. It was unusual for the guardian to show alarm, even though she might feel it. "Where is Harriet?" The shouting and the cheering ceased instantly. "Oh, she's just playing a trick on us," scoffed Margery Brown. Suddenly the keen eyes of Jane McCarthy caught sight of something that sent her heart leaping. That something was a series of bubbles that rose to the surface. Jane gazed wide-eyed, neither moving nor speaking, then suddenly hurled herself into the pond. Two loud splashes followed her own dive into the water. Tommy and Miss Elting were plunging ahead with all speed. Jane was the first to reach the scene. She dived, came up empty-handed, then dived again. Tommy essayed to make a dive, but did not get in deep enough to fully cover her back. Miss Elting made an error in her calculations, as Jane had done on the first dive, missing the sunken automobile by several feet. Now Hazel sprang into the water and swam to them as fast as she knew how to propel herself. Jane shot out of the water and waved both arms frantically above her head. "Spread out!" she cried in a strained, frightened voice. "Did--didn't you find her?" gasped Miss Elting. "No." Jane was gone again, leaving a wake that reached all the way to the beach, so violent had been her floundering dive. Tommy, who had raised her head from the water a short distance from where the guardian was paddling, uttered a scream. "There thhe ith!" she cried; "there she ith! Right down there. Come in a hurry. She ith under the car. I could thee her plainly. Oh, I'm tho thcared!" Tommy began paddling for the shore with all speed. Miss Elting did not answer. Instead, she took a long dive. About this time Jane came up. Hazel, who was making for the spot where the guardian had disappeared, pointed to it. Jane understood. It took her but a few seconds to reach the center of the rippling circle left by the guardian; then Crazy Jane's feet kicked the air a couple of times. She had taken an almost perpendicular dive. But it seemed that she had not been under water more than a second or two when she lunged to the surface. A few feet from her Miss Elting appeared, threw herself over on her back and lay gasping for breath. "She'th got her!" screamed Tommy. "Harriet ith dead!" Gazing out over the pond she saw Jane swimming swiftly toward shore, dragging the apparently lifeless body of Harriet Burrell. Miss Elting and Hazel were closing up on Jane rapidly. Reaching her side a moment later, the guardian took one of Harriet's arms and assisted in towing her in. Tommy remembered afterward having been fascinated by the expressions in their faces. She stared and stared. The faces of the two women were white and haggard. Still farther back she saw only Hazel's eyes. They were so large that Tommy was scarcely able to credit their belonging to Hazel. Had Tommy known it, her own face was more pale and haggard at that moment than those of her companions. Jane dragged Harriet ashore; then Miss Elting grasped the unconscious girl almost roughly, flung her over on her stomach and began applying "first aid to the drowned." "Ith--ith she dead?" gasped Tommy. "She's drowned, darlin'," answered Crazy Jane McCarthy abruptly. CHAPTER IV A QUESTION OF POLITICS "Lay her over on her back!" Jane obeyed Miss Elting's command promptly. The guardian, using her wet handkerchief, cleared Harriet's mouth by keeping the tongue down to admit the air. "Work her arms back and forth. We must set up artificial respiration," she directed. Jane, without any apparent excitement, began a steady movement of the patient's arms, bringing them together above the head, then down to the sides. She continued this as steadily as if she were not face to face with a great tragedy. She did not yet know whether or not it were a tragedy; but, if appearances went for anything, it was. In the meantime the guardian had glanced over her shoulder at the pond. She saw the trunk slowly drifting in. "Get it and open it, Hazel," she commanded. "I haven't a key." "Break it open with a stone. Never mind a key." Hazel ran out into the water until she was up to her neck, then she swam out. Reaching the floating trunk, she got behind it and began pushing it shoreward. Margery and Tommy stood watching the proceedings in speechless horror. Hazel got the trunk ashore, when, following the guardian's directions, she broke the lock open with a stone. "It's open," she cried. "Are the things inside very wet?" "No; they are just as dry as they can be." "Good. Are Harriet's clothes there?" "I think so. Shall I take them out?" "Not just yet. I will tell you if they are needed." Hazel understood what was in the mind of the guardian. Were Harriet Burrell not to recover, the dry clothing would not be needed. Nevertheless, Hazel piled the contents of the trunk on the ground, then replaced it, leaving Harriet's belongings at the top of the pile, so that they would be ready at hand in case of need. In the meantime Crazy Jane and Miss Elting persisted in their efforts to resuscitate the unconscious girl. Though no sign of returning life rewarded their labor, they continued without a second's halting. Half an hour had passed. That was lengthened to an hour, then suddenly Jane stopped, leaned over and peered into the pale face of Harriet. "I see a little color returning!" she cried in a shrill voice. "Hurrah! Harriet's alive!" "You don't thay?" exclaimed Tommy. "Keep her arms going! Don't stop for a single second," commanded Miss Elting. "Hazel, take off Harriet's shoes. Beat the bottoms of her feet. Oh, if we had something warm to put her in. Margery, you get out Harriet's clothing from the trunk." "I--I can't," answered Buster in a weak voice. "Buthter ith too nervouth. I'll get them," offered Tommy. She did, too. Now that she had something to do, she went about it as calmly as though she had had no previous fear. "Are thethe what you want, Mith Elting?" she asked. "Yes; bring them here. She is breathing. Faster, Jane, faster!" "Don't pull her armth out by the roootth," warned Tommy. The guardian made no reply. It was a critical moment and Harriet Burrell's life hung on a very slender thread. Return to consciousness was so slow as to seem like no recovery at all. The spot of red that had appeared in either cheek faded and disappeared. Miss Elting's heart sank when she noted the change in the face of the unconscious girl. Jane saw it, too, but made no comment. Tommy, having taken the clothes from the trunk, now very methodically piled them up near at hand, so that the guardian might reach them without shifting her position materially. Then the little girl stood with hands clasped before her, her eyes squinting, her face twisted into what Jane afterward said was a really hard knot. Two tiny spots of red once more appeared in each cheek of Harriet's white face. "Shall I move her arms faster?" asked Jane. Miss Elting shook her head. "Keep on as you are. I don't quite understand, but she is alive. Of that I am positive." For fully fifteen minutes after that the two young women worked in silence. They noted joyfully that the tiny spots of color in Harriet's cheeks were growing. The spots were now as large as a twenty-five-cent piece. Miss Elting motioned for Jane to cease the arm movements, then she laid an ear over Harriet's heart. "Keep it up," she cried, straightening suddenly. "We are going to save her." Margery, who had drawn slowly near, turned abruptly, walked away and sat down heavily. Jane's under lip trembled ever so little, but she showed no other sign of emotion, and methodically continued at her work. "Now, as soon as we can get the breath of life into her body, we must strip off those wet clothes and bundle her into something dry. We shall be taking a great chance in undressing her in the open air, but the fact that Harriet is in such splendid condition should go a long way toward pulling her through. I wish we had a blanket to wrap her in. However, we shall have to do with what we have." Jane kept steadily at her work, her eyes fixed on the face of the patient. She made no reply to Miss Elting's words. Tommy, however, tilted her head to one side reflectively. Then she turned it ever so little, regarding the broken trunk as if trying to make up her mind whether or not she should hold it responsible for the disaster. After a few moments of staring at the trunk she sidled over to it, and, stooping down, began rummaging through its contents. From the trunk she finally drew forth a long flannel nightgown. This she carried over and gravely spread out on the pile of clothing that she had previously placed near Miss Elting. The guardian's eyes lighted appreciatively. "Thank you, dear. That is splendid," she said, flashing a smile at Tommy. "You are very resourceful. I am proud of you." "You're welcome," answered Grace with a grimace. "Ith there anything elthe that I can do?" Miss Elting shook her head. The smile had left her face; all her faculties were again centered on the work in hand. Shortly after that the two workers were gratified to note a quiver of the eyelids of the patient. This was followed by a slight rising and falling of the chest, and a few moments later Harriet Burrell opened her eyes, closed them wearily and turned over on her face. Crazy Jane promptly turned her on her back, and none too gently at that. "Plea--se let me alone. I'm all right," murmured Harriet. "Help me carry her out yonder under the trees," ordered the guardian. "There will be less breeze there." "I'll carry her, Miss Elting." Jane picked Harriet up, and, throwing the girl over her shoulder, staggered off into the bushes with her burden. Harriet was heavy, but Jane McCarthy's fine strength was equal to her task. Miss Elting had gathered up the clothing and followed. Tommy started to accompany her, but the guardian motioned her back. "Jane and I will attend to her," she said. Tommy pouted and strolled over to Margery. "Is--is Harriet going to die?" wailed Margery. "No, Buthter, she ithn't." Margery turned anxiously away. By the time the guardian reached the spot where Jane had put Harriet down, the latter had fully recovered consciousness; but she was shivering, her lips were blue and her face gray and haggard except for the two faint spots of color that had first indicated her return to consciousness. "Hold her up while I strip off her waist," commanded Miss Elting. Harriet protested that she was able to stand alone, but just the same Jane supported her. It was the work of but a few moments to strip off the cold, wet garments and put on dry ones, including the flannel nightgown. "Let me lie down a little while," begged Harriet weakly. "No; you must walk. Jane, will you keep her going?" "That I will. Come to me, darlin'." Harriet got to her feet with the assistance of her companion. Jane then began walking her slowly about. The color gradually returned to the face of the Meadow-Brook Girl, the gray pallor giving place to a more healthy glow. She wanted to talk, but Miss Elting said she was not to do so for the present. Now, Tommy and Margery followed her about, though without speaking. This walking was continued for the better part of an hour. In the meantime Miss Elting was considering what might best be done. She decided to go in search of some one who would take them to their destination. After a talk with Harriet, and leaving directions as to what was to be done during her absence, the guardian set out, walking fast. She realized the necessity of warm drinks and something to assist in stirring Harriet's circulation. The Meadow-Brook Girl's escape from drowning had been a narrow one, but no one realized the necessity for further treatment more than Miss Elting did. After a time Harriet insisted on walking without the support of Jane's arm, but it was a difficult undertaking. Harriet had to bring all the resolution she possessed to the task of supporting her weakened limbs; but she managed it, with now and then a rest, leaning against a tree or a rock. Tommy had found her tongue again, to keep up a running fire of inconsequential chatter that served its purpose well, assisting Harriet in keeping her mind from her own troubles. The guardian returned, after having been absent half an hour. She came running down the byway, shouting before she appeared in sight of the party to know if all were well. "Oh, Harriet, I'm so glad to see you looking better! I have a boy and a democrat wagon to take us to the real cove. This isn't the place at all. Lonesome Cove is nearly five miles from here. But look! I've something that will please you!" exclaimed the guardian. "What ith it?" demanded Tommy, edging near. "Coffee!" exclaimed Miss Elting triumphantly. "But how are we going to cook it?" cried Jane. "Get the coffee pot. It is in one of the packs that we saved. We have neither milk nor sugar, but we shan't care about that. I met a boy, as I have told you. He had been to mill with a grist, and was also taking some groceries home with him. I secured the coffee by paying double price for it, but consider it cheap at that. Hazel, you and Margery will gather some dry wood and make a fire." Jane already had gone to look for the coffee pot. She found it, after opening one of the wet packs. "The fire is laid," announced Hazel, "but we haven't any matches. What shall we do?" "Mith Elting hath thome matcheth," answered Tommy. "How do you know, my dear?" The guardian laughed merrily. "I thee a box in your pocket." "You see too much," declared Margery. "Yes, I bought matches, too." Miss Elting herself applied a match to the sticks that had been laid for the cook fire. "Harriet, come right here by the fire and warm yourself." "Where is the boy?" asked Harriet. "He will be along in a few minutes. I ran all the way back. He will drive in and wait until we are ready. I promised him two dollars if he would take us to our destination." "Does he know where it is?" questioned Jane. "He says he does, but--" The guardian flushed and checked herself abruptly. "I nearly gave my surprise away." Jane had the water boiling in a few minutes, then quickly made the coffee. A cup was handed to Harriet. She drank it steaming hot. "Oh, that tastes good!" she breathed. "You can feel it all the way down, can't you?" questioned Tommy solemnly. "Yes, I can." "Drink another one, dear," urged the guardian; "it won't keep you awake. Perhaps, now that you feel better, you will tell us how you came so near drowning?" "I did nearly drown, didn't I?" "You did, as thoroughly as one could and yet live to tell of it," replied Miss Elting, her voice husky. "I had unfastened all the straps save the third one," began Harriet. "By that time the trunk was standing on end. It was very buoyant. The idea never occurred to me that there was any danger from the trunk. I was too much concerned wondering if I shouldn't have to open my mouth, for my lungs were nearly bursting. Well, I gave the last strap a jerk and I think the buckle must have pulled off, for the end of the trunk flew up and hit me on the head." "But how did you get wedged under the car springs?" interrupted the guardian. "I found you there." "I don't know. I don't remember anything that occurred after I was hit by the trunk until I began to realize that some one was working over me, and that I wished to be let alone. I was so comfortable that I did not wish to be disturbed." "Thave me!" exclaimed Tommy. "How long did you work over me?" "More than an hour," replied Miss Elting. "Then I really was just about drowned, was I not?" questioned Harriet, her eyes growing large. "You were." Harriet Burrell pondered a moment, then lifted a pair of serious brown eyes to her companions. "I am glad I had the experience," she said, "but I am sorry I made so much trouble. I feel all right now, and strong enough for almost anything. When do we start for the Cove?" "At once. I hear the boy coming. Do you think you are really ready?" "I know I am. But I believe I will have another cup of coffee before we start. Did we rescue all of our equipment?" "Some of it has been lost, but that doesn't matter so long as we have you safe and sound, yes, there is the boy. Hoo-e-e-e!" called the guardian. "Ye-o-o-w!" answered the boy promptly. They saw him turn into the byway. The horse he was driving was so thin that every rib stood out plainly. The democrat wagon was all squeaks and groans, its wheels being so crooked that the girls thought they were going to come off. "You must help us to get our things aboard," said Miss Elting. "Will your wagon hold them all?" "If it doesn't break down," was the reply. "Well, some of us can walk." The boy backed his rickety wagon down near where the belongings of the Meadow-Brook Girls lay in a tumbled heap. Jane assisted him in loading the equipment, amazing the country boy by her strength and quickness. "You going to camp, eh?" he questioned. "We don't know what we are going to do," replied Jane. "We're likely to do almost anything that happens to enter our minds as well as some things that don't enter our minds. Stow that package under the seat forward; yes, that way. There. Do you think of anything else, Miss Elting!" "Nothing except the automobile. I hardly think we shall be able to take that with us." "Indeed, no," answered Jane with a broad grin. "We'll let Dad do that. Who is going to ride?" "Let's see. Harriet, of course--" "I can walk," protested Harriet. "No; you will ride. Margery and Tommy also may ride. Hazel, Jane and I will walk. It will do us good, for we need exercise this morning, though I must say that a little breakfast would not come amiss." "You thay that ith a Democrat wagon?" questioned Tommy. "Yes, dear. Why do you ask?" answered Miss Elting smilingly. "I jutht wanted to know. I'll walk, thank you, Mith Elting. You thay it ith a Democrat wagon?" "Yes, yes. What of it?" "I wouldn't ride in a Democrat wagon. My father would dithown me if I did! If it wath a Republican wagon, now, it would be all right--but a Democrat wagon--thave me!" CHAPTER V THE ROCKY ROAD TO WAU-WAU "You surely are a loyal little Republican, Tommy. Whether we agree with you in politics or not, we must respect your loyalty. However, I think you had better get up and ride," urged Miss Elting. Tommy shook her head, regarding the democrat wagon with a disapproving squint. Jane assisted Harriet up over the front wheel, Margery climbed in on the other side, the boy "pushed on the reins," and the procession moved slowly toward the main road, with Miss Elting, Jane, Hazel and Tommy trudging on ahead. Harriet rode only a short distance before she grew weary of it, and, dropping to the ground, ran on and joined her companions. "I shall have nervous prostration if I ride in that wagon," she said. "Every minute expecting it to collapse isn't any too good for one who has just been drowned, and whose nerves are on edge." "Promise me that you will not overtax your strength; that if you feel yourself getting weary you _will_ get in and ride," answered the guardian, looking anxiously at Harriet. "I promise," was Harriet's laughing rejoinder. The sun by this time was high in the heavens and was blazing down on them hotly. The warmth felt good, especially to those who still wore the clothes in which they had spent so much time in the cold water of the pond. To Harriet it was a grateful relief from the chill that had followed her accident. Tommy permitted herself to lag behind, and the moment she was out of ear-shot of her companions she began to quiz the country boy to learn where he was taking them. "Lonesome Cove," he replied. "Where ith that?" "On the shore." "On what thhore?" "The sea shore." "Oh! Tho we are going to the thea thhore? I thee," reflected Tommy wisely. "Are there lotth of people there?" "Isn't nobody there. It's just sea shore, that's all." Tommy chuckled and nodded to herself as she increased her pace and joined her party. "When we get to camp I'm going to take a bath in the thea," she announced carelessly. Miss Elting regarded her sharply. "Camp? Sea?" questioned the guardian. "Yeth. I thaid 'camp' and 'thea.'" "Where do you think you are going, Grace?" "Why, to the thea thhore of courthe. But there ithn't anybody there." "Tommy, you've been spying. I am amazed at you." "No, I haven't been doing anything of the thort. It ith true, ithn't it?" "I shall not tell you a single thing. You are trying to quiz me. That isn't fair, my dear." Tommy chuckled and joined Harriet, linking an arm with her and starting a lively conversation. Harriet, instead of growing weary, appeared to be getting stronger with the moments. Her step was more and more springy, and her face had resumed its usual healthy color, but this was the longest five miles she remembered to have traveled. The others felt much the same. It must be remembered that they had had neither supper nor breakfast, except for the cup of coffee that they had taken before starting out on their tramp. The guardian had hoped to reach her destination in time for luncheon, when she knew the girls would have a satisfying meal. However, the hour was near to one o'clock when finally the boy shouted to them. They halted and waited for him. "Lonesome Cove down there, 'bout a quarter of a mile," he informed them, jerking the butt of his whip in the direction of a thin forest of spindling pines to the right of the highway. "Ocean right over there." "I hear it," cried Harriet. "Doesn't it sound glorious?" "We thank you. You may unload our equipment and pile it by the side of the road. We will carry it down to the beach, and again I thank you very much." Jane and Hazel assisted in the unloading. They would permit neither Harriet nor Miss Elting to help. The boy was paid and drove away whistling. He had made a good deal, and knew very well that the folks at home would find no fault over his delay when they learned that he had earned two dollars. "Now, girls, do you know where you are?" asked the guardian, turning to her charges. "Lost in the wilds of New Hampshire," answered Jane dramatically. "No, not lost. We shall soon be among friends. I promise you a great surprise when we get down so near the sea that you hear the pounding of the breakers on the beach." "I gueth you will be thurprithed, too," ventured Tommy. "What do you mean, Grace?" demanded Miss Elting. "I would suggest that we get started," urged Harriet. "I'm hungry. I want my supper, breakfast and luncheon all in one. You forget that I am a drowned person." "We are not likely to forget it," answered the guardian, smiling faintly. "Yes, we will carry our equipment in. Jane, suppose we break it into smaller packs, so it can be the more easily carried. I think we are all ready for a good meal, and that is what we are going to have very shortly now. You know you always get good meals at Wau-Wau." "Wau-Wau!" exclaimed the Meadow-Brook Girls in chorus. "Why, Wau-Wau is in the Pocono Woods," said Harriet. "We are a long way from there, aren't we?" "Oh, yes, yes!" The guardian flushed guiltily. "I spoke without thinking." No one except Harriet and Tommy gave any special heed to the final words of the guardian. The others were busy getting ready to move. They were in something of a hurry for their luncheon. Packs were divided up among them. Harriet insisted upon carrying one end of the trunk with Jane, in addition to the pack she had slung over her shoulder. They finally started down a narrow path that led on down to the shore, leaving some of their equipment behind to be brought later on in the afternoon. As they neared the shore the boom of the surf grew louder and louder. The girls uttered shouts of delight when finally they staggered out into the open with their burdens, on a high bluff overlooking the sea. The sea lay sparkling in the sunlight, while almost at their feet great white-crested combers were rolling in and breaking against the sandy bluff. The salt spray dashed up into their faces and the odor of the salt sea was strong in their nostrils. "Isn't this glorious?" cried Harriet, with enthusiasm. "I shouldn't think you'd ever want to see water again after what occurred this morning," replied Margery Brown. "Oh, that! I had forgotten all about it. This is different, Buster. This is the real sea, and it's perfectly wonderful. Isn't it, Miss Elting?" The guardian, thus far, had not spoken a word. There was a look of puzzled surprise on her face. "What is it, Miss Elting?" questioned Harriet, instantly discovering that something was wrong. "I--I thought we should find some others here," replied the guardian hesitatingly. "I told you there wath no one here," answered Tommy. "Whom did you hope to find?" asked Harriet Burrell. "Some friends of mine. It has been a rocky road to Wau-Wau, and we haven't reached it yet," muttered the guardian under her breath. "I don't understand this, girls," she continued. "I fear we have made a mistake. This isn't the place I thought we were seeking. I must confess that I am lost. But the real place can not be far away. We shall have to walk from this on. Are you equal to it?" "Not till I get thome food," answered Tommy with emphasis. "I'm famithhed. I want thomething to eat." "So do I, darlin'," added Crazy Jane. "But I don't see anything hereabout that looks like food. Do you?" Margery sat down helplessly. Harriet was smiling. She understood something of the plans of the guardian now; yet, like her companions, she was disappointed that the promised meal was not at hand. Miss Elting recovered her composure quickly. "We shall have to cook our own dinner, dears," she said. "Harriet, you sit down in the sun and rest; we will take care of the meal-getting." "You treat me as though I were an invalid. I am able to do my share of the work, and to eat my share of the food, as you will see when we get something cooked." Jane already had run back toward the road to bring some dry sticks that she had discovered when coming in. Miss Elting began opening the packs. "Oh, this is too bad!" she cried. "We must have left that coffee pot with the other things out by the road." "I'll get it." Tommy bounded away. Hazel assisted the guardian in getting the cooking utensils ready, Margery walked about, getting in the way, but not accomplishing much of anything else. There were cold roast beef, butter and plenty of canned goods. The bread that they had brought with them had been dissolved in the water of the ice pond, as had the sugar and considerable other food stuff. Jane came in with an armful of wood and quickly started a fire. Tommy arrived some moments later with the coffee pot and other utensils. While all this was going on Harriet was spreading out their belongings so these might dry out in the sunlight. But the water for the coffee, secured some distance back, was brackish and poor. They made it do, however, and as quickly as possible had boiled their coffee and warmed over the beef and canned beans as well. As for drinking water, there was none at hand fit for this purpose. Dishes were somewhat limited, many of theirs having been lost when the automobile went into the pond. But they were glad enough to do with what they had, and when Jane sounded the meal call, "Come and get it!" there was not an instant's hesitation on the part of any member of that little party of adventurous spirits. "Now take your time, girls," warned Miss Elting. "We will not gulp our food down, even if we have a walk before us this afternoon. And we may have to sleep out-of-doors, but it will not have been the first time for the Meadow-Brook Girls." "Ith thith the thurprithe that you were going to give us?" asked Tommy innocently. "It is a surprise to me, dear. This isn't the place I thought it was at all. The joke is that I don't know where the right place is." "Perhaps, if you would tell us where you wish to go, we might be of some assistance to you," suggested Jane McCarthy. "You can't get the secret from me, Jane," answered the guardian smilingly. "I am going to keep that little secret to myself at all costs. Don't tease me, for I shall not tell you." "It hath cotht a good deal already," piped Tommy. "Let me thee. It hath cotht one automobile, theveral thkirtth, and a girl drowned. Thome cotht that, eh? Pleathe path the beanth." "Tommy has a keen appetite for beans this afternoon. Will you please open another can, Jane?" asked the guardian. "Certainly. Will you have them cold this time, Tommy?" "I will not, thank you. My father thayth there ith more real nourithhment in beanth than there ith in beeftheak. I gueth he knowth. He wath brought up on a bean farm." "Then I'll take the beefsteak and never mind the nourishment," declared Jane, who was not particularly fond of beans. "I'd rather have both," said Margery hungrily. "Of courth you would," teased Tommy. "That ith why you--" "Oh, say something new," groaned Buster. Miss Elting permitted them to jest to their hearts' content. The more they talked the better was she pleased, because it kept them from eating too rapidly. Their meal finished and the dishes cleaned in salt water and sand, the guardian gave thought to their next move. But she was in no haste. The girls were allowed plenty of time to rest and digest their hearty meal, which they did by sitting in the sand with the sun beating down on them. After the lapse of an hour she told the girls to get ready. "I will say to you frankly that I do not know where I am, though I am positive we are on the right road. Our destination can not be so very far from here, and I believe we have ample time to reach it before dark. However, each of you will put a can of beans in her pocket. We will take the coffee, our cups and the coffee pot. Thus equipped, we shall not go hungry in case we are caught out over night. Then, again, there must be houses somewhere along this road. The first one we see I shall stop and make inquiries." "What shall we do with the rest of our things?" questioned Hazel. "Make them into packages and hide the lot. You might blaze a tree near the road, in case we forget. All parts of the road hereabouts look very much alike to me. There is a good place for a _cache_ about half way between here and the highway. I should go in a few rods, but any food that is not in cans we had better throw away." "I don't thee why we can't camp right here," said Grace. "This is not the place to which we are going," Harriet informed her. "I don't know where it is, but, sooner or later, we'll arrive there." "If we are lucky," added Tommy under her breath. [Illustration: Jane and Harriet Hid the Trunk.] Jane had already started for the road. She was called back by Harriet to take hold of one end of the trunk. Together the two girls lugged this to the place on the path that had been indicated by Miss Elting. By going straight in among the trees a short distance they found rocks, under one of which was a hole hollowed out in former times by water, and which made an excellent place in which to stow their equipment until such time as they might be able to return for it. Hazel, Margery and Tommy brought the rest of their belongings from the highway, Miss Elting and Hazel what had been left at their camping place, all being neatly packed away in the hollow in the rock. This done, and a mound of small stones built over it, the girls were ready to proceed on their journey. The afternoon was now well along, so they started off at a brisk pace, led by the guardian. Harriet appeared to have fully recovered from her accident. About an hour later they came in sight of a farmhouse. The guardian directed the girls to sit down and rest while she went up to the house to make some inquiries. When she returned her face was all smiles. "I know where I am now," she called. "How far have we to go?" asked Harriet. "About five miles, they say, but one has to make allowances for distances in the country. It is difficult to find two persons who will agree on the distance to any certain point." "Five mileth, did you say?" questioned Tommy. "Yes, dear." "Thave me!" "We shall easily make it in two hours. I don't think we can go astray. So long as we keep within sound of the sea we shall be right. If you are ready, we will move on." Once more they set out. They had gone on less than an hour when Margery began to cry. Tommy regarded her with disapproving eyes. Margery declared that she couldn't walk another step. Inquiry by Miss Elting developed the fact that Buster had a blister on her right foot. This meant another delay. Miss Elting removed the girl's shoe from that foot and treated the blister. Half an hour was lost by this delay, but no one except Tommy Thompson complained. Tommy complained for the sake of saying something. She teased Margery so unmercifully that Miss Elting was obliged to rebuke her, after which Tommy went off by herself and sat pensively down by the roadside until the order to march was given. The afternoon was waning when once more they came in sight of the sea. The setting sun had turned the expanse of ocean into a vast plain of shimmering, quivering gold. The Meadow-Brook Girls uttered exclamations of delight when they set eyes on the scene. For a few moments they stood still, gazing and gazing as if it were not possible to get enough of the, to most of them, unusual spectacle. A full quarter of a mile ahead they observed that the shores a little back were quite heavily wooded, though the trees were small and slender. This particular spot seemed to have attracted Miss Elting's attention to the exclusion of all else. As she looked, a smile overspread her countenance. The girls did not observe it. "We are nearly there," she called. "Near the camp?" asked Tommy. "Yes, the camp, you little tantalizer," chuckled the guardian. "But you will not know what camp until you reach it." "Oh, yeth I thall. It ith our camp, the Meadow-Brook camp." "I hear shouts. I do believe they are girls'," cried Crazy Jane. She glanced inquiringly at Miss Elting, but the latter's face now gave no hint as to what was in her mind. "Come on; let's run, girls." With one accord they started forward at a brisk trot. This brought a wail from the limping Margery. "Wait for me," she cried. "I--I can't run." To their surprise Tommy halted, waited for Buster, then, linking an arm within hers, assisted Margery to trot along and keep up with her companions. Miss Elting gave Grace an appreciative nod and smile, which amply repaid the little girl for her kindly act. They covered the distance to the miniature forest in quick time, impelled by their curiosity, now realizing that they were to meet with the surprise that their guardian had prepared for them. Harriet had a fairly well defined idea as to what was awaiting them, but even she was to be happily surprised. They reached a point opposite the little forest, when, as they looked toward the sea, visible in spots between the trees, they discovered a row of tents, and in the center of an open space a flag fluttering from a sapling from which the limbs and foliage had been trimmed. "It's Camp Wau-Wau!" shouted Crazy Jane. "Come along, darlin's. Let's see what else there is to surprise us." The girls rushed in among the trees, shouting and laughing. They brought up in the middle of the encampment and halted. A middle-aged, pleasant-faced woman stepped from a tent, gazed at them a moment, then opened her arms, into which the Meadow-Brook Girls rushed, fairly smothering the woman with their affectionate embraces. CHAPTER VI AT HOME BY THE SEA "Oh, my dear Meadow-Brook Girls!" cried the woman. "And I did not know you were coming. Why did you not let me know?" Mrs. Livingston, the Chief Guardian of the Camp Girls, held her young friends off the better to look at them. "We did," replied Miss Elting. "When you wrote that you would be glad to have us join the camp, I made the arrangements and wrote you that we would be here yesterday." "I never received the letter." "But why do you call thith plathe Camp Wau-Wau?" demanded Grace. "Camp Wau-Wau ith in the Pocono Woodth, Mrs. Livingthton." "Yes, my dear; but a camp may move, may it not? This is the same old Camp Wau-Wau, but in a different location. This year we concluded to make our camp by the sea shore, and chose Lonesome Bar for our camping place." "Lonesome Bar!" exclaimed Miss Elting. "That explains it. We Were looking for Lonesome Cove." "Which we found," chuckled Harriet. "We've had the most awful time, and Harriet got drowned," put in Margery Brown. "Drowned?" "Yeth, thhe did," nodded Tommy eagerly. "And we had thuch a time undrowning her! Thhe thwallowed a whole ithe pond of water." Miss Elting here explained to the Chief Guardian what had happened. Mrs. Livingston was amazed. She gazed curiously at the smiling Harriet. "I suppose I should not be surprised at anything Harriet does, but that you all should have fallen into a pond with your car is incredible. What became of the car?" "It's there!" chuckled Jane. "They'll be cutting it out in sections when they take ice from the pond next winter, I reckon. Where can I send a letter? I must have another car, and that quickly! It's something like hard labor to get in and out of this place! But let's be introduced to these nice girls that I see in camp here." "You are the same old Jane, aren't you?" answered the Chief Guardian, with an indulgent smile. "I trust your father is well?" "He is, thank you, but he'll be wanting to have nervous prostration when he hears about my driving into an old pond. Hello, little girl! Have I seen you before!" questioned Crazy Jane, catching a little golden-haired girl by the arm and gazing down into the latter's blue eyes. "This is Miss Skinner, from Concord, young ladies," introduced Mrs. Livingston. "How do you do, Mith Thkinner," greeted Tommy. "Like mythelf, you aren't fat, are you?" "I am not," replied Miss Skinner. "Where do we stow our belongings?" asked Miss Elting. Mrs. Livingston looked puzzled. "Every tent in the camp is full," she replied. "Really, I do not know what I am going to do with you, girls." "That is easily answered. We will sleep out-of-doors," proposed Jane. "We were out all last night, and in our wet clothing at that." "How soon will you have vacancies?" asked Miss Elting. "Four girls will be leaving the last of next week, Miss Elting. Others, I don't recall how many, are to go about the middle of the week following. Until then I fear you will have to shift for yourselves." "We can have something to eat, can't we?" interjected Margery, in a hopeful tone. "Yeth, Buthter mutht have thomething to eat all the time," averred Tommy. "There is plenty for all. Now, come and meet our girls. We have a very fine lot of young women at Camp Wau-Wau this summer, and we think we have an ideal camp, too. I am so sorry that I did not know you were coming. I might make room for two of you on the floor in my tent. There isn't a bit of floor space left in any of the other tents." "I think we all should prefer sleeping out-of-doors, so long as the weather remains fine," answered Miss Elting. "That is just the point. What will you do when it rains?" smiled Mrs. Livingston. "I know," spoke up Tommy. "I'll jutht run and jump into the othean and get wet all over, all at onthe; then I won't mind it at all. Do you thee?" "I do," replied the Chief Guardian gravely. Mrs. Livingston already had begun introducing the Meadow-Brook Girls to the Camp Girls, most of whom had not been in Camp Wau-Wau when the Meadow-Brook Girls had visited it in the Pocono Woods two seasons before. By the time the introductions had been finished and the camp inspected, supper time had arrived. The girls sat down at long tables in brightly lighted tents and enjoyed a delicious supper. It was the first real meal the newcomers had enjoyed in more than a day, and they did full justice to this one, especially did Margery, though openly teased by Tommy because of her appetite. Mrs. Livingston had been kept thoroughly informed of the progress of the Meadow-Brook Girls through her correspondence with Miss Elting, so that she was fully prepared to bestow the rewards that the girls had earned. A council fire was called for that evening, at which the achievements of Harriet Burrell and her companions were related to the camp, and the beads that each, of the five girls had earned were bestowed. Harriet now had quite a string of colored beads, the envy of every Camp Girl. Each of the other girls of the Meadow-Brook party had performed either heroic or meritorious acts, for which they were rewarded by the gift of beads according to the regulations of the order. Unfortunately, the now badly damaged trunk that had been carried at the rear of Jane McCarthy's car contained their ceremonial dresses, so that the Meadow-Brook Girls were unable to appear in the regulation costume; and they also lacked other important equipment, namely, blankets in which to wrap themselves for outdoor sleeping. "There is not an extra blanket in camp," said Mrs. Livingston, when the situation was explained to the Chief Guardian. "I don't know what we shall do. I fear you girls will have to go into town and stay at a hotel." "Oh, no. We have slept out-of-doors under worse conditions," declared Harriet. "Please do not concern yourself over us. We shall get along very nicely. Do you happen to have an extra piece of canvas in camp?" "There is a side wall that we use for covering our vegetables, such as potatoes. You may use that if you wish, but I warn you it is not very clean." "We will give it a good dusting. It will answer very nicely to lie on and we'll sleep close together to keep warm. I am not sure but I should prefer sleeping out in that way. The Indians many times slept in the open without covering. I don't see why we shouldn't do the same." "Are there any thnaketh here?" inquired Tommy anxiously. "Oh, no," the Chief Guardian replied smilingly. "Any bugth?" "Naturally, there are some insects; fleas, perhaps, but you don't mind those." "No. My father thayth I hop around like a thand flea at a clam bake mythelf, but if I wath fat I couldn't do that, could I?" asked Tommy with a sidelong glance at Buster. Margery, who had been an interested listener to the conversation, now turned her back, elevating her nose disdainfully. She made no reply to Tommy's fling at her. Harriet already had gone to bring the canvas, which was to be their bed for the night. She determined on the morrow to make bough beds for herself and companions, provided any suitable boughs were to be had. The canvas was dragged to a level spot. Jane and Hazel scraped the ground clean and smooth while Harriet was beating the canvas to get the dust out of it. This done, the canvas was spread out on the ground and folded over twice, leaving sufficient of it to cover them after they had taken their positions for the night. Tommy regarded the preparations with mild interest. "Who ith going to thleep next to the wall?" she asked. "We thought we should place you next to the fold," replied Miss Elting. "You can't kick the cover off there." "And where ith Buthter going to thleep?" "In the middle." "That ith all right. I don't withh to be too clothe to her. We might thquabble all night." "Now, Tommy, you first," nodded Harriet. Tommy took her place on the canvas with great care, gathering her skirts about her, turning around and around as if in search of the softest possible place on which to lie. "You are thure Buthter ithn't going to thleep near me?" persisted Miss Tommy. "Yes, yes. Please get in," urged Miss Elting. "I jutht wanted to know, that ith all." She lay down, then one by one her companions took their places on the canvas. Harriet was the last to turn in. Before doing so she drew the unoccupied half of the canvas over the girls, leaving Tommy at the fold, as had been promised. There were no pillows. It was a case of lying stretched out flat or using one's arm for a pillow. The latter plan was adopted by most of the girls, though Harriet lay flat on her back after tucking herself in, gazing up at the stars and listening to the surf beating on the shore as the tide came rolling in. Now and then a roller showed a white ridge at its top, the white plainly visible even in the darkness, for the moon had not yet risen. The campfire burned low, the camp itself being as silent as if deserted. Now and then twitterings in the tree tops might have been heard; were heard, in fact, by Harriet Burrell, but not heeded, for her gaze was fixed, as it had been for some moments, on two tiny specks of light far out on the dark sea. One of the specks was green, the other red. They rose and fell in unison, now and then disappearing for a few seconds, then rising, high in the air, as it appeared. The two lights were the side lights of a boat, red on the port and green on the starboard, and above them was a single white light at the masthead. "According to those lights the boat is heading directly toward the beach," mused Harriet reflectively. "I wonder if I ought to show a light? No. They know where they are going. Besides, they can see the light of the campfire. The wind is increasing, too." Harriet dozed. She awakened half an hour later and gazed sleepily out to sea. The same lights were there, though they now appeared to be much nearer. All of a sudden they blinked out and were seen no more. The girl sat up, rubbing her eyes wonderingly. "Could they have sunk? No, of course not. How silly of me! The boat has turned about, and the lights are not visible from behind." But she did not lie down at once. Instead, she rested her chin in the palms of her hands and gazed dreamily out over the water. A fresh, salty breeze was now blowing in. She could hear the flap, flap of the canvas of the tents off in the camp, a thin veil of mist was obscuring the stars, the pound of the surf was growing louder and the swish of the water on the beach more surly. All at once what looked to her to be a huge cloud suddenly loomed close at hand, then began moving along the beach. "Mercy! what is it?" exclaimed the girl under her breath. She crept from beneath the canvas and ran down to the beach. "It's a ship! How close to the shore they are running, and they have no lights out." Harriet watched the vessel for some moments. She saw it swing around a long, narrow point of land a short distance to the south of the camp and boldly enter a bay. She was unable to make out with any distinctness what was being done there, but she heard the creak of the boom as it swung over and the rattle of the tackle as the sails came down, though unable to interpret these sounds. Soon there came a sharp whistle from human lips, answered by a similar whistle from the shore, then all was quiet. Harriet Burrell crept back under the canvas, wondering vaguely what could be the meaning of this. She was too sleepy to think much about it and soon dropped into a sound sleep, from which she was destined to be rudely awakened. CHAPTER VII A SUDDEN STORM The canvas that covered the sleeping Meadow-Brook Girls was suddenly lifted from them, then whipped back with a force that nearly knocked the breath out of some of them. A chorus of yells greeted the giant slap of the canvas, and a bevy of girls rolled and scrambled out of the way. "Hold it down, or we shall lose it," cried Harriet, her voice barely heard in the roar of the wind. But no one of the party seemed inclined to act as an anchor for the canvas, which was rolled, then whisked out of sight. "There, now you have done it!" shouted Crazy Jane McCarthy. "We sleep on the ground for the rest of the night!" A gust of wind had thrown Jane off her balance and knocked her down. "Take hold of a tree," advised Harriet. "I can't get to one," wailed Margery. "I can't walk." "Creep," suggested Tommy shrilly. "Yes, we must seek cover. I fear there will be rain soon," added Miss Elting. "This is an awful blow. I can feel the spray from the ocean." "Will the ocean come up here?" questioned Margery apprehensively. "No. Don't be foolish," answered Harriet. "But we shall get wet, all the same." Half walking, half crawling, the Meadow-Brook Girls crept farther back among the small trees, through which the wind was shrieking and howling. They saw the campfire lifted from the ground and sent flying through the air, leaving a trail of starry sparks in its wake. "There go the tents!" cried Miss Elting. A medley of shouts and cries of alarm followed hard upon the guardian's words. A gust more severe than any that had preceded it, and of longer duration, had rooted up the weakened tent stakes or broken the guy ropes. A whole street of tents tipped over backward, leaving their occupants scrambling from their cots, now in the open air. "Girls, see if you can lend the Wau-Wau girls assistance," commanded Miss Elting. "Hurry!" About all that was necessary to get to the distressed campers was to let go of the trees to which the Meadow-Brook Girls had been clinging. The wind did the rest, and they brought up in confused heaps near and beyond the uncovered tents. Cots had been overturned by the sudden heavy squall, blankets and equipment blown away. The cook tent was down and the contents apparently a wreck. "Cling to the trees! Never mind saving anything now!" cried Mrs. Livingston, whose tent had shared the same fate as those of her charges. "Take care of yourselves first. The squall is blowing itself out. It will soon pass." Almost before the words were uttered, the gale subsided. A sudden hush fell over the camp. "There!" called Mrs. Livingston. "What did I tell you? Now, hurry and get the things together. Never mind sorting out your belongings. We must get some cover over us as soon as possible, for we are going to have rain." The rain began in a spattering of heavy drops. The thunder of the surf was becoming louder and louder, for the sea had been lashed into foamy billows by the brief, though heavy, blow. The waves were now mounting the bluff back of the beach, leaving a white coating of creamy foam over a considerable part of the ground below the camp. "Do you think it ith going to rain?" questioned Tommy. "It is, my dear," answered Mrs. Livingston. "You had better prepare yourself for it." "Yeth, I think tho, too. I think I will. I told the girlth what I would do. Here goeth." Tommy turned and ran toward the beach at full speed. "Come back, Tommy! Where are you going!" called Miss Elting. "I'm going to fool the rain. I'm going to get wet before the rain cometh." "Maybe she is going to do as she said--jump into the ocean," suggested Margery Brown. Harriet suddenly dropped the piece of canvas at which she had been tugging, and started after Tommy, who had already headed for the bluff, and was running with all her might, apparently to get into the water before the rain came down hard enough to soak her. The little lisping girl had no intention of getting into the water, knowing full well that by standing on the edge of the bluff a moment she could get a drenching that would be perfectly satisfactory so far as a thorough wetting was concerned. But even in this Harriet Burrell saw danger. "Don't go near the edge, Tommy!" she shouted. Tommy Thompson merely waved her hand and continued on. Nor did she halt until she had reached the edge of the bluff, having waded through the white foam with which the ground had been covered. She stood there, faintly outlined in the night, and with both hands thrown above her head as if she were about to dive, uttered a shrill little yell. "Stop! Come back!" begged Harriet. "I'm going to take a thwim," replied Tommy. A great, dark roller came thundering in. It leaped up into the air, hovered an instant, then descended in an overwhelming flood right over the shivering figure of the little Meadow-Brook Girl standing on the edge of the bluff. Harriet had reached the scene just in time to get the full force of the downpour. Neither girl could speak, both were choking, when suddenly the ground gave way beneath their feet and they felt themselves slipping down and down until it seemed to Harriet as if they were going to the very bottom of the sea. Now they were lifted from their feet. They were no longer slipping downward. Instead, they were being carried up and up until they were free from the choking pressure of the water, and once more were breathing the free, though misty, salt air of the sea. "Oh, thave me!" wailed Tommy. "I'll try. I don't know. We have been carried out to sea by a receding wave. The bank gave way. Oh, what a foolish girl you are! Swim! Swim with all your might! We shall have to fight hard. We may not be able to save ourselves as it is. Swim toward the shore!" "Whi--ch way ith the thhore?" wailed Tommy. "I don't know. I can't see. I think it must be that way." She placed a firm grip on Tommy's shoulder, turning the smaller girl about, heading her toward what Harriet Burrell believed to be the shore. She wondered why she could see no light over there, having forgotten that the campfire had been blown away in the squall. The two girls now began to swim with all their might. It seemed to them, in their anxiety, as if they had been swimming for hours. Harriet finally ceased swimming and lay floating with a slight movement of her arms. "What ith it?" questioned Grace. "I don't know." "But you thee thomething, don't you?" "That is the worst of it. I do not. Look sharp. Can you make out anything that looks like the shore?" "I thee a light! I thee a light!" cried Tommy delightedly. "Yes; I see it now. That must be on the shore. We have been going in the wrong direction. Swim with all your might!" For a few moments they did swim, strongly and with long overhand strokes, Tommy and Harriet keeping close together, Harriet ever watchful that a swell did not carry her little companion from her. They had made considerable progress, but still the shore seemed to have disappeared from view. The light that Tommy had discovered had gone out. At least, it was no longer to be seen. Harriet stopped swimming, and, raising herself as high as possible out of the water, again and again took quick surveys of their surroundings. The seas were heavier and less broken where they now were. Slowly it dawned upon Harriet Burrell that they were in deep water. She raised her voice in a long-drawn shout. Both listened. No sound save the swish of the water about them was to be heard. The wind had not come up again, but a fresh, salty breeze was blowing over them, chilling the girls, sending shivers through their slender bodies. "Oh, what thhall we do?" sobbed Grace. "What can we do to thave ourthelveth?" "I don't know, Tommy. About all we can do is to keep up our courage and wait for daylight. We must keep moving as well as we can, or we shall get so cold that we shall perish." "Wait until daylight? Oh, thave me! I thall die--I thurely thall. Thave me, Harriet!" "Keep up your courage, darling. We are far from being goners yet, but we have before us a night that will call for all the courage we possess. Now pull yourself together and be a brave little girl." "I don't want to be brave; I want to go home," wailed Grace. "So do I, and we shall go as soon as we are able to see where home is," answered Harriet, forcing a laugh. "Then why don't you go?" "I can't." "I'm going." Tommy began to swim. Harriet propelled herself up to her companion and grasped her by an arm. "Tommy, you _must_ obey me! You don't know where you are going. You may be swimming out to sea for all you know. Be a good girl and save your strength. The night may become lighter later on, then we shall manage to reach the shore somehow." "But why don't you go now?" "Because I don't know where the shore is, dearie. We are lost, just as much lost as if we were in the middle of the Atlantic," answered Harriet solemnly. CHAPTER VIII A NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN NIGHT "Be brave! Remember that you are a Meadow-Brook Girl, Tommy," encouraged Harriet. "We are swimmers. We can't drown unless we get into a panic. There is a boat somewhere hereabouts. I saw one sail into the cove, or the bay, whichever it is, before I went to sleep this evening. The men surely will be coming out in the morning; then, if we are too far from shore to get in, we ought to be able to attract their attention. They will pick us up." "Do--do you think we are far from thhore?" "I fear so. Still, I can't be certain about that. I am dreadfully confused and don't know one direction from another. I wish the moon would come up. That would give us our points of compass. Perhaps the clouds may blow away after a little. We shall at least be able to see more clearly after that." "Oh, I'm tho cold! I'm freething, Har-r-r-i-e-t." "I will fix that. Come, swim with me. We will ride the waves," cried Harriet. The swells were long and high. Now they would ride to the top of one, then go slipping down the other side on a plane of almost oily smoothness. At such times Tommy would cry out. Even Harriet's heart would sink as she glanced up at the towering mountains of water on either side of them. It seemed as if nothing could save them from being engulfed, buried under tons of dark water. At the second when all hope appeared to be gone they would find themselves being slowly lifted up and up and up until once more they topped another mountainous swell. Fortunately for the two girls, the tops of the swells were in most instances solid, dark water. The strong wind having gone down, the crests generally showed no white, broken foam. When such an one was met with it meant a rough few moments for the Meadow-Brook Girls and a severe shaking up. Tommy had been in the surf on many occasions, when at the sea shore with her parents, and understood it fairly well. Harriet had never been in the salt water, but was guided wholly by the instincts of the swimmer, of one who loved the water, and for whom it seemed almost her natural element, and in the excitement of the hour she at times forgot the peril of their position. So far as she knew they might already be far out to sea, with a mile or more of salt water underneath them. In the meantime there was intense excitement in the camp. Miss Elting had been a witness to the sudden disappearance of Grace and Harriet. She had seen both girls enveloped in the cloud of spray and dark water. Jane McCarthy had gone bounding toward the beach, followed by their guardian and several of the Camp Girls, who, though not having seen Harriet and Grace disappear, surmised something of the truth. Reaching the edge of the bluff, they saw at once what had occurred. A large portion of the sandy bluff had sloughed off and slipped into the sea, having been loosened and undermined by the persistent smash of the waves against the bluff. Jane started to leap down, but Miss Elting caught her in time. "No, no, no," protested the guardian; "you must not!" "But they are down there drowning!" screamed Crazy Jane. "There is nothing we can do to save them. They aren't there. You can see they are not." "But if not, where are they?" cried Jane. "My dears, if they went in there they undoubtedly have been carried out. The undertow is very strong in a storm such as this," said Mrs. Livingston sadly. She had hurried down to the beach upon seeing the others running in that direction, to ascertain the cause. "Some one get a boat!" screamed Margery. The Chief Guardian shook her head sadly. "There is no boat here. Even if there were, we could not launch it against that sea, nor would it live a moment did we succeed in getting it launched. We can do no more than trust in God and wait. You see the wind is blowing on shore and--" "No, it is blowing off toward the cove. The wind has shifted," answered Jane McCarthy. "But that doesn't help us a bit." "Gather wood and build a fire," commanded Mrs. Livingston. The Camp Girls hurriedly set about gathering fuel for a fire, but having brought wood, the fuel refused to burn. The rain had thoroughly soaked everything. The merest flicker of flame was all they were able to get. They tried again and again, but with no better results, finally giving up the attempt altogether. "I am afraid we shall have to let it go," decided the Chief Guardian. "A light would help so much, and, if the two girls are alive, would serve as a guide for them." Jane interrupted by uttering a shrill cry. She listened, but there was no response. She cried out again and again, then finally gave up the effort. "I'm afraid they are gone," she moaned. "Unless they were hurt when the wave struck them I do not believe they are lost," said Miss Elting, with a calmness and hopefulness that she really did not feel, though she dared not permit herself to admit that Harriet and Grace really had been lost. "Both are excellent swimmers, and Harriet never would give up so long as there was a breath of life left in her body." "But can't we do something?" pleaded Margery. The Chief Guardian shook her head sadly. "I fear we can not. You have but to look out there to know that any efforts on our part would be futile." Miss Elting suddenly cried out. "Girls, what can we be thinking of? We must patrol the beach. The sea is going down a little. Divide up into pairs; keep as close to the shore as possible without being caught by a wave; then search every foot of the beach all along. I will go up the beach. Hazel, you come with me. Mrs. Livingston, will you have the other girls assist us?" The Chief Guardian gave the orders promptly. Fifty girls began running along the shore. Mrs. Livingston quickly called them back, dividing the party into groups of two. She was very business-like and calm, which, in a measure, served to calm the girls themselves. "Look carefully," she cautioned. "The missing girls may have been washed ashore; they may be found nearly drowned, and it may not be too late to revive them. Make all haste!" There was no delay. The Camp Girls took up their work systematically. A thorough search was made of the beach in both directions, the patrols eventually returning to the Chief Guardian to report that they had found no trace of the missing girls. "Keep moving. They may drift in," commanded Mrs. Livingston. The search was again taken up, pairs of girls going over the ground thoroughly, investigating every shadow, every sticky mass of sea weed that caught their anxious glances, but not a sign of either of the two girls did they find. An hour had passed; then Mrs. Livingston called them in. She directed certain groups to return to camp and begin getting the tents laid out, and to put up such as were in condition to be raised. The Chief Guardian herself remained on the beach with Miss Elting and the Meadow-Brook Girls. There was little conversation. The women walked slowly back and forth, scanning the sea, of which they could see but little, for the night was still very dark. At first they tried calling out at intervals, ceasing only when their voices had grown hoarse. To none of their calls was there any reply. Harriet and Tommy were too far out, and the noise about them was too great to permit of their hearing a human voice, even had it been closer at hand. Meantime the two girls were now swimming quite steadily. Harriet knew that, were they to remain quiet too long, they would grow stiff and gradually get chilled through. That would mark the end, as she well understood. Then again it was necessary to give Tommy enough to do to keep her mind from her troubles, which were many that night. All the time Harriet was straining eyes and ears to locate the land. She had not the remotest idea in which direction it lay, and dared not swim straight ahead in any direction for fear of going farther away. The wind died out and rose again. Had it continued to freshen from the start, she would have permitted herself to drift with it, but Harriet feared that the wind had veered, and that it was now blowing out to sea, what little there was of it, so she tried to swim about in a circle in so far as was possible. Tommy, of course, knew nothing of what was in the mind of her companion, nor did Harriet think best to confide in her. "I'm getting tired. I can't keep up much longer," wailed Grace. "Rest a moment on your back. I will keep a hand under your shoulders so you won't sink. If only one knew it, it isn't really possible to sink, provided the lungs are kept well filled with air and no water swallowed." "I could think like a thtone if I let mythelf go." "Don't let yourself go. There is every reason why you should not, and not one why you should." "Yeth." Tommy turned over on her back. "Did you ever thwallow thalt water?" "I never did." "Then don't. It ith awful. Oh, I'm tho tired and I'm getting thleepy." Harriet roused herself instantly. She gave Tommy a brisk slap on one cheek. Tommy cried out and began fighting back, with the result that she was the one to swallow salt water. Tommy choked, strangled and floundered, still screaming for Harriet to save her. Instead Harriet let her companion struggle, keeping close to her, but making no effort to help. "Thave me!" It was a choking moan. Uttering it, Tommy disappeared. Harriet lunged for her and dragged her companion up, and none too soon, for the little girl had swallowed so much salt water that she was really half drowned. Harriet shook her and pounded her on the back, all the time managing to float on the surface of the water, evidencing that Harriet was something of a swimmer. Yet she was becoming weary and the sense of feeling was leaving her limbs. She realized that it was the chill of the Atlantic and that unless she succeeded in restoring her circulation she would soon be helpless. Just now, however, all her efforts were devoted to the task of arousing Grace. The little girl began to whimper and to struggle anew. "I am amazed at you, Tommy," gasped Harriet. "You, a swimmer, to swallow part of the ocean!" "I didn't. The ocean thwallowed me--e." "You must work. Swim, Tommy!" "I--I can't. I'm tho tired." Grace made languid efforts to prove that she was weary. There could be no doubt of it. She did not have the endurance possessed by her companion, and even Harriet's strength was leaving her, because of that terrible numbness in her lower limbs, a numbness that was creeping upward little by little. "I will help you. But you must do something for yourself. Turn over on your stomach. There. You need not try to fight it, just make swimming motions, slowly. Not so fast. Now you have the pace." "I can't keep it. My limbth will not work. My kneeth are thtiff. Oh, Harriet, I think I'm going to die!" "Nonsense! Why, you could swim all night, if necessary, and be up in time for six o'clock breakfast just the same." "Breakfatht. It will be fithh for breakfatht for Tommy Thompthon, I gueth. Fithh, Harriet, fithh," mumbled Grace, then ceased swimming. "Fithh!" "Poor girl, she is about done for!" muttered Harriet Burrell. She turned Tommy over on her back and, placing a hand under the little girl, began swimming slowly. The added burden was almost more than Harriet, in her benumbed state, was able to handle. She knew that she could not support Grace and herself through the rest of that long, dark night. She knew, too, that unless they were rescued, her companion would be past help by the end of another hour. It already seemed hours since they had slipped into the sea and rode out on the crest of a receding wave. Now her movements were becoming slower and slower. She seemed not to possess the power to move her limbs. It was not all weariness either; it was that dragging numbness that was pulling her down. Harriet fought a more desperate battle with herself than she ever had been called upon to fight before. She did not now believe that they would be rescued, but that did not prevent her keeping up the battle as long as a single vestige of strength remained. It was sheer grit that kept Harriet Burrell afloat during that long, heart-breaking swim among the Atlantic rollers on this never-to-be-forgotten night. But at last the girl ceased swimming. Her limbs simply would not move in obedience to her will; her arms seemed weighed down by some tremendous pressure; her head grew heavy and her senses dulled. "I believe this is the end," muttered Harriet. One great struggle, then her weary muscles relaxed. For a few moments she floated on her back, turned over with a great effort, then settled lower and lower in the water, all the time fighting to regain possession of her faculties, but growing weaker with each effort. Then Harriet Burrell went down, dragging Tommy with her. CHAPTER IX A SURPRISE THAT PROVED A SHOCK It could not have been very long, not more than a few seconds, before Harriet Burrell's benumbed senses began to perform their natural functions. Deep down in her inner consciousness was the feeling that, though the surf was breaking over her, underneath her was something solid, immovable. In a vague sort of way she wondered at this, but for the time being was too weary and dulled to reason out the cause of the phenomenon. After a time the girl began to feel little pains shooting up her arms, reaching to her shoulders and down along her spine. Again was her wonderment aroused. Little by little her heavy eyelids struggled open. But her eyes saw only black darkness and water. Harriet, by a supreme force of will, now began to reason the cause. "I am still in the water, but my hands and feet are on something solid. What does it mean?" she thought. Turning her head slightly, she saw that which increased her wonderment. Tommy Thompson was sitting beside her, the little girl's head leaning against Harriet. It struck Harriet as peculiar that Tommy was able to sit on the water with nearly half her body out of the water. Harriet then discovered that she was crouching on all fours. It was a peculiar position for her, too. She wondered, if able to maintain that position, why she might not stand up just as well. "I can do it!" she screamed. "I can stand on the--" She paused. Tommy had toppled over and lay on her side, partly covered with water. "Land!" breathed Harriet. "We are on land, but there is water all about us. I don't understand." Pondering over this for a moment, Harriet stooped and lifted Grace to a sitting posture. Her blood had begun to circulate and a warm glow was suffusing her entire body. "Tommy, wake up! Wake up! It's land. We are on solid ground. Don't you understand?" "Breakfatht for fithh," muttered Tommy. Harriet shook her as vigorously as she could. It required no little effort to get Grace wide enough awake to understand what Harriet was saying, but after a short time Tommy seemed to understand, understanding that finally came to her with a shock almost equal to that that Harriet had felt. "We--we are on thhore?" she questioned. "Yes, yes. Let's get out of the water. Come, dear, I will support you." This she did, though Harriet staggered and was barely able to support herself. She slipped a cold arm about Grace's waist. "Make your feet go." The two girls stumbled forward, Tommy now having an arm about Harriet's waist, then with a scream from Tommy they stepped off into deep water and went in all over. "Thave me, oh, thave me!" moaned Tommy as they came up. But the plunge had done them good. It had shaken both girls wide awake and cleared their clouded minds. They once more had been awakened to a realization of their position. "It wathn't land at all! Let me go, let me die," insisted Tommy, struggling to free herself from Harriet's grasp. "It was a sand bar," explained Harriet. "Please behave yourself, Tommy. You must _do_ something. It is all I can do to take care of myself. Now, please, help me by helping yourself and we shall be on dry land in a few moments." Grace made several awkward attempts to swim, then gave it up. "I can't do it, Harriet. What ith the uthe of trying to thwim any more?" "Don't you understand? We were on a sand bar. It was that that saved our lives after we were overcome. We should have drowned had it not been for the bar." "Yeth, but we are in deep water again," wailed Tommy. "Think, think! Don't be so stupid. We must be near the shore. I don't believe there would be a shallow place like that one far out from land." "Do you think tho?" Tommy's voice was weaker than before. "I am sure of it. Swim. That's a good girl." "I--I can't." "Then I will swim for you." Once more Harriet Burrell placed a hand under Grace and began swimming with her. The surf was behind them and was rapidly carrying them with it toward either the shore or the sea, Harriet neither knew nor thought which. Had she not been still half dazed she might have smelled the vegetation on shore, not so very far from them, but of this she took no heed. She swam, summoning all her strength to the task, knowing that she would not be able to keep up much longer. Then all at once her hands touched bottom. A moment more and she lay full length upon the wet, sandy bottom with the waves breaking over her. Harriet groped with her hands and found that the water at arm's length, ahead was but a few inches deep. She sprang up with, a weak cry. "Tommy, Tommy! We've made it." "Fithh," muttered Grace. Harriet grasped her by the arms and began backing toward shore, dragging her companion with her. The ground grew more and more solid as she backed. There could be no doubt now. They were rapidly getting to dry land. Here, unlike the beach fronting the camp, the ground sloped gradually up away from the sea, then extended off among the trees a level stretch for some distance. Tommy struggled a little when Harriet raised her to her feet. The latter did not know which way camp lay from where they had landed, but she decided that it must be to the right of them. In this surmise Harriet was correct, but the camp was farther away than she had thought. She staggered along, half leading, half carrying, her companion, until, exhausted by her efforts, she sank down, Tommy with her. "I can't go another step; I'm tired out," gasped Harriet. "Ye-t-h," agreed Grace weakly. The two girls toppled over and stretched out on the wet ground, clasped in each other's arms. They were almost instantly asleep. Tired nature could endure no more, and there they continued to lie and slumber through the remaining hours of the night. Break of day still found patrol parties running along the shore, alternately searching the beach and gazing out to sea. An occasional boat was sighted far out, but that was all. No signs of the missing Meadow-Brook Girls had been found. Ever since the dawn, however, Crazy Jane McCarthy had been taking account of the direction of the wind, which was blowing across the bay to the right of their camp. She decided to investigate that part of the coast on her own account, going far beyond the farthest point that had been reached by any of the patrols. Suddenly Crazy Jane uttered a yell that should have been heard at the camp, but was not. She had discovered the girls lying on the beach--still locked in each other's arms. Jane rushed to them, and, grabbing Tommy, began shaking her. Harriet raised her heavy eyelids, sat up and rubbed her eyes. Tommy tried to brush Jane aside. "Fithh for breakfatht," she muttered. "Oh, Jane, is it really you?" stammered Harriet, trying to keep from lying back and again going to sleep. "Oh, my stars, darlin's! And we thought all the time that you were both drowned. Don't tell me a thing now. I'll go right back and get some of the girls to help me get you back to camp." "No, no; we can walk. There is nothing the matter with us except that we are tired out. Tommy, Tommy, wake up! It is morning and we are safe and dry. Think of it!" "I--I don't want to think. I want to go to thleep." Jane lifted and shook the little lisping girl until Tommy begged for mercy, declaring that she would rather go to sleep than return to camp. It required no little effort to get the girl to try to walk. Harriet herself would have much preferred going back to sleep, but after a time, with their arms about Tommy, they managed to get her started, upon which they took up their weary trudge to the camp, more than a mile away, stumbling along with Tommy, half asleep nearly every minute of the time. It was almost an hour later when a great shout arose from the camp as the girls were discovered slowly approaching. There was a wild rush to meet them. Every girl in camp, including the guardians, joined in the rush to welcome the returning Meadow-Brook Girls. CHAPTER X SUMMONED TO THE COUNCIL "They're saved! They're saved!" shouted fifty voices, their owners almost wild with delight. With one common impulse they gathered up Tommy and Harriet and started to carry them into camp. Tommy offered no resistance. She submitted willingly. With Harriet it was different. She struggled, freed herself from the detaining arms, and sprang away from her rejoicing companions, laughing softly. "I am perfectly able to take care of myself, thank you," she said. "You certainly do not look it," declared the Chief Guardian. Harriet's face was pale, her eyes sunken, with dark rings underneath them, but in other ways she appeared to be her old self. "We shall both be as well as ever after we have had something warm to eat and drink." "Tell us, oh, tell us about it," cried several girls in chorus. "Not a word until after the girls have had something to eat and drink. They are completely exhausted." Mrs. Livingston gazed wonderingly at Harriet Burrell, knowing full well that the latter had borne the greater share of the burden in the battle that she must have had to fight through the long, dark night. The cook girls were already making coffee and warming up food left over from their own breakfast, as being the quickest way to prepare something for the returned Meadow-Brook Girls. That meal strengthened and cheered them wonderfully. Tommy began to chatter after having drunk her first cup of coffee. Their companions sat about in a semi-circle watching them, scarcely able to restrain their curiosity as to what had happened during the night. Jane opened the recital by a question. "Did you really mean that you wished fish for breakfast, Tommy?" she asked. Grace regarded her with a frowning squint. "I didn't want any fithh for breakfatht. It wath the fithh that wanted me for their breakfatht." "And there are sharks off this coast, too!" gasped one of the girls. "Were you in the water for long?" asked Miss Elting. "It seemed like a long time, it seemed like hours and hours," admitted Harriet, accompanying the words with a bright smile that the keen-eyed Chief Guardian saw was forced. "For hours!" cried the girls in chorus. "If you feel able, please tell us about it," urged Hazel. Mrs. Livingston shook her head. "Both girls are going to bed immediately. Please fix up two cots for them in my tent. No, no," she added in answer to Harriet's protests, "it is my order. You are to turn in and sleep until supper time, if you wish; by that time we shall have the camp put to rights and you may talk to your hearts' content." The Chief Guardian led the two girls to her tent, assisting them to remove their damp clothing, putting them in warm flannel night gowns and tucking them in their cots. Harriet insisted that she did not wish to be "babied," but, the guardian was firm. After tucking them in Mrs. Livingston sat down on the edge of Tommy's cot and began asking her questions, all of which Tommy answered volubly, Harriet now and then offering objections to her companion's praise. In a few moments the Chief Guardian was in possession of the whole story of the night's experiences. "You are the same brave Harriet that we came to know so well at our camp in the Pocono Woods," said Mrs. Livingston. "There are not many like you; but we shall speak of your achievements later. Now I will draw the flap, and I do not wish to see it opened until sundown. I know that I may depend upon you to obey orders." Harriet nodded. "There is something I should like to ask. Did you see anything of a sail boat in the bay this morning?" "No. Why?" "I saw one come in last night before the blow. It anchored in the cove. They had put out their lights before coming in, which made me wonder." "Are you sure about that?" "Yes, I know. I wondered if they had been blown ashore?" "We should have known of it if such had been the case. But I can't understand what a boat could be doing in here. This is a remote place where people seldom come. That was why I chose it for our summer camping place. I will ask the girls if they saw anything of the boat you mention, but it is doubtful." "Another thing. Oh, I'm not going to keep you here talking with me all day." "No; I want to go to thleep," interjected Grace. "I saw a cabin down on that long point of land just this side of the bay. What is it?" "A fisherman's cabin. It is not occupied, nor has it been in a very long time." "Then why can't we Meadow-Brook Girls use it while we are in camp? I should love to be down by the water, with the sea almost at my feet." "I should think you would have had enough of the sea, after your dreadful experience of last night," laughed Mrs. Livingston. "I am fascinated with the sea. It is wonderful! Do you think we could have the cabin?" "I will consult with Miss Elting. If she thinks it wise, I will see what can be done. Of course, it is a little farther from the camp than I like. I prefer to have my girls where I can have an eye on them at all times. But the Meadow-Brook Girls can be depended upon to take care of themselves, save that they are too venturesome. Yes, I will see what can be done." "Oh, thank you ever so much," answered Harriet with glowing eyes. "Then, if we wish, we may sleep out on the sands when the nights are warm." "I shall have to think about that, my dear. Now go to sleep. This evening I shall have more to say." Tommy was already asleep. Harriet dropped into a heavy slumber within a very few moments after the Chief Guardian's departure. She did not awaken until the sun had dipped into the sea. As she forced herself to a realization of her surroundings, the merry chatter of voices was borne to her ears and the savory odor of camp cooking to her nostrils. In the meantime an active day had been spent by the Camp Girls. There was much to be done, for the camp was in a confused condition after the storm of the preceding evening. A day of labor had given a keen zest to the appetites of the campers; added to this was the satisfaction of having completed their work. The camp now was in trim condition. Acting upon the orders of the Chief Guardian, the wood had been laid for a council fire. The orders had been issued for the girls to don ceremonial dress and report for a council at eight o'clock that evening. The girls wondered what important subject was to come up for consideration, as it was not the evening for the regular weekly council fire that was always held during the summer encampment. Of all this Harriet was unaware. When she awakened she found dry clothing laid out for her to put on. The same had been done for Grace, who was still sleeping soundly. Harriet shook the little girl awake. "It is nearly night, dear," she said. "How do you feel?" Tommy blinked several times before replying. "How do I feel? Not tho wet ath I did latht night. I thmell thupper!" exclaimed Tommy, sitting up suddenly. "I told you it was nearly night. Let's go out and see the girls. How good they all are to us!" "I thuppothe they will all be looking at me and following me about ath though I wath thome thort of curiothity," complained Grace. "Of course you would not like that. It would embarrass you, wouldn't it, Tommy?" "It would embarrath me more if they didn't," answered Tommy honestly, puckering her face into frowns and squinting up at Harriet so whimsically that the older girl burst into a peal of merry laughter. Instantly following the laugh, Jane's head was thrust through the tent opening. The head was in disorder, for Jane had found no time to attend to her hair. She had been working, which meant that she had been accomplishing things, for Jane was a host in herself when it came to work. "Excuse the condition of my crowning glory, darlin's, but I couldn't wait to comb it. I have been sent to tell you that the grease is on the bacon and the potatoes are popping open in the hot ashes of the cook fire. We're going to cut off the tops of them, dig out a tunnel and fill the tunnel with butter. Um, um! Now, what do you think of that?" In a twinkling Tommy was out of bed and gleefully hurrying into her clothes. "I thought it would interest you, darlin'," chuckled Jane. "You dress as if you were going to a fire," declared Harriet, with a good-natured laugh. "She is," answered Crazy Jane; "the camp fire--the cook fire, I should say." Tommy, during this dialogue, had not uttered a word. Finally, having got into her clothes to her satisfaction, she darted from the tent, spinning Jane half-way around as she dashed past her, the little girl twisting her hair into a hard knot as she ran. "I want a potato with a hole in it," she shouted the moment she came in sight of the cook fire. Some one snatched a hot tuber from the ashes and tossed it to her. Tommy caught the potato, but dropped it instantly and began cooling her fingers. "I want one with a hole in it," she insisted. "Bring it here and you shall have it," replied Miss Elting. Instead of picking up the potato and carrying it, Tommy propelled it along with the toe of her boot. She did not propose to burn her fingers again. The guardian gouged out a hole to the bottom, filling the hole with butter, Tommy's eyes growing larger and larger. Then she began to eat the potato with great relish, after having seasoned it with salt and pepper. This was no time for words, nor were any uttered until nothing but the blackened skin of the potato was left. "Thave me!" gasped Tommy. "Pleathe, may I have another?" "Don't you think it would be well to wait for supper?" suggested Miss Elting. "In your greediness you have forgotten the others." "I beg your pardon, but I wath tho hungry! If you had been a fithh thwimming in the ocean all night you, too, would have an appetite. How would you like to be a fithh, Mith Livingthton?" "I am quite content to be a mere human being," was the Chief Guardian's laughing reply. "Were you afraid when you found yourself out in the ocean all alone?" "Afraid? I--I gueth I didn't think about that. I wath too buthy trying to keep from filling up with thalt water. Did you ever drink any of that water, Mith Livingthton?" "Hardly." "Then take the advice of a fithh, and don't." All hands were called to supper, thus putting an end to the conversation, which had been heartily enjoyed by Mrs. Livingston. Tommy always was a source of amusement to her. She appreciated the active mind and the keen, if sometimes rude, retorts and ready answers of the little lisping girl. After supper a short time was spent in visiting among the girls principally to discuss the marvelous experience of the two Meadow-Brook Girls; then one by one the girls left to go to their tents to don their ceremonial dress, and in place of the regulation serge uniform of the Camp Girls figures clad in the ceremonial dress, their hair hanging in two braids over their shoulders, and beads glistening about their necks, began to make their appearance. Barely had the girls put on their ceremonial costumes before a moccasined Wau-Wau girl ran at an Indian lope through the camp, crying out the call for the council fire: "Gather round the council fire, The chieftain waits you there," chanted the runner, circling the camp after having gone straight through the center from her own tent. The girls began moving toward a dark spot in the young forest where the wood for the fire had been piled, but not yet lighted. "What are we going to do?" questioned Tommy. Miss Elting said she could not say; that the Chief Guardian had called the council. Silent figures took their places, sitting on the ground, curling their feet underneath them, speaking no words, waiting for the flame that would open the Wau-Wau council. At last all were seated. From among the number there stepped forward a dark figure who halted before the pile of dry wood, then, stooping, began rubbing two sticks together, while the circle of Camp Girls chanted: "Flicker, flicker, flicker, flame; Burn, fire, burn!" A tiny blaze sprang from the two sticks, then the chant rose higher and higher, figures rose up, swaying their bodies from side to side in unison as the blaze grew into a flame and the flame into a roaring fire, the tongues of which reached almost to the tops of the slender trees that surrounded the camp of the Wau-Wau Girls. "I light the light of health for Wau-Wau," announced the firemaker, turning her back to the flames and facing part of the circle of expectant faces on which the lights and shadows from the fire were playing weirdly. This completed the opening ceremony. The council fire was in order, the purpose of the meeting would soon be explained, thus relieving the curiosity of some fifty girls who were burning to know what it was all about. Not the least curious of these was Tommy Thompson. CHAPTER XI A REWARD WELL-EARNED "I'm just perishing to know what it's about," confided Margery Brown to the girl next to her. "What do you suppose it is?" "I think it has something to do with last night," answered the Camp Girl. "Oh! you mean about Harriet and Tommy?" "Yes. Be quiet, the C.G. is going to say something." The Chief Guardian had already risen. Passing about the circle, she extended a hand to each of the girls there assembled. There were no other greetings than the warm clasp of friendship and good-fellowship, but it meant much to these brown-faced, strong-limbed young women who had been members of the organization for a year or more. The Chief Guardian took her place by the fire. "My daughters," she said, "we have gathered this evening about the council fire, that ancient institution, to speak of matters that are near to the heart of each of us. Last night two of your number gave a marked demonstration of what a Camp Girl may do, of what pluck will do, an exhibition of sheer moral courage, one of the greatest assets of a Camp Girl." "That ith uth," whispered Tommy to Harriet Burrell, who sat beside her. Harriet's face was flushed. She feared the guardian was about to speak of her achievements, which Harriet was not at all eager to hear. "I refer to the thrilling experiences of Miss Burrell and Miss Thompson in battling with the big seas far out there in the darkness, and with every reason to believe that their efforts would prove of no avail. It is not the battle of despair to which I refer. There was no such. Rather, it was that dogged courage that never even permits a suggestion of give-up to enter the mind of the fighter. It was a courage such as this, combined with rare judgment and physical ability, that makes it possible for Miss Burrell and Miss Thompson to be present with us at the council fire this evening. "They have not told the story willingly. I had to draw it from them bit by bit, which I venture to say is more than any of my girls have succeeded in doing." The guardian smiled as she glanced about at the eager, flushed faces of the Camp Girls. "Yes, yes!" they cried. "As you all know, Miss Burrell, seeing the danger of her companion, hurried to her rescue, with the result that both girls went into the sea. They were quickly carried out to sea by the undertow, which they fought away from and propelled themselves to the surface. Then they began swimming, but in the darkness were unable to see the shore. After a time, Miss Thompson, less strong than her companion, gave out. Then began the real battle, and though Miss Burrell was benumbed with cold, exhausted by her efforts, she managed by a great effort to keep herself and her companion afloat. Fortunately for them, the wind had shifted and they swam and drifted into the bay and eventually to the shore. We have no means of telling how long our two plucky Wau-Wau Girls were in the water, because they themselves cannot tell when they reached the shore--but, think of it! cast away on a dark and stormy ocean in a black night such as that was. That is a triumph, an act of courage and heroism that should be held up as an example to every Camp Girl in America. However, I should not advise any of you to attempt to emulate the example set by our two young friends," added the Chief Guardian warningly. A ripple of laughter ran around the circle, then the ensuing silence was broken by a remark from Tommy which sent the girls nearest to her into a shout of laughter. "Well, I thhould thay not!" exploded Tommy. "You might tell the girls how you felt when you believed that all was lost," suggested the Chief Guardian smilingly, nodding at Tommy. "Do you recall how you felt in that trying moment?" "I motht thertainly do." "How did you feel?" "I felt cold. I had what Harriet callth 'cold feet.' Then I gueth I didn't feel much of anything till I felt mythelf thitting in the thand with thome of me dry and thome of me wet, and Harriet trying to drag me out of the thudth." "Out of what?" exclaimed the Chief Guardian. "Thudth." "Suds," interpreted Miss Elting. "Grace refers to the froth left on the shore by the beating waves." "Yeth, thudth," repeated Tommy. "Harriet, your companions would like to hear from your own lips about your experiences in the water." "Oh, please, Mrs. Livingston, won't you excuse me?" "If you wish, but--" "My own part was nothing more than an instinct to save myself, which everyone possesses. I do want to say, though, that Tommy Thompson was the bravest girl I ever saw. She was not afraid, nor can she be blamed for getting numb and sleepy. I did myself. No one can ever tell me that Tommy isn't as brave a girl as lives. She has proved that." "Yeth, I'm a real hero," piped Tommy with great satisfaction. "A heroine, you mean, Tommy," corrected Harriet. "Yeth, I gueth tho," agreed the little lisping girl amid general laughter, in which, the Chief Guardian joined. "There is nothing else that I can think of to say, Mrs. Livingston. We were fortunate; we have much for which to be thankful, for it was through no heroism on my part that we got ashore and were saved." Harriet sat down, inwardly glad that her part of the story was told. "We have our own views as to that," answered the Chief Guardian. "And now that we have cleared the way, I would say that the camp guardians have unanimously agreed on giving each of you two young ladies a full set of beads for your achievements of last night, for such achievements touch upon nearly all the crafts of our order. They have been worthily won and will prove a splendid addition to the already heavy necklace of beads you have earned." "I gueth we'll need a chain bearer inthtead of a torch bearer if we keep on earning beadth," suggested Grace. The two girls were requested to step out. They did so, posing demurely before the blazing campfire. Mrs. Livingston placed a string of beads about the neck of each of the two girls. There were beads of red, orange, sky blue, wood brown, green, black and gold, and red, white and blue, representative of the different crafts of the organization. Linking hands and raising them above their heads, thus forming a chain about the blazing campfire, the Wau-Wau Girls began swaying the human chain, chanting in low voices: "Beads of red and beads of blue, Beads that keep us ever true; Beads of gold and beads of brown, Make for health and great renown." Tommy, chancing to catch the eyes of Margery Brown on the opposite side of the circle, winked wisely at her. Tommy was in her element, but quite the opposite was the case with Harriet. She was uncomfortable and embarrassed, and though proud of the beads that had been awarded to her, she felt that she scarcely had earned them. She was suddenly aroused by the voice of the Chief Guardian. "Miss Thompson will be seated," she was saying. "Miss Burrell will kindly remain standing." "Now you are going to catch it," whispered Grace, as she began stepping backward toward her place, which she did not quite reach. She sat down on Hazel instead, raising a titter among the girls near by who had witnessed the mishap. But the interruption was brief. The girls were too much interested in what was taking place there by the campfire. They had not the remotest idea what the Chief Guardian was going to do, though they felt positive that some further honor was to be paid to Harriet Burrell. "I think I but voice the feelings of the guardians and the girls of Camp Wau-Wau, both those who are with us here for the first time and, those who were members of this camp when the Meadow-Brook Girls joined, when I say that Harriet Burrell is deserving of further promotion at our hands. In the two years that she has been a member of our great organization she has worn the crossed logs upon her sleeve, the emblem of the 'Wood Gatherer'; she has borne with honor the crossed logs, the flame and smoke, the emblem of the 'Fire-Maker.' She has, too, more than fulfilled the requirements of these ranks, filled them with honor to herself, her friends and the organization; and instead of earning sixteen honors from the list of elective honors, she has won more than forty, a record in the Camp Girls' organization. She has fulfilled other requirements that pertain to an even higher rank. She has proved herself a leader, trustworthy, happy, unselfish, has led her own group through many trying situations and emergencies, winning the love and enthusiasm of those whom she has led." [Illustration: Harriet and Tommy Received Their Reward.] "My dear, what is the greatest desire of a Torch Bearer?" "To pass on to others the light that has been given to her; to make others happy and to light their pathway through life," was Harriet's ready response. There were those in the circle who quickly caught the significance of the Chief Guardian's question. Many were now aware what reward was to be bestowed upon the Meadow-Brook Girl. "Who bring to the hearth the wood and kindling?" questioned the Chief Guardian. "The Wood Gatherers." "Who place the sticks for lighting?" "The Fire Makers." Harriet's replies were prompt, but given with some embarrassment. "Who rubs together the tinder sticks and imparts the spark that produces the flame?" "The Torch Bearer," answered Harriet in a low voice. Her face now seemed to be burning almost as hotly as was the council fire before her. "What are the further duties of a Torch Bearer?" "To act as a leader of her fellows in their sports and in their more serious occupations, to assist them in learning that work, that accomplishment, bring the greater joys of life; to assist the guardian in any and all ways," was the low-spoken reply. "Correct. And having more than fulfilled the requirements, I now appoint you to be a Torch Bearer, a real leader in the Camp Girls' organization, thus entitling you to wear that much-coveted emblem, the crossed logs, flame and smoke. Workers, arise and salute your Torch Bearer with the grand hailing sign of the tribe!" CHAPTER XII MYSTERY ON A SAND BAR "I--I thank you." Harriet, placing the right hand over the heart, bowed low, and the ceremony was complete. The voices of the Wau-Wau Girls were raised in singing, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Then they ran forward, fairly smothering Harriet with their embraces and congratulations. "You forget that I am the real hero," Tommy reminded them; whereat they picked up the little girl and tried to toss her back and forth, with the result that she was dropped on the ground. The guardians added their congratulations as soon as they succeeded in getting close enough to Harriet to do so. Grace also came in for her share of congratulation and praise, with which she was well content. "Come, girls," urged Miss Elting, "you know we have to make our beds, and the hour is getting late." "I'm not thleepy," protested Grace, "I could thtay awake for ageth." "You will be by the time we find our sleeping place. It is some little distance from here." Harriet glanced at the guardian inquiringly. "Yes, it is the cabin," answered Miss Elting. "Mrs. Livingston lost no time in arranging for us to occupy it, though I am not at all certain that it is the wise thing to do under the circumstances." "Under what circumstances?" asked Harriet. "Storms." "But they can do us no harm." "We shall have to take for granted that they will not. Mrs. Livingston sent to town to ask permission of the owner, who readily granted it. He had forgotten that he owned the cabin. It seems that no one has occupied it in several years. Mrs. Livingston also obtained some new blankets for us, but for to-night we shall have to put up with some hardships. To-morrow you girls can fix us bough-beds; then we shall be quite comfortable. But we shall have to cook out-of-doors, there being no stove in the cabin." "We shan't be able to cook on the bar. The breeze from the sea is so strong there that it would blow the fire away." "We must come to camp for our meals, then. Perhaps that would be better after all. We don't wish to run away by ourselves; and besides this, you are now a Torch Bearer and must take a more active part in the affairs of the Camp, even if you are of the Meadow-Brook group," reminded the guardian. Harriet nodded thoughtfully. "How good and kind Mrs. Livingston is! And think of what she has done for me. It is too good to be true." "What is too good to be true?" questioned the Chief Guardian herself. "Everything--all that you have done for me." "We are still in your debt. Now you had better be getting along. Will you need a light?" "No, thank you. Harriet ith an owl. She can thee in the dark jutht ath well ath in the light," answered Tommy, speaking for Harriet. The Meadow-Brook party, after calling their good nights, started toward the cabin, Harriet with the thought strong in her mind that only one rank lay between her and the highest gift in the power of the organization to bestow. She determined that one day she would be a Guardian of the Fire, but she dared not even dream of ever rising to the high office of Chief Guardian. Harriet's life would be too full of other things, she felt. They trooped, laughing and chatting, along the beach, and, reaching the Lonesome Bar, followed it out. The bar was a narrow, sandy strip that extended nearly a quarter of a mile out into the bay. About half way out the cabin had been built and for some time occupied by a Portsmouth man, who occasionally ran down there for a week-end fishing trip. The cabin, as a camping place, possessed the double advantage of being out of the mosquito zone and of being swept by ocean breezes almost continuously. A fresh breeze was now blowing in from the sea, and the white-crested rollers could be seen slipping past them on either side. It was almost as though they were walking down an ocean lane without even wetting their boots. The water was shallow on either side, so that even though they stepped off they were in no danger of going into deep water. "We have forgotten all about a lamp!" exclaimed Harriet as they neared the cabin. "That has been attended to," replied Miss Elting. "You know we have been thleeping, Harriet," reminded Tommy--"thleeping our young headth off. Ithn't it nithe to be able to thleep while other folkth do your work for you?" They had hurried on and Tommy was obliged to run to catch up with them. Miss Elting was lighting a swinging lamp when they entered the cottage, which consisted of one room, above which was an attic, but with no entrance so far as they were able to observe. Six rolls of blankets lay on the floor against a side wall ready to be opened and spread when the girls should be ready for bed. One solitary window commanded a view of the sea. Tommy surveyed the place with a squint and a scowl. There was not another article in the place besides the blankets. "There ithn't much danger of falling over the furniture in the dark, ith there?" she asked. "Not when we have a Torch Bearer with us," answered Buster, from the shadow just outside the door. "Thave me!" murmured Tommy. "Oh, my stars! We'll laugh to-morrow, darlin'. It's too dark to laugh now. Come in and sit down, Buster. It isn't safe to leave you out there. No telling what you might not do after having given out such a flimsy 'joke.'" "Where shall I sit?" asked Margery, stepping in and glancing about the room. "Take the easy chair over there in the corner," suggested Harriet smilingly. "But there isn't any chair there." "That ith all right. You jutht thit where the chair would be if there were one," suggested Tommy. "No sitting this evening," declared the guardian. "You will all prepare for bed. At least two of you need rest--I mean Harriet and Tommy." "Yeth, we alwayth need that. I never thhall get enough of it until after I have been dead ever and ever tho long." "I am not sleepy, but, of course, being a leader now, I have to set a good example," said Harriet lightly. Tommy squinted at her inquiringly, as if trying to decide whether or not it were prudent to take advantage of her now that Harriet was a leader officially. She decided to test the matter out at the first opportunity, but just now there was a matter of several hours' sleep ahead, so Tommy quickly prepared for sleep, after which, straightening out her blanket, she twisted herself up in it in a mummy roll with only the top of her tow-head and a pair of very bright little eyes observable over the top of the blanket. Harriet waited until her companions had rolled up in their blankets; then she opened the door wide so that the ocean breeze blew in and swirled about the interior of the cabin in a miniature gale. The girls did not mind it at all. They thought it delicious. This was getting the real benefit of being at the sea shore. Harriet rolled in her blanket directly in front of the door with her head pillowed on the sill. To enter the cabin one would have to step over her. She went to sleep after lying gazing out over the sea for some time. "What's that?" Harriet started up with a half-smothered exclamation. A report that sounded like the discharge of a gun had aroused her, or else she had been dreaming. She was not certain which it had been. The other girls were asleep, as was indicated by their regular breathing. Harriet listened intently. She had not changed her position, but her eyes were wide open, looking straight out to sea. Nothing unusual was found there. She was about to close her eyes again when a peculiar creaking sound greeted her ears. Harriet knew instantly the meaning of the sound. It came from the straining of ropes on a sailboat. Unrolling from the blanket and hastily dressing, the Meadow-Brook Girl crawled out to the bar, wishing to make her observations unseen by any one else. Now she saw it again, that same filmy cloud in the darkness, towering up in the air, moving almost phantom-like into the bay to the south of the cabin on Lonesome Bar. "It's a boat. I believe it is the same one I saw in there before. But I can't be sure of that. I don't know boats well enough; then, again, the night is too dark to make certain. I don't know that it would be anything of importance if a boat were to run in here to anchor for the night. That evidently is what they propose doing," she thought. That Harriet's surmise was correct was evidenced a few moments later when the boat's anchor splashed into the waters of the bay and the anchor chain rattled through the hawse hole. Harriet tried to get a clear idea of what the boat itself looked like, but was unable to do so on account of the darkness. Now the creak of oars was borne faintly to her ears; the sound ceased abruptly, then was taken up again. "They are putting a boat ashore!" muttered Harriet, who was now sitting on the sand, her hair streaming over her shoulder in the fresh, salty breeze. "I hope to goodness none of them comes out here. The girls would be terribly frightened if they knew about this. I don't believe I shall tell them, unless--" Harriet paused suddenly as the sound of men's voices was heard somewhere toward the land end of the bar. She walked around to the rear of the cabin, peering shoreward. She made out faintly the figures of two men coming down the bar. They were carrying something between them--something that seemed to be heavy and burdensome, for the men were staggering under its weight. The Meadow-Brook Girl realized that she was face to face with a mystery, but what that mystery was she could not even surmise, nor would she for some time to come. She determined to act, however, and that, if possible, without alarming her companions. Hesitating but a moment, Harriet stepped out boldly and started up the bar to meet the mysterious strangers with their heavy burden. CHAPTER XIII A STRANGE PROCEEDING They did not appear to see her until Harriet was within a few yards of them. Then they halted sharply, dropped their burden and straightened up. The right hand of one of them slipped to his hip pocket, then a few seconds later was slowly withdrawn with a handkerchief in it. "It's a girl," exclaimed one of the pair in a low voice. "Well, what do you think about that?" "Hello, there, Miss! What is it? Who are ye?" demanded one of the men. "I was about to ask the same question of you. What are you doing here?" "This here is free coast, young woman. We've as good a right to be here as yourself, and maybe more right," returned the stranger. "That depends, sir. I wish you wouldn't speak so loudly, either. You will awaken my companions. I would just as soon they did not see you, for I don't like the looks of you in the dark." "Companions!" exploded one of the men under his breath. "Whew! Where are they?" "In the cabin. We are occupying it now. Where were you going with that box? You know there is nothing but the sea beyond here. This is a bar. The mainland is the other way. Perhaps you thought you were headed up the beach?" "Sure we did, Miss. Thank you. We'll be going. Sorry to have disturbed you. Got some provisions for a friend of ours who is down this part of the coast on a fishing trip. Thank you." They gathered up their burden and started back toward the beach as fast as they could stagger, Harriet in the meantime standing where they had left her, gazing after them with forehead wrinkled into ridges of perplexity. Harriet watched the men all the way back to the beach. She saw them put down the box they had been carrying and stand looking back at her. Harriet quickly retraced her steps to the cabin, in the shadow of which she halted and continued her watching. The men stood for some time, evidently engaged in a discussion, though no sound of voices reached the listening girl. They then picked up their box and walked down the beach with it. "That is odd. They said they were going up the beach with provisions for a friend. I don't understand this proceeding at all, but it looks questionable to me. I know what I'll do; I'll follow them." The Meadow-Brook Girl did not stop to consider that she had decided upon a possibly dangerous adventure. Stooping over as low as possible and yet remain on her feet, Harriet ran full speed toward the beach. She saw the men halt and put down the box, whereat the girl flattened herself on the sandy bar and lay motionless until, finally, they picked up their burden and went on. She was able to make out the sailboat anchored some little distance out in the bay. "They must have brought the box off from the boat," she mused. "I wonder what is in it? I am positive that there is some mystery here. It isn't my affair, but my woman's curiosity makes me wonder what it is all about. There they go again." She was up and off, this time reaching the beach before they put down the box again. Now Harriet was reasonably safe from discovery. She crouched close to the sandy bluff and lay watching. She saw one of the men put off in a rowboat, which he propelled rapidly over to the sailboat. He did not remain there long, and she saw him pulling back to shore as if in more haste than when he went out. "Now they are going to do something," decided the watching girl. "Yes, they are going to take the box." The men did. Picking it up, they carried it back in among the trees, Harriet following at a safe distance, picking her way cautiously, not making the slightest sound in moving about among the spindling pines. Finally, realizing that the men had stopped, the girl crouched down with eyes and ears on the alert. She could hear them at work. They were not going ahead, but they were engaged in some occupation the nature of which for the moment puzzled Harriet Burrell. Then all at once the truth flashed into her mind. "They are hiding the box!" exclaimed the girl under her breath. "But why are they doing that? What secret could be so dark that it needs hiding in the woods? I shall make it my business to find out. There, they are coming out." She threw herself on the ground. She could hear the men approaching. They seemed, from the sound of their voices, to be coming directly toward her. Harriet gathered herself ready for a spring in case of discovery, which now seemed imminent, then again flattened herself on the ground. "I won't run until I have to," she decided. Courage was required for a girl to remain in Harriet's position under the circumstances, but Harriet Burrell had plenty of this and to spare. In the meantime the men were rapidly drawing near. They were conversing in low tones, but the girl in hiding on the ground was unable to make out what they were saying. Rather was her attention centered on what they were going to do, which was the all-important question at that moment. But Harriet was not left long in suspense. The men were coming straight toward her. She could see them quite plainly now, and wondered why they did not see her. It was evident that they had not yet done so, perhaps because they were so fully occupied with their own affairs. Harriet Burrell braced herself. To rise would mean instant discovery; to remain as she was, possible avoidance of it. She decided upon the latter course and lay still. Within a minute the expected occurred. The men had swerved to their right slightly, raising the hope in the mind of Harriet that they were going to pass her without discovering her. Instead a heavy boot came in contact with her own feet. There followed a muttered exclamation, the man pitched headlong, the girl having stiffened her limbs to meet the shock the instant she felt the touch of the boot against her feet. The man's companion laughed uproariously and was called sharply to account by the one who had fallen. Now came the supreme test for Harriet. She could scarcely restrain herself from crying out, springing up and running away. Instead, she lay perfectly quiet, breathing as lightly as possible. The man got up growling. "Confound these dark holes," he snarled. "Hurt yourself?" questioned his companion. "No, only skinned my wrist. Let's get back to the boat. Why doesn't the Cap'n do it himself instead of asking us to take all the risks and all the knocks to boot?" "Because he is paying us for doing it. I reckon you'd better do as you're told if you want to come in for the clean-up. We'd better be hustling, too, for Cap'n wants to get under way. We've lost too much time already and we'll be in bad first thing we know." The man who had fallen answered with an unintelligible growl. He had not looked behind him to see what he had fallen over. Instead, he wrapped a handkerchief about his wrist and started on. The two men trudged on down toward where they had left their boat. They were nearly at the beach before Harriet Burrell finally sat up. "Wasn't that a narrow escape?" she breathed. "He fell over me and never saw me. I wonder if my ankle is broken? It feels as though it were. How it did hurt when he kicked me! It is a wonder I did not scream. I wonder what they are going to do now?" She got up and limped toward the beach, using a little less caution than she had done when coming out. She paused just at the edge of the trees, where she stood in the shadow observing the men. They shoved the boat off and followed it out a little way, splashing in the water with their heavy boots, for the beach was too shallow to permit their getting into the rowboat and rowing directly away from the shore. They first had to shove it off into deeper water. This was quickly accomplished, and piling in, one of the pair began rowing out toward the sailboat. The Meadow-Brook girl sat down and began to rub her injured ankle. The rowboat was now merely a dark blotch out on the bay. The blotch neared the sailboat and was lost in the shadow that surrounded the larger craft. A few moments later Harriet heard the anchor being hauled in, then the creak of the rings on the mast as the sail was being raised. The boat got under way quickly and with very little disturbance, swung to the breeze, the boom lurching to the leeward side of the boat with a "clank." Then the sailboat began moving slowly from the bay. There were no lights to be seen either within or without. The boat was in darkness. Harriet gazed with straining eyes until the boat had finally merged with the sea and was lost to view. A few moments later she caught the twinkle of a masthead light. She watched the light and saw that it was moving slowly up the coast. "That's the last of them for to-night," she reflected. "I wonder where they put that box and what is in it? However, I can't look for it to-night. I will see if I can find out anything about it in the morning. I hope Miss Elting hasn't awakened and missed me." Harriet stepped quickly down to the beach. She gained the bar and ran until she reached the cabin. Listening outside the door, she found that her companions were still asleep. She crept cautiously into the cabin, undressed, rolled in her blanket and lay staring up at the ceiling until her heavy eyelids closed and she was sound asleep. Her companions apparently had slept through the entire adventure, for which Harriet Burrell was thankful. CHAPTER XIV A VISITOR WHO WAS WELCOME "Wake up, girls. Put on your bathing suits and jump in." Miss Elting already was dressed in her blue bathing costume, her hair tucked under her red rubber bathing cap. "We have just time for a swim before breakfast. I see the smoke curling up from the campfire already." "I don't want to thwim; I want to thleep," protested Tommy. "Get a move, darlin', unless you want to be thrown in," interjected Jane, who was hurrying into her bathing suit. "Margery, don't tempt us too far, or we will throw you in, too." "I am sleepy, too," declared Harriet, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "I can't imagine what makes me feel so stupid this morning." Then, remembering, she became silent. "If you would go to bed with the children and get your regular night's rest, you wouldn't be so sleepy in the morning," Jane answered with apparent indifference. Harriet regarded Jane with inquiring eyes. "I wonder if Jane really suspects that I was out of the cabin in the night, or whether it was one of her incidental remarks?" she reflected. "I'll find out before the day is ended." "Am I right, darlin'?" persisted Jane, with a tantalizing smile. "Right about what?" "Being up late?" "I agree with you," replied Harriet frankly, looking her questioner straight in the eyes. "I am losing altogether too much sleep of late." "We didn't lothe any thleep latht night," added Tommy. "You certainly did not, my dear; nor did Margery nor any of the others unless it were Crazy Jane," declared Harriet with a mischievous glance at Jane McCarthy, who refused to be disturbed by it or to be trapped into any sort of an admission. "Girls, girls, aren't you coming in?" Miss Elting rose dripping from the bay and peered into the cabin. "Come in or you'll be too late." "At once, Miss Elting," called Harriet. "It has taken me some little time to get awake. I am awake now. Here I come." She ran out of the cabin and sprang into the water with a shout and a splash, striking out for the opposite side, nearly a quarter of a mile away. She had reached the middle of the bay before the guardian caught sight of her and called to her to return. The Meadow-Brook girl did so, though it had been her intention to swim all the way across the bay and back. In the meantime the other girls had begun their swim. Jane was splashing about in deep water, Hazel doing likewise, while Margery was swimming in water barely up to her neck. Tommy, on the other hand, appeared to be afraid to venture out. Every time a ripple would break about her knees she would scream and run back out of the way. "'Fraid cat!" jeered Margery. "'Fraid to come in where the water is deep." "Yeth, I am," admitted Tommy. "I told you so, I told you so," shouted Buster. "I always said she was a 'fraid cat, and now she has shown you that I am right." "Who is a 'fraid cat?" demanded Miss Elting, pulling herself up on the beach with her hands. "I am," answered Tommy, speaking for herself. "Who says you are?" "Buthter." "Margery, I am ashamed of you. You have evidently forgotten that Grace showed how little she was afraid when she was lost at sea the other night," chided the guardian. "Yeth, I'm a 'fraid cat. But I'd rather be a 'fraid cat than a fat cat!" declared the little, lisping girl with an earnestness that made them all smile. Harriet came swinging in with long, steady strokes, the last one landing her on the sand with the greater part of her body out of the shallow water. "Why wouldn't you let me go across, Miss Elting?" she asked. "You would be late for breakfast." "Oh! I thought you feared I might drown," answered Harriet whimsically. "Once is enough," answered Jane. "There goes the fish horn. Hurry, girls! We are going to be late." "The fithh horn? Are we going to have fithh for breakfatht?" questioned Tommy. "Never mind what, girls. Tuck up your blankets and get busy. Remember, you must braid your hair before going to breakfast. I don't like to see you at meals with your hair down; you girls are too old for that." "Yes, Miss Elting," answered Harriet. "I gueth I'll cut my hair off. It ith too much trouble to fix it every morning," decided Grace. "But, Mith Elting, couldn't I fix it the night before and thleep in it?" "Certainly not! How can you suggest such a thing?" Tommy twisted her face out of shape and blinked solemnly at Margery, whose chin was in the air. They were all hurrying now, for their morning bath had given them keen appetites. Miss Elting was first to be ready, then Harriet, but they waited until their companions were dressed and ready to go. "The Indian lope to the breakfast tent," announced Miss Elting. "Forward, go!" The girls started off at an easy though not particularly graceful lope, the guardian and the Torch Bearer setting the pace for the rest. They arrived at the cook tent with faces flushed and eyes sparkling, with a few moments to spare before the moment for marching in arrived. The Chief Guardian smiled approvingly. "Sleeping out on the bay appears to agree with you girls," she said. "I have no need to ask if you slept well." "Harriet is the restless one," answered Jane. Harriet flushed in spite of her self-control; but no special significance was attached to Jane's remark, for it was seldom that she was taken seriously. Harriet, after recovering from her momentary confusion, chuckled and laughed, very much amused over what had made no impression at all on her companions. "I shall ask some of our craftswomen here to build beds for the cabin," announced the Chief Guardian, as they were sitting down. "It is not necessary," replied Miss Elting. "Our girls prefer the bough beds, which they will build during the day." "And what will our new Torch Bearer do to amuse herself after the regular duties of the day are done?" questioned Mrs. Livingston. "Will she take her group for a swim in the Atlantic?" "Yeth, Harriet and mythelf are going to try to thwim acroth thith afternoon," Grace informed them. "Swim across the Atlantic? Mercy me!" answered Mrs. Livingston laughingly. "That would indeed be an achievement." "I beg your pardon, but I didn't thay 'acroth the othean'; I meant to thwim acroth the pond down in the cove yonder. Harriet could thwim acroth the othean if she withhed to, though," added Tommy. "You surely have a loyal champion, Miss Burrell," called one of the guardians from the far end of the table. "Still, we have not heard what you are going to do to-day. I am quite sure it will be something worth while?" "I have about made up my mind to go out in search of buried treasure," answered Harriet, with mock gravity. They laughed heartily at this. Jane regarded her narrowly. "I wonder what Harriet has in her little head now?" she said under her breath. "Why, what do you mean?" asked the Chief Guardian. "Buried treasure along this little strip of coast? Perhaps, however, you may mean out on the Shoal Islands." "No, Mrs. Livingston. Right here in Camp Wau-Wau there is buried treasure. I don't know whether it is worth anything or not, but there is a buried treasure here." The girls uttered exclamations of amazement, for they saw that their new Torch Bearer was in earnest, that she meant every word she had uttered about the treasure. "Now, isn't that perfectly remarkable?" breathed Margery. "Oh, do tell us about it?" cried the girls. "Not a word more," answered Harriet. "I give you leave to find it, though, if you can. Some of you clever trailers see if you can pick up the trail and follow it to its end. At the end you will find the buried treasure, unless it has been taken away within a few hours, which I very much doubt. Now, that is all I am going to tell you about it." "Do you really mean that, Harriet?" questioned Grace. Harriet nodded. "Why don't you get it yourthelf, then?" "I may one of these days if the girls fail to find it. I wish to see if they are good trailers. But we are forgetting to eat breakfast. Just now I am more in need of breakfast than of buried treasure." "Yes, girls, please eat your breakfast. We must put the camp to rights as soon as we finish, for I have an idea that we may have visitors before the day is done," urged Mrs. Livingston. The Wau-Wau girls were too much excited over Harriet's words to be particularly interested in the subject of visitors just then, so they hurried their breakfast, discussing the new Torch Bearer's veiled suggestions, eager to have done with the morning meal and the morning work that they might try to solve this delightful mystery. Harriet was well satisfied with the excitement she had stirred, though having done so would rather bar her from carrying out certain plans that she had had in mind ever since the previous night. Later in the morning, however, under pretext of wishing to get pine boughs for her bed, she, with Tommy, strolled off into the woods, but beyond locating the spot where she had lain when the man stumbled over her in the darkness she made no progress toward solving the mystery. Not the slightest trace of the box did she discover. Of course, Harriet did not hope to find the mysterious box standing in plain sight, but she could not imagine what they had done with it in so brief a time. She did not dare make much of a point of searching about, observing that Tommy was regarding her keenly during the morning stroll. With her belt hatchet Harriet selected and cut such boughs as she desired and placed them in a pile, afterward to be carried out to the cabin on the Lonesome Bar. Later on they were assisted by the other Meadow-Brook Girls. They covered the floor of the cabin with the fragrant green boughs until Tommy declared that it made her "thleepy" just to smell it. In the meantime, those of their companions who were not engaged with camp duties were strolling about along the beach near the camp, discussing what Harriet had told them at breakfast that morning. It was all right to tell them to pick up the trail, but what trail was it, and how were they to find it? Even the guardians were not beyond curiosity in the matter, and they, too, when they thought themselves unobserved, might have been seen looking eagerly about for the "trail." All this amused Harriet Burrell very much. With her group, Harriet was at the cabin arranging the boughs, when they were summoned to camp by three blasts of the fish horn used for the various signals employed by Camp Wau-Wau. Something had happened in camp. "Thomebody hath found it!" cried Tommy, shooting a quick glance of inquiry at Harriet Burrell. The latter flushed, then burst out laughing after a look toward the miniature forest of spindling pines. "I hope they have. But I may tell you, my dear Tommy, that they haven't found either the trail or my buried treasure." "You must know pretty well where it is," said Miss Elting, eyeing Harriet steadily for a few seconds. "Come, we must not delay answering that summons." They did not delay. The Meadow-Brook Girls responded promptly, making a run for it in good order. "There's a motor car," shouted Jane, when they came in sight of the camp. "O darlin's, maybe it is a new car Daddy has sent down for me to take the place of the one that is drowned." Jane leaped on ahead of her companions, intent upon reaching the camp. Harriet sprinted up beside her, almost as much excited as was Crazy Jane herself. The two girls easily outdistanced their companions in a very few moments. It was a race between them to see who should first reach the camp. Harriet fell behind slightly as her quick eyes made out a figure sitting in front of the Chief Guardian's tent. The figure was that of a man and he was conversing with Mrs. Livingston. Jane uttered a sudden shrill cry. She, too, had discovered the visitor and recognized him. "It's Daddy. It's my dear old Daddy!" she screamed, and, forgetful of the lectures she had received on comporting herself with dignity and restraint, Crazy Jane threw herself--hurled herself, in fact--into the arms of Contractor McCarthy. Now, a camp chair is never any too substantial. The one on which Mr. McCarthy was sitting was no exception to the rule. It collapsed under the force of Crazy Jane's projectile-like force. Mr. McCarthy, in attempting to save himself from going down with it, lurched sideways. In doing so he bumped heavily against the Chief Guardian, and with a sharp little cry from the latter, the three went down in a confused heap. CHAPTER XV TOMMY MAKES A DISCOVERY A dozen girls sprang forward to the assistance of the unfortunate trio, but Harriet was ahead of them. She grasped the Chief Guardian under the arms and lifted her to her feet, then taking a hand of Mr. McCarthy pulled him up with disconcerting suddenness. He looked dazed and a little sheepish. "It's that mad girl Jane of mine," he explained. Mrs. Livingston's face was flushed, her eyes snapped; then her angry expression softened and she burst out laughing. "O Jane, Jane! You will be the undoing of all of us before you have done." Jane, with her hair disheveled, stood ruefully surveying the scene. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Livingston, that you went over. I didn't want to make you fall down, but I just had to show Daddy how glad I was to see him." "You showed me all right, young lady. Lucky, for us all that we had soft ground under us. Mrs. Livingston, I suppose you'll be telling me to take this mad-cap daughter of mine home with me. I shouldn't blame you if you did, and I don't think I'd cry over it, for I want her. No, I don't mean that--" "Daddy!" rebuked Jane. "I mean that she is better off here, and you are doing her a heap of good, Mrs. Livingston, even if she did give way to one of her old fits of violence just now." "Certainly not, Mr. McCarthy," answered the Chief Guardian promptly. "We all love Jane. She is a splendid girl and we should miss her. I certainly did miss her last summer, and now I should miss her more than ever. I hope we shall have her with us for many summers; then one of these days, when she is older, she, too, will have a camp of girls to look after." "I feel very thorry for the camp," broke in Tommy. "You will have to buy a new camp stool, Daddy," reminded Jane. "I'm glad I'm not so stout that I break up the furniture every time I sit on it." "Yeth, Buthter doeth that," said Tommy, nodding solemnly. "And you, young lady, you've got some strength in those arms," he said, turning to Harriet. "The way you bounced me to my feet was a wonder. Tommy, you haven't shaken hands with your old friend. Come here, my dear, and shake hands with me." "You were tho mixed up that I couldn't tell which wath the hand to thhake," replied Grace promptly. "That wath what Jane callth a meth, wathn't it?" "It was. Why, how do you do, Hazel--and Margery, too? Well, well! this is a delightful surprise. How fine you all look. And I hear you had a swim the other night, Harriet, and you, too, Tommy. Well, well! And you like the water, eh?" "It is glorious," breathed Harriet, instinctively glancing out to sea, where a flock of gulls were circling and swooping down in search of food. "You won't have to swim any more unless you wish to. I've made different arrangements about that." "You mean you have bought me a new car, Daddy?" interrupted Jane. "I haven't said. I reckon you don't need a car here. You must have learned, from your recent experience, that an automobile doesn't travel on water half as well as it does on land." "Ourth did. It traveled fine until it got to the bottom," Tommy informed him. "No, I haven't bought another car yet. I have some men who are going to get the old one up to-morrow. We shall see what shape she's in. Of course, if she isn't workable any more, I will have another for you by the time you get home. Tell me how it happened. I couldn't make much out of your telegram. By the way, when you send a telegram, don't forget that you aren't writing a letter. That telegram you sent cost me nine dollars and thirty-seven cents." "Isn't it worth that much to hear from your daughter?" Jane's eyes were dancing. Mr. McCarthy took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. "What would you do with her, Mrs. Livingston?" he laughed. "I should love her, Mr. McCarthy; she is worth it," was the Chief Guardian's prompt reply. "She is," he agreed solemnly, "and I do. But you haven't told me, Jane, darling." "Oh, let Harriet do it. I never was strong on telling things so any one could understand what I was talking about." "There isn't much to tell about the accident, except that we turned off on a side road according to directions. Jane wheeled down it at a slow rate of speed--for her," added Harriet under her breath. "We ran out on an ice pier and plumped right into the pond." "You went down with the car, then?" stammered Mr. McCarthy. "Right down to the bottom," Tommy informed him. "That did not amount to much," continued Harriet. "The top was not up. We had little difficulty in getting out--" "But Harriet was drowned in getting the trunk free from the rear end," declared Jane earnestly. "Drowned?" exclaimed the contractor. "Yes, nearly drowned," corrected Miss Elting. "We had a pretty hard time resuscitating her. I am beginning to think that the Meadow-Brook Girls bear charmed lives, Mr. McCarthy." "So am I. But you don't mean to tell me that Harriet really was all but drowned?" "Yes." "It does beat all, it does," reflected Mr. McCarthy, mopping his forehead again and regarding Harriet with wondering eyes. "It is a guess as to whether she or Jane can get into the most trouble. They are a pair hard to beat." "We do not try to find excitement, Mr. McCarthy," expostulated Harriet. "We cannot always help it if trouble overtakes us the way it did when the car went into the ice pond." "Certainly not. I know you, at least, are wholly to be depended upon, but Jane isn't always the most prudent girl in the world. Now, will you dears run along and enjoy yourselves. I have several things to discuss with Mrs. Livingston, then we will have an afternoon together. I wish Jane and Harriet to drive down with me and show me the place where they lost the car later on in the afternoon. You remember you interrupted our conversation here a short time ago, Jane," reminded the visitor. "May I try the car, Dad?" questioned Jane. "Yes. But look sharp that you don't wreck the thing. I have no fancy to walk all the way back to Portsmouth this evening," he chuckled. "Come along, Meadow-Brooks. I can't take any more this trip, but if Dad's buggy goes all right, I'll take the rest of you out on the instalment plan." "I don't want to go," decided Tommy. "I want to thtay here and retht. I never get any retht at all." The others were eager to go. Jane already was cranking up the car. Her companions, with the exception of Grace Thompson, piled in, and a few moments later the car rolled from the camp, headed for the highway some little distance from the camp. There was no road leading to the camp, but the way was reasonably smooth, provided one dodged the trees, both standing and fallen. In the meantime the other girls went about their duties and recreations. Mr. McCarthy and Mrs. Livingston again sat down and continued their conversation. Tommy, now being without a guardian, Miss Elting having gone with Jane and her party, started down toward the beach, her eyes very bright, her movements quick and alert. Some of the girls whom she met asked where she was going. Tommy replied that she might go fishing, but that she couldn't say for sure until she found out whether she could catch anything. The little girl kept edging farther and farther away from her companions, until finally, finding herself beyond sight of them, began running with all her might. They saw no more of Tommy Thompson for several hours. While all this was going on, Jane McCarthy was racing her father's car up and down the road at an ever-increasing rate of speed. Those in the camp could hear the purr of the motors, and now and then a flash of red showed between the trees as the car sped past the camp. "Must be doing close to fifty miles an hour," observed Mr. McCarthy, grinning. "Aren't you afraid she will kill herself, or some one else?" questioned the guardian anxiously. "She never has. I don't reckon it would bother any of the Meadow-Brook Girls to go into the ditch. They are pretty well used to getting into mix-ups." "They certainly have every reason to be used to it," nodded Mrs. Livingston reflectively. "But, were they my daughters, I must confess I should not know an easy moment. I do not, as it is, when they are out of my sight. That was the reason I hesitated to accede to your request. However, they will have nothing to do with the operation of it. All they will have to do will be to sit still and enjoy themselves. Then, again, it is the one thing needful to make a summer at the sea shore thoroughly enjoyable. I know that all of my girls will take the keenest possible delight in it, and I thank you, on their behalf, for your thoughtfulness and kindness. You have done a great deal for our camp, as well as for our organization, and I wish you would permit me to make it known to the general officers in--" "By no means, Mrs. Livingston," hastily interposed the visitor. "It is nothing at all, and it's just a little pride in that mad-cap daughter of mine that has led me to do what little I have. But in reference to the new plan, you will tell the girls to-day, eh?" "No; you tell them." "Oh, leave me out of it, please." "I could not do that. You will take dinner with us to-day, of course, and then you may announce it to the girls. I can imagine how pleased they will be. Why, there come the girls now!" exclaimed the Chief Guardian. "The girls?" "Yes, yes. Jane--" "Eh? Alone?" "No, no. There is Miss Elting and Harriet. Yes, they are all there. What can it mean?" "It means that they have smashed the car," groaned Mr. McCarthy. "I told you." He did not look around, but sat fumbling with his hat, his face very red. Jane stepped up before him, and with chin on her breast surveyed him from under her eyelashes, "Well?" he demanded. "Well, we're here," answered Jane. "What is the trouble, girls?" cried Mrs. Livingston. "Thank goodness, you are all here. Why doesn't some one speak up?" "How much damage did you do to her, Jane?" questioned the visitor calmly, referring to the car. "Enough." "Tell me about it!" "She's in the ditch about a mile up the road." "Think we can pull her out between us?" Jane shook her head. "Not without the wrecking crew. She's bottom side up, two wheels off and part of her machinery on the other side of the road," was Crazy Jane's calm reply. However, before they had an opportunity to say more, Tommy Thompson came running toward them, her face flushed with excitement. "I've found it! I've found it!" she shouted. "Found what?" demanded the Chief Guardian. "I've found the treathure trail. I've got it, I know I have!" CHAPTER XVI TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE "She's found the buried treasure!" screamed Buster. The girls uttered a cheer. Harriet regarded Tommy's excited face inquiringly. "You really have found it?" "Yeth, yeth." "Where is the treasure?" "I don't know. How thhould I know?" "But you said you had found it," interposed the Chief Guardian. "No, I thaid I had found the trail. Of courthe, I haven't found the treathure. But I've found thomething, and--" "What did you find? Come, tell us," urged Harriet. Controlling herself somewhat, Tommy glanced triumphantly at the expectant faces about her. "There wath a man at thith camp latht night." "What?" The girls asked the question at the top of their voices. "There were two men here latht night," persisted Grace. "Please explain what you mean, Grace," commanded the Chief Guardian. "You say there were two men here last night. How do you know?" "I found the markth of their feet--in the thand. But that wathn't all I found. There wath a boat here, too--a boat. Now, what do you think of that?" "Try to be more explicit, Grace," urged Miss Elting. "Tell us what you have discovered, without beating about the bush so long." "There wathn't any buthh to beat about. It wath right on the thand. Don't you underthtand?" Miss Elting sat down. "Tell it your own way, then. We are simply wasting time in trying to hurry you," she said. "Yeth. Well, it wath thith way. I wath looking for the treathure trail that Harriet told uth about at breakfatht thith morning, though I don't thee how thhe thhould know anything about it. My footthepth led me--led me, you understand? No, it wath my feet, not my footthtepth, that led me--right along the thhore of the ocean. And what do you thuppose I found?" "An oyster shell," suggested Margery. "No, not that. I found where a boat had been drawn up on the thhore and then thhoved out again. It had been drawn up on the thand. Then there were trackth about the place, trackth of heavy bootth, and a mark in the thand where thomething heavy had been put down. It looked like a box. I gueth it wath. The men had taken the box between them and carried it up and down the thhore ath far ath I could thee. You know, the tide wathhed the marks out near down to the thea." "What did they do with the box, dearie?" interrupted Harriet. "That I have not yet dethided. I thhall find out about that later. Well, after a time, it theemth, they took the box up the thandy beach and into the woodth, but by that time it wath tho dark that I couldn't thee any more footprintth and couldn't tell what they did with the box." "Marvelous," muttered Buster. "Excruciatingly marvelous!" "Is this a fairy story?" demanded Mrs. Livingston. "Ask Harriet," suggested Crazy Jane. "I think she knows more about it than Tommy does. Don't you, Harriet?" "What makes you think that, Jane?" questioned Harriet mischievously. "Ask me, darlin'." "I have, dear." Jane stepped over and whispered in Harriet's ear, the others regarding the proceeding with puzzled expressions on their faces. Harriet's face broke out into a ripple of smiles. "I am caught red-handed," she said. "It seems that I am not the only light sleeper in the Meadow-Brook camp. Jane chanced to observe something that I did last night. She has known it all along. She hinted at it this morning, and I suspected that she knew more than she had told us." "But, my dear, we are all in the dark," reminded the Chief Guardian. "Won't you be good enough to explain this mystery? Surely you can do so in a way that will make it clear to us. Two men, a box and a boat and goodness knows what else, here on this lonely part of the coast." "I was suddenly awakened last night," began Harriet without preliminary remarks. "A boat sailed into the bay close to shore and came to anchor. Then a small boat put off. Two men were in it. They came ashore with a heavy box, started down the bar, then back to the beach after I had met and stopped them. Tommy has told you the truth about their further movements." "Wait a moment. You stopped them, you say?" questioned Mrs. Livingston. "Yes. I didn't want them to get near the cabin and disturb our party. According to their story they had made a mistake. They had some supplies for a friend of theirs who was on a fishing trip somewhere up the coast." "You believed that to be the case, then?" "No, Mrs. Livingston, I did not, because, instead of going up the beach after I had turned them back, they went the other way, eventually turning in among the trees, where they remained for some time. I did not see them again until they fell over me later--" "What!" The guardian was more amazed than before. "Oh, I forgot to tell you that I followed them to see what they were going to do. I didn't find out, but they found me, though they were not aware of it." Harriet explained how she had lain down on the ground and how one of the two men had stumbled over her feet without discovering her presence. Exclamations of amazement greeted this part of the story. "What became of them after that?" asked Miss Elting. "They shoved off their rowboat, rowed out to the sailboat, which quickly weighed anchor and put out to sea. That is all I know about it. You see, Tommy was right." Mrs. Livingston turned to Tommy. "My dear, you did splendidly. Of all this camp of girls you were the only one who found the trail and read it aright. That is trailing for you, Mr. McCarthy. But what could the men have been doing here? I do not like the looks of it at all." "They have gone, so we needn't worry," replied Harriet. "I forgot to say that there was a boat in here--I think it was the same one--the other night just before the storm. It is my idea that they came in on that occasion to put something ashore, but were obliged to get out to sea before the storm broke. They came back on the following night to finish what they had failed to do the first time." Mr. McCarthy nodded. So did Mrs. Livingston. "Remarkable girls, these Meadow-Brook Girls, Mr. McCarthy. However, there is nothing to be done. We shall not be bothered any more, in all probability. Besides, they were not here on our account, so we have no cause to worry." "And I've got to walk back to Portsmouth," groaned Mr. McCarthy. "I told you, Mrs. Livingston." "Perhaps we may catch some farmer who is going in that direction, and who will be willing to give you a lift," she suggested. "No; you will have to let me sleep under a tree and hang about to-night. The men are coming down in the morning to get the car out of the pond. They might as well have two jobs as one. How did it happen, Jane?" For the first time the party of Camp Girls who had gathered about the little group gave their attention to the Meadow-Brook Girls. The latter were now discovered to be much the worse for wear. Their hair was down over their shoulders and their clothes were soiled and torn. "Got it hard, didn't you?" chuckled Mr. McCarthy. "Oh, not so much," replied Jane, repressing a smile. "You are a thight. You look ath though you had been digging for buried treathure," declared Tommy. "How'd it happen?" rumbled Mr. McCarthy. "It was like this, Daddy, dear. We were running along nicely and easily--just at a comfortable jog, when--" "How fast?" "How much time were we making, Harriet?" "Nearly sixty miles an hour." "Yes, I knew it wasn't very fast. Just jogging, Daddy." The visitor grunted. "Something went wrong with the steering gear. I don't know what it was, but the wheel had no effect on the car. You should have seen us. It was funny, wasn't it, girls, the way that car darted from one side of the road to the other, and we hanging on for dear life? You see, that was all we could do--hang on. Well, the car jumped the ditch, went up the bank on that side of the road, smashed into the iron post of a wire fence, then stood up on end and turned over backward. Did you ever see such a contrary automobile? Where did you buy it, Dad?" "Didn't buy it. Borrowed it of a man I know up at Portsmouth. It'll cost me only a few thousand to make it right with him, but then Dad's rich; don't you care." "I never do," chuckled Jane. "Do you?" "No, I don't, so long as no one gets hurt. How'd you get out? What did you do when the car was stopped by the fence?" "We just went on over, Dad. You know nothing can stop a Meadow-Brook Girl when she is once well started on a course. We landed on plowed ground on the other side of the fence." "Mercy!" exclaimed the Chief Guardian. "Can anything hurt you, girls?" "I hope not," answered Harriet. "This was a little sudden, but we didn't mind it so very much, did we, Miss Elting?" "I don't know who you mean by 'we,' but please do not include me in this particular 'we.' I am not over the shock of that plunge yet, nor do I expect to be for some hours to come. I fear the car is ruined, Mr. McCarthy. I hope you will not send another one down here for Jane, if you will pardon my saying so." This from Miss Elting. "That's all right, Miss Elting. I am not going to send another car at present. Perhaps when you young folks are ready to go home I may send a car for you, but I may give you a driver. For the present I've got something else in my mind. I had to wait until I asked Mrs. Livingston about it before I put it through. She thinks it will be fine. She will tell you all about it at dinner to-day." "There goes the dinner horn now," announced the guardian of the Meadow-Brook Girls. "Girls, you are not presentable. Hurry and get ready for dinner. We mustn't be late to-day, of all days." It was really marvelous that the girls were able to work such a transformation in themselves in so short a time. In the few moments that had been left to them they had rearranged their hair, brushed the dirt of the plowed field from their clothing and washed their faces and hands. It was really a jolly dinner, too, for the good-natured guest kept them all laughing with his humorous stories and odd remarks. He was so much like his daughter Jane that they had no need to be reminded of the relationship. "This has been a day of excitement, hasn't it?" remarked one of the guardians to Miss Elting. "Buried treasure, automobile wrecks, visitors, mysterious strangers. Gracious me! what are the Camp Girls coming to?" "I don't know. Did Mr. McCarthy say what the surprise is that he has in store for the girls? I thought perhaps he might have said something about it during our absence on that automobile ride." "Not that I heard. He undoubtedly told Mrs. Livingston. There, she is speaking now," added the guardian. Mrs. Livingston had risen and rapped on the table with a knife for attention. "Our guest and good friend, Mr. McCarthy, wishes to make an announcement," she said, then sat down. Jane's father got up, his face very red, his forehead glistening with beads of perspiration. "Your guest and good friend most emphatically _does not_ wish to make an announcement," declared the visitor. "But it is up to him to do so because he wishes to please that fine woman, your Chief Guardian--is that what you call yourself, Mrs. Livingston? I get all mixed up with various names and titles. It's as bad as attending a reception of the royal family, judging from what I've heard." Mrs. Livingston nodded, smiling good-naturedly. "Well, girls, you know I've got to do something to furnish that mad-cap daughter of mine with a variety of means of ending her life and those of her friends. She has exhausted everything thus far. However, this is a perfectly safe proposition, this one that I have planned for you and her, and I don't think any of you can get into serious difficulty through it." "Don't keep us in suspense, Dad! Tommy will suffocate if you don't tell us now. She has been holding her breath ever since you began speaking," cried Jane. A ripple of laughter ran along both sides of the table, but quickly subsided when Mr. McCarthy again began speaking. "Very good, if you must know. But--I say, Mrs. Livingston, I think we won't tell them until to-morrow. As I think it over, I guess I won't tell them after all. They'll know all about it when it gets here. That's all." Mr. McCarthy sat down, wiping his forehead and looking vastly relieved. A chorus of "Ohs!" greeted the announcement. "Please, please tell us, oh, do," they begged, but the visitor shook his head. "I think, Mr. McCarthy, that I had better tell them if you do not wish to. They will be too much upset otherwise," said the Chief Guardian. "Have I your permission?" He nodded. "As you wish. They've got me so flustered that I couldn't say another word to them." "Very good. Listen, girls, and I will tell you," said the Chief Guardian. CHAPTER XVII WHEN THEIR SHIP CAME IN There was no need to further impose silence on the Camp Girls. Eager-eyed, they leaned forward, gazing straight at the smiling woman at the head of the table. "I wanted Mr. McCarthy to tell you. However, as he refuses, I shall do so. You are to have a boat for the rest of the summer. The boat is the gift of Mr. McCarthy to the Meadow-Brook Girls directly, and to the rest of you indirectly." "What kind of a boat ith it?" piped Tommy. "A sailboat," answered the visitor. "I have appointed Miss Burrell as the commodore, though she doesn't know it. I understand she did very well as the captain of the 'Red Rover' last summer. Now we'll give her a trial on salt water. You will look to her for your orders and permission to go out, and I imagine you won't have any cause to complain of her treatment of you, eh, Harriet?" "O Mr. McCarthy! you embarrass me. But tell us about the boat," answered Harriet laughingly. "It's just a little old sailboat, that's all--one I picked up at Portsmouth; but even though she's a tub, she is perfectly safe and you may go as far as you wish with her, always first consulting with the captain and the commodore." "Oh, is there to be a captain? Am I to be the captain?" questioned Jane mischievously. "My grathiouth, I hope not," exclaimed Grace. "No. The captain owns this particular boat, and he will be wholly in charge of the actual operation of it, acting upon the orders of the commodore as to who is to go and when and where. Now it's all out and I'm glad of it. I--" Mr. McCarthy's further words were unheard because of the cheer given by the Camp Girls, in which Mrs. Livingston and the guardians joined enthusiastically, much to the discomfiture of the guest, who half rose as though to run away. Evidently thinking better of it, he settled back in his seat and wiped his forehead. Jane got up, and, running to her father, threw a pair of impulsive arms about his neck. "Isn't he the darling Dad, though, girls?" "He is," agreed the Chief Guardian. "You won't think tho after we have all gone and drowned ourthelveth from thith--from the--what ith the name of the thhip on which we are going to thail the thalt water?" "Her name is 'The Sister Sue,'" replied Mr. McCarthy. "Thave me!" wailed Tommy. "The boat may be all right, but think of being drowned in a name like that! Now, if it wath 'The Queen of the Theath,' or thome thuch name ath that, I thouldn't so much mind being drowned in her, but 'The Thithter Thue'--thave uth!" "You are not going to drown at all," laughed Miss Elting, "so don't begin to lay any plans in that direction." "When is the boat coming here, Daddy?" questioned Jane. "To-morrow morning early, if they have her ready in time. I told the owner to slap some new clothes on her, and make her presentable by to-morrow, sure. How do you like the idea, girls?" "Oh, it's just too glorious for anything," cried Margery, now awakened to the possibilities of having a sailboat of their very own. Tommy regarded her quizzically, opened her mouth to speak, then closed her lips. "What is it, dear?" questioned Miss Elting. "It ith nothing now. Maybe I'll thay it when we get to thea, provided Buthter doeth not thay it for me." "See here! We have forgotten all about that buried treasure," exclaimed Mr. McCarthy, at his ease once more after having escaped from the table. "Will you show me, Tommy?" "No, thir. That ith a dark thecret." "What, girls keep a secret?" scoffed the visitor. "Don't you think they can?" demanded Tommy, squinting at him with one eye tightly closed. "Never saw one that could." "Then pleathe look at me." "By the way, Mr. McCarthy," called Mrs. Livingston, "did you mention the name of our new captain, the one who owns and sails the boat?" "That's so. I reckon I forgot that. He is known as Captain Bill. His real name, I believe, is Cummings." "You are quite sure that he is all right, are you, Mr. McCarthy?" "Has a reputation second to none among the Portsmouth skippers. I took care of that, knowing you were a lot of lone women and girls down here. I didn't see him personally. Took my friend Lawyer Roberts's word for it, and what else I could pick up about the docks," added Mr. McCarthy. "But I must be thinking about getting back." "Surely, Daddy, you are never going to think of walking back, are you?" "Not I. I hear an automobile coming. I'm just going to get out to the road and beg a ride. They'll be keeping along on this road for at least ten miles and I can walk the rest of the way in, if I have to. In case I do not see you again, Mrs. Livingston, here's good-bye and good luck. I hope you all have a fine time with the boat. If that skipper doesn't obey orders, day or night, get a telegram to me instantly, and I'll bounce him right off. But don't let Jane send any telegrams. She'll break me, she's so long-winded--" "Which I inherited," finished Crazy Jane. "Come on, girls; let's go out to the highway and see Dad off. We may have to watch him start off on foot." They met the men who were coming to pull the automobile out of the ice pond. Mr. McCarthy gave them the additional job of towing the wrecked car to the nearest garage. Mr. McCarthy was in luck. The automobile that they had heard approaching was a big power moving-van that had been down the coast with a load of furniture for a city family who were moving into their summer home. The driver was willing to give Mr. McCarthy a lift, and a few moments later the contractor was bowling along the highway on his way to Portsmouth, thence on to his home at Meadow-Brook. The girls stood waving to him as long as the big car was in sight, he occasionally leaning out to wave back at them. They then retraced their steps to the camp, talking animatedly about the great treat in store for them--the sailboat with the homely name. They could scarcely contain themselves until the morrow, when the boat was to arrive. In the meantime everybody went over to examine the trail that Tommy Thompson had found. As she had said, it led into the woods and was there lost. Harriet showed them as nearly as possible where she had lain when the man stumbled over her, but search as they might they were unable to find a single trace of the box that had so mysteriously disappeared. At supper that evening Mrs. Livingston advised the girls to say nothing to any one outside of their own companions regarding the strange proceeding. She explained that, by remaining silent on the subject, they might be able to learn more about it, and that perhaps some violation of the law might be at the bottom of it. Early on the following morning all the girls were up scanning the sea for a sail. A coasting schooner in the far distance, making up the coast, was the only boat in sight. The day was brilliant with sunshine, the sea blue and sparkling. The lookouts could see a long distance. The day passed and the night passed, but still no trace of their boat. Nor had the other mysterious craft paid another visit to the bay. At least, if it had, none of the campers had been awake at the time. It was late that afternoon when some one raised a shout and pointed up the coast. There, about five miles away, was a tiny speck of white that they knew to be a sail. There seemed to be but a single sail, which told them that a small boat was carrying it. Then, again, the sail looked so white that they decided it must either be their boat or a private yacht cruising down the coast. "It does look more like a yacht than the 'tub' that Mr. McCarthy described," said the Chief Guardian. "If this is the 'Sister Sue' she is a very trim little craft." The beach was lined with Camp Girls eagerly watching the approaching sailboat, which was coming on at what seemed to them to be an aggravatingly slow rate of speed. "What he needs is an engine," declared Jane. "Now, if he had that motor that's doubled up under the car we ran into the ditch, he could make some time." "That boat is sailing much faster than you think," answered Harriet. "You will see when it gets opposite us how fast it is moving. It is moving so fast that I can't make myself believe it is our boat." "I gueth we'll wait till it getth here," decided Tommy, which voiced the feelings of all. As the sailboat drew down into plain view, exclamations of admiration were heard on all sides. For a single-masted boat she carried a great spread of white canvas and two jibs, each of which was full of wind, pulling powerfully. The wind being off shore, the sloop was heeling the other way, showing quite a portion of her black hull, which was in strong contrast with her glistening white sides and snowy sails. The water was spurting away from her bows, showing white along the black side below her water line--all in all, an inspiring sight to the lover of boats and the big water. "Hurrah, see her go! She's skimming along like a scared cat. No, that isn't our tub, darlin's. I know Dad. She will be safe, but she will come limping and groaning down the line at a mile an hour, then probably go aground in the bay because there won't be room enough for her to turn about. You see if I'm not right." "You are all wrong," answered Harriet. "How do I know? Never mind. You will find that you are." She had seen a man hauling in on the main sheets--the ropes that led from the mainsail back toward the cockpit. From that she knew the boat was preparing to change its course. This it did a few moments later, heading in toward the shore, but pointed at a spot a full half mile below the camp, as nearly as the girls could observe. "Oh, that is too bad! See, they are going somewhere else," cried Miss Elting. "Why--why, what are they trying to do? Are those people crazy?" "They are tacking in," answered Harriet. "Of course. How stupid of me." "It ith the 'Thilly Thue,'" shouted Tommy. "The 'Silly Sue'! hurrah!" yelled the girls, instantly adopting Tommy's nickname for the boat. "Oh, darlin's, isn't she the beauty?" cried Jane. She began dancing about, several others doing likewise. "I thought you knew it was going to be an old tub," reminded Harriet teasingly. "I take it all back. When I see Dad I shall get down on my knees and beg his pardon." Jane began running toward the bay, turning out to the bar as the most likely place to get a good view of their present. She was followed by the entire camp, Chief Guardian and guardians, who ran shouting and waving their hats. As the boat swept majestically into the bay the jibs came in and the mainsail was lowered slightly, the boom being permitted to swing far out. The girls then saw that there were two men on board, one handling the sails, the other was stationed at the wheel. The craft crossed and criss-crossed the bay, sawing back and forth several times before reaching a position for which the skipper evidently had been heading. Then, all at once, he swung the bow of the boat squarely into the wind. "Let go!" he called. The big sail came down with a clatter and rattle of rings, and the anchor went overboard with a loud splash. The "Sister Sue" was at anchor in the bay. The skipper lighted his pipe and sat down all hunched together, puffing away with most aggravating deliberateness. "Aren't you coming ashore so we may get aboard and see the boat?" called Harriet. "Bymeby," was the laconic answer. "I am the commodore. I wish--" "The what?" "The commodore," answered Harriet, laughing so that she barely made herself heard. "Commodore's quarters aren't ready," called back Captain Billy. "Let you know when we're ready for you. We aren't going out again to-day." "I shall have to talk to the captain, I fear," said Mrs. Livingston, smiling faintly. Soon after coming to anchor the second man on the boat was observed to be busy furling the sail, which he took his time in doing. This finished, he hauled up pails of water with a pail tied to the end of a rope and started swabbing down the decks. This completed, he went about other duties, which, to the row of girls sitting on the Lonesome Bar, seemed trivial and for the sake of killing time. "Isn't it perfectly aggravating?" grumbled Margery Brown. The supper horn blew while they still sat there waiting. The Camp Girls reluctantly turned back toward camp. They were disappointed, and so expressed themselves with emphasis while eating their supper. But Harriet, who had been excused before the others had finished, hurried out to take an observation. She was back almost at once. "Their rowboat is coming ashore," she cried, pointing toward the bay. Instantly every girl in the cook tent, without the formality of asking to be excused, pushed back her chair and dashed out. Mrs. Livingston so far overlooked their breach of etiquette as to rush out with the rest of them. "Come on, darlin's. They've come ashore for us at last. First there, first to go out. Go!" It was a race for the landing place, with Harriet and Jane running side by side, Tommy Thompson following and gradually lessening the distance between them in a series of flying leaps. Tommy could run like a frightened fawn. Harriet heard her coming and increased her speed. Tommy gained no more on Harriet, though she arrived at their objective point by the side of Crazy Jane McCarthy. "Ready to go out," announced the man. "But I can't take more than five at a time. Who goes first?" Harriet halted sharply at sound of his voice, and gazed at the man perplexedly. His voice was strangely familiar, but, try as she would, she could not think where she had seen him. CHAPTER XVIII FIREWORKS FROM THE MASTHEAD "Wait for Mrs. Livingston," replied Harriet in answer to the man's question. "You are not the captain, are you?" He shook his head. Mrs. Livingston came upon the scene. Harriet assisted her into the rowboat. The Chief Guardian directed the other Meadow-Brook girls to get in, telling the girls who were left on shore that they would be taken out to the "Sister Sue" as fast as possible, until there was no more room. The others would have their turn soon afterward. If the girls had been pleased with the "Sister Sue" from a shore view, they were enthusiastic at what they saw when they got on board. The decks were white from scouring, the binnacle that held the compass shone with mirror-like brightness, ropes were neatly coiled and everywhere was the smell of fresh paint and the faint, salty odor of the deep sea. The "Sue" was some forty feet in length over all, broad of beam, covered over about half her length amidships by a raised deck cabin, a cabin that rises above the deck a few inches with narrow windows on the two sides. Two doors from the cockpit led into the cabin. Into this the Meadow-Brook Girls hurried, after one quick look over the trim craft. They cried out for Mrs. Livingston to join them. The interior of the cabin was in white with plush seats on each side, the seats being broad and comfortable, affording lounging space for several persons at one time. A tank holding drinking water, at the forward end of the cabin, was the only other furnishing. The "Sue" was far from palatial, but the Camp Girls thought they had never seen a neater or prettier boat, and as for its ability to sail, they had seen something of that as the sloop came into the bay. Mrs. Livingston had remained outside to speak with the skipper. Harriet soon joined them. Captain Billy was a type. His grizzled, red beard was so near the color of his face that it was not easy to determine where the beard left off and the face began. Billy had a habit of avoiding one's eyes when speaking. Either he would be consulting the deck of the "Sue" or gazing at the sky. He was looking up at the clouds now. "The captain says he can safely carry ten persons without crowding, Harriet," the Chief Guardian informed her. Then turning to the captain, "This young lady has been placed in charge of the boat by Mr. McCarthy; of course, your judgment as to what is best for all concerned must prevail." Captain Billy's whiskers bristled. He swept the Meadow-Brook Girl with a quick, measuring glance, then permitted his eyes to gaze upward again. "I was going to suggest, Mrs. Livingston, that we first take you and the other guardians out for a sail, say to-morrow morning. I don't think the captain will wish to go out in the evening," said Harriet. He shook his head. "Certainly not," declared Mrs. Livingston. "And now, sir, what about your meals--the board for yourself and your man?" "Get my own. He goes away early in the morning. Sleep on board, too. You needn't worry about me. Got any gear you want to get aboard?" "Gear?" questioned the Chief Guardian blankly. "Dunnage?" nodded the skipper. "Anything you want to bring aboard?" he shouted. "No, thank you, nothing at present," answered Harriet. "Man will fetch it off before he goes away if there is. Don't ask me to do any packing." "Our young women are perfectly able to help themselves," replied Mrs. Livingston with dignity. "I suppose, however, that having only one rowboat you will come ashore for us whenever we wish to go out?" she added. The captain shook his head. He was the most ungracious person they ever had known. But when Harriet said they had better get word to Mr. McCarthy at once, the captain changed his mind quickly. He said he would come for them whenever they gave him the word. He told them, further, that they would have to bring their own provisions when they went out for a sail, but that he could show them how to catch some fish if they desired to do so. "We shall be ready to go out about ten o'clock to-morrow morning," Mrs. Livingston told him. "If there is anything you wish us to do, you might call to the young women who occupy the cabin there on the Lonesome Bar. I am very glad you are going to remain aboard your boat, for we are not equipped for putting up strangers. But if there is anything you wish in the way of supplies, do not hesitate to send word to me. We have quite a quantity. We are obliged to go beyond the highway for our drinking water, and it is a trifle brackish." "Hadn't we better go ashore and give the others a chance to come out?" asked Harriet. "You and I will remain here. The others may go," returned Mrs. Livingston. Several boatloads of excited girls were put aboard the "Sister Sue." The girls were enthusiastic; they chattered and sang and made merry, Captain Billy growing more taciturn and sour as the moments passed. Finally, Mrs. Livingston said they must put off further visiting of the boat until morning; that night was now upon them. They bade good night to Captain Billy, and his man put them ashore, Mrs. Livingston leaving the sloop last. "He is a queer character," she declared after joining Harriet on the beach later on. "What do you make of him?" "I suppose he is like many of his calling, gruff and of few words. But there is something beyond that which I can't quite make out." "What do you mean? Do you think that he is untrustworthy?" "I don't know, Mrs. Livingston. I do know that I dislike him. Isn't that silly in me?" asked the girl laughingly. "I have no confidence in him." "I think you are in error. Mr. McCarthy would not send us a man who was not trustworthy in every way. He is supposed to be a skillful skipper, and from my observation I know he will behave himself, so we don't care what he is beyond that. Shall you go back to the camp with us, or direct to the cabin?" "To camp." The girls sat about the campfire, singing the songs of the Camp Girls until ten o'clock that evening, after which the Meadow-Brook party bade good night to their companions and strolled down to the bar, thence out to the cabin. All were keenly alive to the pleasures that awaited them on the following day, when they were to have their first sail in the "Sister Sue." Harriet made ready for bed with her companions, but she was not sleepy. She lay on her bough bed near the door, where she remained wide awake, thinking over the occurrences of the past few days. A sound out on the bay, as if something had dropped to the deck of the sloop, attracted her attention. The girl crawled from her bed and out to the front of the cabin on all fours. She then sat up, leaning her back against the cabin; shading her eyes, she gazed off at the boat riding easily in the bay. The "Sue" was faintly outlined in the dim light of the night, but the night was too dark to enable the girl to make out anything in detail, nor was there a sound on board to indicate that any one was awake. "It may be that the captain is putting his man ashore, or else has just returned from doing so. Still, this seems to me a pretty late hour to be sending any one ashore." Harriet thought she could now make out the small boat floating astern of the "Sue," where it was ordinarily kept, though she could not be certain of this. "Ah! There is something going on over there." The faint creak of block and tackle reached her listening ears, which she strained and strained, even closing her eyes that she might concentrate wholly on the sense of hearing. The creaking continued for a couple of minutes, then ceased altogether. "I wonder if the captain can be making sail to go out?" Harriet asked herself, opening wide her eyes and gazing toward the sloop. But the latter was riding lazily on the gentle swell as before, the girl being unable to make out anything that looked like the sail. She thought she surely would be able to see the sail, had it been hoisted. Something was dropped on the deck, making a great clatter, then for several minutes all was silent on board the "Sister Sue." Harriet could not imagine what was going on there. After a time there were further evidences of activity on board; noises, faint, it is true, which indicated that something out of the ordinary was taking place on the boat. Harriet wondered if she had not better call Miss Elting and have her listen, too. Upon second thought, however, she decided not to do so. In the first place she could see and hear fully as much as could the guardian, besides which, were she to awaken the guardian, the other girls undoubtedly would be disturbed. They might make a noise that would prevent her learning what was being done on board the sloop. Harriet shivered, for she was in her kimono, while the breeze blowing in from the sea was fresh and penetrating. She felt a sneeze coming. The girl made heroic efforts to repress the sneeze, then, finding she could not, stuffed an end of her kimono into her mouth and covered her nose with both hands. It was a long, shuddering sneeze that Harriet Burrell uttered. She feared it had not only attracted the attention of the man or men on board the sloop, but awakened her companions as well. The faint noises on deck continued as before. No sound came from the cabin. "Thank goodness, no one heard me," she muttered. "Why is it that one has to sneeze when she doesn't want to, I wonder? I--" She started at sound of a low voice close at hand speaking her name. "Harriet, ith that you?" "Tommy, what a start you gave me! When did you wake up? What are you doing here?" questioned Harriet in a whisper. "That ith what I wath going to athk you. What ith it?" "Sh-h-h! You will waken the others." "If you didn't wake them up with that thneeze nothing but a club will wake them." Tommy crept close to her companion. "You thee thomething, don't you?" "Not much. The night is too dark. I can see the outlines of the 'Sue' over there, but that is about all." "Ith anything the matter with her?" "I think not." "Then why are you watching her tho clothely?" "You are altogether too observant, Tommy. But don't speak so loudly, please. There is nothing of any importance over there. Please go back to bed. You will complain about having to get up for breakfast in the morning." "Did you ever hear me complain about having to eat?" "I can't say that I ever did," smiled Harriet. "But you will catch cold out here." "Tho will you. You will catch cold firtht becauthe you have been out here longer than I have. Anything elthe?" "No, except that I am not going to waste my breath giving you advice. When you become cold enough I presume you will go back to bed." "Yeth, when I find out what ith going on out here. I won't catch cold, but maybe if I thtay out here long enough I'll catch a fithh. There! I know what you are watching. You are watching that 'Thilly Thue.'" "Sh-h-h!" The creaking on board had begun again. It continued at intervals for several moments, both girls listening almost breathlessly. "Wha--at are they doing?" whispered Tommy. "I don't know. That is what I am trying to find out." "My grathiouth! Maybe the captain is going to run away with the 'Thilly Thue'." "No. Come to think of it, I believe he must be getting the boat ready for our sail to-morrow." "Not without a light. There ith thomething else going on. Oh, look!" Following a period of silence, blue sparks began sputtering from the masthead of the "Sister Sue." The girls could hear the sparks crackle and snap spitefully. "Oh, look at the fireworkth!" cried Tommy out loud. "The thhip ith on fire!" Harriet laid a firm hand on her arm. "Keep still!" A faint squealing sound was now distinguishable, while the sparking at the masthead continued with almost rhythmic regularity. "I know! I know what it is!" gasped Harriet excitedly. "Listen, Tommy, listen. Don't you know?" CHAPTER XIX SAILING THE BLUE WATER "No, I don't know what it ith. If I did, I thhouldn't be athking you," answered Grace. "It ith either lightning, fireworkth or a real fire." "It is wireless, Tommy. Don't you know now?" Grace shook her head. "Didn't you ever hear a wireless machine work?" "No; but there ithn't any wireleth on the 'Thilly Thue,' ith there?" "I--I don't know. I mean, I did not see any when we were out there to-day. I don't understand it. What can he be doing with wireless so late at night?" "Maybe he ith telegraphing home to find out if the folkth are all right," suggested Tommy. Harriet did not smile. Her face was very grave, her forehead wrinkled in thought. For the greater part of an hour, with brief intervals between, the wireless on the sloop continued, the sparks at the masthead sputtering and snapping with marked regularity. Had Harriet Burrell understood a little more of telegraphy she would have known, though unable to read the dots and dashes, that the operator was calling some one who did not answer. After a long time he apparently gave it up, for the sparking at the masthead ceased suddenly, followed by a brief period of silence on board, then the creaking of block and tackle was renewed. This was followed by a subdued thumping and rattling about on deck, this lasting only a few moments. The "riding light"--a light hung from the stern of the boat--was hung out, a dim light appeared in the cabin, which after a time was extinguished, then silence settled over the sloop for the night. "That is all for to-night, I think," said Harriet aloud, but in a low voice. "I do not know what it is all about, Tommy, but I do know that something queer is going on here. Do you think you and I will be able to solve the mystery?" "I think tho. Don't you?" "I do. This makes two mysteries for us to solve, one the finding of that mysterious box and the other the mystery of the wireless on the 'Sister Sue.' I would suggest that you don't say a word about it to any one to-morrow. Don't ask any questions, either--leave that to me--but keep your eyes open while you are on board. Perhaps we may discover something that we overlooked there to-day. Wireless on the 'Sister Sue'! I don't understand it at all. Be very careful that you do not wake up the others when you go in. Make sure that you don't fall over a cot and startle the girls." "Yeth, I'll be careful." Harriet remained outside while Grace was getting herself back to bed, but the former darted in quickly upon hearing a crash in the cabin, followed by a scream from Margery. Tommy had stumbled against Buster's bed and fallen across it and on the sleeping stout girl. But Harriet, knowing it would not do for the girls to know that two of their number had been mooning out-of-doors, darted into her own cot, and before they realized that she had just got in, was sitting up in bed demanding to know what all the disturbance was about. "Tommy, have you been walking in your sleep?" demanded Miss Elting. "Yeth, I've been walking, I gueth. Excuthe me, Buthter. If you hadn't been in my way I wouldn't have fallen over you. Good night, friendth." Tommy tumbled into bed, muttering to herself. Harriet did not go to sleep at once. She lay for some little time thinking over the strange occurrences of the night, and wondering what it could mean. Then, her companions having gone to sleep, she too settled down for the few hours that remained before the rising horn blew. Her first thought, upon awakening in the morning, was for the sloop. Quickly scrambling out of bed, she stepped to the door and gazed out on the bay. The "Sister Sue" lay at her anchorage motionless, glistening in the bright rays of the morning sunlight, handsomer, Harriet thought, as she stood admiring the pretty craft, than she had appeared on the previous day. The Camp Girls were filled with expectations of what was before them. They were to sail shortly after ten o'clock, and for many of them it was to be the first sail they had ever enjoyed. Breakfast was eaten and the camp put in order in record time that morning. Promptly at ten o'clock Captain Billy rowed the small boat ashore. He dragged down some trees which he cut, thus making a crude pier for the girls to walk out on, thus enabling him to leave the small boat in deeper water. However, he could take out no more than five passengers at a time. Mrs. Livingston told him that they did not care to sail far that morning. It was her purpose to give each of the girls in the camp a sail that day. Several trips, therefore, would be necessary. "If that's the case, we can take a bigger load on the sloop," replied the captain. "Pile 'em in." "Will it be perfectly safe?" questioned the Chief Guardian. "You can't sink her. The reason I didn't want a big crowd was that I thought you would be going out a long way. We're likely to meet heavy weather several miles outside. In that case a skipper wants plenty of room to move about. Sometimes quick work is necessary, and--" "I don't suppose that being a commodore will prevent my assisting in sailing the boat, will it?" asked Harriet smilingly. The skipper looked her over critically. "I reckon we can make a sailor of you. Know anything about sailing?" "No, sir." "Yeth, she doeth," interjected Grace. "She wath the captain of the 'Red Rover' latht year." "And sunk it," chuckled Crazy Jane. "If you will tell me what to do, I shall be glad to start, Captain." "All right. Get hold of that halyard and see if you can haul the sail up," he answered, grinning mischievously. Captain Billy had not the least idea that she possessed the strength to raise the sail. But Harriet surprised him. She grasped the rope, and, though so light that the weight of the sail nearly pulled her off her feet, she hauled it slowly but steadily to the peak, then, throwing all her weight into one hand and arm, made the halyard fast to a cleat on the deck. "Is that right, sir?" she asked, her face slightly flushed from the exertion. "Great boomers, but you have muscle in your arms!" wondered the skipper. "Now, please hold this wheel just where it is; I'll take in the anchor. The man went back home last night. Don't need him with all these strong-arm ladies on board. We'll be under way in a few minutes now. I--Look out there!" A sudden though slight puff of wind struck the mainsail, sending the sloop ahead directly toward the shore. But without waiting for orders Harriet sprang to the wheel, pointing the bow of the sloop, that had heeled dangerously, right toward the wind that was blowing in from the sea. "Fine!" shouted the captain, shipping the anchor and scrambling back to the cockpit as the sloop settled down on an even keel again, the squall drumming on the ropes and stays. "You've sailed a boat before, young lady." "Nothing more than a canoe and a house boat." "You've got the instinct, just the same. I'll have you sailing this 'Sister Sue' before you're a week older, and sailing it as well as I could sail it myself. Where do you wish to go!" turning inquiringly to Mrs. Livingston. "Up and down the coast, not far out." The skipper tacked back and forth a couple of times to clear the bay, then laid his course diagonally away from the coast. The day was an ideal one, the sloop lay well over and steadily gained headway as she forged ahead with white water spurting away from her bows. "Gul-lor-ious!" cried Margery. "Love-a-ly!" mocked Crazy Jane. Tommy eyed Buster quizzically. "Yeth, but thith ithn't the real thea. You will be singing inthide inthtead of outthide when we get out on the real othean. It won't be the gul-lor-iouth then." "All we need now to make us a real ship is a wireless machine," said Harriet, with apparent innocence. The skipper shot a quick look at her from under his heavy red eyebrows, but Harriet's face was guileless. "Would it not be possible to put a wireless outfit on a boat of this kind, Captain?" "Yes, if you wanted to. But what good would it do you?" "I don't know, except that we might talk with ships far out at sea--ships that we could not see at all. Why don't you put a wireless machine on your little ship? I think that would be fine," persisted the Meadow-Brook girl, with feigned enthusiasm. The skipper growled an unintelligible reply and devoted himself to sailing his boat. Then Tommy took up the subject, discussing wireless telegraphy with great confidence, but in an unscientific manner that would have brought groans of anguish from one familiar with the subject. Harriet Burrell through all of this conversation had been watching the skipper without appearing to do so. That he was ill at ease she saw by the scowl that wrinkled his forehead, but otherwise there was no sign to indicate that their talk had disturbed him. They sailed for two hours, then the sloop returned to the bay, where most of the girls were put ashore and another lot taken aboard. The Meadow-Brook Girls and Mrs. Livingston remained on board. Harriet, during the time the captain was engaged in assisting his passengers over the side, where they were rowed ashore by Jane and Hazel, looked over the "Sister Sue" with more care than she had done before. There was nothing that she could discover that looked like a wireless apparatus. However, at the forward end of the cabin she discovered a small door let into the paneling. This door was locked. She asked the captain to what it opened. "That's the chain locker, where we stow things," he answered gruffly. The girl then began calculating on how much space there was under the floor of the cabin. She decided that there must be at least three feet of hull under there, but the flooring was covered with carpet that extended under the lockers and seats at the side, so that she was unable to determine whether or not the floor could be readily taken up. Altogether, her discoveries did not amount to very much. She was obliged to confess as much to herself. As for Tommy, that young woman had conducted herself admirably during the sail, proving that she was discreet and fully as keen as was Harriet Burrell; and, though Tommy said very little on the subject uppermost in the minds of the two girls, the little girl was constantly on the alert. In the joy of sailing they forgot their noon meal. Nor were they reminded of it when Captain Bill, giving Harriet the wheel, made himself a cup of black coffee over an oil stove and drank it, eating several slices of dry bread. Having finished his luncheon, he pointed to the compass, asking Harriet if she knew anything about it. She said she did not. [Illustration: Harriet Took the Wheel.] "If you are going to be a sailor, you must learn to read the compass," he said. "In the first place, you must learn to 'box the compass.' I'll show you." "Are you looking for the boxth?" questioned Tommy, observing the skipper searching for something in a locker under the stern seat. "Box? No," he grunted. "We don't use that kind of a box in boxing the compass. By boxing the compass we mean reading the points of it." He produced a long, stiff wire, with which he pointed to the compass card. "A mariner's compass is divided into thirty-two points," he informed Harriet. "In the first place, there are four cardinal points, North, East, South and West. As you will see, by looking at the compass card, it is divided into smaller points which are not named on the card. I'll draw you a card to-night with all the points named, then you can learn them. Until you do, you are not a sailor. For instance, to read the compass, we begin with North and go on until we have completed the circle of the card, naming each point and sub-division as we go along. Then you should learn to read it backward as well. After you have learned to do that I will show you how to lay a course by a chart." "I don't thee anything to read," said Tommy, squinting down at the card. "You are not taking the lesson, darlin'," Jane reminded her. "This is the way to begin," Captain Billy told them. "First is North. Then you say north one-quarter, one-half, three-quarters, then the next sub-division is North by East with the same fractions of degrees. We go on as you will see by following the card, as follows, North Northeast; Northeast by North; Northeast; Northeast by East; East Northeast; East by North; East. You proceed in exactly the same manner with the other cardinal points, East, South and West, and that is what is called 'boxing the compass.' Do you think you understand, Miss Burrell?" "I have at least a start," replied Harriet smilingly. "I haven't," declared Tommy with emphasis. "I couldn't thpeak at all if I repeated that awful thtuff." In the meantime Harriet was gazing steadily at the card, fixing the points in mind, really photographing the points of the compass and their sub-divisions on her memory, the skipper observing her with a dry smile. He thought he had given the young sailor a problem that would keep her busy for some days to come. What was his surprise, therefore, when just after they had come to anchor, Harriet asked him to hear her lesson. She began boxing the compass and only once did she pause until she had gone all the way around the card. "How near right was I, Captain?" she asked. "Right as a plumb line. Girl, you're a wonder. Took me four months to learn to read the card; then I didn't have it down as fine as you have. Will you forget it before to-morrow morning?" "Oh, dear me, no," she laughed. "I hope I shall not," added the girl, sobering a little. "I shall write the points down as soon as possible after I get back to camp." "If you have it down fine in the morning, I'll take you for a long sail to-morrow," promised the captain, as he assisted the girls over the side into the waiting small boat. The Wau-Wau girls voted it the most delightful day they ever had spent. When they had reached camp, however, Harriet heard something that caused her to think even more seriously of what already had happened at Camp Wau-Wau. Before the night was over she was to witness that which would add still further to her perplexity. CHAPTER XX OUT OF SIGHT OF LAND "The man wished to know to whom the boat out in the bay belonged," Miss Elting was saying to the Chief Guardian. "He did not give his name, but asked many questions--who the captain is, where we got him and how, and all about it. The questioner was very mysterious. What do you suppose he could have been trying to find out?" "Perhaps he was a police officer looking for a stolen boat. I understand a great many boats are stolen along this coast. But we do not have to worry in the present instance. Miss McCarthy's father would not have given us a man who was not right in every way." "Oh, no," answered Miss Elting. "He seemed perfectly satisfied with what I told him, but he did spend quite a time strolling up and down the beach, out beyond the bar." Harriet had overheard the conversation between Miss Elting and Mrs. Livingston. She smiled at the thought of the light she might possibly shed on the inquiry made by the visitor that afternoon. The girls were sleepy that night and retired early, all save Harriet Burrell and Tommy, who asked permission to sit out on the bar in front of the cabin, which permission Miss Elting readily granted. But Tommy soon grew weary and stumbled into the cabin, where she floundered about sleepily until she had awakened everyone of her companions. Soon after the camp had settled down Harriet was conscious of a renewal of the previous night's activity on board the sloop, and in due time the wireless sparks began sputtering from the aerials at the masthead. They had hardly begun when they abruptly ceased. Her ears caught the sound of the anchor chain scraping through the hawse-hole. The anchor came aboard with a clatter, the mainsail was sent to the peak in short order, the boom swung over and the big sail caught the faint breeze that drifted in from the sea. The sloop, to her amazement, moved out from the bay. No sooner had it cleared the land than a fresh ocean breeze heeled the boat down, sending it rapidly out to sea, where it soon disappeared, sailing without any lights whatever, even the riding light having been taken in before the captain had started out. "What can it mean?" wondered Harriet Burrell. "I know something questionable is going on here, but what is it?" There was no answer to the question. The tide was now booming on the beach and a fresher breeze was springing up, the wind outside having veered until it blew directly into the cove. The girl waited for the return of the "Sister Sue" until long after midnight, then went to bed. The sky had become overcast and a spattering of raindrops smote her in the face. The prospect was for a drizzly night. When the camp awakened next morning the sloop was at her anchorage. What time she had come in Harriet had not the slightest idea, but it must have been early in the morning, because the skipper was just furling the mainsail as the girl emerged from the cabin. The sail was so soaked that he had difficulty in bending it to the boom to which he was trying to house it. But Harriet Burrell said nothing of her discovery at breakfast that morning. Later in the day she confided the secret to Tommy. The latter twisted her face, grimaced and winked wisely. The two girls understood each other. Captain Bill did not mention having been out with the boat, though Harriet gave him an excellent opportunity to do so that same day. A drenching drizzle fell all day long. Of course, this did not interfere with the camp work. The Camp Girls never ceased their labors for rain or storm of any kind. Later on in the day the Meadow-Brook Girls went aboard the sloop with their guardian, principally for the reason that Harriet wished to take further lessons in seamanship. She had learned her compass card well and earned the praise of the grizzled old skipper, but she was ambitious to accomplish greater things. Several days passed, during which the drizzle scarcely ceased for a moment. But during all this time the young woman was not idle, so far as her new interests were concerned. She had asked questions, inquiring the names of things and their uses until she knew them intimately. The ropes and stays, from a mass of complex, meaningless cordage, had resolved themselves into individual units, each of which had its use and its purpose; the compass was no longer a mystery, and, during a lull in the drizzle, when the sun had come out on the fifth day, Harriet was permitted to take an observation with the sextant, the instrument with which mariners take sights to determine their positions at sea. Harriet was instructed to catch the sun at its zenith, which she did, noting the figures on the scale of the sextant and from which, under the instruction of the captain, she figured out the latitude of the sloop. He allowed her to do all the figuring herself. The result was startling. The skipper took her calculations, studied them, frowned, then permitted his face to expand into a wrinkled grin. "Young lady, did you think this was Noah's Ark!" he demanded. "No, sir. Wh--y?" "Because according to your figures the 'Sister Sue' is at this minute located on a line with Mt. Washington, off yonder in the White Range." Harriet flushed to the roots of her hair as her companions shouted gleefully. At last Harriet Burrell had found something that she could not do. But the captain quickly informed them that to be able to take observations accurately, and then figure them out, required long and close application. Some mariners never were really good at theoretical navigation. Nor had Harriet, as yet, mastered the principles of trigonometry, which branch of mathematics underlies navigation. On the following morning the sun came out, and by the time the camp was awake the mainsails and jibs had been put out to dry. They were permitted to swing free all day long and by nightfall were dry and white, ready for the next sail. Captain Billy had promised them a long sail, though not having told them where. That evening he consulted with the Chief Guardian in her tent, with the result that the Meadow-Brook Girls, Miss Elting and five of their companions were told to prepare themselves for an early departure on the following morning, provided the day were fair. The girls were delighted, especially Harriet, who looked forward to putting into actual practice the theories that she had learned. A full day's provisions were put aboard, for these long sails could not be made on schedule time in every instance. An early breakfast was eaten by those who were to go on the sail, after which, bidding good-bye to their companions who remained behind, the sailing party set out for the beach, where Captain Billy was awaiting them with the small boat. The passengers were put aboard in two loads, Harriet and Crazy Jane in the first boat. The two girls set the jibs, which they had in place by the time the skipper returned with the others of the sailing party. They then hoisted the mainsail, and were under way a very few minutes after the party was snugly aboard. The "Sister Sue" sailed out of the bay to the accompaniment of fluttering handkerchiefs from the shore and shrill cries of good-bye. "I'll thend you a pothtal card from Europe," shouted Tommy. The "Sue" dipped and heeled under the fresh breeze, and, with a "bone in her teeth"--a white bar of foam at her bows--reached for the open sea. "Take the wheel," ordered the skipper, nodding at Harriet. "Don't move it much except to fill your sails. See that the sails are full and pulling strongly at all times, and watch the weather for squalls. When the sails are pulling too strong, point the nose closer into the wind, but the 'Sue' will stand up under more than an ordinary squall. That's it." "She is a splendid boat!" cried Harriet. "She is at least a well-balanced boat," answered Captain Billy. "Having the wind on the quarter, we do not have to tack any on this course. You see, we are headed Northeast by East three-quarters. Keep her there." "Were I to keep straight on as I am, where would we land?" asked Harriet. "England." "Oh, let uth keep right on until we get to England," piped Tommy. "How far ith it?" "Three thousand miles, more or less," replied the skipper. "Thave me!" She had followed the skipper forward, where he had gone to change the set of one of the jibs, Tommy watching him with questioning eyes. "There wath a man at the camp the other day," began the little lisping girl. "A man? What did he want in your camp?" "He wath athking quethtionth about you and the boat," replied Tommy innocently. "Eh?" The skipper's filmy blue eyes took on a steely glint. "Asking about me?" "Yeth." "What did he want to know?" "All about you." "Did he say what for?" Captain Billy showed more excitement in his manner than Tommy ever before had seen him exhibit. "No, not that I know of. He athked the guardianth about you, tho I heard, where we got you and who got you. Why do you thuppothe he wanted to know all of thothe thingth?" questioned the little girl, her eyes wide, questioning and innocent. "I don't know, Miss. Forget it." "Do you thuppothe it hath anything to do with the 'Thilly Thue' going out in the night?" Captain Billy gripped the sheet that he was wrapping about a cleat, his red face took on a deeper shade, his eyes grew menacing. But Tommy refused to see anything threatening in either attitude or gaze. She chuckled gleefully. "Oh, I can keep a thecret. I haven't told anything, have I?" laughed Tommy as she ran back to her companions, her eyes bright and sparkling. "I made him thit up and notithe thingth," she chuckled in Harriet's ear. "You watch him, and thee how mad he lookth when he cometh back here." The expression on the face of the skipper bore out all that Tommy had said of him. Harriet rebuked her, and demanded to know what she had said, but Tommy laughed merrily and ran into the cabin. The "Sue" was getting well out to sea now. The shore line was sinking gradually into the sea. The land had become a faint, purplish blur in the distance, a strong, salty breeze was blowing across the sloop and the Atlantic rollers were becoming longer. The "Sue" was beginning to roll heavily, rising and falling to the accompaniment of creaking boom, rattling mast rings and flapping jibs. Keeping on one's feet was becoming more and more difficult with the passing of the moments. "Oh, help!" moaned Margery, in an anguished voice. "What ith the matter!" demanded Tommy, squinting quizzically at her companion, whose face was deathly pale. "Oh, I'm so ill," moaned Buster. Then she toppled over into the cockpit, where she lay moaning. Miss Elting and Hazel picked her up, carried her into the cabin and placed her on one of the cushioned locker seats. Margery promptly rolled off with the next lurch of the sloop. "I wish I were dead!" she moaned. "Cheer up! The wortht ith yet to come," cooed Tommy. "Do you think this is perfectly safe?" questioned Miss Elting, after having staggered outside. "The sea is very rough and we are a long way from shore." "Not at all, Miss," replied the captain. "This is a very fine sea. Why, this boat could go through a hurricane and never leak a drop. You see, we are taking no water aboard at all. Where will you find a boat as dry as this, I'd like to know?" Thus reassured, the guardian felt better about their situation, though she began to feel dizzy and a few moments later was forced to join Margery in the cabin. Buster was still on the cabin floor, unable to keep on the locker seat. She was tossing from side to side with every roll of the sloop. Four other girls from the camp by this time had sought what comfort was to be had in the cabin. Outside, Jane, Harriet, Tommy, Hazel and the skipper were taking their full measure of the enjoyment of the hour. Harriet got out a basket of food, and, bracing herself against the combing, proceeded to eat. Her companions on deck joined her. Tommy carried a roast beef sandwich into the cabin. "Have a nithe, fat thandwitch with me?" she asked. Dismal groans greeted her invitation. Harriet called her back. "You shouldn't have done that, Tommy," she rebuked. "It was most unkind of you. How would you like to be aggravated if you were seasick?" "If I got theathick I'd detherve to be teathed. Oh, thee the gullth." A flock of white gulls was circling over the "Sister Sue." Harriet flung overboard a handful of crumbs, whereat the birds swooped down, rode the swells and greedily picked up the crumbs. They started up and soon overtook the sloop. For an hour the girls fed them; then, the crumbs being exhausted, the gulls soared out to sea in search of other craft and food. For some time the sailing party had been so fully engaged with their own affairs that they had given little thought to their surroundings. They now began to look about them. "The land has disappeared!" cried Harriet. "We are out of sight of land. Isn't this splendid? How far are we out from home, Captain?" "Nearly forty miles," he answered, after consulting the log. "Want to go back?" "Oh, no! Let's keep on going. How I wish we could keep on forever in this way." "We will go on until we meet a ship that is due here." "A ship! Oh, where?" cried the girls. The captain pointed a gnarled finger at a faint smudge on the distant horizon. "Yonder she is," he answered. "Shall we go out and meet her?" "Yes, oh, yes!" shouted the Meadow-Brook Girls gleefully. He changed the course of the "Sister Sue" ever so little, and they went bowling along over the Atlantic rollers headed for the big liner that was approaching them at nearly thirty miles an hour. CHAPTER XXI AN ANXIOUS OUTLOOK "Come out, girlth, and thee the thhip," shouted Tommy, poking her head into the cabin. "Go away and don't bother me," groaned Margery. "Can't you see how sick I am?" "Ithn't that too bad?" deplored Tommy, withdrawing her face with a most unsympathetic grin. All those on deck were watching the black smudge on the horizon, and as they gazed it grew into a great, dark cloud. Out of the cloud, after a time, they saw white foam flashing in the sunlight, caused by the displacement of the great ship as she forged through the summer seas. "Shall we pass near her?" questioned Miss Elting. "We're right on her course," replied the skipper. "We'll turn out soon, for she won't shift her position an inch unless she thinks we're going to run into her. Let your boat off a point to starboard, Miss Burrell." "Aye, aye," answered Harriet promptly, shifting the wheel slightly, eyes fixed on the trembling compass card. The shift of position threw the wind directly abeam. It was now blowing squarely against the quarter, causing the sloop to heel down at a sharp angle. The boat fairly leaped forward, her lee rail almost buried in a smother of foam. The eyes of the girl at the wheel sparkled with pleasure. It was glorious. Harriet Burrell could not remember to have enjoyed a happier moment. "They are watching us," announced the captain, who had been examining the oncoming ship through his glass. "They think we may be coming out to speak to them," he added with a chuckle. "We don't thpeak thhipth in the daylight," answered Tommy, drawing a quick glance from the captain. Harriet gave her a warning look, then devoted her attention to steering the course, glancing at the oncoming ship every now and then. "Swing out," directed Captain Billy. "She throws a heavy swell. We will cut across it at right angles passing under her stern. I'll tell you when to swing in so we'll just make it. Now, can you see the people?" "Yes, yes!" cried the girls. The huge red and black funnels belching clouds of dense black smoke were now plainly visible, as were the towering upperworks of the ship, and the bridge high in the air. "Swing in," commanded the "Sue's" skipper. Harriet put the helm hard over. The sloop responded quickly. Now the spray dashed over the boat in a drenching shower, bringing shouts of glee from the Meadow-Brook Girls. The move in a few minutes brought them so close to the big ship that the girls could look into the fresh sea-blown faces of the passengers who crowded the rails on that side of the liner. It seemed as if the sloop must crash into the side of the larger boat. Harriet glanced inquiringly at Captain Billy, who nodded encouragingly, from which she understood that there was no cause for alarm. The girls were now waving their handkerchiefs and shouting to the amazed passengers, who could not understand why a party in so frail a craft should be met with far out to sea, how far few of those on the ship knew. They did know that they were out of sight of land, which made the marvel all the greater. "Point in closer," commanded Captain Billy. Harriet swung in still more. The "Sister Sue" buried her nose in the foamy, eddying wake of the liner close under the counter, so close, in fact, that the girls could see the water boiling over the twin propellers and hear their beat. The next moment they had passed her and were on the open, rolling sea again, with the big ship threshing her way toward New York, rapidly widening the gap between herself and the venturesome little craft. For the moment that they had been blanketed by the steamer their sails had flattened and they had lost headway, but now the wind picked them up, the sails bellied and the little sloop continued on her way. "We must turn now," said the skipper, consulting the skies, which he swept with a comprehensive glance. He gave Harriet the return course. "I fear we are going to lose the wind. It will pick up later, however. No need to be anxious." He stepped inside the cabin and, leaning forward, consulted the barometer. Harriet noted that his face wore a look of anxiety for the moment. But it had entirely disappeared when he returned to the deck. Once more he swept the horizon. "How is the glass?" she asked, but in a voice too low for her companions to hear. Harriet referred to the barometer. "It has fallen over an inch in two hours," answered Captain Billy. "That is a big drop, isn't it?" "I should say so. But don't say anything to the others," he added, with a quick glance at the girls to see if any had overheard either his or Harriet Burrell's remarks. "It means a blow, does it not?" "Yes. But it may be a long way off, possibly a hundred miles or more." "Then, again, we may be right in the center of it?" she questioned. The skipper nodded again. "Is there anything to be done?" "Nothing except to make all the time we can and keep a weather eye aloft and abroad. Watch your sails and trim them for every breath of air. Jockey her. Now is your time to see what can be done when there is little wind to be had." Harriet was getting practical experience in sailing a boat such as falls to few novices, but she took to the work like one who had long been used to the sea and its varying moods. Under her skilful manipulation the "Sister Sue" was making fairly good headway, though nothing like what she had done on the outward voyage, for the wind was dying out, becoming more fitful, shifting from one point of the compass to another. "When the wind moves opposite to the direction of the hands of a clock--what seamen call 'against the clock'--look out for foul weather," the captain informed her. "That is the way it is going now, isn't it?" "Yes." "I hope we shall have enough to take us home." "We may have too much." Once more the skipper studied the horizon to the northeast. That he was not pleased with his observation Harriet was confident. Again he took a long look at the barometer, glanced at the compass to see that she was on her course, then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, studied the rigging overhead. "We aren't making much headway, are we?" questioned Miss Elting. "None at all," was the, to her, surprising reply; "we're in a dead calm now." The waves had taken on an oily appearance and there were no longer white crests on the rollers. The "Sister Sue" rolled and plunged in a sickening way, the boom swinging from side to side. All hands were in the cockpit or cabin, however, so that there was no danger of their being hit by the swinging boom. In the cabin was heard a series of groans more agonized than before. The guardian had recovered in a measure, though they observed that she was very pale. The fresh air outside revived her somewhat. "I wish you to tell me frankly if there is any danger?" she demanded. "Not yet," was the skipper's evasive answer. "Meaning that there may be later?" "We may be late getting home," he replied. "I can't say any more than that now. Ugh!" Harriet Burrell saw him gazing off to the northeast. She followed the direction of his glance, and saw a purplish haze hanging heavily on the horizon. As she gazed the purple haze seemed to grow darker and to increase in size. The sight disturbed her, though she did not know why. The sea now made little noise. A flock of seagulls could be plainly heard honking high overhead, and a chattering flock of stormy petrels soared down, coming to rest on the water in the wake of the sloop. "I'll take in the jibs. Mind your wheel. We are in for a blow," announced the skipper. CHAPTER XXII IN THE GRIP OF MIGHTY SEAS The captain quickly furled the jibs, then took a reef in the mainsail. Consulting the skies again, he decided to leave one of the jibs up, so set it once more and took another reef in the mainsail, thus shortening the latter considerably. The "Sister Sue" was now making no headway at all, but was rolling dizzily from wave to wave, now and then a swell striking the side of the little boat and tumbling torrents of green water over into the cockpit. The girls were set to work bailing. They already were soaked to the skin, though, instead of being disturbed, they were laughing joyously, thinking it great fun. Their attention was called to a school of porpoises that came leaping toward them, appearing at first like miniature geysers springing out of the oily green seas. The porpoises divided, passing on either side of the sloop and close aboard, racing on toward the land that lay off yonder somewhere in the green distance. It was now impossible to stand without holding fast to something that would not give. Harriet had never seen a boat roll so fast. From side to side it lurched, plunging at the same time, both with almost incredible speed. Her own head was beginning to spin. Tommy's face was pale. "You're getting seasick," smiled Harriet, eyeing her friend sharply. "No, I'm not," protested the little girl "You're getting thick yourthelf." "I confess to being dizzy," admitted Harriet, "but I am not so ill that I must go to bed. Keep outside. You will be much better off than in the cabin, where the air is close and the others are suffering." "I'm going to, thank you." Tommy stood braced against the cabin, her keen little eyes observing the now serious face of the skipper. "I gueth thomething ith going to happen," she observed. "Don't tell the others," cautioned Harriet, with a warning shake of the head. "I don't intend to. What ith it, a thtorm?" Harriet nodded. "I knew it. I jutht knew thomething wath going to break loothe." The purple haze was nearing at a rapid rate of speed, and Harriet Burrell saw that with it the sea was piling up, its white crests angry and menacing. "Try to keep the wind dead astern," ordered the skipper. "I will handle the sheets. Do you think you can manage it?" "Yes, sir. I will be on the lookout for orders. You may depend upon me, sir." "Then we'll weather it, but we shall get pretty wet, and night is coming on, too. We're going to have a merry night of it! All hands who do not wish to get a ducking go below," shouted the skipper. Miss Elting, Jane, Harriet and Tommy remained outside. The captain tossed a rope to each, directing them to tie the ropes about their waists, making the lines fast to a cleat on the after end of the raised deck cabin. "Just for safety's sake," he nodded. The wind was beginning to whistle through the rigging, the water to foam under the bows of the "Sister Sue," showing that she was getting under good headway. "Port one point," bellowed the skipper. Harriet instantly obeyed the command. Then the gale was upon them with a screech and a roar. A volume of water that threatened to swamp them rolled toward the stern, but before it had done so Harriet, acting upon a sharply uttered command, had swung the sloop about until its nose met the oncoming rush of wind and water. She gasped for breath as the flood of salt water enveloped her; yet, bracing her feet, clung firmly to the wheel, holding the craft on the new course. Afterward Harriet had a faint recollection of having seen her companions swimming on the green sea in the little cockpit, Tommy's pale face standing out more prominently than all the rest. "We made it," roared the skipper. "Now hold her steady, and she will ride it out like a duck." He grabbed up a pail and began bailing with all his might. Jane did likewise, then Miss Elting lent her assistance. Tommy was clinging to the cabin roof with all her might. Before the storm struck them they had not thought to light their masthead and side lights. Now it was next to impossible to do so. The sloop was rushing through the seas without a light to mark her presence on the sea that was growing more wild with the moments. But the binnacle light was burning steadily over the compass, so that the helmswoman was able to see in which direction they were heading. The compass told her that, instead of making headway toward land, they were rushing along at a frightful rate of speed toward Europe. Still, she realized that this was the only safe course to follow. All at once Harriet Burrell uttered a sharp cry of alarm. She threw the wheel over so suddenly that a wave smashing against the side of the sloop nearly turned them turtle. Captain Billy, with quick instinct, let go the mainsail, which swung out far to leeward, thus saving the little craft from being upset. Up to this moment he did not know what the sudden shifting meant, but just as he was about to bellow to the helmswoman he caught sight of a towering mass of lights that for the moment seemed to hang over them, then flashed on, missing the "Sue" by a few scant rods of water. They had had a narrow escape from being run down by a steamer. But for Harriet's quickness, nothing could have saved them. It was plain that those on the bridge of the steamer had not discovered the small boat in the sea under their bows, for they did not even hail. "Good work," bellowed the skipper. "I thought we'd got to Europe," shouted Tommy. "Lay her to. I've got to close reef that sail," commanded the captain. Harriet pointed the bow right into the teeth of the wind. Oh, how that little craft did plunge! At times it seemed as if the greater part of her length were wholly out of water, that she had taken a long, quivering leap from the crest of one great wave to another. So hard was she pitching that she had little time left in which to roll. Salt spray rained down over the decks until the cabin itself was almost wholly hidden from the view of the girl at the wheel. In the meantime the captain had reefed the mainsail down to the last row. "Now let her off a few points," he directed. Boom! "Oh, what was that?" cried Miss Elting, her voice barely heard in the shriek of the gale. "What happened?" "Jib gone by the board," shouted the captain. "Lucky if we don't lose the mainsail the same way." Harriet had not uttered a sound when the startling report had boomed out above the roar of the storm, but her heart had seemed to leap into her throat. Her arms had grown numb under the strain of holding the wheel, for the sea was hurling its tremendous force against the craft, requiring great effort on the part of the helmswoman to keep the boat on its course. But she clung doggedly to her chosen task, seeking to pierce the darkness ahead with her gaze. The salt water made her eyes smart so that she could scarcely see at all. Yet she could feel the wind on her face, and by that guide alone she was enabled to keep the "Sue" headed into the storm. She long since had ceased trying to keep the boat on a compass course, for the greater part of the time the compass card was invisible either through the spray or solid water, as the case might be. It was marvelous how the little boat stood up under the bombardment of the Atlantic rollers and the mountains of water that hurled themselves upon her. Harriet was standing in water up to her knees, but, fortunately, every time the boat rolled or plunged, a volume of salt water was hurled out into the sea itself. In the cabin everything movable was afloat. The passengers in there were nearly drowned at times, but in their fright most of them had forgotten their seasickness. They were clinging to the seats in most instances, screaming with fear. Miss Elting, deciding that her presence was needed in the cabin rather than outside, plunged into the dark hole head-first. Quickly gathering herself together, she did her best to calm and comfort the girls, though every plunge of the boat she expected would be its last. It did not seem possible that the little craft could weather the gale. Suddenly there came a mighty crash above their heads, followed by a ripping, tearing sound, and above it all sounded the screams of the girls who were fighting their great battle out there in the cockpit of the "Sister Sue." The girls in the cabin threw themselves into one another's arms, screaming wildly. "Stop it!" shouted Miss Elting. "Be brave, girls. Remember, you are Camp Girls!" The cabin doors burst in and a great green wave hurled them the length of the cabin, crushing them against the bulkhead at the far end, the guardian clinging, gasping, nearly drowned, to a rail above the doorway. CHAPTER XXIII WAGING A DESPERATE BATTLE "We're lost!" exclaimed Miss Elting, turning back into the cabin. But she was suddenly attracted by a shout from without. "Cut away!" screamed Harriet. "Jane, are you there? Tommy!" "He's gone!" It was Jane's voice that answered in a long, wailing cry. The water was rapidly receding from the cabin. Miss Elting quickly straightened the girls out. She did not know how seriously they had been hurt, if at all, but after making sure that all within the cabin were alive, the guardian groped her way to the cockpit. Harriet stood braced against the wheel, shouting out her commands, screaming at the top of her voice to make herself heard and understood above the gale. The guardian staggered over to her. "Oh, what has happened?" she cried. "The mast has gone overboard--part of it at least, and--" "Captain Billy's gone, too! The boom struck and carried him over!" yelled Jane when she had crept near enough to be heard. "Cut away, I tell you. Here is a hatchet." Harriet had groped in the locker, from which she drew a keen-edged hatchet and handed it to Crazy Jane McCarthy. "You'll have to be quick. We're being swamped. See, we are taking water over the side. Oh, _do_ hurry, Jane!" "The captain gone!" moaned Miss Elting. "Can nothing be done?" "No." Harriet's voice was firm. "Unless we work fast we shall all go to the bottom. We must save those on the boat, Miss Elting. But you listen for his voice. Oh, this is terrible!" The steady whack--whack of the hatchet in the hands of Jane McCarthy came faintly to their ears. Once Jane slipped over the side into the water; but, grasping the life-line to which she was tied, the girl pulled herself back on the deck and set pluckily to work again. It was the wonder of Harriet Burrell that the "Sue" kept afloat at all, for she was more under water than above it, and the seas were breaking over her. "Please get back and look after the girls. Where is your life-line?" asked Harriet of Miss Elting. "I threw it off when I went into the cabin." "Get back! Stay there until I call you, or--" Harriet did not finish the sentence, but the guardian understood and turned back into the cabin, where she did her best to comfort the panic-stricken Camp Girls. "Whoop!" shrieked Jane. The "Sue" righted with a violent jolt. Jane had freed the side of the boat of the rigging which, attached to the broken mast and sail, was holding the craft down and threatening every second to swamp her. Jane crept down into the cockpit, and was about to cut away the stays that held the wreckage, which was now floating astern of the sloop. "Stop!" commanded Harriet. "Wait till we see what effect it has on us, but stand by to cut away if we see there is peril. Oh, I hope we shall be able to ride it out. That poor captain! He must have been stunned by a blow of the boom. It seems cruel to stand here without lifting a hand to save him. But what can we do? Jane, is there anything you can think of that we can do?" Crazy Jane shook her head slowly. "Nothing but to tell his family, if we ever get back to land," was her solemn reply. "But, darlin', we aren't on land ourselves yet, and I doubt me very much if we ever shall be. See the waves breaking over this old tub. How long do you think she will stand it?" Harriet did not answer at once. She was peering forward into the darkness. Holding up her hand, she noted the direction of the wind. "Do you see, Jane, the 'Sue' is behaving better! She isn't taking nearly so much water. Do you know what has happened?" "What is it, darlin'?" "The wreckage that you cut away is holding the stern and acting as a sea anchor, and it has pulled the bow of the boat around until we are headed right into the gale. I am glad I didn't let you cut loose the wreckage. It may be the very thing that will save us, but I don't know. I wish you would get some one to help you bail out the pit. The water is getting deep in here again, and the cabin is all afloat." "But more will come in," objected Jane. "And more will swamp us, first thing we know. You take the wheel. I will bail." "I'll do it myself, darlin'." Jane asked Hazel to assist her, and together they slaved until it seemed as if their backs surely would break. The storm, while not abating any, did not appear to increase in fury. It was severe enough as it was. The seas loomed above the broken craft like huge, black mountains, yet somehow they seemed to break just a few seconds before engulfing her and to divide, passing on either side, but the "Sister Sue" wallowed in a smother of foam, creaking and groaning, giving in every joint, and threatening to fall to pieces with each new twist and turn forced upon her by the writhing seas. Miss Elting, after having in a measure quieted the girls in the cabin, came out clinging to a rope. She and Harriet held a shouted conversation, after which the guardian returned to the cabin, where there was less danger of being beaten down by huge seas, although one could get fully as wet inside the cabin as on deck. The hours of the night wore slowly away. The intense impenetrable blackness, the roar and thunder of the sea, the terrible jerking, jolting and hurling beneath them, shook the nerves of the girls, keeping them constantly in a half-dazed condition that perhaps lessened the keenness of their suffering. Harriet and Jane, however, never for a single second relaxed their vigilance, or left a single thing undone that would tend to ease the boat or to contribute to its safety. The binnacle light long since had been extinguished by the water, making it impossible to see the compass to tell which way they were headed. Little good it would have done them to know, either, they being powerless to change their course, or to make any headway at all, save as they drifted with the seas. Harriet hoped they might be drifting toward shore. Instead, they were being slowly carried down the coast and parallel with it. At last the gray of the early dawn appeared in the east, but it was a "high dawn," with the light first appearing high in the sky, meaning to sailors wind or storm. Harriet did not know the meaning of it, however, though she thought it a most peculiar looking sky. And now, as the light came slowly, they were able to get an idea what the sea in which they had been wallowing all night looked like. It was a fearsome sight. As they gazed their hearts sank within them. Mountains of leaden water rose into the air, then sank out of sight again, and when the "Sue" went into one of those troughs of the sea it was like sinking into a great black pit from which there was no escape. Yet the buoyant hull of the sloop rose every time, shaking the water from her glistening white sides and bending to the oncoming seas preparatory to taking another dizzy dive. The lower half of the mast was still standing, a ragged stump, the deck itself swept clean of every vestige of wreckage and movable equipment. What troubled Harriet most was the loss of the water cask. The small water tank in the cabin had been hurled to the floor by the pitching of the sloop and its contents spilled. The Meadow-Brook Girl saw that they were going to be without water to drink, a most serious thing, provided they were not drowned before needing something to drink. As she studied the boat, an idea was gradually formed in her mind, a plan outlined that she determined to try to adopt were the wind to go down sufficiently to make the attempt prudent. Harriet called the others to her, and the girls talked it over in all its details for the better part of an hour. There was nothing to eat on board now, nor did many of the party feel like eating. Tommy, however, found her appetite shortly after daybreak and raised quite a disturbance because there was nothing to be had. She suggested breaking open the doors that led to the chain locker, but of this Harriet would not hear. She did not wish water to get in there, for that appeared to be the one part of the boat that was now free from it, and that really had saved them from going to the bottom. In the meantime the wind did not appear to be abating in the slightest. All that wretched forenoon the majority of the girls, half-dead from fright and exposure, clung desperately to the cushions of the locker seats, wild-eyed and despairing. All that forenoon Harriet Burrell, Jane McCarthy, Tommy, Hazel and Miss Elting stuck to their posts and worked without once pausing to rest. About noon the wind suddenly died out, then began veering in puffs from various quarters of the compass. "Now, Jane, is our chance," cried Harriet. "The storm is broken, but the seas will be high all the rest of the day. If we can fix up some sort of a sail, we may be able to reach land before long." CHAPTER XXIV CONCLUSION When the "Sister Sue" failed to return the previous afternoon, and the storm came on, Mrs. Livingston, greatly alarmed, sent a party of girls with a guardian to the nearest telephone to send word to Portsmouth that the sloop and its passengers were missing. A revenue cutter was sent out to look for them, first, however, having been in communication with the ocean liner the girls had passed by wireless, learning from the captain of the ship of their having sighted the "Sister Sue" and giving the latter's position at the time. This served as a guide for the revenue boat, which steamed through the great seas until daylight. There were no signs of the missing sloop; but, reasoning that, if the boat was still afloat, it must have been blown down the coast, the revenue boat headed in that direction. It was not until three o'clock in the afternoon, however, that the lookout reported seeing something floating in the far distance, off the starboard bow. A study of this object through the glasses led the captain to turn his cutter in that direction. An hour later he was close enough to see that it was a dismantled boat, and that there were people aboard it. Full speed ahead was ordered and the revenue boat rapidly drew up. A strange spectacle was revealed to the officers and men of the revenue cutter as she approached close enough to make out details. The dismantled sloop was lying very low in the water, showing that she was in a bad way. To the top of the stump of the mast a staple had been driven and through this a rope run. This rope held a jib, the greater part of which was on the deck because there was not height enough to spread it all. But what there was of the jib was pulling well in the fresh breeze and the sloop was wallowing through the seas, making fair headway toward land, which now was not more than fifteen miles away. Harriet Burrell, still at the wheel, was giving her full attention to handling the boat, leaving to her companions the task of attracting the attention of the cutter, which, however, had seen the sloop long before the passengers on her had discovered the revenue boat. The captain of the cutter lay to as close to the sloop as he dared go, then held a megaphone conversation with the survivors. Harriet replied that she thought she would be able to get the boat to shore, but suggested that they take off the other girls. The captain would not listen to Harriet's first proposition. After a perilous passage he finally succeeded in getting a boat's crew aboard the sloop, the skipper himself accompanying the rescue party. "And you brought this tub through the gale?" he questioned, turning to Harriet after hearing a brief account of the loss of Captain Billy and the consequent experiences of the "Sister Sue's" passengers. "It was purely good luck, sir," answered Harriet modestly. "It was something a great deal stronger than luck," answered the captain. "The sea is going down. As soon as it is down enough to be safe I will put you all aboard the cutter." "Are you going to leave the sloop?" asked Miss Elting. "No. We want that boat for reasons of our own. We wish to look it over at our leisure. Your sea anchor saved you, that and good seamanship. Miss Burrell, it is a pity you are not a man. You would be commanding a ship in a few years. I think we had better transfer you now. I'm afraid of the sloop." The transfer was a thrilling experience for the Camp Girls. Several times they narrowly missed being upset and thrown into the sea, but after more than two hours' work everyone had been safely landed on the deck of the revenue boat. Three men were put aboard the sloop, a lifeboat being left with them in case the "Sue" foundered. The revenue cutter then started towing her toward home. It was late in the evening when finally they came to anchor off Camp Wau-Wau. The surf was running so high that it was decided not to put the girls ashore until the following morning, though the "Sue" was cast off from her tow and allowed to drift into the bay. From here her crew rowed ashore and informed the anxious Camp Girls that everyone of their companions was safe. But the morning brought with it a further surprise. The cabin in which the Meadow-Brook Girls had made their home had wholly disappeared. With it had gone the bar, swept out by the storm, the cabin lying a hopeless, tangled wreck on the shore of the bay. With it, too, had gone ashore a variety of stuff which the officers of the revenue boat examined early that morning. They pronounced the ruined stuff ammunition. Harriet told of the mysterious box that she had seen carried into the woods. Later in the day this was located and dug up. It was found to be a zinc-lined case, packed with military rifles of old pattern. On board the "Sister Sue," in the chain locker, was found a complete wireless equipment, together with quite a cargo of rifles and ammunition. "These guns were meant for _business_!" remarked the captain of the revenue cutter, as he and another officer stood by superintending the work of four sailors. "Why, I thought the days of piracy had gone by," remarked Harriet. "_Pi_--" gasped Tommy, and turned pale. "Pirates!" echoed Margery Brown in consternation. "Why, we might have been killed and no one would have known what became of us!" "Who said anything about pirates!" retorted the revenue captain, smiling. "Why, you thaid--" began Tommy wonderingly. "I spoke of 'business,'" came the answer of the man in uniform, "and that was what I meant to say. In these days, in Latin-American countries, revolution appears to be one of the leading forms of business." "_Revolution?_" echoed Margery, quickly reviving, while Tommy listened in amazement. "Why, revolutions are romantic; there's nothing awful about 'em." "Nothing awful," laughed Captain Rupert. "In the countries to the south of us most of the revolutions are very tame affairs, so far as actual fighting goes. The crowd that makes the most noise, whether government or insurgent, usually wins the day. For that matter, I never could understand why blank cartridges wouldn't do as well as the real ammunition in these Latin-American revolutions." "Yet if these rifles and cartridges were intended for use in a revolution," Harriet broke in, "doesn't it seem odd to land them on this short strip of New Hampshire coast?" "Not at all odd when you understand the reason," Captain Rupert went on. "These rifles are intended to be used in another projected uprising of the blacks in Cuba. The blacks there are always ready to fight, provided some selfseeking white man offers them the weapons, and a prosperous time, without work, in the event of victory. Such another uprising of the blacks in Cuba has been planned. The secret service men of the Cuban government got wind of the affair and trailed some of the plotters to this country. "Now, the United States is the place where nearly all of the supplies for these revolutions are bought. So our government, watching, discovered that the arms were being slyly shipped to Portsmouth, instead of being directly shipped from New York to Cuba. It was, of course, quite plain that Portsmouth was the port from which the arms and ammunition were to be shipped. So the cutter that I command was ordered to Portsmouth. As soon as the plotters there found the 'Terrapin' cruising off that port they knew they must find some other way of getting the goods out of the country, for it is against the law to ship arms from this country for use against any other established government. "So the plotters hit upon a new plan. They engaged the skipper of a regular fishing smack to carry small lots of arms out to sea, there to transfer them to a sloop. Captain Billy was the man selected to receive the arms and ammunition at sea. He brought them in here, hiding them, with the intention of putting out some dark night, making several short trips, and transferring all the rifles and cartridges--eight thousand rifles and three million cartridges, to a small steamer that would be waiting in the offing. The steam vessel would then carry the cargo to Cuba, landing the goods at some secret, appointed place. Captain Billy, as our government learned, was to receive one thousand dollars for his share in the work. It was a bit risky, as he faced prison if caught--as he surely would have been imprisoned had he lived." "Poor man!" sighed Harriet sympathetically. "I agree with you," nodded Captain Rupert gravely. "Captain Billy was a good fellow, as men go; but he had passed his fiftieth year with fortune as far away as ever, and he caught at the bait of a thousand dollars, though he knew he was breaking the laws of his country. But he's dead," added the revenue officer, uncovering his head for a moment; "therefore we won't discuss his fault further." When the "hidden treasure" in the woods was unearthed it proved to be a large consignment of rifles and cartridges. These had been hidden in a cleverly concealed artificial, sod-covered cave in the woods. Its existence had been so well hidden that Camp Wau-Wau girls had scores of times passed over the cave without suspecting its existence. Before the revenue cutter sailed away the six officers aboard came ashore one evening, taking dinner with the girls, in company with a number of young men, invited from the neighborhood. Afterward until half-past ten o'clock there was a pleasant dance. All too soon Harriet Burrell and her friends found this vacation trip at an end. Proud of the honors they had won, delighted beyond words with the good times they had had, they left for home the day before the hulk of the "Sister Sue" was taken away, at Mr. McCarthy's order, and sold. "We are leaving behind us the best time we have ever had," sighed Hazel on the morning of their departure. "I am sure there are plenty of good times ahead of all of us yet," declared Harriet brightly. "What I'm going to say, girls," broke in Miss Elting, "is not original, but practical. The driver we've engaged to take our belongings to the station will be due here in ten minutes. If we're not ready for him, he'll charge us extra for waiting." So the packing was finished, the driver departed with the luggage, and the Meadow-Brook Girls, somewhat wet-eyed, took leave of all at Camp Wau-Wau. Then, Torch Bearer Harriet Burrell leading the way, the four girls and their guardian took the trail. Yet there was another good time coming, as all our readers will speedily discover when they open the next volume, which is published under the title: "THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS ON THE TENNIS COURTS; Or, Winning Out in the Big Tournament." THE END. 
35332	----	OUR ARTIST IN CUBA [Illustration: CARLETON DEL hys Marke] OUR ARTIST IN CUBA. FIFTY DRAWINGS ON WOOD. LEAVES FROM THE SKETCH-BOOK OF A TRAVELER, DURING THE WINTER OF 1864-5, BY GEO. W. CARLETON. [Illustration: colophon] NEW YORK: _Carleton, Publisher,_ 413 _Broadway._ _London: S. Low, Son & Co._ MDCLXV. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by GEO. W. CARLETON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. CONTENTS. A PRELIMINARY WORD. No. SICK TRANSIT 1 Two BOOBIES 2 A COLORED HERCULES 3 THE CUBAN JEHU 4 IGLESIA DE SAN FRANCISCO 5 A CUBAN MOTIVE 6 AN INFLUENZA 7 FLEE FOR SHELTER 8 THE RIDE 9 A COCK-FIGHT 10 RATHER COOL 11 A SPANISH RETREAT 12 TAKE YOUR PICK 13 SPIDERS, RATS, AND COCKROACHES 14 BELLIGERENTS 15 MATERFAMILIAS ET FILIUS 16 A CULINARY DEPARTMENT 17 A BUNDLE OF CLOTHES 18 A BUTTON-SMASHER 19 WHITE PANTALOONS 20 A CARNIVAL ACQUAINTANCE 21 BEAUTY AT THE BALL 22 A DISAPPOINTMENT 23 DOLCE FAR NIENTE 24 LOCOMOTION 25 THE SPANISH TONGUE 26 AN UNWELCOME VISITOR 27 AN AGREEABLE BATH 28 A CELESTIAL MAID 29 A STATUE ON A BUST 30 A TAIL UNFOLDED 31 PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE 32 SUGAR AND WATER 33 GREEN FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW 34 A SEGAR WELL-LIGHTED 35 WHERE SHALL REST BE FOUND 36 ALL ABOARD 37 THE MATANZAS CAVE 38 A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL 39 A SHADY RETREAT 40 A SPANISH GROCER 41 COLORED HELP 42 VERY MOORISH 43 CHACUN A SON GOUT 44 NATURE'S SWEET RESTORER 45 AGRICULTURAL 46 A COT IN THE VALLEY 47 A COLORED BEAUTY 48 CORNER STONES 49 A SUDDEN DEPARTURE 50 A PRELIMINARY WORD. WITH many misgivings, the author of this little _brochure_ has been persuaded to give the prominence of publication to a mere pocket-book collection of way-side pen-and-ink sketches, the chance results of idle moments, sandwiched with such Cuban events as paring oranges and sipping from their cups of nectar--tearing through the narrow streets of Havana in ragged volantes--listening in the soft moonlight, and arm-in-arm with Cuban señoritas, to the Artillery band in the Plaza des Armas--assisting with domino and false nose at the masquerades in the Tacon Theatre--lounging with ices or delicious chocolate at the Café Dominica--dallying with cigar and fragrant coffee, after the regulation breakfast of codfish, garlic, and onions--snuffing up the perfumed air, and strolling through the golden orange-groves of Cafetals--joining in the battle, murder, and sudden death of Marinao cock-fights--vagabondizing along the shady side of Calle Obispo--and so forth, through all the _dulce far nientes_ of a stranger's drifting life, among the lights and shadows of the Antilles' Queen. The only merit the pictures possess, perhaps, is their faithfulness to nature. Though chiefly caricatures, they represent such incidents and scenes as every one, with both eyes open, sees, who visits Cuba; and being sketched upon the spot, with all the crispy freshness of a first impression, they possess a sort of photographic value, that, in spite of their grotesqueness, may prove more lasting than the entertainment which their humor offers. NEW YORK, April, 1865. THE START.--THE STEAMSHIP COLUMBIA. AT SEA. [Illustration: First day out.--The wind freshens up a trifle as we get outside Sandy Hook; but our artist says he is'nt sea-sick, for he never felt better in his life.] IN THE GULF OF MEXICO. [Illustration: A "Booby"--as seen _from_ the ship's deck.] [Illustration: A Booby--as seen _on_ the ship's deck.] ARRIVAL AT HAVANA. [Illustration: A side elevation of the colored gentleman who carried our luggage from the small boat to the Custom House.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE MERCADERES. [Illustration: The first volante driver that our artist saw in Havana.] VIEW FROM OUR WINDOW AT THE HOTEL ALMY. [Illustration: The old Convent and Bell Tower of the Church of San Francisco,--now used as a Custom House.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE TENIENTE RE. [Illustration: A Cuban Cart and its Motive Power.--Ye patient Donkey.] AT THE CAFE LOUVRE. [Illustration: Manners and Customs of a Cuban with a Cold in his Head.] THE [WICKED] FLEA OF HAVANA. [Illustration: PART I.--The beast in a torpid condition.] [Illustration: PART II.--When he "smells the blood of an Englishmun."] THE NATIONAL VEHICLE OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Manner and Custom of Harnessing ye Animiles to ye Cuban Volante.] A COCK-FIGHT IN CUBA. [Illustration: I.--Chanticleer as he goes in.] [Illustration: II.--Chanticleer considerably "played out."] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE LAMPARILLA. [Illustration: The cool and airy style in which they dress the rising colored generation of Havana.] THE CUBAN TOOTH-PICK. [Illustration: Two ways of carrying it--behind the ear, and in the back-hair.] THE CAPTAIN GENERAL'S QUINTA, [Illustration: View of the Canal and Cocoa Tree; looking East from the Grotto.] THE DOMESTIC INSECTS OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Agitation of the Better-Half of Our Artist, upon entering her chamber and making their acquaintance.] A LITTLE EPISODE IN THE CALLE BARRATILLO. [Illustration: A slight difference arises between the housekeeper's cat and the butcher's dog, who has just come out in his summer costume.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE COMPOSTELLA, [Illustration: The Free Negro.--An every-day scene,-when the weather is fine.] AN INTERIOR IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Kitchen, chief-cook and bottle-washer in the establishment of Mrs. Franke, out on the "Cerro."] HEADS OF THE PEOPLE. [Illustration: A portrait of the young lady, whose family (after considerable urging) consents to take in our washing.] PRIMITIVE HABITS OF THE NATIVES. [Illustration: Washing in Havana.--$4.00 a dozen in gold.] WASHING IN HAVANA.. [Illustration: I.--My pantaloons as they went _in_.] [Illustration: II.--My pantaloons as they came _out_.] CARNIVAL IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A Masquerade at the Tacon Theatre.--Types of Costume, with a glimpse of the "Cuban Dance" in the background.] A MASK BALL AT THE TACON. [Illustration: Our artist mixes in the giddy dance, and falls desperately in love with this sweet creature---- but] LATER IN THE EVENING, [Illustration: When the "sweet creature" unmasks, our Artist suddenly recovers from his fit of admiration. Alas! beauty is but mask deep.] STREETS OF HAVANA--CALLE OBRAPIA. [Illustration: The Cuban Wheelbarrow--In Repose.] STREETS OF HAVANA--CALLE O'REILLY. [Illustration: The Cuban Wheelbarrow--In action.] FIRST HOUR! [Illustration: SECOND HOUR!!] [Illustration: THIRD HOUR!!!] [Illustration: Our Artist forms the praiseworthy determination of studying the Spanish language, and devotes three hours to the enterprise.] BED-ROOMS IN CUBA. [Illustration: The Scorpion of Havana,--encountered in his native jungle.] SEA-BATHS IN HAVANA, [Illustration: Our Artist having prepared himself for a jolly plunge, inadvertently observes an insect peculiar to the water, and rather thinks he won't go in just now.] HOTELS IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A cheerful Chinese Chambermaid (?) at the Fonda de Ingleterra, outside the walls.] HIGH ART IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A gay (but slightly mutilated) old plaster-of-Paris girl, that I found in one of the avenues of the Bishop's Garden, on the "Cerro."] LOCOMOTION IN THE COUNTRY. [Illustration: A Cuban Planter going into town with his plunder.] SHOPPING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist just steps around the corner, to look at a "sweet thing in fans" that his wife has found.] [Illustration: RESULT!] THE NATIONAL BEVERAGE OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist indulges in a _panale frio_ (a sort of lime-ade), at the Café Dominica, and gets so "set up," that he vows he won't go home till morning.] THE LIZARDS OF CUBA. [Illustration: Our Artist, on an entomological expedition in the Bishop's Garden, is disagreeably surprised to find such sprightly specimens.] SMOKING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: An English acquaintance of Our Artist wants a light for his paper segar; whereupon the waiter, according to custom, brings a live coal.] THE MUSQUITOS OF HAVANA. [Illustration: A midsummer's night dream.--Our Artist is just the least bit disturbed in his rest, and gently remonstrates.] PUBLIC SERVANTS IN CUBA. [Illustration: A gay and festive Chinese brakeman, on the railroad near Guines.--The shirt-collar-and-pair-of-spurs style of costume.] ONE OF THE SENSATIONS IN CUBA. [Illustration: The Great Cave near Matanzas.--Picturesque House over the Entrance.] THE GREAT CAVE NEAR MATANZAS. [Illustration: A section of the interior--showing the comfortable manner in which our artist followed the guide, inspected the stalactites, and comported himself generally.] THE OUTSKIRTS OF MATANZAS. [Illustration: One of the Fortifications.--Sketched from the end of the _Passeo_, on a day hot enough to give anything but a donkey the brain fever.] ARCHITECTURE IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: A romantic little _tienda mista_ (grocery store) on a corner, in the Calle Ona.] A CAFFETAL NEAR MATANZAS. [Illustration: Our Artist becomes dumb with admiration, at the ingenious manner of toting little niggers.] THE PICTURESQUE IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: A singular little bit, out of the Calle Manzana.] A SUGAR PLANTATION, NEAR THE YUMORI. [Illustration: Our Artist essays to drink the milk from a green Cocoa;] [Illustration: Fatal effect.--An uncomfortable sensation!] A BED-CHAMBER IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: First night at the "Gran Hotel Leon de Oro."--Our artist is accommodated with quarters on the ground-floor, convenient to the court-yard, and is lulled to sleep by a little domestic concert of cats, dogs, donkeys, parrots and game-cocks.] ECONOMY IS WEALTH. [Illustration: Showing the manner in which one ox accomplishes the labor of two, in San Felipe.] THE SUBURBS OF CALABAZAR [Illustration: A Planter's Hut, and three scraggly Palm Trees in the dim distance.] PLANTATIONS NEAR MARIANAS, [Illustration: A Colored Beauty toting Sugar Cane from the field to the grinding mill.] ARCHITECTURE IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A conglomerate _Esquiria_, on the corner of Calle Obispo and Monserate.] LAST NIGHT IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Alarm of Our Artist and Wife, upon going to their room to pack, and discovering that a Tarantula has taken possession of their trunk.] 
11464	----	Proofreading Team. [Illustration: TOWER OF LA FUERZA _Havana_] CUBA OLD AND NEW BY ALBERT G. ROBINSON 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. OLD CUBA II. NEW CUBA III. THE COUNTRY IV. THE OLD HAVANA V. THE NEW HAVANA VI. AROUND THE ISLAND VII. AROUND THE ISLAND (_Continued_) VIII. THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA IX. CUBA'S REVOLUTIONS X. INDEPENDENCE XI. FILIBUSTERING XII. THE STORY OF SUGAR XIII. VARIOUS PRODUCTS AND INDUSTRIES XIV. POLITICS, GOVERNMENT, AND COMMERCE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Tower of La Fuerza, Havana The Morro, Havana A Planter's Home, Havana Province Iron Grille Gateway, El Vedado, suburb of Havana Watering Herd of Cattle, Luyano River, near Havaria Royal Palms Custom House, Havana Balconies, Old Havana Street in Havana Street and Church of the Angels, Havana A Residence in El Vedado The Volante (now quite rare) A Village Street, Calvario, Havana Province Street and Church, Camaguey Cobre, Oriente Province Hoisting the Cuban Flag over the Palace, May 20,1902 A Spanish Block House Along the Harbor Wall, Havana Country Road, Havana Province Street in Camaguey Palm-Thatched Roofs A Peasant's Home CUBA OLD AND NEW I _OLD CUBA_ Christopher Columbus was a man of lively imagination. Had he been an ordinary, prosaic and plodding individual, he would have stayed at home combing wool as did his prosaic and plodding ancestors for several generations. At the age of fourteen he went to sea and soon developed an active curiosity about regions then unknown but believed to exist. There was even then some knowledge of western Asia, and even of China as approached from the west. Two and two being properly put together, the result was a reasonable argument that China and India could be reached from the other direction, that is, by going westward instead of eastward. In the early autumn of the year 1492, Columbus was busy discovering islands in the Caribbean Sea region, and, incidentally, seeking for the richest of the group. From dwellers on other islands, he heard of one, called Cubanacan, larger and richer than any that he had then discovered. A mixture of those tales with his own vivid imagination produced a belief in a country of wide extent, vastly rich in gold and gems, and already a centre of an extensive commerce. Cruising in search of what he believed to be the eastern coast of Asia, he sighted the shore of Cuba on the morning of October 28, 1492. His journal, under date of October 24, states: "At midnight I tripped my anchors off this _Cabo del Isleo de Isabella_, where I was pitched to go to the island of Cuba, which I learn from these people is very large and magnificent, and there are gold and spices in it, and large ships and merchants. And so I think it must be the island of Cipango (Japan), of which they tell such wonders." The record, under date of Sunday, 28th of October, states: "Continued for the nearest land of Cuba, and entered a beautiful estuary, clear of rocks and other dangers. The mouth of the estuary had twelve fathoms depth, and it was wide enough for a ship to work into." Students have disagreed regarding the first Cuban port entered by Columbus. There is general acceptance of October 28 as the date of arrival. Some contend that on that day he entered Nipe Bay, while others, and apparently the greater number, locate the spot somewhat to the west of Nuevitas. Wherever he first landed on it, there is agreement that he called the island Juana, in honor of Prince Juan, taking possession "in the name of Christ, Our Lady, and the reigning Sovereigns of Spain." His record of the landing place is obscure. It is known that he sailed some leagues beyond it, to the westward. While on board his caravel, on his homeward voyage, he wrote a letter to his friend, Don Rafael Sanchez, "Treasurer of their most Serene Highnesses," in which the experience is described. The original letter is lost, but it was translated into Latin and published in Barcelona in the following year, 1493. While the Latin form is variously translated into English, the general tenor of all is the same. He wrote: "When I arrived at Juana (Cuba), I sailed along the coast to the west, discovering so great an extent of land that I could not imagine it to be an island, but the continent of Cathay. I did not, however, discover upon the coast any large cities, all we saw being a few villages and farms, with the inhabitants of which we could not obtain any communication, they flying at our approach. I continued my course, still expecting to meet with some town or city, but after having gone a great distance and not meeting with any, and finding myself proceeding toward the north, which I was desirous, to avoid on account of the cold, and, moreover, meeting with a contrary wind, I determined to return to the south, and therefore put about and sailed back to a harbor which I had before observed." That the actual landing was at or near the present port of Nuevitas seems to be generally accepted. Columbus appears to have been greatly impressed by the beauty of the island. In his _Life of Columbus_, Washington Irving says: "From his continual remarks on the beauty of scenery, and from his evident delight in rural sounds and objects, he appears to have been extremely open to those happy influences, exercised over some spirits, by the graces and wonders of nature. He gives utterance to these feelings with characteristic enthusiasm, and at the same time with the artlessness and simplicity of diction of a child. When speaking of some lovely scene among the groves, or along the flowery shores of these favored islands, he says, "One could live there forever." Cuba broke upon him like an elysium. "It is the most beautiful island," he says, "that ever eyes beheld, full of excellent ports and profound rivers." A little discount must be made on such a statement. Granting all that is to be said of Cuba's scenic charms, some allowance is to be made for two influences. One is Don Cristobal's exuberance, and the other is the fact that when one has been knocking about, as he had been, for nearly three months on the open sea and among low-lying and sandy islands and keys, any land, verdure clad and hilly, is a picture of Paradise. Many people need only two or three days at sea to reach a similar conclusion. In his letter to Luis de Santangel, Columbus says: "All these countries are of surpassing excellence, and in particular Juana (Cuba,), which contains abundance of fine harbors, excelling any in Christendom, as also many large and beautiful rivers. The land is high, and exhibits chains of tall mountains which seem to reach to the skies and surpass beyond comparison the isle of Cetrefrey (Sicily). These display themselves in all manner of beautiful shapes. They are accessible in every part, and covered with a vast variety of lofty trees which it appears to me never lose their foliage. Some were covered with blossoms, some with fruit, and others in different stages according to their nature. There are palm trees of six or eight sorts. Beautiful forests of pines are likewise found, and fields of vast extent. Here are also honey and fruits of thousand sorts, and birds of every variety." Having landed at this indefinitely located point, Columbus, believing that he had reached the region he was seeking, despatched messengers to the interior to open communication with some high official of Cathay, in which country he supposed himself to be, the idea of Cipango apparently having been abandoned. "Many at the present day," says Washington Irving, "will smile at this embassy to a naked savage chieftain in the interior of Cuba, in mistake for an Asiatic monarch; but such was the singular nature of this voyage, a continual series of golden dreams, and all interpreted by the deluding volume of Marco Polo." But the messengers went on their journey, and proceeded inland some thirty or forty miles. There they came upon a village of about fifty huts and a population of about a thousand. They were able to communicate only by signs, and it is quite certain that the replies of the natives were as little understood by the messengers as the questions were by the natives. The messengers sought something about which the natives knew little or nothing. The communications were interpreted through the medium of imagination and desire. Nothing accomplished, the commission returned and made its disappointing report. Washington Irving thus describes the further proceedings: "The report of the envoys put an end to the many splendid fancies of Columbus, about the barbaric prince and his capital. He was cruising, however, in a region of enchantment, in which pleasing chimeras started up at every step, exercising by turns a power over his imagination. During the absence of the emissaries, the Indians had informed him, by signs, of a place to the eastward, where the people collected gold along the river banks by torchlight and afterward wrought it into bars with hammers. In speaking of this place they again used the words Babeque and Bohio, which he, as usual, supposed to be the proper names of islands or countries. His great object was to arrive at some opulent and civilized country of the East, with which he might establish commercial relations, and whence he might carry home a quantity of oriental merchandise as a rich trophy of his discovery. The season was advancing; the cool nights gave hints of approaching winter; he resolved, therefore, not to proceed farther to the north, nor to linger about uncivilized places which, at present, he had not the means of colonizing, but to return to the east-south-east, in quest of Babeque, which he trusted might prove some rich and civilized island on the coast of Asia." And so he sailed away for Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) which appears to have become, a little later, his favorite West Indian resort. [Illustration: THE MORRO _Havana_] He began his eastward journey on November 12th. As he did not reach Cape Maisi, the eastern point of the island, until December 5th, he must have made frequent stops to examine the shore. Referring to one of the ports that he entered he wrote to the Spanish Sovereigns thus: "The amenity of this river, and the clearness of the water, through which the sand at the bottom may be seen; the multitude of palm trees of various forms, the highest and most beautiful that I have met with, and an infinity of other great and green trees; the birds in rich plumage and the verdure of the fields, render this country of such marvellous beauty that it surpasses all others in charms and graces, as the day doth the night in lustre. For which reason I often say to my people that, much as I endeavor to give a complete account of it to your majesties, my tongue cannot express the whole truth, nor my pen describe it; and I have been so overwhelmed at the sight of so much beauty that I have not known how to relate it." Columbus made no settlement in Cuba; his part extends only to the discovery. On his second expedition, in the spring of 1494, he visited and explored the south coast as far west as the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name _La Evangelista_. He touched the south coast again on his fourth voyage, in 1503. On his way eastward from his voyage of discovery on the coast of Central America, he missed his direct course to Hispaniola, and came upon the Cuban shore near Cape Cruz. He was detained there for some days by heavy weather and adverse winds, and sailed thence to his unhappy experience in Jamaica. The work of colonizing remained for others. Columbus died in the belief that he had discovered a part of the continent of Asia. That Cuba was only an island was determined by Sebastian de Ocampo who sailed around it in 1508. Baron Humboldt, who visited Cuba in 1801 and again in 1825, and wrote learnedly about it, states that "the first settlement of the whites occurred in 1511, when Velasquez, under orders from Don Diego Columbus, landed at Puerto de las Palmas, near Cape Maisi, and subjugated the Cacique Hatuey who had fled from Haiti to the eastern end of Cuba, where he became the chief of a confederation of several smaller native princes." This was, in fact, a military expedition composed of three hundred soldiers, with four vessels. Hatuey deserves attention. His name is not infrequently seen in Cuba today, but it is probable that few visitors know whether it refers to a man, a bird, or a vegetable. He was the first Cuban hero of whom we have record, although the entire reliability of the record is somewhat doubtful. The notable historian of this period is Bartolome Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa. He appears to have been a man of great worth, a very tender heart, and an imagination fully as vivid as that of Columbus. His sympathies were aroused by the tales of the exceeding brutality of many of the early Spanish voyagers in their relations with the natives. He went out to see for himself, and wrote voluminously of his experiences. He also wrote with exceeding frankness, and often with great indignation. He writes about Hatuey. The inference is that this Cacique, or chieftain, fled from Haiti to escape Spanish brutality, and even in fear of his life. There are other translations of Las Casas, but for this purpose choice has been made of one published in London about the year 1699. It is given thus: "There happened divers things in this island (Cuba) that deserve to be remarked. A rich and potent Cacique named Hatuey was retired into the Isle of Cuba to avoid that Slavery and Death with which the Spaniards menaced him; and being informed that his persecutors were upon the point of landing in this Island, he assembled all his Subjects and Domestics together, and made a Speech unto them after this manner. "You know, (said he) the Report is spread abroad that the Spaniards are ready to invade this Island, and you are not ignorant of the ill usage our Friends and Countrymen have met with at their hands, and the cruelties they have committed at Haiti (so Hispaniola is called in their Language). They are now coming hither with a design to exercise the same Outrages and Persecutions upon us. Are you ignorant (says he) of the ill Intentions of the People of whom I am speaking? We know not (say they all with one voice) upon what account they come hither, but we know they are a very wicked and cruel People. I'll tell you then (replied the Cacique) that these Europeans worship a very covetous sort of God, so that it is difficult to satisfy him; to perform the Worship they render to this Idol, they will exact immense Treasures of us, and will use their utmost endeavors to reduce us to a miserable state of Slavery, or else put us to death." The historian leaves to the imagination and credulity of his readers the task of determining just where and how he got the full details of this speech and of the subsequent proceedings. The report of the latter may well be generally correct inasmuch as there were Spanish witnesses present, but the account of this oration, delivered prior to the arrival of the Spanish invaders, is clearly open to a suspicion that it may be more or less imaginary. But the historian continues: "Upon this he took a Box full of Gold and valuable Jewels which he had with him, and exposing it to their view: Here is (said he) the God of the Spaniards, whom we must honor with our Sports and Dances, to see if we can appease him and render him propitious to us; that so he may command the Spaniards not to offer us any injury. They all applauded this Speech, and fell a leaping and dancing around the Box, till they had quite tired and spent themselves. After which the Cacique Hatuey resuming his Discourse, continued to speak to them in these terms: If we keep this God (says he) till he's taken away from us, he'll certainly cause our lives to be taken away from us; and therefore I am of opinion it will be the best way to cast him into the river. They all approved of this Advice, and went all together with one accord to throw this pretended God into the River." But the Spaniards came and encountered the resistance of Hatuey and his followers. The invaders were victorious, and Hatuey was captured and burned alive. Las Casas relates that while the poor wretch was in the midst of the flames, tied to a stake, "a certain Franciscan Friar of great Piety and Virtue, took upon him to speak to him of God and our Religion, and to explain to him some Articles of Catholic Faith, of which he had never heard a word before, promising him Eternal Life if he would believe and threatening him with Eternal Torment if he continued obstinate in his Infidelity. Hatuey reflecting on the matter, as much as the Place and Condition in which he was would permit, asked the Friar that instructed him, whether the Gate of Heaven was open to Spaniards; and being answered that such of them as were good men might hope for entrance there: the Cacique, without any farther deliberation, told him that he had no mind to go to heaven for fear of meeting with such cruel and wicked Company as they were; but he would much rather choose to go to Hell where he might be delivered from the troublesome sight of such kind of People." And so died the Cacique Hatuey. Four hundred years later, the Cuban Government named a gunboat _Hatuey_, in his honor. The Velasquez expedition, in the following year, founded Baracoa, now a small city on the northern coast near the eastern extremity of the island. It is a spot of exceeding scenic charm. It was established as the capital city, but it held that honor for a few years only. In 1514 and 1515, settlements were established at what is now Santiago, at Sancti Spiritus, Trinidad, and Batabano. The latter was originally called San Cristobal de la Habana, the name being transferred to the present city, on the north coast, in 1519. It displaced the name Puerto de Carenas given to the present Havana by Ocampo, who careened his vessels there in 1508. Baracoa was made the seat of a bishopric, and a cathedral was begun, in 1518. In 1522, both the capital and the bishopric were transferred to Santiago, a location more readily accessible from the new settlements on the south coast, and also from Jamaica which was then included in the diocese. Cuba, at about this period, was the point of departure for an important expedition. In 1517, de Cordoba, with three vessels and 110 soldiers, was sent on an expedition to the west for further and more northerly exploration of the land discovered by Columbus in 1503. The coast from Panama to Honduras had been occupied. The object of this expedition was to learn what lay to the northward. The result was the discovery of Yucatan. Cordoba returned to die of wounds received in a battle. A second and stronger expedition was immediately despatched. This rounded the peninsula and followed the coast as far as the present city of Vera Cruz. In 1518, Hernan Cortez was _alcalde_, or mayor, of Santiago de Cuba. On November 18, of that year, he sailed from that port in command of an expedition for the conquest of Mexico, finally effected in 1521, after one of the most romantic campaigns in the history of warfare. All that, however, is a story in which Cuba has no place except that of the starting point and base of the expedition. There is another story of the same kind, a few years later. The first discovery of Florida is somewhat uncertain. It appears on an old Spanish map dated 1502. Following the expedition of Ponce de Leon, in 1513, and of Murielo, in 1516, Narvaez headed an expedition from Cuba in 1528 with some three hundred freebooters. They landed in Florida, where almost the entire band was, very properly, destroyed by the Indians. In 1539, de Soto sailed from Havana, with five hundred and seventy men and two hundred and twenty-three horses, for an extended exploration. They wandered for three years throughout what is now the southern part of the United States from Georgia and South Carolina westward to Arkansas and Missouri. After a series of almost incredible experiences, de Soto died in 1542, on the banks of the Mississippi River at a point probably not far from the Red River. These and other expeditions, from Cuba and from Mexico, to what is now territory of the United States, produced no permanent results. No gold was found. Of the inhabitants of Cuba, as found by the Spaniards, comparatively little is recorded. They seem to have been a somewhat negative people, generally described as docile, gentle, generous, and indolent. Their garments were quite limited, and their customs altogether primitive. They disappear from Cuba's story in its earliest chapters. Very little is known of their numbers. Some historians state that, in the days of Columbus, the island had a million inhabitants, but this is obviously little if anything more than a rough guess. Humboldt makes the following comment: "No means now exist to arrive at a knowledge of the population of Cuba in the time of Columbus; but how can we admit what some otherwise judicious historians state, that when the island of Cuba was conquered in 1511, it contained a million inhabitants of whom only 14,000 remained in 1517. The statistical information which we find in the writings of Las Casas is filled with contradictions." Forty years or so later the Dominican friar, Luis Bertram, on his return to Spain, predicted that "the 200,000 Indians now in the island of Cuba, will perish, victims to the cruelty of the Europeans." Yet Gomara stated that there was not an Indian in Cuba after 1553. Whatever the exact truth regarding numbers, it is evident that they disappeared rapidly, worked to death by severe task-masters. The institution of African slavery, to take the place of the inefficient and fast disappearing native labor, had its beginning in 1521. Baron Humboldt states that from that time until 1790, the total number of African negroes imported as slaves was 90,875. In the next thirty years, the business increased rapidly, and Humboldt estimates the total arrivals, openly entered and smuggled in, from 1521 to 1820, as 372,449. Mr. J.S. Thrasher, in a translation of Humboldt's work, issued in 1856, added a footnote showing the arrivals up to 1854 as 644,000. A British official authority, at the same period, gives the total as a little less than 500,000. The exact number is not important. The institution on a large scale, in its relation to the total number of whites, was a fact. It is, of course, quite impossible even today to argue the question of slavery. To many, the offence lies in the mere fact; to others, it lies in the operation of the system. At all events, the institution is no longer tolerated in any civilized country. While some to whom the system itself was a bitter offence have found much to criticize in its operation in Cuba, the general opinion of observers appears to be that it was there notably free from the brutality usually supposed to attend it. The Census Report of 1899, prepared under the auspices of the American authorities, states that "while it was fraught with all the horrors of this nefarious business elsewhere, the laws for the protection of slaves were unusually humane. Almost from the beginning, slaves had a right to purchase their freedom or change their masters, and long before slavery was abolished they could own property and contract marriage. As a result, the proportion of free colored to slaves has always been large." Humboldt, who studied the institution while it was most extensive, states that "the position of the free negroes in Cuba is much better than it is elsewhere, even among those nations which have for ages flattered themselves as being most advanced in civilization." The movement for the abolition of slavery had its beginning in 1815, with the treaty of Vienna, to which Spain was a party. Various acts in the same direction appear in the next fifty years. The Moret law, enacted in 1870 by the Spanish Cortes, provided for gradual abolition in Spain's dominions, and a law of 1880, one of the results of the Ten Years' War, definitely abolished the system. Traces of it remained, however, until about 1887, when it may be regarded as having become extinct forever in Cuba. For the first two hundred and fifty years of Cuba's history, the city of Havana appears as the special centre of interest. There was growth in other sections, but it was slow, for reasons that will be explained elsewhere. In 1538, Havana was attacked and totally destroyed by a French privateer. Hernando de Soto, then Governor of the island, at once began the construction of defences that are now one of the special points of interest in the city. The first was the Castillo de la Fuerza. In 1552, Havana became the capital city. In 1555, it was again attacked, and practically destroyed, including the new fortress, by French buccaneers. Restoration was effected as rapidly as possible. In 1589, La Fuerza was enlarged, and the construction of the Morro and of La Punta, the fortress at the foot of the Prado, was begun. The old city wall, of which portions still remain, was of a later period. Despite these precautions, the city was repeatedly attacked by pirates and privateers. Some reference to these experiences will be made in a special chapter on the city. The slow progress of the island is shown by the fact that an accepted official report gives the total population in 1775 as 171,620, of whom less than 100,000 were white. The absence of precious metals is doubtless the main reason for the lack of Spanish interest in the development of the country. For a long time after the occupation, the principal industry was cattle raising. Agriculture, the production of sugar, tobacco, coffee, and other crops, on anything properly to be regarded as a commercial scale, was an experience of later years. The reason for this will be found in the mistaken colonial policy of Spain, a policy the application of which, in a far milder manner, cost England its richest colony in the Western Hemisphere, and which, in the first quarter of the 19th Century, cost Spain all of its possessions in this half of the world, with the exception of Cuba and Porto Rico. II _NEW CUBA_ While there is no point in Cuba's history that may be said to mark a definite division between the Old Cuba and the New Cuba, the beginning of the 19th Century may be taken for that purpose. Cuba's development dragged for two hundred and fifty years. The population increased slowly and industry lagged. For this, Spain's colonial policy was responsible. But it was the policy of the time, carried out more or less effectively by all nations having colonies. England wrote it particularly into her Navigation Acts of 1651, 1660, and 1663, and supported it by later Acts. While not rigorously enforced, and frequently evaded by the American colonists, the system at last proved so offensive that the colonists revolted in 1775. Most of Spain's colonies in the Western Hemisphere, for the same reason, declared and maintained their independence in the first quarter of the 19th Century. At the bottom of Cuba's several little uprisings, and at the bottom of its final revolt in 1895, lay the same cause of offence. In those earlier years, it was held that colonies existed solely for the benefit of the mother-country. In 1497, almost at the very beginning of Spain's colonial enterprises in the New World, a royal decree was issued under which the exclusive privilege to carry on trade with the colonies was granted to the port of Seville. This monopoly was transferred to the port of Cadiz in 1717, but it continued, in somewhat modified form in later years, until Spain had no colonies left. While Santiago was the capital of the island, from 1522 to 1552, trade between Spain and the island could be carried on only through that port. When Havana became the capital, in 1552, the exclusive privilege of trade was transferred to that city. With the exception of the years 1762 and 1763, when the British occupied Havana and declared it open to all trade, the commerce of the island could only be done through Havana with Seville, until 1717, and afterward with Cadiz. Baracoa, or Santiago, or Trinidad, or any other Cuban city, could not send goods to Santander, or Malaga, or Barcelona, or any other Spanish market, or receive goods directly from them. The law prohibited trade between Cuba and all other countries, and limited all trade between the island and the mother-country to the port of Havana, at one end, and to Seville or Cadiz, according to the time of the control of those ports, at the other end. Even intercolonial commerce was prohibited. At times, and for brief periods, the system was modified to the extent of special trade licences, and, occasionally, by international treaties. But the general system of trade restriction was maintained throughout all of Spain's colonial experience. Between 1778 and 1803, most of Cuba's ports were opened to trade with Spain. The European wars of the early years of the 19th Century led to modification of the trade laws, but in 1809 foreign commerce with Spanish American ports was again prohibited. A few years later, Spain had lost nearly all its American colonies. A new plan was adopted in 1818. Under that, Spain sought to hold the trade of Cuba and Porto Rico by tariffs so highly favorable to merchandise from the mother-country as to be effectively prohibitive with regard to many products from other countries. This, in general outline, is the cause of Cuba's slow progress until the 19th Century, and the explanation of its failure to make more rapid progress during that century. Naturally, under such conditions, bribery of officials and smuggling became active and lucrative enterprises. It may be said, in strict confidence between writer and reader, that Americans were frequently the parties of the other part in these transactions. In search through a considerable number of American histories, I have been unable to find definite references to trade with Cuba, yet there seems to be abundant reason for belief that such trade was carried on. There are many references to trade with the West Indies as far back as 1640 and even a year or two earlier, but allusions to trade with Cuba do not appear, doubtless for the reason that it was contraband, a violation of both Spanish and British laws. There was evidently some relaxation toward the close of the 18th Century. There are no records of the commerce of the American colonies, and only fragmentary records between 1776 and 1789. The more elaborate records of 1789 and following years show shipments of fish, whale oil, spermaceti candles, lumber, staves and heading, and other articles to the "Spanish West Indies," in which group Cuba was presumably included. The records of the time are somewhat unreliable. It was a custom for the small vessels engaged in that trade to take out clearance papers for the West Indies. The cargo might be distributed in a number of ports, and the return cargo might be similarly collected. For the year 1795, the records of the United States show total imports from the Spanish West Indies as valued at $1,740,000, and exports to that area as valued at $1,390,000. In 1800, the imports were $10,588,000, and the exports $8,270,000. Just how much of this was trade with Cuba, does not appear. Because of the trade increase at that time, and because of other events that, soon afterward, brought Cuba into more prominent notice, this period has been chosen as the line of division between the Old and the New Cuba. Compared with the wonderful fertility of Cuba, New England is a sterile area. Yet in 1790, a hundred and seventy years after its settlement, the latter had a population a little exceeding a million, while the former, in 1792, or two hundred and eighty years after its occupation, is officially credited with a population of 272,300. Of these, 153,559 were white and 118,741 were colored. Several forces came into operation at this time, and population increased rapidly, to 572,363 in 1817, and to 704,465 in 1827. In 1841, it was a little more than a million. But the increase in colored population, by the importation of African slaves, outstripped the increase by the whites. In 1841, the population was divided into 418,291 whites and 589,333 colored. The importation of slaves having declined, the year 1861 shows a white preponderance, since continued and substantially increased. Among the forces contributing to Cuba's rapid growth during this period were a somewhat greater freedom of trade; the revolution in the neighboring island of Haiti and Santo Domingo, that had its beginning in 1791 and culminated, some ten years later, in the rule of Toussaint L'Ouverture; and an increased demand for sugar. One result of the Haitian disorder was the arrival, in eastern Cuba, of a large number of exiles and emigrants who established extensive coffee plantations. During the first hundred and fifty years of Cuba's history, the principal industry of the island was cattle raising, aside from the domestic industry of food supply. The proprietors lived, usually, in the cities and maintained their vast estates in the neighborhood. To this, later on, were added the production of honey and wax and the cultivation of tobacco. With the period now under consideration, there came the expansion of the coffee and sugar industries. The older activities do not appear to have been appreciably lessened; the others were added on. Europe and the Western Hemisphere were at that time in a state of general upheaval and rearrangement. Following the American Revolution, there came the French Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the war of 1812 between the United States and England; and the general revolt of the Spanish colonies. The world was learning new lessons, adopting new policies, in which the Spanish colonial system was a blunder the folly of which Spain did not even then fully realize. Yet from it all, by one means and another, Cuba benefited. Spain was fortunate in its selection of Governors-General sent out at this time. Luis de Las Casas, who arrived in 1790, is credited with much useful work. He improved roads and built bridges; established schools and the _Casa de Beneficencia_, still among the leading institutions in Havana; paved the streets of Havana; improved as far as he could the commercial conditions; and established the _Sociedad Patriotica_, sometimes called the _Sociedad Economica_, an organization that has since contributed immeasurably to Cuba's welfare and progress. He was followed by others whose rule was creditable. But the principal evils, restricted commerce and burdensome taxation, were not removed, although world conditions practically compelled some modification of the commercial regulations. In 1801 the ports of the island were thrown open to the trade of friendly and neutral nations. Eight years later, foreign commerce was again prohibited. In 1818, a new system was established, that of a tariff so highly favorable to merchandise from Spain that it was by no means unusual for goods to be shipped to that country, even from the United States, and from there reshipped to Cuba. Changes in the rates were made from time to time, but the system of heavy discrimination in favor of Spanish goods in Spanish ships continued until the equalization of conditions under the order of the Government of Intervention, in 1899. In his book published in 1840, Mr. Turnbull states that "the mercantile interests of the island have been greatly promoted by the relaxation of those restrictive regulations which under the old peninsular system bound down all foreign commerce with the colonies of Spain, and laid it prostrate at the feet of the mother-country. It cannot be said that the sound principles of free trade, in any large or extended sense of the term, have been recognized or acted upon even at the single port of Havana. The discriminating duties imposed by the supreme government of Madrid on the natural productions, manufactures, and shipping of foreign countries, in contradistinction to those of Spain, are so stringent and so onerous as altogether to exclude the idea of anything approaching to commercial freedom. There is no longer, it is true, any absolute prohibition, but in many cases the distinguishing duties are so heavy as to defeat their own object, and, in place of promoting the interests of the mother-country, have had little other effect than the establishment of an extensive and ruinous contraband." Under such conditions as those existing in Cuba, from its beginning practically until the establishment of its political independence, industrial development and commercial expansion are more than difficult. One of the natural results of such a system appeared in the activities of smugglers. The extent to which that industry was carried on cannot, of course, be even guessed. Some have estimated that the merchandise imported in violation of the laws equalled in value the merchandise entered at the custom houses. An official publication (American) states that "from smuggling on a large scale and privateering to buccaneering and piracy is not a long step, and under the name of privateers French, Dutch, English, and American smugglers and buccaneers swarmed the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for more than two centuries, plundering Spanish _flotas_ and attacking colonial settlements. Among the latter, Cuba was the chief sufferer." Had Cuba's coasts been made to order for the purpose, they could hardly have been better adapted to the uses of smugglers. Off shore, for more than half its coast line, both north and south, are small islands and keys with narrow and shallow passages between them, thus making an excellent dodging area for small boats if pursued by revenue vessels. Thoroughly familiar with these entrances and hiding places, smugglers could land their goods almost at will with little danger of detection or capture. Another heavy handicap on the economic progress of the island appears in the system of taxation. Regarding this system, the Census of 1899 reports as follows: "Apart from imports and exports, taxes were levied on real and personal property and on industries and commerce of all kinds. Every profession, art, or manual occupation contributed its quota, while, as far back as 1638, seal and stamp taxes were established on all judicial business and on all kinds of petitions and claims made to official corporations, and subsequently on all bills and accounts. These taxes were in the form of stamps on official paper and at the date of American occupation the paper cost from 35 cents to $3 a sheet. On deeds, wills, and other similar documents the paper cost from 35 cents to $37.50 per sheet, according to the value of the property concerned. Failure to use even the lowest-priced paper involved a fine of $50. "There was also a municipal tax on the slaughter of cattle for the market. This privilege was sold by the municipal council to the highest bidder, with the result that taxes were assessed on all animals slaughtered, whether for the market or for private consumption, with a corresponding increase in the price of meat. "Another tax established in 1528, called the _derecho_ _de averia_, required the payment of 20 ducats ($16) by every person, bond or free, arriving in the island. In 1665 this tax was increased to $22, and continued in force to 1765, thus retarding immigration, and, to that extent, the increase of population, especially of the laboring class. "An examination of these taxes will show their excessive, arbitrary, and unscientific character, and how they operated to discourage Cubans from owning property or engaging in many industrial pursuits tending to benefit them and to promote the material improvement of the island. "Taxes on real estate were estimated by the tax inspector on the basis of its rental or productive capacity, and varied from 4 to 12 per cent. Similarly, a nominal municipal tax of 25 per cent was levied on the estimated profits of all industries and commerce, and on the income derived from all professions, manual occupations, or agencies, the collector receiving 6 per cent of all taxes assessed. Much unjust discrimination was made against Cubans in determining assessable values and in collecting the taxes, and it is said that bribery in some form was the only effective defense against the most flagrant impositions." Some of the experiences of this period will be considered in special chapters on Cuba's alleged revolutions and on the relations of the United States to Cuba and its affairs. One point may be noted here. The wave of republicanism that swept over a considerable part of Europe and over the Western Hemisphere, from 1775 to 1825 had its direct influence in Spain, and an influence only less direct in Cuba. In 1812, Spain became a constitutional monarchy. It is true that the institution had only a brief life, but the sentiment that lay beneath it persisted and had been repeatedly a cause of disturbance on the Peninsula. Something of the same sentiment pervaded Cuba and excited ambitions, not for national independence, but for some participation in government. A royal decree, in 1810, gave Cuba representation in the Cortes, and two deputies from the island took part in framing the Constitution of 1812. This recognition of Cuba lasted for only two years, the Constitution being abrogated in 1814, but it was restored in 1820, only to cease again three years later. Representatives were again admitted to the Cortes in 1834, and again excluded in 1837. The effect of all this was, perhaps, psychological rather than practical, but it gave rise to a new mental attitude and to some change in conduct. The effect appears in the numerous recurrences of open protest and passive resistance in the place of the earlier submission. Writing in 1855, Mr. J.S. Thrasher stated that "the essential political elements of the island are antagonistic to those of the mother-country. While the Cortes and the crown have frequently declared that Cuba does not form an integral part of the Spanish monarchy, but must be governed by special laws not applicable to Spain, and persist in ruling her under the erroneous and unjust European colonial system, the growing wealth and increasing intelligence of the Cubans lead them to aspire to some share in the elimination of the political principles under which their own affairs shall be administered. A like antagonism exists in the economic relations of the two countries. While the people of Cuba are not averse to the raising of such revenue as may be required for the proper wants of the State, in the administration of which they may participate, they complain, with a feeling of national pride, that fiscal burdens of the most onerous kind are laid upon them for the expressed purpose of advancing interests which are in every sense opposed to their own. Thus, Spain imposes taxes to support a large army and navy, the principal object of which is to prevent any expression of the public will on the part of the people of Cuba. Another class of impositions have for their object the diversion of the trade of Cuba to channels which shall increase the profits of the agriculturists and mariners of Spain without regard to the interests of the people of the island." [Illustration: A PLANTER'S HOME _Havana Province_] Yet in spite of these severe restrictions and heavy burdens, Cuba shows a considerable progress during the first half of the century. It is far from easy to reach fair conclusions from contemporaneous writings. Naturally, Spanish officials and Spanish writers strove to make the best possible case for Spain, its policies and its conduct. The press of the island was either under official control or stood in fear of official reprisals. The Cuban side, naturally partisan, appears to have been presented chiefly by fugitive pamphlets, more or less surreptitiously printed and distributed, usually the product of political extremists. Among these was a man of marked ability and of rare skill in the use of language. He was Don Antonio Saco, known in Cuba as the "Immortal Saco." In a letter written to a friend, in 1846, he says, "The tyranny of our mother-country, today most acute, will have this result--that within a period of time not very remote the Cubans will be compelled to take up arms to banish her." That British observers and most American observers should take the side of the Cubans is altogether natural. Writing in 1854, Mr. M.M. Ballou, in his _History of Cuba_, says: "The Cubans owe all the blessings they enjoy to Providence alone (so to speak), while the evils which they suffer are directly referable to the oppression of the home government. Nothing short of a military despotism could maintain the connection of such an island with a mother-country more than three thousand miles distant; and accordingly we find the captain-general of Cuba invested with unlimited power. He is, in fact, a viceroy appointed by the crown of Spain, and accountable only to the reigning sovereign for his administration of the colony. His rule is absolute; he has the power of life and death and liberty in his hands. He can, by his arbitrary will, send into exile any person whatever, be his name or rank what it may, whose residence in the island he considers prejudicial to the royal interest, even if he has committed no overt act. He can suspend the operation of the laws and ordinances, if he sees fit to do so; can destroy or confiscate property; and, in short, the island may be said to be perpetually in a state of siege." The student or the reader may take his choice. On one side are Spanish statements, official and semi-official, and on the other side, Cuban statements no less partisan. The facts appear to support the Cuban argument. In spite of the severe restrictions and the heavy burdens, Cuba shows a notable progress during the 19th Century. Governors came and went, some very good and others very bad. There were a hundred of them from 1512 to 1866, and thirty-six more from 1866 to 1899, the average term of service for the entire number being a little less than three years. On the whole, the most notable of the group of 19th Century incumbents was Don Miguel Tacon, who ruled from June 1, 1834, until April 16, 1838. His record would seem to place him quite decidedly in the "reactionary" class, but he was a man of action who left behind him monuments that remain to his credit even now. One historian, Mr. Kimball, who wrote in 1850, describes him as one in whom short-sightedness, narrow views, and jealous and weak mind, were joined to an uncommon stubbornness of character. Another, Mr. M.M. Ballou, says that "probably of all the governors-general that have filled the post in Cuba none is better known abroad, or has left more monuments to his enterprise, than Tacon. His reputation at Havana (this was written 1854) is of a somewhat doubtful character; for, though he followed out with energy various improvements, yet his modes of procedure were so violent that he was an object of terror to the people generally, rather than of gratitude. He vastly improved the appearance of the capital and its vicinity, built the new prison, rebuilt the governor's palace, constructed a military road to the neighboring forts, erected a spacious theatre and market house, arranged a new public walk, and opened a vast parade ground without the city walls, thus laying the foundation of the new city which has now sprung up in this formerly desolate suburb. He suppressed the gaming houses and rendered the streets, formerly infested with robbers, as secure as those of Boston or New York." Another writer, Mr. Samuel Hazard, in 1870, says: "Of all the governors who have been in command of the island Governor Tacon seems to have been the best, doing the most to improve the island, and particularly Havana; making laws, punishing offences, and establishing some degree of safety for its inhabitants. It is reported of him that he is said, like the great King Alfred, to have promised the Cubans that they should be able to leave their purses of money on the public highway without fear of having them stolen. At all events, his name is cherished by every Cuban for the good he has done, and _paseos_, theatres, and monuments bear his great name in Havana." The Tacon theatre is now the Nacional, and the Paseo Tacon is now Carlos III. The "new prison" is the _Carcel_, or jail, at the northern end of the Prado, near the fortress of La Punta. Don Miguel may have been disliked for his methods and his manners, but he certainly did much to make his rule memorable. There is no reliable information that shows the progress of the island during the 19th Century. Even the census figures are questioned. A reported 432,000 total population in 1804 is evidently no more than an estimate, yet it is very likely not far from the actual. Concerning their distribution throughout the island, and the number engaged in different occupations, there are no records. There are no acceptable figures regarding the respective numbers of whites and blacks. Nor is there any record of the population in 1895, the year of the war for independence. From the definite tabulation, under American auspices, in 1899, showing 1,576,797, it has been estimated that the number in 1895, was a little less than 1,800,000, the difference being represented by the disasters of the war, by the result of reconcentration, and by departures during the disturbance. The general result seems to be that the population was practically quadrupled. A somewhat rough approximation would show the blacks as multiplied by three, to an 1899 total of 505,000, with the whites multiplied by four, to a total of 1,067,000. Nor are there figures of trade that afford any proper clue to the growth of industry and commerce. There are records of imports and exports from about 1850 onward, but before that time the matter of contraband trade introduces an element of uncertainty. An American official pamphlet on Cuban trade carries the statement, "the ascertainment of full and exact details of the commerce of Cuba prior to the close of Spanish dominion in the island is an impossibility. The Spanish authorities, as a rule, published no complete returns of Cuban trade, either foreign or domestic. Except with regard to Spain and the United States, most of the existing commercial statistics of Cuba, prior to 1899, are fragmentary and merely approximative. Spain and the United States have always kept a separate and distinct trade account with Cuba; but the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other European countries excepting Spain, formerly merged their statistics of trade with Cuba in one general item embracing Cuba and Porto Rico, under the heading of "Spanish West Indies." Since 1899, however, all the Powers have kept separate accounts with Cuba, and the statistics of the Cuban Republic have been reasonably full and accurate." [Illustration: IRON GRILLE GATEWAY _El Vedado, Suburb of Havana_] Cuba's recorded imports in 1894 show a total value of $90,800,000, and exports show a value of $102,000,000. Writing about the year 1825, Humboldt says: "It is more than probable that the imports of the whole island, licit and contraband, estimated at the actual value of the goods and the slaves, amount, at the present time, to fifteen or sixteen millions of dollars, of which barely three or four millions are re-exported." The same authority gives the probable exports of that time as about $12,500,000. The trade at the beginning of the century must have been far below this. The official figures for 1851 show total imports amounting to $34,000,000, and exports to $33,000,000, but the accuracy of the figures is open to question. The more important fact is that of a very large gain in population and in production. The coffee industry, that assumed important proportions during a part of the first half of the century, gradually declined for the reason that sugar became a much more profitable crop. Now, Cuba imports most of its coffee from Porto Rico. Because of its convenience as a contraband article, there are no reliable figures of the tobacco output. Prior to 1817, the commodity was, for much of the time, a crown monopoly and, for the remainder of the time, a monopoly concession to private companies. In that year, cultivation and trade became free, subject to a tax on each planter of one-twentieth of his production. As we shall see, in another chapter, Cuba at last wearied of Spanish exactions and revolted as did the United States, weary of British rule and British exactions and restrictions, more than a hundred years earlier. III _THE COUNTRY_ Description of the physical features of a country seldom makes highly entertaining reading, but it seems a necessary part of a book of this kind. Some readers may find interest if not entertainment in such a review. The total area of the island, including a thousand or more adjacent islands, islets, and keys, is given as 44,164 square miles, a little less than the area of Pennsylvania and a little more than that of Ohio or Tennessee. Illustration of its shape by some familiar object is difficult, although various comparisons have been attempted. Some old Spanish geographers gave the island the name of _La Lengua de Pajaro_, "the bird's tongue." Mr. M.M. Ballou likened it to "the blade of a Turkish scimitar slightly curved back, or approaching the form of a long, narrow, crescent." Mr. Robert T. Hill holds that it "resembles a great hammer-headed shark, the head of which forms the straight, south coast of the east end of the island, from which the sinuous body extends westward. This analogy is made still more striking by two long, finlike strings of keys, or islets, which extend backward along the opposite coasts, parallel to the main body of the island." But all such comparisons call for a lively imagination. It might be likened to the curving handles of a plow attached to a share, or to any one of a dozen things that it does not at all clearly resemble. Regarding the Oriente coast, from Cape Cruz to Cape Maisi, as a base, from that springs a long and comparatively slender arm that runs northwesterly for five hundred miles to the vicinity of Havana. There, the arm, somewhat narrowed, turns downward in a generally southwestern direction for about two hundred miles. The total length of the island, from Cape Maisi on the east to Cape San Antonio on the west, is about seven hundred and thirty miles. Its width varies from a maximum, in Oriente Province, of about one hundred and sixty miles, to a minimum, in Havana Province, of about twenty-two miles. It has a general coast line of about twenty-two hundred miles, or, following all its sinuosities, of about seven thousand miles. Its north coast is, for much of its length, steep and rocky. Throughout the greater part of the middle provinces, there is a border of coral reefs and small islands. At the western end, the north coast is low, rising gradually to the eastward. At the eastern end, the northern coast is abrupt and rugged, rising in a series of hills to the elevations in the interior. Westward from Cape Maisi to Cape Cruz, on the south coast, and immediately along the shore line, runs a mountain range. From here westward, broken by an occasional hill or bluff, the coast is low and marshy. Probably the best description of the topography and the orography of the island yet presented is that given by Mr. Robert T. Hill, of the United States Geological Survey. In his book on Cuba and other islands of the West Indies, Mr. Hill says: "As regards diversity of relief, Cuba's eastern end is mountainous, with summits standing high above the adjacent sea; its middle portion is wide, consisting of gently sloping plains, well-drained, high above the sea, and broken here and there by low, forest-clad hills; and its western third is a picturesque region of mountains, with fertile slopes and valleys, of different structure and less altitude than those of the east. Over the whole is a mantle of tender vegetation, rich in every hue that a flora of more than three thousand species can give, and kept green by mists and gentle rains. Indenting the rock-bound coasts are a hundred pouch-shaped harbors such as are but rarely found in the other islands and shores of the American Mediterranean. "But, at the outset the reader should dispossess his mind of any preconceived idea that the island of Cuba is in any sense a physical unit. On the contrary, it presents a diversity of topographic, climatic, and cultural features, which, as distributed, divide the island into at least three distinct natural provinces, for convenience termed the eastern, central, and western regions. The distinct types of relief include regions of high mountains, low hills, dissected plateaus, intermontane valleys, and coastal swamps. With the exception of a strip of the south-central coast, the island, as a whole, stands well above the sea, is thoroughly drained, and presents a rugged aspect when viewed from the sea. About one-fourth of the total area is mountainous, three-fifths are rolling plain, valleys, and gentle arable slopes, and the remainder is swampy. "The island border on the north presents a low cliff topography, with a horizontal sky-line from Matanzas westward, gradually decreasing from five hundred feet at Matanzas to one hundred feet on the west. The coast of the east end is abrupt and rugged, presenting on both the north and south sides a series of remarkable terraces, rising in stair-like arrangement to six hundred feet or more, representing successive pauses or stages in the elevation of the island above the sea, and constituting most striking scenic features. About one-half the Cuban coast is bordered by keys, which are largely old reef rock, the creations of the same coral-builders that may now be seen through the transparent waters still at work on the modern shallows, decking the rocks and sands with their graceful and many colored tufts of animal foliage." Mr. Hill summarizes the general appearance of the island, thus: "Santiago de Cuba (now called Oriente) is predominantly a mountainous region of high relief, especially along the coasts, with many interior valleys. Puerto Principe (now Camaguey) and Santa Clara are broken regions of low mountain relief, diversified by extensive valleys. Matanzas and Havana are vast stretches of level cultivated plain, with only a few hills of relief. Pinar del Rio is centrally mountainous, with fertile coastward slopes." The notable elevations of the island are the Cordilleras de los Organos, or Organ Mountains, in Pinar del Rio, of which an eastward extension appears in the Tetas de Managua, the Arcas de Canasi, the Escalera de Jaruco, the Pan de Matanzas, and other minor elevations in Havana and Matanzas Provinces. In Santa Clara and Camaguey, the range is represented by crest lines and plateaus along the north shore, and finally runs into the hill and mountain maze of Oriente. In the south-central section of the island, a somewhat isolated group of elevations appears, culminating in El Potrerillo at a height of nearly 3,000 feet. In Oriente, immediately along the south coast line, is the precipitous Sierra Maestra, reaching its greatest altitude in the Pico del Turquino, with an elevation of approximately 8,500 feet. Another elevation, near Santiago, known as La Gran Piedra, is estimated at 5,200 feet. All these heights are densely wooded. From the tops of some of them, east, west, and central, the views are marvellously beautiful, but the summits of most are reached only with considerable difficulty. One of the most notable of these view points, and one of the most easily reached, is the height immediately behind the city of Matanzas, overlooking the famous Yumuri valley. The valley is a broad, shallow bowl, some five or six miles in diameter, enclosed by steeply sloping walls of five to six hundred feet in height. Through it winds the Yumuri River. It is best seen in the early forenoon, or the late afternoon, when there come the shadows and the lights that are largely killed by the more vertical rays of a midday sun. At those hours, it is a scene of entrancing loveliness. There are views, elsewhere, covering wider expanses, but none, I think, of equal beauty. The vicinity of Matanzas affords a spectacle of almost enchantment for the sight-seer, and of deep interest for the geologist. Somewhat more than fifty years ago, an accident revealed the beautiful caves of Bellamar, two or three miles from the city, and easily reached by carriage. Caves ought to be cool. These are not, but they are well worth all the perspiration it costs to see them. They are a show place, and guides are always available. In size, the caverns are not comparable with the caves of Kentucky and Virginia, but they far excel in beauty. They are about three miles in extent, and their lower levels are said to be about five hundred feet from the surface. The rock is white limestone, in which are chambers and passage-ways, stalactites and stalagmites innumerable. These have their somewhat fantastic but not unfitting names, such as the Gothic Temple, the Altar, the Guardian Spirit, the Fountain of Snow, and Columbus' Mantle. The place has been called "a dream of fairyland," a fairly appropriate description. The colors are snow-white, pink, and shades of yellow, and many of the forms are wonderfully beautiful. There are many other caves in the island, like Cotilla, in the Guines region not far from Havana, others in the Cubitas Mountains in Camaguey Province, and still others in Oriente, but in comparison with Bellamar they are little else than holes in the ground. The trip through these remarkable aisles and chambers occupies some three or four hours. Cuba is not big enough for rivers of size. There are innumerable streams, for the island generally is well-watered. The only river of real importance is the Cauto, in Oriente Province. This is the longest and the largest river in the island. It rises in the hills north of Santiago, and winds a devious way westward for about a hundred and fifty miles, emptying at last into the Gulf of Buena Esperanza, north of the city of Manzanillo. It is navigable for small boats, according to the stage of the water, from seventy-five to a hundred miles from its mouth. Numerous smaller streams flow to the coast on both north and south. Some, that are really estuaries, are called rivers. Very few of them serve any commercial purposes. There are a few water areas called lakes, but they are really little other than ponds. On the south coast, directly opposite Matanzas, lies a vast swamp known as the Cienega de Zapata. It occupies an area of about seventy-five miles in length and about thirty miles in width, almost a dead flat, and practically at sea-level. Here and there are open spaces of water or clusters of trees, but most of it is bog and quagmire and dense mangrove thickets. Along the coast are numerous harbors, large and small, that are or, by dredging, could be made available for commercial purposes. Among these, on the north coast, from west to east, are Bahia Honda, Mariel, Havana, Matanzas, Nuevitas, Nipe Bay, and Baracoa. On the south, from east to west, are Guantanamo, Santiago, Manzanillo, Cienfuegos, and Batabano. At all of these, there are now cities or towns with trade either by steamers or small sailing vessels. Among the interesting physical curiosities of the island are the numerous "disappearing rivers." Doubtless the action of water on limestone has left, in many places, underground chambers and tunnels into which the streams have found an opening and in which they disappear, perhaps to emerge again and perhaps to find their way to the sea without reappearance. This seems to explain numerous fresh-water springs among the keys and off-shore. The Rio San Antonio quite disappears near San Antonio de los Banos. Near Guantanamo, a cascade drops three hundred feet into a cavern and reappears a short distance away. Such disappearing rivers are not unknown elsewhere but Cuba has several of them. * * * * * The Census Report of 1907, prepared under American auspices, states that "the climate of Cuba is tropical and insular. There are no extremes of heat, and there is no cold weather." This is quite true if the records of a thermometer are the standard; quite untrue if measured by the sensations of the human body. It is true that, in Havana, for instance, the thermometer seldom exceeds 90° in the hottest months, and rarely if ever goes below 50° in the coldest. But a day with the thermometer anywhere in the 80s may seem to a northern body very hot, and a day with the thermometer in the 50s is cold for anyone, whether a native or a visitor. There is doubtless a physical reason for the fact that a hot day in the north seems hotter than the same temperature in the south, while a day that seems, in the north, only pleasantly cool, seems bitterly cold in the tropics. When the thermometer drops below 60° in Havana, the coachmen blanket their horses, the people put on all the clothes they have, and all visitors who are at all sensitive to low temperature go about shivering. Steam heat and furnaces are unknown, and fireplaces are a rarity. Yet, in general, the variations are not wide, either from day to day or when measured by seasons. The extremes are the infrequent exceptions. Nor is there wide difference between day and night. Taking the island as a whole, the average mean temperature for July, the hottest month, is about 82°, and for January, the coolest month, about 71°. The mean for the year is about 77°, as compared with 52° for New York, 48° for Chicago, 62° for Los Angeles, and 68° for New Orleans. There are places that, by reason of exposure to prevailing winds, or distance from the coast, are hotter or cooler than other places. Havana is one of the cool spots, that is, relatively cool. But no one goes there in search of cold. The yearly range in Havana, from maximum to minimum, rarely if ever exceeds fifty degrees, and is usually somewhat below that, while the range in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis is usually from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five degrees. The particular cause of discomfort for those unused to it, is the humidity that prevails throughout the greater part of the year. The worst season for this, however, is the mid-year months when few people visit the island. The winter months, locally known as the "_invierno_," a term to be associated with our word "vernal" and not with "infernal," are almost invariably delightful, bringing to northern systems a pleasurable physical laziness that is attended by a mental indifference to, or satisfaction with, the sensation. [Illustration: WATERING HERD OF CATTLE _Luyano River near Havana_] The rainfall varies so widely in different parts of the island, and from year to year, that exact information is difficult. Taken as a whole, it is little if at all greater than it is in most places in the United States. We have our arid spots, like El Paso, Fresno, Boise, Phoenix, and Winnemucca, where only a few inches fall in a year, just as Cuba has a few places where the fall may reach sixty-five or seventy inches in a year. But the average fall in Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, and Santiago, is little if any greater than in Boston, New York, or Washington. A difference appears in the fact that about three-quarters of Cuba's precipitation comes between the first of May and the first of October. But the term "wet season" does not mean that it rains all the time, or every day, any more than the term "dry season" means that during those months it does not rain at all. At times during the winter, or dry season, there come storms that are due to unusual cold in the United States. These are known in Cuba, as they are in Texas, as "northers." High winds sweep furiously across the Gulf of Mexico, piling up huge seas on the Cuban coast, and bringing what, in the island, is the substitute for cold weather, usually attended by rain and sometimes by a torrent of it. The prevailing wind in Cuba is the northeast trade-wind. In summer when the sun is directly overhead this wind is nearly east, while in winter it is northeast. The proper way to avoid such discomfort as attends humidity accompanying a thermometer in the 80s, is to avoid haste in movement, to saunter instead of hurrying, to ride instead of walking, to eat and drink in moderation, and where-ever possible, to keep in the shade. Many of those who eat heartily and hurry always, will, after a few days, be quite sure that they have yellow fever or some other tropical disorder, but will be entirely mistaken about it. Modern sanitation in Cuba has made yellow fever a remote possibility, and the drinking water in Havana is as pure as any in the world. Most of the official descriptions of the flora of Cuba appear to be copied from Robert T. Hill's book, published in 1898. As nothing better is available, it may be used here. He says: "The surface of the island is clad in a voluptuous floral mantle, which, from its abundance and beauty, first caused Cuba to be designated the Pearl of the Antilles. In addition to those introduced from abroad, over 3,350 native plants have been catalogued. The flora includes nearly all characteristic forms of the other West Indies, the southern part of Florida, and the Central American seaboard. Nearly all the large trees of the Mexican _Tierra Caliente_, so remarkable for their size, foliage, and fragrance, reappear in western Cuba. Numerous species of palm, including the famous royal palm, occur, while the pine trees, elsewhere characteristic of the temperate zone and the high altitudes of the tropics, are found associated with palms and mahoganies in the province of Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Pines, both of which take their name from this tree. Among other woods are the lignum-vitae, granadilla, the coco-wood, and the _Cedrela Odorata_ (fragrant cedar) which is used for cigar boxes and the lining of cabinet work." In quoting the number of native plants, Mr. Hill uses a report somewhat antiquated. Later estimates place the number as between five and six thousand. Flowers are abundant, flowers on vines, plants, shrubs, and trees, tall stalks with massive heads, and dainty little blossoms by the wayside. Brilliant flowering trees are planted to line the roadsides. Among all the tree-growths, the royal palm is notable. Scoffers have likened it to "a feather duster stood on end," but it is the prominent feature in most of Cuba's landscape, and it serves many purposes other than that of mere decoration. From its stem the Cuban peasant builds his little cottage which he roofs with its leaves. Medicinal qualities are claimed for its roots. From different parts of the tree, a wide variety of useful articles is made, plates, buckets, basins, and even a kettle in which water may be boiled. The huge clusters of seeds are excellent food for animals, and I have heard it said, though without proper confirmation, that "a royal palm will keep a hog." Almost invariably, its presence indicates a rich soil, as it rarely grows in areas of poor land. The forest area of the island is not known with exactness, and is variously estimated at from about six thousand square miles to about sixteen thousand. The difference probably represents the opinion of individual investigators as to what is forest. About one-third of the total is reported as in Oriente, another third in Camaguey, and the remainder scattered through the four remaining provinces. A part of it is "public land," that is, owned by the central government, but a greater part is of private ownership under old Spanish grants. Much of it is dense jungle through which a way can be made only by hacking, almost foot by foot. A good deal of it has already been cut over for its most valuable timber. Most of the woods bear names entirely unfamiliar to us. Some are used as cabinet woods, and some for tanning, for oils, dyes, gums, or fibres. Cuba has few four-footed native wild animals. There are rabbits, but their nativity is not quite certain. There are deer, but it is known that their ancestors were brought from some other country. There are wild dogs, wild cats, and wild pigs, but all are only domestic animals run wild. Perhaps the only animal of the kind known to be native is the _jutia_, sometimes spelled, as pronounced, _hutia_. Some observers have referred to it as a rat, but it climbs trees and grows to the size of a woodchuck, or groundhog. It is sometimes eaten and is said to be quite palatable. Reptiles are fairly common, but none of them is dangerous. The best known is the _maja_, a snake that grows to a length, sometimes, of twelve or fifteen feet. The country people not infrequently make of it a kind of house pet. When that is done, the reptile often makes its home in the cottage thatch, living on birds and mice. They are dull and sluggish in motion. While visiting a sugar plantation a few years ago one of the hands asked if I should be interested by their _maja_. He dipped his hand into a nearby water-barrel in the bottom of which two of them were closely coiled. He dragged out one of perhaps ten or twelve feet in length and four or five inches in diameter, handling it as he would the same length of hawser. He hung it over the limb of a tree so that I could have a good chance for a picture of it. The thing squirmed slowly to the ground and crawled sluggishly away to the place from which it had been taken. Of bird-life there is a large representation, both native and migratory. Among them are some fifty species of "waders." In some parts of the island, the very unpleasant land-crab, about the size of a soup-plate, seems to exist in millions, although thousands is probably nearer the actual. The American soldiers made their acquaintance in large numbers at the time of the Santiago campaign. They are not a proper article of food. They have a salt-water relative that is most excellent eating, as is also the lobster _(langosta)_ of Cuban waters. In the swamp known as the Cienega de Zapata are both alligators and crocodiles, some of them of quite imposing dimensions. [Illustration: ROYAL PALMS] The insect life of the island is extensive. From personal experience, particularly behind the search-light of an automobile that drew them in swarms, I, should say that the island would be a rich field for the entomologist. There are mosquitos, gnats, beetles, moths, butterflies, spiders, and scorpions. The bites of some of the spiders and the stings of the scorpions are, of course, uncomfortable, but they are neither fatal nor dangerous. With the exception of an occasional mosquito, and a perhaps more than occasional flea, the visitor to cities only is likely to encounter few of the members of these branches of Cuban zoology. There is one of the beetle family, however, that is extremely interesting. That is the _cucullo_, which Mr. Hazard, in his book on Cuba, calls a "bright peripatetic candle-bearer, by whose brilliant light one can not only walk, but even read." They are really a kind of glorified firefly, much larger than ours, and with a much more brilliant light. I do not know their candle-power, but Mr. Hazard exaggerates little if at all in the matter of their brilliancy. While those referred to in the foregoing are the most notable features in this particular part of the Cuban field, there are others, though of perhaps less importance, to which reference might be made. Among them would be the sponge fisheries of the coast in the neighborhood of Batabano, and the numerous mineral springs, some of them really having, and others supposed to have, remarkable curative qualities. A half century or so ago, a number of places not far from Havana were resorts to which rich and poor went to drink or to bathe in springs hot or cold or sulphurous or otherwise, for their healing. Among these were the baths at San Diego, near the Organ Mountains in Pinar del Rio; Santa Rita, near Guanabacoa in Havana Province; others near Marianao, on the outskirts of the city; and San Antonio, also in Havana Province. Most of these places now appear to have lost their popularity if not their medicinal virtues. Some, like those at Madruga, not far from Havana, still have a considerable patronage. Something may also be said of earthquakes and hurricanes. The former occur, on a small scale, more or less frequently in Oriente, and much less frequently and of less severity in Havana. The latter come from time to time to work disaster to Cuban industries and, sometimes but not frequently, to cause loss of life and the destruction of buildings. They rarely occur except in the late summer and the autumn. Nearly a hundred years ago, Alexander Humboldt, a traveller and a scientist, wrote thus of the island of Cuba: "Notwithstanding the absence of deep rivers and the unequal fertility of the soil, the island of Cuba presents on every hand a most varied and agreeable country from its undulating character, its ever-springing verdure, and the variety of its vegetable formations." IV _THE OLD HAVANA_ Among the many pictures, stored away in the album of my memory, there are two that stand out more vividly than any others. The subjects are separated by half the world's circumference. One is the sunsets at Jolo, in the southern Philippines. There the sun sank into the western sea in a blaze of cloud-glory, between the low-lying islands on either hand with the rich green of their foliage turned to purple shadows. The other is the sunrise at Havana, seen from the deck of a steamer in the harbor. The long, soft shadows and the mellow light fell on the blue and gray and green of the buildings of the city, and on the red-tiled roofs, with the hills for a background in one-half of the picture, and the gleaming water of the gulf in the background of the other half. I had seen the long stretch of the southern coast of the island, from Cape Antonio to Cape Maisi, while on an excursion with a part of the army of occupation sent to Porto Rico in the summer of 1898, and had set foot on Cuban soil at Daiquiri, but Havana in the morning light, on January 2, 1899, was my first real Cuban experience. It remains an ineffaceable memory. Of my surroundings and experiences aside from that, I have no distinct recollection. All was submerged by that one picture, and quickly buried by the activities into which I was immediately plunged. I do not recall the length of time we were held on board for medical inspection, nor whether the customs inspection was on board or ashore. I recall the trip from the ship to the wharf, in one of the little sailboats then used for the purpose, rather because of later experiences than because of the first one. I have no purpose here to write a history of those busy days, filled as they were with absorbing interest, with much that was pathetic and not a little that was amusing. I have seen that morning picture many times since, but never less beautiful, never less impressive. Nowadays, it is lost to most travellers because the crossing from Key West is made in the daytime, the boat reaching Havana in the late-afternoon. Sometimes there is a partial compensation in the sunset picture, but I have never seen that when it really rivalled the picture at the beginning of the day. The visitor to Cuba, unfamiliar with the island, should take it leisurely. It is not a place through which the tourist may rush, guide book in hand, making snapshots with a camera, and checking off places of interest as they are visited. Picturesqueness and quaintness are not at all lacking, but there are no noble cathedrals, no vast museums of art and antiquity, no snow-clad mountains. There is a charm of light and shade and color that is to be absorbed slowly rather than swallowed at a single gulp. It is emphatically a place in which to dawdle. Let those who are obliged to do so, work and hurry; the visitor and the traveller should take it without haste. It is far better to see Havana and its vicinity slowly and enjoyably, and look at pictures of the rest of the country, than it is to rush through the island merely for the sake of doing so. In his essay on _The Moral of Landscape_, Mr. Ruskin said that "all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity." Nowhere is that more true than it is in Cuba. There is very little in all the island that cannot be seen in Havana and its immediate vicinity. It is well to see the other places if one has ample time, but they should not be seen at the expense of a proper enjoyment of Havana and its neighborhood. In Havana are buildings as old and buildings as beautiful as any in the island. In its vicinity are sugar plantations, tobacco fields, pineapples, cocoanuts, mangoes, royal palms, ceibas, peasants' homes, typical towns and villages, all the life of the people in the city and country. The common American desire to "see it all" in a few days, is fatal to the greatest enjoyment, and productive mainly of physical fatigue and mental confusion. It is the misfortune of most travellers that they carry with them only the vaguest of ideas of what they want to see. They have heard of Cuba, of Havana, the Morro, the Prado, of a sunny island in the midst of a sapphire sea. While it is true that almost everything in Cuba is worth seeing, it is best to acquire, before going, some idea of the exhibition. That saves time and many steps. The old city wall, La Fuerza, and La Punta, are mere piles of masonry, more or less dull and uninteresting unless one knows something of their history. The manners and customs of any country become increasingly interesting if one knows something about them, the reason for them. It is only a short trip to the Castillo del Principe, the fortress that crowns the hill to the west of the city. From that height, the city and the harbor are seen below, to the eastward. Across the bay, on the heights at the entrance, are the frowning walls of Morro Castle surmounted by the towering light-house, and the no less grim walls of La Cabaña. The bay itself is a sprawling, shapeless body of water with a narrow neck connecting it with the Florida Straits. Into the western side of the bay the city thrusts itself in a shape that, on a large map, suggests more than anything else the head and neck of an over-fed bulldog. Into this bay, in 1508, came Sebastian Ocampo, said to be the first white man to visit the spot. He entered for the purpose of careening his little vessels in order to remove the barnacles and accumulated weed-growth. It is possible that the spot was discovered earlier, but there is no record of the discovery if such was made. Ocampo gave it the name of Puerto de Carenas. The next record is of its occupation, in 1519. Four years earlier, Diego Velasquez had left a little colony near what is now called Batabano, on the south coast. He gave the place the name of San Cristobal de la Habana, in memory of the illustrious navigator and discoverer. Habana, or Havana, is a term of aboriginal origin. It proved to be an uncomfortable place of residence, and in 1519 the people moved across the island to the Puerto de Carenas, taking with them the name given to the earlier settlement, and substituting it for the name given by Ocampo. After a time, all was dropped except the present title, Habana, or more commonly by English-speaking people, Havana. It was not much of a place for a number of years, but in 1538 it was sacked and burned by a French pirate, one of the many, of different nations, who carried on a very lively buccaneering business in those and in later years in West Indian waters. Hernando de Soto was then governor of the island, with headquarters at the then capital city, Santiago de Cuba. He proceeded at once to the scene of destruction. On his arrival, he ordered the erection of a fortress. Some of the work then done still remains in the old structure near the Palace, at the foot of Calle O'Reilly, known as La Fuerza. A few years before this time, Hernan Cortes had conquered Mexico, then called New Spain, and a business between Old Spain and New Spain soon developed. The harbor of Havana made a convenient halting-place on the voyages between the two, and the settlement assumed a steadily increasing importance. A new governor, Gonzales Perez de Angulo, who arrived in 1549, decided to make it his place of residence. The year 1552 is generally given as the time of the creation of Havana as the capital city. It was at that time made the residence city of the Governors, by their own choice, but it was not officially established as the capital until 1589. The fortress erected by order of de Soto proved somewhat ineffective. In 1554, another French marauder attacked and destroyed the town. The principal industry of those early days was cattle-raising, a considerable market being developed for export to Mexico, and for the supply of vessels that entered the harbor for food and water. The continuance of incursions by pirates made necessary some further provision for the defence of the city. In 1589, La Fuerza was enlarged and strengthened, and the construction of Morro Castle was begun. To this work was added La Punta, the little fortress on the western shore of the entrance, at the point of the angle now formed by the Prado and the Malecon. These ancient structures, of practically no value whatever in modern warfare, are now among the most picturesque points of interest in the neighborhood. Another, in the same class, of which only a little now remains, is of a later time. This is the old city wall, the construction of which was begun in 1671. Following the simile of the bull-dog's head, a tract of land, formerly known as the Arsenal yard, and now the central railway station, lies tucked away immediately under the animal's jaw. From there to a point on the north shore, near La Punta, in a slightly curving line, a high wall was erected for the purpose of defence on the western or landward side. The old city lay entirely in the area defined by this western wall and the shore of the harbor. At intervals, gates afforded exit to the country beyond, heavy gates that could be closed to exclude any possible attacking party. The fortifications erected from time to time were supposed to afford a system of effective defence for the city. They are now little else than picturesque features in the landscape, points of interest for visitors. Taking the chain in its order, El Morro stands on the point on the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor. Just beyond it is La Cabaña. About a half a mile to the east of this was the stone fort on the hill of San Diego. Three miles east of the Morro, on the shore at Cojimar, is a small and somewhat ancient fortification. This group constituted the defence system on the east. At the head of the bay, on an elevation a little to the south of the city, stands El Castillo de Atares, begun in 1763, immediately after the capture and occupation of the city by the British. This is supposed to protect the city on the south, as Castillo del Principe is supposed to defend it on the west. This stands on a hill on the western outskirts, a somewhat extensive structure, begun in 1774 and completed about twenty years later. A little further to the west, at the mouth of the Almendares river, stands a little fort, or tower, called Chorrera, serving as a western outpost as Cojimar serves as an eastern outpost. Both were erected about the year 1650. On the shore generally north of Principe was the Santa Clara battery, and between that and La Punta, at the foot of the Calzada de Belascoain, stood the Queen's battery. From any modern point of view, the system is little more than military junk, better fitted for its present use as barracks, asylums, and prisons than for military defence. But it is all highly picturesque. In the beginning, most of the buildings of the city were doubtless of wood, with palm-thatched roofs. In time, these gave place to rows of abutting stone buildings with tiled roofs. Most of them were of one story, some were of two stories, and a few "palaces" had three. The city within the wall is today very much as it was a century and more ago. Its streets run, generally but not accurately, at right angles, one set almost due east and west, from the harbor front to the line of the old wall, and the other set runs southward from the shore of the entrance channel to the shore of the inner harbor. Several of these streets are practically continuous from north to south or from east to west. But most of them are rather passage-ways than streets. The houses come to their very edges, except for a narrow strip hardly to be classed as a sidewalk, originally left, presumably, only for the purpose of preventing the scraping of the front of the building by the wheels of passing carts and carriages. It is a somewhat inconvenient system nowadays, but one gets quite used to it after a little, threads the narrow walk a part of his way, takes to the street the rest of the way, and steps aside to avoid passing vehicles quite as did the carriageless in the old days. One excellent way to avoid the trouble is to take a carriage and let the other fellow step aside. Riding in the _coche_ is still one of the cheapest forms of convenience and entertainment in the city, excepting the afternoon drive around the Prado and the Malecon. That is not cheap. We used to pay a dollar an hour. My last experience cost me three times that. [Illustration: CUSTOM HOUSE, HAVANA _Formerly Franciscan Convent Begun_ 1574, _finished_ 1591] Much of the old city is now devoted to business purposes, wholesale, retail, and professional. But there are also residences, old churches, and old public buildings. On the immediate water-front, and for many years used as the custom house, stands the old Franciscan convent, erected during the last quarter of the 16th Century. It is a somewhat imposing pile, dominated by a high tower. I have not visited it for a number of years and do not know if its interior is available for visitors without some special introduction, but there is much worth seeing inside its walls, the flying buttresses of the super-structure, some old and interesting frescoes, and a system of dome construction that is quite remarkable. To the latter, my attention was first called by General Ludlow, a distinguished engineer officer of the United States Army, then acting as governor of the city. To him belongs, although it is very rarely given, the credit for the cleansing of Havana during the First Intervention. He frequently visited the old convent just to see and study that interior dome construction. Immediately behind the Palace is the old convent of the Dominicans, less imposing but of about the same period as the Franciscan structure. It is now used as a high-school building. The Cathedral, a block to the northward of the Dominican convent building, is of a much later date, having been begun as recently as 1742. It was originally the convent of the Jesuits, but became the Cathedral in 1789. Many have believed, on what seems to be acceptable evidence, that here for more than a hundred years rested the bones of Christopher Columbus. He died in Valladolid in 1506, and was buried there. His remains were removed to the Carthusian Monastery, in Seville, in 1513. From there they are said to have been taken, in 1536, to the city of Santo Domingo, where they remained until 1796, when they were brought to Havana and placed in a niche in the walls of the old Cathedral, there to remain until they were taken back to Spain in 1898. There is still an active dispute as to whether the bones removed from Santo Domingo to Havana were or were not those of Columbus. At all events, the urn supposed to contain them was in this building for a hundred years, below a marble slab showing a carving of the voyager holding a globe, with a finger pointing to the Caribbean. Beneath this was a legend that has been thus translated: OH! REST THOU, IMAGE OF THE GREAT COLON, THOUSAND CENTURIES REMAIN, GUARDED IN THE URN, AND IN THE REMEMBRANCE OF OUR NATION. In this neighborhood, to the east of the Plaza de Armas, on which the Palace fronts, is a structure known as _El Templete_. It has the appearance of the portico of an unfinished building, but it is a finished memorial, erected in 1828. The tradition is that on this spot there stood, in 1519, an old ceiba tree under which the newly arrived settlers celebrated their first mass. The yellow Palace, for many years the official headquarters and the residence of successive Governors-General, stands opposite, and speaks for itself. In this building, somewhat devoid of architectural merit, much of Cuba's history, for the last three-quarters of a century, has been written. The best time to see all this and much more that is to be seen, is the early morning, before the wheels begin to go around. The lights and shadows are then the best, and the streets are quieter and less crowded. The different points of interest are easily located by the various guide books obtainable, and the distances are not great. A cup of _cafe con leche_ should precede the excursion. If one feels lazy, as one is quite apt to feel in the tropics and the sub-tropics, fairly comfortable open carriages are at all times available. With them, of course, a greater area can be covered and more places seen, though perhaps seen less satisfactorily. There is much to be seen in the early morning that is best seen in those hours, and much that is not seen later in the day. In all cities there is an early morning life and Havana is no exception. I confess to only a limited personal knowledge of it, but I have seen enough of it, and heard enough about it, to know that the waking-up of cities, including Havana, is an interesting process. I have, at least, had enough personal experience to be sure that the early morning air is delicious, the best of the day. I am not speaking of the unholy hours preceding daybreak, but of six to eight o'clock, which for those of us who are inclined to long evenings is also the best time to be in bed. The early morning church bells are a disturbance to which visitors do not readily adjust their morning naps. Mr. Samuel Hazard, who visited Cuba about the year 1870, and wrote quite entertainingly about it, left the following description of his experience in Havana: "Hardly has the day begun to break when the newly arrived traveller is startled from his delightful morning doze by the alarming sound of bells ringing from every part of the town. Without any particular concert of action, and with very different sounds, they ring out on the still morning air, as though for a general conflagration, and the unfortunate traveller rushes frantically from his bed to inquire if there is any hope of safety from the flames which he imagines, from the noise made, must threaten the whole town. Imagine, O reader! in thy native town, every square with its church, every church with its tower, or maybe two or three of them, and in each particular tower a half-dozen large bells, no two of which sound alike; place the bell-ropes in the hands of some frantic man who pulls away, first with one hand and then the other, and you will get a very faint idea of your first awakening in Havana. Without apparent rhyme or reason, ding, dong, ding they go, every bell-ringer at each different church striving to see how much noise he can make, under the plea of bringing the faithful to their prayers at the early morning mass." [Illustration: BALCONIES IN OLD HAVANA STREET IN HAVANA] The only conceivable advantage of these early bells is the fact that they turn out many a traveller at the hour when Havana is really at its best. Yet, as I read the descriptive tales left by those who wrote forty, fifty, and sixty years ago, I am struck by the fact, that, after all, the old Havana has changed but little. There are trolley lines, electric lights, and a few other so-called modern improvements, but there is still much of the old custom, the old atmosphere. The old wall, with its soldier-guarded gates, is gone, and there are a few modern buildings, but only a few, for which fact I always feel thankful, but the old city is much what it was when Mr. Ballou, and Mr. Dana, and Mr. Kimball, and numerous others wrote about it soon after 1850, and when Mr. Hazard wrote about it in 1870. The automobile is there now in large numbers, in place of the old volante, and there are asphalted streets in place of cobble-stones. The band plays in the evening in the Parque Central or at the Glorieta, instead of in the Plaza de Armas, but the band plays. The restaurants are still a prominent feature in Havana life, as they were then. The ladies wear hats instead of _mantillas_, but they buy hats on Calle Obispo just as and where their mothers and grandmothers bought _mantillas_. Bull-fighting is gone, presumably forever, but crowds flock to the baseball grounds. The midday suspension of business continues, generally, and the afternoon parade, on foot and in carriages, remains one of the important functions of the day. There are many who know Havana, and love it, who pray diligently that it may be many years before the city is Americanized as, for instance, New Orleans has been. Most of the life of the city, as it is seen by most visitors, is outside the old city, and probably few know that any distinction is made, yet the line is drawn with fair clearness. There is a different appearance in both streets and buildings. While there are shops on San Rafael and Galiano and elsewhere, the principal shopping district is in the old city, with Calle Obispo as its centre. They have tried officially, to change the name of the street, but the old familiar name sticks and seems likely to stick for a long time yet. Far be it from a mere man to attempt analysis or description of such a place. He might tell another mere man where to buy a hat, a pair of shoes, or eyeglasses, or a necktie, or where to find a lawyer, but the finer points of shopping, there or elsewhere, are not properly for any masculine description. The ladies may be trusted to learn for themselves, and very quickly, all that they need or want to know about that phase of Havana's commerce. I am leaving much to the guide books that can afford space for all necessary information about churches, statues, and other objects of interest for visitors. Havana's retail merchants have their own way of trading, much as they do in many foreign countries, and in not a few stores in our own country. Prices are usually a question of the customer's ability to match the commercial shrewdness of the dealer. Much of the trade of visitors is now confined to the purchase of such articles as may be immediately needed and to a few souvenirs. One of the charms of the place is the cheap transportation. If you are tired, or in a hurry, there is always a coach near at hand that will take you where you wish to go, for a peseta, or a quarter, if within certain officially prescribed bounds. If you desire to go beyond those bounds, make a bargain with your driver or be prepared for trouble. Down in the old city are to be found several restaurants that are well worth visiting, for those who want good food. I shall not advertise the particular places, but they are well known. As the early morning is the best time to see the old city, the forenoon is the best time for shopping. Such an expedition may well be followed by the _almuerzo_, the midday breakfast or lunch, whichever one sees fit to call it, at one of these restaurants. After that, it is well to enjoy a midday _siesta_, in preparation for the afternoon function on the Prado and the Malecon. V THE NEW HAVANA The new Havana, the city outside the old wall, is about as old as Chicago but not nearly as tall. There is no reason why it should be. Here are wide streets and broad avenues, and real sidewalks, some of them about as wide as the entire street in the old city. About 1830, the region beyond the wall was held largely by Spaniards to whom grants of land had been made for one reason or another. These tracts were plantations, pastures, or unimproved lands, according to the fancy of the proprietor who usually lived in the city and enjoyed himself after the manner of his kind. Here and there, a straggling village of palm-leaf huts sprang up. The roads were rough tracks. To Governor-General Tacon seems due much of the credit for the improvement beyond the walls. During his somewhat iron-handed rule several notable buildings were erected, some of them by his authority. The most notable feature of the district is the renowned Prado, a broad boulevard with a park between two drive-ways, running from the water-front, at the entrance to the harbor, southward for about a mile. A few years ago, rows of trees shaded the central parkway, but they were almost entirely wrecked by the hurricanes in 1906 and 1910. A half mile or so from its northern end, the Prado runs along the west side of the Parque Central, the most notable of the numerous little squares of walks and trees and flowers. A block or two further on is a little park with an excellent statue, known as La India. Opposite that is another really beautiful park, from the western side of which runs a broad street that leads to the Paseo de Carlos Tercero, formerly the Paseo de Tacon, one of the monuments left to his own memory by one of Cuba's most noted Spanish rulers. The Paseo runs westward to El Castillo del Principe, originally a fortress but now a penitentiary. The Prado stops just beyond the companion parks, La India and Colon. These originally formed the Campo de Marte, laid out by General Tacon and, in his time, used as a military parade ground. In a way, the Parque Central is the centre of the city. It is almost that, geographically, and perhaps quite that, socially. In its immediate vicinity are some of the leading hotels and the principal theatres. One of the latter, facing the park on its western side, across the Prado, is now known as the Nacional. Formerly it was the Tacon, a monument to that notable man. There is quite a story about that structure. It is somewhat too long for inclusion here, but it seems worth telling. The following is an abridgment of the tale as it is told in Mr. Ballou's _History of Cuba_, published in 1854. Tacon was the Governor of the island from 1834 to 1838. At that time, a certain man named Marti was eminent in the smuggling and piracy business, an industry in which many others were engaged. But Marti seems to have stood at the top of his profession, a man of skill and daring and evidently well supplied with brains. Tacon's efforts to capture him, or to break up his business, were entirely unsuccessful, and a large reward was offered for his body, alive or dead. Mr. Ballou tells the story in somewhat dramatic manner: "It was a dark, cloudy night in Havana, a few months after the announcement of the reward, when two sentinels were pacing backward and forward before the main entrance to the Governor's palace. A little before midnight, a man was watching them from behind a statue in the park, and after observing that the sentinels paced their brief walk so as to meet each other, and then turned their backs as they separated, leaving a brief moment in the interval when the eyes of both were turned away from the entrance, seemed to calculate upon passing them unobserved. It was an exceedingly delicate manoeuvre, and required great care and dexterity to effect it; but, at last, it was adroitly done, and the stranger sprang lightly through the entrance, secreting himself behind one of the pillars of the inner court. The sentinels paced on undisturbed. The figure which had thus stealthily effected an entrance, now sought the broad stairs that led to the Governor's suite, with a confidence that evinced a perfect knowledge of the place. A second guard-post was to be passed at the head of the stairs; but, assuming an air of authority, the stranger offered a cold military salute and passed forward, as though there was not the most distant question of his right to do so; and thus avoiding all suspicion in the guard's mind, he boldly entered the Governor's reception room unchallenged, and closed the door behind him." In his office, alone, the stranger found Tacon, who was naturally surprised at the appearance of an unannounced caller. He demanded to know who the visitor was, but a direct answer was evaded. After referring to the matter of the reward offered for the discovery of Marti, and the pledge of immunity to the discoverer, the caller demanded and obtained a verbal endorsement of the promise of immunity, under the Governor's word of honor, whatever might be the circumstances of his revelation. He then announced himself as the much-sought pirate and smuggler, Marti. Tacon was somewhat astounded, but he kept his word. Marti was held overnight, but "on the following day," the Ballou account proceeds, "one of the men-of-war that lay idly beneath the guns of Morro Castle suddenly became the scene of the utmost activity, and, before noon, had weighed her anchor, and was standing out into the gulf stream. Marti the smuggler was on board as her pilot; and faithfully did he guide the ship on the discharge of his treacherous business, revealing every haunt of the rovers, exposing their most valuable depots; and many a smuggling craft was taken and destroyed. The amount of money and property thus secured was very great." The contemptible job of betraying his former companions and followers being successfully accomplished, Marti returned with the ships, and claimed his reward from Tacon. The General, according to his word of honor, gave Marti a full and unconditional pardon for all his past offences, and an order on the treasury for the amount of the reward offered. The latter was declined but, in lieu of the sum, Marti asked for and obtained a monopoly of the right to sell fish in Havana. He offered to build, at his own expense, a public market of stone, that should, after a specified term of years, revert to the government, "with all right and the title to the fishery." This struck Tacon as a good business proposition; he saved to his treasury the important sum of the reward and, after a time, the city would own a valuable fish-market. He agreed to the plan. Marti thereupon went into the fish business, made huge profits, and became, so the story goes, the richest man in the island. After a time, being burdened with wealth, he looked about for means of increasing his income. So he asked for and obtained a monopoly of the theatre business in Havana, promising to build one of the largest and finest theatres in the world. The result of the enterprise was the present Nacional theatre, for many years regarded as second only to the Grand theatre in Milan. But it was named the Tacon. Its special attraction was internal; its exterior was far from imposing. It has recently been considerably glorified. Having thus halted for the story of the theatre, we may return to the Prado on which it fronts. Here, Havana society used to gather every afternoon to drive, walk, and talk. The afternoon _paseo_ was and still is the great event of the day, the great social function of the city. At the time of my first visit, in 1899, there was no Malecon drive along the shore to the westward. That enterprise was begun during the First Intervention, and continued by succeeding administrations. In the earlier days, the route for driving was down the east side of the Prado, between the Parque Central and the _Carcel_, and up the west side, around and around, up and down, with bows and smiles to acquaintances met or passed, and, probably, gossip about the strangers. Many horsemen appeared in the procession, and the central promenade was thronged with those who walked, either because they preferred to or because they could not afford to ride around and around. In the Parque Central were other walkers, chatting groups, and lookers-on. Some days the band played. Then the Prado was extended to the water-front; the _glorieta_ was erected; and that became another centre for chatterers and watchers. The building of the Malecon extended the range of the driveway. This afternoon function is an old established institution and a good one. It may not compare favorably with the drive in some of our parks in this country, but it is the best substitute possible in Havana. Indulgence in ices, cooling drinks, chocolate, or other refections, during this daily ceremony, is fairly common but by no means a general practice. The afternoon tea habit has not yet seized upon Havana. The ices are almost invariably excellent. Some of them are prepared from native fruit flavors that are quite unknown here. The _guanabana_ ice is particularly to be recommended. All such matters are quite individual, but a decoction called _chocolate Espanol_ is also to be recommended. It is served hot, too thick to drink, and is to be taken with a spoon, to the accompaniment of cake. It is highly nourishing as well as palatable. There is a wide variety of "soft drinks," made with oranges, limes, or other fruits, and the _orchata_, made from almonds, and the products of American soda fountains, but there is little use of the high-ball or the cocktail except by Americans. [Illustration: STREET AND CHURCH OF THE ANGELS _Havana_] The Cubans are an exceedingly temperate people. Wine is used by all classes, and _aguadiente_, the native rum, is consumed in considerable quantity, but the Cuban rarely drinks to excess. I recall an experience during the earlier years. I was asked to write a series of articles on the use of intoxicants in the island, for a temperance publication in this country. My first article so offended the publishers that they declined to print it, and cancelled the order for the rest of the series. It was perhaps somewhat improper, but in that article I summed up the situation by stating that "the temperance question in Cuba is only a question of how soon we succeed in converting them into a nation of drunkards." Beer is used, both imported and of local manufacture. Gin, brandy, and anisette, cordials and liqueurs are all used to some but moderate extent, but intoxication is quite rare. One fluid extract I particularly recommend, that is the milk of the cocoanut, the green nut. Much, however, depends upon the cocoanut. Properly ripened, the "milk" is delicious, cooling and wholesome, more so perhaps on a country journey than in the city. The nut not fully ripened gives the milk, or what is locally called the "water," an unpleasant, woody taste. I have experimented with it in different parts of the world, in the Philippines, Ceylon, and elsewhere, and have found it wholesome and refreshing in all places. The houses in the new Havana are, on the whole, vastly more cheerful than are the dwellings in the old city. They are of the same general architectural type, but because of the wider streets, more air and sunshine gets into them. Some of the best and most costly are along the Prado. A Cuban house interior generally impresses an American as lacking in home-like quality. Some of the best are richly adorned, but there is a certain bareness and an absence of color. As is usual with customs unlike our own, and which we are therefore prone to regard as inferior to ours, there are excellent reasons for Cuban interior decoration, or rather the lack of it. A little experience, or even a little reflection, shows clearly the impossibility of anything resembling American house decoration in such a climate as that of Cuba. Our warm colors, hangings, upholstered furniture, rugs, and much else that we regard as essential in northern latitudes, would be utterly unendurable in Cuba. There, the marble or tiled floors, the cool tones of wall and ceiling, and the furniture of wood and cane, are not only altogether fitting but as well altogether necessary. Our glass windows would only serve to increase heat and shut out air. As some barrier is necessary to keep passers, even Americans, from intrusive entrance by the windows whose bottoms are at floor level, the system of iron bars or elaborate grille work is adopted. Few Americans see much, if anything, of Cuban home life except as they see it through these barriers as they pass. It is not the custom of the country to invite promiscuous or casual acquaintances to call. It is even less the custom there than it is with us. A book about Cuba, published a few years ago, gives a somewhat extended account of what is called "home life," but it is the home life of workmen and people who do laundry work to eke out a meagre living. It is not even the life of fairly paid artisans, or of people of modest but comfortable income. It is no more a proper description of the domestic life of the island than would be a presentation of the life in the palaces of the wealthy. Such attempts at description are almost invariably a mistake, conveying, whether from purpose or from indifference to truth, a false impression. Domestic economy and household management vary in Cuba as they vary in the United States, in France, England, Japan, or Mexico. The selection of an individual home, or of several, as a basis for description, in Cuba or anywhere else, can only result in a picture badly out of drawing and quite misleading. There are Cuban homes, as there are American homes, that are slatternly and badly managed, and there are Cuban homes that are as spick and span and as orderly in their administration as any home in this country. Their customs, as are ours, are the result of environment and tradition. To some of us, a rectangle of six or eight rocking-chairs, placed in the centre of a room, in which family and visitors sit and rock while they talk, may seem curious, but it is a custom that we may not criticize either with fairness or common decency. The same may be said of the not uncommon custom of using a part of the street floor of the house as a stable. It is an old custom, brought from Spain. But I have wandered from description to incident. I have no intention to attempt a description of Cuban home life, beyond saying that I have been a guest in costly homes in the city and in the little palm-leaf "shacks" of peasants, and have invariably found in both, and in the homes of intermediate classes, only cordial hospitality and gracious courtesy. Those who have found anything different have carried it with them in their own attitude toward their hosts. Many of us, probably most of us, in the United States, make a sort of fetich of the privacy of what we call our home life. We are encased in walls of wood or masonry, with blinds, curtains, or shades at our windows. It might be supposed that we wanted to hide, that there was something of which to be ashamed. It might at least be so interpreted by one unfamiliar with our ways. It is only, like the open domestic life in Cuba, a custom, a habit of long standing. Certainly, much of the domestic life of Cuba is open. The mistress of the house chides a servant, rebukes or comforts a child, sits with her embroidery, chaffers with an itinerant merchant or with the clerk from a store, all in plain sight and hearing of the passer-by. What everyone does, no one notices. The customs of any country are curious only to those from other countries where customs are different. Our ways of life are quite as curious to others as are their ways to us. We are quite blind to that fact chiefly because of an absurd conviction of the immense superiority of our ways. We do not stop to consider reasons for differences. A cup of coffee on an American breakfast table usually consists of about four parts coffee and one part milk or cream. Most Cubans usually reverse these percentages. There is a good reason for it. In our climate, we do not need the large open doors and windows, the high ceilings, and the full and free ventilation that make life endurable in tropical and sub-tropical countries. Their system here would be as impossible as would be our system there. Houses in Cuba like those of an American city or town would make life a miserable burden. The publicity, or semi-publicity, of Cuban home life is a necessary result of conditions. It is, naturally, more in evidence in the city proper, where the houses, abutting immediately on the street, as do most of our city houses, are built, as ours are, in solid rows. We avoid a good deal of publicity by piling our homes on top of each other, and by elevators and stair-climbing. The location of a residence in Havana gives no special idea of the wealth or the social standing of those who occupy it. Not a few well-to-do people still live in the old city, where the streets are narrow and where business is trying to crowd out everything except itself. The home in that quarter may be in a block in which a number of buildings are residences, or it may stand with a warehouse on one side and a workshop on the other. A few people, of unquestionable social position still live in buildings in which the street floor is a store or an office. There is nothing curious about this. In many American cities, old families have clung to old homes, and not a few new families have, from one reason or another, occupied similar quarters. Such a residence may not conform to modern social ideas and standards, but there are Americans in this country, as well as Cubans and Spaniards in Havana, who can afford to ignore those standards. The same is true of many who live in the newer city, outside the old walls. There as here, business encroaches on many streets formerly strictly residential. This holds in the newer part of the city as well as in the old part. A number of streets there are, for a part of their length, quite given over to business. Even the Prado itself is the victim of commercial invasion. What was once one of the finest residences in the city, the old Aldama place fronting on the Campo de Marte, is now a cigar factory. A little beyond it is the Tacon market, occupying an entire block. Stores and shops surround it. The old avenue leading to the once fashionable Cerro, and to the only less fashionable Jesus del Monte, is now a business street. Another business street leads out of the Parque Central, alongside the former Tacon theatre. The broad Calzada de Galiano, once a fashionable residence street, is now largely commercial. While less picturesque than some parts of the old city within the walls, the most attractive part of Havana is undoubtedly the section of El Vedado, the westward extension along the shore. Here are broad streets, trees, gardens, and many beautiful and costly dwellings. This is really the modern Havana. A part of it is only a little above sea-level, and behind that strip is a hill. A few years ago, only a small number of houses were on the hillside or the hilltop. Now, it is well built over with modern houses. The architectural type is generally retained, and it is rather a pity that there should be even what variation there is. El Vedado is the region of the wealthy and the well-to-do, with a large percentage of foreigners. It has its social ways, very much as other places have, in this country, in France, Hong Kong, or Honolulu. They are not quite our ways, but they are a result of conditions, just as ours are. On the hill, a little back of El Vedado, are two "points of interest" for visitors; the old fortress, el Castillo del Principe, and the cemetery. In the latter are some notable monuments. One is known as the Firemen's Monument. For many years, Havana has had, supplementary to its municipal organization, a volunteer firemen's corps. In various ways the latter resembles a number of military organizations in the United States. It is at once a somewhat exclusive social club and a practical force. Membership is a social distinction. If you are in Havana and see men in admirably tailored, uniforms and fire helmets, rushing in a particular direction in cabs, carriages or automobiles, you may know that they are members of the _Bomberos del Comercio_ on their way to a conflagration. Most excellent real work they have done again and again in time of fire and flood. On parade, they look exceedingly dapper with their helmets, uniforms, boots and equipment, somewhat too dandified even to suggest any smoke other than that of cigars or cigarettes. But they are the "real thing in smoke-eaters" when they get to work. They have a long list of heroic deeds on their records. The monument in Colon Cemetery commemorates one of those deeds. In an extensive and dangerous fire, in May, 1890, thirty of these men lost their lives. A few years later, this beautiful and costly shaft was erected, by private subscription, as a tribute to their valor and devotion. Another shaft, perhaps no less notable, commemorates a deplorable and unpardonable event. A number of medical students, mere boys, in the University of Havana, were charged with defacing the tomb of a Spanish officer who had been killed by a Cuban in a political quarrel. At its worst, it was a boyish prank, demanding rebuke or even some mild punishment. Later evidence indicates that while there was a demonstration there was no defacement of the vault. Forty-two students were arrested as participants, tried by court-martial, and sentenced to be shot. Eight of them were shot at La Punta, at the foot of the Prado near the sea-front, and the remainder sentenced to imprisonment for life. All of these, I believe, were afterward released. The Students' Monument expresses the feeling of the Cubans in the matter, a noble memorial. There are numerous other shafts and memorials that are notable and interesting. A number of Cuba's leaders, Maximo Gomez, Calixto Garcia, and others, are buried in this cemetery. [Illustration: A RESIDENCE IN EL VEDADO] Further on, to the southeast, are other sections of the new Havana, the districts of Cerro and Jesus del Monte. El Vedado has largely supplanted these neighborhoods as the "court end" of the city. Many of the fine old residences of forty or fifty years ago still remain, but most of them are now closely surrounded by the more modest homes of a less aristocratic group. A few gardens remain to suggest what they were in the earlier days. Still further out, in the west-and-south quarter-circle, are little towns, villages, and hamlets, typically Cuban, with here and there the more imposing estate of planter or proprietor. But, far the greater number of visitors, perhaps with greater reason, find more of charm and interest in the city itself than in the suburbs or the surrounding country. The enjoyment of unfamiliar places is altogether personal. There are many who really see nothing; they come away from a brief visit with only a confusion of vague recollections of sights and sounds, of brief inspection of buildings about which they knew nothing, of the big, yellow Palace, of this church and that, of the Morro and the harbor, of sunny days, and of late afternoons along the Prado and the Malecon. To me, Havana is losing its greatest charm through an excess of Americanization, slowly but steadily taking from the place much of the individuality that made it most attractive. It will be a long time before that is entirely lost, but five-story office buildings, automobiles in the afternoon parade, steaks or ham and eggs at an eight or nine o'clock breakfast, and all kinds of indescribable hats in place of dainty and graceful _mantillas_, seem to me a detraction, like bay-windows and porticos added to an old colonial mansion. VI _AROUND THE ISLAND_ A hundred years ago, the Cubans travelled from place to place about the island, just as our ancestors did in this country, by water and over rough trails few of which could, with any approach to correctness, be described as roads. It was not until about a hundred years ago that we, in this country, began to build anything even remotely resembling a modern highway. Our towns and cities were on the seaboard or on the banks of rivers navigable for vessels of size sufficient for their purposes. Commodities carried to or brought from places not so located were dragged in stoutly built wagons over routes the best of which was worse than the worst to be found anywhere today. Because real road-making in Cuba is quite a modern institution, an enterprise to which, in their phrase, the Spanish Government did not "dedicate" itself, the Cuban wagons and carts of today are chiefly those of the older time. They are heavy, cumbrous affairs with large wheels, a diameter necessitated by the deep ruts through which a passage was made. A smaller wheel would soon have been "hub-deep" and hopelessly stuck. So, too, with the carriages of the nabobs. The poorer people, when they travelled at all, went on foot or on horseback, as our ancestors did. The nabobs had their _volantes_, still occasionally, but with increasing rarity, seen in some parts of the island. Forty years ago, such vehicles, only a little changed from the original type, were common enough in Havana itself. About that time, or a few years earlier, the four-wheeler began to supplant them for city use. There is a technical difference between the original type of _volante_ and its successor which, though still called a _volante_ was properly called a _quitrin_. The only real difference was that the top of the _quitrin_ was collapsible, and could be lowered when desirable, while the top of the _volante_ was not. I have ridden in these affairs, I cannot say comfortably, over roads that would have been quite impossible for any other wheeled vehicle. At the back, and somewhat behind the body were two wheels, six feet in diameter. From, the axle, two shafts projected for a distance, if memory serves me, of some twelve or fifteen feet. A little forward of the axle, the body, not unlike the old-fashioned American chaise, was suspended on stout leather straps serving as springs. Away off in front, at the end of the shafts, was a horse on which the driver rode in a heavy and clumsy saddle. For long-distance travel, or for particularly rough roads, a second horse was added, alongside the shaft horse, and sometimes a third animal. The motion was pleasant enough over the occasional smooth places, but the usual motion was much like that of a cork in a whirlpool, or of a small boat in a choppy sea. Little attention was paid to rocks or ruts; it was almost impossible to capsize the thing. One wheel might be two feet or more higher than the other, whereupon the rider on the upper side would be piled on top of the rider or riders on the lower side, but there was always a fair distribution of this favor. The rocks and ruts were not always on the same side of the road. The safety from overturn was in the long shafts which allowed free play. In the older days, say sixty or seventy years ago, the _volante_ or the _quitrin_ was an outward and visible sign of a well-lined pocket-book. It indicated the possessor as a man of wealth, probably a rich planter who needed such a vehicle to carry him and his family from their mansion in the city to their perhaps quite as costly home on the plantation. The _calisero_, or driver, was dressed in a costume truly gorgeous, the horses were of the best, and the vehicle itself may have cost two thousand dollars or more. The operation of such a contrivance, extending, from the rear of the wheels to the horse's nose, for twenty feet or more, in the narrow streets of the old city, was a scientific problem, particularly in turning corners. Cuba was early in the field with a railway. In 1830, the United States had only thirty-two miles of line, the beginning of its present enormous system. Cuba's first railway was opened to traffic in November, 1837. It was a forty-five mile line connecting Havana with the town of Guines, southeast of the city. While official permission was, of course, necessary before the work could be undertaken, it was in fact a Cuban enterprise, due to the activity of the _Junta de Fomento_, or Society for Improvement. It was built with capital obtained in London, the construction being in charge of Mr. Alfred Cruger, an American engineer. Ten years later there were nearly three hundred miles of line. At the beginning of the American occupation, in 1899, there were about nine-hundred and fifty miles. There are now more than 2,000 miles of public service line in operation, and in addition there are many hundreds of miles of private lines on the sugar estates. Several cities have trolley lines. For some years after the American occupation, as before that experience, there was only a water-and-rail connection, or an all-water route, between the eastern and western sections of the island. The usual route from Havana to Santiago was by rail to Batabano or to Cienfuegos, and thence by steamer. The alternative was an all-water route, consuming several days, by steamer along the north coast, with halts at different ports, and around the eastern end of the island to the destination. It is now an all-rail run of twenty-four hours. The project for a "spinal railway" from one end of the island to the other had been under consideration for many years. The configuration lent itself excellently to such a system, and not at all well to any other. A railway map of such a system shows a line, generally, through the middle of the island along its length, with numerous branch lines running north and south to the various cities and ports on the coast. The plan, broadly, is being carried out. A combination of existing lines afforded a route to the city of Santa Clara. From these eastward, the Cuba Company, commonly known as the Van Home road, completed a through line in 1902. In its beginning, it was a highly ambitious scheme, involving the building of many towns along the way, the erection of many sugar mills, and the creation of a commercial city, at Nipe Bay, that would leave Havana in the back-number class. All that called for a sum of money not then and not now available. But the "spinal railroad" was built, and from it a number of radiating lines have been built, to Sancti Spiritus, Manzanillo, Nipe Bay, and to Guantanamo. About the only places on the island, really worth seeing, with the exception of Trinidad and Baracoa, can now be reached by a fairly comfortable railway journey. [Illustration: THE VOLANTE _Now quite rare_] In most of the larger cities of the island, a half dozen or so of them, the traveller is made fairly comfortable and is almost invariably well fed. But any question of physical comfort in hotels, more particularly in country hotels, raises a question of standards. As Touchstone remarked, when in the forest of Arden, "Travellers must be content." Those who are not ready to make themselves so, no matter what the surroundings, should stay at home, which, Touchstone also remarked, "is a better place." If the standard is the ostentatious structure of the larger cities of this country, with its elaborate menu and its systematized service, there will doubtless be cause for complaint. So will there be if the standard is the quiet, cleanly inn of many towns in this country and in parts of Europe. The larger towns and villages of the island have a _posada_ in which food and lodging may be obtained; the smaller places may or may not have "a place to stay." Cuba is not a land in which commercial travellers swarm everywhere, demanding comfort and willing to pay a reasonable price for it. However, few travellers and fewer tourists have any inclination to depart from known and beaten paths, or any reason for doing so. Nor does a fairly thorough inspection of the island necessitate any halting in out-of-the-way places where there is not even an imitation of an inn. All that one needs to see, and all that most care to see, can be seen in little tours, for a day, from the larger cities. Yet if one wants to wander a little in the by-paths, it is easy enough to do so. What one sees or does in Cuba will depend mainly upon the purpose of the visit, and upon the violence of the individual mania for seeing as many places as possible. If the object is merely an excursion or an escape from the rigors of a northern winter, there is no occasion for wandering out of sight of the capital city. There is more to see and more to do in Havana than there is in all the rest of the island. Nor is there much to be seen elsewhere that cannot be seen in the immediate vicinity of that city. This, of course, does not cover the matter of scenery. There are no mountains, no forest jungles in that neighborhood, but forests in Cuba are not particularly interesting, and even the mountains of Oriente are no more beautiful or majestic than are our own summits, our own White Hills of New Hampshire, the Adirondacks, the Blue Ridge, the Alleghenies, the Rockies, and the Sierras. The charm of Cuba, and it is extremely charming, is not its special "points of interest." It is rather a general impression, a combination of soft and genial climate with varying lights and shades and colors. Even after much experience there, I am not yet quite ready either to admit or to deny that the island, taken as a whole, is either beautiful or picturesque, and yet there is much of both. Attention is rarely challenged by the sublime or the majestic, but is often arrested by some play of light and shade. Cuban villages, with few exceptions, are unattractive, although there is not infrequently some particular building, usually a church, that calls for a second look or a careful examination. Most of these little communities consist of a row of low and ungraceful structures bordering the highway. They are usually extended by building on at the ends. If the town street gets undesirably long, a second street or a third will be made, on one or both sides of the main street, and thus the town acquires breadth as well as length. The houses are built immediately upon the roadside, and sidewalks are quite unusual. Nor, until the place becomes a large town or a small city, is there, in most cases, any attempt at decoration by means of shade trees. A tree may be left if there happened to be one when the village was born, but rarely do the inhabitants turn their streets into tree-shaded avenues. There would be an excellent opportunity for the activities of Village Improvement Societies in Cuba, if it were not for the fact that such tree-planting would involve pushing all the houses ten or fifteen feet back from the roadside. I have never studied the system of town building in the island, yet it is presumable that there was some such system. In the larger places, there is usually a central park around which are arranged the church, the public buildings, and the stores. Whether these were so constructed from an original plan, or whether they are an evolution, along a general plan, from the long, single street, I do not know. I am inclined to believe that the former was the case, and that it followed the location of a church. The custom is, of course, of Spanish origin, and is common throughout the greater part of Latin America. It finds a fair parallel in our own country custom, by no means infrequent, of an open "green" or common in front of the village church and the town hall. Tree-setting along the Cuban highways, more particularly in the neighborhood of the cities, is not at all unusual, and some of these shaded roads are exceedingly charming. Some are entirely over-arched by laurel trees and the gorgeous _flamboyan_, making long tunnels of shade "through whose broken roof the sky looks in." Evidently the Spanish authorities were too much interested in making money and enjoying themselves in the cities to care very much for what happened to the Cubans in the villages, as long as they paid the money that filled the official pocket and paid for the official entertainment, and the Cubans were too busy getting that money to have much time for village improvement. The Spaniards, following their home custom, might decorate a military highway to some extent, but the rough trail over which the peasant carried his little crop did not concern them. That was quite the business of the peasant who had neither the time nor money to do anything about it. The question of good roads in Cuba is very much what it is in this country. Cuba needs more good roads than its people can afford to build; so does the United States. At the time of the American occupation, in 1899, there were only 160 miles of improved highway in the entire island. Of this, 85 miles were in Havana Province, and 75 miles in Pinar del Rio. The remainder of the island had none. Some work was done during the First Intervention and more was done under the Palma government. At the time of the Second Intervention, there were about 380 miles. That is, the United States and the Cuban Republic built, in six years, nearly 40 per cent, more highway than the Spanish authorities built in four hundred years. During the Palma regime, plans were drawn for an extensive road system, to be carried out as rapidly as the financial resources permitted. Not unlike similar proceedings in this country, in river and harbor work and public buildings, politics came into the matter and, like our own under similar circumstances, each Congressman insisted that some of such work as could immediately be undertaken, some of the money that could be immediately spent, should benefit his particular district. The result was that what was done by the Cubans was somewhat scattered, short stretches built here and there, new bridges built when there might or might not be a usable road to them. The Cuban plan involved, for its completion, a period of years and a large appropriation. It called for comparatively small yearly appropriations for many roads, for more than four hundred different projects. Then came the Second Intervention, in 1906, with what has seemed to many of us an utterly unwise and unwarranted expenditure for the completion of certain selected projects included in the Cuban plan. It may be granted that the roads were needed, some of them very much needed, but there are thousands of miles of unconstructed but much needed roads in the United States. Yet, in this country, Federal, State, county, and town treasuries are not drained to their last dollar, and their credit strained, to build those roads. From the drain on its financial resources, the island will recover, but the misfortune appears in the setting of a standard for Federal expenditure, in its total for all purposes amounting to about $40,000,000 a year, far beyond the reasonable or proper bearing power of the island. But the work was done, the money spent, and the Cubans were committed to more work and to further expenditure. I find no data showing with exactness the mileage completed by the Magoon government, which came to an end in January, 1909, but a Cuban official report made at the end of 1910 shows that the combined activities of the respective administrations, Spanish, American, and Cuban, had given the island, at that time, practically a thousand miles of improved highway, distributed throughout the island. To see the real Cuba, one must get into the country. Havana is the principal city, and for many it is the most interesting place on the island, but it is no more Cuba than Paris is France or than New York is the United States. The real Cuba is rural; the real Cuban is a countryman, a man of the soil. If he is rich, he desires to measure his possessions in _caballerias_ of 33-1/3 acres; if poor, in _hectareas_ of 2-1/2 acres. I do not recall any Cuban cartoon representing the Cuban people that was not a picture of the peasant, the _guajiro_. Cuba, as a political organism, is shown as a quite charming _senorita_, but _el pueblo Cubano_, the Cuban people, are shown as the man of the fields. With the present equipment of railroads, trolley lines, automobile busses, and highways, little excursions are easily made in a day. The railways, trolleys, and automobile busses are unsatisfactory means of locomotion for sight-seeing. The passenger is rushed past the very sights that would be of the greatest interest. To most of us, a private hired automobile is open to the very serious objection of its expensiveness, an item that may sometimes be reduced by division. It has been my good fortune in more recent years to be whirled around in cars belonging to friends but my favorite trip in earlier days is, I presume, still open to those who may care to make it. I have recommended it to many, and have taken a number with me over the route. It is an easy one-day excursion of about sixty miles, by rail to Guanajay, by carriage to Marianao, and return to Havana by rail. Morning trains run to Guanajay, through a region generally attractive and certainly interesting to the novice, by way of Rincon and San Antonio de los Banos, a somewhat roundabout route, but giving a very good idea of the country, its plantations, villages, and peasant homes. At Guanajay, an early lunch, or a late breakfast, may be obtained at the hotel, before or after an inspection of the town itself, a typical place with its little central park, its old church, and typical residences. Inquiry regarding the transportation to Marianao by carriage should not be too direct. It should be treated as a mere possibility depending upon a reasonable charge. I have sometimes spent a very pleasant hour in intermittent bargaining with the competitors for the job, although knowing very well what I would pay and what they would finally accept. Amiably conducted, as such discussions should be in Cuba, the chaffering becomes a matter of mutual entertainment. A bargain concluded, a start may be made about noon for a drive over a good road, through a series of typical villages, to Marianao, in time for a late afternoon train to Havana, reaching there in ample time for dinner. Along the road from Guanajay to Marianao, Maceo swept with ruthless hand in 1896, destroying Spanish property. Here the Spaniards, no less ruthless, destroyed the property of Cubans. It is now a region of peaceful industry, and little or nothing remains to indicate its condition when I first saw it. The little villages along the way were in ruins, the fields were uncultivated, and there were no cattle. At intervals there stood the walls of what had been beautiful country estates. Only one of many was left standing. At intervals, also, stood the Spanish blockhouses. All along that route, in 1906, were the insurrectos of the unfortunate experience of that year. In the village of Caimito, a short distance from Guanajay, along that road, I visited Pino Guerra at his then headquarters when he and his forces so menaced Havana that Secretary Taft, in his capacity of Peace Commissioner, ordered their withdrawal to a greater distance. The trip by rail and road, exhibits most of Cuba's special characteristics. There are fields of sugar cane and fields of tobacco, country villages and peasant homes, fruits and vegetables, ceiba trees, royal palms, cocoanut palms, and mango trees. There is no other trip, as easily made, where so much can be seen. But there are other excursions in the vicinity, for many reasons best made by carriage or by private hired automobile. Within fifteen miles or so of the city, are places like Calvario, Bejucal, and Managua, all reached by good highways through interesting and typical country, and all well illustrating the real life of the real Cubans. It was in the vicinity of those places that Maximo Gomez operated in 1895 and 1896, terrorizing Havana by menacing it from the south and the east while Maceo threatened it from the west. Another short and pleasant trip can be made around the head of the harbor to Guanabacoa, and thence to Cojimar. Another interesting and easily reached point is Guines, a good example of places of its size and class. Of Cuba's larger cities, there are a score that would demand attention in a guide-book. Just as there is a certain similarity in most American cities, in that they are collections of business and residence buildings of generally similar architecture, so is there a certain sameness in most of Cuba's cities. To see two or three of them is to get a general idea of all, although each has its particular features, some particular building, or some special charm of surroundings. The most difficult of access are Baracoa, the oldest city of the island, and Trinidad, founded only a few years later. Glancing at some of these places, in their order from west to east, the first is Pinar del Rio, a comparatively modern city, dating really from the second half of the 18th Century. It owes its past and its present importance to its location as a centre of the tobacco region of the _Vuelta Abajo_. From comfortable headquarters here, excursions can be made, by rail or road, through what is perhaps the most attractive, and not the least interesting section of the island. To the north are the Organ Mountains and the picturesque town of Vinales, one of the most charming spots, in point of scenery, in Cuba. To the west, by rail, is Guane, the oldest settlement in western Cuba, and all around are beautiful hills and cultivated valleys. Eastward from Havana, the first city of importance is Matanzas. Here is much to interest and much to charm, the city itself, its harbor, its two rivers, the famous valley of the Yumuri, and the caves of Bellamar. The city, founded in 1693, lies along the shore of the bay and rises to the higher ground of the hills behind it. It lies about sixty miles from Havana, and is easily reached by rail or by automobile. The next city in order, also on the north coast, is Cardenas, a modern place, settled in 1828, and owing its importance to its convenience as a shipping port for the numerous sugar estates in its vicinity, an importance now somewhat modified by the facilities for rail shipment to other harbors. Seventy-five miles or so further eastward is Sagua la Grande, another point of former convenience as a shipping point for sugar. The city itself is located on a river, or estuary, some ten or twelve miles from its mouth. Forty miles or so further on are Remedies and Caibarien, a few miles apart, the latter on the coast and the former a few miles inland. Caibarien, like Cardenas and Sagua, is chiefly notable as a sugar port, while Remedios is the centre of one of the great tobacco districts, producing a leaf of good quality but generally inferior to the _Partidos_ of Havana Province, and quite inferior to the famous _Vuelta Abajo_. Southward of this region, and about midway the width of the island, somewhat more than two hundred miles eastward of Havana, is the city of Santa Clara, better known in the island as Villa Clara. The city dates its existence from 1689. It lies surrounded by rolling hills and expansive valleys, but in the absence of extensive plantations in its immediate environs, one is led to wonder just why so pleasant a place should be there, and why it should have reached its present proportions. For the tourist who wants to "see it all," it is an excellent and most comfortable central headquarters. [Illustration: A VILLAGE STREET _Calvario, Havana Province_] From Villa Clara it is only a short run to Cienfuegos, the "city of a hundred fires," a modern place, only about a hundred years old. There is every probability that Columbus entered the harbor in 1494, and perhaps no less probability that Ocampo entered in 1508, on his voyage around the island. The harbor extends inland for several miles, with an irregular shore line, behind which rises a border line of hills. The city itself is some four or five miles from the entrance to the harbor. It came into existence, and still exists, chiefly by reason of the sugar business. It is an important outlet for that industry, and many estates are in its near vicinity. The old city of Trinidad is reached, by boat, from Cienfuegos, or rather its port city, Casilda, is so reached. Presumably, it was the port city that Velasquez founded in 1514, a location a few miles inland being chosen later, as being less exposed to attacks by the pirates and freebooters who infested the Caribbean Sea for many years. It is said that Cortes landed here and recruited his forces on his way to Mexico, in 1518. The city itself stands on the lower slopes of the hills that form its highly effective background. Its streets are narrow and tortuous. Like most of the cities of the island, and most of the cities of the world, it has its humble homes of the poor, and its mansions of the rich. Immediately behind it stands a hill with an elevation of about nine hundred feet above sea-level. Its name indicates the reason for its application, _La Vigia_, the "lookout," or the "watch-tower." From its summit, we may assume that the people of earlier times scanned the horizon for any sign of approaching pirates by whom they might be attacked. It serves a more satisfactory purpose nowadays in that it affords one of the loveliest panoramic views to be found anywhere in Cuba. Not far away, and accessible from the city, is the Pico de Potrerillo, about 3,000 feet elevation, the highest point in Central Cuba. Northeast of Trinidad, and reached by rail from Villa Clara, is Sancti Spiritus, Trinidad's rival in antiquity, both having been founded, by Velasquez, in the same year. Here also are narrow, crooked streets in a city of no mean attractions, although it lacks the picturesque charm of its rival in age. It is an inland city, about twenty-five miles from the coast, but even that did not protect it from attack by the pirates. It was several times the victim of their depredations. VII _AROUND THE ISLAND: Continued_ The next city, eastward, is Camaguey, in many ways doubtless the best worth a visit, next to Havana, of any city on the island. It is a place of interesting history and, for me personally, a place of somewhat mixed recollections. The history may wait until I have told my story. I think it must have been on my third visit to the island, early in 1902. On my arrival in Havana, I met my friend Charles M. Pepper, a fellow laborer in the newspaper field. He at once informed me that he and I were to start the next morning for a three or four weeks' journey around the island. It was news to me, and the fact that my baggage, excepting the suitcase that I carried, had failed to come on the boat that brought me, led me to demur. My objections were overruled on the ground that we could carry little baggage anyway, and all that was needed could be bought before starting, or along the way. The next morning saw us on the early train for Matanzas. We spent a week or ten days in that city, in Cardenas, Sagua, Santa Clara, and Cienfuegos, renewing former acquaintance and noting the changes effected by the restoration from the war period. That was before the completion of the Cuba Railway. To get to Camaguey, then known as Puerto Principe, we took the steamer at Cienfuegos and journeyed along the coast to Jucaro. There, because of shallow water, we were dropped into a shore boat some four or five miles from the coast, and there our troubles began. Fortunately, it was early morning. We got something to eat and some coffee, which is almost invariably good in Cuba, but when we meet nowadays we have a laugh over that breakfast at Jucaro. I don't know, and really don't care, what the place is now. After some hours of waiting, we secured passage in an antiquated little car attached to a freight train carrying supplies and structural material to Ciego de Avila, for use by the railway then being built in both directions, eastward and westward from that point. The line that there crosses the island from north to south was built in the time of the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) as a barrier against the revolutionists operating in eastern Cuba. It was restored for use in the revolution of 1895, but its blockhouses at every kilometre, and its barbed wire tangles, were entirely ineffective against Gomez and Maceo and other leaders, all of whom crossed it at their own sweet will, although not without an occasional vicious little contest. We reached Ciego de Avila soon after noon, and had to wait there over night for a further advance. The place is now a thriving little city, but it was then a somewhat sprawling village with a building that was called a hotel. But we got food and drink and beds, all that is really necessary for experienced campaigners. For the next two days, Old Man Trouble made himself our personal companion and did not lose sight of us for a single minute. Through personal acquaintance with the railway officials, we obtained permission to travel over the line, on any and all trains, as far as it was then built, some forty miles or so toward Camaguey. Through them, also, we arranged for saddle horses to meet us at railhead for the remainder of the journey. There were no trains except construction trains carrying rails, ties, lumber, and other materials. We boarded the first one out in the morning. We had our choice of riding on any of those commodities that we might select. There was not even a caboose. We chose a car of lumber as the most promising. For four or five hours we crawled through that country, roasting and broiling on that pile of planks, but the ties and the rails were even hotter. The only way we could keep a place cool enough to sit on was by sitting on it. I once occupied a stateroom next to the steamer's funnel. I have seen, day after day, the pitch bubble between the planks of a steamer's deck in the Indian Ocean. I have been in other places that I thought plenty hot enough, but never have I been so thoroughly cooked as were my companion and I perched on the lumber pile. On top of that, or rather on top of us, there poured a constant rain of cinders from the locomotive puffing away a few cars ahead of us. The road-bed was rough, and at times we had to hang on for our very lives. We can laugh about it now, but, at the time, it was no joke. At last we reached the end of the line, somewhere in a hot Cuban forest, but there were no horses. We watched the operation of railway building, and took turns in anathematizing, in every language of which we had any knowledge, the abandoned ruffian who failed to appear with those horses. Before night, we were almost ready to wish that he had died on the way. At last he came. Our baggage was loaded on a pack-horse; we mounted and rode gallantly on our way. We had about thirty miles to cover by that or some other means of locomotion. Before we had gone a mile, we developed a clear understanding of the reasons for the sale of those horses by the Government of the United States, but why the United States Army ever bought them for cavalry mounts we could not even imagine. There was no road. Most of the way we followed the partly constructed road-bed for the new railway, making frequent detours, through field or jungle, to get around gaps or places of impossible roughness. Before we had covered two miles, we began to wish that the man who sent those horses, a Spaniard, by the way, might be doomed to ride them through all eternity under the saddles with which they were equipped. We were sorry enough for the poor brutes, but sorrier still for ourselves. For several days, I limped in misery from a long row of savage blisters raised on my leg by rawhide knots with which my saddle had been repaired. An hour after starting, we were overtaken by a heavy thunder-shower. At nightfall, after having covered about fifteen wretched miles, we reached a construction camp where an American nobleman, disguised as a section-boss, gave us food and lodging in the little palm-leaf shack that served as his temporary home. It was barely big enough for one, but he made it do for three. [Illustration: STREET AND CHURCH _Camaguey_] Early in the morning, we resumed our journey, plodding along as best we could over a half-graded "right-of-way." A couple of hours brought us to a larger construction camp where we halted for such relief as we could secure. We then were some twelve or fourteen miles from our destination. We discussed the wisdom of making the rest of the way on foot, as preferable to that particular kind of saddle-work, leaving our baggage to come along with the horses when it might. But fortune smiled, or it may have been just a grimace. Word came that a team, two horses and a wagon, would go to the city that afternoon, and there would be room for us. We told our pilot, the man with the horses, just what we thought of him and all his miserable ancestors, gave him a couple of _pesos_, and rejoiced over our prospects of better fortune. But it proved to be only an escape from the fire into the frying-pan. I have driven over many miles of South African _veldt_, straight "across lots," in all comfort, but while the general topography of Camaguey puts it somewhat into the _veldt_ class, its immediate surface did not in the least remind me of the South African plateau. The trip was little short of wonderful for its bumpiness. We got to Camaguey sore and bruised but, as far as we could discover, physically intact, and, having arrived, may now return to its history and description. May no "gentle reader" who scans these pages repeat our experience in getting there. It is supposed that here, or immediately here-about, was the place of "fifty houses and a thousand people" encountered by the messengers of Columbus, when he sent them inland to deliver official letters of introduction to the gorgeous ruler of the country in which he thought he was. Different writers tell different stories about the settlement of the place, but there is no doubt that it was among the earliest to be settled. Columbus gave to a harbor in that vicinity, in all probability the Bay of Nuevitas, the name Puerto del Principe, or Port of the Prince. He called the islands of the neighborhood the Gardens of the King. On that bay, about 1514, Diego Velasquez founded a city, probably the present Nuevitas, which he is said to have called Santa Maria. Somewhere from two to ten years later, an inland settlement was made. This developed into the city that was afterward given the name of Santa Maria del Puerto del Principe, now very properly changed to the old Indian name of Camaguey. If the idea of an inland location was, as it is said to have been, protection against pirates and buccaneers, it was not altogether a success. The distinguished pirate, Mr. Henry Morgan, raided the place very effectively in 1668, securing much loot. In his book, published in 1871, Mr. Hazard says: "Puerto Principe (the present Camaguey) is, probably, the oldest, quaintest town on the island,--in fact, it may be said to be a finished town, as the world has gone on so fast that the place seems a million years old, and from its style of dress, a visitor might think he was put back almost to the days of Columbus." There have been changes since that time, but the old charm is still there, the narrow and crooked streets, forming almost a labyrinth, the old buildings, and much else that I earnestly hope may never be changed. There is now an up-to-date hotel, connected with the railway company, but if I were to go there again and the old hotel was habitable, I know I should go where I first stayed, and where we occupied a huge barrack-like room charged on our bill as "_habitaciones preferentes_," the state chamber. It had a dirty tiled floor, and was the home of many fleas, but there was something about it that I liked. I do not mean to say that all of Camaguey, "the city of the plain," is lovely, or picturesque or even interesting. No more is all of Paris, or Budapest, or Amsterdam, or Washington. They are only so in some of their component parts, but it is those parts that remain in the memory. The country around the city is a vast plain, for many years, and still, a grazing country, a land of horses and cattle. The charm is in the city itself. If I could see only one place outside of Havana, I would see Camaguey. A little less than fifty miles to the north is Nuevitas, reached by one of the first railways built in Cuba, now if ever little more than the port city for its larger neighbor. Columbus became somewhat ecstatic over the region. Perhaps it was then more charming, or the season more favorable, than when I saw it. I do not recall any feeling of special enthusiasm about its scenic charms. Perhaps I should have discovered them had I stayed longer. Perhaps I should have been more impressed had it not been for the impressions of Camaguey. I saw Nuevitas only briefly on my way eastward on that memorable excursion by construction train and saddle. The only route then available was by boat along the north shore, and it was there that we caught the steamer for Santiago. That sail along the coast would have afforded greater pleasure had it lacked the noisy presence of an itinerant opera company whose members persisted, day and night, in exercising their lungs to the accompaniment of an alleged piano in the cabin. I have a far more pleasant recollection, or rather a memory because it stays with me, of music in those waters. The transport on which I went to Porto Rico, in the summer of 1898, carried, among other troops, a battery of light artillery. It had an unusually good bugler, and his sounding of "taps" on those soft, starlit nights remains with me as one of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard. The shrieks, squalls, and roars of those opera people were in a wholly different class. About seventy-five miles east of Nuevitas is Gibara, merely a shipping port for the inland city of Holguin. The former is only one of a number of such places found along the coast. Most of them are attractive in point of surrounding scenery, but little or not at all attractive in themselves, being mere groups of uninteresting structures of the conventional type. Holguin is perhaps two hundred years old, quite pleasantly situated, but affording no special points of interest for the tourist. The city is now easily reached by a branch of the Cuba Railway. It is worth the visit of those who "want to see it all." Beyond Gibara is Nipe Bay, not improbably the first Cuban harbor entered by Columbus. Nipe Bay and its near neighbor, Banes Bay, are the centres of what is now the greatest industrial activity of any part of the island. Here, recent American investment is measured in scores of millions of dollars. Here, in the immediate neighborhood, are some of the largest sugar plantations and mills on the island, the Boston and the Preston. A little to the west of Gibara are two others, Chaparra and Delicias. Hitherto, the western half of the island has been, the great producing district, but present indications point to a not distant time when the eastern district will rival and, it may be, outstrip the section of older development. The foundation is already laid for an extensive enterprise. Nature has afforded one of the finest land-locked harbors in the world at Nipe, and another, though smaller, a few miles away, at Banes. The region now has railroad connection with practically all parts of the island. Around those bays are sugar lands, tobacco lands, fruit lands, and a few miles inland are the vast iron ore beds that, as they are developed, will afford employment for an army of workmen. Nipe Bay is the natural commercial outlet for a vast area of richly productive soil. At present, the region affords nothing of special interest except its industrial activities, its miles and miles of sugar cane, its huge mills, and the villages built to house its thousands of workmen. Seventy-five miles or so eastward of Nipe, lies one of the most charming and interesting spots on the island. This is old Baracoa, the oldest settlement on the island, now to be reached only by water or by the roughest of journeys over mountain trails. The town itself does not amount to much, but the bay is a gem, a little, circular basin, forest-shaded to its border, its waters clear as crystal. Behind it rise the forest-clad hills, step on step, culminating in _el Yunque_, "the anvil," with an elevation of about eighteen hundred feet. Baracoa is supposed to be the place about which Columbus wrote one of his most glowing and extravagant eulogies. Whether it is really worth the time and the discomfort of a special trip to see it, is perhaps somewhat doubtful. It is a place of scenery and sentiment, and little else. There is an old fort on a hilltop, not particularly picturesque, and an old church in which is a cross quite doubtfully reported as having been furnished by Columbus. Sometime, years hence, there will be easier communication, and the fertile hillsides and still more fertile valleys will supply various produces for consumption in the United States. About twenty-five miles east of Baracoa is the end of the island, Cape Maisi. Swinging around that, the coasting steamers turn due west along the shore to Santiago, passing the harbor of Guantanamo, with its United States naval station. That place is reached by rail from Santiago, a highly picturesque route through the Guantanamo valley. Besides the naval station, the place is a shipping port, affording nothing of special interest to the traveller who has seen other and more easily accessible cities of its type. It always seems to me that Santiago, or more properly Santiago de Cuba, would be more engaging if we could forget the more recent history of this city, known to most Cubans as Cuba (pronounced Cooba). No doubt, it is a much better place in which to live than it was twenty years ago, and much of its old charm remains. Its setting cannot be changed. It is itself a hillside town, surrounded by hills, with real mountains on its horizon. The old cathedral, a dominant structure, has been quite a little patched up in recent years, and shows the patches. The houses, big and little, are still painted in nearly all the shades of the spectrum. But there is a seeming change, doubtless psychological rather than physical. One sees, in imagination, Cervera's squadron "bottled up" in the beautiful harbor, while Sampson's ships lie outside waiting for it to come out. It is difficult to forget San Juan Hill and El Caney, a few miles behind the city, and remember only its older stories. A good deal of history has been made here in the last four hundred years. Its pages show such names as Velasquez, Grijalva, Hernan Cortes, and Narvaez, and centuries later, Cespedes, Marti, and Palma. Here was enacted the grim tragedy of the _Virginius_, and here was the conflict that terminated Spain's once vast dominion in the western world. My own impression is that most of its history has already been written, that it will have no important future. As a port of shipment, I think it must yield to the new port, Nipe Bay, on the north coast. It is merely a bit of commercial logic, the question of a sixty-mile rail-haul as compared with a voyage around the end of the island. Santiago will not be wiped from the map, but I doubt its long continuance as the leading commercial centre of eastern Cuba. It is also a fairly safe prediction that the same laws of commercial logic will some day operate to drain northward the products of the fertile valley of the Cauto, and the region behind old Manzanillo and around the still older Bayamo. [Illustration: COBRE _Oriente Province_] Except the places earlier mentioned, Jucaro, Trinidad and Cienfuegos, there are no southern ports to the west until Batabano is reached, immediately south of, and only a few miles from, the city of Havana. It is a shallow harbor, of no commercial importance. It serves mainly as the centre of a sponge-fishing industry, and as a point of departure for the Isle of Pines, and for ports on the south coast. The Isle of Pines is of interest for a number of reasons, among which are its history, its mineral springs, its delightful climate, and an American colony that has made much trouble in Washington. Columbus landed there in 1494, and gave it the name _La Evangelista_. It lies about sixty miles off the coast, almost due south from Havana. Between the island and the mainland lies a labyrinth of islets and keys, many of them verdure-clad. Its area is officially given as 1,180 square miles. There seems no doubt that, at some earlier time, it formed a part of the main island, with which it compares in geologic structure and configuration. It is now, in effect, two islands connected by a marsh; the northern part being broken and hilly, and the southern part low, flat, and sandy, probably a comparatively recently reclaimed coralline plain. The island has been, at various times, the headquarters of bands of pirates, a military hospital, a penal institution, and a source of political trouble. It is now a Cuban island the larger part of which is owned by Americans. It is a part of the province of Havana, and will probably so remain as long as Cuba is Cuba. My personal investigations of the disputed question of the political ownership of the island began early in 1899. I then reached a conclusion from which I have not since seen any reason to depart. The island was then, had always been, and is now, as much a part of Cuba as Long Island and Key West have been and are parts of the United States. Just who it was that first raised the question of ownership, none of us who investigated the matter at the time of its particular acuteness, was able to determine satisfactorily, although some of us had a well-defined suspicion. The man is now dead, and I shall not give his name. Article I, of the Treaty of Paris, of December 10, 1898, presumably disposes of the Cuban area; Article II refers to Porto Rico; and Article III refers to the Philippines. The issue regarding the Isle of Pines was raised under Article II, presumably referring only to Porto Rico. A slight but possibly important difference appears in the Spanish and the English versions. The English text reads that "Spain cedes ... the island of Porto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty" etc. The Spanish text, literally translated runs: "Spain cedes ... the island of Porto Rico and the others that are now under its sovereignty." The obvious reference of the article is to Mona, Viequez, and Culebra, all small islands in Porto Rican waters. But the question was raised and was vigorously discussed. An official map was issued showing the island as American territory. Americans jumped in, bought up large tracts, and started a lively real estate boom. They advertised it widely as American territory, and many put their little collections of dollars into it. The claim of Spanish cession was afterward denied in the very document that served to keep the issue alive for a number of years. Article VI of the Platt Amendment, which the Cubans accepted with marked reluctance, declared that the island was omitted from the boundaries of Cuba, and that the title and ownership should be left to future adjustment by treaty. But no alternative appears between cession and no cession. Had the island become definitely American territory by cession, its alienation, by such a step, would not have been possible. When we left Cuba, in 1902, the official instructions from Washington were that the Isle of Pines would remain under a _de facto_ American government. President Palma, accepting the transfer, expressed his understanding that it would "continue _de facto_ under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Cuba." In some way, the departing American authority failed to leave any agent or representative of the _de facto_ government of the United States, and the Cubans included the island in their new administration, very properly. When the treaty proposed by the Platt Amendment came before the United States Senate, it hung fire, and finally found lodgment in one of the many pigeon-holes generously provided for the use of that august body. There it may probably be found today, a record and nothing more. Why? For the very simple reason that some of the resident claimants for American ownership sent up a consignment of cigars made on the island from tobacco grown on the island, and refused to pay duty on them. The ground of refusal was that they were a domestic product, sent from one port in the United States to another port in the same country, and therefore not dutiable. The case of Pearcy _vs_ Stranahan, the former representing the shippers, and the latter being the Collector of the Port of New York, came before the Supreme Court of the United States, and that final authority decided and declared that the Isle of Pines was Cuban territory and a part of Cuba. The question is settled, and the Isle of Pines can become territory of the United States only by purchase, conquest, or some other form of territorial transfer. While the American settlers in the Isle of Pines, and the several real-estate companies who seek purchasers for their holdings, own a large part of the territory, they still constitute a minority of the population. Many of the settlers, probably most of them, are industrious and persistent in their various productive activities. Their specialty is citrus fruits, but their products are not limited to that line. More than a few have tried their little experiment in pioneering, and have returned to their home land more or less disgusted with their experience. Those who have remained, and have worked faithfully and intelligently, have probably done a little better than they would have done at home. The great wealth for which all, doubtless, earnestly hoped, and in which many, doubtless, really believed, has not come. This settlement is only one of many speculative exploitations in Cuba. Some of these have been fairly honest, but many of them have been little better than rank swindles. Many have been entirely abandoned, the buyers losing the hard-earned dollars they had invested. Others, better located, have been developed, by patience, persistence, and thrift, into fairly prosperous colonies. I do not know how many victims have been caught by unscrupulous and ignorant promoters in the last fifteen years, principally in the United States and in Canada, but they are certainly many, so many that the speculative industry has declined in recent years. Many of the settlers who have remained have learned the game, have discovered that prosperity in Cuba is purchased by hard work just as it is elsewhere. In different parts of the island, east, west, and centre, there are now thrifty and contented colonists who have fought their battle, and have learned the rules that nature has formulated as the condition of success in such countries. Whether these people have really done any better than they would have done had they stayed at home and followed the rules there laid down, is perhaps another question. At all events, there are hundreds of very comfortable and happy American homes in Cuba, even in the Isle of Pines, where they persist in growling because it is Cuba and not the United States. In a review of a country including forty-four thousand square miles of territory, condensed into two chapters, it is quite impossible to include all that is worth telling. Moreover, there is much in the island of which no adequate description can be given. There is much that must be seen if it if to be fairly understood and appreciated. VIII _THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA_ IN his message to Congress, on December 5, 1898, President McKinley declared that "the new Cuba yet to arise from the ashes of the past must needs be bound to us by ties of singular intimacy and strength if its enduring welfare is to be assured." Probably to many of the people of the United States, the story of our relations with Cuba had its beginning with the Spanish-American war. That is quite like a notion that the history of an apple begins with its separation from the tree on which it grew. The general history of the island is reviewed in other chapters in this volume. The story of our active relations with Cuba and its affairs runs back for more than a hundred years, at least to the days of President Thomas Jefferson who, in 1808, wrote thus to Albert Gallatin: "I shall sincerely lament Cuba's falling into any other hands but those of its present owners." Several other references to the island appear at about that time. Two great movements were then going on. Europe was in the throes of the Napoleonic disturbance, and for more than twenty-five years both France and England schemed, sometimes openly and sometimes secretly, for the possession of Cuba. The other movement was the revolution in Spain's colonies in the Western Hemisphere, a movement that cost Spain all of its possessions in that area, with the exception of Cuba and Porto Rico. The influence of the revolutionary activities naturally extended to Cuba, but it was not until after 1820 that matters became dangerously critical. From that time until the present, the question of Cuba's political fate, and the question of our relations with the island, form an interesting and highly important chapter in the history of the United States as well as in the history of Cuba. In his book on the war with Spain, Henry Cabot Lodge makes a statement that may seem curious to some and amazing to others. It is, however, the opinion of a competent and thoroughly trained student of history. He writes thus: "The expulsion of Spain from the Antilles is merely the last and final step of the inexorable movement in which the United States has been engaged for nearly a century. By influence and by example, or more directly, by arms and by the pressure of ever-advancing settlements, the United States drove Spain from all her continental possessions in the Western Hemisphere, until nothing was left to the successors of Charles and Philip but Cuba and Porto Rico. How did it happen that this great movement stopped when it came to the ocean's edge? The movement against Spain was at once national and organic, while the pause on the sea-coast was artificial and in contravention of the laws of political evolution in the Americas. The conditions in Cuba and Porto Rico did not differ from those which had gone down in ruin wherever the flag of Spain waved on the mainland. The Cubans desired freedom, and Bolivar would fain have gone to their aid. Mexico and Colombia, in 1825, planned to invade the island, and at that time invasion was sure to be successful. What power stayed the oncoming tide which had swept over a continent? Not Cuban loyalty, for the expression 'Faithful Cuba' was a lie from the beginning. The power which prevented the liberation of Cuba was the United States, and more than seventy years later this republic has had to fight a war because at the appointed time she set herself against her own teachings, and brought to a halt the movement she had herself started to free the New World from the oppression of the Old. The United States held back Mexico and Colombia and Bolivar, used her influence at home and abroad to that end, and, in the opinion of contemporary mankind, succeeded, according to her desires, in keeping Cuba under the dominion of Spain." For a number of years, Cuba's destiny was a subject of the gravest concern in Washington. Four solutions presented themselves; first, the acquisition of Cuba by the United States; second, its retention by Spain; third, its transfer to some power other than Spain; fourth, its political independence. That the issue was decided by the United States is shown by all the history of the time. While other factors had their influence in the determination, it is entirely clear that the issue turned on the question of slavery. In his book on _Cuba and International Relations_, Mr. Callahan summarizes his review of the official proceedings by saying that "the South did not want to see Cuba independent _without_ slavery, while the North did not want to annex it _with_ slavery." In his work on the _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, Mr. Henry Wilson declares that "thus clearly and unequivocally did this Republic step forth the champion of slavery, and boldly insist that these islands should remain under the hateful despotism of Spain, rather than gain their independence by means that should inure to the detriment of its cherished system. Indeed, it (the United States) would fight to fasten more securely the double bondage on Cuba and the slave." From this point of view, unquestionably correct, it is altogether evident that the United States assumed responsibility for Cuba's welfare, not by the intervention of 1898, but by its acts more than seventy years earlier. The diplomatic records of those years are filled with communications regarding the island, and it was again and again the subject of legislation or proposed legislation. President after President dealt with it in messages to Congress. The acquisition of the island, by purchase or otherwise, was again and again discussed. Popular interest was again and again excited; the Spanish colonial policy was denounced; and the burdens and sufferings of the Cubans were depicted in many harrowing tales. For the policy that led to the imposition of a restraining hand on proposals to free Cuba, in those early days, the people of the United States today must blush. The independence movement in the States of Spanish-America may be said to have had its definite beginning in 1806, when Francisco Miranda, a Venezuelan, sailed from New York with three ships manned by American filibusters, although the first land battle was fought in Bolivia, in 1809, and the last was fought in the same country, in 1825. But the great wave swept from the northern border of Mexico to the southernmost point of Spanish possession. When these States declared their independence, they wrote into their Constitutions that all men should be free, that human slavery should be abolished forever from their soil. The attitude of the United States in the matter of Cuba was determined by the objection to the existence of an anti-slavery State so near our border. The experience of Haiti and Santo Domingo was, of course, clearly in mind, but the objection went deeper than that. Those who are interested may read with profit the debates in the Congress of the United States, in 1826, on the subject of the despatch of delegates to the so-called Panama Congress-of that year. On the whole, it is not pleasant reading from any present point of view. Our cherished Monroe Doctrine was one of the fruits of this period, and in the enunciation of that policy the affairs of Cuba were a prominent if not the dominant force. The language of this doctrine is said to have been written by Secretary Adams, but it is embodied in the message of President Monroe, in December, 1823, and so bears his name. In April, of that year, Secretary Adams sent a long communication to Mr. Nelson, then the American Minister to Spain. For their bearing on the Cuban question, and for the presentation of a view that runs through many years of American policy, extracts from that letter may be included here. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, April 28, 1823. "In the war between France and Spain, now commencing, other interests, peculiarly ours, will, in all probability, be deeply involved. Whatever may be the issue of this war, as between these two European powers, it may be taken for granted that the dominion of Spain upon the American continent, north and south, is irrecoverably gone. But the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico still remain nominally, and so far really, dependent upon her, that she possesses the power of transferring her own dominion over them, together with the possession of them, to others. These islands, from their local position are natural appendages to the North American continent, and one of them, Cuba, almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations, has become an object of transcendant importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union. Its commanding position, with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the West India seas; the character of its population; its situation midway between our southern coast and the island of St. Domingo; its safe and capacious harbor of the Havana, fronting a long line of our shores destitute of the same advantage; the nature of its productions and of its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profitable and mutually beneficial,--give it an importance in the sum of our national interests with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared, and little inferior to that which binds the different members of this Union together. Such, indeed, are the interests of that island and of this country, the geographical, commercial, moral, and political relations, that, in looking forward to the probable course of events, for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself." The communication proceeds to relate the knowledge of the Department that both Great Britain and France were desirous of securing possession and control of the island, and to disclaim, on the part of the United States, all disposition to obtain possession of either Cuba or Porto Rico. The complications of the situation became increasingly serious, more particularly with regard to Cuba, and on December 2, of that year (1823), President Monroe issued his message carrying the "doctrine," which may be given thus: "In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparations for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers (of Europe) to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments that have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have recognized, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." From this time onward, Cuba appears as an almost continuous object of special interest to both the people and the officials of the United States. Notwithstanding this disclaimer of President Monroe's message, the idea of the acquisition of the island, by the United States, soon arose. It persisted through all the years down to the time of the Teller amendment, in 1898, and there are many who even now regard annexation as inevitable at some future time, more or less distant. The plan appears as a suggestion in a communication, under date of November 30, 1825, from Alexander H. Everett, then Minister to Madrid, to President Adams. It crops up repeatedly in various quarters in later years. It would be a difficult and tedious undertaking to chase through all the diplomatic records of seventy years the references to Cuba and its affairs. From that period until the present time, the affairs of the island have been a matter of constant interest and frequent anxiety in Washington. Fear of British acquisition of the island appears to have subsided about 1860, but there were in the island two groups, both relatively small, one of them working for independence, and the other for annexation to the United States. The great majority, however, desired some fair measure of self-government, and relief from economic and financial burdens, under the Spanish flag. The purchase of the island by the United States was proposed by President Polk, in 1848; by President Pierce, in 1854; and by President Buchanan, in his time. Crises appeared from time to time. Among them was the incident of the _Black Warrior_, in 1854. Mr. Rhodes thus describes the affair, in his _History of the United States_: "_The Black Warrior_ was an American merchant steamer, plying between Mobile and New York, stopping at Havana for passengers and mail. She had made thirty-six such voyages, almost always having a cargo for the American port, and never being permitted to bring freight into Havana. The custom of her agent was to clear her 'in ballast' the day before her arrival. The practice, while contrary to the regulations of Cuban ports, had always been winked at by the authorities. It was well understood that the _Black Warrior_ generally had a cargo aboard, but a detailed manifest of her load had never been required. She had always been permitted to sail unmolested until, when bound from Mobile to New York, she was stopped on the 28th of February, 1854, by order of the royal exchequer, for having violated the regulations of the port. The agent, finding that the cause of this proceeding was the failure to manifest the cargo 'in transit,' offered to amend the manifest, which under the rules he had a right to do; but this the collector, on a flimsy pretext, refused to permit. The agent was at the same time informed that the cargo was confiscated and the captain fined, in pursuance of the custom-house regulations. The cargo was cotton, valued at one hundred thousand dollars; and the captain was fined six thousand dollars. The United States consul applied to the captain-general for redress, but no satisfaction was obtained. A gang of men with lighters were sent to the ship under the charge of the _commandante_, who ordered the captain of the _Black Warrior_ to discharge her cargo. This he refused to do. The _commandante_ then had the hatches opened, and his men began to take out the bales of cotton. The captain hauled down his flag and abandoned the vessel to the Spanish authorities." The news of the incident created great excitement in Washington. President Pierce sent a message to Congress, stating that demand had been made on Spain for indemnity, and suggesting provisional legislation that would enable him, if negotiations failed, "to insure the observance of our just rights, to obtain redress for injuries received, and to vindicate the honor of our flag." Mr. Soule, then the American Minister to Madrid, was the official through whom the negotiations were conducted. He was a man of somewhat impetuous temperament, and an ardent advocate of Cuba's annexation. He quite overstepped both the bounds of propriety and of his authority in his submission, under instructions, of a demand for three hundred thousand dollars indemnity. This, and Spanish diplomatic methods, led to delay, and the excitement died out. In the meantime, Spain released the vessel and its cargo, disavowed and disapproved the conduct of the local officials, paid the indemnity claimed by the owners of the vessel, and the ship resumed its regular trips, being treated with every courtesy when visiting Havana. But the incident gave rise to active discussion, and for a time threatened serious results. It followed on the heels of another experience, the Lopez expeditions, to which reference is made in another chapter, and came at a time when Cuba and Cuban affairs were topics of a lively public interest. The subject of acquisition was under general public discussion and occupied a large share of public attention. Some wanted war with Spain, and others proposed the purchase of the island from Spain. But the immediate cause of complaint having been removed by the release of the ship, Soule was instructed to take no further steps in the matter, and the excitement gradually passed away. Immediately following this experience, and growing out of it, came the incident of the "Ostend Manifesto." At that time, James Buchanan was Minister to England. John Y. Mason was Minister to France, and Pierre Soule was Minister to Spain. Secretary of State Marcy suggested a conference between these three officials. They met at Ostend, but afterward transferred their deliberations to Aix la Chapelle. The meeting attracted general attention in Europe. The result of what they reported as "a full and unreserved interchange of views and sentiments," was a recommendation that an earnest effort be made immediately to purchase Cuba. They were of opinion that the sum of one hundred and twenty million dollars be offered. The report proceeded thus: "After we shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba far beyond its present value, and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question, does Cuba in the possession of Spain seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union? Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power; and this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flame from destroying his own home." It is evident that Soule dominated the meeting, and only less evident that he, in some way, cajoled his associates into signing the report. No action was taken on the matter by the Administration, and the incident has passed into history somewhat, perhaps, as one of the curiosities of diplomacy. At all events, all historians note it, and some give it considerable attention. The next serious complication arose out of the Ten Years' War, in Cuba, in 1868, to which reference is made in a chapter on Cuba's revolutions. Spain's leaders seemed quite incapable of grasping the Cuban situation, of seeing it in its proper light. It is more than probable that, even then, the Cubans would have remained loyal if the Spanish authorities had paid attention to their just and reasonable demands. As stated by Mr. Pepper, in his _Tomorrow in Cuba_, "The machete and the torch then gained what peaceful agitation had not been able to achieve." The demands of the Cubans are thus stated by Señor Cabrera, in his _Cuba and the Cubans_: "A constitutional system in place of the autocracy of the Captain-General, freedom of the press, the right of petition, cessation of the exclusion of Cubans from public office, unrestricted industrial liberty, abolition of restrictions on the transfer of landed property, the right of assembly and of association, representation in the Cortes, and local self-government," all reasonable and just demands from every point of view of modern civilization. Spain refused all, and on October 10, 1868, an actual revolution began, the first in the history of the island to be properly classed as a revolution. The United States soon became concerned and involved. In his message to Congress on December 6, 1869, President Grant said: "For more than a year, a valuable province of Spain, and a near neighbor of ours, in whom all our people cannot but feel a deep interest, has been struggling for independence and freedom. The people and the Government of the United States entertain the same warm feelings and sympathies for the people of Cuba in their pending struggle that they have manifested throughout the previous struggles between Spain and her former colonies (Mexico, Central America and South America) in behalf of the latter. But the contest has at no time assumed the conditions which amount to a war in the sense of international law, or which would show the existence of a _de facto_ political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a recognition of belligerency." On June 13, 1870, President Grant sent a special message to Congress, in which he reviewed the Cuban situation. Another reference appears in his message of December 5, 1870. In his message of December 4, 1871, he stated that "it is to be regretted that the disturbed condition of the island of Cuba continues to be a source of annoyance and anxiety. The existence of a protracted struggle in such close proximity to our own territory, without apparent prospect of an early termination, cannot be other than an object of concern to a people who, while abstaining from interference in the affairs of other powers, naturally desire to see every other country in the undisturbed enjoyment of peace, liberty, and the blessings of free institutions." In the message of December 2, 1872, he said: "It is with regret that I have again to announce a continuance of the disturbed condition in the island of Cuba. The contest has now lasted for more than four years. Were its scene at a distance from our neighborhood, we might be indifferent to its result, although humanity could not be unmoved by many of its incidents wherever they might occur. It is, however, at out door." Reference was made to it in all following annual messages, until President Hayes, in 1878, announced its termination, ten years after its beginning. The contest had become practically a deadlock, and a compromise was arranged by General Maximo Gomez, for the Cubans, and General Martinez Campos, for Spain. [Illustration: HOISTING THE CUBAN FLAG OVER THE PALACE, MAY 20, 1902 _Senate building on the right_] The entanglements that grew out of the experiences of this period are too long and too complicated for detailed review here. This country had no desire for war with Spain, but approval of the Spanish policy in Cuba was impossible. The sympathies of the American people were with the Cubans, as they had been for fifty years, and as they continued to be until the end of Spanish occupation in the West Indies. Rumors of all kinds were afloat, and again and again the situation seemed to have reached a crisis that could be ended only by war. A particularly aggravating incident appeared in what is known as the _Virginius_ case. This was described as follows, in President Grant's message to Congress on December 1, 1873. "The steamer _Virginius_ was on the 26th day of September, 1870, duly registered at the port of New York as a part of the commercial marine of the United States. On the 4th of October, 1870, having received the certificate of her register in the usual legal form, she sailed from the port of New York, and has not since been within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. On the 31st day of October last (1873), while sailing under the flag of the United States on the high seas, she was forcibly seized by the Spanish gunboat _Tornado_, and was carried into the port of Santiago de Cuba, where fifty-three of her passengers and crew were inhumanly, and, so far at least as related to those who were citizens of the United States, without due process of law, put to death." Only for the timely arrival of the British man-of-war _Niobe_, and the prompt and decisive action of her commander, there is no doubt that ninety-three others would have shared the fate of their companions. Some were Americans and some were British. The excitement in this country was intense, and war with Spain was widely demanded. Further investigation revealed the fact that the American registry was dishonest, that the ship really belonged to or was chartered by Cubans, that it was engaged in carrying supplies and munitions of war to the insurgents, and that its right to fly the American flag was more than doubtful. The ship was seized by the American authorities under a charge of violation of the maritime laws of the United States, and was ordered to New York, for a trial of the case. American naval officers were placed in command, but she was in bad condition, and foundered in a gale near Cape Fear. As far as the vessel was concerned, the incident was closed. There remained the question of indemnity for what Caleb Cushing, then the American Minister to Spain, in his communication to the Spanish authorities, denounced as "a dreadful, a savage act, the inhuman slaughter in cold blood, of fifty-three human beings, a large number of them citizens of the United States, shot without lawful trial, without any valid pretension of authority, and to the horror of the whole civilized world." England also filed its claim for the loss of British subjects, and payment was soon after made "for the purpose of relief of the families or persons of the ship's company and passengers." In his _Cuba and International Relations_, Mr. Callahan says: "The catalogue of irritating affairs in relation to Cuba, of which the _Virginius_ was only the culmination, might have been urged as sufficient to justify a policy of intervention to stop the stubborn war of extermination which had been tolerated by peaceful neighbors for five years. Some would have been ready to advocate intervention as a duty. The relations of Cuba to the United States, the Spanish commercial restrictions which placed Cuba at the mercy of Spanish monopolists, and the character of the Spanish rule, pointed to the conclusion that if Spain should not voluntarily grant reforms and guarantee pacification of the island, the United States might be compelled, especially for future security, temporarily to occupy it and assist in the organization of a liberal government based upon modern views. Such action might have led to annexation, but not necessarily; it might have led to a restoration of Spanish possession under restrictions as to the character of Spanish rule, and as to the size of the Spanish army and naval force in the vicinity; more likely it would have resulted in the independence of Cuba under American protection." These are only some of the more prominent features in fifty years of American interest in Cuba. Throughout the entire period, the sympathies of the American people were strongly pro-Cuban. Money and supplies were contributed from time to time to assist the Cubans in their efforts to effect a change in their conditions, either through modification of Spanish laws, or by the road of independence. Only a minority of the Cubans sought to follow that road at that time. The movement for independence was not national until it was made so in 1895. What would have happened had we, at the time of the Ten Years' War, granted to the Cubans the rights of belligerents, is altogether a matter of speculation. Such a course was then deemed politically inexpedient. IX _CUBA'S REVOLUTIONS_ Only by magnifying protests into revolts, and riots into revolutions, is it possible to show Cuba as the "land of revolutions" that many have declared it to be. The truth is that from the settlement of the island in 1512 until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, there were only two experiences that can, by any proper use of the term, be called revolutions. This statement, of course, disputes a widely accepted notion, but many notions become widely accepted because of assertions that are not contradicted. That a strong undercurrent of discontent runs through all Cuba's history from 1820 to 1895, is true. That there were numerous manifestations of that discontent, and occasional attempts at revolution, is also true. But none of these experiences, prior to 1868, reached a stage that would properly warrant its description as a revolution. The term is very loosely applied to a wide range of experiences. It is customary to class as revolution all disorders from riots to rebellions. This is particularly the case where the disorder occurs in some country other than our own. The _Standard Dictionary_ defines the essential idea of revolution as "a change in the form of government, or the constitution, or rulers, otherwise than as provided by the laws of succession, election, etc." The _Century Dictionary_ defines such proceedings as "a radical change in social or governmental conditions; the overthrow of an established political system." Many exceedingly interesting parallels may be drawn between the experience of the American colonies prior to their revolution, in 1775, and the experience of Cuba during the 19th Century. In fact, it may perhaps be said that there is no experience in Cuba's history that cannot be fairly paralleled in our own. In his _History of the United States_, Mr. Edward Channing says: "The governing classes of the old country wished to exploit the American colonists for their own use and behoof." Change the word "American" to "Spanish," and the Cuban situation is exactly defined. The situation in America in the 18th Century was almost identical with the situation in Cuba in the 19th Century. Both, in those respective periods, suffered from oppressive and restrictive trade laws and from burdensome taxation, from subordination of their interests to the interests of the people of a mother-country three thousand miles away. Unfortunately for the Cubans, Spain was better able to enforce its exactions than England was. Cuba's area was limited, its available harbors few in number, its population small. Not until the years immediately preceding the revolutions by which the United States and Cuba secured their independence, was there any general demand for definite separation from the mother-country. The desire in both was a fuller measure of economic and commercial opportunity. One striking parallel may be noted. The Tories, or "loyalists," in this country have their counterpart in the Cuban _Autonomistas_. Referring to conditions in 1763, Mr. Channing states that "never had the colonists felt a greater pride in their connection with the British empire." Among the great figures of the pre-revolutionary period in this country, none stands out more clearly than James Otis, of Boston, and Patrick Henry, of Virginia. In an impassioned address, in 1763, Otis declared that "every British subject in America is of common right, by acts of Parliament, and by the laws of God and nature, entitled to all the essential privileges of Britons. What God in his Providence has united let no man dare attempt to pull asunder." Thirteen years later, the sundering blow was struck. Patrick Henry's resolutions submitted to the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 1765, set that colony afire, but at that time neither he nor his associates desired separation and independence if their natural rights were recognized. It was not until the revolution of 1895 that the independence of Cuba became a national demand, a movement based on realization of the hopelessness of further dependence upon Spain for the desired economic and fiscal relief. As in the American colonies there appeared, from time to time, individuals or isolated groups who demanded drastic action on the part of the colonists, so were there Cubans who, from time to time, appeared with similar demands. Nathaniel Bacon headed a formidable revolution in Virginia in 1676. Massachusetts rebelled against Andros and Dudley in 1689. From the passage of the Navigation Acts, in the middle of the 17th Century, until the culmination in 1775, there was an undercurrent of friction and a succession of protests. The Cuban condition was quite the same excepting the fact of burdens more grievous and more frequent open outbreaks. The records of many of the disorders are fragmentary. Spain had no desire to give them publicity, and the Cubans had few means for doing so. The _Report on the Census of Cuba_, prepared by the War Department of the United States, in 1899, contains a summary of the various disorders in the island. The first is the rioting in 1717, when Captain-General Roja enforced the decree establishing a government monopoly in tobacco. The disturbances in Haiti and Santo Domingo (1791-1800) resulting in the establishment of independence in Haiti, under Toussaint, excited unimportant uprisings on the part of negroes in Cuba, but they were quickly suppressed. The first movement worthy of note came in 1823. It was a consequence of the general movement that extended throughout Spanish-America and resulted in the independence of all Spain's former colonies, excepting Cuba and Porto Rico. That the influence of so vast a movement should have been felt in Cuba was almost inevitable. As disorder continued throughout much of the time, the period 1820-1830 is best considered collectively. The same influences were active, and the same forces were operative for the greater part of the term. The accounts of it all are greatly confused, and several nations were involved, including Spain, the United States, France, England, Mexico, and Colombia. The slavery question was involved, as was the question of the transfer of the island to some Power other than Spain. Independence was the aim of some, though probably no very great number. Practically all of Cuba's later experiences have their roots in this period. During these ten years, the issue between Cubans who sought a larger national and economic life, and the Spanish element that insisted upon the continuance of Spanish absolutism, had its definite beginning, to remain a cause of almost constant friction for three-quarters of a century. The Spanish Constitution of 1812, abrogated in 1814, was again proclaimed in 1820, and again abrogated in 1823. The effort of Captain-General Vives, acting under orders from Ferdinand VII, to restore absolutism encountered both vigorous opposition and strong support. Secret societies were organized, whose exact purposes do not appear to be well known. Some have asserted that it was a Masonic movement, while others have held that the organizations were more in the nature of the _Carbonari_. One of them, called the _Soles de Bolivar_, in some way gave its name to the immediate activities. It was charged with having planned a rebellion against the government, but the plans were discovered and the leaders were arrested. The movement appears to have been widespread, with its headquarters in Matanzas. An uprising was planned to take place on August 16, 1823, but on that day Jose Francisco Lemus, the leader, and a number of his associates were arrested and imprisoned. Among them was José Maria Heredia, the Cuban poet, who was, for this offence, condemned, in 1824, to perpetual exile for the crime of treason. Others engaged in the conspiracy fled the country. Some were officially deported. But the punishments imposed on these people served to excite the animosity of many more, and a period of agitation followed, marked by occasional outbreaks and rioting. To meet the situation, an army intended to be employed in reconquering some of the colonies that had already declared and established their independence, was retained on the island. In 1825, a royal decree conferred on the Spanish Governor in Cuba a power practically absolute. This excited still further the anger of the Cuban element and led to other manifestations of discontent. There was a combination of political agitation with revolutionary demonstrations. In 1826, there was a local uprising in Puerto Principe, directed more particularly against the Spanish garrison, whose conduct was regarded as highly offensive. A year or two later, Cuban exiles in Mexico and Colombia, with support from the people of those countries, organized a secret society known as the "Black Eagle," having for its purpose a Cuban revolution. Its headquarters were in Mexico, and its activities were fruitless. Many were arrested and tried and sentenced to death or deportation. But Vives realized the folly of adding more fuel to the flames, and the sentences were in all cases either mitigated or revoked. This seems to have brought that particular series of conspiracies to an end. It was a time of active political agitation and conspiracy, with occasional local riots that were quickly suppressed. While much of it was revolutionary in its aims and purposes, none of it may with any fitness be called a revolution, unless a prevalence of a lively spirit of opposition and rebellion is to be so classed. The agitation settled down for a number of years, but broke out in local spasms occasionally. There were riots and disorders, but that is not revolution. It is to be remembered that the cause of all this disturbance was, in the main, an entirely creditable sentiment, quite as creditable as that which led the American colonists to resist the Stamp taxes and to destroy tea. It was a natural and righteous protest against oppression, a movement lasting for seventy-five years, for which Americans, particularly, should award praise rather than blame or carping criticism. Having done, in our own way, very much what the Cubans have done, in their way, we are not free to condemn them. The only real difference is that their methods were, on the whole, a little more strenuous than ours. Cuban blood was stirred by the successful revolutions in Mexico and in Spanish South America, and conditions in the island were contrasted with those in the then somewhat new United States. Something of the part played by this country in the experiences of the time is presented in another chapter, on the relations of the two countries. The next movement worthy of note came in 1849, if we omit the quarrel, in 1837, between General Tacon and his subordinate, General Lorenzo, and the alleged proposal of the slaves in the neighborhood of Matanzas to rise and slaughter all the whites. Neither of these quite belongs in the revolutionary class. In 1847, a conspiracy was organized in the vicinity of Cienfuegos. Its leader was General Narciso Lopez. The movement was discovered, and some of the participants were imprisoned. Lopez escaped to the United States where he associated himself with a group of Cuban exiles, and opened correspondence with sympathizers in the island. They were joined by a considerable number of adventurous Americans, inspired by a variety of motives. The declared purpose of the enterprise was independence as the alternative of reform in Spanish laws. An expedition was organized, but the plans became known and President Taylor, on August 11, 1849, issued a proclamation in which he declared that "an enterprise to invade the territories of a friendly nation, set on foot and prosecuted within the limits of the United States, is in the highest degree criminal." He therefore warned all citizens of the United States who might participate in such an enterprise that they would be subject to heavy penalties, and would forfeit the protection of their country. He also called on "every officer of this Government, civil or military, to use all efforts in his power to arrest for trial and punishment every such offender against the laws." The party was captured as it was leaving New York. The best evidence of the time is to the effect that there was in Cuba neither demand for nor support of such a movement, but Lopez and his associates, many of them Americans, persisted. A second expedition was arranged, and a party of more than six hundred men, many of them American citizens, assembled on the island of Contoy, off the Yucatan coast, and on May 19, 1850, landed at Cardenas. But there was no uprising on the part of the people. The Spanish authorities, informed of the expedition, sent ships by sea and troops by land. After a sharp skirmish, the invaders fled for their lives. Lopez and those who escaped with him succeeded in reaching Key West. He went to Savannah, where he was arrested but promptly liberated in response to public clamor. But even this did not satisfy the enthusiastic liberator of a people who did not want to be liberated in that way. He tried again in the following year. On August 3, 1851, he sailed from near New Orleans, on the steamer _Pampero_, in command of a force of about four hundred, largely composed of young Americans who had been lured into the enterprise by assurance of thrilling adventure and large pay. They landed near Bahia Honda, about fifty miles west of Havana. Here, again, the Cubans refused to rise and join the invaders. Here, again, they encountered the Spanish forces by whom they were beaten and routed. Many were killed, some were captured, and others escaped into the surrounding country and were captured afterward. Lopez was among the captured. He was taken to Havana, and died by _garrote_ in the little fortress La Punta. His first officer, Colonel Crittenden, and some fifty Americans were captured and taken to Atares, the fortress at the head of Havana harbor, where they were shot. For that somewhat brutal act, the United States could ask no indemnity. In violation of the laws of the United States, they had invaded the territory of a nation with which the country was at peace. In the initial issue of the _New York Times_, on October 18, 1851, there appeared a review of the incident, presenting a contemporaneous opinion of the experience. It was, in part, as follows: "Nothing can be clearer than the fact that, for the present, at least, the inhabitants of Cuba do not desire their freedom. The opinion has very widely prevailed that the Cubans were grievously oppressed by their Spanish rulers, and that the severity of their oppression alone prevented them from making some effort to throw it off. The presence of an armed force in their midst, however small, it was supposed would summon them by thousands to the standard of revolt, and convert the colony into a free republic. Men high in office, men who had lived in Cuba and were supposed to be familiar with the sentiments of its people, have uniformly represented that they were ripe for revolt, and desired only the presence of a small military band to serve as a nucleus for their force. Believing that the Cuban population would aid them, American adventurers enlisted and were ruined. They found no aid. Not a Cuban joined them. They were treated as pirates and robbers from the first moment of their landing. Nor could they expect any other treatment in case of failure. They ceased to be American citizens the moment they set out, as invaders, for the shores of Cuba." [Illustration: A SPANISH BLOCK HOUSE] The excitement of the Lopez incident was passing when it was revived, in 1854, by the _Black Warrior_ experience, to which reference is made elsewhere. Another invasion was projected by exuberant and adventurous Americans. It was to sail from New Orleans under command of General Quitman, a former Governor of the State of Mississippi. No secret was made of the expedition, and Quitman openly boasted of his purposes, in Washington. The reports having reached the White House, President Pierce issued a proclamation warning "all persons, citizens of the United States and others residing therein" that the General Government would not fail to prosecute with due energy all those who presumed to disregard the laws of the land and our treaty obligations. He charged all officers of the United States to exert all their lawful power to maintain the authority and preserve the peace of the country. Quitman was arrested, and put under bonds to respect the neutrality laws. There was a limited uprising in Puerto Principe, in 1851, and a conspiracy was revealed, in Pinar del Rio, in 1852. A few years later the Liberal Club in Havana and the Cuban Junta in New York were reported as raising money and organizing expeditions. Some sailed, but they accomplished little, except as the activities appear as a manifestation of the persistent opposition on the part of what was probably only a small minority of the Cuban people. For several years, the unrest and the agitation continued. Spain's blindness to the situation is puzzling. In his _Cuba and International Relations_, Mr. Callahan says: "Spain, after squandering a continent, had still clung tenaciously to Cuba; and the changing governments which had been born (in Spain) only to be strangled, held her with a taxing hand. While England had allowed her colonies to rule themselves, Spain had persisted in keeping Cuba in the same state of tutelage that existed when she was the greatest power in the world, and when the idea of colonial rights had not developed." In _Tomorrow in Cuba_, Mr. Pepper notes that "though the conception of colonial home rule for Cuba was non-existent among the Spanish statesmen of that day, the perception of it was clear on the part of the thinking people of the island. The educated and wealthy Cubans who in 1865 formed themselves into a national party and urged administrative and economic changes upon Madrid felt the lack of understanding among Spanish statesmen. The concessions asked were not a broad application of civil liberties. When their programme was rejected in its entirety they ceased to ask favors. They inaugurated the Ten Years' War." Regarding this action by the Cubans, Dr. Enrique José Varona, a distinguished Cuban and a former deputy to the Cortes, has stated that "before the insurrection of 1868, the reform party which included the most enlightened, wealthy, and influential Cubans, exhausted all the resources within their reach to induce Spain to initiate a healthy change in her Cuban policy. The party started the publication of periodicals in Madrid and in the island, addressed petitions, maintained a great agitation throughout the country, and having succeeded in leading the Spanish Government to make an inquiry into the economic, political, and social conditions in Cuba, they presented a complete plan of government which satisfied public requirements as well as the aspirations of the people. The Spanish Government disdainfully cast aside the proposition as useless, increased taxation, and proceeded to its exaction with extreme severity." Here not seek its independence; the object was reform in oppressive laws and in burdensome taxation, a measure of self-government, under Spain, and a greater industrial and commercial freedom. It is most difficult to understand the short-sightedness of the Spanish authorities. The war soon followed the refusal of these entirely reasonable demands, and the course of the Cubans is entirely to their credit. An acceptance of the situation and a further submission would have shown them as contemptible. The details of a conflict that lasted for ten years are quite impossible of presentation in a few pages. Nor are they of value or interest to any except special students who can find them elaborately set forth in many volumes, some in Spanish and a few in English. Having tried once before to cover this period as briefly and as adequately as possible, I can do no better here than to repeat the story as told in an earlier work (_Cuba, and the Intervention_). On the 10th of October, 1868, Carlos Manuel Cespedes and his associates raised the cry of Cuban independence at Yara, in the Province of Puerto Principe (now Camaguey). On the 10th of April, 1869, there was proclaimed the Constitution of the Cuban Republic. During the intervening months, there was considerable fighting, though it was largely in the nature of guerrilla skirmishing. The Spanish Minister of State asserted in a memorandum issued to Spain's representatives in other countries, under date of February 3, 1876, that at the outbreak of the insurrection Spain had 7,500 troops, all told, in Cuba. According to General Sickels, at that time the American Minister to Spain, this number was increased by reinforcements of 34,500 within the first year of the war. The accuracy of this information, however, has been questioned. Prior to the establishment of the so-called Republic, the affairs of the insurrection were in the hands of an Assembly of Representatives. On February 26, this body issued a decree proclaiming the abolition of slavery throughout the island, and calling upon those who thus received their freedom to "contribute their efforts to the independence of Cuba." During the opening days of April, 1869, the Assembly met at Guiamaro. On the tenth of that month a government was organized, with a president, vice-president, general-in-chief of the army, secretaries of departments, and a parliament or congress. Carlos Manuel Cespedes was chosen as President, and Manuel de Quesada as General-in-Chief. A Constitution was adopted. Señor Morales Lemus was appointed as minister to the United States, to represent the new Republic, and to ask official recognition by the American Government. The government which the United States was asked to recognize was a somewhat vague institution. The insurrection, or revolution, if it may be so called, at this time consisted of a nominal central government, chiefly self-organized and self-elected, and various roving bands, probably numbering some thousands in their aggregate, of men rudely and incompetently armed, and showing little or nothing of military organization or method. Like all Cuban-Spanish wars and warfare, the destruction of property was a common procedure. Some of the methods employed for the suppression of the insurrection were not unlike those adopted by General Weyler in the later war. At Bayamo, on April 4, 1869, Count Valmaseda, the Spanish Commandant of that district, issued the following proclamation: 1. Every man, from the age of fifteen years upward, found away from his place of habitation, who does not prove a justified reason therefor, will be shot. 2. Every unoccupied habitation will be burned by the troops. 3. Every habitation from which no white flag floats, as a signal that its occupants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes. In the summer of 1869, the United States essayed a reconciliation and an adjustment of the differences between the contestants. To this Spain replied that the mediation of any nation in a purely domestic question was wholly incompatible with the honor of Spain, and that the independence of Cuba was inadmissible as a basis of negotiation. Heavy reinforcements were sent from Spain, and the strife continued. The commerce of the island was not greatly disturbed, for the reason that the great producing and commercial centres lay to the westward, and the military activities were confined, almost exclusively, to the eastern and central areas. In April, 1874, Mr. Fish, then Secretary of State, reported that "it is now more than five years since the uprising (in Cuba) and it has been announced with apparent authority, that Spain has lost upward of 80,000 men, and has expended upward of $100,000,000, in efforts to suppress it; yet the insurrection seems today as active and as powerful as it has ever been." Spain's losses among her troops were not due so much to the casualties of war as they were to the ravages of disease, especially yellow fever. The process, in which both parties would appear to be about equally culpable, of destroying property and taking life when occasion offered, proceedings which are hardly to be dignified by the name of war, continued until the beginning of 1878. Throughout the entire period of the war, the American officials labored diligently for its termination on a basis that would give fair promise of an enduring peace. Many questions arose concerning the arrest of American citizens and the destruction of property of American ownership. Proposals to grant the Cubans the rights of belligerents were dismissed as not properly warranted by the conditions, and questions arose regarding the supply of arms and ammunition, from this country, by filibustering expeditions. References to Cuban affairs appear in many presidential messages, and the matter was a subject of much discussion and numerous measures in Congress. Diplomatic communication was constantly active. In his message of December 7, 1875, President Grant said: "The past year has furnished no evidence of an approaching termination of the ruinous conflict which has been raging for seven years in the neighboring island of Cuba. While conscious that the insurrection has shown a strength and endurance which make it at least doubtful whether it be in the power of Spain to subdue it, it seems unquestionable that no such civil organization exists which may be recognized as an independent government capable of performing its international obligations and entitled to be treated as one of the powers of the earth." Nor did he then deem the grant of belligerent rights to the Cubans as either expedient or properly warranted by the circumstances. In 1878, Martinez Campos was Governor-General of Cuba, and Maximo Gomez was Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban forces. Both parties were weary of the prolonged hostilities, and neither was able to compel the other to surrender. Spain, however, professed a willingness to yield an important part of the demands of her rebellious subjects. Martinez Campos and Gomez met at Zanjon and, on February 10, 1878, mutually agreed to what has been variously called a peace pact, a treaty, and a capitulation. The agreement was based on provisions for a redress of Cuban grievances through greater civil, political, and administrative privileges for the Cubans, with forgetfulness of the past and amnesty for all then under sentence for political offences. Delay in carrying these provisions into effect gave rise to an attempt to renew the struggle two years later, but the effort was a failure. Matters then quieted down for a number of years. The Cubans waited to see what would be done. The Spanish Governor-General still remained the supreme power and, aside from the abolition of slavery, the application of the Spanish Constitution and Spanish laws to Cuba, and Cuban representation in the Cortes, much of which was rather form than fact, the island gained little by the new conditions. Discontent and protest continued and, at last, broke again into open rebellion in 1895. The story of that experience is told in another chapter. In 1906, there came one of the most deplorable experiences in the history of the island, the first and only discreditable revolution. The causes of the experience are not open to our criticism. Our own records show too much of precisely the same kind of work, illegal registration, ballot box stuffing, threats and bribery. The first election in the new Republic was carried with only a limited and somewhat perfunctory opposition to the candidacy of Estrada Palma. Before the second election came, in 1905, he allied himself definitely with an organization then known as the Moderate party. The opposition was known as the Liberal party. Responsibility for the disgraceful campaign that followed rests on both, almost equally. The particular difference lies in the fact that, the principal offices having been given to adherents of the Moderates, they were able to control both registration and election proceedings. But the methods employed by the opposition were no less censurable. Realizing defeat, the Liberals withdrew from the field, by concerted action, on the day of the election, and the Moderates elected every one of their candidates. Naturally, a feeling of bitter resentment was created, and there came, in the spring of 1906, rumors of armed revolt. In August, an actual insurrection was begun. Disgruntled political leaders gathered formidable bands in Pinar del Rio and in Santa Clara provinces. President Palma became seriously alarmed, even actually frightened. Through the United States Consul-General in Havana, he sent urgent appeals to Washington for naval and military aid. Mr. Taft, then Secretary of War, and Mr. Bacon, the Assistant Secretary of State, were sent to Havana to investigate and report on the situation. They arrived in Havana on September 19. After ten days of careful and thorough study, and earnest effort to effect an adjustment, a proclamation was issued declaring the creation of a provisional government. This was accepted by both parties and the insurgent bands dispersed. Charles E. Magoon was sent down as Provisional Governor. Americans who are disposed to censure the Cubans for this experience in their history, may perhaps turn with profit to some little experiences in the history of their own country in its political infancy, in 1786 and 1794. Those incidents do not relieve the Cubans of the censure to which they are open, but they make it a little difficult for us to condemn them with proper grace and dignity. The provisional government continued until January 28, 1909, when control was turned over to the duly elected officials, they being the same who withdrew from the polls, acknowledging defeat, in the election of 1905. X _INDEPENDENCE_ Cuba's final movement for independence began on February 24, 1895. Under the treaty of Zanjon, executed in 1878, Spain agreed to grant to the Cubans such reforms as would remove their grounds of complaint, long continued. The Cubans denied that the terms of the agreement had been kept. Those terms are indicated in a statement submitted by Tomas Estrada y Palma to Richard Olney, then Secretary of State of the United States. It bore the date of December 7, 1895. The communication sets forth, from the Cuban point of view, of course, the causes of the revolution of 1895. It says: "These causes are substantially the same as those of the former revolution, lasting from 1868 to 1878, and terminating only on the representation of the Spanish Government that Cuba would be granted such reforms as would remove the grounds of complaint on the part of the Cuban people. Unfortunately the hopes thus held out have never been realized. The representation which was to be given the Cubans has proved to be absolutely without character; taxes have been levied anew on everything conceivable; the offices in the island have increased, but the officers are all Spaniards; the native Cubans have been left with no public duties whatsoever to perform, except the payment of taxes to the Government and blackmail to the officials, without privilege even to move from place to place in the island except on the permission of government authority. "Spain has framed laws so that the natives have substantially been deprived of the right of suffrage. The taxes levied have been almost entirely devoted to support the army and navy in Cuba, to pay interest on the debt that Spain has saddled on the island, and to pay the salaries of the vast number of Spanish office holders, devoting only $746,000 for internal improvements out of the $26,000,000 collected by tax. No public schools are in reach of the masses for their education. All the principal industries of the island are hampered by excessive imposts. Her commerce with every country but Spain has been crippled in every possible manner, as can readily be seen by the frequent protests of shipowners and merchants. "The Cubans have no security of person or property. The judiciary are instruments of the military authorities. Trial by military tribunals can be ordered at any time at the will of the Captain-General. There is, besides, no freedom of speech, press, or religion. In point of fact, the causes of the Revolution of 1775 in this country were not nearly as grave as those that have driven the Cuban people to the various insurrections which culminated in the present revolution." Spain, of course, denied these charges, and asserted that the agreement had been kept in good faith. The Spanish Government may have been technically correct in its claim that all laws necessary to the fulfillment of its promises had been enacted. But it seems entirely certain that they had not been made effective. The conditions of the Cubans were in no way improved and, some time before the outbreak, they began preparations for armed resistance. In _Cuba and the Intervention_ (published in 1905) I have already written an outline review of the experience of the revolution, and I shall here make use of extracts from that volume. The notable leader and instigator of the movement was José Marti, a patriot, a poet, and a dreamer, but a man of action. He visited General Maximo Gomez at his home in Santo Domingo, where that doughty old warrior had betaken himself after the conclusion of the Ten Years' War. Gomez accepted the command of the proposed army of Cuban liberation. Antonio Maceo also accepted a command. He was a mulatto, an able and daring fighter, whose motives were perhaps a compound of patriotism, hatred of Spain, and a love for the excitement of warfare. Others whose names are written large in Cuba's history soon joined the movement. A _junta_, or committee, was organized with headquarters in New York. After the death of Marti, this was placed in charge of Tomas Estrada y Palma, who afterward became the first President of the new Republic. Its work was to raise funds, obtain and forward supplies and ammunition, and to advance the cause in all possible ways. There were legal battles to be fought by and through this organization, and Mr. Horatio S. Rubens, a New York lawyer, was placed in charge of that department. The twenty-fourth of February was set for the beginning of activities, but arms were lacking, and while the movement was actually begun on that day, the operations of the first six weeks or so were limited to numerous local uprisings of little moment. But the local authorities became alarmed, and martial law was proclaimed in Santa Clara and Matanzas provinces on the 27th. Spain became alarmed also, and immediately despatched General Martinez Campos as Governor-General of the island, to succeed General Calleja. He assumed command on April 16. Maceo and his associates, among them his brother José, also a fighter of note, landed from Costa Rica on April 1. Marti, Gomez, and others, reached the island on the 11th. Meanwhile, Bartolomé Maso, an influential planter in Oriente, had been in command of the forces in his vicinity. Many joined, and others stood ready to join as soon as they could be equipped. Engagements with the Spanish troops soon became a matter of daily occurrence, and Martinez Campos realized that a formidable movement was on. Spain hurried thousands of soldiers to the island. For the first five months, the insurgents kept their opponents busy with an almost uninterrupted series of little engagements, a guerrilla warfare. In one of these, on May 19, José Marti was killed. His death was a severe blow to the patriots, but it served rather to inspire a greater activity than to check the movement. His death came in the effort of a small band of insurgents to pass the Spanish cordon designed to confine activities to Oriente Province. Immediately after the death of Marti, Maximo Gomez crossed that barrier and organized an army in Camaguey. The first engagement properly to be regarded as a battle occurred at Peralejo, near Bayamo, in Oriente, about the middle of July. The respective leaders were Antonio Maceo and General Martinez Campos, in person. The victory fell to Maceo, and Martinez Campos barely eluded capture. The engagements of the Ten Years' War were confined to the then sparsely settled eastern half of the island. Those of the revolution of 1895 covered the greater part of the island, sweeping gradually but steadily from east to west. During my first visit to Cuba, I was frequently puzzled by references to "the invasion." "What invasion?" I asked, "Who invaded the country?" I found that it meant the westward sweep of the liberating army under Gomez and Maceo. It covered a period of more than two years of frequent fighting and general destruction of property. Early in the operations Gomez issued the following proclamation: GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY OF LIBERATION Najasa, Camaguey, July 1, 1895. To THE PLANTERS AND OWNERS OF CATTLE RANCHES: _In accord with the great interests of the revolution for the independence of the country, and for which we are in arms_: WHEREAS, _all exploitations of any product whatsoever are aids and resources to the Government that we are fighting, it is resolved by the general-in-chief to issue this general order throughout the island, that the introduction of articles of commerce, as well as beef and cattle, into the towns occupied by the enemy, is absolutely prohibited. The sugar plantations will stop their labors, and those who shall attempt to grind the crop notwithstanding this order, will have their cane burned and their buildings demolished. The person who, disobeying this order, shall try to profit from the present situation of affairs, will show by his conduct little respect for the rights of the revolution of redemption, and therefore shall be considered as an enemy, treated as a traitor, and tried as such in case of his capture_. (_Signed_) MAXIMO GOMEZ, The General-in-Chief. This proved only partially effective, and it was followed by a circular to commanding officers, a few months later, reading thus: HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY OF LIBERATION Territory of Sancti Spiritus, November 6, 1895. _Animated by the spirit of unchangeable resolution in defence of the rights of the revolution of redemption of this country of colonists, humiliated and despised by Spain, and in harmony with what has been decreed concerning the subject in the circular dated the 1st of July, I have ordered the following_: ARTICLE I. _That all plantations shall be totally destroyed, their cane and outbuildings burned, and railroad connections destroyed_. ARTICLE II. _All laborers who shall aid the sugar factories--these sources of supplies that we must deprive the enemy of--shall be considered as traitors to their country_. ARTICLE III. _All who are caught in the act, or whose violation of Article II shall be proven, shall be shot. Let all chiefs of operations of the army of liberty comply with this order, determined to furl triumphantly, even over ruin and ashes, the flag of the Republic of Cuba_. _In regard to the manner of waging the war, follow the private instructions that I have already given_. _For the sake of the honor of our arms and your well-known courage and patriotism, it is expected that you will strictly comply with the above orders_. _(Signed)_ MAXIMO GOMEZ, General-in-Chief. To peace-loving souls, all this sounds very brutal, but all war is brutal and barbarous. In our strife in the Philippines, from 1899 to 1902, many of us were proud to be told that we were conducting a "humane war." There is no such thing. The very terms are contradictory. Gomez had declared that if Spain would not give up Cuba to the Cubans, the Cubans would themselves render the island so worthless and desolate a possession that Spain could not afford to hold it. Short of further submission to a rule that was, very rightly, regarded as no longer endurable, no other course was open to them. Another proclamation appeared a few days later. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY OF LIBERATION Sancti Spiritus, November 11 1895. To HONEST MEN, VICTIMS OF THE TORCH: _The painful measure made necessary by the revolution of redemption drenched in innocent blood from Hatuey to our own times by cruel and merciless Spain will plunge you in misery. As general-in-chief of the army of liberation, it is my duty to lead it to victory, without permitting myself to be restrained or terrified, by any means necessary to place Cuba in the shortest time in possession of her dearest ideal. I therefore place the responsibility for so great a ruin on those who look on impassively and force us to those extreme measures which they then condemn like dolts and hypocrites as they are. After so many years of supplication, humiliation, contumely, banishment, and death, when this people, of its own will, has arisen in arms, there remains no solution but to triumph, it matters not what means are employed to accomplish it_. _This people cannot hesitate between the wealth of Spain and the liberty of Cuba. Its greatest crime would be to stain the land with blood without effecting its purposes because of puerile scruples and fears which do not concur with the character of the men who are in the field, challenging the fury of an army which is one of the bravest in the world, but which in this war is without enthusiasm or faith, ill-fed and unpaid. The war did not begin February 24; it is about to begin now_. _The war had to be organized; it was necessary to calm and lead into the proper channels the revolutionary spirit always exaggerated in the beginning by wild enthusiasm. The struggle ought to begin in obedience to a plan and method more or less studied, as the result of the peculiarities of this war. This has already been done. Let Spain now send her soldiers to rivet the chains on her slaves; the children of this land are in the field, armed with the weapons of liberty. The struggle will be terrible, but success will crown the revolution and the efforts of the oppressed_. (_Signed_) MAXIMO GOMEZ, General-in-Chief. Such an address doubtless savors of bombast to many Americans, but in the history of political and military oratory in their own land they can find an endless number of speeches that, in that particular quality, rival if they do not surpass it. The Cuban situation was desperate, and the Cuban attitude was one of fixed determination. Productive industry was generally suppressed, and much property was destroyed, by both Cubans and Spaniards. This necessarily threw many out of employment, and drove them into the insurgent ranks. The Cubans are a peaceful people. All desired relief from oppressive conditions, but many did not want war. While many entered the army from patriotic motives, many others were brought into it only as a consequence of conditions created by the conflict. The measures adopted were severe, but decision of the contest by pitched battles was quite impossible. The quoted figures are somewhat unreliable, but the Spanish forces outnumbered the Cubans by at least five to one, and they could obtain freely the supplies and ammunition that the Cubans could obtain only by filibustering expeditions. The Cubans, therefore, adopted a policy, the only policy that afforded promise of success. Spain poured in fresh troops until, by the close of 1895, its army is reported as numbering 200,000 men. The Cubans carried the contest westward from Oriente and Camaguey, through Santa Clara, and into the provinces of Matanzas, Havana, and Pinar del Rio. [Illustration: ALONG THE HARBOR WALL _Havana_] The _trocha_ across the island, from Jucaro on the south to Moron on the north, originally constructed during the Ten Years' War, was a line of blockhouses, connected by barbed wire tangles, along a railway. This obstructed but did not stop the Cuban advance. The authorities declared martial law in the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio on January 2, 1896. Gomez advanced to Marianao, at Havana's very door, and that city was terrified. Maceo was operating immediately beyond him in Pinar del Rio, through the most important part of which he swept with torch and machete. The Spaniards built a _trocha_ there from Mariel southward. Maceo crossed it and continued his work of destruction, in which large numbers of the people of the region joined. He burned and destroyed Spanish property; the Spaniards, in retaliation, burned and destroyed property belonging to Cubans. Along the highway from Marianao to Guanajay, out of many stately country residences, only one was left standing. Villages were destroyed and hamlets were wrecked. On one of his expeditions in December, 1896, Maceo was killed near Punta Brava, within fifteen miles of Havana. Gomez planned this westward sweep, from Oriente, six hundred miles away, but to Antonio Maceo belongs a large part of the credit for its execution. The weakness of the Ten Years' War was that it did not extend beyond the thinly populated region of the east; Gomez and Maceo carried their war to the very gates of the Spanish strongholds. There were occasional conflicts that might well be called battles, but much of it was carried on by the Cubans by sudden and unexpected dashes into Spanish camps or moving columns, brief but sometimes bloody encounters from which the attacking force melted away after inflicting such damage as it could. Guerrilla warfare is not perhaps a respectable method of fighting. It involves much of what is commonly regarded as outlawry, of pillage and of plunder, of destruction and devastation. These results become respectable only when attained through conventional processes, and are in some way supposed to be ennobled by those processes. But they sometimes become the only means by which the weak can meet the strong. Such they seemed to be in the Cuban revolt against the Spaniards, when Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo made guerrilla warfare almost a military science. Gomez formulated his plan of campaign, but, with the means at his disposal, its successful execution was possible only by the methods adopted. At all events, it succeeded. The Cubans were not strong enough to drive Spain out of the island by force of arms, but they showed themselves unconquerable by the Spanish troops. They had once carried on a war for ten years in a limited area; by the methods adopted, they could repeat that experience practically throughout the island. They could at least keep insurrection alive until Spain should yield to their terms, or until the United States should be compelled to intervene. No great movements, but constant irritation, and the suspension of all industry, was the policy adopted and pursued for the year 1897. But there was another side to it all, a different line of activity. Immediately after his arrival on the island, on April 11, 1895, Marti had issued a call for the selection of representatives to form a civil government. He was killed before this was effected. An assembly met, at Jimaguayu, in Camaguey, on September 13, 1895. It consisted of twenty members, representing nearly all parts of the island. Its purpose was the organization of a Cuban Republic. On the 16th, it adopted a Constitution and, on the 18th, elected, as President, Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, and as Vice-President, Bartolomé Maso. Secretaries and sub-secretaries were duly chosen, and all were formally installed. Maximo Gomez was officially appointed as General-in-Chief of the army, with Antonio Maceo as Lieutenant General. Tomas Estrada y Palma was chosen as delegate plenipotentiary and general agent abroad, with headquarters in New York. Both civil and military organizations were, for a time, crude and somewhat incoherent. It could not be otherwise. They were engaged in a movement that could only succeed by success. Arms and money were lacking. The civil government was desirable in a field that the military arm could not cover. Action lay with the military and with the Cuban Junta in the United States. The latter organization immediately became active. Calls were made for financial assistance and liberal responses were made, chiefly by Cubans. In 1896 and 1897, bonds were issued and sold, or were exchanged for supplies and munitions of war. For a number of years scandalous stories were afloat declaring that these bonds were printed by the acre, and issued, purely for speculative purposes, to the extent of millions upon millions of dollars. The truth is that every bond printed, whether issued or unissued, has been fully accounted for, the actual issue being about $2,200,000. Provision was made in Cuba's Constitution for the recognition of this indebtedness, and it has since been discharged, while the plates and the unused bonds have been destroyed. There may have been speculation in the bonds, as there was in the bonds issued by the United States during the Civil War, but Cuba's conduct in the whole matter has been honest and most honorable. In that matter certainly, its detractors have been confounded. The principal difficulty encountered by the _junta_ was the despatch to Cuba of the men and the munitions so greatly needed by those in the field. That, however, is a story that I shall endeavor to tell, in part, in another chapter. It cannot now, if ever, be told in full. Meanwhile, a complicated political situation developed. The story is too long and too complicated for review in detail. It may be given in general outline. The Peace of 1878 was followed by the organization of political parties, the Liberal and the Union Constitutional. At first, there was comparatively little difference in the essence of their respective platforms, but the lines diverged as the situation developed. The Liberal party became, and remained, the Cuban party, and the Union Constitutional became the Spanish party. Later on, the Liberals became the Autonomists. Their object, for twenty years, was reform in conditions under the rule of Spain. There was no independence party. That was organized, in 1895, by Marti, Gomez, Maceo, Maso, and their associates. It had only one plank in its platform--_Cuba Libre y Independiente_--whatever the cost to the island and its people. "The Autonomist group," says Mr. Pepper, in his _Tomorrow in Cuba_, "became as much a political party as it could become under Spanish institutions." It grew in strength and influence, and continued its agitation persistently and stubbornly. The Spanish Cortes busied itself with discussion of Cuban affairs, but reached no conclusions, produced no results. In 1893, there came the definite organization of the Reformist party, with aims not differing greatly from those of the _Autonomistas_. But Spain delayed until Marti and his followers struck their blow. Official efforts to placate them failed utterly, as did efforts to intimidate them or to conquer them. The Autonomists declared their support of the existing Government, and rebuked the insurgents in a _manifesto_ issued on April 4, 1895, six weeks after the outbreak. They only succeeded in antagonizing both sides, the Spanish authorities and the revolutionists. Spain, greatly alarmed, recalled Martinez Campos and sent out Weyler to succeed him. Had Spain followed the advice of Martinez Campos, the failure of the insurrection would have been little short of certain. It sent out Weyler, on whom the Cubans, twenty years earlier, had conferred the title of "Butcher." This step threw to the side of the insurgents the great mass of the middle class Cubans who had previously wavered in uncertainty, questioning the success of revolution while adhering to its general object. Weyler instituted the brutal policy that came to be known as reconcentration. It may be said, in a way, that the Cuban forces themselves instituted this policy. To clear the country in which they were operating, they had ordered all Spaniards and Spanish sympathizers to betake themselves to the cities and towns occupied by Spanish garrisons. This was inconvenient for its victims, but its purpose was humane. Gomez also sought to concentrate the Cubans, particularly the women and children, in the recesses of the hills where they would be less exposed to danger than they would be in their homes. This also was a humane purpose. Weyler's application of this policy was utterly brutal. The people of the country were herded in prison camps, in settlements surrounded by stockades or trenches beyond which they might not pass. No provision was made for their food or maintenance. The victims were non-combatants, women, and children. In his message of December, 1897, President McKinley said of this system, as applied by Weyler, "It was not civilized warfare; it was extermination. The only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave." In my experience as a campaign correspondent in several conflicts, I have necessarily seen more or less of gruesome sights, the result of disease and wounds, but I have seen nothing in any way comparable, in horror and pitifulness, to the victims of this abominable system. To describe their condition in detail would be little short of offensive, those groups of hopeless, helpless sufferers who lingered only until death came and kindly put them out of their misery and pain. But by this time, two forces had come into active operation, dire alarm in Spain and wrath and indignation in the United States. Weyler had failed as Martinez Campos, when leaving the island, predicted. He was recalled, and was succeeded, on October 31, 1897, by General Blanco. The new incumbent tried conciliation, but it failed. The work had gone too far. The party in the field had become the dominant party, not to be suppressed either by force of arms or by promises of political and economic reform. At last, Spain yielded. Outside pressure on Madrid, chiefly from the United States, prevailed. A scheme for Cuban autonomy was devised and, on January 1, 1898, was put into effect. But it came too late. It was welcomed by many non-participants in the war, and a form of government was organized under it. But the party then dominant, the army in the field, distrusted the arrangement and would have none of it. All overtures were rejected and the struggle continued. On February 15, 1898, came the disaster to the battleship _Maine_, in the harbor of Havana. On April 11th, President McKinley's historic message went to Congress, declaring that "the only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba," and asking for power and authority to use the military and naval forces of the United States to effect a termination of the strife in Cuba. Such, in the briefest possible outline, is the record of this eventful period, eventful alike for Cuba and for the United States. During this struggle, the people of the United States became deeply interested in the affairs of the island, and the Administration in Washington became gravely concerned by them. A preceding chapter, on the United States and Cuba, dropped the matter of the relations of this country to the island at the end of the Ten Years' War, but the relations were by no means dropped, nor were they even suspended. The affairs of the island appear again and again in diplomatic correspondence and in presidential messages. The platform of the Republican party, adopted at the national convention in St. Louis, on June 18, 1896, contained the following: "From the hour of achieving their own independence, the people of the United States have regarded with sympathy the struggles of other American peoples to free themselves from European domination. We watch with deep and abiding interest the heroic battle of the Cuban patriots against cruelty and oppression, and our best hopes go out for the full success of their determined contest for liberty. The Government of Spain having lost control of Cuba and being unable to protect the property or lives of resident American citizens, or to comply with its treaty obligations, we believe that the Government of the United States should actively use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to the island." The Democratic party platform of the same year stated that "we extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle for liberty and independence." The platform of the People's party likewise expressed sympathy, and declared the belief that the time had come when "the United States should recognize that Cuba is and of right ought to be a free and independent State." This may be regarded as the almost unanimous opinion of the people of this country at that time. In 1896 and 1897 many resolutions were introduced in the Congress urging action for the recognition of Cuban independence. There was frequent and prolonged debate on the question, but no final action was taken. In his message of December, 1897, President McKinley said: "Of the untried measures (regarding Cuba) there remain only: Recognition of the insurgents as belligerents; recognition of the independence of Cuba; neutral intervention to end the war by imposing a rational compromise between the contestants; and intervention in favor of one or the other party. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that cannot be thought of. That, by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression." [Illustration: COUNTRY ROAD _Havana Province_] Recognition of the Cubans as belligerents would have effected a radical change in the situation. It would have given the Cubans the right to buy in the American market the arms and supplies that they could then only obtain surreptitiously, that they could only ship by "filibustering expeditions," by blockade-runners. In law, the propriety of granting belligerent rights depends upon the establishment of certain facts, upon the proof of the existence of certain conditions. Those conditions did then exist in Cuba. An unanswerable argument was submitted by Horatio S. Rubens, Esq., the able counsel of the Cuban _junta_ in New York. The Cubans never asked for intervention by the United States; they did, with full justification, ask for recognition as belligerents. The consent of this country was deemed inexpedient on political rather than on moral grounds. Had it suited the purposes of this country to grant that right, very much the same arguments would have been made in support of the course as those that were used to support the denial of Cuba's requests. Recognition of Cuban independence, or intervention in favor of the Cubans, would have been the equivalent of the grant of belligerent rights. But the policy adopted, and the course pursued, did not serve to avert war with Spain. The story of that war has been written by many, and is not for inclusion here. The treaty of peace was signed, in Paris, on December 10, 1898, duly ratified by both parties in the following months, and was finally proclaimed on April 11, 1899. The war was over, but its definite termination was officially declared on the anniversary of the issuance of President McKinley's war message. On January 1, 1899, the American flag was hoisted throughout the island, as a signal of full authority, but subject to the provisions of the Teller Amendment to the Joint Resolution of Congress, of April 20, 1898, thus: "That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the Island to its people." At twelve o'clock, noon, on the 20th of May, 1902, there was gathered in the State Apartment of the Palace occupied by many Spanish Governors-General, the officials of the United States, the elected officials of the new Cuban Republic, and a limited number of guests. In that same apartment, General Castellanos signed the abdication of Spanish authority. In its turn, pursuant to its pledges, the United States transferred authority to the President of the Cuban Republic. Four centuries of subjection, and a century of protest and struggle, were there and then ended, and Cuba joined the sisterhood of independent nations. XI _FILIBUSTERING_ The term "filibuster" affords an interesting example of the way in which words and their uses become twisted into something altogether different from their original meaning. It comes from a Dutch word, several centuries old, _vrijbuiter_, or free vessel or boat. It got somehow into English as "freebooter," and into Spanish as _filibustero_. The original referred to piracy. Two or three centuries later, it meant an engagement in unauthorized and illegal warfare against foreign States, in effect, piratical invasions. In time, it came into use to describe the supply of military material to revolutionists, and finally to obstruction in legislative proceedings. In his message of June 13, 1870, President Grant said that "the duty of opposition to filibustering has been admitted by every President. Washington encountered the efforts of Genet and the French revolutionists; John Adams, the projects of Miranda; Jefferson, the schemes of Aaron Burr. Madison and subsequent Presidents had to deal with the question of foreign enlistment and equipment in the United States, and since the days of John Quincy Adams it has been one of the constant cares of the Government in the United States to prevent piratical expeditions against the feeble Spanish American Republics from leaving our shores." In 1806, Francisco Miranda, a Venezuelan patriot whose revolutionary activities preceded those of Simon Bolivar, sailed from New York on what would have been called, some years later, a filibustering expedition. His three vessels were manned chiefly by Americans. There are always those whose love of excitement and adventure, sometimes mixed with an active sympathy for an under dog, leads them to engage in such an enterprise. This one was productive of no important results. There were plenty of American pirates and privateers in earlier days, but I have found no record of any earlier actual expedition whose purpose was the creation of a new republic. But during the next hundred years, including the considerable number of Americans who have engaged in the present disorder in Mexico, such enterprises have been numerous. Among the most notable are the several Lopez expeditions to Cuba, about 1850, and the Walker expeditions to Lower California, Nicaragua, and Honduras, a few years later. The steamer _Virginius_, to which reference is made in another chapter, was engaged in filibustering when she was captured, in 1873, and many of her crew and passengers unlawfully executed, by Spanish authority, in Santiago. But that was only one of many similar enterprises during the Ten Years' War in Cuba. It is very doubtful if the war could have continued as it did without them. During our own Civil War, we called such industries "blockade-running," but it was all quite the same sort of thing. The Confederate army needed arms, ammunition, medicine, and supplies of many kinds. On April 19, 1861, President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the ports of the seceded States, with a supplementary proclamation on the 27th that completed the line, and thus tied the South hand and foot. In his _History of the United States_, Elson notes that raw cotton could be bought in Southern ports for four cents a pound while it was worth $2.50 a pound in Liverpool, and that a ton of salt worth seven or eight dollars in Nassau, a few miles off the coast, was worth $1700 in gold in Richmond before the close of the war, all because of the blockade. There is, naturally, a lack of detail regarding the many expeditions, large and small, of the Ten Years' War, but they began soon after the opening of hostilities. In his _Diary_, Gideon Welles notes, under date of April 7, 1869, the prevalence of "rumors of illegal expeditions fitting out in our country to aid the Cuban insurgents," and states that "our countrymen are in sympathy with them." In December, of that year, President Grant reported that a number of illegal expeditions had been broken up, but did not refer to those that had succeeded. In October, 1870, he issued a general proclamation, without specific reference to Cuba, warning all persons against engagement in such expeditions. During the years of the war, Spanish warships, at different times, seized American vessels, a proceeding which led to some active diplomatic negotiation, and which, on several occasions, threatened to involve this country in war with Spain. The problem of the industry variously known as filibustering, blockade-running, gun-running, and the shipment of contraband, has two ends. There is, first, the task of getting the shipment out of one country, and, second, the task of getting it into another country. While it is generally classed as an unlawful enterprise, there frequently arises a difficulty in proving violation of law, even when goods are seized and the participants arrested. There is, perhaps, a moral question involved also. Such shipments may be a violation of the law. They are generally so regarded. But they may be, as in the case of the struggling Cubans, struggling against actual and generally admitted wrongs, the only means of serving a worthy and commendable end. There is no doubt that, in Cuba's revolution of 1895, Americans who knew about the work were prone to regard a successful expedition to the island with satisfaction if not with glee. They were inclined to regard those engaged as worthy patriots rather than as law-breakers. Under date of February 23, 1898, the House of Representatives requested the Secretary of the Treasury to inform that body "at the earliest date practicable, if not incompatible with the public service, what has been done by the United States to prevent the conveyance to the Cubans of articles produced in the United States, and what to prevent 'filibustering,' and with what results, giving particulars, and at what expense to the United States." A reply was sent on the 28th. It makes a very good showing for the activities of the officials responsible for the prevention of such expeditions, but from all I can learn about the matter, it is quite incomplete. There were a number of excursions not set down in the official records. Sailing dates and time and place of arrival were not advertised in the daily papers. The official statement shows that sixty reports of alleged filibustering expeditions were brought to the attention of the Treasury Department; that twenty-eight of them were frustrated through efforts of the Department; that five were frustrated by the United States Navy; four by Spain; two wrecked; one driven back by storm; one failed through a combination of causes; and seventeen that may be regarded as successful expeditions. The records of the Cuban _junta_ very materially increase the number in the latter class. The despatch of these expeditions was a three-cornered battle of wits. The groups engaged were the officials of the United States, the representatives of Spain, and the agents of the revolution. The United States employed the revenue service and the navy, aided on land by the Customs Service, the Secret Service, and other Federal officers. The official representatives of Spain employed scores of detectives and Spanish spies. The Cuban group sought to outwit them all, and succeeded remarkably well in doing so. A part of the story has been told, with general correctness, in a little volume entitled _A Captain Unafraid_, described as _The Strange Adventures of Dynamite Johnny O'Brien_. This man, really a remarkable man in his special line, was born in New York, in 1837, and, at the time this is written, is still living. He was born and grew to boyhood in the shadow of the numerous shipyards then in active operation along the East River. The yards were his playground. At thirteen years of age, he ran away and went to see as cook on a fishing sloop. He admits that he could not then "cook a pot of water without burning it," but claims that he could catch cod-fish where no one else could find them. From fisherman, sailing-master on private yachts, schooner captain, and officer in the United States Navy in the Civil War, he became a licensed East River pilot in New York. He became what might be called a professional filibuster at the time of the revolution in Colombia, in 1885, following that with similar experience in a revolt in Honduras two years later. The Cubans landed a few expeditions in 1895, but a greater number were blocked. In March, 1896, they applied to O'Brien and engaged him to command the _Bermuda_, then lying in New York and ready to sail. Captain O'Brien reports that her cargo included "2,500 rifles, a 12-pounder Hotchkiss field-gun, 1,500 revolvers, 200 short carbines, 1000 pounds of dynamite, 1,200 _machetes_, and an abundance of ammunition." All was packed in boxes marked "codfish," and "medicines." The _Bermuda_ sailed the next morning, March 15, with O'Brien in command, cleared for Vera Cruz. The Cubans, including General Calixto Garcia, who were to go on the expedition, were sent to Atlantic City, there to engage a fishing sloop to take them off-shore where they would be picked up by the _Bermuda_ on her way. The ship was under suspicion, and was followed down the bay by tugboats carrying United States marshals, customs officers, and newspaper reporters. O'Brien says: "They hung on to us down through the lower bay and out past Sandy Hook, without getting enough to pay for a pound of the coal they were furiously burning to keep up with us. I don't know how far they might have followed us, but when we were well clear of the Hook, a kind fortune sent along a blinding snow-storm, which soon chased them back home." General Garcia and his companions were picked up as planned, and that part of the enterprise was completed. The vessel was on its way. A somewhat roundabout route was taken in order to avoid any possible overhauling by naval or revenue ships. The point selected for the landing was a little harbor on the north coast about thirty miles from the eastern end of the island. The party included two Cuban pilots, supposed to know the coast where they were to land. One of them proved to be a traitor and the other, O'Brien says, "was at best an ignoramus." The traitor, who, after the landing, paid for his offence with his life, tried to take them into the harbor of Baracoa, where lay five Spanish warships. But O'Brien knew the difference, as shown by his official charts, between the Cape Maisi light, visible for eighteen miles, and the Baracoa light, visible for only eight miles, and kicked the pilot off the bridge. The landing was begun at half-past ten at night, and completed about three o'clock in the morning, with five Spanish warships barely more than five miles away. The United States Treasury Department reported this expedition as "successful." The vessel then proceeded to Honduras, where it took on a cargo of bananas, and returned, under orders, to Philadelphia, the home city of its owner, Mr. John D. Hart. Arrests were made soon after the arrival, including Hart, the owner of the vessel, O'Brien, and his mate, and General Emilio Nuñez who accompanied the expedition as the representative of the _junta_. The case was transferred from the courts in Philadelphia to New York, and there duly heard. The alleged offenders were defended by Horatio Rubens, Esq., of New York, the official counsel of the _junta_. One of the grounds of the defence was that the defendants might be guilty of smuggling arms into Cuba, but with that offence the courts of the United States had nothing to do. The jury disagreed. The indictments were held over the heads of the members of the group, but no further action was taken, and two or three years later the case was dismissed by order of the Attorney General of the United States. This expedition fairly illustrates the science of filibustering in its elementary form, a clearance with some attendant risk; a voyage with possibility of interference at any time; and a landing made with still greater risk and danger of capture. The trip had been made so successfully and with such full satisfaction to the promoters that the _junta_ urged O'Brien to remain with them as long as there should be need for his services, and he agreed to do so. A department of expeditions was organized under the general control of Emilio Nuñez, with O'Brien as navigator. Credit for the numerous successful expeditions that followed lies in differing degrees with Nuñez, Palma, Rubens, O'Brien, Hart, Cartaya, and others less well known in connection with the enterprises. But for the work they did, the risks they ran, Cuba's revolution must have failed. All of them risked jail sentences, and some of them risked their lives in ways perhaps even more dangerous than fighting in the field. The success of the _Bermuda_ expedition, carried out by what may be called direct evasion, quite seriously disturbed the authorities in this country, and excited them to greater precautions and wider activity. Whatever may have been their personal feelings in the matter, it was their duty to see that the laws of the country were enforced as far as they could be. The players of the game for the Cubans met the new activities with complicated moves, many of which puzzled the watching officials, and landed a number of expeditions. Meanwhile, minor expeditions continued. The official report notes that on March 12, 1896, the _Commodore_, a 100-ton steamer, sailed from Charleston with men, arms, and ammunition, and landed them in Cuba. The _Laurada_, a 900-ton steamer, was reported by the Spanish Legation as having sailed on May 9, meeting three tugs and two lighters, off the coast, from which were transferred men and arms. The report states that "some of the men landed in Cuba, but the larger part of the arms and ammunition was thrown into the sea," which may or may not have been the case. On May 23, the tug _Three Friends_ left Jacksonville, took on men and arms from two small vessels waiting outside, and landed all in Cuba. A month later, and again two months later, the _Three Friends_ repeated the trip from Florida ports. On June 17, the _Commodore_ made another successful trip from Charleston. While these and other minor expeditions were going on, the department of expeditions in New York was busy with a more extensive enterprise. An order was placed for 3000 rifles, 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition, 3 12-pound Hotchkiss field-guns and 600 shells, _machetes_, and several tons of dynamite. The steamer _Laurada_ was chartered, and the ocean-going tug _Dauntless_ was bought in Brunswick, Georgia. A part of the purchased munitions was ordered to New York, and the remainder, two car loads, shipped to Jacksonville by express. Ostensibly, the _Laurada_ was to sail from Philadelphia to Jamaica for a cargo of fruit, a business in which she had at times engaged. Her actual instructions were to proceed to the vicinity of Barnegat, about forty miles from New York, and there, at sea, await orders. The arms and ammunition came down from Bridgeport on the regular boat from that city, and were left on board until night. There was no particular secrecy about the shipment, and detectives followed it. But when, at dark, the big gates of the dock were closed and locked and all seemed over for the day, the watchers assumed that nothing would be done until the next day, and went away. But, immediately after their departure, a big lighter slipped quietly into the dock across the wharf from the Bridgeport boat, a swarm of men appeared and, behind the closed gates, in the semi-darkness of the wharf, rushed boxes from steamer to lighter. The work was finished at midnight; a tug slipped up and attached a hawser to the lighter; and the cargo was on its way to Cuba. Johnny O'Brien was on the tug. The _Laurada_ was met off Barnegat, as arranged, and the cargo and about fifty Cubans put on board of her. She was ordered to proceed slowly to Navassa Island where the _Dauntless_ would meet her. General Nuñez and O'Brien returned to New York on the tug, and while the detectives suspected that something had been done, they had no clue whatever to guide them. Nuñez and O'Brien started immediately for Charleston, with detectives at their heels. The _Commodore_, a tug then owned by the Cubans, lay in the harbor of that city, with a revenue cutter standing guard over her. She was ordered to get up steam and to go through all the motions of an immediate departure. But this was a ruse to draw attention away from the actual operations. Rubens, meanwhile, had gone to Jacksonville where he busied himself in convincing the authorities that the tug _Three Friends_ was about to get away with an expedition. With one revenue cutter watching the _Commodore_ in Charleston, the other cutter in the neighborhood was engaged in watching the _Three Friends_ in Jacksonville, thus leaving a clear coast between those cities. In Charleston were about seventy-five Cubans waiting a chance to get to the island. O'Brien states that about twenty-five detectives were following their party. Late in the afternoon of August 13, while the smoke was pouring from the funnels of the _Commodore_, the regular south-bound train pulled out of the city. Its rear car was a reserved coach carrying the Cuban party, numbering a hundred or so. Detectives tried to enter, but were told that it was a private car, which it was. They went along in the forward cars. At ten o'clock that night, the train reached Callahan, where the Coast Line crossed the Seaboard Air Line. While the train was halted for the crossing, that rear car was quietly uncoupled. The train went on, detectives and all. The railroad arrangements were effected through the invaluable assistance of Mr. Alphonso Fritot, a local railway man whose authority enabled him to do with trains and train movement whatever he saw fit. He was himself of Cuban birth, though of French-American parentage, with ample reason, both personal and patriotic, for serving his Cuban friends, and his services were beyond measure. By his orders, when that train with its band of detectives had pulled away for Jacksonville, an engine picked up the detached car and ran it over to the Coast Line. A few miles away, it collected from a blind siding the two cars of arms and ammunition shipped some days before, from Bridgeport. A little further on, the line crossed the Satilla River. There lay the _Dauntless_, purchased by Rubens. Steam was up, and a quick job was made of transferring cargo and men from train to boat. Another tug brought a supply of coal, and soon after sunrise another expedition was on its way to Cuba. All this may be very immoral, but some who were on the expedition have told me that it was at least tremendously exciting. On August 17, the passengers and cargo were landed on the Cuban coast near Nuevitas. The tug then proceeded to Navassa Island to meet the _Laurada_. Half of the men and half of the cargo of the steamer were transferred to the tug, and all were safely landed in a little cove a few miles west of Santiago. The landing was made in broad daylight. There were a number of Spanish naval vessels in Santiago harbor, and the city itself was filled with Spanish troops. The tug then returned for the remainder of the _Laurada's_ passengers and cargo, all of which were landed a few days later at the place of the earlier landing. The _Laurada_ went on to Jamaica and loaded with bananas, with which she sailed for Charleston. Arrests were made as a result of the expedition, and the owner of the ship, Mr. John D. Hart, was convicted and sentenced to sixteen months in the penitentiary. After serving four months of his term, a pardon was secured. He is said to be the only one, out of all those engaged in the many expeditions, who was actually convicted, and his only offence was the chartering of his ships to the Cuban revolutionists. The _Dauntless_ was seized on her return to Jacksonville, but was soon released. An effort was made to indict O'Brien, but there was too much sympathy for the Cubans in Florida, where the effort was made. A number of minor expeditions were carried out in the next few months, by the _Dauntless_, the _Three Friends_, and the _Commodore_, the latter being wrecked in the last week in December. In February, 1897, another complicated manoeuvre was successfully executed. This involved the use of the _Bermuda_, the _Laurada_, and no less than seven smaller auxilliary vessels, tugs, lighters, and schooners. Rut the _Laurada_ landed the cargo on the north-eastern coast of the island. As O'Brien tells the story, this successful expedition so angered Captain-General Weyler, then the ruler of the island, that he sent a message to the daring filibuster, through an American newspaper man, somewhat as follows: "Tell O'Brien that we will get him, sooner or later, and when we do, instead of having him shot along with his Cuban companions, I am going to have him ignominiously hanged from the flag-pole at Cabaña, in full view of the city." Cabaña is the old fortress across the bay, visible from nearly all parts of Havana. To this, O'Brien sent reply saying: "To show my contempt for you and all who take orders from you, I will make a landing within plain sight of Havana on my next trip to Cuba. I may even land an expedition inside of the harbor and take you away a prisoner. If we should capture you, which is much more likely than that you will ever capture me, I will have you chopped up into small pieces and fed to the fires of the _Dauntless_." A few months later, this little Irishman, whom Weyler denounced as a "bloodthirsty, dare-devil," and who may have been a dare-devil but was not bloodthirsty, actually carried out a part of this seemingly reckless threat. He landed a cargo within a mile and a half of Morro Castle. By this time, vessels of the United States navy were employed, supplementing the work of the Revenue Service. This, of course, added both difficulty and danger to the work. In March and April, several expeditions were interrupted. For the Spanish blockade of the Cuban coast, there was only contempt. Captain O'Brien told a naval officer that if the navy and the revenue cutters would let him alone he would "advertise the time and place of departure, carry excursions on every trip, and guarantee that every expedition would be landed on time." In May, 1897, two carloads of arms and ammunition were shipped from New York to Jacksonville, but, by the authority of Mr. Fritot, they were quietly dropped from the train at a junction point, and sent to Wilmington, N.C. Their contents were transferred to the tug _Alexander Jones_, and that boat proceeded nonchalantly down the river. Soon afterward, an old schooner, the _John D. Long_, loaded with coal, followed the tug. Two revenue cutters were on hand, but there was nothing in the movements of these vessels to excite their interest. Off shore, the tug attached a towline to the schooner that was carrying its coal supply, its own bunkers being crammed with guns and cartridges. Off Palm Beach, General Nuñez and some sixty Cubans were taken from a fishing boat, according to a prearranged plan. Two days later, at an agreed upon place, they were joined by the _Dauntless_ which had slipped out of Jacksonville. The excursion was then complete. About half the cargo of the _Jones_ was transferred to the _Dauntless_ and was landed, May 21, a few miles east of Nuevitas. A second trip took the remainder of the cargo of the _Jones_ and most of the Cuban passengers, and landed the lot under the very guns, such as they were, of Morro Castle, and within about three miles of the Palace of Captain-General Weyler. All that time, a force of insurgents under Rodriguez and Aurenguren was operating in that immediate vicinity, and was in great need of the supplies thus obtained. Some of the dynamite then landed was used the next day to blow up a train on which Weyler was supposed to be travelling, but in their haste the Cubans got one train ahead of that carrying the official party. The row that Weyler made about this landing will probably never be forgotten by the subordinates who were the immediate victims of his rage. These are only a few of the many expeditions, successful and unsuccessful, made during those three eventful years. The Treasury Department report of February 28, 1898, gives seventeen successful operations. As a matter of fact, more than forty landings were made, although in a few cases a single expedition accounted for two, and in one or two instances for three landings. The experiences run through the entire gamut of human emotions, from absurdity to tragedy. The former is illustrated by the case of the _Dauntless_ when she was held up by a vessel of the United States navy, and boarded by one of the officers of the ship. He examined the tug from stem to stern, sat on boxes of ammunition which seemed to him to be boxes of sardines, stumbled over packages of rifles from which butts and muzzles protruded; and failed utterly to find anything that could be regarded as contraband. The mere fact that a vessel is engaged in transporting arms and ammunition does not, of necessity, bring it within reach of the law. But that particular vessel was a good deal more than under suspicion; it was under the closest surveillance and open to the sharpest scrutiny. The temporary myopia of that particular lieutenant of the United States navy was no more than an outward and visible sign of a well-developed sense of humor, and an indication of at least a personal sympathy for the Cubans in their struggle. Tragedy is illustrated by the disaster to the steamer _Tillie_. One day, late in January, 1898, this vessel, lying off the end of Long Island, took on one of the largest cargoes ever started on a filibustering expedition to Cuba. The cause is not known, but soon after starting a leak developed, beyond the capacity of the pumps. A heavy sea was running, and disaster was soon inevitable. The cargo was thrown overboard to lighten the ship and the vessel was headed for the shore on the chance that it might float until it could be beached. The water in the ship increased rapidly, and extinguished the fires under the boilers; the wind, blowing a high gale, swung into the northwest, thus driving the now helpless hulk out to sea. Huge combing waves swept the decks from end to end. O'Brien tells the story: "We looked in vain for another craft of any kind, and by the middle of the afternoon it seemed as though it was all up with us, for there was not much daylight left, and with her deck almost awash it was impossible that the _Tillie_ should keep afloat all night. The gale had swept us rapidly out to sea. The wind, which was filled with icy needles, had kicked up a wild cross-sea, and it was more comfortable to go down with the ship than even to think of trying to escape in the boats." At last, when there seemed no longer any hope of rescue, the big five-masted schooner _Governor Ames_ came plunging through the heaving seas, and, by masterly seamanship and good fortune, backed by the heroism of her commander and crew, succeeded in taking off all except four, who went down with the ship. But the work went on. There is not space here to tell of the several vessels whose names, through the engagement of the craft in these enterprises, became as familiar to newspaper readers as are the names of ocean liners today. A few months later, the United States Government sent its ships and its men to help those who, for three hard years, had struggled for national independence. XII _THE STORY OF SUGAR_ Chemically, sugar is a compound belonging to the group of carbohydrates, or organic compounds of carbon with oxygen and hydrogen. The group includes sugars, starches, gums, and celluloses. Sugar is a product of the vegetable kingdom, of plants, trees, root crops, etc. It is found in and is producible from many growths. As a laboratory process, it is obtainable from many sources, but, commercially, it is derived from only two, the sugar cane and the beet root. This statement, however, has a certain limitation in that it omits such products as maple sugar, malt sugar, milk sugar, and others having commercial or chemical uses on a limited scale. But it is only with the crystallized sucrose, the familiar sugar of the market and the household, that we are dealing here. The output of the other sugars is measurable in hundreds or even thousands of pounds, but the output of the sugar of commerce is measured in millions of tons. Long experience proves that the desired substance is most readily, most abundantly, and most cheaply, obtained from the juices of the plant commonly known as sugar cane, and from the vegetable known as the sugar beet. The mechanical processes employed in producing sugar from cane and from beets, are practically the same. They are, broadly, the extraction or expression of the juices, their clarification and evaporation, and crystallization. These processes produce what is called "raw sugar," of varying percentages of sucrose content. Following them, there comes, for American uses, the process of refining, of removing the so-called impurities and foreign substances, and the final production of sugar in the shape of white crystals of different size, of sugar as powdered, cube, loaf, or other form. In the case of cane sugar, this is usually a secondary operation not conducted in the original mill. In the case of beet sugar, production is not infrequently a continuous operation in the same mill, from the beet root to the bagged or barrelled sugar ready for the market. The final product from both cane and beet is practically the same. Pure sugar is pure sugar, whatever its source. In the commercial production, on large scale, there remains a small fraction of molasses or other harmless substances, indistinguishable by sight, taste, or smell. With that fraction removed and an absolute 100 per cent. secured, there would be no way by which the particular origin could be determined. For all practical purposes, the sugar of commerce, whether from cane or beet, is pure sugar. It is doubtful if an adulterated sugar can be found in the United States, notwithstanding the tales of the grocer who "sands" his sugar, and of the producer who adds _terra alba_ or some other adulterant. In some countries of Europe and elsewhere, there are sugars of inferior grades, of 85 or 90 or more degrees of sugar purity, but they are known as such and are sold at prices adjusted to their quality. Sugars of that class are obtainable in this country, but they are wanted almost exclusively for particular industrial purposes, for their glucose rather than their sucrose content. The American household, whether the home of the rich or of the poor, demands the well-known white sugar of established purity. There is still obtainable, in this country, but in limited quantity, a sugar very pleasantly remembered by many who have reached or passed middle age. It was variously known as "Muscovado" sugar, or as "plantation sugar," sometimes as "coffee" or "coffee crushed." It was a sugar somewhat sweeter to the taste than the white sugar, by reason of the presence of a percentage of molasses. It was a superior sugar for certain kitchen products, for pies, certain kinds of cake, etc. It has many times been urged in Congress that the employment of what is known as the Dutch Standard, now abolished, excluded this sugar from our market. This is not at all the fact. The disappearance of the commodity is due solely to change in the mechanical methods of sugar production. It would be quite impossible to supply the world's sugar demand by the old "open kettle" process by which that sugar was made. The quality of sugar is easily tested by any one who has a spoonful of sugar and a glass of water. If the sugar dissolves entirely, and dissolves without discoloring the water, it may be accepted as a pure sugar. In his book on _The World's Cane Sugar Industry--Past and Present_, Mr. H.C. Prinsen Geerligs, a recognized expert authority on the subject, gives an elaborate history of the origin and development of the industry. His chapters on those branches are much too long for inclusion in full, but the following extracts tell the story in general outline. He states that the probability that sugar cane originally came from India is very strong, "as only the ancient literature of that country mentions sugar cane, while we know for certain that it was conveyed (from there) to other countries by travellers and sailors." The plant appears in Hindu mythology. A certain prince expressed a desire to be translated to heaven during his lifetime, but Indra, the monarch of the celestial regions, refused to admit him. A famous Hindu hermit, Vishva Mitra, prepared a temporary paradise for the prince, and for his use created the sugar cane as a heavenly food during his occupation of the place. The abode was afterward demolished, but the delectable plant, and a few other luxuries, were "spread all over the land of mortals as a permanent memorial of Vishva Mitra's miraculous deeds." In the time of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) there appear tales of "a reed growing in India which produced honey without the aid of bees." The early references are to sugar cane and not to cane sugar. While there may have been earlier experiences, the history of sugar, as such, seems to begin in the 7th century (A.D.). There is a story that the Chinese Emperor, Tai Tsung (627-650 A.D.) sent people to Behar, in India, to learn the art of sugar manufacture. The Arabs and the Egyptians soon learned how to purify sugar by re-crystallization, and to manufacture sweetmeats from the purified sugar. Marco Polo, who visited China during the last quarter of the 13th Century, refers to "a great many sugar factories in South China, where sugar could be freely bought at low prices." The Mohammedan records of that period also show the manufacture, in India, of crystallized sugar and candy. The area of production at that time covered, generally, the entire Mediterranean coast. The crusaders found extensive plantations in Tripoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere. The plant is said to have been introduced in Spain as early as the year 755. Its cultivation is said to have been a flourishing industry there in the year 1150. Through China, it was early extended to Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines. The records of the 14th Century show the production and distribution of sugar as an important commercial enterprise in the Mediterranean region. The Portuguese discoveries of the 15th Century carried the plant to the Azores, the Cape Verde islands, and to possessions in the Gulf of Guinea. The Spaniards took it to the Western Hemisphere in the early years of the 16th Century. The Portuguese took it to Brazil at about the same time. While a Chinese traveller, visiting Java in 424, reports the cultivation of sugar cane, it was not until more than twelve hundred years later that the island, now an important source of sugar supply, began the production of sugar as a commercial enterprise. By the end of the 18th Century there was what might be called a sugar belt, girdling the globe and extending, roughly, from thirty-five degrees north of the equator to thirty-five degrees south of that line. It was then a product of many of the countries within those limits. The supply of that time was obtained entirely from cane. The early years of the 19th Century brought a new experience in the sugar business. That was the production of sugar, in commercial quantities, from beets. From that time until now, the commodity has been a political shuttlecock, the object of government bounties and the subject of taxation. In 1747, Herr Marggraf, of the Academy of Sciences, in Berlin, discovered the existence of crystallizable sugar in the juice of the beet and other roots. No practical use was made of the discovery until 1801 when a factory was established near Breslau, in Silesia. The European beet-sugar industry, that has since attained enormous proportions, had its actual beginning in the early years of the 19th Century. It was a result of the Napoleonic wars of that period. When the wars were ended, and the blockades raised, the industry was continued in France by the aid of premiums, differentials, and practically prohibitory tariffs. The activities in other European countries under similar conditions of governmental aid, came a little later. The total world supply of sugar, including cane and beet, less than 1,500,000 tons, even as recently as 1850, seems small in comparison with the world's requirement of about twelve times that quantity at the present time. The output of beet sugar was then only about 200,000 tons, as compared with a present production of approximately 8,000,000 tons. But sugar was then a costly luxury while it is today a cheaply supplied household necessity. As recently as 1870, the wholesale price of granulated sugar in New York was thirteen and a half cents a pound, or about three times the present average. Cane sugar is produced in large or small quantities in some fifty different countries and islands. In many, the output is only for domestic consumption, or in quantity too small to warrant inclusion in the list of sources of commercial supply. Sixteen countries are included in the list of beet-sugar producers. Of these, all are in Europe with the exception of the United States and Canada. Only two countries, the United States and Spain, produce sugar from both beet and cane. British India leads in the production of cane sugar, with Cuba a close second on the list, and Java the third. In their total, these three countries supply about two-thirds of the world's total output of cane sugar. Hawaii and Porto Rico, in that order, stand next on the list of producers. Under normal conditions, Germany leads in beet-sugar production, with Russia second, Austria-Hungary third, France fourth, and the United States fifth, with Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark following. The island of Cuba is the most important source of commercial cane sugar. Immediately before the revolution of 1895, its output a little exceeded a million tons. The derangement caused by that experience covered several years, and it was not until 1903 that so large a crop was again made. Since that time, the output has more than doubled. The increase is attributable to the large increase in demand in the United States, and to the advantage given Cuban sugar in this market by the reciprocity treaty of 1903. Practically all of Cuba's export product is in the class commonly known as 96 degree centrifugals, that is, raw sugar of 96 per cent, or thereabout, of sugar content. Under normal conditions, nearly all of Cuba's shipments are to the United States. The sugar industry was introduced in Cuba very soon after the permanent settlement of the island, by Spaniards, in the early years of the 16th Century, but it was not until two hundred and fifty years later that Spain's restrictive and oppressive colonial policy made even its fair extension possible. In 1760, two and a half centuries after the first settlement, the sugar exports of the island were a little less than 4,400 tons. In 1790, they were a little more than 14,000 tons. Some relaxation of the laws regulating production and exportation, made possible an increase to 41,000 tons in 1802, and further relaxation made possible, in 1850, an output somewhat unreliably reported as 223,000 tons. It reached 632,000 tons in 1890, and the stimulus of the "free sugar" schedule of the United States brought it, in the next few years, to more than a million tons. Production in recent years has averaged about 2,500,000 tons. In forty years, only a little more than a single generation, the world's supply of sugar has been multiplied by five, from a little more than three million tons a year to nearly eighteen million tons. The total world output in 1875 would not today supply the demand of the United States alone. This increase in production has been made possible by improvements in the methods and the machinery of manufacture. Until quite recently, primitive methods were employed, much like those used in the production of maple sugar on the farm, although on larger scale. More attention has been paid to varieties of the plant and some, though no very great, change has been made in field processes. In Cuba, the cane is planted in vast areas, in thousands of acres. Some of the estates plant and cultivate their own fields, and grind the cane in their own mills. Others, known as "_colonos_," are planters only, the crop being sold to the mills commonly called "_centrales_." In its general appearance, a field of sugar-cane looks quite like a field of corn, but the method of cultivation is somewhat different. The slow oxen are still commonly used for plowing and for carts. This is not because of any lack of progressive spirit, but because experience has shown that, under all conditions of the industry, the ox makes the most satisfactory and economical motive power, notwithstanding his lack of pace. The Encyclopædia describes sugar-cane as "a member of the grass family, known botanically as _Saccbarum officinarum_. It is a tall, perennial grass-like plant, giving off numerous erect stems 6 to 12 feet or more in height, from a thick solid jointed root-stalk." The ground is plowed in rows in which, not seed, but a stalk of cane is lightly buried. The rootlets and the new cane spring from the joints of the planted stalk which is laid flat and lengthwise of the row. It takes from a year to a year and a half for the stalk to mature sufficiently for cutting and grinding. Several cuttings, and sometimes many, are made from a single planting. There are tales of fields on which cane has grown for forty years without re-planting. A few years ago, ten or fifteen years was not an unusual period. The present tendency is toward more frequent planting, but not annual, as offering a better chance for stronger cane with a larger sugar content. The whole process of cultivation and field treatment is hard, heavy work, most of it very hard work. Probably the hardest and heaviest is the cutting. This is done with a long, heavy-bladed knife, the _machete_. The stalk, from an inch to two inches in thickness, is chopped down near the root, the heavy knife swung with cut after cut, under a burning sun. Only the strongest can stand it, a wearying, back-breaking task. After cutting, the stalk is trimmed and loaded on carts to be hauled, according to distance, either directly to the mill or to the railway running thereto. The large estates have their own railway systems running to all the fields of the plantation. These are private lines operated only for economy in cane transportation. Most of the crushing mills measure their daily consumption of cane in thousands of tons. While every precaution is taken, there are occasional fires. In planting, wide "fire lanes," or uncultivated strips are left to prevent the spread of fire if it occurs. Mill installations vary on the different plantations, but the general principle of operation is the same on all. The first process is the extraction of the juice that carries the sugar. It is probable that this was originally done in hand mortars. Next came the passing of the cane between wooden rollers turned by ox power, the rollers standing upright and connected with a projecting shaft or beam to the outer end of which the animal was attached, to plod around and around while the cane was fed between the rollers. The present system is merely an expansion of that old principle. At the mill, the stalks are dumped, by carload or by cartload, into a channel through which they are mechanically conveyed to huge rollers, placed horizontally, arranged in pairs or in sets of three, and slowly turned by powerful engines. The larger mills have a series of these rollers, two, three, or even four sets, the stalks passing from one to another for the expression of every possible drop of the juice, up to the point where the cost of juice extraction exceeds the value of the juice obtained. The expressed juices are collected in troughs through which they are run to the next operation. The crushed stalks, then known as _bagasse_, are conveyed to the huge boilers where they are used as fuel for the generation of the steam required in the various operations, from the feeding and the turning of the rollers, to the device from which the final product, the crystallized sugar, is poured into bags ready for shipment. All this is a seasonal enterprise. The cane grows throughout the year, but it begins to ripen in December. Then the mills start up and run until the rains of the next May or June suspend further operations. It then becomes impossible to haul the cane over the heavily mired roads from the muddy fields. Usually, only a few mills begin their work in December, and early June usually sees most of them shut down. The beginning of the rainy season is not uniform, and there are mills in eastern Cuba that sometimes run into July and even into August. But the general grinding season may be given as of about five months duration, and busy months they are. The work goes on night and day. The next step is the treatment of the juices expressed by the rollers and collected in the troughs that carry it onward. The operations are highly technical, and different methods are employed in different mills. The first operation is one of purification. The juice, as it comes from the rollers, carries such materials as glucose, salts, organic acids, and other impurities, that must be removed. For this, lime is the principal agent. The details of it all would be as tedious here as they are complicated in the mill. The percentages of the different impurities vary with the variation of the soils in which the cane is grown. The next step, following clarification, is evaporation, the boiling out of a large percentage of the water carried in the juice. For this purpose, a vacuum system is used, making possible a more rapid evaporation with a smaller expenditure of fuel. These two operations, clarification and evaporation by the use of the vacuum, are merely improved methods for doing, on a large scale, what was formerly done by boiling in pans or kettles, on a small scale. That method is still used in many parts of the world, and even in the United States, in a small way. For special reasons, it is still used on some of the Louisiana plantations; it is common in the farm production of sorghum molasses in the South; and in the manufacture of maple sugar in the North. In those places, the juices are boiled in open pans or kettles, the impurities skimmed off as they rise, and the boiling, for evaporation, is continued until a proper consistency is reached, for molasses in the case of sorghum and for crystallization in the case of plantation and maple sugars. There is an old story of an erratic New England trader, in Newburyport, who called himself Lord Timothy Dexter. In one of his shipments to the West Indies, a hundred and fifty years ago, this picturesque individual included a consignment of "warming pans," shallow metal basins with a cover and a long wooden handle, used for warming beds on cold winter nights. The basin was filled with coals from the fireplace, and then moved about between the sheets to take off the chill. He was not a little ridiculed by his acquaintances for sending such merchandise where it could not possibly be needed, but it is said that he made considerable money out of his enterprise. With the covers removed, the long-handled, shallow basins proved admirably adapted for use in skimming the sugar in the boiling-pans. But the old-fashioned method would be impossible today. The different operations are too complicated and too technical for more than a reference to the purpose of the successive processes. Clarification and evaporation having been completed, the next step is crystallization, also a complicated operation. When this is done, there remains a dark brown mass consisting of sugar crystals and molasses, and the next step is the removal of all except a small percentage of the molasses. This is accomplished by what are called the centrifugals, deep bowls with perforated walls, whirled at two or three thousand revolutions a minute. This expels the greater part of the molasses, and leaves a mass of yellow-brown crystals, the coloring being due to the molasses remaining. This is the raw sugar of commerce. Most of Cuba's raw product is classed as "96 degree centrifugals," that is, the raw sugar, as it comes from the centrifugal machines and is bagged for shipment, is of 96 degrees of sugar purity. This is shipped to market, usually in full cargo lots. There it goes to the refineries, where it is melted, clarified, evaporated, and crystallized. This second clarification removes practically everything except the pure crystallized sugar of the market and the table. It is then an article of daily use in every household, and a subject of everlasting debate in Congress. XIII _VARIOUS PRODUCTS AND INDUSTRIES_ The Encyclopædia Britannica states that "although the fact has been controverted, there cannot be a doubt that the knowledge of tobacco and its uses came to the rest of the world from America. As the continent was opened up and explored, it became evident that the consumption of tobacco, especially by smoking, was a universal and immemorial usage, in many cases bound up with the most significant and solemn tribal ceremonials." The name "tobacco" was originally the name of the appliance in which it was smoked and not of the plant itself, just as the term "chowder" comes from the vessel (_chaudière_) in which the compound was prepared. The tobacco plant was first taken to Europe in 1558, by Francisco Fernandez, a physician who had been sent to Mexico by Philip II to investigate the products of that country. The English, however, appear to have been the first Europeans to adopt the smoking habit, and Sir Walter Raleigh was notable for his indulgence in the weed. He is said to have called for a solacing pipe just before his execution. Very soon after their arrival, in 1607, the Virginia settlers engaged in the cultivation of tobacco, and it soon became the most important commercial product of the colony. Smoking, as practiced in this country, appears to have been largely, and perhaps only, by means of pipes generally similar to those now in use. The contents of ancient Indian mounds, or tumuli, opened in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, show the use of pipes by the aborigines probably centuries before the discoveries by Columbus. Many were elaborately carved in porphyry or some other hard stone, while others were made of baked clay. Others, many of them also elaborately carved and ornamented, have been found in Mexico. Roman antiquities show many pipes, but they do not show the use of tobacco. It is assumed that they were used for burning incense, or for smoking some aromatic herb or hemp. The first knowledge of the use of the plant in Cuba was in November, 1492, when Columbus, on landing near Nuevitas, sent his messengers inland to greet the supposed ruler of a supposed great Asiatic empire. Washington Irving thus reports the story as it was told by Navarete, the Spanish historian. Referring to those messengers, he says: "They beheld several of the natives going about with firebrands in their hands, and certain dried herbs which they rolled up in a leaf, and lighting one end, put the other in their mouths, and continued exhaling and puffing out the smoke. A roll of this kind they called a tobacco, a name since transferred to the plant of which the rolls were made. The Spaniards, although prepared to meet with wonders, were struck with astonishment at this singular and apparently nauseous indulgence." A few years later, a different method was reported, by Columbus, as employed in Hispaniola. This consisted of inhaling the fumes of the leaf through a Y-shaped device applied to the nostrils. This operation is said to have produced intoxication and stupefaction, which appears to have been the desired result. The old name still continues in Cuba, and if a smoker wants a cigar, he will get it by calling for a "tobacco." The production of the plant is, next to sugar, Cuba's most important commercial industry. Its early history is only imperfectly known. There was probably very little commercial production during the 16th Century, for the reason that there was then no demand for it. The demand came in the first half of the 17th Century, and by the middle of that period tobacco was known and used in practically all civilized countries. The demand for it spread very rapidly, in spite of papal fulminations and penal enactments. For a time, in Russia, the noses of smokers were cut off. The early part of the 18th Century saw Cuba actively engaged in production and shipment. In 1717, Cuba's tobacco was made a monopoly of the Spanish Government. Under that system, production was regulated and prices were fixed by the agents of the government, in utter disregard of the welfare of the producers. As a result, several serious riots occurred. In 1723, a large number of planters refused to accept the terms offered by the officials, and destroyed the crops of those who did accept, a condition repeated in the State of Kentucky a few years ago, the only difference being that in the Cuban experience the monopolist was the Government, and in Kentucky it was a corporation. A few years later, in 1734, the Cuban monopoly was sold to Don José Tallapiedra who contracted to ship to Spain, annually, three million pounds of tobacco. The contract was afterward given to another, but control was resumed by the Crown, in 1760. Finally, in 1817, cultivation and trade were declared to be free, subject only to taxation. [Illustration: STREET IN CAMAGUEY] In time, it became known that the choicest tobacco in the market came from the western end of Cuba, from the Province of Pinar del Rio. It was given a distinct name, _Vuelta Abajo_, a term variously translated but referring to the downward bend of the section of the island in which that grade is produced. Here is grown a tobacco that, thus far, has been impossible of production elsewhere. Many experiments have been tried, in Cuba and in other countries. Soils have been analyzed by chemists; seeds from the _Vuelta Abajo_ have been planted; and localities have been sought where climatic conditions corresponded. No success has been attained. Nor is the crop of that region produced on an extensive scale, that is, the choicer leaf. Not all of the tobacco is of the finest grade, although most of it is of high quality. There are what may be called "patches" of ground, known to the experts, on which the best is produced, for reasons not yet clearly determined. The fact is well known, but the causes are somewhat mysterious. Nor does the plant of this region appear to be susceptible of improvement through any modern, scientific systems of cultivation. The quality deteriorates rather than improves as a result of artificial fertilizers. The people of the region, cultivating this special product through generation after generation, seem to have developed a peculiar instinct for its treatment. It is not impossible that a time may come when scientific soil selection, seed selection, special cultivation, irrigation, and other systems, singly or in combination, will make possible the production of a standardized high-grade leaf in much greater quantity than heretofore, but it seems little probable that anything so produced will excel or even equal the best produced by these expert _vegueros_ by their indefinable but thorough knowledge of the minutest peculiarities of this peculiar plant. Thus far, it has not even been possible to produce it elsewhere in the island. It has been tried outside of the fairly defined area of its production, tried by men who knew it thoroughly within that area, tried from the same seed, from soils that seem quite the same. But all failed. Science may some day definitely locate the reasons, just as it may find the reason for deterioration in the quality of Cuban tobacco eastward from that area. The tobacco of Havana Province is excellent, but inferior to that of Pinar del Rio. The growth of Santa Clara Province is of good quality, but inferior to that of Havana Province, while the tobacco of eastern Cuba is little short of an offence to a discriminating taste. Tobacco is grown from seeds, planted in specially prepared seed beds. Seeding is begun in the early autumn. When the young plant has attained a proper height, about eight or ten inches, it is removed to, and planted in, the field of its final growth. This preliminary process demands skill, knowledge, and careful attention equal, perhaps, to the requirements of the later stages. Experiments have been made with mechanical appliances, but most of the work is still done by hand, particularly in the area producing the better qualities of leaf. From the time of transplanting, it is watched with the greatest care. A constant battle is waged with weeds and insect life, and water must be brought if the season is too dry. If rains are excessive, as they sometimes are, the crop may be partly or wholly destroyed, as it was in the autumn of 1914. The plant matures in January, after four months of constant watchfulness and labor, in cultivation, pruning, and protection from worms and insects. When the leaves are properly ripened, the stalks are cut in sections, two leaves to a section. These are hung on poles and taken to the drying sheds where they are suspended for three or more weeks. The time of this process, and its results, depend upon moisture, temperature, and treatment. All this is again an operation demanding expert knowledge and constant care. When properly cured, the leaves are packed in bales of about 110 pounds each, and are then ready for the market. Because of the varying conditions under which the leaf is produced, from year to year, it is somewhat difficult to determine with any accuracy the increase in the industry. Broadly, the output appears to have been practically doubled in the last twenty years, a growth attributed to the new economic conditions, to the extension of transportation facilities that have made possible the opening of new areas to cultivation, and to the investment of capital, largely American capital. The exports show, generally, a material increase in sales of leaf tobacco and some decline in sales of cigars. The principal market for the leaf, for about 85 per cent of it, is in the United States where it is made, with more or less honesty, into "all-Havana" cigars. This country, however, takes only about a third of Cuba's cigar output. The United Kingdom takes about as much of that product as we do, and Germany, in normal times, takes about half as much. The remainder is widely scattered, and genuine imported Havana cigars are obtainable in all countries throughout the world. The total value of Cuba's yearly tobacco crop is from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000, including domestic consumption and foreign trade. The story that all Cubans, men and women alike, are habitual and constant smokers, is not and never was true. Whatever it may have been in the past, I am inclined to think that smoking by women is more common in this country than it is in Cuba, particularly among the middle and upper social classes. I have seen many American and English women smoke in public, but never a Cuban woman. Nor is smoking by men without its exceptions. I doubt if the percentage of non-smokers in this country is any greater than it is in the island. There are many Cubans who do smoke, just as there are many Americans, Englishmen, Germans, and Russians. Those who watch on the street for a respectable Cuban woman with a cigar in her mouth, or even a cigarette, will be disappointed. Cuba's tobacco is known by the name of the region in which it is produced; the _Vuelta Abajo_ of Pinar del Rio; the _Partidos_ of Havana Province; the _Manicaragua_ and the _Remedios_ of Santa Clara; and the _Mayari_ of Oriente. Until quite recently, when American organized capital secured control of many of the leading factories in Cuba, it was possible to identify a cigar, in size and shape, by some commonly employed name, such as _perfectos, conchas, panetelas, imperiales, londres_, etc. The old names still appear, but to them there has been added an almost interminable list in which the old distinction is almost lost. Lost, too, or submerged, are many of the old well-known names of manufacturers, names that were a guarantee of quality. There were also names for different qualities, almost invariably reliable, and for color that was supposed to mark the strength of the cigar. An accomplished smoker may still follow the old system and call for a cigar to his liking, by the use of the old terms and names made familiar by years of experience, but the general run of smokers can only select, from a hundred or more boxes bearing names and words that are unfamiliar or unknown, a cigar that he thinks looks like one that he wants. It may be a "_superba_" an "_imperial_" a "Wilson's Cabinet," or a "Havana Kid." There is a wide difference in the dates given as the time of the introduction of the coffee plant in Cuba. One writer gives the year 1720, another gives 1748, and still another gives 1769. Others give various years near the end of the century. It was doubtless a minor industry for fifty years or more before that time, but it was given an impetus and began to assume commercial proportions during the closing years of the 18th Century. During that century, the industry was somewhat extensively carried on in the neighboring island of Santo Domingo. In 1790, a revolution broke out in that island, including Haiti, and lasted, with more or less violent activity, for nearly ten years. One result was the emigration to Cuba of a considerable number of refugees, many of them French. They settled in eastern Cuba, where conditions for coffee-growing are highly favorable. Knowing that industry from their experience with it in the adjacent island, these people naturally took it up in their new home. The cultivation of coffee in Cuba, prior to that time, was largely in the neighborhood of Havana, the region then of the greater settlement and development. For the next forty years or so, the industry developed and coffee assumed a considerable importance as an export commodity, in addition to the domestic supply. In 1840, there were more than two thousand coffee plantations, large and small, producing more than seventy million pounds of coffee, the greater part of which was exported. From about the middle of the century, the industry declined, in part because of lower prices due to increase in the world-supply through increased production in other countries, and in part, because of the larger chance of profit in the growing of sugar, an industry then showing an increased importance. Coffee culture has never been entirely suspended in the island, and efforts are made from time to time to revive it, but for many years Cuba has imported most of its coffee supply, the larger share being purchased from Porto Rico. It would be easily possible for Cuba to produce its entire requirement. There are few more beautiful sights in all the world than a field of coffee trees in blossom. One writer has likened it to "millions of snow drops scattered over a sea of green." They blossom, in Cuba, about the end of February or early in March, the fruit season and picking coming in the autumn. Coffee culture is an industry requiring great care and some knowledge, and the preparation of the berry for the market involves no less of care and knowledge. The quality of the Cuban berry is of the best. It is the misfortune of the people of the United States that very few of them really know anything about coffee and its qualities, notwithstanding the fact that they consume about a billion pounds a year, all except a small percentage of it being coffee of really inferior quality. But coffee, like cigars, pickles, or music, is largely a matter of individual preference. Cuba produces a variety of vegetables, chiefly for domestic consumption, and many fruits, some of which are exported. There is also a limited production of grains. Among the tubers produced are sweet potatoes, white potatoes, yams, the arum and the yucca. From the latter is made starch and the cassava bread. The legumes are represented by varieties of beans and peas. The most extensively used food of the island people is rice, only a little of which is locally grown. The imports are valued at five or six million dollars yearly. Corn is grown in some quantity, but nearly two million dollars worth is imported yearly from the United States. There are fruits of many kinds. The banana is the most important of the group, and is grown throughout the island. It appears on the table of all, rich and poor, sometimes _au naturel_ but more frequently cooked. There are many varieties, some of which are exported while others are practically unknown here. The Cuban mango is not of the best, but they are locally consumed by the million. Only a few of the best are produced and those command a fancy price even when they are obtainable. The aguacate, or alligator pear, is produced in abundance. Cocoanuts are a product largely of the eastern end of the island, although produced in fair supply elsewhere. The trees are victims of a disastrous bud disease that has attacked them in recent years causing heavy loss to growers. [Illustration: PALM-THATCHED ROOFS A PEASANT'S HOME] Since the American occupation, considerable attention has been given, mainly by Americans, to the production of oranges, grape-fruit, and pineapples, in which a considerable industry has been developed. There are several varieties. The guava of Cuba makes a jelly that is superior to that produced from the fruit in any other land of my experience. If there is a better guava jelly produced anywhere, I should be pleased to sample it, more pleased to obtain a supply. But there is a difference in the product even there, just as there is a difference in currant or grape jelly produced here. It depends a good deal on the maker. Some of the best of my experience is made in the neighborhood of Santa Clara, but I have tried no Cuban _jalea de guayaba_ that was not better than any I have had in the Far East or elsewhere. The _guanabana_ is eaten in its natural state, but serves its best purpose as a flavor for ices or cooling drinks. There are a number of others, like the _anon_, the _zapote_, the _granadilla_, the _mamey_, etc., with which visitors may experiment or not as they see fit. Some like some of them and others like none of them. An excellent grade of cacao, the basis of chocolate and cocoa, is produced in somewhat limited quantity. The industry could easily be extended. In fact, there are many soil products not now grown in the island but which might be grown there, and many others now produced on small scale that could be produced in important quantities. That they are not now so produced is due to lack of both labor and capital. The industries of Cuba are, and always have been, specialized. Sugar, tobacco, and at a time coffee, have absorbed the capital and have afforded occupation for the greater number of the island people. The lack of transportation facilities in earlier years, and the system of land tenure, have made difficult if not impossible the establishment of any large number of independent small farmers. The day laborers in the tobacco fields and on sugar plantations have been unable to save enough money to buy a little farm and equip it even if the land could be purchased at all. Yet only a very small percentage of the area is actually under cultivation. Cuba now imports nearly $40,000,000 worth of alimentary substances, altogether too much for a country of its productive possibilities. It is true that a part of this, such as wheat flour for instance, cannot be produced on the island successfully, and that other commodities, such as rice, hog products, and some other articles, can be imported more cheaply than they can be produced locally. But the imports of foodstuffs are undoubtedly excessive, although there are good reasons for the present situation. It is a matter that will find adjustment in time. The island has mineral resources of considerable value, although the number of products is limited. The Spanish discoverers did not find the precious metals for which they were seeking, and while gold has since been found, it has never appeared in quantity sufficient to warrant its exploitation. Silver discoveries have been reported, but not in quantity to pay for its extraction. Nothing is ever certain in those industries, but it is quite safe to assume that Cuba is not a land of precious metals. Copper was discovered in eastern Cuba as early as about the year 1530, and the mines near Santiago were operated as a Government monopoly for some two hundred years, when they were abandoned. They were idle for about a hundred years when, in 1830, an English company with a capital of $2,400,000 reopened them. It is officially reported that in the next forty years copper of a value of more than $50,000,000 was extracted and shipped. During that time, the mines were among the most notable in the world. In the meantime, ownership was transferred to a Spanish corporation organized in Havana. This concern became involved in litigation with the railway concerning freight charges, and this experience was followed by the Ten Years' War, in the early course of which the plant was destroyed and the mines flooded. In 1902, an American company was organized. It acquired practically all the copper property in the Cobre field and began operations on an extensive and expensive scale. A huge sum was spent in pumping thousands of tons of water from a depth of hundreds of feet, in new equipment for the mining operations, and in the construction of a smelter. The best that can be done is to hope that the investors will some day get their money back. Without any doubt, there is a large amount of copper there, and more in other parts of Oriente. So is there copper in Camaguey, Santa Clara, and Matanzas provinces. There are holes in the ground near the city of Camaguey that indicate profitable operations in earlier years. The metal is spread over a wide area in Pinar del Rio, and venturous spirits have spent many good Spanish pesos and still better American dollars in efforts to locate deposits big enough to pay for its excavation. Some of that class are at it even now, and one concern is reported as doing a profitable business. The bitumens are represented in the island by asphalt, a low-grade coal, and seepages of petroleum. At least, several writers tell of coal in the vicinity of Havana, but the substance is probably only a particularly hard asphaltum. The only real coal property of which I have any knowledge is a quite recent discovery. The story was told me by the man whose money was sought to develop it. It was, by the way, an anthracite property. In response to an urgent invitation from a presumably reliable acquaintance, my friend took his car and journeyed westward into Pinar del Rio, through a charming country that he and I have many times enjoyed together. He picked up his coal-discovering friend in the city of Pinar del Rio, and proceeded into the country to inspect the coal-vein. At a number of points immediately alongside the highway, his companion alighted to scrape away a little of the surface of the earth and to return with a little lump of really high-grade anthracite. Such a substance had no proper business there, did not belong there geologically or otherwise. The explanation soon dawned upon my friend. They were following the line of an abandoned narrow-gauge railway, abandoned twenty years ago, along which had been dumped, at intervals, little piles of perfectly good anthracite, imported from Pennsylvania, for use by the portable engine used in the construction of the road. My friend declares that he is entirely ready at any time to swear that there are deposits of anthracite in Cuba. A very good quality of asphalt is obtained in different parts of the island, and considerable quantities have been shipped to the United States. Signs of petroleum deposits have been strong enough to induce investigation and expenditure. An American company is now at work drilling in Matanzas Province. The most extensive and promising mineral industry is iron, especially in eastern Cuba. Millions of tons of ore have been taken from the mountains along the shore between Santiago and Guantanamo, and the supply appears to be inexhaustible. The product is shipped to the United States, to a value of several millions of dollars yearly. A few years ago, other and apparently more extensive deposits were discovered in the northern section of Oriente, The field bought by the Pennsylvania Steel Company is estimated to contain 600,000,000 tons of ore. The Bethlehem Steel Company is the owner of another vast tract. The quality of these ores is excellent. In Oriente Province also are deposits of manganese of which considerable shipments have been made. It is not possible in so brief a survey of Cuba's resources and industries to include all its present activities, to say nothing of its future possibilities. At the present time, the island is practically an extensive but only partly cultivated farm, producing mainly sugar and tobacco, with fruits and vegetables as a side line. The metal deposits supplement this, with promise of becoming increasingly valuable. The forest resources, commercially, are not great, although there are, and will continue to be, sales of mahogany and other fine hardwoods. Local manufacturing is on a comparatively limited scale. All cities and many towns have their artisans, the bakers, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, and others. Cigar making is, of course, classed as a manufacturing enterprise, and so, for census purposes, is the conversion of the juice of the sugar-cane into sugar. A number of cities have breweries, ice factories, match factories, soap works, and other establishments large or small. All these, however, are incidental to the great industries of the soil, and the greater part of Cuba's requirements in the line of mill and factory products is imported. While little is done in the shipment of cattle or beef, Cuba is a natural cattle country. Water and nutritious grasses are abundant, and there are vast areas, now idle, that might well be utilized for stock-raising. There are, of course, just as there are elsewhere, various difficulties to be met, but they are met and overcome. There are insects and diseases, but these are controlled by properly applied scientific methods. There is open feeding throughout the entire year, so there is no need of barns or hay. The local cattle industry makes possible the shipment of some $2,500,000 worth of hides and skins annually. Other lines of industry worthy of mention, but not possible of detailed description here, include sponges, tortoise shell, honey, wax, molasses, and henequen or sisal. All these represent their individual thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their employment of scores or hundreds of wage-earners. Those who start for Cuba with a notion that the Cubans are an idle and lazy people, will do well to revise that notion. There is not the hustle that may be seen further north, but the results of Cuban activity, measured in dollars or in tons, fairly dispute the notion of any national indolence. When two and a half million people produce what is produced in Cuba, somebody has to work. XIV _POLITICS, GOVERNMENT, AND COMMERCE_ The British colonists in America were in large measure self-governing. This is notably true in their local affairs. The Spanish colonists were governed almost absolutely by the mother-country. A United States official publication reports that "all government control centred in the Council of the Indies and the King, and local self government, which was developed at an early stage in the English colonies, became practically impossible in the Spanish colonies, no matter to what extent it may have existed in theory. Special regulations, decrees, etc., modifying the application of the laws to the colonies or promulgating new laws were frequent, and their compilation in 1680 was published as Law of the Indies. This and the _Siete Partidas_, on which they were largely based, comprised the code under which the Spanish-American colonies were governed." There was a paper provision, during the greater part of the time, for a municipal electorate, the franchise being limited to a few of the largest tax-payers. In its practical operation, the system was nullified by the power vested in the appointed ruler. It was a highly effective centralized organization in which no man held office, high or low, who was not a mere instrument in the hands of the Governor-General. Under such an institution the Cubans had, of course, absolutely no experience in self-government. The rulers made laws and the people obeyed them; they imposed taxes and spent the money as they saw fit; many of them enriched themselves and their personally appointed official household throughout the island, at the expense of the tax-payers. A competent observer has noted that such terms as "meeting," "mass-meeting," "self-government," and "home-rule," had no equivalent in the Spanish language. The first of these terms, distorted into "_mitin_," is now in common use, and its origin is obvious. Of theories, ideals, and intellectual conceptions, there was an abundance, but government based on beautiful dreams does not succeed in this practical world. Denied opportunity for free discussion of practical methods, the Cubans discussed theories in lyceums. Under the military government of the United States, from January 1, 1899, to May 20, 1902, there was freedom of speech and freedom of organization. The Cubans began to hold "_mitins_," but visions and beautiful theories characterized the addresses. Prior to the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), there were organizations more or less political in their nature, but the authorities were alert in preventing discussions of too practical a character. In 1865, a number of influential Cubans organized what has been somewhat inappropriately termed a "national party." It was not at all a party in our use of that term. Its purpose was to suggest and urge administrative and economic changes from the Cuban point of view. The suggestions were ignored and, a few years later, revolution was adopted as a means of emphasizing their importance. The result of the Ten Years' War was an assortment of pledges of greater political and economic freedom. Much was promised but little if anything was really granted. There was, however, a relaxation of the earlier absolutism, and under that there appeared a semblance of party organization, in the form of a Liberal party and a Union Constitutional party. There was no special difference in what might be called their platforms. Both focussed, in a somewhat general way, the political aspirations and the economic desires of the Cuban people, much the same aspirations and desires that had been manifested by complaint, protest, and occasional outbreak, for fifty years. National independence had no place in either. That came later, when an army in the field declared that if Spain would not grant independence, the island would be made so worthless a possession that Spain could not afford to hold it. A few years after their organization, the Liberals became the Cuban party, and so remained, and the Union Constitutionals became the Spanish party, the party of the immediate administration. Later on, the Liberal party became the Autonomist party, but Spain's concession of the demands of that group came too late, forced, not by the Autonomists but by the party of the Revolution that swept the island with fire and sword from Oriente to Pinar del Rio. The Autonomists sought what their name indicates; the Revolutionists demanded and secured national independence. Shortly before the final dispersion of the Army of the Revolution, there was organized a body with the imposing title of _La Asamblea de Representantes del Ejercito Cubano_, or the Assembly of Representatives of the Cuban Army. It was composed of leaders of the different military divisions of that army, and included, as I recall it, thirty-one members. This group made no little trouble in the early days of the American occupation. It gathered in Havana, held meetings, declared itself the duly chosen and representative agent of the Cuban people, and demanded recognition as such by the American authorities. Some of its members even asserted that it constituted a _de facto_ government, and held that the Americans should turn the whole affair over to them and promptly sail away. But their recognition was flatly refused by the authorities. At the time, I supported the authorities in this refusal, but afterward I felt less sure of the wisdom of the course. As a recognized body, it might have been useful; rejected, it made no little trouble. Transfer of control to its hands was quite out of the question, but recognition and co-operation might have proved helpful. That the body had a considerable representative quality, there is no doubt. Later, I found many of its members as members of the Constitutional Convention, and, still later, many of them have served in high official positions, as governors of provinces, members of Congress, in cabinet and in diplomatic positions. I am inclined to regard the group broadly, as the origin of the present much divided Liberal party that has, from the beginning of definite party organization, included a considerable numerical majority of the Cuban voters. In the first national election, held December 31, 1901, this group, the military group, appeared as the National party, supporting Tomas Estrada y Palma as its candidate. Its opponent was called the Republican party. Realizing its overwhelming defeat, the latter withdrew on the day of the election, alleging all manner of fraud and unfairness on the part of the Nationals. It is useless to follow in detail the history of Cuba's political parties since that time. In the election of 1905, the former National party appeared as the Liberal party, supporting José Miguel Gomez, while its opponents appeared as the Moderate party, supporting Estrada Palma who, first elected on what he declared to be a non-partisan basis, had definitely affiliated himself with the so-called Moderates. The election was a game of political crookedness on both sides, and the Liberals withdrew on election day. The result was the revolution of 1906. The Liberals split into factions, not yet harmonized, and the Moderate party became the Conservative party. By the fusion of some of the Liberal groups, that party carried the election of 1908, held under American auspices. A renewal of internal disorders, a quarrel among leaders, and much discontent with their administrative methods, resulted in the defeat of the Liberals in the campaign of 1912 and in the election of General Mario Menocal, the head of the Conservative ticket, and the present incumbent. A fair presentation of political conditions in Cuba is exceedingly difficult, or rather it is difficult so to present them that they will be fairly understood. I have always regarded the establishment of the Cuban Republic in 1902 as premature, though probably unavoidable. A few years of experience with an autonomous government under American auspices, civil and not military, as a prologue to full independence, might have been the wiser course, but such a plan seemed impossible. The Cubans in the field had forced from Spain concessions that were satisfactory to many. Whether they could have forced more than that, without the physical assistance given by the United States, is perhaps doubtful. The matter might have been determined by the grant of the belligerent rights for which they repeatedly appealed to the United States. At no time in the entire experience did they ask for intervention. That came as the result of a combination of American wrath and American sympathy, and more in the interest of the United States than because of concern for the Cubans. But, their victory won and Spain expelled, the triumphant Cubans naturally desired immediate enjoyment of the fruits of victory. They desired to exercise the independence for which they had fought. Many protests and not a few threats of trouble attended even the brief period of American occupation. There was, moreover, an acute political issue in the United States. The peace and order declared as the purpose of American intervention had been established. The amendment to the Joint Resolution of April 20, 1898, disclaimed "any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island except for the pacification thereof," etc. The island was pacified. The amendment asserted, further, the determination of the United States, pacification having been accomplished, "to leave the government and control of the island to its people." There was no pledge of any prolonged course of education in principles and methods of self-government. Nor did such education play any appreciable part in the experience of the American military government. The work of the interventors had been done in accordance with the specifications, and the Cubans were increasingly restless under a control that many of them, with no little reason, declared to be as autocratic as any ever exercised by Spain. Transfer and departure seemed to be the politic if not the only course, and we transferred and departed. That these people, entirely without experience or training in self-government, should make mistakes was quite as inevitable as it is that a child in learning to walk will tumble down and bump its little nose. In addition to the inevitable mistakes, there have been occasional instances of deplorable misconduct on the part of individuals and of political parties. For neither mistakes nor misconduct can we criticize or condemn them without a similar criticism or condemnation of various experiences in our own history. We should, at least, regard them with charity. There are, moreover, incidents in the two experiences of American control of the island that, at least, border on the unwise and the discreditable. The only issue yet developed in Cuba is between good government and bad politics. The first President started admirably along the line of the former, and ended in a wretched tangle of the latter, though not at all by his own choice or direction. Official pre-eminence and a "government job" make quite the same appeal to the Cubans that they do to many thousands of Americans. So do raids on the national treasury, and profitable concessions. We see these motes in Cuban eyes somewhat more clearly than we see the beams in our own eyes. A necessarily slow process of political education is going on among the people, but in the meantime the situation has afforded opportunity for exploitation by an assortment of self-constituted political leaders who have adopted politics as a profession and a means of livelihood. Cuba's gravest danger lies in the political domination of men in this class. The present President, General Mario Menocal, is not in that group. The office sought him; he did not seek the office. Some of these self-constituted leaders have displayed a notable aptitude for political organization, and it is largely by means of the many little local organizations that the Cuban political game is played. Although, I believe, somewhat less now than formerly, the little groups follow and support individual leaders rather than parties or principles. Parties and their minor divisions are known by the names of their leaders. Thus, while both men are nominally of the same party, the Liberal, the adherents of José Miguel Gomez, are known as Miguelistas, and the adherents of Alfredo Zayas are known as Zayistas. Were either to announce himself as a Conservative, or to start a new party and call it Reformist or Progressive or any other title, he could count on being followed by most of those who supported him as a Liberal. This is a condition that will, in time, correct itself. What the Cuban really wants is what all people want, an orderly, honest, and economical government, under which he may live in peace and quiet, enjoying the fruits of his labor without paying an undue share of the fruits to maintain his government. For that the Cuban people took up arms against Spain. For a time they may be blinded by the idea of mere political independence, but to that same issue they will yet return by the route of the ballot-box. The game of politics for individual preferment, or for personal profit, cannot long be successfully played in Cuba, if I have rightly interpreted Cuban character and Cuban characteristics. "We, the delegates of the people of Cuba, having met in constitutional convention for the purpose of preparing and adopting the fundamental law of their organization as an independent and sovereign people, establishing a government capable of fulfilling its international obligations, maintaining public peace, ensuring liberty, justice, and promoting the general welfare, do hereby agree upon and adopt the following constitution, invoking the protection of the Almighty. Article I. The people of Cuba are hereby constituted a sovereign and independent State and adopt a republican form of government." Thus opens the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba. I recall an intensely dramatic moment connected with the closing phrase of the preamble. I have used a translation published by a distinguished Cuban. That phrase, in the original, is "_invocando el favor de Dios_," perhaps more exactly translated as "invoking the favor (or blessing) of God." When the Constitution had been drafted and broadly approved, it was submitted to the convention for suggestion of minor changes in verbiage. One of the oldest and most distinguished members of the body proposed that this phrase be left out. Another member, distinguished for his power as an orator and for his cynicism, in a speech of considerable length set forth his opinion that it made little difference whether it was included or excluded. There was no benefit in its inclusion, and no advantage in excluding it. It would hurt none and might please some to have it left in. Immediately across the semi-circle of desks, and facing these two speakers, sat Señor Pedro Llorente, a man of small stature, long, snow-white hair and beard, and a nervous and alert manner. At times, his nervous energy made him almost grotesque. At times, his absorbed earnestness made him, despite his stature, a figure of commanding dignity. Through the preceding addresses he waited with evident impatience. Obtaining recognition from the chairman, he rose and stood with upraised hand his voice tremulous with emotion, to protest against the proposed measure, declaring "as one not far from the close of life, that the body there assembled did not represent an atheistic people." The motion to strike out was lost, and the invocation remains. The result of the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention is a highly creditable instrument. It contains a well-devised Bill of Rights, and makes all necessary provision for governmental organization and conduct. One feature, however, seems open to criticism. In their desire to avoid that form of centralized control, of which they had somewhat too much under Spanish power, the new institution provides, perhaps, for too much local government, for a too extensive provincial and municipal system. It has already fallen down in some respects, and it has become necessary to centralize certain functions, quite as it has become desirable in several of our own matters. Cuba has, perhaps, an undue overload of officialdom, somewhat too many public officers, and quite too many people on its pay-rolls. The feature of Cuba's Constitution that is of greatest interest and importance to the United States is what is known as the Platt Amendment. The provision for a Constitutional Convention in Cuba was made in what was known as Civil Order No. 301, issued by the Military Governor, on July 25, 1900. It provided for an election of delegates to meet in Havana on the first Monday in November, following. The convention was to frame and adopt a Constitution and "as a part thereof, to provide for and agree with the Government of the United States upon the relations to exist between that Government and the Government of Cuba," etc. Against this, the Cubans protested vigorously. The United States had declared that "Cuba is and of right ought to be free and independent." The Cubans held, very properly, that definition of international relations had no fitting place in a Constitution "as a part thereof." Their point was recognized and, under date of November 5, Civil Order No. 310 was modified by Civil Order No. 455. That was issued to the delegates at the time of their assembly. It declared as follows: "It will be your duty, first, to frame and adopt a Constitution for Cuba, and, when that has been done, to formulate what, in your opinion, ought to be the relations between Cuba and the United States." Taking this as their programme, the delegates proceeded to draft a Constitution, leaving the matter of "relations" in abeyance for consideration at the proper time. Yet, before its work was done, the Convention was savagely criticized in the United States for its failure to include in the Constitution what it had been authorized, and virtually instructed, to leave out. The Constitution was completed on February 11, 1901, and was duly signed by the delegates, on February 21. A committee was appointed, on February 11, to prepare and submit plans and proposals regarding the matter of "relations." Prior to that, however, the matter had been frequently but informally discussed by the delegates. Suggestions had been made in the local press, and individual members of the Convention had expressed their views with considerable freedom. Had the United States kept its hands off at that time, a serious and critical situation, as well as a sense of injustice that has not yet entirely died out, would have been averted. Before the Cubans had time to put their "opinion of what ought to be the relations" between the two countries into definite form, there was presented to them, in a manner as needless as it was tactless, a statement of what the American authorities thought those relations should be. The Cubans, who were faithfully observing their earlier instructions, were deeply offended by this interference, and by the way in which the interference came. The measures known as the Platt Amendment was submitted to the United States Senate, as an amendment to the Army Appropriation bill, on February 25, 1901 The Senate passed the bill, and the House concurred A storm of indignant protest swept over the island The Cubans believed, and not without reason, that the instrument abridged the independence of which they had been assured by those who now sought to limit that independence. Public opinion in the United States was divided. Some approved and some denounced the proceeding in bitter terms. The division was not at all on party lines. The situation in Cuba was entirely changed. Instead of formulating an opinion in accordance with their earlier instructions, the members of the Convention were confronted by a choice of what they then regarded as evils, acceptance of unacceptable terms or an indefinite continuance of a military government then no less unacceptable. A commission was sent to Washington to urge changes and modifications. It was given dinners, lunches, and receptions, but nothing more. At last the Cubans shrugged their shoulders. The desire for an immediate withdrawal of American authority, and for Cuban assumption of the reins of government, outweighed the objection to the terms imposed. A Cuban leader said: "There is no use in objecting to the inevitable. It is either annexation or a Republic with the Amendment. I prefer the latter." After four months of stubborn opposition, the Cubans yielded, by a vote of sixteen to eleven, with four absentees. In many ways, the Cuban Government is like our own. The President and Vice-President are elected, through an electoral college, for a term of four years. A "third term" is specifically prohibited by the Constitution. Senators, four from each Province, are chosen, for a term of eight years, by an electoral board. Elections for one half of the body occur every four years. The House is chosen, by direct vote, for terms of four years, one half being elected every two years. The Cabinet, selected and appointed by the President, consists of eight Secretaries of Departments as follows: Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor; State; Government; Treasury (_Hacienda_); Public Instruction; Justice; Public Works; and Health and Charities. There is a Supreme Court, and there are the usual minor courts. The Constitution also makes provision for the organization and the powers of the Provincial and Municipal Governments. To the Constitution, the Platt Amendment is attached as an appendix, by treaty arrangement. As far as governmental system is concerned, Cuba is fairly well equipped; a possible source of danger is its over-equipment. Its laws permit, rather than require, an overburden of officials, high and low. But Cuba's governmental problem is essentially one of administration. Its particular obstacle in that department is professional politics. The whole situation in Cuba is somewhat peculiar. The business of the island, that is, the commercial business, the purchase and sale of merchandise wholesale and retail, is almost entirely in the hands of Spaniards. The Cuban youths seldom become clerks in stores. Most of the so-called "_dependientes_" come out as boys from Spain. It is an old established system. These lads, almost invariably hard workers, usually eat and sleep in the place of their employment. The wage is small but board and lodging, such as the latter is, are furnished. They are well fed, and the whole system is quite paternal. For their recreation, education, and care in case of illness, there are organizations, half club and half mutual protective association, to which practically all belong. The fee is small and the benefits many. Some of these are based on a regional plan, that is, the _Centro de Asturianos_ is composed of those who come from the Spanish province of Asturia, and those from other regions have their societies. There is also a general society of "_dependientes_." Some of these groups are rich, with large membership including not only the clerks of today but those of the last thirty or forty years, men who by diligence and thrift have risen to the top in Cuba's commercial life. Most of Cuba's business men continue their membership in these organizations, and many contribute liberally toward their maintenance. This system more or less effectively bars Cuban youths from commercial life. Nor does commercial life seem attractive to more than a very limited number. This leaves to them, practically, only three lines of possible activity, the ownership and operation of a plantation, a profession, or manual labor. The greater number there, as elsewhere, are laborers, either on some little bit of ground they call their own or rent from its owner, or they are employed by the proprietors of the larger estates. Such proprietorship is, of course, open to only a few. The problem, which is both social and political, appears in a class that cannot or will not engage in manual labor, the well-educated or fairly-educated sons of men of fair income and a social position. Many of these take some professional course. But there is not room for so many in so small a country, and the professions are greatly overcrowded. The surplus either loafs and lives by its wits or at the expense of the family, or turns to the Government for a "job." It constitutes a considerable element on which the aspiring professional politician can draw for support. Having such "jobs," it constitutes a heavy burden on the tax-payers; deprived of its places on the Government pay-roll, it becomes a social and political menace. If a Liberal administration throws them out of their comfortable posts, they become noisy and perhaps violent Conservatives; if discharged by an economical Conservative administration, they become no less noisy and no less potentially violent Liberals. But we may not criticize. The American control that followed the insurrection of 1906 set no example in administrative economy for the Cubans to follow. The productive industries of the island have already been reviewed in other chapters. The development of Cuba's commerce since the withdrawal of Spain, and the substitution of a modern fiscal policy for an antiquated and indefensible system, has been notable. It is, however, a mistake to contrast the present condition with the condition existing at the time of the American occupation, in 1899. The exact accuracy of the record is questionable, but the returns for the year 1894, the year preceding the revolution, show the total imports of the island as $77,000,000, and the total exports as $99,000,000. The probability is that a proper valuation would show a considerable advance in the value of the imports. The statement of export values may be accepted. It may be assumed that had there been no disorder, the trade of the island, by natural growth, would have reached $90,000,000 for imports and $120,000,000, for exports, in 1900. That may be regarded as a fair normal. As it was, the imports of that year were $72,000,000, and the exports, by reason of the general wreck of the sugar business, were only $45,000,000. With peace and order fairly assured, recovery came quickly. The exports of 1905, at $99,000,000, equalled those of 1894, while the imports materially exceeded those of the earlier year. In 1913, the exports reached $165,207,000, and the imports $132,290,000. This growth of Cuba's commerce and industry is due mainly to the economic requirements of the American people. We need Cuba's sugar and we want its tobacco. These two commodities represent about 90 per cent, of the total exports of the island. We buy nearly all of its sugar, under normal conditions, and about 60 per cent, of its tobacco and cigars. On the basis of the total commerce of the island, the records of recent years show this country as the source of supply for about 53 per cent, of Cuba's total imports, and as the market for about 83 per cent, of its exports. A comparison of the years 1903 and 1913 shows a gain of about $87,000,000 in Cuba's total exports. Of this, about $75,000,000 is represented by sugar. The crop of 1894 a little exceeded a million tons. Such a quantity was not again produced until 1903. With yearly variations, due to weather conditions, later years show an enormous and unprecedented increase. The crops of 1913 and 1914 were, approximately, 2,500,000 tons each. The tobacco industry shows only a modest gain. The average value of the exports of that commodity has risen, in ten years, from about $25,000,000 to about $30,000,000. The increase in the industry appears largely in the shipment of leaf tobacco. The cigar business shows practically no change, in that time, as far as values are concerned. This résumé affords a fair idea of Cuba's trade expansion under the conditions established through the change in government. That event opened new and larger doors of opportunity, and the Cubans and others have been prompt in taking advantage of them. Toward the great increase shown, two forces have operated effectively. One is the treaty by which the provisions of the so-called Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitution are made permanently effective. The other is the reciprocity treaty of 1903. By the operation of the former of these instruments the United States virtually underwrites the political stability and the financial responsibility of the Cuban Government. That Government cannot borrow any important sums without the consent of the United States, and it has agreed that this country "may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States." This assumption of responsibility by the United States inspired confidence on the part of capital, and large sums have been invested in Cuban bonds, and in numerous public and private enterprises. Railways and trolley lines have been built and many other works of public utility have been undertaken. The activities of old sugar plantations have been extended under improved conditions, and many new estates with costly modern equipment have been created. The cultivation of large areas, previously lying waste and idle, afforded both directly and indirectly employment for an increased population, as did the numerous public works. The other force, perhaps no less effective, appears in the reciprocity treaty of 1903. This gave to Cuba's most important crop a large though by no means absolute control of the constantly increasing sugar market of the United States, as far as competition from other foreign countries was concerned. The sugar industry of the island may be said to have been restored to its normal proportions in 1903. Our imports for the five-year period 1904-1908 averaged 1,200,000 tons a year. For the five-year period 1910-1914 they averaged 1,720,000 tons. In 1914, they were 2,200,000 tons as compared with 1,260,000 tons in 1904. It is doubtful if the treaty had any appreciable influence on the exports of Cuban tobacco to this country. We buy Cuba's special tobacco irrespective of a custom-house advantage that affects the box price only a little, and the price of a single cigar probably not at all. On the other side of the account, that of our sales to Cuba, there also appears a large increase since the application of the reciprocity treaty. Using the figures showing exports from the United States to Cuba, instead of Cuba's records showing imports from this country, it appears that our sales to the island in the fiscal year 1903, immediately preceding the operation of the treaty, amounted to $21,761,638. In the fiscal year 1913 they were $70,581,000, and in 1914 were $68,884,000. Not all of this quite remarkable gain may properly be credited to the influence of the reciprocity treaty. The purchases of the island are determined, broadly, by its sales. As the latter increase, so do the former. Almost invariably, a year of large export sales is followed by a year of heavy import purchases. The fact that our imports from Cuba are double our sales to Cuba, in the total of a period of years, has given rise to some foolish criticism of the Cubans on the ground that, we buying so heavily from them, they should purchase from us a much larger percentage of their import requirements. No such obligation is held to exist in regard to our trade with other lands, and it should have no place in any consideration of our trade with Cuba. There are many markets, like Brazil, British India, Japan, China, Mexico, and Egypt, in which our purchases exceed our sales. There are more, like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Central America, and numerous others, in which our sales considerably or greatly exceed our purchases. We do not buy from them simply because they buy from us. We buy what we need or want in that market in which we can buy to the greatest advantage. The Cuban merchants, who are nearly all Spaniards, do the same. The notion held by some that, because of our service to Cuba in the time of her struggle for national life, the Cubans should buy from us is both foolish and altogether unworthy. Any notion of Cuba's obligation to pay us for what we may have done for her should be promptly dismissed and forgotten. There are commodities, such as lumber, pork products, coal, wheat flour, and mineral oil produces, that Cuba can buy in our markets on terms better than those obtainable elsewhere. Other commodities, such as textiles, leather goods, sugar mill equipment, railway equipment, drugs, chemicals, and much else, must be sold by American dealers in sharp competition with the merchants of other countries, with such assistance as may be afforded by the reciprocity treaty. That instrument gives us a custom-house advantage of 20, 25, 30, and 40 per cent, in the tariff rates. It is enough in some cases to give us a fair equality with European sellers, and in a few cases to give us a narrow margin of advantage over them. It does not give us enough to compel Cuban buyers to trade with us because of lower delivered prices. Cuba's economic future can be safely predicted on the basis of its past. The pace of its development will depend mainly upon a further influx of capital and an increase in its working population. Its political future is less certain. There is ample ground for both hope and belief that the little clouds that hang on the political horizon will be dissipated, that there will come, year by year, a sane adjustment to the new institutions. But full assurance of peace and order will come only when the people of the island, whether planters or peasants, see clearly the difference between a government conducted in their interest and a government conducted by Cubans along Spanish lines. INDEX A Adams, President John, 127 Angulo, Governor de, 59 Animals, wild, 50 Asphalt, 232, 233 Autonomy, 143, 178 B Babeque, 6, 7 Bacon, Hon. Robert, 160 Bacon's Rebellion, 144 Ballou, M.M., 31, 32, 71 Banes, 113 Baracoa, 12, 91, 100, 114 Batabano, 12, 116 Baths, 52 Bellamar, Caves of, 42,110 Belligerent rights, 136, 140, 157, 158, 181 _Bermuda_, 189, 197 Bertram, Luis, 14 Betancourt, Salvador Cisneros, 174 Black Eagle conspiracy, 147 _Black Warrior_, 131 Blanco, General Ramon, 178 Bolivia, 126 Bolivar, Simon, 124, 185 Bonds, Cuban, 175 Boston sugar plantation, 113 Buchanan, President, 130 C Cabaña, 57, 60 Cabinet, Cuban, 250 Cabrera, Raimundo, 135 Cadiz, 20 Caibarien, 102 Callahan, James M., 125, 139, 152 Camaguey, city, 105, 110, 111 Camaguey, province, 40, 109 Cardenas, 101 Casa de Beneficencia, 24 Castillo del Principe, 57, 60, 71, 83 Cathay, 3 Cathedral, Havana, 63 Cattle, 17, 235 Cauto river, 43 Caves, 42 Cemetery, Colon, 83 Census Reports, United States, 27, 35, 44, 144, 236 Cespedes, Carlos Manuel,154, 155 Channing, Edward, 142, 143 Chaparra sugar plantation, 113 Ciego de Avila, 106 Cienaga de Zapata, 43, 51 Cienfuegos, 102 Cigars, 224, 225, 254 Cipango, 2, 5 Clerks' Associations, 251 Climate, 45 et seq. Coal, 232 Coffee, 23, 36, 226, et seq. Colonies, American in Cuba, 12, 120 Colonies, British, 19, 236 Colonies, Spanish, 19, 21, 123, 126 Columbia, 124, 145 Columbus, Christopher Death and remains, 63 Describes Cuba, 3, 4, 7 Discovers Cuba, 2 Extract from journal, 2 Letter to Sanchez, 3 Memorial to, 64 Mistaken belief, 2, 3, 5, 8 Report to Spanish sovereigns, 7 Second expedition, 7 Commerce, 21, 22, 35, 36, 156, 253, 254, 257 _Commodore_, 193, 195, 197 Constitutional Convention, 247 Constitution, Cuban, 154, 245, 246 Constitution, Spanish, 29, 145, 159 Copper, 231, 232 Cordoba, de, 12 Cortes, Hernan, 13, 58 Cortes, Spanish, 29, 176 Crittenden, Col., 150 Cuba: Aborigines, 14, 15. Advice to visitors, 55. American attitude toward, 135, 137, 140. Annexation proposed, 125 et seq. Animals, wild, 49. Area, 37. Climate and temperature, 45 et seq. Colonized, 12. Commerce, 21, 22, 35, 36, 156, 253, 254, 257. Conquest by Velasquez, II. Described by Columbus, 3, 4, 7. Description, general, 37 et seq. Discovered, 2. Expeditions from, 13, 14. Flora, 48. Forests, 49. Future of, 258. Insects, 51. Intervention by United States, 25, 160, 182, 242. Mineral springs, 52. Monopolies in, 20, 144, 220, 231. Monroe Doctrine, 127. Nineteenth Century, 142. Population, 17, 23, 34. Railways, 89, 91. Relations with United States, 122 et seq., 247, 248. Republic of, 182. Revolutions, 141 et seq. Roads, 87, 95, 96. Self-government, 243. Slavery in, 15, 16, 23, 125, 145, 155. Spanish Governors, 24, 32. Spanish policy in, 17, 19 et seq. 24, 31. Trade restrictions, 20, 21, 24, 25, 30. Taxation, Spanish, 24, 27, 28, 30. Villages, 85, 93, 94, 100 _Cuba and the Intervention_, 154, 164 Cushing, Caleb, 138 Custom house, 62 D _Dauntless_, 193, 194, 197, 199, 200 Delicias sugar plantation, 113 Dexter, Lord Timothy, 216 Domestic life, 80 E EARTHQUAKES, 53 Elections, 240, 250 Elson, Henry William, 186 England, 19, 128, 130, 139, 145 Everett, Alexander H., 130 F FILIBUSTERING expeditions, 148 et seq., 184 et seq. Firemen, 83 Fish, Secretary, 157 Flora, 48 Florida, 13 Forests, 48, 49 Fortifications, 59, 60 France, 128, 145 Fritot, Alphonso, 196, 199 Fruits, 5, 229 Fuerza, la, 17, 58, 59 G Garcia, General Calixto, 84, 190 Geerligs, H.C. Prinsen, 206 Gibara, 112 Gold, 2, 6, 231 Gomez, General Maximo, 84, 158, 164, 172, 174. Proclamations, 167 et seq. Government, 250 Grant, President, 135 et seq. Guane, 101 Guantanamo, 91, 115 Guines, 90 H Haiti, 9, 10, 144 Harbors, 44 Hart, John D., 191, 197 Hatuey, 8 et seq. Havana: Bells, church, 65. British occupation, 20. Capital, 20, 59. Cathedral, 63. Changes in, 66, 67, 82, 85. Commerce limited to, 20. Destroyed, 17, 58, 59. Discovered, 12, 57. Early conditions, 61. Excursions from, 97 et seq. Firemen, 83. Fortifications, 59, 60. Homes in, 77 et seq. Las Casas as governor, 24. Market, fish, 74. Name, origin of, 58. New City, 70 et seq. Old city, 54 et seq. Parks, 70, 71. _Paseo_, 75. Public buildings, 62 et seq. Sanitation of, 63. Settled 12, 58. Shopping in, 68. Streets 61, 71. Suburbs, 85. Sunrise in harbor, 54. Theatre, Nacional, 71 et seq. Havana, province, 38, 41 Hayes, President, 136 Hazard, Samuel, 33, 65, 111 Henry, Patrick, 143 Heredia, José Maria, 146 Hill, Robert T., 39, 48 Holguin, 113 Hotels, 91, 111 Homes, 77 et seq. Humboldt, Baron Alexander, 8, 14, 15, 16, 35, 53 Hurricanes, 53 I Imports and Exports, 253, 256 Independence, 162 et seq. Insect life, 51 Intervention, First, 25, 182, 242 Intervention, Second, 160 Iron ore, 233, 234 Irving, Washington, 4, 5, 6 Isle of Pines, 8, 116, 117 et seq. J Jefferson, Thomas, 122 Joint Resolution of 1898, 242 Jolo, 54 Juana, 2, 4 Jucaro, 106 Junta, 164, 174, 188 K Kimball, R.B. 32 L Las Casas, Bartolomé, 9, 14 Las Casas, Governor Luis de, 24 _Laurada_, 193 et seq. Lemus, José Francisco, 146 Llorente, Pedro, 246 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 123 Lopez, Narciso, 148 et seq. Ludlow, General William, 63 M Maceo, General Antonio, 99, 164, 172, 174 McKinley, President, 122, 178, 179 Magoon, Charles E., 160 _Maine_, battleship, 179 Maisi, Cape, 7, 8, 38, 115 Malecon, 75 Manufactures, 234 Marti, José, 164, 166 Marti, the smuggler, 72 et seq. Martinez Campos, General, 158, 165, 166, 177. Maso, Bartolomé, 165, 174 Massachusetts rebellion, 144 Matanzas, city, 41, 101 Matanzas, province, 41 Menocal, General Mario, 241, 244 Mexico, 13, 58, 124, 145 Minerals, 231 et seq. Mineral springs, 52 Miranda, Francisco, 126, 185 Monopolies, 20, 144, 220, 231. Monroe Doctrine, 127 Monroe, President, 129 Monuments: Firemen's, 83, 84 Students', 84 Moret law, 16 Morgan, Henry, no Morro Castle, 17, 57, 59, 60 Mountains, 5, 41, 93 Murielo, 13 N NARVAEZ, 13 Navigation acts, British, 19, 144 Nelson, Hugh, 127 Nipe Bay, 2, 91, 113, 114 Nuevitas, 2, 3, 110, 111, 112 Nuñez, General Emilio, 191, 192, 199 O O'BRIEN, "Dynamite Johnny," 189, et seq. Ocampo, Sebastian de, 8, 12, 57 Oriente, province, 40, 41 Ostend Manifesto, 133 Otis, James, 143 P PALACE, Governor's, 64 Palma, Tomas Estrada y, 162, 174, 192 Palms, 5, 7, 48, 49 Panama Congress (1826), 126 Parks, Havana, 70, 71 Parties, Political, 159, 176, 237, 238, 240, 244 Pearcy _v_. Stranahan, 120 Pepper, Charles M., 105, 134, 152, 176 Petroleum, 233 Pierce, President, 130, 132, 151 Pinar del Rio, city, 101 Pinar del Rio, province, 41 Platt Amendment, 118, 247 et seq., 255 Politics, 252 Polk, President, 130 Ponce de Leon, 13 Population, 14, 17, 23, 34 Porto Rico, 118 Prado, 71, 75 Preston sugar plantation, 113 Puerto de Carenas, 12, 57 Puerto Principe, see Camaguey Punta, la, 17 Q QUITMAN expedition, 151 R RAILWAYS, 89, 91 Rainfall, 46 Real estate speculation, 120 Reciprocity treaty, 255, 258 Reconcentration, 177 "Relations," question of, 247, 248 Remedios, 102 Revolutions, 19, 141 et seq. of 1868, 153 et seq. of 1895, 162 et seq. of 1906, 159, 160 Rhodes, James Ford, 131 Rivers, 43 44 Roads, 87, 95, 96 Rubens, Horatio, S., 165, 181, 191, 192, 195 Ruskin, John, 56 S Saco, Antonio, 31 Sagua la Grande, 101 Sanchez, Rafael, 3 Sancti Spiritus, 12, 91, 104 Santa Clara, city, 102 Santa Clara, province, 40 Santangel, Luis de, 4 Santiago de Cuba, 12, 13, 20, 115, 116 Santo Domingo, 7 Seville, 20 Slavery, 15, 16, 23, 125, 145, 155 Smuggling, 21, 26 Snakes, 50 Sociedad Economica, 24 Sociedad Patriotica, 24 Soles de Bolivar, 146 Soto, Hernando de, 13, 14, 17, 58 Soule, Pierre, 132, 133 Spain, 17, 19, 24, 29, 123 et seq., 145, 236 Spanish-American independence, 126 Sugar, 113, 203 et seq. Beet sugar, 208 Countries producing, 209 History, 207 In Cuba, 210 Manufacture of, 204, 213 Muscovado, 205 Origin of, 206 Planting and cutting, 213 et seq. Production of, 209, 254, 256 Supreme Court, United States, 120 T Tacon, Governor Miguel, 32, 33, 70, 71 et seq. Taft, Hon. William H., 99, 160 Tariff, Spanish, 21, 25 Taxes, 24, 27, 30, 163 Taylor, President, 148 Teller Amendment, 182 Temperance question, 76 Temperature, 45 et seq. Templete, el, 64 Ten Years' War, 16, 134, 135 et seq., 153 et seq. Thrasher, J.S., 15, 29 _Three Friends_, 193 et seq. _Tillie_, wreck of the, 210 Times, New York, 150 Tobacco, 36, 102, 221, 222 Cultivation in Cuba, 223 History, 219 et seq. Origin, 218 Use in Cuba, 225 Trade restricted, 20, 24, 25, 30 Transportation, 90 Treaty of Paris, 118, 182 Trinidad, 12, 91, 100, 103 Turnbull, David, 25 U UNITED STATES: Diplomatic correspondence, 125 et seq. Mediation offered, 156 Presidential messages, 125, 135, 136, 137, 158, 178, 179, 180, 184 Relations with Cuba, 122 et seq., 179 V Valmaseda proclamation, 156 Varona, Enrique José, 153 Vedado, el, 82 Vegetable products, 228 et seq. Velasquez, 8, 58 Villages, 85, 93 _Virginius_ affair, 116, 137, 185 Volantes, 88 W Welles, Gideon, 186 Weyler, General Valeriano, 177, 198 Wilson, Henry, 125 Y Yumuri valley, 41 Z Zanjon, treaty of, 158 
3050	----	Transcribed from the 1911 Harper and Brothers edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org NOTES OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS ILLUSTRATED CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::::::::1911 COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY HARPER & BROTHERS * * * * * COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1900, 1910, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS [Picture: At the front in Manchuria] Contents: The Cuban-Spanish War The Death of Rodriguez The Greek-Turkish War The Battle of Velestinos The Spanish-American War I. The Rough Riders at Guasimas II. The Battle of San Juan Hill III. The Taking of Coamo IV. The Passing of San Juan Hill The South African War I. With Buller's Column II. The Relief of Ladysmith III. The Night Before the Battle The Japanese-Russian War Battles I did not see A War Correspondent's Kit THE CUBAN-SPANISH WAR: THE DEATH OF RODRIGUEZ {1} Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer, who lived nine miles outside of Santa Clara, beyond the hills that surround that city to the north. When the revolution in Cuba broke out young Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving his father and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was taken, in December of 1896, by a force of the Guardia Civile, the corps d'elite of the Spanish army, and defended himself when they tried to capture him, wounding three of them with his machete. He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government, and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning before sunrise. Previous to execution he was confined in the military prison of Santa Clara with thirty other insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, one after the other, on mornings following the execution of Rodriguez. His execution took place the morning of the 19th of January, 1897, at a place a half-mile distant from the city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Rodriguez had lived for nineteen years. At the time of his death he was twenty years old. I witnessed his execution, and what follows is an account of the way he went to his death. The young man's friends could not be present, for it was impossible for them to show themselves in that crowd and that place with wisdom or without distress, and I like to think that, although Rodriguez could not know it, there was one person present when he died who felt keenly for him, and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spectator. There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when the squad of soldiers marched from town it was still shining brightly through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles in extent, broken by ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high grass, and with bunches of cactus and palmetto. In the hollow of the ridges the mist lay like broad lakes of water, and on one side of the plain stood the walls of the old town. On the other rose hills covered with royal palms that showed white in the moonlight, like hundreds of marble columns. A line of tiny camp-fires that the sentries had built during the night stretched between the forts at regular intervals and burned clearly. But as the light grew stronger and the moonlight faded these were stamped out, and when the soldiers came in force the moon was a white ball in the sky, without radiance, the fires had sunk to ashes, and the sun had not yet risen. So even when the men were formed into three sides of a hollow square, they were scarcely able to distinguish one another in the uncertain light of the morning. There were about three hundred soldiers in the formation. They belonged to the volunteers, and they deployed upon the plain with their band in front playing a jaunty quickstep, while their officers galloped from one side to the other through the grass, seeking a suitable place for the execution. Outside the line the band still played merrily. A few men and boys, who had been dragged out of their beds by the music, moved about the ridges behind the soldiers, half-clothed, unshaven, sleepy-eyed, yawning, stretching themselves nervously and shivering in the cool, damp air of the morning. Either owing to discipline or on account of the nature of their errand, or because the men were still but half awake, there was no talking in the ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning on their rifles, with their backs turned to the town, looking out across the plain to the hills. The men in the crowd behind them were also grimly silent. They knew that whatever they might say would be twisted into a word of sympathy for the condemned man or a protest against the government. So no one spoke; even the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, and the men in the crowd did not mix together, but looked suspiciously at one another and kept apart. As the light increased a mass of people came hurrying from the town with two black figures leading them, and the soldiers drew up at attention, and part of the double line fell back and left an opening in the square. With us a condemned man walks only the short distance from his cell to the scaffold or the electric chair, shielded from sight by the prison walls, and it often occurs even then that the short journey is too much for his strength and courage. But the Spaniards on this morning made the prisoner walk for over a half-mile across the broken surface of the fields. I expected to find the man, no matter what his strength at other times might be, stumbling and faltering on this cruel journey; but as he came nearer I saw that he led all the others, that the priests on either side of him were taking two steps to his one, and that they were tripping on their gowns and stumbling over the hollows in their efforts to keep pace with him as he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in advance of them. He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, pointed beard, great wistful eyes, and a mass of curly black hair. He was shockingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a Neapolitan than a Cuban. You could imagine him sitting on the quay at Naples or Genoa lolling in the sun and showing his white teeth when he laughed. Around his neck, hanging outside his linen blouse, he wore a new scapular. It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with at such a time, but I confess to have felt a thrill of satisfaction when I saw, as the Cuban passed me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not arrogantly nor with bravado, but with the nonchalance of a man who meets his punishment fearlessly, and who will let his enemies see that they can kill but cannot frighten him. It was very quickly finished, with rough and, but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it came to the square, and the condemned man, the priests, and the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in and the line closed behind them. The officer who had held the cord that bound the Cuban's arms behind him and passed across his breast, let it fall on the grass and drew his sword, and Rodriguez dropped his cigarette from his lips and bent and kissed the cross which the priest held up before him. The elder of the priests moved to one side and prayed rapidly in a loud whisper, while the other, a younger man, walked behind the firing squad and covered his face with his hands. They had both spent the last twelve hours with Rodriguez in the chapel of the prison. The Cuban walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and turning his back on the square, faced the hills and the road across them, which led to his father's farm. As the officer gave the first command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light, which had just begun to show above the hills. He made a picture of such pathetic helplessness, but of such courage and dignity, that he reminded me on the instant of that statue of Nathan Hale which stands in the City Hall Park, above the roar of Broadway. The Cuban's arms were bound, as are those of the statue, and he stood firmly, with his weight resting on his heels like a soldier on parade, and with his face held up fearlessly, as is that of the statue. But there was this difference, that Rodriguez, while probably as willing to give six lives for his country as was the American rebel, being only a peasant, did not think to say so, and he will not, in consequence, live in bronze during the lives of many men, but will be remembered only as one of thirty Cubans, one of whom was shot at Santa Clara on each succeeding day at sunrise. The officer had given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out silently that, as I had already observed with some satisfaction, the firing squad were so placed that when they fired they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme end of the square. Their captain motioned his men to lower their pieces, and then walked across the grass and laid his hand on the shoulder of the waiting prisoner. It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been. The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of bullets. He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he had heard the command given, had heard the click of the Mausers as the locks caught--and then, at that supreme moment, a human hand had been laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear. You would expect that any man, snatched back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded gravely, and, with his shoulders squared, took up the new position, straightened his back, and once more held himself erect. As an exhibition of self-control this should surely rank above feats of heroism performed in battle, where there are thousands of comrades to give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of the hills he knew, with only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but that which lay within himself. [Picture: The death of Rodriguez] The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men once more levelled their rifles, the sword rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had stumbled. He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or sound, and did not move again. It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie there, that it could be ended so without a word, that the man in the linen suit would not rise to his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, as he apparently had started to do, to his home; that there was not a mistake somewhere, or that at least some one would be sorry or say something or run to pick him up. But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the priests returned--the younger one with the tears running down his face--and donned their vestments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while the squad stood uncovered, and the men in hollow square shook their accoutrements into place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for the order to march, and the band began again with the same quickstep which the fusillade had interrupted. The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to remember that it had walked there of itself, or noticed that the cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where the figure had first stood. The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a great snake, and then broke into little pieces and started off jauntily, stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to the music. The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close to it that the file closers had to part with the column to avoid treading on it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on it, some craning their necks curiously, others giving a careless glance, and some without any interest at all, as they would have looked at a house by the roadside, or a hole in the road. One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, just opposite to it, and fell. He grew very red when his comrades giggled at him for his awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on either side of the band. They, too, had forgotten it, and the priests put their vestments back in the bag and wrapped their heavy cloaks about them, and hurried off after the others. Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly towards it from the town, driving a bullock-cart that bore an unplaned coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning mists. At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air with warmth and light. The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in it, and at the sight a rooster in a farm-yard near by crowed vigorously, and a dozen bugles answered the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes of the reveille, and from all parts of the city the church bells jangled out the call for early mass, and the little world of Santa Clara seemed to stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just begun. But as I fell in at the rear of the procession and looked back, the figure of the young Cuban, who was no longer a part of the world of Santa Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with the scapular twisted awry across his face, and the blood from his breast sinking into the soil he had tried to free. THE GREEK-TURKISH WAR: THE BATTLE OF VELESTINOS {2} The Turks had made three attacks on Velestinos on three different days, and each time had been repulsed. A week later, on the 4th of May, they came back again, to the number of ten thousand, and brought four batteries with them, and the fighting continued for two more days. This was called the second battle of Velestinos. In the afternoon of the 5th the Crown Prince withdrew from Pharsala to take up a stronger position at Domokos, and the Greeks under General Smolenski, the military hero of the campaign, were forced to retreat, and the Turks came in, and, according to their quaint custom, burned the village and marched on to Volo. John Bass, the American correspondent, and myself were keeping house in the village, in the home of the mayor. He had fled from the town, as had nearly all the villagers; and as we liked the appearance of his house, I gave Bass a leg up over the wall around his garden, and Bass opened the gate, and we climbed in through his front window. It was like the invasion of the home of the Dusantes by Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, and, like them, we were constantly making discoveries of fresh treasure-trove. Sometimes it was in the form of a cake of soap or a tin of coffee, and once it was the mayor's fluted petticoats, which we tried on, and found very heavy. We could not discover what he did for pockets. All of these things, and the house itself, were burned to ashes, we were told, a few hours after we retreated, and we feel less troubled now at having made such free use of them. On the morning of the 4th we were awakened by the firing of cannon from a hill just over our heads, and we met in the middle of the room and solemnly shook hands. There was to be a battle, and we were the only correspondents on the spot. As I represented the London _Times_, Bass was the only representative of an American newspaper who saw this fight from its beginning to its end. We found all the hills to the left of the town topped with long lines of men crouching in little trenches. There were four rows of hills. If you had measured the distance from one hill-top to the next, they would have been from one hundred to three hundred yards distant from one another. In between the hills were gullies, or little valleys, and the beds of streams that had dried up in the hot sun. These valleys were filled with high grass that waved about in the breeze and was occasionally torn up and tossed in the air by a shell. The position of the Greek forces was very simple. On the top of each hill was a trench two or three feet deep and some hundred yards long. The earth that had been scooped out to make the trench was packed on the edge facing the enemy, and on the top of that some of the men had piled stones, through which they poked their rifles. When a shell struck the ridge it would sometimes scatter these stones in among the men, and they did quite as much damage as the shells. Back of these trenches, and down that side of the hill which was farther from the enemy, were the reserves, who sprawled at length in the long grass, and smoked and talked and watched the shells dropping into the gully at their feet. The battle, which lasted two days, opened in a sudden and terrific storm of hail. But the storm passed as quickly as it came, leaving the trenches running with water, like the gutters of a city street after a spring shower; and the men soon sopped them up with their overcoats and blankets, and in half an hour the sun had dried the wet uniforms, and the field-birds had begun to chirp again, and the grass was warm and fragrant. The sun was terribly hot. There was no other day during that entire brief campaign when its glare was so intense or the heat so suffocating. The men curled up in the trenches, with their heads pressed against the damp earth, panting and breathing heavily, and the heat-waves danced and quivered about them, making the plain below flicker like a picture in a cinematograph. From time to time an officer would rise and peer down into the great plain, shading his eyes with his hands, and shout something at them, and they would turn quickly in the trench and rise on one knee. And at the shout that followed they would fire four or five rounds rapidly and evenly, and then, at a sound from the officer's whistle, would drop back again and pick up the cigarettes they had placed in the grass and begin leisurely to swab out their rifles with a piece of dirty rag on a cleaning rod. Down in the plain below there was apparently nothing at which they could shoot except the great shadows of the clouds drifting across the vast checker-board of green and yellow fields, and disappearing finally between the mountain passes beyond. In some places there were square dark patches that might have been bushes, and nearer to us than these were long lines of fresh earth, from which steam seemed to be escaping in little wisps. What impressed us most of what we could see of the battle then was the remarkable number of cartridges the Greek soldiers wasted in firing into space, and the fact that they had begun to fire at such long range that, in order to get the elevation, they had placed the rifle butt under the armpit instead of against the shoulder. Their sights were at the top notch. The cartridges reminded one of corn-cobs jumping out of a corn-sheller, and it was interesting when the bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop up into the air at the same time, flashing in the sun as though they were glad to have done their work and to get out again. They rolled by the dozens underfoot, and twinkled in the grass, and when one shifted his position in the narrow trench, or stretched his cramped legs, they tinkled musically. It was like wading in a gutter filled with thimbles. Then there began a concert which came from just overhead--a concert of jarring sounds and little whispers. The "shrieking shrapnel," of which one reads in the description of every battle, did not seem so much like a shriek as it did like the jarring sound of telegraph wires when some one strikes the pole from which they hang, and when they came very close the noise was like the rushing sound that rises between two railroad trains when they pass each other in opposite directions and at great speed. After a few hours we learned by observation that when a shell sang overhead it had already struck somewhere else, which was comforting, and which was explained, of course, by the fact that the speed of the shell is so much greater than the rate at which sound travels. The bullets were much more disturbing; they seemed to be less open in their warfare, and to steal up and sneak by, leaving no sign, and only to whisper as they passed. They moved under a cloak of invisibility, and made one feel as though he were the blind man in a game of blind-man's-buff, where every one tapped him in passing, leaving him puzzled and ignorant as to whither they had gone and from what point they would come next. The bullets sounded like rustling silk, or like humming-birds on a warm summer's day, or like the wind as it is imitated on the stage of a theatre. Any one who has stood behind the scenes when a storm is progressing on the stage, knows the little wheel wound with silk that brushes against another piece of silk, and which produces the whistling effect of the wind. At Velestinos, when the firing was very heavy, it was exactly as though some one were turning one of these silk wheels, and so rapidly as to make the whistling continuous. When this concert opened, the officers shouted out new orders, and each of the men shoved his sight nearer to the barrel, and when he fired again, rubbed the butt of his gun snugly against his shoulder. The huge green blotches on the plain had turned blue, and now we could distinguish that they moved, and that they were moving steadily forward. Then they would cease to move, and a little later would be hidden behind great puffs of white smoke, which were followed by a flash of flame; and still later there would come a dull report. At the same instant something would hurl itself jarring through the air above our heads, and by turning on one elbow we could see a sudden upheaval in the sunny landscape behind us, a spurt of earth and stones like a miniature geyser, which was filled with broken branches and tufts of grass and pieces of rock. As the Turkish aim grew better these volcanoes appeared higher up the hill, creeping nearer and nearer to the rampart of fresh earth on the second trench until the shells hammered it at last again and again, sweeping it away and cutting great gashes in it, through which we saw the figures of men caught up and hurled to one side, and others flinging themselves face downward as though they were diving into water; and at the same instant in our own trench the men would gasp as though they had been struck too, and then becoming conscious of having done this would turn and smile sheepishly at each other, and crawl closer into the burrows they had made in the earth. [Picture: A mountain battery at Velestinos] From where we sat on the edge of the trench, with our feet among the cartridges, we could, by leaning forward, look over the piled-up earth into the plain below, and soon, without any aid from field-glasses, we saw the blocks of blue break up into groups of men. These men came across the ploughed fields in long, widely opened lines, walking easily and leisurely, as though they were playing golf or sowing seed in the furrows. The Greek rifles crackled and flashed at the lines, but the men below came on quite steadily, picking their way over the furrows and appearing utterly unconscious of the seven thousand rifles that were calling on them to halt. They were advancing directly toward a little sugar-loaf hill, on the top of which was a mountain battery perched like a tiara on a woman's head. It was throwing one shell after another in the very path of the men below, but the Turks still continued to pick their way across the field, without showing any regard for the mountain battery. It was worse than threatening; it seemed almost as though they meant to insult us. If they had come up on a run they would not have appeared so contemptuous, for it would have looked then as though they were trying to escape the Greek fire, or that they were at least interested in what was going forward. But the steady advance of so many men, each plodding along by himself, with his head bowed and his gun on his shoulder, was aggravating. There was a little village at the foot of the hill. It was so small that no one had considered it. It was more like a collection of stables gathered round a residence than a town, and there was a wall completely encircling it, with a gate in the wall that faced us. Suddenly the doors of this gate were burst open from the inside, and a man in a fez ran through them, followed by many more. The first man was waving a sword, and a peasant in petticoats ran at his side and pointed up with his hand at our trench. Until that moment the battle had lacked all human interest; we might have been watching a fight against the stars or the man in the moon, and, in spite of the noise and clatter of the Greek rifles, and the ghostlike whispers and the rushing sounds in the air, there was nothing to remind us of any other battle of which we had heard or read. But we had seen pictures of officers waving swords, and we knew that the fez was the sign of the Turk--of the enemy--of the men who were invading Thessaly, who were at that moment planning to come up a steep hill on which we happened to be sitting and attack the people on top of it. And the spectacle at once became comprehensible, and took on the human interest it had lacked. The men seemed to feel this, for they sprang up and began cheering and shouting, and fired in an upright position, and by so doing exposed themselves at full length to the fire from the men below. The Turks in front of the village ran back into it again, and those in the fields beyond turned and began to move away, but in that same plodding, aggravating fashion. They moved so leisurely that there was a pause in the noise along the line, while the men watched them to make sure that they were really retreating. And then there was a long cheer, after which they all sat down, breathing deeply, and wiping the sweat and dust across their faces, and took long pulls at their canteens. The different trenches were not all engaged at the same time. They acted according to the individual judgment of their commanding officer, but always for the general good. Sometimes the fire of the enemy would be directed on one particular trench, and it would be impossible for the men in that trench to rise and reply without haying their heads carried away; so they would lie hidden, and the men in the trenches flanking them would act in their behalf, and rake the enemy from the front and from every side, until the fire on that trench was silenced, or turned upon some other point. The trenches stretched for over half a mile in a semicircle, and the little hills over which they ran lay at so many different angles, and rose to such different heights, that sometimes the men in one trench fired directly over the heads of their own men. From many trenches in the first line it was impossible to see any of the Greek soldiers except those immediately beside you. If you looked back or beyond on either hand there was nothing to be seen but high hills topped with fresh earth, and the waving yellow grass, and the glaring blue sky. General Smolenski directed the Greeks from the plain to the far right of the town; and his presence there, although none of the men saw nor heard of him directly throughout the entire day, was more potent for good than would have been the presence of five thousand other men held in reserve. He was a mile or two miles away from the trenches, but the fact that he was there, and that it was Smolenski who was giving the orders, was enough. Few had ever seen Smolenski, but his name was sufficient; it was as effective as is Mr. Bowen's name on a Bank of England note. It gave one a pleasant feeling to know that he was somewhere within call; you felt there would be no "routs" nor stampedes while he was there. And so for two days those seven thousand men lay in the trenches, repulsing attack after attack of the Turkish troops, suffocated with the heat and chilled with sudden showers, and swept unceasingly by shells and bullets--partly because they happened to be good men and brave men, but largely because they knew that somewhere behind them a stout, bull-necked soldier was sitting on a camp-stool, watching them through a pair of field-glasses. Toward mid-day you would see a man leave the trench with a comrade's arm around him, and start on the long walk to the town where the hospital corps were waiting for him. These men did not wear their wounds with either pride or braggadocio, but regarded the wet sleeves and shapeless arms in a sort of wondering surprise. There was much more of surprise than of pain in their faces, and they seemed to be puzzling as to what they had done in the past to deserve such a punishment. [Picture: Firing from the trenches at Velestinos] Other men were carried out of the trench and laid on their backs on the high grass, staring up drunkenly at the glaring sun, and with their limbs fallen into unfamiliar poses. They lay so still, and they were so utterly oblivious of the roar and rattle and the anxious energy around them that one grew rather afraid of them and of their superiority to their surroundings. The sun beat on them, and the insects in the grass waving above them buzzed and hummed, or burrowed in the warm moist earth upon which they lay; over their heads the invisible carriers of death jarred the air with shrill crescendoes, and near them a comrade sat hacking with his bayonet at a lump of hard bread. He sprawled contentedly in the hot sun, with humped shoulders and legs far apart, and with his cap tipped far over his eyes. Every now and again he would pause, with a piece of cheese balanced on the end of his knife-blade, and look at the twisted figures by him on the grass, or he would dodge involuntarily as a shell swung low above his head, and smile nervously at the still forms on either side of him that had not moved. Then he brushed the crumbs from his jacket and took a drink out of his hot canteen, and looking again at the sleeping figures pressing down the long grass beside him, crawled back on his hands and knees to the trench and picked up his waiting rifle. The dead gave dignity to what the other men were doing, and made it noble, and, from another point of view, quite senseless. For their dying had proved nothing. Men who could have been much better spared than they, were still alive in the trenches, and for no reason but through mere dumb chance. There was no selection of the unfittest; it seemed to be ruled by unreasoning luck. A certain number of shells and bullets passed through a certain area of space, and men of different bulks blocked that space in different places. If a man happened to be standing in the line of a bullet he was killed and passed into eternity, leaving a wife and children, perhaps, to mourn him. "Father died," these children will say, "doing his duty." As a matter of fact, father died because he happened to stand up at the wrong moment, or because he turned to ask the man on his right for a match, instead of leaning toward the left, and he projected his bulk of two hundred pounds where a bullet, fired by a man who did not know him and who had not aimed at him, happened to want the right of way. One of the two had to give it, and as the bullet would not, the soldier had his heart torn out. The man who sat next to me happened to stoop to fill his cartridge-box just as the bullet that wanted the space he had occupied passed over his bent shoulder; and so he was not killed, but will live for sixty years, perhaps, and will do much good or much evil. Another man in the same trench sat up to clean his rifle, and had his arm in the air driving the cleaning rod down the barrel, when a bullet passed through his lungs, and the gun fell across his face, with the rod sticking in it, and he pitched forward on his shoulder quite dead. If he had not cleaned his gun at that moment he would probably be alive in Athens now, sitting in front of a cafe and fighting the war over again. Viewed from that point, and leaving out the fact that God ordered it all, the fortunes of the game of war seemed as capricious as matching pennies, and as impersonal as the wheel at Monte Carlo. In it the brave man did not win because he was brave, but because he was lucky. A fool and a philosopher are equal at a game of dice. And these men who threw dice with death were interesting to watch, because, though they gambled for so great a stake, they did so unconcernedly and without flinching, and without apparently appreciating the seriousness of the game. There was a red-headed, freckled peasant boy, in dirty petticoats, who guided Bass and myself to the trenches. He was one of the few peasants who had not run away, and as he had driven sheep over every foot of the hills, he was able to guide the soldiers through those places where they were best protected from the bullets of the enemy. He did this all day, and was always, whether coming or going, under a heavy fire; but he enjoyed that fact, and he seemed to regard the battle only as a delightful change in the quiet routine of his life, as one of our own country boys at home would regard the coming of the spring circus or the burning of a neighbor's barn. He ran dancing ahead of us, pointing to where a ledge of rock offered a natural shelter, or showing us a steep gully where the bullets could not fall. When they came very near him he would jump high in the air, not because he was startled, but out of pure animal joy in the excitement of it, and he would frown importantly and shake his red curls at us, as though to say: "I told you to be careful. Now, you see. Don't let that happen again." We met him many times during the two days, escorting different companies of soldiers from one point to another, as though they were visitors to his estate. When a shell broke, he would pick up a piece and present it to the officer in charge, as though it were a flower he had plucked from his own garden, and which he wanted his guest to carry away with him as a souvenir of his visit. Some one asked the boy if his father and mother knew where he was, and he replied, with amusement, that they had run away and deserted him, and that he had remained because he wished to see what a Turkish army looked like. He was a much more plucky boy than the overrated Casabianca, who may have stood on the burning deck whence all but him had fled because he could not swim, and because it was with him a choice of being either burned or drowned. This boy stuck to the burning deck when it was possible for him at any time to have walked away and left it burning. But he stayed on because he was amused, and because he was able to help the soldiers from the city in safety across his native heath. He was much the best part of the show, and one of the bravest Greeks on the field. He will grow up to be something fine, no doubt, and his spirit will rebel against having to spend his life watching his father's sheep. He may even win the race from Marathon. Another Greek who was a most interesting figure to us was a Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis. He was in command of the mountain battery on the flat, round top of the high hill. On account of its height the place seemed much nearer to the sun than any other part of the world, and the heat there was three times as fierce as in the trenches below. When you had climbed to the top of this hill it was like standing on a roof-garden, or as though you were watching a naval battle from a fighting top of one of the battleships. The top of the hill was not unlike an immense circus ring in appearance. The piled-up earth around its circular edge gave that impression, and the glaring yellow wheat that was tramped into glaring yellow soil, and the blue ammunition-boxes scattered about, helped out the illusion. It was an exceedingly busy place, and the smoke drifted across it continually, hiding us from one another in a curtain of flying yellow dust, while over our heads the Turkish shells raced after each other so rapidly that they beat out the air like the branches of a tree in a storm. On account of its height, and the glaring heat, and the shells passing, and the Greek guns going off and then turning somersaults, it was not a place suited for meditation; but Ambroise Frantzis meditated there as though he were in his own study. He was a very young man and very shy, and he was too busy to consider his own safety, or to take time, as the others did, to show that he was not considering it. Some of the other officers stood up on the breastworks and called the attention of the men to what they were doing; but as they did not wish the men to follow their example in this, it was difficult to see what they expected to gain by their braggadocio. Frantzis was as unconcerned as an artist painting a big picture in his studio. The battle plain below him was his canvas, and his nine mountain guns were his paint brushes. And he painted out Turks and Turkish cannon with the same concentrated, serious expression of countenance that you see on the face of an artist when he bites one brush between his lips and with another wipes out a false line or a touch of the wrong color. You have seen an artist cock his head on one side, and shut one eye and frown at his canvas, and then select several brushes and mix different colors and hit the canvas a bold stroke, and then lean back to note the effect. Frantzis acted in just that way. He would stand with his legs apart and his head on one side, pulling meditatively at his pointed beard, and then taking a closer look through his field-glasses, would select the three guns he had decided would give him the effect he wanted to produce, and he would produce that effect. When the shot struck plump in the Turkish lines, and we could see the earth leap up into the air like geysers of muddy water, and each gunner would wave his cap and cheer, Frantzis would only smile uncertainly, and begin again, with the aid of his field-glasses, to puzzle out fresh combinations. The battle that had begun in a storm of hail ended on the first day in a storm of bullets that had been held in reserve by the Turks, and which let off just after sundown. They came from a natural trench, formed by the dried-up bed of a stream which lay just below the hill on which the first Greek trench was situated. There were bushes growing on the bank of the stream nearest to the Greek lines, and these hid the men who occupied it. Throughout the day there had been an irritating fire from this trench from what appeared to be not more than a dozen rifles, but we could see that it was fed from time to time with many boxes of ammunition, which were carried to it on the backs of mules from the Turkish position a half mile farther to the rear. Bass and a corporal took a great aversion to this little group of Turks, not because there were too many of them to be disregarded, but because they were so near; and Bass kept the corporal's services engaged in firing into it, and in discouraging the ammunition mules when they were being driven in that direction. Our corporal was a sharp-shooter, and, accordingly, felt his superiority to his comrades; and he had that cheerful contempt for his officers that all true Greek soldiers enjoy; and so he never joined in the volley-firing, but kept his ammunition exclusively for the dozen men behind the bushes and for the mules. He waged, as it were, a little battle on his own account. The other men rose as commanded and fired regular volleys, and sank back again, but he fixed his sights to suit his own idea of the range, and he rose when he was ready to do so, and fired whenever he thought best. When his officer, who kept curled up in the hollow of the trench, commanded him to lie down, he would frown and shake his head at the interruption, and paid no further attention to the order. He was as much alone as a hunter on a mountain peak stalking deer, and whenever he fired at the men in the bushes he would swear softly, and when he fired at the mules he would chuckle and laugh with delight and content. The mules had to cross a ploughed field in order to reach the bushes, and so we were able to mark where his bullets struck, and we could see them skip across the field, kicking up the dirt as they advanced, until they stopped the mule altogether, or frightened the man who was leading it into a disorderly retreat. It appeared later that instead of there being but twelve men in these bushes there were six hundred, and that they were hiding there until the sun set in order to make a final attack on the first trench. They had probably argued that at sunset the strain of the day's work would have told on the Greek _morale_, that the men's nerves would be jerking and their stomachs aching for food, and that they would be ready for darkness and sleep, and in no condition to repulse a fresh and vigorous attack. So, just as the sun sank, and the officers were counting the cost in dead and wounded, and the men were gathering up blankets and overcoats, and the firing from the Greek lines had almost ceased, there came a fierce rattle from the trench to the right of us, like a watch-dog barking the alarm, and the others took it up from all over the hill, and when we looked down into the plain below to learn what it meant, we saw it blue with men, who seemed to have sprung from the earth. They were clambering from the bed of the stream, breaking through the bushes, and forming into a long line, which, as soon as formed, was at once hidden at regular intervals by flashes of flame that seemed to leap from one gun-barrel to the next, as you have seen a current of electricity run along a line of gas-jets. In the dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding than they had been in the glare of the sun, and the crash of the artillery coming on top of the silence was the more fierce and terrible by the contrast. The Turks were so close on us that the first trench could do little to help itself, and the men huddled against it while their comrades on the surrounding hills fought for them, their volleys passing close above our heads, and meeting the rush of the Turkish bullets on the way, so that there was now one continuous whistling shriek, like the roar of the wind through the rigging of a ship in a storm. If a man had raised his arm above his head his hand would have been torn off. It had come up so suddenly that it was like two dogs, each springing at the throat of the other, and in a greater degree it had something of the sound of two wild animals struggling for life. Volley answered volley as though with personal hate--one crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating it out of recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon. At the same instant all of the Turkish batteries opened with great, ponderous, booming explosions, and the little mountain guns barked and snarled and shrieked back at them, and the rifle volleys crackled and shot out blistering flames, while the air was filled with invisible express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed into one another, bursting and shrieking and groaning. It seemed as though you were lying in a burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had withstood the storms of centuries crashing and falling around your ears, and sending up great showers of sparks and flame. This lasted for five minutes or less, and then the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and from hill-top to hill-top the officers' whistles sounded as though a sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks withdrew into the coming night, and the Greeks lay back, panting and sweating, and stared open-eyed at one another, like men who had looked for a moment into hell, and had come back to the world again. The next day was like the first, except that by five o'clock in the afternoon the Turks appeared on our left flank, crawling across the hills like an invasion of great ants, and the Greek army that at Velestinos had made the two best and most dignified stands of the war withdrew upon Halmyros, and the Turks poured into the village and burned it, leaving nothing standing save two tall Turkish minarets that many years before, when Thessaly belonged to the Sultan, the Turks themselves had placed there. I--THE ROUGH RIDERS AT GUASIMAS On the day the American troops landed on the coast of Cuba, the Cubans informed General Wheeler that the enemy were intrenched at Guasimas, blocking the way to Santiago. Guasimas is not a village, nor even a collection of houses; it is the meeting place of two trails which join at the apex of a V, three miles from the seaport town of Siboney, and continue merged in a single trail to Santiago. General Wheeler, guided by the Cubans, reconnoitred this trail on the 23rd of June, and with the position of the enemy fully explained to him, returned to Siboney and informed General Young and Colonel Wood that on the following morning he would attack the Spanish position at Guasimas. It has been stated that at Guasimas, the Rough Riders were trapped in an ambush, but, as the plan was discussed while I was present, I know that so far from any ones running into an ambush, every one of the officers concerned had a full knowledge of where he would find the enemy, and what he was to do when he found him. That night no one slept, for until two o'clock in the morning, troops were still being disembarked in the surf, and two ships of war had their searchlights turned on the landing-place, and made Siboney as light as a ball-room. Back of the searchlights was an ocean white with moonlight, and on the shore red camp-fires, at which the half-drowned troops were drying their uniforms, and the Rough Riders, who had just marched in from Baiquiri, were cooking a late supper, or early breakfast of coffee and bacon. Below the former home of the Spanish comandante, which General Wheeler had made his head-quarters, lay the camp of the Rough Riders, and through it Cuban officers were riding their half-starved ponies, and scattering the ashes of the camp-fires. Below them was the beach and the roaring surf, in which a thousand or so naked men were assisting and impeding the progress shoreward of their comrades, in pontoons and shore boats, which were being hurled at the beach like sleds down a water chute. It was one of the most weird and remarkable scenes of the war, probably of any war. An army was being landed on an enemy's coast at the dead of night, but with the same cheers and shrieks and laughter that rise from the bathers at Coney Island on a hot Sunday. It was a pandemonium of noises. The men still to be landed from the "prison hulks," as they called the transports, were singing in chorus, the men already on shore were dancing naked around the camp-fires on the beach, or shouting with delight as they plunged into the first bath that had offered in seven days, and those in the launches as they were pitched head-first at the soil of Cuba, signalized their arrival by howls of triumph. On either side rose black overhanging ridges, in the lowland between were white tents and burning fires, and from the ocean came the blazing, dazzling eyes of the search-lights shaming the quiet moonlight. After three hours' troubled sleep in this tumult the Rough Riders left camp at five in the morning. With the exception of half a dozen officers they were dismounted, and carried their blanket rolls, haversacks, ammunition, and carbines. General Young had already started toward Guasimas the First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and according to the agreement of the night before had taken the eastern trail to our right, while the Rough Riders climbed the steep ridge above Siboney and started toward the rendezvous along the trail to the west, which was on high ground and a half mile to a mile distant from the trail along which General Young and his regulars were marching. There was a valley between us, and the bushes were so thick on both sides of our trail that it was not possible at any time, until we met at Guasimas, to distinguish the other column. As soon as the Rough Riders had reached the top of the ridge, not twenty minutes after they had left camp, which was the first opportunity that presented itself, Colonel Wood ordered Captain Capron to proceed with his troop in front of the column as an advance guard, and to choose a "point" of five men skilled as scouts and trailers. Still in advance of these he placed two Cuban scouts. The column then continued along the trail in single file. The Cubans were at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards; the "point" of five picked men under Sergeant Byrne and duty-Sergeant Fish followed them at a distance of a hundred yards, and then came Capron's troop of sixty men strung out in single file. No flankers were placed for the reason that the dense undergrowth and the tangle of vines that stretched from the branches of the trees to the bushes below made it a physical impossibility for man or beast to move forward except along the single trail. Colonel Wood rode at the head of the column, followed by two regular army officers who were members of General Wheeler's staff, a Cuban officer, and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. They rode slowly in consideration of the troopers on foot, who under a cruelly hot sun carried heavy burdens. To those who did not have to walk, it was not unlike a hunting excursion in our West; the scenery was beautiful and the view down the valley one of luxuriant peace. Roosevelt had never been in the tropics and Captain McCormick and I were talking back at him over our shoulders and at each other, pointing out unfamiliar trees and birds. Roosevelt thought it looked like a good deer country, as it once was; it reminded McCormick of Southern California; it looked to me like the trails in Central America. We advanced, talking in that fashion and in high spirits, and congratulating ourselves in being shut of the transport and on breathing fine mountain air again, and on the fact that we were on horseback. We agreed it was impossible to appreciate that we were really at war--that we were in the enemy's country. We had been riding in this pleasant fashion for an hour and a half with brief halts for rest, when Wood stopped the head of the column, and rode down the trail to meet Capron, who was coming back. Wood returned immediately, leading his horse, and said to Roosevelt: "Pass the word back to keep silence in the ranks." The place at which we had halted was where the trail narrowed, and proceeded sharply downward. There was on one side of it a stout barbed-wire fence of five strands. By some fortunate accident this fence had been cut just where the head of the column halted. On the left of the trail it shut off fields of high grass blocked at every fifty yards with great barricades of undergrowth and tangled trees and chapparal. On the other side of the trail there was not a foot of free ground; the bushes seemed absolutely impenetrable, as indeed they were later found to be. When we halted, the men sat down beside the trail and chewed the long blades of grass, or fanned the air with their hats. They had no knowledge of the situation such as their leaders possessed, and their only emotion was one of satisfaction at the chance the halt gave them to rest and to shift their packs. Wood again walked down the trail with Capron and disappeared, and one of the officers informed us that the scouts had seen the outposts of the enemy. It did not seem reasonable that the Spaniards, who had failed to attack us when we landed at Baiquiri, would oppose us until they could do so in force, so, personally, I doubted that there were any Spaniards nearer than Santiago. But we tied our horses to the wire fence, and Capron's troop knelt with carbines at the "Ready," peering into the bushes. We must have waited there, while Wood reconnoitred, for over ten minutes. Then he returned, and began deploying his troops out at either side of the trail. Capron he sent on down the trail itself. G Troop was ordered to beat into the bushes on the right, and K and A were sent over the ridge on which we stood down into the hollow to connect with General Young's column on the opposite side of the valley. F and E Troops were deployed in skirmish-line on the other side of the wire fence. Wood had discovered the enemy a few hundred yards from where he expected to find him, and so far from being "surprised," he had time, as I have just described, to get five of his troops into position before a shot was fired. The firing, when it came, started suddenly on our right. It sounded so close that--still believing we were acting on a false alarm, and that there were no Spaniards ahead of us--I guessed it was Capron's men firing at random to disclose the enemy's position. I ran after G Troop under Captain Llewellyn, and found them breaking their way through the bushes in the direction from which the volleys came. It was like forcing the walls of a maze. If each trooper had not kept in touch with the man on either hand he would have been lost in the thicket. At one moment the underbrush seemed swarming with our men, and the next, except that you heard the twigs breaking, and heavy breathing or a crash as a vine pulled some one down, there was not a sign of a human being anywhere. In a few minutes we broke through into a little open place in front of a dark curtain of vines, and the men fell on one knee and began returning the fire that came from it. The enemy's fire was exceedingly heavy, and his aim was excellent. We saw nothing of the Spaniards, except a few on the ridge across the valley. I happened to be the only one present with field glasses, and when I discovered this force on the ridge, and had made sure, by the cockades in their sombreros, that they were Spaniards and not Cubans, I showed them to Roosevelt. He calculated they were five hundred yards from us, and ordered the men to fire on them at that range. Through the two hours of fighting that followed, although men were falling all around us, the Spaniards on the ridge were the only ones that many of us saw. But the fire against us was not more than eighty yards away, and so hot that our men could only lie flat in the grass and return it in that position. It was at this moment that our men believed they were being attacked by Capron's troop, which they imagined must have swung to the right, and having lost its bearings and hearing them advancing through the underbrush, had mistaken them for the enemy. They accordingly ceased firing and began shouting in order to warn Capron that he was shooting at his friends. This is the foundation for the statement that the Rough Riders had fired on each other, which they did not do then or at any other time. Later we examined the relative position of the trail which Capron held, and the position of G Troop, and they were at right angles to one another. Capron could not possibly have fired into us at any time, unless he had turned directly around in his tracks and aimed up the very trail he had just descended. Advancing, he could no more have hit us than he could have seen us out of the back of his head. When we found many hundred spent cartridges of the Spaniards a hundred yards in front of G Troop's position, the question as to who had fired on us was answered. It was an exceedingly hot corner. The whole troop was gathered in the little open place blocked by the network of grape-vines and tangled bushes before it. They could not see twenty feet on three sides of them, but on the right hand lay the valley, and across it came the sound of Young's brigade, who were apparently heavily engaged. The enemy's fire was so close that the men could not hear the word of command, and Captain Llewellyn and Lieutenant Greenway, unable to get their attention, ran among them, batting them with their sombreros to make them cease firing. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt ran up just then, bringing with him Lieutenant Woodbury Kane and ten troopers from K Troop. Roosevelt lay down in the grass beside Llewellyn and consulted with him eagerly. Kane was smiling with the charming content of a perfectly happy man. When Captain Llewellyn told him his men were not needed, and to rejoin his troop, he led his detail over the edge of the hill on which we lay. As he disappeared below the crest he did not stoop to avoid the bullets, but walked erect, still smiling. Roosevelt pointed out that it was impossible to advance farther on account of the network of wild grape-vines that masked the Spaniards from us, and that we must cross the trail and make to the left. The shouts the men had raised to warn Capron had established our position to the enemy, and the firing was now fearfully accurate. Sergeant Russell, who in his day had been a colonel on a governor's staff, was killed, and the other sergeant was shot through the wrist. In the space of three minutes nine men were lying on their backs helpless. Before we got away, every third man was killed, or wounded. We drew off slowly to the left, dragging the wounded with us. Owing to the low aim of the enemy, we were forced to move on our knees and crawl. Even then men were hit. One man near me was shot through the head. Returning later to locate the body and identify him, I found that the buzzards had torn off his lips and his eyes. This mutilation by these hideous birds was, without doubt, what Admiral Sampson mistook for the work of the Spaniards, when the bodies of the marines at Guantanamo were found disfigured. K Troop meantime had deployed into the valley under the fire from the enemy on the ridge. It had been ordered to establish communication with General Young's column, and while advancing and firing on the ridge, Captain Jenkins sent the guidon bearer back to climb the hill and wave his red and white banner where Young's men could see it. The guidon bearer had once run for Congress on the gold ticket in Arizona, and, as some one said, was naturally the man who should have been selected for a forlorn hope. His flag brought him instantly under a heavy fire, but he continued waving it until the Tenth Cavalry on the other side of the valley answered, and the two columns were connected by a skirmish-line composed of K Troop and A, under Captain "Bucky" O'Neill. G Troop meanwhile had hurried over to the left, and passing through the opening in the wire fence had spread out into open order. It followed down after Captain Luna's troop and D and E Troops, which were well already in advance. Roosevelt ran forward and took command of the extreme left of this line. Wood was walking up and down along it, leading his horse, which he thought might be of use in case he had to move quickly to alter his original formation. His plan, at present, was to spread out his men so that they would join Young on the right, and on the left swing around until they flanked the enemy. K and A Troops had already succeeded in joining hands with Young's column across the valley, and as they were capable of taking care of themselves, Wood was bending his efforts to keep his remaining four companies in a straight line and revolving them around the enemy's "end." It was in no way an easy thing to do. The men were at times wholly hidden from each other, and from him; probably at no one time did he see more than two of his troops together. It was only by the firing that he could tell where his men lay, and that they were always advancing. The advances were made in quick, desperate rushes--sometimes the ground gained was no more than a man covers in sliding for a base. At other times half a troop would rise and race forward and then burrow deep in the hot grass and fire. On this side of the line there was an occasional glimpse of the enemy. But for a great part of the time the men shot at the places from where the enemy's fire seemed to come, aiming low and answering in steady volleys. The fire discipline was excellent. The prophets of evil of the Tampa Bay Hotel had foretold that the cowboys would shoot as they chose, and, in the field, would act independently of their officers. As it turned out, the cowboys were the very men who waited most patiently for the officers to give the word of command. At all times the movement was without rest, breathless and fierce, like a cane-rush, or a street fight. After the first three minutes every man had stripped as though for a wrestling match, throwing off all his impedimenta but his cartridge-belt and canteen. Even then the sun handicapped their strength cruelly. The enemy was hidden in the shade of the jungle, while they, for every thicket they gained, had to fight in the open, crawling through grass which was as hot as a steam bath, and with their flesh and clothing torn by thorns and the sword-like blade of the Spanish "bayonet." The glare of the sun was full in their eyes and as fierce as a lime-light. When G Troop passed on across the trail to the left I stopped at the place where the column had first halted--it had been converted into a dressing station and the wounded of G Troop were left there in the care of the hospital stewards. A tall, gaunt young man with a cross on his arm was just coming back up the trail. His head was bent, and by some surgeon's trick he was carrying a wounded man much heavier than himself across his shoulders. As I stepped out of the trail he raised his head, and smiled and nodded, and left me wondering where I had seen him before, smiling in the same cheery, confident way and moving in that same position. I knew it could not have been under the same conditions, and yet he was certainly associated with another time of excitement and rush and heat. Then I remembered him. As now he had been covered with blood and dirt and perspiration, but then he wore a canvas jacket and the man he carried on his shoulders was trying to hold him back from a white-washed line. And I recognized the young doctor, with the blood bathing his breeches, as "Bob" Church, of Princeton. That was only one of four badly wounded men he carried that day on his shoulders over a half-mile of trail that stretched from the firing-line back to the dressing station and under an unceasing fire. {3} As the senior surgeon was absent he had chief responsibility that day for all the wounded, and that so few of them died is greatly due to this young man who went down into the firing-line and pulled them from it, and bore them out of danger. The comic paragraphers who wrote of the members of the Knickerbocker Club and the college swells of the Rough Riders and of their imaginary valets and golf clubs, should, in decency, since the fight at Guasimas apologize. For the same spirit that once sent these men down a white-washed field against their opponents' rush line was the spirit that sent Church, Channing, Devereux, Ronalds, Wrenn, Cash, Bull, Lamed, Goodrich, Greenway, Dudley Dean, and a dozen others through the high hot grass at Guasimas, not shouting, as their friends the cowboys did, but each with his mouth tightly shut, with his eyes on the ball, and moving in obedience to the captain's signals. Judging from the sound, our firing-line now seemed to be half a mile in advance of the place where the head of the column had first halted. This showed that the Spaniards had been driven back at least three hundred yards from their original position. It was impossible to see any of our men in the field, so I ran down the trail with the idea that it would lead me back to the troop I had left when I had stopped at the dressing station. The walk down that trail presented one of the most grewsome pictures of the war. It narrowed as it descended; it was for that reason the enemy had selected that part of it for the attack, and the vines and bushes interlaced so closely above it that the sun could not come through. The rocks on either side were spattered with blood and the rank grass was matted with it. Blanket rolls, haversacks, carbines, and canteens had been abandoned all along its length. It looked as though a retreating army had fled along it, rather than that one troop had fought its way through it to the front. Except for the clatter of the land-crabs, those hideous orchid-colored monsters that haunt the places of the dead, and the whistling of the bullets in the trees, the place was as silent as a grave. For the wounded lying along its length were as still as the dead beside them. The noise of the loose stones rolling under my feet brought a hospital steward out of the brush, and he called after me: "Lieutenant Thomas is badly wounded in here, and we can't move him. We want to carry him out of the sun some place, where there is shade and a breeze." Thomas was the first lieutenant of Capron's troop. He is a young man, large and powerfully built. He was shot through the leg just below the trunk, and I found him lying on a blanket half naked and covered with blood, and with his leg bound in tourniquets made of twigs and pocket-handkerchiefs. It gave one a thrill of awe and wonder to see how these cowboy surgeons, with a stick that one would use to light a pipe and with the gaudy 'kerchiefs they had taken from their necks, were holding death at bay. The young officer was in great pain and tossing and raving wildly. When we gathered up the corners of his blanket and lifted him, he tried to sit upright, and cried out, "You're taking me to the front, aren't you? You said you would. They've killed my captain--do you understand? They've killed Captain Capron. The --- Mexicans! They've killed my captain." The troopers assured him they were carrying him to the firing-line, but he was not satisfied. We stumbled over the stones and vines, bumping his wounded body against the ground and leaving a black streak in the grass behind us, but it seemed to hurt us more than it did him, for he sat up again clutching at us imploringly with his bloody hands. "For God's sake, take me to the front," he begged. "Do you hear? I order you; damn you, I order--We must give them hell; do you hear? we must give them hell. They've killed Capron. They've killed my captain." The loss of blood at last mercifully silenced him, and when we had reached the trail he had fainted and I left them kneeling around him, their grave boyish faces filled with sympathy and concern. Only fifty feet from him and farther down the trail I passed his captain, with his body propped against Church's knee and with his head fallen on the surgeon's shoulder. Capron was always a handsome, soldierly looking man--some said that he was the most soldierly looking of any of the young officers in the army--and as I saw him then death had given him a great dignity and nobleness. He was only twenty-eight years old, the age when life has just begun, but he rested his head on the surgeon's shoulder like a man who knew he was already through with it and that, though they might peck and mend at the body, he had received his final orders. His breast and shoulders were bare, and as the surgeon cut the tunic from him the sight of his great chest and the skin, as white as a girl's, and the black open wound against it made the yellow stripes and the brass insignia on the tunic, strangely mean and tawdry. Fifty yards farther on, around a turn in the trail, behind a rock, a boy was lying with a bullet wound between his eyes. His chest was heaving with short, hoarse noises which I guessed were due to some muscular action entirely, and that he was virtually dead. I lifted him and gave him some water, but it would not pass through his fixed teeth. In the pocket of his blouse was a New Testament with the name Fielder Dawson, Mo., scribbled in it in pencil. While I was writing it down for identification, a boy as young as himself came from behind me down the trail. "It is no use," he said; "the surgeon has seen him; he says he is just the same as dead. He is my bunkie; we only met two weeks ago at San Antonio; but he and me had got to be such good friends--But there's nothing I can do now." He threw himself down on the rock beside his bunkie, who was still breathing with that hoarse inhuman rattle, and I left them, the one who had been spared looking down helplessly with the tears creeping across his cheeks. The firing was quite close now, and the trail was no longer filled with blanket rolls and haversacks, nor did pitiful, prostrate figures lie in wait behind each rock. I guessed this must mean that I now was well in advance of the farthest point to which Capron's troop had moved, and I was running forward feeling confident that I must be close on our men, when I saw the body of a sergeant blocking the trail and stretched at full length across it. Its position was a hundred yards in advance of that of any of the others--it was apparently the body of the first man killed. After death the bodies of some men seem to shrink almost instantly within themselves; they become limp and shapeless, and their uniforms hang upon them strangely. But this man, who was a giant in life, remained a giant in death--his very attitude was one of attack; his fists were clinched, his jaw set, and his eyes, which were still human, seemed fixed with resolve. He was dead, but he was not defeated. And so Hamilton Fish died as he had lived--defiantly, running into the very face of the enemy, standing squarely upright on his legs instead of crouching, as the others called to him to do, until he fell like a column across the trail. "God gives," was the motto on the watch I took from his blouse, and God could not have given him a nobler end; to die, in the fore-front of the first fight of the war, quickly, painlessly, with a bullet through the heart, with his regiment behind him, and facing the enemies of his country. The line at this time was divided by the trail into two wings. The right wing, composed of K and A Troops, was advancing through the valley, returning the fire from the ridge as it did so, and the left wing, which was much the longer of the two, was swinging around on the enemy's right flank, with its own right resting on the barbed-wire fence. I borrowed a carbine from a wounded man, and joined the remnant of L Troop which was close to the trail. This troop was then commanded by Second Lieutenant Day, who on account of his conduct that morning and at the battle of San Juan later, when he was shot through the arm, was promoted to be captain of L Troop, or, as it was later officially designated, Capron's troop. He was walking up and down the line as unconcernedly as though we were at target practice, and an Irish sergeant, Byrne, was assisting him by keeping up a continuous flow of comments and criticisms that showed the keenest enjoyment of the situation. Byrne was the only man I noticed who seemed to regard the fight as in any way humorous. For at Guasimas, no one had time to be flippant, or to exhibit any signs of braggadocio. It was for all of them, from the moment it started, through the hot, exhausting hour and a half that it lasted, a most serious proposition. The conditions were exceptional. The men had made a night march the evening before, had been given but three hours' troubled sleep on the wet sand, and had then been marched in full equipment uphill and under a cruelly hot sun, directly into action. And eighty per cent. of them had never before been under fire. Nor had one man in the regiment ever fired a Krag-Jorgensen carbine until he fired it at a Spaniard, for their arms had been issued to them so soon before sailing that they had only drilled with them without using cartridges. To this handicap was also added the nature of the ground and the fact that our men could not see their opponents. Their own men fell or rolled over on every side, shot down by an invisible enemy, with no one upon whom they could retaliate, with no sign that the attack might not go on indefinitely. Yet they never once took a step backward, but advanced grimly, cleaning a bush or thicket of its occupants before charging it, and securing its cover for themselves, and answering each volley with one that sounded like an echo of the first. The men were panting for breath; the sweat ran so readily into their eyes that they could not see the sights of their guns; their limbs unused to such exertion after seven days of cramped idleness on the troop-ship, trembled with weakness and the sun blinded and dazzled them; but time after time they rose and staggered forward through the high grass, or beat their way with their carbines against the tangle of vines and creepers. A mile and a half of territory was gained foot by foot in this fashion, the three Spanish positions carried in that distance being marked by the thousands of Mauser cartridges that lay shining and glittering in the grass and behind the barricades of bushes. But this distance had not been gained without many losses, for every one in the regiment was engaged. Even those who, on account of the heat, had dropped out along the trail, as soon as the sound of the fight reached them, came limping to the front--and plunged into the firing-line. It was the only place they could go--there was no other line. With the exception of Church's dressing station and its wounded there were no reserves. Among the first to be wounded was the correspondent, Edward Marshall, of the New York _Journal_, who was on the firing-line to the left. He was shot through the body near the spine, and when I saw him he was suffering the most terrible agonies, and passing through a succession of convulsions. He nevertheless, in his brief moments of comparative peace, bore himself with the utmost calm, and was so much a soldier to duty that he continued writing his account of the fight until the fight itself was ended. His courage was the admiration of all the troopers, and he was highly commended by Colonel Wood in the official account of the engagement. [Picture: Wounded Rough Riders coming over the hill at Siboney. Head of column of Second Infantry going to support the Rough Riders, June 24th] Nothing so well illustrated how desperately each man was needed, and how little was his desire to withdraw, as the fact that the wounded lay where they fell until the hospital stewards found them. Their comrades did not use them as an excuse to go to leave the firing-line. I have watched other fights, where the men engaged were quite willing to unselfishly bear the wounded from the zone of danger. The fight had now lasted an hour, and the line had reached a more open country, with a slight incline upward toward a wood, on the edge of which was a ruined house. This house was a former distillery for _aguardiente_, and was now occupied in force by the enemy. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt on the far left was moving up his men with the intention of taking this house on the flank; Wood, who was all over the line, had the same objective point in his mind. The troop commanders had a general idea that the distillery was the key to the enemy's position, and were all working in that direction. It was extremely difficult for Wood and Roosevelt to communicate with the captains, and after the first general orders had been given them they relied upon the latter's intelligence to pull them through. I do not suppose Wood, out of the five hundred engaged, saw more than thirty of his men at any one time. When he had passed one troop, except for the noise of its volley firing, it was immediately lost to him in the brush, and it was so with the next. Still, so excellent was the intelligence of the officers, and so ready the spirit of the men, that they kept an almost perfect alignment, as was shown when the final order came to charge in the open fields. The advance upon the ruined building was made in stubborn, short rushes, sometimes in silence, and sometimes firing as we ran. The order to fire at will was seldom given, the men waiting patiently for the officers' signal, and then answering in volleys. Some of the men who were twice Day's age begged him to let them take the enemy's impromptu fort on the run, but he answered them tolerantly like spoiled children, and held them down until there was a lull in the enemy's fire, when he would lead them forward, always taking the advance himself. By the way they made these rushes, it was easy to tell which men were used to hunting big game in the West and which were not. The Eastern men broke at the word, and ran for the cover they were directed to take like men trying to get out of the rain, and fell panting on their faces, while the Western trappers and hunters slipped and wriggled through the grass like Indians; dodging from tree trunk to tree trunk, and from one bush to another. They fell into line at the same time with the others, but while doing so they had not once exposed themselves. Some of the escapes were little short of miraculous. The man on my right, Champneys Marshall, of Washington, had one bullet pass through his sleeve, and another pass through his shirt, where it was pulled close to his spine. The holes where the ball entered and went out again were clearly cut. Another man's skin was slightly burned by three bullets in three distinct lines, as though it had been touched for an instant by the lighted end of a cigar. Greenway was shot through this shirt across the breast, and Roosevelt was so close to one bullet, when it struck a tree, that it filled his eyes and ears with tiny splinters. Major Brodie and Lieutenant Thomas were both wounded within a few feet of Colonel Wood, and his color-sergeant, Wright, who followed close at his heels, was clipped three times in the head and neck, and four bullets passed through the folds of the flag he carried. One trooper, Rowland, of Deming, was shot through the lower ribs; he was ordered by Roosevelt to fall back to the dressing station, but there Church told him there was nothing he could do for him then, and directed him to sit down until he could be taken to the hospital at Siboney. Rowland sat still for a short time, and then remarked restlessly, "I don't seem to be doing much good here," and picking up his carbine, returned to the firing-line. There Roosevelt found him. "I thought I ordered you to the rear," he demanded. "Yes, sir, you did," Rowland said, "but there didn't seem to be much doing back there." After the fight he was sent to Siboney with the rest of the wounded, but two days later he appeared in camp. He had marched from Siboney, a distance of six miles, and uphill all the way, carrying his carbine, canteen, and cartridge-belt. "I thought you were in hospital," Wood said. "I was," Rowland answered sheepishly, "but I didn't seem to be doing any good there." They gave him up as hopeless, and he continued his duties and went into the fight of the San Juan hills with the hole still through his ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body, asked to be propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-belt beside him, and the last his troop saw of him he was seated alone grimly firing over their heads in the direction of the enemy. Early in the fight I came upon Church attending to a young cowboy, who was shot through the chest. The entrance to his wound was so small that Church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to stop the flow of blood. "I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger," he said to the boy, "or you'll bleed to death." "All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you know your business." The boy stretched out on his back and lay perfectly quiet while Church, with a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges of the wound. His patient neither whimpered nor swore, but stared up at the sun in silence. The bullets were falling on every side, and the operation was a hasty one, but the trooper made no comment until Church said, "We'd better get out of this; can you stand being carried?" "Do you think you can carry me?" the trooper asked. "Yes." "Well," exclaimed the boy admiringly, "you certainly know your business!" Another of the Rough Riders was brought to the dressing station with a shattered ankle, and Church, after bandaging it, gave him his choice of riding down to Siboney on a mule, or of being carried, a day later, on a litter. "If you think you can manage to ride the mule with that broken foot," he said, "you can start at once, but if you wait until to-morrow, when I can spare the men, you can be carried all the way." The cowboy preferred to start at once, so six hospital stewards lifted him and dropped him on the mule, and into a huge Mexican saddle. He stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup, and his untouched one into the other, and gathered up the reins. "Does it pain you? Can you stand it?" Church asked anxiously. The cowboy turned and smiled down upon him with amused disdain. "Stand _this_?" he cried. "Why, this is just like getting money from home." Toward the last, the firing from the enemy sounded less near, and the bullets passed much higher. Roosevelt, who had picked up a carbine and was firing to give the direction to the others, determined upon a charge. Wood, at the other end of the line, decided at the same time upon the same manoeuvre. It was called "Wood's bluff" afterward, for he had nothing to back it with; while to the enemy it looked as though his whole force was but the skirmish-line in advance of a regiment. The Spaniards naturally could not believe that this thin line which suddenly broke out of the bushes and from behind trees and came cheering out into the hot sunlight was the entire fighting force against it. They supposed the regiment was coming close on its heels, and as Spanish troops hate being rushed as a cat hates water, they fired a few parting volleys and broke and ran. The cheering had the same invigorating effect on our own side as a cold shower; it was what first told half the men where the other half were, and it made every individual man feel better. As we knew it was only a bluff, the first cheer was wavering, but the sound of our own voices was so comforting that the second cheer was a howl of triumph. As it was, the Spaniards thought the Rough Riders had already disregarded all the rules of war. "When we fired a volley," one of the prisoners said later, "instead of falling back they came forward. That is not the way to fight, to come closer at every volley." And so, when instead of retreating on each volley, the Rough Riders rushed at them, cheering and filling the hot air with wild cowboy yells, the dismayed enemy retreated upon Santiago, where he announced he had been attacked by the entire American army. One of the residents of Santiago asked one of the soldiers if those Americans fought well. "_Well_!" he replied, "they tried to catch us with their hands!" I have not attempted to give any account of General Young's fight on our right, which was equally desperate, and, owing to the courage of the colored troops of the Tenth in storming a ridge, equally worthy of praise. But it has seemed better not to try and tell of anything I did not see, but to limit myself to the work of the Rough Riders, to whom, after all, the victory was due, as it was owing to Colonel Wood's charge, which took the Spaniards in flank, that General Wheeler and General Young were able to advance, their own stubborn attack in front having failed to dislodge the enemy from his rifle-pits. According to the statement of the enemy, who had every reason not to exaggerate the size of his own force, 4,000 Spaniards were engaged in this action. The Rough Riders numbered 534, and General Young's force numbered 464. The American troops accordingly attacked a force over four times their own number intrenched behind rifle-pits and bushes in a mountain pass. In spite of the smokeless powder used by the Spaniards, which hid their position, the Rough Riders routed them out of it, and drove them back from three different barricades until they made their last stand in the ruined distillery, whence they finally drove them by assault. The eager spirit in which this was accomplished is best described in the Spanish soldier's answer to the inquiring civilian, "They tried to catch us with their hands." The Rough Riders should adopt it as their motto. II--THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN HILL After the Guasimas fight on June 24, the army was advanced along the single trail which leads from Siboney on the coast to Santiago. Two streams of excellent water run parallel with this trail for short distances, and some eight miles from the coast crossed it in two places. Our outposts were stationed at the first of these fords, the Cuban outposts a mile and a half farther on at the ford nearer Santiago, where the stream made a sharp turn at a place called El Poso. Another mile and a half of trail extended from El Poso to the trenches of San Juan. The reader should remember El Poso, as it marked an important starting-point against San Juan on the eventful first of July. For six days the army was encamped on either side of the trail for three miles back from the outposts. The regimental camps touched each other, and all day long the pack-trains carrying the day's rations passed up and down between them. The trail was a sunken wagon road, where it was possible, in a few places, for two wagons to pass at one time, but the greater distances were so narrow that there was but just room for a wagon, or a loaded mule-train, to make its way. The banks of the trail were three or four feet high, and when it rained it was converted into a huge gutter, with sides of mud, and with a liquid mud a foot deep between them. The camps were pitched along the trail as near the parallel stream as possible, and in the occasional places where there was rich, high grass. At night the men slept in dog tents, open at the front and back, and during the day spent their time under the shade of trees along the trail, or on the banks of the stream. Sentries were placed at every few feet along these streams to guard them from any possible pollution. For six days the army rested in this way, for as an army moves and acts only on its belly, and as the belly of this army was three miles long, it could advance but slowly. This week of rest, after the cramped life of the troop-ship, was not ungrateful, although the rations were scarce and there was no tobacco, which was as necessary to the health of the men as their food. During this week of waiting, the chief excitement was to walk out a mile and a half beyond the outposts to the hill of El Poso, and look across the basin that lay in the great valley which leads to Santiago. The left of the valley was the hills which hide the sea. The right of the valley was the hills in which nestle the village of El Caney. Below El Poso, in the basin, the dense green forest stretched a mile and a half to the hills of San Juan. These hills looked so quiet and sunny and well kept that they reminded one of a New England orchard. There was a blue bungalow on a hill to the right, a red bungalow higher up on the right, and in the centre the block-house of San Juan, which looked like a Chinese pagoda. Three-quarters of a mile behind them, with a dip between, were the long white walls of the hospital and barracks of Santiago, wearing thirteen Red Cross flags, and, as was pointed out to the foreign attaches later, two six-inch guns a hundred yards in advance of the Red Cross flags. It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous looking that it breathed of peace. It seemed as though one might, without accident, walk in and take dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or loll on the benches in the Plaza, or rock in one of the great bent-wood chairs around the patio of the Don Carlos Club. But, on the 27th of June, a long, yellow pit opened in the hill-side of San Juan, and in it we could see straw sombreros rising and bobbing up and down, and under the shade of the block-house, blue-coated Spaniards strolling leisurely about or riding forth on little white ponies to scamper over the hills. Officers of every regiment, _attaches_ of foreign countries, correspondents, and staff officers daily reported the fact that the rifle-pits were growing in length and in number, and that in plain sight from the hill of El Poso the enemy was intrenching himself at San Juan, and at the little village of El Caney to the right, where he was marching through the streets. But no artillery was sent to El Poso hill to drop a shell among the busy men at work among the trenches, or to interrupt the street parades in El Caney. For four days before the American soldiers captured the same rifle-pits at El Caney and San Juan, with a loss of two thousand men, they watched these men diligently preparing for their coming, and wondered why there was no order to embarrass or to end these preparations. On the afternoon of June 30, Captain Mills rode up to the tent of Colonel Wood, and told him that on account of illness, General Wheeler and General Young had relinquished their commands, and that General Sumner would take charge of the Cavalry Division; that he, Colonel Wood, would take command of General Young's brigade, and Colonel Carroll, of General Sumner's brigade. "You will break camp and move forward at four o'clock," he said. It was then three o'clock, and apparently the order to move forward at four had been given to each regiment at nearly the same time, for they all struck their tents and stepped down into the trail together. It was as though fifteen regiments were encamped along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue and were all ordered at the same moment to move into it and march downtown. If Fifth Avenue were ten feet wide, one can imagine the confusion. General Chaffee was at General Lawton's head-quarters, and they stood apart whispering together about the march they were to take to El Caney. Just over their heads the balloon was ascending for the first time and its great glistening bulk hung just above the tree tops, and the men in different regiments, picking their way along the trail, gazed up at it open-mouthed. The head-quarters camp was crowded. After a week of inaction the army, at a moment's notice, was moving forward, and every one had ridden in haste to learn why. There were _attaches_, in strange uniforms, self-important Cuban generals, officers from the flagship _New York_, and an army of photographers. At the side of the camp, double lines of soldiers passed slowly along the two paths of the muddy road, while, between them, aides dashed up and down, splashing them with dirty water, and shouting, "You will come up at once, sir." "You will not attempt to enter the trail yet, sir." "General Sumner's compliments, and why are you not in your place?" Twelve thousand men, with their eyes fixed on a balloon, and treading on each other's heels in three inches of mud, move slowly, and after three hours, it seemed as though every man in the United States was under arms and stumbling and slipping down that trail. The lines passed until the moon rose. They seemed endless, interminable; there were cavalry mounted and dismounted, artillery with cracking whips and cursing drivers, Rough Riders in brown, and regulars, both black and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they were still stumbling and slipping forward. General Sumner's head-quarters tent was pitched to the right of El Poso hill. Below us lay the basin a mile and a half in length, and a mile and a half wide, from which a white mist was rising. Near us, drowned under the mist, seven thousand men were sleeping, and, farther to the right, General Chaffee's five thousand were lying under the bushes along the trails to El Caney, waiting to march on it and eat it up before breakfast. The place hardly needs a map to explain it. The trails were like a pitchfork, with its prongs touching the hills of San Juan. The long handle of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had just come, the joining of the handle and the prongs were El Poso. El Caney lay half-way along the right prong, the left one was the trail down which, in the morning, the troops were to be hurled upon San Juan. It was as yet an utterly undiscovered country. Three miles away, across the basin of mist, we could see the street lamps of Santiago shining over the San Juan hills. Above us, the tropical moon hung white and clear in the dark purple sky, pierced with millions of white stars. As we turned in, there was just a little something in the air which made saying "good-night" a gentle farce, for no one went to sleep immediately, but lay looking up at the stars, and after a long silence, and much restless turning on the blanket which we shared together, the second lieutenant said: "So, if anything happens to me, to-morrow, you'll see she gets them, won't you?" Before the moon rose again, every sixth man who had slept in the mist that night was either killed or wounded; but the second lieutenant was sitting on the edge of a Spanish rifle-pit, dirty, sweaty, and weak for food, but victorious, and the unknown she did not get them. El Caney had not yet thrown off her blanket of mist before Capron's battery opened on it from a ridge two miles in the rear. The plan for the day was that El Caney should fall in an hour. The plan for the day is interesting chiefly because it is so different from what happened. According to the plan the army was to advance in two divisions along the two trails. Incidentally, General Lawton's division was to pick up El Caney, and when El Caney was eliminated, his division was to continue forward and join hands on the right with the divisions of General Sumner and General Kent. The army was then to rest for that night in the woods, half a mile from San Juan. On the following morning it was to attack San Juan on the two flanks, under cover of artillery. The objection to this plan, which did not apparently suggest itself to General Shafter, was that an army of twelve thousand men, sleeping within five hundred yards of the enemy's rifle-pits, might not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad night. As we discovered the next day, not only the five hundred yards, but the whole basin was covered by the fire from the rifle-pits. Even by daylight, when it was possible to seek some slight shelter, the army could not remain in the woods, but according to the plan it was expected to bivouac for the night in those woods, and in the morning to manoeuvre and deploy and march through them to the two flanks of San Juan. How the enemy was to be hypnotized while this was going forward it is difficult to understand. According to this programme, Capron's battery opened on El Caney and Grimes's battery opened on the pagoda-like block-house of San Juan. The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, and the firing, as was discovered later, was not very effective. The battery used black powder, and, as a result, after each explosion the curtain of smoke hung over the gun for fully a minute before the gunners could see the San Juan trenches, which was chiefly important because for a full minute it gave a mark to the enemy. The hill on which the battery stood was like a sugar-loaf. Behind it was the farm-house of El Poso, the only building in sight within a radius of a mile, and in it were Cuban soldiers and other non-combatants. The Rough Riders had been ordered to halt in the yard of the farm-house and the artillery horses were drawn up in it, under the lee of the hill. The First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry were encamped a hundred yards from the battery along the ridge. They might as sensibly have been ordered to paint the rings in a target while a company was firing at the bull's-eye. To our first twenty shots the enemy made no reply; when they did it was impossible, owing to their using smokeless powder, to locate their guns. Their third shell fell in among the Cubans in the block-house and among the Rough Riders and the men of the First and Tenth Cavalry, killing some and wounding many. These casualties were utterly unnecessary and were due to the stupidity of whoever placed the men within fifty yards of guns in action. [Picture: Grime's battery at El Poso. The third Spanish shell fell in among the Cubans in the block-house and among the Rough Riders] A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso one of General Shafter's aides directed General Sumner to advance with his division down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the edge of the woods. "What am I to do then?" asked General Sumner. "You are to await further orders," the aide answered. As a matter of fact and history this was probably the last order General Sumner received from General Shafter, until the troops of his division had taken the San Juan hills, as it became impossible to get word to General Shafter, the trail leading to his head-quarters tent, three miles in the rear, being blocked by the soldiers of the First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and later, by Lawton's division. General Sumner led the Sixth, Third, and Ninth Cavalry and the Rough Riders down the trail, with instructions for the First and Tenth to follow. The trail, virgin as yet from the foot of an American soldier, was as wide as its narrowest part, which was some ten feet across. At places it was as wide as Broadway, but only for such short distances that it was necessary for the men to advance in column, in double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on either side was all but impenetrable, and when the officers and men had once assembled into the basin, they could only guess as to what lay before them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile the country became more open, and General Sumner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half-mile away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the San Juan River, ran across the trail at this point, and another stream crossed it again two hundred yards farther on. The troops were halted at this first stream, some crossing it, and others deploying in single file to the right. Some were on the banks of the stream, others at the edge of the woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high grass which was so high that it stopped the wind, and so hot that it almost choked and suffocated those who lay in it. The enemy saw the advance and began firing with pitiless accuracy into the jammed and crowded trail and along the whole border of the woods. There was not a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear which was not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to return the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy quite clearly and the men in them, but many saw nothing but the bushes under which they lay, and the high grass which seemed to burn when they pressed against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater number of our men were killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles staring at the waving green stuff around them, while the bullets drove past incessantly, with savage insistence, cutting the grass again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one side clinging silently to an arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital stewards passed continually, drawing the wounded back to the streams, where they laid them in long rows, their feet touching the water's edge and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and down the lines, and through the fords of the streams, mounted aides drove their horses at a gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on a church, and one after another paid the price of his position and fell from his horse wounded or dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving an order, shot through the forehead behind both eyes; Captain O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he said, "There is no Spanish bullet made that can kill me." Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was shot out of his saddle. Hidden in the trees above the streams, and above the trail, sharp-shooters and guerillas added a fresh terror to the wounded. There was no hiding from them. Their bullets came from every side. Their invisible smoke helped to keep their hiding-places secret, and in the incessant shriek of shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers, it was difficult to locate the reports of their rifles. They spared neither the wounded nor recognized the Red Cross; they killed the surgeons and the stewards carrying the litters, and killed the wounded men on the litters. A guerilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the breast while I was helping him carry Captain Morton Henry to the dressing-station, the ball passing down through him, and a second shot, from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he lay on the ground where we had dropped him. He was already twice wounded and so covered with blood that no one could have mistaken his condition. The surgeons at work along the stream dressed the wounds with one eye cast aloft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets they feared, though they passed continuously, but too high to do their patients further harm, but the bullets of the sharp-shooters which struck fairly in among them, splashing in the water and scattering the pebbles. The sounds of the two bullets were as different as is the sharp pop of a soda-water bottle from the buzzing of an angry wasp. For a time it seemed as though every second man was either killed or wounded; one came upon them lying behind the bush, under which they had crawled with some strange idea that it would protect them, or crouched under the bank of the stream, or lying on their stomachs and lapping up the water with the eagerness of thirsty dogs. As to their suffering, the wounded were magnificently silent, they neither complained nor groaned nor cursed. "I've got a punctured tire," was their grim answer to inquiries. White men and colored men, veterans and recruits and volunteers, each lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so that he might be carried away to safety, for the wounded were in as great danger after they were hit as though they were in the firing line, but none questioned nor complained. I came across Lieutenant Roberts, of the Tenth Cavalry, lying under the roots of a tree beside the stream with three of his colored troopers stretched around him. He was shot through the intestines, and each of the three men with him was shot in the arm or leg. They had been overlooked or forgotten, and we stumbled upon them only by the accident of losing our way. They had no knowledge as to how the battle was going or where their comrades were or where the enemy was. At any moment, for all they knew, the Spaniards might break through the bushes about them. It was a most lonely picture, the young lieutenant, half naked, and wet with his own blood, sitting upright beside the empty stream, and his three followers crouching at his feet like three faithful watch-dogs, each wearing his red badge of courage, with his black skin tanned to a haggard gray, and with his eyes fixed patiently on the white lips of his officer. When the white soldiers with me offered to carry him back to the dressing-station, the negroes resented it stiffly. "If the Lieutenant had been able to move, we would have carried him away long ago," said the sergeant, quite overlooking the fact that his arm was shattered. "Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me," Roberts added, cheerfully. "They must be very busy. I can wait." As yet, with all these killed and wounded, we had accomplished nothing--except to obey orders--which was to await further orders. The observation balloon hastened the end. It came blundering down the trail, and stopped the advance of the First and Tenth Cavalry, and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to observe what should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitring parties. A balloon, two miles to the rear, and high enough in the air to be out of range of the enemy's fire may some day prove itself to be of use and value. But a balloon on the advance line, and only fifty feet above the tops of the trees, was merely an invitation to the enemy to kill everything beneath it. And the enemy responded to the invitation. A Spaniard might question if he could hit a man, or a number of men, hidden in the bushes, but had no doubt at all as to his ability to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hundred yards distant, and so all the trenches fired at it at once, and the men of the First and Tenth, packed together directly behind it, received the full force of the bullets. The men lying directly below it received the shrapnel which was timed to hit it, and which at last, fortunately, did hit it. This was endured for an hour, an hour of such hell of fire and heat, that the heat in itself, had there been no bullets, would have been remembered for its cruelty. Men gasped on their backs, like fishes in the bottom of a boat, their heads burning inside and out, their limbs too heavy to move. They had been rushed here and rushed there wet with sweat and wet with fording the streams, under a sun that would have made moving a fan an effort, and they lay prostrate, gasping at the hot air, with faces aflame, and their tongues sticking out, and their eyes rolling. All through this the volleys from the rifle-pits sputtered and rattled, and the bullets sang continuously like the wind through the rigging in a gale, shrapnel whined and broke, and still no order came from General Shafter. Captain Howse, of General Sumner's staff, rode down the trail to learn what had delayed the First and Tenth, and was hailed by Colonel Derby, who was just descending from the shattered balloon. "I saw men up there on those hills," Colonel Derby shouted; "they are firing at our troops." That was part of the information contributed by the balloon. Captain Howse's reply is lost to history. General Kent's division, which, according to the plan, was to have been held in reserve, had been rushed up in the rear of the First and Tenth, and the Tenth had deployed in skirmish order to the right. The trail was now completely blocked by Kent's division. Lawton's division, which was to have re-enforced on the right, had not appeared, but incessant firing from the direction of El Caney showed that he and Chaffee were fighting mightily. The situation was desperate. Our troops could not retreat, as the trail for two miles behind them was wedged with men. They could not remain where they were, for they were being shot to pieces. There was only one thing they could do--go forward and take the San Juan hills by assault. It was as desperate as the situation itself. To charge earthworks held by men with modern rifles, and using modern artillery, until after the earthworks have been shaken by artillery, and to attack them in advance and not in the flanks, are both impossible military propositions. But this campaign had not been conducted according to military rules, and a series of military blunders had brought seven thousand American soldiers into a chute of death from which there was no escape except by taking the enemy who held it by the throat and driving him out and beating him down. So the generals of divisions and brigades stepped back and relinquished their command to the regimental officers and the enlisted men. "We can do nothing more," they virtually said. "There is the enemy." Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from the woods behind the line of the Ninth, and finding its men lying in his way, shouted: "If you don't wish to go forward, let my men pass." The junior officers of the Ninth, with their negroes, instantly sprang into line with the Rough Riders, and charged at the blue block-house on the right. I speak of Roosevelt first because, with General Hawkins, who led Kent's division, notably the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, he was, without doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge. General Hawkins, with hair as white as snow, and yet far in advance of men thirty years his junior, was so noble a sight that you felt inclined to pray for his safety; on the other hand, Roosevelt, mounted high on horseback, and charging the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone, made you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore on his sombrero a blue polka-dot handkerchief, a la Havelock, which, as he advanced, floated out straight behind his head, like a guidon. Afterward, the men of his regiment who followed this flag, adopted a polka-dot handkerchief as the badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no one can claim that any two men, or any one man, was more brave or more daring, or showed greater courage in that slow, stubborn advance, than did any of the others. Some one asked one of the officers if he had any difficulty in making his men follow him. "No," he answered, "I had some difficulty in keeping up with them." As one of the brigade generals said: "San Juan was won by the regimental officers and men. We had as little to do as the referee at a prize-fight who calls 'time.' We called 'time' and they did the fighting." I have seen many illustrations and pictures of this charge on the San Juan hills, but none of them seem to show it just as I remember it. In the picture-papers the men are running uphill swiftly and gallantly, in regular formation, rank after rank, with flags flying, their eyes aflame, and their hair streaming, their bayonets fixed, in long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering weight of numbers. Instead of which I think the thing which impressed one the most, when our men started from cover, was that they were so few. It seemed as if some one had made an awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct was to call to them to come back. You felt that some one had blundered and that these few men were blindly following out some madman's mad order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely absurdly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of such a sacrifice was what held you. They had no glittering bayonets, they were not massed in regular array. There were a few men in advance, bunched together, and creeping up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared and flashed with flame. The men held their guns pressed across their chests and stepped heavily as they climbed. Behind these first few, spreading out like a fan, were single lines of men, slipping and scrambling in the smooth grass, moving forward with difficulty, as though they were wading waist high through water, moving slowly, carefully, with strenuous effort. It was much more wonderful than any swinging charge could have been. They walked to greet death at every step, many of them, as they advanced, sinking suddenly or pitching forward and disappearing in the high grass, but the others waded on, stubbornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creeping higher and higher up the hill. It was as inevitable as the rising tide. It was a miracle of self-sacrifice, a triumph of bull-dog courage, which one watched breathless with wonder. The fire of the Spanish riflemen, who still stuck bravely to their posts, doubled and trebled in fierceness, the crests of the hills crackled and burst in amazed roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame. But the blue line crept steadily up and on, and then, near the top, the broken fragments gathered together with a sudden burst of speed, the Spaniards appeared for a moment outlined against the sky and poised for instant flight, fired a last volley, and fled before the swift-moving wave that leaped and sprang after them. The men of the Ninth and the Rough Riders rushed to the block-house together, the men of the Sixth, of the Third, of the Tenth Cavalry, of the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry, fell on their faces along the crest of the hills beyond, and opened upon the vanishing enemy. They drove the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the flag of their country into the soft earth of the trenches, and then sank down and looked back at the road they had climbed and swung their hats in the air. And from far overhead, from these few figures perched on the Spanish rifle-pits, with their flags planted among the empty cartridges of the enemy, and overlooking the walls of Santiago, came, faintly, the sound of a tired, broken cheer. III--THE TAKING OF COAMO This is the inside story of the surrender, during the Spanish War, of the town of Coamo. It is written by the man to whom the town surrendered. Immediately after the surrender this same man became Military Governor of Coamo. He held office for fully twenty minutes. Before beginning this story the reader must forget all he may happen to know of this particular triumph of the Porto Rican Expedition. He must forget that the taking of Coamo has always been credited to Major-General James H. Wilson, who on that occasion commanded Captain Anderson's Battery, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania, Troop C of Brooklyn, and under General Ernst, the Second and Third Wisconsin Volunteers. He must forget that in the records of the War Department all the praise, and it is of the highest, for this victory is bestowed upon General Wilson and his four thousand soldiers. Even the writer of this, when he cabled an account of the event to his paper, gave, with every one else, the entire credit to General Wilson. And ever since his conscience has upbraided him. His only claim for tolerance as a war correspondent has been that he always has stuck to the facts, and now he feels that in the sacred cause of history his friendship and admiration for General Wilson, that veteran of the Civil, Philippine, and Chinese Wars, must no longer stand in the way of his duty as an accurate reporter. He no longer can tell a lie. He must at last own up that he himself captured Coamo. [Picture: Officers watching the artillery play on Coamo. Drawn by F. C. Yohn from a photograph by the Author] On the morning of the 9th of August, 1898, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers arrived on the outskirts of that town. In order to get there they had spent the night in crawling over mountain trails and scrambling through streams and ravines. It was General Wilson's plan that by this flanking night march the Sixteenth Pennsylvania would reach the road leading from Coamo to San Juan in time to cut off the retreat of the Spanish garrison, when General Wilson, with the main body, attacked it from the opposite side. At seven o'clock in the morning General Wilson began the frontal attack by turning loose the artillery on a block-house, which threatened his approach, and by advancing the Wisconsin Volunteers. The cavalry he sent to the right to capture Los Banos. At eight o'clock, from where the main body rested, two miles from Coamo, we could hear the Sixteenth Pennsylvania open its attack and instantly become hotly engaged. The enemy returned the fire fiercely, and the firing from both sides at once became so severe that it was evident the Pennsylvania Volunteers either would take the town without the main body, or that they would greatly need its assistance. The artillery was accordingly advanced one thousand yards and the infantry was hurried forward. The Second Wisconsin approached Coamo along the main road from Ponce, the Third Wisconsin through fields of grass to the right of the road, until the two regiments met at the ford by which the Banos road crosses the Coamo River. But before they met, from a position near the artillery, I had watched through my glasses the Second Wisconsin with General Ernst at its head advancing along the main road, and as, when I saw them, they were near the river, I guessed they would continue across the bridge and that they soon would be in the town. As the firing from the Sixteenth still continued, it seemed obvious that General Ernst would be the first general officer to enter Coamo, and to receive its surrender. I had never seen five thousand people surrender to one man, and it seemed that, if I were to witness that ceremony, my best plan was to abandon the artillery and, as quickly as possible, pursue the Second Wisconsin. I did not want to share the spectacle of the surrender with my brother correspondents, so I tried to steal away from the three who were present. They were Thomas F. Millard, Walstein Root of the _Sun_, and Horace Thompson. By dodging through a coffee _central_ I came out a half mile from them and in advance of the Third Wisconsin. There I encountered two "boy officers," Captain John C. Breckenridge and Lieutenant Fred. S. Titus, who had temporarily abandoned their thankless duties in the Commissariat Department in order to seek death or glory in the skirmish-line. They wanted to know where I was going, and when I explained, they declared that when Coamo surrendered they also were going to be among those present. So we slipped away from the main body and rode off as an independent organization. But from the bald ridge, where the artillery was still hammering the town, the three correspondents and Captain Alfred Paget, Her Majesty's naval attache, observed our attempt to steal a march on General Wilson's forces, and pursued us and soon overtook us. We now were seven, or to be exact, eight, for with Mr. Millard was "Jimmy," who in times of peace sells papers in Herald Square, and in times of war carries Mr. Millard's copy to the press post. We were much nearer the ford than the bridge, so we waded the "drift" and started on a gallop along the mile of military road that lay between us and Coamo. The firing from the Sixteenth Pennsylvania had slackened, but as we advanced it became sharper, more insistent, and seemed to urge us to greater speed. Across the road were dug rough rifle-pits which had the look of having been but that moment abandoned. What had been intended for the breakfast of the enemy was burning in pots over tiny fires, little heaps of cartridges lay in readiness upon the edges of each pit, and an arm-chair, in which a sentry had kept a comfortable lookout, lay sprawling in the middle of the road. The huts that faced it were empty. The only living things we saw were the chickens and pigs in the kitchen-gardens. On either hand was every evidence of hasty and panic-stricken flight. We rejoiced at these evidences of the fact that the Wisconsin Volunteers had swept all before them. Our rejoicings were not entirely unselfish. It was so quiet ahead that some one suggested the town had already surrendered. But that would have been too bitter a disappointment, and as the firing from the further side of Coamo still continued, we refused to believe it, and whipped the ponies into greater haste. We were now only a quarter of a mile distant from the built-up portion of Coamo, where the road turned sharply into the main street of the town. Captain Paget, who in the absence of the British military attache on account of sickness, accompanied the army as a guest of General Wilson, gave way to thoughts of etiquette. "Will General Wilson think I should have waited for him?" he shouted. The words were jolted out of him as he rose in the saddle. The noise of the ponies' hoofs made conversation difficult. I shouted back that the presence of General Ernst in the town made it quite proper for a foreign attache to enter it. "It must have surrendered by now," I shouted. "It's been half an hour since Ernst crossed the bridge." At these innocent words, all my companions tugged violently at their bridles and shouted "Whoa!" "Crossed the bridge?" they yelled. "There is no bridge! The bridge is blown up! If he hasn't crossed by the ford, he isn't in the town!" Then, in my turn, I shouted "Whoa!" But by now the Porto Rican ponies had decided that this was the race of their lives, and each had made up his mind that, Mexican bit or no Mexican bit, until he had carried his rider first into the town of Coamo, he would not be halted. As I tugged helplessly at my Mexican bit, I saw how I had made my mistake. The volunteers, on finding the bridge destroyed, instead of marching upon Coamo had turned to the ford, the same ford which we had crossed half an hour before they reached it. They now were behind us. Instead of a town which had surrendered to a thousand American soldiers, we, seven unarmed men and Jimmy, were being swept into a hostile city as fast as the enemy's ponies could take us there. Breckenridge and Titus hastily put the blame upon me. "If we get into trouble with the General for this," they shouted, "it will be your fault. You told us Ernst was in the town with a thousand men." I shouted back that no one regretted the fact that he was not more keenly than I did myself. Titus and Breckenridge each glanced at a new, full-dress sword. "We might as well go in," they shouted, "and take it anyway!" I decided that Titus and Breckenridge were wasted in the Commissariat Department. The three correspondents looked more comfortable. "If you officers go in," they cried, "the General can't blame us," and they dug their spurs into the ponies. "Wait!" shouted Her Majesty's representative. "That's all very well for you chaps, but what protects me if the Admiralty finds out I have led a charge on a Spanish garrison?" But Paget's pony refused to consider the feelings of the Lords of the Admiralty. As successfully Paget might have tried to pull back a row-boat from the edge of Niagara. And, moreover, Millard, in order that Jimmy might be the first to reach Ponce with despatches, had mounted him on the fastest pony in the bunch, and he already was far in the lead. His sporting instincts, nursed in the pool-rooms of the Tenderloin and at Guttenburg, had sent him three lengths to the good. It never would do to have a newsboy tell in New York that he had beaten the correspondents of the papers he sold in the streets; nor to permit commissioned officers to take the dust of one who never before had ridden on anything but a cable car. So we all raced forward and, bunched together, swept into the main street of Coamo. It was gratefully empty. There were no American soldiers, but, then, neither were there any Spanish soldiers. Across the street stretched more rifle-pits and barricades of iron pipes, but in sight there was neither friend nor foe. On the stones of the deserted street the galloping hoofs sounded like the advance of a whole regiment of cavalry. Their clatter gave us a most comfortable feeling. We almost could imagine the townspeople believing us to be the Rough Riders themselves and fleeing before us. And then, the empty street seemed to threaten an ambush. We thought hastily of sunken mines, of soldiers crouching behind the barriers, behind the houses at the next corner, of Mausers covering us from the latticed balconies overhead. Until at last, when the silence had become alert and menacing, a lonely man dashed into the middle of the street, hurled a white flag in front of us, and then dived headlong under the porch of a house. The next instant, as though at a signal, a hundred citizens, each with a white flag in both hands, ran from cover, waving their banners, and gasping in weak and terror-shaken tones, "Vivan los Americanos." We tried to pull up, but the ponies had not yet settled among themselves which of us had won, and carried us to the extreme edge of the town, where a precipice seemed to invite them to stop, and we fell off into the arms of the Porto Ricans. They brought us wine in tin cans, cigars, borne in the aprons and mantillas of their women-folk, and demijohns of native rum. They were abject, trembling, tearful. They made one instantly forget that the moment before he had been extremely frightened. One of them spoke to me the few words of Spanish with which I had an acquaintance. He told me he was the Alcalde, and that he begged to surrender into my hands the town of Coamo. I led him instantly to one side. I was afraid that if I did not take him up he would surrender to Paget or to Jimmy. I bade him conduct me to his official residence. He did so, and gave me the key to the _cartel_, a staff of office of gold and ebony, and the flag of the town, which he had hidden behind his writing-desk. It was a fine Spanish flag with the coat of arms embroidered in gold. I decided that, with whatever else I might part, that flag would always be mine, that the chance of my again receiving the surrender of a town of five thousand people was slender, and that this token would be wrapped around me in my coffin. I accordingly hid it in my poncho and strapped it to my saddle. Then I appointed a hotel-keeper, who spoke a little English, as my official interpreter, and told the Alcalde that I was now Military Governor, Mayor, and Chief of Police, and that I wanted the seals of the town. He gave me a rubber stamp with a coat of arms cut in it, and I wrote myself three letters, which, to insure their safe arrival, I addressed to three different places, and stamped them with the rubber seals. In time all three reached me, and I now have them as documentary proof of the fact that for twenty minutes I was Military Governor and Mayor of Coamo. During that brief administration I detailed Titus and Breckenridge to wigwag the Sixteenth Pennsylvania that we had taken the town, and that it was now safe for them to enter. In order to compromise Paget they used his red silk handkerchief. Root I detailed to conciliate the inhabitants by drinking with every one of them. He tells me he carried out my instructions to the letter. I also settled one assault and battery case, and put the chief offender under arrest. At least, I told the official interpreter to inform him that he was under arrest, but as I had no one to guard him he grew tired of being under arrest and went off to celebrate his emancipation from the rule of Spain. My administration came to an end in twenty minutes, when General Wilson rode into Coamo at the head of his staff and three thousand men. He wore a white helmet, and he looked the part of the conquering hero so satisfactorily that I forgot I was Mayor and ran out into the street to snap a picture of him. He looked greatly surprised and asked me what I was doing in his town. The tone in which he spoke caused me to decide that, after all, I would not keep the flag of Coamo. I pulled it off my saddle and said: "General, it's too long a story to tell you now, but here is the flag of the town. It's the first Spanish flag"--and it was--"that has been captured in Porto Rico." General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag. He and about four thousand other soldiers think it belongs to them. But the truth will out. Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks from Congress, a pension, or any other trifle, like prize-money, will show the American people to whom that flag really belongs. I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven heroes of Coamo, or eight, if you include "Jimmy," will be told in song and story. Some one else will write the song. This is the story. IV--THE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL When I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places selected for the purpose. I argued from the fact that when our school nine wished to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to search for a vacant lot. I thought opposing armies also marched out of town until they reached some desolate spot where there were no window panes, and where their cannon-balls would hurt no one but themselves. Even later, when I saw battles fought among villages, artillery galloping through a cornfield, garden walls breached for rifle fire, and farm-houses in flames, it always seemed as though the generals had elected to fight in such surroundings through an inexcusable striving after theatrical effect--as though they wished to furnish the war correspondents with a chance for descriptive writing. With the horrors of war as horrible as they are without any aid from these contrasts, their presence always seemed not only sinful but bad art; as unnecessary as turning a red light on the dying gladiator. There are so many places which are scenes set apart for battles--places that look as though Nature had condemned them for just such sacrifices. Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of veldt, is one of these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, and, in Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The photographs have made all of us familiar with the vast, desolate approaches to Port Arthur. These are among the waste places of the earth--barren, deserted, fit meeting grounds only for men whose object in life for the moment is to kill men. Were you shown over one of these places, and told, "A battle was fought here," you would answer, "Why, of course!" But down in Cuba, outside of Santiago, where the United States army fought its solitary and modest battle with Spain, you might many times pass by San Juan Hill and think of it, if you thought of it at all, as only a pretty site for a bungalow, as a place obviously intended for orchards and gardens. On July 1st, twelve years ago, when the American army came upon it out of the jungle the place wore a partial disguise. It still was an irregular ridge of smiling, sunny hills with fat, comfortable curves, and in some places a steep, straight front. But above the steepest, highest front frowned an aggressive block-house, and on all the slopes and along the sky-line were rows of yellow trenches, and at the base a cruel cat's cradle of barbed wire. It was like the face of a pretty woman behind the bars of a visor. I find that on the day of the fight twelve years ago I cabled my paper that San Juan Hill reminded the Americans of "a sunny orchard in New England." That was how it may have looked when the regulars were climbing up the steep front to capture the block-house, and when the cavalry and Rough Riders, having taken Kettle Hill, were running down its opposite slope, past the lake, to take that crest of San Juan Hill which lies to the right of the block-house. It may then have looked like a sunny New England orchard, but before night fell the intrenching tools had lent those sunny slopes "a fierce and terrible aspect." And after that, hour after hour, and day after day, we saw the hill eaten up by our trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents, and torn apart by bomb-proofs, their jutting roofs of logs and broken branches weighed down by earth and stones and looking like the pit mouths to many mines. That probably is how most of the American army last saw San Juan Hill, and that probably is how it best remembers it--as a fortified camp. That was twelve years ago. When I revisited it, San Juan Hill was again a sunny, smiling farm land, the trenches planted with vegetables, the roofs of the bomb-proofs fallen in and buried beneath creeping vines, and the barbed-wire entanglements holding in check only the browsing cattle. San Juan Hill is not a solitary hill, but the most prominent of a ridge of hills, with Kettle Hill a quarter of a mile away on the edge of the jungle and separated from the ridge by a tiny lake. In the local nomenclature Kettle Hill, which is the name given to it by the Rough Riders, has always been known as San Juan Hill, with an added name to distinguish it from the other San Juan Hill of greater renown. The days we spent on those hills were so rich in incident and interest and were filled with moments of such excitement, of such pride in one's fellow-countrymen, of pity for the hurt and dying, of laughter and good-fellowship, that one supposed he might return after even twenty years and recognize every detail of the ground. But a shorter time has made startling and confusing changes. Now a visitor will find that not until after several different visits, and by walking and riding foot by foot over the hills, can he make them fall into line as he thinks he once knew them. Immediately around San Juan Hill itself there has been some attempt made to preserve the ground as a public park. A barbed-wire fence, with a gateway, encircles the block-house, which has been converted into a home for the caretaker of the park, and then, skirting the road to Santiago to include the tree under which the surrender was arranged, stretches to the left of the block-house to protect a monument. This monument was erected by Americans to commemorate the battle. It is now rapidly falling to pieces, but there still is enough of it intact to show the pencilled scribblings and autographs of tourists who did not take part in the battle, but who in this public manner show that they approve of its results. The public park is less than a quarter of a mile square. Except for it no other effort has been made either by Cubans or Americans to designate the lines that once encircled and menaced Santiago, and Nature, always at her best under a tropical sun, has done all in her power to disguise and forever obliterate the scene of the army's one battle. Those features which still remain unchanged are very few. The Treaty Tree, now surrounded by a tall fence, is one, the block-house is another. The little lake in which, even when the bullets were dropping, the men used to bathe and wash their clothes, the big iron sugar kettle that gave a new name to Kettle Hill, and here and there a trench hardly deeper than a ploughed furrow, and nearly hidden by growing plants, are the few landmarks that remain. Of the camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Bates, Sumner, and Wheeler, of Colonels Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt, there are but the slightest traces. The Bloody Bend, as some call it, in the San Juan River, as some call that stream, seems to have entirely disappeared. At least, it certainly was not where it should have been, and the place the hotel guides point out to unsuspecting tourists bears not the slightest physical resemblance to that ford. In twelve years, during one of which there has been in Santiago the most severe rainfall in sixty years, the San Juan stream has carried away its banks and the trees that lined them, and the trails that should mark where the ford once crossed have so altered and so many new ones have been added, that the exact location of the once famous dressing station is now most difficult, if not impossible, to determine. To establish the sites of the old camping grounds is but little less difficult. The head-quarters of General Wheeler are easy to recognize, for the reason that the place selected was in a hollow, and the most unhealthy spot along the five miles of intrenchments. It is about thirty yards from where the road turns to rise over the ridge to Santiago, and all the water from the hill pours into it as into a rain barrel. It was here that Troop G, Third Cavalry, under Major Hardee, as it was Wheeler's escort, was forced to bivouac, and where one-third of its number came down with fever. The camp of General Sam Sumner was some sixty yards to the right of the head-quarters of General Wheeler, on the high shoulder of the hill just above the camp of the engineers, who were on the side of the road opposite. The camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Hawkins, Ludlow, and the positions and trenches taken and held by the different regiments under them one can place only relatively. One reason for this is that before our army attacked the hills all the underbrush and small trees that might conceal the advance of our men had been cleared away by the Spaniards, leaving the hill, except for the high crest, comparatively bare. To-day the hills are thick with young trees and enormous bushes. The alteration in the landscape is as marked as is the difference between ground cleared for golf and the same spot planted with corn and fruit-trees. Of all the camps, the one that to-day bears the strongest evidences of its occupation is that of the Rough Riders. A part of the camp of that regiment, which was situated on the ridge some hundred feet from the Santiago road, was pitched under a clump of shade trees, and to-day, even after seven years, the trunks of these trees bear the names and initials of the men who camped beneath them. {4} These men will remember that when they took this hill they found that the fortifications beneath the trees were partly made from the foundations of an adobe house. The red tiles from its roof still litter the ground. These tiles and the names cut in the bark of the trees determine absolutely the site of one-half of the camp, but the other half, where stood Tiffany's quick-firing gun and Parker's Gatling, has been almost obliterated. The tree under which Colonel pitched his tent I could not discover, and the trenches in which he used to sit with his officers and with the officers from the regiments of the regular army are now levelled to make a kitchen-garden. Sometimes the ex-President is said to have too generously given office and promotion to the friends he made in Cuba. These men he met in the trenches were then not necessarily his friends. To-day they are not necessarily his friends. They are the men the free life of the rifle-pits enabled him to know and to understand as the settled relations of home life and peace would never have permitted. At that time none of them guessed that the "amateur colonel," to whom they talked freely as to a comrade, would be their Commander-in-Chief. They did not suspect that he would become even the next Governor of New York, certainly not that in a few years he would be the President of the United States. So they showed themselves to him frankly, unconsciously. They criticised, argued, disagreed, and he became familiar with the views, character, and worth of each, and remembered. The seeds planted in those half-obliterated trenches have borne greater results than ever will the kitchen-garden. The kitchen-garden is immediately on the crest of the hill, and near it a Cuban farmer has built a shack of mud and twigs and cultivated several acres of land. On Kettle Hill there are three more such shacks, and over all the hills the new tenants have strung stout barbed-wire fences and made new trails and reared wooden gateways. It was curious to find how greatly these modern improvements confused one's recollection of the landscape, and it was interesting, also, to find how the presence on the hills of 12,000 men and the excitement of the time magnified distances and disarranged the landscape. During the fight I walked along a portion of the Santiago road, and for many years I always have thought of that walk as extending over immense distances. It started from the top of San Juan Hill beside the block-house, where I had climbed to watch our artillery in action. By a mistake, the artillery had been sent there, and it remained exposed on the crest only about three minutes. During that brief moment the black powder it burned drew upon it the fire of every rifle in the Spanish line. To load his piece, each of our men was forced to crawl to it on his stomach, rise on one elbow in order to shove in the shell and lock the breech, and then, still flat on the ground, wriggle below the crest. In the three minutes three men were wounded and two killed; and the guns were withdrawn. I also withdrew. I withdrew first. Indeed, all that happened after the first three seconds of those three minutes is hearsay, for I was in the Santiago road at the foot of the hill and retreating briskly. This road also was under a cross-fire, which made it stretch in either direction to an interminable distance. I remember a government teamster driving a Studebaker wagon filled with ammunition coming up at a gallop out of this interminable distance and seeking shelter against the base of the hill. Seated beside him was a small boy, freckled and sunburned, a stowaway from one of the transports. He was grandly happy and excited, and his only fear was that he was not "under fire." From our coign of safety, with our backs to the hill, the teamster and I assured him that, on that point, he need feel no morbid doubt. But until a bullet embedded itself in the blue board of the wagon he was not convinced. Then with his jack-knife he dug it out and shouted with pleasure. "I guess the folks will have to believe I was in a battle now," he said. That coign of safety ceasing to be a coign of safety caused us to move on in search of another, and I came upon Sergeant Borrowe blocking the road with his dynamite gun. He and his brother and three regulars were busily correcting a hitch in its mechanism. An officer carrying an order along the line halted his sweating horse and gazed at the strange gun with professional knowledge. "That must be the dynamite gun I have heard so much about," he shouted. Borrowe saluted and shouted assent. The officer, greatly interested, forgot his errand. "I'd like to see you fire it once," he said eagerly. Borrowe, delighted at the chance to exhibit his toy to a professional soldier, beamed with equal eagerness. "In just a moment, sir," he said; "this shell seems to have jammed a bit." The officer, for the first time seeing the shell stuck in the breech, hurriedly gathered up his reins. He seemed to be losing interest. With elaborate carelessness I began to edge off down the road. "Wait," Borrowe begged; "we'll have it out in a minute." Suddenly I heard the officer's voice raised wildly. "What--what," he gasped, "is that man doing with that axe?" "He's helping me to get out this shell," said Borrowe. "Good God!" said the officer. Then he remembered his errand. Until last year, when I again met young Borrowe gayly disporting himself at a lawn-tennis tournament at Mattapoisett, I did not know whether his brother's method of removing dynamite with an axe had been entirely successful. He said it worked all right. At the turn of the road I found Colonel Leonard Wood and a group of Rough Riders, who were busily intrenching. At the same moment Stephen Crane came up with "Jimmy" Hare, the man who has made the Russian-Japanese War famous. Crane walked to the crest and stood there as sharply outlined as a semaphore, observing the enemy's lines, and instantly bringing upon himself and us the fire of many Mausers. With every one else, Wood was crouched below the crest and shouted to Crane to lie down. Crane, still standing, as though to get out of ear-shot, moved away, and Wood again ordered him to lie down. "You're drawing the fire on these men," Wood commanded. Although the heat--it was the 1st of July in the tropics--was terrific, Crane wore a long India rubber rain-coat and was smoking a pipe. He appeared as cool as though he were looking down from a box at a theatre. I knew that to Crane, anything that savored of a pose was hateful, so, as I did not want to see him killed, I called, "You're not impressing any one by doing that, Crane." As I hoped he would, he instantly dropped to his knees. When he crawled over to where we lay, I explained, "I knew that would fetch you," and he grinned, and said, "Oh, was that it?" A captain of the cavalry came up to Wood and asked permission to withdraw his troop from the top of the hill to a trench forty feet below the one they were in. "They can't possibly live where they are now," he explained, "and they're doing no good there, for they can't raise their heads to fire. In that lower trench they would be out of range themselves and would be able to fire back." "Yes," said Wood, "but all the other men in the first trench would see them withdraw, and the moral effect would be bad. They needn't attempt to return the enemy's fire, but they must not retreat." The officer looked as though he would like to argue. He was a West Point graduate and a full-fledged captain in the regular army. To him, Wood, in spite of his volunteer rank of colonel, which that day, owing to the illness of General Young, had placed him in command of a brigade, was still a doctor. But discipline was strong in him, and though he looked many things, he rose from his knees and grimly saluted. But at that moment, without waiting for the permission of any one, the men leaped out of the trench and ran. It looked as though they were going to run all the way to the sea, and the sight was sickening. But they had no intention of running to the sea. They ran only to the trench forty feet farther down and jumped into it, and instantly turning, began pumping lead at the enemy. Since five that morning Wood had been running about on his feet, his clothes stuck to him with sweat and the mud and water of forded streams, and as he rose he limped slightly. "My, but I'm tired!" he said, in a tone of the most acute surprise, and as though that fact was the only one that was weighing on his mind. He limped over to the trench in which the men were now busily firing off their rifles and waved a riding-crop he carried at the trench they had abandoned. He was standing as Crane had been standing, in silhouette against the sky-line. "Come back, boys," we heard him shouting. "The other men can't withdraw, and so you mustn't. It looks bad. Come on, get out of that!" What made it more amusing was that, although Wood had, like every one else, discarded his coat and wore a strange uniform of gray shirt, white riding-breeches, and a cowboy Stetson, with no insignia of rank, not even straps pinned to his shirt, still the men instantly accepted his authority. They looked at him on the crest of the hill, waving his stick persuasively at the grave-like trench at his feet, and then with a shout scampered back to it. [Picture: Rough Riders in the trenches] [Picture: The same spot as it appears to-day. The figure in the picture is standing in what remains of the trench] After that, as I had a bad attack of sciatica and no place to sleep and nothing to eat, I accepted Crane's offer of a blanket and coffee at his bivouac near El Poso. On account of the sciatica I was not able to walk fast, and, although for over a mile of the way the trail was under fire, Crane and Hare each insisted on giving me an arm, and kept step with my stumblings. Whenever I protested and refused their sacrifice and pointed out the risk they were taking they smiled as at the ravings of a naughty child, and when I lay down in the road and refused to budge unless they left me, Crane called the attention of Hare to the effect of the setting sun behind the palm-trees. To the reader all these little things that one remembers seem very little indeed, but they were vivid at the moment, and I have always thought of them as stretching over a long extent of time and territory. Before I revisited San Juan I would have said that the distance along the road from the point where I left the artillery to where I joined Wood was three-quarters of a mile. When I paced it later I found the distance was about seventy-five yards. I do not urge my stupidity or my extreme terror as a proof that others would be as greatly confused, but, if only for the sake of the stupid ones, it seems a pity that the landmarks of San Juan should not be rescued from the jungle, and a few sign-posts placed upon the hills. It is true that the great battles of the Civil War and those of the one in Manchuria, where the men killed and wounded in a day outnumber all those who fought on both sides at San Juan, make that battle read like a skirmish. But the Spanish War had its results. At least it made Cuba into a republic, and so enriched or burdened us with colonies that our republic changed into something like an empire. But I do not urge that. It will never be because San Juan changed our foreign policy that people will visit the spot, and will send from it picture postal cards. The human interest alone will keep San Juan alive. The men who fought there came from every State in our country and from every class of our social life. We sent there the best of our regular army, and with them, cowboys, clerks, bricklayers, foot-ball players, three future commanders of the greater army that followed that war, the future Governor of Cuba, future commanders of the Philippines, the commander of our forces in China, a future President of the United States. And, whether these men, when they returned to their homes again, became clerks and millionaires and dentists, or rose to be presidents and mounted policemen, they all remember very kindly the days they lay huddled together in the trenches on that hot and glaring sky-line. And there must be many more besides who hold the place in memory. There are few in the United States so poor in relatives and friends who did not in his or her heart send a substitute to Cuba. For these it seems as though San Juan might be better preserved, not as it is, for already its aspect is too far changed to wish for that, but as it was. The efforts already made to keep the place in memory and to honor the Americans who died there are the public park which I have mentioned, the monument on San Juan, and one other monument at Guasimas to the regulars and Rough Riders who were killed there. To these monuments the Society of Santiago will add four more, which will mark the landing place of the army at Daiquairi and the fights at Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan Hill. But I believe even more than this might be done to preserve to the place its proper values. These values are sentimental, historical, and possibly to the military student, educational. If to-day there were erected at Daiquairi, Siboney, Guasimas, El Poso, El Caney, and on and about San Juan a dozen iron or bronze tablets that would tell from where certain regiments advanced, what posts they held, how many or how few were the men who held those positions, how near they were to the trenches of the enemy, and by whom these men were commanded, I am sure the place would reconstruct itself and would breathe with interest, not only for the returning volunteer, but for any casual tourist. As it is, the history of the fight and the reputation of the men who fought is now at the mercy of the caretaker of the park and the Cuban "guides" from the hotel. The caretaker speaks only Spanish, and, considering the amount of misinformation the guides disseminate, it is a pity when they are talking to Americans, they are not forced to use the same language. When last I visited it, Carlos Portuondo was the official guardian of San Juan Hill. He is an aged Cuban, and he fought through the Ten Years' War, but during the last insurrection and the Spanish-American War he not only was not near San Juan, but was not even on the Island of Cuba. He is a charming old person, and so is his aged wife. Their chief concern in life, when I saw them, was to sell me a pair of breeches made of palm-fibre which Carlos had worn throughout the entire ten years of battle. The vicissitudes of those trousers he recited to me in great detail, and he very properly regarded them as of historic value. But of what happened at San Juan he knew nothing, and when I asked him why he held his present post and occupied the Block-House, he said, "To keep the cows out of the park." When I asked him where the Americans had camped, he pointed carefully from the back door of the Block-House to the foot of his kitchen-garden. I assured him that under no stress of terror could the entire American army have been driven into his back yard, and pointed out where it had stretched along the ridge of hills for five miles. He politely but unmistakably showed that he thought I was a liar. From the Venus Hotel there were two guides, old Casanova and Jean Casanova, his languid and good-natured son, a youth of sixteen years. Old Casanova, like most Cubans, is not inclined to give much credit for what they did in Cuba to the Americans. After all, he says, they came only just as the Cubans themselves were about to conquer the Spaniards, and by a lucky chance received the surrender and then claimed all the credit. As other Cubans told me, "Had the Americans left us alone a few weeks longer, we would have ended the war." How they were to have taken Havana, and sunk Cervera's fleet, and why they were not among those present when our men charged San Juan, I did not inquire. Old Casanova, again like other Cubans, ranks the fighting qualities of the Spaniard much higher than those of the American. This is only human. It must be annoying to a Cuban to remember that after he had for three years fought the Spaniard, the Yankee in eight weeks received his surrender and began to ship him home. The way Casanova describes the fight at El Caney is as follows: "The Americans thought they could capture El Caney in one day, but the brave General Toral fought so good that it was six days before the Americans could make the Spaniards surrender." The statement is correct except as regards the length of time during which the fight lasted. The Americans did make the mistake of thinking they could eat up El Caney in an hour and then march through it to San Juan. Owing to the splendid courage of Toral and his few troops our soldiers, under two of our best generals, were held in check from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. But the difference between seven hours of one day and six days is considerable. Still, at present at San Juan that is the sort of information upon which the patriotic and puzzled American tourist is fed. Young Casanova, the only other authority in Santiago, is not so sure of his facts as is his father, and is willing to learn. He went with me to hold my pony while I took the photographs that accompany this article, and I listened with great interest to his accounts of the battle. Finally he made a statement that was correct. "How did you happen to get that right?" I asked. "Yesterday," he said, "I guided Colonel Hayes here, and while I guided him he explained it to me." THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR I--WITH BULLER'S COLUMN "Were you the station-master here before this?" I asked the man in the straw hat, at Colenso. "I mean before this war?" "No fear!" snorted the station-master, scornfully. "Why, we didn't know Colenso was on the line until Buller fought a battle here. That's how it is with all these way-stations now. Everybody's talking about them. We never took no notice to them." And yet the arriving stranger might have been forgiven his point of view and his start of surprise when he found Chieveley a place of only a half dozen corrugated zinc huts, and Colenso a scattered gathering of a dozen shattered houses of battered brick. Chieveley seemed so insignificant in contrast with its fame to those who had followed the war on maps and in the newspapers, that one was not sure he was on the right road until he saw from the car-window the armored train still lying on the embankment, the graves beside it, and the donga into which Winston Churchill pulled and carried the wounded. And as the train bumped and halted before the blue and white enamel sign that marks Colenso station, the places which have made that spot familiar and momentous fell into line like the buoys which mark the entrance to a harbor. We knew that the high bare ridge to the right must be Fort Wylie, that the plain on the left was where Colonel Long had lost his artillery, and three officers gained the Victoria Cross, and that the swift, muddy stream, in which the iron railroad bridge lay humped and sprawling, was the Tugela River. Six hours before, at Frere Station, the station-master had awakened us to say that Ladysmith would be relieved at any moment. This had but just come over the wire. It was "official." Indeed, he added, with local pride, that the village band was still awake and in readiness to celebrate the imminent event. He found, I fear, an unsympathetic audience. The train was carrying philanthropic gentlemen in charge of stores of champagne and marmalade for the besieged city. They did not want it to be relieved until they were there to substitute _pate de foie gras_ for horseflesh. And there were officers, too, who wanted a "look in," and who had been kept waiting at Cape Town for commissions, gladdening the guests of the Mount Nelson Hotel the while with their new khaki and gaiters, and there were Tommies who wanted "Relief of Ladysmith" on the claps of their medals, as they had seen "Relief of Lucknow" on the medals of the Chelsea pensioners. And there was a correspondent who had journeyed 15,000 miles to see Ladysmith relieved, and who was apparently going to miss that sight, after five weeks of travel, by a margin of five hours. We all growled "That's good," as we had done for the last two weeks every time we had heard it was relieved, but our tone was not enthusiastic. And when the captain of the Natal Carbineers said, "I am afraid the good news is too premature," we all said, hopefully, we were afraid it was. We had seen nothing yet that was like real war. That night at Pietermaritzburg the officers at the hotel were in mess-jackets, the officers' wives in dinner-gowns. It was like Shepheard's Hotel, at the top of the season. But only six hours after that dinner, as we looked out of the car-windows, we saw galloping across the high grass, like men who had lost their way, and silhouetted black against the red sunrise, countless horsemen scouting ahead of our train, and guarding it against the fate of the armored one lying wrecked at Chieveley. The darkness was still heavy on the land and the only lights were the red eyes of the armored train creeping in advance of ours, and the red sun, which showed our silent escort appearing suddenly against the sky-line on a ridge, or galloping toward us through the dew to order us, with a wave of the hand, to greater speed. One hour after sunrise the train drew up at Colenso, and from only a mile away we heard the heavy thud of the naval guns, the hammering of the Boer "pom-poms," and the Maxims and Colt automatics spanking the air. We smiled at each other guiltily. We were on time. It was most evident that Ladysmith had not been relieved. This was the twelfth day of a battle that Buller's column was waging against the Boers and their mountain ranges, or "disarranges," as some one described them, without having gained more than three miles of hostile territory. He had tried to force his way through them six times, and had been repulsed six times. And now he was to try it again. No map, nor photograph, nor written description can give an idea of the country which lay between Buller and his goal. It was an eruption of high hills, linked together at every point without order or sequence. In most countries mountains and hills follow some natural law. The Cordilleras can be traced from the Amazon River to Guatemala City; they make the water-shed of two continents; the Great Divide forms the backbone of the States, but these Natal hills have no lineal descent. They are illegitimate children of no line, abandoned broadcast over the country, with no family likeness and no home. They stand alone, or shoulder to shoulder, or at right angles, or at a tangent, or join hands across a valley. They never appear the same; some run to a sharp point, some stretch out, forming a table-land, others are gigantic ant-hills, others perfect and accurately modelled ramparts. In a ride of half a mile, every hill completely loses its original aspect and character. They hide each other, or disguise each other. Each can be enfiladed by the other, and not one gives up the secret of its strategic value until its crest has been carried by the bayonet. To add to this confusion, the river Tugela has selected the hills around Ladysmith as occupying the country through which it will endeavor to throw off its pursuers. It darts through them as though striving to escape, it doubles on its tracks, it sinks out of sight between them, and in the open plain rises to the dignity of water-falls. It runs uphill, and remains motionless on an incline, and on the level ground twists and turns so frequently that when one says he has crossed the Tugela, he means he has crossed it once at a drift, once at the wrecked railroad bridge, and once over a pontoon. And then he is not sure that he is not still on the same side from which he started. Some of these hills are green, but the greater part are a yellow or dark red, against which at two hundred yards a man in khaki is indistinguishable from the rocks around him. Indeed, the khaki is the English soldier's sole protection. It saves him in spite of himself, for he apparently cannot learn to advance under cover, and a sky-line is the one place where he selects to stand erect and stretch his weary limbs. I have come to within a hundred yards of a hill before I saw that scattered among its red and yellow bowlders was the better part of a regiment as closely packed together as the crowd on the bleaching boards at a base-ball match. Into this maze and confusion of nature's fortifications Buller's column has been twisting and turning, marching and countermarching, capturing one position after another, to find it was enfiladed from many hills, and abandoning it, only to retake it a week later. The greater part of the column has abandoned its tents and is bivouacking in the open. It is a wonderful and impressive sight. At the first view, an army in being, when it is spread out as it is in the Tugela basin back of the hills, seems a hopelessly and irrevocably entangled mob. An army in the field is not regiments of armed men, marching with a gun on shoulder, or crouching behind trenches. That is the least, even if it seems the most, important part of it. Before one reaches the firing-line he must pass villages of men, camps of men, bivouacs of men, who are feeding, mending, repairing, and burying the men at the "front." It is these latter that make the mob of gypsies, which is apparently without head or order or organization. They stretched across the great basin of the Tugela, like the children of Israel, their camp-fires rising to the sky at night like the reflection of great search-lights; by day they swarmed across the plain, like hundreds of moving circus-vans in every direction, with as little obvious intention as herds of buffalo. But each had his appointed work, and each was utterly indifferent to the battle going forward a mile away. Hundreds of teams, of sixteen oxen each, crawled like great black water-snakes across the drifts, the Kaffir drivers, naked and black, lashing them with whips as long as lariats, shrieking, beseeching, and howling, and falling upon the oxen's horns to drag them into place. Mules from Spain and Texas, loaded with ammunition, kicked and plunged, more oxen drew more soberly the great naval guns, which lurched as though in a heavy sea, throwing the blue-jackets who hung upon the drag-ropes from one high side of the trail to the other. Across the plain, and making toward the trail, wagons loaded with fodder, with rations, with camp equipment, with tents and cooking-stoves, crowded each other as closely as cable-cars on Broadway. Scattered among them were fixed lines of tethered horses, rows of dog-tents, camps of Kaffirs, hospital stations with the Red Cross waving from the nearest and highest tree. Dripping water-carts with as many spigots as the regiment had companies, howitzer guns guided by as many ropes as a May-pole, crowded past these to the trail, or gave way to the ambulances filled with men half dressed and bound in the zinc-blue bandages that made the color detestable forever after. Troops of the irregular horse gallop through this multitude, with a jangling of spurs and sling-belts; and Tommies, in close order, fight their way among the oxen, or help pull them to one side as the stretchers pass, each with its burden, each with its blue bandage stained a dark brownish crimson. It is only when the figure on the stretcher lies under a blanket that the tumult and push and sweltering mass comes to a quick pause, while the dead man's comrade stands at attention, and the officer raises his fingers to his helmet. Then the mass surges on again, with cracking of whips and shouts and imprecations, while the yellow dust rises in thick clouds and buries the picture in a glaring fog. This moving, struggling mass, that fights for the right of way along the road, is within easy distance of the shells. Those from their own guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo, those from the enemy burst among them at rare intervals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a dozen Tommies rush to dig them out as keepsakes. Up at the front, brown and yellow regiments are lying crouched behind brown and yellow rocks and stones. As far as you can see, the hills are sown with them. With a glass you distinguish them against the sky-line of every hill, for over three miles away. Sometimes the men rise and fire, and there is a feverish flutter of musketry; sometimes they lie motionless for hours while the guns make the ways straight. Any one who has seen Epsom Downs on a Derby day, with its thousands of vans and tents and lines of horses and moving mobs, can form some idea of what it is like. But while at the Derby all is interest and excitement, and every one is pushing and struggling, and the air palpitates with the intoxication of a great event, the winning of a horse-race--here, where men are killed every hour and no one of them knows when his turn may come, the fact that most impresses you is their indifference to it all. What strikes you most is the bored air of the Tommies, the undivided interest of the engineers in the construction of a pontoon bridge, the solicitude of the medical staff over the long lines of wounded, the rage of the naked Kaffirs at their lumbering steers; the fact that every one is intent on something--anything--but the battle. They are wearied with battles. The Tommies stretch themselves in the sun to dry the wet khaki in which they have lain out in the cold night for weeks, and yawn at battles. Or, if you climb to the hill where the officers are seated, you will find men steeped even deeper in boredom. They are burned a dark red; their brown mustaches look white by contrast, theirs are the same faces you have met with in Piccadilly, which you see across the tables of the Savoy restaurant, which gaze depressedly from the windows of White's and the Bachelors' Club. If they were bored then, they are unbearably bored now. Below them the men of their regiment lie crouched amid the bowlders, hardly distinguishable from the brown and yellow rock. They are sleeping, or dozing, or yawning. A shell passes over them like the shaking of many telegraph wires, and neither officer nor Tommy raises his head to watch it strike. They are tired in body and in mind, with cramped limbs and aching eyes. They have had twelve nights and twelve days of battle, and it has lost its power to amuse. When the sergeants call the companies together, they are eager enough. Anything is better than lying still looking up at the sunny, inscrutable hills, or down into the plain crawling with black oxen. Among the group of staff officers some one has lost a cigar-holder. It has slipped from between his fingers, and, with the vindictiveness of inanimate things, has slid and jumped under a pile of rocks. The interest of all around is instantly centred on the lost cigar-holder. The Tommies begin to roll the rocks away, endangering the limbs of the men below them, and half the kopje is obliterated. They are as keen as terriers after a rat. The officers sit above and give advice and disagree as to where that cigar-holder hid itself. Over their heads, not twenty feet above, the shells chase each other fiercely. But the officers have become accustomed to shells; a search for a lost cigar-holder, which is going on under their very eyes, is of greater interest. And when at last a Tommy pounces upon it with a laugh of triumph, the officers look their disappointment, and, with a sigh of resignation, pick up their field-glasses. It is all a question of familiarity. On Broadway, if a building is going up where there is a chance of a loose brick falling on some one's head, the contractor puts up red signs marked "Danger!" and you dodge over to the other side. But if you had been in battle for twelve days, as have the soldiers of Buller's column, passing shells would interest you no more than do passing cable-cars. After twelve days you would forget that shells are dangerous even as you forget when crossing Broadway that cable-cars can kill and mangle. Up on the highest hill, seated among the highest rocks, are General Buller and his staff. The hill is all of rocks, sharp, brown rocks, as clearly cut as foundation-stones. They are thrown about at irregular angles, and are shaded only by stiff bayonet-like cacti. Above is a blue glaring sky, into which the top of the kopje seems to reach, and to draw and concentrate upon itself all of the sun's heat. This little jagged point of blistering rocks holds the forces that press the button which sets the struggling mass below, and the thousands of men upon the surrounding hills, in motion. It is the conning tower of the relief column, only, unlike a conning tower, it offers no protection, no seclusion, no peace. To-day, commanding generals, under the new conditions which this war has developed, do not charge up hills waving flashing swords. They sit on rocks, and wink out their orders by a flashing hand-mirror. The swords have been left at the base, or coated deep with mud, so that they shall not flash, and with this column every one, under the rank of general, carries a rifle on purpose to disguise the fact that he is entitled to carry a sword. The kopje is the central station of the system. From its uncomfortable eminence the commanding general watches the developments of his attack, and directs it by heliograph and ragged bits of bunting. A sweating, dirty Tommy turns his back on a hill a mile away and slaps the air with his signal flag; another Tommy, with the front visor of his helmet cocked over the back of his neck, watches an answering bit of bunting through a glass. The bit of bunting, a mile away, flashes impatiently, once to the right and once to the left, and the Tommy with the glass says, "They understand, sir," and the other Tommy, who has not as yet cast even an interested glance at the regiment he has ordered into action, folds his flag and curls up against a hot rock and instantly sleeps. Stuck on the crest, twenty feet from where General Buller is seated, are two iron rods, like those in the putting-green of a golf course. They mark the line of direction which a shell must take, in order to seek out the enemy. Back of the kopje, where they cannot see the enemy, where they cannot even see the hill upon which he is intrenched, are the howitzers. Their duty is to aim at the iron rods, and vary their aim to either side of them as they are directed to do by an officer on the crest. Their shells pass a few yards over the heads of the staff, but the staff has confidence. Those three yards are as safe a margin as a hundred. Their confidence is that of the lady in spangles at a music-hall, who permits her husband in buckskin to shoot apples from the top of her head. From the other direction come the shells of the Boers, seeking out the hidden howitzers. They pass somewhat higher, crashing into the base of the kopje, sometimes killing, sometimes digging their own ignominious graves. The staff regard them with the same indifference. One of them tears the overcoat upon which Colonel Stuart-Wortley is seated, another destroys his diary. His men, lying at his feet among the red rocks, observe this with wide eyes. But he does not shift his position. His answer is, that his men cannot shift theirs. On Friday, February 23d, the Inniskillings, Dublins, and Connaughts were sent out to take a trench, half-way up Railway Hill. The attack was one of those frontal attacks, which in this war, against the new weapons, have added so much to the lists of killed and wounded and to the prestige of the men, while it has, in an inverse ratio, hurt the prestige of the men by whom the attack was ordered. The result of this attack was peculiarly disastrous. It was made at night, and as soon as it developed, the Boers retreated to the trenches on the crest of the hill, and threw men around the sides to bring a cross-fire to bear on the Englishmen. In the morning the Inniskillings found they had lost four hundred men, and ten out of their fifteen officers. The other regiments lost as heavily. The following Tuesday, which was the anniversary of Majuba Hill, three brigades, instead of a regiment, were told off to take this same Railway Hill, or Pieter's, as it was later called, on the flank, and with it to capture two others. On the same day, nineteen years before, the English had lost Majuba Hill, and their hope was to take these three from the Boers for the one they had lost, and open the way to Bulwana Mountain, which was the last bar that held them back from Ladysmith. The first two of the three hills they wanted were shoulder to shoulder, the third was separated from them by a deep ravine. This last was the highest, and in order that the attack should be successful, it was necessary to seize it first. The hills stretched for three miles; they were about one thousand two hundred yards high. For three hours a single line of men slipped and stumbled forward along the muddy bank of the river, and for three hours the artillery crashed, spluttered, and stabbed at the three hills above them, scattering the rocks and bursting over and behind the Boer trenches on the crest. As is their custom, the Boers remained invisible and made no reply. And though we knew they were there, it seemed inconceivable that anything human could live under such a bombardment of shot, bullets, and shrapnel. A hundred yards distant, on our right, the navy guns were firing lyddite that burst with a thick yellow smoke; on the other side Colt automatics were put-put-put-ing a stream of bullets; the field-guns and the howitzers were playing from a hill half a mile behind us, and scattered among the rocks about us, and for two miles on either hand, the infantry in reserve were firing off ammunition at any part of the three hills they happened to dislike! The roar of the navy's Four-Point-Sevens, their crash, their rush as they passed, the shrill whine of the shrapnel, the barking of the howitzers, and the mechanical, regular rattle of the quick-firing Maxims, which sounded like the clicking of many mowing-machines on a hot summer's day, tore the air with such hideous noises that one's skull ached from the concussion, and one could only be heard by shouting. But more impressive by far than this hot chorus of mighty thunder and petty hammering, was the roar of the wind which was driven down into the valley beneath, and which swept up again in enormous waves of sound. It roared like a wild hurricane at sea. The illusion was so complete, that you expected, by looking down, to see the Tugela lashing at her banks, tossing the spray hundreds of feet in air, and battling with her sides of rock. It was like the roar of Niagara in a gale, and yet when you did look below, not a leaf was stirring, and the Tugela was slipping forward, flat and sluggish, and in peace. The long procession of yellow figures was still advancing along the bottom of the valley, toward the right, when on the crest of the farthermost hill fourteen of them appeared suddenly, and ran forward and sprang into the trenches. Perched against the blue sky on the highest and most distant of the three hills, they looked terribly lonely and insufficient, and they ran about, this way and that, as though they were very much surprised to find themselves where they were. Then they settled down into the Boer trench, from our side of it, and began firing, their officer, as his habit is, standing up behind them. The hill they had taken had evidently been abandoned to them by the enemy, and the fourteen men in khaki had taken it by "default." But they disappeared so suddenly into the trench, that we knew they were not enjoying their new position in peace, and every one looked below them, to see the arriving reinforcements. They came at last, to the number of ten, and scampered about just as the others had done, looking for cover. It seemed as if we could almost hear the singing of the bullet when one of them dodged, and it was with a distinct sense of relief, and of freedom from further responsibility, that we saw the ten disappear also, and become part of the yellow stones about them. Then a very wonderful movement began to agitate the men upon the two remaining hills. They began to creep up them as you have seen seaweed rise with the tide and envelop a rock. They moved in regiments, but each man was as distinct as is a letter of the alphabet in each word on this page, black with letters. We began to follow the fortunes of individual letters. It was a most selfish and cowardly occupation, for you knew you were in no greater danger than you would be in looking through the glasses of a mutoscope. The battle unrolled before you like a panorama. The guns on our side of the valley had ceased, the hurricane in the depths below had instantly spent itself, and the birds and insects had again begun to fill our hill with drowsy twitter and song. But on the other, half the men were wrapping the base of the hill in khaki, which rose higher and higher, growing looser and less tightly wrapt as it spun upward. Halfway to the crest there was a broad open space of green grass, and above that a yellow bank of earth, which supported the track of the railroad. This green space spurted with tiny geysers of yellow dust. Where the bullets came from or who sent them we could not see. But the loose ends of the bandage of khaki were stretching across this green space and the yellow spurts of dust rose all around them. The men crossed this fire zone warily, looking to one side or the other, as the bullets struck the earth heavily, like drops of rain before a shower. The men had their heads and shoulders bent as though they thought a roof was about to fall on them; some ran from rock to rock, seeking cover properly; others scampered toward the safe vantage-ground behind the railroad embankment; others advanced leisurely, like men playing golf. The silence, after the hurricane of sounds, was painful; we could not hear even the Boer rifles. The men moved like figures in a dream, without firing a shot. They seemed each to be acting on his own account, without unison or organization. As I have said, you ceased considering the scattered whole, and became intent on the adventures of individuals. These fell so suddenly, that you waited with great anxiety to learn whether they had dropped to dodge a bullet or whether one had found them. The men came at last from every side, and from out of every ridge and dried-up waterway. Open spaces which had been green a moment before were suddenly dyed yellow with them. Where a company had been clinging to the railroad embankment, there stood one regiment holding it, and another sweeping over it. Heights that had seemed the goal, became the resting-place of the stretcher-bearers, until at last no part of the hill remained unpopulated, save a high bulging rampart of unprotected and open ground. And then, suddenly, coming from the earth itself, apparently, one man ran across this open space and leaped on top of the trench which crowned the hill. He was fully fifteen yards in advance of all the rest, entirely unsupported, and alone. And he had evidently planned it so, for he took off his helmet and waved it, and stuck it on his rifle and waved it again, and then suddenly clapped it on his head and threw his gun to his shoulder. He stood so, pointing down into the trench, and it seemed as though we could hear him calling upon the Boers behind it to surrender. A few minutes later the last of the three hills was mounted by the West Yorks, who were mistaken by their own artillery for Boers, and fired upon both by the Boers and by their own shrapnel and lyddite. Four men were wounded, and, to save themselves, a line of them stood up at full length on the trench and cheered and waved at the artillery until it had ceased to play upon them. The Boers continued to fire upon them with rifles for over two hours. But it was only a demonstration to cover the retreat of the greater number, and at daybreak the hills were in complete and peaceful possession of the English. These hills were a part of the same Railway Hill which four nights before the Inniskillings and a composite regiment had attempted to take by a frontal attack with the loss of six hundred men, among whom were three colonels. By this flank attack, and by using nine regiments instead of one, the same hills and two others were taken with two hundred casualties. The fact that this battle, which was called the Battle of Pieter's Hill, and the surrender of General Cronje and his forces to Lord Roberts, both took place on the anniversary of the battle of Majuba Hill, made the whole of Buller's column feel that the ill memory of that disaster had been effaced. II--THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH After the defeat of the Boers at the battle of Pieter's Hill there were two things left for them to do. They could fall back across a great plain which stretched from Pieter's Hill to Bulwana Mountain, and there make their last stand against Buller and the Ladysmith relief column, or they could abandon the siege of Ladysmith and slip away after having held Buller at bay for three months. Bulwana Mountain is shaped like a brick and blocks the valley in which Ladysmith lies. The railroad track slips around one end of the brick, and the Dundee trail around the other. It was on this mountain that the Boers had placed their famous gun, Long Tom, with which they began the bombardment of Ladysmith, and with which up to the day before Ladysmith was relieved they had thrown three thousand shells into that miserable town. If the Boers on retreating from Pieter's Hill had fortified this mountain with the purpose of holding off Buller for a still longer time, they would have been under a fire from General White's artillery in the town behind them and from Buller's naval guns in front. Their position would not have been unlike that of Humpty Dumpty on the wall, so they wisely adopted the only alternative and slipped away. This was on Tuesday night, while the British were hurrying up artillery to hold the hills they had taken that afternoon. By ten o'clock the following morning from the top of Pieter's Hill you could still see the Boers moving off along the Dundee road. It was an easy matter to follow them, for the dust hung above the trail in a yellow cloud, like mist over a swamp. There were two opinions as to whether they were halting at Bulwana or passing it, on their way to Laing's Neck. If they were going only to Bulwana there was the probability of two weeks' more fighting before they could be dislodged. If they had avoided Bulwana, the way to Ladysmith was open. Lord Dundonald, who is in command of a brigade of irregular cavalry, was scouting to the left of Bulwana, far in advance of our forces. At sunset he arrived, without having encountered the Boers, at the base of Bulwana. He could either return and report the disappearance of the enemy or he could make a dash for it and enter Ladysmith. His orders were "to go, look, see," and avoid an action, and the fact that none of his brigade was in the triumphant procession which took place three days later has led many to think that in entering the besieged town without orders he offended the commanding general. In any event, it is a family row and of no interest to the outsider. The main fact is that he did make a dash for it, and just at sunset found himself with two hundred men only a mile from the "Doomed City." His force was composed of Natal Carbiniers and Imperial Light Horse. He halted them, and in order that honors might be even, formed them in sections with the half sections made up from each of the two organizations. All the officers were placed in front, and with a cheer they started to race across the plain. The wig-waggers on Convent Hill had already seen them, and the townspeople and the garrison were rushing through the streets to meet them, cheering and shouting, and some of them weeping. Others, so officers tell me, who were in the different camps, looked down upon the figures galloping across the plain in the twilight, and continued making tea. Just as they had reached the centre of the town, General Sir George White and his staff rode down from head-quarters and met the men whose coming meant for him life and peace and success. They were advancing at a walk, with the cheering people hanging to their stirrups, clutching at their hands and hanging to the bridles of their horses. General White's first greeting was characteristically unselfish and loyal, and typical of the British officer. He gave no sign of his own in calculable relief, nor did he give to Caesar the things which were Caesar's. He did not cheer Dundonald, nor Buller, nor the column which had rescued him and his garrison from present starvation and probable imprisonment at Pretoria. He raised his helmet and cried, "We will give three cheers for the Queen!" And then the general and the healthy, ragged, and sunburned troopers from the outside world, the starved, fever-ridden garrison, and the starved, fever-ridden civilians stood with hats off and sang their national anthem. The column outside had been fighting steadily for six weeks to get Dundonald or any one of its force into Ladysmith; for fourteen days it had been living in the open, fighting by night as well as by day, without halt or respite; the garrison inside had been for four months holding the enemy at bay with the point of the bayonet; it was famished for food, it was rotten with fever, and yet when the relief came and all turned out well, the first thought of every one was for the Queen! It may be credulous in them or old-fashioned; but it is certainly very unselfish, and when you take their point of view it is certainly very fine. After the Queen every one else had his share of the cheering, and General White could not complain of the heartiness with which they greeted him, he tried to make a speech in reply, but it was a brief one. He spoke of how much they owed to General Buller and his column, and he congratulated his own soldiers on the defence they had made. "I am very sorry, men," he said, "that I had to cut down your rations. I--I promise you I won't do it again." Then he stopped very suddenly and whirled his horse's head around and rode away. Judging from the number of times they told me of this, the fact that they had all but seen an English general give way to his feelings seemed to have impressed the civilian mind of Ladysmith more than the entrance of the relief force. The men having come in and demonstrated that the way was open, rode forth again, and the relief of Ladysmith had taken place. But it is not the people cheering in the dark streets, nor General White breaking down in his speech of welcome, which gives the note to the way the men of Ladysmith received their freedom. It is rather the fact that as the two hundred battle-stained and earth-stained troopers galloped forward, racing to be the first, and rising in their stirrups to cheer, the men in the hospital camps said, "Well, they're come at last, have they?" and continued fussing over their fourth of a ration of tea. That gives the real picture of how Ladysmith came into her inheritance, and of how she received her rescuers. On the morning after Dundonald had ridden in and out of Ladysmith, two other correspondents and myself started to relieve it on our own account. We did not know the way to Ladysmith, and we did not then know whether or not the Boers still occupied Bulwana Mountain. But we argued that the chances of the Boers having raised the siege were so good that it was worth risking their not having done so, and being taken prisoner. We carried all the tobacco we could pack in our saddle-bags, and enough food for one day. My chief regret was that my government, with true republican simplicity, had given me a passport, type-written on a modest sheet of notepaper and wofully lacking in impressive seals and coats of arms. I fancied it would look to Boer eyes like one I might have forged for myself in the writing-room of the hotel at Cape Town. We had ridden up Pieter's Hill and scrambled down on its other side before we learned that the night before Dundonald had raised the siege. We learned this from long trains of artillery and regiments of infantry which already were moving forward over the great plain which lies between Pieter's and Bulwana. We learned it also from the silence of conscientious, dutiful correspondents, who came galloping back as we galloped forward, and who made wide detours at sight of us, or who, when we hailed them, lashed their ponies over the red rocks and pretended not to hear, each unselfishly turning his back on Ladysmith in the hope that he might be the first to send word that the "Doomed City" was relieved. This would enable one paper to say that it had the news "on the street" five minutes earlier than its hated rivals. We found that the rivalry of our respective papers bored us. We condemned it as being childish and weak. London, New York, Chicago were names, they were spots thousands of leagues away: Ladysmith was just across that mountain. If our horses held out at the pace, we would be--after Dundonald--the first men in. We imagined that we would see hysterical women and starving men. They would wring our hands, and say, "God bless you," and we would halt our steaming horses in the market-place, and distribute the news of the outside world, and tobacco. There would be shattered houses, roofless homes, deep pits in the roadways where the shells had burst and buried themselves. We would see the entombed miner at the moment of his deliverance, we would be among the first from the outer world to break the spell of his silence; the first to receive the brunt of the imprisoned people's gratitude and rejoicings. Indeed, it was clearly our duty to the papers that employed us that we should not send them news, but that we should be the first to enter Ladysmith. We were surely the best judges of what was best to do. How like them to try to dictate to us from London and New York, when we were on the spot! It was absurd. We shouted this to each other as we raced in and out of the long confused column, lashing viciously with our whips. We stumbled around pieces of artillery, slid in between dripping water-carts, dodged the horns of weary oxen, scattered companies of straggling Tommies, and ducked under protruding tent-poles on the baggage-wagons, and at last came out together again in advance of the dusty column. "Besides, we don't know where the press-censor is, do we?" No, of course we had no idea where the press-censor was, and unless he said that Ladysmith was relieved, the fact that twenty-five thousand other soldiers said so counted for idle gossip. Our papers could not expect us to go riding over mountains the day Ladysmith was relieved, hunting for a press-censor. "That press-censor," gasped Hartland, "never--is--where he--ought to be." The words were bumped out of him as he was shot up and down in the saddle. That was it. It was the press-censor's fault. Our consciences were clear now. If our papers worried themselves or us because they did not receive the great news until every one else knew of it, it was all because of that press-censor. We smiled again and spurred the horses forward. We abused the press-censor roundly--we were extremely indignant with him. It was so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was relieved. "Confound him," we muttered, and grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel when we were playing truant from school. We were nearing Pieter's Station now, and were half-way to Ladysmith. But the van of the army was still about us. Was it possible that it stretched already into the beleaguered city? Were we, after all, to be cheated of the first and freshest impressions? The tall lancers turned at the sound of the horses' hoofs and stared, infantry officers on foot smiled up at us sadly, they were dirty and dusty and sweating, they carried rifles and cross belts like the Tommies; and they knew that we outsiders who were not under orders would see the chosen city before them. Some of them shouted to us, but we only nodded and galloped on. We wanted to get rid of them all, but they were interminable. When we thought we had shaken them off, and that we were at last in advance, we would come upon a group of them resting on the same ground their shells had torn up during the battle the day before. We passed Boer laagers marked by empty cans and broken saddles and black, cold camp-fires. At Pieter's Station the blood was still fresh on the grass where two hours before some of the South African Light Horse had been wounded. The Boers were still on Bulwana then? Perhaps, after all, we had better turn back and try to find that press-censor. But we rode on and saw Pieter's Station, as we passed it, as an absurd relic of by-gone days when bridges were intact and trains ran on schedule time. One door seen over the shoulder as we galloped past read, "Station Master's Office--Private," and in contempt of that stern injunction, which would make even the first-class passenger hesitate, one of our shells had knocked away the half of the door and made its privacy a mockery. We had only to follow the track now and we would arrive in time--unless the Boers were still on Bulwana. We had shaken off the army, and we were two miles in front of it, when six men came galloping toward us in an unfamiliar uniform. They passed us far to the right, regardless of the trail, and galloping through the high grass. We pulled up when we saw them, for they had green facings to their gray uniforms, and no one with Buller's column wore green facings. We gave a yell in chorus. "Are you from Ladysmith?" we shouted. The men, before they answered, wheeled and cheered, and came toward us laughing jubilant. "We're the first men out," cried the officer and we rode in among them, shaking hands and offering our good wishes. "We're glad to see you," we said. "We're glad to see _you_," they said. It was not an original greeting, but it seemed sufficient to all of us. "Are the Boers on Bulwana?" we asked. "No, they've trekked up Dundee way. You can go right in." We parted at the word and started to go right in. We found the culverts along the railroad cut away and the bridges down, and that galloping ponies over the roadbed of a railroad is a difficult feat at the best, even when the road is in working order. Some men, cleanly dressed and rather pale-looking, met us and said: "Good-morning." "Are you from Ladysmith?" we called. "No, we're from the neutral camp," they answered. We were the first men from outside they had seen in four months, and that was the extent of their interest or information. They had put on their best clothes, and were walking along the track to Colenso to catch a train south to Durban or to Maritzburg, to any place out of the neutral camp. They might have been somnambulists for all they saw of us, or of the Boer trenches and the battle-field before them. But we found them of greatest interest, especially their clean clothes. Our column had not seen clean linen in six weeks, and the sight of these civilians in white duck and straw hats, and carrying walking-sticks, coming toward us over the railroad ties, made one think it was Sunday at home and these were excursionists to the suburbs. We had been riding through a roofless tunnel, with the mountain and the great dam on one side, and the high wall of the railway cutting on the other, but now just ahead of us lay the open country, and the exit of the tunnel barricaded by twisted rails and heaped-up ties and bags of earth. Bulwana was behind us. For eight miles it had shut out the sight of our goal, but now, directly in front of us, was spread a great city of dirty tents and grass huts and Red Cross flags--the neutral camp--and beyond that, four miles away, shimmering and twinkling sleepily in the sun, the white walls and zinc roofs of Ladysmith. We gave a gasp of recognition and galloped into and through the neutral camp. Natives of India in great turbans, Indian women in gay shawls and nose-rings, and black Kaffirs in discarded khaki looked up at us dully from the earth floors of their huts, and when we shouted "Which way?" and "Where is the bridge?" only stared, or pointed vaguely, still staring. After all, we thought, they are poor creatures, incapable of emotion. Perhaps they do not know how glad we are that they have been rescued. They do not understand that we want to shake hands with everybody and offer our congratulations. Wait until we meet our own people, we said, they will understand! It was such a pleasant prospect that we whipped the unhappy ponies into greater bursts of speed, not because they needed it, but because we were too excited and impatient to sit motionless. In our haste we lost our way among innumerable little trees; we disagreed as to which one of the many cross-trails led home to the bridge. We slipped out of our stirrups to drag the ponies over one steep place, and to haul them up another, and at last the right road lay before us, and a hundred yards ahead a short iron bridge and a Gordon Highlander waited to welcome us, to receive our first greetings and an assorted collection of cigarettes. Hartland was riding a thoroughbred polo pony and passed the gallant defender of Ladysmith without a kind look or word, but Blackwood and I galloped up more decorously, smiling at him with good-will. The soldier, who had not seen a friend from the outside world in four months, leaped in front of us and presented a heavy gun and a burnished bayonet. "Halt, there," he cried. "Where's your pass?" Of course it showed excellent discipline--we admired it immensely. We even overlooked the fact that he should think Boer spies would enter the town by way of the main bridge and at a gallop. We liked his vigilance, we admired his discipline, but in spite of that his reception chilled us. We had brought several things with us that we thought they might possibly want in Ladysmith, but we had entirely forgotten to bring a pass. Indeed I do not believe one of the twenty-five thousand men who had been fighting for six weeks to relieve Ladysmith had supplied himself with one. The night before, when the Ladysmith sentries had tried to halt Dundonald's troopers in the same way, and demanded a pass from them, there was not one in the squadron. We crossed the bridge soberly and entered Ladysmith at a walk. Even the ponies looked disconcerted and crestfallen. After the high grass and the mountains of red rock, where there was not even a tent to remind one of a roof-tree, the stone cottages and shop-windows and chapels and well-ordered hedges of the main street of Ladysmith made it seem a wealthy and attractive suburb. When we entered, a Sabbath-like calm hung upon the town; officers in the smartest khaki and glistening Stowassers observed us askance, little girls in white pinafores passed us with eyes cast down, a man on a bicycle looked up, and then, in terror lest we might speak to him, glued his eyes to the wheel and "scorched" rapidly. We trotted forward and halted at each street crossing, looking to the right and left in the hope that some one might nod to us. From the opposite end of the town General Buller and his staff came toward us slowly--the house-tops did not seem to sway--it was not "roses, roses all the way." The German army marching into Paris received as hearty a welcome. "Why didn't you people cheer General Buller when he came in?" we asked later. "Oh, was that General Buller?" they inquired. "We didn't recognize him." "But you knew he was a general officer, you knew he was the first of the relieving column?" "Ye-es, but we didn't know who he was." I decided that the bare fact of the relief of Ladysmith was all I would be able to wire to my neglected paper, and with remorses started to find the Ladysmith censor. Two officers, with whom I ventured to break the hush that hung upon the town by asking my way, said they were going in the direction of the censor. We rode for some distance in guarded silence. Finally, one of them, with an inward struggle, brought himself to ask, "Are you from the outside?" I was forced to admit that I was. I felt that I had taken an unwarrantable liberty in intruding on a besieged garrison. I wanted to say that I had lost my way and had ridden into the town by mistake, and that I begged to be allowed to withdraw with apologies. The other officer woke up suddenly and handed me a printed list of the prices which had been paid during the siege for food and tobacco. He seemed to offer it as being in some way an official apology for his starved appearance. The price of cigars struck me as especially pathetic, and I commented on it. The first officer gazed mournfully at the blazing sunshine before him. "I have not smoked a cigar in two months," he said. My surging sympathy, and my terror at again offending the haughty garrison, combated so fiercely that it was only with a great effort that I produced a handful. "Will you have these?" The other officer started in his saddle so violently that I thought his horse had stumbled, but he also kept his eyes straight in front. "Thank you, I will take one if I may--just one," said the first officer. "Are you sure I am not robbing you?" They each took one, but they refused to put the rest of the cigars in their pockets. As the printed list stated that a dozen matches sold for $1.75, I handed them a box of matches. Then a beautiful thing happened. They lit the cigars and at the first taste of the smoke--and they were not good cigars--an almost human expression of peace and good-will and utter abandonment to joy spread over their yellow skins and cracked lips and fever-lit eyes. The first man dropped his reins and put his hands on his hips and threw back his head and shoulders and closed his eyelids. I felt that I had intruded at a moment which should have been left sacred. {5} Another boy officer in stainless khaki and beautifully turned out, polished and burnished and varnished, but with the same yellow skin and sharpened cheek-bones and protruding teeth, a skeleton on horseback, rode slowly toward us down the hill. As he reached us he glanced up and then swayed in his saddle, gazing at my companions fearfully. "Good God," he cried. His brother officers seemed to understand, but made no answer, except to jerk their heads toward me. They were too occupied to speak. I handed the skeleton a cigar, and he took it in great embarrassment, laughing and stammering and blushing. Then I began to understand; I began to appreciate the heroic self-sacrifice of the first two, who, when they had been given the chance, had refused to fill their pockets. I knew then that it was an effort worthy of the V. C. The censor was at his post, and a few minutes later a signal officer on Convent Hill heliographed my cable to Bulwana, where, six hours after the Boers had abandoned it, Buller's own helios had begun to dance, and they speeded the cable on its long journey to the newspaper office on the Thames Embankment. [Picture: "Tommies" seeking shelter from "Long Tom" at Ladysmith] When one descended to the streets again--there are only two streets which run the full length of the town--and looked for signs of the siege, one found them not in the shattered houses, of which there seemed surprisingly few, but in the starved and fever-shaken look of the people. The cloak of indifference which every Englishman wears, and his instinctive dislike to make much of his feelings, and, in this case, his pluck, at first concealed from us how terribly those who had been inside of Ladysmith had suffered, and how near to the breaking point they were. Their faces were the real index to what they had passed through. Any one who had seen our men at Montauk Point or in the fever camp at Siboney needed no hospital list to tell him of the pitiful condition of the garrison. The skin on their faces was yellow, and drawn sharply over the brow and cheekbones; their teeth protruded, and they shambled along like old men, their voices ranging from a feeble pipe to a deep whisper. In this pitiable condition they had been forced to keep night-watch on the hill-crests, in the rain, to lie in the trenches, and to work on fortifications and bomb-proofs. And they were expected to do all of these things on what strength they could get from horse-meat, biscuits of the toughness and composition of those that are fed to dogs, and on "mealies," which is what we call corn. That first day in Ladysmith gave us a faint experience as to what the siege meant. The correspondents had disposed of all their tobacco, and within an hour saw starvation staring them in the face, and raced through the town to rob fellow-correspondents who had just arrived. The new-comers in their turn had soon distributed all they owned, and came tearing back to beg one of their own cigarettes. We tried to buy grass for our ponies, and were met with pitying contempt; we tried to buy food for ourselves, and were met with open scorn. I went to the only hotel which was open in the place, and offered large sums for a cup of tea. "Put up your money," said the Scotchman in charge, sharply. "What's the good of your money? Can your horse eat money? Can you eat money? Very well, then, put it away." The great dramatic moment after the raising of the siege was the entrance into Ladysmith of the relieving column. It was a magnificent, manly, and moving spectacle. You must imagine the dry, burning heat, the fine, yellow dust, the white glare of the sunshine, and in the heat and glare and dust the great interminable column of men in ragged khaki crowding down the main street, twenty-two thousand strong, cheering and shouting, with the sweat running off their red faces and cutting little rivulets in the dust that caked their cheeks. Some of them were so glad that, though in the heaviest marching order, they leaped up and down and stepped out of line to dance to the music of the bagpipes. For hours they crowded past, laughing, joking, and cheering, or staring ahead of them, with lips wide apart, panting in the heat and choking with the dust, but always ready to turn again and wave their helmets at Sir George White. It was a pitiful contrast which the two forces presented. The men of the garrison were in clean khaki, pipe-clayed and brushed and polished, but their tunics hung on them as loosely as the flag around its pole, the skin on their cheek-bones was as tight and as yellow as the belly of a drum, their teeth protruded through parched, cracked lips, and hunger, fever, and suffering stared from out their eyes. They were so ill and so feeble that the mere exercise of standing was too severe for their endurance, and many of them collapsed, falling back to the sidewalk, rising to salute only the first troop of each succeeding regiment. This done, they would again sink back and each would sit leaning his head against his musket, or with his forehead resting heavily on his folded arms. In comparison the relieving column looked like giants as they came in with a swinging swagger, their uniforms blackened with mud and sweat and bloodstains, their faces brilliantly crimsoned and blistered and tanned by the dust and sun. They made a picture of strength and health and aggressiveness. Perhaps the contrast was strongest when the battalion of the Devons that had been on foreign service passed the "reserve" battalion which had come from England. The men of the two battalions had parted five years before in India, and they met again in Ladysmith, with the men of one battalion lining the streets, sick, hungry, and yellow, and the others, who had been fighting six weeks to reach it, marching toward them, robust, red-faced, and cheering mightily. As they met they gave a shout of recognition, and the men broke ranks and ran forward, calling each other by name, embracing, shaking hands, and punching each other in the back and shoulders. It was a sight that very few men watched unmoved. Indeed, the whole three hours was one of the most brutal assaults upon the feelings that it has been my lot to endure. One felt he had been entirely lifted out of the politics of the war, and the question of the wrongs of the Boers disappeared before a simple propostiton of brave men saluting brave men. Early in the campaign, when his officers had blundered, General White had dared to write: "I alone am to blame." But in this triumphal procession twenty-two thousand gentlemen in khaki wiped that line off the slate, and wrote, "Well done, sir," in its place, as they passed before him through the town he had defended and saved. III--THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE The Boer "front" was at Brandfort, and, as Lord Roberts was advancing upon that place, one already saw in the head-lines, "The Battle of Brandfort." But before our train drew out of Pretoria Station we learned that the English had just occupied Brandfort, and that the Boer front had been pushed back to Winburg. We decided that Brandfort was an impossible position to hold anyway, and that we had better leave the train at Winburg. We found some selfish consolation for the Boer repulse, in the fact that it shortened our railroad journey by one day. The next morning when we awoke at the Vaal River Station the train despatcher informed us that during the night the "Rooineks" had taken Winburg, and that the burghers were gathered at Smaaldel. We agreed not to go to Winburg, but to stop off at Smaaldel. We also agreed that Winburg was an impossible position to hold. When at eleven o'clock the train reached Kroonstad, we learned than Lord Roberts was in Smaaldel. It was then evident that if our train kept on and the British army kept on there would be a collision. So we stopped at Kroonstad. In talking it over we decided that, owing to its situation, Smaaldel was an impossible position to hold. The Sand River, which runs about forty miles south of Kroonstad, was the last place in the Free State at which the burghers could hope to make a stand, and at the bridge where the railroad spans the river, and at a drift ten miles lower down, the Boers and Free Staters had collected to the number of four thousand. Lord Roberts and his advancing column, which was known to contain thirty-five thousand men, were a few miles distant from the opposite bank of the Sand River. There was an equal chance that the English would attempt to cross at the drift or at the bridge. We thought they would cross at the drift, and stopped for the night at Ventersburg, a town ten miles from the river. Ventersburg, in comparison with Kroonstad, where we had left them rounding up stray burghers and hurrying them to the firing-line, and burning official documents in the streets, was calm. Ventersburg was not destroying incriminating documents nor driving weary burghers from its solitary street. It was making them welcome at Jones's Hotel. The sun had sunk an angry crimson, the sure sign of a bloody battle on the morrow, and a full moon had turned the dusty street and the veldt into which it disappeared into a field of snow. The American scouts had halted at Jones's Hotel, and the American proprietor was giving them drinks free. Their cowboy spurs jingled on the floor of the bar-room, on the boards of the verandas, on the stone floor of the kitchen, and in the billiard-room, where they were playing pool as joyously as though the English were not ten miles away. Grave, awkward burghers rode up, each in a cloud of dust, and leaving his pony to wander in the street and his rifle in a corner, shook hands with every one solemnly, and asked for coffee. Italians of Garibaldi's red-shirted army, Swedes and Danes in semi-uniform, Frenchman in high boots and great sombreros, Germans with the sabre cuts on their cheeks that had been given them at the university, and Russian officers smoking tiny cigarettes crowded the little dining-room, and by the light of a smoky lamp talked in many tongues of Spion Kop, Sannahspost, Fourteen Streams, and the battle on the morrow. They were sun-tanned, dusty, stained, and many of them with wounds in bandages. They came from every capital of Europe, and as each took his turn around the crowded table, they drank to the health of every nation, save one. When they had eaten they picked up the pony's bridle from the dust and melted into the moonlight with a wave of the hand and a "good luck to you." There were no bugles to sound "boots and saddles" for them, no sergeants to keep them in hand, no officers to pay for their rations and issue orders. Each was his own officer, his conscience was his bugle-call, he gave himself orders. They were all equal, all friends; the cowboy and the Russian Prince, the French socialist from La Villette or Montmartre, with a red sash around his velveteen breeches, and the little French nobleman from the Cercle Royal who had never before felt the sun, except when he had played lawn tennis on the Isle de Puteaux. Each had his bandolier and rifle; each was minding his own business, which was the business of all--to try and save the independence of a free people. The presence of these foreigners, with rifle in hand, showed the sentiment and sympathies of the countries from which they came. These men were Europe's real ambassadors to the Republic of the Transvaal. The hundreds of thousands of their countrymen who had remained at home held toward the Boer the same feelings, but they were not so strongly moved; not so strongly as to feel that they must go abroad to fight. These foreigners were not the exception in opinion, they were only exceptionally adventurous, exceptionally liberty-loving. They were not soldiers of fortune, for the soldier of fortune fights for gain. These men receive no pay, no emolument, no reward. They were the few who dared do what the majority of their countrymen in Europe thought. At Jones's Hotel that night, at Ventersburg, it was as though a jury composed of men from all of Europe and the United States had gathered in judgment on the British nation. Outside in the moonlight in the dusty road two bearded burghers had halted me to ask the way to the house of the commandant. Between them on a Boer pony sat a man, erect, slim-waisted, with well-set shoulders and chin in air, one hand holding the reins high, the other with knuckles down resting on his hip. The Boer pony he rode, nor the moonlight, nor the veldt behind him, could disguise his seat and pose. It was as though I had been suddenly thrown back into London and was passing the cuirassed, gauntleted guardsman, motionless on his black charger in the sentry gate in Whitehall. Only now, instead of a steel breastplate, he shivered through his thin khaki, and instead of the high boots, his legs were wrapped in twisted putties. "When did they take you?" I asked. "Early this morning. I was out scouting," he said. He spoke in a voice so well trained and modulated that I tried to see his shoulder-straps. "Oh, you are an officer?" I said. "No, sir, a trooper. First Life Guards." But in the moonlight I could see him smile, whether at my mistake or because it was not a mistake I could not guess. There are many gentlemen rankers in this war. He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet marking him as conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in a church. From the billiard-room, where the American scouts were playing pool, came the click of the ivory and loud, light-hearted laughter; from the veranda the sputtering of many strange tongues and the deep, lazy voices of the Boers. There were Boers to the left of him, Boers to the right of him, pulling at their long, drooping pipes and sending up big rings of white smoke in the white moonlight. He dismounted, and stood watching the crowd about him under half-lowered eyelids, but as unmoved as though he saw no one. He threw his arm over the pony's neck and pulled its head down against his chest and began talking to it. It was as though he wished to emphasize his loneliness. "You are not tired, are you? No, you're not," he said. His voice was as kindly as though he were speaking to a child. "Oh, but you can't be tired. What?" he whispered. "A little hungry, perhaps. Yes?" He seemed to draw much comfort from his friend the pony, and the pony rubbed his head against the Englishman's shoulder. "The commandant says he will question you in the morning. You will come with us to the jail now," his captor directed. "You will find three of your people there to talk to. I will go bring a blanket for you, it is getting cold." And they rode off together into the night. Two days later he would have heard through the windows of Jones's Hotel the billiard balls still clicking joyously, but the men who held the cues then would have worn helmets like his own. The original Jones, the proprietor of Jones's Hotel, had fled. The man who succeeded him was also a refugee, and the present manager was an American from Cincinnati. He had never before kept a hotel, but he confided to me that it was not a bad business, as he found that on each drink sold he made a profit of a hundred per cent. The proprietress was a lady from Brooklyn, her husband, another American, was a prisoner with Cronje at St. Helena. She was in considerable doubt as to whether she ought to run before the British arrived, or wait and chance being made a prisoner. She said she would prefer to escape, but what with standing on her feet all day in the kitchen preparing meals for hungry burghers and foreign volunteers, she was too tired to get away. War close at hand consists so largely of commonplaces and trivial details that I hope I may be pardoned for recording the anxieties and cares of this lady from Brooklyn. Her point of view so admirably illustrates one side of war. It is only when you are ten years away from it, or ten thousand miles away from it, that you forget the dull places, and only the moments loom up which are terrible, picturesque, and momentous. We have read, in "Vanity Fair," of the terror and the mad haste to escape of the people of Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. That is the obvious and dramatic side. That is the picture of war you remember and which appeals. As a rule, people like to read of the rumble of cannon through the streets of Ventersburg, the silent, dusty columns of the re-enforcements passing in the moonlight, the galloping hoofs of the aides suddenly beating upon the night air and growing fainter and dying away, the bugle-calls from the camps along the river, the stamp of spurred boots as the general himself enters the hotel and spreads the blue-print maps upon the table, the clanking sabres of his staff, standing behind him in the candle-light, whispering and tugging at their gauntlets while the great man plans his attack. You must stop with the British army if you want bugle-calls and clanking sabres and gauntlets. They are a part of the panoply of war and of warriors. But we saw no warriors at Ventersburg that night, only a few cattle-breeders and farmers who were fighting for the land they had won from the lion and the bushman, and with them a mixed company of gentleman adventurers--gathered around a table discussing other days in other lands. The picture of war which is most familiar is the one of the people of Brussels fleeing from the city with the French guns booming in the distance, or as one sees it in "Shenandoah," where aides gallop on and off the stage and the night signals flash from both sides of the valley. That is the obvious and dramatic side; the other side of war is the night before the battle, at Jones's Hotel; the landlady in the dining-room with her elbows on the table, fretfully deciding that after a day in front of the cooking-stove she is too tired to escape an invading army, declaring that the one place at which she would rather be at that moment was Green's restaurant in Philadelphia, the heated argument that immediately follows between the foreign legion and the Americans as to whether Rector's is not better than the Cafe de Paris, and the general agreement that Ritz cannot hope to run two hotels in London without being robbed. That is how the men talked and acted on the eve of a battle. We heard no galloping aides, no clanking spurs, only the click of the clipped billiard balls as the American scouts (who were killed thirty-six hours later) knocked them about the torn billiard-cloth, the drip, drip of the kerosene from a blazing, sweating lamp, which struck the dirty table-cloth, with the regular ticking of a hall clock, and the complaint of the piano from the hotel parlor, where the correspondent of a Boston paper was picking out "Hello, My Baby," laboriously with one finger. War is not so terribly dramatic or exciting--at the time; and the real trials of war--at the time, and not as one later remembers them--consist largely in looting fodder for your ponies and in bribing the station-master to put on an open truck in which to carry them. We were wakened about two o'clock in the morning by a loud knocking on a door and the distracted voice of the local justice of the peace calling upon the landlord to rouse himself and fly. The English, so the voice informed the various guests, as door after door was thrown open upon the court-yard, were at Ventersburg Station, only two hours away. The justice of the peace wanted to buy or to borrow a horse, and wanted it very badly, but a sleepy-eyed and sceptical audience told him unfeelingly that he was either drunk or dreaming, and only the landlady, now apparently refreshed after her labors, was keenly, even hysterically, intent on instant flight. She sat up in her bed with her hair in curl papers and a revolver beside her, and through her open door shouted advice to her lodgers. But they were unsympathetic, and reassured her only by banging their doors and retiring with profane grumbling, and in a few moments the silence was broken only by the voice of the justice as he fled down the main street of Ventersburg offering his kingdom for a horse. The next morning we rode out to the Sand River to see the Boer positions near the drift, and met President Steyn in his Cape cart coming from them on his way to the bridge. Ever since the occupation of Bloemfontein, the London papers had been speaking of him as "the Late President," as though he were dead. He impressed me, on the contrary, as being very much alive and very much the President, although his executive chamber was the dancing-hall of a hotel and his roof-tree the hood of a Cape cart. He stood in the middle of the road, and talked hopefully of the morrow. He had been waiting, he said, to see the development of the enemy's attack, but the British had not appeared, and, as he believed they would not advance that day, he was going on to the bridge to talk to his burghers and to consult with General Botha. He was much more a man of the world and more the professional politician than President Kruger. I use the words "professional politician" in no unpleasant sense, but meaning rather that he was ready, tactful, and diplomatic. For instance, he gave to whatever he said the air of a confidence reserved especially for the ear of the person to whom he spoke. He showed none of the bitterness which President Kruger exhibits toward the British, but took the tone toward the English Government of the most critical and mused tolerance. Had he heard it, it would have been intensely annoying to any Englishman. "I see that the London _Chronicle_," he said, "asks if, since I have become a rebel, I do not lose my rights as a Barrister of the Temple? Of course, we are no more rebels than the Spaniards were rebels against the United States. By a great stretch of the truth, under the suzerainty clause, the burghers of the Transvaal might be called rebels, but a Free Stater--never! It is not the animosity of the English which I mind," he added, thoughtfully, "but their depressing ignorance of their own history." [Picture: President Steyn on his way to Sand River battle] His cheerfulness and hopefulness, even though one guessed they were assumed, commanded one's admiration. He was being hunted out of one village after another, the miles of territory still free to him were hourly shrinking--in a few days he would be a refugee in the Transvaal; but he stood in the open veldt with all his possessions in the cart behind him, a president without a republic, a man without a home, but still full of pluck, cheerful and unbeaten. The farm-house of General Andrew Cronje stood just above the drift and was the only conspicuous mark for the English guns on our side of the river, so in order to protect it the general had turned it over to the ambulance corps to be used as a hospital. They had lashed a great Red Cross flag to the chimney and filled the clean shelves of the generously built kitchen with bottles of antiseptics and bitter-smelling drugs and surgeons' cutlery. President Steyn gave me a letter to Dr. Rodgers Reid, who was in charge, and he offered us our choice of the deserted bedrooms. It was a most welcome shelter, and in comparison to the cold veldt the hospital was a haven of comfort. Hundreds of cooing doves, stumbling over the roof of the barn, helped to fill the air with their peaceful murmur. It was a strange overture to a battle, but in time I learned to not listen for any more martial prelude. The Boer does not make a business of war, and when he is not actually fighting he pretends that he is camping out for pleasure. In his laager there are no warlike sounds, no sentries challenge, no bugles call. He has no duties to perform, for his Kaffir boys care for his pony, gather his wood, and build his fire. He has nothing to do but to wait for the next fight, and to make the time pass as best he can. In camp the burghers are like a party of children. They play games with each other, and play tricks upon each other, and engage in numerous wrestling bouts, a form of contest of which they seem particularly fond. They are like children also in that they are direct and simple, and as courteous as the ideal child should be. Indeed, if I were asked what struck me as the chief characteristics of the Boer I should say they were the two qualities which the English have always disallowed him, his simplicity rather than his "cuteness," and his courtesy rather than his boorishness. The force that waited at the drift by Cronje's farm as it lay spread out on both sides of the river looked like a gathering of Wisconsin lumbermen, of Adirondack guides and hunters halted at Paul Smith's, like a Methodist camp-meeting limited entirely to men. The eye sought in vain for rows of tents, for the horses at the picket line, for the flags that marked the head-quarters, the commissariat, the field telegraph, the field post-office, the A. S. C., the R. M. A. C., the C. O., and all the other combinations of letters of the military alphabet. I remembered that great army of General Buller's as I saw it stretching out over the basin of the Tugela, like the children of Israel in number, like Tammany Hall in organization and discipline, with not a tent-pin missing; with hospitals as complete as those established for a hundred years in the heart of London; with search-lights, heliographs, war balloons, Roentgen rays, pontoon bridges, telegraph wagons, and trenching tools, farriers with anvils, major-generals, mapmakers, "gallopers," intelligence departments, even biographs and press-censors; every kind of thing and every kind of man that goes to make up a British army corps. I knew that seven miles from us just such another completely equipped and disciplined column was advancing to the opposite bank of the Sand River. And opposed to it was this merry company of Boer farmers lying on the grass, toasting pieces of freshly killed ox on the end of a stick, their hobbled ponies foraging for themselves a half-mile away, a thousand men without a tent among them, without a field-glass. It was a picnic, a pastoral scene, not a scene of war. On the hills overlooking the drift were the guns, but down along the banks the burghers were sitting in circles singing the evening hymns, many of them sung to the tunes familiar in the service of the Episcopal Church, so that it sounded like a Sunday evening in the country at home. At the drift other burghers were watering the oxen, bathing and washing in the cold river; around the camp-fires others were smoking luxuriously, with their saddles for pillows. The evening breeze brought the sweet smell of burning wood, a haze of smoke from many fires, the lazy hum of hundreds of voices rising in the open air, the neighing of many horses, and the swift soothing rush of the river. When morning came to Cronje's farm it brought with it no warning nor sign of battle. We began to believe that the British army was an invention of the enemy's. So we cooked bacon and fed the doves, and smoked on the veranda, moving our chairs around it with the sun, and argued as to whether we should stay where we were or go on to the bridge. At noon it was evident there would be no fight at the drift that day, so we started along the bank of the river, with the idea of reaching the bridge before nightfall. The trail lay on the English side of the river, so that we were in constant concern lest our white-hooded Cape cart would be seen by some of their scouts and we would be taken prisoners and forced to travel all the way back to Cape Town. We saw many herds of deer, but no scouts or lancers, and, such being the effect of many kopjes, lost all ideas as to where we were. We knew we were bearing steadily south toward Lord Roberts, who as we later learned, was then some three miles distant. About two o'clock his guns opened on our left, so we at least knew that we were still on the wrong side of the river and that we must be between the Boer and the English artillery. Except for that, our knowledge of our geographical position was a blank, and we accordingly "out-spanned" and cooked more bacon. "Outspanning" is unharnessing the ponies and mules and turning them out graze, and takes three minutes--"inspanning" is trying to catch them again, and takes from three to five hours. We started back over the trail over which we had come, and just at sunset saw a man appear from behind a rock and disappear again. Whether he was Boer or Briton I could not tell, but while I was examining the rock with my glasses two Boers came galloping forward and ordered me to "hands up." To sit with both arms in the air is an extremely ignominious position, and especially annoying if the pony is restless, so I compromised by waving my whip as high as I could reach with one hand, and still held in the horse with the other. The third man from behind the rock rode up at the same time. They said they had watched us coming from the English lines, and that we were prisoners. We assured them that for us nothing could be more satisfactory, because we now knew where we were, and because they had probably saved us a week's trip to Cape Town. They examined and approved of our credentials, and showed us the proper trail which we managed to follow until they had disappeared, when the trail disappeared also, and we were again lost in what seemed an interminable valley. But just before nightfall the fires of the commando showed in front of us and we rode into the camp of General Christian De Wet. He told us we could not reach the bridge that night, and showed us a farm-house on a distant kopje where we could find a place to spread our blankets. I was extremely glad to meet him, as he and General Botha are the most able and brave of the Boer generals. He was big, manly, and of impressive size, and, although he speaks English, he dictated to his adjutant many long and Old-World compliments to the Greater Republic across the seas. We found the people in the farm-house on the distant kopje quite hysterical over the near presence of the British, and the entire place in such an uproar that we slept out in the veldt. In the morning we were awakened by the sound of the Vickar-Maxim or the "pom-pom" as the English call it, or "bomb-Maxim" as the Boers call it. By any name it was a remarkable gun and the most demoralizing of any of the smaller pieces which have been used in this campaign. One of its values is that its projectiles throw up sufficient dust to enable the gunner to tell exactly where they strike, and within a few seconds he is able to alter the range accordingly. In this way it is its own range-finder. Its bark is almost as dangerous as its bite, for its reports have a brisk, insolent sound like a postman's knock, or a cooper hammering rapidly on an empty keg, and there is an unexplainable mocking sound to the reports, as though the gun were laughing at you. The English Tommies used to call it very aptly the "hyena gun." I found it much less offensive from the rear than when I was with the British, and in front of it. From the top of a kopje we saw that the battle had at last begun and that the bridge was the objective point. The English came up in great lines and blocks and from so far away and in such close order that at first in spite of the khaki they looked as though they wore uniforms of blue. They advanced steadily, and two hours later when we had ridden to a kopje still nearer the bridge, they were apparently in the same formation as when we had first seen them, only now farms that had lain far in their rear were overrun by them and they encompassed the whole basin. An army of twenty-five thousand men advancing in full view across a great plain appeals to you as something entirely lacking in the human element. You do not think of it as a collection of very tired, dusty, and perspiring men with aching legs and parched lips, but as an unnatural phenomenon, or a gigantic monster which wipes out a railway station, a cornfield, and a village with a single clutch of one of its tentacles. You would as soon attribute human qualities to a plague, a tidal wave, or a slowly slipping landslide. One of the tentacles composed of six thousand horse had detached itself and crossed the river below the bridge, where it was creeping up on Botha's right. We could see the burghers galloping before it toward Ventersburg. At the bridge General Botha and President Steyn stood in the open road and with uplifted arms waved the Boers back, calling upon them to stand. But the burghers only shook their heads and with averted eyes grimly and silently rode by them on the other side. They knew they were flanked, they knew the men in the moving mass in front of them were in the proportion of nine to one. When you looked down upon the lines of the English army advancing for three miles across the plain, one could hardly blame them. The burghers did not even raise their Mausers. One bullet, the size of a broken slate-pencil, falling into a block three miles across and a mile deep, seems so inadequate. It was like trying to turn back the waves of the sea with a blow-pipe. It is true they had held back as many at Colenso, but the defensive positions there were magnificent, and since then six months had passed, during which time the same thirty thousand men who had been fighting then were fighting still, while the enemy was always new, with fresh recruits and re-enforcements arriving daily. As the English officers at Durban, who had so lately arrived from home that they wore swords, used to say with the proud consciousness of two hundred thousand men back of them: "It won't last much longer now. The Boers have had their belly full of fighting. They're fed up on it; that's what it is; they're fed up." They forgot that the Boers, who for three months had held Buller back at the Tugela, were the same Boers who were rushed across the Free State to rescue Cronje from Roberts, and who were then sent to meet the relief column at Fourteen Streams, and were then ordered back again to harass Roberts at Sannahspost, and who, at last, worn out, stale, heartsick, and hopeless at the unequal odds and endless fighting, fell back at Sand River. For three months thirty thousand men had been attempting the impossible task of endeavoring to meet an equal number of the enemy in three different places at the same time. I have seen a retreat in Greece when the men, before they left the trenches, stood up in them and raged and cursed at the advancing Turk, cursed at their government, at their king, at each other, and retreated with shame in their faces because they did so. But the retreat of the burghers of the Free State was not like that. They rose one by one and saddled their ponies, with the look in their faces of men who had been attending the funeral of a friend and who were leaving just before the coffin was swallowed in the grave. Some of them, for a long time after the greater number of the commando had ridden away, sat upon the rocks staring down into the sunny valley below them, talking together gravely, rising to take a last look at the territory which was their own. The shells of the victorious British sang triumphantly over the heads of their own artillery, bursting impotently in white smoke or tearing up the veldt in fountains of dust. But they did not heed them. They did not even send a revengeful bullet into the approaching masses. The sweetness of revenge could not pay for what they had lost. They looked down upon the farm-houses of men they knew; upon their own farm-houses rising in smoke; they saw the Englishmen like a pest of locusts settling down around gardens and farm-houses still nearer, and swallowing them up. Their companions, already far on the way to safety, waved to them from the veldt to follow; an excited doctor carrying a wounded man warned us that the English were just below, storming the hill. "Our artillery is aiming at five hundred yards," he shouted, but still the remaining burghers stood immovable, leaning on their rifles, silent, homeless, looking down without rage or show of feeling at the great waves of khaki sweeping steadily toward them, and possessing their land. THE JAPANESE-RUSSIAN WAR: BATTLES I DID NOT SEE We knew it was a battle because the Japanese officers told us it was. In other wars I had seen other battles, many sorts of battles, but I had never seen a battle like that one. Most battles are noisy, hurried, and violent, giving rise to an unnatural thirst and to the delusion that, by some unhappy coincidence, every man on the other side is shooting only at you. This delusion is not peculiar to myself. Many men have told me that in the confusion of battle they always get this exaggerated idea of their own importance. Down in Cuba I heard a colonel inform a group of brother officers that a Spanish field-piece had marked him for its own, and for an hour had been pumping shrapnel at him and at no one else. The interesting part of the story was that he believed it. But the battle of Anshantien was in no way disquieting. It was a noiseless, odorless, rubber-tired battle. So far as we were concerned it consisted of rings of shrapnel smoke floating over a mountain pass many miles distant. So many miles distant that when, with a glass, you could see a speck of fire twinkle in the sun like a heliograph, you could not tell whether it was the flash from the gun or the flame from the shell. Neither could you tell whether the cigarette rings issued from the lips of the Japanese guns or from those of the Russians. The only thing about that battle of which you were certain was that it was a perfectly safe battle to watch. It was the first one I ever witnessed that did not require you to calmly smoke a pipe in order to conceal the fact that you were scared. But soothing as it was, the battle lacked what is called the human interest. There may have been men behind the guns, but as they were also behind Camel Hill and Saddle Mountain, eight miles away, our eyes, like those of Mr. Samuel Weller, "being only eyes," were not able to discover them. Our teachers, the three Japanese officers who were detailed to tell us about things we were not allowed to see, gazed at the scene of carnage with well-simulated horror. Their expressions of countenance showed that should any one move the battle eight miles nearer, they were prepared to sell their lives dearly. When they found that none of us were looking at them or their battle, they were hurt. The reason no one was looking at them was because most of us had gone to sleep. The rest, with a bitter experience of Japanese promises, had doubted there would be a battle, and had prepared themselves with newspapers. And so, while eight miles away the preliminary battle to Liao-Yang was making history, we were lying on the grass reading two months' old news of the St. Louis Convention. The sight greatly disturbed our teachers. "You complain," they said, "because you are not allowed to see anything, and now, when we show you a battle, you will not look." Lewis, of the _Herald_, eagerly seized his glasses and followed the track of the Siberian railway as it disappeared into the pass. "I beg your pardon, but I didn't know it was a battle," he apologized politely. "I thought it was a locomotive at Anshantien Station blowing off steam." And, so, teacher gave him a bad mark for disrespect. It really was trying. In order to see this battle we had travelled half around the world, had then waited four wasted months at Tokio, then had taken a sea voyage of ten days, then for twelve days had ridden through mud and dust in pursuit of the army, then for twelve more days, while battles raged ten miles away, had been kept prisoners in a compound where five out of the eighteen correspondents were sick with dysentery or fever, and finally as a reward we were released from captivity and taken to see smoke rings eight miles away! That night a round-robin, which was signed by all, was sent to General Oku, pointing out to him that unless we were allowed nearer to his army than eight miles, our usefulness to the people who paid us our salaries was at an end. While waiting for an answer to this we were led out to see another battle. Either that we might not miss one minute of it, or that we should be too sleepy to see anything of it, we were started in black darkness, at three o'clock in the morning, the hour, as we are told, when one's vitality is at its lowest, and one which should be reserved for the exclusive use of burglars and robbers of hen roosts. Concerning that hour I learned this, that whatever its effects may be upon human beings, it finds a horse at his most strenuous moment. At that hour by the light of three paper lanterns we tried to saddle eighteen horses, donkeys, and ponies, and the sole object of each was to kick the light out of the lantern nearest him. We finally rode off through a darkness that was lightened only by a gray, dripping fog, and in a silence broken only by the patter of rain upon the corn that towered high above our heads and for many miles hemmed us in. After an hour, Sataki, the teacher who acted as our guide, lost the trail and Captain Lionel James, of the _Times_, who wrote "On the Heels of De Wet," found it for him. Sataki, so our two other keepers told us, is an authority on international law, and he may be all of that and know all there is to know of three-mile limits and paper blockades, but when it came to picking up a trail, even in the bright sunlight when it lay weltering beneath his horse's nostrils, we always found that any correspondent with an experience of a few campaigns was of more general use. The trail ended at a muddy hill, a bare sugar-loaf of a hill, as high as the main tent of a circus and as abruptly sloping away. It was swept by a damp, chilling wind; a mean, peevish rain washed its sides, and they were so steep that if we sat upon them we tobogganed slowly downward, ploughing up the mud with our boot heels. Hungry, sleepy, in utter darkness, we clung to this slippery mound in its ocean of whispering millet like sailors wrecked in mid-sea upon a rock, and waited for the day. After two hours a gray mist came grudgingly, trees and rocks grew out of it, trenches appeared at our feet, and what had before looked like a lake of water became a mud village. Then, like shadows, the foreign attaches, whom we fondly hoped might turn out to be Russian Cossacks coming to take us prisoners and carry us off to breakfast, rode up in silence and were halted at the base of the hill. It seemed now, the audience being assembled, the orchestra might begin. But no hot-throated cannon broke the chilling, dripping, silence, no upheaval of the air spoke of Canet guns, no whirling shrapnel screamed and burst. Instead, the fog rolled back showing us miles of waving corn, the wet rails of the Siberian Railroad glistening in the rain, and, masking the horizon, the same mountains from which the day before the smoke rings had ascended. They now were dark, brooding, their tops hooded in clouds. Somewhere in front of us hidden in the Kiao liang, hidden in the tiny villages, crouching on the banks of streams, concealed in trenches that were themselves concealed, Oku's army, the army to which we were supposed to belong, was buried from our sight. And in the mountains on our right lay the Fourth Army, and twenty miles still farther to the right, Kuroki was closing in upon Liao-Yang. All of this we guessed, what we were told was very different, what we saw was nothing. In all, four hundred thousand men were not farther from us than four to thirty miles--and we saw nothing. We watched as the commissariat wagons carrying food to these men passed us by, the hospital stores passed us by, the transport carts passed us by, the coolies with reserve mounts, the last wounded soldier, straggler, and camp-follower passed us by. Like a big tidal wave Oku's army had swept forward leaving its unwelcome guests, the attaches and correspondents, forty lonely foreigners among seventy thousand Japanese, stranded upon a hill miles in the rear. Perhaps, as war, it was necessary, but it was not magnificent. That night Major Okabe, our head teacher, gave us the official interpretation of what had occurred. The Russians, he said, had retreated from Liao-Yang and were in open flight. Unless General Kuroki, who, he said, was fifty miles north of us, could cut them off they would reach Mukden in ten days, and until then there would be no more fighting. The Japanese troops, he said, were in Liao-Yang, it had been abandoned without a fight. This he told us on the evening of the 27th of August. The next morning Major Okabe delivered the answer of General Oku to our round-robin. He informed us that we had been as near to the fighting as we ever would be allowed to go. The nearest we had been to any fighting was four miles. Our experience had taught us that when the Japanese promised us we would be allowed to do something we wanted to do, they did not keep their promise; but that when they said we would not be allowed to do something we wanted to do, they spoke the truth. Consequently, when General Oku declared the correspondents would be held four miles in the rear, we believed he would keep his word. And, as we now know, he did, the only men who saw the fighting that later ensued being those who disobeyed his orders and escaped from their keepers. Those who had been ordered by their papers to strictly obey the regulations of the Japanese, and the military attaches, were kept by Oku nearly six miles in the rear. [Picture: War correspondents in Manchuria. From a photograph by Guy Scull. R. H. Davis (Collier's), W. H. Lewis (New York Herald), John Fox, Jr. (Scribner's), W. H. Brill (Associated Press)] On the receipt of Oku's answer to the correspondents, Mr. John Fox, Jr., of _Scribner's Magazine_, Mr. Milton Prior, of the London _Illustrated News_, Mr. George Lynch, of the London _Morning Chronicle_, and myself left the army. We were very sorry to go. Apart from the fact that we had not been allowed to see anything of the military operations, we were enjoying ourselves immensely. Personally, I never went on a campaign in a more delightful country nor with better companions than the men acting as correspondents with the Second Army. For the sake of such good company, and to see more of Manchuria, I personally wanted to keep on. But I was not being paid to go camping with a set of good fellows. Already the Japanese had wasted six months of my time and six months of Mr. Collier's money, Mr. Fox had been bottled up for a period of equal length, while Mr. Prior and Mr. Lynch had been prisoners in Tokio for even four months longer. And now that Okabe assured us that Liao-Yang was already taken, and Oku told us if there were any fighting we would not be allowed to witness it, it seemed a good time to quit. Other correspondents would have quit then, as most of them did ten days later, but that their work and ours in a slight degree differed. As we were not working for daily papers, we used the cable but seldom, while they used it every day. Each evening Okabe brought them the official account of battles and of the movements of the troops, which news of events which they had not witnessed they sent to their separate papers. But for our purposes it was necessary we should see things for ourselves. For, contrary to the popular accusation, no matter how flattering it may be, we could not describe events at which we were not present. But what mainly moved us to decide, was the statements of Okabe, the officer especially detailed by the War Office to aid and instruct us, to act as our guide, philosopher, and friend, our only official source of information, who told us that Liao-Yang was occupied by the Japanese and that the Russians were in retreat. He even begged me personally to come with him into Liao-Yang on the 29th and see how it was progressing under the control of the Japanese authorities. Okabe's news meant that the great battle Kuropatkin had promised at Liao-Yang, and which we had come to see, would never take place. Why Okabe lied I do not know. Whether Oku had lied to him, or whether it was Baron-General Kodama or Major-General Fukushima who had instructed him to so grossly misinform us, it is impossible to say. While in Tokio no one ever more frequently, nor more unblushingly, made statements that they knew were untrue than did Kodama and Fukushima, but none of their deceptions had ever harmed us so greatly as did the lie they put into the mouth of Okabe. Not only had the Japanese _not_ occupied Liao-Yang on the evening of the 27th of August, but later, as everybody knows, they had _to fight six days_ to get into it. And Kuroki, so far from being fifty miles north toward Mukden as Okabe said he was, was twenty miles to the east on our right preparing for the closing in movement which was just about to begin. Three days after we had left the army, the greatest battle since Sedan was waged for six days. So our half year of time and money, of dreary waiting, of daily humiliations at the hands of officers with minds diseased by suspicion, all of which would have been made up to us by the sight of this one great spectacle, was to the end absolutely lost to us. Perhaps we made a mistake in judgment. As the cards fell, we certainly did. But after the event it is easy to be wise. For the last fifteen years, had I known as much the night before the Grand Prix was run as I did the next afternoon, I would be passing rich. The only proposition before us was this: There was small chance of any immediate fighting. If there were fighting we could not see it. Confronted with the same conditions again, I would decide in exactly the same manner. Our misfortune lay in the fact that our experience with other armies had led us to believe that officers and gentlemen speak the truth, that men with titles of nobility, and with the higher titles of general and major-general, do not lie. In that we were mistaken. The parting from the other correspondents was a brutal attack upon the feelings which, had we known they were to follow us two weeks later to Tokio, would have been spared us. It is worth recording why, after waiting many months to get to the front, they in their turn so soon left it. After each of the big battles before Liao-Yang they handed the despatches they had written for their papers to Major Okabe. Each day he told them these despatches had been censored and forwarded. After three days he brought back all the despatches and calmly informed the correspondents that not one of their cables had been sent. It was the final affront of Japanese duplicity. In recording the greatest battle of modern times three days had been lost, and by a lie. The object of their coming to the Far East had been frustrated. It was fatuous to longer expect from Kodama and his pupils fair play or honest treatment, and in the interest of their employers and to save their own self-respect, the representatives of all the most important papers in the world, the _Times_, of London, the New York _Herald_, the Paris _Figaro_, the London _Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail_, and _Morning Post_, quit the Japanese army. Meanwhile, unconscious of what we had missed, the four of us were congratulating ourselves upon our escape, and had started for New-Chwang. Our first halt was at Hai-Cheng, in the same compound in which for many days with the others we had been imprisoned. But our halt was a brief one. We found the compound glaring in the sun, empty, silent, filled only with memories of the men who, with their laughter, their stories, and their songs had made it live. But now all were gone, the old familiar faces and the familiar voices, and we threw our things back on the carts and hurried away. The trails between Hai-Cheng and the sea made the worst going we had encountered in Manchuria. You soon are convinced that the time has not been long since this tract of land lay entirely under the waters of the Gulf of Liaotung. You soon scent the salt air, and as you flounder in the alluvial deposits of ages, you expect to find the salt-water at the very roots of the millet. Water lies in every furrow of the miles of cornfields, water flows in streams in the roads, water spreads in lakes over the compounds, it oozes from beneath the very walls of the go-downs. You would not be surprised at any moment to see the tide returning to envelop you. In this liquid mud a cart can make a trail by the simple process of continuing forward. The havoc is created in the millet and the ditches its iron-studded wheels dig in the mud leave to the eyes of the next comer as perfectly good a trail as the one that has been in use for many centuries. Consequently the opportunities for choosing the wrong trail are excellent, and we embraced every opportunity. But friendly Chinamen, and certainly they are a friendly, human people, again and again cheerfully went far out of their way to guide us back to ours, and so, after two days, we found ourselves five miles from New-Chwang. Here we agreed to separate. We had heard a marvellous tale that at New-Chwang there was ice, champagne, and a hotel with enamelled bath-tubs. We had unceasingly discussed the probability of this being true, and what we would do with these luxuries if we got them, and when we came so near to where they were supposed to be, it was agreed that one of us would ride on ahead and command them, while the others followed with the carts. The lucky number fell to John Fox, and he left us at a gallop. He was to engage rooms for the four, and to arrange for the care of seven Japanese interpreters and servants, nine Chinese coolies, and nineteen horses and mules. We expected that by eight o'clock we would be eating the best dinner John Fox could order. We were mistaken. Not that John Fox had not ordered the dinner, but no one ate it but John Fox. The very minute he left us Priory's cart turned turtle in the mud, and the largest of his four mules lay down in it and knocked off work. The mule was hot and very tired, and the mud was soft, cool, and wet, so he burrowed under its protecting surface until all we could see of him was his ears. The coolies shrieked at him, Prior issued ultimatums at him, the Japanese servants stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked about him, but he only snuggled deeper into his mud bath. When there is no more of a mule to hit than his ears, he has you at a great disadvantage, and when the coolies waded in and tugged at his head, we found that the harder they tugged, the deeper they sank. When they were so far out of sight that we were in danger of losing them too, we ordered them to give up the struggle and unload the cart. Before we got it out of dry-dock, reloaded, and again in line with the other carts it was nine o'clock, and dark. In the meantime, Lynch, his sense of duty weakened by visions of enamelled bathtubs filled with champagne and floating lumps of ice, had secretly abandoned us, stealing away in the night and leaving us to follow. This, not ten minutes after we had started, Mr. Prior decided that he would not do, so he camped out with the carts in a village, while, dinnerless, supperless, and thirsty, I rode on alone. I reached New-Chwang at midnight, and after being refused admittance by the Japanese soldiers, was finally rescued by the Number One man from the Manchuria Hotel, who had been sent out by Fox with two sikhs and a lantern to find me. For some minutes I dared not ask him the fateful questions. It was better still to hope than to put one's fortunes to the test. But I finally summoned my courage. "Ice, have got?" I begged. "Have got," he answered. There was a long, grateful pause, and then in a voice that trembled, I again asked, "Champagne, have got?" Number One man nodded. "Have got," he said. I totally forgot until the next morning to ask about the enamelled bathtubs. When I arrived John Fox had gone to bed, and as it was six weeks since any of us had seen a real bed, I did not wake him. Hence, he did not know I was in the hotel, and throughout the troubles that followed I slept soundly. Meanwhile, Lynch, as a punishment for running away from us, lost his own way, and, after stumbling into an old sow and her litter of pigs, which on a dark night is enough to startle any one, stumbled into a Japanese outpost, was hailed as a Russian spy, and made prisoner. This had one advantage, as he now was able to find New-Chwang, to which place he was marched, closely guarded, arriving there at half-past two in the morning. Since he ran away from us he had been wandering about on foot for ten hours. He sent a note to Mr. Little, the British Consul, and to Bush Brothers, the kings of New-Chwang, and, still tormented by visions of ice and champagne, demanded that his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel. There he swore they would find a pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter New-Chwang, three friends who could identify him, four carts, seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals. The commandant took him to the Manchuria Hotel, where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail they found John Fox in bed. As Prior, the only one of us not in New-Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting us to enter it, there was no one to prove what either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of town on the first train. Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from his bed at three in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy, so he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of New-Chwang as quickly as he wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of Japan and away from the Japanese people. At this the officer, being a Yale graduate, and speaking very pure English, told Mr. Fox to "shut up," and Mr. Fox being a Harvard graduate, with an equally perfect command of English, pure and undefiled, shook his fist in the face of the Japanese officer and told him to "shut up yourself." Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned for the defence about to plunge into conflict with his captor, leaped unhappily from foot to foot, and was heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should adjourn for ice and champagne. "If I were a spy," demanded Fox, "do you suppose I would have ridden into your town on a white horse and registered at your head-quarters and then ordered four rooms at the principal hotel and accommodations for seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals? Is that the way a Russian spy works? Does he go around with a brass band?" The officer, unable to answer in kind this excellent reasoning, took a mean advantage of his position by placing both John and Lynch under arrest, and at the head of each bed a Japanese policeman to guard their slumbers. The next morning Prior arrived with the pass, and from the decks of the first out-bound English steamer Fox hurled through the captain's brass speaking-trumpet our farewells to the Japanese, as represented by the gun-boats in the harbor. Their officers, probably thinking his remarks referred to floating mines, ran eagerly to the side. But our ship's captain tumbled from the bridge, rescued his trumpet, and begged Fox, until we were under the guns of a British man-of-war, to issue no more farewell addresses. The next evening we passed into the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and saw above Port Arthur the great guns flashing in the night, and the next day we anchored in the snug harbor of Chefoo. I went at once to the cable station to cable _Collier's_ I was returning, and asked the Chinaman in charge if my name was on his list of those correspondents who could send copy collect. He said it was; and as I started to write, he added with grave politeness, "I congratulate you." For a moment I did not lift my eyes. I felt a chill creeping down my spine. I knew what sort of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of it. "Why?" I asked. The Chinaman bowed and smiled. "Because you are the first," he said. "You are the only correspondent to arrive who has seen the battle of Liao-Yang." The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew then what disaster had fallen, but I cheated myself by pretending the man was misinformed. "There was no battle," I protested. "The Japanese told me themselves they had entered Liao-Yang without firing a shot." The cable operator was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw what it meant and delivered the blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a patient he cannot recover. Gently, reluctantly, with real sympathy he said, "They have been fighting for six days." I went over to a bench, and sat down; and when Lynch and Fox came in and took one look at me, they guessed what had happened. When the Chinaman told them of what we had been cheated, they, in their turn, came to the bench, and collapsed. No one said anything. No one even swore. Six months we had waited only to miss by three days the greatest battle since Gettysburg and Sedan. And by a lie. For six months we had tasted all the indignities of the suspected spy, we had been prisoners of war, we had been ticket-of-leave men, and it is not difficult to imagine our glad surprise that same day when we saw in the harbor the white hull of the cruiser _Cincinnati_ with our flag lifting at her stern. We did not know a soul on board, but that did not halt us. As refugees, as fleeing political prisoners, as American slaves escaping from their Japanese jailers, we climbed over the side and demanded protection and dinner. We got both. Perhaps it was not good to rest on that bit of drift-wood, that atom of our country that had floated far from the mainland and now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager, sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our dark-skinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one thing and meant the other. All the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary humiliations, of petty unpoliteness from a half-educated, half-bred, conceited, and arrogant people fell from us like a heavy knapsack. We were again at home. Again with our own people. Out of the happy confusion of that great occasion I recall two toasts. One was offered by John Fox. "Japan for the Japanese, and the Japanese for Japan." Even the Japanese wardroom boy did not catch its significance. The other was a paraphrase of a couplet in reference to our brown brothers of the Philippines first spoken in Manila. "To the Japanese: 'They may be brothers to Commodore Perry, but they ain't no brothers of mine.'" It was a joyous night. Lieutenant Gilmore, who had been an historic prisoner in the Philippines, so far sympathized with our escape from the Yellow Peril as to intercede with the captain to extend the rules of the ship. And those rules that were incapable of extending broke. Indeed, I believe we broke everything but the eight-inch gun. And finally we were conducted to our steamer in a launch crowded with slim-waisted, broad-chested youths in white mess jackets, clasping each other's shoulders and singing, "Way down in my heart, I have a feeling for you, a sort of feeling for you"; while the officer of the deck turned his back, and discreetly fixed his night glass upon a suspicious star. It was an American cruiser that rescued this war correspondent from the bondage of Japan. It will require all the battle-ships in the Japanese navy to force him back to it. A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S KIT I am going to try to describe some kits and outfits I have seen used in different parts of the world by travellers and explorers, and in different campaigns by army officers and war correspondents. Among the articles, the reader may learn of some new thing which, when next he goes hunting, fishing, or exploring, he can adapt to his own uses. That is my hope, but I am sceptical. I have seldom met the man who would allow any one else to select his kit, or who would admit that any other kit was better than the one he himself had packed. It is a very delicate question. The same article that one declares is the most essential to his comfort, is the very first thing that another will throw into the trail. A man's outfit is a matter which seems to touch his private honor. I have heard veterans sitting around a camp-fire proclaim the superiority of their kits with a jealousy, loyalty, and enthusiasm they would not exhibit for the flesh of their flesh and the bone of their bone. On a campaign, you may attack a man's courage, the flag he serves, the newspaper for which he works, his intelligence, or his camp manners, and he will ignore you; but if you criticise his patent water-bottle he will fall upon you with both fists. So, in recommending any article for an outfit, one needs to be careful. An outfit lends itself to dispute, because the selection of its component parts is not an exact science. It should be, but it is not. A doctor on his daily rounds can carry in a compact little satchel almost everything he is liable to need; a carpenter can stow away in one box all the tools of his trade. But an outfit is not selected on any recognized principles. It seems to be a question entirely of temperament. As the man said when his friends asked him how he made his famous cocktail, "It depends on my mood." The truth is that each man in selecting his outfit generally follows the lines of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. But another man, should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no use to himself, his regiment, or his newspaper. So he carries a folding cot and the more fortunate one of tougher fibre laughs at him. Another man says that the only way to campaign is to travel "light," and sets forth with rain-coat and field-glass. He honestly thinks that he travels light because his intelligence tells him it is the better way; but, as a matter of fact, he does so because he is lazy. Throughout the entire campaign he borrows from his friends, and with that _camaraderie_ and unselfishness that never comes to the surface so strongly as when men are thrown together in camp, they lend him whatever he needs. When the war is over, he is the man who goes about saying: "Some of those fellows carried enough stuff to fill a moving van. Now, look what I did. I made the entire campaign on a tooth-brush." As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking admiration for the man who dares to borrow. His really is the part of wisdom. But at times he may lose himself in places where he can neither a borrower nor a lender be, and there are men so tenderly constituted that they cannot keep another man hungry while they use his coffee-pot. So it is well to take a few things with you--if only to lend them to the men who travel "light." On hunting and campaigning trips the climate, the means of transport, and the chance along the road of obtaining food and fodder vary so greatly that it is not possible to map out an outfit which would serve equally well for each of them. What on one journey was your most precious possession on the next is a useless nuisance. On two trips I have packed a tent weighing, with the stakes, fifty pounds, which, as we slept in huts, I never once had occasion to open; while on other trips in countries that promised to be more or less settled, I had to always live under canvas, and sometimes broke camp twice a day. In one war, in which I worked for an English paper, we travelled like major-generals. When that war started few thought it would last over six weeks, and many of the officers regarded it in the light of a picnic. In consequence, they mobilized as they never would have done had they foreseen what was to come, and the mess contractor grew rich furnishing, not only champagne, which in campaigns in fever countries has saved the life of many a good man, but cases of even port and burgundy, which never greatly helped any one. Later these mess supplies were turned over to the field-hospitals, but at the start every one travelled with more than he needed and more than the regulations allowed, and each correspondent was advised that if he represented a first-class paper and wished to "save his face" he had better travel in state. Those who did not, found the staff and censor less easy of access, and the means of obtaining information more difficult. But it was a nuisance. If, when a man halted at your tent, you could not stand him whiskey and sparklet soda, Egyptian cigarettes, compressed soup, canned meats, and marmalade, your paper was suspected of trying to do it "on the cheap," and not only of being mean, but, as this was a popular war, unpatriotic. When the army stripped down to work all this was discontinued, but at the start I believe there were carried with that column as many tins of tan-leather dressing as there were rifles. On that march my own outfit was as unwieldy as a gypsy's caravan. It consisted of an enormous cart, two oxen, three Basuto ponies, one Australian horse, three servants, and four hundred pounds of supplies and baggage. When it moved across the plain it looked as large as a Fall River boat. Later, when I joined the opposing army, and was not expected to maintain the dignity of a great London daily, I carried all my belongings strapped to my back, or to the back of my one pony, and I was quite as comfortable, clean, and content as I had been with the private car and the circus tent. Throughout the Greek war, as there were no horses to be had for love or money, we walked, and I learned then that when one has to carry his own kit the number of things he can do without is extraordinary. While I marched with the army, offering my kingdom for a horse, I carried my outfit in saddle-bags thrown over my shoulder. And I think it must have been a good outfit, for I never bought anything to add to it or threw anything away. I submit that as a fair test of a kit. Further on, should any reader care to know how for several months one may keep going with an outfit he can pack in two saddle-bags, I will give a list of the articles which in three campaigns I carried in mine. Personally, I am for travelling "light," but at the very start one is confronted with the fact that what one man calls light to another savors of luxury. I call fifty pounds light; in Japan we each were allowed the officer's allowance of sixty-six pounds. Lord Wolseley, in his "Pocketbook," cuts down the officer's kit to forty pounds, while "Nessmut," of the _Forest and Stream_, claims that for a hunting trip, all one wants does not weigh over twenty-six pounds. It is very largely a question of compromise. You cannot eat your cake and have it. You cannot, under a tropical sun, throw away your blanket and when the night dew falls wrap it around you. And if, after a day of hard climbing or riding, you want to drop into a folding chair, to make room for it in your carry-all you must give up many other lesser things. By travelling light I do not mean any lighter than the necessity demands. If there is transport at hand, a man is foolish not to avail himself of it. He is always foolish if he does not make things as easy for himself as possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in season and out of season he plays the Spartan. Any man who suffers discomforts he can avoid because he fears his comrades will think he cannot suffer hardships is an idiot. You often hear it said of a man that "he can rough it with the best of them." Any one can do that. The man I want for a "bunkie" is the one who can be comfortable while the best of them are roughing it. The old soldier knows that it is his duty to keep himself fit, so that he can perform his work, whether his work is scouting for forage or scouting for men, but you will often hear the volunteer captain say: "Now, boys, don't forget we're roughing it; and don't expect to be comfortable." As a rule, the only reason his men are uncomfortable is because he does not know how to make them otherwise; or because he thinks, on a campaign, to endure unnecessary hardship is the mark of a soldier. In the Cuban campaign the day the American forces landed at Siboney a major-general of volunteers took up his head-quarters in the house from which the Spanish commandant had just fled, and on the veranda of which Caspar Whitney and myself had found two hammocks and made ourselves at home. The Spaniard who had been left to guard the house courteously offered the major-general his choice of three bed-rooms. They all were on the first floor and opened upon the veranda, and to the general's staff a tent could have been no easier of access. Obviously, it was the duty of the general to keep himself in good physical condition, to obtain as much sleep as possible, and to rest his great brain and his limbs cramped with ten days on shipboard. But in a tone of stern reproof he said, "No; I am campaigning now, and I have given up all luxuries." And with that he stretched a poncho on the hard boards of the veranda, where, while just a few feet from him the three beds and white mosquito nets gleamed invitingly, he tossed and turned. Besides being a silly spectacle, the sight of an old gentleman lying wide awake on his shoulder-blades was disturbing, and as the hours dragged on we repeatedly offered him our hammocks. But he fretfully persisted in his determination to be uncomfortable. And he was. The feelings of his unhappy staff, several of whom were officers of the regular army, who had to follow the example of their chief, were toward morning hardly loyal. Later, at the very moment the army moved up to the battle of San Juan this same major-general was relieved of his command on account of illness. Had he sensibly taken care of himself, when the moment came when he was needed, he would have been able to better serve his brigade and his country. In contrast to this pose is the conduct of the veteran hunter, or old soldier. When he gets into camp his first thought, after he has cared for his horse, is for his own comfort. He does not wolf down a cold supper and then spread his blanket wherever he happens to be standing. He knows that, especially at night, it is unfair to ask his stomach to digest cold rations. He knows that the warmth of his body is needed to help him to sleep soundly, not to fight chunks of canned meat. So, no matter how sleepy he may be, he takes the time to build a fire and boil a cup of tea or coffee. Its warmth aids digestion and saves his stomach from working overtime. Nor will he act on the theory that he is "so tired he can sleep anywhere." For a few hours the man who does that may sleep the sleep of exhaustion. But before day breaks he will feel under him the roots and stones, and when he awakes he is stiff, sore and unrefreshed. Ten minutes spent in digging holes for hips and shoulder-blades, in collecting grass and branches to spread beneath his blanket, and leaves to stuff in his boots for a pillow, will give him a whole night of comfort and start him well and fit on the next day's tramp. If you have watched an old sergeant, one of the Indian fighters, of which there are now too few left in the army, when he goes into camp, you will see him build a bunk and possibly a shelter of boughs just as though for the rest of his life he intended to dwell in that particular spot. Down in the Garcia campaign along the Rio Grande I said to one of them: "Why do you go to all that trouble? We break camp at daybreak." He said: "Do we? Well, maybe you know that, and maybe the captain knows that, but I don't know it. And so long as I don't know it, I am going to be just as snug as though I was halted here for a month." In camping, that was one of my first and best lessons--to make your surroundings healthy and comfortable. The temptation always is to say, "Oh, it is for only one night, and I am too tired." The next day you say the same thing, "We'll move to-morrow. What's the use?" But the fishing or shooting around the camp proves good, or it comes on to storm, and for maybe a week you do not move, and for a week you suffer discomforts. An hour of work put in at the beginning would have turned it into a week of ease. When there is transport of even one pack-horse, one of the best helps toward making camp quickly is a combination of panniers and bed used for many years by E. F. Knight, the _Times_ war correspondent, who lost an arm at Gras Pan. It consists of two leather trunks, which by day carry your belongings slung on either side of the pack-animal, and by night act as uprights for your bed. The bed is made of canvas stretched on two poles which rest on the two trunks. For travelling in upper India this arrangement is used almost universally. Mr. Knight obtained his during the Chitral campaign, and since then has used it in every war. He had it with Kuroki's army during this last campaign in Manchuria. {6} A more compact form of valise and bed combined is the "carry-all," or any of the many makes of sleeping-bags, which during the day carry the kit and at night when spread upon the ground serve for a bed. The one once most used by Englishmen was Lord Wolseley's "valise and sleeping-bag." It was complicated by a number of strings, and required as much lacing as a dozen pairs of boots. It has been greatly improved by a new sleeping-bag with straps, and flaps that tuck in at the ends. But the obvious disadvantage of all sleeping-bags is that in rain and mud you are virtually lying on the hard ground, at the mercy of tarantula and fever. The carry-all is, nevertheless, to my mind, the most nearly perfect way in which to pack a kit. I have tried the trunk, valise, and sleeping-bag, and vastly prefer it to them all. My carry-all differs only from the sleeping-bag in that, instead of lining it so that it may be used as a bed, I carry in its pocket a folding cot. By omitting the extra lining for the bed, I save almost the weight of the cot. The folding cot I pack is the Gold Medal Bed, made in this country, but which you can purchase almost anywhere. I once carried one from Chicago to Cape Town to find on arriving I could buy the bed there at exactly the same price I had paid for it in America. I also found them in Tokio, where imitations of them were being made by the ingenious and disingenuous Japanese. They are light in weight, strong, and comfortable, and are undoubtedly the best camp-bed made. When at your elevation of six inches above the ground you look down from one of them upon a comrade in a sleeping-bag with rivulets of rain and a tide of muddy water rising above him, your satisfaction, as you fall asleep, is worth the weight of the bed in gold. My carry-all is of canvas with a back of waterproof. It is made up of three strips six and a half feet long. The two outer strips are each two feet three inches wide, the middle strip four feet. At one end of the middle strip is a deep pocket of heavy canvas with a flap that can be fastened by two straps. When the kit has been packed in this pocket, the two side strips are folded over it and the middle strip and the whole is rolled up and buckled by two heavy straps on the waterproof side. It is impossible for any article to fall out or for the rain to soak in. I have a smaller carry-all made on the same plan, but on a tiny scale, in which to carry small articles and a change of clothing. It goes into the pocket after the bed, chair, and the heavier articles are packed away. When the bag is rolled up they are on the outside of and form a protection to the articles of lighter weight. The only objection to the carry-all is that it is an awkward bundle to pack. It is difficult to balance it on the back of an animal, but when you are taking a tent with you or carrying your provisions, it can be slung on one side of the pack saddle to offset their weight on the other. I use the carry-all when I am travelling "heavy." By that I mean when it is possible to obtain pack-animal or cart. When travelling light and bivouacking by night without a pack-horse, bed, or tent, I use the saddle-bags, already described. These can be slung over the back of the horse you ride, or if you walk, carried over your shoulder. I carried them in this latter way in Greece, in the Transvaal, and Cuba during the rebellion, and later with our own army. The list of articles I find most useful when travelling where it is possible to obtain transport, or, as we may call it, travelling heavy, are the following: A tent, seven by ten feet, with fly, jointed poles, tent-pins, a heavy mallet. I recommend a tent open at both ends with a window cut in one end. The window, when that end is laced and the other open, furnishes a draught of air. The window should be covered with a flap which, in case of rain, can be tied down over it with tapes. A great convenience in a tent is a pocket sewn inside of each wall, for boots, books, and such small articles. The pocket should not be filled with anything so heavy as to cause the walls to sag. Another convenience with a tent is a leather strap stretched from pole to pole, upon which to hang clothes, and another is a strap to be buckled around the front tent-pole, and which is studded with projecting hooks for your lantern, water-bottle, and field-glasses. This latter can be bough ready-made at any military outfitter's. Many men object to the wooden tent-pin on account of its tendency to split, and carry pins made of iron. With these, an inch below the head of the pin is a projecting barb which holds the tent rope. When the pin is being driven in, the barb is out of reach of the mallet. Any blacksmith can beat out such pins, and if you can afford the extra weight, they are better than those of ash. Also, if you can afford the weight, it is well to carry a strip of water-proof or oilcloth for the floor of the tent to keep out dampness. All these things appertaining to the tent should be tolled up in it, and the tent itself carried in a light-weight receptacle, with a running noose like a sailor's kit-bag. The carry-all has already been described. Of its contents, I consider first in importance the folding bed. And second in importance I would place a folding chair. Many men scoff at a chair as a cumbersome luxury. But after a hard day on foot or in the saddle, when you sit on the ground with your back to a rock and your hands locked across your knees to keep yourself from sliding, or on a box with no rest for your spinal column, you begin to think a chair is not a luxury, but a necessity. During the Cuban campaign, for a time I was a member of General Sumner's mess. The general owned a folding chair, and whenever his back was turned every one would make a rush to get into it. One time we were discussing what, in the light of our experience of that campaign, we would take with us on our next, and all agreed, Colonel Howze, Captain Andrews, and Major Harmon, that if one could only take one article it would be a chair. I carried one in Manchuria, but it was of no use to me, as the other correspondents occupied it, relieving each other like sentries on guard duty. I had to pin a sign on it, reading, "Don't sit on me," but no one ever saw the sign. Once, in order to rest in my own chair, I weakly established a precedent by giving George Lynch a cigar to allow me to sit down (on that march there was a mess contractor who supplied us even with cigars, and occasionally with food), and after that, whenever a man wanted to smoke, he would commandeer my chair, and unless bribed refuse to budge. This seems to argue the popularity of the contractor's cigars rather than that of the chair, but, nevertheless, I submit that on a campaign the article second in importance for rest, comfort, and content is a chair. The best I know is one invented by Major Elliott of the British army. I have an Elliott chair that I have used four years, not only when camping out, but in my writing-room at home. It is an arm-chair, and is as comfortable as any made. The objections to it are its weight, that it packs bulkily, and takes down into too many pieces. Even with these disadvantages it is the best chair. It can be purchased at the Army and Navy and Anglo-Indian stores in London. A chair of lighter weight and one-fourth the bulk is the Willisden chair, of green canvas and thin iron supports. It breaks in only two pieces, and is very comfortable. Sir Harry Johnson, in his advice to explorers, makes a great point of their packing a chair. But he recommends one known as the "Wellington," which is a cane-bottomed affair, heavy and cumbersome. Dr. Harford, the instructor in outfit for the Royal Geographical Society, recommends a steamer-chair, because it can be used on shipboard and "can be easily carried afterward." If there be anything less easy to carry than a deck-chair I have not met it. One might as soon think of packing a folding step-ladder. But if he has the transport, the man who packs any reasonably light folding chair will not regret it. As a rule, a cooking kit is built like every other cooking kit in that the utensils for cooking are carried in the same pot that is used for boiling the water, and the top of the pot turns itself into a frying-pan. For eight years I always have used the same kind of cooking kit, so I cannot speak of others with knowledge; but I have always looked with envious eyes at the Preston cooking kit and water-bottle. Why it has not already been adopted by every army I do not understand, for in no army have I seen a kit as compact or as light, or one that combines as many useful articles and takes up as little room. It is the invention of Captain Guy H. Preston, Thirteenth Cavalry, and can be purchased at any military outfitter's. The cooking kit I carry is, or was, in use in the German army. It is made of aluminum,--weighs about as much as a cigarette-case, and takes up as little room as would a high hat. It is a frying-pan and coffee-pot combined. From the Germans it has been borrowed by the Japanese, and one smaller than mine, but of the same pattern, is part of the equipment of each Japanese soldier. On a day's march there are three things a man must carry: his water-bottle, his food, which, with the soldier, is generally carried in a haversack, and his cooking kit. Preston has succeeded most ingeniously in combining the water-bottle and the cooking kit, and I believe by cutting his water-bottle in half, he can make room in his coffee-pot for the food. If he will do this, he will solve the problem of carrying water, food, and the utensils for cooking the food and for boiling the water in one receptacle, which can be carried from the shoulder by a single strap. The alteration I have made for my own use in Captain Preston's water-bottle enables me to carry in the coffee-pot one day's rations of bacon, coffee, and biscuit. [Picture: The component parts of the Preston cooking kit] [Picture: German Army cooking kit after use in five campaigns. All of these articles pack inside the kettle] In Tokio, before leaving for Manchuria, General Fukushima asked me to bring my entire outfit to the office of the General Staff. I spread it out on the floor, and with unerring accuracy he selected from it the three articles of greatest value. They were the Gold Medal cot, the Elliott chair, and Preston's water-bottle. He asked if he could borrow these, and, understanding that he wanted to copy them for his own use, and supposing that if he used them, he would, of course, make some restitution to the officers who had invented them, I foolishly loaned them to him. Later, he issued them in numbers to the General Staff. As I felt, in a manner, responsible, I wrote to the Secretary of War, saying I was sure the Japanese army did not wish to benefit by these inventions without making some acknowledgment or return to the inventors. But the Japanese War Office could not see the point I tried to make, and the General Staff wrote a letter in reply asking why I had not directed my communication to General Fukushima, as it was not the Secretary of War, but he, who had taken the articles. The fact that they were being issued without any return being made, did not interest them. They passed cheerfully over the fact that the articles had been stolen, and were indignant, not because I had accused a Japanese general of pilfering, but because I had accused the wrong general. The letter was so insolent that I went to the General Staff Office and explained that the officer who wrote it, must withdraw it, and apologize for it. Both of which things he did. In case the gentlemen whose inventions were "borrowed" might, if they wished, take further steps in the matter, I sent the documents in the case, with the exception of the letter which was withdrawn, to the chief of the General Staff in the United States and in England. In importance after the bed, cooking kit, and chair, I would place these articles: Two collapsible water-buckets of rubber or canvas. Two collapsible brass lanterns, with extra isinglass sides. Two boxes of sick-room candles. One dozen boxes of safety matches. One axe. The best I have seen is the Marble Safety Axe, made at Gladstone, Mich. You can carry it in your hip-pocket, and you can cut down a tree with it. One medicine case containing quinine, calomel, and Sun Cholera Mixture in tablets. Toilet-case for razors, tooth-powder, brushes, and paper. Folding bath-tub of rubber in rubber case. These are manufactured to fold into a space little larger than a cigar-box. Two towels old, and soft. Three cakes of soap. One Jaeger blanket. One mosquito head-bag. One extra pair of shoes, old and comfortable. One extra pair of riding-breeches. One extra pair of gaiters. The former regulation army gaiter of canvas, laced, rolls up in a small compass and weighs but little. One flannel shirt. Gray least shows the dust. Two pairs of drawers. For riding, the best are those of silk. Two undershirts, balbriggan or woollen. Three pairs of woollen socks. Two linen handkerchiefs, large enough, if needed, to tie around the throat and protect the back of the neck. One pair of pajamas, woollen, not linen. One housewife. Two briarwood pipes. Six bags of smoking tobacco; Durham or Seal of North Carolina pack easily. One pad of writing paper. One fountain pen, _self-filling_. One bottle of ink, with screw top, held tight by a spring. One dozen linen envelopes. Stamps, wrapped in oil-silk with mucilage side next to the silk. One stick sealing-wax. In tropical countries mucilage on the flap of envelopes sticks to everything except the envelope. One dozen elastic bands of the largest size. In packing they help to compress articles like clothing into the smallest possible compass and in many other ways will be found very useful. One pack of playing-cards. Books. One revolver and six cartridges. The reason for most of these articles is obvious. Some of them may need a word of recommendation. I place the water-buckets first in the list for the reason that I have found them one of my most valuable assets. With one, as soon as you halt, instead of waiting for your turn at the well or water-hole, you can carry water to your horse, and one of them once filled and set in the shelter of the tent, later saves you many steps. It also can be used as a nose-bag, and to carry fodder. I recommend the brass folding lantern, because those I have tried of tin or aluminum have invariably broken. A lantern is an absolute necessity. When before daylight you break camp, or hurry out in a wind storm to struggle with flying tent-pegs, or when at night you wish to read or play cards, a lantern with a stout frame and steady light is indispensable. The original cost of the sick-room candles is more than that of ordinary candles, but they burn longer, are brighter, and take up much less room. To protect them and the matches from dampness, or the sun, it is well to carry them in a rubber sponge-bag. Any one who has forgotten to pack a towel will not need to be advised to take two. An old sergeant of Troop G, Third Cavalry, once told me that if he had to throw away everything he carried in his roll but one article, he would save his towel. And he was not a particularly fastidious sergeant either, but he preferred a damp towel in his roll to damp clothes on his back. Every man knows the dreary halts in camp when the rain pours outside, or the regiment is held in reserve. For times like these a pack of cards or a book is worth carrying, even if it weighs as much as the plates from which it was printed. At present it is easy to obtain all of the modern classics in volumes small enough to go into the coat-pocket. In Japan, before starting for China, we divided up among the correspondents Thomas Nelson & Sons' and Doubleday, Page & Co.'s pocket editions of Dickens, Thackeray, and Lever, and as most of our time in Manchuria was spent locked up in compounds, they proved a great blessing. In the list I have included a revolver, following out the old saying that "You may not need it for a long time, but when you do need it, you want it damned quick." Except to impress guides and mule-drivers, it is not an essential article. In six campaigns I have carried one, and never used it, nor needed it but once, and then while I was dodging behind the foremast it lay under tons of luggage in the hold. The number of cartridges I have limited to six, on the theory that if in six shots you haven't hit the other fellow, he will have hit you, and you will not require another six. This, I think, completes the list of articles that on different expeditions I either have found of use, or have seen render good service to some one else. But the really wise man will pack none of the things enumerated in this article. For the larger his kit, the less benefit he will have of it. It will all be taken from him. And accordingly my final advice is to go forth empty-handed, naked and unashamed, and borrow from your friends. I have never tried that method of collecting an outfit, but I have seen never it fail, and of all travellers the man who borrows is the wisest. Footnotes: {1} From "A Year from a Reporter's Note Book," copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers. {2} From "A Year from a Reporter's Note Book, copyright, 1897, Harper & Brothers." {3} For this "distinguished gallantry in action," James R. Church later received the medal of honor. {4} Some of the names and initials on the trees are as follows: J. P. Allen; Lynch; Luke Steed; Happy Mack, Rough Riders; Russell; Ward; E. M. Lewis, C, 9th Cav.; Alex; E. K. T.; J. P. E.; W. N. D.; R. D. R.; I. W. S., 5th U. S.; J. M. B.; J. M. T., C, 9th. {5} A price list during the siege: SIEGE OF LADYSMITH, 1899-1900. _I certify that the following are the correct and highest prices realised at my sales by Public Auction during the above Siege_, JOE DYSON, _Auctioneer_. LADYSMITH, FEBRUARY 21_st_, 1900. Pounds s. d. 14 lbs. Oatmeal 2 19 6 Condensed Milk, 0 10 0 per tin 1 lb. Beef Fat 0 11 0 1 lb. Tin 0 17 0 Coffee 2 lb. Tin 1 6 0 Tongue 1 Sucking Pig 1 17 0 Eggs, per dozen 2 8 0 Fowls, each 0 18 6 4 Small 0 15 6 Cucumbers Green Mealies, 0 3 8 each Small plate 1 5 0 Grapes 1 Small plate 0 12 6 Apples 1 Plate 0 18 0 Tomatoes 1 Vegetable 1 8 0 Marrow 1 Plate 0 11 0 Eschalots 1 Plate 0 19 0 Potatoes 3 Small bunches 0 9 0 Carrots 1 Glass Jelly 0 18 0 1 lb. Bottle 1 11 0 Jam 1 lb. Tin 1 1 0 Marmalade 1 dozen Matches 0 13 6 1 pkt. 1 5 0 Cigarettes 50 Cigars 9 5 0 0.25 lb. Cake 2 5 0 "Fair Maid" Tobacco 0.5 lb. Cake 3 5 0 "Fair Maid" 1 lb. Sailors 2 3 0 Tobacco 0.25 lb. tin 3 0 0 "Capstan" Navy Cut Tobacco {6} The top of the trunk is made of a single piece of leather with a rim that falls over the mouth of the trunk and protects the contents from rain. The two iron rings by which each box is slung across the padded back of the pack-horse are fastened by rivetted straps to the rear top line of each trunk. On both _ends_ of each trunk near the top and back are two iron sockets. In these fit the staples that hold the poles for the bed. The staples are made of iron in the shape of the numeral 9, the poles passing through the circle of the 9. The bed should be four feet long three feet wide, of heavy canvas, strengthened by leather straps. At both ends are two buckles which connect with straps on the top of each trunk. Along one side of the canvas is a pocket running its length and open at both ends. Through this one of the poles passes and the other through a series of straps that extend on the opposite side. These straps can be shortened or tightened to allow a certain "give" to the canvas, which the ordinary stretcher-bed does not permit. The advantage of this arrangement is in the fact that it can be quickly put together and that it keeps the sleeper clear of the ground and safeguards him from colds and malaria. 
31898	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE BRIGHT SHAWL JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER NEW YORK ALFRED·A·KNOPF 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Published, October, 1922 Second Printing, October, 1922 Set up and electrotyped by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y. Printed and bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA For Hamilton and Phoebe Gilkyson junior in their fine drawing-room at Mont Clare The Works Of Joseph Hergesheimer Novels The Lay Anthony [1914] Mountain Blood [1915] The Three Black Pennys [1917] Java Head [1918] Linda Condon [1919] Cytherea [1922] The Bright Shawl [1922] Shorter Stories Wild Oranges [1918] Tubal Cain [1918] The Dark Fleece [1918] The Happy End [1919] Travel San Cristobal de la Habana [1920] New York: Alfred A. Knopf THE BRIGHT SHAWL When Howard Gage had gone, his mother's brother sat with his head bowed in frowning thought. The frown, however, was one of perplexity rather than disapproval: he was wholly unable to comprehend the younger man's attitude toward his experiences in the late war. The truth was, Charles Abbott acknowledged, that he understood nothing, nothing at all, about the present young. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the thoroughly absurd, the witless, things they constantly did, dispensing with their actual years he would have considered them the present aged. They were so--well, so gloomy. Yet, in view of the gaiety of the current parties, the amounts of gin consumed, it wasn't precisely gloom that enveloped them. Charles Abbott searched his mind for a definition, for light on a subject dark to a degree beyond any mere figure of speech. Yes, darkness particularly described Howard. The satirical bitterness of his references to the "glorious victory in France" was actually a little unbalanced. The impression Abbott had received was of bestiality choked in mud. His nephew was amazingly clear, vivid and logical, in his memories and opinions; they couldn't, as he stated them in a kind of frozen fury, be easily controverted. What, above everything else, appeared to dominate Howard Gage was a passion for reality, for truth--all the unequivocal facts--in opposition to a conventional or idealized statement. Particularly, he regarded the slightest sentiment with a suspicion that reached hatred. Abbott's thoughts centered about the word idealized; there, he told himself, a ray of perception might be cast into Howard's obscurity; since the most evident fact of all was that he cherished no ideals, no sustaining vision of an ultimate dignity behind men's lives. The boy, for example, was without patriotism; or, at least, he hadn't a trace of the emotional loyalty that had fired the youth of Abbott's day. There was nothing sacrificial in Howard Gage's conception of life and duty, no allegiance outside his immediate need. Selfish, Charles Abbott decided. What upset him was the other's coldness: damn it, a young man had no business to be so literal! Youth was a time for generous transforming passions, for heroics. The qualities of absolute justice and consistency should come only with increasing age--the inconsiderable compensations for the other ability to be rapt in uncritical enthusiasms. Charles Abbott sighed and raised his head. He was sitting in the formal narrow reception room of his city house. The street outside was narrow, too; it ran for only a square, an old thoroughfare with old brick houses, once no more than a service alley for the larger dwellings back of which it ran. Now, perfectly retaining its quietude, it had acquired a new dignity of residence: because of its favorable, its exclusive, situation, it was occupied by young married people of highly desirable connections. Abbott, well past sixty and single, was the only person there of his age and condition. October was advanced and, though it was hardly past four in the afternoon, the golden sunlight falling the length of the street was already darkling with the faded day. A warm glow enveloped the brick façades and the window panes of aged, faintly iridescent glass; there was a remote sound of automobile horns, the illusive murmur of a city never, at its loudest, loud; and, through the walls, the notes of a piano, charming and melancholy. After a little he could distinguish the air--it was Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. The accent of its measure, the jota, was at once perceptible and immaterial; and overwhelmingly, through its magic of suggestion, a blinding vision of his own youth--so different from Howard's--swept over Charles Abbott. It was exactly as though, again twenty-three, he were standing in the incandescent sunlight of Havana; in, to be precise, the Parque Isabel. This happened so suddenly, so surprisingly, that it oppressed his heart; he breathed with a sharpness which resembled a gasp; the actuality around him was blurred as though his eyes were slightly dazzled. The playing continued intermittently, while its power to stir him grew in an overwhelming volume. He had had no idea that he was still capable of such profound feeling, such emotion spun, apparently, from the tunes only potent with the young. He was confused--even, alone, embarrassed--at the tightness of his throat, and made a decided effort to regain a reasonable mind. He turned again to the consideration of Howard Gage, of his lack of ideals; and, still in the flood of the re-created past, he saw, in the difference between Howard and the boy in Havana, what, for himself anyhow, was the trouble with the present. Yes, his premonition had been right--the youth of today were without the high and romantic causes the service of which had so brightly colored his own early years. Not patriotism alone but love had suffered; and friendship, he was certain, had all but disappeared; such friendship as had bound him to Andrés Escobar. Andrés! Charles Abbott hadn't thought of him consciously for months. Now, with the refrain of the piano, the jota, running through his thoughts, Andrés was as real as he had been forty years ago. It was forty years almost to the month since they had gone to the public ball, the danzón, in the Tacon Theatre. That, however, was at the close of the period which had recurred to him like a flare in the dusk of the past. After the danzón the blaze of his sheer fervency had been reduced, cooled, to maturity. But not, even in the peculiarly brutal circumstances of his transition, sharply; only now Charles Abbott definitely realized that he had left in Cuba, lost there, the illusions which were synonymous with his young intensity. After that nothing much had absorbed him, very little had happened. In comparison with the spectacular brilliancy of his beginning, the remainder of life had seemed level if not actually drab. Certainly the land to which he had returned was dull against the vivid south, the tropics. But he couldn't go back to Havana, he had felt, even after the Spanish Government was expelled, any more than he could find in the Plaza de Armas his own earlier self. The whole desirable affair had been one--the figures of his loves and detestations, the paseos and glorietas and parques of the city, now, he had heard, so changed, formed a unity destroyed by the missing of any single element. He wasn't, though, specially considering himself, but rather the sustaining beliefs that so clearly marked the divergence between Howard's day and his own. This discovery, he felt, was of deep importance, it explained so much that was apparently inexplicable. Charles Abbott asserted silently, dogmatically, that a failure of spirit had occurred ... there was no longer such supreme honor as Andrés Escobar's. The dance measure in the Spanish Rhapsody grew louder and more insistent, and through it he heard the castanets of La Clavel, he saw the superb flame of her body in the brutal magnificence of the fringed mantón like Andalusia incarnate. * * * * * He had a vision of the shawl itself, and, once more, seemed to feel the smooth dragging heaviness of its embroidery. The burning square of its colors unfolded before him, the incredible magentas, the night blues and oranges and emerald and vermilion, worked into broad peonies and roses wreathed in leaves. And suddenly he felt again that, not only prefiguring Spain, it was symbolical of the youth, the time, that had gone. Thus the past appeared to him, wrapped bright and precious in the shawl of memory. No woman that Howard Gage might dream of could have worn La Clavel's mantón; it would have consumed her like a breath of fire, leaving a white ash hardly more than distinguishable from the present living actuality. Women cast up a prodigious amount of smoke now, a most noisy crackling, but Charles Abbott doubted the blaze within them. Water had been thrown on it. Their grace, too, the dancing about which they made such a stir,--not to compare it with La Clavel's but with no better than Pilar's--was hardly more than a rapid clumsy posturing. Where was the young man now who could dance for two hours without stopping on a spot scarcely bigger than the rim of his silk hat? Where, indeed, was the silk hat! Even men's clothes had suffered in the common decline: black satin and gold, nicely cut trousers, the propriety of pumps, had all vanished. Charles Abbott recalled distinctly the care with which he had assembled the clothing to be taken to Cuba, the formal dress of evening, with a plum-colored cape, and informal linens for the tropical days. The shirt-maker had filled his box with the finest procurable cambrics and tallest stocks. Trivialities, yet they indicated what had once been breeding; but now, incredibly, that was regarded as trivial. The Spanish Rhapsody had ceased, and the sun was all but withdrawn from the street; twilight was gathering, particularly in Charles Abbott's reception room. The gilded eagle of the old American clock on the over-mantel seemed almost to flutter its carved wings, the fragile rose mahogany spinet held what light there was, but the pair of small brocaded sofas had lost their severe definition. Charles Abbott's emotion, as well, subsided, its place taken by a concentrated effort to put together the details of a scene which had assumed, in his perplexity about Howard, a present significance. He heard, with a momentarily diverted attention, the closing of the front door beyond, women's voices on the pavement and the changing gears of a motor: Mrs. Vauxn and her daughter were going out early for dinner. They lived together--the girl had married into the navy--and it was the former who played the piano. The street, after their departure, was silent again. How different it was from the clamorous gaiety of Havana. Not actual sickness, Charles Abbott proceeded, but the delicacy of his lungs, following scarlet fever, had taken him south. A banking associate of his father's, recommending Cuba, had, at the same time, pointedly qualified his suggestion; and this secondary consideration had determined Charles on Havana. The banker had added that Cuba was the most healthful place he knew for anyone with no political attachments. There political activity, more than an indiscretion, was fatal. What did he mean? Charles Abbott had asked; and the other had replied with a single ominous word, Spain. There was, it was brought out, a growing and potent, but secretive, spirit of rebellion against the Government, to which Seville was retaliating with the utmost open violence. This was spread not so much through the people, the country, at large, as it was concentrated in the cities, in Santiago de Cuba and Havana; and there it was practically limited to the younger members of aristocratic families. Every week boys--they were no more for all their sounding pronunciamientos--were being murdered in the fosses of Cabañas fortress. Women of the greatest delicacy, suspected of sympathy with nationalistic ideals, were thrown into the filthy pens of town prostitutes. Everywhere a limitless system of espionage was combating the gathering of circles, tertulias, for the planning of a Cuba liberated from a bloody and intolerable tyranny. Were these men, Charles pressed his query, really as young as himself? Younger, some of them, by five and six years. And they were shot by a file of soldiers' muskets? Eight students at the university had been executed at once for a disproved charge that they had scrawled an insulting phrase on the glass door of the tomb of a Cuban Volunteer. At this the elder Abbott had looked so dubious that Charles hastily abandoned his questioning. Enough of that sort of thing had been shown; already his mother was unalterably opposed to Cuba; and there he intended at any price to go. But those tragedies and reprisals, the champion of his determination insisted, were limited, as he had begun by saying, to the politically involved. No more engaging or safer city than Havana existed for the delight of young travelling Americans with an equal amount of money and good sense. He had proceeded to indicate the temperate pleasures of Havana; but, then, Charles Abbott had no ear for sensuous enjoyment. His mind was filled by the other vision of heroic youth dying for the ideal of liberty. He had never before given Cuba, under Spanish rule, a thought; but at a chance sentence it dominated him completely; all his being had been tinder for the spark of its romantic spirit. This, naturally, he had carefully concealed from his parents, for, during the days that immediately followed, Cuba as a possibility was continuously argued. Soon his father, basing his decision on Charles' gravity of character, was in favor of the change; and in the end his mother, at whose prescience he wondered, was overborne. Well, he was for Havana! His cabin on the Morro Castle was secured, that notable trunkful of personal effects packed; and his father, greatly to Charles' surprise, outside all women's knowledge, gave him a small derringer with a handle of mother-of-pearl. He was, now, the elder told him, almost a man; and, while it was inconceivable that he would have a use for the pistol, he must accustom himself to such responsibility. He wouldn't need it; but if he did, there, with its greased cartridges in their short ugly chambers, it was. "Never shoot in a passion," the excellent advice went on; "only a cool hand is steady, and remember that it hasn't much range." It was for desperate necessity at a very short distance. With the derringer lying newly in his grasp, his eyes steadily on his father's slightly anxious gaze, Charles asseverated that he would faithfully attend every instruction. At the identical moment of this commitment he pictured himself firing into the braided tunic of a beastly Spanish officer and supporting a youthful Cuban patriot, dying pallidly of wounds, in his free arm. The Morro Castle hadn't left its New York dock before he had determined just what part he would take in the liberation of Cuba--he'd lead a hopeless demonstration in the center of Havana, at the hour when the city was its brightest and the band playing most gaily; his voice, sharp like a shot, so soon to be stilled in death, would stop the insolence of music. * * * * * This was not a tableau of self-glorification or irresponsible youth, he proceeded; it was more significant than a spirit of adventure. His determination rested on the abstraction of liberty for an oppressed people; he saw Cuba as a place which, after great travail, would become the haunt of perfect peace. That, Charles felt, was not only a possibility but inevitable; he saw the forces of life drawn up in such a manner--the good on one side facing the bad on the other. There was no mingling of the ranks, no grey; simply, conveniently, black and white. And, in the end, the white would completely triumph; it would be victorious for the reason that heaven must reign over hell. God was supreme. Charles wasn't at all religious, he came of a blood which delegated to its women the rites and responsibilities of the church; but there was no question in his mind, no doubt, of the Protestant theological map; augustness lay concretely behind the sky; hell was no mere mediæval fantasy. He might ignore this in daily practice, yet it held him within its potent if invisible barriers. Charles Abbott believed it. The supremacy of God, suspended above the wickedness of Spain, would descend and crush it. Ranged, therefore, squarely on the side of the angels, mentally he swept forward in confidence, sustained by the glitter of their invincible pinions. The spending of his life, he thought, was a necessary part of the consummation; somehow without that his vision lost radiance. A great price would be required, but the result--eternal happiness on that island to which he was taking linen suits in winter! Charles had a subconscious conception of the heroic doctrine of the destruction of the body for the soul's salvation. The Morro Castle, entering a wind like the slashing of a stupendous dull grey sword, slowly and uncomfortably steamed along her course. Most of the passengers at once were seasick, and either retired or collapsed in a leaden row under the lee of the deck cabins. But this indisposition didn't touch Charles, and it pleased his sense of dignity. He appeared, erect and capable, at breakfast, and through the morning promenaded the unsteady deck. He attended the gambling in the smoking saloon, and listened gravely to the fragmentary hymns attempted on Sunday. These human activities were all definitely outside him; charged with a higher purpose, he watched them comprehendingly, his lips bearing the shadow of a saddened smile; essentially he was alone, isolated. Or at least he was at the beginning of the four days' journey--he kept colliding with the rotund figure of a man wrapped to the eyes in a heavy cloak until, finally, from progressing in opposite directions, they fell into step together. To Charles' delight, the other was a Cuban, Domingo Escobar, who lived in Havana, on the Prado. Charles Abbott learned this from the flourishing card given in return for his own. Escobar he found to be a man with a pleasant and considerate disposition; indeed, he maintained a scrupulous courtesy toward Charles far transcending any he would have had, from a man so much older, at home. Domingo Escobar, it developed, had a grown son, Vincente, twenty-eight years old; a boy perhaps Charles' own age--no, Andrés would be two, three, years younger; and Narcisa. The latter, his daughter, Escobar, unashamed, described as a budding white rose. Charles wasn't interested in that, his thoughts were definitely turned from girls, however flower-like; but he was engaged by Vincente and Andrés. He asked a great many questions about them, all tending to discover, if possible, the activity of their patriotism. This, though, was a subject which Domingo Escobar resolutely ignored. Once, when Charles put a direct query with relation to Spain in Cuba, the older man, abruptly replying at a tangent, ignored his question. It would be necessary to ask Andrés Escobar himself. That he would have an opportunity to do this was assured, for Andrés' parent, who knew the Abbotts' banking friend intimately, had told Charles with flattering sincerity how welcome he would be at the Escobar dwelling on the Prado. The Prado, it began to be clear, of all the possible places of residence in Havana, was the best; the Escobars went to Paris when they willed; and, altogether, Charles told himself, he had made a very fortunate beginning. He picked up, from various sources on the steamer, useful tags of knowledge about his destination: The Inglaterra, to which he had been directed, was a capital hotel, but outside the walls. Still, the Calle del Prado, the Paseo there, were quite gay; and before them was the sweep of the Parque Isabel, where the band played. At the Hotel St. Louis, next door, many of the Spanish officers had their rooms, but at the hour of dinner they gathered in the Café Dominica. The Noble Havana was celebrated for its camarones--shrimps, Charles learned--and the Tuileries, at the juncture of Consulado and San Rafael Streets, had a salon upstairs especially for women. Most of his dinners, however, he would get at the Restaurant Français, excellently kept by François Garçon on Cuba Street, number seventy-two. There he would encounter the majority of his young fellow countrymen in Havana; the Café El Louvre would serve for sherbets after the theatre, and the Aguila de Oro.... The Plaza de Toros, of course, he would frequent: it was on Belascoin Street near the sea. The afternoon fights only were fashionable; the bulls killed in the morning were no more than toro del aguadiente. And the cockpit was at the Valla de Gallo. There were other suggestions as well, put mostly in the form of ribald inquiry; but toward them Charles Abbott persisted in an attitude of uncommunicative disdain. His mind, his whole determination, had been singularly purified; he had a sensation of remoteness from the flesh; his purpose killed earthly desire. He thought of himself now as dedicated to that: Charles reviewed the comfortable amount of his letter of credit, his personal qualifications, the derringer mounted in mother-of-pearl, in the light of one end. It annoyed him that he couldn't, at once, plunge into this with Domingo Escobar; but, whenever he approached that ordinarily responsive gentleman with anything political, he grew morose and silent, or else, more maddening still, deliberately put Charles' interest aside. The derringer, however, brought out an unexpected and gratifying stir. Escobar had stopped in Charles' cabin, and the latter, with a studied air of the casual, displayed the weapon on his berth. "You must throw it away," Escobar exclaimed dramatically; "at once, now, through the porthole." "I can't do that," Charles explained; "it was a gift from my father; besides, I'm old enough for such things." "A gift from your father, perhaps," the other echoed; "but did he tell you, I wonder, how you were going to get it into Cuba? Did he explain what the Spanish officials would do if they found you with a pistol? Dama de Caridad, do you suppose Cuba is New York! The best you could hope for would be deportation. Into the sea with it." But this Charles Abbott refused to do, though he would, he agreed, conceal it beyond the ingenuity of Spain; and Escobar left him in a muttering anger. Charles felt decidedly encouraged: a palpable degree of excitement, of tense anticipation, had been granted him. * * * * * Yet his first actual breath of the tropics, of Cuba, was very different, charged and surcharged with magical peace: the steamer was enveloped in an evening of ineffable lovely blueness. The sun faded from the world of water and left an ultramarine undulating flood with depths of clear black, the sky was a tender gauze of color which, as night approached, was sewn with a glimmer that became curiously apparent, seemingly nearby, stars. The air that brushed Charles' cheek was slow and warm; its warmth was fuller, heavier with potency, than any summer he had known. Accelerating his imagination it dissipated his energies; he lounged supine in his chair, long past midnight, lulled by the slight rise and fall of the sea, gathered up benignly into the beauty above him. Later he had to stir himself into the energy of packing, for the Morro Castle was docking early in the morning. He closed his bag thoughtfully, the derringer on a shelf. Escobar had spoken about it, warning him, again; and it was apparent that no obvious place of concealment would be sufficient. At last he hit on an excellent expedient--he would suspend it inside the leg of a trouser. He fell asleep, still saturated with the placid blue immensity without, and woke sharply, while it was still dark. But it was past four, and he rose and dressed. The deck was empty, deserted, and the light in the pilot house showed a solitary intent countenance under a glazed visor. There was, of course, no sign of Cuba. A wind freshened, it blew steadily with no change of temperature, like none of the winds with which he was familiar. It appeared to blow the night away, astern. The caged light grew dull, there were rifts in the darkness, gleams over the tranquil sea, and the morning opened like a flower sparkling in dew. The limitless reach of the water flashed in silver planes; miniature rainbows cascaded in the spray at the steamer's bow; a flight of sailing fish skittered by the side. Far ahead there was a faint silhouette, like the print of a tenuous green-grey cloud, on the sea. It grew darker, bolder; and Charles Abbott realized that it was an island. Cuba came rapidly nearer; he could see now that it wasn't pale; its foliage was heavy, glossy, almost sombre. The Morro Castle bore to the left, but he was unable to make out an opening, a possible city, on the coast. The water regained its intense blue, at once transparent, clear, and dyed with pigment. The other travellers were all on deck: Charles moved toward Domingo Escobar, but he eluded him. Undoubtedly Escobar had the conjunction of the derringer and the Spanish customs in mind. A general uneasiness permeated the small throng; they conversed with a forced triviality, or, sunk in thought, said nothing. Then, with the sudden drama of a crash of brass, of an abruptly lifting curtain, they swung into Havana harbor. Charles was simultaneously amazed at a great many things--the narrowness of the entrance, the crowded ships in what was no more than a rift of the sea, a long pink fortress above him at the left, and the city, Havana itself, immediately before him. His utmost desire was satisfied by that first glimpse. Why, he cried mentally, hadn't he been told that it was a city of white marble? That was the impression it gave him--a miraculous whiteness, a dream city, crowning the shining blue tide. Every house was hung with balconies on long shuttered windows, and everywhere were parks and palms, tall palms with smooth pewter-like trunks and short palms profusely leaved. Here, then, white and green, was the place of his dedication; he was a little dashed at its size and vigor and brilliancy. The steamer was scarcely moving when the customs officials came on board; and, as the drift ceased, a swarm of boats like scows with awnings aft clustered about them. Hotel runners clambered up the sides, and in an instant there was a pandemonium of Spanish and disjointed English. A man whose cap bore the sign Hotel Telégrafo clutched Charles Abbott's arm, but he sharply drew away, repeating the single word, "Inglaterra!" The porter of that hotel soon discovered him, and, with a fixed reassuring smile, got together all the baggage for his guests. Charles, instructed by Domingo Escobar, ignored the demand for passports, and proceeded to the boat indicated as the Inglaterra's. It was piled with luggage, practically awash; yet the boatmen urged it ashore, to the custom house, in a mad racing with the whole churning flotilla. The rigor of the landing examination, Charles thought impatiently, had been ridiculously exaggerated; but, stepping into a hack, two men in finely striped linen, carrying canes with green tassels, peremptorily stopped him. Charles was unable to grasp the intent of their rapid Spanish, when one ran his hands dexterously over his body. He explored the pockets, tapped Charles' back, and then drew aside. When, at last, he was seated in the hack, the position of the derringer was awkward, and carefully he shifted it. An intimate view of Havana increased rather than diminished its evident charms. The heat, Charles found, though extreme, was less oppressive than the dazzling light; the sun blazing on white walls, on walls of primrose and cobalt, in the wide verdant openings, positively blinded him. He passed narrow streets over which awnings were hung from house to house, statues, fountains, a broad way with files of unfamiliar trees, and stopped with a clatter before the Inglaterra. It faced on a broad covered pavement, an arcade, along which, farther down, were companies of small iron tables and chairs; and it was so foreign to Charles, so fascinating, that he stood lost in gazing. A hotel servant in white, at his elbow, recalled the necessity of immediate arrangements, and he went on into a high cool corridor set with a marble flooring. At the office he exchanged his passport for a solemn printed warning and interminable succession of directions; and then, climbing an impressive stair, he was ushered into a room where the ceiling was so far above him that once more he was overcome by strangeness and surprise. He unpacked slowly, with a gratifying sense of the mature significance of his every gesture; and, in the stone tub hidden by a curtain in a corner, had a refreshing bath. There was a single window rising from the tiled floor eight or ten feet, and he opened double shutters, discovering a shallow iron-railed balcony. Before him was a squat yellow building with a wide complicated façade; it reached back for a square, and Charles decided that it was the Tacon Theatre. On the left was the Parque de Isabel, with its grass plots and gravel walks, its trees and iron settees, gathered about the statue of Isabel II. Charles Abbott's confidence left him little by little; what had seemed so easy in New York, so apparent, was uncertain with Havana about him. The careless insolence of the inspectors with the green-tasseled canes at once filled him with indignation and depression. How was he to begin his mission? Without a word of Spanish he couldn't even make it known. There was Andrés Escobar to consider: his father had told Charles that he knew a few words of English. Meanwhile, hungry, he went down to the eleven o'clock breakfast. * * * * * A ceremonious head waiter led him to a small table by a long window on the Parque, where, gazing hastily at the breakfasts around him, he managed, with the assistance of his waiter's limited English, to repeat their principal features. These were fruit and salads, coffee flavored with salt, and French bread. Clear white curtains swung at the window in a barely perceptible current of air, and he had glimpses of the expanse without, now veiled and now intolerably brilliant. His dissatisfaction, doubts, vanished in an extraordinary sense of well-being, or settled importance and elegance. There were many people in the dining-room, it was filled with the unfamiliar sound of Spanish; the men, dark, bearded and brilliant-eyed, in white linens, with their excitable hands, specially engaged his attention, for it was to them he was addressed. The women he glanced over with a detached and indulgent manner: they were, on the whole, a little fatter than necessary; but their voices were soft and their dress and jewels, even so early in the day, nicely elaborate. All his interest was directed to the Cubans present; other travellers, like--or, rather, unlike--himself, Americans, French and English, planning in their loud several tongues the day's excursions, or breakfasting with gazes fastened on Hingray's English and Spanish Conversations, Charles carefully ignored. He felt, because of the depth of his own implication, his passionate self-commitment, here, infinitely superior to more casual, to blinder, journeyings. He disliked the English arrogance, the American clothes, and the suspicious parsimony of the French. Outside, in the main corridor of the hotel, he paused undecided; practically no one, he saw, in the Parque Isabel, was walking; there was an unending broad stream of single horse victorias for hire; but he couldn't ask any driver he saw to conduct him to the heart of the Cuban party of liberty. The strongest of all his recognitions was the fact that he had no desire--but a marked distaste--for sightseeing; he didn't want to be identified, in the eyes of Havana, with the circulating throng of the superficially curious. In the end he strolled away from the Inglaterra, to the left, and discovered the Prado. It was a wide avenue with the promenade in the center shaded by rows of trees with small burnished leaves. There, he remembered, was where the Escobars lived, and he wondered which of the imposing dwellings, blue or white, with sweeping pillars and carved balconies and great iron-bound doors, was theirs. He passed a fencing school and gymnasium; a dilapidated theatre of wood pasted with old French playbills; fountains with lions' heads; and came to the sea. It reached in an idyllic and unstirred blue away to the flawless horizon, with, on the rocks of its shore, a company of parti-colored bath-houses. There was an old fort, a gate--which, he could see, once formed part of the city wall--bearing on its top a row of rusted and antiquated cannon. Slopes of earth led down from the battery, and beyond he entered a covered stone way with a parapet dropping to the tranquil tide. After an open space, the Maestranza, he came to a pretty walk; it was the Paseo de Valdez, with trees, stone seats and a rippling breeze. Charles Abbott indolently examined an arch, fallen into disrepair, erected, its tablet informed him, by the corps of Royal Engineers. He sat on a bench, saturated by the hot vivid peace; before him reached the narrow entrance of the bay with, on the farther hand, the long pink wall of the Cabañas. A drift of military music came to him from the fortress.... A great love for Havana stirred in his heart; already, after only a few hours, he was familiar, contented, there. It seemed to Charles that he understood its spirit; the beauty of palms and marble was what, in the bleak north, all his life he had longed for. The constriction of his breathing had vanished. The necessity for an immediate and violent action had lessened; he would, when the time came, act; he was practically unlimited in days and money. Charles decided, however, to begin at once the study of Spanish; and he'd arrange for lessons at the Fencing School. Both of those accomplishments were imperative to his final intention. He lingered on the beach without an inclination to move--he had been lower physically than he realized. The heat increased, the breeze and band stopped, and finally he rose and returned to the Inglaterra. There the high cool shadow of his room was so soothing that he fell into a sound slumber and was waked only by a pounding at his door past the middle of afternoon. A servant tendered him a card that bore engraved the name Andrés Escobar. He would see Mr. Escobar, he sent word, as soon as he could be dressed. And, choosing his garb in a mingling of haste and particular care, he was permeated by an indefinable excitement. Facing Andrés, he had a sensation of his own clumsiness, his inept attitude; for the other, younger than he in appearance, was faultless in bearing: in immaculately ironed linen, a lavender tie and sprig of mimosa, he was an impressive figure of the best fashion. But Andrés Escobar was far more than that: his sensitive delicately modelled dark face, the clear brown eyes and level lips, were stamped with a superfine personality. His English, as his father had said, was halting, confined to the merest formal phrases, but his tones were warm with hospitality. "It was polite of you to come so soon," Charles replied; "and your father was splendid to me on the steamer." "How do you like Havana?" Andrés asked. "I love it!" Charles Abbott exclaimed, in a burst of enthusiasm, but of which, immediately after, he was ashamed. "I was thinking this morning," he continued more stiffly, "when I had hardly got here, how much at home I felt. That's funny, too; for it's entirely different from all I have known." "You like it!" Andrés Escobar reflected his unreserved tone. "That's good; I am very, very glad. You must come to our house, Papa sends you this." He smiled delightfully. They were standing, and Charles waved toward the dining-room. "Suppose we go in there and have a drink." In Havana he continually found himself in situations of the most gratifying maturity--here he was, in the dining-room of the Inglaterra Hotel, with a tall rum punch before him, and a mature looking cigar. He was a little doubtful about the latter, its length was formidable; and he delayed lighting it until Andrés had partly eclipsed himself in smoke. But, to his private satisfaction, Charles enjoyed the cigar completely. He liked his companion enormously, noticing, as they sat in a comfortable silence, fresh details: Andrés' hair, ink-black, grew in a peak on his forehead; the silk case which held his cigars was bound in gold; his narrow shoes were patent leather with high heels. But what, above all else, impressed Charles, was his evidently worldly poise, the palpable air of experience that clung to him. Andrés was at once younger and much older than himself. "How are you interested?" Andrés asked, "in ... girls? I know some very nice ones." "Not in the least," Charles Abbott replied decidedly; "the only thing I care for is politics and the cause of justice and freedom." * * * * * Andrés Escobar gazed swiftly at the occupied tables around them; not far away there was a party of Spanish officers in loose short tunics and blue trousers. Then, without commenting on Charles' assertion, he drank from his glass of punch. "Some very nice girls," he repeated. Charles was overwhelmed with chagrin at his indiscretion; Andrés would think that he was a babbling idiot. At the same time he was slightly impatient: his faith in the dangers of Havana had been shaken by the city's aspect of profound placidity, its air of unalloyed pleasure. "You should know my friends," Andrés went on conversationally; "Remigio Florez, they are great coffee planters, and Jaime--Jaime Quintara--and Tirso Labrador. They will welcome you, as I." Charles explained his intention of learning Spanish, of fencing; and the other promised his unreserved assistance. He would have a teacher of languages sent to the hotel and himself take Charles to the Fencing School. "Tomorrow," he promised. The drinks were finished, the cigars consumed in long ashes, and Andrés Escobar rose to go. As they walked toward the Paseo the Cuban said, "You must be very careful, liberty is a dangerous word; it is discussed only in private; in our tertulia you may speak." He held out a straight forward palm. "We shall be friends." Again in his room, Charles dwelt on Andrés, conscious of the birth of a great liking, the friendship the other had put into words. He wanted to be like Andrés, as slender and graceful, with his hair in a peak and a worldly, contained manner. Charles was thin, rather than slender, more awkward than not; decidedly fragile in appearance. And his experience of life had been less than nothing. Yet he would make up for this lack by the fervor of his attachment to the cause of Cuba. He recalled all the stories he knew of foreign soldiers heroic in an adopted cause; that was an even more ideal form of service than the natural attachment to a land of birth. He moved a chair out on his balcony, and sat above the extended irregular roof of the Tacon Theatre, watching the dusk flood the white marble ways. The lengthening shadows of the Parque blurred, joined in one; the façades were golden and then dimly violet; the Gate of Montserrat lost its boldness of outline. Cries rose from the streets, "Cuidado! Cuidado!" and "Narranjas, narranjas dulces." The evening news sheets were called in long falling inflections. What surprised him was that, although he had more than an ordinary affection for his home, his father and mother, now, here, they were of no importance, no reality, to him. He never, except by an objective effort, gave the north, the past, a thought. He was carried above personal relationships and familiar regard; at a blow his old ties had been severed; the new held him in the grip of their infinite possibilities. All the petty things of self were obscured in the same way that the individual aspects of the city below him were being merged into one dignity of tone. Yet, at the same time, his mood had a charming reality--the suaveness of Andrés Escobar. His, Charles Abbott's, would be a select, an aristocratic, fate; the end, when it overtook him, would find him in beautiful snowy linens, dignified, exclusive, to the last. His would be no pot-house brawling. That was his double necessity, the highest form of good in circumstances of the first breeding. One, perhaps, to his æsthetic fibre, was as important as the other. And, dressing for dinner, he spoiled three shirts in the exact right fixing of his studs. In the dining-room, he pressed a liberal sum of American money on the head waiter, and was conducted to the table he had occupied at breakfast. Everyone, practically, except some unspeakable tourists, was in formal clothes; and the conversations, the sparkling light, were like the champagne everywhere evident. Charles chose a Spanish wine, the Marquis de Riscal; and prolonged his sitting over coffee and a cigar, a Partagas, like those in Andrés' silk case. He had never before tasted coffee with such a rich thick savor, its fragrance alone, blending with the blue smoke of his cigar, filled him with pleasure. The room was long, tiled, and had, against the far wall, a great mirror which held in reverse the gay sweep of the tables, the heavily powdered shoulders of women, the prismatic flashes of diamonds and men's animated faces. The reflections were almost as fascinating as the reality, and Charles gazed from one to the other. Drinking, he saw, was universal, but none of the Cubans were drunk; and for that reason his attention was held by two men at the table next to his: the waiter had left a bottle of brandy, and the individual facing Charles, with a sallow face from which depended, like a curtain, a square-cut black beard, was filling and refilling his thimble-sized glass. He was watching, with a shifting intentness of gaze, all who entered; and suddenly, as Charles' eyes were on him, he put down his half-lifted brandy and a hand went under the fold of his coat. Charles turned, involuntarily, and saw a small immaculate Cuban with grey hair and a ribband in his buttonhole advancing among the tables. He was a man of distinguished appearance, important it was evident, for a marked number of people bowed as he passed. When he had gone on, the bearded individual rose, swaying slightly, and, with his hand still in his coat rapidly overtook the other. Charles Abbott had an impulse to cry out; but, oppressed by a sense of helpless dread, impending disaster, without a sound or power of movement he followed the course of the second figure. The two were now at the end of the dining-room, close to the mirror, when the man with the decoration stopped and turned sharply. There was the sudden stabbing report of a pistol, and, immediately following, a loud splintering crash. Charles had the crazy illusion that a man who had been shot was made of china, and would be found in broken bits on the floor. There was an instantaneous hysterical uproar, dominated by the screams of women; in the panic which rose there was a rush for the entrance, a swirl of tearing satin and black dress coats. Then, even before he heard the concerted derisive amazement, Charles realized that, dazed by the brandy, the intended murderer had fired at the reflection of his mark in the glass. What an utterly ridiculous error; and yet his hands were wet and cold, his heart pounding. Something of the masking gaiety, the appearance of innocent high spirits, was stripped from the dining-room of the Inglaterra, from Havana. There was an imperative need for Andrés Escobar's caution. Charles' equanimity returned: with a steady hand he poured out more coffee. He was ashamed of his emotion; but, by heaven, that was the first of such violence he had witnessed; he knew that it happened, to a large degree its possibility had brought him to Cuba; yet directly before him, in a square beard and a decorating ribband!... On the floor were the torn painted gauze and broken ivory sticks of a woman's fan. * * * * * The echo of that futile shot followed Charles Abbott to the Escobars', where, because of the often repeated names of its principals, he recognized that the affair was being minutely discussed. The room in which they sat was octagonal, with the high panels of its walls no more than frames for towering glass doors set in dark wood; above were serrated openings, Eastern in form, and the doors were supported by paired columns of glacial white marble. It was entered through a long corridor of pillars capped in black onyx with wicker chairs, a tiling laid in arabesques and potted palms; and opposite was the balcony over the Prado. A chandelier of crystal, hanging by a chain from the remote ceiling, with a frosted sparkle like an illuminated wedding cake, unaffected by prismatic green and red flashes, filled the interior with a chilly brightness. The chairs of pale gilt set in a circle, the marble pattern of the floor, the dark heads of the Escobars, looked as though they were bathed in a vitreous fluid preserving them in a hard pallor forever. But it was cool; the beginning constant night breeze fluttered the window curtains and swayed the pennants of smoke from the cigars. Domingo Escobar finished what was evidently a satirical period with a decisive clearing of his throat--a-ha! He was a small rotund man with a gigantic moustache laid without a brown hair misplaced over a mouth kindly and petulant. His wife, Carmita, obese with indulgent indolence, her placid expression faintly acid, waved a little hand, like a blanched almond, indicative of her endless surprise at the clamor of men. Andrés was silent, immobile, faultless in a severity of black and white. Charles had begun to admire him inordinately: above everything, Andrés possessed a simple warmness of heart, a generosity of emotion, together with a fastidious mind. Fortunate combination. And his person, his gestures and flashing speech, his brooding, were invested by an intangible quality of romance; whatever he did was absorbing, dramatic and--and fateful. He was a trifle aloof, in spite of his impulsive humanity, a thought withdrawn as though by a shadow that might have been but his unfailing dignity. Charles' gaze wandered from him to Narcisa, who, Domingo Escobar had said, resembled a flower bud. As she sat in pale yellow ruffles, with her slim hands clasped and her composed face framed in a wide dense stream of hair, she was decidedly fetching. Or, rather, she gave promise of charm; at present, she was too young to engage him in any considerable degree. Narcisa, he concluded, was fourteen. At very long intervals she looked up and he caught a lustrous, momentary interrogation of big black eyes. A very satisfactory sister for Andrés Escobar to have; and, wondering at the absence of Vincente, the eldest son, Charles asked Andrés about his brother. A marked constraint was immediately visible in the family around him. Vincente, he was informed abruptly, was out of Havana, he had had to go to Matanzas. Later, on the balcony over the Prado, Andrés added an absorbing detail. "Vincente, we think, is in the Party of Liberation. But you must say nothing. I do not know, Vincente will not speak; but mama has noticed the gendarmes in front of the house, and when she drives." "I should like to talk to him," Charles Abbott declared; "you must arrange it for me. Look here, there's nobody around, I might as well tell you that's why I came to Cuba, to fight the cursed Spanish. I'm--I'm serious, there's nothing I wouldn't do; and if I have to be killed, why, I am ready for that. It's all worked out in my head, except some petty little details. Cuba ought to be free; this oppression is horrible, like a spell on you--you're all afraid to more than whisper--that must be broken. It must! I have a good little bit of money and I can get more. You've got to help me." Andrés clasped his hand. "That is wonderful!" His lowered exclamation vibrated with feeling. "How can you have such nobility! I am given to it, and Jaime and Remigio Florez and Tirso. But we are going to wait, we think that is better; Spain shall pay us when the time comes. Those students, eight of them, who were shot, were well known to us. They put them against a wall by the prison and fired. You could hear it clearly. But, when we are ready, the Spanish Volunteers--" hatred closed his throat, drew him up rigidly. "Not yet," he insisted; "this shall be different, forever. Perhaps your country will help us then." Charles was increasingly impatient; he couldn't, he felt, wait, delay his gesture for freedom. He conceived the idea that he might kill the Captain-General of Spain in Cuba, shoot him from the step of his carriage and cry that it was a memorial of the innocent boys he had murdered. Andrés dissuaded him; it would, he said, only make the conditions of living more difficult, harsh, put off the other, the final, consummation. Below, on the promenade, the rows of gas lamps shone wanly through the close leaves of the India laurels; there was a ceaseless sauntering throng of men; then, from the Plaza de Armas, there was the hollow rattat of drums, of tattoo. It was nine o'clock. The night was magnificent, and Charles Abbott was choked by his emotions; it seemed to him that his heart must burst with its expanding desire of heroic good. He had left the earth for cloudy glories, his blood turned to a silver essence distilled in ethereal honor; he was no longer a body, but a vow, a purpose. One thing, in a surpassing humility, he decided, and turned to Andrés. "Very well, if you think the other is best. Listen to me: I swear never to leave Cuba, never to have a different thought or a hope, never to consider myself at all, until you are free." The intent face of Andrés Escobar, dim in the gloom of the balcony, was like a holy seal upon his dedication. A clatter of hoofs rose from below--the passage of a squad of the gendarmes on grey horses, their white coats a chalky glimmer in the night. Andrés and Charles watched them until they vanished toward the Parque Isabel; then Andrés swore, softly. Again in his room at the Inglaterra Charles speculated about the complications of his determination to stay in Cuba until it was liberated from Spain. That, he began to realize, might require years. Questions far more difficult rose than any created by a mere immediate sacrifice; the attitude of his father, for example; he, conceivably, would try to force him home, shut off the supply of money. Meanwhile, since the Inglaterra was quite expensive, he would move to a less pretentious place. And, in the morning, Charles installed himself at the Hotel San Felipe, kept on Ancha del Norte Street, near the bay, by a German woman. His room was on the top floor, on, really, a gallery leading to the open roof that was much frequented after dinner in a cooling air which bore the restrained masculine chords of guitars. On the right he could see the flares of Morro Castle, and, farther, the western coast lying black on the sea. He had his room there, and the first breakfast, but his formal breakfast and dinner he took at the Restaurant Français, the Aguila d'Oro, or the Café Dominica. Late, with Andrés and their circle, their tertulia, Charles would idle at the El Louvre over ice-cream or the sherbets called helados in Havana. On such occasions they talked with a studied audible care of the most frivolous things; while Charles cherished close at heart the sensation of their dangerous secret and patient wisdom, the assurance that some day their sacred resolution would like lightning shatter their pretence of docility. * * * * * Yet, in spite of the dark texture of their minds, they were, at times, casually happy, intent, together, on mundane affairs. They were, all five, inseparable: Jaime Quintara, the eldest, was even more of an exquisite than Andrés; he imported his lemon-colored gloves by the box from Paris, where they were made to his measure; and in them, it was the common jest, he went to bed. He was almost fat, with absurdly small feet and a perceptible moustache. In addition, he was in love with a public girl who lived on Gloria Street; altogether he was a man of the world. Remigio Florez was absolutely different: the son of a great coffee estate in Pinar del Rio, of limitless riches, he was still simple and unaffected, short, with a round cheerful face and innocent lips. Tirso Labrador was tall and heavy, he had the carriage of a cavalry officer, a dragoon; and, slow mentally, his chief characteristic was a remarkable steadfastness, a loyalty of friendship, admiration, for his more brilliant companions. Tirso Labrador was very strong, and it was his boast, when they were alone, that he intended to choke a Spaniard slowly to death with his naked hands. Except, however, for the evening, Charles was rarely idle; upheld by his fervor he studied Spanish with an instructor through most of the morning, and rode or fenced in the sala in the afternoon. His knowledge of Spanish, supplemented by his friends, grew rapidly; he had, his teacher declared, a very special aptitude for the language. Domingo Escobar got great delight from throwing sentences, queries, at him with inconceivable rapidity, and in pretending that every reply Charles attempted was senseless. Narcisa, when he was present, contrived to sit with her gaze on her hands folded in her ruffled lap and to lift her widely opened eyes for breathless interrogations. She was, Charles was forced to admit, notably pretty; in fact, for a little girl, she was a beauty. Now if she had been thirty he might have had a hopeless passion for her, hopeless not because she failed to return it, but for the reason that he was a man without a future--some day, they both knew, he would desert love for stark death. They went, Charles and Andrés, Tirso and Remigio and Jaime, to the Tacon Theatre for every play, where they occupied a box in the first row, the primer piso, and lounged, between the acts, on the velvet rail with their high silk hats and canes and boutonnières. At times there were capital troupes of players and dancers from Andalusia, and the evening was well spent. They liked, too, the zarzuelas, the operettas of one act, largely improvised with local allusions. But they most warmly applauded the dancers. One, La Clavel, from Seville, had been announced by posters all over the city; and, at the moment she appeared on the Tacon stage, Tirso had his heavy arm about Remigio's shoulders, Jaime's gloved hands were draped over his cane, and Charles was sitting in the rear of the box with Andrés. The orchestra began a sharply accented dance measure--it was a jota--and a lithe figure in a mantón of blazing silks and a raked black felt hat made a sultry bow. La Clavel was indolent; she tapped a heel and sounded her castanets experimentally; a reminiscent smile hovered on the sombre beauty of her face. Suddenly Charles' attention was wholly captured by the dancer; he leaned forward, gazing over Remigio's shoulder, vaguely conscious of the sound of guitars and suppressed drums, the insistent ring of a triangle. She stamped her foot now, and the castanets were sharp, exasperated. Then slowly she began to dance. She wove a design of simple grace with her hips still and her arms lifted and swaying; she leaned back, her eyes, under the slanted brim of her hat, half closed; and her movements, the rhythm, grew more pronounced. Through the music Charles could hear the stamp of her heels, the augmented shrilling of the castanets. Her fire increased; there were great scarlet peonies on her shawl, and they fluttered as though they were troubled by a rising wind. La Clavel swept in a widening circle on her hips, and her arms were now extended and now thrust down rigidly behind her. She dominated the cruel colors of her shawl with a savage intensity that made them but the expressions of her feelings--the scarlet and magenta and burning orange and blue were her visible moods, her capriciousness and contempt and variability and searing passion. Her hat was flung across the stage, and, with her bound hair shaking loose from its high shell comb, she swept into an appalling fury, a tormented human flame, of ecstasy. When Charles Abbott felt that he could support it no longer, suddenly she was, apparently, frozen in the immobility of a stone; the knotted fringe of her mantón hung without a quiver. An uproar of applause rose from the theatre, a confusion of cries, of Olé! Olé! Anda! Anda! Chiquella! A flight of men's hats sailed like birds around her. Jaime Quintara pounded his cane until it broke, and, with the others, Charles shouted his unrestrained Spanish approbation. They crowded into the front of the box, intent on every movement, every aspect, of the dancer. Afterwards, at the Tuileries, Andrés expressed their concerted feeling: "The most magnificent woman alive!" Jaime went across the café to speak to a man who had a connection with the Tacon Theatre. He returned with an assortment of information--La Clavel was staying at the St. Louis; she would be in Havana for a month; and she had been seen with Captain Ceaza y Santacilla, of the regiment of Isabel II. This latter fact cast them into a gloom; and Remigio Florez so far broke the ban of sustained caution as to swear, in the name of the Lady of Caridad, at Santacilla and his kind. Nothing, though, could reduce their enthusiasm for La Clavel; they worshipped her severally and together, discussing to the last shading her every characteristic. She was young, but already the greatest dancer the world had--would ever have, Charles added. And Andrés was instructed to secure the box for her every appearance in Havana; they must learn, they decided, if she were to dance in Santiago de Cuba, in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, in Cathay. They, if it were mortally possible, would be present. Meanwhile none of them was to take advantage of the others in the contingency that she should miraculously come to love him. That incredible happiness the individual must sacrifice to his friendship, to his oath above all other oaths--Cuba. The country's name was not spoken, but it was entirely understood. They were seated on the lower floor, by the stairs which led up to the salon for women; and, sharply, Charles grasped Andrés' arm. Passing them was a slender woman muffled in a black silk capote, with no hat to cover the intricate mass of her hair piled against a high comb. Behind her strode a Spanish officer of cavalry, his burnished scabbard hooked on his belt against its silver chain; short, with a thick sanguine neck above the band of his tunic, he had morose pale blue eyes and the red hair of compounded but distinct bloods. "La Clavel," Charles whispered; "and it must be that filthy captain, Santacilla, with her." * * * * * Seated on the roof of the Hotel San Felipe, the night's trade wind faintly vibrant with steel strings, Charles Abbott thought at length about La Clavel. Two weeks had passed since she first danced at the Tacon Theatre; she had appeared on the stage three times afterward; and she was a great success, a prodigious favorite, in Havana. Charles and Andrés, Jaime and Remigio and Tirso Labrador, had, frankly, become infatuated with her; and it was this feeling which Charles, at present, was examining. If it endangered the other, his dedication to an ordeal of right, he had decided, he must resolutely put the dancer wholly outside his consideration. This, he hoped, would not be necessary: his feeling for La Clavel lay in the realm of the impersonal. It was, in fact, parallel with the other supreme cause. La Clavel was a glittering thing of beauty, the perfection of all that in a happier world, an Elysium--life and romance might be. He regarded her in a mood of decided melancholy as something greatly desirable and never to be grasped. When she danced his every sensibility was intensified; life, for the moment, was immeasurably lovely, flooded with lyrical splendor, vivid with gorgeous color and aching happiness. Charles' pleasure in every circumstance of being was acutely expanded--his affection for Andrés, the charm of Havana, the dignity of his impending fate. Ordinarily he would not have been content with this; he would have striven to turn such abstractions into the concrete of an actual experience. But now an unusual wisdom held him intent on the vision; that, he recognized, was real; but what the reality, the woman herself, was, who could be sure? No, he wasn't in love with La Clavel in the accepted sense of that indefinite term; he was the slave of the illusion, the emotions, she spun; he adored her as the goddess of his youth and aspirations. He tried to explain this, in halting and inadequate Spanish, to his tertulia; and because of his spirit rather than his words, his friends understood him. They were standing by the marble statue of Ferdinand VII in the Plaza de Armas, waiting for the ceremony of Retrata, to begin in a few moments. The square was made of four gardens, separated by formal walks, with a circular glorieta; and the gardens, the royal palms and banyans and flambeau trees, were palely lighted by gas lamps which showed, too, the circling procession of carriages about the Plaza. The square itself was filled with sauntering men, a shifting pattern of white linens, broad hats and glimmering cigars, diversified by the uniforms of Spain. At eight o'clock a sergeant's guard and the band marched smartly into position before the Governor-General's palace, where they stood at rest until the drums of the barracks announced retreat. Then, at attention, the gun of El Morro sounded, and the band swept into the strains of Philemon et Baucis. Jaime Quintara smiled sceptically at Charles' periods: Platonic sentiments might satisfy Abbott, he declared, but for himself.... At this, Remigio insisted on their moving out to inspect the carriages. They were, for the most part, quitrins, drawn with two horses, one outside the shafts ridden by a calesero in crimson velvet laced with gold and a glazed hat. The quitrins had two wheels, a leather hood strapped back, and held three passengers by means of a small additional seat, called, Andrés explained, la niña bonita, where the prettiest woman was invariably placed. None of the women wore hats, but they were nearly all veiled, and the carriages were burdened with seductive figures in wide dresses of perfumed white waving slow fans. There was, however, little conversation between the men on foot and the women carefully cultivating expressions of remote unconcern. Rarely, if she were accompanied by a masculine member of her family, a woman came to earth for a short stroll in the gardens. Charles was absolutely inattentive to them, but his companions, particularly Tirso and Jaime, noted and, with dismaying freedom, commented on every feminine detail that struck their fancy. It was Tirso who excitedly called their attention to one of the new volantas in which sat La Clavel. Ceaza y Santacilla was not with her; the place at her side was occupied by the man to whom Jaime had spoken about the dancer in the Tuileries. Quintara, capturing his attention, spoke in his profoundest manner. There was a halt in the movement of carriages, and La Clavel was directly before them. She wore the high comb and a mantilla of black lace falling in scalloped folds around the vivid flower of her face--her beauty, at least to Charles, was so extraordinary, her dark loveliness was so flaming, that the scarlet camellia in her hair seemed wan. They were, all four, presented to the dancer; and four extreme bows, four fervid and sonorous acknowledgments, rose to the grace, the divinity, above. It seemed to Charles that, perhaps because he was an American, La Clavel noticed him more than the others: certainly she smiled at him and the brilliancy of her gaze was veiled, made enigmatic, by the lowering of her sweeping eyelashes. The checked restlessness of the horses was again released in a deliberate progress, but, as La Clavel was carried on, the man with her added that, after Retreta, they would stop at the El Louvre for an ice cream, a mantecado. Remigio Florez drew in a deep breath which he allowed to escape in the form of a sigh; Jaime smoothed the wrists of his bright yellow gloves; Tirso Labrador settled his guardsman's shoulders into his coat. "She won't get out of the volanta," Charles said thoughtfully; "and someone will have to bring out her refresco. We'd better get there early and stand at the door." "No hurry," the suave Jaime put in; "no one will leave here until after tattoo." At nine o'clock the drums and bugles sounded from various parts of the city. There was one more tune played directly under the palace windows, after which the band and its guards left briskly to the measure of a quickstep. Charles led the way through the crowd to the Prado and the Parque Isabel. A number of carriages were there before them, the occupants mostly eating ices, and the café was being rapidly filled. Waiting keen-eyed at the entrance, they saw the volante with La Clavel before it drew up, and the calesero had scarcely dismounted from his horse when the dancer was offered her choice of the available sweets. She preferred, rather than an ice, an orchata, and sipped it slowly with an air of complete enjoyment. Her every movement, Charles Abbott saw, the turn of the hand holding the glass, her chin and throat against the black film of lace, her slender body's poise, was utterly and strongly graceful: it was, more than any other quality, the vigor of her beauty that impressed him. It seemed as though she must be superbly young, and dance magnificently, forever. As Charles was considering this he was unceremoniously thrust aside for the passage of Captain Santacilla with another cavalry officer whose cinnamon colored face was stamped with sultry ill-humor. Santacilla addressed the dancer aggressively with the query of why she misspent her evening with the cursed Cuban negroes. * * * * * La Clavel made no reply, but tended her empty glass to Andrés; then she glanced indifferently at the captains. "Their manners," she said, "are very pretty; and as for the negro--" she shrugged her delectable shoulders. "My blood is as pure, as Castilian, as your own," Tirso Labrador began hotly; but Remigio stilled him with a hand on his arm. In an uncolored voice he begged the dancer to excuse them; and, sweeping off their hats, they were leaving when Santacilla's companion stepped forward in a flash of ungoverned anger like an exposed knife: "I've noticed you before," he addressed Tirso, "hanging and gabbling around the cafés and theatres, and it's my opinion you are an insurrectionist. If the truth were known, I dare say, it would be found you are a friend to Cespedes. Anyhow, I'm tired of looking at you; if you are not more retiring, you will find yourself in the Cabañas." "Good evening," Remigio repeated in an even tone. With his hand still on Tirso's arm he tried to force him into the café; but the other, dark with passion, broke away. "You have dishonored my father and the name of a heroic patriot," he said to the officer of cavalry. "In this I am alone." With a suspicious quickness he leaned forward and his big hands shut about the Spaniard's throat. Charles, with a suppressed exclamation, recalled Tirso's determination to choke one of the enemies of Cuba. The man in the gripping fingers stiffened and then, grotesquely, lost his aspect of a human form; suddenly he was no more than a thing of limp flesh and gay fabrics. Instantly an uproar, a surging passionate excitement grew, at the heart of which Tirso Labrador was curiously still. Heaving bodies, at once closing in and prudently scattering, hid from Charles his friend. There was an onrush of gendarmes, harsh exclamations and oaths; then, at the flash of steel, a short agonized cry--Tirso's voice at once hoarse and inhuman with death. Charles Abbott, hurrying away at Andrés' urgent insistence, caught a final glimpse of a big young body sunk on the flagging of the Paseo; he saw a leaden face and a bubbling tide of blood. Beyond the Montserrat gate they halted, and he was shocked to hear Remigio Florez curse Tirso as brutally as any Spaniard. Andrés, white and trembling, agreed. "Here is what I warned you of," he turned to Charles; "it is fatal to lose your temper. You think that what Tirso did ends with him in purgatory ... ha! Perhaps he is best out of it among us all. It might be better for you to go back to America tomorrow and forget about Cuba." "Yes," Remigio added, "probably we are all ruined; and certainly the police spies will be waiting for us at home." "It would have been better if we had dissipated more," Jaime added: "we have been entirely too high-minded and unnatural. Young men meet together only to conspire or find love--the Spaniards know that and we were fools." "We haven't been suspected of anything," Andrés pointed out; "and it may be said that Tirso was killed defending his name. No, the trouble is to come; and it wasn't our fault. We must see less of each other, at least in public, and be quite overcome about Tirso; that is another account I charge to Spain: I knew him when I was a child ... in the Vuelta Arriba--" Andrés Escobar began to cry wholly and unaffectedly; he leaned against an angle of the gate, his head in an arm, and prolonged sobs shook his body. Tears were silently streaming over Jaime's face, but Charles Abbott's eyes were dry. He was filled by an ecstasy of horror and detestation at the brutal murder of Tirso. Fear closed his throat and pinched his heart with icy fingers; but he ignored, rose above, himself, in a tremendous accession of his determination to drive injustice--if not yet from the world--from Cuba. How little, he thought, anyone knew him who advised a return to America. Before the cold violent fact of death a great part of his early melodramatic spirit evaporated; the last possible trace of any self-glorification left him, the lingering mock-heroics of boyhood were gone. His emotion, now, was almost exultant; like a blaze of insuperable white light it drowned all the individual colors of his personality; it appeared to him almost that he had left the earth, that he was above other men. More than anything, he continued, he would require wisdom, the wisdom of patience, maturity; Tirso had been completely wasted. He was seated, again, on the roof of his hotel, and again it was night: the guitars were like a distant sounding of events evolved in harmonies, and there was the gleam of moonlight on the sea, a trace of the moon and the scent of mignonette trees. He was, he felt, very old, grave, in deportment; this detachment from living must be the mark of age. Charles had always been a little removed from activity by sickness; and now his almost solitary, dreaming habit of existence had deepened in him. He thought, from time to time, of other periods than his own, of ages when such service as his had been, for gentlemen, the commonplace of living: he saw, in imagination, before the altar of a little chapel, under the glimmer of tall candles, a boyish figure kneeling in armor throughout the night. At morning, with a faint clashing of steel, the young knight under a vow rode into black forests of enchanted beasts and men and impure magic, from which he delivered the innocent and the pure in heart. Charles Abbott recalled the burning of the Protestant Cranmer, and, as well, the execution of John Felton for posting the Papal bull against the Queen on the door of London House. They too, like the knights of Arthurian legend, had conquered the flesh for an ideal. He was carried in spirit into a whole world of transcendent courage, into a company who scorned ease and safety in the preservation of an integrity, a devotion, above self. This gave him a release, the sense that his body was immaterial, that filled him with a calm serious fervor. He was conscious, through this, of the ceaseless playing of the guitars, strains of jotas and malagueñas, laden with the seductiveness, the fascination, of sensuous warm life. It was, in its persistence, mocking; and finally it grew into a bitter undertone to the elevation of his thought: he wanted, like Savonarola, to bring to an end the depravity of the city; he wanted to cleanse Havana of everything but the blanched heavenly ardor of his own dedication. The jotas continued and the scent of mignonette increased. The moon, slipping over the sea, shone with a vague brightness on the leaves of the laurels below, on the whiteness of marble walks, and in the liquid gleam of fountains. A woman laughed with a note of uncertainty and passion.... It was all infinitely removed from him, not of the slightest moment. What rose, dwelt, in Charles was a breath of eternity, of infinitude; he was lost in a vision of good beyond seasons, changeless, and for all men whomsoever. It must come, he told himself so tensely that he was certain he had cried his conviction aloud. The music sustained its burden of earthly desire to which the harsh whispering rustle of the palm fronds added a sound like a scoffing laughter. * * * * * At the Plaza de Toros, the following Sunday afternoon, Charles saw La Clavel; she was seated on an upper tier near the stand of the musicians, over the entrance for the bulls; and, in an audience composed almost entirely of men, she was brilliantly conspicuous in a flaming green mantón embroidered in white petals; her mantilla was white, and Charles could distinguish the crimson blot of the flower by her cheek. The brass horns and drums of the band were making a rasping uproar, and the crowded wooden amphitheatre was tense with excitement. Andrés Escobar, beside Charles, was being gradually won from a settled melancholy; and, in an interested voice, he spoke to Charles about the espada, José Ponce, who had not yet killed a bull in Cuba, but who was a great hero of the ring in Spain and South America. "There is La Clavel," Charles said by way of reply; "she is with Captain Santacilla, and I think, but I can't be sure, the officer Tirso tried to choke to death. What is his name--de Vaca, Gaspar Arco de Vaca." "Even that," Andrés answered, "wasn't accomplished. La Clavel's engagement in Havana is over; I suppose it will be Buenos Aires next. Do you remember how we swore to follow her all over the world, and how Tirso wanted to drag her volanta in place of the horses? At heart, it's no doubt, she is Spanish, and yet.... There's the procession." The key bearer, splendid in velvet and gold and silver, with a short cloak, rode into the ring followed by the picadores on broken-down horses: their legs were swathed in leather and their jackets, of ruby and orange and emerald, were set with expensive lace. They carried pikes with iron points; while the banderilleros, on foot, with hair long and knotted like a woman's, hung their bright cloaks over an arm and bore the darts gay with paper rosettes. The espada, José Ponce, was greeted with a savage roar of approbation; he was dressed in green velvet, his zouave jacket heavy with gold bullion; and his lithe slender dark grace recalled to Charles Abbott La Clavel. Charles paid little attention to the bull fighting, for he was far in the sky of his altruism; his presence at the Plaza de Toros was merely mechanical, the routine of his life in Havana. Across from him the banked humanity in the cheaper seats à sol, exposed to the full blaze of mid-afternoon, made a pattern without individual significance; he heard the quick bells of the mules that dragged out the dead bulls; a thick revolting odor rose from the hot sand soaked with the blood and entrails of horses. At times, half turning, he saw the brilliant shawl of the dancer, and more than once he distinguished her voice in the applause following a specially skilful or daring pass. He thought of her with a passionate admiration unaffected by the realization that she had brought them the worst of luck: perhaps any touch of Spain was corrupting, fatal. And the sudden desire seized him to talk to La Clavel and make sure that her superb art was unshadowed by the disturbing possibilities voiced by Andrés. There were cries of fuego! fuego! and Charles Abbott was conscious of a bull who had proved indifferent to sport. A banderillero, fluttering his cloak, stepped forward and planted in the beast's shoulder a dart that exploded loudly with a spurt of flame and smoke; there was a smothered bellow, and renewed activities went forward below. "What a rotten show!" Charles said to Andrés, and the latter accused him of being a tender sentimentalist. José Ponce, Andrés pronounced with satisfaction, was a great sword. The espada was about to kill: he moved as gracefully as though he were in the figure of a dance; his thrust, as direct as a flash of lightning, went up to the hilt, and the vomiting bull fell in crashing death at his feet. "Suppose, for a change, we go to the Aguila de Oro," Andrés suggested; "the air is better there." By that he meant that the café was relatively free from Spaniards. The throng moved shoulder to shoulder slowly to the doors; but Charles managed to work his way constantly nearer the conspicuous figure of La Clavel. He despaired, however, of getting close to her, when an unforeseen eddy of humanity separated the dancer from her companions and threw her into Charles' path. She recognized him immediately: but, checking his formal salutation, she said, in a rapid lowered voice, that she would very much like to see him ... at the St. Louis late on the afternoon of tomorrow. They were separated immediately, leaving in Charles a sense of excited anticipation. He joined Andrés soon after and told him what had occurred. "I suppose it is safe for you," Andrés decided; "you are an American, no one has yet connected you with the cause of Cuba. But this woman--What do we know of her?--you'll have to be prudent!" Andrés Escobar had grown severe in the last week, he had hardened remarkably; his concentration, Charles felt, his bitterness, even excluded his friends. Charles Abbott's affection for him increased daily; his love, really, for Andrés was a part of all that was highest in him. Unlike the love of any woman, Andrés made no demand on him, what only mattered was what each intrinsically was: there were no pretence, no weary protestations, nothing beside the truth of their mutual regard, their friendship. What Charles possessed belonged equally, without demand, to Andrés; they had, aside from their great preoccupation, the same thoughts and prejudices, the same taste in refrescos and beauty and clothes. They discovered fresh identical tastes with a rush of happiness. It was, like the absorbing rest, immaterial, the negation of ordinary aims and ideas of comfort and self-seeking. Charles would have died for Andrés, Andrés for Charles, without of a moment's hesitation; indeed, the base of their feeling lay in the full recognition of that fact. This they admitted simply, with no accent of exaggeration or boasting: on the present plane of their being it was the most natural thing in the world. At the Aguila de Oro, spinning the paddle of a molinillo, and individual chocolate mill, Andrés informed Charles that Vincente was home. "He has told me everything," Andrés Escobar continued with pride. "We are now more than Escobars--brother Cubans. He has been both shot and sabred and he has a malaria. But nearly all his friends are dead. Soon, he says, we, Jaime and Remigio--and, I added, you--will have to go out. He is to let us know when and how." "Do the police know he is in Havana?" "We think not; they haven't been about the house since the investigation of the de Vaca affair, and our servants are not spies. You must come and see Vincente this evening, for he may leave at any hour. It seems that he is celebrated for his bravery and the Spaniards have marked him for special attention. Papa and mama are dreadfully disturbed, and not only because of him; for if he is discovered, all of us, yes, little Narcisa, will be made to pay--to a horrible degree, I can tell you." * * * * * There was, apparently, nothing unusual in the situation at the Escobars' when Charles called in the evening. The family, exactly as he had known it, was assembled in the drawing-room, conversing under the icy flood of the crystal chandelier. He found a chair by Narcisa, and listened studiously to the colloquial Spanish, running swiftly around the circle, alternating with small thoughtful silences. Soon, however, Charles Abbott could see that the atmosphere was not normal--the vivacity palpably was forced through the shadow of a secret apprehension. Domingo Escobar made sudden seemingly irrelevant gestures, Carmita sighed out of her rotundity. Only Narcisa was beyond the general subdued gloom: in her clear white dress, her clocked white silk stockings, and the spread densely black curtain of her hair, she was intent on a wondering thought of her own. Her gaze, as usual, was lowered to her loosely clasped hands; but, growing conscious of Charles' regard, she looked up quickly, and, holding his eyes, smiled at him with an incomprehensible sweetness. He regarded her with a gravity no more than half actual--his mind was set upon Vincente--and her even pallor was invaded by a slow soft color. Charles nodded, entirely friendly, and she turned away, so abruptly that her hair swung out and momentarily hid her profile. He forgot her immediately, for he had overheard, half understood, an allusion to the Escobars' elder son. With a growing impatience he interrogated Andrés, and the latter nodded a reassurance. Then Andrés Escobar rose, punctiliously facing his father--he would, with permission, take Charles to the upper balconies, the wide view from which he had never seen. Domingo was plainly uneasy, displeased; but, after a long frowning pause, gave his reluctant consent. Charles Abbott was acutely aware of his heels striking against the marble steps which, broad, imposing and dark, led above. Vincente, it developed, without actually being in hiding, was limited to the scope of the upper hall, where, partly screened in growing palms, its end formed a small salon. There was a glimmer of light though sword-like leaves, and a lamp on an alabaster table set in ormolu cast up its illumination on a face from which every emotion had been banished by a supreme weariness. Undoubtedly at one time Vincente Escobar had been as handsome as Andrés; more arbitrary, perhaps, with a touch of impatience resembling petulance; the carriage, the air, of a youth spoiled by unrestrained inclination and society. The ghost of this still lingered over him, in the movement of his slender hands, the sharp upflinging of his chin; but it was no more than a memento of a gay and utterly lost past. The weariness, Charles began to realize, was the result of more than a spent physical and mental being--Vincente was ill. He had acquired a fever, it was brought out, in the jungles of Camagüey. At first he was wholly indifferent to Charles; at the end of Andrés' enthusiastic introduction, after a flawless but perfunctory courtesy, Vincente said: "The United States is very important to us; we have had to depend almost entirely on the New York Junta for our life. We have hope, too, in General Grant. Finally your country, that was so successful in its liberation, will understand us completely, and sweep Spain over the sea. But, until that comes, we need only money and courage in our, in Cuban, hearts. You are, I understand from Andrés, rich; and you are generous, you will give?" That direct question, together with its hint at the personal unimportance of his attachment to a cause of pure justice, filled Charles with both resentment and discomfort. He replied stiffly, in halting but adequate Spanish, that there had been a misunderstanding: "I am not rich; the money I have you would think nothing--it might buy a stand or two of rifles, but no more. What I had wanted to spend was myself, my belief in Cuba. It seemed to me that might be worth something--" he stopped, in the difficulty of giving expression to his deep convictions; and Andrés warmly grasped his hand. He held Charles' palm and addressed his brother in a passionate flood of protest and assertion: Charles Abbott, his dear friend, was as good a patriot as any Escobar, and they should all embrace him in gratitude and welcome; he was, if not the gold of the United States, its unselfish and devoted heart; his presence here, his belief in them, was an indication of what must follow. "If he were killed," Andrés explained. "That alone would bring us an army; the indignation of his land would fall like a mountain on our enemies." This, giving Charles a fresh view of his usefulness, slightly cooled his ardor; he was willing to accept it, in his exalted state he would make any sacrifice for the ideal that had possessed him; but there was an acceptance of brutal unsentimental fact in the Latin fibre of the Escobars foreign to his own more romantic conceptions. Vincente wasn't much carried away by the possibility Andrés revealed. "He'd be got out of the way privately," he explained in his drained voice; "polite letters and no more, regrets, would be exchanged. The politicians of Washington are not different from those of Cuba. If he is wise he will see Havana as an idler. Even you, Andrés, do not know yet what is waiting for you. It is one thing to conspire in a balcony on the Prado and another to lie in the marshes of Camagüey. You cannot realize how desperate Spain is with the debt left from her wars with Morocco and Chile and Peru. Cuba, for a number of years, has been her richest possession. While the Spaniards were paying taxes of three dollars and twenty some cents, we, in Cuba, were paying six dollars and sixty-nine. After our declaration of independence at Manzanillo--" an eloquent pause left his hearers to the contemplation of what had followed. "You know how it has gone with us," Vincente continued, almost exclusively to the younger Escobar. "Carlos Cespedes left his practice of the law at Bayamo for a desperate effort with less than a hundred and thirty men. But they were successful, and in a few weeks we had fifteen thousand, with the constitution of a republican government drawn. We ended slavery," here, for a breath, he addressed Charles Abbott. "But in that," he specified, "we were different from you. In the United States slavery was considered as only a moral wrong. Your Civil War was, after all, an affair of philanthropy; while we freed the slaves for economic reasons. "Well, our struggle went on," he returned to Andrés, "and we were victorious, with, at the most, fifty thousand men against how many? One, two, hundred thousand. And we began to be recognized abroad, by Bolivia and Columbia and the Mexican Congress. The best Cubans, those like ourselves, were in sympathy with the insurrection. Everything was bright, the climate, too, was fighting for us; and then, Andrés, we lost man after man, the bravest, the youngest, first: they were murdered, as I may be tonight, killed among the lianas, overtaken in the villages, smothered in small detachments by great forces, until now. And it is for that I have said so much, when it is unnecessary to pronounce a word. What do you think is our present situation? What do you think I left of our splendid effort in the interior? General Agramonte and thirty-five men. That and no more! "Their condition you may see in me--wasted, hardly stronger than pigeons, and less than half armed. What, do you think, one boy from Pennsylvania is worth to that? Can he live without food more than half the time, without solid land under his feet, without protection against the mosquitoes and heat and tropical rains? And in Havana: but remember your friend, Tirso Labrador! You, Andrés, have no alternative; but your Charles Abbott he would be a danger rather than an assistance." Charles, with a prodigious effort at a calm self-control, answered him. "You are very thoughtful, and it is right to be cautious, but what you say is useless. Andrés understands! I'd never be satisfied to be anything except a Cuban patriot. It isn't necessary for you to understand that in a minute, an evening. I might be no good in Camagüey, but I am not as young as Tirso; I am more bitter and patient. By heaven, I will do something, I will be a part of your bravery! Not only the soldiers in the field, not only Agramonte, but sacrifice--" * * * * * Charles' throat was closed, his words stopped, by the intensity of his feeling; his longing to be identified, lost, in the spirit of General Agramonte and the faithful thirty-five burned into a desperation of unhappiness. Vincente Escobar, it was evident, thought that he wasn't capable of sustaining such a trust. Still there was nothing to be gained by protests, hot asseverations; with difficulty he suppressed his resentment, and sat, to all appearances, calm, engaged with a cigar and attending Vincente's irregular vehement speech. Andrés was silent, dark and serious; but the gaze he turned upon Charles was warm with affection and admiration. Nothing, Vincente insisted, could be done now; they must wait and draw into their cause every possible ultimate assistance and understanding. If the truth were known, he repeated again and again, the world would be at their feet. Finally, his enthusiasm, his power, ebbed; his yellow pinched face sank forward: he was so spent, so delivered to a loose indifference of body, that he might well have been dead. Charles rose with a formal Spanish period voicing the appreciation of the honor that had been his. "We are all worried about Vincente," Andrés proceeded, as they were descending the vault-like stairs; "there is a shadow on him like bad luck. But it may be no more than the fever. Our mother thinks he needs only her love and enough wine jelly." They were again in the drawing-room with the Escobars; and Charles momentarily resumed the seat he had left beside Narcisa. Domingo and his wife were submerged in gloomy reflection, and Andrés sat with his gaze fixed on the marble, patterned in white and black, of the floor. Suddenly Narcisa raised her head with an air of rebellion. "It's always like the church," she declared incredibly. "Everything has got so old that I can't bear it--Vincente as good as dead and Andrés resembling a Jesuit father! Must all my life go on in this funeral march?" The elder Escobars regarded her in a voiceless amazement; but Andrés said severely: "You are too young to understand the tragedy of Cuba or Vincente's heroic spirit. I am ashamed of you--before Charles Abbott." Narcisa rose and walked swiftly out upon the balcony. They had been, it seemed to Charles, rather ridiculous with her; it was hard on Narcisa to have been thrust, at her age, into such a serious affair. The Escobars, and particularly Vincente, took their responsibility a little too ponderously. Following a vague impulse, made up both of his own slightly damaged pride and a sympathy for Narcisa, he went out to the balcony where she stood with her hands lightly resting on the railing. Veiled in the night, her youth seemed more mysterious than immature; he was conscious of an unsteady flutter at her unformed breast; her face had an aspect of tears. "You mustn't mind them," he told her; "they are tremendously bothered because they see a great deal farther than you can. The danger to Vincente, too, in Havana, spies--" She interrupted him, looking away so that he could see only a trace of her cheek against the fragment fall of her hair. "It isn't that, but what Andrés said about you." This admission startled him, and he studied Narcisa--her hands now tightly clasping the iron railing--with a disturbed wonder. Was it possible that she cared for him? At home, ignored by a maturity such as his, she would have been absorbed in the trivial activities of girls of her own age. But Havana, the tropics, was different. It was significant, as well, that he was permitted to be with her, practically alone, beyond the sight and hearing of her mother; the Escobars, he thought, had hopes of such a consummation. It was useless, he was solely wedded to Cuba; he had already pictured the only dramatic accident of the heart that could touch him. Not little Narcisa! She was turned away from him completely: a lovely back, straight and narrow, virginal--Domingo Escobar had said this--as a white rose bud, yet with an impalpable and seductive scent. In other circumstances, a happier and more casual world, she would have been an adorable fate. An increasing awkwardness seized him, a conviction of impotence. "Narcisa," he whispered at her ear; but, before he could finish his sentence, her face was close to his, her eyes were shut and the tenderness of her lips unprotected. Charles put an arm about her slim shoulders and pressed his cheek against hers. "Listen," he went on, in his lowered voice, patching the deficiencies of his Spanish with English words clear in their feeling if not in sound, "nothing could have shown me myself as well as you, for now I know that I can never give up a thought to anything outside what I have promised my life to. A great many men are quite happy with a loving wife and children and a home--a place to go back to always; and, in a way, since I have known you, I envy them. Their lives are full of happiness and usefulness and specially peace; but, dearest Narcisa, I can't be like that, it isn't for me. You see, I have chosen to love a country; instead of being devoted only to you, there are thousands of women, rich and poor and black and white, I must give myself for. I haven't any existence, any rights, of my own; I haven't any money or time or security to offer. I didn't choose it, no, it chose me--it's exactly as though I had been stopped on the street and conscripted. A bugle was blown in my ear. Love, you must realize, is selfish; it would be selfish to take you on a steamer, for myself, and go north. If I did that, if I forgot what I have sworn, I'd die. I should seem to the world to be alive, and I'd walk about and talk and go into the city on some business or other; but, in reality, I should be as dead as dust. "There are men like that everywhere, Narcisa, perhaps the most of life is made up of them. They look all right and are generally respected; yet, at some time or other, they killed themselves, they avoided what they should have met, tried to save something not worth a thought. I don't doubt a lot never find it out, they think they are as good as ever--they don't remember how they once felt. But others discover it, or the people who love them discover it for them. And that would happen to me, to us." In reply to all this she whispered that she loved him. Her arm slipped up across his shoulder and the tips of her fingers touched his left cheek. A momentary dizziness enveloped him at her immeasurable sweetness: it might be that she was a part of what he was to find, to do, in Cuba; and then his emotion perished in the bareness of his heart to physical passion. Its place was taken by a deep pride in his aloofness from the flesh; that alone, he felt, dignified him, set him above the mischances of self-betrayal. Charles Abbott kissed her softly and then took her hands. "You wouldn't want me, Narcisa," he continued; "if I failed in this, I should fail you absolutely. If I were unfaithful now I could never be faithful to you." She drew her hands sharply away. "It's you who are young and not I," she declared; "you talk like a boy, like Andrés. All you want is a kind of glory, like the gold lace the officers of Isabella wear. Nothing could be more selfish." "You don't understand," he replied patiently. Narcisa, he felt, could never grasp what was such a profound part of his masculine necessity. Abstractions, the liberty, for example, of an alien people, would have little weight against her instinct for the realities in her own heart. Her emotion was tangible, compared with his it was deeply reasonable; it moved in the direction of their immediate good, of the happiness, the fullness, of their beings; while all his desire, his hope, was cloudy, of the sky. In the high silver radiance of his idealism, the warmer green of earth, the promise of Narcisa's delicate charm, the young desire in his blood, were, he felt, far away, dim ... below. * * * * * The conviction fastened upon him that this chance realization would determine, where women were concerned, the whole of his life. But that space, he reminded himself, short at best, was, in him, to terminate almost at once. All his philosophy of resistance, of strength, was built upon the final dignity of a supreme giving. His thoughts went back to Narcisa as he sat in La Clavel's room in the St. Louis, watching a hairdresser skilfully build up the complicated edifice of the dancer's hair. Soon, he grasped, it would be ready for the camellia placed back of the lobe of an ear. A towel was pinned about her naked shoulders, she had on a black fringed petticoat and dangling slippers of red morocco leather. La Clavel was faced away from Charles, but, in the mirror before which she sat, he could see her features and vivid changing expressions. The truth was that, close, he had found her disconcerting, almost appalling. Climbing the long stairs at the message that she would see him in her room, he had surrendered himself to the romantic devotion which had overwhelmed the small select circle of his intimates. This had nothing to do with the admirable sentiment of a practical all-inclusive love; it was æsthetic rather than social. They all worshipped La Clavel as a symbol of beauty, as fortunately unattainable in a small immediate measure; and, bowing inside the door of her chamber, he had been positively abashed at the strange actuality of her charm. La Clavel was at once more essentially feminine than any other woman he had encountered and different from all the rest. A part of the impression she created was the result of her pallor, the even unnatural whiteness under the night of her hair. Her face was white, but her lips--a carmine stick lay close at her hands--were brutally red. She hurt him, struck savagely at the idealism of his image; indeed, in the room permeated with a dry powdered scent, at the woman redolent of vital flesh, he had been a little sickened. However, that had gone; and he watched the supple hands in the crisp coarse mass of her hair with a sense of adventure lingering faintly from his earlier youth: he was, in very correct clothes, holding his hat and stick and gloves, idling through the toilet of a celebrated dancer and beauty. Or, rather, he saw himself objectively, as he had been say a year ago, at which time his present situation would have surpassed his most splendid worldly hopes. It was strange, he thought, how life granted one by one every desire ... when it was no longer valued: the fragrance, the tender passion, of Narcisa, the preference in La Clavel singling him out from a city for her interest! She smiled at him over her shoulder, and, in return, he nodded seriously, busy with a cigarette; maintaining, in a difficult pass, his complete air of indifference, of experience. The hairdresser must have pulled roughly at a strand for, with a sudden harsh vulgarity, she described him as a blot on the virginity of his mother; in an instant every atom of her was charged with anger. It was, Charles told himself, exactly as though a shock of dried grass had caught fire; ignited gun powder rather than blood seemed to fill her veins. Her ill-temper, tempestuous in its course, was over as quickly as it had flared into being. She paid the hairdresser from a confusion of silver and gold on her dressing-table and dismissed him with a good nature flavored by a native proverb. Then, bending above a drawer, she brought out the vivid shawl in which she had danced. La Clavel folded its dragging brilliancy squarely along its length, laid it across her breast, brought the fringed ends under and up over her arms, crossed them in a swift twist, and she was wholly, magnificently, clothed. She sat on the edge of a bed covered with gay oddments of attire--fans and slippers with vermilion heels, lace mantillas, a domino in silver tissue lined in carnation and a knife with a narrow blade and holder of silk. Charles offered her his cigarette case, but she declined in favor of the long pale cigars Andrés and he himself affected. With its smoke drifting bluely across her pallid face, her eyes now interrogating him, and now withdrawn in thought, she asked him about Tirso Labrador. Charles Abbott quickly gathered that his presence was for that sole purpose. "I heard all that was said," she warned him; "and I don't want that repeated. Why did he try to garotte de Vaca with his hands? There was more in it than appeared. But all Ceaza will say is that he was a cursed traitor to the Crown. Signor American, I like Cuba, they have been very good to me here; I like you and your polite friends. But whenever I try to come closer to you, to leave the stage, as it were, for the audience, we are kept apart. The Spanish officers who take up so much of my time warn me that I must have nothing to do with disaffected Cubans; the Cubans, when I reach out my arms to them, are only polite. "Certainly I know that there has been a rebellion; but it is stamped out, ended, now; there are no signs of it in Havana, when I dance the jota; so why isn't everyone sensible and social; why, if they are victorious, are not Gaspar Arco de Vaca and Ceaza y Santacilla easier? If, as it must be, Cuba is subjected, why doesn't it ignore the unpleasant and take what the days and nights always offer? There can be no longer, so late in the history of the world, a need for the old Inquisition, the stabbers Philip commanded." Charles Abbott had an impulse to reply that, far from being conquered, the spirit of liberty in Cuba was higher than ever before; he wanted to tell her, to cry out, that it was deathless; and that no horrors of the black past were more appalling than those practiced now by the Spanish soldiery. Instead of this he watched a curl of smoke mount through the height of the room to a small square window far up on the wall where it was struck gold by a shaft of sunlight. "He was particularly a friend of yours?" she insisted, returning to Tirso. "You were always together, watching me dance from your box in the Tacon Theatre, and eating ices at the El Louvre or at the Tuileries." He spoke slowly, indifferently, keeping his gaze elevated toward the ceiling. "Tirso Labrador was a braggard, he was always boasting about what he could do with his foolish muscles. What happened to him was unavoidable. We weren't sorry--a thorough bully. As for the others, that dandy, Quintara, and Remigio Florez, who looks like a coffee berry from their plantation at Vuelta Arriba, and Escobar, I am very much in their debt--I bring the gold and they provide the pleasures of Havana. They are my runners. I haven't the slightest interest in their politics; if they support the Revolution or Madrid, they keep all that out of my knowledge." A prolonged silence followed, a period devoted to the two cigars. "That Escobar," La Clavel said, "is a very beautiful boy. What you tell me is surprising; he, at any rate, seems quite different. And I have seen you time after time sitting together, the two or three or four of you, with affectionate glances and arms. I am sensitive to such things, and I think you are lying." An air of amused surprise appeared on his countenance, "If you are so taken with Andrés Escobar," he observed, "why did you make this appointment with me? May I have the pleasure of taking him a note from you? he is very fond of intrigues." Leaning forward she laid a firm square palm on his knee. "You have told me all that I wanted--this Tirso, who was killed, he was your dear friend and his death an agony; the smaller, the coffee berry, you are devoted to his goodness and simplicity; beneath Quintara's waistcoats you find a heart of gold. But Escobar--is it Andrés?--you love better than your life. They care nothing for your American dollars; it is evident they all have much more than you. What is it, then, you are united by? I shall tell you--Cuba. You are patriots, insurrectionists; Santacilla was right. And neither is your rebellion crushed, not with Agramonte alive." She leaned back with glimmering eyes and the cruel paint of her mouth smiling at him. * * * * * She was, then, Charles Abbott reflected, an agent of Spain's; calmly he rehearsed all they had said to each other, he examined every sentence, every inflection of voice. He could not have been more circumspect; the position he had taken, of a pleasure-loving young American, was so natural that it was inevitable. No, La Clavel knew nothing, she was simply adopting another method in her task of getting information for Santacilla. At this, remembering the adoration of his circle for her, he was brushed by a swift sorrow. For them she had been the symbol, the embodiment, of beauty; the fire and grace of her dancing had intensified, made richer, their sense of life. She had been the utmost flashing peak of their desire; and now it was clear to him that she was rotten at the core, La Clavel was merely a spy; what had engaged them was nothing more than a brilliant flowery surface, a bright shawl. "You are wasting your efforts," he assured her, with an appearance of complete comfort. "Even if you were right, I mean about the others, what, do you think, would make them confide in me, almost a stranger? You understand this so much better than I that, instead of questioning me, you ought to explain the whole Cuban situation. Women like yourself, with genius, know everything." She utterly disconcerted Charles by enveloping him in a rapid gesture, her odorous lips were pressed against his cheek. "You are as sweet as a lime flower," La Clavel declared. "After the others--" her expression of disgust was singularly valid. "That is what I love about you," she cried suddenly, "your youth and freshness and courage. Tirso Labrador dying so gallantly ... all your beardless intent faces. The revolt in Cuba, I've felt it ever since I landed at Havana, it's in the air like wine. I am sick of officers: look, ever since I was a child the army has forced itself upon me. I had to have their patronage when I was dancing and their company when I went to the cafés; and when it wasn't the cavalry it was the gentlemen. They were always superior, condescending; and always, inside me, I hated them. They thought, because I was peasant born, that their attentions filled me with joy, that I should be grateful for their aristocratic presences. But, because I was what I was, I held them, with their ladies' hands and sugared voices, in contempt. There isn't one of them with the entrails to demand my love. "I tell you I was smothering in the air about me. My dancing isn't like the posturing of the court, it's the dancing of the people, my people, passionate like a knife. I am from the Morena, and there we are not the human sheep who live in the valleys, along the empty rivers. How shall I explain? But how can you explain yourself? You are not a Cuban; this rebellion, in which you may so easily be killed almost before you begin to live, it isn't yours. What drew you into it? You must make it plain, for I, too, am caught." "Men are different from women," he replied, putting into words his newly acquired wisdom; "whatever happened to me would be useless for you, you couldn't be helped by it." Yet he was forced to admit to himself that all she had said was reasonable; at bottom it didn't contradict his generalization, for it was based on a reality, on La Clavel's long resentment, on indignities to her pride, on, as she had said, the innate freedom of the mountain spirit. If she were honest, any possible attachment to Cuba might result from her hatred of Spain, of Sevilla and Madrid. Hers, then, would be the motive of revenge. "You are right about the difference in our experiences," she agreed; "I was dancing for a living at six; at ten I had another accomplishment. I have lived in rooms inlaid with gold, and in cellars with men where murder would have been a gracious virtue. Yes, lime flower, there is little you know that could be any assistance to me. But the other, your purity, your effort of nobility, that I must learn from you." He explained his meaning more fully to her, and she listened intently. "You think," she interrupted, "that a woman must be attached to something real, like your arm or a pot of gold. You know them, and that at your age, at any age, is a marvel enough in itself. The wisest men in Europe have tried to understand the first movement of my dancing--how, in it, a race, the whole history of a nation, is expressed in the stamp of a heel, the turn of a hip. They wonder what, in me, had happened to the maternal instinct, why I chose to reflect life, as though I were a mirror, rather than experience it. And now, it seems, you see everything, all is clear to you. You have put a label, such as are in museums, on women; good!" She smiled at him, mocking but not unkind. "However," he told her crossly, "that is of very little importance. How did we begin? I have forgotten already." "In this way," she said coolly; "I asked if it would be of any interest to--let us say, your friends, to learn that the United States, in spite of the Administration, will not recognize a Republican Cuba. Fish is unchangeably opposed to the insurgents. You may expect no help there." "That might be important to the insurgents," he admitted; "but where are they to be found--in the cabildos of Los Egidos?" "At least repeat what you have heard to Escobar: is it Andrés or Vincente?" The name of Andrés' brother was spoken so unexpectedly, the faintest knowledge of Vincente on the part of the dancer of such grave importance, that Charles Abbott momentarily lost his composure. "Vincente!" he exclaimed awkwardly. "Was that the other brother? But he is dead." "Not yet," she replied. "It is planned for tonight, after dinner, when he is smoking in the little upper salon." Agitated, at a loss for further protest, he rose. He must go at once to the Escobars, warn them. "You will admit now that I have been of use," La Clavel was standing beside him. "And it is possible, if Vincente Escobar isn't found, and Ceaza discovers that you were here, that--" she paused significantly. "I am the victim of a madness," she declared, "of a Cuban fever." But there was no time now to analyse the processes of her mind and sex. "I'll be going," he said abruptly. "Naturally," she returned; "but what about your coming back? That will be more difficult, and yet it is necessary. Ah, yes, you must pretend to be in love with me; it will be hard, but what else is there? A dancer has always a number of youths at her loose heels. "You will be laughed at, of course; the officers, Santacilla and Gaspar, will be unbearable. You will have to play the infatuated fool, and send me bouquets of gardenias and three-cornered notes, and give me money. That won't be so hard, because we can use the same sum over and over; but I shall have to read the notes to my protectors in the army." "I'll be going," he repeated, gathering his stick and gloves from the floor. She asked, with a breath of wistfulness, if he could manage a touch of affection for her? Charles Abbott replied that this was not the hour for such questions. "The young," she sighed, "are glacial." But that, she proceeded, was exactly what drew her to them. They were like the pure wind along the eaves under which she had been born. "I promise never to kiss you again, or, if I must, solely as the mark of brotherhood. And now go back to--to Andrés." She backed away from him, superb in the shawl, and again she was rayed in the superlative beauty of her first appearance. The woman was lost in the dancer, the flesh in the vision, the art. "You could be a goddess," Charles told her, "the shrine of thousands of hearts." The declaration of his entire secret was on his lips; but, after all, it wasn't his. There was a possibility that she had lied about Vincente, and at this second he might be dead, the Volunteers waiting for him, Charles Abbott, below. * * * * * Hurrying through the Paseo Isabel to the Prado, Charles, looking at his watch, found that it was nearly six. Carmita Escobar and Narcisa, and probably Domingo, were driving perhaps by the sea or perhaps toward Los Molinos, the park of the Captain-General. At any rate the women would be away from the house, and that, in the situation which faced the Escobars, was fortunate. If what La Clavel said were true, and Charles Abbott now believed her implicitly, the agents of the Crown would be already watching in the Prado. Vincente must be smuggled away; how, he didn't yet see; but a consultation would result in a plan for his escape. The servant who opened the small door in the great iron-studded double gate, though he knew Charles Abbott well, was uncommunicative to the point of rudeness. He refused to say who of the family were at home; he intimated that, in any case, Charles would not be seen, and he attempted to close him out. Charles, however, ignoring the other's protests, forced his way into the arch on the patio. He went up the wide stairs unceremoniously to the suite of formal rooms along the street, where, to his amazement, he found the Escobar family seated in the sombreness of drawn curtains, and all of them with their faces marked with tears. Surprised by his abrupt appearance they showed no emotion other than a dull indifference. Then Andrés rose and put his hand on Charles' shoulder, speaking in a level grave voice: "My dear Abbott, Vincente, our brother, has made the last sacrifice possible to men. He died at noon, sitting in his chair, as a result of the fever." This was tragic, but, with a deeper knowledge of the dilemma facing them, Charles was actually impatient. "What," he demanded, "are you going to do with the body?" "It is placed in dignity on a couch, and we have sent to Matanzas for a priest we can trust. He'll be here early in the morning, and then, and then, we must forget our love." "You must do that now, without a minute's loss," Charles urged them. "You can wait for no priest. The Spanish Government knows he is here; tonight, after dinner, he was to have been taken. The house will be stood on its roof, every inch investigated. You spoke, once, of Narcisa, what might horribly swallow you all. Well, it has almost come." Andrés' grip tightened; he was pale but quiet. "You are right," he asserted; "but how did you find this out, and save us?" That, Charles replied, was of no importance now. What could they do with Vincente's body? Carmita, his mother, began to cry again, noiselessly; Narcisa, as frigid as a statue in marble, sat with her wide gaze fastened on Charles Abbott. "What?" Domingo echoed desperately. It was no longer a question of the dignity, the blessing, of the dead, but of the salvation of the living. Vincente's corpse, revered a few minutes before, now became a hideous menace; it seemed to have grown to monumental proportions, a thing impossible to put out of sight. Undoubtedly soldiers were watching, guarding the house: a number of men in nondescript clothes were lounging persistently under the rows of Indian laurels below. A hundred practical objections immediately rose to confront every proposal. Carmita and Narcisa had been sent from the room, and a discussion was in progress of the possibility of cutting the body into minute fragments. "If that is decided on," Domingo Escobar declared, with sweat rolling over his forehead, "I must do it; my darling and heroic son would approve; he would wish me to be his butcher." Andrés, harder, more mature, than the elder, stopped such expressions of sentiment. It would make such a mess, he reminded them; and then, how far could the servants, the hysterical negroes, be depended upon? They would soon discover the progress of such an operation. Charles suggested fire, but the Spanish stoves, with shallow cups for charcoal, were useless, and the ovens were cold; it would create suspicion to set them to burning so late in the day. "Since we can't get rid of it," Charles declared, "we must accept it. The body is there, but whose is it? Did you send a servant to Matanzas?" Two had gone, riding, once they were beyond Havana, furiously. A Jamaican negro, huge and black, totally unlike Vincente, and a Cuban newly in the city, a mestizo, brought in from the Escobars' small sugar estate near Madriga. Andrés at once appropriated Charles' idea. Their mother and Narcisa, he proclaimed, must go out as usual for their afternoon drive, and he would secure some clothes that belonged to Juan Roman, the servant. No one in the back of the house, luckily, had seen the riders leave. Judged more faithful than the rest, they had been sent away as secretly as possible. "What," Charles Abbott asked, "caused his death?" Andrés faced him coldly. "This pig of a countryman I killed," he said. "The Spanish will understand that. They have killed a multitude of us, for nothing, for neglect in polishing the back of a boot. It will be more difficult with the servants,--they are used to kindness, consideration, here; but they, too, in other places, have had their lesson. And I was drunk." In spite of Charles' insistence, he was not permitted to assist in the carrying out of the details that followed. He sat, walked about, alone in the drawing-room. After an interminable wait he heard the report, faint and muffled by walls, of a pistol, and then running feet passed the door. Domingo appeared first, a glass of brandy in his shaking hand: "He has gone, in a sack, to be thrown into the sea ... the blood hid his face. Ah, Jesu! But it was successful--a corporal looked, with the hundred doblons I pressed into his hand. He kicked the body three times, thrust a knife into it, and said that there, anyhow, was one less Cuban." Andrés entered the room and, without speech, embraced Charles, kissing him on either cheek; and soon Carmita Escobar and Narcisa, with their parasols and embroidered gloves, returned from their drive. They could do nothing but wait for what impended, and Charles Abbott related to Andrés the entire scene with La Clavel. "I believe in her," he concluded. Andrés agreed with him. "Her plan is excellent," he pronounced; "it will be very hard on you, though. You will be fed on insults." That, Charles protested, was nothing. "And, worse still, it will end our companionship. You will be able no longer to go about with Jaime and Remigio and me. Yes, that, so soon, is over. What was left of our happiness together has been taken away. We are nothing now in ourselves. How quickly, Charles, we have aged; when I look in the glass I half expect to see grey hair. It is sad, this. Why did you leave your comfort and safety and come to us? But, thank God, you did. It was you who saved us for the present. And that, now, is enough; you must go back to the San Felipe. Put on your best clothes, with a rose in your buttonhole, and get drunk in all the cafés; tell anyone who will listen that La Clavel is more superb than Helen of the Greeks, and buy every Spanish officer you see what he may fancy." As Charles Abbott left the Escobar dwelling a detachment of Cuban Volunteers on horse, and a file of infantry, their uniform of brown drilling dressed with red collars and cuffs, had gathered across its face. "Quien vive?" a harsh voice stopped him. "Forastero," Charles answered sullenly. He was subjected to a long insolent scrutiny, a whangee cane smote him sharply across the back. He regarded the men about him stolidly; while an officer, who had some English, advised him to keep away from suspected Cubans. But, at last, he was released, directed to proceed at once to Anche del Norte Street, where his passport would be again examined. Charles prepared slowly for dinner at the Dominica; and, when he was ready to go out, he was the pattern of a fashionable and idle young tourist. But what filled his mind was the speculation whether or not the Escobars would remember to prevent the return of Juan Roman with the priest from Matanzas. * * * * * Nothing, considering the aspirations of Charles Abbott, could have been more ironical than the phase of life he entered upon the acceptance of La Clavel into the party of independence. The entire success of this dangerous arrangement depended on his ability to create an impression, where he was concerned, of unrelieved vapidity. He was supposed to be infatuated with the dancer; and he lingered, not wholly sober, about the fashionable resorts. Charles sent her flowers; and, sitting in his room on the roof of the San Felipe, he composed, in a cold distaste, innumerable short variations on the theme of a fluid and fatuous attachment. In reality, he had been repelled by the actuality of La Clavel; he had an unconquerable aversion for her room with its tumbled vivid finery, the powdered scents mingling with the odors of her body and of the brandy always standing in a glass beside her. Yet the discrepancy between the woman herself and the vision she had bred continued to puzzle and disconcert him. When they were together it was this he preferred to talk about. At times she answered his questioning with a like interest; but all, practically, that she understood about herself, her dancing, had been expressed in their first conversation upon that topic. The rest, at best, was no more than a childlike curiosity and vanity. She had an insatiable appetite for compliment; and, sincere in his admiration for her impersonal aspect, Charles was content to gratify her; except when, in spite of her promise, she kissed him ardently. This never failed to seriously annoy him; and afterwards she would offer him a mock apology. It detracted, he felt, from his dignity, assaulted, insidiously, the elevation of his purpose in life. He cherished a dislike, part cultivated and part subconscious, for women. All his thoughts and emotions were celibate, chaste. Such a scene had just ended, La Clavel was at her glass, busy with a rouge pot and a scrap of soft leather; and Charles was standing stiffly by the door. She had used, in describing him, a Spanish word about the meaning of which he was not quite clear, but he had an idea that it bore a close resemblance to prig. That specially upset him. At the moment his dislike for her almost broke down his necessary diplomacy. In an island of men desirous of her least favor--her fame transcended seas and reached from coast to coast--he only, thinking less than nothing of his privilege, had an instant unchallenged access to her. He knew, carefully watched, all her various dependents: Calixto Sola, the hairdresser, a creature with a sterile face constantly twisted into painful grimaces; he was an employee in a barbering shop on Neptune Street, too volatile for any convictions, but because of a spiteful, injured disposition, not to be trusted. Then there was La Clavel's maid, Jobaba, a girl with an alabaster beauty indefinitely tainted by Africa. She was, Charles decided, the most corrupt being he had ever encountered. Her life away from the St. Louis was incredibly, wildly, debauched. Among other things, she danced, as the mulata, the rumba, an indescribable affair; and she had connections with the rites of brujeria, the degraded black magic of the Carabale in Cuba. She was beautiful, with a perfection of grace, except for the direct gaze of her brown eyes, which revealed an opacity, a dullness, like mud. She was, even more than to La Clavel, the servant of Santacilla; she reported, the dancer told Charles, every possible act and speech of her mistress to the Spaniards, who, in return, supplied her with a little money and a load of biting curses. The chambermaid who attended La Clavel's room had lost a lover with the forces of General Agramonte, and was of use to Charles; without knowledge of the hidden actuality she yet brought him, unread, communications for the patriotic party; and she warned him of Santacilla's presence and uncertain humors. The laundress had been, in her youth, an actress in the cheap local theatres, and, when she was not sodden with drink, showed an admirable devotion to her famous patron by the most delicate feats imaginable in ironing. She was almost purely Spanish and had only a contempt for the Cubeños. While Charles Abbott's duty was, on the surface, direct and easy, it was complicated by the need for a constant watchfulness, a wit in countless small details. Supporting, well enough, the boredom of his public role, he had to manage with an unfailing dexterity the transmission of the information that came to the insurrectionists through La Clavel. These facts she gathered through the unguarded moments of Ceaza y Santacilla's talk--he was close to the Captain-General and had important connections at Madrid--and, at prolonged parties, from the conversation of his intimates. Charles put these communications into contracted written English sentences; in that way, even as against the accidental chance of being, at any time, searched, he could better convey their import; and gave them in carefully planned, apparently incidental encounters, to any one of a score of correctly gloved and boutonnièred young men he had come to know by adroitly managed assurances. Charles had formed, as well, principally in the Café Dominica, a superficial familiarity with other Americans in Havana for banking or commercial purposes. They, regarding him as immensely rich and dissipated, were half contemptuous and half eager for the associations, the pleasures, of his mode of life. He went, as often as it seemed necessary, to the United States Club on Virtudes Street, where, together with his patriots, but different from them in a hidden contempt, he gambled, moderately and successfully. His luck became proverbial, and, coupled with La Clavel's name, his reputation soon grew into what he intrigued for. Often, alone on the hotel roof, he regarded himself with an objective amazement: everything was precisely as he had planned, hoped for, on the steamer Morro Castle--and entirely different. It was probable that the death he had not, in imagination, shrunk from, would crush him at any unexpected moment, an unpredictable slip; but how could he have foreseen the trivial guise he would wear? Charles was forced, it seemed to him, to ape every single quality he hated. The spending of his money, as legitimately as though it were exchanged for guns, on casual acquaintances and rum punches, on gardenias that wilted and entertainment that choked him by its vulgar banality, gradually embittered him. The insincerity of the compliments he paid, the lying compliments to which he listened with an ingenuous smile and an entire comprehension of their worthlessness, steadily robbed his ideal of its radiant aloofness. His enthusiasm, he discovered, his high ardor, must be changed to patience and fortitude, the qualities which belonged to his temperament and years had to give place to those of an accomplished maturity; the romance of his circumstance deserted the surface to linger hidden, cherished, beneath all the practical and immediate rest. He began to perceive the inescapable disappointing difference between an idea, a conception of the mind, and its execution. The realization of that, he told himself, the seduction of the lofty, the aerial, to earth, constituted success, power. The spirit and the flesh! And the flesh constantly betrayed the highest determinations. How he resented, distrusted, the mechanics, the traps and illusions, of an existence on an animal plane! His fervor, turned in upon itself, began to assume an aspect of the religious; his imposed revolt from the mundane world turned his thoughts to an intangible heaven, a spotless and immaterial hereafter. The white façades of Havana, intolerably gold under the sun and glimmering in the tropical nights, the procession and clamor of the Dia des Reyes, the crowded theatres, the restaurants where, with no appetite, he ate as little as possible--began to appear vague, unsubstantial. What, so intently, was on every hand being done he thought meaningless. Where, originally, he had been absorbed in bringing relief to countless specific Cubans, he now only dwelt on a possible tranquility of souls, a state, like that promised in the Bible, without corruption and injustice and tears. * * * * * These considerations particularly occupied Charles Abbott waiting inside the door of Santa Clara Church for La Clavel, who was coming to the eight o'clock morning mass. Outside, the day was still and very hot, intolerably blazing, but the darkened interior of the church, the air heavy with incense, was cool. An intermittent stream of people entered--the white and gilt of a Spanish naval uniform was followed by gay silks, a priest passed noiselessly, like a shadow; an old woman with a rippling fire of jewels made her way forward, across the wide stone floor, with the regular subdued tap of a cane. The impending celebration of the mass gathered its activity, its white and black figures, about an altar. Suddenly Charles envied the priests in their service of an ideal embodied in a spiritual Trinity. Even Cuba vanished from the foreground of his thoughts at the conception of a devotion not alone to an island, a nation, but to all the world of men. His interest, measured with this, was merely temporal, limited. Compared with the Protestant influences of his birth and experience, the separation of religion from society, the all-absorbing gesture and the mysticism of the Roman church offered a complete escape, an obliteration, of the individual. But, as he dwelt upon this, he realized that, for him, it was an impossibility. He might be a Franciscan, begging his way, in brown bagging and sandals, through a callous world for which he ceaselessly prayed; or one of the heroic Jesuits of the early French occupation of the Mississippi Valley. Yet these, as well, were no more than pictures, designs in a kaleidoscope which, immediately turned, would be destroyed in a fresh pattern. He was brought back to reality by the swinging of the heavy curtain at the door; a segment of day, like a white explosion of powder, was visible, and La Clavel proceeded to the font of holy water. As he joined her she complained: "You should have held it for me in your palm; what barbarians the Americans and English are." She was, characteristically, dressed as brightly as possible, in a mauve skirt with an elaborately cut flounce swaying about yellow silk stockings, a mantón of white crêpe de Chine embroidered with immense emerald green blossoms; her hair piled about its tall comb was covered with a mantilla falling in scallops across her brilliant cheeks. In the church, that reduced so much, she was startling in her bold color and presence. A negro, whom Charles recognized as a servant at the St. Louis, followed her with a heavy roll and a small unpainted chair with a caned seat. Before the altar, under the low pointed arches of the transept, he spread out a deep-piled Persian rug--where La Clavel promptly kneeled--and set the chair conveniently for her. Her devotion at an end, the dancer rose and disposed herself comfortably. The constant flutter of a fan with sandal wood sticks stirred the edge of her mantilla. After she had scrutinized the worshippers about them, she turned to Charles, speaking in a guarded voice. He listened with an intense concentration, in the careful preliminaries of a difficult act of memory, asking her, when it could not be avoided, to repeat facts or names. They were, now, concerned with the New York Junta, involved tables of costs, and La Clavel was palpably annoyed by the unaccustomed necessity of a strict mental effort. She raised her eyebrows, shot an inviting glance at an interested man of middle age, and shut and opened her fan by an irritable twist of the wrist. Watching, weighing, her mood, Charles abruptly brought her recital to an end. "That is enough for the present," he decided. "My choice infant," she retorted, "your air of being my director is comic. And I could wish you were not so immaculate, so unworldly--you are tiresome more often than not. I could scream with laughing when I think you are supposed to be my servant of love." The striking of a silvery bell interrupted her with the necessity for a reverence. The mutter of prayer was instantly lost in echoless space. The genuflexions of the priests and acolytes were rapid. "This secrecy," she went on, "is against my disposition, unnatural. I am a woman in whom the complete expression of every feeling is not only a good but a necessity. There are times when I must, it seems, give way to my hatred of those perfumed captains. I sit beside Santacilla, with his hand on my knee, and, hidden by my skirt, my fingers are wedded to the knife in my stocking. A turn, a sweep of the arm ... there is a tearing cut I learned in the mountains." The prayers, the Latin invocations, grew louder with the symbolized miracle of transubstantiation, the turning back of the bread and wine into the humility and forbearance of Christ. Charles Abbott was still, pale and remote; and the heat of La Clavel's words died before the vision of an eternal empire of souls irrevocably judged. She sank forward again, the knotted fringe of her mantón spread out beyond the rug, upon the stone. After a little he told her that her courage, her daring and patience, were magnificent. But she replied that they were cold virtues. "All virtues are cold," Charles assured her seriously. If that were so, La Clavel whispered, her cheek close to his, she was lost to virtue. Anyhow, she didn't believe him, he could not, at his age, know so much. Yet not, God comprehended, that he wasn't both virtuous and cold; any other man in the world, not a heathen, would have flung himself at her. Charles said wearily: "We have been over this before, and you know that I do not care for women. What I was a few years ago--" "A baby," she informed him. "What I was a few years ago," he repeated with dignity, "is no longer true of me. I belong body and spirit to the cause of which you are aware. And if I didn't it would be, in many respects, no different--science and the liberation of a people are all one, selfless." "I left the knife out of my present toilet," she sighed. "It would be a charity to free you from the shape you hate so dearly." "I must go back to the San Felipe and write what you told me," he proceeded. "I understand that Santacilla has gone out on a slaughtering party, and I'll have to take you around in the evening. There are zarzuelas in the Tacon Theatre this evening, and afterwards, I suppose, dulces upstairs at the Tuileries. It's no good, though, expecting me for Retreta--I've got to have some time to recover and sleep: four o'clock last night, with a pack of imbeciles, and three the night before. The smell of Jamaica rum and limes makes me sick." The mass was over, the people scattering, and, once more cheerful, she laughed at him. "You might wear a hair shirt," she suggested; "they are splendid for the soul." He handed her, without reply, into the small victoria, one of the first in Havana, which had taken the place of her volanta. In the sun, her shawl, her smile, were dazzling. A knot of men gathered, gazing at her with longing, regarding Charles Abbott with insolent resentment and wonder; how, their expressions made clear the thought, could that insignificant and colorless foreigner, that tepid American, engage and hold La Clavel, the glory of Cuba and Spain? She drove away, shielding her eyes with the fan, and Charles returned slowly, on foot, to the hotel, reaching it in time for the eleven o'clock breakfast. Bolting his door, closing the high shutters of his glassless window, he lay down tired and feverish. The vendors of oranges cried, far off, their naranjes, naranjes dulces. The bed, which had no mattress, its sacking covered by a single sheet, the pillow stuffed hard with cotton, offered him little rest. His body, wet with sweat, twisted and turned continually, and sleep evaded him; its peace almost within his grasp, it fled before the hot insistence of his thoughts. The uncomfortable flesh mocked and dragged at the spirit. It occurred to him suddenly, devastatingly, that he might fail in his purpose; the armor of his conviction of invincibility fell from him with the semblance of a loud ringing. * * * * * Of all the disturbing elements in Charles Abbott's present life the one which, it had seemed, must prove most difficult, Santacilla and his friends, troubled him least. There was, in their jeering, a positive quality to be met; his own necessary restraint furnished him with a sustaining feeling of triumph, stability; in his control, the sacrifice of his dignity, his actual pride, damaged by La Clavel, was restored. He acted the part of the infatuated, ubiquitous youth, he thought, with entire success. It had been hardest at first--Santacilla, who pretended to find Charles under his feet like a dog, threatened, if he didn't stay away from the St. Louis, to fling him down the long flight of stairs descending from the dancer's room. This, Charles wholly realized, was not an idle boasting. Seated, it might be, quietly against the wall, outside the immediate circle about La Clavel, the officers, the Spanish grandees in Cuba for pleasure or for the supervision of their copper mines at Cobra, Charles would watch, study, Ceaza y Santacilla, finding in him the epitome of the Spain he himself hated. What, principally, was evident about the officer with the heavy short neck, the surprising red hair, and small restless blue eyes, was cruelty of an extraordinary refined persistence. He had, unexpectedly in his sheer brutal bulk, a tormenting spirit, a mental abnormality, rather than the to-be-looked-for mere insensate weight of his fist. He was, Charles discovered, the victim of disordered nerves, his gaze, his thick hands or shoulders, were never still, and his lips had a trick of movement as if in the pronunciation of soundless periods. He spoke, even to La Clavel, abruptly, mockingly; his tenderest words, addressed to her with a sweeping disregard of whoever could overhear, were hasty, introspective rather than generous. More frequently he was silent, redly brooding. It was evident to the most casual understanding that Santacilla was, by birth, association and ideas, an aristocrat of the absolute type fast disappearing. It was his power that, in a world largely affected by the ideal of Christianity, he was ruthless; in an era of comparative humanity he was inhuman. There was, about him, the smell of the slow fires of the Inquisition, of languid murder, curious instruments of pain. Charles recalled a story of the Spanish occupation of Cuba--how the soldiers in armor cut and stabbed their way through a village of naked, unprepared and peaceable bodies. That, until he had known Santacilla, had been incomprehensible--a page of old history; but now Charles understood: he could see the heavy figure with a darkly suffused face hacking with a sword. He was insane, Charles Abbott told himself; in other circumstances he'd be soon convicted of a sensational murder, quickly hanged or put in an asylum. But in Havana, as an officer of the Crown quartered on a people he held in less esteem than the cattle whose slaughter he applauded in the bull ring, nothing, practically, limited his mad humors. Yes, here, in the West, he was Spain, the old insufferable despotism, and Charles thought of Santacilla's necessary end as coldly as though the soldier were no more than a figment of the doomed old injustice. La Clavel was seated with Charles Abbott in the upper room of the Tuileries, when Santacilla slid into an unoccupied chair beside them. They were eating mantecados, frozen sweetened cream, and Santacilla dropped a number of battered Cuban coins, small in denomination, into Charles' half consumed ice. "If you were a man," he said, "you could break them up with your teeth." The other quietly put the plate away and lighted a cigarette. He smiled, as if in appreciation of his humor, at the officer. "But I'll bet you twenty doblons you can't break one," he added. Santacilla replied that he was considering having Charles Abbott deported. "You are so dangerous," he explained, with the grimace that served him as a smile. "I often consult with our Captain-General. 'This Abbott,' he says; 'Agramonte is nothing, but I am afraid of him. He is wise, he is deep.' And then we think what can be done with you--a tap on the head, not too hard and not far from the ear, would make you as gentle as a kitten. I have had it done; really it is a favor, since then you would forget all your trouble, the problems of state. You'd cry if I raised a finger at you." La Clavel interrupted him to swear at his degraded imagination. "And the figure in the jota!" he turned to her. "You know that the Spaniards of birth have, as well as their own, the blood of the Moriscos. What they were, what the East is, with women, I beg you to remember. "This new treatment of women is very regrettable. I am a little late for absolute happiness; too late, for example, to fasten your tongue with a copper wire to the tongue across the table from you. Lovers, you see, joined at last." He talked while he ate, in a manner wholly delicate, minute fragile dulces, cakes, glazed in green and pink, and ornamental confections of almond paste. Unperturbed, La Clavel found him comparable to a number of appalling objects and states. Coarse, was all that he replied. "You are a peasant, a beast, and what you say is merely stupid. There this Abbott is your superior--he has a trace, a suspicion, of blood. I am wondering," he was addressing Charles again. "It seems impossible that you are as dull as you appear; there is more, perhaps, than meets the eye. Your friendship with the Escobars broke up very suddenly; and you never see Floret and Quintara with his borrowed French airs. They are nothing, it is true, yet they have a little Castilian, they are better than the avaricious fools at the United States Club. Of course, if you are in love with this cow gone mad, a great deal is accounted for." He wiped his fingers first on a serviette and then on a sheer web of linen marked with a coronet and his cipher. "Pah!" he exclaimed, looking at the dancer, "your neck is dirty again." Sick with disgust, his blood racing with a passionate detestation, Charles Abbott laughed loudly. But he was relieved that Santacilla's attention had been shifted from him. Another officer, a major of the Isabel regiment, tall and dark and melancholy, joined them. He ignored Charles completely, and talked to La Clavel about her dances--the Arragonese jota and those of the other provinces of Spain. He had, it developed, written an opera on the subject of de Gama and a fabulous Florida. Santacilla grew restive at this and gazed about the room maliciously. Then, suddenly, he rose and walked to the table where a young Cuban exquisite was sitting with a girl slender and darkly lovely. Santacilla leaned over, with his hands planted on their table, and made a remark that drove the blood in a scarlet tide to the civilian's face. Then the Spaniard amazingly produced from his sleeve a ball of lamb's wool such as women use to powder their faces, and touched the girl's nose lightly. He went to another table and repeated his act, to another and another, brushing all the feminine noses, and returned, unchallenged, to his place. "If I had been with any of those women," he related comfortably, "and the King had done that, there would have been a new king and a new infanta." The musical Spaniard, inappropriately in uniform, remonstrated, "A lot of them will kill you some night in the Paseo de Valdez or on the quays." Santacilla agreed with him. "No doubt it will overtake me--if not here, then on the Peninsula. A hundred deaths, all distressing, have been sworn upon me." Charles Abbott's expression was inane, but, correcting that statement, he said to himself, "A hundred and one." La Clavel yawned, opening to their fullest extent her lips on superb teeth and a healthy throat. "I have, at least, a sponge, a basin of water," she proclaimed indirectly. Santacilla replied, "You think nothing can cleanse me, and, in your chattering way, you are right; except, it may be, that last twist of steel or ounce of lead. Some of my soldiers are planning to manage it; I know them well, and I gave one an opportunity today: I stood with my back to him in the parapet of the Twelve Apostles for three, five, minutes, while he tramped and fiddled with his musket, and then I put him in a hole in the stone for a year." * * * * * The other Spanish officer, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, Santacilla's closest companion, observed toward Charles an air of profound civility, and his pretence was more galling than Santacilla's morbid threats and exposed contempt. De Vaca was, in temperament and appearance, purely Iberian: he was of middle height, he carried his slender body with an assured insulting grace, and had a narrow high-boned face, a bigoted nose and a moustache like a scrolling of India ink on a repressed and secretive mouth. Charles often encountered him in the Fencing School on the Prado, across from the Villa Nueva Theatre. The officers of Isabella congregated there late in the afternoon, where they occupied all the chairs and filled the bare room with the soft stamp of their heels and the harsh grinding of engaged buttoned steel. The foils, however, were not always covered: there had been some fatalities from duelling in the sala de Armas since Charles Abbott had been in Havana; a Cuban gentleman past sixty had been slain by a subaltern of seventeen; two officers, quarreling over a crillo girl, had sustained punctured lungs, from which one had bled to death. The Cubans, it was made evident, were there by sufferance, and the fencing master, Galope Hormiguero, an officer who had been retired from a Castilian regiment under the shadow of an unprovoked murder, made little effort to conceal his disdain of the Islanders. Charles he regarded without interest: he was a faithful student, and made all the required passes, engaged the other beginning students, with regularity; but even he saw that he would never be notably skilful with the foil or rapier or broadsword. Charles had a delicate sense of touch, he bore himself firmly, his eye was true; he had the appearance of mastery, but the essence of it was not in him. His heart, Hormiguero frequently told him, was like a sponge; he wasn't tempered to the commanding of death. He agreed, silently, that he wasn't a butcher; and as for his heart--time would show its material. Meanwhile he kept up the waist and forearm exercises, the indicated breathing, gaining, if not a different spirit, a harder and cured body. The room was large, with the usual high windows on a balcony, and strips of coco-matting over the tiled floor. A light wooden partition provided dressing space, the chairs were carried about hither and there, and the racks of foils against the walls reflected the brightness of day in sudden long shivers like other and immaterial blades. It had been, originally, a drawing-room, the cornice was elaborate, and painted on the ceiling were flying cupids and azure and cornucopias of spilling flowers. At moments of rest, his chest laboring and arms limp at his sides, Charles Abbott would stare up at the remote pastoral of love and Venus and roses. Then the clamor, the wicked scrape of steel, the sharp breaths, the sibilant cries that accompanied the lunges, would appear wholly incomprehensible to him, a business in a mad-house; he'd want to tear the plastron, with its scarlet heart sewn high on the left, from his chest, and fling it, with his gauntlet and mask, across the floor; he'd want to break all the foils, and banish Galope Hormiguero to live among the wild beasts he resembled. He was deep in such a mood when de Vaca's considerate tones roused him. "Positively," he said, "you are like one of the heroes who held Mexico on the point of his sword or who swept the coast of Peru of its gold. And you are idle, for you see no one who can hold the mat with you." "In reality," Charles replied, "I fence very awkwardly. But you have often seen me, I haven't any need to tell you that." "That can never be established without experience," the Spaniard asserted; "I should have to feel your wrist against mine. If you will be patient, if you will wait for me, I'll risk a public humiliation." Charles Abbott said evenly: "I'd be very glad to fence with you, of course." When de Vaca, flawlessly appointed, returned, Charles rose steadily, and strapped on his mask, tightened the leather of the plastron. A murmur of subdued amusement followed their walking out together onto an unoccupied strip--de Vaca was a celebrated swordsman. Charles saluted acceptably, but the wielding of the other's gesture of courtesy filled him with admiration. The foils struck together, there was a conventional pass and parry, and from that moment Charles Abbott lost control of his steel. At a touch from de Vaca, scarcely perceptible, his foil rose or fell, swept to one side or the other; a lunge would end in the button describing a whole arc, and pointing either to the matting or the winged and cherubic cupids. The laughter from the chairs grew louder, more unguarded, and then settled into a constant stream of applause and merriment. Disengaged, he said in tones which he tried in vain to make steady, "You have a beautiful hand." De Vaca, his eyes shining blackly through wire mesh, thanked him in the politest language known. He began, then, to make points, touches, wherever he chose--with a remarkably timed twist he tore the cloth heart from Charles' wadding; he indicated, as though he were a teacher with a pointer, anatomical facts and regions; de Vaca seemed to be calling Charles' attention, by sharp premonitory taps, to what he might have been saying. There were now a number of voices encouraging and applauding him; he was begged not to be so hard upon Gaspar; and it was hoped that he was not giving way to the venting of a secret spite. A nerveless parry in tierce brought out a tempestuous support-- His arm was as heavy, as numb, as lead, the conventional period had been ignored, and his torment went on and on. His chest, he thought, must burst under the strapped plastron, and sweat poured in a sheet across his eyes. The episode seemed utterly meaningless, undemanded; the more remarkable because of de Vaca's indifference to him, to all the trivialities of his Cuban duty. How yellow the face was, the eyes were like jet, through the mask. Then Charles Abbott grasped what, he was certain, was the purpose of such an apparently disproportionate attack. It was the result of a cold effort, a set determination, to destroy what courage he had. He gazed quickly about, and saw nothing but Spanish faces; the fencing master was in the far end of the room, intent upon a sheaf of foils. At any moment de Vaca could have disarmed him, sent his steel flying through air; but that he forebore to do. Instead he opposed his skill, his finesse, his strength, in the attack upon Charles Abbott's fibre. "If I collapse," Charles told himself, "it will be for eternity." Any sense of time was disintegrated in a physical agony which required all his wasting being to combat. But, even worse than that, far more destructive, was the assault upon his mind. If he crumbled ... he thought of himself as dust, his brain a dry powder in his skull. The laughter around him, which had seemed to retreat farther and farther, had ceased, as though it had been lost in the distance. The room, widening to an immensity of space, was silent, charged with a malignant expectancy. Soon, Charles felt, he would fall into unreckoned depths of corrupt shadows, among the obscene figures of the hideously lost. The sweat streaming into his mouth turned thick and salt--blood, from his nose. There was a tumult in his head: his fencing now was the mere waving of a reed. Again and again the Spaniard's foil, as cruelly and vitally direct as at the first pass, struck within Charles' guard. The face of wood, of yellow wood, the eyes that were bits of coal, behind the mask, pursued him into the back of his brain. It stirred, there, a smothering instinct, a dormant memory, and Charles, with a wrenching effort, in a voice thin like a trickle of water from a spigot, said again, "--a most beautiful hand." Sharply, incomprehensibly, it was over. Drooping forward upon his knees, dropping his foil from paralysed fingers, he saw de Vaca, with his mask on an arm, frowning. "Now," Charles Abbott thought luxuriously, "I can faint and be damned to them." The cloud of darkness which flowed over him was empty of the vileness of fear; rather, like the beneficence of night, it was an utterly peaceful remission of the flesh. * * * * * His physical exhaustion, the weariness of his mind, continued in a settled lassitude through the following day. He was to see Andrés Escobar, give him what information he had had from La Clavel, the next morning at the baths of the Campos Eliseos; and meanwhile he scarcely stirred from the San Felipe. Charles, for the time, lacked the bravado necessary for the sustaining of his pretence. His thoughts, turned in upon his own acts and prospects, dwelt quietly on his determination. He had changed appreciably during his stay in Havana; even his physiognomy was different how, he couldn't say, but he was aware that his expression had, well, hardened. The cure which had been the principally hoped-for result of Cuba was complete. In spite of his collapse in the fencing school, he was more compactly strong than ever before. It occurred to him that, now, he might be described as a man. This brought him a certain pleasure, and, in keeping with that state, he tried to simplify, to comprehend, the idealism which dominated him. He didn't want to grasp vainly at rosy clouds. His first attitude, one of hardly more than boyish excitement, had soon become a deep impersonal engagement--he had promised himself to Cuba. That will was stronger than ever; but the schooling of the past weeks, together with the stiffening of his spirit, had bred a new practicality in him, superior, he felt, to any sheer heroics. He vastly preferred the latter, he hadn't totally lost the inspiring mental picture of a glorious sacrifice; but he had come to the realization that it was more important to stay alive. What, in reality, he was trying to do was to see himself consecutively, logically. In this, he recognized, his mind was different from the Escobars', from the blind fervor of the many Cuban patriots he knew. He could see that reflected in their manner toward him: no trace of Vincente's aloofness remained, they had come, forgetting his comparative youth, his alien blood, to regard him with almost an anxiety of respect. When it was possible, men of the widest possible activities talked to him of their plans. In short, Charles Abbott felt that he might become a power; and this he coolly set himself to bring about. His heritage was that of success; there were distinguished men, who had carried alone heavy responsibilities to their justified end, no more than two or three generations behind him. His mother, he thought gladly, surveying her in the clearness of a full detachment, had an astonishing courage of spirit. Charles told himself that he would have to become a politician; his undiminished idealism, without which his validity was nothing, must be shut into his heart, held purely for the communication of its force and for his own benefit. The simple path of truth, of partisan enthusiasm, must be put aside. The uncalculating bravery of the men gathered about General Agramonte was of indispensable value; but undirected, with no brain to make secure, to put into operation, the fire they created, that would come to little. He wished that his connection, his duty, with La Clavel was over, that he could delegate it elsewhere, but, obviously, for the moment, that was impossible. It merely remained for him, then, to take no unpondered chances, never again to be drawn into such a situation as he had faced with Gaspar Arco de Vaca. Before such a sharp decision, a certain amount of his sheer joy evaporated: it was less inspiring to be cautious than daring. The Cubans themselves, always excepting Andrés, had lost an appreciable amount of their glamour for him. They were, now, units, elements, to be managed, to be tranquilized, steadied, moved about. All this, of course, was yet to come; the recognition of him was instinctive rather than acknowledged. But, he repeated to himself, it was forming, spreading. That, then, was the shape, the actuality, of his vision--to establish himself indispensably at the fore of a Cuban liberty, incipient, dreamed of, and accomplished. All his thoughts dropped, almost with the audible smooth clicking of meshed steel gears, into place. The last degree of joy was replaced by a fresh calm maturity. He would never, it was obvious, be a leader of soldiers, and he had no desire to become the visible head of government; no, his intention was other than that of Carlos de Cespedes. He viewed his future self rather as a powerful source of advice with a house on the Prado. It was curious how coldly, exactly, he planned so much; and he stopped to examine his ambition even more closely and to discover if it were merely absurd. It struck him that it might be he had lost too much, that already he had become selfish, ambitious for himself, and he recalled the religious aspect so quickly gone. No, he decided, his effort was to bridge that space, already recognized, between desire and realization. Anyhow, he determined to speak of this as well to Andrés during their bath. The April temporale lay in an even heat over the city, and the end of the Paseo Isabel was crowded by the quitrins of women, the caleseros, in their brilliant livery, sleeping in whatever shade offered. The Escobars had a private bath, but Andrés preferred the larger baño publico, where it was possible to swim, and there Charles found him. The basin had been hollowed from the coral rock; it was perhaps eighteen or twenty feet square, and the height of the water, with a passage for a fresh circulation cut in the front wall, was level with the calm reach of the sea. The pool, as clear as slightly congealed and cooled air, open to the horizon, was roofed, with a railed ledge and steps descending into the water, and Andrés Escobar sat with his legs half immersed. He greeted Charles conventionally, concealing the pleasure which shone in his eyes. "I stopped at your dressing-room," Charles Abbott told him; "anything might be taken from the pockets of your coat." The converse of this possibility, that something had been put into a pocket, he conveyed. Andrés nodded indifferently. The other slid into the water, sinking and swimming beneath the surface to the farther end. It was delicious. Swimming was his only finished active accomplishment; and, with a half concealed pride, he exhibited it in skilful variations. Even the public bath, he felt, was too contracted for the full expression of his ability. In addition to this, it was necessary to talk confidentially to Andrés. And so, with a wave of his arm, he indicated the freedom of the sea beyond. Andrés Escobar followed him over the stone barrier, and together they swam steadily out into the blue. Finally, they rested, floating, and Charles diffidently related what was in his heart. His friend, less secure in the water, listened with a gravity occasionally marred by a mouthful of sea. "You are right," he agreed, when Charles had finished. "Although you have put it modestly, I think--many of us admit--that you may be a strong man in Cuba. Indeed, I have heard it said that you should go back to America, and put more intensity into the Junta. Naturally I should regret that, but we must all do what, in the end, is best. Charles, there is a great deal of water under and around us, and I should feel better nearer the Campos Eliseos." "Wait," Charles Abbott replied with a touch of impatience; "you are quite safe, there is no tide at present." Floating in the calm immensity, his arms outspread, his face, at once burned by the sun and lapped by water, turned to the opposed azure above, he drew in accession after accession of a determination like peace. Nothing should upset what he had planned. There was a stir beside him--André Escobar was returning to the shore, and lazily, thoughtfully, he swam back. The Cuban left immediately, for breakfast; but Charles lingered in the pool, lounging upon the wooden grilling with a cigarette. One by one the bathers went away. The sky, the sea, were a blaze of blue. The clatter of hoofs, the caleseros' departing cries, sounded from the Paseo. "Charles Abbott," he repeated his own name aloud with an accent of surprise. What, whom, did it describe? He gazed down over his drying body. This, then, was he--the two legs, thin but sufficiently muscular, the trunk in a swimming suit, the arms and hands! His hidden brain, his invisible mind, was himself as well; and, of the two, the mind and the body, the unseen was overwhelmingly the more important. He remembered how, fencing with de Vaca, the body had failed him utterly; de Vaca, attacking his will, was contemptuous of the other ... and his will had survived. Rising, he felt that he commanded himself absolutely; he had no sympathy, no patience, for frailty, for a failure through the celebrated weaknesses of humanity: hardness was the indispensable trait of success. * * * * * The whole of reasonably intelligent life, Charles discovered, was disrupted by the ceaseless clash of two utterly opposed ideas, emotions. There was, first, the need in the individual to serve, to justify, himself, to maintain his integrity; and, as well, there was the duty--at least, it was universally called a duty--of a self-sacrifice for love. The failures of superior men came largely, he was certain, in the breaking down of the first through the second. A man, for example, put into motion the accomplishment of his own demand, and then was appalled by the incidental price, but more to others than to himself. Yes, love betrayed men. The Escobars were, inseparably, Cuba, they were happily merged, lost, in one supreme cause; yet the superiority of their hearts over the head endangered their dearest preoccupation. They saw symbols as realities, they wrongly valued emotion more highly than reasoning. And further, Charles returned to himself, if he had consulted and listened to his parents, if his love of home had outweighed his singular vision, he would be nothing now but an unimportant drifting figure. His parents had had more knowledge of life than he; undoubtedly their counsel, in the main, was correct, safe. That word, safe, was it specially. The instinct of his mother was to preserve, to spare, him; to win for him as smooth a passage through life as was procurable. She had her particular feminine idea of what, in her son, spelled solid accomplishment; and, with all her spirit, it was material in so far as it was visible: position in a settled community, the money necessary for an existence both dignified and ornamental, a "nice" wife--another devoted sheltering soul such as herself--and well-behaved handsome children. The inner qualities she demanded for him were faith, honesty, and fidelity. Her vision of a broad close-cut lawn and grey stone house with pillars and a port-cochère, his wife, in silks and chaste jewels, receiving a polite company in the drawing-room, was admirable. In it he would be gray-haired and, together with an increasing stoutness, of an assured dignity. His children would worship his wisdom and paternal benevolence, and the world of affairs would listen to him with attentive respect. It was, unquestionably, an impressive conception. Every detail was excellent, but he cared for, revered, none of them. He didn't want to be safe, to decline softly to a soft old age, a death smothered in feathers. More than anything else his desire was to live intensely, to ride, upright, the crest of a thunderous wave. He hated, now, every phase of a decent suburban smugness. Someone else was welcome to the girl designated, by his mother, to be his wife. Someone other than himself might sit across the dinner-table from her, week after week, month after month, year after year, and watch her stereotyped face beyond the cut flowers; another might listen to the interminable gabble about servants and neighbors and dresses and cards. The children would be differently, more appropriately, fathered; his, Charles Abbott's, potential children were gathered into an ideal that was, too, an idea. It must be served, realized, within the dimensions of his own bone and fibre; it was exclusively his, his the danger, the penalty and the reward. Charles would not have had it different, even if, although none existed, he had any choice. He must, however, prepare himself against the betrayal he was able to trace so clearly in others; there could be no faltering, no remorse; he was cut off from the ordinary solaces, the comfortable compactness, of general living. But, already, temperamentally, he liked, preferred, this; alone, never for a minute was he lonely. The inattention to home, primarily the result of a new scene and of exciting circumstances, had grown into an impersonal fondness for his family; he failed to miss them, to wish for their presence. The only element that remained from the past was his love for Andrés Escobar; he confronted it valorously, deposed it from his mind, but it clung around his heart. How fortunate it was that Andrés could not detach him from his resolve; it was unthinkable that one should stand in the way of the other. These reflections occupied his mind at various times and places: one day in the American Consulate on Obispo Street; again at the steamship office on Mercaderes; over his cigarette and cheese and jelly at the Noble Havana; strolling along Ricla Street where the principal shops were congregated; at a dinner party in the Palace of the Conde de Santovernia. He was aloof. All the activity that absorbed the people among whom he went was to him trivial, utterly of no consequence. Sometimes he would walk through the stalls of the Mercado de Cristina, on the Plaza Vieja, or in through the Honradez factory on Sol Street, where a handful of cigars was courteously given to any appreciative visitor. He would return along the Paseo de Valdez to the park where he had sat when he was first in Cuba, and, as then, the strains of the military band of the Cabañas drifted across the bay. The dwelling of the Captain-General, with the Royal Lottery on the ground floor, had before it sentries in red and white; the Quay de Caballeria, reached through the Plaza of San Francisco, was tempered and pleasant in the early dusk, and at the Quay de Machina was a small garden with grotesque rosy flamingoes and gold-fish in the fountain. He sat, as well, lonely, considering and content, in the Alameda de Paula, where, by the glorieta, it was called the Salon O'Donnell. The moats, filled with earth, truck gardens, the shore covered with sugar pans, engaged his absent-minded interest. With the improvement of his Spanish, he deserted the better known cafés and restaurants, the insolence of the Castilian officers, for modest Cuban places of food, where he drank Catalan wine, and smoked the Vegueros, the rough excellent plantation cigars. This new mood, he was relieved to find, gave his acquaintances as much amusement as his public dissipation--it was ascribed to the predicted collapse of his love affair with La Clavel. She was, he was rallied, growing tired of his attentions; and, in the United States Club, he was requested not to drown himself, because of the trouble it would cause his country. Captain Santacilla, however, studied him with a growing ill-humor; his peculiar threats and small brutalities had stopped, but his temper, Charles recognized, was becoming dangerous. He declared frankly, in the Café Dominica, that Charles wasn't the fool he appeared, and he repeated his assertions of the need for a deportation or worse. This was a condition which, sooner or later, must be met, and for which Charles prepared himself. Both Cubans and Spaniards occasionally disappeared forever--the former summarily shot by a file of muskets in a fosse, and the latter, straying in the anonymous paths of dissipation, quieted by a patriotic or vindictive knife. This, it seemed to Charles Abbott, would be the wisest plan with Santacilla; and he had another strange view of himself considering and plotting a murder. The officer, who had an extraordinary sense of intangible surrounding feelings and pressures, spoke again to Charles of the efforts to dispose of him. "The man doesn't draw breath who will do it," he proclaimed to Charles, at the entrance to the Valla de Gallo. "It's a superstition, but I'd back it with my last onza of gold. I've seen it in you very lately, but give it up. Or don't give it up. Either way you are unimportant. I can't understand why you are still here, why I permit you to live. If I remember it I'll speak to my sergeant, Javier Gua: he performs such an errand to a nicety. I have taken a dislike to you, very unreasonably, for you are no more than a camarone. I believe, for all your appearance of money, that La Clavel supports you; it is her doblons, I am certain, you gamble away and spend for food." Charles Abbott smiled at the insult: "On one hand I hear that she has thrown me over and then you say that she supports me. Which, I wonder, is to be preferred? But neither, fortunately, is true. I can still buy her a bouquet of camellias and she will still wear it. As for the money, I never lose at gambling, Santacilla, I am always successful; the cards are in my favor. If I bet on the black, it turns up; and when I choose the red, affairs are red." Santacilla's uneasy eyes shifted over him suspiciously. "Blood and death, that is what black and red are," he said. "But you are not the dispenser of fate." The peak of his cockaded hat threw a shadow over his sanguine face to the chin. "A camarone," he repeated, "a stalk of celery. Gua, and I'll remember to tell him, will part you from your conceit." There was a metallic crowing of roosters as the officer turned away. * * * * * La Clavel noticed a marked difference in Charles, but proclaimed that it was no more than an increase in his natural propensity for high-mindedness. It fatigued her, she declared, to be with him, made her dizzy to gaze up at his altitude of mind. He was seated in her room, the hairdresser was sweating in the attempt to produce an effect she was describing to him with phrases as stinging as the whip of foils, while Charles watched her with a degree of annoyance. Her humors, where he was concerned, were unpredictable; and lately she had found a special delight in attacks on his dignity. She said and did things--an air of innocence hiding her malice--indecently ribald that shook his firmest efforts to appear, to be, unconcerned. At last, in a volatile rage, she dismissed the servant with his tongs and pomatum and crimping leads, and swore to Charles Abbott that she was going to the Argentine by the first boat that offered passage. "I am sick of Cuba, and I've forgotten that I am an artist, and that is bad. You are wrapped up in this liberty, and that is very well for you, an ordinary person. You must have something like that, outside you, to follow, for you've very little within. But me, I am not an ordinary person; I am La Clavel. I am more valuable to the world than pumpkins or republics. I stamp my heel," she stamped her heel, a clear sharp sound, and her body swept into a line passionate and tense, "and I create a people, a history." La Clavel secured the castanets lying on her dressing-table--in answer to their irritable rhythmic clinking she projected, for an instant, a vision of all desire. "I can make men forget; I can draw them out of their sorrows and away from their homes; I can put fever in their blood that will blind them to memories and duty. Or I can be a drum, and lead them out, without a regret, a fear, to death. That is more than a naranjada or a cigar or an election. And, because of what I have given you, I have put that out of my life; I have been living like the mistress of a bodega. To be clear, Charles, I am tired of you and Cuba, and I have satisfied my hatred of the officers with cologne on their handkerchiefs." "I understand that perfectly," Charles Abbott assured her; "and I cannot beg you to stay. Whatever your motive was, your value to us has been beyond any payment. If our movement had a saint, you would fill that place." She laughed, "A strange saint in a mantón and slippers with painted heels." "Much better," Charles replied, "than many of those in sanctified robes. I had the feeling, too," he proceeded, "that our usefulness together was coming to an end." It seemed to him that again she had become the glorified figure of the stage, his dislike for her actuality, her flesh, vanished, leaving only profound admiration. "I am amazed," she said, in a lingering half humorous resentment, "that you never loved me, I never brought you a regret or a longing or made any trouble in your heart." "That was because I put you so high," he explained. She raised her shoulders and objected that it was late for compliments. "Be honest--you didn't care for me. You ought to be very successful, you have things surprising in the so young. Will you," she demanded suddenly, totally changing the subject, "be my maid?" He hastened to inform her, vehemently, that he would not. "Jobaba hasn't come today," La Clavel continued; "and she wasn't here to dress me for dinner last evening. That is unusual in her: I have a feeling she is not coming back." "Perhaps she has been murdered in one of the brujos cabildos," Charles suggested. "It is impossible to say where that frenzy stops." A happening quite different, the dancer told him, was in her mind. "I could never get into the thoughts of Jobaba," she admitted. "And there is very little I miss. I suppose it's the negro. She is like cream, smooth and beautiful to look at, but turned by thunder." If she were going away, Charles reminded her, there were a number of things to be discussed and closed. And she told Charles how a Cuban, ostensibly attached to the national party, but in reality a Spanish secret agent, had been sent into Camagüey. His name was Rimblas. Charles Abbott repeated that, and memorized such characteristics as La Clavel knew. There was an indefinite stir at the door, a short knock, and he moved to the window as Santacilla entered unceremoniously. The Spaniard was a model of politeness, of consideration, and he listened, seated with his hands folded about the head of his officer's cane, to La Clavel's determination to go to South America. It was an excellent plan, he agreed; they would welcome her rapturously in Buenos Aires; but hadn't she put off her intention a little too long? It was on account of the climate, the season, he hastened to add. Although, of course, they would open the opera house for her, the smart world would come in from their estancias. "But what will our young American do?" he demanded. "How will he live without his delight? But perhaps he is going to the Argentine with you. He will have a busy time, and a hatful of challenges there, where beauty is appreciated to the full." Charles said, with an appearance of sullenness, that he hadn't been invited to go farther south; and Santacilla replied that, as a matter of fact, it might be necessary for him to remain, perhaps forever, in Havana. He spoke cheerfully, gazing amiably upon them, but a vague quality of his bearing, his voice, was disturbing, mocking. His words had the air of an underlying meaning different from their sound. An uneasiness, as well, was communicated to La Clavel: she watched Santacilla with an indirect puzzled gaze. "Jobaba has gone," she announced abruptly. The trace of a smile hovered about the officer's expression of regret. "A personable clip of hell," was his opinion of the strayed maid. "Do you remember the major who composed music?" he addressed La Clavel. "Well, he was always a little touched in the brain, and he caught this negro hysteria, he became a brujos. He'd come home in the morning with his body marked in yellow chalk, and wrung out like a boatman's sponge; and he let drop a fact or two about your Jobaba screaming to an African drum rubbed with the fingers. In that state, he said, a great deal that was curious and valuable could be dragged from her. We encouraged his madness, at the Cabañas, for what it brought us. But it was unfortunate for him--he ties bright rags about his ankles and mumbles, when he thinks he is alone." Charles Abbott's mind, sifting all that the other said, was abnormally active, sharp. Something, he couldn't quite grasp what, was acutely, threateningly, wrong. He had a sense of impending danger, a premonition of dashing sound, of discord. And, whatever developed, he must meet it, subdue and conquer it. Ceaza y Santacilla, he saw, was not visibly armed; but, probably, he would carry a small pistol. The one his father had given him was in Charles' pocket. The difficulty was that, in the event of a disturbance, no matter what the outcome here might happen to be, the dancer and he would bear the weight of any Spanish fury. And it was no part of his intention to be cut in half by bullets behind a fortress wall. He could only delay, discover as soon as possible what was behind Santacilla's deceiving patience and good humor. Upon that he would have to act without hesitation and with no chance of failure. The regiment should, the dancer complained, send her maid back to her. Manners were very much corrupted beyond the western ocean--in Sevilla the servant would have been dispatched in a bullock cart deep in roses. That, he answered, reminded him of another procession, a different cart; but it was more French than Castilian--the tumbril. He was seated against a wall at a right angle from the door, and Charles left the vicinity of the window, lounging across the room. La Clavel said, "I know you so well, Ceaza, what is it; what is it you are saying and saying without speaking of? Your mind is like a locked metal box that shows only the flashes on the surface. But you must open it for us. It seems as though you were threatening me, and that, you best should realize, is useless." His flickering eyes rested first on her and then upon Charles Abbott. "You will never get to South America now," he asserted; "for you are a conspirator against your King. Since you have shown such a love of Cuban soil you are to become a part of it forever." * * * * * Charles Abbott, now standing by the door, shot in the bolt which secured it, and, by a fortunate, a chance, twist, broke off the handle. Santacilla, undisturbed, remained seated, smiling while his fingers played with the plaited loop of his cane. "This infatuation," he indicated them with a wave, "while it convinced Havana, never entirely satisfied me. I have been watching you, Jobaba has been listening, for days. You were very cunning, but, in the end, you failed; you were neither skilful nor patient enough. Yet, at the last, all that you heard were fairy tales--the spy that was sent to Camagüey, ha!" La Clavel faced him calmly, but, Charles saw, she was pale. He was revolving a hundred impractical schemes: they had only one end, the death of Santacilla, but how that was to be brought about with safety to Cuba evaded him. "I am not a traitor in the way you mean," she declared; "what your conceit never allowed you to note was that, in Spain and here, I have always detested you; and what I did was the result of that. I struck at you and not at our country, for the court and church and army are no longer our strength--if we still have any except the knife and cord--but our weakness." "Fools," he asserted, unmoved. "And now you are the fool," she added. "No, you are wrong; I am only enjoying myself before the show is over. I wanted to see you, and your young devotee, twist and turn before the fact of death. I have killed, and seen executed, a number of people, men and women; but I was still curious--a great dancer and a rich young American. That is an unusual day." It was best, Charles Abbott decided, to bring about as much as possible with no more delay; the prime necessary act accomplished, they could face the problems of the immediate future steadily. He quietly produced his pistol and levelled it. The dry click which alone followed the pulling of the trigger made the officer aware of the attempt upon his life. A dark angry surge invaded his face, and then receded. "No man will ever kill me," he repeated. "It is my star." A hand left the cane and produced a small gold whistle. Charles stared dully at the useless weapon, with its mounting of mother-of-pearl, which he still held. "The cartridges have been too long in their barrels," Santacilla explained; "they have dried and shifted. You should have greased them every week." La Clavel stood, lost in thought, like a woman in a dream. Her hair, over which she had spent such time and curses, was an elaborate silhouette against the light. "Ceaza, Ceaza," she implored, going to him, "you must let me go and dance in Buenos Aires, they have never seen me there, it is necessary to my career." She was close beside him, when he rose suddenly, pushing the chair between them. "You Andalusian devil!" he cried, and put the whistle to his lips. Before he could blow, the dancer had flung herself on him, with an arm bound about his neck, a hand dragging at his throat. The whistle fell, the chair was brushed aside, and the man and woman, in a straining desperate grip, swayed into the middle of the floor. Charles, driven by an inherited instinct to protect La Clavel, to replace her in such a struggle, caught at either of the locked shoulders; but, whirling in the passion of their strife, they struck him aside. He made another effort to pull Santacilla to the floor, without success; and then, with a small stout chair in his hands, he waited for an opportunity to bring it crashing on the officer's head. He was appalled by the fury of the woman silently trying to choke her enemy; her other hand, grasping the thin glimmer of the knife always convenient in her stocking, the officer held away from them. Her years of dancing, her early hardening life in the mountains, had given her a strength and litheness now tearing at the weight, the masculinity, of Santacilla. He was trying, in vain, to break her wrist, to close his fingers into her throat; and, bending, the fragility of her clothes ripped across her sinuous back. Shifting and evading the thrust of his power, she was sending the blood in purple waves over his neck and thick cheeks. Neither of them cried out, spoke; there was only the sound of hoarse breathing, inarticulate expressions of unendurable strain. Charles Abbott, raising, holding poised, the chair, and lowering it, was choked with the grappling horror before him. La Clavel's face was as blanched as the officer's was dark, her eyes were wide-open and set, as though she were in a galvanic trance. Again and again Santacilla tried to tear away her arms, to release himself from the constriction at his neck. His fingers dug red furrows through her flesh, they tormented and outraged her. A palm closed upon her countenance, and blood ran from under it. But there was no weakening of her force, no slackening in her superb body. She seemed curiously impersonal; robbed of all traits of women; she was like a symbolical fate, the figure from a shield, from an emblem, dragging him to death. Then, suddenly, in an inadequate muffled voice burdened with a shuddering echo of fear, he cried for her to release him. It was so unexpected, he became so inexplicably limp, that La Clavel backed away instinctively. Charles started forward, the chair lifted high; but he was stopped by the expression, the color, of Ceazy Santacilla's face. The officer turned, with his hands at his throat, toward the window. He took an uncertain step, and then stood wavering, strangely helpless, pathetically stricken. "The air," he whispered; "hot as wine." He pitched abruptly face forward upon the floor. La Clavel tried to speak against the labored heaving of her breast, but what she attempted to say was unintelligible. Charles, slipping back the broken bolt with a finger in its orifice, listened intently at the door. The Hotel St. Louis was wrapped undisturbed in its siesta; no alarm had been created. Santacilla lay as he had fallen, an arm loosely outspread, a leg doubled unnaturally under its fellow. He bore the laxness, the emptiness, of death. He had spoken truly that it wasn't in his star to be killed by a man. Finding that he was still holding the chair, Charles put it softly down. "Well," he said, "the revolution is through with him." He glanced suddenly at La Clavel. She was drooping, disheveled and hideous; her hair lay on her bare shoulders in coarse strands; her face was swollen with bruises. Now, he realized, she would never see the Argentine; she would never again hear the shouted olés that greeted, rewarded, the brilliancy of her jota. His thoughts shifted to Cuba and himself--if it were a crime of passion that had been committed in her room, the cause, there, would be freed from suspicion. He had, as customary, come directly, unostentatiously, to her room, and he was certain that he had not been observed. A duty, hard in the extreme, was before him. "Why did you bring about Santacilla's death?" he demanded. She gazed at him dully, uncomprehendingly. "It was because he was jealous," he proceeded; "you must hold to that." She nodded, dazed. "When they come into the room and find him you must show what he did to you. And, after all, you didn't kill him. Perhaps that will save you," his voice was without conviction. "They won't believe you, and they may try measures to get at the truth; but you will be faithful. You will keep your secret, and--and I must go. I shall ask for you downstairs, make them send up a servant, and shout as loudly as any." She held up her battered countenance dumbly and, with a feeling of transcendent reverence, he kissed her cut lips. Thrown across the end of the bed, the shawl she had danced in, blazing with gay color, cast the reflection of its carmines and yellows on the calcimined wall. It was like a burst of the music which accompanied her dancing. The castanets lay on the floor. The blessed saint of Cuban independence! Then the caution that had become a part of his necessity rode uppermost: he proceeded silently to the door, and, closing it behind him, went, meeting no one, to the ground floor, where he pulled irritably at the wire hanging from a bell under the ceiling. The raw jangle brought a servant, a rosy-cheeked Gallego boy, heavy with sleep, who went stumbling up the stairs on Charles' errand. * * * * * In his own room a wave of physical horror swept over Charles Abbott; he was obliged to sit down, and the chair, the floor, seemed to rock at the giddy sickness of the memory of Santacilla, stumbling with a wine-colored face toward the window in a vain gasping for air, for life. He recovered slowly: notwithstanding the death of Tirso Labrador, the wasted shape of Andrés' brother, all the tragedies he had heard reported, it was not until now that he realized the entire grimness of the undertaking against Spain. The last possibility of the spectacular departed, leaving him with a new sense of the imminence of death. He had considered this, under certain circumstances welcoming it, or dismissing it with a creditable calmness, many times before; but then his attitude had been softened by the detachment, the impersonality, of his view. But at last the feeling of death was tangibly at his own throat; not today, nor tomorrow, probably; but inescapably. Well, he assured himself, he wouldn't, at that intense moment, fail an inner necessity; but his understanding gave him an additional feeling of the accidental aspects of life and of the Cuban revolution. Until then he had, sub-consciously, except for one short depression, been certain of the ultimate triumph of right; he had thought it must succeed through its mere rightness; and he had pictured justice as a condition dropped beneficently from the clouds, wrought with the thunder of angels' wings. But accomplishment on earth, with men, he now saw, was neither safe, easy nor assured. It was the result of bitter struggle, a strife open to the most appalling mischances. A necessity of the spirit, it must be executed in the flesh, and flesh was a treacherous, unstable substance; it was capable not only of traitorous betrayals, but equally of honest, and no less fatal, failures. With this in his thoughts he went to the door, in answer to a knock, and received a heavy carefully tied parcel. He opened it, and, dripping in dazzling color from the wrapping paper, was La Clavel's mantón, the one in which he had first seen her insolently dancing the jota. Charles, with a stirred heart, searched carefully for a note, a scrap of revealing paper; but there was none. She had sent it to him silently, before she had been taken away, in a sentiment the delicacy of which deeply moved him. He laid the shawl over the bed, where its cruel brilliancy filled the white-walled room, darkened against the heat, with flashes of magenta and orange and burning blue. La Clavel had worn it dancing, where it emphasized her grace and perversity and stark passion; it had been, in Charles Abbott's mind, synonymous with her, with the vision she created; but, suddenly, it lost that significance, and he saw it as the revealed outspread pattern of his own existence. The shawl was a map, a representation, of the country of the spirit through which he passed; such emotions, such heat, and such golden roses, all had been, were, his against that background of perilous endeavor. It seemed to float up from the bed and to reach from coast to coast, from end to end, of Cuba; its flowers took root and grew, casting about splendor and perfume; the blue widened into the sky, the tenderness of the clasping sea; the dark greens were the shadows of the great ceiba trees, the gloom of the jungles, the massed royal palms of the plains. And not only was it the setting, the country, its violent dissonances became cries, victorious or hopeless, the sweep of reddened swords, the explosions of muskets. There was the blood that had welled into the Laurel Ditch of Cabañas; and, as well, the sultry mysterious presence of Africa in the West--the buzzing madness of the music of the danzón, the hysterics of brujeria. Charles, at the heart of this, stood enveloped, surrounded, by a drama like the sharp clash of cymbals. It was easy to be overwhelmed, strangled, blinded, by the savage color; briefly to be obliterated. That possibility had been, lately, very much in his mind; and he wondered, against all his recent change, if, in the surrender of his idealism, he had lost his amulet, his safety. While he had, to a large extent, solved, for himself, the philosophy of conduct, cleared the motives of his acts, a great deal was inexplicable still. He saw, dimly, that there could be little hope of justice on any island except as the projection, the replica, of a fundamental universal integrity of justice. Perfection like that couldn't begin on the rim of being and extend inward; it must be at the center of all life, obscured, delayed, but, in an end not computable in the span of human existence, certain and inevitable. Charles Abbott now had the feeling that, parallel with the maintaining of his grasp on materialism, his recognition of the means at his hand, there should be an allegiance to a supremacy of the immeasurable whole. That double vision, the acceptance of a general good together with the possibility of extreme ill to the individual, puzzled him. He was required to put faith in a power seemingly indifferent to him, to discharge a responsibility in return for which nothing that he could weigh was promised. Charles recalled what had overtaken the dancer, La Clavel, in payment for a heroic effort against an insupportable oppression. Disaster had met the body, the flesh; what occurred in the spirit he was unable to grasp; but this, suddenly, breathlessly, he saw: La Clavel's bitter defiance, her mountain-born hatred of oppression, her beaten but undefiled body, had communicated to him something of her own valor. It was as though she had given him a palm, a shielded flame, to add to his own fortitude. In all probability she would, soon, be dead; Charles correctly gauged the Spanish animosity; and yet she was alive, strong, in him. She would be living; it was Ceaza y Santacilla who had died, been vanquished; his abnormal refinement dropping so easily into the bestial, the measure of evil, in him, for which he stood, had been slain, dissipated, ended. The shawl contracted, became a thing magnificent but silk, a mantón invested with a significance brave and surprisingly tender. It was, now, the standard of La Clavel, the mantle of the saintliness he had proclaimed. His doubts, his questioning, were resolved into the conviction that the act of the dancer was her spirit made visible, created tangibly for a tangible purpose, and that, there, she was indestructible. With that conclusion to serve as a stay and a belief, a philosophy of conduct, he returned from the extra-mundane to the world. Charles thought of La Clavel's desire to dance in Buenos Aires, for South America. He wondered how old she was; he had never before considered her in any connection with age; she had seemed neither old nor young, but as invested with the timeless quality of her art. She had spoken often of her girlhood, but no picture of her as a girl had formed in his mind. It was conceivable that, in more stable circumstances, she would have grown old, become withered with the peculiar ugliness of aged Spanish women; but that, too, he could not realize. Somehow, La Clavel's being was her dancing, and what had gone before, or what might have followed, were irrelevant, unreal; they were not she. He understood, now, her protest against being absorbed, involved, in anything but her profession. He became conscious of the sustained gravity of his thoughts, how his activity had been forced from the body to his mind; and that recalled to him the necessity for a contrary appearance. It would be wise for him to go to the Café Dominica that evening, in an obvious facile excitement at his connection, at once close and remote, with the death of Santacilla in the dancer's room. But, beyond the fact that it was known he had dispatched the servant upstairs, and the usual wild, thin speculations, nothing had been allowed to appear. Santacilla, it was announced, had died naturally. La Clavel wasn't mentioned. She had spoken to others than Charles of her determination to go to the Argentine; and it was probable, rumor said, principally in Spanish mouths, that she would go quietly south. At the United States Club, the idlers and gamblers surveyed Charles with dubious looks; and, over a rum punch, he adopted a sullen uncommunicative air. It would not do to drop his widely advertised habits too suddenly; he could not, in a day, change from a rake to a serious student of such books as Machiavelli's Prince; and he prepared, with utter disgust, for his final bow in the cloak of dissipation. * * * * * Purely by accident he met, at the Plaza de Toros, Jaime Quintara, Remigio Florez and Andrés. It was so fortunately, evidently, haphazard, that they continued together while Charles related the circumstances of the tragedy in La Clavel's room. The others were filled with wonder, bravos, at her strength and courage. Someday, Remigio swore, when Cuba was free, he would put up a monument to her in India Park. It would be of heroic size, the bronze figure of a dancer, in a mantón, on a block of stone, with an appropriate inscription. "The trouble with that," Andrés objected, "is if we should live and put up a monument to everyone who deserved it, the parks would be too crowded with bronzes for walking. All of Cuba might have to be commemorated in metal." At Neptuno Street and the Paseo Isabel they parted. Charles proceeded alone toward the sea; and, with the knowledge that Andrés had not gone home, but would be evident in public elsewhere, he stopped to see the other members of the Escobar family. Carmita Escobar had faded perceptibly since Vincente's death; still riven by sorrow she ceaselessly regretted the unhappy, the blasphemous, necessity which made the wearing of mourning for him inadmissible. Domingo Escobar, as well, showed the effects of continuous strain; his vein of humor was exhausted, he no longer provoked Charles' inadequate Spanish; he avoided any direct reference to Cuba. He was, he said, considering moving to Paris, he was getting old and no one could complain, now, since--. He broke off, evidently at the point of referring to Vincente and the Escobar local patriotism. But Narcisa, Charles was told, had become promised to Hector Carmache, an admirable gentleman with large sugar interests; luckily, for Narcisa, unconnected with any political dreams. "She will be very happy," her mother proclaimed. Narcisa narrowed her eyes. "He lives on an estancia," she added, "where there will be banana trees and Haitians to watch; and the conversation will be about the number of arrobas the mill grinds." She relapsed again into silence; but, from her lowered countenance, he caught a quick significant glance toward the balcony. She rose, presently, and walked out. Charles gazed at Domingo and Carmita Escobar; they were sunk in thought, inattentive, and he quietly joined Narcisa. "Andrés has told me a great deal about you," she proceeded; "I made him. He loves you too, and he says that you are very strong and respected everywhere. I have had to hear it like that, for you never come here now. And I hear other things, too, but from my maid, about the dancer, La Clavel. You gamble, it seems, and drink as well." That, he replied, was no more than half true; it was often necessary for him to appear other than he was. He studied her at length: she had grown more lovely, positively beautiful, in the past month; the maturity of her engagement to marry had already intensified her. Narcisa's skirt had been lowered and her hair, which had hung like a black fan, was tied with a ribbon. "How do you like me?" she demanded. But when he told her very much, she shook her head in denial. "I ought to be ashamed," she added, "but I am not. Did you realize that, when we were out here before, I made you a proposal? You ignored it, of course.... I am not ashamed of what I did then, either. Afterwards, standing here, I wanted to throw myself to the street; but, you see, I hadn't the courage. It's better now, that time has gone--I'll get fat and frightful." "This Carmache," Charles Abbott asked, "don't you like, no, love him?" She answered: "He is, perhaps, fifty--I am fifteen--and quite deaf on one side, I can never remember which; and he smells like bagasse. I've only seen him once, for a minute, alone, and then he wanted me to sit on his knees. I said if he made me I'd kill him some night when he was asleep. But he only laughed and tried to catch me. You should have heard him breathing; he couldn't. He called me his Carmencita. But, I suppose, I shall come to forget that, as well. I wanted you to know all about it; so, when you hear of my marriage, you will understand what to look for." "That is all very wrong!" Charles exclaimed. In reply she said, hurriedly, "Kiss me." That was wrong, too, he repeated, afterward. Her warmth and tender fragrance clung to him like the touch of flower petals. She turned away, standing at the front of the balcony, her arms, bare under elbow ruffles, resting on the railing. The flambeau trees in the Parque Isabel were like conflagrations. Her head drooped on her slender neck until it almost rested, despairingly, on the support before her. "I hate your northern way of living," her voice was suppressed, disturbingly mature; "I hate their bringing you into the house, only to break my heart. Charles," she laid an appealing hand on his sleeve, "could you do this--help me to run away? We have cousins in New York who would receive me. If you could just get me on a steamer!" "No," he said decidedly, "I could not; I wouldn't even if it were possible. What would Andrés, my friend, think? It would ruin me here." "If you had," she admitted, after a little, "as soon as we reached the street, I would have locked myself about your neck like my crystal beads. Once when I was supposed to be going with a servant to the sea baths, I had the quitrin stop at the San Felipe, and I went up the stair, to the roof, to your room, but you were out. You see, I am a very evil girl." He agreed to the extent that she was a very foolish girl. In turn she studied him carefully. "You seem to have no heart," she announced finally; "not because you don't love me, but in affairs generally; but I can tell you a secret--you have! It's as plain as water. What you think you are--poof!" She blew across the open palm of her hand. "I hope not," he returned anxiously. "But you are too young, even if you are to be married, to know about or to discuss such things. As Andrés' best friend I must caution you--" "Why did you kiss me?" she interrupted. He was, now, genuinely sorry that he had, but he replied that it had been no more than the salute of a brother. "You had better go in," he continued; "when they realize we are out here there will be a stir, perhaps you will be put to bed." "I might make a scandal," she deliberated, "throw myself on you and cry as loudly as possible." A smile appeared upon her fresh charming lips at his expression of dismay. "Then you would have to marry me." "I'd have to spank you," he retorted. "I shall never speak directly to you again," she concluded; "so you must remember what I say, that you are not what you'd like to be." She was, he thought, in spite of her loveliness, a very disagreeable little girl. That designation, ludicrously inadequate, he forced upon himself. With a flutter of her skirts she was gone. The afternoon was so still that he could hear the drilling of soldiers by the shore, the faint guttural commands and the concerted grounding of muskets. Narcisa and her unpleasant prediction faded from his mind. Standing on the balcony he imagined a vast concourse gathered below with upturned faces, waiting for him to speak. He heard the round periods, the sonorous Spanish, he delivered, welcoming, in the name of the people, their newly gained independence, and extending to them the applause and reassurances of the United States. "You have won this for yourselves," he proclaimed, "by your valor and faith and patience; and no alien, myself least of all, could have been indispensable to you. What I was privileged to do was merely to hold together some of the more inglorious but necessary parts of your struggle; to bring, perhaps, some understanding, some good will, from the world outside. You have added Cuba to the invaluable, the priceless, parts of the earth where men are free; a deed wrought by the sacrifice of the best among you. Liberty, as always, is watered by blood--" he hesitated, frowning, something was wrong about that last phrase, of, yes--the watered with blood part; sprinkled, nourished, given birth in? That last was the correct, the inevitable, form. The hollow disembodied voice of the drill sergeant floated up and then was lost in the beginning afternoon procession of carriages. * * * * * With a larger boutonnière than he would have cared to wear at home, a tea rose, he was making his way through the El Louvre, when Gaspar Arco de Vaca rose from a gay table and signalled for him. It was after Retreta, the trade wind was even more refreshing than customary, and the spirit of Havana, in the parques and paseos and restaurants, was high. The Louvre was crowded, a dense mass of feminine color against the white linen of the men, and an animated chatter, like the bubbles of champagne made articulate, eddied about the tables laden with dulces and the cold sweet brightness of ices. He hesitated, but de Vaca was insistent, and Charles approached the table. "If you think you can remain by yourself," the Spaniard said pleasantly, "you are mistaken. For women now, because of the dancer, you are a figure of enormous interest." He presented Charles to a petulant woman with a long nose, a seductive mouth, and black hair low in the French manner; then to a small woman in a dinner dress everywhere glittering with clear glass beads, and eyes in which, as he gazed briefly into them, Charles found bottomless wells of interrogation and promise. He met a girl to whom, then, he paid little attention, and a man past middle age with cropped grey hair on a uniformly brown head and the gilt floriations of a general. A place was made for Charles into which, against his intention, he was forced by a light insistence. It was, he discovered, beside the girl; and, because of their proximity, he turned to her. At once he recognized that she was unusual, strange: he had dismissed her as plain, if not actually ugly, and that judgment he was forced to recall. The truth was that she possessed a rare fascination; but where, exactly, did it lie? She was, he thought, even younger than Narcisa, yet, at the same time, she had the balanced calm of absolute maturity. Then he realized that a large part of her enigmatic charm came from the fact that she was, to a marked degree, Chinese. Her face, evenly, opaquely, pale, was flat, an oval which held eyes with full, ivory-like lids, narrow eye brows, a straight small nose and lips heavily coated with a carmine that failed utterly to disguise their level strength. Her lustreless hair, which might have been soot metamorphosed into straight broad strands, was drawn back severely, without ornament or visible pins, over her shapely skull. She wore no jewelry, no gold bands nor rings nor pendants; and her dress, cut squarely open at her slim round throat, was the fragile essence of virginity. She attracted Charles, although he could think of nothing in the world to say to her; he was powerless to imagine what interested her; a girl, she had no flavor of the conceits of her years; feminine, she was without the slightest indication of appropriate sentiments, little facile interests or enthusiasms. From time to time she looked at him, he caught a glimpse of eyes, blue, grey or green, oblique and disturbing; she said nothing and ate in infinitesimal amounts the frozen concoction of sapote before her. Charles Abbott hadn't grasped her name, and in reply to his further query, she told him in a low voice that it was Pilar, Pilar de Lima. Yes, she had been born in Peru. No, she had never been to China, although she had traveled as far as Portugal and London. His interest in her increased, she was so wholly outside his--any conceivable--life; and, without words, in a manner which defied his analysis, she managed to convey to him the assurance that he was not impossible to her. He found, at intervals, fresh qualities to engage him: she had unmistakably the ease which came from the command of money; the pointed grace of her hands--for an instant her palm had sought his--hid an unexpected firmness; she was contemptuous of the other vivacious women at the table; and not a change of expression crossed the placidity of a countenance no more than a mask for what, mysterious and not placid, was back of it. Then, in an undertone during a burst of conversation, she said, "I like you." She was half turned from him, in profile, and her lips had not seemed to move. Seen that way her nose was minute, the upward twist of her eye emphasized, her mouth no more than a painted sardonic curl. She was as slender as a boy of a race unknown to Charles--without warmth, without impulses, fashioned delicately for rooms hung in peacock silks and courtyards of fretted alabaster and burnished cedar. He wanted to reply that he liked her, but, in prospect, that seemed awkward, banal; and a lull in the conversation discouraged him. Instead he examined his feelings in regard to this Pilar from Lima. It was obvious that she had nothing in common with the women he had dismissed from his present and future; she was more detached, even, than La Clavel on the stage. And when, abruptly, she began to talk to him, in an even flow of incomprehensible vowels and sibilants, he was startled. Gaspar de Vaca spoke to her in a peremptory tone, and then he addressed Charles, "She'll hardly say a word in a Christian tongue, but, when it suits her, she will sail on in Chinese for a quarter of an hour. It may be her sense of humor, it may be a prayer, perhaps what she says, if it could be understood, would blast your brain, and perhaps she merely has a stomach ache." But his remonstrance had the effect designed; and after an imperturbable silence, she said again that she liked Charles Abbott. The General regretfully pushed back his chair, rose, and held out an arm in formal gallantry, and Charles was left to follow with Pilar. She lingered, while the others went on, and asked him if, tomorrow, he would take her driving to Los Molinos. He hesitated, uncertain of the wisdom of such a proceeding, when her hand again stole into his. What, anyhow, in the face of that direct request, could he do but agree? They must have, she proceeded, since he hadn't a private equipage, the newest quitrin he could procure, and a calesero more brilliant than any they should pass on the Calzada de la Reina. After all he would be but keeping up the useful pretence of his worldliness; yet, looking forward to the drive with her, an hour in the scented shade of the Captain-General's gardens, he was aware of an anticipated pleasure. The need for caution was reduced to a minimum, it shrank from existence; naturally he wouldn't talk to Pilar de Lima of politics, he could not be drawn into the mention of his friends, of any names connected in the slightest way with a national independence. It was possible that she had been selected, thrown with him, for that very purpose; but there his intelligence, he thought, his knowledge of intrigue, had been underestimated, insulted. No--Pilar, de Vaca, Spain, would gain nothing, and he would have a very pleasant, an oddly stimulating and exciting, afternoon. The excitement came from her extraordinary personality, an intensity tempered with a remoteness, an indifference, which he specially enjoyed after the last few tempestuous days. Being with her resembled floating in a barge on a fabulous Celestial river between banks of high green bamboo. It had no ulterior significance. She was positively inhuman. He met her, with an impressive glittering carriage and rider, according to her appointment, at the end of the Paseo Tacon, past the heat of afternoon. She was accompanied by a duenna with rustling silk on a tall gaunt frame, and a harsh countenance, the upper lip marred by a bluish shadow, swathed in a heavy black mantilla. Pilar was exactly the same as she had been the evening before. The diminished but still bright day showed no flaw on the evenness of her pallor, the artificial carmine of her lips was like the applied petals of a geranium, her narrow sexless body was upright in its film of clear white. The older woman was assisted into the leather body of the quitrin, Pilar settled lightly in the niña bonita, Charles mounted to the third place, the calesero swung up on the horse outside the shafts, and they rattled smartly into the Queen's Drive. From where he sat he could see nothing but the sombre edge of the mantilla beside him and Pilar's erect back, her long slim neck which gave her head, her densely arranged hair, an appearance of too great weight. On either side the fountains and glorietas, the files of close-planted laurel trees, whirled behind them. The statue of Carlos III gave way to the Jardin Botánico. * * * * * There he commanded the carriage to halt, and, in reply to Pilar's surprise, explained that he was following the established course. "We leave the quitrin here, and it meets us at the gates of the Quinta, and meanwhile we walk. There are a great many paths and flowers." On the ground she admitted her ignorance of Havana, and, followed at a conventional distance by her companion, they entered the Gardens. There was a warm perfumed steam of watered blossoming plants and exotic trees; and Charles chose a way that brought them into an avenue of palms, through which the fading sunlight fell in diagonal bands, to a wide stone basin where water lilies spread their curd-like whiteness. There they paused, and Pilar sat on the edge of the pool, with one hand dipping in the water. He saw that, remarkably, she resembled a water lily bloom, she was as still, as densely pale; and he told her this in his best manner. But if it pleased her he was unable to discover. A hundred feet away from them the chaperone cast her replica on the unstirred surface of the water, in the middle of which a fountain of shells maintained a cool splashing. "I should like one of those," she said, indicating a floating flower. "It's too far out," he responded, and she turned her slow scrutiny upon him. Her eyes were neither blue nor gray but green, the green of a stone. "That you are agreeable is more important than you know," she said deliberately. "And de Vaca--" she conveyed a sense of disdain. "What is it that he wants so much from you? How can it, on this little island, a place with only two cities, be important? I must tell you that I am not cheap; and when I was brought here, to see a boy, it annoyed me. But I am annoyed no longer," her wet fingers swiftly left their prints on his cheek. "Oporto and the English Court--I understood that; but to dig secrets from you, an innocent young American," she relapsed into silence as though he, the subject she had introduced, were insufficient to excuse the clatter of speech. So far as he was concerned, he replied, he had no idea of her meaning. "You see," he went on more volubly, "I was, to some extent, connected with the death of Santacilla, an officer of the regiment of Isabel, and they may still be looking for information about that." She assured him he was wrong. "It is Cuba that troubles them. It's in their heads you are close to powerful families here and in North America, and that you are bringing them together, pouring Northern gold into the empty pockets of the Revolution. I saw at once, before I met you, that I should waste my time, and I was going away at once ... until you walked into the restaurant. Now it will amuse me, and I shall take the doblons I get and buy you a present, a ruby, and, when you see Captain de Vaca, you will wear it and smile and he will know nothing." "You mustn't buy me anything," Charles protested earnestly; "I can at least understand that, how generous you are. If you are unfamiliar with Cuba perhaps you will let me inform you. I came to Havana, you see, for my lungs. They were bad, and now they are good; and that is my history here. There is no hole in them because I have been careful to avoid the troubles on the street; and the way to miss them is not to give them an admission. The reason I am here with you is because you seemed to me, in yourself, so far away from all that. Your mind might be in China." He went on to make clear to her his distrust of women. "But you are different; you are like a statue that has come to life, a very lovely statue. What you really are doesn't matter, I don't care, I shall never know. But a water lily--that is enough." "Are you wise or no deeper than this?" she asked, indicating the shallow fountain. "But don't answer; how, as you say, can it affect us? You are you and I am I. We might even love each other with no more; that would be best--it is the more that spoils love." "What do you know about that?" But, relapsing into immobility, she ignored his question. Beyond doubt his interest in her had increased; it was an attraction without name, yet none the less potent. Seated close beside him she still seemed to be fashioned from a vital material other than flesh and blood; she was like a creation of sheer magic ... for what end? They rose, leaving the Botanical Gardens, the spotted orchids and air plants and oleanders, for the Quinta. There they passed into a walk completely arched over with the bushes of the Mar Pacifico, the rose of the Pacific, a verdurous tunnel of leaves and broad fragrant pink blooms, with a farther glimpse of a cascade over mossy rocks. The stream entered a canal, holding some gaily painted and cushioned row boats, and a green-gold flotilla of Mandarin ducks. There were aviaries of doves, about which strollers were gathered, and a distant somnolent military guard. It was the first time for weeks that Charles had been consciously relaxed, submerged in an unguarded pleasure of being. Pilar might be honest about de Vaca and his purpose, or she might be covering something infinitely more cunning. It would bring her nothing! The very simplicity of his relationship with her was a complete protection; he had no impulse to be serious, nothing in his conversation to guard. Pilar seemed singularly young here, engaged in staring at and fingering the flowers, reading the sign boards that designated the various pleasances--the Wood of the Princess, the Garden of San Antonio, the Queen's Glade. Her tactile curiosity was insatiable, she trailed her sensitive hands over every strange surface that offered. Then, with her airy skirt momentarily caught on a spear of bearded grass, he saw, below her knee, under the white stocking, the impression of a blade, narrow and wicked. La Clavel had carried a knife in that manner, many women, he had no doubt, did; but in Pilar its stealthy subdued gleam affected him unpleasantly. It presented a sharp mocking contrast to all that, in connection with her, had been running happily through his mind. "I thought you were a moth, soft and white," he told her; "but it appears that you are a wasp in disguise--I hope it won't occur to you to sting me." Serenely she resettled her skirt. "Did you look for a scapular? Young men's eyes should be on the sky." Then she put an arm through his. "It was never there for you ... a moth soft and white. But I don't care for that." Her gliding magnetic touch again passed, like the fall of a leaf, over his cheek. Affecting not to notice it he lighted a thin cigar; he'd have to watch Pilar de Lima. Or was it himself who needed care? The feeling of detachment, of security, was pierced by a more acute emotion, a sensation that resembled the traced point of her knife. She asked, nearing the place where they were to meet the quitrin, when she might see him again; and mechanically he suggested that evening, after the music in the Plaza de Armas. Returning to Ancha del Norte Street, his face was grave, almost concerned, but he was made happy by finding Andrés Escobar in his room. Andrés, with the window shades lowered, was lounging and smoking in his fine cambric shirt sleeves. He had a business of routine to communicate, and then he listened, censoriously, to Charles' account of his afternoon. "She is a little devil, of course, with her gartered steel, but she amuses me. I have the shadow of an idea that she was truthful about de Vaca; and the ruby would be an excellent joke." "I cannot approve of any of this," Andrés decided; "it has so many hidden possibilities--the Spaniards are so hellish cunning. To be candid with you, I can't understand why they have neglected you so long. You are, Charles, fairly conspicuous. Perhaps it is because they hope, in the end, to get information from you. In that case, if we were in danger, I would shoot you with my own hand. Drop this Chinese water lily; their stems are always in the mud." "On the contrary, you must see her," Charles Abbott insisted. "I've explained that she can't hurt us; and we may get something floated the other way." He was aware of an indefinable resentment at Andrés' attitude: his love for him was all that prevented the acerbity of a voiced irritation. * * * * * Yet, when the regimental band was leaving to the diminishing strains of its quickstep, Andrés joined Charles and Pilar--who had left her quitrin--strolling through the Plaza. As usual she said practically nothing; but, in the gloom, she was specially potent, like a fascinating and ironic idol to innocence; and Charles Abbott was pleased by Andrés' instant attention. Pilar was reluctant, now, to return to the carriage, and she lingered between the men, who, in turn, gazed down addressing remarks to the smooth blackness of her hair or to the immobile whiteness of her face. Charles dropped behind, to light a cigar, and when he came up to them again he had the illusive sense of a rapid speech stopped at his approach. Andrés Escobar's countenance was lowered, his brow drawn together ... it had been Pilar de Lima, surprisingly, who had talked. Charles recalled the manner in which her low, even voice flowed from scarcely moving lips, with never a shadow of emotion, of animation, across her unstirred flattened features. Some Cubans gathered about the table when, later, they were eating ices; and, gaining Pilar's consent, he left with the indispensable polite regrets and bows. He was vaguely and thoroughly disturbed, uneasy, as though a grain of poison had entered him and were circulating through all his being. It was a condition he was unfamiliar with, disagreeable in the extreme; and one which he determined to stamp out. It hadn't existed in his contact with Pilar until the appearance of Andrés; yes, it came about from the conjunction of the girl, Andrés and himself; spilled into the clarity of their companionship, Andrés and his, her influence had already darkened and slightly embittered it ... had affected it, Charles added; she was powerless to touch him in the future; he put her resolutely, completely, from his thoughts. He was a little appalled at the suddenness with which the poison had tainted him, infecting every quality of superiority, of detachment, of reasoning, he possessed. When he saw Andrés again, after the interval of a week, his heart was empty of everything but crystal admiration, affection; but Andrés was obscured, his bearing even defiant. They were at a reception given by a connection of the Cespedes on the Cerro. Instinctively they had drawn aside, behind a screen of pomegranate and mignonette trees in the patio; but their privacy, Charles felt, had been uncomfortably invaded. He spoke of this, gravely, and Andrés suddenly drooped in extreme dejection. "Why did you ever bring us together!" he exclaimed. "She, Pilar, has fastened herself about me like one of those pale strangling orchids. No other woman alive could have troubled me, but, then, Pilar is not a woman." Charles Abbott explained his agreement with that. "What is she?" Andrés cried. "She says nothing, she hardly ever lifts her eyes from her hands, I can give you my word kissing her is like tasting a sherbet; and yet I can't put her out of my mind. I get all my thoughts, my feelings, from her as though they passed in a body from her brain to mine. They are thoughts I detest. Charles, when I am away from you, I doubt and question you, and sink into an indifference toward all we are, all we have been." "Something like that began to happen to me," Charles admitted; "it was necessary to bring it to an end; just as you must. Such things are not for us. Drop her, Andrés, on the Paseo, where she belongs." The other again slipped outside the bounds of their friendship. "I must ask you to make no such allusion," he retorted stiffly. Charles laughed, "You old idiot," he said affectionately, "have her and get over it, then, as soon as possible; I won't argue with you about such affairs, that's plain." Andrés laid a gripping hand on his arm, avoiding, while he spoke, Charles' searching gaze. "There is one thing you can do for me," he hurried on, "and--and I beg you not to refuse. The mantón that belonged to La Clavel! I described it to Pilar, and she is mad to wear it to the danzón at the Tacon Theatre. You see, it was embroidered by the Chinese, and it is appropriate for her. Think of Pilar in that shawl, Charles." "She can't have it," he answered shortly. Andrés Escobar's face darkened. "It had occurred to me you might refuse," he replied. "Then there is nothing for me to do. But it surprises me, when I remember the circumstances, that you have such a tender feeling for it. After all, it wasn't a souvenir of love; you never lost an opportunity to say how worn you were with La Clavel." "No, Andrés, it isn't a token of love, but a banner, yours even more than mine, a charge we must keep above the earth." That, Andrés observed satirically, was very pretty; but a mantón, a woman's thing, had no relation to the cause of Cuban independence. "Perhaps, but of course, you are right," Charles agreed. "Very well, then it is only a superstition of mine. I have the feeling that if we lower this--this standard it will bring us bad luck, it will be disastrous. What that Pilar, you may think, is to you, the mantón has always been for me. It is in my blood; I regard it as a sailor might a chart. And then, Andrés, remember--it protected Cuba." "I have to have it," the other whispered desperately; "she--she wants it, for the danzón." Charles Abbott's resentment changed to pity, and then to a calm acceptance of what had the aspect of undeviating fate. "Very well," he said quietly. "After all, you are right, it is nothing but a shawl, and our love for each other must not suffer. I'll give it to you freely, Andrés: she will look wonderful in it." The other grasped his hands. "Be patient, Charles," he begged. "This will go and leave us as we were before, as we shall always be. It hasn't touched what you know of, it is absolutely aside from that--a little scene in front of the curtain between the acts of the serious, the main, piece. I doubted her honesty, as you described it, at first; but you were right. She has no interest at all in our small struggle; she is only anxious to return to Peru." "I wish she had never come from there!" Charles declared; "whether she is honest or dishonest is unimportant. She is spoiled, like a bad lime." "If you had been more successful with her--" Andrés paused significantly. "So that," Charles returned, "is what she said or hinted to you!" Andrés Escobar was gazing away into the massed and odorous grey-blue mignonette. "Go away before I get angry with you; you are more Spanish than any Mendoza. The mantón you'll find at home tonight." He was, frankly, worried about Andrés; not fundamentally--Andrés' loyalty was beyond any personal betrayal--but because he was aware of the essential inflammability of all tropical emotion. The other might get into a rage with Pilar, who never, herself, could fall into such an error, and pay the penalty exacted by a swift gesture toward the hem of her skirt. Then he recalled, still with a slight shudder of delight, the soft dragging feel of her fingers on his cheek. He tied the shawl up sombrely, oppressed by the conviction of mischance he had expressed to Andrés, and despatched it. Pilar de Lima might, possibly, depart for Peru earlier even than she hoped; boats left not infrequently for Mexico and South America--the Argentine for which La Clavel had longed--and she was welcome to try her mysterious arts upon the seas away from Cuba and Andrés. A sugar bag could easily, at the appropriate moment, be slipped over her head, and a bateau carry her out, with a sum of gold, at night to a departing ship. There would be no trouble, after she had been seen, in getting her on board. And Charles Abbott thought of her, in her silent whiteness, corrupting one by one the officers and crew; a vague hatred would spread over the deck, forward and aft; and through the cabins, the hearts, her suggestions and breath of evil touched. They would never see Mexico, he decided; but, on a calm purple night in the Gulf, a sanguine and volcanic inferno of blackened passion would burst around the flicker of her blanched dress and face no colder in death than in life. * * * * * Charles Abbott's thoughts returned continually to Andrés; in the shadowy region of his brain the latter was like a vividly and singly illuminated figure. He remembered, too, the occasion of his first seeing Andrés, at the Hotel Inglaterra: they had gone together into the restaurant, where, over rum punches and cigars, the love he had for him had been born at once. It was curious--that feeling; a thing wholly immaterial, idealizing. He had speculated about it before, but without coming to the end of its possibilities, the bottom of its meaning. There was no need to search for a reason for the love of women; that, it might be, was no more than mechanical, the allurement cast by nature about its automatic purpose. It belonged to earth, where it touched any sky was not Charles' concern; but his friendship for Andrés Escobar had no relation to material ends. At first it had been upheld, vitalized, by admiration, qualities perceptible to his mind, to analysis; he had often reviewed them--Andrés' deep sense of honor, his allegiance to a conduct free of self, his generosity, his slightly dramatic but inflexible courage, the fastidious manners of his person. His clothes, the sprig of mimosa he preferred, the angle of his hat and the rake back, through an elbow, of his malacca cane, were all satisfying, distinguished. But Charles' consciousness of these actual traits, details, had vanished before an acceptance of Andrés as a whole, uncritically. What, once, had been a process of thought had become an emotion integral with his own subconscious being. Something of his essential character had entered Andrés, and a part of Andrés had become bound into him. This, as soon as she had grown into the slightest menace to it, had cast Pilar de Lima from his consideration. It had been no effort, at the moment necessary he had forgotten her; just as Andrés, faced with the truth, would put her away from him. The bond between them, Charles told himself, was forged from pure gold. This was running through his head on the night of the danzón. He was seated at the entrance of the United States Club, where the sharp Yankee accents of the gamblers within floated out and were lost in the narrow walled darkness of Virtudes Street. It was no more than eleven, the Tacon Theatre would be empty yet.... Charles had no intention of going to the danzón, but at the same time he was the victim of a restless curiosity in connection with it; he had an uncomfortable oppression at the vision of Andrés, with Pilar in the bright shawl, on the floor crowded with the especial depravities of Havana. The Spanish officers had made it customary for men of gentility to go into the criolla festivities; they were always present, the young and careless, the drunken and degenerate; and that, too, added to Charles' indefinable sense of possible disaster. In a way, it might be an excellent thing for him to attend, to watch, the danzón. If Andrés were infatuated he would be blind to the dangers, both the political and those emanating from the mixture of bloods. At this moment the game inside ended, and a knot of men, sliding into their coats, awkwardly grasping broad-brimmed hats, appeared, departing for the Tacon Theatre. A perfunctory nodded invitation for him to accompany them settled the indecision in Charles Abbott's mind. And, a half hour later, he was seated in a palco of the second tier, above the dance. Familiar with them, he paid no attention to the sheer fantastic spectacle; the two orchestras, one taking up the burden of sound when the other paused, produced not for him their rasping dislocated rhythm. He was aware only of floating skirts, masks and dark or light faces, cigars held seriously in serious mouths. Charles soon saw that Andrés and Pilar de Lima had not yet arrived. As he leaned forward over the railing of the box, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, sardonic and observing, glanced up and saluted with his exaggerated courtesy. He disappeared, there was a knock at the closed door behind Charles, and de Vaca entered. There was a general standing acknowledgement of his appearance; the visor of his dress cap was touched for every man present, and he took a vacated chair at Charles' side. "You weren't attracted to my white absinthe," he said easily. On the contrary, Charles replied, he had liked Pilar very well, although she had annoyed him by foolish tales of a Spanish interest in him. "She is, of course, an agent," de Vaca admitted indifferently. "We almost have to keep her in a cage, like a leopard from Tartary. She has killed three officers of high rank; although we do not prefer her as an assassin. She is valuable as a drop of acid, here, there; and extraordinary individuals often rave about her. We'll have to garrotte her some time, and that will be a pity." There was a flash of color below, of carmine and golden orange, and Charles recognized Pilar wrapped, from her narrow shoulders to her delicate ankles, in the mantón. Andrés Escobar, with a protruding lip and sullen eyes, was at her side. Suddenly de Vaca utterly astounded Charles; with a warning pressure of his hand he spoke at the younger man's ear: "I am leaving at once for Madrid, a promotion has fortunately lifted me from this stinking black intrigue, and I have a memory ... from the sala de Armas, the echo of a sufficiently spirited compliment. As I say, I am off; what is necessary to you is necessary--a death in Havana or a long life at home. Where I am concerned you have bought your right to either. You cannot swing the balance against Spain. And I have this for you to consider. Your friend, Escobar, has reached the end of his journey. It will accomplish nothing to inform him; he is not to walk from the theatre. Very well--if you wish to hatch your seditious wren's eggs tomorrow, if you wish to wake tomorrow at all, stay away from him. Anything else will do no good except, perhaps, for us." Charles Abbott sat with a mechanical gaze on the floor covered with revolving figures. He realized instantly that Gaspar Arco de Vaca had been truthful. The evidence of that lay in the logic of his words, the ring of his voice. The officer rose, saluted, and left. Andrés had come to the end of his journey! It was incredible. He had not moved from the spot where Charles had first seen him; he had taken off his hat, and his dark faultlessly brushed hair held in a smooth gleam the reflection of a light. Andrés turned with a chivalrous gesture to Pilar, who, ignoring it completely, watched with inscrutable eyes the passing men. The shawl, on her, had lost its beauty; it was malevolent, screaming in color; contrasted with it her face was marble. How, Charles speculated desperately, was Andrés to be killed? And then he saw. A tall young Spaniard with a jeering countenance, in the uniform of a captain in a regiment not attached at Havana, stopped squarely, with absolute impropriety, before Pilar and asked her to dance. Andrés Escobar, for the moment, was too amazed for objection; and, as Pilar was borne away, he made a gesture of denial that was too late. He glanced around, as though to see if anyone had observed his humiliation; and Charles Abbott instinctively drew back into the box. As he did this he cursed himself with an utter loathing. Every natural feeling impelled him below, to go blindly to the support of Andrés. There must be some way--a quick shifting of masks and escape through a side door--to get him safely out of the hands of Spain. This, of course, would involve, endanger, himself, but he would welcome the necessity of that acceptance. Gaspar de Vaca had indicated the price he might well pay for such a course--the end, at the same time, of himself; not only the death of his body but the ruin of his hopes and high plans. Nothing, he had told himself a thousand times, should be allowed to assail them. Indeed, he had discussed just such a contingency as this with Andrés. Theoretically there had been no question of the propriety of an utter seeming selfishness; the way, across a restaurant table, had been clear. * * * * * In the box the other Americans maintained a steady absorbed commenting on the whirling color of the danzón. One, finally, attracted by the mantón on Pilar de Lima, called the attention of the others to her Chinese characteristics. They all leaned forward, engaged by the total pallor of her immobility above the blazing silk. They exclaimed when she left the Spanish officer and resumed her place by Andrés Escobar's side. "Isn't that peculiar?" Charles was asked. "You are supposed to know all about these dark affairs. Isn't it understood that the women keep to their own men? And that Cuban, Abbott, you know him; we often used to see you with him!" "Yes," Charles Abbott acknowledged, "partners seldom leave each other. That is Andrés Escobar." He paid no more heed to the voices about him, but sat with his gaze, his hopes and fears, fastened on Andrés and Pilar. Back again, she was, as usual, silent, dragging her fingers through the knotted magenta fringe of the shawl. Andrés, though, was speaking in short tense phrases that alternated with concentrated angry pauses. She lifted her arms to him, and they began to dance. They remained, however, characteristic of the danzón, where they were, turning slowly and reversing in a remarkably small space. They were a notably graceful couple, and they varied, with an intricate stepping, the general monotony of the measure. Charles had an insane impulse to call down to Andrés, to attract his attention, and to wave him away from the inimical forces gathering about him. Instead of this he lighted a cigarette, with hands the reverse of steady, and concentrated all his thoughts upon the fact of Cuban independence. That, he told himself, was the only thing of importance in his life, in the world. And it wasn't Cuba--alone, but the freedom of life at large, that rested, in part at least, on the foundation he might help to lay, the beginning solidity of human liberty, superiority. He forced himself to gaze with an air of indifference at the dancing below him; but, it seemed, wherever he looked, the mantón floated into his vision. He saw, now, nothing else, neither Pilar nor Andrés, but only the savage challenging fire of silks. The shawl's old familiar significance had been entirely lost--here he hated and feared it, it was synonymous with all that threatened his success. It gathered into its folded and draped square the evil of the danzón, the spoiled mustiness of joined and debased bloods, the license under a grotesque similitude of restraint. This was obliterated by a wave of affection for Andrés so strong that it had the effect of an intolerable physical pressure within his body: his love had the aspect of a tangible power bound to assert itself or to destroy him. With clenched hands he fought it back, he drove it away before the memory of the other. Voices addressed him, but he paid no attention, the words were mere sounds from a casual sphere with which he had nothing in common. He must succeed in his endeavor, put into actuality at this supreme moment his selfless projection of duty, responsibility. For it was, in spite of his preoccupation with its personal possibilities, an ideal to which he, as an entity, was subordinated. He recalled the increasing number of destinies in which he was involved, that were being thrust upon him, and for which, at best, he would become accountable. So much more lay in the immediate future than was promised--justified--in the present. Here, too, Andrés was at fault--precisely the accident had happened to him that he was so strict in facing for others. His absorption wouldn't, as an infatuation, continue; or, rather, it could not have lasted ... long. But already it had been long enough to finish, to kill, Andrés. Charles rose uncontrollably to his feet; he would save his friend from the menace of the whole Spanish army. But de Vaca, whose every accent carried conviction, had been explicit: he particularly would not have spoken under any other circumstance. He had, in reality, been tremendously flattering in depending to such a degree on Charles' coolness and intellect. Gaspar de Vaca would have taken no interest in a sentimentalist. The officer without question had found in Charles Abbott a strain of character, a resolution, which he understood, approved; to a certain extent built on. He had, in effect, concluded that Charles and himself would act similarly in similar positions. It was, Charles decided, at an end; he must go on as he had begun. A strange numb species of calm settled over him. The vast crowded floor, the boxes on either hand, sweeping tier on tier to the far hidden ceiling, surrounding the immense chandelier glittering with crystal lustres, were all removed, distant, from him. The Tacon Theatre took on the appearance of a limitless pit into which all human life had been poured, arbitrarily thrown together, and, in the semblance of masquerading gaiety, made to whirl in a time that had in its measure the rattle of bones, a drumming on skulls. This conception sickened him, he could, he felt, no longer breathe in a closeness which he imagined as fetid; and Charles realized that, at least, there was no need for him to remain. Indeed, it would be better in every way to avoid the impending, the immediate, catastrophe. With a hasty incoherent remark he secured his hat and left the box. Outside, in the bare corridor, he paused and his lips automatically formed the name Andrés Escobar. In a flash he saw the gathering disintegration of the Escobar family--Vincente dead, his body dishonored; Narcisa, ineffable, flower-like, sacrificed to dull ineptitude; Domingo, who had been so cheerfully round, furrowed with care, his spirit dead before his body; Carmita sorrowing; and Andrés, Andrés the beautiful, the young and proud, betrayed, murdered in a brawl at a negro dance. What disaster! And where, in the power of accomplishment, they had failed, where, fatally, they had been vulnerable, was at their hearts, in their love each for the other, or in the fallibility of such an emotion as Andrés felt for Pilar. He, Charles Abbott, must keep free from that entanglement. This reassurance, however, was not new; all the while it had supported him. He made his way down the broad shallow steps, passing extraordinary figures--men black and twisted like the carvings of roots in the garb of holiday minstrels; women coffee-colored and lovely like Jobaba, their faces pearly with rice powder, in yellow satin or black or raw purple, their feet in high-heeled white kid slippers. Where they stood in his way he brushed them unceremoniously, hastily, aside, and he was followed by low threatening murmurs, witless laughter. A man, loyal to the Cuban cause, attempted to stop him, to repeat something which, he assured Charles, was of grave weight; but he went on heedlessly. His passage became, against his reasoning mind, a flight; and he cursed, with an unbalanced rage, in a minor frenzy, when he saw that he would have to walk through a greater part of the body of the theatre before he could escape. The dancers had, momentarily, thinned out, and he went directly across the floor. There was a flame before his eye, the illusion of a shifting screen of blood; and he found himself facing Pilar de Lima and Andrés; beyond, the Spanish officer, tall and lank and young, was peering at them with an aggressive spite. Charles turned aside, avoiding the tableau. Then he heard Andrés' exasperated voice ordering the girl to come with him to the promenade. Instead of that her glimmering eyes, with lights like the reflection of polished green stones, evading Andrés, sought and found the officer. Charles Abbott's legs were paralysed, he was held stationary, as though he were helpless in a dream. His heart pounded and burned, and a great strangling impulse shook him like a flag in the wind. "Andrés!" he cried, "Andrés, let her go, she is nothing! Quickly, before it is too late. Remember--" There was a surging concentration so rapid that Charles saw it as a constricting menace rather than the offensive of a group of men. Pilar stooped, her hand at her knee. Charles threw an arm about Andrés, but he was dragged, struggling, away. She was icy in the hell of the mantón. There was a suspension of breathing, of sound, through which a fragile hand with a knife searched and searched. Then a shocking blow fell on Charles Abbott's head and the Tacon Theatre rocked and collapsed in darkness. * * * * * The sharp closing of a door brought him, a man advanced in middle age, abruptly to his feet. He was confused, and swayed dizzily, with out-stretched arms as though he were grasping vainly for the dissolving fragments of a shining mirage of youth. They left him, forever, and he stood regaining his strayed sense of immediacy. He was surprisingly weary, in a gloom made evident by the indirect illumination of an arc light across and farther up the street. Fumbling over the wall he encountered the light switch, and flooded his small drawing-room with brilliance. The clock on the mantle, crowned by an eagle with lifted gilded wings, pointed to the first quarter past eleven: when he had sunk into his abstraction from the present, wandered back into the sunlight of Havana and his days of promise, it had been no more than late afternoon; and now Mrs. Vauxn and her daughter, his neighbors, had returned from their dinner engagement. He wondered, momentarily, why that hour and ceremony had passed unattended for him, and then recalled that Bruton and his wife, who kept his house, had gone to the funeral of a relative, leaving on the dining-room table, carefully covered, some cuts of cold meat, a salad of lettuce, bran bread and fresh butter, and the coffee percolator with its attachment for a plug in the floor. To the rest, he had faithfully told Mrs. Bruton, who was severe with him, he'd attend. In place of that he had wandered into an amazing memory of his beginning manhood. The beginning, he told himself, and, in many ways the end--since then he had done little or nothing. After the ignominy of his deportation from Cuba--impending satisfactory negotiations between the United States and Spain, he gathered later, had preserved him from the dignity of political martyrdom--a drabness of life had caught him from which he could perceive no escape. Not, he was bound to add, that he had actively looked for one. No, his participation in further events had been interfered with by a doubt, his life had been drawn into an endless question. If he had walked steadily past Andrés Escobar, left him to a murder which, after all, he, Charles Abbott, had been powerless to stop, would he have gone on to the triumph of his ideal? In addition to this there was the eternal speculation over the relation, in human destiny, of the heart to the head--which, in the end, would, must, triumph? There was no necessity in his final philosophy for the optimism, where men are concerned, that had been his first stay. He wasn't so sure now--but was he certain of anything?--of the coming victory of right, of the spreading, from land to land, of freedom. Did life reach upward or down, or was it merely the circling of a carrousel, the whirling of the danzón? Nothing, for him, could be settled, definite. He was inclined to the belief that the blow of the scabbard on his head.... That, however, like the rest, was indeterminate. He came back eternally to the same query--had he, as for so long, so wearily, he had insisted to himself, failed, proved weak for the contentions of existence on a positive plane? Had he become a part, a member, of the nameless, the individually impotent, throng? His sympathies were, by birth, aristocratic rather than humane; he preferred strength to acquiescence; but there were times now, perhaps, when he was aging, when there was a relief in sinking into the sea of humility. Then his thoughts centered again on Howard Gage; who, before leaving that afternoon, had unpleasantly impressed Charles Abbott by his inelasticity, the fixity of his gaze upon the ground. Howard had been involved in a war of a magnitude that swamped every vestige of the long-sustained Cuban struggle. And he admitted his relation to this had been one of bitter necessity: "I had to go, we all did," Howard Gage had said. "There wasn't any music about it, any romance. It had to be done, that was all, and it was. Don't expect me to be poetic." Yes, the youth of today were, to Charles' way of thinking, badly off. Anyone who could not be poetic, who wouldn't be if he had the chance, was unfortunate, limited, cramped. Visions, ideals, were indispensable for youth. Why, damn it, love was dependent on dreams, unreality. He had never known it; but he was able to appreciate what it might be in a man's life. He no longer scorned love, or the woman he was able to imagine--a tender loveliness never out of a slightly formal beauty. For her the service parts of the house would have no existence; and, strangely, he gave no consideration to children. It wasn't that he minded loneliness; that was not an unmixed evil, especially for a man whose existence was chiefly spun from memories, speculations, and conditioned by the knowledge that he had had the best of life, its fullest measure, at the beginning. He had never again seen a woman like La Clavel, a friend who could compare with Andrés, wickedness such as Pilar's, days and players as brilliant as those of Havana before, well--before he had passed fifty. If the trade winds still blew, tempering the magnificence of the Cuban nights, they no longer blew for him. But Havana, as well, had changed. The piano next door took up, where it had been dropped, the jota from Liszt's Rhapsody Espagnol. It rippled and sang for a moment and then ended definitely for the night. Other dancers, Charles reasonably supposed, continued the passionate art of that lyric passage; he read of them, coming from Spain to the United States for no other purpose. He had no doubt about their capability, and no wish to see them. They would do for Howard Gage. What if he, instead of Charles Abbott, had been at the Tacon Theatre the night Andrés had died? That was an interesting variation of the old question--what, in his predicament, would Howard Gage have done? Walked away, probably, holding his purpose undamaged! But Andrés could never have loved Howard Gage; Andrés, for his attachment, required warmth, intensity, the ornamental forms of honor; poetry, briefly. That lost romantic time, that day in immaculate white linen with a spray of mimosa in its buttonhole! There were some flowers, Charles recalled, standing on the table in the hall, dahlias; and he walked out and drew one into the lapel of his coat. It was without scent, just as, now, life was unscented; yet, surveying himself in the mirror over the vase, he saw that the sombreness of his attire was lightened by the spot of red. Nothing, though, could give vividness to his countenance, that was dry and dull, scored with lines that resembled traces of dust. The moustache across his upper lip was faded and brittle. It was of no account; if he had lacked ultimately the courage, the stamina, to face and command life, he was serene at the threat of death. Suddenly hungry, he went into the dining-room and removed the napkins, turned the electricity into the percolator. Then, with a key from under the edge of the cloth on a console-table, he opened a door of the sideboard, and produced a tall dark bottle of Marquis de Riscal wine, and methodically drew the cork. Charles Abbott wiped the glass throat and, seated, poured out a goblet full of the translucent crimson liquid. It brought a slight flush to his cheeks, a light in his eyes, and the shadow of a vital humor, a past challenge, to his lips. He had lifted many toasts in that vintage, his glass striking with a clear vibration against other eagerly held glasses. More often than not they--Tirso, the guardsman in statue, Remigio, Jaime, Andrés and himself--had drunk to La Clavel. He drank to her, probably the sole repository of her memory, her splendor, on earth, now. "La Clavel," he said her name aloud. And then, "Andrés." A sharp gladness seized him that Andrés had, almost at the last, heard his voice, his shouted warning and apprehension and love. If liberty, justice, were to come, one life, two, could make no difference; a hundred years, a hundred hundred, were small measures of time. And if all were doomed, impossible, open to the knife of a fateful Pilar, why, then, they had had their companionship, their warmth, a period of unalloyed fidelity to a need that broke ideals like reeds. Perhaps what they had found was, after all, within them, that for which they had swept the sky. THE END * * * * * 
33455	----	TO CUBA AND BACK BY RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. 1887 CONTENTS I.--From Manhattan to El Morro II.--Havana: _First Glimpses (1)_ III.--Havana: _First Glimpses (2)_ IV.--Havana: _Prisoners and Priests_ V.--Havana: _Olla Podrida_ VI.--Havana: _A Social Sunday_ VII.--Havana: _Belén and the Jesuits_ VIII.--Matanzas IX.--To Limonar by Train X.--A Sugar Plantation: _The Labor_ XI.--A Sugar Plantation: _The Life_ XII.--From Plantation to Plantation XIII.--Matanzas and Environs XIV.--Reflections via Railroad XV.--Havana: _Social, Religious and Judicial Tidbits_ XVI.--Havana: _Worship, Etiquette and Humanitarianism_ XVII.--Havana: _Hospital and Prison_ XVIII.--Havana: _Bullfight_ XIX.--Havana: _More Manners and Customs_ XX.--Havana: _Slaves, Lotteries, Cockfights and Filibusters_ XXI.--A Summing-up: _Society, Politics, Religion, Slavery, Resources and Reflections_ XXII.--Leave-taking I. FROM MANHATTAN TO EL MORRO The steamer is to sail at one P.M.; and, by half-past twelve, her decks are full, and the mud and snow of the pier are well trodden by men and horses. Coaches drive down furiously, and nervous passengers put their heads out to see if the steamer is off before her time; and on the decks, and in the gangways, inexperienced passengers run against everybody, and mistake the engineer for the steward, and come up the same stairs they go down, without knowing it. In the dreary snow, the newspaper vendors cry the papers, and the book vendors thrust yellow covers into your face--"Reading for the voyage, sir--five hundred pages, close print!" And that being rejected, they reverse the process of the Sibyl--with "Here's another, sir, one thousand pages, double columns." The great beam of the engine moves slowly up and down, and the black hull sways at its fasts. A motley group are the passengers. Shivering Cubans, exotics that have taken slight root in the hothouses of the Fifth Avenue, are to brave a few days of sleet and cold at sea, for the palm trees and mangoes, the cocoas and orange trees, they will be sitting under in six days, at farthest. There are Yankee shipmasters going out to join their "cotton wagons" at New Orleans and Mobile, merchants pursuing a commerce that knows no rest and no locality; confirmed invalids advised to go to Cuba to die under mosquito nets and be buried in a Potter's Field; and other invalids wisely enough avoiding our March winds; and here and there a mere vacationmaker, like myself. Captain Bullock is sure to sail at the hour; and at the hour he is on the paddle-box, the fasts are loosed, the warp run out, the crew pull in on the warp on the port quarter, and the head swings off. No word is spoken, but all is done by signs; or, if a word is necessary, a low clear tone carries it to the listener. There is no tearing and rending escape of steam, deafening and distracting all, and giving a kind of terror to a peaceful scene; but our ship swings off, gathers way, and enters upon her voyage, in a quiet like that of a bank or counting-room, almost under a spell of silence. The state-rooms of the "Cahawba," like those of most American sea-going steamers, are built so high above the water that the windows may be open in all but the worst of weather, and good ventilation be ensured. I have a very nice fellow for my room-mate, in the berth under me; but, in a state-room, no room-mate is better than the best; so I change my quarters to a state-room further forward, nearer "the eyes of her," which the passengers generally shun, and get one to myself, free from the rattle of the steering gear, while the delightful rise and fall of the bows, and leisurely weather roll and lee roll, cradle and nurse one to sleep. The routine of the ship, as regards passengers, is this: a cup of coffee, if you desire it, when you turn out; breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve, dinner at three, tea at seven, and lights put out at ten. Throughout the day, sailing down the outer edge of the Gulf Stream, we see vessels of all forms and sizes, coming in sight and passing away, as in a dioramic show. There is a heavy cotton droger from the Gulf, of 1200 tons burden, under a cloud of sail, pressing on to the northern seas of New England or Old England. Here comes a saucy little Baltimore brig, close-hauled and leaning over to it; and there, half down in the horizon, is a pile of white canvas, which the experienced eyes of my two friends, the passenger shipmasters, pronounce to be a bark, outward bound. Every passenger says to every other, how beautiful! how exquisite! That pale thin girl who is going to Cuba for her health, her brother travelling with her, sits on the settee, propped by a pillow, and tries to smile and to think she feels stronger in this air. She says she shall stay in Cuba until she gets well! After dinner, Capt. Bullock tells us that we shall soon see the high lands of Cuba, off Matanzas, the first and highest being the Pan of Matanzas. It is clear over head, but a mist lies along the southern horizon, in the latter part of the day. The sharpest eyes detect the land, about 4 P.M., and soon it is visible to all. It is an undulating country on the coast, with high hills and mountains in the interior, and has a rich and fertile look. That height is the Pan, though we see no special resemblance, in its outline, to a loaf of bread. We are still sixty miles from Havana. We cannot reach it before dark, and no vessels are allowed to pass the Morro after the signals are dropped at sunset. We coast the northern shore of Cuba, from Matanzas westward. There is no waste of sand and low flats, as in most of our southern states; but the fertile, undulating land comes to the sea, and rises into high hills as it recedes. "There is the Morro! and right ahead!" "Why, there is the city too! Is the city on the sea? We thought it was on a harbor or bay." There, indeed, is the Morro, a stately hill of tawny rock, rising perpendicularly from the sea, and jutting into it, with walls and parapets and towers on its top, and flags and signals flying, and the tall lighthouse just in front of its outer wall. It is not very high, yet commands the sea about it. And there is the city, on the sea-coast, indeed--the houses running down to the coral edge of the ocean. Where is the harbor, and where the shipping? Ah, there they are! We open an entrance, narrow and deep, between the beetling Morro and the Punta; and through the entrance, we see the spreading harbor and the innumerable masts. But the darkness is gathering, the sunset gun has been fired, we can just catch the dying notes of trumpets from the fortifications, and the Morro Lighthouse throws its gleam over the still sea. The little lights emerge and twinkle from the city. We are too late to enter the port, and slowly and reluctantly the ship turns her head off to seaward. The engine breathes heavily, and throws its one arm leisurely up and down; we rise and fall on the moonlit sea; the stars are near to us, or we are raised nearer to them; the Southern Cross is just above the horizon; and all night long, two streams of light lie upon the water, one of gold from the Morro, and one of silver from the moon. It is enchantment. Who can regret our delay, or wish to exchange this scene for the common, close anchorage of a harbor? II. HAVANA: First Glimpses (I) We are to go in at sunrise, and few, if any, are the passengers that are not on deck at the first glow of dawn. Before us lie the novel and exciting objects of the night before. The Steep Morro, with its tall sentinel lighthouse, and its towers and signal staffs and teeth of guns, is coming out into clear daylight; the red and yellow striped flag of Spain--blood and gold--floats over it. Point after point in the city becomes visible; the blue and white and yellow houses, with their roofs of dull red tiles, the quaint old Cathedral towers, and the almost endless lines of fortifications. The masts of the immense shipping rise over the headland, the signal for leave to enter is run up, and we steer in under full head, the morning gun thundering from the Morro, the trumpets braying and drums beating from all the fortifications, the Morro, the Punta, the long Cabaña, the Casa Blanca and the city walls, while the broad sun is fast rising over this magnificent spectacle. What a world of shipping! The masts make a belt of dense forest along the edge of the city, all the ships lying head in to the street, like horses at their mangers; while the vessels at anchor nearly choke up the passage ways to the deeper bays beyond. There are the red and yellow stripes of decayed Spain; the blue, white and red--blood to the fingers' end--of La Grande Nation; the Union crosses of the Royal Commonwealth; the stars and stripes of the Great Republic, and a few flags of Holland and Portugal, of the states of northern Italy, of Brazil, and of the republics of the Spanish Main. We thread our slow and careful way among these, pass under the broadside of a ship-of-the-line, and under the stern of a screw frigate, both bearing the Spanish flag, and cast our anchor in the Regla Bay, by the side of the steamer "Karnac," which sailed from New York a few days before us. Instantly we are besieged by boats, some loaded with oranges and bananas, and others coming for passengers and their luggage, all with awnings spread over their sterns, rowed by sallow, attenuated men, in blue and white checks and straw hats, with here and there the familiar lips and teeth, and vacant, easily-pleased face of the Negro. Among these boats comes one, from the stern of which floats the red and yellow flag with the crown in its field, and under whose awning reclines a man in a full suit of white linen, with straw hat and red cockade and a cigar. This is the Health Officer. Until he is satisfied, no one can come on board, or leave the vessel. Capt. Bullock salutes, steps down the ladder to the boat, hands his papers, reports all well--and we are pronounced safe. Then comes another boat of similar style, another man reclining under the awning with a cigar, who comes on board, is closeted with the purser, compares the passenger list with the passports, and we are declared fully passed, and general leave is given to land with our luggage at the custom-house wharf. Now comes the war of cries and gestures and grimaces among the boatmen, in their struggle for passengers, increased manifold by the fact that there is but little language in common between the parties to the bargains, and by the boatmen being required to remain in their boats. How thin these boatmen look! You cannot get it out of your mind that they must all have had the yellow fever last summer, and are not yet fully recovered. Not only their faces, but their hands and arms and legs are thin, and their low-quartered slippers only half cover their thin yellow feet. In the hurry, I have to hunt after the passengers I am to take leave of who go on to New Orleans:--Mr. and Mrs. Benchley, on their way to their intended new home in western Texas, my two sea captains, and the little son of my friend, who is the guest, on this voyage, of our common friend the captain, and after all, I miss the hearty hand-shake of Bullock and Rodgers. Seated under an awning, in the stern of a boat, with my trunk and carpet-bag and an unseasonable bundle of Arctic overcoat and fur cap in the bow, I am pulled by a man with an oar in each hand and a cigar in mouth, to the custom-house pier. Here is a busy scene of trunks, carpet-bags, and bundles; and up and down the pier marches a military grandee of about the rank of a sergeant or sub-lieutenant, with a preposterous strut, so out of keeping with the depressed military character of his country, and not possible to be appreciated without seeing it. If he would give that strut on the boards, in New York, he would draw full houses nightly. Our passports are kept, and we receive a license to remain and travel in the island, good for three months only, for which a large fee is paid. These officers of the customs are civil and reasonably rapid; and in a short time my luggage is on a dray driven by a Negro, and I am in a volante, managed by a Negro postilion, and am driving through the narrow streets of this surprising city. The streets are so narrow and the houses built so close upon them, that they seem to be rather spaces between the walls of houses than highways for travel. It appears impossible that two vehicles should pass abreast; yet they do so. There are constant blockings of the way. In some places awnings are stretched over the entire street, from house to house, and we are riding under a long tent. What strange vehicles these volantes are!--A pair of very long, limber shafts, at one end of which is a pair of huge wheels, and the other end a horse with his tail braided and brought forward and tied to the saddle, an open chaise body resting on the shafts, about one third of the way from the axle to the horse; and on the horse is a Negro, in large postilion boots, long spurs, and a bright jacket. It is an easy vehicle to ride in; but it must be a sore burden to the beast. Here and there we pass a private volante, distinguished by rich silver mountings and postilions in livery. Some have two horses, and with the silver and the livery and the long dangling traces and a look of superfluity, have rather an air of high life. In most, a gentleman is reclining, cigar in mouth; while in others, is a great puff of blue or pink muslin or cambric, extending over the sides to the shafts, topped off by a fan, with signs of a face behind it. "Calle de los Oficios," "Calle del Obispo," "Calle de San Ignacio," "Calle de Mercaderes," are on the little corner boards. Every little shop and every big shop has its title; but nowhere does the name of a keeper appear. Almost every shop advertises "por mayor y menor," wholesale and retail. What a Gil Blas-Don Quixote feeling the names of "posada," "tienda," and "cantina" give you! There are no women walking in the streets, except negresses. Those suits of seersucker, with straw hats and red cockades, are soldiers. It is a sensible dress for the climate. Every third man, perhaps more, and not a few women, are smoking cigars or cigarritos. Here are things moving along, looking like cocks of new mown grass, under way. But presently you see the head of a horse or mule peering out from under the mass, and a tail is visible at the other end, and feet are picking their slow way over the stones. These are the carriers of green fodder, the fresh cut stalks and blades of corn; and my chance companion in the carriage, a fellow passenger by the "Cahawba," a Frenchman, who has been here before, tells me that they supply all the horses and mules in the city with their daily feed, as no hay is used. There are also mules, asses, and horses with bananas, plantains, oranges and other fruits in panniers reaching almost to the ground. Here is the Plaza de Armas, with its garden of rich, fragrant flowers in full bloom, in front of the Governor's Palace. At the corner is the chapel erected over the spot where, under the auspices of Columbus, mass was first celebrated on the island. We are driven past a gloomy convent, past innumerable shops, past drinking places, billiard rooms, and the thick, dead walls of houses, with large windows, grated like dungeons, and large gates, showing glimpses of interior court-yards, sometimes with trees and flowers. But horses and carriages and gentlemen and ladies and slaves, all seem to use the same entrance. The windows come to the ground, and, being flush with the street, and mostly without glass, nothing but the grating prevents a passenger from walking into the rooms. And there the ladies and children sit sewing, or lounging, or playing. This is all very strange. There is evidently enough for me to see in the ten or twelve days of my stay. But there are no costumes among the men, no Spanish hats, or Spanish cloaks, or bright jackets, or waistcoats, or open, slashed trousers, that are so picturesque in other Spanish countries. The men wear black dress coats, long pantaloons, black cravats, and many of them even submit, in this hot sun, to black French hats. The tyranny of systematic, scientific, capable, unpicturesque, unimaginative France, evidently rules over the realm of man's dress. The houses, the vehicles, the vegetation, the animals, are picturesque; to the eye of taste "_Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile._" We drove through the Puerta de Monserrate, a heavy gateway of the prevailing yellow or tawny color, where soldiers are on guard, across the moat, out upon the "Paseo de Isabel Segunda," and are now "extramuros," without the walls. The Paseo is a grand avenue running across the city from sea to bay, with two carriage-drives abreast, and two malls for foot passengers, and all lined with trees in full foliage. Here you catch a glimpse of the Morro, and there of the Presidio. This is the Teatro de Tacón; and, in front of this line of tall houses, in contrast with the almost uniform one-story buildings of the city, the volante stops. This is Le Grand's hotel. III. HAVANA: First Glimpses (2) To a person unaccustomed to the tropics or the south of Europe, I know of nothing more discouraging than the arrival at the inn or hotel. It is nobody's business to attend to you. The landlord is strangely indifferent, and if there is a way to get a thing done, you have not learned it, and there is no one to teach you. Le Grand is a Frenchman. His house is a restaurant, with rooms for lodgers. The restaurant is paramount. The lodging is secondary, and is left to servants. Monsieur does not condescend to show a room, even to families; and the servants, who are whites, but mere lads, have all the interior in their charge, and there are no women employed about the chambers. Antonio, a swarthy Spanish lad, in shirt sleeves, looking very much as if he never washed, has my part of the house in charge, and shows me my room. It has but one window, a door opening upon the veranda, and a brick floor, and is very bare of furniture, and the furniture has long ceased to be strong. A small stand barely holds up a basin and ewer which have not been washed since Antonio was washed, and the bedstead, covered by a canvas sacking, without mattress or bed, looks as if it would hardly bear the weight of a man. It is plain there is a good deal to be learned here. Antonio is communicative, on a suggestion of several days' stay and good pay. Things which we cannot do without, we must go out of the house to find, and those which we can do without, we must dispense with. This is odd, and strange, but not uninteresting, and affords scope for contrivance and the exercise of influence and other administrative powers. The Grand Seigneur does not mean to be troubled with anything; so there are no bells, and no office, and no clerks. He is the only source, and if he is approached, he shrugs his shoulders and gives you to understand that you have your chambers for your money and must look to the servants. Antonio starts off on an expedition for a pitcher of water and a towel, with a faint hope of two towels; for each demand involves an expedition to remote parts of the house. Then Antonio has so many rooms dependent on him, that every door is a Scylla, and every window a Charybdis, as he passes. A shrill, female voice, from the next room but one, calls "Antonio! Antonio!" and that starts the parrot in the court yard, who cries "Antonio! Antonio!" for several minutes. A deep, bass voice mutters "Antonio!" in a more confidential tone; and last of all, an unmistakably Northern voice attempts it, but ends in something between Antonio and Anthony. He is gone a good while, and has evidently had several episodes to his journey. But he is a good-natured fellow, speaks a little French, very little English, and seems anxious to do his best. I see the faces of my New York fellow-passengers from the west gallery, and we come together and throw our acquisitions of information into a common stock, and help one another. Mr. Miller's servant, who has been here before, says there are baths and other conveniences round the corner of the street; and, sending our bundles of thin clothes there, we take advantage of the baths, with comfort. To be sure, we must go through a billiard-room, where the Creoles are playing at the tables, and the cockroaches playing under them, and through a drinking-room, and a bowling-alley; but the baths are built in the open yard, protected by blinds, well ventilated, and well supplied with water and toilet apparatus. With the comfort of a bath, and clothed in linen, with straw hats, we walk back to Le Grand's, and enter the restaurant, for breakfast--the breakfast of the country, at 10 o'clock. Here is a scene so pretty as quite to make up for the defects of the chambers. The restaurant with cool marble floor, walls twenty-four feet high, open rafters painted blue, great windows open to the floor and looking into the Paseo, and the floor nearly on a level with the street, a light breeze fanning the thin curtains, the little tables, for two or four, with clean, white cloths, each with its pyramid of great red oranges and its fragrant bouquet--the gentlemen in white pantaloons and jackets and white stockings, and the ladies in fly-away muslins, and hair in the sweet neglect of the morning toilet, taking their leisurely breakfasts of fruit and claret, and omelette and Spanish mixed dishes, (ollas,) and café noir. How airy and ethereal it seems! They are birds, not substantial men and women. They eat ambrosia and drink nectar. It must be that they fly, and live in nests, in the tamarind trees. Who can eat a hot, greasy breakfast of cakes and gravied meats, and in a close room, after this? I can truly say that I ate, this morning, my first orange; for I had never before eaten one newly gathered, which had ripened in the sun, hanging on the tree. We call for the usual breakfast, leaving the selection to the waiter; and he brings us fruits, claret, omelette, fish fresh from the sea, rice excellently cooked, fried plantains, a mixed dish of meat and vegetables (olla), and coffee. The fish, I do not remember its name, is boiled, and has the colors of the rainbow, as it lies on the plate. Havana is a good fishmarket; for it is as open to the ocean as Nahant, or the beach at Newport; its streets running to the blue sea, outside the harbor, so that a man may almost throw his line from the curb-stone into the Gulf Stream. After breakfast, I take a volante and ride into the town, to deliver my letters. Three merchants whom I call upon have palaces for their business. The entrances are wide, the staircases almost as stately as that of Stafford House, the floors of marble, the panels of porcelain tiles, the rails of iron, and the rooms over twenty feet high, with open rafters, the doors and windows colossal, the furniture rich and heavy; and there sits the merchant or banker, in white pantaloons and thin shoes and loose white coat and narrow necktie, smoking a succession of cigars, surrounded by tropical luxuries and tropical protections. In the lower story of one of these buildings is an exposition of silks, cotton and linens, in a room so large that it looked like a part of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. At one of these counting-palaces, I met Mr. Theodore Parker and Dr. S. G. Howe, of Boston, who preceded me, in the "Karnac." Mr. Parker is here for his health, which has caused anxiety to his friends lest his weakened frame should no longer support the strong intellectual machinery, as before. He finds Havana too hot, and will leave for Santa Cruz by the first opportunity. Dr. Howe likes the warm weather. It is a comfort to see him--a benefactor of his race, and one of the few heroes we have left to us, since Kane died. The Bishop of Havana has been in delicate health, and is out of town, at Jesús del Monte, and Miss M---- is not at home, and the Señoras F---- I failed to see this morning; but I find a Boston young lady, whose friends were desirous I should see her, and who was glad enough to meet one so lately from her home. A clergyman to whom, also, I had letters, is gone into the country, without much hope of improving his health. Stepping into a little shop to buy a plan of Havana, my name is called, and there is my hero's wife, the accomplished author and conversationist, whom it is an exhilaration to meet anywhere, much more in a land of strangers. Dr. and Mrs. Howe and Mr. Parker are at the Cerro, a pretty and cool place in the suburbs, but are coming in to Mrs. Almy's boarding-house, for the convenience of being in the city, and for nearness to friends, and the comforts of something like American or English housekeeping. In the latter part of the afternoon, from three o'clock, our parties are taking dinner at Le Grand's. The little tables are again full, with a fair complement of ladies. The afternoon breeze is so strong that the draught of air, though it is hot air, is to be avoided. The passers-by almost put their faces into the room, and the women and children of the poorer order look wistfully in upon the luxurious guests, the colored glasses, the red wines, and the golden fruits. The Opera troupe is here, both the singers and the ballet; and we have Gazzaniga, Lamoureux, Max Maretzek and his sister, and others, in this house, and Adelaide Phillips at the next door, and the benefit of a rehearsal, at nearly all hours of the day, of operas that the Habaneros are to rave over at night. I yield to no one in my admiration of the Spanish as a spoken language, whether in its rich, sonorous, musical, and lofty style, in the mouth of a man who knows its uses, or in the soft, indolent, languid tones of a woman, broken by an occasional birdlike trill-- "_With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,_ _The melting voice through mazes running_"-- but I do not like it as spoken by the common people of Cuba, in the streets. Their voices and intonations are thin and eager, very rapid, too much in the lips, and, withal, giving an impression of the passionate and the childish combined; and it strikes me that the tendency here is to enfeeble the language, and take from it the openness of the vowels and the strength of the harder consonants. This is the criticism of a few hours' observation, and may not be just; but I have heard the same from persons who have been longer acquainted with it. Among the well educated Cubans, the standard of Castilian is said to be kept high, and there is a good deal of ambition to reach it. After dinner, walked along the Paseo de Isabel Segunda, to see the pleasure-driving, which begins at about five o'clock, and lasts until dark. The most common carriage is the volante, but there are some carriages in the English style, with servants in livery on the box. I have taken a fancy for the strange-looking two-horse volante. The postilion, the long, dangling traces, the superfluousness of a horse to be ridden by the man that guides the other, and the prodigality of silver, give the whole a look of style that eclipses, the neat appropriate English equipage. The ladies ride in full dress, décolletées, without hats. The servants on the carriages are not all Negroes. Many of the drivers are white. The drives are along the Paseo de Isabel, across the Campo del Marte, and then along the Paseo de Tacón, a beautiful double avenue, lined with trees, which leads two or three miles, in a straight line, into the country. At 8 o'clock, drove to the Plaza de Armas, a square in front of the governor's house, to hear the Retreta, at which a military band plays for an hour, every evening. There is a clear moon above, and a blue field of glittering stars; the air is pure and balmy; the band of fifty or sixty instruments discourses most eloquent music under the shade of palm trees and mangoes; the walks are filled with promenaders, and the streets around the square lined with carriages, in which the ladies recline, and receive the salutations and visits of the gentlemen. Very few ladies walk in the square, and those probably are strangers. It is against the etiquette for ladies to walk in public in Havana. I walk leisurely home, in order to see Havana by night. The evening is the busiest season for the shops. Much of the business of shopping is done after gas lighting. Volantes and coaches are driving to and fro, and stopping at the shop doors, and attendants take their goods to the doors of the carriages. The watchmen stand at the corners of the streets, each carrying a long pike and a lantern. Billiard-rooms and cafés are filled, and all who can walk for pleasure will walk now. This is also the principal time for paying visits. There is one strange custom observed here in all the houses. In the chief room, rows of chairs are placed, facing each other, three or four or five in each line, and always running at right angles with the street wall of the house. As you pass along the street, you look up this row of chairs. In these, the family and the visitors take their seats, in formal order. As the windows are open, deep, and large, with wide gratings and no glass, one has the inspection of the interior arrangement of all the front parlors of Havana, and can see what every lady wears, and who is visiting her. IV. HAVANA: Prisoners and Priests If mosquito nets were invented for the purpose of shutting mosquitoes in with you, they answer their purpose very well. The beds have no mattresses, and you lie on the hard sacking. This favors coolness and neatness. I should fear a mattress, in the economy of our hotel, at least. Where there is nothing but an iron frame, canvas stretched over it, and sheets and a blanket, you may know what you are dealing with. The clocks of the churches and castles strike the quarter hours, and at each stroke the watchmen blow a kind of boatswain's whistle, and cry the time and the state of the weather, which, from their name (serenos), should be always pleasant. I have been advised to close the shutters at night, whatever the heat, as the change of air that often takes place before dawn is injurious; and I notice that many of the bedrooms in the hotel are closed, both doors and shutters, at night. This is too much for my endurance, and I venture to leave the air to its course, not being in the draught. One is also cautioned not to step with bare feet on the floor, for fear of the nigua (or chigua), a very small insect, that is said to enter the skin and build tiny nests, and lay little eggs that can only be seen by the microscope, but are tormenting and sometimes dangerous. This may be excessive caution, but it is so easy to observe, that it is not worth while to test the question. There are streaks of a clear dawn; it is nearly six o'clock, the cocks are crowing, and the drums and trumpets sounding. We have been told of sea-baths, cut in the rock, near the Punta, at the foot of our Paseo. I walk down, under the trees, toward the Presidio. What is this clanking sound? Can it be cavalry, marching on foot, their sabres rattling on the pavement? No, it comes from that crowd of poor-looking creatures that are forming in files in front of the Presidio. It is the chain-gang! Poor wretches! I come nearer to them, and wait until they are formed and numbered and marched off. Each man has an iron band riveted round his ankle, and another round his waist, and the chain is fastened, one end into each of these bands, and dangles between them, clanking with every movement. This leaves the wearers free to use their arms, and, indeed, their whole body, it being only a weight and a badge and a note for discovery, from which they cannot rid themselves. It is kept on them day and night, working, eating, or sleeping. In some cases, two are chained together. They have passed their night in the Presidio (the great prison and garrison), and are marshalled for their day's toil in the public streets and on the public works, in the heat of the sun. They look thoroughly wretched. Can any of these be political offenders? It is said that Carlists, from Old Spain, worked in this gang. Sentence to the chain-gang in summer, in the case of a foreigner, must be nearly certain death. Farther on, between the Presidio and the Punta, the soldiers are drilling; and the drummers and trumpeters are practising on the rampart of the city walls. A little to the left, in the Calzada de San Lázaro, are the Baños de Mar. These are boxes, each about twelve feet square and six or eight feet deep, cut directly into the rock which here forms the sea-line, with steps of rock, and each box having a couple of portholes through which the waves of this tideless shore wash in and out. This arrangement is necessary, as sharks are so abundant that bathing in the open sea is dangerous. The pure rock, and the flow and reflow, make these bathing-boxes very agreeable, and the water, which is that of the Gulf Stream, is at a temperature of 72 degrees. The baths are roofed over, and partially screened on the inside, but open for a view out, on the side towards the sea; and as you bathe, you see the big ships floating up the Gulf Stream, that great highway of the Equinoctial world. The water stands at depths of from three to five feet in the baths; and they are large enough for short swimming. The bottom is white with sand and shells. These baths are made at the public expense, and are free. Some are marked for women, some for men, and some "por la gente de color." A little further down the Calzada, is another set of baths, and further out in the suburbs, opposite the Beneficencia, are still others. After bath, took two or three fresh oranges, and a cup of coffee, without milk; for the little milk one uses with coffee must not be taken with fruit here, even in winter. To the Cathedral, at 8 o'clock, to hear mass. The Cathedral, in its exterior, is a plain and quaint old structure, with a tower at each angle of the front; but within, it is sumptuous. There is a floor of variegated marble, obstructed by no seats or screens, tall pillars and rich frescoed walls, and delicate masonry of various colored stone, the prevailing tint being yellow, and a high altar of porphyry. There is a look of the great days of Old Spain about it; and you think that knights and nobles worshipped here and enriched it from their spoils and conquests. Every new eye turns first to the place within the choir, under that alto-relief, behind that short inscription, where, in the wall of the chancel, rest the remains of Christopher Columbus. Borne from Valladolid to Seville, from Seville to San Domingo, and from San Domingo to Havana, they at last rest here, by the altar side, in the emporium of the Spanish Islands. "What is man that thou art mindful of him!" truly and humbly says the Psalmist; but what is man, indeed, if his fellow men are not mindful of such a man as this! The creator of a hemisphere! It is not often we feel that monuments are surely deserved, in their degree and to the extent of their utterance. But when, in the New World, on an island of that group which he gave to civilized man, you stand before this simple monumental slab, and know that all of him that man can gather up, lies behind it, so overpowering is the sense of the greatness of his deeds, that you feel relieved that no attempt has been made to measure it by any work of man's hands. The little there is, is so inadequate, that you make no comparison. It is a mere finger-point, the _hic jacet_, the _sic itur_. The priests in the chancel are numerous, perhaps twenty or more. The service is chanted with no aid of instruments, except once the accompaniment of a small and rather disordered organ, and chanted in very loud and often harsh and blatant tones, which reverberate from the marble walls, with a tiresome monotony of cadence. There is a degree of ceremony in the placing, replacing, and carrying to and fro of candles and crucifixes, and swinging of censers, which the Roman service as practised in the United States does not give. The priests seem duly attentive and reverent in their manner, but I cannot say as much for the boys, of whom there were three or four, gentlemen-like looking lads, from the college, doing service as altar boys. One of these, who seemed to have the lead, was strikingly careless and irreverent in his manner; and when he went about the chancel, to incense all who were there, and to give to each the small golden vessel to kiss, (containing, I suppose a relic), he seemed as if he were counting his playmates out for a game, and flinging the censer at them and snubbing their noses with the golden vessel. There were only about half a dozen persons at mass, beside those in the chancel; and all but one of these were women, and of the women two were Negroes. The women walk in, veiled, drop down on the bare pavement, kneeling or sitting, as the service requires or permits. A Negro woman, with devout and even distressed countenance, knelt at the altar rail, and one pale-eyed priest, in cassock, who looked like an American or Englishman, knelt close by a pillar. A file of visitors, American or English women, with an escort of gentlemen, came in and sat on the only benches, next the columns; and when the Host was elevated, and a priest said to them, very civilly, in English, "Please to kneel down," they neither knelt nor stood, nor went away, but kept their seats. After service, the old sacristan, in blue woollen dress, showed all the visitors the little chapel and the cloisters, and took us beyond the altar to the mural tomb of Columbus, and though he was liberally paid, haggled for two reals more. In the rear of the Cathedral is the Seminario, or college for boys, where also men are trained for the priesthood. There are cloisters and a pleasant garden within them. V. HAVANA: Olla Podrida Breakfast, and again the cool marble floor, white-robed tables, the fruits and flowers, and curtains gently swaying, and women in morning toilets. Besides the openness to view, these rooms are strangely open to ingress. Lottery-ticket vendors go the rounds of the tables at every meal, and so do the girls with tambourines for alms for the music in the street. As there is no coin in Cuba less than the medio, 6-1/4 cents, the musicians get a good deal or nothing. The absence of any smaller coin must be an inconvenience to the poor, as they must often buy more than they want, or go without. I find silver very scarce here. It is difficult to get change for gold, and at public places notices are put up that gold will not be received for small payments. I find the only course is to go to one of the Cambios de Moneda, whose signs are frequent in the streets, and get a half doubloon changed into reals and pesetas, at four per cent discount, and fill my pockets with small silver. Spent the morning, from eleven o'clock to dinner-time, in my room, writing and reading. It is too hot to be out with comfort. It is not such a morning as one would spend at the St. Nicholas, or the Tremont, or at Morley's or Meurice's. The rooms all open into the court-yard, and the doors and windows, if open at all, are open to the view of all passers-by. As there are no bells, every call is made from the veranda rail, down into the court-yard, and repeated until the servant answers, or the caller gives up in despair. Antonio has a compeer and rival in Domingo, and the sharp voice of the woman in the next room but one, who proves to be a subordinate of the opera troupe, is calling out,"Do-meen-go! Do-meen-go!" and the rogue is in full sight from our side, making significant faces, until she changes her tune to "Antonio! Antonio! adónde está Domingo?" But as she speaks very little Spanish, and Antonio very little French, it is not difficult for him to get up a misapprehension, especially at the distance of two stories; and she is obliged to subside for a while, and her place is supplied by the parrot. She is usually unsuccessful, being either unreasonable, or bad pay. The opera troupe are rehearsing in the second flight, with doors and windows open. And throughout the hot middle day, we hear the singing, the piano, the parrot, and the calls and parleys with the servants below. But we can see the illimitable sea from the end of the piazza, blue as indigo; and the strange city is lying under our eye, with its strange blue and white and yellow houses, with their roofs of dull red tiles, its strange tropical shade-trees, and its strange vehicles and motley population, and the clangor of its bells, and the high-pitched cries of the vendors in its streets. Going down stairs at about eleven o'clock, I find a table set in the front hall, at the foot of the great staircase, and there, in full view of all who come or go, the landlord and his entire establishment, except the slaves and coolies, are at breakfast. This is done every day. At the café round the corner, the family with their white, hired servants, breakfast and dine in the hall, through which all the customers of the place must go to the baths, the billiard rooms, and the bowling-alleys. Fancy the manager of the Astor or Revere, spreading a table for breakfast and dinner in the great entry, between the office and the front door, for himself and family and servants! Yesterday and to-day I noticed in the streets and at work in houses, men of an Indian complexion, with coarse black hair. I asked if they were native Indians, or of mixed blood. No, they are the coolies! Their hair, full grown, and the usual dress of the country which they wore, had not suggested to me the Chinese; but the shape and expression of the eye make it plain. These are the victims of the trade, of which we hear so much. I am told there are 200,000 of them in Cuba, or, that so many have been imported, and all within seven years. I have met them everywhere, the newly-arrived, in Chinese costume, with shaved heads, but the greater number in pantaloons and jackets and straw hats, with hair full grown. Two of the cooks at our hotel are coolies. I must inform myself on the subject of this strange development of the domination of capital over labor. I am told there is a mart of coolies in the Cerro. This I must see, if it is to be seen. After dinner drove out to the Jesús del Monte, to deliver my letter of introduction to the Bishop. The drive, by way of the Calzada de Jesús del Monte, takes one through a wretched portion, I hope the most wretched portion, of Havana, by long lines of one story wood and mud hovels, hardly habitable even for Negroes, and interspersed with an abundance of drinking shops. The horses, mules, asses, chickens, children, and grown people use the same door; and the back yards disclose heaps of rubbish. The looks of the men, the horses tied to the door-posts, the mules with their panniers of fruits and leaves reaching to the ground, all speak of Gil Blas, and of what we have read of humble life in Spain. The little Negro children go stark naked, as innocent of clothing as the puppies. But this is so all over the city. In the front hall of Le Grand's, this morning, a lady, standing in a full dress of spotless white, held by the hand a naked little Negro boy, of two or three years old, nestling in black relief against the folds of her dress. Now we rise to the higher grounds of Jesús del Monte. The houses improve in character. They are still of one story, but high and of stone, with marble floors and tiled roofs, with court-yards of grass and trees, and through the gratings of the wide, long, open windows, I see the decent furniture, the double, formal row of chairs, prints on the walls, and well-dressed women maneuvering their fans. As a carriage with a pair of cream-colored horses passed, having two men within, in the dress of ecclesiastics, my driver pulled up and said that was the Bishop's carriage, and that he was going out for an evening drive. Still, I must go on; and we drive to his house. As you go up the hill, a glorious view lies upon the left. Havana, both city and suburbs, the Morro with its batteries and lighthouse, the ridge of fortifications called the Cabaña and Casa Blanca, the Castle of Atares, near at hand, a perfect truncated cone, fortified at the top--the higher and most distant Castle of Príncipe, "_And, poured round all,_ _Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste_"-- No! Not so! Young Ocean, the Ocean of to-day! The blue, bright, healthful, glittering, gladdening, inspiring Ocean! Have I ever seen a city view so grand? The view of Quebec from the foot of the Montmorenci Falls, may rival, but does not excel it. My preference is for this; for nothing, not even the St. Lawrence, broad and affluent as it is, will make up for the living sea, the boundless horizon, the dioramic vision of gliding, distant sails, and the open arms and motherly bosom of the harbor, "with handmaid lamp attending":--our Mother Earth, forgetting never the perils of that gay and treacherous world of waters, its change of moods, its "strumpet winds"--ready is she at all times, by day or by night, to fold back to her bosom her returning sons, knowing that the sea can give them no drink, no food, no path, no light, nor bear up their foot for an instant, if they are sinking in its depths. The regular episcopal residence is in town. This is only a house which the Bishop occupies temporarily, for the sake of his health. It is a modest house of one story, standing very high, with a commanding view of city, harbor, sea, and suburbs. The floors are marble, and the roof is of open rafters, painted blue, and above twenty feet in height; the windows are as large as doors, and the doors as large as gates. The mayordomo shows me the parlor, in which are portraits in oil of distinguished scholars and missionaries and martyrs. On my way back to the city, I direct the driver to avoid the disagreeable road by which we came out, and we drive by a cross road, and strike the Paseo de Tacón at its outer end, where is a fountain and statue, and a public garden of the most exquisite flowers, shrubs, and trees, and around them are standing, though it is nearly dark, files of carriages waiting for the promenaders, who are enjoying a walk in the garden. I am able to take the entire drive of the Paseo. It is straight, very wide, with two carriageways and two footways, with rows of trees between, and at three points has a statue and a fountain. One of these statues, if I recollect aright, is of Tacón; one of a Queen of Spain; and one is an allegorical figure. The Paseo is two or three miles in length; reaching from the Campo de Marte, just outside the walls, to the last statue and public garden, on gradually ascending ground, and lined with beautiful villas, and rich gardens full of tropical trees and plants. No city in America has such an avenue as the Paseo de Tacón. This, like most of the glories of Havana, they tell you they owe to the energy and genius of the man whose name it bears.--I must guard myself, by the way, while here, against using the words America and American, when I mean the United States and the people of our Republic; for this is America also; and they here use the word America as including the entire continent and islands, and distinguish between Spanish and English America, the islands and the main. The Cubans have a taste for prodigality in grandiloquent or pretty names. Every shop, the most humble, has its name. They name the shops after the sun and moon and stars; after gods and goddesses, demi-gods and heroes; after fruits and flowers, gems and precious stones; after favorite names of women, with pretty, fanciful additions; and after all alluring qualities, all delights of the senses, and all pleasing affections of the mind. The wards of jails and hospitals are each known by some religious or patriotic designation; and twelve guns in the Morro are named for the Apostles. Every town has the name of an apostle or saint, or of some sacred subject. The full name of Havana, in honor of Columbus, is San Cristóbal de la Habana; and that of Matanzas is San Carlos Alcázar de Matanzas. It is strange that the island itself has defied all the Spanish attempts to name it. It has been solemnly named Juana, after the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; then Ferdinandina, after Ferdinand himself; then Santiago, and, lastly, Ave María; but it has always fallen back upon the original Indian name of Cuba. And the only compensation to the hyperbolical taste of the race is that they decorate it, on state and ceremonious occasions, with the musical prefix of "La siempre fidelísima Isla de Cuba." At 7.30 P.M. went with my New York fellow-passengers to hear an opera, or, more correctly, to see the people of Havana at an opera. The Teatro de Tacón is closed for repairs. This is unfortunate, as it is said by some to be the finest theater, and by all to be one of the three finest theaters in the world. This, too, is attributed to Tacón; although it is said to have been a speculation of a clever pirate turned fish-dealer, who made a fortune by it. But I like well enough the Teatro de Villanueva. The stage is deep and wide, the pit high and comfortable, and the boxes light and airy and open in front, with only a light tracery of iron to support the rails, leaving you a full view of the costumes of the ladies, even to their slippers. The boxes are also separated from the passage-ways in the rear, only by wide lattice work; so that the promenaders between the acts can see the entire contents of the boxes at one view; and the ladies dress and sit and talk and use the fan with a full sense that they are under the inspection of a "committee of the whole house." They are all in full dress, décolletées, without hats. It seemed, to my fancy, that the mature women were divisible into two classes, distinctly marked and with few intermediates--the obese and the shrivelled. I suspect that the effect of time in this climate is to produce a decided result in the one direction or the other. But a single night's view at an opera is very imperfect material for an induction, I admit. The young ladies had, generally, full figures, with tapering fingers and well-rounded arms; yet there were some in the extreme contrast of sallow, bilious, sharp countenances, with glassy eyes. There is evidently great attention to manner, to the mode of sitting and moving, to the music of the voice in speaking, the use of the hands and arms, and, perhaps it may be ungallant to add, of the eyes. The Governor-General, Concha (whose title is, strictly, Capitan-General), with his wife and two daughters, and two aides-de-camp, is in the Vice-regal box, hung with red curtains, and surmounted by the royal arms. I can form no opinion of him from his physiognomy, as that is rather heavy, and gives not much indication. Between the acts, I make, as all the gentlemen do, the promenade of the house. All parts of it are respectable, and the regulations are good. I notice one curious custom, which I am told prevails in all Spanish theaters. As no women sit in the pit, and the boxes are often hired for the season, and are high-priced, a portion of an upper tier is set apart for those women and children who cannot or do not choose to get seats in the boxes. Their quarter is separated from the rest of the house by gates, and is attended by two or three old women, with a man to guard the entrance. No men are admitted among them, and their parents, brothers, cousins and beaux are allowed only to come to the door, and must send in refreshments, and even a cup of water, by the hands of the dueñas. Military, on duty, abound at the doors and in the passage-ways. The men to-night are of the regiment of Guards, dressed in white. There are enough of them to put down a small insurrection, on the spot. The singers screamed well enough, and the play was a poor one, "María de Rohan," but the prima donna, Gazzaniga, is a favorite, and the excitable Cubans shout and scream, and throw bouquets, and jump on the benches, and, at last, present her with a crown, wreathed with flowers, and with jewels of value attached to it. Miss Adelaide Phillips is here, too, and a favorite, and has been crowned, they say; but she does not sing to-night. VI. HAVANA: A Social Sunday To-morrow, I am to go, at eight o'clock either to the church of San Domingo, to hear the military mass, or to the Jesuit church of Belén; for the service of my own church is not publicly celebrated, even at the British consulate, no service but the Roman Catholic being tolerated on the island. To-night there is a public máscara (mask ball) at the great hall, next door to Le Grand's. My only window is by the side of the numerous windows of the great hall, and all these are wide open; and I should be stifled if I were to close mine. The music is loud and violent, from a very large band, with kettle drums and bass drums and trumpets; and because these do not make noise and uproar enough, leather bands are snapped, at the turns in the tunes. For sleeping, I might as well have been stretched on the bass drum. This tumult of noises, and the heat are wearing and oppressive beyond endurance, as it draws on past midnight, to the small hours; and the servants in the court of the hall seem to be tending at tables of quarrelling men, and to be interminably washing and breaking dishes. After several feverish hours, I light a match and look at my watch. It is nearly five o'clock in the morning. There is an hour to daylight--and will this noise stop before then? The city clocks struck five; the music ceased; and the bells of the convents and monasteries tolled their matins, to call the nuns and monks to their prayers and to the bedsides of the sick and dying in the hospitals, as the maskers go home from their revels at this hideous hour of Sunday morning. The servants ceased their noises, the cocks began to crow and the bells to chime, the trumpets began to bray, and the cries of the streets broke in before dawn, and I dropped asleep just as I was thinking sleep past hoping for; when I am awakened by a knocking at the door, and Antonio calling, "Usted! Usted! Un caballero quiere ver á Usted!" to find it half-past nine, the middle of the forenoon, and an ecclesiastic in black dress and shovel hat, waiting in the passage-way, with a message from the bishop. His Excellency regrets not having seen me the day before, and invites me to dinner at three o'clock, to meet three or four gentlemen, an invitation which I accept with pleasure. I am too late for the mass, or any other religious service, as all the churches close at ten o'clock. A tepid, soothing bath, at "Los baños públicos," round the corner, and I spend the morning in my chamber. As we are at breakfast, the troops pass by the Paseo, from the mass service. Their gait is quick and easy, with swinging arms, after the French fashion. Their dress is seersucker, with straw hats and red cockades: the regiments being distinguished by the color of the cloth on the cuffs of the coat, some being yellow, some green, and some blue. Soon after two o'clock, I take a carriage for the bishop's. On my way out I see that the streets are full of Spanish sailors from the men-of-war, ashore for a holiday, dressed in the style of English sailors, with wide duck trousers, blue jackets, and straw hats, with the name of their ship on the front of the hat. All business is going on as usual, and laborers are at work in the streets and on the houses. The company consists of the bishop himself, the Bishop of Puebla de los Ángeles in Mexico, Father Yuch, the rector of the Jesuit College, who has a high reputation as a man of intellect, and two young ecclesiastics. Our dinner is well cooked, and in the Spanish style, consisting of fish, vegetables, fruits, and of stewed light dishes, made up of vegetables, fowls and other meats, a style of cooking well adapted to a climate in which one is very willing to dispense with the solid, heavy cuts of an English dinner. The Bishop of Puebla wore the purple, the Bishop of Havana a black robe with a broad cape, lined with red, and each wore the Episcopal cross and ring. The others were in simple black cassocks. The conversation was in French; for, to my surprise, none of the company could speak English; and being allowed my election between French and Spanish, I chose the former, as the lighter infliction on my associates. I am surprised to see what an impression is made on all classes in this country by the pending "Thirty Millions Bill" of Mr. Slidell. It is known to be an Administration measure, and is thought to be the first step in a series which is to end in an attempt to seize the island. Our steamer brought oral intelligence that it had passed the Senate, and it was so announced in the Diario of the day after our arrival, although no newspaper that we brought so stated it. Not only with these clergymen, but with the merchants and others whom I have met since our arrival, foreigners as well as Cubans, this is the absorbing topic. Their future seems to be hanging in doubt, depending on the action of our government, which is thought to have a settled purpose to acquire the island. I suggested that it had not passed the Senate, and would not pass the House; and, at most, was only an authority to the President to make an offer that would certainly be refused. But they looked beyond the form of the act, and regarded it as the first move in a plan, of which, although they could not entirely know the details, they thought they understood the motive. These clergymen were well informed as to the state of religion in the United States, the relative numbers and force of the various denominations, and their doctrinal differences; the reputations of Brownson, Parker, Beecher, and others; and most minutely acquainted with the condition of their own church in the United States, and with the chief of its clergy. This acquaintance is not attributable solely to their unity of organization, and to the consequent interchange of communication, but largely also to the tie of a common education at the Propaganda or St. Sulpice, the catalogues of whose alumni are familiar to the educated Catholic clergy throughout the world. The subject of slavery, and the condition and prospects of the Negro race in Cuba, the probable results of the coolie system, and the relations between Church and State in Cuba, and the manner in which Sunday is treated in Havana, the public school system in America, the fate of Mormonism, and how our government will treat it, were freely discussed. It is not because I have any reason to suppose that these gentlemen would object to all they said being printed in these pages, and read by all who may choose to read it in Cuba, or the United States, that I do not report their interesting and instructive conversation; but because it would be, in my opinion, a violation of the universal understanding among gentlemen. After dinner, we walked on the piazza, with the noble sunset view of the unsurpassed panorama lying before us; and I took my leave of my host, a kind and courteous gentleman of Old Spain, as well as a prelate, just as a few lights were beginning to sprinkle over the fading city, and the Morro Light to gleam on the untroubled air. Made two visits in the city this evening. In each house, I found the double row of chairs, facing each other, always with about four or five feet of space between the rows. The etiquette is that the gentlemen sit on the row opposite to the ladies, if there be but two or three present. If a lady, on entering goes to the side of a gentleman, when the other row is open to her, it indicates either familiar acquaintance or boldness. There is no people so observant of outguards, as the Spanish race. I notice, and my observation is supported by what I am told by the residents here, that there is no street-walking, in the technical sense, in Havana. Whether this is from the fact that no ladies walk in the streets--which are too narrow for comfortable or even safe walking--or by reason of police regulations, I do not know. From what one meets with in the streets, if he does not look farther, one would not know that there was a vice in Havana, not even drunkenness. VII. HAVANA: Belén and the Jesuits Rose before six, and walked as usual, down the Paseo, to the sea baths. How refreshing is this bath, after the hot night and close rooms! At your side, the wide blue sea with its distant sails, the bath cut into the clean rock, the gentle washing in and out of the tideless sea, at the Gulf Stream temperature, in the cool of the morning! As I pass down, I meet a file of coolies, in Chinese costume, marching, under overseers, to their work or their jail. And there is the chain-gang! clank, clank, as they go headed by officers with pistols and swords, and flanked by drivers with whips. This is simple wretchedness! While at breakfast, a gentleman in the dress of the regular clergy, speaking English, called upon me, bringing me, from the bishop an open letter of introduction and admission to all the religious, charitable, and educational institutions of the city, and offering to conduct me to the Belén (Bethlehem). He is Father B. of Charleston, S. C. temporarily in Havana, with whom I find I have some acquaintances in common, both in America and abroad. We drive together to the Belén. I say drive; for few persons walk far in Havana, after ten o'clock in the morning. The volantes are the public carriages of Havana; and are as abundant as cabs in London. You never need stand long at a street door without finding one. The postilions are always Negroes; and I am told that they pay the owner a certain sum per day for the horse and volante, and make what they can above that. The Belén is a group of buildings, of the usual yellow or tawny color, covering a good deal of ground, and of a thoroughly monastic character. It was first a Franciscan monastery, then a barrack, and now has been given by the government to the Jesuits. The company of Jesus here is composed of a rector and about forty clerical and twenty lay brethren. These perform every office, from the highest scientific investigations and instruction, down to the lowest menial offices, in the care of the children; some serving in costly vestments at the high altar, and others in coarse black garb at the gates. It is only three years since they established themselves in Havana, but in that time they have formed a school of two hundred boarders and one hundred day scholars, built dormitories for the boarders, and a common hall, restored the church and made it the most fully attended in the city; established a missionary work in all parts of the town, recalled a great number to the discipline of the Church, and not only created something like an enthusiasm of devotion among the women, who are said to have monopolized the religion of Cuba in times past, but have introduced among the men, and among many influential men, the practices of confession and communion, to which they had been almost entirely strangers. I do not take this account from the Jesuits themselves, but from the regular clergy of other orders, and from Protestants who are opposed to them and their influence. All agree that they are at work with zeal and success. I met my distinguished acquaintance of yesterday, the rector, who took me to the boys' chapel, and introduced me to Father Antonio Cabre, a very young man of a spare frame and intellectual countenance, with hands so white and so thin, and eyes so bright, and cheek so pale! He is at the head of the department of mathematics and astronomy, and looks indeed as if he had outwatched the stars, in vigils of science or of devotion. He took me to his laboratory, his observatory, and his apparatus of philosophic instruments. These I am told are according to the latest inventions, and in the best style of French and German workmanship. I was also shown a collection of coins and medals, a cabinet of shells, the commencement of a museum of natural history, already enriched with most of the birds of Cuba, and an interesting cabinet of the woods of the island, in small blocks, each piece being polished on one side, and rough on the other. Among the woods were the mahoganies, the iron-wood, the ebony, the lignum vitæ, the cedar, and many others, of names unfamiliar to me, which admit of the most exquisite polish. Some of the most curious were from the Isla de Pinos, an island belonging to Cuba, and on its southern shore. The sleeping arrangement for the boys here seemed to me to be new, and to be well adapted to the climate. There is a large hall, with a roof about thirty feet from the floor, and windows near the top, to give light and ventilation above, and small portholes, near the ground, to let air into the passages. In this hall are double rows of compartments, like high pews, or, more profanely, like the large boxes in restaurants and chop-houses, open at the top, with curtains instead of doors, and each large enough to contain a single bed, a chair, and a toilet table. This ensures both privacy and the light and air of the great hall. The bedsteads are of iron; and nothing can exceed the neatness and order of the apartments. The boys' clothes are kept in another part of the house, and they take to their dormitories only the clothes that they are using. Each boy sleeps alone. Several of the Fathers sleep in the hall, in curtained rooms at the ends of the passage-ways, and a watchman walks the rounds all night, to guard against fire, and to give notice of sickness. The boys have a playground, a gymnasium, and a riding-school. But although they like riding and fencing, they do not take to the robust exercises and sports of English schoolboys. An American whom I met here, who had spent several months at the school, told me that in their recreations they were more like girls, and like to sit a good deal, playing or working with their hands. He pointed out to me a boy, the son of an American mother, a lady to whom I brought letters and kind wishes from her many friends at the North, and told me that he had more pluck than any boy in the school. The roof of the Belén is flat, and gives a pleasant promenade, in the open air, after the sun is gone down, which is much needed, as the buildings are in the dense part of the city. The brethren of this order wear short hair, with the tonsure, and dress in coarse cassocks of plain black, coming to the feet, and buttoned close to the neck, with a cape, but with no white of collar above; and in these, they sweep like black spectres, about the passage-ways, and across the halls and court-yards. There are so many of them that they are able to give thorough and minute attention to the boys, not only in instruction, both secular and religious, but in their entire training and development. From the scholastic part of the institution, I passed to the church. It is not very large, has an open marble floor, a gallery newly erected for the use of the brethren and other men, a sumptuous high altar, a sacristy and vestry behind, and a small altar, by which burned the undying lamp, indicating the presence of the Sacrament. In the vestry, I was shown the vestments for the service of the high altar, some of which are costly and gorgeous in the extreme, not probably exceeded by those of the Temple at Jerusalem in the palmiest days of the Jewish hierarchy. All are presents from wealthy devotees. One, an alb, had a circle of precious stones; and the lace alone on another, a present from a lady of rank, is said to have cost three thousand dollars. Whatever may be thought of the rightfulness of this expenditure, turning upon the old question as to which the alabaster box of ointment and the ordained costliness of the Jewish ritual "must give us pause," it cannot be said of the Jesuits that they live in cedar, while the ark of God rests in curtains; for the actual life of the streets hardly presents any greater contrast, than that between the sumptuousness of their apparel at the altar, and the coarseness and cheapness of their ordinary dress, the bareness of their rooms, and the apparent severity of their life. The Cubans have a childish taste for excessive decoration. Their altars look like toyshops. A priest, not a Cuban, told me that he went to the high altar of the cathedral once, on a Christmas day, to officiate, and when his eye fell on the childish and almost profane attempts at symbolism--a kind of doll millinery, if he had not got so far that he could not retire without scandal, he would have left the duties of the day to others. At the Belén there is less of this; but the Jesuits find or think it necessary to conform a good deal to the popular taste. In the sacristy, near the side altar, is a distressing image of the Virgin, not in youth, but the mother of the mature man, with a sword pierced through her heart--referring to the figurative prediction "a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." The handle and a part of the blade remain without, while the marks of the deep wound are seen, and the countenance expresses the sorest agony of mind and body. It is painful, and beyond all legitimate scope of art, and haunts one, like a vision of actual misery. It is almost the only thing in the church of which I have brought away a distinct image in my memory. A strange, eventful history is that of the Society of Jesus! Ignatius Loyola, a soldier and noble of Spain, renouncing arms and knighthood, hangs his trophies of war upon the altar of Monserrate. After intense studies and barefoot pilgrimages, persecuted by religious orders whose excesses he sought to restrain, and frowned upon by the Inquisition, he organizes, with Xavier and Faber, at Montmartre, a society of three. From this small beginning, spreading upwards and outwards, it overshadows the earth. Now, at the top of success, it is supposed to control half Christendom. Now, his order proscribed by State and Church alike and suppressed by the Pope himself, there is not a spot of earth in Catholic Christendom where the Jesuit can place the sole of his foot. In this hour of distress, he finds refuge in Russia, and in Protestant Prussia. Then, restored and tolerated, the order revives here and there in Europe, with a fitful life; and, at length, blazes out into a glory of missionary triumphs and martyrdoms in China, in India, in Africa, and in North America; and now, in these later days, we see it advancing everywhere to a new epoch of labor and influence. Thorough in education, perfect in discipline, absolute in obedience--as yielding, as indestructible, as all-pervading as water or as air! The Jesuits make strong friends and strong enemies. Many, who are neither the one nor the other, say of them that their ethics are artificial, and their system unnatural; that they do not reform nature, but destroy it; that, aiming to use the world without abusing it, they reduce it to subjection and tutelage; that they are always either in dangerous power, or in disgrace; and although they may labor with more enthusiasm and self-consecration than any other order, and meet with astonishing successes for a time, yet such is the character of their system that these successes are never permanent, but result in opposition, not only from Protestants, and moderate Catholics, and from the civil power, but from other religious orders and from the regular clergy in their own Church, an opposition to which they are invariably compelled to yield, at last. In fine, they declare, that, allowing them all zeal, and all ability, and all devotedness, their system is too severe and too unnatural for permanent usefulness anywhere--medicine and not food, lightning and not light, flame and not warmth. Not satisfied with this moderated judgment, their opponents have met them, always and everywhere, with uniform and vehement reprobation. They say to them--the opinion of mankind has condemned you! The just and irreversible sentence of time has made you a by-word and a hissing, and reduced your very name, the most sacred in its origin, to a synonym for ambition and deceit! Others, again, esteem them the nearest approach in modern times to that type of men portrayed by one of the chiefest, in his epistle: "In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering; ... by honor and dishonor; by evil report and good report; as deceivers and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." VIII. MATANZAS As there are no plantations to be seen near Havana, I determine to go down to Matanzas, near which the sugar plantations are in full tide of operation at this season. A steamer leaves here every night at ten o'clock, reaching Matanzas before daylight, the distance by sea being between fifty and sixty miles. Took this steamer to-night. She got under way punctually at ten o'clock, and steamed down the harbor. The dark waters are alive with phosphorescent light. From each ship that lies moored, the cable from the bows, tautened to its anchor, makes a run of silver light. Each boat, gliding silently from ship to ship, and shore to shore, turns up a silver ripple at its stem, and trails a wake of silver behind; while the dip of the oar-blades brings up liquid silver, dripping, from the opaque deep. We pass along the side of the two-decker, and see through her ports the lanterns and men; under the stern of one frigate, and across the bows of another (for Havana is well supplied with men-of-war); and drop leisurely down by the Cabaña, where we are hailed from the rocks; and bend round the Morro, and are out on the salt, rolling sea. Having a day of work before me, I went early to my berth, and was waked up by the letting off of steam, in the lower harbor of Matanzas, at three o'clock in the morning. My fellow-passengers, who sat up, said the little steamer tore and plunged, and jumped through the water like a thing that had lost its wits. They seemed to think that the Cuban engineer had got a machine that would some day run away with him. It was, certainly, a very short passage. We passed a good many vessels lying at anchor in the lower harbor of Matanzas, and came to anchor about a mile from the pier. It was clear, bright moonlight. The small boats came off to us, and took us and our luggage ashore. I was landed alone on a quay, carpet-bag in hand, and had to guess my way to the inn, which was near the water-side. I beat on the big, close-barred door; and a sleepy Negro, in time, opened it. Mine host was up, expecting passengers, and after waiting on the very tardy movements of the Negro, who made a separate journey to the yard for each thing the room needed, I got to bed by four o'clock, on the usual piece of canvas stretched over an iron frame, in a room having a brick floor, and windows without glass closed with big-bolted shutters. After coffee, walked out to deliver my letters to Mr.----, an American merchant, who has married the daughter of a planter, a gentleman of wealth and character. He is much more agreeable and painstaking than we have any right to expect of one who is served so frequently with notice that his attentions are desired for the entertainment of a stranger. Knowing that it is my wish to visit a plantation, he gives me a letter to Don Juan Chartrand, who has an ingenio (sugar plantation), called La Ariadne, near Limonar, and about twenty-five miles back in the country from Matanzas. The train leaves at 2.30 P.M., which gives me several hours for the city. Although it is not yet nine o'clock, it is very hot, and one is glad to keep on the shady side of the broad streets of Matanzas. This city was built later and more under foreign direction than Havana, and I have been told, not by persons here however, that for many years the controlling influences of society were French, English, and American; but that lately the policy of the government has been to discourage foreign influence, and now Spanish customs prevail--bull-fights have been introduced, and other usages and entertainments which had had no place here before. Whatever may be the reason, this city differs from Havana in buildings, vehicles, and dress, and in the width of its streets, and has less of the peculiar air of a tropical city. It has about 25,000 inhabitants, and stands where two small rivers, the Yumurí and the San Juan, crossed by handsome stone bridges, run into the sea, dividing the city into three parts. The vessels lie at anchor from one to three miles below the city, and lighters, with masts and sails, line the stone quays of the little rivers. The city is flat and hot, but the country around is picturesque, hilly, and fertile. To the westward of the town, rises a ridge, bordering on the sea, called the Cumbre, which is a place of resort for the beauty of its views; and in front of the Cumbre, on the inland side, is the deep rich valley of the Yumurí, with its celebrated cavern. These I must see, if I can, on my return from the plantation. In my morning walk, I see a company of coolies, in the hot sun, carrying stones to build a house, under the eye of a taskmaster who sits in the shade. The stones have been dropped in a pile, from carts, and the coolies, carry them, in files, to the cellar of the house. They are naked to the waist, with short-legged cotton trousers coming to the knees. Some of these men were strongly, one or two of them powerfully built, but many seemed very thin and frail. While looking on, I saw an evident American face near me, and getting into conversation with the man, found him an intelligent shipmaster from New York, who had lived in Matanzas for a year or two, engaged in business. He told me, as I had heard in Havana, that the importer of the coolies gets $400 a head for them from the purchaser, and that the coolies are entitled from the purchaser to four dollars a month, which they may demand monthly if they choose, and are bound to eight years' service, during which time they may be held to all the service that a slave is subject to. They are more intelligent, and are put to higher labor than the Negro. He said, too, it would not do to flog a coolie. Idolaters as they are, they have a notion of the dignity of the human body, at least as against strangers, which does not allow them to submit to the indignity of corporal chastisement. If a coolie is flogged, somebody must die; either the coolie himself, for they are fearfully given to suicide, or the perpetrator of the indignity, or some one else, according to their strange principles of vicarious punishment. Yet such is the value of labor in Cuba, that a citizen will give $400, in cash, for the chance of enforcing eight years' labor, at $4 per month, from a man speaking a strange language, worshipping strange gods or none, thinking suicide a virtue, and governed by no moral laws in common with his master--his value being yet further diminished by the chances of natural death, of sickness, accident, escape, and of forfeiting his services to the government, for any crime he may commit against laws he does not understand. The Plaza is in the usual style--an enclosed garden, with walks; and in front is the Government House. In this spot, so fair and so still in the noonday sun, some fourteen years ago, under the fire of the platoons of Spanish soldiers, fell the patriot and poet, one of the few popular poets of Cuba, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdez. Charged with being the head of that concerted movement of the slaves for their freedom which struck such terror into Cuba, in 1844, he was convicted and ordered to be shot. At the first volley, as the story is told, he was only wounded. "Aim here!" said he, pointing to his head. Another volley, and it was all over. The name and story of Gabriel de la Concepción Valdez are preserved by the historians and tourists of Cuba. He is best known, however, by the name of Placido, that under which he wrote and published, than by his proper name. He was a man of genius and a man of valor, but--he was a mulatto! IX. TO LIMONAR BY TRAIN Took the train for Limonar, at 2.30 P.M. There are three classes of cars, all after the American model, the first of about the condition of our first-class cars when on the point of being condemned as worn out; the second, a little plainer; and the third, only covered wagons with benches. The car I entered had "Davenport & Co., makers, Cambridgeport, Mass.," familiarly on its front, and the next had "Eaton, Gilbert & Co., Troy, N. York." The brakemen on the train are coolies, one of them a handsome lad, with coarse, black hair, that lay gracefully about his head, and eyes handsome, though of the Chinese pattern. They were all dressed in the common shirt, trousers and hat, and, but for their eyes, might be taken for men of any of the Oriental races. As we leave Matanzas, we rise on an ascending grade, and the bay and city lie open before us. The bay is deep on the western shore, under the ridge of the Cumbre, and there the vessels lie at anchor; while the rest of the bay is shallow, and its water, in this state of the sky and light, is of a pale green color. The lighters, with sail and oar are plying between the quays and the vessels below. All is pretty and quiet and warm, but the scene has none of those regal points that so impress themselves on the imagination and memory in the surroundings of Havana. I am now to get my first view of the interior of Cuba. I could not have a more favorable day. The air is clear, and not excessively hot. The soft clouds float midway in the serene sky, the sun shines fair and bright, and the luxuriance of a perpetual summer covers the face of nature. These strange palm trees everywhere! I cannot yet feel at home among them. Many of the other trees are like our own, and though, tropical in fact, look to the eye as if they might grow as well in New England as here. But the royal palm looks so intensely and exclusively tropical! It cannot grow beyond this narrow belt of the earth's surface. Its long, thin body, so straight and so smooth, swathed from the foot--in a tight bandage of tawny gray, leaving only its deep-green neck, and over that its crest and plumage of deep-green leaves! It gives no shade, and bears no fruit that is valued by men. And it has no beauty to atone for those wants. Yet it has more than beauty--a strange fascination over the eye and the fancy, that will never allow it to be overlooked or forgotten. The palm tree seems a kind of _lusus naturae_ to the northern eye--an exotic wherever you meet it. It seems to be conscious of its want of usefulness for food or shade, yet has a dignity of its own, a pride of unmixed blood and royal descent--the hidalgo of the soil. What are those groves and clusters of small growth, looking like Indian corn in a state of transmigration into trees, the stalk turning into a trunk, a thin soft coating half changed to bark, and the ears of corn turning into melons? Those are the bananas and plantains, as their bunches of green and yellow fruits plainly enough indicate, when you come nearer. But, that sad, weeping tree, its long yellow-green leaves drooping to the ground! What can that be? It has a green fruit like a melon. There it is again, in groves! I interrupt my neighbor's tenth cigarrito, to ask him the name of the tree. It is the cocoa! And that soft green melon becomes the hard shell we break with a hammer. Other trees there are, in abundance, of various forms and foliage, but they might have grown in New England or New York, so far as the eye can teach us; but the palm, the cocoa, the banana and plantain are the characteristic trees you could not possibly meet with in any other zone. Thickets--jungles I might call them--abound. It seems as if a bird could hardly get through them; yet they are rich with wild flowers of all forms and colors, the white, the purple, the pink, and the blue. The trees are full of birds of all plumage. There is one like our brilliant oriole. I cannot hear their notes, for the clatter of the train. Stone fences, neatly laid up, run across the lands;--not of our cold bluish-gray granite, the color, as a friend once said, of a miser's eye, but of soft, warm brown and russet, and well overgrown with creepers, and fringed with flowers. There are avenues, and here are clumps of the prim orange tree, with its dense and deep-green polished foliage gleaming with golden fruit. Now we come to acres upon acres of the sugar-cane, looking at a distance like fields of overgrown broomcorn. It grows to the height of eight or ten feet, and very thick. An army could be hidden in it. This soil must be deeply and intensely fertile. There, at the end of an avenue of palms, in a nest of shade-trees, is a group of white buildings, with a sea of cane-fields about it, with one high furnace-chimney, pouring out its volume of black smoke. This is a sugar plantation--my first sight of an ingenio; and the chimney is for the steam works of the sugar-house. It is the height of the sugar season, and the untiring engine toils and smokes day and night. Ox carts, loaded with cane, are moving slowly to the sugar-house from the fields; and about the house, and in the fields, in various attitudes and motions of labor, are the Negroes, men and women and children, some cutting the cane, some loading the carts, and some tending the mill and the furnace. It is a busy scene of distant industry, in the afternoon sun of a languid Cuban day. Now these groups of white one-story buildings become more frequent, sometimes very near each other, all having the same character--the group of white buildings, the mill, with its tall furnace-chimney, and the look of a distillery, and all differing from each other only in the number and extent of the buildings, or in the ornament and comfort of shade-trees and avenues about them. Some are approached by broad alleys of the palm, or mango, or orange, and have gardens around them, and stand under clusters of shade-trees; while others glitter in the hot sun, on the flat sea of cane-fields, with only a little oasis of shade-trees and fruit-trees immediately about the houses. I now begin to feel that I am in Cuba; in the tropical, rich, sugar-growing, slave-tilled Cuba. Heretofore, I have seen only the cities and their environs in which there are more things that are common to the rest of the world. The country life tells the story of any people that have a country life. The New England farm-house shows the heart of New England. The mansion-house and cottage show the heart of Old England. The plantation life that I am seeing and about to see, tells the story of Cuba, the Cuba that has been and that is. As we stop at one station, which seems to be in the middle of a cane-field, the Negroes and coolies go to the cane, slash off a piece with their knives, cut off the rind and chew the stick of soft, saccharine pulp, the juice running out of their mouths as they eat. They seem to enjoy it so highly, that I am tempted to try the taste of it, myself. But I shall have time for all this at La Ariadne. These stations consist merely of one or two buildings, where the produce of the neighborhood is collected for transportation, and at which there are very few passengers. The railroad is intended for the carriage of sugar and other produce, and gets its support almost entirely in that way; for it runs through a sparse, rural population, where there are no towns; yet so large and valuable is the sugar crop that I believe the road is well supported. At each station are its hangers-on of free Negroes, a few slaves on duty as carriers, a few low whites, and now and then someone who looks as if he might be an overseer or mayoral of a plantation. Limonar appears in large letters on the small building where we next stop, and I get out and inquire of a squad of idlers for the plantation of Señor Chartrand. They point to a group of white buildings about a quarter of a mile distant, standing prettily under high shade-trees, and approached by an avenue of orange trees. Getting a tall Negro to shoulder my bag, for a real, I walk to the house. It is an afternoon of exquisite beauty. How can any one have a weather sensation, in such an air as this? There is no current of the slightest chill anywhere, neither is it oppressively hot. The air is serene and pure and light. The sky gives its mild assurance of settled fair weather. All about me is rich verdure, over a gently undulating surface of deeply fertile country, with here and there a high hill in the horizon, and, on one side, a ridge that may be called mountains. There is no sound but that of the birds, and in the next tree they may be counted by hundreds. Wild flowers, of all colors and scents, cover the ground and the thickets. This is the famous red earth, too. The avenue looks as if it had been laid down with pulverized brick, and all the dust on any object you see is red. Now we turn into the straight avenue of orange trees--prim, deep green trees, glittering with golden fruit. Here is the one-story, high-roofed house, with long, high piazzas. There is a high wall, carefully whitewashed, enclosing a square with one gate, looking like a garrisoned spot. That must be the Negroes' quarters; for there is a group of little Negroes at the gate, looking earnestly at the approaching stranger. Beyond is the sugar-house, and the smoking chimney, and the ox carts, and the field hands. Through the wide, open door of the mansion, I see two gentlemen at dinner, an older and a younger--the head of gray, and the head of black, and two Negro women, one serving, and the other swinging her brush to disperse the flies. Two big, deep-mouthed hounds come out and bark; and the younger gentleman looks at us, comes out, and calls off the dogs. My Negro stops at the path and touches his hat, waiting permission to go to the piazza with the luggage; for Negroes do not go to the house door without previous leave, in strictly ordered plantations. I deliver my letter, and in a moment am received with such cordial welcome that I am made to feel as if I had conferred a favor by coming to see them. X. A SUGAR PLANTATION: The Labor At some seasons, a visit may be a favor, on remote plantations; but I know this is the height of the sugar season, when every hour is precious to the master. After a brief toilet, I sit down with them; for they have just begun dinner. In five minutes, I am led to feel as if I were a friend of many years. Both gentlemen speak English like a native tongue. To the younger it is so, for he was born in South Carolina, and his mother is a lady of that state. The family are not here. They do not live on the plantation, but in Matanzas. The plantation is managed by the son, who resides upon it; the father coming out occasionally for a few days, as now, in the busy season. The dinner is in the Spanish style, which I am getting attached to. I should flee from a joint, or a sirloin. We have rice, excellently cooked, as always in Cuba, eggs with it, if we choose, and fried plantains, sweet potatoes, mixed dishes of fowl and vegetables, with a good deal of oil and seasoning, in which a hot red pepper, about the size of the barberry, prevails. Catalonia wine, which is pretty sure to be pure, is their table claret, while sherry, which also comes direct from the mother-country, is for dessert. I have taken them by surprise, in the midst of the busiest season, in a house where there are no ladies; yet the table, the service, the dress and the etiquette, are none the less in the style of good society. There seems to be no letting down, where letting down would be so natural and excusable. I suppose the fact that the land and the agricultural capital of the interior are in the hands of an upper class, which does no manual labor, and which has enough of wealth and leisure to secure the advantages of continued intercourse with city and foreign society, and of occasional foreign travel, tends to preserve throughout the remote agricultural districts, habits and tone and etiquette, which otherwise would die out, in the entire absence of large towns and of high local influences. Whoever has met with a book called "Evenings in Boston," and read the story of the old Negro, Saturday, and seen the frontispiece of the Negro fleeing through the woods of Santo Domingo, with two little white boys, one in each hand, will know as much of Mr. Chartrand, the elder, as I did the day before seeing him. He is the living hero, or rather subject, for Saturday was the hero, of that tale. His father was a wealthy planter of Santo Domingo, a Frenchman, of large estates, with wife, children, friends and neighbors. These were gathered about him in a social circle in his house, when the dreadful insurrection overtook them, and father, mother, sons, and daughters were murdered in one night, and only two of the children, boys of eight and ten, were saved by the fidelity of Saturday, an old and devoted house servant. Saturday concealed the boys, got them off the island, took them to Charleston, South Carolina, where they found friends among the Huguenot families, and the refugees from Santo Domingo. There Mr. Chartrand grew up; and after a checkered and adventurous early life, a large part of it on the sea, he married a lady of worth and culture, in South Carolina, and settled himself as a planter, on this spot, nearly forty years ago. His plantation he named "El Laberinto," (The Labyrinth,) after a favorite vessel he had commanded, and for thirty years it was a prosperous cafetal, the home of a happy family, and much visited by strangers from. America and Europe. The causes which broke up the coffee estates of Cuba carried this with the others; and it was converted into a sugar plantation, under the new name of La Ariadne, from the fancy of Ariadne having shown the way out of the Labyrinth. Like most of the sugar estates, it is no longer the regular home of its proprietors. The change from coffee plantations to sugar plantations--from the cafetal to the ingenio, has seriously affected the social, as it has the economic condition of Cuba. Coffee must grow under shade. Consequently the coffee estate was, in the first place, a plantation of trees, and by the hundred acres. Economy and taste led the planters, who were chiefly the French refugees from Santo Domingo to select fruit trees, and trees valuable for their wood, as well as pleasing for their beauty and shade. Under these plantations of trees, grew the coffee plant, an evergreen, and almost an ever-flowering plant, with berries of changing hues, and, twice a year, brought its fruit to maturity. That the coffee might be tended and gathered, avenues wide enough for wagons must be carried through the plantations, at frequent intervals. The plantation was, therefore, laid out like a garden, with avenues and foot-paths, all under the shade of the finest trees, and the spaces between the avenues were groves of fruit trees and shade trees, under which grew, trimmed down to the height of five or six feet, the coffee plant. The labor of the plantation was in tending, picking, drying, and shelling the coffee, and gathering the fresh fruits of trees for use and for the market, and for preserves and sweetmeats, and in raising vegetables and poultry, and rearing sheep and horned cattle and horses. It was a beautiful and simple horticulture, on a very large scale. Time was required to perfect this garden--the Cubans call it paradise--of a cafetal; but when matured, it was a cherished home. It required and admitted of no extraordinary mechanical power, or of the application of steam, or of science, beyond the knowledge of soils, of simple culture, and of plants and trees. For twenty years and more it has been forced upon the knowledge of the reluctant Cubans, that Brazil, the West India islands to the southward of Cuba, and the Spanish Main, can excel them in coffee-raising. The successive disastrous hurricanes of 1843 and 1845, which destroyed many and damaged most of the coffee estates, added to the colonial system of the mother-country, which did not give extraordinary protection to this product, are commonly said to have put an end to the coffee plantations. Probably, they only hastened a change which must at some time have come. But the same causes of soil and climate which made Cuba inferior in coffee-growing, gave her a marked superiority in the cultivation of sugar. The damaged plantations were not restored as coffee estates, but were laid down to the sugar-cane; and gradually, first in the western and northern parts, and daily extending easterly and southerly over the entire island, the exquisite cafetals have been prostrated and dismantled, the groves of shade and fruit trees cut down, the avenues and foot-paths ploughed up, and the denuded land laid down to wastes of sugar-cane. The sugar-cane allows of no shade. Therefore the groves and avenues must fall. To make its culture profitable, it must be raised in the largest possible quantities that the extent of land will permit. To attempt the raising of fruit, or of the ornamental woods, is bad economy for the sugar planter. Most of the fruits, especially the orange, which is the chief export, ripen in the midst of the sugar season, and no hands can be spared to attend to them. The sugar planter often buys the fruits he needs for daily use and for making preserves, from the neighboring cafetals. The cane ripens but once a year. Between the time when enough of it is ripe to justify beginning to work the mill, and the time when the heat and rains spoil its qualities, all the sugar-making of the year must be done. In Louisiana, this period does not exceed eight weeks. In Cuba it is full four months. This gives Cuba a great advantage. Yet these four months are short enough; and during that time, the steam-engine plies and the furnace fires burn night and day. Sugar-making brings with it steam, fire, smoke, and a drive of labor, and admits of and requires the application of science. Managed with skill and energy, it is extremely productive. Indifferently managed, it may be a loss. The sugar estate is not valuable, like the coffee estate, for what the land will produce, aided by ordinary and quiet manual labor only. Its value is in the skill, and the character of the labor. The land is there, and the Negroes are there; but the result is loss or gain, according to the amount of labor that can be obtained, and the skill with which the manual labor and the mechanical powers are applied. It is said that at the present time, in the present state of the market, a well-managed sugar estate yields from fifteen to twenty-five per cent on the investment. This is true, I am inclined to think, if by the investment be meant only the land, the machinery, and the slaves. But the land is not a large element in the investment. The machinery is costly, yet its value depends on the science applied to its construction and operation. The chief item in the investment is the slave labor. Taking all the slaves together, men, women, and children, the young and the old, the sick and the well, the good and the bad, their market value averages about $1000 a head. Yet of these, allowing for those too young or too old, for the sick, and for those who must tend the young, the old and the sick, and for those whose labor, like that of the cooks, only sustains the others, not more than one half are able-bodied, productive laborers. The value of this chief item in the investment depends largely on moral and intellectual considerations. How unsatisfactory is it, then, to calculate the profits of the investment, when you leave out of the calculation the value of the controlling power, the power that extorts the contributions of labor from the steam and the engine and the fire, and from the more difficult human will. This is the "plus x" of the formula, which, unascertained, gives us little light as to the result. But, to return to the changes wrought by this substitution of sugar for coffee. The sugar plantation is no grove, or garden, or orchard. It is not the home of the pride and affections of the planter's family. It is not a coveted, indeed, hardly a desirable residence. Such families as would like to remain on these plantations are driven off for want of neighboring society. Thus the estates, largely abandoned by the families of the planters, suffer the evils of absenteeism, while the owners live in the suburbs of Havana and Matanzas, and in the Fifth Avenue of New York. The slave system loses its patriarchal character. The master is not the head of a great family, its judge, its governor, its physician, its priest and its father, as the fond dream of the advocates of slavery, and sometimes, doubtless, the reality, made him. Middlemen, in the shape of administradores, stand between the owner and the slaves. The slave is little else than an item of labor raised or bought. The sympathies of common home, common childhood, long and intimate relations and many kind offices, common attachments to house, to land, to dogs, to cattle, to trees, to birds--the knowledge of births, sicknesses, and deaths, and the duties and sympathies of a common religion--all those things that may ameliorate the legal relations of the master and slave, and often give to the face of servitude itself precarious but interesting features of beauty and strength--these they must not look to have. This change has had some effect already, and will produce much more, on the social system of Cuba. There are still plantations on which the families of the wealthy and educated planters reside. And in some cases the administrador is a younger member or a relative of the family, holding the same social position; and the permanent administrador will have his family with him. Yet, it is enough to say that the same causes which render the ingenio no longer a desirable residence for the owner make it probable that the administrador will be either a dependent or an adventurer; a person from whom the owner will expect a great deal, and the slaves but little, and from whom none will get all they expect, and perhaps none all they are entitled to. In the afternoon we went to the sugar-house, and I was initiated into the mysteries of the work. There are four agents: steam, fire, cane juice, and Negroes. The results are sugar and molasses. At this ingenio, they make only the Muscovado, or brown sugar. The processes are easily described, but it is difficult to give an idea of the scene. It is one of condensed and determined labor. To begin at the beginning, the cane is cut from the fields by companies of men and women, working together, who use an instrument called a machete, which is something between a sword and a cleaver. Two blows with this slash off the long leaves, and a third blow cuts off the stalk, near to the ground. At this work, the laborers move like reapers, in even lines, at stated distances. Before them is a field of dense, high-waving cane; and behind them, strewn wrecks of stalks and leaves. Near, and in charge of the party, stands a driver, or more grandiloquently, a contramayoral, with the short, limber plantation whip, the badge of his office, under his arm. Ox-carts pass over the field, and are loaded with the cane, which they carry to the mill. The oxen are worked in the Spanish fashion, the yoke being strapped upon the head, close to the horns, instead of being hung round the neck, as with us, and are guided by goads, and by a rope attached to a ring through the nostrils. At the mill, the cane is tipped from the carts into large piles, by the side of the platform. From these piles, it is placed carefully, by hand, lengthwise, in a long trough. This trough is made of slats, and moved by the power of the endless chain, connected with the engine. In this trough, it is carried between heavy, horizontal, cylindrical rollers, where it is crushed, its juice falling into receivers below, and the crushed cane passing off and falling into a pile on the other side. This crushed cane (bagazo), falling from between the rollers, is gathered into baskets by men and women, who carry it on their heads into the fields and spread it for drying. There it is watched and tended as carefully as new-mown grass in haymaking, and raked into cocks or windrows, on an alarm of rain. When dry, it is placed under sheds for protection against wet. From the sheds and from the fields, it is loaded into carts and drawn to the furnace doors, into which it is thrown by Negroes, who crowd it in by the armful, and rake it about with long poles. Here it feeds the perpetual fires by which the steam is made, the machinery moved, and the cane-juice boiled. The care of the bagazo is an important part of the system; for if that becomes wet and fails, the fires must stop, or resort be had to wood, which is scarce and expensive. Thus, on one side of the rollers is the ceaseless current of fresh, full, juicy cane-stalks, just cut from the open field; and on the other side, is the crushed, mangled, juiceless mass, drifting out at the draught, and fit only to be cast into the oven and burned. This is the way of the world, as it is the course of art. The cane is made to destroy itself. The ruined and corrupted furnish the fuel and fan the flame that lures on and draws in and crushes the fresh and wholesome; and the operation seems about as mechanical and unceasing in the one case as in the other. From the rollers, the juice falls below into a large receiver, from which it flows into great, open vats, called defecators. These defecators are heated by the exhaust steam of the engine, led through them in pipes. All the steam condensed forms water, which is returned warm into the boiler of the engine. In the defecators, as their name denotes, the scum of the juice is purged off, so far as heat alone will do it. From the last defecator, the juice is passed through a trough into the first caldron. Of the caldrons, there is a series, or, as they call it, a train, through all which the juice must go. Each caldron is a large, deep, copper vat, heated very hot, in which the juice seethes and boils. At each, stands a strong Negro, with long, heavy skimmer in hand, stirring the juice and skimming off the surface. This scum is collected and given to the hogs, or thrown upon the muck heap, and is said to be very fructifying. The juice is ladled from one caldron to the next, as fast as the office of each is finished. From the last caldron, where its complete crystallization is effected, it is transferred to coolers, which are large, shallow pans. When fully cooled, it looks like brown sugar and molasses mixed. It is then shovelled from the coolers into hogsheads. These hogsheads have holes bored in their bottoms; and, to facilitate the drainage, strips of cane are placed in the hogshead, with their ends in these holes, and the hogs-head is filled. The hogsheads are set on open frames, under which are copper receivers, on an inclined plane, to catch and carry off the drippings from the hogsheads. These drippings are the molasses, which is collected and put into tight casks. I believe I have given the entire process. When it is remembered that all this, in every stage, is going on at once, within the limits of the mill, it may well be supposed to present a busy scene. The smell of juice and of sugar-vapor, in all its stages, is intense. The Negroes fatten on it. The clank of the engine, the steady grind of the machines, and the high, wild cry of the Negroes at the caldrons to the stokers at the furnace doors, as they chant out their directions or wants--now for more fire, and now to scatter the fire--which must be heard above the din, "A-a-b'la! A-a-b'la!" "E-e-cha candela!" "Pu-er-ta!", and the barbaric African chant and chorus of the gang at work filling the cane-troughs--all these make the first visit at the sugar-house a strange experience. But after one or two visits, the monotony is as tiresome as the first view is exciting. There is, literally, no change in the work. There are the same noises of the machines, the same cries from Negroes at the same spots, the same intensely sweet smell, the same state of the work in all its stages, at whatever hour you visit it, whether in the morning, or evening, at midnight, or at the dawn of the day. If you wake up at night, you hear the "A-a-b'la! A-a-b'la!" "E-e-cha! E-e-cha!" of the caldron-men crying to the stokers, and the high, monotonous chant of the gangs filling the wagons or the trough, a short, improvisated stave, and then the chorus--not a tune, like the song of sailors at the tackle and falls, but a barbaric, tuneless intonation. When I went into the sugar-house, I saw a man with an unmistakably New England face in charge of the engine, with that look of intelligence and independence so different from the intelligence and independence of all other persons. "Is not that a New England man?" "Yes," said Mr. Chartrand, "he is from Lowell; and the engine was built in Lowell." When I found him at leisure, I made myself known to him, and he sat down on the brickwork of the furnace, and had a good unburdening of talk; for he had not seen any one from the United States for three months. He talked, like a true Yankee, of law and politics--the Lowell Bar and Mr. Butler, Mr. Abbott and Mr. Wentworth; of the Boston Bar and Mr. Choate; of Massachusetts politics and Governor Banks; and of national politics and the Thirty Millions Bill, and whether it would pass, and what if it did. This engineer is one of a numerous class, whom the sugar culture brings annually to Cuba. They leave home in the autumn, engage themselves for the sugar season, put the machinery in order, work it for the four or five months of its operation, clean and put it in order for lying by, and return to the United States in the spring. They must be machinists, as well as engineers; for all the repairs and contrivances, so necessary in a remote place, fall upon them. Their skill is of great value, and while on the plantation their work is incessant, and they have no society or recreations whatever. The occupation, however, is healthful, their position independent, and their pay large. This engineer had been several years in Cuba, and I found him well informed, and, I think, impartial and independent. He tells me, which I had also heard in Havana, that this plantation is a favorable specimen, both for skill and humanity, and is managed on principles of science and justice, and yields a large return. On many plantations--on most, I suspect, from all I can learn--the Negroes, during the sugar season, are allowed but four hours sleep in the twenty-four, with one for dinner, and a half hour for breakfast, the night being divided into three watches, of four hours each, the laborers taking their turns. On this plantation, the laborers are in two watches, and divide the night equally between them, which gives them six hours for sleep. In the day, they have half an hour for breakfast and one hour for dinner. Here, too, the very young and the very old are excused from the sugar-house, and the nursing mothers have lighter duties and frequent intervals of rest. The women worked at cutting the cane, feeding the mill, carrying the bagazo in baskets, spreading and drying it, and filling the wagons; but not in the sugar-house itself, or at the furnace doors. I saw that no boys or girls were in the mill--none but full-grown persons. The very small children do absolutely nothing all day, and the older children tend the cattle and run errands. And the engineer tells me that in the long run this liberal system of treatment, as to hours and duties, yields a better return than a more stringent rule. He thinks the crop this year, which has been a favorable one, will yield, in well-managed plantations a net interest of from fifteen to twenty-five per cent on the investment; making no allowance, of course, for the time and skill of the master. This will be a clear return to planters like Mr. Chartrand, who do not eat up their profits by interest on advances, and have no mortgages, and require no advances from the merchants. But the risks of the investment are great. The cane-fields are liable to fires, and these spread with great rapidity, and are difficult to extinguish. Last year Mr. Chartrand lost $7,000 in a few hours by fire. In the cholera season he lost $12,000 in a few days by deaths among the Negroes. According to the usual mode of calculation, I suppose the value of the investment of Mr. Chartrand to be between $125,000 and $150,000. On well-managed estates of this size, the expenses should not exceed $10,000. The gross receipts, in sugar and molasses, at a fair rate of the markets, cannot average less than between $35,000 and $40,000. This should leave a profit of between eighteen and twenty-two per cent. Still, the worth of an estimate depends on the principle on which the capital is appraised. The number of acres laid down to cane, on this plantation, is about three hundred. The whole number of Negroes is one hundred, and of these not more than half, at any time, are capable of efficient labor; and there are twenty-two children below the age of five years, out of a total of one hundred Negroes. Beside the engineer, some large plantations have one or more white assistants; but here an intelligent Negro has been taught enough to take charge of the engine when the engineer is off duty. This is the highest post a Negro can reach in the mill, and this Negro was mightily pleased when I addressed him as maquinista. There are, also, two or three white men employed, during the season, as sugar masters. Their post is beside the caldrons and defecators, where they are to watch the work in all its stages, regulate the heat and the time for each removal, and oversee the men. These, with the engineer, make the force of white men who are employed for the season. The regular and permanent officers of a plantation are the mayoral and mayordomo. The mayoral is, under the master or his administrador, the chief mate or first lieutenant of the ship. He has the general oversight of the Negroes, at their work or in their houses, and has the duty of exacting labor and enforcing discipline. Much depends on his character, as to the comfort of master and slaves. If he is faithful and just, there may be ease and comfort; but if he is not, the slaves are never sure of justice, and the master is sure of nothing. The mayoral comes, of necessity, from the middle class of whites, and is usually a native Cuban, and it is not often that a satisfactory one can be found or kept. The day before I arrived, in the height of the season, Mr. Chartrand had been obliged to dismiss his mayoral, on account of his conduct to the women, which was producing the worst results with them and with the men; and not long before, one was dismissed for conniving with the Negroes in a wholesale system of theft, of which he got the lion's share. The mayordomo is the purser, and has the immediate charge of the stores, produce, materials for labor, and provisions for consumption, and keeps the accounts. On well regulated plantations, he is charged with all the articles of use or consumption, and with the products as soon as they are in condition to be numbered, weighed, or counted, and renders his accounts of what is consumed or destroyed, and of the produce sent away. There is also a boyero, who is the herdsman, and has charge of all the cattle. He is sometimes a Negro. Under the mayoral, are a number of contramayorales, who are the boatswain's mates of the ship, and correspond to the "drivers" of our southern plantations. One of them goes with every gang when set to work, whether in the field or elsewhere, and whether men or women, and watches and directs them, and enforces labor from them. The drivers carry under the arm, at all times, the short, limber plantation whip, the badge of their office and their means of compulsion. They are almost always Negroes; and it is generally thought that Negroes are not more humane in this office than the low whites. On this plantation, it is three years since any slave has been whipped; and that punishment is never inflicted here on a woman. Near the Negro quarters, is a penitentiary, which is of stone, with three cells for solitary confinement, each dark, but well ventilated. Confinement in these, on bread and water, is the extreme punishment that has been found necessary for the last three years. The Negro fears solitude and darkness, and covets his food, fire, and companionship. With all the corps of hired white labor, the master must still be the real power, and on his character the comfort and success of the plantation depend. If he has skill as a chemist, a geologist, or a machinist, it is not lost; but, except as to the engineer, who may usually be relied upon, the master must be capable of overseeing the whole economy of the plantation, or all will go wrong. His chief duty is to oversee the overseers, to watch his officers, the mayoral, the mayordomo, the boyero, and the sugar masters. These are mere hirelings, and of a low sort, such as a slave system reduces them to; and if they are lazy, the work slackens; and if they are ill-natured, somebody suffers. The mere personal presence of the master operates as a stimulus to the work. This afternoon young Mr. Chartrand and I took horses and rode out to the cane-field, where the people were cutting. They had been at work a half hour. He stopped his horse where they were when we came to them, and the next half hour, without a word from him, they had made double the distance of the first. It seems to me that the work of a plantation is what a clock would be that always required a man's hand pressing on the main spring. With the slave, the ultimate sanction is force. The motives of pride, shame, interest, ambition, and affection may be appealed to, and the minor punishments of degradation in duties, deprivation of food and sleep, and solitary confinement may be resorted to; but the whip, which the driver always carries, reminds the slave that if all else fails, the infliction of painful bodily punishment lies behind, and will be brought to bear, rather than that the question be left unsettled. Whether this extreme be reached, and how often it be reached, depends on the personal qualities of the master. If he is lacking in self-control, he will fall into violence. If he has not the faculty of ruling by moral and intellectual power--be he ever so humane, if he is not firm and intelligent, the bad among the slaves will get the upper hand; and he will be in danger of trying to recover his position by force. Such is the reasoning _à priori_. At six o'clock, the large bell tolls the knell of parting day and the call to the Oración, which any who are religious enough can say, wherever they may be, at work or at rest. In the times of more religious strictness, the bell for the Oración, just at dusk, was the signal for prayer in every house and field, and even in the street, and for the benediction from parent to child and master to servant. Now, in the cities, it tolls unnoticed, and on the plantations, it is treated only as the signal for leaving off work. The distribution of provisions is made at the storehouse, by the mayordomo, my host superintending it in person. The people take according to the number in their families; and so well acquainted are all with the apportionment, that in only one or two instances were inquiries necessary. The kitchen fires are lighted in the quarters, and the evening meal is prepared. I went into the quarters before they were closed. A high wall surrounds an open square, in which are the houses of the Negroes. This has one gate, which is locked at dark; and to leave the quarters after that time is a serious offence. The huts were plain, but reasonably neat, and comfortable in their construction and arrangement. In some were fires, round which, even in this hot weather, the Negroes like to gather. A group of little Negroes came round the strange gentleman, and the smallest knelt down with uncovered heads, in a reverent manner, saying, "Buenos días Señor." I did not understand the purpose of this action, and as there was no one to explain the usage to me, I did them the injustice to suppose that they expected money, and distributed some small coins among them. But I learned afterwards that they were expecting the benediction, the hand on the head and the "Dios te haga bueno." It was touching to see their simple, trusting faces turned up to the stranger--countenances not yet wrought by misfortune, or injury, or crime, into the strong expressions of mature life. None of these children, even the smallest, was naked, as one usually sees them in Havana. In one of the huts, a proud mother showed me her Herculean twin boys, sprawling in sleep on the bed. Before dark, the gate of the quarters is bolted, and the night is begun. But the fires of the sugar-house are burning, and half of the working people are on duty there for their six hours. I sat for several hours with my host and his son, in the veranda, engaged in conversation, agreeable and instructive to me, on those topics likely to present themselves to a person placed as I was--the state of Cuba, its probable future, its past, its relations to Europe and the United States, slavery, the coolie problem, the free-Negro labor problem, and the agriculture, horticulture, trees and fruits of the island. The elder gentleman retired early, as he was to take the early train for Matanzas. My sleeping-room is large and comfortable, with brick floor and glass windows, pure white bed linen and mosquito net, and ewer and basin scrupulously clean, bringing back, by contrast, visions of Le Grand's, and Antonio, and Domingo, and the sounds and smells of those upper chambers. The only moral I am entitled to draw from this is, that a well-ordered private house with slave labor, may be more neat and creditable than an ill-ordered public house with free labor. As the stillness of the room comes over me, I realize that I am far away in the hill country of Cuba, the guest of a planter, under this strange system, by which one man is enthroned in the labor of another race, brought from across the sea. The song of the Negroes breaks out afresh from the fields, where they are loading up the wagons--that barbaric undulation of sound: "_Na-nú, A-yá,--Na-né, A-yá:_" and the recurrence of here and there a few words of Spanish, among which "Mañana" seemed to be a favorite. Once, in the middle of the night, I waked, to hear the strains again, as they worked in the open field, under the stars. XI. A SUGAR PLANTATION: The Life When I came out from my chamber this morning, the elder Mr. Chartrand had gone. The watchful negress brought me coffee, and I could choose between oranges and bananas, for my fruit. The young master had been in the saddle an hour or so. I sauntered to the sugar-house. It was past six, and all hands were at work again, amid the perpetual boiling of the caldrons, the skimming and dipping and stirring, the cries of the caldron-men to the firemen, the slow gait of the wagons, and the perpetual to-and-fro of the carriers of the cane. The engine is doing well enough, and the engineer has the great sheet of the New York Weekly Herald, which he is studying, in the intervals of labor, as he sits on the corner of the brickwork. But a turn in the garden is more agreeable, among birds, and flowers, and aromatic trees. Here is a mignonette tree, forty feet high, and every part is full and fragrant with flowers, as is the little mignonette in our flower-pots. There is the allspice, a large tree, each leaf strong enough to flavor a dish. Here is the tamarind tree: I must sit under it, for the sake of the old song. My young friend joins me, and points out, on the allspice tree, a chameleon. It is about six inches long, and of a pea-green color. He thinks its changes of color, which are no fable, depend on the will or on the sensations, and not on the color of the object the animal rests upon. This one, though on a black trunk, remained pale green. When they take the color of the tree they rest on, it may be to elude their enemies, to whom their slow motions make them an easy prey. At the corner of the house stands a pomegranate tree, full of fruit, which is not yet entirely ripe; but we find enough to give a fair taste of its rich flavor. Then there are sweet oranges, and sour oranges, and limes, and coconuts, and pineapples, the latter not entirely ripe, but in the condition in which they are usually plucked for our market, an abundance of fuchsias, and Cape jasmines, and the highly prized night-blooming cereus. The most frequent shade-tree here is the mango. It is a large, dense tree, with a general resemblance, in form and size, to our lime or linden. Three noble trees stand before the door, in front of the house. One is a Tahiti almond, another a mango, and the third a cedar. And in the distance is a majestic tree, of incredible size, which is, I believe, a ceiba. When this estate was a cafetal, the house stood at the junction of four avenues, from the four points of the compass: one of the sweet orange, one of the sour orange, one of palms, and one of mangoes. Many of these trees fell in the hurricanes of 1843 and '45. The avenue which leads from the road, and part of that leading towards the sugar-house, are preserved. The rest have fallen a sacrifice to the sugar-cane; but the garden, the trees about the house, and what remains of the avenues, give still a delightful appearance of shelter and repose. I have amused myself by tracing the progress, and learning the habits of the red ants, a pretty formidable enemy to all structures of wood. They eat into the heart of the hardest woods; not even the lignum vitæ, or iron-wood, or cedar, being proof against them. Their operations are secret. They never appear upon the wood, or touch its outer shell. A beam or rafter stands as ever with a goodly outside; but you tap it, and find it a shell. Their approaches, too, are by covered ways. When going from one piece of wood to another, they construct a covered way, very small and low, as a protection against their numerous enemies, and through this they advance to their new labors. I think that they may sap the strength of a whole roof of rafters, without the observer being able to see one of them, unless he breaks their covered ways, or lays open the wood. The course of life at the plantation is after this manner. At six o'clock, the great bell begins the day, and the Negroes go to their work. The house servants bring coffee to the family and guests, as they appear or send for it. The master's horse is at the door, under the tree, as soon as it is light, and he is off on his tour, before the sun rises. The family breakfasts at ten o'clock, and the people--la gente, as the technical phrase is for the laborers, breakfast at nine. The breakfast is like that of the cities, with the exception of fish and the variety of meats, and consists of rice, eggs, fried plantains, mixed dishes of vegetables and fowls, other meats rarely, and fruits, with claret or Catalonia and coffee. The time for the siesta or rest, is between breakfast and dinner. Dinner hour is three for the family, and two for the people. The dinner does not differ much from the breakfast, except that there is less of fruit and more of meat, and that some preserve is usually eaten, as a dessert. Like the breakfast, it ends with coffee. In all manner of preserves, the island is rich. The almond, the guava, the cocoa, the soursop, the orange, the lime, and the mamey apple afford a great variety. After dinner, and before dark, is the time for long drives; and, when the families are on the estates, for visits to neighbors. There is no third meal; but coffee, and sometimes tea, is offered at night. The usual time for bed is as early as ten o'clock, for the day begins early, and the chief out-door works and active recreations must be had before breakfast. In addition to the family house, the Negro quarters, and the sugar-house, there is a range of stone buildings, ending with a kitchen, occupied by the engineer, the mayoral, the boyero, and the mayordomo, who have an old Negro woman to cook for them, and another to wait on them. There is also another row of stone buildings, comprising the store-house, the penitentiary, the hospital, and the lying-in room. The penitentiary, I have described. The hospital and lying-in room are airy, well-ventilated, and suitable for their purposes. Neither of them had any tenants to-day. In the center of the group of buildings is a high frame, on which hangs the great bell of the plantation. This rings the Negroes up in the morning, and in at night, and sounds the hours for meals. It calls all in, on any special occasion, and is used for an alarm to the neighboring plantations, rung long and loud, in case of fire in the cane-fields, or other occasions for calling in aid. After dinner, to-day, a volante, with two horses, and a postilion in bright jacket and buckled boots and large silver spurs, the harness well-besprinkled with silver, drove to the door, and an elderly gentleman alighted and came to the house, attired with scrupulous nicety of white cravat and dress coat, and with the manners of the _ancien régime_. This is M. Bourgeoise, the owner of the neighboring large plantation, Santa Catalina, one of the few cafetals remaining in this part of the island. He is too old, and too much attached to his plantation, to change it to a sugar estate; and he is too rich to need the change. He, too, was a refugee from the insurrection of Santo Domingo, but older than M. Chartrand. Not being able to escape, he was compelled to serve as aid-de-camp to Jacques Dessalines. He has a good deal to say about the insurrection and its results, of a great part of which he was an eye-witness. The sight of him brought vividly to mind the high career and sad fate of the just and brave Toussaint L'Ouverture, and the brilliant successes, and fickle, cruel rule, of Dessalines--when French marshals were out-maneuvered by Negro generals, and pitched battles were won by Negroes and mulattoes against European armies. This gentleman had driven over in the hope of seeing his friend and neighbor, Mr. Chartrand, the elder. He remained with us for some time, sitting under the veranda, the silvered volante and its black horses and black postilion standing under the trees. He invited us to visit his plantation, which I was desirous to do, as a cafetal is a rarity now. My third day at La Ariadne is much like the preceding days: the early rising, the coffee and fruit, the walk, visits to the mill, the fields, the garden, and the quarters, breakfast, rest in-doors with reading and writing, dinner, out of doors again, and the evening under the veranda, with conversations on subjects now so interesting to me. These conversations, and what I had learned from other persons, open to me new causes for interest and sympathy with my younger host. Born in South Carolina, he secured his rights of birth, and is a citizen of the United States, though all his pecuniary interests and family affections are in Cuba. He went to Paris at the age of nine, and remained there until he was nineteen, devoting the ten years to thorough courses of study in the best schools. He has spent much time in Boston, and has been at sea, to China, India, and the Pacific and California--was wrecked in the Boston ship "Mary Ellen," on a coral reef in the India seas, taken captive, restored, and brought back to Boston in another ship, whence he sailed for California. There he had a long and checkered experience, was wounded in the battle with the Indians who killed Lieut. Dale and defeated his party, was engaged in scientific surveys, topographical and geological, took the fever of the south coast at a remote place, was reported dead, and came to his mother's door, at the spot where we are talking this evening, so weak and sunken that his brothers did not know him, thinking it happiness enough if he could reach his home, to die in his mother's arms. But home and its cherishings, and revived moral force, restored him, and now, active and strong again, when in consequence of the marriage of his brothers and sisters, and the departure of neighbors, the family leave their home of thirty-five years for the city, he becomes the acting master, the administrador of the estate, and makes the old house his bachelor's hall. An education in Europe or the United States must tend to free the youth of Cuba from the besetting fault of untravelled plantation-masters. They are in no danger of thinking their plantations and Cuba the world, or any great part of it. In such cases, I should think the danger might be rather the other way--rather that of disgust and discouragement at the narrowness of the field, the entire want of a career set before them--a career of any kind, literary, scientific, political, or military. The choice is between expatriation and contentment in the position of a secluded cultivator of sugar by slave labor, with occasional opportunities of intercourse with the world and of foreign travel, with no other field than the limits of the plantation afford, for the exercise of the scientific knowledge, so laboriously acquired, and with no more exciting motive for the continuance of intellectual culture than the general sense of its worth and fitness. XII. FROM PLANTATION TO PLANTATION If the master of a plantation is faithful and thorough, will tolerate no misconduct or imposition, and yet is humane and watchful over the interests and rights, as well as over the duties of the Negroes, he has a hard and anxious life. Sickness to be ministered to, the feigning of sickness to be counteracted, rights of the slaves to be secured against other Negroes, as well as against whites, with a poor chance of getting at the truth from either; the obligations of the Negro _quasi_ marriage to be enforced against all the sensual and childish tendencies of the race; theft and violence and wanderings from home to be detected and prevented; the work to be done, and yet no one to be over-worked; and all this often with no effectual aid, often with only obstructions, from the intermediate whites! Nor is it his own people only that are to be looked to. The thieving and violence of Negroes from other plantations, their visits by night against law, and the encroachments of the neighboring free blacks and low whites, are all to be watched and prevented or punished. The master is a policeman, as well as an economist and a judge. His revolver and rifle are always loaded. He has his dogs, his trackers and seizers, that lie at his gate, trained to give the alarm when a strange step comes near the house or the quarters, and ready to pursue. His hedges may be broken down, his cane trampled or cut, or, still worse, set fire to, goats let into his pastures, his poultry stolen, and sometimes his dogs poisoned. It is a country of little law and order, and what with slavery and free Negroes and low whites, violence or fraud are imminent and always formidable. No man rides far unarmed. The Negroes are held under the subjection of force. A quarter-deck organization is established. The master owns vessel and cargo, and is captain of the ship, and he and his family live in the cabin and hold the quarter-deck. There are no other commissioned officers on board, and no guard of marines. There are a few petty officers, and under all, a great crew of Negroes, for every kind of work, held by compulsion--the results of a press-gang. All are at sea together. There are some laws, and civil authorities for the protection of each, but not very near, nor always accessible. After dinner to-day, we take saddle-horses for a ride to Santa Catalina. Necessary duties in the field and mill delay us, and we are in danger of not being able to visit the house, as my friend must be back in season for the close of work and the distribution of provisions, in the absence of his mayoral. The horses have the famous "march," as it is called, of the island, an easy rapid step, something like pacing, and delightful for a quiet ride under a soft afternoon sky, among flowers and sweet odors. I have seen but few trotting horses in Cuba. The afternoon is serene. Near, the birds are flying, or chattering with extreme sociability in close trees, and the thickets are fragrant with flowers; while far off, the high hills loom in the horizon; and all about us is this tropical growth, with which I cannot yet become familiar, of palms and cocoas and bananas. We amble over the red earth of the winding lanes, and turn into the broad avenue of Santa Catalina, with its double row of royal palms. We are in--not a forest, for the trees are not thick and wild and large enough for that--but in a huge, dense, tropical orchard. The avenue is as clear and straight and wide as a city mall; while all the ground on either side, for hundreds of acres, is a plantation of oranges and limes, bananas and plantains, cocoas and pineapples, and of cedar and mango, mignonette and allspice, under whose shade is growing the green-leaved, the evergreen-leaved coffee plant, with its little dark red berry, the tonic of half the world. Here we have a glimpse of the lost charm of Cuba. No wonder that the aged proprietor cannot find the heart to lay it waste for the monotonous cane-field, and make the quiet, peaceful horticulture, the natural growth of fruit and berry, and the simple processes of gathering, drying, and storing, give place to the steam and smoke and drive and life-consuming toil of the ingenio! At a turn in the avenue, we come upon the proprietor, who is taking his evening walk, still in the exact dress and with the exact manners of urban life. With truly French politeness, he is distressed, and all but offended, that we cannot go to his house. It is my duty to insist on declining his invitation, for I know that Chartrand is anxious to return. At another turn, we come upon a group of little black children, under the charge of a decent, matronly mulatto, coming up a shaded footpath, which leads among the coffee. Chartrand stops to give a kind word to them. But it is sunset, and we must turn about. We ride rather rapidly down the avenue, and along the highway, where we meet several travellers, nearly all with pistols in their holsters, and one of the mounted police, with carbine and sword; and then cross the brook, pass through the little, mean hamlet of Limonar, whose inmates are about half blacks and half whites, but once a famed resort for invalids, and enter our own avenue, and thence to the house. On our way, we pass a burying-ground, which my companion says he is ashamed to have me see. Its condition is bad enough. The planters are taxed for it, but the charge of it is with the padre, who takes big fees for burials, and lets it go to ruin. The bell has rung long ago, but the people are waiting our return, and the evening duties of distributing food, turning on the night gang for night work, and closing the gates are performed. To-night the hounds have an alarm, and Chartrand is off in the darkness. In a few minutes he returns. There has been some one about, but nothing is discovered. A Negro may have attempted to steal out, or some strange Negro may be trying to steal in, or some prowling white, or free black, has been reconnoitering. These are the terms on which this system is carried on; and I think, too, that when the tramp of horses is heard after dark, and strange men ride towards the piazza, it causes some uneasiness. The morning of the fourth day, I take my leave, by early train for Matanzas. The hour is half-past six; but the habits of rising are so early that it requires no special preparation. I have time for coffee, for a last visit to the sugar-house, a good-by to the engineer, who will be back on the banks of the Merrimack in May, and for a last look into the quarters, to gather the little group of kneelers for "la benedición," with their "Buenos días, Señor." My horse is ready, the Negro has gone with my luggage, and I must take my leave of my newly-made friend. Alone together, we have been more intimate in three days than we should have been in as many weeks in a full household. Adios!--May the opening of a new home on the old spot, which I hear is awaiting you, be the harbinger of a more cheerful life, and the creation of such fresh ties and interests, that the delightful air of the hill country of Cuba, the dreamy monotony of the day, the serenity of nights which seem to bring the stars down to your roof or to raise you half-way to them, and the luxuriance and variety of vegetable and animal life, may not be the only satisfactions of existence here. A quiet amble over the red earth, to the station, in a thick morning mist, almost cold enough to make an overcoat comfortable; and, after two hours on the rail, I am again in Matanzas, among close-packed houses, and with views of blue ocean and of ships. XIII. MATANZAS AND ENVIRONS Instead of the posada by the water-side, I take up my quarters at a hotel kept by Ensor, an American, and his sister. Here the hours, cooking, and chief arrangements are in the fashion of the country, as they should be, but there is more of that attention to guests which we are accustomed to at home than the Cuban hotels usually give. The objects to be visited here are the Cumbre and the valley of the Yumurí. It is too late for a morning ride, and I put off my visit until afternoon. Gazzaniga and some of the opera troupe are here; and several Americans at the hotel, who were at the opera last night, tell me that the people of Matanzas made a handsome show, and are of opinion that there was more beauty in the boxes than we saw at the Villanueva. It appears, too, that at the Retreta, in the Plaza de Armas, when the band plays, and at evening promenades, the ladies walk about, and do not keep to their carriages as in Havana. As soon as the sun began to decline, I set off for the Cumbre, mounted on a pacer, with a Negro for a guide, who rode, as I soon discovered, a better nag than mine. We cross the stone bridges, and pass the great hospital, which dominates over the town. A regiment, dressed in seersucker and straw hats, is drilling, by trumpet call, and drilling well, too, on the green in front of the barracks while we take our winding way up the ascent of the Cumbre. The bay, town, and shipping lie beneath us; the Pan rises in the distance to the height of some 3,000 feet; the ocean is before us, rolling against the outside base of the hills; and, on the inside, lies the deep, rich, peaceful valley of the Yumurí. On the top of the Cumbre, commanding the noblest view of ocean and valley, bay and town, is the ingenio of a Mr. Jenkes, a merchant bearing a name that would put Spanish tongues to their trumps to sound, were it not that they probably take refuge in the Don Guillermo, or Don Enrique, of his Christian name. The estate bears the name of La Victoria, and is kindly thrown open to visitors from the city. It is said to be a model establishment. The house is large, in a classic style, and costly, and the Negro quarters, the store-houses, mechanic shops, and sugar-house are of dimensions indicating an estate of the first class. On the way up from the city, several fine points of sight were occupied by villas, all of one story, usually in the Roman or Grecian style, surrounded by gardens and shade-trees, and with every appearance of taste and wealth. It is late, but I must not miss the Yumurí; so we dive down the short, steep descent, and cross dry brooks and wet brooks, and over stones, and along bridle-paths, and over fields without paths, and by wretched hovels, and a few decent cottages, with yelping dogs and cackling hens and staring children, and between high, overhanging cliffs, and along the side of a still lake, and after it is so dark that we can hardly see stones or paths, we strike a bridle-path, and then come out upon the road, and, in a few minutes more, are among the gas-lights and noises of the city. At the hotel, there is a New York company who have spent the day at the Yumurí, and describe a cave not yet fully explored, which is visited by all who have time--abounding in stalactites, and, though much smaller, reminding one of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. I cannot leave Matanzas without paying my respects to the family to whose kindness I owe so much. Mr. Chartrand lives in a part of the suburbs called Versailles, near the barracks, in a large and handsome house, built after the style of the country. There I spend an agreeable evening, at a gathering of nearly all the family, sons and daughters, and the sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. There is something strangely cosmopolitan in many of the Cuban families--as in this, where are found French origin, Spanish and American intermarriage, education in Europe or the United States, home and property in Cuba, friendships and sympathies and half a residence in Boston or New York or Charleston, and three languages at command. Here I learn that the Thirty Millions Bill has not passed, and, by the latest dates, is not likely to pass. My room at Ensor's is on a level with the court-yard, and a horse puts its face into the grating as I am dressing, and I know of nothing to prevent his walking in at the door, if he chooses, so that the Negro may finish rubbing him down by my looking-glass. Yet the house is neatly furnished and cared for, and its keepers are attentive and deserving people. XIV. REFLECTIONS VIA RAILROAD Although the distance to Havana, as the bird flies, is only sixty miles, the railroad, winding into the interior, to draw out the sugar freights, makes a line of nearly one hundred miles. This adds to the length of our journey, but also greatly to its interest. In the cars are two Americans, who have also been visiting plantations. They give me the following statistics of a sugar plantation, which they think may be relied upon. Lands, machinery, 320 slaves, and 20 coolies, worth $500,000. Produce this year, 4,000 boxes of sugar and 800 casks of molasses, worth $104,000. Expenses, $35,000. Net, $69,000, or about 14 per cent. This is not a large interest on an investment so much of which is perishable and subject to deterioration. The day, as has been every day of mine in Cuba, is fair and beautiful. The heat is great, perhaps even dangerous to a Northerner, should he be exposed to it in active exercise, at noon--but, with the shade and motion of the cars, not disagreeable, for the air is pure and elastic, and it is only the direct heat of the sun that is oppressive. I think one notices the results of this pure air, in the throats and nasal organs of the people. One seldom meets a person that seems to have a cold in the head or the throat; and pocket handkerchiefs are used chiefly for ornament. I cannot weary of gazing upon these new and strange scenes; the stations, with the groups of peasants and Negroes and fruit-sellers that gather about them, and the stores of sugar and molasses collected there; the ingenios, glimmering in the heat of the sun, with their tall furnace chimneys; the cane-fields, acres upon acres; the slow ox-carts carrying the cane to the mill; then the intervals of unused country, the jungles, adorned with little wild flowers, the groves of the weeping, drooping, sad, homesick cocoa; the royal palm, which is to trees what the camel or dromedary is among animals seeming to have strayed from Nubia or Mesopotamia; the stiff, close orange tree, with its golden balls of fruit; and then the remains of a cafetal, the coffee plant growing untrimmed and wild under the reprieved groves of plantain and banana. It is certainly true that there is such a thing as industry in the tropics. The labor of the tropics goes on. Notwithstanding all we hear and know of the enervating influence of the climate, the white man, if not laborious himself, is the cause that labor is in others. With all its social and political discouragements, with the disadvantages of a duty of about twenty-five per cent on its sugars laid in the United States, and a duty of full one hundred per cent on all flour imported from the United States, and after paying heavier taxes than any people on earth pay at this moment, and yielding a revenue, which nets, after every deduction and discount, not less than sixteen millions a year--against all these disadvantages, this island is still very productive and very rich. There is, to be sure, little variety in its industry. In the country, it is nothing but the raising and making of sugar; and in the towns, it is the selling and exporting of sugar. With the addition of a little coffee and copper, more tobacco, and some fresh fruit and preserves, and the commerce which they stimulate, and the mechanic and trading necessities of the towns, we have the sum of its industry and resources. Science, arts, letters, arms, manufactures, and the learning and discussions of politics, of theology, and of the great problems and opinions that move the minds of the thinking world--in these, the people of Cuba have no part. These move by them, as the great Gulf Stream drifts by their shores. Nor is there, nor has there been in Cuba, in the memory of the young and middle-aged, debate, or vote, or juries, or one of the least and most rudimental processes of self-government. The African and Chinese do the manual labor, the Cubans hold the land and the capital, and direct the agricultural industry; the commerce is shared between the Cubans, and foreigners of all nations; and the government, civil and military, is exercised by the citizens of Old Spain. No Cuban votes, or attends a lawful political meeting, or sits on a jury, or sees a law-making assembly, except as a curiosity abroad, even in a municipality; nor has he ever helped to make, or interpret, or administer laws, or borne arms, except by special license of government granted to such as are friends of government. In religion, he has no choice, except between the Roman Catholic and none. The laws that govern him are made abroad, and administered by a central power, a foreign Captain-General, through the agency of foreign civil and military officers. The Cuban has no public career. If he removes to Old Spain, and is known as a supporter of Spanish royal power, his Creole birth is probably no impediment to him. But at home, as a Cuban, he may be a planter, a merchant, a physician, but he cannot expect to be a civil magistrate, or to hold a commission in the army, or an office in the police; and though he may be a lawyer, and read, sitting, a written argument to a court of judges, he cannot expect to be himself a judge. He may publish a book, but the government must be the responsible author. He may edit a journal, but the government must be the editor-in-chief. At the chief stations on the road, there are fruit-sellers in abundance, with fruit fresh from the trees: oranges, bananas, sapotes, and coconuts. The coconut is eaten at an earlier stage than that in which we see it at the North, for it is gathered for exportation after it has become hard. It is eaten here when no harder than a melon, and is cut through with a knife, and the soft white pulp, mixed with the milk, is eaten with a spoon. It is luscious and wholesome, much more so than when the rind has hardened into the shell, and the soft pulp into a hard meat. A little later in the afternoon, the character of the views begins to change. The ingenios and cane-fields become less frequent, then cease altogether, and the houses have more the appearance of pleasure retreats than of working estates. The roads show lines of mules and horses, loaded with panniers of fruits, or sweeping the ground with the long stalks of fresh fodder laid across their backs, all moving towards a common center. Pleasure carriages appear. Next comes the distant view of the Castle of Atares, and the Príncipe, and then the harbor and the sea, the belt of masts, the high ridge of fortifications, the blue and white and yellow houses, with brown tops; and now we are in the streets of Havana. Here are the familiar signs--Por mayor y menor, Posada y Cantina, Tienda, Panadería, Relojería, and the fanciful names of the shops, the high-pitched falsetto cries of the streets, the long files of mules and horses, with panniers of fruit, or hidden, all but their noses and tails, under stacks of fresh fodder, the volantes, and the motley multitude of whites, blacks, and Chinese, soldiers and civilians, and occasionally priests--Negro women, lottery-ticket vendors, and the girl musicians with their begging tambourines. The same idlers are at the door of Le Grand's; a rehearsal, as usual, is going on at the head of the first flight; and the parrot is blinking at the hot, white walls of the court-yard, and screaming bits of Spanish. My New York friends have got back from the country a day before me. I am installed in a better room than before, on the house-top, where the sun is hot, but where there is air and a view of the ocean. XV. HAVANA: Social, Religious and Judicial Tidbits The warm bath round the corner is a refreshment after a day's railroad ride in such heat; and there, in the front room, the man in his shirt sleeves is serving out liquor, as before, and the usual company of Creoles is gathered about the billiard tables. After a dinner in the handsome, airy restaurant of Le Grand's, I drive into the city in the evening, to the close streets of the Extramuros, and pay a visit to the lady whom I failed to see on my arrival. I am so fortunate as to meet her, and beside the pleasure to be found in her society, I am glad to be able to give her personal information from her attached and sympathizing friends, at the North. While I am there, a tinkling sound of bells is heard in the streets, and lights flash by. It is a procession, going to carry the viaticum, the last sacrament, to a dying person. From this house, I drove towards the water-side, past the Plaza de Armas, the old Plaza de San Francisco, with its monastery turned into an almacén (a store-house of merchandise,) through the Calle de los Oficios, to the boarding-house of Madame Almy, to call upon Dr. and Mrs. Howe. Mr. Parker left Havana, as he intended, last Tuesday, for Santa Cruz. He found Havana rather too hot for his comfort, and Santa Cruz, the most healthful and temperate of the islands, had always been his destination. He had visited a few places in the city, and among others, the College of Belén, where he had been courteously received by the Jesuits. I found that they knew his reputation as a scholar and writer, and a leading champion of modern Theism in America. Dr. Howe had called at Le Grand's, yesterday, to invite me to go with him to attend a trial, at the Audiencia, which attracted a good deal of interest among the Creoles. The story, as told by the friends of Señor Maestri, the defendant, is that in the performance of a judicial duty, he discharged a person against whom the government was proceeding illegally, and that this lead to a correspondence between him and the authorities, which resulted in his being deposed and brought to trial, before the Audiencia, on a charge of disrespect to the Captain-General. I have no means of learning the correctness of this statement, at present-- "_I say the tale as 'twas said to me._" The cause has, at all events, excited a deep interest among the Creoles, who see in it another proof of the unlimited character of the centralized power that governs them. I regret that I missed a scene of so much interest and instruction. Dr. Howe told me that Maestri's counsel, Señor Azcárate, a young lawyer, defended his friend courageously; but the evidence being all in writing, without the exciting conflicts and vicissitudes of oral testimony, and the written arguments being delivered sitting; there was not much in the proceedings to stimulate the Creole excitability. No decision was given, the Court taking time to deliberate. It seems to have been a Montalembert trial, on a small theater. To-night there is again a máscara at the next door, but my room is now more remote, and I am able to sleep through it. Once I awoke. It was nearly five o'clock. The music was still going on, but in softer and more subdued tones. The drums and trumpets were hushed, and all had fallen, as if by the magic touch of the approaching dawn, into a trance of sound, a rondo of constantly returning delicious melody, as nearly irresistible to the charmed sense as sound can be conceived to be--just bordering on the fusing state between sense and spirit. It is a contradanza of Cuba. The great bells beat five, over the city; and instantly the music ceases, and is heard no more. The watchmen cry the hour, and the bells of the hospitals and convents sound their matins, though it is yet dark. XVI. HAVANA: Worship, Etiquette and Humanitarianism At break of day, I am in the delightful sea-baths again, not ill-named Recreo and Elíseo. But the forlorn chain-gang are mustered before the Presidio. It is Sunday, but there is no day of rest for them. At eight o'clock I present myself at the Belén. A lady, who was passing through the cloister, with head and face covered by the usual black veil, turned and came to me. It was Mrs.----, whom I had seen last evening. She kindly took me to the sacristy, and asked some one to tell Father---- that I was there, and then went to her place in church. While waiting in the sacristy, I saw the robing and unrobing of the officiating priests, the preparation of altar ceremonials by boys and men, and could hear the voices and music in the church, on the other side of the great altar. The manner of the Jesuits is in striking contrast with that at the Cathedral. All is slow, orderly and reverential, whether on the part of men or boys. Instead of the hurried walk, the nod and duck, there is a slow march, a kneeling, or a reverential bow. At a small side altar, in the sacristy, communion is administered by a single priest. Among the recipients are several men of mature years and respectable position; and side by side with them, the poor and the Negroes. In the Church, there is no distinction of race or color. Father---- appears, is unrobed, and takes me to the gallery of the church, near the organ. From this, I looked down upon a sea of rich costumes of women, veiled heads, and kneeling figures, literally covering the floor of the church. On the marble pavement, the little carpets are spread, and on these, as close as they can sit or kneel, are the ladies of rank and wealth of Havana. A new-comer glides in among them seeking room for her carpet, or room of charity or friendship on a carpet already spread; and the kneelers or sitters move and gather in their wide skirts to let her pass. Here and there a servant in livery winds his way behind his mistress, bearing her carpet, and returns to the porch when it has been spread. The whole floor is left to women. The men gather about the walls and doorways, or sit in the gallery, which is reserved for them. But among the women, though chiefly of rank and wealth, are some who are Negroes, usually distinguished by the plain shawl, instead of the veil over the head. The Countess Villanueva, immensely rich, of high rank, and of a name great in the annals of Cuba, but childless, and blind, and a widow, is lead in by the hand by her Negro servant. The service of the altar is performed with dignity and reverence, and the singing, which is by the Jesuit Brothers themselves, is admirable. In the choir I recognized my new friends, the Rector and young Father Cabre, the professor of physics. The "Tantum ergo Sacramentum," which was sung kneeling, brought tears into my eyes, and kept them there. After service, Mr.---- came to me, and made an engagement to show me the benevolent institutions on the Bishop's list, accepting my invitation to breakfast at Le Grand's, at eleven o'clock. At eleven he came, and after a quiet breakfast in a side room, we went to the house of Señor----, whom he well knows, in the hope that he would go with us. The Señor was engaged to meet one of the Fathers at noon, and could not go, but introduced to me a relative of his, a young student of medicine in the University, who offered to take me to the Presidio and other places, the next day. It occurred to us to call upon a young American lady, who was residing at the house of a Spanish lady of wealth and rank, and invite her to go with us to see the Beneficencia, which we thought she might do, as it is an institution under the charge of nuns, and she was to go with a Padre in full dress. But the customs of the country are rigid. Miss---- was very desirous to go, but had doubts. She consulted the lady of the house, who would know, if any one could, the etiquette of Havana. The Señora's reply was, "You are an American, and may do anything." This settled the matter in the negative, and we went alone. Now we drive to Don Juan---- 's. The gate is closed. The driver, who is a white, gets off and makes a feeble and timid rap at the door. "Knock louder!" says my friend, in Spanish. "What cowards they are!" he adds to me. The man makes a knock, a little louder. "There, see that! Peeking into the keyhole! Mean! An Englishman would beat the door down before he would do that." Don Juan is in the country, so we fail of all our expected companions. The Casa de Beneficencia is a large institution, for orphan and destitute children, for infirm old persons, and for the insane. It is admirably situated, bordering on the open sea, with fresh air and very good attention to ventilation in the rooms. It is a government institution, but is placed under charge of the Sisters of Charity, one of whom accompanied us about the building. Though called a government institution, it must not be supposed that it is a charity from the crown. On the contrary, it is supported by a specific appropriation of certain of the taxes and revenues of the island. In the building is a church not yet finished, large enough for all the inmates, and a quiet little private chapel for the Sisters' devotions, where a burning lamp indicated the presence of the Sacrament on the small altar. I am sorry to have forgotten the number of children. It was large, and included both sexes, with a separate department for each. In a third department are the insane. They are kindly treated and not confined, except when violent; but the Sister told us they had no medical treatment unless in case of sickness. (Dr. Howe told me that he was also so informed.) The last department is for aged and indigent women. One of the little orphans clung to the Sister who accompanied us, holding her hand, and nestling in her coarse but clean blue gown; and when we took our leave, and I put a small coin into her little soft hand, her eyes brightened up into a pretty smile. The number of the Sisters is not full. As none have joined the order from Cuba, (I am told literally none,) they are all from abroad, chiefly from France and Spain; and having acclimation to go through, with exposure to yellow fever and cholera, many of those that come here die in the first or second summer. And yet they still come, in simple, religious fidelity, under the shadow of death. The Casa de Beneficencia must be pronounced by all, even by those accustomed to the system and order of the best charitable institutions in the world, a credit to the island of Cuba. The charity is large and liberal, and the order and neatness of its administration are beyond praise. From the Beneficencia we drove to the Military Hospital. This is a huge establishment, designed to accommodate all the sick of the army. The walls are high, the floors are of brick and scrupulously clean, as are all things under the charge of the Sisters of Charity; and the ventilation is tolerable. The building suffered from the explosion of the magazine last year, and some quarters have not yet been restored for occupation. The number of sick soldiers now in hospital actually exceeds one thousand! Most of them are young, some mere lads, victims of the conscription of Old Spain, which takes them from their rustic homes in Andalusia and Catalonia and the Pyrenees, to expose them to the tropical heats of Cuba, and to the other dangers of its climate. Most had fevers. We saw a few cases of vómito. Notwithstanding all that is said about the healthfulness of a winter in Cuba, the experienced Sister Servant (which, I believe, is the title of the Superior of a body of Sisters of Charity) told us that a few sporadic cases of yellow fever occur in Havana, in all seasons of the year; but that we need not fear to go through the wards. One patient was covered with the blotches of recent smallpox. It was affecting to see the wistful eyes of these poor, fevered soldier-boys, gazing on the serene, kind countenances of the nuns, and thinking of their mothers and sisters in the dear home in Old Spain, and feeling, no doubt, that this womanly, religious care was the nearest and best substitute. The present number of Sisters, charged with the entire care of this great hospital, except the duty of cooks and the mere manual and mechanic labor necessarily done by men, is not above twenty-five. The Sister Servant told us that the proper complement was forty. The last summer, eleven of these devoted women died of yellow fever. Every summer, when yellow fever or cholera prevails, some of them die. They know it. Yet the vacancies are filled up; and their serene and ever happy countenances give the stranger no indication that they have bound themselves to the bedside of contagious and loathsome diseases every year, and to scenes of sickness and death every day. As we walked through the passage-ways, we came upon the little private chapel of the Sisters. Here was a scene I can never forget. It was an hour assigned for prayer. All who could leave the sick wards--not more than twelve or fourteen--were kneeling in that perfectly still, secluded, darkened room, in a double row, all facing to the altar, on which burned one taper, showing the presence of the Sacrament, and all in silent prayer. That double row of silent, kneeling women, unconscious of the presence of any one, in their snow-white, close caps and long capes, and coarse, clean, blue gowns--heroines, if the world ever had heroines, their angels beholding the face of their Father in heaven, as they knelt on earth! It was affecting and yet almost amusing--it would have been amusing anywhere else--that these simple creatures, not knowing the ways of the world, and desirous to have soft music fill their room, as they knelt at silent prayer, and not having (for their duties preclude it) any skill in the practice of music, had a large music-box wound and placed on a stand, in the rear, giving out its liquid tones, just loud enough to pervade the air, without forcing attention. The effect was beautiful; and yet the tunes were not all, nor chiefly, religious. They were such as any music-box would give. But what do these poor creatures know of what the world marches to, or dances to, or makes love by? To them it was all music, and pure and holy! Minute after minute we stood, waiting for, but not desiring, an end of these delightful sounds, and a dissolving of this spell of silent adoration. One of the Sisters began prayers aloud, a series of short prayers and adorations and thanksgivings, to each of which, at its close, the others made response in full, sweet voices. The tone of prayer of this Sister was just what it should be. No skill of art could reach it. How much truer than the cathedral, or the great ceremonial! It was low, yet audible, composed, reverent: neither the familiar, which offends so often, nor the rhetorical, which always offends, but that unconscious sustained intonation, not of speech, but of music, which frequent devotions in company with others naturally call out; showing us that poetry and music, and not prose and speech, are the natural expressions of the deepest and highest emotions. They rose, with the prayer of benediction, and we withdrew. They separated, to station themselves, one in each ward of the hospital, there, aloud and standing, to repeat their prayers--the sick men raising themselves on their elbows, or sitting in bed, or, if more feeble, raising their eyes and clasping their hands, and all who can or choose, joining in the responses. XVII. HAVANA: Hospital and Prison Drove out over the Paseo de Tacón to the Cerro, a height, formerly a village, now a part of the suburbs of Havana. It is high ground, and commands a noble view of Havana and the sea. Coming in, I met the Bishop, who introduced me to the Count de la Fernandina, a dignified Spanish nobleman, who owns a beautiful villa on this Paseo, where we walked a while in the grounds. This house is very elegant and costly, with marble floors, high ceilings, piazzas, and a garden of the richest trees and flowers coming into the court-yard, and advancing even into the windows of the house. It is one of the most beautiful villas in the vicinity of Havana. There are several noblemen who have their estates and titles in Cuba, but are recognized as nobles of Spain--in all, I should say, about fifty or sixty. Some of these have received their titles for civil or military services; but most of them have been raised to their rank on account of their wealth, or have purchased their titles outright. I believe there are but two grades, the marquis and the count. Among the titles best known to strangers are Villanueva, Fernandina, and O'Reilly. The number of Irish families who have taken rank in the Spanish service and become connected with Cuba, is rather remarkable. Beside O'Reilly, there are O'Donnel, O'Farrel, and O'Lawlor, descendants of Irishmen who entered the Spanish service after the battle of the Boyne. Dr. Howe had seen the Presidio, the great prison of Havana, once; but was desirous to visit it again; so he joined me, under the conduct of our young friend, Señor----, to visit that and the hospital of San Juan de Dios. The hospital we saw first. It is supported by the government--that is to say, by Cuban revenues--for charity patients chiefly, but some, who can afford it, pay more or less. There are about two hundred and fifty patients. This, again, is in the charge of the Sisters of Charity. As we came upon one of the Sisters, in a passage-way, in her white cap and cape, and black and blue dress, Dr. Howe said, "I always take off my hat to a Sister of Charity," and we paid them all that attention, whenever we passed them. Dr. Howe examined the book of prescriptions, and said that there was less drugging than he supposed there would be. The attending physician told us that nearly all the physicians had studied in Paris, or in Philadelphia. There were a great many medical students in attendance, and there had just been an operation in the theater. In an open yard we saw two men washing a dead body, and carelessly laying it on a table, for dissection. I am told that the medical and surgical professions are in a very satisfactory state of advancement in the island, and that a degree in medicine, and a license to practise, carry with them proofs of considerable proficiency. It is always observable that the physical and the exact sciences are the last to suffer under despotisms. The Presidio and Grand Cárcel of Havana is a large building, of yellow stone, standing near the fort of the Punta, and is one of the striking objects as you enter the harbor. It has no appearance of a jail without, but rather of a palace or court; but within, it is full of live men's bones and of all uncleanness. No man, whose notions are derived from an American or English penitentiary of the last twenty years, or fifty years, can form an idea of the great Cuban prison. It is simply horrible. There are no cells, except for solitary confinement of "incomunicados"--who are usually political offenders. The prisoners are placed in large rooms, with stone floors and grated windows, where they are left, from twenty to fifty in each, without work, without books, without interference or intervention of any one, day and night, day and night, for the weeks, months or years of their sentences. The sights are dreadful. In this hot climate, so many beings, with no provision for ventilation but the grated windows--so unclean, and most of them naked above the waist--all spend their time in walking, talking, playing, and smoking; and, at night, without bed or blanket, they lie down on the stone floor, on what clothes they may have, to sleep if they can. The whole prison, with the exception of the few cells for the "incomunicados," was a series of these great cages, in which human beings were shut up. Incarceration is the beginning, middle and end of the whole system. Reformation, improvement, benefit to soul or body, are not thought of. We inquired carefully, both of the officer who was sent to attend us, and of a capitán de partido, who was there, and were positively assured that the only distinction among the prisoners was determined by the money they paid. Those who can pay nothing, are left to the worst. Those who can pay two reals (twenty-five cents) a day, are placed in wards a little higher and better. Those who can pay six reals (seventy-five cents) a day, have better places still, called the "Salas de distinción," and some privileges of walking in the galleries. The amount of money, and not the degree of criminality, determines the character of the punishment. There seems to be no limit to the right of the prisoners to talk with any whom they can get to hear them, at whatever distance, and to converse with visitors, and to receive money from them. In fact, the whole scene was a Babel. All that was insured was that they should not escape. When I say that no work was done, I should make the qualification that a few prisoners were employed in rolling tobacco into cigars, for a contractor; but they were very few. Among the prisoners was a capitán de partido (a local magistrate), who was committed on a charge of conniving at the slave-trade. He could pay his six reals, of course; and had the privileges of a "Sala de distinción" and of the galleries. He walked about with us, cigar in mouth, and talked freely, and gave us much information respecting the prison. My last request was to see the garrotte; but it was refused me. It was beginning to grow dark before we got to the gate, which was duly opened to us, and we passed out, with a good will, into the open air. Dr. Howe said he was nowise reluctant to be outside. It seemed to bring back to his mind his Prussian prison, a little too forcibly to be agreeable. He felt as if he were in keeping again, and was thinking how he should feel if, just as we got to the gate, an officer were to bow and say, "Dr. Howe?" "Yes, sir." "You may remain here. There is a charge against you of seditious language, since you have been in the island." No man would meet such a danger more calmly, and say less about it, than he, if he thought duty to his fellow-beings called him to it. The open air, the chainless ocean, and the ships freely coming and going, were a pleasant change to the eye, even of one who had never suffered bonds for conscience sake. It seemed strange to see that all persons outside were doing as they pleased. XVIII. HAVANA: Bullfight A bullfight has been advertised all over the town, at the Plaza de Toros. Shall we go? I would not, if it were only pleasure that I was seeking. As I am sure I expect only the contrary, and wish merely to learn the character of this national recreation, I will go. The Plaza de Toros is a wooden amphitheater, in the suburbs, open at the top--a circle of rising seats, with the arena in the center. I am late. The cries of the people inside are loud, sharp, and constant; a full band is blowing its trumpets and beating its drums; and the late stragglers are jostling for their tickets. I go through at a low door, find myself under benches filled with an eager, stamping, shouting multitude, make my way through a passage, and come out on the shady side, for it is a late afternoon sun, and take my place at a good point of view. A bull, with some blood about his fore-quarters and two or three darts (banderillas) sticking in his neck, is trotting harmlessly about the arena, "more sinned against than sinning," and seeming to have no other desire than to get out. Two men, each carrying a long, stout, wooden pole, pointed with a short piece of iron, not long enough to kill, but only to drive off and to goad, are mounted on two of the sorriest nags eyes ever beheld--reprieved jades, whom it would not pay to feed and scarcely pay to kill, and who have been left to take their chances of death here. They could hardly be pricked into a trot, and were too weak to escape. I have seen horses in every stage of life and in every degree of neglect, but no New York Negro hack-driver would have taken these for a gift, if he were obliged to keep them. The bull could not be said to run away from the horses, for they did not pursue; but when, distracted by sights and sounds, he came against a horse, the horse stood still to be gored, and the bull only pushed against him with his head, until driven off by the punching of the iron-pointed pole of the horseman. Around the arena are sentry-boxes, each large enough to hold two men, behind which they can easily jump, but which the bull cannot enter; and from these, the cowardly wretches run out, flourish a red cloth at the bull, and jump back. Three or four men, with darts in hand, run before the bull, entice him by flapping their red cloths, and, as he trots up to them, stick banderillas into his neck. These torment the bull, and he tries to shake them off, and paws the ground; but still he shows no fight. He trots to the gate, and snuffs to get out. Some of the multitude cry "Fuera el toro! Fuera el toro!" which means that he is a failure, and must be let out at the gate. Others are excited, and cry for the killer, the matador; and a demoniacal scene follows, of yells and shouts, half-drowned by twenty or thirty drums and trumpets. The cries to go on prevail; and the matador appears, dressed in a tight-fitting suit of green small-clothes, with a broad silver stripe, jerkin, and stockings--a tall, light-complexioned, elegantly made, glittering man, bearing in one hand a long, heavy, dull black sword, and in the other a broad, red cloth. Now comes the harrying and distracting of the bull by flags, and red cloths, and darts; the matador runs before, flings his cloth up and down; the bull trots towards it--no furious rush, or maddened dash, but a moderate trot--the cloth is flashed over his face and one skilfully directed lunge of the sword into his back neck, and he drops instantly dead at the feet of the matador, at the very spot where he received the stab. Frantic shouts of applause follow; and the matador bows around, like an applauded circus-rider, and retires. The great gate opens, and three horses abreast are driven in, decked with ribbons, to drag the bull round the arena. But they are such feeble animals that, with all the flourish of music and the whipping of drivers, they are barely able to tug the bull along over the tan, in a straight line for the gate, through which the sorry pageant and harmless bull disappear. Now, some meager, hungry, sallow, sweaty, mean-looking degenerates of Spain jump in and rake over the arena, and cover up the blood, and put things to rights again; and I find time to take a view of the company. Thankful I am, and creditable it is, that there are no women. Yes, there are two mulatto women in a seat on the sunny side, which is the cheap side. And there are two shrivelled, dark, Creole women, in a box; and there is one girl of eight or ten years, in full dress, with an elderly man. These are all the women. In the State Box, under the faded royal arms, are a few officials, not of high degree. The rest of the large company is a motley collection, chiefly of the middle or lower classes, mostly standing on the benches, and nearly all smoking. The music beats and brays again, the great gates open, and another bull rushes in, distracted by sights and sounds so novel, and for a few minutes shows signs of power and vigor; but, as he becomes accustomed to the scene, he tames down; and after several minutes of flaunting of cloths and flags, and piercing with darts, and punching with the poles of the horsemen, he runs under the poor white horse, and upsets him, but leaves him unhurt by his horns; has a leisurely trial of endurance with the red horse, goring him a little with one horn, and receiving the pike of the driver--the horse helpless and patient, and the bull very reasonable and temperate in the use of his power--and then is enticed off by flags, and worried with darts; and, at last, a new matador appears--a fierce-looking fellow, dressed in dark green, with a large head of curling, snaky, black hair, and a skin almost black. He makes a great strut and flourish, and after two or three unsuccessful attempts to get the bull head on, at length, getting a fair chance, plunges his black sword to the hilt in the bull's neck--but there is no fall of the bull. He has missed the spinal cord and the bull trots off, bleeding in a small stream, with a sword-handle protruding a few inches above the hide of his back-neck. The spectators hoot their contempt for the failure; but with no sign of pity for the beast. The bull is weakened, but trots about and makes a few runs at cloths, and the sword is drawn from his hide by an agile dart-sticker (banderillero), and given to the black bully in dark green, who makes one more lunge, with no better success. The bull runs round, and reels, and staggers, and falls half down, gets partly up, lows and breathes heavily, is pushed over and held down, until a butcher dispatches him with a sharp knife, at the spinal cord. Then come the opened gates, the three horses abreast, decked with ribbons, the hard tug at the bull's body over the ground, his limbs still swaying with remaining life, the clash and clang of the band, and the yells of the people. Shall I stay another? Perhaps it may be more successful, and--if the new bull will only bruise somebody! But the new bull is a failure. After all their attempts to excite him, he only trots round, and snuffs at the gates; and the cry of "Fuera el toro!" becomes so general, with the significant triple beat of the feet, in time with the words, all over the house, that the gates are opened, and the bull trots through, to his quarters. But the meanness, and cruelty, and impotency of this crowd! They cry out to the spear-men and the dart-men, and to the tormentors, and to the bull, and to the horses, and to each other, in a Babel of sounds, where no man's voice can possibly be distinguished ten feet from him, all manner of advice and encouragement or derision, like children at a play. One full grown, well-dressed young man, near me, kept up a constant cry to the men in the ring, when I am sure no one could distinguish his words, and no one cared to--until I became so irritated that I could have throttled him. But, such you are! You can cry and howl at bull-fights and cockfights and in the pits of operas and theaters, and drive bulls and horses distracted, and urge gallant gamecocks to the death, and applaud opera singers into patriotic songs, and leave them to imprisonment and fines--and you yourselves cannot lift a finger, or join hand to hand, or bring to the hazard life, fortune, or honor, for your liberty and your dignity as men. Work your slaves, torture your bulls, fight your gamecocks, crown your dancers and singers--and leave the weightier matters of judgment and justice, of fame by sea and land, of letters and arts and sciences, of private right and public honor, the present and future of your race and of your native land, to the care of others--of a people of no better blood than your own, strangers and sojourners among you! The next bull is treated to a refinement of torture, in the form of darts filled with heavy China crackers, which explode on the neck of the poor beast. I could not see that even this made him really dangerous. The light-complexioned, green-and-silver matador dispatches him, as he did the first bull, with a single lunge, and--a fall and a quiver, and all is over! The fifth bull is a failure and is allowed to go out of the ring. The sixth is nearly the same with the others, harmless if let alone, and goaded into short-lived activity, but not into anything like fury or even a dangerous animosity. He is treated to fire-crackers, and gores one horse a little--the horse standing, side on, and taking it, until the bull is driven off by the punching of the spear; and runs at the other horse, and, to my delight, upsets the rider, but unfortunately without hurting him, and the black-haired matador in green tries his hand on him and fails again, and is hooted, and takes to throwing darts, and gets a fall, and looks disconcerted, and gets his sword again, and makes another false thrust; and the crippled and bleeding animal is thrown down and dispatched by the butcher with his short knife, and drawn off by the three poor horses. The gates close, and I hurry out in a din of shouts and drums and trumpets, the great crowd waiting for the last bull--but I have seen enough. There is no volante waiting, and I have to take my seat in an omnibus, and wait for the end of the scene. The confusion of cries and shouts and the interludes of music still goes on, for a quarter of an hour, and then the crowd begins to pour out, and to scatter over the ground. Four faces in a line are heading for my omnibus. There is no mistaking that head man, the file leader. "Down East" is written legibly all over his face. Tall, thin, sallow, grave, circumspect! The others are not counterparts. They vary. But "New England" is graven on all. "Wa-a-al!" says the leader, as he gets into the omnibus. No reply. They take their seats, and wipe their foreheads. One expectorates. Another looks too wise for utterance. "By," ... a long pause--How will he end it?--"Jingoes!" That is a failure. It is plain he fell short, and did not end as he intended. The sentiment of the four has not yet got uttered. The fat, flaxen-haired man makes his attempt. "If there is a new milch cow in Vermont that wouldn't show more fight, under such usage, than them bulls, I'd buy her and make a present of her to Governor _Cunchy_--or whatever they call him." This is practical and direct, and opens the way to a more free interchange. The northern ice is thawed. The meanness and cruelty of the exhibition is commented upon. The moral view is not overlooked, nor underrated.--None but cowards would be so cruel. And last of all, it is an imposition. Their money has been obtained under false pretences. A suit would lie to recover it back; but the poor devils are welcome to the money. The coach fills up with Cubans; and the noise of the pavements drowns the further reflections of the four philanthropists, patriots and economists. XIX. HAVANA: More Manners and Customs The people of Cuba have a mode of calling attention by a sound of the tongue and lips, a sort of "P--s--t!" after the fashion of some parts of the continent of Europe. It is universal here; and is used not only to servants and children, but between themselves, and to strangers. It has a mean sound, to us. They make it clear and penetrating; yet it seems a poor, effeminate sibilation, and no generous, open-mouthed call. It is the mode of stopping a volante, calling a waiter, attracting the attention of a friend, or calling the notice of a stranger. I have no doubt, if a fire were to break out at the next door, a Cuban would call "P--s--t!" They beckon a person to come to them by the reverse of our motion. They raise the open hand, with the palm outwards, bending the fingers toward the person they are calling. We should interpret it to be a sign to go away. Smoking is universal, and all but constant. I have amused myself, in the street, by seeing what proportion of those I meet have cigars or cigarettes in their mouths. Sometimes it has been one half, sometimes one in three. The cigar is a great leveller. Any man may stop another for a light. I have seen the poor porters, on the wharf, bow to gentlemen, strangers to them, and hold out a cigar, and the gentlemen stop, give a light, and go on--all as of course. In the evening, called on the Señoritas F----, at the house of Mr. B----, and on the American young lady at Señor M---- 's, and on Mrs. Howe, at Mde. Almy's, to offer to take letters or packets. At Mrs. Almy's, there is a gentleman from New York, Mr. G----, who is dying of consumption. His only wish is to live until the "Cahawba" comes in, that he may at least die at sea, if he cannot survive until she reaches New York. He has a horror of dying here, and being buried in the Potter's Field. Dr. Howe has just come from his chamber. I drove out to the bishop's, to pay my parting respects. It is about half-past eight in the evening. He has just returned from his evening drive, is dressed in a cool, cambric dressing-gown, after a bath, and is taking a quiet cigar, in his high-roofed parlor. He is very cordial and polite, and talks again about the Thirty Millions Bill, and asks what I think of the result, and what I have seen of the island, and my opinion of the religious and charitable institutions. I praise the Belén and the Sisters of Charity, and condemn the prison, and he appears to agree with me. He appreciates the learning and zeal of the Brothers of Belén; speaks in the highest terms of the devotedness of the Sisters of Charity; and admits the great faults of the prison, but says it was built recently, at an enormous out-lay, and he supposes the government is reluctant to be at the expense of abandoning it and building another. He charges me with messages of remembrance and respect to acquaintances we have in common. As I take my leave, he goes with me to the outer gate, which is kept locked, and again takes leave, for two leave-takings are the custom of the country, and returns to the solitude of his house. Yesterday I drove out to the Cerro, to see the coolie jail, or market, where the imported coolies are kept for sale. It is a well-known place, and open to all visitors. The building has a fair-looking front; and through this I enter, past two porters, into an open yard in the rear, where, on the gravel ground, are squatting a double line of coolies, with heads shaved, except a tuft on the crown, dressed in loose Chinese garments of blue and yellow. The dealer, who is a calm, shrewd, heartless-looking man, speaking English as well as if it were his native tongue, comes out with me, calls to the coolies, and they all stand up in a double line, facing inward, and we pass through them, preceded by a driver armed with the usual badge of the plantation driver, the short, limber whip. The dealer does not hesitate to tell me the terms on which the contracts are made, as the trade is not illegal. His account is this--The importer receives $340 for each coolie, and the purchaser agrees to pay the coolie four dollars per month, and to give him food, and two suits of clothes a year. For this, he has his services for eight years. The contract is reduced to writing before a magistrate, and two originals are made, one kept by the coolie and one by the purchaser, and each in Chinese and Spanish. This was a strange and striking exhibition of power. Two or three white men, bringing hundreds of Chinese thousands of miles, to a new climate and people, holding them prisoners, selling their services to masters having an unknown tongue and an unknown religion, to work at unknown trades, for inscrutable purposes! The coolies did not look unhealthy, though some had complaints of the eyes; yet they looked, or I fancied they looked, some of them, unhappy, and some of them stolid. One I am sure had the leprosy although the dealer would not admit it. The dealer did not deny their tendency to suicide, and the danger of attempting to chastise them, but alleged their great superiority to the Negro in intelligence, and contended that their condition was good, and better than in China, having four dollars a month, and being free at the end of eight years. He said, which I found to be true, that after being separated and employed in work, they let their hair grow, and adopt the habits and dress of the country. The newly-arrived coolies wear tufts, and blue-and-yellow, loose, Chinese clothes. Those who have been here long are distinguishable from the whites only by the peculiar tinge of the cheek, and the form of the eye. The only respect in which his account differed from what I heard elsewhere was in the amount the importer receives, which has always been stated to me at $400. While I am talking with him, a gentleman comes and passes down the line. He is probably a purchaser, I judge; and I leave my informant to follow what is more for his interest than talking with me. The importation has not yet existed eight years. So the question, what will become of these men, exotics, without women or children, taking no root in the land, has not come to a solution. The constant question is--will they remain and mix with the other races? Will they be permitted to remain? Will they be able to go back? In 1853, they were not noticed in the census; and in 1857, hardly noticed. The number imported may, to some extent, be obtained from the records and files of the aduana, but not so as to be relied upon. I heard the number estimated at 200,000 by intelligent and well-informed Cubans. Others put it as low as 60,000. Certain it is that coolies are to be met with everywhere, in town and country. So far as I can learn, there is no law in China regulating the contracts and shipment of Chinese coolies, and none in Cuba regulating their transportation, landing, or treatment while here. The trade has grown up and been permitted and recognized, but not regulated. It is yet to be determined how far the contract is enforceable against either party. Those coolies that are taken from the British East Indies to British islands are taken under contracts, with regulations, as to their exportation and return, understood and enforced. Not so the Chinese coolies. Their importers are _lege soluti_. Some say the government will insist on their being returned. But the prevailing impression is that they will be brought in debt, and bound over again for their debts, or in some other way secured to a life-long servitude. Mr.----, a very wealthy and intelligent planter, tells me he is to go over to Regla, to-morrow morning, to see a lot of slaves offered for sale to him, and asks me if I have ever seen a sale of slaves. I never have seen that sight, and accept his invitation. We are to leave here at half-past six, or seven, at the latest. All work is early here; I believe I have mentioned that the hour of 'Change for merchants is 7.30 A.M. XX. HAVANA: Slaves, Lotteries, Cockfights and Filibusters Rise early, and walk to the sea-baths, and take a delightful float and swim. And refreshing it is, after a feverish night in my hot room, where I did not sleep an hour all night, but heard every quarter-hour struck, and the boatswain's whistle of the watchmen and their full cry of the hour and the weather, at every clock-strike. From the bath, I look out over the wall, far to the northeast, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the "Cahawba's" smoke. This is the day of her expected arrival. My New York friends and myself feel that we have seen Havana to our satisfaction, and the heat is becoming intense. We are beginning to receive advice against eating fruit after _café au lait_, or bananas with wine, and in favor of high-crowned hats at noon to prevent congestion from heat, and to avoid fogs in the morning. But there is no "Cahawba" in sight, and I hear only the bray of trumpets and roll of drums from the Morro and Cabaña and Punta, and the clanking march of the chain-gang down the Paseo, and the march of the guard to trumpet and drum. Mr.---- is punctual at seven, his son with him, and a man in a suit of white linen, who is the broker employed by Mr.----. We take a ferry-boat and cross to the Regla; and a few minutes' walk brings us to a small nail factory, where all the workmen are coolies. In the back-yard of this factory is a line of low buildings, from which the slaves are brought out, to be shown. We had taken up, at the ferry-boat, a small, thin, sharp-faced man, who was the dealer. The slaves are formed in a semicircle, by the dealer and broker. The broker pushed and pulled them about in a coarse, careless manner, worse than the manner of the dealer. I am glad he is not to be their master. Mr.---- spoke kindly to them. They were fully dressed; and no examination was made except by the eye; and no exhibitions of strength or agility were required, and none of those offensive examinations of which we read so much. What examination had been made or was to be made by the broker, out of my presence, I do not know. The "lot" consisted of about fifty, of both sexes and of all ages, some being old, and some very young. They were not a valuable lot, and Mr.---- refused to purchase them all. The dealer offered to separate them. Mr.---- selected about half of them, and they were set apart. I watched the countenances of all--the taken and the left. It was hard to decipher the character of their emotions. A kind of fixed hopelessness marked the faces of some, listlessness that of others, and others seemed anxious or disappointed, but whether because taken or rejected, it was hard to say. When the separation was made, and they knew its purpose, still no complaint was made and no suggestion ventured by the slaves that a tie of nature or affection was broken. I asked Mr.---- if some of them might not be related. He said he should attend to that, as he never separated families. He spoke to each of those he had chosen, separately, and asked if they had parent or child, husband or wife, or brother or sister among those who were rejected. A few pointed out their relations, and Mr.---- took them into his lot. One was an aged mother, one a wife, and another a little daughter. I am satisfied that no separations were made in this case, and equally satisfied that neither the dealer nor the broker would have asked the question. I asked Mr.---- on what principle he made his selection, as he did not seem to me always to take the strongest. "On the principle of race," said he. He told me that these Negroes were probably natives of Africa, bozales, except the youngest, and that the signs of the races were known to all planters. A certain race he named as having always more intelligence and ambition than any other; as more difficult to manage, but far superior when well managed. All of this race in the company, he took at once, whatever their age or strength. I think the preferred tribe was the Lucumí, but am not certain. From this place, I made a short visit to the almacén de azúcar, in the Regla, the great storehouses of sugar. These are a range of one-story, stone warehouses, so large that a great part of the sugar crop of the island, as I am told, could be stored in them. Here the vessels go to load, and the merchants store their sugar here, as wine is stored in the London docks. The Cubans are careful of the diet of foreigners, even in winter. I bought a couple of oranges, and young Mr.---- bought a sapote, a kind of sweet-sour apple, when the broker said "Take care! Did you not have milk with your coffee?" I inquired, and they told me it was not well to eat fresh fruit soon after taking milk, or to take bananas with wine, or to drink spirits. "But is this in winter, also?" "Yes; and it is already very hot, and there is danger of fever among strangers." Went to La Dominica, the great restaurant and depot of preserves and sweetmeats for Havana, and made out my order for preserves to take home with me. After consultation, I am advised to make up my list as follows: guava of Peru, limes, mamey apples, soursop, coconut, oranges, guava jelly, guava marmalade, and almonds. The ladies tell me there is a kind of fine linen sold here, called bolan, which it is difficult to obtain in the United States, and which would be very proper to take home for a present. On this advice, I bought a quantity of it, of blue and white, at La Diana, a shop on the corner of Calle de Obispo and San Ignacio. Breakfasted with a wealthy and intelligent gentleman, a large planter, who is a native of Cuba, but of European descent. A very nice breakfast, of Spanish mixed dishes, rice cooked to perfection, fruits, claret, and the only cup of good black tea I have tasted in Cuba. At Le Grand's, we have no tea but the green. At breakfast, we talked freely on the subject of the condition and prospects of Cuba; and I obtained from my host his views of the economic and industrial situation of the island. He was confident that the number of slaves does not exceed 500,000, to 200,000 free blacks, and 600,000 or 700,000 whites. His argument led him to put the number of slaves as low as he could, yet he estimated it far above that of the census of 1857, which makes it 375,000. But no one regards the census of slaves as correct. There is a tax on slaves, and the government has little chance of getting them stated at the full number. One planter said to a friend of mine, a year or two ago, that his two hundred slaves were returned as one hundred. I find the best opinions put the slaves at 650,000, the free blacks at 200,000, and the whites at 700,000. Havana is flooded with lottery-ticket vendors. They infest every eating-house and public way, and vex you at dinner, in your walks and rides. They sell for one grand lottery, established and guaranteed by the government, always in operation, and yielding to the state a net revenue of nearly two millions a year. The Cubans are infatuated with this lottery. All classes seem to embark in it. Its effect is especially bad on the slaves, who invest in it all they can earn, beg, or steal, allured by the glorious vision of possibly purchasing their freedom, and elevating themselves into the class of proprietors. Some gentlemen at Le Grand's have been to a cock-fight. I shall be obliged to leave the island without seeing this national sport for which every town, and every village has a pit, a Valle de Gallos. They tell me it was a very exciting scene among the spectators. Negroes, free and slave, low whites, coolies, and men of high condition were all frantically betting. Most of the bets were made by holding up the fingers and by other signs, between boxes and galleries. They say I should hardly credit the large sums which the most ordinary looking men staked and paid. I am surprised to find what an impression the López expedition made in Cuba--a far greater impression than is commonly supposed in the United States. The fears of the government and hopes of sympathizers exaggerated the force, and the whole military power of the government was stirred against them. Their little force of a few hundred broken-down men and lads, deceived and deserted, fought a body of eight times their number, and kept them at bay, causing great slaughter. The railroad trains brought the wounded into Havana, car after car; rumors of defeat filled the city; artillery was sent out; and the actual loss of the Spaniards, in killed and wounded, was surprisingly large. On the front wall of the Cabaña, plainly seen from the deck of every vessel that leaves or enters the port, is a monument to the honor of those who fell in the battle with the filibusteros. The spot where López was garroted, in front of the Punta, is pointed out, as well as the slope of the hill from the castle of Atares, where his surviving followers were shot. XXI. A SUMMING-UP: Society, Politics, Religion, Slavery, Resources and Reflections To an American, from the free states, Cuba presents an object of singular interest. His mind is occupied and almost oppressed by the thought of the strange problems that are in process of solution around him. He is constantly a critic, and a philosophizer, if not a philosopher. A despotic civil government, compulsory religious uniformity, and slavery are in full possession of the field. He is always seeking information as to causes, processes and effects, and almost as constantly baffled. There are three classes of persons in Cuba, from whom he receives contradictory and irreconcilable statements: the Cubans, the Spaniards, and foreigners of other nations. By Cubans, I mean the Criollos (Creoles), or natives of Cuba. By Spaniards, I mean the Peninsulares, or natives of Old Spain. In the third class are comprised the Americans, English, French, Germans, and all other foreigners, except Spaniards, who are residents on the island, but not natives. This last class is large, possesses a great deal of wealth, and includes a great number of merchants, bankers and other traders. The Spaniards, or Peninsulares, constitute the army and navy, the officers of the government in all departments, judicial, educational, fiscal and postal, the revenue and the police, the upper clergy, and a large and wealthy class of merchants, bankers, shopkeepers, and mechanics. The higher military and civil officers are from all parts of Spain; but the Catalans furnish the great body of the mechanics and small traders. The Spaniards may be counted on as opponents of the independence of Cuba, and especially of her annexation to the United States. In their political opinions, they vary. Some belong to the liberal, or Progresista party, and others are advocates of, or at least apologists for, the present order of things. Their force and influence is increased by the fact that the government encourages its military and civil officers, at the expiration of their terms of service, to remain in the island, still holding some nominal office, or on the pay of a retired list. The foreign residents, not Spaniards, are chiefly engaged in commerce, banking, or trade, or are in scientific or mechanic employments. These do not intend to become citizens of Cuba. They strike no root into the soil, but feel that they are only sojourners, for purposes of their own. Of all classes of persons, I know of none whose situation is more unfavorable to the growth and development of sentiments of patriotism and philanthropy, and of interest in the future of a race, than foreigners, temporarily resident, for purposes of money-making only, in a country with which they have nothing in common, in the future or the past. This class is often called impartial. I do not agree to that use of the term. They are, indeed, free from the bias of feeling or sentiment; and from the bias generated by the combined action of men thinking and feeling alike, which we call political party. But they are subject to the attractions of interest; and interest will magnetize the mind as effectually as feeling. Planted in a soil where the more tender and delicate fibers can take no hold, they stand by the strong tap-root of interest. It is for their immediate advantage to preserve peace and the existing order of things; and even if it may be fairly argued that their ultimate interests would be benefited by a change, yet the process is hazardous, and the result not sure; and, at most, they would do no more than take advantage of the change, if it occurred. I should say, as a general thing, that this class is content with the present order of things. The island is rich, production is large, commerce flourishes, life and property are well protected, and if a man does not concern himself with political or religious questions, he has nothing to fear. Of the Americans in this class, many, doubtless, may be favorably inclined toward annexation, but they are careful talkers, if they are so; and the foreigners, not Americans, are of course earnestly opposed to it, and the pendency of the question tends to draw them towards the present government. It remains only to speak of the Cubans. They are commonly styled Creoles. But as that word includes natives of all Spanish America, it is not quite definite. Of the Cubans, a few are advocates of the present government--but very few. The far greater part are disaffected. They desire something approximating to self-government. If that can be had from Spain, they would prefer it. If not, there is nothing for them but independence, or annexation to some other power. Not one of them thinks of independence; and if it be annexation, I believe their present impulse is toward the United States. Yet on this point, among even the most disaffected of the Cubans, there is a difference of opinion. Many of them are sincere emancipationists, and fear that if they come in at the southern end of our Union, that question is closed for ever. Others fear that the Anglo-Saxon race would swallow up the power and property of the island, as they have done in California and Texas, and that the Creoles would go to the wall. It has been my fortune to see persons of influence and intelligence from each of these chief divisions, and from the subdivisions, and to talk with them freely. From the sum of their conflicting opinions and conflicting statements, I have endeavored to settle upon some things as certain; and, as to other things, to ascertain how far the debatable ground extends, and the principles which govern the debate. From all these sources, and from my own observations, I will endeavor to set down what I think to be the present state of Cuba, in its various interesting features, trusting to do it as becomes one whose acquaintance with the island has been so recent and so short. POLITICAL CONDITION When the liberal constitutions were in force in Spain, in the early part of this century, the benefits of them extended to Cuba. Something like a provincial legislature was established; juntas, or advisory boards and committees, discussed public questions, and made recommendations; a militia was organized; the right to bear arms was recognized; tribunals, with something of the nature of juries, passed upon certain questions; the press was free, and Cuba sent delegates to the Spanish Cortes. This state of things continued, with but few interruptions or variations, to 1825. Then was issued the celebrated Royal Order of May 29, 1825, under which Cuba has been governed to the present hour. This Royal Order is the only constitution of Cuba. It was probably intended merely as a temporary order to the then Captain-General; but it has been found convenient to adhere to it. It clothes the Captain-General with the fullest powers, the tests and limit of which are as follows: " ... fully investing you with the whole extent of power which, by the royal ordinances, is granted to the governors of besieged towns. In consequence thereof, His Majesty most amply and unrestrictedly authorizes your Excellency not only to remove from the island such persons, holding offices from government or not, whatever their occupation, rank, class, or situation in life may be, whose residence there you may believe prejudicial, or whose public or private conduct may appear suspicious to you...." Since 1825, Cuba has been not only under martial law, but in a state of siege. As to the more or less of justice or injustice, of honesty or peculation, of fidelity or corruption, of liberality or severity, with which these powers may have been exercised, a residence of a few days, the reading of a few books, and conversations with a few men, though on both sides, give me no right to pronounce. Of the probabilities, all can judge, especially when we remember that these powers are wielded by natives of one country over natives of another country. Since 1825, there has been no legislative assembly in Cuba, either provincial or municipal. The municipal corporations (ayuntamientos) were formerly hereditary, the dignity was purchasable, and no doubt the bodies were corrupt. But they exercised some control, at least in the levying and expending of taxes; and, being hereditary, were somewhat independent, and might have served, like those of Europe in the middle ages, as nuclei of popular liberties. These have lost the few powers they possessed, and the members are now mere appointees of the Captain-General. Since 1836, Cuba has been deprived of its right to a delegation in the Cortes. Since 1825, vestiges of anything approaching to popular assemblies, juntas, a jury, independent tribunals, a right of voting, or a right to bear arms, have vanished from the island. The press is under censorship; and so are the theaters and operas. When "I Puritani" is played, the singers are required to substitute Lealtad for Libertad, and one singer was fined and imprisoned for recusancy; and Facciolo, the printer of a secretly circulated newspaper, advocating the cause of Cuban independence, was garroted. The power of banishing, without a charge made, or a trial, or even a record, but on the mere will of the Captain-General, persons whose presence he thinks, or professes to think, prejudicial to the government, whatever their condition, rank, or office, has been frequently exercised, and hangs at all hours over the head of every Cuban. Besides, that terrible power which is restrained only by the analogy of a state of siege, may be at any time called into action. Cubans may be, and I suppose usually are, regularly charged and tried before judges, on political accusations; but this is not their right; and the judges themselves, even of the highest court, the Real Audiencia, may be deposed and banished, at the will of the military chief. According to the strictness of the written law, no native Cuban can hold any office of honor, trust, or emolument in Cuba. The army and navy are composed of Spaniards, even to the soldiers in the ranks, and to the sailors at the guns. It is said by the supporters of the government that this order is not adhered to; and they point to a capitán-general, an intendente, and a chief of the customs, who were Cubans. Still, such is the written law; and if a few Cubans are put into office against the law, those who are so favored are likely to be the most servile of officers, and the situation of the rest is only the more degraded. Notwithstanding the exceptions, it may be said with substantial truth that an independent Cuban has open to him no career, civil or military. There is a force of volunteers, to which some Cubans are admitted, but they hold their places at the will of the government; and none are allowed to join or remain with them unless they are acceptable to the government. There are vexatious and mortifying regulations, too numerous and minute to be complied with or even remembered, and which put the people in danger of fines or extortion at every turn. Take, for instance, the regulation that no man shall entertain a stranger over night at his house, without previous notice to the magistrate. As to the absolute prohibition of concealed weapons, and of all weapons but the regulation sword and pistols--it was no doubt introduced and enforced by Tacón as a means of suppressing assassinations, broils and open violence; and it has made life safer in Havana than it is in New York; yet it cannot be denied that it created a serious disability. In fine, what is the Spanish government in Cuba but an armed monarchy, encamped in the midst of a disarmed and disfranchised people? The taxes paid by the Cubans on their property, and the duties levied on their commerce, are enormous, making a net income of not less than $16,000,000 a year. Cuba pays all the expenses of its own government, the salaries of all officers, the entire cost of the army and navy quartered upon it, the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion, and of all the charitable and benevolent institutions, and sends an annual remittance to Spain. The number of Spanish men-of-war stationed on the coast, varies from twenty-five to thirty. Of the number of soldiers of the regular army in Cuba, it is difficult to form an opinion. The official journal puts them at 30,000. The lowest estimate I heard, was 25,000; and the highest was 40,000. Judging from the number of sick I saw at the Hospital Militar, I should not be surprised if the larger estimate was nearer the truth. But details are of little importance. The actual administration may be a little more or less rigid or lax. In its legal character, the government is an unmixed despotism of one nation over another. RELIGION No religion is tolerated but the Roman Catholic. Formerly the church was wealthy, authoritative and independent, and checked the civil and military power by an ecclesiastical power wielded also by the dominant nation. But the property of the church has been sequestrated and confiscated, and the government now owns all the property once ecclesiastical, including the church edifices, and appoints all the clergy, from the bishop to the humblest country curate. All are salaried officers. And so powerless is the church, that, however scandalous may be the life of a parish priest, the bishop cannot remove him. He can only institute proceedings against him before a tribunal over which the government has large control, with a certainty of long delays and entire uncertainty as to the result. The bishopric of Havana was formerly one of the wealthiest sees in Christendom. Now the salary is hardly sufficient to meet the demands which custom makes in respect of charity, hospitality and style of living. It may be said, I think with truth, that the Roman Catholic Church has now neither civil nor political power in Cuba. That there was a long period of time during which the morals of the clergy were excessively corrupt, I think there can be no doubt. Make every allowance for theological bias, or for irreligious bias, in the writers and tourists in Cuba, still, the testimony from Roman Catholics themselves is irresistible. The details, it is not worth while to contend about. It is said that a family of children, with a recognized relation to its female head, which the rule of celibacy prevented ever becoming a marriage, was general with the country priesthood. A priest who was faithful to that relation, and kept from cockfighting and gambling, was esteemed a respectable man by the common people. Cuba became a kind of Botany Bay for the Romish clergy. There they seem to have been concealed from the eye of discipline. With this state of things, there existed, naturally enough, a vast amount of practical infidelity among the people, and especially among the men, who, it is said, scarcely recognized religious obligations at all. No one can observe the state of Europe now, without seeing that the rapidity of communication by steam and electricity has tended to add to the efficiency of the central power of the Roman Catholic Church, and to the efficacy and extent of its discipline. Cuba has begun to feel these effects. Whether they have yet reached the interior, or the towns generally, I do not know; but the concurrent testimony of all classes satisfied me that a considerable change has been effected in Havana. The instrumentalities which that church brings to bear in such cases, are in operation: frequent preaching, and stricter discipline of confession and communion. The most marked result is in the number of men, and men of character and weight, who have become earnest in the use of these means. Much of this must be attributed, no doubt, to the Jesuits; but how long they will be permitted to remain here, and what will be the permanent effects of the movement, I cannot, of course, conjecture. I do not enter into the old field of contest. "We care not," says one side, "which be cause and which effect;--whether the people are Papists, because they are what they are, or are as they are because they are Papists. It is enough that the two things coexist." The other side replies that no Protestant institutions have ever yet been tried for any length of time, and to any large extent, with southern races, in a tropical climate; and the question--what would be their influence, and what the effect of surrounding causes upon them, lies altogether in the region of conjecture, or, at best, of faith. Of the moral habits of the clergy, as of the people, at the present time, I am entirely unable to judge. I saw very little that indicated the existence of any vices whatever among the people. Five minutes of a street view of London by night, exhibits more vice, to the casual observer, than all Havana for a year. I do not mean to say that the social morals of the Cubans are good, or are bad; I only mean to say that I am not a judge of the question. The most striking indication of the want of religious control is the disregard of the Lord's Day. All business seems to go on as usual, unless it be in the public offices. The chain-gang works in the streets, under public officers. House-building and mechanic trades go on uninterrupted; and the shops are more active than ever. The churches, to be sure, are open and well filled in the morning; and I do not refer to amusements and recreations; I speak of public, secular labor. The Church must be held to some responsibility for this. Granted that Sunday is not the Sabbath. Yet, it is a day which, by the rule of the Roman Church, the English Church in England and America, the Greek Church and other Oriental Churches--all claiming to rest the rule on Apostolic authority, as well as by the usage of Protestants on the continent of Europe--whether Lutherans or Calvinists--is a day of rest from secular labor, and especially from enforced labor. Pressing this upon an intelligent ecclesiastic, his reply to me was that the Church could not enforce the observance--that it must be enforced by the civil authorities; and the civil authorities fall in with the selfishness and gratifications of the ruling classes. And he appealed to the change lately wrought in Paris, in these respects, as evidence of the consistency of his Church. This is an answer, so far as concerns the Church's direct authority; but it is an admission either of feeble moral power, or of neglect of duty in times past. An embarrassment in the way of more strictness as to secular labor, arises from the fact that slaves are entitled to their time on Sundays, beyond the necessary labor of providing for the day; and this time they may use in working out their freedom. Another of the difficulties the church has to contend with, arises out of Negro slavery. The Church recognizes the unity of all races, and allows marriage between them. The civil law of Cuba, under the interpretations in force here, prohibits marriage between whites and persons who have any tinge of the black blood. In consequence of this rule, concubinage prevails, to a great extent, between whites and mulattoes or quadroons, often with recognition of the children. If either party to this arrangement comes under the influence of the Church's discipline, the relation must terminate. The Church would allow and advise marriage; but the law prohibits it--and if there should be a separation, there may be no provision for the children. This state of things creates no small obstacle to the influence of the Church over the domestic relations. SLAVERY It is difficult to come to a satisfactory conclusion as to the number of slaves in Cuba. The census of 1857 puts it at 375,000; but neither this census nor that of 1853 is to be relied upon, on this point. The Cubans are taxed for their slaves, and the government find it difficult, as I have said, to get correct returns. No person of intelligence in Cuba, however desirous to put the number at the lowest, has stated it to me at less than 500,000. Many set it at 700,000. I am inclined to think that 600,000 is the nearest to the truth. The census makes the free blacks, in 1857, 125,000. It is thought to be 200,000, by the best authorities. The whites are about 700,000. The only point in which the census seems to agree with public opinion, is in the proportion. Both make the proportion of blacks to be about one free black to three slaves; and make the whites not quite equal to the entire number of blacks, free and slave together. To ascertain the condition of slaves in Cuba, two things are to be considered: first, the laws, and secondly, the execution of the laws. The written laws, there is no great difficulty in ascertaining. As to their execution, there is room for opinion. At this point, one general remark should be made, which I deem to be of considerable importance. The laws relating to slavery do not emanate from the slave-holding mind; nor are they interpreted or executed by the slave-holding class. The slave benefits by the division of power and property between the two rival and even hostile races of whites, the Creoles and the Spaniards. Spain is not slave-holding, at home; and so long as the laws are made in Spain, and the civil offices are held by Spaniards only, the slave has at least the advantage of a conflict of interests and principles, between the two classes that are concerned in his bondage. The fact that one Negro in every four is free, indicates that the laws favor emancipation. They do both favor emancipation, and favor the free blacks after emancipation. The stranger visiting Havana will see a regiment of one thousand free black volunteers, parading with the troops of the line and the white volunteers, and keeping guard in the Obra Pia. When it is remembered that the bearing arms and performing military duty as volunteers is esteemed an honor and privilege, and is not allowed to the whites of Creole birth, except to a few who are favored by the government, the significance of this fact may be appreciated. The Cuban slave-holders are more impatient under this favoring of the free blacks than under almost any other act of the government. They see in it an attempt, on the part of the authorities, to secure the sympathy and coöperation of the free blacks, in case of a revolutionary movement--to set race against race, and to make the free blacks familiar with military duty, while the whites are growing up in ignorance of it. In point of civil privileges, the free blacks are the equals of the whites. In courts of law, as witnesses or parties, no difference is known; and they have the same rights as to the holding of lands and other property. As to their social position, I have not the means of speaking. I should think it quite as good as it is in New England, if not better. So far as to the position of the blacks, when free. The laws also directly favor emancipation. Every slave has a right to go to a magistrate and have himself valued, and on paying the valuation, to receive his free papers. The valuation is made by three assessors, of whom the master nominates one and the magistrate the other two. The slave is not obliged to pay the entire valuation at once; but may pay it in installments, of not less than fifty dollars each. These payments are not made as mere advances of money, on the security of the master's receipt, but are part purchases. Each payment makes the slave an owner of such a portion of himself, _pro parte indivisa_, or as the common law would say, in tenancy-in-common, with his master. If the valuation be one thousand dollars, and he pays one hundred dollars, he is owned, one-tenth by himself and nine-tenths by his master. It has been said, in nearly all the American books on Cuba, that, on paying a share, he becomes entitled to a corresponding share of his time and labor; but, from the best information I can get, I think this is a mistake. The payment affects the proprietary title, but not the usufruct. Until all is paid, the master's dominion over the slave is not reduced, as respects either discipline, or labor, or right of transfer; but if the slave is sold, or goes by operation of law to heirs or legatees or creditors, they take only the interest not paid for, subject to the right of future payment under the valuation. There is another provision, which, at first sight, may not appear very important, but which is, I am inclined to think, the best practical protection the slave has against ill-treatment by his master: that is, the right to a compulsory sale. A slave may, on the same process of valuation compel his master to transfer him to any person who will pay the money. For this purpose, he need establish no cause of complaint. It is enough if he desires to be transferred, and some one is willing to buy him. This operates as a check upon the master, and an inducement to him to remove special causes of dissatisfaction; and it enables the better class of slave-holders in a neighborhood, if cases of ill-usage are known, to relieve the slave, without contention or pecuniary loss. In making the valuation, whether for emancipation or compulsory transfer, the slave is to be estimated at his value as a common laborer, according to his strength, age, and health. If he knows an art or trade, however much that may add to his value, only one hundred dollars can be added to the estimate for this trade or art. Thus the skill, industry and character of the slave, do not furnish an obstacle to his emancipation or transfer. On the contrary, all that his trade or art adds to his value, above one hundred dollars, is, in fact, a capital for his benefit. There are other provisions for the relief of the slave, which, although they may make even a better show on paper, are of less practical value. On complaint and proof of cruel treatment, the law will dissolve the relation between master and slave. No slave can be flogged with more than twenty-five lashes, by the master's authority. If his offence is thought greater than that punishment will suffice for, the public authorities must be called in. A slave mother may buy the freedom of her infant, for twenty-five dollars. If slaves have been married by the Church, they cannot be separated against their will; and the mother has the right to keep her nursing child. Each slave is entitled to his time on Sundays and all other holidays, beyond two hours allowed for necessary labor, except on sugar estates during the grinding season. Every slave born on the island is to be baptized and instructed in the Catholic faith, and to receive Christian burial. Formerly, there were provisions requiring religious services and instruction on each plantation, according to its size; but I believe these are either repealed, or become a dead letter. There are also provisions respecting the food, clothing and treatment of slaves in other respects, and the providing of a sick room and medicines, &c.; and the government has appointed magistrates, styled síndicos, numerous enough, and living in all localities, whose duty it is to attend to the petitions and complaints of slaves, and to the measures relating to their sale, transfer or emancipation. As to the enforcement of these laws, I have little or no personal knowledge to offer; but some things, I think, I may treat as reasonably sure, from my own observation, and from the concurrent testimony of books, and of persons of all classes with whom I have conversed. The rule respecting religion is so far observed as this, that infants are baptized, and all receive Christian burial. But there is no enforcement of the obligation to give the slaves religious instruction, or to allow them to attend public religious service. Most of those in the rural districts see no church and no priest, from baptism to burial. If they do receive religious instruction, or have religious services provided for them, it is the free gift of the master. Marriage by the Church is seldom celebrated. As in the Roman Church marriage is a sacrament and indissoluble, it entails great inconvenience upon the master, as regards sales or mortgages, and is a restraint on the Negroes themselves, to which it is not always easy to reconcile them. Consequently, marriages are usually performed by the master only, and of course, carry with them no legal rights or duties. Even this imperfect and dissoluble connection has been but little attended to. While the slave-trade was allowed, the planters supplied their stock with bozales (native Africans) and paid little attention, even on economic principles, to the improvement, or, speaking after the fashion of cattle-farms, to the increase of stock on the plantation. Now that importation is more difficult, and labor is in demand, their attention is more turned to their own stock, and they are beginning to learn, in the physiology of increase, that canon which the Everlasting has fixed against promiscuous intercourse. The laws respecting valuation, the purchase of freedom at once or by instalments, and the compulsory transfer, I know to be in active operation in the towns, and on plantations affording easy access to towns or magistrates. I heard frequent complaints from slave-holders and those who sympathized with them, as to the operation of these provisions. A lady in Havana had a slave who was an excellent cook; and she had been offered $1700 for him, and refused it. He applied for valuation for the purpose of transfer, and was valued at $1000 as a laborer, which, with the $100 for his trade, made a loss to the owner of $600, and, as no slave can be subsequently sold for a larger sum than his valuation, this provision gave the slave a capital of $600. Another instance was of a planter near Matanzas, who had a slave taught as a carpenter; but after learning his trade, the slave got himself transferred to a master in the city, for the opportunity of working out his freedom, on holidays and in extra hours. So general is the enforcement of these provisions that it is said to have resulted in a refusal of many masters to teach their slaves any art or trade, and in the hiring of the labor of artisans of all sorts, and the confining of the slaves to mere manual labor. I heard of complaints of the conduct of individuals who were charged with attempting to influence the credulous and too ready slaves to agree to be transferred to them, either to gratify some ill-will against the owner, or for some supposed selfish interest. From the frequency of this tone of complaint and anecdote, as well as from positive assertions on good authority, I believe these provisions to have considerable efficacy. As to the practical advantage the slaves can get from these provisions in remote places; and as to the amount of protection they get anywhere from the special provisions respecting punishment, food, clothing, and treatment generally, almost everything lies in the region of opinion. There is no end to statement and anecdote on each side. If one cannot get a full and lengthened personal experience, not only as the guest of the slave-holder, but as the companion of the local magistrates, of the lower officers on the plantation, of slave-dealers and slave-hunters, and of the emancipated slaves, I advise him to shut his ears to mere anecdotes and general statements, and to trust to reasonable deductions from established facts. The established facts are, that one race, having all power in its hands, holds an inferior race in slavery; that this bondage exists in cities, in populous neighborhoods, and in remote districts; that the owners are human beings, of tropical races, and the slaves are human beings just emerging from barbarism, and that no small part of this power is exercised by a low-lived and low-minded class of intermediate agents. What is likely to be the effect on all the parties to this system, judging from all we know of human nature? If persons coming from the North are credulous enough to suppose that they will see chains and stripes and tracks of blood; and if, taking letters to the best class of slave-holders, seeing their way of life, and hearing their dinner-table anecdotes, and the breakfast-table talk of the ladies, they find no outward signs of violence or corruption, they will probably, also, be credulous enough to suppose they have seen the whole of slavery. They do not know that that large plantation, with its smoking chimneys, about which they hear nothing, and which their host does not visit, has passed to the creditors of the late owner, who is a bankrupt, and is in charge of a manager, who is to get all he can from it in the shortest time, and to sell off the slaves as he can, having no interest, moral or pecuniary, in their future. They do not know that that other plantation, belonging to the young man who spends half his time in Havana, is an abode of licentiousness and cruelty. Neither do they know that the tall hounds chained at the kennel of the house they are visiting are Cuban bloodhounds, trained to track and to seize. They do not know that the barking last night was a pursuit and capture, in which all the white men on the place took part; and that, for the week past, the men of the plantation have been a committee of detective and protective police. They do not know that the ill-looking man who was there yesterday, and whom the ladies did not like, and all treated with ill-disguised aversion, is a professed hunter of slaves. They have never seen or heard of the Sierra del Cristal, the mountain-range at the eastern end of Cuba, inhabited by runaways, where white men hardly dare to go. Nor do they know that those young ladies, when little children, were taken to the city in the time of the insurrection in the Vuelta de Arriba. They have not heard the story of that downcast-looking girl, the now incorrigibly malignant Negro, and the lying mayoral. In the cities, they are amused by the flashy dresses, indolence and good-humor of the slaves, and pleased with the respectfulness of their manners, and hear anecdotes of their attachment to their masters, and how they so dote upon slavery that nothing but bad advice can entice them into freedom; and are told, too, of the worse condition of the free blacks. They have not visited the slave-jails, or the whipping-posts in the house outside the walls, where low whites do the flogging of the city house-servants, men and women, at so many reals a head. But the reflecting mind soon tires of the anecdotes of injustice, cruelty and licentiousness on the one hand, and of justice, kindness and mutual attachment, on the other. You know that all coexist; but in what proportion you can only conjecture. You know what slavery must be, in its effect on both the parties to it. You seek to grapple with the problem itself. And, stating it fairly, it is this--Shall the industry of Cuba go on, or shall the island be abandoned to a state of nature? If the former, and if the whites cannot do the hard labor in that climate, and the blacks can, will the seven hundred thousand whites, who own all the land and improvements, surrender them to the blacks and leave the island, or will they remain? If they must be expected to remain, what is to be the relation of the two races? The blacks must do the hard work, or it will not be done. Shall it be the enforced labor of slavery, or shall the experiment of free labor be tried? Will the government try the experiment, and if so, on what terms and in what manner? If something is not done by the government, slavery will continue; for a successful insurrection of slaves in Cuba is impossible, and manumissions do not gain upon the births and importations. MATERIAL RESOURCES AND EDUCATION Cuba contains more good harbors than does any part of the United States south of Norfolk. Its soil is very rich, and there are no large wastes of sand, either by the sea or in the interior. The coral rocks bound the sea, and the grass and trees come down to the coral rocks. The surface of the country is diversified by mountains, hills and undulating lands, and is very well wooded, and tolerably well watered. It is interesting and picturesque to the eye, and abounds in flowers, trees of all varieties, and birds of rich plumage, though not of rich notes. It has mines of copper, and probably of iron, and is not cursed with gold or silver ore. There is no anthracite, but probably a large amount of a very soft, bituminous coal, which can be used for manufactures. It has also marble, and other kinds of stone; and the hard woods, as mahogany, cedar, ebony, iron-wood, lignum vitæ, &c., are in abundance. Mineral salt is to be found, and probably in sufficient quantities for the use of the island. It is the boast of the Cubans that the island has no wild beasts or venomous reptiles. This has been so often repeated by tourists and historians that I suppose it must be admitted to be true, with the qualification that they have the scorpion, and tarantula, and nigua; but they say that the bite of the scorpion and tarantula, though painful, is not dangerous to life. The nigua, (sometimes called chigua, and by the English corrupted into jigger,) is troublesome. With these exceptions, the claim to freedom from wild or venomous animals may be admitted. Their snakes are harmless, and the mosquitoes no worse than those of New England. As to the climate, I have no doubt that in the interior, especially on the red earth, it is healthy and delightful, in summer as well as in winter; but on the river borders, in the low lands of black earth, and on the savannas, intermittent fever and fever-and-ague prevail. The cities have the scourge of yellow fever and, of late years, also the cholera. In the cities, I suppose, the year may be divided, as to sickness, into three equal portions: four months of winter, when they are safe; four of summer, when they are unsafe; and four of spring and autumn, when they are passing from one state to the other. There are, indeed, a few cases of vómito in the course of the winter, but they are little regarded, and must be the result of extreme imprudence. It is estimated that twenty-five per cent of the soldiers die of yellow fever the first years of their acclimation; and during the year of the cholera, sixty per cent of the newly-arrived soldiers died. The mean temperature in winter is 70 degrees, and in summer 83 degrees, Fahrenheit. The island has suffered severely from hurricanes, although they are not so frequent as in others of the West India islands. They have violent thunderstorms in summer, and have suffered from droughts in winter, though usually the heavy dews keep vegetation green through the dry season. That which has been to me, personally, most unexpected, is the industry of the island. It seems to me that, allowing for the heat of noon and the debilitating effect of the climate, the industry in agriculture and trade is rather striking. The sugar crop is enormous. The annual exportation is about 400,000 tons, or about 2,000,000 boxes, and the amount consumed on the island is very great, not only in coffee and in daily cooking, but in the making of preserves and sweetmeats, which are a considerable part of the food of the people. There is also about half a million hogsheads of molasses exported annually. Add to this the coffee, tobacco and copper, and a general notion may be got of the industry and productions of the island. Its weak point is the want of variety. There are no manufactures of any consequence; the mineral exports are not great; and, in fact, sugar is the one staple. All Cuba has but one neck--the worst wish of the tyrant. As to education, I have no doubt that a good education in medicine, and a respectable course of instruction in the Roman and Spanish law, and in the natural sciences, can be obtained at the University of Havana; and that a fair collegiate education, after the manner of the Latin races, can be obtained at the Jesuit College, the Seminario, and other institutions at Havana, and in the other large cities; and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart have a flourishing school for girls at Havana. But the general elementary education of the people is in a very low state. The scattered life of planters is unfavorable to public day-schools, nay, almost inconsistent with their existence. The richer inhabitants send their children abroad, or to Havana; but the middle and lower classes of whites cannot do this. The tables show that, of the free white children, not more than one in sixty-three attend any school, while in the British West India islands, the proportion is from one in ten to one in twenty. As to the state of education, culture and literary habits among the upper classes, my limited experience gives me no opportunity to judge. The concurrent testimony of tourists and other writers on Cuba is that the habits of the Cuban women of the upper and middle classes are unintellectual. Education is substantially in the hands of the government. As an instance of their strictness, no man can take a degree at the University unless he makes oath that he does not belong to, has never belonged to, and will not belong to, any society not known to and permitted by the government. REFLECTIONS To return to the political state and prospects of Cuba. As for those persons whose political opinions and plans are not regulated by moral principle, it may be safely said that, whatever their plans, their object will not be the good of Cuba, but their own advantage. Of those who are governed by principle, each man's expectation or plan will depend upon the general opinion he entertains respecting the nature of men and of society. This is going back a good way for a test; but I am convinced it is only going to the source of opinion and action. If a man believes that human nature in an unrestrained course, is good, and self-governing, and that when it is not so, there is a temporary and local cause to be assigned for the deviation; if he believes that men, at least in civilized society, are independent beings, by right entitled to, and by nature capable of, the exercise of popular self-government, and that if they have not this power in exercise, it is because they have been deprived of it by somebody's fraud or violence, which ought to be detected and remedied, as we abate a public nuisance in the highway; if a man thinks that overturning a throne and erecting a constitution will answer the purpose;--if these are his opinions as to men and society, his plan for Cuba, and for every other part of the world, may be simple. No wonder such a one is impatient of the inactivity of the governed masses, and is in a constant state of surprise that the fraud and violence of a few should always prevail over the rights and merits of the many--when they themselves might end their thraldom by a blow, and put their oppressors to rest--by a bare bodkin! But if the history of the world and the observation of his own times have led a man to the opinion that, of divine right and human necessity, government of some sort there must be, in which power must be vested somewhere, and exercised somehow; that popular self-government is rather of the nature of a faculty than of a right; that human nature is so constituted that the actual condition of civil society in any place and nation is, on the whole, the fair result of conflicting forces of good and evil--the power being in proportion to the need of power, and the franchises to the capacity for using franchises; that autocrats and oligarchs are the growth of the soil; and that every people has, in the main, and in the long run, a government as good as it deserves; if such is the substance of the belief to which he has been led or forced, he will look gravely upon the future of such people as the Cubans, and hesitate as to the invention and application of remedies. If he reflects that of all the nations of the southern races in North and South America, from Texas to Cape Horn, the Brazilians alone, who have a constitutional monarchy, are in a state of order and progress; and if he further reflects that Cuba, as a royal province, with all its evils, is in a better condition than nearly all the Spanish republican states, he may well be slow to believe that, with their complication of difficulties, and causes of disorder and weakness--with their half million or more of slaves and quarter million or less of free blacks, with their coolies, and their divided and hostile races of whites--their Spanish blood, and their utter want of experience in the discharge of any public duties, the Cubans will work out successfully the problem of self-government. You cannot reason from Massachusetts to Cuba. When Massachusetts entered into the Revolution, she had had one hundred and fifty years of experience in popular self-government under a system in which the exercise of this power was more generally diffused among the people, and extended over a larger class of subjects, and more decentralized, than had ever been known before in any part of the world, or at any period of the world's story. She had been, all along, for most purposes, an independent republic, with an obligation to the British Empire undefined and seldom attempted to be enforced. The thirteen colonies were ships fully armed and equipped, officered and manned, with long sea experience, sailing as a wing of a great fleet, under the Admiral's fleet signals. They had only to pass secret signals, fall out of line, haul their wind, and sail off as a squadron by themselves; and if the Admiral with the rest of the fleet made chase and gave battle, it was sailor to sailor and ship to ship. But Cuba has neither officers trained to the quarter-deck, nor sailors trained to the helm, the yard, or the gun. Nay, the ship is not built, nor the keel laid, nor is the timber grown, from which the keel is to be cut. The natural process for Cuba is an amelioration of her institutions under Spanish auspices. If this is not to be had, or if the connection with Spain is dissolved in any way, she will probably be substantially under the protection of some other power, or a part of another empire. Whatever nation may enter upon such an undertaking as this, should take a bond of fate. Beside her internal danger and difficulties, Cuba is implicated externally with every cause of jealousy and conflict. She has been called the key to the Gulf of Mexico. But the Gulf of Mexico cannot be locked. Whoever takes her is more likely to find in her a key to Pandora's box. Close upon her is the great island of Jamaica, where the experiment of free Negro labor, in the same products, is on trial. Near to her is Haiti where the experiment of Negro self-government is on trial. And further off, separated, it is true, by the great Gulf Stream, and with the neighborhood of the almost uninhabited and uninhabitable sea coast of southern Florida, yet near enough to furnish some cause for uneasiness, are the slave-states of the Great Republic. She is an island, too; and as an island, whatever power holds or protects her, must maintain on the spot a sufficient army and navy, as it would not do to rely upon being able to throw in troops and munitions of war, after notice of need. As to the wishes of the Cubans themselves, the degree of reliance they place, or are entitled to place, on each other, and their opportunities and capacity for organized action of any kind, I have already set down all I can be truly said to know; and there is no end to assertion and conjecture, or to the conflicting character of what is called information, whether received through men or books. XXII. LEAVE-TAKING All day there have been earnest looks to the northwest, for the smoke of the "Cahawba." We are willing and desirous to depart. Our sights are seen, our business done, and our trunks packed. While we are sitting round our table after dinner, George, Mr. Miller's servant, comes in, with a bright countenance, and says "There is a steamer off." We go to the roof, and there, far in the N. W., is a small but unmistakable cloud of steamer's smoke, just in the course the "Cahawba" would take. "Let us walk down to the Punta, and see her come in." It is between four and five o'clock, and a pleasant afternoon, and we saunter along, keeping in the shade, and sit down on the boards at the wharf, in front of the Presidio, near to where politicians are garroted, and watch the progress of the steamer, amusing ourselves at the same time with seeing the Negroes swimming and washing horses in the shallow water off the bank. A Yankee flag flies from the signalpost of the Morro, but the Punta keeps the steamer from our sight. It draws towards six o'clock, and no vessel can enter after dark. We begin to fear she will not reach the point in season. Her cloud of smoke rises over the Punta, the city clocks strike six, the Morro strikes six, the trumpets bray out, the sun is down, the signals on the Morro are lowering--"She'll miss it!"--"No--there she is!"--and, round the Punta comes her sharp black head, and then her full body, her toiling engine and smoking chimney and peopled decks, and flying stars and stripes--Good luck to her! and, though the signal is down, she pushes on and passes the forts without objection, and is lost among the shipping. My companions are so enthusiastic that they go on board; but I return to my hotel and take a volante, and make my last calls, and take my last looks, and am ready to leave in the morning. In half an hour, the arrival of the "Cahawba" is known over all Havana, and the news of the loss of her consort, the "Black Warrior," in a fog off New York--passengers and crew and specie safe. My companions come back. They met Capt. Bullock on the pier, and took tea with him in La Dominica. He sails at two o'clock to-morrow. * * * * * I shall not see them again, but there they will be, day after day, day after day--how long?--aye, how long?--the squalid, degraded chain-gang! The horrible prison!--profaning one of the grandest of sites, where city, sea and shore unite as almost nowhere else on earth! These were my thoughts as, in the pink and gray dawn, I walked down the Paseo, to enjoy my last refreshing in the rock-hewn sea-baths. This leave-taking is a strange process, and has strange effects. How suddenly a little of unnoticed good in what you leave behind comes out, and touches you, in a moment of tenderness! And how much of the evil and disagreeable seems to have disappeared! Le Grand, after all, is no more inattentive and intractable than many others would become in his place; and he does keep a good table, and those breakfasts are very pretty. Antonio is no hydropathist, to be sure, and his ear distinguishes the voices that pay best; yet one pities him in his routine, and in the fear he is under, being a native of Old Spain, that his name will turn up in the conscription, when he will have to shoulder his musket for five years in the Cabaña and Punta. Nor can he get off the island, for the permit will be refused him, poor fellow! One or two of our friends are to remain here for they have pulmonary difficulties, and prefer to avoid the North in March. They look a little sad at being left alone, and talk of going into the country to escape the increasing heat. A New York gentleman has taken a great fancy to the volantes, and thinks that a costly one, with two horses, and silvered postilion in boots and spurs and bright jacket would eclipse any equipage in Fifth Avenue. When you come to leave, you find that the strange and picturesque character of the city has interested you more than you think; and you stare out of your carriage to read the familiar signs, the names of streets, the Obra Pia, Lamparilla, Mercaderes, San Ignacio, Obispo, O'Reilly, and Oficios, and the pretty and fantastic names of the shops. You think even the narrow streets have their advantages, as they are better shaded, and the awnings can stretch across them, though, to be sure, they keep out the air. No city has finer avenues than the Isabel and the Tacón; and the palm trees, at least, we shall not see at the North. Here is La Dominica. It is a pleasant place, in the evening, after the Retreta, to take your tea or coffee under the trees by the fountain in the court-yard, and meet the Americans and English--the only public place, except the theater, where ladies are to be seen out of their volantes. Still, we are quite ready to go; for we have seen all we have been told to see in Havana, and it is excessively hot, and growing hotter. But no one can leave Cuba without a permit. When you arrive, the visé of your passport is not enough, but you must pay a fee for a permit to land and remain in the island; and when you wish to return, you must pay four dollars to get back your passport, with a permit to leave. The custom-house officials were not troublesome in respect to our luggage, hardly examining it at all, and, I must admit, showed no signs of expecting private fees. Along the range of piers, where the bows of the vessels run in, and on which the labor of this great commerce is performed, there runs a high, wide roof, covering all from the intense rays of the sun. Before this was put up, they say that workmen used to fall dead with sunstrokes, on the wharves. On board the "Cahawba," I find my barrel of oranges from Iglesia, and box of sweet-meats from La Dominica, and boxes of cigars from Cabaña's, punctually delivered. There, once more, is Bullock, cheerful, and efficient; Rodgers, full of kindness and good-humor; and sturdy, trustworthy Miller, and Porter, the kindly and spirited; and the pleased face of Henry, the captain's steward; and the familiar faces of the other stewards; and my friend's son, who is well and very glad to see me, and full of New Orleans, and of last night, which he spent on shore in Havana. All are in good spirits, for a short sea voyage with old friends is before us; and then--home! The decks are loaded and piled up with oranges: oranges in barrels and oranges in crates, filling all the wings and gangways, the barrels cut to let in air, and the crates with bars just close enough to keep in the oranges. The delays from want of lighters, and the great amount of freight, keep us through the day; and it is nearly sundown before we get under way. All day the fruit boats are along-side, and passengers and crew lay in stocks of oranges and bananas and sapotes, and little boxes of sweetmeats. At length, the last barrel is on board, the permits and passenger-lists are examined, the revenue officers leave us, and we begin to heave up our anchor. The harbor is very full of vessels, and the room for swinging is small. A British mail-steamer, and a Spanish man-of-war, and several merchantmen, are close upon us. Captain Bullock takes his second mate aft and they have a conference, as quietly as if they were arranging a funeral. He is explaining to him his plan for running the warps and swinging the ship, and telling him beforehand what he is to do in this case, and what in that, and how to understand his signs, so that no orders, or as few as possible, need be given at the time of action. The engine moves, the warp is hauled upon, the anchor tripped, and dropped again, and tripped again, the ship takes the right sheer, clear of everything, and goes handsomely out of the harbor, the stars and stripes at her peak, with a waving of hats from friends on the Punta wharf. The western sky is gorgeous with the setting sun, and the evening drums and trumpets sound from the encircling fortifications, as we pass the Casa Blanca, the Cabaña, the Punta, and the Morro. The sky fades, the ship rises and falls in the heave of the sea, the lantern of the Morro gleams over the water, and the dim shores of Cuba are hidden from our sight. 
33617	----	Pioneering ... in Cuba By JAMES M. ADAMS [Illustration] [Illustration: JAMES M. ADAMS.] PIONEERING IN CUBA _A NARRATIVE OF THE SETTLEMENT OF LA GLORIA, THE FIRST AMERICAN COLONY IN CUBA, AND THE EARLY EXPERIENCES OF THE PIONEERS_ BY JAMES M. ADAMS ONE OF THE ORIGINAL COLONISTS _Illustrated_ CONCORD, N. H.: The Rumford Press 1901 Copyright, 1901, by JAMES M. ADAMS TO MY FELLOW COLONISTS WHOSE COURAGE, CHEERFULNESS, AND KINDLY SPIRIT WON MY ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED PREFACE. My excuse for writing and publishing this book is a threefold one. For some time I have strongly felt that the true story of the La Gloria colony should be told, without bias and with an accurate, first-hand knowledge of all the facts. My close relations with the colony and the colonists, and an actual personal residence in La Gloria for nearly half a year, have made me entirely familiar with the conditions there, and I have endeavored to present them to the reader clearly, correctly, and honestly. Secondly, I have been imbued with the belief that many of the daily happenings in the colony, particularly those of the earlier months, are of sufficient general interest to justify their narration; and if I am wrong in this, I am quite sure that these incidents, anecdotes, and recollections will find an attentive audience among the colonists and their friends. It is one of the author's chief regrets that the size and scope of this book does not admit of the mention by name of all of the colonists who were prominent and active in the life of the colony. Thirdly, while in La Gloria, in his capacity as a member of the Pioneer Association, the author had the honor to be the chairman of the committee on History of the Colony. This committee was not officially or outwardly active, but in a quiet way its members stored up history as fast as it was made. The author does not dignify the present work by the name of history, but prefers to call it a narrative of the first year of the colony. He believes, however, that it contains many facts and incidents which will be found useful material to draw upon when in later years a complete history of the first American colony in Cuba may be written. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. V. K. Van De Venter, a professional photographer of Dundee, Michigan, for some of the best pictures in the book. The other photographs were taken, and in several cases kindly furnished gratuitously, by Robin H. Ford, John H. Rising, L. E. Mayo, and W. G. Spiker. I am also under obligation to Mr. Spiker for the loan of the cut of the lake on the Laguna Grande tract, and to Dr. W. P. Peirce for the use of the cut of his pineapple garden in La Gloria. All of the pictures in the book are scenes in the province of Puerto Principe, and with two or three exceptions, in or around La Gloria. J. M. A. _North Weare, N. H., December, 1900._] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE COLONISTS IN NUEVITAS HARBOR. PAGE A New Sight for Old Nuevitas--The _Yarmouth_ drops Anchor in the Harbor--The Vanguard of the First American Colony Planted in Cuba--The Beautiful Cuban Coast--Picturesque Appearance of Nuevitas--"Distance Lends Enchantment to the View"--Character of the Colonists--Gen. Paul Van der Voort--Nearly all the States Represented--"The Only Canuck on Board"--The Voyage from New York 17 CHAPTER II. THE JOURNEY TO PORT LA GLORIA An Irritating Delay--Ashore at Nuevitas--Midnight Row at the Pier--Convivial Colonists Clash With Cubans--Ex-Soldier Takes an Involuntary Bath--The Cuban Police--Hon. Peter E. Park--The Start for La Gloria--Some Intending Colonists Back Out--The Man With the Long, Red Face--The Only Woman--The Fleet Anchors--"To-morrow, Four O'clock, Wind Right, Go!"--An Uncomfortable Night--Cuban Captain Falls Overboard--Port La Gloria Sighted 32 CHAPTER III. A TOUGH TRAMP TO LA GLORIA CITY. Arrival at the Port--A Discouraging Scene--Mud, Water, and Sand Flies--The Memorable Walk to La Gloria "City"--An Awful Road--Battle With Water, Mud, Stumps, Roots, Logs, Briers and Branches--Lawyer Park Leads the Strange Procession--La Gloria at Last--The Royal Palm--Women in Masculine Garb--Col. Thos. H. Maginniss--First Night in La Gloria--The Survey Corps--Chief Engineer Kelly--Experiences of the Lowells and Spikers 44 CHAPTER IV. FIRST DAYS IN THE NEW COLONY. Isolation of La Gloria--The Camp at Night--Strange Sounds in the Forest--The Colonists Happy--Their Excellent Health--Remarkable Cures Effected by the Climate--The Agreeable Temperature--Prolonged Rainy Season--The "Hotel"--The Log Foundation--A Favorite Joke--The Company's Spring--Small Variety of Food--My First Supper in La Gloria--Eating Flamingo and Aged Goat--A Commissary With Nothing to Sell--A Fluctuating Population 59 CHAPTER V. THE ALLOTMENT OF THE LAND. The Character of the Contracts--The Question of Subdivision--Some of the Difficulties--Matter Placed in the Hands of a Committee of the Colonists--Fair and Feasible Plan Adopted--Gen. Van der Voort's Arrival in La Gloria--His Boat Nearly Wrecked--Delay in Getting Baggage--Colonists Get Their Land Promptly--The Town as Laid Out--Site Well Chosen--Woods Full of Colonists Hunting for Their Plantations--Different Kinds of Soil 73 CHAPTER VI. THE SUGAR RIOT. Population of Colony Slowly Increases--Arrival of Second _Yarmouth_--Sensational and Ridiculous Reports--Consternation in Asbury Park--Laughing Over Newspaper Stories--Excitement Over Sugar--Mass Meeting to Air the Grievance--An Unexpected Turn of Affairs--Cable From New York Brings Good News--Van der Voort Elected President of the Company--Sugar Orators Remain Silent--A Noisy Celebration 86 CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURES AND MISADVENTURES. The Women in the Camp--Mrs. Moller--Her Costume and Extraordinary Adventures--How She Entered La Gloria--Roosts in a Tree all Night--Builds the First House in La Gloria--Her Famous Cow and Calf--Wonderful Bloomers--Ubiquitous Mrs. Horn--Weighed 250, but Waded Into La Gloria--Not "Rattled" by a Brook Running Through Her Tent--A Pig Hunt and Its Results--Surveyors Lost in the Woods 94 CHAPTER VIII. THE CUBANS. Good People to "Get Along With"--Their Kindness and Courtesy--Harmony and Good Feeling Between the Colonists and Cubans--Their Primitive Style of Living--The Red Soil and Its Stains--Rural Homes--Prevalence of Children, Chickens, and Dogs--Little Girl Dresses for Company With Only a Slipper--Food and Drink of the Cubans--Few Amusements--An Indifferent People--The Country Districts of the Province of Puerto Principe 104 CHAPTER IX. STEPS OF PROGRESS. Clearing and Planting--The Post-office--Col. John F. Early--The "Old Señor"--La Gloria Police Force--Chief Matthews' Nightly Trip "Down the Line"--No Liquor Sold, and Practically no Crime Committed--Watchman Eugene Kezar--Religious Services and Ministers--La Gloria Pioneer Association--Dr. W. P. Peirce--Mr. D. E. Lowell--Mr. R. G. Barner--Important Work of the Association 118 CHAPTER X. EVENTS IMPORTANT AND OTHERWISE. Worth of the Colonists--Gen. Van der Voort's New Cuban House--The "Lookout Tree"--Its Part in the Cuban Wars--The General's Garden--Marvelously Rapid Growth of Plants--First Birth in La Gloria--Olaf El Gloria Olson--Given a Town Lot--Temperature Figures--Perfection of Climate--The Maginniss Corduroy Road--First Well Dug--Architect M. A. C. Neff 133 CHAPTER XI. SELF-RELIANCE OF THE COLONISTS. The Man With the Hoe--"Grandpa" Withee Able to Take Care of Himself--Not Dead, but Very Much Alive--A Pugnacious Old Man--Mr. Withee Shoots Chickens and Defies the Authorities--Big Jack McCauley and His "Influence"--"Albany" and the Mosquitoes--Arrival of Third _Yarmouth_--Arnold Mollenhauer--John A. Connell--S. W. Storm--The First School and Its Teacher 143 CHAPTER XII. THE FIRST HOLIDAY IN LA GLORIA. Craving for Athletic Sports--Half Holiday Formally Proclaimed--A Beautiful Day--The Colonists Photographed--Lieut. Evans and His Soldiers of the Eighth U. S. Cavalry--Successful Sports--Baseball Game--An Event not Down on the Program--Excited Colonists--Lawyer C. Hugo Drake of Puerto Principe--His Scheme--Ordered Out of Camp--A Night in the Woods--Lieutenant Cienfuente 155 CHAPTER XIII. INDUSTRY OF THE COLONISTS. Pink Orchids on the Trees--Vegetables Raised and Fruit Trees Set Out--The Various Employments--Working on the Survey Corps--Chief Kelly's Facetious Formula--An Official Kicker--B. F.Seibert--Improvements at the Port--Fish, Alligators, and Flamingo--J. L. Ratekin--First Banquet in La Gloria--Departure of Maginniss Party--First Death in the Colony--Only One Death in Six Months--Lowell's Corduroy Road and Kelly's Permanent Highway 166 CHAPTER XIV. THE FIRST BALL IN LA GLORIA. A Semi-Anniversary--Town Lots and Plantations Allotted in First Six Months--A Grand Ball--French Dancing Master in Charge--Dan Goodman's Pennsylvania Modesty--Organizing an Orchestra at Short Notice--The Ballroom--Rev. Dr. Gill Lends His Tent Floor--Elaborate Decorations--A Transformation Scene--Some Taking Specialties--A Fine Supper--Music in Camp--An Aggravating Cornet Player--Singers in the Colony 177 CHAPTER XV. A WALKING TRIP TO PUERTO PRINCIPE. Five Good Walkers--A Halt at Mercedes--Sparsely Settled Country--Cuban Trails--A Night in the Woods--A Cripple From Sore Feet--A Pretty Country Place--The Cubitas Mountains--Hunting for the Late Cuban Capital--A Broad and Beautiful View--Seventeen Miles Without a House--Night on the Plain--The City of Puerto Principe--Politeness of Its People--The Journey Home--Sanchez' Sugar Plantation--Lost in the Forest--La Gloria Once More 186 CHAPTER XVI. IN AND AROUND LA GLORIA. Horses That May Have Committed Suicide--Colonel Maginniss "A Master Hand in Sickness"--Sudden and Surprising Rise of Water--A Deluge of Frogs--A Greedy Snake--Catching Fish in Central Avenue--D. Siefert's Industry--Max Neuber--Mountain View--A Facetious Signboard--The Sangjai--An Aggravating and Uncertain Channel 203 CHAPTER XVII. THE COLONY AT THE END OF THE FIRST YEAR. The Saw Mill--The Pole Tramway to the Bay--A Tragedy in the Colony--Death of Mr. Bosworth--The Summer Season--The Country Around La Gloria--The Cuban Colonization Company--Guanaja--The Rural Guard--Organizations in La Gloria--The March of Improvements--Construction of Wooden Buildings--Colonists Delighted With Their New Home in the Tropics 212 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. James M. Adams Frontispiece. Map of Cuba 16 City of Nuevitas, Cuba 20 Gen. Paul Van der Voort 26 An Involuntary Bath 42 Port La Gloria 46 Author on Road to La Gloria 48 Col. Thomas H. Maginniss 52 "The Hotel" 64 The Spring 68 Robert C. Beausejour 82 La Gloria, Cuba, Looking North 88 First House in La Gloria 97 Frank J. O'Reilly 110 First Women Colonists of La Gloria. 122 Dr. William P. Peirce 126 Gen. Van der Voort's Cuban House 134 La Gloria, Cuba, Looking South 150 Group of Colonists 158 The Survey Corps 168 Interior Gen. Van der Voort's House 182 Agramonte Plaza, Puerto Principe, Cuba 200 Dr. Peirce's Pineapple Patch 208 Scene on Laguna Grande 214 [Illustration: MAP OF CUBA., PROVINCES. 1 PINAR DEL RIO 2 HAVANA 3 MATANZAS 4 SANTA CLARA 5 PUERTO PRINCIPE 6 SANTIAGO DE CUBA PIONEERING IN CUBA. CHAPTER I. ARRIVAL OF THE COLONISTS IN NUEVITAS HARBOR. Just after noon on January 4, 1900, the ancient city of Nuevitas, Cuba, lazily basking in the midday sunshine, witnessed a sight which had not been paralleled in the four hundred years of its existence. A steamer was dropping anchor in the placid water of the harbor a mile off shore, and her decks were thronged with a crowd of more than two hundred eager and active Americans. They wore no uniforms, nor did they carry either guns or swords; and yet they had come on an errand of conquest. They had fared forth from their native land to attack the formidable forests and to subdue the untamed soil of the province of Puerto Principe--a task which required scarcely less courage and resolution than a feat of arms might have demanded in that locality two years before. Well aware that there was a hard fight before them, they were yet sanguine of success and eager to begin active operations. It was the vanguard of the first American colony planted in Cuba. The vessel that lay at anchor in the beautiful land-locked harbor of Nuevitas was the screw steamer _Yarmouth_, a steel ship which, if not as fast and elegant as the ocean greyhounds that cross the Atlantic, was large and fine enough to have easily commanded the unbounded admiration and amazement of Christopher Columbus had he beheld her when he landed from the _Santa Maria_ on the coast of Cuba near this point more than four centuries ago. Great changes have been wrought since the days of Columbus in the manner of craft that sail the seas, but less progress has been made by the city of Nuevitas in those four hundred long years. The _Yarmouth_, substantial if not handsome, and safe if not swift, had brought the colonists to this port without mishap, thus redeeming one of the many promises of the Cuban Land and Steamship Company. Since early morning the vessel had been slowly steaming along the palm-fringed coast of the "Pearl of the Antilles," daybreak having revealed the fact that the boat was too far to the eastward, and late in the forenoon we entered the picturesque bay of Nuevitas, took on a swarthy Cuban pilot, and, gliding quietly past straggling palm-thatched native shacks and tiny green-clad isles, came to anchor in plain view of the city that Velasquez founded in 1514. We had passed two or three small circular forts, any one of which would have been demolished by a single well-directed shot from a thirteen-inch gun. These defenses were unoccupied, and there was naught else to threaten the established peace. [Illustration: CITY OF NUEVITAS, CUBA.] The day was beautiful, freshened by a soft and balmy breeze, with the delightful temperature of 75 degrees. Far back in the interior, through the wonderfully transparent Cuban atmosphere, one could see the light blue peaks of lofty mountains, standing singly instead of in groups, as if each were the monarch of a small principality. Their outlines, as seen at this distance, were graceful and symmetrical, rather than rugged and overpowering like some of their brother chieftains of the North. Near at hand the listless city of Nuevitas extended from the water's edge backward up the hillside of a long, green ridge, the low, red-tiled houses clinging to what seemed precarious positions along the rough, water-worn streets that gashed the side of the hill. To the right a green-covered promontory projected far into the bay, dotted with occasional native shacks and planted in part with sisal hemp. The colonists on shipboard, ignorant of the appearance of this tropical product, at first took the hemp for pineapple plants, but soon learned their mistake from one who had been in the tropics before. Viewed from the harbor, Nuevitas looks pretty and picturesque, but once on shore the illusion vanishes. Mud meets you at the threshold and sticks to you like a brother. The streets, for the most part, are nothing more than rain-furrowed lanes, filled with large, projecting stones and gullies of no little depth. Sticky, yellow mud is everywhere, and once acquired is as hard to get rid of as the rheumatism. The houses, in general, are little better than hovels, and the gardens around them are neglected and forlorn. When a spot more attractive than the others is found, Nature is entitled to all the credit. The shops are poor and mean, and not over well supplied with merchandise. The natives, while kindly disposed toward the "Americanos," are, for the most part, unattractive in dress and person. The few public buildings are ugly and there is not a pleasant street in the town. And yet when seen from the harbor the city looks pretty, mainly on account of its red-tiled houses, grassy hillside slopes, and waving cocoanut palms. The author of the ancient saying that "distance lends enchantment to the view," might well have gathered his inspiration at Nuevitas. If the inhabitants of Nuevitas have the quality of curiosity, they clearly did not have it with them at the time of our arrival. Although it is said on good authority, that the city had never before had more than twelve or fifteen visitors at one time, save soldiers or sailors, the natives betrayed no excitement and little interest in the advent of two hundred American civilians. With the exception of a handful of boatmen and a few fruit venders, not a person came to the piers to gaze at the new arrivals, and in the town the people scarcely gave themselves the trouble to look out of their open dwellings and shops at the colonists. This may have been inherent courtesy--for the Cuban is nothing if not courteous--but to us it seemed more like indifference. The Cubans are certainly an indifferent people, and at this port they appeared to have no object or interest in life. They dwelt in drowsy content, smoking their cigarettes, and doing their little buying and selling in a leisurely and heedless manner. The most of them pick up a precarious living with but little labor. These easy-going habits impress the close observer as being more the result of indifference than downright indolence, for when the occasion demands it the Cuban often exhibits surprising activity and industry. He does not, however, work for the fun of it, and it never occurs to him that it is necessary to lay up anything for the proverbial "rainy day." Accustomed to the fairest skies in the world, he never anticipates cloudy weather. It is quite possible that if we had been arrayed in brilliant uniforms, resplendent of gold lace, brass buttons, and all the accompanying trappings, we should have aroused more interest, for the Cuban loves color, pageant, and martial show, but as a matter of fact, nothing could have been plainer and uglier than the dress of most of the colonists. To the superficial observer, there was nothing about the invaders to hold attention, but to me, who had closely studied my companions and fellow-colonists for nearly a week, they were full of interest and inspiration. They were, to be sure, a motley crowd, representing many states and territories, and several grades of social standing, but they were obviously courageous, enterprising, and of good character. In point of intelligence and manifest honesty and energy they averaged high--much higher than one would expect of the pioneers in a project of this sort. They were not reckless and unscrupulous adventurers, nor yet rolling stones who sought an indolent life of ease, but serious-minded and industrious home-seekers. They had counted the cost, and resolved to go forward and achieve success, expecting obstacles, but not anticipating defeat. A thoughtful person could not fail to be impressed by the serious and resolute manner in which these voyagers entered upon the work of establishing a new home for themselves in a tropical country. Since the days when the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon the bleak shores of New England, I doubt if a better aggregation of men had entered upon an enterprise of this character. The colonists sailed from New York on the _Yarmouth_ on Saturday, December 30, 1899, a stinging cold day. It was the first excursion run by the Cuban Land and Steamship Company, whose offices at 32 Broadway had for several days been crowded with men from all parts of the country eager to form a part of the first expedition to establish an American colony at La Gloria, on the north coast of Cuba, about forty miles west of Nuevitas. Every passenger on board the _Yarmouth_ was supposed to have purchased or contracted for land at La Gloria, and practically all had done so. The steamer was commanded by Capt. E. O. Smith, a popular and efficient officer, and carried besides her complement of crew and waiters, two hundred and eleven passengers, all men with one exception, Mrs. Crandall, the wife of an employé of the company. The colonists represented all sections of the country, from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Florida. No less than thirty states sent their delegations, two territories, Canada, Prince Edward's Island, and British Columbia. All came to New York to make up this memorable excursion. The genial and stalwart Gen. Paul Van der Voort of Nebraska, who was commander-in-chief of the national G. A. R. in 1882-'83, had led on a party of over twenty from the West, several of them his own neighbors in Omaha. The others were from different parts of Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. General Van der Voort was the assistant manager of the company, and a little later became its president. He went to Cuba in the double capacity of an officer of the company, to take charge of its business there, and a colonist to make La Gloria his permanent residence. Honest, affable, and humorous, a magnetic and convincing speaker, with a sunny nature singularly free from affectation and ardently loyal to his friends, General Van der Voort was a natural leader of men, well fitted to head a colonizing expedition. One of his sons had been in La Gloria for some time working as a surveyor in the employ of the company. [Illustration: GEN. PAUL VAN DER VOORT.] General Van der Voort's party, however, formed but a small fraction of the Western representation. Twelve men came from Illinois, six from Michigan, five from Minnesota, four from Wisconsin, four from Indiana, four from Oklahoma--men who were "boomers" in the rush for land in that territory--two from Missouri, two from Washington state, one from Wyoming, one from South Dakota, and one from California. Ohio men, usually so much in evidence, were hard to find, only one man on board acknowledging that he hailed from that state. The South was not so largely represented as the West, but there were two men from Maryland, two from Virginia, two from Georgia, one from Florida, one from West Virginia, and one from Washington, D. C. New York state led the entire list with fifty-one. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts came next with twenty-one each. From New Jersey there were fifteen. Among the New England states, New Hampshire and Connecticut followed Massachusetts, with five each. Rhode Island contributed four, Maine two, and Vermont two. Two of the colonists hailed from British Columbia, one from Prince Edward's Island, and one from Toronto, Canada. The latter, a tall, good-looking Englishman by the name of Rutherford, cheerfully announced himself as "the only Canuck on board." Those who were fortunate enough to become intimately acquainted with this clear-headed and whole-hearted gentleman were easily convinced that while he might call himself a "Canuck" and become a Cuban by emigration, he would remain to the end of his days an Englishman, and a very good specimen of his race. If Rutherford had not taken part in the "sugar riot"--but that's "another story." The colonists represented even more occupations than states. There were four physicians, one clergyman, one lawyer, one editor, one patent office employé, small merchants, clerks, bookkeepers, locomotive engineers, carpenters, and other skilled mechanics, besides many farmers. There were also a number of specialists. The embryo colony included several veterans of the Spanish war, some of whom had been in Cuba before. G. A. R. buttons were surprisingly numerous. The men, generally speaking, appeared to be eminently practical and thoroughly wide awake. They looked able to take hold of a business enterprise and push it through to success, regardless of obstacles. Several of the colonists showed their thrift by taking poultry with them, while an old gentleman from Minnesota had brought along two colonies of Italian honey bees. Another old man explained his presence by jocularly declaring that he was going down to Cuba to search for the footprints of Columbus. Accents representing all sections of the country were harmoniously and curiously mingled, and the spirit of fraternity was marked. The one colored man in the party, an intelligent representative of his race, had as good standing as anybody. The voyage down was uneventful. It occupied four days and a half, and for thirty-six hours, in the neighborhood of Cape Hatteras, very rough water was encountered. But few on board had ever known such a sea, and sickness was universal. The discomfort was great, partly owing to the crowded condition of the boat. Many a hardy colonist sighed for his Western ranch or his comfortable house in the East. The superior attractions of Cuba were forgotten for the moment, and there was intense longing for the land that had been left behind. It is a fact hard to believe that several on board had never before seen the ocean, to say nothing of sailing upon its turbulent bosom. With the return of a smooth sea a marvelous change came over the voyagers, and all began to look eagerly forward to a sight of the famed "Pearl of the Antilles." We were now sailing a calm tropical sea, with the fairest of skies above us and a mild and genial temperature that was a great delight after the severe cold of the Northern winter. The salubrious weather continued through the remaining forty-eight hours of the voyage, and the colonists resumed their interrupted intercourse, having but a single subject in their eager discussions--always the prospects of the colony or something bearing on their pioneer enterprise. The topic was far from being talked out when we glided into the tranquil harbor of Nuevitas. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. THE JOURNEY TO PORT LA GLORIA. The newly arrived colonists found the Spanish word "mañana" still in high favor at Nuevitas, though it was difficult to fix the responsibility for the irritating delays. The Cubans and the officers of the company alike came in for a good deal of straight-from-the-shoulder Yankee criticism. Some of this was deserved, but not all. The company's officers had been handicapped in many ways, and for this and perhaps other reasons, had not pushed things along as rapidly and successfully as the colonists had been led to expect. It was learned that the town of La Gloria was as yet only a town in name, the foundation of its first building, the hotel, having just been laid. The lumber for the structure lay on the docks at Nuevitas. The company's portable sawmill machinery was rusting in the open air at the same place. If the colonists marveled at this, their wonder disappeared when, a little later, they tramped and waded the four miles of so-called "road" that lay between Port La Gloria and La Gloria "city". Nothing daunted by these discouraging signs and the many unfavorable reports, the most of the colonists determined to push ahead. Arriving at Nuevitas Thursday noon, January 4, the passengers of the _Yarmouth_ were not allowed to leave the vessel that day or evening. Many were desirous of exploring the ancient city of Nuevitas, but the most frequent and anxious inquiry was, "When shall we be taken to La Gloria?". It was a hard question to answer, and no one in authority attempted to do so. There were several causes contributing to the delay, one of which was the customs inspection and another the question of transportation. Communication between Nuevitas and La Gloria was neither easy nor regular. The overland route was the nearest, about forty miles, but could only be utilized by a person on foot or horseback. At the time of our arrival this way was entirely impracticable by any mode of travel. The inside or shallow water route was about forty-eight miles long, and the outside or deep water course, sixty miles. The officers of the company decided upon the latter as the most feasible, and set out to procure lighters to convey the colonists and their baggage. This was no easy matter, as the business had to be done with Cubans, and Cubans are never in any hurry about coming to terms. Friday morning the passengers of the _Yarmouth_ were permitted to go ashore and wake up the inhabitants of the sleepy city, each person paying some thrifty Cuban twenty-five cents for transportation thither in a sailboat. The Cuban boatmen coined money during our three days' stay in Nuevitas harbor. So also did the fruit venders, who came out to the steamer in small boats and sold us pineapples, tiny fig bananas, and green oranges at exorbitant prices. The fruit looked inferior, but the flavor was good. Most of it grew without care, and in a semi-wild condition. The colonists were eager to sample any fruit of the country, as most of them were intending to make fruit growing their business. The "Americanos" succeeded in waking up Nuevitas in some degree, and at night a few of them set out to "paint the town red". Only a few, however; the great majority behaved remarkably well. The day was spent in quietly inspecting the city and its surroundings. Many of the visitors bought needed supplies at the small stores. Saturday was passed in the same way as Friday, the only incident of note being a small-sized disturbance which took place at the pier near midnight. Three belated Americans, who had done more than look upon the "aguardiente", got into a quarrel with a Cuban boatman in regard to their return to the _Yarmouth_. The Americans were mainly at fault, the boatman was obstinate, and a war of words was soon followed by blows. The boatman was getting the worst of the scrimmage when several of the Cuban police swooped down upon the party. Two of the Americans drew revolvers, but they were quickly disarmed and overcome, one of the trio, who wore the uniform of the United States army, which he had lately quitted, falling over into the harbor in the scuffle. This sudden and unexpected ducking ended the fight; the "Americanos" compromised with the boatman, and were allowed to return to the _Yarmouth_. These intending colonists did not remain long at La Gloria, although one of the three purposes to return. The conduct of the Cuban police upon this occasion, and upon all others which came under my notice, was entirely creditable. They dress neatly, are sober and inoffensive in manner, and appear to perform their duties conscientiously and well. While we lay in Nuevitas harbor we received several visits from Gen. A. L. Bresler and the Hon. Peter E. Park, president and resident manager, respectively, of the Cuban Land and Steamship Company, both of whom had been stopping in the city for some time. They had acquired the Cuban dress and, to some extent, Cuban habits. Mr. Park decided to accompany the colonists to La Gloria, and to share with them all the hardships that they might encounter on the journey. It was no new thing for Mr. Park to make the trip. He had made it slowly along the coast in a small sailboat; he had made it in quicker time in a steam launch, and he had sometimes gone overland on horseback, struggling through mud and water and tangled vines, swimming swollen rivers and creeks, and fighting swarms of aggressive mosquitoes in the dense woods. He knew exactly what was before him; the colonists did not. General Bresler, strange to say, had never been at La Gloria. It was on Sunday afternoon, at a little past one o'clock, that the colonists finally got away from Nuevitas and made the start for La Gloria. The fleet consisted of three small schooners loaded with light baggage, a little freight, and nearly two hundred passengers. Two of the boats were Nuevitas lighters, with Cuban captains and crew, while the third was a schooner from Lake Worth, Florida, carrying about twenty colonists from that state. This boat, known as the _Emily B._, had arrived at Nuevitas a day or two before the _Yarmouth_. Among her passengers were four or five women. The heavy baggage of the _Yarmouth_ colonists was loaded upon yet another lighter, which was to follow later. The colonists embarked upon the sailing craft from the decks of the _Yarmouth_, leaving behind a score or more of their number whose backbone had collapsed or who for some other reason had decided to return home immediately. It is, I believe, a veritable fact that more than one of the intending colonists went back on the same boat without so much as setting foot on the soil of Cuba. Probably examples of the "chocolate éclair" backbone are to be found everywhere. One of the returning voyagers was a tall, thin man of middle age, wearing a long, red, sorrowful face. It had been apparent from the very start that his was an aggravated case of home-sickness. He had shown unmistakable evidence of it before the _Yarmouth_ had even left North river, and he did not improve as the vessel approached the coast of Cuba. He rarely spoke to anybody, and could be seen hour after hour kneeling in a most dejected attitude upon a cushioned seat in the main saloon, gazing mournfully out of the window at the stern across the broad waters. His was about the most striking example of sustained melancholy that ever came under my observation, and could not seem other than ridiculous in that company. When we slowly moved away from the _Yarmouth_, I was not surprised to see this man standing silently upon the steamer's deck. The look of unillumined dejection was still upon his face. A man whose face does not light up under the subtle charm of the Cuban atmosphere is, indeed, a hopeless case, and ought not to travel beyond the limits of the county wherein lies his home. There were others who remained behind on the _Yarmouth_ for better reasons. Mr. and Mrs. Crandall returned to New York because the company's sawmill, which he was to operate, had not been taken to La Gloria and was not likely to be for some time to come. Mrs. Crandall was the only woman passenger on the voyage down and had been fearfully seasick all the way. Orders had been given that no women or children should be taken on this first excursion, but an exception was made in the case of Mrs. Crandall because she was the wife of an employé of the company. The departing colonists waved their good-bys to the _Yarmouth_, and the little fleet was towed out to the entrance of Nuevitas harbor, about ten miles, when the schooners came to anchor and the tugboat returned to the city. Although it was but little past three o'clock and the weather fine, the passengers learned to their dismay that the boats had anchored for the night. The furrowed-faced old captain would take no chances with the open sea at night and so would proceed no farther. "To-morrow--four o'clock--wind right--go!" he said, with a dramatic gesture and what seemed to the colonists an unnecessarily explosive emphasis on the last word. The boats were anchored in the narrow entrance to the harbor, where the smooth-running tide closely resembled a river. On one bank, one hundred yards away, were an old stone fort and a few Cuban shacks. Some of the passengers were desirous of going ashore to see the fort and the houses, but neither entreaties nor bribes could force the old Cuban captain to allow the use of his small boats. The Cubans are fond of waiting and cannot appreciate American restlessness. So we were obliged to sit quietly and gaze wistfully at the green-clad shore. As night came on, it was found that loaves of bread and large chunks of salt beef constituted the larder. It was poor fare, but the colonists accepted the situation cheerfully and broke bread and ate as much of the greasy meat as they could. It was a radiant evening, with soft, caressing breezes and a star-lit sky of incomparable beauty. Many of the voyagers saw the famed Southern Cross for the first time and gazed at it long in silent contemplation, overcome by that delicious feeling of dreamy content which takes possession of one in the tropics. On one of the boats, religious services were held, conducted by a Georgia clergyman, the Rev. A. E. Seddon of Atlanta, one of the most enthusiastic and uncomplaining of the colonists. The singing of hymns was joined in by many of the eighty-seven passengers on the boat, and prayers were offered by no less than four individuals. It was a singularly impressive scene, not altogether unlike what took place on board the _Mayflower_ centuries before. The peaceful evening was followed by a night of great discomfort. The passengers were crowded together, and many slept, or attempted to sleep, on boxes, barrels, or the lumber which formed a part of the cargo of the schooner. I slept, at intervals, on the lumber designed for the hotel at La Gloria. Often had I slept in hotels, but this was my first experience in sleeping _on_ one. Some of the passengers on the schooners sat up all night in preference to lying upon boxes and lumber. We were not, however, without entertainment during that long, wearisome night. We had a philosopher among us, in the person of quaint old Benjamin Franklin--of Griffin's Corners, New York--who talked earnestly and eloquently upon his appalling experiences in Confederate military prisons many years before. The handful of soldiers of the Spanish war were modestly silent in the presence of this gaunt old veteran of the great civil strife. Judge Groesbeck, of Washington, D. C., quoted poetry and told anecdotes and stories, while the Rev. Mr. Seddon, Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., and others, contributed their share to the conversation. As we became drowsy, we could hear, now and again, some one of our companions giving an imitation of the Cuban captain: "To-morrow--four o'clock--wind right--go!". [Illustration: AN INVOLUNTARY BATH.] Early in the morning, true to his word, the captain set sail, and as the wind was right good progress was made. One of the diverting incidents of the morning was the fall of the captain overboard. In the crowded condition of the boat, he lost his footing and went over backward into the water. He scrambled back again in a hurry, with a look of deep disgust upon his rather repulsive face, but the inconsiderate "Americanos" greeted him with a roar of laughter. One enterprising amateur photographer secured a snapshot of him as he emerged dripping from his involuntary bath. A little later one of the Cubans caught a handsome dolphin, about two feet and a half long. The crew cooked it and served it up at ten cents a plate. As our schooner, drawing five feet of water, entered the inlet about fifteen miles from the port of La Gloria, she dragged roughly over the rocky bottom for some distance and came perilously near suffering misfortune. The other schooners came in collision at about this time and a panic ensued. No serious damage resulted, however. It was between twelve and one o'clock that afternoon that the port of La Gloria was sighted. CHAPTER III. A TOUGH TRAMP TO LA GLORIA CITY. As the fleet of schooners drew near La Gloria port, a row of small tents was discerned close to the shore. Elsewhere there was a heavy growth of bushes to the water's edge--the mangroves and similar vegetation fairly growing out into the sea. Between and around the tents was a wretched slough of sticky, oozy mud nearly a foot deep, with streams of surface water flowing over it in places into the bay. The colonists were filled with excitement and mingled emotions as they approached the shore, but their hearts sank when they surveyed this discouraging scene. They landed on the rude pier, and after much difficulty succeeded in depositing their light baggage in tents reserved for the purpose. Narrow boards laid down to walk on were covered with slippery mud, and some lost their footing and went over headforemost into the slough. One jaunty, well-dressed young man from New Jersey, who had found the trip vastly entertaining up to this point, was so disgusted at suffering a "flop-over" into the mire that he turned immediately back and returned to his home in Atlantic City. And so the sifting process went on among the intending colonists. The conditions at the port at that time were certainly most unpleasant. Mud and water were on every hand, and sand flies were as thick as swarms of bees, and nearly as ferocious; they allowed no one any peace. The company had considerately provided coffee and bread for the landing "immigrants", and something of the sort was certainly needed to fortify them for what was to follow. Lunch over, such of the colonists as had not decided to turn back started for the "city" of La Gloria, four miles inland. We found that the electric cars were not running, that the 'bus line was not in operation, and that we could not take a carriage to the hotel; nor was there a volante, a wagon, a bullock cart, a horse, mule, or pony in evidence. Neither was there a balloon or any other kind of airship. We learned further that a rowboat could be used only a portion of the way. Under the circumstances, we decided to walk. [Illustration: PORT LA GLORIA. _Photograph by V. K. Van De Venter, Jan. 25, 1900._] The road, if such it may be called, led through an open savanna, with occasional belts of timber. There had been heavy rains just before our arrival, and the trail was one of the most wretched ever followed by a human being. For about a quarter of a mile there was an apology for a corduroy road, but the logs composing it were so irregular and uneven in size, and had been so disarranged by surface water and so nearly covered with debris that it all seemed to have been placed there to obstruct travel rather than to facilitate it. After the corduroy, the trail was a disheartening mixture of water, mud, stumps, roots, logs, briers, and branches. Now we would be wading through shallow water and deep mud that almost pulled our shoes off; then splashing through water and tall, coarse grass; and again, carefully threading our precarious way among ugly stumps, logs, and fallen limbs, in water above our knees. At times the traveler found himself almost afloat in the forest. He was lucky, indeed, if he did not fall down, a misfortune which was little less than a tragedy. Before leaving the port we had been advised to remove our stockings and roll our trousers above our knees. Few of us had on anything better than ordinary shoes, and the sensation of tramping through the mud and water with these was far from pleasant. Many had rubber boots or leggings in their trunks, but the trunks were still at Nuevitas. [Illustration: AUTHOR ON ROAD TO LA GLORIA. (_Jan. 8, 1900._)] Notwithstanding the bad road, one hundred and sixty stout-hearted colonists set out for La Gloria between 1:30 and 3 o'clock. They straggled along for miles, old men and young men, and even lame men; some with valises, some with bundles, and many with overcoats. In the lead was Peter E. Park, the Detroit lawyer who for months had been acting as the Cuban manager for the company. His stalwart form was encased in a suit of white duck, and he wore a broad, slouch hat and high, leather boots. He looked quite picturesque as he strode through the mud and water, apparently trying to impress the colonists with the idea that the poor road was nothing to justify making a fuss. Inwardly, no doubt, he was somewhat sensitive on the subject of the road; justly or unjustly, the colonists blamed him for its condition. It was hot and hard work, this four-mile walk under a tropical sun, but the men bore it with a good deal of patience. I started with a pair of rubbers on, but was compelled to abandon them before getting far, leaving a large amount of rich Cuban soil in and on them. The scene which presented itself was unique and interesting. All sorts of costumes were worn, including some young fellows in soldiers' uniforms, and there was no little variety in the luggage carried. Some staggered under very heavy loads. Quite a number of cameras and kodaks were to be seen. The trail led through a rich savanna, soil which is undoubtedly adapted to the raising of sugar cane, rice, and cocoanuts. Many palmetto and palm trees lined the way. One could not well view the scenery without stopping, for fear of losing one's footing. Thorns were troublesome and easily penetrated the wet shoes of the weary travelers. The colonists all agreed that this road was the freest from dust of any they had ever trod. At last, after two hours of toil and discomfort, we came in sight of dry land and the camp. We had crossed two small creeks and seen a few unoccupied native shacks. No part of the land had been cultivated. Many of us had seen for the first time close at hand the majestic royal palm, which is deservedly the most distinguished tree in the island. It is a tree without branches, crowned at the top of a perfectly straight shaft with a bunch of long, graceful, dark green leaves. The royal palm rises to a height of sixty, seventy, and even eighty feet, its symmetrical shape and whitish color giving it the appearance of a marble column. It bears no fruit, and affords little shade, but it is highly ornamental and forms a striking feature of the landscape. The tree often lives to be two hundred years old; it has twenty leaves, one of which is shed about once a month. It has been stated that the seeds from a single tree will support one good-sized hog. As we approached our destination we passed two buxom women sitting on a huge stump. They were clad in shirt waists, belted trousers and leggings, and wore broad hats of a masculine type. We silently wondered if this was the prevailing fashion among the women of La Gloria, but soon found that it was not. Even the pair that we had first seen came out a few days later in dainty skirts and feminine headgear. Indeed, we found La Gloria, in some respects, more civilized than we had anticipated. It was late in the afternoon of Monday, January 8, 1900, that the one hundred and sixty members of the first excursion to establish the first American colony in Cuba, reached the camp which occupied the site of La Gloria city of to-day. We found about a dozen tents, and as many more native shacks occupied by Cubans who were at work for the company. The Cubans numbered about fifty, and the American employés nearly as many more. There were also a few Florida and other settlers who had reached the spot early. Altogether, the population just before our arrival was about one hundred, seven or eight of whom were women. [Illustration: COL. THOMAS H. MAGINNISS.] The white city grew rapidly after we appeared on the scene. The company had tents, which we were obliged to put up for ourselves, and it was several hours before we had opportunity to even partially dry our wet feet and shoes. All that evening little groups of barefooted men could be seen gathered around camp-fires, drying themselves and their clothing. The distribution, location, and erection of the tents was placed in charge of Col. Thomas H. Maginniss of Philadelphia, Pa., an ex-officer of the United States regular army and a veteran of the Civil War, who had come down among the colonists on the _Yarmouth_. Colonel Maginniss was a handsome man of great stature, youthful in appearance, mentally alert and physically active, with very prepossessing manners. Although a little past fifty years of age, he looked to be hardly more than forty. He was a favorite from the start, and aside from being a picturesque personality, soon became an influential power among the colonists. So efficiently did he perform his duties in supervising the erection of the tent city, that a little later he was regularly given the position of superintendent of camp, in the employ of the company. He held this post until his return to the States, early in April. Our first night in La Gloria was not one of sybaritic pleasure. We were able to secure some poor cots and one thin blanket apiece. This was insufficient, for the nights, or rather the early mornings, were quite cold. Some of the men were obliged to sit up all night to gather warmth from fires. The rotten cloth on the cots went to pieces, in most cases, before the night was over, and, altogether, sleep was at a premium. Many of the tents were crowded; in mine were eight persons, representing nearly as many states. Fortunately, the insects gave us very little trouble. The population of the camp that first night must have been nearly three hundred, and the next day it increased to quite that number. * * * * * While the colonists did not arrive at La Gloria in any considerable numbers until January, 1900, the preliminary operations began there on October 9, 1899, when Chief Engineer J. C. Kelly landed with a survey corps from Texas. It was a splendid corps of bright, hardy, plucky, indefatigable men, skilful in their work and under discipline as rigid as that of an army. Chief Kelly was from Eagle Lake, Texas, in which state he had become well known through the performance of a great deal of important work. He was an exceedingly capable engineer, a strict but just disciplinarian, a good financier, and at all times highly popular with his men, whose devotion to him was as striking as that often shown by soldiers to their colonel or their general. Mr. Kelly was an interesting talker, and an athlete and amateur impersonator of no mean pretensions. With him he brought, as assistant chief, Mr. H. O. Neville, a well-educated, versatile, and agreeable young man. Among the others in the Texas party were Sam M. Van der Voort, son of the general, and I. G. Wirtz, both of whom later became instrument men. S. H. Packer, also of Texas, was one of the corps. From New York came F. Kimble and J. A. Messier, the latter familiarly known as "Albany", and from Havana, B. B. Lindsley, all three serving later as instrument men more or less of the time. All the men above mentioned were efficient surveyors and good fellows, each something of a "character" in his way. Among other early arrivals, most of whom were attached to the survey corps, were O. V. De Long of Havana, H. L. Starker of Chicago, David Porter of Detroit, Richard Head of Florida, J. A. McCauley of New York, Will Corlett, and Jack Griffith. The experiences of the members of the survey corps at La Gloria had been a continued story of hardship, privation, and exposure. They came in before the rainy season had ended, pushing their toilsome way through tangled vines and thorny thickets, wading through mud and water, and often being compelled to swim swollen creeks. Much of the time they patiently worked knee deep or waist deep in water, covered with swarms of mosquitoes or other pestiferous insects. Often they had little to eat save cornmeal "mush" and boniatos (sweet potatoes); but for all this, they were seldom ill and rarely made a complaint. Sleeping in their wet clothes, which would not dry in the dampness of the night, they were up early each morning ready for another day's attack upon the jungle. The fact that they were not more often sick is the best testimonial to the healthfulness of the climate of northeastern Cuba that has come under my notice. It speaks volumes, especially when it is known that a little later men from the Northern states, and even British Columbia, worked on the survey corps under similar conditions and with like immunity from serious illness. Occasionally, to be sure, they would be poisoned from standing too long in water or coming in contact with the güao tree, or shrub, but this affliction, while severe, was never fatal. The good work faithfully and uncomplainingly performed by the survey corps in and around La Gloria, under such trying circumstances, is worthy of as much praise and admiration as a successful military campaign. It required courage, skill, and patient endurance to move upon and tame this tropical forest on the north coast of Cuba. A handful of colonists followed the survey corps into La Gloria at intervals, the first ladies coming in December. These were Mrs. D. E. Lowell and Mrs. W. G. Spiker; they came with their husbands. Mr. Lowell had been a prosperous orange and pineapple grower in Florida until the great freeze came, and Mr. Spiker was a successful photographer in Ohio before leaving his state to find him a new home in the tropics. The Lowells and Spikers were intelligent and cultivated people who had been accustomed to a good style of living, but who were now ready to undertake a rough, pioneer life in the strong hope of a bright future. The party landed at Palota, northwest of La Gloria, and came in with horses and wagon of their own, following the roughest kind of trail for the larger part of nine miles. It was a hard and perilous trip; only with the greatest difficulty could the horses draw the load through the heavy mud and over the deeply gullied road. More than once the team seemed hopelessly stuck, but was extricated after a time and the toilsome journey continued. At last the bedraggled party reached La Gloria, and the first women colonists set foot on the soil of the future Cuban-American city. When the _Yarmouth_ colonists arrived, the Lowells and Spikers had been living at La Gloria for several weeks; they were well and happy, and pleased with the climate and the country. CHAPTER IV. FIRST DAYS IN THE NEW COLONY. The first few days after our arrival we led a strange and what seemed to many of us an unreal life. Shut into a small open space by a great forest, with no elevation high enough for us to see even so much of the outside world as hills, mountains, or the sea, it almost seemed as if we had dropped off of the earth to some unknown planet. Day after day passed without our seeing the horizon, or hearing a locomotive or steamboat whistle. We had no houses, only tents, and there was not a wooden building of any sort within a dozen miles. At night the camp was dimly lighted by flickering fires and the starry sky, and through the semi-darkness came the hollow, indistinct voices of men discussing the outlook for the future. There were always some who talked the larger part of the night, and others who invariably rose at three o'clock in the morning; this was two hours before light. In the deep forest at night were heard strange sounds, but high above them all, every night and the whole of the night, the harsh, complaining note of a certain bird who seemed to be eternally unreconciled to the departure of day. I think it was a bird, but it may have been the wail of a lost soul. It was lonesome there in the wilds of Cuba in those early days of the new colony, and doubtless there was some home-sickness, but the reader should not gain the impression that the pioneers were downcast and unhappy. On the contrary, they were delighted with the climate and the country, despite the difficulties encountered in entering it and the deprivations which had to be put up with. From the first, the colonists, generally speaking, were more than cheerful; they were happy and contented. Buoyant in spirits, eager to explore and acquire information concerning the surrounding country, they enjoyed the pioneer life with the keenest relish. They laughed at the hardships and privations, made friends with each other and with the Cubans, and tramped the woods and trails with reckless disregard of mud and water and thorny underbrush. The men were astonished to find themselves in such excellent health; the more they exposed themselves, the more they seemed to thrive, until nearly every man in the colony was ready to say that he was better physically and mentally than when he left home. It was the same with the women, whose improved health, entire cheerfulness, and evident contentment were a revelation to the observer. There are many women who take as readily to a pioneer life as do the men. This was notably the case in La Gloria. The colonists had not come to La Gloria in search of a health resort--at least, the great majority had not--but that is what they found. Scarcely had we set foot on the soil of Cuba when those of us who had catarrh--and what Yankee has not?--found that we no longer suffered from the affliction. This cure, which proved permanent, was something the majority of us had not counted on. Nor had we counted on the entire freedom from colds which we enjoyed in the island. But the cure of catarrh was of small importance in comparison with the sudden and marked improvement in those who suffered from nervous diseases. It is not too much to say, that many found the soothing Cuban climate a specific for such disease which they had not dreamt of in their philosophy. Those with kidney ailments and rheumatism reported themselves improved, and there was not wanting evidence that persons with consumptive tendencies and other weaknesses would find the air salubrious and a residence in this part of the island beneficial. The temperature at this time was delightful, a close approach to perfection, the thermometer ranging from 70° to 84° at noon, and rarely falling below 60° at any time of day. It still rained frequently, an unusual and remarkable prolongation of the rainy season, which ordinarily ends in November, but the water fell in brief showers and left the rest of the day bright and clear. Indeed, it was not until February that the rain ceased altogether and the dry season fairly began. The Cubans declared that they had never known the wet season to continue so late. The long continued rains were held responsible, perhaps justly so, for many of the inconveniences and drawbacks which the colonists encountered. The company stoutly declared that to these unusual meteorological conditions was due the failure to build the road to the port which had been promised, and that the absence of the road prevented the transportation of the lumber for the construction of the hotel. This latter assertion was true beyond all question. The "hotel" was a subject of much comment and immoderate mirth. It existed on paper in spacious and imposing elegance; it was a splendid structure of the imagination. But let it not be thought for one moment that the hotel was wholly a myth. Not so; the situation would not have been half so funny if it had been. There stood the foundation for the immense building squarely across Central avenue, about a quarter of a mile back from the front line of the town. A large space had been cleared in the forest, and the centre of this opening was the hotel site. The foundation consisted of large logs of hard wood, sawed about four feet long and stood upright. They were set in cement on stone that was sunk slightly below the surface of the ground. How many of these logs there were I cannot say, but there was a small army of them, aligned across Central avenue and extending far to either side. Under the dim light of the stars they looked like a regiment of dwarfs advancing to attack the camp. Workmen were putting the finishing touches on this foundation when we arrived, but the work was soon discontinued altogether, leaving the wooden army to serve as an outpost of slowly advancing civilization. Of course, we always directed new arrivals to the "hotel" as soon as they came in over the "road" from the port! After a while we became so fond of the hotel joke that I think we should have been sorry to see the building completed. [Illustration: "THE HOTEL." _Photograph by V. K. Van De Venter, Jan. 23, 1900._] The bad road to the port also cut off all chance of getting the sawmill up to La Gloria, and it daily became more evident that we should continue to dwell in tents for some time to come. We were destitute enough during those first days in the colony. Our trunks had not come, and did not for several weeks, and many of us were without change of clothing or even a towel. We washed in a small creek which ran through the Cuban camp, wiping our hands and faces on handkerchiefs. This and other creeks served us well for drinking water, and there was also an excellent spring on the company's reserve north of the town. Very little freight could be brought up from the port, and hence it was that we were not over-well supplied with provisions. There was usually enough in quantity, but the quality was poor and there was a painful lack of variety. The engineer corps' cook house was hastily enlarged into a public restaurant upon our arrival, and did the best it could to feed the hungry colonists. Some of the latter boarded themselves from the start--purchasing what supplies they could get at the commissary--and perhaps had a shade the best of it. I shall never forget my first supper in La Gloria. It was at the company's restaurant. We were crowded together on long, movable benches, under a shelter tent. Before us were rough board tables innocent of cloth. The jejines (gnats or sand flies) swarmed about us, disputing our food and drink and even the air we breathed. The food was not served in courses; it came on all at once, and the "all" consisted of cold bread without butter, macaroni, and tea without milk. There were not even toothpicks or glasses of water. Amid the struggling humanity, and regardless of the inhumanity of the jejines (pronounced by the Cubans "haheens"), my gentlemanly friend from Medfield, Mass., sat at my right and calmly ate his supper with evident relish. He was fond of macaroni and tea. Alas! I was not. At home he had been an employé in an insane asylum. I, alas! had not enjoyed the advantages of such wholesome discipline. Of that supper I remember three things most distinctly--the jejines, my friend's fondness for macaroni and tea, and the saintly patience and good-humor of our waiter, Al Noyes. It was not long before there was an improvement in the fare, although no great variety was obtainable. We usually had, however, the best there was in camp. The staples were salt beef, bacon, beans, and sweet potatoes or yams, and we sometimes had fresh pork (usually wild hog), fried plantains, and thin, bottled honey. We often had oatmeal or corn meal mush, and occasionally we rejoiced in a cook whose culinary talent comprehended the ability to make fritters. The bread was apt to be good, and we had Cuban coffee three times a day. We had no butter, and only condensed milk. It was considerably later, when I ate at the chief engineer's table, that we feasted on flamingo and increased our muscular development by struggling with old goat. If it had been Chattey's goat, no one would have complained, but unfortunately it was not. Chattey was our cook, and he kept several goats, one of which had a pernicious habit of hanging around the dining tent. One day, just before dinner, he was discovered sitting on a pie in the middle of the table, greedily eating soup out of a large dish. Chattey's goat was a British goat, and had no respect for the Constitution of the United States or the table etiquette which obtained in the first American colony in Cuba. The soup was dripping from Billy's whiskers, which he had not even taken the trouble to wipe. It is certain that British goats have no table manners. [Illustration: THE SPRING. _Photograph by V. K. Van De Venter, Jan. 23, 1900._] But I am getting ahead of my story. The condition of the road to the port was so bad for some time after our arrival that it was barely possible to get up sufficient provisions to supply the daily needs of the camp, to say nothing of other freight. We were in need of almost everything to furnish our tents or to begin agricultural operations. There was, to be sure, the "commissary," where the company had confidently assured us in its advertising literature "every necessary article from a plough to a knitting needle" would be on sale "at the most reasonable prices." As a matter of fact, the commissary was almost as bare as the famous cupboard of old Mother Hubbard, and of the commodities that were stored there, very few seemed to be for sale to the colonists. After several ineffectual attempts to get what I wanted, I entered the commissary tent one day to make a test case. Of Mr. Richardson, the man in charge, I blandly inquired: "Can I get a tin pail?" "No," with a gentle shake of the head. "Can I get any kind of a pail?" "No," with another shake. "Can I get a tin pan or a wash basin?" "No," with a shake. "Can I get a tin dish or an earthen dish or a wooden dish?" "No," with more shakes. "Can I buy a tin cup or an earthen mug?" "No," with a vigorous shake. "Can I buy a knife, fork, or spoon?" "No, no," with two quick shakes. "Can I buy a piece of cloth of any kind?" "No, sir," stiffly. "Can I buy an empty box?" "No, sir, you can't--need 'em all ourselves." "Is there anything that you have got to sell?" I inquired meekly. "Well, there is some mosquito netting over there." I had mosquito netting--but mosquito netting did not make a very good drinking utensil. I left the commissary without inquiring for a plough or a knitting needle. The population of La Gloria fluctuated greatly during the first week after our advent. Our arrival and the additions of the following day had brought the total population of the camp up to at least three hundred. The wet and muddy trails, and the backwardness of all improvements, increased enormously the feeling of distrust among the colonists, and some began to loudly question the security of titles. This alarm, which ultimately proved to be entirely unfounded, kept the camp in a ferment for a day or two. Oceans of discussion were indulged in, Mr. Park was closely and warmly questioned, and there was a general feeling of uneasiness and unrest. The result was that when the last half of the week had begun, La Gloria had suffered a loss of nearly one hundred of its population. Discouraged and disgusted men made their way back to the coast, hoping to get transportation to Nuevitas, and thence back to their respective homes. There was a delay at Port La Gloria, and a few remained there until they had made up their minds to return to the camp. The others went on to Nuevitas, but were unable to secure transportation at once to the States. The consequence was that nearly or quite one half eventually returned to La Gloria, straggling in from time to time. As the week drew to a close the town quieted down, the restless spirits having departed. Those of us who remained either had faith in the ultimate success of the project, or were at least disposed to give the enterprise a fair trial. We were not easily stampeded; and we placed some reliance on Senator Park's positive assurance that the deeds would be all right. We saw, of course, that the company's affairs had been badly managed, and that promised improvements had not as yet materialized, but, on the other hand, we had learned from personal observation that the land was good, the timber valuable, the drinking water pure and abundant, and the climate delightful beyond description. The most of those who returned to the States with harrowing tales either never got as far as La Gloria at all, or else spent less than forty-eight hours in the camp. The majority of the colonists cheerfully stuck by the colony, and laughed at the untruthful and exaggerated newspaper stories as they were sent down to us from the frozen North. CHAPTER V. THE ALLOTMENT OF THE LAND. The chief of the immediate problems which confronted the colonists and the officers of the company was the allotment of the land. The company had purchased it, or secured options on it, in large tracts, some of these tracts containing over ten thousand acres each. The colonists had contracted for it in small holdings, varying from a town lot, 25 x 100 feet in size, to a forty-acre tract of plantation land. No more than forty acres were sold to any one on a single contract. The contracts which could be made were, respectively, as follows: Town lots, three sizes, 25 x 100 feet, 50 x 100, and 50 x 150; plantation land, 2-1/2 acres, 5 acres, 10 acres, 20 acres, and 40 acres. The purchaser paid in full or on monthly instalments, as he preferred, being allowed a discount of ten per cent. for cash. According to the terms of the contracts, he did not purchase the land at all, but bought stock in a coöperative company and the land was a gift to him. However, the coöperative company feature was always in the background in the mind of the colonist, and he felt that he was buying the land and almost invariably so termed the transaction. It was the land he had his eye on, and his present anxiety was to have a good piece promptly allotted to him. At the company's headquarters in New York, no plan of subdivision had been formulated further than a general promise in advertising circulars to allot the land in the order of the numbers of the contracts. At first glance, this seemed both fair and feasible, but once on the ground at La Gloria, some very formidable difficulties loomed up. Of the four or five thousand persons who had invested up to that time less than three hundred were at La Gloria, and there was not in Cuba even a list of the people who had made contracts with the company, to say nothing of their respective holdings and the status of their payments. No such list could be obtained from New York under several weeks or perhaps months, and when obtained would be of little value for the reason that there could not possibly be land enough surveyed by that time to allot one half of the thousands of investors. Surveying in this dense tropical forest was necessarily slow work, and progress had been impeded by the long-continued rains. It was manifestly impossible to make a general allotment of the land at once, and yet it was essential that the colonists who had actually arrived on the spot should be given their tracts promptly and permitted to go to work upon them. The life of the colony seemed to hinge on action of this sort. Quite early the company had stated that the subdivision would be made about January 1, and when General Van der Voort arrived in New York in the latter part of December, he assured the colonists who were preparing to sail with him to Cuba that they should have their land by January 15. This promise was carried out to the letter, and was the only rational course of action that could be pursued under the existing circumstances. It undoubtedly saved the colony at what was a critical stage. During the voyage down, the colonists on board the _Yarmouth_ were greatly exercised over the method of allotment; that is to say, many of them were, while others declared that they would be satisfied if they only got their land promptly. General Van der Voort gave the subject much anxious consideration, seeking to devise a plan which should be at once just and practical. He finally decided that the fairest and best thing to do was to place the matter in the hands of a committee of the colonists, giving them the power to prescribe the method of allotment within certain limitations, subject to the approval of the colonists on the ground. The general described this as the "town-meeting" principle, and his decision gave entire satisfaction to the pioneers. General Van der Voort arrived in La Gloria Thursday, January 11, having remained behind at Nuevitas to see the baggage of the colonists through the custom house. This accomplished, he took passage for La Gloria on board the lighter carrying the trunks, etc. The voyage was not a smooth one. The boat came near being wrecked in the rough sea, and suffered the loss of its rudder. Finally an anchorage was effected about a dozen miles from the La Gloria shore, and General Van der Voort and others were taken off in a small boat. The trunks and other baggage were not landed until nearly a week later, and it was several weeks before much of the luggage reached La Gloria city. The contents of many of the trunks suffered serious damage from water and mould, although in some cases the things came through entirely uninjured. General Van der Voort rode from Port La Gloria to the camp on horseback, a hard trip, for the road had not improved. The mud and water and debris made it a slow and exhausting journey. He assumed charge of the company's business in the colony at once. Arrangements were made for a prompt allotment of the land, and a committee of nine colonists, with Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., as chairman, was chosen to devise a plan of distribution. After several prolonged sessions, the committee unanimously reported a scheme by which those present should select their land from the official map in the order of the priority of their purchases. After these, the investors having authorized representatives on the ground, the latter holding powers of attorney, were to have their chance. In this second class, also, priority of purchase governed the order of selection. The report further provided that the investor should be allowed a second choice if he found his land to be unsatisfactory. This plan, which I believed then and believe now was the best that could have been devised, was adopted by the colonists with but a single dissenting vote. On Saturday, January 13, the allotment began, in what was known as headquarters tent. The committee which had formulated the plan of distribution was in charge, assisted by Chief Engineer Kelly, Architect Neff, and others. The town lots were given out first, and by night nearly all who were entitled to make selections in these classes had been served. The town lot distribution was completed Monday morning, the 15th. The town was one mile square, and had been laid out and surveyed under the supervision of M. A. Custer Neff, civil engineer and architect. It was traversed and counter-traversed by streets and avenues, appropriately named. These were as yet, for the most part, only surveyors' paths cut through the forest, but they were much used as thoroughfares to reach town lots and the plantation lands beyond. They were rough roads, filled with mud, water, stumps, stubble, and roots, but with the advent of the dry season they became more easily passable. The highway running through the centre of the town to and from the coast was known as Central avenue, and the road passing through the centre at right angles was called Dewey street. Around the intersecting point, the exact centre of the town, space had been reserved for a large plaza. Central avenue and Dewey street were each designed to be one hundred feet wide, and were naturally the paths most used by the colonists. The former actually extended from the rear line of the town northward to the bay, five miles away, while the latter continued from the side lines of the town out into the plantation lands to the east and west. The town site was well chosen. It has a fair elevation above the sea, a firm, hard soil, with steadily rising ground. The front line of the town is about twenty feet above tidewater; the centre about one hundred feet, and the rear line nearly or quite two hundred feet. Around the town was a belt of land a quarter of a mile wide reserved by the company; then came the plantations on every side. When the committee finished the allotment of town lots on the morning of January 15, it was found that nearly five hundred lots had been taken up out of a total in all classes of about three thousand six hundred. The colonists had not been slow in selecting corner lots, and the lots on Central avenue and those facing the plaza on all sides were early preëmpted. The colonists had faith that a real city would rise on the chosen site. When the demand for town lots had been satisfied, the committee began at once to give out the plantation land. The choice was necessarily restricted to about eight or ten thousand acres to the west, southwest, and northwest of the town, which was all that had been surveyed up to that time. When this condition was discovered by the colonists, the unsurveyed land to the north, south, and east began, naturally enough, to appear far more desirable in the eyes of the investors than that which had been surveyed to the westward, and some refused to make a selection at all, preferring delay to a restricted choice. The great majority, however, mindful that they were privileged to change if the land was not satisfactory, went ahead and made their selections. As a matter of fact, the surveyed tract to the westward was probably as good as any, all of the land held by the company being rich and highly productive. The first man to choose his plantation was Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., who, it so chanced, was chairman of the committee on allotment. Dr. Peirce's contract was No. 2, and it was dated in January, 1899. But few contracts were made before April of that year. Contract No. 1 was not on the ground, and no one present knew who was the holder. The allotment was well conducted, and went on quite rapidly. It was eagerly watched by a large group of interested spectators, impatiently awaiting their turn. Some tried to extract inside information from the surveyors, who were supposed to know the relative value of every square foot of the land, but the majority either made their choice blindly, with knowledge of nothing save the proximity of the tract to the town, or trusted to the meagre information they had acquired regarding the character of the land in different localities during their tramps in the few days since their arrival. It was a strange scene. Men of all ages and occupations, coming from nearly every one of the United States, and several other countries, strangers until a few days before, were crowded together in a large tent, each anxious to do the best possible for himself, and yet in few instances discourteous to his neighbor. It was a good-natured, well-behaved crowd, and there was no friction in the proceedings. The colonists were satisfied that the plan of allotment was a fair one; there was no complaint about anything except the restricted choice. Monday night saw the allotment well advanced, and Tuesday it was finished. Everybody then on the ground who wished to make a selection for himself or those whom he represented had been accommodated, and the committee's duties were at an end. Nearly seven thousand acres of plantation land had been allotted. [Illustration: ROBERT C. BEAUSEJOUR. (_One of the Early Colonists._)] As soon as they had selected their land from the map the colonists scurried out into the surrounding country to find it. The woods were full of men hunting their plantations. It was no easy matter to find them, since there was nothing to go by but the numbered stakes of the surveyors. These were anything but plain guides to the uninitiated, and even the more understanding were sometimes baffled by reason of indistinct figures or missing stakes. The result was that many viewed other people's land for their own, while some, conscious of their helplessness, gave up the search for the time being. The majority, however, found their land with no more difficulty than was inevitable in a long tramp through the rough and muddy paths of a jungle. The mosquitoes kept us company, and the parrots scolded us from overhead, but there were no wild beasts or venomous snakes to be dreaded. Probably there are no tropical forests in the world so safe as those of Cuba; one may sleep in them night after night without fear of death or disease. This is true, at least, of the country within a radius of forty miles from La Gloria, as I can testify from personal experience and observation. In most cases the colonists were pleased with their land when they found it, and the changes were comparatively few. A little of the lowest land was more or less under water, but even this was rarely given up, the holders discovering that it was very rich, and realizing that it would be all right in the dry season, and that it could be drained for the wet. Some experienced men from Florida showed a decided preference for this land, and later it developed that their judgment was good. This lowest land was of black soil; that slightly higher was apt to be yellow, and the highest red or chocolate. All these different colored soils were embraced in the allotment which had been made, and they all represented good land. The colonists could never agree as to which was the best. Undoubtedly some were superior for certain purposes to others, but all appeared to be fertile and gave promise of being very productive. The black and yellow soils were almost entirely free from stone, while the red and chocolate had some, but seldom enough to do any harm. The colonists set to work with energy clearing their town lots, and a few began work at once on their plantations. The colony was soon a busy hive of industry. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE SUGAR RIOT. After the middle of January and the beginning of the allotment of the land, the population of La Gloria began to "pick up" somewhat. Colonists who had been lingering at Nuevitas, and some new ones who had come down from the States by the Munson line, would straggle in from time to time. People were coming and going almost every day, but the balance was in favor of the colony and the population slowly but surely increased. Among the new arrivals were quite a number of women and children. About January 20 the advance guard of the colonists who had come on the second excursion of the _Yarmouth_ made its appearance. On this trip the _Yarmouth_ brought about sixty passengers, the majority of whom finally got up to La Gloria. More would have come if Nuevitas at that time had not been a hotbed of misrepresentation regarding conditions in the new colony. All the unfavorable features were grossly and ridiculously exaggerated, while stories of starvation, sickness, and death were poured into the ears of new arrivals until many an intending colonist became convinced that it would be taking his life in his hand for him to make even the briefest visit to La Gloria. Such is the tendency of human nature to exaggerate, and to build a big sensation out of a small nucleus. People who had never seen La Gloria were the ones whose representations seemed to be most credited in the States and by the new arrivals therefrom. I saw a letter received by one of the company's officials at La Gloria from a woman in Asbury Park, N. J., who was nearly crazed by anxiety for her youngest son, who was then in the colony. She had heard frequently from her oldest son, who had been in La Gloria with the survey corps for several months, and he had always written very favorably of the place, so she said, but she had lately seen an Asbury Park man who had returned from Nuevitas and he had told a terrible story of suffering and danger in the colony. The woman's letter showed clearly that she discredited the accounts of her son and accepted those of the man who had brought back a harrowing tale. Why she credited the story of a man who never got further than Nuevitas in preference to that of her own son, who had been at La Gloria for months, I never could understand, especially as the latter was an intelligent and apparently perfectly reliable young man. Doubtless mortals are predisposed to believe the worst. I looked up the woman's youngest son, and found him well and happy, and ready to join with his brother in speaking favorably of La Gloria. [Illustration: LA GLORIA, CUBA, LOOKING NORTH. _Photograph by V. K. Van De Venter, Jan. 23, 1900._] Meanwhile, we were living contentedly in La Gloria, enjoying excellent health and suffering no serious discomfort, and laughing in uproarious glee over the sensational articles which appeared in many of the newspapers of the States. With no little surprise we learned from the great newspapers of the United States that we were "marooned in a Cuban swamp," suffering from "malaria and starvation," and "dying of yellow fever and smallpox." As a matter of fact, at that time there had not been a single death or one case of serious sickness. The health of the colonists remained good through the winter, the spring, and even the following summer. Indeed, the colonists had but few grievances, so few that they would sometimes manufacture them out of trifles. Of such was the "sugar riot" with its laughable and harmonious ending. One day in the latter part of January, when the arrival of provisions was barely keeping pace with the arrival of colonists, a small invoice of sugar was brought into La Gloria over the bad road from the port. Scarcely had it been unloaded at the commissary when the head of the engineer corps took possession of about half of it for the surveyors and the boarders at their table, and gave orders that the other half should be turned over to the Cuban workmen of the company. The carrying out of this order aroused great indignation among the colonists who were boarding themselves and had run out of sugar, as most of them had. This action of the amateur "sugar trust" caused certain of the colonists to sour, so to speak, on all of the officers and chief employés of the company, for the time being, at least, and mutterings, "not loud but deep," were heard all about the camp. Not that there was danger of a sanguinary conflict, but a war of words seemed imminent. The "era of good feeling" was threatened. A day or two later, on the evening of Saturday, January 27, a meeting of the colonists was held preparatory to the organization of a pioneer association, and it was arranged among some of the leading spirits in the sugar agitation that at the close of this session the saccharine grievance should be publicly aired. The gathering was held around a camp-fire in the open air, in front of headquarters tent. The regularly called meeting adjourned early, with a feeling of excited expectancy in the air. Something was about to happen. The officers of the company on the ground, it was understood, were to be raked over the coals for favoring the Cubans and thus perpetrating an outrage on the colonists. The colonists whose tempers had been kept sweet by a sufficiency of sugar lingered around in the pleasant anticipation of witnessing an _opera bouffe_. But it was the unexpected that happened. Just as the sugar orators were preparing to orate, a man with muddy boots pushed through the crowd and entered headquarters tent. A moment later the stalwart form of Colonel Maginniss emerged from the tent, and in his hand he bore a slip of paper. It was a cablegram from New York, which had just been brought in from Nuevitas, announcing the election of General Van der Voort as president of the Cuban Land and Steamship Company. When the dispatch had been read to the crowd, there was silence for an instant, and then the air was rent with cheers. There had never been any question about General Van der Voort's popularity. The colonists had full faith in his honesty and devotion to the colony, and hence looked upon his election to the presidency of the company as the best possible security for the success of the enterprise. They had been distrustful of the management of the company; the choice for the new president inspired them with renewed hope and confidence. It was the unanimous opinion that it was the best thing that could have happened. He was the right man in the right place; he was in La Gloria to stay, and reckoned himself as a colonist among them. The sugar agitators forgot that their coffee had not been sweetened for forty-eight hours, and joined heartily in the cheering. In fact, all who had "come to scoff remained to pray," so to speak. It was voted to send a cablegram to the New York office announcing the deep satisfaction of the colonists in the choice made for president. General Van der Voort responded to calls and made an excellent speech. A little later in the evening there was a big demonstration in honor of the significant event. More than anything else it resembled a Fourth of July celebration. Bonfires were lighted and salutes fired, and the air of La Gloria resounded with cheers. The Cubans came over from their camp, and after the Americans had got through, started in for a celebration of their own. This was partly because of their fondness for General Van der Voort and partly on account of their childish love of noise and display. The colonists became convinced that night that if the Cubans ever become American citizens they will be equal to all of the Fourth of July requirements. The noise they made double discounted that made by the colonists. They cheered and shouted and fired salutes by the hundred. They marched up and down the main street, singing and laughing and blowing conch shells. They freed Cuba over again, and had a rattling good time in doing it. It seemed as if the racket would never end, but about midnight they went jabbering back to their camp. It was the noisiest night in the history of La Gloria. But the "sugar riot" was averted, and never took place. CHAPTER VII. ADVENTURES AND MISADVENTURES. Among the dozen women in the camp, the most striking figure was Mrs. Moller, a Danish widow, who came from one of the states, Pennsylvania, I believe. I cannot say exactly when she reached La Gloria, but she was one of the earliest of her sex to arrive, and achieved the distinction of building the first house in the "city." Speaking of sex, it was not easy to determine that of Mrs. Moller upon a casual acquaintance. Slight of figure, with bronzed face and close-cut hair, she wore a boy's cap, blouse, trousers, a very short skirt, and rubber boots, while her belt fairly bristled with revolvers and knives. She was a quiet, imperturbable person, however, and it was difficult to get her to relate her adventures, which had been somewhat extraordinary. She first came into La Gloria from Palota, where she landed from a boat with no other company than her trunk. There was not a living person at or near Palota, so, deserting her baggage, she started out afoot and alone, and attempted to make her way along the muddy and difficult trail nine miles to La Gloria. It was a hard road to travel, with scarcely a habitation along the way. Late in the afternoon she reached an inhabited shack, and the Cubans invited her to spend the night. Although weary, she declined the invitation, and pressed on. Darkness soon overtook her, but still she kept on through the dense woods. The trail was exceedingly rough, and she stumbled along among stumps, roots, and muddy gullies. Every few steps she fell down, and finally becoming exhausted, she was compelled to spend the night in the heart of the forest. She had no shelter whatever, and no means of making a fire. She sat in the woods all night, not being able to go to sleep, her only company being the mosquitoes. In the morning she found she had lost her way, but at last struck a Cuban trail, and was overtaken by a native horseman. He kindly gave her a place in front of him on his pony, and thus she entered the youthful city of La Gloria. Nor was this Mrs. Moller's last adventure. She had an extraordinary faculty for getting into trouble. Her trunk, which she had abandoned at Palota, was rifled by some one, probably a wandering Cuban, and she spent much time in traveling about the country seeking to get the authorities to hunt up the offender and recover the stolen goods. On one occasion she started in the early evening to walk into La Gloria from the port. When she had got about half way darkness came on and she lost the indistinct trail across the savanna. Not daring to go further, she roosted in a tree all night. Her idea in taking to the tree was that the mosquitoes would be less numerous at such an elevation, but she did not escape them altogether. Nothing serious happened and she turned up in camp all right the next morning. Mrs. Moller had no better luck when she rode than when she walked. At one time, while driving from Las Minas to Nuevitas in a wagon with another colonist, the team went over an embankment in the darkness and was so badly damaged that she and her companion were obliged to walk into Nuevitas, twelve or fifteen miles distant, along the railroad track. The journey was neither easy nor pleasant. [Illustration: FIRST HOUSE IN LA GLORIA.] But Mrs. Moller had both pluck and enterprise. She it was who built the first house in La Gloria, a log cabin far up in the woods on Central avenue. It was put up in the latter part of January. She employed an American and a Cuban to construct it, and had it covered with a canvas roof. She personally supervised the erection of the house, and when it was done planted sunflowers, banana trees, pineapples, etc., around it. She lived here alone for some time before she had any near neighbors. Mrs. Moller also enjoyed the distinction of owning the first cow, the first calf, and the first goat in La Gloria. As these animals roamed at large much of the time and were noisy, disorderly beasts, they were anything but popular in the colony. They were so destructive to planted things, that the threats to plant the cow and her unhappy offspring were numerous and oft-repeated, and the subject was discussed in more than one meeting of the Pioneer Association. It was said that Mrs. Moller had come to La Gloria with the idea of starting a dairy business, and it was further reported that she had taken the first prize for dairy butter at the World's Fair in Chicago. But the dairy did not materialize, and La Gloria long went butterless. It was a standing wonder with us that the Rural Guards did not disarm Mrs. Moller. They frequently met her as she traveled about the country, and must have seen that she carried deadly weapons. They did not relieve her of them, however, but the American authorities at La Gloria finally forbade her to wear her revolvers about the camp. It must not be thought that Mrs. Moller always dressed as I have described her. On state occasions, such as Sunday services and the regular Saturday night meetings of the Pioneer Association, she doffed her blue blouse and rubber boots, and came out with a jacket and the most immaculate starched and stiff bloomers, gorgeous in light and bright colors. At such times she was a wonder to behold. Mrs. Moller spoke broken English, and was not greatly given to talking except when she had business on hand. But if Mrs. Moller was the most striking figure in camp, the most ubiquitous and irrepressible person was Mrs. Horn of South Bend, Indiana. She was one of the earliest arrivals in La Gloria, coming in with two sons and a daughter, but without her husband. Mrs. Horn was a loud-voiced, good-natured woman, who would have tipped the scales at about two hundred and fifty pounds, provided there had been any scales in La Gloria to be tipped. She reached La Gloria before the _Yarmouth_ colonists, but how is something of a mystery. It is known, however, that she waded in through miles of mud and water, and was nothing daunted by the experience. Never for a moment did she think of turning back, and when she had pitched her tent, she announced in a high, shrill voice that penetrated the entire camp, that she was in the colony to stay. She had lived in South Bend, Ind., and thought she could stand anything that might come to her in La Gloria. Mrs. Horn claimed to be able to do anything and go anywhere that a man could, and no one was inclined to dispute the assertion. She had the temperament which never gets "rattled," and when she woke up one night and found a brook four inches deep and a foot wide running through her tent she was not in the least disconcerted. In the morning she used it to wash her dishes in. She continued to make use of it until it dried up a day or two later. One of Mrs. Horn's distinctions was that she was the first woman to take a sea bath at Port La Gloria, walking the round trip of eight miles to do so. She was both a good walker and a good swimmer. She was delighted with La Gloria and Cuba. Her sons were nearly man-grown, and her daughter was about twelve years of age. It was one of the diversions of the camp to hear Mrs. Horn call Edna at a distance of a quarter of a mile or more. Mrs. Horn may unhesitatingly be set down as a good colonist. Though at times too voluble, perhaps, she was energetic, patient, kind-hearted, and generous. When the colonists who came on the _Yarmouth_ first arrived in La Gloria many of them were eager for hunting and fishing, but the sport of hunting wild hogs very soon received a setback. An Englishman by the name of Curtis and two or three others went out to hunt for big game. After a rough and weary tramp of many miles, they suddenly came in sight of a whole drove of hogs. They had traveled so far without seeing any game, that they could scarcely believe their eyes, but they recovered themselves and blazed away. The result was that they trudged into camp some hours later triumphantly shouldering the carcasses of three young pigs. The triumph of the hunters was short-lived, however. The next morning an indignant Cuban rode into camp with fire in his eye and a keen edge on his machete. He was in search of the "Americanos" who shot his pigs. He soon found them and could not be mollified until he was paid eight dollars in good American money. The next day the same Cuban rode into camp with a dead pig on his horse in front of him. This was larger than the others, and the man wanted seventeen dollars for it. Curtis, _et al._, did not know whether they shot the animal or not, but they paid the "hombre" twelve dollars. The following day the Cuban again appeared bringing another deceased porker. This was a full grown hog, and its owner fixed its value at twenty dollars. Again he got his money, and the carcass as well. How much longer the Cuban would have continued to bring in dead pigs, had he not been made to understand that he would get no more money, cannot be stated. To this day, Curtis and his friends do not know whether they actually killed all those pigs. What they are sure of is that there is small difference in the appearance of wild hogs and those which the Cubans domesticate. And this is why the hunting of wild hogs became an unpopular sport in La Gloria. The colony had its mild excitements now and again. One evening there was long continued firing of guns and blowing of conch shells in that corner of the camp where the surveyors had their tents. Inquiring the cause, we learned that three surveyors were lost in the woods and that the noise was being made to inform them of the location of the camp. The men, who had come to Cuba as colonists, had separated from the surveying party just before dark and attempted to make a short cut back to the camp. They had been at work in a low, wet section two or three miles northwest of the town, and their progress homeward was necessarily slow. They had not proceeded far when it became perfectly dark and it was borne in upon them that "cutting across lots" in a Cuban forest was quite a different matter from doing it in some of the States. They were obliged to suspend travel and hold up for the night. Although they could faintly hear the reports of the guns in the camp they were unable to make their way in through the thick woods. The men were without food or anything for shelter. Having an axe with them, they chopped down a tree, to keep them from the wet ground, and attempted to sleep upon its branches. The hard bed and the numerous mosquitoes were not conducive to sleep, but the tired fellows finally succumbed. When they awoke in the morning, one of them found that he had slipped down and was lying with his legs in the water. Not long after daylight they came into camp wet, tired, and hungry. It was no uncommon thing for surveyors to get lost, but nothing serious ever resulted. CHAPTER VIII. THE CUBANS. I am often asked, "How did you get along with the Cubans?" very much as inquiry might be made as to how we got along with the Apaches, or with the Modocs; and one man said, decidedly, "I think I might like Cuba, but I could never stand those Cubans." He had never seen a Cuban, I believe. We got along with the Cubans very well indeed, much better than with some of our neighbors in the States. Judging from our experience with the inhabitants of the province of Puerto Principe, there are no better people on the face of the earth to "get along with" than the Cubans. We found them, almost without exception, courteous, social, kind, hospitable, and honest. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as if there was nothing they would not do for us that lay within their power. They appeared to appreciate kind and fair treatment, and to be eager to return the same to us. Those we came in contact with were mainly of the humbler classes, but we saw nothing to indicate that those higher in the social scale were less friendly and considerate. The Cubans we met seemed to like the Americans, and the colonists certainly reciprocated the feeling. After a residence of nearly a year among them, Hon. Peter E. Park emphatically declared that there was as little meanness in the Cubans as in any class of people he had ever fallen in with, and many other Americans in La Gloria echoed this sentiment. I can easily conceive that under abuse the Cubans would exhibit some very disagreeable and dangerous qualities, but what people of spirit does not under such circumstances? Self-control is not a marked characteristic of the Cuban, and he is apt to revenge himself upon his enemy in any way he can at the earliest opportunity. But with kind and just treatment, he is your friend, and very good friends we found these Cubans--we of the colony at La Gloria. Among themselves they are an easy-going, good-natured, talkative people, and they display these same qualities to foreigners who approach them rightly. Rude they never are, but they sometimes show a childish sullenness when offended. Strong in their likes and dislikes, they often exhibit no little devotion to those whom they esteem or respect, and I believe them to be quite as reliable and trustworthy as the average among the inhabitants of the tropics. I have heard it said that the Cubans of some of the other provinces do not compare favorably with those of Puerto Principe, which may be true; yet I cannot help thinking that the race as a whole has been much maligned. Under a strong, just government I believe they would prove to be excellent citizens, but I do not expect that they will soon develop much administrative ability. Some writers and travelers have done the Cubans justice, but many obviously have not. The soldiers of the United States army have an unconcealed dislike for them, which the Cubans, naturally enough, ardently reciprocate. Perhaps the soldiers expect too much homage from a people upon whom they feel they conferred the priceless boon of liberty. At all events, in many cases where there has been bad blood between the two, it is easy to believe that the soldiers were the most to blame, for the Cubans as we met them were anything but aggressive. Many a Yankee could take lessons of them in the noble art of minding one's own business. So much for the character of the Cubans. Less can be said for their style of living, which in the rural districts and some parts of the cities is primitive to the verge of squalor. In the country around La Gloria it was no uncommon thing to find a Cuban who owned hundreds or thousands of acres of land--most of it uncultivated, to be sure--living in a small, palm-thatched hut with no other floor than the hard red soil. The house would be furnished in the scantiest way, a rude wooden table, a few chairs, and perhaps a rough bench or two. Often there would be no beds other than hammocks, no stoves, and sometimes not even a fireplace of any description. The meals, such as they were, would be cooked in the open front of the shack over a fire usually built on the ground. Occasionally the enclosed room which formed the rear of the shack would have an uneven board floor, but there were never any carpets or rugs, or even a matting of any sort. Of course there was no paint or varnish, and very little color about the place save the brown of the dry thatch on the roof and the brick-red grime from the soil which colored, or discolored, everything it came in contact with like a pigment. This red stain was astonishingly in evidence everywhere. It was to be seen upon the poles which supported the hut, on all of the furniture, upon the clothing of the inmates, and even upon their persons. It looked like red paint, and evidently was about as hard to get off. The huge wheels of the bullock carts seemed to be painted with it, and the mahogany and cedar logs hauled out of the forest took on the color. In a walking trip to the city of Puerto Principe I passed through a region about twenty miles from La Gloria where nearly all the trees along the road were colored as evenly for about two feet from the ground as if their trunks had been carefully painted red. My companions and I pondered over this matter for some time and finally arrived at the opinion that wild hogs, or possibly a large drove of domesticated swine, had rolled in the red dust of the highway and then rubbed up against the neighboring trees. They were colored to about the height of a hog's back. This seemed to be the only reasonable explanation, and is undoubtedly the true one. This region was close to the Cubitas mountains, where the Cuban insurgents long had their capital and kept their cattle to supply the army in the field; it may be that they had also large droves of hogs which roamed through the near-by country. The Cuban homes as I found them in the rural districts around La Gloria were not ornamented with books and pictures. Sometimes, to be sure, there would be a few lithographs tacked up, and I had reason to believe that the houses were not wholly destitute of books, but they were never in evidence. The things that were always in evidence were children, chickens, and dogs, and often pigs and goats. There was a democracy about the domestic economy of the household that must have been highly flattering to the chickens, dogs, pigs, etc. They always had all the rights and privileges that the children or even the adults had. I have seen a two-year-old child and a cat eating contentedly out of the same dish. [Illustration: FRANK J. O'REILLY. (_One of the Early Colonists._)] But if the children were always in evidence, their clothing oftentimes was not. Nothing is more common in Cuba than to see young children in unabashed nakedness. Their nudity is complete, and their unconsciousness absolute. In nature's garb they toddle along some of the streets of the cities, and in the rural districts they may be seen in the same condition in and around their humble homes. Naked babies lie kicking in hammocks or more quietly in their mothers' arms, and naked children run about at play. I once stopped at a shack to get coffee, and while waiting in the open front of the "casa" for its preparation, was surrounded by a bevy of bright little children who had neglected to put on their clothes. At last it seemed to occur to a pretty four-year-old girl that she was not properly attired for company, so she sat down on the dirt floor and pulled on a slipper! She appeared somewhat disturbed at not being able to find its mate, and hunted quite a while for it, but finally gave up the search and accepted the situation, evidently concluding that a single shoe was clothing enough in which to receive even such distinguished guests as "Americanos." With the adult members of the family, also, this nakedness of the children passes as a matter of course. The climate is so mild that clothing is not demanded, but I caught myself wondering if insects never bite Cubans. The Cubans are rather an abstemious people. They care little for their food and are not given to excessive drinking. Those in the country around La Gloria lived chiefly on pork, stewed beans, rice, and boniatos (sweet potatoes). It is a mistaken idea that they do not eat much meat; they eat a great deal of pork in all forms, and seem to be equally fond of wild hog and the domesticated animal. As a matter of fact, there is small difference between the two. Both are "razor backs", and have practically no fat on them. The flesh tastes about as much like beef as it does like the fatted pork of New England swine. The Cubans keep a good deal of poultry, but from personal observation I cannot say that they eat much of it. The hens and the eggs are small, but the former sell for one dollar apiece and the latter for about forty cents a dozen. The Cubans in the rural parts of the province of Puerto Principe eat very little beef, but this may be because it is not easy to get it, while lamb and mutton are unheard of. The Cubans make excellent coffee of their own raising, which they invariably drink without milk. Coffee alone forms the early breakfast, the substantial breakfast being at ten o'clock, and the dinner (la comida) at three or four o'clock. There is nothing to eat after this, but there may be coffee in the evening. In fact, the Cubans are liable to drink coffee at any hour of the day, and they always wind up their two regular meals with it. They are fond of sweets, particularly a sort of preserved orange (dulce naranja). It may be that they eat fresh fruit, but when I do not know, for I never saw a Cuban eating an orange, a banana, or a pineapple. These they sold to us at rather excessive prices. The Cubans nearly all drink, but very little at a time, and rarely get drunk. Their favorite drinks are wine, rum, and brandy (aguardiente). In a holiday week in the city of Puerto Principe, the only two men I saw intoxicated were Americans. One was a soldier, the other a camp follower. The Cubans of the rural districts did not appear to be religious, although there was apt to be a rude wooden cross fixed in the ground in front of their dwellings, possibly with a superstitious idea of thus averting evil. These crosses were nothing more than a slender pole, eight or ten feet high, stripped of its bark, with a cross piece near the top. They were dry and weather beaten, and looked more like a roost for birds than a religious emblem. Smaller wooden crosses were to be found in the little graveyards that we occasionally came upon. These seldom contained more than two or three graves, which were unmarked by any visible name or inscription. In the villages there were, of course, larger cemeteries, but the country I am writing of was very sparsely settled, averaging scarcely more than one or two families to the square mile. The natives appeared to have very few amusements. They hunted somewhat, and in the villages and cities had occasional dances of rather a weird character. They had cock fights, too, I suppose, but these did not seem to be a feature of the country life about us. The rural Cuban spends much of his time in riding about the country on his patient and intelligent pony, buying supplies and disposing of his small produce. When they till their land is a mystery, for they never seem to be at work upon it. In fact, very little was tilled at all in the region about La Gloria. It was no uncommon thing to find a man owning hundreds of acres, with less than one acre under cultivation. This condition was usually explained by the statement that everything had been killed out during the Ten Years' War, and that the natives were too poor to again put their land under cultivation. This was a half-truth, at least, but Cuban indifference must have had something to do with it. One of the La Gloria colonists once asked an intelligent and good-appearing elderly Cuban why he did not cultivate more of his land. "What is the use?" was the reply. "When I need money I pick off some bananas and sell them. I get for them twenty or twenty-five dollars, which lasts me a long time. When I need more money, I pick more bananas." This is the common Cuban view. His natural indifference, combined with the exactions of Spanish government, has kept his mind free from any thought of making provision for the future. The reader should bear in mind that I have been describing the people of the province of Puerto Principe, and mainly of the rural portions thereof. I am well aware that in the more thickly settled and more prosperous provinces fine country houses are sometimes to be found, and the people generally may live somewhat differently and perhaps better, but I believe I have faithfully pictured the typical Cuban as he exists to-day in the country districts of Puerto Principe, the fertile and unfortunate province which has probably suffered more from the ravages of war in the last thirty years than any other province in the island. It was completely despoiled during the Ten Years' War, and has never recovered. Its deserted plantations are now being reclaimed, largely by Americans, and ere long will blossom forth with luscious fruits and other valuable products. The slight acquaintance which I had with the Cubans of the cities of Puerto Principe and Nuevitas led me to the belief that they did not differ greatly from the more intelligent inhabitants of the country sections. Among the half hundred Cubans who worked for the company and occupied a camp at La Gloria, were many from the cities of the province, the others coming from small towns and villages. Most of them had served in the Cuban army--the "Army of Liberation", as it was called. Though these men had but few comforts, they appeared to be happy and contented; they were almost invariably peaceable and good-humored. The Americans liked these "Cú-bi-ans"--as some of the colonists persisted in calling them--and entire harmony prevailed. It was amusing to me when we first arrived to hear some of the Western colonists inadvertently speak of them as "the Indians", owing, I suppose, to their primitive mode of living. Columbus called them by the same name when, on the 28th of October, 1492, he landed on the island at a point not twenty miles from what is now Port La Gloria,--but within the last four hundred years the appellation of "Cuban" has become well known throughout the world. The Cubans must work out their own destiny, but I am satisfied that they will steadily progress in the scale of civilization. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. STEPS OF PROGRESS. The opening of the month of February found the colonists in excellent health and good spirits, and hard at work on their land or for the company. The La Gloria post-office had been established, church services were held regularly in a large tent, and the La Gloria Pioneer Association had been organized and held its regular meeting on Saturday evening of each week. Town lots were being cleared, gardens planted, and pineapple plants set out as fast as the land could be prepared and the "suckers" obtained. Through the active efforts of General Van der Voort, a United States post-office was established immediately after his arrival. The general held the commission as postmaster, and selected for his assistant, Col. John. F. Early of Wilber, Nebraska, who had been postmaster of his town before coming to Cuba. The general being otherwise engaged, most of the actual work of the office fell upon Colonel Early, who was well qualified to perform it. Some months later, Van der Voort resigned the postmastership, and Early was promoted to the head of the office. The post-office first occupied a small space in headquarters tent, but was soon moved to a tent by itself near at hand. Here it remained until the fall of 1900, when it was moved into a new wooden building constructed for it on Central avenue. From the first the office did considerable business, which steadily increased. The colonists wrote and received many letters, but were loud in their complaints of the irregularity and infrequency of the mails. In a measure, this faultfinding was justified, but the philosophical were more patient and felt that the colony was lucky to have a post-office at all. The remedy was slow in coming, but the mail facilities gradually improved. At first the letters were collected at the office in a wooden box, but before many weeks had passed a regulation metallic receptacle, painted red and marked "U. S. Mail," was placed in front of the tent. I well remember the shout that went up from the assembled colonists when this reminder of home and civilization was brought in on horseback from the port by the mail carrier. It seemed almost like having a glimpse of the old home. The regular sworn mail carrier between Port La Gloria and the post-office was Señor Ciriaco Rivas, familiarly known as "the old señor" among the colonists, by whom he was much beloved. He was a true-hearted gentleman and a brave soldier, being a veteran of the Ten Years' War and the later conflict. He was one of the best friends that the colonists had, and was their guest and companion on many occasions, and sometimes their host. Señor Rivas owned a large tract of land in the neighborhood, but lived with his family in the Cuban camp at La Gloria. While scorning to take pay from individuals for his services, he assisted the colonists in manifold ways. In the summer of 1900 he was named by the government as alcalde (magistrate) of La Gloria and the country for five miles around, but on the 15th day of the following September he died at Nuevitas, lamented alike by Cubans and Americans. Besides attending to his post-office duties, Colonel Early represented large land interests in the colony and gave much time to work in connection therewith. He was one of the most enthusiastic of the colonists, being delighted with the country and its prospects. Fond of hunting and fishing, a lover of birds, trees, and flowers, versatile in his tastes and accomplishments, Colonel Early found Cuba much to his liking, and complained of nothing save the "hell-hens," as he irreverently called the despised jejines (sand flies). He was a veteran of the Civil War, and had been something of a politician in his Nebraska home. [Illustration: THE FIRST WOMEN COLONISTS OF LA GLORIA. Mrs. Spiker. Mrs. Horn. Mrs. Morrison. Mrs. Matthews. Miss Boston. Mrs. Hovora Mrs. Lowell. Mrs. McElman. Edna Horn. Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Neff. ] Unlike the mining camps of our great West, La Gloria was a moral and orderly town. This was largely due to the fact that General Van der Voort insisted that no liquor should be sold, a prohibition which was rigidly enforced. The result was that there was peace and quiet, and no crime save a few small thefts. Very little policing was necessary. At the beginning the police force consisted of Mr. George H. Matthews of Asbury Park, N. J., whose only duty appeared to be a daily tour of the camp in the early evening. Chief of Police Matthews lived in a tent at the upper end of the camp. When darkness came on he would light his little lantern and "go down the line," as he called his nightly trip down the main street and back. The whole operation, including lighting the lantern, occupied about twenty minutes. Mr. Matthews also plied the trade of a barber, charging twenty-five cents for a shave. It was finally decided that if anybody was robbing the colonists, he was the man and the police force was abolished altogether. Soon after Mr. Matthews and his wife returned to their home in Asbury Park. They were well liked, and their departure was regretted. A little later there were some actual thefts, generally attributed to negroes who lurked about the camp, and Eugene Kezar, from Barre, Vermont, was put on as night watchman. He performed this duty faithfully, as he did every duty which devolved upon him, and the thefts soon ceased. Much of the time Kezar was in the employ of the company in the daytime about the camp, supervising the erection of tents, taking care of property, and performing manifold duties in the interest of the company and the colonists. The first church service in La Gloria was held on January 14, conducted by the Rev. A. E. Seddon of Atlanta, Ga., a minister of the Christian church, who was one of the colonists who came on the first _Yarmouth_. It was attended by a large proportion of the colonists. Mr. Seddon was a good preacher and a cultivated man, but did not long remain at La Gloria. Becoming interested in another proposed colony, he took his departure from La Gloria soon after the allotment of the land. Next the Rev. J. W. Harris of Vermont preached for one Sunday, but he also took an early departure. At about this time the venerable Dr. William I. Gill of Asbury Park, N. J., joined the colony, and conducted church services for some weeks. His health not being good, he was forced to give up regular preaching. For a time the congregation was without an officiating clergyman, but sermons were read each Sunday by some layman, and a Sabbath school was regularly held. With the spring came two ministers together, the Rev. James G. Stuart of London, Canada, and the Rev. W. A. Nicholas of Huntington, West Virginia. Mr. Stuart's stay at this time was temporary, but he preached one Sunday to the edification of a good-sized audience. When his leave of absence expired he returned to his far away home in Canada, but before sailing he expressed himself as being greatly pleased with La Gloria, and made known his intention to make it his residence at some future time. He left money to have a large tract of land cleared and cultivated. Mr. Stuart had been the owner of an orange grove in California, and was satisfied that the fruit would do finely in the soil around La Gloria. He was highly enthusiastic in his praise of the country. Mr. Nicholas, a minister of the Baptist church, succeeded Mr. Stuart in the La Gloria pulpit, and preached several weeks. He then returned to West Virginia for the purpose of bringing his family to Cuba to establish a permanent home. In June he brought his wife and children to La Gloria and resumed his religious teaching. He has since preached regularly, and is held in high respect by the colonists. Mrs. Nicholas is also very popular in the colony. Mr. Nicholas is delighted with Cuba, and is enjoying greatly improved health. Besides the preaching and Sunday-school, weekly prayer-meetings, teachers' meetings, and choir meetings have been held in the colony from its earliest days. [Illustration: DR. WILLIAM P. PEIRCE.] The first organization of the colonists, and the force which had most to do with shaping the course of affairs in the early life of the colony, was the La Gloria Pioneer Association. At a mass meeting in front of headquarters tent on the 18th of January, Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., was made temporary chairman, and R. C. Bourdette of Dexter, Kansas, temporary secretary. James M. Adams, D. E. Lowell, and R. C. Bourdette were appointed a committee to draft a constitution and by-laws. At a meeting January 27 the committee reported a constitution and by-laws, which were adopted, and the following officers were elected for a term of six months: Dr. W. P. Peirce, president; D. E. Lowell, vice-president; R. G. Barner, secretary; Col. Thomas H. Maginniss, treasurer; E. B. Newsom, W. G. Spiker, J. A. Florence, W. M. Carson, and Rev. William I. Gill, executive board. The president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer were members of the executive board _ex-officio_. Dr. Peirce, the president, was one of the ablest of the colonists, a man of consequence in his state, and possessed of both mental and financial resources. Genial, kindly, and humorous, he was much liked by his fellow-colonists, and made an admirable presiding officer for the association. He had entire faith in the ultimate success of the colony, and did much to advance its welfare. Mr. Lowell, the vice-president, had been a successful fruit grower in Florida and a leading citizen in that section of the state where he resided. He was one of the first of the colonists to reach La Gloria, coming in with his wife before the first _Yarmouth_ party arrived. He was a substantial and practical man, and a valuable prop to the colony, wherein he was popular and influential. Mr. Barner, the secretary, was a young man from Philadelphia, and was one of the colonists who came on the first _Yarmouth_. He was an expert stenographer and typewriter, and a man of good judgment and untiring industry. For a time he worked upon the land, but was soon taken into the president's office, where he proved to be a faithful and efficient clerk and secretary. Well liked among his brother and sister colonists, he was given numerous responsible positions as new organizations were formed. Colonel Maginniss, the treasurer, was also from Philadelphia, and has been before alluded to as the superintendent of the camp. His duties as treasurer of the association were not arduous, but he performed good service as chairman of the committee on transportation. The other members of the executive board were leading colonists, and intelligent and practical men. The executive board appointed the following committees: Transportation, Col. Thomas H. Maginniss (chairman), J. A. Florence, S. L. Benham, W. P. Hartzell, Thomas R. Geer--the latter resigning, he was replaced by James M. Adams; supplies, E. B. Newsom (chr.), D. E. Lowell, W. G. Spiker, E. F. Rutherford, M. T. Holman; sanitation, Dr. W. P. Peirce (chr.), G. A. Libby, M. T. Jones, W. S. Dunbar, G. H. Matthews; manufactures, D. L. Carleton (chr.), W. L. Yard, J. A. Anderson, J. C. Kelly, W. H. Gruver; history of the colony, James M. Adams (chr.), A. E. Seddon, Rev. William I. Gill, M. A. C. Neff, F. X. Hovora; legal affairs, Gen. Paul Van der Voort (chr.), Col. Thomas H. Maginniss, Capt. Joseph Chace, W. M. Carson, J. F. Early; education and religious observance, Mrs. Andrews (chr.), Mrs. D. E. Lowell, Mrs. W. G. Spiker, Mrs. William I. Gill, Mrs. M. A. C. Neff; village improvements, M. A. C. Neff (chr.), D. E. Lowell, B. F. Seibert, E. B. Newsom, J. C. Florence, Peter Larsen, H. E. Mosher, S. M. Van der Voort, James Peirce, Mrs. Clara Broome, Mrs. J. A. Horn, Mrs. G. H. Matthews. Mrs. Andrews did not remain in La Gloria, and hence never served on the committee on education and religious observance; Mrs. D. E. Lowell acted as chairman and directed the work of the committee with zeal and intelligence. As time went on, numerous other vacancies occurred in the several committees, but these were filled and the work was not retarded. Most of the committees were more or less active and accomplished as much as could reasonably be expected considering the many obstacles encountered. If the net results accomplished by the association at this early stage seem small, it should be remembered that it was no slight task to hold the colony together in the face of natural obstructions, irritating delays, and disheartening disappointments. All these things the colonists had to encounter, and the Pioneer Association performed a great work in banding the settlers together, staying their courage and preventing a stampede in the darkest hours, and in keeping things moving, slowly though it may have been, in the right direction. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive what the colonists would have done at the beginning without the coöperative aid afforded by this organization. Practically the whole colony belonged to it during the first few months of its existence. The meetings were held every Saturday night and were always well attended. They were valued not only for utilitarian purposes, but as almost the sole amusement enjoyed by the colonists during the week. These meetings supplied the place of the theatre, the lyceum, and social festivities, and some of the women were heard to say that they looked forward the whole week to this regular gathering. Subjects of absorbing interest always came up, the speaking was quite good and never tedious, and humorous and witty remarks were very often heard and fully appreciated. The ludicrous always appealed to the audience keenly. Many of the colonists participated in the speaking, and the discussions were invariably good-natured. The speakers were sure of close attention and generous treatment from their auditors, even from those who might disagree with them. The brotherly feeling which pervaded the colony was always manifest at these gatherings. Some of the Cubans would often attend, and more than once a Spaniard was in the audience. It was a strange sight, one of these meetings. In the dim light of two or three lanterns, the colonists would be grouped together under a shelter tent, some sitting on rude wooden benches and others standing. Those on the outskirts were as often under the stars as under the tent. Both the audience and the surroundings were picturesque, albeit the whole effect was suggestive of a primitive life which few of the colonists had before experienced. The scene is one that is not likely ever to be forgotten by those who participated in it. In July, 1900, the Pioneer Association elected new officers, as follows: President, D. E. Lowell; vice-president, John Latham; secretary, William M. Carson; treasurer, J. R. P. de les Derniers. By this time new and more wieldy organizations had sprung up which took much of the practical work from the association, the latter becoming more of a reminiscence than a potent force. It is still, however, a factor in the social life of La Gloria. CHAPTER X. EVENTS IMPORTANT AND OTHERWISE. On the last day of January I became private secretary to President Van der Voort, serving in that capacity until my return to the States nearly four months later. This position brought me into close and intimate contact with all of the colonists, and to no small extent I shared their joys and woes. I was made the recipient of their confidences, and was sometimes able, I believe, to make somewhat smoother the rather thorny paths they had to travel. When I was unable to do this, it was never from lack of full sympathy with their trials and hardships. I cannot be too emphatic in saying that never in my life have I met an aggregation of men and women who were more honest, good-natured, patient, and reasonable. To me, personally, they invariably extended the kindest consideration, and so, for that matter, did the officers of the company. The nucleus for the first American colony in Cuba was beyond all question a good and substantial one. [Illustration: GEN. VAN DER VOORT'S CUBAN HOUSE.] About the middle of February Gen. Van der Voort moved into his new Cuban house, which had been constructed for him by Cuban workmen in an open space ninety or one hundred yards back from the main street of the camp. The house and most of the tents constituting the camp were on the company's reservation just north of the front line of the town. As fast as the colonists got their town lots cleared they moved on to them, but their places in the reservation camp were often taken by new-comers. The general's palm house, or shack, was an ingenious and interesting piece of work. The Cubans exercised all their marvelous skill in its construction, with highly creditable results. When completed it was water tight, and cool, comfortable, and picturesque. The house contained two good-sized rooms, an enclosed bedroom at the back and an open apartment at the front used for an office and reception-room. Until a conventional board floor was laid by an "Americano" carpenter, there was not a nail in the entire structure. The upright poles, cross pieces, the ridgepole, and the rafters and cross rafters, were securely fastened together with tough bark and vines, while the roof was carefully thatched with palm leaves. The latter were broad, fan-shaped leaves, several feet across at the widest part. Each had a stout stem two or three feet long. The leaves were laid upon the roof, beginning at the eaves, stems pointing to the ridgepole. The leaves were carefully lapped like shingles, and tightly lashed by the stems to the rafters and cross rafters. If a leak was discovered it was easy to close it by binding on another leaf. The leaves used came from what is commonly known as the dwarf or cabbage palm. Royal palm bark was used along the ridgepole. The back and sides of the house were of palm leaves, as was the front of the rear room, a door being cut through it. The front of the outer apartment was entirely open. The original floor was of wood cut from the royal palm, the rough and heavy boards, or planks, being fastened to cross logs by wooden pins. Not proving entirely satisfactory, this floor, after a short time, was replaced by a more even one laid by a Yankee carpenter. This was the only change made by General Van der Voort in his Cuban house, with which he was greatly delighted. When new the prevailing color, inside and out, was a beautiful green, which soon turned to a yellowish brown. The change did not add to its beauty, but it still remained comfortable and picturesque. The cost of such a house in La Gloria was about fifty dollars. The general's house was wonderfully cool, as I can testify from personal experience, having occupied it daily for three months. Within a dozen yards of the general's house stood a historic landmark known as the "Lookout Tree," a gigantic tree used by the Cubans during the Ten Years' War and the late insurrection to watch for Spanish gun-boats that patroled the coast and for filibusters bringing arms and ammunition. It was at or very near Port La Gloria--known to the Cubans as Viaro--that the celebrated _Gussie_ landed her arms and ammunition for the Cubans, just after the intervention of the United States. Up through the "Lookout Tree" grow what appear to be two small and very straight trees, about three feet apart; actually, they are the downward shooting branches of a parasitic growth, taking root in the ground. The Cubans have utilized these for a ladder, cutting notches into them and fastening cross-pieces, or rungs, very securely with barbed wire. One may climb high into the big tree by this curious ladder, and from the top a good view of the coast is obtained. After our arrival the tree was sometimes brought into requisition in watching for the boat from Nuevitas, and the good climbers among the colonists often made the ascent merely for the satisfaction of performing the feat, which was not such an easy one as might appear, since the ladder did not reach to the top by fifteen or twenty feet. A space of about half an acre, chiefly in front of the house, General Van der Voort had plowed and planted for a garden. Vegetables were sown in February and a little later a good number of pineapple plants, banana, orange and coffee trees, etc., were set out. The vegetables began to come on in April, and the fruit trees and pineapples exhibited a thrifty growth from month to month. Small palm trees were also set out along the path leading from the house across the garden to Central avenue. The company had another and larger garden near by which was planted in the latter part of January. Some of its products were ready for the table in March, and radishes even earlier. The soil of these gardens was not of the richest, being red and containing oxide of iron; but, for all that, seeds came up marvelously quick and plants grew well. I have known beans which were planted Saturday morning to be up on the following Monday. The soil of practically all of the plantations and many of the town lots is very rich. On February 21, the day before Washington's birthday, occurred the first birth in La Gloria, a lusty son being born to Mr. and Mrs. Olaf Olson. Mr. Olson was one of the most prosperous and progressive of the colonists, and his wife was a true pioneer. At the time of the birth the Olsons were living in a tent on their town lot on Market street, not far from Central avenue. Dr. Peirce was the officiating physician, and the infant developed as rapidly, in proportion, as plants in that tropical clime. It proved to be a remarkably healthy child. It was promptly named Olaf El Gloria Olson, and on the request of the Pioneer Association, the company generously made it a present of a town lot. Soon after the birth of the child, Mr. Olson moved into a house of his own construction. The weather at this time was good and the temperature very comfortable. Ordinarily the thermometer registered throughout the day from 70 to 84 degrees of heat. The lowest temperature for January was 55°; the highest, 91°. The lowest for February was 56°; the highest, 91°. The extremes of heat are nearly as great in winter as in summer, but there is much more variation. In summer the temperature ordinarily runs from about 78° to 90°, but occasionally touches 94°, which is the highest I have ever known it to be in La Gloria. Even at this figure the heat is not oppressive. There is such a refreshing breeze night and day in Cuba that one does not suffer from the heat either in summer or winter. The climate is so fine at all seasons of the year, that to a New Englander it seems absolutely perfect. The colonists worked hard every day under the rays of the sun and suffered no ill effects. They came to the conclusion that getting acclimated was a "cinch" in comparison with enduring the changing weather of the Northern states. During the first week in February the colonists, such of them as were not otherwise employed, began the construction of a corduroy road over the worst places on the trail from La Gloria to the port. The work was under the supervision of Colonel Maginniss, and from twenty to thirty men labored daily for some time. While not of a permanent character, this work made the road more passable for pedestrians and animals, and was of material aid in the hauling up of provisions and belated baggage. By the end of February most of us had got our trunks. The workers on the road were employed by the company, with the understanding that their wages should be credited upon their land payments, or upon the purchase of new land. This was satisfactory to the colonists, and many took advantage of the opportunity to acquire more town lots. Many other employés of the company also turned in their time for the purchase of plantation land or town lots. On the 19th of February the first well in La Gloria was opened. It was at the corner of Market street and Florida avenue, and was dug by a syndicate of colonists who lived in that vicinity. Good water was struck at a depth of about twelve feet. Many people used the water from this well, and a little later it was made considerably deeper. The well was square, and the ground was so hard at this point that it was found to be unnecessary to stone it. Many other wells were dug soon after, in all of which good water was found fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the ground. Early in February, M. A. C. Neff, engineer and architect, who had been in charge of the town site survey, was transferred to the work of preparing real estate maps and books. Mr. Neff was a fine draughtsman, and his colored maps were a delight to the eye. One of his maps was used in the allotment of town lots, another was placed on file at Puerto Principe in connection with the recording of deeds, while others were sent to the New York office of the company or kept for use in La Gloria. Much credit is due Mr. Neff for his part in the upbuilding of La Gloria. He was enthusiastic in forwarding improvements of all kinds. Both he and his admirable wife considered themselves colonists, and looked forward with pleasant anticipations to a permanent home in La Gloria. CHAPTER XI. SELF-RELIANCE OF THE COLONISTS. I was deeply impressed by the courage and self-reliance of the colonists. From the start they showed a splendid ability to take care of themselves. One day early in February a white-bearded old fellow past seventy years of age, with blue overalls on and a hoe over his shoulder, appeared at the door of General Van der Voort's tent. "General," he said, "if a man owns a lot, has anybody else a right to come on to it and pick fruit of any kind?" "Not if the owner has a revolver and bowie knife," laughingly replied Van der Voort. "Well," said the man, "I just thought I'd ask ye. A couple o' fellers (Cubans) came on to my lot to-day while I was at work there and began to pick some o' these 'ere guavas. I told 'em to git out, but they didn't go. Then I went for 'em with this hoe. One of 'em drawed his machete, but I didn't care for that. I knew I could reach him with my hoe before he could reach me with his knife. They went off." General Van der Voort laughed heartily, and evidently was satisfied that the man with the hoe was able to protect himself without the aid of the La Gloria police force. The old man's name, as I afterwards learned, was Joseph B. Withee. Some of the colonists who had become intimately acquainted with him familiarly called him "grandpa," although he was not the oldest man in the colony. His age was seventy-one years, and he hailed from the state of Maine. None of his family or friends had come to Cuba with him, but he had grown children living in the Pine Tree state. Alone and single-handed he began his pioneer life in La Gloria, but he was not daunted by obstacles or fearful of the future. On the contrary, he was most sanguine. He worked regularly every day clearing and planting his plantation, and was one of the first of the colonists to take up his residence on his own land. He soon had vegetables growing, and had set out strawberry and pineapple plants, besides a number of banana, orange, and lemon trees. It was his boast that he had the best spring of water in the colony, and it certainly was a very good one. Mr. Withee declared that his health was much improved since coming to Cuba, and that he felt ten or fifteen years younger. Everybody in the colony could bear witness that he was remarkably active and industrious. Once his relatives in Maine, not hearing from him, became alarmed, and wrote to the company asking if he were alive and in La Gloria. I went down to his plantation with the letter, and asked him if he was alive. He thought he was, and suspended work long enough to sniff at the idea that he was not able to take care of himself. Mr. Withee was wont to admit that before he came to Cuba he had a weak back, but the only weakness we were ever able to detect in him was an infirmity of temper which foreboded pugnacious action. Most assuredly he had plenty of backbone, and his persistent pugnacity was highly amusing. He was always wanting to "lick" somebody, and I know not what my fate will be if we ever meet after he reads these lines, although we were excellent friends in La Gloria. I can imagine that my friend Withee was brought up in one of those country school "deestricts" where every boy had to fight his way step by step to the respect of his associates, and where it was the custom for the big scholars to attempt each winter to thrash the teacher and throw him into a snowdrift. If so, I will warrant that Withee was held in high respect. Withee had a great idea of standing up for his rights, and for a long time he was on the war-path, as he confided to me, in pursuit of a surveyor who had cut down a small palm tree on his plantation. He didn't know which individual of the survey corps it was who perpetrated the "outrage," but if the old man found out, one of Chief Kelly's men was in for a good licking. Of course, the surveyor was entirely innocent of any intent to injure the property of Mr. Withee or anybody else, and cut the tree while running a survey line. It was some months after this, in September, that the spirit of Withee's revolutionary sires joined issue with his fierce indignation, and produced fatal results--fatal to several chickens that invaded his premises. A neighboring colonist, who lived on the other side of the avenue, kept a large number of hens, and allowed them free range. They developed a fondness for wandering across the road, and feeding in Withee's well-stocked garden. They didn't know Withee. The old man sputtered vehemently, and remonstrated with the owner--but the chickens continued to come. Finally, Withee went to a friendly colonist and borrowed his gun. Soon after his return home, one of the detested hens wandered nonchalantly across the dead line, and presently was minus a head. Another essayed the same feat, with the result that there were two headless chickens in La Gloria. Withee's aim was as good as when he used to shoot chipmunks in the Maine woods. The owner of the hens heard the reports of the gun, and came over. He was told to go home and pen up his poultry. Taking the two dead chicks, he went to the Rural Guards and entered a complaint. While he was gone, Withee reduced the poultry population of La Gloria by one more. The owner of the hens returned, accompanied by Rural Guards, several prominent Cubans, and a few colonists. They had come to take the gun away from Withee. The old man stood the whole crowd off, and told them to keep their feet clear of his place. They obeyed the order, but told him he must kill no more chickens under penalty of arrest. He told them to keep the chickens off his premises under penalty of their being killed. The old man was left the master of the situation, and the hens were restricted to a pen. Speaking of courage and self-confidence reminds me of a remark of big Jack McCauley. There was included in the company's property, about five miles from La Gloria, a deserted plantation known as Mercedes. Upon it was an old grove of orange trees, which, in the spring of 1900, bore a fine crop. For a long time everybody was allowed to help himself at will, and Cubans, colonists, and surveyors availed themselves of the opportunity to lay in a supply of fruit. At length, as the oranges grew riper, orders were given that no one should take more than he could eat on the spot, but the oranges continued to disappear by the bagful. Stalwart Jack McCauley was at that time employed about the camp by the company, and it was decided to station him out at Mercedes, with a view to stopping the raids on the orange grove. Before leaving to undertake this duty, Jack quietly remarked: "I'll go out there and see if I've got any influence, and if not, I'll create some!" Big Jack's "influence" proved to be ample, and the balance of the orange crop was saved. McCauley's close friend and "pardner" was J. A. Messier, familiarly known as "Albany." Together they held a large tract of plantation land. "Albany" worked as a flagman in one of the surveying parties. Once, when the mosquitoes in the woods were more than ordinarily thick and ferocious, he made a complaint, a rare thing in him or any other surveyor. "They surround you," he said, "and you can't push them away because there is nowhere to push them!" "Albany" was the leading big snake killer in the colony, and was an adept at stretching and preparing their skins. But perhaps his greatest distinction was that of being floor manager of the first ball in La Gloria, a notable event which will be described in a later chapter. [Illustration: LA GLORIA, CUBA, LOOKING SOUTH. (_March, 1900._)] On the afternoon of February 27, the colonists who came on the third and last trip of the _Yarmouth_, about sixty in number, reached La Gloria. Among them were Arnold Mollenhauer of New York, a representative of the company; John A. Connell of East Weymouth, Mass., and S. W. Storm of Nebraska. The party was brought up from Nuevitas on the snug little steamer _Bay Shore_, and had a very comfortable passage. The _Bay Shore_ was bought by the company to ply between Nuevitas and Port La Gloria, and was to have been used to transport the colonists who came to Cuba on the first _Yarmouth_ excursion, but, unfortunately, she came into collision with another boat at about that time, and was unfit for use for several weeks. This was one of a singular chain of accidents and annoyances which gave the colony a serious setback at the very start. The _Bay Shore_ proved to be a very unlucky boat, and was laid up from one cause or another most of the time. When the _Bay Shore_ was out of commission, a sailboat had to be used between La Gloria and Nuevitas. Mr. Mollenhauer did not remain long at La Gloria at this time, but established his headquarters at Nuevitas, taking up the work that had been in charge of Maj. P. S. Tunison. Young Mr. Mollenhauer proved to be the right man in the right place. He was active and efficient in the performance of his duties, and was very much liked by the colonists for his gentlemanly bearing, accommodating spirit, and frank and upright character. The affairs of the company and the colony took a new start when he came to Cuba and assumed charge of the disbursement of the funds. John A. Connell was a prosperous business man of East Weymouth, Mass., and came to La Gloria to make it his permanent home. He was one of the most enthusiastic and progressive of the colonists, and gave daily expression to his liking for Cuba and his firm faith in the future of La Gloria. He was a man of property and of decided ability. Physically, he was a giant, being six feet four inches tall, and well proportioned. He was fond of athletics and was himself a good athlete. A man of strong intelligence, he appeared to good advantage as a speaker. Mr. Connell built the first frame building in La Gloria, a modest board structure with a roofing of tarred paper, and occupied it as a general store. It was situated on Central avenue in the company's reserve. This was not, however, the first store in La Gloria. Besides the company's commissary, W. G. Spiker started a store in a tent several months earlier. George E. Morrison opened a store in a tent on Central avenue just inside of the town line at about the same time that Connell started, and did a good business until he returned to the States several months later. Morrison had lived in many places, including Chicago, Ill., and Central America. In practical affairs he was one of the most versatile men in the colony. S. W. Storm of Nebraska was a veteran of the Civil War, and a good type of his class. Cheerful and buoyant, lively as a boy, he entered into the pioneer life with a hearty relish, as, indeed, did all of the many old soldiers who came to La Gloria. The renewal of camp life under agreeable climatic conditions seemed to be a great joy to them. Mr. Storm was never known to complain of anything, not even when he severely cut his foot while chopping. He brought with him to La Gloria his young son Guy, who was soon placed in school. The first school in La Gloria was started and taught by Mrs. Whittle of Albany, N. Y. It occupied a large shelter tent on the reserve, near Central avenue. It was fitted up with a board floor, wooden benches, tables, etc. The school opened February 26 with six scholars, and though text-books were few in number, the pupils made good progress in their studies. Mrs. Whittle was an attractive and cultivated lady, and an inspiring and tactful teacher. Before the middle of March the school had sixteen scholars, and a little later twenty-one. There was also at the same time an evening school for men, in which Mrs. Whittle taught grammar and spelling, and Mr. Max Neuber of Philadelphia, a prominent colonist, gave lessons in Spanish. Tuition was free in both schools, which were kept up until Mrs. Whittle and Mr. Neuber returned to the States in April. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. THE FIRST HOLIDAY IN LA GLORIA. The first holiday in La Gloria was marked by incidents that will be long remembered by the colonists. The credit for the inauguration of the movement for such a day belongs to John A. Connell, whose warm Irish blood craved athletic sport. Some of the rest of us were not far behind him in this particular. Mr. Connell arranged a program of running, jumping, wheelbarrow and potato races, etc., and after a conference of those interested, it was decided to ask the president of the company to declare a general half-holiday. I was delegated to bring the matter before General Van der Voort, who entered heartily into the spirit of the affair and readily granted our request. Accordingly, a formal proclamation was drawn up setting aside Saturday afternoon, March 24, as a holiday throughout the colony. The first draft was copied in the elegant handwriting of Chief Engineer Kelly, duly signed by President Van der Voort and attested by his secretary, and then conspicuously posted on the flag-staff which graced Central avenue. Further preparations were made for the red-letter day, and a baseball game added to the program. I found in my trunk a baseball, which I had brought to Cuba, I know not why, except, perhaps, with the American idea that a baseball is always a good companion. Simultaneously, the indefatigable J. L. Ratekin--one time a soldier in Col. William J. Bryan's Nebraska regiment in the Spanish War--dragged out of his kit a good baseball bat. Why Ratekin brought this bat to Cuba I cannot say, but I half suspect that he thought he might have to use it in self-defence. I am glad to be able to state, however, that it was put only to peaceful and legitimate uses, and killed nothing save "in-shoots" and "drops." Saturday, March 24, was a remarkably fine day even for sunny Cuba. A cloudless sky of beautiful blue, a temperature of from 80 to 90 degrees, and a soft, refreshing breeze combined to make it ideal weather for La Gloria's initial holiday. I remember that several bicycles were brought out and used on this day, one or two by young women. The muddy trails had dried up in most places, so that wheels could be ridden for considerable distances on the roads radiating from La Gloria. The dry season was fairly on by March 1, and for some time thereafter mud was practically eliminated from our list of annoyances. At noon the several surveying parties tramped in from their distant work in the woods, and soon after the colonists began to gather on Central avenue from headquarters tent to Connell's store. The women proved that they had not left all their finery in the States, while nearly every child was in its best bib and tucker. The men appeared in a great variety of costumes, but most of them had given more thought to comfort than to elegance. It was at this time that the first large group picture of the colonists was taken. The opportunity was too good to lose. We were hastily grouped across Central avenue, and three amateur photographers simultaneously took shots at us. The resulting photograph, though on a small scale, is a faithful picture of about half the colonists in La Gloria on March 24, 1900. One of the photographers was Lieut. Evans of the Eighth U. S. Cavalry, who had arrived in La Gloria the day before in command of a pack train consisting of about a dozen men and twenty mules. The detachment came from the city of Puerto Principe and was touring the country for practice and exercise. It may easily be imagined that we were glad to see them, and they seemed equally glad to see us. At our earnest solicitation they consented to participate in our holiday sports. [Illustration: GROUP OF COLONISTS. (_March 24, 1900._)] The sports went off well. There were some good athletes among the colonists, but a soldier named T. Brooks succeeded in winning a majority of the events. He was a quiet little fellow, but his athletic prowess was a credit to the United States army. A few Cubans took part in the events, but did not distinguish themselves. The chief attraction of the day was the baseball game, which began about the middle of the afternoon. A diamond had been laid out in a large open space just east of Central avenue, and the ground was remarkably level and hard. It was a natural baseball field, and with but little work was ready for use. The greater part of the colony, men, women, and children, gathered to see the first exhibition of the American national game in La Gloria. Among the spectators were President Van der Voort and Chief Engineer Kelly. There were also a few Spaniards and many Cubans present. Few of the latter, probably, had ever before seen a baseball game, although the sport is a popular pastime among the American soldiers encamped near Puerto Principe. This latter fact accounts for the proficiency of the soldiers who came to La Gloria. They formed one nine, and the other was made up of colonists. The latter played well, everything considered, but the superior discipline and practice of Uncle Sam's boys made them the winners in a close score. The game was umpired by M. T. Jones of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, one of the colonists, who came on the first _Yarmouth_ and the capable assistant of Superintendent Maginniss about the camp. The game ended an hour or two before sundown and closed the outdoor sports of a very successful and enjoyable day. But there was one notable event on that first holiday not down on the program, and one which few of the colonists knew anything about at the time and of which not many had subsequent knowledge. As I wended my way in the direction of my tent near General Van der Voort's house, under the mellow rays of the declining sun, three excited colonists intercepted me. They were Chief Engineer Kelly, John A. Connell, and D. E. Lowell. Drawing me aside from the thoroughfare, they hastily informed me that a lawyer by the name of C. Hugo Drake, of Puerto Principe, had just come into La Gloria with Lieutenant Cienfuente, the owner of the Viaro tract, with the intention of dispossessing the colonists of their land. They had ridden in on horseback from Puerto Principe, forty-five miles away. Lieutenant Cienfuente was an elderly Spaniard who had been an officer in the Spanish army, and Drake claimed to have charge, in part, of his business affairs. We had heard from Drake before, and knew perfectly well that he had induced the landholding Spaniard to come with him to La Gloria. Drake was an American, having come to Cuba from Mississippi just after the war with Spain and set up as a lawyer and restaurant keeper in Puerto Principe. He was a young man of a prominent family, but was reputed to be somewhat dissipated. He has since persistently claimed that his errand to La Gloria was not to dispossess the colonists, but in reality was in their interest. This explanation cannot be accepted, however, except upon the hypothesis that the colonists were bound to lose their lands under the contracts which they held. This, as the event proved, was a groundless fear; their holdings were perfectly secure. In order to make the situation clear to the reader a little explanation is necessary. The Viaro tract, which was the one in question, included about two thirds of the town site and a little over ten thousand acres of plantation land adjoining. The greater part of this land had been allotted to colonists, but no deeds had then been given. The company had made a first payment on the tract, and was paying the balance in instalments. One of these instalments was overdue when Drake came to La Gloria with Lieutenant Cienfuente, who had owned the land, and set up the claim that the contract had lapsed. Lieutenant Cienfuente was willing to wait a reasonable length of time for his pay, but had become suspicious that he was not going to get it at all, and hence was more or less under the influence of Drake, who appears to have been a self-appointed attorney for the Spaniard. Drake had a great scheme, which was to make a new contract directly with the colonists, or newly chosen representatives, at an advanced price for the tract. This advance was to be divided between Cienfuente and himself, and Drake's share would have amounted to $25,000 or $30,000. Of course, in Drake's scheme, the only alternative for the colonists was dispossession. Yielding to the young lawyer's insinuating representations, Lieutenant Cienfuente had agreed to the plan, but he was by no means an aggressive factor in it. Meanwhile, the company's officers in New York were concluding arrangements to make the overdue payment, which was done a few weeks later. With but little hesitation, Lieutenant Cienfuente accepted the money from Messrs. Park and Mollenhauer, and Drake's little scheme collapsed like a toy balloon. A part of the above facts only were known to us when Messrs. Kelly, Connell, Lowell, and myself had our hurried conference late in the afternoon of our first holiday. Mr. Lowell was particularly excited, and seriously disturbed by the apprehension that he might have his land taken away from him. It was quickly agreed that it was for the mutual interest of Drake and the colony that he should not be permitted to spend the night in La Gloria. We went over to the house of General Van der Voort, and discussed the situation with him. He mingled his indignation with ours, and dictated a peremptory order that Drake should leave the camp at once. I was commissioned to deliver the message, and Messrs. Kelly, Connell, and Lowell volunteered to accompany me. After a little search we found Drake near the "old señor's" shack. He seemed to divine our errand and came forward to meet us, pale and trembling, perhaps from excitement, possibly from fear. Indeed, we must have looked somewhat formidable if not belligerent. We were all large men, and Kelly was the only one of the four who was not six feet or more in height. I gave Drake the paper from the general. Scarcely glancing at it, he said, apologetically, in a low tone, "It's all a mistake, gentlemen, I meant no harm to anybody." We assured him that we thought he would be safer elsewhere than in La Gloria. He did not stop to argue the matter, but turning went directly to the shack and saddled his horse. We had intended to give him an hour; he was out of La Gloria in ten minutes. He was obliged to spend the night in the dense woods. The treatment of Mr. Drake was not hospitable, but the colonists looked upon him as an interloper whose machinations might bring upon them a great deal of trouble. I do not think he had any wish to injure the colonists, but he certainly had an itching palm for the large stake which he thought he saw within his reach. I saw him a week or two later in Puerto Principe, and he was amicable enough. He still believed his scheme would go through, but it was not long before his hopes were dashed. He told me he was heavily armed when in La Gloria, and could have "dropped" all four of us, but that he had promised Lieutenant Cienfuente not to make any trouble. He surely did not, as it turned out. Mr. Drake had the manners of a gentleman, and extended many courtesies to me during my stay in Puerto Principe. His resentment on account of the La Gloria episode was mainly directed toward General Van der Voort, and he emphatically declared that he had already taken steps to summon the general into court for the insult. Lieutenant Cienfuente remained in La Gloria as our special guest. He was entertained at the officers' table, was the guest of honor at the meeting of the Pioneer Association that evening, and every effort was made to make him feel at home. On the following Monday he left for his home in Puerto Principe in high good humor. CHAPTER XIII. INDUSTRY OF THE COLONISTS. The opening of spring did not bring any material change in weather that the colonists could detect, save that the occasional rainfall had ceased. The temperature for March was about the same as for January and February, the lowest recorded by the thermometer being 53°, and the highest 92°. The weather was delightful and comfortable. There was more blossoming of flowers in the woods and the openings, and many a big tree became a veritable flower garden, with great clusters of pink orchids clinging to its huge trunk and massive limbs. There were several trees thus ornamented in close proximity to my tent. The colonists were now progressing with their work and displaying the greatest industry. Considerable clearing had been done, and some planting. Gardens were growing well, and the colonists were eating potatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc., of their own raising. Many thousands of pineapple plants had been set out, and banana and orange trees were being put into the ground as fast as they could be obtained. Many of the colonists were employed more or less by the company in one capacity or another. Some worked on the road, some about the camp, a few in the gardens, and still others in the cook-house. A number had been employed in the survey corps almost from the time of their arrival, while others worked "off and on," according to their convenience and disposition. The work of the surveyors was hard and exposing, and the fare usually poor and meagre, but for all that the men generally liked the employment and there was a constant stream of applicants for vacant places. In most cases the applicant knew what was before him and hence could appreciate the grim humor of Chief Kelly's unvarying formula. After questioning the applicant to ascertain if he really wanted to work, the chief would say, facetiously: "All you have to do is to follow a painted pole and eat three meals a day." Following a "painted pole" through the mud, water, and underbrush of a Cuban jungle, especially with an axe in one's hand to wield constantly, is no sinecure, but the men did not have to work very hard at their meals! My admiration of the pluck and patience of the "boys" on the survey corps was unbounded, and, I believe, fully justified. At their table the chief had designated an official kicker, and no one else was supposed to utter a complaint, and it was seldom that they did. The discipline was like that of an army. When a man was ordered to do a thing, two courses lay open to him--do it or quit. Usually the orders were carried out. [Illustration: THE SURVEY CORPS. (_March 24, 1900._)] One of the most capable and industrious of the colonists was B. F. Seibert of Omaha, Nebraska. He was a man of taste and refinement, and at the same time eminently practical. He was a veteran of the Civil War and a prominent citizen in the Western city whence he came. He had lived at one time in California, and there had gained special knowledge of the cultivation of fruits, flowers, and ornamental shrubbery. A few days after his arrival in La Gloria in January, Mr. Seibert was placed in charge of the port, and at once set to work to bring order out of chaos. He took care of the large amount of baggage and freight that had been dumped in the mud on the shore, placing it under temporary shelter, and a little later constructed an ample warehouse connecting with the pier. He removed the bushes and debris from the beach, thoroughly drained the locality, leveled the ground, cleared the accumulated sea-weed from the sand of the shore, extended and improved the pier, and put everything in first-class order, until one of the roughest and most forbidding of spots became positively attractive. I have rarely seen so complete and pleasing a transformation. The Port La Gloria of to-day is a delightful place, neat and well kept, swept by balmy breezes from the sea, and commanding an entrancing view across the vari-colored waters of the beautiful bay to the island of Guajaba, with its picturesque mountains, and the other keys along the coast. There is good sea-bathing here, and excellent fishing not far away. A few miles down the coast the mouth of the Maximo river is reached, where one may shoot alligators to his heart's content, while along the shore of Guajaba Key the resplendent flamingo may be brought down by a hunter who is clever enough to get within range of the timid bird. Assistant Chief Engineer Neville was a good flamingo hunter, and we occasionally dined off the big bird at the officers' table. One of the hardest workers in the colony was Jason L. Ratekin, who came from Omaha, Nebraska. He was a man of marked individuality, and though not overburdened with capital, was fertile in resources and full of energy and determination. At first he performed arduous work for the company in the transportation of baggage and freight from the port with the bullock team, and later went into business for himself as a contractor for the clearing and planting of land. He was enthusiastic and progressive. Among all the colonists there was none more public-spirited, and he demonstrated his kindness of heart on many occasions. Once when the bullock team was bringing in a sick woman and several small children, and the rough and wearisome journey was prolonged into the darkness of the night, he distinguished himself by carrying the ten-months-old baby nearly all the way in his arms and by breaking into a consignment of condensed milk to save it from starvation. Ratekin was a rough-looking fellow, but a more generous and kindly nature is seldom met with. The first banquet in La Gloria was held on the evening of March 26, in honor of the fifty-second birthday of Col. Thomas H. Maginniss, superintendent of camp, who was about to return to his wife and eleven children in Philadelphia. M. T. Jones of Williamsport, Pa., was master of ceremonies, and the occasion was highly enjoyable. The banquet was served in a tent restaurant on Central avenue, and the guests numbered about twenty, several of whom were ladies. The table presented a very attractive appearance, and the menu included salads, sardines, salt beef, smoked herrings, fresh fish, bread, cake and _lime_-o-nade. Among the after-dinner speakers were Colonel Maginniss, General Van der Voort, S. N. Ware of Wyoming, Jesse B. Kimes, Rev. Dr. Gill, D. E. Lowell, M. A. C. Neff, H. O. Neville, John A. Connell, and James M. Adams. The banquet was voted a success by all present. On Sunday, April 1, Colonel Maginniss and about twenty of the colonists left La Gloria for Nuevitas preparatory to sailing for the States. This was the largest number of colonists that had departed at one time since mid-winter, and their leaving caused some depression throughout the colony. This was quickly over, however, and new arrivals soon made up for the numerical loss. The Maginniss party included M. T. Jones of Pennsylvania and H. E. Mosher of New York state, who had been his assistants in the work of the camp, and Mrs. Whittle of Albany, N. Y., and Max Neuber of Philadelphia, Pa., who had been the teachers of the day and evening schools. Mr. Neuber and some of the others expressed the intention of returning to La Gloria later in the year. The departure of the score of colonists at this time was marked by a most melancholy incident, which was speedily followed by the first death in La Gloria. John F. Maxfield of Providence, R. I., a man past middle age, who had come to La Gloria on the first _Yarmouth_ excursion, had been ill for several weeks with a complication of ailments. Although he had the watchful care and companionship of a friend from the same city, Capt. Joseph Chace, he became very much depressed and sadly homesick. When the Maginniss party was made up to return to the States, he believed himself sufficiently improved to accompany it, and braced up wonderfully for the effort. When the day arrived, he announced his intention of walking to the port, and set out to do so, but was quickly picked up and taken down in a wagon. At the pier he was overcome by exhaustion, and exhibited so much weakness that it was deemed unsafe to place him on board of either of the small and crowded sail-boats. It was feared he would not survive the hardships and exposure of the journey to Nuevitas. The decision to leave him behind, although kindly meant, was a great blow to him, and was believed by some to have hastened his death, which took place the next morning. However this may be, it is improbable that he would have lived to reach his home in the States. Heart failure was the final cause of his death. He had good care at the port, but his extreme weakness could not be overcome. Mr. Maxfield was a quiet, unobtrusive man, and was held in high esteem throughout the colony. He was buried in a pleasant spot in the company's reserve, and his funeral was attended by almost the entire colony and some of the Cubans. The services were held out of doors in a beautiful glade, and were conducted by the Rev. Dr. Gill. It was a most impressive scene. This was the only death in La Gloria during the six months succeeding the arrival of the first colonists. This low rate of mortality was the more remarkable from the fact that a number of invalids came or were brought into the colony during the winter. One day there came in from the port a wagon bringing a woman who had been a paralytic for years, and her sick husband, who had been unable to sit up for a long time. They were from Kansas, and were accompanied by grown children and friends. The colonists expected there would very soon be two deaths in La Gloria, but the sick man, who was a mere skeleton, improved steadily and in a few weeks was able to walk about the camp, while his paralytic wife was no worse and was considered by the family to be slightly better. Considering that the invalids were living in tents without expert care, the man's recovery was hardly less than marvelous. On April 2, work on the corduroy road to the port, which had been suspended, was resumed under the capable supervision of D. E. Lowell. Mr. Lowell proved to be the best roadmaker who had taken a hand at the game up to that time, and, considering the little he had to do with, accomplished a great deal. His workmen were from among the colonists and he rarely had more than ten or twelve at a time, and usually less, but in five or six weeks he had done much for the betterment of the highway. No one realized better than Mr. Lowell that this was only a temporary road, but it was the best to be had at the time. Later in the year, a fine, permanent highway to the port was begun by Chief Engineer Kelly, and when completed La Gloria's great drawback will be removed. Kelly's is a substantial, rock-ballasted road, twelve feet wide, and graded two feet above high-water mark. It will make La Gloria easy of access from the coast. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. THE FIRST BALL IN LA GLORIA. Meanwhile, the sale and allotment of plantations and town lots steadily continued, until on April 9, six months from the day the surveyors began their operations, about twelve thousand or fifteen thousand acres of land had been allotted, besides nine hundred and thirty-three city lots. Many of the lots had been cleared, and parts of some of the plantations. Quite an amount of planting, in the aggregate, had been done. The survey corps and the colonists agreed that the semi-anniversary of the coming of the surveyors to La Gloria should be marked by a celebration, and the bold project of a grand ball was set on foot. When I first heard of it, I thought it was a joke, but when I saw a long list of committees conspicuously posted on Central avenue, and had been requested by "Albany" to announce the coming event at the regular meeting of the Pioneer Association, I realized that the talk had been serious and that Terpsichore had actually gained a footing in La Gloria. I was authorized to announce that the ball would be in charge of a French dancing master, which was the fact, for Floor Manager Messier ("Albany") was a Frenchman by birth. The ball and the accompanying supper were free to all, but the women of the colony had been requested to contribute food--and most nobly they responded--while the men, particularly the surveyors, hustled for fruit, sugar, etc. It was a cheering sight when big Jack McCauley drove in from Mercedes with the mule team, bringing a whole barrel of oranges. These were some of the oranges which had been saved by Jack's "influence." It was no small task to make the necessary preparations for the ball, and some of the committees were kept very busy. I was on the committee on music, and learned to my dismay, a few hours before the ball was to open, that Dan Goodman, the fiddler, had been attacked by stage fright and had declared that if he was to be the whole orchestra he would "hang up the fiddle and the bow." I interviewed Dan,--who was just as good a fellow as his name implies,--and found that he was really suffering from Pennsylvania modesty. Accordingly it devolved on me to build up an orchestra with Dan as a nucleus. I succeeded beyond my expectations. In a short time I had secured the musical services of Ed. Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Spiker, and others. The evening came, and like Jerry Rusk, they "seen their duty and done it." And it may further be said that they "done it" very well. It was decided to hold the ball in a large canvas-covered structure which had formerly been used as a restaurant kitchen and store-house. There was only a dirt floor, and hence the matter of a temporary flooring became a problem. Boards were almost an unknown luxury in La Gloria at that time, but a few were picked up about the camp, and the Rev. Dr. Gill kindly loaned the flooring of his tent for the evening. Even then, only so much of the ballroom floor was boarded as was actually used for dancing. It is not too much to say that the ballroom was elaborately decorated. High overhead were fastened graceful and beautiful palm leaves, a dozen feet or more in length, and there were green wreathes and initial letters flecked with flowers and bright red berries. Men, women, and children joined efforts to make the interior of the tent a bower of tropical beauty. The effect was most pleasing. Such decorations in the Northern states would doubtless have cost a large sum of money. Here they cost only a little time and labor. I wish I could say that the ballroom was brilliantly lighted, but the gas and electric light plants were as yet unplanted, and we had to depend on kerosene lanterns suspended from the roof. However, as most of us had been using only candles for illumination, the lantern light seemed very good. No one thought of complaining that it was dark. I shall not be able to describe the Grand Ball in all its wondrous details, but only to make brief mention of a few of the features which particularly impressed me. I remember that as the people gathered together we had great difficulty in recognizing each other. We had thought we were all well acquainted, but that was before the men and women had gone down into the bottom of their trunks and fished out their good clothes. The transformation, particularly in some of the men, was paralyzing, and after we had identified the individuals inside of the clothes, many of us forgot our company manners and opened our mouths wide in astonishment. Men who had been accustomed to wear, seven days in each week, a careless outing costume, or old, cheap clothes of cotton or woolen material, or mayhap nothing more than shirt and overalls, had suddenly blossomed out in well-fitting black suits, set off by cuffs, high collars, and silk ties. It was a dazzling sight for La Gloria. The men had been very negligent of their dress; scarcely one had brought his valet with him to Cuba! There may even have been a few dress suits at the ball, and I will not make oath that some of the women were not in décolleté gowns; to be entirely safe, however, I will not swear that they were. The women looked very well and so did the men; all were a credit to an American colony. Mr. J. A. Messier ("Albany"), the floor manager and master of ceremonies, was attired in neat and conventional dress, and performed his duties gracefully and well. The grand march was led by General Van der Voort and Mrs. Dan Goodman, followed by Chief Engineer Kelly with a daughter of Señor Rivas. I do not find among my possessions a dance order, and hence can give no description of it; and I apprehend that the others present would have no better success. But there was dancing, and a lot of it. [Illustration: INTERIOR GEN. VAN DER VOORT'S HOUSE. (_April, 1900._)] Furthermore, it was much enjoyed, both by the participants and the spectators. About the middle of the evening some specialties were introduced. Chief Engineer Kelly performed a clog dance successfully, turning a handspring at the end, and Architect Neff executed an eccentric French dance with a skill and activity that brought down the house. There was also good clog dancing by some of the younger men. The ball was attended by nearly the entire colony. This was made manifest when we lined up for supper, which was served across the street. The procession to the tables numbered one hundred and forty persons by actual count. The tables were set under shelter tents, and were beautifully decorated and loaded with food. There were meats, fish, salads, puddings, cakes, and a wonderful variety of pies, in which the guava was conspicuous. Coffee and fruits were also much in evidence. Never before had La Gloria seen such a spread. On this occasion the women of the colony achieved a well-merited reputation for culinary skill and resourcefulness. Except for a few enthusiasts, who went back to the ballroom for more dancing, the supper wound up the evening's festivities. The semi-anniversary had been properly celebrated, and the first ball in La Gloria had proved successful beyond anticipation. April 9, 1900, may be set down as a red letter day in the history of the colony. Speaking of the ball and its orchestra calls to mind the music in the camp in the early days of the colony. There was not much. Occasionally a violin was heard; and more often, perhaps, a guitar or mandolin. But the most persistent musician was a cornet player, who for a time was heard regularly every night from one end of the camp. His wind was good, but his repertoire small. He knew "Home, Sweet Home" from attic to cellar, and his chief object in life seemed to be to make others as familiar with it as himself. He played little else, and the melting notes of John Howard Payne's masterpiece floated through the quiet camp hour after hour, night after night. Finally, the colonists visited him and told him gently but firmly that he must stop playing that piece so much; it was making them all homesick. Not long after the cornet player disappeared. I think there was no foul play. Probably he had simply betaken himself to home, sweet home. There were many good singers in camp. Some of them met regularly once or twice a week and sang gospel hymns. These formed the choir at the Sunday services. There was another group of vocalists, equally excellent in its way, which confined itself to rendering popular songs. Some of the latter, who dwelt and had their "sings" near my tent, would have done credit to the vaudeville stage. They were known as the "Kansas crowd." It gave me, a native of the Granite state, great satisfaction to hear these Kansas people singing with spirit and good expression "My Old New Hampshire Home." I was pleased to regard it as a Western tribute to New Hampshire as the place of the ideal home. CHAPTER XV. A WALKING TRIP TO PUERTO PRINCIPE. It was on the day after the Grand Ball, Tuesday, April 10, that a party of us started on a walking trip to the city of Puerto Principe, forty-five miles away. My companions, who, like myself, were all colonists, were Jeff D. Franklin of Florida, David Murphy of New Jersey, A. H. Carpenter of Massachusetts, and a Mr. Crosby of Tennessee. Mr. Crosby was a man of middle age; the rest of us were younger, Carpenter being a mere youth of perhaps eighteen. All were good walkers. The start was made at about 8:30 in the morning. The day was pleasant and balmy, but not excessively warm. The trail was now in good condition, and the walking would have been altogether agreeable had it not been for the packs upon our shoulders. We carried hammocks, blankets, and such food as bread, crackers, sardines, bacon, and coffee. One of the party had a frying-pan slung across his back. Our loads were not actually heavy, but they seemed so after we had walked a few miles. Our course lay to the southwest, through the deserted plantation of Mercedes, where we stopped an hour to eat oranges and chat with the colonists at work there. Resuming our march, we soon passed an inhabited Cuban shack near an abandoned sugar mill, stopping a few minutes to investigate a small banana patch near the road. We had been here before and knew the owner. A mile further on we reached another occupied shack, and called to get a drink of agua (water). We were hospitably received in the open front of the casa (house) and given heavy, straight-backed, leather-bottomed chairs of an antique pattern. The agua furnished was rain water which had been stored in a cistern, and had at least the virtue of being wet. There were at home an old man, a very fleshy elderly woman, and two rather good-looking girls, the appearance and dress of one of whom indicated that she was a visitor. This was about the only shack we saw where there were no young children in evidence. We tarried but a few minutes. After making inquiries about the road, as we did at almost every house, we continued on our way. For the next three or four miles we had a good hard trail through the woods, but saw neither habitation nor opening. Shortly after noon we emerged from the woods into an open space, where, on slightly elevated ground, stood two shacks. We had been here before and knew the man who occupied one of them. There was no land under cultivation in sight, and the only fruit a custard apple tree and a few mangoes. There were a good many pigs roaming about, and the shack we entered contained several small children. Our Cuban friend seemed glad to see us; his wife brought us water to drink, and we were invited to sit down. Our social call would have been more satisfactory if we had known more Spanish, or our host had spoken English. We made but a brief stay, and on departing asked the Cuban to point out to us the road to Puerto Principe. Since leaving the woods we had seen no road or trail of any sort. He took us around his house and accompanied us for some distance, finally pointing out an indistinct trail across high savanna land which he said was the right one. This path, which could hardly be seen, was the "road" from the coast to the third largest city in Cuba, only about thirty miles away! Such are Cuban roads. At times you can only guess whether you are in a road or out of it. What lay before us was now entirely unfamiliar. At about one o'clock we halted by the side of the trail for a midday rest and lunch. We were a dozen miles from La Gloria, and about an equal distance from the Cubitas mountains, through which we were to pass. An hour later we took up the march again. We soon entered the woods and found a smooth, firm trail over the red earth. We passed through miles of timber, of a fine, straight growth. In the thick woods but few royal palms were seen, but in the more open country we saw some magnificent groves of them. During the afternoon we passed only two or three shacks, but as we approached the Cubitas mountains the few habitations and their surroundings improved in character. The houses continued to be palm-thatched, but they were more commodious and surrounded by gardens in which were a few orange and banana trees, and other fruits and vegetables. Some of the places were quite pretty. Occasionally we would see cleared land that had once been cultivated, but no growing crops of any amount. This part of the country had been agriculturally dead since the Ten Years' War. How the natives live, I know not, but it is safe to say that they do not live well. They raise boniatos and cassava, a little fruit, and keep a few pigs. Often their chief supply of meat is derived from the wild hogs which they shoot. And yet these Cubans were living on some of the best land in the world. Late in the afternoon, after walking for a mile or more along a good road bordered by the ornamental but worthless jack-pineapple plant, we came to a wide gateway opening into an avenue lined with cocoanut palms and leading up to a couple of well-made Cuban shacks. The houses stood at the front of quite a large garden of fruit trees. We called at one of the shacks, which proved to be well populated. An elderly man, large for a Cuban and well-built, came forward to greet us and was inclined to be sociable. His shirt appeared to be in the wash, but this fact did not seem to embarrass him any; he still had his trousers. Of a younger man we bought a few pounds of boniatos (sweet potatoes) and after some urging persuaded him to go out and get some green cocoanuts for us from the trees. He sent his little boy of about twelve years of age up the tree to hack off a bunch of the nuts with his machete. We drank the copious supply of milk with great satisfaction; there is no more refreshing drink in all Cuba. As the boy had done all the work, we designedly withheld our silver until he had come down the tree and we could place it in his hands. We wondered if he would be allowed to keep it. Climbing the smooth trunk of a cocoanut tree is no easy task. We camped that night among the trees by the side of the road a quarter of a mile further on. We had made twenty miles for the day, and were now on high ground near the base of the Cubitas mountains. The rise had been so very gradual that we had not noticed that we were ascending. The trunks of all the trees around us were stained for a short distance from the ground with the red of the soil, caused, as we believed, by the wild hogs rubbing up against them. Our supper of fried boniatos and bacon was skilfully cooked by Jeff Franklin, who used the hollow trunk of a royal palm, which had fallen and been split, for an oven. For drink we had cocoanut milk. By the vigorous use of Dave Murphy's machete we cleared away the underbrush so that we could swing our hammocks among the small trees. Franklin had no hammock, but slept under a blanket on a rubber coat spread on the ground. The night was comfortably warm and brilliantly clear. It was delightful to lie in our hammocks and gaze up through the trees at the beautiful star-lit sky. There were mosquitoes, of course, but they did not trouble us much, and we all slept well. We were up early the next morning, a perfect day, and after eating a substantial breakfast proceeded on our journey. We felt little exhaustion from the long walk of the preceding day, but I was a sad cripple from sore feet. I had on a pair of Cuban shoes which were a little too short for me (although they were No. 40) and my toes were fearfully blistered and bruised. There was nothing to do, however, but go forward as best I could, so I limped painfully along behind my companions, keenly conscious that Josh Billings was a true philosopher when he said that "tite boots" made a man forget all his other troubles. A fraction of a mile beyond our camping place we discovered a well-kept shack ensconced in cosy grounds amid palms, fruit trees, and flowering shrubs. It was one of the prettiest scenes we saw. We called for water, politely greeted the woman who served us with our best pronunciation of "buenos dias," and, murmuring our "gracias," went our way with some regrets at leaving so pleasant a spot. A mile or two further on we came to a distinct fork in the road. One way lay nearly straight ahead, the other bore off to the right. While we were debating which trail to take, a horseman fortunately came along, the first person we had seen on the road that day and the second since leaving Mercedes on the preceding forenoon. He told us to go to the right, and we were soon in the foothills of the mountains. It was here that we found a deserted shack behind which was a cleared space in the woods of several acres. On this little plantation grew bananas, cocoanuts, cassava, boniatos, and other vegetables. As it was in the Cubitas mountains near this spot that the Cuban insurrectionists had what they called their independent civil government for some time prior to the intervention of the United States, and secreted their cattle and raised fruit and vegetables to supply food for the "Army of Liberation," we guessed that this might be one of the places then put under cultivation. It certainly had had very little recent care. After journeying past some chalk-white cliffs, which we examined with interest, we entered the mountain pass which we supposed would take us through the town or village of Cubitas, the one-time Cuban capital. The way was somewhat rough and rugged, but not very steep. The mountains were covered with trees and we had no extended view in any direction. All at once, at about 10:30 a.m., we suddenly and unexpectedly emerged from the pass, when the shut-in forest view changed to a broad and sweeping prospect into the interior of Cuba. What we looked down upon was an immense savanna, stretching twenty miles to the front, and perhaps more on either hand, broken in the distance on all sides by hills and lofty mountains. It was a beautiful sight, particularly for us who had been shut in by the forest most of the time for months. The savanna was dry, but in places showed bright green stretches that were restful to the eye. It was dotted with thousands of small palm trees, which were highly ornamental. We could not see Puerto Principe, nor did we catch sight of it until within three miles of the city. There was no town or village in sight, and not even a shack, occupied or unoccupied. The view embraced one vast plain, formerly used for grazing purposes, but now wholly neglected and deserted. We did not then know that we were to walk seventeen miles across this savanna before seeing a single habitation of any sort. We had seen nothing of the village of Cubitas, and concluded that we had taken the wrong pass. We were afterwards told that Cubitas consisted of a single shack which had been used as a canteen. Whether the Cuban government occupied this canteen, or one of the caves which are said to exist in these mountains, I cannot say. The revolutionary government, being always a movable affair, was never easy to locate. It was, however, secure from harm in these mountains. We noticed later that the natives seemed to regard all the scattered houses within a radius of half a dozen miles from this part of the mountains as forming Cubitas. The post-office must have been up a tree. After a brief rest on the south slope of the mountains, we resumed our march, a wearisome one for all of us and exceedingly painful to me with my disabled feet. They seemed even sorer after a halt. My ankles were now very lame from unnaturally favoring my pinched toes. The midday sun was hot, and we suffered a good deal from thirst. There were no longer any houses where we could procure water. We had not seen a stream of any sort in the last twenty miles. I staggered along as best I could, a straggler behind my companions. A little after noon we came suddenly upon two or three little water holes directly in our path. It seemed like an oasis in the desert. We could not see where the water came from nor where it went, but it was clear and good, and we were duly thankful. We ate dinner here under a small palm tree, and enjoyed a siesta for an hour. In the afternoon we met only one person, a Cuban produce pedler on horseback. He treated those who cared for liquor out of a big black bottle. That afternoon's tramp will linger long in our memories. I thought we should never get across that seemingly endless savanna. At last, when it was near six o'clock, we reached an old deserted open shack which stood on the plain not far from the trail. Here we spent the night, cooking our supper and procuring in a near-by well tolerably good water, notwithstanding the dirty scum on top of it. We were within four miles of Puerto Principe, and my ears were delighted that evening with a sound which I had not heard in more than three months--the whistle of a locomotive. Our night was somewhat disturbed by rats, fleas, and mosquitoes, but we were too tired not to sleep a good part of it. The breeze across the savanna was gentle and soothing. The next morning we walked into the time-scarred city of Puerto Principe--that is, the others walked and I hobbled. If possible, my feet were worse than ever. In the outskirts, our party divided, Franklin, Murphy, and Carpenter branching off to the left to go to the camp of the Eighth U. S. Cavalry two miles east of the city near the railroad track, and Crosby and I going directly into the heart of the town in search of a hotel. We had a long walk through the narrow and roughly paved streets before we found one. There is no denying that we were a tough-looking pair of tramps. We were unshaven and none too clean. Our clothes were worn and frayed, and soiled with mud and dust. We were bent with the packs upon our shoulders, and walked with very pronounced limps. Everywhere we were recognized as "Americanos," although it seemed to me we looked more like Italian organ-grinders. To the day of my death I shall never cease to be grateful to the people of Puerto Principe for the admirable courtesy and good manners exhibited to us. They did not stone nor jeer us; they did not even openly stare at the odd spectacle we presented. Even the children did not laugh at us, and the dogs kindly refrained from barking at our heels. At all times during our stay of several days we were treated with perfect courtesy and a respectful consideration which our personal appearance scarcely warranted and certainly did not invite. The Spaniards and Cubans seem to associate even the roughest dressed American with money and good-nature. The humbler children would gather about us, pleading, "Americano, gimme a centavo!" while little tots of four years would say in good English and the sweetest of voices, "Good-by, my frien'!" It was the soldiers who had taught them this. Their parents rarely spoke any English whatever. We stayed at the Gran Hotel, said by some to be the best in the city. It was none too good, but not bad as Cuban hotels run. The terms were moderate, $1.50 per day, for two meals and lodging. A third meal could not be obtained for love nor money. I bought mine at street stands or in a café. Not a word of English was spoken at this hotel. I cannot describe Puerto Principe at any length. It is an old Spanish city in architecture and customs, and might well have been transplanted from mediæval Spain. As a matter of fact, it was moved here centuries ago from the north coast of Cuba, near the present site of Nuevitas, the change being made to escape the incursions of pirates. It has a population of about forty-seven thousand, and is the third largest city in Cuba, and the most populous inland town. Many of the residents are wealthy and aristocratic, and the people, generally speaking, are fine-looking and very well dressed. I several times visited the chief plaza, which had lately taken the new name of Agramonte, and watched with interest the handsome men and beautiful señoritas who promenaded there. I was told that late in the afternoon and early in the evening the young people of the best families in the city walked in the plaza. They were certainly elegantly dressed and most decorous in behavior. The plaza was very pretty, with its royal palms and ornamental flower beds. It was flanked by one of the several ancient Catholic churches in the city. While in Puerto Principe I was in receipt of unexpected courtesies from Mr. C. Hugo Drake, the American lawyer alluded to in an earlier chapter of this book. [Illustration: AGRAMONTE PLAZA, PUERTO PRINCIPE, CUBA. _Photograph by V. K. Van de Venter, Jan. 28, 1900._] After spending four delightful days in Puerto Principe, I took the train to Las Minas, twenty miles to the eastward. There I joined my companions, who had preceded me by twenty-four hours. Here we boarded the private cane train of Bernabe Sanchez and rode to Señor Sanchez' great sugar mill at Senado, six miles away. Señor Sanchez has a pleasant residence here, surrounded by fruit trees and shrubs. We saw ripe strawberries growing in his garden. Scores of Cuban shacks in the vicinity house his workmen and their families. We went all over his immense, well-appointed sugar mill, then in operation, and in the early afternoon rode on the flat cars of the cane train through his extensive plantation for nine miles, the land on either side of the track for all this distance being utilized for the growing of sugar cane. The end of the track left us about eighteen miles from La Gloria. We set out to walk home, but late in the afternoon the party accidentally divided and both divisions got lost. Murphy and I spent an uncomfortable night in the thick, damp woods, and taking up the tramp early the next morning, found ourselves, two or three hours later, at the exact point near the end of Sanchez' plantation where we had begun our walk the afternoon before. We had walked about fifteen miles and got back to our starting point without realizing that we had deviated from the main trail. Stranger yet, the other division of the party had done exactly the same thing, but had reached this spot late the night before and was now half way to La Gloria. Murphy and I made a new start, and after getting off the track once or twice, finally reached the Maximo river, crossed it on a tree, and got into La Gloria at 5:30 that afternoon, nearly worn out and looking like wild men. I had had nothing to eat for forty-eight hours save two cookies, one cracker, and half a sweet potato. CHAPTER XVI. IN AND AROUND LA GLORIA. A very good Book that I wot of contains an Apocrypha. This will have no Apocrypha, but I will here relate an incident which did not come under my personal observation, but which was told of by my ordinarily veracious friend, Colonel Maginniss. At one time during the winter, Colonel Maginniss and his assistants had for three days, been searching for a company horse that was lost, when a man named Ramsden came to the colonel's tent and reported that there was a horse hanging in the woods not far away. The colonel and Mr. Jones went to the spot and found a large white horse, that had weighed twelve hundred pounds, dead in the thicket, hanging by the neck. No formal inquest was held, but it was the colonel's theory that this American-born horse could not live on Cuban grass, and had deliberately hanged himself. A somewhat similar case I was personally cognizant of. A sick horse was reported drowning in a shallow pond near the camp. Colonel Maginniss went to the scene on a Cuban pony, with a dozen colonists, and after a hard struggle the horse was dragged one hundred yards away from the mud and water, and left on dry land. Early the next morning it was discovered that the horse had worked his way back into the pond and drowned himself. Was this a case of animal suicide? It may be said that none of the colonists ever resorted to this desperate expedient, even when the sugar gave out. Colonel Maginniss was "a master hand in sickness." An English woman who came to the colony was very ill, and blood poisoning set in. The colonel's experience as a family man was now of service. He had the woman removed to a large tent, attended her personally and looked after the children, calling four or five times daily, and administering such remedies as he had. The woman recovered, and gratefully expressed the belief that the colonel had saved her life. Near the end of April there was a sudden and surprising rise of water along Central avenue between La Gloria and the port. One afternoon Mr. Lowell and his men at work upon the road noticed that the water was rising in the creeks and ditches along the way. This was a surprising discovery, inasmuch as there had been no rain of any account. The water continued to rise rapidly, and when the men left off work late in the afternoon it was several feet higher than it had been at noon. It came up steadily through the night, so that pedestrians to the port the next morning found the water even with the new road all along and over it where the creeks came in. Further down toward the port, the savanna was flooded in places to a depth of one or two feet. Among the pedestrians that morning were several colonists who were on their way home to the States, and who, singularly enough, were obliged to walk out of La Gloria through mud and water very much as they had walked in several months before, although between the two periods there had been for a long time a good dry road. It was that morning that we, in the camp, heard a peculiar rushing sound which we at first mistook for water sweeping through the woods. On going down the road to investigate, however, we found that the noise was the deafening chorus of millions of little frogs--some contended that they were tree toads--which had come in with the flood or with the rain which fell in the night. Never before had I seen such a sight. The frogs were everywhere, on logs, stumps, in the water, and along the road; bits of earth jutting out of the water would be covered with them. They were all of one color--as yellow as sulphur--and appeared to be very unhappy. I saw large stumps so covered with these frogs, or toads, as to become pyramids of yellow. Whether frogs or toads, they seemed averse to getting wet and were all seeking dry places. I saw a snake about two feet long, who had filled himself up with them from head to tail, floating lazily on the surface of the water. No less than five of the yellowbacks had climbed up on his head and neck, and he had only energy enough left to clasp his jaws loosely upon one of them and then let go. The snake seemed nearly dead from over-eating. The frogs disappeared in a day or two as suddenly as they had come. At the time of this small-sized flood, a party of surveyors were camped upon the savanna near Central avenue and about a mile from the port. Their camp was high enough to escape the water, but they were pretty well surrounded by it. One of the men, finding deep water running in the road, went a-fishing there and boasted that he had caught fish in Central avenue! The water soon subsided, and the generally accepted explanation of the sudden flood was that it had been caused by the overflow of the Maximo, and that there had been heavy rains, or a cloudburst, twelve or fifteen miles away. April was a warm month, but by no means an uncomfortable one. The lowest temperature recorded was 67°; the highest, 94°. The weather was delightful; the breezes were fresh and fragrant; flowers were blossoming everywhere; and the honey bees of this incomparable bee country were happy and industrious. So, too, were the colonists. The work of the latter was well advanced by the first of May, or, at least, that of some of them. As an example of industry, D. Siefert is worthy of mention. Mr. Siefert hailed from British Columbia and came to La Gloria on the first _Yarmouth_. On the voyage down he was somewhat disturbed over the question of getting his deed, but once in La Gloria, he put his apprehensions behind him, secured his allotment of a five-acre plantation, indulged in no more vain questionings and waited for no further developments, but each morning shouldered his axe and attacked the trees on his land. He kept up the battle for months, rarely missing a day's work. The result was that by May 1, Mr. Siefert, alone and unaided, had cleared his five acres of timber land, burned it over, and was ready for planting. Other colonists worked hard and effectually in the forest, but this was the best single-handed performance that came under my notice. [Illustration: DR. PEIRCE'S PINEAPPLE PATCH.] Another enterprising and highly intelligent colonist was Max Neuber of Philadelphia, who has been before alluded to as one of the teachers in the evening school. Mr. Neuber pushed the work upon his land, doing much of it himself. Early and late his friends would find him chopping, digging, and planting. When he left for the States in April he had five boxes packed with the products of his plantation, such as lemons, limes, potatoes, and specimens of mahogany and other valuable woods. A group of industrious workers, most of whom had earlier been attached to the survey corps, were in May located and well settled in a place which they called Mountain View. This was a partially open tract four or five miles west of La Gloria and about a mile from Mercedes. Here the young men pitched their tents and swung their hammocks, confidently claiming that they had the best spot in all the country round. From here the Cubitas mountains could be plainly seen; hence the name of Mountain View. A person following the rough trail from La Gloria to Mercedes might have seen on a tree at the left, shortly before reaching the latter place, a shingle bearing the inscription, "Change Cars for Mountain View." If he should choose to take the narrow, rough, and crooked trail to the left through the woods, he would ere long come out into the open and probably see Smith Everett, formerly of Lenawee county, Michigan, lying-in his hammock watching his banana trees grow. I have before mentioned the irregularity and infrequency of the mails. The remedy was slow in coming. The chief cause of the irregularity was The Sangjai, which, though designed to be an aid to navigation, was often a great hindrance to it. The Sangjai was a very narrow and very shallow channel, partly natural and partly artificial, through what had once been the Sabinal peninsula. The artificial and difficult part of the channel known as The Sangjai was about half way between La Gloria and Nuevitas. It had to be used in following the short or "inside" water course. This was the route over which went our mail in a small sailboat. The Sangjai at one point was so shallow that it contained only a few inches of water at low tide and less than two feet when the tide was high. It was a hard place to get through at best, and many a passenger on craft which went this way had to get out and walk, and help push the boat besides! Boats always had to be pushed or poled through The Sangjai. If the winds permitted the sailboat to reach this aggravating channel at the right time, there was no great delay; but otherwise, the boat would be held up for ten or twelve hours. This was altogether unpleasant, especially as the mosquitoes and jejines claimed The Sangjai (pronounced Sanghi, or corruptly, Shanghi) for their own. The mail, like everything else, had to await the will of the waters, or, perhaps I should say, the convenience of the moon. The Sangjai played a very important part in the early history of La Gloria. CHAPTER XVII. THE COLONY AT THE END OF THE FIRST YEAR. My pen must glide rapidly over the events of the summer and early fall. The sawmill, which had been so long delayed and so often promised as to become a standing joke in the colony, finally reached La Gloria from Nuevitas, via the port, on May 30. Nothing was more needed; its non-arrival had delayed both building operations and the clearing of land. A few weeks later the mill was in operation, to the great joy of the colonists. In June the construction of a pole tramway from La Gloria to a point on the bay between the port and the Palota landing was begun. This was completed on August 14, and transportation operations were at once inaugurated. The new landing place was named Newport. On July 16 the building of a substantial and permanent highway from La Gloria to the port was commenced under the supervision of Chief Engineer Kelly, and before October 1 the work was well advanced. The chosen route was along Central avenue. The colonists celebrated the Fourth of July with an appropriate entertainment. On July 3 the colony witnessed a tragedy in the killing of a youth named Eugene Head by a stone thrown by a young Spanish boy. The coroner's jury decided that young Head's death was accidental. Both boys were residents of La Gloria. The fifth of July was marked by the death of a valued colonist, Mr. F. H. Bosworth, a veteran of the Civil War. Mr. Bosworth was seventy-one years old, and had not been in rugged health for a long time. He was an enterprising colonist, and performed a great deal of work for a man of his years and enfeebled physical condition. His wife, also a resident of La Gloria, survived him. The general health of the colony through the summer was excellent. There was but little rain, and the weather was delightful beyond all expectation. The temperature ordinarily ranged from about 78° to 90°, and never exceeded 94°. The colonists came to believe that the summer season was even more agreeable than the winter. It was heartily voted that Cuba was a good all-the-year-round country. [Illustration: SCENE ON LAGUNA GRANDE.] The end of the first year of the colony--reckoning from October 9, 1899, when the surveyors began operations--saw much progress toward extensive colonization, not in La Gloria alone, but also in the surrounding country. The Cuban Colonization Company, organized with Dr. W. P. Peirce of Hoopeston, Ill., as president and treasurer, and W. G. Spiker of Cleveland, Ohio, as vice-president and general manager, had acquired two excellent tracts of land, known as Laguna Grande and Rincon Grande, to the eastward of the La Gloria property. These are being subdivided and sold to colonists in small holdings. In the Rincon Grande tract, on the bay front, the city of Columbia is being laid out, and doubtless will soon be settled by thrifty and progressive colonists from the United States. It is claimed that this is the exact spot where Columbus landed in 1492, and it certainly does answer well the historical description. Other colonists had purchased the Canasi tract, southwest of La Gloria and adjoining the Caridad property, and Hon. Peter E. Park was said to have secured an option on the Palota tract. It is understood that these two tracts are to be divided up and sold to colonists. The Caridad tract, adjoining La Gloria on the south, had passed into the hands of Mr. O. N. Lumbert of New York, and still other tracts in the neighborhood were being negotiated for by Americans. Judging from the progress of this first year in colonization, there will soon be more Americans in this region than Cubans. The nearest Cuban village to La Gloria is Guanaja (pronounced Wan-ah-ha) twelve miles to the northwest, and six or seven miles from Mercedes. Before the Ten Years' War Guanaja was a port of some importance, and the village is said to have embraced one hundred and eighty houses. But the town and surrounding country suffered severely in the long war, and somewhat in the later conflict. Now Guanaja consists of one rude wooden building, used as a store, and a dozen shacks stretched along the bay front close to the water, with a few scattered palm houses further back from the shore. The situation is rather picturesque, commanding a beautiful view across the brilliant-hued water to Cayo Romano, and the surrounding country is pleasant and might be made highly productive. The La Gloria colonists sometimes patronized the Guanaja store, and found the proprietor accommodating and reasonable in his prices. In the country between La Gloria and Guanaja we would often meet members of the Rural Guard, in groups of two or three. They were fine-looking mounted Cubans, selected by the American military government from among the best of the late followers of Gomez, Garcia, and Maceo to patrol the country and preserve the peace. They frequently visited us at La Gloria, and made a favorable impression. The La Gloria colony at the close of its first year had several newly formed organizations in a flourishing condition. Prominent among these was the La Gloria Colony Transportation Company, which owned and operated the pole tramway to the bay. Its officers were: J. C. Kelly, president; D. E. Lowell, first vice-president and general manager; W. A. Merrow, second vice-president; M. A. Custer Neff, chief engineer; R. G. Earner, secretary; William I. Gill, treasurer; H. W. O. Margary, counsel; and John Latham, E. F. Rutherford, D. W. Clifton, R. H. Ford, W. M. Carson, J. A. Messier, directors. The La Gloria Colony Telephone Company, organized to construct and operate a telephone line to the bay, was officered as follows: J. C. Kelly, president; F. E. Kezar, vice-president and general manager; J. R. P. de les Derniers, secretary; S. M. Van der Voort, chief engineer and director; J. A. Connell, director. The La Gloria Colony Cemetery Association had the following officers: J. C. Kelly, M. A. C. Neff, D. E. Lowell, trustees; J. C. Kelly, president; H. W. O. Margary, vice-president; E. L. Ellis, treasurer; A. B. Chambers, secretary; Rev. W. A. Nicholas, general manager; F. E. Kezar, J. C. Francis, S. L. Benham, Mrs. W. A. Nicholas, Mrs. John Lind, directors. The Cuban Land and Steamship Company donated ten acres of land for a cemetery. The La Gloria Horticultural Society had about thirty members, with officers as follows: H. W. O. Margary, president; A. W. Provo, vice-president; R. G. Barner, secretary; Smith Everett, treasurer. The La Prima Literary Society also had something like thirty members, and these officers: H. W. O. Margary, chairman; A. W. Provo, vice-chairman; R. H. Ford, secretary; Smith Everett, treasurer. The two last named societies jointly purchased a town lot, and propose to erect at some future time a building for a hall, reading-room, etc. The colony's first anniversary found improvements marching steadily, if not rapidly, on. The sawmill, already alluded to, was busily at work; Olson's shingle mill was completed; the two-story frame building on Central avenue to be used as post-office; dwelling, etc., was done, as were numerous other wooden houses occupied as stores or residences; there were half a dozen well-stocked stores doing business, and several restaurants and bakeries. Many buildings were in process of construction, and much clearing and planting going on. Choice fruit trees were being imported, as well as cattle, mules, swine, and poultry. The colonists were subsisting in part upon vegetables and pineapples of their own raising, and looking confidently forward to exporting products of this character in the near future. Fruit growing was the most popular industry among the colonists, but there were those who were looking into the subjects of sugar, coffee, tobacco, cacao, rubber, lumber, cattle raising, etc. The outlook for all such enterprises seemed highly promising. Urgent needs of La Gloria are a canning factory and an establishment for the manufacture of furniture; these industries should flourish from the start. The enthusiasm of the colonists was unbounded; they were filled and thrilled with delight over their new home in the tropics. The climate was glorious, the air refreshing and soothing, the country picturesque and healthful, the soil fertile and productive. Not for a moment did they doubt that, after a few short years of slight hardship and trifling deprivations, a life of luxurious comfort lay before them. A fortune or a competence seemed certain to come to every man who would work and wait for it, and in all La Gloria there was hardly a person to be found who would willingly blot from his memory his interesting experiences while PIONEERING IN CUBA. [Illustration] Fortunes in Cuba A SHORT ROAD TO A COMPETENCY AND A LIFE AMID TROPICAL DELIGHTS FOR THOSE WHO ARE AWAKE TO THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY. [Illustration] The Cuban Colonization Company Owns and holds deeds for two large tracts of the best land in Cuba, situated on the north coast in the Province of Puerto Principe, the most fertile and healthful portion of the island. This region is being rapidly colonized by enterprising Americans, who own and are developing thousands of plantations in the immediate vicinity of our holdings. We are selling this valuable land in small tracts, from five to forty acres each, at a low price, payable in monthly installments. It has been practically demonstrated that this soil will produce abundantly all kinds of tropical fruits, sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, cocoanuts, etc. The purchaser of land from us will have no taxes to pay for the first three years, and can have a warranty deed as soon as his land is paid for. A discount of 10 pet cent. allowed from regular prices when full payment is made at time o£ purchase. An Insurance Policy. In case of the death of any purchaser we will issue a warranty deed to his or her estate without further payment. REMEMBER--That a 10-acre Orange Grove in Cuba, four years old, is worth ten thousand dollars, and will net you from three to six thousand dollars annually. REMEMBER--That in Cuba you can have fruits ripening every month in the year. REMEMBER--That what you would pay for winter clothing and fuel to keep you warm in the United States will keep up a home in Cuba, where the winter months are perpetual June. REMEMBER--That in our location are combined a delightful and healthful climate, pure and abundant water, and a rich and productive soil. Send for illustrated booklet and leaflets, giving information concerning prices, etc. CUBAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. MAIN OFFICE, ROOM 367, ARCADE, CLEVELAND, OHIO BRANCH OFFICE. -- -- HOOPESTON, ILL. OFFICERS DR. W. P. PEIRCE, President and Treasurer. W. G. SPIKER, Vice-President and General Manager. G. W. HANCHETT, Assistant Manager. W. P. PEIRCE, JR., Secretary. JAMES PEIRCE, Assistant Secretary. Pioneering in Cuba. A NARRATIVE OF THE SETTLEMENT OF LA GLORIA, THE FIRST AMERICAN COLONY IN CUBA, AND THE EARLY EXPERIENCES OF THE PIONEERS. By JAMES M. ADAMS, One of the Original Colonists. In one volume, 16mo., Illustrated with scenes in La Gloria. PRICE: Bound in Cloth, $1.00; Bound in Paper, 50 Cents. The book will be sent postpaid on receipt of price by the author, at North Weare, N. H., or by the Rumford Printing Co., Concord, N. H. AGENTS WANTED. Address the author. 
11013	----	[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been numbered and moved to the end.] Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America By William Cullen Bryant. 1850. To the Reader. The letters composing this volume were written at various times, during the last sixteen years, and during journeys made in different countries. They contain, however, no regular account of any tour or journey made by the writer, but are merely occasional sketches of what most attracted his attention. The greater part of them have already appeared in print. The author is sensible that the highest merit such a work can claim, if ever so well executed, is but slight. He might have made these letters more interesting to readers in general, if he had spoken of distinguished men to whose society he was admitted; but the limits within which this may be done, with propriety and without offense, are so narrow, and so easily overstepped, that he has preferred to abstain altogether from that class of topics. He offers his book to the public, with expectations which will be satisfied by a very moderate success. New York, _April_, 1850. Contents. To the Reader Letter I.--First Impressions of an American in France.--Tokens of Antiquity: churches, old towns, cottages, colleges, costumes, donkeys, shepherds and their flocks, magpies, chateaux, formal gardens, vineyards, fig-trees.--First Sight of Paris; its Gothic churches, statues, triumphal arches, monumental columns.--Parisian gaiety, public cemeteries, burial places of the poor Letter II.--Journey from Paris to Florence.--Serenity of the Italian Climate.--Dreary country between Paris and Chalons on the Saone.--Autun. --Chalons.--Lyons.--Valley of the Rhine.--Avignon.--Marseilles; its growth and prosperity.--Banking in France.--Journey along the Mediterranean.-- American and European Institutions Letter III.--Tuscan Scenery and Climate.--Florence in Autumn.-- Deformities of Cultivation.--Exhibition of the Academy of the Fine Arts.--Respect of the Italians for Works of Art Letter IV.--A Day in Florence.--Bustle and Animation of the Place.--Sights seen on the Bridges.--Morning in Florence.--Brethren of Mercy.--Drive on the Cascine.--Evening in Florence.--Anecdote of the Passport System.--Mildness of the Climate of Pisa Letter V.--Practices of the Italian Courts.--Mildness of the Penal Code in Tuscany.--A Royal Murderer.--Ceremonies on the Birth of an Heir to the Dukedom of Tuscany.--Wealth of the Grand Duke Letter VI.--Venice.--Its peculiar Architecture.--Arsenal and Navy Yard.--The Lagoons.--Ceneda.--Serravalle.--Lago Morto.--Alpine Scenery.--A June Snow-Storm in the Tyrol.--Splendor of the Scenery in the Sunshine.--Landro.--A Tyrolese Holiday.--Devotional Character of the People.--Numerous Chapels.--Sterzing.--Bruneck.--The Brenner.--Innsbruck. --Bronze Tomb of Maximilian I.--Entrance into Bavaria Letter VII.--An Excursion to Rock River in Illinois.--Birds and Quadrupeds of the Prairies.--Dad Joe's Grove.--Beautiful Landscape.--Traces of the Indian Tribes.--Lost Rocks.--Dixon.--Rock River; beauty of its banks.--A Horse-Thief.--An Association of Felons.--A Prairie Rattlesnake.--The Prairie-Wolf; its habits.--The Wild Parsnip Letter VIII.--Examples of Lynch Law.--Practices of Horse-Thieves in Illinois.--Regulators.--A Murder.--Seizure of the Assassins, their trial and execution.--One of the Accomplices lurking in the Woods.--Another Horse-Thief shot Letter IX.--An Example of Senatorial Decorum.--The National Museum at Washington.--Mount Vernon.--Virginia Plantations.--Beauty of Richmond.--Islands of James River.--An Old Church.--Inspection of Tobacco.--Tobacco Factory.--Work and Psalmody.--Howden's Statue of Washington. Letter X.--Journey from Richmond to Charleston.--Pine Forests of North Carolina.--Collection of Turpentine.--Harbor of Charleston.--Aspect of the City. Letter XI.--Interior of South Carolina.--Pine Woods.--Plantations.--Swamps. --Birds.--A Corn-Shucking.--Negro Songs.--A Negro Military Parade.-- Character of the Blacks.--Winter Climate of South Carolina. Letter XII.--Picolata.--Beauty of the Season.--The St. John's.--A Hammock.--Voyage from Charleston to Savannah.--City of Savannah.--Quoit Club.--A Negro Burial-Place.--Curious Epitaphs.--Bonaventure.--Majestic Avenues of Live-Oaks.--Alligators.--Black Creek. Letter XIII.--Woods of Florida.--Anecdotes of the Florida War.--Aspect of St. Augustine.--Its Streets.--Former Appearance of the City.--Orange Groves.--Fort of St. Mark.--Palm Sunday.--A Frenchman preaching in Spanish. Letter XIV.--Climate of St. Augustine.--Tampa Bay.--Melons in January.--Insects in Southern Florida.--Healthfulness of East Florida.--A Sugar Plantation.--Island of St. Anastasia.--Quarries of Shell-Rock.--Customs of the Mahonese.--A Mahonese or Minorcan hymn. Letter XV.--Florida the "Poor Man's Country."--Settlement of the Peninsula.--The Indian War.--Its Causes.--Causes of the Peace.--The Everglades.--St. Mary's in Georgia.--Plague of Sand-Flies.--Alligator Shooting.--Tobacco Chewing. Letter XVI.--The Champlain Canal.--Beauty of its Banks.--Whitehall.-- Canadian French.--A Family setting out for the West.--The Michigan Lay.-- Vermont Scenery. Letter XVII.--Grasshoppers.--White Clover.--Domestic Arrangements of two unmarried Ladies.--Canadian French Laborers.--Quakers.--A Pretty Mantua Maker.--Anecdote told by a Quakeress.--Walpole.--Keene.--A Family of healthy young Women. Letter XVIII.--A Voyage to Liverpool.--Mountains of Wales.--Growth of Liverpool.--Aspect of the Place.--Zoological Gardens.--Cemetery among the Rocks.--Ornamental Cultivation.--Prince's Park.--Chester.--Manchester. --Calico Printing. Letter XIX.--Edale in Derbyshire.--A Commercial Traveller.--Chapel-en-le-Frith.--The Winnets.--Mam Tor.--Heathy Hills.--The Lark.--Caverns of the Peak of Derbyshire.--Castle of the Peverils.--People of Derbyshire.--Matlock.--Derby. Letter XX.--Works of Art.--Power's Greek Slave.--Exhibition of the Royal Academy.--Turner's late Pictures.--Webster.--Thorburn.--New Houses of Parliament.--Artists in Water-Colors. Letter XXI.--The Parks of London.--Their Extent.--Want of Parks in New York.--Sweeping of the Streets.--Safety from Housebreaking.--Beggars.-- Increase of Poverty. Letter XXII.--Edinburg.--The Old Town.--The Castle.--Solid Architecture of the New Town.--Views from the different Eminences.--Poverty in the Wynds and Alleys.--Houses of Refuge for the Destitute.--Night Asylums for the Houseless.--The Free Church.--The Maynooth Grant.--Effect of Endowments. Letter XXIII.--Fishwomen of Newhaven.--Frith of Forth.--Stirling.-- Callander.--The Trosachs.--Loch Achray.--Loch Katrine.--Loch Lomond. --Glenfalloch.--Dumbarton.--The Leven. Letter XXIV.--Glasgow.--Its Annual Fair.--Its Public Statues.--The Free Church.--Free Church College.--Odd Subject of a Sermon.--Alloway.--Burns's Monument.--The Doon.--The Sea.--Burns's Birthplace.--The River Ayr. Letter XXV.--Voyage to Ireland.--Ailsa Craig.--County of Down.--County of Lowth.--Difference in the Appearance of the Inhabitants.-- Peat-Diggers.--A Park.--Samples of different Races of Men.--Round Towers.--Valley of the Boyne.--Dublin.--Its Parks.--O'Connell.--The Repeal Question.--Wall, the Artist.--Exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Society. Letter XXVI.--Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell.--Humanity and Skill.--Quiet Demeanor of the Patients.--Anecdotes of the Inmates.--The Corn-law Question.--Coleman's Improvement on the Piano. Letter XXVII.--Changes in Paris.--Asphaltum Pavements.--New and Showy Buildings.--Suppression of Gaming-Houses.--Sunday Amusements.--Physical Degeneracy.--Vanderlyn's Picture of the Landing of Columbus. Letter XXVIII.--A Journey through the Netherlands.--Brussels.--Waterloo. --Walloons and Flemings.--Antwerp.--Character of Flemish Art.--The Scheldt.--Rotterdam.--Country of Holland.--The Hague.--Scheveling.-- Amsterdam.--Broek Saardam.--Utrecht. Letter XXIX.--American Artists abroad.--Düsseldorf: Leutze.--German Painters.--Florence: Greenough, Powers, Gray, G. L. Brown.--Rome: H. K. Brown, Rossiter, Lang. Letter XXX.--Buffalo.--The New Fort.--Leopold de Meyer.--Cleveland.-- Detroit. Letter XXXI.--Trip from Detroit to Mackinaw.--The Chippewa Tribe.--The River St. Clair.--Anecdote.--Chippewa Village.--Forts Huron and Saranac.--Bob Low Island.--Mackinaw. Letter XXXII.--Journey from Detroit to Princeton.--Sheboygan.--Milwaukie. --Chicago.--A Plunge in the Canal.--Aspect of the Country. Letter XXXIII.--Return to Chicago.--Prairie-Hens.--Prairie Lands of Lee County.--Rock River District. Letter XXXIV.--Voyage to Sault Ste. Marie.--Little Fort.--Indian Women gathering Rice.--Southport.--Island of St. Joseph.--Muddy Lake.--Girdled Trees. Letter XXXV.--Falls of the St. Mary.--Masses of Copper and Silver.--Drunken Indians.--Descent of the Rapids.--Warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company.--Canadian Half-breeds.--La Maison de Pierre.--Tanner the Murderer. Letter XXXVI.--Indians at the Sanlt.--Madeleine Island.--Indian Dancing-girls.--Methodist Indians.--Indian Families.--Return to Mackinaw. Letter XXXVII.--The Straits of Mackinaw.--American Fur Company.--Peculiar Boats.--British Landing.--Battle-field.--Old Mission Church.--Arched Rock. Letter XXXVIII.--Excursion to Southern New Jersey.--Easton.--The Delaware.--The Water Gap.--Bite of a Copper-head snake. Letter XXXIX.--The Banks of the Pocano.--Deer in the Laurel Swamps.--Cherry Hollow.--The Wind Gap.--Nazareth.--Moravian Burying Grounds.--A Pennsylvania German. Letter XL.--Paint on Brick Houses.--The New City of Lawrence.--Oak Grove. Letter XLI.--Islands of Casco Bay.--The Building of Ships.--A Seal in the Kennebeck.--Augusta.--Multitude of Lakes.--Appearances of Thrift. Letter XLII.--The Willey House.--Mount Washington.--Scenery of the White Mountains.--A Hen Mother of Puppies. Letter XLIII.--Passage to Savannah.--Passengers in the Steamer.--Old Times in Connecticut.--Cape Hatteras.--Savannah.--Bonaventure.--Charleston.-- Augusta. Letter XLIV.--Southern Cotton Mills.--Factory Girls.--Somerville. Letter XLV.--The Florida Coast.--Key West.--Dangerous Navigation.--A Hurricane and Flood.--Havana. Letter XLVI.--Women of Cuba.--Airy Rooms.--Devotion of the Women.--Good Friday.--Cascarilla.--Cemetery of Havana.--Funerals.--Cock-fighting.-- Valla de Gallos.--A Masked Ball. Letter XLVII.--Scenery of Cuba.--Its Trees.--Sweet-Potato Plantation.--San Antonio de los Barios.--Black and Red Soil of Cuba.--A Coffee Estate.-- Attire of the Cubans. Letter XLVIII.--Matanzas.--Valley of Yumuri.--Cumbre.--Sugar Estate.--Process of its Manufacture. Letter XLIX.--Negroes in Cuba.--Execution by the Garrote.--Slave Market.--African, Indian, and Asiatic Slaves.--Free Blacks in Cuba.--Annexation of Cuba to the United States. Letter L.--English Exhibitions of Works of Art.--The Society of Arts.--Royal Academy.--Jews in Parliament. Letter LI.--A Visit to the Shetland Isles.--Highland Fishermen.--Lerwick. --Church-goers in Shetland.--Habitations of the Islanders.--The Noup of the Noss.--Sheep and Ponies.--Pictish Castle.--The Zetlanders.--A Gale in the North Sea.--Cathedral of St. Magnus.--Wick. Letter LII.--Europe under the Bayonet.--Uses of the State of Siege.--The Hungarians.--Bavaria.--St. Gall.--Zurich.--Target-shooting.--France.-- French Expedition to Rome. Letter LIII.--Volterra; its Desolation.--The Balza.--Etruscan Remains.--Fortress of Volterra. Letters of a Traveller. Letter I. First Impressions of an American in France. Paris, _August_ 9, 1834. Since we first landed in France, every step of our journey has reminded us that we were in an old country. Every thing we saw spoke of the past, of an antiquity without limit; everywhere our eyes rested on the handiwork of those who had been dead for ages, and we were in the midst of customs which they had bequeathed to their descendants. The churches were so vast, so solid, so venerable, and time-eaten; the dwellings so gray, and of such antique architecture, and in the large towns, like Rouen, rose so high, and overhung with such quaint projections the narrow and cavernous streets; the thatched cots were so mossy and so green with grass! The very hills about them looked scarcely as old, for there was youth in their vegetation--their shrubs and flowers. The countrywomen wore such high caps, such long waists, and such short petticoats!--the fashion of bonnets is an innovation of yesterday, which they regard with scorn. We passed females riding on donkeys, the Old Testament beast of burden, with panniers on each side, as was the custom hundreds of years since. We saw ancient dames sitting at their doors with distaffs, twisting the thread by twirling the spindle between the thumb and finger, as they did in the days of Homer. A flock of sheep was grazing on the side of a hill; they were attended by a shepherd, and a brace of prick-eared dogs, which kept them from straying, as was done thousands of years ago. Speckled birds were hopping by the sides of the road; it was the magpie, the bird of ancient fable. Flocks of what I at first took for the crow of our country were stalking in the fields, or sailing in the air over the old elms; it was the rook, the bird made as classical by Addison as his cousin the raven by the Latin poets. Then there were the old chateaus on the hills, built with an appearance of military strength, their towers and battlements telling of feudal times. The groves by which they were surrounded were for the most part clipped into regular walls, and pierced with regularly arched passages, leading in various directions, and the trees compelled by the shears to take the shape of obelisks and pyramids, or other fantastic figures, according to the taste of the middle ages. As we drew nearer to Paris, we saw the plant which Noah first committed to the earth after the deluge--you know what that was I hope--trained on low stakes, and growing thickly and luxuriantly on the slopes by the side of the highway. Here, too, was the tree which was the subject of the first Christian miracle, the fig, its branches heavy with the bursting fruit just beginning to ripen for the market. But when we entered Paris, and passed the Barrière d'Etoile, with its lofty triumphal arch; when we swept through the arch of Neuilly, and came in front of the Hotel des Invalides, where the aged or maimed soldiers, the living monuments of so many battles, were walking or sitting under the elms of its broad esplanade; when we saw the colossal statues of statesmen and warriors frowning from their pedestals on the bridges which bestride the muddy and narrow channel of the Seine; when we came in sight of the gray pinnacles of the Tuilleries, and the Gothic towers of Notre-Dame, and the Roman ones of St. Sulpice, and the dome of the Pantheon, under which lie the remains of so many of the great men of France, and the dark column of Place Vendòme, wrought with figures in relief, and the obelisk brought from Egypt to ornament the Place Louis Quatorze, the associations with antiquity which the country presents, from being general, became particular and historical. They were recollections of power, and magnificence, and extended empire; of valor and skill in war which had held the world in fear; of dynasties that had risen and passed away; of battles and victories which had left no other fruits than their monuments. The solemnity of these recollections does not seem to press with much weight upon the minds of the people. It has been said that the French have become a graver nation than formerly; if so, what must have been their gayety a hundred years ago? To me they seem as light-hearted and as easily amused as if they had done nothing but make love and quiz their priests since the days of Louis XIV.--as if their streets had never flowed with the blood of Frenchmen shed by their brethren--as if they had never won and lost a mighty empire. I can not imagine the present generation to be less gay than that which listened to the comedies of Molière at their first representation; particularly when I perceive that even Molière's pieces are too much burdened with thought for a Frenchman of the present day, and that he prefers the lighter and more frivolous vaudeville. The Parisian has his amusements as regularly as his meals, the theatre, music, the dance, a walk in the Tuilleries, a refection in the café, to which ladies resort as commonly as the other sex. Perpetual business, perpetual labor, is a thing of which he seems to have no idea. I wake in the middle of the night, and I hear the fiddle going, and the sound of feet keeping time, in some of the dependencies of the large building near the Tuilleries, in which I have my lodgings. When a generation of Frenchmen "Have played, and laughed, and danced, and drank their fill"-- when they have seen their allotted number of vaudevilles and swallowed their destined allowance of weak wine and bottled small-beer, they are swept off to the cemetery of Montmartre, or of Père la Chaise, or some other of the great burial-places which lie just without the city. I went to visit the latter of these the other day. You are reminded of your approach to it by the rows of stone-cutters' shops on each side of the street, with a glittering display of polished marble monuments. The place of the dead is almost a gayer-looking spot than the ordinary haunts of Parisian life. It is traversed with shady walks of elms and limes, and its inmates lie amidst thickets of ornamental shrubs and plantations of the most gaudy flowers. Their monuments are hung with wreaths of artificial flowers, or of those natural ones which do not lose their color and shape in drying, like the amaranth and the ever-lasting. Parts of the cemetery seem like a city in miniature; the sepulchral chapels, through the windows of which you see crucifixes and tapers, stand close to each other beside the path, intermingled with statues and busts. There is one part of this repository of the dead which is little visited, that in which the poor are buried, where those who have dwelt apart from their more fortunate fellow-creatures in life lie apart in death. Here are no walks, no shade of trees, no planted shrubbery, but ridges of raw earth, and tufts of coarse herbage show where the bodies are thrown together under a thin covering of soil. I was about to walk over the spot, but was repelled by the sickening exhalations that rose from it. Letter II. A Journey to Florence. Florence, _Sept_ 27, 1834. I have now been in this city a fortnight, and have established myself in a suite of apartments lately occupied, as the landlord told me, in hopes I presume of getting a higher rent, by a Russian prince. The Arno flows, or rather stands still, under my windows, for the water is low, and near the western wall of the city is frugally dammed up to preserve it for the public baths. Beyond, this stream so renowned in history and poetry, is at this season but a feeble rill, almost lost among the pebbles of its bed, and scarcely sufficing to give drink to the pheasants and hares of the Grand Duke's Cascine on its banks. Opposite my lodgings, at the south end of the _Ponte alla Carraia_, is a little oratory, before the door of which every good Catholic who passes takes off his hat with a gesture of homage; and at this moment a swarthy, weasel-faced man, with a tin box in his hand, is gathering contributions to pay for the services of the chapel, rattling his coin to attract the attention of the pedestrians, and calling out to those who seem disposed to pass without paying. To the north and west, the peaks of the Appenines are in full sight, rising over the spires of the city and the groves of the Cascine. Every evening I see them through the soft, delicately-colored haze of an Italian sunset, looking as if they had caught something of the transparency of the sky, and appearing like mountains of fairy-land, instead of the bleak and barren ridges of rock which they really are. The weather since my arrival in Tuscany has been continually serene, the sky wholly cloudless, and the temperature uniform--oppressively warm in the streets at noon, delightful at morning and evening, with a long, beautiful, golden twilight, occasioned by the reflection of light from the orange-colored haze which invests the atmosphere. Every night I am reminded that I am in the land of song, for until two o'clock in the morning I hear "all manner of tunes" chanted by people in the streets in all manner of voices. I believe I have given you no account of our journey from Paris to this place. That part of it which lay between Paris and Chalons, on the Saone, may be described in a very few words. Monotonous plains, covered with vineyards and wheat-fields, with very few trees, and those spoiled by being lopped for fuel--sunburnt women driving carts or at work in the fields--gloomy, cheerless-looking towns, with narrow, filthy streets--troops of beggars surrounding your carriage whenever you stop, or whenever the nature of the roads obliges the horses to walk, and chanting their requests in the most doleful whine imaginable--such are the sights and sounds that meet you for the greater part of two hundred and fifty miles. There are, however, some exceptions as to the aspect of the country. Autun, one of the most ancient towns of France, and yet retaining some remains of Roman architecture, lies in a beautiful and picturesque region. A little beyond that town we ascended a hill by a road winding along a glen, the rocky sides of which were clothed with an unpruned wood, and a clear stream ran dashing over the stones, now on one side of the road and then on the other--the first instance of a brook left to follow its natural channel which I had seen in France. Two young Frenchmen, who were our fellow-passengers, were wild with delight at this glimpse of unspoiled nature. They followed the meanderings of the stream, leaping from rock to rock, and shouting till the woods rang again. Of Chalons I have nothing to tell you. Abelard died there, and his tomb was erected with that of Eloise in the church of St. Marcel; but the church is destroyed, and the monument has been transported to the cemetery of Père la Chaise, and with it all the poetry of the place is vanished. But if you would make yourself supremely uncomfortable, travel as I did in a steamboat down the Saone from Chalons to Lyons, on a rainy day. Crowded into a narrow, dirty cabin, with benches on each side and a long table in the middle, at which a set of Frenchmen with their hats on are playing cards and eating _déjeuners à la fourchette_ all day long, and deafening you with their noise, while waiters are running against your legs and treading on your toes every moment, and the water is dropping on your head through the cracks of the deck-floor, you would be forced to admit the superlative misery of such a mode of travelling. The approach to Lyons, however, made some amends for these inconveniences. The shores of the river, hitherto low and level, began to rise into hills, broken with precipices and crowned by castles, some in ruins and others entire, and seemingly a part of the very rocks on which they stood, so old and mossy and strong did they seem. What struck me most in Lyons was the superiority of its people in looks and features to the inhabitants of Paris--the clatter and jar of silk-looms with which its streets resounded--and the picturesque beauty of its situation, placed as it is among steeps and rocks, with the quiet Saone on one side, and the swiftly-running Rhone on the other. In our journey from Lyons to Marseilles we travelled by land instead of taking the steamboat, as is commonly done as far as Avignon. The common books of travels will tell you how numerous are the ruins of feudal times perched upon the heights all along the Rhone, remnants of fortresses and castles, overlooking a vast extent of country and once serving as places of refuge to the cultivators of the soil who dwelt in their vicinity--how frequently also are to be met with the earlier yet scarcely less fresh traces of Roman colonization and dominion, in gateways, triumphal arches, walls, and monuments--how on entering Provence you find yourself among a people of a different physiognomy from those of the northern provinces, speaking a language which rather resembles Italian than French--how the beauty of the women of Avignon still does credit to the taste of the clergy, who made that city for more than half a century the seat of the Papal power--and how, as you approach the shores of the Mediterranean, the mountains which rise from the fruitful valleys shoot up in wilder forms, until their summits become mere pinnacles of rock wholly bare of vegetation. Marseilles is seated in the midst of a semicircle of mountains of whitish rock, the steep and naked sides of which scarce afford "a footing for the goat." Stretching into the Mediterranean they inclose a commodious harbor, in front of which are two or three rocky islands anchored in a sea of more vivid blue than any water I had ever before seen. The country immediately surrounding the city is an arid and dusty valley, intersected here and there with the bed of a brook or torrent, dry during the summer. It is carefully cultivated, however, and planted with vineyards, and orchards of olive, fig, and pomegranate trees. The trees being small and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at noon, the intense blue of the sea, the peculiar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy myself in a tropical region. The Greeks judged well of the commercial advantages of Marseilles when they made it the seat of one of their early colonies. I found its streets animated with a bustle which I had not seen since I left New York, and its port thronged with vessels from all the nations whose coasts border upon the great midland sea of Europe. Marseilles is the most flourishing seaport in France; it has already become to the Mediterranean what New York is to the United States, and its trade is regularly increasing. The old town is ugly, but the lower or new part is nobly built of the light-colored stone so commonly used in France, and so easily wrought--with broad streets and, what is rare in French towns, convenient sidewalks. New streets are laid out, gardens are converted into building-lots, the process of leveling hills and filling up hollows is going on as in New York, the city is extending itself on every side, and large fortunes have been made by the rise in the value of landed property. In a conversation with an intelligent gentleman resident at Marseilles and largely engaged in commercial and moneyed transactions, the subject of the United States Bank was mentioned. Opinions in France, on this question of our domestic politics, differ according as the opportunities of information possessed by the individual are more or less ample, or as he is more or less in favor of chartered banks. The gentleman remarked that without any reference to the question of the United States Bank, he hoped the day would never come when such an institution would be established in France. The project he said had some advocates, but they had not yet succeeded, and he hoped never would succeed in the introduction of that system of paper currency which prevailed in the United States. He deprecated the dangerous and uncertain facilities of obtaining credit which are the fruit of that system, which produce the most ruinous fluctuations in commerce, encourage speculation and extravagance of all kinds, and involve the prudent and laborious in the ruin which falls upon the rash and reckless. He declared himself satisfied with the state of the currency of France, with which, if fortunes were not suddenly built up they were not suddenly overthrown, and periods of apparent prosperity were not followed by seasons of real distress. I made the journey from Marseilles to Florence by land. How grand and wild are the mountains that overlook the Mediterranean; how intense was the heat as we wound our way along the galleries of rock cut to form a road; how excellent are the fruits, and how thick the mosquitoes at Nice; how sumptuous are the palaces, how narrow and dark the streets, and how pallid the dames of Genoa; and how beautiful we found our path among the trees overrun with vines as we approached southern Italy, are matters which I will take some other opportunity of relating. On the 12th of September our _vetturino_ set us down safe at the _Hotel de l'Europe_ in Florence. I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States travelling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step. He finds himself delayed at every large town and at every frontier of a kingdom or principality, to submit to a strict examination of the passport with which the jealousy of the rulers of these countries has compelled him to furnish himself. He sees everywhere guards and sentinels armed to the teeth, stationed in the midst of a population engaged in their ordinary occupations in a time of profound peace; and to supply the place of the young and robust thus withdrawn from the labors of agriculture he beholds women performing the work of the fields. He sees the many retained in a state of hopeless dependence and poverty, the effect of institutions forged by the ruling class to accumulate wealth in their own hands. The want of self-respect in the inferior class engendered by this state of things, shows itself in the acts of rapacity and fraud which the traveller meets with throughout France and Italy, and, worse still, in the shameless corruption of the Italian custom-houses, the officers of which regularly solicit a paltry bribe from every passenger as the consideration of leaving his baggage unexamined. I am told that in this place the custom of giving presents extends even to the courts of justice, the officers of which, from the highest to the lowest, are in the constant practice of receiving them. No American can see how much jealousy and force on the one hand, and necessity and fear on the other, have to do with keeping up the existing governments of Europe, without thanking heaven that such is not the condition of his own country. Letter III. Tuscan Scenery and Climate. Florence, _October_ 11, 1834. The bridge over the Arno, immediately under my window, is the spot from which Cole's fine landscape, which you perhaps remember seeing in the exhibition of our Academy, was taken. It gives, you may recollect, a view of the Arno travelling off towards the west, its banks overhung with trees, the mountain-ridges rising in the distance, and above them the sky flushed with the colors of sunset. The same rich hues I behold every evening in the quarter where they were seen by the artist when he made them permanent on his canvas. There is a great deal of prattle about Italian skies: the skies and clouds of Italy, so far as I have had an opportunity of judging, do not present so great a variety of beautiful appearances as our own; but the Italian atmosphere is far more uniformly fine than ours. Not to speak of its astonishing clearness, it is pervaded by a certain warmth of color which enriches every object. This is more remarkable about the time of sunset, when the mountains put on an aerial aspect, as if they belonged to another and fairer world; and a little after the sun has gone down, the air is flushed with a glory which seems to transfigure all that it incloses. Many of the fine old palaces of Florence, you know, are built in a gloomy though grand style of architecture, of a dark-colored stone, massive and lofty, and overlooking narrow streets that lie in almost perpetual shade. But at the hour of which I am speaking, the bright warm radiance reflected from the sky to the earth, fills the darkest lanes, streams into the most shadowy nooks, and makes the prison-like structures glitter as with a brightness of their own. It is now nearly the middle of October, and we have had no frost. The strong summer heats which prevailed when I came hither, have by the slowest gradations subsided into an agreeable autumnal temperature. The trees keep their verdure, but I perceive their foliage growing thinner, and when I walk in the Cascine on the other side of the Arno, the rustling of the lizards, as they run among the heaps of crisp leaves, reminds me that the autumn is wearing away, though the ivy which clothes the old elms has put forth a profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur with bees like our orchards in spring. As I look along the declivities of the Appenines, I see the raw earth every day more visible between the ranks of olive-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines. If I have found my expectations of Italian scenery, in some respects, below the reality, in other respects they have been disappointed. The forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by the buildings, imposing from their architecture or venerable from time, which crown the eminences. But if the hand of man has done something to embellish this region, it has done more to deform it. Not a tree is suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural channel. An exterminating war is carried on against the natural herbage of the soil. The country is without woods and green fields; and to him who views the vale of the Arno "from the top of Fiesole," or any of the neighboring heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it appears, at any time after midsummer, a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish maple on which the vines are trained. The simplicity of nature, so far as can be done, is destroyed; there is no fine sweep of forest, no broad expanse of meadow or pasture ground, no ancient and towering trees clustered about the villas, no rows of natural shrubbery following the course of the brooks and rivers. The streams, which are often but the beds of torrents dry during the summer, are confined in straight channels by stone walls and embankments; the slopes are broken up and disfigured by terraces; and the trees are kept down by constant pruning and lopping, until half way up the sides of the Appenines, where the limit of cultivation is reached, and thence to the summit is a barren steep of rock, without herbage or soil. The grander features of the landscape, however, are fortunately beyond the power of man to injure; the lofty mountain-summits, bare precipices cleft with chasms, and pinnacles of rock piercing the sky, betokening, far more than any thing I have seen elsewhere, a breaking up of the crust of the globe in some early period of its existence. I am told that in May and June the country is much more beautiful than at present, and that owing to a drought it now appears under a particular disadvantage. The Academy of the Fine Arts has had its exhibition since I arrived. In its rooms, which were gratuitously open to the public, I found a large crowd of gazers at the pictures and statues. Many had come to look at some work ordered by an acquaintance; others made the place a morning lounge. In the collection were some landscapes by Morghen, the son of the celebrated engraver, very fresh and clear; a few pieces sent by Bezzoli, one of the most eminent Italian painters of his time; a statue of Galileo, not without merit, by Costoli, for there is always a Galileo or two, I believe, at every exhibition of the kind in Florence; portraits good, bad, and indifferent, in great abundance, and many square feet of canvas spoiled by attempts at historical painting. Let me remark, by the way, that a work of art is a sacred thing in the eyes of Italians of all classes, never to be defaced, never to be touched, a thing to be looked at merely. A statue may stand for ages in a public square, within the reach of any one who passes, and with no sentinel to guard it, and yet it shall not only be safe from mutilation, but the surface of the marble shall never be scratched, or even irreverently scored with a lead pencil. So general is this reverence for art, that the most perfect confidence is reposed in it. I remember that in Paris, as I was looking at a colossal plaster cast of Napoleon at the Hotel des Invalides, a fellow armed with a musket who stood by it bolt upright, in the stiff attitude to which the soldier is drilled, gruffly reminded me that I was too near, though I was not within four feet of it. In Florence it is taken for granted that you will do no mischief, and therefore you are not watched. Letter IV. A Day in Florence. Pisa, _December_ 11, 1834. It is gratifying to be able to communicate a piece of political intelligence from so quiet a nook of the world as this. Don Miguel arrived here the other day from Genoa, where you know there was a story that he and the Duchess of Berri, a hopeful couple, were laying their heads together. He went to pay his respects to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who is now at Pisa, and it was said by the gossips of the place that he was coldly received, and was given to understand that he could not be allowed to remain in the Tuscan territory. There was probably nothing in all this. Don Miguel has now departed for Rome, and the talk of to-day is that he will return before the end of the winter. He is doubtless wandering about to observe in what manner he is received at the petty courts which are influenced by the Austrian policy, and in the mean time lying in wait for some favorable opportunity of renewing his pretensions to the crown of Spain. Pisa offers a greater contrast to Florence than I had imagined could exist between two Italian cities. This is the very seat of idleness and slumber; while Florence, from being the residence of the Court, and from the vast number of foreigners who throng to it, presents during several months of the year an appearance of great bustle and animation. Four thousand English, an American friend tells me, visit Florence every winter, to say nothing of the occasional residents from France, Germany, and Russia. The number of visitors from the latter country is every year increasing, and the echoes of the Florence gallery have been taught to repeat the strange accents of the Sclavonic. Let me give you the history of a fine day in October, passed at the window of my lodgings on the Lung' Arno, close to the bridge _Alla Carraja_. Waked by the jangling of all the bells in Florence and by the noise of carriages departing loaded with travellers, for Rome and other places in the south of Italy, I rise, dress myself, and take my place at the window. I see crowds of men and women from the country, the former in brown velvet jackets, and the latter in broad-brimmed straw hats, driving donkeys loaded with panniers or trundling hand-carts before them, heaped with grapes, figs, and all the fruits of the orchard, the garden, and the field. They have hardly passed, when large flocks of sheep and goats make their appearance, attended by shepherds and their families, driven by the approach of winter from the Appenines, and seeking the pastures of the Maremma, a rich, but, in the summer, an unhealthy tract on the coast; The men and boys are dressed in knee-breeches, the women in bodices, and both sexes wear capotes with pointed hoods, and felt hats with conical crowns; they carry long staves in their hands, and their arms are loaded with kids and lambs too young to keep pace with their mothers. After the long procession of sheep and goats and dogs and men and women and children, come horses loaded with cloths and poles for tents, kitchen utensils, and the rest of the younglings of the flock. A little after sunrise I see well-fed donkeys, in coverings of red cloth, driven over the bridge to be milked for invalids. Maid-servants, bareheaded, with huge high carved combs in their hair, waiters of coffee-houses carrying the morning cup of coffee or chocolate to their customers, baker's boys with a dozen loaves on a board balanced on their heads, milkmen with rush baskets filled with flasks of milk, are crossing the streets in all directions. A little later the bell of the small chapel opposite to my window rings furiously for a quarter of an hour, and then I hear mass chanted in a deep strong nasal tone. As the day advances, the English, in white hats and white pantaloons, come out of their lodgings, accompanied sometimes by their hale and square-built spouses, and saunter stiffly along the Arno, or take their way to the public galleries and museums. Their massive, clean, and brightly-polished carriages also begin to rattle through the streets, setting out on excursions to some part of the environs of Florence--to Fiesole, to the Pratolino, to the Bello Sguardo, to the Poggio Imperiale. Sights of a different kind now present themselves. Sometimes it is a troop of stout Franciscan friars, in sandals and brown robes, each carrying his staff and wearing a brown broad-brimmed hat with a hemispherical crown. Sometimes it is a band of young theological students, in purple cassocks with red collars and cuffs, let out on a holiday, attended by their clerical instructors, to ramble in the Cascine. There is a priest coming over the bridge, a man of venerable age and great reputation for sanctity--the common people crowd around him to kiss his hand, and obtain a kind word from him as he passes. But what is that procession of men in black gowns, black gaiters, and black masks, moving swiftly along, and bearing on their shoulders a litter covered with black cloth? These are the _Brethren of Mercy_, who have assembled at the sound of the cathedral bell, and are conveying some sick or wounded person to the hospital. As the day begins to decline, the numbers of carriages in the streets, filled with gaily-dressed people attended by servants in livery, increases. The Grand Duke's equipage, an elegant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen, footmen, and outriders in drab-colored livery, comes from the Pitti Palace, and crosses the Arno, either by the bridge close to my lodgings, or by that called _Alla Santa Trinità_, which is in full sight from the windows. The Florentine nobility, with their families, and the English residents, now throng to the Cascine, to drive at a slow pace through its thickly-planted walks of elms, oaks, and ilexes. As the sun is sinking I perceive the Quay, on the other side of the Arno, filled with a moving crowd of well-dressed people, walking to and fro, and enjoying the beauty of the evening. Travellers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in the shabby _vettura_, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of baggage, porters, postillions, couriers, and travellers. Night at length arrives--the time of spectacles and funerals. The carriages rattle towards the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pass through the streets chanting the service for the dead. The Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their masks, and their sable garb, give them a kind of supernatural appearance. I return to bed, and fall asleep amidst the shouts of people returning from the opera, singing as they go snatches of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening. Such is a picture of what passes every day at Florence--in Pisa, on the contrary, all is stagnation and repose--even the presence of the sovereign, who usually passes a part of the winter here, is incompetent to give a momentary liveliness to the place. The city is nearly as large as Florence, with not a third of its population; the number of strangers is few; most of them are invalids, and the rest are the quietest people in the world. The rattle of carriages is rarely heard in the streets; in some of which there prevails a stillness so complete that you might imagine them deserted of their inhabitants. I have now been here three weeks, and on one occasion only have I seen the people of the place awakened to something like animation. It was the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin; the Lung' Arno was strewn with boughs of laurel and myrtle, and the Pisan gentry promenaded for an hour under my window. On my leaving Florence an incident occurred, which will illustrate the manner of doing public business in this country. I had obtained my passport from the Police Office, _viséd_ for Pisa. It was then Friday, and I was told that it would answer until ten o'clock on Tuesday morning. Unluckily I did not present myself at the Leghorn gate of Florence until eleven o'clock on that day. A young man in a military hat, sword, and blue uniform, came to the carriage and asked for my passport, which I handed him. In a short time he appeared again and desired me to get out and go with him to the apartment in the side of the gate. I went and saw a middle-aged man dressed in the same manner, sitting at the table with my passport before him. "I am sorry," said he, "to say that your passport is not regular, and that my duty compels me to detain you." "What is the matter with the passport?" "The _visé_ is of more than three days standing." I exerted all my eloquence to persuade him that an hour was of no consequence, and that the public welfare would not suffer by letting me pass, but he remained firm. "The law," he said, "is positive; I am compelled to execute it. If I were to suffer you to depart, and my superiors were to know it, I should lose my office and incur the penalty of five days' imprisonment." I happened to have a few coins in my pocket, and putting in my hand, I caused them to jingle a little against each other. "Your case is a hard one," said the officer, "I suppose you are desirous to get on." "Yes--my preparations are all made, and it will be a great inconvenience for me to remain." "What say you," he called out to his companion who stood in the door looking into the street, "shall we let them pass? They seem to be decent people." The young man mumbled some sort of answer. "Here," said the officer, holding out to me my passport, but still keeping it between his thumb and finger, "I give you back your passport, and consent to your leaving Florence, but I wish you particularly to consider that in so doing, I risk the loss of my place and an imprisonment of five days." He then put the paper into my hand, and I put into his the expected gratuity. As I went to the carriage, he followed and begged me to say nothing of the matter to any one. I was admitted into Pisa with less difficulty. It was already dark; I expected that my baggage would undergo a long examination as usual; and I knew that I had some dutiable articles. To my astonishment, however, my trunks were allowed to pass without being opened, or even the payment of the customary gratuity. I was told afterwards that my Italian servant had effected this by telling the custom-house officers some lie about my being the American Minister. Pisa has a delightful winter climate, though Madame de Staël has left on record a condemnation of it, having passed here a season of unusually bad weather. Orange and lemon trees grow in the open air, and are now loaded with ripe fruit. The fields in the environs are green with grass nourished by abundant rains, and are spotted with daisies in blossom. Crops of flax and various kinds of pulse are showing themselves above the ground, a circumstance sufficient to show that the cultivators expect nothing like what we call winter. Letter V. Practices of the Italian Courts. Florence, _May_ 12, 1835. Night before last, a man-child was born to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and yesterday was a day of great rejoicing in consequence. The five hundred bells of Florence kept up a horrid ringing through the day, and in the evening the public edifices and many private houses were illuminated. To-day and to-morrow the rejoicings continue, and in the mean time the galleries and museums are closed, lest idle people should amuse themselves rationally. The Tuscans are pleased with the birth of an heir to the Dukedom, first because the succession is likely to be kept in a good sort of a family, and secondly because for want of male children it would have reverted to the House of Austria, and the province would have been governed by a foreigner. I am glad of it, also, for the sake of the poor Tuscans, who are a mild people, and if they must be under a despotism, deserve to live under a good-natured one. An Austrian Prince, if he were to govern Tuscany as the Emperor governs the Lombardo-Venetian territory, would introduce a more just and efficient system of administering the laws between man and man, but at the same time a more barbarous severity to political offenders. I saw at Volterra, last spring, four persons who were condemned at Florence for an alleged conspiracy against the state. They were walking with instruments of music in their hands, on the top of the fortress, which commands an extensive view of mountain, vale, and sea, including the lower Val d'Arno, and reaching to Leghorn, and even to Corsica. They were well-dressed, and I was assured their personal comfort was attended to. A different treatment is the fate of the state prisoners who languish in the dungeons of Austria. In Tuscany no man's life is taken for any offense whatever, and banishment is a common sentence against those who are deemed dangerous or intractable subjects. In all the other provinces a harsher system prevails. In Sardinia capital executions for political causes are frequent, and long and mysterious detentions are resorted to, as in Lombardy, with a view to strike terror into the minds of a discontented people. The royal family of Naples kill people by way of amusement. Prince Charles, a brother of the king, sometime in the month of April last, found an old man cutting myrtle twigs on some of the royal hunting-grounds, of which he has the superintendence. He directed his attendants to seize the offender and tie him to a tree, and when they had done this ordered them to shoot him. This they refused, upon which he took a loaded musket from the hands of one of them, and with the greatest deliberation shot him dead upon the spot. His Royal Highness soon after set out for Rome to amuse himself with the ceremonies of the Holy Week, and to figure at the balls given by Torlonia and other Roman nobles, where he signalized himself by his attentions to the English ladies. Of the truth of the story I have related I have been assured by several respectable persons in Naples. About the middle of May I was at the spot where the murder was said to have been committed. It was on the borders of the lake of Agnano. We reached it by a hollow winding road, cut deep through the hills and rocks thousands of years ago. It was a pretty and solitary spot; a neat pavilion of the royal family stood on the shore, and the air was fragrant with the blossoms of the white clover and the innumerable flowers which the soil of Italy, for a short season before the summer heats and drought, pours forth so profusely. The lake is evidently the crater of an old volcano: it lies in a perfect bowl of hills, and the perpetual escape of gas, bubbling up through the water, shows that the process of chemical decomposition in the earth below has not yet ceased. Close by, in the side of the circular hill that surrounds the lake, stands the famous _Grotto del Cane_, closed with a door to enable the keeper to get a little money from the foreigners who come to visit it. You may be sure I was careful not to trim any of the myrtles with my penknife. But to return to Tuscany--it is after all little better than an Austrian province, like the other countries of Italy. The Grand Duke is a near relative of the Emperor; he has the rank of colonel in the Austrian service, and a treaty of offense and defense obliges him to take part in the wars of Austria to the extent of furnishing ten thousand soldiers. It is well understood that he is watched by the agents of the Austrian Government here, who form a sort of high police, to which he and his cabinet are subject, and that he would not venture upon any measure of national policy, nor even displace or appoint a minister, without the consent of Metternich. The birth of a son to the Grand Duke has been signalized, I have just learned, by a display of princely munificence. Five thousand crowns have been presented to the Archbishop who performed the ceremony of christening the child; the servants of the ducal household have received two months' wages, in addition to their usual salary; five hundred young women have received marriage portions of thirty crowns each; all the articles of property at the great pawnbroking establishments managed by goverment, pledged for a less sum than four livres, have been restored to the owners without payment; and finally, all persons confined for larceny and other offences of a less degree than homicide and other enormous crimes, have been liberated and turned loose upon society again. The Grand Duke can well afford to be generous, for from a million and three hundred thousand people he draws, by taxation, four millions of crowns annually, of which a million only is computed to be expended in the military and civil expenses of his government. The remainder is of course applied to keeping up the state of a prince and to the enriching of his family. He passes, you know, for one of the richest potentates in Europe. Letter VI. Venice.--The Tyrol. Munich, _August_ 6, 1835. Since my last letter I have visited Venice, a city which realizes the old mythological fable of beauty born of the sea. I must confess, however, that my first feeling on entering it was that of disappointment. As we passed in our gondola out of the lagoons, up one of the numerous canals, which, permeate the city in every direction in such a manner that it seems as if you could only pass your time either within doors or in a boat, the place appeared to me a vast assemblage of prisons surrounded with their moats, and I thought how weary I should soon grow of my island prison, and how glad to escape again to the main-land. But this feeling quickly gave way to delight and admiration, when I landed and surveyed the clean though narrow streets, never incommoded by dust nor disturbed by the noise and jostling of carriages and horses, by which you may pass to every part of the city--when I looked again at the rows of superb buildings, with their marble steps ascending out of the water of the canals, in which the gondolas were shooting by each other--when I stood in the immense square of St. Mark, surrounded by palaces resting on arcades, under which the shops rival in splendor those of Paris, and crowds of the gay inhabitants of both sexes assemble towards evening and sit in groups before the doors of the coffee-houses--and when I gazed on the barbaric magnificence of the church of St. Mark and the Doge's palace, surrounded by the old emblems of the power of Venice, and overlooking the Adriatic, once the empire of the republic. The architecture of Venice has to my eyes, something watery and oceanic in its aspect. Under the hands of Palladio, the Grecian orders seemed to borrow the lightness and airiness of the Gothic. As you look at the numerous windows and the multitude of columns which give a striated appearance to the fronts of the palaces, you think of stalactites and icicles, such as you might imagine to ornament the abodes of the water-gods and sea-nymphs. The only thing needed to complete the poetic illusion is transparency or brilliancy of color, and this is wholly wanting; for at Venice the whitest marble is soon clouded and blackened by the corrosion of the sea-air. It is not my intention, however, to do so hackneyed a thing as to give a description of Venice. One thing, I must confess, seemed to me extraordinary: how this city, deprived as it is of the commerce which built it up from the shallows of the Adriatic, and upheld it so long and so proudly, should not have decayed even more rapidly than it has done. Trieste has drawn from it almost all its trade, and flourishes by its decline. I walked through the arsenal of Venice, which comprehends the Navy Yard, an enormous structure, with ranges of broad lofty roofs supported by massive portions of wall, and spacious dock-yards; the whole large enough to build and fit out a navy for the British empire. The pleasure-boats of Napoleon and his empress, and that of the present Viceroy, are there: but the ships of war belonging to the republic have mouldered away with the Bucentaur. I saw, however, two Austrian vessels, the same which had conveyed the Polish exiles to New York, lying under shelter in the docks, as if placed there to show who were the present masters of the place. It was melancholy to wander through the vast unoccupied spaces of this noble edifice, and to think what must have been the riches, the power, the prosperity, and the hopes of Venice at the time it was built, and what they are at the present moment. It seems almost impossible that any thing should take place to arrest the ruin which is gradually consuming this renowned city. Some writers have asserted that the lagoons around it are annually growing shallower by the depositions of earth brought down by streams from the land, that they must finally become marshes, and that their consequent insalubrity will drive the inhabitants from Venice. I do not know how this may be; but the other causes I have mentioned seem likely to produce nearly the same effect. I remembered, as these ideas passed through my mind, a passage in which one of the sacred poets foretells the desertion and desolation of Tyre, "the city that made itself glorious in the midst of the seas," "Thy riches and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners and thy pilots, thy calkers and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war that are in thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin." I left this most pleasing of the Italian cities which I had seen, on the 24th of June, and took the road for the Tyrol. We passed through a level fertile country, formerly the territory of Venice, watered by the Piave, which ran blood in one of Bonaparte's battles. At evening we arrived at Ceneda, where our Italian poet Da Ponte was born, situated just at the base of the Alps, the rocky peaks and irregular spires of which, beautifully green with the showery season, rose in the background. Ceneda seems to have something of German cleanliness about it, and the floors of a very comfortable inn at which we stopped were of wood, the first we had seen in Italy, though common throughout the Tyrol and the rest of Germany. A troop of barelegged boys, just broke loose from school, whooping and swinging their books and slates in the air, passed under my window. Such a sight you will not see in southern Italy. The education of the people is neglected, except in those provinces which are under the government of Austria. It is a government severe and despotic enough in all conscience, but by providing the means of education for all classes, it is doing more than it is aware of to prepare them for the enjoyment of free institutions. In the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, as it is called, there are few children who do not attend the public schools. On leaving Ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of which was occupied by the ancient town of Serravalle, resting on arcades, the architecture of which denoted that it was built during the middle ages. Near it I remarked an old castle, which formerly commanded the pass, one of the finest ruins of the kind I had ever seen. It had a considerable extent of battlemented wall in perfect preservation, and both that and its circular tower were so luxuriantly loaded with ivy that they seemed almost to have been cut out of the living verdure. As we proceeded we became aware how worthy this region was to be the birthplace of a poet. A rapid stream, a branch of the Piave, tinged of a light and somewhat turbid blue by the soil of the mountains, came tumbling and roaring down the narrow valley; perpendicular precipices rose on each side; and beyond, the gigantic brotherhood of the Alps, in two long files of steep pointed summits, divided by deep ravines, stretched away in the sunshine to the northeast. In the face of one the precipices by the way-side, a marble slab is fixed, informing the traveller that the road was opened by the late Emperor of Germany in the year 1830. We followed this romantic valley for a considerable distance, passing several little blue lakes lying in their granite basins, one of which is called the _Lago morto_ or Dead Lake, from having no outlet for its waters. At length we began to ascend, by a winding road, the steep sides of the Alps--the prospect enlarging as we went, the mountain summits rising to sight around us, one behind another, some of them white with snow, over which the wind blew with a wintery keenness--deep valleys opening below us, and gulfs yawning between rocks over which old bridges were thrown--and solemn fir forests clothing the broad declivities. The farm-houses placed on these heights, instead of being of brick or stone, as in the plains and valleys below, were principally built of wood; the second story, which served for a barn, being encircled by a long gallery, and covered with a projecting roof of plank held down with large stones. We stopped at Venas, a wretched place with a wretched inn, the hostess of which showed us a chin swollen with the _goitre_, and ushered us into dirty comfortless rooms where we passed the night. When we awoke the rain was beating against the windows, and, on looking out, the forest and sides of the neighboring mountains, at a little height above us, appeared hoary with snow. We set out in the rain, but had not proceeded far before we heard the sleet striking against the windows of the carriage, and soon came to where the snow covered the ground to the depth of one or two inches. Continuing to ascend, we passed out of Italy and entered the Tyrol. The storm had ceased before we went through the first Tyrolese village, and we could not help being struck with the change in the appearance of the inhabitants--the different costume, the less erect figures, the awkward gait, the lighter complexions, the neatly-kept habitations, and the absence of beggars. As we advanced, the clouds began to roll off from the landscape, disclosing here and there, through openings in their broad skirts as they swept along, glimpses of the profound valleys below us, and of the white sides and summits of mountains in the mid-sky above. At length the sun appeared, and revealed a prospect of such wildness, grandeur, and splendor as I had never before seen. Lofty peaks of the most fantastic shapes, with deep clefts between, sharp needles of rocks, and overhanging crags, infinite in multitude, shot up everywhere around us, glistening in the new-fallen snow, with thin wreaths of mist creeping along their sides. At intervals, swollen torrents, looking at a distance like long trains of foam, came thundering down the mountains, and crossing the road, plunged into the verdant valleys which winded beneath. Beside the highway were fields of young grain, pressed to the ground with the snow; and in the meadows, ranunculuses of the size of roses, large yellow violets, and a thousand other Alpine flowers of the most brilliant hues, were peeping through their white covering. We stopped to breakfast at a place called Landro, a solitary inn, in the midst of this grand scenery, with a little chapel beside it. The water from the dissolving snow was dropping merrily from the roof in a bright June sun. We needed not to be told that we were in Germany, for we saw it plainly enough in the nicely-washed floor of the apartment into which we were shown, in the neat cupboard with the old prayer-book lying upon it, and in the general appearance of housewifery, a quality unknown in Italy; to say nothing of the evidence we had in the beer and tobacco-smoke of the travellers' room, and the guttural dialect and quiet tones of the guests. From Landro we descended gradually into the beautiful valleys of the Tyrol, leaving the snow behind, though the white peaks of the mountains were continually in sight. At Bruneck, in an inn resplendent with neatness--so at least it seemed to our eyes accustomed to the negligence and dirt of Italian housekeeping--we had the first specimen of a German bed. It is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of huge square bolsters and pillows, that you rather sit than lie. The principal covering is a bag of down, very properly denominated the upper bed, and between this and the feather-bed below, the traveller is expected to pass the night. An asthmatic patient on a cold winter night might perhaps find such a couch tolerably comfortable, if he could prevent the narrow covering from slipping off on one side or the other. The next day we were afforded an opportunity of observing more closely the inhabitants of this singular region, by a festival, or holiday of some sort, which brought them into the roads in great numbers, arrayed in their best dresses--the men in short jackets and small-clothes, with broad gay-colored suspenders over their waistcoats, and leathern belts ornamented with gold or silver leaf--the women in short petticoats composed of horizontal bands of different colors--and both sexes, for the most part, wearing broad-brimmed hats with hemispherical crowns, though there was a sugar-loaf variety much affected by the men, adorned with a band of lace and sometimes a knot of flowers. They are a robust, healthy-looking race, though they have an awkward stoop in the shoulders. But what struck me most forcibly was the devotional habits of the people. The Tyrolese might be cited as an illustration of the remark, that mountaineers are more habitually and profoundly religious than others. Persons of all sexes, young and old, whom we meet in the road, were repeating their prayers audibly. We passed a troop of old women, all in broad-brimmed hats and short gray petticoats, carrying long staves, one of whom held a bead-roll and gave out the prayers, to which the others made the responses in chorus. They looked at us so solemnly from under their broad brims, and marched along with so grave and deliberate a pace, that I could hardly help fancying that the wicked Austrians had caught a dozen elders of the respectable society of Friends, and put them in petticoats to punish them for their heresy. We afterward saw persons going to the labors of the day, or returning, telling their rosaries and saying their prayers as they went, as if their devotions had been their favorite amusement. At regular intervals of about half a mile, we saw wooden crucifixes erected by the way-side, covered from the weather with little sheds, bearing the image of the Saviour, crowned with thorns and frightfully dashed with streaks and drops of red paint, to represent the blood that flowed from his wounds. The outer walls of the better kind of houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the subjects of these were mostly sacred, such as the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and the Ascension. The number of houses of worship was surprising; I do not mean spacious or stately churches such as we meet with in Italy, but most commonly little chapels dispersed so as best to accommodate the population. Of these the smallest neighborhood has one for the morning devotions of its inhabitants, and even the solitary inn has its little consecrated building with its miniature spire, for the convenience of pious wayfarers. At Sterzing, a little village beautifully situated at the base of the mountain called the Brenner, and containing, as I should judge, not more than two or three thousand inhabitants, we counted seven churches and chapels within the compass of a square mile. The observances of the Roman Catholic church are nowhere more rigidly complied with than in the Tyrol. When we stopped at Bruneck on Friday evening, I happened to drop a word about a little meat for dinner in a conversation with the spruce-looking landlady, who appeared so shocked that I gave up the point, on the promise of some excellent and remarkably well-flavored trout from the stream that flowed through the village--a promise that was literally fulfilled. At the post-house on the Brenner, where we stopped on Saturday evening, we were absolutely refused any thing but soup-maigre and fish; the postmaster telling us that the priest had positively forbidden meat to be given to travellers. Think of that!--that we who had eaten wild-boar and pheasants on Good Friday, at Rome, under the very nostrils of the Pope himself and his whole conclave of Cardinals, should be refused a morsel of flesh on an ordinary Saturday, at a tavern on a lonely mountain in the Tyrol, by the orders of a parish priest! Before getting our soup-maigre, we witnessed another example of Tyrolese devotion. Eight or ten travellers, apparently laboring men, took possession of the entrance hall of the inn, and kneeling, poured forth their orisons in the German language for half an hour with no small appearance of fervency. In the morning when we were ready to set out, we inquired for our coachman, an Italian, and found that he too, although not remarkably religious, had caught something of the spirit of the place, and was at the _Gotteshaus_, as the waiter called the tavern chapel, offering his morning prayers. We descended the Brenner on the 28th of June in a snow-storm, the wind whirling the light flakes in the air as it does with us in winter. It changed to rain, however, as we approached the beautiful and picturesque valley watered by the river Inn, on the banks of wrhich stands the fine old town of Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol. Here we visited the Church of the Holy Cross, in which is the bronze tomb of Maximilian I. and twenty or thirty bronze statues ranged on each side of the nave, representing fierce warrior chiefs, and gowned prelates, and stately damsels of the middle ages. These are all curious for the costume; the warriors are cased in various kinds of ancient armor, and brandish various ancient weapons, and the robes of the females are flowing and by no means ungraceful. Almost every one of the statues has its hands and fingers in some constrained and awkward position; as if the artist knew as little what to do with them as some awkward and bashful people know what to do with their own. Such a crowd of figures in that ancient garb, occupying the floor in the midst of the living worshipers of the present day, has an effect which at first is startling. From Innsbruck we climbed and crossed another mountain-ridge, scarcely less wild and majestic in its scenery than those we had left behind. On descending, we observed that the crucifixes had disappeared from the roads, and the broad-brimmed and sugar-loaf hats from the heads of the peasantry; the men wore hats contracted in the middle of the crown like an hour-glass, and the women caps edged with a broad band of black fur, the frescoes on the outside of the houses became less frequent; in short it was apparent that we had entered a different region, even if the custom-house and police officers on the frontier had not signified to us that we were now in the kingdom of Bavaria. We passed through extensive forests of fir, here and there checkered with farms, and finally came to the broad elevated plain bathed by the Isar, in which Munich is situated. Letter VII. An Excursion to Rock River. Princeton, Illinois, _June_ 21, 1841. I have just returned from an excursion to Rock River, one of the most beautiful of our western streams. We left Princeton on the 17th of the month, and after passing a belt of forest which conceals one of the branches of the Bureau River, found ourselves upon the wide, unfenced prairie, spreading away on every side until it met the horizon. Flocks of turtle-doves rose from our path scared at our approach; quails and rabbits were seen running before us; the prairie-squirrel, a little striped animal of the marmot kind, crossed the road; we started plovers by the dozen, and now and then a prairie-hen, which flew off heavily into the grassy wilderness. With these animals the open country is populous, but they have their pursuers and destroyers; not the settlers of the region, for they do not shoot often except at a deer or a wild turkey, or a noxious animal; but the prairie-hawk, the bald-eagle, the mink, and the prairie-wolf, which make merciless havoc among them and their brood. About fifteen miles we came to Dad Joe's Grove, in the shadow of which, thirteen years ago, a settler named Joe Smith, who had fought in the battle of the Thames, one of the first white inhabitants of this region, seated himself, and planted his corn, and gathered his crops quietly, through the whole Indian war, without being molested by the savages, though he was careful to lead his wife and family to a place of security. As Smith was a settler of such long standing, he was looked to as a kind of patriarch in the county, and to distinguish him from other Joe Smiths, he received the venerable appellation of Dad. He has since removed to another part of the state, but his well-known, hospitable cabin, inhabited by another inmate, is still there, and his grove of tall trees, standing on a ridge amidst the immense savannahs, yet retains his name. As we descended into the prairie we were struck with the novelty and beauty of the prospect which lay before us. The ground sank gradually and gently into a low but immense basin, in the midst of which lies the marshy tract called the Winnebago Swamp. To the northeast the sight was intercepted by a forest in the midst of the basin, but to the northwest the prairies were seen swelling up again in the smoothest slopes to their usual height, and stretching away to a distance so vast that it seemed boldness in the eye to follow them. The Winnebagoes and other Indian tribes which formerly possessed this country have left few memorials of their existence, except the names of places. Now and then, as at Indiantown, near Princeton, you are shown the holes in the ground where they stored their maize, and sometimes on the borders of the rivers you see the trunks of trees which they felled, evidently hacked by their tomahawks, but perhaps the most remarkable of their remains are the paths across the prairies or beside the large streams, called Indian trails--narrow and well-beaten ways, sometimes a foot in depth, and many of them doubtless trodden for hundreds of years. As we went down the ridge upon which stands Dad Joe's Grove, we saw many boulders of rock lying on the surface of the soil of the prairies. The western people, naturally puzzled to tell how they came there, give them the expressive name of "lost rocks." We entered a forest of scattered oaks, and after travelling for half an hour reached the Winnebago Swamp, a tract covered with tall and luxuriant water-grass, which we crossed on a causey built by a settler who keeps a toll-gate, and at the end of the causey we forded a small stream called Winnebago Inlet. Crossing another vast prairie we reached the neighborhood of Dixon, the approach to which was denoted by groves, farm-houses, herds of cattle, and inclosed corn fields, checkering the broad green prairie. Dixon, named after an ancient settler of the place still living, is a country town situated on a high bank of Rock River. Five years ago two log-cabins only stood on the solitary shore, and now it is a considerable village, with many neat dwellings, a commodious court-house, several places of worship for the good people, and a jail for the rogues, built with a triple wall of massive logs, but I was glad to see that it had no inmate. Rock River flows through high prairies, and not, like most streams of the West, through an alluvial country. The current is rapid, and the pellucid waters glide over a bottom of sand and pebbles. Its admirers declare that its shores unite the beauties of the Hudson and of the Connecticut. The banks on either side are high and bold; sometimes they are perpendicular precipices, the base of which stands in the running water; sometimes they are steep grassy or rocky bluffs, with a space of dry alluvial land between them and the stream; sometimes they rise by a gradual and easy ascent to the general level of the region, and sometimes this ascent is interrupted by a broad natural terrace. Majestic trees grow solitary or in clumps on the grassy acclivities, or scattered in natural parks along the lower lands upon the river, or in thick groves along the edge of the high country. Back of the bluffs, extends a fine agricultural region, rich prairies with an undulating surface, interspersed with groves. At the foot of the bluffs break forth copious springs of clear water, which hasten in little brooks to the river. In a drive which I took up the left bank of the river, I saw three of these in the space of as many miles. One of these is the spring which supplies the town of Dixon with water; the next is a beautiful fountain rushing out from the rocks in the midst of a clump of trees, as merrily and in as great a hurry as a boy let out of school; the third is so remarkable as to have received a name. It is a little rivulet issuing from a cavern six or seven feet high, and about twenty from the entrance to the further end, at the foot of a perpendicular precipice covered with forest-trees and fringed with bushes. In the neighborhood of Dixon, a class of emigrants have established themselves, more opulent and more luxurious in their tastes than most of the settlers of the western country. Some of these have built elegant mansions on the left bank of the river, amidst the noble trees which seem to have grown up for that very purpose. Indeed, when I looked at them, I could hardly persuade myself that they had not been planted to overshadow older habitations. From the door of one of these dwellings I surveyed a prospect of exceeding beauty. The windings of the river allowed us a sight of its waters and its beautifully diversified banks to a great distance each way, and in one direction a high prairie region was seen above the woods that fringed the course of this river, of a lighter green than they, and touched with the golden light of the setting sun. I am told that the character of Rock River is, throughout its course, much as I have described it in the neighborhood of Dixon, that its banks are high and free from marshes, and its waters rapid and clear, from its source in Wisconsin to where it enters the Mississippi amidst rocky islands. What should make its shores unhealthy I can not see, yet they who inhabit them are much subject to intermittent fevers. They tell you very quietly that every body who comes to live there must take a seasoning. I suppose that when this country becomes settled this will no longer be the case. Rock River is not much subject to inundations, nor do its waters become very low in summer. A project is on foot, I am told, to navigate it with steam-vessels of a light draught. When I arrived at Dixon I was told that the day before a man named Bridge, living at Washington Grove, in Ogle county, came into town and complained that he had received notice from a certain association that he must leave the county before the seventeenth of the month, or that he would be looked upon as a proper subject for Lynch law. He asked for assistance to defend his person and dwelling against the lawless violence of these men. The people of Dixon county came together and passed a resolution to the effect, that they approved fully of what the inhabitants of Ogle county had done, and that they allowed Mr. Bridge the term of four hours to depart from the town of Dixon. He went away immediately, and in great trepidation. This Bridge is a notorious confederate and harborer of horse-thieves and counterfeiters. The thinly-settled portions of Illinois are much exposed to the depredations of horse-thieves, who have a kind of centre of operations in Ogle county, where it is said that they have a justice of the peace and a constable among their own associates, and where they contrive to secure a friend on the jury whenever any one of their number is tried. Trial after trial has taken place, and it has been found impossible to obtain a conviction on the clearest evidence, until last April, when two horse-thieves being on trial eleven of the jury threatened the twelfth with a taste of the cowskin unless he would bring in a verdict of guilty. He did so, and the men were condemned. Before they were removed to the state-prison, the court-house was burnt down and the jail was in flames, but luckily they were extinguished without the liberation of the prisoners. Such at length became the general feeling of insecurity, that three hundred citizens of Ogle county, as I understand, have formed themselves into a company of volunteers for the purpose of clearing the county of these men. Two horse-thieves have been seized and flogged, and Bridge, their patron, has been ordered to remove or abide the consequences. As we were returning from Dixon on the morning of the 19th, we heard a kind of humming noise in the grass, which one of the company said proceeded from a rattlesnake. We dismounted and found in fact it was made by a prairie-rattlesnake, which lay coiled around a tuft of herbage, and which we soon dispatched. The Indians call this small variety of the rattlesnake, the Massasauger. Horses are frequently bitten by it and come to the doors of their owners with their heads horribly swelled but they are recovered by the application of hartshorn. A little further on, one of the party raised the cry of wolf, and looking we saw a prairie-wolf in the path before us, a prick-eared animal of a reddish-gray color, standing and gazing at us with great composure. As we approached, he trotted off into the grass, with his nose near the ground, not deigning to hasten his pace for our shouts, and shortly afterward we saw two others running in a different direction. The prairie-wolf is not so formidable an animal as the name of wolf would seem to denote; he is quite as great a coward as robber, but he is exceedingly mischievous. He never takes full-grown sheep unless he goes with a strong troop of his friends, but seizes young lambs, carries off sucking-pigs, robs the henroost, devours sweet corn in the gardens, and plunders the water-melon patch. A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians. It is their way to gnaw a hole immediately into the first melon they lay hold of. If it happens to be ripe, the inside is devoured at once, if not, it is dropped and another is sought out, and a quarrel is picked with the discoverer of a ripe one, and loud and shrill is the barking, and fierce the growling and snapping which is heard on these occasions. It is surprising, I am told, with what dexterity a wolf will make the most of a melon; absorbing every remnant of the pulp, and hollowing it out as clean as it could be scraped by a spoon. This is when the allowance of melons is scarce, but when they are abundant he is as careless and wasteful as a government agent. Enough of natural history. I will finish my letter another day. _June 26th_. Let me caution all emigrants to Illinois not to handle too familiarly the "wild parsnip," as it is commonly called, an umbelliferous plant growing in the moist prairies of this region. I have handled it and have paid dearly for it, having such a swelled face that I could scarcely see for several days. The regulators of Ogle county removed Bridge's family on Monday last and demolished his house. He made preparations to defend himself, and kept twenty armed men about him for two days, but thinking, at last, that the regulators did not mean to carry their threats into effect, he dismissed them. He has taken refuge with his friends, the Aikin family, who live, I believe, in Jefferson Grove, in the same county, and who, it is said, have also received notice to quit. Letter VIII. Examples of Lynch Law. Princeton, Illinois, _July 2, 1841._ In my last letter I mentioned that the regulators in Ogle county, on Rock River, in this state, had pulled down the house of one Bridge, living at Washington Grove, a well-known confederate of the horse-thieves and coiners with which this region is infested. Horse-thieves are numerous in this part of the country. A great number of horses are bred here; you see large herds of them feeding in the open prairies, and at this season of the year every full-grown mare has a colt running by her side. Most of the thefts are committed early in the spring, when the grass begins to shoot, and the horses are turned out on the prairie, and the thieves, having had little or no employment during the winter, are needy; or else in the autumn, when the animals are kept near the dwellings of their owners to be fed with Indian corn and are in excellent order. The thieves select the best from the drove, and these are passed from one station to another till they arrive at some distant market where they are sold. It is said that they have their regular lines of communication from Wisconsin to St. Louis, and from the Wabash to the Mississippi. In Ogle county they seem to have been bolder than elsewhere, and more successful, notwithstanding the notoriety of their crimes, in avoiding punishment. The impossibility of punishing them by process of law, the burning of the court-house at Oregon City last April, and the threats of deadly vengeance thrown out by them against such as should attempt to bring them to justice, led to the formation of a company of citizens, "regulators" they call themselves, who resolved to take the law into their own hands and drive the felons from the neighborhood. This is not the first instance of the kind which has happened in Illinois. Some twenty years since the southern counties contained a gang of horse-thieves, so numerous and well-organized as to defy punishment by legal means, and they were expelled by the same method which is now adopted in Ogle county. I have just learned, since I wrote the last sentence, that the society of regulators includes, not only the county of Ogle, but those of De Kalb and Winnebago, where the depredations of the horse-thieves and the perfect impunity with which they manage to exercise their calling, have exhausted the patience of the inhabitants. In those counties, as well as in Ogle, their patrons live at some of the finest groves, where they own large farms. Ten or twenty stolen horses will be brought to one of these places of a night, and before sunrise the desperadoes employed to take them are again mounted and on their way to some other station. In breaking up these haunts, the regulators, I understand, have proceeded with some of the formalities commonly used in administering justice. The accused party has been allowed to make his defense, and witnesses have been examined, both for and against him. These proceedings, however, have lately suffered a most tragical interruption. Not long after Bridge's house was pulled down, two men, mounted and carrying rifles, called at the dwelling of a Mr Campbell, living at Whiterock Grove, in Ogle county, who belonged to the company of regulators, and who had acted as the messenger to convey to Bridge the order to leave the county. Meeting Mrs. Campbell without the house, they told her that they wished to speak to her husband. Campbell made his appearance at the door and immediately both the men fired. He fell mortally wounded and lived but a few minutes. "You have killed my husband," said Mrs. Campbell to one of the murderers whose name was Driscoll. Upon this they rode off at full speed. As soon as the event was known the whole country was roused, and every man who was not an associate of the horse-thieves, shouldered his rifle to go in pursuit of the murderers. They apprehended the father of Driscoll, a man nearly seventy years of age, and one of his sons, William Driscoll, the former a reputed horse-thief, and the latter, a man who had hitherto borne a tolerably fair character, and subjected them to a separate examination. The father was wary in his answers, and put on the appearance of perfect innocence, but William Driscoll was greatly agitated, and confessed that he, with his father and others, had planned the murder of Campbell, and that David Driscoll, his brother, together with another associate, was employed to execute it. The father and son were then sentenced to death; they were bound and made to kneel; about fifty men took aim at each, and, in three hours from the time they were taken, they were dead men. A pit was dug on the spot where they fell, in the midst of a prairie near their dwelling; their corpses, pierced with bullet-holes in every part, were thrown in, and the earth was heaped over them. The pursuit of David Driscoll and the fellow who was with him when Campbell was killed, is still going on with great activity. More than a hundred men are traversing the country in different directions, determined that no lurking-place shall hide them. In the mean time various persons who have the reputation of being confederates of horse-thieves, not only in Ogle county, but in the adjoining ones, even in this, have received notice from the regulators that they cannot be allowed to remain in this part of the state. Several suspicious-looking men, supposed to be fugitives from Ogle county, have been seen, within a few days past, lurking in the woods not far from this place. One of them who was seen the day before yesterday evidently thought himself pursued and slunk from sight; he was followed, but escaped in the thickets leaving a bundle of clothing behind him. Samonok, Kane County, Illinois, _July 5th._ I have just heard that another of the Driscolls has been shot by the regulators. Whether it was David, who fired at Campbell, or one of his brothers, I can not learn. Letter IX. Richmond in Virginia. Richmond, Virginia, _March 2, 1843._ I arrived at this place last night from Washington, where I had observed little worth describing. The statue of our first President, by Greenough, was, of course, one of the things which I took an early opportunity of looking at, and although the bad light in which it is placed prevents the spectator from properly appreciating the features, I could not help seeing with satisfaction, that no position, however unfavorable, could impair the majesty of that noble work, or, at all events, destroy its grand general effect. The House of Representatives I had not seen since 1832, and I perceived that the proceedings were conducted with less apparent decorum than formerly, and that the members no longer sat with their hats on. Whether they had come to the conclusion that it was well to sit uncovered, in order to make up, by this token of mutual respect, for the too frequent want of decorum in their proceedings, or whether the change has been made because it so often happens that all the members are talking together, the rule being that the person speaking must be bareheaded, or whether, finally, it was found, during the late long summer sessions, that a hat made the wearer really uncomfortable, are questions which I asked on the spot, but to which I got no satisfactory answer. I visited the Senate Chamber, and saw a member of that dignified body, as somebody calls it, in preparing to make a speech, blow his nose with his thumb and finger without the intervention of a pocket-handkerchief. The speech, after this graceful preliminary, did not, I confess, disappoint me. Whoever goes to Washington should by all means see the Museum at the Patent Office, enriched by the collections lately brought back by the expedition sent out to explore the Pacific. I was surprised at the extent and variety of these collections. Dresses, weapons, and domestic implements of savage nations, in such abundance as to leave, one would almost think, their little tribes disfurnished; birds of strange shape and plumage; fishes of remote waters; whole groves of different kinds of coral; sea-shells of rare form and singular beauty from the most distant shores; mummies from the caves of Peru; curious minerals and plants: whoever is interested by such objects as these should give the museum a more leisurely examination than I had time to do. The persons engaged in arranging and putting up these collections were still at their task when I was at Washington, and I learned that what I saw was by no means the whole. The night before we set out, snow fell to the depth of three inches, and as the steamboat passed down the Potomac, we saw, at sunrise, the grounds of Mount Vernon lying in a covering of the purest white, the snow, scattered in patches on the thick foliage of cedars that skirt the river, looking like clusters of blossoms. About twelve, the steamboat came to land, and the railway took us through a gorge of the woody hills that skirt the Potomac. In about an hour, we were at Fredericksburg, on the Rappahannock. The day was bright and cold, and the wind keen and cutting. A crowd of negroes came about the cars, with cakes, fruit, and other refreshments. The poor fellows seemed collapsed with the unusual cold; their faces and lips were of the color which drapers call blue-black. As we proceeded southward in Virginia, the snow gradually became thinner and finally disappeared altogether. It was impossible to mistake the region in which we were. Broad inclosures were around us, with signs of extensive and superficial cultivation; large dwellings were seen at a distance from each other, and each with its group of smaller buildings, looking as solitary and chilly as French chateaus; and, now and then, we saw a gang of negroes at work in the fields, though oftener we passed miles without the sight of a living creature. At six in the afternoon, we arrived at Richmond. A beautiful city is Richmond, seated on the hills that overlook the James River. The dwellings have a pleasant appearance, often standing by themselves in the midst of gardens. In front of several, I saw large magnolias, their dark, glazed leaves glittering in the March sunshine. The river, as yellow as the Tiber, its waters now stained with the earth of the upper country, runs by the upper part of the town in noisy rapids, embracing several islands, shaded with the plane-tree, the hackberry, and the elm, and prolific, in spring and summer, of wild-flowers. I went upon one of these islands, by means of a foot-bridge, and was pointed to another, the resort of a quoit-club comprising some of the most distinguished men of Richmond, among whom in his lifetime was Judge Marshall, who sometimes joined in this athletic sport. We descended one of the hills on which the town is built, and went up another to the east, where stands an ancient house of religious worship, the oldest Episcopal church in the state. It is in the midst of a burying-ground, where sleep some of the founders of the colony, whose old graves are greenly overgrown with the trailing and matted periwinkle. In this church, Patrick Henry, at the commencement of the American Revolution, made that celebrated speech, which so vehemently moved all who heard him, ending with the sentence: "Give me liberty or give me death." We looked in at one of the windows; it is a low, plain room, with small, square pews, and a sounding board over the little pulpit. From the hill on which this church stands, you have a beautiful view of the surrounding country, a gently undulating surface, closed in by hills on the west; and the James River is seen wandering through it, by distant plantations, and between borders of trees. A place was pointed out to us, a little way down the river, which bears the name of Powhatan; and here, I was told, a flat rock is still shown as the one on which Captain Smith was placed by his captors, in order to be put to death, when the intercession of Pocahontas saved his life. I went with an acquaintance to see the inspection and sale of tobacco. Huge, upright columns of dried leaves, firmly packed and of a greenish hue, stood in rows, under the roof of a broad, low building, open on all sides--these were the hogsheads of tobacco, stripped of the staves. The inspector, a portly man, with a Bourbon face, his white hair gathered in a tie behind, went very quietly and expeditiously through his task of determining the quality, after which the vast bulks were disposed of, in a very short time, with surprisingly little noise, to the tobacco merchants. Tobacco, to the value of three millions of dollars annually, is sent by the planters to Richmond, and thence distributed to different nations, whose merchants frequent this mart. In the sales it is always sure to bring cash, which, to those who detest the weed, is a little difficult to understand. I went afterwards to a tobacco factory, the sight of which amused me, though the narcotic fumes made me cough. In one room a black man was taking apart the small bundles of leaves of which a hogshead of tobacco is composed, and carefully separating leaf from leaf; others were assorting the leaves according to the quality, and others again were arranging the leaves in layers and sprinkling each layer with the extract of liquorice. In another room were about eighty negroes, boys they are called, from the age of twelve years up to manhood, who received the leaves thus prepared, rolled them into long even rolls, and then cut them into plugs of about four inches in length, which were afterwards passed through a press, and thus became ready for market. As we entered the room we heard a murmur of psalmody running through the sable assembly, which now and then swelled into a strain of very tolerable music. "Verse sweetens toil--" says the stanza which Dr. Johnson was so fond of quoting, and really it is so good that I will transcribe the whole of it-- "Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound-- All at her work the village maiden sings, Nor, while she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things." Verse it seems can sweeten the toil of slaves in a tobacco factory. "We encourage their singing as much as we can," said the brother of the proprietor, himself a diligent masticator of the weed, who attended us, and politely explained to us the process of making plug tobacco; "we encourage it as much as we can, for the boys work better while singing. Sometimes they will sing all day long with great spirit; at other times you will not hear a single note. They must sing wholly of their own accord, it is of no use to bid them do it." "What is remarkable," he continued, "their tunes are all psalm tunes, and the words are from hymn-books; their taste is exclusively for sacred music; they will sing nothing else. Almost all these persons are church-members; we have not a dozen about the factory who are not so. Most of them are of the Baptist persuasion; a few are Methodists." I saw in the course of the day the Baptist church in which these people worship, a low, plain, but spacious brick building, the same in which the sages of Virginia, a generation of great men, debated the provisions of the constitution. It has a congregation of twenty-seven hundred persons, and the best choir, I heard somebody say, in all Richmond. Near it is the Monumental church, erected on the site of the Richmond theatre, after the terrible fire which carried mourning into so many families. In passing through an old part of Main-street, I was shown an ancient stone cottage of rude architecture and humble dimensions, which was once the best hotel in Richmond. Here, I was told, there are those in Richmond who remember dining with General Washington, Judge Marshall, and their cotemporaries. I could not help comparing it with the palace-like building put up at Richmond within two or three years past, named the Exchange Hotel, with its spacious parlors, its long dining-rooms, its airy dormitories, and its ample halls and passages, echoing to the steps of busy waiters, and guests coming and departing. The Exchange Hotel is one of the finest buildings for its purpose in the United States, and is extremely well-kept. I paid a visit to the capitol, nobly situated on an eminence which overlooks the city, and is planted with trees. The statue of Washington, executed by Houdon for the state of Virginia, in 1788, is here. It is of the size of life, representing Gen. Washington in the costume of his day, and in an ordinary standing posture. It gratifies curiosity, but raises no particular moral emotion. Compared with the statue by Greenough, it presents a good example of the difference between the work of a mere sculptor--skillful indeed, but still a mere sculptor--and the work of a man of genius. I shall shortly set out for Charleston, South Carolina. Letter X. A Journey from Richmond to Charleston. Charleston, _March_ 6, 1843. I left Richmond, on the afternoon of a keen March day, in the railway train for Petersburg, where we arrived after dark, and, therefore, could form no judgment of the appearance of the town. Here we were transferred to another train of cars. Among the passengers was a lecturer on Mesmerism with his wife, and a young woman who accompanied them as a mesmeric subject. The young woman, accustomed to be easily put to sleep, seemed to get through the night very comfortably; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness. About two o'clock in the morning, we reached Blakely on the Roanoke, where we were made to get out of the cars, and were marched in long procession for about a quarter of a mile down to the river. A negro walked before us to light our way, bearing a blazing pine torch, which scattered sparks like a steam-engine, and a crowd of negroes followed us, bearing our baggage. We went down a steep path to the Roanoke, where we found a little old steamboat ready for us, and in about fifteen minutes were struggling upward against the muddy and rapid current. In little more than an hour, we had proceeded two miles and a half up the river, and were landed at a place called Weldon. Here we took the cars for Wilmington, in North Carolina, and shabby vehicles they were, denoting our arrival in a milder climate, by being extremely uncomfortable for cold weather. As morning dawned, we saw ourselves in the midst of the pine forests of North Carolina. Vast tracts of level sand, overgrown with the long-leaved pine, a tall, stately tree, with sparse and thick twigs, ending in long brushes of leaves, murmuring in the strong cold wind, extended everywhere around us. At great distances from each other, we passed log-houses, and sometimes a dwelling of more pretensions, with a piazza, and here and there fields in which cotton or maize had been planted last year, or an orchard with a few small mossy trees. The pools beside the roads were covered with ice just formed, and the negroes, who like a good fire at almost any season of the year, and who find an abundant supply of the finest fuel in these forests, had made blazing fires of the resinous wood of the pine, wherever they were at work. The tracts of sandy soil, we perceived, were interspersed with marshes, crowded with cypress-trees, and verdant at their borders with a growth of evergreens, such as the swamp-bay, the gallberry, the holly, and various kinds of evergreen creepers, which are unknown to our northern climate, and which became more frequent as we proceeded. We passed through extensive forests of pine, which had been _boxed_, as it is called, for the collection of turpentine. Every tree had been scored by the axe upon one of its sides, some of them as high as the arm could reach down to the roots, and the broad wound was covered with the turpentine, which seems to saturate every fibre of the long-leaved pine. Sometimes we saw large flakes or crusts of the turpentine of a light-yellow color, which had fallen, and lay beside the tree on the ground. The collection of turpentine is a work of destruction; it strips acre after acre of these noble trees, and, if it goes on, the time is not far distant when the long-leaved pine will become nearly extinct in this region, which is so sterile as hardly to be fitted for producing any thing else. We saw large tracts covered with the standing trunks of trees already killed by it; and other tracts beside them had been freshly attacked by the spoiler. I am told that the tree which grows up when the long-leaved pine is destroyed, is the loblolly pine, or, as it is sometimes called, the short-leaved pine, a tree of very inferior quality and in little esteem. About half-past two in the afternoon, we came to Wilmington, a little town built upon the white sands of Cape Fear, some of the houses standing where not a blade of grass or other plant can grow. A few evergreen oaks, in places, pleasantly overhang the water. Here we took the steamer for Charleston. I may as well mention here a fraud which is sometimes practiced upon those who go by this route to Charleston. Advertisements are distributed at New York and elsewhere, informing the public that the fare from Baltimore to Charleston, by the railway through Washington and Richmond, is but twenty-two dollars. I took the railway, paying from place to place as I went, and found that this was a falsehood; I was made to pay seven or eight dollars more. In the course of my journey, I was told that, to protect myself from this imposition, I should have purchased at Baltimore a "through ticket," as it is called; that is, should have paid in advance for the whole distance; but the advertisement did not inform me that this was necessary. No wonder that "tricks upon travellers" should have become a proverbial expression, for they are a much-enduring race, more or less plundered in every part of the world. The next morning, at eight o'clock, we found ourselves entering Charleston harbor; Sullivan's Island, with Fort Moultrie, breathing recollections of the revolution, on our right; James Island on our left; in front, the stately dwellings of the town, and all around, on the land side, the horizon bounded by an apparent belt of evergreens--the live-oak, the water-oak, the palmetto, the pine, and, planted about the dwellings, the magnolia and the wild orange--giving to the scene a summer aspect. The city of Charleston strikes the visitor from the north most agreeably. He perceives at once that he is in a different climate. The spacious houses are surrounded with broad piazzas, often a piazza to each story, for the sake of shade and coolness, and each house generally stands by itself in a garden planted with trees and shrubs, many of which preserve their verdure through the winter. We saw early flowers already opening; the peach and plum-tree were in full bloom; and the wild orange, as they call the cherry-laurel, was just putting forth its blossoms. The buildings--some with stuccoed walls, some built of large dark-red bricks, and some of wood--are not kept fresh with paint like ours, but are allowed to become weather-stained by the humid climate, like those of the European towns. The streets are broad and quiet, unpaved in some parts, but in none, as with us, offensive both to sight and smell. The public buildings are numerous for the size of the city, and well-built in general, with sufficient space about them to give them a noble aspect, and all the advantage which they could derive from their architecture. The inhabitants, judging from what I have seen of them, which is not much, I confess, do not appear undeserving of the character which has been given them, of possessing the most polished and agreeable manners of all the American cities. I may shortly write you again from the interior of South Carolina. Letter XI. The Interior of South Carolina. A Corn-Shucking. Barnwell District, South Carolina, _March 29, 1843._ Since I last wrote, I have passed three weeks in the interior of South Carolina; visited Columbia, the capital of the state, a pretty town; roamed over a considerable part of Barnwell district, with some part of the neighboring one of Orangeburg; enjoyed the hospitality of the planters--very agreeable and intelligent men; been out in a racoon hunt; been present at a corn-shucking; listened to negro ballads, negro jokes, and the banjo; witnessed negro dances; seen two alligators at least, and eaten bushels of hominy. Whoever comes out on the railroad to this district, a distance of seventy miles or more, if he were to judge only by what he sees in his passage, might naturally take South Carolina for a vast pine-forest, with here and there a clearing made by some enterprising settler, and would wonder where the cotton which clothes so many millions of the human race, is produced. The railway keeps on a tract of sterile sand, overgrown with pines; passing, here and there, along the edge of a morass, or crossing a stream of yellow water. A lonely log-house under these old trees, is a sight for sore eyes; and only two or three plantations, properly so called, meet the eye in the whole distance. The cultivated and more productive lands lie apart from this tract, near streams, and interspersed with more frequent ponds and marshes. Here you find plantations comprising several thousands of acres, a considerable part of which always lies in forest; cotton and corn fields of vast extent, and a negro village on every plantation, at a respectful distance from the habitation of the proprietor. Evergreen trees of the oak family and others, which I mentioned in my last letter, are generally planted about the mansions. Some of them are surrounded with dreary clearings, full of the standing trunks of dead pines; others are pleasantly situated in the edge of woods, intersected by winding paths. A ramble, or a ride--a ride on a hand-gallop it should be--in these pine woods, on a fine March day, when the weather has all the spirit of our March days without its severity, is one of the most delightful recreations in the world. The paths are upon a white sand, which, when not frequently travelled, is very firm under foot; on all sides you are surrounded by noble stems of trees, towering to an immense height, from whose summits, far above you, the wind is drawing deep and grand harmonies; and often your way is beside a marsh, verdant with magnolias, where the yellow jessamine, now in flower, fills the air with fragrance, and the bamboo-briar, an evergreen creeper, twines itself with various other plants, which never shed their leaves in winter. These woods abound in game, which, you will believe me when I say, I had rather start than shoot,--flocks of turtle-doves, rabbits rising and scudding before you; bevies of quails, partridges they call them here, chirping almost under your horse's feet; wild ducks swimming in the pools, and wild turkeys, which are frequently shot by the practiced sportsman. But you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which I was present was given on purpose that I might witness the humors of the Carolina negroes. A huge fire of _light-wood_ was made near the corn-house. Light-wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so called, not because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the world, but because it gives more light than any other fuel. In clearing land, the pines are girdled and suffered to stand; the outer portion of the wood decays and falls off; the inner part, which is saturated with turpentine, remains upright for years, and constitutes the planter's provision of fuel. When a supply is wanted, one of these dead trunks is felled by the axe. The abundance of light-wood is one of the boasts of South Carolina. Wherever you are, if you happen to be chilly, you may have a fire extempore; a bit of light-wood and a coal give you a bright blaze and a strong heat in an instant. The negroes make fires of it in the fields where they work; and, when the mornings are wet and chilly, in the pens where they are milking the cows. At a plantation, where I passed a frosty night, I saw fires in a small inclosure, and was told by the lady of the house that she had ordered them to be made to warm the cattle. The light-wood fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk, and piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are the words: Johnny come down de hollow. Oh hollow! Johnny come down de hollow. Oh hollow! De nigger-trader got me. Oh hollow! De speculator bought me. Oh hollow! I'm sold for silver dollars. Oh hollow! Boys, go catch de pony. Oh hollow! Bring him round de corner. Oh hollow! I'm goin' away to Georgia. Oh hollow! Boys, good-by forever! Oh hollow! The song of "Jenny gone away," was also given, and another, called the monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal singer personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the other negroes bore part in the chorus, "Dan, dan, who's de dandy?" One of the songs, commonly sung on these occasions, represents the various animals of the woods as belonging to some profession or trade. For example-- De cooter is de boatman-- The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is. De cooter is de boatman. John John Crow. De red-bird de soger. John John Crow. De mocking-bird de lawyer. John John Crow. De alligator sawyer. John John Crow. The alligator's back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge of a saw, which explains the last line. When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a spacious kitchen. One of them took his place as musician, whistling, and beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men came forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and drumming with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility and perseverance, though all of them had performed their daily tasks and had worked all the evening, and some had walked from four to seven miles to attend the corn-shucking. From the dances a transition was made to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia trainings, in which the words of command and the evolutions were extremely ludicrous. It became necessary for the commander to make a speech, and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called upon a huge black man named Toby to address the company in his stead. Toby, a man of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against the wall, looking upon the frolic with an air of superiority. He consented, came forward, demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand, and harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby had listened to stump-speeches in his day. He spoke of "de majority of Sous Carolina," "de interests of de state," "de honor of ole Ba'nwell district," and these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which we could make nothing. A length he began to falter, when the captain with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was allowed by all the spectators, black and white, to have made an excellent speech. The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is, of course, the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice. The result is a compromise in which each party yields something, and a good-natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other. I have been told by planters that the slave brought from Africa is much more serviceable, though more high-spirited and dangerous than the slave born in this country, and early trained to his condition. I have been impatiently waiting the approach of spring, since I came to this state, but the weather here is still what the inhabitants call winter. The season, I am told, is more than three weeks later than usual. Fields of Indian corn which were planted in the beginning of March, must be replanted, for the seed has perished in the ground, and the cotton planting is deferred for fine weather. The peach and plum trees have stood in blossom for weeks, and the forest trees, which at this time are usually in full foliage, are as bare as in December. Cattle are dying in the fields for want of pasture. I have thus had a sample of the winter climate of South Carolina. If never more severe or stormy than I have already experienced, it must be an agreeable one. The custom of sitting with open doors, however, I found a little difficult to like at first. A door in South Carolina, except perhaps the outer door of a house, is not made to shut. It is merely a sort of flapper, an ornamental appendage to the opening by which you enter a room, a kind of moveable screen made to swing to and fro, but never to be secured by a latch, unless for some purpose of strict privacy. A door is the ventilator to the room; the windows are not raised except in warm weather, but the door is kept open at all seasons. On cold days you have a bright fire of pine-wood blazing before you, and a draught of cold air at your back. The reason given for this practice is, that fresh air is wholesome, and that close rooms occasion colds and consumptions. Letter XII. Savannah. Picolata, East Florida, _April 7, 1843._ As I landed at this place, a few hours since, I stepped into the midst of summer. Yesterday morning when I left Savannah, people were complaining that the winter was not over. The temperature which, at this time of the year, is usually warm and genial, continued to be what they called chilly, though I found it agreeable enough, and the showy trees, called the _Pride of India_, which are planted all over the city, and are generally in bloom at this season, were still leafless. Here I find every thing green, fresh, and fragrant, trees and shrubs in full foliage, and wild roses in flower. The dark waters of the St. John's, one of the noblest streams of the country, in depth and width like the St. Lawrence, draining almost the whole extent of the peninsula, are flowing under my window. On the opposite shore are forests of tall trees, bright in the new verdure of the season. A hunter who has ranged them the whole day, has just arrived in a canoe, bringing with him a deer, which he has killed. I have this moment returned from a ramble with my host through a hammock, he looking for his cows, and I, unsuccessfully, for a thicket of orange-trees. He is something of a florist, and gathered for me, as we went, some of the forest plants, which were in bloom. "We have flowers here," said he, "every month in the year." I have used the word hammock, which here, in Florida, has a peculiar meaning. A hammock is a spot covered with a growth of trees which require a richer soil than the pine, such as the oak, the mulberry, the gum-tree, the hickory, &c. The greater part of East Florida consists of pine barrens--a sandy level, producing the long leaved pine and the dwarf palmetto, a low plant, with fan-like leaves, and roots of a prodigious size. The hammock is a kind of oasis, a verdant and luxuriant island in the midst of these sterile sands, which make about nine-tenths of the soil of East Florida. In the hammocks grow the wild lime, the native orange, both sour and bitter-sweet, and the various vines and gigantic creepers of the country. The hammocks are chosen for plantations; here the cane is cultivated, and groves of the sweet orange planted. But I shall say more of Florida hereafter, when I have seen more of it. Meantime let me speak of my journey hither. I left Charleston on the 30th of March, in one of the steamers which ply between that city and Savannah. These steamers are among the very best that float--quiet, commodious, clean, fresh as if just built, and furnished with civil and ready-handed waiters. We passed along the narrow and winding channels which divide the broad islands of South Carolina from the main-land--islands famed for the rice culture, and particularly for the excellent cotton with long fibres, named the sea-island cotton. Our fellow-passengers were mostly planters of these islands, and their families, persons of remarkably courteous, frank, and agreeable manners. The shores on either side had little of the picturesque to show us. Extensive marshes waving with coarse water-grass, sometimes a cane-brake, sometimes a pine grove or a clump of cabbage-leaved palmettoes; here and there a pleasant bank bordered with live-oaks streaming with moss, and at wide intervals the distant habitation of a planter--these were the elements of the scenery. The next morning early we were passing up the Savannah river, and the city was in sight, standing among its trees on a high bank of the stream. Savannah is beautifully laid out; its broad streets are thickly planted with the Pride of India, and its frequent open squares shaded with trees of various kinds. Oglethorpe seems to have understood how a city should be built in a warm climate, and the people of the place are fond of reminding the stranger that the original plan of the founder has never been departed from. The town, so charmingly embowered, reminded me of New Haven, though the variety of trees is greater. In my walks about the place I passed a large stuccoed building of a dull-yellow color, with broad arched windows, and a stately portico, on each side of which stood a stiff looking palmetto, as if keeping guard. The grim aspect of the building led me to ask what it was, and I was answered that it was "the old United States Bank," It was the building in which the Savannah branch of that bank transacted business, and is now shut up until the time shall come when that great institution shall be revived. Meantime I was pained to see that there exists so little reverence for its memory, and so little gratitude for its benefits, that the boys have taken to smashing the windows, so that those who have the care of the building have been obliged to cover them with plank. In another part of the city I was shown an African church, a neat, spacious wooden building, railed in, and kept in excellent order, with a piazza extending along its entire front. It is one of the four places of worship for the blacks of the town, and was built by negro workmen with materials purchased by the contributions of the whites. South of the town extends an uninclosed space, on one side of which is a pleasant grove of pines, in the shade of which the members of a quoit-club practice their athletic sport. Here on a Saturday afternoon, for that is their stated time of assembling, I was introduced to some of the most distinguished citizens of Savannah, and witnessed the skill with which they threw the discus. No apprentices were they in the art; there was no striking far from the stake, no sending the discus rolling over the green; they heaped the quoits as snugly around the stakes as if the amusement had been their profession. In the same neighborhood, just without the town, lies the public cemetery surrounded by an ancient wall, built before the revolution, which in some places shows the marks of shot fired against it in the skirmishes of that period. I entered it, hoping to find some monuments of those who founded the city a hundred and ten years ago, but the inscriptions are of comparatively recent date. Most of them commemorate the death of persons born in Europe, or the northern states. I was told that the remains of the early inhabitants lie in the brick tombs, of which there are many without any inscription whatever. At a little distance, near a forest, lies the burial-place of the black population. A few trees, trailing with long moss, rise above hundreds of nameless graves, overgrown with weeds; but here and there are scattered memorials of the dead, some of a very humble kind, with a few of marble, and half a dozen spacious brick tombs like those in the cemetery of the whites. Some of them are erected by masters and mistresses to the memory of favorite slaves. One of them commemorates the death of a young woman who perished in the catastrophe of the steamer Pulaski, of whom it is recorded, that during the whole time that she was in the service of her mistress, which was many years, she never committed a theft, nor uttered a falsehood. A brick monument, in the shape of a little tomb, with a marble slab inserted in front, has this inscription: "In memory of Henrietta Gatlin, the infant stranger, born in East Florida, aged 1 year 3 months." A graveyard is hardly the place to be merry in, but I could not help smiling at some of the inscriptions. A fair upright marble slab commemorates the death of York Fleming, a cooper, who was killed by the explosion of a powder-magazine, while tightening the hoops of a keg of powder. It closes with this curious sentence: "This stone was erected by the members of the Axe Company, Coopers and Committee of the 2nd African Church of Savannah for the purpose of having a Herse for benevolent purposes, of which he was the first sexton." A poor fellow, who went to the other world by water, has a wooden slab to mark his grave, inscribed with these words: "Sacred to the memory of Robert Spencer who came to his Death by A Boat, July 9th, 1840, aged 21 years. Reader as you am now so once I And as I am now so Mus you be Shortly. Amen." Another monument, after giving the name of the dead, has this sentence: "Go home Mother dry up your weeping tears. Gods will be done." Another, erected to Sarah Morel, aged six months, has this ejaculation: "Sweet withered lilly farewell." One of the monuments is erected to Andrew Bryan, a black preacher, of the Baptist persuasion. A long inscription states that he was once imprisoned "for preaching the Gospel, and, without ceremony, severely whipped;" and that, while undergoing the punishment, "he told his persecutors that he not only rejoiced to be whipped, but was willing to suffer death for the cause of Christ." He died in 1812, at the age of ninety-six; his funeral, the inscription takes care to state, was attended by a large concourse of people, and adds: "An address was delivered at his death by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, Dr. Kollock, Thomas Williams, and Henry Cunningham." While in Savannah, I paid a visit to Bonaventure, formerly a country seat of Governor Tatnall, but now abandoned. A pleasant drive of a mile or two, through a budding forest, took us to the place, which is now itself almost grown up into forest. Cedars and other shrubs hide the old terraces of the garden, which is finely situated on the high bank of a river. Trees of various kinds have also nearly filled the space between the noble avenues of live-oaks which were planted around the mansion. But these oaks--never saw finer trees--certainly I never saw so many majestic and venerable trees together. I looked far down the immense arches that overshadowed the broad passages, as high as the nave of a Gothic cathedral, apparently as old, and stretching to a greater distance. The huge boughs were clothed with gray moss, yards in length, which clung to them like mist, or hung in still festoons on every side, and gave them the appearance of the vault of a vast vapory cavern. The cawing of the crow and the scream of the jay, however, reminded us that we were in the forest. Of the mansion there are no remains; but in the thicket of magnolias and other trees, among rosebushes and creeping plants, we found a burial-place with monuments of some persons to whom the seat had belonged. Savannah is more healthy of late years than it formerly was. An arrangement has been made with the owners of the plantations in the immediate vicinity by which the culture of rice has been abandoned, and the lands are no longer allowed to be overflowed within a mile from the city. The place has since become much less subject to fevers than in former years. I left, with a feeling of regret, the agreeable society of Savannah. The steamboat took us to St. Mary's, through passages between the sea-islands and the main-land, similar to those by which we had arrived at Savannah. In the course of the day, we passed a channel in which we saw several huge alligators basking on the bank. The grim creatures slid slowly into the water at our approach. We passed St. Mary's in the night, and in the morning we were in the main ocean, approaching the St. John's, where we saw a row of pelicans standing, like creatures who had nothing to do, on the sand. We entered the majestic river, the vast current of which is dark with the infusion of the swamp turf, from which it is drained. We passed Jacksonville, a little town of great activity, which has sprung up on the sandy bank within two or three years. Beyond, we swept by the mouth of the Black Creek, the water of which, probably from the color of the mud which forms the bed of its channel, has to the eye an ebony blackness, and reflects objects with all the distinctness of the kind of looking-glass called a black mirror. A few hours brought us to Picolata, lately a military station, but now a place with only two houses. Letter XIII. St. Augustine. St. Augustine, East Florida, _April 2, 1843._ When we left Picolata, on the 8th of April, we found ourselves journeying through a vast forest. A road of eighteen miles in length, over the level sands, brings you to this place. Tall pines, a thin growth, stood wherever we turned our eyes, and the ground was covered with the dwarf palmetto, and the whortleberry, which is here an evergreen. Yet there were not wanting sights to interest us, even in this dreary and sterile region. As we passed a clearing, in which we saw a young white woman and a boy dropping corn, and some negroes covering it with their hoes, we beheld a large flock of white cranes which rose in the air, and hovered over the forest, and wheeled, and wheeled again, their spotless plumage glistening in the sun like new-fallen snow. We crossed the track of a recent hurricane, which had broken off the huge pines midway from the ground, and whirled the summits to a distance from their trunks. From time to time we forded little streams of a deep-red color, flowing from the swamps, tinged, as we were told, with the roots of the red bay, a species of magnolia. As the horses waded into the transparent crimson, we thought of the butcheries committed by the Indians, on that road, and could almost fancy that the water was still colored with the blood they had shed. The driver of our wagon told us many narratives of these murders, and pointed out the places where they were committed. He showed us where the father of this young woman was shot dead in his wagon as he was going from St. Augustine to his plantation, and the boy whom we had seen, was wounded and scalped by them, and left for dead. In another place he showed us the spot where a party of players, on their way to St. Augustine, were surprised and killed. The Indians took possession of the stage dresses, one of them arraying himself in the garb of Othello, another in that of Richard the Third, and another taking the costume of Falstaff. I think it was Wild Cat's gang who engaged in this affair, and I was told that after the capture of this chief and some of his warriors, they recounted the circumstances with great glee. At another place we passed a small thicket in which several armed Indians, as they afterward related, lay concealed while an officer of the United States army rode several times around it, without any suspicion of their presence. The same men committed, immediately afterward, several murders and robberies on the road. At length we emerged upon a shrubby plain, and finally came in sight of this oldest city of the United States, seated among its trees on a sandy swell of land where it has stood for three hundred years. I was struck with its ancient and homely aspect, even at a distance, and could not help likening it to pictures which I had seen of Dutch towns, though it wanted a windmill or two, to make the resemblance perfect. We drove into a green square, in the midst of which was a monument erected to commemorate the Spanish constitution of 1812, and thence through the narrow streets of the city to our hotel. I have called the streets narrow. In few places are they wide enough to allow two carriages to pass abreast. I was told that they were not originally intended for carriages, and that in the time when the town belonged to Spain, many of them were floored with an artificial stone, composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock, and that no other vehicle than a hand-barrow was allowed to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the wheels of the carts and carriages, introduced by the new inhabitants. The old houses, built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of small shells, overhang the streets with their wooden balconies, and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the pomegranate and of the orange-tree, now fragrant with flowers, and, rising yet higher, the leaning boughs of the fig, with its broad luxuriant leaves. Occasionally you pass the ruins of houses--walls of stone, with arches and staircases of the same material, which once belonged to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange language. You are told that these are the remains of those who inhabited the country under the Spanish dominion, and that the dialect you have heard is that of the island of Minorca. "Twelve years ago," said an acquaintance of mine, "when I first visited St. Augustine, it was a fine old Spanish town. A large proportion of the houses, which you now see roofed like barns, were then flat-roofed, they were all of shell-rock, and these modern wooden buildings were not yet erected. That old fort, which they are now repairing, to fit it for receiving a garrison, was a sort of ruin, for the outworks had partly fallen, and it stood unoccupied by the military, a venerable monument of the Spanish dominion. But the orange-groves were the ornament and wealth of St. Augustine, and their produce maintained the inhabitants in comfort. Orange-trees, of the size and height of the pear-tree, often rising higher than the roofs of the houses, embowered the town in perpetual verdure. They stood so close in the groves that they excluded the sun and the atmosphere was at all times aromatic with their leaves and fruit, and in spring the fragrance of the flowers was almost oppressive." These groves have now lost their beauty. A few years since, a severe frost killed the trees to the ground, and when they sprouted again from the roots, a new enemy made its appearance--an insect of the _coccus_ family, with a kind of shell on its back, which enables it to withstand all the common applications for destroying insects, and the ravages of which are shown by the leaves becoming black and sere, and the twigs perishing. In October last, a gale drove in the spray from the ocean, stripping the trees, except in sheltered situations, of their leaves, and destroying the upper branches. The trunks are now putting out new sprouts and new leaves, but there is no hope of fruit for this year at least. The old fort of St. Mark, now called Fort Marion, a foolish change of name, is a noble work, frowning over the Matanzas, which flows between St. Augustine and the island of St. Anastasia, and it is worth making a long journey to see. No record remains of its original construction, but it is supposed to have been erected about a hundred and fifty years since, and the shell-rock of which it is built is dark with time. We saw where it had been struck with cannon-balls, which, instead of splitting the rock, became imbedded and clogged among the loosened fragments of shell. This rock is, therefore, one of the best materials for a fortification in the world. We were taken into the ancient prisons of the fort--dungeons, one of which was dimly lighted by a grated window, and another entirely without light; and by the flame of a torch we were shown the half-obliterated inscriptions scrawled on the walls long ago by prisoners. But in another corner of the fort, we were taken to look at two secret cells, which were discovered a few years since, in consequence of the sinking of the earth over a narrow apartment between them. These cells are deep under ground, vaulted overhead, and without windows. In one of them a wooden machine was found, which some supposed might have been a rack, and in the other a quantity of human bones. The doors of these cells had been walled up and concealed with stucco, before the fort passed into the hands of the Americans. "If the Inquisition," said the gentleman who accompanied us, "was established in Florida, as it was in the other American colonies of Spain, these were its secret chambers." Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and in the morning I attended the services in the Catholic church. One of the ceremonies was that of pronouncing the benediction over a large pile of leaves of the cabbage-palm, or palmetto, gathered in the woods. After the blessing had been pronounced, the priest called upon the congregation to come and receive them. The men came forward first, in the order of their age, and then the women; and as the congregation consisted mostly of the descendants of Minorcans, Greeks, and Spaniards, I had a good opportunity of observing their personal appearance. The younger portion of the congregation had, in general, expressive countenances. Their forms, it appeared to me, were generally slighter than those of our people; and if the cheeks of the young women were dark, they had regular features and brilliant eyes, and finely formed hands. There is spirit, also, in this class, for one of them has since been pointed out to me in the streets, as having drawn a dirk upon a young officer who presumed upon some improper freedoms of behavior. The services were closed by a plain and sensible discourse in English, from the priest, Mr. Rampon, a worthy and useful French ecclesiastic, on the obligation of temperance; for the temperance reform has penetrated even hither, and cold water is all the rage. I went again, the other evening, into the same church, and heard a person declaiming, in a language which, at first, I took to be Minorcan, for I could make nothing else of it. After listening for a few minutes, I found that it was a Frenchman preaching in Spanish, with a French mode of pronunciation which was odd enough. I asked one of the old Spanish inhabitants how he was edified by this discourse, and he acknowledged that he understood about an eighth part of it. I have much more to write about this place, but must reserve it for another letter. Letter XIV. St. Augustine. St. Augustine, _April 24, 1843_ You can not be in St. Augustine a day without hearing some of its inhabitants speak of its agreeable climate. During the sixteen days of my residence here, the weather has certainly been as delightful as I could imagine. We have the temperature of early June, as June is known in New York. The mornings are sometimes a little sultry, but after two or three hours, a fresh breeze comes in from the sea, sweeping through the broad piazzas and breathing in at the windows. At this season it comes laden with the fragrance of the flowers of the Pride of India, and sometimes of the orange-tree, and sometimes brings the scent of roses, now in full bloom. The nights are gratefully cool, and I have been told, by a person who has lived here many years, that there are very few nights in the summer when you can sleep without a blanket. An acquaintance of mine, an invalid, who has tried various climates and has kept up a kind of running fight with Death for many years, retreating from country to country as he pursued, declares to me that the winter climate of St. Augustine is to be preferred to that of any part of Europe, even that of Sicily, and that it is better than the climate of the West Indies. He finds it genial and equable, at the same time that it is not enfeebling. The summer heats are prevented from being intense by the sea-breeze, of which I have spoken. I have looked over the work of Dr. Forry on the climate of the United States, and have been surprised to see the uniformity of climate which he ascribes to Key West. As appears by the observations he has collected, the seasons at that place glide into each other by the softest gradations, and the heat never, even in midsummer, reaches that extreme which is felt in higher latitudes of the American continent. The climate of Florida is in fact an insular climate; the Atlantic on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west, temper the airs that blow over it, making them cooler in summer and warmer in winter. I do not wonder, therefore, that it is so much the resort of invalids; it would be more so if the softness of its atmosphere and the beauty and serenity of its seasons were generally known. Nor should it be supposed that accommodations for persons in delicate health are wanting; they are in fact becoming better with every year, as the demand for them increases. Among the acquaintances whom I have made here, I remember many who, having come hither for the benefit of their health, are detained for life by the amenity of the climate. "It seems to me," said an intelligent gentleman of this class, the other day, "as if I could not exist out of Florida. When I go to the north, I feel most sensibly the severe extremes of the weather; the climate of Charleston itself, appears harsh to me." Here at St. Augustine we have occasional frosts in the winter, but at Tampa Bay, on the western shore of the peninsula, no further from this place than from New York to Albany, the dew is never congealed on the grass, nor is a snow-flake ever seen floating in the air. Those who have passed the winter in that place, speak with a kind of rapture of the benignity of the climate. In that country grow the cocoa and the banana, and other productions of the West Indies. Persons who have explored Florida to the south of this, during the past winter, speak of having refreshed themselves with melons in January, growing where they had been self-sown, and of having seen the sugar-cane where it had been planted by the Indians, towering uncropped, almost to the height of the forest trees. I must tell you, however, what was said to me by a person who had passed a considerable time in Florida, and had journeyed, as he told me, in the southern as well as the northern part of the peninsula, "That the climate is mild and agreeable," said he, "I admit, but the annoyance to which you are exposed from insects, counterbalances all the enjoyment of the climate. You are bitten by mosquitoes and gallinippers, driven mad by clouds of sand-flies, and stung by scorpions and centipedes. It is not safe to go to bed in southern Florida without looking between the sheets, to see if there be not a scorpion waiting to be your bed-fellow, nor to put on a garment that has been hanging up in your room, without turning it wrong side out, to see if a scorpion has not found a lodging in it." I have not, however, been incommoded at St. Augustine with these "varmint," as they call them at the south. Only the sand-flies, a small black midge, I have sometimes found a little importunate, when walking out in a very calm evening. Of the salubrity of East Florida I must speak less positively, although it is certain that in St. Augustine emigrants from the north enjoy good health. The owners of the plantations in the neighborhood, prefer to pass the hot season in this city, not caring to trust their constitutions to the experiment of a summer residence in the country. Of course they are settled on the richest soils, and these are the least healthy. The pine barrens are safer; when not interspersed with marshes, the sandy lands that bear the pine are esteemed healthy all over the south. Yet there are plantations on the St. John's where emigrants from the north reside throughout the year. The opinion seems everywhere to prevail, and I believe there is good reason for it, that Florida, notwithstanding its low and level surface, is much more healthy than the low country of South Carolina and Georgia. The other day I went out with a friend to a sugar plantation in the neighborhood of St. Augustine. As we rode into the inclosure we breathed the fragrance of young orange-trees in flower, the glossy leaves of which, green at all seasons, were trembling in the wind. A troop of negro children were at play at a little distance from the cabins, and one of them ran along with us to show us a grove of sour oranges which we were looking for. He pointed us to a copse in the middle of a field, to which we proceeded. The trees, which were of considerable size, were full of flowers, and the golden fruit was thick on the branches, and lay scattered on the ground below. I gathered a few of the oranges, and found them almost as acid as the lemon. We stopped to look at the buildings in which the sugar was manufactured. In one of them was the mill where the cane was crushed with iron rollers, in another stood the huge cauldrons, one after another, in which the juice was boiled down to the proper consistence; in another were barrels of sugar, of syrup--a favorite article of consumption in this city--of molasses, and a kind of spirits resembling Jamaica rum, distilled from the refuse of the molasses. The proprietor was absent, but three negroes, well-clad young men, of a very respectable appearance and intelligent physiognomy, one of whom was a distiller, were occupied about the buildings, and showed them to us. Near by in the open air lay a pile of sugar cane, of the ribbon variety, striped with red and white, which had been plucked up by the roots, and reserved for planting. The negroes of St. Augustine are a good-looking specimen of the race, and have the appearance of being very well treated. You rarely see a negro in ragged clothing, and the colored children, though slaves, are often dressed with great neatness. In the colored people whom I saw in the Catholic church, I remarked a more agreeable, open, and gentle physiognomy than I have been accustomed to see in that class. The Spanish race blends more kindly with the African, than does the English, and produces handsomer men and women. I have been to see the quarries of coquina, or shell-rock, on the island of St. Anastasia, which lies between St. Augustine and the main ocean. We landed on the island, and after a walk of some distance on a sandy road through the thick shrubs, we arrived at some huts built of a frame-work of poles thatched with the radiated leaves of the dwarf palmetto, which had a very picturesque appearance. Here we found a circular hollow in the earth, the place of an old excavation, now shaded with red-cedars, and the palmetto-royal bristling with long pointed leaves, which bent over and embowered it, and at the bottom was a spring within a square curb of stone, where we refreshed ourselves with a draught of cold water. The quarries were at a little distance from this. The rock lies in the ridges, a little below the surface, forming a stratum of no great depth. The blocks are cut out with crowbars thrust into the rock. It is of a delicate cream color, and is composed of mere shells and fragments of shells, apparently cemented by the fresh water percolating through them and depositing calcareous matter brought from the shells above. Whenever there is any mixture of sand with the shells, rock is not formed. Of this material the old fort of St. Mark and the greater part of the city are built. It is said to become harder when exposed to the air and the rain, but to disintegrate when frequently moistened with sea-water. Large blocks were lying on the shore ready to be conveyed to the fort, which is undergoing repairs. It is some consolation to know that this fine old work will undergo as little change in the original plan as is consistent with the modern improvements in fortification. Lieutenant Benham, who has the charge of the repairs, has strong antiquarian tastes, and will preserve as much as possible of its original aspect. It must lose its battlements, however, its fine mural crown. Battlements are now obsolete, except when they are of no use, as on the roofs of churches and Gothic cottages. In another part of the same island, which we visited afterward, is a dwelling-house situated amid orange-groves. Closely planted rows of the sour orange, the native tree of the country, intersect and shelter orchards of the sweet orange, the lemon, and the lime. The trees were all young, having been planted since the great frost of 1835, and many of them still show the ravages of the gale of last October, which stripped them of their leaves. "Come this way," said a friend who accompanied me. He forced a passage through a tall hedge of the sour orange, and we found ourselves in a little fragrant inclosure, in the midst of which was a tomb, formed of the artificial stone of which I have heretofore spoken. It was the resting-place of the former proprietor, who sleeps in this little circle of perpetual verdure. It bore no inscription. Not far from this spot, I was shown the root of an ancient palm-tree, the species that produces the date, which formerly towered over the island, and served as a sea-mark to vessels approaching the shore. Some of the accounts of St. Augustine speak of dates as among its fruits; but I believe that only the male tree of the date-palm has been introduced into the country. On our return to the city, in crossing the Matanzas sound, so named probably from some sanguinary battle with the aborigines on its shores; we passed two Minorcans in a boat, taking home fuel from the island. These people are a mild, harmless race, of civil manners and abstemious habits. Mingled with them are many Greek families, with names that denote their origin, such as Geopoli, Cercopoli, &c., and with a cast of features equally expressive of their descent. The Minorcan language, the dialect of Mahon, _el Mahones_, as they call it, is spoken by more than half of the inhabitants who remained here when the country was ceded to the United States, and all of them, I believe, speak Spanish besides. Their children, however, are growing up in disuse of these languages, and in another generation the last traces of the majestic speech of Castile, will have been effaced from a country which the Spaniards held for more than two hundred years. Some old customs which the Minorcans brought with them from their native country are still kept up. On the evening before Easter Sunday, about eleven o'clock, I heard the sound of a serenade in the streets. Going out, I found a party of young men, with instruments of music, grouped about the window of one of the dwellings, singing a hymn in honor of the Virgin in the Mahonese dialect. They began, as I was told, with tapping on the shutter. An answering knock within had told them that their visit was welcome, and they immediately began the serenade. If no reply had been heard they would have passed on to another dwelling. I give the hymn as it was kindly taken down for me in writing by a native of St. Augustine. I presume this is the first time that it has been put in print, but I fear the copy has several corruptions, occasioned by the unskillfulness of the copyist. The letter _e_, which I have put in italics, represents the guttural French _e_, or perhaps more nearly the sound of _u_ in the word but. The _sh_ of our language is represented by _sc_ followed by an _i_ or an _e_; the _g_ both hard and soft has the same sound as in our language. Disciarem lu dol, Cantarem anb' alagria, Y n'arem a dá Las pascuas a Maria. O Maria! Sant Grabiel, Qui portaba la anbasciada; Des nostre rey del cel Estarau vos preñada. Ya omiliada, Tu o vais aqui serventa, Fia del Deu contenta, Para fe lo que el vol. Disciarem lu dol, &c. Y a milla nit, Pariguero vos regina; A un Deu infinit, Dintra una establina. Y a millo dia, Que los Angles van cantant Pau y abondant De la gloria de Deu sol. Disciarem lu dol, &c. Y a Libalam, Allá la terra santa, Nu nat Jesus, Anb' alagria tanta. Infant petit Que tot lu mon salvaria; Y ningu y bastaria, Nu mes un Deu tot sol. Disciarem lu dol, &c. Cuant d'Orien lus Tres reys la stralla veran, Deu omnipotent, Adorá lo vingaran. Un present inferan, De mil encens y or, A lu beneit Señó, Que conesce cual se vol. Disciarem lu dol, &c. Tot fu gayant Para cumpli lu prumas; Y lu Esperit sant De un angel fan gramas. Gran foc ences, Que crama lu curagia; Deu nos da lenguagia, Para fe lo que Deu vol. Disciarem lu dol, &c. Cuant trespasá De quest mon nostra Señora, Al cel s'empugiá Sun fil la matescia ora. O emperadora, Que del cel sou eligida! Lu rosa florida, Mé resplanden que un sol. Disciarem lu dol, &c. Y el tercer giorn Que Jesus resuntá, Deu y Aboroma, Que la mort triumfá. De alli se ballá Para perldrá Lucife, An tot a seu peudá, Que de nostro ser el sol. Disciarem lu dol, &c[1] After this hymn, the following stanzas, soliciting the customary gift of cakes or eggs, are sung: Ce set sois que vain cantant, Regina celastial! Dunus pan y alagria, Y bonas festas tingau. Yo vos dou sus bonas festas, Danaus dinés de sus nous; Sempre tarem lus mans llestas Para recibí un grapat de ous. Y el giorn de pascua florida Alagramos y giuntament; As qui es mort par darnos vida Ya viú gloriosament. Aquesta casa está empedrada, Bien halla que la empedró; Sun amo de aquesta casa Baldria duná un do. Furmagiada, o empanada, Cucutta o flaó; Cual se vol cosa me grada, Sol que no me digas que no[2]. The shutters are then opened by the people within, and a supply of cheese-cakes, or other pastry, or eggs, is dropped into a bag carried by one of the party, who acknowledge the gift in the following lines, and then depart: Aquesta casa está empedrada, Empedrada de cuatro vens; Sun amo de aquesta casa, _Es_ omo de compliment[3]. If nothing is given, the last line reads thus: No _es_ omo de compliment. Letter XV. A Voyage from St. Augustine to Savannah. Savannah, _April_ 28, 1843. On the morning of the 24th, we took leave of our good friends in St. Augustine, and embarked in the steamer for Savannah. Never were softer or more genial airs breathed out of the heavens than those which played around us as we ploughed the waters of the Matanzas Sound, passing under the dark walls of the old fort, and leaving it behind us, stood for the passage to the main ocean. It is a common saying in St. Augustine, that "Florida is the best poor man's country in the world," and, truly, I believe that those who live on the shores of this sound find it so. Its green waters teem with life, and produce abundance of the finest fish, "------ of shell or fin, And exquisitest name." Clams are dug up on the pure sands along the beach, where the fishermen drag their boats ashore, and wherever the salt water dashes, there is an oyster, if he can find aught upon which to anchor his habitation. Along the edge of the marshes, next to the water, you see a row--a wall I should rather say--of oysters, apparently sprouting one out of another, as high as the tide flows. They are called here, though I do not know why, ratoon oysters. The abundance of fish solves the problem which has puzzled many, how the Minorcan population of St. Augustine live, now that their orange-trees, upon which they formerly depended, are unproductive. In the steamboat were two or three persons who had visited Florida with a view of purchasing land. Now that the Indian war is ended, colonization has revived, and people are thronging into the country to take advantage of the law which assigns a hundred and sixty acres to every actual settler. In another year, the influx of population will probably be still greater, though the confusion and uncertainty which exists in regard to the title of the lands, will somewhat obstruct the settlement of the country. Before the Spanish government ceded it to the United States, they made numerous grants to individuals, intended to cover all the best land of the territory. Many of the lands granted have never been surveyed, and their situation and limits are very uncertain. The settler, therefore, if he is not very careful, may find his farm overlaid by an old Spanish claim. I have said that the war is ended. Although the Seminole chief, Sam Jones, and about seventy of his people remain, the country is in profound peace from one end to the other, and you may traverse the parts most distant from the white settlements without the least danger or molestation from the Indians. "How is it," I asked one day of a gentleman who had long resided in St. Augustine, "that, after what has happened, you can think it safe to let these people remain?" "It is perfectly safe," he answered. "Sam Jones professes, and I believe truly, to have had less to do with the murders which have been committed than the other chiefs, though it is certain that Dr. Perrine, whose death we so much lament, was shot at Indian Key by his men. Besides, he has a quarrel with one of the Seminole chiefs, whose relative he has killed, and if he were to follow them to their new country, he would certainly be put to death. It is his interest, therefore, to propitiate the favor of the whites by the most unexceptionable behavior, for his life depends upon being allowed to remain. "There is yet another reason, which you will understand from what I am about to say. Before the war broke out, the Indians of this country, those very men who suddenly became so bloodthirsty and so formidable, were a quiet and inoffensive race, badly treated for the most part by the whites, and passively submitting to ill treatment without any appearance of feeling or spirit. When they at length resolved upon war, they concealed their families in the islands of the Everglades, whither they supposed the whites would never be able to follow them. Their rule of warfare was this, never to endanger the life of one of their warriors for the sake of gaining the greatest advantage over their enemies; they struck only when they felt themselves in perfect safety. If they saw an opportunity of destroying twenty white men by the sacrifice of a single Indian, the whites were allowed to escape. Acting on this principle, if their retreat had been as inaccessible as they supposed it, they would have kept up the warfare until they had driven the whites out of the territory. "When, however, General Worth introduced a new method of prosecuting the war, following up the Indians with a close and perpetual pursuit, chasing them into their great shallow lake, the Everglades, and to its most secret islands, they saw at once that they were conquered. They saw that further hostilities were hopeless, and returned to their former submissive and quiet demeanor. "It is well, perhaps," added my friend in a kind of postscript, "that a few Indians should remain in Florida. They are the best hunters of runaway slaves in the world, and may save us from a Maroon war." The Indian name of the Everglades, I am told, signifies Grass-water, a term which well expresses its appearance. It is a vast lake, broader by thousands of acres in a wet than in a dry season, and so shallow that the grass everywhere grows from the bottom and overtops its surface The bottom is of hard sand, so firm that it can be forded almost everywhere on horseback, and here and there are deep channels which the traveller crosses by swimming his horse. General Worth's success in quelling the insurrection of the Seminoles, has made him very popular in Florida, where the energy and sagacity with which the closing campaign of the war was conducted are spoken of in the highest terms. He has lately fixed his head-quarters at St Augustine. In the afternoon, our steamer put in between two sandy points of land and we arrived at St Mary's, formerly a buccaneer settlement, but now so zealous for good order that our captain told us the inhabitants objected to his taking in wood for his steamboat on Sunday. The place is full of groves of the orange and lime--young trees which have grown up since 1835, and which, not having suffered, like those of St. Augustine, by the gale, I found beautifully luxuriant. In this place, it was my fate to experience the plague of sand-flies. Clouds of them came into the steamboat alighting on our faces and hands and stinging wherever they alighted. The little creatures got into our hair and into our eyes, and crawled up our sleeves and down our necks, giving us no rest, until late in the night the vessel left the wharf and stood out into the river, where the current of air swept most of our tormentors away. The next morning, as we were threading the narrow channels by which the inland passage is made from St. Mary's to Savannah, we saw, from time to time, alligators basking on the banks. Some of our fellow-passengers took rifles and shot at them as we went by. The smaller ones were often killed, the larger generally took the rifle-balls upon their impenetrable backs, and walked, apparently unhurt, into the water. One of these monstrous creatures I saw receive his death-wound, having been fired at twice, the balls probably entering at the eyes. In his agony he dashed swiftly through the water for a little distance, and turning rushed with equal rapidity in the opposite direction, the strokes of his strong arms throwing half his length above the surface. The next moment he had turned over and lay lifeless, with his great claws upward. A sallow-complexioned man from Burke county, in Georgia, who spoke a kind of negro dialect, was one of the most active in this sport, and often said to the bystanders. "I hit the 'gator that time, I did." We passed where two of these huge reptiles were lying on the bank among the rank sedges, one of them with his head towards us. A rifle-ball from the steamer, struck the ground just before his face, and he immediately made for the water, dragging, with his awkward legs, a huge body of about fifteen feet in length. A shower of balls fell about him as he reached the river, but he paddled along with as little apparent concern as the steamboat we were in. The tail of the alligator is said to be no bad eating, and the negroes are fond of it. I have heard, however, that the wife of a South Carolina cracker once declared her dislike of it in the following terms: "Coon and collards is pretty good fixins, but 'gator and turnips I can't go, no how." Collards, you will understand, are a kind of cabbage. In this country, you will often hear of long collards, a favorite dish of the planter. Among the marksmen who were engaged in shooting alligators, were two or three expert chewers of the Indian weed--frank and careless spitters--who had never been disciplined by the fear of woman into any hypocritical concealment of their talent, or unmanly reserve in its exhibition. I perceived, from a remark which one of them let fall, that somehow they connected this accomplishment with high breeding. He was speaking of four negroes who were hanged in Georgia on a charge of murdering their owner. "One of them," said he, "was innocent. They made no confession, but held up their heads, chawed their tobacco, and spit about like any gentlemen." You have here the last of my letters from the south. Savannah, which I left wearing almost a wintry aspect, is now in the full verdure of summer. The locust-trees are in blossom; the water-oaks, which were shedding their winter foliage, are now thick with young and glossy leaves; the Pride of India is ready to burst into flower, and the gardens are full of roses in bloom. Letter XVI. An Excursion to Vermont and New Hampshire. Addison County, Vermont, _July_ 10, 1843. I do not recollect that I ever heard the canal connecting the Hudson with Lake Champlain praised for its beauty, yet it is actually beautiful--that part of it at least which lies between Dunham's Basin and the lake, a distance of twenty-one miles, for of the rest I can not speak. To form the canal, two or three streams have been diverted a little from their original course, and led along a certain level in the valley through which they flowed to pour themselves into Champlain. In order to keep this level, a perpetually winding course has been taken, never, even for a few rods, approaching a straight line. On one side is the path beaten by the feet of the horses who drag the boats, but the other is an irregular bank, covered sometimes with grass and sometimes with shrubs or trees, and sometimes steep with rocks. I was delighted, on my journey to this place, to exchange a seat in a stage-coach, driven over the sandy and dusty road north of Saratoga by a sulky and careless driver, for a station on the top of the canal-packet. The weather was the finest imaginable; the air that blew over the fields was sweet with the odor of clover blossoms, and of shrubs in flower. A canal, they say, is but a ditch; but this was as unlike a ditch as possible; it was rather a gentle stream, winding in the most apparently natural meanders. Goldsmith could find no more picturesque epithet for the canals of Holland, than "slow;" "The slow canal, the yellow blossomed vale--" but if the canals of that country had been like this, I am sure he would have known how to say something better for them. On the left bank, grassed over to the water's edge, I saw ripe strawberries peeping out among the clover, and shortly afterward a young man belonging to the packet leaped on board from the other side with a large basket of very fine strawberries. "I gathered them," said he "down in the swamp; the swamp is full of them." We had them afterward with our tea. Proceeding still further, the scenery became more bold. Steep hills rose by the side of the canal, with farm-houses scattered at their feet; we passed close to perpendicular precipices, and rocky shelves sprouting with shrubs, and under impending woods. At length, a steep broad mountain rose before us, its sides shaded with scattered trees and streaked with long horizontal lines of rock, and at its foot a cluster of white houses. This was Whitehall; and here the waters of the canal plunge noisily through a rocky gorge into the deep basin which holds the long and narrow Lake Champlain. There was a young man on board who spoke English imperfectly, and whose accent I could not with certainty refer to any country or language with which I was acquainted. As we landed, he leaped on shore, and was surrounded at once by half a dozen persons chattering Canadian French. The French population of Canada has scattered itself along the shores of Lake Champlain for a third of the distance between the northern boundary of this state and the city of New York, and since the late troubles in Canada, more numerously than ever. In the hotel where I passed the night, most of the servants seemed to be emigrants from Canada. Speaking of foreigners reminds me of an incident which occurred on the road between Saratoga Springs and Dunham's Basin. As the public coach stopped at a place called Emerson, our attention was attracted by a wagon-load of persons who had stopped at the inn, and were just resuming their journey. The father was a robust, healthy-looking man of some forty years of age; the mother a buxom dame; the children, some six or seven, of various ages, with flaxen hair, light-blue eyes, and broad ruddy cheeks. "They are Irish," said one of my fellow-passengers. I maintained on the contrary that they were Americans. "Git ap," said the man to his horses, pronouncing the last word very long. "Git ap; go 'lang." My antagonist in the dispute immediately acknowledged that I was right, for "git ap," and "go 'lang" could never have been uttered with such purity of accent by an Irishman. We learned on inquiry that they were emigrants from the neighborhood, proceeding to the Western Canal, to take passage for Michigan, where the residence of a year or two will probably take somewhat from the florid ruddiness of their complexions. I looked down into the basin which contains the waters of the Champlain, lying considerably below the level on which Whitehall is built, and could not help thinking that it was scooped to contain a wider and deeper collection of waters. Craggy mountains, standing one behind the other, surround it on all sides, from whose feet it seems as if the water had retired; and here and there, are marshy recesses between the hills, which might once have been the bays of the lake. The Burlington, one of the model steamboats for the whole world, which navigates the Champlain, was lying moored below. My journey, however, was to be by land. At seven o'clock in the morning we set out from Whitehall, in a strong wagon, to cross the mountainous country lying east of the lake. "Git ap," said our good-natured driver to his cattle, and we climbed and descended one rugged hill after another, passing by cottages which we were told were inhabited by Canadian French. We had a passenger from Essex county, on the west side of the lake, a lady who, in her enthusiastic love of a mountainous country, seemed to wish that the hills were higher; and another from the prairies of the western states, who, accustomed for many years to the easy and noiseless gliding of carriages over the smooth summer roads of that region, could hardly restrain herself from exclaiming at every step against the ruggedness of the country, and the roughness of the ways. A third passenger was an emigrant from Vermont to Chatauque county, in the state of New York, who was now returning on a visit to his native county, the hills of Vermont, and who entertained us by singing some stanzas of what he called the Michigan song, much in vogue, as he said, in these parts before he emigrated, eight years ago. Here is a sample: "They talk about Vermont, They say no state's like that: 'Tis true the girls are handsome, The cattle too are fat. But who amongst its mountains Of cold and ice would stay, When he can buy paraira In Michigan-_i-a_?" By "paraira" you must understand prairie. "It is a most splendid song," continued the singer. "It touches off one state after another. Connecticut, for example:" "Connecticut has blue laws, And when the beer, on Sunday, Gets working in the barrel, They flog it well on Monday." At Benson, in Vermont, we emerged upon a smoother country, a country of rich pastures, fields heavy with grass almost ready for the scythe, and thick-leaved groves of the sugar-maple and the birch. Benson is a small, but rather neat little village, with three white churches, all of which appear to be newly built. The surrounding country is chiefly fitted for the grazing of flocks, whose fleeces, however, just at present, hardly pay for the shearing. Letter XVII. An Excursion to Vermont and New Hampshire. Keene, New Hampshire, _July_ 13, 1843. I resume my journey where I stopped short in my last, namely, on reaching Benson, in Vermont, among the highlands west of Lake Champlain. We went on through a pastoral country of the freshest verdure, where we saw large flocks of sheep grazing. From time to time we had glimpses of the summits of a long blue ridge of mountains to the east of us, and now and then the more varied and airy peaks of the mountains which lie to the west of the lake. They told me that of late years this part of the country had suffered much from the grasshoppers, and that last summer, in particular, these insects had made their appearance in immense armies, devouring the plants of the ground and leaving it bare of herbage. "They passed across the country," said one person to me, "like hail storms, ravaging it in broad stripes, with intervals between in which they were less numerous." At present, however, whether it was the long and severe winter which did not fairly end till the close of April, or whether it was the uncommonly showery weather of the season hitherto, that destroyed these insects, in some early stage of their existence, I was told that there is now scarce a grasshopper in all these meadows and pastures. Everywhere the herbage was uncommonly luxuriant, and everywhere I saw the turf thickly sprinkled with the blossoms of the white clover, on the hill, in the valley, among rocks, by streams, by the road-side, and whenever the thinner shade of the woods allowed the plants of the field to take root. We might say of the white clover, with even more truth than Montgomery says of the daisy:-- "But this bold floweret climbs the hill, Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, Plays on the margin of the rill, Peeps o'er the fox's den." All with whom I spoke had taken notice of the uncommon abundance of the white clover this year, and the idea seemed to prevail that it has its regular periods of appearing and disappearing,--remaining in the fields until it has taken up its nutriment in the soil, and then giving place to other plants, until they likewise had exhausted the qualities of the soil by which they were nourished. However this may be, its appearance this season in such profusion, throughout every part of the country which I have seen, is very remarkable. All over the highlands of Vermont and New Hampshire, in their valleys, in the gorges of their mountains, on the sandy banks of the Connecticut, the atmosphere for many a league is perfumed with the odor of its blossoms. I passed a few days in the valley of one of those streams of northern Yermont, which find their way into Champlain. If I were permitted to draw aside the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me most interesting history of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years, during which they have shared each other's occupations and pleasures and works of charity while in health, and watched over each other tenderly in sicknesss; for sickness has made long and frequent visits to their dwelling. I could tell you how they slept on the same pillow and had a common purse, and adopted each other's relations, and how one of them, more enterprising and spirited in her temper than the other, might be said to represent the male head of the family, and took upon herself their transactions with the world without, until at length her health failed, and she was tended by her gentle companion, as a fond wife attends her invalid husband. I would tell you of their dwelling, encircled with roses, which now in the days of their broken health, bloom wild without their tendance, and I would speak of the friendly attentions which their neighbors, people of kind hearts and simple manners, seem to take pleasure in bestowing upon them, but I have already said more than I fear they will forgive me for, if this should ever meet their eyes, and I must leave the subject. One day I had taken a walk with a farmer of the place, over his extensive and luxuriant pastures, and was returning by the road, when a well-made young fellow in a cap, with thick curly hair, carrying his coat on his arm, wearing a red sash round his waist, and walking at a brisk pace, overtook us. "Etes-vous Canadien?"--are you a Canadian? said my companion. "Un peu"--a little--was the dry answer. "Where are you going?" asked the farmer again, in English. "To Middlebury," replied he, and immediately climbed a fence and struck across a field to save an angle in the road, as if perfectly familiar with the country "These Canadian French," said the farmer, "come swarming upon us in the summer, when we are about to begin the hay-harvest, and of late years they are more numerous than formerly. Every farmer here has his French laborer at this season, and some two or three. They are hardy, and capable of long and severe labor; but many of them do not understand a word of our language, and they are not so much to be relied upon as our own countrymen; they, therefore, receive lower wages." "What do you pay them?" "Eight dollars a month, is the common rate. When they leave your service, they make up their packs, and bring them for your inspection, that you may see that they have taken nothing which does not belong to them. I have heard of thefts committed by some of them, for I do not suppose that the best of the Canadians leave their homes for work, but I have always declined to examine their baggage when they quit my house." A shower drove us to take shelter in a farm-house by the road. The family spoke with great sympathy of John, a young French Canadian, "a gentlemanly young fellow," they called him, who had been much in their family, and who had just come from the north, looking quite ill. He had been in their service every summer since he was a boy. At the approach of the warm weather, he annually made his appearance in rags, and in autumn he was dismissed, a sprucely-dressed lad, for his home. On Sunday, as I went to church, I saw companies of these young Frenchmen, in the shade of barns or passing along the road; fellows of small but active persons, with thick locks and a lively physiognomy. The French have become so numerous in that region, that for them and the Irish, a Roman Catholic church has been erected in Middlebury, which, you know, is not a very large village. On Monday morning, we took the stage-coach at Middlebury for this place. An old Quaker, in a broad-brimmed hat and a coat of the ancient cut, shaped somewhat like the upper shell of the tortoise, came to hand in his granddaughter, a middle-aged woman, whom he had that morning accompanied from Lincoln, a place about eighteen miles distant, where there is a Quaker neighborhood and a Quaker meeting-house. The denomination of Quakers seems to be dying out in the United States, like the Indian race; not that the families become extinct, but pass into other denominations. It is very common to meet with neighborhoods formerly inhabited by Quakers, in which there is not a trace of them left. Not far from Middlebury, is a village on a fine stream, called Quaker Village, with not a Quaker in it. Everywhere they are laying aside their peculiarities of costume, and in many instances, also, their peculiarities of speech, which are barbarous enough as they actually exist, though, if they would but speak with grammatical propriety, their forms of discourse are as commodious as venerable, and I would be content to see them generally adopted. I hope they will be slow to lay aside their better characteristics: their abhorrence of violence, and the peaceful and wholesome subjection in which, of all religious denominations, they seem to have best succeeded in holding the passions. In such remote and secluded neighborhoods as Lincoln, their sect will probably make the longest stand against the encroachments of the world. I perceived, however, that the old gentleman's son, who was with him, and, as I learned, was also a Quaker, had nothing peculiar in his garb. Before sunset we were in sight of those magnificent mountain summits, the Pico, Killington Peak, and Shrewsbury Peak, rising in a deep ultra-marine blue among the clouds that rolled about them, for the day was showery. We were set down at Rutland, where we passed the night, and the next morning crossed the mountains by the passes of Clarendon and Shrewsbury. The clouds were clinging to the summits, and we travelled under a curtain of mist, upheld on each side by mountain-walls. A young woman of uncommon beauty, whose forefinger on the right hand was dotted all over with punctures of the needle, and who was probably a mantua-maker, took a seat in the coach for a short distance. We made some inquiries about the country, but received very brief, though good-natured answers, for the young lady was a confirmed stammerer. I thought of an epigram I had somewhere read, in which the poet complimented a lady who had this defect, by saying that the words which she wished to utter were reluctant to leave so beautiful a mouth, and lingered long about the pearly teeth and rosy lips. We passed through a tract covered with loose stones, and the Quaker's granddaughter, who proved to be a chatty person, told us a story which you may possibly have heard before. "Where did you get all the stones with which you have made these substantial fences?" said a visitor to his host, on whose grounds there appeared no lack of such materials. "Look about you in the fields, and you will see," was the answer. "I have looked," rejoined the questioner, "and do not perceive where a single stone is missing, and that is what has puzzled me." Soon after reaching the highest elevation on the road, we entered the state of New Hampshire. Our way led us into a long valley formed by a stream, sometimes contracted between rough woody mountains, and sometimes spreading out, for a short distance, into pleasant meadows; and we followed its gradual descent until we reached the borders of the Connecticut. We crossed this beautiful river at Bellows Falls, where a neat and thriving village has its seat among craggy mountains, which, at a little distance, seem to impend over it. Here the Connecticut struggles and foams through a narrow passage of black rocks, spanned by a bridge. I believe this is the place spoken of in Peters's History of Connecticut, where he relates that the water of the river is so compressed in its passage between rocks, that an iron bar can not be driven into it. A few miles below we entered the village of Walpole, pleasantly situated on the knolls to the east of the meadows which border the river. Walpole was once a place of some literary note, as the residence of Dennie, who, forty years since, or more, before he became the editor of the Port Folio, here published the Farmer's Museum, a weekly sheet, the literary department of which was amply and entertainingly filled. Keene, which ended our journey in the stage-coach, is a flourishing village on the rich meadows of the Ashuelot, with hills at a moderate distance swelling upward on all sides. It is a village after the New England pattern, and a beautiful specimen of its kind--broad streets planted with rock-maples and elms, neat white houses, white palings, and shrubs in the front inclosures. During this visit to New Hampshire, I found myself in a hilly and rocky region, to the east of this place, and in sight of the summit of Monadnock, which, at no great distance from where I was, begins to upheave its huge dark mass above the surrounding country. I arrived, late in the evening, at a dwelling, the door of which was opened to me by two damsels, all health and smiles. In the morning I saw a third sister of the same florid bloom and healthful proportions. They were none of those slight, frail figures, copies of the monthly plates of fashion, with waists of artificial slenderness, which almost force you to wonder how the different parts of the body are kept together--no pallid faces, nor narrow chests, nor lean hands, but forms which might have satisfied an ancient statuary, with a well-formed bust, faces glowing with health, rounded arms, and plump fingers. They are such women, in short, as our mothers, fifty years ago, might have been. I had not observed any particular appearance of health in the females of the country through which I had passed; on the contrary, I had been disappointed in their general pallidness and look of debility. I inquired of my host if there was any cause to which this difference could be traced. "I have no doubt of the cause," replied he. "These girls are healthy, because I have avoided three great errors. They have neither been brought up on unwholesome diet, nor subjected to unwholesome modes of dress, nor kept from daily exercise in the open air. They have never drunk tea or coffee, nor lived upon any other than plain and simple food. Their dress--you know that even the pressure of the easiest costume impedes the play of the lungs somewhat--their dress has never been so tight as to hinder free respiration and the proper expansion of the chest. Finally, they have taken exercise every day in the open air, assisting me in tending my fruit trees and in those other rural occupations in which their sex may best take part. Their parents have never enjoyed very good health; nor were the children particularly robust in their infancy, yet by a rational physical education, they have been made such as you see them." I took much pleasure in wandering through the woods in this region, where the stems of the primeval forest still stand--straight trunks of the beech, the maple, the ash, and the linden, towering to a vast height. The hollows are traversed by clear, rapid brooks. The mowing fields at that time were full of strawberries of large size and admirable flavor, which you could scarce avoid crushing by dozens as you walked. I would gladly have lingered, during a few more of these glorious summer days, in this wild country, but my engagements did not permit it, and here I am, about to take the stage-coach for Worcester and the Western Railroad. Letter XVIII. Liverpool.--Manchester. Manchester, England, _May_ 30, 1845. I suppose a smoother passage was never made across the Atlantic, than ours in the good ship Liverpool. For two-thirds of the way, we slid along over a placid sea, before the gentlest zephyrs that ever swept the ocean, and when at length the winds became contrary, they only impeded our progress, without making it unpleasant. The Liverpool is one of the strongest, safest, and steadiest of the packet-ships; her commander prudent, skillful, always on the watch, and as it almost seemed to me, in every part of the vessel at once; the passengers were good-tempered and quiet, like the sea on which we were sailing; and with all these advantages in our favor, I was not disposed to repine that we were a week longer in crossing the Atlantic, than some vessels which left New York nearly the same time. It was matter of rejoicing to all of us, however, when we saw the Irish coast like a faint cloud upon the horizon, and still more were we delighted, when after beating about for several days in what is called the Chops of the Channel, we beheld the mountains of Wales. I could hardly believe that what I saw were actually mountain summits, so dimly were their outlines defined in the vapory atmosphere of this region, the nearer and lower steeps only being fully visible, and the higher and remoter ones half lost in the haze. It seemed to me as if I were looking at the reflection of mountains in a dull mirror, and I was ready to take out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe the dust and smoke from its surface. About thirty miles from Liverpool we took on board a pilot, whose fair complexion, unbronzed by the sun, was remarked by the ladies, and soon after a steamer arrived and took us in tow. At twelve o'clock in the night, the Liverpool by the aid of the high tide cleared the sand-bar at the mouth of the port, and was dragged into the dock, and the next morning when I awoke, I found myself in Liverpool in the midst of fog and rain. "Liverpool," said one of its inhabitants to me, "is more like an American than an English city; it is new, bustling, and prosperous." I saw some evidences of this after I had got my baggage through the custom-house, which was attended with considerable delay, the officers prying very closely into the contents of certain packages which I was taking for friends of mine to their friends in England, cutting the packthread, breaking the seals, and tearing the wrappers without mercy. I saw the streets crowded with huge drays, carrying merchandise to and fro, and admired the solid construction of the docks, in which lay thousands of vessels from all parts of the globe. The walls of these docks are built of large blocks of red sandstone, with broad gateways opening to the river Mersey, and when the tide is at its height, which I believe is about thirty feet from low water, the gates are open, and vessels allowed to enter and depart. When the tide begins to retire, the gates are closed, and the water and the vessels locked in together. Along the river for miles, the banks are flanked with this massive masonry, which in some places I should judge to be nearly forty feet in height. Meantime the town is spreading into the interior; new streets are opened; in one field you may see the brickmakers occupied in their calling, and in the opposite one the bricklayers building rows of houses. New churches and new public buildings of various kinds are going up in these neighborhoods. The streets which contain the shops have for the most part a gay and showy appearance; the buildings are generally of stucco, and show more of architectural decoration than in our cities. The greater part of the houses, however, are built of brick which has a rough surface, and soon acquires in this climate a dark color, giving a gloomy aspect to the streets. The public buildings, which are rather numerous, are of a drab-colored freestone, and those which have been built for forty or fifty years, the Town Hall, for example, and some of the churches, appear almost of a sooty hue. I went through the rooms of the Town Hall and was shown the statue of Canning, by Chantry, an impressive work as it seemed to me. One of the rooms contains a portrait of him by Lawrence, looking very much like a feeble old gentleman whom I remember as not long since an appraiser in the New York custom-house. We were shown a lofty saloon in which the Common Council of Liverpool enjoy their dinners, and very good dinners the woman who showed us the rooms assured us they were. But the spirit of corporation reform has broken in upon the old order of things, and those good dinners which a year or two since were eaten weekly, are now eaten but once a fortnight, and money is saved. I strolled to the Zoological Gardens, a very pretty little place, where a few acres of uneven surface have been ornamented with plantations of flowering shrubs, many of which are now in full bloom, artificial ponds of water, rocks, and bridges, and picturesque buildings for the animals. Winding roads are made through the green turf, which is now sprinkled with daisies. It seems to be a favorite place of resort for the people of the town. They were amused by the tricks of an elephant, the performances of a band of music, which among other airs sang and played "Jim along Josey," and the feats of a young fellow who gave an illustration of the centrifugal force by descending a _Montagne Russe_ in a little car, which by the help of a spiral curve in the railway, was made to turn a somerset in the middle of its passage, and brought him out at the end with his cap off, and his hair on end. One of the most remarkable places in Liverpool, is St. James's Cemetery. In the midst of the populous and bustling city, is a chasm among the black rocks, with a narrow green level at the bottom. It is overlooked by a little chapel. You enter it by an arched passage cut through the living rock, which brings you by a steep descent to the narrow level of which I have spoken, where you find yourself among graves set with flowers and half concealed by shrubbery, while along the rocky sides of the hollow in which you stand, you see tombs or blank arches for tombs which are yet to be excavated. We found the thickets within and around this valley of the dead, musical with innumerable birds, which build here undisturbed. Among the monuments is one erected to Huskisson, a mausoleum with a glass door through which you see his statue from the chisel of Gibson. On returning by the passage through the rock, we found preparations making for a funeral service in the chapel, which we entered. Four men came staggering in under the weight of a huge coffin, accompanied by a clergyman of imposing stature, white hair, and florid complexion. Four other coffins were soon after brought in and placed in the church, attended by another clergyman of less pre-possessing appearance, who, to my disappointment, read the service. He did it in the most detestable manner, with much grimace, and with the addition of a supernumerary syllable after almost every word ending with a consonant. The clerk delivered the responses in such a mumbling tone, and with so much of the Lancashire dialect, as to be almost unintelligible. The other clergyman looked, I thought, as if, like myself, he was sorry to hear the beautiful funeral service of his church so profaned. In a drive which we took into the country, we had occasion to admire the much talked of verdure and ornamental cultivation of England. Green hedges, rich fields of grass sprinkled with flowers, beautiful residences, were on every side, and the wheels of our carriage rolled over the smoothest roads in the world. The lawns before the houses are kept smoothly shaven, and carefully leveled by the roller. At one of these English houses, to which I was admitted by the hospitality of its opulent owner, I admired the variety of shrubs in full flower, which here grow in the open air, rhododendrons of various species, flushed with bloom, azaleas of different hues, one of which I recognized as American, and others of various families and names. In a neighboring field stood a plot of rye-grass two feet in height, notwithstanding the season was yet so early; and a part of it had been already mown for the food of cattle. Yet the people here complain of their climate. "You must get thick shoes and wrap yourself in flannel," said one of them to me. "The English climate makes us subject to frequent and severe colds, and here in Lancashire you have the worst climate of England, perpetually damp, with strong and chilly winds." It is true that I have found the climate miserably chilly since I landed, but I am told the season is a late one. The apple-trees are just in bloom, though there are but few of them to be seen, and the blossoms of the hawthorn are only just beginning to open. The foliage of some of the trees, rich as it is, bears the appearance in some places of having felt the late frosts, and certain kinds of trees are not yet in leaf. Among the ornaments of Liverpool is the new park called Prince's Park, which a wealthy individual, Mr. Robert Yates, has purchased and laid out with a view of making it a place for private residences. It has a pretty little lake, plantations of trees and shrubs which have just began to strike root, pleasant nooks and hollows, eminences which command extensive views, and the whole is traversed with roads which are never allowed to proceed from place to place in a straight line. The trees are too newly planted to allow me to call the place beautiful, but within a few years it will be eminently so. I have followed the usual practice of travellers in visiting the ancient town of Chester, one of the old walled towns of England, distant about fifteen miles from Liverpool--rambled through the long galleries open to the street, above the ground-story of the houses, entered its crumbling old churches of red freestone, one of which is the church of St. John, of Norman architecture, with round arches and low massive pillars, and looked at the grotesque old carvings representing events in Scripture history which ornament some of the houses in Watergate-street. The walls are said to have been erected as early as the time of William the Conqueror, and here and there are towers rising above them. They are still kept in repair and afford a walk from which you enjoy a prospect of the surrounding country; but no ancient monument is allowed to stand in the way of modern improvements as they are called, and I found workmen at one corner tumbling down the stones and digging up the foundation to let in a railway. The river Dee winds pleasantly at the foot of the city walls. I was amused by an instance of the English fondness for hedges which I saw here. In a large green field a hawthorn hedge was planted, all along the city wall, as if merely for the purpose of hiding the hewn stone with a screen of verdure. Yesterday we took the railway for Manchester. The arrangements for railway travelling in this country are much more perfect than with us. The cars of the first class are fitted up in the most sumptuous manner, cushioned at the back and sides, with a resting-place for your elbows, so that you sit in what is equivalent to the most luxurious armchair. Some of the cars intended for night travelling are so contrived that the seat can be turned into a kind of bed. The arrangement of springs and other contrivances to prevent shocks, and to secure an equable motion, are admirable and perfectly effectual. In one hour we had passed over the thirty-one miles which separate Manchester from Liverpool; shooting rapidly over Chat Moss, a black blot in the green landscape, overgrown with heath, which, at this season of the year, has an almost sooty hue, crossing bridge after bridge of the most solid and elegant construction, and finally entered Manchester by a viaduct, built on massive arches, at a level with the roofs of the houses and churches. Huge chimneys surrounded us on every side, towering above the house-tops and the viaduct, and vomiting smoke like a hundred volcanoes. We descended and entered Market-street, broad and well-built, and in one of the narrowest streets leading into it, we were taken to our comfortable hotel. At Manchester we walked through the different rooms of a large calico-printing establishment. In one were strong-bodied men standing over huge caldrons ranged along a furnace, preparing and stirring up the colors; in another were the red-hot cylinders that singe the down from the cloth before it is stamped; in another the machines that stamp the colors and the heated rollers that dry the fabric after it is stamped. One of the machines which we were shown applies three different colors by a single operation. In another part of the establishment was the apparatus for steaming the calicoes to fasten the colors; huge hollow iron wheels into which and out of which the water was continually running and revolving in another part to wash the superfluous dye from the stamped cloths; the operation of drying and pressing them came next and in a large room, a group of young women, noisy, drab-like, and dirty, were engaged in measuring and folding them. This morning we take the coach for the Peak of Derbyshire. Letter XIX. Edale in Derbyshire. Derby, England, _June_ 3, 1845. I have passed a few pleasant days in Derbyshire, the chronicle of which I will give you. On the morning of the 30th of May, we took places at Manchester in the stage-coach for Chapel-en-le-Frith. We waited for some time before the door of the Three Angels in Market-street, the finest street in Manchester, broad and well-built, while the porters were busy in fastening to the vehicle the huge loads of luggage with which the English commonly travel. As I looked on the passers by, I was again struck with what I had observed almost immediately on entering the town--the portly figures and florid complexions of some, and the very diminutive stature and sallow countenances of others. Among the crowds about the coach, was a ruddy round-faced man in a box-coat and a huge woollen cravat, walking about and occasionally giving a look at the porters, whom we took to be the coachman, so well did his appearance agree with the description usually given of that class. We were not mistaken, for in a short time we saw him buttoning his coat, and deliberately disentangling the lash from the handle of a long coach whip. We took our seats with him on the outside of the coach, and were rolled along smoothly through a level country of farms and hedge-rows, and fields yellow with buttercups, until at the distance of seven miles we reached Stockport, another populous manufacturing town lying in the smoke of its tall chimneys. At nearly the same distance beyond Stockport, the country began to swell into hills, divided by brooks and valleys, and the hedge-rows gave place to stone fences, which seamed the green region, bare of trees in every direction, separating it into innumerable little inclosures. A few miles further, brought us into that part of Derbyshire which is called the Peak, where the hills become mountains. Among our fellow-passengers, was a powerfully made man, who had the appearance of being a commercial traveller, and was very communicative on the subject of the Peak, its caverns, its mines, and the old ruined castle of the Peverils, built, it is said, by one of the Norman invaders of England. He spoke in the Derbyshire dialect, with a strong provincial accent. When he was asked whether the castle was not the one spoken of by Scott, in his Peveril of the Peak, he replied, "Scott? Scott? I dunna know him." Chapel-en-le-Frith is a manufacturing village at the bottom of a narrow valley, clean-looking, but closely built upon narrow lanes; the houses are of stone, and have the same color as the highway. We were set down, with our Derbyshire friend, at the Prince's Arms, kept by John Clark, a jolly-looking man in knee-breeches, who claimed our fellow passenger as an old acquaintance. "I were at school with him," said he; "we are both Peakerels." John Clark, however, was the more learned man of the two, he knew something of Walter Scott; in the days when he was a coachman, he had driven the coach that brought him to the Peak, and knew that the ruined castle in the neighborhood was once the abode of Scott's Peveril of the Peak. We procured here an odd vehicle called a car, with seats on the sides where the passengers sit facing each other, as in an omnibus, to take us to Edale, one of the valleys of Derbyshire. Our new acquaintance, who was about to proceed on foot to one of the neighboring villages, was persuaded to take a seat with us as far as his road was the same with ours. We climbed out of the valley up the bare green hills, and here our driver, who was from Cheshire, and whose mode of speaking English made him unintelligible to us, pointed to a house on a distant road, and made an attempt to communicate something which he appeared to think interesting. Our Derbyshire friend translated him. "The water," said he, "that fall on one side of the roof of that 'ouse go into the 'Umber, and the water that fall on the other side go into the Mersey. Last winter that 'ouse were covered owre wi' snow, and they made a _h_archway to go in and out. We 'ad a _h_eighteen month's storm last winter." By an "eighteen month's storm" we learned, on inquiry, that he meant eighteen weeks of continued cold weather, the last winter having been remarkable for its severity. Our kind interpreter now left us, and took his way across the fields, down a path which led through a chasm between high tower-like rocks, called the Winnets, which etymoloists say is a corruption of Windgates, a name given to this mountain-pass from the currents of air which are always blowing through it. Turning out of the main road, we began to ascend a steep green declivity. To the right of us rose a peaked summit, the name of which our driver told us was Mam Tor. We left the vehicle and climbed to its top, where a wide and beautiful prospect was out-spread before us. To the north lay Edale, a deep and almost circular valley, surrounded by a wavy outline of pastoral hills, bare of trees, but clothed in living green to their summits, except on the northern side of the valley, where, half-way down, they were black with a thick growth of heath. At the bottom of the valley winded a little stream, with a fringe of trees, some of which on account of the lateness of the season were not yet in leaf, and near this stream were scattered, for the most part, the habitations. In another direction lay the valley of Hopedale, with its two villages, Hope and Castleton, its ancient castle of the Peverils seated on a rock over the entrance of the Peak Cavern, and its lead mines worked ever since the time of the Saxons, the Odin mines as they are called, the white cinders of which lay in heaps at their entrance. We left the driver to take our baggage to its destination, and pursued our way across the fields. Descending a little distance from the summit, we came upon what appeared to be an ancient trench, thickly overgrown with grass, which seemed to encircle the upper part of the hill. It was a Roman circumvallation. The grass was gemmed with wild pansies, yellow, "freaked with jet," and fragrant, some of which we gathered for a memorial of the spot. In descending to the valley, we came upon a little rivulet among hazels and hollies and young oaks, as wild and merry as a mountain brook of our own country. Cowslips and wild hyacinths were in flower upon its banks, and blue violets as scentless as our own. We followed it until it fell into the larger stream, when we crossed a bridge and arrived at a white house, among trees just putting out their leaves with plots of flowers in the lawn before it. Here we received a cordial welcome from a hospitable and warmhearted Scotchman. After dinner our host took us up the side of the mountain which forms the northern barrier of Edale. We walked through a wretched little village, consisting of low cottages built of stone, one or two of which were alehouses; passed the parsonage, pleasantly situated on the edge of a little brook, and then the parson himself, a young man just from Cambridge, who was occupied in sketching one of the picturesque points in the scenery about his new habitation. A few minutes active climbing brought us among the heath, formming a thick elastic carpet under our feet, on which we were glad to seat ourselves for a moment's rest. We heard the cuckoo upon every side, and when we rose to pursue our walk we frequently startled the moor-fowl, singly or in flocks. The time allowed by the game laws for shooting them had not yet arrived, but in the mean time they had been unmercifully hunted by the hawks, for we often found the remains of such as had been slain by these winged sportsmen, lying in our path as we ascended. We found on the top of the hill, a level of several rods in width, covered to a considerable depth with peat, the produce of the decayed roots of the heath, which has sprung and perished for centuries. It was now soft with the abundant rains which had fallen, and seamed with deep muddy cracks, over which we made our way with difficulty. At length we came to a spot from which we could look down into another valley. "That," said our host, "is the Woodlands." We looked and saw a green hollow among the hills like Edale, but still more bare of trees, though like Edale it had its little stream at the bottom. The next day we crossed the Mam Tor a second time, on a visit to the Derbyshire mines. On our way, I heard the lark for the first time. The little bird, so frequently named in English poetry, rose singing from the grass almost perpendicularly, until nearly lost to the sight in the clouds, floated away, first in one direction, then in another, descended towards the earth, arose again, pouring forth a perpetual, uninterrupted stream of melody, until at length, after the space of somewhat more than a quarter of an hour, he reached the ground, and closed his flight and his song together. The caverns which contain the Derbyshire spars of various kinds, have been the frequent theme of tourists, and it is hardly worth while to describe them for the thousandth time. Imagine a fissure in the limestone rock, descending obliquely five hundred feet into the bowels of the earth, with a floor of fallen fragments of rock and sand; jagged walls, which seem as if they would fit closely into each other if they could be brought together, sheeted, in many places, with a glittering, calcareous deposit, and gradually approaching each other overhead--imagine this, and you will have an idea of the Blue John mine, into which we descended. The fluor-spar taken from this mine is of a rich blue color, and is wrought into vases and cups, which were extremely beautiful. The entrance to the Peak Cavern, as it is called, is very grand. A black opening, of prodigious extent, yawns in the midst of a precipice nearly three hundred feet in height, and you proceed for several rods in this vast portico, before the cave begins to contract to narrower dimensions. At a little distance from this opening, a fine stream rushes rapidly from under the limestone, and flows through the village. Above, and almost impending over the precipice, is the castle of the Peverils, the walls of which, built of a kind of stone which retains the chisel marks made eight hundred years since, are almost entire, though the roof has long ago fallen in, and trees are growing in the corners. "Here lived the English noblemen," said our friend, "when they were robbers--before they became gentlemen." The castle is three stories in height, and the space within its thick and strong walls is about twenty-five feet square. These would be thought narrow quarters by the present nobility, the race of gentlemen who have succeeded to the race of robbers. The next day we attended the parish church. The young clergyman gave us a discourse on the subject of the Trinity, and a tolerably clever one, though it was only sixteen minutes long. The congregation were a healthy, though not a very intelligent looking set of men and women. The Derbyshire people have a saying-- "Darbyshire born, and Darbyshire bred, Strong o' the yarm and weak o' the yead." The latter line, translated into English, would be-- "Strong of the arm, and weak of the head;" and I was assured that, like most proverbs, it had a good deal of truth in it. The laboring people of Edale and its neighborhood, so far as I could learn, are not remarkable for good morals, and indifferent, or worse than indifferent, to the education of their children. They are, however, more fortunate in regard to the wages of their labor, than in many other agricultural districts. A manufactory for preparing cotton thread for the lace-makers, has been established in Edale, and the women and girls of the place, who are employed in it, are paid from seven to eight shillings a week. The farm laborers receive from twelve to thirteen shillings a week, which is a third more than is paid to the same class in some other counties. The people of the Peak, judging from the psalmody I heard at church, are not without an ear for music. "I was at a funeral, not long since," said our host, "a young man, born deaf and dumb, went mad and cut his throat. The people came from far and near to the burial. Hot ale was handed about and drunk in silence, and a candle stood on the table, at which the company lighted their pipes. The only sound to be heard was the passionate sobbing of the father. At last the funeral service commenced, and the hymn being given out, they set it to a tune in the minor key, and I never heard any music performed in a manner more pathetic." On Monday we left Edale, and a beautiful drive we had along the banks of the Derwent, woody and rocky, and wild enough in some places to be thought a river of our own country. Of our visit to Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, one of the proudest of the modern English nobility, and to Haddon Hall, the finest specimen remaining of the residences of their ancestors, I will say nothing, for these have already been described till people are tired of reading them. We passed the night at Matlock in sight of the rock called the High Tor. In the hot season it swarms with cockneys, and to gratify their taste, the place, beautiful as it is with precipices and woods, has been spoiled by mock ruins and fantastic names. There is a piece of scene-painting, for example, placed conspicuously among the trees on the hill-side, representing an ancient tower, and another representing an old church. One place of retreat is called the Romantic Rocks, and another the Lover's Walk. To-day we arrived at Derby, and hastened to see its Arboretum. This is an inclosure of eleven acres, given by the late Mr. Josiah Strutt to the town, and beautifully laid out by London, author of the work on Rural Architecture. It is planted with every kind of tree and shrub which will grow in the open air of this climate, and opened to the public for a perpetual place of resort. Shall we never see an example of the like munificence in New York? Letter XX. Works of Art. London, _June_ 18, 1845. I have now been in London a fortnight. Of course you will not expect me to give you what you will find in the guide-books and the "Pictures of London." The town is yet talking of a statue of a Greek slave, by our countryman Powers, which was to be seen a few days since at a print-shop in Pall Mall. I went to look at it. The statue represents a Greek girl exposed naked for sale in the slave-market. Her hands are fettered, the drapery of her nation lies at her feet, and she is shrinking from the public gaze. I looked at it with surprise and delight; I was dazzled with the soft fullness of the outlines, the grace of the attitude, the noble, yet sad expression of the countenance, and the exquisite perfection of the workmanship. I could not help acknowledging a certain literal truth in the expression of Byron, concerning a beautiful statue, that it "----fills The air around with beauty." It has fixed the reputation of Powers, and made his fortune. The possessor of the statue, a Mr. Grant, has refused to dispose of it, except to a public institution. The value which is set upon it, may be inferred from this circumstance, that one of the richest noblemen in England told the person who had charge of the statue, that if Mr. Grant would accept two thousand pounds sterling for it, he should be glad to send him a check for the amount. Some whispers of criticism have been uttered, but they appear to have been drowned and silenced in the general voice of involuntary admiration. I hear that since the exhibition of the statue, orders have been sent to Powers from England, for works of sculpture which will keep him employed for years to come. The exhibition of paintings by the Royal Academy is now open. I see nothing in it to astonish one who has visited the exhibitions of our Academy of the Arts of Design in New York, except that some of the worst pictures were hung in the most conspicuous places. This is the case with four or five pictures by Turner--a great artist, and a man of genius, but who paints very strangely of late years. To my unlearned eyes, they were mere blotches of white paint, with streaks of yellow and red, and without any intelligible design. To use a phrase very common in England, they are the most extraordinary pictures I ever saw. Haydon also has spoiled several yards of good canvas with a most hideous picture of Uriel and Satan, and to this is assigned one of the very best places in the collection. There is more uniformity of style and coloring than with us; more appearance of an attempt to conform to a certain general model, so that of course there are fewer unpleasant contrasts of manner: but this is no advantage, inasmuch as it prevents the artist from seeking to attain excellence in the way for which he is best fitted. The number of paintings is far greater than in our exhibitions; but the proportion of good ones is really far smaller. There are some extremely clever things by Webster, who appears to be a favorite with the public; some fine miniatures by Thorburn, a young Scotch artist who has suddenly become eminent, and several beautiful landscapes by Stanfield, an artist of high promise. We observed in the catalogue, the names of three or four of our American artists; but on looking for their works, we found them all hung so high as to be out of sight, except one, and that was in what is called the condemned room, where only a glimmer of light enters, and where the hanging committee are in the practice of thrusting any such pictures as they can not help exhibiting, but wish to keep in the dark. My English friends apologize for the wretchedness of the collection, its rows of indifferent portraits and its multitude of feeble imitations in historical and landscape painting, by saying that the more eminent artists are preparing themselves to paint the walls and ceilings of the new Houses of Parliament in fresco. The pinnacles and turrets of that vast and magnificent structure, built of a cream-colored stone, and florid with Gothic tracery, copied from the ancient chapel of St. Stephen, the greater part of which was not long ago destroyed by fire, are rising from day to day above the city roofs. We walked through its broad and long passages and looked into its unfinished halls, swarming with stone-cutters and masons, and thought that if half of them were to be painted in fresco, the best artists of England have the work of years before them. With the exhibition of drawings in water-colors, which is a separate affair from the paintings in oil, I was much better pleased. The late improvement in this branch of art, is, I believe, entirely due to English artists. They have given to their drawings of this class a richness, a force of effect, a depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so crisp were the leaves, so juicy the stalks, and with such skillful relief was flower heaped upon flower and leaf upon leaf. Letter XXI The Parks of London.--The Police. London, _June_ 24, 1845. Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious, open grounds of London. I doubt, in fact, whether any person fully comprehends their extent, from any of the ordinary descriptions of them, until he has seen them or tried to walk over them. You begin at the east end of St. James's Park, and proceed along its graveled walks, and its colonnades of old trees, among its thickets of ornamental shrubs carefully inclosed, its grass-plots maintained in perpetual freshness and verdure by the moist climate and the ever-dropping skies, its artificial sheets of water covered with aquatic birds of the most beautiful species, until you begin almost to wonder whether the park has a western extremity. You reach it at last, and proceed between the green fields of Constitution Hill, when you find yourself at the corner of Hyde Park, a much more spacious pleasure-ground. You proceed westward in Hyde Park until you are weary, when you find yourself on the verge of Kensington Gardens, a vast extent of ancient woods and intervening lawns, to which the eye sees no limit, and in whose walks it seems as if the whole population of London might lose itself. North of Hyde Park, after passing a few streets, you reach the great square of Regent's Park, where, as you stand at one boundary the other is almost undistinguishable in the dull London atmosphere. North of this park rises Primrose Hill, a bare, grassy eminence, which I hear has been purchased for a public ground and will be planted with trees. All round these immense inclosures, presses the densest population of the civilized world. Within, such is their extent, is a fresh and pure atmosphere, and the odors of plants and flowers, and the twittering of innumerable birds more musical than those of our own woods, which build and rear their young here, and the hum of insects in the sunshine. Without are close and crowded streets, swarming with foot-passengers, and choked with drays and carriages. These parks have been called the lungs of London, and so important are they regarded to the public health and the happiness of the people, that I believe a proposal to dispense with some part of their extent, and cover it with streets and houses, would be regarded in much the same manner as a proposal to hang every tenth man in London. They will probably remain public grounds as long as London has an existence. The population of your city, increasing with such prodigious rapidity; your sultry summers, and the corrupt atmosphere generated in hot and crowded streets, make it a cause of regret that in laying out New York, no preparation was made, while it was yet practicable, for a range of parks and public gardens along the central part of the island or elsewhere, to remain perpetually for the refreshment and recreation of the citizens during the torrid heats of the warm season. There are yet unoccupied lands on the island which might, I suppose, be procured for the purpose, and which, on account of their rocky and uneven surface, might be laid out into surpassingly beautiful pleasure-grounds; but while we are discussing the subject the advancing population of the city is sweeping over them and covering them from our reach. If we go out of the parks into the streets we find the causes of a corrupt atmosphere much more carefully removed than with us. The streets of London are always clean. Every day, early in the morning, they are swept; and some of them, I believe, at other hours also, by a machine drawn by one of the powerful dray-horses of this country. Whenever an unusually large and fine horse of this breed is produced in the country, he is sent to the London market, and remarkable animals they are, of a height and stature almost elephantine, large-limbed, slow-paced, shaggy-footed, sweeping the ground with their fetlocks, each huge foot armed with a shoe weighing from five to six pounds. One of these strong creatures is harnessed to a street-cleaning machine, which consists of brushes turning over a cylinder and sweeping the dust of the streets into a kind of box. Whether it be wet or dry dust, or mud, the work is thoroughly performed; it is all drawn into the receptacle provided for it, and the huge horse stalks backward and forward along the street until it is almost as clean as a drawing-room. I called the other day on a friend, an American, who told me that he had that morning spoken with his landlady about her carelessness in leaving the shutters of her lower rooms unclosed during the night. She answered that she never took the trouble to close them, that so secure was the city from ordinary burglaries, under the arrangements of the new police, that it was not worth the trouble. The windows of the parlor next to my sleeping-room open upon a rather low balcony over the street door, and they are unprovided with any fastenings, which in New York we should think a great piece of negligence. Indeed, I am told that these night robberies are no longer practiced, except when the thief is assisted by an accessary in the house. All classes of the people appear to be satisfied with the new police. The officers are men of respectable appearance and respectable manners. If I lose my way, or stand in need of any local information, I apply to a person in the uniform of a police officer. They are sometimes more stupid in regard to these matters than there is any occasion for, but it is one of the duties of their office to assist strangers with local information. Begging is repressed by the new police regulations, and want skulks in holes and corners, and prefers its petitions where it can not be overheard by men armed with the authority of the law. "There is a great deal of famine in London," said a friend to me the other day, "but the police regulations drive it out of sight." I was going through Oxford-street lately, when I saw an elderly man of small stature, poorly dressed, with a mahogany complexion, walking slowly before me. As I passed him he said in my ear, with a hollow voice, "I am starving to death with hunger," and these words and that hollow voice sounded in my ear all day. Walking in Hampstead Heath a day or two since, with an English friend, we were accosted by two laborers, who were sitting on a bank, and who said that they had came to that neighborhood in search of employment in hay-making, but had not been able to get either work or food. My friend appeared to distrust their story. But in the evening, as we were walking home, we passed a company of some four or five laborers in frocks, with bludgeons in their hands, who asked us for something to eat. "You see how it is, gentlemen," said one of them, "we are hungry; we have come for work, and nobody will hire us; we have had nothing to eat all day." Their tone was dissatisfied, almost menacing; and the Englishman who was with us, referred to it several times afterward, with an expression of anxiety and alarm. I hear it often remarked here, that the difference of condition between the poorer and the richer classes becomes greater every day, and what the end will be the wisest pretend not to foresee. Letter XXII. Edinburgh. Edinburgh, _July_ 17, 1845. I Had been often told, since I arrived in England, that in Edinburgh, I should see the finest city I ever saw. I confess that I did not feel quite sure of this, but it required scarcely more than a single look to show me that it was perfectly true. It is hardly possible to imagine a nobler site for a town than that of Edinburgh, and it is built as nobly. You stand on the edge of the deep gulf which separates the old and the new town, and before you on the opposite bank rise the picturesque buildings of the ancient city-- "Piled deep and massy, close and high," looking, in their venerable and enduring aspect, as if they were parts of the steep bank on which they stand, an original growth of the rocks; as if, when the vast beds of stone crystallized from the waters, or cooled from their fusion by fire, they formed themselves by some freak of nature into this fantastic resemblance of the habitations of men. To the right your eyes rest upon a crag crowned with a grand old castle of the middle ages, on which guards are marching to and fro; and near you to the left, rises the rocky summit of Carlton Hill, with its monuments of the great men of Scotland. Behind you stretch the broad streets of the new town, overlooked by massive structures, built of the stone of the Edinburgh quarries, which have the look of palaces. "Streets of palaces and walks of slate," form the new town. Not a house of brick or wood exists in Edinburgh; all are constructed of the excellent and lasting stone which the earth supplies almost close to their foundations. High and solid bridges of this material, with broad arches, connect the old town with the new, and cross the deep ravine of the Cowgate in the old town, at the bottom of which you see a street between prodigiously high buildings, swarming with the poorer population of Edinburgh. From almost any of the eminences of the town you see spread below you its magnificent bay, the Frith of Forth, with its rocky islands; and close to the old town rise the lofty summits of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crag, a solitary, silent, mountainous district, without habitations or inclosures, grazed by flocks of sheep. To the west flows Leith-water in its deep valley, spanned by a noble bridge, and the winds of this chilly climate that strike the stately buildings of the new town, along the cliffs that border this glen, come from the very clouds. Beyond the Frith lie the hills of Fifeshire; a glimpse of the blue Grampian ridges is seen where the Frith contracts in the northwest to a narrow channel, and to the southwest lie the Pentland hills, whose springs supply Edinburgh with water. All around you are places the names of which are familiar names of history, poetry, and romance. From this magnificence of nature and art, the transition was painful to what I saw of the poorer population. On Saturday evening I found myself at the market, which is then held in High-street and the Netherbow, just as you enter the Canongate, and where the old wooden effigy of John Knox, with staring black eyes, freshly painted every year, stands in its pulpit, and still seems preaching to the crowd. Hither a throng of sickly-looking, dirty people, bringing with them their unhealthy children, had crawled from the narrow wynds or alleys on each side of the street. We entered several of these wynds, and passed down one of them, between houses of vast height, story piled upon story, till we came to the deep hollow of the Cowgate. Children were swarming in the way, all of them, bred in that close and impure atmosphere, of a sickly appearance, and the aspect of premature age in some of them, which were carried in arms, was absolutely frightful. "Here is misery," said a Scotch gentleman, who was my conductor. I asked him how large a proportion of the people of Edinbugh belonged to that wretched and squalid class which I saw before me. "More than half," was his reply. I will not vouch for the accuracy of his statistics. Of course his estimate was but a conjecture. In the midst of this population is a House of Refuge for the Destitute, established by charitable individuals for the relief of those who may be found in a state of absolute destitution of the necessaries of life. Here they are employed in menial services, lodged and fed until they can be sent to their friends, or employment found for them. We went over the building, a spacious structure, in the Canongate, of the plainest Puritan architecture, with wide low rooms, which, at the time of the union of Scotland with England, served as the mansion of the Duke of Queensbury. The accommodations of course are of the humblest kind. We were shown into the sewing-room, were we saw several healthy-looking young women at work, some of them barefooted. Such of the inmates as can afford it, pay for their board from three and sixpence to five shillings a week, besides their labor. In this part of the city also are the Night Asylums for the Houseless. Here, those who find themselves without a shelter for the night, are received into an antechamber, provided with benches, where they first get a bowl of soup, and are then introduced into a bathing-room, where they are stripped and scoured. They are next furnished with clean garments and accommodated with a lodging on an inclined plane of planks, a little raised from the floor, and divided into proper compartments by strips of board. Their own clothes are, in the mean time, washed, and returned to them when they leave the place. It was a very different spectacle from the crowd in the Saturday evening market, that met my eyes the next morning in the clean and beautiful streets of the new town; the throng of well-dressed church-goers passing each other in all directions. The women, it appeared to me, were rather gaily dressed, and a large number of them prettier than I had seen in some of the more southern cities. I attended worship in one of the Free Churches, as they are called, in which Dr. Candlish officiates. In the course of his sermon, he read long portions of an address from the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, appointing the following Thursday as a day of fasting and prayer, on account of the peculiar circumstances of the time, and more especially the dangers flowing from the influence of popery, alluding to the grant of money lately made by parliament to the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth. The address proposed no definite opposition, but protested against the measure in general, and, as it seemed to me, rather vague terms. In the course of the address the title of National Church was claimed for the Free Church, notwithstanding its separation from the government, and the era of that separation was referred to in phrases similar to those in which we speak of our own declaration of national independence. There were one or two allusions to the persecutions which the Free Church had suffered, and something was said about her children being hunted like partridges upon the mountains; but it is clear that if her ministers have been hunted, they have been hunted into fine churches; and if persecuted, they have been persecuted into comfortable livings. This Free Church, as far as I can learn, is extremely prosperous. Dr. Candlish is a fervid preacher, and his church was crowded. In the afternoon I attended at one of the churches of the established or endowed Presbyterian Church, where a quiet kind of a preacher held forth, and the congregation was thin. This Maynooth grant has occasioned great dissatisfaction in England and Scotland. If the question had been left to be decided by the public opinion of these parts of the kingdom, the grant would never have been made. An immense majority, of all classes and almost all denominations, disapprove of it. A dissenting clergyman of one of the evangelical persuasions, as they are called, said to me--"The dissenters claim nothing from the government; they hold that it is not the business of the state to interfere in religious matters, and they object to bestowing the public money upon the seminaries of any religious denomination." In a conversation which I had with an eminent man of letters, and a warm friend of the English Church, he said: "The government is giving offense to many who have hitherto been its firmest supporters. There was no necessity for the Maynooth grant; the Catholics would have been as well satisfied without it as they are with it; for you see they are already clamoring for the right to appoint through their Bishops the professors in the new Irish colleges. The Catholics were already establishing their schools, and building their churches with their own means: and this act of applying the money of the nation to the education of their priests is a gratuitous offense offered by the government to its best friends." In a sermon which I heard from the Dean of York, in the magnificent old minster of that city, he commended the liberality of the motives which had induced the government to make the grant, but spoke of the measure as one which the friends of the English Church viewed with apprehension and anxiety. "They may dismiss their fears," said a shrewd friend of mine, with whom I was discussing the subject. "Endowments are a cause of lukewarmness and weakness. Our Presbyterian friends here, instead of protesting so vehemently against what Sir Robert Peel has done, should thank him for endowing the Catholic Church, for in doing it he has deprived it of some part of its hold upon the minds of men." There is much truth, doubtless, in this remark. The support of religion to be effectual should depend upon individual zeal. The history of the endowed chapels of dissenting denominations in England is a curious example of this. Congregations have fallen away and come to nothing, and it is a general remark that nothing is so fatal to a sect as a liberal endowment, which provides for the celebration of public worship without individual contributions. Letter XXIII. The Scottish Lakes. Glasgow, _July_ 19, 1845. I must not leave Scotland without writing you another letter. On the 17th of this month I embarked at Newhaven, in the environs of Edinburgh, on board the little steamer Prince Albert, for Stirling. On our way we saw several samples of the Newhaven fishwives, a peculiar race, distinguished by a costume of their own; fresh-colored women, who walk the streets of Edinburgh with a large wicker-basket on their shoulders, a short blue cloak of coarse cloth under the basket, short blue petticoats, thick blue stockings, and a white cap. I was told that they were the descendants of a little Flemish colony, which long ago settled at Newhaven, and that they are celebrated for the readiness and point of their jokes, which, like those of their sisters of Billingsgate, are not always of the most delicate kind. Several of these have been related to me, but on running them over in my mind, I find, to my dismay, that none of them will look well on paper. The wit of the Newhaven fishwives seems to me, however, like that of our western boatmen, to consist mainly in the ready application of quaint sayings already current among themselves. It was a wet day, with occasional showers, and sometimes a sprinkling of Scotch mist. I tried the cabin, but the air was too close. The steamboats in this country have but one deck, and that deck has no shelter, so I was content to stand in the rain for the sake of the air and scenery. After passing an island or two, the Frith, which forms the bay of Edinburgh, contracts into the river Forth. We swept by country seats, one of which was pointed out as the residence of the late Dugald Stewart, and another that of the Earl of Elgin, the plunderer of the Parthenon; and castles, towers, and churches, some of them in ruins ever since the time of John Knox, and hills half seen in the fog, until we came opposite to the Ochil mountains, whose grand rocky buttresses advanced from the haze almost to the river. Here, in the windings of the Forth, our steamer went many times backward and forward, first towards the mountains and then towards the level country to the south, in almost parallel courses, like the track of a ploughman in a field. At length we passed a ruined tower and some fragments of massy wall which once formed a part of Cambus Kenneth Abbey, seated on the rich lands of the Forth, for the monks, in Great Britain at least, seem always to have chosen for the site of their monasteries, the banks of a stream which would supply them with trout and salmon for Fridays. We were now in the presence of the rocky hills of Stirling, with the town on its declivity, and the ancient castle, the residence of the former kings of Scotland, on its summit. We went up through the little town to the castle, which is still kept in perfect order, and the ramparts of which frown as grimly over the surrounding country as they did centuries ago. No troops however are now stationed here; a few old gunners alone remain, and Major somebody, I forget his name, takes his dinners in the banqueting-room and sleeps in the bed-chamber of the Stuarts. I wish I could communicate the impression which this castle and the surrounding region made upon me, with its vestiges of power and magnificence, and its present silence and desertion. The passages to the dungeons where pined the victims of state, in the very building where the court held its revels, lie open, and the chapel in which princes and princesses were christened, and worshiped, and were crowned and wed, is turned into an armory. From its windows we were shown, within the inclosure of the castle, a green knoll, grazed by cattle, where the disloyal nobles of Scotland were beheaded. Close to the castle is a green field, intersected with paths, which we were told was the tilting-ground, or place of tournaments, and beside it rises a rock, where the ladies of the court sat to witness the combats, and which is still called the Ladies' Rock. At the foot of the hill, to the right of the castle, stretches what was once the royal park; it is shorn of its trees, part is converted into a race-course, part into a pasture for cows, and the old wall which marked its limits is fallen down. Near it you see a cluster of grassy embankments of a curious form, circles and octagons and parallelograms, which bear the name of King James's Knot, and once formed a part of the royal-gardens, where the sovereign used to divert himself with his courtiers. The cows now have the spot to themselves, and have made their own paths and alleys all over it. "Yonder, to the southwest of the castle," said a sentinel who stood at the gate, "you see where a large field has been lately ploughed, and beyond it another, which looks very green. That green field is the spot where the battle of Bannockburn was fought, and the armies of England were defeated by Bruce." I looked, and so fresh and bright was the verdure, that it seemed to me as if the earth was still fertilized with the blood of those who fell in that desperate struggle for the crown of Scotland. Not far from this, the spot was shown us where Wallace was defeated at the battle of Falkirk. This region is now the scene of another and an unbloody warfare; the warfare between the Free Church and the Government Church. Close to the church of the establishment, at the foot of the rock of Stirling, the soldiers of the Free Church have erected their place of worship, and the sound of hammers from the unfinished interior could be heard almost up to the castle. We took places the same day in the coach for Callander, in the Highlands. In a short time we came into a country of hillocks and pastures brown and barren, half covered with ferns, the breckan of the Scotch, where the broom flowered gaudily by the road-side, and harebells now in bloom, in little companies, were swinging, heavy with the rain, on their slender stems. Crossing the Teith we found ourselves in Doune, a Highland village, just before entering which we passed a throng of strapping lasses, who had just finished their daily task at a manufactory on the Teith, and were returning to their homes. Between Doune and Callander we passed the woods of Cambus-More, full of broad beeches, which delight in the tenacious mountain soil of this district. This was the seat of a friend of the Scott family, and here Sir Walter in his youth passed several summers, and became familiar with the scenes which he has so well described in his Lady of the Lake. At Callander we halted for the night among a crowd of tourists, Scotch, English, American, and German, more numerous than the inn at which we stopped could hold. I went out into the street to get a look at the place, but a genuine Scotch mist covering me with water soon compelled me to return. I heard the people, a well-limbed brawny race of men, with red hair and beards, talking to each other in Gaelic, and saw through the fogs only a glimpse of the sides of the mountains and crags which surrounded the village. The next morning was uncommonly bright and clear, and we set out early for the Trosachs. We now saw that the village of Callander lay under a dark crag, on the banks of the Teith, winding pleasantly among its alders, and overlooked by the grand summit of Benledi, which rises to the height of three thousand feet. A short time brought us to the stream "Which, daughter of three mighty lakes, From Vennachar in silver breaks," and we skirted the lake for nearly its whole length. Loch Vennachar lies between hills of comparatively gentle declivity, pastured by flocks, and tufted with patches of the prickly gorse and coarse ferns. On its north bank lies Lanrick Mead, a little grassy level where Scott makes the tribe of Clan Alpine assemble at the command of Roderick Dhu. At a little distance from Vennachar lies Loch Achray, which we reached by a road winding among shrubs and low trees, birches, and wild roses in blossom, with which the air was fragrant. Crossing a little stone bridge, which our driver told us was the Bridge of Turk, we were on the edge of Loch Achray, a little sheet of water surrounded by wild rocky hills, with here and there an interval of level grassy margin, or a grove beside the water. Turning from Loch Achray we reached an inn with a Gaelic name, which I have forgotten how to spell, and which if I were to spell it, you could not pronounce. This was on the edge of the Trosachs, and here we breakfasted. It is the fashion, I believe, for all tourists to pass through the Trosachs on foot. The mob of travellers, with whom I found myself on the occasion--there were some twenty of them--did so, to a man; even the ladies, who made about a third of the number, walked. The distance to Loch Katrine is about a mile and a half, between lofty mountains, along a glen filled with masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by some convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either side, and in whose shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood of the birch and ash. But I will not describe the Trosachs after Walter Scott. Head what he says of them in the first canto of his poem. Loch Katrine, when we reached it, was crisped into little waves, by a fresh wind from the northwest, and a boat, with four brawny Highlanders, was waiting to convey us to the head of the lake. We launched upon the dark deep water, between craggy and shrubby steeps, the summits of which rose on every side of us; and one of the rowers, an intelligent-looking man, took upon himself the task of pointing out to us the places mentioned by the poet. "There," said he, as we receded from the shore, "is the spot in the Trosachs where Fitz James lost his gallant gray." He then repeated, in a sort of recitation, dwelling strongly on the rhyme, the lines in the Lady of the Lake which relate that incident. "Yonder is the island where Douglass concealed his daughter. Under that broad oak, whose boughs almost dip into the water, was the place where her skiff was moored. On that rock, covered with heath, Fitz James stood and wound his bugle. Near it, but out of sight, is the silver strand where the skiff received him on board." Further on, he pointed out, on the south side of the lake, half way up among the rocks of the mountain, the place of the Goblin Cave, and still beyond it "The wild pass, where birches wave, Of Beal-a-nam-bo." On the north shore, the hills had a gentler slope, and on their skirts, which spread into something like a meadow, we saw a solitary dwelling. "In that," said he, "Rob Roy was born." In about two hours, our strong-armed rowers had brought us to the head of the lake. Before we reached it, we saw the dark crest of Ben Lomond, loftier than any of the mountains around us, peering over the hills which formed the southern rampart of Loch Katrine. We landed, and proceeded--the men on foot and the women on ponies --through a wild craggy valley, overgrown with low shrubs, to Inversnaid, on Loch Lomond, where a stream freshly swollen by rains tumbled down a pretty cascade into the lake. As we descended the steep bank, we saw a man and woman sitting on the grass weaving baskets; the woman, as we passed, stopped her work to beg; and the children, chubby and ruddy, came running after us with "Please give me a penny to buy a scone." At Iversnaid we embarked in a steamboat which took us to the northern extremity of the lake, where it narrows into a channel like a river. Here we stopped to wait the arrival of a coach, and, in the mean time, the passengers had an hour to wander in the grassy valley of Glenfalloch, closed in by high mountains. I heard the roar of mountain-streams, and passing northward, found myself in sight of two torrents, one from the east, and the other from the west side of the valley, throwing themselves, foaming and white, from precipice to precipice, till their waters, which were gathered in the summit of the mountains, reached the meadows, and stole through the grass to mingle with those of the lake. The coach at length arrived, and we were again taken on board the steamer, and conveyed the whole length of Loch Lomond to its southern extremity. We passed island after island, one of which showed among its thick trees the remains of a fortress, erected in the days of feudal warfare and robbery, and another was filled with deer. Towards the southern end of the lake, the towering mountains, peak beyond peak, which overlook the lake, subside into hills, between which the stream called Leven-water flows out through a rich and fertile valley. Coaches were waiting at Balloch, where we landed, to take us to Dumbarton. Near the lake we passed a magnificent park, in the midst of which stood a castle, a veritable castle, a spacious massive building of stone, with a tower and battlements, on which a flag was flying. "It belongs to a dry-goods merchant in Glasgow," said the captain of the steamboat, who was in the coach with us; "and the flag is put up by his boys. The merchants are getting finer seats than the nobility." I am sorry to say that I have forgotten both the name of the merchant and that of his castle. He was, as I was told, a liberal, as well as an opulent man; had built a school-house in the neighborhood, and being of the Free Church party, was then engaged in building a church. Near Renton, on the banks of the Leven, I saw a little neighborhood, embosomed in old trees. "There," said our captain, "Smollet was born." A column has been erected to his memory in the town of Renton, which we saw as we passed. The forked rock, on which stands Dumbarton Castle, was now in sight overlooking the Clyde; we were whirled into the town, and in a few minutes were on board a steamer which, as evening set in, landed us at Glasgow. I must reserve what I have to tell of Glasgow and Ayrshire for yet another letter. Letter XXIV. Glasgow.--Ayr.--Alloway. Dublin, _July_ 24, 1845. I promised another letter concerning Scotland, but I had not time to write it until the Irish Channel lay between me and the Scottish coast. When we reached Glasgow on the 18th of July, the streets were swarming with people. I inquired the occasion, and was told that this was the annual fair. The artizans were all out with their families, and great numbers of country people were sauntering about. This fair was once, what its name imports, an annual market for the sale of merchandise; but it is now a mere holiday in which the principal sales, as it appeared to me, were of gingerbread and whisky. I strolled the next morning to the Green, a spacious open ground that stretches along the Clyde. One part of it was occupied with the booths and temporary theatres and wagons of showmen, around and among which a vast throng was assembled, who seemed to delight in being deafened with the cries of the showmen and the music of their instruments. In one place a band was playing, in another a gong was thundering, and from one of the balconies a fellow in regal robes and a pasteboard crown, surrounded by several persons of both sexes in tawdry stage-dresses, who seemed to have just got out of bed and were yawning and rubbing their eyes, was vociferating to the crowd in praise of the entertainment which was shortly to be offered them, while not far off the stentor of a rival company, under a flag which announced a new pantomime for a penny, was declaiming with equal vehemence. I made my way with difficulty through the crowd to the ancient street called the Salt Market, in which Scott places the habitation of Baillie Jarvie. It was obstructed with little stalls, where toys and other inconsiderable articles were sold. Here at the corner of one of the streets stands the old tower of the Tolbooth where Rob Roy was confined, a solid piece of ancient architecture. The main building has been removed and a modern house supplies its place; the tower has been pierced below for a thoroughfare, and its clock still reports the time of day to the people of Glasgow. The crowd through which I passed had that squalid appearance which marks extreme poverty and uncertain means of subsistence, and I was able to form some idea of the prodigious number of this class in a populous city of Great Britain like Glasgow. For populous she is, and prosperous as a city, increasing with a rapidity almost equal to that of New York, and already she numbers, it is estimated, three hundred thousand inhabitants. Of these it is said that full one-third are Irish by birth or born of Irish parents. The next day, which was Sunday, before going to church, I walked towards the west part of the city; where the streets are broad and the houses extremely well-built, of the same noble material as the new town of Edinburgh; and many of the dwellings have fine gardens. Their sites in many places overlook the pleasant valley of the Clyde, and I could not help acknowledging that Glasgow was not without claim to the epithet of beautiful, which I should have denied her if I had formed my judgment from the commercial streets only. The people of Glasgow also have shown their good sense in erecting the statues which adorn their public squares, only to men who have some just claim to distinction. Here are no statues, for example, of the profligate Charles II., or the worthless Duke of York, or the silly Duke of Cambridge, as you will see in other cities; but here the marble effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column in the principal square, and not far from it is that of the inventor Watt; while the statues erected to military men are to those who, like Wellington, have acquired a just renown in arms. The streets were full of well-dressed persons going to church, the women for the most part, I must say, far from beautiful. I turned with the throng and followed it as far as St. Enoch's church, in Buchanan-street, where I heard a long discourse from a sensible preacher, Dr. Barr, a minister of the established Kirk of Scotland. In the afternoon I climbed one of the steep streets to the north of my hotel, and found three places of worship, built with considerable attention to architectural effect, and fresh, as it seemed, from the hands of the mason. They all, as I was told, belonged to the Free Kirk, which has lately been rent from the establishment, and threatens to leave it a mere shadow of a church, like the Episcopal church in Ireland. "Nothing," said an intelligent Glasgow friend of mine, "can exceed the zeal of the friends of the Free Church. One of our Glasgow merchants has just given fifteen hundred pounds towards the fund for providing _manses_, or parsonages, for the ministers of that Church, and I know of several who have subscribed a thousand. In all the colleges of Scotland, the professors are obliged, by way of test, to declare their attachment to the Presbyterian Church as by law established. Parliament has just refused to repeal this test, and the friends of the Free Church are determined to found a college of their own. Twenty thousand pounds had already been subscribed before the government refused to dispense with this test, and the project will now be supported with more zeal than ever." I went into one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr. Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school. It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their besetting infirmity. At the close of the exercises, he announced that a third service would be held in the evening. "The subject," continued he, "will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah in the whale's belly." In returning to my hotel, I passed by another new church, with an uncommonly beautiful steeple and elaborate carvings. I inquired its name; it was the new St. John's, and was another of the buildings of the Free Church. On Monday we made an excursion to the birthplace of Burns. The railway between Glasgow and Ayr took us through Paisley, worthy of note as having produced our eminent ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, and along the banks of Castle Semple Loch, full of swans, a beautiful sheet of water, sleeping among green fields which shelve gently to its edge. We passed by Irvine, where Burns learned the art of dressing flax, and traversing a sandy tract, close to the sea, were set down at Ayr, near the new bridge. You recollect Burns's dialogue between the "auld brig" of Ayr and the new, in which the former predicted that vain as her rival might be of her new and fresh appearance, the time would shortly come when she would be as much dilapidated as herself. The prediction is fulfilled; the bridge has begun to give way, and workmen are busy in repairing its arches. We followed a pleasant road, sometimes agreeably shaded by trees, to Alloway. As we went out of Ayr we heard a great hammering and clicking of chisels, and looking to the right we saw workmen busy in building another of the Free Churches, with considerable elaborateness of architecture, in the early Norman style. The day was very fine, the sun bright, and the sky above us perfectly clear; but, as is generally the case in this country with an east wind, the atmosphere was thick with a kind of dry haze which veils distant objects from the sight. The sea was to our right, but we could not discern where it ended and the horizon began, and the mountains of the island of Arran and the lone and lofty rock of Ailsa Craig looked at first like faint shadows in the thick air, and were soon altogether undistinguishable. We came at length to the little old painted kirk of Alloway, in the midst of a burying ground, roofless, but with gable-ends still standing, and its interior occupied by tombs. A solid upright marble slab, before the church, marks the place where William Burns, the father of the poet, lies buried. A little distance beyond flows the Doon under the old bridge crossed by Tam O'Shanter on the night of his adventure with the witches. This little stream well deserves the epithet of "bonnie," which Burns has given it. Its clear but dark current, flows rapidly between banks often shaded with ashes, alders, and other trees, and sometimes overhung by precipices of a reddish-colored rock. A little below the bridge it falls into the sea, but the tide comes not up to embitter its waters. From the west bank of the stream the land rises to hills of considerable height, with a heathy summit and wooded slopes, called Brown Carrick Hill. Two high cliffs near it impend over the sea, which are commonly called the Heads of Ayr, and not far from these stands a fragment of an ancient castle. I have sometimes wondered that born as Burns was in the neighborhood of the sea, which I was told is often swelled into prodigious waves by the strong west winds that beat on this coast, he should yet have taken little if any of his poetic imagery from the ocean, either in its wilder or its gentler moods. But his occupations were among the fields, and his thoughts were of those who dwelt among them, and his imagination never wandered where his feelings went not. The monument erected to Burns, near the bridge, is an ostentatious thing, with a gilt tripod on its summit. I was only interested to see some of the relics of Burns which it contains, among which is the Bible given by him to his Highland Mary. A road from the monument leads along the stream among the trees to a mill, at a little distance above the bridge, where the water passes under steep rocks, and I followed it. The wild rose and the woodbine were in full bloom in the hedges, and these to me were a better memorial of Burns than any thing which the chisel could execute. A barefoot lassie came down the grassy bank among the trees with a pail, and after washing her feet in the swift current filled the pail and bore it again over the bank. We saw many visitors sauntering about the bridge or entering the monument; some of them seemed to be country people,--young men with their sisters and sweethearts, and others in white cravats with a certain sleekness of appearance I took to be of the profession of divinity. At the inn beside the Doon, a young woman, with a face and head so round as almost to form a perfect globe, gave us a dish of excellent strawberries and cream, and we set off for the house in which Burns was born. It is a clay-built cottage of the humblest class, and now serves, with the addition of two new rooms of a better architecture, for an ale-house. Mrs. Hastings, the landlady, showed us the register, in which we remarked that a very great number of the visitors had taken the pains to write themselves down as shoemakers. Major Burns, one of the sons of the poet, had lately visited the place with his two daughters and a younger brother, and they had inscribed their names in the book. We returned to Ayr by a different road from that by which we went to Alloway. The haymakers were at work in the fields, and the vegetation was everywhere in its highest luxuriance. You may smile at the idea, but I affirm that a potato field in Great Britain, at this season, is a prettier sight than a vineyard in Italy. In this climate, the plant throws out an abundance of blossoms, pink and white, and just now the potato fields are as fine as so many flower gardens. We crossed the old bridge of Ayr, which is yet in good preservation, though carriages are not allowed to pass over it. Looking up the stream, we saw solitary slopes and groves on its left bank, and I fancied that I had in my eye the sequestered spot on the banks of the Ayr, where Burns and his Highland Mary held the meeting described in his letters, and parted to meet no more. Letter XXV. Ireland.--Dublin. Dublin, _July_ 25, 1845. We left Glasgow on the morning of the 22d, and taking the railway to Ardrossan were soon at the beach. One of those iron steamers which navigate the British waters, far inferior to our own in commodious and comfortable arrangements, but strong and safe, received us on board, and at ten o'clock we were on our way to Belfast. The coast of Ayr, with the cliff near the birthplace of Burns, continued long in sight; we passed near the mountains of Arran, high and bare steeps swelling out of the sea, which had a look of almost complete solitude; and at length Ailsa Craig began faintly to show itself, high above the horizon, through the thick atmosphere. We passed this lonely rock, about which flocks of sea-birds, the solan goose, and the gannet, on long white wings with jetty tips, were continually wheeling, and with a glass we could discern them sitting by thousands on the shelves of the rock, where they breed. The upper part of Ailsa, above the cliffs, which reach more than half-way to the summit, appears not to be destitute of soil, for it was tinged with a faint verdure. In about nine hours--we were promised by a lying advertisement it should be six--we had crossed the channel, over smooth water, and were making our way, between green shores almost without a tree, up the bay, at the bottom of which stands, or rather lies, for its site is low, the town of Belfast. We had yet enough of daylight left to explore a part at least of the city. "It looks like Albany," said my companion, and really the place bears some resemblance to the streets of Albany which are situated near the river, nor is it without an appearance of commercial activity. The people of Belfast, you know, are of Scotch origin, with some infusion of the original race of Ireland. I heard English spoken with a Scotch accent, but I was obliged to own that the severity of the Scottish physiognomy had been softened by the migration and the mingling of breeds. I presented one of my letters of introduction, and met with so cordial a reception, that I could not but regret the necessity of leaving Belfast the next morning. At an early hour the next day we were in our seats on the outside of the mail-coach. We passed through a well-cultivated country, interspersed with towns which had an appearance of activity and thrift. The dwellings of the cottagers looked more comfortable than those of the same class in Scotland, and we were struck with the good looks of the people, men and women, whom we passed in great numbers going to their work. At length, having traversed the county of Down, we entered Lowth, when an immediate change was visible. We were among wretched and dirty hovels, squalid-looking men and women, and ragged children--the stature of the people seemed dwarfed by the poverty in which they have so long lived, and the jet-black hair and broad faces which I saw around me, instead of the light hair and oval countenances so general a few miles back, showed me that I was among the pure Celtic race. Shortly after entering the county of Lowth, and close on the confines of Armagh, perhaps partly within it, we traversed, near the village of Jonesborough, a valley full of the habitations of peat-diggers. Its aspect was most remarkable, the barren hills that inclose it were dark with heath and gorse and with ledges of brown rock, and their lower declivities, as well as the level of the valley, black with peat, which had been cut from the ground and laid in rows. The men were at work with spades cutting it from the soil, and the women were pressing the water from the portions thus separated, and exposing it to the air to dry. Their dwellings were of the most wretched kind, low windowless hovels, no higher than the heaps of peat, with swarms of dirty children around them. It is the property of peat earth to absorb a large quantity of water, and to part with it slowly. The springs, therefore, in a region abounding with peat make no brooks; the water passes into the spongy soil and remains there, forming morasses even on the slopes of the hills. As we passed out of this black valley we entered a kind of glen, and the guard, a man in a laced hat and scarlet coat, pointed to the left, and said, "There is a pretty place." It was a beautiful park along a hill-side, groves and lawns, a broad domain, jealously inclosed by a thick and high wall, beyond which we had, through the trees, a glimpse of a stately mansion. Our guard was a genuine Irishman, strongly resembling the late actor Power in physiognomy, with the very brogue which Power sometimes gave to his personages. He was a man of pithy speech, communicative, and acquainted apparently with every body, of every class, whom we passed on the road. Besides him we had for fellow-passengers three very intelligent Irishmen, on their way to Dublin. One of them was a tall, handsome gentleman, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and a rich South-Irish brogue. He was fond of his joke, but next to him sat a graver personage, in spectacles, equally tall, with fair hair and light-blue eyes, speaking with a decided Scotch accent. By my side was a square-built, fresh-colored personage, who had travelled in America, and whose accent was almost English. I thought I could not be mistaken in supposing them to be samples of the three different races by which Ireland is peopled. We now entered a fertile district, meadows heavy with grass, in which the haymakers were at work, and fields of wheat and barley as fine as I had ever seen, but the habitations of the peasantry had the same wretched look, and their inmates the same appearance of poverty. Wherever the coach stopped we were beset with swarms of beggars, the wittiest beggars in the world, and the raggedest, except those of Italy. One or two green mounds stood close to the road, and we saw others at a distance. "They are Danish forts," said the guard. "Every thing we do not know the history of, we put upon the Danes," added the South of Ireland man. These grassy mounds, which are from ten to twenty feet in height, are now supposed to have been the burial places of the ancient Celts. The peasantry can with difficulty be persuaded to open any of them, on account of a prevalent superstition that it will bring bad luck. A little before we arrived at Drogheda, I saw a tower to the right, apparently a hundred feet in height, with a doorway at a great distance from the ground, and a summit somewhat dilapidated. "That is one of the round towers of Ireland, concerning which there is so much discussion," said my English-looking fellow-traveller. These round towers, as the Dublin antiquarians tell me, were probably built by the early Christian missionaries from Italy, about the seventh century, and were used as places of retreat and defense against the pagans. Not far from Drogheda, I saw at a distance a quiet-looking valley. "That," said the English-looking passenger, "is the valley of the Boyne, and in that spot was fought the famous battle of the Boyne." "Which the Irish are fighting about yet, in America," added the South of Ireland man. They pointed out near the spot, a cluster of trees on an eminence, where James beheld the defeat of his followers. We crossed the Boyne, entered Drogheda, dismounted among a crowd of beggars, took our places in the most elegant railway wagon we had ever seen, and in an hour were set down in Dublin. I will not weary you with a description of Dublin. Scores of travellers have said that its public buildings are magnificent, and its rows of private houses, in many of the streets, are so many ranges of palaces. Scores of travellers have said that if you pass out of these fine streets, into the ancient lanes of the city, you see mud-houses that scarcely afford a shelter, and are yet inhabited. "Some of these," said a Dublin acquaintance to me, "which are now roofless and no longer keep out the weather, yet show by their elaborate cornices and their elegant chimney-pieces, that the time has been, and that not very long since, when they were inhabited by the opulent class." He led me back of Dublin castle to show me the house in which Swift was born. It stands in a narrow, dirty lane called Holy's court, close to the well-built part of the town: its windows are broken out, and its shutters falling to pieces, and the houses on each side are in the same condition, yet they are swarming with dirty and ragged inmates. I have seen no loftier nor more spacious dwellings than those which overlook St. Stephen's Green, a noble park, planted with trees, under which the showery sky and mild temperature maintain a verdure all the year, even in midwinter. About Merrion square, another park, the houses have scarcely a less stately appearance, and one of these with a strong broad balcony, from which to address the people in the street, is inhabited by O'Connell. The park of the University, in the midst of the city, is of great extent, and the beautiful public grounds called Phenix Park, have a circumference of eight miles. "Do not suppose," said a friend to me, "that these spacious houses which you see about you, are always furnished with a magnificence corresponding to that of their exterior. It is often the case that a few rooms only of these great ranges of apartments are provided with furniture, and the rest left empty and unoccupied. The Irishman of the higher class, as well as of the humbler, is naturally improvident, generous, fond of enjoying the moment, and does not allow his income to accumulate, either for the purpose of hoarding or the purpose of display." I went into Conciliation Hall, which resembles a New York lecture-room, and was shown the chair where the autocrat of Ireland, the Liberator, as they call him, sits near the chairman at the repeal meetings. Conciliation Hall was at that time silent, for O'Connell was making a journey through several of the western counties, I think, of Ireland, for the purpose of addressing and encouraging his followers. I inquired of an intelligent dissenter what was the state of the public feeling in Ireland, with regard to the repeal question, and whether the popularity of O'Connell was still as great as ever. "As to O'Connell," he answered, "I do not know whether his influence is increasing, but I am certain that it is not declining. With regard to the question of repealing the Union, there is a very strong leaning among intelligent men in Ireland to the scheme of a federal government, in other words to the creation of an Irish parliament for local legislation, leaving matters which concern Ireland in common with the rest of the empire to be decided by the British Parliament." I mentioned an extraordinary declaration which I had heard made by John O'Connell on the floor of Parliament, in answer to a speech of Mr. Wyse, an Irish Catholic member, who supported the new-colleges bill. This younger O'Connell denounced Wyse as no Catholic, as an apostate from his religion, for supporting the bill, and declared that for himself, after the Catholic Bishops of Ireland had expressed their disapproval of the bill, he inquired no further, but felt himself bound as a faithful member of the Catholic Church to oppose it. "It is that declaration," said the gentleman, "which has caused a panic among those of the Irish Protestants who were well-affected to the cause of repeal. If the Union should be repealed, they fear that O'Connell, whose devotion to the Catholic Church appears to grow stronger and stronger, and whose influence over the Catholic population is almost without limit, will so direct the legislation of the Irish Parliament as only to change the religious oppression that exists from one party to the other. There is much greater liberality at present among the Catholics than among their adversaries in Ireland, but I can not say how much of it is owing to the oppression they endure. The fact that O'Connell has been backward to assist in any church reforms in Ireland has given occasion to the suspicion that he only desires to see the revenues and the legal authority of the Episcopal Church transferred to the Catholic Church. If that should happen, and if the principle avowed by John O'Connell should be the rule of legislation, scarcely any body but a Catholic will be able to live in Ireland." Mr. Wall, to whom our country is indebted for the Hudson River Portfolio, and who resided in the United States for twenty-two years, is here, and is, I should think, quite successful in his profession. Some of his later landscapes are superior to any of his productions that I remember. Among them is a view on Lough Corrib, in which the ruined castle on the island of that lake is a conspicuous object. It is an oil painting, and is a work of great merit. The Dublin Art Union made it their first purchase from the exhibition in which it appeared. Mr. Wall remembers America with much pleasure, and nothing can exceed his kindness to such of the Americans as he meets in Ireland. He took us to the exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Society. Among its pictures is a portrait of a lady by Burton, in water-colors, most surprising for its perfection of execution and expression, its strength of coloring and absolute nature. Burton is a native of Dublin, and is but twenty-five years old. The Irish connoisseurs claim for him the praise of being the first artist in water-colors in the world. He paints with the left hand. There are several other fine things by him in the exhibition. Maclise, another Irish artist, has a picture in the exhibition, representing a dramatic author offering his piece to an actor. The story is told in Gil Blas. It is a miracle of execution, though it has the fault of hardness and too equal a distribution of light. I have no time to speak more at large of this exhibition, and my letter is already too long. This afternoon we sail for Liverpool. Letter XXVI. The Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell. London, _July_ 28, 1845. Since we came to England we have visited the Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell, in the neighborhood of London. It is a large building, divided into numerous apartments, with the plainest accommodations, for the insane poor of the county of Middlesex. It is superintended by Dr. Conolly, who is most admirably fitted for the place he fills, by his great humanity, sagacity, and ingenuity. I put these qualities together as necessary to each other. Mere humanity, without tact and skill, would fail deplorably. The rude and coarse methods of government which consist in severity, are the most obvious ones; they suggest themselves to the dullest minds, and cost nothing but bodily strength to put them in execution; the gentler methods require reflection, knowledge, and dexterity. It is these which Dr. Conolly applies with perfect success. He has taken great pains to make himself acquainted, by personal observation, with the treatment of the insane in different hospitals, not only in England, but on the continent. He found that to be the most efficacious which interferes least with their personal liberty, and on this principle, the truth of which an experience of several years has now confirmed, he founded the system of treatment at Hanwell. We had letters to Dr. Conolly, with the kindness and gentleness of whose manners we were much struck. He conducted us over the several wards of the Asylum. We found in it a thousand persons of both sexes, not one of whom was in seclusion, that is to say confined because it was dangerous to allow him to go at large; nor were they subjected to any apparent restraint whatever. Some were engaged in reading, some in exercises and games of skill; of the females some were occupied in sewing, others at work in the kitchen or the laundry; melancholic patients were walking about in silence or sitting gloomily by themselves; idiots were rocking their bodies backward and forward as they sat, but all were peaceable in their demeanor, and the greatest quiet prevailed. No chastisement of any kind is inflicted; the lunatic is always treated as a patient, and never as an offender. When he becomes so outrageous and violent that his presence can be endured no longer, he is put into a room with padded walls and floors where he can do himself no mischief, and where his rage is allowed to exhale. Even the straight jacket is unknown here. I said that the demeanor of all the patients with whom the Asylum was swarming was peaceable. There was one exception. On entering one of the wards, a girl of an earnest and determined aspect, as soon as she saw Dr. Conolly began to scream violently, and sprang towards him, thrusting aside the bystanders by main force. Two of the female attendants came immediately up and strove to appease her, holding her back without severity, as a mother would restrain her infant. I saw them struggling with her for some time; how they finally disposed of her I did not observe, but her screams had ceased before we left the ward. Among the patients was one who, we were told, was remarkable for his extravagant love of finery, and whose cell was plastered over with glaring colored prints and patches of colored paper ornamentally disposed. He wore on his hat a broad strip of tarnished lace, and had decorated his waistcoat with several perpendicular rows of pearl buttons. "You have made your room very fine here," said the doctor. "Yes," said he, smiling and evidently delighted, "but, my dear sir, all is vanity--all is vanity, sir, and vexation of spirit. There is but one thing that we ought to strive for, and that is the kingdom of heaven." As there was no disputing this proposition, we passed on to another cell, at the door of which stood a tall, erect personage, who was busy with a pot of paint and a brush, inscribing the pannels with mottoes and scraps of verse. The walls of his room were covered with poetry and pithy sentences. Some of the latter appeared to be of his own composition, and, were not badly turned; their purport generally was this: that birth is but a trivial accident, and that virtue and talent are the only true nobility. This man was found wandering about in Chiswick, full of a plan for educating the Prince of Wales in a manner to enable him to fill the throne with credit and usefulness. As his name could not be learned, the appellation of "Chiswick" was given him, which he had himself adopted, styling himself Mr. "Chiswick" in his mottoes, but always taking care to put the name between inverted commas. As we proceeded, a man rose from his seat, and laying both hands on a table before him, so as to display his fingers, ornamented with rings made of black ribbon, in which glass buttons were set for jewels, addressed Dr. Conolly with great respect, formally setting forth that he was in great want of a new coat for Sundays, the one he had on being positively unfit to appear in, and that a better had been promised him. The doctor stopped, inquired into the case, and the poor fellow was gratified by the assurance that the promised coat should be speedily forthcoming. In his progress through the wards Dr. Conolly listened with great patience to the various complaints of the inmates. One of them came up and told us that he did not think the methods of the institution judicious. "The patients," said he, "are many of them growing worse. One in particular, who has been here for several weeks, I can see is growing worse every day." Dr. Conolly asked the name of this patient--"I can not tell," said the man, "but I can bring him to you." "Bring him then," said the doctor; and after a moment's absence he returned, leading up one of the healthiest and quietest looking men in the ward. "He looks better to be sure," said the man, "but he is really worse." A burst of laughter from the patients who stood by followed this saying, and one of them looking at me knowingly, touched his forehead to intimate that the objector was not exactly in his senses. In one of the female wards we were introduced, as gentlemen from America, to a respectable-looking old lady in black, who sat with a crutch by her side. "Are you not lawyers?" she asked, and when we assured her that we were only Yankees, she rebuked us mildly for assuming such a disguise, when she knew very well that we were a couple of attorneys. "And you, doctor," she added, "I am surprised that you should have any thing to do with such a deception." The doctor answered that he was very sorry she had so bad an opinion of him, as she must be sensible that he had never said any thing to her which was not true. "Ah, doctor," she rejoined, "but you are the dupe of these people." It was in the same ward, I think, that a well-dressed woman, in a bonnet and shawl, was promenading the room, carrying a bible and two smaller volumes, apparently prayer or hymn books. "Have you heard the very reverend Mr. ----, in ---- chapel?" she asked of my fellow-traveller. I have unfortunately forgotten the name of the preacher and his chapel. On being answered in the negative, "Then go and hear him," she added, "when you return to London." She went on to say that the second coming of the Saviour was to take place, and the world to be destroyed in a very few days, and that she had a commission to proclaim the approach of that event. "These poor people," said she, "think that I am here on the same account as themselves, when I am only here to prepare the way for the second coming." "I'm thinking, please yer honor, that it is quite time I was let out of this place," said a voice as we entered one of the wards. Dr. Conolly told me that he had several Irish patients in the asylum, and that they gave him the most trouble on account of the hurry in which they were to be discharged. We heard the same request eagerly made in the same brogue by various other patients of both sexes. As I left this multitude of lunatics, promiscuously gathered from the poor and the reduced class, comprising all varieties of mental disease, from idiocy to madness, yet all of them held in such admirable order by the law of kindness, that to the casual observer most of them betrayed no symptoms of insanity, and of the rest, many appeared to be only very odd people, quietly pursuing their own harmless whims, I could not but feel the highest veneration for the enlightened humanity by which the establishment was directed. I considered, also, if the feeling of personal liberty, the absence of physical restraint, and the power of moral motives, had such power to hold together in perfect peace and order, even a promiscuous band of lunatics, how much greater must be their influence over the minds of men in a state of sanity, and on how false a foundation rest all the governments of force! The true basis of human polity, appointed by God in our nature, is the power of moral motives, which is but another term for public opinion. Of the political controversies which at present agitate the country, the corn-law question is that which calls forth the most feeling; I mean on the part of those who oppose the restrictions on the introduction of foreign grain--for, on the other side, it appears to me that the battle is languidly fought. Nothing can exceed the enthusiasm of the adversaries of the corn-laws. With some of them the repeal of the tax on bread is the remedy for all political evils. "Free trade, free trade," is the burden of their conversation, and although a friend of free trade myself, to the last and uttermost limit, I have been in circles in England, in which I had a little too much of it. Yet this is an example to prove what a strong hold the question has taken of the minds of men, and how completely the thoughts of many are absorbed by it. Against such a feeling as that which has been kindled in Great Britain, on the corn-law question, no law in our country could stand. So far as I can judge, it is spreading, as well as growing stronger. I am told that many of the farmers have become proselytes of the League. The League is a powerful and prodigiously numerous association, with ample and increasing funds, publishing able tracts, supporting well-conducted journals, and holding crowded public meetings, which are addressed by some of the ablest speakers in the United Kingdom. I attended one of these at Covent Garden. Stage, pit, boxes, and gallery of that large building were filled with one of the most respectable-looking audiences, men and women, I have ever seen. Among the speakers of the evening were Cobden and Fox. Cobden in physiognomy and appearance might almost pass for an American, and has a certain New England sharpness and shrewdness in his way of dealing with a subject. His address was argumentative, yet there was a certain popular clearness about it, a fertility of familiar illustration, and an earnest feeling, which made it uncommonly impressive. Fox is one of the most fluent and ingenious speakers I ever heard in a popular assembly. Both were listened to by an audience which seemed to hang on every word that fell from their lips. The musical world here are talking about Colman's improvement in the piano. I have seen the instrument which the inventor brought out from America. It is furnished with a row of brass reeds, like those of the instrument called the Seraphine. These take up the sound made by the string of the piano, and prolong it to any degree which is desired. It is a splicing of the sounds of one instrument upon another. Yet if the invention were to be left where it is, in Colman's instrument, it could not succeed with the public. The notes of the reeds are too harsh and nasal, and want the sweetness and mellowness of tone which belong to the string of the piano. At present the invention is in the hands of Mr. Rand, the portrait painter, a countryman of ours, who is one of the most ingenious mechanicians in the world. He has improved the tones of the reeds till they rival, in softness and fullness, those of the strings, and, in fact, can hardly be distinguished from them, so that the sounds of the two instruments run into one another without any apparent difference. Mr. Rand has contrived three or four different machines for making the reeds with dispatch and precision; and if the difficulty of keeping the strings, which are undergoing a constant relaxation, in perfect unison with the reeds can be overcome, I see nothing to prevent the most complete and brilliant success. Letter XXVII. Changes in Paris. Paris, _August_ 9, 1845. My last letter was dated at London, in my passage across England. I have been nearly a fortnight in Paris. In ten years I find a considerable change in the external aspect of this great capital. The streets are cleaner, in many of them sidewalks have been made, not always the widest to be sure, but smoothly floored with the asphaltum of Seyssel, which answers the purpose admirably; the gutters have been removed from the middle of the street to the edge of the curbstone, and lately the curbstone has been made to project over them, so that the foot-passengers may escape the bespattering from carriage-wheels which he would otherwise be sure to get in a rainy day, and there are many such days in this climate--it has rained every day but one since I entered France. New passages have been cut from street to street, old streets have been made wider, new streets have been made, with broad sidewalks, and stately rows of houses hewn from the easily wrought cream-colored stone of the quarries of the Seine. The sidewalks of the Boulevards, and all the public squares, wherever carriages do not pass, have been covered with this smooth asphaltic pavement, and in the Boulevards have been erected some magnificent buildings, with richly carved pilasters and other ornaments in relief, and statues in niches, and balconies supported by stone brackets wrought into bunches of foliage. New columns and statues have been set up, and new fountains pour out their waters. Among these is the fountain of Molière, in the Rue Richelieu, where the effigy of the comic author, chiseled from black marble, with flowing periwig and broad-skirted coat, presides over a group of naked allegorical figures in white marble, at whose feet the water is gushing out. In external morality also, there is some improvement; public gaming-houses no longer exist, and there are fewer of those uncleanly nuisances which offend against the code of what Addison calls the lesser morals. The police have had orders to suppress them on the Boulevards and the public squares. The Parisians are, however, the same gay people as ever, and as easily amused as when I saw them last. They crowd in as great numbers to the opera and the theatres; the Boulevards, though better paved, are the same lively places; the guingettes are as thronged; the public gardens are as full of dancers. In these, as at the New Tivoli, lately opened at Chateau Rouge in the suburbs, a broad space made smooth for the purpose is left between tents, where the young grisettes of Paris, married and unmarried, or in that equivocal state which lies somewhere between, dance on Sunday evening till midnight. At an earlier hour on the same day, as well as on other days, at old Franconi's Hippodrome, among the trees, just beyond the triumphal arch of Neuilly, imitations of the steeple chase, with female riders who leap over hedges, and of the ancient chariot-races with charioteers helmeted and mailed, and standing in gilt tubs on wheels, are performed in a vast amphiteatre, to a crowd that could scarcely have been contained in the Colosseum of Home. I have heard since I came here, two or three people lamenting the physical degeneracy of the Parisians. One of them quoted a saying from a report of Marshal Soult, that the Parisian recruits for the army of late years were neither men nor soldiers. This seems to imply a moral as well as a physical deterioration. "They are growing smaller and smaller in stature," said the gentleman who made this quotation, "and it is difficult to find among them men who are of the proper height to serve as soldiers. The principal cause no doubt is in the prevailing licentiousness. Among that class who make the greater part of the population of Paris, the women of the finest persons rarely become mothers." Whatever may be the cause, I witnessed a remarkable example of the smallness of the Parisian stature on the day of my arrival, which was the last of the three days kept in memory of the revolution of July. I went immediately to the Champs Elysées, to see the people engaged in their amusements. Some twenty boys, not fully grown, as it seemed to me at first, were dancing and capering with great agility, to the music of an instrument. Looking at them nearer, I saw that those who had seemed to me boys of fourteen or fifteen, were mature young men, some of them with very fierce mustaches. Since my arrival I have seen the picture which Vanderlyn is painting for the Rotunda at Washington. It represents the Landing of Columbus on the shores of the New World. The great discoverer, accompanied by his lieutenant and others, is represented as taking possession of the newly found country. Some of the crew are seen scrambling for what they imagine to be gold dust in the sands of the shore, and at a little distance among the trees are the naked natives, in attitudes of wonder and worship. The grouping is happy, the expression and action skillfully varied--the coloring, so far as I could judge in the present state of the picture, agreeable. "Eight or ten weeks hard work," said the artist, "will complete it." It is Vanderlyn's intention to finish it, and take it to the United States in the course of the autumn. Letter XXVIII. A Journey through The Netherlands. Arnheim, Guelderland, _August_ 19, 1848. After writing my last I was early asleep, that I might set out early the next morning in the diligence for Brussels. This I did, and passing through Compeigne, where Joan of Arc was made prisoner--a town lying in the midst of extensive forests, with here and there a noble group of trees; and through Noyon, where Calvin was born, and in the old Gothic church of which he doubtless worshiped; and through Cambray, where Fenelon lived; and through fields of grain and poppy and clover, where women were at work, reaping the wheat, or mowing and stacking the ripe poppies, or digging with spades in their wet clothes, for it had rained every day but one during the thirteen we were in France, we arrived in the afternoon of the second day at the French frontier. From this a railway took us in a few hours to Brussels. Imagine a rather clean-looking city, of large light-colored buildings mostly covered with stucco, situated on an irregular declivity, with a shady park in the highest part surrounded by palaces, and a little lower down a fine old Gothic cathedral, and still lower down, the old Town Hall, also of Gothic architecture, and scarcely less venerable, standing in a noble paved square, around which are white and stately edifices, built in the era of the Spanish dominion;--imagine handsome shops and a good-looking people, with a liberal sprinkling of priests, in their long-skirted garments, and throw in the usual proportion of dirt and misery, and mendicancy, in the corners and by-places, and you have Brussels before you. It still rained, but we got a tilbury and drove out to see the battle-ground of Waterloo. It was a dreary drive beside the wood of Soignes and through a part of it,--that melancholy-looking forest of tall-stemmed beeches--beech, beech, nothing but beech--and through the Walloon villages--Waterloo is one of them--and through fields where wet women were at work, and over roads where dirty children by dozens were dabbling like ducks in the puddles. At last we stopped at the village of Mont St. Jean, whence we walked through the slippery mud to the mound erected in the midst of the battle-field, and climbed to its top, overlooking a country of gentle declivities and hollows. Here the various positions of the French and allied armies during the battle which decided the fate of an empire, were pointed out to us by a young Walloon who sold wine and drams in a shed beside the monument. The two races which make up the population of Belgium are still remarkably distinct, notwithstanding the centuries which have elapsed since they occupied the same country together. The Flemings of Teutonic origin, keep their blue eyes and fair hair, and their ancient language--the same nearly as the Dutch of the sixteenth century. The Walloons, a Celtic race, or Celtic mixed with Roman, are still known by their dark hair and black eyes, and speak a dialect derived from the Latin, resembling that of some of the French provinces. Both languages are uncultivated, and the French has been adopted as the language of commerce and literature in Belgium. If you would see a city wholly Flemish in its character, you should visit Antwerp, to which the railway takes you in an hour and a half. The population here is almost without Walloon intermixture, and there is little to remind you of what you have seen in France, except the French books in the booksellers' windows. The arts themselves have a character of their own which never came across the Alps. The churches, the interior of which is always carefully kept fresh with paint and gilding, are crowded with statues in wood, carved with wonderful skill and spirit by Flemish artists, in centuries gone by--oaken saints looking down from pedestals, and Adam and Eve in the remorse of their first transgression supporting, by the help of the tree of knowledge and the serpent, a curiously wrought pulpit. The walls are hung with pictures by the Flemish masters, wherever space can be found for them. In the Cathedral, is the Descent from the Cross, by Rubens, which proves, what one might almost doubt who had only seen his pictures in the Louvre, that he was a true artist and a man of genius in the noblest sense of the term. We passed two nights in Antwerp, and then went down the Scheldt in a steamer, which, in ten hours, brought us to Rotterdam, sometimes crossing an arm of the sea, and sometimes threading a broad canal. The houses on each side of these channels, after we entered Holland, were for the most part freshly painted; the flat plains on each side protected by embankments, and streaked by long wide ditches full of water, and rows of pollard willows. Windmills by scores, some grinding corn, but most of them pumping water out of the meadows and pouring it into the channel, stood on the bank and were swinging their long arms madly in a high wind. On arriving at Rotterdam, you perceive at once that you are in Holland. The city has as many canals as streets, the canals are generally overhung with rows of elms, and the streets kept scrupulously clean with the water of the canals, which is salt. Every morning there is a vigorous splashing and mopping performed before every door by plump servant girls, in white caps and thick wooden shoes. Our hotel stood fronting a broad sheet of water like the lagoons at Venice, where a solid and straight stone wharf was shaded with a row of elms, and before our door lay several huge vessels fastened to the wharf, which looked as if they were sent thither to enjoy a vacation, for they were neither loading nor unloading, nor did any person appear to be busy about them. Rotterdam was at that time in the midst of a fair which filled the open squares and the wider streets of the city with booths, and attracted crowds of people from the country. There were damsels from North Holland, fair as snow, and some of them pretty, in long-eared lace caps, with their plump arms bare; and there were maidens from another province, the name of which I did not learn, equally good-looking, with arms as bare, and faces in white muslin caps drawn to a point on each cheek. Olycoeks were frying, and waffles baking in temporary kitchens on each side of the streets. The country about Rotterdam is little better than a marsh. The soil serves only for pasture, and the fields are still covered with "yellow blossoms," as in the time of Goldsmith, and still tufted with willows. I saw houses in the city standing in pools of dull blue water, reached by a bridge from the street: I suppose, however, there might be gardens behind them. Many of the houses decline very much from the perpendicular; they are, however, apparently well-built and are spacious. We made no long stay in Rotterdam, but after looking at its bronze statue of Erasmus, and its cathedral, which is not remarkable in any other respect than that it is a Gothic building of brick, stone being scarce in Holland, we took the stage-coach for the Hague the next day. Green meadows spotted with buttercups and dandelions, flat and low, lower than the canals with which the country is intersected, and which bring in between them, at high tide, the waters of the distant sea, stretched on every side. They were striped with long lines of water which is constantly pumped out by the windmills, and sent with the ebb tide through the canals to the ocean. Herds of cattle were feeding among the bright verdure. From time to time, we passed some pleasant country-seat, the walls bright with paint, and the grounds surrounded by a ditch, call it a moat if you please, the surface of which was green with duck-weed. But within this watery inclosure, were little artificial elevations covered with a closely-shaven turf, and plantations of shrubbery, and in the more extensive and ostentatious of them, were what might be called groves and forests. Before one of these houses was a fountain with figures, mouths of lions and other animals, gushing profusely with water, which must have been pumped up for the purpose, into a reservoir, by one of the windmills. Passing through Schiedam, still famous for its gin, and Delft, once famous for its crockery, we reached in a couple of hours the Hague, the cleanest of cities, paved with yellow brick, and as full of canals as Rotterdam. I called on an old acquaintance, who received me with a warm embrace and a kiss on each cheek. He was in his morning-gown, which he immediately exchanged for an elegant frock coat of the latest Parisian cut, and took us to see Baron Vorstolk's collection of pictures, which contains some beautiful things by the Flemish artists, and next, to the public collection called the Museum. From this we drove to the Chateau du Bois, a residence of the Dutch Stadtholders two hundred years ago, when Holland was a republic, and a powerful and formidable one. It is pleasantly situated in the edge of a wood, which is said to be part of an original forest of the country. I could believe this, for here the soil rises above the marshy level of Holland, and trees of various kinds grow irregularly intermingled, as in the natural woods of our own country. The Chateau du Bois is principally remarkable for a large room with a dome, the interior of which is covered with large paintings by Rubens, Jordaens, and other artists. Our friend took leave of us, and we drove out to Scheveling, where Charles II. embarked for England, when he returned to take possession of his throne. Here dwell a people who supply the fish-market of the Hague, speak among themselves a dialect which is not understood elsewhere in Holland, and wear the same costume which they wore centuries ago. We passed several of the women going to market or returning, with large baskets on their heads, placed on the crown of a broad-brimmed straw bonnet, tied at the sides under the chin, and strapping creatures they were, striding along in their striped black and white petticoats. In the streets of Scheveling, I saw the tallest woman I think I ever met with, a very giantess, considerably more than six feet high, straddling about the street of the little village, and scouring and scrubbing the pavement with great energy. Close at hand was the shore; a strong west wind was driving the surges of the North Sea against it. A hundred fishing vessels rocking in the surf, moored and lashed together with ropes, formed a line along the beach; the men of Scheveling, in knit woollen caps, short blue jackets, and short trowsers of prodigious width, were walking about on the shore, but the wind was too high and the sea too wild for them to venture out. Along this coast, the North Sea has heaped a high range of sand-hills, which protect the low lands within from its own inundations; but to the north and south the shore is guarded by embankments, raised by the hand of man with great cost, and watched and kept in constant repair. We left the Hague, and taking the railway, in a little more than two hours were at Amsterdam, a great commercial city in decay, where nearly half of the inhabitants live on the charity of the rest. The next morning was Sunday, and taking advantage of an interval of fair weather, for it still continued to rain every day, I went to the Oudekerk, or Old Church, as the ancient Cathedral is called, which might have been an impressive building in its original construction, but is now spoiled by cross-beams, paint, galleries, partitions, pews, and every sort of architectural enormity. But there is a noble organ, with a massive and lofty front of white marble richly sculptured, occupying the west end of the chancel. I listened to a sermon in Dutch, the delivery of which, owing partly to the disagreeable voice of the speaker and partly no doubt to my ignorance of the language, seemed to me a kind of barking. The men all wore their hats during the service, but half the women were without bonnets. When the sermon and prayer were over, the rich tones of the organ broke forth and flooded the place with melody. Every body visits Broek, near Amsterdam, the pride of Dutch villages, and to Broek I went accordingly. It stands like the rest, among dykes and canals, but consists altogether of the habitations of persons in comfortable circumstances, and is remarkable, as you know, for its scrupulous cleanliness. The common streets and footways, are kept in the same order as the private garden-walks. They are paved with yellow bricks, and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared as if just washed and mopped. I have never seen any collection of human habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses. Saardam, where Peter the Great began his apprenticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a shelf within the wall, from which a door opens into the room. I should have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another. They were dairy houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into butter. The lower story of the dwelling, paved with bricks, is used in winter as a stable for the cattle; in the summer, it is carefully cleansed and painted, so that not a trace of its former use remains, and it then becomes both the dairy and the abode of the family. The story above is as neat as the hands of Dutch housewives can make it; the parlor, the dining-room, the little boxes in the wall which hold the beds, are resplendent with cleanliness. In going from Amsterdam by railway to Utrecht, we perceived the canals by which the plains were intersected became fewer and fewer, and finally we began to see crops of grain and potatoes, a sign that we had emerged from the marshes. We stopped to take a brief survey of Utrecht. A part of its old cathedral has been converted into a beautiful Gothic church, the rest having been levelled many years ago by a whirlwind. But what I found most remarkable in the city was its public walks. The old walls by which Utrecht was once inclosed having been thrown down, the rubbish has formed hillocks and slopes which almost surround the entire city and border one of its principal canals. On these hillocks and slopes, trees and shrubs have been planted, and walks laid out through the green turf, until it has become one of the most varied and charming pleasure-grounds I ever saw--swelling into little eminences, sinking into little valleys, descending in some places smoothly to the water, and in others impending over it. We fell in with a music-master, of whom we asked a question or two. He happened to know a little German, by the help of which he pieced out his Dutch so as to make it tolerably intelligible to me. He insisted upon showing us every thing remarkable in Utrecht, and finally walked us tired. The same evening the diligence brought us to Arnheim, a neat-looking town with about eighteen hundred inhabitants, in the province of Guelderland, where the region retains not a trace of the peculiarities of Holland. The country west of the town rises into commanding eminences, overlooking the noble Rhine, and I feel already that I am in Germany, though I have yet to cross the frontier. Letter XXIX. American Artists Abroad. Rome, _October_, 1845. You would perhaps like to hear what the American artists on the continent are doing. I met with Leutze at Düsseldorf. After a sojourn of some days in Holland, in which I was obliged to talk to the Dutchmen in German and get my answers in Dutch, with but a dim apprehension of each other's meaning, as you may suppose, on both sides; after being smoked through and through like a herring, with the fumes of bad tobacco in the railway wagons, and in the diligence which took us over the long and monotonous road on the plains of the Rhine between Arnheim and Düsseldorf--after dodging as well as we were able, the English travellers, generally the most disagreeable of the travelling tribe, who swarm along the Rhine in the summer season, it was a refreshment to stop a day at Düsseldorf and take breath, and meet an American face or two. We found Leutze engaged upon a picture, the subject of which is John Knox reproving Queen Mary. It promises to be a capital work. The stern gravity of Knox, the embarrassment of the Queen, and the scorn with which the French damsels of her court regard the saucy Reformer, are extremely well expressed, and tell the story impressively. At Düsseldorf, which is the residence of so many eminent painters, we expected to find some collection, or at least some of the best specimens, of the works of the modern German school. It was not so, however--fine pictures are painted at Düsseldorf, but they are immediately carried elsewhere. We visited the studio of Schröter--a man with humor in every line of his face, who had nothing to show us but a sketch, just prepared for the easel, of the scene in Goëthe's Faust, where Mephistophiles, in Auerbach's cellar, bores the edge of the table with a gimlet, and a stream of champagne gushes out. Köhler, an eminent artist, allowed us to see a clever painting on his easel, in a state of considerable forwardness, representing the rejoicings of the Hebrew maidens at the victory of David over Goliath. At Lessing's--a painter whose name stands in the first rank, and whom we did not find at home--we saw a sketch on which he was engaged, representing the burning of John Huss; yet it was but a sketch, a painting in embryo. But I am wandering from the American artists. At Cologne, whither we were accompanied by Leutze, he procured us the sight of his picture of Columbus before the Council of Salamanca, one of his best. Leutze ranks high in Germany, as a young man of promise, devoting himself with great energy and earnestness to his art. At Florence we found Greenough just returned from a year's residence at Graefenberg, whence he had brought back his wife, a patient of Priessnitz and the water cure, in florid health. He is now applying himself to the completion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and her infant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them. Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms, holding them back, in such a manner that he has no command of their muscles, even for the purpose of freeing himself. Besides the particular incident represented by the group, it may pass for an image of the aboriginal race of America overpowered and rendered helpless by the civilized race. Greenough's statue of Washington is not as popular as it deserves to be; but the work on which he is now engaged I am very sure will meet with a different reception. In a letter from London, I spoke of the beautiful figure of the Greek slave, by Powers. At Florence I saw in his studio, the original model, from which his workmen were cutting two copies in marble. At the same place I saw his Proserpine, an ideal bust of great sweetness and beauty, the fair chest swelling out from a circle of leaves of the acanthus. About this also the workmen were busy, and I learned that seven copies of it had been recently ordered from the hand of the artist. By its side stood the unfinished statue of Eve, with the fatal apple in her hand, an earlier work, which the world has just begun to admire. I find that connoisseurs are divided in opinion concerning the merit of Powers as a sculptor. All allow him the highest degree of skill in execution, but some deny that he has shown equal ability in his conceptions. "He is confessedly," said one of them to me, who, however, had not seen his Greek slave, "the greatest sculptor of busts in the world--equal, in fact, to any that the world ever saw; the finest heads of antiquity are not of a higher order than his." He then went on to express his regret that Powers had not confined his labors to a department in which he was so pre-eminent. I have heard that Powers, who possesses great mechanical skill, has devised several methods of his own for giving precision and perfection to the execution of his works. It may be that my unlearned eyes are dazzled by this perfection, but really I can not imagine any thing more beautiful of its kind than his statue of the Greek slave. Gray is at this moment in Florence, though he is soon coming to Rome. He has made some copies from Titian, one of which I saw. It was a Madonna and child, in which the original painting was rendered with all the fidelity of a mirror. So indisputably was it a Titian, and so free from the stiffness of a copy, that, as I looked at it, I fully sympathized with the satisfaction expressed by the artist at having attained the method of giving with ease the peculiarity of coloring which belongs to Titian's pictures. An American landscape painter of high merit is G. L. Brown, now residing at Florence. He possesses great knowledge of detail, which he knows how to keep in its place, subduing it, and rendering it subservient to the general effect. I saw in his studio two or three pictures, in which I admired his skill in copying the various forms of foliage and other objects, nor was I less pleased to see that he was not content with this sort of merit, but, in going back from the foreground, had the art of passing into that appearance of an infinity of forms and outlines which the eye meets with in nature. I could not help regretting that one who copied nature so well, should not prefer to represent her as she appears in our own fresh and glorious land, instead of living in Italy and painting Italian landscapes. To refer again to foreign artists--before I left Florence I visited the annual exhibition which had been opened in the Academy of the Fine Arts. There were one or two landscapes reminding me somewhat of Cole's manner, but greatly inferior, and one or two good portraits, and two or three indifferent historical pictures. The rest appeared to me decidedly bad; wretched landscapes; portraits, some of which were absolutely hideous, stiff, ill-colored, and full of grimace. Here at Rome, we have an American sculptor of great ability, Henry K. Brown, who is just beginning to be talked about. He is executing a statue of Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, of which the model has been ready for some months, and is also modelling a figure of Rebecca at the Well. When I first saw his Ruth I was greatly struck with it, but after visiting the studios of Wyatt and Gibson, and observing their sleek imitations of Grecian art, their learned and faultless statues, nymphs or goddesses or gods of the Greek mythology, it was with infinite pleasure that my eyes rested again on the figure and face of Ruth, perhaps not inferior in perfection of form, but certainly informed with a deep human feeling which I found not in their elaborate works. The artist has chosen the moment in which Ruth is addressed by Boaz as she stands among the gleaners. He quoted to me the lines of Keats, on the song of the nightingale-- "Perchance the self-same song that found a path To the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien's corn." She is not in tears, but her aspect is that of one who listens in sadness; her eyes are cast down, and her thoughts are of the home of her youth, in the land of Moab. Over her left arm hangs a handful of ears of wheat, which she has gathered from the ground, and her right rests on the drapery about her bosom. Nothing can be more graceful than her attitude or more expressive of melancholy sweetness and modesty than her physiognomy. One of the copies which the artist was executing--there were two of them--is designed for a gentleman in Albany. Brown will shortly, or I am greatly mistaken, achieve a high reputation among the sculptors of the time. Rosseter, an American painter, who has passed six years in Italy, is engaged on a large picture, the subject of which is taken from the same portion of Scripture history, and which is intended for the gallery of an American gentleman. It represents Naomi with her two daughters-in-law, when "Orpah kissed her, but Ruth clave unto her." The principal figures are those of the Hebrew matron and Ruth, who have made their simple preparations for their journey to the land of Israel, while Orpah is turning sorrowfully away to join a caravan of her country people. This group is well composed, and there is a fine effect of the rays of the rising sun on the mountains and rocks of Moab. At the studio of Lang, a Philadelphia artist, I saw two agreeable pictures, one of which represents a young woman whom her attendants and companions are arraying for her bridal. As a companion piece to this, but not yet finished, he had upon the easel a picture of a beautiful girl, decked for espousals of a different kind, about to take the veil, and kneeling in the midst of a crowd of friends and priests, while one of them is cutting off her glossy and flowing hair. Both pictures are designed for a Boston gentleman, but a duplicate of the first has already been painted for the King of Wirtemberg. Letter XXX. Buffalo.--Cleveland.--Detroit. Steamer Oregon, Lake Huron, Off Thunder Bay, _July_ 24, 1846. As I approached the city of Buffalo the other morning, from the east, I found myself obliged to confess that much of the beauty of a country is owing to the season. For twenty or thirty miles before we reached Lake Erie, the fields of this fertile region looked more and more arid and sun-scorched, and I could not but contrast their appearance with that of the neighborhood of New York, where in a district comparatively sterile, an uncommonly showery season has kept the herbage fresh and deep, and made the trees heavy with leaves. Here, on the contrary, I saw meadows tinged by the drought with a reddish hue, pastures grazed to the roots of the grass, and trees spreading what seemed to me a meagre shade. Yet the harvests of wheat, and even of hay, in western New York, are said to be by no means scanty. Buffalo continues to extend on every side, but the late additions to the city do not much improve its beauty. Its nucleus of well-built streets does not seem to have grown much broader within the last five years, but the suburbs are rapidly spreading--small wooden houses, scattered or in clusters, built hastily for emigrants along unpaved and powdery streets. I saw, however, on a little excursion which I made into the surrounding country, that pleasant little neighborhoods are rising up at no great distance, with their neat houses, their young trees, and their new shrubbery. They have a fine building material at Buffalo--a sort of brown stone, easily wrought--but I was sorry to see that most of the houses built of it, both in the town and country, seemed to have stood for several years. We visited the new fort which the government is erecting on the lake, a little to the north of the town, commanding the entrance of Niagara river. It is small, but of wonderful apparent strength, with walls of prodigious thickness, and so sturdy in its defences that it seemed to me one might as well think of cannonading the cliffs of Weehawken. It is curious to see how, as we grow more ingenious in the means of attack, we devise more effectual means of defence. A castle of the middle ages, in which a grim warrior of that time would hold his enemies at bay for years, would now be battered down before breakfast. The finest old forts of the last century are now found to be unsafe against attack. That which we have at St. Augustine was an uncommonly good sample of its kind, but when I was in Florida, three or four years since, an engineer of the United States was engaged in reconstructing it. Do mankind gain any thing by these improvements, as they are called, in the art of war? Do not these more dreadful engines of attack on the one side, and these more perfect means of protection on the other, leave the balance just where it was before? On Tuesday evening, at seven o'clock, we took passage in the steamer Oregon, for Chicago, and soon lost sight of the roofs and spires of Buffalo. A lady of Buffalo on her way to Cleveland placed herself at the piano, and sang several songs with such uncommon sweetness and expression that I saw no occasion to be surprised at what I heard of the concert of Leopold de Meyer, at Buffalo, the night before. The concert room was crowded with people clinging to each other like bees when they swarm, and the whole affair seemed an outbreak of popular enthusiasm. A veteran teacher of music in Buffalo, famous for being hard to be pleased by any public musical entertainment, found himself unable to sit still during the first piece played by De Meyer, but rose, in the fullness of his delight, and continued standing. When the music ceased, he ran to him and shook both of his hands, again and again, with most uncomfortable energy. At the end of the next performance he sprang again on the platform and hugged the artist so rapturously that the room rang with laughter. De Meyer was to give another concert on Tuesday evening at Niagara Falls, and the people of Buffalo were preparing to follow him. The tastes of our people are certainly much changed within the last twenty years. A friend of ours used to relate, as a good joke, the conversation of two men, who came to the conclusion that Paganini was the greatest man in the world. They were only a little in advance of their age. If such are the honors reaped by De Meyer, we shall not be astonished if Sivori, when he comes over, passes for the greatest man of his time. The next morning found us with the southern shore of Lake Erie in sight--a long line of woods, with here and there a cluster of habitations on the shore. "That village where you see the light-house," said one of the passengers, who came from the hills of Maine, "is Grand River, and from that place to Cleveland, which is thirty miles distant, you have the most beautiful country under the sun--perfectly beautiful, sir; not a hill the whole way, and the finest farms that were ever seen; you can buy a good farm there for two thousand dollars." In two or three hours afterward we were at Cleveland, and I hastened on shore. It is situated beyond a steep bank of the lake, nearly as elevated as the shore at Brooklyn, which we call Brooklyn Heights. As I stood on the edge of this bank and looked over the broad lake below me, stretching beyond the sight and quivering in the summer wind, I was reminded of the lines of Southey: --"Along the bending line of shore Such hue is thrown as when the peacock's neck Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst, Embathed in emerald glory." But it was not only along the line of the shore that these hues prevailed; the whole lake glowed with soft amethystine and emerald tinges, in irregular masses, like the shades of watered silk. Cleveland stands in that beautiful country without a hill, of which my fellow-passenger spoke--a thriving village yet to grow into a proud city of the lake country. It is built upon broad dusty ways, in which not a pebble is seen in the fat dark earth of the lake shore, and which are shaded with locust-trees, the variety called seed-locust, with crowded twigs and clustered foliage--a tree chosen, doubtless, for its rapid growth, as the best means of getting up a shade at the shortest notice. Here and there were gardens filled with young fruit-trees; among the largest and hardiest in appearance was the peach-tree, which here spreads broad and sturdy branches, escapes the diseases that make it a short-lived tree in the Atlantic states, and produces fruit of great size and richness. One of my fellow-passengers could hardly find adequate expressions to signify his high sense of the deliciousness of the Cleveland peaches. I made my way to a street of shops: it had a busy appearance, more so than usual, I was told, for a company of circus-riders, whose tents I had seen from a distance on the lake, was in town, and this had attracted a throng of people from the country. I saw a fruit-stall tended by a man who had the coarsest red hair I think I ever saw, and of whom I bought two or three enormous "bough apples," as he called them. He apologized for the price he demanded. "The farmers," said he, "know that just now there is a call for their early fruit, while the circus people are in town, and they make me pay a 'igh price for it." I told him I perceived he was no Yankee. "I am a Londoner," he replied; "and I left London twelve years ago to slave and be a poor man in Ohio." He acknowledged, however, that he had two or three times got together some property, "but the Lord," he said, "laid his hand on it." On returning to the steamer, I found a party of country people, mostly young persons of both sexes, thin and lank figures, by no means equal, as productions of the country, to their bough apples. They passed through the fine spacious cabin on the upper deck, extending between the state-rooms the whole length of the steamer. At length they came to a large mirror, which stood at the stern, and seemed by its reflection to double the length of the cabin. They walked on, as if they would extend their promenade into the mirror, when suddenly observing the reflection of their own persons advancing, and thinking it another party, they politely made way to let it pass. The party in the mirror at the same moment turned to the same side, which first showed them the mistake they had made. The passengers had some mirth at their expense, but I must do our visitors the justice to say that they joined in the laugh with a very good grace. The same evening, at twelve o'clock, we were at Detroit. "You must lock your state-rooms in the night," said one of the persons employed about the vessel, "for Detroit is full of thieves." We followed the advice, slept soundly, and saw nothing of the thieves, nor of Detroit either, for the steamboat was again on her passage through Lake St. Clair at three this morning, and when I awoke we were moving over the flats, as they are called, at the upper end of the lake. The steamer was threading her way in a fog between large patches of sedge of a pea-green color. We had waited several hours at Detroit, because this passage is not safe at night, and steamers of a larger size are sometimes grounded here in the day-time. I had hoped, when I began, to bring down the narrative of my voyage to this moment, but my sheet is full, and I shall give you the remainder in another letter. Letter XXXI. A Trip from Detroit to Mackinaw. Steamer Oregon, Lake Michigan, _July_ 25, 1846. Soon after passing the flats described in my last letter, and entering the river St. Clair, the steamer stopped to take in wood on the Canadian side. Here I went on shore. All that we could see of the country was a road along the bank, a row of cottages at a considerable distance from each other along the road, a narrow belt of cleared fields behind them, and beyond the fields the original forest standing like a long lofty wall, with its crowded stems of enormous size and immense height, rooted in the strong soil--ashes and maples and elms, the largest of their species. Scattered in the foreground were numbers of leafless elms, so huge that the settlers, as if in despair of bringing them to the ground by the ax, had girdled them and left them to decay and fall at their leisure. We went up to one of the houses, before which stood several of the family attracted to the door by the sight of our steamer. Among them was an intelligent-looking man, originally from the state of New York, who gave quick and shrewd answers to our inquiries. He told us of an Indian settlement about twenty miles further up the St. Clair. Here dwell a remnant of the Chippewa tribe, collected by the Canadian government, which has built for them comfortable log-houses with chimneys, furnished them with horses and neat cattle, and utensils of agriculture, erected a house of worship, and given them a missionary. "The design of planting them here," saidth esettler, "was to encourage them to cultivate the soil." "And what has been the success of the plan?" I asked. "It has met with no success at all," he answered. "The worst thing that the government could do for these people is to give them every thing as it has done, and leave them under no necessity to provide for themselves. They chop over a little land, an acre or two to a family; their squaws plant a little corn and a few beans, and this is the extent of their agriculture. They pass their time in hunting and fishing, or in idleness. They find deer and bears in the woods behind them, and fish in the St. Clair before their doors, and they squander their yearly pensions. In one respect they are just like white men, they will not work if they can live without." "What fish do they find in the St. Clair?" "Various sorts. Trout and white-fish are the finest, but they are not so abundant at this season. Sturgeon and pike are just now in season, and the pike are excellent." One of us happening to observe that the river might easily be crossed by swimming, the settler answered: "Not so easily as you might think. The river is as cold as a well, and the swimmer would soon be chilled through, and perhaps taken with the cramp. It is this coldness of the water which makes the fish so fine at this season." This mention of sturgeons tempts me to relate an anecdote which I heard as I was coming up the Hudson. A gentleman who lived east of the river, a little back of Tivoli, caught last spring one of these fish, which weighed about a hundred and sixty pounds. He carried it to a large pond near his house, the longest diameter of which is about a mile, and without taking it out of the net in which he had caught it, he knotted part of the meshes closely around it, and attaching them to a pair of lines like reins, put the creature into the water. To the end of the lines he had taken care to attach a buoy, to mark the place of the fish in the pond. He keeps a small boat, and when he has a mind to make a water-excursion, he rows to the place where the buoy is floating, ties the lines to the boat and, pulling them so as to disturb the fish, is drawn backward and forward with great rapidity over the surface. The pond, in its deepest part, has only seven feet water, so that there is no danger of being dragged under. We now proceeded up the river, and in about two hours came to a neat little village on the British side, with a windmill, a little church, and two or three little cottages, prettily screened by young trees. Immediately beyond this was the beginning of the Chippewa settlement of which we had been told. Log-houses, at the distance of nearly a quarter of a mile from each other, stood in a long row beside the river, with scattered trees about them, the largest of the forest, some girdled and leafless, some untouched and green, the smallest trees between having been cut away. Here and there an Indian woman, in a blue dress and bare-headed, was walking along the road; cows and horses were grazing near the houses; patches of maize were seen, tended in a slovenly manner and by no means clear of bushes, but nobody was at work in the fields. Two females came down to the bank, with paddles, and put off into the river in a birch-bark canoe, the ends of which were carved in the peculiar Indian fashion. A little beyond stood a group of boys and girls on the water's edge, the boys in shirts and leggins, silently watching the steamer as it shot by them. Still further on a group of children of both sexes, seven in number, came running with shrill cries down the bank. It was then about twelve o'clock, and the weather was extremely sultry. The boys in an instant threw off their shirts and leggins, and plunged into the water with shouts, but the girls were in before them, for they wore only a kind of petticoat which they did not take off, but cast themselves into the river at once and slid through the clear water like seals. This little Indian colony on the edge of the forest extends for several miles along the river, where its banks are highest and best adapted to the purpose of settlement. It ends at last just below the village which bears the name of Fort Saranae, in the neighborhood of which I was shown an odd-looking wooden building, and was told that this was the house of worship provided for the Indians by the government. At Fort Huron, a village on the American side, opposite to Fort Saranae, we stopped to land passengers. Three Indians made their appearance on the shore, one of whom, a very large man, wore a kind of turban, and a white blanket made into a sort of frock, with bars of black in several places, altogether a striking costume. One of this party, a well-dressed young man, stopped to speak with somebody in the crowd on the wharf, but the giant in the turban, with his companion, strode rapidly by, apparently not deigning to look at us, and disappeared in the village. He was scarcely out of sight when I perceived a boat approaching the shore with a curiously mottled sail. As it came nearer I saw that it was a quilt of patchwork taken from a bed. In the bottom of the boat lay a barrel, apparently of flour, a stout young fellow pulled a pair of oars, and a slender-waisted damsel, neatly dressed, sat in the stern, plying a paddle with a dexterity which she might have learned from the Chippewa ladies, and guiding the course of the boat which passed with great speed over the water. We were soon upon the broad waters of Lake Huron, and when the evening closed upon us we were already out of sight of land. The next morning I was awakened by the sound of rain on the hurricane deck. A cool east wind was blowing. I opened the outer door of my state-room, and snuffed the air which was strongly impregnated with the odor of burnt leaves or grass, proceeding, doubtless, from the burning of woods or prairies somewhere on the shores of the lake. For mile after mile, for hour after hour, as we flew through the mist, the same odor was perceptible: the atmosphere of the lake was full of it. "Will it rain all day?" I asked of a fellow-passenger, a Salem man, in a white cravat. "The clouds are thin," he answered; "the sun will soon burn them off." In fact, the sun soon melted away the clouds, and before ten o'clock I was shown, to the north of us, the dim shore of the Great Manitoulin Island, with the faintly descried opening called the West Strait, through which a throng of speculators in copper mines are this summer constantly passing to the Sault de Ste. Marie. On the other side was the sandy isle of Bois Blanc, the name of which is commonly corrupted into Bob Low Island, thickly covered with pines, and showing a tall light-house on the point nearest us. Beyond another point lay like a cloud the island of Mackinaw. I had seen it once before, but now the hazy atmosphere magnified it into a lofty mountain; its limestone cliffs impending over the water seemed larger; the white fort--white as snow--built from the quarries of the island, looked more commanding, and the rocky crest above it seemed almost to rise to the clouds. There was a good deal of illusion in all this, as we were convinced as we came nearer, but Mackinaw with its rocks rising from the most transparent waters that the earth pours out from her springs, is a stately object in any condition of the atmosphere. The captain of our steamer allowed us but a moment at Mackinaw; a moment to gaze into the clear waters, and count the fish as they played about without fear twenty or thirty feet below our steamer, as plainly seen as if they lay in the air; a moment to look at the fort on the heights, dazzling the eyes with its new whiteness; a moment to observe the habitations of this ancient village, some of which show you roofs and walls of red-cedar bark confined by horizontal strips of wood, a kind of architecture between the wigwam and the settler's cabin. A few baskets of fish were lifted on board, in which I saw trout of enormous size, trout a yard in length, and white-fish smaller, but held perhaps in higher esteem, and we turned our course to the straits which lead into Lake Michigan. I remember hearing a lady say that she was tired of improvements, and only wanted to find a place that was finished, where she might live in peace. I think I shall recommend Mackinaw to her. I saw no change in the place since my visit to it five years ago. It is so lucky as to have no _back-country_, it offers no advantages to speculation of any sort; it produces, it is true, the finest potatoes in the world, but none for exportation. It may, however, on account of its very cool summer climate, become a fashionable watering-place, in which case it must yield to the common fate of American villages and improve, as the phrase is. Letter XXXII. Journey from Detroit to Princeton. Princeton, Illinois, _July_ 31, 1846. Soon after leaving the island of Mackinaw we entered the straits and passed into Lake Michigan. The odor of burnt leaves continued to accompany us, and from the western shore of the lake, thickly covered with wood, we saw large columns of smoke, several miles apart, rising into the hazy sky. The steamer turned towards the eastern shore, and about an hour before sunset stopped to take in wood at the upper Maneto island, where we landed and strolled into the forest. Part of the island is high, but this, where we went on shore, consists of hillocks and hollows of sand, like the waves of the lake in one of its storms, and looking as if successive storms had swept them up from the bottom. They were covered with an enormous growth of trees which must have stood for centuries. We admired the astonishing transparency of the water on this shore, the clean sands without any intermixture of mud, the pebbles of almost chalky whiteness, and the stones in the edge of the lake, to which adhered no slime, nor green moss, nor aquatic weed. In the light-green depths, far down, but distinctly seen, shoals of fish, some of them of large size, came quietly playing about the huge hull of our steamer. On the shore were two log-houses inhabited by woodmen, one of whom drew a pail of water for the refreshment of some of the passengers, from a well dug in the sand by his door. "It is not so good as the lake water," said I, for I saw it was not so clear. "It is colder, though," answered the man; "but I must say that there is no purer or sweeter water in the world than that of our lake." Next morning we were coasting the western shore of Lake Michigan, a high bank presenting a long line of forest. This was broken by the little town of Sheboygan, with its light-house among the shrubs of the bank, its cluster of houses just built, among which were two hotels, and its single schooner lying at the mouth of a river. You probably never heard of Sheboygan before; it has just sprung up in the forests of Wisconsin; the leaves have hardly withered on the trees that were felled to make room for its houses; but it will make a noise in the world yet. "It is the prettiest place on the lake," said a passenger, whom we left there, with three chubby and healthy children, a lady who had already lived long enough at Sheboygan to be proud of it. Further on we came to Milwaukie, which is rapidly becoming one of the great cities of the West. It lies within a semicircle of green pastoral declivities sprinkled with scattered trees, where the future streets are to be built. We landed at a kind of wharf, formed by a long platform of planks laid on piles, under which the water flows, and extending to some distance into the lake, and along which a car, running on a railway, took the passengers and their baggage, and a part of the freight of the steamer to the shore. "Will you go up to town, sir?" was the question with which I was saluted by the drivers of a throng of vehicles of all sorts, as soon as I reached the land. They were ranged along a firm sandy beach between the lake and the river of Milwaukie. On one side the light-green waters of the lake, of crystalline clearness, came rolling in before the wind, and on the other the dark thick waters of the river lay still and stagnant in the sun. We did not go up to the town, but we could see that it was compactly built, and in one quarter nobly. A year or two since that quarter had been destroyed by fire, and on the spot several large and lofty warehouses had been erected, with an hotel of the largest class. They were of a fine light-brown color, and when I learned that they were of brick, I inquired of a by-stander if that was the natural color of the material. "They are Milwaukie brick," he answered, "and neither painted nor stained; and are better brick besides than are made at the eastward." Milwaukie is said to contain, at present, about ten thousand inhabitants. Here the belt of forest that borders the lake stretches back for several miles to the prairies of Wisconsin. "The Germans," said a passenger, "are already in the woods hacking at the trees, and will soon open the country to the prairies." We made a short stop at Racine, prettily situated on the bank among the scattered trees of an oak opening, and another at Southport, a rival town eleven miles further south. It is surprising how many persons travel, as way-passengers, from place to place on the shores of these lakes. Five years ago the number was very few, now they comprise, at least, half the number on board a steamboat plying between Buffalo and Chicago. When all who travel from Chicago to Buffalo shall cross the peninsula of Michigan by the more expeditious route of the railway, the Chicago and Buffalo line of steamers, which its owners claim to be the finest line in the world, will still be crowded with people taken up or to be set down at some of the intermediate towns. When we awoke the next morning our steamer was at Chicago. Any one who had seen this place, as I had done five years ago, when it contained less than five thousand people, would find some difficulty in recognizing it now when its population is more than fifteen thousand. It has its long rows of warehouses and shops, its bustling streets; its huge steamers, and crowds of lake-craft, lying at the wharves; its villas embowered with trees; and its suburbs, consisting of the cottages of German and Irish laborers, stretching northward along the lake, and westward into the prairies, and widening every day. The slovenly and raw appearance of a new settlement begins in many parts to disappear. The Germans have already a garden in a little grove for their holidays, as in their towns in the old country, and the Roman Catholics have just finished a college for the education of those who are to proselyte the West. The day was extremely hot, and at sunset we took a little drive along the belt of firm sand which forms the border of the lake. Light-green waves came to the shore in long lines, with a crest of foam, like a miniature surf, rolling in from that inland ocean, and as they dashed against the legs of the horses, and the wheels of our carriage, the air that played over them was exceedingly refreshing. When we set out the following day in the stage-coach for Peru, I was surprised to see how the settlement of Chicago had extended westward into the open country. "Three years ago," said a traveller in the coach, "it was thought that this prairie could neither be inhabited nor cultivated. It is so level and so little elevated, that for weeks its surface would remain covered with water; but we have found that as it is intersected with roads, the water either runs off in the ditches of the highways, or is absorbed into the sand which lies below this surface of dark vegetable mould, and it is now, as you perceive, beginning to be covered with habitations." If you ever go by the stage-coach from Chicago to Peru, on the Illinois river, do not believe the glozing tongue of the agent who tells you that you will make the journey in sixteen hours. Double the number, and you will be nearer the truth. A violent rain fell in the course of the morning; the coach was heavily loaded, nine passengers within, and three without, besides the driver; the day was hot, and the horses dragged us slowly through the black mud, which seemed to possess the consistency and tenacity of sticking-plaster. We had a dinner of grouse, which here in certain seasons, are sold for three cents apiece, at a little tavern on the road; we had passed the long green mound which bears the name of Mount Joliet, and now, a little before sunset, having travelled somewhat less than fifty miles, we were about to cross the channel of the Illinois canal for the second or third time. There had once been a bridge at the crossing-place, but the water had risen in the canal, and the timbers and planks had floated away, leaving only the stones which formed its foundation. In attempting to ford the channel the blundering driver came too near the bridge; the coach-wheels on one side rose upon the stones, and on the other sank deep into the mud, and we were overturned in an instant. The outside passengers were pitched head-fore-most into the canal, and four of those within were lying under water. We extricated ourselves as well as we could, the men waded out, the women were carried, and when we got on shore it was found that, although drenched with water and plastered with mud, nobody was either drowned or hurt. A farm wagon passing at the moment, forded the canal without the least difficulty, and taking the female passengers, conveyed them to the next farm-house, about a mile distant. We got out the baggage, which was completely soaked with water, set up the carriage on its wheels, in doing which we had to stand waist high in the mud and water, and reached the hospitable farm-house about half-past nine o'clock. Its owner was an emigrant from Kinderhook, on the Hudson, who claimed to be a Dutchman and a Christian, and I have no reason to doubt that he was either. His kind family made us free of their house, and we passed the night in drying ourselves, and getting our baggage ready to proceed the next day. We travelled in a vehicle built after the fashion of the English post-coach, set high upon springs, which is the most absurd kind of carriage for the roads of this country that could be devised. Those stage-wagons which ply on Long Island, in one of which you sometimes see about a score of Quakers and Quakeresses, present a much better model. Besides being tumbled into the canal, we narrowly escaped being overturned in a dozen other places, where the mud was deep or the roads uneven. In my journey the next day, I was struck with the difference which five years had made in the aspect of the country. Frame or brick houses in many places had taken the places of log-cabins; the road for long distances now passed between fences, the broad prairie, inclosed, was turned into immense fields of maize, oats, and wheat, and was spotted here and there with young orchards, or little groves, and clumps of bright-green locust-trees, and where the prairie remained open, it was now depastured by large herds of cattle, its herbage shortened, and its flowers less numerous. The wheat harvest this year is said to have failed in northern Illinois. The rust has attacked the fields which promised the fairest, and they are left unreaped, to feed the quails and the prairie-hens. Another tedious day's journey, over a specially bad road, brought us to Peru a little before midnight, and we passed the rest of the night at an inn just below the bank, on the margin of the river, in listening to the mosquitoes. A Massachusetts acquaintance the next morning furnished us with a comfortable conveyance to this pleasant neighborhood. Letter XXXIII. Return to Chicago. Chicago, _August_ 8, 1846. You may be certain that in returning to this place from Princeton I did not take the stage coach. I had no fancy for another plunge into the Illinois canal, nor for being overturned upon the prairies in one of those vehicles which seem to be set high in the air in order they may more easily lose their balance. We procured a private conveyance and made the journey in three days--three days of extreme heat, which compelled us to travel slowly. The quails, which had repaired for shade to the fences by the side of the road, ran from them into the open fields, as we passed, with their beaks open, as if panting with the excessive heat. The number of these birds at the present time is very great. They swarm in the stubble fields and in the prairies, and manifest little alarm at the approach of man. Still more numerous, it appears to me, are the grouse, or prairie-hens, as they call them here, which we frequently saw walking leisurely, at our approach, into the grass from the road, whither they resorted for the sake of scattered grains of oats or wheat that had fallen from the loaded wagons going to Chicago. At this season they are full fed and fearless, and fly heavily when they are started. We frequently saw them feeding at a very short distance from people at work in the fields. In some neighborhoods they seem almost as numerous as fowls in a poultry-yard. A settler goes out with his gun, and in a quarter of an hour brings in half a dozen birds which in the New York market would cost two dollars a pair. At one place where we stopped to dine, they gave us a kind of pie which seemed to me an appropriate dessert for a dinner of prairie-hens. It was made of the fruit of the western crab-apple, and was not unpalatable. The wild apple of this country is a small tree growing in thickets, natural orchards. In spring it is profusely covered with light-pink blossoms, which have the odor of violets, and at this season it is thickly hung with fruit of the color of its leaves. Another wild fruit of the country is the plum, which grows in thickets, plum-patches, as they are called, where they are produced in great abundance, and sometimes, I am told, of excellent quality. In a drive which I took the other day from Princeton to the alluvial lands of the Bureau River, I passed by a declivity where the shrubs were red with the fruit, just beginning to ripen. The slope was sprinkled by them with crimson spots, and the odor of the fruit was quite agreeable. I have eaten worse plums than these from our markets, but I hear that there is a later variety, larger and of a yellow color, which is finer. I spoke in my last of the change caused in the aspect of the country by cultivation. Now and then, however, you meet with views which seem to have lost nothing of their original beauty. One such we stopped to look at from an eminence in a broad prairie in Lee county, between Knox Grove and Pawpaw Grove. The road passes directly over the eminence, which is round and regular in form, with a small level on the summit, and bears the name of the Mound. On each side the view extends to a prodigious distance; the prairies sink into basins of immense breadth and rise into swells of vast extent; dark groves stand in the light-green waste of grass, and a dim blue border, apparently of distant woods, encircles the horizon. To give a pastoral air to the scene, large herds of cattle were grazing at no great distance from us. I mentioned in my last letter that the wheat crop of northern Illinois has partially failed this year. But this is not the greatest calamity which has befallen this part of the country. The season is uncommonly sickly. We passed the first night of our journey at Pawpaw Grove--so named from the number of pawpaw-trees which grow in it, but which here scarcely find the summer long enough to perfect their fruit. The place has not had the reputation of being unhealthy, but now there was scarce a family in the neighborhood in which one or more was not ill with an intermittent or a bilious fever. At the inn where we stopped, the landlady, a stout Pennsylvania woman, was just so far recovered as to be able, as she informed us, "to poke about;" and her daughter, a strapping lass, went out to pass the night at the bedside of one of the numerous sick neighbors. The sickness was ascribed by the settlers to the extremely dry and hot weather following a rainy June. At almost every place where we stopped we heard similar accounts. Pale and hollow-eyed people were lounging about. "Is the place unhealthy," I asked one of them. "_I_ reckon so," he answered; and his looks showed that he had sufficient reason. At Aurora, where we passed the second night, a busy little village, with mills and manufactories, on the Fox River, which here rushes swiftly over a stony bed, they confessed to the fever and ague. At Naperville, pleasantly situated among numerous groves and little prairies swelling into hills, we heard that the season was the most sickly the inhabitants had known. Here, at Chicago, which boasts, and with good reason, I believe, of its healthy site, dysenteries and bilious attacks are just now very common, with occasional cases of fever. It is a common remark in this country, that the first cultivation of the earth renders any neighborhood more or less unhealthy. "Nature," said a western man to me, some years since, "resents the violence done her, and punishes those who first break the surface of the earth with the plough." The beautiful Rock River district, with its rapid stream, its noble groves, its banks disposed in natural terraces, with fresh springs gushing at their foot, and airy prairies stretching away from their summits, was esteemed one of the most healthy countries in the world as long as it had but few inhabitants. With the breaking up of the soil came in bilious fever and intermittents. A few years of cultivation will render the country more healthy, and these diseases will probably disappear, as they have done in some parts of western New York. I can remember the time when the "Genesee Country," as it was called, was thought quite a sickly region--a land just in the skirts of the shadow of death. It is now as healthy, I believe, as any part of the state. Letter XXXIV. Voyage to Sault Ste. Marie. Sault Ste. Marie, _August_ 13, 1846. When we left Chicago in the steamer, the other morning, all the vessels in the port had their flags displayed at half-mast in token of dissatisfaction with the fate of the harbor bill. You may not recollect that the bill set apart half a million of dollars for the construction or improvement of various harbors of the lakes, and authorized the deepening of the passages through the St. Clair Flats, now intricate and not quite safe, by which these bulky steamers make their way from the lower lakes to the upper. The people of the lake region had watched the progress of the bill through Congress with much interest and anxiety, and congratulated each other when at length it received a majority of votes in both houses. The President's veto has turned these congratulations into expressions of disappointment which are heard on all sides, sometimes expressed with a good deal of energy. But, although the news of the veto reached Chicago two or three days before we left the place, nobody had seen the message in which it was contained. Perhaps the force of the President's reasonings will reconcile the minds of people here to the disappointment of their hopes. It was a hot August morning as the steamer Wisconsin, an unwieldy bulk, dipping and bobbing upon the small waves, and trembling at every stroke of the engine, swept out into the lake. The southwest wind during the warmer portion of the summer months is a sort of Sirocco in Illinois. It blows with considerable strength, but passing over an immense extent of heated plains it brings no coolness. It was such an air that accompanied us on our way north from Chicago; and as the passengers huddled into the shady places outside of the state-rooms on the upper deck, I thought of the flocks of quails I had seen gasping in the shadow of the rail-fences on the prairies. People here expose themselves to a draught of air with much less scruple than they do in the Atlantic states. "We do not take cold by it," they said to me, when I saw them sitting in a current of wind, after perspiring freely. If they do not take cold, it is odds but they take something else, a fever perhaps, or what is called a bilious attack. The vicissitudes of climate at Chicago and its neighborhood are more sudden and extreme than with us, but the inhabitants say that they are not often the cause of catarrhs, as in the Atlantic states. Whatever may be the cause, I have met with no person since I came to the West, who appeared to have a catarrh. From this region perhaps will hereafter proceed singers with the clearest pipes. Some forty miles beyond Chicago we stopped for half an hour at Little Fort, one of those flourishing little towns which are springing up on the lake shore, to besiege future Congresses for money to build their harbors. This settlement has started up in the woods within the last three or four years, and its cluster of roofs, two of the broadest of which cover respectable-looking hotels, already makes a considerable figure when viewed from the lake. We passed to the shore over a long platform of planks framed upon two rows of posts or piles planted in the sandy shallows. "We make a port in this manner on any part of the western shore of the lake," said a passenger, "and convenient ports they are, except in very high winds. On the eastern shore, the coast of Michigan, they have not this advantage; the ice and the northwest winds would rend such a wharf as this in pieces. On this side too, the water of the lake, except when an east wind blows, is smoother than on the Michigan coast, and the steamers therefore keep under the shelter of this bank." At Southport, still further north, in the new state of Wisconsin, we procured a kind of omnibus and were driven over the town, which, for a new settlement, is uncommonly pretty. We crossed a narrow inlet of the lake, a _creek_ in the proper sense of the term, a winding channel, with water in the midst, and a rough growth of water-flags and sedges on the sides. Among them grew the wild rice, its bending spikes, heavy with grain, almost ready for the harvest. "In the northern marshes of Wisconsin," said one of our party, "I have seen the Indian women gathering this grain. Two of them take their places in a canoe; one of them seated in the stern pushes it with her paddle through the shallows of standing water, while the other, sitting forward, bends the heads of the rice-plant over the sides of the canoe, strikes them with a little stick and causes the grain to fall within it. In this way are collected large quantities, which serve as the winter food of the Menomonies, and some other tribes." The grain of the wild rice, I was told, is of a dark color, but palatable as food. The gentleman who gave me this account had made several attempts to procure it in a fit state to be sown, for Judge Buel, of Albany, who was desirous of trying its cultivation on the grassy shallows of our eastern rivers. He was not successfull at first, because, as soon as the grain is collected, it is kiln-dried by the Indians, which destroys the vegetative principle. At length, however, he obtained and sent on a small quantity of the fresh rice, but it reached Judge Buel only a short time before his death, and the experiment probably has not been made. On one side of the creek was a sloping bank of some height, where tall old forest trees were growing. Among these stood three houses, just built, and the space between them and the water was formed into gardens with regular terraces faced with turf. Another turn of our vehicle brought us into a public square, where the oaks of the original forest were left standing, a miniature of the _Champs Elysées_, surrounding which, among the trees, stand many neat houses, some of them built of a drab-colored brick. Back of the town, we had a glimpse of a prairie approaching within half a mile of the river. We were next driven through a street of shops, and thence to our steamer. The streets of Southport are beds of sand, and one of the passengers who professed to speak from some experience, described the place as haunted by myriads of fleas. It was not till about one o'clock of the second night after leaving Chicago, that we landed at Mackinaw, and after an infinite deal of trouble in getting our baggage together, and keeping it together, we were driven to the Mission House, a plain, comfortable old wooden house, built thirty or forty years since, by a missionary society, and now turned into an hotel. Beside the road, close to the water's edge, stood several wigwams of the Potawottamies, pyramids of poles wrapped around with rush matting, each containing a family asleep. The place was crowded with people on their way to the mining region of Lake Superior, or returning from it, and we were obliged to content ourselves with narrow accommodations for the night. At half-past seven the next morning we were on our way to the Sault Ste. Marie, in the little steamer General Scott. The wind was blowing fresh, and a score of persons who had intended to visit the Sault were withheld by the fear of seasickness, so that half a dozen of us had the steamer to ourselves. In three or four hours we found ourselves gliding out of the lake, through smooth water, between two low points of land covered with firs and pines into the west strait. We passed Drummond's Island, and then coasted St. Joseph's Island, on the woody shore of which I was shown a solitary house. There I was told lives a long-nosed Englishman, a half-pay officer, with two wives, sisters, each the mother of a numerous offspring. This English polygamist has been more successful in seeking solitude than in avoiding notoriety. The very loneliness of his habitation on the shore causes it to be remarked, and there is not a passenger who makes the voyage to the Sault, to whom his house is not pointed out, and his story related. It was hinted to me that he had a third wife in Toronto, but I have my private doubts of this part of the story, and suspect that it was thrown in to increase my wonder. Beyond the island of St. Joseph we passed several islets of rock with fir-trees growing from the clefts. Here, in summer, I was told, the Indians often set up their wigwams, and subsist by fishing. There were none in sight as we passed, but we frequently saw on either shore the skeletons of the Chippewa habitations. These consist, not like those of the Potawottamies, of a circle of sticks placed in the form of a cone, but of slender poles bent into circles, so as to make an almost regular hemisphere, over which, while it serves as a dwelling, birch-bark and mats of bulrushes are thrown. On the western side of the passage, opposite to St. Joseph's Island, stretches the long coast of Sugar Island, luxuriant with an extensive forest of the sugar-maple. Here the Indians manufacture maple-sugar in the spring. I inquired concerning their agriculture. "They plant no corn nor squashes," said a passenger, who had resided for some time at the Sault; "they will not ripen in this climate; but they plant potatoes in the sugar-bush, and dig them when the spring opens. They have no other agriculture; they plant no beans as I believe the Indians do elsewhere." A violent squall of wind and rain fell upon the water just as we entered that broad part of the passage which bears the name of Muddy Lake. In ordinary weather the waters are here perfectly pure and translucent, but now their agitation brought up the loose earth from the shallow bottom, and made them as turbid as the Missouri, with the exception of a narrow channel in the midst where the current runs deep. Rocky hills now began to show themselves to the east of us; we passed the sheet of water known by the name of Lake George, and came to a little river which appeared to have its source at the foot of a precipitous ridge on the British side. It is called Garden River, and a little beyond it, on the same side, lies Garden Village, inhabited by the Indians. It was now deserted, the Indians having gone to attend a great assemblage of their race, held on one of the Manitoulin Islands, where they are to receive their annual payments from the British government. Here were log-houses, and skeletons of wigwams, from which the coverings had been taken. An Indian, when he travels, takes with him his family and his furniture, the matting for his wigwam, his implements for hunting and fishing, his dogs and cats, and finds a home wherever he finds poles for a dwelling. A tornado had recently passed over the Garden Village. The numerous girdled-trees which stood on its little clearing, had been twisted off midway or near the ground by the wind, and the roofs had, in some instances, been lifted from the cabins. At length, after a winding voyage of sixty miles, between wild banks of forest, in some places smoking with fires, in some looking as if never violated either by fire or steel, with huge carcasses of trees mouldering on the ground, and venerable trees standing over them, bearded with streaming moss, we came in sight of the white rapids of the Sault Sainte Marie. We passed the humble cabins of the half-breeds on either shore, with here and there a round wigwam near the water; we glided by a white chimney standing behind a screen of fir-trees, which, we were told, had belonged to the dwelling of Tanner, who himself set fire to his house the other day, before murdering Mr. Schoolcraft, and in a few minutes were at the wharf of this remotest settlement of the northwest. Letter XXXV. Falls of the St. Mary. Sault Ste. Marie, _August_ 15, 1846. A crowd had assembled on the wharf of the American village at the Sault Sainte Marie, popularly called the _Soo_, to witness our landing; men of all ages and complexions, in hats and caps of every form and fashion, with beards of every length and color, among which I discovered two or three pairs of mustaches. It was a party of copper-mine speculators, just flitting from Copper Harbor and Eagle River, mixed with a few Indian and half-breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I saw a face or two quite familiar in Wall-street. I had a conversation with an intelligent geologist, who had just returned from an examination of the copper mines of Lake Superior. He had pitched his tent in the fields near the village, choosing to pass the night in this manner, as he had done for several weeks past, rather than in a crowded inn. In regard to the mines, he told me that the external tokens, the surface indications, as he called them, were more favorable than those of any copper mines in the world. They are still, however, mere surface indications; the veins had not been worked to that depth which was necessary to determine their value with any certainty. The mixture of silver with the copper he regarded as not giving any additional value to the mines, inasmuch as it is only occasional and rare. Sometimes, he told me, a mass of metal would be discovered of the size of a man's fist, or smaller, composed of copper and silver, both metals closely united, yet both perfectly pure and unalloyed with each other. The masses of virgin copper found in beds of gravel are, however, the most remarkable feature of these mines. One of them which has been discovered this summer, but which has not been raised, is estimated to weigh twenty tons. I saw in the propeller Independence, by which this party from the copper mines was brought down to the Sault, one of these masses, weighing seventeen hundred and fifty pounds, with the appearance of having once been fluid with heat. It was so pure that it might have been cut in pieces by cold steel and stamped at once into coin. Two or three years ago this settlement of the Sault de Ste. Marie, was but a military post of the United States, in the midst of a village of Indians and half-breeds. There were, perhaps, a dozen white residents in the place, including the family of the Baptist Missionary and the agent of the American Fur Company, which had removed its station hither from Mackinaw, and built its warehouse on this river. But since the world has begun to talk of the copper mines of Lake Superior, settlers flock into the place; carpenters are busy in knocking up houses with all haste on the government lands, and large warehouses have been built upon piles driven into the shallows of the St. Mary. Five years hence, the primitive character of the place will be altogether lost, and it will have become a bustling Yankee town, resembling the other new settlements of the West. Here the navigation from lake to lake is interrupted by the falls or rapids of the river St. Mary, from which the place receives its name. The crystalline waters of Lake Superior on their way through the channel of this river to Lake Huron, here rush, and foam, and roar, for about three quarters of a mile, over rocks and large stones. Close to the rapids, with birchen-canoes moored in little inlets, is a village of the Indians, consisting of log-cabins and round wigwams, on a shrubby level, reserved to them by the government. The morning after our arrival, we went through this village in search of a canoe and a couple of Indians, to make the descent of the rapids, which is one of the first things that a visitor to the Sault must think of. In the first wigwam that we entered were three men and two women as drunk as men and women could well be. The squaws were speechless and motionless, too far gone, as it seemed, to raise either hand or foot; the men though apparently unable to rise were noisy, and one of them, who called himself a half-breed and spoke a few words of English, seemed disposed to quarrel. Before the next door was a woman busy in washing, who spoke a little English. "The old man out there," she said, in answer to our questions, "can paddle canoe, but he is very drunk, he can not do it to-day." "Is there nobody else," we asked, "who will take us down the falls?" "I don't know; the Indians all drunk to-day." "Why is that? why are they all drunk to-day?" "Oh, the whisky," answered the woman, giving us to understand, that when an Indian could get whisky, he got drunk as a matter of course. By this time the man had come up, and after addressing us with the customary "_bon jour_" manifested a curiosity to know the nature of our errand. The woman explained it to him in English. "Oh, messieurs, je vous servirai," said he, for he spoke Canadian French; "I go, I go." We told him that we doubted whether he was quite sober enough. "Oh, messieurs, je suis parfaitement capable--first rate, first rate." We shook him off as soon as we could, but not till after he had time to propose that we should wait till the next day, and to utter the maxim, "Whisky, good--too much whisky, no good." In a log-cabin, which some half-breeds were engaged in building, we found two men who were easily persuaded to leave their work and pilot us over the rapids. They took one of the canoes which lay in a little inlet close at hand, and entering it, pushed it with their long poles up the stream in the edge of the rapids. Arriving at the head of the rapids, they took in our party, which consisted of five, and we began the descent. At each end of the canoe sat a half-breed, with a paddle, to guide it while the current drew us rapidly down among the agitated waters. It was surprising with what dexterity they kept us in the smoothest part of the water, seeming to know the way down as well as if it had been a beaten path in the fields. At one time we would seem to be directly approaching a rock against which the waves were dashing, at another to be descending into a hollow of the waters in which our canoe would be inevitably filled, but a single stroke of the paddle given by the man at the prow put us safely by the seeming danger. So rapid was the descent, that almost as soon as we descried the apparent peril, it was passed. In less than ten minutes, as it seemed to me, we had left the roar of the rapids behind us, and were gliding over the smooth water at their foot. In the afternoon we engaged a half-breed and his brother to take us over to the Canadian shore. His wife, a slender young woman with a lively physiognomy, not easily to be distinguished from a French woman of her class, accompanied us in the canoe with her little boy. The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art. We were in one of the finest that float on St. Mary's river, and when I looked at its delicate ribs, mere shavings of white cedar, yet firm enough for the purpose--the thin broad laths of the same wood with which these are inclosed, and the broad sheets of birch-bark, impervious to water, which sheathed the outside, all firmly sewed together by the tough slender roots of the fir-tree, and when I considered its extreme lightness and the grace of its form, I could not but wonder at the ingenuity of those who had invented so beautiful a combination of ship-building and basket-work. "It cost me twenty dollars," said the half-breed, "and I would not take thirty for it." We were ferried over the waves where they dance at the foot of the rapids. At this place large quantities of white-fish, one of the most delicate kinds known on our continent, are caught by the Indians, in their season, with scoop-nets. The whites are about to interfere with this occupation of the Indians, and I saw the other day a seine of prodigious length constructing, with which it is intended to sweep nearly half the river at once. "They will take a hundred barrels a day," said an inhabitant of the place. On the British side, the rapids divide themselves into half a dozen noisy brooks, which roar round little islands, and in the boiling pools of which the speckled trout is caught with the rod and line. We landed at the warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, where the goods intended for the Indian trade are deposited, and the furs brought from the northwest are collected. They are surrounded by a massive stockade, within which lives the agent of the Company, the walks are graveled and well-kept, and the whole bears the marks of British solidity and precision. A quantity of furs had been brought in the day before, but they were locked up in the warehouse, and all was now quiet and silent. The agent was absent; a half-breed nurse stood at the door with his child, and a Scotch servant, apparently with nothing to do, was lounging in the court inclosed by the stockade; in short, there was less bustle about this centre of one of the most powerful trading-companies in the world, than about one of our farm-houses. Crossing the bay, at the bottom of which these buildings stand, we landed at a Canadian village of half-breeds. Here were one or two wigwams and a score of log-cabins, some of which we entered. In one of them we were received with great appearance of deference by a woman of decidedly Indian features, but light-complexioned, barefoot, with blue embroidered leggings falling over her ankles and sweeping the floor, the only peculiarity of Indian costume about her. The house was as clean as scouring could make it, and her two little children, with little French physiognomies, were fairer than many children of the European race. These people are descended from the French voyageurs and settlers on one side; they speak Canadian French more or less, but generally employ the Chippewa language in their intercourse with each other. Near at hand was a burial ground, with graves of the Indians and half-breeds, which we entered. Some of the graves were covered with a low roof of cedar-bark, others with a wooden box; over others was placed a little house like a dog-kennel, except that it had no door, others were covered with little log-cabins. One of these was of such a size that a small Indian family would have found it amply large for their accommodation. It is a practice among the savages to protect the graves of the dead from the wolves, by stakes driven into the ground and meeting at the top like the rafters of a roof; and perhaps when the Indian or half-breed exchanged his wigwam for a log-cabin, his respect for the dead led him to make the same improvement in the architecture of their narrow houses. At the head of most of these monuments stood wooden crosses, for the population here is principally Roman Catholic, some of them inscribed with the names of the dead, not always accurately spelled. Not far from the church stands a building, regarded by the half-breeds as a wonder of architecture, the stone house, _la maison de pierre_, as they call it, a large mansion built of stone by a former agent of the Northwest or Hudson Bay Company, who lived here in a kind of grand manorial style, with his servants and horses and hounds, and gave hospitable dinners in those days when it was the fashion for the host to do his best to drink his guests under the table. The old splendor of the place has departed, its gardens are overgrown with grass, the barn has been blown down, the kitchen in which so many grand dinners were cooked consumed by fire, and the mansion, with its broken and patched windows, is now occupied by a Scotch farmer of the name of Wilson. We climbed a ridge of hills back of the house to the church of the Episcopal Mission, built a few years ago as a place of worship for the Chippewas, who have since been removed by the government. It stands remote from any habitation, with three or four Indian graves near it, and we found it filled with hay. The view from its door is uncommonly beautiful; the broad St. Mary lying below, with its bordering villages and woody valley, its white rapids and its rocky islands, picturesque with the pointed summits of the fir-tree. To the northwest the sight followed the river to the horizon, where it issued from Lake Superior, and I was told that in clear weather one might discover, from the spot on which I stood, the promontory of Gros Cap, which guards the outlet of that mighty lake. The country around was smoking in a dozen places with fires in the woods. When I returned I asked who kindled them. "It is old Tanner," said one, "the man who murdered Schoolcraft." There is great fear here of Tanner, who is thought to be lurking yet in the neighborhood. I was going the other day to look at a view of the place from an eminence, reached by a road passing through a swamp, full of larches and firs. "Are you not afraid of Tanner?" I was asked. Mrs. Schoolcraft, since the assassination of her husband, has come to live in the fort, which consists of barracks protected by a high stockade. It is rumored that Tanner has been seen skulking about within a day or two, and yesterday a place was discovered which is supposed to have served for his retreat. It was a hollow, thickly surrounded by shrubs, which some person had evidently made his habitation for a considerable time. There is a dispute whether this man is insane or not, but there is no dispute as to his malignity. He has threatened to take the life of Mr. Bingham, the venerable Baptist missionary at this place, and as long as it is not certain that he has left the neighborhood a feeling of insecurity prevails. Nevertheless, as I know no reason why this man should take it into his head to shoot me, I go whither I list, without the fear of Tanner before my eyes. Letter XXXVI. Indians at the Sault. Mackinaw, _August_ 19, 1846. We were detained two days longer than we expected at the Sault de Ste. Marie, by the failure of the steamer General Scott to depart at the proper time. If we could have found a steamer going up Lake Superior, we should most certainly have quieted our impatience at this delay, by embarking on board of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls, which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer, and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She had just been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where a broad path, with hillocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to the surface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. The moment she touched the water, she stuck fast, and the engineer was obliged to go to Cleveland for additional machinery to move her forward. He had just arrived with the proper apparatus, and the steamer had begun to work its way slowly into the deep water; but some days must yet elapse before she can float, and after that the engine must be put together. Had the Julia Palmer been ready to proceed up the lake, I should certainly have seized the occasion to be present at an immense assemblage of Indians on Madeleine Island. This island lies far in the lake, near its remoter extremity. On one of its capes, called La Pointe, is a missionary station and an Indian village, and here the savages are gathering in vast numbers to receive their annual payments from the United States. "There were already two thousand of them at La Pointe when I left the place," said an intelligent gentleman who had just returned from the lake, "and they were starving. If an Indian family has a stock of provisions on hand sufficient for a month, it is sure to eat it up in a week, and the Indians at La Pointe had already consumed all they had provided, and were living on what they could shoot in the woods, or get by fishing in the lake." I inquired of him the probable number of Indians the occasion would bring together. "Seven thousand," he answered. "Among them are some of the wildest tribes on the continent, whose habits have been least changed by the neighborhood of the white man. A new tribe will come in who never before would have any transactions with the government. They are called the Pillagers, a fierce and warlike race, proud of their independence, and, next to the Blackfeet and the Camanches, the most ferocious and formidable tribe within the territory of the United States. They inhabit the country about Red River and the head-waters of the Mississippi." I was further told that some of the Indian traders had expressed their determination to disregard the law, set up their tents at La Pointe, and sell spirits to the savages. "If they do, knives will be drawn," was the common saying at the Sault; and at the Fort, I learned that a requisition had arrived from La Pointe for twenty men to enforce the law and prevent disorder. "We can not send half the number," said the officer who commanded at the Fort, "we have but twelve men in all; the rest of the garrison have been ordered to the Mexican frontier, and it is necessary that somebody should remain to guard the public property." The call for troops has since been transferred to the garrison at Mackinaw, from which they will be sent. I learned afterward from an intelligent lady of the half-caste at the Sault, that letters had arrived, from which it appeared that more than four thousand Indians were already assembled at La Pointe, and that their stock of provisions was exhausted. "They expected," said the lady, "to be paid off on the 15th of August, but the government has changed the time to nearly a month later. This is unfortunate for the Indians, for now is the time of their harvest, the season for gathering wild rice in the marshes, and they must, in consequence, not only suffer with hunger now, but in the winter also." In a stroll which we made through the Indian village, situated close to the rapids, we fell in with a half-breed, a sensible-looking man, living in a log cabin, whose boys, the offspring of a squaw of the pure Indian race, were practicing with their bows and arrows. "You do not go to La Pointe?" we asked. "It is too far to go for a blanket," was his answer--he spoke tolerable English. This man seemed to have inherited from the white side of his ancestry somewhat of the love of a constant habitation, for a genuine Indian has no particular dislike to a distant journey. He takes his habitation with him, and is at home wherever there is game and fish, and poles with which to construct his lodge. In a further conversation with the half-breed, he spoke of the Sault as a delightful abode, and expatiated on the pleasures of the place. "It is the greatest place in the world for fun," said he; "we dance all winter; our women are all good dancers; our little girls can dance single and double jigs as good as any body in the States. That little girl there," pointing to a long-haired girl at the door, "will dance as good as any body." The fusion of the two races in this neighborhood is remarkable; the mixed breed running by gradual shades into the aboriginal on the one hand, and into the white on the other; children with a tinge of the copper hue in the families of white men, and children scarcely less fair sometimes seen in the wigwams. Some of the half-caste ladies at the Falls of St. Mary, who have been educated in the Atlantic states, are persons of graceful and dignified manners and agreeable conversation. I attended worship at the Fort, at the Sault, on Sunday. The services were conducted by the chaplain, who is of the Methodist persuasion and a missionary at the place, assisted by the Baptist missionary. I looked about me for some evidence of the success of their labors, but among the worshipers I saw not one male of Indian descent. Of the females, half a dozen, perhaps, were of the half-caste; and as two of these walked away from the church, I perceived that they wore a fringed clothing for the ankles, as if they took a certain pride in this badge of their Indian extraction. In the afternoon we drove down the west bank of the river to attend religious service at an Indian village, called the Little Rapids, about two miles and a half from the Sault. Here the Methodists have built a mission-house, maintain a missionary, and instruct a fragment of the Chippewa tribe. We found the missionary, Mr. Speight, a Kentuckian, who has wandered to this northern region, quite ill, and there was consequently no service. We walked through the village, which is prettily situated on a swift and deep channel of the St. Mary, where the green waters rush between the main-land and a wooded island. It stands on rich meadows of the river, with a path running before it, parallel with the bank, along the velvet sward, and backed at no great distance by the thick original forest, which not far below closes upon the river on both sides. The inhabitants at the doors and windows of their log-cabins had a demure and subdued aspect; they were dressed in their clean Sunday clothes, and the peace and quiet of the place formed a strong contrast to the debaucheries we had witnessed at the village by the Falls. We fell in with an Indian, a quiet little man, of very decent appearance, who answered our questions with great civility. We asked to whom belonged the meadows lying back of the cabins, on which we saw patches of rye, oats, and potatoes. "Oh, they belong to the mission; the Indians work them." "Are they good people, these Indians?" "Oh yes, good people." "Do they never drink too much whisky?" "Well, I guess they drink too much whisky sometimes." There was a single wigwam in the village, apparently a supplement to one of the log-cabins. We looked in and saw two Indian looms, from which two unfinished mats were depending. Mrs. Speight, the wife of the missionary, told us that, a few days before, the village had been full of these lodges; that the Indians delighted in them greatly, and always put them up during the mosquito season; "for a mosquito," said the good lady, "will never enter a wigwam;" and that lately, the mosquitoes having disappeared, and the nights having grown cooler, they had taken down all but the one we saw. We passed a few minutes in the house of the missionary, to which Mrs. Speight kindly invited us. She gave a rather favorable account of the Indians under her husband's charge, but manifestly an honest one, and without any wish to extenuate the defects of their character. "There are many excellent persons among them," she said; "they are a kind, simple, honest people, and some of them are eminently pious." "Do they follow any regular industry?" "Many of them are as regularly industrious as the whites, rising early and continuing at their work in the fields all day. They are not so attentive as we could wish to the education of their children. It is difficult to make them send their children regularly to school; they think they confer a favor in allowing us to instruct them, and if they happen to take a little offense their children are kept at home. The great evil against which we have to guard is the love of strong drink. When this is offered to an Indian, it seems as if it was not in his nature to resist the temptation. I have known whole congregations of Indians, good Indians, ruined and brought to nothing by the opportunity of obtaining whisky as often as they pleased." We inquired whether the numbers of the people at the mission were diminishing. She could not speak with much certainty as to this point, having been only a year and a half at the mission, but she thought there was a gradual decrease. "The families of the Indians," she said, in answer to one of my questions, "are small. In one family at the village are six children, and it is the talk of all the Indians, far and near, as something extraordinary. Generally the number is much smaller, and more than half the children die in infancy. Their means would not allow them to rear many children, even if the number of births was greater." Such appears to be the destiny of the red race while in the presence of the white--decay and gradual extinction, even under circumstances apparently the most favorable to its preservation. On Monday we left the Falls of St. Mary, in the steamer General Scott, on our return to Mackinaw. There were about forty passengers on board, men in search of copper-mines, and men in search of health, and travellers from curiosity, Virginians, New Yorkers, wanderers from Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, and I believe several other states. On reaching Mackinaw in the evening, our party took quarters in the Mansion House, the obliging host of which stretched his means to the utmost for our accommodation. Mackinaw is at the present moment crowded with strangers; attracted by the cool healthful climate and the extreme beauty of the place. We were packed for the night almost as closely as the Potawottamies, whose lodges were on the beach before us. Parlors and garrets were turned into sleeping-rooms; beds were made on the floors and in the passages, and double-bedded rooms were made to receive four beds. It is no difficult feat to sleep at Mackinaw, even in an August night, and we soon forgot, in a refreshing slumber, the narrowness of our quarters. Letter XXXVII. The Island of Mackinaw. Steamer St. Louis, Lake Huron, _August_ 20, 1846. Yesterday evening we left the beautiful island of Mackinaw, after a visit of two days delightfully passed. We had climbed its cliffs, rambled on its shores, threaded the walks among its thickets, driven out in the roads that wind through its woods--roads paved by nature with limestone pebbles, a sort of natural macadamization, and the time of our departure seemed to arrive several days too soon. The fort which crowns the heights near the shore commands an extensive prospect, but a still wider one is to be seen from the old fort, Fort Holmes, as it is called, among whose ruined intrenchments the half-breed boys and girls now gather gooseberries. It stands on the very crest of the island, overlooking all the rest. The air, when we ascended it, was loaded with the smoke of burning forests, but from this spot, in clear weather, I was told a magnificent view might be had of the Straits of Mackinaw, the wooded islands, and the shores and capes of the great mainland, places known to history for the past two centuries. For when you are at Mackinaw you are at no new settlement. In looking for samples of Indian embroidery with porcupine quills, we found ourselves one day in the warehouse of the American Fur Company, at Mackinaw. Here, on the shelves, were piles of blankets, white and blue, red scarfs, and white boots; snow-shoes were hanging on the walls, and wolf-traps, rifles, and hatchets, were slung to the ceiling--an assortment of goods destined for the Indians and half-breeds of the northwest. The person who attended at the counter spoke English with a foreign accent. I asked him how long he had been in the northwestern country. "To say the truth," he answered, "I have been here sixty years and some days." "You were born here, then." "I am a native of Mackinaw, French by the mother's side; my father was an Englishman." "Was the place as considerable sixty years ago as it now is?" "More so. There was more trade here, and quite as many inhabitants. All the houses, or nearly all, were then built; two or three only have been put up since." I could easily imagine that Mackinaw must have been a place of consequence when here was the centre of the fur trade, now removed further up the country. I was shown the large house in which the heads of the companies of _voyageurs_ engaged in the trade were lodged, and the barracks, a long low building, in which the _voyageurs_ themselves, seven hundred in number, made their quarters from the end of June till the beginning of October, when they went out again on their journeys. This interval of three months was a merry time with those light-hearted Frenchmen. When a boat made its appearance approaching Mackinaw, they fell to conjecturing to what company of _voyageurs_ it belonged; as the dispute grew warm the conjectures became bets, till finally, unable to restrain their impatience, the boldest of them dashed into the waters, swam out to the boat, and climbing on board, shook hands with their brethren, amidst the shouts of those who stood on the beach. They talk, on the New England coast, of Chebacco boats, built after a peculiar pattern, and called after Chebacco, an ancient settlement of sea-faring men, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of their place to Ipswich. The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to a boat of peculiar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides, and flat-bottomed, an excellent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live in the wild storms that surprise the mariner on Lake Superior. We took yesterday a drive to the western shore. The road twined through a wood of over-arching beeches and maples, interspersed with the white-cedar and fir. The driver stopped before a cliff sprouting with beeches and cedars, with a small cavity at the foot. This he told us was the Skull Cave. It is only remarkable on account of human bones having been found in it. Further on a white paling gleamed through the trees; it inclosed the solitary burial ground of the garrison, with half a dozen graves. "There are few buried here," said a gentleman of our party; "the soldiers who come to Mackinaw sick get well soon." The road we travelled was cut through the woods by Captain Scott, who commanded at the fort a few years since. He is the marksman whose aim was so sure that the western people say of him, that a raccoon on a tree once offered to come down and surrender without giving him the trouble to fire. We passed a farm surrounded with beautiful groves. In one of its meadows was fought the battle between Colonel Croghan and the British officer Holmes in the war of 1813. Three luxuriant beeches stand in the edge of the wood, north of the meadow; one of them is the monument of Holmes; he lies buried at its root. Another quarter of a mile led us to a little bay on the solitary shore of the lake looking to the northwest. It is called the British Landing, because the British troops landed here in the late war to take possession of the island. We wandered about awhile, and then sat down upon the embankment of pebbles which the waves of the lake, heaving for centuries, have heaped around the shore of the island--pebbles so clean that they would no more soil a lady's white muslin gown than if they had been of newly polished alabaster. The water at our feet was as transparent as the air around us. On the main-land opposite stood a church with its spire, and several roofs were visible, with a background of woods behind them. "There," said one of our party, "is the old Mission Church. It was built by the Catholics in 1680, and has been a place of worship ever since. The name of the spot is Point St. Ignace, and there lives an Indian of the full caste, who was sent to Rome and educated to be a priest, but he preferred the life of a layman, and there he lives on that wild shore, with a library in his lodge, a learned savage, occupied with reading and study." You may well suppose that I felt a strong desire to see Point St. Ignace, its venerable Mission Church, its Indian village, so long under the care of Catholic pastors, and its learned savage who talks Italian, but the time of my departure was already fixed. My companions were pointing out on that shore, the mouth of Carp River, which comes down through the forest roaring over rocks, and in any of the pools of which you have only to throw a line, with any sort of bait, to be sure of a trout, when the driver of our vehicle called out, "Your boat is coming." We looked and saw the St. Louis steamer, not one of the largest, but one of the finest boats in the line between Buffalo and Chicago, making rapidly for the island, with a train of black smoke hanging in the air behind her. We hastened to return through the woods, and in an hour and a half we were in our clean and comfortable quarters in this well-ordered little steamer. But I should mention that before leaving Mackinaw, we did not fail to visit the principal curiosities of the place, the Sugar Loaf Rock, a remarkable rock in the middle of the island, of a sharp conical form, rising above the trees by which it is surrounded, and lifting the stunted birches on its shoulders higher than they, like a tall fellow holding up a little boy to overlook a crowd of men--and the Arched Rock on the shore. The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and through the opening spanned by the arch of the rock I saw the long waves, rolled up by a fresh wind, come one after another out of the obscurity, and break with roaring on the beach. The path along the brow of the precipice and among the evergreens, by which this rock is reached, is singularly wild, but another which leads to it along the shore is no less picturesque--passing under impending cliffs and overshadowing cedars, and between huge blocks and pinnacles of rock. I spoke in one of my former letters of the manifest fate of Mackinaw, which is to be a watering-place. I can not see how it is to escape this destiny. People already begin to repair to it for health and refreshment from the southern borders of Lake Michigan. Its climate during the summer months is delightful; there is no air more pure and elastic, and the winds of the south and southwest, which are so hot on the prairies, arrive here tempered to a grateful coolness by the waters over which they have swept. The nights are always, in the hottest season, agreeably cool, and the health of the place is proverbial. The world has not many islands so beautiful as Mackinaw, as you may judge from the description I have already given of parts of it. The surface is singularly irregular, with summits of rock and pleasant hollows, open glades of pasturage and shady nooks. To some, the savage visitors, who occasionally set up their lodges on its beach, as well as on that of the surrounding islands, and paddle their canoes in its waters, will be an additional attraction. I can not but think with a kind of regret on the time which, I suppose is near at hand, when its wild and lonely woods will be intersected with highways, and filled with cottages and boarding-houses. Letter XXXVIII. An Excursion to the Water Gap. Stroudsberg, Monroe Co., Penn. _October_ 23, 1846. I reached this place last evening, having taken Easton in my way. Did it ever occur to you, in passing through New Jersey, how much the northern part of the state is, in some respects, like New York, and how much the southern part resembles Pennsylvania? For twenty miles before reaching Easton, you see spacious dwelling-houses, often of stone, substantially built, and barns of the size of churches, and large farms with extensive woods of tall trees, as in Pennsylvania, where the right of soil has not undergone so many subdivisions as with us. I was shown in Warren county, in a region apparently of great fertility, a farm which was said to be two miles square. It belonged to a farmer of German origin, whose comfortable mansion stood by the way, and who came into the state many years ago, a young man. "I have heard him say," said a passenger, "that when his father brought him out with his young wife into Warren county, and set him down upon what then appeared a barren little farm, now a part of his large and productive estate, his heart failed him. However he went to work industriously, practicing the strictest economy, and by applying lime copiously to the soil made it highly fertile. It is lime which makes this region the richest land in New Jersey; the farmers find limestone close at hand, burn it in their kilns, and scatter it on the surface. The person of whom I speak took off large crops from his little farm, and as soon as he had any money beforehand, he added a few acres more, so that it gradually grew to its present size. Rich as he is, he is a worthy man; his sons, who are numerous, are all fine fellows, not a scape-grace among them, and he has settled them all on farms around him." Easton, which we entered soon after dark, is a pretty little town of seven thousand inhabitants, much more substantially built than towns of the same size in this country. Many of the houses are of stone, and to the sides of some of them you see the ivy clinging and hiding the masonry with a veil of evergreen foliage. The middle of the streets is unpaved and very dusty, but the broad flagging on the sides, under the windows of the houses, is sedulously swept. The situation of the place is uncommonly picturesque. If ever the little borough of Easton shall grow into a great town, it will stand on one of the most commanding sites in the world, unless its inhabitants shall have spoiled it by improvements. The Delaware, which forms the eastern bound of the borough, approaches it from the north through high wooded banks, and flows away to join the Susquehanna between craggy precipices. On the south side, the Lehigh comes down through a deep, verdant hollow, and on the north the Bushkill winds through a glen shaded with trees, on the rocky banks of which is one of the finest drives in the world. In the midst of the borough rises a crag as lofty as that on which Stirling Castle is built--in Europe, it would most certainly have been crowned with its castle; steep and grassy on one side, and precipitous and rocky on the other, where it overhangs the Bushkill. The college stands on a lofty eminence, overlooking the dwellings and streets, but it is an ugly building, and has not a tree to conceal even in part its ugliness. Besides these, are various other eminences in the immediate vicinity of this compact little town, which add greatly to its beauty. We set out the next morning for the Delaware Water Gap, following the road along the Delaware, which is here uncommonly beautiful. The steep bank is mostly covered with trees sprouting from the rocky shelves, and below is a fringe of trees between the road and the river. A little way from the town, the driver pointed out, in the midst of the stream, a long island of loose stones and pebbles, without a leaf or stem of herbage. "It was there," said he, "that Gaetter, six years ago, was hanged for the murder of his wife." The high and steep bank of the river, the rocks and the trees, he proceeded to tell us, were covered on that day with eager spectators from all the surrounding country, every one of whom, looking immediately down on the island, could enjoy a perfect view of the process by which the poor wretch in the hands of the hangman was turned off. About five miles from Easton we stopped to water our horses at an inn, a large handsome stone house, with a chatty landlord, who spoke with a strong German accent, complaining pathetically of the potato disease, which had got into the fields of the neighborhood, but glorying in the abundant crops of maize and wheat which had been gathered. Two miles further on, we turned away from the river and ascended to the table-land above, which we found green with extensive fields of wheat, just springing under the autumnal sun. In one of the little villages nestling in the hollows of that region, we stopped for a few moments, and fell into conversation with a tolerably intelligent man, though speaking English with some peculiarities that indicated the race to which he belonged. A sample of his dialect may amuse you. We asked him what the people in that part of the country thought of the new tariff. "Oh," said he, "there are different obinions, some likes it and some not." "How do the democrats take it?" "The democratic in brinciple likes it." "Did it have any effect on the election?" "It brevented a goot many democrats from voting for their candidate for Congress, Mr. Brodhead, because he is for the old tariff. This is a very strong democratic district, and Mr. Brodhead's majority is only about a sousand." A little beyond this village we came in sight of the Water Gap, where the Blue Ridge has been cloven down to its base to form a passage for the Delaware. Two lofty summits, black with precipices of rock, form the gates through which the river issues into the open country. Here it runs noisily over the shallows, as if boasting aloud of the victory it had achieved in breaking its way through such mighty barriers; but within the Gap it sleeps in quiet pools, or flows in deep glassy currents. By the side of these you see large rafts composed of enormous trunks of trees that have floated down with the spring floods from the New York forests, and here wait for their turn in the saw-mills along the shore. It was a bright morning, with a keen autumnal air, and we dismounted from our vehicle and walked through the Gap. It will give your readers an idea of the Water Gap, to say that it consists of a succession of lofty peaks, like the Highlands of the Hudson, with a winding and irregular space between them a few rods wide, to give passage to the river. They are unlike the Highlands, however, in one respect, that their sides are covered with large loose blocks detached from the main precipices. Among these grows the original forest, which descends to their foot, fringes the river, and embowers the road. The present autumn is, I must say, in regard to the coloring of the forests, one of the shabbiest and least brilliant I remember to have seen in this country, almost as sallow and dingy in its hues as an autumn in Europe. But here in the Water Gap it was not without some of its accustomed brightness of tints--the sugar-maple with its golden leaves, and the water-maple with its foliage of scarlet, contrasted with the intense green of the hemlock-fir, the pine, the rosebay-laurel, and the mountain-laurel, which here grow in the same thicket, while the ground below was carpeted with humbler evergreens, the aromatic wintergreen, and the trailing arbutus. The Water Gap is about a mile in length, and near its northern entrance an excellent hotel, the resort of summer visitors, stands on a cliff which rises more than a hundred feet almost perpendicularly from the river. From this place the eye follows the Water Gap to where mountains shut in one behind another, like the teeth of a saw, and between them the Delaware twines out of sight. Before the hotel a fine little boy of about two years of age was at play. The landlord showed us on the calf of the child's leg two small lurid spots, about a quarter of an inch apart. "That," said he, "is the bite of a copper-head snake." We asked when this happened. "It was last summer," answered he; "the child was playing on the side of the road, when he was heard to cry, and seen to make for the house. As soon as he came, my wife called my attention to what she called a scratch on his leg. I examined it, the spot was already purple and hard, and the child was crying violently. I knew it to be the bite of a copper-head, and immediately cut it open with a sharp knife, making the blood to flow freely and washing the part with water. At the same time we got a yerb" (such was his pronunciation) "on the hills, which some call lion-heart, and others snake-head. We steeped this yerb in milk which we made him drink. The doctor had been sent for, and when he came applied hartshorn; but I believe that opening the wound and letting the blood flow was the most effectual remedy. The leg was terribly swollen, and for ten days we thought the little fellow in great danger, but after that he became better and finally recovered." "How do you know that it was a copper-head that bit him?" "We sent to the place where he was at play, found the snake, and killed it. A violent rain had fallen just before, and it had probably washed him down from the mountain-side." "The boy appears very healthy now." "Much better than before; he was formerly delicate, and troubled with an eruption, but that has disappeared, and he has become hardy and fond of the open air." We dined at the hotel and left the Water Gap. As we passed out of its jaws we met a man in a little wagon, carrying behind him the carcass of a deer he had just killed. They are hunted, at this time of the year, and killed in considerable numbers in the extensive forests to the north of this place. A drive of four miles over hill and valley brought us to Stroudsburg, on the banks of the Pocano--a place of which I shall speak in my next letter. Letter XLII. An Excursion to the Water Gap. Easton, Penn., _October_ 24, 1846. My yesterday's letter left me at Stroudsburg, about four miles west of the Delaware. It is a pleasant village, situated on the banks of the Pocano. From this stream the inhabitants have diverted a considerable portion of the water, bringing the current through this village in a canal, making it to dive under the road and rise again on the opposite side, after which it hastens to turn a cluster of mills. To the north is seen the summit of the Pocano mountain, where this stream has its springs, with woods stretching down its sides and covering the adjacent country. Here, about nine miles to the north of the village, deer haunt and are hunted. I heard of one man who had already killed nine of these animals within two or three weeks. A traveller from Wyoming county, whom I met at our inn, gave me some account of the winter life of the deer. "They inhabit," he said, "the swamps of mountain-laurel thickets, through which a man would find it almost impossible to make his way. The laurel-bushes, and the hemlocks scattered among them, intercept the snow as it falls, and form a thick roof, under the shelter of which, near some pool or rivulet, the animals remain until spring opens, as snugly protected from the severity of the weather as sheep under the sheds of a farm-yard. Here they feed upon the leaves of the laurel and other evergreens. It is contrary to the law to kill them after the Christmas holidays, but sometimes their retreat is invaded, and a deer or two killed; their flesh, however, is not wholesome, on account of the laurel leaves on which they feed, and their skin is nearly worthless." I expressed my surprise that the leaves of the mountain laurel, the _kalmia latifolia_, which are so deadly to sheep, should be the winter food of the deer. "It is because the deer has no gall," answered the man, "that the pison don't take effect. But their meat will not do to eat, except in a small quantity, and cooked with pork, which I think helps take the pison out of it." "The deer," he went on to say, "are now passing out of the blue into the gray. After the holidays, when their hair becomes long, and their winter coat is quite grown, their hide is soft and tender, and tears easily when dressed, and it would be folly to kill them, even if there were no law against it." He went on to find a parallel to the case of the deer-skins in the hides of neat-cattle, which, when brought from a hot country, like South America, are firmer and tougher than when obtained in a colder climate like ours. The Wyoming traveller gave a bad account of the health, just at present, of the beautiful valley in which he lived. "We have never before," said he, "known what it was to have the fever and ague among us, but now it is very common, as well as other fevers. The season has neither been uncommonly wet nor uncommonly dry, but it has been uncommonly hot." I heard the same account of various other districts in Pennsylvania. Mifflin county, for example, was sickly this season, as well as other parts of the state which, hitherto have been almost uniformly healthy. Here, however, in Stroudsburg and its neighborhood, they boasted that the fever and ague had never yet made its appearance. I was glad to hear a good account of the pecuniary circumstances of the Pennsylvania farmers. They got in debt like every body else during the prosperous years of 1835 and 1836, and have been ever since working themselves gradually out of it. "I have never," said an intelligent gentleman of Stroudsburg, "known the owners of the farms so free from debt, and so generally easy and prosperous in their condition, as at this moment." It is to be hoped that having been so successful in paying their private debts, they will now try what can be done with the debt of the state. We left Stroudsburg this morning--one of the finest mornings of this autumnal season--and soon climbed an eminence which looked down upon Cherry Hollow. This place reminded me, with the exception of its forests, of the valleys in the Peak of Derbyshire, the same rounded summits, the same green, basin-like hollows. But here, on the hill-sides, were tall groves of oak and chestnut, instead of the brown heath; and the large stone houses of the German householders were very unlike the Derbyshire cottages. The valley is four miles in length, and its eastern extremity is washed by the Delaware. Climbing out of this valley and passing for some miles through yellow woods and fields of springing corn, not Indian corn, we found ourselves at length travelling on the side of another long valley, which terminates at its southern extremity in the Wind Gap. The Wind Gap is an opening in the same mountain ridge which is cloven by the Water Gap, but, unlike that, it extends only about half-way down to the base. Through this opening, bordered on each side by large loose blocks of stone, the road passes. After you have reached the open country beyond, you look back and see the ridge stretching away eastward towards the Water Gap, and in the other direction towards the southwest till it sinks out of sight, a rocky wall of uniform height, with this opening in the midst, which looks as if part of the mountain had here fallen into an abyss below. Beyond the Wind Gap we came to the village of Windham, lying in the shelter of this mountain barrier, and here, about twelve o'clock, our driver stopped a moment at an inn to give water to his horses. The bar-room was full of fresh-colored young men in military uniforms, talking Pennsylvania German rather rapidly and vociferously. They surrounded a thick-set man, in a cap and shirt-sleeves, whom they called Tscho, or Joe, and insisted that he should give them a tune on his fiddle. "Spiel, Tscho, spiel, spiel," was shouted on every side, and at last Tscho took the floor with a fiddle and began to play. About a dozen of the young men stood up on the floor, in couples, facing each other, and hammered out the tune with their feet, giving a tread or tap on the floor to correspond with every note of the instrument, and occasionally crossing from side to side. I have never seen dancing more diligently performed. When the player had drawn the final squeak from his violin, we got into our vehicle, and in somewhat more than an hour were entering the little village of Nazareth, pleasantly situated among fields the autumnal verdure of which indicated their fertility. Nazareth is a Moravian village, of four or five hundred inhabitants, looking prodigiously like a little town of the old world, except that it is more neatly kept. The houses are square and solid, of stone or brick, built immediately on the street; a pavement of broad flags runs under their windows, and between the flags and the carriage-way is a row of trees. In the centre of the village is a square with an arcade for a market, and a little aside from the main street, in a hollow covered with bright green grass, is another square, in the midst of which stands a large white church. Near it is an avenue, with two immense lime-trees growing at the gate, leading to the field in which they bury their dead. Looking upon this square is a large building, three or four stories high, where a school for boys is kept, to which pupils are sent from various parts of the country, and which enjoys a very good reputation. We entered the garden of this school, an inclosure thickly overshadowed with tall forest and exotic trees of various kinds, with shrubs below, and winding walks and summer-houses and benches. The boys of the school were amusing themselves under the trees, and the arched walks were ringing with their shrill voices. We visited also the burying place, which is situated on a little eminence, backed with a wood, and commands a view of the village. The Moravian grave is simple in its decorations; a small flat stone, of a square shape, lying in the midst, between the head and foot, is inscribed with the name of the dead, the time and place of his birth, and the time when, to use their own language, he "departed," and this is the sole epitaph. But innovations have been recently made on this simplicity; a rhyming couplet or quatrain is now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead One recent grave was loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely, and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places of other denominations. The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, are arranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, and sometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper. As we were leaving Nazareth, the innkeeper came to us, and asked if we would allow a man who was travelling to Easton to take a seat in our carriage with the driver. We consented, and a respectable-looking, well-clad, middle-aged person, made his appearance. When we had proceeded a little way, we asked him some questions, to which he made no other reply than to shake his head, and we soon found that he understood no English. I tried him with German, which brought a ready reply in the same language. He was a native of Pennsylvania, he told me, born at Snow Hill, in Lehigh county, not very many miles from Nazareth. In turn, he asked me where I came from, and when I bid him guess, he assigned my birthplace to Germany, which showed at least that he was not very accurately instructed in the diversities with which his mother tongue is spoken. As we entered Easton, the yellow woods on the hills and peaks that surround the place, were lit up with a glowing autumnal sunset. Soon afterward we crossed the Lehigh, and took a walk along its bank in South Easton, where a little town has recently grown up; the sidewalks along its dusty streets were freshly swept for Saturday night. As it began to grow dark, we found ourselves strolling in front of a row of iron mills, with the canal on one side and the Lehigh on the other. One of these was a rolling mill, into which we could look from the bank where we stood, and observe the whole process of the manufacture, which is very striking. The whole interior of the building is lighted at night only by the mouths of several furnaces, which are kindled to a white heat. Out of one of these a thick bar of iron, about six feet in length and heated to a perfect whiteness, is drawn, and one end of it presented to the cylinders of the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled out to three or four times its original size. A sooty workman grasps the opposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, and returns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the opposite side. In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into an enormous length, and shoots across the black floor with a twining motion like a serpent of fire. At last, when pressed to the proper thinness and length, it is coiled up into a circle by the help of a machine contrived for the purpose, which rolls it up as a shopkeeper rolls up a ribbon. We found a man near where we stood, begrimed by the soot of the furnaces, handling the clumsy masses of iron which bear the name of bloom. The rolling mill, he said, belonged to Rodenbough, Stewart & Co., who had very extensive contracts for furnishing iron to the nailmakers and wire manufacturers. "Will they stop the mill for the new tariff?" said I. "They will stop for nothing," replied the man. "The new tariff is a good tariff, if people would but think so. It costs the iron-masters fifteen dollars a ton to make their iron, and they sell it for forty dollars a ton. If the new tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less they will still make money." So revolves the cycle of opinion. Twenty years ago a Pennsylvanian who questioned the policy of the protective system would have been looked upon as a sort of curiosity. Now the bloomers and stable-boys begin to talk free trade. What will they talk twenty years hence? Letter XL. Boston.--Lawrence.--Portland. Portland, _July_ 31, 1847. I left Boston for this place, a few days since, by one of the railways. I never come to Boston or go out of it without being agreeably struck with the civility and respectable appearance of the hackney-coachmen, the porters, and others for whose services the traveller has occasion. You feel, generally, in your intercourse with these persons that you are dealing with men who have a character to maintain. There is a sober substantial look about the dwellings of Boston, which pleases me more than the gayer aspect of our own city. In New York we are careful to keep the outside of our houses fresh with paint, a practice which does not exist here, and which I suppose we inherited from the Hollanders, who learned it I know not where--could it have been from the Chinese? The country houses of Holland, along the canals, are bright with paint, often of several different colors, and are as gay as pagodas. In their moist climate, where mould and moss so speedily gather, the practice may be founded in better reasons than it is with us. "Boston," said a friend to whom I spoke of the appearance of comfort and thrift in that city, "is a much more crowded place than you imagine, and where people are crowded there can not be comfort. In many of the neighborhoods, back of those houses which present so respectable an aspect, are buildings rising close to each other, inhabited by the poorer class, whose families are huddled together without sufficient space and air, and here it is that Boston poverty hides itself. You are more fortunate on your island, that your population can extend itself horizontally, instead of heaping itself up, as we have begun to do here." The first place which we could call pleasant after leaving Boston was Andover, where Stuart and Woods, now venerable with years, instruct the young orthodox ministers and missionaries of New England. It is prettily situated among green declivities. A little beyond, at North Andover, we came in sight of the roofs and spires of the new city of Lawrence, which already begin to show proudly on the sandy and sterile banks of the Merrimac, a rapid and shallow river. A year ago last February, the building of the city was begun; it has now five or six thousand inhabitants, and new colonists are daily thronging in. Brick kilns are smoking all over the country to supply materials for the walls of the dwellings. The place, I was told, astonishes visitors with its bustle and confusion. The streets are encumbered with heaps of fresh earth, and piles of stone, brick, beams, and boards, and people can with difficulty hear each other speak, for the constant thundering of hammers, and the shouts of cartmen and wagoners urging their oxen and horses with their loads through the deep sand of the ways. "Before the last shower," said a passenger, "you could hardly see the city from this spot, on account of the cloud of dust that hung perpetually over it." "Rome," says the old adage, "was not built in a day," but here is a city which, in respect of its growth, puts Rome to shame. The Romulus of this new city, who like the Latian of old, gives his name to the community of which he is the founder, is Mr. Abbot Lawrence, of Boston, a rich manufacturer, money-making and munificent, and more fortunate in building cities and endowing schools, than in foretelling political events. He is the modern Amphion, to the sound of whose music, the pleasant chink of dollars gathered in many a goodly dividend, all the stones which form the foundation of this Thebes dance into their places, "And half the mountain rolls into a wall." Beyond Lawrence, in the state of New Hampshire, the train stopped a moment at Exeter, which those who delight in such comparisons might call the Eton of New England. It is celebrated for its academy, where Bancroft, Everett, and I know not how many more of the New England scholars and men of letters, received the first rudiments of their education. It lies in a gentle depression of the surface of the country, not deep enough to be called a valley, on the banks of a little stream, and has a pleasant retired aspect. At Durham, some ten miles further on, we found a long train of freight-cars crowded with the children of a Sunday-school, just ready to set out on a pic-nic party, the boys shouting, and the girls, of whom the number was prodigious, showing us their smiling faces. A few middle-aged men, and a still greater number of matrons, were dispersed among them to keep them in order. At Dover, where are several cotton mills, we saw a similar train, with a still larger crowd, and when we crossed the boundary of New Hampshire and entered South Berwick in Maine, we passed through a solitary forest of oaks, where long tables and benches had been erected for their reception, and the birds were twittering in the branches over them. At length the sight of numerous groups gathering blue-berries, in an extensive tract of shrubby pasture, indicated that we were approaching a town, and in a few minutes we had arrived at Portland. The conductor, whom we found intelligent and communicative, recommended that we should take quarters, during our stay, at a place called the Veranda, or Oak Grove, on the water, about two miles from the town, and we followed his advice. We drove through Portland, which is nobly situated on an eminence overlooking Casco Bay, its maze of channels, and almost innumerable islands, with their green slopes, cultivated fields, and rocky shores. We passed one arm of the sea after another on bridges, and at length found ourselves on a fine bold promontory, between Presumpscot river and the waters of Casco Bay. Here a house of entertainment has just been opened--the beginning of a new watering-place, which I am sure will become a favorite one in the hot months of our summers. The surrounding country is so intersected with straits, that, let the wind come from what quarter it may, it breathes cool over the waters; and the tide, rising twelve feet, can not ebb and flow without pushing forward the air and drawing it back again, and thus causing a motion of the atmosphere in the stillest weather. We passed twenty-four hours in this pleasant retreat, among the oaks of its grove, and along its rocky shores, enjoying the agreeable coolness of the fresh and bracing atmosphere. To tell the truth we have found it quite cool enough ever since we reached Boston, five days ago; sometimes, in fact, a little too cool for the thin garments we are accustomed to wear at this season. Returning to Portland, we took passage in the steamer Huntress, for Augusta, up the Kennebeck. I thought to give you, in this letter, an amount of this part of my journey, but I find I must reserve it for my next. Letter XLI. The Kennebeck. Keene, New Hampshire, _August 11, 1847_. We left Portland early in the afternoon, on board the steamer Huntress, and swept out of the harbor, among the numerous green islands which here break the swell of the Atlantic, and keep the water almost as smooth as that of the Hudson. "It is said," remarked a passenger, "that there are as many of these islands as there are days in the year, but I do not know that any body has ever counted them." Two of the loftiest, rock-bound, with verdant summits, and standing out beyond the rest, overlooking the main ocean, bore light-houses, and near these we entered the mouth of the Kennebeck, which here comes into the sea between banks of massive rock. At the mouth of the river were forests of stakes, for the support of the nets in which salmon, shad, and alewives are taken. The shad fishery, they told me, was not yet over, though the month of August was already come. We passed some small villages where we saw the keels of large unfinished vessels lying high upon the stocks; at Bath, one of the most considerable of these places, but a small village still, were five or six, on which the ship-builders were busy. These, I was told, when once launched would never be seen again in the place where they were built, but would convey merchandise between the great ports of the world. "The activity of ship-building in the state of Maine," said a gentleman whom I afterward met, "is at this moment far greater than you can form any idea of, without travelling along our coast. In solitary places where a stream or creek large enough to float a ship is found, our builders lay the keels of their vessels. It is not necessary that the channel should be wide enough for the ship to turn round; it is enough if it will contain her lengthwise. They choose a bend in the river from which they can launch her with her head down stream, and, aided by the tide, float her out to sea, after which she proceeds to Boston or New York, or some other of our large seaports to do her part in carrying on the commerce of the world." I learned that the ship-builders of Maine purchase large tracts of forest in Virginia and other states of the south, for their supply of timber. They obtain their oaks from the Virginia shore, their hard pine from North Carolina; the coverings of the deck and the smaller timbers of the large vessels are furnished by Maine. They take to the south cargoes of lime and other products of Maine, and bring back the huge trunks produced in that region. The larger trees on the banks of the navigable rivers of Maine were long ago wrought into the keels of vessels. It was not far from Bath, and a considerable distance from the open sea, that we saw a large seal on a rock in the river. He turned his head slowly from side to side as we passed, without allowing himself to be disturbed by the noise we made, and kept his place as long as the eye could distinguish him. The presence of an animal always associated in the imagination with uninhabited coasts of the ocean, made us feel that we were advancing into a thinly or at least a newly peopled country. Above Bath, the channel of the Kennebeck widens into what is called Merrymeeting Bay. Here the great Androscoggin brings in its waters from the southwest, and various other small streams from different quarters enter the bay, making it a kind of Congress of Rivers. It is full of wooded islands and rocky promontories projecting into the water and overshading it with their trees. As we passed up we saw, from time to time, farms pleasantly situated on the islands or the borders of the river, where a soil more genial or more easily tilled had tempted the settler to fix himself. At length we approached Gardiner, a flourishing village, beautifully situated among the hills on the right bank of the Kennebeck. All traces of sterility had already disappeared from the country; the shores of the river were no longer rock-bound, but disposed in green terraces, with woody eminences behind them. Leaving Gardiner behind us, we went on to Hallowell, a village bearing similar marks of prosperity, where we landed, and were taken in carriages to Augusta, the seat of government, three or four miles beyond. Augusta is a pretty village, seated on green and apparently fertile eminences that overlook the Kennebeck, and itself overlooked by still higher summits, covered with woods, The houses are neat, and shaded with trees, as is the case with all New England villages in the agricultural districts. I found the Legislature in session; the Senate, a small quiet body, deliberating for aught I could see, with as much grave and tranquil dignity as the Senate of the United States. The House of Representatives was just at the moment occupied by some railway question, which I was told excited more feeling than any subject that had been debated in the whole session, but even this occasioned no unseemly agitation; the surface was gently rippled, nothing more. While at Augusta, we crossed the river and visited the Insane Asylum, a state institution, lying on the pleasant declivities of the opposite shore. It is a handsome stone building. One of the medical attendants accompanied us over a part of the building, and showed us some of the wards in which there were then scarcely any patients, and which appeared to be in excellent order, with the best arrangements for the comfort of the inmates, and a scrupulous attention to cleanliness. When we expressed a desire to see the patients, and to learn something of the manner in which they were treated, he replied, "We do not make a show of our patients; we only show the building." Our visit was, of course, soon dispatched. We learned afterward that this was either insolence or laziness on the part of the officer in question, whose business it properly was to satisfy any reasonable curiosity expressed by visitors. It had been our intention to cross the country from Augusta directly to the White Hills in New Hampshire, and we took seats in the stage-coach with that view. Back of Augusta the country swells into hills of considerable height with deep hollows between, in which lie a multitude of lakes. We passed several of these, beautifully embosomed among woods, meadows, and pastures, and were told that if we continued on the course we had taken we should scarcely ever find ourselves without some sheet of water in sight till we arrived at Fryeburg on the boundary between Maine and New Hampshire. One of them, in the township of Winthrop, struck us as particularly beautiful. Its shores are clean and bold, with little promontories running far into the water, and several small islands. At Winthrop we found that the coach in which we set out would proceed to Portland, and that if we intended to go on to Fryeburg, we must take seats in a shabby wagon, without the least protection for our baggage. It was already beginning to rain, and this circumstance decided us; we remained in the coach and proceeded on our return to Portland. I have scarcely ever travelled in a country which presented a finer appearance of agricultural thrift and prosperity than the portions of the counties of Kennebeck and Cumberland, through which our road carried us. The dwellings are large, neatly painted, surrounded with fruit-trees and shrubs, and the farms in excellent order, and apparently productive. We descended at length into the low country, crossed the Androscoggin to the county of York, where, as we proceeded, the country became more sandy and sterile, and the houses had a neglected aspect. At length, after a journey of fifty or sixty miles in the rain, we were again set down in the pleasant town of Portland. Letter XLII. The White Mountains. Springfield, Mass., _August_ 13, 1847. I had not space in my last letter, which was written from Keene, in New Hampshire, to speak of a visit I had just made to the White Mountains. Do not think I am going to bore you with a set description of my journey and ascent of Mount Washington; a few notes of the excursion may possibly amuse you. From Conway, where the stage-coach sets you down for the night, in sight of the summits of the mountains, the road to the Old Notch is a very picturesque one. You follow the path of the Saco along a wide valley, sometimes in the woods that overhang its bank, and sometimes on the edge of rich grassy meadows, till at length, as you leave behind you one summit after another, you find yourself in a little plain, apparently inclosed on every side by mountains. Further on you enter the deep gorge which leads gradually upward to the Notch. In the midst of it is situated the Willey House, near which the Willey family were overtaken by an avalanche and perished as they were making their escape. It is now enlarged into a house of accommodation for visitors to the mountains. Nothing can exceed the aspect of desolation presented by the lofty mountain-ridges which rise on each side. They are streaked with the paths of landslides, occurring at different periods, which have left the rocky ribs of the mountains bare from their bald tops to the forests at their feet, and have filled the sides of the valley with heaps of earth, gravel, stones, and trunks of trees. From the Willey house you ascend, for about two miles, a declivity, by no means steep, with these dark ridges frowning over you, your path here and there crossed by streams which have made for themselves passages in the granite sides of the mountains like narrow staircases, down which they come tumbling from one vast block to another. I afterward made acquaintance with two of these, and followed them upward from one clear pool and one white cascade to another till I was tired. The road at length passes through what may be compared to a natural gateway, a narrow chasm between tall cliffs, and through which the Saco, now a mere brook, finds its way. You find yourself in a green opening, looking like the bottom of a drained lake with mountain summits around you. Here is one of the houses of accommodation from which you ascend Mount Washington. If you should ever think of ascending Mount Washington, do not allow any of the hotel-keepers to cheat you in regard to the distance. It is about ten miles from either the hotels to the summit, and very little less from any of them. They keep a set of worn-out horses, which they hire for the season, and which are trained to climb the mountain, in a walk, by the worst bridle-paths in the world. The poor hacks are generally tolerably sure-footed, but there are exceptions to this. Guides are sent with the visitors, who generally go on foot, strong-legged men, carrying long staves, and watching the ladies lest any accident should occur; some of these, especially those from the house in the Notch, commonly called Tom Crawford's, are unmannerly fellows enough. The scenery of these mountains has not been sufficiently praised. But for the glaciers, but for the peaks white with perpetual snow, it would be scarcely worth while to see Switzerland after seeing the White Mountains. The depth of the valleys, the steepness of the mountain-sides, the variety of aspect shown by their summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamed with the open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain region seen north and south of us, gleaming with many lakes, took me with surprise and astonishment. Imagine the forests to be shorn from half the broad declivities--imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turf and footpaths leading from one to the other, and herds and flocks browzing, and you have Switzerland before you. I admit, however, that these accessories add to the variety and interest of the landscape, and perhaps heighten the idea of its vastness. I have been told, however, that the White Mountains in autumn present an aspect more glorious than even the splendors of the perpetual ice of the Alps. All this mighty multitude of mountains, rising from valleys filled with dense forests, have then put on their hues of gold and scarlet, and, seen more distinctly on account of their brightness of color, seem to tower higher in the clear blue of the sky. At that season of the year they are little visited, and only awaken the wonder of the occasional traveller. It is not necessary to ascend Mount Washington, to enjoy the finest views. Some of the lower peaks offer grander though not so extensive ones; the height of the main summit seems to diminish the size of the objects beheld from it. The sense of solitude and immensity is however most strongly felt on that great cone, overlooking all the rest, and formed of loose rocks, which seem as if broken into fragments by the power which upheaved these ridges from the depths of the earth below. At some distance on the northern side of one of the summits, I saw a large snow-drift lying in the August sunshine. The Franconia Notch, which we afterwards visited, is almost as remarkable for the two beautiful little lakes within it, as for the savage grandeur of the mountain-walls between which it passes. At this place I was shown a hen clucking over a brood of young puppies. They were littered near the nest where she was sitting, when she immediately abandoned her eggs and adopted them as her offspring. She had a battle with the mother, and proved victorious; after which, however, a compromise took place, the slut nursing the puppies and the hen covering them as well as she could with her wings. She was strutting among them when I saw her, with an appearance of pride at having produced so gigantic a brood. From Franconia we proceeded to Bath, on or near the Connecticut, and entered the lovely valley of that river, which is as beautiful in New Hampshire, as in any part of its course. Hanover, the seat of Dartmouth College, is a pleasant spot, but the traveller will find there the worst hotels on the river. Windsor, on the Vermont side, is a still finer village, with trim gardens and streets shaded by old trees; Bellows Falls is one of the most striking places for its scenery in all New England. The coach brought us to the railway station in the pleasant village of Greenfield. We took seats in the train, and leaving on our left the quiet old streets of Deerfield under their ancient trees, and passing a dozen or more of the villages on the meadows of the Connecticut, found ourselves in less than two hours in this flourishing place, which is rapidly rising to be one of the most important towns in New England. Letter XLIII. A Passage to Savannah. Augusta, Georgia, _March 29, 1849_. A quiet passage by sea from New York to Savannah would seem to afford little matter for a letter, yet those who take the trouble to read what I am about to write, will, I hope, admit that there are some things to be observed, even on such a voyage. It was indeed a remarkably quiet one, and worthy of note on that account, if on no other. We had a quiet vessel, quiet weather, a quiet, good-natured captain, a quiet crew, and remarkably quiet passengers. When we left the wharf at New York last week, in the good steamship Tennessee, we were not conscious, at first, as we sat in the cabin, that she was in motion and proceeding down the harbor. There was no beating or churning of the sea, no struggling to get forward; her paddles played in the water as smoothly as those of a terrapin, without jar or noise. The Tennessee is one of the tightest and strongest boats that navigate our coast; the very flooring of her deck is composed of timbers instead of planks, and helps to keep her massive frame more compactly and solidly together. It was her first voyage; her fifty-one passengers lolled on sofas fresh from the upholsterer's, and slept on mattresses which had never been pressed by the human form before, in state-rooms where foul air had never collected. Nor is it possible that the air should become impure in them to any great degree, for the Tennessee is the best-ventilated ship I ever was in; the main cabin and the state-rooms are connected with each other and with the deck, by numerous openings and pipes which keep up a constant circulation of air in every part. I have spoken of the passengers as remarkably quiet persons. Several of them, I believe, never spoke during the passage, at least so it seemed to me. The silence would have been almost irksome, but for two lively little girls who amused us by their prattle, and two young women, apparently just married, too happy to do any thing but laugh, even when suffering from seasickness, and whom we now and then heard shouting and squealing from their state-rooms. There were two dark-haired, long-limbed gentlemen, who lay the greater part of the first and second day at full length on the sofas in the after-cabin, each with a spittoon before him, chewing tobacco with great rapidity and industry, and apparently absorbed in the endeavor to fill it within a given time. There was another, with that atrabilious complexion peculiar to marshy countries, and circles of a still deeper hue about his eyes, who sat on deck, speechless and motionless, wholly indifferent to the sound of the dinner-bell, his countenance fixed in an expression which seemed to indicate an utter disgust of life. Yet we had some snatches of good talk on the voyage. A robust old gentleman, a native of Norwalk, in Connecticut, told us that he had been reading a history of that place by the Rev. Mr. Hall. "I find," said he, "that in his account of the remarkable people of Norwalk, he has omitted to speak of two of the most remarkable, two spinsters, Sarah and Phebe Comstock, relatives of mine and friends of my youth, of whom I retain a vivid recollection. They were in opulent circumstances for the neighborhood in which they lived, possessing a farm of about two hundred acres; they were industrious, frugal, and extremely charitable; but they never relieved a poor family without visiting it, and inquiring carefully into its circumstances. Sarah was the housekeeper, and Phebe the farmer. Phebe knew nothing of kitchen matters, but she knew at what time of the year greensward should be broken up, and corn planted, and potatoes dug. She dropped Indian corn and sowed English grain with her own hands. In the time of planting or of harvest, it was Sarah who visited and relieved the poor. "I remember that they had various ways of employing the young people who called upon them. If it was late in the autumn, there was a chopping-board and chopping-knife ready, with the feet of neat-cattle, from which the oily parts had been extracted by boiling. 'You do not want to be idle,' they would say, 'chop this meat, and you shall have your share of the mince-pies that we are going to make.' At other times a supply of old woollen stockings were ready for unraveling. 'We know you do not care to be idle' they would say, 'here are some stockings which you would oblige us by unraveling.' If you asked what use they made of the spools of woollen thread obtained by this process, they would answer: 'We use it as the weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They had negro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant of theirs, who has seen more than a hundred years, is alive yet. "They practiced one very peculiar piece of economy. The white hickory you know, yields the purest and sweetest of saccharine juices. They had their hickory fuel cut into short billets, which before placing on the fire they laid on the andirons, a little in front of the blaze, so as to subject it to a pretty strong heat. This caused the syrup in the wood to drop from each end of the billet, where it was caught in a cup, and in this way a gallon or two was collected in the course of a fortnight. With this they flavored their finest cakes. "They died about thirty years since, one at the age of eighty-nine, and the other at the age of ninety. On the tomb-stone of one of them, it was recorded that she had been a member of the church for seventy years. Their father was a remarkable man in his way. He was a rich man in his time, and kept a park of deer, one of the last known in Connecticut, for the purpose of supplying his table with venison. He prided himself on the strict and literal fulfillment of his word. On one occasion he had a law-suit with one of his neighbors, before a justice of the peace, in which he was cast and ordered to pay ten shillings damages, and a shilling as the fees of court. He paid the ten shillings, and asked the justice whether he would allow him to pay the remaining shilling when he next passed his door. The magistrate readily consented, but from that time old Comstock never went by his house. Whenever he had occasion to go to church, or to any other place, the direct road to which led by the justice's door, he was careful to take a lane which passed behind the dwelling, and at some distance from it. The shilling remained unpaid up to the day of his death, and it was found that in his last will he had directed that his corpse should be carried by that lane to the place of interment." When we left the quarantine ground on Thursday morning, after lying moored all night with a heavy rain beating on the deck, the sky was beginning to clear with a strong northwest wind and the decks were slippery with ice. When the sun rose it threw a cold white light upon the waters, and the passengers who appeared on deck were muffled to the eyes. As we proceeded southwardly, the temperature grew milder, and the day closed with a calm and pleasant sunset. The next day the weather was still milder, until about noon, when we arrived off Cape Hatteras a strong wind set in from the northeast, clouds gathered with a showery aspect, and every thing seemed to betoken an impending storm. At this moment the captain shifted the direction of the voyage, from south to southwest; we ran before the wind leaving the storm, if there was any, behind us, and the day closed with another quiet and brilliant sunset. The next day, the third of our voyage, broke upon us like a day in summer, with amber-colored sunshine and the blandest breezes that ever blew. An awning was stretched over the deck to protect us from the beams of the sun, and all the passengers gathered under it; the two dark-complexioned gentlemen left the task of filling the spittoons below, and came up to chew their tobacco on deck; the atrabilious passenger was seen to interest himself in the direction of the compass, and once was thought to smile, and the hale old gentleman repeated the history of his Norwalk relatives. On the fourth morning we landed at Savannah. It was delightful to eyes which had seen only russet fields and leafless trees for months, to gaze on the new and delicate green of the trees and the herbage. The weeping willows drooped in full leaf, the later oaks were putting forth their new foliage, the locust-trees had hung out their tender sprays and their clusters of blossoms not yet unfolded, the Chinese wistaria covered the sides of houses with its festoons of blue blossoms, and roses were nodding at us in the wind, from the tops of the brick walls which surround the gardens. Yet winter had been here, I saw. The orange-trees which, since the great frost seven or eight years ago, had sprung from the ground and grown to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, had a few days before my arrival felt another severe frost, and stood covered with sere dry leaves in the gardens, some of them yet covered with fruit. The trees were not killed, however, as formerly, though they will produce no fruit this season, and new leaf-buds were beginning to sprout on their boughs. The dwarf-orange, a hardier tree, had escaped entirely, and its blossoms were beginning to open. I visited Bonaventure, which I formerly described in one of my letters. It has lost the interest of utter solitude and desertion which it then had. A Gothic cottage has been built on the place, and the avenues of live-oaks have been surrounded with an inclosure, for the purpose of making a cemetery on the spot. Yet there they stand, as solemn as ever, lifting and stretching their long irregular branches overhead, hung with masses and festoons of gray moss. It almost seemed, when I looked up to them, as if the clouds had come nearer to the earth than is their wont, and formed themselves into the shadowy ribs of the vault above me. The drive to Bonaventure at this season of the year is very beautiful, though the roads are sandy; it is partly along an avenue of tall trees, and partly through the woods, where the dog-wood and azalea and thorn-trees are in blossom, and the ground is sprinkled with flowers. Here and there are dwellings beside the road. "They are unsafe the greater part of the year," said the gentleman who drove me out, and who spoke from professional knowledge, "a summer residence in them is sure to bring dangerous fevers." Savannah is a healthy city, but it is like Rome, imprisoned by malaria. The city of Savannah, since I saw it six years ago, has enlarged considerably, and the additions made to it increase its beauty. The streets have been extended on the south side, on the same plan as those of the rest of the city, with small parks at short distances from each other, planted with trees; and the new houses are handsome and well-built. The communications opened with the interior by long lines of railway have, no doubt, been the principal occasion of this prosperity. These and the Savannah river send enormous quantities of cotton to the Savannah market. One should see, with the bodily eye, the multitude of bales of this commodity accumulating in the warehouses and elsewhere, in order to form an idea of the extent to which it is produced in the southern states--long trains of cars heaped with bales, steamer after steamer loaded high with bales coming down the rivers, acres of bales on the wharves, acres of bales at the railway stations--one should see all this, and then carry his thoughts to the millions of the civilized world who are clothed by this great staple of our country. I came to this place by steamer to Charleston and then by railway. The line of the railway, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in length, passes through the most unproductive district of South Carolina. It is in fact nothing but a waste of forest, with here and there an open field, half a dozen glimpses of plantations, and about as many villages, none of which are considerable, and some of which consist of not more than half a dozen houses. Aiken, however, sixteen miles before you reach the Savannah river, has a pleasant aspect. It is situated on a comparatively high tract of country, sandy and barren, but healthy, and hither the planters resort in the hot months from their homes in the less salubrious districts. Pretty cottages stand dispersed among the oaks and pines, and immediately west of the place the country descends in pleasant undulations towards the valley of the Savannah. The appearance of Augusta struck me very agreeably as I reached it, on a most delightful afternoon, which seemed to me more like June than March. I was delighted to see turf again, regular greensward of sweet grasses and clover, such as you see in May in the northern states, and do not meet on the coast in the southern states. The city lies on a broad rich plain on the Savannah river, with woody declivities to the north and west. I have seen several things here since my arrival which interested me much, and if I can command time I will speak of them in another letter. Letter XLIV. Southern Cotton Mills. Barnwell District, South Carolina, _March_ 31, 1849. I promised to say something more of Augusta if I had time before departing from Cuba, and I find that I have a few moments to spare for a hasty letter. The people of Augusta boast of the beauty of their place, and not without some reason. The streets are broad, and in some parts overshadowed with rows of fine trees. The banks of the river on which it stands are high and firm, and slopes half covered with forest, of a pleasant aspect, overlook it from the west and from the Carolina side. To the south stretches a broad champaign country, on which are some of the finest plantations of Georgia. I visited one of these, consisting of ten thousand acres, kept throughout in as perfect order as a small farm at the north, though large enough for a German principality. But what interested me most, was a visit to a cotton mill in the neighborhood,--a sample of a class of manufacturing establishments, where the poor white people of this state and of South Carolina find occupation. It is a large manufactory, and the machinery is in as perfect order as in any of the mills at the north. "Here," said a gentleman who accompanied us, as we entered the long apartment in the second story, "you will see a sample of the brunettes of the piny woods." The girls of various ages, who are employed at the spindles, had, for the most part, a sallow, sickly complexion, and in many of their faces, I remarked that look of mingled distrust and dejection which often accompanies the condition of extreme, hopeless poverty. "These poor girls," said one of our party, "think themselves extremely fortunate to be employed here, and accept work gladly. They come from the most barren parts of Carolina and Georgia, where their families live wretchedly, often upon unwholesome food, and as idly as wretchedly, for hitherto there has been no manual occupation provided for them from which they do not shrink as disgraceful, on account of its being the occupation of slaves. In these factories negroes are not employed as operatives, and this gives the calling of the factory girl a certain dignity. You would be surprised to see the change which a short time effects in these poor people. They come barefooted, dirty, and in rags; they are scoured, put into shoes and stockings, set at work and sent regularly to the Sunday-schools, where they are taught what none of them have been taught before--to read and write. In a short time they became expert at their work; they lose their sullen shyness, and their physiognomy becomes comparatively open and cheerful. Their families are relieved from the temptations to theft and other shameful courses which accompany the condition of poverty without occupation." "They have a good deal of the poke-easy manner of the piny woods about them yet," said one of our party, a Georgian. It was true, I perceived that they had not yet acquired all that alacrity and quickness in their work which you see in the work-people of the New England mills. In one of the upper stories I saw a girl of a clearer complexion than the rest, with two long curls swinging behind each ear, as she stepped about with the air of a duchess. "That girl is from the north," said our conductor; "at first we placed an expert operative from the north in each story of the building as an instructor and pattern to the rest." I have since learned that some attempts were made at first to induce the poor white people to work side by side with the blacks in these mills. These utterly failed, and the question then became with the proprietors whether they should employ blacks only or whites only; whether they should give these poor people an occupation which, while it tended to elevate their condition, secured a more expert class of work-people than the negroes could be expected to become, or whether they should rely upon the less intelligent and more negligent services of slaves. They decided at length upon banishing the labor of blacks from their mills. At Graniteville, in South Carolina, about ten miles from the Savannah river, a neat little manufacturing village has lately been built up, where the families of the _crackers_, as they are called, reclaimed from their idle lives in the woods, are settled, and white labor only is employed. The enterprise is said to be in a most prosperous condition. Only coarse cloths are made in these mills--strong, thick fabrics, suitable for negro shirting--and the demand for this kind of goods, I am told, is greater than the supply. Every yard made in this manufactory at Augusta, is taken off as soon as it leaves the loom. I fell in with a northern man in the course of the day, who told me that these mills had driven the northern manufacturer of coarse cottons out of the southern market. "The buildings are erected here more cheaply," he continued, "there is far less expense in fuel, and the wages of the workpeople are less. At first the boys and girls of the cracker families were engaged for little more than their board; their wages are now better, but they are still low. I am about to go to the north, and I shall do my best to persuade some of my friends, who have been almost ruined by this southern competition, to come to Augusta and set up cotton mills." There is water-power at Augusta sufficient to turn the machinery of many large establishments. A canal from the Savannah river brings in a large volume of water, which passes from level to level, and might be made to turn the spindles and drive the looms of a populous manufacturing town. Such it will become, if any faith is to be placed in present indications, and a considerable manufacturing population will be settled at this place, drawn from the half-wild inhabitants of the most barren parts of the southern states. I look upon the introduction of manufactures at the south as an event of the most favorable promise for that part of the country, since it both condenses a class of population too thinly scattered to have the benefit of the institutions of civilized life, of education and religion--and restores one branch of labor, at least, to its proper dignity, in a region where manual labor has been the badge of servitude and dependence. One of the pleasantest spots in the neighborhood of Augusta is Somerville, a sandy eminence, covered with woods, the shade of which is carefully cherished, and in the midst of which are numerous cottages and country seats, closely embowered in trees, with pleasant paths leading to them from the highway. Here the evenings in summer are not so oppressively hot as in the town below, and dense as the shade is, the air is dry and elastic. Hither many families retire during the hot season, and many reside here the year round. We drove through it as the sun was setting, and called at the dwellings of several of the hospitable inhabitants. The next morning the railway train brought us to Barnwell District, in South Carolina, where I write this. I intended to send you some notes of the agricultural changes which I have observed in this part of South Carolina since I was last here, but I have hardly time to do it. The culture of wheat has been introduced, many planters now raising enough for their own consumption. The sugar cane is also planted, and quantities of sugar and molasses are often made sufficient to supply the plantations on which it is cultivated. Spinning-wheels and looms have come into use, and a strong and durable cotton cloth is woven by the negro women for the wear of the slaves. All this shows a desire to make the most of the recources of the country, and to protect the planter against the embarrassments which often arise from the fluctuating prices of the great staple of the south--cotton. But I have no time to dwell upon this subject. To-morrow I sail for Cuba. Letter XLV. The Florida Coast.--Key West. Havana, _April_ 7, 1849. It was a most agreeable voyage which I made in the steamer Isabel, to this port, the wind in our favor the whole distance, fine bright weather, the temperature passing gradually from what we have it in New York at the end of May, to what it is in the middle of June. The Isabel is a noble sea-boat, of great strength, not so well ventilated as the Tennessee, in which we came to Savannah, with spacious and comfortable cabins, and, I am sorry to say, rather dirty state-rooms. We stopped off Savannah near the close of the first day of our voyage, to leave some of our passengers and take in others; and on the second, which was also the second of the month, we were running rapidly down the Florida coast, with the trade-wind fresh on our beam, sweeping before it a long swell from the east, in which our vessel rocked too much for the stomachs of most of the passengers. The next day the sea was smoother; we had changed our direction somewhat and were going before the wind, the Florida reefs full in sight, with their long streak of white surf, beyond which, along the line of the shore, lay a belt of water, of bright translucent green, and in front the waves wore an amethystine tint. We sat the greater part of the day under an awning. A long line, with a baited hook at the end, was let down into the water from the stern of our vessel, and after being dragged there an hour or two, it was seized by a king-fish, which was immediately hauled on board. It was an elegantly shaped fish, weighing nearly twenty pounds, with a long head, and scales shining with blue and purple. It was served up for dinner, and its flavor much commended by the amateurs. The waters around us were full of sails, gleaming in the sunshine. "They belong," said our Charleston pilot, "to the wreckers who live at Key West. Every morning they come out and cruise among the reefs, to discover if there are any vessels wrecked or in distress--the night brings them back to the harbor on their island." Your readers know, I presume, that at Key West is a town containing nearly three thousand inhabitants, who subsist solely by the occupation of relieving vessels in distress navigating this dangerous coast, and bringing in such as are wrecked. The population, of course, increases with the commerce of the country, and every vessel that sails from our ports to the Gulf of Mexico, or comes from the Gulf to the North, every addition to the intercourse of the Atlantic ports with Mobile, New Orleans, the West Indies, or Central America, adds to their chances of gain. These people neither plant nor sow; their isle is a low barren spot, surrounded by a beach of white sand, formed of disintegrated porous limestone, and a covering of the same sand, spread thinly over the rock, forms its soil. "It is a scandal," said the pilot, "that this coast is not better lighted. A few light-houses would make its navigation much safer, and they would be built, if Florida had any man in Congress to represent the matter properly to the government. I have long been familiar with this coast--sixty times, at least, I have made the voyage from Charleston to Havana, and I am sure that there is no such dangerous navigation on the coast of the United States. In going to Havana, or to New Orleans, or to other ports on the gulf, commanders of vessels try to avoid the current of the gulf-stream which would carry them to the north, and they, therefore, shave the Florida coast, and keep near the reefs which you see yonder. They often strike the reefs inadvertently, or are driven against them by storms. In returning northward the navigation is safer; we give a good offing to the reefs and strike out into the gulf-stream, the current of which carries us in the direction of our voyage." A little before nine o'clock we had entered the little harbor of Key West, and were moored in its still waters. It was a bright moonlight evening, and we rambled two or three hours about the town and the island. The hull of a dismasted vessel lay close by our landing-place; it had no name on bow or stern, and had just been found abandoned at sea, and brought in by the wreckers; its cargo, consisting of logwood, had been taken out and lay in piles on the wharf. This town has principally grown up since the Florida war. The habitations have a comfortable appearance; some of them are quite neat, but the sterility of the place is attested by the want of gardens. In some of the inclosures before the houses, however, there were tropical shrubs in flower, and here the cocoanut-tree was growing, and other trees of the palm kind, which rustled with a sharp dry sound in the fresh wind from the sea. They were the first palms I had seen growing in the open air, and they gave a tropical aspect to the place. We fell in with a man who had lived thirteen years at Key West. He told us that its three thousand inhabitants had four places of worship--an Episcopal, a Catholic, a Methodist, and a Baptist church; and the drinking-houses which we saw open, with such an elaborate display of bottles and decanters, were not resorted to by the people of the place, but were the haunt of English and American sailors, whom the disasters, or the regular voyages of their vessels had brought hither. He gave us an account of the hurricane of September, 1846, which overflowed and laid waste the island. "Here where we stand," said he, "the water was four feet deep at least. I saved my family in a boat, and carried them to a higher part of the island. Two houses which I owned were swept away by the flood, and I was ruined. Most of the houses were unroofed by the wind; every vessel belonging to the place was lost; dismasted hulks were floating about, and nobody knew to whom they belonged, and dead bodies of men and women lay scattered along the beach. It was the worst hurricane ever known at Key West; before it came, we used to have a hurricane regularly once in two years, but we have had none since." A bell was rung about this time, and we asked the reason. "It is to signify that the negroes must be at their homes," answered the man. We inquired if there were many blacks in the place. "Till lately," he replied, "there were about eighty, but since the United States government has begun to build the fort yonder, their number has increased. Several broken-down planters, who have no employment for their slaves, have sent them to Key West to be employed by the government. We do not want them here, and wish that the government would leave them on the hands of their masters." On the fourth morning when we went on deck, the coast of Cuba, a ridge of dim hills, was in sight, and our vessel was rolling in the unsteady waves of the gulf stream, which here beat against the northern shore of the island. It was a hot morning, as the mornings in this climate always are till the periodical breeze springs up, about ten o'clock, and refreshes all the islands that lie in the embrace of the gulf. In a short time, the cream-colored walls of the Moro, the strong castle which guards the entrance to the harbor of Havana, appeared rising from the waters. We passed close to the cliffs on which it is built, were hailed in English, a gun was fired, our steamer darted through a narrow entrance into the harbor, and anchored in the midst of what appeared a still inland lake. The city of Havana has a cheerful appearance seen from the harbor. Its massive houses, built for the most part of the porous rock of the island, are covered with stucco, generally of a white or cream color, but often stained sky-blue or bright yellow. Above these rise the dark towers and domes of the churches, apparently built of a more durable material, and looking more venerable for the gay color of the dwellings amidst which they stand. The extensive fortifications of Cabañas crown the heights on that side of the harbor which lies opposite to the town; and south of the city a green, fertile valley, in which stand scattered palm-trees, stretches towards the pleasant village of Cerro. We lay idly in the stream for two hours, till the authorities of the port could find time to visit us. They arrived at last, and without coming on board, subjected the captain to a long questioning, and searched the newspapers he brought for intelligence relating to the health of the port from which he sailed. At last they gave us leave to land, without undergoing a quarantine, and withdrew, taking with them our passports. We went on shore, and after three hours further delay got our baggage through the custom-house. Letter XLVI. Havana. Havana, _April_ 10, 1849. I find that it requires a greater effort of resolution to sit down to the writing of a long letter in this soft climate, than in the country I have left. I feel a temptation to sit idly, and let the grateful wind from the sea, coming in at the broad windows, flow around me, or read, or talk, as I happen to have a book or a companion. That there is something in a tropical climate which indisposes one to vigorous exertion I can well believe, from what I experience in myself, and what I see around me. The ladies do not seem to take the least exercise, except an occasional drive on the Paseo, or public park; they never walk out, and when they are shopping, which is no less the vocation of their sex here than in other civilized countries, they never descend from their _volantes_, but the goods are brought out by the obsequious shopkeeper, and the lady makes her choice and discusses the price as she sits in her carriage. Yet the women of Cuba show no tokens of delicate health. Freshness of color does not belong to a latitude so near the equator, but they have plump figures, placid, unwrinkled countenances, a well-developed bust, and eyes, the brilliant languor of which is not the languor of illness. The girls as well as the young men, have rather narrow shoulders, but as they advance in life, the chest, in the women particularly, seems to expand from year to year, till it attains an amplitude by no means common in our country. I fully believe that this effect, and their general health, in spite of the inaction in which they pass their lives, is owing to the free circulation of air through their apartments. For in Cuba, the women as well as the men may be said to live in the open air. They know nothing of close rooms, in all the island, and nothing of foul air, and to this, I have no doubt, quite as much as to the mildness of the temperature, the friendly effect of its climate upon invalids from the north is to be ascribed. Their ceilings are extremely lofty, and the wide windows, extending from the top of the room to the floor and guarded by long perpendicular bars of iron, are without glass, and when closed are generally only closed with blinds which, while they break the force of the wind when it is too strong, do not exclude the air. Since I have been on the island, I may be said to have breakfasted and dined and supped and slept in the open air, in an atmosphere which is never in repose except for a short time in the morning after sunrise. At other times a breeze is always stirring, in the day-time bringing in the air from the ocean, and at night drawing it out again to the sea. In walking through the streets of the towns in Cuba, I have been entertained by the glimpses I had through the ample windows, of what was going on in the parlors. Sometimes a curtain hanging before them allowed me only a sight of the small hands which clasped the bars of the grate, and the dusky faces and dark eyes peeping into the street and scanning the passers by. At other times, the whole room was seen, with its furniture, and its female forms sitting in languid postures, courting the breeze as it entered from without. In the evening, as I passed along the narrow sidewalk of the narrow streets, I have been startled at finding myself almost in the midst of a merry party gathered about the window of a brilliantly lighted room, and chattering the soft Spanish of the island in voices that sounded strangely near to me. I have spoken of their languid postures: they love to recline on sofas; their houses are filled with rocking-chairs imported from the United States; they are fond of sitting in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. Indeed they go beyond us in this respect; for in Cuba they have invented a kind of chair which, by lowering the back and raising the knees, places the sitter precisely in the posture he would take if he sat in a chair leaning backward against a wall. It is a luxurious attitude, I must own, and I do not wonder that it is a favorite with lazy people, for it relieves one of all the trouble of keeping the body upright. It is the women who form the large majority of the worshipers in the churches. I landed here in Passion Week, and the next day was Holy Thursday, when not a vehicle on wheels of any sort is allowed to be seen in the streets; and the ladies, contrary to their custom during the rest of the year, are obliged to resort to the churches on foot. Negro servants of both sexes were seen passing to and fro, carrying mats on which their mistresses were to kneel in the morning service. All the white female population, young and old, were dressed in black, with black lace veils. In the afternoon, three wooden or waxen images of the size of life, representing Christ in the different stages of his passion, were placed in the spacious Church of St. Catharine, which was so thronged that I found it difficult to enter. Near the door was a figure of the Saviour sinking under the weight of his cross, and the worshipers were kneeling to kiss his feet. Aged negro men and women, half-naked negro children, ladies richly attired, little girls in Parisian dresses, with lustrous black eyes and a profusion of ringlets, cast themselves down before the image, and pressed their lips to its feet in a passion of devotion. Mothers led up their little ones, and showed them how to perform this act of adoration. I saw matrons and young women rise from it with their eyes red with tears. The next day, which was Good Friday, about twilight, a long procession came trailing slowly through the streets under my window, bearing an image of the dead Christ, lying upon a cloth of gold. It was accompanied by a body of soldiery, holding their muskets reversed, and a band playing plaintive tunes; the crowd uncovered their heads as it passed. On Saturday morning, at ten o'clock, the solemnities of holy week were over; the bells rang a merry peal; hundreds of volantes and drays, which had stood ready harnessed, rushed into the streets; the city became suddenly noisy with the rattle of wheels and the tramp of horses; the shops which had been shut for the last two days, were opened; and the ladies, in white or light-colored muslins, were proceeding in their volantes to purchase at the shops their costumes for the Easter festivities. I passed the evening on the _Plaza de Armas_, a public square in front of the Governor's house, planted with palms and other trees, paved with broad flags, and bordered with a row of benches. It was crowded with people in their best dresses, the ladies mostly in white, and without bonnets, for the bonnet in this country is only worn while travelling. Chairs had been placed for them in a double row around the edge of the square, and a row of volantes surrounded the square, in each of which sat two or more ladies, the ample folds of their muslin dresses flowing out on each side over the steps of the carriage. The Governor's band played various airs, martial and civic, with great beauty of execution. The music continued for two hours, and the throng, with only occasional intervals of conversation, seemed to give themselves up wholly to the enjoyment of listening to it. It was a bright moonlight night, so bright that one might almost see to read, and the temperature the finest I can conceive, a gentle breeze rustling among the palms overhead. I was surprised at seeing around me so many fair brows and snowy necks. It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or perhaps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions of these ladies seem to differ several shades from those which I saw yesterday at the churches. A female acquaintance has since given me another solution of the matter. "The reason," she said, "of the difference you perceived is this, that during the ceremonies of holy week they take off the _cascarilla_ from their faces, and appear in their natural complexions." I asked the meaning of the word _cascarilla_, which I did not remember to have heard before. "It is the favorite cosmetic of the island, and is made of egg-shells finely pulverized. They often fairly plaster their faces with it. I have seen a dark-skinned lady as white almost as marble at a ball. They will sometimes, at a morning call or an evening party, withdraw to repair the _cascarilla_ on their faces." I do not vouch for this tale, but tell it "as it was told to me." Perhaps, after all, it was the moonlight which had produced this transformation, though I had noticed something of the same improvement of complexion just before sunset, on the Paseo Isabel, a public park without the city walls, planted with rows of trees, where, every afternoon, the gentry of Havana drive backward and forward in their volantes, with each a glittering harness, and a liveried negro bestriding, in large jack-boots, the single horse which draws the vehicle. I had also the same afternoon visited the receptacle into which the population of the city are swept when the game of life is played out--the Campo Santo, as it is called, or public cemetery of Havana. Going out of the city at the gate nearest the sea, I passed through a street of the wretchedest houses I had seen; the ocean was roaring at my right on the coral rocks which form the coast. The dingy habitations were soon left behind, and I saw the waves, pushed forward by a fresh wind, flinging their spray almost into the road; I next entered a short avenue of trees, and in a few minutes the volante stopped at the gate of the cemetery. In a little inclosure before the entrance, a few starvling flowers of Europe were cultivated, but the wild plants of the country flourished luxuriantly on the rich soil within. A thick wall surrounded the cemetery, in which were rows of openings for coffins, one above the other, where the more opulent of the dead were entombed. The coffin is thrust in endwise, and the opening closed with a marble slab bearing an inscription. Most of these niches were already occupied, but in the earth below, by far the greater part of those who die at Havana, are buried without a monument or a grave which they are allowed to hold a longer time than is necessary for their bodies to be consumed in the quicklime which is thrown upon them. Every day fresh trenches are dug in which their bodies are thrown, generally without coffins. Two of these, one near each wall of the cemetery, were waiting for the funerals. I saw where the spade had divided the bones of those who were buried there last, and thrown up the broken fragments, mingled with masses of lime, locks of hair, and bits of clothing. Without the walls was a receptacle in which the skulls and other larger bones, dark with the mould of the grave, were heaped. Two or three persons were walking about the cemetery when we first entered, but it was now at length the cool of the day, and the funerals began to arrive. They brought in first a rude black coffin, broadest at the extremity which contained the head, and placing it at the end of one of the trenches, hurriedly produced a hammer and nails to fasten the lid before letting it down, when it was found that the box was too shallow at the narrower extremity. The lid was removed for a moment and showed the figure of an old man in a threadbare black coat, white pantaloons, and boots. The negroes who bore it beat out the bottom with the hammer, so as to allow the lid to be fastened over the feet. It was then nailed down firmly with coarse nails, the coffin was swung into the trench, and the earth shoveled upon it. A middle-aged man, wrho seemed to be some relative of the dead, led up a little boy close to the grave and watched the process of filling it. They spoke to each other and smiled, stood till the pit was filled to the surface, and the bearers had departed, and then retired in their turn. This was one of the more respectable class of funerals. Commonly the dead are piled without coffins, one above the other, in the trenches. The funerals now multiplied. The corpse of a little child was brought in, uncoffined; and another, a young man who, I was told, had cut his throat for love, was borne towards one of the niches in the wall. I heard loud voices, which seemed to proceed from the eastern side of the cemetery, and which, I thought at first, might be the recitation of a funeral service; but no funeral service is said at these graves; and, after a time, I perceived that they came from the windows of a long building which overlooked one side of the burial ground. It was a mad-house. The inmates, exasperated at the spectacle before them, were gesticulating from the windows--the women screaming and the men shouting, but no attention was paid to their uproar. A lady, however, a stranger to the island, who visited the Campo Santo that afternoon, was so affected by the sights and sounds of the place, that she was borne out weeping and almost in convulsions. As we left the place, we found a crowd of volantes about the gate; a pompous bier, with rich black hangings, drew up; a little beyond, we met one of another kind--a long box, with glass sides and ends, in which lay the corpse of a woman, dressed in white, with a black veil thrown over the face. The next day the festivities, which were to indemnify the people for the austerities of Lent and of Passion Week, began. The cock-pits were opened during the day, and masked balls were given in the evening at the theatres. You know, probably, that cock-fighting is the principal diversion of the island, having entirely supplanted the national spectacle of bull-baiting. Cuba, in fact, seemed to me a great poultry-yard. I heard the crowing of cocks in all quarters, for the game-cock is the noisiest and most boastful of birds, and is perpetually uttering his notes of defiance. In the villages I saw the veterans of the pit, a strong-legged race, with their combs cropped smooth to the head, the feathers plucked from every part of the body except their wings, and the tail docked like that of a coach horse, picking up their food in the lanes among the chickens. One old cripple I remember to have seen in the little town of Guines, stiff with wounds received in combat, who had probably got a furlough for life, and who, while limping among his female companions, maintained a sort of strut in his gait, and now and then stopped to crow defiance to the world. The peasants breed game-cocks and bring them to market; amateurs in the town train them for their private amusement. Dealers in game-cocks are as common as horse-jockies with us, and every village has its cock-pit. I went on Monday to the _Valla de Gallos_, situated in that part of Havana which lies without the walls. Here, in a spacious inclosure, were two amphitheatres of benches, roofed, but without walls, with a circular area in the midst. Each was crowded with people, who were looking at a cock-fight, and half of whom seemed vociferating with all their might. I mounted one of the outer benches, and saw one of the birds laid dead by the other in a few minutes. Then was heard the chink of gold and silver pieces, as the betters stepped into the area and paid their wagers; the slain bird was carried out and thrown on the ground, and the victor, taken into the hands of the owner, crowed loudly in celebration of his victory. Two other birds were brought in, and the cries of those who offered wagers were heard on all sides. They ceased at last, and the cocks were put down to begin the combat. They fought warily at first, but at length began to strike in earnest, the blood flowed, and the bystanders were heard to vociferate, "_ahí están pelezando_"[4]--"_mata! mata! mata!_"[5] gesticulating at the same time with great violence, and new wagers were laid as the interest of the combat increased. In ten minutes one of the birds was dispatched, for the combat never ends till one of them has his death-wound. In the mean time several other combats had begun in smaller pits, which lay within the same inclosure, but were not surrounded with circles of benches. I looked upon the throng engaged in this brutal sport, with eager gestures and loud cries, and could not help thinking how soon this noisy crowd would lie in heaps in the pits of the Campo Santo. In the evening was a masked ball in the Tacon Theatre, a spacious building, one of the largest of its kind in the world. The pit, floored over, with the whole depth of the stage open to the back wall of the edifice, furnished a ball-room of immense size. People in grotesque masks, in hoods or fancy dresses, were mingled with a throng clad in the ordinary costume, and Spanish dances were performed to the music of a numerous band. A well-dressed crowd filled the first and second tier of boxes. The Creole smokes everywhere, and seemed astonished when the soldier who stood at the door ordered him to throw away his lighted segar before entering. Once upon the floor, however, he lighted another segar in defiance of the prohibition. The Spanish dances, with their graceful movements, resembling the undulations of the sea in its gentlest moods, are nowhere more gracefully performed than in Cuba, by the young women born on the island. I could not help thinking, however, as I looked on that gay crowd, on the quaint maskers, and the dancers whose flexible limbs seemed swayed to and fro by the breath of the music, that all this was soon to end at the Campo Santo, and I asked myself how many of all this crowd would be huddled uncoffined, when their sports were over, into the foul trenches of the public cemetery. Letter XLVII. Scenery of Cuba.--Coffee Plantations. Matanzas, _April 16, 1849_. My expectations of the scenery of the island of Cuba and of the magnificence of its vegetation, have not been quite fulfilled. This place is but sixty miles to the east of Havana, but the railway which brings you hither, takes you over a sweep of a hundred and thirty miles, through one of the most fertile districts in the interior of the island. I made an excursion from Havana to San Antonio de los Baños, a pleasant little town at nine leagues distance, in a southeast direction from the capital, in what is called the Vuelta Abajo. I have also just returned from a visit to some fine sugar estates to the southeast of Matanzas, so that I may claim to have seen something of the face of the country of which I speak. At this season the hills about Havana, and the pastures everywhere, have an arid look, a russet hue, like sandy fields with us, when scorched by a long drought, on like our meadows in winter. This, however, is the dry season; and when I was told that but two showers of rain have fallen since October, I could only wonder that so much vegetation was left, and that the verbenas and other herbage which clothed the ground, should yet retain, as I perceived they did, when I saw them nearer, an unextinguished life. I have, therefore, the disadvantage of seeing Cuba not only in the dry season, but near the close of an uncommonly dry season. Next month the rainy season commences, when the whole island, I am told, even the barrenest parts, flushes into a deep verdure, creeping plants climb over all the rocks and ascend the trees, and the mighty palms put out their new foliage. Shade, however, is the great luxury of a warm climate, and why the people of Cuba do not surround their habitations in the country, in the villages, and in the environs of the large towns, with a dense umbrage of trees, I confess I do not exactly understand. In their rich soil, and in their perpetually genial climate, trees grow with great rapidity, and they have many noble ones both for size and foliage. The royal palm, with its tall straight columnar trunk of a whitish hue, only uplifts a Corinthian capital of leaves, and casts but a narrow shadow; but it mingles finely with other trees, and planted in avenues, forms a colonnade nobler than any of the porticoes to the ancient Egyptian temples. There is no thicker foliage or fresher green than that of the mango, which daily drops its abundant fruit for several months in the year, and the mamey and the sapote, fruit-trees also, are in leaf during the whole of the dry season; even the Indian fig, which clasps and kills the largest trees of the forest, and at last takes their place, a stately tree with a stout trunk of its own, has its unfading leaf of vivid green. It is impossible to avoid an expression of impatience that these trees have not been formed into groups, embowering the dwellings, and into groves, through which the beams of the sun, here so fierce at noonday, could not reach the ground beneath. There is in fact nothing of ornamental cultivation in Cuba, except of the most formal kind. Some private gardens there are, carefully kept, but all of the stiffest pattern; there is nothing which brings out the larger vegetation of the region in that grandeur and magnificence which might belong to it. In the Quinta del Obispo, or Bishop's Garden, which is open to the public, you find shade which you find nowhere else, but the trees are planted in straight alleys, and the water-roses, a species of water-lily of immense size, fragrant and pink-colored, grow in a square tank, fed by a straight canal, with sides of hewn stone. Let me say, however, that when I asked for trees, I was referred to the hurricanes which have recently ravaged the island. One of these swept over Cuba in 1844, uprooting the palms and the orange groves, and laying prostrate the avenues of trees on the coffee plantations. The Paseo Isabel, a public promenade, between the walls of Havana and the streets of the new town, was formerly over-canopied with lofty and spreading trees, which this tempest leveled to the ground; it has now been planted with rows of young trees, which yield a meagre shade. In 1846 came another hurricane, still more terrific, destroying much of the beauty which the first had spared. Of late years, also, such of the orange-trees as were not uprooted, or have recently been planted, have been attacked by the insect which a few years since was so destructive to the same tree in Florida. The effect upon the tree resembles that of a blight, the leaves grow sere, and the branches die. You may imagine, therefore, that I was somewhat disappointed not to find the air, as it is at this season in the south of Italy, fragrant with the odor of orange and lemon blossoms. Oranges are scarce, and not so fine, at this moment, in Havana and Matanzas, as in the fruit-shops of New York. I hear, however, that there are portions of the island which were spared by these hurricanes, and that there are others where the ravages of the insect in the orange groves have nearly ceased, as I have been told is also the case in Florida. I have mentioned my excursion to San Antonio. I went thither by railway, in a car built at Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, and worked by an American engineer. For some distance we passed through fields of the sweet-potato, which here never requires a second planting, and propagates itself perpetually in the soil, patches of maize, low groves of bananas with their dark stems, and of plantains with their green ones, and large tracts producing the pineapple growing in rows like carrots. Then came plantations of the sugar-cane, with its sedge-like blades of pale-green, then extensive tracts of pasturage with scattered shrubs and tall dead weeds, the growth of the last summer, and a thin herbage bitten close to the soil. Here and there was an abandoned coffee-plantation, where cattle were browzing among the half-perished shrubs and broken rows of trees; and the neglected hedges of the wild pine, _piña raton_, as the Cubans call it, were interrupted with broad gaps. Sometimes we passed the cottages of the _monteros_, or peasants, built often of palm-leaves, the walls formed of the broad sheath of the leaf, fastened to posts of bamboo, and the roof thatched with the long plume-like leaf itself. The door was sometimes hung with a kind of curtain to exclude the sun, which the dusky complexioned women and children put aside to gaze at us as we passed. These dwellings were often picturesque in their appearance, with a grove of plantains behind, a thicket of bamboo by its side, waving its willow-like sprays in the wind; a pair of mango-trees near, hung with fruit just ripening and reddish blossoms just opening, and a cocoa-tree or two lifting high above the rest its immense feathery leaves and its clusters of green nuts. We now and then met the _monteros_ themselves scudding along on their little horses, in that pace which we call a rack. Their dress was a Panama hat, a shirt worn over a pair of pantaloons, a pair of rough cowskin shoes, one of which was armed with a spur, and a sword lashed to the left side by a belt of cotton cloth. They are men of manly bearing, of thin make, but often of a good figure, with well-spread shoulders, which, however, have a stoop in them, contracted, I suppose, by riding always with a short stirrup. Forests, too, we passed. You, doubtless, suppose that a forest in a soil and climate like this, must be a dense growth of trees with colossal stems and leafy summits. A forest in Cuba--all that I have seen are such--is a thicket of shrubs and creeping plants, through which, one would suppose that even the wild cats of the country would find it impossible to make their way. Above this impassable jungle rises here and there the palm, or the gigantic ceyba or cotton-tree, but more often trees of far less beauty, thinly scattered and with few branches, disposed without symmetry, and at this season often leafless. We reached San Antonio at nine o'clock in the morning, and went to the inn of La Punta, where we breakfasted on rice and fresh eggs, and a dish of meat so highly flavored with garlic, that it was impossible to distinguish to what animal it belonged. Adjoining the inn was a cockpit, with cells for the birds surrounding the inclosure, in which they were crowing lustily. Two or three persons seemed to have nothing to do but to tend them; and one, in particular, with a gray beard, a grave aspect, and a solid gait, went about the work with a deliberation and solemnity which to me, who had lately seen the hurried burials at the Campo Santo, in Havana, was highly edifying. A man was training a game-cock in the pit; he was giving it lessons in the virtue of perseverance. He held another cock before it, which he was teaching it to pursue, and striking it occasionally over the head to provoke it, with the wing of the bird in his hand, he made it run after him about the area for half an hour together. I had heard much of the beauty of the coffee estates of Cuba, and in the neighborhood of San Antonio are some which have been reputed very fine ones. A young man, in a checked blue and white shirt, worn like a frock over checked pantaloons, with a spur on one heel, offered to procure us a _volante_, and we engaged him. He brought us one with two horses, a negro postillion sitting on one, and the shafts of the vehicle borne by the other. We set off, passing through fields guarded by stiff-leaved hedges of the ratoon-pine, over ways so bad that if the motion of the volante were not the easiest in the world, we should have taken an unpleasant jolting. The lands of Cuba fit for cultivation, are divided into red and black; we were in the midst of the red lands, consisting of a fine earth of a deep brick color, resting on a bed of soft, porous, chalky limestone. In the dry season the surface is easily dispersed into dust, and stains your clothes of a dull red. A drive of four miles, through a country full of palm and cocoanut trees, brought us to the gate of a coffee plantation, which our friend in the checked shirt, by whom we were accompanied, opened for us. We passed up to the house through what had been an avenue of palms, but was now two rows of trees at very unequal distances, with here and there a sickly orange-tree. On each side grew the coffee shrubs, hung with flowers of snowy white, but unpruned and full of dry and leafless twigs. In every direction were ranks of trees, prized for ornament or for their fruit, and shrubs, among which were magnificent oleanders loaded with flowers, planted in such a manner as to break the force of the wind, and partially to shelter the plants from the too fierce rays of the sun. The coffee estate is, in fact, a kind of forest, with the trees and shrubs arranged in straight lines. The _mayoral_, or steward of the estate, a handsome Cuban, with white teeth, a pleasant smile, and a distinct utterance of his native language, received us with great courtesy, and offered us _cigarillos_, though he never used tobacco; and spirit of cane, though he never drank. He wore a sword, and carried a large flexible whip, doubled for convenience in the hand. He showed us the coffee plants, the broad platforms with smooth surfaces of cement and raised borders, where the berries were dried in the sun, and the mills where the negroes were at work separating the kernel from the pulp in which it is inclosed. "These coffee estates," said he, "are already ruined, and the planters are abandoning them as fast as they can; in four years more there will not be a single coffee plantation on the island. They can not afford to raise coffee for the price they get in the market." I inquired the reason. "It is," replied he, "the extreme dryness of the season when the plant is in flower. If we have rain at this time of the year, we are sure of a good crop; if it does not rain, the harvest is small; and the failure of rain is so common a circumstance that we must leave the cultivation of coffee to the people of St. Domingo and Brazil." I asked if the plantation could not be converted into a sugar estate. "Not this," he answered; "it has been cultivated too long. The land was originally rich, but it is exhausted"--tired out, was the expression he used--"we may cultivate maize or rice, for the dry culture of rice succeeds well here, or we may abandon it to grazing. At present we keep a few negroes here, just to gather the berries which ripen, without taking any trouble to preserve the plants, or replace those which die." I could easily believe from what I saw on this estate, that there must be a great deal of beauty of vegetation in a well-kept coffee plantation, but the formal pattern in which it is disposed, the straight alleys and rows of trees, the squares and parallelograms, showed me that there was no beauty of arrangement. We fell in, before we returned to our inn, with the proprietor, a delicate-looking person, with thin white hands, who had been educated at Boston, and spoke English as if he had never lived anywhere else. His manners, compared with those of his steward, were exceedingly frosty and forbidding, and when we told him of the civility which had been shown us, his looks seemed to say he wished it had been otherwise. Returning to our inn, we dined, and as the sun grew low, we strolled out to look at the town. It is situated on a clear little stream, over which several bathing-houses are built, their posts standing in the midst of the current. Above the town, it flows between rocky banks, bordered with shrubs, many of them in flower. Below the town, after winding a little way, it enters a cavern yawning in the limestone rock, immediately over which a huge ceyba rises, and stretches its leafy arms in mid-heaven. Down this opening the river throws itself, and is never seen again. This is not a singular instance in Cuba. The island is full of caverns and openings in the rocks, and I am told that many of the streams find subterranean passages to the sea. There is a well at the inn of La Punta, in which a roaring of water is constantly heard. It is the sound of a subterranean stream rushing along a passage in the rocks, and the well is an opening into its roof. In passing through the town, I was struck with the neat attire of those who inhabited the humblest dwellings. At the door of one of the cottages, I saw a group of children, of different ages, all quite pretty, with oval faces and glittering black eyes, in clean fresh dresses, which, one would think, could scarcely have been kept a moment without being soiled, in that dwelling, with its mud floor. The people of Cuba are sparing in their ablutions; the men do not wash their faces and hands till nearly mid-day, for fear of spasms; and of the women, I am told that many do not wash at all, contenting themselves with rubbing their cheeks and necks with a little aguardiente; but the passion for clean linen, and, among the men, for clean white pantaloons, is universal. The _montero_ himself, on a holiday or any public occasion, will sport a shirt of the finest linen, smoothly ironed, and stiffly starched throughout, from the collar downward. The next day, at half-past eleven, we left our inn, which was also what we call in the United States a country store, where the clerks who had just performed their ablutions and combed their hair, were making segars behind the counter from the tobacco of the Vuelta Abajo, and returned by the railway to Havana. We procured travelling licenses at the cost of four dollars and a half each, for it is the pleasure of the government to levy this tax on strangers who travel, and early the following morning took the train for Matanzas. Letter XLVIII. Matanzas.--Valley of Yumuri. Los Guines, _April_ 18, 1849. In the long circuit of railway which leads from Havana to Matanzas, I saw nothing remarkably different from what I observed on my excursion to San Antonio. There was the same smooth country, of great apparent fertility, sometimes varied with gentle undulations, and sometimes rising, in the distance, into hills covered with thickets. We swept by dark-green fields planted with the yuca, an esculent root, of which the cassava bread is made, pale-green fields of the cane, brown tracts of pasturage, partly formed of abandoned coffee estates where the palms and scattered fruit-trees were yet standing, and forests of shrubs and twining plants growing for the most part among rocks. Some of these rocky tracts have a peculiar appearance; they consist of rough projections of rock a foot or two in height, of irregular shape and full of holes; they are called _diente de perro_, or dog's teeth. Here the trees and creepers find openings filled with soil, by which they are nourished. We passed two or three country cemeteries, where that foulest of birds, the turkey-vulture, was seen sitting on the white stuccoed walls, or hovering on his ragged wings in circles over them. In passing over the neighborhood of the town in which I am now writing, I found myself on the black lands of the island. Here the rich dark earth of the plain lies on a bed of chalk as white as snow, as was apparent where the earth had been excavated to a little depth, on each side of the railway, to form the causey on which it ran. Streams of clear water, diverted from a river to the left, traversed the plain with a swift current, almost even with the surface of the soil, which they keep in perpetual freshness. As we approached Matanzas, we saw more extensive tracts of cane clothing the broad slopes with their dense blades, as if the coarse sedge of a river had been transplanted to the uplands. At length the bay of Matanzas opened before us; a long tract of water stretching to the northeast, into which several rivers empty themselves. The town lay at the southwestern extremity, sheltered by hills, where the San Juan and the Yumuri pour themselves into the brine. It is a small but prosperous town, with a considerable trade, as was indicated by the vessels at anchor in the harbor. As we passed along the harbor I remarked an extensive, healthy-looking orchard of plantains growing on one of those tracts which they call _diente de perro_. I could see nothing but the jagged teeth of whitish rock, and the green swelling stems of the plantain, from ten to fifteen feet in height, and as large as a man's leg, or larger. The stalks of the plantain are juicy and herbaceous, and of so yielding a texture, that with a sickle you might entirely sever the largest of them at a single stroke. How such a multitude of succulent plants could find nourishment on what seemed to the eye little else than barren rock, I could not imagine. The day after arriving at Matanzas we made an excursion on horseback to the summit of the hill, immediately overlooking the town, called the Cumbre. Light hardy horses of the country were brought us, with high pommels to the saddles, which are also raised behind in a manner making it difficult to throw the rider from his seat. A negro fitted a spur to my right heel, and mounting by the short stirrups, I crossed the river Yumuri with my companions, and began to climb the Cumbre. They boast at Matanzas of the perpetual coolness of temperature enjoyed upon the broad summit of this hill, where many of the opulent merchants of the town have their country houses, to which the mosquitoes and the intermittents that infest the town below, never come, and where, as one of them told me, you may play at billiards in August without any inconvenient perspiration. From the Cumbre you behold the entire extent of the harbor; the town lies below you with its thicket of masts, and its dusty _paseo_, where rows of the Cuba pine stand rooted in the red soil. On the opposite shore your eye is attracted to a chasm between high rocks, where the river Canimar comes forth through banks of romantic beauty--so they are described to me--and mingles with the sea. But the view to the west was much finer; there lay the valley of the Yumuri, and a sight of it is worth a voyage to the island. In regard to this my expectations suffered no disappointment. Before me lay a deep valley, surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains, with the little river Yumuri twining at the bottom. Smooth round hillocks rose from the side next to me, covered with clusters of palms, and the steeps of the southeastern corner of the valley were clothed with a wood of intense green, where I could almost see the leaves glisten in the sunshine. The broad fields below were waving with cane and maize, and cottages of the _monteros_ were scattered among them, each with its tuft of bamboos and its little grove of plantains. In some parts the cliffs almost seemed to impend over the valley; but to the west, in a soft golden haze, rose summit behind summit, and over them all, loftiest and most remote, towered the mountain called the _Pan de Matanzas_. We stopped for a few moments at a country seat on the top of the Cumbre, where this beautiful view lay ever before the eye. Round it, in a garden, were cultivated the most showy plants of the tropics, but my attention was attracted to a little plantation of damask roses blooming profusely. They were scentless; the climate which supplies the orange blossom with intense odors exhausts the fragrance of the rose. At nightfall--the night falls suddenly in this latitude--we were again at our hotel. We passed our Sunday on a sugar estate at the hospitable mansion of a planter from the United States about fifteen miles from Matanzas. The house stands on an eminence, once embowered in trees which the hurricanes have leveled, overlooking a broad valley, where palms were scattered in every direction; for the estate had formerly been a coffee plantation. In the huge buildings containing the machinery and other apparatus for making sugar, which stood at the foot of the eminence, the power of steam, which had been toiling all the week, was now at rest. As the hour of sunset approached, a smoke was seen rising from its chimney, presently pufis of vapor issued from the engine, its motion began to be heard, and the negroes, men and women, were summoned to begin the work of the week. Some feed the fire under the boiler with coal; others were seen rushing to the mill with their arms full of the stalks of the cane, freshly cut, which they took from a huge pile near the building; others lighted fires under a row of huge cauldrons, with the dry stalks of cane from which the juice had been crushed by the mill. It was a spectacle of activity such as I had not seen in Cuba. The sound of the engine was heard all night, for the work of grinding the cane, once begun, proceeds day and night, with the exception of Sundays and some other holidays. I was early next morning at the mill. A current of cane juice was flowing from the mill in a long trunk to a vat in which it was clarified with lime; it was then made to pass successively from one seething cauldron to another, as it obtained a thicker consistence by boiling. The negroes, with huge ladles turning on pivots, swept it from cauldron to cauldron, and finally passed it into a trunk, which conveyed it to shallow tanks in another apartment, where it cooled into sugar. From these another set of workmen scooped it up in moist masses, carried it in buckets up a low flight of stairs, and poured it into rows of hogsheads pierced with holes at the bottom. These are placed over a large tank, into which the moisture dripping from the hogsheads is collected and forms molasses. This is the method of making the sugar called Muscovado. It is drained a few days, and then the railways take it to Matanzas or to Havana. We visited afterward a plantation in the neighborhood, in which clayed sugar is made. Our host furnished us with horses to make the excursion, and we took a winding road, over hill and valley, by plantations and forests, till we stopped at the gate of an extensive pasture-ground. An old negro, whose hut was at hand, opened it for us, and bowed low as we passed. A ride of half a mile further brought us in sight of the cane-fields of the plantation called Saratoga, belonging to the house of Drake & Company, of Havana, and reputed one of the finest of the island. It had a different aspect from any plantation we had seen. Trees and shrubs there were none, but the canes, except where they had been newly cropped for the mill, clothed the slopes and hollows with their light-green blades, like the herbage of a prairie. We were kindly received by the administrator of the estate, an intelligent Biscayan, who showed us the whole process of making clayed sugar. It does not differ from that of making the Muscovado, so far as concerns the grinding and boiling. When, however, the sugar is nearly cool, it is poured into iron vessels of conical shape, with the point downward, at which is an opening. The top of the sugar is then covered with a sort of black thick mud, which they call clay, and which is several times renewed as it becomes dry. The moisture from the clay passes through the sugar, carrying with it the cruder portions, which form molasses. In a few days the draining is complete. We saw the work-people of the Saratoga estate preparing for the market the sugar thus cleansed, if we may apply the word to such a process. With a rude iron blade they cleft the large loaf of sugar just taken from the mould into three parts, called first, second, and third quality, according to their whiteness. These are dried in the sun on separate platforms of wood with a raised edge; the women standing and walking over the fragments with their bare dirty feet, and beating them smaller with wooden mallets and clubs. The sugar of the first quality is then scraped up and put into boxes; that of the second and third, being moister, is handled a third time and carried into the drying-room, where it is exposed to the heat of a stove, and when sufficiently dry, is boxed up for market like the other. The sight of these processes was not of a nature to make one think with much satisfaction of clayed sugar as an ingredient of food, but the inhabitants of the island are superior to such prejudices, and use it with as little scruple as they who do not know in what manner it is made. In the afternoon we returned to the dwelling of our American host, and taking the train at _Caobas_, or Mahogany Trees--so called from the former growth of that tree on the spot--we were at Matanzas an hour afterward. The next morning the train brought us to this little town, situated half-way between Matanzas and Havana, but a considerable distance to the south of either. Letter XLIX. Negroes in Cuba.--Indian Slaves. Havana, _April_ 22, 1849. The other day when we were at Guines, we heard that a negro was to suffer death early the next morning by the _garrote_, an instrument by which the neck of the criminal is broken and life extinguished in an instant. I asked our landlady for what crime the man had been condemned. "He has killed his master," she replied, "an old man, in his bed." "Had he received any provocation?" "Not that I have heard; but another slave is to be put to death by the _garrote_ in about a fortnight, whose offense had some palliation. His master was a man of harsh temper, and treated his slaves with extreme severity; the negro watched his opportunity, and shot him as he sat at table." We went to the place of execution a little before eight o'clock, and found the preparations already made. A platform had been erected, on which stood a seat for the prisoner, and back of the seat a post was fixed, with a sort of iron collar for his neck. A screw, with a long transverse handle on the side of the post opposite to the collar, was so contrived that, when it was turned, it would push forward an iron bolt against the back of the neck and crush the spine at once. Sentinels in uniform were walking to and fro, keeping the spectators at a distance from the platform. The heat of the sun was intense, for the sea-breeze had not yet sprung up, but the crowd had begun to assemble. As near to the platform as they could come, stood a group of young girls, two of whom were dressed in white and one was pretty, with no other shade for their dusky faces than their black veils, chatting and laughing and stealing occasional glances at the new-comers. In another quarter were six or eight monteros on horseback, in their invariable costume of Panama hats, shirts and pantaloons, with holsters to their saddles, and most of them with swords lashed to their sides. About half-past eight a numerous crowd made its appearance coming from the town. Among them walked with a firm step, a large black man, dressed in a long white frock, white pantaloons, and a white cap with a long peak which fell backward on his shoulders. He was the murderer; his hands were tied together by the wrists; in one of them he held a crucifix; the rope by which they were fastened was knotted around his waist, and the end of it was held by another athletic negro, dressed in blue cotton with white facings, who walked behind him. On the left of the criminal walked an officer of justice; on his right an ecclesiastic, slender and stooping, in a black gown and a black cap, the top of which was formed into a sort of coronet, exhorting the criminal, in a loud voice and with many gesticulations, to repent and trust in the mercy of God. When they reached the platform, the negro was made to place himself on his knees before it, the priest continuing his exhortations, and now and then clapping him, in an encouraging manner, on the shoulder. I saw the man shake his head once or twice, and then kiss the crucifix. In the mean time a multitude, of all ages and both sexes, took possession of the places from which the spectacle could be best seen. A stone-fence, such as is common in our country, formed of loose stones taken from the surface of the ground, upheld a long row of spectators. A well-dressed couple, a gentleman in white pantaloons, and a lady elegantly attired, with a black lace veil and a parasol, bringing their two children and two colored servants, took their station by my side--the elder child found a place on the top of the fence, and the younger, about four years of age, was lifted in the arms of one of the servants, that it might have the full benefit of the spectacle. The criminal was then raised from the ground, and going up the platform took the seat ready for him. The priest here renewed his exhortations, and, at length, turning to the audience, said, in a loud voice, "I believe in God Almighty and in Jesus Christ his only Son, and it grieves me to the heart to have offended them." These words, I suppose, were meant, as the confession of the criminal, to be repeated after the priest, but I heard no response from his lips. Again and again the priest repeated them, the third time with a louder voice than ever; the signal was then given to the executioner. The iron collar was adjusted to the neck of the victim, and fastened under the chin. The athletic negro in blue, standing behind the post, took the handle of the screw and turned it deliberately. After a few turns, the criminal gave a sudden shrug of the shoulders; another turn of the screw, and a shudder ran over his whole frame, his eyes rolled wildly, his hands, still tied with the rope, were convulsively jerked upward, and then dropped back to their place motionless forever. The priest advanced and turned the peak of the white cap over the face to hide it from the sight of the multitude. I had never seen, and never intended to see an execution, but the strangeness of this manner of inflicting death, and the desire to witness the behavior of an assembly of the people of Cuba on such an occasion, had overcome my previous determination. The horror of the spectacle now caused me to regret that I made one of a crowd drawn to look at it by an idle curiosity. The negro in blue then stepped forward and felt the limbs of the dead man one by one, to ascertain whether life were wholly extinct, and then returning to the screw, gave it two or three turns more, as if to make his work sure. In the mean time my attention was attracted by a sound like that of a light buffet and a whimpering voice near me. I looked, and two men were standing by me, with a little white boy at their side, and a black boy of nearly the same age before them, holding his hat in his hand, and crying. They were endeavoring to direct his attention to what they considered the wholesome spectacle before him. "_Mira, mira, no te hardá daño_"[6] said the men, but the boy steadily refused to look in that direction, though he was evidently terrified by some threat of punishment and his eyes filled with tears. Finding him obstinate, they desisted from their purpose, and I was quite edified to see the little fellow continue to look away from the spectacle which attracted all other eyes but his. The white boy now came forward, touched the hat of the little black, and goodnaturedly saying "_pontelo, pontelo_"[7] made him put it on his head. The crowd now began to disperse, and in twenty minutes the place was nearly solitary, except the sentinels pacing backward and forward. Two hours afterward the sentinels were pacing there yet, and the dead man, in his white dress and iron collar, was still in his seat on the platform. It is generally the natives of Africa by whom these murders are committed; the negroes born in the country are of a more yielding temper. They have better learned the art of avoiding punishment, and submit to it more patiently when inflicted, having understood from their birth that it is one of the conditions of their existence. The whip is always in sight. "Nothing can be done without it," said an Englishman to me, who had lived eleven years on the island, "you can not make the negroes work by the mild methods which are used by slaveholders in the United States; the blacks there are far more intelligent and more easily governed by moral means." Africans, the living witnesses of the present existence of the slave-trade, are seen everywhere; at every step you meet blacks whose cheeks are scarred with parallel slashes, with which they were marked in the African slave-market, and who can not even speak the mutilated Spanish current in the mouths of the Cuba negroes. One day I stood upon the quay at Matanzas and saw the slaves unloading the large lighters which brought goods from the Spanish ships lying in the harbor--casks of wine, jars of oil, bags of nuts, barrels of flour. The men were naked to the hips; their only garment being a pair of trowsers. I admired their ample chests, their massive shoulders, the full and muscular proportions of their arms, and the ease with which they shifted the heavy articles from place to place, or carried them on their heads. "Some of these are Africans?" I said to a gentleman who resided on the island. "They are all Africans," he answered, "Africans to a man; the negro born in Cuba is of a lighter make." When I was at Guines, I went out to look at a sugar estate in the neighborhood, where the mill was turned by water, which a long aqueduct, from one of the streams that traverse the plain, conveyed over arches of stone so broad and massive that I could not help thinking of the aqueducts of Rome. A gang of black women were standing in the _secadero_ or drying-place, among the lumps of clayed sugar, beating them small with mallets; before them, walked to and fro the major-domo, with a cutlass by his side and a whip in his hand, I asked him how a planter could increase his stock of slaves. "There is no difficulty," he replied, "slaves are still brought to the island from Africa. The other day five hundred were landed on the sea-shore to the south of this; for you must know, Señor, that we are but three or four leagues from the coast." "Was it done openly?" I inquired. "_Publicamente_, Señor, _publicamente_;[8] they were landed on the sugar estate of _El Pastor_, and one hundred and seven more died on the passage from Africa." "Did the government know of it?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Of course the government knows it," said he; "every body else knows it." The truth is, that the slave-trade is now fully revived; the government conniving at it, making a profit on the slaves imported from Africa, and screening from the pursuit of the English the pirates who bring them. There could scarcely be any arrangement of coast more favorable for smuggling slaves into a country, than the islands and long peninsulas, and many channels of the southern shore of Cuba. Here the mangrove thickets, sending down roots into the brine from their long branches that stretch over the water, form dense screens on each side of the passages from the main ocean to the inland, and render it easy for the slaver and his boats to lurk undiscovered by the English men-of-war. During the comparative cessation of the slave-trade a few years since, the negroes, I have been told, were much better treated than before. They rose in value, and when they died, it was found not easy to supply their places; they were therefore made much of, and every thing was done which it was thought would tend to preserve their health, and maintain them in bodily vigor. If the slave-trade should make them cheap again, their lives of course will be of less consequence to their owners, and they will be subject again to be overtasked, as it has been said they were before. There is certainly great temptation to wear them out in the sugar mills, which are kept in motion day and night, during half the year, namely, through the dry season. "If this was not the healthiest employment in the world," said an overseer to me on one of the sugar estates, "it would kill us all who are engaged in it, both black and white." Perhaps you may not know that more than half of the island of Cuba has never been reduced to tillage. Immense tracts of the rich black or red mould of the island, accumulated on the coral rock, are yet waiting the hand of the planter to be converted into profitable sugar estates. There is a demand, therefore, for laborers on the part of those who wish to become planters, and this demand is supplied not only from the coast of Africa, but from the American continent and southwestern Asia. In one of the afternoons of Holy Week, I saw amid the crowd on the _Plaza de Armas_, in Havana, several men of low stature, of a deep-olive complexion, beardless, with high cheek-bones and straight black hair, dressed in white pantaloons of cotton, and shirts of the same material worn over them. They were Indians, natives of Yucatan, who had been taken prisoners of war by the whites of the country and sold to white men in Cuba, under a pretended contract to serve for a certain number of years. I afterward learned, that the dealers in this sort of merchandise were also bringing in the natives of Asia, Chinese they call them here, though I doubt whether they belong to that nation, and disposing of their services to the planters. There are six hundred of these people, I have been told, in this city. Yesterday appeared in the Havana papers an ordinance concerning the "Indians and Asiatics imported into the country under a contract to labor." It directs how much Indian corn, how many plantains, how much jerked-pork and rice they shall receive daily, and how many lashes the master may inflict for misbehavior. Twelve stripes with the cowskin he may administer for the smaller offenses, and twenty-four for transgressions of more importance; but if any more become necessary, he must apply to a magistrate for permission to lay them on. Such is the manner in which the government of Cuba sanctions the barbarity of making slaves of the freeborn men of Yucatan. The ordinance, however, betrays great concern for the salvation of the souls of those whom it thus delivers over to the lash of the slave-driver. It speaks of the Indians from America, as Christians already, but while it allows the slaves imported from Asia to be flogged, it directs that they shall be carefully instructed in the doctrines of our holy religion. Yet the policy of the government favors emancipation. The laws of Cuba permit any slave to purchase his freedom on paying a price fixed by three persons, one appointed by his master and two by a magistrate. He may, also, if he pleases, compel his master to sell him a certain portion of his time, which he may employ to earn the means of purchasing his entire freedom. It is owing to this, I suppose, that the number of free blacks is so large in the island, and it is manifest that if the slave-trade could be checked, and these laws remain unaltered, the negroes would gradually emancipate themselves--all at least who would be worth keeping as servants. The population of Cuba is now about a million and a quarter, rather more than half of whom are colored persons, and one out of every four of the colored population is free. The mulattoes emancipate themselves as a matter of course, and some of them become rich by the occupations they follow. The prejudice of color is by no means so strong here as in the United States. Five or six years since the negroes were shouting and betting in the cockpits with the whites; but since the mulatto insurrection, as it is called, in 1843, the law forbids their presence at such amusements. I am told there is little difficulty in smuggling people of mixed blood, by the help of legal forms, into the white race, and if they are rich, into good society, provided their hair is not frizzled. You hear something said now and then in the United States concerning the annexation of Cuba to our confederacy; you may be curious, perhaps, to know what they say of it here. A European who had long resided in the island, gave me this account: "The Creoles, no doubt, would be very glad to see Cuba annexed to the United States, and many of them ardently desire it. It would relieve them from many great burdens they now bear, open their commerce to the world, rid them of a tyrannical government, and allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way. But Spain derives from the possession of Cuba advantages too great to be relinquished. She extracts from Cuba a revenue of twelve millions of dollars; her government sends its needy nobility, and all for whom it would provide, to fill lucrative offices in Cuba--the priests, the military officers, the civil authorities, every man who fills a judicial post or holds a clerkship is from old Spain. The Spanish government dares not give up Cuba if it were inclined. "Nor will the people of Cuba make any effort to emancipate themselves by taking up arms. The struggle with the power of Spain would be bloody and uncertain, even if the white population were united, but the mutual distrust with which the planters and the peasantry regard each other, would make the issue of such an enterprise still more doubtful. At present it would not be safe for a Cuba planter to speak publicly of annexation to the United States. He would run the risk of being imprisoned or exiled." Of course, if Cuba were to be annexed to the United States, the slave trade with Africa would cease to be carried on as now, though its perfect suppression might be found difficult. Negroes would be imported in large numbers from the United States, and planters would emigrate with them. Institutions of education would be introduced, commerce and religion would both be made free, and the character of the islanders would be elevated by the responsibilities which a free government would throw upon them. The planters, however, would doubtless adopt regulations insuring the perpetuity of slavery; they would unquestionably, as soon as they were allowed to frame ordinances for the island, take away the facilities which the present laws give the slave for effecting his own emancipation. Letter L. English Exhibitions of Works of Art. London, _July_ 7, 1849. I have just been to visit a gallery of drawings in water-colors, now open for exhibition. The English may be almost said to have created this branch of art. Till within a few years, delineations in water-colors, on drawing paper, have been so feeble and meagre as to be held in little esteem, but the English artists have shown that as much, though in a somewhat different way, may be done on drawing-paper as on canvas; that as high a degree of expression may be reached, as much strength given to the coloring, and as much boldness to the lights and shadows. In the collection of which I speak, are about four hundred drawings not before exhibited. Those which appeared to me the most remarkable, though not in the highest department of art, were still-life pieces by Hunt. It seems to me impossible to carry pictorial illusion to a higher pitch than he has attained. A sprig of hawthorn flowers, freshly plucked, lies before you, and you are half-tempted to take it up and inhale its fragrance; those speckled eggs in the bird's nest, you are sure you might, if you pleased, take into your hand; that tuft of ivy leaves and buds is so complete an optical deception, that you can hardly believe that it has not been attached by some process to the paper on which you see it. A servant girl, in a calico gown, with a broom, by the same artist, and a young woman standing at a window, at which the light is streaming in, are as fine in their way, and as perfect imitations of every-day nature, as you see in the works of the best Flemish painters. It is to landscape, however, that the artists in water-colors have principally devoted their attention. There are several very fine ones in the collection by Copley Fielding, the foregrounds drawn with much strength, the distant objects softly blending with the atmosphere as in nature, and a surprising depth and transparency given to the sky. Alfred Fripp and George Fripp have also produced some very fine landscapes--mills, waters in foam or sleeping in pellucid pools, and the darkness of the tempest in contrast with gleams of sunshine. Oakley has some spirited groups of gipsies and country people, and there are several of a similar kind by Taylor, who designs and executes with great force. One of the earliest of the new school of artists in water-colors is Prout, whose drawings are principally architectural, and who has shown how admirably suited this new style of art is to the delineation of the rich carvings of Gothic churches. Most of the finer pieces, I observed, were marked 'sold;' they brought prices varying from thirty to fifty guineas. There is an exhibition now open of the paintings of Etty, who stands high in the world of art as an historical painter. The "Society of the Arts"--I believe that is its name--every year gets up an exhibition of the works of some eminent painter, with the proceeds of which it buys one of his pictures, and places it in the National Gallery. This is a very effectual plan of forming in time a various and valuable collection of the works of British artists. The greatest work of Etty is the series representing the Death of Holofernes by the hand of Judith. It consists of three paintings, the first of which shows Judith in prayer before the execution of her attempt; in the next, and the finest, she is seen standing by the conch of the heathen warrior, with the sword raised to heaven, to which she turns her eyes, as if imploring supernatural assistance; and in the third, she appears issuing from the tent, bearing the head of the ravager of her country, which she conceals from the armed attendants who stand on guard at the entrance, and exhibits to her astonished handmaid, who has been waiting the result. The subject is an old one, but Etty has treated it in a new way, and given it a moral interest, which the old painters seem not to have thought of. In the delineation of the naked human figure, Etty is allowed to surpass all the English living artists, and his manner of painting flesh is thought to be next to that of Rubens. His reputation for these qualities has influenced his choice of subjects in a remarkable manner. The walls of the exhibition were covered writh Venuses and Eves, Cupids and Psyches, and nymphs innocent of drapery, reclining on couches, or admiring their own beauty reflected in clear fountains. I almost thought myself in the midst of a collection made for the Grand Seignior. The annual exhibition of the Royal Academy is now open. Its general character is mediocrity, unrelieved by any works of extraordinary or striking merit. There are some clever landscapes by the younger Danbys, and one by the father, which is by no means among his happiest--a dark picture, which in half a dozen years will be one mass of black paint. Cooper, almost equal to Paul Potter as a cattle painter, contributes some good pieces of that kind, and one of them, in which the cattle are from his pencil, and the landscape from that of Lee, appeared to me the finest thing in the collection. There is, however, a picture by Leslie, which his friends insist is the best in the exhibition. It represents the chaplain of the Duke leaving the table in a rage, after an harangue by Don Quixote in praise of knight-errantry. The suppressed mirth of the Duke and Duchess, the sly looks of the servants, the stormy anger of the ecclesiastic, and the serene gravity of the knight, are well expressed; but there is a stiffness in some of the figures which makes them look as if copied from the wooden models in the artist's study, and a raw and crude appearance in the handling, so that you are reminded of the brush every time you look at the painting. To do Leslie justice, however, his paintings ripen wonderfully, and seem to acquire a finish with years. If one wishes to form an idea of the vast numbers of indifferent paintings which are annually produced in England, he should visit, as I did, another exhibition, a large gallery lighted from above, in which each artist, most of them of the younger or obscurer class, takes a certain number of feet on the wall and exhibits just what he pleases. Every man is his own hanging committee, and if his pictures are not placed in the most advantageous position, it is his own fault. Here acres of canvas are exhibited, most of which is spoiled of course, though here and there a good picture is to be seen, and others which give promise of future merit. Enough of pictures. The principal subject of political discussion since I have been in England, has been the expediency of allowing Jews to sit in Parliament. You have seen by what a large majority Baron Rothschild has been again returned from the city of London, after his resignation, in spite of the zealous opposition of the conservatives. It is allowed, I think, on all hands, that the majority of the nation are in favor of allowing Jews to hold seats in Parliament, but the other side urge the inconsistency of maintaining a Christian Church as a state institution, and admitting the enemies of Christianity to a share in its administration. Public opinion, however, is so strongly against political disabilities on account of religious faith, that with the aid of the ministry, it will, no doubt, triumph, and we shall see another class of adversaries of the Establishment making war upon it in the House of Commons. Nor will it be at all surprising if, after a little while, we hear of Jewish barons, earls, and marquises in the House of Peers. Rothschild himself may become the founder of a noble line, opulent beyond the proudest of them all. The protectionist party here are laboring to persuade the people that the government have committed a great error, in granting such liberal conditions to the trade of other nations, to the prejudice of British industry. They do not, however, seem to make much impression on the public mind. The necessaries of life are obtained at a cheaper rate than formerly, and that satisfies the people. Peel has been making a speech in Parliament on the free-trade question, which I often hear referred to as a very able argument for the free-trade policy. Neither on this question nor on that of the Jewish disabilities, do the opposition seem to have the country with them. Letter LI. A Visit to the Shetland Isles. Aberdeen, _July_ 19, 1849. Two days ago I was in the Orkneys; the day before I was in the Shetland Isles, the "farthest Thule" of the Romans, where I climbed the Noup of the Noss, as the famous headland of the island of Noss is called, from which you look out upon the sea that lies between Shetland and Norway. From Wick, a considerable fishing town in Caithness, on the northern coast of Scotland, a steamer, named the Queen, departs once a week, in the summer months, for Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, and Lerwick, in Shetland. We went on board of her about ten o'clock on the 14th of July. The herring fishery had just begun, and the artificial port of Wick, constructed with massive walls of stone, was crowded with fishing vessels which had returned that morning from the labors of the night; for in the herring fishery it is only in the night that the nets are spread and drawn. Many of the vessels had landed their cargo; in others the fishermen were busily disengaging the herrings from the black nets and throwing them in heaps; and now and then a boat later than the rest, was entering from the sea. The green heights all around the bay were covered with groups of women, sitting or walking, dressed for the most part in caps and white short gowns, waiting for the arrival of the boats manned by their husbands and brothers, or belonging to the families of those who had come to seek occupation as fishermen. I had seen two or three of the principal streets of Wick that morning, swarming with strapping fellows, in blue highland bonnets, with blue jackets and pantaloons, and coarse blue flannel shirts. A shopkeeper, standing at his door, instructed me who they were. "They are men of the Celtic race," he said--the term Celtic has grown to be quite fashionable, I find, when applied to the Highlanders. "They came from the Hebrides and other parts of western Scotland, to get employment in the herring fishery. These people have travelled perhaps three hundred miles, most of them on foot, to be employed six or seven weeks, for which they will receive about six pounds wages. Those whom you see are not the best of their class; the more enterprising and industrious have boats of their own, and carry on the fishery on their own account." We found the Queen a strong steamboat, with a good cabin and convenient state-rooms, but dirty, and smelling of fish from stem to stern. It has seemed to me that the further north I went, the more dirt I found. Our captain was an old Aberdeen seaman, with a stoop in his shoulders, and looked as if he was continually watching for land, an occupation for which the foggy climate of these latitudes gives him full scope. We left Wick between eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon, and glided over a calm sea, with a cloudless sky above us, and a thin haze on the surface of the waters. The haze thickened to a fog, which grew more and more dense, and finally closed overhead. After about three hours sail, the captain began to grow uneasy, and was seen walking about on the bridge between the wheel-houses, anxiously peering into the mist, on the look-out for the coast of the Orkneys. At length he gave up the search, and stopped the engine. The passengers amused themselves with fishing. Several coal-fish, a large fish of slender shape, were caught, and one fine cod was hauled up by a gentleman who united in his person, as he gave me to understand, the two capacities of portrait-painter and preacher of the gospel, and who held that the universal church of Christendom had gone sadly astray from the true primitive doctrine, in regard to the time when the millennium is to take place. The fog cleared away in the evening; our steamer was again in motion: we landed at Kirkwall in the middle of the night, and when I went on deck the next morning, we were smoothly passing the shores of Fair Isle--high and steep rocks, impending over the waters with a covering of green turf. Before they were out of sight we saw the Shetland coast, the dark rock of Sumburgh Head, and behind it, half shrouded in mist, the promontory of Fitfiel Head,--Fitful Head, as it is called by Scott, in his novel of the Pirate. Beyond, to the east, black rocky promontories came in sight, one after the other, beetling over the sea. At ten o'clock, we were passing through a channel between the islands leading to Lerwick, the capital of Shetland, on the principal island bearing the name of Mainland. Fields, yellow with flowers, among which stood here and there a cottage, sloped softly down to the water, and beyond them rose the bare declivities and summits of the hills, dark with heath, with here and there still darker spots, of an almost inky hue, where peat had been cut for fuel. Not a tree, not a shrub was to be seen, and the greater part of the soil appeared never to have been reduced to cultivation. About one o'clock we cast anchor before Lerwick, a fishing village, built on the shore of Bressay Sound, which here forms one of the finest harbors in the world. It has two passages to the sea, so that when the wind blows a storm on one side of the islands, the Shetlander in his boat passes out in the other direction, and finds himself in comparatively smooth water. It was Sunday, and the man who landed us at the quay and took our baggage to our lodging, said as he left us-- "It's the Sabbath, and I'll no tak' my pay now, but I'll call the morrow. My name is Jim Sinclair, pilot, and if ye'll be wanting to go anywhere, I'll be glad to tak' ye in my boat." In a few minutes we were snugly established at our lodgings. There is no inn throughout all the Shetland Islands, which contain about thirty thousand inhabitants, but if any of my friends should have occasion to visit Lerwick, I can cheerfully recommend to them the comfortable lodging-house of Mrs. Walker, who keeps a little shop in the principal street, not far from Queen's lane. We made haste to get ready for church, and sallied out to find the place of worship frequented by our landlady, which was not a difficult matter. The little town of Lerwick consists of two-story houses, built mostly of unhewn stone, rough-cast, with steep roofs and a chimney at each end. They are arranged along a winding street parallel with the shore, and along narrow lanes running upward to the top of the hill. The main street is flagged with smooth stones, like the streets in Venice, for no vehicle runs on wheels in the Shetland islands. We went up Queen's lane and soon found the building occupied by the Free Church of Scotland, until a temple of fairer proportions, on which the masons are now at work, on the top of the hill, shall be completed for their reception. It was crowded with attentive worshipers, one of whom obligingly came forward and found a seat for us. The minister, Mr. Frazer, had begun the evening service, and was at prayer. When I entered, he was speaking of "our father the devil;" but the prayer was followed by an earnest, practical discourse, though somewhat crude in the composition, and reminding me of an expression I once heard used by a distinguished Scotchman, who complained that the clergy of his country, in composing their sermons, too often "mak' rough wark of it." I looked about among these descendants of the Norwegians, but could not see any thing singular in their physiognomy; and but for the harsh accent of the preacher, I might almost have thought myself in the midst of a country congregation in the United States. They are mostly of a light complexion, with an appearance of health and strength, though of a sparer make than the people of the more southern British isles. After the service was over, we returned to our lodgings, by a way which led to the top of the hill, and made the circuit of the little town. The paths leading into the interior of the island, were full of people returning homeward; the women in their best attire, a few in silks, with wind-tanned faces. We saw them disappearing, one after another, in the hollows, or over the dark bare hill-tops. With a population of less than three thousand souls, Lerwick has four places of worship--a church of the Establishment, a Free church, a church for the Seceders, and one for the Methodists. The road we took commanded a fine view of the harbor, surrounded and sheltered by hills. Within it lay a numerous group of idle fishing-vessels, with one great steamer in the midst; and more formidable in appearance, a Dutch man-of-war, sent to protect the Dutch fisheries, with the flag of Holland flying at the mast-head. Above the town, on tall poles, were floating the flags of four or five different nations, to mark the habitation of their consuls. On the side opposite to the harbor, lay the small fresh-water lake of Cleikimin, with the remains of a Pictish castle in the midst; one of those circular buildings of unhewn, uncemented stone, skillfully laid, forming apartments and galleries of such small dimensions as to lead Sir Walter Scott to infer that the Picts were a people of a stature considerably below the ordinary standard of the human race. A deep Sabbath silence reigned over the scene, except the sound of the wind, which here never ceases to blow from one quarter or another, as it swept the herbage and beat against the stone walls surrounding the fields. The ground under our feet was thick with daisies and the blossoms of the crow-foot and other flowers; for in the brief summer of these islands, nature, which has no groves to embellish, makes amends by pranking the ground, particularly in the uncultivated parts, with a great profusion and variety of flowers. The next morning we were rowed, by two of Jim Sinclair's boys, to the island of Bressay, and one of them acted as our guide to the remarkable precipice called the Noup of the Noss. We ascended its smooth slopes and pastures, and passed through one or two hamlets, where we observed the construction of the dwellings of the Zetland peasantry. They are built of unhewn stone, with roofs of turf held down by ropes of straw neatly twisted; the floors are of earth; the cow, pony, and pig live under the same roof with the family, and the manure pond, a receptacle for refuse and filth, is close to the door. A little higher up we came upon the uncultivated grounds, abandoned to heath, and only used to supply fuel by the cutting of peat. Here and there women were busy piling the square pieces of peat in stacks, that they might dry in the wind. "We carry home these pits in a basket on our showlders, when they are dry," said one of them to me; but those who can afford to keep a pony, make him do this work for them. In the hollows of this part of the island we saw several fresh-water ponds, which were enlarged with dykes and made to turn grist mills. We peeped into one or two of these mills, little stone buildings, in which we could hardly stand upright, inclosing two small stones turned by a perpendicular shaft, in which are half a dozen cogs; the paddles are fixed below, and there struck by the water, turn the upper stone. A steep descent brought us to the little strait, bordered with rocks, which divides Brassey from the island called the Noss. A strong south wind was driving in the billows from the sea with noise and foam, but they were broken and checked by a bar of rocks in the middle of the strait, and we crossed to the north of it in smooth water. The ferryman told us that when the wind was northerly he crossed to the south of the bar. As we climbed the hill of the Noss the mist began to drift thinly around us from the sea, and flocks of sea-birds rose screaming from the ground at our approach. At length we stood upon the brink of a precipice of fearful height, from which we had a full view of the still higher precipices of the neighboring summit, A wall of rock was before us six hundred feet in height, descending almost perpendicularly to the sea, which roared and foamed at its base among huge masses of rock, and plunged into great caverns, hollowed out by the beating of the surges for centuries. Midway on the rock, and above the reach of the spray, were thousands of sea-birds, sitting in ranks on the numerous shelves, or alighting, or taking wing, and screaming as they flew. A cloud of them were constantly in the air in front of the rock and over our heads. Here they make their nests and rear their young, but not entirely safe from the pursuit of the Zetlander, who causes himself to be let down by a rope from the summit and plunders their nests. The face of the rock, above the portion which is the haunt of the birds, was fairly tapestried with herbage and flowers which the perpetual moisture of the atmosphere keeps always fresh--daisies nodding in the wind, and the crimson phlox, seeming to set the cliffs on flame; yellow buttercups, and a variety of other plants in bloom, of which I do not know the name. Magnificent as this spectacle was, we were not satisfied without climbing to the summit. As we passed upward, we saw where the rabbits had made their burrows in the elastic peat-like soil close to the very edge of the precipice. We now found ourselves involved in the cold streams of mist which the strong sea-wind was drifting over us; they were in fact the lower skirts of the clouds. At times they would clear away and give us a prospect of the green island summits around us, with their bold headlands, the winding straits between, and the black rocks standing out in the sea. When we arrived at the summit we could hardly stand against the wind, but it was almost more difficult to muster courage to look down that dizzy depth over which the Zetlanders suspend themselves with ropes, in quest of the eggs of the sea-fowl. My friend captured a young gull on the summit of the Noup. The bird had risen at his approach, and essayed to fly towards the sea, but the strength of the wind drove him back to the land. He rose again, but could not sustain a long flight, and coming to the ground again, was caught, after a spirited chase, amidst a wild clamor of of the sea-fowl over our heads. Not far from the Noup is the Holm, or, as it is sometimes called, the Cradle or Basket, of the Noss. It is a perpendicular mass of rock, two or three hundred feet high, with a broad flat summit, richly covered with grass, and is separated from the island by a narrow chasm, through which the sea flows. Two strong ropes are stretched from the main island to the top of the Holm, and on these is slung the cradle or basket, a sort of open box made of deal boards, in which the shepherds pass with their sheep to the top of the Holm. We found the cradle strongly secured by lock and key to the stakes on the side of the Noss, in order, no doubt, to prevent any person from crossing for his own amusement. As we descended the smooth pastures of the Noss, we fell in with a herd of ponies, of a size somewhat larger than is common on the islands. I asked our guide, a lad of fourteen years of age, what was the average price of a sheltie. His answer deserves to be written in letters of gold-- "It's jist as they're bug an' smal'." From the ferryman, at the strait below, I got more specific information. They vary in price from three to ten pounds, but the latter sum is only paid for the finest of these animals, in the respects of shape and color. It is not a little remarkable, that the same causes which, in Shetland, have made the horse the smallest of ponies, have almost equally reduced the size of the cow. The sheep, also--a pretty creature, I might call it--from the fine wool of which the Shetland women knot the thin webs known by the name of Shetland shawls, is much smaller than any breed I have ever seen. Whether the cause be the perpetual chilliness of the atmosphere, or the insufficiency of nourishment--for, though the long Zetland winters are temperate, and snow never lies long on the ground, there is scarce any growth of herbage in that season--I will not undertake to say, but the people of the islands ascribe it to the insufficiency of nourishment. It is, at all events, remarkable, that the traditions of the country should ascribe to the Picts, the early inhabitants of Shetland, the same dwarfish stature, and that the numerous remains of their habitations which still exist, should seem to confirm the tradition. The race which at present possesses the Shetlands is, however, of what the French call "an advantageous stature," and well limbed. If it be the want of a proper and genial warmth, which prevents the due growth of the domestic animals, it is a want to which the Zetlanders are not subject. Their hills afford the man apparently inexhaustible supply of peat, which costs the poorest man nothing but the trouble of cutting it and bringing it home; and their cottages, I was told, are always well warmed in winter. In crossing the narrow strait which separates the Noss from Bressay, I observed on the Bressay side, overlooking the water, a round hillock, of very regular shape, in which the green turf was intermixed with stones. "That," said the ferryman, "is what we call a Pictish castle. I mind when it was opened; it was full of rooms, so that ye could go over every part of it." I climbed the hillock, and found, by inspecting several openings, which had been made by the peasantry to take away the stones, that below the turf it was a regular work of Pictish masonry, but the spiral galleries, which these openings revealed, had been completely choked up, in taking away the materials of which they were built. Although plenty of stone may be found everywhere in the islands, there seems to be a disposition to plunder these remarkable remains, for the sake of building cottages, or making those inclosures for their cabbages, which the islanders call _crubs_. They have been pulling down the Pictish castle, on the little island in the fresh-water loch called Cleikimin, near Lerwick, described with such minuteness by Scott in his journal, till very few traces of its original construction are left. If the inclosing of lands for pasturage and cultivation proceeds as it has begun, these curious monuments of a race which has long perished, will disappear. Now that we were out of hearing of the cries of the sea-birds, we were regaled with more agreeable sounds. We had set out, as we climbed the island of Bressay, amid a perfect chorus of larks, answering each other in the sky, and sometimes, apparently, from the clouds; and now we heard them again overhead, pouring out their sweet notes so fast and so ceaselessly, that it seemed as if the little creatures imagined they had more to utter, than they had time to utter it in. In no part of the British Islands have I seen the larks so numerous or so merry, as in the Shetlands. We waited awhile at the wharf by the minister's house in Bressay, for Jim Sinclair, who at length appeared in his boat to convey us to Lerwick. "He is a noisy fallow," said our good landlady, and truly we found him voluble enough, but quite amusing. As he rowed us to town he gave us a sample of his historical knowledge, talking of Sir Walter Raleigh and the settlement of North America, and told us that his greatest pleasure was to read historical books in the long winter nights. His children, he said, could all read and write. We dined on a leg of Shetland mutton, with a tart made "of the only fruit of the Island" as a Scotchman called it, the stalks of the rhubarb plant, and went on board of our steamer about six o'clock in the afternoon. It was matter of some regret to us that we were obliged to leave Shetland so soon. Two or three days more might have been pleasantly passed among its grand precipices, its winding straits, its remains of a remote and rude antiquity, its little horses, little cows, and little sheep, its sea-fowl, its larks, its flowers, and its hardy and active people. There was an amusing novelty also in going to bed, as we did, by daylight, for at this season of the year, the daylight is never out of the sky, and the flush of early sunset only passes along the horizon from the northwest to the northeast, where it brightens into sunrise. The Zetlanders, I was told by a Scotch clergyman, who had lived among them forty years, are naturally shrewd and quick of apprehension; "as to their morals," he added, "if ye stay among them any time ye'll be able to judge for yourself." So, on the point of morals, I am in the dark. More attention, I hear, is paid to the education of their children than formerly, and all have the opportunity of learning to read and write in the parochial schools. Their agriculture is still very rude, they are very unwilling to adopt the instruments of husbandry used in England, but on the whole they are making some progress. A Shetland gentleman, who, as he remarked to me, had "had the advantage of seeing some other countries" besides his own, complained that the peasantry were spending too much of their earnings for tea, tobacco, and spirits. Last winter a terrible famine came upon the islands; their fisheries had been unproductive, and the potato crop had been cut off by the blight. The communication with Scotland by steamboat had ceased, as it always does in winter, and it was long before the sufferings of the Shetlanders were known in Great Britain, but as soon as the intelligence was received, contributions were made and the poor creatures were relieved. Their climate, inhospitable as it seems, is healthy, and they live to a good old age. A native of the island, a baronet, who has a great white house on a bare field in sight of Lerwick, and was a passenger on board the steamer in which we made our passage to the island, remarked that if it was not the healthiest climate in the world, the extremely dirty habits of the peasantry would engender disease, which, however, was not the case. "It is, probably, the effect of the saline particles in the air," he added. His opinion seemed to be that the dirt was salted by the sea-winds, and preserved from further decomposition. I was somewhat amused, in hearing him boast of the climate of Shetland in winter. "Have you never observed" said he, turning to the old Scotch clergyman of whom I have already spoken, "how much larger the proportion of sunny days is in our islands than at the south?" "I have never observed it," was the dry answer of the minister. The people of Shetland speak a kind of Scottish, but not with the Scottish accent. Four hundred years ago, when the islands were transferred from Norway to the British crown, their language was Norse, but that tongue, although some of its words have been preserved in the present dialect, has become extinct. "I have heard," said an intelligent Shetlander to me, "that there are yet, perhaps, half a dozen persons in one of our remotest neighborhoods, who are able to speak it, but I never met with one who could." In returning from Lerwick to the Orkneys, we had a sample of the weather which is often encountered in these latitudes. The wind blew a gale in the night, and our steamer was tossed about on the waves like an egg-shell, much to the discomfort of the passengers. We had on board a cargo of ponies, the smallest of which were from the Shetlands, some of them not much larger than sheep, and nearly as shaggy; the others, of larger size, had been brought from the Faro Isles. In the morning, when the gale had blown itself to rest, I went on deck and saw one of the Faro Island ponies, which had given out during the night, stretched dead upon the deck. I inquired if the body was to be committed to the deep. "It is to be skinned first," was the answer. We stopped at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, long enough to allow us to look at the old cathedral of St. Magnus, built early in the twelfth century--a venerable pile, in perfect preservation, and the finest specimen of the architecture once called Saxon, then Norman, and lately Romanesque, that I have ever seen. The round arch is everywhere used, except in two or three windows of later addition. The nave is narrow, and the central groined arches are lofty; so that an idea of vast extent is given, though the cathedral is small, compared with the great minsters in England. The work of completing certain parts of the building which were left unfinished, is now going on at the expense of the government. All the old flooring, and the pews, which made it a parish church, have been taken away, and the original proportions and symmetry of the building are seen as they ought to be. The general effect of the building is wonderfully grand and solemn. On our return to Scotland, we stopped for a few hours at Wick. It was late in the afternoon, and the fishermen, in their vessels, were going out of the harbor to their nightly toil. Vessel after vessel, each manned with four stout rowers, came out of the port--and after rowing a short distance, raised their sails and steered for the open sea, till all the waters, from the land to the horizon, were full of them. I counted them, hundreds after hundreds, till I grew tired of the task. A sail of ten or twelve hours brought us to Aberdeen, with its old cathedral, encumbered by pews and wooden partitions, and its old college, the tower of which is surmounted by a cluster of flying buttresses, formed into the resemblance of a crown. This letter, you perceive, is dated at Aberdeen. It was begun there, but I have written portions of it at different times since I left that city, and I beg that you will imagine it to be of the latest date. It is now long enough, I fear, to tire your readers, and I therefore lay down my pen. Letter LII. Europe under the Bayonet. Paris, _September_ 13, 1849. Whoever should visit the principal countries of Europe at the present moment, might take them for conquered provinces, held in subjection by their victorious masters, at the point of the sword. Such was the aspect which France presented when I came to Paris a few weeks since. The city was then in what is called, by a convenient fiction, a state of siege; soldiers filled the streets, were posted in every public square and at every corner, were seen marching before the churches, the cornices of which bore the inscription of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, keeping their brethren quiet by the bayonet. I have since made a journey to Bavaria and Switzerland, and on returning I find the siege raised, and these demonstrations of fraternity less formal, but the show and the menace of military force are scarcely less apparent. Those who maintain that France is not fit for liberty, need not afflict themseves with the idea that there is at present more liberty in France than her people know how to enjoy. On my journey, I found the cities along the Rhine crowded with soldiers; the sound of the drum was heard among the hills covered with vines; women were trundling loaded wheel-barrows, and carrying panniers like asses, to earn the taxes which are extorted to support the men who stalk about in uniform. I entered Heidelberg with anticipations of pleasure; they were dashed in a moment; the city was in a state of siege, occupied by Prussian troops which had been sent to take the part of the Grand Duke of Baden against his people. I could hardly believe that this was the same peaceful and friendly city which I had known in better times. Every other man in the streets was a soldier; the beautiful walks about the old castle were full of soldiers; in the evening they were reeling through the streets. "This invention," said a German who had been a member of the Diet of the Confederation lately broken up, "this invention of declaring a city, which has unconditionally submitted, to be still in a state of siege, is but a device to practice the most unbounded oppression. Any man who is suspected, or feared, or disliked, or supposed not to approve of the proceedings of the victorious party, is arrested and imprisoned at pleasure. He may be guiltless of any offense which could be made a pretext for condemning him, but his trial is arbitrarily postponed, and when at last he is released, he has suffered the penalty of a long confinement, and is taught how dangerous it is to become obnoxious to the government." From Heidelberg, thus transformed, I was glad to take my departure as soon as possible. Our way from that city to Heilbronn, was through a most charming country along the valley of the Neckar. Here were low hills and valleys rich with harvests, a road embowered in fruit-trees, the branches of which were propped with stakes to prevent them from breaking with their load, and groves lying pleasantly in the morning sunshine, where ravens were croaking. Birds of worse omen than these were abroad, straggling groups, and sometimes entire companies of soldiers, on their way from one part of the duchy to another; while in the fields, women, prematurely old with labor, were wielding the hoe and the mattock, and the younger and stronger of their sex were swinging the scythe. In all the villages through which we passed, in the very smallest, troops were posted, and men in military uniform were standing at the doors, or looking from the windows of every inn and beer-house. At Heilbronn we took the railway for Stuttgart, the capital of Wurtemberg. There was a considerable proportion of men in military trappings among the passengers, but at one of the stations they came upon us like a cloud, and we entered Stuttgart with a little army. That city, too, looked as if in a state of siege, so numerous were the soldiery, though the vine-covered hills, among which it is situated, could have given them a better occupation. The railway, beyond Stuttgart, wound through a deep valley and ended at Geisslingen, an ancient Swabian town, in a gorge of the mountains, with tall old houses, not one of which, I might safely affirm, has been built within the last two hundred years. From this place to Ulm, on the Danube, the road was fairly lined with soldiers, walking or resting by the wayside, or closely packed in the peasants' wagons, which they had hired to carry them short distances. At Ulm we were obliged to content ourselves with straitened accommodations, the hotels being occupied by the gentry in epaulettes. I hoped to see fewer of this class at the capital of Bavaria, but it was not so; they were everywhere placed in sight as if to keep the people in awe. "These fellows," said a German to me, "are always too numerous, but in ordinary times they are kept in the capitals and barracks, and the nuisance is out of sight. Now, however, the occasion is supposed to make their presence necessary in the midst of the people, and they swarm everywhere." Another, it was our host of the Goldener Hirsch, said to my friend, "I think I shall emigrate to America, I am tired of living under the bayonet." I was in Munich when the news arrived of the surrender of the Hungarian troops under Görgey, and the fall of the Hungarian republic. All along my journey I had observed tokens of the intense interest which the German people took in the result of the struggle between Austria and the Magyars, and of the warmth of their hopes in favor of the latter. The intelligence was received with the deepest sorrow. "So perishes," said a Bavarian, "the last hope of European liberty." Our journey to Switzerland led us through the southern part of Bavaria, among the old towns which formed a part of ancient Swabia. The country here, in some respects, resembles New England; here are broad woods, large orchards of the apple and pear, and scattered farm-houses--of a different architecture, it is true, from that of the Yankees, and somewhat resembling, with their far-projecting eaves, those of Switzerland. Yet there was a further difference--everywhere, men were seen under arms, and women at the plough. So weary had I grown of the perpetual sight of the military uniform, that I longed to escape into Switzerland, where I hoped to see less of it, and it was with great delight that I found myself at Lindau, a border town of Bavaria, on the Bodensee, or Lake of Constance, on the shores of which the boundaries of four sovereignties meet. A steamer took us across the lake, from a wharf covered with soldiers, to Roorschach, in Switzerland, where not a soldier was to be seen. Nobody asked for our passports, nobody required us to submit our baggage to search. I could almost have kneeled and kissed the shore of the hospitable republic; and really it was beautiful enough for such a demonstration of affection, for nothing could be lovelier than the declivities of that shore with its woods and orchards, and grassy meadows, and green hollows running upward to the mountain-tops, all fresh with a shower which had just passed and now glittering in the sunshine, and interspersed with large Swiss houses, bearing quaintly-carved galleries, and broad overhanging roofs, while to the east rose the glorious summits of the Alps, mingling with the clouds. In three or four hours we had climbed up to St. Gall--St. Gallen, the Germans call it--situated in a high valley, among steep green hills, which send down spurs of woodland to the meadows below. In walking out to look at the town, we heard a brisk and continued discharge of musketry, and, proceeding in the direction of the sound, came to a large field, evidently set apart as a parade-ground, on which several hundred youths were practicing the art of war in a sham fight, and keeping up a spirited fire at each other with blank cartridges. On inquiry, we were told that these were the boys of the schools of St. Gall, from twelve to sixteen years of age, with whom military exercises were a part of their education. I was still, therefore, among soldiers, but of a different class from those of whom I had seen so much. Here, it was the people who were armed for self-protection; there, it was a body of mercenaries armed to keep the people in subjection. Another day's journey brought us to the picturesque town of Zurich, and the next morning about four o'clock I was awakened by the roll of drums under my window. Looking out, I saw a regiment of boys of a tender age, in a uniform of brown linen, with little light muskets on their shoulders, and miniature knapsacks on their backs, completely equipped and furnished for war, led on by their little officers in regular military order, marching and wheeling to the sound of martial music with all the precision of veterans. In Switzerland arms are in every man's hands; he is educated to be a soldier, and taught that the liberties of his country depend on his skill and valor. The worst effect, perhaps of this military education is, that the Swiss, when other means of subsistence are not easily found, become military adventurers and sell their services to the first purchaser. Meantime, nobody is regarded as properly fitted for his duties as a member of the state, who is not skilled in the use of arms. Target-shooting, _Freischiessen_, is the national amusement of Switzerland, and has been so ever since the days of Tell; occasions of target-shooting are prescribed and superintended by the public authorities. They were practicing it at the stately city of Berne when we visited it; they were practicing it at various other places as we passed. Every town is provided with a public shooting-ground near its gates. It was at one of the most remarkable of these towns; it was at Freiburg, Catholic Freiburg, full of Catholic seminaries and convents, in the churches of which you may hear the shrill voices of the nuns chanting matins, themselves unseen; it was at Freiburg, grandly seated on the craggy banks of her rivers, flowing in deep gulfs, spanned by the loftiest and longest chain-bridges in the world, that I saw another evidence of the fact that Switzerland is the only place on the continent where freedom is understood, or allowed to have an existence. A proclamation of the authorities of the canton was pasted on the walls and gates, ordaining the 16th of September as a day of religious thanksgiving. After recounting the motives of gratitude to Providence; after speaking of the abundance of the harvests, the health enjoyed throughout Switzerland, at the threshold of which the cholera had a second time been stayed; the subsidence of political animosities, and the quiet enjoyment of the benefits of the new constitution upon which the country had entered, the proclamation mentioned, as a special reason of gratitude to Almighty God, that Switzerland, in this day of revolutions, had been enabled to offer, among her mountains, a safe and unmolested asylum to the thousands of fugitives who had suffered defeat in the battles of freedom. I could not help contrasting this with the cruel treatment shown by France to the political refugees from Baden and other parts of Germany. A few days before, it had been announced that the French government required of these poor fellows that they should either enlist at once in the regiments destined for service in Algiers, or immediately leave the country--offering them the alternative of military slavery, or banishment from the country in which they had hoped to find a shelter. I have spoken of the practice of Switzerland in regard to passports, an example which it does not suit the purpose the French politicians to follow. Here, and all over the continent, the passport system is as strictly and vexatiously enforced as ever. It is remarkable that none of the reformers occupied in the late remodelling of European institutions, seems to have thought of abolishing this invention of despotism--this restraint upon the liberty of passing from place to place, which makes Europe one great prison. If the people had been accustomed to perfect freedom in this respect, though but a short time, it might have been found difficult, at least in France, to reimpose the old restraints. The truth is, however, that France is not quite so free at present as she was under Louis Philippe. The only advantage of her present condition is, that the constitution places in the hands of the people the means of peaceably perfecting their liberties, whenever they are enlightened enough to claim them. On my way from Geneva to Lyons I sat in _banquette_ of the diligence among the plebeians. The conversation happened to turn on politics, and the expressions of hatred against the present government of France, which broke from the conductor, the coachman, and the two passengers by my side, were probably significant of the feeling which prevails among the people. "The only law now," said one, "is the law of the sabre." "The soldiers and the _gens d'armes_ have every thing their own way now," said another, "but by and by they will be glad to, hide in the sewers." The others were no less emphatic in their expressions of anger and detestation. The expedition to Rome is unpopular throughout France, more especially so in the southern part of the republic, where the intercourse with Rome has been more frequent, and the sympathy with her people is stronger. "I have never," said an American friend, who has resided some time in Paris, "heard a single Frenchman defend it." It is unpopular, even among the troops sent on the expedition, as is acknowledged by the government journals themselves. To propitiate public opinion, the government has changed its course, and after making war upon the Romans to establish the pontifical throne, now tells the Pope that he must submit to place the government in the hands of the laity. This change of policy has occasioned a good deal of surprise and an infinite deal of discussion. Whatever may be its consequences, there is one consequence which it can not have, that of recovering to the President and his ministry the popularity they have lost. Letter LIII. Volterra. [This letter was casually omitted from its proper place near the beginning of the volume.] Rome, _April_ 15, 1835. Towards the end of March I went from Pisa to Volterra. This you know is a very ancient city, one of the strongholds of Etruria when Rome was in its cradle; and, in more modern times, in the age of Italian republics, large enough to form an independent community of considerable importance. It is now a decayed town, containing about four thousand inhabitants, some of whom are families of the poor and proud nobility common enough over all Italy, who are said to quarrel with each other more fiercely in Volterra than almost anywhere else. It is the old feud of the Montagues and the Capulets on a humbler scale, and the disputes of the Volterra nobility are the more violent and implacable for being hereditary. Poor creatures! too proud to engage in business, too indolent for literature, excluded from political employments by the nature of the government, there is nothing left for them but to starve, intrigue, and quarrel. You may judge how miserably poor they are, when you are told they can not afford even to cultivate the favorite art of modern Italy; the art best suited to the genius of a soft and effeminate people. There is, I was told, but one pianoforte in the whole town, and that is owned by a Florentine lady who has recently come to reside here. For several miles before reaching Volterra, our attention was fixed by the extraordinary aspect of the country through which we were passing. The road gradually ascended, and we found ourselves among deep ravines and steep, high, broken banks, principally of clay, barren, and in most places wholly bare of herbage, a scene of complete desolation, were it not for a cottage here and there perched upon the heights, a few sheep attended by a boy and a dog grazing on the brink of one of the precipices, or a solitary patch of bright green wheat in some spot where the rains had not yet carried away the vegetable mould. Imagine to yourself an elevated country like the highlands of Pennsylvania or the western part of Massachusetts; imagine vast beds of loam and clay in place of the ledges of rock, and then fancy the whole region to be torn by water-spouts and torrents into gulleys too profound to be passed, with sharp ridges between--stripped of its trees and its grass--and you will have some idea of the country near Volterra. I could not help fancying, while I looked at it, that as the earth grew old, the ribs of rock which once upheld the mountains, had become changed into the bare heaps of earth which I saw about me, that time and the elements had destroyed the cohesion of the particles of which they were formed, and that now the rains were sweeping them down to the Mediterranean, to fill its bed and cause its waters to encroach upon the land. It was impossible for me to prevent the apprehension from passing through my mind, that such might be the fate of other quarters of the globe in ages yet to come, that their rocks must crumble and their mountains be levelled, until the waters shall again cover the face of the earth, unless new mountains shall be thrown up by eruptions of internal fire. They told me in Volterra, that this frightful region had once been productive and under cultivation, but that after a plague which, four or five hundred years since, had depopulated the country, it was abandoned and neglected, and the rains had reduced it to its present state. In the midst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there interspersed with fertile spots, rises the mountain on which Volterra is situated, where the inhabitants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere, almost perpetually cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies; while below, on the banks of the Cecina, which in full sigjit winds its way to the sea, they die of fevers. One of the ravines of which I have spoken,--the _balza_ they call it at Volterra--has ploughed a deep chasm on the north side of this mountain, and is every year rapidly approaching the city on its summit. I stood on its edge and looked down a bank of soft red earth five hundred feet in height. A few rods in front of me I saw where a road had crossed the spot in which the gulf now yawned; the tracks of the last year's carriages were seen reaching to the edge on both sides. The ruins of a convent were close at hand, the inmates of which, two or three years since, had been removed by the government to the town for safety. These will soon be undermined by the advancing chasm, together with a fine piece of old Etruscan wall, once inclosing the city, built of enormous uncemented parallelograms of stone, and looking as if it might be the work of the giants who lived before the flood; a neighboring church will next fall into the gulf, which finally, if means be not taken to prevent its progress, will reach and sap the present walls of the city, swallowing up what time has so long spared. "A few hundred crowns," said an inhabitant of Volterra to me, "would stop all this mischief. A wall at the bottom of the chasm, and a heap of branches of trees or other rubbish, to check the fall of the earth, are all that would be necessary." I asked why these means were not used. "Because," he replied, "those to whom the charge of these matters belongs, will not take the trouble. Somebody must devise a plan for the purpose, and somebody must take upon himself the labor of seeing it executed. They find it easier to put it off." The antiquities of Volterra consist of an Etruscan burial-ground, in which the tombs still remain, pieces of the old and incredibly massive Etruscan wall, including a far larger circuit than the present city, two Etruscan gates of immemorial antiquity, older doubtless than any thing at Rome, built of enormous stones, one of them serving even yet as an entrance to the town, and a multitude of cinerary vessels, mostly of alabaster, sculptured with numerous figures in _alto relievo_. These figures are sometimes allegorical representations, and sometimes embody the fables of the Greek mythology. Among them are some in the most perfect style of Grecian art, the subjects of which are taken from the poems of Homer; groups representing the besiegers of Troy and its defenders, or Ulysses with his companions and his ships. I gazed with exceeding delight on these works of forgotten artists, who had the verses of Homer by heart--works just drawn from the tombs where they had been buried for thousands of years, and looking as if fresh from the chisel. We had letters to the commandant of the fortress, an ancient-looking stronghold, built by the Medici family, over which we were conducted by his adjutant, a courteous gentleman with a red nose, who walked as if keeping time to military music. From the summit of the tower we had an extensive and most remarkable prospect. It was the 19th day of March, and below us, the sides of the mountain, scooped into irregular dells, were covered with fruit-trees just breaking into leaf and flower. Beyond stretched the region of barrenness I have already described, to the west of which lay the green pastures of the Maremma, the air of which, in summer, is deadly, and still further west were spread the waters of the Mediterranean, out of which were seen rising the mountains of Corsica. To the north and northeast were the Appenines, capped with snow, embosoming the fertile lower valley of the Arno, with the cities of Pisa and Leghorn in sight. To the south we traced the windings of the Cecina, and saw ascending into the air the smoke of a hot-water lake, agitated perpetually with the escape of gas, which we were told was visited by Dante, and from which he drew images for his description of Hell. Some Frenchman has now converted it into a borax manufactory, the natural heat of the water serving to extract the salt. The fortress is used as a prison for persons guilty of offenses against the state. On the top of the tower we passed four prisoners of state, well-dressed young men, who appeared to have been entertaining themselves with music, having guitars and other instruments in their hands. They saluted the adjutant as he went by them, who, in return, took off his hat. They had been condemned for a conspiracy against the government. The commandant gave us a hospitable reception. In showing us the fortress he congratulated us that we had no occasion for such engines of government in America. We went to his house in the evening, where we saw his wife, a handsome young lady, whom he had lately brought from Florence, the very lady of the pianoforte whom I have already mentioned, and the mother of two young children, whose ruddy cheeks and chubby figures did credit to the wholesome air of Volterra. The commandant made tea for us in tumblers, and the lady gave us music. The tea was so strong a decoction that I seemed to hear the music all night, and had no need of being waked from sleep, when our _vetturino_, at an early hour the next morning, came to take us on our journey to Sienna. The End. Footnotes [1] The following is a Spanish translation of this hymn as taken down in writing from the mouth of one of the Mahonese, as they call themselves, a native of St. Augustine. The author does not hold himself responsible for the purity of the Castilian. Dejaremos el duelo, Cantaremos con alegria, E iremos á dar Las pascuas á Maria. O Maria. San Gabriel Acá portó la embajada. De nuestro rey del ciel Estareis preñada. Ya humillada Tu que vais aqui servente, Hija de Dios contenta Para hacer lo que el quiere. Dejaremos el duelo, &a. Y á media noche, Paristeis reyna A un Dios infinite Dentro de un establo. Y a media dia, Los Angeles van cantando Paz y abundancia De la gloria de Dios solo. Dejaremos el duelo, &a. Y a Belem, Allá en la tierra santa, Nos nació Gesus Con alegria tanta. Niño chiquito, Que todo el mundo salvaria; Y ningun bastaria Sino un Dios todo solo. Dejaremos el duelo, &a. Cuando del Oriente los Tres reyes la estrella vieron, Dios omnipotente, Para adorarlo ivinieron. Un regalo inferieron, De mil inciensos y oro, Al bendito Señor Que sabe qualquiera cosa. Dejaremos el duelo, &a. Todo fu pronto Para cumplir la promesa; Del Espiritu Santo Un Angel fue mandado. Gran fuego encendido Que quema el corage; Dios nos de lenguage Para hacer lo que quiere. Dejaremos el duelo, &a. Cuando se fué De este mundo nuestra Señora, Al ciel se empujó Su hijo la misme hora. O emperadora, Que del ciel sois elijida! La rosa florida, Mas resplandesciente que un sol! Dejaremos el duelo, &a. Y el tercer dia Que Gesus resuscitó, Dios y Veronica De la morte triunfó. De alli se bajó Para perder á Lucifer, Con todo el suo poder, Que dienuestro ser el sol. Dejaremos el duelo, &a. [2] Thus in the Spanish translation furnished me: Estos seis versos que cantamos Regina celestial! Dadnos paz y alegria, Y buenas fiestas tengais. Yo vos doy sus buenas fiestas; Dadnos dinero de nuestras nueces. Siempre tendremos las manos prestas. Para recibir un cuatro de huevos. Y el dia de pascua florida, Alegremonos juntamente; El que mori para darnos vida Ya vive gloriosamente. Aquesta casa está empredrada, Bien halla que la empedró; El amo de aquesta casa, Quisiera darnos un don. Quesadilla, o empanada, Cucuta, o flaon, Qualquiera cosa me agrada, Solo que no me digas que no, [3] Thus in the Spanish: Aquesta casa está empedrada, Empedrada de cuatro vientos; El amo de aquesta casa Es hombre de cortesia. [4] "Now they are fighting!" [5] "Kill! kill! kill!" [6] "Look, look, it will do you no harm." [7] "Put it on, put it on." [8] "Publicly, sir, publicly." 
29564	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) [Aside from obvious typographical errors, the spelling of the original book has been preserved. The spelling and accentuation of Spanish and French words have not been modernized or corrected. (note of transcriber)] THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES OR _AN ARTIST IN CUBA_ BY WALTER GOODMAN HENRY S. KING & CO. 65 CORNHILL & 12 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1873 (_All rights reserved_) TO MY TRAVELLING-COMPANION AND BROTHER-ARTIST SEÑOR DON JOAQUIN CUADRAS OF CUBA _THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED_ IN REMEMBRANCE OF OUR LONG AND UNINTERRUPTED FRIENDSHIP AT HOME AND ABROAD PREFACE. Cuba having lately become a prominent object of attention, both to Europe and America, I venture to think that any trustworthy information that can be given respecting it, may prove acceptable to the reader. I approach my task with no great pretensions, but yet with an experience acquired by many years' residence in the Island, and an intimate intercourse with its inhabitants. I arrived there in 1864, when Cuba was enjoying uninterrupted peace and prosperity, and my departure took place in the first year of her adversity. Having thus viewed society in the Island under the most opposite conditions, I have had various and ample opportunities of studying its institutions, its races and its government; and in availing myself of these opportunities I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to avoid those matters which are alike common to life in Spain and in Cuba. As I write, Cuba is passing through a great crisis in her history. For this reason my experiences may prove more interesting than they might otherwise have done; nor do I think that they will be found less attractive, because it has been my choice to deal with the subject before me from the point of view rather of an artist than of a traveller or a statistician. Perhaps I may be allowed to add, that the matter contained in these pages will be almost entirely fresh to the reader; for, although I have included a few papers which I have from time to time contributed to _All the Year Round_, _Cassell's Magazine_, and _London Society_, I have taken care to introduce them in such a manner as not to break the continuity with which I have endeavoured to connect the various parts of my subject. In explanation of the title chosen for this volume, I may remark that 'the Pearl of the Antilles' is one of the prettiest in that long series of eulogistic and endearing titles conferred by poets and others on the Island of Cuba, which includes 'the Queen of the Antilles,' 'the Jewel in the Spanish Crown,' 'the Promised Land,' 'the Summer Isle of Eden,' 'the Garden of the West,' and 'the Loyal and Ever-faithful Isle.' WALTER GOODMAN. 22 LANCASTER ROAD, WESTBOURNE PARK, LONDON: 1873. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. A CUBAN WELCOME. PAGE Our Reception at Santiago de Cuba--Spanish Law--A Commemorative Feast--Cuban Courtesy--Coffee House Politeness CHAPTER II. DAILY LIFE IN CUBA. A Cuban Home--My Bed-Room--A Creole Breakfast--Don Benigno and his Family--A Cuban Matron--Church-going in connection with Shopping--An Evening Tertulia--A Tropical Moon CHAPTER III. ART-PATRONAGE IN CUBA. Our Studio--Our Critics--Our Patrons--Still-Life CHAPTER IV. A CUBAN 'VELORIO.' More Still-Life--A Night-Wake--Mourners--Doña Dolores--A Funeral Procession--A Burial CHAPTER V. CUBAN MODELS. Tropical Birds--The Coco's--La Grulla--Vultures--Street Criers--Water Carriers CHAPTER VI. CUBAN BEGGARS. Carrapatam Bunga--The Havana Lottery--A Lady Beggar--A Beggar's Opera--Popular Characters--Charity--A Public Raffle--The 'King of the Universe' CHAPTER VII. THE BLACK ART IN CUBA. A Model Mulatto--A Bewitched Watchman--Cuban Sorcery--An Enchanted Painter CHAPTER VIII. A TASTE OF CUBAN PRISON-LIFE. Two Views of the Morro Castle--The Commandant--The Town Jail--Cuban Policemen--Prisoners--A Captive Indian--Prison Fare--A Court of Justice--A Trial--A Verdict CHAPTER IX. A WEST INDIAN EPIDEMIC. A Cuban Physician and his Patient--A Nightmare--A Mystery--A Cure--By the Sad Sea Waves--A Cuban Watering-place--Lobster-hunting--Another View of the Morro Castle--What 'Dios sabe' means CHAPTER X. GENERAL TACON'S JUDGMENT. Pleasant Company--The Cigar Girl of Havana--A Tobacconist Shop in Cuba--A Romance of Real Life--Spanish Justice abroad CHAPTER XI. (VERY) HIGH ART IN CUBA. On the Ceiling--'Pintar-monos'--A Chemist's Shop à la Polychrome--Sculpture under Difficulties--'Nothing like Leather'--A Triumph in Triumphal Arches--Cuban Carpenters--The Captain-General of Havana CHAPTER XII. A CORRESPONDENT IN THE WEST INDIES. American News-agents and their Work--Local Information--The 'Glorious Campaign' of Santo Domingo--'El Cañon de Montecristo' Wounded Soldiers--Still-Life again--A Visit from the Spanish Fleet--Escape from Jail CHAPTER XIII. CUBAN MUSIC. A Soirée at Don Laureano's--An eminent Violinist and Composer--Cuban Pianos--_Real_ Negro Minstrels--Carnival Songs--Coloured Improvisatores CHAPTER XIV. MASQUERADING IN CUBA. Deserted--'Los Mamarrachos'--A French-Creole Ball--Street Masquers--Negro Amateurs--Masks and Dominoes--The Plaza de Armas--Victims of the Carnival--A Cuban Café in Holiday Time--'Comparsas'--White and Black Balls--A Moral CHAPTER XV. AN EVENING AT THE RETRETA. A Musical Promenade--My Friend Tunicú--Cuban Beauties--Dark Divinities--A Cuban Café--A Popular 'Pollo'--Settling the Bill! CHAPTER XVI. AT A CUBAN BALL. The Philharmonic and its Members--A Street Audience--The Guests--Engaging Partners--'La Carabina'--'La Danza Criolla'--Dance Music--Refreshments--A Pretty Partner--A Night with Cuban Gamblers--Spanish Cards--An Old Hand--'Temblores' CHAPTER XVII. CUBAN THEATRICALS. The Stage-Door Keeper--A Rehearsal--The Spanish Censor--A Cuban Audience--Dramatic Performances--Between Acts--Behind the Scenes--A Dénouement in Real Life CHAPTER XVIII. MY DÉBUT ON A CUBAN STAGE. An Engagement--A Foreign 'Star'--A Benefit Night--A Local Play--First Appearance--A serious 'Hitch'--Re-engagement CHAPTER XIX. COFFEE GROUNDS OF CUBA. Going out of Town--On the Road--A wayside Inn--A Cane Field--West Indian Fruit Trees--The Arrival--A Dinner in the Country--The Evening Blessing--Tropical Reptiles--A Farm Yard--Slave Flogging--Coffee--Tropical Scenery--A Siesta CHAPTER XX. COUNTRY-LIFE AT A SUGAR ESTATE. An Artist's Tent--Early Sport--An 'Ingenio'--Sugar and Rum--Afternoon Sport--A Ride through the Country--Negro Dancing--An Evening in the Country--'La Loteria' CHAPTER XXI. LOVE-MAKING IN THE TROPICS. My Inamorata--Clandestine Courtship--A Love Scene--'Il Baccio' in Cuba--The Course of True Love--A Stern Parent CHAPTER XXII. A CUBAN CONVENT. Without the Walls--'El Torno'--A Convent Letter--Accomplices--A Powder Plot--With the Nuns--Don Francisco the Dentist CHAPTER XXIII. A CRUISE IN THE WEST INDIES. Cuban Telegraphy--The 'New York Trigger'--News from Porto Rico--A Day in Porto Rico--Don Felipe--A Mail Agent--Coasting--Aguadilla--Mayagüez--Santo Domingo--Sight-seeing--Telegraphic News CHAPTER XXIV. A STATE OF SIEGE IN CUBA. A Cuban Newspaper Office--Local Intelligence--The Cuban Revolution--Spanish Volunteers--A Recruit--With Bimba--'Los Insurrectos'--At a Fire--Cuban Firemen CHAPTER XXV. CUBAN WARFARE. Spanish Soldiers--A Sally--Prisoners of War--'Los Voluntarios'--A Triumphant Return--Danger!--Cuban Emigrants CHAPTER XXVI. HAVANA CIGARETTES. PAGE Cigars--The Etiquette of Smoking--A Cigarette Manufactory--The Courteous Proprietor--The Visitors' Book--Cigarette Rolling CHAPTER XXVII. A MULATTO GIRL. An Obscure Birth--Bondage--A Bad Master--A Good Godfather--A Cuban Christening--Anomaly of Slavery--A White Lover--Rivals--An Important Event CHAPTER XXVIII. A MULATTO GIRL (_continued_). The Slave Trade--Ermiña and her Lover--Panics--'Los Insurrectos' v. 'Los Voluntarios'--A Wounded Patriot--Spanish Law and Cuban Law--The 'Mambi's'--A Promise--An Alarm--All's Well that ends Well CHAPTER XXIX. A CUBAN WEDDING. Open Engagements--A Marriage Ceremony--A Wedding Breakfast--The Newly Married Couple CHAPTER XXX. CUBANS IN NEW YORK. The Morro Castle again--Summer and Winter--Cuban Refugees--Filibusters--'Los Laborantes' of New York and their Work--American Sympathisers THE PEARL OF THE ANTILLES CHAPTER I. A CUBAN WELCOME. Our Reception at Santiago de Cuba--Spanish Law--A Commemorative Feast--Cuban Courtesy--Coffee-House Politeness. My companion and brother-artist, Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú, is a native of Cuba, and as he has signified his intention to visit his birthplace in the West Indies, we bid 'addio' to fair Florence, where for three years we have dwelt together and followed our profession, and, embarking in a French steamer at St. Nazaire, we set sail for the Pearl of the Antilles. Our official reception at Santiago de Cuba is far from cordial. Before we land, the Spanish authorities meet us on board, and, after a careful inspection of our passports, present each of us with what they call a 'permit of disembarcation,' for which we have to pay sixteen reales 'fuertes.' Having, so to speak, purchased 'tickets of admission' to the Spanish colony, and having also deposited our luggage in the 'cloak-room' of the establishment--which in this instance is represented by a custom-house--we naturally expect to be favoured with a 'bill' of tropical performances. No such bill is, however, presented to us; but as a substitute, we obtain full particulars by application, within a month after our arrival, to the chief of police. From this functionary we learn that our 'tickets of admission' are available only for one quarter's sojourn in the island, and that if we desire to remain for a longer period, an official 'season-ticket' must be procured. The authorised programme of the 'Loyal and Ever-faithful Isle' is divided into a great many Acts. One of these acts announces that 'no foreigner is allowed to reside more than three months in the island without procuring first a carta de domicilio (habitation license), which he may obtain by a petition supported by the consul of his nation.' The carta de domicilio will enable the foreigner in question to dwell unmolested in this strangely governed country for a period not exceeding five years; but he may not leave the island, neither may he remove to another town, without a pass from a Capitan de Partido, a Celador, or some such official. The chief of police moreover tells us that, conformably with another act or article in his code, the 'applicant' must represent himself as a Catholic; that he must take the oaths of fidelity and vassalage before the governor, and that within the prescribed five years 'a foreigner must be either naturalised, or he must leave the country.' Yet another act proclaims that during the first five years of his residence, 'the said foreigner may not carry on nor may he possess a shop, a warehouse, or become a captain of a vessel. He may, however, have a share in a company or firm of Spaniards.' But the strangest mandate of all is that which denies to 'any inhabitant whatsoever' the privilege of moving from one house to another 'without giving notice of such removal to the chief of police!' Thus much for our welcome by the authorities of Cuba! The Cubans themselves are, however, more obsequious. Long before we have anchored in the Cuban bay, the news of our arrival has reached the ears of my companion's friends, who hasten to greet us from little canoes with white awnings to ward off the rays of the scorching sun. Having landed, and satisfied the authorities, we are escorted by a number of these friends to our future residence, which we had decided should be an hotel. But my partner's friends will not hear of our lodging at a strange place, and one of their number, who claims close relationship with Nicasio, succeeds in persuading us both to become his guests. He accordingly hails his two-wheeled quitrin, and drives us to his dwelling. The rest of our friends follow on foot, and are invited by our host, Don Benigno, to partake of the sumptuous banquet which has been prepared in honour of Nicasio's return to his native country. Several ladies are present, and with these in light muslin dresses--the gentlemen in their suits of white drill--the long table with its white covering--the spacious dining-hall with its white-washed walls--and the glare of the sun which pours in from numerous windows and open doors--the scene is enlivening, to say the least of it; while a singular contrast is supplied by the sombre appearance of the slaves who serve round the condiments. Of course my companion is lionised and made much of on this occasion, and his friend--whom everybody addresses, on account of his nationality, as 'el Caballero Inglés,' is treated with every show of attention. Being fresh from Europe we are both examined and cross-examined upon the questions of news, and to satisfy all demands requires no inconsiderable amount of oratory. Healths are drunk and responded to by some of the company, and Don Benigno's nephew, Tunicú, delivers some appropriate verses of his own composition, which he has dedicated to his kinsman Nicasio. It is not the custom in this country for the ladies to retire after a meal, and leave their lords to their cups and conversation, but everybody remains seated until black coffee and big Havana cigars are handed, the cloth has been removed, and our host's baby--a girl ten months old attired in nature's vestments--has been placed for general inspection and approval in the centre of the festive board. When everybody has sufficiently devoured with his or her eyes this kind of human dessert, Don Benigno's lady--Doña Mercedes--proposes to adjourn for music and dancing to the reception-room--an apartment which is little better than a continuation of the dining-hall; the boundary line between the two chambers being defined by a narrow slip of wall. The musical entertainments begin with a performance on the piano by a sun-burnt young lady attired in a low-necked, short-sleeved dress, who accompanies another young lady who essays a patriotic song commencing: Cuba, Cuba! mi patria querida, in which she assures her audience, in Spanish verse, that there is no place like Cuba, and no country more fertile and picturesque than the Pearl of the Antilles. This favourite ditty is called a Melopea, or words without a melody--the words being simply 'spoken,' and closely followed on the piano by lively music. This song and another having been disposed of, partners are selected and the Danza Criolla--a popular Cuban valse--is for the rest of the afternoon (for it is still broad daylight) performed. The guests then depart; and after a little conversation with Don Benigno and his family, Nicasio and I are conducted by a black domestic to our dormitories. Here we indulge in a siesta, and otherwise refresh ourselves till the hour of dinner. Those of Nicasio's friends who have been foiled in their attempt to secure us for their guests, console themselves by exhibiting their hospitality in other ways. We are overwhelmed with invitations to pass the temporada, or season, at their estates in the country, and so numerous are these invitations that, were we to accept them all, two years would scarcely suffice for the fulfilment of our engagements. During the first weeks of our residence in Santiago, the hospitality which we receive in various ways is sometimes overpowering. Wherever we may wander some unknown friend has anticipated our arrival, and secretly provided for our wants. We turn into a café for refreshments, and when we offer to pay for what we have ordered, the waiter refuses to take our coin, while he assures us that our repast has already been paid for! Subsequently we discover that the proprietors of all the restaurants and cafés in the town have been instructed by some mysterious person or persons not to accept payment from 'Don Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú and his English companion,' but to 'put it down to the account.' Whenever we visit the theatre, the same pecuniary objections are raised; and upon one occasion, the haberdasher to whom we apply for a dozen shirts à la créole actually refuses to favour us with a bill! These attentions are, however, short-lived, for my partner, after permitting them to exist for a reasonable length of time, publicly gives out that unless this overpowering hospitality altogether ceases, he and el Caballero Inglés will remove to a less demonstrative town. This warning takes effect, but still the tendency to 'stand treat'--which is a special weakness in Cuba--manifests itself in other ways. I go into a café where some creoles--utter strangers to me--are grouped around one of the marble tables. If I happen to be accompanied by a lady, every man rises and salutes us. If alone, I am offered a seat and refreshments; for under no circumstances, and in no locality, does a Cuban eat and drink without first inviting his neighbours to partake of his fare. 'Usted gusta?' (Will you partake of this?) or 'Gusta usted tomar algo?' (Won't you take something?) is a Cuban's grace before meat. These, attentions are not, however, confined to feeding. They are adapted to everything that a Cuban possesses. If I admire any article or individual belonging to a Cuban--no matter whether the object of my admiration be a watch-guard--a handsome cane--a horse--a gun--a slave, or a pretty child--I am invariably assured that it is mine (Es para usted), or that it is my servant (Un servidor de usted). When I ask a Cuban where he lives, he promptly replies: 'At your house,' in such-and-such a street, number so-and-so; and whenever such an individual favours me with a letter, I always find the document addressed: 'From your house' (Su casa). In short, I never know what politeness means, nor what extensive West Indian possessions are at my disposal, till I live amidst the luxuries of the Pearl of the Antilles! CHAPTER II. DAILY LIFE IN CUBA. A Cuban Home--My Bed-Room--A Creole Breakfast--Don Benigno and his Family--A Cuban Matron--Church-going in connection with Shopping--An Evening Tertulia--A Tropical Moon. Like most of his neighbours, Don Benigno keeps 'open house' in more than one way. The huge street-door of his habitation remains unclosed at all hours of the day and evening, and anyone who pleases may walk in and partake of the Don's hospitality. Don Benigno's house is constructed after the pattern of the good, old-fashioned Cuban dwellings, with an eye to earthquake, heavy rains, and excessive heat. So careful is a creole to provide against these casualties, that his residence serves less as an abode for comfort than as a place of shelter. It has a single storey, and is roofed with Roman tiles. The walls are of lath and plaster, or mamposteria, as it is called, and the beams which support the roof are visible from the interior as they are in a barn. Some of the apartments are paved with marble, while others are paved with brick. In the centre of the spacious reception-room, or sala, is laid a small square of carpet, like a misplaced hearth-rug, on which stand twelve rocking-chairs, arranged face to face like seats in a railway carriage. They are accompanied by a few footstools and some spittoons. The rooms are not overcrowded with furniture and ornaments, and these scarce commodities stand out in bold relief against the white-washed walls and bare flooring. The chairs and sofas are all cane-backed and cane-bottomed. Tables are not plentiful, and curtains are employed as adornments for some of the doors instead of the windows, which are also devoid of glass. An elegant gas chandelier is suspended from one of the cross-beams of the sloping roof, and a couple of unserviceable console tables, with their corresponding pier-glasses, complete the decorations of the sala. No fire-stoves are required in any chamber except the kitchen, and the latter being situated in the patio, or court-yard, at the back of the premises, the residents in a Cuban house are never troubled with any other smoke than that which is generated by tobacco. As for the dormitories--the one which I occupy might belong to a holy friar. There is an aspect of cell and sanctity about everything in it. The furniture is nothing to speak of, and the bed, which is called a catre, closely resembles a tressled apple-stall with a canvas tray. When not in use, the catre is shut up and whisked away into an obscure corner. When required for sleeping purposes, it is opened, and the bed having been 'made' with a couple of sheets and a pillow, it is planted in a cool place, which often happens to be the centre of the apartment. The monotonous appearance of the white-washed walls is relieved by coloured lithograph drawings of saints and virgins, and against one of the walls is placed a table decorated like a small altar with a white lace-trimmed cloth upon which stand some gilded candlesticks, vases containing artificial flowers, and a large wooden statuette, gorgeously painted and embellished. This image represents the patron saint, Santiago, beneath whose feet burns night and day a small oil lamp. The object for which this luminary is intended is ignored by me for many days, and meanwhile I use it, when nobody is looking, for the lighting of my cigarettes. My authority for this sacrilegious act is derived from my companion, Nicasio, who is a liberal-minded Catholic, and as I find he also performs the same ceremony in his own dormitory, my conscience is relieved. Equally mysterious are a couple of dry fonts which have in all respects the appearances of china watch-pockets. I make use of one for the accommodation of my time-piece, until I am informed that only holy water is allowed to repose within its sacred embraces. In fine weather my slumbers at night are uninterrupted, but when it rains--and in Cuba it never rains but it pours in bucketfuls--my rest is at intervals sorely disturbed. I dream that a thousand belligerent cats are at civil war on the Roman-tiled roof above me, and that for some unknown reason I alone expiate their bloodthirsty crimes, by enduring a horrible penance, which consists in the historical torture of a slow and perpetual stream of liquid which dribbles upon my bare cranium. I awake suddenly to find that my nightmare has not been unfounded. Something damp, proceeding from the sloping roof, drops at regular intervals upon my forehead. By the light of the patron saint who watches over me I perceive that the rain has found an inlet through a gotera in the roof. A gotera is a hole in the tiles, formed during the day by the action of the baking sun upon the mortar, which yields to its cracking influence and leaves an aperture. Rising hurriedly in the dead of night, I remove my catre to a dry corner, and at the same time place a basin beneath the spot from whence the drops of rain issue. Once more I awake under the same moistening influence. A fresh gotera has arisen over my dry place of repose. Again I shift my ground, and use an empty pail for the accommodation of the intrusive element; but fresh goteras appear wherever I pitch my catre, until, having circumnavigated all the safe coasts of my tempestuous apartment and exhausted every receptacle for water, I take up my bed and deposit it in an adjoining chamber, which happening to be unoccupied and free from goteras, allows my slumbers to remain undisturbed till morning. Don Benigno's family take what we should call breakfast, but which they term 'tienta pie,' in their respective sleeping chambers. At six A.M. a dark domestic enters my dormitory with a cup of black coffee and a cigarette. Later, this is followed by a larger cup of milk qualified with coffee, or, if I prefer chocolate, the latter in an extraordinary thick form is brought. The beverage is accompanied by a Cuban bun or a milk roll with foreign butter: for as the native cow does not supply the material for that luxury, the butter used in Cuba is all imported in bottles like preserves. Eleven o'clock is the hour appointed for breakfast. This is a substantial meal and appears to be breakfast, dinner, and supper rolled into one. Every item of food is served as a separate course, of which there are more than fourteen different 'fuentes,' or dishes, on the table. A plate of eggs and sliced bananas fried in butter constitutes the first course. A second course is represented by a dish containing a combination of boiled rice and dried cod-fish, or 'bacalao,' with tomato sauce. 'Serence,' with 'congri,' is a Creole dish composed of Indian corn, rice, and red beans, and forms course number three. Sambumbia, anis, and chimbombó, are native vegetables prepared in a variety of palatable ways. An olla podrida of sweet yams, pumpkins, white beans, bacon, sausage, and cabbage is another favourite dish; and, lastly, fish, flesh, and fowl in a dozen different guises complete the bill of fare. This sumptuous repast having been washed down with Catalan claret, some West Indian fruits and solid-looking preserves are partaken of, and the indispensable cigar or cigarette and wholesome café noir are handed round. Breakfast over, the Don's family disperse, each to his or her occupation. The children retire to their schoolroom, where the different masters (for in Cuba there are no 'out-door' governesses) engaged for their instruction arrive at their prescribed hours, give their lessons, and depart. A master is provided for every branch of learning and for teaching every art except that of dancing, this accomplishment being naturally and easily acquired by the graceful little ladies and gentlemen themselves. Don Benigno retreats, after breakfast, to his office, where he transacts his business affairs, which seem to consist chiefly in lolling in an easy chair with a long cigar between his lips, while he watches his escribano, or clerk, as that functionary makes up accounts and writes letters. As for the Don's lady, Doña Mercedes, she may be described broadly as a sleeping partner, her department in the firm being literally the sleeping department. After disposing of her housekeeping duties, which are briefly accomplished by handing the black cook a certain sum daily for marketing purposes, the worthy lady passes the rest of the day with a fan in a rocking chair, in which she sways and fans herself cool. Doña Mercedes has a youthful appearance from her neck upwards, but being somewhat corpulent, her figure scarcely corresponds with the attractions of her face. Being, however, attired in a loose linen gown which falls like a sack, ungirdled and uninterrupted, from her fair shoulders to her remarkably small shoes, the protuberances of her person escape notice, and, with her jet-black hair neatly and tastefully arranged, she may be said to represent an agreeable type of the Cuban matron. It is often a matter for wonder with me, how Señora Mercedes and her friends contrive to keep their hair in such perfect order. Cuban ladies being gifted by nature with a wealth of hair require no artificial aid; but I am told that their heads being once 'dressed' for the day remain intact till night, a fact which I can easily credit, seeing that no ceole lady assumes either bonnet, hat, or other covering for the head, when she takes her walks abroad. But Doña Mercedes is not always such a helpless member of society as I have represented her. She is possessed of a warm, generous nature, and this quality often prompts the good lady to perform many useful acts of kindness and charity to those who are in need of her benevolence. Between one and three in the afternoon, Don Benigno and his family indulge in the wholesome luxury of a warm bath; for, despite the climate, a creole, when in town, rarely immerses his or her body in perfectly cold water. The water intended for bathing purposes is sometimes placed in the centre of the patio, or court-yard, where, under the powerful influence of the sun, it is soon warmed to any reasonable degree of temperature. Ablutions over, the indispensable siesta is enjoyed by everybody, on catres or in hammocks; for the heat of mid-day is insupportable, and repose after a bath is considered salutary. After the siesta, Doña Mercedes and her young daughters, accompanied by her adopted child--a girl of ten--do what the ladies of many other countries do late in the afternoon. They attire themselves fashionably and take a stroll in the Plaza or a drive in the Alameda, which is the Rotten Row of a Cuban town. Whatever shopping Doña Mercedes contemplates is effected in the cool of the early morning after her devotions at the church, whither she repairs at the hour of six A.M. Church-going is a serious undertaking with the good lady. Firstly, she and her daughters must be becomingly attired, and on this occasion black lace veils are included in their toilettes. Besides prayer-books, rosaries, and fans, the devotees must be provided with small squares of carpet and toy-like chairs of papier maché inlaid with gold and pearl ornaments. These articles of furniture are conveyed to the sacred edifice by some young negress servants, for with the exception of a few wooden benches, a Cuban church offers no relief to the weary flesh. Having entered the church, Doña Mercedes proceeds to moisten the tips of her ungloved fingers in some holy water from a font, and after duly crossing herself, extends her hand to her daughters, who touch it and thus partake of the blessed liquid. The black attendants then spread the fragments of carpet, place the chairs, and retire to a dark corner of the building. The ceremonies begin. Doña Mercedes and her daughters follow the ecclesiastic in their miniature prayer-books, and alternately kneel and cross themselves when required to do so; gaze with a devout expression at their favourite saint, and tell their beads; take a mental note of their neighbours' dresses, fan themselves, and exchange nods of recognition with acquaintances--till a little bell from one of the side-chapels tinkles for the final ceremony of elevating the host. Matins over, the ladies betake themselves to the principal thoroughfares, where the best shops are to be found, and when their purchases have been made they return home, calling on the way at the houses of their friends. When there is no performance at the theatre or the promenade in the military square, Don Benigno holds a tertulia in his balcony. A tertulia is a reception, or social gathering, and may be held at any hour of the day; but the best time for a tertulia is the cool of the evening. The five o'clock dinner being over and digested, Don Benigno sallies forth--cigar in mouth--upon his covered balcony, or coridor, as it is called, which in length and breadth strikingly resembles the platform of a small railway station. 'Traigan las balanzas!' drawls the Don, and in answer to his summons a couple of negroes appear with a number of rocking-chairs, which they place--when the moon is at its brightest--in a shady corner of the verandah. Here we all seat ourselves, and await the arrival of any guest who may 'drop in' for a sociable chat and a cigar. Don Francisco--the chief doctor of the town--is usually the first to appear. He is followed by Señor Esteban, the lawyer, Don Magin, the merchant, Don Felipe, the sugar-planter, and one or two young creoles whose avocations are doubtful. As each guest appears, everybody rises and salutes him elaborately. The visitors are all attired for the evening in black alpaca coats, white drill trousers, and waistcoats, patent leather thin-soled boots, and bran new 'bómbas'--a bomba being the slang term for a tall beaver hat. For some moments the company assembled remain speechless, and no sounds are heard in the silent evening but the swaying of the rocking-chairs and the creaking of the gentlemen's stiffly-starched trousers. Presently someone produces a neat home-made cigarette case, and before selecting a cigar or a cigarette for his own consumption offers it to all the males present, who accept of his generosity. The conversation, in which those who are not already asleep join, now becomes general. The weather, and the state of the coffee and cane crops, are all duly discussed, together with the theatre and the last ball at the Philharmonic. Politics are lightly touched upon, for two of the gentlemen present are Spaniards, and for obvious reasons a Cuban usually avoids all topics which concern the government of his country. Occasionally someone who is well-read in the day's newspaper, essays a mild discussion with somebody else who has not seen the paper for a week; but as Cuban periodicals are under official control, they are not remarkable for their political veracity, and the well-read member of the company usually gets the worst of the argument. Learning that my companion and I contemplate establishing a studio for the practice of our profession in the town, everybody offers us his advice, and recommends to our notice certain houses suitable for art purposes. Don Esteban, the lawyer, favours us with his legal opinion, reminding us of the law which prohibits a foreigner from setting up in business on his own account; but we assure him of our intention to 'go into partnership,' and that as one of us is a Cuban born, we have no uneasiness. It is considered fatal to sit under the rays of a Cuban moon, so when that luminary is visible to any occupant of the balcony, his rocking-chair is immediately shifted into a shadier part. But, in doing so, extreme care is taken lest the occupant should reseat himself with his back inclined in the least manner towards his neighbour, as a Cuban would rather suffer any personal inconvenience than be discovered in this impolite posture. No refreshment of any kind is offered by our host during the tertulia, but if one of the company feels thirsty he calls for a glass of iced water, which is accordingly brought to him by a slave, who, if necessary, qualifies the harmless beverage with 'panales,' which is a kind of cake prepared with white sugar. Other tertulias are being held at neighbouring houses. Those who have no balconies to boast of, place their rocking-chairs in the passage or hall of their dwelling, while others, who have neither the one accommodation nor the other, deposit their receptacles for the weary on the pavement in the street. The black domestics form a tertulia on the door-steps or squat together in dark unoccupied parts of the corridors. Their jabber is incessant and occasionally requires a gentle reminder. Sometimes one of their company essays a wild melody, accompanying his song on a primitive instrument of his own manufacture. Throughout the evening the streets are utterly deserted, and as, moreover, they are badly illuminated with gas, the aspect on a dark night is not cheerful. But on a bright, moonlit night, such as that to which I have referred, artificial lighting is altogether dispensed with. The moon in the tropics is, for astronomical reasons, brighter than it is elsewhere; but as regards Cuba, another reason might be derived from the fact that, metaphorically speaking, a slave country and a badly governed one into the bargain, is about the darkest spot in the habitable globe. At least, in Cuba the lamp of Heaven shines with increased brilliancy, illuminating alike Spaniard, Cuban, freedman, and bondsman! CHAPTER III. ART-PATRONAGE IN CUBA. Our Studio--Our Critics--Our Patrons--Still-Life. Assisted by Don Benigno's nephew Tunicú, Nicasio and I in time meet with a residence suitable for art purposes. Our habitation consists of six rooms on a single floor, with a wide balcony in front, and a spacious patio, or court-yard, at the back. We have no furniture worth mentioning; furniture in Cuba being represented by a few cane or leather-bottomed chairs, some spittoons, and a small square of carpet. But our walls are well hung with works of art in various stages of progress, which, in a great measure, compensate for the otherwise barren appearance of our apartments. Our studio is a spacious chamber on a level with the street which it overlooks. The windows occupy more than half of the wall space, are guiltless of glass, and are protected by iron bars. The accessories of our strange calling lend an interest to our domestic arrangements, and form a kind of free entertainment for the vulgar. To insure privacy, we have sometimes curtained the lower half of our enormous windows; but this contrivance has always proved ineffectual, for in the midst of our labour, the space above the curtains has been gradually eclipsed by the appearance of certain playful blacks who have clambered to the heights by means of the accommodating rails. Gentlemen of colour have little respect for the polite arts; they look upon our sanctum as a sort of permanent peep-show, and upon us as a superior order of photographers. Primed with these delusions our Spanish Sambo comes for his carte-de-visite at all hours of the sunny day, persuaded that we undertake black physiognomies at four dollars a dozen; and when we assure him that ours is the legitimate colouring business, and that we have no connexion with Señor Collodión up the street, our swarthy patron produces a ready-made black and white miniature of himself, and commissions us to colour it in our best manner. The press of Santiago dubs us 'followers of the divine art of Apelles,' and an inspection of our works of art is thus described in one of the local papers: 'We have lately visited those industrious gentlemen Don Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú and El Caballero Inglés Don Gualterio who, as the public are aware, have established a studio in Cuba for the practice of the divine art of Raphael and Michael Angelo. It is the duty of every art-loving person to inspect all temples of the beautiful whether they be represented by the luxurious palaces of the great or the humblest cottages on earth. Knowledge reveals itself in the dullest as well as the brightest localities, for true genius can abide anywhere. 'He who, like ourselves, has frequently traversed the Calle de Santa Rosa, must have observed that in that street stands a priceless casket, which being open leads to the studio of the two distinguished followers of the divine art of Apelles to whom we have referred.' After continuing to indulge in this poetical strain for another paragraph or two, the enthusiastic writer is recalled to his duties of art-showman, and proceeds to describe in glowing colours all that is contained in the 'priceless casket,' open for his inspection. He lingers lovingly over a large copy of Titian's 'Venus' which, together with other pictures and unfinished sketches, we had brought with us from Italy. He is perfectly enraptured with the charms of the painted goddess, from whom he can scarcely tear himself away even on paper, and he concludes with the remark that, 'after contemplating this life-like representation of nature, the spectator is disposed to touch the canvas to convince himself that what he beholds is merely a painted shadow of the reality!' Sketches and portraits next occupy his attention; 'and if,' he adds, 'the visitor's curiosity is not satisfied with the representations of men and women, he can relieve his vision by regarding beasts and birds, which, although only depicted upon canvas, appear to be endowed with animation!' In spite, however, of these and other published tributes to our genius, we find that high art, at least, does not pay in our part of the tropics. Regardless of posterity, therefore, we abandon the sublime, and offer our art services for anything that may present itself. A bonâ fide painter is a rarity in the town I am describing, so Nicasio and I are comparatively alone in the fine art field. Our patrons are numerous, but we are expected by them to be as versatile as the 'general utility' of theatrical life. Nicasio finds a lucrative post vacant at the public 'Academy of Arts'--an institution supported by the municipality of the town. There is a great dearth of 'professors of drawing,' owing to the sudden resignation of a gentleman who previous to our arrival had been the sole representative of 'the divine art of Apelles.' The academy is a dreary apology for a school of art. The accommodation is scanty, and the 'models' provided for the scholars or 'discipulos,' as they are grandly styled, consist wholly of bad lithographic drawings. The post of professor, however, yields a fair monthly stipend, and it being offered to and accepted by my companion, contributes no inconsiderable item towards our united income. We are overwhelmed with portrait work, but most of it is connected with defunct people, for we cannot induce our patrons to believe that a living person is a fit subject for our brush. And so it often happens that we are summoned from our homes, doctor-like, at all hours of the night, to hasten to the house of a moribund, for the purpose of making such notes as shall afterwards serve as guides for a replica of the late lamented in his habit as he lived. One of our first applicants for this kind of patronage is Don Magin, the merchant, whose acquaintance we have made at Don Benigno's tertulia. The Don stops me in the street one day, and with a disturbed countenance tells me that his only child--a girl of three--has been lately buried. Will I, or my partner, be so good as to restore her to life on canvas? I agree to undertake the work if Don Magin will provide me with a guide in the shape of a photograph. 'I am sorry to inform you,' says the Don, 'that my poor child never sat for her photograph.' 'Then,' I remark, 'I will be satisfied with a slight but faithful sketch, or even a coloured miniature.' 'I regret that I cannot supply you with any representation of my departed daughter,' replies Don Magin. 'How then can you expect to possess a portrait of her?' I enquire. 'Easily enough,' he answers. 'It is true that I have no actual likeness of the child; but equally good guides are at your disposal. I can provide you with the little dress, the little hat, the little shoes and socks which she was accustomed to wear. I have also taken the measure of her height, and the size round her pretty waist. I can furnish you with minute particulars respecting the colour of her complexion, hair and eyes, and I will show you a lovely child who resembles my own in many ways. Besides this, my Engracia was considered to bear a strong likeness to her father. Make her appear so also in the painting; introduce the accessories which I have mentioned; take a notion or two from the girl that I will send, and I am convinced that the result will be satisfactory to both of us.' In vain do I endeavour to show the impossibility of such an achievement; the merchant will not hear of refusal, and as an inducement for me to make only a trial, he offers me a large price, promising to double the amount if I succeed to his liking. It is a source of infinite consolation to the distressed old gentleman--who by the way is very grey and wrinkled--when I finally agree to make a trial; but I warn him that his anticipations about the result will never be realised. Sanguine and happy, my strange patron departs, and in due course I receive the various articles he had specified. The pretty child serves well enough as a model for the proportions of the figure, and attired in the garb of her late lamented playmate, she enables me to devote every attention to the detail. I am also able to crown the little pink dress with an infantile face, whose hair, eyes, and complexion I colour according to instructions; and with the introduction of a landscape background and with a stray flower or two arranged in the foreground, the sum total is a pretty picture which, on that account, leaves at least a 'balance in my favour!' The portrait (?) having been placed in its gilded frame, my patron is invited to inspect it. For many long moments Don Magin contemplates the work without uttering a word. His countenance, which I watch with an anxious eye--as yet expresses neither approval nor the reverse. Does this portrait on my easel remind the bereaved parent of his lost offspring? It does! yes; there faithfully depicted are the very dress, the very little hat, and the still smaller shoes which she was wont to wear in life! The figure, complexion, colour of eyes and hair, are all hers to a shade. In short, a resemblance to his child gradually developes itself before the old gentleman's vision, till at last clasping both my hands, and with tears in his eyes, he declares that I have succeeded far beyond his best expectations. In this instance everything terminates like the last scene in the drama, where the aged father recognises his long lost child. But work of this nature does not always end so satisfactorily. Happily, portraiture is not our only resource. We hold important professorships in colleges, schools, and ladies' academies, where we impart every accomplishment in which drawing-paper and pencils are used, including the art of caligraphy, missal-painting, and designing for fancy needlework. Whenever a strolling company of Spanish players encamp for the season at the theatre, our services are required as the company's special scenic artists. The demand for scenery at the Teatro Real Cuba is, however, small; a divergence from its standard repertoire being considered as next to an infringement on public rights; so our labours rarely extend beyond an occasional property, or 'set' in the shape of a painted 'ancestor,' a practicable piece of furniture, or a bit of bank for introduction into the elegant saloon, the cottage interior, or the wood scene. Once only are our scenic services in special request for a fairy piece, which the manager has announced with 'entirely new decorations.' Though the public believe that four months have been employed in the preparations, we have barely as many days for the purpose, and during this short space we produce that gorgeous temple which is destined to form a conspicuous feature in the well-worn wood scene, and we add to the native charm of the elegant saloon and the cottage interior with suitable embellishments. Dutch metal and coloured foils, lavishly administered, cover a multitude of imperfections, and we have still the red fire and an indulgent public to fall back upon. Our efforts are rewarded by thunders of applause on the part of the audience, and eulogistic paragraphs in the local papers. To oblige our worthy friend Don Benigno we are, upon another occasion, induced to paint and embellish his quitrin--a two-wheeled carriage of the gig class, the component parts of which bear one to the other something of the proportions of a spider and his web; the body of the conveyance being extremely small, the shafts inconceivably long, and the wheels of a gigantic circumference. The street-doors of most Cuban houses are constructed with a view to the admittance of such a vehicle, which when not in use is carefully enveloped in brown holland, like a harp or a chandelier during the out-of-town season, and is deposited in the hall or passage of the threshold, and in some cases in a corner of the marble-paved reception room. The presence in our studio of Don Benigno's quitrin is therefore not very remarkable. Many weeks, however, elapse before we can get rid of this unsightly piece of furniture. Several coats of paint and varnish have to be applied, and innumerable coloured lines introduced, before it is ready to receive the more artistic touches. All devices connected with painting are by our Cuban patrons generalised under the head of 'paisaje' or landscape, and in the present instance the landscapes include two views of Don Benigno's crest together with his elaborate monogram. A couple of mulatto art-aspirants whom we graciously receive as disciples for one hour daily, help considerably in this undertaking, and take such an especial delight in it that it is a sorrowful day for them when Saturnine--Don Benigno's black postilion--comes to wheel away their handiwork. CHAPTER IV. A CUBAN 'VELORIO.' More Still-Life--A Night Wake--Mourners--Doña Dolores--A Funeral Procession--A Burial. To be summoned from his couch at all hours of the night is not an uncommon occurrence with a medical man, but for a follower of 'the divine art of Apelles' to be thus disturbed in his slumbers is, to say the least of it, an unreasonable proceeding. Nevertheless one of us must rise and don his clothes at three A.M.; for a black varlet has come to inform us that his 'amo,' Don Pancho Agüerro y Matos, has just died, and that his bereaved family are desirous of preserving his image on canvas. Nicasio and I, as usual, draw lots for the questionable privilege of immortalising the late lamented, and as this time I am the unfortunate winner, it behoves me to gather together the implements of our craft, attire myself in my darkest garments, and follow the sombre messenger of death to the house of mourning. Here a 'velorio,' or night-wake, for the departed is being held. The reception room is already crowded with the defunct's relatives and dearest friends, who are seated on chairs and low stools against the walls. As soon as I appear everybody rises in accordance with the polite custom of the country, and the chief mourners crowd around me and give expression to their grief in a variety of ways. Some clasp my neck and waist; others cling to my legs, and pointing to an adjoining chamber, they beseech me to restore the late lamented to life--on canvas. Encompassed as I am, it is no easy matter to reach the apartment where the deceased, surrounded by long wax candles and tall silver candlesticks, lies in state. Though my duties are confined to the portrayal of the inanimate face before me, I often pause to take mental as well as pictorial notes of the surroundings. I observe that the defunct is attired in a suit of black, which has doubtless been provided by the undertakers; for the clothes are much too wide for his wasted anatomy, and give him the appearance of a misfitted dissenting minister. I remark that the dead man's relatives and friends bear their loss bravely; for some are endeavouring to drown their sorrows in the cup that cheers, and in lively conversation. I am reminded of the popular theory that tobacco is a disinfectant, from the fact that most of the company, including the elderly ladies, are indulging in that luxury. Occasionally a tray of cigars is handed round together with coffee, chocolate, sweetmeats, and biscuits. I note that these convivialities are only interrupted when a visitor is announced. That upon these occasions the mourners are inspired to give loud expression to their grief. That the women shriek, rave, and occasionally vary their proceedings by swooning and going into hysterics. I observe that the new arrival is seized and surrounded as I had been and conducted into the chamber of death, where some of the mourners give vent to their sorrow by clasping the clerical-looking clothes or embracing the borrowed boots. I find that among the lady mourners the most demonstrative is Doña Dolores, who is said to be the nearest surviving relative of the departed; though from the language which she occasionally utters it is not clear to me what kind of relationship she claims. Whenever a new mourner appears, Doña Dolores, who has been hitherto silently seated behind me, springs to her feet and in the following terms apostrophises the dead: 'Oh! Pancho. My little dear! (the defunct was a middle-aged gentleman). Answer me, my love. Where are you, my brother? Ah! it's all over with you now, Panchito. To-morrow you will be quite alone, with nobody to speak to you. Oh! my Panchito--my love--my life--my entraños! Pancho of my heart; of my soul! My brother--my son--my love--my father; for thou hast been more than father, lover, son, and brother to me!' After a short pause the lady breaks out afresh: 'Virgen Santísima! Virgen de la Caridad! Where is my poor Panchito? What have you done with him? Where are you, Pancho? Answer me, my love! Maria Santísima; look at my poor brother all alone without the power to speak or rise! Make him answer me! Oh! my dear companion--my cousin--my godfather--mi compadre--my parent--my friend; speak! Tell me where you are! Come to me, my Pancho; my Panchito. Oh! Pancho--Pan-cho! Pa-n-n-cho!!' Once, in the middle of the lady's eloquence, the late Don Pancho startles everybody (myself included) by opening his mouth and drooping his head! In order to facilitate my operations, the body had been propped up in a sitting posture, but by some mishap the props had given way. Until the real cause of the displacement is made manifest, Doña Dolores is beside herself with joy. Her Pancho has been restored to life! Her beloved 'stepfather, spouse, and compatriot' will drive with her to the Alameda to-morrow! He shall have a cigar and a cup of coffee now, and his portrait shall not be painted! 'Go,' says the Señora to me in a tone of authority; 'we don't want you any more. Panchito will accompany me to the photographer's, and save you the trouble!' Fortunately the lady's friends intercede at this moment; for finding that I do not obey her commands, the exasperated Señora makes a wild dash at my sketch-book; over-turning in her movements my box of colours and one of the long candlesticks! Convinced, however, of the truth, the poor lady is pacified, and resumes her place behind me. On the morning of the second day of the velorio, as I am putting the finishing touches to my sketch, certain strange ceremonies are observed. An undertaker's man is announced, and, apparently with no other object in view than to provide becoming robes of sable for the bereaved, proceeds to take the general dimensions of everybody present. But I observe that a separate length of white tape is employed in each case, and that when a sufficient number have been thus collected, the measures are consigned to the dead man's pockets, together with the mourners' white cambric handkerchiefs. When these and other curious ceremonials--the precise object of which I cannot for the life of me penetrate--have been enacted, more undertakers arrive and proceed to prepare the body for decent burial. There is much lamentation when the coffin is finally borne from the house. The women shriek and swoon, grovel on the ground, and tear their hair. As for Doña Dolores--she is inconsolable, and continues to harangue the remains until her speech is inarticulate and she is carried away in a fainting condition to her chamber. A procession, consisting of upwards of seventy mourners, follows on foot the richly-gilded and ornamented hearse. Everybody is attired in the deepest mourning, which, as fashions in Cuba go, includes a tall beaver hat adorned with broad crape, a black cloth coat and white trousers. The hired mutes, however, present a more sombre appearance, for not only are their habiliments black, but also their faces and bare hands; mutes in Cuba being represented by negroes of the darkest shade. The funeral procession now leads on in the direction of the cathedral, where mass for the dead is to be performed. Those who do not care to enter the sacred edifice will light their cigars and cigarettes, and will employ the interval which elapses before the burial service is over, by strolling about the neighbourhood, and chatting with acquaintances at their grated windows. Service being over, the funeral will proceed to the cemetery at St. Ana's. Arrived at the gates of the burial ground, everybody will return home without waiting for the interment, which in Cuba is performed by a couple of black sextons who, unattended by either priest, mourner, or any other person, lower the remains into the hole which has been dug for it! CHAPTER V. CUBAN MODELS. Tropical Birds--The Cocos--La Grulla--Vultures--Street Criers--Water Carriers. My companion has a weakness for bird-painting, and it pleases him to have the living originals on the premises. Therefore does our spacious court-yard contain a goodly collection of the feathered tribe, with one or two animals without feathers. A large wirework aviary is filled with fifty specimens of tropical birds with pretty plumage and names hard to pronounce. A couple of cocos--a species of stork, with clipped wings--run freely about the yard, in company with a wild owl and a grulla, a tall crane-like bird five feet high. In a tank of water are a pair of young caymanes, or crocodiles. These interesting creatures are still in their infancy, and at present measure only four feet six inches from the tips of their hard noses to the points of their flexible tails. We have done our best to tame them; but they have not yet fallen into our domestic ways. Nor does time improve their vicious natures, for at the tender age of six months they have already shown signs of insubordination. If they persist in their evil courses we must needs make a premature end of them, which is no easy matter, for their scaly hides are already tough as leather, and the only indefensible parts about them are their small eyes and open mouths. The Cocos, male and female, are meagre-bodied birds, with slender legs, and beaks twelve inches long. They are an inseparable couple, and wander about our patio and rooms in a restless nervous fashion, rattling their chop-stick noses into everything. Now they are diving into the mould of flower-pots for live food, which they will never swallow till it has been previously slain. One of them has espied a cockroach in a corner, and in darting towards the prey a scorpion crosses its path. The venomous reptile hugs the belligerent beak in the hope of conveying to it some of its deadly sting; but the tip of Coco's horny appendage is a long way from his tender points, and Scorpio must travel many an inch before he can make the desired impression. Meanwhile the stork has teased Scorpio's life out, and jerked his remains into that bourn whence no defunct reptile returns. Our Coco's chief delight is to play with our painting materials, where much amusement may be derived by upsetting a bottle of varnish, or by distributing our long brushes in various parts of the room. A fund of entertainment is found in the displacement of every object not too weighty for Coco to convey. Thus, when a wineglass or a small coffee cup is missing, it will be discovered in the most unlikely spot, such as the balcony, on the roof, or maybe in our neighbour's dusthole. By Coco's sleight of _beak_, slippers part company and invite us to hunt for them, as if we were playing a certain old-fashioned game. As for the spoons, knives, and forks--they are disseminated everywhere like seeds in a ploughed field. Has anyone seen my inkstand? Yes; it has caught Coco's eye, and it has consequently been caught up by his chop-stick beak. With the agility of a sprite, he had hopped upon my open writing-desk, and having duly overhauled the contents and carefully transplanted each particular sheet of paper, envelope, pen and pencil, he devotes his attention to the ink; half of which he must surely have imbibed, for his beak remains parti-coloured for many days, and the inkstand, which I discover on the first fine 'retreta,' reposing within my best beaver hat, is perfectly empty! To their credit, be it said, the two Cocos--male and female--never for an instant part company. Where one trips, there trips the other. If Señor Coco starts off on any important enterprise, his Señora gives a croak expressive of her readiness to follow, and is after him like his own shadow. Similarly, when la Señora Coco dives into the depths of an old boot in quest of emptiness, her lord assists at the investigation. Once only, my Lady Coco is missing; having wandered from the house, and lost herself in an adjacent field. Until her reappearance, Lord Coco is inconsolable. The pastimes of the studio and the patio have no attractions for the bereaved bird. He fasts during the day, and croaks dismally at night. But when the prodigal at last returns, Lord Coco is quite another bird, and in a moment of rapture he secretes our last tube of flake white in the water-jug! The majestic Grulla is a better behaved bird. There is a dignity about her walk, and a formality about her ways, which are examples to her feathered companions. At night she is as serviceable as the best watch-dog, warning all trespassers by her piercing shriek, and by a furious dash at them with her strong neck and sharp-pointed beak. Grulla abominates all new-comers, and it was long before she was reconciled to the presence of her crocodile companions. When first their objectionable society was thrust upon the huge bird, she became nearly beside herself with vexation, and made savage onslaughts on the invaders' impenetrable hides. Once Grulla was in imminent danger of losing her neck whilst taking a blind header at the enemy's beady eye; for in a moment the reptile opened his yard of jaw for the easy accommodation of the bird's three feet of throat. My lady's behaviour at table leaves nothing to be desired. At the dinner hour she strides into our apartment without bidding, and takes her allotted place. The bird's two feet six inches of legs serve her instead of a chair, and her swan-like neck enables her to take a bird's-eye view of the most distant dish. But she never ventures to help herself to anything till the meal is actually placed on the plate before her; nor does she bolt her food like a beast, but disposes of it gracefully, like the best educated biped. Jerking the article for consumption neatly into her beak, and raising her head high in the air, she waits till the comestible has gravitated naturally down her throat. The Grulla's favourite dishes are sweet bananas, boiled pumpkin, and the crumb of new bread; but she is also partial to fresh raw beefsteak whenever she can get it. Everybody has his likes and his dislikes. Some people cannot abide a pig, and Grulla's antipathy is a big Aura. An Aura is a vulture which sails gracefully over every Cuban town in quest of prey. The Aura is an invaluable bird in the tropics; the dead carcases of animals being by its means cleared away in a few hours. Its services are, in this respect, rated at so high a value that it is considered an illicit act to slay one of these useful scavengers of the air, and a heavy fine is imposed on the slayer. Grulla, however, does not appreciate Aura's virtues; but whenever one of these vultures is visible from the patio, she shrieks like a maniac, flaps her large wings angrily, and turns wild pirouettes in the yard. Besides our bird-models, the street criers, who pass our doors at all hours, are occasionally induced to lend their services to the cause of art. Early in the morning la Lechera goes her rounds, with a large can of milk miraculously poised upon her head. The black milkmaid is attired in a single garment of cotton or coarse canvas; her feet and ankles are exposed, and her head is bound with a coloured handkerchief like a turban. We purchase daily of the Lechera a medio's worth of milk, but she grins incredulously, when one day we invite her to enter our studio. She is a slave belonging to the proprietor of a neighbouring farm, and what would 'mi-amo,' her master, say, or more probably 'do,' if he heard that his serf employed her time by sitting for her 'paisaje?' The Almidonero next favours us with a 'call.' This gentleman traffics in starch, an article in great demand, being employed for stiffening a Cuban's white drill clothes. The vendor of starch is a Chinese by birth, and, like other Celestials residing in Cuba, answers to the nickname of Chow-chow, from a popular theory that the word (which in the Chinese language stands for 'provisions') expresses everything in a Chinaman's vocabulary. Chow-chow carries upon his head a wooden tray, containing a number of circular pats of starch, of the consistency and appearance of unbaked loaves. The Panadero, or baker's man, visits us twice a day. In the cool of the early morning the little man--an Indian by birth--is extraordinarily active and full of his business, but during the heat of mid-day, when his visit is repeated, time to him seems of no importance. Our Indian baker is usually discovered sleeping a siesta on our broad balcony, and by his side lies a flat circular bread-basket as large as the wheel of a quitrin. Despite the scorching sun, he remains in this position hatless and bare-footed. La Cascarillera frequently passes our door with her double cry of 'Las Cosi-tas!'--'La Cascar-il-la!' The negress offers for sale a kind of chalk with which the ladies of Cuba are in the habit of powdering their faces and necks. She also sells what she calls 'cositas francesas,' which consist of cakes and tarts prepared by the French creoles of Cuba. Many of the less opulent Madamas of the town employ their time by making French pastry, which their slaves afterwards dispose of in the public streets. The Dulcera deals in 'dulces,' and her cry of 'Dulce de guayaba! Dulce de almiba!' proclaims that her tray contains various kinds of West Indian preserves. The Dulcera is also a slave, and consequently derives no pecuniary benefit from the sale of her sweets, unless, by pre-arrangement with her owner, a share in the profits has been allowed. El Malojero is a dark young gentleman who perambulates the town on the back of a mule--or more correctly on the summit of a small mountain of long, freshly-gathered grass. This grass, or 'maloja' as it is called, together with maize, constitute a Creole horse's fodder, and being packed in bundles on all sides of the beast of burthen, only the head and hoofs of the animal are visible; while el Malojero, perched several feet above its back, completes the moving picture. La Aguadora is perhaps the most attractive of all peripatetics of the pavement. It is she who provides the inhabitants with the indispensable fluid--water. The water supply of Cuba is derived from wells attached to certain houses; but those who, like ourselves, have not this convenience on the premises, have water brought to them from the nearest pump or spring. More than one Aguadora is employed to replenish our empty vessels, and, like all popular characters in Cuba, each is favoured with a distinguishing nickname. One of our water-carriers answers to the pseudonym Cachon, another is called Tatagüita, a third Mapí, while a fourth is dubbed with the imposing title of Regina. In turn, these mulatto wenches arrive from the public font with small barrels and strangely-fashioned water-jars, and deposit their contents in our reservoir and in our 'tina.' A tina is a filter on a gigantic scale. The exterior resembles a sentry box, and is furnished on all sides with ventilating apertures through which a current of air passes. At the top of the box or cupboard is fixed a huge basin made of a porous stone, through which the water slowly drips, and is received thus filtered in an enormous earthen jar. A tin pot with a very long handle serves to ladle out the filtered liquid, and the rim of this vessel is fringed with sharp projections like a chevaux de frise, as a caution to the thirsty not to apply their lips to the ladle! Our nymphs of the pump are more serviceable as models than any of their sister itinerants. They have symmetrical forms, which are partially revealed through the scantiness of their clothing. Their coffee-coloured features are, besides, regular and not devoid of expression. My companion becomes artistically captivated with Regina, who serves as a model for an important picture, which Nicasio paints, but unfortunately does not sell, in Cuba! Mapí, a mulatto girl of tender years, is equally serviceable, and plays many parts on canvas; while Cachon and Tatagüita, who are older and less comely, impersonate characters becoming their condition. But alas for art patronage in Cuba! these and other fanciful productions do not meet with a purchaser in the Pearl of the Antilles. CHAPTER VI. CUBAN BEGGARS. Carrapatam Bunga--The Havana Lottery--A Lady Beggar--A Beggar's Opera--Popular Characters--Charity--A Public Raffle--The 'King of the Universe.' Despite the dearth of patrons for the 'legitimate' in art, my companion and I continue to occupy our leisure moments in collecting such material as may prove attractive in a more art-loving country. Suggestions for pictures and sketches are not, however, wholly derived from the street vendors I have described. The beggars of Cuba are equally worthy of places in our sketch-books. Spain's romantic 'Beggar on horseback,' in some respects meets with a prototype in her colony. That apparently hapless mendicant shuffling along the white, heated road of a narrow street, is a blind negro, with the imposing nickname of Carrapatam Bunga. He is attired in a clean suit of brown holland, and he wears a broad-brimmed panama. His flat, splay feet are bare, showing where one of his toes has been consumed by a nigua, a troublesome insect which introduces itself into the foot, and, if not eradicated in time, remains there to vegetate. Across his shoulders is slung a huge canvas bag for depositing comestible alms, and in his hand is a long rustic staff. Charity with a Cuban is a leading principle of his religion, and to relieve the indigent--no matter whether the object for relief be worthy or not--is next in importance to disburdening the mind to a father confessor. Mindful of the native weakness in this respect, Carrapatam Bunga bears his sorrows from door to door, confident that his affliction and his damaged foot will command pity wheresoever he wanders. But he is impudent, and a boisterous, swaggering fellow. Hear him as he demands compassion, with his swarthy, fat face upturned to the blazing sun, and with a long cigar between his bulging lips. 'Ave Maria! here's the poor blind man; poor fellow! Give him a medio (a threepenny-piece) somebody. Does nobody hear him, el pobrecito? Come, make haste! Don't keep the poor fellow waiting. Poor Carrapatam Bunga! He is stone blind, poor fellow, and his feet are blistered and sore. Misericordia, señores. Barajo! why don't somebody answer? Which is mi s'ñora Mercedes' house? Will somebody lead me to it? Mi s'ñora Mercedes!' Bunga knows most of his patrons by name. Doña Mercedes appears at her iron-grated window, through the bars of which the benevolent lady offers a silver coin and a small loaf. 'Gracias, mi s'ñora; Dios se la pague su merced! (May Heaven reward your worship.) Who's got a light for the poor ciego?' Somebody favours the ciego with a light, and Carrapatam Bunga goes on his way smoking and humming a tune, and presently harangues in another street. Will it be believed that this wanderer has a farm in the country, with slaves in his employ, and hundreds of dollars in his exchequer? When not on beggar-beat, Bunga retires to his possessions, where he lives luxuriously. Like some of his begging fraternity, the negro occasionally varies his mendicant trade by offering for sale lottery tickets bearing what he calls 'lucky numbers.' The Havana lottery is a great institution in Cuba, and has an extraordinary fascination for rich as well as poor. Each ticket costs seventeen dollars, and is printed in such a form as to be susceptible of division into seventeen parts, so as to suit all pockets. The prizes vary from 100 to 100,000 dollars, and there are two 'sorteos,' or draws, monthly. On each occasion 35,000 tickets are offered for sale, and out of this number 600 are prizes. He whose number happens to approach within ten paces of the 100,000 dollar, or 50,000 dollar prize, receives a gratuity of 200 dollars as a reward for being 'near the mark.' This lottery is a source of revenue to the Spanish state in Cuba, which claims a fourth share of the products yielded by the sale of tickets. As an instance of the enormous capital sometimes derived from this source, it is said that in a certain prosperous year, 546,000 tickets brought to the Havana treasury no less than 8,736,000 dollars! Our friend Carrapatam Bunga often invests in fragments of unsold tickets, and on one occasion he drew a prize to the value of 700 dollars, which good luck, together with his beggar savings, enabled him to purchase a farm and to hire a few labourers to work it with. Whether from habit or from love of gain, Bunga never forsook his favourite vocation, but continued to bear his sorrows from door to door, as if they still belonged to him. In Cuba, at least, beggars may be said to be choosers. Saturday is the day which they prefer for transacting their business, because it precedes Sunday, when the faithful attend high mass in the church, and go to confession. Except on Saturday, and on some festive occasions, it is a rare event for a beggar to be seen asking alms in the public streets. Every Saturday morning I pay my respects to Don Benigno and his amiable señora, Doña Mercedes, who, as I have already explained, keep open house in more than one way; the huge doors of their habitation being ajar at all hours. As I sit chatting with my worthy hostess, the street door--which has direct communication with the reception room--is boldly thrown open, and a white lady, attired in well-starched muslin, and adorned with jewels, enters. I rise, in accordance with the polite custom of the country, while Don Benigno offers the visitor a rocking-chair. The conversation proceeds on subjects of general interest, in which the visitor joins. Curiously, I am never introduced to the lady in muslin; but the unusual behaviour of my host is soon accounted for. After a few minutes the stranger señora rises, and approaching Doña Mercedes, offers her hand. Doña Mercedes does not take the proffered palm, but simply places upon it a piece of silver coin of the value of a franc. 'May Heaven reward you,' says the lady-beggar, and takes her gift and her leave without another word. Something like a Beggars' Opera may be realised whilst sitting before Don Benigno's huge window on Saturday morning, and watching the thriftless performers as they pass. The entertainment 'opens' at the early hour of six A.M.; from that time till the Cuban breakfast-hour of eleven, we are treated with begging solos only: mendicants who stand and deliver monologues like Carrapatam Bunga or Muñekon--an equally popular beggar. Sometimes the applicant for charity announces himself with a bold bang on the door, followed by the pious ejaculation, 'Ave Maria!' The lame, or otherwise afflicted, are content with simply directing attention to their misfortunes, while the less 'favoured' attract public regard by humming a wild air, to which a gibberish libretto is attached, or by descanting upon social and political matters. The ill-paved condition of the Cuban streets, the inefficient supply of water, the bad lighting of the town at night, the total absence of anything like proper drainage, are favourite topics with these open-air orators. Like other Cuban celebrities, a characteristic _nom de guerre_ is invented for every beggar. That brown complexioned lady with a man's straw hat on her head, and a faded cotton gown clinging to her shrunken form, is called Madama Chaleco, from a popular tradition that the old lady formerly donned a man's waistcoat or chaleco. From this cause she has become the butt of every street boy, who irritates the poor mulatto woman into frenzy by shouting her nickname in a derisive tone. The Madama has resided only a few years in Cuba; her birthplace being some neighbouring island where English and French are spoken: these languages being perfectly familiar to the old lady. Madama Pescuezo is another foreign importation, and her alias is founded on a long sinewy throat or pescuezo which the dame possesses. Isabel Huesito is famous for her leanness, and hence the appellation: huesito, or skinny. Madama Majá is said to have magic dealings with snakes or majás. Gallito Pigméo is noted for his shortness of stature and his attributes of a chicken. Barrigilla is pot-bellied, and El Ñato has a flatter nose than his black brethren. Carfardóte, Taita Tomás, Macundú, Cotuntum, Carabela Zuzundá, Ña Soledad, and Raton Cojonudo, are each named after some personal peculiarity. Sometimes whole sentences stand as nicknames for these popular characters. Amárrame-ese-perro is applied to a beggar who, like most negroes, has a dread of dogs, and his repeated, and often causeless, cry of 'Chain me up that dog!' earns for him this imposing title. Another equally nervous negro fears horse-flesh, and his constant ejaculation of 'Pull up! you horse-faced animal,' gains him the nickname of Jála-pa-lante-cara-de-caballo! Our Beggars' Opera concludes with a brilliant chorus of mendicants, who, at twelve o'clock, visit their patrons in large companies. At that hour, one of Don Benigno's slaves enters with a large flat basket containing a quantity of small two-penny loaves, which the negro places upon the marble floor in front of the open door. Soon a crowd of beggars of all shades and castes, who during the last half-hour have been squatting in a row under the broad shade of the opposite houses, approach, and, without bidding, help to empty the capacious bread-basket. Further up the street they go, picking up more crumbs at rich mansions, whose owners occasionally vary their entertainment by providing for their vagrant visitors a little 'ajiaco,' or native soup. Cuban people are not fond of bestowing their charity through the medium of a public institution. The only place of the kind in that part of Cuba which I am describing is called the Beneficencia, or almshouse, which is under the superintendence of the Sisters of Charity. Wealthy ladies contribute largely towards the support of this establishment, but, in order to provide funds, public raffles are indispensable. Nothing succeeds in Cuba so well as something in which chance or luck, combined with amusement, is the inducement of the venture, and a raffle in aid of funds for the famished is always popular. Doña Mercedes, the most benevolent of ladies, tells me that she and the prosperous Señoras already referred to have in project a grand bazaar for the benefit of the poor, to which everybody is expected to contribute. The articles received for the purposes of the bazaar are to be exhibited in one of the big saloons of the Governor's house, which overlooks the Plaza de Armas, and they will be raffled for during three special evenings. For weeks Doña Mercedes and her charitable sisters are busy collecting and numbering the contributions as they arrive, or twisting the paper chances into the form of cigar lights. The military square presents an animated scene on the evenings of the raffle. Twelve tables, bearing rich cloths and silver candelabra, are distributed about the broad promenade of the plaza. Around each table are seated a score of the fairest of Cuba's daughters, elegantly attired in evening costume, without any head-covering, and with only a scarf or shawl lightly protecting their fair shoulders. Doña Mercedes looks charming in a pink grenadine dress, and with her luxuriant black hair tastefully arranged, as a Cuban Señora alone knows how. Each lady adopts her most insinuating manner in order to dispose of her twisted tickets, the greater portion of which contain, of course, blanks, or a consolatory couplet, like a motto in a cracker, for the gratification of the unsuccessful purchaser. There is loud cheering when a prize is drawn, especially if it happen to be of importance, like the 'grand prize,' which consists of a prettily worked purse containing six golden onzas (twenty pounds sterling). Crowds of beggars are assembled within range of the plaza, and some of them occasionally invest in a medio or peseta's worth of tickets, but as coloured people are never permitted to mix with white folk in public, their tickets are handed to them by officials appointed for that purpose. Some of these blacks are 'retired' slaves: in other words, negroes who have become free, either by devoting the savings of many years to the purchase of their liberty, or by having their freedom left them as a legacy by an indulgent master. Those who have ability and industry make the most of their precious gifts by devoting their energies to trade or to music, for which accomplishment negroes have often a natural inclination; but the infirm or the inactive--and of these there is always a majority--are reduced to penury, in which condition they fall naturally into begging ways, and prosper accordingly. That intelligent-looking black who craves of me a peseta in order to buy a small bundle of tickets for the raffle, is a well-known beggar. His name is Roblejo, and he owes his freedom to the publication of a book of poems written by himself. Assisted by a benevolent _littérateur_, Roblejo was enabled to put his poetic lucubrations into readable form, and the novelty taking the public fancy, subscribers were found sufficient for the purpose of printing the book, and effecting the author's emancipation. 'Holá, Don Pancho! How goes it with thee?' The individual whom I address is probably the most popular beggar in the town. His real name is Pancho Villergas, but he is commonly known as El Rey del Orbe (the King of the Universe). I have often endeavoured to secure a faithful likeness of this illustrious gentleman, but Pancho cannot be prevailed upon to sit either to an artist or to a photographer. Whenever the subject is broached by me, El Rey del Orbe grins, shakes his head knowingly, and observes, in the only English with which he is conversant: 'Oh, ye--s; vary vel, no good, good mornin'.' Pancho is a genuine white man, but age and exposure to the sun and wind have bronzed him to a mulatto colour. He has a picturesque Saint Francis beard, and a benign, strongly marked countenance. He wears a coat purposely patched with many shaded cloths; each shade being considered by him to represent one of his numerous dominions. Being buttoned up to his neck, the coat gives him a military appearance, while it economises his linen. Upon his head is a tall beaver hat, which has seen better days, but which the Universe-King is careful to keep well brushed. Pancho is slightly crazed, and his monomania consists in the belief that he is not a beggar, but a benefactor to his country. With this notion, no persuasion will induce him to accept a donation in the shape of coin. Those who are acquainted with Pancho's weakness, and desire to relieve his wants, must do so through the medium of stratagem. If they succeed in imposing upon El Rey del Orbe by prevailing upon him to 'borrow' food or raiment, they consider themselves amply rewarded for their act of charity. The only article which the King of the Universe will deign to accept is foolscap writing-paper, because he believes that the use to which he applies it will be beneficial to mankind in general, and to Cuba in particular. He fills his foolscap with correspondence, which he addresses to the highest authorities; the favoured recipients being His Excellency the Governor, the alcalde mayor, and members of the town council. Whenever any political or social question is raised, the King of the Universe is sure to despatch an important document bearing his opinion and advice. His majesty is usually his own letter-carrier, unless he can meet with a trustworthy messenger in the shape of a priest, an officer, or a policeman. The matter contained in these momentous memorials occupies from eighteen to twenty closely-written sheets, and is always prefaced with the imposing heading: 'Yo, el Rey' (I, the King). Pancho's indigence and infatuation have a romantic origin. This old, shabby-looking object before me was at one time a well-to-do planter, and held a high position among merchants. One fatal day he became enamoured of a creole coquette, who cruelly jilted him. The disappointment turned his brain. People attributed his harmless insanity to eccentricity, and merchants transacted business with him as of old, till one heartless scoundrel, taking advantage of his misfortune, swindled him out of a large sum of money, and this deed eventually led to Pancho's insolvency and utter ruin. CHAPTER VII. THE BLACK ART IN CUBA. A Model Mulatto--A Bewitched Watchman--Cuban Sorcery--An Enchanted Painter. It is not always easy to secure the services of a better class of model than our peripatetic of the pavement. Before we can induce such a person to walk into our studio, many arts, unconnected with our calling, must be employed, especially if the object of our solicitation happen to be young and fair. Having directed our professional gaze upon such a Señorita, it behoves us first to visit her family, and make friends with her parents, brothers or sisters, in order that their consent may be easily and naturally obtained. Thus, when I cast my artistic eye upon the pretty Perpetua, I have to proceed with extreme caution, lest her parents should misinterpret the nature of my demand. For Perpetua belongs to the octoroon 'species' of mulatto. Her father is a white man, and her mother is a free-born quadroon-woman, and they reside with their daughter in an humble dwelling near our studio. Don Ramon being a small tobacconist, and his wife, Doña Choncha, a laundress, we have sometimes patronised the little family, and in this manner I make the acquaintance of my future model. It is, however, far from easy to persuade the old lady that my admiration for her daughter is wholly confined to the picturesque; for when I broach the model-subject, Doña Choncha smiles incredulously, and says she will consult her friends. While she is doing so, an extraordinary revelation respecting the brown old dame is made to me by Mateo, the 'sereno' or watchman of our district. Armed with a pike, lantern, revolver, and coil of rope for pinioning purposes, the watchman wanders about our neighbourhood, halting every quarter of an hour to blow a shrill whistle to inform the inhabitants of the time of night, and whether it is 'sereno' (fine) or 'nublado' (cloudy). One dark night the sereno pauses before our balcony, and after assuring the somnolent, in recitative, that it is 'three-quarters past eleven and nu-bla-do!' approaches me, and in a mysterious whisper enquires whether I carry 'contradaños,' or charms against evil, about my person. Finding that I do not possess such articles, the watchman recommends me to apply without delay for a talisman or two. Raw mustard, powdered glass, and sulphur, he says, are highly effectual as charms. At that very moment Mateo's pockets are full of these safeguards, and when threatened with any danger, he has only to sprinkle around him some of the antidote against evil. The watchman then tells me that Doña Choncha is in league with 'brujas' (witches), and that if I continue to visit at her house I shall do well to take the precautions he has suggested. Mateo is himself a firm believer in the Black Art, and gives me some interesting particulars respecting a secret society of sorcerers, who hold certain midnight revels in an empty saloon of a house somewhere in the town. There is a kind of freemason mystery attached to their proceedings, and none but members are in the secret. It appears, however, that their dark deeds consist chiefly in a dead-of-night dance around a defunct 'majá' or enchanted snake, by a number of people, most of whom are attired in nature's vestments. The watchman likewise tells me that the practice of witchcraft in Cuba is sometimes attended with serious and fatal consequences, and that crimes of the worst description are frequently the result of it. An individual unwittingly takes his neighbour's life in obedience to commands from a sanguinary sorcerer, who requires a certain weight of human blood to complete the ingredients of an enchanted preparation. 'Bring me a couple of handfuls of hair, and four ounces of blood from Fulano,' says the weird, who has been applied to for spiritual absolution, 'and I will prepare you a contradaño--a charm--that shall rid you of your evil genius, and help you out of your present difficulty.' Fulano objects to part with his 'personal' property, when the request is made to him in a friendly way; so he gets a hard knock on the head one day, when he least expects it, and if he escapes with his life he is lucky. Such instances of witchcraft as these, the sereno says, are found only among the coloured population of Cuba, and when discovered the perpetrators of the nefarious acts are brought to justice and severely punished; but belief in necromancy exists even among the more enlightened inhabitants of Cuba, and it is far from uncommon to hear of highly respectable whites taking part in the practice of it. Mateo then gives me his own personal experiences of the Black Art as a warning against the danger which, he says, will surely threaten me if I continue to visit the tobacconist family. The watchman assures me that for many long weeks he had laboured under the depressing influence of a spell. The unfortunate occurrence began with an anonymous letter conveying the unwelcome information that a certain enemy of Mateo's was engaged in brewing some dreadful mischief for his especial benefit. In his professional capacity, the watchman has more than one foe in the town, and it is therefore difficult to 'spot,' and afterwards capture, the actual offender. The warning letter, however, admonishes him that so long as he does not walk in a certain locality, no harm to him can possibly accrue. It is not easy for Mateo to avoid the indicated thoroughfare, as it happens to come exactly within our watchman's beat at night; but he surmounts the obstacle at the risk of incurring his employers' displeasure, by exchanging beats with a brother watchman. The irregular act is, however, made known to the authorities, and Mateo is threatened with instant dismissal if he persists in avoiding the street in question. Fortunately, the sereno receives a second missive from the anonymous correspondent, containing the assurance that there is still hope for immediate and radical disenchantment if Mateo will only follow the writer's advice. This consists, first of all, in depositing a piece of coin under the door of his correspondent's habitation. At an early hour, the money will disappear through some unseen agency, and will afterwards be consigned to a disenchanting locality in the Cuban bay. The sereno is next enjoined to examine the lining of his bran-new panama, which he has lately purchased to wear only on festive occasions. If all goes well, he will assuredly discover certain black pins and human hairs crossed, entwined and affixed in a peculiar fashion to the crown of his hat. The same evil omens will likewise appear at the ferule end of his gold-knobbed walking-stick. Satisfied that there is 'no deception,' the proprietor of the enchanted hat and cane wraps up those articles carefully in several folds of paper, according to instructions, and early one Sunday morning deposits the parcel in a certain hole in an undesirable field on the confines of the town. 'When I had done so,' concludes the watchman, pausing to inform the inhabitants that it is three-quarters past midnight and nu-bla-do!--'when I had done so, I walked without fear along the forbidden street, and I have walked there in safety ever since!' The watchman enjoins me to be warned by his story, and once more advises me to provide myself with a few contradaños. 'Had I taken the same precautions,' observes Mateo, 'I should have escaped all my troubles.' 'And preserved your panama and gold-headed cane!' I add. 'Past one o'clock and seren-o!' sings the watchman as he takes his leave of me. My interest in the tobacconist's family is considerably increased by what I have heard, and my visits are none the less frequent because of the friendly admonitions which I have received. I do not provide myself with the talismans which the sereno has recommended; but I watch the old lady's ways more narrowly than I have before done, till I begin at last to detect something like a malignant expression in her shrunken, yellow-brown countenance. I observe no change in her pretty daughter, though I must confess that in one way, at least, La Perpetua is more 'charming' than ever. The young girl is full of her approaching 'fiesta,' or saint's day, which annual event is to be celebrated by an afternoon ball and early supper at her humble home. The presents she expects to receive in the shape of trays of dulces and confectionary will, she assures me, exceed those of the past fiesta. Perpetua is the acknowledged belle of the 'barrio,' or district, where she resides, and she has many admirers. But unfortunately the young creole is not so white as her fair complexion would lead one to suppose. Don Ramon is undoubtedly a white man, but his wife belongs to the mulatto tribe, and Perpetua's origin is unquestionably obscure. Still Doña Choncha has great hopes that her pretty daughter will command a white alliance among her husband's friends in spite of this drawback, and it is whispered that the ambitious old dame has her eye upon more than one eligible suitor for her child's whitey-brown hand. Mateo, the watchman--ever hard on Doña Choncha--declares that it is her 'evil eye' that is being exercised in Perpetua's behalf; but I heed him not, though I am now more than ever cautious in my behaviour at the tobacconist's. Whatever truth there may be in the watchman's assertion that I am the object of enchantment, at present I have received no practical evidence of it. When I probe Perpetua privately on the subject, I find that she has little to tell, except that her mother is in the habit of visiting a locality in the town unknown to Perpetua and Don Ramon, and that, upon one occasion, she administered a harmless drug to her daughter, assuring her that it was a protection against cholera. As for Don Ramon--that good-natured gentleman is altogether a disbeliever in witchcraft, and though he admits that the art is popular among a certain class in Cuba, he is of opinion that the Cuban bruja, or witch, is simply a high order of gipsy, whose chief object is pecuniary gain. The government of the country, with its accustomed inertness, has not yet established a law for the suppression of this evil; 'and so,' says the tobacconist, 'sorcery flourishes, and the brujas prosper.' I am beginning to abandon all hope of obtaining La Perpetua for a model, when one day I receive an anonymous letter, the handwriting and diction of which seem to be the production of an uninstructed Ethiop. The writer assures me that somebody or other is at present engaged in the useful occupation of working for my complete overthrow and subjugation, and that if I require further particulars on the subject I may easily obtain them for the small consideration of a 'punctured peseta' (a coin with a 'lucky' hole in it). When I exhibit the mysterious document to the watchman, that individual is of course highly pleased to find that I have, at last, received some evidence of the existence of such mighty people as brujas, and his advice resolves itself, as usual, into sulphur and powdered mustard. He has now not the least doubt that Doña Choncha has made application to the brujas for a spell, and he recommends me to pay the peseta asked of me by my anonymous correspondent. A communication from a live witch is worth all the money demanded for it, and I accordingly place the coin, as directed, in a crevice under my door. Sure enough, it disappears before daylight, and in return I obtain a second sheet of magic manuscript, which, like its predecessor, is unpleasantly greasy to the touch and offensive to the nose; but it is full of information, and concludes with an offer to effect my permanent disenchantment if I will but follow the writer's instructions. If I am disposed to do so, I must first meet the writer, or his deputy, alone in a certain unfrequented locality of the town at a late hour; arming myself with a contradaño in the shape of a media onza. Thirty-four shillings may appear a high rate for disenchantment, but the watchman assures me that the operation often costs four times that amount, and that if the unknown bruja fulfils his promise I shall have made a great bargain. As I do not value my malignant spirit at any price, I decline for the present to avail myself of this opportunity to be relieved of it. My occupations prevent me from paying my accustomed visits at the tobacconist's for some days, but one sunny morning I venture to look in at the little establishment. Don Ramon, I am told, is passing some weeks at his 'vega,' or tobacco farm; but his black assistants are at their wooden benches as usual, rolling tobacco leaves into cigars. I pass through the section of a shop (which has neither wall nor window in front of it) into the inner apartment, usually occupied by Doña Choncha and her daughter, and find the former engaged in sorting tobacco leaves on the brick-floor, and the latter in swaying and fanning herself in a cane rocking-chair. Both ladies salute me respectfully, and make kind enquiries after my health. These formalities over, Doña Choncha collects together her tobacco leaves, and, without a word of explanation, adjourns to the 'patio.' For the first time, since my acquaintance with the tobacconist's family, I am left alone with the pretty Perpetua! All is not well with her weird-looking mother, as I very shortly have reason to find. I have been scarcely ten minutes in Perpetua's agreeable society, when she is summoned by her mother to the court-yard. Upon her return I am offered some 'refresco,' made from the juicy fruit of the guanabana. 'Who mixed this drink?' I enquire, after taking a sip of it. 'La máma mixed it,' replies Perpetua. Has the old hag added some infernal drug to the refreshment? I wonder; for there is something besides guanabana in the libation! While I am speculating about this, lo! a strange odour is wafted into the little chamber, and presently some smoke is seen to issue from an aperture in the door. Is the house on fire? Perpetua is again summoned by Doña Choncha; but before leaving the apartment she begs me not to be alarmed, as it is only her mother at her duties. I would willingly believe what she says, but being sufficiently familiar with the process of drying tobacco leaves, I am convinced that sulphur, hair, mustard, and heaven knows what besides, are not employed in it. The fumes of these burning substances are, however, entering the apartment, and the atmosphere is most oppressive--so much so, that my pulse beats high, and my head begins to swim. Without waiting another moment, I seize my walking-stick and panama hat, and escape from the enchanted chamber into the street. The hot air does not dispel the giddy feeling which had come over me, and not until I have reached my well-ventilated abode, changed my damp linen, and sponged my fevered body with 'aguardiente' and water, do I feel myself again. I am better still after having taken a refreshing siesta in my swinging hammock, in which condition I dream of black pins, burnt hair, raw mustard, and sulphur. When I awake, I examine carefully the lining of my panama, and the ferule end of my walking-stick, to satisfy myself that no burglarious bruja has taken advantage of my repose to tamper with my property. But whether it is that my stick and hat are of no great value, or that the defences of our studio are impregnable, no bruja has offered to take 'charge' of these things by labelling them with their infernal tickets. My partner, to whom I record the events of the day, is of opinion that if all models are as difficult to secure as La Perpetua, we had better abandon our researches in this direction, and abide by our street criers and mendicants. He also suggests a little landscape-painting by way of variety, and, with this object in view, we plan certain walking expeditions into the surrounding country. What subjects for landscape pictures we meet with, and whether or not we are more successful in our quest after inanimate nature, will be told in another chapter. CHAPTER VIII. A TASTE OF CUBAN PRISON-LIFE. Two Views of the Morro Castle--The Commandant--The Town Jail--Cuban Policemen--Prisoners--A Captive Indian--Prison Fare--A Court of Justice--A Trial--A Verdict. I dream that I am Silvio Pellico, that the prisoner of St. Helena is my fellow-captive, and that an apartment belonging to the Spanish Inquisition is our dormitory. Clasps of iron eat their way into our ankles and wrists; gigantic rats share our food; our favourite exercise is swinging head downwards in the air, and our chief recreation is to watch the proceedings of tame spiders. I awake and find my bed unusually hard. My bed-clothes have vanished, and in their stead are a couple of hard benches, with my wearing apparel rolled up for a pillow. By a dim light I observe that my apartment is remarkably small, bare, damp, and dome-shaped. The window is a barred aperture in the door; is only a foot square, and looks on to the patio, or narrow passage, where unlimited wall stares me in the face. Do I still dream, or is this actually one of 'le mie prigioni'? I rub my eyes for a third time, and look about the semi-darkened vault. Somebody is snoring. I gaze in the direction whence the sound proceeds, and observe indistinctly an object huddled together in a corner. So, this is no dream, after all; and that heap of sleeping humanity is not Napoleon, but my companion, Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú. We are both shut up in one of the subterranean dungeons of the Morro Castle; not the Havana Morro, but the fortress at Santiago de Cuba, alluded to by Tom Cringle. Why are we here? What were we doing yesterday afternoon? Well; we were taking a seven miles walk to the Morro Castle, the picturesque neighbourhood of which we had not yet visited, and as the grounds attached to the fortress are always open to the public, we proposed a quiet evening saunter over them. We had a negro with us, an old and faithful vassal, who at the present moment is enjoying solitary confinement in another part of the fortress. We reached the castle grounds, where a group of Spanish 'militares' were seated. We gave them the 'Buenas tardes:' they returned our salute, and their chief, who was no less a personage than the commandant of the Morro, offered us refreshment, and permitted us to wander about the grounds. In our ramble we paused here and there to admire the picturesque 'bits' of scenery which, at every turn of a winding road, broke upon our view. By a narrow path cut in the grey rock we descended to the sea-shore, and stood before the entrance of the Cuban harbour. We watched the French packet as she steamed into port on her way to the town, and saw the gun fired which announced her arrival. The steamer was so near, that we could scan the faces of everybody on board, and hear enthusiastic congratulations on their safe arrival after their tedious voyage. The skipper conferred with the Morro guard. What was the ship's name? Where did she hail from? Who was her captain? Where was she bound for? A needless demand, I thought, seeing that there is no water navigable beyond the town; but it was in strict conformity with Spanish regulations. As evening advanced, we prepared to return to our temporary home, where a good dinner doubtless awaited us, with a cup of café noir to follow, and correspondence--ah! my friends never missed a mail--to open and to devour. 'Alto allá!' The ominous command to halt where we stood, still rings in my ear. A party of soldiers, with pointed muskets and fixed bayonets, ran with all speed in our direction. 'Car-amba!' Were we the object of their precipitation? We were! They conducted us to an eminence, where stood a podgy, high-shouldered, short-necked man with a squeaky interrogative voice and gold spectacles. This was the commandant. Without explanation, that officer, in brief words, ordered us to be arrested. The soldiers obeyed. They bandaged our eyes with handkerchiefs. They led us along hollow-sounding alleys; beneath echoing archways; down scores of stone steps; through mouldy passages. Lower yet, where a strong flavour of cooking assailed our sense of smell. A couple more downward flights, and then we paused--heard a jingling of big keys--an opening of ponderous doors--and here we were. Here, in a subterranean vault, I know not how many feet below sunlight. The air is close and vaporous; the domed chamber is damp and musty. They have divested us of all our portable property save a few cigarettes which we have secreted in a dark corner, and there is nothing to be had in the way of refreshment for love or money. Yes, for money. I have bribed the sentinel, who occasionally eclipses our square of window, with all my ready cash, and he has brought us contraband cups of weak coffee. Will he treat our dark domestic as well? We try him, and find that he won't. What's o'clock? We have no means of ascertaining this, as Phoebus, who might have suggested the time of day, is a long way out of sight. Our sentinel says it is early morning. Hark! A sound of many footsteps; a rattling of arms and keys. Enter our military jailer with a dozen soldiers to release us from our present quarters. Our eyes are bandaged as before, and after passing up several flights of steps in another direction, our sight is restored: the scene changes, and we are discovered, like the Prince of Denmark, upon another part of the platform. Our faithful vassal is with us, looking as much like a ghost as it is possible for a negro to appear. They have tied his arms behind him with cords, and serve us in the same manner; while eight soldiers encircle us at respectful distances, and deliberately proceed to load their weapons. The negro trembles with affright, and falls on his knees. Misericordia! they are going to shoot us, he thinks; for he is ignorant of the Spanish custom of loading in the presence of the prisoner before escorting him from one jail to another. To another? Santo Dios! Then we are prisoners still? I think of the victim of Santa Margherita and his many prisons, and begin to wonder how many years of incarceration we shall experience. 'En marcha!' Eight 'militares' and a sergeant place us in their midst, and in this way we march to town, a distance of seven miles. Our sergeant proves to be more humane than his superior, and on the uneven road pauses to screw up cigarettes for us, and, in consideration of our helpless condition, even places them in our mouths. It is Sunday morning, and when we reach the town all good Catholics have been to high mass, and are parading the narrow thoroughfare dressed in fashionable attire. Crowds gather around us and speculate as to the particular crime we are guilty of; and, to tell the truth, our appearance is by no means respectable. Have we shot the commandant? Undermined the Morro? Poisoned the garrison? Have we headed a negro conspiracy, or joined a gang of pirates? Friends whom we recognise on our way endeavour to interrogate us, but are interrupted by the sergeant. We halt before the governor's house; but his excellency is not yet out of bed, and may not be disturbed. So we proceed to the town jail, where everybody is stirring and where they are happy to see us, and receive us with open doors. A dozen policemen, dressed in brown-holland coats, trimmed with yellow braid and silver buttons, with panama hats, revolvers, and short Roman swords, are seated on benches at the prison entrance. Passing them, we are hurried into a white-washed chamber, where a frowning functionary, in brown-holland and silver lace, with a panama on his head, and a long cigar in his mouth, sits at a desk scribbling something on stamped paper. He pauses to examine and peruse a large letter which our sergeant hands him, and which contains a statement of our arrest, with full particulars of our misdeeds. The document is folded in official fashion, is written, regardless of economy, with any quantity of margin, and is terminated by a tremendous signature, accompanied by an elaborate flourish, which occupies exactly half a page. The gentleman in brown-holland casts a look of suspicion at us, and directs a couple of policemen to search us, 'registrar' us, as he calls it, which they accordingly do; but nothing that we could dispense with is found on our persons, except the grime upon our hands and faces, and a pearl button, which has strayed during the journey, and somehow found its way into my boot. Nothing further being required of us for the present, we are conducted into the centre of the jail to an extensive court-yard, where a crowd of prisoners of all shades and castes lie basking in the sun. We are led to one of the galleries which surround the patio, our arms are untied, and we are introduced into three different chambers. The apartment alloted to me is spacious and airy enough, and has a huge barred window that overlooks the main thoroughfare. In these respects, at least, my quarters resemble an ordinary Cuban parlour in a private house. But the only articles of furniture are a couple of hard benches and a straw mattress; and although a Cuban parlour has a barred window, a brick floor, and white-washed walls, it has also a few cane-bottomed chairs, an elegant mirror, and a gas chandelier. The prison in which I am confined was originally a convent, and now it is not only devoted to the use of malefactors, but also accommodates mad people, whose shrieks and wild laughter I occasionally hear. From my window I can see into the private houses opposite, where ladies are swaying and fanning themselves in 'butacas,' or rocking-chairs, while half a dozen naked white and black children play in an adjacent room. Friends passing along the street recognise me; but I may not converse with them, or the sentry below will inform, and I shall be removed to a more secluded part of the stronghold. I am not alone. My chamber is occupied by a native Indian, whose origin is distinguishable by his lank, jet-black hair, his gipsy-like complexion, and finely-cut nostrils. He is neither tattooed, nor does he wear feathers, beads or animals' hides; but with the exception of his face and hands (which are very dirty) he has all the appearance of a civilized being. The Indian has been himself arrested on suspicion, but his trial has been postponed for many weary months, and he is at present quite ignorant of the charge on which he may stand accused. Having no friends to intercede for him, or golden doubloons wherewith to convince the authorities of his innocence, the poor fellow is afraid things will go hard with him. The Indian is eloquent on the subjects of slavery and Spanish rule, both of which he warmly denounces. He is careful to remind me, that although he speaks the Spanish language, and is governed by Spanish laws, he is no more a Spaniard than is an American an Englishman. There is something in common between these nationalities, he says, whereas between a Cuban and a Spaniard there is a very wide gulf! My patriotic friend gets so excited over these and other favourite topics that, afraid of the consequences of his conversation, I propose a smoke. 'What!' he exclaims, approaching me in what seems a threatening attitude. 'Is it possible that you have any tobacco, and that you are going to smoke some here?' Lest the Indian should be no smoker himself and dislike the odour of tobacco, I tell him that if he objects, I will postpone my harmless whiff until after captivity. He does object; but after contemplating my scanty supply of cigarettes as I restore them to my pocket, he observes with a sigh: 'I was once an inveterate smoker!' 'Till you very wisely gave up the vice,' I add. 'No!' says he, 'I did not give it up. It was my accursed captors who withheld it from me. I have not smoked for many long months, and I would often give ten years of my life for one little cigarette!' 'Try one of mine,' I suggest, extracting the packet again which alas! contains my last four. 'Gracias; no,' he replies, 'I shall be depriving you, and you will find cigarettes scarce in these quarters!' 'If you are a true Cuban,' I observe, 'you will remember that it is next to an insult to refuse a man's tobacco. Besides, if you object to my indulging in the luxury upon the plea that the delicious perfume is unendurable in another, both of us will be deprived of the pleasure!' 'You are right,' says the Indian, 'then I will take just one.' So saying, he accepts the little paper squib which I offer, and carefully divides the contents into two equal parts; explaining, as he does so, how he intends to reserve one half of the tobacco for another occasion. While thus engaged I am reminded of the awful fact that I have no means of igniting our cigarettes. When I mention this unfortunate circumstance to my companion, he smiles triumphantly, and after placing his ear to the door in melodramatic fashion, proceeds to raise a particular brick in the floor of our apartment under which at least half a dozen matches are concealed. 'These matches,' he remarks, 'have been treasured in that hole ever since I came to lodge in this jail.' 'Have you resided here long?' I inquire. 'It has appeared long to me,' he answers, 'eighteen months, more or less; but I have no record of the date.' 'You must have found the hours hang heavily on you,' I remark, 'or, maybe, you have a hobby like the political prisoners one reads of. You have a favorite flower somewhere? Or, perhaps, you are partial to spiders?' 'There are plenty of gigantic spiders here,' he replies, 'together with centipedes and scorpions; but whenever one of those reptiles crosses my path--I kill it!' When my fellow-captive learns my nationality, his surprise and pleasure are very great. 'I like the English and Americans,' says he, 'and I would become one or the other to-morrow, if it were possible.' 'You are very kind to express so much esteem for my countrymen,' I say. 'It is not so much your countrymen,' he says, 'as your free country with its just and humane laws, which every Cuban admires and covets.' I remind him that, under existing circumstances, I am no better off than he is, though to be sure as a British subject, my consul, who resides in Santiago, will doubtless see me righted. The Indian is, however, of a different opinion. He assures me that my nationality will avail me nothing if I have no interest with some of the Spanish officials. He gives me instances to prove how it is often out of the power of a consul to assist a compatriot in difficulties. 'Not long since,' says my friend, 'a marine from your country, being intoxicated, and getting mixed up in a street brawl, was arrested and locked up with a crowd of insubordinate coolies and Spanish deserters. His trial was, as usual, postponed. In the meanwhile, the jail had become overcrowded by the arrival of some wounded soldiers from San Domingo, and your countryman was shipped off with others to another prison at Manzanillo, where he was entered on the list of convicts, and has never been heard of since.' 'In this very jail,' continues the Indian, 'are a couple of American engineers, both of whom stand accused of being concerned in a negro conspiracy, and who have been locked up here for the last six months. They are ignorant of the Spanish language, have mislaid their passports, and have been denied a conference with their consul, who is, of course, unaware of their incarceration.' I make a mental note of this last case, with a view to submit it to the proper authority as soon as I shall be able to do so. My attention is presently arrested by a sound which reminds me of washing, for in Cuba this operation is usually performed by placing the wet linen on a flat board, and belabouring it with a smooth stone or a heavy roller. My companion smiles when I give him my impression of the familiar sounds, and he tells me that white linen is not the object of the beating, but black limbs! An unruly slave receives his castigation at the jail when it is found inconvenient to perform the operation under his master's roof. No inquiry into the offence is made by the officers of justice; the miscreant is simply ordered twenty-five or fifty lashes, as the case may be, by his accuser, who acts also as his jury, judge, and occasionally--executioner! Whilst listening to the unfortunate's groans and appeals for mercy, I watch the proceedings of a chain-gang of labourers, some twenty of whom have left the jail for the purpose of repairing a road in an adjacent street. They are dressed in canvas suits, numbered and lettered on the back, and wear broad-brimmed straw-hats. Each man smokes, and makes a great rattling of his chains as he assists in drawing along the heavy trucks and implements for work. A couple of armed soldiers and three or four prison-warders accompany the gang; the former to keep guard, the latter to superintend the labour. Some of the prisoners sell hats, fans, toys, and other articles of their own manufacture as they go along. One of these industrious gentlemen has entered, chains and all, into a private house opposite, and while he stands bargaining with a highly respectable white, his keeper sits, like Patience, on the doorstep smoking a cigar. I withdraw from the window to meet my jailer, who has brought--not my freedom? no; my food. It is the first meal I have tasted for many long hours, and I am prepared to relish it though it be but a banana and Catalan wine. These are, however, the least items in the princely fare which the jailer has brought. The whitest of tablecloths is removed from the showiest of trays, and discloses a number of small tureens, in which fish, flesh, and fowl have been prepared in a variety of appetising ways. Besides these are a square cedar-box of guava preserves, a pot of boiling black coffee, a bundle of the best Ti Arriba cigars, and a packet of Astrea cigarettes; all served on the choicest china. This goodly repast cometh from La Señora Mercedes, under whose hospitable roof I have lodged and fed for many months. Doña Mercedes has heard of our captivity, and, without making any enquiry into the nature of our misdemeanour, has instantly despatched one of her black domestics with the best breakfast she can prepare. The Indian assures me that the admittance into jail of such a collation augurs well. I have doubtless friends who are using their influence with the officials in my behalf, and, in short, he considers my speedy release a certainty. 'Usted gusta?' I invite my companion to share the good things, but he excuses himself by saying that, with his present prospects, he would rather not recall the feeling of a good meal. He, however, partakes of some of my coffee, the odour of which is far too savoury for his self-denial, and helps me with the tobacco. Breakfast over, I take a siesta on half the furniture, and after a few hours' delicious oblivion am awakened by the jailer, who comes with the welcome news that the court is sitting, and that my presence is required. 'Imprisoned and tried on the same day!' exclaims my Indian friend. 'Then,' says he, 'I may well wish you adieu for ever!' A Cuban court of justice, broadly described, consists of two old men, a deal table, a bottle of ink, and a boy. One of the elders is the alcalde mayor, an awful being, invested with every kind of administrative power; the other functionary is his escribano, or legal man-of-all-work, who dispenses Spanish law upon the principle of 'French without a master.' He professes to teach prisoners their fate in one easy lesson, without the interposition of either counsel or jury. None but those immediately concerned in the case are admitted into the tribune; so that the prisoner, who is frequently the only party interested, has the court, so to speak, all to himself! The chamber into which I am ushered on the present occasion has very much the appearance of a schoolroom during the holidays. The walls are white-washed, and half a dozen short forms lie in disorder about the brick floor. At one end of the apartment is a yellow map of the Antilles; at the other is hung a badly painted oil portrait of her Catholic Majesty Isabella, with a soiled coat-of-arms of Castile above her, and a faded Spanish banner half concealing her royal countenance. Beneath this trophy, on a raised platform, is seated the prison magistrate, or fiscal, as he is called. Before him is a cedar-wood table, with a bottle of ink, a glass of blotting sand and a quire of stamped paper. On his right is an escribano and a couple of interpreters, whose knowledge of the English language I afterwards find to be extremely limited. On his left is seated my captive companion Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú. Everybody present, including a couple of brown-holland policemen at the door, is smoking, which has a sociable air, and inspires me with confidence. Upon my appearance in court everybody rises; the fiscal politely offers me a cigar and a seat on the bench. As a matter of form--for my Spanish is by no means unintelligible--I am examined through the medium of an interpreter, who makes a terrible hash of my replies. He talks of the 'foots of my friend's negro,' and the 'commandant's, officers', sergeant's relations,' by which I infer that the learned linguist has never overcome the fifth lesson of his Ollendorff. It is accordingly found necessary to conduct the rest of the inquiry in good Castilian. A great case has been made out against us by the commandant, who represents us in his despatch as spies in league with any quantity of confederates. A pocket-book full of nefarious notes and significant scratches has been found upon me: together with a four-bladed penknife, a metallic corkscrew, a very black lead-pencil, and an ink-eraser! In the commandant's opinion the said notes are, without doubt, private observations on the mysteries of the Morro, and the scratches are nothing more nor less than topographical plans of the fortifications. Absurd and improbable as the commandant's story may appear, it would have had great weight against us with the fiscal, and considerably protracted the period of our release, were it not for the fact that the fiscal is on intimate terms with my companion's family. This fortunate circumstance, aided by the laudable efforts of my consul, who works wonders with his excellency the governor, enables us to be set at liberty without further delay. There is, however, some difficulty in the case of our black attendant, whom the authorities would still keep in bondage, out of compliment to stern justice; but we intercede for him, and he accompanies us from jail. Crowds of people await outside and escort us to our studio, where dear old Don Benigno, his amiable señora and family, welcome us with joy. Wherever we go, we are lionised and loaded with congratulations and condolence. A kind of patriotic sentiment is mixed up with the public sympathy; Spanish rule being extremely distasteful to a Cuban, and any opportunity for expressing his disgust of an incompetent ruler being hailed by him with delight. All our Cuban friends--and, to say the truth, many of the Spaniards themselves--are unanimous in their disapproval of the commandant's conduct. But I have not yet done with the commandant, as will be seen in another chapter. CHAPTER IX. A WEST INDIAN EPIDEMIC. A Cuban Physician and his Patient--A Nightmare--A Mystery--A Cure--By the Sad Sea Waves--A Cuban Watering-place--Lobster-hunting--Another View of the Morro Castle--What 'Dios sabe' means. Not many days after the events recorded in the last chapter, I am on a sick couch. What is the nature of my infirmity? Neither I nor my companion can tell. Don Benigno, who comes to offer me his condolences, attributes the cause of my complaint to confinement in the close, vaporous dungeon of the Morro Castle, and his medical adviser, Don Francisco, who is summoned to my bed-side, confirms Don Benigno's opinion, adding, that the sudden transition from a damp atmosphere to the heat of a tropical sun may have contributed to produce my disorder. After examining me in the usual way, the physician inquires whether my head throbs without aching; whether I am troubled with certain pains in my joints and across my loins, and whether I feel altogether as if I had been confined several weeks to my bed. Marvelling much at the doctor's penetration, I reply that the symptoms he described exactly correspond with those which I experience. In short; Don Francisco is perfectly acquainted with the nature of my malady. Strange to say, however, he does not venture to give it a name, and stranger still, he leads my partner into our studio, where with closed doors both converse like a couple of assassins conspiring against my life. What passes between them is not revealed to me, but after the doctor's departure, my companion assures me I have only caught a severe cold, and that if I remain 'under cover,' I shall be perfectly well in six days. Why in six days? While pondering much over this, a strange heat oppresses me; my head throbs more than ever; my pains increase, and to add to my discomfiture, Nicasio, together with Don Benigno and our black attendant, suddenly begin to dance furiously around my 'catre,' terminating their wild gyrations by vanishing between the bars of the grated window! My friends were doubtless afraid of the commandant of the Morro and her Majesty's British consul; for these gentlemen have entered the apartment and established themselves on either side of my catre. The commandant, claiming me for his prisoner, again attempts to carry me off to the Morro Castle, but my consul envelopes me in an enormous Union Jack, and declaring that I am a British subject, dares the Spanish officer to lay a finger on me. The commandant now draws his sword--a weapon of such monstrous length that it cannot be conveniently unsheathed without detaching the scabbard from the belt from which it depends. The consul in turn exhibits a mighty scroll of parchment, which takes as long to unroll as the officer's sabre takes to unsheath. Meanwhile I watch the combatants in agonising suspense, till the chamber becomes suddenly dark. But, after a painful pause, daylight appears, and to my unspeakable relief I find that my formidable visitors have vanished, and that I am alone with Nicasio. My companion smiles and tells me that I have been talking in my sleep. In other words, that I have been delirious. Now that we are alone, I press my partner to reveal to me the true cause of my complaint; for, in spite of his previous assertion, I am more than ever convinced that the truth is being concealed from me. But Nicasio cannot be persuaded, neither does he explain why he mentioned six days as the period for my convalescence. On the fifth day, I am considerably worse than I was before. A feeling of utter prostration accompanied by an inordinate thirst comes over me. This is followed by a sensation as of sea-sickness and overpowering lassitude. I am parched with thirst, but I have neither strength to express my want in words nor to indicate it by suitable gestures. Some refreshing draught is, however, placed to my lips, which I swallow greedily; at the same time my head is relieved by the application of 'vejicatorios,' or blisters, to the soles of my feet. More than half my medical advisers prescribe bleeding, but Don Francisco will not hear of it, and from first to last this expedient is never adopted. My deplorable condition is not improved by a thought which suggests itself from the hue of my hands, which I perceive for the first time are saffron-coloured. Santo Dios! Can this be the yellow fever? The yellow fever it is; though for some mysterious reason the secret is carefully kept from me to the last. Yes: I have the 'fiebre amarilla:' but, thank God, not the 'vómito negro,' or black vomit, which is the worst form of the yellow fever, and in nine cases out of ten proves fatal. To-morrow my troubles will be over, provided that the night is passed tranquilly; but should there be the least indication of a relapse before daylight--well; the fact would not be recorded by me! To say that my beloved companion never for an instant leaves my bed-side until the critical moment has passed; or that good old Don Benigno provides for my wants, and consults at least six different doctors, who come at prescribed hours to tap me on the chest, probe me in the ribs, and press my pulse; to say that Doña Mercedes proves the best and kindest of nurses and most sympathetic of friends; and that even the loquacious Tunicú, together with a host of acquaintances, makes kind enquiries after my daily progress, and offers to provide a shopful of dainties--is to say that the attentions which I receive from strangers in a foreign country are all that my dearest relatives at home could desire. Having passed the night of the fifth day tranquilly, I awake on the morning of the memorable sixth, in a perfect state of health. All my pains have disappeared as if by magic: my head ceases to throb; my body is delightfully cool, and I am otherwise so convalescent that were it not for my doctor's strict injunctions, I should arise, dress, and betake myself to the nearest restaurant. But my West Indian physician administers to my wants in easy stages. I am allowed to sit in a rocking chair near the window with closed shutters, but I may not wash, neither may I brush my hair, nor breathe a new atmosphere for several days to come. From the mildest nourishment in the way of sugar panales and water, I am gradually introduced to more solid food, and at least a week elapses before Don Francisco approves of Don Benigno's proposal to recruit his patient's health at the sea-side. Now that the crisis is over, I learn that the greatest fears had been entertained for my recovery; that six out of the seven doctors, who had considered my case, had pronounced it hopeless. I was an Englishman, they said, and my countrymen had the reputation for indulging rather freely in stimulants--above all in malt liquors, and these stimulants were fatal to a constitution when attacked by yellow fever. But Don Francisco, who had carefully interrogated me on my past, which he found greatly belied his brother practitioners' conjectures, was more sanguine of the cure, and now that I am free from danger, he pronounces me 'acclimatised,' and as unlikely to experience another attack of the same epidemic as the natives of Cuba themselves. He, however, warns me of 'tercianas' or intermittent fevers which occasionally succeed yellow fever, and which are consequent on intemperate habits and undue exposure to the sun. Accepting Don Benigno's generous invitation to pass a few weeks with him, his family and a few friends at a watering place, I take leave of Nicasio for the first time, and become Don Benigno's guest once more. Our destination is La Socapa, a small fishing village three miles distant from town. The only way to reach La Socapa (which is situated at the narrow entrance of the Cuban Bay, and faces the Morro Castle which stands on the opposite bank) is by water. We therefore hire a heavy boat, and after an hour's sail along the sinuous harbour, we are landed at La Socapa. There are no 'apartments to let' at this favourite watering-place. When a Cuban gentleman proposes to rusticate with his family at this locality, he hires an empty house and fits it up with some furniture brought by his slaves from his residence in town. Not more than a dozen cottages are available as lodging-houses at La Socapa; the village being occupied by fishermen and their families. Don Benigno's temporary abode is isolated from the village and stands on an eminence looking seawards. It is a single-storied habitation and provides the usual accommodations of a Cuban country-house. There are no bathing machines at La Socapa. Those who are inclined for a dip in the sea betake themselves to secluded spots on the coast, and disrobe themselves behind rocks and bushes. 'Tiburones,' or sharks, occasionally visit this neighbourhood, and as these voracious creatures have a strange partiality for human limbs, the bathers are careful not to venture beyond certain stones which have been placed for the purpose of keeping out the greedy invaders. Sometimes we indulge in a little fishing off the banks of the harbour, or the gentlemen of our party take their sporting guns to an adjacent wood where wild pigeons, partridges, quails and guinea-fowl abound. This sport may be varied by a hunt after wild deer, small specimens of which are to be obtained in these parts. Our favourite evening amusement is lobster-hunting. For this sport, a big barge is procured, and, after having been furnished with carpets and rugs for the ladies' accommodation, we proceed to navigate the shores and creeks of the harbour. Three or four black fishermen accompany us and bear long torches of wood, by the light of which the ground beneath the shallow water is visible. Our prey is secured by throwing a net, in the meshes of which the lobster becomes entangled; but should this prove ineffectual, a long pole forked at one end is thrust over the creature's hard back, and as he struggles to free himself from the pronged embrace, a nimble negro dives into the water and captures him alive. Great excitement prevails when a lobster comes on board, and bounds among our crew and passengers. Having brought provisions with us, we 'make a night' of this molluscular expedition, and keep up the convivialities till two or three o'clock, A.M. One of the liveliest of our party is a young Spanish officer, whom everybody addresses as Manuel. Manuel is engaged to Don Benigno's eldest daughter, Paquita, a young lady of fourteen tropical summers, who, however, has the appearance of a señorita of sweet seventeen. I am on terms of the closest friendship with the young officer, for it was partly through his intercession with the authorities that Nicasio and I obtained our release from captivity. One day, after attiring himself in his regimentals, Don Manuel proposes a visit to the Morro Castle, and invites me to accompany him, assuring me that under his trusty escort there will be no danger of arrest. We accordingly hire a small canoe, and after rowing across the narrow harbour, land at one of the forts of the formidable fortress. The officer's uniform is an all-powerful pass wherever we go. It enables us to land, to pass the various sentries, who touch their caps respectfully as we approach, and finally to reach the commandant's private dwelling in the very heart of the stronghold. El señor comandante is at home, and invites us in. He is delighted to see his young friend the captain, and charmed to form the acquaintance of the captain's companion. He does not recognise me in the least, and satisfied of that fact, I accept his pressing invitation to lunch with himself and officers. After coffee and cigars, our host offers to show us the secrets of his prison-house. This time my eyes are not bandaged, and I follow the commandant without military assistance. We are shown all over the fortifications. We inspect minutely the old-fashioned twenty-four pounders; rest on the six bronze French guns (which, we are told, are quite new, and the only serviceable weapons in the fortress), and make other observations, which, if we were enemies with an inclination to storm the place from the sea, would greatly assist us in our operations. Now we are in the sleeping caves, where the hundred men who compose the garrison are lodged. Now we are descending flights of stone steps. We pass along hollow-sounding alleys and under echoing archways. Presently we arrive at the cooking department, where the atmosphere feels oppressive, and is black with innumerable flies. We come at last to the deepest part of the fortress, where 'criminals of the worst description' (so the commandant informs me) are lodged. Narrow, intricate passages lead to the different cells. Our guide points out some of the prisoners, and invites us to look in at them through their little square windows. Strange to say, he does not seem to be at all conversant with the nature of their offences. 'Dios sabe!' accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, is invariably the commandant's reply to any query respecting a particular prisoner. 'Dios sabe' may, however, signify a great deal more than 'Heaven knows;' and, perhaps, the commandant chooses not to explain himself. We pause before a dungeon where it is said a Chinaman committed suicide after six days' incarceration: self-slaughter among Celestials being their favourite mode of killing care. An equally suicidal Chow-chow is confined there now; but they have bound him hand and foot, and he lies muttering in falsetto like a maniac. He would doubtless give something for a little soothing opium! My friend the commandant assures me that the vault I am now surveying with such interest is unoccupied, and persuades me to pass on. But I linger lovingly at the little square window, and take a fond look at the interior. The theatre of my woe has changed in appearance, the company having gone. But there still remain the empty benches! 'Whom have you had within the past twelve months?' I ask. 'Dios sabe!' It is not the commandant's business to know where his prisoners are quartered, or what becomes of them. I apply afterwards for the same information to the captain of the garrison. 'Dios sabe!' The staff of officers engaged in the Morro service is relieved once a month, and the captain I address has only lately taken the command. 'Dios sabe!' In the majority of cases, it is, indeed, Heaven alone who knows what becomes of unfortunates in a country where law is directed through the agency of military despotism, and where the disposal of a man's life and liberty is entrusted to the mercy of a vain and capricious commandant. CHAPTER X. GENERAL TACON'S JUDGMENT. Pleasant Company--The Cigar Girl of Havana--A Tobacconist's Shop in Cuba--A Romance of Real Life--Spanish Justice abroad. My health being now perfectly established, I signify my intention of returning to my companion and duties in town. As my military friend, Don Manuel, must also depart--his leave of absence having expired--I accept his invitation to share the boat which is to convey him to Santiago, and bid adieu to Don Benigno and his family, who contemplate remaining at the sea-side for some days longer. Don Manuel is excellent company, and, although an officer in the Spanish service, his views of politics are exceedingly liberal. During the homeward passage, the officer entertains me with various stories illustrative of Cuban administration. He tells me that since the Pearl of the Antilles has adorned the Spanish crown, the island of Cuba has always been governed by a captain-general, a mighty personage, invested with much the same power and authority as that of a monarch in some countries, and, like a king, could not possibly do anything that was wrong. 'The Cubans,' says he, 'have seldom had reason to be grateful to Spain for the rulers she has appointed over them, because these have been usually selected rather on the score of influence than capacity or merit. There is, however, on record at least one captain-general whose name is held in esteem by the Cuban people, on account of the good he effected during his short reign in Havana. Captain-General Tacon established some degree of safety for the inhabitants by introducing new laws, and by severely punishing certain social offences which his predecessors had rather overlooked, if they did not themselves set the example. It is said of Tacon that, like Alfred the Great, he promised the Cubans that they should be able to cast their purses upon the public pavement, and yet find them there again after many days. Stories are current in Cuba of the general's singular mode of administering justice, which in many cases partook of an originality somewhat whimsical of its kind.' Don Manuel gives me the most popular story of this sort--that of the cigar girl of Havana, which I will now repeat to the reader in the following form: Miralda Estalez was remarkable alike for the beauty of her person and the excellence of her tobacco. She kept a cigar-shop in Havana, in the Calle del Comercio; a narrow street, with a footpath scarcely wider than an ordinary kerbstone. It was the veriest section of a shop, without a front of any kind; presenting, from the street side, much the same appearance as a burnt-out dwelling would exhibit, or a theatrical scene viewed by an audience. During the hot hours of the day a curtain was suspended before the shop to ward off the powerful rays of the sun, under whose influence the delicate goods within might otherwise be prematurely dried, while the effect would be equally detrimental to their fair vendor. The easy mode of access, assisted by the narrow kerbstone, together with many attractions within the shop, tempted many passers to drop in for a chat and a cigar. There was a little counter, with little pyramidal heaps of cigarette packets and cigars, of the genuine Havana brand, distributed upon it. Affixed to a wall at the back was a glass show-case, fitted with shelves like a book-case, and laden with bundles of the precious leaves, placed like volumes side by side, and bound in bright yellow ribbon. Although Miralda was visited from morning till night by every kind of male, black and brown, as well as white, nothing was ever said against the virtue of the young tobacconist. Like the cigars she sold, Miralda was of 'calidad superior;' and, in the same manner, age had rather improved her quality than otherwise, for it had ripened her into a charming full-grown woman of sixteen tropical summers. Some merit was due to Miralda for the respectable life she led; for, besides the temptations to which she was daily and hourly subjected, she was quite alone in the world, her parents, brothers, and sisters being dead. Miralda naturally found many admirers among her numerous customers; she, however, made no distinction with them, but had a bright smile and a kind word for all who favoured her with their praises and their patronage. One alone, perhaps, held a place nearer her heart than all others. This was Don Pedro Mantanez, a young boatman employed in the harbour near the Morro Castle. Pedro was of good white parentage, though one would not have judged so from the colour of his skin, which, from long exposure to the sun and the weather, had turned a pale coffee colour. Pedro loved Miralda fondly, and she was by no means indifferent to the handsome Creole. But the pretty tobacconist was in no hurry to wear the matrimonial chains. The business, like herself, was far from old-established, and she thought in her capacity of a married woman the attractions of her shop would diminish by at least one-half, while her patrons would disappear in the same ratio. Miralda once made her lover a promise that she would marry him as soon as he should have won a prize in the lottery; for, with his savings, this would enable Pedro to have a share in her business as well as in her happiness. So, once a month, Pedro invested a doubloon in lottery-tickets; but, as he never succeeded in winning a prize, he failed to wed the pretty tobacconist. Still, the young boatman continued to drop anchor at the cigar-shop as often as his spare time would allow; and as the fond couple always conducted themselves with the strictest propriety, their engagement remained a secret. Now Pedro Mantanez had a rival, and, to a certain extent, a formidable one. The Count Almante was a noble of Spanish birth, and an officer by profession. He was one of those fortunate gentlemen who, from no inherent talent or acquired ability, had been sent from the mother-country to enrich himself in her prosperous colony. Besides his wealth, which report described as ill-gotten, he gloried in the reputation of being a gay cavalier in Havana, and a great favourite with the Creole ladies. It was his boast that no girl beneath him in station had been yet known to reject any offer he might propose; and he would sometimes lay wagers with his associates that the lady whom he had newly honoured with his admiration would, at a given time, stand entered in his book of amours as a fresh conquest. To achieve a particular object, the count would never allow anything, human or otherwise, to stand in his path; and by reason of his wealth, his nobility, and his influence with the authorities, his crimes were numerous and his punishments few, if any. It happened that the last señorita who had taken Count Almante's fancy was Miralda Estalez. The count spent many hours and many pesetas at the pretty tobacconist's counter, where, we may be sure, he used his most persuasive language to attain his very improper purpose. Accustomed to have pretty things poured into her ears by a variety of admirers, Miralda regarded the count's addresses with indifference; and, while behaving with her wonted amiability of manner, gave him neither encouragement nor motive for pressing his suit. One evening the count lingered at the cigar-shop longer than custom allows, and, under the pretence of purchasing and smoking more cigars, remained until the neighbouring shops were closed and the streets were deserted. Alone with the girl, and insured against intruders, Count Almante ventured to disclose his unworthy passion. Amongst other things, he said: 'If you will love me and live with me, I will give you as many golden onzas as you require, and I will place at your disposal another and a better shop in the suburbs of the Cerro, where you can carry on your business as before.' The Cerro was situated near the count's palace. Miralda said nothing in reply; but, looking the count steadily in the face, gave him the name of another shop where, she informed him, he would obtain better cigars than those she sold. Heedless of the significance of her remark, which he attributed to shyness, Almante rose from where he had been seated, and, approaching the girl, endeavoured to place his arm round her waist. Ever guarded against the casualties of insult, Miralda retreated a step, and at the same moment drawing a small dagger from the folds of her dress, warned the count not to touch her. Baulked in his design, Almante withdrew, assuring the girl with a smile that he did but jest; but as he left the shop he bit his lip and clenched his fist with evident disappointment. When Pedro heard of what had happened, his indignation was great, and he resolved to take summary vengeance; but Miralda begged him not to be precipitate, as she had now no fear of further molestation from the count; and as days elapsed, and Almante had not resumed his visits, it seemed apparent that he had taken Miralda's advice, and transferred his custom elsewhere. One evening, as Miralda was about to close her shop for the night, a party of soldiers halted before her door. The commanding officer entered, and, without a word, presented to the astonished tobacconist a warrant for her arrest. Knowing that it was useless to disobey any officer in the employ of the captain-general, Miralda signified her readiness to accompany the military escort, who, accordingly, placed her in their midst, and conducted her through the streets in the direction of the prison. But instead of halting here, the party continued their march until they had reached the confines of the city. Miralda's courage now deserted her, and, with tears in her eyes, she appealed to the officer in command. 'Por la Virgen Santísima!' she exclaimed, 'let me know where I am being taken to.' 'You will learn when you get there. Our orders strictly forbid us to make any explanation,' was the only reply she obtained. Miralda was not long in learning the worst. Very shortly, her escort halted before Count Almante's castle in the neighbourhood of the Cerro, and, having entered the court-yard of that building, the fair captive was conducted tremblingly into a chamber elegantly fitted up for her reception. After waiting here a few minutes in painful suspense, an inner door was thrown open, and Count Almante stood before her. The scene which then followed may be better imagined than described. We may be sure that the count used every effort in order to prevail upon his prisoner, but without success. Miralda's invariable response was a gleam of her dagger, which never left her hand from the first moment of entering the odious building. Finding that mild measures would not win the pretty tobacconist, the count, as is usual under such circumstances with persons of his nature, threatened her with violence; and he would, doubtless, have carried out his threat, if Miralda had not anticipated him by promising to relent and to become his if her persecutor would allow her one short week to reconsider her determination. Deceived by the girl's assumed manner, Almante acceded to her desire and agreed to wait. Miralda, however, felt assured that before long her lover would discover her whereabouts, and by some means effect her release. She was not disappointed. Miralda's sudden disappearance was soon made known to Pedro Mantanez, who, confident that his beloved had fallen into the count's clutches, determined to obtain access to Almante's palace. For this purpose he assumed the dress of a monk; and, his face being unknown at the castle, he easily obtained an entry, and afterwards an interview with Miralda herself. The girl's surprise and joy at beholding her lover were unbounded. In his strong embrace, she became oblivious of her sorrows, confident that the young boatman would now conduct her speedily into a harbour of refuge. She was not mistaken. Pedro sought and obtained an audience with General Tacon. The general was, as usual, immersed in public affairs; but, being gifted with the enviable faculty of hearing, talking, and writing at the same moment, merely glanced at his applicant, and desired him to tell his story. Pedro did as he was desired, and when he had concluded, Tacon, without raising his eyes from the papers with which he appeared intently engaged, made the following inquiry: 'Is Miralda Estalez your sister?' 'No, su excelencia, she is not,' replied Pedro. 'Your wife, perhaps?' suggested the general. 'She is my betrothed!' General Tacon motioned the young man to approach, and then directing a look to him which seemed to read him through, held up a crucifix, and bade him swear to the truth of all that he had stated. Pedro knelt, and taking the cross in both hands, kissed it, and made the oath required of him. When he had done so, the general pointed to an apartment, where he desired Pedro to wait until he was summoned. Aware of the brief and severe manner in which General Tacon dealt with all social questions, Pedro Mantanez left the august presence in doubt whether his judge would decide for or against his case. His suspense was not of long duration. In an hour or so, one of the governor's guards entered, ushering in Count Almante and his captive lady. The general received the new-comers in the same manner as he had received the young boatman. In a tone of apparent indifference, he addressed the count as follows: 'If I am not mistaken, you have abused your authority by effecting the abduction of this girl?' 'I confess I have done so,' replied the count, in a tone intended to match that of his superior; 'but,' he continued, with a conciliatory smile, 'I think that the affair is of such a nature that it need not occupy the attention of your excellency.' 'Well, perhaps not,' said his judge, still busy over the documents before him. 'I simply wish to learn from you, upon your word of honour, whether any violence has been used towards the girl.' 'None whatever, upon my honour,' replied Almante, 'and I am happy in believing that none will be required!' 'Is the girl already yours, then?' 'Not at present,' said the count, with a supercilious smirk, 'but she has promised to become mine very shortly.' 'Is this true?' inquired the captain-general, for the first time raising his eyes, and turning to Miralda, who replied: 'My promise was made only with a view to save myself from threatened violence.' 'Do you say this upon your oath?' 'Upon my oath I do!' The general now ordered Pedro Mantanez to appear, and then carefully interrogated the lovers upon their engagement. Whilst doing so he wrote a dispatch and handed it to one of his guards. When the latter had departed, Tacon sent a messenger in quest of a priest and a lawyer. When these arrived, the general commanded the priest to perform the ceremony of marriage between Miralda Estalez and Count Almante and bade the lawyer prepare the necessary documents for the same purpose. The count, who had already expressed his vexation at what promised to be an attempt to deprive him of his new favorite by allying her with the boatman, was horrified when he heard what the governor's mandate really was. His indignation was extreme, and he endeavoured to show how preposterous such an alliance would be, by reminding the general of his noble birth and honorable calling. Pedro was equally disappointed at being thus dispossessed of his betrothed and appealed to Tacon's generosity and sense of right. Miralda remained speechless with astonishment, but with the most perfect reliance in the wisdom of her judge. Meanwhile, in spite of all remonstrances, the marriage was formally solemnised, and Miralda Estalez and Count Almante were man and wife. The unhappy bridegroom was then requested to return to his palace in the Cerro, while his bride and her late lover were desired to remain. Upwards of an hour had passed since the count's departure, and nothing further transpired. The governor had resumed his business affairs, and appeared, as before, utterly unconscious of all present. He was however shortly interrupted by the appearance of the guard whom he had despatched with his missive. 'Is my order executed?' inquired the general, looking up for a moment only. 'Sí, mi general, it is,' replied the guard. 'Nine bullets were fired at the count as he rode round the corner of the street mentioned in your dispatch.' Tacon then ordered that the marriage and death of Count Almante should receive all publicity, and that legal steps should be taken for the purpose of showing that the property and name of the defunct were inherited by his disconsolate widow. When the general's commands had been fulfilled, and a decent period after the count's demise had transpired, it need scarcely be added that Pedro Mantanez married the countess, with whom he lived happily ever after. 'Rather a barbarous way of administering justice,' I remark, at the conclusion of Don Manuel's story. 'In my country,' I add, 'such an act as that which General Tacon committed would be called murder.' 'It is not looked upon in that light here,' says the officer. 'You must remember that the count had been already guilty of many crimes worthy the punishment of death, and as there had been no means of bringing him to justice, justice improved the occasion which his last offence presented, and, as it were, came to him!' CHAPTER XI. (VERY) HIGH ART IN CUBA. On the Ceiling--'Pintar-monos'--A Chemist's Shop _à la Polychrome_--Sculpture under Difficulties--'Nothing like Leather'--A Triumph in Triumphal Arches--Cuban Carpenters--The Captain-General of Havana. Our incarceration proves of professional service to us. It spreads our renown and procures us more congenial patronage than we have hitherto received. While I have been rusticating at La Socapa, my brother limner has been busily employed on work in which he takes especial delight. A rich marquis having just returned from a visit to Europe, is inspired with the desire to decorate his new mansion, which has lately been purchased by him, in what he calls a 'tasteful' fashion. For this purpose all the decorative talent of the town is engaged. Nicasio is also applied to, and undertakes to adorn the ceiling of the long reception-room with four large oil paintings representing the seasons. The marquis has not perfected his taste for the fine arts by his visit to Europe, for he still persists in applying the vulgar term 'mono,' or monkey, to all paintings in which figures form the leading features, and of classifying everything else under the general denomination of 'paisaje.' All artists are to him 'pintar-monos,' or painters of monkeys, and when he summons my partner to arrange about the pictures which he desires to have affixed to his ceiling, he points to the octagonal spaces which these productions are destined to fill, and observes: 'Quiero cuatro monos para tapar estos hoyos,' which is equivalent to saying: I want four daubs (monkeys) to cover over those holes with. Nicasio accordingly makes sundry small designs for the four 'monos,' in which certain allegorical figures of ladies in scanty robes, and Cupids without any apparel, are introduced. My partner's favourite water-carriers, Regina and Mapí, together with Doña Mercedes' well-formed baby Isabelica, serve as models for Spring, Summer and Winter which when finished, are affixed to their respective 'hoyos' or holes in the ceiling. The picture of Autumn, however, remains uncompleted. The rich marquis discovers that the quality of the work far exceeds his expectations and finding also that its value has increased in proportion, he considers that this season, which happens to be the last executed, should be 'thrown in,' or in other words included in the price charged for the other three. In short, he declares that unless the 'pintar-monos' agrees to this arrangement, that he (the marquis) will get another pintar-monos to complete the series. As Nicasio objects to work gratis, our patron, true to his word, commissions a house decorator to supply the missing season, and the result may be easily imagined! The Cuban critics are, however, sufficiently intelligent to distinguish between the good and the very bad; and thus while the local papers are unanimous in their praises of Spring, Summer and Winter, they do not hesitate to pronounce Autumn a failure and an 'unseasonable' production. The success which attends my companion's efforts, induces others to embark in decorative enterprises, and among our patrons for this new kind of work, is a 'botecario,' or chemist, who offers us a large amount to paint and otherwise adorn his new shop in what he calls the polychrome style. We have the vaguest notions on that subject, but so have also the chemist and the Cuban critics. We accordingly undertake the work, and manufacture something in which the Pompeian, the Rafaelesque, the Arabesque, and the French wall-paper equally participate. In the centre of the ceiling is to be placed a large allegorical oil-painting, representing a female figure of France in the act of crowning the bust of the famous chemist Orfila. In the four angles of the ceiling are to be painted portraits of the Spanish physician the Marquis of Joca, the English chemist Faraday, the Italian anatomist Paganucci, and the French chemist Velpeau. It takes exactly seven months to carry out our design, in the execution whereof we are assisted by the native talent already alluded to. Among our staff of operators are a couple of black white-washers for the broad work, a master carpenter with his apprentice for the carvings, and an indefatigable Chow-chow, or Chinaman, whom we employ extensively for the elaborate pattern work. Our mulatto pupils also help us in many ways. The chief objects of attraction in this great undertaking are without a doubt a pair of life-sized figures of two celebrated French chemists, named Parmentier and Vauquelin, destined to stand in a conspicuous part of the shop. As there are no sculptors in our town, it devolves as usual upon the 'followers of the divine art of Apelles' to try their hands at the art of Phidias. Confident of success, the chemist provides us with a couple of plaster busts representing the French celebrities in question, and bids us do our best. The fragments of drapery exhibited on these gentlemen enable us to decide on the kind of costume which our figures should wear; the one being indicative of a robe somewhat clerical, and the other evincing without a doubt that the original belonged to a period when knee-breeches and top-boots were much in vogue. The resources of Cuba for the making of statues are limited, so the material we employ is slight. We construct our figures upon the principle on which paper masks are made, and by painting them afterwards in imitation of marble, a very solid appearance may be obtained. I will not describe the many difficulties which we encounter at every stage of this process; but when the hollow effigies are complete and we have fixed them to their painted wooden plinths, we are vain enough to believe that we have produced as goodly a pair of sham statues as you would see if you travelled from one extremity of Cuba to the other. It is the night which precedes the opening of the chemist's shop, and we have retired to our dormitories after having given a final coat of marble colour to our pasteboard productions. I am about to tumble into my hammock, when my progress is arrested by a strange sound which seems to emanate from an adjoining chamber. I re-ignite my extinguished lamp, and take a peep into the studio. Something is certainly moving in that apartment. I summon my companion, who joins me, and we enter our sanctum. 'Misericordia! One of the statues is alive,' I exclaim, horrified at what appears to me a second edition of Frankenstein. 'Eppur si muove!' ejaculates Nicasio, quoting from another authority. Monsieur Parmentier--he of the periwig and top-boots--is sinking perceptibly, though gradually. We advance to save him, but alas! too late; the illustrious Frenchman is already on his bended boots. The wooden props which supported his hollow legs have given way, and his top boots are now a shapeless mass. We pause for a moment to contemplate the wreck before us, and immediately set about repairing the damage. But how? A brilliant idea suggests itself. In a corner of the studio stand the leather originals which have served us as models for the extremities of the injured statue. These same boots belong to an obliging shoemaker who has only lent them to us. But what of that? The case is urgent, and this is no time to run after our friend and bargain with him for his property. To fill the boots with plaster of Paris; to humour them, while the plaster is yet moist, into something which resembles the human leg divine, is the work of a few moments. To fix them firmly to the wooden plinth, and prop over them the incomplete torso by means of laths cunningly concealed, occupies little more than an hour and a half. A coat of thick white paint administered below, completes the operation, and Parmentier is erect again, and apparently none the worse for his disaster. One more layer of paint early next morning, and the statue is faultless, and ready for being borne triumphantly from our studio to its destination. There it is placed in its niche, and no one suspects the mishap. Evening approaches, and with it come crowds of Cuban dilettanti and others who have been invited. The ceremony of blessing the new undertaking is solemnised according to custom by a priest, and an assistant who sprinkles holy-water from a small hand-broom upon everything and everybody, while a short prayer in Latin is chanted. Then the guests proceed to examine the various embellishments of this singular shop, pausing to refresh themselves from the sumptuous repast which the chemist has provided for his guests and patrons in an adjoining chamber. The statues form a subject for wonder with everybody, and no one will believe that they are constructed of other than solid material. Even the credulous, who are permitted to tap one of Parmentier's boots as a convincing test, cannot help sharing the popular delusion. But our friend the shoemaker is not so easily deceived. From certain signs, known only to himself, he recognises in the statue's painted extremities his own appropriated goods. We swear him to secrecy, and offer to pay him liberally for the loss he has sustained; and it pleases him to discover that in the pursuit of the fine arts--and as regards statue-making in the West Indies we echo the sentiment--there is nothing like leather! The chemist's shop is scarcely disposed of, when application is again made to us for another important undertaking. The Captain-General of Havana has signified his intention to honour our town with a visit, and preparations for his reception must accordingly be made. The good people of Cuba have not a superabundance of affection for their distinguished chief: possibly because captains-general are not as a rule all that their subjects might desire. But a visit from his excellency is such an unusual event (for our captain-general is rarely absent from his comfortable palace in the Havana) that the inhabitants of Santiago determine to make at least holiday--if not to profit--out of the occasion. The merchants and shopkeepers are especially interested in exhibiting their loyalty; for in this manner they hope to obtain many mercantile concessions. Certain little nefarious transactions connected with the custom-house may through the captain-general's benevolence be forgiven or ignored, while other matters, connected with the landing of negroes, may also pass censorship. A number of petitions for various local favours have been also prepared, and in short the inhabitants hope to derive many advantages from the visit of their colonial King. The merchants' contribution towards the festivities will be a public ball in the theatre, and a grand triumphal arch, which they propose to erect in the principal thoroughfare. But a triumphal arch, such as these gentlemen contemplate, is not so easily obtained in Cuba. Los Señores Bosch Brothers--who are appointed to direct this work--have, however, no difficulty in providing architects qualified to undertake the fabrication required. The followers of the divine art of Apelles no doubt 'deal' in triumphal arches, and the 'job' is accordingly offered to them. Our experience in the manufacture of triumphal arches is not wide, but our patrons are so very pressing, and their terms are, moreover, so very liberal, that we are finally induced to embark in the enterprise. A plan of the proposed structure having been drawn and submitted for approval to Don Elijio, who is the head of the firm of Bosch Brothers, our operations begin. The order of architecture which we adopt partakes of the Norman and the early Gothic, with a 'dash,' so to speak, of the Byzantine, to give it a cheerful aspect. It might remind the learned in these matters of York Minster, Temple Bar, or a court in the Crystal Palace; but the Señores Bosch Brothers--whose acquaintance with architectural master-pieces is confined to the governor's palace of lath and plaster, and the white-washed cathedral--are easily satisfied. Our labours are conducted in the extensive store-room of Messrs. Bosch Brothers, which, in order to facilitate our operations, is cleared of its cumbersome contents. The arch is destined to stand in that part of the street which divides the warehouse from the market-place. The latter stands at an elevation of more than forty feet above the pavement, and is reached by a wide flight of stone steps. It forms part of our plan to connect our frail edifice with the market wall, and match its local stone colour. We have exactly a month for the completion of our task, and we make the most of our time. Cart-loads of white wood, in planks and logs, arrive at all hours of the day, together with yards upon yards of coarse canvas, pounds of nails, colours in powder, huge earthenware pots and size. In short, our requirements are akin to those of a scene painter. Thrifty Don Elijio has periodical moments of panic; for it seems to him that our demands for wood, paint, canvas and nails, are exorbitant, and more than once he predicts the ruin of his speculation. The merchant begins to regret that he did not persuade us to 'contract' for the whole expense, instead of receiving a separate remuneration for our time and labour. Sometimes he will endeavour to show that there is something defective in our agreement. 'Look here!' says he. 'You are artists, and if I come to you to have my portrait painted, I suppose you will not expect me to pay for your colours and canvas?' We have neither time nor ability to argue the point; but the man of many bargains is easily convinced, when we hint about relinquishing our labours! Foiled in his effort to reduce expenses, the merchant tries to economise in another way, by questioning the propriety of adopting certain little contrivances which he cannot for the life of him follow in the original plan. 'What are those hugh firework sort of wheels for?' he asks one day. 'I don't see them in the drawing, and therefore consider them unnecessary.' 'Those wheels,' we explain, 'which you are pleased to compare with fireworks, constitute the skeleton, or framework, of four turrets, which, after having been concealed behind canvas, painted stone-colour, and relieved with imitation port-holes, will be suspended from the uppermost angles of the arch.' 'And where is that broad octagonal chimney to be placed?' inquires the merchant. 'That "chimney,"' we reply, 'represents a Gothic temple, and is destined to stand over the centre of the arch upon a graduated pedestal.' The wood-work of our fabric is put together by a number of black and brown carpenters; but we have to superintend every part, as these gentlemen have no notion whatever of architectural devices, and our eloquence fails to convey to their intelligence our multifarious needs. The readiest of our assistants is a young mulatto, nicknamed El Tuerto by reason of a strong cast in his left eye. He is far more industrious than his fellow-workmen, most of whom have a weakness for aguardiente, and are consequently often in what my medical friend Doctor Acéro terms, 'a state of vulgar excitement.' El Tuerto easily grasps at an idea, and sometimes offers a useful suggestion or two. It is he who recommends to our notice a friend of his who, he thinks, might be serviceable in the painting department. The friend in question is a feeble old negro, occasionally afflicted with delirium tremens. We try him with the 'line' work, which consists in squaring off the imitation stones of the painted masonry: but, his hand being too unsteady for this, we employ him for the graining, which accords better with his peculiar 'touch,' as the process requires certain nervous jerks of the wrist. At length the day arrives when the stones of the street must be uprooted, the tall scaffolding planted, and the innumerable pieces of painted canvas which form the external covering of the arch, united and raised to their respective places. When the fabric is complete, the local papers, which have already noticed its progress from time to time, thus describe its beauties: 'The triumphal arch erected in the Calle de la Marina by the merchants and planters of Santiago, is the combined work of those illustrious followers of the divine art of Apelles, Don Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú and El Caballero Inglés Don Gualterio. This imposing structure measures forty-five feet in height, thirty feet in breadth, and nine feet in depth. It is supposed to represent part of an old feudal castle with its turrets, port-holes and belfry, and is painted in imitation of granite stone, which forms a striking contrast with the intense blue of our tropical sky, against which the arch stands in bold relief. 'On either side of the façade are painted colossal figures representing Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Justice. Above these allegories are placed the escutcheons of our illustrious Captain-General, together with the coats-of-arms belonging to Spain and to Santiago de Cuba. Near the centre of the arch are recorded in bold and fanciful letters the various triumphs of our distinguished general; such as the blockade of Zaragoza in 1843, the glorious campaign in Portugal, 1847, the Italian expedition, etc. 'Upon each of the four turrets are planted tall flag-staffs, from which coloured streamers gracefully depend, and over the centre of the arch, upon the summit of the pretty campanilla, waves majestically in the breeze the imposing banner of Spanish commerce. 'From the palms of the arch is suspended a garland of natural evergreens, in which is artistically entwined a broad red and orange-coloured ribbon bearing the following inscription: '"To His Excellency the Captain-General: from the Merchants and Planters of Santiago de Cuba."' His excellency arrives in due course, and is so thoroughly gratified with his reception in Santiago, that upon his return to Havana he reports favourably to his government upon the progress and prosperity of our part of the 'Ever-faithful Isle.' CHAPTER XII. A CORRESPONDENT IN THE WEST INDIES. American News-agents and their Work--Local Information--The 'Glorious Campaign' of Santo Domingo--'El Cañon de Montecristo'--Wounded Soldiers--Still Life again!--A Visit from the Spanish Fleet--Escape from Jail. 'Here is something in your line,' remarks Nicasio one day, handing me a letter which has just been brought to our studio by a black messenger. The letter is from Don Elijio, of the firm of Bosch Brothers, and states that the Havana agent of the _New York Trigger_ has commissioned the merchants to find him a person who is both qualified and willing to undertake the post of newspaper correspondent. The individual must have a thorough knowledge of the Spanish and English languages; he must be conversant with the ways of Cuba and be in a position to collect facts connected with the social and political life of the town in which he resides. His duties will also be to receive communications from the agents of the American newspaper in question, who are dispersed all over the West Indies, and after selecting the chief points of interest contained in these communications, he must dispatch them, in the form of telegrams and news-letters, to head-quarters in Havana. For these services a liberal monthly salary is offered, and Don Elijio presuming that journalism is in some way related to 'the divine art of Apelles,' and having moreover every confidence in our versatile powers, offers us the engagement. All is fish that comes to our net in Cuban waters, so as art 'trade' is looking rather 'dull,' owing to recent monetary panics in the town, Nicasio advises me to give the correspondent business a trial. I accordingly accept the proffered post, and after some preliminary arrangements with Messrs Bosch Brothers, commence operations. In my capacity of correspondent to the _New York Trigger_, I am required to follow certain directions with which the central agent in Havana supplies me. First, a telegram, containing the pith of the news I have to impart, must be dispatched with all speed to head-quarters in Havana, where it will be again transmitted to New York by means of the submarine cable between Havana and Florida. The telegram must be shortly followed by a carefully composed news-letter, of which press-copies must be taken and dispatched by two or three different routes. I am enjoined to remember that 'the first thing correspondents should acquire is news, and the second is how to give it; not forgetting that they are writing for a newspaper and not for a magazine.' 'The correspondence,' says the directions, 'should embrace all that bears upon the political, administrative, agricultural, mining, commercial and other topics of the day, including new enterprises, new railroads and telegraphs. It is important to obtain the particulars of any measure contemplated by the Spanish Government, but these must be obtained from _reliable_ sources and _before_ they have been made public. Local subjects should be eschewed, except they bear on politics, or on anything transcendental and of a "sensational" character likely to interest the American public.' The shipping list, containing the names of vessels and their dates of arrival and departure to and from any port, together with a brief account of any disaster at sea, forms an important item in the agent's duties. But above all promptness in the dispatch of news 'bearing a sensational character,' is strongly recommended. To be _in advance_ of its contemporaries--or at least never behind them--is the end and aim of the American paper which I serve, and to attain these desirable objects, every artifice must be employed and 'no expense spared.' The agents established in the neighbouring islands and in South America are mostly natives of the towns where they reside and, like myself, have other occupations besides those which concern a newspaper. Señor Pillo, who supplies most of my South American news, is a clerk in a sugar warehouse. Mons. Blagué of Hayti is a cigar manufacturer in that colony, while Meinheer Vandercram is a sorter in the Post-office at St Thomas. Then there is Mr. Archibald Cannie, in the adjacent island of Jamaica, who furnishes me with abundant news from Colon, Panama, St. Domingo, Barbadoes, Trinidad and a family of sister isles. These persons sometimes give me a world of trouble with their conflicting statements and confused information, and their sins are invariably visited upon my shoulders. Mr. Cannie of Jamaica is, however, the best of my correspondents, though he is occasionally afflicted with what my employer in Havana styles 'Magazine on the brain;' which means that Mr. Cannie is too prolific, and adopts a diffuse, rambling mode of imparting facts in preference to those much desired virtues brevity and conciseness. My residence--on an elevated part of the town commanding a view of the Cuban Bay--enables me to sight vessels before they have anchored in the harbour. Every ship is announced to the authorities by means of signals. A signal post is planted on the Morro Castle overlooking the sea. Another is situated inland between the fortress and the town, while a third stands within telescope range of the Custom-house. It is this last which, on certain days, engrosses my attention; for by it I am made aware of the approach of vessels long before they are visible in the bay. The signal post is shaped like a cross, to the points of which are hoisted black and white balls and coloured banners, by means of which the description of the craft, together with her name and country, is made known. In my employ is a young negro who, whenever a vessel is expected, squats in the shade of our broad balcony, and with a telescope placed to his left eye takes observation of the signal post. As soon as anything is hoisted, the black sentinel reports the same to me after the following fashion: 'Miamo, alerte! The signal is speaking.' 'What does it say, negrito?' I inquire from within. 'White ball in the centre, miamo.' By this I know that a steamer is in sight. After a pause my negrito informs me that the signal has added something to its last observation. 'What does it say?' 'Blue streamer to windward under white ball.' From these appearances I gather where the steamer hails from and what is her nationality. In the same manner I derive other information respecting the coming craft, all of which I hasten to note down. The sound of a gun warns me that the vessel has already entered the harbour, six miles distant. Anon she appears cautiously steering through the narrow winding bay; gradually disclosing first her rig, then her colours, and lastly her name. Long before the ship has dropped anchor, I have reached the quay, where I embark in a small canoe to meet the moving steamer. Arrived within hailing distance of the vessel, I shout to the purser, the supercargo, or to anybody else who may have brought news or correspondence for me. If I succeeded in obtaining some, I land again, and before the anchorage gun is fired, I am on my way to the telegraph office. Here--with my dispatches before me--I compose and forward a brief summary of news from the port whence the steamer hails, and if there is nothing to interrupt the line of communication with America, the _New York Trigger_ will contain my telegrams in its second edition of the following day. I have many difficulties to contend with in my quest of local matter in Santiago. Some of my Cuban friends help me in my researches, and I also pick up fragments of 'intelligence' in the cafés, the public promenade, the warehouses, and the newspaper offices. Occasionally I hold secret audience with an intelligent native, who volunteers some extraordinary information on a local subject which is of no interest whatever to anybody except my informant. Sometimes the applicant is persuaded that I have indirect influence with the American Congress, and presses me to communicate his grievance to the authorities in Washington. I dare not close my ear against such applicants, for in the mass of valueless dross which I receive, I sometimes discover a rough diamond which, after due cutting and polishing, I dispose of to the _New York Trigger_. For instance: an aged negro of my acquaintance comes to me one day, with the astounding information that he, and a number of equally decrepit and unserviceable slaves, have been killed and buried by his master. In other words, the owners of these useless helots have hoodwinked the slave emancipators by representing their decrepit human property as defunct, while they substitute fresh importations in their places. Subsequently I learn that a landing of blacks has been lately effected near Guantánamo, and, upon a closer investigation, I gather the curious particulars, which are these:-- The Capitan de Partido, or Major of the district, where the nefarious transaction took place, was naïvely requested by the parties interested in the landing to absent himself from the locality during a certain week; for which simple act he would receive four or five thousand dollars. During his absence, the landing of slaves is of course effected; and when the authorities hear of the transaction, and reprimand el Capitan de Partido for his want of vigilance, the latter exonerates himself by explaining how he was unfortunately absent from his post within the very date of the embarkation. This is a topic of passing interest to the American people, while it affords the _Trigger_ a text for a number of 'telling' articles relative to slave-emancipation, in which an appeal is made to the American Congress on the expediency of taking the colony in hand. Many other important events transpire while I am fulfilling my duties of correspondent to the _New York Trigger_. Prominent among these, is the return from Santo Domingo of the Spanish army after another unsuccessful attempt to establish a footing in that island. In order to assure the people of Cuba that the campaign has been attended with 'glorious' results, a public fiesta in honour of the return of General Gandarias and his followers is celebrated in our town. The streets are gaily decorated, and a certain cannon, which had been captured in Montecristo by the Spaniards, is wheeled on a cart through the streets, followed by a procession of soldiers and a band of music. This cannon--which is a heavy-looking, unserviceable weapon of the old-fashioned calibre--is made much of by everybody, and finally a niche is built in a wall of the cathedral, and the 'cañon de Montecristo,' as it is henceforth derisively termed by the Cubans, is deposited in this niche with a railing before it, and an inscription above, in which the people of Cuba are reminded of the 'glorious campaign of Santo Domingo.' Shortly after the appearance of the cañon de Montecristo, some vessels of war from the seat of hostilities arrive with a vast cargo of sick and wounded Spaniards. 'The Loyal and Ever-faithful' inhabitants of Santiago meet them on board, and some volunteer to convey the infirm soldiers to the hospitals in town. Nicasio and I are pressed into this service by our good friend Doctor Francisco, who is the head medical officer of the garrison. Each soldier, as he is landed, is placed on a canvas stretcher, provided with a couple of stout poles, and in this manner he is borne on the shoulders of four volunteers. When all have safely disembarked, a procession is formed, and headed by a band of music, we march slowly through the streets in the direction of Santa Ana, where the military hospital is situated. The distance is about two miles, and we have to move with extreme care so as to aggravate as little as possible the sufferings of the wounded men. The individual whom Nicasio and I, assisted by a couple of friends, have volunteered to convey, is the young Spanish officer Don Manuel, the betrothed of Don Benigno's daughter. He does not appear to be seriously wounded, for he chats pleasantly with us on the way and gives us a vivid description of his late experiences. Arrived at the hospital, we deposit our burthens on their respective couches, where the poor fellows are, in due time, left to the tender care of Doctor Francisco and his assistant surgeons. Don Manuel is one of the first whom the doctor visits. A ball has lodged in the young fellow's hip, but he endures his painful operation bravely. While the ball is being extracted, Don Manuel smokes cigarettes, and converses with those around him. I gather from the communicative young officer much information respecting the late war. He tells me that the Spanish soldiers acted with their accustomed valour, and did their best to vanquish their black opponents; but that in spite of their efforts, the enemy proved more than a match for them. The guerilla mode of warfare adopted by the swarthy warriors, assisted by the bad roads and impenetrable country, together with the fatal effects of the climate, combined to defeat the assailants, and, after many fruitless attempts, attended with considerable losses to the Spanish army, the troops were ordered to withdraw from the scene of hostilities. Always with an 'eye to business,' my partner and I improve the occasion by obtaining sundry commissions for portraits of some of the distinguished officers who had fallen in the late campaign. One of the more important works of this kind is a large historical picture, in which the illustrious commander of the expedition and his staff of officers are introduced. In order to ensure correct likenesses of the individuals who are to figure in our painted production, photographs, and military uniforms are supplied for our use. Many weary weeks are devoted to this _capo d'opera,_ and when the picture is completed, it is handsomely framed and exhibited to an admiring crowd in one of the saloons of the governor's palace. The war of Santo Domingo being over and forgotten, the town is again enlivened by the arrival of the Spanish fleet fresh from Peru after the unsatisfactory bombardment of Callao. The vessels are anchored in the Cuban harbour and include the iron-clad steamer 'Numancia,' commanded by Admiral Mendez Nunez; the 'Villa de Madrid' with Captain Topete on board; the 'Resolucion' and the 'Almanza.' Our illustrious visitors are lionised for nearly a week at the public expense. Banquets, balls and other entertainments are given in their honour; and in acknowledgment of these attentions, the officers of the 'Numancia,' before the fleet takes its departure, give a grand ball on board their vessel, to which the leading families of Santiago are invited. The upper deck of the iron-clad is covered with a gigantic awning, and is so disguised with flowers, tropical plants, and other adornments, that the guests can scarcely realise the fact that they are actually on board a man-of-war. A long supper table is laid between decks, and here the visitors are invited to inspect the gunnery arrangements and a certain part of the vessel which had sustained some damage during the late expedition. From some of the officers and crew of this vessel I obtain a few particulars relative to the bombardment of Callao, and these I hasten to use for the benefit of the American newspaper which I serve. Another interesting event is the attempted escape from the town jail of upwards of two hundred prisoners. The whole town is for many days thrown into a state of alarm, for eleven out of the number succeed in effecting their escape. These are, however, eventually captured by the police, and after being tried in the usual way by court-martial, are sentenced to be shot in public. Upon the morning of the execution, there is great excitement in town. The execution is a fearful spectacle, for the firing has to be repeated more than once before the unfortunates are pronounced dead. One of the victims is my former fellow-prisoner, the communicative Indian, who, after the first shots had been fired by the soldiers, offered to confess his sins, which he had hitherto refused to do upon the plea that the instrument of confession was 'only a piece of crossed wood.' CHAPTER XIII. CUBAN MUSIC. A Soirée at Don Laureano's--An eminent Violinist and Composer--Cuban Pianos--Real Negro Minstrels--Carnival Songs--Coloured Improvisatores. All work and no play makes even a 'follower of the divine art of Apelles' a dull caballero; so when the day's toils are over, my companion and I amuse ourselves in various ways. The theatre, the Retreta, or promenade, a ball at the Philharmonic, and masquerading during the carnival season, are among our favourite diversions. Sometimes I enjoy these amusements in company with my partner; but when his society is denied me, I avail myself of the companionship of my friend Tunicú, who is a great authority in all matters appertaining to the 'gay and festive.' Being fond of music, Tunicú introduces me to his friend Laureano, who is a favourite musical composer and an accomplished violinist. In appearance, Don Laureano strongly resembles the renowned Paganini, and it is for this reason, together with his marvellous performances on the violin, that his admirers sometimes advise him to visit Europe and America. Don Laureano is chiefly employed as leader of the theatrical band and as conductor of the orchestra which performs on fiestas at the cathedral. He also gives lessons in pianoforte and violin playing, and composes songs and 'zarzuelas.' Once this accomplished gentleman wrote an entire oratorio of some five hundred pages, which after being printed and gorgeously bound, was presented to Her Catholic Majesty the Queen of Spain. Laureano gives musical matinées and soirées at his private dwelling. Everybody in the town being personally acquainted with him, no special invitations are issued, but those who are inclined to enjoy a little music, have only to enter the Don's open door, which has direct communication with his reception room. Those who can obtain neither seats nor standing-room, remain in the street, where, the huge windows of the musician's house being devoid of glass, the performances are perfectly audible. Negroes and mulattoes of all shades are among the spectators of the pavement; but with the exception of a few coloured musicians, only white people are admitted within the building. The programme of entertainments includes popular melodies, selections from oratorios, zarzuelas and Cuban dances. Laureano is assisted by his son, Laureanito, who, notwithstanding his tender years, is a proficient on the piano. This youthful prodigy usually accompanies his parent when the latter enraptures his audience with a brilliant solo performance on his favourite instrument. Don Laureano is fond of comparing 'musical notes' with foreigners, and finding that I sing comic songs and strum a little on the piano, he occasionally prevails upon me to oblige the company with some of my reminiscences of popular European airs. The productions of such foreigners as have been inspired to compose pieces founded on Cuban music, are also included in Don Laureano's repertory. Ravina's far-famed 'Habaneros,' Gottschalk's 'Ojos Criollos' and Salaman's 'Spanish Caprice,' are favourites with a Cuban audience. But, like all Cuban and Spanish music, they require to be played with a certain local sentiment, and it is for this reason that the most accomplished European performers often fail to satisfy the Cuban musical appetite. Under the practised hands of a Cuban player, however, every justice is done to the compositions I have quoted. Don Laureano's piano does not differ from any other piano, save that its mechanism is in some way adapted to suit the requirements of a tropical climate. Pianos of American manufacture are popular in Cuba; but Pleyel's instruments are preferred by some, on account of their soft tone and durability. A piano is an expensive luxury in the West Indies; its intrinsic value being comparatively small when the cost of its transfer from Europe or America, and the duty charged thereon, are considered. Pianos, moreover, do not last as long in the tropics as they do in colder climates, and great care is accordingly taken of their delicate machinery. To ensure against any moisture which may ascend from the marble or brick floor of the chamber in which the instrument is lodged, small glass cups are placed as insulators under the castors. It is considered highly detrimental to the tone of a piano to use it during damp or wet weather; so, on a rainy day, the instrument is locked up and the key carefully concealed by its owner. Among the coloured community are many accomplished performers on every instrument except the piano; for, somehow, the dark digits of these gentlemen do not adapt themselves to the white and black ivories. Veritable 'negro minstrels' are, in Cuba, as plentiful as blackberries; but, as they 'never perform out of' the island, their renown is purely local. The mulatto, Urriola, is famous for his performances on the cornet-à-piston and the double-bass, and his young son is a favourite flute-player. Lino Boza is the name of a distinguished negro performer on the clarionet. He is also a popular composer of Cuban dance music. These musical geniuses are all free, and reside in La Calle del Rey Pelayo--a quarter of the town much frequented by the emancipated tribes. Urriola and his son, together with Lino Boza and other black and brown gentlemen, are great acquisitions in the orchestras of the theatre, the cathedral, and the public balls; but their services are mostly in request during the carnival season, and on certain fiestas. They are, indeed, in such demand for the latter occasions, that engagements with them are entered into days before these festivities take place, and not unfrequently the same band is required to play at a dozen different localities in one day. The 'Danza Criolla' is the patriotic music of Cuba, and every fresh carnival gives birth to a new set of these 'danzas.' When the air happens to be unusually 'pegajoza,' or catching, a brief song is improvised, and the words of this song chime so well with the music which suggests them, as to form a sort of verbal counterpart of the melody. The merits of these songs are not, however, confined to a judicious selection of words to suit the air. There is often a quaint local humour conveyed in the doggerel verses; the charm being greatly enhanced by the introduction of creole slang and mispronounced Spanish. Fragments of these effusions occasionally degenerate into street sayings, which are in everybody's mouth till the next carnival. One of the most popular during a certain year was 'Tocólo mejor que tu!' which means Tocólo is a better fellow than you. Other equally choice refrains--though not to be rendered into corresponding English--are 'Amarillo! suenemelo pinton,'and 'Calabazon, tu estás pinton.' The following ditty, attached to a favourite Cuban danza, called 'La Chupadera,' meets with many admirers. In the original it begins:-- ¡Ay! si lo sé, que yo estoy diciendo, Que la chupadera á real está vendiendose, Cuando chupamos, cuando llueve, todo mojamos, &c. which emphatically affirms that at a certain period of the (carnival) day one may become comfortably tipsy for the small sum of five-pence, and it further demonstrates how rain and rum can alike moisten the human body. Here is some wholesome advice for procrastinating people:-- ¡Ay! Policarpio; toma la sopa, Mientras que está caliente; Tomela, chino, que te se enfría! in which Policarpio is recommended to drink his soup while it is hot, and not to wait until the nourishment is cold and unpalatable. ¡Arrempuja! que por el hoyo se engarta la aguja. is equally sententious. Forward! for remember that the needle can only be threaded through its eye. The following brief song speaks in praise of the neighbours at Santo Domingo:-- Por un Español doy medio; Por un Cubano--un doblón; Y por un Dominicano ¡Doy vida y corazon! in which a Spaniard is estimated at two-pence, a Cuban at a doubloon, and a Dominican at nothing less than 'life and soul.' Here is some sage advice for a young lady seeking a husband:-- Chiquilla, si te casarás, Cásate con un 'scribano; Qu' aunque no tenga dinero, Siempre con la pluma en mano-- recommending to her notice a hard-working clerk, who, although possibly deficient in fortune, has the power of earning one with his pen. A baker is (in song) also considered an eligible match in preference to a tobacconist, for whereas the latter cannot always provide the necessaries of life, the former is at least sure of bread, chocolate (which every Cuban baker manufactures and sells), and a few 'reales,' at a very early hour of the day; as the original words clearly demonstrate:-- La mujer del tabaquero No tiene nada seguro. La mujer del panadero Todo lo tiene seguro; Que á las cinco de la mañana Tiene el pan y el chocolate, Y los tres reales, seguros. The following is a specimen of a serenade, which is more remarkable for its local associations than for its originality:-- No te causas espanto, ne admiracion, Que los que te cantan, tus amigos son. Y abrime la puerta, que estoy en la calle; Que dirán la gente?--Que es un desaire! Cuatro rosas traigo, en cada mano dos, No te canto mas, porque ya nos vamos. Fear not, nor marvel greatly; for those who sing at your window are your truest friends. So, open wide your doors to me, for behold me in the street. And what will people say, then? Why sure, that you are slighting me! I bring with me four roses fresh--two in every hand; but I'll sing to you no more, because--we all must go elsewhere. Songs similar to those quoted are usually delivered by negroes and mulattoes at their tertulias or evening gatherings, where, seated on leather-bottomed chairs, or squatting at the portals of their doors, they entertain their black and brown divinities. One of the party accompanies himself upon a guitar, or a primitive instrument formed out of a square box upon which are arranged slips of flexible iron of different lengths and tones. Another has a strangely-fashioned harp, made from a bent bamboo, to which a solitary string is attached. The guitar player is, however, in greater demand than the rest, and is perhaps asked to favour the company with a sentimental song, such, for example, as the popular ditty called La Bayamesa, which commences:-- ¿No te acuerdes, gentil Bayamesa, Que tu fuistes el amor de Fulgencio, Cuando alegre en tu candida frente, Beso ardiente imprimí, con pasion?-- that is, a certain 'gentle Bayamese' is reminded that she was the loved one of Fulgencio, who, invited by the lady's _open_ countenance impressed upon it a passionate kiss. This being unanimously approved of by the company, the dark-complexioned troubadour will probably be called upon for another song, and the following mournful ballad will perhaps be chanted:-- Yo nací solo para padecer; ¡No te acuerdes mas de mí! No tengo ningun placer, Desgraciada y sin salud; Yo nací solo para padecer. Mira, ¡ay! la virtud No se consigue así, &c. I was born a child of tears! Think thou then no more of me. Life brings only grief and fears To one worn and pale with care. I was born a child of tears! Ah! can virtue linger where Dwelleth only misery? CHAPTER XIV. MASQUERADING IN CUBA. Deserted!--'Los Mamarrachos'--A French-Creole Ball--Street Masquers--Negro Amateurs--Masks and Dominoes--The Plaza de Armas--Victims of the Carnival--A Cuban Café in Holiday Time--'Comparsas'--White and Black Balls--A Moral. It is the twenty-eighth of December, and the thermometer stands at eighty-five in the shade. I rise with the 'ganza grulla'--our bird chronometer--that wonderful creature of the crane species, with a yard of neck, and two-feet-six of legs. Every morning at six of the clock precisely, our grulla awakens us by half-a-dozen gurgling and metallic shrieks, in a tone loud enough to be heard by his Excellency the Governor, who is a sound sleeper, and lives in a big palace half a league from our studio. I descend from my Indian grass hammock, and don a suit of the flimsiest cashmere, in compliment to the winter month, and because there is still a taste of night air in the early morning. I have to manufacture my own café noir to-day, for my companion is absent, and our servants--a stalwart Ethiop and a youthful mulatto--are both abroad, and will not return for the next three days. It is a fiesta and Friday. To-morrow is 'la ñapa,' or day of grace, 'thrown in' to the holiday-makers, to enable them to recruit their exhausted frames, which they do by repeating the pleasurable excitement of the previous day. Then comes Sunday, another fiesta, which, in most foreign climes, is another word for day, not of rest, but of restlessness. The leading characteristics of a Cuban carnival are the street 'comparsas,' or companies of masqueraders--'mamarrachos' as they are called in the creole vernacular--and the masked balls. Here you have a comparsa comprised of pure Africans; though you wouldn't believe it, for their flat-nosed faces are illumined by a coat of light flesh-colour, and their woolly heads are dyed a blazing crimson. The males have also assumed female attire, though their better halves have not returned the compliment. Here is another and a better comparsa, of mulattoes, with cheeks of flaming vermilion, wigs of yellow tow, and false beards. Their everyday apparel is worn reversed, and the visible lining is embellished with tinsel, paint, and ribbons. They are preceded by a band of music: a big drum, hand tambours, basket rattles, conch shells, and a nutmeg-grater. The members of this goodly company dance and sing as they pass rapidly along the streets, occasionally halting in their career to serenade a friend. Now, they pause before a cottage, at the door of which is a group of 'mulaticas francesas,' or French mulatto girls. The maskers salute them in falsetto voices, and address them by their Christian names as a guarantee of their acquaintanceship. The girls try hard to recognise the disfigured faces of their visitors. At last:-- 'Holá! Musyer Fransoir, je vous conóse!' cries a yellow divinity in creole French. 'Venici! Monte!' calls another; at which invitation, Musyer Fransoir, who has stood confessed, ascends the narrow side steps which give entrance to the cottage, and vanishes through a diminutive door. He appears again hatless, and beckons his companions, who follow his lead with alacrity. Soon, a hollow drumming, rattling, and grating, is heard, varied by the occasional twang of an exceedingly light guitar making vain efforts to promote harmony. A shuffling of slippered feet, and voices singing, signify that a dance is pending. Everybody--meaning myself and my neighbours--moves towards the scene. Everybody passes up the perilous steps, and endeavours to squeeze into the spare apartment. A few succeed in establishing a permanent footing in the room, and the rest stand at the doorway and window, or burst through the chamber by a back door into an open yard. In carnival time, everybody's house is everybody else's castle. There is a perfect Babel at the French criolla's. Some are endeavouring to dance with little more terra firma to gyrate upon than 'La Nena' had on her foot square of table. Others are beating time on tables, trays, and tin pots. Somebody has brought a dismal accordion, but he is so jammed up in a corner by the dancers, that more wind is jerked out of him than he can possibly jerk out of his instrument. The man with the faint guitar is no better off. Every now and then a verse of dreary song is pronounced by one of the dancers. Here is a specimen:-- ¡Ay! Caridad; ¡ay! Caridad; ¡ay! Caridad, Cuidao' con la luna si te dá. ¡Ca-la-ba-zon! tu estás pinton. (Oh! Charity, Charity, foolish Charity. Beware of the moon, and avoid her _clarity_!) There is a pause--an interval of ten minutes or so for refreshments. English bottled ale, at two shillings the bottle, is dispensed, together with intensely black coffee, which leaves a gold-brown stain on the cup in proof of its genuineness; and this is followed by the indispensable nip of the native brandy, called aguardiente. Stumps of damp cigars are abandoned for fresh ones, and the air is redolent of smoke, beer, and brown perspiration. If you remain long in this atmosphere, which reminds you of a combination of a London cook-shop and a museum of stuffed birds and mummies, you will become impregnated by it, and then not all the perfumes of Araby will eradicate it from your system. I need not go far to witness the street sights in carnival time. Many of them I can enjoy from my position on my balcony. 'Enter' the shade of an Othello in false whiskers. He is attired in a red shirt, top boots, and a glazed cap. In his mouth is a clay pipe; in his hand a black bottle: both products of Great Britain. He is followed by a brother black, in the disguise of a gentleman, with enormous shirt collars and heavy spectacles. In his arms rests a colossal volume, upon which his attention is riveted, and against the brim of his napless hat is stuck a lighted taper. He stumbles along with uneven step, and occasionally pauses for the purpose of giving tongue to his profound cogitations. The crowd jeer him as he passes, but he is unmoved, and the expression of his copper-coloured countenance is ever grave and unchangeable. His eyes--or more correctly speaking, his spectacles--never wander from the mystic page, save when he trims his taper of brown wax, or exchanges it for another and a longer. One cannot help remarking how on all occasions the 'oppressed' negro preserves his natural gravity. Whether it be his pleasure or his pain, he takes it stoically, without any observable alteration in his sombre physiognomy. How do you reconcile the singular anomaly of a nigger with his face painted black? Here is one, whose face and bare arms are besmeared with soot and ink. His thick lips start out in bright scarlet relief, his eyebrows are painted white, and his spare garments (quite filthy enough before) are bedaubed with tar and treacle. This piece of grimy humanity is worthy of note as showing that the despised nigger is really not so black as he is painted; if the truth were known, perhaps, the man himself has adopted this disguise with a view to prove to the meditative world that there may yet be another, and a blacker, population! It is not wise to be too contemplative, and to stay at home, on a carnival day in Cuba. All the world recognises you in the character of a moralising recluse, and all the carnival world will surely make you its victim. As I sit, despising these frivolities, as I call them, a great 'comparsa' of whites--the genuine article--comes rushing along in my direction. Out of the carnival season, the dramatis personæ of this comparsa are respectable members of society, in white drill suits and Spanish leather boots. To-day they are disreputable-looking and unrecognisable. Their faces are painted black, red, and mulatto-colour. Their disguise is of the simplest, and withal most conspicuous nature, consisting of a man's hat and a woman's chemise--low-necked, short-sleeved, and reaching to the ground. They dance, they sing, and jingle rattles and other toys, and are followed by a band of music of the legitimate kind. In it are violins, a double-bass, a clarionet, a French horn, a bassoon, a brace of tambours, and the indispensable nutmeg-grater, performed upon with a piece of wire exactly as the actual grater is by the nutmeg. The musicians, who are all respectably dressed blacks, hired for the occasion, play the everlasting 'Danza Cubana.' This is Cuba's national dance, impossible to be described as it is impossible to be correctly played by those who have never heard it as executed by the native. In a country where carnivals are objected to by the police, I have heard but one pianoforte player who, in his very excellent imitation of the quaint music of 'La Danza,' has in the least reminded me of the original, with its peculiar hopping staccato bass and running and waltzing treble; but he had long been a resident in the Pearl of the Antilles. The comparsa just described has halted before my balcony, as I guessed it would from the fact that its members were white people, and possibly friends. Oh, why did I not follow Nicasio's example and accept José Joaquin's invitation last evening to make one of a comparsa of wax giantesses! But I preferred seclusion to-day, and must take the consequences! Here they come straight into my very balcony with their 'Holá! Don Gualterio. No me conóces?' in falsetto voices. Do I know you? How should I in that ungentlemanly make-up? Let me see. Yes, Frasquito it is, by all that's grimy! What! and Tunicú, too, and Bimba? I feel like Bottom the weaver when he summoned his sprites. Que hay, amigos? By this time my amigos have taken unlawful possession of my innermost apartments. It's of no use to expostulate. I must bottle up my indignation, and uncork my pale ale. I do the latter by producing all my English supply of that beverage; but it proves insufficient. The thirst of my burglarious intruders is not easily sated. The cry is still: 'Cerveza!' Convinced that I have exhausted all my beer, they are content to fall back upon aguardiente; which very plebeian liquor, to judge from their alcoholic breath, my guests have been falling back upon ever since the morning. 'Musica! Vamos á bailar!' The chemised cavaliers propose a dance. Musica! The musica strikes up with a deafening echo under my spacious roof. At the inspiring tones of 'La Danza,' a dozen spectators from the pavement, consisting chiefly of mulatto girls and white neighbours, invite themselves in. Here's a pretty thing! An extemporised public masked ball in my private dwelling in the middle of the day! If this were Cornwall-road, Bayswater, I would have every one of them prosecuted for trespass. Music--a! Aguardiente! They combine singing with dancing, and mix these with cigar smoking and aguardiente drinking. To save my credit, the genuine white brandy I provide is diluted to ten degrees of strength, and costs only two dollars and a quarter the garafon! I find myself suddenly whirled round by one of my uninvited visitors. I would not have selected such a partner, but I have no choice. Smoke is said to be a disinfectant; so I smoke as I dance. For the closeness of the atmosphere, and the muskiness of mulatto girls, are not congenial to one's olfactory and respiratory organs. At last the final drop of aguardiente is drained, the music ceases, and my friends, and my friends' friends, and the strangers that were without my gate, take their not unwelcome departure. This has been a warning, which, as I live, I'll profit by. I extemporise and assume a home-made disguise. A strange sensation of guilt, of going to do something wrong, comes over me and makes me quake from the top of my extemporised turban to the sole of my sandal slippers. Whither shall I wander, forlorn pantomimist that I am? I loiter about the least frequented neighbourhoods, until the shades of eve--which in this climate come with a rush--have fallen, and then I mix fearlessly with the throng, among whom I am but as a drop in a Black Sea. In my peregrinations I meet a company of negro masqueraders, who, without the least ceremony, are entering the private dwelling of an opulent Don. The illustrious family are tranquilly seated in the elegant sala; but what care their visitors? It is carnival time and they, serfs of that same house, are licensed to bring themselves and their friends. They bear between them a painted screen, which they unfold and plant in the middle of the saloon. It forms a theatrical proscenium on a small scale. An orchestra of tambours, tin-trays, and nutmeg-grating güiros opens the performances, and then the actors proceed to saw the air. They perform this operation in turn, by reason of the limited proportions of their stage; and one very tall negro, who appears to have been altogether omitted in the carpenter's calculations, has to speak his speech behind the top drop. He speaks it trippingly too; for in the middle of a most exciting monologue, he upsets the whole paraphernalia and himself into the bargain. The entertainment, including refreshments, has lasted some fifteen minutes, when the itinerant troupe (who derive no benefit from their labours save what honour and self-enjoyment yield) pick up their portable proscenium and walk away. By far the gayest region of the city during a carnival is the spacious square called the Plaza de Armas. Here are the governor's house, the residences of Cuban Belgravia, the cafés, and the cathedral. Myriads of masqueraders, in every variety of motley and domino, congregate in the plaza after their day's perambulations, and dance, sing, or bewitch each other with their disguises. There is a party of masqued and dominoed ladies: genuine whites all--you can tell it by the shape of their gloveless hands and the transparent pink of their finger-nails--endeavouring to hoax a couple of swains in false noses and green spectacles, both of whom have been already recognised. The perplexed youths try their hardest to discover their fair interlocutors by peeping at their profiles through their wire masks, but in vain. At the next quiet tertulia these same ladies will have rare fun with their puzzled victims of the night of the masquerade. Within earshot of where I am standing are a small crew of ancient mariners, Britons every one of them; unless they happen to be Americans from Boston: it does not matter which to a Cuban. They belong to the good ship _Mary Barker_, lately arrived from Halifax, in quest of Cuban copper. Jack has come ashore to-night to see the sights and collect material for a new yarn, which he will deliver at his native fireside one of these odd days. Some masker has approached the group, and has brought them the astounding information that he--the unknown--belongs to the _Mary Barker_. Jack turns to his messmates with a bewildered air. Then, addressing the masker, 'What, Joe?' says he at a venture. 'No, not Joe,' says the man behind the mask. 'Try again.' 'Shiver my timbers!' exclaims Jack, 'I give it up. Here, Tom,' says he to a shipmate of that name, 'you're good at conhumdrums; just step for'ard and tell this here lubber who he his.' Tom tries and fails, but arrives at the possible conclusion that it is 'some o' them 'ere Cubeyans a-making game on us.' Refreshment stalls stand at intervals along the pavement of the plaza. Each table has a white tablecloth, and is dimly illumined by candles sheltered from the wind by enormous stand shades of glass, or lamps of portable gas. Leather-bottomed chairs are placed invitingly around, and charcoal braziers for warming drinks keep their respectful distances. Egg-flip, bottled ale, café noir, and a kind of soupe à la Julienne, called by the natives 'aijaco,' are dispensed by negress vendors, who charge double for everything, and drive a roaring trade. Approaching one of the tables, I call for a plate of aijaco, and am perfectly understood by the dark divinity, who places before me a pot-pourri of yams, green bananas, cut pumpkins, 'aguacates,' chicken, and broth of the same. I do full justice to this rich and substantial repast, and, by way of dessert, conclude with a very small cup of properly made café noir and a genuine Yara. I then betake myself to the nearest coffee-house. After black coffee cometh what is popularly termed 'plus-café,' and this being an unlicensed spirit, cannot be had in the street. The coffee-saloon is well patronised, and the air of carnival is here very strong. Everybody and everything seem to follow the masquerade lead, the very furniture forming no exception to the rule: for the gas chandeliers are encased in fancy papers, the walls and pictures are adorned by tropical leaves and evergreens, the chairs are transformed into shapes of seated humanity, the marble slabs of the little round tables are partially disguised in robes of glass and crystal. As for the white-jacketed proprietor and his myrmidons, including Rubio, the mixer of liquors, behind the counter, they all wear smiles or holiday faces, while they carefully conceal their natural sleepiness. 'Mozo! garçon! Una copita con cognac!' The waiter hears, but does not obey, having already too many copitas on his mind. 'Allá voy, señor!' he, however, says; and as it is some consolation to know that he will come eventually, I forgive his procrastination, and bide my time. Meanwhile, I watch a group of maskers who surround a guitar-playing improvisatore, who assures his audience in song that he is expiring because of the faithlessness of his mulatto, who has rejected his advances with ridicule. ¡Ay, ay, ay! que me estoy muriendo, si. ¡Ay, ay, ay! por una mulata; Y ella está reyendose, Que es cosa que me mata! In an opposite corner are a pair of moralising Davids gravely descanting upon the frailty of woman to the accompaniment of a windy accordion and a güiro nutmeg-grater, something after this fashion:-- Women there are in this world, we see, Whose tongues are long enough for three; They bear their neighbours' skins about, And twist and turn them inside out. Pellejo ajeno! lo viran al revés. This is the whole song, and nothing but the song: for negro melodies, of which the above is a specimen, are essentially epigrammatic. A rush is made to the big barred windows and open doors of the café. An important comparsa of Congo negroes of both sexes is passing in procession along the street. They have just been paying their respects to no less a personage than his Excellency the Governor of Santiago, in the long reception-room of whose palace, and in whose august presence they have dared to dance! The troupe is headed by a brace of blacks, who carry banners with passing strange devices, and a dancing mace-bearer. These are followed by a battalion of colonels, generals, and field-marshals, in gold-braided coats and gilded cocked-hats. Each wears a broad sash of coloured silk, a sword and enormous spurs. These are not ordinary, masqueraders be it known, but grave subjects of his sombre majesty King Congo, the oldest and blackest of all the blacks: the lawfully appointed sovereign of the coloured community. It seems to form part of the drilling of his majesty's military to march with a tumble-down, pick-me-up step, for as each member of the corps moves, he is for ever losing his balance and finding his equilibrium; but whether on the present occasion this remarkable step proceeds from loyalty or liquor, I cannot say. In the rear of his Congo Majesty's officers are a crowd of copper-coloured amazons, in pink muslins trimmed with flowers and tinsel, who march trippingly in files of four, at well-measured distances, and form a connecting link with each other by means of their pocket-handkerchiefs held by the extreme corners. Each damsel carries a lighted taper of brown wax, and a tin rattle, which she jingles as she moves. The whole procession terminates in a military band, composed of musicians whose hard work and little pay are exhibited in their uniforms, which are limited to buttonless shirts and brief unmentionables. Their instruments are a big drum, hand tambours, huge cone-shaped basket rattles, a bent bamboo harp with a solitary string, and the indispensable güiro or nutmeg-grater. There is harmony in this outline of an orchestra, let him laugh who may. No actual tune is there, but you have all the lights and shadows--the skeleton, so to speak--of a tune, and if your imagination be musical, that will suffice to supply the melody. The peculiar measure adopted in the negro drum-music, and imitated in 'La Danza' and in church-bell chiming, has an origin which those who have a taste for natural history will do well to make a note of. There is an insect--I forget the name, but you may hear it any fine night in the wilds of a tropical country--that gives out a continuous croak, which exactly corresponds with this measure. 'Al fin y al cabo,' I have taken my plus-café; and now that it is very early morning, I take the nearest way to my virtuous home. On my way thither, I pause before the saloons of the Philharmonic, where a grand bal masqué of genuine, and doubtful, whites is being held. From my position on the pavement I can see perfectly well into the salon de bal, so I will not evade the door-keeper, as others do, by introducing myself in disguise as somebody else. I observe that the proceedings within have already begun to grow warm. There is no lack of partners in carnival time, as everybody, save the black musicians, is dancing the everlasting contra-danza. Some of the excited toe-trippers have abandoned their masks. One of these, an olive-complexioned señorita, wears a tell-tale patch of blue paint on her left cheek; condemning testimony that at some period of the evening she danced with that 'mamarracho' whose face is painted like an Indian chief! In a dark corner of the billiard-room, where two gentlemen attired in the garb of Philip the Second are playing carambola against a couple of travestied Charles the Fifths, are seated a snug couple--lover and mistress to all appearance. The dominoed lady is extremely bashful, her replies are brief and all but inaudible. The fond youth has proposed a saunter into the refreshing night air, where a moon, bright enough to read the smallest print by, is shining. His proposal is acceded to. His heart is glad now: but what will his feelings be when he discovers that the beloved object is a bearded brute like himself! The orchestra is playing one of Lino Boza's last danzas. Lino Boza is, as I have already stated, a negro composer and clarionet player of great renown in Cuba, and this particular danza is one of the 'pegajosa' or 'irresistible' kind. You have heard it played all over the town to-day, and to-morrow you will hear it sung with a couple of doggerel rhymes in creole Spanish, which fit into the music so well as to 'appear to be the echoes of the _melody_.' The way in which Lino helps the dancers in their favourite gyrations by his inimitable and ever-varied performance on the clarionet, should be a warning to protecting mammas! The step of 'La Danza' is difficult for an amateur to acquire, but when once it is achieved, and you are fortunate enough to secure a graceful partner, the result is highly satisfactory. I am almost tempted to trespass upon the early hours of the morning, for the sake of the music of 'La Danza' and those open-air refreshment stalls where everything looks hot and inviting. The night breeze is, moreover, cool and exhilarating, and, after all, it is not later than nine P.M.--in Europe. I lead on, nevertheless, in the direction of the heights of El Tivoli, where I reside; stopping not in my upward career, save to pay a flying visit at a ball of mulattoes. A crowd of uninvited are gazing, like myself, between the bars of the huge windows; for the ball is conducted upon exclusive principles, and is accessible only with tickets of admission. Two 'policias,' armed with revolvers and short Roman Swords, are stationed at the entrance-door, and this looks very much like the precursor of a row. Mulatto balls generally do end in some unlooked-for 'compromisa,' and it would not surprise me if this particular ball were to terminate in something sensational. I am home, and am myself again, ruminating upon the events of the day and night, and I arrive at the conclusion that the despised and oppressed negro is not so ill off as he is made out to be, especially in carnival time. As I enter, our grulla thinks it must be six o'clock, and essays to shriek that hour, as is her custom; but I startle her in the middle of her fourth chime, and she stops at half-past three. Then I climb into my aerial couch, in whose embrace I presently invoke that of the grim masker, Morpheus! CHAPTER XV. AN EVENING AT THE RETRETA. A Musical Promenade--My Friend Tunicú--Cuban Beauties--Dark Divinities--A Cuban Café--A Popular 'Pollo'--Settling the Bill. The Retreta is a musical promenade, or 'retreat,' held upon the evenings of every Sunday and Thursday, between the hours of eight and ten, in the Plaza de Armas. Here all the fashionables of Santiago congregate, to converse and to listen to the military band. Those who reside in the square itself, or in the adjacent streets, have a few ordinary chairs conveyed from their houses and planted in a convenient situation near the music. The promenade is a broad gravel walk, in the centre of a railed square, and is bounded by little garden plots, fountains, and huge overhanging tropical trees. Those who have not brought with them any domestic furniture, occupy, when weary with walking, the stone benches at the outskirts of the square and in the line of march. The promenaders form a kind of animated oval as they parade the boundaries of the gravel walk, and they consist chiefly of ladies attired in pretty muslin dresses, but divested of all head covering save that which nature lavishly supplies. The interior of the moving oval thus formed is exclusively occupied by gentlemen, dressed either in suits of white drill, Panama hats, and shoes of Spanish leather, or in black coats and tall beaver 'bómbas.' These fashionables wander about their allotted ground, occasionally halting to contemplate the moving panorama of divinities, by which they are encircled. There is much to admire in the plainest of Creoles, whether the point of attraction be her graceful manner of walking--and in this no other lady can equal her--the taste exhibited in her dress, or in the arrangement of her luxuriant hair. My friend Tunicú is a great authority upon the subject of Cuban beauty, and appears to be a favourite with everybody. Like most young Creoles of his kind, Tunicú prides himself upon his intimacy with everybody of importance in the town. From his point of view, the inhabitants of Santiago belong to one gigantic family, the different members of which are all, more or less, related to one another, and to him. Tunicú has this family, so to speak, at his fingers' ends, and is full of information respecting their antecedents and their private concerns. He points out for me some of the leading families who are present at the promenade. He shows me which are the Palacios, the Castillos, the Torres, the Brooks, and the Puentes. Those cane chairs are occupied by the Agramontes, the Duanys, the Vinents, and the Quintanas. Upon the stone benches are seated the Bravos, the Valientes, and the Villalons. Those ladies who have just joined the promenaders belong to the distinguished families of the Ferrers, the Fajados, the Fuentes, the Castros, and the Colases. He offers to present me to any of the company whom I may care to become acquainted with; and in proof of his intimacy with everybody who passes us, he salutes many of the ladies, and addresses them, whether they be married or single, by their Christian names. 'Adios, Carmecita!' he remarks, as a young lady of that name sails by us. 'Au revoir, Manuelica!' he says to a dark beauty with remarkably large eyes and exaggerated eyelashes. 'A tus piés, lovely Teresita!' says he to another olive-complexioned damsel, whose chief attractions are a very perfect profile and an intelligent brow. 'Till we meet again, Marianita!' he observes, when Marianita, who has a pretty figure and small hands, passes our way. 'How bewitching you look to-night, my pretty Panchita!' he murmurs, as a charming young girl, with fair hair and a pink and white complexion, blushes and hurries on. 'Farewell, my fascinating Frasquita!' he ejaculates to an equally blonde Creole. Tunicú's fair hearers apparently do not disapprove of these al fresco compliments, but occasionally acknowledge them by bestowing upon him a momentary smile or a graceful inclination of the head, as they do with scores of admirers, who, like Tunicú, venture to give voice to their sentiments. Whenever I question my loquacious friend about anybody in whom I may feel interested, he positively overwhelms me with the most minute particulars respecting his or her antecedents. For example: Fulana de Tal is a visitor at Don Benigno's, and for some mysterious reason Doña Mercedes has, on more than one occasion, offered her pecuniary assistance. 'Do you know that lady?' I inquire, as Fulana de Tal seats herself beside Doña Mercedes. 'Fulana de Tal!' exclaims Tunicú with a contemptuous chuckle; 'I should rather think I do! Fulana de Tal, widow of the late Timothy de Tallo y Gallo, the large importer of soap and composites, in Candela Street number sixty-eight, corner of Vela Lane, opposite Snúfa's the ironmonger. Old Timothy de Tallo failed for forty thousand dollars four years and ten months ago; ran away from his creditors and embarked for France, where he died fourteen months after his arrival in Paris. His widow, related to my uncle Benigno, was left destitute with three children--two boys, and one girl named Fefita. But nobody starves in my country! Fefita is engaged to Nicolás, son of Nicolás Neira, director of the St. Michael copper mines. They say young Nicolás will have thirty thousand dollars if he marries, and when his governor dies will be a millionaire. Old Nicolás is awfully lucky--won a hundred thousand dollars in the Havana lottery upon one occasion, and twenty thousand on another. He has three coffee plantations and two sugar estates. One of them is worked by no less than four hundred and fifty slaves. Car-amba! you should see the procession of mules that arrives in town every day from the Camino del Cobre: each beast laden with sacks weighing nearly two hundredweight. When Fefita marries, her mother will be well off again; meanwhile Don Benigno supports her, though nobody is supposed to know it.' 'Who is that charming girl with the neat little figure and the dark frizzled hair?' I inquire, as the object of my admiration, accompanied by an elderly lady, passes close to where I am standing. 'Oh! that is Cachita,' says Tunicú; 'Cachita Perales, with her mother Doña Belen--amiable but weak old lady; very much directed by her husband Don Severiano, who is an old brute--plenty of "paja" (tin) though, but close-fisted.' 'I fancy I have met the younger lady at the theatre, and at other places of amusement,' I observe. 'Very likely,' says Tunicú. 'Cachita is fond of amusement. You see, she has no lover yet to fall back upon, as it were. Lots of admirers, though; but the old man wants to wed her to young Amador, son of old Catasus, the rich planter; and the sensible young lady dislikes Amador because he is a Spaniard, and a coxcomb into the bargain.' 'Are you very intimate with the Perales?' I ask. 'Intimate!' repeats my friend with a scornful smirk. 'Well, I look in at their tertulia at least twice a week. But you seem interested in the family--sweet upon the señorita, eh! Admire your taste--acknowledged beauty, you know.' 'Can you introduce me to the young lady and her mama?' I ask. Can he? of course he can! He has been waiting till now to do so. I am accordingly presented to the ladies as 'El Caballero Inglés, Don Gualterio, bosom companion of Don Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú,' whom everybody has heard of. Then all four stroll round the promenade; Tunicú artfully engaging the old lady, and leaving me to do the amiable with the pretty creole. As we walk and converse, the military band continues to play operatic selections, zarzuela medleys, pots-pourris of favourite airs and Cuban dances. At ten o'clock precisely the music ceases, and the band removes to the governor's house which faces the square. At a given signal, a quick march is played, and before the music is half over, the instrumentalists depart in procession through the streets leading to their barracks. We now take leave of our lady friends, who intimate their intention of being present at the Philharmonic rooms, where a grand ball has been advertised for to-night. Many of the invited remain in the Plaza till the opening of this ball, which is announced by a band of negro minstrels who come to escort the dancers to the scene of festivities. During the promenade, partners have been already engaged, and as Tunicú is a member of the Philharmonic, and has offered to procure me an admission, I engage myself to the charming Cachita for the first three dances. Tunicú and I occupy the interval which precedes the opening of the ball in various ways. The terrace of the cathedral, which overlooks the square, is thronged with coloured people, who, not being allowed to join in the promenade below, watch their white brethren from a distance. There is, however, among this assembly, a sprinkling of whites, some of whom are in a state of mourning, and consider it indecorous to show themselves in public; while others, like Tunicú and myself, visit the occupants of the terrace to exchange greetings with some of the dark divinities there. Tunicú is a great admirer of whitey-brown beauty, especially that which birth and the faintest coffee-colour alone distinguish from the pure and undefiled. He is also an advocate of equality of races, and like many other liberal Cubans, sighs for the day when slavery shall be abolished. Some of the brown ladies whom he addresses belong to respectable families of wealth and importance in the town; and were it not for certain rules which society prescribes, Tunicú says they would contract the whitest of alliances. Descending the broad flight of steps of the cathedral, Tunicú invites me to partake of some refreshment at a neighbouring café. The round marble tables of the café are crowded with fashionables fresh from the Retreta. Some of Tunicú's companions are sipping and smoking at one of these tables. The moment we appear, his friends rise, salute us elaborately, and offer us places at their festive board. What will we take in the way of refreshment? This requires reflection, and meanwhile we gather a suggestion or two from the libations already before us. There are sugar and water panales, cream-ices, cold fruit drinks, bottles of English ale, and 'sangria' or rum punch, to choose from. 'When you are in doubt, order café noir and a petit verre,' is Tunicú's maxim, which we both adopt on this occasion. Cups of coffee and cognac are accordingly brought, cigarettes are handed round, and the convivialities of the café proceed. The company at the Retreta is discussed, and the brown beauties of the cathedral terrace are descanted upon. One of our party, whom everybody addresses by his nickname of 'Bimba,' is more loquacious than the rest, not excepting the garrulous Tunicú. Bimba is a popular character in Cuba, and in some respects represents a type of the Creole 'pollo,' or man-about-town. He is short of stature, lean and bony. He has a long thin face, with a very sun-burnt complexion, a prominent proboscis, and his hair, eyes and eyebrows are remarkably black and lustrous. The pollo's weakness is over-confidence in himself and in the ways of the world. To him everything appears bright and sunny. Nothing in his estimation seems impossible of realisation. If you are in a difficulty, Bimba is the man to help you through, or at least to _offer_ to do so! Bimba takes especial care to let everybody know that he is a 'travelled man' and a linguist; which literally translated means, that he has spent a few weeks in Havana and a few months in New York; in which places he has acquired a smattering of two or three different languages. Learning that I am an Englishman, Bimba improves the occasion to air all the Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary for the edification of his friends, who marvel much at Bimba's fluency in a foreign tongue. But whether it is that my residence among Spanish-speaking people has demoralised my native lingo, or whether it is that Bimba's English has grown rusty--it is evident that at least three-fourths of his rapidly spoken words are as incomprehensible to me as they are to the rest of our party. Bimba's knowledge is not however, confined to languages and to mundane matters. As a 'man of business' no one can surpass him; though it is never clear to anybody what kind of occupation he follows. He is, besides, conversant with most of the arts and sciences. As for painting--well; he says that he has 'dabbled' in the art for years; and though he confesses he has not practised it of late, he knows well enough what materials are used for the construction of a picture. In proof of this knowledge, he offers to introduce me to a number of highly 'picturesque' models, and mentions a locality which, he declares, abounds with subjects worthy of an artist's attention. This locality is called La Calle del Gallo, and is a street which, I am afterwards told, is inhabited by certain coloured ladies of doubtful repute. Being the hour of departure for the Philharmonic ball, the conversation ceases and the important operation of paying for what has been consumed must be undertaken. When a party of Cubans meet at a public refreshment-room, settling the bill is a serious matter. Everybody aspires to the privilege, and everybody presents his coin to the waiter. 'Here, garçon! Take for all,' says one of the company, offering a golden doubloon to the attendant. 'Excuse me, I spoke first,' observes another, exhibiting a gold coin of about the size of a five-shilling piece. 'No, no; it was I,' protests a third; while others, with fingers in fobs, wink and shake their heads at the bewildered waiter as if to imply that one of them will settle with the 'mozo' in secret. The mozo will not, however, accept payment from anybody. 'Está pago ya' (it is already paid for), he observes, and walks away. The company are amazed. Who could have been guilty of the treacherous act? and how and when was it performed? Presently one of the party rises and feigns impatience for his departure. He smiles, and all declare that he was the culprit. Subsequently, this individual leads the waiter into a dark corner of the café, where accounts are squared; by which we know that before the refreshments were ordered he had arranged with the garden about payment. 'Nada, chicos!' observes the successful payee, as we quit the café, 'otra dia tocará á ustedes.' (Never mind, my boys! it will be your turn another day.) CHAPTER XVI. AT A CUBAN BALL. The Philharmonic and its Members--A Street Audience--The Guests--Engaging Partners--'La Carabina'--'La Danza Criolla'--Dance Music--Refreshments--A Pretty Partner--A Night with Cuban Gamblers--Spanish Cards--An Old Hand--'Temblores!' The saloons of the Philharmonic are well suited for dancing as well as for other purposes. The spacious apartments are entered by enormous doors, and those which are set apart for the use of the dancers are separated one from the other by narrow slips of wall. The heat, generated by the gas, finds an easy egress through the open doors and unglazed windows, and by these means the ventilation within is only surpassed by the open air. A balcony--resembling part of a ship's upper-deck--occupies the entire breadth of the building, and it affords an excellent promenade and lounge in the intervals of dancing. The street is crowded with a mixed audience, composed of coloured people and of whites in mourning, for whose accommodation chairs of all kinds are brought from their houses in the neighbourhood. The interior of the Philharmonic is perfectly visible to these spectators of the pavement, who, consequently, watch the proceedings within, as they would watch an entertainment at the theatre. The ladies of the ball are attired in simple muslin dresses of the grenadine, the tarlatan, or the tulle kind; but no rule is observed with regard to the cut or shape of their costume. She whom nature has endowed with a comely figure, adopts the 'decolado,' or low-necked, short-sleeved fashion, while her less favoured sisters prefer to conceal their charms behind spotted lace or tulle. In short, the frequenters of such a ball as that to which I refer are licensed to dress as becomingly as they please, and only on rare occasions, such as a ball at the theatre, at the governor's house, or at the mansion of some equally distinguished person, are the strict rules of French etiquette observed. The señoritas and their escorts are received in an ante-chamber by nine of the oldest members of the society, who conduct the ladies to the dressing-room of the establishment, where a few mulatto girls are in attendance. Their toilettes being complete, it is considered 'the correct thing' for one of these nine deputies of the Philharmonic to offer to escort the lady dancers to the 'salon de bal;' and afterwards to conduct the non-dancers to a locality set apart for the 'old people,' for people in a state of mourning, and for those ladies whose lovers do not approve of their dancing. The male dancers--the majority of whom are pale-faced gentlemen with black mustachios, imperials, and cropped hair--appear in ordinary walking costume, consisting of black frock coats, black or white vests, and white trousers, and neither they nor their fair partners include gloves in their toilettes. Fans are used irrespective of sex, as a creole gentleman considers that such commodities are as indispensable to him as they are to his lady. As most of the guests have already secured partners at the Retreta and elsewhere, and as at all respectable gatherings in Cuba everybody is supposed to know everybody else, the irksome formalities of introduction are altogether dispensed with. 'Me hará usted el obsequio de cederme ésta danza?' is in Spanish the politest form for asking a lady 'if you may have the pleasure of dancing with her.' But should you be on intimate terms with her, you may inform yourself whether she is willing to 'take a little turn with you,' by making the inquiry:-- 'Quiere usted que demos una vueltecita?' If the lady is 'sorry to say that she is engaged,' her answer will be, 'Lo siento; estoy comprometida.' If, on the contrary, she 'will have much pleasure,' she replies, 'Con mucho gusto.' It is not unusual for a gentleman who is not dancing to _borrow_ another gentleman's partner for a 'carabina,' or round or two; for which purpose the aspirant for that privilege has only to approach the dancing couple, and in his politest tone say--addressing his remarks indirectly to both:-- 'Will the señorita be good enough to consent, with you, to my taking a turn with her?' or, as it is better expressed in Spanish, 'La señorita será bastante amable para que con usted consiente el darme una carabina?' Sometimes when the aspirant is very intimate with the couple, he observes simply: 'Chico; una carabina?' (A turn, old fellow?) and without waiting for a reply, seizes his friend's partner round the waist and waltzes her away. Occasionally the carabina is taken without asking; but this is done only by certain pollos who are vain enough to believe that they confer an honour upon the ladies of their preference by confining their evening's gyrations to carabinas. These attentions, however, sometimes involve the pollo in a quarrel with the lady's partner, as happened once with a certain Acha--a Spanish officer from Guantánamo--who fought a duel for the sake of a carabina which he had danced illicitly with a famous creole beauty called La Nena. It frequently happens that the much-desired carabina is graciously conceded to an unfortunate pollito, or very young gentleman, who has been unable to secure a partner. Tunicú often avails himself of a pollito when he happens to be afflicted with an uncongenial partner, or one whose manner of dancing does not satisfy him! The famous 'danza criolla' is the favourite dance of the evening: indeed, with the exception of a vagrant polka and a mazurka or two, this dance occupies the entire programme. The danza criolla requires great practice before it can be successfully accomplished; but no amount of private tuition will help the novice to acquire the approved step. The best school for the study and pursuit of the art is a mulatto ball, or such a ball as the Philharmonic society gives on every Palm Sunday at seven in the morning. There is a very mixed attendance at the last-mentioned ball, as the members usually invite their 'guariminicas,' or companions of the carnival. A Cuban pollo has generally three ladies to whom he is devoted. The first of these is represented by the señorita whom he is destined to marry one of these days, but with whom he may not be seen alone. The second lady of his choice is the afore-mentioned 'guariminica querida,' who accompanies him about town when any fiesta is held; and the third is the mulatto beauty, whom he serenades and presents with various gifts in token of his admiration for her charms. The step of la danza is distantly related to a slow valse; but being accompanied by certain graceful movements of the limbs--vulgarly termed, in creole vernacular, 'la sopimpa'--the excitement is far greater than it is with the fastest 'trois temps' on record. So great indeed, that after every other 'round' the couples pause and perform a kind of lady's-chain in quadrille groups of six or eight. Each dancer gives his or her favourite version of this remarkable step. Some appear to glide around as if propelled on wheels; while others define the step by hops, backward skips and short turns, now to the right, now the left; but all preserve the same graceful movements of the body. The pleasures of the dance are greatly enhanced by the quality of the music, which is more or less inspiriting according to the air selected. Among the best Cuban dance music are the Cocuyé, the Chupadera, the Calabazon, the Sopimpa, the Mulata, the Pollita Americana, Merenguito, Lunarcitos, Al Mediodia, and 'á las Bellas Cubanas.' The clarionet takes the lead in the band of black musicians, and the güiro and tambours serve to mark the peculiar chopping compass which is the leading feature of the creole dance. The güiro proper is an instrument made from the hard fruit whence it derives its name. The güiro of society is, however, manufactured out of tin, and shaped like a broad tube rounded at one end to a fine point To one side is attached a handle; the other side is furnished with notches or transverse ridges, which being rapidly scraped by a piece of thick wire, a hollow, grating sound is produced. The monotony of this sound is varied on the tambours, and neither of those instruments is used when the dancers pause for the lady's-chain. It is not unusual for an enthusiastic dancer to present the leader of the band with a piece of money, as an inducement for the latter to prolong the dance, and as a graceful tribute to his partner's dancing. But this proceeding not being always approved of by the rest of the dancers, a master of the ceremonies--called 'el bastonero'--is sometimes appointed for the purpose of regulating the duration of the dances; but as el bastonero is himself a dancer, he takes care to time the dances according to his own requirements. At an ordinary Philharmonic ball, such as that which I am describing, the frequenters of the 'ambigú,' or refreshment room, must pay for what they consume. This is a serious consideration with the pollo, for he is expected to invite not only his partner, but also his partner's parents, brothers, or chaperones, and sometimes a friend or two of the family! The ambigú refreshment stall provides chiefly hams, lobsters, turkeys, chickens, fried fish, escabeche (another variety of fish), tongue, and other substantial viands; all of which are done full justice to by the señorita's relatives and friends! The appetite of the young lady herself is, however, more easily satisfied. A cup of thick chocolate with 'panatela' or pound cake, and an 'helado,' or ice is all that she requires in the way of refreshment; unless, later in the evening, she prefer a 'jigote,' which is a kind of thick soup made from boiled chicken, minced fine, and flavoured with herbs. Adjoining the ambigú is a small apartment, where gentlemen--and some of the older ladies too--may enjoy a smoke while they sip their café and cognac. Of course Tunicú has a variety of partners, but Bimba being partial to billiards, divides his time between the ballroom and the billiard-table. Cachita--with whom I dance more than three times in the course of the evening--makes a delightful partner, and when, after sundry experiments, we are agreed upon the matter of step, I feel in the seventh heaven! Cachita's manners and conversation are as agreeable as her dancing is, and combine to impress me with the fancy that our acquaintance dates from a more remote period than the present evening. Upon the strength of my being an artist, she examines me on the subject of Cuban beauty, and my replies are not unfavourable to Cachita and her countrywomen. In turn, I interrogate her on the popular impression of foreigners, and from her responses I gather that the people of nearly every country, except Spain, hold a distinguished place in a Cuban's esteem. The palm is, however, given to the Americans and English. Cachita has been early taught to regard these nations with favour, and that to possess the political and social advantages which English and Americans enjoy, is the ambition of every right-minded Cuban. But politics is dangerous ground to tread, especially when you are discussing them with a beautiful young lady, who expresses so much enthusiasm for your 'patria,' and who, moreover, tells you to your face that your countrymen are 'simpáticos.' There is no telling what conversation such topics might lead to, if Cachita's mamma, Doña Belen, did not interrupt our tête-à-tête by coming to inform her daughter that the ball is nearly over, and that it is time to depart. No ball at the Philharmonic is said to have terminated until the members of the society and their male friends have indulged in a little gambling. So when the ladies and their escorts have departed, and the gas in the ball rooms has been extinguished, old as well as young pollos betake themselves to an apartment, where they pass the small hours of the night in card-playing. Curious to learn the mysteries of Cuban gambling, I accept Tunicú's invitation to watch the proceedings, one night after such a ball as that which I have described. The chamber into which I am conducted is illumined in one part only, where a group of gentlemen are seated or standing around a square table. Having decided whether the game of the evening shall be 'monté,' 'tresillo,' or 'burro,' the dealer proceeds to shuffle the cards, which he does in an elaborate manner, and afterwards grasps the pack firmly in his left hand, taking care to conceal the bottom card. The dealer has a partner who is seated on the opposite side of the table with a pile of golden 'onzas' before him. These onzas, which represent the 'bank,' look like medals about to be awarded as prizes for merit, for each coin is of the size of a five-shilling piece, and is equal in value to seventeen dollars, or three pounds eight shillings sterling. Carefully extracting four cards from the top and bottom of the pack, and after placing them, faces upwards, on the table, the dealer invites the company to stake their money. Gold in onzas, half-onzas, four-dollar pieces, and 'escudos,' or two dollars, is produced; but he who is indisposed to risk more than a fractional part of his money at one time, expresses his desire by concealing a portion of his coin beneath the card of his selection. Thus an onza placed half-way under a card signifies that the owner wishes to stake only half that coin, or eight dollars and fifty cents. Similarly a fourth of the money being exhibited, represents four dollars and twenty-five cents. 'Al juego, caballeros!' cries the dealer, and everybody accordingly stakes his money. Satisfied that the four cards are not equalised, the dealer, by a dexterous turn of the wrist, reverses the pack, by which means the bottom card is exposed. If this card does not pair with one of those on the table, other cards are slowly revealed, till one of the four on the table has been 'casado' or paired. The nine of spades being drawn, pairs with the nine of clubs on the table. The banker consequently pays on this card, and receives on that which lies by its side. The other two cards are similarly disposed of, and this, with a few variations, constitutes the game. With the exception of 'el rey' (the king) and 'la zota' (the knave), a Spanish pack of cards differs considerably from the French or English pack. There are no tens, to begin with, consequently the total number of cards is forty-eight. The queen is also absent. Her majesty is, however, represented by 'el caballo,' a figure of a knight on horseback. Clubs (called 'bastos') are veritable clubs of the Hercules pattern; and a spade is not a spade in this instance, but it is an 'espada,' or sword of the approved shape. Each player has a favourite card, upon which he invariably stakes his money whenever it is turned up in the course of the game. Tunicú's 'winning' colour is 'el caballo' (horse and rider). Bimba swears by the king, while his neighbour, Don Vicente, has a partiality for the royal fives of every suit. These gentlemen are fond of apostrophising the cards of their selection, as if to encourage the pasteboard to win. Thus, Tunicú not unfrequently addresses his caballo as a 'noble animal' or a 'trusty steed,' while Bimba speaks of 'el rey' as a 'right royal gentleman' and a 'just sovereign.' But when, as it too often happens, 'el caballo' proves faithless, and 'el rey' unprofitable, their praises are no longer sung, but certain disrespectful adjectives are applied to them. The Spanish language is rich in oaths, the mildest of which are some of those expressions which begin with the syllable 'Car,' such, for example, as 'Caramba!' 'Carambóla!' (the billiard cannon), 'Caracóles!' (shells), and 'Caracolito!' (a small shell). One of the greatest gamblers at the Philharmonic is Don Vicente. Tunicú tells me, _sotto voce_, that the old gentleman has had a run of ill-luck for the past fortnight, and that, having exhausted all his ready cash, he is about to wager his 'quitrin' and horses. If the five of swords on the table is not paired in the next draw, Don Vicente will lose his equipage. The next 'turn up' being a king, and a king being opposed to the five of swords, Don Vicente loses. 'Watch the old man now,' whispers Tunicú. I glance in the direction indicated by my companion, and observe that the gambler's right hand, which for some minutes past had been concealed beneath his shirt-front, is drawn with violence across his breast. 'A habit of his when he loses an important amount,' remarks Tunicú under his breath; 'the old fellow has torn his bare flesh.' Except ourselves, no one present has paid the least regard to the unfortunate gamester, for until the past fortnight Don Vicente had been usually lucky. While the dealer is in the act of shuffling a bran-new pack as a preliminary to the fiftieth game to-night, the cards suddenly fall from his fingers, and he, his partner, together with the rest of the company, turn deadly pale and rush wildly to the broad balcony. I follow them; though for the moment I am unable to account for this strange diversion in the proceedings. In another instant, however, the truth flashes across me. The apartment which we have deserted had, for a few seconds only, oscillated as if a thousand ghosts were dancing in the empty saloons adjoining, or as if a train were passing beneath the floor. From the balcony I observe that the dark streets are already crowded with people, most of whom are scantily clothed in night attire. Some are kneeling and praying aloud for Misericordia! others are shrieking and invoking a variety of saints, and the greatest confusion prevails. It was only a 'temblor,' or shock of earthquake, in its mildest form, but it may be the precursor of a more serious disaster. 'Such a calamity,' says Tunicú, 'has happened ten years ago, when the earth opened, and many buildings, including the cathedral, fell like packs of cards to the ground. The inhabitants fled in terror from the town and encamped for many days and nights in the neighbouring country, where one is comparatively out of danger.' Before daylight, another 'temblor,' or trembling of the earth, is felt, but, like its predecessor, it is unattended with disastrous consequences. CHAPTER XVII. CUBAN THEATRICALS. The Stage Door-Keeper--A Rehearsal--The Spanish Censor--A Cuban Audience--Dramatic Performances--Between Acts--Behind the Scenes--A Dénouement in Real Life. A Call for seven A.M. would hardly meet with a punctual response were such an announcement posted behind the stage-door of a London theatre; but in Cuba the more important business of the day is transacted during the cool hours of the morning, and it does not surprise Roscius of the West Indies when he finds himself summoned to a theatrical rehearsal some three or four hours before breakfast. After that meal, Roscius makes up for lost sleeping-time by taking a long siesta till the hour of dinner. During rehearsal, in the theatre I am describing, the doors are open to the public, and, there being nothing to pay for admission, the stalls and private boxes are always well filled by a not very select audience. Gentlemen of colour are not inadmissible on these occasions; hats may be worn at pleasure, and smoking is so far from being strictly prohibited, that manager and actors themselves set the example. I am tempted to stroll into the theatre during rehearsal, because it is a refreshing lounge after toiling up the stony, hilly, Cuban streets, and because I may gather a new fact or two connected with life behind the Cuban curtain, from my friend who is popularly known as El Marquesito del Queso. El Marquesito is a great authority in matters theatrical. He resides permanently in the building itself, and is paid for taking care of it by night and by day. He is, besides, property-man, costumier, and a good mimic, often obliging the manager by imitating the bark of a dog, the crow of a cock, or the bray of a donkey behind the wings. At the end of the season he is allowed half a benefit, on which occasion only he delights his numerous patrons by enacting the fore-paws in a dancing donkey, to the tune of the Zapateo, a popular negro double-shuffle. In carnival time, El Marquesito lets out dominoes and masks of his own manufacture, or faded theatrical costumes and properties; and whenever the Captain-General honours the town with his august presence, it devolves upon my friend to superintend the decorations of the houses and those of the theatre, where a grand ball to celebrate the event is held. His imposing nickname of El Marquesito del Queso, is derived from the fact that the property-man is in the habit of supping on 'queso' or cheese, and of afterwards making believe that he has feasted like a young Marquis. The curtain being raised for rehearsal, discloses the whole strength of a very fair company of Spanish actors. None of them bear the conventional air of strolling players; the men are moustached, and fashionably attired, and the women, from leading lady to insignificant super, are elegantly dressed. Apropos of supers, El Marquesito assures me it is no easy matter to secure the invaluable services of a genuine white for these purposes. A white lady is not to be had for love or money; and when fairies are required for a burlesque, the children of respectable families are sometimes prevailed upon to appear. Male supers are not so scarce; Spanish soldiers may occasionally be hired; and when these are otherwise engaged, a dozen stage-struck youths of good family volunteer their services as chorus, crowd, or army. The important rôles of quadruped and agitated water are filled by negroes, who, in Cuba, are, of course, plentiful as blackberries; but when a real black face is required to figure in the performance, it is represented by a painted mulatto, for Spanish law in Cuba is strict, and prohibits the genuine article from appearing on the stage. The theatre opens four times a week, including Sunday, and the entertainment is varied every night. To-day the company rehearse a local drama, a zarzuela, and a farce called 'Un Cuarto con dos Camas' being a version of Morton's 'Double-bedded Room.' A famous actor from Spain is the star of the present season. At rehearsal he is a fallen star, being extremely old and shaky, but at night his make-up is wonderful, and he draws large audiences, who witness his great scene of a detected thief in convulsions. The prompter is seated under a cupola in the centre of the stage near the footlights, as at the opera, and his duties are arduous. It devolves upon him to read over the part of each performer in a suppressed tone, and to direct their manner of exit and their position on the stage. He is unseen by the audience, but often heard by them, for the actors have only a faint notion of their parts, and cannot repeat a line at night without having it first hissed at them by their friend at the footlights. El Marquesito del Queso has much to say upon the subject of censorship of plays in Cuba. A play, he tells me, cannot be acted before it has been first submitted to the censor, who, empowered by government, is at liberty to place his red mark of disapproval over any word, line, or passage which he may deem offensive to Spanish morality or to Spanish politics. There is no rule attached to this dramatic censorship, and each censor, in every town throughout the island, has his own way of passing judgment; thus, what would suit the politics and morality of Havana, might be considered treasonable and profane at Santiago, and _vice versâ_. A capital comedy is often so mutilated by the Cuban censor as to be rendered dramatically unfit for representation. All Cuban buildings are constructed with a provident eye to earthquake and tropical heat, and the theatre is no exception to the rule. The means of egress are ample and facile, so that in case of emergency the audience may, comparatively speaking, step from their places into the street. On every side are huge open windows and doors, by means of which perfect ventilation is ensured. Fire is also carefully provided against, and there is always a small regiment of black 'bomberos,' or firemen, stationed in readiness within the theatre. There are two tiers of private boxes, and a gallery. The first tier is but slightly elevated above the pit, enabling the occupants to converse, as is the fashion, with friends in the stalls. Both tiers have the appearance of an ordinary dress circle, with a low partition to distinguish one box from another. There are wide lobbies at the back, and an ornamental iron grating in front. Like most houses in Cuba, the theatre is without drapery, the stall-seats and box-chairs, which are cane-bottomed, not excepted. The interior of a Cuban theatre is barren as a bull-ring. Despite my intimacy with El Marquesito del Queso, I pay my money at the doors, before I enter the theatre at night, like everybody else; for in this proud country it is considered humiliating in a respectable person to beg an order or a pass. I accordingly purchase two separate tickets; one for my admission into the theatre, and one for my seat in it; otherwise, I should have to stand, like the indigent few, at the back of the boxes. Tunicú sometimes accompanies me on these occasions, and gives me the names and occupation of most of the audience, whom he seems to know personally. For the matter of that, everybody in a Cuban theatre is on intimate terms with everybody else, and there is much conversation between the occupants of the boxes, who are, with few exceptions, ladies, and those of the pit, who are exclusively gentlemen. The señoritas, in low-necked muslin dresses, with a wealth of genuine hair, and with their inevitable fans, form a pleasing frame of fair humanity around the picture of dark coats and white drill trousers in the pit. Their hands are gloveless, and their diminutive fingers are loaded with rings of great value: for Cuban ladies are fond of jewellery, and make a great display of it upon all public occasions. Some of the señoras have brought slave attendants, who crouch in waiting on the ground behind them. Tunicú points me out the doctor's box, and when that eminent gentleman appears late in the evening, I recognise him as the man who saved me from the yellow fever. The doctor, I learn, is strong on that disorder, but weak on the subject of earthquake, against which, no West Indian physician has succeeded in finding a remedy. His box is nearest the principal entrance door, for he is nervous about earthquake, and is ever on the alert when he visits a theatre. Tunicú informs me that an earthquake in a theatre is worse than a fire, and gives me the interesting particulars of such a catastrophe as it happened in the doctor's own experience. It was a slight affair, he says, a mere 'temblorcito', as he calls it; one wall was seen to crack from top to bottom, some plaster from an opposite wall peeled off, a globe from one of the gas lamps fell among the audience, and that was all; but the panic was terrible for all that, and many were crushed to death in their attempt to escape. The stout gentleman who occupies that big box all to himself in the centre of the theatre, is his excellency the president. No Spanish entertainment is complete without its president. The curtain may not rise till his excellency has taken his seat; the actors may not respond to a call or an encore if the president is not agreeable, and does not flutter the big play-bill before him, in token of his acquiescence. The box to the right is the lawful property of the censor, who, like most Spanish authorities in Cuba, rarely pays for his pleasure. He is extremely affable and condescending with everybody before the curtain, though so stern and unyielding behind the scenes. His daughters, charming young ladies, are with him, and flirt freely with the numerous Pollos, who come to pay their homage. That stall in the centre of the pit is occupied by the editor of the _Diario_, a Cuban daily paper, whose politics and local information are strongly diluted by censorial ink, and which is, therefore, unintelligible and devoid of interest. The editor of the _Diario_ is extremely lenient in his reports of theatrical entertainments, and on him the manager, at least, may always rely. His contemporary and rival, the editor of the _Redactor_, government organ, is seated in a stall near his excellency the governor-general, who is enthroned in a wide stage-box, and is dressed in full uniform, covered with orders. His excellency is accompanied by an aide-de-camp and half a dozen bronze-faced, heavily moustached officers, all of whom are more or less adorned with orders, crosses, and other military decorations. In the bend of the theatre are the boxes of the English and American consuls; and within earshot of where Tunicú and I are seated, is the box occupied by Cachita, her parents and sister, whom we visit between the acts. But what are those mysterious enclosures with trellis-work before them on either side of the proscenium? Those are special private boxes for the use of persons or families who are still in a state of half-mourning, and may not yet expose themselves to public scrutiny. But these boxes are not always occupied by mourners, whispers Tunicú, in great confidence. There are a certain class, he tells me, who wear a kind of half-mourning, which never becomes out of fashion; these are the half-castes or quadroons, who dare not be seen in public with acknowledged white people. The gallery is as usual devoted to soldiers, sailors, and persons of slender means; and in the extreme background are a few benches set apart for the exclusive accommodation of mulatto girls and negroes of both sexes, most of whom are elegantly attired; for coloured people are scrupulous in their dress on all public occasions. After the overture--a medley of Cuban dance music and Spanish fandango, played upon ordinary instruments by black musicians--a big bell, to summon all stragglers to their places, is heard, the curtain is raised, and the performance begins. There is nothing peculiar in a Cuban drama except that no allusion to political matters is made, and that the profane and immoral are somewhat freely indulged in. The comic players perplex the prompter with inordinate gagging, and delight in personalities with occupants of the orchestra and pit. There is much applause when the comic man shuffles through the charinga--a popular negro dance, difficult of performance, and shouts of laughter are produced in the scene between a Yankee, who speaks very broken Spanish, and a lady who speaks Spanish with the approved Cuban accent. It is an enthusiastic and excitable audience. The entirely new drama is a complete success, owing to the realistic performance of the famous star from old Spain. That gentleman is on the point of breaking a blood-vessel in his effort to impersonate the convulsive thief; but he is saved by the doctor in the private box, who is suddenly summoned to the actor's dressing-room. This interesting incident makes a deep impression upon the sympathising public, and greatly increases the interest of the drama. Then the curtain is lowered amidst rapturous applause, and calls for the infirm player, who is presently led on the stage, supported by one of the company and by the doctor. In the following act, the star astonishes his audience by a vivid representation of a detected thief gone mad, and his private convulsions being still fresh in their memories, many are seen to direct their gaze towards the doctor's box, in doubt whether that gentleman will not be required to administer also to a mind diseased. But all conjecture on this point is presently set at rest by the acting madman himself, who is duly restored to his senses at the conclusion of the play. An interval of from twenty to thirty minutes elapses between each act, during which the whole audience rise from their places and promenade around and about the theatre. The ladies betake themselves to the lobbies to flirt, fan, and refresh themselves with ice 'sorbetes.' The gentlemen from the pit are everywhere. Some are conferring with friends in the 'grilles,' or mourning-boxes; some are smoking cigarettes in spacious saloons provided for smokers; others are in the street drinking 'orchata' or 'bul,' a compound of English beer with iced water and syrup. The stage itself is, however, their favourite resort. Open doors give access to that mysterious ground from the front of the theatre, and the pit public is thus enabled to wander into every nook and corner, from the traps below to the flies above. The players do not shun their visitors, but rather court their society, for a friend in front is considered a desirable acquisition, and half-way towards a reputation as 'favourite;' to say nothing of benefit nights at the end of a season. A small crowd of Pollos waylay the 'first lady' as she leaves her dressing-room. As many as conveniently can, enter the leading actor's room to congratulate him on his success and his speedy recovery from the sensational scene. Another party of Pollos chokes the narrow passage leading to the premiere danseuse's boudoir, and great is their joy when they catch a glimpse of the gauze goddess as she flutters hurriedly past on her way to the green-room. The stage is thronged with these walking gentlemen, who require no rehearsal or prompter, and whose most attractive performance consists in unbounded cigarette smoking, and in getting in everybody's way. It is a miracle how, in the midst of this dire confusion, carpenters, scene-shifters, and managers contrive to set the stage for another act; and what a scene would be disclosed if the drop were to rise prematurely! Presently a voice is heard to cry, 'Fuera!' this being Spanish for 'Clear the stage;' the big bell tolls, and the audience in due course return to their places in front. The curtain having been drawn up after the drama, a man comes round, like a ticket-collector on a railway, to demand the cards of reserved seats from their holders, and to distribute programmes for to-morrow's performances. Everybody is in turn disturbed and annoyed, for at that moment the low-comedy man is singing a comic parody, in a farce called 'The Sexton and the Widow.' But there is a graver interruption than that caused by the ticket-collector--an interruption which affects actors as well as audience, rendering everybody within the theatre walls motionless and speechless. Some ladies are seen to cross themselves devoutly, and are heard to utter ejaculations about 'Misericordia' and 'Maria Santísima.' Every door in the theatre is thrown wide open, and the servants of the establishment stand before them with lighted candles. What is amiss? I look for El Marquesito del Queso, but he has disappeared. Fire? The black bombero firemen are in their accustomed places, and exhibit no sign that such a catastrophe has occurred. Rebellious outbreak of runaway niggers? I glance at the military-box, and find the occupants peacefully inclined. Earthquake? I look towards the doctor's box, and observe that nervous gentleman perfectly tranquil and unmoved. Hark! a tinkling bell is ringing somewhere outside the theatre. From my position in the stalls I can see into the open street beyond, and anon I descry a procession of church dignitaries in full canonicals, the first of whom bears the tinkling bell, while the rest carry long wax candles, the Host, and the sacred umbrella. Their mission at this hour of the evening is that of administering the holy sacrament to a dying man, and as they pass along the streets, it behoves all occupants of houses within the route devoutly to acknowledge the procession as it passes. The audience and actors accordingly kneel and cross themselves while the holy functionaries and their sacrament are in view. One of the ecclesiastical party enters the theatre and glances hurriedly within, to see that all are in the approved attitude. I am thankful to find myself doing as the good Catholics are doing, for I know that our visitor has no respect of persons or creeds, and would call me to order without the least hesitation, were I inclined to rebel. When the religious 'function' in the street (all public shows, from a bull-fight to high mass, are called 'functions' in the Spanish language) is out of sight and hearing, and the candles at the door are extinguished, the spectators resume their seats, and the farce 'function' on the stage proceeds. CHAPTER XVIII. MY DÉBUT ON A CUBAN STAGE. An Engagement--A Foreign 'Star'--A Benefit Night--A Local Play--First Appearance--A Serious 'Hitch'--Re-engagement. I have already noted how Nicasio and I have lent our art services at the theatre whenever scenic decorations were required. Our colour boxes have also been in demand on certain occasions when the leading performers were particular respecting the correct pencilling of their eyebrows, the effective corking of their cheeks, and other attributes of an actor's 'make-up.' Whenever an English play is wanted for adaptation to the Spanish stage, the manager--very naturally--'falls back upon' the Anglo-Saxon follower of the divine art of Apelles. Upon one occasion I am required to translate the famous farce of 'Box and Cox'--a farce entirely new to a Cuban audience and, consequently, a great success when interpreted for them into choice Castilian. One day, application is made to me by Señor Don Baltazar Telon y Escotillon, impresario and first low comedian of the Teatro Real de Cuba, who begs me, as a personal favour, to undertake an important rôle in a new farce which he proposes to present to the Cuban public on the occasion of his annual benefit. The farce is from the pen of a popular Cuban author, and is called 'Los Mocitos del Dia' (Fops of the Period). The subject of the play is of local interest, with a moral exposing in farcical colours the foibles of the Cuban 'Pollo,' or dandy, whose taste for pleasure and idleness is only exceeded by his aversion for manual labour and for early matrimony. The characters are as follows:-- Teresita, a beautiful young Creole. Doña Lola, her aunt. Juana, a mulatto slave. Ramon, a 'mocito' in love with Teresita. Don Gabriel, a fruiterer. Mister Charles, a Yankee engineer from a sugar plantation. To lend a realistic tone to the last-mentioned personage, the manager has 'secured the services of a live Yankee from the United States'--at least, such is his announcement; but, in reality, the gentleman who has offered to fill the part is an Englishman, and one of 'the famous followers of the divine art of Apelles.' 'Posters,' bearing my Anglo-Saxon name--which to a Cuban ear has an imposing sound--are affixed to the corners of every street, and bills of the play are distributed gratis throughout the town. In accordance with custom, the beneficee has addressed envelopes, enclosing a programme of the entertainments, together with a photograph of himself and a 'luneta' or reserved-seat ticket, to all the known frequenters of the theatre. Those who appreciate the compliment implied by the talented comedian, will assuredly lend their patronage on his benefit night, and perhaps forward twice or thrice the value of the ticket of admission. The manager is confident of a 'bumper,' and bids me do my best. To acquit myself with credit is not so easy as Don Baltazar supposes. First, it is necessary to eschew my irreproachable Spanish, and to assume that language as it is spoken by an American of the lower orders, residing in Cuba. During my visits to sugar plantations, I have sometimes made the acquaintance of certain engineers from Philadelphia, who, while the cane harvest lasts, are employed to work the machinery used in sugar making. With these gentlemen before me for models, and with Nicasio at hand, I study my part. Contrary to the system adopted by my brother-players, I carefully commit the whole of my part to memory, noting the grammatical errors, which are numerous, and the fragments of English which occasionally appear. I am punctual in my attendance at the rehearsals, which is more than some of my fellow-comedians can say. When an actor of the Teatro Real de Cuba is absent from rehearsal, a super or a scene-shifter is called to read over his part until he arrives. I have considerable difficulty in following the prompter, whose duty it is to dictate to the performer the words which the latter afterwards repeats. Seated in a stage trap before the leader of the orchestra, he is conveniently within hearing of the actors, who upon the evening of representation never desert him if they can possibly help it. But I, who have studied my part after the manner of English actors, could easily dispense with the Cuban prompter's services. His prompting is perplexing, and fills me with prospective terrors of a 'break-down.' Often while I am in the middle of a speech, my officious friend at the footlights has already whispered the remainder, besides uttering the words which belong to the next speaker. If I pause for purposes of 'by-play,' the gentleman in the trap is convinced that I have forgotten my rôle, and insists upon repeating the missing line, though I expostulate in a low voice, and beg him, by all the saints in the calendar, to hold his peace. A copy of the new farce is dispatched, previous to its representation, to the Spanish Censor, who, after a careful perusal, returns it with the following foot-note:-- 'Having examined this comedy, I find in it nothing which should prevent its representation from being authorised. Signed: The Censor of Theatres--Antonio de los Sandos y Ribaldos.' In spite of this formal declaration, one passage in the farce is found to bear a condemnatory red mark. The objectionable phrase belongs to Mister Charles, the Yankee engineer, who, in the course of the play's action, is made to observe: 'These poor Spanish brutes want civilising badly!' Don Baltazar is puzzled, and consults his company upon the propriety--not to say safety--of using the questionable words. All agree that the point is a telling one, and would gratify an audience composed principally of Cubans, who have no affection for Spaniards; and they are of opinion that as no written exception to the play has, as is usual in such cases, been made by the censor, the text may safely be followed. From the broad balcony of my private dwelling, I watch with eager interest the Spanish orange and red banner, which, on a certain day, waves over the Teatro Real de Cuba, in token of an evening's performance. If the weather prove unfavourable, this fluttering emblem of fine weather will fall like a barometer; the doors of the theatre will close, and a notice, postponing the entertainments for another evening, will be affixed over the entrance. Such an event is, however, not in store; and at seven o'clock precisely the huge doors of the Teatro Real de Cuba are thrown open. The performances begin with a stirring drama in a prologue and three acts, entitled 'Flor de un Dia.' The tone of this very favourite piece would, without doubt, be questioned by a Lord Chamberlain, but as it contains no political offence, it meets with the unqualified approval of his Excellency the Spanish Censor. Before the curtain rises, the manager peeps through a small glazed hole, in the centre of the act-drop, and surveys the audience. The house is full, 'de bóte en bóte,' as the newspapers afterwards express it. His Excellency the Governor, attended by his staff of officers, occupies the big stage box on the left of the proscenium, and there is a goodly sprinkling of Spaniards in every part of the theatre. Of course I have many friendly 'hands' in the house. The English and American consuls are in their respective pálcos. Nicasio is seated in the third row of the stalls, together with Tunicú, Bimba, and a host of their Pollo companions. Don Benigno, Doña Mercedes and their daughters and friends, are also present; and Cachita and her parents occupy their favourite private box. Most foreign plays are divided into 'escenas,' and the farce of 'Los Mocitos del Dia' contains no less than twenty-four. My 'call' is for scene nine, so after the second act of the drama, I go to my dressing-room and arrange my 'make-up' for the Cubanised Yankee. Agreeably to the Cuban notion of American costume, I don a suit of dark-coloured winter clothing, together with a red flannel shirt, heavy hob-nailed boots, and an engineer's broad-peaked cap. Similarly, I apply cosmetic to my hair, which I comb flat and lank; I rouge my cheeks and nose plentifully with crimson colour, attach a thick tuft of hair to my chin, and with the aid of burnt cork give to my naturally round face a lantern-jawed, cadaverous appearance. When the curtain has fallen upon the three-act drama, my dressing-room is besieged by a host of Cuban friends, who have come to wish me success and to inspect my make-up behind the scenes. All congratulate me on my effective disguise, and promise to assist towards giving me a warm reception. Nicasio remains with me till the last moment, to run over my part again, put the finishing touches to my toilette and inspire me with confidence. But now the big bell, summoning all stragglers to their places, is heard, the audience resume their seats, and the curtain rises for 'Los Mocitos del Dia.' The scene of the farce is laid in the interior of a 'ventorillo,' or fruiterer's shop, in Cuba, with real bananas, plantains, sugar-cane, cocoa-nuts, mangoes, Panama hats, and limp hand-baskets distributed about the stage. Juana, the mulatto girl--attired in a low-necked, short-sleeved cotton gown and a coloured turban--is discovered smoking an enormous cigar, and washing clothes in a kind of flat tub, called in Creole vernacular a 'batea.' She soliloquises in the drawling nasal tone peculiar to her race, and adopts a Spanish _patois_ which abounds in abbreviated words, suppressed s's, unlisped z's, and s-sounding c's. After singing the 'Candelita,' a favourite Cuban ditty, Juana discourses upon her master Don Gabriel's objections to 'lo mocito,' as she calls them, and describes their rakish habits. Enter Teresita's lover, Ramon. The 'mocito' desires an uninterrupted interview with his mistress, and offers to bribe the mulatto with silver 'medios' if she will warn the lovers of the 'enemy's' approach by singing the 'Candelita' outside. Juana accepts the bribe, which she places carefully within the folds of her turban after the fashion of her tribe, and vanishes in quest of her young mistress. Enter Teresita.--'Válgame Dios! Ramon?' Ramon.--'Teresita de mi vida!' (Love-scene.) Teresita refers to her father's dislike to 'los mocitos,' whom Don Gabriel declares to have no occupations save those of gambling and dancing, and who go about 'perfumed with eau-de-Cologne and violet powder.' Her papa's notion of a model son-in-law is an individual who savours of the workshop. Such a man Don Gabriel has discovered in the person of Mister Charles (pronounced Charleys), the engineer of Don Hermenejildo Sanchez' sugar estate. Ramon is disgusted with this information. 'What!' he exclaims, 'you married to a "fogonero"--a stoker! I will never consent to such a union--first because of my deeply-rooted love for you, and secondly because of my patriotic feeling on the subject. This is a question of race, Teresita mia. It is war between coal and café-a fight between brandy and bananas. Yes; rosbif _versus_ fufú. Mister Charleys is a bisteque (beefsteak), and I am your tasajito con platanito verde machucado!' (a favourite Creole dish). The infatuated fruiterer is, nevertheless, resolved to make up a match between his daughter and the industrious mechanic, and, accordingly, brings Mister Charleys home with him. Mister Charleys, who has fortified himself with a strong stimulant, is waiting at the wing for his cue, in company with the 'call-boy' (an old man in this instance), who holds a copy of cues in one hand and a lighted candle in the other. The call-boy whispers 'Fuera!' as a signal for me to disappear from the wing, gives me an encouraging push, and the gloom behind the scenes is suddenly exchanged for a blaze of gas, and a theatre full of enthusiastic spectators. Following Don Gabriel, who leads the way, I am greeted with a round of hearty applause in acknowledgement of my effective make-up, and when I give utterance to the opening words, in which reference is made to the heat of the weather, and to the difficulties Mister Charleys has encountered in his quest after refreshment, the house is convulsed. Some time, however, elapses before I can thoroughly appreciate my situation, and realise the fact that all this applause and laughter is due to my appearance on the stage. I easily overcome the temporary agitation induced by the glare of the lamps and the gaze of the hundreds of upturned faces before me; but I cannot withstand the behaviour of the gentleman in the domed trap. His perpetual prompting, combined with his perceptible enjoyment of the new piece, is, to say the least of it, confusing, and fills me with misgivings of a premature 'hitch.' The play proceeds. I am formally introduced to the ladies, whose hands I squeeze awkwardly and savagely, while Don Gabriel--whom I address as Don Guebriel--sings the praises of Mister Charleys. Enter my rival Ramon, disguised as a Catalan shopkeeper, in false whiskers, and a tall white hat with a black band. Shopkeepers in Cuba are usually natives of Barcelona, and the object of Ramon's disguise, is to persuade Don Gabriel that he is one of that money-making community. He talks Spanish with the approved Catalonian accent; introduces himself as 'Dun Panchu Defulou, Cutulan y cumerciante,' and offers to traffic with his host. The imposture is, however, short-lived. In a hard squeeze of the hand which I give the sham Catalan at parting, he inadvertently roars out in a good Creole accent:-- 'Ay! ay! ay! caramba, suelte usted.' (Oh! for goodness' sake, let go!) The old gentleman suspects his maiden sister of aiding and abetting the dangerous 'mocito,' and there is every reason for his suspicion; Doña Lola having persuaded herself that it is she, and not her young niece, who is the object of the 'mocito's' solicitations. Deluded with this notion, the elderly spinster facilitates Ramon's visit to the house, and there is a scene in which she helps to conceal him in a huge barrel used for storing charcoal. One of the chief 'situations' in the farce occurs when Don Gabriel, at the instigation of Mister Charleys (whom Ramon nicknames Mister Estornudo, or Sneezer, from the resemblance of his name to a sneeze as expressed in Spanish), fires a loaded pistol at the barrel and its human contents. It is during the action of this scene that the questionable phrase, already referred to, should be delivered by the Yankee engineer. The cue being given, I am in the act of repeating the lines, when the voice of Don Baltazar, the manager, to whom is apportioned the rôle of Ramon, is heard imploring me, from the barrel, to omit the words. Conscious of the presence of his Excellency the Governor, the manager is suddenly seized with misgivings as to the manner in which the expression will be received, and will not risk his Excellency's displeasure. My fellow-comedians, who are all Cubans, urge me to proceed. The prompter thinks I have forgotten my part, and repeats the text--so often, indeed, that the spectators in the third row of the stalls at last overhear him, and call unanimously for the correct version of the play. 'These poor Span---- ' I begin. The barrel trembles visibly. 'Por Dios,' hisses the manager, bobbing up from the barrel like an undecided Jack-in-the-box--'for Heaven's sake, don't compromise me!' The audience begin to show signs of impatience. Again the prompter maddens me by giving the text. Myself (_aside to prompter_): 'Bar--ajo! sir, I know my part.' Mister Charleys (_very loud to audience_): 'These poor Spanish brutes want civilising badly!' 'Bravo! Muy bien!' from the Cuban party. Groans and loud whistling from the Spaniards. 'That was well said!' observes a voice. 'Fuera!' (Turn him out!) observes another. 'It was a good home-thrust!' cries the first. 'Fuera ese hombre!' (Turn out that man!) shrieks voice number two. 'Polizia!' The theatrical president rises angrily from his box and summons the police. The male spectators who occupy the pit-stalls begin to be as unruly as they are at a bull-fight. The ladies move from their boxes to the lobbies. The censor is sent for by the president. The manager is charged to appear by the censor; and anon Ramon, _alias_ Don Baltazar Telon y Escotillon, his face and dress besmeared with charcoal, steps into the president's 'palco.' 'Bravo! Bien!' from the audience, whose good-humour is at once restored by this new and unexpected diversion. A mighty conference is held in the president's box, and the matter of dispute is warmly discussed with suitable gesticulations. The question is, however, finally decided in favour of the manager. Order being now established, the president's box is cleared, the actors resume their positions on the stage, and the farce, which proves a great success, terminates happily. When the performances are over, and I have attired myself in the costume of the country, I join my friends in the front of the house. Don Benigno and his family congratulate me on my successful début and express a hope that it will not be my last appearance on the Cuban stage. Tunicú, Bimba and others of my Pollo friends overwhelm me with compliments, and as soon as I am at liberty, they hurry me and Nicasio off to the nearest café, where a substantial supper is soon provided. Cachita and her relations are equally warm in their praises, and Cachita's father, Don Severiano--to whom I am for the first time introduced--very much rewards my efforts, by inviting me to pass a few days, during the approaching summer, at his coffee estate, whither he and his family are bound. As for Don Baltazar, the manager--he is so rejoiced at the success of his plan of presenting the public not only with a 'real Yankee from the United States,' but with one of the 'original' followers of the divine art of Apelles, that he induces me to repeat the performance; and 'Los Mocitos del Dia' is forthwith announced for another evening. CHAPTER XIX. COFFEE GROUNDS OF CUBA. Going out of Town--On the Road--A Wayside Inn--A Cane Field--West-Indian Fruit Trees--The Arrival--A Dinner in the Country--The Evening Blessing--Tropical Reptiles--A Farm-Yard--Slave Flogging--Coffee--Tropical Scenery--A Siesta. My experience of the Spanish West Indies warrants me in the assertion that a tropical climate has but one season throughout the year, and that season is summer. The months of August and September, however, are favoured with a special season of their own; but the prevailing temperature can scarcely be defined by mounting mercury, neither can it be adequately described. It is during these blazing hot months that the ever-azure firmament seems to blink with blue: that the roads and pavement blister the soles of your feet; and that the gay-coloured house-fronts scorch your clothes of white drill and tan your Anglo-Saxon complexion. The Cubans have a mania for painting the fronts of their town residences a celestial blue, a blinding white, or a feverish yellow ochre: colours singularly trying to the eyes, and figurative eyesores to artists in search of the harmonious. It is at this oppressive season of the year that I would relieve my exhausted vision with the grateful greens of the dusky olive, the pale pea, and the lively emerald. I pant for a plantation which shall shelter and not suffocate. The realisation of my desire is kindly brought about by Cachita's father, Don Severiano, who hospitably places at my disposal his hacienda in the country. Thither he himself is bound, with Doña Belen his wife, his children, certain friends and domestics. So I make one of his party. Don Severiano is a wealthy planter, with I know not how many acres of rich soil, where the coffee-plant grows, yielding a couple of crops or so per annum to the labour of a small battalion of blacks. On the morning of our departure for Don Severiano's coffee estate, Don Severiano himself is in the patio, presiding over the saddling and harnessing department; for some of us are to bestride horses. The ladies and children are to drive; and mules, and carts drawn by oxen, are reserved for the conveyance of the luggage and the domestics. By way of dispelling our lingering somnolence, and fortifying us for the heavy journey before us, cups of strong coffee are handed round; and, with a view to getting over as much ground as possible before blinding daylight shall appear, we start at three o'clock to the minute. The quitrins--light gig vehicles on wheels six yards in circumference, with shafts sixteen feet long, and drawn by mules bearing negro postilions in jack-boots--lead the way. The equestrians follow at a jog-trot; the extreme tips of their buff-coloured shoes lightly touching the stirrups; their knees firmly pressed against the saddles; their figures bolt upright and immovable. Then come the carts with shady awnings of palm leaves, drawn by oxen with yokes fastened to the points of their horns. The drivers probe them with long iron-tipped lances, and further goad them by shouting their names and adjective titles. But they move slowly, and are soon left miles behind. In their rear are about a dozen mules with well-filled panniers, linked together in line by their tails and rope reins, and led by a mounted driver with a long whip, who grasps the end of the cord by which they are united, and shouts ferocious menaces as he goes. It is still dark. The dew lies thick on everything; myriads of frogs and night insects yet hold their croaking concert; and the fire-fly cucullo, with its phosphorescent lantern, darts about here and there, like falling stars and fireworks. A stony stream has now to be forded. Into it splash the gigs; our horses following willingly, for they are thirsty, poor beasts, and the cool spring water is inviting. The roads are, so far, favourable to our march; but we have arrived at a piece of ground where muddy puddles lie horse-leg deep. A bridle road invites, but the thoroughfare being intercepted by brushwood and overhanging branches, it is not easy to effect a passage. Our leader, Don Severiano, accordingly unsheathes the long machete, which he wears like a sword, and hacks him an avenue for self and followers. The thicket is even darker than the high-road we have deserted, and our leader curbs his horse with caution while he lights a taper of brown wax; for the ground is slippery, and abounds in deep holes and unexpected crevices. From my position in the rear, the effect produced by the rays of the solitary illumination is agreeable to the sight. The dark outlines of the riders who precede me, appear like black silhouettes against a background of green and brown, and nature by candle-light looks like stage scenery. We emerge again upon the main road, and at full speed gallop after our friends. We fall in with them at a tienda, or wayside inn, at which they have halted. Dismounting from our horses, we assist the ladies to alight from their carriages. Of course I attend upon the fair Cachita, whose agreeable society I enjoy till our departure from the tienda. The tienda is a queer combination of tavern, coffee-house, chandler's shop, and marine-store dealer's. The walls and ceiling are completely concealed by miscellaneous wares. Spurs and sardine boxes; candles, calico, and crockery; knives and nutmeg-graters; toys, tubs, and timepieces; rows of sweet hams, sheathed machetes, pulleys, coils of rope and farming implements; Panama hats, buff-coloured country shoes; tin spoons, preserves, and French brandy. The innkeeper or shopkeeper of this out-of-the-world store is a native of Barcelona--by name Boy--who pronounces Spanish with a very broad Catalan accent. We travellers are his sole customers at present, and as we require only hot coffee at a medio the cup, aguardiente brandy at a creole penny the nip, a handful of cigars, and a packet of paper cigarettes, the profits derived from our patronage cannot be very great. We are off once more, not to halt again until a cane field stops the way. The growing cane, with its bamboo-shaped fruit, and waving leaf of long grass, crops up to the right and left of us for miles, and terminates in the 'ingenio' or sugar-works. The entrance to the proprietor's grounds is by a five-barred gate and a wigwam, both of which have been designed and constructed by an aged and decrepit African who occupies the latter. He crawls out of his domicile as we approach, and his meagre form is barely covered by a grimy blanket fastened to his girdle by means of a strip of dried palm bark. To all our questions his solitary response is 'Sí, sñor, miamo,' being exactly the creole Spanish for the creole English 'Yes, massa.' Having by this means satisfied ourselves that 'miamo,' his massa, is at home and willing to receive us, we proceed until we hear the clicking of a whip, and observe indistinctly a row of naked blacks, who are engaged in some earthy occupation. A big bronze-faced man, in a white canvas suit and a pancake Panama hat, stands behind them and holds a long knotted whip, which he occasionally applies to their backs as a gentle reminder that time represents so many Spanish doubloons. This is the 'mayoral,' or overseer. He seems to pride himself upon his masterly touch with the thong, for when no black skin forms an excuse for the practice of his skill, he flicks at nothing, to keep his hand in. The sorrow of this sight is greatly augmented by the dead silence; for whenever the chastising weapon descends, the sufferer is mute. The lawful owner of these lashed shoulders and of a couple of hundred more, has turned out to greet us. His unshaved countenance wears a sleepy expression, but the stump of a lighted cigar is already in his mouth. At a given signal, a couple of small slaves appear, with cups of hot coffee and a tray of long home-made cigars. 'Candela!' Mine host invokes fire, and a little mulatto girl, upon whom it devolves to provide it, presents each smoker with a lump of red-hot charcoal in the clutches of a lengthy pair of tongs. Daylight is appearing, and warns us that we must be on the move again. 'Adelante, caballeros!' Leaving the level cane district, for the next few hours we are winding up mountains. At every turn of the road, the ingenio we have quitted grows smaller and smaller, till the planter's residence, the big engine-shed, and the negro cottages, become mere toys under our gaze. Now we are descending. Our sure-footed animals understand the kind of travelling perfectly, and, placing their fore-paws together, like horses trained for a circus, slide down with the greatest ease. Somebody ahead has exclaimed, 'Miren!' We look, and behold a distant view of Don Severiano's 'cafetal.' The path has become narrower, and we are encompassed by short thick hedges, dotted with red and black berries of a form not unlike diminutive olives. I pick and open one of these berries, and somebody observing, 'Que café tan abundante!' I discover that what I have plucked is coffee in a raw state. 'Que admirable es la naturaleza!' sings a Spanish dramatist. Nature is, indeed, much to be admired, especially when you are viewing her in orange groves, where oranges, for the trouble of picking them, hang invitingly over your very mouth, seeming to say, 'Eat me, stranger.' Some are small and green as gooseberries; others are big as your head, and of the bright hue to which they give a name. Next on the carte of nature's dessert are the heart-shaped, smooth-skinned mangoes, with their massive and symmetrical tree. They are followed by a procession of lime-trees, citrons, nisperos, granadas, marañones, anones, zapotes, mamoncillos, and a host of other fruits with strange shapes and equally odd Hispano-Indian appellations. I grieve to relate that the king of fruits--the princely pine-apple--is far from being the exalted personage you would have expected him to be. Like a bachelor cabbage, he grovels in solitary state under our feet! We play at marbles with pomegranates, and practise tilting at the ring with citrons. Throw into the scene a few parasite and plantain trees with slender trunks and colossal leaves; fill in the foreground with gigantic ferns, aloes, and palmettoes, and the background with spotless blue; select for yourself from the nearest hot-house where specimens of exotic plants are nursed, and you are with us, dear--and none the less dear for being imaginative--reader! Distant barking denotes that we are within earshot of our destination; and anon a couple of Don Severiano's faithful dogs come bounding along the road towards us. 'Hey, Esperules, old girl! What, and Tocólo too?' Don Severiano caresses them in turn as each leaps to his saddle. A dozen more lie in ambush at the gate which leads to the coffee grounds, and through which we are now passing. The mayoral, with his wife and children, turn out to meet and welcome us. Crowds of Africans pay us homage and grin with delight. We halt in the patio, and a score of half-naked grooms assist us in alighting, and watch and help us at our lightest movement. As it is evening dusk when we arrive, and as we are exhausted with our day's pilgrimage, we betake ourselves to our dormitories without a word. Here we are served by stalwart domestics, who bathe our burning feet in luke-warm water, and sponge our irritated bodies with diluted aguardiente. A clean shirt of fine linen; a fresh suit of whity-brown drill; a toy cup of black coffee; and we are refreshed and ready to do justice to dinner; to the 'aijaco' of chicken and native vegetables; to the 'bacalao' or stock-fish, with tomato sauce; to the boiled meat, cabbage, 'chocho,' bacon, and 'garbanzos'; to the stewed goat, with accompaniment of yams, baked bananas, pumpkin and Indian corn; to the guava jellies and guanavana preserves mashed up with insipid creole cheese; to the juicy mangoes cut up in slices in the midst of Catalan wine and sugar; to the excellent black coffee, and home-made cigars. These we discuss in the broad balcony without, where, seated on leather-bottomed chairs, we pass the rest of the evening. The second overseer, with his staff of field slaves, fills the yard which faces us. The faithful vassals have ended their day's toil, and are come to beg the evening blessing of their lord and master. Blacks of both sexes and all ages, stand before us in a row; some with machete reaping-knives under their arms, or bundles of maloja-fodder for the stable supply; others with the empty baskets into which they have been plucking the ripe coffee berry. Their evening costume consists of a loose garment of coarse canvas. The women wear head-dresses of gaily-coloured handkerchiefs twisted and tied in a peculiar fashion; the men have broad-brimmed straw hats and imitation panamas. The second overseer, with his inseparable whip, leans against our balcony with the air of a showman, as each black approaches with crossed arms to crave his or her master's blessing. 'La ben'dicion, miamo.' 'It is given,' says Miamo Don Severiano with the supremest indifference. Being in the country, and moreover tired, we retire for the night at a reasonable hour. We have to make the best of our extemporised couches, for our luggage and furniture are yet on their way, and probably will not put in an appearance before morning. Some of the guests, therefore, betake themselves to swinging hammocks, while others occupy the mayoral Don José's catres--a species of folding bedstead not unlike an open apple-stall with a canvas tray. Not until we have fairly taken possession of our temporary couches, do we fully appreciate Doña Belen's fore-thought in providing many yards of mosquito netting. I have always dreaded a country life, no matter in what part of the world, on account of strange vermin. A shudder runs through me at the mention of earwigs and caterpillars; but give me a hatful of those interesting creatures for bedfellows in preference to a cot in Cuba without a mosquito net! What is that sweet creature crawling cautiously towards me along the brick floor, looking like a black star-fish with a round body? 'Oh, it is nothing, massa,' says my black valet 'I kill him in a minute, massa.' Which he does with his naked heel. Only an 'araña peluda;' in plain English, a spider of gigantic proportions, whose lightest touch will draw you like a poultice. I let the 'cucurrachos' pass, for I recognise in them my old familiar friend the cockroach, whose worst crime is to leave an offensive smell on every object he touches. Neither do I object to the 'grillo,' a green thing which hops all over the room; for I know it to be but a specimen of magnified grasshopper, who will surely cease its evening gambols as soon as the light is extinguished. But oh, by Santiago or any other saint you please, I would have you crush, mangle, kill, and utterly exterminate that dark brown long-tailed brute, from whose body branch all kinds of horrible limbs, the most conspicuous of which are a pair of claws that resemble the handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of 'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for scorpion gymnastics), my appearance at the breakfast-table to-morrow, and for days after, will be hideous; to say nothing of personal discomfort and fever. Now, a mosquito net stretched over you on its frame, effectually insures you against such midnight visitors; and, if well secured on every side, will even serve to ward off the yard and a half of 'culebra' or snake, which at certain seasons is wont to invade your bedroom floor at night. I am awakened at an early hour by Don Severiano's live stock, who hold their musical matinée in the big yard exactly under my open window. The bloated and presumptuous turkey-cock, 'guanajo,' is leading tenor in the poultry programme. First fiddle is the 'gallo Inglés,' or English rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls, varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock, perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds the performance below in plaintive and heart-rending tones. Before I am up and stirring, a dark domestic brings me a tiny cup of boiling coffee and a paper cigarette, and waits for further orders. Don Severiano proposes a stroll (he tells me) through his grounds. Our horses are soon led out, and we bestride them, with an empty sack for a saddle and a bit of rope for a bridle. Better riders than the Cubans I never saw in an equestrian circus, and steadier and easier-going animals than Cuban horses I have never ridden on a 'roundabout' at a country fair. We come upon a sorry sight at one of the 'secaderos,' or coffee-drying platforms. A young mulatto woman is undergoing 'veinte cinco' on a short ladder: in other words, is being flogged. They have tied her, face downwards, by her wrists and ankles, to a slanting ladder, while an overseer and a muscular assistant in turn administer two dozen lashes with a knotted thong. She receives her punishment with low groans; when she catches a glimpse of the spectators, she craves our intercession. 'Perdona, miamo!' The overseer laughs, and, turning to his visitors, offers his weapon with a polite invitation that one of us will try our skill. We all appeal to Don Severiano, and, at our earnest request, that humane gentleman orders his mayoral to let the culprit off. Smarting salt and aguardiente are then rubbed in for healing purposes, and the wretched girl is conducted to a dark chamber, where her baby, five months old, is shortly afterwards brought her for solace and aliment. I venture to inquire the nature of her crime, and am assured that it is ungovernable temper and general insubordination of more than a month's standing. Our horses are halting on one of the four secaderos, or 'barbacués'--smooth platforms on which the ripe coffee-berry is laid and raked out to be blackened and baked by the sun. Near the secaderos is a circle of ground, hedged in like a bull-ring and containing a horizontal fluted roller, turned by a crank. This roller, or pulping-mill, is made to gyrate by a mule, crushing in its perpetual journey the already baked coffee-berry, until the crisp husk peels off and exposes a couple of whity-brown, hard, oval seeds, upon which are inscribed two straight furrows. There are winnowing-machines, for separating the chaff from the already milled grain. In that outhouse a group of dark divinities are engaged in the difficult process of sieving and sorting. See with what exceeding dexterity Alicia, Ernestina, and Constancia--the black workers have the whitest of Christian names--handle their big sieves. Alicia, cigar in mouth, takes an armful of the winnowed seed from the sack at her side, and transfers it to her sieve, which she shakes until the dust and remaining particles of husk fall like floating feathers to the ground. Then, by an expert turn of the wrist, she separates the smaller and better quality of seed from the larger and coarser; and by another remarkable sleight of hand, tilts the former into its corresponding heap on the ground, and pours the latter into a sack. Constancia is scarcely as expert as Alicia though. The sieve's perforations are wide enough to admit the small seed of the 'caracol,' and she separates the two qualities by the ordinary process of sieving the small and retaining the great. Well seated on his chesnut charger, Don Severiano conducts us by a circuitous path up an exceedingly steep hill. The trees are tall and ponderous; the leaves are, for the most part, gigantic and easy to count; the fruits are of the biggest; the mountain tops are inaccessible; and the rivers contain fish for Titans. Surely giants must have peopled Cuba, long before Columbus found out the colony! Don Severiano takes little or no interest in the landscape, his attention being wholly absorbed by the small round berries, which may before long be converted into grains of gold, if the coffee crop yield as it promises. The pickers are at their work. A score of them are close at hand, with their baskets already filled. Observe how they choose the dark red, and eschew the unripe green, or the black and overdone berry. The second overseer, whip in hand, is ever behind, to see that the pickers do not flag. He is a genuine white; but his complexion is so bronzed, that you would scarcely distinguish him from a mulatto, save for his lank hair and thin lips. He volunteers explanation. He points to the big fruit of the cacao, or cocoa plant, and shows which are the bread, the milk and the cotton trees. Learning that I am a foreigner and an Englishman, he offers some useful information respecting certain trees and plants which yield invaluable products, such as might be turned to good account by an enterprising European, but which are unnoticed and neglected by the wealthy independent native. At our request, he unsheathes his machete and cuts us a few odd-shaped twigs from a coffee bush, with which we may manufacture walking-sticks. He exhibits one of his own handiwork. It is engraved all over, polished and stained in imitation of a snake; and, as it rests in the green grass, it looks the very counterpart of such a reptile, with beady eyes and scaly back. On closer acquaintanceship, I find the second overseer to be a great connoisseur in canes. It is our breakfast hour, and Doña Belen and the other ladies will not like to be kept waiting. So we return to the barbacué, where the powerful odour of roasting coffee is wafted towards us. The black cook is roasting a quantity of the drab seed, in a flat pipkin over a slow fire. She is careful to keep the seed in motion with a stick, lest it burn; and when it has attained the approved rich brown hue, she sprinkles a spoonful of sugar over it to bring out its flavour, and then leaves it to cool on the ground. Near her are a wooden pestle and mortar for reducing the crisp toasted seed to powder; and a small framework of wood in which rests a flannel bag for straining the rich brown decoction after it has been mixed and boiled. Substantial breakfast over, some of us carry our hammocks and betake ourselves to the adjacent stream. Here, beneath the shade of lofty bamboos, within hearing of the musical mocking-bird, the wild pigeon and the humming-bird, in the midst of sweet-smelling odours, we lotus-eaters encamp, affixing each a hammock between a couple of trunks of trees. Here, we see nature under her brightest and sunniest aspect, and, divesting our imagination of oil and canvas landscape, arrive at the conclusion that trees and plants are very green indeed, and of an endless variety of shade; that stones do not glitter, save where water damps them; and that a Cuban sky is far bluer than the most expensive ultramarine on a painter's palette. CHAPTER XX. COUNTRY LIFE AT A SUGAR ESTATE. An Artist's Tent--Early Sport--An 'Ingenio'--Sugar and Rum--Afternoon Sport--A Ride through the Country--Negro Dancing--An Evening in the Country--'La Loteria.' With my companion Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú, behold me passing the sultry months of August and September at the plantation of our worthy friend Don Benigno, who, with his wife and family, have encamped for the summer season at a farm-house on his sugar estate. Our host's party is somewhat larger than usual, consisting of, besides his wife and family, his eldest daughter's intended, Don Manuel, and _his_ family. After our arrival, it is found that Don Benigno's premises cannot accommodate us; we therefore obligingly seek a lodging elsewhere, and as in the tropics any place of shelter serves for a habitation, we do not greatly sacrifice our comfort. Assisted by a stalwart negro, Nicasio and I improvise a lodging on the banks of the river which flows near Don Benigno's country house. Our rustic bower consists of a framework of roughly cut branches, and has an outer covering formed of the dried papyrus-like bark of palms. The interior is not spacious, but it meets all our requirements. In it we can swing our hammocks at night, and assume a sitting posture without inconvenience during the day. Our implements for sketching, together with a couple of double-barrelled guns and some fishing-tackle, distributed about the apartment, form agreeable objects for our gaze, while, at the same time, they are within our easiest grasp. Plenty of good fishing may be obtained in the deep, wide river which flows at our feet, and our guns may be equally well employed with sport in the opposite direction. As for our more peaceful instruments of art, there is abundant scope for them on every side; and thus we can shoot, angle, or sketch, as we may feel inclined, without moving from our shady retreat, which, during the sunnier hours of the day, we dare not desert. We rise at a very early hour; indeed, it is not yet daylight when our dark domestic brings us our early cup of café noir and cigarettes. After refreshing our bodies in the natural gigantic bath which flows before our domicile, we dress: an operation which does not occupy much time, as our wardrobe consists simply of coloured flannel shirts, brown holland trousers, Panama hats, and buff-coloured shoes. Thus attired, with ammunition affixed to our girdles, and guns shouldered, we plunge into an adjacent thicket in quest of game; the objects of our sport being chiefly wild guinea-fowl, quails, partridges, and wild pigeons. No game license is required of us in these parts, and the sporting competition is very small, if indeed it exists at all, within earshot of us; at least, at this hour of the morning we have the field to ourselves. We hear nothing as yet but the rustling of gigantic ferns, bamboos, and plantain leaves, together with the occasional song of the winged tribe, whose united harmony it is our purpose soon to interrupt. The silence of the grey dawn is eminently favourable to our sport, and the low bushes which intercept our path screen us from the penetrating gaze of our prey. The guinea-fowl, or 'gallos de Guinea' as they are styled, occupy our first attention. At this hour they emerge from their hiding-places by the score to feed among the dewy heather. We have to move with extreme caution, for the colour of their soft feathers is scarcely distinguishable from the ground which they have selected as a table for their morning meal. Nicasio is in advance of me, tracking a company of guinea-fowls, whose melodious chirp has caught his accustomed ear. They are not yet visible, but my sporting friend has halted behind a bush, and thrown away his white tell-tale panama. This means mischief. The dark-grey clothes and sun-burnt face of my companion blend naturally with the surroundings, and, as he crouches motionless on the ground, he, like the birds just described, is barely discernible. I watch him with interest and some impatience, for a covey of large pigeons challenge my weapon close at hand. Their cooing seems to proceed from a great distance, but, conscious of the enemy's ventriloquial power, his muffled music does not deceive me. My companion has now levelled his gun, and, taking steady aim, presently fires. At the sound of fire-arms my pigeons take flight, and as they rise I fire into their midst. My companion now discharges his second barrel into a covey of quails, which had been feeding unobserved within a few paces of him. I take a shot at one of these birds as it flutters incautiously over my head, and it falls with a heavy thud at my feet. The firing has reached the quick ears of Don Benigno's watch-dogs, and anon our favourite animals, Arrempuja and No-se-puede, come bounding towards us. The sagacious brutes help to bring in our wounded, which we are gratified to find are more numerous than we contemplated. Gathering together our spoil, we remove to another spot, where our performances are repeated, though scarcely with the same success. The sun has already begun to cast broad shadows along the soil, and warns us that the hour for our 'tienta pie,' or early meal, approaches; so we return to our hut, change our damp linen for dry, and join the company, who are already seated on the broad balcony of Don Benigno's house, watching the interesting process of milking cows. Bowls of warm milk are presently handed round by negroes, who bring also new milk rolls which have just arrived from the village ten miles distant. 'What luck have you had?' inquires our host of his sporting friends. We exhibit the result of our morning's sport, which gains us much applause and approving cries of 'Ay! que bonito. Ay! que bueno.' The black cook to whom we consign our game, promises to do culinary justice to them at breakfast. We employ the interval which precedes that late meal in a saunter through Don Benigno's sugar works, where some of us are initiated into the mysteries of sugar making and rum distilling. The operations are conducted under a spacious shed in the piazza which faces the Don's dwelling-house, and here the whole process, from the crushing of the newly-gathered cane to the distilling of the aguardiente, or white brandy, is explained to us by our host, who apologises because he cannot show everything in working condition at this time of the year. He, however, enlightens us as to the uses of all we behold, and leaves the rest to our imagination. Here is the store-house where the freshly-gathered cane is kept ready for the crushing process. Under that spacious shed is the engine-room in connexion with the rollers that crush the cane. Near us are the tanks or boilers for the reception of the 'jugo' or cane-juice. We are shown the clarifying pans and the coolers in which the boiled liquid, after being skimmed, is transformed into sugar grains or crystals. One of the most interesting sights is the process of separating the molasses, or treacle, from the crystalline portion of the sugar, which is done by the action of centrifugal force. The sugar, still in a liquid condition, is poured into a deep circular pan, which contains a movable drum-shaped cylinder of wire gauze. The latter is whirled rapidly round by means of machinery, and in doing so drives the liquid against the sides of the gauze drum, through the meshes of which the molasses escapes, leaving the dry white sugar clinging in hard cakes to the sides. Don Benigno gives us interesting statistics on his favourite subject, informing us how twelve or fourteen tons of ripe cane may be converted into one thousand five hundred hogsheads of sugar. The machinery and engine are at present taking their periodical doze like a great boa constrictor. The engineer--a native of Philadelphia--has gone home for the holidays, and will not return till October or November, when the cane harvest begins and his indispensable services will be required. He has unscrewed all the brass fittings, taken out the slender and highly polished steel work, and stowed them away with fatherly care, while he has greased whatever is immovable, and then wrapped it up tenderly in machinery swaddling clothes. Being an Englishman, I am looked upon by the company as an authority in matters mechanical, and my opinion touching the merits of the engineering works is consulted. I accordingly peer into everything with the air of a connoisseur, and happening to catch a glimpse of the maker's name and address on one of the shafts, observe grandly:-- 'Ah, Fletcher and Company, I have heard of the firm.' We have yet to visit Don Benigno's distillery, where the molasses or refuse of the sugar is converted into white brandy or rum. This is a simple process. The raw liquid is first boiled, and the steam which generates passes through a complication of sinuous tubing until it reaches a single tap, where it spirts out in fits and starts into the cold colourless spirit called 'aguardiente.' A glass valve is connected with the tap, and by means of this the degrees of strength formed by the spirit are gauged. The distillers are already at work, as the operations in this department are best accomplished out of harvest time. One of them invites us to test the strength of the precious spirit, which the gentlemen of our party do with their mouths, while the ladies are content to bathe their hands and temples in the icy-cold liquid. Everybody takes a deep interest in all that is shown by our amicable cicerone, save, perhaps, Don Manuel and his inamorata, who occasionally loiter behind congenial cogwheels, huge coolers, clarifying pans, and other objects used in the process of sugar-making. The attachment which the lovers conceive for this particular portion of Don Benigno's possessions is so great, that it is with difficulty that they are induced to abandon it. Their repeated visits to the same secluded spot upon subsequent occasions, only confirms our host's theory, that machinery has a strange fascination for persons of all ages and sexes! Our morning's perambulations terminate with a visit to the infirmary where the sick people, employed on the estate, are tended, and a stroll through the black barracks, which consists of rows of neatly built cottages, occupied by the Don's slaves and their families. After a substantial breakfast, which resembles dinner in the variety of dishes provided, some of our party betake themselves to their dormitories with a siesta in view, being incapable of any more active service till the hot hours have passed. Nicasio and I, however, prefer to improve the sunny moments under the grateful shade of our improvised wigwam, in which position we may sketch, fish, or shoot without much exertion: but despite our laudable efforts to do something useful, our pencils drop from our hands, our angling is neglected, and we surrender to the overpowering heat. I am awakened by my companion, who enjoins me, perhaps because I am indulging too loudly in somnolence, to be silent. 'What is it? Fish or feather?' I ask. 'Both,' he replies, under his breath. 'Hush! it's a river bird.' 'What is its shape?' 'I haven't seen it yet; but it has been chirping among the reeds and long grasses there, for the last half-hour.' My friend's gun is half cocked in readiness, and presented through an aperture in our hut. After a long pause the bird emerges from its hiding-place, and with astonishing velocity half flies, half skims across the river, and vanishes between the reeds on the opposite bank. Bang! bang! go both barrels of Nicasio's 'escopeta,' and both have missed their mark. My sporting friend is, however, determined to secure his game, which is an odd-looking creature, with a long neck and longer legs, similar to a crane. He accordingly fords the river at a shallow point, and in spite of my remonstrances (for a river bird is not easy to bag) goes in quest of his prey. At the expiration of a couple of hours, Nicasio, who has followed the bird two or three miles up and down the river, returns with it triumphantly, but he is himself very wet, footsore, and exhausted. Our fishing is not so successful as our shooting to-day, and we have soon to abandon both amusements, together with our sketching, for the day is on the wane, and the ladies have come down to the river to take their afternoon's bath before dinner. So we modestly withdraw, and betake ourselves to a neighbouring 'cocoral,' where we refresh ourselves with the cool drink furnished by the cocoa-nut. Towards nightfall, when dinner, with its indispensable accompaniments of café and cigars, is over, our host invites the gentlemen to accompany him to the plantations of a few friendly neighbours. Horses are accordingly saddled, spurs are affixed to our boots, and away we gallop. Our first halt is made at a grazing-farm belonging to Don Benigno, and kept by his mayoral, or overseer, a stout, bronze-faced man, who, we are told, rarely moves during the day from a leather-bottomed chair, which he places slopingly against a post of the verandah. After inspecting Don Benigno's cattle, which consist chiefly of oxen, cows, and goats, we ride over to some coffee estates and tobacco farms, whose owners, or representatives, give us a hearty welcome, and are lavish of their hospitality, offering for our acceptance everything they possess except their wives and families, whom they, however, present to us as our 'servants.' Our time being limited, we cannot partake of their bounty to-night, but promise to return another day. On the road homewards, we dismount at a coffee estate belonging to Don Benigno's kinsman, Don Felipe, where we remain for an hour or so, and watch the performances of a crowd of black labourers, who are keeping holiday in honour of some favoured saint. Dancing, with 'tumba' or drum accompaniments, forms the leading feature in the entertainments. The negroes, in turn, take part in the drumming, which is performed by bestriding barrel-shaped tambours, and beating the parchment side rapidly with their hands. The strange measure of the dance is so varied and well sustained, that the outline of an air may be easily distinguished. This primitive music is accompanied by a performance on rattles, by singing, and by scraping the güiro. This instrument is, in the country, roughly made from a dry calabash, notched in such a manner that a hollow grating sound is produced by scraping the rough surface with a fragment of bone. The dancers warm to their work in every sense. Only two couples volunteer at one time, and when they are utterly exhausted, others take their place. The partners dance independently of one another, and only join hands occasionally. The women, attired in long cotton gowns and coloured turbans, assume a short, shuffling kind of step, which gives them the appearance of gliding on wheels, while the upper parts of their persons oscillate, or sway to and fro in a manner peculiar to their tribe. The men, whose evening costume consists of buttonless shirts and short canvas trousers, are more demonstrative than their partners. Sometimes they throw up their arms in wild ecstacy, or leap madly into the air; varying these gymnastic performances by squatting, frog-fashion, near the ground, or turning pirouettes. They get so excited and warm over their gyrations, that their Panama hats, which have been doffed and donned fifty times, are thrown away, their buff-coloured shoes are kicked off, and finally their shirts are disposed of in a similar manner. Nicasio and I contemplate the animated scene with painters' eyes, and during the pauses of the dance, we mix and fraternise with the swarthy company. Having expressed a wish to immortalise on canvas a couple of brown divinities, picturesquely attired, our hospitable host, Don Felipe, who has already offered us his country residence, together with the surroundings, including horses, cattle, tobacco, coffee, and all that is his, does not hesitate to add to his list of gifts, the model-ladies that have attracted our observation; so, after his accustomed declaration, 'They are at your disposal,' he promises to have them 'forwarded' to Don Benigno's hacienda without much delay. The lateness of the hour warns us that we must be moving, so after a parting cup with our host and his family, we remount our steeds, and turn homewards. During our absence, the ladies and children have been playing the old-fashioned round game of loto, over which they are intently occupied when we join them. Doña Mercedes is calling the numbers from a bag, but not in the orthodox way. In order to increase the excitement and confusion of the game, the playful lady invents noms de guerre for some of the numbers. Number one is by her transformed into 'el único' (the only one); number two, when drawn, is termed 'el par dichoso' (the happy pair); and number three, 'las Gracias' (the Graces). Similarly, number fifteen becomes 'la niña bonita' (the pretty girl); number thirty-two, 'la edad de Cristo,' and so on up to number sixty-nine, which she describes as 'el arriba para abajo' (the upside down number). All the tens she gives in their numerical form, coupled with the creolised adjective 'pelao,' or shaven, because the ciphers in these numbers are thought to resemble a bald head. When 'Loteria!' has been at last shouted by a successful winner, loto is abandoned, and cards, in which the gentlemen take the lead, are substituted. Don Benigno proposes the exciting and speculative game of monté, and all the ready cash of the company is forthwith exhibited on the table. Long after the children and ladies have retired, the males of our party continue to gamble over this fascinating game. While we are finishing our last round but six, a slave enters the broad airy balcony where we are assembled, and approaching our host, whispers mysteriously in his ear. Don Benigno directs a look at my companion and me, and observes, with a smile, 'Señores artistas, your models have arrived.' True to his word, Don Felipe has dispatched our swarthy models that same evening, so as to be in readiness for to-morrow's pictorial operations, and the good-natured coffee-planter begs as a personal favour to himself, that we will return his property not later than the day after to-morrow. CHAPTER XXI. LOVE-MAKING IN THE TROPICS. My Inamorata--Clandestine Courtship--A Love Scene--'Il Bacio' in Cuba--The Course of True Love--A Stern Parent. I am in love. The object of my affection is, I need scarcely explain, the fair Cachita, who lives in the heart of sunny Santiago. She has the blackest of bright eyes, a profusion of dark, frizzled hair, with eyebrows and lashes to match. It is universally admitted that the complexion of my inamorata is fair for a daughter of the tropics, but truth compels me to state that in one sense Cachita is not so white as she is painted. During the day she plasters her delicate skin with 'cascarilla:' a chalky composition of powdered egg-shell and rum. This she applies without the least regard for effect, after the manner of other Cuban ladies, who have a theory that whitewash is a protection against the sun, and a check to unbecoming perspiration. Towards the cool of the evening, however, my Cachita divests herself of her calcareous mask, and appears in all her native bloom. Since my return from Don Severiano's plantation, I have been a constant visitor at the parental residence in town, and here, in due course, the tender passion gradually developes itself. For reasons presently to be explained, we occasionally meet at the window of Cachita's boudoir, which is admirably adapted for purposes of wooing, being wide, lofty, and within easy reach from the street. Like other Cuban windows, it is guiltless of glass, but anything like elopement from within, or burglary from without, is effectually provided against by means of strong iron bars, placed wide enough apart, however, to admit the arm and shoulder of a Pyramus on the pavement, or the yielding face of a Thisbe on the other side. An open engagement in Cuba has many disadvantages which an open-air engagement has not. Seated in an uncongenial arm-chair, the conventional lover may enjoy the society of his betrothed any hour of the day or evening, but he may not meet her by gaslight alone, nor may he exhibit his passion in a demonstrative manner, save in the presence of others. Warned by these objections, Cachita and I have agreed to keep our own counsel, and court in this al fresco way. Besides, it is the Cuban custom for a lady to sit before her window, in the cool of the evening, and converse with a passing acquaintance, without infringing the rules of propriety. Cachita's parents are in the 'comedor' taking their early supper of thick chocolate and new milk rolls. Doña Belen is a corpulent lady, with a couple of last century side-curls, and a round, good-natured face. Don Severiano is a short, shrivelled old gentleman, with a sallow countenance, closely shaved like a priest's, and a collar and cravat of the latest fashion. These worthy people are at present ignorant of their daughter's attachment, and we have agreed not to enlighten them, because their opinions respecting matrimony differ. Doña Belen is easily won if a suitor to her daughter's hand can prove his genuine white origin, while Don Severiano has an extreme partiality for gentlemen with coffee plantations, sugar estates, or tobacco farms. The Spanish language is an agreeable medium for expressing the tender passion; creole Spanish is even more suited to such a purpose, being full of endearing epithets and affectionate diminutives. I am not obliged to address my lady-love by her simple name of Caridad; I may call her Caridadcita, Cachita, Chuchú, Concha, Cachona, Conchita, or Cachumbita, and be perfectly grammatical, and at the same time fond. The same romantic language enables me to use such pretty epithets as 'Mi mulatica' (my little mulatto girl), 'Mi Chinita' (my little Chinawoman), 'Mi negrita' (my pretty negress). And if these endearing epithets are found insufficient to express my affectionate regard, I have the option of addressing my beloved in such terms as: Prenda de mi alma! My soul's jewel! Botoncito de rosa! Little rose-bud! Lucero de la mañana! Dawn of the day! Luz de mi vida! Light of my life! Ojitos de cocuyo! Little fire-fly eyes! Consuelo mio! My own joy! Mi merenguito! My little merengue! Ojitos de pega-pega! Eyes that rivet! Mi monona! My lovely one! Mi tormento! My little torment! Mi consolacion! My consolation! Hija de mi alma! Child of my soul! and a number of expressions as choice as those quoted above. Our conversation is carried on in epigrammatic phrases. I need not waste words by making the long-winded inquiry, 'Do you love me?' It is sufficient to ask simply, 'Me quieres?' And when Cachita tells me, in reply, that her love for me may be compared to her fondness for her mother's precious bones ('Te quiero mas que á los huesitos de mi mamá'), and when, following suit, I assure my beloved that I value her as I do the apple of mine eye ('como la niña de mis ojos'), I know well enough that these are only figures of speech adopted by lovers in the Spanish tropics. 'Mi corazoncito,' says Cachita, fondly, 'I fear that your visits here must be suspended for the present.' 'Why so, mi vida?' 'Papacito (Don Severiano) suspects something. His friend, Señor Catasus, who passes here every evening, has seen us converse at the window more frequently than custom allows, and he has mentioned it to papacito.' Old Catasus has a son whom Don Severiano employs, and I fancy that his interest in Cachita's welfare is not purely disinterested. 'Young Amador is a frequent visitor at your father's house?' 'He comes with others in the evening sometimes.' 'He danced three times with you at the Piñata ball, and he walks with you on Sunday evenings in the Plaza de Armas, when the military band plays.' 'You are not jealous?' 'N--no; I am only afraid lest young Amador admires you too much.' 'What of that?' 'Don Catasus has a large coffee plantation, and you know what a partiality your father has for sons of wealthy planters.' 'Are you angry?' 'No, I am not angry, mi tojosita.' 'Me quieres mucho?' 'Muchísimo, pichona mia. Deme un beso.' 'Before giving you one, you must promise two things.' 'What are they?' 'That you will not be jealous, and that you will go no more to the Pica-pica balls.' 'I have been only once this season, mi vidita.' 'My black maid Gumersinda was there, and she says that you danced all night with the mulattoes.' 'I was practising the difficult step of La Danza Criolla.' 'It is danced very improperly by the coloured people at the Pica-pica.' 'Many of my white acquaintances go to these balls, and I am only following their custom and that of the country.' 'Promise not to go again this season.' 'I promise; so, deme un beso.' Cachita inserts her soft face between the obliging bars of the huge window, and as nobody is passing at that moment, I take an affectionate leave of my 'Piedra.' My interviews with Cachita at her window become rare on account of Don Severiano's suspicions, and as Cuban ladies of all ages never leave their homes to visit their next-door neighbour without a trusty escort, I have no other opportunity for an uninterrupted tête-à-tête. Occasionally I meet my fair one at early mass in one of the churches, or at the musical promenade in the public square, but on these occasions she is always accompanied by a friend or a relative, and a couple of black attendants. On the approach of Cachita's saint's day, Santa Caridad, I favour my divinity with a little midnight music. Those of my friends whose sweethearts are called Caridad, join me in hiring a few musicians and a couple of vocalists. When our minstrels have performed their first melody, the Sereno, or night-watchman, appears, and demands to see our serenade licence, because, out of the carnival season, no serenading is allowed without a special permit from the authorities. After duly exhibiting our licence, the music proceeds, and when a song, composed expressly for the lady we are serenading, has been sung, and a few more danzas have been played, a shutter of the grated window is seen to open, a white hand with a white handkerchief flutters approvingly between the iron bars, and a significant flower is offered for the acceptance of him whom it may most concern. Tunicú takes a friendly interest in my affaire d'amour, and gives me the benefit of his experience in such matters. In the carnival season, and on certain fiestas, I visit my Caridad, in company with a dozen Pollo friends, amongst whom are Tunicú and Bimba, and we bring with us a full band of black musicians, bearing ordinary stringed instruments. Our visit is paid in broad daylight, but we are masked, and so disguised that paterfamilias cannot recognise his guests; he is, however, satisfied as regards our respectability, when my good friend Tunicú privately reveals his name. At the inspiring tones of La Danza some lady neighbours flock to the scene, and follow us and our swarthy instrumentalists into our host's reception-room, which is entered direct from the street by a huge door. Then a dance is extemporised. The fascinating step of La Danza Criolla lends itself to a little secret love-making, and with a partner like the graceful Cachita (to whom alone I disclose myself when my turn comes to visit her house), I feel in the seventh heaven! But dancing at twelve o'clock in the day, with a tropical sun blazing in at the windows and open doors, and a room full of excited dancers, merits some more substantial reward, and in the pauses of the danza, our hospitable host invites us into his spacious comedor, where refreshments in the shape of champagne, English bottled ale, café noir, and dulces, are lavishly dispensed. Report, which in Cuba travels like a tornado, and distorts like a convex mirror, poisons the mind of Cachita's parent, Don Severiano, and one sultry afternoon, Cachita's black maid, Gumersinda, brings me a billet-doux from her young mistress, which fills me with alarm. Don Severiano knows all--more than all--and has resolved to separate us by removing Cachita to one of his sugar estates, eight leagues from town. For some weeks I hear nothing of her whereabouts, but at last one of Don Severiano's black mule-drivers halts before my door. He tells me that Cachita and her family are staying at La Intimidad, a sugar estate; and after searching among his mule's complicated trappings, he produces a missive from his young mistress. Absence has affected Cachita, as it affects other ladies in love, and my fair creole expresses a desire to see me. Don Severiano will be leaving the estate for town on a certain day, and, if I am willing, a meeting may easily be effected. Saturnino, the mule-driver, who is in the secret, undertakes to guide me to the trysting-place. I accordingly obtain a fast-trotting steed, and follow him through the intricate country, which, after many hours' riding, brings us to the neighbourhood of La Intimidad. There my guide conducts me to a tumble-down negro hut kept by a decrepit negress, and situated in the midst of a very paradise of banana-trees, plantains, palms, and gigantic ferns. The fare which my hostess provides consists of native fruits and vegetables, cooked in a variety of ways, together with 'bacalao' (dried cod-fish), and 'tasajito,' or salted meat, dried in the sun. After my fatiguing pilgrimage, I refresh myself with a cigarette and a cup of well-made 'café negro;' I bathe in spring water diluted with aguardiente rum, and exchange my soiled clothes of white drill for a fresh suit of the same material. Towards the cool of the evening, as I sit smoking a long damp cigar before the door of my rustic habitation, the flapping of huge plantain-leaves, and the clatter of horses' hoofs, announce the approach of my charmer, who, escorted by the faithful Gumersinda, has come to visit me in my homely retreat. I assist Cachita in alighting from her steed, and in due course we are seated beneath the shade of an overhanging mango-tree, whose symmetrical leaves reach to the ground, and completely conceal us. We are disturbed by no other sound than the singing of birds, the creaking of hollow bamboos, and the rippling of water. Under these pleasant circumstances, we converse and make love to our hearts' content. The cautious Gumersinda warns us when the hour for separation arrives, and then we reluctantly part. Our agreeable tête-à-tête is repeated on the following day, but as Don Severiano is expected to return the day after, this is our last interview. On my road back to town, whom should I meet, at a wayside tienda, but Cachita's formidable parent, together with his friend Señor Catasus, and my rival, the young Amador! Don Severiano is furious. High words pass between us, there is a scene, and I leave the cane-field proprietor swearing to punish everybody concerned in his daughter's secret engagement. Some days after my return to town, I learn that the black maid Gumersinda, and the mule-driver Saturnino, have suffered the penalty of slave law at the hands of their owner, who has sentenced them both to a severe flogging. Through the medium of a friend, I receive a note from Cachita, to inform me that her father is determined to break off my engagement with his daughter by a more effectual separation than that which has been already attempted. 'If you love me,' the note concludes, 'have me deposited without delay.' To 'deposit' a young lady in Cuba, is to have her legally transferred to the house of a trustworthy relative, or a respectable family. A legal document for her arrest is presented at the parental house, and if the young lady be of age, and willing to sign her assent, no opposition on the part of her parents will avail. If, at the expiration of the prescribed period, no reason is shown why the deposited damsel should not follow her inclinations, the lover may release his precious pledge by marrying her at once. In accordance with Cachita's desire, I consult the nearest lawyer, from whom I obtain a formal document, empowering me to deposit Cachita as soon as she shall have arrived at her town residence. I await this event with impatience, but days elapse, and the shutters of Don Severiano's habitation remain closed. I am soon relieved from my anxiety, but am horrified to learn that Cachita has been removed from the sugar estate, and consigned to the tender care of nuns in the town convent. As my legal powers cannot penetrate that sanctum, I am compelled to await the natural course of events. Cachita is destined to pass six long months within the convent walls, during which time Don Severiano confidently hopes that solitary confinement and holy teaching will have a beneficial effect upon Cachita's mind. Should this prove otherwise, the period for her incarceration will be prolonged, until the fire of her young affections shall have been completely quenched. CHAPTER XXII. A CUBAN CONVENT. Without the Walls--'El Torno'--A Convent Letter--Accomplices--A Powder Plot--With the Nuns--Don Francisco the Dentist. My creole inamorata has been already immured five long weeks in the nunnery, expiating there her 'sin' of secret love-making. Nearly five months must yet elapse before she will be released and restored to her stern parent Don Severiano: that is, if the nuns' report of her be favourable; but should the efforts of those estimable ladies prove unsuccessful, and Cachita persist in following the inclinations of her heart, the term of her incarceration will be protracted another six months, when, in accordance with conventual discipline, she will be required to commence her duties as a novice. Desirous of ascertaining how far monastic confinement has affected my Cachita's sentiments, I propose to sound her on the subject by private communication. Tunicú, whom I consult, tells me that this is not easily accomplished, and I soon find that his statement is correct. The convent is a strong building. At fixed hours the outer doors are thrown open, and disclose a small stone ante-chamber, furnished with wooden benches like a prison. Here may a pilgrim enter, but no further. There is another and a stronger door, communicating with the interior, and accessible only to a favoured few. Near it is a panelled or blind window, forming part of a 'torno' or turnstile--a mechanical contrivance by means of which articles for the convent use are secretly admitted. On more than one occasion have I visited the torno, in the vain hope of persuading the invisible door-keeper behind to receive some love-tokens for my captive mistress. Tapping three times on the hollow window, I pause until a voice murmurs 'Ave Maria!' to which I respond, being well versed in conventual watchwords, 'Por mis pecados!' The voice inquires my pleasure. If it be my pleasure to have a missive conveyed to an immured 'sister,' and I can satisfy my unseen interlocutor by representing myself as a relative of the captive lady in whom I am interested, the turnstile rotates with magic velocity, the flat panel vanishes, and, behold, a species of cupboard with many shelves, upon which anything of a moderate size may be placed. Having deposited my letter on one of the shelves, it disappears, with the cupboard, like a pantomime trick, and the panelled window resumes its original dull aspect. But whether my document will reach the rightful owner, I can never ascertain, for days elapse, and no reply is forthcoming. Varying my proceedings at the torno, I sometimes express a desire to exchange a few greetings with my cloistered love, by meeting her in a certain chamber appointed for such a purpose, and conversing with her through a double grating. But the door-keeper informs me that such a privilege is accorded to parents only of the immured, who can prove their identity; so my effort in that direction is a failure. At Tunicú's suggestion, every Sunday morning I visit the convent chapel which is attached to the building itself, and is open to the public at prescribed hours. The chapel is a bare-looking sanctuary of small dimensions, and easily crowded by a score or two of ladies with white veils, who come to pay their devotions from the neighbouring houses. At one extremity of the white-washed chamber is an altar-piece, before which a priest, assisted by a boy, officiates, and to the left is a strongly-barred window connected with the interior of the convent. Behind this window, which is heavily curtained as well as railed, stand the nuns and other inmates of the cloister, who have come to take part in the ceremonies. The responses are chanted by this invisible congregation in a subdued tone. During a certain portion of the ceremonies, the curtain is partially drawn, and the outline of a thickly veiled devotee is discerned as she bends forward to kiss the priest's hand and to receive his blessing. I envy the ecclesiastic, and gaze with eager interest, as figure after figure approaches in turn; but my sight cannot penetrate the dark recesses of the curtain, and the lady whom I seek comes and disappears unrecognised. I am aroused early one morning by a black messenger, who delivers me a thick letter, which I open nervously, for I find it comes from the 'Convento de la Enseñanza.' The writing, though the contents savour strongly of monastic diction, is certainly in Cachita's hand, and is signed by herself. 'My dream of happiness,' the letter begins, 'can no longer be realised. My conscience, my teachers, and my father-confessor, all persuade me that I have sinned in the outer world, and that if I desire to be absolved, I must repent without delay. Exhorted by the worthy nuns, I am daily becoming more alive to a sense of my unworthiness, and convinced of the urgent necessity for beginning a new life of holiness and virtue. Guided to this blessed convent by the finger of Providence, I have been enabled, with the assistance of the best of counsel, to reflect seriously over what has happened, and I have now taken a vow never again to act from the impulse of my young and inexperienced heart.' After dwelling upon the enormity of the offence of making love without the approval of a parent, the writer exhorts me, by my 'mother,' and by other people whom I 'hold dear,' to return her letters, and all other evidence of the past, with the assurance that by so doing I shall accomplish one important step towards the 'termination of the sad story of this ill-begotten wooing' (para completar la triste historia de ese amor desgraciado). The letter concludes as follows:-- 'Perhaps you will receive a parting word from me' (the present document occupies exactly eight pages of closely written convent paper), 'which will put an end to this unfortunate story. You must, then, forget me entirely. Look upon the past as a dream, an illusion, a flash of happiness which is no more. Never must the name of Cachita escape your lips. I shall remember you only in my prayers' (the word 'only' is erased with pencil). 'Fail not to send the letters. And adios! till we meet in heaven.--CARIDAD.' The bearer of this letter is Guadalupe, a slave of Cachita's father, Don Severiano, and she is intrusted with messages to and from the convent. Twice a week she visits the torno cupboard, charged with changes of linen and other articles for her young mistress's use. Everything is carefully examined by a nun, before being consigned to its owner; so Tunicú's ingenious notion of conveying by this opportunity something contraband to the fair prisoner cannot be entertained. Having bribed Guadalupe with a bundle of cigars and a coloured handkerchief for a turban, I obtain from her, in return, some intelligence of her young mistress. 'Have you heard how la Niña Cachita fares?' I inquire. 'Badly,' says the negress. 'The monastic life does not agree with her lively disposition, and she yearns for freedom again, la pobre!' 'Then the nuns have not succeeded in converting her?' 'I think not, miamo. In a letter to her mother, Doña Belen, who has still a good opinion of your worship, mi amita Cachita ridicules the Monjas (nuns), and describes their strange ways.' 'Has Don Severiano expressed his intention to release la Niña at the expiration of her allotted six months?' 'I believe so; but even then, it will be nearly five long months before she can be with us again!' The most important information which I draw from the communicative black is, that my medical friend, Don Francisco, who is a dentist as well as a doctor, is attending my beloved for professional purposes. I resolved to call upon Don Francisco, and when Guadalupe has taken her departure with a packet containing a selection from Cachita's letters, and one of my own, which I have carefully worded, in case it should fall into wrong hands, I repair at once to the house of my medical friend. Don Francisco sympathises with me, and promises to aid me in a plan which I have conceived for communicating by letter with my absent mistress; but he warns me that there are many difficulties in the way of doing so. 'The nuns,' he says, 'who accompany my patient, stand like a couple of sentinels on each side of her, and no word or gesture escapes their attentive ears and watchful gaze. He must have more than a conjuror's hand who can perform any epistolary feat and escape their keen observation.' The allusion to conjuring reminds me of my scheme. Will Don Francisco recommend to his patient a box of his registered tooth-powder? He will be delighted to have that opportunity. 'One of my assistants who accompanies me in my convent rounds shall include such a box in my dentist's bag.' Don Francisco sees through my 'little powder plot,' as he calls it, and hands me a box of his patented tooth-powder, beneath which I afterwards carefully deposit a billet-doux. But Don Francisco can improve upon my scheme, and staggers me with his new idea. 'You shall deliver the box yourself!' says he. The convent rules, he explains, allow him to introduce an assistant, or 'practicante,' as he is called. The same practicante does not always accompany him in his semi-weekly visits to the convent. 'As I am about to visit La Cachita for dental purposes only,' says the considerate gentleman, 'you shall on this occasion act as my practicante.' Early next morning we are on the threshold of the sacred ground. Don Francisco boldly enters the stone ante-chamber, which I have so often timidly approached, and taps with a firm knuckle on the torno. 'Ave Maria Purísima!' murmurs the door-keeper from behind. 'Pecador de mí!' (sinner as I am) replies the practised Don. 'Que se ofrece usted?' (what is your pleasure?) inquires the voice. And when the dentist has satisfied the door-keeper's numerous demands, a spring door flies open, and we step into a narrow passage. Here we remain for some moments, while our persons are carefully identified through a perforated disc. Then another door opens, the mysterious door-keeper appears and conducts us into the very core of the convent. As we look over the convent garden, which is tastefully laid out with tropical plants and kitchen stuff, a thickly veiled nun approaches us. The lady seems to be on familiar terms with the dentist, whom she addresses in a mild, soothing tone, as if she were administering words of comfort to a sick person. We follow her through a narrow corridor, where I observe numerous doors, which I am told give access to the apartments or cells occupied by the convent inmates. We pass a chamber where children's voices are heard. There is a school attached to the convent, for the benefit of those who desire their offspring to receive religious instruction from the nuns. Music and fancy needlework are also taught, and some of the distressed damsels, who, like Cachita, are undergoing a term of conventual imprisonment for similar offences, impose upon themselves a mild form of hard labour by assisting to improve the infant mind. Cachita, who is a good musician, takes an active part in this branch of education. At last we are ushered into a gloomy, white-washed apartment (everything in the convent appears to be of wood and whitewash), where our guide takes leave of us. While the dentist, assisted by his practicante, is arranging his implements for tooth-stopping on a deal table, which, together with a couple of wooden chairs, constitute the furniture of this cheerless chamber, an inner door is thrown open, and a couple of nuns, attired in sombre black, enter with Don Francisco's fair patient. Cachita is dressed in spotless white, a knotted rope suspended from her girdle, and a yellowish veil affixed in such a manner to her brow as to completely conceal her hair, which, simple practicante though I be, I know is dark, soft, and frizzled at the top. Her pretty face is pale, and already wears (or seems to wear) the approved expression of monastic resignation. At Don Francisco's suggestion, I carefully conceal my face while Cachita seats herself between the sentinel nuns. The dentist, with a presence of mind which I emulate but little, commences his business of tooth-stopping, pausing in his work to exchange a few friendly words with his patient and the amicable nuns. Hitherto my services have not been in requisition; but anon the subject of the tooth-powder is introduced. Will La Cachita allow the dentist to recommend her a tooth-powder of his own preparation? Cachita is in no immediate need of such an article, but the dentist is persuasive, and the young lady is prevailed upon to give the powder a trial. 'You will derive much benefit from its use,' observes Don Francisco. 'My assistant' (and here the cunning tooth-stopper, being close to his patient's ear, whispers my name) 'will bring it you presently.' 'What ails la Niña?' inquires one of the nuns, bending forward; for Cachita has uttered a cry, and swooned away. 'Nothing, señora,' says Don Francisco with the same sang-froid already noted. 'Only a nerve which I have accidentally excited in my operation. She will be better presently.' The dentist desires me to bring him a certain bottle, and with the contents of this, his patient is soon restored to consciousness. 'Keep her head firm,' says my artful friend, addressing me with a faint smile on his countenance, 'while I put the finishing touches to my work.' I obey; and though my hands are far from being as steady as an assistant's should be, I acquit myself creditably. Cachita's mouth is again open to facilitate the dentist's operations, but also, as it seems to me, in token of surprise at the apparition now bending over her. 'You will find much relief in the use of this tooth-powder,' continues my friend, in a careless tone, as though nothing had happened. 'Very strengthening to the gums. When you have got to the bottom of the box--just open your mouth a little wider--when you have got to the bottom of the box--where' (he whispers) 'you will find a note--I will send you another.' Cachita, by this time accustomed to my presence, can now look me fearlessly in the face with those expressive eyes of hers, which I can read so well, and before the dentist's operations are over, we have contrived, unobserved, to squeeze hands on three distinct occasions. Assured by this means of my lover's constancy, I now take my leave of her, and, advised by my friends, patiently await the term of her convent captivity, which expires, as I have already stated, in four months and three weeks. Upwards of three of these months elapse and I hear nothing more of the fair recluse, and during that long interval many strange and unexpected events transpire as to the 'Ever-faithful Isle.' CHAPTER XXIII. A CRUISE IN THE WEST INDIES. Cuban Telegraphy--The _New York Trigger_--News from Porto Rico--A day in Porto Rico--Don Felipe--A Mail Agent--Coasting--Aguadilla--Mayagüez--Santo Domingo--Sight-seeing--Telegraphic News. There has been a sad dearth of news in the tropics for many long months. The war of Santo Domingo is at an end. The great hurricane at St. Thomas has passed into oblivion. The rising of negroes in Jamaica is forgotten. The civil war in Hayti is suspended for the nineteenth time. Not so much as a shipwreck is afloat; even the yellow fever is on the wane, and not a single case of cholera has been quoted. The people of the tropics are enjoying a delightful and uninterrupted repose, and the elements and climate are perfectly inoffensive. It seems as if our part of the world had sunk into a delicious paradise, and that my services on behalf of the _New York Trigger_ would be for the future dispensed with. I am, shortly, recalled to my journalistic duties by the arrival of some 'startling' news from Porto Rico. An insurrection has broken out in the interior of that island, where the inhabitants have planted what they call their 'flag of freedom,' intimating their intention to rebel against their Spanish rulers. This is food for the _Trigger_, and I hasten to prepare it daintily, for transmission by telegraph. At the office of the telegraph, I meet the American consul's secretary. Now, as I know that that gentleman is connected with the _Central Press of Havana_, I conclude that he is upon the same errand as myself. In the interests of the _New York Trigger_, it is therefore my duty now to forestall the secretary, by forwarding my news before he has had time to dispatch his. The secretary is at the telegraph table scribbling at a rapid rate, and you may be sure he does not slacken his speed when he becomes conscious of the presence of the formidable agent of the _New York Trigger_! Only one instrument is used for telegraphic purposes, so he whose telegram is first handed to the clerk is first to be served by that functionary. The system of telegraphy--like every other system in Cuba--is supervised by the Spanish administration. Every telegram must be submitted to the authorities before it is dispatched, in case anything treasonable or offensive to the government should enter into its composition. The dispatch being approved of, it is returned to the telegraph office and transmitted in the usual manner. The sender is, however, obliged to pay for his message in paper stamps, and these must be affixed to the document; but under no circumstances is he permitted to make his payments in Spanish coin. This paper money--which in form resembles postage-stamps--cannot be obtained at the telegraph office, but must be purchased at the 'Colecturía,' a certain government establishment in another part of the town. Thus, the unfortunate individual who happens to be unprovided with sufficient stamps, is often at a standstill. By a miracle, my important news from Porto Rico is ready for transmission as soon as that of my rival, the American secretary; but, unfortunately, that gentleman is before me in presenting his document to the telegraph clerk. The latter examines the message carefully to see that nothing is wanting, when, to my great joy, he returns it with the remark, that the indispensable stamps have not been affixed! My rival is aghast, and offers to pay in golden doubloons; but the official is not to be bribed--especially before a witness--so the American secretary, who is unprovided with stamps, has no other alternative but to go in quest of them. Meanwhile I, whose pocket-book is full of the precious paper-money, hand in my message, which the clerk accepts, and in my presence ticks off to Havana. From thence it will proceed by submarine cable to the coast of Florida, where, after being duly translated into English, it will be transmitted to New York, and to-morrow, if all goes well, it will appear in the columns of the _New York Trigger_. On my way to a neighbouring café for refreshment after my labours, I gather from a printed placard on a wall of the governor's palace, some further particulars concerning the rebellion:-- 'The Spanish troops have had an encounter with the insurgents, and utterly routed them, with a loss, on the Spanish side, of one man killed and three slightly wounded. The enemy's losses are incalculable!' This piece of intelligence, of course, proceeds from government sources, and is therefore doubtful; but all is fish that comes to my journalistic net, so I return to the telegraph office, and give the _Trigger_ the benefit of the doubt. In the course of the day, I obtain the rebel version of the fight:-- 'A great battle has been fought between the _Patriots_ and the Spaniards, in which the latter were forced to retreat with considerable losses.' Twenty-three words more for the _Trigger_. The revolution spreads; the news circulates, and every mail steamer from Porto Rico brings correspondence for me from the agent in that island. Day by day the _New York Trigger_ is filled with telegrams and editorial paragraphs about the revolution in the Spanish colony; and that widely circulating newspaper is often in advance, and never behind, its contemporaries with 'latest intelligence from the seat of war.' At length a fatal piece of news reaches us. Afraid lest the revolutionary mania should infect our town, the Spanish authorities have subjected the mail bags from Porto Rico to an epistolary quarantine; in other words, all our correspondence is overhauled at the post-office, and any document bearing upon the revolution is confiscated. The central agent in Havana of the _New York Trigger_ is beside himself when he finds that no more telegrams and news-letters are forthcoming, and reminds me, per wire, of my duties. It is in vain to assure him of the true state of affairs, and of my inability to supply him with the dearly coveted 'intelligence.' He will not believe that my resources for information are as limited as I represent them to be. One day I receive a mighty telegram from him, acquainting me with the fact that a contemporary of the _Trigger_ has actually published some 'startling' news from the seat of war! This fearful announcement is shortly followed by another dispatch to the following effect:-- 'If you cannot obtain the news required by remaining in Santiago, leave immediately for Principe (our alias for Porto Rico). If no steamer is ready, charter a sailing vessel. Collect all the information you can in detail, and return without loss of time. N.B. Spare no expense. The "Gatillo" (Spanish for "Trigger") thirsts for particulars.' As no steamer is announced to sail before another week, I take the other alternative, and charter a small sailing vessel. I land in due time at Porto Rico. I seek our agent, Don Felipe, and after some trouble, I find him--in jail! He is a native of the village near the scene of the outbreak, and for some mysterious reason has been arrested 'on suspicion.' Assisted by the English and American consuls, to whom I have letters of introduction, and using the _Trigger's_ dollars for the pockets of the officials, I ultimately succeed in procuring the agent's release. Don Felipe then produces press copies of certain communications which he had dispatched by the last mail steamers, but which had been intercepted at the Cuban post-office, and, after inviting me to lunch at one of the finest cafés I have ever had the pleasure of entering, he accompanies me over the town, where we collect the latest particulars respecting the insurrection. San Juan de Puerto Rico is a fine city. The houses are three and four stories high, and are constructed after the American fashion. The streets are wide and symmetrically arranged. The roads are all paved and hilly. Every street leads to a fort, a gun and a sentry; and, in some cases, to high cliffs with an extensive view of the open sea. In short, San Juan is a strongly-fortified place. Everything is very clean, very new, and very modern looking. The cathedral is a noble edifice, and the theatre is in every way equal to the best buildings of the kind in Europe. Crossing an open square, in which appear a number of bronze statues, Don Felipe conducts me back to the café, where we partake of refreshment, and arrange the various items of news which we have collected during our afternoon's ramble over the town. Don Felipe advises me to dispatch the frail bark which had brought me from Cuba, and return by the mail steamer which has just arrived from St. Thomas, and is announced to sail for Cuba early next morning. As this is by far the speediest way of getting home, I follow my friend's advice, and accept his invitation to repose for the night at his humble dwelling. The rest of the day and evening is passed very agreeably. The British consul--a fine military-looking old fellow--invites me to dine with him and his charming family. It is pleasant to speak and hear spoken one's native tongue again, after being comparatively deaf and dumb in that language for nearly five years. It is still more delightful to feel at home with one's countrymen and countrywomen in a strange land, and thus, when I take leave of my hospitable English host and his family, I sincerely regret, with them, the brevity of my visit. I rise at a very early hour next morning, and, accompanied by Don Felipe, I take my passage on board the 'Pájaro del Oceano,' that being the name of the steamer which is to convey me to Cuba. The naval agent of the English mail company, who is a young Cuban named Fernandez, salutes me as I embark, for we had been slightly acquainted with one another in Santiago. Before taking leave of Don Felipe, I introduce him to the mail agent, for by the latter's means I hope for the future to ensure the safe delivery of my dispatches from Porto Rico and other islands. Don Fernandez touches at the port of Santiago at least once a month, and if he can be pressed into the _Trigger's_ service, he will be invaluable to that newspaper. The mail agent has a compartment on board all to himself, and invites me to occupy one of the comfortable berths which it contains. He is in other ways so civil and obliging, that his company is altogether most congenial during the voyage, and before our arrival in Cuba, we have become the closest of friends. I am alarmed to find that our steamer will touch at other ports before reaching its destination; but Fernandez assures me that the voyage will occupy much less time than it would if it were made in a sailing vessel, especially in the present somewhat stormy weather. In short, if all goes well, we shall sight the Morro Castle in less than five days. In sorting his correspondence, the mail agent discovers some important missives addressed to me. These, which he kindly hands to me, I find come from the _Trigger's_ agents in St. Thomas, Jamaica, and other islands; and contain some interesting intelligence respecting the projected purchase by the United States of the Bay of Samana, together with the particulars of an earthquake near Callao, a scheme for a floating dock at Kingston, Jamaica, and other topics equally interesting to Americans. These matters, together with my Porto Rico news, I proceed to arrange in concise form, for immediate dispatch by telegraph, on my arrival at Santiago. Friend Fernandez very much excites my curiosity by exhibiting the mail bags from Southampton. One of these bags is labelled 'Havana,' the other 'Santiago de Cuba,' and as they contain the correspondence from Europe, doubtless letters and newspapers addressed to me and Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú are among the number. But the mouths of both sacks--which make _my_ mouth 'water'--are securely tied and sealed, and the mail agent dares not venture to open them, until they have been deposited at the Cuban post-office. On the evening of the following day we land in a boat at Aguadilla--a small watering-place on the coast of Porto Rico. The village is represented by a row of tumble-down houses and a scattering of picturesque negro huts. While my companion confers with the postal agent of Aguadilla, I occupy the time by a saunter through the quiet, primitive streets, picking up here and there from a communicative native scraps of news concerning the insurrection, which I learn is now very much on the wane. The business of the mail agent being over, we return to our steamer, where, after partaking of a hearty meal--in spite of wind and weather--we turn into our snug berths and chat and smoke our cigarettes till sleep overtakes us. We awake early next morning to find that we have already anchored off Mayagüez. Mayagüez is an important sea-side town on the Porto Rico coast, and is surrounded by the loveliest tropical scenery that I have yet beheld in the West Indies. One long, broad and perfectly level street runs in a direct line from the quay to the confines of the town. Branching off from this formidable thoroughfare are a few narrow streets which terminate in small rivers and streams, across which innumerable little bridges are thrown. As we are destined to halt at this delightful spot for several hours, we make the most of our time. After calling upon our vice-consul--who is also the English postal agent, and has an office in one of the numerous warehouses which face the quay--and after having partaken of some refreshment at a café, my companion and I hail a quaint dilapidated vehicle of the fly species and drive through _the_ street of the town. This street beginning with shops, continues with tall private dwellings, which, in turn, are succeeded by pretty villas, till the open country suddenly appears. I am amazed to find that for our drive through the town, half a mile beyond it and back again, we are charged the astonishingly modest fare of two-pence half-penny! We have embarked again and are off to Santo Domingo, where we land on the following day. Santo Domingo--the capital of the island of that name--is an antiquated city, with brown, sombre-looking stone houses intermingled with quaint towers and gateways, tropical trees, shrubbery and ruins. We reach the city in a small boat, passing up a long river called the Ozana, and after Don Fernandez has deposited his mail bags at the post-office, we wander over the town. My companion knows every part of it well, having, as he tells me, visited it at least twice a month for the past three years. Acting, therefore, as a cicerone, he conducts me through the Calle del Comercio, which is the principal street in the city, but which has a very dismal and deserted aspect. The cathedral is an ancient building, and has resisted wind, weather, earthquake, and revolution for upwards of three hundred years. The interior is full of interest for the artist and the antiquarian, containing, among other objects, the first mausoleum of Christopher Columbus. Don Fernandez tells me that the remains of the great discoverer were originally brought from Spain and deposited here, and that they were afterwards transferred to the cathedral of Havana, where they at present repose. On our way from the cathedral we meet a number of coloured officials belonging to the republic; and for the first time in my experience, I behold a negro policeman! We pause before an old picturesque archway where a sentry is on guard. The sentry is a black youth of not more than eighteen Dominican summers. His uniform consists of a ragged shirt, brown holland trousers, and a broad Panama hat. He has apparently an easy life of it, for his musket reposes in a corner of the gateway, while he himself is seated, half dozing, on a big stone! After inspecting the quaint old market-place, together with an ancient Franciscan monastery called La Forsza, the 'Well of Columbus,' and other interesting 'sights,' Don Fernandez warns me that the hour for our departure is near. I accordingly accompany him to the office of the English consul, where he has to receive the mail bags of Santo Domingo. We have to wait some time at the consul's office, for important dispatches from President Baez. I devote the time which elapses before these dispatches appear, to a little business on behalf of the _New York Trigger_. There is, however, scarcely any news of importance to be obtained. Since the war of Santo Domingo, the inhabitants have enjoyed an uninterrupted peace, and with the exception of a few petty squabbles with their neighbours, the Haytiens, and the projected purchase of the Bay of Samana, nothing eventful has transpired in the island. The President's dispatches having arrived, we take leave of the consul and the company assembled, and, under the escort of a torn and tattered negro porter bearing the mail bags, reach the quay. Passing through the custom-house, which is represented by a roof and eight posts, we embark in our little canoe, and gliding over the waters of the river Ozana, which skirts the town, reach our steamer. In rather more than forty-eight hours the Morro Castle is sighted, and in due course I land once again at the Pearl of the Antilles. The various items of information collected during my cruise being already carefully prepared for telegraphic purposes, I repair without loss of time to the telegraph office. Behold me safely seated in the scribbling department of that establishment, rejoicing in the fact that I am the sole occupant of the apartment. From the perfect quiet which reigns in the operating room, I conclude that the clerks are not very busy, and that they are prepared to 'wire' any number of words which I may present to them. I have no dread of competition, at least for the present; for even if my rival correspondents should have received news by the same steamer which brought me, I know from experience, that some hours must necessarily elapse before it can be in a condition for telegraphing. With a triumphant smile, I seize a quire of printed telegraph forms, and proceed to copy in 'a clear, bold hand' from my notes. Now to astonish the _Trigger_, and all whom my abundant information may concern! I have scarcely finished my first instalment of news, when a telegraph messenger taps me on the shoulder and staggers me with the information, that in consequence of a serious interruption in the line of communication with Havana, the operations of the telegraph are for the present suspended! Then I learn for the first time that a great revolution has broken out in Spain, and that, despite the precautions of the governor of our town, the revolutionary mania has seized the natives of Cuba, many of whom have already risen in arms not many leagues from Santiago! Among other achievements, the rebellious party have cut the telegraph wires and intercepted the land mails. There are no railways in direct communication with Havana, and the postal service is effected by means of mounted carriers. Thus the speediest ways for conveying news to Havana are cut off, and there is no other resource but the tardy steamer. I accordingly return without delay to the 'Pájaro del Oceano,' which is to sail for Havana in three hours' time, and finding my good friend Don Fernandez on board, I secretly hand him my big budget of news, begging him by all the saints in the calendar to deliver the same into the hands of the Havana agent. I am afraid to think what effect this further delay will have upon the _New York Trigger_! Still it may be some consolation for the enterprising proprietor of that newspaper if he find that his contemporaries are suffering from the same complaint. CHAPTER XXIV. A STATE OF SIEGE IN CUBA. A Cuban Newspaper Office--Local Intelligence--The Cuban Revolution--Spanish Volunteers--A Recruit--With Bimba--- 'Los Insurrectos'--At a Fire--Cuban Firemen. 'We are in a state of siege!' says my friend, Don Javier, editor of a Cuban periodical called _El Sufragio Universâl_. 'Y bien, amigo mio; how does the situation affect you?' 'Malisísimamente!' returns Don Javier, offering me a seat at his editorial table. 'The maldito censor,' he whispers, 'has suppressed four columns of to-day's paper; and there remains little in the way of information, besides the feuilleton, some advertisements, and a long sonnet addressed to 'Lola' on the occasion of her saint's day, by an amorous Pollo-poet. The weather is sultry and oppressive. The huge doors and windows of _El Sufragio Universâl_ office are thrown wide open. Everybody is dressed in a coat of white drill, a pair of white trousers, is without waistcoat, cravat, or shirt-collar, wears a broad-brimmed Panama, and smokes a long damp cigar. The sub-editor--a lean, coffee-coloured person, with inky sleeves--is seated at a separate table making up columns for to-morrow's 'tirada,' or impression. Before him is a pile of important news from Puerto Rico and San Domingo, besides a voluminous budget from that indefatigable correspondent, Mr. Archibald Cannie, of Jamaica. More than half of this interesting news has been already marked out by the censor's red pencil, and the bewildered sub looks high and low for material wherewith to replenish the censorial gaps. Small, half-naked negroes, begrimed with ink--veritable printer's devils--appear and crave for 'copy,' but in vain. 'Give out the foreign blocks,' says the editor, in the tone of a commander. The foreign blocks are stereotyped columns, supplied by American quacks and other advertisers to every newspaper proprietor throughout the West Indies. On account of their extreme length and picturesque embellishments, these advertisements are used only in cases of emergency. While the foreign blocks are being dispensed, the 'localista,' or general reporter, enters in breathless haste. He has brought several fragments of local information. Four runaway negroes have been captured by the police. Two English sailors have died of yellow fever in the Casa de Salud. A coolie has stabbed another coolie at the copper mines, and has escaped justice by leaping into an adjacent pit. A gigantic cayman, or shark, has been caught in the harbour. The localista has also some items of news about the Cuban insurrection. The rebels have increased in numbers. They have occupied all the districts which surround our town, destroyed the aqueduct, cut the telegraph wire, and intercepted the land mails to Havana. There is now no communication with the capital, save by sea. Troops have again been dispatched to the interior, but their efforts have proved ineffectual. Upon their appearance, the rebels vanish into the woods and thickets, and there exhaust the patience and the energy of the military. The sub-editor notes everything down, taking care to eschew that which is likely to prove offensive to the sensitive ears of the authorities. The material is then given out for printing purposes; for his worship the censor will read nothing until it has been previously set up in type. As many hours will elapse before the proof sheets are returned with censorial corrections, Don Javier proposes a saunter through the town. On the way, Don Javier entertains me with an account of the revolution. 'The first grito de independencia,' says he, 'took place on October the tenth (1868), at La Demajagua--an ingenio, or sugar estate, belonging to Don Carlos Manuel Cespedes, a wealthy Cuban planter and a distinguished advocate. One hundred and forty-seven men, armed with forty-five fowling-pieces, four rifles and a few pistols and machetes, constituted the rebellious band which, under Señor Cespedes' leadership, had ventured to raise the standard of independence. Two days after, their numbers were increased to 4,000. 'When our governor was first told that a party of Cubans had risen in open revolt, not many leagues from our town, he publicly proclaimed that the rebellious band consisted of a small crowd of "descamisados," or ragged vagrants, and runaway negroes, whom a dozen policemen could easily disperse. In spite of this pretended indifference, he nevertheless thought fit to communicate with the Captain-General of Havana. That mighty functionary thought more seriously of the outbreak; he was perfectly aware of the heavy taxes which had been imposed upon the inhabitants of our island; of the state of ruin into which many of our leading planters had been thrown by these taxes; and conscious also of the oppression and despotism which had been exercised over our colony during the reign of the lately dethroned Queen of Spain, he doubtless calculated that the revolutionary mania inaugurated in the Mother Country would naturally be imitated in the Loyal and Ever-faithful Isle. But whatever may have been his speculations, certain it is that as soon as he heard of the rebellious movement, he telegraphed to our governor, commanding him to dispatch to the scene of the outbreak as many troops as could be safely spared from the garrison at Santiago. Meanwhile, he himself dispatched a battalion of tried warriors from the capital. 'Before our apathetic governor had had time to obey the orders of his chief, an encounter had already taken place at Yara, in the district of Manzanillo, between some of the rebels and a column of the Crown regiment who were quartered at the town of Bayamo. 'Our governor was now alive to the gravity of the situation, and in due course began to take what he called "active measures." Following the example set by the governor of Manzanillo, he declared our town in a state of siege; and you will now have an opportunity of judging for yourself what a siege in Cuba is like.' The usual military precautions against assault on an unfortified place have been taken. The entrances to the streets have been barricaded with huge hogsheads containing sand and stones; small cannon stand in the plaza and principal thoroughfares. At every corner that we turn, we are accosted by a sentry, who challenges us three times over: 'Who goes there?' 'Spain.' 'What kind of people?' 'Inoffensive.' And so forth. The theatre, the bull-ring, the promenade, are all closed for the season. The masquerading and carnival amusements are at an end. Payments have been suspended, and provisions have become scarce and dear. The people whom we meet have grown low-spirited, and the sunny streets look gloomy and deserted. We glance in at the warehouses and manufactories, and find everybody within attired in military costume; for many of the inhabitants have enrolled themselves as volunteers for the pleasure of wearing a uniform at their own expense, and of sporting a rifle provided by the government. The names of those who object to play at soldiers have been noted down, and their proceedings are narrowly watched. The Plaza de Armas is crowded with volunteers; their uniform consists of a blue and white striped blouse, white drill trousers, and a Panama hat, to the band of which is attached a vermilion-coloured cockade embellished with silver lace. The majority of these amateur warriors are Catalan shopkeepers, and clerks from Spanish warehouses. Don Javier tells me that these gentlemen, together with the Havana volunteers, represent a very formidable army; and that in the event of affairs taking a more serious turn, the volunteers would take an active part in the hostilities. 'The Catalan shopkeepers,' says Don Javier, 'are even more interested than Spain in preserving our colony under its present administration.' 'Under a more just and humane government, together with the abolition of slavery, these traders would be considerable losers; for most of them are large slave-owners, and enjoy certain mercantile privileges, which would be denied them under a new policy.' I remind Don Javier that these said Catalans are after all Spaniards born, and that, whatever their private object may be, for patriotic reasons it seems only natural that they should desire to maintain order in the Spanish colony. 'No muy! not a bit of it,' says my friend; 'they are not prompted by any feeling of patriotism. They have been too long estranged from their home at Barcelona, and love Cuba and her rich resources too much, to make that a consideration. I have heard them say that they would take up arms against their own government, rather than that Cuba should enjoy the privileges to which I have alluded.' While we are conversing, a couple of volunteers approach and salute us. One of them is my friend Bimba, who tells me that he has enlisted, partly for the 'fun' of wearing a uniform, and partly to ensure himself against arrest. 'Well, Don Javier,' says he,'are you not one of us yet? And you too, Don Gualterio, surely you will help to protect our town?' I plead, as an excuse, my nationality. 'Que caramba!' exclaims Bimba; 'why, your countryman, the clerk in B---- 's warehouse, is a volunteer; and so are the S---- 's from the German house in the Calle de la Marina.' Don Javier observes that our numerous duties prevent us from joining the corps. 'Car! Que duties y duties?' says Bimba; 'business is slack with all of us now. You, Don Javier, will have an easy time of it, notwithstanding your trade of news-disseminator; for you know, only "official" accounts of the war are fit for publication in your paper! As for you, amigo Gualterio, there will be no more triumphal arches wanted for the present; and no more "monos" (portraits) of defunct people, till the revolution is over, and then I have no doubt there will be more than enough to occupy you and your partner Nicasio! The theatre, too, is closed until further notice, so there will be no more theatricals.' Leaving Don Javier to chat with the other volunteer, I withdraw with Bimba to a quiet corner of the square and converse with him in private. Bimba is one of the favoured few who is aware of my connection with an American newspaper, because, for obvious reasons, I have always been careful to preserve my incognito. Now, more than ever, it behoves me to adopt this precaution. As a blind to the authorities and in order to facilitate my journalistic operations, Bimba suggests that I should join the volunteers. He tells me that our governor has signified his intention to make another sally with the troops, and that he has invited some of the volunteers to accompany the expedition. Enrolled as a volunteer, my friend says that it will not be difficult to obtain permission to follow with others in the rear of the Spanish regulars, and that by so doing I shall be able to 'report progress.' Our mutual friend Tunicú has not yet enlisted, I find. 'That gentleman is otherwise engaged,' says Bimba; 'his leisure moments are occupied at the house of his uncle Don Benigno, in the enjoyment of the society of his little mulatto-lady, who is, as you know, Don Benigno's adopted daughter.' 'What! the pretty Ermiña?' I exclaim; 'why, she is a mere child!' 'She was a child five years ago, when you and your partner were the Don's guests,' says Bimba. 'Now Ermiña is a grown woman of fifteen tropical summers.' 'There is some mystery connected with that young lady,' I observe; 'and I have never yet been able to fathom it. Can you enlighten me?' 'Not much,' returns Bimba; 'I strongly suspect--but let us not talk scandal in these warlike times. I only know that Ermiña is a remarkably white mulatto of the octoroon class; that she has been educated like a lady; and that she is the bosom companion of Don Benigno's daughters.' My curiosity being aroused, I resolve to probe Tunicú on the subject of his affaire de coeur, at our next meeting. Meanwhile I adopt friend Bimba's suggestion and enroll myself in his corps, and, with others, obtain permission to accompany the troops on their expedition. Some days, however, elapse before our feeble-minded governor can make up his mind to the sally. A couple of Spanish frigates lie at anchor in the harbour, in readiness to bombard the town if the rebels should effect an entrance and stir up the inhabitants, their countrymen, to revolt. The garrison has been considerably augmented by the arrival of fresh troops from Puerto Rico and Spain, who are quartered indiscriminately in the jail, the hospitals, and churches, to expire there by the score of yellow fever, vómito negro, and dysentery. Meanwhile the besiegers make no attempt at assault, but occasionally challenge the troops to sally from their stronghold by firing their sporting rifles within earshot of the town. Several foreign vessels of war are stationed in the bay ready, if necessary, to assist the foreign residents of the town. Among these vessels are the American war steamer 'Penobscot' and H.B.M.'s steam-ship the 'Eclipse;' the latter having been summoned from Port Royal, Jamaica, by the English vice-consul of Santiago. One day a great panic is raised, with cries of' Los insurrectos! Los insurrectos!' followed by a charge of mounted military through the streets. It is reported that the insurgents are coming; so everybody hastens home, and much slamming of doors and barring of windows is heard. But the alarm proves a false one; and, with the exception of a few arrests made by the police, just to keep up appearances, no further damage results. One memorable night, shortly after the inhabitants have retired, the terrible cry of 'fire!' is heard throughout the town, and a report spreads that the insurgents have at last effected an entrance, and set fire to several houses. Sure enough, from the roof of our studio, Nicasio and I witness what, at our distance, seems to be the burning of Santiago de Cuba! The sky is black with smoke, and from the centre of the town broad flames mount high into the air. Verily, part of Santiago is in flames, but the cause of the conflagration is--as we afterwards find--in no way connected with the insurrection. A 'panaderia' (baker's shop) and a linen-draper's warehouse, called 'El Globo,' owned by Catalans, have both caught fire by accident. Under ordinary circumstances, the disaster would not have created any other alarm than that which usually accompanies such a rare event as a fire in Cuba. But having connected its origin with the pending revolution, the town is thrown into a state of extreme panic, and until the truth is made manifest, the greatest confusion prevails. Mounted guards and policemen--armed to the teeth--charge through the streets in all directions, and the volunteers turn out en masse and congregate in large numbers before the scene of the conflagration in the Plaza de Dolores. Even the foreign consuls share for the moment in the popular apprehension. Their national flags are seen to flutter over their respective consulates, and a few well-armed marines from the 'Penobscot' and 'Eclipse' war-steamers are despatched by the captains of these vessels for the protection of the American and English residents. Passing the British consulate on our way to the Plaza de Dolores, we observed a couple of British tars--their cutlasses shouldered and with revolvers in their belts--on guard at the open doors. Meanwhile the black 'bomberos,' or firemen of the town, are at their work. But they are ill-provided with the machinery for extinguishing a great fire. Only one engine is available, and their water is supplied in buckets and by means of a long hose which communicates with the court-yard of an opposite house. The gallant captain of the British war-steamer offers to provide the firemen with an engine and men from his vessel; but the bomberos are able to dispense with this assistance, as their plan of operations consists chiefly in cutting off all communication with the fire, by destroying the surrounding houses. If any proof were wanting to show that the despised, but free and well-paid negro, is not devoid of ability and energy, these black and brown bomberos would surely provide ample testimony. A better conducted, better disciplined body of men than the coloured firemen of Cuba it has never been my fortune to meet anywhere. Steady, earnest of purpose, and perfectly free from excitement, they work like veritable negroes, and they prove as serviceable as the whitest of their bombero brethren. In less than four hours the safety of the surrounding habitations is ensured, and the fire, being now confined to the doomed buildings, is left to burn itself out. CHAPTER XXV. CUBAN WARFARE. Spanish Soldiers--A Sally--Prisoners of War--'Los Voluntarios'--A triumphant Return--Danger!--Cuban Emigrants. Our vacillating governor having at last consented to another chase after the rebels, under the leadership of a certain Spanish colonel, a body of volunteers--myself among the number--join the troops on the appointed day and march with them from town. The Spanish troops muster some five hundred strong. Their hand weapons are of the old-fashioned calibre, and they carry small field guns on the backs of mules. Every man is smoking either a cigarette or a cigar as he tramps along. His uniform is of dark blue cotton, or other light material suitable to the tropical heat. He carries little else besides his gun, his tobacco, and a tin-pot for making coffee; for the country through which he is passing abounds naturally in nearly every kind of provender. The besiegers have altogether disappeared from the neighbouring country, and for the first few miles our march is easy and uninterrupted. But soon the passes grow narrower, until our progress is effected in single file. Occasionally we halt to refresh ourselves, for the weather is intensely hot, and the sun blazes upon our backs. To ensure ourselves against brain fever, we gather a few cool plantain leaves and place them in layers in the crowns of our Panamas. Our way is incessantly intercepted by fallen trees and brushwood; but we can see nothing of the enemy, and hear little besides the singing of birds and the ripple of hidden water. Many of our party would gladly abandon the quest after human game, and make use of their weapons in a hunt after wild pig, or small deer, which animals abound in this part of the country. 'Alto!' We have waded at last through the intricate forest, and halt in an open plain. It is evening, and as we are weary with our wanderings, we encamp here all night. A moon is shining bright enough for us to read the smallest print; but we are disinclined to be studious, and smoke our cigarettes and sip our hot coffee. Men are dispatched to a neighbouring plantation in quest of bananas, pumpkins, Indian corn, sugar-cane, pine-apples, pomegranates, cocoa-nuts, and mangoes, and with this princely fare we take our suppers. Then sleep overtakes us. Early next morning we are called to arms by the sound of firing, which seems to reach us from a hill in the distance. The noise is as if a thousand sportsmen were out for a battue. Our commander assures us that the enemy is near at hand, and soon crowds of mounted men appear on the hill before us. With the aid of our field-glasses, we watch their movements, and can distinguish their dresses of white canvas, their sporting guns, and primitive spears. A body of them surrounds a thatched hut, over the roof of which droops a white banner with a strange device, consisting of a silver star on a square of republican red. The enemy appears to be very numerous, and as he marches along the ridge of the hill, his line seems interminable. All our opponents are mounted on horses, or mules with strange saddles and equipments. 'Adelante!' We advance to meet the foe. Some hours elapse before we can reach the thatched hut, as our course is exceedingly circuitous. We find the hut occupied by a decrepit, half-naked negro, but our birds have flown. The negro, who tells us he is a hermit, and that his name is San Benito, can give us no information as to the whereabouts of the enemy, so we make him a prisoner of war. The opposing forces have left nothing but their patriotic banner behind them. This trophy our commander possesses himself of, and bears off in triumph. Then we scour the country in companies of fifty; but we meet with nothing more formidable, than a barricade of felled trees and piled stones. Once we capture a strange weapon, made out of the trunk of a very hard tree, scooped and trimmed into the form of a cannon, and bound with strong iron hoops. Upon another occasion we discharge our rifles into a thicket whence sounds of firing proceed, and we make two more prisoners of war, in the shape of a couple of runaway negroes. Though we have had no encounter with the enemy, our 'losses' are not inconsiderable; many of the soldiers having been attacked by those terrible and invincible foes--fever and dysentery. In this manner at least two-thirds of our force is put _hors de combat_. Our colonel is in despair. As for the volunteers, their disappointment at the unsuccessful issue is very great. At length our colonel, disgusted with the result of the campaign, orders a retreat. The troops willingly obey, and are preparing for their march back, when twenty of the volunteers come to the front and propose making one effort to storm the enemy's impregnable fortress. Finding our colonel opposed to such a wild enterprise, these gentlemen, reckless of the consequences, plunge headlong into an adjacent thicket, and thence presently the sound of fire-arms proceeds. For upwards of an hour we await the return of these mad adventurers, and during the interval the firing is incessant. Finally the 'besiegers' are seen to emerge from a distant part of the thicket. When we join them, we find that more than half their number are wounded, and the rest bear between them no less than three prisoners of war! For the first time I have the pleasure of standing before veritable rebels! Two of the prisoners are whites and are seriously maimed; the third is a mulatto youth of not more than sixteen years. They are all attired in brown holland blouses, white trousers, buff-coloured shoes and straw hats. The white men have been disarmed, but the mulatto lad has still a revolver and machete-sword in his belt. The volunteers are elated beyond measure by their formidable(?) captures, and endeavour to persuade their chief to make another attempt with the troops. But the colonel will not hear of it, and commands the men instantly to retreat. The volunteers obey this time, in spite of their protestations, but before doing so, a horrible scene is enacted. The mulatto lad, who is only slightly wounded, is bound hand and foot with strong cords, and consigned to the care of the soldiers, but the other two unfortunates, who lie groaning in agony on the ground, are brutally seized by some of the volunteers, who, after maltreating them in a shocking manner, stab them to death with the points of their bayonets! Sickening at the fearful spectacle, I gladly follow the colonel and his men, who are unanimous in their indignation at the outrage. A two days' march brings us to the confines of the town again; but before we proceed to enter, the governor, accompanied by a staff of officers and a band of music, comes out to meet us. A cart, driven by oxen, is procured, and upon it are placed the captured cannon and rebel banner, the former of which is as much as possible concealed by Spanish flags and flowers. A procession is then formed, and in this way we pass through the streets, followed by the military band, which plays a hymn of victory in commemoration of our triumphant return. The houses become suddenly decorated with banners, blankets, and pieces of drugget suspended from the windows, and the inhabitants welcome us with loud cheers and 'vivas.' Immediately upon quitting the ranks, I repair to the office of _El Sufragio Universál_, for the purpose of reporting to Don Javier the result of our expedition. Strange to relate, that gentleman has already perused a glowing account of our glorious campaign in _El Redactor_, the government organ in Cuba. The editor hands me a copy of that periodical, and there, sure enough, is a thrilling description of what we might have achieved, if we had had the good fortune to encounter the enemy in the open field! But the editor has some strange news for my private ear. He tells me that a fillibustering expedition from the United States has landed with arms, ammunition, and a thousand American fillibusters, in the Bay of Nipe, not many leagues from our town. With this reinforcement it is confidently expected that the rebels will make an attempt to attack the Spanish troops in their stronghold. Don Javier, who is a Cuban to the bone, is sanguine of his countrymen's success. With a few more such expeditions, he is sure that the colony will soon be rid of its Spanish rulers. Then the editor gives me some extraordinary information about myself. It appears that during my absence, _El Redactor_ has made the wonderful discovery that I am one of the agents of an American newspaper; has referred in its leading articles to the 'scandalous and untruthful reports' published by its American contemporary, and has insinuated that henceforth the climate of Cuba will be found by many degrees too warm for me. But this is not the worst news which the Cuban editor has to impart. The cholera, he says, has been raging in many parts of the town, and innumerable families have in consequence of this disaster and the continued arrests, fled from Santiago. The majority of them had embarked in the first steamer announced to leave the island, which happened to be the 'Caravelle,' bound for Jamaica; others had taken refuge at their estates in the country, while numbers of young Cubans, who had been threatened with arrest, had made their escape and joined the insurgent army. On my way from Don Javier's office, I meet Bimba, and from him I learn further particulars respecting this wholesale flight of Cubans. He tells me that, among the departures are Don Benigno and his family, who fled to his country estate. That Don Severiano and _his_ family have set sail for Europe, taking with them my creole lady-love, who had been for this purpose released from the convent. My friend says that their destination is Paris. So au revoir, Cachita mia; we may meet again! Quien sabe? Bimba then discloses the wonderful intelligence, that among the passengers by the French steamer bound for Jamaica was my companion Nicasio Rodriguez y Boldú; and he hands me a letter which my partner had entrusted to his care. The contents of this document only confirms what I have already heard. The cholera, the recent arrests, the fact that Nicasio is the close friend of the formidable agent of the _New York Trigger_, have combined to induce him to abandon the island before my return. He urges me to follow his example without delay and embark in the first steamer which leaves the island. He himself will remain in Jamaica till he hears from me, and if I am unable to join him there, we shall--si Dios quiere--meet again in that part of Europe where for many years we have dwelt together and practised, under more favourable auspices, 'the divine art of Apelles.' The first steamer announced to leave Santiago is the 'Pelayo,' and as this vessel will sail for Havana in four hours' time, I prepare for my journey to the Cuban capital. Bimba and those of my friends who still remain in this disturbed part of the Ever-faithful Isle, accompany me on board. Foremost is the editor of _El Sufragio Universál_, who, after wishing me a 'bon voyage' and a hearty 'vaya usted con Dios,' secretly hands me a bundle of papers, containing, among other matters, the 'leavings' of the censor for the past fortnight, which Don Javier hopes will be acceptable to the proprietors of the _New York Trigger_. I had almost forgotten Tunicú! 'What has become of him?' I ask. Bimba tells me that Tunicú has disappeared no one knows whither. 'Eloped with his mulatto lady?' I suggest. 'No muy!' says Bimba; 'la Ermiña accompanied Don Benigno to his estate. You will probably hear of them again.' CHAPTER XXVI. HAVANA CIGARETTES. Cigars--The Etiquette of Smoking--A Cigarette Manufactory--The Courteous Proprietor--The Visitors' Book--Cigarette Rolling. That the characteristics of Cuba, and the ways of the people, are better observed in the Santiago end of the island than they are in Havana, is apparent to me after my arrival in the latter city. Here I am reminded in many respects of a fashionable European town--indeed, by reason of its modern innovations, the Cuban capital has been styled the 'Paris of the tropics.' Compared with Santiago, Havana offers few attractions to the traveller in quest of 'Cosas de Cuba,' besides its tobacco; and to this subject I accordingly devote my attention. I am in the Louvre. Not the French palace of that name, but a fashionable café in the heart of Havana. The interior of the Café del Louvre is tastefully decorated; the walls are concealed behind huge mirrors, the floor is of marble, and countless tables crowded with Habaneros and foreigners from all parts of Las Americas, are distributed about the saloon. At one end is a long 'mostrador' or counter, where fancy chocolate, confectionary, and tobacco in all its branches are sold. Here you have your pick of brands, from the gigantic and costly Ramas cigar to the 'tamaño pequeño' cigarette. But do not suppose that because you are at the birthplace of your choice Havanas, you will get those articles at a cost comparatively next to nothing. I, who from infancy upwards have cherished this fiction, am lamentably disappointed when I discover what exorbitant prices are demanded for the best brands. The cedar boxes, with their precious contents, set like gems in the midst of tinfoil and fancy-cut paper, look inviting; but I seek in vain for a cigar at the ridiculously cheap rate I have prepared myself to pay. I try Brevas, and ask for a penn'orth of the best, but am horrified when I am told that a single specimen of that brand costs five-pence! The Intimidads alarm me; the Bravas unman me; and as for the Cabañas, the Partagas, the Henry Clays, and the Upmanns, I am filled with awe at the bare mention of their value per pound. A real Ramas, I am informed, is worth eighteen-pence English, while superior Upmanns are not to be had under ten sovereigns a hundred. In despair of finding anything within my means at the Louvre counter, I purchase a 'medio's' worth of cigarettes--a medio, or two-pence half-penny being the smallest coin current in Cuba--order a cup of café noir, and sally forth in quest of cheaper smokeables. Crossing the square where the Tacon theatre and circus stand, I wander through the narrow, ill-paved streets of the Cuban capital. At the corner of every hotel, under archways and arcades, I meet with tables laid out like fruit-stalls, bearing bundles of cigars and cigarettes. Here, at least, I expect to find something to smoke at a fabulously low rate. Yes; here are cigars at two, three, and five for a silver two-pence; but those I invest in do not satisfy me; they are damp, new, badly rolled, won't draw, and have all kinds of odd shapes. Some are curved like Turkish scimetars, others are square and flat, as if they had been mangled or sat upon, while a few are undecided in form like horse-radish. The vendor assures me that all his cigars are born of 'tabaco legitimo,' of 'calidad superior,' grown on the low sandy soil of the famous Vuelta Abajo district; but I know what a very small area that tract of land comprises, and I will no more believe in the abundance of its resources than I will in those of Champagne and Oporto. In my peregrinations, I gaze fondly into the interior of wholesale cigar warehouses, but dare not enter and demand the price of half of one of those countless cedar-boxes, which I see piled up to the very ceiling in walls fifty boxes thick. At last I founder on the Plaza de Santa Isabel, a spacious square, laid out with pretty gardens and tropical trees. Here is the grand hotel where the Special Correspondent to the _New York Trigger_ wields his mighty pen. To him and to other acquaintances I apply for information on the subject of tobacco. My foreign friends assure me you cannot get a good cigar in Havana at any price, as all the best are exported to Europe and the United States; unless you prefer German tobacco, of which great quantities are imported into Havana. The natives have quite a different account to give. They declare that the best cigars never leave the country but are easily obtained if you know where to seek them; and they refer me to the warehouses. Every one whom I consult graciously offers me a few specimens from his own particular cigar-case; and as in Cuba it is considered an offence to refuse a man's tobacco, I am soon in possession of a goodly stock, which I calculate will last me for the next eight and forty hours at least. A singular etiquette is observed all over Cuba with respect to smoking, which a rough Britisher does not always appreciate. An utter stranger is at liberty to stop you in the middle of the street to beg the favour of your 'candela,' or light from your cigar. If you are polite, you will immediately hand him your weed, with the ashes carefully shaken off, and the lighted end conveniently pointed in his direction. Part of your fire having been successfully transferred to his cigar, the stranger is bound to return your property, presenting it, by a dexterous turn of the wrist, with the mouth end towards you; an operation which requires no little practice, as it is accompanied with a downward jerk to express deep obligation. If, after this, you are inclined to abandon your cigar for a fresh one, you may not do so in the stranger's presence, but wait till he has disappeared. There is a sort of smoking freemasonry, too, between Cubans all over the world. A Cuban recognises a compatriot anywhere, by the manner in which he screws up his cigarette, holds it, and offers or accepts a light. Advised by a friend who is a great smoker, I give up my cigar investigations, and devote my attention to the humbler cigarette. With this object in view, I ramble down the narrow 'calles' or streets of St. Ignacio, del Obispo, and de Cuba. At every twelfth house which I pass is a small shop where only the article I seek is sold. In the first-mentioned calle is the 'deposito' of the far-famed Cabañas cigarette; in the second, the Gallito and Honradez stores. I visit the latter, which holds the highest reputation, and take an inventory of the stock. I am shown an endless variety of cigarettes at comparatively insignificant prices; a packet of twenty-six of those mostly in vogue costing only a silver medio, or two-pence half-penny English. There are innumerable sizes, from the smallest named Acacias, to the biggest, or tamaño mayor, called Grandifloras. The floor of the shop is sanded with burnt cigarette ends, looking like exhausted cartridges, and the pavement without is peppered with their fragments. Every man or responsible child whom I pass has a little tube of smoking paper between his lips, and glancing in at an open restaurant, I observe a group of feeders, each of whom has a cigarette stuck behind his ear like a pen. At last I pause before the imposing factory of Louis Susini and Son, situated in a little plaza in the Calle de Cuba. It is here that the best cigarettes, popularly known as Honradez, are manufactured. The exterior of the building, with its marble columns reminding one of a Genoese palace, is worthy of attention. Above the grand entrance is the Honradez figure of Justice, bearing the famous motto: 'Los hechos me justificarán' (my deeds will justify me). But there is much to be seen within; and as a party of half a dozen ladies and gentlemen are about to enter, I join them and unite with them in begging permission of the proprietor to inspect the works. One of the firm soon appears, and after a polite greeting, kindly appoints an assistant to show us over the manufactory. We are told that everything in connection with cigarette making, except the actual growing of the tobacco, takes place within these extensive premises, and are forewarned that a long afternoon is necessary to see everything to our satisfaction. Before we begin, we are politely requested to affix our signatures in a ledger provided for visitors to the establishment; and having obeyed, copies of our autographs are made on slips of paper, and, by a mechanical contrivance in the wall, these are dispatched for some mysterious purpose to the regions above. At the suggestion of the cicerone, we follow our names; not by the same means, however, but by winding staircases and intricate passages. Before starting, we peep into the engine-room to glance at the steam power which works the machinery required in the different departments. The first ascent brings us to spacious store-rooms, where loose cigarettes, and those already packed in bundles, are kept. The walls are literally papered with cigarettes in wheels, which look like complicated fireworks. As we move from one wheel to another, we are invited to help ourselves to, and test, the different qualities, which some of us accordingly do in wine-tasting fashion; taking a couple of whiffs from each sample and flinging the rest in the dust. Further on, we come to a small apartment where the operation of sorting the labels for enveloping each packet of twenty cigarettes, takes place. The labels are fresh from the printers; a workman is standing before a round movable table, and as this revolves, he drops them into little boxes belonging to their respective patterns. Each label is stamped with the Honradez figure of Justice, accompanied either by a charade, a comic verse, a piece of dance music on a small scale, an illuminated coat of arms, or a monogram pattern for Berlin wool-work. Some are adorned with artistic designs of a superior order, such as coloured landscapes, groups of figures, or photographs of eminent persons. Another ascent, and we are in the stationery department. It seems odd to examine large sheets and thick reams of paper, which we have been accustomed to see only in the form of cigarette books or tubes of small dimensions. A wonderful variety of rice and other paper is before us. There are two or three qualities of white, and endless shades of brown and yellow. Some are lightly tinted as the complexion of a half-caste; others are quadroon-hued, or of a yellow-brown mulatto-colour. We are shown medicated and scented papers. The first of these, called pectoral paper, is recommended by the faculty to persons with weak chests; the last, when ignited, gives out an agreeable perfume. Yet another floor, and we are introduced into a long chamber with rows of long tables, at which a hundred Chinese workmen are engaged in counting the already twisted cigarettes into bundles of twenty-six, and enveloping them in their ornamental labels or covers. To accomplish this operation with necessary speed, much practice and dexterity in the handling is required. The coolies--a thousand of whom are employed on the establishment--are, however, great adepts at the art, and patient and plodding as beasts of burthen. But among the celestials there is one master-hand who distinguishes himself above all the others by his superior skill. Piles of loose cigarettes and gummed labels are before him. Into the former he digs his dexterous fingers, and he knows by the feel alone whether he has the prescribed twenty-six within his grasp. By a peculiar shake he humours the handful into its tubular form, and with another movement wraps it lightly in a paper cover, which he leaves open at one end and neatly tucks in at the other. He is so rapid in his work, that we can scarcely follow him with our eyes, and the whole performance, from beginning to end, looks to us like a conjuring trick. Our guide tells us how many thousands of packets per day are in this way completed by these useful coolies. 'Arriba!' Another flight leads to the 'picadura' department, where tobacco leaves are prepared for cigarette making. The aspect on all sides reminds us of a room in a Manchester factory. We wade carefully through a maze of busy machinery. There are huge contrivances for pressing tobacco into solid cakes hard as brickbats; ingenious apparatus for chopping these cakes into various sized grains of 'picadura' or tobacco cuttings; horizontal and vertical tramways for forwarding the latter to their respective compartments. Near us is a winnowing chamber for separating particles of dust from the newly cut picadura. We enter by a spring door which closes after us with a bang, and everybody is immediately seized with a violent fit of sneezing. Particles of escaping tobacco dust float in the air and tickle our olfactories. We are actually standing within a huge snuff-box! After inhaling a wholesale pinch of this powder, which leaves us sneezing for the next quarter of an hour, we clamber to the heights of the establishment, and find ourselves in the printing and paper cutting departments. Here artists are engaged in preparing lithographic stones and wood blocks with various picturesque designs for cigarette labels. Gilders are illuminating labels, and cutters are shaping paper into their cigarette and label sizes. Further on are printing offices, where all the letterpress and lithography required in the establishment is accomplished. This is far from an insignificant item in the manufactory, for, besides the pictorial and letterpress covers, there are the Honradez advertisements to print; circulars, pamphlets, together with dedicatory dance music, and an occasional local newspaper. We linger lovingly about this interesting department, and, before we leave, the foreman of the printing office presents each lady member of our party with a piece of Cuban dance music, upon the cover of which is printed a few words of dedication, accompanied by the lady's own name in full. Whilst wondering at the magic by which this mark of attention has been quietly accomplished, we descend to the ground floor, and are again met by the courteous proprietor, who presents each gentleman visitor with a newly-made packet of cigarettes upon which, lo! and behold! are our names. It is pleasing to see one's name in print, and when it is witnessed on an ordinary Havana cigarette packet, the charm is greatly augmented. Before taking leave of our civil host, we are invited to comment upon what we have seen, in the visitors' book, and you may be sure that our observations are not unfavourable to the courteous proprietor and his interesting exhibition. Susini & Son have published a thick pamphlet containing a list of names and remarks of distinguished visitors to his establishment. It is a curious work in its way, for the epigrammatic effusions are varied, amusing, and composed in at least half a dozen languages. Some of the authors have chosen a poetic style of commentary, while others content themselves with matter-of-fact prose. A well-known signature is here and there recognisable among these cosmopolitan productions. A famous Italian opera star has rhymed in her native lingo; a popular French acrobat--possibly one of a company of strolling equestrians--has immortalised himself in Parisian heroics. M. Pianatowsky, the Polish fiddler, has scrawled something incomprehensible in Russian or Arabic--no matter which; while Mein Herr Van Trinkenfeld comes out strong in double Dutch. Need I add that the immortal Smith of London is in great force in the book, or that his Queen's English is worthy of his world-wide reputation? We are in the act of quitting the Honradez establishment, when it suddenly occurs to one of us that, after all that has been said and seen, we have failed to watch a cigarette in actual process of manufacture. What! have we presided at a performance of 'Hamlet' with the hero omitted; or are the component parts of cigarettes planted in the ground to sprout out ready-made like radishes? I return and ask for information on this subject. 'Perdonen, ustedes,' says our hospitable friend, 'I had forgotten to tell you that our cigarrillos are rolled by the presidiarios.' What's a 'presidiario'? A 'presidiario' is a convict, and convicts in Cuba are sentenced to eternal cigarette-making in lieu of oakum-picking. The government contract with the manufacturers for this purpose, and--voilà tout! Anxious to 'sit out' the whole cigarette performance to the very last act, I ask and obtain permission to visit the town jail. In one of the stone apartments of this well-regulated building are groups of convicts dressed in white blouses and loose trousers of coarse canvas. Amongst them are Africans, Congos, mulattoes of many shades, Chinese--Chow-chows as they are called--and sun-burnt whites, who are principally insubordinate Spanish soldiers and sailors. Each has a heavy chain dangling from his waist and attached to his ankle, wears a broad-brimmed straw hat of his own manufacture, and incessantly smokes. Before him is a wooden box filled with picadura and small squares of tissue paper. Great nicety is required to roll a cigarette after the approved fashion; the strength or mildness of the tobacco being in a great measure influenced by the way the grains are more or less compressed. A smoker of course finds a tightly-twisted cigarette more difficult to draw than a loosely twisted one. The presidiario does not seem to object to his hard labour, but doubtless prefers it to other kinds of perpetual rolling on a wheel. He employs no sticky element to secure the edges of his cigarette, but tucks the ends neatly in, by means of a pointed thimble which he wears on his forefinger. Ponder well over this, ye Havana cigarette smokers! and when next you indulge in a whiff from your favourite luxury, remember that a pickpocket has had his hand on your picadura! CHAPTER XXVII. A MULATTO GIRL. An Obscure Birth--Bondage--A Bad Master--A Good God-Father--A Cuban Christening--Anomaly of Slavery--A White Lover--Rivals--An Important Event. My contemplated departure for New York is for many days postponed by the unexpected meeting with Don Benigno's family, who, under extraordinary circumstances presently to be related, have recently arrived in the Havana. My old friends are also bound for the great American city; but at present they are full of preparations for the approaching marriage between Don Benigno's eldest daughter, Paquita and the young Spanish officer, Don Manuel. The latter has lately received a military appointment in the Cuban capital, and as he contemplates residing there with his future bride, Don Benigno is anxious that the wedding shall take place with as little delay as possible. Before that event, and before Don Benigno and the rest of his family leave with me for New York, I am made acquainted with the fact, that another marriage will be shortly celebrated in the Don's family, and that the betrothed lady is no other than Don Benigno's adopted daughter, the fair Ermiña! Don Benigno tells me that for certain reasons this wedding will not take place in the Ever-faithful Isle. What those reasons are, and how my curiosity respecting the past of the pretty mulatto girl is at last gratified, will appear in the following brief narrative, which, as the matter contained in it was chiefly derived from the young lady herself, I propose to repeat as nearly as possible in her own words. * * * * * I was bought and paid for before I was born. My own mother bargained for, and finally secured me, for the sum of twenty-five dollars. A kind of speculative interest was attached to my nativity. Had my sale not been effected previous to my appearance in the world, I should have become the property of my mother's master, who, in accordance with the laws of serfdom, might then dispose of me, if he pleased, at a rate far exceeding my mother's slender savings; and, if nature had destined me for a healthy boy instead of a girl, my value would have been still greater. My mother was a slave belonging to a wealthy coffee-planter. Of my father I know little, save that he was a white man, and that being a professed gambler and deeply in debt, he disappeared from Cuba shortly before I was ushered into the world. His flight concerned no one more than my mother, for he had promised to purchase her liberty for a thousand dollars, which was the price demanded by her owner. There was no world to censure my parent for the trouble she had brought upon herself, because, in a slave-country, little importance is attached to such a common occurrence as the birth of a mulatto. My mother's master would have exhibited a similar indifference, if, indeed, he would not have rejoiced at the event--for it added a few dollars to his exchequer--were it not for the fact that Don Vicente had a secret motive for great displeasure. His slave was a mulatto, belonging to the fair class known as quadroons. My mother was a comely specimen of her race, and Don Vicente, being well aware of this, had his own reasons for qualifying her conduct as an act of disobedience. This act he determined should receive punishment, and accordingly, when his human property was convalescent, she was removed, with her infant, to one of Don Vicente's estates, and there cruelly flogged! You may be sure that this severe treatment did not increase my mother's affection for Don Vicente, and, in spite of his dreadful threat to employ his slave as a common coffee-picker--which, for a mulatto, accustomed to the luxuries of town life, is worse than sending her to the galleys--my mother remained true to herself. Finding menaces of no avail, and afraid of disturbing his domestic tranquillity, Don Vicente abandoned his purpose and advertised his human property for hire at so much per month. In its way, this was a sore trial for my dear parent, for although she heartily loathed her master, she was greatly attached to his family, at whose hands she had known only kindness and humanity. Her new master might prove to be as bad as, or even worse than, her owner, and such a prospect was far from pleasant. She was, however, agreeably disappointed. Don Benigno responded to the advertisement, and would have purchased my mother outright, but the times were critical, and the worthy gentleman could not afford the exorbitant price demanded for her. He, however, agreed to hire my parent, who was forthwith removed, with her free-born child, to her new habitation. Don Benigno was of course the kindest of masters; in proof of which, his first act, after procuring my mother's temporary release, was to interest himself in her child's baptism. For this purpose, he ordered that every formality connected with this ceremony should be rigidly observed. He himself officiated as godfather, and, in accordance with custom, invited my mother's relatives and friends to be present at the festivities, which were to be held at a small farm on one of his estates. As is usual on such occasions, my generous godfather sent a 'baptismal token' to every guest. The nearest relatives received an 'escudo de oro,' or two-dollar piece. The next of kin were presented with pesetas, while the friends were favoured with silver medios. Each token was pierced with a 'lucky' hole, to which was attached a piece of coloured ribbon, with my name and the date of my birth printed in gold letters on either side. The ceremony of christening being over, Don Benigno gave a grand banquet and a ball, at his farm-house, to which all the farmers and white country people in the neighbourhood were invited. My kind godfather was in the habit of investing a 'doblón' of four dollars every month in the Havana lottery; and he promised that if he should succeed in drawing a prize, he would devote part of the amount to the purchase of my mother. But no such good fortune ever happened to the worthy gentleman, although, upon more than one occasion, he expended a whole 'onza' in tickets. Nothing worthy of note transpired during the early years of my childhood. My health was all that could be desired after my teething--an operation whose successful issue, it was confidently believed, was due to the bone necklace which I wore from my birth, and which the good people of my country consider acts as a charm against the evils imminent to infancy. Don Benigno's children--who were somewhat older than myself--were my closest companions. We were, indeed, more like sisters together, than young mistresses and maid. As for my dear godfather and Doña Mercedes--they treated me as a pet child. Before I had turned fourteen, I was already a grown woman, and, as far as outward appearance, as white as it is possible for my caste to be. With the exception of my lips, which are, as you observe, somewhat _prononcé_, and the whites of my eyes, which are slightly tinged with yellow, there is no perceptible difference between me and those creoles whose origin is less doubtful than my own. Despite, however, my personal attractions, I was fully conscious of the nice distinction between white and white about which the people of my country are so jealously exacting; and my dark origin always formed a barrier between me and my thoroughbred sisters. Whenever Don Benigno, or his family, addressed me as 'Mulatica,' 'Chinita,' or 'Negrita,' I sometimes thought of the literal meaning of those endearing epithets! Tunicú, as you know, was always a frequent visitor at Don Benigno's tertulia, but at the period to which I now refer, he used to pass some hours with us during the daytime. I think Tunicú always admired me more than he did Don Benigno's daughters, and now that I was a grown woman, he often gave expression to his sentiments. I was by no means insensible to Tunicú's attentions, for he was a handsome young gentleman, with a dark brown moustache and imperial to match. His complexion, too, was several shades darker than my own, though this, of course, did not detract from the purity of his descent, which was apparent in the clear white of his eyeballs, the transparent pink of his finger nails, and other signs peculiar to offspring of white parents. Our admiration for one another gradually developed itself into something more serious, until one day Tunicú gave me to understand that he loved me truly. I think he was sincere, at least I chose to believe so, and, besides, he gave daily proof of his preference for me to the whitest ladies of his acquaintance. Notwithstanding this, the wide gulf of origin which existed between Tunicú and me could not be concealed, and was continually made manifest. My white lover was passionately fond of dancing, and frequently attended at the balls given at the Philharmonic, where I dared not be seen, save in the capacity of spectator. Crowds of coloured people were permitted, like myself, to watch the dancing from a distance, but none were allowed to trespass upon the hallowed threshold. The same stern rule separated me and my lover at the Retreta in the public square. I might stand, with others of my class, on the broad terrace of the cathedral and watch the promenaders, or listen to the military band; but I dared not be seen with the unsullied gentlefolks below. Occasionally, Tunicú would desert his white companions, and ascending the broad steps of the cathedral, pass the rest of the evening in my society. On these occasions I should have felt supremely happy, but for the painful thought that Tunicú was sacrificing his position for my sake. The white ladies, who visited at Don Benigno's, though sometimes deigning to notice me, out of compliment to their host, secretly hated and despised me; and if they did not actually scandalise me behind my back, they never forgot to remind those around them of my parentage, and of the unquestionable difference which existed between us. Then there was my mother, whose cruel fate was ever a dark cloud in my happiest moments with my lover. Thanks to her, I was a free-born woman, while she, alas! still endured a state of bondage. I often wished that I might be enabled to turn to profitable account the education which I had received through Don Benigno's bounty, and in this manner earn enough to pay for my parent's liberty; but, unfortunately, there are no governesses in Cuba, and what white lady of respectability would care to send her child to my school, supposing that I had been able to set up such an establishment? Sometimes I indulged in the wild hope that Tunicú might one day take me to a foreign country, where my past would be ignored, and where we might be married without regard to the opinion of the world. But my lover, though always full of projects and promises, had never once alluded to the subject of matrimony. People broadly hinted that my Tunicú was a libertine, like some of his companions and that he had no intention of making me his wife; but we were both favoured with rivals whose interest it was to speak in these terms. My rivals were the white ladies, who were jealous of Tunicú's attentions to me, and who never forgot to openly express their indignation at the relationship which they knew to exist between me and my lover. Tunicú's rivals were even more numerous; some of them would show their regard for me by serenading under my window with a band of music, upon such occasions as my saint's day, or during the fiestas. I dared not exhibit an indifference to these attentions, without transgressing certain social laws of the country; besides, I found that Tunicú himself did not disapprove of them--he never explained why, but I suppose he considered these little attentions as a sort of acknowledgment of his good taste, or, perhaps, they afforded a proof to him of my constancy. The boldest of my admirers was a young half-caste called Frasquito, whose mulatto-father was a wealthy tobacco trader and held a high position among the Cuban merchants. Frasquito was an occasional visitor at Don Benigno's, for, being an accomplished musician, he was a great acquisition when a dance was given at our residence. Once he composed a Cuban danza, and dedicated it to me, calling it after my name: 'La Bella Ermiña.' Frasquito was perfectly aware of my relations with Tunicú, but he must have regarded them with the same levity as others did; for, one day, happening to be alone with my admirer, he, to my great confusion and surprise, made me an offer of marriage; assuring me that his father had already approved of his choice, and promising that if I would accept him for a husband, he would, previous to the marriage ceremony, procure my beloved mother's liberty. I fear that my reply was unsatisfactory to both of us. I could not tell him with truth that I was betrothed to another, because, though that other had long appropriated my heart, he had never openly asked my hand. It was equally difficult to show why I did not avail myself of this opportunity for effecting my mother's emancipation; and Frasquito knew too well that I would make any personal sacrifice to release my beloved parent from bondage. I, however, told Frasquito that his offer had so taken me by surprise, that he must give me time to consider of it, and that in the meanwhile he must never allude to the subject. Tunicú, to whom alone I confided what had passed between me and my admirer, scouted the notion of my alliance with the 'son of a nigger,' as he expressed it; but strange to tell, he did not seem angry at the fact of matrimony having been proposed by another. 'You are too fair and too refined,' said he, 'for the son of a black man. When you marry, you must be wedded to somebody having better antecedents than that, Ermiña mia.' I felt the truth of his remark, and now began to consider my late offer in the light of an insult. The mulatto's pretensions to my hand must surely, I thought, have been induced by his knowledge of my birth, for he would not have ventured to make such a proposal to a white woman; and perfectly aware of my secret attachment, he seemed to have implied that I was incapable of commanding the true love of a white man. Impressed with these reflections, I resolved to test the truth of the mulatto's inuendos, and, for the first time, I broached to Tunicú the subject nearest my heart. 'Do you think, mi amor,' said I to my lover, 'that I shall ever marry as well as you could desire?' Tunicú paused, before replying to my question, and then observed--turning his gaze from me as he spoke:-- 'Why should not mi Ermiña marry well? She is young, beautiful, accomplished--' --'and the daughter of a slave!' I added; my eyes moistening as I uttered the terrible words. For a few moments my lover remained silent and pensive Then recovering himself, he began to converse in his old, confident, assuring manner, gratifying my imagination with pictures of events which were never to happen, and promising things impossible to be realised. At least nothing ever did happen as Tunicú had predicted, while one event shortly transpired which in his wildest dreams had never occurred to him. That event was the Cuban insurrection, which, as you know, has already affected the lives of hundreds of my unhappy countrymen and countrywomen; but in what manner it would concern our future destinies, neither Tunicú nor I could possibly foretell. CHAPTER XXVIII. A MULATTO GIRL (_continued_). The Slave Trade--Ermiña and her Lover--Panics--'Los Insurrectos' v. 'Los Voluntaries'--A Wounded Patriot--Spanish Law and Cuban Law--The 'Mambís'--A Promise--An Alarm--All's Well that Ends Well. You already know how, during the early stages of the Cuban revolution, the inhabitants of Santiago were called upon to enroll themselves as volunteers; that those who evaded the order were regarded with suspicion, in many cases arrested, and occasionally shot after a mock trial; that others who preferred to abandon the town, were punished for their want of loyalty to their rulers, who confiscated their property. My good benefactor, Don Benigno, was too old to enlist and even more disinclined to fight against his countrymen, the rebels; so when the cholera broke out, he made this a pretext for escaping the vigilance of the authorities, and fled with his family and belongings to a farm on his sugar estate. My mother would have accompanied us, but for a circumstance which obliged her to remain in the town. Her rightful owner, Don Vicente, had in one day lost half his fortune; the rebels having encamped at his principal estate and utterly despoiled it. Four hundred negroes employed on this estate had joined the revolutionists, and as each slave was valued, on the average, at five hundred dollars, the loss which Don Vicente sustained may be easily estimated. To provide against fresh losses, Don Vicente determined to sell all that still remained to him, and embark with his family for a more peaceful country. He hoped to realise a large amount from the sale of his town slaves, and as my mother represented no insignificant item in this valuable property, she was, of course, included in the list of vendibles. I was in despair! 'Tunicú, del alma!' said I to my lover, 'if you are as devoted to me as you profess to be, buy--borrow--beg my beloved parent; but don't let her fall into strange hands!' My dread lest she should become the property of an utter stranger, drove me to this appeal. Tunicú was equal to the occasion, as he always was; whether with the same disappointing result in view, I could not tell. 'Ermiña de mi corazon!' he replied, 'I am not in a position to buy your mother. Don Benigno has already borrowed her and must now return her. To beg her is out of the question. But I think I have a more practical plan. It may not agree with the laws of this country, and it must be attended with great personal risk; but I will try it.' I looked inquiringly. 'I am aware, 'continued Tunicú, with one of his pleasant smiles, 'that in the course of true love it rarely happens that in order to prove his affection for his mistress, the lover must first elope with his lady-love's mother; but circumstances create strange situations, and under the present circumstances, I see no other alternative than to run away with your parent.' Conscious of the great risk attending such an enterprise, and of the terrible consequences which would inevitably result from an untimely discovery, I begged that Tunicú would reveal to me his plan of operations. But to this he objected. 'No,' said he, 'I have found of late that my outspoken projects have exhausted themselves in words, so you must allow me, for this once, to keep my own counsel.' My lover's unusual reply somehow inspired me with greater confidence than anything he had ever uttered: so, woman though I was, I determined to restrain my curiosity. 'Whatever your plan may be, dearest Tunicú,' said I, 'I agree to it blindly.' 'Then,' said he, 'you will also agree to our temporary separation. You will accompany my uncle to the farm?' To this I also, though reluctantly, acceded. So my mother was returned to Don Vicente, with whose family she was to reside until a purchaser was found. Tunicú remained in town; while I and Don Benigno's family were conveyed in a covered cart drawn by oxen to the farm-house. We arrived opportunely. The town which we had left was, as you know, already in a state of siege, and shortly after our departure, Count Valmaseda's dreadful manifesto, announcing that every man, woman, and child who should be discovered in certain districts of the country were to be shot like dogs, was published. We dared not now venture beyond the limits of the farm-grounds, for the report of fire-arms was continually heard in the neighbouring woods. Don Benigno was in daily fear lest the volunteers should visit our retreat, for he was well acquainted with the details of their past iniquities. Early one morning we were awakened by a negro, who hastened to the farm-house, shouting as he came: 'Los Insurrectos! Los Insurrectos!' 'The insurgents are coming!' was the signal of alarm usually adopted by non-combatants, because the insurgents, and not the volunteers, were said to be the scarecrows of our island. It was, however, 'Los Voluntaries' and not 'Los Insurrectos' this time, for a party of volunteers were visible on a distant eminence. Our black sentinel, however, still persisted in shouting, 'Los Insurrectos!' The same cry was echoed by other negroes, who, with their faces tinged with the pale green of a black's fear, came running towards us with the information that three insurgents were riding within a mile of our habitation. The statement proved correct, for presently three horsemen arrived at the farm. All three were armed with revolvers, and short swords called 'machetes,' and they were attired in brown holland blouses, buff-coloured shoes, and Panama hats. One of these men appeared to be suffering great bodily pain, but his face was so besmeared with dirt and blood, that we could scarcely tell whether he was a mulatto or a white man. The poor fellow had been seriously wounded, and groaned in agony as Don Benigno's slaves assisted him to dismount. After he had been placed upon a catre in one of our apartments and revived with a draught of aguardiente, the invalid smiled mournfully around him, and then, to our unspeakable astonishment, inquired whether we did not recognise in him Don Benigno's nephew! I will not describe the scene which followed this disclosure, but I will endeavour to repeat to you what Tunicú had now to reveal. His first words caused me great happiness; though the strange tone in which they were uttered seemed scarcely to correspond with the good news conveyed in them. 'Your mother,' said he, glancing in my direction, 'is free!' He now told us how, in spite of his efforts to steal my dear parent, Don Vicente had succeeded in selling her to a brutal slave-trader, who contemplated employing her as a common labourer at a coffee plantation, and how, being aware of this, my lover determined to save her from such a terrible fate. Parties of young Cubans were then secretly planning expeditions into the heart of the country, where their compatriots in arms were concealed, and this being known to my lover, he lost no time in enrolling himself among them. A party of these young men were on the eve of departing on their rebellious or patriotic mission, and as my mother's new master had already started for his plantation with his recent purchases and half-a-dozen armed negroes, Tunicú persuaded his companions to help him to rescue my parent. Well armed, well acquainted with the roads of their intricate country, and mounted on fast trotting horses, the little band of warriors followed in the track of the slave-owner, and, after some hours of hard riding, they succeeded in overtaking him. They then demanded, in the name of 'Cuban justice,' every slave in his possession, declaring, that now the Cuban people had risen in defence of their rights and for the abolition of slavery, they were no longer amenable to Spanish law. 'We are all Cubans,' said they, 'and well armed, as you see; and we intend to fight for both causes whenever an opportunity presents itself.' Hostile measures were, however, quite unnecessary in this instance. The eloquence of my brave countrymen sufficed to create a mutiny among the trader's black body-guard, who with one accord came over to the enemy. In short, the slaves were all released, and their late owner, after vowing to be avenged, rode off to the nearest garrison for the purpose of reporting to the authorities what had happened, and, if possible, obtain redress for the wrongs he had sustained. In the meantime the victorious party hastened to join their brethren in arms, some of whom were encamped in one of the strong fortifications which nature so generously provides in our well-wooded mountains. But they had scarcely reached this part of the country, when a battalion of volunteers, guided by the slave-trader, went in pursuit of them. Tunicú then described an encounter which afterwards took place between the latter and the patriots. He said that for upwards of an hour shots were exchanged, but with no advantage to either side; till the slave-trader (doubtless acquainted with the roads of this intricate country) suddenly discovered an opening in the forest. Through this opening he, followed by a number of the volunteers, entered, and, sheltered by the surrounding foliage and trees, took deadly aim at those of their enemies who were exposed to their view. Many of my countrymen fell in this cruel slaughter, and amongst them were two of the recently captured slaves. Horrible to relate, one of these slaves was my mother. Seeing her fall, Tunicú boldly advanced towards the spot whence the firing proceeded, and there beheld the slave-trader who, he had no doubt, was my parent's assassin. Without a moment's hesitation, Tunicú shot this man dead with his revolver. A dozen rifles were levelled at the daring fellow as he hastened to return to his companions, and unfortunately a bullet lodged in his side. My warlike countrymen now retreated to a safe part of the forest, and here they remained, till the patience and the ammunition of their assailants were exhausted. As soon as my lover was sufficiently recovered from his wound, he was escorted by two of his companions to Don Benigno's farm, where they duly arrived. How shall I describe the agony which Tunicú's narrative caused me! My mother was indeed free, and by the hand of her own master; but alas! how dearly was her liberty purchased! I consoled myself with the reflection that my dear parent had been saved from a fate such as was in store for her had she been recaptured by her owner. Our anxiety was now devoted to my lover, who had suffered considerably from his long ride to the farm. We were able to attend the invalid unmolested; though news reached us that the insurrection was spreading in all directions, and we were in constant fear that it would reach too near our retreat. I was happier with my lover during his recovery, than I had ever been. The perils which he had undergone for my sake seemed to have toned down his volatile nature, and although his habit of promising had not wholly deserted him, I had reason to be grateful for at least one sweet promise which he made me! 'Ermiña de mi alma!' said he, one evening that we were alone together, 'my uncle contemplates leaving with you all for North America, there to remain till the revolution is over. I cannot accompany you, but we shall meet there, and if, after your intercourse with the white society of that country--where you will be treated as an equal--your feelings with regard to me are unchanged, we will be married, and I will endeavour to make your life happier than it has hitherto been.' 'Not happier than it is now,' said I. * * * * * 'Los Insurrectos!--Los Insurrectos!' The insurgents again? No; our swarthy sentinels were wrong this time, for presently a dozen Spanish troopers, all armed to the teeth, galloped into our court-yard. We were, of course, greatly alarmed at their appearance; for we had no doubt that they had come to apprehend my lover. We were, however, soon agreeably relieved from our anxiety on this account, by a letter which the officer in command had brought for Don Benigno. This letter came from his future son-in-law, Don Manuel, who, since the commencement of the revolution, had been quartered with his regiment at Manzanillo, not many leagues from our farm. Aware that we had left town for Don Benigno's plantation, and conscious of the danger which was now threatening every district in the eastern extremity of the island, Don Manuel proposed that we should join him without delay at Manzanillo, and thence proceed to Havana, to which the young officer was shortly to be transferred. As yet perfect tranquillity reigned at the Cuban capital; and 'here,' suggested Don Manuel, 'we might remain,' under his official protection, 'until the rebellion was suppressed.' 'The rest of her story,' says Don Benigno, breaking in at this point of it, 'is soon told. The soldiers remained with us for two or three days while we prepared for our departure, and in the meantime they discussed the merits of our fried bananas with boiled rice, our bacalao and casabe, our tasajo, our chimbombó, our ajiaco and our Catalan wine. Then, consigning my plantation to the care of my trusty major-domo, we all left for Manzanillo, under our military escort. Shortly after our arrival, Tunicú set sail for North America; for Don Manuel was of opinion that unless my nephew joined the Mambís (nickname for the rebellious party), it would not be safe for him to remain in any part of the Ever-faithful Isle. But we hope to meet him there, and, meanwhile we intend to practise those virtues of patience and amiability which have hitherto served us so well--eh, mi Ermiña? My daughter's marriage will soon be celebrated, and after the nuptials some of us will, I hope--si Dios quiere--depart for the great city of New York.' CHAPTER XXIX. A CUBAN WEDDING. Open Engagements--A Marriage Ceremony--A Wedding Breakfast--The Newly-Married Couple. A number of Don Benigno's relatives and friends have, like ourselves, taken refuge in the peaceful city of Havana. Some of them purpose remaining here till affairs at Santiago are more settled, while others, like Don Benigno, intend to make New York their temporary abode. Surrounded by his friends, the Don begins to feel at home again. Every evening he holds a tertulia at his temporary residence, as of old, and upon these occasions I recognise many familiar faces. Señor Esteban, the lawyer, Don Magin, the merchant, and Don Felipe, the sugar planter, are the Don's guests again. Doctor Francisco and his family have also arrived in Havana, en route for Europe: for even our medical friend has been in danger of arrest for having administered to some wounded 'patriots' at a village near Santiago. Don Manuel is of course a constant visitor at Don Benigno's, but I do not envy him the term of courtship which precedes the marriage, nor is the ceremony itself very inviting. In his capacity of lover, Don Manuel is bound to submit to many hardships. He may not meet his fiancée alone under any circumstances; her society must be enjoyed only in the presence of the numerous friends and relatives who visit her at all hours of the day and evening. Then, he is expected to return some of these visits, in company with his future bride, her mother and sister. He must also submit to certain formalities required of him by the priest who is to unite the 'promessi sposi,' and the most irksome of these is that of confession. Paquita confesses, and that is nothing new to her, but it is otherwise with the young officer. In short, until Don Manuel is actually a happy husband, his position is by no means enviable, and for my own part, I would gladly relinquish two years of married life in Cuba for half an hour's secret love-making at a certain grated window! The wearisome ordeal at length comes to an end--the nuptial day arrives. The ceremony, such as it is, takes place very late in the night; indeed, it is early morning before Don Manuel and his male friends reach the cathedral, where the event is to be celebrated. A single bell tolls like a funeral knell as we enter a small chapel connected with the sacred edifice. It is a dreary apartment, dismally lighted with two long wax candles. Nobody is present, save Don Manuel, the male friends already mentioned, and the sacristan, who enlivens us by trying (and failing) to beautify, with false flowers and false candles, a miserable altar-piece at one extremity of the chapel. The young officer's importance as a bridegroom is not at present appreciated, either by himself or by his friends, with whom he converses upon indifferent subjects, and who, like myself, are attired in ordinary walking costume. Presently a Quitrin, drawn by a couple of mules, with a black postilion in jack-boots, halts without. The bride, accompanied by her mother and a friend, alight, and, without taking notice of anybody in particular, pass silently into the chapel. The importance of Don Manuel's position does not reveal itself by this act, nor is it considerably improved, when the ecclesiastic, who is to marry the happy pair, emerges from a dark corner, smiles artificially around him, and exhausts the rest of his amiability with the ladies. But the priest is not so unconscious of Don Manuel as that gentleman supposes. Soon he singles the officer out from the group of males, and bids him follow the bride, and his future mother-in-law, into an adjacent chamber. But little is required of the bridegroom besides his signature to a paper, which he does not read; and when the holy man has addressed something or other to him in the Latin language, he is politely requested to withdraw. Shortly after Don Manuel's retirement, the bride and her escort issue from the mysterious chamber, and, after saluting us all round, take their departure and drive away. Don Manuel's distinguished position seems to be scarcely increased by these proceedings; but when his friends congratulate him, the lights of the chapel are extinguished, and the decorations on the miserable altar-piece are stowed away, he endeavours to realise the feelings of a married man. Don Manuel follows his friends as they lead the way to the bride's parental roof, consoling himself with newly-rolled cigarettes as he walks along. It is nearly two A.M. before we reach the scene of the festivities, where most of the guests are already assembled. A long table has been tastefully arranged with sweetmeats, cakes, fruit, wine, and other luxuries, and some of the guests, whose appetites could not be restrained, have already inaugurated the festivities. Much confusion, uproar, and struggling after dainties peculiar to a Cuban banquet, prevail, and it is not without an effort that the young officer contrives at last to find a place near his bride. Healths are drunk and responded to incessantly, and often simultaneously; rather, as it would seem, for the excuse of drinking champagne and English bottled ale, than from motives of sentiment. When enough cigarettes have been smoked, and enough wine and beer have been disposed of, all the company rises with one accord. The ladies throw light veils across their shoulders, the gentlemen don their panamas; and the bride and her mother, together with the bridegroom and all the guests, followed by an army of black domestics, leave Don Benigno's habitation, and marching in noisy procession along the narrow streets, arrive at the bride's future home. It is a one-storied dwelling with marble floors and white-washed walls, and is furnished with bran-new cane-bottomed chairs and other adornments belonging to a Cuban residence. The huge doors and windows of every apartment are thrown open to their widest and the interior being brilliantly lighted with gas, the view from the street is almost as complete as within the premises. Everybody crowds into the latter, and examines the arrangements of each chamber with as deep an interest as if they were wandering through an old baronial mansion with cards of invitation from its absent owner. The reception-room, the comedor or dining-room, the out-houses round the patio or court-yard, are carefully inspected by the throng, who are irrepressible even in respect to the dormitory assigned for the use of the bridegroom, and that allotted to the bride, and situated in quite a different quarter. Everybody's curiosity being satisfied, everybody, save the newly-married pair and a few black domestics, is wished a 'muy buenas noches,' or, more correctly speaking (for the hour is 4 A.M.), a very good morning. CHAPTER XXX. CUBANS IN NEW YORK. The Morro Castle again--Summer and Winter--Cuban Refugees--Filibusters--'Los Laborantes' of New York and their Work--American Sympathisers. I am a prisoner in the Morro Castle again, and this time my fellow captives are more numerous. We occupy separate apartments. The chamber which has been allotted to me is considerably smaller than that of the fortress at Santiago. So small that the floor measures barely four feet in width, and seated in my narrow cot, my head approaches within a few inches of the ceiling. Don Benigno, his wife, his unmarried daughter, and the pretty Ermiña, together with a score of Cuban families, are all imprisoned in the same stronghold, whence there is no escape. For we are encompassed on every side by a moat so deep and so wide that no engineering skill would avail to connect us with terra firma. This is, however, not the Havana Morro, nor is it the fortress at Santiago de Cuba; but an American steamer called the 'Morro Castle' and bound for New York, where--wind and weather permitting--we shall all arrive, in little more than four days! Although the month is January, the atmosphere is still sultry and oppressive; so much so that most of the passengers prefer to sleep on deck. But on the morning of the third day of our voyage, there is a perceptible change in the temperature. The passengers are seen to shiver and to huddle together in warm corners of the cabin. Everybody has exchanged his or her summer clothing for warmer vestments. The ladies appear no more in light muslin dresses, and without any head covering. The gentlemen have eschewed their suits of white drill and Panama hats, and have assumed heavy over-coats and flannel under-clothing. It is a 'nipping and an eager air,' closely resembling winter, and reminding everybody of the fact, that in one short hour we have tripped lightly from the perpetual summer of the tropics into the coldest season of the north. Some sea water which had been hauled up in a bucket half an hour ago was perfectly tepid, and now when the bucket is lowered and raised we are amazed to find that the contents are icy cold! Next day the liquid in our water jugs is discovered to be in a freezing condition, and fires have been lighted in all the stoves. But our chilly Creoles derive little or no warmth from these artificial means, although they are swathed in garments ten inches deep. Great is the joy when the 'Morro Castle' at last sails into the wide and picturesque harbour of the great American city, and when we have safely landed, satisfied the Custom-house officers, and are finally lodged in a comfortable hotel in Broadway, our happiness is complete. Numbers of Cuban families are already encamped in the hotel which Don Benigno has selected for himself, family and friend, and at the table d'hôte where we take our first American meal, the conversation is held exclusively in the Spanish language. Don Benigno is delighted to find himself among his countrymen again, and as the city is over-run with Cuban refugees, he soon meets many of his old friends. Some of them tell him that, having had their property confiscated, and being too old to take part in the revolution, they intend to remain in America, where they hope to improve their fortunes; while the more able-bodied are recruiting with a view to certain secret expeditions to Cuba. Tunicú, who joins us shortly after our arrival, is of course overjoyed at our appearance, and welcomes some of us literally with 'open arms!' Having passed some weeks in New York, he is of course already acquainted with everybody of note in the city, and is familiar with American ways. He tells us all about the Cuban 'Laborantes' of New York, and how they are labouring in behalf of their bellicose countrymen. How juntas are held, and how the Cuban ladies take a prominent part in these meetings, and provide funds for the relief of their sick and wounded compatriots in arms. Tunicú informs us that a grand bazaar, with this object in view, is now being promoted by these energetic señoras, and when Doña Mercedes hears of this, she and her daughters are soon busy at their favourite occupation. Tunicú says that the proceeds of the bazaar will not be wholly devoted to the purpose for which it is publicly announced, but that a large amount will be set apart for the purchase of arms and accoutrements; it being whispered that another fillibustering expedition is contemplated, and that great hopes are entertained of its safe departure from America. He says that an important landing has been lately effected at Guanaja--a small town on the Cuban coast--where Manuel Quesada, the newly-appointed general of the Cuban army, has arrived with eighty well-drilled men, 2,700 muskets and necessary ammunition. Besides the bazaar money, large amounts are raised by giving public concerts and by an occasional dramatic performance at one of the Bowery theatres, at which a stirring drama founded on the Cuban revolution is presented. The concerts, however, prove more attractive and remunerative; especially if it is announced that a young and lovely Creole, attired as 'Liberty' and holding a Cuban flag in her hand, will sing a patriotic ballad. Equally effective are recitals from the famous Cuban poets--Heredia and Placida. When the 'Himno del Desterrado,' by the first-named author, is given, it is always received with great applause by the Cuban members of the audience and by those who understand the beautiful language in which this favourite poem is written. But nothing pleases the mixed audience of Cubans and Americans half so well as when a renowned pianist favours them with a performance on the piano of a 'Danza Criolla.' At the first strains of their patriotic melody, the Creoles present become wild with enthusiasm. The Cuban ladies wave their handkerchiefs with delight, while their brother-patriots stand on their seats, and for the moment drown their favourite music with loud and prolonged cheering, accompanied by shouts of 'Viva Cuba libre!' (Long live free Cuba!) 'Muerte á España!' (Death to Spain!) and other patriotic sentiments. The American people are unanimous in their sympathy for the Cuban cause, and the sentiment is popular even with the New York shopkeepers, who already offer for sale 'Cravats à la Cespedes,' 'Insurrectionary Inkstands,' and 'Patriot Pockethandkerchiefs.' Important meetings, too, are held at Cooper's Institute, Steinway Hall, and other public places, at each of which a great concourse of American sympathisers gathers. Many eminent orators preside at these meetings, and endeavour with all their eloquence to urge upon the Congress at Washington the necessity for immediate recognition of the rights of the Cuban belligerents. Annexation is, of course, suggested, and slavery loudly denounced. One eloquent speaker is of opinion that the present struggle of the Cubans for independence and self-government belongs to the same category as the American Revolution in 1776; that it should excite the sympathy of all friends of popular progress, and that it deserves every kind of assistance that other nations may be able to render. Another well-known orator, connected with the church, declares that 'the Cuban cause is just, and that the wrongs against which the Cubans have revolted are such as should arouse the indignation of mankind, inasmuch as these wrongs include taxation without representation, the forced maintenance of slavery, the exclusion of all natives of the island from public service, the denial of the right to bear arms and of all the sacred privileges of citizenship and nationality.' A third speaker avers, among other sentiments, that, in proclaiming the abolition of slavery, the patriots of Cuba have given conclusive evidence that they share the most substantial ideas of modern democracy, and that their political principles are in unison with those which inspire and govern the profoundest thinkers and statesmen of the age. That while men of free minds in all countries must view with interest and hope the uprising in Cuba, 'we, as citizens of the Republic of North America, and near neighbours of the beautiful and productive island, recognise a special obligation towards those patriots who are toiling and fighting for its emancipation from Spanish tyranny.' 'It is the duty of our Government,' concludes another speaker, amidst loud and prolonged applause, 'to recognise the belligerent rights of the Cubans at the earliest practicable moment, and thus to show the world, that the American nation is always on the side of those who contend against despotism and oppression; and we earnestly entreat the Executive at Washington that there may be no unnecessary delay in dealing with this important subject.' But in spite of these demonstrations of public sympathy, the mighty House of Representatives cannot be induced to join in the popular sentiment. Memorials are addressed to the American President, and persons of influence labour in behalf of the Cuban cause. Upon one occasion a party of Cuba's fairest daughters 'interview' the President's wife and secretary, but nothing comes of it except more sympathy and more able editorials in the New York papers, in which it is again suggested that a bold and decisive policy should be commenced with regard to Cuba and to American interests there, and that the shortest way to settle now and for ever all difficulty relative to that island, is to send out a powerful fleet and to recognise the independence of the people of the Pearl of the Antilles. _Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London_. NEW BOOKS OF TRAVEL. =The Fayoum; or, Artists In Egypt.= A Tour with M. Gérôme and others. By J. LENOIR. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. cloth, 7_s._ 6_d._ =Tent Life with English Gipsies in Norway.= By HUBERT SMITH. 5 full-page Engravings, and 31 smaller Illustrations, with Map of the Country showing Routes. In 8vo. cloth, price 21_s._ =A Winter in Morocco.= By AMELIA PERRIER. Illustrated. Large crown 8vo. price 10_s._ 6_d._ =Ireland in 1872.= A Tour of Observation, with Remarks on Irish Public Questions. By Dr. JAMES MACAULAY. Crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._ =Field and Forest Rambles of a Naturalist in New Brunswick.= With Notes and Observations on the Natural History of Eastern Canada. By A. LEITH ADAMS, M.A. &c., Author of 'Wanderings of a Naturalist in India,' &c. &c. Illustrated. In 8vo. cloth, 14_s._ =Bokhara: its History and Conquest.= By Professor ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY, of the University of Pesth, Author of 'Travels in Central Asia,' &c. Demy 8vo. 18_s._ 'We conclude with a cordial recommendation of this valuable book. In former years, Mr. Vambéry gave ample proofs of his powers as an observant, easy, and vivid writer. In the present work his moderation, scholarship, insight, and occasionally very impressive style, have raised him to the dignity of an historian.' SATURDAY REVIEW. * * * * * HENRY S. KING & CO. 5 Cornhill and 12 Paternoster Row, London. 
32812	----	[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOR OF HAVANA.] SIXTH THOUSAND. HISTORY OF CUBA; OR, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics. BEING A POLITICAL, HISTORICAL, AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ISLAND, FROM ITS FIRST DISCOVERY TO THE PRESENT TIME. BY MATURIN M. BALLOU. L'ILE DE CUBA SEULE POURRAIT VALOIR UN ROYAUME. _L'Abbé Raynal._ ILLUSTRATED. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY. NEW YORK: J.C. DERBY. PHILADELPHIA: LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & COMPANY. 1854. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Stereotyped by HOBART & ROBBINS, New England Type and Stereotype Foundery BOSTON. TO His Friend, FRANCIS A. DURIVAGE, ESQ., As a small Token of Regard for HIS EXCELLENCE IN THOSE QUALITIES WHICH CONSTITUTE STERLING MANHOOD; AS A TRUE AND WORTHY FRIEND; AS A RIPE SCHOLAR, AND A GRACEFUL AUTHOR, This Volume IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR PREFACE. The remarkable degree of interest expressed on all sides, at the present time, relative to the island of Cuba, has led the author of the following pages to place together in this form a series of notes from his journal, kept during a brief residence upon the island. To these he has prefixed a historical glance at the political story of Cuba, that may not be unworthy of preservation. The fact that the subject-matter was penned in the hurry of observation upon the spot, and that it is thus a simple record of what would be most likely to engage and interest a stranger, is his excuse for the desultory character of the work. So critically is the island now situated, in a political point of view, that ere this book shall have passed through an edition, it may be no longer a dependency of Spain, or may have become the theatre of scenes to which its former convulsions shall bear no parallel. In preparing the volume for the press, the author has felt the want of books of reference, bearing a late date. Indeed, there are none; and the only very modern records are those written in the desultory manner of hurried travellers. To the admirable work of the learned Ramon de la Sagra,--a monument of industry and intelligence,--the author of the following pages has been indebted for historical suggestions and data. For the privilege of consulting this, and other Spanish books and pamphlets, relative to the interests and history of the island, the author is indebted to the Hon. Edward Everett, who kindly placed them at his disposal. Where statistics were concerned, the several authorities have been carefully collated, and the most responsible given. The writer has preferred to offer the fresh memories of a pleasant trip to the tropics, to attempting a labored volume abounding in figures and statistics; and trusts that this summer book of a summer clime may float lightly upon the sea of public favor. M.M.B. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Island of Cuba--Early colonists--Island aborigines--First importation of slaves--Cortez and his followers--Aztecs--The law of races--Mexican aborigines--Valley of Mexico--Pizarro--The end of heroes--Retributive justice--Decadence of Spanish power--History of Cuba--The rovers of the gulf--Havana fortified--The tyrant Velasquez--Office of Captain-general--Loyalty of the Cubans--Power of the captain-general--Cupidity of the government--The slave-trade--The British take Havana--General Don Luis de las Casas--Don Francisco de Arranjo--Improvement, moral and physical, of Cuba, 9 CHAPTER II. The constitution of 1812--Revolution of La Granja--Political aspect of the island--Discontent among the Cubans--The example before them--Simon Bolivar, the Liberator--Revolutions of 1823 and 1826--General Lorenzo and the constitution--The assumption of extraordinary power by Tacon--Civil war threatened--Tacon sustained by royal authority--Despair of the Cubans--Military rule--A foreign press established--Programme of the liberal party--General O'Donnell--The spoils--Influence of the climate, 25 CHAPTER III. Armed intervention--Conspiracy of Cienfuegos and Trinidad--General Narciso Lopez--The author's views on the subject--Inducements to revolt--Enormous taxation--Scheme of the patriots--Lopez's first landing, in 1850--Taking of Cardinas--Return of the invaders--Effect upon the Cuban authorities--Roncali recalled--New captain-general--Lopez's second expedition--Condition of the Invaders--Vicissitudes--Col. Crittenden--Battle of Las Pozas--Superiority of courage--Battle of Las Frias--Death of Gen. Enna--The fearful finale of the expedition, 38 CHAPTER IV. Present condition of Cuba--Secret treaty with France and England--British plan for the Africanization of the island--Sale of Cuba--Measures of General Pezuela--Registration of slaves--Intermarriage of blacks and whites--Contradictory proclamations--Spanish duplicity--A Creole's view of the crisis and the prospect, 54 CHAPTER V. Geographical position of the island--Its size--The climate--Advice to invalids--Glance at the principal cities--Matanzas--Puerto Principe--Santiago de Cuba--Trinidad--The writer's first view of Havana--Importance of the capital--Its literary institutions--Restriction on Cuban youths and education--Glance at the city streets--Style of architecture--Domestic arrangements of town houses--A word about Cuban ladies--Small feet--Grace of manners and general characteristics, 66 CHAPTER VI. Contrast between Protestant and Catholic communities--Catholic churches--Sabbath scenes in Havana--Devotion of the common people--The Plaza de Armas--City squares--The poor man's opera--Influence of music--La Dominica--The Tacon Paseo--The Tacon Theatre--The Cathedral--Tomb of Columbus over the altar--Story of the great Genoese pilot--His death--Removal of remains--The former great wealth of the church in Cuba--Influence of the priests, 80 CHAPTER VII. Nudity of children and slaves--The street of the merchants--The currency of Cuba--The Spanish army in the island--Enrolment of blacks--Courage of Spanish troops--Treatment by the government--The garrote--A military execution--The market-men and their wares--The milk-man and his mode of supply--Glass windows--Curtains for doors--The Campo Santo, or burial-place of Havana--Treatment of the dead--The prison--The fish-market of the capital, 95 CHAPTER VIII. The story of Marti, the smuggler, 108 CHAPTER IX. The lottery at Havana--Hospitality of the Spaniards--Flattery--Cuban ladies--Castilian, Parisian and American politeness--The bonnet in Cuba--Ladies' dresses--The fan--Jewelry and its wear--Culture of flowers--Reflections--A most peculiar narcotic--Cost of living on the island--Guines--The cock-pit--Training of the birds--The garden of the world--Birds of the tropics--Condition of agriculture--Night-time--The Southern Cross--Natural resources of Cuba--Her wrongs and oppressions, 116 CHAPTER X. The volante and its belongings--The ancient town of Regla--The arena for the bull-fights at Havana--A bull-fight as witnessed by the author at Regla--A national passion with the Spanish people--Compared with old Roman sports--Famous bull-fighters--Personal description of Cuban ladies--Description of the men--Romance and the tropics--The nobility of Cuba--Sugar noblemen--The grades of society--The yeomanry of the island--Their social position--What they might be--Love of gambling, 131 CHAPTER XI. A sugar plantation--Americans employed--Slaves on the plantations--A coffee plantation--Culture of coffee, sugar and tobacco--Statistics of agriculture--The cucullos, or Cuban fire-fly--Novel ornaments worn by the ladies--The Cuban mode of harnessing oxen--The montero and his horse--Curious style of out-door painting--Petty annoyances to travellers--Jealousy of the authorities--Japan-like watchfulness--Questionable policy--Political condition of Cuba, 145 CHAPTER XII. Tacon's summary mode of justice, 161 CHAPTER XIII. Consumption of tobacco--The universal cigar--Lady smokers--The fruits of Cuba--Flour a prohibited article--The royal palm--West Indian trees--Snakes, animals, etc.--The Cuban blood-hound--Mode of training him--Remarkable instinct--Importation of slaves--Their cost--Various African tribes--Superstitious belief--Tattooing--Health of the negroes--Slave laws of the island--Food of the negroes--Spanish law of emancipation--General treatment of the slaves, 171 CHAPTER XIV. Pecuniary value of the slave-trade to Havana--The slave clippers--First introduction of slaves into Cuba--Monopoly of the traffic by England--Spain's disregard of treaty stipulations--Spanish perfidy--Present condition of Spain--Her decadence--Influence upon her American possessions--Slaves upon the plantations--The soil of Cuba--Mineral wealth of the island--The present condition of the people--The influences of American progress--What Cuba might be, 186 CHAPTER XV. Area of Cuba--Extent of cultivated and uncultivated lands--Population--Proportion between the sexes--Ratio of legitimate to illegitimate births--Ratio between births and deaths--Agricultural statistics--Commerce and commercial regulations--Custom-house and port charges--Exports and imports--Trade with the United States--Universities and schools--Education--Charitable institutions--Railroads--Temperature, 201 CHAPTER XVI. Retrospective thoughts--The bright side and dark side of the picture--Cuban institutions contrasted with our own--Political sentiments of the Creoles--War footing--Loyalty of the colony--Native men of genius--The Cubans not willing slaves--Our own revolution--Apostles of rebellion--Moral of the Lopez expedition--Jealousy of Spain--Honorable position of our government--Spanish aggressions on our flag--Purchase of the island--Distinguished conservative opinion--The end. 214 THE HISTORY OF CUBA. CHAPTER I. The Island of Cuba--Early colonists--Island aborigines--First importation of slaves--Cortez and his followers--Aztecs--The law of races--Mexican aborigines--Valley of Mexico--Pizarro--The end of heroes--Retributive justice--Decadence of Spanish power--History of Cuba--The rovers of the Gulf--Havana fortified--The tyrant Velasquez--Office of captain-general--Loyalty of the Cubans--Power of the captain-general--Cupidity of the government--The slave-trade--The British take Havana--General Don Luis de las Casas--Don Francisco de Arranjo--Improvement, moral and physical, of Cuba. The island of Cuba, one of the earliest discoveries of the great admiral, has been known to Europe since 1492, and has borne, successively, the names of Juana,[1] Fernandina, Santiago and Ave Maria, having found refuge at last in the aboriginal appellation. Soon after its discovery by Columbus, it was colonized by Spaniards from St. Domingo, but was considered mainly in the light of a military depôt, by the home government, in its famous operations at that period in Mexico. The fact that it was destined to prove the richest jewel in the Castilian crown, and a mine of wealth to the Spanish treasury, was not dreamed of at this stage of its history. Even the enthusiastic followers of Cortez, who sought that fabulous El Dorado of the New World, had no golden promise to hold forth for this gem of the Caribbean Sea. The Spanish colonists from St. Domingo found the island inhabited by a most peculiar native race, hospitable, inoffensive, timid, fond of the dance and the rude music of their own people, yet naturally indolent and lazy, from the character of the climate they inhabited. They had some definite idea of God and heaven; and were governed by patriarchs, or kings, whose word was law, and whose age gave them precedence. They had few weapons of offence or defence, and knew not the use of the bow and arrow. Of course, they were at once subjected by the new comers, who reduced them to a state of slavery; and, proving hard taskmasters, the poor, over-worked natives died in scores, until they had nearly disappeared, when the home government granted permission to import a cargo of negroes from the coast of Africa to labor upon the ground, and to seek for gold, which was thought to exist in the river-courses.[2] Thus early commenced the slave-trade of Cuba, a subject to which we shall have occasion more fully to refer. Cuba became the head-quarters of the Spanish power in the west, forming the point of departure for those military expeditions which, though inconsiderable in numbers, were so formidable in the energy of the leaders, and in the arms, discipline, courage, ferocity, fanaticism and avarice, of their followers, that they were amply adequate to carry out the vast schemes of conquest for which they were designed. It was hence that Cortez marched to the conquest of Mexico,--a gigantic undertaking--one a slight glance at which will recall to the reader the period of history to which we would direct his attention. Landing upon the continent, with a little band, scarcely more than half the complement of a modern regiment, he prepared to traverse an unknown country, thronged by savage tribes, with whose character, habits and means of defence, he was wholly unacquainted. This romantic adventure, worthy of the palmiest days of chivalry, was crowned with success, though checkered with various fortune, and stained with bloody episodes, that prove how the threads of courage and ferocity are inseparably blended in the woof and warp of Spanish character. It must be remembered, however, that the spirit of the age was harsh, relentless and intolerant; and, that if the Aztecs, idolaters and sacrificers of human victims, found no mercy at the hands of the fierce Catholics whom Cortez commanded, neither did the Indians of our own section of the continent fare much better at the hands of men professing a purer faith, and coming to these shores, not as warriors, with the avowed purpose of conquest, but themselves persecuted fugitives. As the first words that greeted the ears of the Plymouth colonists were "Welcome, Englishmen!" uttered by a poor native, who had learned them from the fishermen off the northern coast, so were the Spaniards at first kindly welcomed by the aborigines they encountered in the New World. Yet, in the north-east and south-west the result was the same: it mattered little whether the stranger was Roman Catholic or Protestant; whether he came clad in steel, or robed in the garments of peace; whether he spoke the harsh English, the soft French, or the rich Castilian tongue. The inexorable laws which govern races were rigidly enforced; the same drama was everywhere enacted, the white race enjoying a speedy triumph. There were episodical struggles, fierce and furious, but unavailing; here Guatimozin, there Philip of Pokanoket--here a battle, there a massacre. The Spanish general encountered a people who had attained a far higher point of art and civilization than their red brethren of the north-east part of the continent. Vast pyramids, imposing sculptures, curious arms, fanciful garments, various kinds of manufactures, the relics of which still strangely interest the student of the past, filled the invaders with surprise. There was much that was curious and startling in their mythology, and the capital of the Mexican empire presented a singular and fascinating spectacle to the eyes of Cortez. The rocky amphitheatre in the midst of which it was built still remains unchanged, but the vast lake which surrounded it, traversed by causeways, and covered with floating gardens, laden with flowers and perfume, is gone. The star of the Aztec dynasty set in blood. In vain did the inhabitants of the conquered city, roused to madness by the cruelty and extortion of the victors, expel them from their midst. Cortez refused to flee further than the shore; the light of his burning galleys rekindled the desperate valor of his followers, and Mexico fell, as a few years after did Peru under the perfidy and sword of Pizarro, thus completing the scheme of conquest, and giving Spain a colonial empire more splendid than that of any other power in Christendom. Of the agents in this vast scheme of territorial aggrandizement, we see Cortez dying in obscurity, and Pizarro assassinated in his palace, while retributive justice has overtaken the monarchy at whose behests the richest portions of the western continent were violently wrested from their native possessors. If "the wild and warlike, the indolent and the semi-civilized, the bloody Aztec, the inoffensive Peruvian, the fierce Araucanian, all fared alike" at the hands of Spain, it must be confessed that their wrongs have been signally avenged. "The horrid atrocities practised at home and abroad," says Edward Everett, "not only in the Netherlands, but in every city of the northern country, cried to Heaven for vengeance upon Spain; nor could she escape it. She intrenched herself behind the eternal Cordilleras; she took to herself the wings of the morning, and dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea; but even there the arm of retribution laid hold of her, and the wrongs of both hemispheres were avenged by her degeneracy and fall." So rapid a fall is almost without a parallel in the history of the world. Less than three centuries from the time when she stood without a rival in the extent and wealth of her colonial possessions, she beheld herself stripped, one by one, of the rich exotic jewels of her crown. Her vice-regal coronet was torn from her grasp. Mexico revolted; the South American provinces threw off her yoke; and now, though she still clutches with febrile grasp the brightest gem of her transatlantic possessions, the island of Cuba, yet it is evident that she cannot long retain its ownership. The "ever-faithful" island has exhibited unmistakable symptoms of infidelity, its demonstrations of loyalty being confined to the government officials and the hireling soldiery. The time will surely come when the last act of the great drama of historical retribution will be consummated, and when, in spite of the threatening batteries of the Moro and the Punta, and the bayonets of Spanish legions, _siempre fiel_ will no longer be the motto of the Queen of the Antilles. The history of Cuba is deficient in events of a stirring character, and yet not devoid of interest. Columbus found it inhabited, as we have already remarked, by a race whose manners and character assimilated with the mild climate of this terrestrial paradise. Although the Spanish conquerors have left us but few details respecting these aborigines, yet we know with certainty, from the narratives of the great discoverer and his followers, that they were docile and generous, but, at the same time, inclined to ease; that they were well-formed, grave, and far from possessing the vivacity of the natives of the south of Europe. They expressed themselves with a certain modesty and respect, and were hospitable to the last degree. Their labor was limited to the light work necessary to provide for the wants of life, while the bounteous climate of the tropics spared the necessity of clothing. They preferred hunting and fishing to agriculture; and beans and maize, with the fruits that nature gave them in abundance, rendered their diet at once simple and nutritious. They possessed no quadrupeds of any description, except a race of voiceless dogs, of whose existence we have no proof but the assertion of the discoverers. The island was politically divided into nine provinces, namely, Baracoa, Bayaguitizi, Macaca, Bayamo, Camaguey, Jagua, Cueyba, Habana and Haniguanica. At the head of each was a governor, or king, of whose laws we have no record, or even tradition. An unbroken peace reigned among them, nor did they turn their hands against any other people. Their priests, called _Behiques_, were fanatics, superstitious to the last degree, and kept the people in fear by gross extravagances. They were not cannibals, nor did they employ human sacrifices, and are represented as distinguished by a readiness to receive the Gospel. The capital of the island was Baracoa,[3] erected into a city and bishopric in 1518, but both were transferred to Santiago de Cuba in 1522. In the year 1538, the city of Havana was surprised by a French corsair and reduced to ashes. The French and English buccaneers of the West Indies, whose hatred the Spaniards early incurred, were for a long time their terror and their scourge. Enamored of the wild life they led, unshackled by any laws but the rude regulations they themselves adopted, unrefined by intercourse with the gentler sex, consumed by a thirst for adventure, and brave to ferocity, these fierce rovers, for many years, were the actual masters of the gulf. They feared no enemy, and spared none; their vessels, constantly on the watch for booty, were ever ready, on the appearance of a galleon, to swoop down like an eagle on its prey. The romance of the sea owes some of its most thrilling chapters to the fearful exploits of these buccaneers. Their _coup de main_ on Havana attracted the attention of De Soto, the governor of the island, to the position and advantages of the port at which the Spanish vessels bound for the peninsula with the riches of New Mexico were accustomed to touch, and he accordingly commenced to fortify it. It increased in population by degrees, and became the habitual gubernatorial residence, until the home government made it the capital of the island in 1589, on the appointment of the first Captain-general, Juan de Tejada. The native population soon dwindled away under the severe sway of the Spaniards, who imposed upon them tasks repugnant to their habits, and too great for their strength. Velasquez, one of the earliest governors of the island, appears to have been an energetic and efficient magistrate, and to have administered affairs with vigor and intelligence; but his harsh treatment of the aborigines will ever remain a stain upon his memory. A native chief, whose only crime was that of taking up arms in defence of the integrity of his little territory, fell into the hands of Velasquez, and was burned alive, as a punishment for his patriotism.[4] It is no wonder that under such treatment the native population disappeared so rapidly that the Spaniards were forced to supply their places by laborers of hardier character. We have seen that the office of captain-general was established in 1589, and, with a succession of incumbents, the office has been maintained until the present day, retaining the same functions and the same extraordinary powers. The object of the Spanish government is, and ever has been, to derive as much revenue as possible from the island; and the exactions imposed upon the inhabitants have increased in proportion as other colonies of Spain, in the western world, have revolted and obtained their independence. The imposition of heavier burthens than those imposed upon any other people in the world has been the reward of the proverbial loyalty of the Cubans; while the epithet of "ever-faithful," bestowed by the crown, has been their only recompense for their steady devotion to the throne. But for many years this lauded loyalty has existed only in appearance, while discontent has been fermenting deeply beneath the surface. The Cubans owe all the blessings they enjoy to Providence alone (so to speak), while the evils which they suffer are directly referable to the oppression of the home government. Nothing short of a military despotism could maintain the connection of such an island with a mother country more than three thousand miles distant; and accordingly we find the captain-general of Cuba invested with unlimited power. He is, in fact, a viceroy appointed by the crown of Spain, and accountable only to the reigning sovereign for his administration of the colony. His rule is absolute; he has the power of life and death and liberty in his hands. He can, by his arbitrary will, send into exile any person whatever, be his name or rank what it may, whose residence in the island he considers prejudicial to the royal interest, even if he has committed no overt act. He can suspend the operation of the laws and ordinances, if he sees fit to do so; can destroy or confiscate property; and, in short, the island may be said to be perpetually in a state of siege. Such is the infirmity of human nature that few individuals can be trusted with despotic power without abusing it; and accordingly we find very few captain-generals whose administration will bear the test of rigid examination. Few men who have governed Cuba have consulted the true interests of the Creoles; in fact, they are not appointed for that purpose, but merely to look after the crown revenue. An office of such magnitude is, of course, a brilliant prize, for which the grandees of Spain are constantly struggling; and the means by which an aspirant is most likely to secure the appointment presupposes a character of an inferior order. The captain-general knows that he cannot reckon on a long term of office, and hence he takes no pains to study the interests or gain the good-will of the Cubans. He has a two-fold object in view,--to keep the revenue well up to the mark, and to enrich himself as speedily as possible. Hence, the solemn obligations entered into by Spain with the other powers for the suppression of the African slave-trade are a dead letter; for, with very few exceptions, the captains-general of Cuba have connived at the illegal importation of slaves, receiving for their complaisance a large percentage on the value of each one landed on the island; for, though the slavers do not discharge their living freights at the more frequented ports, still their arrival is a matter of public notoriety, and it is impossible that, with the present system of espionage, the authorities can be ignorant of such an event. Nor can we imagine that the home government is less well-informed upon the subject, though they assume a politic ignorance of the violation of the law. Believing that the importation of slaves is essential to the maintenance of the present high revenue, Spain illustrates the rule that there are none so blind as those who do not wish to see. It is only the cheapness of labor, resulting from the importation of slaves, that enables the planters to pour into the government treasury from twenty to twenty-four millions of dollars annually. Of this we may speak more fully hereafter. In 1760, the invasion and conquest of the island by the British forms one of the most remarkable epochs in its history. This event excited the fears of Spain, and directed the attention of the government to its importance in a political point of view. On its restoration, at the treaty of peace concluded between the two governments in the following year, Spain seriously commenced the work of fortifying the Havana, and defending and garrisoning the island generally. The elements of prosperity contained within the limits of this peerless island required only a patriotic and enlightened administration for their development; and the germ of its civilization was stimulated by the appointment of General Don Luis de las Casas to the post of captain-general. During the administration of this celebrated man, whose memory is cherished with fond respect by the Cubans, The Patriotic Society of Havana was formed, with the noble idea of diffusing education throughout the island, and introducing a taste for classical literature, through his instrumentality, while the press was also established in the capital, by the publication of the _Papel Periodico_. In the first third of the present century, the _intendente_, Don Alejandro Ramirez, labored to regulate the revenues and economical condition of the country, and called the attention of the government to the improvement of the white population. But the most important concession obtained of the metropolitan government, the freedom of commerce, was due to the patriotic exertions of Don Francisco de Arranjo, the most illustrious name in Cuban annals, "one," says the Countess Merlin, "who may be quoted as a model of the humane and peaceful virtues," and "who was," says Las Casas, "a jewel of priceless value to the glory of the nation, a protector for Cuba, and an accomplished statesman for the monarchy." Even the briefest historical sketch (and this record pretends to no more) would be incomplete without particular mention of this excellent man. He was born at Havana, May 22d, 1765. Left an orphan at a very early age, he managed the family estate, while a mere boy, with a discretion and judgment which would have done honor to a man of mature age. Turning his attention to the study of the law, he was admitted to practice in the mother country, where for a considerable period he acted as the agent for the municipality of Havana, and, being thoroughly acquainted with the capabilities of the island, and the condition and wants of his countrymen, he succeeded in procuring the amelioration of some of the most flagrant abuses of the colonial system. By his exertions, the staple productions of the island were so much increased that the revenue, in place of falling short of the expenses of the government, as his enemies had predicted, soon yielded a large surplus. He early raised his voice against the iniquitous slave-trade, and suggested the introduction of white laborers, though he perceived that the abolition of slavery was impracticable. It was owing to his exertions that the duty on coffee, spirits and cotton, was remitted for a period of ten years, and that machinery was allowed to be imported free of duty to the island. The _Junta de Fomento_ (society for improvement) and the Chamber of Commerce were the fruits of his indefatigable efforts. Of the latter institution he was for a long time the Syndic, refusing to receive the perquisites attached to the office, as he did the salaries of the same and other offices that he filled during his useful life. While secretary of the Chamber, he distinguished himself by his bold opposition to the schemes of the infamous Godoy (the Prince of Peace), the minion of the Queen of Spain, who, claiming to be protector of the Chamber of Commerce, demanded the receipts of the custom-house at Havana. He not only defeated the plans of Godoy, but procured the relinquishment of the royal monopoly of tobacco. His patriotic services were appreciated by the court at Madrid, although at times he was the inflexible opponent of its schemes. The cross of the order of Charles III. showed the esteem in which he was held by that monarch. Yet, with a modesty which did him honor, he declined to accept a title of nobility which was afterwards offered to him. In 1813, when, by the adoption of the constitution of 1812, Cuba became entitled to representation in the general Cortes, he visited Madrid as a deputy, and there achieved the crowning glory of his useful life,--the opening of the ports of Cuba to foreign trade. In 1817 he returned to his native island with the rank of Counsellor of State, Financial Intendente of Cuba, and wearing the grand cross of the order of Isabella. He died in 1837, at the age of seventy-two, after a long and eminently useful life, bequeathing large sums for various public purposes and charitable objects in the island. Such a man is an honor to any age or nation, and the Cubans do well to cherish his memory, which, indeed, they seem resolved, by frequent and kindly mention, to keep ever green. Fostered by such men, the resources of Cuba, both physical and intellectual, received an ample and rapid development. The youth of the island profited by the means of instruction now liberally placed at their disposal; the sciences and belles-lettres were assiduously cultivated; agriculture and internal industry were materially improved, and an ambitious spirit evoked, which subsequent periods of tyranny and misrule have not been able, with all their baneful influences, entirely to erase. The visitor from abroad is sure to hear the people refer to this "golden period," as they call it, of their history, the influence of which, so far from passing away, appears to grow and daily increase with them. It raised in their bosoms one spirit and trust which they sadly needed,--that of self-reliance,--and showed them of what they were capable, under liberal laws and judicious government. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE IMPERIAL DEL PASEO.] FOOTNOTES: [1] In honor of Prince John, son of Ferdinand and Isabella. Changed to Fernandina on the death of Ferdinand; afterwards called Ave Maria, in honor of the Holy Virgin. Cuba is the Indian name. [2] "Thus," exclaims the pious Arrati, "began that gathering of an infinite number of gentiles to the bosom of our holy religion, who would otherwise have perished in the darkness of paganism." Spain _has_ liberal laws relative to the religious instruction of the slaves; but they are no better than a dead letter. [3] Here Leo X. erected the first cathedral in Cuba. Baracoa is situated on the north coast, at the eastern extremity of the island, and contains some three thousand inhabitants, mixed population. [4] The words of this unfortunate chief (Hatucy), extorted by the torments he suffered, were, "_Prefiero el infierno al cielo si en cielo ha Españoles_." (I prefer hell to heaven, if there are Spaniards in heaven.) CHAPTER II. The constitution of 1812--Revolution of La Granja--Political aspect of the island--Discontent among the Cubans--The example before them--Simon Bolivar, the Liberator--Revolutions of 1823 and 1826--General Lorenzo and the constitution--The assumption of extraordinary power by Tacon--Civil war threatened--Tacon sustained by royal authority--Despair of the Cubans--Military rule--A foreign press established--Programme of the liberal party--General O'Donnell--The spoils--Influence of the climate. When the French invasion of Spain in 1808 produced the constitution of 1812, Cuba was considered entitled to enjoy its benefits, and the year 1820 taught the Cubans the advantage to be derived by a people from institutions based on the principle of popular intervention in public affairs. The condition of the nation on the death of Ferdinand VII. obliged Queen Christina to rely on the liberal party for a triumph over the pretensions of the Infante Don Carlos to the crown, and to assure the throne of Donna Isabella II., and the _Estatuto Real_ (royal statute) was proclaimed in Spain and Cuba. The Cubans looked forward, as in 1812 and 1820, to a representation in the national congress, and the enjoyment of the same liberty conceded to the Peninsula. An institution was then established in Havana, with branches in the island, called the Royal Society for Improvement, already alluded to in our brief notice of Don Francisco Arranjo. The object of this society was to aid and protect the progress of agriculture and commerce; and it achieved a vast amount of good. At the same time, the press, within the narrow limits conceded to it, discussed with intelligence and zeal the interests of the country, and diffused a knowledge of them. In 1836 the revolution known as that of La Granja, provoked and sustained by the progressionists against the moderate party, destroyed the "Royal Statute," and proclaimed the old constitution of 1812. The queen-mother, then Regent of Spain, convoked the constituent Cortes, and summoned deputies from Cuba. Up to this time, various political events, occurring within a brief period, had disturbed but slightly and accidentally the tranquillity of this rich province of Spain. The Cubans, although sensible of the progress of public intelligence and wealth, under the protection of a few enlightened governors, and through the influence of distinguished and patriotic individuals, were aware that these advances were slow, partial and limited, that there was no regular system, and that the public interests, confided to officials intrusted with unlimited power, and liable to the abuses inseparable from absolutism, frequently languished, or were betrayed by a cupidity which impelled despotic authorities to enrich themselves in every possible way at the expense of popular suffering. Added to these sources of discontent was the powerful influence exerted over the intelligent portion of the people by the portentous spectacle of the rapidly-increasing greatness of the United States, where a portion of the Cuban youths were wont to receive their education, and to learn the value of a national independence based on democratic principles, principles which they were apt freely to discuss after returning to the island. There also were the examples of Mexico and Spanish South America, which had recently conquered with their blood their glorious emancipation from monarchy. Liberal ideas were largely diffused by Cubans who had travelled in Europe, and there imbibed the spirit of modern civilization. But, with a fatuity and obstinacy which has always characterized her, the mother country resolved to ignore these causes of discontent, and, instead of yielding to the popular current, and introducing a liberal and mild system of government, drew the reins yet tighter, and even curtailed many of the privileges formerly accorded to the Cubans. It is a blind persistence in the fated principle of despotic domination which has relaxed the moral and political bonds uniting the two countries, instilled gall into the hearts of the governed, and substituted the dangerous obedience of terror for the secure loyalty of love. This severity of the home government has given rise to several attempts to throw off the Spanish yoke. The first occurred in 1823, when the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, offered to aid the disaffected party by throwing an invading force into the island. The conspiracy then formed, by the aid of the proffered expedition, for which men were regularly enlisted and enrolled, would undoubtedly have ended in the triumph of the insurrection, had it not been discovered and suppressed prematurely, and had not the governments of the United States, Great Britain and France, intervened in favor of Spain. In 1826 some Cuban emigrants, residing in Caraccas, attempted a new expedition, which failed, and caused the imprisonment and execution of two patriotic young men, Don Francisco de Agüero, y Velazco, and Don Bernabé Sanchez, sent to raise the department of the interior. In 1828 there was a yet more formidable conspiracy, known as _El Aguila Negra_ (the black eagle). The efforts of the patriots proved unavailing, foiled by the preparation and power of the government, which seems to be apprised by spies of every intended movement for the cause of liberty in Cuba. We have alluded to the revolution of La Granja, in Spain, and we have now briefly to consider its effects on the island of Cuba, then under the sway of General Don Miguel Tacon. We shall have occasion to refer more than once, in the course of our records of the island, to the administration of Tacon; for he made his mark upon Cuba, and, though he governed it with an iron hand and a stern will, as we shall see, yet he did much to improve its physical condition, even as Louis Napoleon, despot though he be, has already vastly beautified and improved the sanitary condition of the city of Paris. The first place on the island which received intelligence of the revolution of La Granja, and the oath to the constitution of 1812 by the Queen-Regent of Spain, was Santiago de Cuba, the capital of the eastern department. It was then commanded by General Lorenzo, who immediately assembled the authorities, corporations and functionaries, in pursuance of the example of his predecessors,--who, without waiting for the orders of the higher authority of the island, had, under similar circumstances, prepared to obey the supreme government of the nation,--and proclaimed through his department the Code of Cadiz, without any opposition, and to the general joy of Spaniards and Cubans. His first acts were to reëstablish the constitutional _ayuntamiento_, the national militia, the liberty of the press, and all other institutions, on the same footing as in 1823, when King Ferdinand recovered absolute authority, and made arrangements for the election of deputies to the new Cortes. Tacon, who was not a friend to liberal institutions, and who was fixed in his idea that the new constitution would convulse the country, notwithstanding his knowledge of the state of things when this law was actually in force in Cuba, was quite indignant when he heard what had transpired. Knowing that he could not compel General Lorenzo to abrogate the constitution he had proclaimed, he forthwith cut off all communication with the eastern department, and formed a column to invade it, and to restore the old order of things by force. This was a bold, impolitic and dangerous move, because this resolve was contrary to the wishes of the supreme government and public opinion, which would not fail to see treason in the act of Gen. Tacon, against the mother country. Although the royal proclamation which announced to Tacon the establishment of the constitution in Spain intimated forthcoming orders for the election of deputies in Cuba to the general Cortes, still he considered that his commission as captain-general authorized him, under the circumstances, to carry out his own will, and suppress at once the movement set on foot by General Lorenzo, on the ground of its danger to the peace of the island, and the interests of Spain. The royal order, which opened the way for his attacks upon the Cuban people, after a confused preamble, confers on the captain-general all the authority appertaining in time of war to a Spanish governor of a city in a state of siege, authorizing him in any circumstances and by his proper will to suspend any public functionary, whatever his rank, civil, military, or ecclesiastical; to banish any resident of the island, without preferring any accusations; to modify any law, or suspend its operations;[5] disobey with impunity any regulation emanating from the Spanish government; to dispose of the public revenues at his will; and, finally, to act according to his pleasure, winding up with recommending a moderate use of the confidence evinced by the sovereign in according power so ample. Although the captains-general of Cuba have always been invested with extraordinary power, we believe that these items of unlimited authority were first conferred upon Vivez in 1825, when the island was menaced by an invasion of the united forces of Mexico and Columbia. In these circumstances, and emanating from an absolute authority, like that of Ferdinand VII., a delegation of power which placed the destinies of the island at the mercy of its chief ruler might have had the color of necessity; but to continue such a delegation of authority in time of peace is a most glaring and inexcusable blunder. Meanwhile Tacon assembled a column of picked companies of the line, the provincial military and rural cavalry, and placed them, under the orders of General Gascue, in the town of Guines, hoping by this great parade and preparation to impose on General Lorenzo, and strike terror into the inhabitants of the whole island. He also adroitly worked by secret agents upon the forces at Santiago de Cuba, and thus by cunning and adroitness brought about quite a reäction in the public sentiment. Under these circumstances, if General Lorenzo, master of the eastern department, with two regiments of regular troops, all the national militia, all devoted to the new order of things and ready to obey his will, had marched upon Puerto Principe, the capital of the centre, where the garrison was not strong enough to oppose him, and had there proclaimed the constitutional code through the authority of the royal _Audiencia_, Gen. Tacon would unquestionably have desisted from his opposition, and relinquished the command of the island. Cuba would then have enjoyed the same political rights as the rest of Spain, and have escaped the horrors of tyranny which have since weighed her down. But Gen. Lorenzo proved weak, let slip the golden opportunity of triumphing over Tacon, and returned to Spain in the vain hope that the supreme government would sustain him. In the mean time, Tacon sent his body of soldiery to Santiago, their arrival being signalized by the establishment of a military commission to try and punish all who had been engaged innocently in establishing the fallen constitution. The commandant Moya presided, and the advocate Miret was held as counsel. No sooner had this barbarous tribunal commenced its proceedings, than no Creole belonging to families of influence could look upon himself as safe from persecution, since nearly all of them had hastened to obey the orders of General Lorenzo, and, like him, taken oath to the constitution. Many men of rank, reputation and education, including several respectable clergymen, fell under the ban of the military commission. Some were thrown into the prisons of Santiago de Cuba, some banished for a given period, and many emigrated to avoid the horrors of a Spanish dungeon, and the greater part in one way or another were torn from the bosoms of their families. Of the soldiers who faithfully obeyed their officers, about five hundred were condemned to work in the streets of Havana, with their feet shackled. Such are the measures meted out by despotism to those who have the misfortune to live under its iron yoke. Tacon triumphed, yet the Cubans did not utterly despair. They cherished the hope that the Spanish government would recognize the legality of their proceedings in the eastern department; but they were doomed to disappointment. The Cuban deputies presented themselves in the Spanish capital, and offered their credentials. But they were referred to a committee of men profoundly ignorant of the feelings, opinions and condition, of the Cuban people, or deriving what few notions they possessed from those interested on the side of Tacon. The deputies were not allowed a seat in the Cortes, and the government decided that the provisions of the constitution should not apply to Cuba, but that it should be governed by special laws. Since then, the island has been ruled by the arbitrary will of the captains-general, without intervention of the Spanish Cortes, without the intervention of the island, and, what is almost inconceivable, at first thought, without the direct action even of the sovereign authority. Tacon, now that the royal authority had sustained his action, was more despotic than ever. It is true that he introduced some legal and municipal reforms; that he embellished the capital, and improved its health; but under him the censorship of the press was almost prohibitory. The local _ayuntamientos_, which, at the most despotic epoch, had frequently produced happy effects, by representing to the sovereign the wants of the country, were shorn of their privileges, and their attributes confined to the collection and distribution of the municipal funds. Tacon is also charged with promoting the jealousies naturally existing between Spaniards and Creoles, and with completely subjecting the civil courts to military tribunals. "In a state of agitation in the public mind, and disorder in the government," says the author of an able pamphlet entitled "_Cuba y su Gobierno_," to whom we are indebted for invaluable information that could only be imparted by a Creole, "with the political passions of Spaniards and Cubans excited; the island reduced from an integral part of the monarchy to the condition of a colony, and with no other political code than the royal order, conferring unlimited power upon the chief authority; the country bowed down under the weighty tyranny of two military commissions established in the capitals of the eastern and western departments; with the prisons filled with distinguished patriots; deprived of representation in the Cortes; the _ayuntamientos_ prohibited the right of petition; the press forbidden to enunciate the state of public opinion, closed the administration of General Don Miguel Tacon in the island of Cuba, the most calamitous, beyond a question, that this country has suffered since its discovery by the Spaniards." The liberal party of Cuba, denied the expression of their views in the local prints, and anxious to present their wants and their grievances before the home government, conceived the ingenious idea of establishing organs abroad. Two papers were accordingly published; one at Paris, called "_El Correo de Ultramar_" and one at Madrid, entitled "_El Observador_," edited by distinguished Cubans.[6] It is scarcely necessary to say that these produced no favorable result, and the people of the island became convinced that the mother country was resolved to persevere in the plan of ruling Cuba with a rod of iron, indifferent alike to her tears and her remonstrances. The programme of the liberal party was exceedingly moderate, petitioning only for the following concessions: 1st, That a special ministry, devoted to Cuban affairs, should be established at Madrid; 2d, That a legal organ of communication between Spain and Cuba should be established in the island, to represent the well-defined interests of the metropolis and the colony; 3d, That some latitude should be given to the press, now controlled by a triple censorship; 4th, That efficacious means should be adopted for the complete suppression of the barbarous traffic in African slaves; 5th, That the government should permit the establishment of societies for the improvement of the white inhabitants; 6th, That the island should be relieved of the enormous weight of the contributions now levied upon her. None of these privileges, however, have been conceded to suffering Cuba by the home government. The first successor of General Tacon ruled Cuba with a spirit of moderation and temperance, seeking to conciliate the liberals, and giving hopes of great reforms, which as yet have never been accomplished. During the administration of the Prince de Aglona, a superior tribunal, the Royal Pretorial Audience, was established in Havana, to take cognizance of civil suits in cases of appeal, and to resolve the doubts which the confused system of legislation produces at every step in the inferior tribunals. Gen. Valdes was the first and only official who granted free papers to the emancipated negroes who had served out their term of apprenticeship, and who opposed the African trade. He showed, by his example, that this infamous traffic may be destroyed in the country without a necessary resort to violent measures, but by the will of the captain-general. General O'Donnell, as captain-general,[7] instead of repressing, encouraged the slave-trade, and a greater number of the unfortunate victims of human avarice were introduced into the island, during his administration, than during any like term since the conclusion of the treaty of 1817. Of course he vacated his post vastly enriched by the spoils, having doubtless received, as was declared, from one to two doubloons per head on every slave landed upon the island during his administration; a sum that would alone amount to a fortune. Of events which transpired during the administration of Roncali and Concha we may have occasion to speak hereafter, but with this more modern chapter in the history of the island the general reader is already conversant. It appears almost incredible that an intelligent people, within so short a distance of our southern coast, constantly visited by the citizens of a free republic, and having the example of successful revolt set them, by the men of the same race, both in the north and south, weighed down by oppressions almost without parallel, should never have aimed an effectual blow at their oppressors. It would seem that the softness of the unrivalled climate of those skies beneath which it is luxury only to exist has unnerved them, and that the effeminate spirit of the original inhabitants has descended in retribution to the posterity of the _conquistadores_. FOOTNOTES: [5] "En su consecuencia da S.M. á V.E. la mas ámplia é ilimitada autorizacion, no tan solo para separar de esa Isla á las personas empleadas ó no empleadas, cualquiera que sea su destino, rango, clase ó condicion, cuya permanencia en ella crea prejudicial, ó que le infunda recelos su conducta pública ó privada, reemplazandolas interinamente con servidores fieles á S.M. y que merezcan á V.E. toda su confianza, sino tambien para suspender la ejecucion de cualesquiera órdenes ó providencias generales espedidas sobre todos los ramos de la administracion en aquella parte en que V.E. considere conveniente al real servicio, debiendo ser en todo caso provisionales estas medidas, y dar V.E. cuenta á S.M. para su soberana aprobacion."--_From the Royal Ordinance conferring unlimited powers on the Captains-general of Cuba._ [6] "La Verdad," a paper devoted to Cuban interests, established in New York in 1848, and conducted with signal ability, is distributed gratuitously, the expense being defrayed by contributions of Cubans and the friends of Cuban independence. This is the organ of the annexation party, organized by exiles in this country. [7] General Leopold O'Donnell was appointed governor-general in 1843, continuing a little over four years to fill the lucrative position. His wife was a singular and most avaricious woman, engaged in many speculations upon the island, and shamefully abusing her husband's official influence for the purposes of pecuniary emolument. CHAPTER III. Armed intervention--Conspiracy of Cienfuegos and Trinidad--General Narciso Lopez--The author's views on the subject--Inducements to revolt--Enormous taxation--Scheme of the patriots--Lopez's first landing in 1850--Taking of Cardinas--Return of the invaders--Effect upon the Cuban authorities--Roncali recalled--New captain-general--Lopez's second expedition--Condition of the Invaders--Vicissitudes--Col. Crittenden--Battle of Las Pozas--Superiority of courage--Battle of Las Frias--Death of Gen. Enna--The fearful finale of the expedition. We have noticed in the preceding chapter, the anomaly of the political condition of Cuba, increasing in prosperity and civilization, imbibing liberal ideas from its geographical position, and yet denied participation in the few shadowy rights which the peninsular subjects of the enfeebled, distracted and despotic parent monarchy enjoyed. We have seen that, in later years, the adoption of more liberal ideas by Spain produced no amelioration of the condition of the colony; and that, on the other hand, a conformity to the legal enactments of the mother country was punished as treason. The result of the movement in the western department, under Tacon, showed the Cubans that they had nothing to hope from Spain, while the cruelties of General O'Donnell increased the great discontent and despair of the people. They now became satisfied that the hope of legal reform was but a chimera; and a portion of the liberal party, seeing no issue from their insufferable position but that of revolution, boldly advocated the intervention of arms. In 1848 a conspiracy was formed, in Cienfuegos and Trinidad, with the purpose of throwing off the Spanish yoke; but it was soon discovered, and crushed by the imprisonment of various individuals in the central department. The principal leader in this movement was General Narciso Lopez, who succeeded in effecting his escape to the United States, where he immediately placed himself in communication with several influential and liberal Creoles, voluntary and involuntary exiles, and established a correspondence with the remnant of the liberal party yet at liberty on the island, at the same time being aided in his plans by American sympathy. The result of the deliberations of himself, his correspondents and associates, was to try by the chances of war for the liberation of Cuba. The disastrous result of the expedition boldly undertaken for this purpose is already well known. Before sketching the principal features of this attempt, we may be permitted to declare that, although we deplore the fate of those of our countrymen who perished in the adventure, though we readily concede that many of them were actuated by lofty motives, still we must condemn their action, and approve of the vigorous measures adopted by the federal government to suppress that species of reckless adventure in which the _flibustiers_ engaged. No amount of sympathy with the sufferings of an oppressed people, no combination of circumstances, no possible results, can excuse the fitting out of a warlike expedition in the ports of a nation against the possessions of a friendly power. The flag which has waved unstained in peace and war over a free land for more than three quarters of a century, must remain spotless to the last. The hopes of every free heart in the world are centred on our banner, and we must see to it that no speck dims the dazzling lustre of its stars. No degree of pride at the daring gallantry displayed by the little handful of invaders of Cuba,--a gallantry inherited from a brave ancestry who displayed their valor in the holiest of causes,--must blind our eyes to the character of the adventure which called it forth. We have tears for the fallen, as brothers and men; but our conscience must condemn their errors. While, individually, we should rejoice to see Cuba free, and an integral portion of the Union, nothing will ever induce us to adopt the atrocious doctrine that the ends justify the means. But let us pass to a consideration of the recent events in the records of the island. Many of the leading patriots of the island undoubtedly believed that the government of the United States would second their efforts, if they should decide to unite themselves to our republic, and boldly raise the banner of annexation. A portion of the Cuban liberals adopted the motto, "Legal Reform or Independence;" and these two factions of the patriots did not henceforth act in perfect concert with each other--a most fatal error to the interests of both. Time and circumstances favored the war and annexation party; the people were more than ever discontented with a government which so oppressed them by a military despotism, and by the enormous weight of the unjust taxation levied upon them. We may here remark that the increase of the public revenue, in the midst of so many elements of destruction and ruin, can only be explained by the facility with which the captain-general and royal stewards of the island invent and arrange taxes, at their pleasure, and without a shadow of propriety, or even precedent. The _consuming_ population of Cuba amounts to about eight hundred thousand souls, and the total amount of taxes and contributions of various forms is more than twenty-three millions of dollars, in specie, per annum! It is hardly conceivable that such a sum can be extorted from a population whose wealth is precarious, and whose living is so costly. With this revenue the government pays and supports an army of over twenty thousand Peninsular troops in the island; a vast number of employés, part of the clergy and half the entire navy of Spain; the diplomatic corps in the United States and Mexico; many officials of rank at home in Spain; and the surplus is remitted to Spain, and spent on the Peninsula on matters entirely foreign to the interests of the island itself. A precious state of affairs! The colored population of the island, both slaves and free, hated the Spaniards, for good reasons. The war party, moreover, reckoned on the genius of a leader (Lopez) trained to arms,[8] equal in talents to any of the Spanish generals, and beloved by the Spanish troops, as well as by the Cuban population; and they relied, also, as we have said, on the sympathy and ultimate aid of the United States government. It is undoubtedly true that interested parties in this country, prompted by mercenary motives, increased this latter delusion by false reports; while the Cuban conspirators, in turn, buoyed up the hopes of their friends in the United States, by glowing accounts of the patriotic spirit of the Creoles, and the extent of the preparations they were making for a successful revolt. General Lopez was actively arranging the means for an invasion, when, in 1849, the United States government threw terror into the ranks of the _flibustiers_, by announcing its determination to enforce the sacredness of treaty stipulations. This, for a time, frustrated the intended invasion. In 1850 Lopez succeeded in effecting his first descent upon the island. Having succeeded in baffling the vigilance of the United States government, an expedition, consisting of six hundred and fifty-two men, was embarked on board two sailing-vessels and the steamer Creole, which conveyed the general and his staff. In the beginning of July the sailing-vessels left New Orleans, with orders to anchor at Contoy, one of the Mugeres Islands, on the coast of Yucatan; the general followed, on the Creole, on the 7th. At the time when the troops were embarked on the Creole at Contoy, fifty-two of the number, who had been deceived as to the nature of the expedition, refused to follow the general, and were left on the island, with the intention of returning to the United States in the two schooners. General Lopez, after gaining some information from a fisherman he encountered, resolved to land at Cardenas, on the northern coast of the island, a hundred and twenty miles east of Havana. He calculated that he could surprise and master the garrison before the captain-general could possibly obtain intelligence of his departure from New Orleans. His plan was, to master the town, secure the authorities, intimidate the Spaniards, and then, sustained by the moral influence of victory, proceed to Matanzas by railroad. Roncali, the captain-general, having received intelligence of the landing at Contoy, despatched several ships-of-war in that direction, to seize upon the general and his followers. The latter, however, escaped the snare, and effected his landing on the 19th. The garrison rushed to arms, and, while a portion of the troops, after immaterial loss, retired in good order to the suburbs, another, under the command of Governor Ceruti, intrenched themselves in the government-house, and gave battle to the invaders. After a sharp skirmish, the building being set on fire, they surrendered; the governor and two or three officers were made prisoners, and the soldiers consented to join the revolutionary colors! Meanwhile, a body of one hundred invaders seized upon the railroad station. The engines were fired up, and the trains made ready to transport the invading column to Matanzas. But now came a pause. General Lopez, seeing that the native population did not respond to his appeal, knew that as soon as the news of the taking of Cardenas should be circulated, he would be in a very critical situation. In fact, the governor of Matanzas was soon on the march, at the head of five hundred men. General Armero sailed from Havana in the Pizarro, with a thousand infantry, while two thousand five hundred picked troops, under the command of General Count de Mirasol, were sent from Havana by the railroad. Lopez saw that it would be madness to wait the attack of these formidable columns, unsupported save by his own immediate followers, and accordingly issued his orders for the reëmbarkation of his band, yet without relinquishing the idea of landing on some more favorable point of the island. That portion of the garrison which, in the beginning of the affair, had retreated to the suburbs, finding itself reïnforced by a detachment of cavalry, attempted to cut off the retreat of the invading general; but the deadly fire of the latter's reserve decimated the horse, and the infantry, dismayed at their destruction, took to rapid flight. The Creole accordingly left the port without molestation, and before the arrival of the government steam-frigate Pizarro. The Spanish prisoners were landed at Cayo de Piedras, and then Lopez, discovering the Pizarro in the distance, made for the American continent, where the steamer was abandoned. General Lopez was arrested by the authorities of Savannah, but liberated again, in deference to the public clamor. The Creole was seized, confiscated and sold. The invaders disbanded; and thus this enterprise terminated. A less enterprising and determined spirit than that of General Lopez would have been completely broken by the failure of his first attempts, the inactivity of the Cubans, the hostility of the American government, and the formidable forces and preparations of the Spanish officials. He believed, however, that the Cubans were ripe for revolt; that public opinion in the United States would nullify the action of the federal government; and that, if he could once gain a foothold in the island, the Spanish troops would desert in such numbers to his banners that the preponderance of power would soon be upon his side; and, with these views, he once more busied himself, with unremitting industry, to form another expedition. Meanwhile, the daring attack upon Cardenas, while it demonstrated the determination of the invading party, caused great anxiety in the mind of General Roncali. True, he had at his disposal an army of more than twenty thousand regular troops; but he was by no means sure of their loyalty, and he therefore determined to raise a local militia; but, as he suffered only Spaniards to enlist in it, he aroused the jealousy of the Cuban-born inhabitants, and thus swelled the force of opposition against the government. General Lopez was informed of this fact, and based new hopes upon the circumstance. The Spanish government, having recalled Roncali, appointed Don José de la Concha captain-general of the island, and the severity of his sway reminded the inhabitants of the iron rule of Tacon. It was during his administration that Lopez effected his second landing at Playitas, sixty miles west of Havana. Several partial insurrections, which had preceded this event, easily suppressed, as it appears, by the Spanish government, but exaggerated in the accounts despatched to the friends of Cuba in the United States, inflamed the zeal of Lopez, and made him believe that the time for a successful invasion had at length arrived.[9] He was so confident, at one time, of the determination and ability of the Cubans alone to secure their independence, that he wished to embark without any force, and throw himself among them. It was this confidence that led him to embark with only four hundred ill-armed men on board the little steamer Pampero, on the 2d of August, 1851. This force consisted mostly of Americans, but embraced forty-nine Cubans in its ranks, with several German and Hungarian officers; among the latter, General Pragay, one of the heroes of the Hungarian revolution, who was second in command to General Lopez on this occasion. Many of the foreign officers spoke little, if any, English, and mutual jealousies and insubordinations soon manifested themselves in the little band. They were composed of fierce spirits, and had come together without any previous drilling or knowledge of each other. It was not the intention of the commander-in-chief to sail direct for Cuba, but to go to the neighborhood of St. John's river, Florida, and get a supply of artillery, ammunition, extra arms, etc. He then proposed to land somewhere in the central department, where he thought he could get a footing, and rally a formidable force, before the government troops could reach him. But, when five days out, Lopez discovered that the Pampero was short of coal; as no time could be spared to remedy this deficiency, he resolved to effect a landing at once, and send back the Pampero for reïnforcements and supplies. At Key West he obtained favorable intelligence from Cuba, which confirmed his previous plans. He learned that a large portion of the troops had been sent to the eastern department; and he accordingly steered for Bahia Honda (deep bay). The current of the gulf, acting while the machinery of the boat was temporarily stopped for repairs, and the variation of the compass in the neighborhood of so many arms, caused the steamer to run out of her course on the night of the 10th; and when the morning broke, the invaders found themselves heading for the narrow entrance of the harbor of Havana! The course of the steamer was instantly altered; but all on board momentarily expected the apparition of a war steamer from the channel between the Moro and the Punta. It appeared, afterwards, that the Pampero was signalized as a strange steamer, but not reported as suspicious until evening. The Pampero then made for the bay of Cabañas; but, just as she was turning into the entrance, a Spanish frigate and sloop-of-war were seen at anchor, the first of which immediately gave chase, but, the wind failing, the frigate gave it up, and returned to the bay to send intelligence of the expedition to Havana. The landing was finally effected at midnight, between the 11th and 12th of August, and the steamer was immediately sent off to the United States for further reïnforcements. As it was necessary to obtain transportation for the baggage, General Lopez resolved to leave Col. Crittenden with one hundred and twenty men to guard it, and with the remainder of the expedition to push on to Las Pozas, a village about ten miles distant, whence he could send back carts and horses to receive it. Among the baggage were four barrels of powder, two of cartridges, the officers' effects, including the arms of the general, and the flag of the expedition. From the powder and arms they should not have separated, but have divided that, against contingency. In the mean time, seven picked companies of Spanish troops of the line had been landed at Bahia Honda, which force was strengthened by contingents drawn from the neighborhood. The march of the invading band to Las Pozas was straggling and irregular. On reaching the village, they found it deserted by the inhabitants. A few carts were procured and sent back to Crittenden, that he might advance with the baggage. Lopez here learned from a countryman of the preparations making to attack him. It was no portion of his plan to bring the men into action with regular troops, in their present undisciplined state; he proposed rather to take a strong position in the mountains, and there plant his standard as a rallying-point, and await the rising of the Cubans, and the return of the Pampero with reïnforcements for active operations. As soon as Lopez learned the news from Bahia Honda, he despatched a peremptory order to Crittenden to hasten up with the rear-guard, abandoning the heavy baggage, but bringing off the cartridges and papers of the expedition. But the fatal delay of Crittenden separated him forever from the main body, only a small detachment of his comrades (under Captain Kelly) ever reaching it. The next day, while breakfast was being prepared for them, the soldiers of the expedition were suddenly informed, by a volley from one of the houses of the village, that the Spanish troops were upon them. They flew to arms at once, and the Cuban company dislodged the vanguard of the enemy, who had fired, at the point of the bayonet, their captain, Oberto, receiving his death-wound in the spirited affair. General Enna, a brave officer, in command of the Spanish troops, made two charges in column on the centre of the invaders' line, but was repulsed by that deadly fire which is the preëminent characteristic of American troops. Four men alone escaped from the company heading the first column, and seventeen from that forming the advance of the second column of attack. The Spaniards were seized with a panic, and fled. Lopez's force in this action amounted to about two hundred and eighty men; the Spaniards had more than eight hundred. The total loss of the former, in killed and wounded, was thirty-five; that of the latter, about two hundred men killed, and a large number wounded! The invaders landed with about eighty rounds of cartridges each; the Spanish dead supplied them with about twelve thousand more; and a further supply was subsequently obtained at Las Frias; the ammunition left with Crittenden was never recovered. In the battle of Las Pozas, General Enna's horse was shot under him, and his second in command killed. The invaders lost Colonel Downman, a brave American officer; while General Pragay was wounded, and afterwards died in consequence. Though the invaders fired well and did terrible execution, they could not be prevailed upon to charge the enemy, and gave great trouble to the officers by their insubordination. The night after the battle, Captain Kelly came up with forty men, and announced that the Spanish troops had succeeded in dividing the rear-guard, and that the situation of Crittenden was unknown. It was not until some days afterwards that it was ascertained that Crittenden's party, attempting to leave the island in launches, had been made prisoners by a Spanish man-of-war. They were taken to Havana, and brutally shot at the castle of Atares. About two o'clock on the 14th of August, the expedition resumed its march for the interior, leaving behind their wounded, who were afterwards killed and mutilated by the Spaniards. The second action with the Spanish troops occurred at the coffee-plantation of Las Frias, General Enna attacking with four howitzers, one hundred and twenty cavalry, and twelve hundred infantry. The Spanish general attacked with his cavalry, but they were met by a deadly fire, thrown into utter confusion, and forced to retreat, carrying off the general mortally wounded. The panic of the cavalry communicated itself to the infantry, and the result was a complete rout. This was the work of about two hundred muskets; for many of Lopez's men had thrown away their arms on the long and toilsome march. The expedition, however, was too weak to profit by their desperate successes, and had no means of following up these victories. Plunging into the mountains, they wandered about for days, drenched with rain, destitute of food or proper clothing, until despair at last seized them. They separated from each other, a few steadfast comrades remaining by their leader. In the neighborhood of San Cristoval, Lopez finally surrendered to a party of pursuers. He was treated with every indignity by his captors, though he submitted to everything with courage and serenity. He was taken in a steamer from Mariel to Havana. Arrived here, he earnestly desired to obtain an interview with Concha, who had been an old companion-in-arms with him in Spain; not that he expected pardon at his hands, but hoping to obtain a change in the manner of his death. His soul shrank from the infamous _garrotte_, and he aspired to the indulgence of the _cuatro tiros_ (four shots). Both the interview and the indulgence were refused, and he was executed on the first of September, at seven o'clock in the morning, in the Punta, by that mode of punishment which the Spaniards esteem the most infamous of all. When he landed at Bahia Honda, he stooped and kissed the earth, with the fond salutation, "_Querida Cuba_" (dear Cuba)! and his last words, pronounced in a tone of deep tenderness, were, "_Muero por mi amada Cuba_" (I die for my beloved Cuba).[10] The remainder of the prisoners who fell into the hands of the authorities were sent to the Moorish fortress of Ceuta; but Spain seems to have been ashamed of the massacre of Atares, and has atoned for the ferocity of her colonial officials by leniency towards the misguided men of the expedition, granting them a pardon. At present it may be said that "order reigns in Warsaw," and the island is comparatively quiet in the presence of a vast armed force. To Concha have succeeded Canedo and Pezuelas, but no change for the better has taken place in the administration of the island. Rigorous to the native population, insolent and overbearing to foreigners, respecting no flag and regarding no law, the captains-general bear themselves as though Spain was still a first-rate power as of yore, terrible on land, and afloat still the mistress of the sea. FOOTNOTES: [8] His reputation as a cavalry officer was very distinguished, and he was commonly recognized as _La primera Lanza de España_ (the first lance of Spain).--_Louis Schlesinger's Narrative of the Expedition._ [9] "The general showed me much of his correspondence from the island. It represented a pervading anxiety for his arrival, on the part of the Creole population. His presence alone, to head the insurrection, which would then become general, was all they called for; his presence and a supply of arms, of which they were totally destitute. The risings already made were highly colored in some of the communications addressed to him from sources of unquestionable sincerity."--_Louis Schlesinger's Narrative of the Expedition._ [10] General Lopez was born in Venezuela, South America, in 1798; and hence, at the time of his execution, must have been about fifty-two years of age. He early became an adopted citizen of Cuba, and espoused one of its daughters. CHAPTER IV. Present condition of Cuba--Secret treaty with France and England--British plan for the Africanization of the island--Sale of Cuba--Measures of General Pezuela--Registration of slaves--Intermarriage of blacks and whites--Contradictory proclamations--Spanish duplicity--A Creole's view of the crisis and the prospect. Cuba is at present politically in a critical and alarming condition, and the most intelligent natives and resident foreigners live in constant dread of a convulsion more terrific and sanguinary than that which darkened the annals of St. Domingo. Those best informed of the temper, designs and position of Spain, believe in the existence of a secret treaty between that country, France and England, by which the two latter powers guarantee to Spain her perpetual possession of the island, on condition of her carrying out the favorite abolition schemes of the British government, and Africanizing the island. Spain, it is supposed, unable to stand alone, and compelled to elect between the loss of her colony and subserviency to her British ally, has chosen of the two evils that which wounds her pride the least, and is best calculated to secure the interests of monarchical Europe. All the recent measures of the Captain-general Pezuela are calculated to produce the conviction that the Africanization of Cuba has been resolved upon; and, if his alarming proclamation of the third of May has been somewhat modified by subsequent proclamations and official declarations, it is only because the Spanish government lacks the boldness to unmask all its schemes, while the Eastern war prevents France and Great Britain from sending large armaments to Cuba to support it; and because the national vessels and troops destined to swell the government forces in the island have not all arrived. But for the existence of the war in the East, the manifestoes of the captain-general would have been much more explicit. As it is, they are sufficiently bold and menacing. A peaceful solution to the question of Cuba, by its sale to the United States, is not regarded as probable by the best-informed Creoles. They say that, even if the queen were disposed to sell the island, it would be impossible to obtain the consent of the Cortes. The integrity of the Spanish domain, including all the islands, is protected by legal enactment; and it would require the abrogation of a fundamental law before it could be consummated.[11] Now, the Spanish subjects well understand that they would not be likely to be gainers by the sale of Cuba, however large a sum the United States might be willing to pay for it, while the monopoly to trade, the bestowal of lucrative insular offices on Spaniards alone, and other incidental advantages, give them a direct interest in the maintenance of the present order of things. Those who take this view of the question say that if Spain has not promptly rejected the overtures supposed to have been made by our minister at Madrid, this delay indicates only a conscious weakness, and not any hesitation of purpose. It is simply a diplomatic trick--a temporizing policy. Why, they ask, if Spain had any idea of parting with the island, would she be making naval and military preparations on a grand and costly scale, at home, while in the island she is making large levies, and enrolling colored troops, not as militia, as the government has falsely given out, but as regulars? We are reluctant to abandon the hope of our purchasing the island, but candor compels us to state the plausible arguments of those who assert that no success can possibly attend the plan for its peaceable acquisition. Within a brief space of time, the administration of General Pezuela has been signalized by measures of great significance and importance: The decree of the third of May; the order for the registration of slaves introduced into the island in violation of the treaty of 1817; the decree freeing more than fifteen thousand _emancipados_ in the space of a fortnight; that of May 25th, enrolling and arming negroes and mulattoes; the project for importing negroes and mulattoes from Africa, under the name of free apprentices; the institution of free schools for the instruction of the blacks, while the whites are abandoned to their own resources; and, finally, the legalization of the intermarriages of blacks and whites, which last measure has actually been carried into effect, to the indignation of the Creoles,--all these measures show the determination of the Spanish government to bring about the emancipation of slavery, and the social equalization of the colored and white population, that it may maintain its grasp upon the island, under penalty of a war of races, which could only terminate in the extinction of the whites, in case of a revolutionary movement. The proclamation of the third of May, alluded to above, and disclosing some of the abolition plans of the government, produced a startling sensation. In it the captain-general said: "It is time for the planter to substitute for the rapid but delusive advantages derived from the sale of human flesh, safer profits, more in harmony with civilization, religion and morals;" and that "the time had come to make the life of the slave sweeter than that of the white man who labors under another name in Europe." The proclamation, coupled with that conferring exclusive educational advantages on colored persons, roused even the Spaniards; some of the wealthiest and most influential of whom held secret meetings to discuss the measures to be adopted in such a crisis, in which it was resolved to withhold all active aid from the government, some going so far as to advocate the making of common cause with the Creoles. The mere hint of a fusion between the Spaniards and Creoles, whom it has been the policy of the colonial government to alienate from each other, was sufficient to excite the fears of the captain-general; and accordingly, on the 31st of May, he published a sort of explanatory manifesto, designed to allay the alarm of the Spaniards, and conflicting, in several points, with that of the 3d. "Her Majesty's government," says the document of the 31st, "is well aware that the unhappy race (the Africans), once placed among civilized men, and protected by the religion and the great laws of our ancestors, is, in its so-called slavery, a thousand times happier than other European classes, whose liberty is only nominal." If this assertion were true, what becomes of the famous declaration, in the former proclamation, that the time had arrived to make the life of the slave happier than of the white European laborer? If this assertion were true, that "good time" had not only arrived, but passed away, and his measures for the improvement of the involuntary bondmen were actually supererogatory. The owners of slaves are, moreover, assured that they shall not be disturbed in the possession of their "legitimate property," and that the government will conciliate a due regard for such property "with the sacred fulfilment of treaties." It is very evident that the Creoles are doomed to be the victims of Spanish duplicity. It is notorious that many thousands of slaves have been introduced into the island, for a series of years, with the connivance of the government, when they had it in their power, at any time, to stop the traffic altogether. The vigilance of the British cruisers was baffled by the assurance that the Africans thus brought over were apprentices, Spain never hesitating to deceive an ally; and now, when compelled to keep faith, in a desperate emergency, she betrays her own subjects, and throws the penalty of her own bad faith on them. A gentleman residing in Cuba writes: "No one can be here, and watch the progress of things, without being convinced that the ultimate object is the emancipation of the slaves of the island transported subsequent to the treaty of 1820, which will comprise four-fifths of the whole number; and no one who is an attentive observer, and with his ears open, but must be satisfied that there is some other powerful influence brought to bear on the subject besides Spain. Take, for instance, the late order for the registration of the slaves. The British consul openly says that the British government have been, for a long time, urging the measure. But it is not only in this, but in every other step taken, that the British finger is constantly seen. A thousand corroborative circumstances could be cited. Cuba is to-day indebted to Russia for being free from this calamity. But for the emperor's obstinacy, there would have been an English and French fleet that would have enabled them to carry out all the measures they have in contemplation." With relation to the intermarriage of blacks and whites, our informant says, "Many marriages have been performed since the date of the circular,"--that of the Bishop of Havana to the curates of the island, by the authority of the captain-general. "The captain-general," says the same authority, "is now exerting his influence for the admission of blacks into the university, to prepare them for clerical orders. Should this system be adopted, I fear it will lead to bad consequences. It will, of course, be strenuously opposed. The indignation of the Creoles has been difficult to restrain,--at which you cannot be surprised, when their daughters, wives and sisters, are daily insulted, particularly by those in uniform. I fear a collision may take place. If once commenced, it will be terrific." The decree authorizing the celebration of marriages between blacks and whites has probably produced more indignation among the Creoles than any other official acts of the captain-general. It was directed to the bishop in the form of a circular, and issued on the 22d of May. On the 29th of the same month, the bishop transmitted copies of it to all the curates within his jurisdiction; and, as we have seen, many of these incongruous marriages have been already solemnized. Notwithstanding these notorious and well-authenticated facts, the official organ of the government, the _Diario de la Marina_, had the effrontery to publish a denial of the transaction, asserting it to be mere idle gossip, without the slightest foundation, and ridiculing the idea in a tone of levity and _persiflage_. This may teach us how little dependence is to be placed on the declarations of the Spanish officials; and we shall be prepared to receive with incredulity the denial, in the name of the queen, of the existence of a treaty with England, having for its base the abolition of slavery, as a reward for British aid in preserving Cuba to Spain. The captain-general says that she relies not on foreign aid to maintain her rights, but on her powerful "navy and disciplined army; on the loyalty of the very immense (_inmensisima_) majority of her vigorous native citizens (Creoles); on the strength imparted to the good by the defence of their hearths, their laws and their God; and on the hurricanes and yellow fever for the enemy." "Here," writes a Cuban gentleman, commenting on the above declaration, "we must make a pause, and remark, _en passant_, that the name of her majesty thus invoked, far from giving force to the denial, weakens it greatly; for we all know the value of the royal word, particularly that of her majesty Isabella II. In her name a full pardon was offered to Armenteros and his associates, who raised the cry of independence in Trinidad, and this document effected the purpose for which it was designed. Armenteros and the others, who placed reliance in the royal word, were, some of them, shot, and the rest deported to African dungeons. No reliance can be placed on the loyalty of the vast majority of the vigorous citizens (unless the negroes alone are comprehended under this phrase), when the whites are deprived of arms for the defence of their country, and men are fined five pesos for carrying canes of a larger size than can be readily introduced into a gun-barrel, and free people of color are alone admitted into the ranks of the troops. The Cubans are not relied upon, since, to prevent their joining Lopez, all the roads were blockaded, and everybody found on them shot; and the immense number of exiles does not prove the majority which favors the government to be so prodigious. "The value of the powerful navy and well-trained army of the island was shown in the landing of Lopez, and the victories that three hundred men constantly obtained over an army of seven thousand, dispersing only when ammunition failed them. Hurricanes and the yellow fever are most melancholy arms of defence; and, if they only injured the enemy, the Spaniards, who are as much exposed as other Europeans to the fatal influence, would be the true enemies of Cuba." The following remarks on the present condition and prospects of the island are translated from a letter written by an intelligent Creole, thoroughly conversant with its affairs: "The whites tremble for their existence and property; no one thinks himself secure; confidence has ceased, and with it credit; capitalists have withdrawn their money from circulation; the banks of deposit have suspended their discounts; premiums have reached a fabulous point for the best of paper. The government was not ignorant that this would be the result, and prepared to get out of the momentary crisis by the project of a bank,[12] published in the _Gaceta_ of the 4th (May); but the most needy class, in the present embarrassed circumstances, is that of the planters; and it is necessary, to enable them to fulfil their engagements, that their notes should be made payable at the end of the year,--that is, from harvest to harvest,--and not at the end of six months, as provided for in the regulations. But it matters not; we are pursuing the path which will precipitate us into the abyss, if instantaneous and efficacious help does not come to save the island from the imminent ruin which threatens it. "The cause of the liberty of nations has always perished in its cradle, because its defenders have never sought to deviate from legal paths,--because they have followed the principles sanctioned by the laws of nations; while despots, always the first to exact obedience to them when it suited their convenience, have been the first to infringe them when they came into collision with their interests. Their alliances to suppress liberty are called _holy_, and the crimes they commit by invading foreign territories, and summoning foreign troops to their aid to oppress their own vassals, are sacred duties, compliances with secret compacts; and, if the congresses, parliaments and Cortes of other nations, raise the cry to Heaven, they answer, the government has protested,--acts have been performed without their sanction,--there is no remedy,--they are acts accomplished. "An act accomplished will shortly be the abolition of slavery in Cuba; and the tardy intervention of the United States will only have taken place when its brilliant constellation lights up the vast sepulchre which will cover the bodies of her sons, sacrificed to the black race as a reward for their sympathies with American institutions, and the vast carnage it will cost to punish the African victors. What can be done to-day without great sacrifices to help the Cubans, to-morrow cannot be achieved without the effusion of rivers of blood, and when the few surviving Cubans will curse an intervention which, deaf to their cries, will only be produced by the cold calculations of egotism. Then the struggle will not be with the Spaniards alone. The latter will now accede to all the claims of the cabinet at Washington, by the advice of the ambassadors of France and England, to advance, meanwhile, with surer step to the end,--to give time for the solution of the Eastern question, and for France and England to send their squadrons into these waters. Well may they deny the existence of secret treaties; this is very easy for kings, as it will be when the case of the present treaty comes up, asserting that the treaty was posterior to their negative, or refusing explanations as inconsistent with their dignity. But we witness the realization of our fears; we see the Spanish government imperturbably setting on foot plans which were thought to be the delirium of excited imaginations; doing at once what promised to be a gradual work; and hear it declared, by distinguished persons, who possess the confidence of General Pezuela, that the existence of the treaty is certain, and that the United States will be told that they should have accepted the offer made to become a party to it, in which case the other two powers could not have adopted the abolition scheme. But, supposing this treaty to have no existence, the fact of the abolition of slavery is no less certain. It is only necessary to read the proclamation of the captain-general, if the last acts of the government be not sufficiently convincing. The result to the island of Cuba and to the United States is the same, either way. If the latter do not hasten to avert the blow, they will soon find it impossible to remedy the evil. In the island there is not a reflecting man,--foreigner or native, Creole or European,--who does not tremble for the future that awaits us, at a period certainly not far remote." FOOTNOTES: [11] The administration of Bravo Murillo fell in an attempt of this kind, and did not rise again. [12] Pezuela's bank is to have a capital of two million dollars; the government to be a shareholder for half a million. The effect of such an institution would be to drain the island of specie. CHAPTER V. Geographical position of the island--Its size--The climate--Advice to invalids--Glance at the principal cities--Matanzas--Puerto Principe--Santiago de Cuba--Trinidad--The writer's first view of Havana--Importance of the capital--Its literary institutions--Restriction on Cuban youths and education--Glance at the city streets--Style of architecture--Domestic arrangements of town houses--A word about Cuban ladies--Small feet--Grace of manners and general characteristics. Having thus briefly glanced at the political story of Cuba, let us now pass to a consideration of such peculiarities of climate, soil and population, as would naturally interest a stranger on visiting the island. The form, geographically speaking, of Cuba, is quite irregular, and resembles the blade of a Turkish scimeter slightly curved back, or approaching the form of a long, narrow crescent. It stretches away in this shape from east to west, throwing its western end into a curve, as if to form an impregnable barrier to the outlet of the Gulf of Mexico; and as if, at some ancient period, it had formed a part of the American continent, and had been severed on its north side from the Florida peninsula by the wearing of the Gulf-stream, and from Yucatan, on its south-western point, by a current setting into the gulf. Its political position all concede to be of the most vital importance to the United States; and this will be apparent to any one, from the slightest inspection of the map. It is the most westerly of the West Indian isles, and, compared with the rest, has nearly twice as much superficial extent of territory. Its greatest extent, from east to west, is about six hundred miles; its narrowest part, twenty-two miles. The circumference is about two thousand miles, containing some thirty-two thousand square miles.[13] The narrow form of the island, and the Cordillera chain of mountains, which divides it throughout its whole length, leave a very limited course for its rivers and streams; and consequently these in the rainy season become torrents, and during the rest of the year are nearly dried up. Those that sustain themselves throughout the year are well stocked with delicate and finely-flavored fish. Probably no place on the earth has a finer or more desirable climate than has the main portion of Cuba;[14] with the clear atmosphere of the low latitudes, no mist, the sun seldom obscured, and the appearance of the stars and sky at night far brighter and more beautiful than at the north.[15] The atmosphere does not seem to lose its transparency with the departure of day. Sunset is ever remarkable for its soft, mellow beauty here, and the long twilight that follows it. For many years the island has been the resort of the northern invalid in search of health, especially of those laboring under pulmonary affections; the soft, soothing power of the climate having a singularly healing influence, as exercised in the balmy trade-winds.[16] The climate so uniformly soft and mild, the vegetation so thriving and beautiful, the fruits so delicious and abundant, seem to give it a character almost akin to that we have seen described in tales of fairy land. The declining health of a beloved companion was the motive which induced the author of these pages to visit the delightful climate of Cuba, with the hope that its genial and kindly influence might revive her physical powers; nor were these hopes disappointed; for, transplanted from the rough climate of our own New England, immediate and permanent improvement was visible. To persons in the early stages of pulmonary complaints the West Indies hold forth great promise of relief; and, at the period when invalid New Englanders most require to avoid their own homes, namely, during the prevailing east winds of April, May and June, the island of Cuba is in the glory of high summer, and enjoying the healthiest period of its yearly returns. After the early part of June, the unacclimated would do well to take passage up the gulf to New Orleans, and come gradually north with the advancing season. From the proximity of Cuba in the north-western parts to our own continent, the climate is variable, and a few hundred feet above the level of the sea ice is sometimes formed, but snow never falls upon the island, though it is occasionally visited in this region by hail storms. In the cities and near the swamps, the yellow fever, that scourge of all hot climates, prevails from the middle of June to the last of October; but in the interior of the island, where the visitor is at a wholesome distance from humidity and stagnant water, it is no more unhealthy than our own cities in summer. It is doubtful if Havana, even in the fever season, is as unhealthy as New Orleans during the same period of the year. The principal cities of the island are Havana, with a population of about two hundred thousand; Matanzas, twenty-five thousand; Puerto Principe, fourteen thousand; Santiago de Cuba, thirty thousand; Trinidad, thirteen thousand; St. Salvador, eight thousand; Manzanilla, three thousand; Cardenas, Nuevitas, Sagua la Grande, Mariel, etc. etc. Cuba abounds in fine large harbors; those of Havana, Niepe and Nuevitas, are among the best. The bay of Matanzas is also capacious; Cardenas and the roadstead of Sagua la Grande have plenty of water for brigs and schooners. Matanzas,[17] though second to Puerto Principe in point of inhabitants, yet stands next to Havana in commercial importance, and is said to be much healthier than the capital. It is located in a valley in one of the most fertile portions of the island, the city extending from the flat sea-shore up to the picturesque and verdant heights by which the town is surrounded in the form of an amphitheatre. The fortifications are of rather a meagre character. The custom-house is the most prominent building which strikes the eye on approaching the city by water, and is an elegant structure of stone, but one story high, built at the early part of the present century. On the heights above the city, the inhabitants have planted their country seats, and from the bay the whole scene is most delightfully picturesque. There are two fine churches in Matanzas, and a second-class theatre, cock-pit, etc. Statistics show the custom-house receipts of the port to exceed the large sum of a million and a half dollars annually. Besides the railroad leading to Havana, there is another leading to the interior and bearing southward, of some thirty or forty miles in length. On all the Cuban railroads you ride in American-built cars, drawn by American-built engines, and conducted by American engineers. The back country from Matanzas is rich in sugar and coffee plantations. Puerto Principe is the capital of the central department of the island, and is situated in the interior. The trade of the place, from the want of water-carriage, is inconsiderable, and bears no proportion to the number of inhabitants. What ever portion of the produce of Puerto Principe and its immediate neighborhood is exported, must find its way first to Nuevitas, twelve and a half leagues distant, from whence it is shipped, and from whence it receives in return its foreign supplies. It is situated about one hundred and fifty miles from Havana. Its original locality, when founded by Velasquez, was Nuevitas, but the inhabitants, when the place was feeble in numbers and strength, were forced to remove to this distance inland, to avoid the fierce incursions of the Buccaneers, who thronged the coast. Santiago de Cuba has a noble harbor, and is defended by a miniature Moro Castle, being a well-planned fortress after the same style, and known as _El Moro_. This city was founded in 1512, and is the capital of the eastern department of the island, but has at various times suffered severely from earthquakes, and within a couple of years was visited by the cholera, which swept off some five or six thousand of its population in about the same number of weeks. Santiago, though it now presents many features of decay, and its cathedral is closed for fear of disaster occurring if it should be occupied, is yet the third city on the island in a commercial point of view. The immediate neighborhood of the city being mountainous and somewhat sterile, produces little sugar, but the many fine coffee estates, and several vast copper mines of uncomputed extent and value, which have been worked by English companies, give it much importance. It is two hundred and thirty leagues from Havana, on the south coast. Trinidad, situated about a league from Casilda, on the south coast, and ninety miles from Havana, is probably one of the healthiest and pleasantest locations for invalids on the island. It lies at the base of a ridge of mountains that protect it from the north wind, and is free from all humidity, with that great blessing, good water, at hand, an article which unfortunately is very scarce in Cuba. Our first view of Moro Castle was gained from the quarter-deck, after a fifteen days' voyage; it was just as the sun was dipping into the sea, too late for us to enter the harbor, for the rules of the port are rigorously observed, and we were obliged to stand off and on through the night. At early morning our jack was set at the fore as a signal for a pilot, and at noon we had answered the rough peremptory hail from the castle, and dropped anchor in the safe and beautiful harbor of the capital. The scene was absorbingly interesting to a stranger. Around us floated the flags of many nations, conspicuous among which were the gallant stars and stripes. On the one side lay the city, on a low, level plain, while the hills that make the opposite side of the harbor presented a beautiful picture of the soft green sward and the luxuriant verdure that forms the constant garb of the tropics. As Paris is said to be France, so is Havana Cuba, and its history embraces in no small degree that of all the island, being the centre of its talent, wealth and population. Every visible circumstance proclaims the great importance of the city, even to the most casual observer. Moro Castle[18] frowning over the narrow entrance of the harbor, the strong battery answering to it on the opposite point, and known as La Punta, the long range of cannon and barracks on the city side, the powerful and massive fortress of the Cabanas[19] crowning the hill behind the Moro, all speak unitedly of the immense importance of the place. Havana is the heart of Cuba, and will never be yielded unless the whole island be given up; indeed, the possessors of this strong-hold command the whole Spanish West Indies. The bay, shaped like an outspread hand, the wrist for the entrance, is populous with the ships of all nations,[20] and the city, with its 200,000 inhabitants, is a depot of wealth and luxury. With an enormous extent of public buildings, cathedrals, antique and venerable churches and convents, with the palaces of nobles and private gentlemen of wealth, all render this capital of Cuba probably the richest place for its number of square rods in the world. Beside the Royal University of Havana, a medical and law school, and chairs on all the natural sciences, it contains many other institutions of learning. It is true that, in spite of their liberal purpose and capability, there is a blight, as it were, hanging over them all. Pupils enlist cautiously, suffer undue restraint, and in spite of themselves seem to feel that there is an unseen influence at work against the spirit of these advantages. Among the schools are a Royal Seminary for girls, a free school of sculpture and painting, a mercantile school, also free, with many private institutions of learning, of course not to be compared in ability or general advantages to like institutions with us. There is a fine museum of Natural History, and just outside the city walls a very extensive botanical garden. No one, even among the islanders, who would be supposed to feel the most pride in the subject, will for a moment deny, however, that the means for education are very limited in Cuba. An evidence of this is perceptibly evinced by the fact that the sons of the planters are almost universally sent abroad, mostly to this country, for educational purposes. An order was not long since promulgated, by direction of the home government, in which the inhabitants are forbidden to send their children to the United States, for the purpose of education. A bold, decided order. Of course the reason for this is quite apparent, and is openly acknowledged in Havana, viz:--that these youths, during their residence here, adopt liberal ideas and views of our republican policy, which become fixed principles with them; nor is there any doubt of this being the case, for such students as have thus returned, unhesitatingly (among friends) avow their sentiments, and most ardently express a hope for Cuban independence; and this class, too, upon the island are far more numerous than might at first be supposed. Those who have been educated in France, Germany, and England, seem at once to imbibe the spirit of those youths who have returned from the United States, and long before there was any open demonstration relative to the first Lopez expedition, these sons of the planters had formed themselves into a secret society, which is doubtless still sustained, with the avowed purpose of exercising its ability and means to free Cuba, sooner or later, from the Spanish yoke. The city of Havana is surrounded by a high wall and ditch, and its gates are always strictly guarded by soldiery, no stranger being permitted to pass unchallenged. The streets, which are extremely narrow, are all Macadamized, and cross each other at right angles, like those of Philadelphia and some other American cities. There are no sidewalks, unless a narrow line of flag-stones which are level with the surface of the street may be so called. Indeed, the people have little use for sidewalks, for they drive almost universally about town in place of walking, being thus borne about in that peculiar vehicle, a volante. A woman of respectability is never seen on foot in the streets, and this remark, as singular as it may sound to our Broadway and Washington-street belles, is applicable even to the humblest classes; unless, indeed, it be the fruit women from the country, with their baskets richly laden upon their heads, while they cry the names of their tempting burdens in the long drawling Spanish style. The architecture of the city houses is exceedingly heavy, giving to them an appearance of great age. They are constructed so as almost universally to form squares in their centres, which constitutes the only yard which the house can have, and upon which the lofty arches of the corridor look down. The lower story is always occupied as storeroom, kitchen, and stable, (think of a suite of drawing-rooms over a stable!) while the universal volante blocks up in part the only entrance to the house. From this inner court-yard a wide flight of steps leads to the second story, from the corridor of which all the rooms open, giving them an opening front and rear on two sides at least. As peculiar as this mode of building may seem, it is nevertheless well adapted to the climate, and one becomes exceedingly well satisfied with the arrangement. An air of rude grandeur reigns over all the structure, the architecture being mainly Gothic and Saracenic. The rooms are all lofty, and the floors are stuccoed or tiled, while the walls and ceilings are frequently ornamented in fresco, the excellence of the workmanship of course varying in accordance with the owner's or occupant's means, and his ability to procure an artist of high or _mediocre_ talent. But the most striking peculiarity of the town house in Cuba, is the great care taken to render it safe against assault. Every man's house is literally his castle here, each accessible window being barricaded with iron bars, while large massive folding doors secure the entrance to the house, being bullet proof and of immense strength. No carpets are seen here, and from the neighboring Isle of Pines, which lies off the southern shore of Cuba, a thick slate is found, also marble and jasper of various colors, which are cut in squares, and form the general material for floors in the dwelling-houses. The heat of the climate renders carpets, or even wooden floors, quite insupportable, and they are very rarely to be found. We have said that the Creole ladies never stir abroad except in the national volante, and whatever their domestic habits may be, they are certainly, in this respect, good _house-keepers_. A Cuban belle could never, we fancy, be made to understand the pleasures of that most profitless of all employments, spinning street-yarn. While our ladies are busily engaged in sweeping the sidewalks of Chestnut-street and Broadway with their silk flounces, she wisely leaves that business to the gangs of criminals who perform the office with their limbs chained, and a ball attached to preserve their equilibrium. It is perhaps in part owing to these habits that the feet of the Cuban señorita are such a marvel of smallness and delicacy, seemingly made rather for ornament than for use. She knows the charm of the _petit pied bien chaussé_ that delights the Parisian, and accordingly, as you catch a glimpse of it, as she steps into the volante, you perceive that it is daintily shod in a French slipper, the sole of which is scarcely more substantial in appearance than writing paper.[21] The feet of the Havana ladies are made for ornament and for dancing. Though with a roundness of figure that leaves nothing to be desired in symmetry of form, yet they are light as a sylph, clad in muslin and lace, so languid and light that it would seem as if a breeze might waft them away like a summer cloud. They are passionately fond of dancing, and tax the endurance of the gentlemen in their heroic worship of Terpsichore. Inspired by the thrilling strains of those Cuban airs, which are at once so sweet and brilliant, they glide or whirl through the mazes of the dance hour after hour, until daylight breaks upon the scene of fairy revel. Then, "exhausted but not satiated," they betake themselves to sleep, to dream of the cadences of some Cuban Strauss, and to beat time in imagination to the lively notes, and to dream over the soft words and winning glances they have exchanged. Beautiful as eastern houris, there is a striking and endearing charm about the Cuban ladies, their very motion being replete with a native grace; every limb elastic and supple. Their voices are sweet and low, "an excellent thing in woman," and the subdued tone of their complexions is relieved by the arch vivacity of night-black eyes that alternately swim in melting lustre or sparkle in expressive glances. Their costume is never ostentatious, though costly; the most delicate muslin, the finest linen, the richest silk, the most exquisitely made satin shoes,--these, of course, render their chaste attire exceedingly expensive. There are no "strong-minded" women among them, nor is it hardly possible to conceive of any extremity that could induce them to get up a woman's right convention--a suspension of fans and volantes might produce such a phenomenon, but we very much doubt it. The Creole ladies lead a life of decided ease and pleasure. What little work they do is very light and lady-like, a little sewing or embroidery; the bath and the _siesta_ divide the sultry hours of the day. They wait until nearly sunset for the drive in the dear volante, and then go to respond by sweet smiles to the salutations of the _caballeros_ on the Paseos, and after the long twilight to the Plaza de Armas, to listen to the governor's military band, and then perhaps to join the mazy dance. Yet they are capable of deep and high feeling, and when there was a prospect of the liberation of the island, these fair patriots it will be remembered gave their most precious jewels and ornaments as a contribution to the glorious cause of liberty. FOOTNOTES: [13] Humboldt's calculation makes it contain forty-three thousand, three hundred and eighty square miles; but other estimates approximate more nearly our own statement. [14] According to Dr. Finlay, a resident physician on the island, its hottest months are July and August, when the mean temperature is from 80° to 83° Fahrenheit. [15] "The nights are very dark, but the darkness is as if transparent; the air is not felt. There could not be more beautiful nights in Paradise."--_Miss Bremer's Letters._ [16] When consumption _originates_ in Cuba, it runs its course so rapidly that there is, perhaps, no wonder the Creoles should deem it, as they universally do, to be contagious. [17] The first lines of this city were traced on Saturday, the 10th of October, 1693, by Señor Manzaneda, under whose government it was founded. It was named San Cárlos Alcázar de Matanzas; the last word, that by which it is known, signifying the slaughter of a battle-field. [18] Moro Castle was first built in 1633; the present structure was erected on the ruins of the first, destroyed by the English in 1762. [19] Built by Charles III., and said to have cost the sum of $7,000,000. According to Rev. L.L. Allen's lecture on Cuba, it was more than forty years in building. [20] The port of Havana is one of the best harbors in the world. It has a very narrow entrance, but spreads immediately into a vast basin, embracing the whole city, and large enough to hold a thousand ships of war.--_Alexander H. Everett._ [21] "Her hands and feet are as small and delicate as those of a child. She wears the finest satin slippers, with scarcely any soles, which, luckily, are never destined to touch the street."--_Countess Merlin's Letters._ CHAPTER VI. Contrast between Protestant and Catholic communities--Catholic churches--Sabbath scenes in Havana--Devotion of the common people--The Plaza de Armas--City squares--The poor man's opera--Influence of music--La Dominica--The Tacon Paseo--The Tacon Theatre--The Cathedral--Tomb of Columbus over the altar--Story of the great Genoese pilot--His death--Removal of remains--The former great wealth of the church in Cuba--Influence of the priests. On no occasion is the difference between the manners of a Protestant and Catholic community so strongly marked as on the Sabbath. In the former, a sober seriousness stamps the deportment of the people, even when they are not engaged in devotional exercises; in the latter, worldly pleasures and religious exercises are pursued as it were at the same time, or follow each other in incongruous succession. The Parisian flies from the church to the railway station, to take a pleasure excursion into the country, or passes with careless levity from St. Genevieve to the Jardin Mabille; in New Orleans, the Creole, who has just bent his knee before the altar, repairs to the French opera, and the Cuban from the blessing of the priest to the parade in the Plaza. Even the Sunday ceremonial of the church is a pageant; the splendid robe of the officiating priest, changed in the course of the offices, like the costumes of actors in a drama; the music, to Protestant ears operatic and exciting; the clouds of incense that scatter their intoxicating perfumes; the chants in a strange tongue, unknown to the mass of worshippers;--all these give the services a holiday and carnival character.[22] Far be it from us to charge these congregations with any undue levity; many a lovely Creole kneels upon the marble floor, entirely estranged from the brilliant groups around her, and unconscious for the time of the admiration she excites; many a _caballero_ bows in reverence, forgetful, for the time being, of the bright eyes that are too often the load-star of attraction to the church; and there are very many who look beyond the glittering symbols to the great truths and the great Being they are intended to typify. But we fear that a large portion of the community who thus worship, attach more importance to the representation than to the principles or things represented. The impression made by the Sabbath ceremonies of the church strikes us as evanescent, and as of such a character as to be at once obliterated by the excitement of the worldly pleasures that follow. Still, if the Sabbath in Catholic countries be not wholly devoted to religious observances, neither are the week days wholly absorbed by business and pleasure. The churches and chapels are always open, silently but eloquently inviting to devotion; and it is much to be able to step aside, at any moment, from the temptations, business and cares of life, into an atmosphere of seclusion and religion. The solemn quiet of an old cathedral on a week-day is impressive from its very contrast with the tumult outside. Within its venerable walls the light seems chastened as it falls through storied panes, and paints the images of Christian saints and martyrs on the cold pavement of the aisles. Who can tell how many a tempest-tossed soul has found relief and strength from the ability to withdraw itself at once from the intoxicating whirl of the world and expand in prayer in one of these hospitable and ever open sanctuaries? The writer is a firm Protestant, by education, by association and feeling, but he is not so bigoted as not to see features in the Catholic system worthy of commendation. Whether the Catholic church has accomplished its mission, and exhausted its means of good, is a question open to discussion, but that in the past it has achieved much for the cause of true religion cannot be denied. Through the darkest period in the history of the world, it was the lamp that guided to a higher civilization, and the bulwark of the people against the crushing force of feudalism; and with all the objections which it discovers to a Protestant eye, it still preserves many beautiful customs. The Sabbath in Havana breaks upon the citizens amid the ringing of bells from the different convents and churches, the firing of cannon from the forts and vessels, the noise of trumpets, and the roll of the drum. Sunday is no day of physical rest here. The stores are open as usual, the same cries are heard in the streets, and the lottery tickets are vended as ever at each corner. The individual who devotes himself to this business rends the air with his cries of temptation to the passing throng, each one of whom he earnestly assures is certain to realize enormous pecuniary returns by the smallest investment, in tickets, or portions of tickets, which he holds in sheets, while he brandishes a huge pair of scissors, ready to cut in any desired proportion. The day proves no check to the omnipresent "organ grinders," the monkey shows, and other characteristic scenes. How unlike a New England Sabbath is all this, how discordant to the feelings of one who has been brought up amid our Puritanic customs of the sacred day! And yet the people of Havana seem to be impressed with no small degree of reverence for the Catholic faith. The rough Montero from the country, with his long line of loaded mules, respectfully raises his panama with one hand, while he makes the sign of the cross with the other, as he passes the church. The calisero or postilion, who dashes by with his master in the volante, does not forget, in his hurry, to bend to the pommel of his saddle; and even the little negro slave children may be observed to fold their arms across their breasts and remain reverentially silent until they have passed its doors. The city abounds in beautifully arranged squares, ornamented by that king of the tropical forest, the Royal Palm, with here and there a few orange trees, surrounded by a luxuriant hedge of limes. The largest and most beautiful of these squares is the _Plaza de Armas_, fronting which is the Governor's palace, and about which are the massive stone barracks of the Spanish army. This square is surrounded by an iron railing and divided into beautiful walks, planted on either side with gaudy flowers, and shadowed by oranges and palms, while a grateful air of coolness is diffused around by the playing of a copious fountain into a large stone basin, surmounted by a marble statue of Ferdinand. Public squares, parks and gardens, are the lungs of great cities, and their value increases as the population becomes dense. Heap story upon story of costly marble, multiply magazines and palaces, yet neglect to provide, in their midst, some glimpse of nature, some opening for the light and air of heaven, and the costliest and most sumptuous of cities would prove but a dreary dwelling-place. The eye wearies, in time, of the glories of art, but of the gifts of nature never, and in public squares and gardens both may be happily combined. Human culture brings trees, shrubs and flowers to their fullest development, fosters and keeps green the emerald sward, and brings the bright leaping waters into the midst of the graces of nature. Nowhere does a beautiful statue look more beautiful than when erected in a framework of deep foliage. These public squares are the most attractive features of cities. Take from London Hyde Park, from Paris the Champs Elysées and the Tuilleries gardens, the Battery and the Park from New York, and the Common from Boston, and they would be but weary wildernesses of brick, stone and mortar. The enlightened corporation that bestows on a young city the gift of a great park, to be enjoyed in common forever, does more for posterity than if it raised the most sumptuous columns and palaces for public use or display. [Illustration: PLAZA DE ARMAS AND GOVERNOR'S PALACE.] The Plaza de Armas of Havana is a living evidence of this, and is the nightly resort of all who can find time to be there, while the governor's military band performs always from seven to nine o'clock. The Creoles call it "the poor man's opera," it being free to all; every class resorts hither; and even the ladies, leaving their volantes, sometimes walk with husband or brother within the precincts of the Plaza. We are told that "the man who has not music in his soul is fit for treason, stratagem and spoils." It is undoubtedly from motives of policy that the Havanese authorities provide this entertainment for the people. How ungrateful it would be to overthrow a governor whose band performs such delightful polkas, overtures and marches; and yet, it requires some circumspection for the band-master to select airs for a Creole audience. It would certainly never do to give them "Yankee Doodle;" their sympathies with the "_Norte Americanos_" are sufficiently lively without any such additional stimulus; and it is well for the authorities to have a care, for the power of national airs is almost incredible. It was found necessary, in the times of the old Bourbons, to forbid the performance of the "_Ranz des Vaches_," because it so filled the privates of the Swiss guards with memories of their native home that they deserted in numbers. The Scotch air of "Lochaber no more" was found to have the same effect upon the Highland regiments in Canada; and we are not sure that "Yankee Doodle," performed in the presence of a thousand Americans on the Plaza de Armas, would not secure the annexation of the island in a fortnight. The Creoles are passionately fond of music. Their favorite airs, besides the Castilian ones, are native dances, which have much sweetness and individuality of character. They are fond of the guitar and flageolet, and are often proficients in their use, as well as possessing fine vocal powers. The voice is cultivated among the gentlemen as often as with the ladies. Music in the open air and in the evening has an invincible effect everywhere, but nowhere is its influence more deeply felt than in a starry tropical night. Nowhere can we conceive of a musical performance listened to with more delightful relish than in the Plaza at Havana, as discoursed by the governor's band, at the close of the long tropical twilight. In the immediate neighborhood of the Plaza, near the rear of the governor's palace, is a superb confectionary,--really one of the notabilities of the city, and only excelled by Taylor's saloon, Broadway, New York. It is called La Dominica, and is the popular resort of all foreigners in Havana, and particularly of Americans and Frenchmen. It is capable of accommodating some hundreds of visitors at a time, and is generally well filled every afternoon and evening. In the centre is a large open court, paved with white marble and jasper, and containing a fountain in the middle, around which the visitors are seated. Probably no establishment in the world can supply a larger variety of preserves, bon-bons and confectionaries generally, than this, the fruits of the island supplying the material for nearly a hundred varieties of preserves, which the proprietor exports largely to Europe and America, and has thereby accumulated for himself a fortune. Following the street on which is this famous confectionary, one is soon brought to the city walls, and, passing outside, is at once ushered into the Tacon Paseo, where all the beauty and fashion of the town resort in the after part of the day. It is a mile or more in length, beautifully laid out in wide, clean walks, with myriads of tropical flowers, trees and shrubs, whose fragrance seems to render the atmosphere almost dense. Here the ladies in their volantes, and the gentlemen mostly on foot, pass and repass each other in a sort of circular drive, gayly saluting, the ladies with a coquettish flourish of the fan, the gentlemen with a graceful wave of the hand. In these grounds is situated the famous Tacon Theatre. In visiting the house, you enter the first tier and parquette from the level of the Paseo, and find the interior about twice as large as any theatre in this country, and about equal in capacity to Tripler Hall, New York, or the Music Hall, Boston. It has five tiers of boxes, and a parquette with seats, each separate, like an arm-chair, for six hundred persons. The lattice-work in front of each box is light and graceful, of gilt ornament, and so open that the dresses and pretty feet of the señoras are seen to the best advantage. The decorations are costly, and the frescoes and side ornaments of the proscenium exceedingly beautiful. A magnificent cut-glass chandelier, lighted with gas, and numerous smaller ones extending from the boxes, give a brilliant light to this elegant house. At the theatre the military are always in attendance in strong force, as at all gatherings in Cuba, however unimportant, their only perceptible use, however, being to impede the passages, and stare the ladies out of countenance. The only other noted place of amusement is the Italian opera-house, within the city walls, an oven-shaped building externally, but within appropriately and elegantly furnished with every necessary appurtenance. No object in Havana will strike the visitor with more of interest than the cathedral, situated in the Calle de Ignacio. Its towers and pillared front of defaced and moss-grown stone call back associations of centuries gone by. This cathedral, like all of the Catholic churches, is elaborately ornamented with many fine old paintings of large size and immense value. The entire dome is also decorated with paintings in fresco. The chief object of interest, however, and which will not fail to attract the attention, is a tablet of marble inlaid in the wall at the right of the altar, having upon its face the image of Christopher Columbus, and forming the entrance to the tomb where rest the ashes of this discoverer of a western world; here, too, are the iron chains with which an ungrateful sovereign once loaded him. How great the contrast presented to the mind between those chains and the reverence bestowed upon this tomb![23] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT HAVANA.] The story of the great Genoese possesses a more thrilling interest than any narrative which the imagination of poet or romancer has ever conceived. The tales of the Arabian Nights, with all their wealth of fancy, are insipid and insignificant compared with the authentic narrative of the adventures of the Italian mariner and his sublime discovery. Familiar as we are with it from childhood, from the greatness of the empire he gave to Christendom, the tale has still a fascination, however often repeated, while the visible memorials of his greatness and his trials revive all our veneration for his intellect and all our interest in the story of his career. His name flashes a bright ray over the mental darkness of the period in which he lived, for men generally were then but just awakening from the dark sleep of the middle ages. The discovery of printing heralded the new birth of the republic of letters, and maritime enterprise received a vigorous impulse. The shores of the Mediterranean, thoroughly explored and developed, had endowed the Italian states with extraordinary wealth, and built up a very respectable mercantile marine, considering the period. The Portuguese mariners were venturing farther and farther from the peninsula ports, and traded with different stations on the coast of Africa. But to the _west_ lay what men supposed to be an illimitable ocean, full of mystery, peril and death. A vague conception that islands, hitherto unknown, might be met with afar off on that strange wilderness of waters, like oases in a desert, was entertained by some minds, but no one thought of venturing in quest of them. Columbus alone, regarded merely as a brave and intelligent seaman and pilot, conceived the idea that the earth was spherical, and that the East Indies, the great El Dorado of the century, might be reached by circumnavigating the globe. If we picture to ourselves the mental condition of the age, and the state of science, we shall find no difficulty in conceiving the scorn and incredulity with which the theory of Columbus was received. We shall not wonder that he was regarded as a madman or as a fool; we are not surprised to remember that he encountered repulse upon repulse, as he journeyed wearily from court to court, and pleaded in vain for aid to the sovereigns of Europe and wise men of the cloister. But the marvel is that when gate after gate was closed against him, when all ears were deaf to his patient importunities, when day by day the opposition to his views increased, when, weary and foot-sore, he was forced to beg a morsel of bread and a cup of water for his fainting and famished boy, at the door of a Spanish convent, his reason did not give way, and his great heart did not break beneath its weight of disappointment. But his soul was then as firm and steadfast as when, launched in his frail caravel upon the ocean, he pursued day after day, and night after night, amidst a discontented, murmuring, and mutinous crew, his westward path over the trackless waters. We can conceive of his previous sorrows, but what imagination can form an adequate conception of his hopefulness and gratitude when the tokens of the neighborhood of land first greeted his senses; of his high enthusiasm when the shore was discovered; of his noble rapture when the keel of his bark grounded on the shore of San Salvador, and he planted the royal standard in the soil, the Viceroy and High Admiral of Spain in the New World! No matter what chanced thereafter, a king's favor or a king's displeasure, royal largesses or royal chains,--that moment of noble exultation was worth a long lifetime of trials. Such were our thoughts before the cathedral altar, gazing on his consecrated tomb, and thus suggestive will the visitor be sure to find this memorial of the great captain amid its sombre surroundings.[24] It will be remembered that Columbus died in Valladolid, in 1506. In 1513 his remains were transferred to Seville, preparatory to their being sent, as desired in his will, to St. Domingo. When that island was ceded to France, the remains were delivered to the Spaniards. This was in 1796, one hundred and three years after they had been placed there; they were then brought with great pomp to Havana, in a national ship, and were deposited in the cathedral in the presence of all the high authorities. The church itself, aside from this prominent feature of interest, is vastly attractive from its ancient character and appearance, and one lingers with mysterious delight and thoughtfulness among its marble aisles and confessionals. The wealth of the church and of the monks in Cuba was formerly proverbial, but of late years the major portion of the rich perquisites which they were so long permitted to receive, have been diverted in their course, so as to flow into the coffers of the crown. The priests at one time possessed large tracts of the richest soil of the island, and their revenue from these plantations was immense; but these lands were finally confiscated by the government, and, with the loss of their property, the power of the monks has also declined, and they themselves diminished in numbers. Two of their large establishments, St. Augustine and St. Domingo, have been converted into government storehouses, and the large convent of San Juan de Dios is now used solely for a hospital. Formerly the streets were thronged by monks, but now they are only occasionally seen, with their sombre dress and large shovel hats. The character of this class of men has of former years been a scandal to the island, and the stories that are told by respectable people concerning them are really unfit for print. They led lives of the most unlimited profligacy, and they hesitated not to defy every law, moral or divine. For a long period this existed, but Tacon and subsequent governors-general, aroused to a sense of shame, made the proper representations to the home government, and put a stop to their excesses. Many persons traced the bad condition of public morals and the increase of crime just previous to Tacon's governorship directly to this ruling influence. A fearful condition when those who assume to lead in spiritual affairs proved the fountain-head of crime upon the island, themselves the worst of criminals. FOOTNOTES: [22] The influence of fifteen minutes in the church, if salutary, seems soon dissipated by the business and amusements without its walls. The shops are open; the cock-pit fuller than on busier days of the week; and the streets thronged with volantes; the theatres and ball rooms crowded; and the city devoted to pleasure.--_Rev. Abiel Abbot's Letters._ [23] There is now being completed, at Genoa, an elaborate and most classical monument to the memory of Columbus. The work hag been entrusted to a Genoese, a pupil of Canova; and, according to Prof. Silliman, who visited it in 1851, promises to be "one of the noblest of historical records ever sculptured in marble." [24] The reward of genius is rarely contemporary, and even posterity is frequently most remiss in its justice. "Sebastian Cabot gave England a continent," says Bancroft, "and no one knows his burial-place!" CHAPTER VII. Nudity of children and slaves--The street of the merchants--The currency of Cuba--The Spanish army in the island--Enrolment of blacks--Courage of Spanish troops--Treatment by the government--The garrote--A military execution--The market-men and their wares--The milk-man and his mode of supply--Glass windows--Curtains for doors--The Campo Santo, or burial-place of Havana--Treatment of the dead--The prison--The fish-market of the capital. One peculiarity which is certain to strike the stranger from the first hour he lands upon the island, whether in public or private houses, in the stores or in the streets, is that the young slaves, of both sexes, under the age of eight or ten years, are permitted to go about in a state of perfect nudity; while the men of the same class, who labor in the streets, wear only a short pair of pantaloons, without any other covering to the body, thus displaying their brawny muscles at every movement. This causes rather a shock to the ideas of propriety entertained by an American; but it is thought nothing of by the "natives." On the plantations inland, the slaves of either sex wear but just enough clothes to appear decently. The almost intolerable heat when exposed to field-labor is the excuse for this, a broad palm-leaf hat being the only article that the negroes seem to desire to wear in the field. The Calle de Mercaderes, or the street of the merchants, is the Broadway and Washington Street of Havana, and contains many fine stores for the sale of dry goods, china, jewelry, glass-ware, etc. The merchant here does not designate his store by placing his own name on his sign, but, on the contrary, adopts some fancy title, such as the "America," the "Star," the "Bomb," "Virtue," and the like; which titles are paraded in golden letters over the doors. These tradesmen are, generally speaking, thorough Jews in their mode of dealing, and no one thinks of paying the first price asked by them for an article, as they usually make allowances for being beaten down at least one half. The ladies commonly make their purchases in the after part of the day, stopping in their volantes at the doors of the shops, from which the articles they desire to examine are brought to them by the shopmen. No lady enters a shop to make a purchase, any more than she would be found walking in the streets. There is no paper money known on the island, so that all transactions at these stores must be consummated in specie. The coin generally in use is the Spanish and Mexican dollar, half and quarter dollars, pesétas, or twenty-cent pieces, and reals de plata, equal to our twelve-and-a-half cent pieces, or York shillings. The gold coin is the doubloon and its fractions. Silver is always scarce, and held at a premium in Havana, say from two to five per cent. As Cuba has no regular bank, the merchant draws on his foreign credit altogether, each mercantile house becoming its own sub-treasury, supplied with the largest and best of iron safes. The want of some legitimate banking system is severely felt here, and is a prominent subject of complaint with all foreign merchants. The Spanish government supports a large army on the island, which is under the most rigid discipline, and in a state of considerable efficiency. It is the policy of the home government to fill the ranks with natives of old Spain, in order that no undue sympathy may be felt for the Creoles, or islanders, in case of insurrection or attempted revolution. An order has recently been issued by Pezuela, the present governor-general, for the enrolment of free blacks and mulattoes in the ranks of the army, and the devotion of these people to Spain is loudly vaunted in the captain-general's proclamation. The enlistment of people of color in the ranks is a deadly insult offered to the white population of a slave-holding country,--a sort of shadowing forth of the menace, more than once thrown out by Spain, to the effect that if the colonists should ever attempt a revolution, she would free and arm the blacks, and Cuba, made to repeat the tragic tale of St. Domingo, should be useless to the Creoles if lost to Spain. But we think Spain overestimates the loyalty of the free people of color whom she would now enroll beneath her banner. They cannot forget the days of O'Donnell (governor-general), when he avenged the opposition of certain Cubans to the illicit and infamous slave-trade by which he was enriching himself, by charging them with an abolition conspiracy in conjunction with the free blacks and mulattoes, and put many of the latter to the torture to make them confess imaginary crimes; while others, condemned without a trial, were mowed down by the fire of platoons. Assuredly the people of color have no reason for attachment to the _paternal_ government of Spain. And in this connection we may also remark that this attempt at the enrolment of the blacks has already proved, according to the admission of Spanish authority, a partial failure, for they cannot readily learn the drill, and officers dislike to take command of companies. We have remarked that the Spanish troops are in a state of rigid discipline, and exhibit much efficiency. They are to the eye firm and serviceable troops,--the very best, doubtless, that Spain can produce; but it must be remembered that Spanish valor is but a feeble shadow of what it was in the days of the Cid and the middle ages. A square of Spanish infantry was once as impregnable as the Macedonian phalanx; but they have sadly degenerated. The actual value of the Spanish troops in Cuba may be estimated by their behavior in the Lopez invasion. They were then called upon, not to cope with a well-appointed and equal force, but with an irregular, undisciplined band of less than one-fourth their number, armed with wretched muskets, entirely ignorant of the simplest tactics, thrown on a strange shore, and taken by surprise. Yet nearly a full regiment of infantry, perfectly drilled and equipped, flank companies, commanded by a general who was styled the Napoleon of Cuba, were driven from the field by a few irregular volleys from their opponents. And when again the same commanding officer brought a yet greater force of every arm,--cavalry, rifles, infantry and artillery,--against the same body of insurgents, fatigued and reduced in numbers and arms, they were again disgracefully routed. What dependence can be placed upon such troops? They are only capable of overawing an unarmed population. The Cubans seem to fear very little from the power or efforts of the Spanish troops in connection with the idea of any well-organized revolutionary attempt, and even count (as they have good reason to do) upon their abandoning the Spanish flag the moment there is a doubt of its success. They say that the troops are enlisted in Spain either by glowing pictures of the luxury and ease of a military life in Cuba, or to escape the severity of justice for the commission of some crime. They no sooner arrive in the island than the deception of the recruiting sergeants becomes glaringly apparent. They see themselves isolated completely from the people, treated with the utmost cruelty in the course of their drills, and oppressed by the weight of regulations that reduce them to the condition of machines, without any enjoyments to alleviate the wretchedness of their situation. Men thus treated are not to be relied upon in time of emergency; they can _think_, if they are not permitted to act, and will have opinions of their own. Soldiers thus ruled naturally come to hate those in authority over them, finding no redress for their wrongs, and no sympathy for their troubles. Their immediate officers and those higher in station are equally inaccessible to them, and deaf to their complaints; and when, in the hour of danger, they are called upon to sustain the government which so cruelly oppresses them, and proclamations, abounding in Spanish hyperbole, speak of the honor and glory of the Spanish army and its attachment to the crown, they know perfectly well that these declarations and flatteries proceed from the lips of men who entertain no such sentiments in their hearts, and who only come to Cuba to oppress a people belonging to the same Spanish family as themselves. Thus the despotic system of the Spanish officers, combined with the complete isolation of the troops from the Creole population, has an effect directly contrary to that contemplated, and only creates a readiness on the part of the troops to sympathize with the people they are brought to oppress. The constant presence of a large military force increases the discontent and indignation of the Creoles. They know perfectly well its object, and regard it as a perpetual insult, a bitter, ironical commentary on the epithet of "ever faithful" with which the home government always addresses its western vassal. The loyalty of Cuba is indeed a royal fiction. As well might a highwayman praise the generosity of a rich traveller who surrenders his purse, watch and diamonds, at the muzzle of the pistol. Cuban loyalty is evinced in an annual tribute of some twenty-four millions of hard money; the freedom of the gift is proved by the perpetual presence of twenty-five to thirty thousand men, armed to the teeth![25] The complete military force of Cuba must embrace at the present time very nearly thirty thousand troops,--artillery, dragoons and infantry,--nearly twenty thousand of which force is in and about Havana. To keep such a body of soldiers in order, when governed by the principles we have described, the utmost rigor is necessary, and military executions are very frequent. The _garrote_ is the principal instrument of capital punishment used in the island,--a machine contrived to choke the victim to death without suspending him in the air. The criminal is placed in a chair, leaning his head back upon a support prepared for it, when a neck-yoke or collar of iron is drawn up close to the throat. At the appointed moment, a screw is turned behind, producing instantaneous death, the spinal cord being crushed where it unites with the brain. This, though a repulsive idea, is far more merciful than hanging, it would seem, whereby life is destroyed by the lingering process of suffocation. The most common mode of execution, however, in the army, is the legitimate death of a soldier; and, when he is condemned, he always falls by the hands of his comrades. The writer witnessed one of these military executions in the rear of the barracks that make the seaward side of the _Plaza de Armas_, one fine summer's morning. It was a fearful sight, and one that chilled the blood even in a tropical summer day! A Spanish soldier of the line was to be shot for some act of insubordination against the stringent army rules and regulations; and, in order that the punishment might have a salutary effect upon his regiment, the whole were drawn up to witness the scene. The immediate file of twelve men to which the prisoner had belonged when in the ranks, were supplied with muskets by their officer, and I was told that _one_ musket was left without _ball_, so that each one might hope that his was not the hand to slay his former comrade, and yet a sense of mercy would cause them all to aim at the heart. The order was given; the bright morning sun shone like living fire along the polished barrels of the guns, as the fatal muzzles all ranged in point at the heart of the condemned. "_Fuego!_" (fire) said the commanding officer. A report followed, accompanied by a cloud of smoke, which the sea breeze soon dispersed, showing us the still upright form of the victim. Though wounded in many places, no vital part was touched, nor did he fall until his sergeant, advancing quickly, with a single reserved shot blew his brains over the surrounding green-sward! His body was immediately removed, the troops were formed into companies, the band struck up a lively air, and thus was a human being launched into eternity. A very common sight in the cities or large towns of Cuba early in the morning, is to meet a Montero from the country, riding his donkey, to the tail of which another donkey is tied, and to this second one's tail a third, and so on, up to a dozen, or less. These animals are loaded with large panniers, filled with various articles of produce; some bearing cornstalks for food for city animals; some hay, or straw; others oranges, or bananas, or cocoanuts, etc.; some with _bunches_ of live fowls hanging by the feet over the donkey's back. The people live, to use a common phrase, "from hand to mouth,"--that is, they lay in no stores whatever, and trust to the coming day to supply its own necessities. Hay, cornstalks, or grain, are purchased only in sufficient quantity for the day's consumption. So with meats, so with fruits, so with everything. When it is necessary to send to the market, the steward or stewardess of the house, always a negro man or woman, is freely entrusted with the required sum, and purchases according to his or her judgment and taste. The cash system is universally adopted, and all articles are regularly paid for when purchased. The Monteros, who thus bring their produce to market, wear broad palm-leaf hats, and striped shirts over brown pantaloons, with a sword by their side, and heavy spurs upon their heels. Their load once disposed of, with a strong cigar lighted in their mouths, they trot back to the country again to pile up the panniers, and on the morrow once more to supply the wants of the town. They are an industrious and manly race of yeomanry. Few matters strike the observant stranger with a stronger sense of their peculiarity than the Cuban milk-man's mode of supplying that necessary aliment to his town or city customers. He has no cart filled with shining cans, and they in turn filled with milk (or what purports to be milk, but which is apt strongly to savor of Cochituate or Croton), so there can be no deception as to the genuine character of the article which he supplies. Driving his sober kine from door to door, he deliberately milks just the quantity required by each customer, delivers it, and drives on to the next. The patient animal becomes as conversant with the residence of her master's customers as he is himself, and stops unbidden at regular intervals before the proper houses, often followed by a pretty little calf which amuses itself by gazing at the process, while it wears a leather muzzle to prevent its interference with the supply of milk intended for another quarter. There are doubtless two good reasons for this mode of delivering milk in Havana and the large towns of Cuba. First, there can be no diluting of the article, and second, it is sure to be sweet and fresh, this latter a particular desideratum in a climate where milk without ice can be kept only a brief period without spoiling. Of course, the effect upon the animal is by no means salutary, and a Cuban cow gives but about one third as much milk as our own. Goats are driven about and milked in the same manner. Glass windows are scarcely known even in the cities. The finest as well as the humblest town houses have the broad projecting window, secured only by heavy iron bars (most prison-like in aspect), through which, as one passes along the narrow streets, it is nearly impossible to avoid glancing upon domestic scenes that exhibit the female portion of the family engaged in sewing, chatting, or some simple occupation. Sometimes a curtain intervenes, but even this is unusual, the freest circulation of air being always courted in every way.[26] Once inside of the dwelling houses there are few doors, curtains alone, shutting off the communication between chambers and private rooms, and from the corridor upon which they invariably open. Of course, the curtain when down is quite sufficient to keep out persons of the household or strangers, but the little naked negro slave children (always petted at this age), male and female, creep under this _ad libitum_, and the monkeys, parrots, pigeons, and fowls generally make common store of every nook and corner. Doors might keep these out of your room, but curtains do not. One reason why the Cubans, of both sexes, possess such fine expansive chests, is doubtless the fact that their lungs thus find full and unrestrained action, living, as it were, ever in the open air. The effect of this upon the stranger is at once visible in a sense of physical exhilaration, fine spirits and good appetite. It would be scarcely possible to inhabit a house built after our close, secure style, if it were placed in the city of Havana, or even on an inland plantation of the island. The town houses are always accessible upon the roofs, where during the day the laundress takes possession, but at evening they are frequently the family resort, where the evening cigar is enjoyed, and the gossip of the day discussed, in the enjoyment of the sea breeze that sweeps in from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Just outside the city walls of Havana, and on the immediate sea-coast, lies the Campo Santo, or public cemetery, not far from the city prison. It is approached by a long street of dilapidated and miserable dwellings, and is not attractive to the eye, though the immediate entrance is through cultivated shrubbery. A broad, thick wall encloses the cemetery, in which oven-like niches are prepared for the reception of the coffins, containing the better or more wealthy classes, while the poor are thrown into shallow graves, sometimes several together, not unfrequently negroes and whites, without a coffin, quicklime being freely used to promote decomposition. In short, the whole idea, and every association of the Campo Santo, is of a repulsive and disagreeable character. This irreverent treatment of the dead, and the neglected condition of their place of sepulture, is a sad feature in a Christian country, contrasting strongly with the honors paid to the memory of the departed by semi-civilized and even savage nations. We all know the sacredness that is attached by the Turks to their burial grounds, how the mournful cypresses are taught to rise among the turbaned tombstones, and how the survivors are wont to sit upon the graves of the departed, musing for hours over the loved and lost, and seeming to hold communion with their liberated spirits. How different is it here with the Campo Santo! The bitterest pang that an Indian endures when compelled to leave his native hunting grounds, is that he must abandon the place where the ashes of his ancestors repose. The enlightened spirit which removes cemeteries from the centre of dense population is worthy of all commendation--the taste that adorns them with trees and flowers, beautifying the spot where the "last of earth" reposes, is a proof of high-toned feeling and a high civilization. Nothing of this spirit is manifested at Havana. The establishment of the cemetery without the walls of the city was a sanitary measure, dictated by obvious necessity, but there the march of improvement stopped. No effort has been made to follow the laudable example of other countries; no, the Spanish character, arrogant and self-sufficient, will not bend to be taught by others, and will not admit a possibility of error, and they are as closely wedded to national prejudices as the Chinese. Spain is, at this moment, the most old-fashioned country of Christendom, and it is only when pressed upon by absolute necessity that she reluctantly admits of innovation. Tacon, during his rule in the island, erected outside the city walls, and near the gate of La Punta, on the shore, a spacious prison, capable of accommodating five thousand prisoners. It is quadrangular, each side being some three hundred feet long and fifty high, enclosing a central square, planted with shrubbery and watered by a cooling and graceful fountain. The fresh breeze circulates freely through its walls, and it is considered one of the healthiest spots in the vicinity of the capital, while it certainly presents a strong contrast to the neglected precincts of the Campo Santo, hard by. The fish-market of Havana affords probably the best variety of this article of any city in the world. The long marble counters display the most novel and tempting array that one can well imagine; every hue of the rainbow is represented, and a great variety of shapes. But a curse hangs over this species of food, plenty and fine as it is, for it is made a government monopoly, and none but its agents are permitted to sell or to catch it in the vicinity of the city. This singular law, established under Tacon, is of peculiar origin, and we cannot perhaps do better than tell the story, as gathered on the spot, for the amusement of the reader. FOOTNOTES: [25] "Can it be for the interest of Spain to cling to a possession that can only be maintained by a garrison of twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand troops, a powerful naval force, and an annual expenditure, for both arms of the service, of at least twelve million dollars? Cuba, at this moment, costs more to Spain than the entire naval and military establishment of the United States costs the federal government."--_Edward Everett, on the tripartite treaty proposition._ [26] "Doors and windows are all open. The eye penetrates the whole interior of domestic life, from the flowers in the well-watered court to the daughter's bed, with its white muslin curtains tied with rose-colored ribbons."--_Countess Merlin's Letters._ CHAPTER VIII. THE STORY OF MARTI, THE SMUGGLER. One of the most successful villains whose story will be written in history, is a man named Marti, as well known in Cuba as the person of the governor-general himself. Formerly he was notorious as a smuggler and half pirate on the coast of the island, being a daring and accomplished leader of reckless men. At one time he bore the title of King of the Isle of Pines, where was his principal rendezvous, and from whence he despatched his vessels, small, fleet crafts, to operate in the neighboring waters. His story, well known in Cuba and to the home government, bears intimately upon our subject. When Tacon landed on the island, and became governor-general, he found the revenue laws in a sad condition, as well as the internal regulations of the island; and, with a spirit of mingled justice and oppression, he determined to do something in the way of reform.[27] The Spanish marine sent out to regulate the maritime matters of the island, lay idly in port, the officers passing their time on shore, or in giving balls and dances on the decks of their vessels. Tacon saw that one of the first moves for him to make was to suppress the smuggling upon the coast, at all hazards; and to this end he set himself directly to work. The maritime force at his command was at once detailed upon this service, and they coasted night and day, but without the least success against the smugglers. In vain were all the vigilance and activity of Tacon and his agents--they accomplished nothing. At last, finding that all his expeditions against them failed, partly from the adroitness and bravery of the smugglers, and partly from the want of pilots among the shoals and rocks that they frequented, a large and tempting reward was offered to any one of them who would desert from his comrades and act in this capacity in behalf of the government. At the same time, a double sum, most princely in amount, was offered for the person of one Marti, dead or alive, who was known to be the leader of the lawless rovers who thus defied the government. These rewards were freely promulgated, and posted so as to reach the ears and eyes of those whom they concerned; but even these seemed to produce no effect, and the government officers were at a loss how to proceed in the matter. It was a dark, cloudy night in Havana, some three or four months subsequent to the issuing of these placards announcing the rewards as referred to, when two sentinels were pacing backwards and forwards before the main entrance to the governor's palace, just opposite the grand plaza. A little before midnight, a man, wrapped in a cloak, was watching them from behind the statue of Ferdinand, near the fountain, and, after observing that the two soldiers acting as sentinels paced their brief walk so as to meet each other, and then turn their backs as they separated, leaving a brief moment in the interval when the eyes of both were turned away from the entrance they were placed to guard, seemed to calculate upon passing them unobserved. It was an exceedingly delicate manoeuvre, and required great care and dexterity to effect it; but, at last, it was adroitly done, and the stranger sprang lightly through the entrance, secreting himself behind one of the pillars in the inner court of the palace. The sentinels paced on undisturbed. The figure which had thus stealthily effected an entrance, now sought the broad stairs that led to the governor's suit of apartments, with a confidence that evinced a perfect knowledge of the place. A second guard-post was to be passed at the head of the stairs; but, assuming an air of authority, the stranger offered a cold military salute and pressed forward, as though there was not the most distant question of his right so to do; and thus avoiding all suspicion in the guard's mind, he boldly entered the governor's reception room unchallenged, and closed the door behind him. In a large easy chair sat the commander-in-chief, busily engaged in writing, but alone. An expression of undisguised satisfaction passed across the weather-beaten countenance of the new comer at this state of affairs, as he coolly cast off his cloak and tossed it over his arm, and then proceeded to wipe the perspiration from his face. The governor, looking up with surprise, fixed his keen eyes upon the intruder,-- "Who enters here, unannounced, at this hour?" he asked, sternly, while he regarded the stranger earnestly. "One who has information of value for the governor-general. You are Tacon, I suppose?" "I am. What would you with me? or, rather, how did you pass my guard unchallenged?" "Of that anon. Excellency, you have offered a handsome reward for information concerning the rovers of the gulf?" "Ha! yes. What of them?" said Tacon, with undisguised interest. "Excellency, I must speak with caution," continued the new comer; "otherwise I may condemn and sacrifice myself." "You have naught to fear on that head. The offer of reward for evidence against the scapegraces also vouchsafes a pardon to the informant. You may speak on, without fear for yourself, even though you may be one of the very confederation itself." "You offer a reward, also, in addition, for the discovery of Marti,--Captain Marti, of the smugglers,--do you not?" "We do, and will gladly make good the promise of reward for any and all information upon the subject," replied Tacon. "First, Excellency, do you give me your knightly word that you will grant a free pardon to _me_, if I reveal all that you require to know, even embracing the most secret hiding-places of the rovers?" "I pledge you my word of honor," said the commander. "No matter how heinous in the sight of the law my offences may have been, still you will pardon me, under the king's seal?" "I will, if you reveal truly and to any good purpose," answered Tacon, weighing in his mind the purpose of all this precaution. "Even if I were a leader among the rovers, myself?" The governor hesitated for a moment, canvassing in a single glance the subject before him, and then said: "Even then, be you whom you may; if you are able and will honestly pilot our ships and reveal the secrets of Marti and his followers, you shall be rewarded as our proffer sets forth, and yourself receive a free pardon." "Excellency, I think I know your character well enough to trust you, else I should not have ventured here." "Speak, then; my time is precious," was the impatient reply of Tacon. "Then, Excellency, the man for whom you have offered the largest reward, dead or alive, is now before you!" "And you are--" "Marti!" The governor-general drew back in astonishment, and cast his eyes towards a brace of pistols that lay within reach of his right hand; but it was only for a single moment, when he again assumed entire self-control, and said, "I shall keep my promise, sir, provided you are faithful, though the laws call loudly for your punishment, and even now you are in my power. To insure your faithfulness, you must remain at present under guard." Saying which, he rang a silver bell by his side, and issued a verbal order to the attendant who answered it. Immediately after, the officer of the watch entered, and Marti was placed in confinement, with orders to render him comfortable until he was sent for. His name remained a secret with the commander; and thus the night scene closed. On the following day, one of the men-of-war that lay idly beneath the guns of Moro Castle suddenly became the scene of the utmost activity, and, before noon, had weighed her anchor, and was standing out into the gulf stream. Marti, the smuggler, was on board, as her pilot; and faithfully did he guide the ship, on the discharge of his treacherous business, among the shoals and bays of the coast for nearly a month, revealing every secret haunt of the rovers, exposing their most valuable depots and well-selected rendezvous; and many a smuggling craft was taken and destroyed. The amount of money and property thus secured was very great; and Marti returned with the ship to claim his reward from the governor-general, who, well satisfied with the manner in which the rascal had fulfilled his agreement, and betrayed those comrades who were too faithful to be tempted to treachery themselves, summoned Marti before him. "As you have faithfully performed your part of our agreement," said the governor-general, "I am now prepared to comply with the articles on my part. In this package you will find a free and unconditional pardon for all your past offences against the laws. And here is an order on the treasury for--" "Excellency, excuse me. The pardon I gladly receive. As to the sum of money you propose to give to me, let me make you a proposition. Retain the money; and, in place of it, guarantee to me the right to fish in the neighborhood of the city, and declare the trade in fish contraband to all except my agents. This will richly repay me, and I will erect a public market of stone at my own expense, which shall be an ornament to the city, and which at the expiration of a specified number of years shall revert to the government, with all right and title to the fishery." Tacon was pleased at the idea of a superb fish-market, which should eventually revert to the government, and also at the idea of saving the large sum of money covered by the promised reward. The singular proposition of the smuggler was duly considered and acceded to, and Marti was declared in legal form to possess for the future sole right to fish in the neighborhood of the city, or to sell the article in any form, and he at once assumed the rights that the order guaranteed to him. Having in his roving life learned all the best fishing-grounds, he furnished the city bountifully with the article, and reaped yearly an immense profit, until, at the close of the period for which the monopoly was granted, he was the richest man on the island. According to the agreement, the fine market and its privilege reverted to the government at the time specified, and the monopoly has ever since been rigorously enforced. Marti, now possessed of immense wealth, looked about him, to see in what way he could most profitably invest it to insure a handsome and sure return. The idea struck him if he could obtain the monopoly of theatricals in Havana on some such conditions as he had done that of the right to fish off its shores, he could still further increase his ill-gotten wealth. He obtained the monopoly, on condition that he should erect one of the largest and finest theatres in the world, which he did, as herein described, locating the same just outside the city walls. With the conditions of the monopoly, the writer is not conversant. Many romantic stories are told of Marti; but the one we have here related is the only one that is authenticated, and which has any bearing upon the present work. FOOTNOTES: [27] Tacon governed Cuba four years, from 1834 to 1838. CHAPTER IX. The lottery at Havana--Hospitality of the Spaniards--Flattery--Cuban ladies--Castilian, Parisian and American politeness--The bonnet in Cuba--Ladies' dresses--The fan--Jewelry and its wear--Culture of flowers--Reflections--A most peculiar narcotic--Cost of living on the island--Guines--The cock-pit--Training of the birds--The garden of the world--Birds of the tropics--Condition of agriculture--Night-time--The Southern Cross--Natural resources of Cuba--Her wrongs and oppressions. There is a monthly lottery in Havana, with prizes amounting to one hundred and ten thousand dollars, and sometimes as high as one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, under the immediate direction and control of the authorities, and which is freely patronized by the first mercantile houses, who have their names registered for a certain number of tickets each month. The poorer classes, too, by clubbing together, become purchasers of tickets, including slaves and free negroes; and it is but a few years since, that some slaves, who had thus united and purchased a ticket, drew the first prize of sixty thousand dollars; which was honestly paid to them, and themselves liberated by the purchase of their freedom from their masters. Honestly and strictly conducted as these lotteries are, yet their very stability, and the just payment of all prizes, but makes them the more baneful and dangerous in their influence upon the populace. Though now and then a poor man becomes rich through their means, yet thousands are impoverished in their mad zeal to purchase tickets, though it cost them their last medio. The government thus countenances and fosters a taste for gambling, while any one acquainted at all with the Spanish character, must know that the people need no prompting in a vice to which they seem to take intuitively. The Spaniards receive credit for being a very hospitable people, and to a certain extent this is due to them; but the stranger soon learns to regard the extravagant manifestations which too often characterize their etiquette, as quite empty and heartless. Let a stranger enter the house of a Cuban for the first time, and the host or hostess of the mansion says at once, either in such words or their equivalent, "All that we have is at your service; take what you will, and our right hand with it." Yet no one thinks of understanding this literally. The family volante is at your order, or a saddle horse; and in such small kindnesses they are indeed polite; but when they beg of you to accept a ring, a book, a valuable toy, because you have happened to praise it, you are by no means to do so. Another trait of character which suggests itself in this connection, is their Universal habit of profuse compliment.[28] The ladies listen to them, as a matter of course, from their countrymen, or from such Frenchmen as have become domesticated in the island; but if an American takes occasion to compliment them, they are at once delighted, for they believe them to be sincere, and the matter is secretly treasured to be repeated. The Cuban ladies, with true feminine acuteness, estimate correctly the high-flown compliments of their countrymen; and the kindred French, Castilian and Parisian politeness is of about equal value, and means the same thing,--that is, nothing. To strangers it is very pleasant at first, but the moment it is apparent that these profuse protestations of friendship and offers of service are transparent devices, and that if you take them at their word they are embarrassed, perhaps offended, that you must be constantly on your guard, and be very careful to consider every fine phrase as a flower of rhetoric, it becomes positively disagreeable. Good manners go a great way; and if a person does you a favor, the pleasure you experience is much enhanced by the grace with which the obligation is conferred; but there is a vast difference between true and false politeness. The former springs only from a good and true heart; the latter is especially egotistical. Both the French and Spanish are extremely gallant to women; and yet the condition of women in both France and Spain is vastly inferior to that of our fair countrywomen, notwithstanding the Spanish _caballero_ and the Parisian _elegant_ can couch their heartless compliments in terms our plain people would vainly attempt to imitate. But what cares a woman for fine phrases, if she knows that the respect due to her sex is wanting? The condition of the women of Cuba is eminently Spanish, and she is here too often the slave of passion and the victim of jealousy. The bonnet, which forms so important a part of the ladies' costume in Europe and American cities, is entirely unknown, or, rather, never worn by the Creole ladies; and strangers who appear with this article of dress are regarded with as much curiosity as we should be exercised by to meet in our own streets a Tuscarora chief in his war-paint. In place of the bonnet the Cuban ladies wear a long black veil, gathered at the back of the head upon the clustered braid of hair (always dark and luxuriant), and drawn to one side of the face or the other, as circumstances may require. More frequently, however, even this appendage is not seen, and they ride in the Paseos and streets with their heads entirely uncovered, save by the sheltering hood of the volante. When necessity calls them abroad during the early or middle hours of the day, there is a canvas screen buttoning to the dasher, and extending to the top of the vehicle, forming a partial shelter from the sun. This apparatus is universally arranged upon the volantes which stand at the corners of the streets for common hire; but the private vehicles are rarely seen much abroad before the early twilight, or just before sunset. Full dress, on all state occasions, with the Cuban ladies, is black; but white is worn on all ordinary ones, forming a rich and striking contrast to the fair olive complexions of the wearers. Jewelry is worn to a great extent, and, by those who can afford it, to the amount of most fabulous sums, of course the diamond predominating; but there is a general fondness for opals, garnets and pearls, worn in bracelets more particularly, or in bands about the hair, at the top of the forehead. There is one article without which the Cuban lady would not feel at home for a single moment; it is the fan, which is a positive necessity to her, and she learns its coquettish and graceful use from very childhood. Formed of various rich materials, it glitters in her hand like a gaudy butterfly, now half, now wholly shading her radiant face, which quickly peeps out again from behind its shelter, like the moon from out a gilded cloud. This little article (always rich and expensive), perfectly indispensable in a Cuban lady's costume, in their hands seems almost to speak; she has a witching flirt with it that expresses scorn; a graceful wave of complaisance; an abrupt closing of it, that indicates vexation or anger; a gradual and cautious opening of its folds, that signifies reluctant forgiveness; in short, the language of the fan in a Cuban's hand is an adroit and expressive pantomime, that requires no foreign interpreter. It may be owing to the prodigality of nature in respect to Flora's kingdom, which has led to no development among the people of Cuba, in the love and culture of flowers. Of course this remark is intended in a general point of view, there necessarily being exceptions to establish the rule. But it is a rare thing to see flowers under cultivation here, other than such as spring up from the over-fertile soil, unplanted and untended. In New Orleans one cannot pass out of the doors of the St. Charles Hotel, at any hour of the day, without being saluted first by the flavor of magnolias, and then by a Creole flower-girl, with "Buy a bouquet for a dime, sir?" But nothing of the sort is seen in Cuba; flowers are a drug. Nevertheless, I fear that people who lack an appreciation of these "illumined scriptures of the prairie," show a want of delicacy and refinement that even an humble Parisian grisette is not without. Scarcely can you pass from the coast of Cuba inland for half a league, in any direction, without your senses being regaled by the fragrance of natural flowers,--the heliotrope, honeysuckle, sweet pea, and orange blossoms predominating. The jessamine and cape rose, though less fragrant, are delightful to the eye, and cluster everywhere, among the hedges, groves and plantations. There seems to be, at times, a strange narcotic influence in the atmosphere of the island, more especially inland, where the visitor is partially or wholly removed from the winds that usually blow from the gulf in the after part of the day. So potent has the writer felt this influence, that at first it was supposed to be the effect of some powerful plant that might abound upon the plantations; but careful inquiry satisfied him that this dreamy somnolence, this delightful sense of ease and indolent luxuriance of feeling, was solely attributable to the natural effect of the soft climate of Cuba. By gently yielding to this influence, one seems to dream while waking; and while the sense of hearing is diminished, that of the olfactories appears to be increased, and pleasurable odors float upon every passing zephyr. One feels at peace with all human nature, and a sense of voluptuous ease overspreads the body. Others have spoken to the writer of this feeling of idle happiness, which he has himself more than once experienced in the delightful rural neighborhood of Alquizar. The only unpleasant realizing sense during the enjoyment of the condition referred to, is the fear that some human voice, or some chance noise, loud and abrupt, shall arouse the waking dreamer from a situation probably not unlike the pleasanter effect of opium, without its unpleasant reäction. As it regards the cost of living in the island, it may be said to average rather high to the stranger, though it is declared that the expense to those who permanently reside here, either in town or country, is cheaper, all things considered, than in the United States. At the city hotels and best boarding-houses of Havana and Matanzas, the charge is three dollars per day, unless a special bargain is made for a considerable period of time. Inland, at the houses of public entertainment, the charge per diem is, of course, considerably less; and the native style of living is nearly the same within or out of the city. The luscious and healthful fruits of the tropics form a large share of the provision for the table, and always appear in great variety at dessert. Good common claret wine is regularly placed before the guest without charge, it being the ordinary drink of the people. As to the mode of cooking, it seems to be very like the French, though the universal garlic, which appears to be a positive necessity to a Spanish palate, is very apt to form a disagreeable preponderance in the flavor of every dish. Fish, meat and fowl are so disguised with this article and with spices, that one is fain to resort to the bill of fare, to ascertain of what he is partaking. The vegetable soups of the city houses (but for the garlic) are excellent, many of the native vegetables possessing not only admirable flavor, and other desirable properties for the purpose, but being also glutinous, add much to the properties of a preparation answering to the character of our Julian soup. Oysters, though plentiful on the coast, are of inferior quality, and are seldom used for the table; but pickled oysters from the United States are largely used in the cities. One of the pleasantest places of resort for enjoyment on the whole island, is probably the town of Guines, connected with Havana by a railroad (the first built upon the soil of Cuba), and but a few leagues from the capital.[29] This locality is thought to be one of the most salubrious and appropriate for invalids, and has therefore become a general resort for this class, possessing several good public houses, and in many respects is quite Americanized with regard to comforts and the necessities of visitors from the United States. In Guines, and indeed in all Cuban towns, villages, and even small hamlets, there is a spacious cock-pit, where the inhabitants indulge in the sport of cock-fighting,--an absorbing passion with the humble, and oftentimes with the better classes. This indulgence is illustrative of their nature,--that is, the Spanish nature and blood that is in them,--a fact that is equally attested by their participation in the fearful contest of the bull-fight. It is really astonishing how fierce these birds become by training; and they always fight until one or the other dies, unless they are interfered with. The amount of money lost and won by this cruel mode of gambling is very large daily. Ladies frequently attend these exhibitions, the upper seats being reserved for them; and they may, not unfrequently, be seen entering fully into the excitement of the sport. The cock-pit is a large or small circular building, not unlike, in external appearance, to a New England out-door hay-stack, its dimensions being governed by the populousness of the locality where it is erected. The seats are raised in a circle, around a common centre, where the birds are fought, or "pitted," upon prepared ground, covered with saw-dust or tan. The cocks, which are of a peculiar species of game birds, are subjected from chickenhood, so to speak, to a peculiar course of treatment. Their food is regularly weighed, and so many ounces of grain are laid out for each day's consumption, so that the bird is never permitted to grow fat, but is kept in "condition" at all times. The feathers are kept closely cropped in a jaunty style, and neck and head, to the length of three inches or more, are completely plucked of all feathers, and daily rubbed with _aguadiente_ (island rum), until they become so calloused that they are insensible to any ordinary wound which its antagonist might inflict. Brief encounters are encouraged among them while they are young, under proper restrictions, and no fear is had of their injuring themselves, until they are old enough to have the _steel gaffs_ affixed upon those which nature has given them. Then, like armed men, with swords and daggers, they attack each other, and the blood will flow at every stroke, the conflict being in no degree impeded, nor the birds affrighted, by the noisy cries, jeers, and loud challenges of the excited horde of gamblers who throng all sides of the cock-pit.[30] Cuba has been justly styled the garden of the world, perpetual summer smiling upon its favored shores, and its natural wealth almost baffling the capacity of estimation. The waters which surround it, as we have already intimated, abound with a variety of fishes, whose bright colors, emulating the tints of precious stones and the prismatic hues of the rainbow, astonish the eye of the stranger. Stately trees of various species, the most conspicuous being the royal palm, rear their luxuriant foliage against the azure heavens, along the sheltered bays, by the way-side, on the swells of the haciendas, delighting the eye of the traveller, and diversifying the ever-charming face of the tropical landscape. Through the woods and groves flit a variety of birds, whose dazzling colors defy the palette of the artist. Here the loquacious parrot utters his harsh natural note; there the red flamingo stands patiently by the shore of the lagoon, watching in the waters, dyed by the reflection of his plumage, for his unconscious prey. It would require a volume to describe the vegetable, animal and mineral kingdom of Cuba. Among the most familiar birds, and those the names of which even the casual observer is apt to learn, are the Cuba robin, the blue-bird, the cat-bird, the Spanish woodpecker, the gaudy-plumed parrot, the pedoreva, with its red throat and breast and its pea-green head and body. There is also a great variety of wild pigeons, blue, gray and white; the English ladybird, as it is called, with a blue head and scarlet breast, and green and white back; the indigo-bird, the golden-winged woodpecker, the ibis, the flamingo, and many smaller species, like the humming-bird. Parrots settle on the sour orange trees when the fruit is ripe, and fifty may be secured by a net at a time. The Creoles stew and eat them as we do the pigeon; the flesh is rather tough, and as there are plenty of fine water and marsh birds about the lagoons, which are most tender and palatable, one is at a loss to account for the taste that leads the people to eat the parrot. The brown pelican is very plenty on the sea-coast, like the gull off our own shores, and may be seen at all times sailing lazily over the sea, and occasionally dipping for fish. Here, as among other tropical regions, and even in some southern sections of this country, the lazy-looking bald-headed vulture is protected by law, being a sort of natural scavenger or remover of carrion. The agriculturists of the island confine their attention almost solely to the raising of sugar, coffee and tobacco, almost entirely neglecting Indian corn (which the first settlers found indigenous here), and but slightly attending to the varieties of the orange.[31] It is scarcely creditable that, when the generous soil produces from two to three crops annually, the vegetable wealth of this island should be so poorly developed. It is capable of supporting a population of almost any density, and yet the largest estimate gives only a million and a half of inhabitants. On treading the fertile soil, and on beholding the clustering fruits offered on all sides, the delicious oranges, the perfumed pine-apples, the luscious bananas, the cooling cocoanuts, and other fruits for which our language has no name, we are struck with the thought of how much Providence, and how little man, has done for this Eden of the Gulf. We long to see it peopled by men who can appreciate the gifts of nature, men who are willing to do their part in reward for her bounty, men who will meet her half way and second her spontaneous efforts.[32] Nowhere on the face of the globe would intelligent labor meet with a richer reward,--nowhere on the face of the globe would repose from labor be so sweet. The hour of rest here sinks upon the face of nature with a peculiar charm; the night breeze comes with its gentle wing to fan the weary frame, and no danger lurks in its career. It has free scope through the unglazed windows. Beautifully blue are the heavens, and festally bright the stars of a tropical night. Preëminent in brilliancy among the constellations is the Southern Cross, a galaxy of stars that never greets us in the north. At midnight its glittering framework stands erect; that solemn hour passed, the Cross declines.[33] How glorious the night where such a heavenly sentinel indicates its watches! Cuba is indeed a land of enchantment, where nature is beautiful, and where mere existence is a luxury, but it requires the infusion of a sterner, more self-denying and enterprising race to fully test its capabilities, and to astonish the world with its productiveness. We have thus dilated upon the natural resources of Cuba, and depicted the charms that rest about her; but every picture has its dark side, and the political situation of the island is the reverse in the present instance. Her wrongs are multifarious, and the restrictions placed upon her by her oppressors are each and all of so heinous and tyrannical a character, that a chapter upon each would be insufficient to place them in their true light before the world. There is, however, no better way of placing the grievances of the Cubans, as emanating from the home government, clearly before the reader, than by stating such of them as occur readily to the writer's mind in brief:-- She is permitted no voice in the Cortes; the press is under the vilest censorship; farmers are compelled to pay ten per cent. on all their harvest except sugar, and on that article two and a half per cent.; the island has been under martial law since 1825; over $23,000,000 of taxes are levied upon the inhabitants, to be squandered by Spain; ice is monopolized by the government; flour is so taxed as to be inadmissible; a Creole must purchase a license before he can invite a few friends to take a cup of tea at his board; there is a stamped paper, made legally necessary for special purposes of contract, costing eight dollars per sheet; no goods, either in or out of doors, can be sold without a license; the natives of the island are excluded entirely from the army, the judiciary, the treasury, and the customs; the military government assumes the charge of the schools; the grazing of cattle is taxed exorbitantly; newspapers from abroad, with few exceptions, are contraband; letters passing through the post are opened and purged of their contents before delivery; fishing on the coast is forbidden, being a government monopoly; planters are forbidden to send their sons to the United States for educational purposes; the slave-trade is secretly encouraged by government; no person can remove from one house to another without first paying for a government permit; all cattle (the same as goods) that are sold must pay six per cent. of their value to government; in short, every possible subterfuge is resorted to by the government officials to swindle the people,[34] everything being taxed, and there is no appeal from the decision of the captain-general! [Illustration: A CUBAN VOLANTE IN THE PASEO.] FOOTNOTES: [28] The common salutation, on being introduced or meeting a lady, is, "_A los pies de usted señora_" (at the feet of your grace, my lady). [29] San Julian de los Guines contains from two to three thousand inhabitants. [30] The English game-cock is prized in Cuba only for crossing the breed, for he cannot equal the Spanish bird in agility or endurance. [31] Three years after the seed of the orange tree is deposited in the soil, the tree is twelve or fifteen feet high, and the fourth year it produces a hundred oranges. At ten years of age it bears from three to four thousand, thus proving vastly profitable. [32] "This favored land wants nothing but _men_ to turn its advantages to account, and enjoy their results, to be acknowledged as the garden of the world."--_Alexander H. Everett._ [33] Humboldt tells us that he has often heard the herdsmen in South America say, "Midnight is past--the Southern Cross begins to bend." [34] "No such extent of taxation, as is now enforced in Cuba, was ever known or heard of before in any part of the world; and no community, relying solely on the products of its own labor, could possibly exist under it."--_Alexander H. Everett._ CHAPTER X. The volante and its belongings--The ancient town of Regla--The arena for the bull-fights at Havana--A bull-fight as witnessed by the author at Regla--A national passion with the Spanish people--Compared with old Roman sports--Famous bull-fighters--Personal description of Cuban ladies--Description of the men--Romance and the tropics--The nobility of Cuba--Sugar noblemen--The grades of society--The yeomanry of the island--Their social position--What they might be--Love of gambling. The volante, that one vehicle of Cuba, has been several times referred to in the foregoing pages. It is difficult without experience to form an idea of its extraordinary ease of motion or its appropriateness to the peculiarities of the country.[35] It makes nothing of the deep mud that accompanies the rainy season, but, with its enormous wheels, six feet in diameter, heavy shafts, and low-hung, chaise-like body, it dashes over and through every impediment with the utmost facility. Strange as it may seem, it is very light upon the horse, which is also bestridden by the postilion, or _calisero_. When travelling any distance upon the road, a second horse is added on the left, abreast, and attached to the volante by an added whiffletree and traces. When there are two horses in this style, the postilion rides the one to the left, leaving the shaft horse free of other weight than that of the vehicle. When the roads are particularly bad and there is more than usual weight to carry, of baggage, etc., a third horse is often used, but he is still placed abreast with the others, to the right of the shaft horse, and guided by a bridle rein in the hands of the calisero. The Spaniards take great pride in these volantes, especially those improved for city use, and they are often to be met with elaborately mounted with silver, and in many instances with gold, wrought with great skill and beauty. There were volantes pointed out to the writer, of this latter character, in Havana, that could not have cost less than two thousand dollars each, and this for a two-wheeled vehicle. A volante equipped in this style, with the gaily dressed calisero, his scarlet jacket elaborately trimmed with silver braid, his high jack-boots with silver buckles at the knee, and monstrous spurs upon his heels, with rowels an inch long, makes quite a dashing appearance, especially if a couple of blackeyed Creole ladies happen to constitute the freight. Thus they direct their way to the Tacon Paseo, to meet the fashion of the town at the close of the day--almost the only out-door recreation for the sex. Of all the games and sports of the Cubans, that of the bull-fight is the most cruel and fearful, and without one redeeming feature in its indulgence. The arena for the exhibitions in the neighborhood of Havana is just across the harbor at Regla, a small town, having a most worn and dilapidated appearance.[36] This place was formerly the haunt of pirates, upon whose depredations and boldness the government, for reasons best known to itself, shut its official eyes; more latterly it has been the hailing place for slavers, whose crafts have not yet entirely disappeared, though the rigor of the English and French cruisers in the Gulf has rendered it necessary for them to seek a less exposed rendezvous. Of the Spanish marine they entertain no fear; there is the most perfect understanding on this point, treaty stipulations touching the slave-trade, between Spain, England and France, to the contrary notwithstanding.[37] But we were referring to the subject of the bull-fights. The arena at Regla, for this purpose, is a large circular enclosure of sufficient dimensions to seat six thousand people, and affording perhaps a little more than half an acre of ground for the fight. The seats are raised one above another in a circle around, at a secure height from the dangerous struggle which is sure to characterize each exhibition. On the occasion when the writer was present, after a flourish of trumpets, a large bull was let loose from a stall opening into the pit of the enclosure, where three Spaniards (_toreadors_), one on foot and two on horseback, were ready to receive him, the former armed with a sword, the latter with spears. They were three hardened villains, if the human countenance can be relied upon as shadowing forth the inner man, seemingly reckless to the last degree, but very expert, agile, and wary. These men commenced at once to worry and torment the bull until they should arouse him to a state of frenzy. Short spears were thrust into his neck and sides with rockets attached, which exploded into his very flesh, burning and affrighting the poor creature. Thrusts from the horsemen's spears were made into his flesh, and while he was bleeding thus at every pore, gaudy colors were shaken before his glowing eyes; and wherever he turned to escape his tormentors, he was sure to be met with some freshly devised expedient of torment, until at last the creature became indeed perfectly infuriated and frantically mad. Now the fight was in earnest! In vain did the bull plunge gallantly and desperately at his enemies, they were far too expert for him. They had made this game their business perhaps for years. Each rush he made upon them was easily avoided, and he passed them by, until, in his headlong course, he thrust his horns deep into the boards of the enclosure. The idea, of course, was not to give him any fatal wounds at the outset, and thus dispatch him at once, but to worry and torment him to the last. One of the gladiators now attacked him closely with the sword, and dexterously wounded him in the back of the neck at each plunge the animal made towards him, at the same time springing on one side to avoid the shock. After a long fight and at a grand flourish of trumpets, the most skilful of the swordsmen stood firm and received the infuriated beast on the point of his weapon, which was aimed at a fatal spot above the frontlet, leading direct to the brain. The effect was electrical, and like dropping the curtain upon a play: the animal staggered, reeled a moment, and fell dead! Three bulls were thus destroyed, the last one in his frenzy goring a fine spirited horse, on which one of the gladiators was mounted, to death, and trampling his rider fearfully. During the exhibition, the parties in the arena were encouraged to feats of daring by the waving of handkerchiefs and scarfs in the hands of the fair señoras and señoritas. Indeed there is generally a young girl trained to the business, who takes a part in the arena with the matadors against the bull. The one thus engaged, on the occasion here referred to, could not have exceeded seventeen years in age.[38] Whatever colonial modifications the Spanish character may have undergone in Cuba, the Creole is Castilian still in his love for the cruel sports of the arena, and there is a great similarity between the modern Spaniards and the ancient Romans in this respect. As the Spanish language more closely resembles Latin than Italian, so do the Spanish people show more of Roman blood than the natives of Italy themselves. _Panem et circenses_ (bread and circuses!) was the cry of the old Roman populace, and to gratify their wishes millions of sesterces were lavished, and, hecatombs of human victims slain, in the splendid amphitheatres erected by the masters of the world in all the cities subjected to their sway. And so _pan y toros_ (bread and bulls!) is the imperious demand of the Spaniards, to which the government always promptly responds. The parallel may be pursued still further: the loveliest ladies of Rome gazed with rapture upon the dying agonies of the gladiators who hewed each other in pieces, or the Christian's who perished in conflict with the wild beasts half starved to give them battle! The beauteous señoras and señoritas of Madrid and Havana enjoy with a keen delight the terrible spectacle of bulls speared by the _picador_, or gallant horses ripped up and disembowelled by the horns of their brute adversaries. It is true that the ameliorating spirit of Christianity is evident in the changes which the arena has undergone; human lives are not sacrificed wholesale in the combats; and yet the bull-fight is sufficiently barbarous and atrocious. It is a national institution, and, as an indication of national character, is well worthy of attention, however repulsive to the sensitive mind. The queen of England is sometimes present on the race-track, so also the queen of Spain occupies the royal box at the great bull-festas of Madrid. A skilful bull-fighter is a man of mark and distinction. Montez was regarded by the Spaniards of this generation with nearly as much respect as Don Rodriguez de Bivar in the days of the Moorish wars, to such a point has the vaunted chivalry of Spain degenerated! Sometimes Spanish nobles enter the arena, and brave peril and death for the sake of the applause bestowed upon the successful _torero_, and many lives are lost annually in this degrading sport. Few professional bull-fighters reach an advanced age; their career in the arena is almost always short, and they cannot avoid receiving severe wounds in their dangerous career. Pepe Illo, a famous Spanish picador, was wounded no less than twenty-six times, and finally killed by a bull. This man and another noted _torero_, named Romero, were possessed of such undaunted courage, that, in order to excite the interest of the spectators, they were accustomed to confront the bull with fetters upon their feet. Another famous picador in the annals of the arena was Juan Sevilla, who on one occasion was charged furiously by an Andalusian bull which overthrew both horse and rider. The savage animal, finding that the legs of his fallen antagonist were so well protected by the iron-ribbed hide of the pantaloons the bull-fighters wear that it was impossible to make an impression on them, lowered his horns with the intention of striking him in the face; but the dauntless picador, seizing one of the bull's ears in his right hand, and thrusting the fingers of the other into his nostrils, after a horrible struggle compelled him to retire. Then, when every one looked to see him borne out of the ring dying, he rose to his feet, called for a fresh horse and lance, and bounding into the saddle, attacked the bull in the centre of the ring, and driving the iron up to the shaft in his neck, rolled him over dead. "O," says an enthusiastic eye-witness of this prodigious feat, "if you had heard the _vivas_, if you had witnessed the frantic joy, the crazy ecstasy at the display of so much courage and good fortune, like me you would have envied the lot of Sevilla." Such are some of the dangers and excitements of the bull-ring; such is the character of some of the scenes which the gentle ladies of Cuba have learned, not to endure, but to welcome with delight. To look upon these ladies, you could not possibly imagine that there was in them sufficient hardihood to witness such exhibitions. They are almost universally handsome, in person rather below the height of the sex with us, but with an erect and dignified carriage, and with forms always rounded to a delicate fullness, displaying a tendency to _enbonpoint_ quite perfection itself in point of model.[39] The hair is always black and profuse, the complexion a light olive, without a particle of carmine, the eyes--a match for the hair in color--are large and beautifully expressive, with a most irresistible dash of languor in them.[40] It is really difficult to conceive of a homely woman with such eyes as you are sure to find them endowed with in Cuba. They have been justly famed also for their graceful carriage, and, indeed, it is the very poetry of motion, singular as it may seem when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not simply a progressive move, but the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and modulation of voice, rich, liquid and sweet as the nightingale's, that engage the beholder, and lend a happy charm to the majestic grace of every attitude and every step. It is a union, a harmonious consort of all these elements, that so beautifies the carriage of the Cuban ladies. The men are, also, generally speaking, manly and good-looking, though much lighter, smaller and more agile, than the Americans. The lazy life that is so universally led by them tends to make them less manly in physical development than a life of activity would do. It seems to be an acknowledged principle among them never to do that for themselves that a slave can do for them,--a fact that is very plainly demonstrated by the style of the volante, where the little horse is made not only to draw after him the vehicle and its contents, but also to carry upon his back a heavy negro, weighed down with jack-boots and livery, as a driver, when a pair of reins extending from the bridle to the volante would obviate all necessity for the negro's presence at all. But a Creole or Spaniard would think it demeaning to drive his own volante; the thing is never seen on the island. The climate, we know, induces to this sense of ease. With abundance of leisure, and the ever-present influences of their genial clime, where the heart's blood leaps more swiftly to the promptings of the imagination--where the female form earliest attains its wonted beauty and longest holds its sway over the heart--the West Indies seem peculiarly adapted for romance and love. The consequent adventures among the people are very numerous, and not, oftentimes, without startling interest, affording such themes and plots as a French _feuilletonist_ might revel in. An ungraceful woman is not to be found on the island; whether bred in the humble cottage of the Montero, or in the luxuriant mansion of the planter or citizen, she is sure to evince all the ease and grace of polished life. Your heart is bound to them at once, when on parting they give you kindly the Spanish benediction, "Go, señor, in a good hour." The nobility of Cuba, so called, is composed of rather original material, to say the least of it, and forms rather a funny "institution." There may be some thirty gentlemen dubbed with the title of Marquis, and as many more with that of Count, most of both classes having acquired their wealth by the carrying on of extensive sugar plantations. These are sneeringly designated by the humbler classes as "sugar noblemen," nearly all of these aristocratic gentlemen having bought their titles outright for money, not the least consideration being had by the Spanish throne as to the fitness of the individual even for this nominal honor, save a due consideration for the amount of the would-be noble's fortune. Twenty-five thousand dollars will purchase either title. And yet, the tone of Cuban society may be said to be eminently aristocratic, and, in certain circles, very exclusive. The native of old Spain does not endeavor to conceal his contempt of foreigners and the Creoles, shielding his inferiority of intelligence under a cloak of hauteur; and thus the Castilians and Creoles form two quite distinct classes in the island,--a distinction which the home government endeavor to foster and promote in every way, for obvious reasons of their own. The sugar planter, the coffee planter, the merchant, the liberal professions and the literati (this last a meagre class in numbers), stand about in the order in which we have written them, as it regards their relative degrees or social position, but wealth has the same charm here as in every part of Christendom, and the millionaire has the entrée to all classes. The Monteros, or yeomanry of Cuba, inhabit the less-cultivated portions of the soil, venturing into the cities only to sell their surplus produce, acting as "market-men" for the cities in the immediate neighborhood of their homes. When they stir abroad they are always armed cap-a-pie with sword and pistols,[41] and, indeed, every one carries arms upon the inland roads of Cuba. Formerly this was a most indispensable precaution, though weapons are now rarely brought into use. The arming of the Monteros, however, has always been encouraged by the authorities, as they thus form a sort of mounted militia at all times available, and, indeed, not only the most effective, but about the only available arm of defence against negro insurrections. The Montero is rarely a slave-owner himself, but frequently is engaged on the plantations during the busy season as an extra overseer. He is generally a hard taskmaster to the slave, having an intuitive hatred for the blacks. The Monteros[42] form an exceedingly important and interesting class of the population of the island. They marry very young,--the girls from thirteen to fifteen, the young men from sixteen to twenty,--and almost universally rearing large families. Their increase during the last twenty years has been great, and they seem to be fast approaching to a degree of importance that will make them, like the American farmers, the bone and sinew of the land. The great and glaring misfortune of their present situation, is the want of intelligence and cultivation; books they have none, nor, of course, schools. It is said that they have been somewhat aroused, of late, from this condition of lethargy concerning education, and that efforts are being made among them to a considerable extent to afford their children opportunity for instruction. Physically speaking, they are a fine yeomanry, and, if they could be rendered intelligent, would in time become what nature seems to have designed them for,--the real masters of the country. There is one fact highly creditable to the Monteros, and that is their temperate habits, as it regards indulgence in stimulating drinks. As a beverage, they do not use ardent spirits, and seem to have no taste for the article, though at times they join the stranger in a social glass. I doubt if any visitor ever saw one of this class in the least intoxicated. This being the fact, they are a very reliable people, and can be counted upon in an emergency. As to the matter of temperance, it needs no missionaries in the island, for probably there is not so large a tract of territory in Europe or America, as this island, where such a degree of temperance is observed in the use of intoxicating drinks. Healths are drunk at table, but in sparing draughts, while delicious fruits fill up the time devoted to dessert. There is probably but one vice that the Monteros may be said to be addicted to, or which they often indulge in, and that is one which is so natural to a Spaniard, and the appliances for which are so constantly at hand, in the shape of the cock-pit, that it is not a wonder he should be seduced by the passion of gambling. Many of the more intelligent avoid it altogether, but with others it appears to be a part and parcel of their very existence. In the cities, as we have already shown, the government encourage and patronize the spirit of gaming, as they derive from its practice, by charging exorbitant licences, etc., a heavy sum annually. FOOTNOTES: [35] "When I first saw the rocking motion of the volante as it drove along the streets, I thought 'that must be an extremely disagreeable carriage!' but when I was seated in one, I seemed to myself rocked in a cloud. I have never felt an easier motion."--_Miss Bremer's Letters._ [36] Regla new contains some seven thousand inhabitants, and is chiefly engaged in the exportation of molasses, which is here kept in large tanks. [37] An intelligent letter-writer estimates the present annual importation of slaves at not less than 10,000 souls, direct from Africa. [38] "One of the chief features in this sport, and which attracted so many, myself among the number, was a young and beautiful girl, as lovely a creature as Heaven ever smiled upon, being one of the chief actresses in the exciting and thrilling scene."--_Rev. L.L. Allen's Lecture._ [39] "The waist is slender, but never compressed by corsets, so that it retains all its natural proportions."--_Countess Merlin's Letters._ [40] "They have plump figures, placid, unwrinkled countenances, well-developed busts, and eyes the brilliant languor of which is not the languor of illness."--_W.C. Bryant's Letters._ [41] "The broadsword dangles by the side of the gentleman, and holsters are inseparable from his saddle; the simplest countryman, on his straw saddle, belts on his rude cutlass, and every man with a skin less dark than an African appears ready for encounter."--_Rev. Abiel Abbot's Letters._ [42] "They are men of manly bearing, of thin make, but often of a good figure, with well-spread shoulders, which, however, have a stoop in them, contracted, I suppose, by riding always with a short stirrup."--_W.C. Bryant's Letters._ CHAPTER XI. A sugar plantation--Americans employed--Slaves on the plantations--A coffee plantation--Culture of coffee, sugar and tobacco--Statistics of agriculture--The cucullos, or Cuban fire-fly--Novel ornaments worn by the ladies--The Cuban mode of harnessing oxen--The montero and his horse--Curious style of out-door painting--Petty annoyances to travellers--Jealousy of the authorities--Japan-like watchfulness--Questionable policy--Political condition of Cuba. The sugar plantations are the least attractive in external appearance, but the most profitable, pecuniarily, of all agricultural investments in the tropics. They spread out their extensive fields of cane without any relief whatever to the eye, save here and there the tall, majestic and glorious palm bending gracefully over the undergrowth. The income of some of the largest sugar plantations in Cuba is set down as high as two hundred thousand dollars per annum, the lowest perhaps exceeding one hundred thousand dollars. Some of them still employ ox-power for grinding the cane; but American steam-engines are fast taking the place of animal power, and more or less are monthly exported for this purpose from New York, Philadelphia and Boston. This creates a demand for engineers and machinists, for whom the Cubans are also dependent upon this country; and there are said to be at this time two hundred Bostonians thus engaged, at a handsome remuneration, upon the island. A Spaniard or Creole would as soon attempt to fly as he would endeavor to learn how properly to run a steam-engine. As this happens to be a duty that it is not safe to entrust to even a faithful slave, he is therefore obliged to send abroad for foreign skill, and to pay for it in round numbers. During the manufacturing season a large, well-managed sugar plantation exhibits a scene of the utmost activity and unremitting labor. The planter must "make hay while the sun shines;" and when the cane is ripe no time must be lost in expressing the juice. Where oxen are employed, they often die of over-work before the close of the season, and the slaves are allowed but five hours for sleep, though during the rest of the year the task of the negroes is comparatively light, and they may sleep ten hours if they choose.[43] In society, the sugar planter holds a higher rank than the coffee planter, as we have indicated in the classification already given; probably, however, merely as in the scale of wealth, for it requires nearly twice the amount of capital to carry on the former that is required to perfect the business of the latter, both in respect to the number of hands and also as it relates to machinery. But, as the sugar plantation surpasses the coffee in wealth, so the coffee plantation surpasses, the sugar in every natural beauty and attractiveness. A coffee plantation is one of the most beautiful gardens that can well be conceived of; in its variety and beauty baffling correct description, being one of those peculiar characteristics of the low latitudes which must be seen to be understood. An estate devoted to this purpose usually covers some three hundred acres of land, planted in regular squares of eight acres, and intersected by broad alleys of palms, mangoes, oranges, and other ornamental and beautiful tropical trees.[44] Mingled with these are planted lemons, pomegranates, cape jessamines, and a species of wild heliotrope, fragrant as the morning. Conceive of this beautiful arrangement, and then of the whole when in flower; the coffee, with its milk-white blossoms, so abundant that it seems as though a pure white cloud of snow had fallen there and left the rest of the vegetation fresh and green. Interspersed in these fragrant alleys is the red of the Mexican rose, the flowering pomegranate, and the large, gaudy flower of the penon, shrouding its parent stem in a cloak of scarlet, with wavings here and there of the graceful yellow flag, and many bewitchingly-fragrant wild flowers, twining their tender stems about the base of these. In short, a coffee plantation is a perfect floral El Dorado, with every luxury (except ice) the heart could wish. The writer's experience was mainly gained upon the estate of Dr. Finlay, a Scotch physician long resident in Cuba, and who is a practising physician in Havana. He has named his plantation, in accordance with the custom of the planters, with a fancy title, and calls it pleasantly Buena Esperanza (good hope). The three great staples of production and exportation are sugar, coffee and tobacco. The sugar-cane (_arundo saccharifera_) is the great source of the wealth of the island. Its culture requires, as we have remarked elsewhere, large capital, involving as it does a great number of hands, and many buildings, machines, teams, etc. We are not aware that any attempt has ever been made to refine it on the island. The average yield of a sugar plantation affords a profit of about fifteen per cent. on the capital invested. Improved culture and machinery have vastly increased the productiveness of the sugar plantations. In 1775 there were four hundred and fifty-three mills, and the crops did not yield quite one million three hundred thousand _arrobas_ (an arroba is twenty-five pounds). Fifty years later, a thousand mills produced eight million arrobas; that is to say, each mill produced six times more sugar. The Cuban sugar has the preference in all the markets of Europe. Its manufacture yields, besides, molasses, which forms an important article of export. A liquor, called _aguadiente_, is manufactured in large quantities from the molasses. There are several varieties of cane cultivated on the island. The Otaheitian cane is very much valued. A plantation of sugar-cane requires renewal once in about seven years. The canes are about the size of a walking-stick, are cut off near the root, and laid in piles, separated from the tops, and then conveyed in carts to the sugar-mill, where they are unladen. Women are employed to feed the mills, which is done by throwing the canes into a sloping trough, from which they pass between the mill-stones and are ground entirely dry. The motive power is supplied either by mules and oxen, or by steam. Steam machinery is more and more extensively employed, the best machines being made in the vicinity of Boston. The dry canes, after the extraction of the juice, are conveyed to a suitable place to be spread out and exposed to the action of the sun; after which they are employed as fuel in heating the huge boilers in which the cane-juice is received, after passing through the tank, where it is purified, lime-water being there employed to neutralize any free acid and separate vegetable matters. The granulation and crystallization is effected in large flat pans. After this, it is broken up or crushed, and packed in hogsheads or boxes for exportation. A plantation is renewed by laying the green canes horizontally in the ground, when new and vigorous shoots spring up from every joint, exhibiting the almost miraculous fertility of the soil of Cuba under all circumstances. The coffee-plant (_caffea Arabica_) is less extensively cultivated on the island than formerly, being found to yield only four per cent. on the capital invested. This plant was introduced by the French into Martinique in 1727, and made its appearance in Cuba in 1769. It requires some shade, and hence the plantations are, as already described, diversified by alternate rows of bananas, and other useful and ornamental tropical shrubs and trees. The decadence of this branch of agriculture was predicted for years before it took place, the fall of prices being foreseen; but the calculations of intelligent men were disregarded, simply because they interfered with their own estimate of profits. When the crash came, many coffee raisers entirely abandoned the culture, while the wiser among them introduced improved methods and economy into their business, and were well rewarded for their foresight and good judgment. The old method of culture was very careless and defective. The plants were grown very close together, and subjected to severe pruning, while the fruit, gathered by hand, yielded a mixture of ripe and unripe berries. In the countries where the coffee-plant originated, a very different method is pursued. The Arabs plant the trees much further apart, allow them to grow to a considerable height, and gather the crop by shaking the trees, a method which secures only the ripe berries. A coffee plantation managed in this way, and combined with the culture of vegetables and fruits on the same ground, would yield, it is said, a dividend of twelve per cent. on the capital employed; but the Cuban agriculturists have not yet learned to develop the resources of their favored island. _Tobacco._ This plant (_nicotiana tabacum_) is indigenous to America, but the most valuable is that raised in Cuba. Its cultivation is costly, for it requires a new soil of uncommon fertility, and a great amount of heat. It is very exhausting to the land. It does not, it is true, require much labor, nor costly machinery and implements. It is valued according to the part of the island in which it grows. That of greatest value and repute, used in the manufacture of the high cost cigars, is grown in the most westerly part of the island, known popularly as the _Vuelta de Abajo_. But the whole western portion of the island is not capable of producing tobacco of the best quality. The region of superior tobacco is comprised within a parallelogram of twenty-nine degrees by seven. Beyond this, up to the meridian of Havana, the tobacco is of fine color, but inferior aroma (the Countess Merlin calls this aroma the vilest of smells); and the former circumstance secures it the preference of foreigners. From Consolacion to San Christoval, the tobacco is very hot, in the language of the growers, but harsh and strong, and from San Christoval to Guanajay, with the exception of the district of Las Virtudes, the tobacco is inferior, and continues so up to Holguin y Cuba, where we find a better quality. The fertile valley of Los Guines produces poor smoking tobacco, but an article excellent for the manufacture of snuff. On the banks of the Rio San Sebastian are also some lands which yield the best tobacco in the whole island. From this it may be inferred how great an influence the soil produces on the good quality of Cuban tobacco; and this circumstance operates more strongly and directly than the slight differences of climate and position produced by immediate localities. Perhaps a chemical analysis of the soils of the Vuelta de Abajo would enable the intelligent cultivator to supply to other lands in the island the ingredients wanting to produce equally good tobacco. The cultivators in the Vuelta de Abajo are extremely skilful, though not scientific. The culture of tobacco yields about seven per cent. on the capital invested, and is not considered to be so profitable on the island as of yore. Cacao, rice, plantains, indigo, cotton, sago, yuca (a farinaceous plant, eaten like potatoes), Indian corn, and many other vegetable productions, might be cultivated to a much greater extent and with larger profit than they yield. We are astonished to find that with the inexhaustible fertility of the soil, with an endless summer, that gives the laborer two and three crops of some articles a year, agriculture generally yields a lower per centage than in our stern northern latitudes. The yield of a _caballeria_ (thirty-two and seven-tenths acres) is as follows: Sugar, $2,500 Coffee, 750 Tobacco, 3,000 Cacao, 5,000 Indigo, 2,000 Indian corn, 2 crops, 1,500 Rice, 1,000 Sago, 1,500 Plantains, 2,500 Yuca, 1,000 It must be remembered that there are multitudes of fruits and vegetable productions not enumerated above, which do not enter into commerce, and which grow wild. No account is taken of them. In the hands of a thrifty population, Cuba would blossom like a rose, as it is a garden growing wild, cultivated here and there in patches, but capable of supporting in ease a population of ten times its density. About the coffee plantations, and, indeed, throughout the rural parts of the island, there is an insect called a cucullos, answering in its nature to our fire-fly, though quadruple its size, which floats in phosphorescent clouds over the vegetation. One at first sight is apt to compare them to a shower of stars. They come in multitudes, immediately after the wet or rainy season sets in, and there is consequently great rejoicing among the slaves and children, as well as children of a larger growth. They are caught by the slaves and confined in tiny cages of wicker, giving them sufficient light for convenience in their cabins at night, and, indeed, forming all the lamps they are permitted to have. Many are brought into the city and sold by the young Creoles, a half-dozen for a paseta (twenty-five cents). Ladies not unfrequently carry a small cage of silver attached to their bracelets, containing four or five of them, and the light thus emitted is like a candle. Some ladies wear a belt of them at night, ingeniously fastened about the waist, and sometimes even a necklace, the effect thus produced being highly amusing. In the ball-rooms they are sometimes worn in the flounces of the ladies' dresses, and they seem nearly as brilliant as diamonds. Strangely enough, there is a natural hook near the head of the Cuban fire-fly, by which it can be attached to any part of the dress without any apparent injury to the insect itself; this the writer has seen apparently demonstrated, though, of course, it could not be strictly made clear. The town ladies pet these cucullos, and feed them regularly with sugar cane, of which the insects partake with infinite relish; but on the plantations, when a fresh supply is wanted, they have only to wait until the twilight deepens, and a myriad can be secured without trouble. The Cubans have a queer, but yet excellent mode of harnessing their oxen, similar to that still in vogue among eastern countries. The yoke is placed behind the horns, at the roots, and so fastened to them with thongs that they draw, or, rather, push by them, without chafing. The animals always have a hole perforated in their nostrils, through which a rope is passed, serving as reins, and rendering them extremely tractable; the wildest and most stubborn animals are completely subdued by this mode of controlling them, and can be led unresisting anywhere. This mode of harnessing seems to enable the animal to bring more strength to bear upon the purpose for which he is employed, than when the yoke is placed, as is the case with us, about the throat and shoulders. It is laid down in natural history that the greatest strength of horned animals lies in the head and neck, but, in placing the yoke on the breast, we get it out of reach of both head and neck, and the animal draws the load behind by the mere force of the weight and impetus of body, as given by the limbs. Wouldn't it be worth while to break a yoke of steers to this mode, and test the matter at the next Connecticut ploughing-match? We merely suggest the thing. The Cuban horse deserves more than a passing notice in this connection. He is a remarkably valuable animal. Though small and delicate of limb, he can carry a great weight; and his gait is a sort of _march_, something like our pacing horses, and remarkably easy under the saddle. They have great power of endurance, are small eaters, and very docile and easy to take care of. The Montero inherits all the love of his Moorish ancestors for the horse, and never stirs abroad without him. He considers himself established for life when he possesses a good horse, a sharp Toledo blade, and a pair of silver spurs, and from very childhood is accustomed to the saddle. They tell you long stories of their horses, and would make them descended direct from the Kochlani,[45] if you will permit them. Their size may readily be arrived at from the fact that they rarely weigh over six hundred pounds; but they are very finely proportioned. The visitor, as he passes inland, will frequently observe upon the fronts of the clustering dwelling-houses attempts at representations of birds and various animals, looking like anything but what they are designed to depict, the most striking characteristic being the gaudy coloring and remarkable size. Pigeons present the colossal appearance of ostriches, and dogs are exceedingly elephantine in their proportions. Especially in the suburbs of Havana may this queer fancy be observed to a great extent, where attempts are made to depict domestic scenes, and the persons of either sex engaged in appropriate occupations. If such ludicrous objects were met with anywhere else but in Cuba, they would be called caricatures, but here they are regarded with the utmost complacency, and innocently considered as ornamental.[46] Somehow this is a very general passion among the humbler classes, and is observable in the vicinity of Matanzas and Cardenas, as well as far inland, at the small hamlets. The exterior of the town houses is generally tinted blue, or some brown color, to protect the eyes of the inhabitants from the powerful reflection of the ever-shining sun. One of the most petty and annoying experiences that the traveller upon the island is sure to meet with, is the arbitrary tax of time, trouble and money to which he is sure to be subjected by the petty officials of every rank in the employment of government; for, by a regular and legalized system of arbitrary taxation upon strangers, a large revenue is realized. Thus, the visitor is compelled to pay some five dollars for a landing permit, and a larger sum, say seven dollars, to get away again. If he desires to pass out of the city where he has landed, a fresh permit and passport are required, at a further expense, though you bring one from home signed by the Spanish consul of the port where you embarked, and have already been adjudged by the local authorities. Besides all this, you are watched, and your simplest movements noted down and reported daily to the captain of police, who takes the liberty of stopping and examining all your newspapers, few of which are ever permitted to be delivered to their address; and, if you are thought to be a suspicious person, your letters, like your papers, are unhesitatingly devoted to "government purposes." An evidence of the jealous care which is exercised to prevent strangers from carrying away any information in detail relative to the island, was evinced to the writer in a tangible form on one occasion in the Paseo de Isabella. A young French artist had opened his portfolio, and was sketching one of the prominent statues that grace the spot, when an officer stepped up to him, and, taking possession of his pencil and other materials, conducted him at once before some city official within the walls of Havana. Here he was informed that he could not be allowed to sketch even a tree without a permit signed by the captain-general. As this was the prominent object of the Frenchman's visit to the island, and as he was really a professional artist sketching for self-improvement, he succeeded, after a while, in convincing the authorities of these facts, and he was then, as a great favor, supplied with a permit (for which he was compelled to pay an exorbitant fee), which guaranteed to him the privilege of sketching, with certain restrictions as to fortifications, military posts, and harbor views; the same, however, to expire after ninety days from the date. The great value and wealth of the island has been kept comparatively secret by this Japan-like watchfulness; and hence, too, the great lack of reliable information, statistical or otherwise, relating to its interests, commerce, products, population, modes and rates of taxation, etc. Jealous to the very last degree relative to the possession of Cuba, the home government has exhausted its ingenuity in devising restrictions upon its inhabitants; while, with a spirit of avarice also goaded on by necessity, it has yearly added to the burthen of taxation upon the people to an unparalleled extent. The cord _may_ be severed, and the overstrained bow will spring back to its native and upright position! The Cubans are patient and long-suffering, that is sufficiently obvious to all; and yet Spain may break the camel's back by one more feather! The policy that has suppressed all statistical information, all historical record of the island, all accounts of its current prosperity and growth, is a most short-sighted one, and as unavailing in its purpose as it would be to endeavor to keep secret the diurnal revolutions of the earth. No official public chart of the harbor of Havana has ever been issued by the Spanish government, no maps of it given by the home government as authentic; they would draw a screen over this tropical jewel, lest its dazzling brightness should tempt the cupidity of some other nation. All this effort at secrecy is little better than childishness on their part, since it is impossible, with all their precautions, to keep these matters secret. It is well known that our war department at Washington contains faithful sectional and complete drawings of every important fortification in Cuba, and even the most reliable charts and soundings of its harbors, bays and seaboard generally. The political condition of Cuba is precisely what might be expected of a Castilian colony thus ruled, and governed by such a policy. Like the home government, she presents a remarkable instance of stand-still policy; and from one of the most powerful kingdoms, and one of the most wealthy, is now the humblest and poorest. Other nations have labored and succeeded in the race of progress, while her adherence to ancient institutions, and her dignified scorn of "modern innovations," amount in fact to a species of retrogression, which has placed her far below all her sister governments of Europe. The true Hidalgo spirit, which wraps itself up in an antique garb, and shrugs its shoulders at the advance of other countries, still rules over the beautiful realm of Ferdinand and Isabella, and its high-roads still boast their banditti and worthless gipsies, as a token of the declining power of the Castilian crown. FOOTNOTES: [43] According to the Spanish slave code, the slave can be kept at work in Cuba only from sunrise till sunset, with an interval for repose at noon of two hours. But this is not regarded in the manufacturing season, which, after all, the slaves do not seem to dread, as they are granted more privileges at this period, and are better fed, with more variety of meats and spices, with other agreeable indulgences. [44] The coffee-tree requires to be protected, at least partially, from the sun; hence the planting of bananas and other trees in their midst. [45] "Those horses, called by the Arabians Kochlani, of whom a written genealogy has been kept for two thousand years. They are said to derive their origin from King Solomon's steeds."--_Niebuhr._ [46] "On the fronts of the shops and houses, and on plastered walls by the way-side, you continually see painted birds, and beasts, and creeping things, men and women in their various vocations and amusements, and some things and some images not strictly forbidden by the letter of the commandment, being like nothing in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth!"--_Rev. Abiel Abbot's Letters._ CHAPTER XII. TACON'S SUMMARY MODE OF JUSTICE. Probably of all the governors-general that have filled the post in Cuba none is better known abroad, or has left more monuments of his enterprise, than Tacon. His reputation at Havana is of a somewhat doubtful character; for, though he followed out with energy the various improvements suggested by Aranjo, yet his modes of procedure were so violent, that he was an object of terror to the people generally, rather than of gratitude. He vastly improved the appearance of the capital and its vicinity, built the new prison, rebuilt the governor's palace, constructed a military road to the neighboring forts, erected a spacious theatre and market-house (as related in connection with Marti), arranged a new public walk, and opened a vast parade ground without the city walls, thus laying the foundation of the new city which has now sprung up in this formerly desolate suburb. He suppressed the gaming-houses, and rendered the streets, formerly infested with robbers, as secure as those of Boston or New York. But all this was done with a bold military arm. Life was counted of little value, and many of the first people fell before his orders. Throughout all his career, there seemed ever to be within him a romantic love of justice, and a desire to administer it impartially; and some of the stories, well authenticated, illustrating this fact, are still current in Havana. One of these, as characteristic of Tacon and his rule, is given in this connection, as nearly in the words of the narrator as the writer can remember them, listened to in "La Dominica's." During the first year of Tacon's governorship, there was a young Creole girl, named Miralda Estalez, who kept a little cigar-store in the _Calle de Mercaderes_, and whose shop was the resort of all the young men of the town who loved a choicely-made and superior cigar. Miralda was only seventeen, without mother or father living, and earned an humble though sufficient support by her industry in the manufactory we have named, and by the sales of her little store. She was a picture of ripened tropical beauty, with a finely rounded form, a lovely face, of soft, olive tint, and teeth that a Tuscarora might envy her. At times, there was a dash of languor in her dreamy eye that would have warmed an anchorite; and then her cheerful jests were so delicate, yet free, that she had unwittingly turned the heads, not to say hearts, of half the young merchants in the _Calle de Mercaderes_. But she dispensed her favors without partiality; none of the rich and gay exquisites of Havana could say they had ever received any particular acknowledgment from the fair young girl to their warm and constant attention. For this one she had a pleasant smile, for another a few words of pleasing gossip, and for a third a snatch of a Spanish song; but to none did she give her confidence, except to young Pedro Mantanez, a fine-looking boatman, who plied between the Punta and Moro Castle, on the opposite side of the harbor. Pedro was a manly and courageous young fellow, rather above his class in intelligence, appearance and associations, and pulled his oars with a strong arm and light heart, and loved the beautiful Miralda with an ardor romantic in its fidelity and truth. He was a sort of leader among the boatmen of the harbor for reason of his superior cultivation and intelligence, and his quick-witted sagacity was often turned for the benefit of his comrades. Many were the noble deeds he had done in and about the harbor since a boy, for he had followed his calling of a waterman from boyhood, as his fathers had done before him. Miralda in turn ardently loved Pedro; and, when he came at night and sat in the back part of her little shop, she had always a neat and fragrant cigar for his lips. Now and then, when she could steal away from her shop on some holiday, Pedro would hoist a tiny sail in the prow of his boat, and securing the little stern awning over Miralda's head, would steer out into the gulf, and coast along the romantic shore. There was a famous roué, well known at this time in Havana, named Count Almonte, who had frequently visited Miralda's shop, and conceived quite a passion for the girl, and, indeed, he had grown to be one of her most liberal customers. With a cunning shrewdness and knowledge of human nature, the count besieged the heart of his intended victim without appearing to do so, and carried on his plan of operations for many weeks before the innocent girl even suspected his possessing a partiality for her, until one day she was surprised by a present from him of so rare and costly a nature as to lead her to suspect the donor's intentions at once, and to promptly decline the offered gift. Undismayed by this, still the count continued his profuse patronage in a way to which Miralda could find no plausible pretext of complaint. At last, seizing upon what he considered a favorable moment, Count Almonte declared his passion to Miralda, besought her to come and be the mistress of his broad and rich estates at Cerito, near the city, and offered all the promises of wealth, favor and fortune; but in vain. The pure-minded girl scorned his offer, and bade him never more to insult her by visiting her shop. Abashed but not confounded, the count retired, but only to weave a new snare whereby he could entangle her, for he was not one to be so easily thwarted. One afternoon, not long after this, as the twilight was settling over the town, a file of soldiers halted just opposite the door of the little cigar-shop, when a young man, wearing a lieutenant's insignia, entered, and asked the attendant if her name was Miralda Estalez, to which she timidly responded. "Then you will please to come with me." "By what authority?" asked the trembling girl. "The order of the governor-general." "Then I must obey you," she answered; and prepared to follow him at once. Stepping to the door with her, the young officer directed his men to march on; and, getting into a volante, told Miralda they would drive to the guard-house. But, to the surprise of the girl, she soon after discovered that they were rapidly passing the city gates, and immediately after were dashing off on the road to Cerito. Then it was that she began to fear some trick had been played upon her; and these fears were soon confirmed by the volante's turning down the long alley of palms that led to the estate of Count Almonte. It was in vain to expostulate now; she felt that she was in the power of the reckless nobleman, and the pretended officer and soldiers were his own people, who had adopted the disguise of the Spanish army uniform. Count Almonte met her at the door, told her to fear no violence, that her wishes should be respected in all things save her personal liberty,--that he trusted, in time, to persuade her to look more favorably upon him, and that in all things he was her slave. She replied contemptuously to his words, and charged him with the cowardly trick by which he had gained control of her liberty. But she was left by herself, though watched by his orders at all times to prevent her escape. She knew very well that the power and will of Count Almonte were too strong for any humble friend of hers to attempt to thwart; and yet she somehow felt a conscious strength in Pedro, and secretly cherished the idea that he would discover her place of confinement, and adopt some means to deliver her. The stiletto is the constant companion of the lower classes, and Miralda had been used to wear one even in her store against contingency; but she now regarded the tiny weapon with peculiar satisfaction, and slept with it in her bosom! Small was the clue by which Pedro Mantanez discovered the trick of Count Almonte. First this was found out, then that circumstance, and these, being put together, they led to other results, until the indefatigable lover was at last fully satisfied that he had discovered her place of confinement. Disguised as a friar of the order of San Felipe, he sought Count Almonte's gates at a favorable moment, met Miralda, cheered her with fresh hopes, and retired to arrange some certain plan for her delivery. There was time to think _now_; heretofore he had not permitted himself even an hour's sleep; but she was safe,--that is, not in immediate danger,--and he could breathe more freely. He knew not with whom to advise; he feared to speak to those above him in society, lest they might betray his purpose to the count, and his own liberty, by some means, be thus jeopardized. He could only consider with himself; he must be his own counsellor in this critical case. At last, as if in despair, he started to his feet, one day, and exclaimed to himself, "Why not go to head-quarters at once? why not see the governor-general, and tell him the whole truth? Ah! see him?--how is that to be effected? And then this Count Almonte is a _nobleman_! They say Tacon loves justice. We shall see. I _will_ go to the governor-general; it cannot do any harm, if it does not do any good. I can but try." And Pedro did seek the governor. True, he did not at once get audience of him,--not the first, nor the second, nor third time: but he persevered, and was admitted at last. Here he told his story in a free, manly voice, undisguisedly and open in all things, so that Tacon was pleased. "And the girl?" asked the governor-general, over whose countenance a dark scowl had gathered. "Is she thy sister?" "No, Excelencia, she is dearer still; she is my betrothed." The governor, bidding him come nearer, took a golden cross from his table, and, handing it to the boatman, as he regarded him searchingly, said, "Swear that what you have related to me is true, as you hope for heaven!" "I swear!" said Pedro, kneeling and kissing the emblem with simple reverence. The governor turned to his table, wrote a few brief lines, and, touching a bell, summoned a page from an adjoining room, whom he ordered to send the captain of the guard to him. Prompt as were all who had any connection with the governor's household, the officer appeared at once, and received the written order, with directions to bring Count Almonte and a young girl named Miralda immediately before him. Pedro was sent to an anteroom, and the business of the day passed on as usual in the reception-hall of the governor. Less than two hours had transpired when the count and Miralda stood before Tacon. Neither knew, the nature of the business which had summoned them there. Almonte half suspected the truth, and the poor girl argued to herself that her fate could not but be improved by the interference, let its nature be what it might. "Count Almonte, you doubtless know why I have ordered you to appear here." "Excelencia, I fear that I have been indiscreet," was the reply. "You adopted the uniform of the guards for your own private purposes upon this young girl, did you not?" "Excelencia, I cannot deny it." "Declare, upon your honor, Count Almonte, whether she is unharmed whom you have thus kept a prisoner." "Excelencia, she is as pure as when she entered beneath my roof," was the truthful reply. The governor turned, and whispered something to his page, then continued his questions to the count, while he made some minutes upon paper. Pedro was now summoned to explain some matter, and, as he entered, the governor-general turned his back for one moment as if to seek for some papers upon his table, while Miralda was pressed in the boatman's arms. It was but for a moment, and the next, Pedro was bowing humbly before Tacon. A few moments more and the governor's page returned, accompanied by a monk of the church of Santa Clara, with the emblems of his office. "Holy father," said Tacon, "you will bind the hands of this Count Almonte and Miralda Estalez together in the bonds of wedlock!" "Excelencia!" exclaimed the count, in amazement. "Not a word, Señor; it is your part to obey!" "My nobility, Excelencia!" "Is forfeited!" said Tacon. Count Almonte had too many evidences before his mind's eye of Tacon's mode of administering justice and of enforcing his own will to dare to rebel, and he doggedly yielded in silence. Poor Pedro, not daring to speak, was half-crazed to see the prize he had so long coveted thus about to be torn from him. In a few moments the ceremony was performed, the trembling and bewildered girl not daring to thwart the governor's orders, and the priest declared them husband and wife. The captain of the guard was summoned and despatched with some written order, and, in a few subsequent moments, Count Almonte, completely subdued and broken-spirited, was ordered to return to his plantation. Pedro and Miralda were directed to remain in an adjoining apartment to that which had been the scene of this singular procedure. Count Almonte mounted his horse, and, with a single attendant, soon passed out of the city gates. But hardly had he passed the corner of the Paseo, when a dozen musketeers fired a volley upon him, and he fell a corpse upon the road! His body was quietly removed, and the captain of the guard, who had witnessed the act, made a minute upon his order as to the time and place, and, mounting his horse, rode to the governor's palace, entering the presence chamber just as Pedro and Miralda were once more summoned before the governor. "Excelencia," said the officer, returning the order, "it is executed!" "Is the count dead?" "Excelencia, yes." "Proclaim, in the usual manner, the marriage of Count Almonte and Miralda Estalez, and also that she is his legal widow, possessed of his titles and estates. See that a proper officer attends her to the count's estate, and enforces this decision." Then, turning to Pedro Mantanez, he said, "No man nor woman in this island is so humble but that they may claim justice of Tacon!" The story furnishes its own moral. CHAPTER XIII. Consumption of tobacco--The universal cigar--Lady smokers--The fruits of Cuba--Flour a prohibited article--The royal palm--West Indian trees--Snakes, animals, etc.--The Cuba blood-hound--Mode of training him--Remarkable instinct--Importation of slaves--Their cost--Various African tribes--Superstitious belief--Tattooing--Health of the negroes--Slave laws of the island--Food of the negroes--Spanish law of emancipation--General treatment of the slaves. The consumption of tobacco,[47] in the form of cigars, is absolutely enormous in the island. Every man, woman and child, seems to smoke; and it strikes one as rather peculiar, to say the least of it, to see a lady smoking her cigarito in the parlor, or on the verandah; but this is very common. The men, of all degrees, smoke, and smoke everywhere; in the houses, in the street, in the theatre, in the cafés, in the counting-room; eating, drinking, and, truly, it would seem, sleeping, they smoke, smoke, smoke. The slave and his master, the maid and her mistress, boy and man,--all, all smoke; and it is really odd that vessels don't scent Havana far out at sea before they heave in sight of its headlands. No true Havanese ever moves a foot without his portable armory of cigars, as indispensable to him as is his quiver to the wild Indian, and he would feel equally lost without it. Some one has facetiously said that the cigar ought to be the national emblem of Cuba. The gentlemen consume from ten to twelve cigars per day, and many of the women half that number, saying nothing of the juvenile portion of the community. The consequence of this large and increasing consumption, including the heavy export of the article, is to employ a vast number of hands in the manufacture of cigars, and the little stores and stalls where they are made are plentifully sprinkled all over the city, at every corner and along the principal streets. It is true that the ladies of the best classes in Havana have abandoned the practice of smoking, or at least they have ostensibly done so, never indulging absolutely in public; but the writer has seen a noted beauty whose teeth were much discolored by the oil which is engendered in the use of the paper cigars, thus showing that, although they no longer smoke in public, yet the walls of their boudoirs are no strangers to the fumes of tobacco. This is the only form in which the weed is commonly used here. You rarely meet a snuff-taker, and few, if any, chew tobacco. It is astonishing how passionately fond of smoking the negroes become; with heavy pipes, well filled, they inhale the rich narcotic, driving it out at the nostrils in a slow, heavy stream, and half dozing over the dreamy and exhilarating process. They are fully indulged in this taste by their masters, whether in town, or inland upon the plantations. The postilions who wait for fare in the streets pass four-fifths of their time in this way, and dream over their pipes of pure Havana. We can have but a poor idea, at the north, of tropical fruits, for only a portion of them are of a nature to admit of exportation, and those must be gathered in an unripe condition in order to survive a short sea voyage. The orange in Boston, and the orange in Havana, are vastly different; the former has been picked green and ripened on ship-board, the latter was on the tree a few hours before you purchased it, and ripened upon its native stem. So of the bananas, one of the most delightful of all West India fruits, and which grow everywhere in Cuba with prodigal profuseness. The principal fruits of the island are the banana, mango, pomegranate, orange, pine-apple,[48] zapota, tamarind, citron, fig, cocoa, lemon, rose-apple and bread-fruit. Though any of these are eaten freely of at all hours, yet the orange seems to be the Creole's favorite, and he seldom rises from his bed in the morning until he has drank his cup of strong coffee, and eaten three or four oranges, brought fresh and prepared to him by a slave. The practice is one which the visitor falls very naturally into, and finds most agreeable. They have a saying that "the orange is gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night." The most singular of these varieties of fruits (by no means embracing all) is the rose-apple, which, when eaten, has the peculiar and very agreeable flavor of otto of rose, and this is so strong that to eat more than one at a time is almost unpleasant. It has a very sweet taste, and flavors some soups finely. Of these fruit trees, the lemon is decidedly the most ornamental and pretty, for, though small and dwarfish, like the American quince, yet it hangs with flowers, small lemons, and ripe fruit, all together, reminding one of the eastern _Alma_,[49] and forming an uncommon and beautiful sight. This agreeable phenomenon will surprise you at every turn upon the coffee plantations. But the article of food most required in the island is flour, while the importation of it is made so unreasonably expensive as to amount to a positive prohibition upon the article. On foreign flour there is a fixed duty of _ten dollars_, to which if we add the one and a half per cent., with other regular charges, the duty will amount to about ten dollars and fifty cents per barrel. This enormous tax on flour prevents its use altogether in the island, except by the wealthier classes. True, there is a home-made, Spanish article, far inferior, which costs somewhat less, being imported from far-off Spain without the prohibitory clause. The estimate of the consumption of flour in this country gives one and a half barrel per head, per annum; but let us suppose that the free population consume but one. The free population--that is, the whites exclusively, not including the large number of free negroes--numbers over six hundred thousand; if the island belonged to this country, there would immediately arise a demand for six hundred thousand barrels of flour per annum, for the duty would no longer exist as a prohibition upon this necessary article. At four dollars and fifty cents per barrel, this would make the sum of two million seven hundred thousand dollars; and if we allow half a barrel each to the slaves and free blacks, which would be the natural result, being not only the best but cheapest food, we have an annual demand of from four to five hundred thousand barrels more of the great staple production of the United States. This is an item worth considering by political economists. At the present time, the imports into this country from thence exceed our exports to Cuba to the amount of nearly one million of dollars annually. But we were writing of the vegetable productions of the island, when this digression occurred. The Royal Palm is the noblest tree of Cuba, rising from thirty to fifty feet, and sometimes even twice this height, with a straight stem, while from the top spring the broad and beautiful leaves, in a knot, like a plume of ostrich feathers. The bark is equally divided by ornamental ringlets encircling it, each one marking a year of its age. A peculiarity of this tree is, that it has no substance in the interior of the trunk,[50] yet the outside, to the thickness of an inch and more, makes the finest of boards, and, when seasoned, will turn a board nail with one stroke of the hammer. The top of the palm yields a vegetable which is much used upon the table, and, when boiled, resembles in flavor our cauliflower. The cocoanut tree very much resembles the palm, the branches diverging, like the ribs of an umbrella, from one common centre, among which the fruit hangs in tempting clusters far out of reach from the ground. The plantain, with its profuse clusters of finger-like fruit, grows low like the banana, which it vastly resembles, and the entire trunk of both are renewed yearly; the old stock, after yielding its crop, decaying rapidly, and forming the most nutritious matter for the soil that can be had. Many of the hedges through the plantations are formed of aloes, of a large and luxuriant growth, with dagger-like points, and stiff, long leaves, bidding defiance to ingress or egress, yet ever ornamented with a fragrant cup-like flower. Lime hedges are also very abundant, with their clusters of white blossoms, and there is a vast supply of mahogany and other precious woods, in the extensive forests. It is somewhat remarkable that there is not a poisonous reptile or animal of any sort in Cuba. Snakes of various species abound, but are said to be perfectly inoffensive, though sometimes destructive to domestic fowls. During a pleasant trip between San Antonio and Alquizar, in a volante with a planter, this subject happened to be under discussion, when the writer discovered a snake, six feet long, and as large at the middle as his arm, directly before the volante. On suddenly exclaiming, and pointing it out, the planter merely replied by giving its species, and declaring that a child might sleep with it unharmed. In the meantime, it was a relief to see the _innocent_ creature hasten out of the way and secrete itself in a neighboring hedge. Lizards, tarantulas and chameleons, abound, but are considered harmless. The writer has awakened in the morning and found several lizards creeping on the walls of his apartment. Only one small quadruped is found in Cuba that is supposed to be indigenous, and that is called the hutia, much resembling a mouse, but without the tail. The Cuban blood-hound, of which we hear so much, is not a native of the island, but belongs to an imported breed, resembling the English mastiff, though with longer nose and limbs. He is naturally a fierce, blood-thirsty animal, but the particular qualities which fit him for tracing the runaway slaves are wholly acquired by careful and expert training. This training of the hounds to fit them for following and securing the runaway negroes is generally entrusted to a class of men who go about from one plantation to another, and who are usually Monteros or French overseers out of employment. Each plantation keeps more or less of these dogs, more as a precautionary measure, however, than for actual use, for so certain is the slave that he will be instantly followed as soon as he is missed, and easily traced by the hounds, of whose instinct he is fully aware, that he rarely attempts to escape from his master. In one respect this acts as a positive advantage to the negroes themselves, for the master, feeling a confidence relative to their possession and faithfulness, and well knowing the ease with which they can at once be secured should they run away, is thus enabled to leave them comparatively free to roam about the plantation, and they undergo no surveillance except during working hours, when an overseer is of course always somewhere about, looking after them, and prompting those that are indolent. The blood-hounds are taken when quite young, tied up securely, and a negro boy is placed to tease and annoy them, occasionally administering a slight castigation upon the animals, taking care to keep out of the reach of their teeth. This whipping is generally administered under the direction of the trainer, who takes good care that it shall not be sufficiently severe to really hurt the dogs or crush their spirit of resistance. As the dogs grow older, negro men, in place of boys, are placed to fret and irritate them, occasionally administering, as before, slight castigations upon the dogs, but under the same restrictions; and they also resort to the most ingenious modes of vexing the animals to the utmost, until the very sight of a negro will make them howl. Finally, after a slave has worried them to the last degree, he is given a good start, and the ground is marked beforehand, a tree being selected, when the dogs are let loose after him. Of course they pursue him with open jaws and the speed of the wind; but the slave climbs the tree, and is secure from the vengeance of the animals. This is the exact position in which the master desires them to place his runaway slave--"tree him," and then set up a howl that soon brings up the hunters. They are never set upon the slaves to bite or injure them, but only placed upon their track to follow and hunt them. So perfect of scent are these animals, that the master, when he is about to pursue a runaway, will find some clothing, however slight, which the missing slave has left behind him, and giving it to the hounds to smell, can then rely upon them to follow the slave through whole plantations of his class, none of whom they will molest, but, with their noses to the ground, will lead straight to the woods, or wherever the slave has sought shelter. On the plantations these dogs are always kept chained when not in actual use, the negroes not being permitted to feed or to play with them; they are scrupulously fed by the overseer or master, and thus constitute the animal police of the plantation. In no wise can they be brought to attack a white man, and it would be difficult for such to provoke them to an expression of rage or anger, while their early and systematic training makes them feel a natural enmity to the blacks, which is of course most heartily reciprocated. Cuba has been called the hot-bed of slavery; and it is in a certain sense true. The largest plantations own from three to five hundred negroes, which establishments require immense investments of capital successfully to manage. A slave, when first landed, is worth, if sound, from four to five hundred dollars, and more as he becomes acclimated and instructed, their dull natures requiring a vast deal of watchful training before they can be brought to any positive usefulness, in doing which the overseers have found kindness go a vast deal farther than roughness. Trifling rewards, repaying the first efforts at breaking in of the newly imported negro, establishes a good understanding at once, and thus they soon grow very tractable, though they do not for a long time understand a single word of Spanish that is addressed to them. These negroes are from various African tribes, and their characteristics are visibly marked, so that their nationality is at once discernible, even to a casual observer. Thus the Congos are small in stature, but agile and good laborers; the Fantee are a larger race, revengeful, and apt to prove uneasy; those from the Gold Coast are still more powerful, and command higher prices, and when well treated make excellent domestic servants. The Ebros are less black than the others, being almost mulatto. There is a tribe known as the Ashantees, very rare in Cuba, as they are powerful at home, and consequently are rarely conquered in battle, or taken prisoners by the shore tribes in Africa, who sell them to the slave factories on the coast. They are prized, like those from the Gold Coast, for their strength. Another tribe, known as the Carrobalees, are highly esteemed by the planters, but yet they are avoided when first imported, from the fact that they have a belief and hope, very powerful among them, that after death they will return to their native land, and therefore, actuated by a love of home, these poor exiles are prone to suicide. This superstition is also believed in by some other tribes; and when a death thus occurs, the planter, as an example to the rest, and to prevent a like occurrence among them, burns the body, and scatters the ashes to the wind! The tattooed faces, bodies and limbs, of the larger portion of the slaves, especially those found inland upon the plantations, indicate their African birth; those born upon the island seldom mark themselves thus, and being more intelligent than their parents, from mingling with civilization, are chosen generally for city labor, becoming postilions, house-servants, draymen, laborers upon the wharves, and the like, presenting physical developments that a white man cannot but envy on beholding, and showing that for some philosophical reason the race thus transplanted improves physically, at least. They are remarkably healthy; indeed, all classes of slaves are so, except when an epidemic breaks out among them, and then it rages more fearfully far than with the whites. Thus the cholera and small-pox always sweep them off by hundreds when these diseases get fairly introduced among them. If a negro is sick he requires just twice as much medicine as a white man to affect him, but for what reason is a mystery in the practice of the healing art. The prevailing illness with them is bowel complaints, to which they are always more or less addicted, and their food is therefore regulated to obviate this trouble as far as possible, but they always eat freely of the fruits about them, so ripe and inviting, and so plentiful, too, that half the crop and more, usually rots upon the ground ungathered. The swine are frequently let loose to help clear the ground of its overburdened and ripened fruits. The slaves upon the plantations in all outward circumstances seem quite thoughtless and happy; the slave code of the island, which regulates their government, is never widely departed from. The owners are obliged to instruct them all in the Catholic faith, and they are each baptized as soon as they can understand the signification of the ceremony. The law also provides that the master shall give a certain quantity and variety of food to his slaves; but on this score slaves rarely if ever have cause of complaint, as it is plainly for the planter's interest to keep them in good condition. There is one redeeming feature in Spanish slavery, as contrasted with that of our southern country, and that is, that the laws favor emancipation. If a slave by his industry is able to accumulate money enough to pay his _first cost_ to his master, however unwilling the planter may be to part with him, the law guarantees him his freedom. This the industrious slave can accomplish at farthest in seven years, with the liberty and convenience which all are allowed. Each one, for instance, is permitted to keep a pig, and to cultivate a small piece of land for his own purposes, by raising corn; the land yielding two crops to the year, they can render a pig fat enough, and the drovers pay fifty dollars apiece to the slaves for good ones. This is a _redeeming_ feature, but it is a bitter pill at best. There are doubtless instances of cruelty towards the slaves, but the writer is forced to acknowledge that he never witnessed a single evidence of this during his stay in the island,[51] and, while he would be the last person to defend slavery as an institution, yet he is satisfied that the practical evils of its operation are vastly overrated by ignorant persons. It is so obviously for the planter's interest to treat his slaves kindly, and to have due consideration for their health and comfort--that he must be a very short-sighted being not to realize this. What man would under-feed, ill-treat, or poorly care for a horse that he expected to serve him, in return, promptly and well? We have only to consider the subject in this light for a moment, to see how impossible it is that a system of despotism, severity and cruelty, would be exercised by a Cuban master towards his slaves. Let no ingenious person distort these remarks into a pro-slavery argument. God forbid! FOOTNOTES: [47] The name _tobacco_ is said to have been that of the pipe used by the native Indians to inhale the smoke with, consisting of a small tube, with two branches intended to enter the nostrils. [48] This highly-flavored and excellent fruit is so abundant in Cuba that the best sell in the market at a cent apiece. [49] "You never can cast your eyes on this tree, but you meet there either blossoms or fruit."--_Nieuhoff._ [50] It is remarkable that the palm tree, which grows so lofty, has not a root as big as a finger of the human hand. Its roots are small, thread-like, and almost innumerable. [51] "I believe the lash is seldom applied; I have never seen it, nor have I seen occasion for it."--_Rev. Abiel Abbot's Letters._ CHAPTER XIV. Pecuniary value of the slave-trade to Havana--The slave clippers--First introduction of slaves into Cuba--Monopoly of the traffic by England--Spain's disregard of treaty stipulations--Spanish perfidy--Present condition of Spain--Her decadence--Influence upon her American possessions--Slaves upon the plantations--The soil of Cuba--Mineral wealth of the island--The present condition of the people--The influences of American progress--What Cuba might be. Like Liverpool and Boston, in their early days, Havana has drawn an immense wealth from the slave-trade; it has been the great commercial item in the business for the capital year after year, and the fitting out of ventures, the manning of vessels, and other branches of trade connected therewith, have been the sources of uncounted profit to those concerned. The vessels employed in this business were built with an eye to the utmost speed. Even before the notion of clipper ships was conceived, these crafts were built on the clipper model, more generally known as Baltimore clippers. Over these sharp hulls was spread a quantity of canvas that might have served as an outfit for a seventy-four. The consummate art displayed in their construction was really curious, and they were utterly unfit for any legitimate commerce. Nor are these vessels by any means yet extinct. They hover about the island here and there at this very hour; now lying securely in some sheltered bay on the south side, and now seeking a rendezvous at the neighboring Isle of Pines. The trade still employs many crafts. They mount guns, have a magazine in accordance with their tonnage, with false decks that can be shipped and unshipped at will. It is well known that the Americans can produce the fastest vessels in the world; and speed is the grand desideratum with the slaver, consequently Americans are employed to build the fleet crafts that sail for the coast of Africa. The American builder must of course know the purpose for which he constructs these clippers; and, indeed, the writer is satisfied, from personal observation, that these vessels are built on speculation, and sent to Cuba to be sold to the highest bidder. Of course, being in a measure contraband, they bring large prices, and the temptation is strong to construct them, rather than to engage in the more regular models. This reference to the subject as connected with the commerce of the island, leads us to look back to the history of the pernicious traffic in human beings, from its earliest commencement in Cuba, and to trace its beginning, progress and main features. It has been generally supposed that Las Casas first suggested the plan of substituting African slave labor for that of the Indians in Cuba, he having noticed that the natives, entirely unused to labor, sunk under the hard tasks imposed upon them, while the robuster negroes thrived under the same circumstances. But negro slavery did not originate with Las Casas. Spain had been engaged in the slave trade for years, and long prior to the discovery of America by Columbus; and Zuñiga tells us that they abounded in Seville. Consequently Spanish emigrants from the old world brought their slaves with them to Cuba, and the transportation of negro slaves, born in slavery among Christians, was sanctioned expressly by royal ordinances. Ferdinand sent over fifty slaves to labor in the royal mines: Las Casas pleaded for the further employment of negroes, and consequent extension of the slave trade. "But covetousness," says Bancroft, "and not a mistaken benevolence, established the slave trade, which had nearly received its development before the charity of Las Casas was heard in defence of the Indians. Reason, policy and religion alike condemned the traffic." Cardinal Ximenes, the grand inquisitor of Spain, protested against the introduction of negroes in Hispaniola, foreseeing the dangers incident to their increase; and three centuries later the successful revolt of the slaves of Hayti, the first place in America which received African slaves, justified his intelligent predictions and forebodings. England embarked largely in the slave trade, and Queen Elizabeth shared in the guilty profits of the traffic. In the year 1713, when, after a period of rest, the slave trade was resumed, the English purchased of Spain a monopoly of the trade with the Spanish colonies, and she carried it on with great vigor and pecuniary success, until she had completely stocked these islands with blacks. In the year 1763 their number was estimated at sixty thousand. This fact will enable us to appreciate as it deserves the extreme modesty of the British government in fomenting abolition schemes in the island of Cuba, after contributing so largely to the creation of an evil which appears almost irremediable. We say a realizing sense of the circumstances of the case will enable us rightly to appreciate the character of the British government's philanthropy. We applaud England for her efforts at the suppression of the slave trade,--a traffic which all the powers of Christendom, Spain excepted, have united to crush,--but we cannot patiently contemplate her efforts to interfere with the internal economy of other countries, when she herself, as in the case of the Spanish colonies and of the United States, has so weighty a share of responsibility in the condition of things as they now exist; to say nothing of the social condition of her own subjects, which so imperatively demands that her charity should begin at home. We have said that Spain alone, of the great powers, has not done her part in the suppression of the slave trade.[52] She is solemnly pledged by treaty stipulations, to make unceasing war against it, and yet she tacitly connives at its continuance, and all the world knows that slaves are monthly, almost weekly, landed in Cuba. Notorious is it that the captains-general have regularly pocketed a fee of one doubloon or more for every slave landed, and that this has been a prolific source of wealth to them. The exceptions to this have been few, and the evidences are indisputable. Within a league of the capital are several large barracoons, as they are called, where the newly-imported slaves are kept, and offered for sale in numbers. The very fact that these establishments exist so near to Havana, is a circumstance from which each one may draw his own inference. No one can travel in Cuba without meeting on the various plantations groups of the newly-imported Africans. Valdez, who strenuously enforced the treaty obligations relative to the trade, without regard to private interest, was traduced by the Spaniards, and by their management fell into disfavor with his government at home. O'Donnell deluged the island with slaves during his administration, and filled his coffers with the fees accruing therefrom. Since his time the business has gone on,--to be sure less openly, and under necessary restrictions, but nevertheless with great pecuniary profit. At the same time the Spanish authorities have, while thus increasing the numbers of savage Africans reduced to a state of slavery, constantly endeavored to weaken the bonds of attachment between master and slave, and to ferment the unnatural hatred of races with the fearful design of preparing another St. Domingo for the Cubans, should they dare to strike a strenuous blow for freedom. We have thus seen that the Spanish crown is directly responsible for the introduction of slavery into Cuba, and that crown officers, invested with more than vice-regal authority, have sanctioned, up to this day, the accumulation and the aggravation of the evil. It is now clearly evident that the slave-trade will continue so long as the island of Cuba remains under the Spanish flag. The British government have remonstrated again and again with Spain, against this long-continued infraction of treaties; but the dogged obstinacy of the Spanish character has been proof against remonstrance and menace. She merits the loss of Cuba for her persistent treachery and perfidy, leaving out of the account a long list of foul wrongs practised upon the colony, the enormous burthen of taxes placed upon it, and the unequalled rigor of its rule. The time has come when the progress of civilization demands that the island shall pass into the hands of some power possessed of the ability and the will to crush out this remnant of barbarism. That power is clearly designated by the hand of Providence. No European nation can dream of obtaining Cuba; no administration in this country could stand up for one moment against the overwhelming indignation of the people, should it be weak enough to acquiesce in the transfer of Cuba to any European power. The island must be Spanish or American. Had it been the property of a first-rate power, of any other European sovereignty but Spain, it would long since have been a cause of war. It is only the imbecile weakness of Spain that has thus far protected her against the consequences of a continuous course of perfidy, tyranny and outrage. But the impunity of the feeble and the forbearance of the strong have their limits; and nations, like individuals, are amenable to the laws of retributive justice. The present condition of Spain is a striking illustration of the mutability of fortune, from which states, no more than individuals, are exempted. We read of such changes in the destinies of ancient empires,--the decadence of Egypt, the fall of Assyria, and Babylon, and Byzantium, and Rome; but their glory and fall were both so far distant in the recess of time, that their history seems, to all of us who have not travelled and inspected the monuments which attest the truth of these events, a sort of romance: whereas, in the case of Spain, we realize its greatness, and behold its fall! One reason why we feel so deep an interest in the fate of the Castilian power, is that the history of Spain is so closely interwoven with that of our own country,--discovered and colonized as it was under the auspices of the Spanish government. We owe our very existence to Spain, and from the close of the fifteenth century our histories have run on in parallel lines. But while America has gone on increasing in the scale of destiny, in grandeur, power and wealth, poor Spain has sunk in the scale of destiny, with a rapidity of decadence no less astonishing than the speed of our own progress. The discovery of America, as before alluded to, seemed to open to Spain a boundless source of wealth and splendid power; triumphs awaited her arms in both North and South America. Cortes in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru added vast territory and millions of treasure to the national wealth. But we have seen how sure is retribution. One by one those ill-gotten possessions have escaped the grasp of the mother country; and now, in her old age, poor, and enfeebled, and worn out, she clings, with the death-gripe of a plundered and expiring miser, to her last earthly possession in the New World. Moved in some degree by the same spirit that actuates the home government, the Cubans have heretofore viewed anything that looked like an attempt at improvement with a suspicious eye; they have learned to fear innovation; but this trait is yielding, as seen in the introduction of railroads, telegraphs, and even the lighting of the city of Havana by gas,--all done by Americans, who had first to contend with great opposition, and to run imminent risks and lavish energy and money; but when these things are once in the course of successful experiment, none are more ready than the Cubans to approve. This same characteristic, a clinging to the past and a fear of advancement, seems to have imparted itself to the very scenery of the island, for everything here appears to be of centuries in age, reminding one of the idea he has formed of the hallowed East. The style of the buildings is not dissimilar to that which is found throughout the Orient, and the trees and vegetable products increase the resemblance. Particularly in approaching Havana from the interior, the view of the city resembles almost precisely the Scriptural picture of Jerusalem. The tall, majestic palms, with their tufted tops, the graceful cocoanut tree, and many other peculiarities, give to the scenery of Cuba an Eastern aspect, very impressive to the stranger. It is impossible to describe to one who has not visited the tropics, the bright vividness with which each object, artificial or natural, house or tree, stands out in the clear liquid light, where there is no haze nor smoke to interrupt the view. Indeed, it is impossible to express fully how _everything_ differs in Cuba from our own country, so near at hand. The language, the people, the climate, the manners and customs, the architecture, the foliage, the flowers and general products, all and each afford broad contrasts to what the American has ever seen at home. But a long cannon-shot, as it were, off our southern coast, yet once upon its soil, the visitor seems to have been transported into another quarter of the globe, the first impression being, as we have said, decidedly of an Oriental character. But little effort of the imagination would be required to believe oneself in distant Syria, or some remote part of Asia. But let us recur for one moment to the subject of the slaves from which we have unwittingly digressed. On the plantations the slaves have some rude musical instruments, which they manufacture themselves, and which emit a dull monotonous sound, to the cadence of which they sit by moonlight and sing or chant, for hours together. One of these instruments is a rude drum to the beating of which they perform grotesque dances, with unwearying feet, really surprising the looker-on by their power of endurance in sustaining themselves in vigorous dancing. Generally, or as is often the case, a part of Saturday of each week is granted to the slaves, when they may frequently be seen engaged at ball, playing a curious game after their own fashion. This time of holiday many prefer to pass in working upon their own allotted piece of ground and in raising favorite vegetables and fruits, or corn for the fattening of the pig hard by, and for which the drovers, who regularly visit the plantations for the purpose, will pay them in good golden doubloons. It is thought that the city slave has a less arduous task than those in the country, for he is little exposed to the sun, and is allowed many privileges, such for instance as attending church, and in this the negroes seem to take particular delight, especially if well dressed. A few gaudy ribbons, and nice glass beads of high color are vastly prized by both sexes of the slaves in town and country. In the cities some mistresses take pleasure in decking out their immediate male and female attendants in fine style with gold ornaments in profusion. There was one beautiful sight the writer particularly noticed in the church of Santa Clara, viz: that before the altar all distinction was dropped, and the negro knelt beside the Don. The virgin soil of Cuba is so rich that a touch of the hoe prepares it for the plant, or, as Douglass Jerrold says of Australia, "just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest." So fertile a soil is not known to exist in any other portion of the globe. It sometimes produces three crops to the year, and in ordinary seasons two may be relied upon,--the consequence is that the Monteros have little more to do than merely to gather the produce they daily carry to market, and which also forms so large a portion of their own healthful and palatable food. The profusion of its flora and the variety of its forests are unsurpassed, while the multitude of its climbing shrubs gives a luxuriant richness to its scenery, which contributes to make it one of the most fascinating countries in the world. Nowhere are the necessities of life so easily supplied, or man so delicately nurtured. The richest soil of the island is the black, which is best adapted to the purpose of the sugar-planter, and for this purpose it is usually chosen. So productive is this description of land that the extensive sugar plantations, once fairly started, will run for years, without the soil being even turned, new cane starting up from the old roots, year after year, with abundant crops. This is a singular fact to us who are accustomed to see so much of artificial means expended upon the soil to enable it to bear even an ordinary crop to the husbandman. The red soil is less rich, and is better adapted to the planting of coffee, being generally preferred for this purpose, while the mulatto-colored earth is considered inferior, but still is very productive and is improved by the Monteros for planting tobacco, being first prepared with a mixture of the other two descriptions of soil which together form the richest compost, next to guano, known in agriculture. Coal is fortunately found on the island, of a bituminous nature; had this not been the case, the numerous steam engines which are now at work on the plantations would have soon consumed every vestige of wood on the island, though by proper economy the planter can save much by burning the refuse cane. The soil is also rich in mineral wealth, particularly in copper, iron and loadstone. Gold and silver mines have been opened, and in former times were worked extensively, but are now entirely abandoned. The copper mines near Sagua la Grande in 1841 yielded about four millions of dollars, but the exactions of the government were such that they greatly reduced the yield of the ore. An export duty of five per cent. was at first imposed upon the article: finally the exportation was prohibited altogether, unless shipped to old Spain, with a view of compelling the owners to smelt it in that country. These arbitrary measures soon reduced the profit of the business, and the working of the mines from producing in 1841 four millions, to about two by 1845, and finally they were abandoned. And now is it to be wondered at that the Creoles should groan under the load of oppressions forced upon them as depicted in the foregoing pages? No! On the contrary we feel that they are too forbearing, and look to the enervating influence of their clime as an excuse for their supineness under such gross wrongs. Their lovely climate and beautiful land are made gloomy by the persecutions of their oppressors; their exuberant soil groans with the burthens that are heaped upon it. They are not safe from prying inquiry at bed or board, and their every action is observed, their slightest words noted. They can sing no song not in praise of royalty, and even to hum an air wedded to republican verse is to provoke suspicion and perhaps arrest. The press is muzzled by the iron hand of power, and speaks only in adulation of a distant queen and a corrupt court. Foreign soldiers fatten upon the people, eating out their substance, and every village near the coast of the island is a garrison, every interior town is environed with bayonets! A vast deal has been said about the impregnable harbor of Havana, the "Gibraltar of America" being its common designation, but modern military science acknowledges no place to be impregnable. A thousand chances might happen which would give the place to an invading force; besides which it has been already twice taken; and though it may be said that on these occasions it was not nearly so well garrisoned as now, neither so well armed or manned, the reply is also ready that it has never been besieged by such a force as could now be brought against it, to say nothing of the vast advantage afforded by the modern facilities for destruction.[53] Were not the _inaccessible_ heights of Abraham scaled in a night? and how easily the impregnable fortress of San Juan de Ulloa fell! Havana could be attacked from the land side and easily taken by a resolute enemy. With the exception of this one fortress, the Moro, and the fort in its rear, the Cabensas, the island is very poorly defended, and is accessible to an invading force in almost any direction, either on the east, west, or south coast. Matanzas, but sixty miles from Havana, could be taken by a small force from the land side, and serve as a depot from whence to operate, should a systematic effort be organized. Cuba's boasted strength is chimerical. Steam and the telegraph are revolutionizing all business relations and the course of trade. A line of steamers, one of the best in the world, runs between New York and Havana, also New Orleans and Havana. By this means all important intelligence reaches Cuba in advance of any other source, and through this country. By the telegraph, Havana is brought within three days' communication with New York and Boston. All important advices must continue to reach the island through the United States, and the people must still look to this country for political and commercial information, and to the movement of our markets for the regulation of their own trade and commerce. New Orleans has become the great centre to which their interests will naturally tend; and thus we see another strong tie of common interest established between the island of Cuba and the United States. Naturally belonging to this country by every rule that can be applied, the writer believes that Cuba will ere long be politically ours. As the wise and good rejoice in the extension of civilization, refinement, the power of religion and high-toned morality, they will look forward hopefully to such an event. Once a part of this great confederacy, Cuba would immediately catch the national spirit and genius of our institutions, and the old Castilian state of dormancy would give way to Yankee enterprise, her length and breadth would be made to smile like a New England landscape Her sons and daughters would be fully awakened to a true sense of their own responsibility, intelligence would be sown broadcast, and the wealth of wisdom would shine among the cottages of the poor. In the place of the rolling drum and piercing fife, would be heard the clink of the hammer and the merry laugh of untrammelled spirits. The bayonets that bristle now on every hill-side would give place to waving corn, and bright fields of grain. The honest Montero would lay aside his Toledo blade and pistol holsters, and the citizen who went abroad after sunset would go unarmed. Modern churches, dedicated to pure Christianity, would raise their lofty spires and point towards heaven beside those ancient and time-eaten cathedrals. The barrack rooms and guard stations, in every street, town or village, would be transformed into school-houses, and the trade winds of the tropics would sweep over a new Republic! [Illustration: CHARACTERISTIC STREET SCENE.] FOOTNOTES: [52] English authorities,--Sir F. Buxton in the van,--declare that the extent of the slave trade has but slightly diminished, while the restrictions under which it is now carried on renders it more fatal than ever to the blacks. [53] "It is as well secured as it probably could be against an attack from the harbor, but could still be assailed with effect in the same way in which the French succeeded against Algiers, by landing a sufficient force in the rear."--_Alexander H. Everett._ CHAPTER XV. Area of Cuba--Extent of cultivated and uncultivated lands--Population--Proportion between the sexes--Ratio of legitimate to illegitimate births--Ratio between births and deaths--Agricultural statistics--Commerce and commercial regulations--Custom-house and port charges--Exports and imports--Trade with the United States--Universities and schools--Education--Charitable institutions--Railroads--Temperature. In addition to the statistical information incidentally contained in the preceding pages, we have prepared the following tables and statements from authentic sources, giving a general view of the resources, population, wealth, products and commerce, etc., of the island, with other items of interest and importance. _Area of Cuba._--Humboldt states the area of the island to be 43,380 geographical square miles. Mr. Turnbull puts it at 31,468, and, adding the areas of its dependencies, namely, the Isle of Pines, Turignano, Romano, Guajaba, Coco, Cruz, Paredon Grande, Barril, De Puerto, Eusenachos, Frances, Largo, and other smaller islands, makes the total 32,807 square miles. Years. Population. 1775, 170,370. 1791, 272,140. 1817, 551,998. 1827, 704,487, viz.: Whites, male, 168,653 Free colored, males, 51,962 " female, 142,398 " females, 54,532 -------- ------- 311,051 106,494 Slaves, 183,290 males, and 103,652 females, = 286,942. Total colored, 393,436. Excess of colored over white population, 82,305. Year 1841-- Whites, 418,291 Free colored, 152,838 Slaves, 436,495 --------- Total, 1,007,624 Excess of colored over white, 171,042 Year 1851-- Whites, 605,560 Free colored, 205,570 Slaves, 442,000 -------- Total, 1,253,130 Year 1854-- Total population, 1,500,000 _Proportions between the sexes._--In 1774 the white males formed 58 per cent., and the females 42 per cent., of the population; free colored, males, 52, females, 48; male slaves, 65, females, 35. Total, males, 58 per cent., females, 42. In 1792 the proportion was-- Whites, males, 0.55 " females, 0.45 Free colored, males, 0.47 " females, 0.53 Slaves, males, 0.56 " females, 0.44 Total, males, 0.53 " females, 0.47 In 1817-- Whites, males, 0.55 " females, 0.45 Free colored, males, 0.52 " females, 0.48 Slaves, males, 0.62 " females, 0.38 Total, males, 0.57 " females, 0.43 In 1827-- Whites, males, 0.54 " females, 0.46 Free colored, males, 0.48 " females, 0.52 Slaves, males, 0.64 Slaves, females, 0.36 Total, males, 0.56 " females, 0.44 In Paris, the ratio is 54.5 per cent. males, to 45.5 females; in England, 50.3 per cent. males, and 49.7 per cent. females, and in the United States, 51 per cent. males, and 49 per cent. females. The ratio of legitimate to illegitimate births, deduced from the observations of five years, is as follows: 2.1136 to 1 among the whites; 0.5058 to 1 among the colored; 1.0216 to 1 in the total. That is to say, establishing the comparison per centum, as in the proportion of the sexes, we have: Whites, 67.8 per cent. legitimate, and 32.2 per cent. illegitimate. Colored, 33.7 " " " 66.3 " " Total, 50.5 " " " 49.5 " " No capital or people of Europe, Stockholm alone excepted, offers so startling a result, nearly one half the number of births being illegitimate. Taking the average from the statements of births for five years, we find that in every 100 legitimate whites there are 51.1 males, and 48.9 females; and in an equal number of illegitimate, 49 males, and 51 females. Among people of color, in 100 legitimate births, 50.6 males, and 49.4 females; and in the illegitimate, 47.2 males, and 52.8 females. And finally, that, comparing the totals, we obtain in the legitimate, 51.6 males, and 48.4 females; and in the illegitimate, 47.1 males, and 52.9 females. Consequently these observations show that in Cuba, in the illegitimate births, the number of males is much less than that of females, and the contrary in the legitimate births. _Ratio between the Births and Deaths for five years._ +------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | | 1825 | 1826 | 1827 | 1828 | 1829 | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | Births, | 3,129 | 3,443 | 3,491 | 3,705 | 3,639 | | Deaths, | 2,698 | 2,781 | 3,077 | 3,320 | 3,712 | | Difference,| 431 | 662 | 414 | 385 | 73 | +------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ _Agriculture._--The total number of acres comprising the whole territory is 14,993,024. Of these, in 1830, there were used: In sugar-cane plantations, 172,608 " coffee trees, 184,352 " tobacco, 54,448 " lesser or garden and fruit culture, 823,424 -------- Total acres, 1,234,832 Leaving over 13,000,000 of acres uncultivated. Some of these uncultivated lands are appropriated to grazing, others to settlements and towns; the remainder occupied by mountains, roads, coasts, rivers and lakes,--the greater part, however, wild. Total value of lands in 1830, $94,396,300 Value of buildings, utensils, etc., 55,603,850 The different products of cultivation were valued as follows: Sugar canes in the ground, $6,068,877 Coffee trees, 32,500,000 Fruit trees, vegetables, etc., 46,940,700 Tobacco plants, 340,620 ----------- Total value of plants, 85,850,197 Total value of wood exported, consumed on the island and made into charcoal, $3,818,493 Minimum value of the forests, 190,624,000 Value of 138,982 slaves, at $300 each, 41,694,600 Total value of live stock, 39,617,885 RECAPITULATION. Lands, $94,396,300 Plants, including timber, 276,774,367 Buildings, engines and utensils, 54,603,850 Slaves, 41,694,600 Animals, 39,617,885 ----------- 507,087,002 ----------- Representative value of capital invested, 317,264,832 VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS. Sugar, $8,132,609 Molasses, 262,932 Coffee, 4,325,292 Cocoa, 74,890 ---------- Carried forward, 12,795,723 Brought forward, $12,795,723 Cotton, 125,000 Leaf tobacco, 687,240 Rice, 454,230 Beans, peas, onions, etc., 257,260 Indian corn, 4,853,418 Vegetables and fruits, 11,475,712 Grapes, 5,586,616 Casada, 146,144 Charcoal, 2,107,300 Woods or the products of woods, 1,741,195 ---------- Total value of vegetable productions, 40,229,838 Total value of animal productions, 9,023,116 ---------- 49,252,954 Total _net_ product of agricultural and rural industry 22,808,622 Capital invested, $338,917,705, produces, 48,839,928 COMMERCE AND COMMERCIAL REGULATIONS. _Import duties._--The rate of duty charged on the importation of foreign produce and manufactures in foreign bottoms is 24-1/2 and 30-1/4 on the tariff valuation of each article, while the same articles in Spanish bottoms, from a foreign port, pay 17-1/2 and 21-1/4 per cent. _Export duties._--Foreign flag for any port, 6-1/4 per cent. on tariff valuation. Spanish flag for a foreign port, 4-1/2 per cent. on tariff valuation. Spanish flag for Spanish port, 2-1/4 per cent. on tariff valuation; except leaf tobacco, which pays 12-1/2, 6-1/4 and 2-1/4 per cent., according to the flag and destination. An additional per centage, under various pretexts, is also levied on the total amount of all duties. Foreign flour is subject to a duty that is nearly prohibitory. Gold and silver are free of import duty, but pay, the former 1-1/4 and the latter 2-1/4 per cent., export. Every master of a vessel, on entering port, is obliged to present two manifests of his cargo and stores,--one to the boarding officers, and the other at the time of making entry and taking both the oaths, twenty-four hours after his arrival, with permission of making any necessary corrections within the twelve working hours; and every consignee is required to deliver a detailed invoice of each cargo to his, her or their consignment, within forty-eight hours after the vessel has entered port, and heavy penalties are incurred from mere omission or inaccuracy. The tonnage duty on foreign vessels is 12 rials, or $1.50, per register ton. On vessels arriving and departing in ballast or putting in in distress no duty is levied. Besides the tonnage duty, every foreign square-rigged vessel entering and loading incurs about $85 expenses, besides $5.50 for each day occupied in discharging. Foreign fore-and-aft vessels pay about $15 less port charges. The tonnage duties and port charges are very high. Foreign vessels pay $8.50 per ton. In the port of Havana an additional duty of 21-7/8 cents per ton is levied on all vessels for the support of the dredging machine. The wharf charges on foreign vessels are $1.50 for each 100 tons register. The light-house duties, officers' fees, etc., vary at the different ports of the island, but are exorbitantly high in all. At Baracoa, for instance, the following is the tariff of exactions: Tonnage duty, per ton, $1.50 Anchorage, 12.00 Free pass at the fort, 3.00 Health officer, 8.00 Interpreter, 5.00 Inspector's fee for sealing hatchway, 5.00 Inspecting vessel's register, 8.00 Clearance, 8.00 The actual expenses of discharging a foreign vessel of 160-4/95 tons, which remained a fortnight in the port of Havana, amounted to $900. IMPORTS AND EXPORTS OF CUBA FOR A SERIES OF SIXTEEN YEARS. Years. Imports. Exports. 1826 $14,925,754 $13,809,838 1827 17,352,854 14,286,192 1828 19,534,922 13,114,362 1829 18,695,856 13,952,405 1830 16,171,562 15,870,968 1831 15,548,791 12,918,711 1832 15,198,465 13,595,017 1834 18,511,132 13,996,100 1835 18,563,300 14,487,955 1836 20,722,072 14,059,246 1837 22,551,969 15,398,245 1838 22,940,357 20,346,407 1839 24,729,878 20,471,102 1840 25,217,796 21,481,848 1841 24,700,189 25,941,783 1842 24,637,527 26,684,701 During the last year (1842), the imports from the United States were, In Spanish vessels, $474,262 In Foreign do., $5,725,959 Exports to the United States for the same year, In Spanish vessels, $243,683 In Foreign do., $5,038,891 Total imports from the United States, $6,200,219 " exports to do., $5,282,574 Total number of arrivals in Spanish ports (1842), 2657 " clearances from do., 2727 The following table exhibits the exports from the principal towns in 1848: _North Side of the Island._ Havana. Matanzas. Cardenas. Sagua la Grande. Sugar (boxes) 671,440 318,931 13,900 34,628 Coffee (arrobas, 25lbs. each) 93,797 61,251 1,094 Molasses (hhds.) 25,886 61,793 60,508 8,327 Rum (pipes) 10,479 1 Cigars (thousands) 136,980 62 Mariel. Gibaro. Remedios. Neuvitas. Baracoa. Sugar (boxes) 1,648 5,595 4,293 Coffee (arrobas) 16,241 114 Molasses (hhds.) 8,336 16,201 1,880 5,030 Rum (pipes) 223 Cigars (boxes, 1000 each) 588 88 2,061 247 Tobacco (lbs.) 1,867,736 2,267 102,168 _South Side._ Manzanilla. Trinidad. St. Jago Cienfuegos. Santa de Cuba. Cruz. Sugar (boxes) 115 69,656 31,298 59,215 198 Coffee (arrobas) 3,609 548,432 128 Molasses (hhds.) 1,475 26,175 857 14,160 997 Rum (pipes) 60 554 379 181 Tobacco (lbs.) 315,570 1,208,536 5,000 2,669 Cigars (thousands) 542 399 4,575 41 155 Copper ore (lbs.) 571,826 _Universities, Schools, etc._--Besides the Royal University at Havana, there are several other learned institutes, such as the Royal Seminary of San Carlos y San Ambrosio, founded in 1773; a seminary for girls, founded in 1691; a free school for sculpture and painting, which dates from 1818; a free mercantile school, and some private seminaries, to which we have before referred. The Royal Economical Society of Havana, formerly called the Patriotic Society, was established in 1793, and is divided into three principal sections, on education, agriculture, commerce and popular industry; a department of history has been added. Several eminent and talented men have given eclat to this institution. The Medical School was organized in 1842. The means of general education are very narrow and inadequate. No report on the state of education in the island has been published since 1836. At that time, there were two hundred and ten schools for white, and thirty-one for colored children. In 1842, the public funds for educational purposes were reduced from thirty-two thousand to eight thousand dollars. Nueva Filipina, in a rich tobacco-growing district, with a population of thirty thousand souls, had but one school for forty pupils, a few years since. _Charitable Institutions, Hospitals, etc._--There are several charitable institutions in Havana, with ample funds and well managed. Such are the Casa Real de Beneficencia, the Hospital of San Lazaro and the Foundling Hospital,--Casa Real de Maternidad. In other parts of the island, there are eighteen hospitals, located in its chief towns. _Railroads._--The first railroad built in Cuba was that from Havana to Guines, forty-five miles in length, completed and opened in 1839. In 1848, there were two hundred and eighty-five miles of railroads on the island, and the capital invested in them has been computed at between five and six millions of dollars. _Climate._--The diversity of surface gives rise to considerable variation in temperature. On the highest mountain ridges, at four thousand feet above the level of the sea, ice is sometimes formed in mid winter, but snow is unknown. The mean temperature of the hottest months (July and August) is about 83° Fahrenheit. The coldest months are January and December. CHAPTER XVI. Retrospective thoughts--The bright side and dark side of the picture--Cuban institutions contrasted with our own--Political sentiments of the Creoles--War footing--Loyalty of the colony--Native men of genius--The Cubans not willing slaves--Our own revolution--Apostles of rebellion--Moral of the Lopez expedition--Jealousy of Spain--Honorable position of our government--Spanish aggressions on our flag--Purchase of the island--Distinguished conservative opinion--The end. It is with infinite reluctance that the temporary sojourner in Cuba leaves her delicious shores, and takes his farewell look at their enchanting features. A brief residence in the island passes like a midsummer night's dream, and it requires a strenuous effort of the mind to arrive at the conviction that the memories one brings away with him are not delusive sports of the imagination. Smiling skies and smiling waters, groves of palm and orange, the bloom of the heliotrope, the jessamine, and the rose, flights of strange and gaudy birds, tropic nights at once luxurious and calm, clouds of fire-flies floating like unsphered stars on the night breeze, graceful figures of dark-eyed señoritas in diaphanous drapery, picturesque groups of Monteros, relieved by the dusky faces and stalwart forms of the sons of Africa, undulating volantes, military pageants, ecclesiastical processions, frowning fortresses, grim batteries, white sails, fountains raining silver,--all these images mingle together in brilliant and kaleidoscopic combinations, changing and varying as the mind's eye seeks to fix their features. Long after his departure from the enchanting island the traveller beholds these visions in the still watches of the night, and again he listens to the dash of the sea-green waves at the foot of the Moro and the Punta, the roll of the drum and the crash of arms upon the ramparts, and the thrilling strains of music from the military band in the Plaza de Armas. The vexations incident to all travel, and meted out in no stinted measure to the visitor at Cuba, are amply repaid by the spectacles it presents. "----It is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land! What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree! What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!" If it were possible to contemplate only the beauties that nature has so prodigally lavished on this Eden of the Gulf, shutting out all that man has done and is still doing to mar the blessings of Heaven, then a visit to or residence in Cuba would present a succession of unalloyed pleasures equal to a poet's dream. But it is impossible, even if it would be desirable, to exclude the dark side of the picture. The American traveller, particularly, keenly alive to the social and political aspects of life, appreciates in full force the evils that challenge his observation at every step, and in every view which he may take. If he contrast the natural scenery with the familiar pictures of home, he cannot help also contrasting the political condition of the people with that of his own country. The existence, almost under the shadow of the flag of the freest institutions the earth ever knew, of a government as purely despotic as that of the autocrat of all the Russias, is a monstrous fact that startles the most indifferent observer. It must be seen to be realized. To go hence to Cuba is not merely passing over a few degrees of latitude in a few days' sail,--it is a step from the nineteenth century back into the dark ages. In the clime of sun and endless summer, we are in the land of starless political darkness. Lying under the lee of a land where every man is a sovereign, is a realm where the lives, liberties, and fortunes of all are held at the tenure of the will of a single individual, and whence not a single murmur of complaint can reach the ear of the nominal ruler more than a thousand leagues away in another hemisphere. In close proximity to a country where the taxes, self-imposed, are so light as to be almost unfelt, is one where each free family pays nearly four hundred dollars per annum for the support of a system of bigoted tyranny, yielding in the aggregate an annual revenue of twenty-five millions of dollars for which they receive no equivalent,--no representation, no utterance, for pen and tongue are alike proscribed,--no honor, no office, no emolument; while their industry is crippled, their intercourse with other nations hampered in every way, their bread literally snatched from their lips, the freedom of education denied, and every generous, liberal aspiration of the human soul stifled in its birth. And this in the nineteenth century, and in North America. Such are the contrasts, broad and striking, and such the reflections forced upon the mind of the citizen of the United States in Cuba. Do they never occur to the minds of the Creoles? We are told that they are willing slaves. Spain tells us so, and she extols to the world with complacent mendacity the loyalty of her "_siempre fielissima isla de Cuba_." But why does she have a soldier under arms for every four white adults? We were about to say, white male citizens, but there are no citizens in Cuba. A proportionate military force in this country would give us a standing army of more than a million bayonets, with an annual expenditure, reckoning each soldier to cost only two hundred dollars per annum, of more than two hundred millions of dollars. And this is the peace establishment of Spain in Cuba--for England and France and the United States are all her allies, and she has no longer to fear the roving buccaneers of the Gulf who once made her tremble in her island fastness. For whom then is this enormous warlike preparation? Certainly for no external enemy,--there is none. The question answers itself,--it is for her very loyal subjects, the people of Cuba, that the queen of Spain makes all this warlike show. It is impossible to conceive of any degree of loyalty that would be proof against the unparalleled burthens and atrocious system by which the mother country has ever loaded and weighed down her western colonists. They must be either more or less than men if they still cherish attachment to a foreign throne under such circumstances. But the fact simply is, the Creoles of Cuba are neither angels nor brutes; they are, it is true, a long-suffering and somewhat indolent people, lacking in a great degree the stern qualities of the Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Norman races, but nevertheless intelligent, if wanting culture, and not without those noble aspirations for independence and freedom, destitute of which they would cease to be men, justly forfeiting all claim to our sympathy and consideration. During the brief intervals in which a liberal spirit was manifested towards the colony by the home government, the Cubans gave proof of talent and energy, which, had they been permitted to attain their full development, would have given them a highly honorable name and distinguished character. When the field for genius was comparatively clear, Cuba produced more than one statesman and man of science, who would have done honor to a more favored land. But these cheering rays of light were soon extinguished, and the fluctuating policy of Spain settled down into the rayless and brutal despotism which has become its normal condition, and a double darkness closed upon the political and intellectual prospects of Cuba. But the people are not, and have not been the supine and idle victims of tyranny which Spain depicts them. The reader, who has indulgently followed us thus far, will remember the several times they have attempted, manacled as they are, to free their limbs from the chains that bind them. It is insulting and idle to say that they might have been free if they had earnestly desired and made the effort for freedom. Who can say what would have been the result of our own struggle for independence, if Great Britain, at the outset, had been as well prepared for resistance as Spain has always been in Cuba? Who can say how long and painful would have been the struggle, if one of the most powerful military nations of Europe had not listened to our despairing appeal, and thrown the weight of her gold and her arms into the scale against our great enemy? When we see how--as we do clearly--in a single night the well-contrived schemes of an adroit and unprincipled knave enslaved a brilliant and warlike people, like the French, who had more than once tasted the fruits of republican glory and liberty, who had borne their free flag in triumph over more than half of Europe, we can understand why the Cubans, overawed from the very outset, by the presence of a force vastly greater in proportion than that which enslaved France, have been unable to achieve their deliverance. Nay, more--when we consider the system pursued by the government of the island, the impossibility of forming assemblages, and of concerting action, the presence of troops and spies everywhere, the compulsory silence of the press--the violation of the sanctity of correspondence, the presence of a slave population, we can only wonder that any effort has been made, any step taken in that fatal pathway of revolution which leads infallibly to the _garrote_. If Cuba lies at present under the armed heel of despotism we may be sure that the anguish of her sons is keenly aggravated by their perfect understanding of our own liberal institutions, and an earnest, if fruitless desire to participate in their enjoyment. It is beyond the power of the Spanish government to keep the people of the island in a state of complete darkness, as it seems to desire to do. The young men of Cuba educated at our colleges and schools, the visitors from the United States, and American merchants established on the island, are all so many apostles of republicanism, and propagandists of treason and rebellion. Nor can the captains-general with all their vigilance, exclude what they are pleased to call incendiary newspapers and documents from pretty extensive circulation among the "ever faithful." That liberal ideas and hatred of Spanish despotism are widely entertained among the Cubans is a fact no one who has passed a brief period among them can truthfully deny. The writer of these pages avers, from his personal knowledge, that they await only the means and the opportunity to rise in rebellion against Spain. We are too far distant to see more than the light smoke, but those who have trodden the soil of Cuba have sounded the depths of the volcano. The history of the unfortunate Lopez expedition proves nothing contrary to this. The force under Lopez afforded too weak a nucleus, was too hastily thrown upon the island, too ill prepared, and too untimely attacked, to enable the native patriots to rally round its standard, and thus to second the efforts of the invaders. With no ammunition nor arms to spare, recruits would have only added to the embarrassment of the adventurers. Yet had Lopez been joined by the brave but unfortunate Crittenden, with what arms and ammunition he possessed, had he gained some fastness where he could have been disciplining his command, until further aid arrived, the adventure might have had a very different termination from what we have recorded in an early chapter of this book. Disastrous as was the result of the Lopez expedition, it nevertheless proved two important facts: first, the bravery of the Cubans, a small company of whom drove the enemy at the point of the bayonet; and, secondly, the inefficiency of Spanish troops when opposed by resolute men. If a large force of picked Spanish troops were decimated and routed in two actions, by a handful of ill-armed and undisciplined men, taken by surprise, we are justified in believing that if an effective force of ten thousand men, comprising the several arms, of cavalry, artillery, and infantry, had been thrown into the island, they would have carried all before them. With such a body of men to rally upon, the Cubans would have risen in the departments of the island, and her best transatlantic jewel would have been torn from the diadem of Spain. That the Spanish government lives in constant dread of a renewal of the efforts on the part of Americans and exiled Cubans to aid the disaffected people of the island in throwing off its odious yoke, is a notorious fact, and there are evidences in the conduct of its officials towards those of this government that it regards the latter as secretly favoring such illegal action. Yet the steps taken by our government to crush any such attempts have been decided enough to satisfy any but a jealous and unreasonable power. President Fillmore, in his memorable proclamation, said, "Such expeditions can only be regarded as adventures for plunder and robbery," and declaring Americans who engaged in them outlaws, informed them that "they would forfeit their claim to the protection of this government, or any interference in their behalf, no matter to what extremity they might be reduced in consequence of their illegal conduct." In accordance with this declaration, the brave Crittenden and his men were allowed to be shot at Atares, though they were not taken with arms in their hands, had abandoned the expedition, and were seeking to escape from the island. In a similar spirit the present chief magistrate alluded to our relations with Spain in his inaugural address, in the following explicit terms:-- "Indeed it is not to be disguised that our attitude as a nation, and our position on the globe, render the acquisition of certain possessions, not within our jurisdiction, eminently important, if not, in the future, essential for the preservation of the rights of commerce and the peace of the world. Should they be obtained, it will be through no grasping spirit, but with a view to obvious national interest and security, and in a manner entirely consistent with the strictest observance of national faith." A recent proclamation, emanating from the same source, and warning our citizens of the consequences of engaging in an invasion of the island, also attests the determination to maintain the integrity of our relations with an allied power. No candid student of the history of our relations with Spain can fail to be impressed by the frank and honorable attitude of our government, or to contrast its acts with those of the Spanish officials of Cuba. A history of the commercial intercourse of our citizens with the island would be a history of petty and also serious annoyances and grievances to which they have been subjected for a series of years by the Spanish officials, increasing in magnitude as the latter have witnessed the forbearance and magnanimity of our government. Not an American merchant or captain, who has had dealings with Cuba, but could furnish his list of insults and outrages, some in the shape of illegal extortions and delays, others merely gratuitous ebullitions of spite and malice dictated by a hatred of our country and its citizens. Of late instances of outrage so flagrant have occurred, that the executive has felt bound to call the attention of Congress to them in a message, in which he points out the great evil which lies at the bottom, and also the remedy. "The offending party," he says, "is at our doors with large power for aggression, but none, it is alleged, for reparation. The source of redress is in another hemisphere; and the answers to our just complaints, made to the home government, are but the repetition of excuses rendered by inferior officials to the superiors, in reply to the representations of misconduct. In giving extraordinary power to them, she owes it to justice, and to her friendly relations to this government, to guard with great vigilance against the exorbitant exercise of these powers, and in case of injuries to provide for prompt redress." It is very clear that if, in such cases as the seizure of a vessel and her cargo by the port officers at Havana, for an alleged violation of revenue laws, or even port usages, redress, in case of official misconduct, can only be had by reference to the home government in another part of the world, our trade with Cuba will be completely paralyzed. The delay and difficulty in obtaining such redress has already, in too many cases, prompted extortion on the one hand, and acquiescence to injustice on the other. The experience of the last four years alone will fully sustain the truth of this assertion. In 1851 two American vessels were seized off Yucatan by the Spanish authorities on suspicion of being engaged in the Lopez expedition; in the same year the steamship Falcon was wantonly fired upon by a Spanish government vessel; in 1852 the American mail bags were forcibly opened and their contents examined by order of the captain-general; and less than two years ago, as is well known, the Crescent City was not allowed to land her passengers and mails, simply because the purser, Smith, was obnoxious to the government of the island. The Black Warrior, fired into on one voyage, was seized lately for a violation of a custom house form--an affair not yet, it is believed, settled with the Spanish government. More than once, on specious pretexts, have American sailors been taken from American vessels and thrown into Spanish prisons. In short, the insults offered by Spanish officials to our flag have so multiplied of late that the popular indignation in the country has reached an alarming height. It is difficult for a republic and a despotism, situated like the United States and Cuba, to live on neighborly terms; and to control the indignation of the citizens of the former, proud and high spirited, conscious of giving no offence, and yet subjected to repeated insults, is a task almost too great for the most adroit and pacific administration. When we add to this feeling among our people a consciousness that Cuba, the source of all this trouble, is in unwilling vassalage to Spain, and longing for annexation to the United States, that under our flag the prosperity of her people would be secured, a vast addition made to our commercial resources, an invaluable safeguard given to our southern frontier, and the key to the Mississippi and the great west made secure forever, we can no longer wonder at the spread of the conviction that Cuba should belong to this country, and this too as soon as can be honorably brought about. Had she possessed more foresight and less pride, Spain would have long since sold the island to the United States, and thereby have relieved herself of a weighty care and a most dangerous property. "So far from being really injured by the loss of the island," says Hon. Edward Everett, in his able and well known letter to the British minister rejecting the proposition for the tripartite convention, "there is no doubt that, were it peacefully transferred to the United States, a prosperous commerce between Cuba and Spain, resulting from ancient associations and common language and tastes, would be far more productive than the best contrived system of colonial taxation. Such, notoriously, has been the result to Great Britain of the establishment of the independence of the United States." If it be true that the American minister at Madrid has been authorized to offer a price nothing short of a royal ransom for the island, we cannot conceive that the greedy queen, and even the Cortes of Spain, would reject it, unless secretly influenced by the powers which had the effrontery to propose for our acceptance the tripartite treaty, by which we were expected to renounce forever all pretension to the possession of Cuba. It is difficult to believe that France and England could for a moment seriously suppose that such a ridiculous proposition would be for one moment entertained by this government, and yet they must so have deceived themselves, or otherwise they would not have made the proposition as they did. Of the importance, not to say necessity, of the possession of Cuba by the United States, statesmen of all parties are agreed; and they are by no means in advance of the popular sentiment; indeed, the class who urge its immediate acquisition, at any cost, by any means, not as a source of wealth, but as a political necessity, is by no means inconsiderable. It would be foreign to our purpose to quote the opinions of any ultraists, nor do we design, in these closing remarks, to enter the field of politics, or political discussion. We have endeavored to state facts only, and to state them plainly, deducing the most incontrovertible conclusions. We find the following remarks in a recent conservative speech of Mr. Latham, a member of Congress, from California. They present, with emphasis, some of the points we have lightly touched upon: "I admit that our relations with Spain, growing out of that island (Cuba), are of an extremely delicate nature; that the fate of that island, its misgovernment, its proximity to our shores, and the particular institutions established upon it, are of vast importance to the peace and security of this country; and that the utmost vigilance in regard to it is not only demanded by prudence, but an act of imperative duty on the part of our government. The island of Cuba commands, in a measure, the Gulf of Mexico. In case of a maritime war, in which the United States may be engaged, its possession by the enemy might become a source of infinite annoyance to us, crippling our shipping, threatening the great emporium of our southern commerce, and exposing our whole southern coast, from the capes of Florida to the mouth of the Rio Grande, to the enemy's cruisers. The geographical position of Cuba is such that we cannot, without a total disregard to our own safety, permit it to pass into the hands of any first-class power; nay, that it would be extremely imprudent to allow it to pass even into the hands of a power of the second rank, possessed of energy and capacity for expansion." If Cuba come into our possession peaceably, as the fruits of a fair bargain, or as a free-will offering of her sons, after a successful revolution, we can predict for her a future as bright as her past has been desolate and gloomy; for the union of a territory with a foreign population to our confederacy is no new and doubtful experiment. Louisiana, with her French and Spanish Creoles, is one of the most reliable states of the Union; and, not long after her admission, she signed, with her best blood, the pledge of fealty to the common country. More recently, we all remember how, when Taylor, in the presence of the foe upon the Rio Grande, called for volunteers, the gallant Creoles rushed to arms, and crowded to his banner. The Creoles of Cuba are of the same blood and lineage,--Spaniards in chivalry of soul, without the ferocity and fanaticism of the descendants of the Cid. We are sure, from what they have shown in the past, that liberal institutions will develop latent qualities which need only free air for their expansion. They will not want companions, friends and helpers. A tide of emigration from the States will pour into the island, the waste lands will be reclaimed, and their hidden wealth disclosed; a new system of agricultural economy will be introduced; the woods of the island will furnish material for splendid ships; towns and villages will rise with magical celerity, and the whole surface of the "garden of the world" will blossom like the rose. "Rich in soil, salubrious in climate, varied in productions, the home of commerce," says the Hon. O.R. Singleton, of Mississippi, "Cuba seems to have been formed to become 'the very button on Fortune's cap.' Washed by the Gulf-stream on half her borders, with the Mississippi pouring out its rich treasures on one side, and the Amazon, destined to become a 'cornucopia,' on the other,--with the ports of Havana and Matanzas on the north, and the Isle of Pines and St. Jago de Cuba on the south, Nature has written upon her, in legible characters, a destiny far above that of a subjugated province of a rotten European dynasty. Her home is in the bosom of the North American confederacy. Like a lost Pleiad, she may wander on for a few months or years in lawless, chaotic confusion; but, ultimately, the laws of nature and of nations will vindicate themselves, and she will assume her true social and political condition, despite the diplomacy of statesmen, the trickery of knaves, or the frowns of tyrants. Cuba will be free. 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33739	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material at the Internet Archive.) [Illustration: book's cover] [Illustration: map of Cuba] CUBA ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE BY A. D. HALL [Illustration: colophon] NEW YORK STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS 81 FULTON STREET Copyrighted 1898 By STREET & SMITH. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE. I.--Discovery and Early History 7 II.--The British Occupation--Spain's Gratitude 19 III.--Cuba's Early Struggles for Liberty 30 IV.--The Ten Years' War 43 V.--The Virginius Embroglio 59 VI.--Again Spain's Perfidy 67 VII.--Some Cuban Heroes 73 VIII.--Cuban Tactics 84 IX.--Weyler the Butcher 92 X.--The Crime of the Century 102 XI.--Two Methods of Warfare; The Spanish and the Cuban 110 XII.--The Butcher's Campaign 122 XIII.--America's Charity and Spain's Diplomacy 132 XIV.--The Last Days of Peace 144 XV.--The Topography and Resources of Cuba 154 XVI.--What Will the Future Be? 170 CUBA ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE CHAPTER I. DISCOVERY AND EARLY HISTORY. "The goodliest land that eye ever saw, the sweetest thing in the world." Such was Columbus' opinion of Cuba, just after he first beheld it, and, after the lapse of four hundred years, the words, making due allowance for the hyperbole of enthusiasm, still hold good. And this, too, in spite of all the trials and tribulations which the fair "Pearl of the Antilles" has been forced to undergo at the hands of her greedy and inhuman masters. The eyes of all the world are now upon this indescribably beautiful and fertile country. Like Andromeda, she has been shuddering and gasping in the power of a monster, but at last a Perseus has come to her rescue. Somewhat tardily perhaps the United States, united now in every meaning of the word, has from pure philanthropy embraced her cause--the United States whose watchword, with a sturdy hatred of the oppressor, has ever been and always will be "freedom." The star of hope, symbolized by the lone star upon the Cuban flag, and so long concealed by gloomy, threatening clouds, is now shining clear and bright; and all civilization is waiting with happy confidence for the day, God willing not far distant, when "Cuba Libre" shall be not only an article of creed, but an established fact. The island of Cuba, the largest and richest of the West Indian Islands, and up to the present the most important of Spain's colonial possessions, not so vast as they once were but still of no inconsiderable value, was discovered by Columbus during his first voyage to the far west. For many centuries, even back to the time of Solomon, the chief object of explorers had been a discovery of a passage to India and the fabulous wealth of the East. In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo, the famous Venetian explorer, went far beyond any of his predecessors and succeeded in reaching Pekin. He also heard of another empire which was called Zipangri, the same that we now know as Japan. When he returned and published what we are sorry to say was none too veracious an account, Polo being only too ready to draw upon his imagination, other nations were fired by emulation. The Portuguese were the first to achieve any positive result. Early in the fifteenth century, inspired by an able and enterprising sovereign, they doubled Cape Non, discovered Madeira, occupied the Azores and reached the Senegal and the Cape Verde Islands. In 1486, Bartholomew Diaz sighted the Cape of Good Hope, which some ten years later Vasco da Gama, the most famous of all Portuguese explorers, rounded, and then proceeded some distance toward India. It was after hearing the wonderful tales of these explorers that Columbus became inspired with the idea of sailing westward on the unknown waters, expecting thus to reach India. After untold discouragements, and finally by the generosity of Queen Isabella, who was brought to believe in his conjectures, he set sail from Palos, August 3, 1492, with three small vessels manned by about ninety sailors. The following 12th of October he first sighted the western hemisphere, which, however, he thought to be Asia, and by the way, lived and died in that belief. This land was one of the Bahama Islands, called by the natives Guanahani, but christened by Columbus as San Salvador. It is now known as Cat Island. The 28th of the same month Columbus discovered Cuba, entering the mouth of a river in what he believed to be that "great land," of which he had heard so much. From the very beginning, it was as it has existed to the present day--the Spaniards looked for gold and were determined to exploit their new possessions to the very last peseta that could be wrung from them. The island was first called Juana, in honor of Prince John, son of Ferdinand and Isabella; but, after Ferdinand's death, it received the name of Fernandina. Subsequently, it was designated, after Spain's patron saint, Santiago, and still later Ave Maria, in honor of the Virgin. Finally it received its present name, the one originally bestowed upon it by the natives. Cuba means "the place of gold," and Spain has constantly kept this in mind, both theoretically and practically. At first, however, the answers received in Cuba in reply to the questions of her discoverers as to the existence of gold were not satisfactory. It seemed as if this ne plus ultra to the Spaniards was to be found in a neighboring and larger island, which has been known by the various names of Hayti, Hispaniola and Santo Domingo. The prospect of enrichment here was so inviting that the first settlement of Spain in the New World was made in Hayti. The aborigines seem to have made no resistance to the coming among them of a new race of people. They were apparently peaceful and kindly, dwelling in a state of happy tranquillity among themselves. Their character is best demonstrated by an extract from a letter written by Columbus to their Catholic majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella: "The king having been informed of our misfortune expressed great grief for our loss and immediately sent aboard all the people in the place in many large canoes; we soon unloaded the ship of everything that was upon deck, as the king gave us great assistance; he himself, with his brothers and relations, took all possible care that everything should be properly done, both aboard and on shore. And, from time to time, he sent some of his relations weeping, to beg of me not to be dejected, for he would give me all that he had. I can assure your highnesses that so much care would not have been taken in securing our effects in any part of Spain, as all our property was put together in one place near his palace, until the houses which he wanted to prepare for the custody of it were emptied. He immediately placed a guard of armed men, who watched during the whole night, and those on shore lamented as if they had been much interested in our loss. The people are so affectionate, so tractable and so peaceable, that I swear to your highnesses that there is not a better race of men nor a better country in the world. They love their neighbor as themselves, their conversation is the sweetest and mildest in the world, cheerful and always accompanied by a smile. And although it is true that they go naked, yet your highnesses may be assured that they have many very commendable customs; the king is served with great state, and his behavior is so decent that it is pleasant to see him, as it is likewise the wonderful memory which these people have, and their desire of knowing everything which leads them to inquire into its causes and effects." Strange and far from pleasant reading this in the light of future events. By so-called savages the invading Spaniards were treated with the utmost kindness and courtesy, while many generations later the descendants of these same Spaniards, on this same island, visited nothing but cruelty and oppression upon those unfortunates who after all were of their own flesh and blood. As has been said, the first settlement of the Spaniards was made on the island of Hayti. But the dreams of enormous revenue were not realized, in spite of the fact that the natives were men, women and children reduced to slavery, and all the work that was possible, without regard to any of the dictates of humanity, was exacted from them. In spite of the fact, did we say? No, rather because of it. For, owing to the hardships inflicted upon them, the native population, which originally was considerably over a million, was reduced to some fifty thousand, and it was therefore impossible to extract from the earth the riches it contained. Thus, does unbridled greed ever overleap itself. After its discovery, Cuba was twice visited by Columbus, in April, 1494, and again in 1502, but these visits do not seem to have been productive of any particular results. It was not until 1511 that the Spaniards thought it worth while to colonize Cuba, and only then because they believed that they had exhausted the resources of Hayti, in other words, that that particular orange had been sucked dry. Therefore they sent a band of three hundred men under Diego Velasquez, who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, to make a settlement on the island. Velasquez and his companions found the natives peaceful and happy, ruled over by nine independent chiefs. They met with but little resistance, and that little was easily overcome. Soon the weak and guileless Indians were completely subjugated. There was one instance which it is well worth while to relate here as showing the Spanish character, which centuries have not changed, and which is as cruel and bloodthirsty to-day as it was then. There was one native chief, a refugee from Hayti, named Hatuey, who had had previous dealings with the Spaniards, and knew what was to be expected from them. He had strongly opposed their invasion, was captured, and sentenced to be burned alive at the stake. As the flames curled about him, a Franciscan monk held up a crucifix before him, urging him to abjure the impotent gods of his ancestors and embrace Christianity. Hatuey, knowing well that his conversion would not save him from a horrible death, and remembering all the atrocities he had seen committed, asked where Heaven was and if there were many Spaniards there. "A great many of then," answered the monk. "Then," cried Hatuey, "I will not go to a place where I may meet one of that accursed race. I prefer to go elsewhere." Hatuey's death ended all rebellion, if struggling for one's rights can be rebellion, and the iron hand of tyranny, whose grasp has never since been relaxed, closed firmly upon the beautiful island. Three hundred of the natives were given as slaves to each Spaniard, but, as in Hayti, it was found that they were not strong enough for the enormous tasks their masters would have imposed upon them. So negro slaves were imported from the mother country, and their descendants remained in the bonds of serfdom for centuries. The first permanent settlement was made at Santiago de Cuba, on the Southeastern coast, the scene of Admiral Sampson's recent brilliant achievements, and this was for a long time the capital of the colony. Then came Trinidad, and in 1515 a town was started called San Cristoval de la Habana, which name was transferred four years later to the present capital, the first named place being rechristened Batabana. The natives were treated with the utmost cruelty, so cruelly, in fact, that they were practically exterminated. Only a comparatively few years after the settlement of the island there were scarcely any of them left. The result of this short sighted policy on the part of Spain was that agriculture declined to an enormous extent, and Cuba became virtually a pastoral country. In 1537, the king appointed as captain-general Hernando de Soto, the picturesque adventurer, who was afterwards famous as the discoverer of the Mississippi and for his romantic search for the fountain of eternal youth. All powers, both civil and military, were vested in the captain-general, the title bestowed upon the governors, although many of them were civilians. Shortly after this appointment, Havana was reduced to ashes by a French privateer, and De Soto built for the city's protection the Castillo de la Fuerza, a fortress which still exists. But this precaution proved ineffectual, as in 1554, the city which had gained considerably in importance, as it had now become the capital, was again attacked and partially destroyed by the French. Two other fortresses were then constructed, the Punta and the Morro. The discovery of Mexico and other countries drew away from the island the majority of its working population, and the government passed a law imposing the penalty of death upon all who left it. Spain also imposed the heaviest trade restrictions upon Cuba. It was exploited in every direction for the benefit of the mother country and to the exclusion of every one else. All foreigners, and even Spaniards not natives of Castile, were prohibited from trading with the island or settling in it. The consequence was that the increase of population was slow, the introduction of negroes, whose labor was most essential for prosperity, was gradual, and the progress and growth of the island were almost stopped. Moreover, Spain was ruler of the greater part of the Atlantic, and a most despotic ruler she proved herself to be. Numerous tales are told of the atrocities committed upon navigators, especially those of England. When Cromwell, who caused many liberal ideas to be introduced into England, tried to induce Spain to abolish the Inquisition and to allow the free navigation of the Atlantic, the Spanish ambassador replied: "For my master to relinquish those prerogatives would be the same as to put out both his eyes." One instance of Spain's cruelty, for which, however, she suffered a well-merited retribution, may be related here. In 1564, a party of French Huguenots settled in Florida near the mouth of the river St. John. A certain Menendez, who was sailing under orders to "gibbet and behead all Protestants in those regions," fell upon the colonists and massacred all he could find. Some of the settlers, who happened to be away at the time, shortly afterward fell into the hands of Menendez, who hanged them all, placing this inscription above their heads: "Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." In 1567, however, a French expedition surprised a body of Spaniards who had undertaken to found St. Augustine, and in their turn hanged these settlers, "Not as Spaniards, but as murderers." Hampered and oppressed as they were, deprived of a free and convenient market for the produce of the soil by reason of the monopolies imposed by the mother country, it is not strange that the Cubans had recourse to smuggling, and this was especially the case after the British conquest of Jamaica in 1655. So universal did the practice become, that when Captain-General Valdez arrived, he found that nearly all the Havanese were guilty of the crime of illicit trading, the punishment of which was death. At the suggestion of Valdez, a ship was freighted with presents for the king, and sent to Spain with a petition for pardon, which was finally granted. But the whole of Europe was against Spain in her arrogant assumption of the suzerainty of the New World. Especially were her pretensions condemned and resisted by the English, French, Portuguese and Dutch, all of whom were engaged in colonizing different portions of America. Then arose a body of men, who were productive of most important results. These were known as buccaneers, and were practically a band of piratical adventurers of different nationalities, united in their opposition to Spain. Hayti, as has already been intimated, had been almost depopulated by the oppressive colonial policy of Spain. The island had become the home of immense herds of wild cattle, and it was the custom of the smugglers to stop there to provision their ships. The natives, which were still left, had learned to be skilled in preserving the meat by means of fire and smoke, and they called their kilns "boucans." The smugglers, besides obtaining what they desired for their own use of this preserved meat, established an extensive illicit trade in it. Hence, they obtained the name of buccaneers. Spanish monopolies were the pest of every port in the New World, and mariners of the western waters were filled with a detestation, quite natural, of everything Spanish. Gradually, the ranks of the buccaneers were recruited. They were given assistance and encouragement, direct and indirect, by other nations, even in some cases being furnished with letters-of-marque and reprisal as privateers. The commerce of Spain had been gradually dwindling since the defeat of the so-called Invincible Armada, and the buccaneers commenced now to seize the returning treasure ships and to plunder the seaboard cities of Cuba and other Spanish possessions. Even Havana itself was not spared by them. The buccaneers, indefensible though many of their actions were, had a great influence upon the power and colonial tactics of Spain. Beyond this, they opened the eyes of the world to the rottenness of the whole system of Spanish government and commerce in America, and undoubtedly did much to build up the West Indian possessions of England, France and Holland. It is curious to note here the career of one of their most famous leaders, an Englishman named Morgan. He was barbarous in the extreme and returned from many expeditions laden with spoil. But, finally, he went to Jamaica, turned respectable and was made deputy-governor of the island. He died, by favor of Charles II., the "gallant" Sir Henry Morgan. But in 1697, the European powers generally condemned the buccaneers. In spite of the lessons they had received, and the universal protest of other nations, the Spaniards, obstinate then as ever, refused to change their policy. They persisted in closing the magnificent harbors of Cuba to the commerce of the rest of the world, and that, too, when Spain could not begin to use the products of the island. Still she could not and would not allow one bit of gold to slip from between her fingers. She has always held on with eager greed to all that she could lay her hands on. It is certainly food for the unrestrained laughter of gods and men that she has recently been sneering at the United States as a nation of traders and money grubbers. CHAPTER II. THE BRITISH OCCUPATION--SPAIN'S GRATITUDE. In the early years of the eighteenth century, Cuba was more or less at peace, that is so far as Spain, a degenerate mother of a far more honorable daughter, would allow her to be at peace, and she increased in population, and, to a certain extent, in material prosperity. But in 1717, a revolt broke out, a revolt which was thoroughly justified. Spain felt that the agricultural wealth of the island was increasing, and she desired for herself practically the whole of the advantages which accrued from it. Therefore, she demanded a royal monopoly of the tobacco trade. This demand was strenuously and bitterly opposed by the Cubans. The Captain-General, Raja, was obliged to flee, but finally the trouble was ended, and Spain, by might far rather than by right, had her way. The monopoly was established. But the oppressive government led to another uprising in 1723, which again was quickly quelled. Twelve of the leaders were hanged by Guazo, who was at that time the captain-general. Twice, therefore, did the one who was in the wrong conquer, simply from the possession of superior force. It is said that the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. And in the light of recent events, this seems to be, and in fact, so far as human intelligence can determine, it is true. Richard Le Galliene, to-day, toward the end of the nineteenth century, speaks in clarion tones, as follows: "Spain is an ancient dragon, That too long hath curled Its coils of blood and darkness About the new-born world. Think of the Inquisition Think of the Netherlands! Yea! think of all Spain's bloody deeds In many times and lands. And let no feeble pity Your sacred arms restrain; This is God's mighty moment To make an end of Spain." About this time, that is, from 1724 to 1747, Cuba, chiefly, if not almost entirely, at Havana, became a ship building centre, of course, once more, at least for a time, to the advantage of Spain. In all, there were constructed some one hundred and twenty-five vessels, carrying amongst them four thousand guns. These ships comprised six ships of the line, twenty-one of seventy to eighty guns each, twenty-six of fifty to sixty guns, fourteen frigates of thirty to forty guns and fifty-eight smaller vessels. But then Spain became jealous--imagine a parent jealous of the success of its child!--and the ship-building industry was peremptorily stopped. During the present century, in Cuba only the machinery of one steamer, the Saqua, has been constructed, and two ships, one a war steamer and one a merchant steamer, have been built at Havana. What a commentary on the dominating and destructive policy--self-destructive policy, too--of Spain! In 1739, there arose in England a popular excitement for a war against Spain. One of the chief incidents which led to this was an episode which caused Thomas Carlyle to call the strife that followed "The War of Jenkins' Ear." The English had persisted in maintaining a trade with Cuba in spite of Spain's prohibition. A certain Captain Jenkins, who was in command of an English merchantman, was captured by a Spanish cruiser. His ship was subjected to search, and he himself, according to his own declaration, put to the torture. The Spaniards, however, could find little or nothing of which to convict him, and, irritated at this they committed a most foolish act, a deed of childish vengeance. They cut off one of his ears and told him to take it back to England and show it to the king. Jenkins preserved his mutilated ear in a bottle of spirits, and, in due course of time, appeared himself before the House of Commons and exhibited it to that body. The excitement ensuing upon the proof of this outrage to a British subject beggars description. Walpole was at that time prime minister, and, although essentially a man of peace, he found it impossible to stem the tide, and public sentiment compelled him to declare war against Spain. This war, however, was productive of but little result one way or the other. But before long another struggle ensued, which was far more reaching in its consequences. In 1756, what is known in history as the Seven Years War, broke out. This seems to have been a mere struggle for territory, and, besides a duel between France and England, involved Austria, with its allies, France, Russia and the German princes against the new kingdom of Prussia. This naturally led to an alliance between England and Prussia. Towards the end of the war, early in 1762, hostilities were declared against Spain. An English fleet and army, under Lord Albemarle, were sent to Cuba. The former consisted of more than two hundred vessels of all classes, and the latter of fourteen thousand and forty-one men. The opposing Spanish force numbered twenty-seven thousand six hundred and ten men. With the English, were a large number of Americans, some of whom figured later more or less prominently in the war of the Revolution. Israel Putnam, the hero of the breakneck ride at Horseneck, and General Lyman, under whom Putnam eventually served, were among these, as was also Lawrence Washington, a brother of "The Father of His Country." By the way, the American loss in Cuba during this campaign was heavy. Very few, either officers or men, ever returned home. Most of those who were spared by the Spanish bullets succumbed to the rigors of the tropical climate, to which they were unaccustomed and ill-prepared for. May this experience of our forefathers in the last century not be repeated in the persons of our brothers of the present! The defense of Havana was excessively obstinate, and the Cuban volunteers covered themselves with glory. But, in spite of the superior force of the Spanish, the English were finally successful. Taking all things into consideration, it was a wonderful feat of arms, one of which only the Anglo-Saxon race is capable. Nevertheless, it was only after a prolonged struggle that the victory was complete. At last, on the 30th of July, Morro Castle surrendered, and about two weeks afterward, the city of Havana capitulated. The spoil divided among the captors amounted to about four million seven hundred thousand dollars. The English remained in possession of Cuba for something like six mouths, and during that time instituted many important and far-reaching reforms, so much so in fact that when the Spaniards regained possession, they found it very difficult to re-establish their former restrictive and tyrannous system. For instance, the sanitary condition of Havana, which was atrocious even in those comparatively primitive days of hygiene, was vastly improved. All over the island, roads were opened. During the time of the English occupation, over nine hundred loaded vessels entered the port of Havana, more than in all the previous entries since the discovery. The commerce of the island improved to a remarkable extent, and for the first time the sugar industry began to be productive. If the British had remained in possession of Cuba, it is probable that that unhappy island would have been spared much of its misery and would have been as contented, prosperous and loyal as Canada is to-day. It really seemed as if an era of prosperity had begun, when by the treaty of Paris, in February, 1763, most of the conquests made during the Seven Years' War were restored to their original owners, and among them unfortunately in the light of both past and future events, Cuba to the misrule of the Spaniards. England, however, was eminently the gainer by this treaty, as she received from France all the territory formerly claimed by the latter east of the Mississippi, together with Prince Edward's Island, Cape Breton, St. Vincent, Dominica, Minorca and Tobago. In return for Cuba, Spain ceded to England Florida, while the Spanish government received Louisiana from France. On the other hand, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Pondicherry and Goree were returned to France. It was impossible for the Spanish to undo in a day all the good that the English rule, short though it was, had accomplished. Moreover, it was more than fortunate for Cuba that there followed not long after two governors of more than ordinary ability and humanity, both of whom had her interests at heart, and they caused a period of unwonted prosperity, most grateful to the Cubans, to follow. The first of these governors, or to give them their rightful title, captain-generals, was Luis de Las Casas, who was appointed in 1790. Now, for the first time in her history, Cuba really made rapid progress in commercial prosperity as well as in public improvements. Las Casas developed all branches of industry, allowed the establishment of newspapers, and gave his aid to the patriotic societies. He also introduced the culture of indigo, removed as far as his powers permitted the old trammels, which an iniquitous system had placed upon trade, and made noble efforts to bring about the emancipation of the enslaved Indian natives. His attitude toward the newly established republic of the United States was most generous, and this helped largely to develop the industry of the island. By his judicious administration, the tranquillity of Cuba remained undisturbed during the time of the rebellion in Hayti, and this in face of the fact that strenuous efforts were made by the French, to form a conspiracy and bring about an uprising among the free people of color in Cuba. Another thing that will redound forever to the credit of Las Casas and which should make his memory beloved by all Americans--it was through his efforts that the body of Columbus was removed from Hayti where it had been entombed and deposited in its present resting-place in the Cathedral of Havana. In 1796, Las Casas was succeeded by another just and philanthropic governor, the Count of Santa Clara. The latter greatly improved the fortifications which then guarded the island and constructed a large number of others, among them the Bateria de Santa Clara, just outside Havana, and named in his honor. It was undoubtedly due in a very great measure to the kindly policies of these two noble and far seeing men that Cuba at that time became confirmed in her allegiance to the mother country; and had they been followed by men of equal calibre of both mind and heart, it is more than probable that the history of Cuba would have been devoid of stirring events. For, as the old saying has it: "Happy nations have no history." In 1795 a number of French emigrants arrived from San Domingo, and proved a valuable acquisition. In 1802, a disastrous fire occurred in a suburb of Havana, called Jesu Maria, and over eleven thousand four hundred people were rendered destitute and homeless. About this time, the star of Napoleon Bonaparte, the greatest of heroes or the greatest of adventurers, according to the point of view, was in the ascendant. Almost without exception there was not a country in Europe that had not felt the weight of his heavy hand, and, to all intents and purposes, he was the master of the continent. Spain was by no means to escape his greed for conquest and power. Her country was overrun and ravaged by his victorious armies. Her reigning family was driven away. Napoleon deposed the descendant of a long line of Bourbons, Ferdinand VII., and placed his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, upon the throne. Then the attitude and the action of Cuba were superb. Her loyalty was unwavering. Every member of the provincial council declared his fidelity to the old dynasty, and took an oath to defend and preserve the island for its legitimate sovereign. More than this--the Cubans followed this declaration up by deeds, which ever speak louder than mere words. They made numerous voluntary subscriptions, they published vehement pamphlets, and they sent their sons to fight and shed their blood for the agonized mother country. For this, Cuba received the title of "The Ever Faithful Isle," by which it has been known ever since. A very pretty compliment truly! But let us see in what other and more substantial ways was Cuba's magnificent fidelity rewarded. The answer is as brief as it is true. In no way whatever. Many promises were made at the time by the Provisional Government at Seville, chief among them being that all Spanish subjects everywhere should have equal rights. But not one of these promises was ever kept. On the contrary, it was not long before the oppression became greater than ever. There were deprivation of political, civil and religious liberty, an exclusion of the islanders from all public offices, and a heavy and iniquitous taxation to maintain the standing army and navy. Clothed as they were with the powers of an Oriental despot, most of the captain-generals from Spain covered themselves with infamy, the office as a rule having been sought (and this was distinctly realized by the Spanish government) only as an end and means to acquire a personal fortune. To realize the practically absolute authority given to the captain-generals, it is only necessary to read the royal decree promulgated after Joseph Bonaparte had been deposed and the Bourbon king, Ferdinand, restored to the throne. A portion of this amazing document is as follows: "His majesty, the king our Lord, desiring to obviate the inconveniences that might, in extraordinary cases, result from a division of command, and from the interferences and prerogatives of the respective officers: for the important end of preserving in that precious island his legitimate sovereign authority and the public tranquility, through proper means, has resolved, in accordance with the opinion of his council of ministers, to give to your excellency the fullest authority, bestowing upon you all the powers which by the royal ordinances are granted to the governors of besieged cities. In consequence of this his majesty gives to your excellency the most ample and unbounded power, not only to send away from the island any persons in office, whatever their occupation, rank, class or condition, whose continuance therein your excellency may deem injurious, or whose conduct, public or private, may alarm you, replacing them with persons faithful to his majesty, and deserving of all the confidence of your excellency; but also to suspend the execution of any order whatsoever, or any general provision made concerning any branch of the administration as your excellency may think most suitable to the royal service." For over one hundred and seventy years these orders have received little or no change, and they still remain practically the supreme law of Cuba. This was the way that magnanimous, grateful, chivalrous Spain began to reward "The Ever Faithful Isle" for its unparalleled loyalty and devotion. And Heaven save the mark! this was only the beginning. "That precious island," says the royal decree. Precious! There was never a truer word spoken. For Spain has always loved Cuba with a fanatical, gloating passion, as the fox loves the goose, as Midas loved gold, and as in the case of Midas, this love has eventually led to her destruction. CHAPTER III. CUBA'S EARLY STRUGGLES FOR LIBERTY. It was in 1813 that the Bonapartist regime came to an end in Spain, and Ferdinand VII. reascended the throne. In the very beginning he paid no attention to the Constitution; he dissolved the Cortes and did his best to make his monarchy an absolute one. Again, as has been said, Cuba felt the yoke of his despotism, all previous promises, when the aid of the island was to his advantage, being as completely ignored as if they had never been made. In Spanish America, revolutionary movements had been begun some three years before, and after stubborn warfare, Buenos Ayres, Venezuela and Peru finally succeeded in obtaining complete independence from Spanish authority. From all these countries, swarms of Spanish loyalists made their way to Cuba, and were ordered to be maintained at the expense of the island. Spain also desired to make of Cuba a military station, whence she could direct operations in her efforts to reconquer the new republic. This plan was vehemently opposed by the Cubans. Discontent rapidly fomented and increased throughout the island. Numerous secret political societies were formed, and there arose two great opposing factions, the one insisting that the liberal constitution granted by the Provisional Government of Seville at the time the Bourbon king was deposed should be the fundamental law of Cuba, while the other proclaimed its partisanship of rigid colonial control. In 1821, Hayti declared its independence of Spain, and in the same year Florida passed into the possession of the United States. Both these events increased the feeling of unrest and discontent in Cuba, and this was further augmented by the establishment of a permanent military commission, which took cognizance of even ordinary offenses, but particularly of all offenses against disloyalty. An attempt at revolution, the purpose being the establishment of a republic, was made in 1823 by the "Soles de Bolivar" association. It was arranged that uprisings should take place simultaneously in several of the Cuban cities, but the plans became known to the government and the intended revolution was nipped in the bud, all the leaders being arrested and imprisoned the very day on which it had been arranged to declare independence. In 1826 Cuban refugees in Mexico and in some of the South American republics planned an invasion of Cuba to be led by Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of Colombia, but it came to nothing, owing to the impossibility of securing adequate support both of men and money. A year or two later these same men attempted another uprising in the interests of greater privileges and freedom. A secret society, known as the "Black Eagle" was organized, with headquarters at Mexico, but with a branch office and recruiting stations in the United States. This invasion, however, also proved abortive, owing chiefly to the determined opposition displayed by the slave-holders both in the United States and Cuba. The ringleaders were captured and severely punished by the Spanish authorities. The struggles for freedom had attracted the attention of the people of the United States and were viewed by them with ever-increasing interest and sympathy. After the acquisition of Florida, the future of the island of Cuba became of more or less importance to the people of the United States and has remained so to the present day. As President Cleveland said in his message of December, 1896: "It is so near to us as to be hardly separated from our own territory." The truth of this is apparent when it is remembered that the straits of Florida can be crossed by steamer in five hours. It began to be feared that Cuba might fall into the hands of England or France and the governments of those countries as well as that of Spain were informed that such a disposition of it would never be consented to. Its position at the entrance of the gulf of Mexico could not be disregarded. The American government declared its willingness that it should remain a Spanish colony, but stated it would never permit it to become the colony of another country. In 1825 Spain made a proposition that, in consideration of certain commercial concessions the United States should guarantee to her the possession of Cuba; but this proposition was declined on the ground that such a thing would be contrary to the established policy of the United States. One of the most important consequences of Spain's efforts to regain possession of the South American republics, the independence of which had been recognized by the United States, was the formulation of what has since been known as the "Monroe Doctrine." In his message of December 2, 1823, President Monroe promulgated the policy of neither entangling ourselves in the broils of Europe, nor suffering the powers of the old world to interfere with the affairs of the new. He further declared that any attempt on the part of the European powers "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere" would be regarded by the United States as "dangerous to our peace and safety," and would accordingly be opposed. Although since then there has been more or less friction with England over the Monroe doctrine, at that time she greatly aided in its becoming established as a feature of international law, and strengthened the position of the United States, by her recognition of the South American republics. The Spanish slave code, by which the slave trade, which had formerly been a monopoly, was made free, had given a great stimulus to the importation of slaves. It was almost brought to an end, however, by the energetic efforts of Captain-General Valdez. But the increased consumption of sugar in Great Britain, owing to reduction of duty and the placing of foreign and British sugars on the same basis gave a new stimulus to the traffic; and, in their own pecuniary interest, ever more prominent with them than any question of humanity, the Spanish relaxed their efforts, and the slave trade attained greater dimensions than ever before. In 1844 there occurred an uprising which was more serious than any which had preceded it. The slaves on the sugar plantations in the neighborhood of Matanzas were suspected of being about to revolt. There was no real proof of this, and in order to obtain evidence a large number of slaves were tortured. It was evident that Spain was still ready, if in her opinion occasion required it, to have recourse to the barbarities of the old Inquisitorial days. By evidence manufactured by such outrageous methods, one thousand three hundred and forty-six persons were tried and convicted, of whom seventy-eight were shot, and the others punished with more or less severity. Of those declared guilty, fourteen were white, one thousand two hundred and forty-two free colored persons, and fifty-nine slaves. The project of annexation to the United States was first mooted in 1848, after the proclamation of the French republic. The people of the slave States, in view of the increasing population and the anti-slavery feeling of the North and West were beginning to feel alarmed as to the safety of the "peculiar institution," and there was a strong sentiment among them in favor of annexing Cuba and dividing it up into slave states. President Polk, therefore, authorized the American minister at Madrid to offer one hundred million dollars for Cuba; but the proposition was rejected in the most peremptory manner. A similar proposal was made ten years afterward in the Senate, but after a debate it was withdrawn. The next conspiracy, rebellion or revolution (it has been called by all these names according to the point of view and the sympathies of those speaking or writing of it) broke out in 1848. It was headed by Narciso Lopez, who was a native of Venezuela, but who had served in the Spanish army, and had attained therein the rank of major-general. This was of considerable more importance than any of the outbreaks that had preceded it. The first attempt of Lopez at an insurrectionary movement was made in the centre of the island. It proved to be unsuccessful, but Lopez, with many of his adherents, managed to escape and reached New York, where there were a large number of his sympathizers. Lopez represented the majority of the Cuban population as dissatisfied with Spanish rule, and eager for revolt and annexation to the United States. In 1849, with a party small in numbers, he attempted to return to Cuba, but the United States authorities prevented him accomplishing his purpose. He was undaunted by failure, however, and the following year, he succeeded in effecting another organization and sailed from New Orleans on the steamer Pampero, with a force which has been variously estimated at from three to six hundred men, the latter probably being nearer the truth. The second in command was W. S. Crittenden, a gallant young Kentuckian, who was a graduate of West Point, and who had earned his title of colonel in the Mexican war. They landed at Morillo in the Vuelta Abajo. Here the forces were divided; one hundred and thirty under Crittenden remained to guard the supplies, while Lopez with the rest pushed on into the interior. There had been no disguise in the United States as to the object of this expedition. Details in regard to it had been freely and recklessly published, and there is a lesson to be learned even from this comparatively trivial attempt to obtain freedom as to a proper censorship of the press in time of warfare. The Spanish government was fully informed beforehand as to all the little army's probable movements. The consequence was that Lopez was surrounded and his whole force captured by the Spanish. The expected uprising of the Cuban people, by the way, had not taken place. Hearing no news of his superior officer, Crittenden at first made a desperate attempt to escape by sea, but, being frustrated in this, he took refuge in the woods. At last he and his little force, now reduced to fifty men, were forced to capitulate. The United States Consul was asked to interfere in the case of Crittenden, but refused to do so. It was said at the time that there were two reasons for this: First, there was no doubt whatever as to the nature of the expedition, and secondly, the consul, who does not appear to have been particularly brave, was alarmed for his personal safety. The trial, if trial it can be called, and condemnation followed with the utmost, almost criminal, celerity. In batches of six, Crittenden and his fifty brave surviving comrades were shot beneath the walls of the fortress of Alara. When the Spaniards ordered Crittenden, as was the custom, to kneel with his back to the firing party, the heroic young Kentuckian responded: "No! I will stand facing them! I kneel only to my God!" It is stated that the bodies of the victims were mutilated in a horrible manner. There was no inconsiderable number of Cubans who sympathized with Lopez, but, held as they were under a stern leash, they did not dare to intercede for him. He was garroted at Havana, being refused the honorable death of a soldier. Some others of his comrades were shot, but most of them were transported for life. The sad fate of Crittenden aroused the greatest indignation and bitterness in the United States, but the tenets of international law forbade anything to be done in the case. During the administration of President Pierce, there occurred an incident which threatened at one time to lead to hostilities, and which was one of the first of the many incidents that have embittered the United States against Spain as regards its administration of Cuba. This was the firing on the American steamer, Black Warrior, by a Spanish man-of-war. The Black Warrior was a steamer owned in New York, and plying regularly between that city and Mobile. It was her custom both on her outward and homeward bound trips to touch always at Havana. The custom laws were then very stringent, and she ought each time to have exhibited a manifest of her cargo. But still this was totally unnecessary, as no portion of her cargo was ever put off at Havana. She was therefore entered and cleared under the technical term of "in ballast." This was done nearly thirty times with full knowledge and consent of the Spanish revenue officers; and, moreover the proceeding was in accordance with a general order of the Cuban authorities. But in February, 1850, the steamer was stopped and fired upon in the harbor of Havana. The charge brought against her was that she had an undeclared cargo on board. This cargo was confiscated, and a fine of twice its value imposed. The commander of the vessel, Captain Bullock, refused to pay the fine, and declared that the whole proceeding was "violent, wrongful and in bad faith." But, obtaining no redress, he hauled down his colors, and, carrying them away with him, left the vessel as a Spanish capture. With his crew and passengers, he made his way to New York, and reported the facts to the owners. The latter preferred a claim for indemnity of three hundred thousand dollars. After a tedious delay of five years, this sum was paid, and so the matter ended. The affair of the Black Warrior was one of the cases that led to the celebrated Ostend Conference. This conference was held in 1854 at Ostend and Aix-la-Chapelle by Messrs. Buchanan, Mason and Soule, United States ministers at London, Paris and Madrid, and resulted in what is known as the Ostend manifesto. The principal points of this manifesto were as follows: "The United States ought if possible to purchase Cuba with as little delay as possible. "The probability is great that the government and Cortes of Spain will prove willing to sell it because this would essentially promote the highest and best interests of the Spanish people. "The Union can never enjoy repose nor possess reliable securities as long as Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries. "The intercourse which its proximity to our coast begets and encourages between them (the inhabitants of Cuba) and the citizens of the United States has, in the progress of time, so united their interests and blended their fortunes that they now look upon each other as if they were one people and had but one destiny. "The system of immigration and labor lately organized within the limits of the island, and the tyranny and oppression which characterize its immediate rulers, threaten an insurrection at every moment which may result in direful consequences to the American people. "Cuba has thus become to us an unceasing danger, and a permanent cause for anxiety and alarm. "Should Spain reject the present golden opportunity for developing her resources and removing her financial embarrassments, it may never come again. "Extreme oppression, it is now universally admitted, justifies any people in endeavoring to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. The sufferings which the corrupt, arbitrary and unrelenting local administration necessarily entails upon the inhabitants of Cuba cannot fail to stimulate and keep alive that spirit of resistance and revolution against Spain which has of late years been so often manifested. In this condition of affairs it is vain to expect that the sympathies of the people of the United States will not be warmly enlisted in favor of their oppressed neighbors. "The United States has never acquired a foot of territory except by fair purchase, or, as in the case of Texas, upon the free and voluntary application of the people of that independent State, who desired to blend their destinies with our own. "It is certain that, should the Cubans themselves organize an insurrection against the Spanish government, no human power could, in our opinion, prevent the people and government of the United States from taking part in such a civil war in support of their neighbors and friends." We have quoted thus largely from the Ostend manifesto, because it seems to us, with one exception, to be so pertinent to the present status of affairs. The one exception is: We no longer desire the annexation of Cuba. The present war is a holy war. It has been entered into wholly and entirely from motives of philanthropy, to give to a suffering and downtrodden people the blessings of freedom which we ourselves enjoy. Moreover, the manifesto clearly shows that the causes of Cuban uprising are of no recent date; and that, before the United States rose in its wrath, it was patient and long-suffering. Although the Senate debated the questions raised by the manifesto for a long time, nothing resulted from the deliberations. Questions of extraordinary moment were arising in our own country, from which terrible results were to ensue, and for the time being, indeed for years to come, everything else sank into insignificance. Meantime, the question of independence was still being agitated in Cuba. General Jose de la Concha, in anticipation of a rising of the Creole population threatened to turn the island into an African dependency. He formed and drilled black troops, armed the native born Spaniards and disarmed the Cubans. Everything was got in readiness for a desperate defense. The Cuban junta in New York had enlisted a large body of men and had made ready for an invasion. Under the circumstances, however, the attempt was postponed. Pinto and Estrames, Cubans taken with arms in their hands, were executed, while a hundred others were either condemned to the galleys or deported. General de la Concha's foresight and vigilance unquestionably prevented a revolution, and for his services he was created Marquis of Havana. Then ensued a period of comparative quiet, but the party of independence was only awaiting an opportunity to strike. Long before this, Spain had entered upon the downward path. "A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe," some one designated her. She had been accumulating a debt against her, a debt which can never be repaid. And she has no one to blame for her wretched feeble, exhausted condition but herself--her own obstinacy, selfishness and perversity. Truly, Spain has changed but little, and that only in certain outward aspects, since the time of Torquemada and the Inquisition. She is the one nation of Europe that civilization does not seem to have reached. The magnificent legacy left her by her famous son, Christopher Columbus, has been gradually dissipated; the last beautiful jewel in the crown of her colonial possessions, the "Pearl of the Antilles" is about to be wrested from her. Her case is indeed a pitiable one, and yet sympathy is arrested when we remember that her reward to Columbus for his magnificent achievements was to cover his reputation with obloquy and load his person with chains. CHAPTER IV. THE TEN YEARS' WAR. For about fourteen years after 1854, the outbreaks in Cuba were infrequent, and of little or no moment. To all intents and purposes, the island was in a state of tranquility. In September, 1868, a revolution broke out in the mother country, the result of which was that Queen Isabella was deposed from the throne and forced to flee the country. This time Cuba did not proclaim her loyalty to the Bourbon dynasty, as she had done some sixty years before. She had learned her lesson. She knew now how Spanish sovereigns rewarded loyalty, and the fall of Isabella, instead of inspiring the Cubans with sympathy, caused them to rush into a revolution, an action which, paradoxical as it may seem, was somewhat precipitate, although long contemplated. All Cuba had been eagerly looking forward to the inauguration of political reforms, or to an attempt to shake of the pressing yoke of Spain. At first it was thought that the new government would ameliorate the condition of Cuba, and so change affairs that the island might remain contentedly connected with a country of which she had so long formed a part. But these hopes were soon dissipated, and the advanced party of Cuba at once matured their plans for the liberation of the island from the military despotism of Spain. A declaration of Cuban independence was issued at Manzanillo in October, 1868, by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a lawyer of Bayamo. This declaration began as follows: "As Spain has many a time promised us Cubans to respect our rights, without having fulfilled her promises; as she continues to tax us heavily, and by so doing is likely to destroy our wealth; as we are in danger of losing our property, our lives and our honor under further Spanish dominion, therefore, etc., etc." Thus was inaugurated what was destined to prove the most protracted and successful attempt at Cuban freedom, up to that time. It is certain that the grievances of the islanders were many, and this was even recognized to a certain extent in Spain itself. In a speech delivered by one of the Cuban deputies to the Cortes in 1866 occurs this passage: "I foresee a catastrophe near at hand, in case Spain persists in remaining deaf to the just reclamations of the Cubans. Look at the old colonies of the American continent. All have ended in conquering their independence. Let Spain not forget the lesson; let the government be just to the colonies that remain. Thus she will consolidate her dominion over people who only aspire to be good sons of a worthy mother, but who are not willing to live as slaves under the sceptre of a tyrant." In 1868 the annual revenue exacted from Cuba by Spain was in the neighborhood of twenty-six million dollars; and plans were in progress by which even this great revenue was to be largely increased. Not one penny of this was applied to Cuba's advantage. On the contrary, it was expended in a manner which was simply maddening to the Cubans. The officials of the island, be it understood, were invariably Spaniards. The captain-general received a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year; at this time, this sum was twice as much as that paid to the President of the United States. The provincial governors obtained twelve thousand dollars each, while the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba and the Bishop of Havana were paid eighteen thousand dollars apiece. In addition to these large salaries, there were perquisites which probably amounted to as much again. Even the lowest offices were filled by friends of Spanish politicians. These officials had no sympathy with Cuba, and cared nothing for her welfare, save in so far as they were enabled to fill their own pockets. The stealing in the custom houses was enormous. It has been estimated at over fifty per cent of the gross receipts. Every possible penny was forced from the native planters under the guise of taxes and also by the most flagrant blackmail. By a system of differential duties, Spain still managed to retain a monopoly of the trade to Cuba while the colonists were forced to pay the highest possible rates for all they received from the mother country. The rates of postage were absurdly outrageous. For instance there was an extra charge for delivery. When a native Cuban received a prepaid letter at his own door, he was obliged to pay thirty-seven and a half cents additional postage. The taxes on flour were so high that wheaten bread ceased to be an article of ordinary diet. The annual consumption of bread in Spain was four hundred pounds for each person, while in Cuba, it was only fifty-three pounds, nine ounces. In fact, all the necessaries of life were burdened with most iniquitous taxation. Then again there was the interest on the national debt. While the Spaniards paid three dollars and twenty-three cents per capita, six dollars and thirty-nine cents, nearly double, was exacted from the Cubans. All these were the chief causes of the revolution which began in 1868, and many of them still existed a few years ago and led to the last revolution. By the way, there is but little chance but that it will prove the last, bringing as its consequence, what has been struggled for so long--the freedom of Cuba. The standard of revolt in the Ten Years War, as has been stated, was raised by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. He was well known as an able lawyer and a wealthy planter. In the very beginning, he was unfortunately forced to take action before he had intended to do so, by reason of news of the projected outbreak reaching the authorities in Havana. A letter carrier, who from his actions gave rise to suspicions, was detained at Cespedes' sugar plantation, La Demajagua, and it was found that he was the bearer of an order for the arrest of the conspirators. With this information, immediate action became necessary. Cespedes deemed it expedient to strike at once, and with only two hundred poorly equipped men, he commenced the campaign at Yara. This place was defended by a Spanish force too strong for the insurgents. But Cespedes was not long in attracting to himself a most respectable following. At the end of a few weeks he found himself at the head of fifteen thousand men. The little army, however, was anything but well provided with arms and ammunition. Among them were many of Cespedes' former slaves whom the general promptly liberated. Attacks were made on Las Tunas, Cauto Embarcardero, Jiguana, La Guisa, El Datil and Santa Rita, in almost every case victory remaining with the insurgents. On the 15th of October it was decided to attack Bayamo, an important town of ten thousand inhabitants. On the 18th the town was captured. The governor, with a small body of men, shut himself up in the fort, but a few days after was forced to capitulate. For the relief of Bayamo, a Spanish force under Colonel Quiros, numbering, besides cavalry and artillery, about eight hundred infantry, started out from Santiago de Cuba, but was defeated and driven back to Santiago with heavy losses. The Spanish general, Count Valmaseda, was sent from Havana into the insurrectionary district, but was attacked and forced to return, leaving his dead on the field. Afterwards Valmaseda, who had increased his force to four thousand men, marched on Bayamo. He received a severe check at Saladillo, but eventually succeeded in crossing the Cauto. The Cubans saw the hopelessness of defending the place against such superior numbers, and, rather than have it fall into the hands of the enemy, burned the city. In December, General Quesada, who afterward played a most prominent part in the war, landed a cargo of arms and took command of the army at Camarguey. Before the close of the year, Spain, realizing how desperate was to be the struggle, had under arms nearly forty thousand troops which had been sent from Europe, besides twelve thousand guerillas recruited on the island and some forty thousand volunteers organized for the defense of the cities. These latter were in many respects analogous to the National Guard of the United States. They were raised from Spanish immigrants, between whom and the native Cubans have always existed a bitter enmity and jealousy. In the spring of 1869, the revolutionists drew up a constitution, which provided for a republican form of government, an elective president and vice-president, a cabinet and a single legislative chamber. It also made a declaration in favor of the immediate abolition of slavery. Cespedes was elected president and Francisco Aquilero vice-president. It is said that at the beginning of the war, before being driven to reprisals, the Cubans behaved with all humanity. They took many Spanish prisoners of war, but paroled them. On the other hand, the Cuban prisoners were treated with the utmost treachery and cruelty. In all parts of the island, no Cuban taken a prisoner of war was spared; to a man they were shot on the spot as so many dogs. Valmaseda, the Spanish general, in April, 1869, issued the following proclamation, which speaks for itself: "Inhabitants of the country! The re-enforcements of troops that I have been waiting for have arrived; with them I shall give protection to the good, and punish promptly those that still remain in rebellion against the government of the metropolis. "You know that I have pardoned those that have fought us with arms; that your wives, mothers and sisters have found in me the unexpected protection that you have refused them. You know, also, that many of those I have pardoned have turned against us again. "Before such ingratitude, such villainy, it is not possible for me to be the man I have been; there is no longer a place for a falsified neutrality; he that is not for me is against me, and that my soldiers may know how to distinguish, you hear, the orders they carry: 1st. Every man, from the age of fifteen years, upward, found away from his habitation and not proving a justified motive therefor, will be shot. 2d. Every unoccupied habitation will be burned by the troops. 3d. Every habitation from which does not float a white flag, as a signal that its occupants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes. "Women that are not living at their own homes, or at the house of their relatives, will collect in the town of Jiguana or Bayamo, where maintenance will be provided. Those who do not present themselves will be conducted forcibly." The second paragraph was flagrantly untrue. Those who had fought against the Spaniards had not been pardoned. On the contrary, they had been put to death. Fearful atrocities had been committed in Havana and elsewhere. To cite only a few instances: The shooting of men, women and children at the Villanuesa Theatre, at the Louvre, and at the sack of Aldama's house. Valmaseda's proclamation raised a storm of protest from all civilized nations, and the Spaniards, stiff and unbending, never wavered, but the policy embodied in Valmaseda's proclamation remained their tactics until the end of the war. The United States was especially roused and disgusted. Secretary Fish, in a letter to Mr. Hale, then Minister to Spain, protested "against the infamous proclamation of general, the Count of Valmaseda." Even a Havanese paper is quoted as declaring that, "Said proclamation does not even reach what is required by the necessities of war in the most civilized nations." The revolutionists were victorious in almost every engagement for the first two years, although their losses were by no means inconsiderable. It has even been acknowledged recently by a representative of Spain to the United States that the greater and better part of the Cubans were in sympathy with the insurrection. This opinion appeared in a statement made by Senor De Lome (whose reputation among Americans is now somewhat unsavory) in the New York Herald of February 23, 1896. The Cubans were recognized as belligerents by Chili, Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru, Columbia and Mexico. There were two important expeditions of assistance sent to the Cubans in the early part of the war. One was under the command of Rafael Quesada, and, in addition to men, brought arms and ammunition, of which the insurgents were sadly in need. The other was under General Thomas Jordan, a West Point graduate and an ex-officer in the Confederate service. By the way, the South, with its well-known chivalry, has always evinced warm sympathy for the unfortunate Cubans. To their glory be it spoken and remembered! Quesada managed to reach the interior without resistance. But Jordan, with only one hundred and seventy-five men, but carrying arms and ammunition for two thousand six hundred men, besides several pieces of artillery, was attacked at Camalito and again at El Ramon; he succeeded in repulsing the enemy and reaching his destination. Soon after, as General Quesada demanded extraordinary powers, he was deposed by the Cuban congress, and General Jordan was appointed commander-in-chief in his stead. In August, 1870, the United States government offered to Spain their good offices for a settlement of the strife. Mr. Fish, who was then secretary of State, proposed terms for the cession of the island to the Cubans, but the offer was declined. This is only one of the many times when Spain, in her suicidal policy, has refused to listen to reason. About this time the volunteers expelled General Dulce, and General de Rodas was sent from Spain to replace him with a re-enforcement of thirty thousand men. General de Rodas, however, remained in command only about six months, he in his turn being replaced by Valmaseda, again at the dictation of the volunteers. Speaking of these volunteers, who it will be remembered were recruited from Spanish immigrants and who were peculiarly obnoxious to Cubans of all classes, it will not be out of place to relate here an act of wanton cruelty upon their part. This took place in the autumn of 1871. One of the volunteers had died, and his body had been placed in a public tomb in Havana. Later it was discovered that the tomb had been defaced, by some inscription placed upon it, no more, no less. Suspicion fell upon the students of the university. The volunteers made a complaint and forty-three of the young students were arrested and tried for the misdemeanor. An officer of the regular Spanish army volunteered to defend them, and through his efforts, they were acquitted. This verdict did not satisfy the volunteers, however. They demanded and obtained from the captain-general, who was a man of weak character, the convening of another court-martial two-thirds of which was to be composed of volunteers. Was there ever such a burlesque of justice? The accusers and the judges were one and the same persons. Of course, there could be but one result. All the prisoners were found guilty and condemned, eight to be shot, and the others to imprisonment and hard labor. The day after the court-martial (?) fifteen hundred volunteers turned out under arms and executed the eight boys. This incident filled the whole of the United States with horror and indignation. The action was censured by the Spanish Cortes, but the matter ended there. No attempt whatever was made to punish the offenders. The insurgents waged an active warfare until the spring of 1871. They had at that time a force of about fifty thousand men, but they were badly armed and poorly supplied with necessities of all sorts. The resources of the Spaniards were infinitely greater. About this time the Cuban soldiers who had been fighting in the district of Camaguey signified a desire to surrender and cease the conflict, provided their lives were spared. The proposition was accepted. Their commander, General Agramonte refused to yield, and he was left with only about thirty-five men who remained loyal to him. He formed a body of cavalry, and continued fighting for some two years longer, when he was killed on the field of battle. In January, 1873, the Edinburg Review contained a very strong article on the condition of affairs in Cuba, in the course of which it said: "It is well known that Spain governs Cuba with an iron and blood-stained hand. The former holds the latter deprived of political, civil and religious liberty. Hence the unfortunate Cubans being illegally prosecuted and sent into exile, or executed by military commissions in time of peace; hence their being kept from public meeting, and forbidden to speak or write on affairs of State; hence their remonstrances against the evils that afflict them being looked on as the proceedings of rebels, from the fact that they are bound to keep silence and obey; hence the never-ending plague of hungry officials from Spain, to devour the product of their industry and labor; hence their exclusion from public stations, and want of opportunity to fit themselves for the art of government; hence the restrictions to which public instruction with them is subjected, in order to keep them so ignorant as not to be able to know and enforce their rights in any shape or form whatever; hence the navy and the standing army, which are kept in their country at an enormous expenditure from their own wealth, to make them bend their knees and submit their necks to the iron yoke that disgraces them; hence the grinding taxation under which they labor, and which would make them all perish in misery but for the marvelous fertility of their soil." In July, 1873, Pieltain, then captain-general, sent an envoy to President Cespedes to offer peace on condition that Cuba should remain a state of the Spanish republic, but this offer was declined. In December of the same year, Cespedes was deposed by the Cuban Congress, and Salvador Cisneros elected in his place. The latter was a scion of the old Spanish nobility who renounced his titles and had his estates confiscated when he joined the revolution. He was and is distinguished for his patriotism, intelligence and nobility of character. It was his daughter, Evangelina Cisneros, who was rescued from the horrors of a Spanish dungeon by Americans, and brought to the United States. After his retirement, Cespedes was found by the Spaniards, and put to death, according to their usual policy: "Slay and spare not." The war dragged on, being more a guerrilla warfare than anything else. The losses were heavy on both sides. There is no data from which to obtain the losses of the Cubans, but the records in the War Office at Madrid show the total deaths in the Spanish land forces for the ten years to have been over eighty thousand. Spain had sent to Cuba one hundred and forty-five thousand men, and her best generals, but while they kept the insurgents in check they were unable to subdue them. The condition of the island was deplorable, her trade had greatly decreased and her crops were ruined. For years there had been a constant waste of men and money, with no perceptible gain on either side. By 1878, both parties were heartily weary of the struggle and ready to compromise. General Martinez de Campos was then in command of the Spanish forces, and he opened negotiations with the Cuban leader, Maximo Gomez, the same who was destined later to attain even more prominence. Gomez listened to what was proposed, and after certain deliberations, terms of peace were concluded in February, 1878, by the treaty of El Zanjon. This treaty guaranteed Cuba representation in the Spanish Cortes, granted a free pardon to all who had taken part directly or indirectly, in the revolution, and permitted all those who wished to do so to leave the island. At first glance these terms seem fair. But, as we shall see later, Spain in this case as in all others was true to herself, that is, false to every promise she made. CHAPTER V. THE VIRGINIUS EMBROGLIO. There was one event of the ten years' war which deserves to be treated somewhat in detail, as the universal excitement in the United States caused by the affair for a time appeared to make a war between the United States and Spain inevitable. And the Cubans hoped that this occurrence would lead to the immediate expulsion of the Spaniards from Cuba. The hopes thus raised, however, were doomed to meet with disappointment, as the diplomatic negotiations opened between the United States and Spain led to a peaceable settlement of the whole difficulty. The trouble was this: On the 31st of October, 1873, the Virginius, a ship sailing under the American flag, was captured on the high seas, near Jamaica, by the Spanish steamer Tornado, on the ground that it intended to land men and arms in Cuba for the insurgent army. The Virginius was a steamer which was built in England during the civil war, and was used as a blockade-runner. She was captured and brought to the Washington Navy Yard. There she was sold at auction. The purchaser was one John F. Patterson, who took an oath that he was a citizen of the United States. On the 26th of September, 1870, the Virginius was registered in the custom house of New York. As all the requisites of the statute were fulfilled in her behalf, she cleared in the usual way for Curacoa, and sailed early in September for that port. It was discovered a good many years after that Patterson was not the real owner of the vessel, but that, as a matter of fact, the money for her purchase had been furnished by Cuban sympathizers, and that she was virtually controlled by them. From the day of her clearance in New York, she certainly did not return within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Nevertheless, she preserved her American papers, and whenever she entered foreign ports, she made it a practice to put forth a claim to American nationality, which claim was always recognized by the authorities in those ports. There is no evidence whatever to show that she committed any overt act, or did anything that was contrary to international law. She cleared from Kingston, Jamaica, on the 23rd of October, 1873, for Costa Rica. As President Grant said in his message to Congress, January 5th, 1874, she was under the flag of the United States, and she would appear to have had, as against all powers except the United States, the right to fly that flag and to claim its protection as enjoyed by all regularly documented vessels registered as part of our commercial marine. Still quoting President Grant, no state of war existed conferring upon a maritime power the right to molest and detain upon the high seas a documented vessel, and it could not be pretended that the Virginius had placed herself without the pale of all law by acts of piracy against the human race. (And yet this very thing is what the Spaniards, without rhyme or reason, did claim. Ever since they have been claiming what was false, as for instance their reports of the victories (!) in the American-Spanish war. By so doing they have made themselves the laughing-stock of nations, for, although they never hesitate to lie, they do not know how to lie with a semblance of truth, which might be, far be it from us to say would be, a saving grace). If the papers of the Virginius were irregular or fraudulent, and frankly they probably were, the offense was one against the laws of the United States, justifiable only in their tribunals. However, to return to facts, on the morning of the 31st of October, the Virginius was seen cruising near the coast of Cuba. She was chased by the Spanish man-of-war Tornado, captured, and brought into the harbor of Santiago de Cuba on the following day. One hundred and fifty-five persons were on board, many of whom bore Spanish names. This was made a great point of by the Spanish authorities, although as a matter of fact it proved nothing. This action was not only in violation of international law, but it was in direct contravention of the provisions of the treaty of 1795. Mr. E. G. Schmitt was at that time the American vice-consul at Santiago, and he lost no time in demanding that he should be allowed to see the prisoners, in order to obtain from them information which should enable him to protect those who might be American citizens, and also whatever rights the ship should chance to have. Mr. Schmitt was treated with the utmost discourtesy by the authorities, who practically told him that they would admit of no interference on his part, and insisted that all on board the Virginius were pirates and would be dealt with as such. And indeed they were. The Virginius was brought into Santiago late in the afternoon of the first of November, and a court-martial was convened the next morning to try the prisoners. Within a week fifty-three men had received the semblance of a trial and had been shot. Meanwhile England, who even her worst enemies cannot deny, is always on the side of humanity, intervened. Reports of the barbarous proceedings had reached Jamaica, and H. M. S. Niobe, under the command of Sir Lambton Lorraine, was dispatched to Santiago with instructions to stop the massacre. The Niobe arrived at Santiago on the eighth, and Lorraine threatened to bombard the town unless the executions were immediately stopped. This threat evidently frightened the bloodthirsty governor, for no more shooting took place. It was a noble act on the part of Sir Lambton Lorraine, and the American public appreciated it. On his way home to England, he stopped in New York. It was proposed to tender him a public reception, but this Sir Lambton declined. But by way of telling what a "brick" he was considered, a silver brick from Nevada was presented to him, upon the face of which was inscribed: "Blood is thicker than water. Santiago de Cuba, November, 1873. To Sir Lambton Lorraine, from the Comstock Mines, Virginia City, Nevada, U. S. A." President Grant, through General Daniel E. Sickles, who then represented the United States at Madrid, directed that a demand should be made upon Spain for the restoration of the Virginius, for the return of the survivors to the protection of the United States, for a salute to the flag, and for the punishment of the offending parties. When the news of the massacre reached Washington, the Secretary of State telegraphed Minister Sickles: "Accounts have been received from Havana of the execution of the captain and thirty-six of the crew and eighteen others. If true, General Sickles will protest against the act as brutal and barbarous, and ample reparation will be demanded." Minister Sickles replied: "President Castelar received these observations with his usual kindness, and told me confidentially that at seven o'clock in the morning, as soon as he read the telegram from Cuba, and without reference to any international question, for that indeed had not occurred to him, he at once sent a message to the captain-general, admonishing him that the death penalty must not be imposed upon any non-combatant, without the previous approval of the Cortes, nor upon any person taken in arms against the government without the sanction of the executive." About that time, a writer of some celebrity, who was also a war correspondent, named Ralph Keeler, mysteriously disappeared. Although it was never proven, there is little doubt but that he was assassinated by the Spaniards. Then, as now, there was an intense hatred in the Spanish breast against every citizen of the United States. As Murat Halstead expresses it, there seemed to be a blood madness in the air. Mr. Halstead, by the way, tells an anecdote of a madman, who seized a rifle with sabre attached and assaulted a young man who had asked him an innocent question. He knocked him down and stabbed him to death with a bayonet, sticking it through him a score of times as he cried: "Cable my country that I have killed a rebel!" The murderer was adjudged insane. Further comment is unnecessary. To return to the controversy over the Virginius between the United States and Spain. General Sickles, as he had been instructed, made a solemn protest against the barbarities perpetrated at Santiago. The Spanish Minister of State replied in a rather ill-humored way, and amongst other things, he said that the protest of America was rejected with serene energy. This somewhat ridiculous expression gave General Sickles a chance to rejoin, which he did, as follows: "And if at last under the good auspices of Senor Carvajal, with the aid of that serenity that is unmoved by slaughter, and that energy that rejects the voice of humanity, which even the humblest may utter and the most powerful cannot hush, this government is successful in restoring order and peace and liberty where hitherto, and now, all is tumult and conflict and despotism, the fame of the achievement, not confined to Spain, will reach the continents beyond the seas and gladden the hearts of millions who believe that the new world discovered by Columbus is the home of freemen and not that of slaves." About this time, Spain asked the good offices of England as an intervener, but to his glory be it spoken and to the nation which he represented, Lord Granville declined, "unless on the basis of ample reparation made to the United States." Spain continued to dilly-dally and evade the question of her responsibility. On the 25th of November Mr. Fish telegraphed to Minister Sickles: "If no accommodation is reached by the close of to-morrow, leave. If a proposition is submitted, you will refer it to Washington, and defer action." This was just after Minister Sickles had informed the authorities at Washington that Lord Granville regarded the reparation demanded as just and moderate. On the 26th, however, just as the American minister was preparing to ask for his passports, close the legation and leave Spain, he received a note from Senor Carvajal which conceded in part the demands of the United States. This proposition was virtually that the Virginius and the survivors should be given up, but the salute was to be dispensed with, in case Spain satisfied the United States within a certain time that the Virginius had no right to carry the flag. After considerable correspondence an arrangement was finally arrived at, Spain further agreeing to proceed against those who had offended the sovereignty of the United States, or who had violated their treaty rights. In his message, President Grant says: "The surrender of the vessel and the survivors to the jurisdiction of the tribunals of the United States was an admission of the principles upon which our demand had been founded. I therefore had no hesitation in agreeing to the arrangement which was moderate and just, and calculated to cement the good relations which have so long existed between Spain and the United States." The following words, spoken by Secretary Fish to Admiral Polo, in an interview during the progress of the negotiations, are worthy to be quoted: "I decline to submit to arbitration the question of an indignity to the flag. I am willing to submit all questions which are properly subjects of reference." On the 16th of December the Virginius, with the American flag flying, was delivered to the United States at Bahia Honda. The vessel was unseaworthy. Her engines were out of order and she was leaking badly. On the passage to New York she encountered a severe storm, and, in spite of the efforts of her officers and men, she sank off Cape Fear. The survivors of the massacre were surrendered at Santiago de Cuba on the 18th, and reached New York in safety. About eighty thousand dollars were paid by Spain as compensation to the families of the American and British victims who perished at Santiago. But no punishment was ever visited upon the governor who ordered the executions. There was a tremendous amount of feeling aroused in the United States over the Virginius affair, and the government was severely criticized and censured for not avenging the inhuman butcheries and the insults to the flag. But it must be remembered that the government had a very hard task to deal with. There was little or no doubt but that the Virginius, at the time of her capture was intended for an unlawful enterprise, in spite of Captain Fry's words in a letter to his wife just before his execution: "There is to be a fearful sacrifice of life from the Virginius, and, as I think, a needless one, as the poor people are unconscious of crime and even of their fate up to now. I hope God will forgive me, if I am to blame for it." The clamor of the American people for revenge was fiery in its intensity, but the government did not yield to it, in which it was right. There has been more than one time in our history when if public opinion had been allowed to rule, the results would have been fatal; and the very men who were most abused, in the light of future events, have been praised for their wisdom and moderation. Murat Halstead sums up the whole matter in a clear and just manner. He says in his admirable book, "The Story of Cuba:" "It is not, we must say, a correct use of words to say that the United States was degraded by the Virginius incident. In proportion as nations are great and dignified, they must at least obey their own laws and treaties. When Grant was President of the United States and Castelar was President of Spain, there was a reckless adventure and shocking massacre, but we were not degraded because we did not indulge in a policy of vengeance." CHAPTER VI. AGAIN SPAIN'S PERFIDY. Before proceeding further, it is necessary to call attention to one very important matter which was the direct result of the Ten Years' War. If the insurgents accomplished nothing else, they may well be proud of this achievement. Their own freedom they failed to obtain, but they were the cause of freedom being bestowed upon others. We refer to the manumission of the slaves. The Spanish slave code, promulgated in 1789, is admitted everywhere to have been very humane in its character. So much so that when Trinidad came into the possession of the English, the anti-slavery party resisted successfully the attempt of the planters of that island to have the Spanish law replaced by the British. Once again, however, were the words of Spain falsified by her deeds. Spanish diplomacy up to the present day has only been another name for lies. For, notwithstanding the mildness of the code, its provisions were constantly and glaringly violated. In 1840, a writer, who had personal knowledge of the affairs of Cuba, declared that slavery in Cuba was more destructive to human life, more pernicious to society, degrading to the slave and debasing to the master, more fatal to health and happiness than in any other slave-holding country on the face of the habitable globe. It was in Cuba that the slaves were subjected to the coarsest fare and the most exhausting and unremitting toil. A portion of their number was even absolutely destroyed every year by the slow torture of overwork and insufficient sleep and rest. In 1792 the slave population of the island was estimated at eighty-four thousand; in 1817, one hundred and seventy-nine thousand; in 1827, two hundred and eighty-six thousand; in 1843, four hundred and thirty-six thousand; in 1867, three hundred and seventy-nine thousand, five hundred and twenty-three, and in 1873, five hundred thousand, or about one-third of the entire population. In 1870, two years after the beginning of the war, in which the colored people, both free and slaves, took a prominent part, the Spanish legislature passed an act, providing that every slave who had then passed, or should thereafter pass, the age of sixty should be at once free, and that all yet unborn children of slaves should also be free. The latter, however, were to be maintained at the expense of the proprietors up to their eighteenth year, and during that time to be kept as apprentices at such work as was suitable to their age. Slavery was absolutely abolished in Cuba in 1886. Spain was therefore the last civilized country to cling to this vestige of barbarism, and she probably would not have abandoned it then had she not been impelled to by force and her self-interest. After the treaty of El Zanjon, it was supposed by the Cubans, and rightly too, had they been dealing with an honorable opponent and not a trickster, that the condition of Cuba would be greatly improved. The treaty, in the first place, guaranteed Cuba representation in the Cortes in Madrid. This was kept to the letter, but the spirit was abominably lacking. The Peninsulars, that is, the Spaniards in Cuba, obtained complete control of the polls, and, by unparalleled frauds, always managed to elect a majority of the deputies. The deputies, purporting to come from Cuba, might just as well have been appointed by the Spanish crown. In other and plainer words, Cuba had no representation whatever in the Cortes. The cities of Cuba were hopelessly in debt and they were not able to provide money for any municipal services. There were no funds to keep up the schools, and in consequence they were closed. As for hospitals and asylums, they scarcely existed. There was only one asylum for the insane in all the island, and that was wretchedly managed. This asylum was in Havana. Elsewhere, the insane were confined in the cells of jails. The public debt of Spain was something enormous, and Cuba was forced to pay a part of the interest on this which was out of all proportion. Perez Castaneda spoke of this in the Spanish Cortes in the following terms: "The debt of Cuba was created in 1864 by a simple issue of three million dollars, and it now amounts to the fabulous sum of one hundred and seventy-five million dollars. What originated the Cuban debt? The wars of Santo Domingo, of Peru and of Mexico. But are not these matters for the Peninsula? Certainly they are matters for the whole of Spain. Why must Cuba pay that debt?" Again, Senor Robledo, in a debate at Madrid, after speaking of the fearful abuses existent in the government of Havana, said: "I do not intend to read the whole of the report; but I must put the House in possession of one fact. To what do these defalcations amount? They amount to twenty-two million, eight hundred and eleven thousand, five hundred and sixteen dollars. Did not the government know this? What has been done?" In 1895 it was alleged that the custom house frauds in Cuba, since the end of the Ten Years War, amounted to over one hundred millions of dollars. It is enough to make one hold one's breath in horror. And, remember well, there was absolutely no redress for the suffering Cubans by peaceful means. One more quotation. Rafael de Eslara of Havana, when speaking of the misery of the island, thus summed up the situation: "Granted the correctness of the points which I have just presented, it seems to be self-evident that a curse is pressing upon Cuba, condemning her to witness her own disintegration, and converting her into a prey for the operation of those swarms of vampires that are so cruelly devouring us, deaf to the voice of conscience, if they have any; it will not be rash to venture the assertion that Cuba is undone; there is no salvation possible." Taxation on all sides was enormous, the two chief products of the island, sugar and tobacco, suffering the most. While other countries gave encouragement to their colonies, Spain did everything she could to discourage her well-beloved "Ever Faithful Isle." The Cuban planter had to struggle along with a heavy tax on his crop, an enormous duty on his machinery, and an additional duty at the port of destination. America once rose in wrath against unjust taxation, but her grievances were as nothing in comparison with those of--we had almost written--her sister republic. May the inadvertency prove a prophecy! To show how the products of Cuba, under this ghastly extortion have declined, we make the following statement, based on the most reliable statistics. In 1880 Cuba furnished twenty-five per cent. of all the sugar of the world. In 1895 this had declined to ten and a half per cent. In 1889, the export of cigars rated at forty dollars per one thousand amounted to ten millions, nineteen thousand and forty dollars. In 1894 it was five millions, three hundred and sixty-eight thousand, four hundred dollars, a loss of nearly one-half in five years. Then besides all this, Cuba had to pay the high salaries of the horde of Spanish officials, nothing of which accrued to her advantage. There can be no doubt but that the treaty of El Zanjon was a cheat, and its administration a gigantic scandal. Can any fair-minded person think then that the Cubans were wrong, when driven to the wall, oppressed beyond measure, goaded to madness by an inhuman master, they broke out once again into open revolt, determined this time to fight to the death or to obtain their freedom? CHAPTER VII. SOME CUBAN HEROES. Although the natural resources of Cuba are remarkable, as will be demonstrated later, and more than sufficient for all her people, a large number of Cubans have, either of their own free will or by force become exiles. Besides over forty thousand in the United States, there are a large number in the islands under British control, as well as throughout the West Indies and in the South American republics. It is perfectly natural that these exiles should feel the deepest interest in their native land, and although Spain has complained frequently of being menaced from beyond her borders, what else could she expect after the way in which she treated these exiled sons of hers? Besides she has had no just cause for grievance, as the right for foreign countries to furnish asylums to political offenders has been recognized from time immemorial, and, unless some overt act be committed, there can be no responsibility on the part of such foreign countries. Enough perhaps has been said to show that the Cubans had every reason to once again rise in revolt, but in order that there may be no doubt as to the justice of their cause, let us recapitulate: Spain has invariably drawn from the island all that could be squeezed out of it. In spite of her protests she has never done anything for Cuba, all her aim being to replenish her own exhausted treasury and to enrich the functionaries of the Spanish government. While Cuba is a producing country, she has been refused the right to dispose of her produce to other countries except at ruinous rates, in spite of the fact that Spain herself could not begin to consume all that Cuba had to offer. The market of the island, by the way, from the very nature of things, is the United States, and not Spain. The rules which limit importation have been most rigid. For instance, American flour cannot enter Cuba free of duty, while it enters as a free product into Spain. Spain has governed Cuba with a most arbitrary hand. The island has had nothing whatever to say as to the management of its own affairs. The Cubans have purposely been kept in a state of ignorance, the system of education amounting practically to nothing. The Spaniards have never kept one promise made, but after each promise have increased their oppression and tyranny. In 1894 Senor Sagasta laid before the Cortes a project for reform in Cuba; but the sense of this project was confused in the extreme; there was little hope that a reform planned with such little method could meet with any degree of successful realization. In fact there was little or no possibility that the abuses under which the island groaned would be removed. At last patience ceased to be a virtue. The present rising in Cuba was begun toward the close of 1894. The leader was Jose Marti, a poet and orator, who was then in New York. He at the outset, was the very soul of the revolutionary movement, and he held in his hands the threads of the conspiracy. He was a man of charming and captivating personality, strong in his own convictions and devoted body, heart and soul to the interests of his country. He was the son of a Spanish colonel and when quite young was condemned, for what reason has never been known, to ten years imprisonment in Havana. Afterwards, he was sentenced to the galleys for life. When the amnesty was declared, after the Ten Years War, he was given back his freedom, but his resentment still continued and he vowed his life to obtaining the liberty of Cuba. He went first to Central America, and afterwards took up his residence in the United States. Everywhere he preached what he considered a holy war. Here and there he gathered together contributions, which he sent to Cuba for the secret purchase of arms and ammunition. He met with many rebuffs and disappointments, but not for one moment did he doubt the justice of his cause or its ultimate success. He was not a visionary man, but there were those even among the ones he had won over by his impassioned words who looked upon him as the victim of hallucinations. That this was not true, the events of the past few years have fully proven. Marti organized his first expedition in New York, and set sail for Cuba with three vessels, the Lagonda, the Amadis and the Baracoa, containing men and war materials. This expedition was stopped, however, by the United States authorities. Later, Marti joined Gomez, Cromlet, Cebreco and the Maceo brothers, all of whom had fought in the Ten Years War, at Santo Domingo, which was Gomez' home. Some description of these men, all of whom have done magnificent work for the freedom of their country, may not be out of place. Maximo Gomez is about seventy-five years of age, and he may perhaps be termed the "Washington" of the fight for liberty. It will be remembered that he was a leader in the Ten Years War. He is a man of excellent judgment, and, in spite of his years, of marvelous mental and physical activity. No better man could the insurgents have selected as their general-in-chief. Flor Cromlet was a guerilla of unquestioned valor, who lost his life early in the campaign, but his name will live in the annals of free and independent Cuba. His mother was a mulatto, but his father was a Spaniard. The Maceo brothers have been particularly distinguished. They were born of colored parents, and were of the type of the mulatto. Both were men of indomitable courage. Antonio Maceo was born at Santiago de Cuba in 1848. At the beginning of the Ten Years War, he was a mule driver, and could neither read nor write. He was one of the first to enlist in the Cuban army, and soon showed his courage and intelligence. He was rapidly promoted to superior rank and became a terror to the Spanish army. Their one idea seemed to be to capture him, but apparently he possessed a charmed life. During his leisure moments, which it can be imagined were but few, he managed to learn to read and write. He was one of the last combatants to lay down his arms in the former war, and then only because he saw that further struggle would only end in loss of life without the winning of liberty. He was exiled and then travelled through America, studying constantly and ever endeavoring to improve himself. Here was a poor, obscure, descendant of slaves who by sheer perseverance, of course coupled with natural ability, afterward held the armies of a great nation at bay. Antonio Maceo was killed in Havana province in 1896, probably through the treachery of one of his followers, and his brother died, but not until both had accomplished wonderful deeds of valor. It is a pity that they could not have lived to see the results of their unselfish patriotism. Another mulatto who has won fame in the cause of "Free Cuba" is Augustin Cebreco. The "Marion of Cuba," as he was called, Nestor Aranguren, must not be forgotten. He was at the head of a little band of men, all members of the best Havana families and graduates of the university. He was very much like the "Swamp Fox" of our Revolution in the way he would undertake some daring raid, and then retreat into the long grass of the Manigua to rest his tired horses and recruit his men. One of his most famous exploits was the capture of a train at the very gates of Havana. Aranguren treated his captives most kindly, with one exception, and in this he was justified. A man named Barrios had often informed against the insurgents, and he was condemned to death. Of him, Aranguren said: "That Cuban must die. I must rid my country of such an unnatural son. Thank God, there are few such traitors!" The rest were allowed to go free. To one of the Spaniards who were on the train, Aranguren said: "If Spain should grant a generous and liberal autonomy, peace is not only possible, but probable; but, if she should persevere in her false colors, she will not regain control of this island, until every true soldier of Cuba is dead, and that will take a long time." The ill-fated Aranguren died at the age of twenty-four. It was not until May, 1895, that Marti and the other leaders thought it wise to go to Cuba. When they reached there, they found that the insurgents had already commenced the rebellion and had even gained some ground. At first the Spanish authorities looked upon the insurrection as a trivial matter, nothing more serious than a negro riot. They believed that it would be speedily suppressed as Spain had then in the island an army of nineteen thousand men, besides the fifty thousand volunteers, who could be called on in case of need. But, to make all sure, seven thousand more soldiers were sent over from Spain. In addition to this, many men, who afterward were among the leaders of the insurgent party expressed their unqualified disapproval of the movement. And in this, they were undoubtedly sincere, as they had not the slightest idea that it could succeed. The general lack of sympathy and the universal criticism that met the little band of revolutionists unquestionably contributed much toward the relaxation of the vigilance of the government. But the government was soon to be undeceived. The insurrection became a very serious matter indeed. The insurgents pursued very much the same tactics that they had followed in the Ten Years War, that is, they would seldom risk an open battle, and the Spaniards could gain but little ground against the guerilla methods of their opponents. The Cubans were very badly equipped; in fact they had scarcely any war material whatever. They began by appropriating indiscriminately any fire arms wherever they could find them, from the repeating rifle to the shot gun with the ramrod. Many of them were armed only with revolvers, and the majority of them had simply the "machete," a knife about nineteen inches in length. Recruits constantly came to their ranks, however, and it was not long before they numbered over six thousand. A political crisis now took place in Spain, and the conservative party came into power. Premier Canovas then appointed as governor-general of Cuba, Martinez Campos, who had been so successful, by diplomacy rather than by anything else, in ending the Ten Years War. He landed at Guantanamo, and before visiting Havana, he issued the most elaborate instructions to every department of the military service, which now had been largely reinforced. In the early part of the war, a great misfortune befell the Cubans, and that was in the loss of their beloved leader, Jose Marti. On the 18th of May, a part of the insurgent army camped upon the plains of Dos Rios, where they learned that the enemy was in the neighborhood, in safety, protected by a fort. The insurgents numbered about seven hundred cavalrymen, under the command of Marti and Gomez. The next morning they came upon the Spanish outpost. Gomez, who has always shown himself to be a prudent general, thought it would be wiser not to risk a battle, but to continue their route, as the object of the expedition was not skirmishing, but to attempt to penetrate into the Province of Puerto Principe. But Jose Marti, in his fiery enthusiasm longed to fall upon the enemy; he declared that not to do so would be dishonor. Gomez yielded. Marti was mounted upon a very spirited horse. He was told that it was unmanageable, but he would not listen to reason. Crying, "Come on, my children!" and "Viva Cuba Libre," he dashed upon the Spanish, followed by his men. Before this onslaught, the Spaniards retreated, but in good order. Gomez cried to his troops to rally, but Marti, dragged on by his horse which he was unable to control, disappeared among the ranks of the enemy. He received a bullet above the left eye, another in the throat, and several bayonet thrusts in the body. Led by Gomez, who was heart broken at the fate of his old companion and friend, the insurgents charged upon the Spaniards, but it was of no avail. The latter retained possession of the corpse of the gallant soldier, whose only fault was a too reckless bravery. And now it is a pleasure to be able to recount one noble act on the part of the Spaniards, perhaps the only one in the whole course of the war. General Campos, who was a just and honorable man, ordered the body of the illustrious patriot to receive decent burial, and one of the Spanish officers even pronounced a sort of eulogy over the remains. There was a report that Gomez had also been killed, but this was a mistake. About a mouth afterward he crossed the trocha and entered the province of Puerto Principe, more commonly known as the Camaguey. The trocha, by the way, was an invention of Campos in the preceding war, and was found to be of great value. It was practically a line of forts extending across the island between the provinces of Puerto Principe and Santa Clara, and it was intended that the insurgents should not be allowed to cross this line. Other trochas were afterwards erected, but they have not proved of any extraordinary advantage in the present insurrection. An assembly, composed of representatives of all the bands that were under arms, met and elected the officers of the revolutionary government. Salvador Cisneros, otherwise known as the Marquis of Santa Lucia, was elected president, the same office he had filled during the Ten Years War. The other officers were: Vice-President, Bartolomeo Maso. Secretary of State, Rafael Portuondo y Tamayo. Secretary of War, Carlos Roloff. Secretary of the Treasury, Severo Pina. General-in-Chief, Maximo Gomez. Lieutenant-General, Antonio Maceo. Afterwards, at another election, as officers, according to the Cuban constitution, only serve two years, there were replaced by the following: President, Bartolomeo Maso. Vice-President, Mendez Capote. Secretary of State, Andres Moreno de la Torres. Secretary of War, Jose B. Alemon. Secretary of the Treasury, Ernesto Fons Sterling. Maximo Gomez still remained general-in-chief. Gomez and Campos were now pitted once more against each other, as they had been in the previous war. Both men issued orders to their respective commands. Gomez ordered the Cubans to attack the small Spanish outposts, capture their arms if possible setting at liberty every man who should deliver them up; to cut all railway and telegraph lines; to keep on the defensive and retreat in groups, unless the Cubans were in a position to fight the enemy at great advantage; to destroy Spanish forts and other buildings where any resistance was made by the enemy; to destroy all sugar crops and mills, the owners of which refused to contribute to the Cuban war fund; and, finally to forbid the farmers to send any food to the cities unless upon the payment of certain taxes. On his part, Campos issued the following commands: Several regiments to protect the sugar estates; other detachments to be placed along the railroads, and on every train in motion; to attack always, unless the enemy's numbers were three to one; all rebels, except officers, who surrendered, to be allowed to go free and unmolested; convoys of provisions to be sent to such towns as needed them. Everything was now in readiness for a fierce campaign, and one that threatened to be protracted. It was not long before operations commenced in earnest. CHAPTER VIII. CUBAN TACTICS. There was one incident which occurred in the early part of the disturbances which caused a certain amount of excitement in the United States, as it was thought that it would prove to be a repetition of the Virginius affair. On the 8th of March, 1895, the ship Allianca was bound from Colon to New York. She was following the usual track of vessels near the Cuban shore. But, outside the three mile limit, she was fired upon by a Spanish gunboat. President Cleveland declared this to be an unwarrantable interference by Spain with passing American ships. Protest was promptly made by the United States against this act as not being justified by a state of war; nor permissible in respect of a vessel on the usual paths of commerce, nor tolerable in view of the wanton peril occasioned to innocent life and property. This act was disavowed by Spain, with full expression of regret, and with an assurance that there should not be again such just cause for complaint. The offending officer was deposed from his command. All this was eminently satisfactory, and the United States took no further action in the matter. The chief battle of the campaign, while Campos still remained governor-general, was that fought at Bayamo, in July, 1895. Campos himself commanded in person, and for the first time the Spaniards, ever vain-glorious and self-confident, became aware of the mettle of the men arrayed against them. The Spanish forces numbered some five thousand men, while the Cubans had not much more than half that number. It was the Spanish strategy, however, to divide their men into detachments, and the Cubans were quick to take advantage of this. The fight was a long and bloody affair, but finally the victory, although not pronounced, remained with the Cubans. The Spanish forces were more or less demoralized, and their loses were heavy. Thirteen Spanish officers were killed, while the Cubans lost two colonels. The Cubans admitted that fifty of their number were killed or disabled, but they claimed that the loss of the Spaniards was over three hundred. It is impossible to tell much from the Spanish accounts, as they were far from being complete and were highly colored. It has been the same way in the present war, as witness the laughable "one mule" report, with which all are familiar. In this engagement, General Santocildes was killed. It is said that Santocildes sacrificed his own life to save that of his friend and superior, Campos. There are two very different stories told of the attitude of Antonio Maceo toward Campos in this battle. One is to the effect that he did not know that Campos was commanding in person, but when he was told of it the following day, he said: "Had I known it, I would have sacrificed five hundred more of my men, and I would have taken him dead or alive! Thus with one blow I would have ended the war." The other is quite different, and has been very generally believed amongst the Cubans. It is to the effect that, during the fight, Maceo recognized Campos, and, pointing him out to his men, ordered them not to harm him, as he was a soldier who made war honorably. Murat Halstead relates two incidents of the battle of Bayamo, which, however, he declares must be taken with a large grain of salt. One, which comes from an insurgent authority is as follows: "Campos only saved himself by a ruse. Taking advantage of the Cubans' well-known respect for the wounded, he had himself placed in a covered stretcher, which they allowed to pass, without looking inside the cover. When outside of the Cuban lines he was obliged to walk on foot to Bayamo, through six miles of by-paths, under cover of the darkness, only accompanied by a colored guide." The other tells that a son of Campos, who was a lieutenant, was captured, but released with a friendly message to his father, who of course, was expected to follow so admirable an example. Whether these anecdotes are true or not, one thing is certain. After the battle, Maceo collected the wounded, whom the Spaniards left upon the field in their retreat, and treated them in the most humane manner possible. He wrote to Campos the following letter: * * * "To His Excellency, the General Martinez Campos: "Dear Sir--Anxious to give careful and efficient attendance to the wounded Spanish soldiers that your troops left behind on the battle-field, I have ordered that they be lodged in the houses of the Cuban families that live nearest to the battle-ground, until you send for them. "With my assurance that the forces you may send to escort them back will not meet any hostile demonstrations from my soldiers, I have the honor to be, sir, "Yours respectfully, "Antonio Maceo." * * * While Maceo was thus maneuvering in the eastern part of the island, the general-in-chief, Maximo Gomez, was fighting in Camaguey. The population in the provinces of Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba had risen almost to a man, and the movement was well under way in the province of Santa Clara. Several encounters took place, the most important being the attack upon the little city of Cascorro, which Gomez succeeded in capturing. He found there a large quantity of arms and ammunition, of which the Cubans were greatly in need. Gomez proved himself quite as magnanimous as Maceo. The wounded were all cared for to the best of his ability, and the prisoners were returned to the Spanish leaders. This example, however, seems to have been utterly lost upon the Spaniards. The insurgent forces, under Gomez, were at this time divided into six portions, operating in the six provinces, and commanded by Antonio Maceo, Aguerre, Lacret, Carillo, Suarez and Jose Maceo. Suarez was afterwards cashiered for cowardice, and replaced by Garcia. In August, 1895, Maceo joined his chief at a place called Jimaguaya, where Gomez had called to him a large proportion of the Cuban forces, which numbered at that time about thirty thousand. And against these undisciplined soldiers was arrayed a regular army of over eighty-five thousand men, not counting the armed volunteers. The odds were terribly against the Cubans, but Gomez and Maceo were confident of success. It should be mentioned here that there were quite a number of women fighting under Maceo, and these women did heroic service. In fact, the Cuban women have given innumerable proofs of their devotion, body and soul, to the cause of "Cuba Libre." Gomez' objective point was Havana, and between Jimaguaya and Havana, there were over fifty thousand Spanish soldiers. When Gomez started, he had about twelve thousand men, which he divided into three columns. He was quite well aware that the fighting must be of the guerilla stamp. In fact, it was the only species of warfare possible. He therefore instructed his lieutenants to have recourse to strategy, to foil the enemy at every point. The one object was to reach Havana. "In the event of a forced battle," he said finally, "overthrow them! Pass over them and on to Havana!" The march was begun, the instructions being followed to the letter. Actual combat was everywhere avoided. The Spanish papers constantly had reports like this: "After a few shots the rebels ran away." They did not understand that this was exactly Gomez' tactics, and he was succeeding, too. Every day the insurgents advanced further and further west. At the end of a fortnight they reached the trocha of Jaruco, which had been constructed in the centre of the island. This trocha was occupied by a large and important Spanish force. Gomez ordered Maceo to make a feigned attack upon the northern portion of the trocha. The Spaniards rushed there in a body, and Gomez, who had counted upon this very thing, crossed the southern part, which was left unprotected, without striking a blow. As soon as Maceo knew that Gomez had passed over in safety, he immediately disappeared with his men, and soon after managed to rejoin his chief. It was a very clever ruse, and Campos, whose headquarters were then in Santa Clara realized that he had been outgeneralled. He ordered a hurried march to Cienfuegos, and there took command. The evasive movements of the insurgents continued, and again and again was Campos outflanked. With but little difficulty the Cubans crossed two other trochas, and finally entered the Province of Matanzas, which Campos had felt positive could never be invaded; the Spaniards meanwhile constantly retreating, nearer and nearer to the capital. At last, Campos determined to force an open conflict. He told his lieutenants where they were to meet him. This was in December, 1895. Campos lay in wait for Maceo's forces at a point between Coliseo and Lumidero. It seemed at first as if the insurgents were caught in a trap, and would be forced to accept a battle in the open, which could not fail to be disastrous to them. But a happy thought came to Maceo, and, in connection with this plan, he issued his orders. Suddenly, the cane-fields which surrounded the camp of the Spaniards burst into flame, and on each side was a great blazing plain. Campos knew that he had once more been foiled, and he gave the order to retreat at once. This battle, if battle it can be called, had important results. It enabled Gomez to reach Jovellanos, a city which commanded the railroad lines of Cardenas, Matanzas and Havana. These lines Gomez destroyed as well as every sugar plantation upon his route. As to the destruction of the sugar fields and the reason therefor, we shall have something to say later on. Campos, completely outwitted and vanquished in his attempts to stop the onward progress of the insurgents, now fell back upon Havana, which he reached Christmas Day. His reception in the capital was anything but a pleasant one. The Spaniards there had clamored from the very beginning for revenge without mercy, and they looked upon the successive checks which the army had received as little less than criminal. They demanded of the governor-general the reason for his repeated defeats, and even threatened him personally. There were three political parties in Cuba, the Conservatives, the Reformists and the Autonomists. Campos met the leaders of these parties in an interview, and asked for their opinions. The consultation was very unsatisfactory, and as a result Campos proposed his resignation to which the ministry made no objection. Shortly after, his resignation was sent in and accepted. He sailed for Spain the 17th of January, his place being temporarily filled by General Sabas Marin. In spite of Martinez Campos' failure to subdue the insurrection, nothing but the greatest sympathy and respect can be felt for him, at least out of Spain, where, speaking in a general manner, humanity has no place, and gratitude is an unknown quantity. Campos' services to his country had been great, including, as they did, the pacification of Cuba in the Ten Years War, the quelling of a revolt in Spain itself, and the restoration and support of the Spanish monarchy. At an advanced age, when he should have been enjoying a well deserved rest, he was sent away to fight a difficult war, and to risk the tarnishing of his laurels as a military commander. All praise to Martinez Campos for his pure patriotism, his unswerving rectitude, his magnanimity and his exalted ideas of honor! This praise even the enemies of his country cannot refuse to him. CHAPTER IX. WEYLER THE BUTCHER. No greater contrast to Campos could possibly be imagined than his successor, General Valeriano Weyler, known, and with the utmost justice, throughout Cuba and the United States as "The Butcher." During his official life in Cuba, he proved again and again the truth of his reputation for relentless cruelty. There is no doubt that during former wars he committed the most atrocious crimes. It is not claimed that he ever showed any brilliant qualifications as a military leader, and it was precisely because he lacked the characteristics of General Campos, that Spain appointed him governor-general, hoping that his severity (no, severity is too mild a word, his savage brutality) would accomplish what Campos had failed to do. In the light of events following his appointment, events which filled the whole civilized world with indignation and horror, it has been pretended by Spain that her ministry specially instructed him to "moderate his ardor." Moderate his ardor, indeed! Granted that he obeyed instructions, if, indeed such instructions ever existed, just think for a moment what would have happened if he had not! It is very hard to write in a temperate vein when Weyler is the subject. But where is the case for the plaintiff? Where are their defenders, when Nero, Caligula or Judas is in question? Let us now contemplate a pen picture of "The Butcher," painted by Mr. Elbert Rappleye, a very clever American newspaper correspondent: "General Weyler is one of those men who creates a first impression, the first sight of whom can never be effaced from the mind, by whose presence the most careless observer is impressed instantly, and yet, taken altogether, he is a man in whom the elements of greatness are concealed under a cloak of impenetrable obscurity. Inferior physically, unsoldierly in bearing, exhibiting no trace of refined sensibilities nor pleasure in the gentle associations that others live for, or at least seek as diversions, he is nevertheless the embodiment of mental acuteness, crafty, unscrupulous, fearless and of indomitable perseverance. "Campos was fat, good-natured, wise, philosophical, slow in his mental processes, clear in his judgment, emphatic in his opinions, outspoken and withal, lovable, humane, conservative, constructive, progressive, with but one object ever before him, the glorification of Spain as a motherland and a figure among peaceful, enlightened nations. Weyler is lean, diminutive, shriveled, ambitious for immortality, irrespective of its odor, a master of diplomacy, the slave of Spain for the glory of sitting at the right of her throne, unlovable, unloving, exalted." After telling of how he was admitted to Weyler's presence, Mr. Rappleye continues his vivid description. "And what a picture! A little man. An apparition of blacks--black eyes, black hair, black beard, dark--exceedingly dark--complexion; a plain black attire. He was alone and was standing facing the door I entered. He had taken a position in the very centre of the room, and seemed lost in its immense depths. His eyes, far apart, bright, alert and striking, took me in at a glance. His face seemed to run to chin, his lower jaw protruding far beyond any ordinary indication of firmness, persistence or will power. His forehead is neither high nor receding; neither is it that of a thoughtful or philosophic man. His ears are set far back; and what is called the region of intellect, in which are those mental attributes that might be defined as powers of observation, calculation, judgment and execution, is strongly developed." Mrs. Kate Masterson, another American journalist, was, we believe, the only one, except Mr. Rappleye, who obtained an interview with Weyler. Among other things that he said, Mrs. Masterson reports the following: "I have shut out the Spanish and Cuban papers from the field as well as the American. In the last war the correspondents created much jealousy by what they wrote. They praised one and rebuked the other. They are a nuisance." "I have no time to pay attention to stories. Some of them are true and some of them are not." "The Spanish columns attend to their prisoners just as well as any other country in times of war." An obviously false statement, by the way. "War is war. You cannot make it otherwise, try as you will." True to a certain extent, General Weyler, but not from your point of view. There are certain humanitarian principles, of which you seem to be ignorant that can be practiced in time of war as well as in time of peace. Weyler declared to Mrs. Masterson that women, if combatants, would be treated just the same as men. As a matter of fact, whether combatants or non-combatants, he treated them worse than men. He sneered at the Cuban leaders, at Maceo for being a mulatto, and for having, as he asseverated, no military instruction. And at Gomez, whom he declared was not a brave soldier and had never distinguished himself in any way. It has always been the policy of the Spaniards to belittle the Cubans, sneering at them as being generaled by negroes, half breeds and illiterate to a degree. Beyond the fact that this is contemptibly false, they do not stop to think how they are dishonoring their own troops which have made such little headway against them. When the Spaniards have forced the insurgents to surrender in all the revolts that have taken place, it has been mainly through false representations and lying promises, promise that they knew, when they made them, were never intended to be carried out. Weyler's character may perhaps be best understood from his own following egotistical statement, which is well-authenticated: "I care not for America, England, or any other country, but only for the treaties we have with them. They are the law. I know I am merciless, but mercy has no place in war, I know the reputation which has been built up for me. I care not what is said about me unless it is a lie so grave as to occasion alarm. I am not a politician. I am Weyler." Contrast with these utterances, the words of Maximo Gomez, the grand old man of Cuba, in his instructions to his men: "Do not risk your life unnecessarily. You have only one and can best serve your country by saving it. Dead men cannot fire guns. Keep your head cool, your machete warm, and we will yet free Cuba." Gomez, by the way, at one time, served under Weyler, the former a captain, the latter as a colonel. The noble Cuban leader certainly did not obtain his views of modern warfare from his then superior officer. When Weyler arrived in Cuba he had at his command at least one hundred and twenty thousand regulars, fifty thousand volunteers and a large naval coast guard. Rather a formidable force to subdue what has been characterized as a handful of bandits. His policy from the beginning was one of extermination, and he made war upon those who were not in arms against Spain as well as those who were, upon women and children as well as upon men. Although Weyler did not begin what may be called active operations until November (he arrived in February), still he persecuted by every means in his power the pacificos, that is, those who did not take arms for or against either side. He conceived what General Fitzhugh Lee calls "the brilliant idea" of ruining the farmers so that they should not be able to give any aid to the insurgents. Read carefully the text of his famous reconcentrado order, which brought misery, ruin and death to the peaceable inhabitants of the island: * * * "I, Don Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, Marquis of Tenerife, Governor-General, Captain-General of this island and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, etc., etc., hereby order and command: "1. That all inhabitants of the country districts, or those who reside outside the lines of fortifications of the towns, shall within a delay of eight days enter the towns which are occupied by the troops. Any individual found outside the lines in the country at the expiration of this period shall be considered a rebel and shall be dealt with as such. "2. The transport of food from the towns, and the carrying of food from one place to another by sea or by land, without the permission of the military authorities of the place of departure, is absolutely forbidden. Those who infringe upon the order will be tried and punished as aiders and abettors of the rebellion. "3. The owners of cattle must drive their herds to the towns, or the immediate vicinity of the towns, for which purposes proper escorts will be given them. "4. When the period of eight days, which shall be reckoned in each district from the day of the publication of this proclamation in the country town of the district, shall have expired, all insurgents who may present themselves will be placed under my orders for the purpose of designating a place in which they may reside. The furnishing of news concerning the enemy, which can be availed of with advantage, will serve as a recommendation to them; also, when the presentation is made with firearms in their possession, and when, and more especially, when the insurgents present themselves in numbers. Valeriano Weyler." * * * Was there ever a more damnable--there is no other word for it--a more damnable proclamation issued? And the result? Words can scarcely do justice to it. It was the death-sentence of thousands and thousands of innocent people, the large majority of whom were women and children. The peasant farmers, with their families, were only allowed to bring with them what they could carry on their backs, when they were forced to leave all that they had in the world, and remove to the places of "concentration," where it was impossible for them to make a living. Before leaving they saw their houses and crops burned, and their live stock, be it much or little, that they possessed, confiscated. Starvation was before them, and starve they did. And let the reader bear this fact well in mind--these were non-combatants, women and children. The deaths have occurred in ghastly numbers. More than two hundred thousand have perished from starvation and starvation alone, with no hand from the government stretched out to aid them. The record made by the butcher and the butcher's emissaries is without parallel in all history. No wonder that the United States held its breath in horror, before raising its mailed hand to strike forever the chains from this suffering people. General Weyler did not care how deeply he should wade in blood, nor to what age or sex this blood belonged, so long as he should attain his ends. Talk as you please about the atrocities of the Turks, but they pale before those of the Spaniards in Cuba; acts committed, too, not in secret, but openly and by public proclamation. Read what Stephen Bonsal, who was an eye-witness, says in his book: "The Real Condition of Cuba To-day." "In the western provinces, we find between three and four hundred thousand people penned up in starvation stations and a prey to all kinds of epidemic diseases. They are without means and without food, and with only the shelter that the dried palm-leaves of their hastily erected bohios afford, and in the rainy season that is now upon them, there is no shelter at all. They have less clothing than the Patagonian savages, and, half naked, they sleep upon the ground, exposed to the noxious vapors which these low-lying swamp-lands emit. They have no prospect before them but to die, or, what is more cruel, to see those of their own flesh and blood dying about them, and to be powerless to succor and to save. About these starvation stations the savage sentries pace up and down with ready rifle and bared machete, to shoot down and to cut up any one who dares to cross the line. And yet, who are these men who are shot down in the night like midnight marauders? And why is it they seek, with all the desperate courage of despair, to cross that line where death is always awaiting their coming, and almost invariably overtakes them? They are attempting nothing that history will preserve upon its imperishable tablets, or even this passing generation remember. No, they are simply attempting to get beyond the starvation lines, to dig their potatoes and yams, to bring home again to the hovel in which their families are housed with death and hunger all about them. And they do their simple duty, not blinded as to the danger, or without warning as to their probable fate, for hardly an hour of their interminable day passes without their hearing the sharp click of the trigger and the hoarse cry of the sentry which precede the murderous volley; and every morning, through the narrow, filthy lanes upon which the huts have been erected the guerillas, drive along the pack-mules bearing the mutilated bodies of those who have been punished cruelly for the crime of seeking food to keep their children from starvation. This colossal crime, with all the refinement of slow torture, is so barbarous, so bloodthirsty and yet so exquisite, that the human mind refuses to believe it, and revolts at the suggestion that it was conceived, planned and plotted by a man. And yet this crime, this murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children, is now being daily committed in Cuba, at our very doors and well-nigh in sight of our shores, and we are paying very little heed to the spectacle." These words were written before the United States came to the rescue, and the criticism in the last sentence is, thank Heaven, no longer applicable. We are slow to act perhaps, but when we do act, our work is effective, and we never rest until our aim is accomplished. CHAPTER X. THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY. To enlarge upon the sufferings of the Cubans is a painful task, but it is a task that must be accomplished, in the interests of justice and humanity, and also that the reader may clearly understand why it was the bounden duty of the United States to interfere. Let us therefore proceed with the evidence. Julian Hawthorne gives his testimony as follows: "These people have starved in a land capable of supplying tens of millions of people with abundant food. The very ground on which they lie down to breathe their last might be planted with produce that would feed them to repletion. But so far from any effort to save them having been made by Spain, she has wilfully and designedly compassed their destruction. She has driven them in from their fields and plantations and forbidden them to help themselves; the plantations themselves have been laid waste, and should the miserable reconcentrados attempt under the pretended kindly dispensation of Blanco to return to their properties they would find the Spanish guerillas lying in wait to massacre them. No agony of either mind or body has been wanting. The wife has lost her husband, the mother, her children; the child its parents, the husband, his family. They have seen them die. Often they have seen them slaughtered wantonly as they lay helpless, waiting a slower end. The active as well as the passive cruelties of the Spaniards toward these people have been well-nigh unimaginable." Call Richard Harding Davis to the stand! "In other wars men have fought with men, and women have suffered indirectly because the men were killed, but in this war it is the women herded together in the towns like cattle who are going to die, while the men camped in the fields and mountains will live." General Fitz Hugh Lee says: "General Weyler believes that everything is fair in war and every means justifiable that will ultimately write success on his standards. He did not purpose to make war with velvet paws, but to achieve his purpose of putting down the insurrection, if he had to wade through, up to the visor of his helmet, the blood of every Cuban, man, women and child, on the island." Now hear General Lee relate the following incident, an incident which created much discussion and feeling in the United States: "Dr. Ruiz, an American dentist, who was practicing his profession in a town called Guanabacoa, some four miles from Havana, was arrested. A railroad train between Havana and this town had been captured by the insurgents, and the next day the Spanish authorities arrested a large number of persons in Guanabacoa, charging them with giving information which enabled the troops, under their enterprising young leader, Aranguren, to make the capture; and among these persons arrested was this American. He was a strongly built, athletic man, who confined himself strictly to the practice of his profession and let politics alone. He had nothing to do with the train being captured, but that night was visiting a neighbor opposite, until nine or ten o'clock, when he returned to his house and went to bed. He was arrested by the police the next morning; thrown into an incommunicado cell; kept there some fifty or sixty hours, and was finally (when half crazed by his horrible imprisonment and calling for his wife and children) struck over the head with a 'billy' in the hands of a brutal jailer and died from the effects. Ruiz went into the cell an unusually healthy and vigorous man, and came out a corpse." James Creelman, a brilliant newspaper correspondent, gives his testimony: "Everywhere the breadwinners of Cuba are fleeing in terror before the Spanish columns, and the ranks of life are being turned into the ranks of death, for the Cuban who has seen his honest and harmless neighbors tied up and shot before his eyes, in order that some officer may get credit for a battle, takes his family to the nearest town or city for safety, and then goes out to strike a manly blow for his country." Senator Thurston, who was sent to Cuba to investigate and report the condition of affairs, in a passionate address to the United States Senate testifies: "For myself I went to Cuba firmly believing the condition of affairs there had been greatly exaggerated by the press, and my own efforts were directed in the first instance to the attempted exposure of these supposed exaggerations. Mr. President, there has undoubtedly been much sensationalism in the journalism of the time, but as to the condition of affairs in Cuba, there has been no exaggeration, because exaggeration has been impossible. The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never saw, and please God I may never see again, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Mantanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them. The government of Spain has not and will not appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding these citizens of Spain; we are nursing their sick; we are saving such as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say: 'It is right for us to send food, but we must keep our hands off.' I say that the time has come when muskets ought to go with the food." Finally, Senor Enrique Jose Verona, who was at one time a deputy to the Spanish Cortes, sums up the situation as follows: "Spain denies to the Cubans all effective powers in their own county. Spain condemns the Cubans to a political inferiority in the land where they were born. Spain confiscates the product of the Cubans' labor without giving them in return either safety, prosperity or education. Spain has shown itself utterly incapable of governing Cuba. Spain exploits, impoverishes and demoralizes Cuba." This is only a very small portion of the testimony which might be offered, but can the opinions of men of undoubted honor and veracity be impeached? Not a tithe of the horrors which has existed in the island of Cuba has been told, and probably never will be told. Because a large proportion of the sufferers did not, like Du Barri, shriek upon the scaffold, but, like De Rohan, died mute. But still something further can be said as to "The Butcher's" methods, and, worse still, as to the putting into practice of those methods. The insurgents have invariably been treated as if they were pirates. The tigerish nature of Weyler spared no one. Refugees, that is those who did not obey his barbarous proclamation, were shot down in cold blood. Starvation was his policy, and starvation too of those, whatever their sympathies might have been, had never raised a finger against the existing government. The reconcentrados, harassed beyond all measure, saw nothing before them but death, and the happiest among them were those who died first. How would you, reader, like to be shut off, with no means of subsistence, for yourself, your wife and your children, within military lines, to cross which meant instant death? The Butcher could not conquer this valiant people in honorable warfare, and therefore, worthy scion of his blood, he, without one qualm of conscience, determined to exterminate them. Young boys, not more than fifteen or sixteen years of age, were charged with the crime of "rebellion and incendiarism" (that was the favorite charge of Weyler), and sometimes with the pretence of a trial, sometimes with no trial at all, were shot down in cold blood by the score. Poor little starving babies clung to their mothers' breasts from which no substance was to be obtained. Weyler knew all this, and in his palace in Havana simply laughed, content so long as each day the death rate of the Cubans increased, and he himself was gaining favor with his government, and meanwhile had all that he wanted to eat and drink. The merciless wretch, by the way, was ever careful not to expose his own precious person to bullet or machete. But what could be expected of him? He was a Spaniard, a man after Spain's own heart, and one whom it was her delight to honor. This picture is not over-painted. The colors if anything are laid on too thin. Although the so-called rebels were not conquered and never could be conquered, Weyler was constantly sending reports home of the "pacification" of first this and then that portion of the island. This he probably supposed was necessary to placate the Spaniards, who are divided amongst themselves and ever ready to rise against the existing government whatever it may be. In spite of all this, brute Weyler has been and still is the idol of a certain class of Spaniards. In spite of all? No, we should have said, because of all. One of his adherents, among other things, said to Stephen Bonsal, and this is the sort of utterance that the majority of Spain applauds: "The only way to end this Cuban question is the way General Weyler is going about it. The only way for Spain to retain her sovereignty over these islands is to exterminate--butcher if you like--every man, woman and child upon it who is infected with the contagion and dreams of Cuba Libre. These people must be exterminated and we consider no measure too ruthless to be adopted to secure this end. "I read in an American paper the other day that General Weyler was poisoning the streams from which the insurgents drink in Matanzas province. It was not true, but I only wish it had been. "General Weyler is our man. We feel sure of him. He will not be satisfied until every insurgent lies in the ditch with his throat cut, and that is all we want." Stop a moment and think! These words were spoken at the end of the nineteenth century by the representative of a professed Christian country. How have the teachings of Christ, who always and primarily advocated charity, been forgotten or perverted! The whole matter of Cuba under Spanish rule is a disgrace to the age we live in. But (call it spread-eagleism if you like) the United States now has the affair in hand. It can and will right this wrong, and so effectively that there will be no possibility of its recurrence. CHAPTER XI. TWO METHODS OF WARFARE: THE SPANISH AND THE CUBAN. Now let us turn to the one crime, so-called, that has been alleged against the Cubans. We refer to the burning of the sugar crops. That this has been done on each and every occasion, no one will deny. At first glance, it seems an act of vandalism. But is it so? Let us examine carefully into the causes and reasons for it. The Spaniards claim that it is a notable example of the reckless and uncivilized methods of the insurgents. On the contrary, it is a policy which was carefully planned and systematically carried out by Gomez and the other Cuban leaders. In a proclamation by Gomez, he ordered his lieutenants to burn the sugar plantations, but he did not tell them to destroy the mills, because he did not wish, in case of his succeeding in his purpose of liberating Cuba, to lay the producers flat upon their backs, from which position they could never, or, only with the utmost difficulty, arise. The destruction of the sugar cane was a necessity of war. It must be remembered that from the sugar crop Spain has received her largest revenue from Cuba, and to cut off this source of revenue is to cripple Spain and take away from her a large sum of money with which she might otherwise wage warfare. To show that the damage wrought is by no means irreparable, we cannot do better than quote Baron Antomarchi, a Frenchman who lived for a long time in Cuba, was there during the early part of the present insurrection, and knows of what he is speaking: "Since the suppression of slavery, and as a result of the high price of labor the work of sugar making had been modified. In former times a sugar planter considered his plantation his most necessary possession. After the process of manufacture was modified, it was his sugar mill upon which he depended; his plantation was less important. So in burning the sugar crop, Gomez did not strike a death-blow at the producer. It is a well known fact that when the cane growth is cut by fire and the fields are burnt close to the ground, the yield of the following season is increased and improved; so we see that Gomez did not ruin the country when he burned the plantations. True, the fields have been burned, but they will spring up with a more vigorous luxuriance after the rest which was one of the conditions imposed upon the first agricultural community of which we have any reliable record, and if the mills which Gomez has left intact are not destroyed by some authority equally potent, when the country is reorganized, the sugar industry may flourish to a degree undreamed of before the Cuban war for liberty." Besides depriving Spain of her revenue, Gomez had another though a lesser reason, for burning the sugar cane. He knew that those who were thrown out of employment would flock to his standard, and his forces thereby be greatly augmented. On the whole, we do not see that the criticism and blame which have been given to the insurgents for destroying the crops and for the time being laying waste the land, are deserved. It was a measure of war, and one, which it seems to us, under the circumstances, was thoroughly justified. Now let us contrast, for a moment, the different methods of the Spaniards and the Cubans in waging warfare. In the first place, we do not mean to affirm that the insurgents have not committed actions, which, in the light of civilization, are indefensible, but they are few and far between, and they were forced upon them. After all the horrors to which they were subjected, they would have been less than human if they had not retaliated. The Cubans, both in the Ten Years' War and in the present one, have been merciful to those of the enemy who fell into their hands. The latter have been almost invariably treated with kindness and allowed to go free and unmolested. But the Spaniards never reciprocated. It has been their invariable policy not to exchange prisoners, a notable instance of this being their recent refusal to exchange the gallant Hobson and his comrades. To be sure, according to international law they are not compelled to do this, but it is doubtful if there is another civilized nation (by the way, it is an undeserved compliment to intimate that Spain is civilized), which would have acted as the country which boasts of its chivalry has done. Just here, let us say that those acts of cruelty which have been committed by the Cuban army have been very far from receiving the sanction of their leaders. On the contrary, they have been done in violation of the explicit orders of those leaders; and whenever the offenders have been discovered, they have been hanged as bandits to the limb of the nearest tree. The hatred and barbarity which the Spaniards have without exception, evinced toward the Cubans have done much to alienate the latter, have been the chief causes why peace could not be maintained, and have made only one outcome possible--the freedom and independence of the island. We have already seen the humanity with which Gomez, Maceo and the other Cuban chiefs treated the wounded of the enemy who chanced to fall into their hands. But how was it on the other side? How did the Spaniards behave toward the insurgent wounded? When not killed at once and their sufferings ended immediately, they were cast into loathsome dungeons, with insufficient food and with no medical attendance whatever. Now to a charge which has more than once been brought against Spain, which has been brought against her recently, which her government has indignantly denied, but which both in the past and the present has been proved beyond any question of a doubt. The charge refers to an action which, with the exception of Spain, has never been committed but by the most savage tribes, the Indians of North America and the inhabitants of darkest Africa. We do not think that even the Turks were ever accused of such an atrocious, unspeakable act. We mean the mutilation of the dead bodies (often in a horrible, obscene way) left upon the battlefield. It is with regret and loathing that we approach the subject. But facts must be spoken. There has been scarcely a combat between the Spaniards and the Cubans, in all the revolutions which have occurred, where the former have not been guilty of the revolting practice of the mutilation of dead bodies. Indeed the most savage of tribes have never gone further in the demoniac wreaking of vengeance upon the fallen bodies of the enemy than the Spaniards have. It has been a common custom with them to disfigure, mangle and commit nameless indignities upon the dead. When Nestor Aranguren, who you will remember was one of the bravest of the Cuban leaders, the "Marion," the "Swamp Fox" of the insurrection, was killed, his body, covered with honorable wounds was taken to Havana, and paraded before the citizens, subject to their jeers and curses. When another insurgent leader, Castillo, was killed, the same frightful spectacle was witnessed. Indeed, it has been the rule among the Spaniards whenever the body of a so-called rebel leader fell into their hands, to drag his nude and mutilated body, tied at the end of a horse's tail, throughout the nearest town, and the excuse for this was--what? That the body might be fully identified. Among the Cubans, there is only one instance related where they retaliated in kind. And this was when it is said that they sent a Spanish soldier back to Havana with his tongue cut out. But even this story, the only act of brutality alleged against them is not well authenticated, resting as it does entirely upon Spanish evidence. And we know well how much credence can be given to that evidence. To come down to more recent occurrences. When it was first reported that the bodies of our marines killed at Guantanamo were subjected to unmentionable mutilations by the Spaniards, we could not believe it. It was said that the condition of the bodies was caused by shots fired from the Mauser rifle. But the Mauser rifle inflicts a clean cut hole. It could not possibly have been responsible for the horrible condition of the bodies. It is impossible for us to explain further in print. Remember or look up what was done by the Apaches in some of our Indian wars, and then from your knowledge, or the knowledge gained by research, fill up the hiatus. And the Spaniards cannot claim in this latter instance, if indeed they can in any other, that these barbarities were committed by irregular and irresponsible troops. It is beyond question that by far the greater portion of the troops employed against Colonel Huntington (we are referring now to the affair at Guantanamo) belonged to the regular army, under the command of General Linares. The New York Herald, in an editorial on the subject, remarks most justly and forcibly: "What sort of a degraded spectacle, then, does Spain present, going whining through Europe in search of intercession or intervention, with such a damnable record against her, made in the very first engagement of troops? "We can hear good old John Bull sputter out his righteous indignation, but will his Holiness the Pope recognize such degenerate child? Can the punctilious Francis Joseph of Austria afford to condone crimes like these? Will the Emperor William or the Czar of Russia lift his voice in behalf of such fiends? Can our sister republic, France, sympathize with the monsters who disgrace the very name of soldier? "Not so! All Europe will join with our own government, now thoroughly aroused to the indignities put upon it, and voice the stern edict of humanity and civilization: "Spain has now placed herself without the pale of the nations. Let her meet the retribution she so justly deserves." Senor Estrado Palma, the representative of Cuba in the United States, has declared in a manifesto that the Cubans threw themselves into the struggle advisedly and deliberately, that they knew what they had to face and decided unflinchingly to persevere until they should free themselves from the Spanish government. Experience has taught them that they have nothing to envy in the Spaniards; that in fact, they feel themselves superior to them, and can expect from Spain no improvement, no better education. Slavery is ended in Cuba, and the white and the colored live together in perfect harmony, fighting side by side, to obtain political liberty. Senor Palma, by the way, asserts, with how much authority we are unable to state, that the colored population in Cuba is superior to that of the United States. He says that they are industrious, intelligent and lovers of learning; also, that, during the last fifteen years, they have attained remarkable intellectual development. There are certain utterances of Senor Palma in this manifesto which deserve to be quoted in full, so pregnant are they with truth, and so full of food for thought to the average American citizen, whether he agrees with them or not. Senor Palma says: "We Cubans have a thousandfold more reason in our endeavor to free ourselves from the Spanish yoke than had the people of the thirteen colonies, when, in 1775, they rose in arms against the British government. The people of these colonies were in full enjoyment of all the rights of man; they had liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, liberty of the press, the right of public meeting and the right of free locomotion. They elected those who governed them, they made their own laws, and, in fact, enjoyed the blessings of self-government. They were not under the sway of a captain-general with arbitrary powers, who, at his will could imprison them, deport them to penal colonies, or order their execution even without the semblance of a court-martial. They did not have to pay a permanent army and navy in order that they might be kept in subjection, nor to feed a swarm of hungry employees yearly sent over from the metropolis to prey upon the country. They were never subjected to a stupid and crushing customs tariff which compelled them to go to home markets for millions of merchandise annually which they could buy much cheaper elsewhere; they were never compelled to cover a budget of twenty-six or thirty millions a year without the consent of the taxpayers and for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the army and navy of the oppressor, to pay the salaries of thousands of worthless European employees, the whole interest on a debt not incurred by the colony, and other expenditures from which the island received no benefit whatever; for, out of all those millions, only the paltry sum of seven hundred thousand dollars was apparently applied for works of internal improvement, and one-half of which invariably went into the pockets of Spanish employees. "If the right of the thirteen British colonies to rise in arms in order to acquire their independence has never been questioned because of the attempt of the mother country to tax them by a duty upon tea, or by the Stamp Act, will there be a single citizen in this great republic of the United States, whether he be a public or private man, who will doubt the justice, the necessity in which the Cuban people find themselves of fighting to-day and to-morrow and always, until they shall have overthrown Spanish oppression and tyranny in their country, and formed themselves into a free and independent republic?" Now, honestly, all prejudice aside, this is not a bad brief for the plaintiff, is it? There is one more document to which we desire to call your attention. And that is, a letter written to Professor Starr Jordan, of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University of San Francisco, by a Havanese gentleman of undoubted integrity and of Spanish origin. Professor Jordan declares that this letter seems to show that "the rebellion is not a mere bandit outbreak of negroes and jailbirds, but the effort of the whole people to throw off the yoke of a government they find intolerable." The letter states, among other things, that the insurrection was begun and is kept up by Cuban people; that the Spanish government has made colossal and unheard-of efforts to put it down, but has not succeeded in diminishing it; on the contrary, the insurrection has spread from one extreme of the island to the other; that the flower of the Cuban youth is in the army of the insurrection, in whose ranks are many physicians, lawyers, druggists, professors, artists, business men, engineers and men of that ilk. Professor Jordan's correspondent declares that this fact can be proved by the excellent consular service of the United States. He admits that destruction has been carried on by both sides, but affirms that the insurgents began by destroying their own property, in order to deprive the troops of the government of shelter and sustenance. He further declares that the insurgents will continue in their course until they fulfill their purpose, carrying all before them by fire and blood. He concludes as follows: "All eyes are directed toward the north, to the republic which is the mother of all Americans. The people of the United States must bear strongly in mind now, as never before, that profession is null and void, if action does not affirm it." But action has come at last, as the fiendish Spaniards have already found out to their cost. What is Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," at the present time of writing? The answer to that question is as follows: A land devastated and temporarily ruined; a gem besmirched almost beyond recognition; a heap of smoking ashes; a population of starving men, women and children, with an iron hand clutching remorselessly at their hearts; a horrible, ghastly picture of what savage men are capable of in the way of destruction. Now, Americans, people of the free and independent United States; you who enjoy all the blessings of liberty; you who can pursue your avocations without let or hindrance; you who are the jury in this case--the evidence is before you. You have undoubtedly heard it said that the interference of the United States was unwarrantable; that there was no real reason for the present Spanish-American war; that a stronger country took advantage of a weaker; and other arguments ad nauseam. But is there one of our readers who would see a woman, or a weak though honorable man, attacked by a savage foe, without interfering, and doing the best he could to give life and freedom to the oppressed? Think it all over, Americans, and think it over carefully and judiciously. At your own doors, is a poor, miserable, starving wretch, starving from no fault of his, and with a bulldog, not your own, but belonging to a neighbor (a neighbor, grant you with whom you have always hitherto been at peace) about to fasten its fangs in the throat of this unhappy man. Would you hold your hands, saying that it was no affair of yours, or, with your superior strength, would you fly to the rescue? Once more, Americans, you have heard the whole evidence. The case is in your hands. What is your verdict? CHAPTER XII. THE BUTCHER'S CAMPAIGN. Now let us go back to the making of history, to the time when the butcher Weyler came to Cuba to assume the governor-generalship. By this time the Cuban question had been brought authoritatively before the United States Senate, the people were beginning to be strongly roused with indignation at the state of affairs in Cuba, and there was considerable excitement when the news of Weyler's appointment became known. Strange to say, the insurgents rejoiced rather than grieved at this appointment, the cause of which is not far to seek. They knew thoroughly well Weyler's character, and what his policy was more than likely to be. They thought that it would drive all the Cubans, who were wavering, into their ranks and would at last force the United States, whose people, when all is said and done, were their natural allies and defenders, to intervene. After the battle of Coliseo, Gomez and Maceo made their way through Madruga, Nueva-Paz and Guines. Then they destroyed, at a large number of points, the very important railway which connected Havana with Batabano, and also cut the telegraph wires. When they had accomplished this, the two leaders separated, Gomez to advance in the direction of Havana, and Maceo to invade Pinar del Rio, which is in the extreme west of the island. Gomez succeeded in burning several more or less important suburbs of Havana. Almost the first military movement that Weyler made was an attempt to cut off Maceo and prevent his communication with the other detachments of the Cuban army. It seemed to be his chief purpose to compass the death of the mulatto leader, a purpose which at last was most unfortunately accomplished, but then only through treachery. In emulation of his predecessor, Weyler also tried his hand at trocha building. He constructed a fence of this description across Cuba between the port of Artemisa and the bay of Majana, about twenty-five miles from Havana. It may be of interest to describe this particular trocha, as it was one of, if not the most important, and a good example of the others. As its name, trocha, signifies, it was a ditch, or rather two ditches, some three yards wide and the same in depth, with a road between them broad enough to allow cavalry to pass. On each bank was a barbed wire fence, to stop the assailants' progress. Beyond the two ditches, were trous-de-loup, or wolf-traps, from twenty to seventy feet apart. At every hundred yards or so there were fortifications. After night fell, this fortified line was lighted by electricity. Twelve thousand men comprised the garrison, besides outposts of half as many more. Weyler prided himself greatly upon this trocha, which was intended to keep the rebels at a distance. But, in spite of all the precautions taken, the wily Maceo and his men more than once crossed the trocha, and the Spanish were not the wiser until it was too late to prevent them. Once, when they had passed the obstruction without a shot being fired, the insurgents tore up some distance of a railway line on the further side of the trocha, the Cuban leader remarking: "We did this just to show the enemy that we noticed their plaything." The headquarters of the insurgents was and is up to the present writing, a place called Cubitas, the top of a mountain, something over a score of miles from Puerto Principe. It is practically impregnable, only a very narrow spiral path leading up to it. A handful of men could defend it against a large army. The little plain on top of the mountain has an area of more than a square mile. It is arable land, and many food products are raised there. The insurgents have constructed here quite a number of wooden buildings, and they have also a dynamite factory. It would take a long time to capture the place by storm or to starve the defenders out. The Cubans have had one great advantage, that is, they are acclimated. Quite the contrary is true of the Spanish army of invasion, and their ranks have suffered far more from the climate than they have from the bullets of the foe. Added to this, their wages are greatly in arrears and the rations provided for them are unwholesome and insufficient. The surgeons have a very small supply of quinine and antiseptics, both of which are absolutely essential. The strength of the two armies, at the time of Weyler's arrival in Cuba was about as follows: The government has 200,000 men, including the 60,000 volunteers, while the insurgents numbered not much more than a fourth of this, some fifty or sixty thousand men, which were scattered among the various provinces, the largest proportion being massed in Santiago de Cuba. There were twenty-four generals in the Cuban army, nineteen being white, three black, one a mulatto, and one an Indian; of the thirty-four colonels, twenty-seven were white, five were black, and two were mulattoes. The record of the mortality among the Spanish soldiers is an appalling one, something simply ghastly to contemplate. Harper's Weekly has published statistics concerning Spanish losses in Cuba, which were obtained from a source that it was forbidden to disclose. In two years from March, 1895 to March, 1897, 1,375 were killed in battle, 765 died of wounds, and 8,627 were wounded, but recovered. Ten per cent. of the killed and fatally wounded were officers, and 5 per cent. of the wounded died of yellow fever, while 127 officers and about 40,000 men succumbed to other maladies. Another authority gives the following rates of losses: Out of every thousand, ten were killed, sixty-six died of yellow fever, two hundred and one died of other diseases, while one hundred and forty-three were sent home, either sick or wounded. Out of two hundred thousand men sent to Cuba in two years, only in the neighborhood of ninety-six thousand, capable of bearing arms, were left the first of March, 1897. During our own civil war one and sixty-five one-hundredths per cent. of all those mustered into the United States service were killed in action or died of their wounds; ten per cent. were wounded, and a little less than two per cent. died of wounds and from unknown causes. That we lost during the civil war, 186,216 men from disease is terrible enough, but to equal the percentage of the Spanish losses from the same cause, during twice the time that our war lasted, would bring the total up to a million and a half of men. From the very beginning, the insurgents held possession of the two eastern provinces, Santiago and Puerto Principe. It was only by unremitting efforts and the loss of many lives that the Spaniards retained their hold on the district about Bayamo. Late in 1890 General Calixto Garcia, now second in rank to Gomez, and playing an important part in the aiding of the American troops, landed on the island with strong reinforcements. Garcia, who was also a veteran of the Ten Years' War had several more or less important engagements with the Spanish, in almost all of which he was victorious. Antonio Maceo, in order to consult with Gomez, crossed the trocha on the night of December 4, 1896. The next day, at the head of five hundred men and within an hour's ride of Havana, he was killed in a skirmish, just as he had made the declaration that all was going well. A young son of Gomez, who was suffering from an old wound, and who refused to leave the ground until his chief was carried away, was also killed. There is not the shadow of a doubt but that this double catastrophe was due to the treachery of one of Maceo's companions, a certain Dr. Zertucha. One of Maceo's aides tells the story as follows: "Firing was heard near Punta Brava, and Zertucha, who had ridden off to one side of the road, came galloping back, crying: "Come with me! Come with me! Quick! Quick!" Maceo at once put spurs to his horse, and, followed by his five aids, rode swiftly after the physician, who plunged into the thick growth on the side of the road. The party had only ridden a few yards, when Zertucha, bent low in his saddle, and swerved sharply to one side, galloping away like mad. Almost at the same moment, a volley was fired by a party of Spanish soldiers hidden in the dense underbrush, and Maceo and four of his men dropped out of their saddles, mortally wounded." The single survivor, the man whose words are quoted above, contrived to get back to his own party and brought them to the scene of the tragedy. The Spaniards were driven away, Maceo's body was found stripped, and young Gomez had been stabbed, and his skull was broken. The traitor Zertucha surrendered to the Spanish by whom naturally he was treated with the utmost kindness and consideration. Afterwards Zertucha attempted to blacken Maceo's memory by declaring that he was disheartened and desperate, and that his death was the result of his own folly. Senor Palma says of this: "General Maceo was loved and supported by all men struggling for Cuban independence, whether in a military or civil capacity. If a man was ever idolized by his people, that man was General Maceo. Dr. Zertucha knows that, but perhaps he has an object in making his false assertions." An object? Of course he had an object--the currying of favor with the Spaniards, the saving of his own wretched carcass and the obtaining of the blood-money due him. So perished the last of the Maceos, eight brothers, all having died before him in the cause of Cuban liberty. The following poem on Maceo's death appeared in the New York Sun: Antonio Maceo. "Stern and unyielding, though others might bow to the tempest; Slain by the serpent who cowered in hiding behind thee; Slumber secure where the hands of thy comrades have laid thee; Dim to thine ear be the roar of the battle above thee. Set now is thy sun, going down in darkness and menace, While through the thick-gathering clouds one red ray of vengeance Streams up to heaven, blood red, from the place where thou liest. Though the sword of Death's angel lies cold on thy forehead, Still to the hearts of mankind speaks the voice of thy spirit: Still does thine angry shade arrest the step of the tyrant. "V. B." Maceo's death was a terrible blow to the insurgents, but, with indomitable spirit they rallied and plunged with renewed energy into the fray. Maceo was succeeded by General Rius Rivers, who does not seem to have been in any way the equal of his predecessor. Having accomplished by low treachery what he had not succeeded in doing by open, honorable warfare, Weyler increased his efforts to put down the rebellion in Pinar del Rio, where Maceo had been in command. The trochas now became of advantage, and Weyler succeeded in confining Rivera's scattered bands to the province. Early in 1897, Rivera was made a prisoner, and since then nothing of importance, from a military standpoint, has occurred in Pinar del Rio. In 1897 there were but few incidents of interest in the war. The Cubans were holding back, evading conflicts wherever they could, and waiting for the long-delayed interposition of the United States. Guines, however, was taken by them, and General Garcia captured the fortified post of Tunas after a fight of three days. The Spanish commander and about forty per cent. of his force were killed. Finally the remainder of the garrison surrendered. The spoils which fell into the hands of the Cubans comprised a large amount of rifles and ammunition, besides two Krupp guns. The victory was a notable one, especially as Weyler had cabled his government that Tunas was impregnable. Its fall gave rise to much harsh criticism and bitter feeling in Spain. Weyler was constantly proclaiming the "pacification" of certain provinces, statements that were most transparently absurd and false. He even immediately followed up his proclamations by the most severe and brutal measures in those very provinces. Finally even Madrid, to whom it would have mattered little if the policy had proved a success, became convinced that Weyler's savage procedure was a failure. The butcher had gained absolutely no advantage, but had simply been the cause of untold and undeserved suffering. The insurrection, taking it all for all, was just as strong, if not stronger, than it was the day Weyler arrived in Cuba. So, in October, 1897, he was withdrawn from his post, and summoned back to Spain. It is to be hoped that the world will never again witness such a shameful and shameless exhibition as was his administration. Before dismissing him from these pages, let us quote from Stephen Bonsal, with whose words no unprejudiced person can quarrel. Mr. Bonsal says: "Should they be wise, and they will have a moment of clairvoyance soon, or they will disappear as a nation, the Spaniards should seek to cast a mantle of oblivion and forgetfulness about the wretched name of Weyler and all the ignoble deeds that have characterized his rule. While it cannot be expected that the bishop will be displaced by the butcher, there is one whom Weyler will displace upon his unenviable pinnacle of prominence in the temple of infamy, and that is Alva. His name is destined to become in every tongue that is spoken by civilized people a synonym of bloody, relentless and pitiless war waged upon American soil, upon the long-disused methods of the Vandals and the Visigoths; and Alva, who had the cruel spirit of his age and a sincere fanaticism as his excuse, will step down and out into an oblivion which will doubtless be grateful to his shade, and most certainly so to those who bear his execrated name. "I could ask no more terrible punishment for him (Weyler) than many years of life to listen to the voices of despair he has heard ring out upon his path through Cuba; to hear again and ever the accusing voices which no human power can hush, and to review the scenes of suffering which he has occasioned which no human power can obliterate from his memory." CHAPTER XIII. AMERICA'S CHARITY AND SPAIN'S DIPLOMACY. The new governor-general of Cuba was Don Ramon Blanco, as to whose character accounts differ. It is probable that while he is not the high-minded, honorable gentleman that Campos was, he is far, very far from being such an unmitigated beast as his predecessor. Before he reached Cuba, which was the last of October, 1897, he stated in an interview: "My policy will never include concentration. I fight the enemy, not women and children. One of the first things I shall do will be to allow the reconcentrados to go out of the town and till the soil." This sounds very just and right, but, as a matter of fact, the policy enounced was never carried out, not even in minor particulars. The persecution of the pacificos remained as bitter and relentless as ever. Perhaps General Blanco is not entirely to blame for this, as the pressure brought to bear against his expressed ideas both by the home government and by the "peninsulars" in Havana, who had been in full accord with the methods of the "Butcher," was so strong as scarcely to be resisted. Blanco issued an amnesty proclamation soon after his arrival in Havana, but the insurgents paid little or no attention. Their experience in such matters in the past had been too stern to be forgotten. In the field, Blanco was also most unsuccessful, gaining nothing but petty victories of no value whatever. The pay of the Spanish soldiers was terribly in arrears, and their rations were of the most meagre description. No wonder that they were disheartened, and in no condition to fight. In a word, Blanco absolutely failed, as completely as had his predecessors, in quelling the rebellion. The people of the United States were becoming more and more enraged at the atrocities committed at their very door, and more and more anxious that the Cubans should have the independence which they themselves had achieved. Moreover, there was a large number of Americans in the island who were made to suffer from the policy of reconcentration. Citizens of the United States, a large number of them being naturalized Americans, were constantly being seized and imprisoned, on suspicion alone, no proof whatever being advanced, of their furnishing aid and comfort to the insurgents. They were placed in filthy cells, no communication with the outside world being allowed them. This is what the Spaniards term "incommunicado." No writing materials were allowed them and nothing whatever to read. The windows were so high up that no view was to be obtained. The cells were damp with the moisture of years and had rotten, disease-breeding floors, covered with filth of every description. Moreover, they were overrun with cockroaches, rats and other vermin. The sustenance furnished the prisoners was wretched, and even such as it was, it was not given to them regularly. More often than not, they were left for long hours to suffer the pangs of hunger and thirst. A notable instance of Americans being seized and imprisoned in these loathsome dungeons is the following: A little schooner called the "Competitor" attempted to land a filibustering expedition. She was captured, after most of her passengers had been landed, and her crew, numbering five, were tried by a court which had been instructed to convict them, and sentenced to death. They would undoubtedly have been executed, as some years before had been the prisoners of the ill-fated Virginius, had it not been for the prompt intervention of the United States, spurred thereto by General Fitz Hugh Lee. The conviction was growing stronger and stronger in the United States that something should be done to mitigate the terrible suffering in Cuba. The Red Cross Association, a splendid charitable organization, at the head of which was Miss Clara Barton, undertook this noble work of relief. The government of the United States lent its assistance and support. Large sums of money and tons of supplies of food were contributed throughout the Union, both by public and private donations. The newspapers everywhere, North, East, South and West, did magnificent service in furthering the good work. Spain, instead of showing gratitude, rather resented this, and there was considerable difficulty to prosecute the labor of charity. Still, the efforts, in the interests of suffering humanity were by no means unavailing. President McKinley speaks of the movement as follows: "The success which had attended the limited measure of relief extended to the suffering American citizens of Cuba, by the judicious expenditure through consular agencies, of money appropriated expressly for their succor by the joint resolution approved May 24, 1897, prompted the humane extension of a similar scheme of aid to the great body of sufferers. A suggestion to this end was aquiesced in by the Spanish authorities. On the twenty-fourth of December last, I caused to be issued an appeal to the American people, inviting contributions, in money or in kind, for the starving sufferers in Cuba, following this on the eighth of January by a similar public announcement of the formation of a Central Cuban Relief Committee, with headquarters in New York city, composed of three members representing the American National Red Cross Society, and the religious and business elements of the community. The efforts of that committee have been untiring and have accomplished much. Arrangements for free transportation to Cuba have greatly aided the charitable work. The president of the American Red Cross and representatives of other contributory organizations have generously visited Cuba and co-operated with the consul-general and the local authorities to make effective disposition of the relief collected through the efforts of the Central Committee. Nearly $200,000 in money and supplies has already reached the sufferers and more is forthcoming. The supplies are admitted duty free, and transportation to the interior has been arranged, so that the relief, at first necessarily confined to Havana and the larger cities, is now extended through most if not all of the towns through which suffering exists. Thousands of lives have already been saved. The necessity for a change in the condition of the reconcentrados is recognized in the Spanish government." And yet Spain resented these charitable efforts, as being opposed to her policy. The people of the United States, in sending this money and these supplies, had nothing else in view but charity, a longing to do all that they could to relieve the anguish of an oppressed and tortured people. There was no ulterior motive whatever. A large amount of the sums contributed was diverted to a purpose very different from that for which it had been intended. The Spanish government, more through fear of the condemnation of the other European nations than anything else, voted about six hundred thousand dollars for the relief of the starving reconcentradoes. But this was a ruse, a sum chiefly on paper. General Lee, and his testimony is incontrovertible, says: "I do not believe six hundred thousand dollars, in supplies, will be given to those people, and the soldiers left to starve. They will divide it up here and there; a piece taken off here and a piece taken off there. I do not believe they have appropriated anything of the kind. The condition of the reconcentrados out in the country is just as bad as in General Weyler's day. It has been relieved a good deal by supplies from the United States, but that has ceased now. "General Blanco published a proclamation, rescinding General Weyler's bando, as they call it there, but it has had no practical effect. In the first place, these people have no place to go; the houses have been burned down; there is nothing but the bare land there, and it would take them two months before they could raise the first crop. In the next place, they are afraid to go out from the lines of the towns, because the roving bands of the Spanish guerillas, as they are called, would kill them. So they stick right in the edges of the town, just like they did, with nothing to eat except what they can get from charity. The Spanish have nothing to give." The government and people of Spain now became very much afraid of the attitude of the United States. They knew that something had to be done, so to speak, to throw a sop to Cerberus. Therefore Sagasta, the premier of Spain, conceived the idea of granting to Cuba a species of autonomy. But, with the usual Spanish diplomacy, it was not autonomy at all. It purposed to be home rule, but every article gave a loop-hole for Spain not to fulfill her obligations. It was a false and absurd proposition, intended to deceive, but too flimsy in its fabric to deceive any one. It was rotten clean through, and was opposed by everyone except the framers of the autonomistic papers, General Blanco, his staff and a few others, who hoped, but hoped in vain, great things from the proclamation. The Cuban leaders, who at one time would have hailed with joy such a concession, if they had been assured that the provisions would have been followed out loyally and without fraud, now rejected the autonomistic proposition with scorn and loathing. Their battle cry was now, and they were determined it ever should be: "Independence or death!" It was too late. There was no possibility now of home rule under Spanish domination. Gomez even went so far as to declare that any one who should attempt to bring to his camp any offer of autonomy would be seized as a spy and shot. General Lee, speaking of the proposed autonomy, says: "Blanco's autonomistic government was doomed to failure from its inception. The Spanish soldiers and officers scorned it because they did not desire Cuban rule, which such autonomy, if genuine, would insure. The Spanish merchants and citizens were opposed to it because they too were hostile to the Cubans having control of the island, and, if the question could be narrowed down to Cuban control or annexation to the United States, they were all annexationists, believing that they could get a better government, and one that would protect in a greater measure life and property under the United States flag than under the Cuban banner. On the other hand, the Cubans in arms would not touch it, because they were fighting for free Cuba. And the Cuban citizens and sympathizers were opposed to it also." Senor Palma sums up the question of autonomy as follows: "Autonomy would mean that the Cuban people will make their own laws, appoint all their public officers, except the governor-general, and attend to the local affairs with entire independence, without, of course, interference by the metropolis. What then would be left to Spain, since between her and Cuba there is no commercial intercourse of any kind? Spain is not and cannot be, a market for Cuban products, and is moreover unable to provide Cuba with the articles in need by the latter. The natural market for the Cuban products is the United States, from which in exchange Cuba buys with great advantage flour, provisions, machinery, etc. What then, I repeat, is left to Spain but the big debt incurred by her, without the consent and against the will of the people of Cuba? We perfectly understand the autonomy of Canada as a colony of Great Britain. The two countries are closely connected with each other by the most powerful ties--the mutual interest of a reciprocal commerce." Murat Halstead, who is invariably logical and correct, puts the whole matter in a few trenchant words: "There is nothing to regard as possible in any of the reforms the Spaniards are promising with much animation and to which they ascribe the greatest excellence, to take place after the insurgents have surrendered their arms. Spain is, as always, incapable of changing her fatal colonial policy, that never has been or can be reformed." Spain's fatal colonial policy. Could there be truer words? Let us pause for a moment to contemplate what this fatal colonial policy has cost her. At one time she swayed the destinies of Europe and had possessions in every continent. Samuel Johnson, in writing of her, said: "Are there no regions yet unclaimed by Spain? Quick, let us rise, those unhappy lands explore, And bear oppression's insolence no more." The whole reason of Spain's downfall is the ruthless and savage character of the Spanish people. Due to her oppression, note the following list of colonies which she has lost: 1609. The Netherlands. 1628. Malacca, Ceylon, Java and other islands. 1640. Portugal. 1648. Spain renounced all claim to Holland. 1648. Brabant and other parts of Flanders. 1649. Maestricht, Hetogenbosch, Breda, Bergen-of-Zoom, and many other fortresses in the Low Countries. In this year also she practically surrendered supremacy on the seas to Northern Europe. 1659. Rousillon and Cardague. By the cession of these places to France, the boundary line between France and Spain became the Pyrenees. 1668. Other portions of Flanders. 1672. Still more cities and towns in Flanders. 1704. Gibraltar. 1704. Majorca, Minorca and Ivizza. 1791. The Nootka Sound settlements. 1794. St. Domingo. 1800. Louisiana. 1802. Trinidad. 1819. Florida. 1810-21. Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chili, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Patagonia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador, Hayti and numerous other islands. Spain has now not a foot of territory on the American continent, and very shortly she will not have a foot anywhere except within the confines of her own home. To return again to the proposed autonomy of Cuba. At the time it was offered Gomez, that grand old man of Cuba said: "This is a war to the death for independence, and nothing but independence will we accept. To talk of home rule is to idle away time. But I have hopes that the United States, sooner or later, will recognize our belligerency. It is a question of mere justice, and, in spite of all arts of diplomacy, justice wins in the long run. The day we are recognized as belligerents, I can name a fixed term for the end of the war. "With regard to paying an indemnity to Spain, that is a question of amount. A year ago we could pay $100,000,000, and I was ready to agree to that. Now that Spain owes more than $400,000,000, we will not pay so much." It was too late now to speak of reforms or of home rule in any shape. The Cubans were not willing to nurse illusions. They were resolved on absolute freedom or nothing. Any form of Spanish rule would mean the entire subjection of the Cubans, and, had they accepted the proposed autonomy, there is no doubt but that the future would have been as bad, if not worse, than the past. Public opinion in the United States was never so deeply aroused as it was now. Citizens in all ranks of life were calling loudly for interference, which, in the name of civilization and humanity, should end the horrible state of affairs in Cuba. The United States was Cuba's natural defender and protector, and now, both press and public declared, was the time to act. The president was fully aware of the gravity of the situation, but with rare discretion, for which future historians will give him due credit, he bided his time, preferring, if possible, peace with honor. In his first message relating to the Cuban situation, President McKinley said: "If it shall hereafter appear to be a duty imposed by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization and humanity, to intervene with force, it shall be without fault on our part, and only because the necessity of such action will be so clear as to command the support and approval of the civilized world." General Stewart L. Woodford, our minister to Spain, behaved with the utmost courtesy and did everything in the power of mortal man to avoid hostilities. One cause of the American people's irritability, and in all justice there was much reason for it, was Spain's pretence that the Cuban war had been prolonged because of America's inability or non desire to maintain neutrality. Nothing could be falser or more absurd, for the United States had invariably, whenever possible, stopped all filibustering expeditions to Cuba. The records will bear out this statement, without any possibility of refutation. More than two millions of dollars had been expended by the United States in Spain's interest. Certainly, gratitude or its equivalent is a word that does not appear in the Spanish lexicon. CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST DAYS OF PEACE. Then came the De Lome incident which served to inflame further passions already aroused. Senor Enrique Depuy De Lome was the Spanish minister to this country. He wrote a letter, strongly denunciatory of the president's message, and of the president himself; with the worst taste possible, he alluded to Mr. McKinley as a low politician, one who catered, for political purposes, to the rabble. This letter was intercepted and a copy given to the press. The original was sent to the State Department. Of course De Lome at once became persona non grata, which the Spanish government recognized, and even before Minister Woodford could make a "representation," De Lome was recalled from his position and Senor Polo appointed in his place. President McKinley showed the most admirable self-poise through all this affair, evincing outwardly no resentment for what was a personal insult to himself. It was declared that we ought to have a ship of war in Havana harbor to protect American citizens, and for that purpose, the Maine was sent there. It was the visit of a friendly ship to, at that time, a friendly country. The Maine was received by the Spanish officials with every outward show of respect, the firing of salutes and the raising of the American and Spanish flags on the vessels of different nationalities. And yet what was the result? Once more came an exhibition of Spain's perfidy. We know it is very much like the Scotch verdict of "non proven," but still there is no doubt among fair-minded men. A tragedy ensued, a tragedy in which Spain played the part of the villain, and such an unconscionable villain as has never been seen upon the boards of any stage. On the night of Tuesday, February 19, 1898, the United States battleship Maine, presumably in friendly waters, was lying calmly anchored in the harbor of Havana. Suddenly, with no warning whatever, for there was no suspicion on the part of either officers or men, the magnificent battleship was blown up. Two officers and two hundred and sixty of the crew perished, but their names and memories will ever be cherished affectionately and gratefully by the American people. All on board behaved in the most heroic manner, Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, the commander being the last to leave the fated ship. The famous naval historian, Captain Mahan, says: "The self-control shown in the midst of a sudden and terrible danger, of which not one of the men on board knew, showed that in battle with known dangers about them, and expecting every minute the fate that might overtake them, the fellow sailors of the men of the Maine would stand to their guns and their ship to the last. It was evident that the old naval spirit existed, and that the sailors of the new navy were as good as those who manned the old-time ships." The Maine was one of the very best vessels in the American navy; with her stores and ammunition, she represented an expenditure of close upon five millions of dollars. The blowing up of the Maine and the loss of our brave men aroused the most intense excitement throughout the United States, but the request of Captain Sigsbee that public opinion should be suspended until thorough investigation had been made, was followed, and the people behaved with admirable and remarkable control. A naval board of inquiry was at once organized by the United States government. This board consisted of experienced officers, who were greatly assisted in their labors by a strong force of experts, wreckers and divers. The investigation was most searching. The 21st of March, 1898, the board presented a unanimous verdict. The report was most voluminous, embracing some twelve thousand pages. The verdict was practically that "the loss of the Maine was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on the part of any of the officers or members of her crew; that the ship was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of two or more of her forward magazines; and that no evidence has been obtainable fixing the responsibility of the destruction of the Maine upon any person or persons." Although it was not possible to obtain evidence which should convict the guilty parties, there was not and never has been the faintest doubt in the mind of any fair-minded person as to who was responsible for the tragedy. When Congress afterward spoke of the crime or the criminal negligence of the Spanish officials, the words found an ardent response in the heart of every true American. There is no doubt but that the destruction of the Maine was the lever that started the machinery of war. Like "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember the Maine!" is a clarion cry of battle that will go echoing down the centuries. In Cuba we were most fortunate in having a superb representative in the person of General Fitz Hugh Lee, a man of rare intellectual ability, ever courteous but ever firm, a fine specimen of Southern chivalry. The Spaniards, as was but natural, hated him, but when his withdrawal was suggested by the Spanish government President McKinley cabled to Minister Woodford at Madrid that the services of General Lee at Havana were indispensable and his removal could not be considered. The relations between Spain and the United States became every day more and more strained. Every effort was made by the President to bring about a peaceable solution of the Cuban question, but Spain, stiff necked and suicidal, refused to cooperate with him. On April 11, the president sent his famous message to Congress. In it, he alluded to the way in which we had been forced to police our own waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of Cuba. He spoke of how our trade had suffered, how the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba had been largely lost, and how the temperance and forbearance of our own people had been so sorely tried as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens. The President, also, made some strong arguments against both belligerency and recognition, especially against the latter. He quoted Jackson's argument, on the subject of the recognition of Texas, concluding as follows: "Prudence, therefore, seems to dictate that we should stand aloof, and maintain our present attitude, if not until Mexico itself or one of the great foreign powers shall recognize the independence of the new government; at least until the lapse of time or the course of events should have proved beyond cavil or dispute the ability of the people of that country to maintain their separate sovereignty and to uphold the government constituted by them. Neither of the contending parties can justly complain of this course. By pursuing it we are but carrying out the long established policy of our government, a policy which has secured us respect and influence abroad and inspired confidence at home." It is necessary to quote still further from President McKinley's message, a message so fine, so just and so true, that we are sure it will go down into history praised by all future historians, as it well deserves to be. He says: "The spirit of all our acts hitherto has been an earnest, unselfish desire for peace and prosperity in Cuba, untarnished by differences between us and Spain, and unstained by the blood of American citizens. "The forcible intervention of the United States as a neutral to stop the war, according to the large dictates of humanity and following many historical precedents where neighboring states have interfered to check the hopeless sacrifice of life by internecine conflicts beyond their borders, is justifiable on rational grounds. It involves, however, hostile constraint upon both parties to the contest, as well as to enforce a truce as to guide the eventual settlement. The grounds for such intervention may be briefly summarized as follows: "1. In the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say that this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and is, therefore, none of our business. It is specially our duty, for it is right at our doors. "2. We owe to our citizens in Cuba to afford them that protection and indemnity for life and property which no government there can or will afford, and to that end to terminate the conditions that deprive them of local protection. "3. The right to intervene may be justified by the very serious injury to the commerce, trade and business interest of our people, and by the wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island. "4. And, what is of the utmost importance, the present condition of affairs in Cuba is a constant menace to our peace and entails upon this government an enormous expense. With such a conflict waged for years in an island so near us, and with which our people have such trade and business relations--when the lives and liberty of our citizens are in constant dread, and their property destroyed and themselves ruined--where our trading-vessels are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door, by warships of a foreign nation, the expeditious of filibustering that we are powerless to prevent altogether, and the irritating questions and entanglements thus arising--all these and others that I need not mention, with the resulting strained relations, are a constant menace to our peace, and compel us to keep on a semi-war footing with a nation with which we are at peace." In his message, the President also gives utterance to these notable and memorable words: "The long trial has proved that the object for which Spain wages war cannot be attained. "The fire of insurrection may flame or may smoulder with varying seasons, but it has not been, and it is plain that it cannot be, extinguished by present methods. The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which cannot longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. "In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests, which give us the right and the duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop." The President then refers the whole matter to Congress to decide as that body may think best. A somewhat acrimonious debate, of several days duration followed, chiefly over the side issue of the recognition of the Republic of Cuba. On April 19, 1898, by the way, the date of the first battle of the Revolution at Concord, Massachusetts, the following joint resolution was agreed upon. "Joint resolution for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba, and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect. "Whereas, the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the Island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian civilization, culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a United States battleship, with two hundred and sixty-six of its officers and crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and cannot longer be endured, as has been set forth by the President of the United States in his message to Congress of April 11, 1898, upon which the action of Congress was invited; therefore, "Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, "1. That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent. "2. That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the Government of the United States does hereby demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters. "3. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States to such extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect. "4. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people." The President set his seal of approval upon these resolutions the following day, and the same day an ultimatum was sent to Spain, practically the same as what has been quoted above. It was also stated that it was the President's duty to request an answer within forty-eight hours. Within forty-eight hours the ultimatum was rejected by the Spanish Cortes. The ministers and representatives of the two countries were immediately recalled from their various posts, and a state of warfare proclaimed. The United States now stood pledged to aid and succor agonized Cuba, to strike the shackles from off her bruised and bleeding limbs, and raise her to a position which her valor had long deserved, amongst the free and independent nations of the world. CHAPTER XV. THE TOPOGRAPHY AND RESOURCES OF CUBA. Cuba lies in the northern portion of the torrid zone, and immediately south of Florida. From Key West to the nearest point on the Cuban coast, the distance in 86 miles. The form of Cuba is an irregular crescent, with a large number of bays or indentations. The coast line is about 2,200 miles, exclusive of the indentations; or, if we include the latter, nearly 7,000 miles. The island is about 760 miles long. Its breadth varies from 127 miles at a point some fifty miles west of Santiago to 28 miles from Havana to the south. Its area is 43,314 square miles, which includes the Isle of Pines and several smaller islands. Cuba is intersected by a range of mountains, more or less broken, which extends across the entire island, from east to west, and from which the rivers flow to the sea. This range is called the Sierra del Cobra, and it includes the Pico de Turginuo, with an altitude of 7,670 feet, the highest point on the whole island. There are other ranges, and the eastern portion of the island is particularly hilly. We must not forget the famous Pan of Matanzas which received its name from its resemblance to a loaf of sugar. It is 1,300 feet high, and has been of great service to mariners in enabling them to get their bearings. Naturally the rivers are small, but they are numerous. The principal one, and the only one that can properly be called navigable, is the Canto. Schooners ascend this for about sixty miles. It rises in the Sierra del Cobre, and empties upon the south coast, a few miles from Manzanillo. Mineral springs abound, and their medicinal qualities are in high repute. Of lakes there are only a few, and most of these lie in the marsh lands. The Scientific American says: "The country may be broadly divided into the region of the plains the rolling uplands and the forest lands. The lowlands form a practically continuous belt around the island, and in them are to be found the great sugar plantations. Above these and on the lower slopes are found the grazing and farm lands, upon, which, among other things, is raised the famous Havana tobacco. The remainder of the island, especially the eastern portion is covered with a dense forest growth." The vegetation of Cuba is of the most luxuriant and beautiful description. The forests are full of a large variety of trees, almost all of them most valuable for mechanical purposes. Some of them are almost as hard as iron. One of these is called the quiebra hacha (the axe breaker). There are other woods such as the jucaro, which are indestructible, even under water. Still others are lignum vitae, ebony, rosewood, mahogany, cedar, lancewood and many other species. There are over fifty varieties of palm, and the orange and lemon trees are indigenous. Although the forests are so dense so to be almost impenetrable, there are no wild animals in them larger than the wild dogs, which closely resemble wolves both in appearance and habits. The fruits are those natural to the tropics, but only oranges, pineapples and bananas are raised for exportation. The land is not suited to the cultivation of cereals, and there is no flour mill on the island. At one time, the coffee plantations were in a flourishing condition, but the recent outbreak has largely interfered with this industry. By far the chief industries in the island are the cultivation of sugar and tobacco, both of which are famous the world over. The soil of Cuba is simply a marvel of richness, practically unrivalled in any other part of the world. Except occasionally in the case of tobacco, fertilizers are not used. Crops have been grown on the same ground without an atom of fertilization for over a hundred years. This superb soil gives the Cuban sugar planter an enormous advantage over his competitors in other countries. For instance, in Jamaica, one to two hogsheads of sugar is considered a good yield, but in Cuba, three hogsheads are the average. The introduction of modern machinery, which is very expensive, has done much to drive out the small planters, and the tax imposed by the Spanish government almost trebled the cost to the planter. In times of peace, the sugar production of Cuba averaged a million of tons a year, but this is nothing like what the island might be made to yield under a decent government and proper enterprise. It has been estimated that if all the land suitable to the growth of sugar cane were devoted to that industry, Cuba might supply the entire western hemisphere with sugar. Mr. Gollan, the British consul general, says: "Until a very recent date the manufacture of sugar and the growing of the cane in Cuba were extremely profitable undertakings, and the reasons for their prosperity may be stated as: "1. The excellence of the climate and the fertility of the soil, which allow of large crops of good cane. The rainfall, about 50 inches, is so distributed that irrigation is not a necessity, though it would in many cases be advisable. "2. The great movement toward the centralization of the estates which took place in the early eighties, planters having understood the value of large sugar houses and overcome their difficulty in this way. "3. The proximity of the United States, affording, as it does, a cash market for the sugar." To show how the sugar trade has been injured by the Cuban uprising, the following figures are of interest: Description. Tons in 1895. Tons in 1896. Exports 832,431 235,628 Stocks 135,181 36,260 ---------- ---------- Local consumption 967,612 271,888 50,000 40,000 ---------- ---------- 1,017,612 311,888 Stock on January 1 (previous crop) 13,348 86,667 --------- ------- Total production 1,004,264 225,221 The decrease in 1895-96 was 779,043 tons, equivalent to 77.574 per cent. While the tobacco crop of some portions of Cuba is unsurpassed, notably that of Vuelta Alajo and of Mayari, it is of excellent quality all over the island, the poorest of it being quite as good as that of Hayti. The entire crop is estimated at $10,000,000 annually. Yet, owing to the extortions of the government, which loaded it with restrictions and exactions of every description, the tobacco industry has always been an uncertain one. It is said that the tobacco growers, disgusted with their treatment, have always been in favor of the revolutionists. The mineral riches of the island have never been exploited to any considerable extent and yet it is known that they are by no means unimportant. Gold and silver exist. Some specimens of the finest gold have been obtained, but at an expense of time and labor that could not remunerate the parties engaged in the enterprise. There are copper mines near Santiago of large extent and very rich in ore. There are also several iron mines. Numerous deposits of manganese have been found in the Sierra Maestra range. As nearly all the manganese used in the United States comes from the Black Sea, it is thought that these mines will prove very valuable, when the conditions for operating them are more favorable. Bituminous coal is very abundant. Marble, jasper and slate are also to be found in many parts of the island. The trade of the United States with Cuba since 1891 is given as follows by the bureau of statistics, Treasury Department: Imports. Exports. 1891 $61,714,395 $12,224,888 1892 77,931,671 17,953,570 1893 78,706,506 24,157,698 1894 75,678,261 20,125,321 1895 52,871,259 12,807,661 1896 40,017,730 7,530,880 1897 18,406,815 8,259,776 The commerce of Spain with Cuba since 1891, the figures up to 1895 being taken from a compilation by the department of agriculture, and those for 1896 from a British foreign office report was: Imports from Exports to Cuba. Cuba. 1891 $7,193,173 $22,168,050 1892 9,570,399 28,046,636 1893 5,697,291 24,689,373 1894 7,265,120 22,592,943 1895 7,176,105 26,298,497 1896 4,257,360 26,145,800 The railways are insufficient and wretchedly managed, while the roads are in a deplorable condition, sometimes, in wet weather, being almost impassible. In regard to the future commercial prosperity of Cuba, Mr. Hyatt, who until recently was our consul at Santiago, gives the following opinion: "Railroads and other highways, improved machinery and more modern methods of doing business are among the wants of Cuba; and with the onward march of civilization these will doubtless be hers in the near future. Cuba, like other tropical and semi-tropical countries, is not given to manufacturing; her people would rather sell the products of the soil and mines and buy manufactured goods. The possibilities of the island are great, while the probabilities remain an unsolved problem." When the tropical position of Cuba is taken into consideration, it may be stated that its climate is generally mild. In fact, we can say that it is one of the best, if not the very best, of the countries lying within the tropics; and, during the dry season, it is unsurpassable anywhere. In this season, the days are delightful, and the nights, with the clear, transparent air, and the sky spangled with myriads of stars (many of which, notably the constellation known as "The Southern Cross," are not visible in more northern countries), are veritable dreams of beauty. The heat and cold are never extreme, and there is only a slight difference in the temperature all the year round. The warmest month at Havana is July, with an average temperature of 82 degrees Fahrenheit, and the coldest is January, with an average temperature of 70 degrees. The rainy season lasts from the first of May till the first of October. The popular impression is that it rains pretty nearly all the time during this season, but this is a mistake. On an average there are not more than ten rainy days a month, and the rain generally comes in the afternoon. The temperature of Havana in the summer is but little higher than that of New Orleans, while its rainfall is infinitely less. Yellow fever exists in the coast cities all the year round, but it rarely makes its appearance in the interior. The western part of the island is as habitable as is Ohio. It is certain that the effects of the climate upon the Spanish soldiers has been disastrous, but much of the mortality among them have been due not to the climate alone, but to a bad system of hygiene, wretched diet, unsuitable clothing and a criminal disregard on the part of the military authorities of the health of the men under their control. The Medical Record, in an article on the subject, says: "There is no evading the fact, however, that the landing of a large body of more or less raw, unacclimatized men in the lowlands of a reputed unhealthy coast at the beginning of the rainy season is an experiment that must from the very nature of things be attended with much risk." But the danger to our own soldiers must also from the very nature of things, be much less than it has proved to the Spaniards. Our army is composed of a much higher class of men intellectually, and besides that, they will be infinitely better taken care of. The next point to be considered is the population of Cuba. There has been no official census taken since 1887. Then the entire population was estimated at 1,631,687. Of these about one-fifth were natives of Spain, 10,500 were whites of foreign blood, 485,187 were free negroes, about 50,000 were Chinese and the rest native Cubans. It may be interesting to note the percentage of whites and blacks, and to see how the negro element has been decreasing both relatively and absolutely during late years. At the present time the negroes are in all probability not more than one-fourth of the entire population. Per Year. White. Negro. Cent. 1804 234,000 198,000 45.8 1819 239,830 213,203 47. 1830 332,352 423,343 56. 1841 418,291 589,333 58.4 1850 479,490 494,252 50.75 1860 632,797 566,632 47. 1869 797,596 602,215 43. 1877 985,325 492,249 33. 1887 1,102,689 485,188 30.55 The island is divided into six political divisions, each province taking the name of its capital city: Havana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, Santiago de Cuba and Pinar del Rio. The figures in the following table give the population by provinces, as well as the density of population (number of inhabitants per square kilometer.) Square Provinces. Inhabitants. Kilometers. Density. Pinar del Rio 225,891 14,967 15.09 Habana 451,928 8,610 52.49 Matanzas 259,578 8,486 30.59 Santa Clara 354,122 23,083 15.34 Puerto Principe 67,789 32,341 2.10 Santiago de Cuba 272,379 35,119 7.76 --------- ------- ----- Totals 1,631,687 122,606 13.31 In Cuba, under Spanish rule, the Roman Catholic is the only religion tolerated by the government. There are no Protestant or Jewish places of worship. A decree promulgated in Madrid in 1892 declares that, while a person who should comply with all other requirements might be permitted to remain on the island, he would not be allowed to advance doctrines at variance with those of the established church. As Catholicism is a state religion, its maintenance is charged to the revenues of the island, and amounts to something like $400,000 a year. Education in Cuba is, or has been, at a very low ebb. That is due, as many other things are, to the wretched, short-sighted policy of Spain, the country which has never completely emerged from the darkness of barbarism. She was afraid to give education to the Cubans, thinking that she could better dominate them in their ignorance. There is a royal university in Havana, and a collegiate institute in each of the six provinces, the number of students in all amounting to nearly three thousand, but these come almost without exception from the ranks of the well-to-do. Less than one out of every forty-five of the children in Cuba attend the public schools. There was a farcical law passed in 1880, making education compulsory. How could such a law be of any effect when there was neither the ability nor the desire to provide school-houses and instructors? Now let us take a brief glance at some of the chief cities of Cuba. Havana, the principal and capital city of the island, is situated on the west side of the bay of Havana, on a peninsula of level land of limestone formation. It is the seat of the general government and captain-generalcy, superior court of Havana (audencia,) general direction of finance, naval station, arsenal, observatory, diocese of the bishopric and the residence of all the administrative officers of the island (civil, military, maritime, judicial and economic). Its strategic position at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico has aptly given to the city the name of the Key of the Gulf; and a symbolic key is emblazoned in its coat-of-arms. The harbor, the entrance to which is narrow, is wide and deep, and a thousand ships could easily ride there at anchor. It has always been supposed to be strongly fortified, its chief defences being Morro Castle, the Cabana, the Castillo del Principe, Fort Atares, the Punta and the Reina Battery. The population of Havana, from the last official estimate, is about 220,000. Before the present war, Havana was one of the most charming places in the world for the tourist to visit, more especially during the winter months. There is scarcely a city in Europe which, to the American seemed so foreign as Havana. The whole appearance of the place, its manners and customs, were all totally different to what the American had been accustomed. The streets are so narrow that vehicles by law are obliged to pass down one street and up another, while the sidewalks are not more than two feet wide and hollowed down in the centre by the constant trampling of feet. This applies to the city proper, for, outside the walls, there are many broad and beautiful avenues. The streets are very noisy and, as a rule, excessively unclean. The houses, many of them palaces, wonderfully beautiful within, but situated on dark and dirty alleys, are all built about a central courtway. There are no fireplaces anywhere, nor a window shielded with glass in the whole city. The windows have iron bars, and within those of the first story is the inevitable row of American rocking chairs. Through these bars the Cuban lover interviews his inamorata. It would be the height of indecorum for him to approach nearer, to seek to speak with her within the walls of her own home, even in the presence of her father and mother. Cows are driven about the streets and milked in front of your own door, when you desire the lacteal fluid. This custom is, at all events, a safeguard against adulteration. Ladies do not go into the shops to make purchases, but all goods are brought out to them as they sit in their volantes. By the way, the volante (flyer) is the national carriage and no other, practically, is used in the country. It consists of a two seated vehicle, slung low down by leather straps from the axle of two large wheels, and it has shafts fifteen feet long. The horse in the shafts is led by a postillion, whose horse is harnessed on the other side of the shafts in the same manner. The carriage is extremely comfortable to travel in, and the height of the wheels and their distance apart prevent all danger of turning over, although the roads in the country are for the most part, mere tracks through fields and open land. Ox carts and pack mules are used for conveying goods in the interior of the island outside of the meagre railway lines. Havana has some beautiful public parks and some really fine statues, chiefly those of Spain's former rulers. Its principal theatre, the Tacon, is celebrated throughout the world for its size and beauty. In regard to theatres, there is one peculiar custom in Havana: By the payment of a certain sum, beyond the price of admission, one is allowed to go behind the scenes between the acts. This privilege has caused great annoyance to many eminent artists. The cathedral of Havana is rather imposing in architecture, although it is badly situated, but it is very interesting because there is an urn within its walls which is said, and with a large semblance of truth, to contain the bones of Columbus. Space does not permit us to tell of all the charms of Havana, but, suffice it to say, that it was and will be again, under far happier conditions too, one of the most delightful cities in the world. The city of Cuba, next in commercial importance to Havana, is Matanzas. It is beautifully situated on the north coast, about seventy miles from Havana, and has a population of about fifty thousand. The climate is fine, and Matanzas is considered the healthiest city on the island. With proper drainage (something that has hitherto been almost unknown in Cuba as are all other sanitary arrangements) yellow fever and malaria would be almost unknown. If it should ever come under American enterprise, the city would develop into a superb pleasure resort and be a fatal rival to the Florida towns. We cannot forbear to mention the Caves of Bellamar. These are not far from Matanzas and are subterranean caverns, of which there are a number in Cuba. The walls and roofs are covered with stalactites of every conceivable hue and shape, and forming pictures of beauty far beyond anything conceived of, even in the Arabian Nights. The most modern city of importance is Cienfuegos (as its name signifies, the City of a Hundred Fires). It has a population of about twenty-six thousand and its harbor is one of the best on the southern coast, with a depth of 27 feet at the anchorage, and from 14 to 16 feet at the wharves. Cardenas is a seaport on the north coast about 135 miles east of Havana. Its population is about the same as Cienfuegos. In the rainy season, its climate is distinctly bad and its sanitary conditions worse. It has some large manufactories, and carries on a flourishing trade. Santiago de Cuba, on the southeastern coast, is the second city of size in Cuba (60,000 inhabitants), and the one on which all American eyes have been fixed, for it is there that our brave Sampson bottled up Cervera's illusive fleet, and on its suburbs a fierce battle was fought, July 1, 2 and 3, between the American troops under General Shafter and the Spanish army under General Linares, resulting in the defeat of the latter and the subsequent surrender of the city to the United States' forces on Sunday, July 17. It is very difficult, by the way, to find the entrance to the harbor of Santiago. Approaching it from the sea, nothing is seen but lofty mountains. When quite near, two mountains seem to suddenly part, and a channel only 180 yards wide, but of good depth, is revealed. It is the oldest city in America, many years older than St. Augustine, having been founded by Velasquez in 1514, and is exceedingly quaint and mediaeval. Its chief fortifications are the Castillo of La Socapa and the Morro Castle, the largest and most picturesque of the three of that name. The latter was built about 1640, and is a fine specimen of the feudal "donjon keep" with battlemented walls, moats, drawbridge, portcullis and all the other paraphernalia of the days of romance. The harbor itself, around which so much interest has clustered, is naturally one of the finest in the world, but no pains has been taken to improve it, the funds appropriated for that purpose having been stolen by the Spanish engineers and officials. Santiago is Spanish for St. James, who is the special patron saint of Spain, on account of a myth that he once made a journey to that country. Cuba, in short, is one of the most beautiful and fertile countries on the face of the globe, but man, in the shape of brutal Spain, has done everything he could, to ruin the gifts Nature so lavishly bestowed. Let us hope and believe, as surely we have every reason to do, that upon the "Pearl of the Antilles," the sun of prosperity will rise, driving away the gloomy shadows of oppression, and that the dawn will be not long postponed. CHAPTER XVI. WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BE? It is unnecessary to refer except in a brief manner to the Spanish-American war, as the struggle is at the present time of writing only in its inception, and no one can tell how long it will last or what reverses each side may experience before peace is declared. One thing is certain, however. The result is not problematical. It is assured. The United States will be victorious in the end, be that end near or distant, and Cuba must and shall be free. If ever there was a war that was entered into purely from motives of humanity and with no thought whatever of conquest, it is this one. The entire people of the United States were agreed that their purpose was a holy one, and instantly the call of the President was responded to from all parts of the country. Sectional differences, such as they were, vanished like mist before the sun. There was no Easterner, no Westerner, no Northerner, no Southerner, but "Americans all." We are proud of our army and navy, and justly so. Dewey destroyed a large fleet, without the loss of a man, a feat unprecedented in the annals of warfare, ancient or modern. Sampson bottled up Cervera's fleet in the harbor of Santiago, after the wily admiral had attempted a diplomacy which was nothing more nor less than absurd, and when Cervera, on the eve of the surrender of the city, attempted to escape from his self-constituted trap, his four armored cruisers and two torpedo boat destroyers were literally riddled and sunk outside the harbor by the skilful gunners of the American fleet. Hobson, in sinking the Merrimac, displayed a heroism that has never been surpassed. And on land, General Shafter's achievements have been brilliant in the extreme. It is interesting here to examine for a moment the attitude of other countries toward us since the declaration of war with Spain. Of course they all declared neutrality. At first France apparently was very bitter against us, declaring that it was a war of aggression and one that was unjustified. We think we have already shown in these pages how unwarrantable such an accusation was. There was a reason for France's feeling, outside of the fact that her people, like Spain's, belong to the Latin race, and that reason was that a large proportion of Spanish bonds was held in France. Even the best of us do not bear with equanimity anything which depletes our pockets. But it was not long before a great change took place both in press and public and a wave of French sympathy turned toward us. This is as it should be and was inevitable. There could be no lasting rancor between us and our sister republic, the country who gave us Lafayette and presented us with the Statue of Liberty. The press of Germany has unquestionably said some very harsh things. But we are confident that the feeling is confined to the press and does not represent the mass of the people. We do know that it is in no way representative of the German government, which from the very beginning has showed itself most friendly to us. The ties between Germany and the United States are too strong ever to be severed, with the thousands and thousands of Germans in this country who rank among our very best citizens. Russia, who from time immemorial has been our friend and given us her moral support in all our troubles, has treated us with the utmost cordiality. But the pleasantest thing of all has been the attitude of Great Britain, our once mother country. She has stood by us through thick and thin, hurling defiance in the face of the world in her championship of us, and rejoicing in our victories almost as if they were her own. This has done more to bring the two great English-speaking nations together than anything else could possibly have done, and will probably have far reaching consequences in the future. The Marquis of Lansdowne, the British Secretary of State of War, in a recent speech, thus expressed himself: "There could be no more inspiring ideal than an understanding between two nations sprung from the same race and having so many common interests, nations which, together, are predominant in the world's commerce and industry. "Is there anything preposterous in the hope that these two nations should be found--I will not say in a hard and fast alliance of offense and defense, but closely connected in their diplomacy, absolutely frank and unreserved in their international councils, and ready wherever the affairs of the world are threatened with disturbance to throw their influence into the same scale? "Depend upon it, these are no mere idle dreams or hazy aspirations. The change which has come over the sentiment of each country toward the other during the last year or two is almost immeasurable. One can scarcely believe they are the same United States with whom, only two years ago, we were on the verge of a serious quarrel. "The change is not an ephemeral understanding between diplomatists, but a genuine desire of the two peoples to be friends, and therefore it cannot be laughed out of existence by the sort of comments we have lately heard." There is a poem which we cannot forbear to quote here, it is so fine in itself and so expressive of the existing situation. The author is Richard Mansfield, the eminent actor: THE EAGLE'S SONG. BY RICHARD MANSFIELD. The Lioness whelped, and the sturdy cub Was seized by an eagle and carried up And homed for a while in an eagle's nest, And slept for a while on an eagle's breast, And the eagle taught it the eagle's song: "To be staunch and valiant and free and strong!" The Lion whelp sprang from the eerie nest, From the lofty crag where the queen birds rest; He fought the King on the spreading plain, And drove him back o'er the foaming main. He held the land as a thrifty chief, And reared his cattle and reaped his sheaf, Nor sought the help of a foreign hand, Yet welcomed all to his own free land! Two were the sons that the country bore To the Northern lakes and the Southern shore, And Chivalry dwelt with the Southern son, And Industry lived with the Northern one. Tears for the time when they broke and fought! Tears was the price of the union wrought! And the land was red in a sea of blood, Where brother for brother had swelled the flood! And now that the two are one again, Behold on their shield the word "Refrain!" And the lion cubs twain sing the eagle's song, "To be staunch and valiant and free and strong!" For the eagle's beak and the lion's paw, And the lion's fangs and the eagle's claw, And the eagle's swoop and the lion's might, And the lion's leap and the eagle's sight, Shall guard the flag with the word "Refrain!" Now that the two are one again! Here's to a cheer for the Yankee ships! And "Well done, Sam," from the mother's lips! War is unquestionably a terrible thing. As General Sherman put it, "war is hell." But there are other terrible and yet necessary things, also, such as the operations of surgery and the infliction of the death penalty. War is justifiable, when waged, as the present one unquestionably is, from purely unselfish motives, simply from a determination to rescue a people whose sufferings had become unbearable to them and to the lookers-on. The United States, by its action, has set a lesson for the rest of the world, which the latter will not be slow to learn and for which future generations will bless the name of America. Nobly are we following out the precepts of our forefathers, who declared in one of the most magnificent documents ever framed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." We fought for these principles, in our own interests, a century and a quarter ago; in the interests of others, we are fighting for them to-day. A question which has been universally asked is this: Can the Cubans, if they obtain freedom, govern themselves, or will not a free Cuba become a second Hayti with all the horrors of that island? To this our reply is: Most emphatically Cuba will be able to govern herself; not in the beginning, perhaps, where mistakes must of necessity be made, but most certainly in the end. The Cuban leaders are men of high intelligence and lofty purposes, and they know what reforms must be instituted. Some one has said that "love of liberty is the surest guarantee of representative government." Surely these men have shown their love of liberty in the fullest degree and have proved themselves in every way fitted for self-government. The Cubans, strange as the statement may seem to those who have studied the matter only in a cursory way, are not a people who love trouble. Though revolution after revolution has occurred in the island, the Cubans have never taken up arms until every peaceful means of redress had been resorted to. It has been feared that the negro element would be a disturbing influence, but we can see little or no reason for this dread. The same thing was said of the emancipation of the slaves in our own South, but certainly, taken altogether, the behavior of the colored race in the United States, since the Civil War, has been most praiseworthy. A Frenchman, Baron Antomarchi, who is naturally unprejudiced, says: "When the time for the settlement of the Cuban question shall have come it will be an affair of give and take between the whites and the negroes, and if the negro does not succeed in convincing the white man that he is entitled to a full measure of civil authority, a measure which by reason of his numerical strength he will have a right, under a republican government, to exact, then we may have to stand by while Cuba engages in an internal struggle important enough to cripple or, to say the least, seriously hinder, her development. Should the war come to an end and should Cuba be free to develop the riches of the land for which she is now battling, an American protectorate would prevent all dangers of race conflict. The United States would be under a moral obligation to avert disorder. Aside from all considerations of a commercial character there would be the obligation resulting from an adherence to consistency of conduct. The stand taken by the American legislators, or some of them, to say nothing of the stand taken by the American people, would make this latter obligation even still more binding. Not until her machetes shall have been returned to their original use can Cuba develop the riches bestowed upon her by Nature. After the dawn of peace, when her sons are free to settle down to the tranquil life of the untrammeled husbandman, there will be no hunted exiles in the long grass of her savannas. When Cuba has attained the quiet calm that her younger generation has never known, she will show the world that it was not for idle brigands that Maceo died. In the shadow of the feathered cocoa palms in the deep shade of the drooping heavy leaves where Gilard dreamed of liberty, great cities shall one day loom in the misty, tropic twilight, and peace shall brood over the land that now, seamed with the graves of Cuba's heroes, awaits the murdered bodies of Cuban victims. Not until that day has come will it be known how strong to endure torment and sorrow, how brave in time of danger, were the men who won the day for Cuban independence." It is absolutely certain that all the natural and political ties that have bound "the Ever Faithful Isle" to the mother country have been so completely severed that it is utterly impossible they should ever be united again. The unique banner of Cuba, with its blue and white stripes and a single star upon a red triangle, has cost more blood and treasure than any revolutionary flag known to history. When this war is over, and Spain has learned her lesson, severe but well-deserved, and we hope salutary, then shall that flag take its place among the honored ones of other nations; then will the Cubans show their ability to prize and cherish the liberty for which the blood of their heroes has been spilled; then, under the protectorate of the United States, but as an independent republic, will Cuba, in the words of our own General Lee, emerge from the dark shadows of the past, and stand side by side with those countries who have their place in the sunlight of peace, progress and prosperity. Oh! Cuba Libre! as Longfellow said of our own Union, so do all Americans, who are now fighting with you shoulder to shoulder, say to you: "Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee--are all with thee!" (THE END.) * * * * * [Illustration: book's back cover] Transcriber's note: Both Hatury and Hatuey appear in the text. Due to the fact that there were so many typographical errors in the printing, it is assumed that Hatury is also one. Hatury has been changed to Hatuey which is the original Spanish spelling of the Taino chief's name. The spelling of the country, Chile remains spelled Chili. The spelling of reconcehtrado was changed to reconcentrado; add nauseam.=>ad nauseam. The title page carrie the error: IT'S PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. This has been corrected: ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
21075	----	The Cruise of the Thetis A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection By Harry Collingwood ________________________________________________________________________ The Thetis is a fast motor-cruiser. The story takes us to Cuba, and we visit various places in it (even Guantanamo!). There has been an insurrection there and our heroes get themselves involved. The book used was very well printed, and so the transcription was easy, and we think it has been well-done. ________________________________________________________________________ THE CRUISE OF THE THETIS A TALE OF THE CUBAN INSURRECTION BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD CHAPTER ONE. A FRIEND--AND A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER. "Hillo, Singleton, old chap, how are you?" exclaimed a young fellow of about eighteen years of age, as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of a lad about his own age, who, on a certain fine July day in the year of grace 1894, was standing gazing into the window of a shop in Piccadilly. The speaker was a somewhat slightly-built youth, rather tall and slim, by no means ill-looking, of sallow complexion and a cast of features that betrayed his foreign origin, although his English was faultless. The young man whom he had addressed was, on the other hand, a typical Englishman, tall, broad, with "athlete" written large all over him; fair of skin, with a thick crop of close-cut, ruddy-golden locks that curled crisply on his well-shaped head, and a pair of clear, grey-blue eyes that had a trick of seeming to look right into the very soul of anyone with whom their owner happened to engage in conversation. Just now, however, there was a somewhat languid look in those same eyes that, coupled with an extreme pallor of complexion and gauntness of frame, seemed to tell a tale of ill health. The singularly handsome face, however, lighted up with an expression of delighted surprise as its owner turned sharply round and answered heartily: "Why, Carlos, my dear old chap, this is indeed an unexpected pleasure! We were talking about you only last night--Letchmere, Woolaston, Poltimore, and I, all old Alleynians who had foregathered to dine at the Holborn. Where in the world have you sprung from?" "Plymouth last, where I arrived yesterday, _en route_ to London from Cuba," was the answer. "And you are the second old Alleynian whom I have already met. Lancaster--you remember him, of course--came up in the same compartment with me all the way. He is an engineer now in the dockyard at Devonport, and was on his way to join his people, who are off to Switzerland, I think he said." "Yes, of course I remember him," was the answer, "but I have not seen him since we all left Dulwich together. And what are you doing over here, now--if it is not an indiscreet question to ask; and how long do you propose to stay?" The sallow-complexioned, foreign-looking youth glanced keenly about him before replying, looked at his watch, and then remarked: "Close upon half-past one--lunch-time; and this London air of yours has given me a most voracious appetite. Suppose we go in somewhere and get some lunch, to start with; afterwards we can take a stroll in the Park, and have a yarn together--that is to say, if you are not otherwise engaged." "Right you are, my boy; that will suit me admirably, for I have no other engagement, and, truth to tell, was feeling somewhat at a loss as to how to dispose of myself for the next hour or two. Here you are, let us go into Prince's," answered Singleton. The two young men entered the restaurant, found a table, called a waiter, and ordered lunch; and while they are taking the meal the opportunity may be seized to make the reader somewhat better acquainted with them. There is not much that need be said by way of introduction to either of them. Carlos Montijo was the only son of Don Hermoso Montijo, a native of Cuba, and the most extensive and wealthy tobacco planter in the Vuelta de Abajo district of that island. He was also intensely patriotic, and was very strongly suspected by the Spanish rulers of Cuba of regarding with something more than mere passive sympathy the efforts that had been made by the Cubans from time to time, ever since '68, to throw off the Spanish yoke. He was a great admirer of England, English institutions, and the English form of government, which, despite all its imperfections, he considered to be the most admirable form of government in existence. It was this predilection for things English that had induced him to send his son Carlos over to England, some nine years prior to the date of the opening of this story, to be educated at Dulwich, first of all in the preparatory school and afterwards in the College. And it was during the latter period that Carlos Montijo became the especial chum of Jack Singleton, a lad of the same age as himself, and the only son of Edward Singleton, the senior partner in the eminent Tyneside firm of Singleton, Murdock, and Company, shipbuilders and engineers. The two lads had left Dulwich at the same time, Carlos to return to Cuba to master the mysteries of tobacco-growing, and Singleton to learn all that was to be learnt of shipbuilding and engineering in his father's establishment. A year ago, however, Singleton senior had died, leaving his only son without a near relation in the world--Jack's mother having died during his infancy: and since then Jack, as the dominant partner in the firm, had been allowed to do pretty much as he pleased. Not that he took an unwise advantage of this freedom--very far from it: he clearly realised that, his father being dead, there was now a more stringent necessity than ever for him to become master of every detail of the business; and, far from taking things easy, he had been working so hard that of late his health had shown signs of giving way, and at the moment when we make his acquaintance he was in London for the purpose of consulting a specialist. During the progress of luncheon there had been, as was to be expected, a brisk crossfire of question and answer between the two young men, in the course of which Montijo had learned, among other things, that his friend Jack had been ordered by the specialist to leave business very severely alone for some time to come, and, if possible, to treat himself to at least six months' complete change of air, scene, and occupation. "It fortunately so happens," said Jack, "that my position in the firm will enable me to do this very well, since Murdock, the other partner, is, and has been since my father's death, the actual manager of the business; and as he has been with us for nearly thirty years he knows all that there is to know about it, and needs no assistance from me. Also, I have at last completed the submarine which has been my pet project for almost as long as I can remember, and now all that I need is the opportunity to try her: indeed, but for Oxley's strict injunctions to me to cut business altogether, I should certainly spend my holiday in putting the boat to a complete series of very much more thorough and exhaustive tests than have thus far been possible. As it is, I really am at an almost complete loss how to spend my six months' holiday." "Do you mean to say that you have no plans whatever?" demanded Montijo, as he and his friend rose from the table to leave the restaurant. "None but those of the most vague and hazy description possible," answered Singleton. "Oxley's orders are `change of scene, no work, and a life in the open air'; I am therefore endeavouring to weigh the respective merits of a cruise in my old tub the _Lalage_, and big-game shooting somewhere in Central Africa. But neither of them seems to appeal to me very strongly; the cutter is old and slow, while as for the shooting project, I really don't seem to have the necessary energy for such an undertaking, in the present state of my health." "Look here, Jack," observed Montijo eagerly, as he slid his hand within his friend's arm and the pair wheeled westward toward Hyde Park, "I believe I have the very scheme to suit you, and I will expound it to you presently, when we get into the Park and can talk freely without the risk of being overheard. Meanwhile, what was it that you were saying just now about a submarine? I remember, of course, that you were always thinking and talking about submarines while we were at Dulwich, and also that you once made a model which you tested in the pond, and which dived so effectually that, unless you subsequently recovered her, she must be at the bottom of the pond still." "Ay," answered Jack with a laugh; "I remember that ill-fated model. No, I never recovered her, but she nevertheless served her purpose; for her mishap gave me my first really useful idea in connection with the design of a submarine boat. And at last I have completed a working model which thus far has answered exceedingly well. She is only a small affair, you know, five feet in diameter by twenty-five feet long, but she is big enough to accommodate two men--or even three, at a pinch. I have been as deep as ten fathoms in her, and have no doubt she could descend to twice that depth; while she has an underwater speed of twenty knots, which she can maintain for five hours." "By Jove, that's splendid--very much better than anything that anyone else has done, thus far!" exclaimed Montijo admiringly. "You ought to make your fortune with a boat of that sort. And you are pining for an opportunity to subject her to a thoroughly practical test? Well, my scheme, which I will explain in full when we get into the Park, will enable you to do that." "Is that so?" commented Jack. "Then that alone would very strongly predispose me in favour of it. But why make such a secret of it, old chap? Is it of such a character that a passer-by, catching a few words of it, would be likely to hand us over to the nearest policeman as a couple of conspirators?" "Well, no; it is scarcely so bad as that," answered Montijo, laughing: "but it is of such a nature that I would prefer not to speak of it, if you don't mind, until we are somewhere in the Park where we can converse freely without the fear of being overheard. You see, the Pater and I are pretty well-known to--and not too well liked by--the Spanish authorities in Cuba, and it is by no means certain that they may not think it quite worth their while to have us watched over here; therefore--" "Yes, of course, I understand," returned Jack; "therefore for the present `mum's the word', eh?" Montijo nodded, and the two lads strode along, conversing upon various topics, until they reached Hyde Park Corner, and swung in through the Park gates, and so on to the grass. "Ah, now at last I can speak freely!" remarked Montijo with a sigh of relief. "First of all, Singleton," he continued, "you must understand that what I am about to say will be spoken in the strictest confidence; and, whether you should agree to my proposal or not, I must ask you to pledge your honour as a gentleman that you will not repeat a single word of what I say to anyone--anyone, mind you--without first obtaining my consent, or that of my Pater." "All right, Carlos, my boy," answered Singleton, cheerily; "I promise and vow all that you ask. There is nobody on the face of this earth of ours who can keep a secret better than I can, as you ought to know by this time." "Yes, I do know it, perfectly well," agreed Montijo. "Well," he continued, "the fact is that the Pater and I have at last begun to interest ourselves actively in Cuban politics. We Cubans, as you perhaps know, have been trying, ever since '68, to induce the Spaniards to govern us mildly and justly, but thus far all our efforts have been fruitless: we are still being ground down and tyrannised over until the lives of many of us have become a burden; neither the property, the liberty, nor the life of any Cuban is safe to-day, unless he is well- known to be a supporter of the Spanish Government. After more than a quarter of a century of patient but ineffectual effort, therefore, it has been determined to take up arms, strike a blow for liberty, and never rest until Cuba is free from the hated Spanish yoke. "It is in connection with this movement that the Pater and I are now in England. It is now nearly a year since Senor Marti--the man who above all others has been conspicuous in his efforts on behalf of Cuba--got hold of the Pater and succeeded in convincing him that it is the duty of every Cuban to do his utmost to free his country from the grasp of the tyrant; and one of the first-fruits of this was the giving of an order by the Pater--through a friend--for the construction of a fast steam- yacht, to be used as may be required in the service of the country, but primarily for the purpose of smuggling arms, ammunition, and necessaries of all kinds into the island. Now, by a singular coincidence, this friend and agent of the Pater chose your firm as that which should build the yacht; and now we, having been advised that she is ready for delivery--" "What!" exclaimed Singleton, "you surely don't mean to say that Number 78 is your boat?" "Yes," answered Montijo quietly; "that is the number by which she is at present known, I believe." "Then, Carlos, my dear boy, accept my most hearty congratulations!" exclaimed Singleton. "Our naval constructor has let himself go, and fairly outdone himself over that craft. It was a difficult task that you gave him to do when you asked for a boat of not less than three hundred tons on eight feet draught of water, and with a sea speed of twenty-two knots; but he has done it, and the result is that you have, in Number 78, the prettiest little boat that ever swam. Why, man, she has already done twenty-four knots over the measured mile, on her full draught of water, and in a fairly heavy sea; and she is the very sweetest sea boat that it is possible to imagine. Of course we could not have done it had we not boldly adopted the new-fashioned turbine principle for her engines; but they work to perfection, and even when she is running at full speed one can scarcely feel a tremor in her." "I am delighted to receive so excellent an account of her," answered Montijo, "and so will the Pater be when I tell him--or, rather, when you tell him; for, Singleton, I want you to promise that you will dine with us to-night, and make the Pater's acquaintance. He is the very dearest old chap that you ever met--your own father, of course, excepted--and he will be enchanted to make your acquaintance. He already knows you well enough by name to speak of you as `Jack'." "I will do so with pleasure," answered Singleton heartily. "I have no other engagement, and after one has been to a theatre or a concert every night for a week--as I have--one begins to wish for a change. And while I don't wish to flatter you, Carlos, my boy, if your father is anything like you he is a jolly good sort, and I shall be glad to know him. But we have run somewhat off the track, haven't we? I understood that you have some sort of proposal to make." "Yes," answered Montijo, "I have. Let me see--what were we talking about? Oh, yes, the yacht! Well, now that she is built, we are in something of a difficulty concerning her--a difficulty that did not suggest itself to any of us until quite recently. That difficulty is the difficulty of ownership. She has been built for the service of Cuba, but somebody must be her acknowledged owner; and if she is admitted to be the property of the Pater, of Marti, or, in fact, of any Cuban, she will at once become an object of suspicion to the Spanish Government, and her movements will be so jealously watched that it will become difficult, almost to the verge of impossibility, for her to render any of those services for which she is specially intended. You see that, Jack, don't you?" "Certainly," answered Singleton, "that is obvious to the meanest intellect, as somebody once remarked. But how do you propose to get over the difficulty?" "There is only one way that the Pater and I can see out of it," answered Montijo, "and that is to get somebody who is not likely to incur Spanish suspicion to accept the nominal ownership of the yacht, under the pretence of using her simply for his own pleasure." "Phew!" whistled Singleton. "That may be all right for the other fellow, but how will it be for you? For that scheme to work satisfactorily you must not only find a man who will throw himself heart and soul into your cause, but also one whose honesty is proof against the temptation to appropriate to himself a yacht which will cost not far short of forty thousand pounds. For you must remember that unless the yacht's papers are absolutely in order, and her apparent ownership unimpeachable, it will be no good at all; she must be, so far at least as all documentary evidence goes, the indisputable property of the supposititious man of whom we have been speaking: and, that being the case, there will be nothing but his own inherent honesty to prevent him from taking absolute possession of her and doing exactly as he pleases with her, even to selling her, should he be so minded. Now, where are you going to find a man whom you can trust to that extent?" "I don't know, I'm sure," answered Montijo; "at least, I didn't until I met you, Jack. But if you are willing to be the man--" "Oh, nonsense, my dear fellow," interrupted Jack, "that won't do at all, you know!" "Why not?" asked Montijo. "Is it because you don't care to interfere in Cuban affairs? I thought that perhaps, as you are obliged to take a longish holiday, with change of scene and interests, an outdoor life, and so on, you would rather enjoy the excitement--" "Enjoy it?" echoed Singleton. "My dear fellow, `enjoy' is not the word, I should simply revel in it; all the more because my sympathies are wholly with the Cubans, while I--or rather my firm, have an old grudge against the Spaniards, who once played us a very dirty trick, of which, however, I need say nothing just now. No, it is not that; it is--" "Well, what is it?" demanded Montijo, seeing that Jack paused hesitatingly. "So near as I can put it," answered Jack, "it is this. Your father doesn't know me from Adam; and you only know as much as you learned of me during the time that we were together at Dulwich. How then can you possibly tell that I should behave on the square with you? How can you tell that, after having been put into legal possession of the yacht, I should not order you and your father ashore and forbid you both to ever set foot upon her decks again?" Montijo laughed joyously. "Never mind how I know it, Jack," he answered. "I do know it, and that is enough. And if that is not a sufficiently convincing argument for you, here is another. You will admit that, in order to avoid the difficulty which I have pointed out, we must trust somebody, mustn't we? Very well. Now I say that there is no man in all the world whom I would so implicitly trust as yourself; therefore I ask you, as a very great favour, to come into this affair with us. It will just nicely fill up your six months' holiday--for the whole affair will be over in six months, or less--and give you such a jolly, exciting time as you may never again meet with during the rest of your life. Now, what do you say to that?" "I say that your Pater must be consulted before the matter is allowed to go any further," answered Jack. "You can mention it to him between now and to-night, if you like, and if the idea is agreeable to him we can discuss it after dinner. And that reminds me that you have not yet mentioned the place or the hour of meeting." "We are staying at the Cecil, and we dine at seven sharp," answered Montijo. "But don't go yet, old chap, unless I am boring you. Am I?" "Do you remember my once punching your head at Dulwich for some trifling misdemeanour?" asked Jack laughingly, as he linked his arm in that of Montijo. "Very well, then. If you talk like that you will compel me to do it again. Do you know, Carlos, this scheme of yours is rapidly exercising a subtle and singularly powerful fascination over me? and even if your father should hesitate to entrust his boat to me, I feel very like asking him to let me take a hand in the game, just for the fun of the thing. And what a splendid opportunity it would afford for testing the powers of my submarine! Oh, by Jove, I think I must go, one way or another!" The two young men wandered about the Park for nearly an hour longer, discussing the matter eagerly, and even going so far as to make certain tentative plans; and then they separated and went their respective ways, with the understanding that they were to meet again at the Cecil. Jack was putting up at Morley's Hotel, in Trafalgar Square, and his nearest way back to it was, of course, down Piccadilly; but as he passed out through the Park gate he suddenly bethought himself of certain purchases that he wished to make at the Army and Navy Stores, and he accordingly crossed the road and entered the Green Park, with the intention of passing through it and Saint James's Park, and so into Victoria Street by way of Queen Anne's Gate and the side streets leading therefrom. He had got about halfway across Green Park when he became aware of quick footsteps approaching him from behind, and the next moment he was overtaken and accosted by a rather handsome man, irreproachably attired in frock-coat, glossy top-hat, and other garments to match. The stranger was evidently a foreigner--perhaps a Spaniard, Jack thought, although he spoke English with scarcely a trace of accent. Raising his hat, he said: "Pardon me, sir, but may I venture to enquire whether the gentleman from whom you parted a few minutes ago happens to be named Montijo?" "Certainly," answered Jack; "there can be no possible objection to your making such an enquiry, somewhat peculiar though it is. But whether I answer it or not must depend upon the reason which you may assign for asking the question. It is not usual, here in England, for total strangers to ask such personal questions as yours without being prepared to explain why they are asked." "Precisely!" assented the stranger suavely. "My reason for asking is that I am particularly anxious to see Senor Montijo on very important business of a strictly private nature, and should your friend happen to be the gentleman in question I was about to ask if you would have the very great goodness to oblige me with his present address." "I see," said Jack. "What caused you to think that my friend might possibly be the individual you are so anxious to meet?" "Simply a strong general resemblance, nothing more," answered the stranger. "Then, my dear sir," said Jack, "since you saw my friend--for otherwise you could not have observed his strong general resemblance to the person whom you are so anxious to meet--will you permit me to suggest that obviously the proper thing for you to have done was to accost him when the opportunity presented itself to you, instead of following me. Before I answer your question I am afraid I must ask you to favour me with your card, as a guarantee of your _bona fides_, you know." "Certainly," answered the stranger unhesitatingly, as he felt in the breast pocket of his coat for his card-case. His search, however, proved ineffectual, or at least no card-case was produced; and presently, with an air of great vexation, he exclaimed: "Alas! sir, I regret to say that I appear to have lost or mislaid my card-case, for I certainly have not it with me. My name, however, is-- Mackintosh," with just the slightest perceptible hesitation. "Mackintosh!" exclaimed Jack with enthusiasm; "surely not one of the Mackintoshes of Inveraray?" "Certainly, my dear sir," answered the stranger effusively. "You have no doubt heard of us, and know us to be eminently respectable?" "Never heard of you before," answered Jack, with a chuckle. "Good- morning, Mr Mackintosh!" And with a somewhat ironical bow he left the stranger gaping with astonishment. "Now, what is the meaning of this, and what does Mr--Mackintosh--of Inveraray--want with Carlos, I wonder?" mused the young man, as he strode off across the Park. He considered the matter carefully for a few minutes, and presently snapped his fingers as he felt that he had solved the puzzle. "I don't believe he is in the least anxious to obtain Montijo's address," he mused, "otherwise he would have followed Carlos--not me! But I suspect that he has been quietly dogging Carlos, with a view to discovering what friends he and his father make here in England; and, having seen Carlos and me together for some hours to-day, he was desirous of obtaining an opportunity to become acquainted with my features and general appearance. Shouldn't wonder if he follows me up and tries to discover where I live--yes, there the beggar is, obviously following me! Very well, I have no objection; on the contrary, the task of dodging him will add a new zest to life. And I'll give him a good run for his money!" And therewith Jack, who had thus far been sauntering very quietly along, suddenly stepped out at his smartest pace, and was greatly amused to observe the anxiety which the stranger evinced to keep up with him. Out through the gate by the corner of Stafford House grounds strode Jack, across the Mall, through the gate into Saint James's Park, and along the path leading to the bridge, where he stopped, ostensibly to watch some children feeding the ducks, but really to see what the stranger would do. Then on again the moment that the latter also stopped, on past the drinking fountain and through the gate, across Birdcage Walk, and so into Queen Anne's Gate, a little way along York Street, then to the left and through into Victoria Street, across the road, and into the main entrance of the Army and Navy Stores. As he ran up the steps he glanced over his shoulder and saw his pursuer frantically striving to dodge between a 'bus and a hansom cab and still to keep his eyes on Jack, who passed in through the heavy swing doors, through the grocery department, sharp round to the right through the accountant's office into the perfumery department, and so out into Victoria Street again, making sure, as he passed out, that he had baffled his pursuer. Turning to the left, Jack then walked a little way down the street towards Victoria Station until he saw a Camden Town 'bus coming up, when he quietly crossed the road, boarded the 'bus, and ten minutes later stepped off it again as it pulled up at its stopping-place at the corner of Trafalgar Square. Jack now looked carefully round once more, to make quite sure that he had thrown "Mr Mackintosh" off the scent, satisfied himself that the individual in question was nowhere in sight, and entered his hotel. CHAPTER TWO. LIEUTENANT MILSOM, R.N. The evening was fine, and the distance not far from Morley's to the Cecil; Jack therefore did not trouble to take a cab, but, slipping on a light dust-coat over his evening dress, set out to walk down the Strand on his way to dine with his friend. As he went his thoughts were dwelling upon the incident of his afternoon encounter with the mysterious "Mr Mackintosh, of Inveraray"; and he decided that he would let Carlos and his father know that someone appeared to be taking rather a marked interest in them and their movements. A walk of some ten minutes' duration sufficed to take him to his destination; and as he turned in at the arcade which gives access to the hotel from the Strand, whom should he see but the mysterious stranger, apparently intently studying the steamship advertisements displayed in one of the windows of the arcade, but in reality keeping a sharp eye upon the hotel entrances. "Ah!" thought Jack; "watching, are you? All right; I'll see if I can't give you a bit of a scare, my friend!" And, so thinking, the young giant walked straight up to the stranger, and, gripping him firmly by the arm, exclaimed: "Hillo, Mackintosh, waiting for Mr Montijo, eh? Is this where he is stopping? Because, if so, we may as well go in together, and see if he is at home. The sight of you reminds me that I rather want to see him myself. Come along, old chap!" And therewith Jack, still retaining his grip upon the stranger's arm, swung him round and made as though he would drag him along to the hotel. "Carrajo! How dare you, sir!" exclaimed the stranger, vainly striving to wrench himself free from Jack's grasp. "Release me, sir; release me instantly, you young cub, or I will call a policeman!" "What!" exclaimed Jack, in affected surprise; "don't you wish to see your friend Montijo? Very well; run along, then. But take notice of what I say, Mr Mackintosh; if I find you hanging about here again I will call a policeman and give you in charge as a suspicious character. Now, be off with you, and do not let me see you again." And, swinging him round, Jack thrust him away with such force that it was with difficulty the man avoided falling headlong into the carriage- way. Then, calmly passing into the hotel, Singleton enquired for Senor Montijo, and was ushered to that gentleman's private suite of rooms by an obsequious waiter. He found both father and son waiting for him in a very pretty little drawing-room, and, Carlos having duly introduced his friend, the three stood chatting together upon the various current topics of the day until dinner was announced, when they filed into a small dining-room adjoining. Here also the conversation was of a strictly general character, so long, at least, as the waiters were about; but at length the latter withdrew, and the two young men, at Senor Montijo's request, drew up their chairs closer to his. Don Hermoso Montijo was a man in the very prime of life, being in his forty-third year; and, fortune having been kind to him from the first, while sickness of every description had carefully avoided him, he looked even younger than his years. He was a tall, powerful, and strikingly handsome man, of very dark complexion, with black hair, beard, and moustache, and dark eyes that sparkled with good humour and vivacity; and his every movement and gesture were characterised by the stately dignity of the true old Spanish hidalgo. He had spoken but little during dinner, his English being far from perfect; moreover, although he had paid the most elaborately courteous attention to what Jack said, his thoughts had seemed to be far away. Now, however, he turned to his guest and said, with an air of apology: "Senor Singleton, I must pray you to me pardon if I have silent been during--the--meal--of dinner, but I have not much of English, as you have doubtless noticed. Have you the Spanish?" Jack laughed as he replied in that language: "What I have, Senor, I owe entirely to Carlos here. He may perhaps have told you that we two used to amuse ourselves by teaching each other our respective tongues. But I am afraid I was rather a dull scholar; and if my Spanish is only half as good as Carlos's English I shall be more than satisfied." "I am afraid I am unable to judge the quality of Carlos's English," answered Don Hermoso, "but I beg to assure you, Senor, that your Spanish is excellent; far better, indeed, than that spoken by many of my own countrymen. If it be not too tedious to you, Senor, I would beg you to do me the favour of speaking Spanish for the remainder of the evening, as I find it exceedingly difficult to make myself quite clearly understood in English." Jack having expressed his perfect readiness to fall in with this suggestion, Don Hermoso continued: "Carlos has been telling me what passed between you and him to-day, Senor Singleton, and although I was naturally somewhat disinclined to give an unqualified assent to his suggestion before I had seen you, permit me to say that now, having seen, watched, and conversed with you, nothing will give me greater pleasure than to endorse his proposal, unless it be to hear that you agree to it." "To be perfectly candid, Don Hermoso, I feel very strongly inclined to do so," answered Jack. "But before I can possibly give my assent to Carlos's proposal you must permit me to clearly indicate the risks to you involved in it. You know absolutely nothing of me, Senor, beyond what you have learned from your son; and it is in the highest degree essential that you should clearly understand that what Carlos suggested to me this afternoon involves you in the risk of losing your yacht, for the carrying into effect of that proposal would make the vessel positively my own, to do as I pleased with; and if I should choose to retain possession of her, neither you nor anybody else could prevent me." "I very clearly understand all that, my dear young friend," answered Don Hermoso, "and I am perfectly willing to take the risks, for several reasons. In the first place, if you were the kind of individual to do what you have just suggested, I do not for an instant believe that you would have warned me that the proposal involved me in the risk of losing my yacht. In the next place, although, as you say, I know little or nothing about you, my son Carlos knows you pretty intimately, and I can rely upon his judgment of you. And, finally, I do not believe that any Englishman in your position would or could be guilty of such infamous conduct as you have suggested. The fact is that we shall certainly be obliged to trust somebody--for if it were once known that the yacht belonged to me she would be so strictly watched that we could do little or nothing with her; and I would naturally trust you, rather than a stranger." "Of course," answered Jack, "that is only natural, and I can quite understand it. Nevertheless I will not give you an answer at present; you must have sufficient time to think the matter over at leisure, and perhaps while doing so you may hit upon some alternative scheme that will suit you better. Meanwhile, let me tell you of a little adventure that I had this afternoon, just after I had parted from you, Carlos--and its continuation this evening. It will perhaps interest you, for I am greatly mistaken if it does not concern you both, even more than it does me." And therewith Jack proceeded to give a humorous relation of his two encounters with the foreign-looking gentleman claiming to be one of the Mackintoshes of Inveraray. When at length he finished, father and son looked at each other with glances of alarm, and simultaneously exclaimed: "Now, who can that possibly be?" "Your description of the man does not in the least degree suggest any particular individual to me," continued Don Hermoso; "but that, of course, is not surprising, for a man must have a singularly striking personality to allow of his being identified from verbal description only. But let him be who he may, I am quite disposed to agree with you that his object in accosting you this afternoon was to enable him to familiarise himself with your personal appearance; while the fact that you caught him watching the hotel this evening would seem to indicate that our presence in London is known, and that our visit is regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. This only strengthens my conviction that your aid, my dear Senor Singleton, will be of the greatest value to us, if we can succeed in persuading you to give it." Don Hermoso's manner was such as to leave no room for doubt in the mind of Singleton as to the sincerity of the Cuban, while the latter and his son were easily able to see that their proposal strongly appealed to the adventurous spirit of the young Englishman: it is therefore not surprising that ere they parted that evening Singleton had definitely agreed to become, for the time being, the apparent owner of the new steam-yacht, and to take part in the gun-running adventure; also agreeing to take along with him the working model of his submarine, which all three were of opinion might be found exceedingly useful, while the service upon which they were about to engage would afford Jack an opportunity to put the craft to the test of actual work. These important points having been arranged, it was further agreed that, since the two Montijos were evidently under Spanish surveillance, they should advertise their connection with the yacht as little as possible, leaving the matters of the final trials of the vessel, the payment of the last instalment of her cost, and her transfer to Jack's ownership entirely in the hands of the agent who had thus far managed the business for them; taking a holiday on the Continent, meanwhile, and joining the vessel only at the last moment prior to her departure for Cuba. And it was further arranged that the ordering and shipment of the arms, ammunition, and supplies destined for the use of the insurgents should also be left absolutely in the hands of the agent and Jack conjointly; by which means the Montijos would effectually avoid embroilment with the Spanish authorities, while it was hoped that, by occupying the attention of those authorities themselves, that attention would be completely diverted from Jack and the yacht. The settlement of these details and of others incidental to them kept the three conspirators busy until nearly midnight, when Jack rose to go, having already arranged to leave the hotel by the side entrance in order to baffle the eminently respectable "Mr Mackintosh", should that individual happen to be still on the watch. As it happened, he was; for upon leaving the hotel Jack sauntered along the Embankment as far as Waterloo Bridge, then made his way up into Lancaster Place, and there took a cab, in which he drove up the Strand, where he saw his man, evidently on guard, strolling slowly to and fro in front of the main entrance to the Cecil. Now Jack, although a yacht owner, was not a member of any yacht club, his cutter _Lalage_ being such an out-of-date craft, and so seldom in use, that he had not thus far thought it worth while to very intimately identify himself with what is the Englishman's pastime _par excellence_. But as he thought over the events of the evening while smoking a final pipe before turning in that night, it occurred to him that if he was to successfully pose as the owner of a fine new steam-yacht, it was imperative that he should become a member of some smart club; and as he happened to have two or three intimate friends who belonged to the Royal Thames, he decided upon attempting to procure election into that somewhat exclusive club. Accordingly, the next morning he addressed letters to those friends, requesting them to undertake the matter of his election, with the result, it may here be mentioned, that about three weeks later he received a communication from the secretary of the club, intimating his enrolment, and requesting the payment of his entrance fee and first subscription. This matter having been attended to, Jack next addressed a letter to Senor Montijo's agent, making an appointment with him for the afternoon; and then went out to interview his tailor and outfitter, for the purpose of procuring a suitable outfit. Then it occurred to him that for the especial work which the new yacht was required to do she would need a first-rate crew, every man of whom must be absolutely to be depended upon under all circumstances. The eight or ten hands comprising the crew of the _Lalage_ were all well- known to him, having indeed belonged to the cutter for years, while she was still the property of Jack's father, and they would doubtless serve as the nucleus of the new ship's crew: but of course they would go but a little way towards the manning of a steam-yacht of three hundred and forty tons measurement; while Perkins, satisfactory as he had proved himself in his capacity of skipper of the cutter, would never do as commander of the new ship--though he might perhaps make a very good chief officer. Having arrived at this point in his meditations, Jack suddenly bethought himself of Lieutenant Philip Milsom, R.N. (retired), who would make a perfectly ideal skipper for the new craft, and would probably be glad enough to get to sea again for a few months, and supplement his scanty income by drawing the handsome pay which the captain of a first-class modern steam-yacht can command. Whereupon the young man turned into the next telegraph office that he came to, and dispatched a wire to Milsom, briefly informing him that he had heard of a berth which he thought would suit him, and requesting him to call at Morley's Hotel on the following day. And at lunch-time Jack received a letter from Carlos Montijo, announcing the departure of his father and himself for Paris, _en route_ for Switzerland, and containing an itinerary and list of dates for Singleton's guidance in the event of his finding it necessary to communicate with them. Jack had finished his luncheon, and was taking a cup of coffee with his cigarette in the smoke-room, when a waiter entered, bearing a card the owner of which was enquiring for Mr Singleton. The card bore the name of "James M. Nisbett", and Jack knew that Senor Montijo's agent had arrived. He accordingly directed the waiter to show Mr Nisbett up into his private sitting-room. Mr Nisbett was one of those agents whose business is generally brought to them by foreign and colonial clients; and his transactions consisted of obtaining for and forwarding to those clients anything and everything that they might chance to require, whether it happened to be a pocket knife, a bridal trousseau, or several hundred miles of railway; a needle, or an anchor. And, being a keen man of business, it was only necessary to mention to him the kind of article required, and he was at once prepared to say where that article might be best obtained. Also, being a tremendously busy man, he was wont to get straight to business, without any circumlocution; and he did so in the present instance by producing a letter which he had that morning received from Don Hermoso Montijo, detailing the arrangement arrived at on the previous night between himself and Jack, and authorising Nisbett to act upon Jack's instructions precisely as though these instructions emanated directly from Don Hermoso himself. This letter very effectually cleared the ground, and Jack at once began to detail to Nisbett full particulars of all the arms, ammunition, stores, and articles generally which it was intended to put on board the yacht for conveyance to Cuba; after which arrangements were made for the final trials of the yacht prior to her acceptance by Nisbett on behalf of his clients, and her subsequent transference to Jack's ownership. It was perfectly clear to Jack that this last arrangement was distinctly unpalatable to Nisbett, who thought he saw in it some deep-laid scheme for the theft of the yacht from her actual owners; but when Jack explained the reasons which had actuated the Montijos in making the proposal, and further cheerfully offered to consent to any alternative scheme which would achieve the same result, the man at once gave in, frankly admitting that the arrangement already come to was the best that could be suggested. He remained with Jack two full hours, carefully discussing with him every point affecting the success of the expedition; and when at length he retired he was fully primed with all the information necessary to enable him to satisfactorily perform his share of the task. The following morning brought Jack a visitor of a very different but equally thorough type, in the person of Lieutenant Philip Milsom, R.N., who sent in his card while the young man was still dawdling over a rather late breakfast. "Bring the gentleman in here," ordered Jack; and a minute later the waiter re-appeared, conducting a dapper-looking, clean-shaven man of medium height, attired in a suit of blue serge, the double-breasted jacket of which he wore buttoned tight to his body. This individual spotted Jack instantly, and, pushing the waiter on one side, bustled up with outstretched hand to the table at which the young man was sitting, exclaiming in a brisk, cheery voice: "Hillo, Jack, my hearty, what cheer? Gad! what a big lump of a chap you have become since I saw you last--how long ago?--ay, it must be more than two years. But, nevertheless, I should have known you anywhere, from your striking likeness to your poor father. Well, and how are you, my lad, eh? Not very much the matter with you, I should say--and yet I don't know; you look a trifle chalky about the gills, and your clothes seem to hang rather more loosely than they should. What have you been doing with yourself, eh?" "Oh, nothing very dreadful!" laughed Jack, "only overworking myself a trifle, so I am told. But sit down, there's a good fellow, and--have you breakfasted, by the way?" "Breakfasted very nearly three hours ago, my boy," was the answer. "But if you want me to join you--I see you are still busy at it--don't be bashful, but say so straight out, and I'll not refuse, for the journey up has given me a fresh appetite." "That's right," said Jack. "Now, which will you have, coffee or tea? And you can take your choice of ham and eggs, steak, chop, and fish." "Thanks!" said Milsom, "I'll take coffee--and a steak, rather underdone. And while the steak is getting ready I'll amuse myself with one of those rolls and a pat of butter, if you don't mind. I got your telegram, by the way, or of course I shouldn't be here. What is the job, my boy, eh? I suppose it is something that a gentleman may undertake, or you wouldn't have thought of me, eh?" "Of course," said Jack; "that is to say, I think so. But you must judge for yourself whether the post is such as you would care to accept. The fact is that, as I told you just now, I have been overworking myself; and a specialist whom I have come down here to consult tells me that I must take a long holiday in the open air. I have therefore decided to go on a yachting cruise--to the West Indies, probably--and I want you to take command of the ship for me. She is a brand-new, three-hundred-and- forty-ton steam-yacht, of eight hundred indicated horse-power, and her guaranteed sea speed is twenty-two knots." Milsom pursed up his lips and gave vent to a prolonged whistle as Jack enunciated these particulars; then his features relaxed into a broad smile as he extended his right hand across the table to Jack, exclaiming: "I'm your man! As I came along in the train this morning I was cogitating what was the smallest amount of pay that I would take for this job--whatever it might be; but, by the piper, Jack, the mere pleasure of commanding such a craft would be payment enough for me, and I'm quite willing to take it on free, gratis, and for nothing, if you say so." "The pay," said Jack, "will be at the rate of thirty pounds sterling per calendar month, with uniform and your keep, of course, thrown in." "Good enough!" exclaimed Milsom enthusiastically. "You may take it that upon these terms I accept the command of the--what's her name?" "She is so new," said Jack, "that she has not yet been given a name. At present she is known simply as Number 78. But"--lowering his voice--"I have not yet told you everything; you had better wait until you have heard all that I have to say before you definitely decide. Meanwhile, here comes your steak and some fresh coffee, so you had better get your breakfast; and when you have finished we will both go up to my private room." "Right ho!" acquiesced Milsom, who forthwith turned his attention to his second breakfast, saying very little more until he intimated that he had finished, and was now quite ready to resume the discussion of the matter that had brought him up to town. Accordingly, Jack conducted his friend up to his private sitting-room, waved him into a chair, and took one himself. "Ah!" exclaimed Milsom, in a tone that conveyed his complete satisfaction with things in general; "this is all right. I suppose, by the way, a chap may smoke here, mayn't he?" "Of course," said Jack; "smoke away as hard as you please, old man. Have a cigar?" "No, thanks," answered the Navy man; "good, honest, stick tobacco, smoked out of a well-seasoned brier, is good enough for me--unless one can get hold of a real, genuine Havana, you know; but they are scarcely to be had in these days." "All the same, I think we may perhaps manage to get hold of one or two where we are going," said Jack; "that is to say, if you are still willing to take on the job after you have heard what I am bound to tell you." "Ah!" exclaimed Milsom; "something in the background, eh? Well, it can't be very terrible, I fancy, Jack, or you would not be mixed up in it. However, heave ahead, my lad, and let us hear the worst, without further parley." "Well," said Jack, "the fact is that the yachting trip is all a `blind', and is in reality neither more nor less than a gun-running expedition in aid of the Cuban revolutionaries. And the yacht is really not mine, but belongs to a certain very wealthy Cuban gentleman who, being, like most Cubans, utterly sick of the Spanish misgovernment of the island, has thrown in his lot with the patriots, and has had the craft specially built for their service. But, recognising that to declare his ownership of her would at once arouse the suspicion of the Spaniards, and attract a tremendous amount of unwelcome attention to her, he has persuaded me to assume the apparent ownership of the vessel, and to undertake a trip to the West Indies in her, ostensibly for my health, but actually to run into the island a consignment of arms and ammunition, and otherwise to assist the patriots in every possible way." "I see," observed Milsom thoughtfully. "That means, of course, that I should really be in the service of the Cuban gentleman, instead of in yours. That makes a very important difference, Jack, for, you see, I shall have to look to him, instead of to you, for my pay; and smuggling contraband of war is a very different matter from navigating a gentleman's private yacht, and is work for which I shall expect to be well paid." "Then am I to understand that you regard thirty pounds per month as insufficient?" demanded Jack. "Not at all, my dear boy," answered Milsom quickly, "do not misunderstand me; I am quite content with the pay, but as the service is one that I can see with half an eye will involve a good deal of risk, I want to be quite certain of getting it. Now, is your friend to be absolutely depended upon in that respect? You see, if this insurrection should fail--as it probably will--your friend may be killed, or imprisoned, and all his property confiscated; and then I may whistle for my money." "I think not," said Jack. "For my friend has left the management of everything in my hands, and I will see that you are all right. But I am very glad that you have raised the point; for it has enabled me to see that the proper thing will be to deposit a sufficient sum in an English bank to cover the pay of all hands for a period of--well, say twelve months. What do you say to that?" "I say," answered Milsom, "that it will be quite the proper thing to do, and will smooth away a very serious difficulty. But, Jack, my boy, has it occurred to you that you will be running a good many quite unnecessary risks by mixing yourself up in this affair? For you must remember that we may be compelled to fight, before all is done; while, if we are captured, it may mean years of imprisonment in a Spanish penal settlement, which will be no joke, I can assure you, my lad!" "Ah!" answered Jack. "To be quite frank, I had not thought of the last contingency you mention. But `in for a penny, in for a pound'; I'll take the risk, and trust to my usual good luck to keep me out of a Spanish prison. The fact is, Phil, that I am fairly aching for a bit of adventure, and I simply must have it." "Very well," said Milsom grimly; "I think you have hit upon a most excellent scheme for getting it! My advice to you, Jack, is to leave the whole thing severely alone; but, whether you do or not, I am in it, so please give me your orders. And, mind you, Jack, I take them from you, and from nobody else." "Very well," said Jack. "It may be necessary for you to modify that resolution later on, but let that pass; at present, at all events, you will receive all instructions from me, and regard me as the owner of the vessel. Now the first thing to be done is to secure a good crew; and, as I have told you precisely the kind of work that will have to be done, I shall look to you to provide the right sort of officers and men. I suppose you will have to give them a hint that they will be required to do something more than mere everyday yachting work--and you must arrange their pay accordingly; but, while doing this, you must be careful not to let out the true secret, or it will not remain such for very long. And you need not trouble to provide the engine-room staff; I think I can manage that part of the business myself." "I see," answered Milsom. "You wish me to engage merely the officers, seamen, and stewards? Very well. How many guns will she carry?" "Guns?" echoed Jack. "By Jove, I had not thought of that! Will she need any guns?" "She certainly will, if she is to be as useful as she ought to be," answered Milsom. "Um!" said Jack; "that complicates matters a bit, doesn't it? I am afraid that I must refer that point to Senor Montijo, the actual owner. What sort of armament would you recommend for such a craft, Phil?" "Oh! not a very heavy one," answered Milsom; "probably four 12-pounders, of the latest pattern, and a couple of Maxims would be sufficient." Jack made a note of these particulars for reference to Senor Montijo, and then said: "Now, is there anything else that you can think of, Phil?" "Nothing except an outfit of small arms--rifles, revolvers, and cutlasses, you know, for the crew," answered Milsom. "If anything else should occur to me I will write and mention it." "Very well; pray do so," said Jack. "Now, I think that is all for the present. Pick a first-class, thoroughly reliable crew, Phil. I give you a week in which to look for them, by which time I expect the boat will be ready to receive them. Then you can bring them all north with you, and we will ship them in the proper orthodox style. Now, good-bye; and good luck to you in your search!" CHAPTER THREE. THE S.Y. THETIS, R.T.Y.C. The next day was spent by Jack, at Mr Nisbett's invitation, in visiting, in the company of that gentleman, the establishments of certain manufacturers of firearms, where he very carefully inspected and tested the several weapons submitted to him for approval; finally selecting a six-shot magazine rifle, which was not only a most excellent weapon in all other respects, but one especially commending itself to him on account of the simplicity of its mechanism, which he believed would prove to be a very strong point in its favour when put into the hands of such comparatively unintelligent persons as he strongly suspected the rank and file of the Cuban insurgents would prove to be. He also decided upon an exceedingly useful pattern of sword-bayonet to go with the rifle, and also a six-shot revolver of an especially efficient character; and there and then gave the order--through Mr Nisbett--for as large a number of these weapons, together with ammunition for the same, as he believed the yacht could conveniently stow away. This done, he returned to his hotel, reaching it just in good time for dinner; and devoted the evening to the concoction of a letter to Senor Montijo, at Lucerne, reporting all that he had thus far done, also referring to Don Hermoso the important question of the yacht's armament, and somewhat laboriously transcribing the said letter into cipher. Jack's business in London was now done; on the following morning, therefore, he took train back to Newcastle. He called upon Mr Murdock, his partner, in the evening, explaining the arrangement which he had made to pay a visit to Cuba, including the rather singular proposal of Senor Montijo to which he had consented, as to the apparent ownership of the new yacht; and listened patiently but unconvinced to all Murdock's arguments against what the canny Northumbrian unhesitatingly denounced as an utterly hare-brained scheme. The next two days he devoted to the task of putting all his affairs in order, lest anything serious should happen to him during the progress of his adventure; and on the third day Nisbett presented himself, with his consulting naval architect, to witness the final trials of the yacht before accepting her, on behalf of Senor Montijo, from the builders. These trials were of a most searching and exhaustive character, lasting over a full week, at the end of which came the coal-consumption test, consisting of a non-stop run northward at full speed, through the Pentland Firth, round Cape Wrath; then southward outside the Hebrides and past the west coast of Ireland, thence from Mizen Head across to Land's End; up the English Channel and the North Sea, to her starting-point. The run down past the west coast of Ireland, and part of the way up the Channel, was accomplished in the face of a stiff south-westerly gale and through a very heavy sea, in which the little craft behaved magnificently, the entire trial, from first to last, being of the most thoroughly satisfactory character, and evoking the unmeasured admiration of the naval architect under whose strict supervision it was performed. Jack was on board throughout the trial, as the representative of the builders, and his experience of the behaviour of the boat was such as to fill him with enthusiasm and delight at the prospect of the coming trip. The contract was certified as having been faithfully and satisfactorily completed, the final instalment of the contract price was paid, and Nisbett, on behalf of Senor Montijo, took over the vessel from the builders, at once transferring the ownership of her to Jack. Meanwhile a letter had arrived from Senor Montijo, authorising the arming of the ship in accordance with Milsom's suggestion, and the _Thetis_, as she had been named, was once more laid alongside the wharf to receive certain extra fittings which were required to admit of the prompt mounting of her artillery when occasion should seem to so require. In the meantime Jack had written to Milsom, extending the time allowed the latter in which to pick up a suitable crew, and at the same time suggesting that Perkins and the rest of the crew of the _Lalage_ should be afforded an opportunity to join the _Thetis_, should they care to do so, subject, of course, to Milsom's approval of them; and by the time that the extra fittings were in place, and the little ship drydocked and repainted outside, the Navy man had come north with his retinue, and the hands were duly shipped, Jack having, with the assistance of the superintendent of his fitting-shops, meanwhile selected a first-rate engine-room staff and stokehold crew. The completing of all these arrangements carried the time on to the last week of July; and on the 28th day of that month the _Thetis_ steamed down the Tyne on her way to Cowes, Jack having decided to give as much vraisemblance as possible to his apparent ownership of the vessel, and to the pretence that he was yachting for health's sake, by putting in the month of August in the Solent, during which the order for arms, ammunition, etcetera, would be in process of execution. Although Jack was not a racing man--the _Lalage_ being of altogether too ancient a type to pose as a racer--he was by no means unknown in the yachting world, and he found a host of acquaintances ready and willing to welcome his appearance in Cowes Roads, especially coming as he did in such a fine, handsome little ship as the _Thetis_; and for the first fortnight of the racing the new steamer, with her burgee and blue ensign, was a quite conspicuous object as, with large parties of friends, both male and female, on board, she followed the racers up and down the sparkling waters of the Solent. Jack was precisely of that light-hearted, joyous temperament which can find unalloyed pleasure amid such surroundings, and he threw himself heart and soul into the daily gaieties with an abandon that was sufficient, one would have thought, to have utterly destroyed all possible suspicion as to the existence of ulterior motives. Yet, happening to be ashore one afternoon with a party of friends, he was startled, as they walked down the High Street at Cowes, to see coming toward him a man whom he believed he had met somewhere before. The individual did not appear to be taking very particular notice of anything just at the moment, seeming indeed to be sunk deep in thought; but when he was about ten yards from Jack's party he suddenly looked up and found the young man's eyes fixed enquiringly upon him. For an instant he stopped dead, and an expression of mingled annoyance and fear flashed into his eyes; then he turned quickly and sprang, as if affrighted, into the door of a shop opposite which he had paused. But in that instant Jack remembered him; he was "Mr Mackintosh, of Inveraray!" "Now what, in the name of fortune, is that chap doing down here?" wondered Singleton. "Is it accident and coincidence only, or has he discovered something, and come down here to watch my doings and those of the yacht? That is a very difficult question to answer, for one meets all sorts of people at Cowes during August; yet that fellow does not look as though he knew enough about yachts to have been attracted here by the racing. And he was evidently desirous of avoiding recognition by me, or why did he bolt into that shop as he did? I am prepared to swear that he did not want to buy anything; he had not the remotest intention of entering the place until he saw me. Of course that may have been because of the scare I gave him that night at the Cecil--or, on the other hand, it may have been because he did not wish me to know that he was anywhere near me. Anyhow, it does not matter, for my doings down here have been absolutely innocent, and such as to disarm even the suspicion of a suspicious Spanish spy; and in any case he cannot very well follow me wherever I go. Perhaps before the month is out his suspicions--if he has any--will be laid at rest, since I am just now doing absolutely nothing to foster or strengthen them, and he will come to the conclusion that there is no need to watch me. But I am very glad that the idea occurred to me of never running the boat at a higher speed than fourteen knots while we have been down here; there is nothing to be gained by giving away her real speed, and--who knows?--a little harmless deception in that matter may one day stand us in good stead." Thenceforward, whenever Jack had occasion to go ashore, he always kept a particularly smart lookout for "Mr Mackintosh"; but he saw him no more during the remainder of his stay in the Solent. Yet a few days later an incident occurred which, although unmarked by any pronounced significance, rather tended to impress upon Jack the conviction that somebody was evincing a certain amount of interest in the speed qualifications of the _Thetis_, although it was quite possible that he might have been mistaken. This incident took the form of a somewhat sudden proposal to get up a race for steam-yachts round the island, for a cup of the value of fifty guineas. Such a proposal was a little remarkable, from the fact that steam-yacht racing is a form of sport that is very rarely indulged in by Englishmen, at least in English waters; yet everything must necessarily have a beginning, and there was no especial reason why steam-yacht racing should not be one of those things, particularly as the idea appeared to be received with some enthusiasm by certain owners of such craft. When the matter was first mentioned to Singleton, and it was suggested that he should enter the _Thetis_ for the race, he evinced a disposition to regard the proposal with coldness, as he had already arrived at the conclusion that it might be unwise to reveal the boat's actual capabilities; but his attitude was so strongly denounced as unsportsmanlike, and he found himself subjected to such urgent solicitations--not to say pressure--that he quickly grew suspicious, and mentioned the matter to Milsom. Milsom, in turn, after considering the matter for a little, suggested that the chief engineer of the boat should be consulted, with the result that it was ultimately decided to enter the _Thetis_ for the race, Macintyre undertaking that while the yacht should present to onlookers every appearance of being pushed to the utmost--plenty of steam blowing off, and so on--her speed should not be permitted to exceed fifteen knots, and only be allowed to reach that at brief intervals during the race. With this understanding Jack agreed to enter, and the race duly came off in splendid weather, and was pronounced to be a brilliant success, the _Thetis_ coming in third, but losing the race by only eight seconds on her time allowance. Nobody was perhaps better pleased at the result than Jack, for the new boat made a brave show and apparently struggled gamely throughout the race to win the prize, the "white feather" showing from first to last on the top of her waste pipe, and a thin but continuous film of light-brown smoke issuing from her funnel from start to finish. If anyone happened to have taken the trouble to get up the race with the express object of ascertaining the best speed of the _Thetis_, they knew it now; it was fourteen knots, rising to nearly fifteen for a few minutes occasionally when the conditions were especially favourable! With the approach of the end of the month the yachts began to thin out more and more perceptibly every day, the racers going westward and the cruisers following them; the steam-yachts hanging on to accompany the Channel Match to Weymouth. The _Thetis_ was one of these; and Jack allowed it to be pretty generally understood that after the Weymouth regatta was over he intended to run north for a month or so, visiting the Baltic, and perhaps proceeding as far east as Cronstadt. But yachtsmen are among the most capricious of men--some of them never know from one moment to another what they really intend to do; thus it is, after all, not very surprising that when the _Thetis_ arrived off the mouth of the Tyne Jack Singleton should suddenly give orders for her nose to be turned shoreward, and that, an hour or two later, she should glide gently up alongside and make fast to the private wharf of Singleton, Murdock, and Company. What is surprising is that, when she was seen approaching, some fifty of Singleton, Murdock, and Company's most trusty hands received sudden notice that they were required for an all-night job; and that at dawn the next morning the _Thetis_ drew a full foot more water than she had done when she ran alongside the wharf some twelve hours earlier, although in the interim she had not taken an ounce of coal into her bunkers. It so happened that Mr Murdock was absent on important business when the _Thetis_ arrived alongside the wharf, and he did not return to Newcastle until nearly midnight, when he, of course, made the best of his way to his own house. But he was at the works betimes next morning, and, knowing that the yacht was expected, he took the wharf on his way to the office, with the object of ascertaining whether she had arrived. The sight of her lying alongside in all her bravery of white enamel paint, gilt mouldings, and polished brasswork caused him to heave a great sigh of relief; and he joyously hurried forward to greet Jack, whom he saw standing on the wharf engaged in earnest conversation with the yard foreman. "Good-morning, Singleton!--Morning, Price!" he exclaimed as he approached the two. "Well, Jack," he continued, "so you arrived up to time, eh? And by the look of the boat I should say that you've got the stuff on board; is that so? Ah! that's all right; I am precious glad to hear it, I can tell you, for to have those cases accumulating here day after day has been a source of great anxiety to me." "Sorry!" remarked Jack cheerfully. "But why should they worry you, old chap? Everything is securely packed in air-tight, zinc-lined cases, so that there was really no very serious cause for anxiety or fear, even of an explosion. Such a thing could not possibly happen except by the downright deliberate act of some evil--disposed individual; and I don't think--" "Precisely," interrupted Murdock; "that was just what was worrying me-- at least, it was one of the things that was worrying me. Not on account of our own people, mind you; I believe them to be loyal and trustworthy to a man. But I cannot help thinking that some hint of your expedition must have leaked out, for we have never had so many strangers about the place since I have been in the business as we have had during the last fortnight, while those cases have been arriving. We have simply been overwhelmed with business enquiries of every description--enquiries as to our facilities for the execution of repairs; enquiries as to the quickest time in which we could build and deliver new ships; enquiries respecting new engines and machinery of every conceivable kind, not one of which will probably come to anything. And the thing that troubled me most was that every one of these people wanted to be shown over the place from end to end, in order that they might judge for themselves, as they explained, whether our works were sufficiently extensive and up-to- date to enable us to execute the particular kind of work that they wanted done: and every mother's son of them gravitated, sooner or later, to the spot where those precious cases of yours were stacked, and seemed profoundly interested in them; while one chap, who was undoubtedly a foreigner, had the impudence to insinuate that the marks and addresses on the cases, indicating that they were sugar machinery for Mauritius, were bogus! I sent him to the rightabout pretty quickly, I can tell you. Why, what the dickens are you laughing at, man? It is no laughing matter, I give you my word!" For Jack had burst into a fit of hearty laughter at Murdock's righteous indignation. "No, no; of course not, old chap," answered Jack, manfully struggling to suppress his mirth; "awfully annoying it must have been, I'm sure. Well, is that all?" "No," answered Murdock indignantly, "it is not; nor is it the worst. Only the day before yesterday we had a man poking about here who said he was from the Admiralty. He wanted nothing in particular for the moment, he said, but was simply making a tour of the principal shipyards of the country, with the view of ascertaining what were the facilities of each for the execution of Admiralty work. He, too, was vastly interested in those precious cases of yours, so much so, indeed, that I should not have been at all surprised if he had asked to have the whole lot of them opened! Oh, yes! of course I know he could not have gone to such a length as that without assigning some good and sufficient reason; but I tell you, Jack, that we are playing a dangerous game, and I will not be a party to a repetition of it. A pretty mess we should be in if the British Government were to discover that we are aiding and abetting insurgents in arms against the authority of a friendly Power! Why, it would mean nothing short of ruin--absolute ruin--to us!" "Yes, you are quite right, old chap, it would," agreed Jack soberly; "and if Senor Montijo wants to ship any more stuff after this, it must not be through this yard. But it is all aboard and out of sight now, and we leave for--um--Mauritius, shall we say?--this afternoon; so there is no need for you to worry any further about it." "Well, to be perfectly candid with you, Jack," said Murdock, "I shall not be at all sorry to see the _Thetis_ safely away from this and on her way down the river, for I shall not be quite comfortable and easy in my mind until I do. And you will have to be very careful what you are about, my boy; `there is no smoke without fire', and all this fuss and prying about of which I have been telling you means something, you may depend. It would not very greatly surprise me if you discover that you are being followed and watched." "We must take our chance of that," laughed Jack. "Not that I am very greatly afraid. The fact is, Murdock, that you are constitutionally a nervous man, and you have worried yourself into a perfect state of scare over this business. But never mind, your anxiety will soon be over now, for here comes our coal, if I am not mistaken; and I promise you that we will be off the moment that we have taken our last sack on board. But I will run into the office and say good-bye before I go." The church clocks were just striking two when, Jack having duly fulfilled his promise to say good-bye to his partner, and to exchange a final word or two with him, the _Thetis_ cast off from the wharf, backed out into the stream, and, swinging round, swept away down the river at the modest rate of fourteen knots, that being her most economical speed, and the pace at which, in order to make her coal last out, it had been decided that she should cross the Atlantic. She sat very deep in the water, and her decks, fore and aft, were packed with coal, in sacks so closely stowed that there was only a narrow gangway left between them from the foot of the ladder abaft the deck-house to the companion, and a similar gangway from the fore end of the bridge deck to the forecastle. If it was necessary for the men to pass to any other part of the ship, such as to the ensign staff, for instance, they had to climb over the sacks. She was particularly well equipped with boats, too: there were a steam pinnace and a whaler in chocks on the starboard side of the deck- house, balanced by the lifeboat and cutter on the other; and she carried no less than four fine, wholesome boats at her davits aft, all nicely covered over with canvas, to protect them from the sun--and also, in one case, to screen from too curious eyes Jack's submarine, which was snugly stowed away in the largest quarter boat, that craft having had her thwarts removed to make room for the submarine. Twenty-six hours later, namely, at four o'clock on the following afternoon, the _Thetis_ anchored off Boulogne; the steam pinnace was lowered, and Jack, accompanied by four seamen, proceeded into the harbour, landing at the steps near the railway station. From thence it was a very short walk to the hotel to which he was bound; and in a few minutes he was at his destination, enquiring for Monsieur Robinson. "Yes," he was informed, "Monsieur Robeenson was in, and was expecting a Monsieur Singleton. Possibly Monsieur might be the gentleman in question?" Jack confessed that he was; and, being piloted upstairs, was presently shown into a room where he found Don Hermoso Montijo and his son Carlos obviously waiting for him. As he entered they both sprang to their feet and advanced toward him with outstretched hands. "Ah, Senor Singleton," exclaimed Don Hermoso, "punctual to the minute, or, rather"--glancing at his watch--"a few minutes before your time! We duly received your wire in Paris this morning, and came on forthwith. I am delighted to learn that everything has gone so smoothly. Do I understand that you are now ready to sail for Cuba?" "Certainly, Don Hermoso," answered Jack; "we can be under way in half an hour from this, if you like; or whenever you please. It is for you to say when you would like to start." "Then in that case we may as well be off at once," said Don Hermoso. "For the first fortnight or three weeks of our tour through Switzerland we were undoubtedly the objects of a great deal of interested attention, but latterly we have not been so acutely conscious of being followed and watched; everything that we did was so perfectly open and frank that I think the persons who had us under surveillance must have become convinced that their suspicions of us were groundless, and consequently they relaxed their attentions. And I believe that we managed to get away from Paris this morning without being followed. If that is the case we have of course managed to throw the watchers off the scent, for the moment at least, and it will no doubt be wise to get away from here before it is picked up again. I hope that you, Senor, have not been subjected to any annoyance of that kind?" "No," said Jack laughingly, "I have not, beyond meeting at Cowes with that man who called himself Mackintosh--of which I informed you in one of my letters--I have had little or no cause to believe that I have become an object of suspicion to the Spanish Government. It is true that a race for steam-yachts was got up, a little while before I left the Solent, under circumstances which suggested to me that an attempt was being made to ascertain the best speed of the _Thetis_; but the attempt might have existed only in my imagination, and if it was otherwise, the plan was defeated, so no harm was done. But my partner has been a good deal worried recently by the incursions of a number of inquisitive strangers, who have obtruded themselves upon him and invaded our works with what he considers very inadequate excuses. His fixed impression is that a whisper was somehow allowed to get abroad that arms, ammunition, and stores were to be shipped from our yard for the use of the Cuban insurgents, and that the inquisitive strangers were neither more nor less than emissaries of the Spanish Government, sent down to investigate into the truth of the matter. They one and all appear to have betrayed a quite remarkable amount of interest in the cases, and one individual at least seems to have pretty broadly hinted his doubts as to the genuineness of the markings on them. Also, our own Government appears to have received a hint of what we were doing, and to have sent a man down to investigate; I am afraid, therefore, that despite all our precautions, we have not wholly succeeded in avoiding suspicion. And if such should be the case it will be a pity, for it will certainly mean trouble for us all later on." "The stronger the reason why we should start without further delay," said Don Hermoso. "Carlos, oblige me by ringing the bell." The bell was rung, the bill asked for and paid, the various servants generously tipped, and the little party set out. The Montijos' luggage had been left in the hall of the hotel: there was nothing therefore but for the four seamen to seize it, shoulder it, and carry it down to the pinnace; and this occupied but a few minutes. A quarter of an hour later the party had gained the deck of the yacht, and the pinnace was once more reposing in her chocks on the bridge deck. "Get your anchor up, Mr Milsom, if you please," said Jack, allowing his eyes to stray shoreward as Milsom repeated the order to the mate. As he looked, he became aware of something in the nature of a commotion or disturbance at the end of the pier; and, entering the chart-house, he brought forth a pair of splendid binoculars with which to investigate. Upon applying the glasses to his eyes he saw that there was a little crowd of perhaps fifty people gathered on the pier end, all eagerly listening to a man who was talking and gesticulating with great vehemence as he pointed excitedly toward the yacht. The man appeared to be particularly addressing two gendarmes who were among the crowd, but everybody was clustering close round him and listening, apparently in a state of the greatest excitement, to what he had to say, while occasionally one or another in the crowd would face seaward and shake his fist savagely at the yacht. "Come here a moment, Carlos," called Jack. "I want you to look through these glasses at the mob gathered yonder on the pier end, and especially at the excited individual in their midst, and tell me whether you remember having ever seen him before." Young Montijo took the glasses from Jack, looked intently through them for a full minute, and then turned to Singleton, saying: "Why, yes, of course I do. He is the chap that the Pater and I were constantly meeting, wherever we went, while we were in Switzerland. We met him so repeatedly that at length we could not avoid the conviction that he was dogging our footsteps. On board the steamers, in the trains, even when out driving, it was continually the same; we did not seem able to get away from him. He never took the slightest notice of us, but that only made us suspect him all the more, because in the case of other people, after we had encountered them a few times, many of them bowed to us, some even entered into conversation with us; but although that fellow stopped at the same hotels as we used, and generally contrived to sit at the same table with us, he never allowed himself to show, by so much as a momentary glance, that he had ever seen us before. Oh, yes"--as he again applied the glasses to his eyes--"that is the same man; I could swear to him among a thousand. And what is he after now? Upon my word it looks very much as though he intended to follow us on board here! See, there are two men bringing a boat along toward the steps at the end of the pier, and--yes--by Jove, that is what he means to do! And he is bringing the gendarmes with him! Now what mischief can he possibly be up to? The Pater and I have done nothing--" "Let me have a look," interrupted Jack, almost snatching the binoculars out of his friend's hand, and putting them up to his eyes. "Ay," he said, "you are right, Carlos, undoubtedly. There he goes down the steps, with the policemen at his heels. Yes; now they get into the boat and seat themselves. Yes, he is pointing out the yacht to the boatmen, and now they are shoving off and heading this way!--Mr Milsom," he broke off suddenly, "what is the best news with regard to that anchor of ours?" "Forecastle there!" shouted Milsom; "how are you coming on with your anchor?" "The cable's almost up and down, sir," answered Perkins, the chief mate, who was standing by the knight-heads and hanging on by the forestay as he leaned over to watch the cable. "We shall break out in about a couple of minutes." "And it will take that boat ten minutes, at least, to get alongside, even if they keep up their present pace," remarked Jack. "We will get a move on the ship, Phil, as soon as the anchor is out of the ground; I don't very much like the look of those gendarmes in that boat." "No; nor do I," answered Milsom. "Quartermaster, tend the wheel!" "But surely they cannot do anything!" exclaimed Carlos. "What could they do?" "Well," said Jack, "I have heard, before now, of people being arrested upon false charges, either for the purpose of obtaining possession and getting a sight of their private papers; or with the object of detaining them until it became too late for them to accomplish a certain undertaking; or until some other and more serious charge could be trumped up against them, and the necessary witnesses found and coached to procure their conviction. It would be rather a bad thing for Cuba, for instance, if, at this particular juncture in its affairs, your father were clapped in prison and kept there for a couple of years." "Well, yes, I suppose it would," agreed Carlos. "Anchor's aweigh, sir!" reported Perkins, at this moment, as the steam windlass, after slowing down until it nearly stopped, suddenly started to clank at racing speed. "Very good," answered Milsom. "Up with it as fast as you please." Then, with a casual glance at the approaching boat, which was by this time within about a quarter of a mile of the yacht, he laid his hand upon the engine-room telegraph and signalled: "Quarter speed ahead!" CHAPTER FOUR. CIRCUMVENTING THE ENEMY. "Whither away now, Mr Singleton? Down channel, I suppose?" enquired Milsom, when the yacht began to forge ahead. "I think not," said Jack. "In view of the fact that there is somebody in that boat who appears to be willing to adopt very energetic measures to get hold of Senor Montijo--or the yacht--it will perhaps be a wise step for us to run a few miles up channel, instead of down, until we get out of sight of any inquisitive eyes which may possibly be watching us: so please shape a course up through the Straits for an hour or two--say two hours; then we can seize a favourable opportunity to turn round and run down channel, hugging the English shore fairly close. But your question reminds me that the time has arrived when we ought to decide for what port we are to make, in order that you may work out your Great Circle courses. What think you, Don Hermoso?" he continued, in Spanish. "Have you any definite idea as to the precise spot which it would be best for us to make for?" "Really, Senor, that is a detail that I have not yet seriously considered," answered Don Hermoso. "My idea was to get into communication with the Junta as soon as we reach the other side, and learn from them what spot would be the most suitable at which to make the attempt to land our consignment. What think you, Captain Milsom?" "Where has this Junta of yours established itself?" asked Milsom, also taking up the conversation in Spanish, of which he had a serviceable knowledge. "Would it be possible to get a cable message into their hands from this side without the risk of it being intercepted by the Spaniards?" "Oh, yes; quite easily!" answered Don Hermoso. "They have established their headquarters in New York, and I could cable to them in cipher, if necessary." "Then," said Milsom, "if I may be permitted, I would suggest that, since we are now running up channel, it would be a good plan for you to land at Dover, and cable to the Junta the information that you have actually started; that you have some reason to suspect that we have not altogether escaped the suspicion of the Spanish authorities, and that consequently the yacht may be watched for, and perhaps followed when we arrive in Cuban waters; and that it would therefore be a very great convenience if, when we get across, we could find a communication awaiting us--say at Key West--giving us the latest information upon the situation generally, and advice as to the most desirable spot at which to attempt the landing of our cargo." "A most excellent suggestion!" exclaimed Don Hermoso. "Come, gentlemen, let us enter the chart-house and draft the message at once, after which I will transcribe it into cipher in readiness to dispatch it upon our arrival at Dover." With the exercise of considerable thought and ingenuity a concise rendering of the points suggested by Milsom was at length drafted: and, upon the arrival of the yacht off Dover, Don Hermoso and Singleton went ashore in the steam pinnace and dispatched the message to New York; after which the yacht's bows were turned southward again until she had rounded Beachy Head, when Milsom set the course at west by south for the Lizard, from which headland he intended to take his final "departure". It was just nine o'clock in the evening when the _Thetis_ rounded Beachy Head; and at noon next day she was abreast of the Lizard and two miles distant from it. "A splendid `departure'!" exclaimed Milsom enthusiastically, when he had taken a careful bearing of the headland. "I now know the ship's position at noon to-day almost to a foot; and I was anxious to make a really good departure, for I have worked out a very elaborate and complete system of Great Circle courses from the Lizard to the north- west end of the Little Bahama Bank, which is a spot that must be hit off very accurately if one would avoid disaster. Thence I shall run down the Florida Strait to Key West, the course which I intend to steer being the shortest possible distance to that spot. And we must not run a mile farther than is necessary, Jack, for Macintyre tells me that it will take him all his time to make his coal last out." As it happened, there was no cause for apprehension as to the coal lasting out, for when the _Thetis_ was two days out from the Lizard she fell in with a fresh easterly wind which enabled her to use her sails to such great advantage that she saved a full day in the run across, steaming in through the East Channel and dropping her anchor in four fathoms of water within half a mile of the town of Key West a few minutes before six o'clock in the evening of her eleventh day out from the Lizard. There were several American men-o'-war of various descriptions, ranging from battleships to torpedo boats, lying at anchor in the roadstead, as well as two cruisers, three gunboats, and a torpedo boat flying the Spanish flag; and Singleton noticed, with mingled concern and amusement, that, as the little _Thetis_ swept past the Spanish vessels at close quarters, with the blue burgee and ensign of the "Royal Thames" gaily fluttering from masthead and ensign staff, the yacht was an object of the keenest interest to the officers who were promenading the navigating bridges. A boat from the custom-house, with the health officer of the port in her, came off to the yacht almost as soon as her anchor was down: but as the _Thetis_ had a clean bill of health there was no difficulty about getting pratique, and the party might have landed forthwith had they so pleased; they deemed it wise, however, to exercise a certain measure of restraint, by abstaining from landing until the next morning. But although the port authorities were perfectly polite, Singleton thought--or was it only a case of a guilty conscience?--that the custom-house officer betrayed even more than ordinary Yankee curiosity as to the reasons which had prompted Jack to select West Indian waters as the spot in which to pursue his quest of renewed health; and there seemed to be a very marked disposition on the part of the man to indulge in hints and innuendoes suggesting that he was perfectly aware of the existence of a certain something "under the rose", until Singleton at length put a stop to it by asking him, point- blank, what it was at which he was hinting. And when he at length went down the side to return to the shore, he left a subordinate on board the yacht. The Montijos were very wroth at this act of the customs authorities, which they rather wished Jack to resent as an act of discourtesy on the part of the American Government; but Milsom promptly interposed, explaining matters, while Jack laughed heartily, declaring that there was not the slightest need to worry, since they had nothing in the shape of contraband or otherwise that they wished to land at Key West. The saloon party breakfasted at nine o'clock the next morning, and, embarking in the steam pinnace about ten, went ashore, ostensibly to enquire at the post office for letters, and to view the quaint little town, but really to visit an agent of the Cuban Junta who was established there; upon whom, however, Don Hermoso did not call until nearly two o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour the streets were practically deserted. The first visit of the party was to the post office, where, as he had expected, Don Hermoso found awaiting him a long letter, written in cipher, from the Junta at New York, cordially thanking him for his generous assistance, and informing him that arrangements had been made for a trusty party to await the arrival of the yacht in the Laguna de Cortes, at the south-west end of Cuba, where everything was to be landed, and where also a pilot would be found waiting to take the yacht into the lagoon. The letter ended up by giving a password which would be evidence of the _bona fides_ both of the pilot and of the party who had been told off to receive the contraband. It soon became apparent to Jack that he and his party were attracting a very considerable amount of attention from certain individuals, who appeared to be following them about the town persistently, and apparently with very little pretence at concealment. It was therefore arranged that when the moment arrived for the visit to be paid to the agent of the Junta, Don Hermoso should pay it alone, Carlos and Jack meanwhile doing their best to decoy the persistent spies in some other direction. But their efforts were of no avail, for it soon became clear that a separate spy had been told off to watch each member of the party; when they separated, therefore, Jack found that while one man remained to watch him, a second followed Don Hermoso, and a third, with equal tenacity, followed Carlos. And finally, when, later on in the afternoon, Jack set off to walk down to the wharf in order to go back aboard the yacht, he suddenly found himself accosted by a swarthy, unkempt individual, picturesquely attired in rags, yet whose manner was somehow out of keeping with his appearance. "_Pardon, Senor_" exclaimed the fellow in Spanish, with an air of mystery, as he took off his sombrero with a flourish, "but have I the supreme honour of addressing the noble Englishman who owns the beautiful yacht that came in yesterday?" "If you refer to the English yacht _Thetis_," said Jack, "yes, I am the owner of her." "_Mil gracias, Senor_, for your condescension," answered the man. "Senor," he continued, "I have a very great favour to beg of you. It has been said that the Senor is about to visit Cuba. Is this so?" The mention of Cuba instantly put Jack on his guard: he at once suspected that he was face to face with another Spanish spy, and felt curious to know what the fellow was driving at. Yet he was careful to conceal the fact that his suspicions had been aroused; he therefore answered, with an air of carelessness: "Indeed! That is curious, for I am not aware that I have thus far mentioned my intentions to anyone ashore here. And, as to visiting Cuba--well, I am not at all certain that I shall do so; for, from what I have gathered to-day, I am led to understand that the country is in a very disturbed condition, and that it is scarcely safe for strangers to go there at present. But you have not yet mentioned the favour that you wish to ask me. Has it anything to do with my supposed intention to visit Cuba?" "Assuredly it has, Senor; most intimately," answered the other. "Senor," and the speaker assumed a yet more furtive and mysterious manner, "I am a Cuban--and a patriot; I am destitute, as my appearance doubtless testifies, and I am most anxious to return to my country and take up arms against the oppressor. The English, enjoying liberty themselves, are reputed to be in sympathy with us Cubans in our endeavours to throw off the hated yoke of a foreign oppressor; and I have ventured to hope that the Senor would be magnanimous enough to give me a passage across to Havana in his beautiful yacht." "I think," said Jack, with an air of hauteur, "that you have altogether mistaken the character of my vessel. She is not a passenger ship, but a private yacht in which I am taking a cruise for the benefit of my health; and it is not my custom to give passages to total strangers, especially when by so doing I should run the risk of embroiling myself with the Spanish authorities, with whom I have no quarrel. No, Senor, you must pardon my seeming churlishness in refusing so apparently trivial a favour, but I decline to associate myself in any way with the quarrel between your country and Spain. I have the honour to bid you good-day." "Ah, pardon, Senor; just one moment!" persisted the man. "The noble Senor disclaims any intention to associate himself with the quarrel between Cuba and Spain; yet two well-known Cuban patriots are guests on board his yacht!" "It would almost appear that my yacht and I are attracting a quite unusual amount of attention here," laughed Jack. "The gentlemen of whom you speak are personal friends of mine--the younger of them, indeed, went to the same school as myself, in England--which should be sufficient to account for my intimacy with them. But it does not follow that, because they happen to be friends of mine, I am to give a free passage to Cuba to anyone who chooses to ask me. Were I to do so I should probably have to carry across half the inhabitants of Key West! No, Senor, I must beg to be excused." And, bowing profoundly to his ragged interlocutor--for with the language Jack always found himself falling into the stately mannerisms of the Spaniard--the young man passed on, wondering whether he had indeed been guilty of an ungracious act to a genuine Cuban patriot, or whether the man whom he had just left was a Spanish spy. He put the question to Don Hermoso that night over the dinner-table, while relating to his companions the incident of the afternoon; but the Don laughed heartily at Jack's qualms of conscience. "Never trouble yourself for a moment on that score, my dear Jack," said he. "The man was without doubt a Spanish spy. Had he been a genuine Cuban patriot, as he represented himself to be, he would have known that it would only have been necessary to present himself to the local agent of the Junta, with the proofs of his identity, when he could easily have obtained a passage across to Cuba. But the incident is only one more proof, if such were needed, that our party and the yacht have somehow incurred the very gravest suspicion of the Spaniards, and that we are being most jealously watched. I fear that Carlos and I are chiefly responsible for this; indeed, the agent here did not scruple to say that we--Carlos and I--committed a very great tactical blunder in coming out here in the yacht. He asserts that we ought to have come out in the ordinary way by mail steamer, and that in such a case little or no suspicion would have attached to the yacht; but that certain news transmitted from Europe, coupled with the fact of our presence on board, has convinced the authorities that the yacht is in these waters for the purpose of running a cargo of contraband into the island. Of course we have our spies, as the Spaniards have theirs, and one of our most trusty investigators reported to-day, while I was with the agent, that it is undoubtedly the intention of the Spanish authorities that their torpedo boat shall accompany the _Thetis_, so long as she remains in Cuban waters." "Phew! that sounds awkward," remarked Milsom. "Does anybody know what her speed is?" Nobody did, it appeared; whereupon Milsom undertook to ascertain whether the custom-house officer possessed the knowledge, and, if so, to extract it from him. Accordingly, when, a little later, the saloon party adjourned to the deck for the enjoyment of their post-prandial cigars, the skipper sauntered away forward and up on the top of the deck-house, where Perkins and the officer were sitting yarning together, and joined them. He sat chatting with them for nearly an hour, and then, upon the pretext that he had forgotten to speak to Mr Singleton about the arrangements for coaling the ship, rose and joined the trio who were sitting aft near the stern grating. "Well," said Jack, "have you been able to learn anything, Phil?" "Yes," answered Milsom; "and what I have learned is not very comforting. That torpedo boat, it appears, is practically a new craft, and she has a sea speed of twenty-five knots, which is one knot better than our best; so how we are going to dodge her is more than I at present know. The three gunboats we need not trouble about, for the two-masted craft are only capable of sixteen knots, while the three-masted boat--the _Destructor_--can do about seventeen, at a pinch, though she is said to have been at one time capable of twenty-two and a half. Neither need we trouble about the cruisers, for the faster of them--the _Lepanto_--is only capable of twenty and a half knots when she is clean, and I am told that at present she is dreadfully foul." "Still, it appears to me that the torpedo boat is, apart from the rest, more than we shall be able to manage," remarked Don Hermoso. "If she persists in dogging our heels we shall not have a ghost of a chance of landing our cargo anywhere." "No," said Jack. "But she will not dog our heels, Don Hermoso; don't you trouble. This is where my submarine comes in, and is going to score, if I am not mistaken. Macintyre and I will be able to doctor that torpedo boat so that she will not trouble us. We will just go down in the submarine and remove the nut that secures her propeller to its shaft, and when she begins to move, her propeller will drop off; and before it can be replaced we will have our cargo ashore, and be in a position to laugh at her." "But how will you manage that, Jack, in the presence of all these ships?" demanded Milsom. "You could not possibly do what you suggest without being seen. Besides, there is the custom-house officer to be reckoned with; and I really do not believe that the man is to be trusted with your secret." "We shall have to do the job at night-time--the night before we leave here for Cuba," said Jack. "And, as to the custom-house officer, we must trust that he will sleep too soundly to hear anything." "Leave him to me," said Don Hermoso. "I am a bit of a chemist, in my way, and I will concoct a liquid a few drops of which in his grog the last thing at night will cause him to sleep soundly all night, and awake none the worse in the morning." "That will get us over one difficulty," said Jack, "and I have just thought of a plan that will get us over another--that of getting the submarine into the water unobserved. It strikes me that we can do all that is necessary without using the submarine at all. That torpedo boat is, as you may observe, lying quite close to the shore, so close, indeed, that there cannot be much more than two feet of water under her keel. Consequently Macintyre and I have only to don our special diving dresses--which, as I think I have explained to you, need no air-pipe or anything of that sort--go down over the side of the yacht, and make our way to our prey under water. With a little management we could even do the trick in broad daylight, and nobody be any the wiser!" "Excellent!" exclaimed Milsom enthusiastically. "We will have the lighters alongside to coal us to-morrow; and before they come along we will hang tarpaulins all round the ship to keep the paint clean. Then, while everybody is busy coaling, you and Macintyre can watch your opportunity and slip over the side through the ash port. Gad! won't those fellows be wrathy when their propeller parts company! They will no doubt suspect us, but they cannot possibly prove anything." On the following morning, immediately after breakfast, Milsom went ashore and made arrangements for the immediate coaling of the yacht; and while he was absent, Jack and Macintyre, the chief engineer, got out the diving dresses and thoroughly overhauled them, charged the air cylinders with densely-compressed air, and collected such tools as they expected to require for their job. By the time that this had been done, Milsom was back aboard the yacht, having made all his arrangements, including one which was of considerable assistance to Jack and Macintyre. This consisted of an arrangement to take the yacht directly alongside the coal hulk, instead of coaling from lighters, and the advantage to the conspirators arose from the fact that the particular hulk from which the _Thetis_ was to coal lay within a short hundred yards of the spot where the Spanish torpedo boat rode at anchor. Then a number of tarpaulins were got up on deck and hung over the ship's sides, fore and aft, covering the hull from the bulwark rail right down to the surface of the water, to protect the white paint from defilement by flying coal dust; and, this having been done, the yacht was taken alongside the coal hulk, and the process of coaling the vessel at once began under the joint supervision of Milsom and the second engineer, the skipper being especially particular in the arranging of the fenders between the hulls of the two craft. So fastidiously careful was he, indeed, in this matter, that he finally caused two booms to be rigged out, one forward and one aft, to bear the yacht off from the side of the hulk, with the result that there was a clear space of fully two feet between the sides of the two craft. And, to facilitate as much as possible the process of coaling, Milsom caused a broad gangway, nearly six feet wide, to be rigged between the two vessels, so that the porters might pass to and fro freely without obstructing each other. And, singularly enough, this gangway happened to be rigged exactly over the ash port, which was thus quite effectually concealed from the view of even the most prying eyes. And there undoubtedly were several pairs of eyes very curiously and intently watching everything that was happening aboard the English yacht, not the least intent among them being those of the custom-house officer, who planted himself upon the bridge of the _Thetis_, fully determined that nothing great or small should be passed from the yacht to the coal hulk without his full knowledge and consent. Thus, thanks to the exceeding care with which Milsom had made his dispositions, Jack--who, with the two Montijos, was supposed to be down below--and Macintyre, fully equipped in their diving dresses, and with their tools slung to their belts, had not the slightest difficulty in leaving the yacht unobserved, and descending to the bottom of the harbour by way of a diving ladder. The water being shallow and tolerably clear, and the sun high enough in the heavens to throw a strong light down into it, the two adventurers were able to see well enough to be able to pass from the yacht to the torpedo boat without any other guide than that of their unaided eyesight; and within ten minutes the pair found themselves beneath the bottom of their quarry, the keel of which was, as Jack had anticipated, within about three feet of the ground. The boat, they found, was driven by a single propeller protected by a skeleton frame forming the boat's keel and sternpost, and to climb into this frame occupied Macintyre less than a minute, helped as he was by Jack. Macintyre's first act was to subject the propeller nut to a very careful examination, after which he fixed a big spanner in position and threw his whole weight upon it, assisted by Jack, who was pulling at a rope attached to the extreme end of the spanner handle. The nut, however, was rusted on so effectually as to be immovable, so Macintyre climbed down and, by means of a slate and a piece of chalk, consulted Jack as to what was best to be done to overcome the difficulty. Looking up, and studying the structure of the boat's stern intently, Jack saw that by steadying themselves by the rudder chains they could both climb up and stand upon the arm of the spanner, when, by bracing their shoulders against the boat's overhanging stern, they could bring the whole of their united strength to bear, and thus possibly start the nut. By means of a diagram and a few words chalked upon the slate Macintyre was soon made to comprehend what Jack meant, and then they both climbed up and, with considerable difficulty, arranged themselves in the required position. Then, bracing their shoulders against the vessel's hull, the two men thrust with all their might, with the result that the nut suddenly started, and the spanner fell off, dropping to the bottom of the harbour and leaving the two operators hanging by the rudder chains. The drop from thence to the sand, however, was not above six feet--a mere trifle in water--so they let go, recovered the spanner, and got to work again. Once started, the nut gave them very little further difficulty, and ten minutes later it was off and safely buried out of sight in the sand. The propeller, however, still remained on the shaft, and might quite possibly continue to remain there for a time, even should the boat get under way; but the moment that she stopped her engines after once getting under way, or if she should happen to attempt to go astern, the propeller would at once slip off and be lost. Three-quarters of an hour from the moment of leaving the yacht, Jack and Macintyre were safely on board her again, with their task accomplished, much to the satisfaction of the party. It was well on toward lunch-time ere the yacht's bunkers were full and she was able to haul off from the coal hulk, and the greater part of the afternoon was occupied by the crew in washing down the decks and paint work, cleaning up generally, polishing brasswork, and restoring the little vessel to her normal state of immaculate neatness; during which Jack and the two Montijos took a final run ashore, for it had been decided that, failing the occurrence of anything to cause an alteration of their plans, they would leave for Cuba on the following day. No attempt was made to preserve secrecy as to the yacht's movements; nor, on the other hand, were the preparations for her departure ostentatiously displayed. Soon after eight o'clock in the morning a thin film of smoke was seen to issue from the vessel's funnel, gradually increasing in density, and it became quite apparent to all who chose to interest themselves in the matter that the _Thetis_ was getting up steam in readiness to take her departure. And that she intended to leave almost immediately was further indicated by the arrival alongside her of a boat containing fresh water, and other boats containing fresh meat, vegetables, fruit, and supplies generally. But there were no signs of hurry on board the vessel: everything was done openly and leisurely, as is the way of people who are taking their pleasure; and it was not until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon that the boats were hoisted to the davits, and a thin jet of steam spouting from the bows of the vessel proclaimed that her crew were getting her anchor. And when at length Perkins, the chief mate, standing in the bows of the vessel, vociferously announced that the anchor was aweigh, there was no sign of haste or anxiety in the slow, leisurely movement of the yacht as she swept round in a wide circle from the spot where she had lain at anchor, and headed seaward by way of the West Channel, dipping her ensign to the men-o'-war in the roadstead as she went, while her crew catted and fished the anchor on its appearance above the surface. Then, and not until then, did the _Thetis_ quicken, until she was running at a speed of about fourteen knots. The yacht had been under way about half an hour when Jack, who with the two Montijos and Milsom was on the top of the deck-house, diligently watching the roadstead which they had just left, exclaimed: "Here she comes!" and the Spanish torpedo boat was seen coming along astern, with a dense cloud of black smoke pouring from her funnels, and the water playing like a fountain about her sharp stem as she swept after the _Thetis_ at full speed. Milsom looked at her long and earnestly through his binoculars; then he turned to Jack and, with a frown wrinkling his brow, said: "By the look of that boat, and the pace at which she is coming through the water, it appears to me, young man, that something has gone very seriously wrong with the little job that you undertook to do yesterday. Are you quite sure that you removed the nut?" "Absolutely certain," answered Jack cheerfully. "Then how do you account for the fact that she has not yet dropped her propeller?" demanded Milsom. "Easily enough," answered Jack. "She got under way, like ourselves, by steaming ahead and sweeping round in a wide circle. So long as her engines continue to turn ahead, her propeller will probably retain its position on the shaft, kept there by the pressure of the water on its blades; but the moment that she eases down, it will probably drop off, or, if not then, it certainly will at the instant when her engines are stopped. Don't be alarmed, Phil; you have only to cause her to stop her engines, and you will see what will happen." "Then," said Milsom, as he laid his hand upon the bridge telegraph and signalled "Full speed ahead", "we will entice her a bit farther out to sea before we do anything more. If she runs out of sight of the anchorage before breaking down we shall get a nice little start, and shall probably not be interfered with for the rest of the trip. Ah, there is the edge of the bank ahead of us!" as a line of demarcation between the pale, greenish-blue water over the reef and the deep-blue water beyond it became visible. "Let her go off to due south," to the quartermaster at the wheel; "we'll try to persuade them that we are bound for Havana!" "A stern chase is a long chase", especially when one craft has five or six miles start of the other, and the pursuing craft has only a single knot's--or perhaps not quite so much as that--advantage in speed; it was consequently not until the brief dusk was deepening into darkness, and the great mellow stars were leaping into view in the rapidly deepening azure of the sky, that, the _Thetis_ being by that time about midway between Key West and Havana, Milsom rang down to the engine-room for half speed, and allowed the torpedo boat to range up abreast of the yacht. This she did at a distance of about a quarter of a mile, without making any attempt to speak to or interfere with the English vessel, merely slowing down to regulate her pace to that of the yacht. Then Milsom spoke down through the voice tube, ordering the engines to be first stopped, and then to go slowly, but at a gradually increasing speed, astern, by which means he quite expected to induce the commander of the torpedo boat to stop. The result was everything that could have been desired, for as soon as the Spaniard realised that he was running ahead of the yacht in the most unaccountable way, he stopped his engines and waited patiently for the other vessel to overtake him, his propeller doubtless slipping off the tail-shaft and going to the bottom at the instant of the stopping of the engines. But while the torpedo boat, deprived of the drag of her propeller, continued to forge strongly ahead under the impetus of her own momentum, the _Thetis_ was even more rapidly widening the distance between herself and the torpedo boat by going full speed astern, until, when the two craft were separated by some three miles of heaving water, the perplexed and astounded Spanish lieutenant, still ignorant of what had happened, made up his mind to go back to see what the English ship was about, and, ordering his helm to be put hard over, rang down to his engine-room for "full speed ahead". Then the furious racing of his engines, as steam was admitted into the cylinders, revealed the ghastly truth that he had lost his propeller and was absolutely helpless, with the nearest land fully forty miles away. He rushed from the bridge down into the tiny engine-room, to consult with and explosively reprimand the engineers for permitting such a mishap to occur; and at length, when his vexation had worked itself off, returned to the deck and gave orders for signals of distress to be made, by means of rockets, to the English yacht. But by that time the _Thetis_ had vanished in the darkness; nor did she re-appear, although the unfortunate lieutenant expended his entire stock of rockets in a vain attempt to attract her attention. CHAPTER FIVE. HIS SPANISH MAJESTY'S GUNBOAT TIBURON. Meanwhile the saloon party on board the _Thetis_, having comfortably bestowed themselves in capacious basket chairs under the awning on the top of the deck-house when the yacht got under way, watched with mingled interest and amusement the strenuous pursuit of their own vessel by the Spanish torpedo boat; and when at length Milsom gave the order for the yacht's engines to be first stopped and then sent astern, they with one accord rose to their feet and brought their glasses to bear upon the torpedo boat, intent upon seeing what would next happen. For although darkness had by this time fallen, the night was beautifully fine and clear, and the mellow lustre of the innumerable stars shed a soft light upon the scene that enabled the watchers, with the aid of their powerful night glasses, to perceive with very tolerable distinctness whatever might happen within so short a distance as a quarter of a mile, or even twice as far. Presently Jack spoke. "She has stopped, I think," he said; "at all events I can no longer distinguish the phosphorescent wake made by her propeller; and if that is the case we shall have no more trouble from her. Of course it would have been easy enough for us to have made this pursuit impossible, by removing her propeller when we were working at it yesterday; but the thought occurred to me that, had we done so, the removal might have been discovered, and in that case it is quite possible that suspicion, even though of a very vague and doubtful character, might have fastened upon us, with the result that at some future time, when it may be vitally important for us to repeat the trick, such precautions might be taken as would render its repetition impossible. As it is, the craft has been under steam for a couple of hours, during which, to all appearance, nothing was wrong with her. I do not think, therefore, that anyone is in the least likely to connect us with the mishap." "No," agreed Milsom, "the thing was most excellently done, Jack, it could not possibly have been better managed; and the mishap will wear the aspect of an ordinary accident of the sea. You have a longer head upon you than I can boast, my lad; I should never have thought as far ahead as you did. But I think we are far enough away from that boat now to allow of our resuming our voyage." And he signalled to the engine- room, first to "Stop", and then to go "Full speed ahead." "Port your helm, Quartermaster," he said to the helmsman, "until she heads due north, and then give her a very small touch of starboard helm--just enough to enable us to make a wide circle round that torpedo boat out yonder--until her head works round to south-west by west, when you can steady her at that. That course," he explained to his companions, "ought to run us within sight of the light on Jutias about three bells in the middle watch." "And when do you suppose we shall reach our destination, Captain?" asked Don Hermoso. "The Laguna de Cortes? Oh! about breakfast-time to-morrow morning, if we keep the boat running at full speed, and do not meet with any interruption on the way," answered Milsom. "Hillo!" exclaimed Jack; "see that rocket, Phil? It looks as though it might have been sent up by the torpedo boat. She will be somewhere out in that direction, won't she?" "Ay, there or thereabout," answered Milsom, glancing into the compass bowl to get the bearing of the rocket. "That means that they've just discovered the loss of their propeller, and are in trouble about it." "I hope that the crew of the boat are in no danger," exclaimed Don Hermoso anxiously. "I have no wish that they should come to harm--" "No need to worry yourself about that, Senor," answered Milsom. "The weather is fine, and the boat, no doubt, sound enough. The worst that is likely to happen to them is that they will have to stay where they are until something comes along and tows them into Havana." At this moment the dinner gong sounded, and the little party retired below. When Jack went up on deck next morning, as the ship's bell was striking eight, he saw that the yacht was running along, with her head to the eastward, within about half a mile of some low land, dotted with trees, which stretched ahead and astern of her for several miles on their port hand, terminating at each extremity in a low headland. Inland, at a distance of about twenty-five miles, rose a long range of hills, or low mountains, which appeared to rise to a height of something between two thousand and three thousand feet. "Good-morning, Jack!" cheerily exclaimed the skipper, as Singleton ran up the ladder on to the top of the deck-house. "Glorious morning, isn't it? But it is going to be roasting hot a little later on; the sun has a sting already, in spite of this piping easterly breeze." "Yes," agreed Jack. "And if it is hot here, what must it be ashore? But where are we now, Skipper?" "Pretty close to our destination, I'm thankful to say," answered Milsom. "That point astern is Cape Corrientes, the point ahead is Mangle Point, four miles beyond which is Cape Frances, where we shall run in upon the Bank, or shoal, which extends eastward for something like one hundred and sixty miles to the end of the Jardinillos. Those hills, inland there, are called the Organ Mountains; though, to my mind, the name is much too grandiloquent for such insignificant elevations. I hope that pilot chap who is to take us into the lagoon will be keeping a bright lookout for us; I have just been having a squint at the chart, and I tell you, Jack, that I don't half like the idea of taking this little beauty in over that precious Bank, where it would be the easiest thing in the world to rip the bottom out of her on some unsuspected upstanding coral snag. I mean to go dead slow all the while that we are on that Bank, I can tell you, although I happen to know the greater part of it as well as I know my own back garden. And it is perhaps because I know it so well that I like it so little. Ah!"--as the yacht swung round the point which she had been approaching, and opened out for another about four miles farther on--"there is Cape Frances; and there is the Bank showing up plainly enough. That is it, where the colour of the water changes from dark blue to almost white. And now it is time for us to hoist the signal by which the pilot is to identify us. Mr Perkins, have the goodness to bend on Y and run it up to the fore truck, if you please." A minute later, Don Hermoso and Carlos made their appearance on the top of the deck-house, just as Y--a rectangular flag composed of red and yellow diagonal stripes--went soaring up to the fore-mast-head. "Good-morning, Jack! good-morning, Captain!" said Don Hermoso. "Is that red-and-yellow flag the prearranged signal agreed upon for our identification by the pilot and the people on shore?" "It is, Senor," answered Milsom. "There is Cape Frances, on our port bow--no doubt you recognise it--and if your pilot is keeping a proper lookout, he ought to spot us immediately upon our rounding that point." "And no doubt he will, Captain," returned Don Hermoso. "So that is Cape Frances? No, I do not recognise it, Senor, for I have never before passed it at sea. And those are the Sierras de los Organos yonder, and the Sierras del Rosario farther on to the right. I recognise them, of course. And--yes, surely--just to the right of that isolated peak I can see what must certainly be the town of Pinar del Rio! We are not far from home now, Carlos, and if all goes well with us to-day we ought to- night to sleep in our own casa, and see dear little Isolda once more. The child will rejoice to have us with her again." "Yes," said Carlos, "and I shall not only rejoice to see her again, but to know that you are once more on the spot to look after her. In her last letter to me, received at Key West, she mentioned that Don Sebastian Alvaros has been a most persistent visitor to the house ever since we left Cuba, and I have my doubts of that man. I did not mention the matter to you when I received the letter, as I did not wish to make you feel uneasy; but now that we may hope to be at home to-night I think it only right that you should know." "Ah!" remarked Don Hermoso; "I will see that Don Sebastian's visits are discouraged henceforth. It is true that I know nothing against him-- indeed, he is spoken of as a very promising officer--still, like yourself, Carlos, I do not altogether trust him; he is not precisely a desirable acquaintance, and I will endeavour to make him understand that he is not wanted at the hacienda." At this moment the _Thetis_ passed Cape Frances and opened out into the Bay of Cortes. "There is our destination, gentlemen," said Milsom, pointing to a projecting bluff some eight or nine miles up the coast. "That bluff is Piedras Point; and beyond it is the Laguna de Cortes--or the Pirates' Lagoon as some people call it. And here we are at the edge of the Bank; from this point onward I intend to proceed very cautiously indeed." So saying, he laid his hand upon the handle of the engine-room telegraph and rang down for "Half speed", calling down the voice tube a moment later for the engines to be run dead slow. And as the yacht slowed up she passed from the dark blue of the deep water to the pale, whitish blue of the shallow water that covers the immense coral reef known locally as The Bank. "Mr Perkins," shouted Milsom, "I must have a man as lookout at the foremast-head, if you please. You had better bend a boatswain's chair on to the gaff-topsail halyards, and send him up in that, as I shall require him to stay there until we are safely at anchor. And when you have done that, rouse your cable on deck, and see everything ready for letting go. Jack, I can spare eyes for nothing but the ship just now, so oblige me, will you, by taking the glasses, and say whether you can see anything in the shape of a boat coming toward us with a flag flying. And, between whiles, you may just look carefully along the coast to see if you can spot a guarda-costa hovering about. We don't want to be caught napping in the act of landing this stuff." Jack took the glasses out of their case and swept the whole of the visible coast, but for some time without result; there was nothing under either sail or steam to be seen in any direction. At length, however, when the yacht had arrived within about two miles of Piedras Point, a small pirogue under sail suddenly shot out from behind the point, heading to the southward close-hauled; she carried a sprit-mainsail and a jib, and at the top end of the sprit there fluttered a diminutive replica of the red-and-yellow flag which was flying from the fore truck of the yacht. "Ah!" exclaimed Jack, as he brought his glasses to bear upon the boat; "here comes your pilot, Phil, at last, and he is flying the `all right' signal, so I suppose we may take it for granted that the coast is clear." "Yes, I see him," answered Milsom. "Keep her away a couple of points, Quartermaster, and give that boat a chance to fetch us. She is coming alongside. Masthead there. Keep a very bright lookout, my man, for sunken rocks; there are plenty of them to be found here if they are looked for." "Ay, ay, sir!" answered the man. "We have passed a few already; but I didn't say anything, because we weren't headin' so as to hit 'em." Ten minutes later the pirogue was close at hand, and Milsom rang down the signal to "Stop". The pirogue was a very quaint-looking craft, of about twenty feet in length by some five feet beam, formed out of a solid log of wood which had been roughly trimmed with an axe to form the bottom portion of her, with a couple of planks above to form her top sides. Although the trade wind was blowing quite fresh, this queer- looking craft carried no ballast, properly so-called; but to prevent her from capsizing a couple of negroes stood on her weather gunwale, holding on to ropes attached to her masthead, and leaning back almost horizontally out over the water. A third negro, attired in a picturesquely dirty shirt, and trousers rolled up above his knees, and with a most shockingly dilapidated straw hat on his head, steered the little craft by means of a broad-bladed paddle laid out over the lee quarter. Primitive, however, as the craft was in appearance, she came through the water at a most astonishing rate, and presently shot up alongside under the lee of the yacht, the two negroes who acted as ballast smartly recovering themselves and springing inboard as she did so. A rope's end was thrown down into her, and the picturesque individual who had been steering her nimbly climbed up the side of the yacht and stepped on deck, where he was met by Don Hermoso. "Buenos dias, Senor!" exclaimed the fellow, doffing his ragged head- covering with the flourish and grace of a grandee. "Cuba is ready!" (This was the password that was to prove the _bona fides_ of the man.) "And we also are ready," answered Don Hermoso. "Is the coast clear?" "Quite clear, Senor," answered the man, who, by the way, was a turtle fisher, inhabiting a hut on one of the small cays that stretched across the entrance of the lagoon which the yacht was approaching. "A gunboat has been cruising about the bay of late, but she steamed away yesterday morning, after communicating with the shore, and we have seen nothing of her since." "Then we had better proceed forthwith, and get our work over whilst the opportunity is favourable," remarked Don Hermoso. "What is your name, by the by?" "Pedro, Senor--Pedro Velasquez," answered the man. "Good!" said Don Hermoso. "Follow me up to the bridge, Pedro. "This is our pilot, Captain," he continued, introducing the negro to Milsom, who looked at him quizzically and responded to his bow by somewhat curtly bidding him "Good-morning!" "He says that the coast is clear, so we may as well proceed forthwith. How do we steer, Pedro?" "Keep an offing of a mile, to allow of room for turning, and to get a straight run in. For the present we may head for that white building on the hillside yonder," answered Pedro. This being clear to Milsom, the latter touched the telegraph, and the yacht proceeded, with the pirogue astern in tow. Presently three small cays detached themselves from the mainland, revealing a fine spacious expanse of land-locked water behind them; and when, a little later, the _Thetis_ had brought the largest cay fair abeam, the pilot waved his hand, the helm was put hard a-starboard, and the vessel's bows were pointed straight for the channel between the northernmost cay and the mainland. "We must enter the channel very slowly, Senor," cautioned Pedro, "for the navigation of it is rather awkward, and I doubt whether a vessel of this size has ever before been taken into the lagoon." With her engines going dead slow, and occasionally stopping altogether to deaden her way, the yacht crept cautiously along until, having passed the critical danger-spot, she slid into the lagoon, which was now seen to be a sheet of water some four miles long by about two miles broad, trending due north and south, with a creek in its north-west corner, toward which the bows of the vessel were turned, the speed being quickened up to about eight knots. Ten minutes later the pilot gave the word to be ready to anchor; the engines were stopped and then sent astern, and a minute afterwards, the yacht having been brought to a standstill, the anchor was let go, and the voyagers found themselves riding in a fine, snug harbour, absolutely safe in all weathers, and perfectly screened from the view of anything and everything that might chance to pass outside. No sooner was the anchor down than the creek abreast which the yacht was moored began to swarm with boats of all shapes and sizes, which came hurrying out to receive and transfer to the shore the cases of arms, ammunition, dynamite, lead, and supplies of all kinds which lay snugly stowed away beneath the floors of the ship's saloons; while the entire strength of the yacht's crew was employed upon the task of breaking out the packages and conveying them on deck. The boats' crews were all coloured men, and mostly negroes; but in the leading boat there came a mulatto bearing a letter from Rabi, the then leader of the insurgents, to Don Hermoso, authorising the bearer, one Jose Seguin, to receive the contraband, which was now passed down into the boats with all possible speed, as a rumour had reached the place that a strong body of Spanish troops was in the neighbourhood, and might make its appearance at any moment. It did not turn up, however, and by two o'clock in the afternoon every scrap of incriminating material was out of the yacht and on its way to the headquarters of the insurgents, somewhere up in the Organ Mountains. Every scrap, that is to say, except the four 12-pound quick-firers and the two Maxims, with their store of ammunition, which constituted the armament of the yacht. These weapons had not thus far been mounted, it having been deemed inadvisable to make so unusual a display as that of an armed yacht in the harbour of Key West, lest undue attention should be attracted to the vessel, and inconvenient questions asked. But now, by Milsom's advice, they got the weapons up and mounted them, so that, in the event of the vessel being searched by the Spanish authorities, there should be nothing in the nature of concealed weapons on board to afford an excuse for the making of trouble. Thus, by the end of the afternoon watch the yacht was again spruce and clean as a new pin, and made a very brave show with her brand-new, silver-bright guns grinning threateningly out over the rail, and the two Maxims all ready for action on the top of the deck-house. Her appearance said, as plainly as words: "Touch me who dares!" yet her armament was not boisterously aggressive, considering that her presumptive owner had set out from England with no very settled programme, but the possibility that ere he returned he might be moved to visit spots where, despite the rapid spread of civilisation, might is still right. The hurry and confusion incidental to the landing of the yacht's cargo of contraband had been so great that any such orderly meal as the usual luncheon had been out of the question, and everybody had eaten and drunk as they worked, snatching a mouthful or a gulp when they could; the little saloon party were consequently now gathered on the top of the deck-house, getting an early afternoon tea, while the anchor was being hove up by means of the steam windlass, prior to the vessel proceeding to sea again. Don Hermoso had been congratulating himself and everybody else upon the ease and complete success with which the yacht's primary mission had been accomplished, and had also expressed himself very nicely as to the magnitude of his obligation to Jack and Milsom for the invaluable assistance which they had rendered, without which, the Don declared, the adventure could never have been brought to a successful issue. "And now, my dear Jack," he continued, "I have two further favours to ask you. The first is that you will have the goodness to land Carlos and myself as soon as may be at Calonna--which is about twenty-two miles to the eastward of this--in order that we may take the train thence to Pinar del Rio, in time, perhaps, to reach home to-night; and the second is, that you will favour us with your company for as long a time as you may be disposed to stay. Then, having landed us, Captain Milsom can take the yacht round to Havana, when, if the island proves to be sufficiently quiet to allow of the vessel being left in Perkins's charge, we shall feel happy if he also"--with a bow to Milsom--"will honour our poor house with his presence for a time, until, indeed, the yacht is again required for service." Jack accepted the invitation promptly and unhesitatingly: Carlos and he were old chums, and indeed almost like brothers; while as for Don Hermoso, Jack had seen enough of him during the voyage out to have contracted for him a feeling of the highest regard and esteem. He knew that the invitation was as earnest and cordial as words could make it; and the conversations that had been engaged in from time to time on board the yacht had caused him to become profoundly interested in Cuba, and filled him with an intense desire to see the island, and, if possible, be an eye-witness of its struggle for liberty. Milsom, on the other hand, while perhaps as keen as Jack to see all that there was to be seen, was, above and before all things else, a sailor; his acceptance of Don Hermoso's invitation, therefore, was qualified by sundry conditions, every one of which had reference to the question of the safety of the yacht. By the time that the conversation had reached this point the anchor was a-trip, and Milsom went to the engine-room telegraph, while the quartermaster climbed up to the bridge and stationed himself at the wheel. Velasquez was no longer on board, Milsom having informed him that he could now dispense with his services--for it was one of Lieutenant Philip Milsom's characteristics that when he had once witnessed the navigation of any particular passage he could at any time thereafter perform the same feat of navigation himself; he therefore now took sole charge of the yacht and skilfully navigated her out of the lagoon and into the open sea, setting the course for Calonna, after which he again calmly seated himself at the table and asked for another cup of tea. The yacht, running at about eleven knots, had accomplished a little more than half the distance between the lagoon and Calonna when smoke was seen ahead, and a few minutes later a steamer was made out coming toward them. There was nothing alarming in this, of course, for small coasting steamers are constantly plying between the various ports along the coast of Cuba: but it was not long ere it became apparent, from the rig of the approaching craft--which was that of a three-masted schooner--that she was a Government vessel, probably a gunboat; and Milsom made no secret of his relief at the fact that everything of a compromising nature had been safely got out of the _Thetis_. Any doubt that might have existed as to the character of the stranger was soon dispelled; for when she arrived within about a mile of the _Thetis_ she hoisted the Spanish naval ensign at her mizen peak and, slowing down, rounded-to athwart the yacht's course, at the same time hoisting the international signal, "Heave-to; I am sending a boat!" "What is the proper thing to do, Phil?" demanded Jack, when Milsom read out the interpretation of the signal. "He has no right to stop us, has he?" "Certainly not," answered Milsom. "If he suspects us of an intention to smuggle he may follow and watch us, of course; but to stop us in this high-handed fashion is coming it rather too strong. He knows that we are an English yacht, for there are our ensign and burgee to bear witness to the fact. Nevertheless, since we have happily got rid of everything of a compromising nature, we may as well heave-to and allow him to board us, when you, Jack, in your character as owner, may make as much fuss as you please--the more the better--and threaten to report him, also to complain to your Government of the insult and outrage to which he has subjected you. In short, `bluff' him for all that you're worth." "All right!" said Jack, "I will. When--" His further remarks were cut short by the flash of a gun and a jet of smoke spouting from the bows of the gunboat; and the next instant a twenty-four-pound round shot came ricochetting toward the yacht, missing her by only about a dozen yards! "Confound the fellow's impudence!" exclaimed Milsom, as he dashed at the bridge telegraph and signalled to stop the engines. "It would rightly serve him if we were to return his fire. But perhaps the wisest plan and the most dignified will be to stop and let him come aboard. But give it him hot for firing upon the British flag. Make him sit up! I only wish that I could jabber Spanish as fluently as you do; I'd scare him out of his skin!" As the yacht, with the way that she had on her, gradually drifted down toward the gunboat, it was seen that the latter was preparing to lower a boat; and presently a gig, manned by six oarsmen and a coxswain, was hauled up to her gangway, down the ladder of which an officer in lieutenant's uniform presently descended, stepping into the boat, which then pushed off and headed toward the _Thetis_. Meanwhile, Milsom having said a few hasty words to Perkins, the yacht's gangway had been thrown open and her accommodation ladder lowered, and when presently the Spanish boat dashed alongside and hooked on, Jack and Milsom were standing just inside the gangway, waiting to receive the officer. He was a rather good-looking man, somewhere about thirty years of age, and as he sprang up the ladder and in on deck he touched the peak of his uniform cap by way of salute: and Milsom saw his eyebrows go up as his eyes fell upon the two quick-firers that graced the yacht's after deck. "Good afternoon, gentlemen!" he said, in almost perfect English; "what ship is this?" "Leave him to me, Jack," whispered Milsom, upon discovering the welcome fact that he could make himself understood; and without waiting for Jack's consent he stepped forward and answered: "This is the English yacht _Thetis_, of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, as you may see by looking at that ensign. And what ship is that, sir; and what does the captain of her mean by firing upon us?" "That ship, Senor, is His Spanish Majesty's gunboat _Tiburon_, sent out especially to look for your vessel," answered the officer. "My Government has received positive intelligence from a reliable source that you have on board a large consignment of arms and ammunition destined for the use of the Cuban insurgents; and our instructions are to seize your vessel and take her into Havana. We fired upon you because you were somewhat slow in obeying our summons to stop." "Oh!" said Milsom, "so that is how matters stand, is it? And do you suppose, sir, that Great Britain will allow her flag to be fired on without having something to say about it?" "Great Britain will scarcely be willing to protect a vessel which, under the shelter of her flag, is engaged in succouring those who are rebelling against the rule of a friendly nation!" remarked the officer. "And, in any case, we are prepared to take the consequences of our acts. We know this so-called yacht to be a smuggler of contraband of war, and we intend to seize her." "What if I were to tell you that we have not an ounce of contraband of war on board?" enquired Milsom. "My captain would simply not believe you, Senor," answered the Spaniard. "You will therefore be pleased to regard this vessel as a prize, and yourselves as prisoners!" and he stepped quickly to the gangway and called to the armed crew of the boat to come out of her. As he did so, Milsom put a whistle to his lips and blew a short, shrill blast. There instantly followed a rush of bare feet along the deck; and as the Spaniards passed in through the yacht's gangway they found themselves confronted with some thirty stalwart British seamen, with drawn cutlasses in their hands and revolvers in their belts. "Caramba! What does this mean, Senor?" demanded the Spanish lieutenant, starting back in dismay at this unexpected _denouement_. "It means just this, Senor Teniente," answered Milsom; "we don't intend to stand any nonsense of any description. You go back to your ship and tell your captain that, since somebody seems to have sent him out on a fool's errand, my owner here, Senor Don John Singleton, will--purely as an act of courtesy, mind you--permit him, or you, to search this ship from stem to stern and from keel to truck, in order that you may thoroughly satisfy yourselves that we have no contraband, whether of war or otherwise, on board. But there will be no seizure of this ship; understand that! Such an act would be an outrage to our flag; and, as you may see, we are both ready and willing to resist it! Also, you will please tell your captain that we demand an ample apology for his high- handed behaviour in daring to fire upon us." "Carrajo! Senor, those are very big words; and you ought to be perfectly certain of yourself before you use them. They are offensive, sir; and a Spanish officer allows no one to use such words to him with impunity!" exclaimed the Spaniard. "Sir," retorted Milsom, "the behaviour of your captain in firing upon this yacht was offensive; and he will find that he cannot treat Englishmen in that fashion with impunity. There is a right and a wrong way of doing these things, and your captain has chosen the wrong way; he will therefore be made to suffer for it." "We shall see, Senor Englishman; we shall see," returned the Spaniard. "Then, am I to understand that you refuse to surrender your ship?" "Yes, sir," answered Milsom; "that is precisely what I wish you to understand. And I wish you to understand, further, that if you dare to attempt force, I will treat you as a pirate, and sink you, despite your flag. You see that I have the means and the power to carry out my threat--" waving his hand first towards the guns and then towards his men. "Very well, Senor," answered the Spaniard, livid with rage at being thus hectored before his own men, "I will tell my captain what you say; and it will be for him to decide how he will deal with you. If it rested with me, I would blow your ship out of the water. And I shall remember your face, Senor; and it may be that some day we shall meet on shore." "I expect to be in Havana to-morrow, or next day, Senor Teniente, and it will afford me the greatest pleasure to meet you there," answered Milsom. "Good afternoon, and don't forget to tell your captain that if he chooses to come on board in a friendly way, my owner here will be very pleased to see him, and to show him all over the ship. He can look into every nook and cranny of her if it will afford him any satisfaction to do so." The Spanish lieutenant bowed without speaking, signed to his men to go back into their boat, and followed them down the side. Five minutes later Jack and Milsom saw him gesticulating violently on the gunboat's quarter-deck as he related to the commander of the craft his version of the recent interview. CHAPTER SIX. COMMANDER DON LUIS Y ALBUQUERQUE. "I say, Phil, you seemed to have your knife into that Spaniard," said Jack, as he and Milsom stood watching the gunboat. "You appeared to take a delight in rubbing his fur the wrong way." "Yes," agreed Milsom meditatively, "I am afraid I did; and I am afraid, too, that I went just a little farther than there was any strict need for. But then the beggars put my back up, to start with, by firing at us. Had they contented themselves with pitching a shot across our fore- foot, I would not have minded so much; but they fired to hit--if they could. Then that lieutenant must needs come swaggering aboard here, putting on side, and threatening us--actually threatening us--with arrest, and imprisonment, and goodness knows what else! I only wish they would try to take us; I would teach them that it pays to be civil to Englishmen.--Well, what the dickens are you laughing at?" for Jack had burst into a hearty peal of laughter. "Oh, Phil, Phil," Jack exclaimed, when at length he had regained control of himself, "you are as good as a pantomime! The idea of you, of all men, complaining of the other fellow having threatened, and put on side! Why, man alive, you were just as exasperating as you could possibly be to the poor chap; and, as to the threatening--why, you were simply breathing out threatenings and slaughter! You will have to keep your weather eye lifting, my hearty, when you get round to Havana; for that fellow will look out for you, and force you into a fight, as sure as eggs are eggs." "All right!" answered Milsom, "I'll not disappoint him; if he wants fighting he shall have as much as he can take. But, after all, Jack, I have no doubt you are right, and that I was a bit `trying', as my poor mother used to say. But then, you see, I was `bluffing', doing the virtuous-indignation business, and all that, you know, for it was necessary to persuade the gentlemen that we are absolutely virtuous and innocent; it would never do to allow them to entertain the slightest shred of suspicion of the vessel, otherwise they would be continually watching her. Ah! As I expected, here comes the skipper himself to have a talk with us--and also to have a look round. I expect that, after what his lieutenant has told him, he is feeling a bit uncomfortable. But we must be civil to him and smooth him down; for, after all, there is nothing to be gained by making enemies without good and sufficient cause. And perhaps you, in your character of owner of the ship, had better tackle this fellow; then we shall have an opportunity to witness your skill as a diplomatist." Accordingly, when the captain of the gunboat entered the yacht's gangway, it was Jack who received him, Milsom simply standing by as a sort of supporter. The new arrival was a man apparently a few years older than his lieutenant, very distinguished looking for the commander of a mere gunboat, and with a considerably more polished and affable manner than the man who had preceded him. He raised his cap at Jack's salutation, and said, in English: "Good afternoon, gentlemen! I am given to understand by my lieutenant that a most unfortunate mistake appears to have in some inexplicable manner arisen in connection with this vessel; and I have come on board for the purpose of putting matters right, if possible." "You are most welcome, Senor Capitan," answered Jack cordially; "and I shall be very pleased to render you all the assistance in my power--the more so since I am very anxious to see as much as possible of your beautiful island, and may perhaps remain here for some time. Indeed, I may say that one reason for my visit to Cuba is that I have had some idea of investing in a tobacco plantation here." "Indeed, Senor?" observed the Spaniard. "Our information pointed to a very different reason for your visit. As my lieutenant has already informed you, we have been led to believe that the presence of your yacht in Cuban waters was due to sympathy on your part with the insurgents, and a determination to assist them by smuggling munitions of war into the country for their use. And, as my lieutenant has also informed you, the _Tiburon_ has been sent out specially for the purpose of seizing the vessel." "Yes," said Jack suavely, "your lieutenant mentioned that fact--in somewhat emphatic language; so emphatic, indeed, that, if I may be permitted to say so, it was almost offensive, and my captain felt bound to adopt somewhat vigorous speech in expressing our disapproval, not only of his behaviour, but also of that of your Government. It is not usual, Senor, as you must know, for an Englishman, visiting a foreign country in his own yacht, to have his vessel seized upon the strength of a mere rumour; and you must allow me to say that, in acting as it has done, I consider your Government has not only been precipitate, but has also behaved in such a manner as will evoke a very strong protest from my own. The British Government, Senor, is not wont to have its flag fired upon without exacting ample reparation." It was quite clear that the Spanish officer was beginning to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. He was silent for several seconds, and appeared to be reviewing the situation. At length he said: "Senor, you must not blame my Government for the indiscretion of one of its officers. I personally am responsible for the act of firing upon your ship, which I now acknowledge to have been a quite unjustifiable act, for which I beg to tender you my most sincere and profound apologies; although I must be allowed to say that I fired under the impression that you intended to disregard my summons to heave-to." "I am afraid, Senor," said Jack, "that your explanation does not go very far toward mending matters; for my contention is that you had no right to stop me on the high seas. But I will allow that to pass, and will accept your apology, for I have no wish whatever to make matters unpleasant for you personally, or for your Government; on the contrary, I am anxious to establish the most amicable relations possible between myself and the Spanish authorities during my stay in the island: therefore, having made my protest, I will say no more about it. But as there appears to have been some suspicions with regard to the character of my yacht, I must insist that either you, or someone on your behalf, shall examine the vessel at once, that you--and, through you, your Government--may be completely satisfied that such suspicions are absolutely groundless." "Senor," said the Spaniard, "you overwhelm me with your generous consideration. If you will kindly permit me I should like, as well for your justification as for my own, to look over your vessel, in order that I may be in a position to absolutely assure my superiors that their suspicions are without foundation. And, to prevent all possibility of any future misunderstanding, I should like my lieutenant to be present at the inspection, if you will be so very good as to permit it." "By all means," answered Jack cordially. "Pray send your boat for your lieutenant--and any other officers whom you would like to be present. The more, the better; for, Senor, you must understand that I wish your inspection of my yacht to be thorough and exhaustive." The Spaniard bowed and, stepping to the gangway, called down to his coxswain, instructing him to proceed to the gunboat and request Lieutenant Fernandez to come on board the English yacht forthwith. Then, during the short interval between the dispatch and the return of the boat, the Spanish Commander chatted affably with Jack and Milsom upon indifferent subjects, incidentally introducing himself as Commander Luis y Albuquerque. Lieutenant Fernandez was in a much more subdued mood when he returned than he had been upon his departure from the _Thetis_: probably he had done some hard thinking in the interim, and had come to recognise the possibility that trouble might be looming ahead of him; at all events his manner was all courtesy and politeness as he again stepped in through the gangway. "Senor Fernandez," said Don Luis, "I am very much afraid that, from what Don Juan Singleton has told me, there has been a most serious mistake somewhere, and that we have thus been betrayed into unwittingly inflicting a most unprovoked affront upon an English gentleman. Senor Singleton has, however," with a bow to Jack, "been good enough to accept my explanation and apologies, and I therefore venture to hope that we may now consider the incident as closed. But Senor Singleton insists-- quite justifiably, I think--that we shall satisfy ourselves as to the falsity of the statement that he is carrying munitions of war; and I have therefore sent for you to accompany me on a tour of inspection through this yacht, which we must make so thorough that there shall be no possibility of any aspersions being hereafter cast upon the integrity of Don Juan or his vessel. And now, Senor," to Jack, "we are ready to accompany you." "Very well," said Jack. "Where would you like to begin--forward, or aft?" "Perhaps we may as well begin forward, and work our way aft," answered the Spanish Commander. "Right," acquiesced Jack. "Captain Milsom, be so good as to give instructions for two or three men to attend us below with lanterns. Meanwhile, gentlemen, perhaps you will give my boats an overhaul. I will have the canvas covers stripped off them." "Oh no, Senor," protested Don Luis, "there is not the slightest necessity for us to go to such extreme lengths as that; for, assuming for a moment that you actually had contraband on board, you would not be in the least likely to carry it stowed in your boats." Now this offer of Jack's was a piece of "bluff", for his boats were the only places that he did not wish the Spaniards to examine, since in one of them was stowed his submarine, the sight of which he knew would be likely to give rise to renewed suspicions. And, as we have seen, the "bluff" worked to perfection, possibly in consequence of the slight, but none the less perceptible, tone of sarcasm in which Jack made the offer. With a feeling of carefully suppressed relief, Jack accordingly led the Spaniards forward to the forecastle, down into which the party descended, and where they found three men--one of whom was the carpenter--awaiting them with lighted lanterns. The forecastle was soon examined, and then the hatch of the forepeak was lifted, and that darksome storehouse very carefully explored. There was no passage from the forepeak into the hold, as the collision bulkhead ran from the keelson right up to the deck; and, Jack having pointed out this fact, the party emerged on deck and descended into the officers' quarters, proceeding from thence down into the main hold, where they found nothing but iron ballast and the water tanks, every one of which Jack insisted should be opened and looked into. Thence they proceeded to the engine- room and stokehold, where they found much to admire in the scrupulous cleanliness and unusual form of the machinery, but no sign or trace of anything in the nature of contraband. Then they entered the main saloon, and examined it and the sleeping cabins, finishing up with the steward's storeroom, the sail-room, and the powder magazine. Jack was quite prepared to be questioned about this last, and he was; but he had his answer ready. "Is it usual, Senor Singleton, for English yachts to go as heavily armed as your vessel is?" suavely enquired Don Luis. "Not when cruising in home waters," answered Jack. "But when the intention is to `cruise foreign', as we phrase it, especially if the cruise is to be round the world, it is usually considered prudent to provide the vessel with an armament sufficiently powerful to protect her from the attacks of pirates--Malays, Chinese, and so on--or, in fact, aggressors of any description. For instance," he continued maliciously, "if we had not happened to have been armed to-day, just consider, Senor, how unpleasant would have been our predicament at this moment." Don Luis frowned. "Pardon me, Senor," said he, "but I hope you are not labouring under the misapprehension that it is because of your ship being armed that I have refrained from arresting you; the suggestion is injurious, Senor. Your freedom is due entirely to the fact that I accepted the assurances which you offered to Lieutenant Fernandez, and was willing to believe that an unfortunate mistake had somehow arisen. And I trust you will also believe that, had the mistake resulted in unpleasant consequences to yourself, my Government would have hastened to make you the most ample reparation on the instant of discovering that wrong had been done you, as it will, now, if you insist--" "Pray say no more," interrupted Jack. "I have not the slightest desire to place either you, personally, or your Government in an embarrassing position. If, therefore, you are fully satisfied that your information respecting me and my yacht was wrong, I am quite willing to regard the incident as closed, and to say nothing further about it. And in proof of my friendly disposition, permit me to say that it will afford me very great pleasure if you and your lieutenant will give me the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night." But Don Luis very courteously declined Jack's polite invitation, upon the plea that he felt it to be his imperative duty to return forthwith to Havana, to report to the authorities there the full and true circumstances of the case, in order that Jack might be subjected to no further annoyance from the unfortunate blunder that had somehow been made. But no doubt the true explanation of his refusal was to be found in the fact that his exceedingly sensitive pride was hurt by Jack's innuendo, and by the fact that he had been placed in a false and somewhat ridiculous position. It was bad enough to be made to appear ridiculous in the eyes of one's own people; but to be humiliated before one of those arrogant, overbearing Englishmen! Caramba! The two Spaniards therefore took a most ceremonious leave of Jack and Milsom, descended to their boat, and pulled back to their own ship, which immediately started her engines and steamed away to the westward, dipping her colours in salute as she went; while the _Thetis_ resumed her course to the eastward in the direction of Calonna, off which she arrived about an hour later. But the delay occasioned by the incident of the yacht's encounter with the gunboat had been just sufficient to prevent the arrival of the _Thetis_ until after the last train of the day had left Calonna for Pinar del Rio. Don Hermoso therefore decided to remain on board the yacht all night, and to leave her in time to take the first train on the following morning. Naturally enough, the chief topic of conversation at the dinner-table, that night, was the encounter with the gunboat, and the clever manner in which the Spaniards had been "bluffed", Don Hermoso maintaining that it was entirely due to Jack's skill in the gentle art that no suspicion had appeared to enter the heads of the Spaniards that the contraband had already been got rid of. The matter was very freely discussed, and it was finally decided that, on the whole, it was a very fortunate circumstance not only that the encounter had taken place, but that it had occurred where and when it did; for the ignorance of the Spanish authorities as to the speed of the yacht would naturally preclude the suspicion that the vessel had already spent some hours in discharging her cargo, while the very complete and thorough search to which the yacht had been subjected was of course conclusive, so far as the non- existence of contraband on board at that moment was concerned. The only point upon which Jack had any uneasiness was the fact of the yacht being so formidably armed; he had given what he regarded as a very clever and ingenious explanation of the circumstance, which he hoped would prove completely satisfactory, but he was nevertheless not wholly free from doubts on the matter. On the following morning the two Montijos and Jack were astir betimes, in order to catch an early train to Pinar del Rio; and nine o'clock found them ashore and on the platform, waiting for the train to emerge from the siding into which it had been shunted. Calonna was not at that time an important place, nor is the Cuban railway system remarkable for its efficiency; nothing need therefore be said about either save that after jolting through some exceedingly beautiful country, which grew more beautiful with every mile of progress upon a gradually rising gradient, the travellers were safely landed in the city of Pinar del Rio--a distance of some fifteen miles from Calonna--in a trifle over an hour! Here Senor Montijo's private carriage--a somewhat cumbersome, four-wheeled affair, fitted with a leather awning and curtains to protect the occupants from either sun or rain, and drawn by four horses, the off leader being ridden by a postilion, while the wheelers were driven from the box--was awaiting them, it having been sent in from the house on the preceding day. The luggage having been securely strapped on to a platform attached to the rear of the coach, Don Hermoso signed to Jack to enter the vehicle, placed himself by Jack's side, and was followed by Carlos, when the affair got under way, with a tremendous amount of shouting and whip cracking, and went rolling and rumbling and jolting down the narrow street and so out into the country. There was a drive of about sixteen miles farther inland and toward the Organ Mountains before them ere they could arrive at the hacienda Montijo, and although the road was abominable, and the heat intense, Jack declared that he had never so thoroughly enjoyed a drive in his life. For the country was somewhat rugged, and the scenery therefore very lovely, the road being bordered on either side by fields of tobacco and sugar, and here and there a patch of cool green Indian corn, divided from the road by low hedges which were just then a perfect blaze of multi-coloured flowers of various descriptions. It was a fairly busy scene, too, for the tobacco was ripe, and the fields were alive with labourers of all colours, from the full-blooded negro to the pure Spaniard, gathering the crop. At length, when they had been travelling for about a couple of hours, and when, despite the charm of everything that he saw around him, Jack began to grow conscious of the fact that he was aching in every joint from the rolling and jolting of the carriage, the vehicle turned off the main road into a lane, access to which was gained through a pair of massive timber gates hung upon piers of ancient, moss-grown masonry; and Don Hermoso announced that they were now upon his own demesne. And here at once Jack became conscious of a very great change in the appearance of everything; for not only was the road upon which they were travelling smooth and well kept, but the fields on either hand, instead of being half-choked with weeds, as had been the case with most of those that they had passed, were scrupulously clean, while the labourers, instead of being picturesque scarecrows, were decently clad, and worked as men do who are content and happy. Every man of them was clearly on the lookout for the carriage, and had a word of respectful greeting for his returning master, while--what was perhaps stranger still--Don Hermoso seemed to intimately know every man, woman, and child on the place, though there were hundreds of them. At length a bend in the road brought the house in sight, at a distance of about a mile, and Jack saw before him, perched on the shoulder of a low eminence, a long, white, bungalow-like structure, with a high, thatched roof, and a gallery and veranda running along the whole length of the front, and apparently along the sides also. The building was of one storey only, and although the veranda was so broad as to cast the whole of the front into deep shadow it seemed to Jack that that front was pierced by at least a dozen doors and windows. As Jack looked, two female figures clad in white suddenly made their appearance in the centre of the gallery, and so beautifully clear was the atmosphere that, even at that distance, it could be distinctly seen that they were waving their pocket handkerchiefs to the occupants of the coach. Carlos also saw them, and frantically waved his panama by way of reply, shouting, as he did so: "Hurrah, Padre; hurrah, Jack! Look! there are the Madre and Isolda out on the gallery, waving to us! I'll bet that they have been watching the bend of the road through their opera-glasses for the last hour or more!" "Doubtless," answered Don Hermoso, laughing happily as he too leaned out of the coach to wave a greeting. "Since we did not arrive last night, as arranged, they have naturally expected us to turn up early this morning." Winding hither and thither along the hillside, in order to secure an even and easy gradient, the road presently left the tobacco fields and passed between broad spaces of lawn luxuriantly clad with guinea-grass, and having large parterres of flowers scattered about it here and there; while in other places it was picturesquely broken up by clumps of feathery bamboo, or gigantic wild cotton and other trees. At length, with a final dash and a grand flourish, the carriage drew up in front of the broad flight of stone steps that led up the scarped and flower- strewn face of the mound upon which the house was built; and one of the two female figures came rushing down the steps, bareheaded, despite the almost vertical sun, and flung herself into the outstretched arms of Don Hermoso, while the other followed in a somewhat more stately and dignified manner. Then, when Don Hermoso had released this first figure from his embrace, and turned, hat in hand, to meet the second, Senorita Isolda treated her brother Carlos to a like greeting, after which she turned, with a sunny smile and eyes flashing welcome, to Jack. "Isolda," exclaimed Carlos, performing the ceremony of introduction, "this, as you will of course have guessed, is my old friend and chum, Jack Singleton, to whom we are so deeply indebted for the very valuable assistance that he has rendered us in our great undertaking. He is the best friend and comrade that ever lived, therefore give him a cordial welcome, for my sake, dear." "I give you a thousand welcomes, Senor Jack," she exclaimed impulsively, as she offered her hand, "and a thousand thanks for all that you have done for my father and Carlos. I am delighted that you have been able to come to us, for I seem to know you quite well; Carlos has talked so often about you, and of what you used to do together in the old days at Dulwich, that I feel it quite impossible to regard you as a stranger." For perhaps the first time in his life Jack Singleton found himself at a loss for words. As a rule he had plenty to say for himself, but now he found himself suddenly dumb. He had heard his friend Carlos speak of his sister Isolda with patronising, brotherly affection as "a good child", "a nice little thing", "not half a bad sort", and so on, and he seemed to remember that only a day or two ago Carlos had casually mentioned that his sister was just sixteen years of age; he had therefore pictured the girl to himself as a hoyden, in the transition stage of frocks that are neither short nor long, but betwixt and between, a girl with hair flying loose about her shoulders--in short, a girl. And now, all unprepared, he found himself grasping the hand of a glorious creature of absolutely dazzling loveliness, with the face, form, and manners of an irresistibly fascinating woman, who, despite her sixteen years of age, looked as though she might be quite twenty. He stammered out a few halting and stumbling words of thanks for her kindly welcome of him, feeling all the time that he would have liked to kick himself for his stupid gaucherie; and then turned to receive the greeting of Senora Montijo. This lady was simply an older edition of her lovely daughter, with a more composed and stately manner, and her welcome to Jack was cordiality itself; and presently they all turned and made their way into the house, which they entered by way of a wide doorway furnished with two leaves, now thrown wide open, the upper panels of which were fitted with Venetian lattices for the admission of air and the exclusion of the too-ardent beams of the sun. This doorway gave entrance to a large, marble-paved hall extending the entire depth of the house from front to back, as was to be seen from the fact that another door, opposite that by which the party had just entered, stood wide open, through which could be seen another broad veranda running along the back of the house, beyond which could be caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a kind of courtyard, with more lawns and flower beds, and a handsome fountain in the centre. The hall was adorned with beautiful flowering plants in large tubs, and furnished with an abundant supply of settees and luxuriously-cushioned basket chairs, and seemed to be used as a kind of lounging place, for which it was eminently adapted, since the two open doors caused a constant draught of comparatively cool air through the apartment. There were a few good pictures on the walls, as well as a gun-rack, well fitted with sporting guns and rifles; and a hatstand which, in addition to its legitimate use, formed a convenient support for sundry riding-whips and pairs of spurs. Two passages, leading to right and left out of this hall, gave access, as Jack subsequently discovered, to the rooms located at the extremities of the building. "Now, Jack, old chap," said Carlos, linking his arm in that of his friend, after a moment's murmured conversation with his mother, "let me take you to your room. You will be glad to have a wash and brush-up after our dusty journey; and by the time that you are ready, second breakfast will be served." And, so saying, he conducted Singleton out through the rear door of the hall into the back veranda, which, as Jack now saw, ran not only along the entire rear face of the main building but also along the face of two wings which projected therefrom at right angles, one at each end of the house. These wings, it appeared, provided the sleeping accommodation, bathrooms, lavatories, and so on, of the establishment; beyond which again were the kitchen and other domestic offices, and the coach-house and stables, with the lawn, fountain, and flower beds between, the buildings being shaded not only by the broad veranda, but also by rows of orange, lemon, lime, and peach trees, the fragrance from which imparted an indescribably refreshing character to the air. Turning to the left as they emerged from the hall, Carlos conducted his friend along the left wing until they reached the last door but one, which the young Cuban threw open, ushering his friend into a neatly furnished and clean bedroom, in which Jack's overland trunk had already been deposited. "The Madre has put you in here, Jack," Carlos explained, "because the room faces east, and will therefore be cool when you turn in at night, while the trees in front shield it from the morning sun. Also it is next to the men's bathroom, and therefore will be handy for your bath, night and morning. Now, there are water, soap, and towels; if you require anything else, shout for Antonio, and he will bring you whatever you want. Breakfast will be ready in a quarter of an hour." CHAPTER SEVEN. DON SEBASTIAN ALVAROS THREATENS TROUBLE. "Second breakfast" in the West Indies is the equivalent of luncheon in England, except that the former is perhaps the more elaborate meal of the two; when therefore Jack, escorted by Carlos, entered the fine, airy dining-room, it at once became evident that he was about to sit down to a very substantial repast, for which he was not at all sorry, as the long journey had given him a most excellent appetite. Moreover, he had by this time recovered the equilibrium which had been so seriously disturbed by his first sight of Senorita Isolda, and had again found the use of his tongue; it was therefore a very gay and happy quintette that arranged itself around the well-furnished table. Jack was of course by this time on almost as intimate terms with Don Hermoso as he was with Carlos, and he presently discovered that the ladies were disposed to treat him rather as an old friend than as a new acquaintance; and he told himself that his visit to Cuba promised to be one of the most pleasant experiences of his life. The meal over, Don Hermoso excused himself, as there were naturally many matters demanding his earliest attention after his long absence from home; while the Senora had her household affairs to attend to. Carlos therefore took the task of entertaining Jack upon himself, with his sister as chief assistant, and proposed a ride, as there were many charming spots in the neighbourhood that he wished his friend to see. The horses were accordingly ordered, and the three young people, despising the usual afternoon siesta, set off, taking a path which led upward through a wild and most picturesque ravine, down which a mountain stream brawled and foamed, the murmurous tumult of its waters mingling musically with the sough of the wind in the multitudinous trees that clothed the hillsides, and imparting a most welcome sensation of coolness to the atmosphere. They rode at a foot pace, first because they were in no hurry, and secondly because the path was narrow and rough, there being room only for two riders abreast; Carlos therefore led the way, with Jack and Dona Isolda following close at his horse's tail. They had not been ten minutes under way when they arrived at a spot the marvellous natural beauty of which caused Jack to exclaim aloud in his astonishment: for upon rounding a bend in the path they found themselves in a little amphitheatre, about five hundred yards across, the tree-clad sides of which rose precipitously to a great height on either hand, and were gorgeous with great clustering blooms of every imaginable hue, from purest white through every shade of colour to a deep rich purple that looked almost black where seen in shadow; while the air, almost motionless down in the hollow, was heavy with the mingling of a thousand exquisite perfumes. The floor of this amphitheatre consisted of a great basin of rock, partly filled with fine white sand brought down from the uplands during countless generations by the flow of the stream, the basin being brimful of crystal-clear water which came pouring and plashing into it from above over a series of miniature cataracts, the lowest of which, about twelve feet high, impinged upon a small ledge of rock which projected into the basin for the space of about a yard. "This," said Carlos, "is our swimming bath, to which we often come for a dip in the early morning; it is absolutely private, all this being our own property, and nobody but ourselves ever passes here. What think you of it, Jack; is it not perfect?" Jack pronounced it magnificent, and there and then undertook to join Carlos in a dip on the following and every other morning during his stay. The water was about twenty feet deep, and the place was consequently perfect for swimming in. By the side of the road, at a spot where there happened to be a few square yards of level ground, the surface had been cleared of the luxuriant undergrowth, and a small bathing house, containing two dressing-rooms--one for either sex--had been erected; and here the bathing dresses were kept and the necessary changes of costume made. Having spent a little time in admiring this glorious bathing pool, the party moved onward again, and, following the ever-rising path, at length, after a most delightful ride of about five miles through a continuous succession of scenes of surpassing beauty, emerged upon an open tableland, from which a most extensive and glorious view of mile upon mile of the southern slope of the island was to be obtained, with the sea shining in soft, opalescent tints beyond, and the Isla de Pinos, with its three curiously shaped mountains, lying on the horizon. The white sails of a few coasting craft gleamed pearl-like here and there, just discernible at that distance, and Jack searched the watery expanse for some sign of the _Thetis_; but she had vanished. Doubtless she was on the other side of Cape San Antonio by this time, and therefore well on her way round to Havana. Being thus reminded of the existence of the yacht, Jack was suddenly inspired with a brilliant idea, which he promptly communicated to Carlos. "Look here, Carlos, old chap," he exclaimed, "if the yacht is not likely to be required for other service just at present, why should not we all take a cruise in her round the island and over to Jamaica, from whence we might even go on to some of the other islands? I am sure that the trip would do your mother and sister a vast amount of good. Have you ever been out of Cuba, Senorita?" "Never," answered Dona Isolda. "I was born here, and, less lucky than Carlos, was also educated here; so that I know nothing whatever about the great outside world, save what I have read of it in books. Havana is my conception of a great and handsome city, so you may guess how ignorant I am, and how intensely I should enjoy seeing other places. Do you think, Carlos mio, that Senor Singleton's suggestion is possible of realisation?" "It may be," answered Carlos, a little doubtfully. "Everything will, of course, depend upon what news may come from the Junta. I know that the Padre has placed the vessel unreservedly at their disposal--rather unwisely, I think--and I shall be very much surprised if they do not make the fullest possible use of her. But, of course, if she is not likely to be required for a month or two, I think it would be an admirable plan for us all to go for a cruise in her. It would tend to avert suspicion from her, too, for I am pretty certain that it will not be wise to leave her lying idle in Havana or in any other of our harbours. I will mention the matter to the Padre at the first favourable opportunity." "I am sure it would do Mamma a vast amount of good," remarked Senorita Isolda; "and it might also have the effect of putting a stop to the visits of Senor Alvaros, who is fast becoming an unendurable nuisance." "Indeed! In what way?" demanded Carlos sharply. "Why," answered Senorita Isolda, "we are never free from him. He rides over here three or four times a week, and makes himself as much at home as though the place belonged to him, although he has never received the slightest encouragement either from Mamma or from me. And then he bores me with his unwelcome attentions." "Ah!" ejaculated Carlos through his clenched teeth; "somehow I feared as much. The fellow must be choked off by some means. The question is, how to do it without giving offence. You see," he continued, turning to Jack, "we Cubans are in an exceedingly awkward position, and are obliged to walk most circumspectly. We are compelled to submit to many things that are utterly distasteful to us, for if we did not we should at once be suspected of harbouring designs inimical to the Government; and, once regarded with suspicion, our liberty, our property, ay, even our lives, would be imperilled." "A confoundedly unpleasant state of things, in truth," said Jack; "but surely it does not extend so far that you dare not give a man a hint that his visits to your house are distasteful?" "Indeed it does, though," answered Carlos. "Suppose, for example, that my father were to hint to this fellow Alvaros that he is not wanted here, and that his visits must cease, the probability is that the man-- who, I may mention, is captain of a regiment of infantry--would at once proceed to hint to his superiors that all is not right with us, when there is no knowing what dreadful thing might happen. The fact is, that the pride of these fellows is so intense and so sensitive, and they are withal so destitute of principle, that if a man dares to offend one of them he at once makes every Spaniard in the island his enemy." "How would it be if I were to pick a quarrel with him?" suggested Jack. "They would not dare to interfere with me." "I am by no means so sure of that," answered Carlos. "They could do nothing to you openly, of course; but open, honest, daylight methods are not regarded here with very much respect just at present, and you might perhaps mysteriously disappear. Oh, no, it would never do for you to attempt to interfere, Jack! On the contrary, you must most studiously refrain from anything and everything that would be in the least likely to breed ill blood between you and the Spaniards, because--who knows?-- we may need your help ere long. And that you could only effectively give by maintaining good relations with the Government and its representatives." Conversing thus, they at length turned their horses' heads and slowly took their way back toward the house; and by the time that they reached it Jack found himself upon terms of almost as complete intimacy with Senorita Isolda as those he was on with her brother. For, despite the intense pride which seems to be so strongly marked a characteristic of all who have Spanish blood in their veins, Senorita Isolda was a most charmingly ingenuous, unsophisticated girl, frank and open as the day; furthermore, she had been so long accustomed to hear Jack spoken of admiringly by Carlos that she had insensibly acquired a strong predisposition in his favour; and, finally, and quite contrary to rule, when at length she met him in the flesh she instantly decided that this stalwart, handsome young Englishman was all that Carlos had represented him to be--and very much more. Upon reaching the house they found, to their disgust, that Captain Alvaros had again turned up, ostensibly for the purpose of bidding Don Hermoso and Carlos welcome back to Cuba and hearing from them an account of their holiday wanderings in Europe. Jack found the Spanish soldier to be a man of about thirty-two years of age, tall, swarthy, and by no means ill-looking: but such physical advantages as he possessed were heavily discounted by a pair of piercing, black, sinister-looking eyes, and a distinctly arrogant, overbearing manner; the man evidently thought well of himself, and took no trouble to conceal the fact. He greeted Jack's appearance in Senorita Isolda's company with something very nearly approaching a scowl, and coldly acknowledged Senora Montijo's formal introduction of the young man with an air of careless hauteur that was eloquent of his disapproval of the young man's presence in the house, which he further emphasised by thereafter contemptuously ignoring Jack--for a time. Carlos flushed with angry annoyance as he beheld this treatment of his friend, for which he apologised as soon as the pair were alone together; but Jack's sunny temperament was not so easily ruffled, and he simply laughed, saying: "Don't you let that worry you, old chap; it doesn't hurt me in the least. I don't care a brass button whether the man likes or dislikes me; I care neither for his friendship nor his enmity. I am not of a quarrelsome disposition, as you know, but should he attempt to be actively disagreeable, or to force a quarrel upon me, I have no doubt that I shall know how to take care of myself." When the party again met at the dinner-table there were indications that Senor Alvaros had made up his mind to treat Jack as a person much too insignificant to be worthy of the least notice: but he soon found that he must either abandon this line of policy or himself be left out in the cold, for the Montijos, one and all, persisted in including Jack in the conversation; and very quietly and unobtrusively, but none the less firmly, contrived to make Senor Alvaros understand that the young Englishman was already regarded as one of themselves. Seeing this, he changed his tactics and artfully endeavoured to entrap Jack into an expression of opinion upon the politics of the island: but the young man was not to be so easily caught; he laughingly disclaimed any knowledge of or interest in political questions of any kind, and pointed out that in any case his acquaintance with Cuba was altogether too recent to have enabled him to form even the most elementary opinion on the question, at the same time mentioning as a general axiom that Englishmen were usually regarded as cherishing a weakness in favour of good government and the maintenance of law and order. And later on in the evening, when the party adjourned to the drawing- room, the soldier again found his endeavours to pose as a _persona grata_ quietly ignored. He would fain have monopolised the society of Dona Isolda for the remainder of the evening, and attempted to carry her off with him to a remote corner of the room, but Carlos would have none of it. His sister had a good voice, and had been taught to use it to the best advantage, and he wanted his friend Jack to hear her sing some of the old-fashioned Andalusian folksongs, which she did with cheerfulness and alacrity, promptly recognising Carlos' intention and eagerly seconding it. Then Carlos proclaimed that Jack was a singer and an accomplished pianist, and insisted that his friend should sing and play to them; and when Senor Alvaros privately confided to Senorita Isolda his opinion that English music was simply barbarous, and Englishmen utterly unendurable, the young lady unhesitatingly declared that she entirely disagreed with him. Altogether, Senor Alvaros spent a distinctly unpleasant evening, for which circumstance he blamed the young Englishman; and as he rode back to his quarters that night he cursed the English nation freely, and Jack in particular, for whom, he decided, there was no room in Cuba. And the worst of it all was that not a word had been said, not a thing had been done, to which he could openly take the slightest exception. But how was this pestilent young cub of an Englishman to be got rid of? That was the question that worried Alvaros during the greater part of that night and the whole of the next day. The first impulse of the Spaniard was to deprive the Montijo family of his (Alvaros') countenance and society until, alarmed at the loss, they should dismiss the cause of it: but upon further reflection he came to the conclusion that it might be unwise to adopt so very drastic a step, for two very good and sufficient reasons, the first of which was that, being impecunious himself, he had fully made up his mind to marry Dona Isolda and thus acquire a substantial interest in the Montijo property and estates, and was therefore unwilling to do anything which might possibly jeopardise the position which he had worked so hard to gain as a friend of the family; while the second reason was that he was by no means sure that his abstention would be regarded by the Montijos as a matter of very great moment. Then it was most unfortunate that Jack was not only an Englishman, but a young man doubtless of position and substance, or he would not be the owner of so costly a plaything as a steam-yacht. Had he been anything but an Englishman, or an American, it would have been comparatively easy to have had him arrested upon a charge of complicity with the insurgents; but these nations had a most awkward and inconvenient habit of looking after their people, and whenever one of them chanced to get into trouble their Governments always insisted upon instituting the most exhaustive enquiries into the matter, and were wont to make it understood, with almost brutal distinctness of manner, that they would not tolerate anything that bore the slightest suspicion of irregularity. He had heard it whispered that the authorities had received a hint from their spies on the other side to look out for a yacht which was suspected of having on board contraband for the use of the insurgents; but he argued that the vessel in question could scarcely be the craft owned by this young man, for the simple reason that there appeared to be nothing of a surreptitious or secret nature in his movements, or in those of his yacht, which, as he understood, was, or would very shortly be, in Havana harbour. No, the more he thought about it, the more profoundly was he convinced that it would be impossible to bring about Jack's removal by an attempt to involve him in the political unrest of the islanders. Some other means must be tried. He wondered whether, perchance, it might be possible to frighten the young man into an early departure from the casa Montijo and the island. It was not a very easy matter to frighten an Englishman, he knew, and this particular one impressed Alvaros as being especially unpromising in that respect; still, there was no harm in trying. Accordingly when, upon the next day but one, the Spaniard again rode over to call upon the Montijos, he made an opportunity to take Jack on one side for a moment and ask him whether he had yet fixed a date for his departure from the island. "A date for my departure?" echoed Jack. "Certainly not, Senor. On the contrary, it is my intention to make quite a long stay here, and see Cuba from end to end. It is even possible that I may decide to purchase a property on the island, and try my luck as a tobacco planter." "I fervently trust not, Senor, for your own sake," said Alvaros. "Permit me to offer you a little friendly advice. Cut short your visit, and leave Cuba at once. I advise you, as a friend, to do so." "Indeed!" said Jack. "And why, pray? Of course you have some good reason for offering me this advice, Senor Alvaros?" "Yes," answered Alvaros, "I have; and it is this. Cuba is in a most unsettled state at present. She is seething with rebellion, and all strangers are regarded with the utmost suspicion by the Government. Nothing would be easier than for you to find yourself involved in one of the numerous conspiracies which we know to be brewing; and, once involved, you would find it exceedingly difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to extricate yourself. Therefore take my advice, and go forthwith. It is good advice; for I tell you plainly that you are not wanted here!" "Thanks!" answered Jack coolly. "I am very much obliged to you, Senor Alvaros, for the friendly feeling which has prompted you to give me what I suppose you wish me to understand as a `warning'. But I must tell you candidly that I believe you are taking a very exaggerated view of the danger--if danger there be, which I greatly doubt. But, danger or no danger, I shall still carry out my original plans; and if danger should come--well, I daresay I shall be quite able to take care of myself." So that was no good! The Spaniard had feared that it would not be of much use to attempt to frighten an Englishman; and so it had proved. Well, there were other ways, and those must be tried. After Alvaros had left, that night, and the family had separated, Jack accompanied Carlos into the room of the latter, and related what had passed between the Spanish officer and himself, asking Carlos for his opinion upon the subject. "I will tell you, Jack, just exactly what I think," answered Carlos, after considering the matter for some few minutes. "You must know that Captain Alvaros made our acquaintance about a year ago, at a ball given in Havana by the Capitan-General of the island. After that he contrived to meet one or more of us on frequent occasions; and finally he requested the Padre's permission to visit us. We none of us particularly liked him; but it is not altogether wise policy to offend a Spaniard, especially if he happens to be an official, in these times, and so the Padre rather reluctantly gave his consent, and Alvaros accordingly called here occasionally. While we have been away, however, it appears that the man has somehow contrived to get himself posted at Pinar del Rio, which, as you are aware, is not very far from here; and I learn that since then his calls have been so frequent as to have become a thorough nuisance. Now, from what my sister tells me, I have a suspicion that Alvaros is anxious to contract a matrimonial alliance with our family--which, I may tell you at once, Jack, he will not be permitted to do; and my belief is that the fellow simply cannot endure to see another man in Isolda's society, and that is why he wants you to go. But of course you won't; and I am very glad indeed that you made that quite clear to him. He was evidently trying to scare you off what he apparently chooses to consider his preserves; but if he knew you as well as I do, Jack, he would understand that it needs a good deal more than the vague hints of a captain of Spanish infantry to frighten you. Now, my advice to you is to take no notice whatever of the beggar, and if he tries it on again--well, just repeat what you said to-night. And--perhaps it will be better not to mention the matter, at all events just yet, to the Padre, or in fact anyone else." "All right, old chap," answered Jack; "you may trust me. But, look here, Carlos, I hope that my presence in this house is not going to involve any of you in trouble or difficulty of any sort with the Government. If I thought that there was the least likelihood of that--" "My dear chap, there isn't," interrupted Carlos. "We are one of the oldest and most influential families in Cuba; and the Spaniards know perfectly well that to meddle with us would be to make a very serious mistake. So do not allow any idea of that kind to worry you in the least. You will stay on here just as long as you like; and the longer you stay the better we shall all be pleased. Besides, there is going to be a rising here before long, and then you will have an opportunity to witness several very interesting things." Two days later Captain Alvaros again presented himself; but this time, instead of entering the house in his usual free and easy manner, he enquired for Don Hermoso and, upon learning that that gentleman was in his office, sent in a formal request for a private interview. He was at once admitted, and found Don Hermoso seated at a large writing table, which was strewed with account books and papers. The Don accorded his visitor a courteous if somewhat stiff welcome, and, having requested him to be seated, enquired in what way he could be of service--for this formal visit had somehow suggested to Don Hermoso the idea that Captain Alvaros desired to borrow money from him. "Such a visit as this from me, Don Hermoso, can have but one object, and I think you will have no difficulty in guessing what that object is," replied Alvaros, with a somewhat embarrassed laugh. "Pardon me, Senor," answered Don Hermoso; "you credit me with a much larger measure of perspicacity than I can lay claim to. To be perfectly frank with you, I cannot conceive why you should desire a private interview with me, unless--how shall I put it?--unless--you find yourself in a position of temporary pecuniary embarrassment; and in that case I should have thought that--" "Senor Montijo," exclaimed Alvaros, starting to his feet indignantly, "do you wish to insult me?" "Certainly not, Senor," answered Don Hermoso blandly. "Pray be seated, and dismiss from your mind at once any such unworthy suspicion. Why should I desire to insult you? But if I am mistaken in my guess as to the object of your visit, would it not be best for you to state your business with me explicitly?" "I will, Senor," answered Alvaros. "To be both explicit and brief, then, I have called upon you this morning for the purpose of demanding the hand of your daughter, Senorita Isolda, in marriage." "To demand--the hand of--my daughter--in marriage?" gasped Don Hermoso in amazement. "Certainly, Senor Montijo," retorted Alvaros haughtily. "Surely there is nothing so very extraordinary in making such a demand, is there?" "Nothing very extraordinary, certainly," returned Don Hermoso, who had quickly recovered a grip upon himself; "but something most entirely unexpected, I assure you. You do me and my family too much honour, Senor Alvaros. I presume you have some reason for supposing that your suit will be acceptable to my daughter?" "I have never had any reason to suppose otherwise, Senor," answered Alvaros. "But even were the Senorita to entertain any foolish objections--or imagine that she entertained them--I presume it would make no difference in your decision. If she does not actually entertain any sentiment of love for me at this moment I have not a shadow of doubt as to my ability to inspire that sentiment as soon as we are married. The young lady will raise no objection, I presume, if she is given to understand that the marriage would be in conformity with your wishes; and I imagine it is quite unnecessary for me to point out to you how very greatly to your advantage and that of your whole family such a marriage would be." "Advantage, did you say, Senor?" retorted Don Hermoso. "Pardon me, I am afraid that I am unusually dull to-day, but I am compelled to confess that for the moment I scarcely see in what respect such an alliance would be an advantage to us. If it would not be troubling you too much, would you kindly explain?" "Surely, Senor Montijo, it ought not to be very difficult for you to see how highly advantageous it would be for you and yours to be allied in marriage to an officer of some distinction--if I may be permitted to say so--in the Spanish Army!" exclaimed Alvaros, in tones of haughty surprise. "I am a scion of one of the best families of Spain, while you, if you will pardon me for reminding you of the fact, are merely a Cuban; and in these troublous days no Cuban is entirely free from suspicion--" "Enough, Senor!" interrupted Don Hermoso indignantly. "You appear to despise me as `merely a Cuban'; but you either forget, or are ignorant of, the fact that my father was born in Spain, and there are few Spanish names that stand higher than that of Montijo. You have made a mistake, Senor, in presuming to claim superiority for yourself over my family. I decline the honour of the alliance which you have proposed; and I trust that, under these circumstances, you will see the propriety of discontinuing your visits to my house." For nearly a full minute Alvaros glared at Don Hermoso, as though he could scarcely believe that he had heard aright, could scarcely credit the fact that a "rascally Cuban", as he mentally termed Montijo, had had the unparalleled, the unspeakable audacity to spurn--ay, spurn was the correct word--an alliance with him, Don Sebastian Alvaros, Captain in the army of His Majesty the King of Spain! It was unthinkable! It was an insult that could only be wiped out by blood! And yet it would be exceedingly awkward to quarrel with these people; for if he did it would put an end at once and for ever to any possibility of marriage with the daughter. And he simply must marry her, by hook or by crook: his honour demanded it, for he had already boasted freely among his fellow-officers of his conquest of the fairest maid in Cuba; and his credit also demanded it, for he had made the same boast to the money-lenders in Havana, and had raised considerable sums of money on the strength of it. Swallowing his rage, therefore, he made an attempt to retrace that false step by exclaiming: "Pardon me, Don Hermoso, but I have been most unfortunate in my choice of words, and, believe me, you have entirely mistaken my meaning. What I really intended to convey was--" But in that brief minute of silence Don Hermoso had read the man's real character in his face, and had instantly come to the conclusion that he would rather see his daughter lying dead than in the power of such a ruffian; he therefore cut short the officer's protestations by assuring him that his words admitted of no misinterpretation, and that therefore he must persist in his refusal. "Very well, then," exclaimed Alvaros, "if you prefer to have me for an enemy, instead of a friend and ally, be it so, Senor Montijo; I will not disappoint you. But beware! You have insulted me, and I am a man who never forgets or forgives an insult!" And, springing to his feet, he dashed his braided cap on to his head, strode clanking and jingling to the door, and so took his departure without further word of farewell. CHAPTER EIGHT. SENOR ALVAROS GETS TO WORK. For fully a quarter of an hour after the departure of Alvaros, Don Hermoso sat plunged in a deep and somewhat anxious reverie. He scarcely knew whether he was more pleased or annoyed at what had just happened: for, on the one hand, he was at last rid of a distinctly uncongenial acquaintance, which had been almost thrust upon him in the first instance, and which had proved ever more uncongenial and unwelcome with the lapse of time; while, on the other hand, he fully recognised that he had made for himself a vindictive and implacable enemy who, although not very formidable or dangerous just then, might at any moment become so. For although Senor Montijo was one of the most important and influential persons in the island, he was a Cuban; and, as such, he was well aware that, thanks to the corruption which was then rampant among the Spanish officials of the Government, there could be no hope of justice for him if he were brought into collision with any of these officials, of whom, of course, Alvaros was one. The word of a Cuban, however important his position might be, was of absolutely no weight whatever; and Don Hermoso was fully aware that it would be no very difficult matter for Alvaros to absolutely ruin him if he chose. Yet even ruin would be preferable to seeing his beloved daughter the wife and slave of such a man as Alvaros had proved himself to be; and, for the rest, should it come to be war to the knife between them--well, he must take his chance with the rest of the Cubans, and trust to the coming revolution to enable him to hold his own. His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Milsom, who, having taken the _Thetis_ into Havana harbour and snugly berthed her there, and further made every possible provision for her safety, had turned her over to the capable care of Perkins, her chief mate, and had now come on by train as far as Pinar del Rio, and from thence by Don Hermoso's carriage, to pay his promised visit to the hacienda Montijo. He was full of glee at the unconcealed uneasiness with which the Spanish officials regarded the presence of the yacht in the harbour; and their evident belief that, despite the strict search of the vessel by the commander and lieutenant of the _Tiburon_, she carried, hidden away in some cleverly-contrived place of concealment, the contraband of which they had been informed by their spies on the other side of the Atlantic. "They have put on board us no less than four custom-house officers-- empleados de la aduana, as they call them--to see that nothing is surreptitiously landed from the ship," he exclaimed with boisterous enjoyment; "and four boats now guard around us every night! Oh, they are a great people, these Spaniards!" Then he went on to relate how, a few hours after his arrival, a boat had come alongside from the _Tiburon_, which was also lying in the harbour, bearing a challenge for him from Lieutenant Silvio Fernandez, her lieutenant, who demanded satisfaction from him for his insulting behaviour on the occasion of the yacht being stopped by the gunboat; and how he had accepted the challenge to fight and, being the challenged party, had chosen fists as the weapons wherewith the duel was to be fought: and he made merry over the lieutenant's indignation when he had declined to accept swords or pistols as a substitute for fists. "Of course," he concluded, "the fight did not come off, although I remained in Havana forty-eight hours longer than I originally intended, in order to give Senor Fernandez every chance." During dinner, that night, Don Hermoso related to his family and guests the particulars of the interview that had occurred between him and Alvaros in the afternoon; and if he had, even for a moment, entertained the slightest doubt as to the wisdom of the step which he had taken in declining Alvaros' proposal and dismissing him from the house, it was finally dissipated when Senorita Isolda expressed in quite unmistakable terms her relief and gratification. The next few days sped very pleasantly, for the young people, at any rate, who passed their time in shooting, or in taking long rides about the surrounding country; and Senorita Isolda frequently found herself contrasting the genial, hearty friendliness and chivalrous courtesy of her brother's English friends with the stiff, haughty, overbearing manner and overweening conceit of the Spanish officers, who seemed to think that such attentions as they chose to pay her ought to be regarded as a vast condescension on their part. It was about a week after the dismissal of Alvaros by Don Hermoso that, at the end of a long and fatiguing day's shooting, ending up with a very pleasant musical evening, the party in the casa Montijo retired, somewhat late, to their several rooms; and Jack Singleton, weary with much tramping under the scorching sun, lost no time in disrobing and flinging himself, with his pyjama suit as his only covering, upon his bed, where he almost instantly sank into a sound and dreamless sleep. He had probably been asleep for at least three hours, although it seemed to him only as many minutes, when he suddenly started broad awake, with the disagreeable feeling that he was no longer alone, or rather, to put it more exactly, that someone had that instant stealthily entered his room by way of the window, which, as is customary in Cuba, had been left wide open for the admission of every possible breath of air. For a moment he lay perfectly still, listening intently, and peering the while into the darkness which encompassed him. All was perfectly still, however, save for the faint rustle in the night breeze of the mosquito curtains which surrounded his bed, and the musical tinkling of the waters of the fountain outside; while the darkness was so intense that it was only with the utmost difficulty he could dimly discern the opening of the window, which, it will be remembered, looked out upon a patio, or kind of courtyard. Suddenly the room was faintly illumined for a moment by a flicker of summer lightning, and Jack felt almost positive that during that fraction of a second he caught a glimpse of something by the open window which had certainly not been there when he retired for the night--something which suggested a crouching human figure. Stretching out his hand, Jack cautiously and noiselessly parted the mosquito curtains, with the object of getting a clear view when the next flash should come, as come he knew it would. And come it did, a minute or two later, disclosing to the young man's astonished gaze a form on hands and knees, about halfway between the window and the bed. As before, the glimmer of the lightning was but momentary, but, brief as it was, it sufficed Jack to see that the individual, whoever he might be, held a long, murderous-looking knife in his right hand; and the inference was obvious that he was there for no good purpose. Jack had learned, among other things, to act promptly and with decision, and no sooner was he again in darkness than, with a single bound, he was on his feet on the floor, where he instantly came into violent collision with the stranger, who was at that precise moment in the very act of rising from his knees. Brief as had been the flicker of the lightning, it had enabled Jack to measure his distance and to note the exact spot occupied by the unknown: the moment, therefore, that he came into contact with the intruder his left hand fell unerringly upon the right wrist of the other, which he seized in so vice-like a grip that the arm became immovable; while with his right he grasped the man by the throat and thrust him violently backward, at the same instant twining his right leg round the legs of his antagonist, with the result that both crashed to the ground, Jack being uppermost. His antagonist was an immensely powerful man, lithe and sinewy as a leopard, and he struggled furiously to free himself, hitting out savagely with his free left hand and landing one or two very nasty blows on Jack's face; until the latter, with one knee on his prostrate foe's chest, managed to get the other upon his left forearm and thus pin it to the ground. Meanwhile Jack's grip upon the throat of the man was by no means to be shaken off, and the struggles of the stranger were rapidly growing weaker as the breath was remorselessly choked out of him, when Milsom and Carlos, both of whom had been awaked by the commotion, dashed into the room, bearing lights, and loudly demanding to know what was the matter. "I'll be shot if I know," answered Jack; "but I daresay this chap can tell us. He got in through the window; and as the lightning showed him to be a stranger, and I also noticed that he carried a rather formidable-looking knife, it occurred to me that it might be wise to make a prisoner of him, and get him to tell us who he is, and what he wants. Now, friend, I will trouble you for that knife." The man surrendered the weapon with a sullen scowl. "Thanks!" said Jack. "Now you may stand up." The man rose to his feet, revealing to the gaze of the three friends a tall and sinewy form, attired in the picturesquely-tattered garb of a muleteer, or wagoner. The fellow was a low-class Spaniard, of singularly vicious and disreputable appearance; and as he glared vindictively at his captor he looked capable of anything, murder included. For a moment he appeared inclined to make a desperate bid for liberty; but as Jack had slipped between him and the open window, while Milsom, with a cocked revolver in his hand, stood with his back against the closed door of the apartment, he thought better of it, and simply enquired: "Well, what are you going to do with me?" "That will depend, to some extent, upon the answers which you may see fit to give to our questions," answered Carlos. "First of all, who are you; and what errand brought you here?" "My name, Senor Montijo, is Panza--Antonio Panza; my present occupation is that of a carrier of goods; and I suppose I may as well confess at once that my business here was to murder the English senor, your friend." "To murder me?" repeated Jack. "And why, pray? What harm have I ever done you, that you should desire to murder me?" "None whatever, Senor," answered the man. "But it would appear that you have harmed somebody else, or I should not have been hired to slit your throat." "So," exclaimed Carlos, "that is the explanation, is it? I suspected as much! And pray who is the coward who hired you to do his dirty work for him?" "Ah, pardon, Senor; that is just what I may not tell you!" answered Panza. "I was paid handsomely to undertake this piece of work; and it was part of the bargain that, should I fail, I was to keep my employer's secret." "Is it permissible to ask how much you were paid?" demanded Jack. "Certainly, Senor," answered the fellow. "I was paid fifty doubloons to kill you, if I could, and to hold my tongue about it." "Fifty doubloons--a trifle over fifty pounds sterling!" exclaimed Jack, in comic disgust. "Is that all that my life is worth to your employer?" "He told me that it was the utmost he could afford to give, Senor; and it was quite enough to tempt me. Why, were I to work all my life at my trade as a carrier, I could never hope to save fifty doubloons, nay, nor the fourth part of that sum. It is not so very long ago that I risked my life constantly as a contrabandista, for a profit of one-fifth of that amount." "Well, Antonio," said Carlos, "according to your own showing you have a very elastic conscience, which you appear to have made pretty completely subservient to your own interests. Now, I suppose you know what will happen to you if we hand you over to the authorities?" "Yes, Senor," answered the ruffian. "I shall probably be sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour; which sentence will be commuted to one month, if I behave myself, as I shall, of course." "Six months' hard labour?" exclaimed Carlos incredulously. "You are strangely mistaken, friend. You are far more likely to get ten years' penal servitude in Africa. Attempted murder is a crime that is usually punished very severely." "Usually--yes," assented the prisoner. "But that is when one attempts to murder a Spaniard. This muchacho, however, is English; and nobody in Cuba is just now likely to trouble himself very much over the attempted murder of an Englishman. Besides, I have received a definite promise that, if caught, I shall be very leniently treated." "Oh, you have, have you?" exclaimed Carlos, in a tone that seemed to indicate that he was beginning to see daylight. "That seems to point to the fact that your employer is a man possessing a considerable amount of influence with the authorities. But I fancy he must have entirely forgotten the British Consul at Havana. Does he, or do you, imagine for a moment that that gentleman will permit any tampering with justice where one of his countrymen is concerned? Make no mistake about that, my friend! So surely as you are brought to trial, so surely may you rely upon receiving the maximum amount of punishment for your crime." "Santa Maria!" gasped Panza. "I had forgotten that." "I suspected as much," answered Carlos. "Now, if Senor Singleton here should chance to be disposed to be merciful, to the extent of permitting you to go free, would you be willing in return to swear upon that crucifix which I see you wear round your neck that you will make no further attempt upon his life; and also to disclose the name of your employer?" "That would be no good, Senor," said Panza. "My employer warned me that, should I attempt to betray him, he would simply deny every word I might say; and who would take the word of a suspected contrabandista against that of a--well, a Spaniard of high position? It is true that the judge might shrewdly suspect that there was a considerable amount of truth in my story; but he would be very careful to conceal any such suspicion, I assure you." "It thus appears that your employer has taken the utmost care to shield himself behind you, and leave you to bear the brunt of whatever may befall," exclaimed Carlos. "But you have not replied to my question yet. I asked you whether, in the event of Senor Singleton permitting you to go free and unpunished, you would swear never again to lift your hand against him; and also to disclose the name of your employer. As a matter of fact, I know it already; but it would of course be more satisfactory to have an explicit statement from you." "If you know the man, as you say, Senor, you will also know that it will not be of the slightest use to charge him with complicity in this," answered Panza. "Possibly not," agreed Carlos. "Yet it would enable us to give Senor Alvaros a hint that his machinations are known, and that henceforth we shall be on our guard against them." "Very well, Senor," agreed the would-be assassin. "You have named the man who employed me; it is therefore evident that you know a great deal more about this affair--whatever it may be--than he suspects, so it is useless for me to attempt to keep the secret from you. Senor Alvaros is indeed the man who employed me; but I am not going to be such a fool as to go back and tell him that I have failed. I insisted upon receiving payment in advance, and there is therefore no need for me to see him again; I shall consequently leave Pinar del Rio, and resume my former occupation of contrabandista. With Senor Alvaros' fifty doubloons I can see my way to earn a very comfortable living as a smuggler; and if you, Senor, should at any time require my services in that capacity--or any other, for that matter--I shall be pleased to do my utmost to afford you complete satisfaction." "Very well, I will remember," said Carlos, laughing heartily at the man's cool impudence. "But you have not yet taken the oath, you know, and you must do that before we can release you." Without a word of objection the Spaniard took the small bronze crucifix in his hand, bowed his head reverently as he pressed it to his lips, and then, holding it aloft before him, exclaimed: "I swear upon this emblem of our redemption, and by all my hopes of salvation, that I will never again attempt to take the life of the young Englishman, if he will be so generous as to allow me to go free and unpunished for what I have already done." "Right, that will do! You are free to go, now, as soon as you please. Open the door, Milsom, and let him pass," said Jack. "Mil gracias y buenas noches, Senor," exclaimed Panza as he strode toward the door. "One word before I go, caballeros; beware of Senor Alvaros, for he bears no love for either of you." And he passed into the night and the darkness. "Well," exclaimed Milsom, "I have met with some queer folk in my time, but that chap breaks the record for cool impudence! Spanish is not my strong point, but, if I understood him aright, after calmly acknowledging that he had been hired to murder our friend Jack, here, he with equal calmness informs you that if you should at any time want a similar job done, he will be pleased to undertake it, and will do his best to afford you complete satisfaction! `Murders of the most barbarous description undertaken, and executed with promptitude and dispatch', eh? By Jove, this is an interesting country!" Carlos laughed rather bitterly. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" he responded. "And it has come to this under Spanish rule. That fellow knew perfectly well that, in accepting Alvaros' commission, he was incurring absolutely no risks whatever, beyond such small personal danger as was involved in his attack upon a sleeping man, and that is not much, as a rule. But the incident goes to show what a vindictive and unscrupulous scoundrel that fellow Alvaros is. I must tell the Padre about it to-morrow, for it is evident that the man means mischief, and we must all be on our guard. The worst of it is that we can take no overt steps in the matter; for, as our friend Panza hinted, if we were to go to the authorities with a statement of what has occurred, and lodge a complaint against Alvaros, we should only be laughed at. The Spanish Government protects its own people pretty effectually; but Cubans and foreigners have to take care of themselves as best they can." "Nevertheless," said Milsom, "I should advise Jack to put the matter into the hands of our Consul at Havana, who is not at all the sort of fellow to stand any nonsense. He would doubtless communicate promptly with the Capitan-General, informing him of what has happened, and giving him very clearly to understand that he will be held responsible if, after receiving such information, anything is allowed to happen to Jack." "Yes," assented Carlos, "that might be a good plan, perhaps. But I would suggest that you decide upon nothing until we have had a talk with the Padre to-morrow. Let us hear, first, what he thinks of the affair. Meanwhile, Jack, I think you need not apprehend any further molestation to-night, and certainly none from Panza; after swearing that oath he will not again raise his hand against you. But, to make assurance doubly sure, I will rouse Pedro and instruct him to mount guard under the veranda for the remainder of the night, and to turn loose the two bloodhounds. Then woe betide any stranger who attempts to approach the house!" On the following morning, after first breakfast, Carlos and Jack followed Don Hermoso into his office, where the former informed his father of the incident of the preceding night, and of Milsom's suggestion that the matter should be placed in the hands of the English Consul, to be dealt with as that official might deem fit. Don Hermoso was of course, as might be expected, most indignant at the outrage, and was at first very strongly disposed to make a personal matter of it by lodging a formal complaint with the Capitan-General against Alvaros; but after listening to all that his son and Jack had to say he finally allowed himself to be dissuaded from taking so decisive a step, especially as he fully shared their doubts as to its effectiveness: but he cordially approved of Milsom's suggestion that the affair should be laid before the English Consul, and the final result of the talk was that Jack and Carlos forthwith rode into Pinar del Rio, and from thence took train to Havana, where they arrived rather late in the afternoon, yet still early enough to catch the Consul ere he left his office for the day. This official gave the two young men a cordial welcome, and listened to Jack's story with the utmost attention, his mouth setting ever more firmly and the frown upon his brow lowering ever more darkly as the story proceeded. When at length it was finished he said: "I have heard of this man Alvaros before, but never any good of him. Yet I believe he stands well with the Capitan-General. But of course I shall not allow that to influence me; one of my duties here is to protect British subjects, and I intend to do it. It is rather unfortunate, Mr Singleton, that you should have chosen this particular period for your visit to Cuba, for I may tell you--if you don't happen to know it already--that foreigners of all kinds, and particularly Americans and English, are looked upon with scant favour by the Spaniards just now, as the latter suspect them of favouring the aspirations of the Cubans toward independence. And that reminds me that the Spaniards somehow got hold of the notion that you were bringing out a cargo of contraband of war for the Cuban insurgents. I suppose there is no truth in that story, is there?" Jack had been expecting some such question as this, sooner or later, and was fully prepared for it. He had made up his mind that to tell the Consul the whole truth of the matter would only be to place that official in an extremely embarrassing position, so he answered, with a laugh: "They took good care to test the truth of the story for themselves by sending out a torpedo boat to accompany us from Key West and see that we did not land anything of the kind. But something went wrong with her-- she apparently broke down--and we left her. But, to make assurance doubly sure, they also sent out a gunboat which--quite unlawfully, in my opinion--stopped us on the high seas, and informed us that we were all prisoners." Then Jack went on to relate in full detail all the occurrences of that afternoon--how Milsom had refused to surrender the yacht, and had threatened to sink the gunboat if force were attempted, and how he, Jack, had subsequently insisted upon the yacht being searched, and how nothing had been found, to the intense disappointment and chagrin of the Spanish officers, from whom he had exacted an ample apology. The Consul's brow cleared, and he laughed heartily as Jack described in graphic language the entire incident, from beginning to end; and when the story was ended he was pleased to express a somewhat qualified approval of the Englishmen's behaviour. "As a matter of fact," he said, "the whole affair was in the highest degree irregular. On the one hand, the Spaniards had no business to stop you on the high seas, whatever their suspicions may have been; and in so doing they exceeded their rights and laid themselves open to the rebuff which you gave them. On the other hand, although I do not blame you altogether for your somewhat high-handed action in offering resistance to their attempted seizure of your vessel, it would have been more politic on your part to have submitted, and then placed the whole affair in my hands. I would have seen to it that no harm befell you; and I would also have exacted from the Government an ample apology and adequate compensation for the outrage. However, that is all past and done with; but I have no doubt you will be quite able to follow me when I point out to you that such an incident is, in itself, quite sufficient to render you a somewhat unpopular personage with the Spanish officials, and to cause them to regard with scarcely veiled disapproval your avowed intention to prolong your visit to the island. I tell you candidly that you must be quite prepared to have your stay in Cuba rendered as unpleasant as it can possibly be made; and I ought to advise you to make that stay as brief as possible. But if you choose to remain I will do my utmost to protect you; and I can guarantee you freedom from official interference so long as you abstain from meddling with politics. But of course I cannot insure you against private malignity, such as that of this fellow Alvaros; the utmost that I can promise is that, should anything untoward happen to you, I will exact ample reparation. I shall make it my business to call upon the Capitan-General to-morrow, and will not only lay the whole case before him, but will also insist upon his taking some steps to mark his disapproval of Captain Alvaros' peculiar methods of venting his personal spite. And now, since you cannot possibly get back to Senor Montijo's place to-night, I think perhaps you cannot do better than come home with me; I can put you both up quite easily." Thus it was accordingly arranged; and after dinner their genial host took the two young men out and showed them something of the town of Havana, which was very interesting to Jack, although less so to Carlos, who was of course tolerably familiar with the place. They also took the opportunity to pay a flying visit to the _Thetis_, which they found moored just off the custom-house, still with four customs officers on board; but the other precaution mentioned by Milsom had been relaxed, for it was gradually being borne in upon the minds of the Spanish officials that there was nothing about the ship, or about the behaviour of her people, to justify their suspicions. Everything was found quite right on board her: Perkins took care to keep everybody on the alert, a strict anchor watch was maintained every night, to guard against any possible attempt to maliciously damage the ship; and it appeared that, before leaving her, Milsom had taken care to have the bunkers filled to their utmost capacity, while Macintyre, the chief engineer, after having had the boilers thoroughly cleaned, had caused them to be filled with fresh water in readiness to get up steam at a moment's notice. On the following morning the Consul called upon the Capitan-General, taking the two lads with him, and lodged a formal, but none the less vigorous, complaint respecting the outrage which had been offered to a British subject--Jack, to wit--by one of his officers. The Capitan- General, who was a fine, stately, white-haired man, listened with the most courteous attention to what the two Englishmen had to say, and then, with equal courtesy, proceeded to pooh-pooh the whole story, insisting upon the exceeding unlikelihood of any officer of Captain Alvaros' standing in the Spanish service stooping to so degrading and cowardly a step as that of hiring an assassin to "remove" an almost total stranger from his path. He dwelt very strongly upon the sterling worth of Senor Alvaros' character, and the very high esteem in which that gentleman was held by all who enjoyed the privilege of his acquaintance; and mildly reproached the Englishmen for being so credulous as to believe the unsupported story of such an unmitigated ruffian as Panza had appeared to be. The fact that the character of a Spanish officer and gentleman could be so easily smirched was dwelt upon by him at some length, but more in sorrow than in anger; and he did not omit to draw the especial attention of his visitors to the important fact that, even according to their own showing, there was no sufficient motive to induce Senor Alvaros to engage in such a very reprehensible undertaking. It was intensely amusing to Jack, and scarcely less so to Carlos, to observe the sympathetic courtesy with which the English Consul listened to all this rigmarole, which, from his manner, one might have believed to have been absolutely convincing--until he remarked, in turn: "Well, my dear General, after all has been said, one fact remains; which is, that Senor Singleton's life has been attempted by a man whom he never saw before, and who could therefore have had no personal animus against him. The obvious inference therefore is that he was hired by someone to make the attempt; and he asserts that the man who hired him was Senor Alvaros. Therefore, notwithstanding all that you have said, if anything further of an untoward nature should happen to Senor Singleton, I warn you that very grave suspicion will attach to Senor Alvaros, and I shall be compelled to insist upon the most stringent enquiry being made into the matter. I would therefore suggest--if you will pardon me for taking so great a liberty--that Senor Alvaros should be made aware of all the circumstances of the case; and that a hint should be given him of the extreme necessity for the utmost circumspection on his part. And now, General, I must offer you my most sincere apologies for having occupied so much of your valuable time, and tender you my warmest thanks for the great patience and courtesy with which you have listened to what I have had to say. Good-morning!" CHAPTER NINE. AN URGENT APPEAL FOR HELP. The two young men reached the casa Montijo, that afternoon, in just nice time to partake of "afternoon tea", which function had promptly been adopted by Senora Montijo and her daughter upon the return of Don Hermoso and Carlos from England, as the very latest and most up-to-date institution, and absolutely indispensable in every household having the slightest pretensions to be considered as belonging to polite society. They related, _in extenso_, the result of their visit to Havana, at which no one was surprised, since everything had happened precisely as had been expected; but all were agreed that, after the very strong representations made by the English Consul, Jack need have very little apprehension of further annoyance from Alvaros. Then Singleton mentioned their impromptu visit to the yacht, and expressed to Milsom his great satisfaction at the state in which he had found both the vessel and her crew; and this, in turn, led to a further discussion of Jack's proposal that the entire family should indulge in a cruise, instead of allowing the craft to remain idle in harbour, fouling her bottom with weed, and impairing the efficiency of her crew. It now appeared that the original suggestion had very powerfully appealed to the imagination of the ladies, who had kept it pretty persistently before Don Hermoso, until he, worthy man, finding nothing very convincing to advance against it, had been gradually brought into a frame of mind that needed very little further persuasion to induce him to give it his willing assent. Accordingly, before the evening was over, the matter had been gone into in earnest, and arrangements completed for a start in about a week's time; with the result that Milsom set out for Havana immediately after first breakfast on the following morning, for the purpose of making preparations. The week passed, and the arrangements of the family had so far advanced that their heavy baggage, dispatched in advance, was actually on its way to Havana, for shipment on board the yacht, and was to be followed by the family and Jack on the following day, when toward the end of the afternoon a horseman dashed up to the door of the house, his clothing thick with dust and his horse reeking with sweat, and demanded instant audience with Senor Montijo on business of the utmost importance; and his demand was enforced by the utterance of a password which secured his prompt admission, Don Hermoso being at the moment engaged in his office, where he was completing with his overseer the final arrangements to be observed in his absence. Ten minutes later Don Hermoso sent a servant in search of Jack and Carlos, who, with Dona Isolda, had gone for a stroll up the ravine; and when the two young men, having been found, entered Don Hermoso's sanctum they discovered him in close conference with the aforesaid dust-stained stranger, who proved to be a Cuban half-breed named Jorge Carnero. This man, Don Hermoso explained, was the bearer of a letter from Senor Marti, the leader of the revolutionary movement in Cuba, calling upon Don Hermoso to assist him in a serious difficulty that had most unexpectedly arisen. It appeared, according to Marti's letter, that the Junta established in New York had, with the assistance of certain rich and sympathetic Americans, collected an enormous quantity of arms, ammunition, and stores of every description, which they had shipped on board a shallow-draught steamer named the _James B. Potter_, with the intention of having them landed in Mulata Bay, some fourteen miles to the westward of Bahia Honda. Everything had gone admirably with the arrangements, up to a certain point: the steamer had succeeded in getting to sea without being stopped; a pilot was on board who was perfectly acquainted with the dangerous coast where the landing was to be effected; and every possible contingency in connection with the landing and prompt conveyance inland of the munitions had been provided for, when, at the very last moment, it had been discovered that the Spanish authorities were perfectly aware of the whole scheme, and had laid their plans for a torpedo boat to pounce upon the ship at the very moment when, two days later, the steamer would appear off the coast and enter the bay at which the landing of the munitions was to be effected. The messenger, Jorge Carnero--whose absolute fidelity to the cause of Free Cuba Marti guaranteed--was the man who had discovered the Spaniards' knowledge of the expedition and their arrangement for quashing it at the psychological moment; and he had been sent on to Montijo, as bearer of Marti's letter asking for help, in order that he might personally give Don Hermoso all the information possible. Marti's only hope was that Senor Montijo might be able to dispatch his yacht to intercept the _James B. Potter_, and warn her of the danger that lay ahead, thus saving the ship and cargo from what must otherwise be inevitable capture. "That," said Don Hermoso, in conclusion, "is the story, Jack. The question now is: Can you devise any plan by which this terrible disaster to our cause may be averted, and the cargo saved to us?" "When, do you say, is this steamer timed to arrive in Mulata Bay?" demanded Jack. Don Hermoso referred to Senor Marti's letter, and then replied: "At mid- day, on the day after to-morrow." "Ah!" said Jack. "That does not allow us very much time, does it? Of course, by leaving here this evening, and spending the night in Pinar del Rio--by which means we could catch the first train to Havana to- morrow morning--we should be enabled to get to sea in very good time to intercept the _James B. Potter_ somewhere in the Strait of Florida; and it may be advisable for us to arrange our plans accordingly, although I am afraid our proceeding to sea to-morrow will revive and greatly strengthen all the Spaniards' former suspicions of us, especially if the _James B. Potter_ should afterwards fail to turn up at her rendezvous at the appointed time. Still, if necessary, we must risk that, rather than permit the ship and cargo to be captured. Do you happen to know where the torpedo boat is lying that is to effect the capture?" he demanded, turning to Carnero. "Yes, Senor," answered Carnero; "she is torpedo boat Number 19, and she is lying in Havana harbour, from which she is to sally forth at the proper moment and conceal herself behind one of the cays lying just to the westward of Mulata Bay, where she will await the approach of the American ship." "A very pretty scheme, and one that is exceedingly likely to succeed--if we do not interfere," commented Jack. "Are there any other Government vessels in Havana harbour?" he asked, turning again to Carnero. "Yes, Senor, certainly," answered Carnero. "There are two others: the _Tiburon_ gunboat, and the cruiser _Infanta Isabel_." "Any steam tugs, or craft of any kind, capable of taking a few soldiers on board and running them round to Mulata Bay?" demanded Jack. "Yes, Senor," answered Carnero, "there is the _Ballena_; but she is at present hauled up on the slips for repairs, and her boiler is out, so she need not be considered." "And are those which you have named all that the Government has at its disposal?" persisted Jack. "Yes, Senor," answered Carnero. "There are, of course, trading steamers sailing out of Havana, which the Government might requisition, in case of need; but--now, let me consider--yes, it happens that on the day after to-morrow not a single steamer will be in port; and the first that may be expected is due to arrive at midnight of that day." "Good!" exclaimed Jack. "Then I think I can see my way. We will do better than go out to intercept the American, Don Hermoso; we will render it impossible for either of those three Government craft to go out of harbour on that day. But when the authorities find their three steamers disabled, they may take it into their heads to throw a few soldiers on board a sailing craft of some sort and send her out to endeavour to capture the _James B. Potter_; therefore you had better send word to the people who are to receive the goods that, while they need not fear a warship of any kind, they had better be prepared to fight a few soldiers, if necessary." "Certainly, that can be managed without difficulty," answered Don Hermoso. "But let us hear your plan, Jack. Our friend Carnero, here, is absolutely trustworthy, therefore you may speak without reserve before him; and if he knows what we intend to do, he will be able to tell others, who will know just what is to happen, and what they will have to provide for." "Very well," said Jack. "This is my plan. You will remember how neatly we doctored the torpedo boat that followed us to sea from Key West? Well, I simply propose to treat the three Government craft in Havana harbour in the same way, only more so. That is to say, I propose, either by fouling their propellers or otherwise, to prevent them from going to sea at all on that day, or until their propellers are cleared; and that, I think, ought to give the American ship time to run in, discharge her cargo, and get to sea again without molestation. But, in order to do this, it will be necessary that we--or at all events I-- should go into Pinar del Rio to-night, in order to catch either the last train to-night or the first train to-morrow to Havana. Perhaps it will look less suspicious if I go alone to-night and you follow on at your leisure to-morrow." "If you are particularly anxious to reach Havana to-night, Senor, it can be done," exclaimed Carnero. "I know a short cut from here that will take us to Pinar within the hour, if you are a good horseman. But, to do it, we must start almost at once." "I am ready now," said Jack, "and as to horsemanship--well, I have hunted over some pretty stiff country in England, which ought to be good enough. Carlos, old man, will you see to bringing along my bag with you to-morrow?" "The Padre will, Jack, of course; but, as for me, I go with you to- night, for I have a notion that I can be useful in the carrying out of this scheme of yours. What say you, Padre?" "I say, go, by all means, my son, if Jack thinks that you will be of the slightest use to him," answered Don Hermoso. "As for your bags, and so on, I will of course take care that they shall go forward with us to- morrow." "Very well, then," said Jack, "in that case let Carlos go with me, for I cannot tell but that we may be glad enough to have him with us during our operations to-morrow. And now I suppose we had better see about making a start. What about horses, Carlos?" "I will go and give instructions to have them saddled forthwith," answered the latter; and he rose and went out to the patio, Jack meanwhile making a few final arrangements as to the hour and place of meeting on the morrow in Havana. Five minutes later the horses were brought round to the front of the house, and the young men, having meanwhile said a word or two of explanation to the ladies and bidden them temporarily adieu, mounted, and, accompanied by Carnero as guide, cantered off down the long path leading to the main road. But ere they reached this their guide turned off to the right, and, following a path that led through the tobacco fields, took them over the fence that formed one of the boundaries of Don Hermoso's property, and the party found themselves in the open country, over which Carnero led them in a bee-line, taking brooks, watercourses, and obstructions of various kinds as they came. The pace of the riders was by no means rapid, nothing more than a brisk canter, in fact, but, the route taken being practically the shortest possible distance between Senor Montijo's hacienda and Pinar del Rio, the journey was accomplished in little over an hour; and when at length they pulled up at the railway station they had a good four minutes in hand. "All right, Senores!" said Carnero, as he received the bridles of the two horses, "I will see that the nags are properly rubbed down and attended to, and that they shall be in readiness to go back with the coach and the servants to-morrow. Adios, Senores; luck go with you!" The clocks in the city were just striking ten when, after a somewhat tedious journey, the train clattered and jolted into the Western Station at Havana; and, jumping out, the lads chartered a volante--the local hansom, which is an open vehicle, mounted upon a pair of enormously high wheels, and fitted with such long shafts that it can only be turned with the utmost difficulty in the narrow streets--and drove down to the wharf, where they hired a shore boat to take them off to the yacht, which was lying moored to a pair of the trunk buoys in the harbour. The ships' bells were chiming "five", that is to say, half-past ten, as the boat, after having been challenged by the anchor watch, swept alongside the _Thetis's_ gangway ladder, and the two young men ascended to the deck. Somewhat to their surprise, they found Milsom on board; for, as they were not expected until the following day, they would not have been at all astonished to learn that the skipper was ashore, amusing himself at the theatre, or elsewhere. But Milsom explained that he had had enough of Havana: he had been to the theatre twice, and considered that it was not a patch upon the Alhambra in Leicester Square at home; he had been to the Cathedral, and had been shown the tomb of Christopher Columbus--the genuineness of which he greatly doubted; he had sauntered in the Alameda in the evenings, listening to the military bands, of which he thought nothing, and trying to discover a Spanish girl that could hold a candle to one of our own wholesome, handsome English lasses, and had failed; and he had also tried, and had failed, to determine the precise number of separate and distinct odours--"stinks", he called them--which go to make up the characteristic smell of Havana. From all of which it will be gathered that the worthy man, with the restlessness characteristic of the sailor, was beginning to weary of his inactivity--although during the past week he had been anything but inactive, it may be mentioned--and was pining for something fresh in the way of excitement. It appeared that, finding himself with spare time on his hands notwithstanding his preparation of the yacht for the projected trip, he had amused himself by designing an elaborate disguise for the craft, under the impression that a time might very possibly arrive when such a disguise would be found exceedingly useful; and he proudly produced a sketch of the said disguise which, when unfolded before the astonished gaze of the two young men, showed the _Thetis_ transmogrified into something resembling a two-funnelled torpedo gunboat, with ram stem and round, spoon-shaped stern all complete. It was a contraption most ingeniously built up of wood and canvas by the joint efforts and skill of Milsom, Macintyre, and the carpenter; and was so handily contrived that, according to the statement of its inventor or designer, given fine weather and smooth water for four hours, the vessel's appearance could be so completely changed that "her own mother wouldn't know her." Having duly admired Milsom's ingenuity, Jack explained in detail the reason why he and Carlos had advanced the time of their arrival, and disclosed his scheme for the temporary disablement of the three men-o'- war in the harbour, into which scheme Milsom entered with the utmost gusto, even going to the length of rousing poor Macintyre out of his berth and ruthlessly breaking in upon his beauty sleep, in order that the parties might have the benefit of the chief engineer's advice and assistance. And when at length the little band of conspirators broke up at midnight and turned in, the plan of campaign had been arranged, down to the last detail. After all, there was not very much to be done in the way of preparation; a couple of hours' work next day by Macintyre and his crew at the portable forge down in the stokehold, and everything was ready for the work which was to commence as soon as possible after ten o'clock that night. There was only one difficulty that still remained to be overcome, and that was the evading of the vigilance of the custom-house officers, who still remained on board the yacht. It is true that that vigilance had been very greatly relaxed of late, since it had been borne in upon even their limited intelligence that nothing remotely resembling an attempt to smuggle anything ashore had ever been made; still, it would be awkward in the extreme if one or more of them should happen to be troubled with insomnia on that particular night, and elect to pass the sleepless hours on deck: but Don Hermoso might be trusted to attend to that matter when he should arrive on board about four o'clock, or a little after, as he did, accompanied by Senora Montijo and Dona Isolda. The difficulty was explained to Don Hermoso during the progress of afternoon tea, which refreshment was partaken of on the top of the deck- house that adjoined the navigating bridge of the vessel; and after the meal was over, Carlos went ashore in the steam pinnace and brought off a small phial of liquid that looked and tasted like water. Then, the fact having been elicited from the chief steward that the custom-house officers had evinced a very marked preference for whisky over the aguardiente of their native land, a bottle of the former was opened and, half a wineglassful of the spirit having been poured from the bottle, a like quantity of the liquid from the phial was substituted for it, the cork replaced, and the bottle well shaken. It was then sent forward to the _empleados de la aduana_ for their especial use, with the compliments of Don Hermoso, that they might drink his health and that of his family, and wish them a pleasant voyage, on this their last night on board, since the yacht would, weather permitting, go to sea some time on the morrow. Half an hour later the steward, with a knowing grin, reported to Milsom that the bottle was already three-parts empty. "That is all right," commented Don Hermoso, when the statement was passed on to him; "the gentlemen of the customs will not be troubled with sleeplessness to-night!" Nor were they; for four bells in the first watch had scarcely struck when, with many yawns, they retired below and--those who were supposed to be on watch as well as those who were off--in ten minutes were sleeping like logs. "Now is our time, Phil, before the moon rises," exclaimed Jack, as soon as the report of the custom-house officers' retirement had been brought aft by the chief steward. "It is important to get the submarine into the water unobserved; but, that done, we can wait until midnight, or even later, before commencing operations. By that time everybody will have turned in; and moreover we shall have the light of the moon to help us." Accordingly, the canvas cover was removed from the particular boat in which the small submarine was hidden, and the mischievous little toy was carefully hoisted out, lowered into the water, submerged until only the top of her diminutive conning tower showed above water, and then effectually concealed by being moored to the boat boom, between the gig and the steam pinnace. Then advantage was taken of the darkness to pass down into her everything that had been prepared for the success of the forthcoming enterprise; after which everybody turned in, except Carlos, who undertook to keep a watch on deck until everything should seem sufficiently quiet in the harbour to admit of the adventurers beginning their work without incurring undue risk of detection. At length two bells in the middle watch (one o'clock) pealed out from the various ships in the harbour; the moon, just past the full, was riding high in the cloudless sky and affording quite as much light as the adventurers desired; and not a sound was to be heard save the faint moan of the wind in the rigging of the various craft in the harbour and the lap of the water alongside: everybody seemed to have gone to bed, except the anchor watch on board the men-o'-war--and they would probably lie down and endeavour to snatch a cat-nap until the moment should come round to again strike the bell. Carlos therefore thought the time propitious; and, treading noiselessly in his rubber-soled deck shoes, went below and quietly called Jack, Milsom, and Macintyre. Macintyre was the first of the trio to appear on deck, for, his business being in the interior of the boat, he had no special dress to don; the pyjama suit in which he had been sleeping would serve as well as any other, and he accordingly wore it. Walking forward with bare feet, he slung himself over the rail, lay out on the boom, and, sliding down the painter of the steam pinnace, got on board that craft--as a "blind" to anyone who might perchance happen to have noticed his movements--and from thence surreptitiously transferred himself to the interior of the submarine--having already cast the boat adrift--which he immediately sealed by fastening down the hood of the little conning tower. Then he set the electric air-pump going, in order to store up for himself a supply of air sufficient to last until the return of the boat. And while this was doing he quietly dropped the boat astern until she lay in the deep shadow cast by the overhanging counter of the yacht, where the other two could board her without the slightest risk of being seen. Some ten minutes later Jack and Milsom appeared on deck, each attired in an improved Fleuss diving dress, by the use of which the necessity for air-pumps and pipes was done away with. Each man wore a long, stout, double-edged dagger in a sheath attached to his belt, as a protection against possible attacks by sharks, with which the waters of the harbour are known to swarm; while Milsom bore, in addition, a formidable lance for the same purpose, or, rather, for the purpose of protecting Jack while the latter worked. And each man wore, attached to his wrist by a lanyard, a small, light steel bar, about four inches long, to enable him to communicate with his companion--by means of the Morse code--by the simple process of tapping on his helmet. They also carried, attached to their belts, small but very powerful electric lanterns, the light of which they could switch on and off at will, to enable them to see what they were about. They had made all their arrangements during the previous day, and had exchanged a few brief last words just before screwing in the front glasses of their helmets. Each therefore knew exactly what he and his companion had to do, and they now accordingly proceeded straight aft, found the Jacob's ladder hanging over the yacht's stern, and by it descended to the submarine, Milsom going first and stationing himself on the boat's deck just abaft the conning tower, while Jack took the corresponding place on the fore side. The weight of the two men was sufficient to just submerge the boat and bury them to their chins when sitting down, while they could disappear altogether by lying flat on the deck. The degree of submersion, therefore, was just right for the beginning of the adventure, and Jack accordingly signalled Macintyre, by means of an electric button, first to back away from the yacht, and then to go ahead dead slow, guiding him at the same time how to steer by means of another button. The torpedo boat, being the most formidable of the three craft, was selected as the first to be operated upon, and the submarine was accordingly headed for her. The water of Havana harbour is unspeakably foul, the sewers of the town discharging into it, and it is almost opaque with the quantity of matter of various kinds that it holds in suspension; it was therefore necessary for the submarine to approach the torpedo boat pretty closely ere sinking any deeper, or it would have been difficult for the adventurers to find their prey in the muddy water, but they managed excellently, approaching within ten yards without being detected. Then Jack, unwilling to court failure by running any unnecessary risks, gave the order to sink slowly, at the same time turning on his electric lamp. Another moment, and he saw the torpedo boat's stern and propeller before him, and the submarine, magnificently managed by Macintyre, who had worked her in all her previous trials, drew gently up until she stopped motionless in such a position that Jack could do just what he wanted. He had decided not to attempt to remove the propeller in this case, lest the violent exertion required to start the nut should cause him to overbalance and fall to the bottom of the harbour, in which case he would inevitably be lost in the deep layer of foul mud which formed the harbour bottom. He therefore took a length of stout chain, already prepared for the purpose, and, having first carefully wound it round the three blades of the boat's propeller, passed the loose ends round the keel bar and rudder where, having drawn them as tight as he and Milsom could draw them, he shackled them together, thus rendering it impossible to move the boat until the chain had been found and taken off. The whole job occupied them a bare quarter of an hour, and could have been done in less had it not been for the hindrance which they experienced from the fish, which--sharks luckily excepted--attracted by their lamps, swarmed round them so persistently that it was almost impossible to do any work for the obstruction of them. The cruiser was the next craft to be dealt with, and, after her, the gunboat; the whole operation of disabling the three vessels being accomplished with almost ludicrous ease in about an hour and a quarter: after which the adventurers returned to the yacht and hoisted in the submarine, stowing her away and concealing her in the quarter boat, without, so far as they were aware, having attracted the attention of a single soul. CHAPTER TEN. THE ACT OF "CERTAIN VERY CLEVER CONSPIRATORS." When, on the following morning, the saloon party on board the _Thetis_ mustered for breakfast beneath the awning which sheltered the top of the deck-house from the too-ardent rays of the sun, they found that their alfresco breakfast-room commanded an uninterrupted and most charming view of the whole of Havana harbour, with the picturesque old town stretching along the waterside on their port hand. It was at that moment a dead calm, for the sea breeze had not yet set in, and the mirrorlike surface of the water reflected a perfect picture of the various craft dotted about the harbour, and of the buildings ashore, already blazing in the dazzling light of the unclouded sun. The business of the day had hardly begun; the ferryboats to Regla were loaded with passengers; boats conveying meat, vegetables, fruit, and fish to the shipping were lazily rippling through the scum that coated the surface of the water; belated fishermen were sweeping their crazy- looking craft out to sea; and a thin column of brown smoke was rising vertically into the motionless air from the funnel of torpedo boat Number 19, which was evidently getting up steam in good time to go in search of the _James B. Potter_. But for the awning over their heads the party would also have seen that a thin, feathery film of smoke was curling upward from the cream-coloured funnel of their own craft; for although it had been decided not to go to sea until the afternoon, Jack had given instructions to have steam for ten o'clock, so as to be prepared for any emergency. The party dawdled over breakfast, the ladies in particular finding so much pleasure in their unwonted surroundings that they could scarcely find time to eat because of the many novel incidents that were continually demanding their attention. Moreover, they were in the enviable condition of people who were in no hurry: their preparations were all complete; nothing remained to be done or to worry about; they were embarked upon a pleasure excursion, and part of the pleasure was to sit still and gaze upon the increasing animation of the charming picture that unfolded itself around them. When they were tired of gazing, a word was all that would be necessary to provide them with a change of scene; and meanwhile Jack was entertaining them all with a humorous account of the adventures of himself and Milsom during the small hours of the morning. Milsom, having already broken his fast, had taken the steam pinnace and gone ashore to the custom-house (which had once been a church) in order to procure his clearance papers. By the time that he had finished his business and come off again, breakfast was over, the stewards were clearing away the table and its equipage, and the movements of the torpedo boat's crew were becoming interesting. A dense cloud of black smoke was by this time pouring from the craft's funnel and driving over the town with the rapidly increasing sea breeze, and presently a small flicker of steam appeared at the top of her waste pipe, and a minute or two later it was seen that the craft was getting her anchor. "Ah," remarked Jack to Senorita Isolda, "the fun is just about to begin!" And so it was. The anchor, thickly coated with foul, evil-smelling, black mud, rose slowly out of the water; and as the cleansing hose was turned upon it the officer on the bridge was seen to lay his hand upon the engine-room telegraph and push the handle a little way forward. Don Hermoso, who, despite all Jack's assurances, felt terribly anxious lest, after all, something should at the last moment go wrong, looked fearfully at the little craft's stern, expecting every instant to see the foaming whirl of water there which would proclaim that the boat's propeller was working; but, save for a very slight momentary disturbance of the scummy surface, there was no result, and presently a very excited individual was seen to emerge from the boat's engine-room hatch and rush up on to the bridge, where he instantly plunged into a violently gesticulatory conversation with the other occupant of the structure. Then the pair left the bridge, hurried aft, and disappeared below. Meanwhile the boat was adrift, and presently, under the influence of the fast-freshening breeze, she drove athwart-hawse of a slashing American schooner, the stout bowsprit of which neatly brought the boat's funnel down on deck, to the accompaniment of a storm of abuse and imprecations from the American skipper and mate. Then, swinging round and gathering sternway, the boat drifted clear, losing her mast also in the process, after which, somebody on board having recovered his presence of mind, her anchor was let go again, and she swung to the wind. That this interesting little incident had not passed unnoticed was presently made manifest by the excited flourishings and gesticulations of the semaphore upon the bridge of the cruiser, to which the torpedo boat's semaphore duly made reply. Then a boat was lowered from the latter craft, and two officers--presumably her commander and her chief engineer--jumped into her stern-sheets and were pulled toward the cruiser. Some ten minutes later the same boat pushed off again and returned to her parent craft, while the semaphore on board the cruiser once more awakened into frenzied activity, its message being this time addressed to the gunboat, as could be deduced from the answering nourishes of that vessel's instrument. The conversation lasted for quite a considerable time; and long ere it was at an end dense clouds of black smoke were pouring out of the funnel of Jack's old friend, the _Tiburon_. Now, although all these happenings were being watched with the most absorbing interest from the top of the _Thetis's_ deck-house, it must not be supposed that the watching was conducted in an obtrusive or ostentatious manner; very far from it. The occupants of that "coign of vantage", to whom Milsom was now added, were, so far as the ordinary observer was concerned, lounging indolently in their several basket chairs, reading, smoking, and chatting together, and apparently giving not a thought to anything that was happening outside the bulwarks of their own ship, save when, now and then, one of them would lift a pair of binoculars and bring them to bear upon some object ashore, ultimately sweeping the entire horizon with them, and pausing for a moment to watch this or that before laying them down again. Nobody, even if watching the party continuously, would, from their actions, have suspected them of taking the smallest interest in the doings of the Spanish Government vessels. Yet there was not a movement on board either the cruiser or the gunboat--the torpedo boat was _hors de combat_ and of no further interest to them--that was not being intensely watched by Milsom and Jack; and presently the latter turned to Carlos and enquired: "Got a pencil and paper about you, old chap?" "Yes," answered Carlos; "I have my pocket-book. Why?" "Then just stand by to jot down such letters as I may call out to you. That gunboat's semaphore is at work again, and I feel curious to know what it is that she wants to say. Ah! just so; it is the cruiser she wants to talk to. Now, stand by." The cruiser having acknowledged the "call", the _Tiburon's_ semaphore began spelling out a message, each letter of which Jack read off and called out as it was signalled. When the message came to an end Carlos read it out and translated it into English. It ran as follows:-- "Fear there is something wrong with my engines also. Have tried to turn them by hand, aided by forty-five pounds of steam, and cannot move them more than an inch or so either way." The cruiser had no reply to make to this disquieting piece of information; but a minute or two later four sailors ran out upon her boat boom and climbed down the Jacob's ladder hanging therefrom into one of the boats, which they cast off and paddled to the gangway ladder, where two officers were by this time waiting. These two individuals at once stepped into the boat, which thereupon was shoved off and pulled alongside the gunboat. "A lieutenant and one of the engineers from the cruiser gone aboard to investigate," commented Milsom. "Now, keep your eye on the gunboat's semaphore, Jack; we shall probably get a little further interesting information presently." They did not, however, for the gunboat's semaphore remained dumb. But the two visitors from the cruiser presently re-appeared, tumbled down over the side into their boat, and were rapidly rowed back to their own ship. Ten minutes later a stream of smoke began to issue first from one and then from the other funnel of the cruiser. It was evident that they had started to get steam on board her in a hurry. And indeed the time had arrived for hurry; for it was now five bells in the forenoon watch, and the _James B. Potter_ was timed to arrive in Mulata Bay at eight bells--an hour and a half thence! She was probably off the harbour's mouth at that moment--or, if not off the harbour's mouth, at least in sight. The Morro Castle, with its signal staff, was not visible from the spot where the _Thetis_ lay moored, being shut off from view by the eastern portion of the Old Town, but it could probably be seen from the cruiser, which was lying considerably farther down the harbour and farther over on the Regla side of it; and while the men folk on the top of the yacht's deck-house were still discussing the matter, Milsom's quick eye caught the cruiser's answering pennant being hoisted in acknowledgment of a signal made to her from some unseen spot. "Aha!" he exclaimed; "do you see that? I wouldn't mind betting my next allowance of grog that that is the acknowledgment of a signal from the Morro that the _Potter_ is in sight! How can we find out, I wonder, without doing anything to arouse the suspicions of the Spanish Johnnies, that we are interested in the matter? If it were not for the suspicion that it would arouse, the simplest way, of course, would be to take the steamboat and run down as far as the harbour's mouth, when we could see for ourselves whether there is a steamer in sight. But it would never do; it would be rather too palpable." "Cannot you tell by reading the cruiser's signals?" demanded Don Hermoso. "See, there are several flags being hoisted on board her now? What do they mean?" "Quite impossible to tell, my dear sir, without possessing a copy of the Spanish Naval signal-book," answered Milsom. "Each navy has its own private code of signals, which no man can read unless he has access to the official signal-book. No; that is no good. Is there no spot ashore from which one can get a good view of the offing?" "Nothing nearer, I am afraid, than Punta Brava; and that is quite two miles from the landing-place by the shortest possible cut," answered Don Hermoso. "One could not walk there and back in much less than an hour and a half, in this heat; and to drive there would, I am afraid, be almost as imprudent as running down to the harbour's mouth in the steam pinnace." "Quite," answered Milsom. "But"--as he leaned out over the rail and glanced up at the yacht's funnel, which he could thus just see clear of the awning--"we might slip our moorings and go out in the yacht, if you like, Senor. I see that we have steam enough to move; and we are free to go to sea at any moment, now, you know." "So I understand," answered Don Hermoso. "Yet I think we had better remain where we are a little longer; for I am anxious to assure myself, before starting on our trip, that the _Potter_ has succeeded in landing her cargo and getting away safely. And if we were to go to sea just now we should be obliged to proceed on our voyage, I think; we could advance no good reason for hanging about outside and watching the movements of strange craft." "No, no, of course not; I quite see your point," agreed Milsom. "It would undoubtedly be better to remain where we are for an hour or two longer, and see how the affair eventually develops. But I wouldn't mind betting that that signal had some reference to the American boat, for see how furiously they are firing up aboard the cruiser." They were indeed firing up "furiously", as Milsom had said; for dense clouds of black smoke were now continuously pouring and billowing out of both funnels of the cruiser, to the outspoken scorn and derision of Macintyre, who had his own ideas upon the subject of "firing", his theory being that to make steam quickly, and keep it when made, one should "fire" lightly and continuously. Meanwhile the preparations for going to sea were progressing apace aboard the cruiser, the boats being all hoisted in except one, which, with a couple of hands in her, was hanging on to the buoy to which the cruiser was moored, in readiness to unshackle the cable from the mooring ring so soon as the vessel had steam enough to enable her to move. The bells of the shipping in the harbour were chiming eight--which in this case meant noon--when the first white feather of steam began to play about the tops of the cruiser's steam pipes; and at the sight the watchers on board the yacht stirred in their chairs and assumed a more alert attitude, for further developments might now be looked for. They came--within the next five minutes--the first of them being the sudden lowering of the captain's gig aboard the cruiser, the hurried descent of her crew into her by way of the davit tackles, and the hauling of her alongside the hastily lowered gangway. A moment later an officer stepped into the stern-sheets; and, with the naval ensign of Spain snapping in the breeze at her stern, and her boat pennant trailing from the staff in her bows, she shoved off and dashed away toward the landing steps, with her eight oarsmen bending their backs and making their good ash blades spring almost to breaking-point, as though their very lives depended upon their speed. She swept past the _Thetis_ within a biscuit's toss, and the party on the top of that vessel's deck- house were not only able to distinguish, by the gold braid on his coat cuffs, that the solitary occupant of the stern-sheets held the rank of captain, but also that the poor man looked worried and scared almost out of his senses. Just before coming abreast of the yacht, which of course had her club ensign and burgee flying, the boat swerved slightly from her course, and for a moment it looked almost as though she intended to run alongside; but the next moment she straightened up again and went on her way toward the landing steps, the "brass bounder" in her stern just touching the peak of his uniform cap with his finger tips in acknowledgment of Jack's and Milsom's courtesy salute. Two minutes later her crew tossed oars and she swept up alongside the landing steps and hooked on; the skipper next moment springing up the steps and disappearing in the crowd of idlers who had gathered at the head of the steps. Two bells came, and with it the stewards to lay the table for second breakfast, or luncheon, on the yacht's deck-house; and as three bells struck, the little party drew in round the "hospitable board" and sat down to their mid-day meal. They had just about finished when Milsom, who was sitting facing the town and wharf, put down his glass somewhat emphatically on the table, and, rising to his feet, exclaimed: "Now, what does this mean?" "What does what mean?" demanded Jack, also rising to his feet and facing in the direction toward which the skipper was looking. "Phew!" he whistled; "the plot thickens! Surely it is not possible that we were seen last night, Phil, eh?" "I could have sworn that we were not," answered Milsom. "Yet, if we were not, I repeat: What does this mean?" He might well ask. For there, halfway between the wharf and the yacht, was the cruiser's boat, with the captain and an elderly gentleman in plain clothes in the stern-sheets; and it was unquestionable that they were making for the yacht. Jack snatched up a pair of binoculars that lay in one of the basket chairs and brought it to bear upon the boat. "Why," he exclaimed, "I'll be shot if it isn't the Capitan-General who is coming off to us!" "The Capitan--General!" gasped Don Hermoso. "Then, depend on it, gentlemen, your movements were observed last night, and you have been informed upon. What will you do?" "Why," answered Jack, "we will wait until we have heard what these people have to say; and then--be guided by circumstances. But--pooh! I believe we are scaring ourselves unnecessarily. If they suspected us of tampering with their ships it is not in a boat manned by six unarmed sailors that they would come off to us. Come along, Phil, you as skipper and I as owner of this vessel will go down to receive these gentlemen and learn what their business is with us." And, so saying, and followed by Milsom, he descended to the main deck and stationed himself at the head of the gangway ladder, by which time the boat was alongside. Another moment and the Capitan-General, hat in hand, and bowing courteously to the two Englishmen, passed in through the gangway, followed by the captain of the cruiser. "Good-day, Senor Singleton!" exclaimed the old gentleman genially, offering his hand. "Do you happen to remember me, or must I introduce myself?" "I remember you perfectly well, of course, General," answered Jack, accepting the proffered hand with--it must be confessed--a feeling of very considerable relief, "and I am very glad indeed to have the honour of receiving you on board my yacht, although you have deferred your visit until the moment when we are about to proceed to sea." "Ah, yes," answered the General, "so I guessed, from the steam which I see issuing from your vessel's funnel! It is about that that I have come off to see you. But, before we go any further, permit me to have the honour of introducing to you Captain Morillo, of His Spanish Majesty's cruiser the _Infanta Isabel_, which lies yonder." The introduction having been made and acknowledged with all due formality, the old gentleman resumed: "Now, a most extraordinary thing has happened here to-day--an occurrence so singular and unique that one is driven to the conviction that certain very clever conspirators have been at work." The old gentleman, whether by accident or designedly, looked Jack square in the eye as he said this; and it was with the utmost difficulty that the latter was able to keep his countenance and retain that nonchalance of demeanour and expression of polite interest which he felt was so necessary to avert any suspicion of his own complicity with the "very clever conspirators". To cover any indication of confusion which he might have inadvertently betrayed, he shouted to the quartermaster, who was busy about nothing in particular near the stern grating: "Quartermaster, bring along four basket chairs." Then to the General: "You interest me immensely, General. I have just sent for some chairs, and when they arrive we will sit and discuss the matter in comfort. Meanwhile, may I offer you and Captain Morillo a glass of wine? We have some very passable champagne down in our cold chamber." The Capitan-General and his friend expressed themselves as perfectly willing to partake of Senor Singleton's gracious hospitality; and presently, seated at ease, and with a foaming glass of ice-cold Mumm before him, the Governor resumed his story. "I need not ask you, Senor, whether you are aware that the present condition of Cuba is somewhat abnormal, for I feel convinced that a caballero of your intelligence must have long ere this discovered that the island is literally seething with rebellion--to such an extent, indeed, that a rising against Spanish rule may be anticipated at any moment. Nor need I point out to you how ruinously disastrous to the rebels and all who might be suspected of sympathising with them such a rising must necessarily be; for it would of course be my painful duty to suppress it by force of arms. It is therefore in the interest of the Cubans themselves that we are adopting certain measures for the prevention of everything of a nature calculated to encourage hope on the part of the native population that a rising against Spanish authority could by any possibility be successful; and one of these measures is the suppression of all importation of weapons and war material of every description." "Quite so," concurred Jack with a smile. "We had an illustration of the vigour and thoroughness of your efforts in that direction upon our arrival on the coast, in the action taken by the Commander of the gunboat yonder, who was only convinced with the utmost difficulty that we were not engaged in the business of smuggling war material into the country. Indeed, I believe he never would have been convinced, had I not insisted upon his making a thoroughly exhaustive search of my vessel, with the result, of course, that nothing of the kind was to be found on board her." The old gentleman flushed, fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair, and fortified himself by emptying his glass. He would rather not have been reminded of that circumstance, especially at that moment. "Ah!" he said, shaking his head sorrowfully as he put down his empty glass and feigned to be oblivious of the fact that Jack promptly refilled it; "yes, that was a most regrettable occurrence--the result of a very unfortunate mistake on the part of certain friends of ours on the other side. I understand, however, that Commander Albuquerque made the _amende honourable_ in a manner that was absolutely satisfactory to yourself, Senor; and, with the expression of my own personal profound regret, I trust that you will have the extreme generosity to allow the deplorable affair to be forgotten." "Of course I will," said Jack heartily; "I am not one to bear malice. We are all liable to make mistakes at some time or other of our lives." "Senor," exclaimed the General with enthusiasm, "I am indeed delighted to find you so generously disposed--the more so that my visit to you to- day is connected with a similar incident; the only difference being that, in this case, there is unfortunately no room for the belief that we are making a second mistake. We have received the most positive information that certain American sympathisers with the revolutionary movement in Cuba have loaded a steamer with munitions of war for the use of the insurgents; and these munitions are to be landed to-day at a spot known as Mulata Bay, a few miles to the westward of this port. The information, most unfortunately, did not reach us in time to allow of our taking measures for the seizure of the cargo upon being landed; but that appeared, at the time, to be a matter of no moment, for I had planned to send a torpedo boat to seize the vessel and her cargo upon her arrival in Mulata Bay. The vessel, I may mention, was to have arrived at her destination at mid-day to-day; and, as a matter of fact, she has arrived, for she was sighted in the offing this morning, and has since been seen heading in toward the bay. And now we come to the explanation of my remark in reference to certain very clever conspirators; for when the torpedo boat attempted to leave the harbour this morning for the purpose of intercepting the smuggling ship, it was found that her machinery had been tampered with, so that it became impossible to send her. It was then decided to send the gunboat; but when she in turn attempted to move it was discovered that she also had been disabled. And finally, to cut my story short, it was discovered that the engines of Captain Morillo's ship had also been so effectually tampered with that she cannot move. Thus, you see, at a very critical moment, we find ourselves absolutely helpless; and unless something can be done, and that instantly, the cargo will be landed, with the deplorable result that an armed rebellion will break out in the island, and incalculable mischief will ensue." "Yes," assented Jack thoughtfully; "I must confess that such a result seems not improbable." "Not improbable!" ejaculated the General; "my dear sir, it is absolutely certain! We have the very best of reasons for knowing that, once the insurgents find themselves possessed of arms, they will lose not a moment in making a determined effort to throw off the yoke of Spanish rule, and the island will be at once plunged into all the horrors of war. Now, my dear Senor Singleton, it is in your power to avert those horrors, if you will!" ("Precisely!" thought Jack; "I could have bet that the old boy was leading up to this.") "You see exactly how we are situated. That American ship and her cargo must be seized; yet we have no ship available with which to effect the seizure. You, on the other hand, have a ship that is in every way admirably adapted for the service, and you have steam up; you can leave the harbour at a moment's notice, if you choose--" "Pardon me, General," interrupted Jack; "I understand exactly what you are driving at: you want me to lend you this yacht for the purpose of conveying a party of soldiers or sailors to--to--" "Mulata Bay," interpolated the General. "Yes," continued Jack, "to Mulata Bay, to seize an American ship which, you say, is smuggling a cargo of contraband-of-war into the island! But, my dear sir, has the very extraordinary nature of your request yet dawned upon you? Do you recognise that you are asking me, a private English gentleman, to mix myself up in a quarrel with which I have absolutely nothing to do, and the rights and wrongs of which I do not in the least understand? Why should I interfere with an American ship, even though she be engaged, as you suggest, in affording aid and encouragement to the revolutionaries?" "Surely, Senor, the reasons that I have already advanced ought to be sufficient," answered the General. "But if they are not, let me give you another. Your friend Don Hermoso Montijo, whom I see with his wife and family on the upper deck yonder, are not altogether free from the taint of suspicion of being in sympathy with the revolutionaries; indeed, it has been whispered to me that--but it would perhaps be unfair to them to repeat suggestions which have not as yet been absolutely proved: let it suffice for me to say that I wish the present predicament of my Government to be laid before them, together with the request which I have ventured to make to you; and let me know how they advise you in the matter." "But, General, this is absolutely preposterous!" protested Jack. "Why should Don Hermoso Montijo and his family be dragged into the affair? And why should I be supposed to be governed by their advice? I must positively refuse to submit the matter to them in any shape or form; and I must also refuse to permit myself to be influenced by any advice which they might see fit to give. They are my guests on board this vessel, and, I may tell you, have embarked in her for the purpose of taking a cruise in her for the benefit of the health of the ladies of the family--indeed, we were on the point of getting under way when you boarded us." "Senor," retorted the General, "I will not pretend to dispute any one of your statements; but I will simply say that if you persist in refusing your assistance to the Spanish Government in this strait, your refusal will have the effect of very greatly strengthening the suspicions that already exist as to the loyalty of the Montijo family!" "General," exclaimed Jack, "if you did but know it you could scarcely have said anything better calculated to defeat your own wishes and make me declare that under no circumstances will I permit myself to be dragged into this business. To be perfectly frank with you, I do not believe that you have the slightest shadow of foundation or excuse for your suspicions of Senor Montijo and his family. But, in order to show you how little grounds there are for them--should such actually exist--I will do violence to my own feelings by acceding to your request, without consulting Senor Montijo in any way, to the extent of conveying a party of your men, not exceeding fifty, to Mulata Bay; upon condition that I am allowed to fly the Spanish man-o'-war ensign while engaged upon the service." "Why do you attach that condition to your assent, Senor?" demanded the General. "Because," snapped Jack, who was now perilously near losing his temper, "I neither can nor will do the work under the British flag!" "I think, Excellency, Senor Singleton is justified in his demand," remarked the skipper of the cruiser, now speaking for the first time. "The work that he has kindly undertaken to do is essentially Spanish Government work, and can only be properly done under the Spanish flag. I will bring you a Spanish ensign and pennant to hoist, Senor, when I bring my men alongside," he added, turning to Jack. "I shall be obliged, Senor, if you will," answered Jack; "for I will do nothing without them." "Then that is settled," exclaimed the General, rising to his feet. "When will you be ready to leave the harbour, Senor Singleton?" "As soon as Captain Morillo brings his men alongside," answered Jack. "Then, to expedite matters, let us be going at once, Morillo," exclaimed the General. Then, turning to Jack, he said: "Senor, permit me to express to you the gratitude not only of myself, personally, but also of the Spanish Government, for your courtesy in consenting to render us this important service at an exceedingly critical moment, I fear that, in my anxiety, I may have brought rather an unfair amount of pressure to bear upon you in order to overcome your scruples; but I trust that you will ultimately forgive me for that. And I am quite sure that if, as I have understood, you intend to prolong your stay in Cuba, the time will come when you will be glad to have placed us all under an obligation. I offer you a thousand thanks, Senor, and have the honour to bid you good- day!" And thereupon, with many bows, his Excellency the Capitan-General of Cuba followed the skipper of the cruiser to the gangway and thence down into their boat. "Well," exclaimed Milsom, who had contrived to follow the conversation sufficiently to get a fairly accurate impression of what had transpired, "you have managed to get us all fairly into the centre of a hobble by consenting to run those men down to Mulata Bay! How the mischief do you propose to get out of it again without putting all the fat in the fire?" "Quite easily, my dear Phil, or you may bet your bottom dollar that I would never have consented," answered Jack. "You see, the Spanish ships have had their engines tampered with. Very well: ours have been tampered with too--Macintyre will have to see to that. While the old chap was talking, the idea occurred to me that if I should persist in my refusal, Captain Morillo might, in desperation, take it into his head to send away a boat expedition to Mulata Bay; and, the people there being of opinion that everything is all right, they may take matters prettily easily, with the result that the boat expedition might possibly have arrived in time to effect a seizure. Therefore while, for the sake of effect, I pretended to be very unwilling to fall in with his Excellency's views, I had decided that I would do so, almost as soon as I saw what was coming. Now, my plan is this. We will take the Spanish crowd aboard and run them down toward Mulata Bay, which will put an effectual stopper upon any attempt to dispatch another expedition. But, when we get down abreast of our destination, our engines will break down, and instead of going into Mulata Bay, we shall go driving helplessly away down to leeward before this fine, roaring trade wind; and before we can get the ship again under command _the James B. Potter_ will have discharged her cargo and got away again. And I reckon upon our appearance off the place under the Spanish ensign and pennant to give all concerned a hint as to the importance of `hustling' over their job. Twiggez?" "Je twig--I tumble!" answered Milsom. "And a very pretty scheme it is, too, Jack--does you proud, old man; it ought to work like a charm. Now, before the Spanish Johnnies come aboard, I'll just hunt up Macintyre, and post him upon his share of the work, while you go and explain matters to the Don and his family. Who-oop! It will be interesting to observe the expression on the countenances of our Spanish friends when our engines--tampered with by those pestilent revolutionaries--break down!" CHAPTER ELEVEN. AN EXPEDITION THAT FAILED. A few minutes sufficed Jack to explain the situation to the Montijo family, to their mingled indignation and amusement; and he then suggested that, as the yacht would possibly be rolling and tumbling about somewhat unpleasantly in the heavy sea outside while in her apparently helpless condition, the ladies might prefer to pass the night ashore, in one of the Havana hotels. But neither of them would for a moment listen to any such proposal: the Senora explained that she had never yet been seasick, and did not propose to begin now; while Dona Isolda opined that it would be no worse for her than if they had gone to sea in the ordinary way during the afternoon, so she, too, elected to remain on board and take her chance. Then, while they were all talking together, Milsom came up on to the top of the deck-house with the information that Macintyre fully understood what was wanted and was making elaborate preparations for a perfectly gorgeous breakdown of the engines--the maximum speed of which during the trip would not exceed fourteen knots, at the outside. And presently the cruiser's first cutter pushed off from her parent ship's side and came pulling toward the yacht, with twenty seamen and five marines on board, in addition to her own crew, all armed to the teeth, and Captain Morillo and another officer in the stern-sheets. A few minutes later the boat swept up alongside, and the two officers ascended to the deck, where they were met by Jack and Milsom. "Senor Singleton, and Senor Capitan Milsom, permit me to have the honour of presenting to you Senor el Teniente Villacampa, the officer who will have the command of the expedition," said Morillo. "He will be responsible for the good behaviour of the men, and will lead them to the attack of the ship and those on shore who will be assisting in the landing of the cargo; but, apart from that duty, he will of course be under your orders. I have brought you," he continued, taking a bundle of bunting from Villacampa, "an ensign and a pennant, which you will substitute for your own colours at the moment which you may deem most suitable. And now, what about boats? Will you tow the one which is alongside; or would you rather use your own?" "I think your people had better use the yacht's boats, Senor," answered Jack. "We have plenty; and it will look more in keeping." "Very well, Senor; I agree with you there," acquiesced Morillo. "And now, as you are doubtless anxious to make an immediate start, I will bid you good-bye; and trust that the expedition will be completely successful. You have full instructions how to proceed, Senor," he added to his lieutenant; and then, cap in hand, bowed himself through the gangway and down the side. As the cruiser's boat shoved off, Milsom ascended to the bridge and, laying his hand on the engine-room telegraph, rang "Stand by!" "Are you all ready to slip, there, Mr Perkins?" he demanded. "All ready, sir," answered Perkins. "Then let go!" ordered Milsom, moving the handle to "Half speed ahead!" "Lay aft, some hands, and stow the gangway ladder. Quartermaster, stand by to dip our ensign to the cruiser as we pass her; and when she has acknowledged it, haul it and the burgee down and stow them away in the flag locker!" "Are you acquainted with Senor Montijo and his family?" asked Jack politely, addressing himself to Lieutenant Villacampa, who looked as though he felt slightly uncomfortable and out of his element. "I have not that honour, Senor," answered Villacampa, looking still more uncomfortable. "Then come up on the deck-house, and let me introduce you," said Jack. "They are most delightful people, and I am sure they will be pleased to know you. Your men had better consider the after deck as their end of the ship, and make themselves as comfortable as they can there. She is a fairly dry little ship, and I think they will be all right there." Whereupon Villacampa gave a brief order to his men, and then followed Jack up the ladder to the top of the deck-house, where he was duly made known to its occupants--to the great gratification of Morillo, who witnessed the little ceremony as the yacht swept past his boat. The lieutenant was very cordially received, as had already been agreed upon by those principally concerned; and, being a very pleasant-mannered and agreeable young fellow, soon found that he was enjoying himself amazingly. "You have a fine, speedy little ship under you, Senor," he said, anxious to make himself agreeable, as the yacht, having passed the cruiser and opened out the harbour's mouth, quickened up her pace to fourteen knots. "Y-es," admitted Jack, in that grudging, depreciatory tone of voice which, for some inexplicable reason, so many Englishmen use when speaking of their own property; "she is not bad, for her size. But a knot or two more would be welcome, just now; for we are late in starting, and we shall have our work cut out to make Mulata Bay before dark. I have been taking a look at my chart, and I see that the place lies inside a reef. Are you acquainted with the pilotage of that part of the coast, Senor?" "Oh yes, Senor!" answered the lieutenant; "I have been in and out of Mulata Bay several times. That was chiefly why Captain Morillo selected me to command the expedition. The navigation, however, is not difficult; and, once through the Cayo Blanco passage, we shall be all right." "No doubt," agreed Jack. "But it is just the getting through that passage that I have been feeling unhappy about. We draw eight feet of water aft, and my chart says that there are only nine feet in the passage." Villacampa admitted that the depth of water shown on the chart was about right, and confessed that the situation, now that one came to look at it, was somewhat awkward; still, he was of opinion that if they could but arrive off the mouth of the pass before dark everything would be all right. At five o'clock the stewards brought up the tables and proceeded to serve tea; and Villacampa, who somehow found himself seated between Senorita Isolda and Capitan Milsom, told himself that he had missed his vocation, and that he ought to have been skipper of an English steam- yacht--with a lovely and fascinating Spanish Senorita as a passenger-- instead of second lieutenant of a dirty Spanish cruiser. They were running along the coast and steering a course of west by south half-south, which gave them a gradually increasing offing, and was a nice, safe course to steer, for it would take them well clear of all dangers; the result being that when at length they arrived off the Cayo Blanco passage, the yacht was quite ten miles off the land, and about five miles distant from the edge of the reef. If Villacampa had noticed how wide an offing was being maintained, he would probably have suggested the desirability of hauling in a point or two; but he did not, for he was being made much of by the ladies, while Jack had artfully placed him with his back toward the land. Milsom, meanwhile, had been watching the coast as a cat watches a mousehole, and the moment that he saw certain marks come "on" he raised his cap and proceeded to mop his perspiring forehead with a large bandana handkerchief; whereupon Perkins, who had been for some time keeping an unostentatious eye upon the party on the top of the deck-house, turned and sauntered aft to the engine-room door, sneezing violently as he walked past it. The next instant there arose a perfectly hair-raising clatter and clash of metal down in the engine-room, and the engines abruptly ceased to revolve! So sudden and startling was the clatter that both ladies screamed, and clasped their hands convulsively, in the most natural manner possible; while Jack and Milsom, starting to their feet and capsizing their chairs with magnificent dramatic effect, dashed, one upon the heels of the other, down the ladder toward the engine-room, the steam from the blow- off at the same moment roaring through the safety valves with violence enough to scare a nervous person out of his wits. The quartermaster, keeping a level head in the midst of the hubbub, promptly ported his helm and turned the yacht's head toward the open sea, and the little craft at once, as though entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, began to roll her rails under as the sea caught her square abeam. The Spanish seamen and marines, startled into sudden activity by the commotion, sprang to their feet, and, after glancing about them for an instant with scared faces, made a dash with one accord for the boats, and were only with difficulty restrained from lowering them, and driven away from the davits by a strong party of the yacht's crew, under Perkins, aided by Jack and Villacampa. Taking the affair "by and large", Macintyre had certainly very effectively fulfilled his promise to produce "a perfectly gorgeous breakdown!" Lieutenant Villacampa was, of course, naturally very anxious to learn the extent of the damage, and how far it was likely to interfere with his execution of the duty confided to him by his superiors; and the poor fellow wrung his hands in despair when Macintyre presently came on deck with a big bolt smashed in two in his hand and, with a great show of indignation, informed the Spaniard in broad Scotch--of which, of course, the poor fellow did not understand a word--that some unknown scoundrel had surreptitiously withdrawn nine such bolts from a certain coupling, and that the other three had, as a natural consequence, gradually sheered through under the excessive strain thrown upon them; and that for his part he was only surprised that the machinery had brought them as far as it had without giving out: and that, furthermore, since it would be necessary to make twelve new bolts to replace those missing and destroyed, it would be several hours, at the earliest, before the yacht could again be brought under control. All of which Jack, struggling valiantly against a violent disposition to laugh uproariously, translated to the unhappy Spanish lieutenant. Then, to add still further to that officer's chagrin and disappointment, the yacht, with the Spanish ensign and pennant snapping from gaff-end and masthead in the roaring trade wind, drove slowly but steadily past the mouth of Mulata Bay, and the young man had the mortification of catching, through a powerful pair of binoculars lent him by Jack, a brief glimpse of the _James B. Potter_ at anchor in the bay, surrounded by a whole flotilla of boats, with steam winches hard at work, and great cases swinging over the side from all three hatchways at the same moment. It was a scurvy trick of fate, he explained to Jack, that he should have been so very near to making a capture important enough to have insured his promotion, and to have had success snatched from him at the moment when it was all but within his grasp. Jack emphatically agreed with him that it was, but rather spoiled the effect immediately afterward by asking: "What about the damage to his engines?" It was, however, obviously a case in which nothing could be done but wait patiently until the necessary repairs could be effected; and, after all, there was, as Jack pointed out, just one solitary grain of comfort in the situation, in that the breakdown had occurred while the yacht was still far enough from the shore to be safe from the peril of stranding. Had the accident been deferred until the vessel was on the point of entering the passage through the reef, the yacht would undoubtedly have been flung by the sea upon the sharp coral and dashed to pieces; when the furious surf, which was at that moment foaming and swirling over the reef, and to which Jack directed Villacampa's attention, must have inevitably drowned every soul on board. This was a fact so patent to the meanest comprehension that the Spanish lieutenant speedily forgot his disappointment, and hastened up on to the deck-house to explain to the ladies how narrow had been their escape from a terrible shipwreck, and to congratulate them upon the circumstance that they were still alive. Meanwhile, the deck hands, under Milsom's supervision, had been busily engaged in getting up on deck and rigging a sea anchor, which was dropped overboard when the yacht had drifted some three miles to the westward of the Cayo Blanco passage; and as there was a strong current setting eastward at the time, the effect was not only to bring the yacht head to wind and sea, and cause her to ride very much more easily and comfortably, but also to effectually check her further drift to the westward. Then came dinner in the saloon, and as Villacampa took his seat at the elegantly appointed table, and noted with keen appreciation the prompt and orderly service of the luxurious meal, he felt fully confirmed in his previous conviction that he had missed his proper vocation. The rising moon had just cleared the horizon and was flooding the weltering waters with her silvery light when, the saloon party being once more assembled on the top of the deck-house for the better enjoyment of the grateful coolness of the night air, a large steamer, which could be none other than the _James B. Potter_, was seen to come out of Mulata Bay and head for the passage, steaming thence out to sea and away to the eastward at a rapid pace, though not so fast but that Villacampa, unconsciously biting his finger nails to the quick in the excess of his mortification, felt convinced that the yacht could have caught her, had that vessel only been under way at the moment. She was not, however, and it was not until the American craft had sunk beyond the eastern horizon a good hour and a half that Macintyre came up on deck to report that he had completed his repairs and was ready to once more start his engines. Whereupon the sea anchor was got inboard and, since there was nothing else to be done, the yacht returned to Havana harbour at a speed of fourteen knots--her engines working as smoothly as though they had never broken down--arriving at her former berth and picking up her buoy at about two o'clock a.m. Captain Morillo, who had been anxiously awaiting her return, promptly made his appearance alongside in the cruiser's cutter, for the purpose of taking off his men and learning the result of the expedition; and great was his wrath and disgust on hearing that it had failed, after all, in consequence of a breakdown of the yacht's engines. He was most searching and minute in his enquiries as to the nature and cause of the accident, which, he eventually agreed with Jack, had undoubtedly been brought about by the miscreants who were responsible for the disablement of the Spanish warships, and who, it was perfectly evident, had determined to ensure the success of the American undertaking by tampering with the machinery of every vessel in the harbour which could by any possibility be employed to frustrate it. Ere taking his leave he ventured to express the hope that Jack and Captain Milsom would do him the favour to accompany him when he went ashore, a few hours later, to report to the Capitan-General the failure of the expedition, as it would be his duty to do: but Jack courteously yet very firmly declined to do anything of the kind, pointing out that Lieutenant Villacampa, who had commanded the expedition, was perfectly able to furnish every particular that the General might require; while, further, Jack considered that very unfair pressure had been brought to bear upon him to induce him to lend his yacht for the purpose of the expedition, and he therefore felt perfectly justified in declining to afford any further assistance to the local representative of the Spanish Government. Whereupon Captain Morillo expressed his profound regret that Senor Singleton should have cause to feel himself aggrieved, and departed, taking his men and his flags with him. The _Thetis_ steamed out of Havana harbour again at eight o'clock that same morning. It is unnecessary to follow in detail the course of the voyagers during the pleasure cruise upon which they had embarked; for while they thoroughly enjoyed themselves the cruise was absolutely uneventful. Suffice it to say that, proceeding in a very leisurely fashion, they completely circumnavigated the island of Cuba, calling in at Matanzas, Cardenas, Nuevitas, Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, Trinidad, Xagua, Batabano, and other more or less interesting ports on the coast; sometimes remaining only a few hours, at other times spending as many days in harbour, while Don Hermoso made certain mysterious excursions inland and had secret conferences with more or less mysterious people, during the progress of which Jack, Carlos, and the two ladies enjoyed themselves amazingly in the steam pinnace, in which craft they made excursions up rivers, and prowled about among romantic cays to their hearts' content. Then they crossed to Jamaica, where they enjoyed ample opportunity to compare the condition of that island, under British rule, with Cuba under the government of the Spaniards, as also to learn how the Jamaicans construe the word "hospitality". Dances, picnics, dinners at Government House and elsewhere, balls at Up-Park camp and on board the battleships at Port Royal succeeded each other with bewildering rapidity; while they were positively deluged with invitations to spend a week or more on various sugar estates dotted about here and there in some of the most beautiful parts of the lovely island: small wonder was it, therefore, that six full weeks slid away ere the _Thetis_ again steamed out to sea from Port Royal. Thence, coasting along the southern shores of San Domingo, the travellers visited Porto Rico, where Don Hermoso again had much business to transact with mysterious strangers, occupying a full fortnight; after which Saint Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Saint Vincent, Grenada, and finally Trinidad (to see the wonderful Pitch Lake) were visited: by which time the month of February in the year 1895 had arrived, and Don Hermoso became anxious to be at home again, as certain very important and momentous events were pending, the progress of which he was anxious to watch as closely as might be. Wherefore, on a certain evening, the yacht weighed her anchor shortly before two bells in the first dogwatch, and, steaming close past the Five Islands, the Diego Islands, Gaspar Grande, and Mono Island, swept out through the Boca de Navios, and shaped a course north-west by west for Cape Tiburon, in the island of Hayti, which was passed at daybreak on the morning but one following; the yacht finally entering Havana harbour and making fast to a buoy at eight o'clock on the morning of the succeeding day. The Montijo family landed immediately after breakfast, and took the first available train to Pinar del Rio, hoping to arrive home the same evening: but Jack remained on board the yacht, as she was by this time so exceedingly foul that it had been decided to dock her and have her cleaned in readiness for any emergency; and, Singleton being her ostensible owner, it was deemed a wise and prudent thing that he should remain at Havana to personally arrange for the work to be done, lest suspicion as to the genuineness of his ownership should arise in the minds of any of the Spanish officials. As Jack went hither and thither about his business, after having seen his friends off by train, he was astonished at the change that had taken place in the appearance of Havana since he had last seen it on that memorable day when the Capitan-General had visited the _Thetis_ and persuaded--or, rather, practically compelled--him to lend that vessel for the purpose of attempting the capture of the _James B. Potter_. Then, Havana was simply a busy seaport; now, it was a fortress preparing for war. The streets were full of troops, fresh landed from the transports in the harbour and marching to the railway stations to entrain for various parts of the island; guns, ammunition and ambulance wagons were rumbling and rattling over the cobbles; excited aides-de- camp were furiously spurring hither and thither, the air was clamourous with the strains of martial music and the incessant shouting of military words of command; the Alameda was an armed camp; and the cafes and restaurants were crowded with arrogant, boasting, posturing military and naval officers, with a small sprinkling of civilians who were made to clearly understand that they were there only on sufferance. Jack could not help noticing the scowls with which the soldiery regarded him, and many an insulting epithet and remark reached his ears; but he was not such a fool as to permit himself to be provoked into a quarrel, single- handed, with thousands, and he therefore went calmly and steadily on his way, taking no more notice of the offensive words than if they had not been spoken, and following the narrow side streets as much as possible. In course of time he arrived at the office of the British Consul, and turned in to pay a call upon that gentleman. He found the official in question up to his eyes in business, but nevertheless received a very cordial greeting, if not a particularly hearty welcome. "Hillo, Singleton, what are you doing back here, and at this moment, above all others?" exclaimed the Consul, rising and holding out his hand. "I was in hopes that you were safely back in the old country long ago." "Indeed?" said Jack, taking the other's proffered hand. "Why safely back? Is Cuba, then, an especially dangerous place for an Englishman just now?" "Well, I will not go so far as to give an unqualified answer in the affirmative to that question," replied the Consul; "but this I will say, that I would certainly not recommend any Englishman to remain on the island at this juncture, unless he is fully prepared to prove to the authorities that he has good and sufficient reasons for so doing. The fact is that Cuba is the crater of a political volcano at the present moment, and nobody quite knows what is going to happen. For some years now, in fact ever since '68, the Cubans have been in a state of more or less unrest, and in more or less open revolt against the Spanish rule; and the indications have for some time past been that the events of '68 to '78 are about to be repeated, possibly in a more aggravated form. It is well-known that large consignments of arms, ammunition, and military stores have recently been smuggled into the country, yet, strangely enough, so great has been the vacillation of the Government mind that, although they have done their utmost to put a stop to the smuggling, they have finished there; no effort has been made to discover what has become of the smuggled cargoes, and, beyond vaguely and generally suspecting all who have not openly declared themselves in favour of the continuance of Spanish rule, no serious endeavour has been made to discover the identity of the conspirators. The fact is, that the Spanish Government is acting precisely like the fabled ostrich; it is burying its head in the sand and refusing to see the coming trouble. Even now, although two armed risings have very recently taken place, one in the province of Santiago and the other in that of Mantanzas--the latter, by the way, having been promptly suppressed--the official mind persists in asserting that the movement is nothing more than an attempt on the part of a few bandits to commit robbery and outrage of every description under the mask of patriotism! Yet you may have observed, as you passed through the streets to-day, that, despite all their assertions, they are behaving very much as though they were in a state of mortal terror. And another symptom of scare is the marked suspicion and distrust, not to say aversion, with which they regard strangers, especially Americans and Englishmen, in the island. The Americans, as you may possibly be aware, have not taken very much trouble to conceal the fact that their sympathies are distinctly on the side of the Cubans, and Spanish intelligence seems unable to differentiate between an American and an Englishman. That is why I say that I would not recommend an Englishman to remain in Cuba just now unless he possesses the means of satisfying the Spaniards that he is not inimical to them." "Well," said Jack, "if there is an Englishman in the whole island who can do that, I think I ought to be that man; for did I not place my yacht at their service for the purpose of smashing up one of those gun- running expeditions that you were speaking of just now, at the moment when every one of their warships in the harbour had been disabled?" "Ah, yes!" said the Consul, "I remember hearing something of that affair, although the authorities did their best to hush it up. You failed, I believe, in consequence of your engines breaking down?" "Yes," said Jack, "just off Mulata Bay, the precise spot where the American steamer was landing her cargo. As a matter of fact, we actually saw her at it." "A most extraordinary affair!" remarked the Consul. "When the vessels were subsequently docked, it was discovered that their propellers had been rendered immovable by being locked with stout chains, from which it was surmised that the outrage must have been perpetrated by means of some kind of diving vessel; but where such a craft could have come from heaven only knows, for nothing of the kind has been discovered or got wind of in any of the harbours of Cuba--although I suppose it would not be a very difficult matter for people acquainted with the working of such a vessel to conceal her very effectually at the bottom of some out- of-the-way bay. I remember reading, some years ago, the story of a gigantic craft that was either airship or submarine, at the will of her crew, and which was capable of doing some very wonderful things; but I regarded the yarn as nothing more than the flight of a romancer's vivid imagination. Yet it must have been some such vessel that disabled the Spanish warships; which goes to prove again the soundness of the old adage that `truth is stranger than fiction'. But your yacht's disablement was an entirely different matter, as I understood, for you actually steamed several miles before you broke down. Did you ever discover to whom you were indebted for your mishap?" "How could we?" answered Jack. "We went to sea again the next morning, and have been absent ever since. I was thinking that I would call upon the Capitan-General, and ask him if any of his people had ever been able to find a clue to the identity of the guilty parties." "Were you?" said the Consul. "Then let me very strongly advise you not to do anything of the kind. He has plenty to worry him just now without being reminded of an exceedingly unpleasant and annoying incident. And, finally, be persuaded by me to clear out of Cuba at the very earliest possible moment; for the island is certainly at present no place for a young fellow like you, who have a good business at home, and no business at all here. Even if you are serious in your idea of purchasing land and establishing a tobacco-growing estate, this is certainly not the time at which to engage in such an undertaking: for, in the first place, the very strong suspicion and distrust with which the authorities at the present moment regard all foreigners would render it almost impossible for you to secure an inalienable title to your land; and, in the next place, when all other difficulties were surmounted, you would find that no labourers were to be had--every mother's son of them being an insurgent, either openly or secretly--and consequently you could get no work done on your land. Therefore it will manifestly be prudent for you to postpone your undertaking until the present imbroglio is at an end and the island is at peace once more. And now, I am afraid that I must bid you good-morning; for this insurrection has piled up a lot of extra business for me as well as for others. But I have given you the very best advice of which I am capable, and I hope that you will not only think it over but very speedily act upon it; for I tell you candidly that Cuba is an exceedingly unsafe place for any Englishman just now." "Upon my word," said Jack, "I am very much disposed to believe that you are right; and I will certainly think over what you have said. Good- bye, and many thanks for your most excellent advice!" But even as the young man left the office and issued upon the crowded street, he knew that he had not the remotest intention of acting upon the Consul's advice, to the extent of leaving Cuba at all events: for he felt that he was morally pledged to stand by the Montijos, so long as they might need him; and there was the complication of the ownership of the yacht, which would need a great deal of straightening out; and, lastly, his close association with the lovely Senorita Isolda, during the four months' cruise just ended, had not been without its effect upon him; so that, taking things all round, he told himself that for him to leave Cuba at present was quite out of the question. When Jack set about making the necessary arrangements for the docking of the _Thetis_ he at once found himself confronted with that adamantine procrastination which constitutes such a serious flaw in the Spanish character; _manana_ (to-morrow) is the word that is most often in the Spaniard's mouth, and his invincible determination never to do to-day what can possibly be postponed until the morrow is perhaps as marked a national characteristic as is the indomitable pride of every Spaniard, from the highest grandee down to the meanest beggar to be found outside a church door. Thus, although the dock happened at that moment to be empty, Singleton found it absolutely impossible to infuse into the dock- officials the energy necessary to enable them to make arrangements for the entrance of the yacht on that day. _Manana_ was the word, wherever he turned; and _manana_ it had to be. And even when at length, late on the following day, the vessel was safely docked and the steam pumps started by which the water was to be pumped out of the enclosure and the vessel left dry and accessible to the workmen, it proved so exceedingly difficult to prevail upon these workmen to get to work that at length Jack and Milsom, driven to despair, and with their patience absolutely exhausted, were obliged to set their own people on to the job of removing from the ship's bottom the thick growth of barnacles and sea grass with which it was encrusted, and afterwards to cover the steel plating with a fresh coating of anti-fouling composition. It was thus a full week from the date of the yacht's arrival in Havana harbour ere she was once more afloat and ready for sea, and Jack at length felt himself free to fulfil his promise to rejoin the Montijo family at their hacienda. CHAPTER TWELVE. BAD NEWS. It was a glorious morning when Jack, after an early breakfast, made his way to the railway station and, having written two days before to apprise his friends of his coming, demanded a first-class ticket for Pinar del Rio. He was gratified to find that not only were there no troops going by his train, but also that very few people were travelling by it, and that he was therefore likely to be able to secure a compartment to himself; for he found himself in a most unaccountable state of excitement at the prospect of meeting his friends once more, and was also acutely conscious of a desire to be absolutely alone in order that he might be free to picture to himself the precise manner in which "she" would be likely to receive him. There was also another reason why the young man was anxious to be alone during his journey, which was that, mingling curiously with the feeling of exhilaration resulting from pleasurable anticipation, there was a certain vague uneasiness, traceable to the fact that no word, either by telegram or letter, had come to him from any member of the Montijo family since he had said _au revoir_ to them on that platform nine days ago. He had not had much time to dwell upon this fact while the yacht was in dock; indeed, he had been so exceedingly busy, and so dog-tired at the end of each day's work, that it had scarcely obtruded itself upon his attention: but now he began to worry himself as to why it was that someone--by which he really meant Dona Isolda--had not been able to find time to drop him so much as two or three lines to say that they had arrived safely, and were hoping to see him soon. Of course, as he told himself, there was no very particular reason why anyone should have written so very vapid and commonplace a piece of intelligence as that they had arrived home safely, for it might be taken for granted that they had done so: the trains in Cuba travelled too slowly, and the traffic was too meagre, to admit of the possibility of an accident--and, moreover, there had been no news of any such thing; and, apart from an accident, there was absolutely no reason that Jack could think of why his friends should not reach their destination in safety. Yet this young man, usually so reasonable and level-headed, was now fast worrying himself into a fever because certain people had not done something which he constantly assured himself there was not the slightest need for them to have done. And when at length the train drew up at the platform of Pinar del Rio station, and he saw Senor Eugenio Calderon, Don Hermoso's manager, waiting thereon, his heart sank, a momentary feeling of sickness and giddiness seized him, and as he reeled out of the carriage on to the platform he muttered to himself: "I knew it; I was certain that something was wrong!" Then he pulled himself together and turned to greet Senor Calderon as unconcernedly as might be. "Well, Senor Calderon, how are you, and how are all at the hacienda?" he exclaimed. "Don Hermoso received my note, I suppose, and--?" "Let us walk to the end of the platform, Senor," replied Calderon, drawing him away out of earshot of the little crowd of alighting and embarking passengers. "I received your letter, Senor Singleton, and, in the absence of Don Hermoso, opened it, as I have opened all letters arriving for him since he left the hacienda. And when I had read it I came to the conclusion that it was my duty to meet you here upon your arrival; for, Senor, I can no longer hide from myself the fear that something untoward has befallen Don Hermoso and his family. I duly received the telegram which he dispatched to me from Havana, apprising me of his arrival there and his intention to return home that same day, and, as requested by the message, I dispatched the carriage here to meet the train by which he said he intended to travel; but on the following day the carriage returned to the house with the intelligence that neither Don Hermoso nor any of the family had arrived, either by the train indicated in the telegram, or by any subsequent train. From this I very naturally concluded that something had occurred to detain the party in Havana, and I looked, from day to day, for a letter or message of some kind explaining the delay; but nothing came, and when at length I received your letter, and gathered from it that you believed the family to be at home, I at once felt that something very wrong had happened, and came to the conclusion that the proper thing for me to do was to meet you here and inform you of all the circumstances." "Of course," concurred Jack; "that certainly was the proper thing to do. But what can possibly have happened to them all? And why the dickens did you not write to me at once when the party failed to turn up?" "I can see now that I ought to have done so," said Calderon. "But you see, Senor," he added in excuse; "I was constantly expecting to hear from Don Hermoso, explaining his absence and naming another day for his arrival; and in this condition of expectancy the days slipped away." "Yes," assented Jack grimly; "I see. Well, it is useless to worry about that now; the question is: What has become of them all? People do not disappear in that mysterious fashion without a cause. It is certain that they did not remain in Havana, for I saw them off; and if they had gone back to the city they would have returned to the yacht, or communicated with me in some way. And it is equally certain that when they stepped aboard the train that morning, they fully intended to return to the house. Their disappearance, therefore, is involuntary on their part; I am confident of that. Now, what can be the explanation of this most singular occurrence? Can it be that--by the way, Senor Calderon, have you had any visitors to the house during the absence of Don Hermoso and his family?" "Yes, Senor, unfortunately we have had visitors--on one occasion; and that visit may very possibly--now that you come to mention it--have had something to do with the disappearance of Senor Montijo and his family. It occurred some three weeks ago; and the visitors consisted of an officer of cavalry and a dozen troopers. He--the officer--enquired for Don Hermoso; and, when told that he was absent from home, demanded the keys of Don Hermoso's desk, which he compelled me to surrender. And when I had handed over the keys, the officer sat down at the desk and spent nearly three hours in going through the whole of Senor Montijo's private papers, some of which he took away with him." "Did he make any remark, or say who he was?" demanded Jack. "No, Senor; neither the one nor the other," answered Calderon. "How long have you been in Don Hermoso's service?" demanded Jack. "For eleven years and--let me consider--yes--for eleven years and nine months, Senor. And I owe to Don Hermoso everything that I have," answered Calderon. "And I suppose you are fully in Don Hermoso's confidence?" asked Jack. "I believe so, Senor," answered Calderon; "I doubt very much whether he has any secrets from me. I know, for instance," dropping his voice almost to a whisper, "that the yacht _Thetis_, which is understood to be your property, really belongs to him. I also know that she brought out from England a large consignment of arms, ammunition, and stores for the use of the insurgents, and that the consignment was landed in the Laguna de Cortes; and I am fully aware that Senor Montijo is actively sympathetic with the insurgents--as is every member of his family and household, down to the meanest stable boy or labourer in the fields." "In that case," said Jack, "the probability is that the papers which the unknown cavalry officer took away with him were of a more or less compromising character, eh?" "I very much fear so, Senor," answered Calderon. "Or, if not exactly compromising, at least of such a character as to prove that Don Hermoso was both sympathetic and in correspondence with the insurgent faction. Pardon me for saying so, Senor Singleton, but I quite easily perceive, by your manner, that you are not at all certain of my fidelity to Don Hermoso. I hope to convince you of that in due time, however; and meanwhile I honour you for your distrust, for it proves your friendly interest in my employer and his family. I shall remain here to manage the estate and guard my employer's interests as long as I am permitted to do so; and, if I mistake not, you will presently be leaving here to return to Havana, with the object of discovering what has happened to Don Hermoso and his family. My own opinion now is that they have all been arrested as conspirators, upon evidence supplied by those abstracted papers--and, if so, I say most fervently, God help them! for the Spaniards will show them no mercy. And, as to my fidelity, Senor, perhaps I can even now afford you some small proof of it by guiding your first footsteps in your search for the lost ones. When you return to Havana, call upon Don Ramon Bergera, whose house is in the Calle del Ignacio, immediately opposite the mansion of the Capitan-General. He is a great friend of Don Hermoso, and--although I believe quite unsuspected by the authorities--an ardent sympathiser with the insurgents; he is also preternaturally clever in obtaining information of all kinds, and solving mysteries. Introduce yourself to him; tell him all that you know of the matter, and all that I have told you; and be guided by him. And with his skill and your courage, Senor Singleton, I trust that all may even yet be well with my honoured friend and patron and his family. Now, here comes your train, Senor; so I will bid you good-bye, and wish you the best of good luck. Should it be necessary for you to communicate with me at any time, it will be advisable to do so by special messenger; for there is only too much reason to suspect that letters are often scrutinised during their passage through the post office. Now you will have to be quick if you wish to get your ticket; so _adios, Senor! Hasta mas verle_." The sun's last rays were gilding the walls of the Morro and the Cabana castles when Jack stepped out of the train at Havana Central Station that evening; but the residence of Don Ramon Bergera was close at hand, and the young Englishman determined to call, there and then, in the hope of finding the Don at home. He was fortunately successful; and five minutes later he found himself in the presence of a fine, distinguished- looking man, with piercing black eyes that seemed to look one through and through. Jack was favourably impressed at once, for there was a look of strength, moral as well as physical, and of straightforwardness, about the man who faced him, that very powerfully appealed to the simple honesty of the Englishman, as also did the frank, open-hearted courtesy of his reception. "Pray be seated, Senor Singleton," said Don Ramon, placing a chair for his visitor; "I am very glad to make your acquaintance. Allow me to offer you a cigar and a glass of sangaree; the latter will refresh you, for you look hot, tired, and dusty, as though you had just made a journey." "I have," said Jack, gratefully accepting the proffered refreshment; and availing himself forthwith of the opening afforded by Don Ramon's remark, he proceeded to tell the whole story of the mysterious disappearance of the Montijo family, winding it up by mentioning that he had made this call at Calderon's suggestion. "I am very glad indeed that you acted upon that suggestion," said Don Ramon. "Calderon is all right; he is absolutely faithful and trustworthy, and Don Hermoso's interests are perfectly safe in his hands. And now, let us consider the very serious question of this mysterious evanishment of my friend and his family. Did I understand you to say that you actually saw them leave Havana?" "Yes," said Jack, "I went with them to the station, and chatted with them until the train pulled out." "Then," said Don Ramon, "it is obvious that the disappearance occurred somewhere between Havana and Pinar del Rio--possibly at Santiago, or maybe at Bejucal. If I cannot hear anything of them elsewhere I will run down to both those places to-morrow and institute a few judicious enquiries. Meanwhile, I fear that Senor Calderon's apprehensions as to the arrest of the entire family are only too well-founded. The fact that a party of soldiers was sent to search Don Hermoso's house proves most conclusively that my friend had somehow contrived to arouse the suspicion of the authorities, which, after all, is not very surprising, knowing what I do as to Don Hermoso's connection with the insurgents; and the fact that certain papers were seized by the search party points to the inference that those papers contained incriminating evidence. And if they did I can only say that I am heartily sorry for the family, for since the recent risings the Government is adopting the most ruthless measures to discourage even passive sympathy with the insurgents; and we know--you and I--that Don Hermoso's sympathy was something very much more than passive. Now, there is another question which I should like to ask you. Do you happen to know whether by any chance Don Hermoso has been unfortunate enough to make any enemies among the Government entourage?--for I may tell you that the present moment is a particularly favourable one for the gratification of private enmity, if the enemy happens to be connected with the Government." Jack considered for a moment. "No," he said slowly, "I am not aware of anything of--stop a moment, though! Yes, by Jove, there is something of that kind, after all! There is a certain Captain Alvaros, belonging to one of your infantry regiments, who had the confounded impudence to propose his marriage with Senorita Isolda, although the young lady is only about sixteen years of age, I believe; and Don Hermoso, very rightly, would not hear of it, refused the fellow point-blank, I understood, and forbade him the house." "Phew!" whistled Don Ramon, with some show of consternation; "is that so? Caramba! I am sorry to hear that. What you have just said is amply sufficient to account for everything. I know a good deal about Don Sebastian Alvaros, enough to assure you, Senor Singleton, that he is, as you English say, `a thorough bad egg'; and, worse than that, he is also a man of some standing and importance in official circles. Now that you come to mention it, I remember that he was stationed, with his company, at Pinar del Rio not so very long ago; but within the last two months he has been made governor of the prison of La Jacoba. Poor Don Hermoso; I am sorry for him! Of course, knowing Alvaros, as he must have done, to refuse him was the only thing possible; but it is a bitter misfortune for him and all his family that the fellow should ever have had an opportunity to see Dona Isolda. And, of course, he was also after Don Hermoso's money, knowing, as he doubtless did, that the son- in-law of Senor Montijo will be an exceedingly lucky man in every respect. Now, Senor Singleton, have you anything else to tell me? Because, if not, I will dispense with ceremony and bid you good evening. Under other circumstances it would have afforded me the greatest possible pleasure if you would have stayed to dine with me: but after what you have told me I shall dine at a restaurant not very far from here, which is largely patronised by officers and Government officials; possibly I may meet someone there from whom I may be fortunate enough to extract a little information. And I will not ask you to accompany me, because it is very desirable that you and I should not be seen together, and that it should not be known that we are acquainted. For which reason it will also be advisable that, in the event of our meeting each other in the street, we should behave as strangers, taking no notice of each other. But you will naturally be anxious to know how I am progressing with my enquiries; and it is also desirable that we should meet and confer together from time to time: therefore our meeting-place had better be here. But do not enter by the front door, as you did this evening, lest someone, knowing you by sight, and aware of your friendship for Don Hermoso--who, you must remember, is a suspected man-- should see you, and the fact of our acquaintance thus become known. When you have occasion to call upon me--which I trust, Senor, will be very often--come to the little wicket in the back wall of my garden, by which I am about to let you out, and I will give my gardener instructions to admit you whenever you may present yourself; there will thus be much less chance of our acquaintance with each other becoming known." So saying, Don Ramon conducted his visitor down a narrow corkscrew staircase into a large and most beautiful garden, where Jack and the gardener were duly confronted with each other, and certain instructions given to the latter; after which the gate in the wall was opened, and, with a prior precautionary peep, to ensure that no lurking watcher was in sight, the young Englishman was gently hustled into a narrow and very dark and dirty lane. "Your way lies to the left," murmured Don Ramon, as he shook hands with Jack and bade him good night. "Walk in the middle of the road; and keep a wary eye on the courts and passages to right and left of you, as you pass them. These back streets are always dangerous, and especially so at night-time; therefore, if anyone should spring out at you, do not stop to parley, but hit out straight and hard. Good night!" As it happened, Jack did not see a solitary human being until he presently emerged into one of the wider and more frequented streets; and twenty minutes later he was safely on board the _Thetis_ again, to the great astonishment of Milsom, who had been pacing the deck in an endeavour to raise an appetite for dinner, and meanwhile picturing to himself the pleasant time that he supposed Jack to be having at the hacienda. He was, of course, profoundly concerned at the news which Jack had to tell him; and spent the remainder of the evening in alternately invoking sea blessings upon the head of Don Sebastian Alvaros, wondering what would happen to the Montijos should the apprehensions of their friends prove correct, and endeavouring to devise schemes for the discovery and liberation of the family. The next morning saw Jack an early visitor at the office of the British Consul; and into the sympathetic ear of that most long-suffering official the young man poured all his woes, all his fears, all his indignation that such happenings could occur in a so-called Christian country. But the Consul could offer him very little comfort; for, as he pointed out to Jack, the affair was one concerning the Spanish Government alone, and with which he could not possibly interfere--at least officially; but he undertook to refer to the matter unofficially, at his next interview with the Capitan-General, and promised to furnish Jack with any information which he might then or upon any other occasion obtain. And with that somewhat meagre promise Master Jack was obliged to rest content. But the young man could not remain so for long; and on that and several succeeding days he wandered about the Havana streets and haunted the various cafes and restaurants in the hope of somewhere hearing a chance word which would throw a glimmer of light upon the mystery. And he also reconnoitred the jails, passing and repassing them a dozen times a day upon the off-chance that he might sooner or later catch a glimpse of one or another of his friends' faces peering out through one of the little grated openings in the walls. But all to no purpose; at the end of three weeks from the date of the disappearance the mystery remained as insoluble as ever. Nor had Don Ramon met with any better success. "I cannot understand it," exclaimed that gentleman irritably; "I have sought information in every conceivable direction, and have set all sorts of unseen forces in motion, with absolutely no result. Even the Capitan-General has drawn blank: he is ignorant--or pretends to be--of what has happened to our friends; and the most that I have been able to get out of him is the statement--which we may take for what it is worth--that he has issued no order for the arrest of any member of the Montijo family. I wish I could get hold of Alvaros, but I have not been able to run up against him; and nobody seems to know where he is, or anything about him." It was three or four days later that Jack, by this time utterly weary and heartsick at his lack of success, entered a restaurant which was much frequented by the officers of the garrison, and, seating himself at a table, ordered second breakfast. There were not very many people in the place at the moment, but it soon began to fill up; and presently the young man's heart gave a great bound, and he felt the pulses of his temples throbbing furiously, as three officers, laughing and talking loudly, entered the place and began to look about them for a table. One of these men was Alvaros; hence Jack's emotion. As the lad sat staring open-eyed at them, Alvaros glanced in his direction, and Jack saw the light of recognition leap into his eyes. "See, my friends," exclaimed the Spaniard, "there is a vacant table, next to the one at which that young beast of an Englishman is sitting. Let us take it." And therewith the trio stalked down the room, and, with a vast amount of clatter, seated themselves at the table next to the one occupied by Singleton. "That beggar means mischief; I can see it in his eye!" thought Jack. "Well," continued he mentally, "let him do his worst; I mean mischief too, and we will see who is the better player at the game. But I must keep cool if I am to come out on top; and, who knows? the skunk may say something which will afford me a useful tip." For a few minutes the three officers sat chatting together, and then Jack noticed that it was Alvaros and the youngest of the trio--an ensign, apparently--who did most of the talking; the third man, who was evidently a cavalryman, merely put in a word or two here and there, and seemed to be slightly disgusted at the boisterousness of his companions. Then Alvaros, who had feigned not to have recognised Jack, exclaimed: "By the by, I must not forget to tell you a most interesting item of news. Do either of you fellows happen to know, or to have heard of, a certain Don Hermoso Montijo, who owns a large tobacco plantation in the direction of Pinar del Rio? But of course you have; everybody knows or has heard of Montijo, the richest man in Cuba--or who was until very recently; but I am afraid that his riches will never be of much use to him again. Why? Simply because the old scoundrel turns out to be hand in glove with the insurgents! He has been helping them most lavishly with money, and it is more than suspected that it is he who is responsible for the importations of arms and supplies of all sorts that have entered the island and reached the hands of the insurgents within the last six months. He even went to Europe, taking his cub of a son with him, for the purpose of procuring the most modern weapons. Every Spaniard, therefore, who falls during the operations for the suppression of the present rising will be indebted to Don Hermoso Montijo for his death. But the Government is going to give him ample time in which to repent of his sins, for he and his family sail for Fernando Po on Sunday next on board the convict steamer _El Maranon_, in the company of several other choice miserables. So we shall no longer be troubled with him or his. And as I was chiefly instrumental in laying bare his villainy, I shall, when his estates are confiscated, put in a claim for them as my reward. "But it was not so much of him as of his daughter that I intended to tell you. Dona Isolda Montijo is universally admitted to be, beyond all question, the most lovely woman in Cuba; and for once the popular estimate is correct, as no man knows so well as I do." ("Steady, old man, steady!" said Jack to himself. "Hold tight, and clench your teeth! The blackguard is talking now with the express intention of provoking you into the commission of some overt act for which you would be sorry afterwards, and you must not allow yourself to be provoked. The infernal fool, in his anxiety to hurt you, has made you a present of what may prove to be a most valuable bit of information; but you must not allow yourself to be inveigled into a scrape of any sort, or you may not be allowed the opportunity to avail yourself of it. So keep a tight grip upon yourself, Jack Singleton, and bottle up your wrath for future use!") "When the Montijos were arrested, about a month ago," continued Don Sebastian, "I so arranged matters that they were confined in La Jacoba; and, of course, as Governor of the prison, I possessed considerable powers; thus it was not difficult--" And therewith the fellow proceeded with great gusto to tell the story of cruelty the like of which, it is to be hoped, for the credit of one's manhood, is not often repeated. And while it was telling, Jack "sat tight" and listened, storing up every vile word and every monstrous detail in his mind that he might have something to whet his vengeance upon when the time for vengeance should come. But his agitation was so evident, his distress so poignant, that Alvaros thought it would be very good fun to direct public attention to it; so, feigning to become suddenly aware of it, he swung his chair round, and exclaimed loud enough for everybody in the room to hear: "Hillo, Senor Englishman, what is the matter with you? You appear to be upset about something. Perhaps my little story jars upon your puritanical English notions? Or perhaps it is--yes, of course you are upset about the news that you have just heard of your friends, for, now that I come to look at you, I see that you are the Englishman whom I met at Don Hermoso's house, and whom I warned to leave this island. How is it that you have not yet gone?" "Because it pleased me to stay," answered Jack. "But I shall be leaving either to-morrow or the next day--for a short time. Now, Don Sebastian Alvaros, disgrace to the uniform that you wear, unmitigated blackguard and scoundrel, mean, contemptible coward, and, as I believe, colossal liar, listen to me! As I told you a moment ago, I am leaving Cuba within the next day or two. But I shall return, Senor; and if it should ever prove that the infamous story which you have just told is even approximately true, I will not kill you, but I will inflict upon you such a fearful punishment for your vile deed that all Cuba shall ring with it, and it shall be a warning to every man who hears the tale to beware of doing the like!" "Bueno, bueno; well spoken, young Englishman!" cried one or two voices from amid the crowd; and several people, anticipating a fracas, started to their feet, as did Alvaros, whose features were now livid and twitching with mingled fury and fear. "Pig of an Englishman," he exclaimed, clapping his hand on his sword hilt, "you shall die for this!" And he attempted to snatch his weapon from its sheath. But the cavalryman who had entered the place with him, and had listened in silence and with a lowering brow to his shameful story, now sprang out of his seat, and, seizing Alvaros by his shoulders, thrust him violently back into his chair, hissing between his clenched teeth: "Silence, cochinillo! Sit down, and do not dare to further disgrace your sword by drawing it on an unarmed man! I will manage this affair. Senor," turning to Jack, "you have publicly insulted an officer of the Spanish Army, and, great as has been your provocation, you must give the man satisfaction. You are an Englishman, it would appear, and it is therefore quite possible that you may have no friends here to see you through your quarrel. Should such be the case, I shall esteem myself honoured if you will permit me to place my services at your disposal. I have the pleasure to offer you my card, Senor." So saying, he produced a card-case, and, extracting a card therefrom, tendered it to Jack. Meanwhile, during the progress of the above little speech, Jack had been thinking hard. He was in for a row, after all, despite his good resolutions of a short time before; and he must carry the matter through as best he could. But since this strange soldier was willing to stand by him and see fair play, there was certainly no need for him to further complicate matters by calling upon Don Ramon or any of the other people whose acquaintance he had made during his short stay in the island--and all of whom were, moreover, friends of Don Hermoso; while, of course, the British Consul was quite impossible. He therefore accepted the proffered card, which bore the inscription: "Lorenzo de Albareda, Colonel." "5th (Madrid) Cuirassiers." and handed over one of his own in return. "I accept your generous offer, Colonel, with the utmost pleasure," he said, "and will leave myself entirely in your hands. I am at present living on board my yacht _Thetis_, which lies in the harbour, and I will arrange that my steamboat shall be in waiting for you at the custom- house steps to convey you on board, where you will find me when you shall have completed your arrangements. And now, Senor, I must leave you. _Adios_, until we meet again!" And therewith, bowing first to his new friend, the Colonel, and then to the company at large, many of whom clapped their hands approvingly, Jack passed out of the restaurant, and made his way to Don Ramon Bergera's house, to tell him what he had learned. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. JACK GROWS DESPERATE. By a lucky chance it happened that Don Ramon was at home when Jack reached the house, and the young man was accordingly conducted to the room in which his Spanish friend usually transacted his business. At sight of his visitor Don Ramon flung down his pen and grasped Jack by the hand. "Well," he exclaimed, "what is it? You have picked up some news at last, I can see; and it is bad news, I fear, by the look of you. Or is it that you are ill? Por Dios, man, you look as though you might be dying! Here, sit down, and let me ring for some cognac." "No, no," said Jack, "I need no cognac, or anything else, thanks; but I have just gained some news of our poor friends, and bad news it is, as you shall hear." And thereupon he related all that had passed at the restaurant, repeating Alvaros' words as nearly verbatim as he could remember them. "Oh, the despicable villain, the atrocious scoundrel!" exclaimed Don Ramon, when Singleton had come to the end of his narrative. "But do you really believe that the part of his story relating to the Senorita Isolda is true? May it not be that it is merely the empty boast of an inordinately vain man? There are individuals, you know, who pride themselves on that sort of thing." "So I believe," answered Jack, "though, thank God, it has never been my misfortune to be brought into contact with any of them until now. No; I am afraid that the story is only too true. The scoundrel, being Governor of the prison, would have the power to--to--do what he says he did, and the mere fact that he boasted of it seems pretty strong evidence that he also had the will. I am therefore afraid that--that-- oh, hang it! this won't do; I must pull myself together or I shall be fit for nothing." "That is very true," acquiesced Don Ramon; "when a man is going out to fight another he must not allow his nerves to be upset by giving way to violent emotion. Now, have you decided upon what weapons you will fight with? Being the challenged party, you know, you have the choice of weapons." "Have I?" said Jack wearily. "Why, yes, of course, I suppose I have. But I have not given a ghost of a thought to the question of weapons. One thing is certain: I don't wish to kill Alvaros, for, of course, Carlos will want to have a turn with him as soon as he can get the chance, and he would, quite rightly, be furious with me if I were to balk him. But neither do I wish him to kill me, for that would entirely upset all my plans. What I should like to do would be to give him a tremendous punishing without endangering his life. I suppose it would not be good form to choose fists as the weapons, would it?" Don Ramon laughed. "I scarcely know whether or not it would be `good form' to insist on fighting with your bare fists," he said, "but I know that it would be most unusual. Still, I am not sure that its singularity would constitute an insuperable bar to its acceptance by the seconds. At any rate there will be no harm in offering the suggestion to de Albareda; he is a thorough good fellow all through, and you may safely leave yourself in his hands. But, if you will pardon me for saying so, my young friend, it appears to me that you are acting somewhat quixotically in sparing this blackguard in order that your friend Carlos may be able to take a hand in his punishment. If the quarrel were mine, I should choose pistols, and shoot the fellow dead, thus making sure of him. Besides, do you suppose that poor Carlos will ever have a chance to get away from Fernando Po, when once they have got him there?" "He never will get there; neither he nor any of the rest of the family," said Jack, his eye brightening as the thought of his great adventure came into his mind. "I have already decided what to do, so far as they are concerned. I shall follow that convict ship, and take the Montijos out of her." "But, my dear boy," remonstrated Bergera, "you cannot possibly do that, you know. It would be an act of piracy on the high seas!" "I don't care the value of a brass button what it is," declared Jack, "I am going to do it; and I will take my chance of being hanged for it afterwards. But it will not be piracy, for I shall do the trick under the Cuban flag--the flag of Cuba Libre, and I shall therefore be a belligerent, not a pirate. And, as to shooting Alvaros dead--I certainly will not do that if I can possibly help it, for such a punishment as that would be altogether too light for the atrocious crime of which he has been guilty, upon his own confession." "Very well," said Don Ramon; "you must do as you please, both in that and the other matter, for I see that you have already made up your mind in both cases. I am glad that you came straight to me with your news, although it is of such a dreadful character: for, now that we have Alvaros' statements that our poor, unhappy friends are in La Jacoba, and that they are to leave for Fernando Po on Sunday, I shall know how and where to prosecute my enquiries; and it is very essential that we should assure ourselves of the truth of both statements, otherwise your attempt at rescue may miss fire, after all. Now, I suppose you will fight that villain to-morrow morning at daybreak. If so, do me the favour of coming here to early breakfast with me at eight o'clock; you can then tell me what has happened, and I, for my part, shall by that time be in a position to tell you definitely how much of Alvaros' story is true." "Certainly," answered Jack; "I will come with pleasure. And meanwhile I suppose I ought to be getting back to the yacht, to be ready to receive de Albareda. So, good-bye! See you to-morrow." It was nearly three o'clock when Singleton reached the _Thetis_; but in answer to his enquiries he was informed that no stranger had visited the ship. He therefore spent the entire afternoon in posting Milsom on the position of affairs generally, and discussing with him Jack's plan for the rescue of the Montijos from the convict steamer; which plan, by the way, Milsom pronounced to be quite feasible, stating that, like Jack, he was fully prepared to go through with it, piracy or not. And therewith he began to congratulate himself upon his foresight in employing his spare time in the preparation of his wonderful disguise for the yacht, an opportunity to use which he had been awaiting with steadily-growing impatience. It was past five o'clock when the steam pinnace appeared approaching the yacht, with de Albareda in the stern-sheets; and that officer explained his delay by stating that he had been obliged to go on duty during the afternoon, and had only just escaped therefrom. He plunged at once into the business on hand by reminding Jack that the choice of weapons was his, and asking him whether he had yet decided what he would use. He was at first inclined to be somewhat annoyed when Jack explained with earnestness that he would prefer to fight with fists only, for he was a man who had a profound respect for the duello, which he considered ought to be conducted with all due formality and dignity; but finally burst into a fit of hearty laughter at the absurdity--as he regarded it--of two men attempting to settle a serious quarrel by pommelling each other like a brace of schoolboys. He admitted that, if Jack chose to insist upon fists as weapons, he would be strictly within his rights, but dwelt, as Don Ramon also had done, upon the unusual character of such a demand, and strongly hinted at his own partiality for pistols; whereupon Jack gracefully conceded the point and agreed that pistols it should be. The remaining details were speedily settled, the hour arranged being sunrise on the following morning, and the place the Botanical Gardens. Then de Albareda went ashore again to interview Alvaros' second and apprise him of the nature of the arrangements, promising to return to the yacht in time for dinner, and spend the night on board. And a very pleasant, genial fellow he proved to be; and a very agreeable evening Jack, Milsom, and he spent together. There are many more cheerful places in the world than the Havana Botanical Gardens just at sunrise, for at that hour the mists lie chill and heavy upon the ground, the grass is saturated with dew, and the numerous trees not only freely bespatter everything beneath their widespreading branches with copious showers of dewdrops, as the wind sweeps through them, but many of them have a trick of assuming a singularly weird and uncanny appearance in the first faint light of the early dawn; yet Jack felt quite happy, not to say exhilarated, as he and his friend the Colonel of Cuirassiers stepped briskly along the dew- sodden gravel paths on their way to the rendezvous, which was an open, grassy space in the south-west corner of the Gardens. Albareda had been assiduously coaching his principal, ever since leaving the yacht, in the etiquette of the duello as observed by the Spanish army, until he considered that he had made his companion letter-perfect; and now he was giving Jack a few last words of caution and admonition before standing him up to be shot at. "There is no doubt in my mind," said he, "that Alvaros intends to kill you, if he can; for what you said to him yesterday has evidently sunk into his mind and made him afraid of you. Therefore you must be careful to fire sharp upon the word, or he will have you, for--to give the fellow his due--he is rather a neat and quick hand with the pistol. The word will be given thus: `One--two--three!' and at the word `three' you must pull trigger. And I should recommend you to look him straight between the eyes from the moment that you are posted, otherwise he may attempt to play some trick with you, such as firing a fraction of a second before the proper time, or something of that sort. Ah, here we are, first on the ground, thank goodness, with a full two minutes to spare! Only just managed it, however, for"--looking back along the path by which they had come--"here come the other fellows, and the surgeon with them. How are you feeling? Quite cool and comfortable? Good; that is excellent!" The conditions were simple: the duellists were to exchange not more than three shots, at a distance of twelve paces, and were to fire at the word of command; and at the last moment it was agreed, at Albareda's suggestion, that if either of the combatants fired before the word of command, he was to be penalised by his antagonist being given the privilege of an extra shot at him. It was evident to all that this condition was exceedingly distasteful to Alvaros; yet he could not complain, or refuse its acceptance, since it imposed no hardship whatever upon the man who intended to fight fair. These matters being arranged, the ground was selected, the utmost care being taken that neither combatant had the slightest advantage over the other in the matter of light; the distance was paced off, and the men placed. "Now," said Albareda, who was to give the word, "I shall count three steadily, thus: `One--two--three!' and at the word `three'--but not before, remember--you may pull trigger. Now, are you both quite ready? Then--one--two--three!" Jack most carefully observed every one of the instructions given him by his second, including that which referred to looking his antagonist steadily between the eyes, and he quickly saw that this simple proceeding had a most disconcerting effect upon Alvaros, whose return gaze at once became shifty and uncertain; the result being that the Spaniard's bullet flew wide, while Jack's, aimed by a hand as steady as a rock, struck Alvaros' right elbow, completely shattering the bone and inflicting an injury that the surgeon, at a first glance, thought would probably stiffen the arm for the remainder of its owner's life, to the extent of very seriously disabling him. Under these circumstances Alvaros' second expressed himself satisfied, and declined any further shots; whereupon Jack and his friend left the ground and went their respective ways, Jack back to the yacht, and the Colonel of Cuirassiers to his quarters. By the time that Jack got back on board the _Thetis_ it was nearly seven o'clock, and the crew were busily engaged in performing the ship's toilet for the day, spreading the awnings, and so on; he therefore retired to the interior of the deck-house with Milsom, and arranged with that individual that he should spend the day in filling the bunkers "chock-a-block" with coal, taking in fresh water, laying in a supply of fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit for sea, and generally preparing to go out of harbour on the following day. Then, a thought suddenly striking him, he wired to Calderon, directing him to pack and dispatch forthwith to the yacht all the wearing apparel of every description that he could find, belonging to any of the members of the Montijo family; the boxes to arrive at Havana next day, without fail, not later than by the mid- day train. This done, he hurried away to keep his breakfast appointment with Don Ramon Bergera, whom he found awaiting him in a somewhat anxious frame of mind lest anything untoward should have resulted from the duel. Reassured on this point, Don Ramon chatted with Jack upon indifferent subjects until breakfast was served and the servants had been dismissed, when he said: "You are no doubt anxious to learn the result of the enquiries into the truth of Alvaros' story which I undertook to make, yesterday afternoon. Well, I can tell you this: I have ascertained, beyond all possibility of doubt, that the Montijos are, as that scoundrel stated, in La Jacoba; and also that they are all to be shipped off to Fernando Po by the steamer _El Maranon_, which steamer is appointed to leave the harbour on Sunday next. But by whose authority they are being thus summarily dealt with, I cannot understand, or ascertain; the only thing which is quite certain being that they have not been tried or convicted publicly. That, however, is nothing, for it is common knowledge that scores-- indeed, I may say hundreds--of people who have been suspected of disloyalty to the Government have mysteriously vanished, from time to time, and have never again been heard of. In the light of what we now know, however, there is little doubt in my mind that they have all been sent either to Ceuta or to Fernando Po. Poor Cuba! She is indeed a downtrodden country, and it is little wonder that her people are at last rising up in arms against the atrocious system of tyranny and misgovernment under which they are groaning. The Capitan-General is a good man, and means well, I believe: but he is weak, and is moreover hampered and embarrassed to the point of helplessness by the multiplicity of impossible instructions which he receives from home; and, furthermore, he is in the hands of a number of unscrupulous, overbearing subordinates who have arrogated to themselves almost autocratic powers, and who act upon their own responsibility, without consulting him. I believe this is what has occurred in the case of the Montijos: this fellow Alvaros has somehow managed to work himself into a position of very considerable power, and I have little doubt that he, and he only, is responsible for the whole shameful business, which, in my opinion, has been neither more nor less than a determined but unsuccessful attempt to force the unhappy Senorita Isolda into a marriage with him!" "Well," said Jack grimly, "he is going to repent of that business in sackcloth and ashes before he dies; he has received his first instalment of punishment this morning, and there is more in store for him!" "By the way," said Don Ramon, "what do you propose to do with the Montijos when you have rescued them, in the event of this mad scheme of yours proving successful?" "Oh," said Jack, "I haven't thought of that, thus far! Of course it will be for Don Hermoso to decide where he will go and what he will do when we have got him and his safely out of the convict ship. I imagine that he will be anxious to return to his own place and take care of his property, if he can. But, if not, he can always find safety in Jamaica." "Y-es," assented Don Ramon doubtfully; "that is of course all right, so far as it goes. But the chances are that Alvaros' next move will be to procure the confiscation of Don Hermoso's property, and secure its possession to himself. Now, just let us consider that point for a moment. Should that happen, what will poor Don Hermoso do?" "I know what I should do in such a case," said Jack. "I should return to my property, and if Alvaros happened to be in possession of it--well, it would be so much the worse for Alvaros, that's all! I tell you, Don Ramon, that in the struggle which is just now beginning in this island, it is the bold, strong men who are going to `come out on top', as the Yankees say; and in the course of the next month or two the Spanish Government will have its hands so full that it will have no time to deal with individuals." "Yes," said Don Ramon with decision, "I believe you are quite right there, my young friend, and probably the most daring policy will be the safest for all Cubans to pursue. Yes, there are possibilities in that idea of yours, I believe; but I must think it over at greater leisure than I have to spare for it just now. Meanwhile, it will manifestly be very advantageous for Don Hermoso to know precisely how affairs stand, and what are the latest developments, before he attempts to return to his home. I will therefore-- By the way, how long do you anticipate that it will take you to effect the rescue?" "Quite impossible to say," answered Jack. "The _Maranon_ will no doubt keep the Cuban coast close aboard until she gets as far east as, say, Cavana Point, and then steer about midway between Great Inagua and Hayti, keeping to the southward of all the banks, and so passing into the open Atlantic, probably `taking her departure', in the navigator's sense of the term, from Cape Viejo Francais, on the northern coast of Hayti, and striking thence, as straight across as she can go, to Fernando Po. It is my intention to go to sea to-morrow, or next day, perhaps, and lie in wait for her; after which I shall follow her at a sufficient distance to avoid arousing the suspicions of the captain, and pounce upon her at the first favourable opportunity that presents itself. But probably, if all goes well with us, they will be free again in a fortnight from to-day." "Upon my word," said Don Ramon, laughing, "it is positively exhilarating to hear the confident tone in which you talk; you are actually inveigling me into the indulgence of some sort of ridiculous hope that your enterprise will be successful! Now, let us talk for a moment or two as though that hope were going to be realised. When you have accomplished the rescue of our friends, you had better put into some Cuban port where your yacht is not known, and communicate with me by telegraph. Now, what would be the best place for you to call at?" "Really," said Jack, "I don't think it matters very much; the _Thetis_ has been into practically every port in Cuba, but that is no reason why she should not enter any of them again. For you must remember that it will be some time before the escape of the Montijo family is known; probably not until the _Maranon_ has travelled all the way to Fernando Po and back--if she is indeed to return to Havana, which, by the way, is by no means certain. How would Guantanamo do?" "Guantanamo would do very well indeed," answered Don Ramon. "Yes; Guantanamo let it be. Now, the next matter to be considered is the question of a cipher in which to communicate, for of course it goes without saying that a cipher of some sort must be used; it would never do for such treasonable correspondence as we have in our minds to be carried on in plain language, capable of being understood by every telegraph clerk or letter-sorter through whose hands it may chance to pass. You don't happen to be acquainted with any first-class cipher, I suppose?" "Yes, I do, if I can but recall it to mind," said Jack. "I met with it in a book some time ago, and it struck me as being especially good from the fact that it consisted entirely of figures, and that it was not necessary to use precisely the same figures every time to represent any particular letter; hence it seems impossible for anyone to decipher it without the key. Now, let me consider: how did it go? Something like this, I think. Can you let me have a pencil and a sheet of paper?" Don Ramon produced the articles required, and Singleton set to work with them. Presently he glanced up with an exclamation of satisfaction. "Yes," he said, "that is right; I thought I had not forgotten it. This is how it goes:" and he proceeded to explain the system to Don Ramon. "Excellent!" exclaimed the latter; "nothing could be better, for it is absolutely safe. Very well, Senor, we will use this cipher, then, in communicating with each other; and you will wire to me upon your arrival at Guantanamo. Meanwhile, I will make it my business to watch the course of events here, and be prepared to furnish you with all the news as soon as I hear of your return. Now, is there anything else remaining to be arranged?" They both considered for several minutes, and at length came to the conclusion that there was not. Whereupon, breakfast having been by this time dispatched, Jack rose and took his leave, laden down with kind and encouraging messages for the Montijos, to be delivered when the rescue of the family should have been accomplished. From Don Ramon's house Jack made his way to the British Consulate, where he bade farewell to the Consul, explaining to that gentleman that he was tired of shore life, and intended to go to sea for a change; and that, further, he did not in the least know whether he should return, or whether he should decide to go home. "If you will take my advice, young gentleman," said the Consul, "you will go home--and stay there; or, at least, you will stay away from Cuba until all these troubles are over." Jack promised that he would give that advice his most careful consideration; after which he bade his fellow-countryman adieu, and made his way aboard the yacht, where Milsom was found busily arranging to take the _Thetis_ alongside a coal hulk as soon as the water lighter had cast off. The remainder of that day was a busy time for both men, for Milsom still had his clearance to effect, and all the stores to receive; while Jack spent the afternoon at the railway station awaiting the arrival of the baggage, the due dispatch of which Calderon had notified to him by telegraph. It arrived late in the afternoon, and was taken straight aboard the yacht, where it was placed at haphazard in the cabins lately occupied by the various members of the Montijo family. Then, when at length the bustle of preparation was ended, and the yacht was in condition to leave at a moment's notice, Jack and Milsom adjourned to the chart-house to discuss those matters which were to ensue upon the departure of the _Thetis_ from Havana harbour. "Now," said Singleton, as he took from a drawer in the chart case a large-scale chart of Cuba, and laid it on top of the case, "how long do you suppose it will take you to effect the transmogrification of this ship by means of that disguise of yours?" "Well," answered Milsom, "seeing that I have never yet rigged the arrangement, I am not prepared to say, to half an hour or so, just how long it will take. I reckon that, under favourable conditions, it ought to be done in about four hours; but, to make all certain, suppose we call it twelve hours. That ought to suffice and at the same time leave a sufficient margin for any small alterations that may be necessary. You seem just a little bit inclined to sneer at my `wonderful' disguise, Master Jack; but you had better wait until you have seen it before you do that. I venture to remind you that I am a Navy man, and, as such, I know a thing or two about disguising ships: I've had a little experience in that direction during the carrying out of manoeuvres; and I am prepared to make a bet that if you--not knowing anything about the arrangement, mind you--were to pass this vessel, in her disguised condition, within half a mile, you would never recognise her." "All right, Phil, old chap, don't get your back up! I'll take your word for it that the thing is all right," said Jack. "And if I seemed to speak disparagingly of your contrivance, forgive me, old man, will you? I've had a good deal to worry me lately, and I'm afraid that both my nerves and my temper are a bit on edge; but I daresay I shall feel better when we get to sea again and can start to circumvent the Spanish Government, or at least that part of it which is responsible for the misrule and shameful injustice which are rampant in Cuba. Now, I think I understood you to say that you require quiet water to enable you to rig this disguising arrangement, so I propose to go to sea to-morrow-- which will be Thursday--and run down the coast to the eastward in search of a secluded spot in which we can effect our transformation without being interfered with or overlooked by anybody. Now, let us have a look at the chart." "There ought not to be very much difficulty in finding a suitable spot," remarked Milsom, as the pair bent over the sheet. "Ah," he continued, laying his finger upon the paper, "here we are! This should be a perfectly ideal place; just sufficient water, a lee to shelter under, and very little likelihood of being disturbed at our work. We can go in here through the Boca de Sagua la Grande, haul up to the south-east, and come to anchor in this little bight in two and a quarter fathoms of water. And when our preparations are complete we can go out to sea again by way of the Boca de Maravillas, thus avoiding the observation of the people who tend the light on Hicacal Cay, who will be sure to notice us as we go in. By the way, I picked up a rather useful little item of information while I was ashore this afternoon. I fell in with the harbour-master, who seems quite a decent sort of chap, as Spaniards go; he and I have gradually grown to be rather chummy since we have been in harbour here, and upon the strength of the fact that I was clearing for sea I took him into that place on the quay yonder and cracked a farewell bottle of wine with him. As we emptied the bottle we yarned together upon various topics; and by and by he made some casual mention of the _Maranon_, to which I replied by saying that she had the appearance of being rather a fast vessel, and that I thought it a pity that her skipper did not take a little more pride in her appearance and smarten her up a bit by giving her a lick of paint occasionally. He shrugged his shoulders and asked: What would I? The ship was a convict ship, and her appearance was a matter of no consequence. As to her speed, she could steam twelve knots, but her most economical speed was eight, and he opined that eight knots would therefore be her pace on the trip to Fernando Po, for which reason he rather pitied the unfortunate convicts who were doomed to travel in her, for she had the reputation of being a most uneasy ship in a seaway. I also ascertained from him that she is timed to sail at two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, which should bring her off our hiding-place about--let me see--yes, about seven o'clock on Monday morning. Now, if her skipper should chance to keep the coast pretty close aboard, as he possibly may, we ought to catch a glimpse of her from our masthead as she goes past: but if, on the other hand, he should push her off into mid-channel, to get the full benefit of the current, I think our best plan will be to allow her, say, four hours for delay in starting, and then follow until we sight her, when our further actions can be governed by circumstances. So I have instructed Perkins to pass the word round among the deck hands for everybody to take a good look at her, so that they may know her again when they see her." "Good!" exclaimed Jack. "That is excellent; the news is well worth a bottle of wine. You don't think, I suppose, that your friend had any suspicion of our intention, and deliberately told you all that for the purpose of misleading you?" "Not he," answered Milsom confidently; "he is too simple a chap to conceive any such suspicion as that. Besides, why should he? We have done nothing to lead even the most suspicious Spaniard to connect our departure with that of _El Maranon_. Oh, no! what he told me slipped out in the most casual way in the ordinary course of conversation, and you may be sure that I was particularly careful not to question him, or to say anything which might lead him to suppose that I took the least interest in the movements of the ship." "Well," said Jack, "we must hope for the best; but I am horribly anxious, Phil, lest anything should go wrong with this scheme of ours. So much depends upon its success, you know. By the way, what about a pilot for this place where we are going to transform the ship? How shall we manage about him?" "We shall not need to `manage' at all," answered Milsom, "for the simple reason that we shall not take a pilot. If we get under way at about eight o'clock to-morrow morning we shall reach our destination with several hours of daylight in hand; and with the help of this chart, a hand aloft on the foremast, and two leadsmen in the forechains, I will guarantee to take this little hooker in and out of that berth without so much as scratching her paint. Oh, no, we shall not take a pilot, who might possibly go back to Havana and set people wondering what the mischief was our object in slipping in behind Esquivel del Norte cay!" CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE RESCUE. With all due observance of the courtesies of the sea the graceful, white-hulled _Thetis_ dipped a farewell salute to the Spanish warships in Havana harbour as she next morning swept past them, outward bound, shortly after nine o'clock in the morning of a glorious April day. Jack was on the navigating bridge with Milsom, and as the beautiful little ship, looking as spick and span as though just fresh from the stocks, and with all her brasswork gleaming and flashing like burnished gold in the brilliant morning sunlight, brought the lighthouse abeam and gaily plunged her keen, shapely bows into the heart of the first blue, wind- whipped, foam-crested surge that met her, and in joyous greeting playfully flung a shower of diamond-tinted spray over her starboard cathead, the young man sighed a sigh of relief, and flung from his shoulders the heavy load of care and anxiety that had of late been wearing him down a great deal more than he knew or even suspected: for now, at last, the expedition that meant so much to him had actually begun, and very soon he would know the best and the worst that was to be known; and perhaps, after all, the worst might prove to be not nearly so bad as he had been led to believe. Alvaros, he was convinced, was not only a blatant braggart, but also an unmitigated liar, and it might be that the foul deed of which he had boasted had never happened, and that the boast was merely another lie. Milsom, regarding his companion with a sympathetic eye, noted how Jack straightened up and flung back his shoulders like a fighter preparing for the fray, and how his eye brightened and his cheek flushed as the strong, salt breeze met his nostrils and swept into his lungs, exhilarating as a draught of wine--and chuckled, for he knew now that the worst was over, and that the collapse which he had been half- dreading would not now come. As for himself, he was as happy as a man can be who is unable to forget that a calamity has befallen certain of his friends. But he was a keen, light-hearted sailor, intensely fond of his profession, and he was now fairly started upon an expedition that very strongly appealed to his professional instincts; he felt like a hunter, and the exhilarating excitement of stalking and running down his prey tended to very largely obliterate the memory of everything else. And he was throwing himself heart and soul into this mad undertaking of Jack's for the deliverance of their friends; he saw the difficulty and recognised the extreme danger of the adventure, and with keen zest he laid himself out to conquer the one and evade the other. Even now, when the yacht had but barely cleared the harbour mouth, he adopted his first ruse for the mystification of the foe, for he understood that it was quite possible that some curious eye might follow the course of the vessel and possibly suspect something if it were seen that she was going the same road that the convict steamer would be following a few days later; he therefore instructed the helmsman to make a very wide and gradual sweep to the eastward, hauling up almost imperceptibly at the rate of a point every quarter of an hour, and thus rendering it absolutely impossible for an observer to guess whether the _Thetis_ was going out through the Florida Strait or down the Nicholas and Old Bahama channels. Also, for the first hour he allowed her to travel at the sober pace of fourteen knots; after which he spoke down the voice tube to Macintyre in the engine-room, and the next instant the little craft was shearing through the long, foam-flecked surges like a chasing dolphin, as the Scotchman gave her all the steam that her engines could take. It was about seven bells in the afternoon watch when, the yacht running in toward the land on a south-easterly course, the head of the mast from which the light on Hicacal Cay is shown appeared dead ahead, and Milsom at once gave orders for the engines to be slowed down to fourteen knots. Then, turning to Jack, he said: "Now, young man, I shall want your assistance, for I am going to personally undertake the job of piloting the little hooker into her hiding-place. The chart still lies spread out on the chart-house table, where we left it last night, and with that before you you ought to be able to con the ship into the Boca without the slightest difficulty. Once she is there, I will take charge again, and give you my directions from the fore-masthead, whither I am about to go; and I shall want you to stand by the engine-room telegraph and transmit my orders to the engine-room smartly. You had better keep that mast yonder fair and square over the bowsprit end until the Boca opens out clearly; then you can ease your helm over to port and head her straight in. Now, I'm off." And, therewith, Milsom left the bridge and ran down on to the fore deck, from which he was presently hoisted to the fore-masthead in a boatswain's chair bent on to a whip rove through the sheave-hole at the masthead. By the time that he was up there the low, mangrove-clothed cays were visible from the bridge; then Jack gave orders for the helm to be ported, and a quarter of an hour later the yacht shot into smooth water between Bushy and Hicacal Cays, and Milsom took in hand the conning of the craft, following the trend of the channel by eye from his lofty lookout, with a couple of leadsmen in the forechains to further help him. But there was no difficulty, for, once inside the cays, the water was both smooth and clear, and Milsom was able to follow unerringly the line of deepest water. As he had anticipated, the unwonted spectacle of so trim and handsome a little vessel as the _Thetis_ attracted the interested attention not only of the lightkeepers but also of the fishermen inhabiting the little cluster of huts near the cottage of the former; but that could not be helped, and, after all, they probably concluded that the yacht was bound to Sagua la Grande, and would think no more about her. And a quarter of an hour later she had slipped round a projecting point, out of sight, and was safely riding at anchor in her hiding-place. As Milsom had foreseen, they reached their destination with some hours of daylight in hand, and the moment that the anchor was down all hands went to work and routed out from the secret recesses of the ship a heterogeneous assortment of light iron rods, bars, angles, and sheets; wood framing and planking; and great rolls of canvas, painted a light, smoky-grey tint, which Milsom asserted would render a vessel practically invisible at a distance of three miles, and the precise composition of which had cost him weeks of anxious thought and study. Then the crew were divided into three gangs; and while one party busied itself, under Macintyre, in sorting out, bolting together, and fixing in position those portions which were to effect a transformation in the appearance of the yacht's bows, another party, under Milsom, was similarly employed in altering the appearance of the vessel's handsome stern, and the third party, under Perkins, was clothing the brightly varnished masts in tight-fitting canvas coats, painted in the all-pervading grey which was to be the colour of the vessel when the work of disguising her should be complete; fixing a bogus fighting top on the ship's foremast; enclosing the chart-house in a casing which should give it the semblance of a conning tower; getting a couple of light signalling yards aloft; and painting the several boats grey. When the men knocked off work at sunset, a great deal had been done; but it was not until six bells in the forenoon watch next day that the work of transformation was finally completed to Milsom's satisfaction, and then the _Thetis_--temporarily re-christened the _Libertad_--so strongly resembled a modern two- funnelled torpedo gunboat that she might easily have deceived even a professional eye at a distance of half a mile; and when, further, a long pennant flaunted itself from the main truck, and the flag of Cuba Libre waved from the ensign staff, the gallant skipper, critically surveying his transmogrified ship from the dinghy, confidently announced that he would defy anybody to trace the most remote resemblance between the vessel upon which his eyes rested and the trim English yacht which had steamed out of Havana harbour on the previous day. On the following Monday morning at daylight the furnace fires were lighted on board the disguised yacht, and at the same time a man with sharp eyes was sent aloft to the fore-masthead to watch the offing over the tops of the low mangrove trees, and give notice of the passage of the _Maranon_, should she happen to heave in sight; but hour after hour passed with no sign of her, unless one of the eastward-going trails of smoke that showed on the horizon during the forenoon happened to emanate from her. They waited patiently until noon, and then, nothing having been seen of the convict ship, Jack and Milsom agreed that it was quite useless to wait any longer; and half an hour later the fishermen outside the Boca de Maravillas were astonished to see a craft, which some of them described as a cruiser, while the others spoke of her as a gunboat, sweep through the passage and head away north-east, as though to clear the eastern extremity of Cay Sal Bank on her way northward through the Santaren Channel. The vessel showed no colours, but was flying a pennant, and the general opinion was that she was an American man-o'- war; though what she had been doing in Sagua la Grande harbour, or how she had got there, nobody seemed able to guess. But although, to the unsophisticated fishermen of Sagua la Grande, the mysterious warship appeared to be bound north, she was really bound south-east through the Nicholas and Old Bahama channels: and when the yacht had made an offing of some fifteen miles--by which time she was of course out of sight of the fishermen's boats, Milsom ordered the helm to be ported and the engines sent full speed ahead, she having by that time run on to a line which the ex-Navy man had pencilled on his chart as the probable course of the convict steamer; and if that craft had left Havana at the hour arranged, and were steaming at the rate which the harbour-master had anticipated would be her pace, she must now be nearly sixty miles ahead. That was a fairly long lead, certainly; but there is a big difference between a speed of eight knots and that of twenty-four, and Milsom calculated that, if the _Maranon_ were really ahead of them, they ought to overtake her in something like three hours. As a matter of fact, they sighted the craft dead ahead about five bells in the afternoon watch, identified her to their entire satisfaction about half an hour later, and passed her, some sixteen miles to the southward, about one bell in the first "dog." "Now," said Milsom, when he came down from aloft after personally satisfying himself as to the identity of the great, dirty-white, rust- streaked hull crawling along in the northern board, "let me make a little calculation. Our plan is to appear ahead of her, steaming to the northward and westward--to meet her, in fact, instead of overtaking her; and the proper time to do this will be about a quarter of an hour before sunset. I take it that she is steaming at about the pace which my friend the harbour-master allowed her--that is to say, about eight knots. At that rate she will be about eight miles farther to the eastward at a quarter of an hour before sunset. That means that--um-- um--yes, that will be about right. Now, Jack, my hearty, cheer up! for unless something goes very radically wrong with our scheme, our friends ought to be safe and snug aboard this dandy little hooker in a couple of hours' time. Now, it is you, my friend, who are going to play the giddy pirate and wrest our friends, at the sword's point, out of the hands of the oppressor, so cut away down below, my lad, and get into your disguise; and while you are doing that the deck hands can be doing the same, so as to render it impossible for them to be identified at any future time, should they be met in the streets of Havana, or elsewhere, by anybody belonging to the _Maranon_." Half an hour later Jack re-appeared on deck, his already well-bronzed face and hands stained to the darkness of a mulatto's skin, and his corpus arrayed in an old, weather-stained, and very-much-the-worse-for- wear Spanish naval lieutenant's uniform, which Don Ramon had caused one of his servants to procure for him at a second-hand wardrobe dealer's in Havana; his disguise being completed by the addition of a black wig and a ferocious moustache and whiskers, obtained through the same channel at a theatrical wig-maker's shop. To say that his own mother would not have known him in this get-up is to put the matter altogether inadequately; and his appearance on deck was the signal for a roar of mingled admiration and mirth from all hands. Meanwhile, the crew had pinned their faith to burnt cork and their working slops as a disguise, except the five who were to form Jack's boat's crew; these having discarded their working slops and donned dungaree overalls, ancient cloth trousers, rusty with salt-water stains, and stiff with tar and grease, big thigh-boots, and worsted caps. A cutlass belted to the waist, and a knife and brace of revolvers in the belt gave the finishing touch of realism to the get-up, and obviated any possibility of doubt as to the seriousness of their mission. By this time the moment had arrived when, according to Milsom's calculations, the yacht ought to be turned round to meet the _Maranon_, now out of sight astern; the helm was accordingly put hard over, and the nimble little craft swept round until she was heading direct for the spot where it had been calculated that the two ships should meet. No combination of circumstances could possibly have been more favourable for the adventure than were those at that moment prevailing. There was no craft of any description in sight as far as the eye could see; the trade wind was blowing quite a moderate breeze; and the sea was not sufficiently formidable to render the task of transferring the rescued people from one ship to the other by means of an open boat at all difficult or dangerous. Moreover, the sun, fast dropping toward the horizon, was quickly losing his intensity of light, and as rapidly plunging all objects into a delicious soft golden haze, in which all detail was lost; it was therefore in the highest degree unlikely that even the keenest eye on board the convict steamer would be able to detect the imposition that was being practised upon them. Presently, a smudge of brown smoke soaring above the horizon broad on the port bow showed that the unsuspecting quarry was approaching; and a minute or two later her masts, fine as spiders' webs, began to rise against the warm, golden glow of the western sky, then her funnel appeared, and finally her bridge and chart-house--appearing as completely detached and isolated objects in the rarefied atmosphere-- suddenly showed themselves on the horizon, alternately appearing and disappearing with the rise and fall of the ship over the swell. Then Milsom rang down to the engine-room for half speed; and a little later, when the _Maranon_ was hull-up and the two vessels were closing fast, he ordered the forward port twelve-pound quick-firer to be loaded with a blank charge. Then, when the two craft were about a mile apart, he ordered the Cuban flag to be run up to the main gaff-end, and the gun to be fired as a polite invitation to the other craft to heave-to, at the same time stopping his own engines. Apparently the skipper of the _Maranon_ did not know what to make of it; for, beyond hoisting Spanish colours, he took no notice of the summons, making no attempt to stop his engines. "Mr Perkins," shouted Milsom, "just heave a shot across that chap's fore-foot, will ye? and we will see whether he understands that language. But for goodness' sake take care that you don't hit him by mistake. We don't want to have the destruction of that vessel on our consciences." Bang! barked the twelve-pounder for the second time, and there was now a vicious tone in the bark which said unmistakably that the gun was shotted; while, if anybody on board the _Maranon_ had any doubt about it, that doubt was a moment later dispelled by the sudden up-leaping of a fountain of foam some twenty fathoms ahead of the vessel. That proved conclusively that the mysterious gunboat flying the Cuban flag was in no humour to be trifled with; and the Spanish captain, objurgating vehemently, rang down for his engines to stop. Thereupon the "gunboat", which by this time had swung round, presenting a view of her stern, with the name _Libertad_ emblazoned upon it in gold letters, lowered a boat, into which four seamen, a coxswain, and a big, black-bearded officer dropped. When the frail craft, propelled by the four sturdy oarsmen, pushed off, and went dancing, light as an empty eggshell, over the purple swell toward the convict ship, the officers on the bridge of which did not fail to note that the crew of the stranger had carefully trained two long, beautifully polished guns and a couple of Maxims on them, "as a gentle hint that there was to be no nonsense," as Milsom put it. Meanwhile, the crew of the _Maranon_, seeing the boat approaching, busied themselves with the task of lowering their side ladder, which they got into position just as the boat dashed alongside and her crew tossed their oars. Although the swell was by no means high, the convict ship rolled heavily upon it as soon as she lost her way, and Jack had to watch his opportunity to spring out of the boat on to the ladder without accident; but he managed it cleverly, and the next moment stood upon the deck of the _Maranon_, where he found the captain of the ship and his chief officer awaiting him. As he stepped in through the gangway he courteously lifted his cap in salute; but the other man was far too angry to acknowledge or return the salute. Instead, he made a step forward, with corrugated brow and clenched fist, and exclaimed: "Senor, I demand to know the reason of this outrage! Who are you; and why have you dared to stop my ship upon the high seas?" By way of reply to the man's menacing demeanour, Jack allowed his left hand to drop on to the butt of one of the pair of revolvers which he carried in his belt. And, instead of answering the very reasonable question which had been put to him, he said: "Captain, I greatly regret to trouble you, but I must ask you to have the goodness to muster your prisoners on deck. Please do it at once; for the light will soon be gone, and I am anxious to complete my; business with you before the darkness falls." "Muster my prisoners on deck?" stormed the captain. "For what reason, Senor? And again I ask, Who are you; and by what authority--?" Jack raised his hand deprecatingly. "My good sir," he exclaimed, "why waste time in asking foolish and useless questions, when I have already intimated to you that I am in a hurry? Will you have the very great goodness--and, I may add, the wisdom--to comply with my request? Or will you compel me to shoot you, in the hope that this gentleman--who, I presume, is your chief officer--will be more reasonable and obliging than yourself?" This hint had the desired effect; the skipper turned away, and, giving certain instructions to his companion, made his way up on to the bridge again, while the other went below. Ten minutes later the prisoners, under the charge of a strong guard of soldiers, began to make their way up on deck; and presently the officer who had gone below to carry out the skipper's instructions re-appeared, with the information that the prisoners were now all paraded forward, and ready for the inspection which he presumed the Senor wished to make of them. Whereupon Jack, calling the coxswain up out of the boat alongside for the purpose of keeping an eye upon things generally, and seeing that no trickery was attempted, went forward to the fore deck, where about three hundred men, women, and children were drawn up in four lines or ranks, two on each side of the deck. The chief officer, or mate, accompanied him. The first face he recognised was that of his friend and chum Carlos, but oh, how shockingly changed! The poor fellow was thin as a skeleton, ghastly pale under the almost vanished tan of the sun, dirty, dishevelled, and in rags. But that was not the most shocking change that Jack noticed in him; it was the look of mingled fear, hate, and horror that gleamed in the young man's eyes, the kind of look that tells of systematic and long-continued cruelty. "Take him aft," said Jack to the officer who was attending him, laying his hand lightly on Carlos' shoulder as he spoke; and he noted with horror how, as he lifted his hand, the poor youth shrank and cowered, as though he expected to be struck. Then presently he came to Senora Montijo, who, poor soul, looked into Jack's face vacantly and laughed, as he directed her, too, to be taken aft! It was clear that she was quite mad; and Jack ground his teeth as he inwardly vowed fresh vows of vengeance against the infamous ruffian who was the author of such unspeakable misery and ruin. A little farther on he found Don Hermoso, whose condition seemed even worse than that of his son. But the Senorita Isolda he could not find, although he searched the remainder of the prisoners twice over. Then he walked aft to where Don Hermoso and his wife and son were standing listlessly together, exchanging an occasional word or two with each other, but apparently too utterly wretched to take notice of anything, or to engage in continuous conversation. Jack addressed himself to Carlos, in English. "Carlos, old chap," he said, "don't start, or look surprised, or appear to recognise me; but you know me, old fellow, don't you? I am Jack--Jack Singleton; that is the yacht over yonder, disguised as a gunboat; and I have come to take you all away out of this wretched ship, and restore you to your home. But I cannot find your sister. Is she not with you?" This apparently simple question had the most extraordinary effect upon Don Hermoso and Carlos. The former, suddenly dropping his face in his hands, began to sob and moan hysterically, while Carlos as suddenly dropped on his knees on the deck, and, lifting his clenched hands skyward, began to call down bitter curses upon the head of Alvaros. Jack shuddered as he listened, and again ground his teeth in impotent fury, for he soon gathered, from his friend's wild words, that the cruelty of which the Spaniard had boasted had indeed been true. But he could gather no information as to the whereabouts of Senorita Isolda from the now frenzied ravings of her brother; and it was only with the utmost difficulty that he at length drew from Don Hermoso the dreadful tidings that his daughter, who had been brought on board the ship a raving maniac, had that very morning contrived to elude the guard, and, rushing on deck, had thrown herself overboard and never been seen again! Poor Jack was so utterly overwhelmed at this awful confirmation of his worst forebodings that several minutes elapsed ere he could speak, and even then he could find no words wherewith to soothe the despair of his friends: but presently he managed to tell them again that he was there to restore them to liberty, and that there were plenty of friends who would stand by them upon their return to their home; then he asked them whether they knew of any more prisoners on board who, like themselves, were the victims of Spanish injustice and tyranny, suggesting that, if so, those poor wretches should also be restored to freedom; whereupon Don Hermoso mentioned that he believed there were two or three more political prisoners on board, and, at Jack's request, accompanied him forward and pointed them out. These also Jack ordered aft, and when they came abreast of the gangway he directed them down into the boat, whither Don Hermoso and his bereaved family followed them, Jack going last, and informing the skipper of the _Maranon_ ere he left that he might now proceed on his voyage, which that individual forthwith did; while, as soon as the released prisoners were on board the yacht, and the boat hoisted to the davits, that craft continued her course to the westward--until the convict steamer was out of sight, when the bows of the _Thetis_ were again turned eastward and her speed reduced to dead slow, for she now had to be stripped of her disguise and restored to her normal appearance again, and some convenient spot for the performance of this operation had to be found, Milsom not deeming it wise to return and effect it in the spot from which they had so recently come. This spot was eventually found, in the shape of a tiny cove near Point Lucrecia; and into it they steamed at daylight next morning, leaving it again the same evening, an hour before sunset, when the _Thetis_ again showed as the trim, white-hulled English yacht, with all her boats bright varnished as of yore, neither yacht nor boats bearing the slightest trace of ever having been even remotely connected with the mysterious "gunboat" that had been seen by the fishermen to steam out of Sagua la Grande harbour. When at length, by the exercise of illimitable patience, Jack succeeded in persuading his friends to believe that their troubles were over, and had induced them to settle down in peace and comfort aboard the yacht, and also to ease their aching hearts by telling him what they had undergone since that day when they so blithely parted from him at the railway station at Havana, it was a really heartrending story of cruel oppression and shameful, irresponsible tyranny to which he felt himself obliged to listen. There is no need to give the full details here; it is sufficient to simply state that upon their arrival at Bejucal, the first station beyond Santiago, they were accosted by a sergeant, who ordered them to leave the train, and who, with the assistance of a couple of files of soldiers, conveyed them back to Havana by goods train late that same night, marching them all off to La Jacoba prison about three o'clock the next morning, where each of them was confined in a separate cell. Later in the day--that is to say, about eleven o'clock in the morning--Don Hermoso was visited by a file of soldiers, who informed him that the governor demanded his presence, and roughly commanded him to follow them. Having obeyed this command, the Don presently found himself in a kind of office, and confronted with Alvaros, who ordered the two guards to leave him alone with their prisoner. Then, this having been done, Alvaros informed Don Hermoso that, in consequence of certain information supplied to the Government, his house had been searched during his absence, and sufficient treasonable correspondence found therein to send the entire family to the penal settlements for life. Next he reminded Don Hermoso that he had on a certain occasion paid him and his family the compliment of proposing for the hand of Dona Isolda, and that the Don had seen fit to reject the proposal with scorn and contumely; yet such, he said, was his generous and forgiving nature that he was quite willing not only to overlook that affront, but also to secure the pardon of Don Hermoso and his family for their treason to the Spanish Government, if the said Don Hermoso would now withdraw his refusal and give his consent to his daughter's marriage with him, Don Sebastian Alvaros, a scion of one of the most noble families in Old Spain. Don Hermoso's reply to this suggestion was the repetition of a categorical and uncompromising refusal; whereupon Alvaros fell into a paroxysm of rage and swore that he would either compel Don Hermoso to give his consent, or certain very dreadful things would happen to every member of the family, Dona Isolda included. And certain very dreadful things had happened, among which floggings and starvation might be mentioned, the whole culminating in their condemnation to transportation for life to the horrors of the penal settlement of Fernando Po, when Don Hermoso persisted in his refusal and declared that he would rather see his daughter dead than wedded to such a scoundrel as Don Sebastian Alvaros. These were the bare outlines of the story, as told by Don Hermoso, but there were details of words said and deeds done that caused Jack Singleton to "see red", and to wonder how it was that a man, made in God's image, could ever become degraded to a condition so much lower than that of the beasts that perish; and how it was that such fiends in human form were permitted to live and to work their wicked will upon others. "However," he comforted himself by saying, "such atrocities as Senor Alvaros has committed do not go unpunished, and the time will come when he will wish that he had shot himself rather than yield to the suggestions of his own evil heart!" How truly he prophesied, and how awful was the retribution that was to fall upon Don Sebastian Alvaros, Jack little knew, otherwise it is possible that even his righteous anger might have been mitigated, his craving for vengeance drowned in the fountain of pity! CHAPTER FIFTEEN. RETRIBUTION. It was a trifle over thirty-six hours from the moment of the deliverance of Don Hermoso and his wife and son when the _Thetis_, brilliant in all the bravery of white enamel paint, gilt figurehead and ornamental scroll-work, freshly varnished boats, and scintillating brasswork, steamed into Guantanamo harbour and let go her anchor off the little town--or village, for it is scarcely more--of Caimamera. The visit of the yacht to this out-of-the-way spot was ostensibly for the purpose of enabling that erratic and irresponsible young Englishman, her owner, to enjoy a day or two's fishing, Guantanamo harbour being noted for the variety of fish with which its waters teem, and the excellent sport which they afford; but Jack's first act was to go ashore and pay an early visit to the telegraph office, from which he dispatched a cipher wire to Don Ramon Bergera, briefly acquainting that gentleman with the bare facts of the rescue and Dona Isolda's death. Then he allowed the crew to take a couple of boats and go fishing, while he devoted himself to the arduous task of comforting and consoling his friends as best he could; indeed, that had been his chief occupation from the moment when the Montijos had first come on board the yacht from the convict ship. Nor were his efforts altogether unavailing, although it was exceedingly difficult to find words of comfort for those whose hearts were still bleeding from the tragic loss of the being who was dearest to them all. With the Senora Montijo Jack was much more successful than with her husband and son, for the poor soul's reason was entirely gone, and to such an extent, indeed, that she seemed to have completely forgotten every circumstance connected with their recent misfortunes, appearing to merely remember Jack as someone with whom certain pleasant memories, vaguely recalled, were connected, and in whose society she therefore took pleasure. She very rarely spoke, never rationally, but was content to walk fore and aft the deck by the hour, with her hand on Jack's supporting arm and her eyes gazing dreamily at the deck planks. She took even more pleasure in Jack's society than she did in that of her husband and son, both of whom were at this time gloomy, saturnine, silent brooders upon revenge. On the second day after their arrival in Guantanamo harbour there came a letter from Don Ramon, briefly congratulating Jack upon his success and the Montijos upon their deliverance, and requesting them to remain where they were for the present, as he had been unable to gather any definite news, but was busily conducting a number of enquiries. Then, after the lapse of a full week, there came another letter from the same source, informing them that the writer had received a communication from Senor Calderon, Don Hermoso's manager, stating that Senor Alvaros--now promoted to the rank of major--had appeared at the hacienda with the intelligence that Don Hermoso and his family, having been found guilty of the crime of conspiracy against the Spanish Government, had been shipped off to Fernando Po for life; and the estates, having been sequestrated, had been given to him as a reward for meritorious service: furthermore, that, Senor Calderon having had long experience in the management of the estate, Major Alvaros was disposed to allow him to retain the post of manager, at least for the present, upon condition that he was found to serve his new master faithfully: and that, finally, Senor Calderon was henceforward to account to Major Alvaros for all income and expenditure connected with the estate. Don Ramon then went on to state that, upon receipt of this communication, he had taken it upon himself to pay a flying visit to Senor Calderon, upon which occasion he, Don Ramon, had informed the Senor of the escape of Don Hermoso from the convict ship, and had instructed him to hold the property, at all hazards, until Don Hermoso's return. And the letter wound up by strongly urging Don Hermoso to return to his property forthwith and hold it against all comers, arming his peons and dependents, if necessary; although the writer was of opinion that the Government generally, and Alvaros in particular, would soon be much too busy to find time to dispute Don Hermoso's right to the possession of his property. Thereupon a council of war was held on the yacht's quarter-deck--the members consisting of Don Hermoso, Carlos, Jack, and Milsom--at which it was ultimately decided that the _Thetis_ should weigh anchor forthwith and run over to Calonna, there to land Don Hermoso, the Senora, Carlos, and Jack, who would then proceed to the hacienda with all speed; while the yacht, under Milsom's command, was to proceed to the Laguna de Cortes, and there remain concealed until it should be seen in what way she could best be employed, after which Milsom was to return by boat to Calonna, and from thence make his way to the hacienda, in order that he might be on the spot to receive such verbal instructions as might be necessary. This arrangement was duly carried out, and the evening of the following day witnessed the return of the little party to the home which they had so joyously left some months before, little dreaming of the sad circumstances under which they would next gaze upon the familiar surroundings. They were welcomed back by the _employes_ of the estate with every sign of the utmost satisfaction, tempered with deep and sincere sorrow at the tragic fate of the young and beautiful daughter of the house, who had contrived during her short life to render herself idolised by every individual in her father's service, from Senor Calderon downward. In the presence of the master and mistress the negroes, with that innate sense of delicacy which governs their conduct toward those whom they love, were careful that the signs of their grief at the loss of their beloved young mistress should be confined to a few respectful expressions of sympathy; but when Mama Faquita, Senorita Isolda's old nurse, having extracted from Carlos a tolerably full and detailed account of the circumstances that had culminated in her beloved young mistress's death, went the round of the negro huts that night, she kindled in the breasts of her fellows a flame of fury and vengeful longing that was destined to consume Senor Alvaros. It is not to be wondered at that, after what Don Hermoso had suffered, personally and through his family, from Spanish misrule, his interest in the management of his vast estates should occupy only a secondary position in his mind; and that he should relegate that management almost entirely to the capable hands and conscientious mind of Senor Calderon, giving the first and most important place to the advancement, by every means in his power, of the aims of the revolutionaries. With this object, therefore, he shut himself up in his own private room for the three weeks following his return home, and plunged strenuously into a voluminous correspondence with Marti, Jesus Rabi, Antonio Maceo, Maximo Gomez, and other more or less prominent insurgent leaders, making exhaustive enquiry into the condition and prospects of the party, and offering advice and assistance in its several projects: while Jack and Carlos made long excursions in various directions for the purpose of personally ascertaining the feeling of the inhabitants and adding fuel to the smouldering flame of insurrection by every means in their power; for it may be said at once that the shocking tyranny, the cruel injustice, and the callous indifference on the part of the island authorities which had rendered possible such a disaster as that which had befallen his friends had kindled in Jack Singleton's breast such fiery indignation, and such a loathing abhorrence, that--quixotic as the resolve may seem to some--he had at once determined to throw in his lot with that of the Montijos, and assist by every means in his power to free Cuba from Spanish misrule. In this fashion nearly two months went by, during which, by Don Hermoso's instructions, the armament of the _Thetis_ had been dismounted, remounted upon field carriages constructed by the carpenter and engineers of the vessel, landed, with their ammunition, at various points on the coast, and delivered over to the armed bands of the revolutionaries, who were by this time springing up like mushrooms all over the island; and the yacht, under Milsom's command, had been dispatched to New York for further supplies. And during the whole of this time, thanks to the fact that the secret had been kept from everybody but sympathisers whose discretion might be relied on, the rescue and return of the Montijo family remained unsuspected by the Spanish authorities. Then, one morning, a message reached Senor Calderon from Major Alvaros, to the effect that the latter would arrive at the hacienda that night, on a business visit, and that all necessary preparations were to be made for his reception. This message Calderon at once handed to Don Hermoso, with a request for instructions as to how the matter should be dealt with; whereupon Jack and Carlos, who happened to be at hand that day, at once undertook the duty of receiving the Spaniard suitably. It was nearly five o'clock in the evening when Alvaros, hot, tired, and dusty from his long ride from Pinar del Rio and his previous journey by train, drew rein and dismounted before the broad flight of steps leading up to the gallery which ran round the house, and, handing over his horse to an obsequious negro who was in waiting, proceeded to ascend the steps, his brow wrinkled into a frown of displeasure at Calderon's failure to be present to give him a suitably respectful greeting upon his arrival. He reached the top of the steps, paused for a moment to glance around him at the wide prospect visible from the commanding elevation of the gallery, and then strode forward to enter the house, the wide folding doors of which stood, as usual, invitingly open. But as he did so, and ere his foot reached the threshold, he was confronted by Carlos, who, emerging suddenly from the obscurity of the entrance hall, levelled a revolver straight at the Spaniard's right eye, so that before that individual could recover from his astonishment, he found himself gazing into the grooved barrel. "Hands up, you villain and murderer!" exclaimed the young Cuban, glaring savagely along the sights of the levelled weapon into Senor Alvaros' eye: "hands up; or I will blow your worthless brains out with as little compunction as that with which I would crush a venomous snake beneath my heel! Quick! Don't hesitate, or I fire!" Alvaros did not hesitate; there was that in the expression of Carlos' eye, and in the yearning curl of his finger round the trigger, which told the Spaniard that the least sign of hesitation would be fatal; and, with the fear of death upon him, he instantly halted and flung up his hands. Had he only known to what that was the prelude he would probably have kept them down and marched on to his death! Then, from behind Carlos, Jack appeared, with a whistle in his hand, which he raised to his lips, and upon which he blew a shrill blast. At the sound a number of negroes appeared, one of them bearing a long coil of raw-hide rope, with a noose at one end of it, in his hand. This rope Jack took from the hands of the negro and, dropping the noose over Alvaros' head, drew it fairly tight, and then handed the rest of the rope back to the black. "Senor," exclaimed the quaking Spaniard, with quivering lips, "are you about to murder me?" "Not just yet," answered Jack cheerfully. "What we may eventually do I will not pretend to say, because, you see, such vermin as you are not fit to live; but at present we are only going to give you the second instalment--I gave you the first, you will remember"--pointing to the officer's still stiff elbow--"of the punishment due to you for your infamous treatment of Don Hermoso and his family." The fellow was by this time white as a corpse, and his lips were tremulous with terror, yet he strove to carry things off with a high hand. "I presume, Senor," he said, "that it is due to your instrumentality that that young ruffian is here at this moment, instead of on his way to Fernando Po; and as he is here, I take it for granted that the remaining members of the family are not far off. But rest assured that a terrible retribution awaits you, not only for this outrage upon me, but also for your rescue of prisoners sentenced by the Spanish Government to transportation!" "Yes," said Jack; "no doubt; I am quite willing to take your word for that. But," altering his tone from one of banter to that of concentrated anger, "let me tell you, Senor Alvaros, that Senorita Isolda Montijo is dead--owing to your cruelty--and for that and your other crimes retribution is about to fall on you. And this is the first part of it!" Saying which, he unbuckled Alvaros' sword, drew the weapon from its sheath, and snapped the blade across his knee. "There!" he exclaimed, flinging the pieces from him; "you will never again disgrace that weapon by wearing it. Lead him away, Pedro; and if he attempts any nonsense, just choke him with that lariat." "This way, Senor," exclaimed Pedro, roughly jerking the lariat in the direction of the steps, as a hint to the prisoner that he was to descend them; and in this ignominious fashion the once arrogant but now cowering and cringing Spaniard was led away under Jack's supervision, while Carlos, selecting a heavy riding-whip from the rack, followed the procession. The prisoner was conducted to the negro quarters, which were situated about half a mile from the house, with a belt of timber between it and them; and there he was stripped to his trousers, and firmly lashed to a post which had been hastily erected for the purpose. Then, the whole of the negroes employed upon the plantation having been assembled, Carlos related to the blacks the several sufferings and indignities which Alvaros had caused to be inflicted upon the members of the Montijo family, and how to him was due the death of the Senorita, his sister, whom they had all loved so well: and when he had finished his story he flogged Alvaros until the miserable wretch screamed and howled for mercy, offering the most abject excuses and apologies for his conduct, and vowing by all the saints that if Carlos would but release him he would leave Cuba, never to return; that he would surrender the Montijo estates to their rightful owner; that he would never breathe to a single living soul a syllable as to what had passed; and that he would also do a number of other unlikely, not to say impossible, things. Then, when his arm was tired, and he could flog no longer, Carlos desisted, and ordered Alvaros to be cast loose from the stake and securely confined in an empty tobacco shed, with a negro on guard at the door of the building to see that he did not escape. When at length the shrinking, cringing creature was hustled into his prison and securely bound, Carlos turned to him and said: "You have now received the second instalment of punishment for your atrocious crime. You will be kept here until it is convenient to remove you, being fed meanwhile upon bread and water. And when a convenient time arrives you will be placed on board a ship and marooned, which will be the final instalment of the punishment which your evil deeds have called down upon your head. The best thing I can wish you is that what you have suffered to-day, and will suffer in the future, will bring home to you the evil of your ways, and lead to your sincere repentance for them." And therewith he passed from Senor Alvaros' sight--to be seen by him no more. That same night, when the white people had all retired to rest in the great casa, Mama Faquita stole away down to the negro quarters and, going from hut to hut, roused their occupants and summoned them to a great palaver in the open space which the huts surrounded, and in which the children were wont to play. The scene was a weirdly picturesque one, for, prior to rousing the negroes, Mama had kindled a great fire in the centre of the open space; and in front of this, in a great semicircle, the negroes congregated, squatting on their heels and rolling their eyeballs in the flickering light of the flames, while Mama addressed them. They were all free, but had all been slaves not so very many years before: many of them were born Africans, with their savage instincts still practically as strong within them as they had ever been; while in the case of the rest, although their association with white men from their birth had rendered them more amenable in some respects than were the more recent importations, the tenacity with which they had adhered to their fetish-worship, with all its secret and horribly revolting customs, tended to keep them still utterly savage at heart, and only too ready to lend a willing ear to any suggestion which offered them an excuse to indulge their inherent lust for cruelty. Moreover, the African black who has been a slave is a singular combination of good and evil: on the one hand, he is capable of affection and devotion, to an extraordinary degree, toward those who have treated him well; while, on the other, he is equally capable of the most ferocious and implacable hatred of those who have injured him or those he loves; also, he is extraordinarily impressionable. Mama Faquita, being herself a full- blooded negress, was of course perfectly well aware of these peculiarities in the nature of her audience; and she played upon them as a skilled musician does upon a sensitively responsive instrument. She dwelt eloquently and at length upon the invariable kindness with which they had one and all been treated by the _amo_ and his family, and especially by the young Senorita, whom some of them at least were able to remember as a little, toddling baby, and whom they all had loved as passionately as though she had been their own; and as she spoke thus the tears of grief streamed down her cheeks, and she wrung her hands in anguish evoking a ready and sympathetic response from her hearers. Then she went on to recall to their memory the sad homecoming of two months ago, and the dreadful tale that they had been told when they asked why the Senorita had not also returned: and finally she reminded them--as though any reminder were by this time necessary--that the author of the family's woe now lay, ay, at that very moment, imprisoned in the tobacco shed, within a stone's-throw of the spot where they were then assembled. She spoke with qualified satisfaction of the punishment which the young master had inflicted upon the picaro in their presence a few hours ago; she admitted that, so far as it went, it was good: but she contended that it did not go nearly far enough, considering the monstrous character of the crime of which the prisoner had been guilty; and she asserted her conviction that white men did not know how to punish, that they were altogether too squeamish in their notions, particularly in the matter of dealing mercifully with those who had injured them; and that it was only the negro who thoroughly understood how to devise a punishment to properly fit the crime. It was enough; there was no need for her to say another word. With consummate skill she had gradually wrought her audience up to a pitch of demoniac fury; she had pictured her--and their--beloved young mistress in the power of the wretch who crouched with smarting, lacerated back yonder in the shed--insulted, ill-treated, and finally driven to madness and death by him: and now, at a word from one of them, the whole body of negroes sprang to their feet and, with low, hissing, muttering execrations and threats, infinitely more terrifying to listen to than the loudest yells of ferocity, ran to the shed and, with a few low- murmured words of explanation to the guard, demanded the surrender of the prisoner. The demand was conceded with scarcely a word of protest, and five minutes later the miserable Alvaros, in a speechless frenzy of fear, was being hurried along a lonely bush path, known only to the negroes, to a spot some three miles distant. What happened to him when he arrived there must be left untold; suffice it to say that Major Alvaros was never more seen of men, and the mystery of his disappearance remains unsolved to this day, although Carlos Montijo and Jack Singleton are under the delusion that they know what became of him. Furthermore, the inhabitants of the hacienda were never troubled by inconvenient enquiries about him, for it afterwards transpired that when he set out upon his fateful journey he had not thought fit to say whither he was going, or how long he intended to be absent; by the time, therefore, that his prolonged absence from duty had provoked enquiry, all trace of him was completely lost. The male occupants of the house were just finishing early breakfast next morning when Senor Calderon presented himself before them, in a condition of considerable mental discomposure, with the intelligence that the prisoner had apparently contrived to effect his escape; for one of the negroes had just come up to the house with the report that, upon his opening the door of the tobacco shed to give the captive his breakfast, Alvaros was found to have disappeared, and no trace of him had thus far been discovered. This was distinctly alarming news, for it was instantly recognised that if Alvaros had really contrived to get clear away, he would undoubtedly make the best of his way back to Havana and there report to the authorities the violence to which he had been subjected; and also, possibly, the rescue of the Montijos from the convict ship, though mention of the latter would probably depend upon whether their conviction had been the result of representations to the Capitan-General, or whether, as Don Ramon Bergera had surmised, it had been the work of Alvaros alone. In either case, the consequences were likely to be quite serious to the Montijos; and Carlos, accompanied by Jack and Calderon, at once hurried away to investigate the circumstances of the alleged escape. Upon their arrival at the tobacco shed they found the door of the building still locked and the negro guard still posted before it, the door having been re-fastened, as Calderon explained, immediately upon the discovery of the prisoner's disappearance. Entering the shed, they at once satisfied themselves as to the truth of the statement that its late occupant was no longer in it, for the building was absolutely empty, and, being a perfectly plain structure, with simply four stone walls, a cement floor, and an unceiled roof, there was no nook or cranny in which even a rat, much less a man, could conceal himself. Moreover, the rope by which he had been, as it was thought, securely bound before being left on the previous evening, was lying upon the floor, immediately beneath one of the large, shuttered openings in the walls which were used for the admission of light and air into the shed as required. The position of the rope naturally led to an examination of the opening beneath which it lay; and it was then found that the massive bolts securing the shutter had been drawn, and that therefore there was nothing to prevent the prisoner from escaping through the opening-- provided that he could free himself from the rope and reach it. But how he had contrived to accomplish these two things was the mystery: for Carlos and Jack had both been present during the lashing-up of Alvaros, and they both felt that they would have been fully prepared to declare that for the prisoner to release himself would be a simple impossibility, so securely had he been bound; while the sill of the opening was quite nine feet from the floor, and for a man to reach it without the help of a ladder, or some similar aid, seemed equally impossible,--and there was no such aid in the building. It occurred to Jack that the prisoner, after freeing himself from his bonds, might have succeeded in throwing the loop of the rope over one of the shutter bolts, and so have drawn himself up; but to accomplish such a feat in absolute darkness again seemed an absolute impossibility. Altogether, the circumstances seemed to be enveloped in impenetrable mystery; there was only one indisputable fact, which was that the prisoner was gone. Then the negro guard was severely questioned, but he seemed quite unable to throw any light upon the matter; his statement was that he had exercised the utmost vigilance all through the night, that he had heard no sound of movement on the part of the prisoner, had noticed nothing to suggest an attempt at escape, and was utterly confounded when, upon unlocking the door to take in the prisoner's breakfast, he found that the bird had flown. This was his story, and no amount of cross- examination caused him to deviate in the slightest degree from it; for when a negro lays himself out to deceive, the fact that he is lying through thick and thin causes him no qualms of conscience. The investigation thus conclusively pointed to the fact that the prisoner had somehow contrived to escape; and, that having been established, the obviously proper thing to do was to endeavour to recapture him. Horses were therefore ordered to be saddled and taken up to the house; a Fantee negro, who had been re-named Juan, and who had the reputation of being a marvellously expert tracker, was ordered to examine the ground about the tobacco shed for tracks, and to hold himself ready to accompany the hunters; and Jack and Carlos then returned to the house to equip themselves. In something less than half an hour the party, consisting of Jack and Carlos, mounted, and each armed with a rifle, and half a dozen negroes, including Juan, set out. The hunt began at the tobacco shed, beneath the unbolted shutter of which Juan declared that, despite the hardness of the ground, he had succeeded in detecting the footprints of the fugitive; and thence it took its course northward, strange to say, in the direction of the mountains, instead of toward Pinar del Rio, as the two young white men had naturally expected. This was so surprising that, as soon as the direction became apparent, Carlos called a halt and openly expressed his conviction that the Fantee was making a mistake; but Juan confidently declared that he was doing nothing of the sort, and, in support of his statement, pointed to certain barely perceptible marks here and there on the ground, which he asserted were the tracks of the fugitive--this assertion being corroborated by the other negroes. To the eyes of the white men the marks in question were so very slight and vague as to convey absolutely no meaning at all; indeed, they could not in some cases convince themselves that there really were any marks; but then the ground was so dry and hard that even their horses left scarcely a trace of their passage: they were therefore obliged to take Juan's word for it that they were on the right track, and follow where he led. They were of opinion that, considering Alvaros' condition after the terrific punishment which Carlos had inflicted upon him only a few hours previously, and the circumstance that he seemed to have been travelling for several hours in darkness, over country that must have been absolutely strange to him, he could not have made very rapid progress, or gone very far; and after the first hour they were in momentary expectation of coming upon him: but mile after mile was traversed, and still Juan asserted that the fugitive was yet some distance ahead, and that they did not appear to be gaining on him very rapidly--due, as the negro pointed out, to the extreme difficulty of tracking over such hard and, for the most part stony, ground. The fact was that Juan and his fellow-negroes, having arranged among themselves a course of action during the short period while Carlos and Jack were preparing for the expedition, were enacting a very cleverly carried out piece of comedy, so cleverly performed, indeed, that neither of the young men had the slightest suspicion that they were being deceived. At length the track, which had led them steadily over rising ground almost from the moment of starting, conducted the party to the entrance of a very wild, romantic, and picturesque-looking gorge which seemed to pierce right into the very heart of the mountains. For some time the going had been growing increasingly difficult, especially for the two horsemen; and now a single glance ahead sufficed to show that it must speedily become impossible for mounted men, for the side of the mountain grew increasingly steep, as one looked forward, until, about a quarter of a mile farther on, it seemed to be practically perpendicular, while the pine trees grew so thickly that in places it appeared as though there would be scarcely room for a man, much less a horse, to pass; moreover, the side of the hill was covered with big outcrops of rock, interspersed with loose boulders, to pass over and among which would require a clear head, a steady eye, and a sure foot. The two young men therefore determined to dismount forthwith and proceed on foot, leaving their horses in charge of one of the negroes. And it was well that they did so, for the path almost immediately grew so steep and difficult that before they had advanced another hundred yards the party found it necessary to frequently drop on their hands and knees to pass some of the more awkward places without being precipitated into the stream which they heard brawling some hundreds of feet below them at the bottom of the ravine. And now, as they slowly and with difficulty made their way along the steep mountain-side, a low murmur, gradually growing in strength and volume of sound, told them that they were approaching a waterfall or cataract of some sort: and after another half-hour of exhausting and perilous crawling, and slipping, and sliding over the loose and shaley ground, they came in sight of it as it opened out before them from behind an enormous, precipitous crag--a solid column of water about twenty feet in diameter, leaping out of a narrow cleft in the rock some three hundred feet above them, and gradually resolving itself into mist as it plunged down into the dark and gloomy depths of the gorge below. To Carlos--and still more to Jack--it seemed impossible that the fugitive should have chosen to pursue the track which they were now following--for to where did it lead? The place was quite new to Carlos; he had never been there before, and it seemed unlikely in the extreme that a stranger to the neighbourhood as Alvaros was would know more about it than one who had dwelt only a few miles off during practically his whole life: yet Juan was now pressing on, a long way ahead, as though he were following on a hot scent, and presently he disappeared altogether in a thick cluster of fir trees high up the side of the hill. Ten minutes later he emerged on the other side of the clump and went scrambling toward the spot where the stream of water spouted out of the rock. Then Carlos saw him suddenly stop and look steadily down the almost vertical side of the mountain, then at the ground at his feet. It took the two lads nearly a quarter of an hour to reach the spot where Juan stood, now surrounded by the other four negroes, to whom he was talking animatedly; and, as they approached, the Fantee pointed to some scars on the hillside which looked as though they had been quite recently made by the passage of some heavy body. "Look, Senores," he cried; "that is where the Spaniard has gone! A loose boulder caught him just here and swept him down into the gorge below. We shall never see him again!" Carlos and Jack looked. Yes; the marks were precisely such as a falling boulder would make, and they were apparently quite fresh, possibly less than half an hour old. But how did Juan know that Alvaros had gone down the hillside with the boulder? Jack asked the question. "Because," answered the black triumphantly, "he came as far as this--as we have seen by his footprints--but went no farther; there are no more footprints to be found. And see, the boulder struck the ground just here"--pointing to a big, raw dint in the soil--"and bounded off, striking again down there where you see that mark. It must have struck here just as the Spaniard reached the spot, and hurled him down to the bottom of the gorge before it. He is doubtless down there at the bottom of the stream, at this moment, pinned down by the boulder that killed him!" And the other negroes emphatically corroborated the statements and suggestions. To Jack and Carlos the theory enunciated by Juan appeared quite possible. Of course they had to accept Juan's word for it that the fugitive's footsteps had been followed thus far, and had utterly disappeared at the precise spot where the boulder--or whatever it was-- had struck. But, this much granted, the remainder of the story seemed quite plausible, seemed indeed the only possible explanation; and since it was quite impossible to test its truth or falsehood without descending to the river below--which was also an impossibility--they were disposed to accept it as true. And thus, very materially assisted by the fortuitous fall of a boulder down a hillside, did the negroes on Senor Montijo's estate successfully hoodwink their white masters, and effectually and for ever put a stop to any further enquiries as to what had become of Major Alvaros, of His Spanish Majesty's light infantry, and erstwhile Governor of La Jacoba. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE WAR-CLOUD OVERSHADOWS THE HACIENDA MONTIJO. For the first fortnight or three weeks following the evanishment of Senor Alvaros a considerable degree of uneasiness prevailed at the hacienda Montijo, the inmates of which daily looked for the appearance of some emissary of the Spanish Government, charged with the duty of investigating the circumstances connected with the disappearance of an important Spanish official: and it was recognised that not only would the enquiries of such an individual be difficult to reply to, but also that his presence would incidentally result in the discovery that the members of the Montijo family, instead of being at Fernando Po, were-- with one exception--at home again. It was admitted to be a contingency that needed careful yet firm handling, and after much consideration a plan was evolved by Jack and Carlos which it was believed would deal effectively with the difficulty, and the necessary steps were taken. But as day after day passed without bringing upon them the complication which they apprehended, their uneasiness rapidly lessened, until at length a day arrived when the conviction forced itself upon them that the attention of the Spanish Government was so fully occupied with other and much more important matters that the disappearance of Senor Alvaros seemed likely to be permitted to pass without especial notice. And thereupon Jack undertook to pay a visit to Don Ramon Bergera in Havana, with the object of ascertaining, as far as possible, what was the attitude of the Spanish official mind upon the subject. He accordingly set out for Pinar del Rio one morning after early breakfast, and arrived in Havana the same afternoon, intending to return to the hacienda Montijo on the following day. But he remained in Havana a full fortnight, during which he and Don Ramon learned many things--among them, the facts that Senor Alvaros was solely responsible for the arrest and attempted transportation of the Montijos, and also for the seizure of the estate--neither of which acts had been reported to the Capitan- General, or been officially recorded: and that, doubtless because of these important reasons, when he had set out on his last journey to visit the estate which he had thus secretly seized, he had omitted to mention to anyone his intentions, his destination, or the probable duration of his absence, with the result that eventually, when the accumulated arrears of his work at length attracted attention and provoked enquiry, nobody could throw the least light upon his whereabouts. The conviction had therefore at length been arrived at that--the man being well-known as possessing a singularly arrogant, overbearing, and irascible disposition--he had perished in some obscure and, quite possibly, discreditable quarrel; and his post as Governor of La Jacoba Prison had been given to another man. These particulars had been gleaned by dint of very patient and careful enquiry on the part of Don Ramon, so judiciously conducted that not a particle of suspicion had anywhere been raised that any enquiry at all was being made: and with them Jack returned to the hacienda and restored tranquillity to the minds of its inhabitants, for it had now been made clear not only that they might dismiss all apprehension of embarrassing enquiry concerning the fate of Senor Alvaros, but also that nobody was likely to dispute Don Hermoso's right to retain his own property. But no sooner were their minds relieved upon this point than they were filled with apprehension on another, namely, poor Senora Montijo's mental condition, which seemed to steadily grow worse. For the first few months of the unfortunate lady's affliction she had been very quiet, giving no trouble at all, and appearing to suffer chiefly from complete loss of memory. But now, just at the moment when Jack and Carlos were completing their preparations to take the field with the rebel forces, a change for the worse occurred: her memory returned to her intermittently, bringing with it the recollection of her daughter's fate, and then, by some peculiar mental process, nothing would console the unhappy mother but the presence and companionship of her son and Jack; and if the lads happened to be both absent when these paroxysms of revived memory occurred, the poor lady quickly became plunged into a condition of such abysmal despair and such maniacal violence that she was for the time being a menace to herself and everybody else. Nobody but Carlos or Jack seemed to have the power of soothing her, and sometimes the combined efforts of both were needed: thus it came about that many months passed, during which the two youths felt themselves constrained to remain within call, and to devote themselves to the task of alleviating the misery of the unhappy lady. Meanwhile, the rebellion, which had arisen in the first instance in the province of Santiago, was for some time confined to the eastern end of the island. At the moment of its outbreak Spain had a garrison of some seventeen thousand men in Cuba, which was an amply sufficient force to have stamped out the rising, had the authorities dealt with it energetically. But they either could not, or would not, see, until it was too late, that serious trouble was impending; and when at length this fact was recognised, and the garrison raised to some thirty thousand men, the rebellion had made such headway that the rebels already had a force of four thousand men in the field, with Maximo Gomez as its Commander-in-chief, and Antonio Maceo as second in command. At this time, however, very few whites had actually taken up arms in the revolutionary cause, for Gomez was a native of San Domingo, while Maceo was a mulatto, and the whites in Cuba entertained the same objection to serving under coloured men that is to be found practically all the world over. But this was more than compensated for by the great accession of coloured recruits attracted to the insurgent ranks by the appearance of Maceo in a position of authority. At the same time secret committees were formed in every town in Cuba for the purpose of preaching the gospel of revolt, with the result that the whole province of Santiago and the greater part of Puerto Principe quickly became aflame. General Martinez Campos, the Capitan-General of the island, at length began to realise the increasing gravity of the situation, and sent to his home government a report to the effect that, in consequence of the rapid spread of the rebellion, it would be absolutely necessary to occupy every province of the island in force, and to vigorously attack the insurgents wherever met with in the field; and that, to do this effectively, he must have still more troops. Accordingly, more troops were dispatched, with the result that by the end of the year 1895 the Spanish arms in Cuba totalled no less than one hundred thousand men, while the rebel strength had increased to ten thousand, who, however, were very badly in need of arms, ammunition, and stores. Consequently Milsom, in the _Thetis_, was kept busy at this time picking up supplies wherever he could get them, and then smuggling them into the island with a boldness and ingenuity that completely baffled all the efforts of the Spaniards to detect him. The proportion of Spanish troops to the revolutionary forces was at this time, it will be observed, as ten to one. This, on paper, appears to be enormous, yet it was not so in reality: for, whereas the Cubans were all native to the soil and inured to the climate, and were, moreover, familiar with the topography of the country, the Spanish soldiers were mostly young, raw recruits, poor shots, quite new to service in the Tropics, unacclimatised, of poor stamina, and therefore peculiarly liable to fall victims to the fever and dysentery which follow upon exposure to tropical rain. Moreover, they were badly fed, and worse looked after; the great disparity between the strength of the two forces was consequently much more apparent than real. Then, too, the Spanish officers were mostly of very indifferent quality: they suffered from the same climatic disabilities as their men; the heat enervated them to such an extent that they could not be induced to take the least trouble about anything, or undertake the least labour; they made no attempt to improve the quality of their men's shooting; they were lax in the enforcement of discipline--save, perhaps, in the exaction of a proper measure of respect from their subordinates; they were strangers to the island and quite ignorant of its topography, and they were too indolent to attempt to learn anything of it; and, lastly, the maps with which they had been supplied were even worse than useless, for they were absolutely misleading. Thus the insurgents experienced no difficulty in eluding the pursuit of the Spanish forces, and in luring them, time after time, into carefully prepared traps, from which escape was only possible at the cost of heavy loss. The insurgents were careful that news of their oft-repeated successes against the Spanish troops should be published throughout the island, despite the desperate efforts of the authorities to suppress it; and, as a consequence, new recruits were constantly being added to their ranks. The insurrectionary movement grew apace; and at length a provisional Government was formed, with the Marquez de Cisneros at its head, as President of the Cuban Republic. The first act of the new Government was to divide up the entire island into different districts; and over each district was appointed a civilian as Prefect. It was of course only natural that the Prefecture of the Pinar del Rio district should be offered to Don Hermoso Montijo; but when he was made fully acquainted with the views of the provisional Government he declined it, for he considered that these views on certain points were so extreme as to render the Government unpopular, and to bring absolute ruin upon a very important section of the community, the planters to wit. One of the proposals of the new Government was to impose certain taxes for the purpose of raising funds wherewith to carry on the revolutionary movement, and to this there could of course be no reasonable objection; but when it was further proposed that non-payment of those taxes should be punished by the destruction of the buildings and crops and the seizure of the live stock of defaulters, Don Hermoso asserted that such action was altogether too drastic, and savoured too much of tyranny to meet with his approval, and he firmly declined to associate himself in any way with it, electing to continue instead to serve the movement, as heretofore, by lavish contributions of money, and the assistance of the yacht. The next step of the insurgent leaders was also one of which Don Hermoso very strongly disapproved, and against which he passionately pleaded--in vain, with the result that a certain feeling of estrangement, not very far removed from enmity, arose between him and the leading spirits of the revolution. The latter, it appeared, had conceived the idea that so long as industry was permitted to flourish in the island, so long would Spain be able to find the necessary funds for the maintenance of a large army in Cuba; but that the moment industry ceased, the fountain of revenue must run dry, and the troops must be withdrawn. They therefore determined to march their forces right through the island to Havana, destroying everything before them; and this terrible resolution they carried into effect, with the result that their track became a long line of burnt cane fields and fire-blackened buildings, the owners of which, whether Spaniards or Cubans, foes or sympathisers, were of course absolutely ruined. The Capitan-General, with ten thousand men, vainly strove to check this terrible advance, but the insurgents easily eluded him and forced their way into the western provinces; with the result that the home Government superseded Campos, sending out in his stead General Don Valeriano y Nicolan Weyler, a man of wide military experience, and possessing a sinister and unenviable reputation for energy and relentless severity. The dispatch of such a man as General Weyler to Cuba was undoubtedly due, in a very great measure, to the fact that the United States of America, keeping a watchful eye upon the struggle going on, as it were, at its very doors, manifested a rapidly increasing disposition to sympathise with the insurgents, fighting gallantly for their liberty against an almost overwhelming force. This exhibition of sympathy, which the Americans took no especial pains to conceal, was highly offensive to Spain, and unquestionably went far toward strengthening her determination to suppress the revolution by force of arms; wherefore she not only dispatched General Weyler to Cuba, but also sent with and after him troops sufficient to raise the Spanish army in the island to the number of two hundred and thirty-five thousand men, including guerrillas and volunteers. Meanwhile, Antonio Maceo, with a force of nearly four thousand men, had penetrated so far west as the province of New Filipipa, where he established himself in a stronghold among the fastnesses of the Sierras de los Organos, or Organ Mountains, from which he swept down at frequent intervals, first upon one town in the neighbourhood and then upon another, harassing and cutting up the Spanish garrisons in them, and generally making of himself a thorn in the flesh of Weyler. The spot in which he had established himself was distant only some ten miles, as the crow flies, from the hacienda Montijo; and he had no sooner made himself comfortable in his new quarters than he surprised and slightly discomposed the inhabitants of the casa by paying them a flying visit. He had been one of the most determined advocates, and the most ruthless executant, of the Republican Government's policy of destructive suppression of the island's industries, and Don Hermoso's firm opposition to that policy had created something very nearly approaching to bad blood between the two; but now, when it was too late, he probably recognised the disastrous mistake that had been made, for it soon became apparent that the chief, if not the sole, object of his visit was to endeavour to regain Don Hermoso's good opinion. But the attempt was not wholly successful; and he did not repeat his visit. The presence of Maceo and four thousand very imperfectly disciplined guerrilla troops, most of whom were coloured men, not too careful in their discrimination between friend and foe, was a double menace of a very serious character to Don Hermoso: for, on the one hand, they were certain, sooner or later, to attract a large body of Spaniards to the neighbourhood, for the purpose of hunting them down; while, on the other, should the patriots find themselves hard pressed, it was quite on the cards that they might take it into their heads to sweep down upon the estate and destroy it utterly, in order to prevent the possibility of the Spaniards seizing it and operating therefrom against them. These two possibilities were anxiously discussed over the dinner-table of the casa Montijo; and it was finally decided that on the following day steps should be taken to put the estate into a condition of defence against both parties. Now there were three--and only three--possible ways of approach to the estate, the first being by the main road from Pinar del Rio; the second by the cross-country route which Jack and Carlos had followed when riding into Pinar del Rio on the occasion of their intervention in the _James B. Potter_ incident; and the third by the route which Alvaros was supposed to have taken on the occasion of his flight, this being the road from the mountains by which Maceo had travelled. This last was an exceedingly difficult route, so difficult, indeed, that there were several spots at which it could be made absolutely impassable with very little difficulty, the most suitable of all, perhaps, being at the waterfall near which Alvaros was supposed to have met his death. At this spot the road--or, rather, path--crossed the ravine by way of an enormous overhanging rock which jutted out from the hillside immediately over the place where the stream flung itself down into the gorge beneath; and, even so, it needed a man with a steady head and good nerves to traverse it, for it was necessary to get from the overhanging rock across a chasm of nearly twelve feet in width to another large rock on the opposite side. A careful examination of this spot convinced Jack that a few pounds of blasting powder, judiciously placed beneath the overhanging mass of rock, would send it hurtling down into the gorge beneath and thus effectually bar all passage in that direction; and this was immediately done. The carriage road from Pinar del Rio could be almost, as easily defended, for, at a few yards from the main road, the private road giving access to Don Hermoso's estate was carried across a wide stream by means of a single-arched masonry bridge, which bridge could be readily destroyed by means of dynamite; and Jack soon made all the arrangements for its destruction, if necessary, at a moment's notice. As for the cross-country road, it, too, led across a stream, much too deep and swift to be forded, and only passable at the point where Jack, Carlos, and their guide, Carnero, had jumped their horses across it. The country on the far side was open for more than a mile, affording not sufficient cover to shelter a rabbit, much less a man; and Jack was of opinion that a Maxim, mounted in a small earthwork which might be thrown up by a few men in less than an hour, would prove amply sufficient to defend the passage against any force that would be likely to be sent against them. Three days, therefore, after Maceo's visit to the hacienda saw their preparations for defence complete, save in the important matter of the Maxims and their ammunition; and two of these, together with a number of rifles, came to hand some three weeks later, Jack having undertaken to proceed to the Laguna de Cortes and there await the arrival of the _Thetis_ with another cargo of contraband of war which she was to land at that spot. The stuff had been purchased with Don Hermoso's money, and Jack therefore felt justified in appropriating as much of it as he considered might be required. He also commandeered one of half a dozen very handsome twelve-pounder field guns, together with a considerable quantity of ammunition. And when he got back with his spoils he took upon himself the duties of musketry instructor to the negroes on the estate, who were knocked off work an hour earlier every evening for the purpose; and, by dint of the exercise of almost inexhaustible patience, he contrived to make very excellent marksmen of a good percentage of them. Meanwhile, with the exception above referred to, events, so far as those on the estate were concerned, pursued the even tenor of their way; nothing in the least out of the common happened, and the Senora Montijo's mental condition had by this time so far improved that the society of Carlos and Jack was no longer necessary to her welfare. But they both remained on the estate, for the war had now come almost to their own door, and their services were as likely to be useful where they were as anywhere else. News came to them at irregular intervals, and there by and by reached them the intelligence that, in order to isolate Maceo and prevent his return to the eastern provinces of the island, General Weyler was constructing a _trocha_, or entrenchment, with blockhouses and wire entanglements all complete, from Mariel on the north coast to Majana on the south--that is to say, across the narrowest part of the island--some sixteen or seventeen miles in length. The next news to hand was that the _trocha_ was completed, and manned by twenty thousand men! And the next was that Weyler was marching ten thousand troops through the province, with the object of finding and destroying Maceo and his men--and any other rebels, actual or suspected, whom they might chance to find! Jack and Carlos felt that the time had arrived for them to hold themselves on the qui vive. They were not kept very long in suspense. A few days later, as they were about to sit down to dinner, a negro peon presented himself, with the report that a large body of Spanish troops, having marched down the road from Pinar del Rio, were at that moment pitching their camp on the plain, some two miles away; and just as the party had finished their meal, and were on the point of rising from the table, the beat of horses' hoofs, approaching the house, was heard, with, a little later, the jingle of accoutrements; and presently footsteps, accompanied by the clink of spurs and the clanking of a scabbard, were heard ascending the steps leading to the veranda. The next moment the major-domo flung open the door and, with the announcement of "Capitan Carera", ushered in a fine, soldierly looking man, attired in a silver-braided crimson jacket and shako, and light-blue riding breeches, tucked into knee-boots adorned with large brass spurs. The newcomer bowed with easy courtesy as he entered, and then paused, apparently taken somewhat aback as his eye fell on the Senora. He quickly recovered himself, however, and, addressing himself to Don Hermoso, asked if he might have the honour of a few minutes' private speech with the owner of the estate; to which Don Hermoso replied by conducting his visitor to the room in which he was wont to transact his business. The interview was very brief, and when it was ended the soldier bowed himself out and, descending the steps, took his horse from the orderly who had accompanied him: then, mounting, he went clattering away down the private road leading through the tobacco fields to the highway, and thence to the distant camp. "Well, what is the news, Pater?" demanded Carlos, as Don Hermoso presently returned to the dining-room, looking very pale and agitated. "The news, my son, is this," answered Don Hermoso, his voice quivering with anger: "General Echague, who is in command of the troops which have just encamped in our neighbourhood, has sent a message to me regretfully intimating that it will be his duty to destroy this house, together with all its warehouses and outbuildings of every description, to prevent its seizure by the rebels who are known to be in this neighbourhood. And, as an act of grace, he gives me until noon to-morrow to remove my household and belongings to such a place of safety as I may select!" "Oh! he does, does he?" retorted Carlos. "Awfully kind of him, I'm sure! And what answer did you return to the message?" "I simply replied that I thanked General Echague for the time given me, and that I would do my utmost to complete my preparations by the hour named," answered Don Hermoso. "That is all right!" commented Carlos grimly. "I think we can complete our preparations by noon to-morrow. What say you, Jack?" "I say," answered Jack, "that we can not only complete our preparations in the time given us, but have plenty of time for play afterwards. As a matter of fact, our preparations are practically complete already. We have nothing to do except blow up the bridge, and that we will do as soon as you, Don Hermoso, and the Senora are far enough on your way to Pinar to be safe from pursuit. Then we will teach these arrogant Spaniards a much-needed lesson on the desirability of modifying their tyrannical methods." "What do you mean, Jack?" demanded Don Hermoso. "Do you imagine for a moment that I will seek safety in flight, and leave you two lads to defend my property for me?" "No, Senor, I don't mean that at all," answered Jack. "What I mean is this: the natural situation of the place is happily such that, with the preparations already made for its defence, and perhaps one or two more which we can easily make to-morrow morning, we can without difficulty hold the estate against a much stronger force than that encamped on the plain below; and therefore there is not the slightest reason why you should not remove the Senora from the turmoil and excitement of the fight which is sure to come to-morrow." "I see," said Don Hermoso. "It is the same thing, however, stated in different words. `The turmoil and excitement of the fight', as you put it, will scarcely be perceptible here, in the house, and will therefore not be likely to have any injurious effect upon my wife, who must be induced to remain indoors while we are arguing the point with the Spaniards. I shall therefore remain and take my share of the risks with you." And from this resolution Don Hermoso was not to be moved. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. WIPED OUT. With the first sign of dawn on the following morning the Montijo estate became a scene of bustling activity; for, as Jack observed, since fight they must, they might as well begin early and get it over during the hours of daylight. Jack and Carlos, who had, with the tacit consent of Don Hermoso, jointly assumed the responsibility of defending the place, had, on the previous night, held a short council of war, and had finally come to the conclusion that of the two vulnerable points of attack which still remained, that which they had by common consent come to speak of as the "cross-country route" was the weaker, since at one point the river was so narrow that it could be jumped by a horseman, and consequently was capable of being temporarily bridged without much difficulty. The defence of this position, therefore, Carlos insisted on personally undertaking, with the assistance of a force consisting of two-thirds of the negroes employed upon the estate; while Jack, with the other third, was to defend the approach by way of the main road and the mined bridge. It was also arranged that Jack was to have the twelve- pounder field gun, while Carlos took the two Maxims. Now, it happened that while the two youths were making these final dispositions, it occurred to Don Hermoso that the attack upon his estate would afford Antonio Maceo and his four thousand guerrillas up there in the mountains a splendid opportunity to come down and take the Spaniards in the rear; he therefore retired to his own room, wrote a long letter to Maceo, in which he fully set forth all the particulars of the situation, and dispatched it by the hands of a trusty negro by way of the ravine and gorge where Alvaros was supposed to have died, the negro asserting his ability to cross the gorge at the waterfall by means of a pine tree which he would cut down in such a manner as to cause it to fall across the gap, and which he would afterwards throw into the abyss, returning to the estate, after the execution of his mission, with Maceo and his men. The reveille was just sounding in the Spanish camp when Jack, having placed his forces in position in open order behind a screen of bamboo and scrub which completely commanded the approach to the mined bridge, and also effectually masked the position of his twelve-pounder, proceeded down the road alone for the purpose of destroying the bridge. Ten minutes later a deep boom, accompanied by a volcanic upheaval of dust and debris, announced the successful accomplishment of the task, at the same time that it startled the Spanish soldiery and aroused the curiosity and suspicion of the Spanish general, who at once dispatched a small reconnoitring party to investigate the nature of the explosion. Jack, who had waited to examine the result of his engineering experiment, and had seen with much satisfaction that, while the crown of the arch was completely destroyed, rendering the bridge absolutely impassable, it would be a simple matter to repair the damage later on, observed the approach of the party, and at once determined to await it, deeming it an excellent opportunity to establish a clear understanding with the Spaniards and bring matters at once to an issue. Accordingly, he stood there, on his own side of the wrecked bridge, in clear view of the approaching reconnoitring party, and patiently awaited its arrival. Presently the officer in charge of the party, catching sight of him, galloped forward alone and, reining up on the opposite side of the gap in the bridge, indignantly demanded: "Hola, Senor! What is the meaning of this, and who is responsible for the deed?" "I am responsible for it," answered Jack; "and it means that Senor Montijo is not disposed to tamely submit to the destruction of his property. You may therefore return to General Echague and inform him that we have placed the estate in a condition of defence; that we are prepared to resist attack to the last gasp; and that if he is ill- advised enough to persist in his attempt at destruction, he, and he only, will be responsible for the bloodshed that must ensue." "It is well, Senor," answered the officer; "I will tell the General what you say. And you, in turn, may inform Senor Montijo that if he persists in his mad resolve to resist us, his blood and that of every soul who takes part with him will be on his own head: for General Echague is in no mood to deal leniently with rebels; when he turns his back upon you a few hours hence the estate will be a blackened, fire-scorched waste, and every man, woman, and child upon it will have been put to the sword!" And, wheeling his horse, with a swaggering show of contemptuous indifference to possible danger he rode slowly away. Jack watched the party until it had returned to the camp, and the officer in command had made his report; and then, seeing that the Spanish troops were to be allowed to get breakfast before being led to the attack, he dispatched Calderon--who had undertaken to perform the duties of galloper--to Carlos with a message to the effect that no immediate attack was to be expected. Then, having posted sentries and given his own contingent instructions to get their breakfast at once, where they were, he mounted his horse and galloped up to the house to snatch the meal which he knew would by this time be ready for him. It was a hurried meal, of course, but it was none the less welcome on that account, and it imparted that feeling of refreshment and vigour which is so comforting to a man who is about to engage in a possibly long and arduous fight; while it also afforded him the opportunity to personally acquaint Don Hermoso and Carlos--who also presently came in--with the details of what had passed between him and the Spanish officer. Then, having fortified himself with food, Jack returned to his post, to find his negro forces busily discussing their own breakfast, which they finished nearly half an hour before there was any sign of movement in the Spanish camp. At length, however, the blare of bugles and the rattle of drums gave intimation that a movement of some sort was impending; and presently the troops were seen to be mustering under arms. They consisted, as Jack soon saw, mainly of infantry: but there was a small body of cavalry with them, about fifty in number; and they also had two light field pieces, each drawn by six mules. While the infantry were forming up, and the mules were being put to the guns, the general and his staff suddenly rode out of camp and advanced along the main road, with the evident intention of reconnoitring the menaced position and ascertaining the most promising point of attack. But Jack had no idea of allowing them to gain even so much advantage as that; he therefore moved among his men, and selecting some twenty of the best shots, rapidly transferred them to another patch of cover which commanded the junction of the private with the main road, and instructed them to open fire upon the reconnoitring party the moment that it should come into view, himself remaining with them to encourage and give them confidence. He had scarcely got his little body of sharpshooters into position when the leading files of the reconnoitring party appeared in sight at the junction of the two roads, evidently bent upon examining the wrecked bridge; and Jack, waiting only until the entire body came into view, gave the order to fire. The effect was disastrous to the Spaniards, for the negroes, concealed as they were, and confident of their own absolute safety, took aim with the utmost coolness and deliberation, with the result that seven out of the dozen saddles were emptied, while the general and another officer had their horses shot under them. There was an immediate wild stampede of the survivors, the two dismounted men contriving with difficulty to catch and mount a couple of riderless horses; and ere they had got beyond range two more men and three more horses were bowled over by the main body of Jack's negroes, who had the adventurous party in view as soon as they were lost to sight by the band of sharpshooters nearer the bridge. Upon regaining his camp the Spanish general at once ordered forward his two field guns, his instructions to the artillerymen apparently being to shell the little clump of cover in which Jack had concealed his sharpshooters. But the latter, despite his youth and inexperience, was shrewd enough to foresee some such move as this, and accordingly he had no sooner put the reconnoitring party to flight than he withdrew his men from their place of concealment and marched them back to rejoin their comrades, taking care to keep them all together, for he had a very strong suspicion that he would again need them for special service ere long. The guns were advanced at a gallop, brought to action front, and unlimbered, all with very creditable smartness; and the next moment shell fire was opened by both weapons upon the little patch of cover just vacated by Jack's marksmen. The aim was good, shell after shell dropping so close to where those marksmen had been concealed that within the first five minutes they must all have been destroyed had they remained there, even although about two out of every three shells failed to explode. The Spanish general was soon convinced that his guns had accomplished their mission, for when they had fired some thirty shells a galloper was seen approaching the artillery officer, and the next moment that individual gave the word to cease fire and limber up. At the word, the drivers put their mules into motion and advanced toward the guns; whereupon Jack, who had been patiently awaiting this movement, gave an order to his sharpshooters, who immediately opened fire upon the teams, with the result that before the guns could be moved every animal was down. Then the artillerymen themselves attempted to drag the weapons away, upon which they also began to drop; and at length a squad of cavalry was dispatched to move the weapons. But they were obliged to gallop nearly half a mile across Jack's front, within range the whole time; and, although they covered the ground at a good pace, so hot was the fire maintained upon them, and so deadly the aim, that not one of the horsemen was able to reach the guns: Jack had got the weapons under the cover of his rifles, and he did not mean to let them go. But Singleton soon had something else than the two guns of the enemy to think about; for while he had been concentrating his attention upon the two field pieces, the entire body of troops had begun to move, and were advancing, in two columns, with the evident intention of endeavouring to force the passage of the stream somewhere in the neighbourhood of the ruined bridge: apparently they were unaware of the existence of the still weaker position which Carlos had undertaken to defend. Through some strange oversight or carelessness on the part of their commander, they were advancing in close order, and Jack felt that now was the moment when his twelve-pounder was likely to prove useful. He intended to captain the gun himself, and had caused it to be loaded with shrapnel some time before: and he therefore now carefully aimed the weapon at a certain spot over which the troops must pass, and the distance of which he knew almost to an inch. Then, waiting patiently until the leading column was within about three yards of it, he fired. The shell appeared to strike the ground and explode almost at the feet of the advancing troops, and when the smoke of the explosion cleared away it was seen that an enormous gap had been made in the advancing column, which had been thrown into the utmost confusion, those men in the immediate vicinity of the gap, on either side of it, having halted in dismay, while the right and left wings had continued to advance; and in the midst of the gap could be seen a long swath of prostrate men, the most of whom were lying horribly and unnaturally still. It was pitiable to see those men, many of them scarcely out of their boyhood, led forth to die in support of grinding, unendurable tyranny and misgovernment: yet that was not the moment in which to indulge a feeling of mistaken humanitarian sentiment--mistaken, because Jack knew that unless those same men could be driven off they would be remorselessly used as the instruments of ruthless destruction and indiscriminate slaughter; so, while the confusion among the ranks was still at its height, he ordered the gun to be reloaded, and again plumped a shell right in the very midst of them. This second shell appeared to have been even more terribly destructive in its effects than the first, for the two columns were, when it fell, bunched close together, and it seemed to have dropped where the men were thickest; and ere the now demoralised troops could recover from the panic into which they had been thrown, their ranks were yet more disastrously thinned, a rattling crash of Maxim fire from Carlos' position indicating the direction from which this new punishment had come. But by this time General Echague had begun to recover his presence of mind. He saw that to attempt to advance farther in close formation in the face of such a withering fire would be suicidal, and he gave the word for his men to take open order, which they instantly did: and a moment later a slight change in the formation of the attacking troops showed that while the leading column was intended to be used in forcing the passage of the river at the point where the bridge had been destroyed, the other column had been diverted to attack the position which Carlos had undertaken to defend. The troops, having taken open order, were next ordered to lie down and thus minimise their exposure as far as possible; and in this posture they advanced to the attack, creeping gradually forward and firing independently at any spot where the flash of a rifle, or a puff of smoke, showed that an enemy lay concealed. There was one small party of men in particular that attracted Jack's attention, and a careful inspection of them through his glasses showed that they were provided with something which had the appearance of scaling ladders, which they were laboriously dragging after them, and which Singleton very shrewdly suspected were intended to span the gap in the broken bridge and thus afford a passage for the troops across the river. To these men, and to the cavalry who were still persistently endeavouring to recover the possession and use of the two field pieces, Jack commended the especial attention of his negroes, leaving the remainder of the Spanish troops to be dealt with a little later on; for, the defenders being safely ensconced in cover, the rifle fire of the attacking party was absolutely harmless to them, and the young Englishman felt that so long as he could keep the party with the scaling ladders at arm's length, and the field pieces from being used against him, he was practically master of the situation. And these two objects he gained most successfully, the party with the ladders very soon being wiped out, while all attempts on the part of the main body to supply its place were effectually frustrated; while, as for the guns, by the time that the cavalry-men had lost rather more than a quarter of their number they had evidently arrived at the conclusion that to move the pieces from the exposed position which they occupied was an impossible task, and they accordingly abandoned it, turning their attention next to the position which Carlos was defending. The unequal fight had been in progress for nearly two hours, during which Singleton's party had experienced less than a dozen casualties, while the enemy, exposed in the open, had suffered very severely, when another body of men suddenly made their appearance in the rear of the Spanish forces, and, with howls and yells of vengeful delight, rushed forward to the attack. A small flag of Cuba Libre which was borne in their midst proclaimed them to be a body of revolutionaries, and the Spanish troops were hastily called off from the attack on the estate and formed up in square to receive them. But the Spaniards might as well have attempted to stop the wind as to stem the onrush of those fierce and determined men, who were, moreover, in overwhelming numbers; they had time only to pour in a couple of hasty, ill-directed volleys, and then the Cubans--armed, some with rifles, and others with swords, cane- knives, machetes, scythe blades, pikes, hatchets, ay, and even crowbars and smiths' hammers--swept down upon and overwhelmed them. For the space of perhaps three minutes there was a hideous melee, a confused mass of men struggling, yelling, shrieking; a popping of pistol shots, a whirling and flashing of blades in the sun; and then out from the midst of the confusion there emerged a bare half-dozen of panic-stricken horsemen, who set spurs to their frantic steeds and galloped for their lives off that fatal field. Another Spanish force had been wiped out by the insurgents! Half an hour later, when the dead had been stripped of their weapons and ammunition, Antonio Maceo and a little body of his subordinate officers, using the scaling ladders left on the field by the Spaniards, crossed the gap in the wrecked bridge, and made their way up to the house for the purpose of thanking Don Hermoso for the letter of warning which he had dispatched to them, and with a request for the loan of all the spades and other tools which he could spare to enable the insurgents to bury the dead: and by sunset that night a long, low mound of fresh- turned earth, showing red amid the vivid green of the grass-grown plain, was all that was left as evidence of the tragedy; while Maceo and his four thousand patriots were wearily wending their way back to their mountain fastness, the richer by two six-pounder field guns, a thousand stand of arms, with a considerable quantity of ammunition, and the entire spoils of the Spanish camp. It was subsequently ascertained that General Echague and five of his staff had succeeded in making good their escape from that field of slaughter; and as it was anticipated that the Spaniards, infuriated by their terrible reverse, would be more than likely to seek an early revenge, Jack and Carlos were kept very busy during the ensuing fortnight in so far improving the defences of the estate as to render it practically impregnable. The remains of the wrecked stone bridge were removed, and a timber drawbridge was built in its place; entrenchments were dug commanding the approach to it and to the one or two other spots where it was thought that the passage of the river might possibly be forced; a further supply of ammunition was sent for; and a small lookout and semaphore station was constructed on the hillside, at a point which commanded a view of every possible approach to the estate. And then ensued a period of rather trying inactivity, during which Jack and Carlos were kept constantly on the tenterhooks of expectancy, vainly striving to get some inkling of the intentions of the enemy. Then at length came the news that General Weyler, baffled in his efforts to force a general engagement with, the enemy, and galled by the constant heavy losses which he was sustaining, through the ravages of disease and at the hands of the insurgents, had issued an order for the concentration of the entire rural population in the fortified towns, in order that they might thus be prevented from supplying the various bands of armed revolutionaries with provisions and other necessaries. The effect of this cruel and tyrannical order was to drive practically every man into the ranks of the rebels--since he could no longer follow his vocation without exposing himself to severe punishment for disobedience; while the women and children, to the number of some sixty thousand, were perforce obliged to obey the decree, and, forsaking their homes, betake themselves to the towns. But no sooner had they done so than it became apparent that no sufficient provision had been made for their maintenance; and, since it was impossible for them to earn a living for themselves, the suffering and loss of life among these unfortunates quickly assumed appalling proportions, to the horror and indignation of the American people, who had been watching, with steadily and rapidly growing disapproval, the peculiar methods of the Spaniards for the suppression of the rebellion. It was the opinion of America, indeed-- and not of America alone, it may be said--that there would have been no rebellion in Cuba but for the gross corruption and inefficiency of the local government; and that the proper method of suppression was, not force of arms, but the introduction of reforms into the system of government. The fact is, that the state of affairs in Cuba was generating a strong and increasing feeling of hostility between the United States of America and Spain; for while, on the one hand, the outspoken comments of the American press deeply wounded the sensitive pride of the Spanish nation, which could ill brook anything that even in the remotest degree savoured of censure, or of interference with its own private affairs, the determination of that nation to manage those affairs in such manner as seemed to it most fit led to many ill-advised acts, tending to further strengthen the sympathy of the freedom-loving American for the oppressed and persecuted Cuban--a sympathy which found expression in the generous supply of munitions of war to the insurgents. This feeling of mutual hostility was further strengthened about this time--that is to say, in June of the year 1896--by what was spoken of at the time as the _Competitor_ incident. The _Competitor_ was a vessel manned by a crew consisting, with one solitary exception, of citizens of the United States; and in the month above-named she was surprised and captured on the north-west coast of the island by the Spanish authorities, immediately after landing a cargo of arms and ammunition destined for Maceo and his little army of patriots. The crew of the ship were forthwith tried by court martial and sentenced to be shot: but under the treaties existing between the United States and Spain it was specially provided that, unless American citizens were actually in arms against Spain when captured, they could only be proceeded against before the ordinary tribunals; the United States, therefore, through General Lee, its Consul-General in Havana, promptly intervened on behalf of the crew, declaring that their trial by court martial was illegal. Spain as promptly retorted that she was perfectly justified in the action which she had taken, and manifested a very strong disposition to abide by the decision of the court martial, and execute its sentence. But the United States remained so inflexibly firm, and made it so clear that it would tolerate no departure whatsoever from the terms of the treaty, that Spain, after holding out as long as she dared, was at length compelled to yield and order a new trial by ordinary process; with the result that the ship's crew, after having been kept for a long time in prison, were eventually released and expelled from the island. This incident greatly embittered the relations between the two nations, Spain especially resenting the humiliation of defeat; and there seems very little doubt that it was the primal cause which led up to the Spanish-American War. One day, as the little party at the casa Montijo were about to sit down to second breakfast, Antonio Maceo suddenly made his appearance. "Good-day, Senores!" he exclaimed, as he mounted the steps leading to the front veranda. "Good-day, Senora! And how are you to-day?" "Quite well, thank you, Senor," answered the Senora. "And you? But I need scarcely ask; the mountain air evidently agrees with you. This is a quite unexpected pleasure, Senor Antonio." "You mean my visit to you, Senora? It is very good of you to say so. Not knowing what facilities you may have for obtaining news, I thought I would come down to let you know that I believe we have at length driven the Spaniards completely out of the neighbourhood. Your friend General Echague attacked us in force about a month ago, with the avowed determination, as I have since learned, of dislodging us from our stronghold; and we had the most splendid fight that I have ever participated in. We allowed him to gradually drive us back some six miles into the mountains, until we had drawn him into a very carefully prepared ambuscade, and there we punished him so severely that I believe he will not again dare to trouble us, especially as I learn that the general himself was severely wounded. But," he continued, taking Don Hermoso by the arm and leading him to the end of the veranda, out of earshot of the Senora, "that is not what I came down to tell you. I learned, only yesterday, that that fiend Weyler, maddened by his inability to check the progress of the rebellion, and the failure of his arms generally, has personally taken the field at the head of an army of sixty thousand men, and is marching through Havana, on his way to Pinar del Rio, carrying fire and sword through the province, and leaving behind him nothing but black and blood-stained ruin. Before he left Havana he proclaimed that a free pardon would be granted to all insurgents who should choose to surrender themselves to the Spanish authorities, and a certain number of those among us who have become incapacitated through sickness have, with the consent of the leaders, accepted his offer: but their surrender, so far from weakening us, has strengthened our hands, for we no longer have them to nurse and look after. But he has also issued another order, to the effect that the Spanish troops, while marching through the country, will henceforth destroy all buildings, crops, cattle, and other property which may be capable of sheltering or assisting the insurgents in any way whatsoever; and, furthermore, that all persons met with who have disobeyed the `concentration' order will be treated as rebels--which means that they will be tried by drum-head court martial and shot. I don't know whether or not you have yet heard this news, Senor Hermoso, but you have aided us thus far in so magnificently generous a manner that I deemed it my duty to come down and make certain, and also to warn you of what you may expect if Weyler should happen to find you here. As for me, I have come to the conclusion that I can do no good by remaining pent up among the mountains, while it is equally certain that with four thousand men I cannot hope successfully to encounter Weyler and his sixty thousand. I have therefore determined to endeavour to slip through the _trocha_ and demonstrate against Havana, in the hope that Weyler will thus be induced to abandon his march and return to protect the city. So far as you are concerned, my advice to you is that you leave this place at once, and either accompany me or fly to some place of safety, whichever you please. But in either case you cannot do better, I think, than turn all your negroes over to me, with such arms as you can spare." "Come in and take some breakfast with us," said Don Hermoso. "This is serious news indeed, and what it is best to do, under the circumstances, is a matter that is not to be decided in a moment; it needs careful consideration, and therefore I will talk it over after breakfast with you--if you can spare me an hour or two--my son, and the young Englishman, who, although only a lad, seems to have a man's head on his shoulders. My present inclination is to remain where I am, and let Weyler do his worst. I believe that, with the dispositions which we have made since Echague's attack upon us, we can hold the estate against all comers." And when, after an hour's earnest conference a little later on in the day, and a tour of the estate in the company of Don Hermoso, Carlos, and Jack, Antonio Maceo took his leave, in order to return to his men among the mountains, he expressed the opinion that, given an ample supply of ammunition, and a sufficient store of provisions, it was just possible that Don Hermoso might be able to hold even Weyler and his sixty thousand men at bay. Whereupon it was decided that the attempt should be made. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. A GALLANT DEFENCE. It is not to be supposed that so momentous a decision as that mentioned at the close of the last chapter could be arrived at without bringing the occupants of the hacienda face to face with many anxieties, one of the most serious of which was, undoubtedly, the question whether the ammunition for which they had sent would arrive ere the appearance upon the scene of General Valeriano y Nicolan Weyler, with his devastating army of sixty thousand men. If it did, all might possibly be well; but if it did not--well, in that case disaster was practically certain. For nearly a week they hung painfully upon the tenterhooks of suspense, waiting for news; and the only news which reached them was to the effect that the new Capitan-General, with characteristic vigour, had issued the most rigorous instructions for a vigilant patrol of the entire coast line of the island to be maintained, with the express object of preventing any further landing of munitions of war of any description whatsoever, the obvious conclusion at which he had arrived being that if such supplies could be effectually stopped the rebellion must eventually be starved out of existence for want of them. But, after a long week of keenest anxiety, intelligence arrived that Milsom had succeeded in eluding the _guardacostas_, and had landed his cargo in a small cove under the lee of San Domingo Point, on the south coast; and that the moiety of that cargo asked for by Don Hermoso was even then well on its way to the estate. The next day it arrived, and was safely stored, to the great relief of the defenders, who now found themselves possessed of a supply of ammunition ample enough to enable them, with care, to withstand a siege of a month's duration, if need be; while they doubted very much whether General Weyler would be disposed to devote even half that amount of time to their subjugation. But the ammunition came to hand only just in the nick of time: for on the very day of its arrival the anxious watchers became aware of a faint odour of burning on the breeze; and when at length darkness closed down upon them, the sky to the eastward glowed red, showing that Weyler and his destroyers were at hand. With the dawn the smell of burning became more pronounced; the hitherto crystalline clearness of the air was seen to be dimmed by a thin veil of brownish-blue vapour; and the lookout in his eyrie far up the mountain-side signalled that flames and thick smoke were visible in the direction of Consolacion del Sur. As the day progressed the haze with which the air was charged grew thicker, the taint of fire and smoke more pungent, and an occasional vibration of the atmosphere suggested to those who became conscious of it the boom of distant artillery; while with the approach of nightfall the whole of the eastern sky became suffused with a flickering, ruddy light, the lookout up the mountain signalling that the entire country to the eastward, as far as the eye could see, seemed to be in flames. On the morrow all these signs of destruction became very greatly accentuated: with the passage of every hour the atmosphere became more thickly charged with smoke, more pungent with the smell of burning; clouds of black ash darkened the sky from time to time, as they were swept along upon the wings of the strong breeze; dense columns of smoke rising here and there showed where the spoilers were at work upon properties so near at hand that they could now be identified and named; while the frequent rattle and crash of rifle fire seemed to indicate that there were others who, like Don Hermoso, were not prepared to stand supinely by and see their entire possessions destroyed. Work was still being carried on by Don Hermoso's _employes_, but they had been turned- to that morning with the injunction that at the sound of the alarm bell they were to instantly drop their tools and muster before the shed in which the arms were stored. As for Singleton and Carlos Montijo, they had jumped into the saddle at daybreak, and were maintaining a ceaseless patrol of the boundaries of the estate, riding in opposite directions, and encountering each other from time to time, when they would exchange such items of information as they might happen to have gleaned in the interim. All through the morning the work of destruction proceeded apace: the atmosphere became hourly thicker and more suffocating with smoke; great tongues of flame could occasionally be seen leaping skyward here and there above the tops of trees; dull boomings from time to time told of the blowing up of buildings; intermittent crashes of volley firing, mingled with shouts and yells and shrieks, told that desperate fights were raging--or that, perchance, some ruthless and summary execution was taking place; and by and by, shortly after mid-day, a solitary horseman, mounted upon a steed in a lather of sweat and recognised by Carlos as their next neighbour to the eastward, came galloping over the temporary drawbridge with a warning to Don Hermoso to fly, with all his family and dependents, since Weyler, with his army of butchers, was already approaching in such overpowering strength that nothing could possibly stand before him. The poor fellow gasped out a breathless story of ruthlessly savage murder and destruction, telling how he had seen every atom of his property looted and burnt, every member of his family shot down; and how he had at the last moment escaped by the skin of his teeth, with the horse he rode and the clothes that he stood up in as his sole remaining possessions in the world. He had effected his escape with some mad idea of flying for his life somewhere, he knew not whither; but upon learning that Don Hermoso was resolved to defend his property to the last, the poor fellow--a certain Don Luis Enrile--begged permission to be allowed to remain and assist in the defence, since he was now a ruined man and had nothing left to live for save revenge. Naturally, Don Hermoso readily acceded to his request. The unhappy Don Luis, having drawn, in broken, gasping sentences, the main outlines of his tragical story, was still filling in some of the more lurid details of that morning's happenings upon his farm, when the lookout perched aloft on the hillside signalled the approach of the enemy; and while Carlos dashed off in one direction to sound the alarm bell and occupy his former defence post, Jack rushed off in the other to raise the temporary drawbridge which had been constructed to take the place of the wrecked stone bridge, and which was now the only means of entering upon and leaving the estate. Having raised the bridge, and carefully secured it against any possibility of becoming lowered by accident, Jack climbed the structure to its uplifted extremity, and from thence looked out over the wide plain that gently sloped away toward the east, south, and west of him; and presently he became aware of a loud, confused, rumbling jumble of sound which, when he was presently able to dissect it, resolved itself into a mingled trampling of multitudinous feet and hoofs, a rumbling and creaking of many wheels, the combined murmur of many human voices, the occasional low, deep, protesting bellow of overdriven animals, the crack of whips, and the continuous shouts of men. The air was still thick with acrid smoke, rendering it difficult to see anything clearly at a distance greater than half a mile; but presently it thickened still more, and Jack recognised that the thickening was produced by a great cloud of dun-coloured dust, out of the midst of which there presently cantered into view a number of Spanish cavalry scouts, a dozen of whom, upon reaching the main road, wheeled to their right and dashed along it toward the point of its junction with the private road leading to Don Hermoso's estate. Jack considered that the moment had now arrived for him to quit his post of observation, and he accordingly slid down the rail of the bridge until he reached the ground, where he was almost immediately joined by the contingent of labourers which was to operate under him, as before, for the defence of the estate at that point. The wood away to the left, and the bamboo coppice, afforded perfect cover and shelter for the whole of his party; and since each man now knew to an inch where he was required to post himself, everybody was in position and entirely hidden from sight a full minute before the leading couple of the cavalry came into view round the bend of the road leading to the ruined bridge. But no sooner did that leading couple appear than two whiplike rifle reports snapped out from somewhere in front of them, and while one rider dropped forward and collapsed on his horse's neck, the other flung up his arms, tossed away the carbine which he was carrying in his right hand, and reeled out of the saddle to the ground with a crash, while his horse, tossing up his head, wheeled sharply round and dashed off to the rear, dragging his dead rider by the left stirrup. The next instant another pair of scouts swung into view, when again out snapped that ominous, double, whiplike crack. This time one of the two riders, dropping his carbine to the ground, clapped his right hand convulsively to his breast as he swiftly wheeled his horse and galloped off; while the horse of his companion, rearing upright and pawing the air furiously for a moment with his fore hoofs, fell backward with a crash and lay dead, pinning his helpless rider beneath him: whereupon the remainder of the party wheeled their horses, and, dashing in their spurs, took to precipitate flight. Shortly afterwards, doubtless in consequence of the report of those men, another reconnoitring party, consisting of half a dozen brilliantly- garbed officers, approached, evidently with the idea of inspecting the nature of the defences of the estate, and ascertaining its weak points. But Jack would have none of it; the moment that they came within point- blank rifle range he opened fire upon them with his sharpshooters, and only three of the half-dozen were able to make good their retreat. Meanwhile the main body of troops gradually debouched into view upon the plain--a motley crowd of infantry clad in rags so effectually bleached and discoloured by exposure to rain and sun that it would probably have puzzled their own officers to name the various regiments to which they belonged; about one hundred cavalry; and three batteries of field artillery: the whole accompanied by an enormous number of baggage, ambulance, and ammunition wagons, water carts, and nondescript vehicles of every imaginable description, and an immense lowing, bellowing, and bleating herd of captured cattle, sheep, and goats, many of which seemed to be half-mad with terror. Mounted officers in scores dashed frantically to and fro among this medley of men, vehicles, and animals; and finally, when the herd of cattle was at length separated from the main body and driven off, a detachment of some three thousand men, and one battery of guns, with a proportion of the wagons and other vehicles, halted on the plain, with the evident intention of attacking the estate, while the remainder of the body went forward. The attack began immediately. A puff or two of white smoke had revealed to the reconnoitring parties the lurking-place of those who had fired upon them, and they had of course pointed out the spot to the artillerymen as that upon which they were to concentrate their fire; with the result that immediately the guns were wheeled to action front, they opened a hot fire upon the bamboo coppice. But, as on the occasion of the previous attack, no sooner had the reconnoitring parties withdrawn than Jack moved his sharpshooters from their cover of bamboo to that of a line of artfully constructed earthworks, which, while far enough removed from the bamboos to be perfectly safe from the artillery fire which he felt certain would be immediately opened upon them, equally commanded the road leading to the ruined bridge, and enabled him to effectually check all endeavours to reconnoitre that point of approach. The result was that after the bamboos had been fiercely shelled for some ten minutes, without producing a single casualty among the defenders, another reconnoitring party, believing that that particular patch of cover had been pretty effectually cleared, boldly galloped forward, under cover of the continued shell fire, to examine the spot which, from the resolution with which it had been defended, they felt convinced must be one of the keys of the position. And there is little doubt that they were as much surprised as disgusted to be received with a volley, from a totally different and not easily discernible point, which caused them to again retire precipitately, leaving nearly two-thirds of their number behind them. Finding himself thus persistently foiled, the officer in command slightly altered his tactics; and, while instructing his artillery to persistently shell every bit of timber or other cover that could possibly afford concealment to the defenders, deployed his infantry into a column of open order and threw out a strong firing line, with instructions to them to advance, taking advantage of every bit of cover that they could find, and shoot at every puff of smoke that they could see. As on the occasion of the previous attack, many of the Spanish shells failed to burst; but, notwithstanding this, a few casualties now began to occur among Jack's party of defenders, and he therefore decided that the moment had arrived for bringing his twelve-pounder into action. This gun, accordingly, which Jack had by this time got mounted on a cleverly-constructed and carefully-masked earth battery, now opened fire upon the enemy's artillery; and as Singleton had personally laid the piece, and knew the exact range to practically an inch, he was lucky enough to dismount and put out of action one of the Spanish guns with his first shot, while his second swept away every one of the artillerymen from the gun next to it. His third and fourth shots did comparatively little damage; but his fifth shell struck one of the guns fair upon the muzzle, at the precise moment when it was being fired, with the result that both shells burst simultaneously, completely shattering the fore part of the gun, as far back as the trunnions, and scattering death and destruction broadcast among the rest of the artillerymen. But by this time the Spanish gunners had managed to locate the position of the weapon that was punishing them so fearfully, and from that moment they devoted their attention exclusively to it, with the result that shells began to drop thick and fast about Jack's ears, smothering and half-blinding him with dust, and occasionally peppering him pretty smartly with the pebbles and fragments of stone that were mingled with the earth of which his battery was composed. Still he gallantly maintained the unequal fight, and actually succeeded in disabling four out of the six guns ere a splinter of shell struck him on the temple and knocked him senseless. When he recovered, he found that darkness was closing down; that he was in his own room and on his own bed, whither he had been brought by an ambulance party of his men; and that Mama Faquita, poor Senorita Isolda's nurse, had taken him in charge, cleaned and dressed his wound, and was looking after him generally. An intermittent crackle of rifle fire told him that the attack was still being pressed, but Faquita informed him that there had been very few serious casualties thus far, and that all was going well. The old woman would fain have kept him confined to his room; but Jack knew that with the darkness would come the real danger, and despite his nurse's vehement protests he not only rose from his bed, but returned to the spot which his contingent of men were still defending. Arrived there, he soon found that events had been happening during his absence. In the first place, it appeared that the remainder of the gun's crew had continued to work the twelve-pounder, and, after firing away a perfectly ruinous quantity of ammunition, had actually succeeded in disabling one of the two remaining Spanish guns; soon after accomplishing which feat, the twelve-pounder itself had been dismounted and put out of action by a shell which had completely destroyed the carriage and at the same time had slain four of the gunners. Whereupon a little party of sharpshooters, remembering the tactics that Jack had adopted during the previous attack upon the estate, had exclusively devoted themselves to a repetition of them, by first of all exterminating the entire crew of the remaining Spanish gun, and then rendering it impossible for anyone else to approach the gun to work it. Meanwhile, the officer in command, finding it useless to try to do anything with his men, exposed as they were upon the open plain, had withdrawn them out of gunshot and gone into camp. It was clear that he proposed to wait until the darkness came to veil his movements. Jack quite anticipated that the first thing which the Spaniards would attempt would be to reconnoitre the entire position, with the object of finding a way to get across the river; and he knew that there were only two points at which this feat of crossing was possible, namely, those which Carlos and he were defending. He therefore scribbled a little note to his friend, warning the latter what to guard against, and dispatched it by a negro messenger, whom he also instructed to afterwards call at the house and bring from thence a pair of binocular glasses which were to be found on a table in his (Jack's) bedroom. By the time that the messenger returned with the glasses it had grown intensely dark: for to the natural obscurity of night there was added the further obscuration caused by the smoke with which the atmosphere was laden; while, to still further intensify the blackness, a heavy thunderstorm was working up against the wind, the combined result being a darkness in which it was literally impossible to see one's hand before one's face. Jack was at first inclined to anathematise the darkness; but when at length he was enabled to fully realise the intensity of it he felt much more disposed to bless it, for, having moved about half a dozen paces away from his post, and experienced some difficulty in finding his way back, he began to comfort himself with the reflection that the enemy, utterly strange to the country as they were, could do nothing until light enough should come to at least enable them to see where to put their feet. Yet Jack was mistaken in so supposing, for as the time went on he became aware of certain sounds out there on the plain which seemed to indicate pretty unmistakably that, despite the darkness, the Spaniards were busily employed. When the moaning and sighing of the night wind among the branches of the trees, the rustle of the bamboos, and the clash of the palm leaves subsided for an instant, allowing more distant sounds to reach his ears, he intermittently caught what seemed to be the sounds of picks and shovels at work at no very great distance; moreover, there were lights flitting about the distant camp, and much movement there, though what it portended Jack was quite unable to discover, even with the help of his night glasses. At length, however, the period of darkness came to an end, for sheet lightning began to flicker and quiver among the densely packed clouds low down on the western horizon, at first for an instant only and at comparatively long intervals, but soon increasing greatly in vividness and rapidity: and then the young Englishman perceived, to his disgust and alarm, that the Spanish soldiers had availed themselves of the obscurity not only to entrench a strong body of riflemen to right and left of their own end of the ruined bridge, but also to advance a long, light platform, or gangway, mounted on the wheels of one of the disabled field pieces, which they seemed to be preparing to throw across the gap in the bridge as soon as they could get sufficient light to enable them to run it into position; indeed, they were actually engaged in moving it forward at the very moment when Jack discovered its existence. To bring up his men, and place them in a position among the bamboos which would enable them to frustrate this bold attempt to span the river was the work of but a minute or two for Jack; then he immediately opened a hot fire upon the working party who were engaged in moving forward the gangway. But no sooner had he done this than he found how seriously the conditions had changed for the worse during those two hours of total darkness; for now the Spaniards who had established themselves in the trenches were so close at hand that the cover of the bamboos was no longer an efficient defence, and casualties among the defenders became disconcertingly frequent. Furthermore, it soon appeared that the Spaniards had got two strong hauling parties sheltered behind a couple of low earthworks, and that these people, by means of two stout ropes attached to the gangway, were steadily and with much skill hauling the thing toward the required position. Jack soon saw, however, that it would be quite impossible for the hauling parties to haul it far enough forward to enable it to be dropped into position across the gap in the ruined bridge: a moment must come, sooner or later, when the concealed men who were dragging upon the ropes would be obliged to leave their cover and push the platform the remaining portion of the distance; and he quickly determined to reserve his energies and his ammunition until that moment. The time quickly arrived. A single bugle blast appeared to be the signal for the entrenched Spanish riflemen to concentrate their fire upon the clump of bamboo brake wherein Jack had hidden his men, and at the same instant about a hundred infantry-men sprang from behind their sheltering earthwork and made a dash at the platform, their every movement being clearly visible by the light of the vivid electric discharges which had by this time become practically continuous. With the utmost resolution they seized the light structure and started to run it forward toward the gap in the bridge; but--Jack having by this time instilled into his dusky troops the virtue of coolness and deliberation in fighting--the next moment they were swept back to cover by a perfectly withering fire that placed nearly half of them _hors de combat_. Meanwhile sounds of hot and sustained firing had gradually breezed up in the direction of the position which Carlos was defending, and ere long it became evident that there also the attack was being pressed; and although the sounds of strife thitherward were soon almost swallowed up in the long, continuous crash and crackle of the rifle fire that was being maintained by the entrenched troops upon Jack's party, the young Englishman could not avoid the suspicion that his friend was being somewhat hardly pressed; for whenever a momentary lull occurred in the firing in front of him, Jack could not only hear that the volume of firing in Carlos' direction was fully maintained, but it seemed to him that it was steadily increasing! And presently a breathless messenger arrived from Carlos, begging Jack to spare the former as many men as he possibly could, to help in driving back a body of Spanish troops who had actually succeeded in forcing a passage across the river! In response to this request Jack of course instantly detached every man he could possibly spare, retaining less than fifty to aid him in defending his own position: but the news which he had just received made it perfectly clear to him that the defence was practically at an end; for if Carlos had been unable to prevent the Spaniards from forcing the passage of the river, it was in the highest degree unlikely that he would be able to stem the rush, much less drive it back. Jack at once began to consider what was the best course to pursue under the new conditions; and, as he thought, a plan began to gradually unfold itself in his mind. The estate, he felt, was lost, for if only a sufficient number of the Spaniards could once get across the river to hold Carlos' force at bay for five minutes, by the end of that time a reinforcement would have crossed strong enough to sweep the defenders out of existence: nothing, therefore, in that case could save the estate from destruction, but it might be possible to visit upon the destroyers a heavy retribution. Jack's mind was thus occupied when another messenger arrived from Carlos to tell him that all was lost, and that Carlos, with the remnant of his party--with whom were Don Hermoso and his wife--was retreating up the valley, hotly pursued by a strong party of Spanish soldiers; while other Spaniards were in possession of the house and the several outbuildings, which they were obviously preparing to set on fire: and the message concluded by requesting Jack to follow with his party, and join the fugitives, if possible. Now it happened that Carlos' retreat up the valley chimed in excellently well with the scheme which was beginning to take shape within Jack's brain; the latter therefore lost no time in collecting together his little band of riflemen and leading them through the wood, round by the rear of the house and outbuildings, and along a bush path, to a spot at which he could intercept and join the retreating party, and at which, moreover, owing to the nature of the ground, he believed he could pretty effectually check the pursuit, and cover the retreat of the main body of the defenders. As he pressed forward at the head of his own scanty contingent the sounds of occasional shots told him that Carlos was still maintaining a good running fight: but, as the path which he was following constituted a short cut to the spot which he desired to reach, he soon left those sounds in his rear, and, pressing rapidly forward, at length arrived at the main path; and, aided by the lightning, which was now flashing incessantly, contrived to place his men in ambush behind a number of big boulders that studded the almost perpendicular sides of the bush-clad hill, just as the leading files of the retreating party came into view round a bend of the path. Jack saw with satisfaction that the retreat was being conducted in good order. First came a body of some fifty well-armed negroes, who were keeping a wary eye about them, to guard against the possibility of being ambuscaded by some portion of the enemy who might have pushed on and got in front of them--although such a thing was scarcely likely to have happened; then came the Senora, in a hammock suspended from a pole borne on the shoulders of two stout negroes, with Don Hermoso and Senor Calderon walking, one on either side of her; and behind these again came the main body of the retreating defenders, with the two Maxim guns in their midst, and with Carlos bringing up the rear in charge of a party of about twenty riflemen, who were covering the retreat by frequently facing round and exchanging shots with the pursuers. As these last came into view, Jack rose from his place of ambush--at the imminent risk of being shot by his friends before they could recognise him--and made the fact of his presence and that of his party known, bidding the others pass on and leave the heaviest of the covering work to him. Their losses, Jack could see, had been terribly heavy, and they looked weary to death with their long hours of fighting: yet he was gratified to observe that, with very few exceptions, the men carried themselves as resolutely as ever, and displayed the effect of his training by taking the fullest advantage of every particle of cover, dodging behind rocks, boulders, trunks of trees, and clumps of bush; taking as careful aim as though they were shooting in a match; re-loading, and then flitting from cover to cover to take up a fresh position. The rear-guard under Carlos had not passed much more than a hundred yards ahead when the leading files of the pursuers appeared round the bend of the path, breathless, from the fact that the retreating party had no sooner disappeared round the elbow than the Spaniards had broken into a run, taking advantage of the circumstance that they were for a moment out of sight of the enemy to shorten the distance between themselves and the pursued. As the vanguard of some twenty pursuing Spaniards dashed round the bend they dropped on one knee and raised their rifles to their shoulders, availing themselves of the lightning flashes to take aim at the little crowd of retreating figures imperfectly seen here and there through the overhanging and swaying branches. The Cruise of the Thetis--by Harry Collingwood CHAPTER NINETEEN. TRAPPED! Never for a moment did they suspect the existence of the little body of men concealed among the ferns and undergrowth and boulders, some sixty feet up the precipitous side of the hill round the base of which they were winding, until, before the quickest of them could pull trigger, there rang out above them an irregular volley, aimed with such deadly precision that every man of them went down before it, and were there found, blocking the path, when their comrades arrived upon the scene a minute or two later. As these in turn swung round the bend and came upon the prostrate forms, they naturally halted and proceeded to examine the bodies, with the view of separating the living from the dead; with the result that there was almost instantly a crowd of about a hundred Spanish soldiers bunched together in the narrow path, some of them performing ambulance work, but the majority simply waiting for an opportunity to pass. This was altogether too good a chance to be neglected; and, waiting only until the jostling crowd in the pathway was at its thickest, Jack raised a whistle to his lips and blew a single, shrill note. The call was instantly answered by a crashing volley from the concealed negroes, which took such murderous effect upon the crowd below that scarcely a dozen men were left upon their feet; and those who were untouched were so utterly demoralised that they incontinently turned tail and retreated upon the main body, shouting: "Back! back! There is an ambuscade round the bend of the road; and we shall be slaughtered to a man if we go forward!" Whereupon the Spanish officer in charge of the pursuit--who was prudently remaining with the main body, instead of pushing forward with the vanguard--at once halted his men, and proceeded to enquire what all the confusion was about. The truth was that, finding himself on strange ground, following a narrow, winding, bush path, with a deepening ravine on his right, and a precipitously steep hillside on his left, overgrown with ferns and scrub thick enough to give perfect cover to an unlimited number of men; and with a furious thunderstorm raging, which promised to speedily develop into something very considerably worse than what it already was, he had no stomach for continuing the pursuit, and was only too glad of an excuse to call a halt and allow the enemy to go upon his way without further molestation. On the other hand, Jack, having satisfied himself that he had at least checked the pursuit, gave the word to his men to move forward; and, taking a short cut over the spur of the hill, they soon found themselves once more in the path, and close upon the heels of their companions. As Jack's party presently overtook what had originally been the rear- guard, Carlos dropped into the rear and joined his friend, and the two youths seized the opportunity to effect an exhaustive interchange of news, and to relate to each other the most stirring episodes in the defence of their respective positions. The young Cuban explained the means adopted by the Spaniards to force a passage across the river, and how he had eventually been overpowered and forced to retire; and then Singleton unfolded to Carlos his views upon the subject of how to deal with the enemy, could the latter be induced to follow them to a certain spot up among the hills which Jack described and Carlos remembered. This spot they were now rapidly approaching. It consisted of a nearly straight defile, about half a mile in length, with a bend in its middle just sufficient to shut out the view of one end of it from the other. This defile was simply a cleft in the stupendous mass of rock that formed a great spur of the mountain on the left-hand side of the path, and was undoubtedly the result of some terrific natural convulsion of prehistoric times, which had rent the living rock asunder, leaving a vertical wall on either side, the indentations in the one wall accurately corresponding to the projections on the other. At the lower extremity--that is to say, the extremity which the fugitives were now approaching--access to the defile was gained by means of a sort of portal, less than six feet wide, the space between the rock walls thence narrowing gradually to about four feet, and thus forming a kind of passage about fifty feet long; beyond which the rock walls gradually receded from each other until, at the other extremity of it, the defile was nearly a hundred feet wide. The walls were unscalable throughout the entire length of the defile, which abruptly ended in a rough and torn rock face some two hundred feet in height. This rock face could scarcely be described as unscalable, because it was so rough that, although practically vertical, the projections on it were so numerous and pronounced that an active man could climb it without much difficulty, if uninterfered with; but if the summit and flanks happened to be held by even a small force of men armed with rifles, to climb it would at once become an absolute impossibility. Outside the entrance there was a small, open, grassy space, backed by dense scrub; and Jack's plan was that Carlos, with about fifty men, should enter the defile, pass through it to its upper extremity and scale the rock face there, holding it against the Spaniards, and thus checking their further advance, while Jack, and the remainder of the negroes, with the two Maxims, should secrete themselves in the scrub and remain in hiding until the entire Spanish force had passed into the defile, when they would emerge and block the entrance with the two Maxims, thus bottling up the Spaniards and compelling them to surrender--or be annihilated. By the time that Singleton had completely unfolded his plans to Carlos, the vanguard of the fugitives had reached the entrance to the defile, where they halted, awaiting further instructions; whereupon Carlos ran forward and, picking his fifty men, led them through the portal, while Jack, taking command of the remainder, caused them to carefully drag and lift the two Maxims into concealment, obliterate all trace of the passage of the guns into the scrub, and afterwards conceal themselves therein--the Senora, Don Hermoso, and Senor Calderon remaining with the party. They had scarcely hidden themselves, and removed all signs of their presence to Jack's satisfaction, when the storm which had been threatening for so long a time burst with terrific fury, the air being continuously a-glimmer with the flickering and quivering of lightning flashes, while the very ground beneath their feet seemed to quake with the deafening, soul-shaking crash of the thunder; and the rain, breaking loose at last, descended in such cataractal volumes that, even partially sheltered as most of them were by the dense foliage of the scrub amid which they cowered, every soul of them was wet to the skin in less than a minute. And in the midst of it all, Jack, peering out from his hiding-place a few feet from the path, saw the wretched Spanish soldiery go splashing and squelching past, too wet, and altogether too utterly tired and miserable apparently, to take any notice of where they were going, and seemingly anxious only to press forward in the hope of somewhere finding shelter. There were about six hundred of them; and by the time that they had all passed into the defile the storm had nearly spent itself. The rain had ceased, the lightning flickered only occasionally, and then low down toward the horizon; the thunder had dwindled to a low, hollow, muffled rumbling, and the clouds overhead had broken up and were drifting fast away, revealing a nearly full moon sailing high overhead, in the strong, silvery light of which the saturated vegetation glittered. As the last Spaniard disappeared within the portal, Singleton cautiously emerged from his hiding-place, and, forcing his way through the sodden herbage, peered round the angle of the rock, watching the movements of the retiring foe. He waited patiently until the rearmost files had penetrated a good hundred yards up the defile, and then he raised his hand, waving it as a signal for his men to come forth. The next instant the place was alive with men. Fifty willing hands dragged forth the Maxims and planted them fair and square in the portal, pointing up the ravine, the ammunition boxes were opened and bands of cartridges placed in position: rifles were loaded; and ere the last of the Spaniards had passed round the bend and out of sight every preparation to give them a warm reception upon their return was complete. The watchers by the portal had not very long to wait. The enemy were not out of sight much more than ten minutes when a solitary rifle shot cracked out at the head of the defile and came echoing down its rocky sides; then another one; then three or four more; until at length a brisk fusillade was proceeding, accompanied by a good deal of confused shouting. This lasted for the best part of an hour, when there came first a lull in the firing, and then the sound of many approaching feet, following which a disorderly crowd of Spanish soldiers appeared doubling down the defile, in full flight toward the entrance. With the appearance of the first of them Jack sprang up on a boulder, and shouted to them to halt; but so eager were the Spaniards to escape from the punishment that had been inflicted upon them at the other end of the defile that it was not until one of the Maxims opened fire upon them that they could be persuaded to stay their precipitate flight. But the sharp, thudding, hammer-like reports of the machine-gun, and the stream of lead that began to play upon them and thin their ranks, soon brought them to a halt, when, flinging down their arms, they cried for quarter, which of course was at once given them. Then, Carlos' party closing in upon them from the rear, the Spaniards were carefully disarmed, their ammunition taken away from them, and their weapons destroyed by being consumed in a huge bonfire, formed of dry wood collected from the depths of the bush. And while this regrettable but necessary act of destruction was in process of execution, Carlos and Jack went among the prisoners, questioning them as to their number, who was in command, upon what principle they were working, and so on. Unfortunately they were unable to extract very much information, for it appeared that every officer had perished, either in the attack upon the estate, or at the far end of the defile: while the soldiers seemed either too stupid or too ill-informed to be able to give trustworthy replies to any of the questions asked, except that General Weyler had gone back to Havana, and that the operations in the province of Pinar del Rio were being conducted by Generals Bernal and Arolas, who, by strict command of Weyler, were laying the entire country waste, destroying every building of whatsoever description, churches included, on the ground that they afforded possible places of refuge or shelter for revolutionaries; mercilessly shooting down every man, woman, and child found, on the plea that, not having obeyed General Weyler's concentration order, they were contumacious rebels: that, in short, where this host went they found smiling prosperity, and left behind them a blood-stained, fire-blackened waste. The troops were not acting in concert, or as one body, but in independent detachments, to each of which was allotted the duty of covering a strip of country of a certain width, which strip it was their task to ravage from end to end. The detachment to which the duty of destroying Don Hermoso's property had fallen had consisted of some three thousand infantry, a troop of cavalry, and a battery of field artillery; and according to the story of the prisoners it had suffered frightfully during the attack, the officer in command having wasted his men most recklessly in his determination to conquer at any cost--indeed, if they were to be believed, with the exception of about half a squadron of cavalry, a few artillerymen, and perhaps fifty men left behind to destroy the buildings, they were the sole survivors of the attack and the pursuit. The question which now presented itself to Jack and Carlos was: What were they to do with their prisoners, now that they had them?--for that they were a distinctly embarrassing possession was an indisputable fact. In the first place, the unfortunate wretches were by this time suffering acutely from hunger and thirst, but their captors had neither food nor drink to give them; indeed, they had none wherewith to satisfy their own pressing needs. Also, since all the buildings on the estate were doubtless by this time utterly destroyed by fire, there was no place in which to confine them; yet it would obviously be the height of folly to set them free while their comrades were still in the neighbourhood, for that would only mean that they would bring back those comrades to complete the work which they themselves had failed to finish. At length, after a long and anxious consultation, it was agreed that the only possible course was to pen the Spaniards inside the defile, keeping them there by the wholesome dread inspired by the presence of the two Maxims and a strong band of armed men holding the portal, under Carlos' command; that Jack, with a picked body of fifty armed negroes, should escort Don Hermoso and the Senora back to the house, in the hope that, somewhere among the ruins, at least a partial shelter might be found for the unhappy lady, who, drenched to the skin, was now threatened with a serious attack of fever; and that, after a shelter had been found for her, Jack and his men should reconnoitre the camp of the enemy and endeavour to learn something of their immediate intentions. This having been arranged, the prisoners were given to understand that they must make themselves as comfortable as they could where they were, for the present, and that any attempt on their part to break out would be visited with immediate and rigorous punishment: after which Jack and his party, accompanied by Don Hermoso and his wife, briskly stepped out on their way down the valley, along the road by which they had so recently come, emerging, about an hour later, into the open space that had been occupied by the warehouses. Some of these, as well as the whole of the negro huts, were found to be nothing but a heap of black and smouldering ruins; while others had been set on fire, but the flames had obviously been extinguished by the pelting rain that had fallen during the latter part of the recent thunderstorm. Those buildings which had happened to contain large quantities of combustible goods had naturally suffered most severely, and were now merely a collection of roofless, smoke-blackened walls; while those which had been empty had suffered comparatively little damage--indeed, in one or two cases, practically none at all, except that the doors had been broken open and partly wrenched off their hinges. One of these was at once utilised as a shelter for Don Hermoso's wife; and, while the negroes mounted guard round the building, the Don and Jack hurried away toward the house, to ascertain its condition, and, so far as the former was concerned, to endeavour to find a change of clothing for the Senora. At the first glimpse, the house, when they reached it, appeared to have suffered very severely, for many of the windows were broken, and the once immaculately white walls were streaked and blackened here and there by fire and smoke: and when they entered the building, everything was found in a most shocking state of confusion; the furniture was overturned and much of it was broken, a great deal of it was irretrievably damaged by fire, great holes had been burnt here and there in the flooring, cupboards and bureaus had been broken open and their contents scattered, apparently in a search for money or valuables; many small articles of value were missing, pictures were slashed and torn, poor Dona Isolda's grand piano had but one leg left and was otherwise a complete wreck, and some priceless china vases and bowls that had been the glory of the drawing-room were lying on the floor, shivered to atoms. But a little closer inspection revealed that while an immense amount of damage had been done--much of it through pure wantonness and lust for destruction--the building itself was practically intact, the roof was still weatherproof, and some of the rooms were in quite inhabitable condition; while there were many articles of furniture and dress, as well as many utensils of various kinds, that could still be made serviceable. Among the inhabitable rooms were the bedroom used by Don Hermoso and his wife, as also those usually occupied by Carlos and Jack; indeed, it appeared as though the spoilers had confined their destructive efforts almost entirely to the front part of the house. Under these circumstances, as there were no signs of the enemy in the immediate neighbourhood, Don Hermoso lost no time in hurrying back to his wife and getting her up to the house and into bed, that being all he could do at the moment to combat the fever which had seized upon her. This much having been accomplished, Jack set his negroes to search among the wreckage for anything in the nature of food which might perchance have escaped destruction, while he, single-handed, set off to reconnoitre the camp of the enemy, out on the plain. His shortest route thereto was by way of the position which Carlos had so resolutely defended; and he chose this because, the enemy having forced the passage of the river at this spot, he believed he would there find the means of crossing most easily himself. He had scarcely traversed a hundred yards from the house ere he began to encounter evidences of the severity of the fight that had waged throughout the afternoon and evening of that disastrously eventful day, in the shape of dead and wounded men, the former lying stark and cold in the light of the moon, some of them with limbs disposed as though they merely slumbered, while the contorted bodies of others showed that they had passed away in the throes of mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their sightless eyeballs upturned until only the whites were visible: while from the lips of the wounded there issued one low, continuous moan of: "Water--water! For the love of God, water!" It was a pitiable sight beyond all human power of description, and as Jack looked round him and beheld those units of slain and tortured humanity a great and righteous anger took possession of him against the arrogant Power that had been the cause of all this anguish and misery--to say nothing of what was enacting elsewhere--rather than surrender its grip upon the fair island that it had neither the will nor the ability to wisely govern--the Power that had deliberately entered upon a vindictive war against those whom it had goaded to rebellion. It was of course quite impossible for him, unaided, to ameliorate appreciably a hundredth part of the physical anguish of the men who lay there writhing and groaning on the sodden ground; but there was one poor wretch who managed to attract his attention--a Spanish soldier who, the lower part of his body paralysed, supported himself upon one hand while he mutely pointed with the other to his open mouth and protruding tongue, and who seemed to be the very living embodiment of torturing thirst. The mute appeal in this poor creature's eyes was so movingly eloquent that the young Englishman simply could not pass on and callously leave him in his torment. He therefore stooped and, laying the man's arms over his shoulders, lifted the poor fellow on to his back and carried him a little way to where a depression in the ground had been converted by the rain into a pool some three or four yards in diameter, from which several wounded men were already slaking their fiery thirst; and there he laid him down within reach of the precious liquid, and stood for a moment to watch the poor creature suck down great draughts of the thick, muddy water! There were scores of other unfortunates in sight whose sufferings were probably as acute as those of the poor wretch whom Jack had just helped, and who had an equally strong claim upon his compassion, but stern necessity demanded that he should neglect them in favour of the mission which he had set out to execute; also, he recognised that his first duty was to secure the safety of his friends. He therefore perforce steeled his heart, and pushed on toward the point at which the Spaniards had effected the passage of the river, and where he consequently expected to find the means of getting across. It was a gruesome journey, if a short one, for every yard that he advanced the dead and wounded lay more thickly piled together, until at length, by the margin of the river, the prostrate bodies of friend and foe were so closely intermingled that he found it difficult to progress at all without trampling them under foot, while the now still night air positively reeked with the odour of blood! It was awful beyond the utmost that the young Englishman's imagination had ever pictured, and as he glanced about him with shrinking gaze and rising gorge he again mentally execrated the leader to whose savagery all those unspeakable horrors were due. But now at last he was at the river, and now also he saw by what means the Spaniards had finally succeeded in accomplishing the task of forcing the passage of the barrier. A single glance at the contrivance was sufficient to prove that the assailants possessed among them at least one skilled engineer, for spanning the stream Jack saw an extraordinarily light yet strong bridge, constructed entirely of bamboos so lashed and braced together as to be capable of sustaining the weight of a continuous column of men, two abreast, over its entire length. It was fashioned upon the principle of the bowstring girder, and was considerably longer than was actually needed--which Jack accounted for by the fact that the Spaniards had been allowed no opportunity to gauge the actual width of the river, and had therefore been obliged to guess at it; yet, so light did it appear to be that he believed thirty men might easily have handled and placed it in position. He quickly passed across it, finding it perfectly firm to the tread, and then set out to cross the open plain toward the distant camp. He had still his night glasses with him, and as he went he frequently made use of them, as much to avoid the risk of being detected by the sentries as to observe what was passing in the camp; but from the outset he failed to detect the presence of any sentries whatever, and gradually it began to dawn upon him that the occupants of the camp, believing the defenders of the estate to be not only absolutely and irretrievably beaten, but also in panic-stricken flight, had not deemed it necessary to post any sentries at all, and were all sleeping in fancied perfect security. And this in fact he found to be actually the case, when at length, with the observance of every possible precaution, he actually stood within the precincts of the camp and looked about him. There was not a light in any one of the many tents round him; the watch fires had burnt low, and in some cases had died out altogether; not a soul was moving from one end of the camp to the other, and all round him were sleeping men! He waited only long enough to assure himself that this was actually the case, and then, withdrawing as carefully as he had come, he hurried back to where he had left his fifty men resting in one of the least damaged of the warehouses, and roused them with the intimation that they were required for instant action. Then, briefly acquainting them with what he had done and what he proposed to do, and ordering them to load their weapons, he marched them out across the bamboo bridge on to the plain, where he bade them take open order and, crouching low on the grass, advance upon the camp, exposing themselves as little as possible, since should but one person in the camp awake and detect them, all this labour would be lost. It took the little band of adventurers a full hour to accomplish the passage across the plain; and when at length they arrived within about fifty yards of the camp, Jack caused the signal to be passed along the line for all hands to lie prone in the grass, while he went forward alone to satisfy himself that everything was still as he had left it. Then, as he had done some two hours previously, Jack crawled right into the heart of the camp and gazed carefully about him. Everything was still perfectly quiet, save that from certain of the tents there issued sounds advertising the fact that there were noisy sleepers within. Then Singleton rose cautiously to his feet and lifted his right hand above his head. The next minute fifty armed negroes, under his whispered directions, were moving about the camp, silent-footed as cats, collecting the piled arms and every other weapon which they could find, and concealing them among the long grass at a safe distance from the camp. Then, this done, Jack raised his revolver above his head and fired a single shot into the air; at the sound of which the startled occupants of the tents came tumbling out, one over another, to learn what the disturbance was about, and to seize their weapons. But, instead of their piled arms, their eyes fell upon fifty stalwart negroes facing them with levelled rifles, and Jack beside them with a revolver in each hand. Such an unexpected sight naturally caused the Spaniards to pause in their rush, of which circumstance Singleton took advantage to thrust one of his revolvers back into his belt, and then raise his hand, with a command for silence. The Spaniards, their eyes still heavy with sleep, and disconcerted by the discovery that every one of their weapons had mysteriously vanished, obeyed readily enough, whereupon Jack requested the officer in command to step forward. A barefooted man, in shirt and trousers only, and carrying in his hand the sheathed sword of a Spanish infantry captain, which he had evidently snatched from his tent pole as he sprang from his camp bed, stepped forward, and, announcing himself as the senior surviving officer, demanded to know who Jack was, and what he wanted. "I am," said Jack, "the commander of a body of negroes, of whom you see a detachment before you. We are in arms against Spain, as are thousands more of the inhabitants of this island, because we very strongly object to the cruel tyranny and oppression with which we have been governed, and demand our freedom. Your march through the country has been marked by violence and outrage of every conceivable description, and you have left in your track nothing but death and desolation. The measure of your iniquity is full, and Cuba will endure no more. Your General Weyler has declared a war of extermination against Cubans, and you who execute his murderous mandate must pay the penalty. Yet, since it would be manifestly unfair to punish the innocent for the guilty, and since I am convinced that many of you have only obeyed your general's orders most unwillingly, I will spare those of you who will surrender, and execute only those who, by refusing, exhibit a readiness to persist in their iniquitous deeds. And do not look for any help from your comrades yonder; they triumphed temporarily, achieving a victory by sheer force of numbers, but since you and they parted company they have fallen into a trap--and now those who still live are prisoners. Will you join them; or will you go the way of those others who have to-night laid down their lives at the behest of a man who knows not the meaning of mercy? Let those among you who are willing to surrender throw up their hands." The officer turned and looked behind him: every man under his command had thrown his hands above his head! It was enough; his humiliation was complete. Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he placed the point on the ground; then, bending the blade into the form of a bow, he gave the hilt a sudden, peculiar thrusting jerk, and the blade snapped in twain. Then, tossing the hilt from him, he exclaimed, in a tone of concentrated bitterness, "I surrender!" and burst into tears of anger and mortification. CHAPTER TWENTY. THE END OF THE STRUGGLE. The prisoners, about a hundred in number, many of whom were less than half-dressed, were now allowed five minutes wherein to retire to their tents and assume their clothing; after which they were formed up four deep, and marched off in the direction from which Jack and his party had come, a young, swift-footed negro having been dispatched on ahead with a note from Singleton for Carlos, informing the latter of the capture of the camp and its occupants, and suggesting that he should bring his prisoners down to the compound adjoining the warehouses. With the arrival of the prisoners and their armed escort within half a mile of the spot where the bamboo bridge crossed the river, they began to come upon the first evidences of the recent fight, in the shape, first, of widely scattered units, and then of little groups of two or three dead or wounded. The first they were obliged to leave, for the moment; but the wounded were, by Jack's orders, now sought for and succoured, so far as succour was possible by unskilled hands, by being, in the first instance, borne closer to the river, and having their fiery thirst temporarily assuaged, and, later on, by having their wounds dressed, so far as the conveniences available permitted. With so large a number of wounded, this labour of mercy necessarily occupied a considerable amount of time, so that it was broad daylight when at length Jack conducted his prisoners into the compound and marched them into an empty and partially ruined storehouse which Carlos had already caused to be prepared for their reception, the prisoners which the young Cuban had brought down from the defile having already been lodged in an adjoining building. Then came the question of feeding the hungry--a very formidable task, considering that practically all the food on the estate had been destroyed by fire on the preceding night. This difficulty, however, was overcome by Jack revisiting the captured camp with a party of a dozen of the least exhausted negroes, and collecting a wagon-load of foodstuffs which, with half a dozen oxen, they drove on to the estate by way of the lowered drawbridge. Then, with infinite labour, the wounded were once more sought out, and carried into one of the storehouses which had suffered least from the fire, where they were attended to, so far as they could be, by a band of their compatriots who had volunteered for the service, and who had given their parole that they would not again take up arms against the Cubans. And next came the terrible task of burying the dead, which was also done, under Jack's supervision, by the prisoners, kept in a proper state of submission by a strong guard of armed negroes. It was by this time considerably past mid-day: at least half of the negroes, who had fought so stubbornly and well in defence of the estate, had had an opportunity to snatch a few hours' sleep, and were consequently in a condition to again mount guard over the prisoners; and then, and only then, did Jack and Carlos retire to their rooms, and flinging themselves, still dressed, upon their beds, sink at once into absolute oblivion. The two young men were aroused about nine o'clock that night to partake of food, when they learned that Don Hermoso had taken over the direction of affairs; also, that the wounded were for the most part doing well, having been taken in hand by a Spanish surgeon who, himself one of the wounded, had been brought in from the field of battle, and, having been attended to by Mama Faquita, was now sufficiently recovered to be able to do duty. This was a quite unexpected bit of good news for the two young men; but there was bad news also for them, in the fact that the unfortunate Senora Montijo was in a state of such high fever that the Spanish doctor was deeply concerned as to her condition, which became still more critical as the night wore on. Before again retiring to rest, Jack "went the rounds", as he expressed it, and saw for himself that everything was satisfactory; and he did the same the first thing upon rising the next morning. Then he, Don Hermoso, and Carlos held a consultation as to how the prisoners were to be disposed of, the difficulty of feeding and controlling so large a number being one that was likely to grow daily: and it was finally decided that, as the rest of the army had by this time passed on, and were scarcely likely to return over the same ground, the sound prisoners, together with those of the wounded who were so slightly hurt as to be able to travel, should be set at liberty and escorted for some few miles on the road to Pinar del Rio by a strong band of armed negroes, whose duty it would be to see that the released men did not attempt to rejoin the main army; that as soon as those were disposed of, the estate--which was practically destroyed, and therefore could not very well be further injured--should be abandoned to the Spanish doctor and such assistants as he could persuade to remain with him to look after the wounded; and that, as soon as the Senora's health would permit, Don Hermoso, Carlos, and Jack should attach themselves to one of the guerrilla bands who were hanging upon the skirts of the main Spanish army and harassing it night and day. The only difficulty in the way of this programme was the question of what to do with the Senora; but this was disposed of by a suggestion from Jack that the lady should be conveyed to the Laguna de Cortes, where the _Thetis_ was due to arrive in about a fortnight, and be put on board the yacht. Then Jack undertook to see to the release of the unhurt prisoners, with all the business incidental thereto; and, as a first step, he proceeded with a band of fifty armed negroes to the captured camp, and forthwith went to work to bring in all the weapons and ammunition, the uninjured field gun, the tents, and the wagons, all of which would be exceedingly valuable acquisitions to any revolutionary force which they might chance to join. Then the horses, mules, and cattle were driven in, the mules being harnessed to the gun and the wagons. All these captures having been stored as carefully as circumstances permitted, the prisoners who were to be released were paraded, and each was served with one day's rations; then they gladly moved off, _en route_ for Pinar del Rio, under a strong escort of armed negroes, led by Jack, who was on this occasion mounted upon a good horse. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when the little army started; and they marched until eight o'clock, when they camped for the night in the open, Jack and his band returning some three miles along the road by which they had gone, and passing the night in a wood through which the road ran. They arrived back at the estate shortly after nine o'clock the next morning, and Jack then learned, to his profound sorrow, that the unfortunate Senora Montijo had passed away during the night, another victim of Spanish tyranny and oppression. They buried the poor lady on the evening of that day, in a particularly lovely and peaceful spot, some distance up the valley, which had been a favourite resort of her daughter. The ceremony was singularly moving and impressive, every negro on the place following the body to the grave, and Don Hermoso himself, in the absence of a priest, reading the funeral service over his departed wife. But although the loss of the lady was deeply felt by all, there can be little doubt that, all things considered, her death was a fortunate circumstance, not only for herself, but also for all those who most dearly loved her; for it was only too clear that her reason had been permanently lost. Twenty-four hours later what had been the finest and best-kept tobacco-growing estate on the island was abandoned to the Spanish doctor and his patients--with a staff of volunteer assistants from the unwounded Spanish prisoners to look after them. The Montijos, father and son, with Jack, and as many of the negro defenders as still survived, had taken to the mountains, carrying off with them the field gun, Maxims, rifles, ammunition, and stores of all descriptions, either originally belonging to them, or taken from the enemy; and a very formidable force they soon proved themselves to be. About a month later news came to the band that Antonio Maceo, having evaded the Spanish army in the province of Pinar del Rio, and got on the other side of Weyler's _trocha_, had been killed in a skirmish not far from Havana, which city he had proposed to threaten, with the object of causing the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the western end of the island. This news, which proved to be true, was a very heavy blow to the revolutionaries, who regarded Antonio as far and away their most capable and energetic leader; and soon afterward they sustained a further very serious loss, in the person of Rius Rivera, who had arrived in Pinar del Rio to take the place of Maceo, but who, in the month of March, 1897, was wounded in a skirmish near San Cristobal, being afterwards captured and deported. Nor was this all; for about the same time Layas, another very prominent and effective revolutionary leader, was killed in a fight in the province of Havana. Yet, serious as those misfortunes were deemed to be, they did not discourage the revolutionaries; on the contrary, they but spurred the latter to more strenuous efforts, and the brief, and often fragmentary, items of intelligence which filtered through to them from time to time concerning the incessant harrying of the Spaniards by Don Hermoso and his active band of guerrillas were cheering as cordial to them, stimulating them to emulative feats of daring and enterprise which rapidly reduced Weyler to the very verge of despair. Meanwhile the course of events in Cuba was being very keenly watched in the United States, and was steadily increasing the already dangerous tension which had been gradually growing between that country and Spain; and this was further increased by the occurrence of the Rius incident. Rius, it may be mentioned, was a Cuban, who, like many other natives of the same island, had resided in the United States, and had deemed it good policy to secure naturalisation papers as an American, after which he had returned to Cuba. The Spanish authorities--who may or may not have had good reason--suspected Rius of being a dangerous person, and arrested him; whereupon the United States Consul, ever watchful of the rights of American citizens, promptly demanded that the man should be immediately brought to trial, and released if no offence could be proved against him. The machinery of diplomacy is sometimes apt to move a trifle slowly, and ere it had moved far enough to bring about the satisfaction of the Consul's demands it was stated that Rius had died suddenly in prison. This put General Fitzhugh Lee upon his mettle: he very strongly suspected that there was more in this man's death than met the eye, and he insisted upon having the body medically examined, with the result that Rius was found to have been killed by a blow on the back of the head; while, scratched by a nail on the back of a chair in his cell, was found a statement to the effect that he was certain the prison authorities were fully determined to murder him. These ugly facts the United States Consul promptly reported to Washington, with the result that the American President immediately ordered him to demand a full investigation of all the circumstances, promising to back him up in his demand with all necessary support. As a result of this, the Spanish authorities, after interposing every possible obstacle in the way, appointed a commission of enquiry; but, as no clear proof was adduced that Rius had actually been deliberately murdered, the incident was permitted to close. There is little doubt, however, that this was the last drop in the cup, and that from that moment the United States practically determined to intervene upon the first legitimate opportunity, unless, indeed, Spain could be persuaded to grant to Cuba something in the nature of a very liberal measure of self-government. To secure this the United States Government approached Madrid with certain proposals; and this action, combined with a change in the Spanish Ministry, resulted in the recall of General Weyler, and the appointment of General Blanco as Capitan-General in his stead. General Blanco arrived in Cuba in the month of November, 1897, charged with the task of pacifying the Cubans by a policy of conciliation, instead of the policy of coercion so vigorously and mercilessly pursued by his predecessor. But conciliation as a policy was adopted by Spain altogether too late to save Cuba to her. Had it been tried two years earlier, and pursued in good faith, it is more than likely that the Cubans, as a whole, would have gladly welcomed it, and that the revolution would have subsided and died out for want of support and encouragement: but now the island bore everywhere the marks of Weyler's destroying hand; its once flourishing industries were gone; its inhabitants were ruined, and those of them who had been concentrated in the fortified towns were dying by thousands, perishing of starvation as the result of gross, culpable mismanagement, if not callous indifference; and the Cubans were firmly resolved never again to submit to a Government capable of such shocking abuses. Their experience of the last two years had convinced them that they had now but to persevere and they could compel Spain to evacuate the island in the course of another year at the utmost; while now, so incensed was the United States with Spain that its intervention might come at any moment. They therefore received General Blanco's conciliatory advances coldly, and, so far from surrendering or laying down their arms, pursued their operations with even intensified energy. Meanwhile, on January 1, 1898, the new Constitution, which was one of Spain's conciliatory measures, was proclaimed as in force, and a Colonial Government was appointed, with Senor Galvin as its nominal leader; but it possessed very little power, since so long as Spain persisted in retaining its hold on Cuba, and the revolution continued, the question of governing the island was necessarily a military one. Then, to add still further to the difficulties of Spain, and to bring the tension between her and the United States to practically breaking-point, came the "Dupuy de Lome" and the "Lee" incidents. The first of these arose out of a letter written by Senor Dupuy de Lome, the Spanish Minister at Washington, to his friend Senor Canalejas, who was then in Cuba on a visit. In this letter Senor Dupuy de Lome was imprudent enough to express, in very emphatic language, his doubts as to the good faith of the United States in the attitude which it had taken up on the Cuban question; and, not satisfied with this signal act of imprudence, the writer must needs indulge in certain very insulting remarks respecting President McKinley. This letter was stolen from Senor Canalejas in Havana, and sold to a New York newspaper, which promptly published it, with the natural result that de Lome was compelled to resign his post. The second, or "Lee", incident was a sequel to the first, and was doubtless prompted by a desire for revenge. It was nothing less than a request by Spain that General Lee should be recalled from his position as Consul-General for the United States at Havana, upon the ground that he was a _persona non grata_ to the Spanish authorities there. Needless to say, the request was not complied with. And then, finally, came the _Maine_ incident. This last had its origin in certain serious military riots which occurred in Havana on the 12th and 13th of January, 1898, due to the opposition of the Spaniards, military and civil, to General Blanco in his character as pacificator; the pacification of the island otherwise than by military operations being very unpopular with the resident Spaniards, and especially with the army. In consequence of these riots, and in view of the danger to American citizens arising out of the disorderly state generally of the city, the battleship _Maine_ was sent to Havana by the United States Government. She arrived in Havana harbour at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of January 25, 1898, and was duly saluted by the forts and the Spanish ships of war, whose salutes she as duly returned; after which, under the direction of the port authorities, she was moored in the man-o'-war anchorage. Nothing that could, even by the most hypersensitive, be construed into an act of discourteous behaviour was shown to either the officers or men of the ship; on the contrary, the Spaniards, no doubt shrewdly suspecting that the eye of the United States, quickened by recent events to a state of preternaturally acute perception, was suspiciously watching their every action, were at the greatest pains to exhibit the utmost courtesy, not only official but also non-official, to their visitors, to whom the officials and residents alike extended the most generous hospitality, in return for which several receptions were held on board the ship by Captain Sigsbee and his officers. Now it happened that on February 15th--which fell on a Tuesday--Don Hermoso Montijo, his son Carlos, and Jack Singleton, completely worn out by many months of campaigning among the mountains, and several sharp attacks of fever, having amalgamated their considerably augmented band with that of another insurgent leader, and turned the command over to him, succeeded in entering the city of Havana unrecognised, and made their way on board the _Thetis_--which had then been for some time lying idle in the harbour--with the intention of recruiting their health by running across the Atlantic for the purpose of procuring a further supply of arms and ammunition, which the continual accessions to the revolutionary ranks caused to be most urgently needed. They were most enthusiastically welcomed by Milsom, who, having heard nothing from any of them for more than three months, was beginning very seriously to fear that, like many others of the revolutionaries, they had been "wiped out" in one or another of the countless skirmishes that were constantly occurring with the Spanish troops. He was delighted to learn that they were all to make a run across the Atlantic and back together; and within an hour of their arrival on board set to work upon the necessary preparations for the trip, which, however, he explained, it would be scarcely possible to complete under a couple of days, in the then disordered state of the city, with its attendant disorganised business conditions. But, great as Milsom's pleasure at their appearance undoubtedly was, Singleton soon became aware of a certain subtle constraint and uneasiness in his friend's manner toward him; and as soon as he had satisfied himself that it really existed, and was not the result of his own imagination, he taxed his friend with it. "Look here, Phil," he said, "there is something wrong somewhere; I can see it by your manner. What is it? Out with it, man! You will have to tell us sooner or later, you know, so you may as well let us know what it is at once. Have you got into collision with the authorities, or roused their suspicions in any way, or what is it? We may as well know first as last, old man; so get it off your mind!" "So you have noticed it, have you?" responded Milsom, rather grimly. "Well, you have guessed rightly, Jack; there is something very seriously wrong, though not in the directions which you have suggested. Of course the authorities have their suspicions--and very strong ones, too, I don't doubt--about this vessel; they would be fools if they had not, seeing the length of time that she has been hanging about in these waters. But whatever their suspicions may be, they cannot possess an atom of proof, or they would have seized the craft before now, and clapped all hands of us into prison. No, it is not that, but--Jack--I don't know what you will say, or what you will think of me--I give you my word of honour that it was not through any carelessness on my part-- but--well, the fact of the matter is that--your submarine has been stolen!" "The submarine stolen!" echoed Jack. "Nonsense, man; you surely cannot mean it!" "By Jove, I do, then, and that is a fact!" answered Milsom. "Just exactly when she went, or how she went, I know no more than you do; but we missed her a fortnight ago. As you know, it has been our custom to keep about a foot of water in the boat which concealed the submarine, to keep her bottom tight; and, as you may also remember, that water was changed once a week--namely, every Saturday morning. Well, a fortnight ago last Saturday, when the canvas cover was taken off the boat in order to change the water in her, she was found to be empty; the submarine was gone! Who took her, or by what means it became possible to steal her without a single soul being a penny the wiser, I cannot tell you, and I do not believe we shall ever know; for, of course, when I came to question the crew, there was not a man who was not willing to swear that he had never closed his eyes for an instant while keeping an anchor watch, though, of course, something of the kind must have happened. I suspect the custom-house officers that the authorities have insisted on keeping aboard us all the time that we have been in harbour; but of course I have not said a word to them about it. I have, however, watched them continually, and by their smug looks of satisfaction I am inclined to believe that they know something about it. And ever since then I have been on the prowl everywhere to see if I could find any trace of the boat, but without success." "Well, old chap," said Jack, "I am exceedingly sorry to hear this; for in unscrupulous hands that submarine may work a terrific amount of mischief, and everything connected with the working of her is so simple that any ordinarily skilful mechanician could easily puzzle it all out with a little study. Moreover, if she has fallen into the hands of the Spaniards--as I suppose she has--they will have no difficulty in accounting for the mysterious disablement of their ships here on the occasion of the _James B. Potter_ incident, and it will make them so watchful that henceforth we shall be able to do absolutely nothing. But I do not blame you, Phil: you could not be expected to know that these fellows had somehow discovered the existence of the boat; nor could you be expected to watch her night and day. Her loss is a very serious misfortune, of course, but I am convinced that it is not through any carelessness of yours that it happened." "Thanks, Jack, for saying that!" answered Milsom; "I did not quite think you would blame me for it: but I cannot help blaming myself to a certain extent; I ought to have been more watchful. Yet how was one to know that the existence of the boat had been discovered? She was guarded night and day, in an unobtrusive way, it is true, and in such a fashion that I believed it quite impossible for anyone to become aware of her existence. Well, she is gone, and we must manage henceforth as best we can without her--unless we can discover her whereabouts and recover possession of her. And now, to change the subject, what do you propose to do with yourselves this afternoon? The Americans are holding a reception aboard the _Maine_. I suppose you wouldn't care to go?" "I think not," said Jack; "it would be rather too risky. I have come face to face with many Spanish officers during the time that I have been out with the revolutionaries; and if I were perchance to run up against one of them on board that ship it might be awkward. No; I think that the safest plan for Don Hermoso, Carlos, and myself will be to remain quietly aboard here now, and not attempt to leave the yacht again so long as she remains in Cuban waters." And upon this opinion the trio acted, remaining below all the afternoon, and not venturing on deck at all until after darkness had fallen. Dinner was over on board the _Thetis_, and the three occupants of the saloon, with Milsom, had adjourned to the top of the deck-house to smoke their post-prandial cigars and enjoy the welcome coolness of the night air. The former were entertaining Milsom by relating to him a few of their recent adventures while operating against the Spanish troops when, just as three bells (half-past nine o'clock) was chiming out from the ships in the harbour, a violent concussion was felt by everybody on board the yacht, and simultaneously their ears were deafened by the sound of a terrific explosion. For a space of perhaps two or three seconds following this a dead silence prevailed, and then from the ships afloat and the streets and quays ashore there arose a low murmur, instantly changing to a confused clamour of hurrying feet and shouting voices, expressive of the utmost panic and dismay, which became a perfect uproar when, as everybody involuntarily turned toward the spot from which the explosion had seemed to proceed, it was seen that the American warship _Maine_ was sinking rapidly by the head, while the after part of her was enveloped in flames. And as everybody stared in paralysed horror at the terrible sight, other explosions, though of a much less violent character, were heard on board her! For a second or two astonishment and dismay seemed to have robbed everybody of all power of coherent thought or action; then Milsom started to his feet and shouted in a voice that rang from end to end of the ship: "Out boats! Each boat her own crew, and no more; you will want every inch of room you can spare for those poor fellows who are struggling for their lives yonder. Hurry, lads, lively now; every second is worth a man's life, remember, for the harbour swarms with sharks! Ah, here you are, Macintyre--come along with me! Is there steam enough in the steamboat's boiler to move her? Good! Then we will try her. I want two more hands. Will you come, Jack, and Carlos?" Of course they would; and in little more than a minute from the first explosion the boats of the _Thetis_ were tearing up the waters of the harbour in a mad race for the honour of being first in the noble work of rescue! And as they went they were joined by boats from the other ships in the harbour, among which were those of the Spanish cruiser _Alphonso the Twelfth_; as well as a large number which put off from the shore. As the boats went hither and thither, seeking for survivors--and finding remarkably few, considering that the complement of the _Maine_ amounted to three hundred and forty-seven--an officer in one of the Spanish boats came dashing up, and, with a great show of authority, announced that Admiral Manterolas' orders were that the rescued Americans were to be put aboard the _Alphonso the Twelfth_, where the injured would receive every attention: accordingly, as soon as the boats of the _Thetis_ had picked up all they could find, they pulled alongside the Spanish warship, and delivered over their living, and in some cases terribly mutilated, freight to her officers and crew. Eighty-six men were rescued, sixty of them being wounded; and of this number the _Thetis's_ boats were responsible for no less than twenty-nine, of whom seventeen were wounded. When at length, having pulled about for nearly an hour without finding any more people to pick up, Milsom reluctantly gave the word for the boats to return to the ship. The wreck, or rather that portion of her which yet remained above water, was still burning. It was perhaps rather a peculiar circumstance that, upon the return of the boats from their mission of rescue, the saloon party aboard the _Thetis_ should almost immediately separate and retire to their respective cabins, with nothing more in the way of conversation than a few curt questions and answers. The fact is that they were powerfully impressed with the conviction that they had that night witnessed, and been in an indirect way assisting at, an occurrence that was destined to exercise an important influence upon the history of two great nations. It is true that, at the moment, the occurrence presented all the appearance of a lamentable accident: but everybody was by this time fully aware of the fact that the trend of events had, for some time past, been of such a character as to cause America and Spain to regard each other with the utmost distrust, to which, on the part of Spain, was added a feeling of aversion not very far removed from hatred at what she regarded as the high-handed action of the United States in reference to certain points of dispute between the two countries; and there was probably not one intelligent person in Havana that night who did not feel convinced that unless the lamentable occurrence which had just happened should prove capable of an absolutely satisfactory explanation, there would certainly be very serious trouble in the immediate future. As for Jack and Milsom, they were both thinking hard, and it was well on toward daybreak ere either of them slept. The result of Milsom's meditations became apparent when, as was the custom, he joined the saloon party at breakfast next morning. After exchanging with them the usual salutations he said, as he drew his chair up to the table: "Well, Don Hermoso, after last night's happening I suppose you will be disposed to defer your departure until it can be seen what is to come of it, will you not?" "Upon my word, Captain, I don't know," answered the Don. "In what way do you think it likely to exercise an influence upon our projected errand?" "Through American intervention--to put the whole thing in a nutshell," answered Milsom. "Of course it is altogether too early yet to express an opinion in public upon the occurrence; but, strictly between ourselves, and in the privacy of this saloon, I don't mind saying that I believe the _Maine_ was deliberately destroyed, and that the submarine which was stolen from this ship was the instrument by which that was done!" "That is also my idea, Skipper," answered Jack. "And," he continued, "if our suspicion as to the guilt of the Spaniards should prove correct, there will be war between America and Spain; America will without doubt be the conqueror, and Spain will be forced to relinquish her hold on Cuba, without the need for further effort on the part of the revolutionaries. So far, therefore, as the purchase of additional munitions of war is concerned, I believe, Don Hermoso, that you may save your money." "Indeed!" said Don Hermoso. "Then in that case, gentlemen, we may as well defer our departure until we see what is about to happen." And they did. The rest of the story is a matter of well-known history. A few days later a court of enquiry into the _Maine_ disaster was opened on board the U.S. steamer _Mangrove_, then lying in Havana harbour, and sat continuously until March 21st; while the wreck of the warship was most carefully examined by divers, who laid the result of their observations before the court. The finding of the court was: "That the loss of the _Maine_ was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on the part of any of the officers, or members of her crew; that the ship was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of two or more of her forward magazines; and that no evidence has been obtainable fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the _Maine_ upon any person or persons." But, the last clause of the finding notwithstanding, there was probably not one United States citizen per hundred who did not feel morally convinced that the Spaniards were the guilty parties; and, that being the case, war was from that moment inevitable. On April 8, 1898, General Lee, the United States Consul-General, received orders to leave Cuba and hand over the charge of the United States interests to the British Consul; and on the following day he, with such American citizens as still remained in Havana, left for Florida in a gunboat. On April 18th a conference between the Committees of the two American Houses resulted in the adoption of a certain resolution, which was signed by President McKinley on the 20th of the same month: a copy was served upon Senor Polo y Bernabe, the Spanish Minister at Washington, who immediately asked for his passports, and left that city. On April 21st the President of the United States proclaimed the blockade of the Cuban coast from Cienfuegos westward to Cape San Antonio, and thence north and east past Havana to Cardenas; and as the bulk of the American fleet had been quietly concentrating at Key West from the date of the destruction of the _Maine_, the blockade was put into effect within eight hours of its declaration. On April 24th the Spanish Government formally recognised the existence of war between itself and the United States; and on the following day the United States Congress passed the following Bill without a division:-- "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in congress assembled:-- "_First_: That war be, and the same is hereby declared to exist, and that war has existed since the 21st day of April, a.d. 1898, including the said day, between the United States of America and the kingdom of Spain. "_Second_: That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry this Act into effect." This is not a story of the Spanish-American war. Let it suffice, therefore, to say that, after the landing of the Fifth Army Corps on the island of Cuba on June 24th, and the destruction of the Spanish squadron under Admiral Cervera on July 3rd, a protocol was signed on August 12th, and all hostilities were suspended; and finally, on January 1, 1899, the relinquishment of Spanish sovereignty over Cuba was formally accomplished, the Spanish flag being lowered and the Stars and Stripes temporarily hoisted in its place on the various forts and other Government buildings throughout the island. A singularly pathetic feature of the Spanish evacuation of Cuba was the solemn removal of the alleged remains of Christopher Columbus from their resting-place in Havana Cathedral, and their conveyance to Spain. The state of the island by the time that the war was ended was of course dreadful beyond description: the inhabitants were, with a few exceptions, reduced to a state of absolute destitution; agriculture had practically ceased; commerce and industry were dead; brigandage was rampant; and, to use the expressive language of the historian, human misery had apparently reached its maximum possibility. Under such circumstances it was not at all difficult for Jack to secure a very large estate adjoining that of Senor Montijo upon exceptionally favourable terms; and although, like that of his friend, the estate consisted but of the soil, now overrun with weeds and the riotous vegetation of the Tropics, labour was abundant, and Jack and his friend Don Hermoso, spending their money freely, soon had every trace of the late troublous times swept away and fresh crops planted. Don Hermoso did not long survive the triumph of the cause which he had so nobly espoused: with the coming of peace there came also time for memory and retrospection, and time for him to miss the dear ones torn from him during the struggle; and shortly after the completion of his great work of restoring his estate to its original prosperous and well-managed condition he passed quietly away--not as the result of any disease in particular, but apparently because now he no longer had anything to live for--and was laid to rest beside his wife. As for Jack, he felt that after what he had seen of, and done in, Cuba, it was simply impossible for him to turn his back upon the island; he therefore disposed of his interest in the firm of Singleton, Murdock and Company, and invested the proceeds in the further extension and development of his already large estate, and to-day he and Carlos Montijo are two of the most popular, respected, and prosperous tobacco planters in the island. The _Thetis_, still in existence, is now the joint property of Jack and Carlos, and in her one or the other, and often both of them together, make frequent trips to England and elsewhere for the purpose of personally conducting their more extensive business transactions. She is still commanded by ex-Lieutenant Milsom, R.N., who never tires of congratulating himself that at last he finds himself in possession of what has every appearance of being a permanently "soft job." 
30130	----	TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: 1) Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2) A few chapter sub-headings do not end with a period. For consistency, obvious errors have been corrected by ending these with a period. 3) A few obvious misprints where sentences did not end with a period have been corrected. 4) The words "manoeuvres" and "manoeuvre" use oe ligature in the original. 5) The following misprints have been corrected: "which we pet in our" corrected to "which we put in our" (page 243) "Britian" corrected to "Britain" (page 271) 6) Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation and ligature usage have been retained. DUE SOUTH OR CUBA PAST AND PRESENT BY MATURIN M. BALLOU AUTHOR OF "DUE WEST; OR ROUND THE WORLD IN TEN MONTHS" BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge Copyright, 1885, By MATURIN M. BALLOU. _All rights reserved._ ELEVENTH IMPRESSION _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. PREFACE. The public favor accorded to a late volume by the author of these pages, entitled "Due West; or Round the World in Ten Months," has suggested both the publication and the title of the volume in hand, which consists of notes of a voyage to the tropics, and a sojourn in Cuba during the last winter. The endeavor has been to present a comprehensive view of the island, past and present, and to depict the political and moral darkness which have so long enshrouded it. A view of its interesting inhabitants, with a glance at its beautiful flora and vegetation generally, has been a source of such hearty enjoyment to the author that he desires to share the pleasure with the appreciative reader. The great importance of the geographical position of the island, its present critical condition, and the proposed treaty of commerce with this country, together render it at present of unusual interest in the eyes of the world. If possible, Cuba is more Castilian than peninsular Spain, and both are so Moorish as to present a fascinating study of national characteristics. M. M. B. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Departure. -- On Board Ship. -- Arrival at Nassau. -- Capital of the Bahamas. -- Climate. -- Soil. -- Fruits and Flowers. -- Magic Fertility. -- Colored Population. -- The Blockade Runners. -- Population. -- Products. -- A Picturesque Local Scene. -- Superstition. -- Fish Story. -- The Silk-Cotton Tree. -- Remarkable Vegetation. -- The Sea Gardens. -- Marine Animal Life. -- The Bahama Banks. -- Burial at Sea. -- Venal Officials. -- Historical Characters. -- The Early Buccaneers. -- Diving for Drinking-Water. 1 CHAPTER II. Among the Islands. -- San Salvador. -- A Glimpse at the Stars. -- Hayti. -- The Gulf Stream. -- The Caribbean Sea. -- Latitude and Longitude. -- The Southern Coast of Cuba. -- A Famous Old Fortress. -- Fate of Political Prisoners. -- The Oldest City in Cuba. -- The Aborigines. -- Cuban Cathedrals. -- Drinking Saloons. -- Dogs, Horses, and Coolies. -- Scenes in Santiago de Cuba. -- Devoured by Sharks. -- Lying at Anchor. -- Wreck of a Historic Ship. -- Cuban Circulating Medium. -- Tropical Temperature. 24 CHAPTER III. Doubling Cape Cruz. -- Trinidad. -- Cienfuegos. -- The Plaza. -- Beggars. -- Visit to a Sugar Plantation. -- Something about Sugar. -- An Original Character. -- A Tropical Fruit Garden. -- Cuban Hospitality. -- The Banana. -- Lottery Tickets. -- Chinese Coolies. -- Blindness in Cuba. -- Birds and Poultry. -- The Cock-Pit. -- Negro Slavery, To-Day. -- Spanish Slaveholders. -- A Slave Mutiny. -- A Pleasant Journey across the Island. -- Pictures of the Interior. -- Scenery about Matanzas. -- The Tropics and the North contrasted. 46 CHAPTER IV. The Great Genoese Pilot. -- Discovery of Cuba. -- Its Various Names. -- Treatment of the Natives. -- Tobacco! -- Flora of the Island. -- Strange Idols. -- Antiquity. -- Habits of the Aborigines. -- Remarkable Speech of an Indian King. -- A Native Entertainment. -- Paying Tribute. -- Ancient Remains. -- Wrong Impression of Columbus. -- First Attempt at Colonization. -- Battle with the Indians. -- First Governor of Cuba. -- Founding Cities. -- Emigration from Spain. -- Conquest of Mexico. 70 CHAPTER V. Baracoa, the First Capital. -- West Indian Buccaneers. -- Military Despotism. -- A Perpetual State of Siege. -- A Patriotic Son of Cuba. -- Political Condition of the Island. -- Education of Cuban Youths. -- Attempts at Revolution. -- Fate of General Narciso Lopez. -- The Late Civil War and its Leader. -- Terrible Slaughter of Spanish Troops. -- Stronghold of the Insurgents. -- Guerrillas. -- Want of Self-Reliance. -- Spanish Art, Literature, and Conquest. -- What Spain was. -- What Spain is. -- Rise and Fall of an Empire. 88 CHAPTER VI. Geographical. -- A Remarkable Weed. -- Turtle-Hunting. -- Turtle-Steaks in Olden Times. -- The Gulf Stream. -- Deep-Sea Soundings. -- Mountain Range of Cuba. -- Curious Geological Facts. -- Subterranean Caverns. -- Wild Animals. -- The Rivers of the Island. -- Fine Harbors. -- Historic Memories of the Caribbean Sea. -- Sentinel of the Gulf. -- Importance of the Position. -- Climate. -- Hints for Invalids. -- Matanzas. -- Execution of a Patriot. -- Valley of Yumuri; Caves of Bellamar; Puerto Principe; Cardenas. 102 CHAPTER VII. City of Havana. -- First Impressions. -- The Harbor. -- Institutions. -- Lack of Educational Facilities. -- Cuban Women. -- Street Etiquette. -- Architecture. -- Domestic Arrangements. -- Barred Windows and Bullet-Proof Doors. -- Public Vehicles. -- Uncleanliness of the Streets. -- Spanish or African! -- The Church Bells. -- Home-Keeping Habits of Ladies. -- Their Patriotism. -- Personal Characteristics. -- Low Ebb of Social Life. -- Priestcraft. -- Female Virtue. -- Domestic Ties. -- A Festive Population. -- Cosmetics. -- Sea-Bathing. 125 CHAPTER VIII. Sabbath Scenes in Havana. -- Thimble-Riggers and Mountebanks. -- City Squares and their Ornamentation. -- The Cathedral. -- Tomb of Columbus. -- Plaza de Armas. -- Out-Door Concerts. -- Habitués of Paseo de Isabella. -- Superbly Appointed Cafés. -- Gambling. -- Lottery Tickets. -- Fast Life. -- Masquerade Balls. -- Carnival Days. -- The Famous Tacon Theatre. -- The Havana Casino. -- Public Statues. -- Beauties of the Governor's Garden. -- The Alameda. -- The Old Bell-Ringer. -- Military Mass. 144 CHAPTER IX. Political Inquisition. -- Fashionable Streets of the City. -- Tradesmen's Signs. -- Bankrupt Condition of Traders. -- The Spanish Army. -- Exiled Patriots. -- Arrival of Recruits. -- The Garrote. -- A Military Execution. -- Cuban Milk Dealers. -- Exposure of Domestic Life. -- Living in the Open Air. -- The Campo Santo of Havana. -- A Funeral Cortége. -- Punishing Slaves. -- Campo de Marte. -- Hotel Telegrafo. -- Environs of the City. -- Bishop's Garden. -- Consul-General Williams. -- Mineral Springs. 166 CHAPTER X. The Fish-Market of Havana. -- The Dying Dolphin. -- Tax upon the Trade. -- Extraordinary Monopoly. -- Harbor Boats. -- A Story about Marti, the Ex-Smuggler. -- King of the Isle of Pines. -- The Offered Reward. -- Sentinels in the Plaza de Armas. -- The Governor-General and the Intruder. -- "I am Captain Marti!" -- The Betrayal. -- The Ex-Smuggler as Pilot. -- The Pardon and the Reward. -- Tacon's Stewardship and Official Career. -- Monopoly of Theatricals. -- A Negro Festival. 184 CHAPTER XI. The Havana Lottery. -- Its Influence. -- Hospitality of the Cubans. -- About Bonnets. -- The Creole Lady's Face. -- Love of Flowers. -- An Atmospheric Narcotic. -- The Treacherous Indian Fig. -- How the Cocoanut is propagated. -- Cost of Living in Cuba. -- Spurious Liquors. -- A Pleasant Health Resort. -- The Cock-Pit. -- Game-Birds. -- Their Management. -- A Cuban Cock-Fight. -- Garden of the World. -- About Birds. -- Stewed Owl! -- Slaughter of the Innocents. -- The Various Fruits. 200 CHAPTER XII. Traveling by Volante. -- Want of Inland Communication. -- Americans Profitable Customers. -- The Cruel National Game. -- The Plaza de Toros. -- Description of a Bull-Fight. -- The Infection of Cruelty. -- The Romans and Spaniards compared. -- Cry of the Spanish Mob: "Bread and Bulls!" -- Women at the Fight. -- The Nobility of the Island. -- The Monteros. -- Ignorance of the Common People. -- Scenes in the Central Market, Havana. -- Odd Ideas of Cuban Beggars. -- An Original Style of Dude. -- A Mendicant Prince. 219 CHAPTER XIII. Introduction of Sugar-Cane. -- Sugar Plantations. -- Mode of Manufacture. -- Slaves on the Plantations. -- African Amusements. -- The Grinding Season. -- The Coffee Plantations. -- A Floral Paradise. -- Refugees from San Domingo. -- Interesting Experiments with a Mimosa. -- Three Staple Productions of Cuba. -- Raising Coffee and Tobacco. -- Best Soils for the Tobacco. -- Agricultural Possibilities. -- The Cuban Fire-Fly. -- A Much-Dreaded Insect. -- The Ceiba Tree. -- About Horses and Oxen. 236 CHAPTER XIV. Consumption of Tobacco. -- The Delicious Fruits of the Tropics. -- Individual Characteristics of Cuban Fruits. -- The Royal Palm. -- The Mulberry Tree. -- Silk Culture. -- The Island once covered by Forests. -- No Poisonous Reptiles. -- The Cuban Bloodhound. -- Hotbed of African Slavery. -- Spain's Disregard of Solemn Treaties. -- The Coolie System of Slavery. -- Ah-Lee draws a Prize. -- Native African Races. -- Negroes buying their Freedom. -- Laws favoring the Slaves. -- Example of San Domingo. -- General Emancipation. 260 CHAPTER XV. Slave Trade with Africa. -- Where the Slavers made their Landing. -- An Early Morning Ride. -- Slaves marching to Daily Labor. -- Fragrance of the Early Day. -- Mist upon the Waters. -- A Slave Ship. -- A Beautiful but Guilty Brigantine. -- A French Cruiser. -- Cunning Seamanship. -- A Wild Goose Chase. -- A Cuban Posada. -- Visit to a Coffee Estate. -- Landing a Slave Cargo. -- A Sight to challenge Sympathy and Indignation. -- Half-Starved Victims. -- Destruction of the Slave Ship. 282 CHAPTER XVI. Antique Appearance of Everything. -- The Yeomen of Cuba. -- A Montero's Home. -- Personal Experience. -- The Soil of the Island. -- Oppression by the Government. -- Spanish Justice in Havana. -- Tax upon the Necessities of Life. -- The Proposed Treaty with Spain. -- A One-Sided Proposition. -- A Much Taxed People. -- Some of the Items of Taxation. -- Fraud and Bankruptcy. -- The Boasted Strength of Moro Castle. -- Destiny of Cuba. -- A Heavy Annual Cost to Spain. -- Political Condition. -- Pictures of Memory. 300 DUE SOUTH. CHAPTER I. Departure. -- On Board Ship. -- Arrival at Nassau. -- Capital of the Bahamas. -- Climate. -- Soil. -- Fruits and Flowers. -- Magic Fertility. -- Colored Population. -- The Blockade Runners. -- Population. -- Products. -- A Picturesque Local Scene. -- Superstition. -- Fish Story. -- The Silk-Cotton Tree. -- Remarkable Vegetation. -- The Sea Gardens. -- Marine Animal Life. -- The Bahama Banks. -- Burial at Sea. -- Venal Officials. -- Historical Characters. -- The Early Buccaneers. -- Diving for Drinking-Water. We left Boston in a blustering snow-storm on the morning of February 25th, and reached New York city to find it also clothed in a wintry garb, Broadway being lined on either side of its entire length with tall piles of snow, like haycocks, prepared for carting away during the coming night. Next morning, when we drove to the dock to take passage on board the steamship Cienfuegos, the snow-mounds had all been removed. The mail steamer sailed promptly at the hour assigned, hauled out into the stream by a couple of noisy little tugs, with two-inch hawsers made fast to stem and stern. Before sunset the pilot left the ship, which was then headed due south for Nassau, N. P., escorted by large fields of floating ice, here and there decked with lazy snow-white sea-gulls. The sharp northwest wind, though blustering and aggressive, was in our favor, and the ship spread all her artificial wings as auxiliary to her natural motor. We doubled Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout well in towards the shore, sighting on the afternoon of the fourth day the Island of Abaco, largest of the Bahama Isles, with its famous "Hole in the Wall" and sponge-lined shore. The woolen clothing worn when we came on board ship had already become oppressive, the cabin thermometer indicating 72° Fahrenheit. With nothing to engage the eye save the blue sky and the bluer water, the most is made of every circumstance at sea, and even trivial occurrences become notable. The playful dolphins went through their aquatic pantomime for our amusement. Half a dozen of them started off just ahead of the cutwater, and raced the ship for two hours, keeping exactly the same relative distance ahead without any apparent effort. Scores of others leaped out of the water and plunged in again in graceful curves, as though they enjoyed the sport. A tiny land bird flew on board, and was chased all over the ship by one or two juveniles until caught, panting and trembling with the unwonted exertion. Presently it was given its liberty, partook freely of bread crumbs and drank of fresh water, then assumed a perch aloft, where it carefully dressed its feathers, and after thanking its entertainers with a few cheerful notes it extended its wings and launched out into space, no land being in sight. The broken mainmast of a ship, floating, with considerable top hamper attached, was passed within a cable's length, suggestive of a recent wreck, and inducing a thousand dreary surmises. At first it was announced as the sea serpent, but its true nature was soon obvious. At midnight, March 1st, Nassau light hove in sight, dimmed by a thin, soft haze, which hung over the water, and through which the light, by some law of refraction, seemed to be coming out to meet the ship. Overhead all was bright,--almost dazzling with unnumbered stars and familiar constellations, like silver spangles on a background of blue velvet. We anchored off the island an hour before daylight, the harbor being too shallow to admit the ship. A forbidding sand bar blocks the entrance, inside of which the water is but fifteen feet deep. Indeed, Nassau would have no harbor at all were it not that nature has kindly placed Hog Island in the form of a break-water, just off the town. The vibrating hull of the Cienfuegos was once more at rest; the stout heart-throbs, the panting and trembling, of the great engine had ceased; the wheelhouse and decks were deserted, and one was fain to turn in below for a brief nap before landing on this the most populous of the Bahamas. The island, which was settled by Europeans as early as 1629, embraces nearly a hundred square miles, forming an oasis in the desert of waters. It is sixteen miles long and about one half as wide, containing fourteen thousand inhabitants, more or less, who can hardly be designated as an enterprising community. On first landing, everything strikes the visitor as being peculiarly foreign,--almost unique. The town is situated on the northerly front of the island, extending along the shore for a couple of miles, and back to a crest of land which rises to nearly the height of a hundred feet. This elevation is crowned by the residence of the English Governor-General, in front of which may be seen a colossal but not admirable statue of Columbus. The town boasts a small public library, a museum, theatre, several small churches, a prison, a hospital, and a bank. The government maintains one company of infantry, composed of black men, officered by whites. It must be admitted that they present a fine military appearance when on parade. Nassau has long been a popular resort for invalids who seek a soft, equable climate, and as it lies between the warm South Atlantic and the Gulf Stream it is characterized by the usual temperature of the tropics. There seemed to be a certain enervating influence in the atmosphere, under the effects of which the habitués of the place were plainly struck with a spirit of indolence. The difference between those just arrived and the regular guests of the Victoria Hotel, in this respect, could not fail to be observed. The languidly oppressive warmth imparts a certain softness to manners, a voluptuous love of idleness, and a glow to the affections which are experienced with less force at the North. Neither snow nor frost is ever encountered here, and yet it is as near to Boston or New York as is the city of Chicago. The temperature, we are told, never falls below 64° Fahrenheit, nor rises above 82°, the variations rarely exceeding five degrees in twenty-four hours. In Florida a change of twenty degrees is not unusual within the period of a single day. The thermometer stood at 73° on the first day of March, and everything was bathed in soft sunlight. It is somewhat singular that an island like New Providence, which is practically without soil, should be so remarkably productive in its vegetation. It is surrounded by low-lying coral reefs, and is itself composed of coral and limestone. These, pulverized, actually form the earth out of which spring noble palm, banana, ceiba, orange, lemon, tamarind, almond, mahogany, and cocoanut trees, with a hundred and one other varieties of fruits, flowers, and woods, including the bread-fruit tree, that natural food for indolent natives of equatorial regions. Of course in such a soil the plough is unknown, its substitutes being the pickaxe and crowbar. However, science teaches us that all soils are but broken and decomposed rock, pulverized by various agencies acting through long periods of time. So the molten lava which once poured from the fiery mouth of Vesuvius has become the soil of thriving vineyards, which produce the priceless Lachryma Christi wine. This transformation is not accomplished in a lifetime, but is the result of ages of slow disintegration. Among other flowering trees, some strikingly beautiful specimens of the alligator-pear in full bloom were observed, the blossom suggesting the passion-flower. While our favorite garden plants at the North are satisfied to bloom upon lowly bushes, at the South they are far more ambitious, and develop into tall trees, though sometimes at the partial expense of their fragrance. The air was full of sweet perfume from the white blossoms of the shaddock, contrasting with the deep glossy green of its thick-set leaves, the spicy pimento and cinnamon trees being also noticeable. With all this charming floral effect the bird melody which greets the ear in Florida was wanting, though it would seem to be so natural an adjunct to the surroundings. Nature's never-failing rule of compensation is manifested here: all the attractions are not bestowed upon any one class; brilliancy of feathers and sweetness of song do not go together. The torrid zone endows the native birds with brilliant plumage, while the colder North gives its feathered tribes the winning charm of melody. The soil of these Bahama Islands, composed of such unpromising ingredients, shows in its prolific yield how much vegetation depends for its sustenance upon atmospheric air, especially in tropical climes. The landlord of the Victoria Hotel told us, as an evidence of the fertility of the soil, that radish seeds which were planted on the first day of the month would sufficiently mature and ripen by the twenty-first--that is in three weeks--for use upon the table; and also that potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons were relatively expeditious in ripening here after planting. Our mind reverted to the jugglers of Madras and Bombay, who made an orange-tree grow from the seed, and bear fruit before our very eyes, at a single sitting. The luscious pineapple, zapota, mango, pomegranate, guava, star-apple, citron, custard-apple, mammee, and other fruits abound. The profuseness and variety of beautiful ferns and orchidaceous plants will also be sure to attract the attention of the Northern visitor. The rocky formation of the soil produces good natural roads, so that a long drive in the environs of Nassau is like a pleasure excursion over a well-macadamized thoroughfare. We were told of a delightful drive of fifteen miles in length which follows the sea beach the whole distance, but did not find time to test its attractions, though strongly tempted by the excellence of the roads. Here, as in other tropical regions, each month has its special floral display, although there are many, and indeed a majority, of the plants which continue to flower all the year round. We observed that the stone walls and hedges were now and again covered for short spaces with the coral-vine, whose red blossoms, so pleasing to the eye, emit no odor. The yellow jasmine was dazzlingly conspicuous everywhere, and very fragrant. Red and white roses, various species of cacti, and tube-roses bloomed before the rude thatched cabins of the negroes in the environs, as well as in the tiny front gardens of the whites in the streets of the town; while red, white, and pink oleanders grew as tall as trees, and flower here every month in the year. The night-blooming cereus abounds, opening just at sunset, and closing again at break of day. The outside leaves of this poetical flower are of a pale green, the inner ones of a pure wax-like white, and the petals light yellow. Complete, it is about eight inches long, and from twelve to fifteen in circumference. While we drove through the suburbs, slatternly, half-clothed family groups of negroes watched us with curious eyes, and on the road aged colored men and women were occasionally met, who saluted us with grave dignity. No one seemed to be at work; sunshine was the only perceptible thing going on, ripening the fruits and vegetables by its genial rays, while the negroes waited for the harvest. Like the birds, they had no occasion to sow, but only to pluck and to eat. There was, both in and out of the town, a tumble-down, mouldy aspect to the dwellings, which seemed to be singularly neglected and permitted to lapse into decay. With the exception of the town of Nassau, and its immediate environs, New Providence is nearly all water and wilderness; it has some circumscribed lakes, but no mountains, rivers, or rivulets. The island is justly famous for the beauty and variety of its lovely flowers. It is true that the rose is not quite equal in color, development, and fragrance to ours of the North; Nature has so many indigenous flowers on which to expend her liberality that she bestows less attention upon this, the loveliest of them all. The Cherokee rose, single-leafed, now so rare with us, seems here to have found a congenial foreign home. In the suburbs of Nassau are many attractive flowers, fostered only by the hand of Nature. Among them was the triangular cactus, with its beautiful yellow blossom, like a small sunflower, supported by a deep green triangular stem. The pendulous cactus was also hanging here and there on walls and tree trunks, in queer little jointed, pipe-stem branches. The royal palm, that king of tropical vegetation, is not very abundant here, but yet sufficiently so to characterize the place. Its roots resemble those of asparagus, and are innumerable. Another peculiarity of the palm is that it starts a full-sized trunk; therefore, not the diameter, but the height, determines its age, which is recorded by annual concentric rings clearly defined upon its tall, straight stem. During the late civil war in the United States, when blockade runners made this place a port of call and a harbor for refitting, it was by English connivance practically a Confederate port. The officers and sailors expended their ill-gotten wealth with the usual lavishness of the irresponsible, the people of Nassau reaping thereby a fabulous harvest in cash. This was quite demoralizing to honest industry, and, as might be expected, a serious reaction has followed. Legitimate trade and industry will require years before they can reassert themselves. Sudden and seeming prosperity is almost sure to be equally transitory. We were told that, during the entire period in which the Confederates resorted here under the open encouragement and protection of England, the town was the scene of the most shameful drunken orgies from morning until night. Lewdness and crime were rampant. Officers played pitch-penny on the veranda of the Victoria Hotel with gold eagles, and affiliated openly with negresses. The evil influence upon all concerned was inevitable, and its poisonous effect is not yet obliterated. Three quarters of the present population are negroes, but of course all trace of the aborigines has disappeared. It is curious and interesting to know what Columbus thought of them. He wrote to his royal mistress, after having explored these Bahamas, as follows: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as themselves: their conversation is the sweetest imaginable, and their faces are always smiling. So gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your highness there is no better people in the world." The negroes are mostly engaged in cultivating patches of pineapples, and yams, sweet potatoes, and other vegetables; a large number of the males employ themselves also in fishing and gathering sponges. It will be remembered that from this locality comes the principal supply of coarse sponge for Europe and America. There is also a considerable trade, carried on in a small way, in fine turtle-shell, which is polished in an exquisite manner, and manufactured by the natives into ornaments. Though the Bahama sponges are not equal to those obtained in the Mediterranean, still they are marketable, and Nassau exports half a million dollars' worth annually. It is a curious fact that sponges can be propagated by cuttings taken from living specimens, which, when attached to a piece of board and sunk in the sea, will increase and multiply. Thus the finest Mediterranean specimens may be successfully transplanted to the coral reefs of these islands, the only requisite to their sustenance seeming to be a coralline shore and limestone surroundings. Another important industry which gives employment to a considerable number of the inhabitants is the canning of pineapples, a process which is equivalent to preserving them for any length of time. One firm on Bay Street, as we were informed, canned and exported nearly a million of pines in one season, lately; and another, engaged in the fresh-fruit trade, shipped to the States fifteen cargoes of pines in one year, besides many thousands of cocoanuts. These are not all raised in Nassau, but this port is made the headquarters for collecting and disposing of the fruit grown upon what are termed the out-islands, as well as marketing the large product of its own soil. It is but a short drive inland to the extensive pineapple fields, where the handsome fruit may be seen in the several stages of growth, varying according to the season of the year. If intended for exportation, the fruit is gathered green; if for canning purposes, the riper it is the better. The visitor will also be impressed by the beauty and grace of the cocoanut trees, their pinnate leaves often a hundred feet from the ground, notwithstanding the bare cylindrical stem attains a thickness of only two feet. The Royal Victoria Hotel, though bearing a loyal name, is kept by an American, and is a very substantial, capacious building, composed of native limestone, four stories high, three of which are surrounded by wide piazzas, which afford the shade so necessary in a land of perpetual summer. The native stone of which the island is composed is so soft when first quarried that it can easily be cut or sawed into any shape desired, but it hardens very rapidly after exposure to the atmosphere. The hotel will accommodate three hundred guests, and is a positive necessity for the comfort and prosperity of the place. It was built and is owned by the British government, who erected it some twenty-five years since. At the time of our arrival there was gathered under the lofty Moorish portico of the hotel a most picturesque group of negroes, of both sexes and of all ages, their ebony faces forming a strong contrast to the background of well-whitewashed walls. Some of the women were dressed in neat calico gowns, and wore broad-brimmed straw hats; some were in rags, hatless, shoeless, and barelegged; some had high-colored kerchiefs wound turban-like about their woolly heads; and some wore scarlet shawls, the sight of which would have driven a Spanish bull raving mad. There were coquettish mulatto girls with bouquets for sale, and fancy flowers wrought of shells; these last of most exquisite workmanship. Specimens of this native shell-work were sent to the Vienna Exposition, where they received honorable mention, and were afterwards purchased and presented to the Prince of Wales. Old gray-haired negroes, with snow-white beards on a black ground, offered fruits in great variety,--zapotas, mangoes, pineapples, and grape-fruit. Others had long strings of sponges for sale, wound round their shoulders like huge snakes; some of these were good, but many were utterly useless. No one knows this better than the cunning negroes themselves, but strangers, only touching at Nassau, they do not expect to see again, and there is proverbially cheating in all trades but ours. A bright, thrifty-looking colored woman had spread out her striped shawl upon the ground, and on this arrayed a really fine collection of conch-shells for sale, delicately polished, and of choice shapes. When first brought to the surface by the divers they are not infrequently found to contain pearls imbedded in the palatable and nutritious meat. These pearls are generally of a pinkish hue, and greatly prized by the jewelers. Now and then a diver will realize a hundred dollars for one of them. From the conch-shell also come the best shell cameos. A smart half-breed offered canes of ebony, lignum vitæ, lance, and orange wood, all of native growth. He was dressed in a white linen jacket, pantaloons to match, with a semi-military cap, cocked on one side of his head,--quite a colored dude. The women who sell native-made baskets are most persistent, but if you purchase of them make your own change, for they are apt to take money away for this purpose and to forget to return. Negro nature is frail, characterized at Nassau by theft and licentiousness, but great crimes are rare. If you have occasion to hire a boat for a sail in the harbor, be sure to find and employ "Bushy," a tall, intelligent darkey, the best boatman and stroke-oar in Nassau. Bushy showed us what he called a fish-whip, made from the whipray, a fish quite new to us, but indigenous to these waters. With a body shaped like a flounder, it has a tail often ten feet long, tapering from about one inch in thickness at the butt to an eighth of an inch at the small end. When dried this resembles whalebone, and makes a good coach-whip. There is a great variety of fish in and about the Bahamas. We saw, just landed at Nassau, a jew-fish, which takes the same place here that the halibut fills at the North, being cut into steaks and fried in a similar manner. They are among the largest of edible fish, and this specimen weighed about four hundred pounds. According to Bushy, at certain seasons of the year the jew-fish lies dormant upon the sandy bottom, and refuses to take the bait. In these transparent waters he is easily seen when in this condition, and the native fishermen then dive down and place a stout hook in his mouth! Though this may sound like a "fish story," we were assured by others of its truth. Bushy undertook to give us the names of the various fishes which abound here, but the long list of them and his peculiar pronunciation drove us nearly wild. Still a few are remembered; such as the yellow-tailed snapper, striped snapper, pork-fish, angel-fish, cat-fish, hound-fish, the grouper, sucking-fish, and so on. Both harbor and deep sea fishing afford the visitor to Nassau excellent amusement, and many sportsmen go thither annually from New York solely for its enjoyment. The colored people of Nassau, as we were assured by one competent to speak upon the subject, form a religious community, according to the ordinary acceptation of the term. They are very fond of church-going, and of singing and shouting on all religious occasions. Nervously emotional, they work themselves up to a hysterical condition so furious as to threaten their sanity, but having naturally so little of that qualification, they are pretty safe. No people could possibly be more superstitious. They shut up and double lock the doors and windows of their cabins at night to keep out evil spirits. There are regular professional man-witches among them, persons a little shrewder and more cunning than their fellows. The very ignorant believe in a sort of fetichism, so that when a boat starts on a sponge-fishing trip, the obeah man is called upon for some coöperation and mysticism, to insure a successful return of the crew. The sponge fishermen have several hundred boats regularly licensed, and measuring on an average twenty tons each. On favorable occasions these men lay aside their legitimate calling, and become for the time being wreckers, an occupation which verges only too closely upon piracy. The intricate navigation of these waters, dotted by hundreds of small reefs and islands, and which can be traversed by only three safe channels, has furnished in former years a large amount of shipwrecked merchandise to Nassau. The wrecking business at best is extremely demoralizing, unfitting any community of men for legitimate industry, as we know very well by the experience gained on our own Florida shore. Men who have cruised fruitlessly for months in search of a profitable wreck will sometimes be tempted to decoy a ship from her proper course, and lead her upon the rocks, by a display of false lights. In front of the Victoria Hotel are some noble specimens of the ceiba, or silk-cotton tree, as it is called here, the finest and loftiest we have seen in any country. These trees, naturally slow growers, must be over a century in age, and afford, by their widespread branches, a shade equally graceful and grateful. Like the india-rubber trees of Asia, these ceibas have at least one half of their anaconda-like roots exposed upon the surface of the ground, dividing the lower portion of the stem into supporting buttresses, a curious piece of finesse on the part of nature to overcome the disadvantage of insufficient soil. The tree bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft, silky texture, and hence its name. It is, however, suitable neither for timber nor fuel, and the small product of cotton is seldom if ever gathered. The islanders are proud of a single specimen of the banyan tree of considerable size, which they show to all visitors; but it cannot be indigenous--it must have been brought in its youth from Asia. There is, however, in these West Indian isles, the black mangrove, with very similar habit to the banyan. The limbs spread to such an extent from the trunk as to require support to prevent them from breaking off or bending to the ground by their own weight; but to obviate this, nature has endowed the tree with a peculiar growth. When the branches have become so heavy as to be no longer able to support themselves, they send forth from the under side sprigs which, rapidly descending to the ground, take root like the banyan, and become supporting columns to the heavy branches above. So the writer has seen in Hindostan a vine which grew, almost leafless, closely entwined around the trees to the very top, whence it descended, took fresh root, and ascended the nearest adjoining tree, until it had gone on binding an entire grove in a ligneous rope. Long tendrils of the love-vine, that curious aerial creeper, which feeds on air alone, were seen hanging across some of the low branches of the Nassau trees, and we were told that the plant will grow equally well if hung upon a nail indoors. Emblematic of true affection, it clings, like Japanese ivy, tenaciously to the object it fixes upon. One specimen was shown to us which had developed to the size of the human hand from a single leaf carelessly pinned by a guest to one of the chamber walls of the hotel. There are said to be six hundred of the Bahama islands, large and small, of which Nassau is the capital, and there, as already intimated, the English Governor-General resides. This numerical calculation is undoubtedly correct; many are mere rocky islets, and not more than twenty have fixed inhabitants. Is there anything more wonderful in nature than that these hundreds of isles should have been built up from the bottom of the sea by insects so small as to be microscopic? All lie north of Cuba and St. Domingo, just opposite the Gulf of Mexico, easily accessible from our own shores by a short and pleasant sea-voyage of three or four days. They are especially inviting to those persons who have occasion to avoid the rigor of Northern winters. People threatened with consumption seek Nassau on sanitary principles, and yet it was found upon inquiry that many natives die of that insidious disease, which rapidly runs its career when it is first developed in a tropical climate. To the author it would seem that consumptives might find resorts better adapted to the recovery of their health. Intermittent fever, also, is not unknown at Nassau. The sea gardens, as they are called, situated just off the shores of the island, are well worth a visit; where, by means of a simple instrument of wood and glass, one is enabled to look many fathoms below the surface of the water, which is here so remarkable for its transparency. These water glasses are all of home manufacture, easily improvised, being formed of a small wooden box three or four inches square, open at the top, and having a water-tight glass bottom. With the glass portion slightly submerged, one is enabled to see distinctly the beautiful coral reefs, with their marvelous surroundings. There are displayed tiny caves and grottoes of white coral of great delicacy and variety, star-fishes, sea-urchins, growing sponges, sea-fans, and gaudy-colored tropical fishes, including the humming-bird-fish, and others like butterflies with mottled fins and scales, and that little oddity the rainbow-fish. The prevailing color of this attractive creature is dark green, but the tinted margins of its scales so reflect the light as to show all the colors of the rainbow, and hence its name. When bottled in alcohol, these fairy-like denizens of the deep lose their brilliancy, which they exhibit only in their native element. This unique display is greatly enhanced in beauty by the clearness of the Bahama waters, and the reflected light from the snow-white sandy bottom, dotted here and there by curious and delicate shells of opalescent lustre. One longs to descend among these coral bowers,--these mermaid-gardens,--and pluck of the submarine flora in its purple, yellow, and scarlet freshness. It will be remembered that Columbus wrote home to his royal patrons that the fish which abounded in the seas partook of the same novelty which characterized everything else in the New World. This was about four hundred years ago, before the great Genoese had discovered Cuba. "The fish," as he wrote, "rivaled the birds in tropical brilliancy of color, the scales of some of them glancing back the rays of light like precious stones, as they sported about the ships and flashed gleams of gold and silver through the clear water." The surface life of these translucent waters is also extremely interesting. Here the floating jelly-fish, called, from its phosphorescence, the glow-worm of the sea, is observed in great variety, sheltering little colonies of young fishes within its tentacles, which rush forth for a moment to capture some passing mite, and as quickly return again to their shelter. One takes up a handful of the floating gulf-weed and finds, within the pale yellow leaves and berries, tiny pipe-fish, sea-horses, and the little nest-building antennarius, thus forming a buoyant home for parasites, crabs, and mollusks, itself a sort of mistletoe of the ocean. The young of the mackerel and the herring glance all about just beneath the surface near the shore, like myriad pieces of silver. Now and again that particolored formation of marine life, the Portuguese man-of-war, is observed, its long ventral fins spread out like human fingers to steady it upon the surface of the water. Verily, the German scientist who says there is more of animal life beneath the surface of the sea than above it cannot be far amiss. This seems to be the more reasonable when we consider the relative proportions of land and water. The whole surface of the globe is supposed to have an area of about two hundred million square miles. Of these only about fifty millions are dry land. Within the harbor of Nassau the divisions of shoal and deep water presented most singular and clearly defined lines of color, azure, purple, and orange-leaf green,--so marked as to be visible half a mile away. All was beneath a sky so deeply and serenely blue as constantly to recall the arching heavens of middle India. The Bahama Banks is a familiar expression to most of us, but perhaps few clearly understand the significance of the term, which is applied to a remarkable plateau at the western extremity of the archipelago, occupying a space between two and three hundred miles long, and about one third as wide. These banks, as they are called, rise almost perpendicularly from an unfathomable depth of water, and are of coral formation. In sailing over them the bottom is distinctly seen from the ship's deck, the depth of water being almost uniformly forty to fifty feet. Some years since, when the author was crossing these banks in a sailing ship, a death occurred among the foremast hands, and the usual sea burial followed. The corpse was sewn up in a hammock, with iron weights at the feet, the more readily to sink it. After reading the burial service the body was launched into the sea from a grating rigged out of a gangway amidship. The waters were perfectly calm, and the barque had but little headway. Indeed, we lay almost as still as though anchored, so that the body was seen to descend slowly alongside until it reached the calcareous, sandy bottom, where it assumed an upright and strangely lifelike position, as though standing upon its feet. An ominous silence reigned among the watching crew, and it was a decided relief to all hands when a northerly wind sprang up, filling the canvas and giving the vessel steerage way. So many years have passed since the occurrence of the scene just related that we may give its sequel without impropriety, though, at the same time, we expose the venal character of Spanish officials. The man we buried on the Bahama Banks had died of small-pox, though no other person on board showed any symptoms of the disease. On entering the harbor of Havana, three days later, we had been hailed from Moro Castle and had returned the usual answer. A couple of doubloons in gold made the boarding officer conveniently blind, and a similar fee thrust quietly into the doctor's hand insured a "clean bill of health," under which we were permitted to land! The alternative was twenty-one days' quarantine. Fort Montague, mounting four rusty guns, "with ne'er a touch-hole to any on 'em," as Bushy informed us, stands upon a projecting point about a mile from the town of Nassau, the road thither forming a delightful evening promenade, or drive. The fort is old, crumbling, and time-worn, but was once occupied by the buccaneers as a most important stronghold commanding the narrow channel. These sea-robbers imposed a heavy tax upon all shipping passing this way, and for many years realized a large income from this source. It was only piracy in another form. Most vessels found it cheaper to pay than to fight. When the notorious Black Beard had his headquarters at Nassau, he sought no such pretext, but preyed upon all commerce alike, provided the vessels were not too well armed to be captured. This notorious pirate had an innate love for cruelty, and often tortured his captives without any apparent purpose, after the fashion of our Western Indians. When the English lashed the mutineers of Delhi and Cawnpore to the muzzles of their cannon and blew them to pieces, they were enacting no new tragedy; legend and history tell us that Black Beard, the pirate of the Windward Passage, set them that example many years before. His rule was to murder all prisoners who would not join his ship, and those whom he took fighting, that is, with arms in their hands, were subjected to torture, one form of which was that of lashing captives to the cannon's mouth and applying the match. Fort Montague is not occupied by even a corporal's guard to-day, and is of no efficiency whatever against modern gunnery. The reader will thus observe that the principal business which has engaged Nassau heretofore has been wrecking, buccaneering, privateering, and blockade running. Some noted characters have found an asylum here, first and last. After Lord Dunmore left Virginia he sought official position and made a home on the island. He was appointed governor, and some of the buildings erected by him are still pointed out to the visitor, especially that known as the Old Fort, just back of the Victoria Hotel, crowning the height. His summer seat, known as the Hermitage, is a quaint old place, still in fair condition, and surrounded by oaks and cocoanut trees, near the sea. Such matters do not often get into history, but legend tells us that some strange orgies took place at the Hermitage, where the play was for heavy stakes, and the drinking was of a similar excessive character. Another well-known individual who sought to make a home here, and also to escape from all former associations, was the notorious Blennerhasset, a name familiar in connection with Aaron Burr. After his trial, it will be remembered that he suddenly disappeared, and was heard of no more. He left his country for his country's good, changing his name to that of Carr. His objective point was Nassau; there his undoubted talent and legal ability were duly recognized and he was appointed government attorney, officiating in that capacity for a number of years. Having deserted his first wife, he found another to console him upon the island. At last wife number one appeared upon the island. She had discovered his hiding-place, and a domestic war ensued. Wife number two carried the day and the rightful spouse was sent away and paid an annuity to keep away. The pretended Mr. Carr is said to have finally lapsed into habits of excessive intemperance, and to have found a stranger's grave on the island. Much of the drinking water, and certainly the best in use at Nassau, as well as on some of the neighboring islands, is procured in a remarkable, though very simple manner, from the sea. Not far from shore, on the coral reefs, there are never-failing fresh water springs, bubbling up from the bottom through the salt water with such force as clearly to indicate their locality. Over these ocean springs the people place sunken barrels filled with sand, one above another, the bottoms and tops being displaced. The fresh water is thus conducted to the surface through the column of sand, which forms a perfect filterer. Such a crude arrangement is only temporary, liable to be displaced by any severe storm which should agitate the surrounding waters. If destroyed in the hurricane season, these structures are not renewed until settled weather. In so small and low lying an island as that of Nassau, it is very plain that this crystal liquid, pure and tasteless, cannot come from any rainfall upon the soil, and its existence, therefore, suggests a problem, the solving of which we submit to the scientists. On the arid shores of the Persian Gulf, where rain so seldom falls, and where there are no rills to refresh the parched soil, fresh water is also obtained from submerged springs beneath the salt water. Here it is brought to the surface by divers, who descend with a leather bag, the mouth of which being opened over the bubbling spring is quickly filled and closed again, being drawn to the surface by those who are left there to assist the diver, who hastens upward for air. In descending his feet are weighted with stones, which being cast off at the proper moment, he naturally rises at once to the surface. This operation is repeated until a sufficient quantity of fresh water is procured. There is no mystery, however, as to the source of these springs. The rain first falls on the distant mountains, and finding its way downward through the fissures of rocky ledges, pursues its course until it gushes forth in the bed of the gulf. CHAPTER II. Among the Islands. -- San Salvador. -- A Glimpse at the Stars. -- Hayti. -- The Gulf Stream. -- The Caribbean Sea. -- Latitude and Longitude. -- The Southern Coast of Cuba. -- A Famous Old Fortress. -- Fate of Political Prisoners. -- The Oldest City in Cuba. -- The Aborigines. -- Cuban Cathedrals. -- Drinking Saloons. -- Dogs, Horses, and Coolies. -- Scenes in Santiago de Cuba. -- Devoured by Sharks. -- Lying at Anchor. -- Wreck of a Historic Ship. -- Cuban Circulating Medium. -- Tropical Temperature. After leaving Nassau we stood northward for half a day in order to get a safe and proper channel out of the crooked Bahamas, where there is more of shoal than of navigable waters, leaving a score of small islands behind us inhabited only by turtles, flamingoes, and sea birds. But we were soon steaming due south again towards our objective point, the island of Cuba, five hundred miles away. San Salvador was sighted on our starboard bow, the spot where Columbus first landed in the New World, though even this fact has not escaped the specious arguments of the iconoclasts. Nevertheless, we gazed upon it with reverent credulity. It will be found laid down on most English maps as Cat Island, and is now the home of two or three thousand colored people. San Salvador is nearly as large as New Providence, and is said to claim some special advantages over that island in the quality of its fruits. It is claimed that the oranges grown here are the sweetest and best in the world, the same excellence being attributed to its abundant yield of pineapples and other tropical fruits. There are so many of these small islands in the Bahama group that the geographers may be excused for the heterogeneous manner in which they have placed them on the common maps. To find their true and relative position one must consult the sailing-charts, where absolute correctness is supposed to be found, a prime necessity in such intricate navigation. The total population of the Bahamas has been ascertained, by census, to be a fraction less than forty thousand. The voyager in these latitudes is constantly saluted by gentle breezes impregnated with tropical fragrance, intensified in effect by the distant view of cocoanut, palmetto, and banana trees, clothing the islands and growing down to the water's very edge. As we glide along, gazing shoreward, now and again little groups of swallows seem to be flitting only a few feet above the water for a considerable distance, and then suddenly disappearing beneath the waves. These are flying-fish enjoying an air bath, either in frolic or in fear; pursued, may be, by some aqueous enemy, to escape from whom they essay these aerial flights. The numerous islands, very many of which are uninhabited, have yet their recorded names, more or less characteristic, such as Rum Key, Turk's Island,--famous for the export of salt,--Bird Rock, Fortune Island, Great and Little Inagua, Crooked Island, and so on, all more or less noted for the disastrous wrecks which have occurred on their low coralline shores. Our Northern cities are largely dependent upon the Bahamas for their early annual supplies of pineapples, cocoanuts, oranges, bananas, and some vegetables, in which they are all more or less prolific. Here also is the harvest field of the conchologist, the beaches and coral reefs affording an abundant supply of exquisitely colored shells, of all imaginable shapes, including the large and valuable conch-shell, of which many thousand dollars' worth are annually exported, the contents first serving the divers for food. It was interesting to remain on deck at night and watch the heavens, as we glided silently through the phosphorescent sea. Was it possible the grand luminary, which rendered objects so plain that one could almost read fine print with no other help, shone solely by borrowed light? We all know it to be so, and also that Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn shine in a similar manner with light reflected from the sun. It was curious to adjust the telescope and bring the starry system nearer to the vision. If we direct our gaze upon a planet we find its disk sharply defined; change the direction and let it rest upon a star, and we have only a point of light, more or less brilliant. The glass reveals to us the fact that the star-dust which we call the Milky Way is an aggregation of innumerable single suns. Sweeping the arching blue with the telescope, we find some stars are golden, some green, others purple, many silvery-white, and some are twins. Probably there is no such thing as stars of the first and second magnitude, as the common expression names them. It is most likely only a question of distance, which regulates the brightness to our vision. Science reduces the distances of heavenly bodies from our earth to figures, but they are so immense as to be simply bewildering. At the North the moon is silvery, but in tropical skies at night it becomes golden, glowing, and luxurious in its splendor, never pale and wan as it seems with us. When the lonely lighthouse which marks Cape Maysi, at the easterly point of Cuba, hove in sight on the starboard bow, the dim form of the mountains of Hayti was also visible on the opposite horizon. A subterranean connection is believed to exist between the mountain ranges of the two islands. When the outline of the Haytian mountains was in view, it was very natural to express a wish to visit the island at some convenient time. This led to some intelligent and interesting remarks from a compagnon de voyage, who had resided for two years at Port-au-Prince, the capital. "Unless you are compelled to land there," said he, "I advise you to avoid Hayti." He fully confirmed the reports of its barbarous condition, and declared it to be in a rapid decadence, as regarded every desirable element of civilization. In the country, a short distance from either Gonaives, Jacmel, or Port-au-Prince, where the mass of the negro population live, Voudou worship and cannibalism are quite common at the present time. The influence of the Voudou priests is so much feared by the government that the horrible practice is little interfered with. When the officials are forced to take cognizance of the crime, the lightest possible punishment is imposed upon the convicted parties. The island of San Domingo is about half the size of Cuba, Hayti occupying one third of the western portion, the rest of the territory belonging to the republic of San Domingo. "As to Port-au-Prince," said our informant, "it is the dirtiest place I have ever seen in any part of the world." Nevertheless, the historic interest clustering about the island is very great. It was the seat of the first Spanish colony founded in the New World. Its soil has been bathed in the blood of Europeans as well as of its aboriginal inhabitants. For three hundred years it was the arena of fierce struggles between the French, Spaniards, and English, passing alternately under the dominion of each of these powers, until finally, torn by insurrection and civil war, in 1804 it achieved its independence. The city of San Domingo, capital of the republic, is the oldest existing settlement by white men in the New World, having been founded in 1494 by Bartholomew Columbus. It contains to-day a little less than seven thousand inhabitants. We gave Cape Maysi a wide berth, as a dangerous reef makes out from the land, eastward, for a mile or more. The fixed light at this point is a hundred and thirty feet above sea level, and is visible nearly twenty miles off shore. We were running through the Windward Passage, as it was called by the early navigators, and whence one branch of the Gulf Stream finds its way northward. The Gulf Stream! Who can explain the mystery of its motive power; what keeps its tepid waters in a course of thousands of miles from mingling with the rest of the sea; whence does it come? The accepted theories are familiar enough, but we do not believe them. Maury says the Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is the Arctic Sea. The maps make the eastern shore of Cuba terminate as sharply as a needle's point, but it proved to be very blunt in reality, as it forms the gateway to the Caribbean Sea, where the irregular coast line runs due north and south for the distance of many leagues. It is a low, rocky shore for the most part, but rises gradually as it recedes inland, until it assumes the form of hills so lofty as to merit the designation of mountains. There was on board of our ship an intelligent resident of Santiago, who was enthusiastic in his description of the plains and valleys lying beyond the hills which stood so prominently on the coast,--hills probably older than any tongue in which we could describe them. The Scriptural Garden of Eden has absolutely been placed here by supposition on the part of traveled people. The temperature is simply perfect, if we are to believe our informant; the vegetation is of a primitive delicacy and beauty unequaled elsewhere; the fruits are fabulously abundant and of the most perfect flavor; the water bubbles forth from springs of crystal purity, and the flora is so lovely as to inspire the most indifferent beholder with delight. "It is called the Garden of Cuba," said the American Consul of Cienfuegos, "but many go further, and declare it to be the location of the original Paradise." Certain it is that the few Americans who have sought this so highly praised region, though compelled to deny themselves the ordinary comforts to be found in more accessible resorts, have admitted with emphasis that nature, pure and undefiled, was here to be enjoyed in unstinted measure. The hills bordering the shore and extending some distance inland contain much undeveloped mineral wealth, such as iron, silver, and gold. A mine of the former product is now being profitably worked by an American company, and the ore regularly shipped to Pennsylvania for smelting. This ore has special properties which render it more than usually valuable, and it is even claimed to be the best iron mine in the world. There is a strangely solitary and inhospitable appearance about this portion of the island, devoid as it is of all human habitations, and fringed either with long reaches of lonely snow-white beach or rugged brown rocks. The volcanic appearance of the land is significant of former upheavals, and this immediate region is still occasionally troubled with geological chills and fever. The nights of early March in this latitude were exceedingly beautiful, and solemnly impressive was the liberal splendor of the sky. The full moon looked down upon and was reflected by waters of perfect smoothness. River navigation could not have been more quiet than were these nights on the blue Caribbean Sea. The air was as mild as June in New England, while at night the Southern Cross and the North Star blazed in the horizon at the same time. As we steered westward after doubling the cape, both of these heavenly sentinels were seen abeam, the constellation on our port side, and the North Star on the starboard. Each day, at the noon hour, the passengers were interested in watching the officers of the ship while they were "taking the sun," to determine the latitude and longitude. Shall we put the process into simple form for the information of the uninitiated? When the sun reaches the meridian, or culminating point of ascension, the exact moment is indicated by the instrument known as a quadrant, adjusted to the eye of the observer. The figures marked on the quadrant give the latitude of the ship at the moment of meridian. The ship's time is then made to correspond, that is to say, it must indicate 12 o'clock, M., after which it is compared with the chronometer's Greenwich time, and the difference enables the observer to determine the longitude. As fifteen miles are allowed to the minute, there will be nine hundred miles to the hour. The importance of absolute correctness in the chronometer will at once be realized, since, were it only three minutes out of the way, it would render the calculation as to longitude wrong by nearly fifty miles, which might be, and doubtless often has been, the cause of wrecking a ship upon rocks laid down upon the charts, but supposed to be far away. With the chronometer and the quadrant observation correctly ascertained, the sailing-master can prick off his exact situation on the chart. So long as the weather will permit a clear view of the sun at noon, the ship's precise location on the wide waste of waters can be known; but when continuous cloudy weather prevails, the ship's course is calculated by what is called dead reckoning, depending upon the speed and distance run as indicated by the log, which is cast hourly under such circumstances, and becomes the main factor in calculating the position of the ship. Of course the result cannot be very accurate, but is a dernier ressort. When land is in sight no observation is necessary, as the bearing of the ship is then unmistakably defined. The sea was like molten sapphire as we glided swiftly along the southern coast of Cuba, watching the gracefully undulating shore. The mountains rose higher and higher, until they culminated in the lofty peak of Pico Turquino (blue mountain), over ten thousand feet high, as lately ascertained by actual measurement. There are coves and bays along this coast where oysters _do_ grow upon trees, ridiculous as the assertion first strikes the ear. The mangrove-trees extend their roots from the shore into the sea, to which the oysters affix themselves, growing and thriving until plucked by the fishermen. They are small and of an inferior species compared with those of our own coast, but are freely eaten in the island. Near the shore hereabouts are many islets containing from three to five square miles, some of which are quite barren, while others are delicious gardens, full of tropical fruit trees, flowers, and odoriferous plants, where Paul and Virginia might have felt quite at home, wandering hand in hand. Soon after passing the remarkably sheltered port of Guantanamo, which was for nearly a century the most notorious piratical rendezvous in the West Indies, the famous castle of Santiago is seen. It is known as Moro Castle, but it antedates the more familiar Moro of Havana by a full century. This antique, yellow, Moorish-looking stronghold--which modern gunnery would destroy in about eight minutes--is picturesque to the last degree, with its crumbling, honeycombed battlements, and queer little flanking turrets, grated windows, and shadowy towers. It is built upon the face of a lofty dun-colored rock, upon whose precipitous side the fortification is terraced. It stands just at the entrance of the narrow channel leading to the city, so that in passing in one can easily exchange oral greetings with the sentry on the outer battlement. What strikingly artistic pictures the light and shade together formed with those time-stained walls, as we steamed slowly by them! On the ocean side, directly under the castle, the sea has worn a gaping cave, so deep that it has not been explored within the memory of the people living in the neighborhood. The broad and lofty entrance is in form as perfect an arch as could be drawn by the pencil of a skillful architect. As is usual with such formations all over the world, there is a romantic legend concerning the cave related as connected with the olden time, and there is also a prevailing superstition, that no one attempting to explore it will live to return. In passing up the channel two or three little forts of queer construction are seen, supplementing the larger one, placed upon jutting headlands. The Moro of Santiago is now used as a prison for political offenders; its days of defensive importance ended with the period of the buccaneers, against whose crude means of warfare it was an ample protection. As we steamed past it that sunny afternoon, stimulated by the novelty of everything about us, a crowd of pallid, sorrowful faces appeared at the grated windows, watching us listlessly. Two days later five of them, who were condemned patriots, were led out upon those ramparts and shot, their bodies falling into the sea, and eight were sent to the penal settlement of Ceuta. Spain extends no mercy to those who dare to raise their hands or voices in favor of freedom; her political existence is sustained only in an atmosphere of oppression and cruelty. Every page of her history is a tableau of bloodshed and torture. The narrow winding channel which leads from the open sea to the harbor passes through low hills and broad meadows covered with rank verdure, cocoanut groves, and little fishing hamlets. Thrifty laurels, palms with their graceful plumes of foliage, and intensely green bananas line the way, with here and there upon the banks a pleasant country house in the midst of a pretty garden of flowering shrubs. So close is the shore all the while that one seems to be navigating upon the land, gliding among trees and over greensward rather than on blue water. Presently we pass a sharp angle of the hills into a broad, sheltered bay, and before us lies the quaint, rambling old city of Santiago de Cuba, built upon a hillside, like Tangier in Africa, and nearly as Oriental as that capital of Morocco. The first most conspicuous objects to meet the eye are the twin towers of the ancient cathedral which have withstood so many earthquakes. The weather-beaten old quartermaster on our forecastle applies the match to his brass twelve-pounder, awaking a whole broadside of echoes among the mountains, the big chain rushes swiftly through the hawse-hole, and the ship swings at her anchor in the middle of the picturesque bay. A boat was promptly secured with which to land at this ancient city, founded by Velasquez. From the moment one touches the shore a sense of being in a foreign land forces itself upon the new-comer. The half-unintelligible language, the people, the architecture, the manners, the vegetation, even the very atmosphere and the intensity of the sunshine, are novel and attractive. It is easy to convey our partial impressions of a new place, however unique it may be, but not our inward sensations. The former are tangible, as it were, and may be depicted; the latter are like atmospheric air, which cannot be seen, but is felt. The many-colored, one-story houses of Santiago are Moorish in architecture, ranged in narrow streets, which cross each other at right angles with considerable regularity, but with roadways in an almost impassable condition, lined with sidewalks of ten or fifteen inches in width. These thoroughfares were once paved with cobblestones, but are now characterized by dirt and neglect, a stream of offensive water constantly percolating through them, in which little naked children are at play. No wonder that the city is annually decimated by yellow fever; the surprise is that it does not prevail there every month in the year. The boys and girls of the lower classes, white and black, are not thought to require clothing until they are about nine years of age. A few negresses were observed sitting on the ground, at the corners of the streets, beside their baskets containing sweet cakes, mouldy biscuits, bananas, and grape-fruit, the uninviting appearance of which seemed to indicate that they were in the last stage of collapse. Was it possible any one could eat such stuff? As we passed and repassed these patient waiters, certainly no purchasers appeared. How the forty-five thousand inhabitants manage to achieve a living it would be difficult to imagine, for the town seemed to be as dead and void of all activity as Cordova, in far-off Spain, the sleepiest city in all Europe. Santiago has not a single bookstore within its limits. No other place in Christendom, with so numerous a population, could exist, outside of Spain, without some literary resort. There are here three or four spacious two-story club-houses, with some pretension to neatness and social accommodations; but then no Cuban town of any size would be complete without these anti-domestic institutions, where the male population may congregate for evening entertainment. The interior arrangements of these club-houses were entirely exposed to view, as we passed by the iron-grated windows, devoid of curtains, blinds, or screens of any sort, and extending from ceiling to floor. Santiago dates back to the year of our Lord 1514, making it the oldest city in the New World, next to San Domingo, and it will be remembered as the place whence Cortez sailed, in 1519, to invade Mexico. Here also has been the seat of modern rebellion against the arbitrary and bitterly oppressive rule of the home government. The city is situated six hundred miles southeast of Havana, and, after Matanzas, comes next to it in commercial importance, its exports reaching the handsome annual aggregate of eight millions of dollars. It is the terminus of two lines of railways, which pass through the sugar districts, and afford transportation for this great staple. Three leagues inland, among the mountains, are situated the famous Cobre copper mines, said to be of superior richness, and whence, in the days of their active working, four million dollars' worth of the ore has been exported in one year. This was the amount shipped in 1841, and so late as 1867 six thousand tons were exported in ten months. Not content with realizing a very large income from the mines by way of taxes upon the product, the Spanish government increased these excise charges to such an extent as to absorb the entire profits of the works and kill the enterprise, so that the rich ores of Cobre now rest undisturbed in the earth. It seems there is an Indian village near the copper mines, whose people are represented to be the only living descendants of the aborigines,--the Caribs whom Columbus found here on first landing. Careful inquiry, however, led us seriously to doubt the authenticity of the story. Probably this people are peculiar in their language, and isolation may have caused them to differ in some respects from the inhabitants of the valley and plains, but four centuries must have destroyed every trace of the early inhabitants of Cuba. Having been from the very outset enslaved and brutally treated by the Spaniards, it is believed that as early as the year of our Lord 1700 they had utterly disappeared, and some historians say no trace even was to be found of the native race one century after the settlement of the island by Europeans. The head of the Church of Rome in Cuba is located here, it being an archbishop's see; and the elaborate ceremonials which occasionally take place attract people from the most distant cities of the island. We chanced to be present when the bishop was passing into the cathedral, clothed in full canonicals and accompanied by church dignitaries bearing a canopy above his head. Observing our little party as strangers, though in the midst of a stately ceremony, the bishop graciously made us a sign of recognition. The cathedral of Santiago is the largest in Cuba, but extremely simple in its interior arrangements; and so, indeed, are all the churches on the island. As to the exterior, the façade resembles the cathedral of Havana, being of the same porous stone, which always presents a crumbled and mottled surface. The inside decorations are childish and fanciful, consisting mostly of artificial flowers of colored paper, crudely formed by inexperienced hands into stars, wreaths, and crosses. One innovation was noticed in this church: a saint on the right of the altar was mounted upon a wooden horse, with spear in rest à la militaire, forming a most incongruous figure. In the church of Matanzas, visited a week or two later, the effigy of our Saviour was observed to be half dressed in female attire, a glaring absurdity which the author has once before seen in the Spanish convent-church of Burgos. In the Matanzas church alluded to, boys and girls of nine and ten years were seen at the confessional. Could absurdity be carried to a greater height? These with negro women form nearly all the audiences to be met with in the Cuban churches, unless upon festal occasions. The men manifest their indifference by their absence, and white women are scarcely represented. Besides the cathedral, Santiago has three or four other old churches, small and dilapidated, within whose sombre walls one seems to have stepped back into the fifteenth century. Upon strolling accidentally into one of these we felt a chill suffuse the whole system, like that realized on descending into a dark, undrained cellar. The multiplicity and gaudiness of the drinking-saloons and bar-rooms were particularly noticeable in passing along the principal streets, and all were doing a thriving business, judging from appearances. The Cubans drink lightly, but they drink often, and are especially addicted to gin, which is dealt out to them at an extraordinarily low price. It appears that people can consume a much larger quantity of spirituous liquors here without becoming intoxicated than they can do at the North. It is very rare to see a person overcome by this indulgence in Cuba, and yet, as was afterwards observed in Cienfuegos, Matanzas, and Havana, the common people begin the day with a very liberal dram, and follow it up with frequent libations until bed-time,--tippling at every convenient opportunity. A few of the better class of private houses were constructed with courts in the centre, where flowers and tropical fruits were growing luxuriantly. These dwellings were confined to no special quarter of the town, but were as often found next to a commercial warehouse or a negro shanty as elsewhere. The dogs, horses, and Chinese coolies were all in wretched condition. One might count the ribs of the first two a long way off, while the latter were ragged, lame, half-starved, and many of them blind. Animals are the recipients of the severest sort of usage both in Cuba and Spain. Few vehicles were to be seen, as merchandise is mostly transported on the backs of mules and ponies, and these animals are seldom shod. The town is lighted with gas, or rather it was so illuminated a few weeks since; but it was quietly whispered about that the corporation had failed to pay for this service last year, and that the monopoly itself was on the verge of bankruptcy, like nearly everything else of a business character in Cuba. The gaslights certainly appeared pale and sickly enough, as though only half confirmed in the purpose of giving any light at all, and were prematurely extinguished in many of the streets. In the shops, whose fronts were all open, like those of Canton and Yokohama, the clerks were to be seen in their shirt sleeves, guiltless of vests or collars, coquetting over calicoes and gaudy-colored merinos with mulatto girls decked in cheap jewelry, and with negresses wearing enormous hoop-earrings. At the approach of evening the bar-rooms and saloons, with a liberal display of looking-glasses, bottles of colored liquors, gin, and glitter, were dazzling to behold. The marble tables were crowded with domino and card players, each sipping at intervals his favorite tipple. The sidewalks are so narrow that the pedestrian naturally seeks the middle of the street as a pathway, and the half a dozen victorias and four volantes which form the means of transportation in Santiago, and which are constantly wandering about in search of a job, manage to meet or to overtake one perpetually; causing first a right oblique, then a left oblique, movement, with such regularity as to amount to an endless zig-zag. We did not exactly appreciate the humor of this annoyance, but perhaps the drivers did. After climbing and descending these narrow, dirty streets by daylight and by gaslight, and watching the local characteristics for a few hours, one is only too happy to take a boat back to the ship, and leave all behind. A desire for a cold bath and a good swim is natural in this climate after sunset, but beware of indulging this inclination in the waters of Santiago. Under that smooth, inviting surface, glistening beneath the rays of a full moon, lurk myriads of sharks. They are large, hungry, man-eating creatures, the tigers of the ocean, and the dread of all local boatmen here. To fall overboard in these waters, however good a swimmer one may be, is simply to be devoured. At Singapore, Sumatra, or Batavia, a Malay will for a consideration dive into the waters of the Malacca Straits, armed with a long, sharp knife, boldly attack a shark, and rip open his bowels at the moment when he turns on his side to give the deadly bite. But on that coast this dreaded fish appears singly; it is rare to see two of them together; while Santiago harbor seems to swarm with them, the dark dorsal fin of the threatening creatures just parting the surface of the sea, and betraying their presence. Lying at anchor between our ship and the shore was a trig Spanish corvette,--an American-built vessel, by the way, though belonging to the navy of Spain. It was curious at times to watch her crew being drilled in various martial manoeuvres. While an officer was exercising the men at furling topsails, a few days before our arrival, a foretopman fell from aloft into the sea. Under ordinary circumstances and in most waters, the man could easily have been saved, but not so in this instance. He did not even rise to the surface. A struggle for portions of his body between half a dozen ravenous sharks was observed alongside the corvette, and all was quickly over. The foretopman had been torn limb from limb and instantly devoured. The over-stimulated brain felt no inclination for sleep on this first night in the harbor, the situation was so novel, and the night itself one to suggest poetic thoughts. The moon was creeping slowly across the blue vault, like a great phantom mingling with the lambent purity of the stars. We sat silently watching the heavens, the water, and the shore; saw the lights go out one after another among the clustering dwellings, and the street gas-burners shut off here and there, until by and by the drowsy town was wrapped in almost perfect darkness. Only the ripple of the sea alongside the ship broke the silence, or the sudden splash of some large fish, leaping out of and falling back into the water. It seemed as though no sky was ever before of such marvelous blue depth, no water so full of mystery, no shore so clad in magic verdure, and no night ever of such resplendent clearness. The landing-steps and grating had been rigged out from a broad porthole on the spar deck, where a quartermaster was awaiting the return of the purser and a party of gentlemen who were making late, or rather early, hours on shore; for it was nearly two o'clock in the morning, and the weary seaman, who had sat down at his post on the grating, was snoring like a wheezy trombone. The measured tread fore and aft of the second officer, who kept the anchor watch, was the only evidence of wakefulness that disturbed our lonely mood. A similar night scene was vividly called to mind as experienced in Typhoon Bay, below Hong Kong, a few years since. In the harbor, next morning, a sunken wreck was pointed out to us, which was partially visible at low tide, not far from the shore. Only the ribs and stanchions are still held together by the stout keel timbers and lower sheathing. This wreck has lain there unheeded for years, yet what a story these old timbers might tell, had they only a tongue with which to give voice to their experience!--literally the experience of ages. We refer to the remains of the old St. Paul, one of the ships of the great Spanish Armada that Philip II. sent to England in 1588, being one of the very few of that famous flotilla that escaped destruction at the time. What a historical memento is the old wreck! After a checkered career, in which this ancient craft had breasted the waves of innumerable seas and withstood the storms of nearly three centuries, she was burned to the water's edge here in the harbor of Santiago a few years since, and sunk, where her remains now lie, covered with slime and barnacles,--a striking emblem of the nation whose flag she once proudly bore. During the last years of her career afloat she was used for transporting troops from Europe, and as a Spanish guard-ship in these seas by the local government. It is doubtful if it is generally known that this relic of the Spanish Armada is in existence. Curio-hunters, once put upon the scent, will probably soon reduce these ancient timbers to chips, and a crop of canes and snuff-boxes, more or less hideous and more or less counterfeit, will ensue. Here we got our first experience of the present currency,--the valueless circulating medium of Cuba. When one has occasion to visit the island it is best to take American funds, either in bank-bills or gold, sufficient to meet all ordinary expenses. Our bank-bills and our gold are both at a premium. This will also save all necessity for drawing on home through any local bankers, who have a way of charging for the accommodation quite after the style of everything Spanish. The hotel-keepers will require their pay on the basis of Spanish gold, but will cheerfully allow a premium of six per cent. on American gold or American bank-bills. As to the banks in Cuba, all are shaky, so to speak; several have lately failed, and the others might as well do so. It is not long since the president of the Havana Savings Bank placed a pistol at his temple and blew his brains out. Mercantile credit may be said to be dead, and business nearly at a standstill. Commercial honesty is hardly to be expected from a bankrupt community, where the people seem only to be engaged in the sale and purchase of lottery tickets, a habit participated in by all classes. What little gold and silver coin there is found in circulation is mutilated; every piece of money, large and small, has been subjected to the ingenious punch, and thus has lost a portion of its intrinsic value. American gold and silver, not having been thus clipped, justly commands a six per cent. premium. The circulating medium upon the island is paper scrip, precisely similar to that used in this country before the resumption of specie payment. This scrip is dirty beyond endurance, and one absolutely hesitates to take it in making change. When our currency became soiled and torn we could exchange it for new, but there is no such facility in Cuba. One dollar of our money will purchase $2.45 of this scrip. It passes current, and really seems to answer the necessities of trade, but even the Cubans are not deceived by it. They know that it is really worthless, being based upon nothing, and issued indiscriminately by a bankrupt government. The paper-mill grinds it out in five, ten, twenty, and fifty cent pieces as fast as it can be put into circulation, while no one knows how much has been issued. But one thing is known; namely, that every authorized issue of a given sum has been enormously exceeded in amount. Within about five years, or less, an issue of bank-bills and of this small currency was entrusted to an establishment in the United States, when fourteen millions of dollars were printed in _addition_ to the amount authorized! All were duly receipted for and signed by corrupt Spanish officials, who coolly divided these millions among themselves! The Captain-General of Cuba during whose administration this financial stroke was accomplished came to the island a poor man, and returned to Spain in two years possessed of three million dollars! There is no more beautiful or safe harbor in the world than that of Santiago de Cuba, commercially speaking, as it is completely land-locked and protected on all sides from storms; but for the same reason it is as close and hot an anchorage as can be found in the tropics. An intelligent resident gave us 80° Fahrenheit as the average temperature of the year, though the thermometer showed a more ambitious figure during our brief stay. There are but two seasons, the wet and the dry, the latter extending from September to May. The city might have an excellent water supply if there were sufficient enterprise among the citizens to cause it to be conducted by pipes from the springs in the neighboring hills. It is now wretchedly deficient in this respect, causing both suffering and ill health in a climate especially demanding this prime necessity of life. CHAPTER III. Doubling Cape Cruz. -- Trinidad. -- Cienfuegos. -- The Plaza. -- Beggars. -- Visit to a Sugar Plantation. -- Something about Sugar. -- An Original Character. -- A Tropical Fruit Garden. -- Cuban Hospitality. -- The Banana. -- Lottery Tickets. -- Chinese Coolies. -- Blindness in Cuba. -- Birds and Poultry. -- The Cock-Pit. -- Negro Slavery, To-Day. -- Spanish Slaveholders. -- A Slave Mutiny. -- A Pleasant Journey across the Island. -- Pictures of the Interior. -- Scenery about Matanzas. -- The Tropics and the North contrasted. To reach Cienfuegos, our next objective point, one takes water conveyance, the common roads in this district being, if possible, a degree worse than elsewhere. It is therefore necessary to double Cape Cruz, and perform a coasting voyage along the southern shore of the island of about four hundred miles. This is really delightful sailing in any but the hurricane months; that is, between the middle of August and the middle of October. It would seem that this should be quite a commercial thoroughfare, but it is surprising how seldom a sailing-vessel is seen on the voyage, and it is still more rare to meet a steamship. Our passage along the coast was delightful: the undulating hills, vales, and plains seemed to be quietly gliding past us of their own volition; the tremor of the ship did not suggest motion of the hull, but a sense of delight at the moving panorama so clearly depicted. No extensive range of waters in either hemisphere is so proverbially smooth as the Caribbean Sea, during eight months of the year, but a stout hull and good seamanship are demanded during the remaining four, especially if coming from the northward over the Bahama Banks and through the Windward Passage, as described in these chapters. The city of Trinidad, perched upon a hillside, is passed at the distance of a few miles, being pleasantly situated more than a league from the coast. The town of Casilda is its commercial port. This arrangement was adopted in the early days as a partial protection against the frequent inroads of the buccaneers, who ceased to be formidable when separated from their ships. Trinidad was once the centre of the prosperous coffee trade of Cuba, but is now, and has been for many years, commercially wrecked. It is very beautifully located, with Mount Vijia for its background, in what is declared to be the healthiest district upon the island. But it is an ancient city, comparatively deserted, its date being nearly contemporary with that of Santiago. Cienfuegos, its successful business rival, is on the contrary quite modern, exhibiting many features of thrift and activity, and is counted the third commercial city of Cuba. Like Cardenas, it is called an American capital. It has some twenty-five thousand inhabitants, a large proportion of whom speak English, nine tenths of its commerce being with the United States. In this immediate neighborhood Columbus, on his second voyage, saw with astonishment the mysterious king who spoke to his subjects only by signs, and that group of men who wore long white tunics like the monks of mercy, while the rest of the people were entirely naked. The town is low and level, occupying a broad plane. The streets are of fair width, crossing each other at right angles, and are kept neat and clean. The harbor is an excellent and spacious one, admitting of vessels being moored at the wharves, a commercial convenience unknown at Santiago, Matanzas, or Havana. The navies of all the world might rendezvous here and not crowd each other. Three rivers, the Canudo, Saludo, and Danuyi, empty into the bay, and each is navigable for a considerable distance inland, a matter of great importance in a country so devoid of good roads. The parti-colored houses are of the usual Cuban type, mostly of one story, built with a patio or open courtyard in the centre, well filled with flowering plants, among which were observed the attractive coral-tree, which resembles a baby palm, and the universal banana. The Plaza of Cienfuegos forms a large, well-arranged square, where an out-door military concert is given twice a week, a universal practice in all Cuban cities. It is laid out with excellent taste, its broad paths nicely paved, and the whole lighted at night with numerous ornamental gas-lamps. The vegetation is both attractive and characteristic, consisting of palms, laurels, and flowering shrubs, mingled with which are some exotics from the North, which droop with a homesick aspect. Plants, like human beings, will pine for their native atmosphere. If it be more rigorous and less genial at the North, still there is a bracing, tonic effect, imparting life and strength, which is wanting in the low latitudes. On one side of this fine square is the government house and barracks, opposite to which is an open-air theatre, and in front is the cathedral with any number of discordant bells. The little English sparrow seems to be ubiquitous, and as pugnacious here as on Boston Common, or the Central Park of New York. Boyish games are very similar the world over: young Cuba was playing marbles after the orthodox fashion, knuckle-down. It was very pitiful to behold the army of beggars in so small a city, but begging is synonymous with the Spanish name, both in her European and colonial possessions. Here the maimed, halt, and blind meet one at every turn. Saturday is the harvest day for beggars in the Cuban cities, on which occasion they go about by scores from door to door, carrying a large canvas bag. Each family and shop is supplied with a quantity of small rolls of bread, specially baked for the purpose, and one of which is nearly always given to the applicant on that day, so the mendicant's bag becomes full of rolls. These, mixed with vegetables, bits of fish, and sometimes meat and bones when they can be procured, are boiled into a soup, thus keeping soul and body together in the poor creatures during the week. Cienfuegos is situated in the midst of a sugar-producing district, where soil and climate are both favorable, and over twenty large plantations are to be seen within a radius of two or three leagues. The export from them, as we were informed by the courteous editor of "La Opinion," a local paper, aggregates thirty thousand hogsheads annually. The visitor should not fail to make an excursion to some representative plantation, where it is impossible not to be much interested and practically informed. One of these sugar estates, situated less than two leagues from the town, was found to be furnished with a complete outfit of the most modern machinery, which had cost the proprietor a quarter of a million dollars. It was working with the usual favorable results, though at the present price of sugar no profit can accrue to the planter. The plantation presented a busy scene. During the grinding season the machinery is run night and day, but is obliged to lie idle for eight months out of the year. In the uncultivated fields through which we passed when driving out to the sugar estate, the prickly pear grew close to the ground in great luxuriance, as it is seen on our Western prairies. Its thick leaves, so green as to be dense with color, impart the effect of greensward at a short distance. On close inspection it was seen to be the star cactus, which like the Northern thistle kills all other vegetation within its reach. Here and there the wild ipecacuanha with its bright red blossom was observed, but the fields, except those devoted to the cane, were very barren near Cienfuegos. Sugar-cane is cultivated like Indian corn, which it also resembles in appearance. It is first planted in rows, not in hills, and must be hoed and weeded until it gets high enough to shade its roots. Then it may be left to itself until it reaches maturity. This refers to the first laying out of a plantation, which will afterwards continue fruitful for years by very simple processes of renewal. When thoroughly ripe the cane is of a light golden yellow, streaked here and there with red. The top is dark green, with long narrow leaves depending,--very much like those of the corn stalk,--from the centre of which shoots upwards a silvery stem a couple of feet in height, and from its tip grows a white fringed plume, of a delicate lilac hue. The effect of a large field at its maturity, lying under a torrid sun and gently yielding to the breeze, is very fine, a picture to live in the memory ever after. In the competition between the products of beet-root sugar and that from sugar-cane, the former controls the market, because it can be produced at a cheaper rate, besides which its production is stimulated by nearly all of the European states through the means of liberal subsidies both to the farmer and to the manufacturer. Beet sugar, however, does not possess so high a percentage of true saccharine matter as does the product of the cane, the latter seeming to be nature's most direct mode of supplying us with the article. The Cuban planters have one advantage over all other sugar-cane producing countries, in the great and inexhaustible fertility of the soil of the island. For instance: one to two hogsheads of sugar to the acre is considered a good yield in Jamaica, but in Cuba three hogsheads is the average. Fertilizing of any sort is rarely employed in the cane-fields, while in beet farming it is the principal agent of success. Though the modern machinery, as lately adopted on the plantations, is very expensive, still the result achieved by it is so much superior to that of the old methods of manufacture that the small planters are being driven from the market. Slave labor cannot compete with machinery. The low price of sugar renders economy imperative in all branches of the business, in order to leave a margin for profit. A planter informed the author that he should spread all of his molasses upon the cane-fields this year as a fertilizer, rather than send it to a distant market and receive only what it cost. He further said that thousands of acres of sugar-cane would be allowed to rot in the fields this season, as it would cost more to cut, grind, pack, and send it to market than could be realized for the manufactured article. Had the price of sugar remained this year at a figure which would afford the planters a fair profit, it might have been the means of tiding over the chasm of bankruptcy which has long stared them in the face, and upon the brink of which they now stand. But with a more than average crop, both as to quantity and quality, whether to gather it or not is a problem. Under these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, extortionate taxation, and oppressive rule. If you visit Cienfuegos you will take rooms at the Hotel Union, as being the least objectionable of the two public houses which the city contains, and there you will make the acquaintance of Jane, who is an institution in herself. Indeed, she will doubtless board your ship when it first arrives, so as to enlighten you concerning the excellences of the Union over its rival establishment, which will also be sure to be represented. Jane is interpreter and general factotum of that delectable posada, the Union, and being the only one in the house who speaks either French or English, she becomes an important factor in your calculations. Jane's nationality is a pleasing mystery, but she may be classed as a Portuguese quadroon. Venus did not preside at her birth, but, by means of the puff-ball and egg-shell powder, she strives to harmonize her mottled features. Being interpreter, waitress, hotel-runner, and chambermaid, she is no idler, and fully earns the quarter eagle you naturally hand her at leave-taking. In visiting the neighboring sugar plantation Jane acts as your guide, on which occasion her independence will be sure to challenge admiration. She salutes slave or master with equal familiarity, conducts you through each process of the elaborate works, from the engine to the crushing mill, and so on, until you reach the centrifugal machine, where the glistening crystals of pure sugar fall into an open receptacle ready for packing and shipment. She takes you into the slave-quarters among the pickaninnies, hens, pigs, and pigeons, looking on blandly and chewing huge pieces of cane while you distribute the bright ten cent pieces with which you filled your pocket at starting. If Jane slyly pinches a papoose and causes it to yell, it is only for fun; she means no harm, though the dusky mite gets smartly slapped by its mother for misbehaving. The cabin floor of bare earth is sure to be covered with these little naked, sprawling objects, like ants. On the way back to town Jane orders the postilion to drive into the private grounds of a palatial Cuban residence, where she boldly announces herself and party to the proprietor in good rolling Spanish. It is the home of Señor N----, a wealthy merchant of the city. We are received as though we belonged to the royal family. The hospitable owner speaks English fluently, and answers our thousand and one questions with tireless courtesy, takes us into his superb fruit garden (of which more anon), then introduces us to his domestic quarters, where everything appears refined, faultlessly neat, and tasteful. If you go to the railroad station, as usual the evening before departure, in order to secure tickets and get your baggage labeled,--for the cars start in the morning before daylight,--Jane will accompany you, riding by your side in the victoria. Excuse her if she orders the calash thrown back, as she appears bonnetless in a loud, theatrical costume, trimmed with red and yellow, and carrying a bouquet in her freckled hands. It is her opportunity, and she looks triumphantly at the street loungers in passing. If you are charged on your bill a Delmonico price for a mythical lunch to be taken with you on the journey to Matanzas, and which Jane has forgotten to put up, pay without wrangling; it saves time and temper. The tropical garden which we visited just outside of Cienfuegos embraced a remarkable variety of trees, including some thrifty exotics. Here the mango, with its peach-like foliage, was bending to the ground with the weight of its ripening fruit; the alligator pear was marvelously beautiful in its full blossom, suggesting, in form and color, the passion-flower; the soft delicate foliage of the tamarind was like our sensitive plant; the banana trees were in full bearing, the deep green fruit (it is ripened and turns yellow off the tree) being in clusters of a hundred, more or less, tipped at the same time by a single, pendent, glutinous bud nearly as large as a pineapple. The date-palm, so suggestive of the far East, and the only one we had seen in Cuba, was represented by a choice specimen, imported in its youth. There was also the star-apple tree, remarkable for its uniform and graceful shape, full of the green fruit, with here and there a ripening specimen; so, also, was the favorite zapota, its rusty-coated fruit hanging in tempting abundance. From low, broad-spreading trees depended the grape-fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime, and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. The cocoanut palm, with its tall, straight stem and clustering fruit, dominated all the rest. Guava, fig, custard-apple, and bread-fruit trees, all were in bearing. Our hospitable host plucked freely of the choicest for the benefit of his chance visitors. Was there ever such a fruit garden before, or elsewhere? It told of fertility of soil and deliciousness of climate, of care, judgment, and liberal expenditure, all of which combined had turned these half a dozen acres of land into a Gan Eden. Through this orchard of Hesperides we were accompanied also by the proprietor's two lovely children, under nine years of age, with such wealth of promise in their large black eyes and sweet faces as to fix them on our memory with photographic fidelity. Before leaving the garden we returned with our intelligent host once more to examine his beautiful specimens of the banana, which, with its sister fruit the plantain, forms so important a staple of food in Cuba and throughout all tropical regions. It seems that the female banana tree bears more fruit than the male, but not so large. The average clusters of the former comprise here about one hundred, but the latter rarely bears over sixty or seventy distinct specimens of the cucumber-shaped product. From the centre of its large broad leaves, which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or fifteen feet there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, this sheltering leaf drops off, and another unfolds, exposing its little brood of fruit; and so the process goes on until six or eight rings of young bananas are started, forming, as we have said, bunches numbering from seventy to a hundred. The banana is a herbaceous plant, and after fruiting its top dies; but it annually sprouts up again fresh from the roots. From the unripe fruit, dried in the sun, a palatable and nutritious flour is made. No matter where one may be, in town or country, in the east or west end of the island, Santiago or Havana, the lottery-ticket vender is there. Men, women, and children are employed to peddle the tickets, cripples especially being pressed into the service in the hope of exciting the sympathies of strangers and thus creating purchasers. It may be said to be about the only prosperous business at present going on in this thoroughly demoralized island. Half the people seem to think of nothing else, and talk of dreaming that such and such combinations of numbers will bring good luck. Some will buy only even numbers, others believe that the odd ones stand the best chance of winning; in short, all the gambling fancies are brought to bear upon these lotteries. Enough small prizes are doled out to the purchasers of tickets, by the cunning management, to keep hope and expectation ever alive in their hearts, and to coax out of them their last dollar in further investments. "If," said a native resident of Matanzas to us, "these lotteries, all of which are presided over by the officials, are honestly conducted, they are the one honest thing in which this government is concerned. Venal in everything else, why should they be conscientious in this gambling game?" No one believes in the integrity of the government, but, strange to say, the masses have implicit faith in the lotteries. At one corner of our hotel in Cienfuegos, there sat upon the sidewalk of the street a blind beggar, a Chinese coolie, whose miserable, poverty-stricken appearance elicited a daily trifle from the habitués of the house. Early one morning we discovered this representative of want and misery purchasing a lottery ticket. They are so divided and subdivided, it appears, as to come even within the means of the street beggars! Speaking of blindness, the multiplicity of people thus afflicted, especially among negroes and coolies, led to the enumeration of those met with in a single day; the result was seventeen. On inquiry it was found that inflammation of the eyes is as common here as in Egypt, and that it runs a rapid and fatal course,--fatal to the sight after having once attacked a victim, unless it receives prompt, judicious, and scientific treatment. The Chinese coolies, who are encountered in all parts of the island, but more especially in the cities, are almost invariably decrepit, poverty-stricken mendicants, and very frequently blind. They are such as have been through their eight years' contract, and have been brought to their present condition by ill-treatment, insufficient food, and the troubles incident to the climate. In the majority of cases these coolies have been cheated out of the trifling amount of wages promised to them, for there is no law in Cuba to which they can appeal. There are laws which will afford the negro justice if resorted to under certain circumstances, but none for the coolies. There are some few Chinamen who have survived every exigency, and are now engaged in keeping small stores or fruit stands, cigar making, and other light employments, their only hope being to gain money enough to carry them back to their native land, and to have a few dollars left to support them after getting there. There are no Chinese laundries in Cuba; John cannot compete with the black women in this occupation, for they are natural washers and ironers. John is only a skillful imitator. He proves most successful in the cigarette and cigar factories, where his deft fingers can turn out a more uniform and handsome article than the Cubans themselves. Machinery is fast doing away with hand-made cigarettes. At the famous establishment of La Honradez, in Havana, which we visited some weeks later, one machine was seen in operation which produced ten thousand complete cigarettes each hour, or a million per day! Still this same establishment employed some fifty Chinese in order to supply its trade with the hand-made article, for home consumption. The Cubans prefer to unroll and readjust a cigarette before lighting it. This cannot be done with the machine-made article, which completes its product by a pasting process. The three machines (an American patent) at the Honradez factory turn out three millions of cigarettes per day, and this is in addition to those which are hand-made by the Chinese. The landlord of the Hotel Union, at Cienfuegos, will give you plenty of fruit and cheap Cataline wine, but the meat which is served is poor and consists mostly of birds. Any other which may be set before you will hardly be found to be a success, but then one does not crave much substantial food in this climate. There is a small wild pigeon which forms a considerable source of food in Cuba, and which breeds several times in a year. They are snared and shot in large numbers for the table, but do not show any signs of being exterminated. Ducks and water-fowl generally abound, and are depended upon to eke out the short supply of what we term butcher's meat. Three quarters of the people never partake of other meat than pigeons, poultry, and wild ducks. Eggs are little used as food, being reserved for hatching purposes. All families in the country and many in the cities make a business of raising poultry, but the product is a bird of small dimensions, not half the size of our common domestic fowls. They are very cheap, but they are also very poor. The practice is to keep them alive until they are required for the table, so that they are killed, picked, and eaten, all in the same hour, and are in consequence very tough. As the climate permits of hens hatching every month in the year, the young are constantly coming forward, and one mother annually produces several broods; chickens, like tropical fruits, are perennial. Sunday is no more a day of rest in Cienfuegos than it is in other Roman Catholic countries; indeed, it seemed to be distinguished only by an increase of revelry, the activity of the billiard saloons, the noisy persistency of the lottery-ticket venders, the boisterousness of masquerade processions, and a general public rollicking. The city is not large enough to support a bull-ring, but cock-pits are to be found all over the island, and the Sabbath is the chosen day for their exhibitions. It must be a very small and very poor country town in Cuba which has not its cock-pit. The inveterate gambling propensities of the people find vent also at dominoes, cards, checkers, and chess in the bar-rooms, every marble table being in requisition for the purpose of the games on Sundays. Having noticed the sparse attendance at the cathedral, we remarked to Jane that the church was quite empty, whereupon she replied with a significant leer, "True, Señor, but the jail is full." More than once an underlying vein of sarcasm was observed in the very pertinent remarks of which Jane was so happily delivered. There are comparatively few slaves to be found on the plantations or elsewhere in the vicinity of Cienfuegos: in fact, slavery is rapidly disappearing from the island. "Slave labor is more costly than any other, all things considered," said a sugar planter to us. "I do not own one to-day, but I have owned and worked six hundred at a time," he added. "We pay no tax on the laborers we hire, but on slaves we pay a heavy head-tax annually." An edict has been promulgated by the home government, which went into force last year, and which frees one slave in every four annually, so that on January 1, 1888, all will have become free. In the mean time the commercial value of slaves has so decreased in view of their near emancipation that they are not appraised on an average at over fifty or sixty dollars each. The law has for a period of many years provided that any slave who pays to his master his appraised value shall at once receive his free papers. Many purchase their liberty under this law, and then hire themselves to the same master or to some other, as they may choose,--at low wages, to be sure, but including food and shelter. Slaves have always been entitled by law in Cuba to hold individual property independent of their masters, and there are few smart ones who have not accumulated more or less pecuniary means during their servitude. They have had no expenses to meet in the way of supporting themselves. That has devolved upon their owners, so that whatever money they have realized by the several ways open to them has been clear profit. Many slaves have anticipated the period of their legal release from servitude, and more will do so during the present year. We also heard of planters who, realizing the inevitable, have manumitted the few slaves whom they still held in bondage, and hiring them at merely nominal wages, believed they saved money by the operation. It will be seen, therefore, that slavery as an institution here is virtually at an end. Low wages will prevail, and this is necessary to enable the planters to compete with the beet sugar producers of Europe. In truth, it is a question how long they will be able to do so at any rate of wages. The modern machinery being so generally adopted by the sugar-cane planters, while remarkably successful, both, as to the quality and the quantity of the juice it expresses from the cane, not only is expensive in first cost, but it requires more intelligent laborers than were found serviceable with the old process. To supply the places of the constantly diminishing slaves, emigrants, as they were called, have heretofore been introduced from the Canary Islands; men willing to contract for a brief period of years, say eight or ten, as laborers, and at moderate wages. These people have proved to be good plantation hands, though not so well able to bear the great heat of the sun as were the negroes; otherwise they were superior to them, and better in all respects than the Chinese coolies, who as workers on the plantations have proved to be utter failures. The mortality among these Mongolians, as we learned from good authority, had reached as high as sixty-seven per cent, within eight years of their date of landing in Cuba, that being also the period of their term of contract. None have been introduced into the island for several years. This coolie importation, like the slave-trade with Africa, was a fraud and an outrage upon humanity, and never paid any one, even in a mercenary point of view, except the shipowners who brought the deceived natives from the coast of China. Slavery in Cuba and slavery in our country were always quite a different thing, and strange to say the laws of the Spanish government were far more favorable and humane towards the victims of enforced labor than were those established in our Southern States. When the American negro ceased to be a slave, he ceased to cultivate the soil for his master only to cultivate it for himself. Not so in the tropics. The Cuban negro, in the first place, is of a far less intelligent type than the colored people in the States; secondly, the abundance of natural food productions in the low latitudes, such as fruit, fish, and vegetables, requires of the negro only to pluck and to eat; clothing and shelter are scarcely needed, and virtually cost nothing where one may sleep in the open air without danger every night in the year; and finally, the negro of the tropics will not work unless he is compelled to. There is a certain class of the Spanish slaveholders who have always fought against negro emancipation in any form,--fought against manifest destiny as well as against sound principles, fought indeed against their own clear interest, so wedded were they to the vile institution of slavery. Yet to every thinking man on the island, it is clearly apparent that human slavery in Cuba, as everywhere else, has proved to be a disturber of the public peace, and has retarded more than anything, else the material and moral progress of the entire people. It is but a short time since that the editor of a Havana newspaper, the "Revista Economica," was imprisoned in Moro Castle, and without even the pretense of a trial afterwards banished from the island, because he dared to point out the fact in print that the freeing of the slaves would prove a mutual benefit to man and master, besides being a grand act of humanity. Two years since the slaves on a large plantation near Guines refused to work on a holiday which had always heretofore been granted to them; whereupon the soldiery were called in to suppress what was called a mutiny of the blacks, resulting in nine negroes being shot dead, and many others put in chains to be scourged at leisure. Doomed as we have shown slavery to be, still it dies hard in Cuba. In the vicinity of Cienfuegos, Santiago, and Trinidad, in the mountain regions of the eastern district, there are many lawless people,--banditti, in fact, who make war for plunder both upon native and foreign travelers, even resorting in some cases to holding prisoners for ransoms. Several aggravating instances of the latter character came to our knowledge while we were on the spot. Since these notes were commenced five of these robbers have been captured, including the leader of the band to which they belonged, a notorious outlaw named Clemente Martinez. They were taken by means of a stratagem, whereby they were decoyed into an ambush, surrounded, and captured red-handed, as they fought furiously, knowing that they had no mercy to expect at the hands of the soldiers. It was the civil guard at Rancho Veloz who made this successful raid into the hills, and every one of the prisoners was summarily shot. Such, off-hand punishment is dangerous, but in this instance it was no more prompt than just. It is necessary, therefore, to carry arms for self-defense upon the roads in some parts of the island, and even the countrymen wear swords when bringing produce to market. Residents having occasion to go any distance inland take a well-armed guard with them, to prevent being molested by the desperate refugees who lurk in the hill country. Undoubtedly many of these lawless bands are composed of former revolutionists, who are driven to extremes by want of food and the necessities of life. Our journey was continued from Cienfuegos to Havana, by way of Matanzas, crossing the island nearly at right angles. The traveler plunges at once by this route into the midst of luxuriant tropical nature, where the vegetation is seen to special advantage, characterized by a great variety of cacti and parasitic growth, flowering trees and ever graceful palms, besides occasional ceibas of immense size. Though the landscape, somehow, was sad and melancholy, it gave rise to bright and interesting thoughts in the observer: doubtless the landscape, like humanity, has its moods. Vegetation, unlike mankind, seems here never to grow old, never to falter; crop succeeds crop, harvest follows harvest; nature is inexhaustible,--it is an endless cycle of abundance. Miles upon miles of the bright, golden-green sugar-cane lie in all directions, among which, here and there, is seen the little cluster of low buildings constituting the negroes' quarters attached to each plantation, and near by is the tall white chimney of the sugar-mill, emitting its thick volume of wreathing smoke, like the funnel of a steamboat. A little on one side stands the planter's house, low and white, surrounded by beautiful shade trees and clustering groups of flowers. Scores of dusky Africans give life to the scene, and the sturdy overseer, mounted on his little Cuban pony, dashes back and forth to keep all hands advantageously at work. One large gang is busy cutting the tall cane with sharp, sword-like knives; some are loading the stalks upon ox-carts; some are driving loads to the mill; some feeding the cane between the great steel crushers, beneath which pours forth a ceaseless jelly-like stream, to be conducted by iron pipes to the boilers; men, women, and children are spreading the crushed refuse to dry in the sun, after which it will be used for fuel. Coopers are heading up hogsheads full of the manufactured article, and others are rolling up empty ones to be filled. Some years ago, when the author first visited Cuba, the overseer was never seen without his long, cutting whip, as well as his sword and pistols. The latter he wears to-day, but the whip is unseen. The fact is, the labor on the plantations is now so nearly free labor that there is little if any downright cruelty exercised as of yore. Or, rather, we will qualify the remark by saying that there has been a vast improvement in this respect on the side of humanity. The shadow of the picture lies in the past. One could not but recall in imagination the horrors which so long characterized these plantations. The bloodthirsty spirit of the Spanish slaveholders had free scope here for centuries, during which time the invaders sacrificed the entire aboriginal race; and since then millions of Africans have been slowly murdered by overwork, insufficient food, and the lash, simply to fill the pockets of their rapacious masters with gold. Few native Cubans are sugar-planters. These estates are almost universally owned and carried on by Spaniards from the European peninsula, or other foreigners, including Englishmen and Americans. Occasionally, in the trip across the island, we passed through a crude but picturesque little hamlet having the unmistakable stamp of antiquity, with low straggling houses built of rude frames, covered at side and roof with palm bark and leaves; chimneys there were none,--none even in the cities,--charcoal only being used for cooking purposes, and which is performed in the open air. About the door of the long, rambling posada, a dozen or more horses were seen tied to a long bar, erected for the purpose, but no wheeled vehicles were there. The roads are only fit for equestrians, and hardly passable even for them. At rare intervals one gets a glimpse of the volante, now so generally discarded in the cities, and which suggested Dr. Holmes's old chaise, prepared to tumble to pieces in all parts at the same time. The people, the cabins, and the horses, are all stained with the red dust of the soil, recalling the Western Indians in their war paint. This pigment, or colored dirt, penetrates and adheres to everything, filling the cars and decorating the passengers with a dingy brick color. It was difficult to realize that these comparatively indifferent places through which we glided so swiftly were of importance and the permanent abode of any one. When the cars stop at the small way-stations, they are instantly invaded by lottery-ticket sellers, boys with tempting fruit, green cocoanuts, ripe oranges, and bananas,--all cheap for cash. And here too is the guava seller, with neatly sealed cans of the favorite preserve. Indeed, it seems to rain guava jelly in Cuba. Others offer country cheese, soft and white, with rolls, while in a shanty beside the road hot coffee and "blue ruin" are dealt out to thirsty souls by a ponderous mulatto woman. There are always a plenty of the denizens of the place, in slovenly dresses and slouched hats, hands in pockets, and puffing cigarettes, who do the heavy standing-round business. Stray dogs hang about the car-wheels and track to pick up the crumbs which passengers throw away from their lunch-baskets. Just over the wild-pineapple hedge close at hand, half a score of naked negro children hover round the door of a low cabin; the mother, fat and shining in her one garment, gazes with arms akimbo at the scene of which she forms a typical part. The engineer imbibes a penny drink of thin Cataline wine and hastens back to his machine, which has been taking water from an elevated cistern beside the track, the bell rings, the whistle sounds, and we are off to repeat the process and the picture, six or eight leagues further on. Take our advice and don't attempt to make a meal at one of these stations. The viands are wretchedly poor, and the price charged is a swindle. As we approach Matanzas the scene undergoes a radical change. Comfortable habitations are multiplied, passable roads appear winding gracefully about the country, groves and gardens spring into view, with small and thrifty farms. Superb specimens of the royal palm begin to appear in abundance, always suggestive of the Corinthian column. Scattered over the hills and valleys a few fine cattle are seen cropping the rank verdure. There is no greensward in the tropics, and hay is never made. The scenery reminds one of Syria and the Nile. One sees some vegetable and fruit farms, but sugar raising absorbs nearly every other interest, the tobacco leaf coming next, now that coffee is so neglected. The farmer ploughs with the crooked branch of a tree, having one handle with which to guide the crude machine,--just such an instrument as is used for the purpose in Egypt to-day, and has been used there for thousands of years. The cattle are mostly poor, half-starved creatures,--starved amid a vegetation only too rank and luxuriant. The dairy receives no attention in Cuba. Butter is seldom made; the canned article from this country, thin and offensive, is made to answer the purpose. The climate is too hot to keep butter or cream without ice, and that is expensive. Human beings, men, women, and children, look stunted and thin, possessing, however, wonderfully fine eyes, large, lustrous, and ebony in hue; eyes that alone make beauty; but the physiognomists have long since learned that eyes of themselves are no indication of character or moral force. The thermometer had stood since early morning at 83°, during the long ride from Cienfuegos. It was hot and dusty. Notwithstanding the ceaseless novelty of the scene, one became a little fatigued, a little weary; but as we approached Matanzas, the refreshing air from off the Gulf of Mexico suddenly came to our relief, full of a bracing tonic, and rendering all things tolerable. The sight of the broad harbor, lying with its flickering surface under the afternoon sun, was beautiful to behold. After all, these tropical regions lack the delicious freshness of the greensward, of new foliage, and the fine fragrance of the rural North; they need the invigorating sleep of the seasons from which to awake refreshed and blooming. Where vegetation is growing and decaying at the same time, there can never be general freshness and greenness; eternal summer lacks interest; we crave the frost as well as the sunshine. Compensation follows fast upon the heels of even a Northern winter. The tropical loveliness of the vegetation in this attractive land indicates what Cuba should be, but is not. Having accompanied the reader across many degrees of latitude, effecting a landing and reaching the interior of Cuba, let us now pass to other considerations of this interesting and important island. CHAPTER IV. The Great Genoese Pilot. -- Discovery of Cuba. -- Its Various Names. -- Treatment of the Natives. -- Tobacco! -- Flora of the Island. -- Strange Idols. -- Antiquity. -- Habits of the Aborigines. -- Remarkable Speech of an Indian King. -- A Native Entertainment. -- Paying Tribute. -- Ancient Remains. -- Wrong Impression of Columbus. -- First Attempt at Colonization. -- Battle with the Indians. -- First Governor of Cuba. -- Founding Cities. -- Emigration from Spain. -- Conquest of Mexico. The island of Cuba was discovered by the great Genoese pilot, on the 28th day of October, 1492. The continent of America was not discovered until six years later,--in 1498. The name of Columbus flashes a bright ray over the mental darkness of the period in which he lived, for the world was then but just awakening from the dull sleep of the Middle Ages. The discovery of printing heralded the new birth of the republic of letters, and maritime enterprise received a vigorous impulse. The shores of the Mediterranean, thoroughly explored and developed, had endowed the Italian States with extraordinary wealth, and built up a very respectable mercantile marine. The Portuguese mariners were venturing farther and farther from the peninsula, and traded with many distant ports on the extended coast of Africa. To the west lay what men supposed to be an illimitable ocean, full of mystery, peril, and death. A vague conception that islands hitherto unknown might be met afar off on that strange wilderness of waters was entertained by some minds, but no one thought of venturing in search of them. Columbus alone, regarded merely as a brave and intelligent seaman and pilot, conceived the idea that the earth was spherical, and that the East Indies, the great El Dorado of the century, might be reached by circumnavigating the globe. If we picture to ourselves the mental condition of the age and the state of science, we shall find no difficulty in conceiving the scorn and incredulity with which the theory of Columbus was received. We shall not wonder that he was regarded as a madman or as a fool; we are not surprised to remember that he encountered repulse upon repulse as he journeyed wearily from court to court, and pleaded in vain to the sovereigns of Europe for aid to prosecute his great design. The marvel is that when door after door was closed against him, when all ears were deaf to his earnest importunities, when day by day the opposition to his views increased, when, weary and footsore, he was forced to beg a bit of bread and a cup of water for his fainting and famishing boy at the door of a Spanish convent, his reason did not give way, and his great heart did not break with disappointment. But he felt himself to be the instrument of a higher power, and his soul was then as firm and steadfast as when, launched in his frail caravél upon the ocean, he pursued day after day and night after night, amidst a murmuring, discontented, and even mutinous crew, his westward path across the trackless waters. No doubt he believed himself to be inspired, or at least specially prompted from above. This was shown by his tenacious observance of all ceremonies of the Church, in his unaffected piety, and in that lofty and solemn enthusiasm which was a characteristic of his whole life. This must have been the secret in no small degree of the power he exerted so successfully over his semi-barbarous followers, who were more affected by awe than by fear. It was the devout and lofty aspect of their commander which controlled his sailors under circumstances so trying. We can conceive of his previous sorrows, but what imagination can form an adequate conception of his hopefulness and gratitude when the tokens of the neighborhood of land first greeted his senses? What rapture must have been his when the keel of his barque first grounded on the shore of San Salvador, and he planted the royal standard in the soil, as the Viceroy and High-Admiral of Spain in the New World! No matter what chanced thereafter, a king's favor or a king's displeasure, royal largesses or royal chains, that moment of noble exultation was worth a lifetime of trials. Columbus first named Cuba "Juana," in honor of Prince John, son of Ferdinand and Isabella. Subsequently the king named it Fernandina. This was changed to Santiago, and finally to Ave Maria; but the aboriginal designation has never been lost, Cuba being its Indian and only recognized name. The new-comers found the land inhabited by a most peculiar race, hospitable, inoffensive, timid, fond of the dance and the rude music of their own people, yet naturally indolent, from the character of the climate they inhabited. They had some definite idea of God and heaven, and were governed by patriarchs or kings, whose word was their only law, and whose age gave them undisputed precedence. They spoke the dialect of the Lucayos, or Bahamas, from which islands it is presumed by historians they originated; but it would seem more reasonable to suppose that both the people of the Bahamas and of the West India isles came originally from the mainland; that is, either north or south of the Isthmus of Panama. In numbers they were vaguely estimated at a million, a calculation the correctness of which we cannot but doubt. Reliable local authority, Cubans who have made a study of the early history of the island, assured the author that the aborigines at the time of Velasquez's first settlement, say in 1512, could not have exceeded four hundred thousand. They had but few weapons of offense or defense, and knew not the use of the bow and arrow. Being a peaceful race and having no wild animals to contend with, their ingenuity had never been taxed to invent weapons of warfare against man or beast. The natives were at once subjected by the new-comers, who reduced them gradually to an actual state of slavery, and proving hard task-masters, the poor overworked creatures died by hundreds, until they had nearly disappeared. The home government then granted permission to import negroes from the coast of Africa to labor upon the soil and to seek for gold, which was known to exist in the river courses. Thus commenced the foreign slave-trade of the West Indies, King Ferdinand himself sending fifty slaves from Seville to labor in the mines, and from that time this plague spot upon humanity has festered on the island. It should be remembered in this connection that previous to the discoveries of Columbus, negro slavery had been reduced to a system by the Moors, and thus existed in Spain before the days of the great Genoese. The Spaniards were not content with putting the aborigines to labor far beyond their power of endurance on the soil where they were born, but shipped them by hundreds to Spain to be sold in the slave-market of Seville, the proceeds being turned into the royal treasury. Columbus himself was the promoter of this outrageous return for the hospitality he had received at the hands of the natives. Irving apologetically says he was induced to this course in order to indemnify the sovereigns of Castile and Leon for the large expense his expedition had been to them. The fact that the great navigator originated the slave-trade in the New World cannot be ignored, though it detracts in no small degree from the glory of his career. Although the conquerors have left us but few details respecting these aborigines, still we know with certainty from the narrative of Columbus, and those of some of his most intelligent followers, that they were docile, artless, generous, but inclined to ease; that they were well-formed, grave, and far from possessing the vivacity of the natives of the south of Europe. They expressed themselves with a certain modesty and respect, and were hospitable to the last degree. Reading between the lines of the records of history, it is manifest that after their own rules and estimates, their lives were chaste and proper, though it was admissible for kings to have several wives. Moreover, though living in a state of nudity, they religiously observed the decencies of life, and were more outraged by Spanish lasciviousness than can be clearly expressed. This debasing trait, together with the greed for gold exhibited by the new-comers, disabused the minds of the natives as to the celestial origin of their visitors, a belief which they at first entertained, and which the Spaniards for mercenary purposes strove to impress upon them. The labor of this people was limited to the light work necessary to provide for the prime wants of life, beyond which they knew nothing, while the bounteous climate of the tropics spared the necessity of clothing. They preferred hunting and fishing to agriculture; beans and maize, with the fruits that nature gave them in abundance, rendered their diet at once simple, nutritious, and entirely adequate to all their wants. They possessed no quadrupeds of any description, except a race of voiceless dogs, as they were designated by the early writers,--why we know not, since they bear no resemblance to the canine species, but are not very unlike a large rat. This animal is trapped and eaten by the people on the island to this day, having much of the flavor and nature of the rabbit. The native Cubans were of tawny complexion and beardless, resembling in many respects the aborigines of North America, and as Columbus described them in his first communication to his royal patrons, were "loving, tractable, and peaceable; though entirely naked, their manners were decorous and praiseworthy." The wonderful fecundity of the soil, its range of noble mountains, its widespread and well-watered plains, with its extended coast line and excellent harbors, all challenged the admiration of the discoverers, so that Columbus recorded in his journal these words: "It is the most beautiful island that eyes ever beheld,--full of excellent ports and profound rivers." And again he says; "It excels all other countries, as far as the day surpasses the night in brightness and splendor." The spot where the Spaniards first landed is supposed to be on the east coast, just west of Nuevitas. "As he approached the island," says Irving, "he was struck with its magnitude and the grandeur of its features: its airy mountains, which reminded him of Sicily; its fertile valleys and long sweeping plains, watered by noble rivers; its stately forests; its bold promontories and stretching headlands, which melted away into remotest distance." Excursions inland corroborated the favorable impression made by the country bordering upon the coast. The abundance of yams, Indian corn, and various fruits, together with the plentifulness of wild cotton, impressed the explorers most favorably. Their avarice and greed were also stimulated by the belief that gold was to be found in large quantities, having received enough to convince them of its actual presence in the soil, but in the supposition that the precious metal was to be found in what is termed paying quantities they were mistaken. The Spaniards were not a little surprised to see the natives using rude pipes, in which they smoked a certain dried leaf with apparent gratification. Tobacco was indigenous, and in the use of this now universal narcotic, these simple savages indulged in at least one luxury. The flora was strongly individualized. The frangipanni, tall and almost leafless, with thick fleshy shoots, decked with a small white blossom, was very fragrant and abundant; here also was the wild passion-flower, in which the Spaniards thought they beheld the emblems of our Saviour's passion. The golden-hued peta was found beside the myriad-flowering oleander, while the undergrowth was braided with cacti and aloes. The poisonous manchineel was observed, a drop of whose milky juice will burn the flesh like vitriol. Here the invaders also observed and noted the night-blooming cereus. They were delighted by fruits of which they knew not the names, such as the custard-apple, mango, zapota, banana, and others, growing in such rank luxuriance as to seem miraculous. We can well conceive of the pleasure and surprise of these adventurous strangers, when first partaking of these new and delicate products. This was four hundred years ago, and to-day the same flora and the same luscious food grow there in similar abundance. Nature in this land of ceaseless summer puts forth strange eagerness, ever running to fruits, flowers, and fragrance, as if they were outlets for her exuberant fecundity. The inoffensive, unsuspicious natives shared freely everything they possessed with the invaders. Hospitality was with them an instinct, fostered by nature all about them; besides which it was a considerable time before they ceased to believe their guests superior beings descended from the clouds in their winged vessels. The Indians lived in villages of two or three hundred houses, built of wood and palm-leaf, each dwelling containing several families, the whole of one lineage, and all were governed by caciques or kings, the spirit of the government being patriarchal. We are told by Las Casas, who accompanied Velasquez in all his expeditions, that "their dances were graceful and their singing melodious, while with primeval innocence they thought no harm of being clad only with nature's covering." The description of the gorgeous hospitality extended to these treacherous invaders is absolutely touching in the light of our subsequent knowledge. They reared no sacred temples, nor did they seem to worship idols, and yet some few antiquities have been preserved which would seem to indicate that the natives possessed grotesque images, half human and half animal, like Chinese gods in effect. These were wrought so rudely out of stone as hardly to convey any fixed idea; vague and imperfect, it is not safe to define them as idolatrous images. They might have been left here by a previous race, for, as we are all aware, respectable authorities hold that this part of the world was originally peopled by Carthaginians, Israelites, Egyptians, Hindoos, and Africans. Columbus, in his second voyage to the West Indies, found the stern-post of a vessel lying on the shore of one of the Leeward isles, which was strongly presumptive evidence that a European ship had been in these waters before him. The fact that at this writing, as already described, there lies in the harbor of Santiago the wreck of the old St. Paul, which must be over three centuries old, shows how long a piece of marine architecture may last, submerged in salt water. An idol similar to those referred to was dug up in Hayti, and is now believed to be in the British Museum, drawings of which the author has seen, and which resemble original religious emblems examined by him in the caves of Elephanta, at Bombay. This emblem, carved by a people unacquainted with the use of edge tools, is believed by antiquarians to afford a degree of light as to the history of worship of the ancient inhabitants of Hispaniola, and also to form a collateral support of the conjecture that they sprang from the parent stock of Asia. According to Las Casas, the native Cubans had a vague tradition of the formation of the earth, and of all created things; of the deluge, of the ark, the raven, and the dove. They knew the tradition of Noah also, according to the same high authority, but for our own part we do not believe that the aborigines had any knowledge of this Biblical story. Their priests were fanatics and kept the people in fear by gross and extravagant means; but as to any formulated system of religious worship, it may be doubted if the aborigines of Cuba recognized any at the time of its discovery by Columbus. Unbroken peace reigned among them, and they turned their hands against no other people. These aborigines exhibited many of the traits universally evinced by savage races, such as painting their bodies with red earth and adorning their heads with the feathers of brilliant birds. Much of the soil is red, almost equal to a pigment, for which purpose it was employed by the natives. They lived mostly in the open air, weaving themselves hammocks in which they slept, suspended among the trees. The cotton which they spun grew wild, but tobacco they planted and cultivated after a rude fashion. The iguana and the voiceless dog, already spoken of, were hunted and eaten, the former of the lizard family, the latter scarcely more than fifteen inches long. They had domestic birds which they fattened and ate. Their only arms were lances tipped with sea-shells, and a sort of wooden sword, both of which were more for display than for use. Fish they caught in nets and also with hooks made of bones. Their boats, or canoes, were formed of the dug-out trunks of trees, and some of these canoes, as Columbus tells us, were sufficiently large to accommodate fifty men. An ancient writer upon this subject says the oars were well formed and properly fitted, but were used only with the power of the arms, that is as paddles, no rowlocks being cut in the boat. The speed attained by them was remarkable, reaching four leagues an hour when an effort to that end was made by the occupants. A large canoe, made from the straight trunk of a mahogany tree, is described as having been five feet in width and seventy-five feet long. This craft was propelled by twenty-five oarsmen on each side, a steersman in the stern, and a lookout at the prow. This was a cacique's barge, in which he made visits of state along shore and up the rivers. History has preserved a remarkable and characteristic speech made by a venerable cacique, who approached Columbus with great reverence on the occasion of his second visit to Cuba, and who, after presenting him with a basket of ripe fruit, said: "Whether you are divinities or mortal men, we know not. You have come into these countries with a force, against which, were we inclined to resist, it would be folly. We are all therefore at your mercy; but if you are men, subject to mortality like ourselves, you cannot be unapprised that after this life there is another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to good and bad men. If therefore you expect to die, and believe, with us, that every one is to be rewarded in a future state according to his conduct in the present, you will do no hurt to those who do none to you." This was duly interpreted to Columbus by a native whom he had taken to Spain, and who had there acquired the Spanish language. His name was Didacus, and the date of the speech was July 7, 1492. The truth of this version is attested by Herrera and others. The reception which Bartholomew Columbus, who was appointed Deputy Governor in the absence of the Admiral, afterwards met with in his progress through the island to collect tribute from the several caciques manifested not only kindness and submission, but also munificence. Having heard of the eagerness of the strangers for gold, such of them as possessed any brought it forth and freely bestowed it upon the Spaniards. Those who had not gold brought abundance of cotton. One cacique in the interior, named Behechio, invited the Deputy Governor to a state entertainment, on which occasion he was received with great ceremony. As he approached the king's dwelling, the royal wives, thirty in number, carrying branches of palm in their hands, came forth to greet the guest with song and dance. These matrons were succeeded by a train of virgins. The first wore aprons of cotton, the last were arrayed only in the innocence of nature, their hair flowing long and freely about their shoulders and necks. Their limbs were finely proportioned, and their complexions, though brown, were smooth, shining, and lovely. The Spaniards were struck with admiration, believing that they beheld the dryads of the woods and the nymphs of the ancient fables. The branches which they bore were delivered to the strangers with low obeisance, indicating entire submission. When the Spaniards entered the rural palace, amid songs and the rude music of the people, they found there a plentiful and, according to the Indian mode of living, a sumptuous banquet prepared for them. After the repast the guests were each conducted to separate lodgings, and each provided with a cotton hammock. On the next day feasting and games were resumed; dancing and singing closed each evening for four consecutive days, and when the Deputy Governor and his people departed, they were laden with gifts by their generous entertainers, who also accompanied them far on their way. This episode will perhaps serve better to give us a just insight into the condition and character of the aborigines of Cuba at that early period than any amount of detailed description possibly could. These aborigines, according to Las Casas, had no tradition even, touching their own origin, and when asked about it only shook their heads and pointed to the sky. Antiquarians have endeavored to draw some reliable or at least reasonable deductions from the collection of bones and skeletons found in the mountain caves of the island, but no conclusion worthy of record has ever been arrived at. Still, upon these evidences some scientists pin their faith that Cuba was a portion of the primitive world. Speaking of these caves, there are many subterranean openings on the island, down which rivers of considerable size abruptly disappear, not again to be met with, though it is reasonably presumed that they find their way through the rocks and soil to the sea-coast. During the ten years subsequent to its discovery, Columbus visited and partially explored the island at four different times, the last being in 1502, four years previous to his death, which took place at Valladolid in 1506. It seems singular to us that his investigations left him still ignorant of the fact that Cuba was an island, and not a part of a new continent. This conviction remained with him during his lifetime. It was not until 1511 that the Spaniards commenced to colonize the island, when Diego Columbus, then Governor of San Domingo, sent an expedition of three hundred men for the purpose, under the command of Diego Velasquez, whose landing was disputed by the natives. A period of ten years had served to open their eyes to Spanish lust and lore of gold, and from having at first regarded them as superior beings, entitled to their obedience, they were finally thus driven to fight them in self-defense. But what could naked savages, armed only with clubs and spears, accomplish against Europeans, trained soldiers, furnished with firearms, protected by plate armor, and accompanied by bloodhounds,--men who had learned the art of war by fighting successfully with the valiant Moors? The natives were at once overpowered and hundreds were slaughtered. From that time forth they became the slaves of their conquerors; a fact which reconciles us in some degree in the light of poetical justice to the fact that Amerigo Vespucci, who followed in the footsteps of others, yet took the honors of discovery so far as to give his name to the largest quarter of the globe. Diego Velasquez, the earliest Governor of the island, appears to have been an energetic and efficient magistrate, and to have administered affairs with vigor and intelligence. He did not live, however, in a period when justice ever erred on the side of mercy, and his harsh and cruel treatment of the aborigines will always remain a stain upon his memory. The native population soon dwindled away under the sway of the Spaniards, who imposed tasks upon them far beyond their physical powers of endurance. The victims of this hardship had no one to befriend them at that time, and no one has done them justice in history. The few glimpses of their character which have come down to us are of a nature greatly to interest us in this now extinct race. Their one fault was in trusting the invaders at all. At the outset they could have swept them from the face of the earth, but, once permitted to establish themselves, they soon became too powerful to be driven out of the land. A native chief, whose only crime was that of taking up arms in defense of the integrity of his little territory, fell into the hands of Velasquez, and was cruelly burned at the stake, near what is now the town of Yara, as a punishment for his patriotism. The words of this unfortunate but brave chief (Hatuey), extorted by the torments which he suffered, were: "I prefer hell to heaven, if there are Spaniards in heaven!" In point of energetic action and material progress, Velasquez reminds us of a later Governor-General, the famous Tacon. In a single decade, Velasquez founded the seven cities of Baracoa, Santiago de Cuba, Trinidad, Bayamo, Puerto del Principe, St. Spiritus, and, on the south coast near Batabano, Havana, since removed to its present site. He caused the mines to be opened and rendered them profitable, introduced valuable breeds of cattle, instituted agricultural enterprise, and opened a large trade with San Domingo, Jamaica, and the Spanish peninsula. Population increased rapidly, thousands of persons emigrating annually from Europe, tempted by the inviting stories of the returned explorers. Emigration schemes were approved and fostered by the home government, and thus a large community was rapidly divided among the several cities upon the island. Still this new province was considered mainly in the light of a military depot by the Spanish throne, in its famous operations at that period in Mexico. The fact that it was destined to prove the richest jewel in the Castilian crown, and a mine of wealth to the Spanish treasury, was not dreamed of at that date in its history. Even the enthusiastic followers of Cortez, who sought that fabulous El Dorado in the New World, had no promise for this gem of the Caribbean Sea; but, in spite of every side issue and all contending interests, the island continued to grow in numbers and importance, while its native resources were far beyond the appreciation of the home government. Thus Cuba became the headquarters of the Spanish power in the West, forming the point of departure for those military expeditions which, though circumscribed in numbers, were yet so formidable in the energy of the leaders, and in the arms, discipline, courage, fanaticism, and avarice of their followers, that they were amply adequate to carry out the vast scheme of conquest for which they were designed. It was hence that Cortez embarked for the conquest of Mexico; a gigantic undertaking, a slight glance at which will recall to the mind of the reader the period of history to which we would direct his attention. Landing upon the continent (1518) with a little band scarcely more than half the complement of a modern regiment, Cortez prepared to traverse an unknown country, thronged by savage tribes with whose character, habits, and means of defense he was wholly unacquainted. This romantic adventure, worthy of the palmiest days of chivalry, was finally crowned with success, though checkered with various fortunes, and stained with bloody episodes that prove how the threads of courage and ferocity are inseparably blended in the woof and warp of Spanish character. It must be remembered, however, that the spirit of the age was harsh, relentless, and intolerant, and that if the Aztecs, idolaters and sacrificers of human victims, found no mercy at the hands of the fierce Catholics whom Cortez commanded, neither did the Indians of our own section of the continent fare much better at the hands of men professing to be disciples of a purer faith, and coming to these shores, not as warriors, but themselves persecuted fugitives. The Spanish generals who invaded Mexico encountered a people who had attained a far higher point of civilization than their red brethren of the outlying Caribbean Islands, or those of the northeastern portion of the continent. Vast pyramids, imposing sculptures, curious arms, fanciful garments, various kinds of manufactures, the relics of which strongly interest the student of the past, filled the invaders with surprise. There was much that was curious and startling in their mythology, and the capital of the Mexican empire presented a strange and fascinating spectacle to the eyes of Cortez. The rocky amphitheatre in the midst of which it was built still remains unchanged, but the great lake which surrounded it, traversed by causeways and covered with floating gardens laden with flowers, is gone. The star of the Aztec dynasty set in blood. In vain did the inhabitants of the conquered city, roused to madness by the cruelty and extortion of the victors, expel them from their midst. Cortez refused to flee farther than the shore; the light of his burning galleys rekindled the desperate valor of his followers, and Mexico fell, as a few years after did Peru under the perfidy and sword of Pizarro, thus completing the scheme of conquest, and giving Spain a colonial empire far more splendid than that of any other power in Christendom. Of the agents in this vast scheme of territorial aggrandizement, we see Cortez dying in obscurity and Pizarro assassinated in his palace, while retributive justice has overtaken the monarchy at whose behest the richest portions of the Western Continent were violently wrested from their native possessors. CHAPTER V. Baracoa, the First Capital. -- West Indian Buccaneers. -- Military Despotism. -- A Perpetual State of Siege. -- A Patriotic Son of Cuba. -- Political Condition of the Island. -- Education of Cuban Youths. -- Attempts at Revolution. -- Fate of General Narciso Lopez. -- The Late Civil War and its Leader. -- Terrible Slaughter of Spanish Troops. -- Stronghold of the Insurgents. -- Guerrillas. -- Want of Self-Reliance. -- Spanish Art, Literature, and Conquest. -- What Spain was. -- What Spain is. -- Rise and Fall of an Empire. Baracoa lies one hundred miles northeast from Santiago, and was the capital of the island as first established by Velasquez. Here Leo X. erected in 1518 the first cathedral in Cuba. The town is situated on the north coast, near the eastern extremity of the island, having a small but deep harbor, and a considerable trade in the shipping of sugar and fruits to this country. The population at present numbers about six thousand. Five years after the settlement of Baracoa, the capital was moved to Santiago de Cuba, where it remained until 1589, when Havana was formally declared to be the capital of the island, its first Captain-General being Juan de Tejada. The city was captured and partially destroyed by a French pirate in 1638, and afterwards suffered a like catastrophe at the hands of the buccaneers of combined nationality, embracing some disaffected Spaniards. So late as 1760 Havana was captured and held by the English, under the Duke of Albemarle, but was restored to Spain, after a brief occupancy, in 1763. The first grand impulse to the material prosperity of the city, anomalous though it may seem, was given through its capture by the British. It is true that the victors seized everything by force, but they also taught the listless people how to repair their losses, and how to multiply prosperity. The port of Havana, accustomed heretofore to receive the visits of half a score of European vessels annually, suddenly became the rendezvous of a thousand ships in the same period of time, much to the surprise of the inhabitants. Bourbon in nature as the Spaniards were and still are, they could not but profit by the brilliant example of their enemies, and from that time forward the city grew rapidly in commercial importance, and has continued to do so, notwithstanding the rivalry of Matanzas, Santiago, Cienfuegos, and other ports, as well as the drawbacks of civil war and business stagnation. These buccaneers of the West Indies, to whom we have so often alluded, were composed mostly of English, French, and Dutch adventurers, whose bitter hatred the Spaniards early incurred. They were for a long time their terror and scourge, being the real masters of the ocean in these latitudes. They feared no enemy and spared none, while by shocking acts of needless cruelty they proved themselves fiends in human shape. Among these rovers there were often found men particularly fitted for the adventurous career they had adopted, men who combined remarkable executive ability with a spirit of daring bravery and a total disregard of all laws, human and divine. By a few such leaders the bands of freebooters were held in hand, and preserved their organization for many years; obedience to the word of their chief, after he was once chosen as such, being the one inviolable law of their union. The romance of the sea owes its most startling chapters to the career of these pirates. Sometimes their principal rendezvous was at the Isle of Pines; at others further north among the Bahamas, Nassau being one of their favorite resorts. In the mean time, under numerous and often changed Captains-General, the island of Cuba increased in population by free emigration from Spain, and by the constant importations of slaves from Africa. It may be said to have been governed by a military despotism from the very outset to the present time; and nothing short of such an arbitrary rule could maintain the connection between the island and so exacting a mother country, more than three thousand miles across the ocean. Accordingly we find the Captain-General invested with unlimited power. He is in fact a viceroy appointed by the crown of Spain, and accountable only to the reigning sovereign for his administration of the colony. His rule is absolute. He has the power of life and death in his hands. He can by his arbitrary will send into exile any person who resides in the island whom he considers inimical to the interests of the home government. Of the exercise of this power instances are constantly occurring, as in the case of the editor of the "Revista Economica," already recorded. He can at will suspend the operation of the laws and ordinances, can destroy or confiscate property, and in short, the island may be said to be in a perpetual state of siege. Such is the infirmity of human nature that few individuals can be safely trusted with despotic power; accordingly we find no Captain-General whose administration will bear the test of rigid examination. Indeed, the venality of a majority of these officials has been so gross as to have passed into a proverb. It is not to be expected that officers from Spain should consult the true interests of the Cubans; they are not sent hither for that purpose, but merely to look after the revenue of the crown, and to swell it to the very uttermost. The office of Governor-General is of course a brilliant prize, for which there are plenty of aspirants eagerly struggling, while the means by which a candidate is most likely to succeed in obtaining the appointment presupposes a character of an inferior order. This official knows that he cannot count on a long term of office, and hence he makes no effort to study the interests or gain the good-will of the people over whom he presides. He has a twofold object only in view: namely, to keep the revenue well up to the mark, and to enrich himself as speedily as possible. The princely salary he receives--fifty thousand dollars per annum, with a palace and household attendants supplied--is but a portion of the income which, by a system of peculation, he is enabled to divert to his private coffers. As a rule, the Captain-General comes out to Cuba a poor man, and returns a rich one, however brief his term of office. Occasionally during the lapse of years a true and patriotic man has filled this important post, when the remarkable elements of prosperity contained within the limits of this peerless land were rapidly developed and advanced. Such an one was Don Luis de las Casas, whose name is cherished by all patriotic Cubans, as also is that of Don Francisco de Arrango, an accomplished statesman and a native of Havana. He was educated in Spain, and designed to follow the law as a profession. This man, being thoroughly acquainted with the possibilities of the island and the condition and wants of his countrymen, succeeded in procuring the amelioration of some of the most flagrant abuses of the colonial system. In his argument for reform before the home government, he told them that serious dissent permeated every class of the community, and was bid in return to employ a still more stringent system of rule. To this Arrango replied that force was not remedy, and that to effectually reform the rebellious they must first reform the laws. His earnest reason carried conviction, and finally won concession. By his exertions the staple productions of the island were so much increased that the revenue, in place of falling short of the expenses of the government as his enemies had predicted, soon yielded a large surplus. He early raised his voice against the iniquitous slave trade, and suggested the introduction of white labor, though he admitted that the immediate and wholesale abolition of slavery was impracticable. This was the rock on which he split, as it regarded his influence with the Spaniards in Cuba, that is, with the planters and rich property holders. Slavery with them was a sine qua non. Many of them owned a thousand Africans each, and the institution, as an arbitrary power as well as the means of wealth, was ever dear to the Spanish heart. Former and subsequent Captains-General not only secretly encouraged the clandestine importation of slaves, after issuing an edict prohibiting it, but profited pecuniarily by the business. It was owing to his exertions that the duty on coffee, spirits, and cotton was remitted for a period of ten years, and that machinery for the sugar plantations was allowed to be imported into Cuba from the United States free of all duty. The patriotic services of Arrango were appreciated by the court of Madrid, although he was at times the inflexible opponent of its selfish schemes. The Cross of Charles III. showed the esteem in which he was held by that monarch. With a modesty which did him honor he declined to accept a title of nobility which was afterwards tendered to him by his king. This patriotic son of Cuba was at heart a republican, and declared that the king could make noblemen, but God only could make gentlemen. In 1813, when, by the adoption of the Constitution of 1812, Cuba became entitled to representation in the general Cortes,--a privilege but briefly enjoyed,--he went to Madrid as a deputy, and there achieved the crowning glory of his useful life: namely, the opening of the ports of the island to foreign trade. In 1817 he returned to his native land with the rank of Counselor of State and Financial Intendant of Cuba, also possessing the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella. He died in 1837, at the age of seventy-two, after a long and eminently useful life, bequeathing large sums of money for various public purposes in his native isle. When the invasion of Spain, which took place in 1808, produced the Constitution of 1812, Cuba was considered entitled, as we have stated, to enjoy its benefits, and it was so announced by royal statute; but political revolution at home and a manifest restiveness upon the island finally led in 1836 to the revoking of this royal statute, which had never been practically operative, and the old Constitution was proclaimed. Up to this period of time the various political events at home had disturbed but slightly the tranquillity of this rich province of Spain. The Cubans, although sensible of the progress of public intelligence and wealth under the protection of a few enlightened governors and through the influence of some distinguished and patriotic individuals, still felt that these advances were slow, partial, and limited. The most intelligent realized that there was no regular system; that the public interests were sure to suffer, confided to officials entrusted with unlimited power. They frequently saw themselves betrayed by a cupidity which impelled the authorities to enrich themselves in every possible way at the expense of general suffering. Added to these sources of discontent was the powerful influence exerted by the spectacle of the rapidly increasing greatness of the United States, where a portion of the Cuban youths were wont to receive their education. No matter in what political faith these youths had left home, they were sure to return republicans. There also were the examples of Mexico and Spanish South America, which had recently conquered with their blood their emancipation from monarchy. Liberal ideas were naturally diffused by Cubans who had traveled either in Europe or North America, there imbibing the spirit of modern civilization. But with a fatuity and obstinacy which has always characterized her, the mother country resolved to ignore all causes of discontent, and their significant influence as manifested by the people of the island. In place of yielding to the popular current and introducing a liberal and mild system of government, she drew the reins yet tighter, curtailing many former privileges. Thus it was that blind persistence in the fatal principle of despotic domination relaxed the natural bonds uniting Cuba and the mother country, and infused gall into the hearts of the governed. Obedience still continued, but it was the dangerous obedience of terror, not the secure and instinctive spirit of loyalty. This severity on the part of the home government has naturally given rise to several attempts to cast off the Spanish yoke. The first occurred in 1823, when Simon Bolivar offered to aid the disaffected party by throwing an invading force into the island. Another was made in 1826, and a third in 1828. In 1848 a conspiracy was formed at Cienfuegos and Trinidad to establish Cuban independence, under the leadership of General Narciso Lopez; but finding that his plans were premature, he escaped to this country, and here arranged a descent upon the island, which he led in person: this was in 1850. General Lopez, however, was not seconded by the timid natives, though they had freely pledged themselves to do so, and his expedition, after winning one decisive battle and several important skirmishes, was at last overpowered and its leader promptly executed. General Lopez was an adopted citizen of Cuba, and was married to one of her daughters. He was executed at the age of fifty-two. The Lopez expedition would seem to have been the most serious and best organized attempt at revolution in Cuba by invasion, though there have been formidable attempts since. From 1868 to 1876 Cuba may be said to have been in a state of chronic civil war. This outbreak was led by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, an able lawyer and wealthy planter of Bayamo, in the eastern department of the island. He raised the standard of independence on his estate, Demajagua, supported at the outset by less than fifty men. This was in October, 1868, and by the middle of November he had an organized army of twelve thousand men; poorly armed, it must be admitted, but united in purpose and of determined will. That portion of the island contiguous to Santiago, and between that city and Cienfuegos, was for a long period almost entirely in possession of the patriot forces. Here many sanguinary battles were fought with varying fortune, at terrible sacrifice of life, especially on the part of the government troops, over one hundred thousand of whom, first and last, are known to have perished in that district. Spain actually sent one hundred and forty-five thousand enlisted men to Cuba during the eight years of active warfare. Of this number those who finally returned to the European peninsula were but a few hundreds! It was publicly stated in the Cortes of Madrid that not enough of that immense force ever returned to fill a single regiment! The climate was far more fatal to these soldiers than were patriot bullets. The warfare was conducted by the native Cubans mostly on the guerrilla plan, and was ten times more destructive to the imported soldiers than to themselves. Discipline counted for little or nothing in contending with men who fought single-handed and from ambush, decimating the ranks of an invading column, who in turn could only fire at random. Exhaustion and promised concessions, which were, as usual with the Spanish government, never fulfilled, finally brought this struggle to an end; but it cost Spain many millions of dollars and the lives of over a hundred and fifty thousand men, saying nothing of the destruction of an enormous amount of property on the island, belonging to loyal Spaniards. Miles upon miles of thrifty plantations, with all their buildings and machinery, were laid waste, and remain so to this day. Since 1876 there have been roving bands of insurgents in existence, causing the authorities more or less serious trouble, leading them at times to make serious attempts at their entire suppression. But the mountains and half-inaccessible forests of the eastern department still serve to secrete many armed and disaffected people, whose frequent outbreaks are made public by the slow process of oral information. The press is forbidden to publish any news of this character. Thus it will be seen that, although the spirit of liberty may slumber in the island, it is by no means dead, nor is the intense hatred which exists between the home-born Spaniard and the native Cuban growing less from year to year. Indeed, the insurrection of Trinidad and Cienfuegos (1868) still smoulders, and any extreme political exigency would be liable to cause it to blaze forth with renewed force. The region where the insurgents have always made their rendezvous, and which they have virtually held for years, is nearest to Guantanamo and Santiago. This mountainous district is the resort of all runaway slaves, escaped criminals, and those designated as insurgents. These together form at the present time a roving community of several hundred desperate men. These refugees, divided into small bands, make predatory raids upon travelers and loyal planters, as we have described, to keep themselves supplied with the necessities of life other than those afforded by the prolific hand of Nature. Occasionally they are organized by some fresh leader, some daring native, stimulated by a spirit of patriotism, and possessing some executive ability; then follows a systematic outbreak of just sufficient importance to harass the government, and to form, perhaps, an excuse for demanding a fresh regiment of victims from the European peninsula. Such a guerrilla contest engages the worst passions of the combatants, and quarter is neither asked nor given when they come face to face. The bloodthirsty acts of both sides, as related to the author during his late visit to the spot, are too horrible to record in these pages. It is not legitimate warfare, but rather wholesale murder, which characterizes these occasions, and there is no expedient of destruction not resorted to by both the refugees and the pursuing soldiers. The nature of the country favors the revolutionists, and determines their mode of conflict. Thus far, when the irregular bands have been strong enough to meet these detachments of regulars sent into their neighborhood to capture them, they have nearly always beaten them gallantly, and this has served to perpetuate their hopes, desperate as is a cause which only outlaws, escaped criminals, and slaves dare to fight for. These people appear to be well supplied with arms and ammunition, which it is said are smuggled to them from sympathizers in this country, particularly from Florida. Though their ranks are supposed to embrace but small numbers, still they form a nucleus at all times, about which discontented spirits may gather. Thus it is found necessary to quarter a foreign army of thirty thousand soldiers upon the people at the present time, while half the navy of Spain lies anchored in the ports of the island. One great drawback and defect in the character of the native Cubans is a want of self-reliance. The remedy for the outrageous oppression under which they have so long struggled lies within themselves; "for they can conquer who believe they can." In the consciousness of strength is strength, but the Creole republicans have never yet evinced the necessary degree of true manhood to challenge general outside sympathy, or to command the respect of other nationalities. The numerous revolutionary outbreaks upon the island--so frequent in the last half century as to be chronic--have all been of the most insignificant character, compared with the importance of the occasion and the object in view. These efforts have mostly been made from without, almost entirely unsupported from within the borders of Cuba, with the exception of that of 1868. It appears incredible that an intelligent people, within so short a distance of our Southern coast, constantly visited by the citizens of a free republic, and having the example of successful revolt set them by the men of the same race, both in the North and the South, weighed down by oppression almost without parallel, should never have aimed an effectual blow at their oppressors. It would seem that the softness of the unrivaled climate of those skies, beneath which it is luxury only to exist, has unnerved this people, and that the effeminate spirit of the original inhabitants had descended in retribution to the posterity of their conquerors. In closing these brief chapters relating to the early history of the island of Cuba, and in bringing the record up to our own period, some natural reflections suggest themselves as to the present condition of the mother country. We follow with more than passing interest the condition of Spain, whose history is so closely interwoven with our own. From the close of the fifteenth century our paths have run on in parallel lines, but while we have gone on increasing in power and wealth, she has sunk in the scale of decadence with a rapidity no less surprising than has been the speed of our own progress. At the commencement of the sixteenth century Spain threatened to become the mistress of the world, as Rome had been before her. She may be said to have at that period dominated Europe. In art she was in the very foremost position: Murillo, Velasquez, Ribera, and other famous painters were her honored sons. In literature she was also distinguished: both Cervantes and Lope de Vega contributed to her greatness and lasting fame. While, in discoverers and conquerors, she sent forth Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro. The banners of Castile and Aragon floated alike on the Pacific and the margin of the Indian Ocean. Her ships sailed in every sea, and brought home freights of fabulous value from all the regions of the earth. Her manufacturers produced the richest silks and velvets; her soil yielded corn and wine; her warriors were adventurous and brave; her soldiers inherited the gallantry of the followers of Charles V.; her cities were the splendid abodes of luxury, refinement, and elegance. She was the court of Europe, the acknowledged leader of chivalry and of grandeur. This is the picture of what Spain was at no remote period of time, but in her instance we have an example showing us that states are no more exempt than individuals from the mutability of fate. So was it with Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and Rome, though in their case we look far back into the vista of history to recall the change, whereas in the instance of Spain we are contemporary witnesses. From a first-class power, how rapidly she has sunk into comparative insignificance! She has been shorn of her wealthy colonies, one after another, in the East and in the West, holding with feeble grasp a few inconsiderable islands only besides this gem of the Antilles, the choicest jewel of her crown. Extremely poor and deeply indebted, she has managed for years to extort by means of the most outrageous system of taxation a large share of her entire revenue from the island of Cuba, her home population having long since become exhausted by over-burdensome imposts. Her nobles of to-day are an effeminate, soulless, and imbecile race, while the common people, with some excellent qualities, are yet ignorant, cruel, and passionate. The whole country is divided against itself, the tottering throne being with difficulty upheld. Even the elements have of late seemed to combine against her, decimating whole cities of her southern possessions by earthquakes, and smiting her people with pestilence. This simple statement of her present situation is patent to all who read and observe. It is not an overdrawn picture. In it the moralist beholds the retributive justice of providence. As Spain in the plenitude of her power was ambitious, cruel, and perfidious, so has the measure which she meted out to others been in return accorded to herself. As with fire and sword she swept the Aztec and the Incas from Mexico and Peru, so was she at last driven from these genial countries by their revolted inhabitants. The spoiler has been despoiled, the victor has been vanquished, and thus has Spain met the just fate clearly menaced by the Scriptures to those who smite with the sword. CHAPTER VI. Geographical. -- A Remarkable Weed. -- Turtle-Hunting. -- Turtle-Steaks in Olden Times. -- The Gulf Stream. -- Deep-Sea Soundings. -- Mountain Range of Cuba. -- Curious Geological Facts. -- Subterranean Caverns. -- Wild Animals. -- The Rivers of the Island. -- Fine Harbors. -- Historic Memories of the Caribbean Sea. -- Sentinel of the Gulf. -- Importance of the Position. -- Climate. -- Hints for Invalids. -- Matanzas. -- Execution of a Patriot. -- Valley of Yumuri; Caves of Bellamar; Puerto Principe; Cardenas. Having thus briefly glanced at the historical and political story of Cuba,--whose very name seems bathed in sunshine and fragrance, yet bedewed with human tears,--let us now consider its peculiarities of climate, soil, and population, together with its geographical characteristics. The form of the island is quite irregular, resembling the blade of a Turkish scimitar slightly curved back, or that of a long narrow crescent, presenting its convex side to the north. It stretches away in this shape from east to west, throwing its western end into a curve, as if to form a barrier to the outlet of the Gulf of Mexico, and as if at some ancient period it had formed a part of the American continent; severed on its north side from the Florida peninsula by the wearing of the Gulf Stream, and from Yucatan, on its southwestern point, by a current setting into the Gulf. Two broad channels are thus formed, by either of which the Mexican Gulf is entered. These channels are nearly of the same width, somewhat exceeding a hundred miles each, the northern passage being a few miles the broader. The Bahama Banks extend along its northern coast-line about fifty or sixty miles distant, where commences the group of many small isles known as the Bahamas, and of which we have already treated. On her eastern extreme, near Cape Maysi, Cuba is within about fifty miles of the western shore of Hayti, from which it is separated by the Windward Passage. The southern shore is washed by the Caribbean Sea, which is also here and there interspersed with small islands of little importance. One hundred and fifty miles due south lies the British island of Jamaica, with a superficial area of over four thousand square miles. Still further to the eastward, on the other side of Hayti, lies Porto Rico (like Cuba a Spanish possession), and the two groups of islands known as the Leeward and Windward isles. These are of various nationalities, including English, French, and Dutch, thus completing the entire region familiarly known to us as the West Indies. In approaching the coast from the Windward isles, the observant traveler will notice the fields of what is called gulf-weed, which floats upon the surface of the sea. It is a unique genus, found nowhere except in these tropical waters, and must not be confounded with the sea-weed encountered by Atlantic steamers off the Banks of Newfoundland, and about the edges of the Gulf Stream in that region. This singular and interesting weed propagates itself on the waves, and there sustains, as on the shore of New Providence, zoöphytes and mollusks which also abound in these latitudes. The poetical theory relating to this sargasso, and possibly to the animals that cling to it, is that it marks the site of an Atlantic continent sunk long ages since, and that, transformed from a rooting to a floating plant, it wanders round and round as if in search of the rocks upon which it once grew. The southern shore of Cuba presents much of special interest to the conchologist in the variety and beauty of the sea-shells that abound upon its beaches. The water is of an exquisite color, a brilliant green, very changeable, like liquid opal. Were an artist truthfully to depict it, he would be called color-mad. Northern skies are never reflected in waters of such fanciful hues. Some beautiful specimens of white corals are found here, but they are not a characteristic of the coast. On that portion bordering the Old Bahama Channel, and also opposite the Isle of Pines, which Columbus named Evangelista,--on this south shore, large numbers of turtles are taken annually, which produce the best quality of tortoise-shell. It is strange that the habits of these creatures down here in the Caribbean Sea should so closely resemble those of the tiny tortoises described by Thoreau as frequenting Walden Pond. The female turtle digs the hole in which to deposit her eggs on the sandy beach, just above the margin of high tide, generally choosing a moonlight night for the purpose. The hole is often so large that the turtle will require an hour of industrious labor to dig it to her entire satisfaction. Observing the strictest silence, the turtle-hunter steals upon the animal, and with a single motion turns it upon its back, rendering it utterly helpless, after which it can be secured at will. Thousands are annually caught in this manner. It is a curious fact worth recalling to memory that four hundred years ago, when Columbus first landed upon the island, he found that the aborigines kept turtle corrals near the beach, amply supplied with these animals. From them they procured eggs, and also furnished themselves with the only meat which it was possible to obtain, if we except that of the little "voiceless dog" which they hunted, and such birds as they could snare. Probably as many turtles were taken by those Carib Indians in 1492 as are caught by the fishermen this year of our Lord, in the same waters, showing how inexhaustible is the supply of Neptune's kingdom. Modern epicures may not therefore claim any distinction as to the priority of discovery touching turtle soup and turtle steaks, both of which were certainly indulged in by the Caribs in Columbus' time, and probably they were in vogue many centuries previous. One neither departs from nor approaches the Cuban shore without crossing that marvelous ocean river, the Gulf Stream, with banks and bottom of cold water, while its body and surface are warm. Its color, in the region of the gulf where it seems to have its rise, is indigo blue, so distinct that the eye can follow its line of demarkation where it joins the common waters of the sea in their prairie-green. Its surface temperature on the coast of the United States is from 75° to 80° Fahrenheit. Its current, of a uniform speed of four to five miles per hour, expends immense power in its course, and moves a body of water in the latitude of the Carolina coast fully two hundred miles wide. This aqueous body exceeds in quantity the rivers of the Mississippi and the Amazon multiplied one thousand times. Its temperature diminishes very gradually, while it moves thousands of leagues, until one branch loses itself in Arctic regions, and the other breaks on the coast of Europe. It is well known to navigators that one branch of the Gulf Stream finds its outlet northward from the Caribbean Sea through the Windward Passage, and that here the current extends to the depth of eight hundred fathoms; the width, however, in this section is not over ten miles. It will be nothing new to tell the reader that the sea, especially in its proximity to the continents, has a similar topographical conformation beneath its surface. The bottom consists of hills, mountains, and valleys, like the surface of the earth upon which we live. A practical illustration of the fact is afforded in the soundings taken by the officers of our Coast Survey in the Caribbean Sea, where a valley was found giving a water depth of three thousand fathoms, twenty-five miles south of Cuba. The Cayman islands, in that neighborhood, are the summit of mountains bordering this deep valley at the bottom of the sea. It is known to extend over seven hundred miles, from between Cuba and Jamaica nearly to the head of the bay of Honduras, with an average breadth of eighty miles. How suggestive the subject of these submarine Alps! Thus the island of Grand Cayman, scarcely twenty feet above sea level, is the top of a mountain twenty thousand five hundred and sixty-eight feet above the bottom of the submarine valley beside which it rises,--an altitude exceeding that of any mountain on the North American continent. A little more than five miles, or say twenty-seven thousand feet, is the greatest depth yet sounded at sea. With an extensive coast-line particularly well adapted for the purpose, smuggling is at all times successfully carried on in Cuba, stimulated by an almost prohibitory tariff. It is well understood that many of the most prosperous merchants in Havana are secretly engaged in this business. The blindness of minor officials is easily purchased. The eastern department of the island is most notorious for this class of illegal trade. It was through these agencies that the revolutionists were so well supplied with arms, ammunition, and other necessities during the eight years of civil war. While we are writing these lines, the cable brings us news of a fresh landing of "filibusters" on the shores in this immediate neighborhood. Cuba is the most westerly of the West Indian isles, and compared with the others has nearly twice as much superficial extent of territory, being about as large as England proper, without the principality of Wales. Its greatest length from east to west is very nearly eight hundred miles; its narrowest part is over twenty miles, and its average width about forty miles. The circumference of the island is set down at two thousand miles, and it is supposed to contain thirty-five thousand square miles. The face of the interior is undulating, with an average level of three hundred feet above the surface of the sea. The narrow form of the island, and the chain of mountains which divides it throughout its whole length, leave a limited course for its rivers, and consequently most of these in the rainy season become torrents, and during the rest of the year are nearly dried up. Those streams which sustain themselves at all seasons are well stocked with fine fish, and afford to lovers of the piscatory art admirable sport. Near their mouths some of the rivers, like those of the opposite coast of Florida, are frequented by crocodiles. The chain of mountains running through the centre of the island, more or less broken in its course, is lofty in the east, but gradually diminishes in elevation towards the west, until it becomes a series of gently undulating hills of one or two hundred feet above sea level, ceasing as a connected range in the vicinity of Matanzas. On the easterly end this range of mountains approaches the south coast between Puerto Principe and Trinidad. The country lying between Cape Cruz, Cape Maysi, and the town of Holguin has the highest elevations; the most lofty point, Turquino, lately measured, has a height of ten thousand eight hundred feet. Illustrative of the great revolutions which the globe has undergone in its several geological epochs, petrified shells and bivalves are found on the summits of these highest peaks, surrounded by coral rocks, both of which differ entirely from those at present existing on the shores of the Antilles. An immense bowlder was pointed out to us on the summit of La Gran Piedra, at an elevation of five thousand feet, of totally different composition from any other rocks on the island. The great mystery is how such a mass of solid stone could have got there. Most of these mountains are thickly wooded, some of them to their very tops, and appear to be in a perpetual state of verdure. There are mahogany trees in these hills reported to be of almost fabulous dimensions, besides other trees of great age. Some idea of the excellence of the timber grown in Cuba may be had from the fact that over one hundred Spanish ships of war--some of which were of the largest size, mounting a hundred and twenty guns--have been built from native stock at the port of Havana. Copper ore is found in abundance, as well as silver and iron, in the mountains. Snow is never known to fall even in these elevated districts, and of course in no other part of the island. In the interior, the extreme heat of the low-lying sea-coast and cities is not experienced, and the yellow fever is unknown. Low, level swampy land is found only on the southern coast, where there are some wild deer, wild cats and dogs, which are hunted; the former introduced into Cuba half a century since, the two latter descended from domestic animals. Large tracts of undulating country are without trees, affording good pasturage. In some of the mountains are extensive caves, not unlike the caves of Bellamar near the city of Matanzas, in which are still to be found the bones of an unknown race, while several of these elevations are so precipitous as to be nearly inaccessible. Travelers who have visited the Bay of Biscay, on the French and Spanish shore near Biarritz, have observed how the rocks have been worn into caverns, arches, alcoves, and honeycombed formations by the action of the waters for centuries. Just so the soft limestone strata beneath the surface of Cuba, in many portions of the island, have been hollowed out, tunneled, and formed into caves, by the tremendous downpour and wash of tropical rains. So the action of the sea has created a cave under Moro Castle, at the mouth of the harbor of Havana, as well as under that other Moro which stands guard over the entrance of Santiago de Cuba. The existence of these subterranean caverns has often led to serious accidents. In some instances buildings which were by chance erected just over them have suddenly been swallowed up as though by an earthquake. Many of the rivers are navigable for short distances. The longest is the Cauto, in the eastern department, which, rising in the Sierra del Cobre, passes between Holguin and Jiguani, and empties on the south coast a little north of Manzanillo. It is navigable for half its length, between fifty and sixty leagues. The river Ay has falls in its course two hundred feet high, and a natural bridge spanning it, nearly as remarkable as that of Virginia. The Sagua le Grande is navigable for five leagues, and the same may be said of the river Sasa. The Agabama, emptying on the south coast near Trinidad, is also partially navigable. There are two hundred and sixty rivers in all, independent of rivulets and torrents. So abundantly is the island supplied with fresh-water springs, especially on the south side, that the pure liquid filters through the fissures of the stratified rock in such quantities as to form, by hydrostatic pressure, springs in the sea itself some distance from the shore. The sulphurous and thermal springs of San Diego are the resort of numerous invalids annually, who come hither from Europe and America. The coast and harbors of Cuba are carefully marked for the purpose of navigation by eighteen well-placed lighthouses, visible from fifteen to twenty miles at sea, according to the importance of the surrounding points. That which stands in Moro Castle, on the south side of the harbor's entrance at Havana, is eighty feet in height and about a hundred and fifty from the level of the sea. It is visible in clear weather twenty miles from shore. In honor of a former Governor-General this lighthouse bears the inscription "O'Donnell, 1844," in mammoth letters. So plain and safe is the entrance to this harbor, which in the narrowest part is some hundred yards wide, that a pilot is hardly necessary, though foreign vessels generally take one. There is little or no tide on this part of the coast, the variations never exceeding two feet. No regular ebb and flow is therefore observable, but when the land breeze rises there is a very slight tide-way setting out of the harbor. No country in the world of the size of this island has so many large and fine harbors. They number twenty-nine on its northern side and twenty-eight on the southern. The well-defined water-line along the yellow, rusty rocks of the coast shows the mark of ages, and also that there has been no upheaval since the land took its present shape. Where there are no regular harbors the shore is indented with numerous deep channels forming inlets, safe only for native boatmen, as the winding course of the blue waters covers myriads of sunken rocks. On the southern side, opposite the Isle of Pines, there are some beautiful reaches of beach, over which the gentle surf rolls continuously with a murmur so soft as to seem like the whispered secrets of the sea. Yet what frightful historic memories brood over these deep waters of the Archipelago, where for nearly two centuries floated and fought the ships of sea-robbers of every nationality, and where the cunning but guilty slave-clippers, fresh from the coast of Africa, loaded with kidnapped men and women, made their harbor! With all their dreamy beauty, the tropics are full of sadness, both in their past and present history. The occasional hurricanes, which prove so disastrous to the Bahamas and other isles in the immediate vicinity of Cuba, rarely extend their influence to its shores, but the bursts of fury which these usually tranquil seas sometimes indulge in are not excelled in violence in the worst typhoon regions. The nearest port of the island to this continent is Matanzas, lying due south from Cape Sable, Florida, a distance of a hundred and thirty miles. Havana is located some sixty miles west of Matanzas, and it is here that the island divides the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, whose coast-line, measuring six thousand miles, finds the outlet of its commerce along the shore of Cuba, almost within range of the guns in Moro Castle. Lying thus at our very door as it were, this island stands like a sentinel, guarding the approaches of the Gulf of Mexico, whose waters wash the shores of five of the United States, and by virtue of the same position barring the entrance of the great river which drains half the continent of North America. Nor does the importance of the situation end here. Cuba keeps watch and ward over our communication with California by way of the isthmus. The peculiar formation of the southeastern shore of this continent, and the prevalence of the trade-winds, with the oceanic current from east to west, make the ocean passage skirting the shore of Cuba the natural outlet for the commerce also of Venezuela, New Granada, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. It is not surprising, therefore, when we realize the commanding position of the island, that so much of interest attaches to its ultimate destiny. Cuba seems formed to become the very button on Fortune's cap. No wonder that the Abbé Raynal pronounced it to be the boulevard of the New World, or that the Spanish historian called it the fairest emerald in the crown of Ferdinand and Isabella. Under any other government in Christendom than that of Spain, the island would to-day have been one vast smiling garden, for its natural advantages are absolutely unequaled. To oppress and rob its inhabitants has been the unvarying policy of the home government from first to last. The undisguised system has been to extort from them every farthing possible in the way of taxes. No legitimate business could sustain itself against the enormous exactions of the Spanish rule. Coffee and cotton planting have been absolutely driven out of the island by the taxes imposed upon their production. In short, the mother country has carried her system of oppression and despotism in Cuba to the utmost stretch of human audacity. Probably no place has a finer or more desirable climate than has the main portion of Cuba, with the clear atmosphere of the low latitudes, no mist, the sun seldom obscured, and a season of endless summer. We do not wonder that the Northern invalid turns instinctively towards so inviting a clime, where Nature in all her moods is so regal. The appearance of the sky at night is far brighter and more beautiful than at the North. The atmosphere does not seem to lose its transparency with the departure of the day. Sunset is remarkable for its soft mellow beauty, all too brief to a New England eye accustomed to the lingering brilliancy of our twilights. For more than half a century the island has been the resort of invalids from colder climes in search of health, especially those laboring under pulmonary affections. Such have rarely failed to realize more or less benefit from the mild and equable temperature. The climate so uniformly soft and soothing, the vegetation so thriving and beautiful, the fruits so delicious and abundant, give it a character akin to fairyland. Here Nature seems ever in a tender, loving mood, the very opposite of her cold temperament at the North. The best time to visit the island, for those who do so in search of health, is from the beginning of January to the middle of May. It is imprudent to remain in the cities of Cuba later than the latter period, as the fever season then commences. The invalid will find that very many physical comforts, and some things deemed imperative at home, must be sacrificed here as quite unattainable: such, for instance, as good beds, strict cleanliness, good milk, and sweet butter. The climatic advantages must suffice for such deprivations. During the greater portion of the year it is dry and hot, the rainy season commencing in June and ending in September. The northeast trade-winds blow over the island from March to October, and though it is especially important to avoid all draughts in the tropics, still one can always find a sufficiently cool and comfortable temperature somewhere, when the trade-wind prevails. To persons in the early stages of consumption this region holds forth great promise of relief; the author can bear witness of remarkable benefit having been realized in many instances. At the period of the year when New England invalids most require to avoid the rigors of the prevailing east winds, namely, in February, March, April, and early May, the island of Cuba is in the glory of high summer, and enjoying the healthiest period of its annual returns. When consumption originates in the island,--as was also found to be the case at Nassau,--it runs its course to a fatal end with such rapidity that the natives consider it to be a contagious disease. Early in May the unacclimated would do well to leave, taking passage up the Gulf to New Orleans, or across the Gulf Stream, which here runs thirty-two miles in width, to Key West, Florida, thence by boat to Tampa Bay, and by railroad to Sanford, and by the St. John's River to St. Augustine, enjoying a brief stay at the latter places, where every requisite convenience can be enjoyed. Jacksonville should not be missed, and by coming north thus slowly and pleasantly, the change of climate is not realized, and June weather will greet the returning traveler with genial warmth. Owing to the proximity of the northwestern part of Cuba to our own continent, the climate is somewhat variable, and at a height of five hundred feet above the level of the sea, ice is sometimes, though rarely formed; but, as has already been said in these notes, snow never falls upon the island. At long intervals Cuba has been visited by brief hailstorms, and persons who tell you this will add, "but we never have known it in our day." In the cities and near the swamps, the yellow fever, that scourge of all hot climates, prevails from the middle of June to the last of October; but in the interior of the island, where the visitor is at a wholesome distance from humidity and stagnant water, it is no more unhealthy than our own cities in summer. It is doubtful if Havana, even in the fever season, is any more unhealthy than New Orleans at the same period of the year. Fevers of different degrees of malignity prevail from May to November, and occasionally throughout the year. Among these the yellow fever is the most dangerous, and sooner or later all resident foreigners seem to suffer from it, as a sort of acclimation; once experienced, however, one is seldom attacked a second time. In the ports yellow fever is often induced by carelessness and exposure; excesses on the part of foreign sailors are frequently the cause of its fatal attack upon them. The thermometer is never known to rise so high in Havana or Santiago, the opposite extremes of the island, as it does sometimes in New York and Boston. The average temperature is recorded as being 77°, maximum 89°, minimum 50° Fahrenheit. We have been thus elaborate as regards this matter because it is of such general interest to all invalids who annually seek an equable clime. The principal cities are Havana, with a population of nearly three hundred thousand; Matanzas, with fifty thousand; Puerto Principe, thirty thousand; Cienfuegos, twenty-five thousand; Trinidad, fourteen thousand; San Salvador, ten thousand; Manzanillo, Cardenas, Nuevitas, Sagua la Grande, and Mariel. Among its largest and finest harbors those of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Nipe, and Nuevitas are the best; the bay of Matanzas is also large, but shallow. This city stands next to Havana in population, but not in commercial importance. It is said to be healthier than the capital, but it lacks those attractions of life and gayety which are essential even to invalids to render them contented. The streets are wide, and many of the Moorish characteristics of Spanish cities, so common in both this island and the European peninsula, are wanting here. It was built much later and more under foreign direction than Havana. The secret of the superior health of Matanzas over that of the capital is undoubtedly because of its better drainage and general cleanliness. Located in one of the most fertile portions of the island, the city extends up the picturesque and verdant hills by which the bay is surrounded, in the form of an amphitheatre. The fortifications are of rather a meagre character, and could not withstand a well organized attack for half an hour. Modern improvements in the construction of heavy guns and projectiles have rendered all the forts in Cuba of no importance as a means of defense against a first-class invading fleet. The custom house is the most prominent building which strikes the eye on approaching the city by water; though built of stone, it is only one story in height, and was erected at the commencement of the present century. On the heights above the city the inhabitants have planted their country seats, from whence the view of the widespreading bay forms a delightful picture. The climate is thought to be especially adapted for the cure of throat and lung diseases, and the city is annually resorted to by those seeking relief from these troubles, as also by those afflicted with neuralgia and rheumatism. The first land made by southern-bound steamers from Boston and New York is the Monte del Pan, or Bread Mountain, forming a lofty background for the city. There are three large churches in Matanzas, a well appointed and spacious theatre, a bull-ring, and cock-pits. Statistics show that the custom-house receipts of the port reach about two million dollars annually. There are two railroads connecting the city with Havana, one of which runs also to the interior southeasterly to Cienfuegos, Sagua, and Villa Clara, intersecting a rich sugar-producing country, from whence it brings a large amount of freight to the coast for shipment. On these Cuban roads one rides in American-built cars, drawn by American engines, and often run by American engineers. Railroads were in use in Cuba before they were adopted in any other Spanish-speaking country, and there are now nearly a thousand miles in active operation on the island. Matanzas is bounded on the north by the river Yumuri, and on the south by that of San Juan. The town is built upon the site of a former Indian village, known to the early discoverers by the name of Yucayo. It is upon the whole a well-built city, containing some small public squares and a pretty Plaza de Armas, like that of Havana, ornamented with choice trees and flowers, with a statue of Ferdinand VII. in its centre. It was in this square that Gabriel Concepcion de la Valdez, a mulatto poet and patriot of Cuba, was shot by the soldiers of the line. He was accused of complicity with the slave insurrection of 1844, when the blacks attempted to gain their freedom. At the time of his execution the first volley fired by the troops failed to touch a vital spot, and the brave victim, bleeding from many wounds, still stood erect, facing his executioners. He then pointed to his heart, and said in a calm clear voice, "Aim here!" The order was at once obeyed, and the second volley sent the heroic man to that haven where there is no distinction as to color. This martyr, of whom comparatively little is known to the public, possessed all the true elements of a poet. Many of his productions have been preserved in print, and some were translated and republished in England a few years since. The Plaza of Matanzas is small, smaller even than that of Cienfuegos, but it presents within its circumscribed space a great variety of tropical trees and flowers, over which stand, sentinel-like, a few royal palms with their ashen-gray stems and concentric rings. The star of Bethlehem, fifteen feet high, was here seen full of lovely scarlet blossoms; the southern jasmine, yellow as gold, was in its glory; mignonette, grown to a graceful tree of twenty feet in height, was fragrant and full of blossoms, close beside the delicate vinca, decked in white and red. Some broad-leaved bananas were thriving in the Plaza, while creeping all over that tree and shrub combined, the Spanish bayonet, were pink, purple, and white morning-glories, at once so familiar and suggestive. Opposite the Plaza are several government offices, and two or three very large, fine club-houses, remarkable for the excellence of their appointments and the spaciousness of the public rooms. Club life prevails in Matanzas, as usual at the expense of domestic life, just as it does in Havana, being very much like London in this respect. It is forbidden to discuss politics in these clubs, the hours being occupied mostly over games of chance, such as cards, dominoes, chess, and checkers. Gambling is as natural and national in Cuba as in China. Many Chinese are seen about the streets and stores of Matanzas, as, indeed, all over the island--poor fellows who have survived their apprenticeship and are now free. They are peaceful, do not drink spirits, work from morning until night, never meddle with politics, and live on one half they can earn, so as to save enough to return to their beloved native land. You may persuade him to assent to any form of religion as a temporary duty, but John is a heathen at heart, and a heathen he will die. The famous afternoon drive of Matanzas was formerly the San Carlos Paseo. It has fine possibilities, and is lined and beautifully ornamented with thrifty Indian laurels. It overlooks the spacious harbor and outer bay, but is now utterly neglected and abandoned; even the roadway is green with vegetation and gullied with deep hollows. It is the coolest place in the city at the evening hour, but the people have become so poor that there are hardly a dozen private vehicles owned in the city, and, consequently, its famous drive is deserted. Matanzas, like all the cities of Cuba, is under the shadow of depressed business, the evidences of which meet one on all hands. The two objects of special interest to strangers who visit Matanzas are, first, the valley of the Yumuri, which may be described briefly as a narrow gorge four miles long, through which flows the river of the same name. The view of this lovely valley will recall, to any one who has visited Spain, the Vega of Granada. There are several positions from which to obtain a good view of the valley, but that enjoyed from the Chapel of Monserrate, on the hill just back of the town, is nearest, and was most satisfactory to us. The view includes a valley, peaceful, tropical, and verdant, embracing plantations, groves, and farms, in the midst of which the river glides like a silver thread through the verdure, and empties into the Bay of Matanzas. The universal belief is that this vale was once a vast, deep lake, walled across the present seaward opening of the valley, from whence a fall may have existed as a natural overflow. Some fearful convulsion of nature rent this bowl and precipitated the lake into the ocean, leaving only the river's course. The second object of note which the visitor will not willingly miss is a sight of the famous caves of Bellamar, situated about two leagues from the city proper. It is customary to make this trip in a volante, and it is quite the thing to ride, at least once, in this unique vehicle, the only article ever invented in Cuba. The road to the caves is extremely rough, and this vehicle is best adapted to pass over the irregularities. If there are only gentlemen of the party, go on horseback. On entering the caves the visitor should throw off any extra clothing that can conveniently be left behind, as it is very warm within, and on coming out, unless one has an extra garment to put on, too great a change of temperature will be realized. These singular caves lead three hundred feet and more beneath the surface, and present beauties to the eye incident to all such subterranean formations. They were discovered accidentally, a few years since, by some stone quarriers, who, on opening into them, imagined they had broken the crust of the earth. In driving to the caves the Bay Street road, through the city, should be taken, which forms one of the finest thoroughfares of any Cuban town. The architecture of the dwellings is that of combined Italian, Grecian, and Moorish, ornamented with colonnades and verandas of stone and iron. Fine as the façades of these houses are,--none above one story in height,--they present a faded and forlorn aspect, a sort of dead-and-alive appearance, yet in accordance with life and business, not only in Matanzas, but all over the island. This one boulevard of Matanzas ends by the shore of the bay, where the fine marine view will cause you to forget all other impressions for the moment, but you will not tarry here. Turning eastward you soon strike the road to the caves, and _such_ a road--it is like the bed of a dry mountain torrent. Persons visiting Matanzas must make up their minds to be content with indifferent hotel accommodations. In fact there are no really good hotels in Cuba; those which exist are poor and expensive. On the inland routes away from the cities there are none, and the humble hostelries, or posadas, as they are called, are so indifferent in point of comforts as not to deserve the name of inns. As a rule, invalids rarely go beyond the cities to remain over night. Brief and pleasant sojourns may be made at Havana, Cienfuegos, Matanzas, and Sagua la Grande, from whence excursions can be made by rail or otherwise and return on the same day. Let us qualify these remarks, as applied to the Hotel Louvre at Matanzas. There was a degree of picturesqueness about this establishment which was not without its attraction, and it was certainly the most cleanly public house in which we found a temporary home while on the island. Its rooms surrounded a bright clean court, or patio, planted with creeping vines, palmettos, bananas, and some fragrant flowering shrubs. The dining-room is virtually out of doors, being open on all sides, and opposite the hotel is a small plaza with tropical trees, backed by an old, musty church, whose bell had the true Spanish trick of giving tongue at most inopportune moments. The rooms of the Louvre are quite circumscribed as to space, and the partitions separating the apartments do not reach to the ceiling, so that privacy, night or day, is out of the question. The floors are all tiled in white marble, and the attendance is courteous. One does not look for a choice bill of fare in Cuba, and therefore will not be disappointed on that score. You will be charged Fifth Avenue prices, however, if you do not get Fifth Avenue accommodations. If you have learned in your travels to observe closely, to study men as well as localities, to enjoy Nature in her ever-varying moods, and to delight in luxurious fruits, flowers, and vegetation, you will find quite enough to occupy and amuse the mind, and make you forget altogether the grosser senses of appetite. Puerto Principe is the capital of the central department of Cuba, and is located well inland. The trade of the place, from the want of water carriage, is inconsiderable, and bears no proportion to the number of its inhabitants, which aggregates nearly thirty-one thousand. The product of the neighborhood, to find means of export, must first make its way twelve and a half leagues to Nuevitas, from whence, in return, it receives its foreign supplies. The two places are now, however, connected by a railroad. Puerto Principe is about one hundred and fifty leagues from Havana. Its original location, as founded by Velasquez in 1514, was at Nuevitas, but the inhabitants, when the place was feeble in numbers, were forced to remove from the coast to avoid the fierce incursions of the pirates, as did the people of Trinidad, who removed from the harbor of Casilda. Cardenas is situated a hundred and twenty miles from Havana on the north coast, and is the youngest town of note in Cuba, having been founded so late as 1827. It has a population of between four and five thousand. Its prosperity is mostly owing to the great fertility of the land by which it is surrounded. It is called the American city, because of the large number of Americans doing business here, and also because the English language is so universally spoken by the people who reside in the place. The Plaza contains an excellent marble statue of Columbus, and is tastefully ornamented with tropical verdure. In the harbor of Cardenas is seen one of those curious springs of fresh water which bubble up beneath the salt sea. The city is the centre of a sugar-producing district, and a considerable portion of the sugar crop of the vicinity of Havana is also shipped from this port to America. It is connected with both the metropolis and Matanzas by rail, and is well worthy of a visit by all who can find the necessary time for doing so. Between Havana and Nuevitas, along the northern slope of the island, are many vast tracts of unimproved land of the best quality. Much of it is overgrown with cedar, ebony, mahogany, and other valuable timber; but a large proportion is savanna or prairie, which might, with little difficulty, be reduced to cultivation. The timber alone, which is often found in large compact bodies, would pay the cost of the land and the expense of clearing it. Many branches of agriculture are neglected which might be made very remunerative, but it will never be brought about except by foreign capital and tact. The natives have not the requisite enterprise and industry. While these chapters are passing through the press, the home government is discussing in the Cortes the propriety of making a large loan to the Cubans for the purpose of bringing the lands above referred to into market, as well as rendering others accessible. But it is doubtful if anything practical is accomplished, unless foreign interest should be enlisted. CHAPTER VII. City of Havana. -- First Impressions. -- The Harbor. -- Institutions. -- Lack of Educational Facilities. -- Cuban Women. -- Street Etiquette. -- Architecture. -- Domestic Arrangements. -- Barred Windows and Bullet-Proof Doors. -- Public Vehicles. -- Uncleanliness of the Streets. -- Spanish or African! -- The Church Bells. -- Home-Keeping Habits of Ladies. -- Their Patriotism. -- Personal Characteristics. -- Low Ebb of Social Life. -- Priestcraft. -- Female Virtue. -- Domestic Ties. -- A Festive Population. -- Cosmetics. -- Sea-Bathing. Havana is a thoroughly representative city,--Cuban and nothing else. Its history embraces in no small degree that of all the island, being the centre of its talent, wealth, and population. It has long been reckoned the eighth commercial capital of the world. Moro Castle, with its Dahlgren guns peeping out through the yellow stones, and its tall sentinel lighthouse, stands guard over the narrow entrance of the harbor; the battery of La Punta on the opposite shore answering to the Moro. There are also the long range of cannon and barracks on the city side, and the massive fortress of the Cabanas crowning the hill behind the Moro. All these are decorated with the red and yellow flag of Spain,--the banner of blood and gold. So many and strong fortifications show how important the home government regard the place. The harbor or bay is shaped like one's outspread hand, with the wrist for an entrance, and is populous with the ships of all nations. It presents at all times a scene of great maritime activity. Besides the national ships of other countries and those of Spain, mail steamers from Europe and America are coming and going daily, also coasting steamers from the eastern and southern shores of the island, added to regular lines for Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean Sea. The large ferry steamers plying constantly between the city and the Regla shore, the fleet of little sailing boats, foreign yachts, and rowboats, glancing in the burning sunlight, create a scene of great maritime interest. The city presents a large extent of public buildings, cathedrals, antique and venerable churches. It has been declared in its prosperity to be the richest place for its number of square miles in the world, but this cannot be said of it at the present time. There is nothing grand in its appearance as one enters the harbor and comes to anchor, though Baron Humboldt pronounced it the gayest and most picturesque sight in America. Its multitude of churches, domes, and steeples are not architecturally remarkable, and are dominated by the colossal prison near the shore. This immense quadrangular edifice flanks the Punta, and is designed to contain five thousand prisoners at a time. The low hills which make up the distant background are not sufficiently high to add much to the general effect. The few palm trees which catch the eye here and there give an Oriental aspect to the scene, quite in harmony with the atmospheric tone of intense sunshine. Unlike Santiago or Matanzas, neither the city nor its immediate environs is elevated, so that the whole impression is that of flatness, requiring some strength of background to form a complete picture. The martial appearance of the Moro and the Cabanas, bristling with cannon, is the most vivid effect of the scene, taken as a whole. It might be a portion of continental Spain broken away from European moorings, and floated hither to find anchorage in the Caribbean Sea. One is also reminded of Malta, in the farther Mediterranean, and yet the city of Valetta, bright, sunny, and elevated, is quite unlike Havana, though Fortress St. Angelo overlooks and guards the place as the Moro does this tropical harbor, and Cuba is the Italy of America. The waters of the harbor, admittedly one of the finest in the world, are most of the time extremely dirty. Many years ago a canal was commenced which was designed to create a flowage calculated to keep the harbor clear of the constantly accumulating filth, but it was never finished, and there remains an evidence of Spanish inefficiency, while the harbor continues to be a vast cesspool. It would be supposed that in a fever-haunted region, great attention would be bestowed upon the matter of drainage, but this is not the case in Havana, or other cities of the island. Most of the effort made in this direction is surface drainage, the liquid thus exposed quickly evaporating in the hot sunshine, or being partially absorbed by the soil over which it passes. Havana contains numerous institutions of learning: a Royal University, founded in 1733, a medical and law school, and chairs of all the natural sciences. In spite of their liberal purposes and capabilities, however, there is a blight hanging over them. Pupils enlist cautiously and reluctantly. Among other schools there is a Royal Seminary for girls, scarcely more than a name, a free school of sculpture and painting, and a mercantile school, with a few private institutions of learning. There is a fairly good museum of natural history, and just outside the city a botanical garden. Still the means of education are very limited in Cuba, an evidence of which is the fact that so many of her youth of both sexes are sent to this country for educational purposes. An order was at one time issued by the government prohibiting this, but its arbitrary nature was so very outrageous, even for a Spanish government, that it was permitted to become a dead letter. What are called free schools, as we use the term, are not known in the island; the facilities for obtaining even the simplest education are very poor. Boys and girls, so far as any attempt is made to educate them, are taught separately, and really under the eye of the Church. Priests and nuns are the agents, the former notoriously making a cloak of their profession for vile and selfish purposes. If we speak decidedly upon this subject, yet we do so with less emphasis than do the Cubans. The girls are taught embroidery and etiquette, considered to be the chief and about the only things necessary for them to know. These young girls are women at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and frequently mothers of families before they are twenty. Of course they fade early. In domestic life the husband is literally lord and master, the wife, ostensibly at least, is all obedience. There is no woman's rights association on the island, nor even a Dorcas society. While young and unmarried, the ladies are strict adherents to all the conventionalities of Spanish etiquette, which is of the most exacting character, but after marriage the sex is perhaps as French as the Parisians, and as gay as the Viennese, under the stimulus of fast and fashionable society. The reason of the edict issued by the government forbidding parents to send their children to this country for educational purposes was obvious. The young Cubans during their residence here imbibed liberal ideas as to our republican form of government, which they freely promulgated and advocated on their return to their native island. Even those who had been educated in France or England, and they were numerous, readily sympathized with the pupils returned from America, and became a dangerous element. Long before the first Lopez expedition, these sons of planters and rich merchants had formed themselves into a secret society, with the avowed purpose of freeing Cuba sooner or later from the Spanish yoke. The low-lying, many-colored city of Havana, called San Cristobel, after the great discoverer, was originally surrounded by a wall, though the population has long since extended its dwellings and business structures far into what was, half a century since, the suburbs. A portion of the old wall is still extant, crumbling and decayed, but it has mostly disappeared. The narrow streets are paved or macadamized, and cross each other at right angles, like those of Philadelphia, but in their dimensions reminding one of continental Toledo, whose Moorish architecture is also duplicated here. There are no sidewalks, unless a narrow line of flagstones can be so called, and in fact the people have less use for them where nearly every one rides in a victoria, the fare being but sixteen cents per mile. A woman of respectability is scarcely ever seen walking in the streets, unless she is a foreigner, or of the lower class, such as sellers of fruit, etc. Those living in close proximity to the churches are sometimes seen proceeding to early mass, accompanied by a negress carrying a portable seat, or a bit of carpet on which to kneel upon the marble floor of the cathedral. But even this is exceptional. Cuban etiquette says that a lady must not be seen on the streets except in a vehicle, and only Americans, English, and other foreigners disregard the rule. The architecture of the dwelling-houses is exceedingly heavy, giving them the appearance of great age. They are built of the porous stone so abundant upon the island, which, though soft when first worked into suitable blocks, becomes as hard as granite by exposure to the atmosphere. The façades of the town houses are nearly always covered with stucco. Their combination of colors, yellow, green, and blue, harmonizes with the glowing atmosphere of the tropics. This will strike the stranger at first as being very odd; there is no system observed, the tenant of each dwelling following his individual fancy as to the hue he will adopt, a dingy yellow prevailing. Standing upon the Campo de Marte and looking in any direction, these changing colors give a picturesque effect to the range of buildings which surround the broad field. In this vicinity the structures are nearly all of two full stories, and many with rows of lofty pillars supporting broad verandas, including one or two palaces, one fine large club-house, some government offices, and the Telegrafo Hotel. These varying colors are not for fancy alone, they have a raison d'être; namely, to absorb the sharp rays of the constant sunshine. But for some toning down of the glare, one's eyes would hardly be able to sustain the power of vision. The vividness with which each individual building and object stands out in the clear liquid light is one of the first peculiarities which will strike the stranger. The dwelling-houses are universally so constructed as to form an open square in the centre, which constitutes the only yard or court that is attached. The house is divided into a living-room, a store-room, chambers, and stable, these all upon one floor, while the family vehicle blocks up in part the only entrance, which is used in common by horses, ladies, slaves, and gentlemen callers. If there is a second story, a broad flight of steps leads to it, and there are the family chambers or sleeping apartments, opening upon a corridor which extends round the court. Peculiar as this manner of building at first seems, it is well adapted to the climate, and one soon becomes satisfied with it. With such surroundings it is easy to imagine one's self at Granada, in far-off Spain, and it seems almost natural to look about for the Alhambra. An air of rude grandeur reigns over these houses, the architecture being Gothic and Saracenic. In the more ancient portions of the town little picturesque balconies of iron or wood jut out from the second-story windows, where the houses rise to the dignity of two stories. From these balconies hang little naked children, like small performers upon the trapeze, until the passer-by fears for their lives. The travel in the narrow streets is regulated by law, and so divided that only certain ones are used for vehicles going north, and others for those traveling south. Thus, vehicles bound into the city from the Paseo go by the way of Obispo Street, but must return by O'Riley Street, so that no two ever meet in these narrow thoroughfares,--a plan which might be advantageously adopted elsewhere. The rooms of the houses are lofty and the floors stuccoed or tiled in marble, while the walls and ceilings are frequently ornamented in fresco, the excellence of the workmanship varying in accordance with the owner's means. The most striking peculiarity of the town-house in Cuba is the precaution taken to render it safe against sudden attack. Every man's house is literally his castle here, each accessible window being secured with stout iron bars, reaching from the top to the bottom, while bullet-proof doors bar the entrance,--the whole seriously suggestive of jails and lunatic asylums. No carpets are used even in the parlors, though a long rug is sometimes placed between the inevitable double row of rocking-chairs. The best floors are laid in white marble and jasper. The great heat of the climate renders even wooden floors quite insupportable. The visitor is apt to find his bed rather unsatisfactory, it being formed by stretching a coarse canvas upon a framework, with an upper and under sheet. Mattresses are not used by the natives, who reject them as being too warm to sleep upon, but the liberality evinced in the shape of mosquito netting is as commendable as it is necessary. The public vehicle called a victoria is a sort of four-wheeled calash, and it has entirely superseded the volante for city use. There are thousands of them about the town, forming a collection of wretchedly wornout carriages, drawn by horses in a like condition. The drivers occupy an elevated seat, and are composed equally of whites and negroes. The charge for a passage from point to point within the city is forty cents in Cuban paper money, equal to sixteen cents of our currency; three times that sum is charged if engaged for the hour. The streets are in a very bad condition and sadly need repairing. The roads leading out to the suburbs in every direction are full of deep holes, and are badly gullied by the heavy rains. The streets, even about the paseos, are so impregnated with filth, here and there, as to be sickening to the senses of the passer-by. Once in three or four weeks somebody is awakened to the exigency of the situation, and a gang of men is put to work to cleanse the principal thoroughfares, but this serves only a temporary purpose. We were told that the reason for this neglect was that no one was regularly paid for work; even the police had not received any pay for seven months, and many refused to serve longer. The soldiery had not been paid their small stipend for nearly a year, but enlisted men sent out from Spain, forming the army, are more easily kept together and more amenable to discipline than any civil body of officials could be. "With everybody and everything so enormously taxed," we ventured to suggest to our informants, "there should be no lack of pecuniary means wherewith to carry on all departments of the government. Pray what becomes of all this money?" The reply was, "Who can say?" with a significant shrug of the shoulders. With all the exactions of the officials, and with the collection of nearly thirty millions of dollars annually, but a moiety finds its way into the national treasury. Peculation is reduced to a science, and is practiced from the highest to the lowest official sent out by the home government. "Spain has squeezed the orange nearly dry," said a distinguished Cuban to us in Matanzas, "and a collapse is inevitable. We are anxiously waiting to see it come; any change would be for the better. We were long threatened with a war of races, if we did not sustain Spanish rule in the island. That is, if we were not loyal to the Madrid authorities, the slaves should be freed to prey upon us. Blood would flow like water. The incendiary torch would be placed in the hands of the negroes, and they should be incited to burn, steal, and ravish! Cuba should be Spanish or African. There was a time when this threat had great force, and its execution was indeed to be dreaded; but that time is past, and no such fear now exists. The slaves are being gradually freed, and are amalgamating with the rest of the populace. The slow liberation of the blacks has accustomed them to freedom, and any organized outrage from that source has ceased to be feared." Why all the bells in Havana should be rung furiously and continuously every morning about daylight, one cannot exactly understand. There does not seem to be any concert of action in this awful conspiracy against sleep; but the tumult thus brought about would certainly seem to be sufficient to "wake the isle from its propriety." From every square with its church, and every church with its towers, this brazen-tongued clamor is relentlessly poured forth. In most Christian lands one good bell is all-sufficient for a church steeple, but here they have them in the plural, and all striving to excel each other at the same moment. Of course no one is able to sleep amid such an outburst of noise, or within the radius of a league. Bells and mosquitoes are two of the prevailing nuisances of this thrice-sunny city. Nor must we forget to add to these aggravations the ceaseless, triumphant crowing of the game-cocks, the noisiest and most boastful of birds, large numbers of which are kept by the citizens purely for gambling purposes in the cock-pit. Besides these "professional" birds, every nook and corner is filled with fowls kept for brooding purposes, each bird family with its crower. We have said that the Cuban ladies rarely stir abroad except in a vehicle, and whatever their domestic habits may be, they are certainly good housekeepers in this respect. While our ladies are busy sweeping the city sidewalks with their trailing dresses, these wisely leave that business to the gangs of criminals detailed from prison to fill that office, with their limbs chained and a heavy ball attached to preserve their equilibrium,--though we should qualify this remark by saying that these condemned men, once so common upon the streets and highways, were not seen during our late visit to Havana. It is, perhaps, owing to the home-keeping habits of the ladies that the feet of the Cuban señoritas are such marvels of smallness and delicacy, seemingly made rather for ornament than for use. You catch a glimpse of them as they step into their victorias, and perceive that they are daintily shod in French slippers, the soles of which are scarcely more substantial than brown paper. Their feet are made for ornament and for dancing. Though they possess a roundness of form that leaves nothing to be desired in symmetry of figure, still they are light as a sylph,--so buoyant, clad in muslin and lace, that it would seem as if a breeze might waft them away like a summer cloud. Passionately fond of dancing, they tax the endurance of the gentlemen in their worship of Terpsichore, stimulated by those Cuban airs which are at once so sweet and so brilliant. There is a striking and endearing charm about the Cuban ladies, their every motion being replete with a native grace. Every limb is elastic and supple. Their voices are sweet and low, while the subdued tone of their complexions is relieved by the arch vivacity of night-black eyes, that alternately swim in melting lustre, and sparkle in expressive glances. If their comeliness matures, like the fruits of their native clime, early and rapidly, it is sad to know that it also fades prematurely. One looks in vain for that serene loveliness combined with age which so frequently challenges our admiration at the North. Their costume is never ostentatious, though often costly, and sometimes a little too mixed or variegated when seen in public. At home, however, nothing of this sort is observed. There the dress is usually composed of the most delicate muslin, the finest linen, and richest silks. We must admit that one rarely sees elsewhere such contrasts in colors upon the person of the fair sex as are at times encountered upon the Paseo. It would drive a French modiste wild to see the proprieties so outraged. It requires all the proverbial beauty of these señoras and señoritas to carry off respectably such combinations as scarlet and yellow, blue and purple, orange and green; but they do it by sheer force of their beautiful eyes and finely rounded figures. It must be acknowledged that the element of native refinement is too often wanting, and that the whole exhibition of the sex is just a little prononcée. They have no intellectual resort, but lead a life of decided ease and pleasure much too closely bordering upon the sensuous, their forced idleness being in itself an incentive to immorality and intrigue. The indifferent work they perform is light and simple; a little sewing and embroidery, followed by the siesta, divides the hours of the day. Those who can afford to keep their victorias wait until nearly sunset for a drive, and then go to respond by sweet smiles to the salutations of the caballeros on the paseos; afterwards to the Parque de Isabella II., to listen to the military band, and then, perhaps, to join in the mazy dance. That these ladies are capable of deep feeling and practical sympathy on such occasions as would naturally draw these qualities forth, we know by experience. When the patriot forces were poorly armed, with but scant material, and ammunition was short, these fair patriots gave freely of their most valuable jewels as a contribution to the cause of liberty. A sad instance illustrative of this fact was told us by a resident of Havana. The young ladies and matrons of a certain circle in the city, at the commencement of the year 1872, had put their diamonds and precious stones together to realize money for forwarding supplies to the insurgents under Cespedes, who was then operating in the vicinity of Santiago. The jewels were secretly intrusted to a brother of one of the ladies, a young man who had just reached the age of twenty-two. His part of the business was the most difficult to perform, but he finally succeeded in realizing over four thousand dollars in gold for the gems intrusted to him. Fortunately the money was at once forwarded to the patriot leader through a safe and reliable channel. Hardly had the business been accomplished to the satisfaction of all concerned when the young Cuban was secretly denounced to the Governor-General as a suspected person. The settings and jewels had all been disposed of so as to be beyond recognition, and it is not known to this day how the brother's complicity with his sisters and their friends was divulged, but presumedly it was through the Jew pawnbrokers. The brother was arrested and thrown into Moro Castle, where he was subjected to the closest examination to find out his accomplices. Loyal and affectionate, he could not be made to speak. He was finally offered his freedom and permission to leave the island if he would divulge all. The government reasoned that if they could make a witness of him they would succeed in serving their own interest best, as by sacrificing one prisoner they might gain knowledge of many disaffected people whom they did not even suspect of disloyalty. One of the sisters of the prisoner determined to assume the guilt, and declare that her brother was the unknowing agent of her purpose; but when at last satisfied that this would not free him, she reluctantly gave up the design. The young Cuban maintained his silence. No publicity was given to the matter. He was brought before a military tribunal--so much is known. The sentence never publicly transpired. Like most political prisoners who pass within the walls of Moro Castle, his fate remains a secret. There are two sides to every picture; even light casts its shadow, and we feel constrained to speak plainly. Social life in the island is certainly at a very low ebb, and unblushing licentiousness prevails. That there are many and noble exceptions only renders the opposite fact the more prominent. This immorality is more particularly among the home Spaniards, whose purpose it is to remain here long enough to gain a certain amount of money, and then to return to the mother country to enjoy it. They look upon all associations contracted here as of a temporary character, and the matter of morality does not affect them in the least. Domestic comforts are few, and, as we have intimated, literature is hardly recognized. The almost entire absence of books or reading matter of any sort is remarkable. A few daily and weekly newspapers, under rigid censorship, supply all the taste for letters. Married women seem to sink far below their husbands in influence. The domestic affections are not cultivated; in short, home to the average Cuban is only a place to sleep,--not of peaceful enjoyment. His meals are rarely taken with his family, but all spare hours are absorbed at the club. Domestic infidelity is prevalent, and female virtue but little esteemed. Priest-craft and king-craft have been the curse of both Spain and Cuba. Here, as in Italy, the outrageous and thinly-disguised immorality of the priesthood poisons many an otherwise unpolluted fount, and thus all classes are liable to infection. Popery and slavery are both largely to be charged with the low condition of morals, though the influence of the former has of late years been much curtailed, both in Spain and in Cuba. The young women are the slaves of local customs, as already intimated, and cannot go abroad even to church without a duenna,--a fact which in itself proves the debased standard of morals. The men appear to have no religion at all, but the women very generally attend early mass and go periodically to confessional. No one seems to think it strange for a white man to have a colony of mulatto children, even though he be also the father of a white family! Many have only the mulatto family, and seem content. These are generally the home Spaniards, already spoken of, and when their fortunes are secured they recklessly sever all local ties and responsibilities and return to Spain. This is no new thing, as there are many families in Cuba of fair position socially, and often of considerable wealth, whose members are by the right of classification quadroons. Miscegenation has greatly complicated social matters, and in half a century, more or less, it may produce a distinctive class, who will be better able to assert and sustain their rights than those who have preceded them. The class of home Spaniards who have emigrated to Cuba has always been of a questionable character. The description of them by Cervantes in his time will apply in our own day with equal force. He says: "The island is the refuge of the profligates of Spain, a sanctuary for homicides, a skulking-place for gamblers and sharpers, and a receptacle for women of free manners,--a place of delusion to many, of amelioration to few." One peculiarity which is sure to strike the stranger unpleasantly, and to which allusion has incidentally been made, whether in public or private houses, in the stores or in the streets, is that the colored children of both sexes, under eight and nine years of age, are permitted to go about in a state of nudity. In the country, among the Montero class, this custom also extends to the white children. The colored men who labor in the streets and on the wharves wear only a short pair of linen pantaloons, displaying a muscular development which any white man might envy. The remarkable contrast in the powerful frames of these dusky Africans and the puny Asiatic coolies is extraordinary. On the plantations and small farms the slaves wear but one garment, just sufficient for decency. The great heat when exposed to the sun is the reason, probably, rather than any economical idea. The populace of Havana is eminently a festive one. Men luxuriate in the café, or spend their evenings in worse places. A brief period of the morning only is given to business, the rest of the day and night to melting lassitude, smoking, and luxurious ease. Evidences of satiety, languor, and dullness, the weakened capacity for enjoyment, are sadly conspicuous, the inevitable sequence of indolence and vice. The arts and sciences seldom disturb the thoughts of such people. Here, as in many European cities, Lazarus and Dives elbow each other, and an Oriental confusion of quarters prevails. The pretentious town-house is side by side with the humble quarters of the artisan, or even the negro hut, about which swarm the naked juveniles of color, a half-clad, slatternly mother appearing now and then. The father of this brood, if there be an acknowledged one, is probably at work upon some plantation not far away, while madame takes in linen to wash, but being possibly herself a slave, pays over one half of her earnings to some city master. High and low life are ever present in strong contrast, and in the best of humor with each other, affording elements of the picturesque, if not of the beautiful. Neatness must be ignored where such human conglomeration exists, and as we all know, at certain seasons of the year, like dear, delightful, dirty Naples, Havana is the hot-bed of pestilence. The dryness of the atmosphere transforms most of the street offal into fine powder, which salutes nose, eyes, ears, and mouth under the influence of the slightest breeze. Though there are ample bathing facilities in and about the city, the people of either sex seem to have a prejudice against their free use. In most hot climates the natives duly appreciate the advantage of an abundance of water, and luxuriate in its use, but it is not so in Cuba. We were told of ladies who content themselves with only wiping neck, face, and hands daily upon a towel saturated with island rum, and, from what was obvious, it is easy to believe this to be true. Sea-bathing is a luxury which the Northern visitor will be glad to improve, if the natives are not, and for their information let us state that it may be safely enjoyed here. Establishments will be found where baths have been cut in the rock on the shore, west of the Punta fort, along the Calle Ancha del Norte. Here water is introduced fresh from the Gulf Stream, sparkling and invigorating, and characterized by much more salt and iodine than is found in more northern latitudes. It is the purest sea-bathing to be found in any city that we know of, refreshing and healthful, producing a sensation upon the surface of the body similar to that of sparkling soda-water on the palate. The island abounds in mineral springs, both hot and cold, all more or less similar in character, and belonging to the class of sulphur springs. Many of these have considerable local reputation for their curative properties. In passing through O'Riley, Obispo, Obrapia, or any business streets at about eleven o'clock in the forenoon and glancing into the stores, workshops, business offices, and the like, one is sure to see the master in his shirt-sleeves, surrounded by his family, clerks, and all white employees, sitting in full sight at breakfast, generally in the business room itself. The midday siesta, an hour later, if not a necessity in this climate, is a universal custom. The shopkeeper, even as he sits on duty, drops his head upon his arm and sleeps for an hour, more or less. The negro and his master both succumb to the same influence, catching their forty winks, while the ladies, if not reclining, "lose themselves" with heads resting against the backs of the universal rocking-chairs. One interior seen by the passer-by is as like another as two peas. A Cuban's idea of a well-furnished sitting-room is fully met by a dozen cane-bottom rocking-chairs, and a few poor chromos on the walls. These rocking-chairs are ranged in two even lines, reaching from the window to the rear of the room, with a narrow woollen mat between them on the marble floor, each chair being conspicuously flanked by a cuspidor. This parlor arrangement is so nearly universal as to be absolutely ludicrous. CHAPTER VIII. Sabbath Scenes in Havana. -- Thimble-Riggers and Mountebanks. -- City Squares and their Ornamentation. -- The Cathedral. -- Tomb of Columbus. -- Plaza de Armas. -- Out-Door Concerts. -- Habitués of Paseo de Isabella. -- Superbly Appointed Cafés. -- Gambling. -- Lottery Tickets. -- Fast Life. -- Masquerade Balls. -- Carnival Days. -- The Famous Tacon Theatre. -- The Havana Casino. -- Public Statues. -- Beauties of the Governor's Garden. -- The Alameda. -- The Old Bell-Ringer. -- Military Mass. On no other occasion is the difference between the manners of a Protestant and Catholic community so strongly marked as on the Sabbath. In the former, a sober seriousness stamps the deportment of the people, even when they are not engaged in devotional exercises; in the latter, worldly pleasures and religious forms are pursued, as it were, at the same time, or follow each other in incongruous succession. We would not have the day made tedious, and it can only be so to triflers; to the true Christian it will ever be characterized by thoughtfulness and repose. The Parisian flies from the church to the railway station to join some picnic excursion, or to assist at the race-course, or he passes with a careless levity from St. Geneviève to the dance booths of the Champs Elysées. In New Orleans, the Creole who has just bent his knee before the altar repairs to the theatre to pass the evening; and the Cuban goes from the absolution of the priest to the hurly-burly of the bull-ring or the cock-pit. The influence of fifteen minutes in the church, if salutary, would seem to be quickly dissipated by the attraction of the gaming-table and the masked ball. Even the Sunday ceremonial of the Church is a pageant: the splendid robes of the officiating priest, changed in the course of the service like the costume of actors in a drama; the music, to Protestant ears operatic and exciting; the clouds of incense scattering their intoxicating perfumes; the chanting in a strange tongue, unknown to the majority of the worshipers,--all tend to give the Roman Catholic services a carnival character. Far be it from us, however, to charge these congregations with an undue levity, or a lack of sincerity. Many a lovely Creole kneels upon the marble floor entirely estranged from the brilliant groups around her, and apparently unconscious for the time of the admiration she excites. There are many, no doubt, who look beyond the glittering symbols to the great truths of the Being whom they are intended to typify. The impression made by the Sabbath ceremonials of the Church strikes us as evanescent, more pleasing to the fancy than informing to the understanding. Still, if the Sabbath in Catholic countries is not wholly devoted to religious observances, neither are the week days wholly absorbed by business and by careless pleasures. The churches are always open, silently but eloquently inviting to devotion, and it is much to be able to step aside at any moment from the temptations, business, and cares of life into an atmosphere of seclusion and religion. The solemn quiet of an old cathedral on a week day is impressive from its very contrast to the tumult outside. Within its venerable walls the light seems chastened, as it falls through stained panes and paints the images of Christian saints and martyrs on the pavement of the aisles. A half unwilling reverence is apt to stimulate us on such an occasion, however skeptical we may be. The Sabbath in Havana breaks upon the citizens amid the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon from the forts, the noise of trumpets, and the roll of the drum. It is no day of physical rest here, and the mechanical trades are uninterrupted. It is the chosen period for the military reviews, the masked ball, and the bull-fight. The stores are open as usual, the same cries are heard on the streets, and the lottery tickets are vended on every corner. The individuals who devote themselves to this business are in numbers like an army with banners. They rend the air with their cries, promising good luck to all purchasers, while they flourish their scissors with one hand, and thrust the sheet of printed numbers in your face with the other, ready to cut any desired ticket or portion of a ticket. The day proves equally propitious for the omnipresent organ-grinder and his ludicrously-dressed little monkey, à la Napoleon; the Chinese peddler; the orange and banana dealer; and the universal cigarette purveyor. Still, the rough Montero from the country, with his long line of loaded mules or ponies, respectfully raises his broad Panama with one hand while he makes the sign of the cross with the other as he passes the church door. The churches of Havana look very old and shabby compared with those of peninsular Spain, where the splendor of church ornamentation reaches its acme. In and about the commercial part of the town, the out-door gambler forms a conspicuous feature of the Sabbath, seated upon a cloth spread upon the ground, and armed with cards, dice, cups, and other instruments. With voluble tongue and expressive pantomime urging the passer-by to try his luck, he meets with varying success. Many who are drawn into the net are adroitly permitted to win a little, and afterwards to lose much. Sailors on shore for a day's liberty are profitable game for these thimble-riggers, as they are called with us. Both Spaniards and Creoles patronize them, and occasionally a negro tries his luck with a trifle. In open squares, or at the intersection of several streets, one sometimes sees a carpet spread upon the ground, upon which an athlete accompanied by a couple of expert boys, dressed in high-colored tights ornamented with spangles, diverts the throng by exhibiting gymnastics. At the close of the performance, a young girl in a fancy dress and with long, flowing hair passes among the spectators and gathers a few shillings. Not far away is observed Punch and Judy in the height of a successful quarrel to the music of a harp and a violin. The automatic contestants pound and pommel each other after the conventional fashion. The city abounds in well-arranged squares, often ornamented by the royal palm, always a figure of majesty and beauty, with here and there a few orange, lime, and banana trees, mingled with the Indian laurel, which forms a grateful shade by its dense foliage. The royal palm is strongly individualized, differing from other trees of the same family. It is usually from sixty to eighty feet in height at what may be called its maturity, and not unfrequently reaches a hundred, the tall trunk slightly swelling near the middle and tapering at either extremity. The upper portion is of a fresh and shining green, contrasting with the lower section, which is of a light slate color. It is crowned by a tuft of branches and leaves at its apex, like a bunch of ostrich feathers drooping in all directions. It seems as though the palm could not be out of place in any spot. It imparts great beauty to the scenery in and about Havana. When it is found dotting a broad stretch of country here and there in isolated groups, or even singly, it is always the first object to catch and delight the eye. It is also a marked and beautiful feature where it forms a long avenue, lining the road on either side leading to a sugar or coffee plantation, but it requires half a century to perfect such an avenue. The Plaza de Armas, fronting the Governor's palace, is a finely kept square, and until the Parque de Isabella was finished, it was the great centre of fashion, and the place of evening resort. At one corner of this Plaza is an insignificant chapel, built upon the spot where Columbus is said to have assisted at the first mass celebrated on the island; an anachronism easily exposed were it worth the while. The great discoverer never landed at Havana during his lifetime, though his body was brought hither for burial, centuries after his death. There is one fact relating to this site in the Plaza de Armas fully authenticated, and which is not without interest. An enormous old ceiba tree originally stood here, beneath whose branches mass was sometimes performed. This remarkable tree having expired of old age was removed by order of the Governor-General, and the chapel was erected on the spot where its widespread branches had cast their shadow for centuries. We did not see the interior of the chapel, as it is opened but once a year to the public,--on the 16th of November, which is the feast day of San Cristobal, when mass is celebrated in honor of the great discoverer. It is said to contain a marble bust of Columbus, and two or three large historical paintings. This square is divided into neatly kept paths, and planted with fragrant flowers, conspicuous among which were observed the white and red camellias, while a grateful air of coolness was diffused by the playing of a fountain into a broad basin, ornamented by a marble statue of Ferdinand VII. The Creoles are passionately fond of music, and this park used to be the headquarters of all out-door concerts. Their favorite airs are waltzes and native dances, with not a little of the Offenbach spirit in them. The guitar is the favorite domestic musical instrument here, as in peninsular Spain, and both sexes are as a rule clever performers upon it. Evening music in the open air is always attractive, but nowhere is its influence more keenly felt than under the mellow effulgence of tropical nights. Nowhere can we conceive of a musical performance listened to with more relish and appreciation than in the Plaza de Armas or the Parque de Isabella in Havana. The latter place on the occasion of the concerts is the resort of all classes. Here friends meet, flirtations are carried on, toilets are displayed, and lovers woo. Even the humble classes are seen in large numbers quietly strolling on the outer portions of the Plaza listening to the fine performances of the band, and quietly enjoying the music, "tamed and led by this enchantress still." The balmy nature of the climate permits the ladies to dispense with shawls or wraps of any sort; bonnets they very seldom wear, so that they sit in their vehicles, or alighting appropriate the chairs arranged for the purpose lining the broad central path, and thus appear in full evening dress, bare arms, and necks supplemented by most elaborate coiffures. Even the black lace mantilla, so commonly thrown over the head and shoulders in the cities of Spain, is discarded of an evening on the Plaza de Isabella. It was very amusing to sit here near the marble statue of the ex-queen (which is, by the way, a wonderful likeness of Queen Victoria), where the band, composed of sixty instrumental performers, discoursed admirable music, and to observe young Cuba abroad, represented by boys and girls of ten and twelve years dressed like young ladies and gentlemen, sauntering arm in arm through the broad paths. These children attend balls given by grown-up people, and are painted and bedizened and decked out like their elders,--a singular fashion in Cuban cities. It is true they not infrequently fall asleep on such occasions in rocking-chairs and in odd corners, overcome by fatigue, as the hours of festivity creep on towards the morning. Childhood is ignored. Youth of a dozen years is introduced to the habits of people thrice that age. We were sadly told, by one who is himself a parent, that most children in the island but twelve years of age know the delicate relations of the sexes as well as they would ever know them. What else could be expected in an atmosphere so wretchedly immoral? Small boys dressed in stovepipe hats and swallow-tail coats, and little misses in long dresses with low necks look like mountebanks. Opposite the Plaza de Isabella, on the Tacon Theatre side of the square, are situated the most fashionable cafés and restaurants of the capital, where "life" commences at nine o'clock in the evening and rages fast and furious until the small hours of the morning. In these resorts, which are one blaze of light, every gas-burner reflected by dozens of mirrors, the marble tables are all occupied by vivacious patrons. Some are playing dominoes, some few are engaged at games of chess, others are busy over checkers or cards, and all are gambling. Even the lookers-on at the games freely stake their money on the fortunes of the several players. The whole scene is one of noise and confusion, fifty tongues giving voice at the same time. If a Spaniard or Creole loses a dollar he gesticulates and argues about it as though thousands were involved in the issue. These people represent all classes. Some are in their shirt-sleeves, some roughly clothed, some in full evening dress; Spaniards, Creoles, mulattoes, and occasionally an unmistakable European. They drink often, but not strong liquors, and one is surprised to hear coffee so often called for in place of wine. The games are kept up until two or three o'clock in the morning. Loitering about the doors beggars always form the shadow of the scene; some lame, some blind, mostly negroes and coolies; now and then there is seen among them an intelligent but sad white face, which looks rather than utters its appeal. These are often the recipients of the successful gambler's bounty. Now and again a lottery-ticket vender comes in and makes the circuit of the tables, always disposing of more or less chances, sometimes selling a whole ticket, price one doubloon, or seventeen dollars. As we watch the scene a daintily dressed youth with shining beaver lounges in, accompanied by one of the demi-monde gayly dressed and sparkling with jewelry which betrays her want of modesty. She is of the true Andalusian type, olive complexion, coal-black hair with eyes to match, and long dark lashes; petite in figure and youthful, but aged in experience. Bonnetless, her luxuriant hair is set high upon her head, held by a square tortoise-shell comb, and carelessly thrown off her forehead with a parting on one side. Be sure some sad story underlies her career. She is of just that gypsy cast that painters love to delineate. They sit down at a side table and order ices, cake, and champagne. These are consumed amid jests and laughter, the spurious champagne, at a fabulous cost, is drunk merrily, the hours creep on, and the couple retire to give place to others, after having furnished a picture of the fast, false life of these brilliant, but dissipated haunts. Some of these cafés are more exclusive than others, where respectable ladies and gentlemen can retire after the band has ceased its performance, and enjoy the cooling influence of an ice. The Louvre, just opposite the Plaza de Isabella and adjoining the Tacon Theatre, is one of such. These establishments couple with their current evening business that of the manufacture of choice preserves for domestic use and also for export, the fruits of the island supplying the basis for nearly a hundred varieties of fruit preserves, which find large sales in our Northern cities and in Europe. In carnival week these cafés do an immense business; it is the harvest of their year. People who can hardly afford three meals a day pinch themselves and suffer much self-denial that they may have money to spend in carnival week. The public masquerade balls, which then take place, allure all classes. The celebrations of the occasion culminate in a grand public masquerade ball given in the Tacon Theatre. The floor of the parquette is temporarily raised to a level with the boxes and the stage, the entire floor or lower part of the house being converted into a grand ball-room. The boxes and galleries are thrown open free to the public. The music, furnished by two military bands, alternating in their performance, is kept up until broad daylight, while the participants come and go as they please. A little after midnight an organization called the comparzas comes upon the scene. It is composed of men, boys, and women, all masked, who have practiced for the occasion some emblematic dance to perform for their own and the public amusement. The other dancers give way and the new-comers perform, in harlequin fashion, their allotted parts. Towards morning a large paper globe is suspended from the ceiling and lowered to within a certain height from the floor. Blindfolded volunteers of both sexes, furnished with sticks, are permitted to walk towards and try to hit it. Scores fail, others just graze the globe of paper, all amid loud laughter from the spectators. Finally some one hits the globe full and fair, bringing down the contents amid vociferous applause. Then commences a general scramble for the contents, consisting of bonbons, toys, and fancy trinkets. The celebrated Tacon Theatre faces the Paseo de Isabella, and is built on the corner of San Rafael Street. It is a capacious structure, but extremely plain and unimpressive in its exterior appearance. It has five tiers of boxes and a spacious parquette, the latter furnished with separate arm-chair seats for six hundred persons. The entire seating capacity of the house is a trifle over three thousand, and the auditorium is of the horseshoe shape. The lattice-work finish before the boxes is very light and graceful in effect, ornamented with gilt, and so open as to display the dresses and pretty feet of the fair occupants to the best advantage. The frescos are in good style, and the ornamentation, without being excessive, is in excellent and harmonious taste. A large, magnificent glass chandelier, lighted with gas, and numerous smaller ones extending from the boxes give a brilliant light to this elegant house, which is one of the largest theatres in the world. The scene is a remarkable one when tier upon tier is filled with gayly dressed ladies, powdered and rouged as Cuban women are apt to be, in the most liberal manner. The parquette is reserved for gentlemen, and when the audience is assembled forms a striking contrast to the rest of the house, as they always appear in dark evening dress, and between the acts put on their tall black beaver hats. These audiences have their own special modes of exhibiting appreciation or applause, when captivated by a prima donna's or a danseuse's efforts to please them. At favorable moments during the performance the artist is showered with bouquets; white doves are set free from the boxes, bearing laudatory verses fastened to their wings; gentlemen throw their hats upon the stage, and sometimes even purses weighted with gold. Tiny balloons are started with long streamers of colored ribbon attached; jewelry in the shape of bracelets and rings is conveyed over the footlights; in short, these Spaniards are sometimes extraordinarily demonstrative. A furore has sometimes cost these caballeros large sums of money. But we are describing the past rather than the immediate present, for the scarcity of pecuniary means has put an end to nearly all such extravagances. The Havanese are peculiar in their tastes. While Miss Adelaide Phillips was more than once the recipient of extravagant favors on the Tacon Theatre stage, Jenny Lind did not pay her professional expenses when she sang there. The military are always in attendance in large numbers at the theatre, as at all public gatherings in Cuba, their only perceptible use being to stare the ladies out of countenance and to obstruct the passageways. In front of the main entrance to the theatre is an open area decorated with tropical plants and trees, where a group of the crimson hibiscus was observed, presenting a gorgeous effect of color. The other places of amusement in Havana, of a dramatic character, are the Payret Theatre, very large, seating twenty-five hundred; the Albisu Theatre, and the Circo, Teatro de Jané, this latter combining a theatre with a circus. As a place of amusement and instruction combined we should be remiss not to mention the Casino of Havana. It is carried on by an organized society formed on the basis of a club and has, we were told, over one hundred members. The Casino occupies a fine building, fronting Obispo Street, and close to the parks. It supports a free school for teaching the English and French languages and drawing. After some fifteen years of successful existence the society has become one of the institutions of the metropolis. The halls and apartments are large, lofty, and very finely furnished with all domestic conveniences except sleeping accommodations. Here dramatic entertainments are frequently given, mostly by amateurs, and generally for charitable purposes. The main ball-room of the Casino is handsomely decorated and is the scene of occasional masked balls, after the true Madrid style, where many an intrigue is consummated which does not always end without bloodshed. It is the favorite resort of all the high officials of Havana, who have within their possible reach too few social entertainments not to make the most of those presented at the Casino. During the carnival season the ball-room of the establishment is said to present, in the form of nightly masquerade balls, scenes which for gayety and picturesqueness cannot be surpassed in Europe. Old Havana is certainly eclipsed by the really fine broad streets and the palatial buildings which have sprung up outside of her ancient limits. In point of picturesqueness the old town has precedence. Near where the Indian Paseo and the Plaza de Isabella II. join each other, a portion of the old wall which once surrounded the city is still to be seen, with its crumbling bastions and ivy-grown débris. Sufficient is left to show that the wall was a remarkably substantial one and an efficient defense against the modes of attack prevalent when it was built. The Indian Paseo commences opposite the Campo de Marte, and is so called from the large marble fountain dedicated to that aboriginal idea. This elaborate structure was executed in Italy at large expense. Its principal figure is an Indian maiden, allegorical of Havana, supporting a shield bearing the arms of the city. These paseos are admirably ornamented on either side by a continuous line of laurel trees whose thick foliage gives admirable shade. On either side of the long central promenade the well-paved streets are broad and handsome, being ornamented with high buildings of a domestic and public character and of good architectural effect. The Matanzas & Havana Railroad depot is situated just opposite one end of the Campo de Marte, its freight yard extending also along the Paseo for an entire block, detracing much from the fine effect of the broad street. The trains and noisy engines being thus brought into the midst of the dwellings and business centre of the city render it very objectionable. The guests of the Telegrafo Hotel can bear testimony as to the nuisance thus created, being awakened at all sorts of unreasonable hours by the engine bell and steam whistle. The Botanical Garden is situated about a mile from the city proper, adjoining which are the attractive grounds of the Governor General's country-house. Both are open to the public and richly repay a visit. The Governor's grounds are shaded by a great variety of tropical trees and flowers. Here was seen what is called the water rose, pink in color and nearly double the size of our pond lily, recalling the Egyptian lotus, to which family it would seem it must belong. Altogether, the place is a wilderness of blossoms, composed of exotic and native flowers. There is also an interesting aviary to be seen here, and a small artificial lake is covered with curious web-footed birds and brilliant-feathered ducks. The gardens seem to be neglected, but they are very lovely in their native luxuriance. Dead wood and decaying leaves are always a concomitant of such gardens in the low latitudes. If the roses and heliotropes are in full bloom, some other flowering shrub alongside is taking its rest and looks rusty, so that the whole garden is never in a glow of beauty at one time, as is the case with us in June. The noble alley of palms, the great variety of trees, blossoms, and shrubs, the music of the fountains, and the tropical flavor permeating everything were all in the harmony of languid beauty. The coral tree, that lovely freak of vegetation, was in bloom, its small but graceful stem, seven or eight feet in height, being topped above the gracefully pendent leaves with a bit of vegetable coral of deepest red, and in the form of the sea growth from which it takes its name. The star cactus was in full flower, the scarlet buds starting out from the flat surface of the thick leaves after a queer and original fashion. The bread-fruit tree, with its large, melon-like product, hung heavy with the nourishing esculent. The Carolina tree, with gorgeous blossoms like military pompons, blazed here and there, overshadowing the large, pure white, and beautiful campanile, with hanging flowers, like metallic bells, after which the plant is named. Here too was a great variety of the scarlet hibiscus and the garland of night (galan de noche), which grows like a young palm to eight or nine feet, throwing out from the centre-of its drooping foliage a cluster of brown blossoms tipped with white, shaped like a mammoth bunch of grapes. It blooms at night and is fragrant only by moon and starlight. Cuba presents an inexhaustible field for the botanist, and in its wilder portions recalls the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. As Ceylon is called the pearl of India so is Cuba the pearl of the Antilles. To reach the Governor's Garden one turns west from the Campo de Marte and takes the Calzada de la Reina, which followed about a mile in a straight line becomes the Paseo de Tacon, really but a continuation of the former street, commencing at the statue of Carlos III., a colossal monument placed in the middle of the broad driveway. This Paseo forms the favorite evening drive of the citizens, where the ladies in victorias and the gentlemen either as equestrians or on foot pass and repass each other, gayly saluting, the ladies with a coquettish flourish of the fan, and the gentlemen with a peculiar wave of the hand. It is in fact the Champs Elysées of Havana, but the road is sadly out of repair and as dusty as an ash-pit. The Alameda--every large Spanish city has a spot so designated--skirts the shore of the harbor on the city side, near the south end of Oficios Street, and is a favorite resort for promenaders at the evening hour. Here a refreshing coolness is breathed from off the sea. This Alameda de Paula might be a continuation of the Neapolitan Chiaja. With characteristics quite different, still these shores constantly remind one of the Mediterranean, Sorrento, Amalfi, and Capri, recalling the shadows which daily creep up the heights of San Elmo and disappear with the setting sun behind the orange groves. Sometimes it would seem to be the grand problem of humanity, why the loveliest regions of the earth and the softest climates should be apportioned to the share of slaves and despots. The cathedral of Havana, on Empedrado Street, is a structure of much interest, its rude pillared front of defaced and moss-grown stone plainly telling of the wear of time. The two lofty towers are hung with many bells, which daily call with their brazen tongues to matins and vespers. Some of these bells are very ancient. The church is not elaborately ornamented,--it rather strikes one with its unusual plainness. It contains a few oil paintings of moderate merit, and also the tomb where the ashes of Columbus so long reposed. All that is visible of this tomb, which is on the right of the altar, is a marble tablet six or eight feet square, upon which, in high relief, is a bust of the great discoverer. As a work of art, the less said of this effigy the better. Beneath the image is an inscription sufficiently bombastic and Spanish in tone, but therein we observed no mention was made of the chains and imprisonment with which an ungrateful country rewarded this man whom history so delights to honor. It will be remembered that Columbus died at Valladolid in 1506. In 1513 his remains were transferred to Seville, preparatory to their being sent, as desired in his will, to St. Domingo, to which city they were removed in 1536. When that island was ceded to France, they were brought with great pomp to Havana in a national ship (January 15, 1796), and deposited in this cathedral in the presence of all the high authorities of the island. These remains have again been removed, and are now interred at Seville, in Spain. The cathedral, aside from this association, is really attractive, and one lingers with quiet thoughtfulness among its marble aisles and confessionals. The lofty dome is supported by pillars of marble and the walls are frescoed. The high altar is a remarkable composition, with pillars of porphyry mingled with a confusion of images, candlesticks, and tinsel. The stalls for the priests are handsomely carved in mahogany. It was annoying to see Gothic grandeur and modern frippery so mingled as was observable in this church. When mass is being performed women attend in goodly numbers, but one rarely sees any of the male population present, unless they be, like the author, strangers come hither from curiosity to see the interior of this Cathedral de la Virgen Maria de la Concepcion. All persons who come to Havana visit the cathedral because it contains the tomb of Columbus, but if they have traveled in Europe they have seen so much finer structures of this class, especially in Spain, that this one challenges but little attention. Let us, gentle reader, go up into the lofty bell tower, where we shall find the most comprehensive view possible of the Cuban capital. The old bell-ringer, seated before a deal table, ekes out a scanty living by making cigars away up here in his circumscribed eyrie. What an original he would have been in the practiced hands of Victor Hugo! This hermit of the tower will call your attention to the ancient bells, which are his sole companions: one bears the date of 1664, with a half-defaced Latin legend; another is dated at London, 1698. He is a queer old enthusiast about these bells, and will tell you on what special occasions of interest he has caused them to speak with metallic tongue to the people: now as a danger signal; then uttering sounds of triumph and announcing a victory; again, tolling the notes of sorrow for the departed, or as merry marriage bells, the heralds of joy. He will tell you how many years, man and boy, he has summoned the devout to matins and to vespers with their resonant voices. If you have a fancy for such things, and some silver to spare, after leaving the bell tower the sacristan will show you the rich vestments, robes, and laces for priestly wear belonging to the church, not forgetting many saintly garments wrought in gold and studded with precious stones. Perhaps you will think, as we did, that such things are but tinsel before Him whom they are supposed to honor. Such dazzling paraphernalia may attract the ignorant or the thoughtless--may make followers, but not converts. Conviction is not the child of fancy, but of judgment. In an anteroom at the left of the altar there are also to be seen utensils of silver and gold, with many costly ornaments for use before the altar on special church occasions. One of these is a triumph of delicate workmanship and of the silversmith's art. It is in the form of a Gothic tower of very elaborate and artistic design, composed of solid silver, ornamented with gold and precious stones. One regards this thoroughly useless disposal of money with the thought that the articles were better sold and the proceeds bestowed in worthy charity. It would then fulfill a far more Christian purpose than that of adding glitter to church pomp and ceremony. To witness the observance of Holy Week, commencing with Palm Sunday, in Havana, one would be impressed with a conviction that the people were at heart devout Roman Catholics. The occasion is solemnly observed. On Sunday the old cathedral is crowded by people who come to obtain branches of holy palm from the priests. The old bell-ringer becomes an important agent of the ceremonies, and the solemn spirit of the occasion seems to imbue all classes of the Havanese. On Holy Thursday, just before midday, the bells of all the churches cease to ring, and every vehicle in the city disappears from the streets as if by magic. The garrison marches through the principal thoroughfares in silence, with measured tread and arms reversed. The national flags upon the shipping, and on all the forts from Moro to the Castillo del Principe, are displayed at half mast. The cathedral and the churches are draped in mourning. On Friday, the effigy of our Saviour's body is carried in solemn procession, men and priests marching with heads uncovered, and devout women of the common classes, especially colored ones, kneeling in the street as it passes. On Saturday, at ten o'clock in the morning, the old bell-ringer suddenly starts a merry peal from the cathedral tower--the bells of La Merced, San Agustin, Santa Clara, and Santa Cataline follow; the town awakens to gayety as from a lethargic sleep. Whites and negroes rush through the streets like mad; vehicles of all sorts again make their appearance, the forts and national ships are dressed in holiday flags, and the town is shaken with reiterated salutes from a hundred cannons. Military mass, as performed within the cathedral, seemed more like a theatrical show than a solemn religious service. On the occasion referred to, the congregation as usual was sparse, and consisted almost exclusively of women, who seem to do penance for both sexes in Cuba. The military band which led the column of infantry marched in, playing a quick operatic air, deploying to one side for the soldiery to pass towards the altar. The time-keeping steps of the soldiery upon the marble floor mingled with drum, fife, and organ. Through all this, one caught now and then the monotonous voice of a shaven-headed priest, reciting his prescribed part at the altar, kneeling and reading at intervals. The busy censer boys in white gowns; the flaring candles casting long shadows athwart the high altar; the files of soldiers kneeling and rising at the tap of the drum; the atmosphere clouded with the fumes of burning incense,--all combined to make up a singularly dramatic picture. The gross mummery witnessed at the temple of Buddha in Ceylon differed only in form, scarcely in degree. The wealth of the churches of the monks in the island was formerly proverbial, but of late the rich perquisites which the priests were so long permitted to extort from the credulous public have been diverted so as to flow into the coffers of the crown. A military depotism brooks no rival in authority. The priests at one time possessed large tracts of land in Cuba, and their revenue therefrom, especially when they were improved as sugar plantations, was very large. These lands have all been confiscated by the government, and with the loss of their property the power of the monks has declined and their numbers have also diminished. Still the liberty of public worship is denied to all save Roman Catholics. Since the suppression of monastic institutions, some of the convents have been utilized for hospitals, government storehouses, and other public offices in Havana. There are some manifest incongruities that suggest themselves as existing between Church and state upon the island. For instance, the Church recognizes the unity of all races and even permits marriage between all, but here steps in the civil law of Cuba and prohibits marriage between white persons and those having any taint of negro blood. In consequence of this,--nature always asserting herself regardless of conventionalities,--a quasi family arrangement often exists between white men and mulatto or quadroon women, whereby the children are recognized as legitimate. But should either party come under the discipline of the Church, the relationship must terminate. Again, as is perfectly well known, many of the priests, under a thin disguise, lead domestic lives, where a family of children exist under the care of a single mother, who is debarred from the honest name of wife by the laws of celibacy which are stringently held as the inexorable rule of the Church. If the priesthood keep from cock-fighting and gambling, says a late writer on the subject, notwithstanding many other departures from propriety, they are considered respectable. Can there be any wonder that the masses of men in Cuba recognize no religious obligations, since none save Roman Catholicism is tolerated, and that, through its priesthood, is so disgraced? CHAPTER IX. Political Inquisition. -- Fashionable Streets of the City. -- Tradesmen's Signs. -- Bankrupt Condition of Traders. -- The Spanish Array. -- Exiled Patriots. -- Arrival of Recruits. -- The Garrote. -- A Military Execution. -- Cuban Milk Dealers. -- Exposure of Domestic Life. -- Living in the Open Air. -- The Campo Santo of Havana. -- A Funeral Cortége. -- Punishing Slaves. -- Campo de Marte. -- Hotel Telegrafo. -- Environs of the City. -- Bishop's Garden. -- Consul-General Williams. -- Mineral Springs. The Inquisition, as it regards the Church of Rome, is suppressed in Cuba, but the political inquisition, as exercised by the government on the island, is even more diabolical than that of the former Jesuitical organization, because it is more secret in its murderous deeds, not one half of the horrors of which will ever be publicly known. Moro Castle is full of political prisoners, who are thinned out by executions, starvation, and hardships generally, from day to day, only to make room for fresh victims. He who enters those grim portals leaves all hope behind. Political trials there are none, but of political arrests there are endless numbers. The life of every citizen is at the disposal of the Captain-General. If a respectable person is arrested, as one suspected of animosity towards the government, he simply disappears. His friends dare not press his defense, or inquire too closely as to his case, lest they, too, should be incarcerated on suspicion, never again to regain their liberty. A maxim of Spanish law is that every accused person is guilty, until he proves himself innocent! As a large majority of the people, in their hearts, sympathize with the revolutionists, and are revolutionists in secret, they are liable to say or to do some trifling thing unwittingly, upon which the lynx-eyed officials seize as evidence of guilt, and their arrest follows. What fearful stories the dungeons of Moro could reveal had they tongue with which to speak! Obispo and O'Riley streets are the principal shopping thoroughfares of the metropolis, containing many fine stores for the sale of dry goods, millinery, china, glassware, and jewelry. These shops are generally quite open in front. Standing at the end, and looking along either of these thoroughfares, one gets a curious perspective view. The party-colored awnings often stretch entirely across the narrow streets, reminding one of a similar effect in Canton, where straw matting takes the place of canvas, forming a sort of open marquee. The queer names adopted for the stores never fail to afford a theme of amusement; the drawling cries of the fruit-dealers and peripatetic tradesmen giving an added interest. The merchant in Havana does not designate his establishment by placing his own name upon his sign, but adopts some fancy title, such as Diana, America, The Star, Virtue, The Golden Lion, and so on, which titles are paraded in gilt letters over the door. The Spanish people are always prodigal in names, making the sun, moon and stars, gods and goddesses, all do duty in designating their stores, villas, and plantations. Nearly every town on the island is named after some apostle or saint. The tradesmen are thorough Jews in their style of dealing with the public, and no one thinks of paying them the price which they first demand for an article. It is their practice in naming a price to make allowance for reduction; they expect to be bargained with, or cheapened at least one half. The ladies commonly make their purchases late in the afternoon or evening, stopping in their victorias at the doors of the shops, from whence the articles they desire are brought by the shopmen and deftly displayed on the street. When lighted up at night the stores are really brilliant and attractive, presenting quite a holiday appearance; but customers are sadly wanting in these days of business depression. "I have been compelled to dismiss my salesmen and do their work myself," said a dry-goods merchant to us; "we dare not give credit, and few persons have cash to spare in these times." One of the principal causes of the present bankrupt condition of the people of Cuba is the critical period of transition through which the island is passing from slave to free labor; besides which there is the exhaustion consequent upon years of civil war and a succession of bad crops. Labor is becoming dearer and sugar cheaper. The Spaniards are slow to adopt labor-saving machinery, or new ideas of any sort, and those not already supplied have neither capital nor credit with which to procure the new machinery for sugar-making. The enormous production of European beet-sugar has cut off all Continental demand for their staple, and has in some degree superseded its use in America. Brigandage is on the increase, as poverty and want of legitimate employment prevail. Money, when it can be borrowed at all, is at a ruinous interest. The army of office-holders still manage to extort considerable sums in the aggregate from the people, under the guise of necessary taxes. Financial ruin stares all in the face. It is a sad thing to say, but only too true, that among people heretofore considered above suspicion in commercial transactions great dishonesty prevails, pecuniary distress and lack of credit driving men, once in good standing, to defraud their creditors at home and abroad. Estates and plantations are not only heavily mortgaged, but the prospective crops are in the same condition, in many cases. In former prosperous years the planters have been lavish spenders of money, ever ready to use their credit to the full extent, until their interest account has consumed their principal. The expensive habits acquired under the promptings of large profits and a sure market are difficult to overcome, and people who never anticipated the present state of affairs are now forced to exercise economy and self-denial. Cuban planters and their families, in years past, came to our most fashionable watering-places decked with jewels of almost fabulous value, and they lavished gold like water; most of these individuals considered themselves to be rich beyond the chances of fortune. Their profuse style of living was a source of envy; their liberality to landlords and to servants was demoralizing, as it regarded the tariff of hotel prices for more steady-going people. Thousands of human beings were yielding their enforced labor to fill these spendthrifts' purses, and sugar was king. The picture has its reverse. Civil war has supervened, the slaves are being freed, sugar is no longer a bonanza, and the rich man of yesterday is the bankrupt of to-day. Truly riches have wings. Spain keeps a large and effective force of soldiers upon the island,--an army out of all proportion in numbers to the territory or people she holds in subjection. The present military force must number some forty thousand, rank and file, and the civil department fully equals the army in number; and all are home Spaniards. A large portion of the military are kept in the eastern department of the island, which is and has ever been the locality where revolutionary outbreaks occur. Eighty per cent, of all the soldiers ever sent to Cuba have perished there! It is as Castelar once pronounced the island to be, in the Cortes at Madrid, namely, the Campo Santo of the Spanish army. Exposure, a miserable commissariat, the climate, and insurgent bullets combine to thin the ranks of the army like a raging pestilence. We were informed by a responsible party that twenty-five per cent, of the newly-arrived soldiers died in their first year, during what is called their acclimation. Foreigners who visit Cuba for business or pleasure do so at the most favorable season; they are not subjected to hardships nor exposed in malarial districts. The soldiers, on the contrary, are sent indiscriminately into the fever districts at the worst season, besides being called upon to endure hardships, all the time, which predispose them to fatal diseases. There are known to be organized juntas of revolutionists at Key West, Florida, in Hayti, and also in New York city, whose designs upon the Cuban government keep the authorities on the island in a state of chronic alarm. A revolutionary spirit is felt to be all the while smouldering in the hearts of this oppressed people, and hence the tyrannous espionage, and the cruelty exercised towards suspected persons. So enormous are the expenses, military and civil, which are required to sustain the government, under these circumstances, that Cuba to-day, notwithstanding the heavy taxes extorted from her populace, is an annual expense to the throne. Formerly the snug sum of seven or eight millions of dollars was the yearly contribution which the island made to the royal treasury, after paying local army, navy, and civil expenses. This handsome sum was over and above the pickings and stealings of the venal officials. As to the Cuban sympathizers at Key West, Florida, a recent visit to that port, just opposite to the island on the hither side of the Gulf Stream, showed us that they formed a large proportion of the population of that thrifty American town. On a day which was the anniversary of some patriotic occasion relating to the island, hundreds of Cuban flags (the single star of free Cuba) were seen displayed upon the dwellings and public places. There are believed to be two thousand Creoles residing here, who have either been expelled from the island for political reasons, or who have escaped from thence as suspected patriots. These people are very generally engaged in the manufacture of the well-known Key West cigars. The Spanish army is governed with an iron hand. Military law knows no mercy, and it is always more or less a lapse into barbarism where it takes precedence. The ranks are filled by conscription in Spain, and when the men first arrive at Havana they are the rawest recruits imaginable. Soldiers who have been doing garrison duty are sent inland to fill the decimated ranks of various stations, and room is thus made for the recruits, who are at once put to work, enduring a course of severe discipline and drill. They land from the transports, many of them, hatless, barefooted, and in a filthy condition, with scarcely a whole garment among a regiment of them. The writer could hardly believe, on witnessing the scene, that they were not a set of criminals being transported for penal servitude. Fatigue dresses no doubt awaited them at the barracks, and after a while they would be served with a cheap uniform, coarse shoes, and straw hats. They are like sheep being driven to the shambles, and are quite as helpless. Twenty-five per cent, and upwards of these recruits are usually under the sod before the close of a twelve-month! Sometimes the hardship they have to endure breeds rebellion among them, but woe betide those who commit any overt act, or become leaders of any organized attempt to obtain justice. The service requires frequent victims as examples to enforce the rigid discipline. The punishment by the garrote is a common resort. It is a machine contrived to choke the victim to death without suspending him in the air. At the same time it is fatal in another way, namely, by severing the spinal column just below its connection with the brain. The condemned man is placed upon a chair fixed on a platform, leaning his head and neck back into a sort of iron yoke or frame prepared to receive it. Here an iron collar is clasped about the throat. At the appointed moment a screw is suddenly turned by the executioner, stationed behind the condemned, and instantaneous death follows. This would seem to be more merciful than hanging, whereby death is produced by the lingering process of suffocation, to say nothing of the many mishaps which so often occur upon the gallows. This mode of punishment is looked upon by the army as a disgrace, and they much prefer the legitimate death of a soldier, which is to fall by the bullets of his comrades when condemned to die. The writer witnessed one of these military executions, early on a clear April morning, which took place in the rear of the barracks near La Punta. It was a trying experience, and recalled to mind the execution of the mulatto poet and patriot, Valdez, which had occurred a few years before in the Plaza at Matanzas. It was a sight to chill the blood even under a tropical sun. A soldier of the line was to be shot for some act of insubordination against the stringent rules of the army, and that the punishment might prove a forcible example to his comrades the battalion to which he belonged was drawn up on parade to witness the cruel scene. The immediate file of twelve men to which the victim had belonged were supplied with muskets by their officer, and we were told that, according to custom, one musket was left without ball, so that each one might hope that his was not the hand to slay his former comrade. A sense of mercy would still lead them all to aim faithfully, so that lingering pain might be avoided. The order was given: the bright morning sun shone like living fire along the polished barrels of the guns, as the fatal muzzles all ranged in point at the body of the condemned. "Fire!" said the commanding officer. A quick, rattling report followed, accompanied by a thin cloud of smoke, which was at once dispersed by the sea breeze, showing the still upright form of the victim. Though wounded in many places, no vital spot had been touched, nor did he fall until the sergeant, at a sign from his officer, advanced with a reserved musket, and quickly blew out his brains! His body was removed. The troops were formed into column, the band struck up a lively air, and thus was a human being launched into eternity. Few current matters strike the stranger as being more peculiar than the Cuban milkman's mode of supplying the required aliment to his town customers. He has no cart bearing shining cans, they in turn filled with milk, or with what purports to be milk; his mode is direct, and admits of no question as to purity. Driving his sober kine from door to door, he deliberately milks then and there just the quantity required by each customer, delivers it, and drives on to the next. The patient animal becomes as familiar with the residences of her master's customers as he is himself, and stops unbidden, at regular intervals, before the proper doors, often followed by a pretty little calf, which amuses itself by gazing enviously at the process, being prevented from interfering by a leather muzzle. Sometimes the flow of milk is checked by an effort of the animal herself, when she seems to realize that the calf is not getting its share of nourishment. The driver then promptly brings the calf to the mother's side, and removes the muzzle long enough to give the little one a brief chance. The cow freely yields her milk while the calf is close to her, and the milkman, muzzling the calf, adroitly milks into his measure. The same mode is adopted in India and the south of Spain. There are at least two good reasons for delivering milk in hot climates after this fashion. First, there can be no adulteration of the article; and second, it is sure to be fresh and sweet. This last is a special desideratum in a climate where ice is an expensive luxury, and the difficulty of keeping milk from becoming acid is very great. The effect upon the cow is by no means salutary, causing the animal to produce much less in quantity than when milked clean at regularly fixed hours, as with us. Goats are often driven about for the same purpose and used in the same manner. It was a surprise not to see more of these animals in Cuba, a country especially adapted to them. Cows thrive best upon grass, of which there is comparatively little in the tropics,--vegetation runs to larger development; but goats eat anything green, and do well nearly anywhere. It is a singular fact that sheep transported to this climate cease gradually to produce wool. After three or four generations they grow only a simple covering, more like hair than wool, and resemble goats rather than sheep. Glass is scarcely known in Cuban windows; the glazier has yet to make his début in Havana. The most pretentious as well as the humblest of the town-houses have the broad, high, projecting window, reaching from floor to ceiling, secured only by heavy horizontal iron bars, prison-like in effect, through which, as one passes along the narrow streets, it is nearly impossible to avoid glancing in upon domestic scenes that frequently exhibit the female portion of the family en déshabillé. Sometimes a loose lace curtain intervenes, but even this is unusual, the freest circulation of fresh air being quite necessary. The eye penetrates the whole interior of domestic life, as at Yokohama or Tokio. Indeed, the manners of the female occupants seem to court this attention from without, coming freely as they do to the windows to chat with passers-by. Once inside of these dwelling-houses there are no doors, curtains alone shutting off the communication between chambers, sitting-rooms, and corridors. These curtains, when not looped up, are sufficient to keep out persons of the household or strangers, it being the custom always to speak, in place of knocking, before passing a curtain; but the little naked negro children, male and female, creep under these curtains without restraint, while parrots, pigeons, and fowls generally make common use of all nooks and corners of the house. Doors might keep these out of one's room, but curtains do not. The division walls between the apartments in private houses, like those in the hotels, often reach but two thirds of the way up to the walls, thus affording free circulation of air, but rendering privacy impossible. One reason why the Cubans all possess such broad expanded chests is doubtless owing to the fact that their lungs find free action at all times. They live, as it were, in the open air. The effect of this upon strangers is seen and felt, producing a sense of physical exhilaration, fine spirits, and a good appetite. It would be impossible to live in a dwelling-house built in our close, secure style, if it were placed in the city of Havana. The laundress takes possession of the roof of the house during the day, but it is the place of social gathering at night, when the family and their guests enjoy the sea-breeze which sweeps in from the Gulf of Mexico. On a clear, bright moonlight night the effect is very striking as one looks across the house-tops, nearly all being upon a level. Many cheerful circles are gathered here and there, some dancing to the notes of a guitar, some singing, and others engaged in quiet games. Merry peals of laughter come from one direction and another, telling of light and thoughtless hearts among the family groups. Occasionally there is borne along the range of roofs the swelling but distant strains of the military band playing in the Plaza de Isabella, while the moon looks calmly down from a sky whose intensely blue vault is only broken by stars. The cemetery, or Campo Santo, of Havana is situated about three miles outside of the city. A high wall incloses the grounds, in which oven-like niches are prepared for the reception of the coffins containing the bodies of the wealthy residents, while the poor are thrown into shallow graves, often several bodies together in a long trench, negroes and whites, without a coffin of any sort. Upon them is thrown quicklime to promote rapid decomposition. The cremation which forms the mode of disposing of the bodies of the deceased as practiced in India is far less objectionable. The funeral cortége is unique in Havana. The hearse, drawn by four black horses, is gilded and decked like a car of Juggernaut, and driven by a flunkey in a cocked hat covered with gold braid, a scarlet coat alive with brass buttons and gilt ornaments, and top boots which, as he sits, reach half-way to his chin. This individual flourishes a whip like a fishing-pole, and is evidently very proud of his position. Beside the hearse walk six hired mourners on either side, dressed in black, with cocked hats and swallow-tail coats. Fifteen or twenty victorias follow, containing only male mourners. The driver in scarlet, the twelve swallow-tails in black, and the occupants of the victorias each and all are smoking cigars as though their lives depended upon the successful operation. And so the cortége files into the Campo Santo. Not far from La Punta there is a structure, protected from the public gaze by a high wall, where the slaves of either sex belonging to the citizens of Havana are brought for punishment. Within are a series of whipping-posts, to which these poor creatures are bound before applying the lash to their bare bodies. The sight of this fiendish procedure is cut off from the public, but more than one person has told us of having heard the agonizing cries of the victims. And yet there are people who will tell us these poor creatures are far better off than when in their native country. One slave-owner said it was necessary to make an example of some member of all large households of slaves each month, in order to keep them under discipline! Another said, "I never whip my slaves; it may be necessary upon a plantation, but not in domestic circles in town. When they have incurred my displeasure, they are deprived of some small creature comfort, or denied certain liberties, which punishment seems to answer every object." So it will be seen that all slave-holders are not cruel. Some seem as judicious and reasonable as is possible under the miserable system of slavery. Opposite the Indian Paseo, General Tacon, during his governorship of the island, constructed a broad camp-ground for military parades in what is now becoming the heart of the city, though outside the limits of the old city walls. He called it the Campo de Marte, and surrounded the whole space, ten acres, more or less, with a high ornamental iron fence. It is in form a perfect square, and on each of the four sides was placed a broad, pretentious gateway, flanked by heavy square pillars. That on the west side he named Puerta de Colon; on the north, Puerta de Cortes; on the south, Puerta de Pizarro; and on the east side, facing the city, he gave the gate the name of Puerta de Tacon. His administration has been more praised and more censured than that of any of his predecessors since the days of Velasquez. This Campo de Marte, which, as stated, was originally intended for military purposes generally, is now converted into a public park, laid out with spacious walks, fountains, handsome trees, and carriage-ways. The gates have been removed, and the whole place thrown open as a thoroughfare and pleasure-ground. Speaking of this open square brings us to the subject of hotels in Havana, and as we have so often been questioned upon this subject, doubtless a few words upon the matter will interest the general reader. We made our temporary home for nearly a month at the Hotel Telegrafo, but why it is so called we do not know. It is considered to be one of the best in the city, and is centrally situated, being opposite to the Campo de Marte. There was a chief clerk who spoke English, and another who spoke French, and two guides who possessed the same facilities. The price of board was from four to five dollars per day, including meals and service. The rooms were very small, table fair, plenty of fruits and preserves, but the meats were poor. Fish was always fresh and good in Havana. Coffee and tea were poor. If one desires to procure good coffee, as a rule, look for it anywhere rather than in countries where it is grown. Cleanliness was not considered as being an indispensable virtue in the Telegrafo. Drainage received but little attention, and the domestic offices of the house were seriously offensive. The yellow fever does not prevail in Havana except in summer, say from May to October; but according to recognized sanitary rules it should rage there every month in the year. The hotels in peninsular Spain are dirty enough to disgust any one, but those of Havana are a degree worse in this respect. Any of our readers who have chanced in their travels upon the Fonda de Rafaela, for instance, at Burgos, in Spain, will understand us fully. It was of no use to remove elsewhere; after examining the other hotels it was thought best to remain at the Telegrafo, on the principle adopted by the Irishman, who, though not inclined to believe in Purgatory, yet accepted this item of faith lest he should go further and fare worse. There is the San Carlos Hotel, near the wharves, which is more of a family than a travelers' resort; the Hotel Pasaje, in Prado Street, quite central; Hotel Europe, in La Plaza de San Francisco; and Hotels Central and Ingleterra: the last two are opposite the Plaza de Isabella, and are in the midst of noise and gayety. Arrangements can be made at any of these houses for board by the day, or on the European plan; all have restaurants. There are some very attractive summer resorts in the environs of the city, one of the nearest and prettiest of which is El Cerro (the hill), one league from town. It has a number of remarkably pleasant country-seats, some of which have extensive gardens, rivaling that of the Captain-General in extent. But to reach Cerro one has to drive over a road which is in such want of repair as to be dangerous, gullied by the rains, and exhibiting holes two feet deep, liable to break the horses' legs and the wheels of the vehicles. Here is a road, close to Havana, with stones weighing hundreds of pounds on the surface, in the very wheel-tracks. Handsome hedges of the wild pine, the aloe, and the Spanish bayonet line the road, where an occasional royal palm, the emblem of majesty, stands alone, adding grandeur to all the surroundings. If you drive out to Cerro, put on a linen duster; otherwise you will be likely to come back looking like a miller's apprentice. Not far beyond Cerro there lies some beautiful country, reached by the same miserable road. Puentes Grandes, a small village near the falls of the Almendares River, is but two miles further north than Cerro, and adjoining this place, a couple of miles further, is a small, picturesque village called Ceiba, from the abundance of that species of tree which once flourished there. These two places have some interesting country residences, where the wealthiest citizens of Havana spend their summers. The village of Quemados is also in this immediate neighborhood, about a couple of leagues from town; here is situated the Havana Hippodrome, where horse-races take place in the winter season. We must not forget to mention Vedado, on the seashore, whither the Havanese drive oftenest on Sundays; it is also connected with the city by steam-cars and omnibus. There are some fine villas here, and it is quite a Cuban watering-place, affording excellent bathing facilities. Vedado has wide streets, and, after the city, seems to be remarkably clean and neat. The Bishop's Garden, so called because some half century since it was the residence of the Bishop of Havana, is about four miles from the city, on the line of the Marianao railroad. It must have been a delightful place when in its prime and properly cared for; even now, in its ruins, it is extremely interesting. There are a score, more or less, of broken, moss-grown statues, stone balustrades, and stone capitals lying among the luxuriant vegetation, indicating what was once here. Its alleys of palms, over two hundred years in age, the thrifty almond-trees, and the gaudy-colored piñons, with their honeysuckle-like bloom, delight the eye. The flamboyant absolutely blazed in its gorgeous flowers, like ruddy flames, all over the grounds. The remarkable fan-palm spread out its branches like a peacock's tail, screening vistas here and there. Through these grounds flows a small swift stream, which has its rise in the mountains some miles inland, its bright and sparkling waters imparting an added beauty to the place. By simple irrigating means this stream is made to fertilize a considerable tract of land used as vegetable gardens, lying between Tulipan and Havana. The Bishop's Garden still contains large stone basins for swimming purposes, cascades, fountains, and miniature lakes, all rendered possible by means of this small, clear, deep river. The neglected place is sadly suggestive of decay, with its moss-covered paths, tangled undergrowth, and untrimmed foliage. Nothing, however, can mar the glory of the grand immemorial palms. The town of Tulipan, in which is the Bishop's Garden, is formed of neat and pleasant residences of citizens desiring to escape the bustle and closeness of the city. The houses are half European or American in their architecture, modified to suit the climate. Here the American Consul-General has a delightfully chosen home, surrounded by pleasant shade, and characterized by lofty, cool apartments; with bright, snowy marble floors, plenty of space, and perfect ventilation. Mr. Williams is a gentleman unusually well fitted for the responsible position he fills, having been a resident of Cuba for many years, and speaking the language like a native. In his intensely patriotic sentiments he is a typical American. It is not out of place for us to acknowledge here our indebtedness to him for much important information relating to the island. The most celebrated mineral springs in Cuba are to be found at San Diego, where there are hot sulphur waters, springs bubbling ceaselessly from the earth, and for which great virtues are claimed. The springs are situated west of Havana, between thirty and forty leagues, at the base of the southern slope of the mountains. These waters are freely drank, as well as bathed in, and are highly charged with sulphureted hydrogen, and contain sulphate of lime and carbonate of magnesia. There are some diseases of women for which the San Diego waters are considered to be a specific, and remarkable cures are authenticated. Rheumatism and skin diseases are specially treated by the local physician. There is a very fair hotel at San Diego, located near the baths, and many Americans speak warmly in praise of the place as a health resort. Next to the springs of San Diego, those of Madruga are notable, situated between Matanzas and Havana, and which can be reached by rail. The character of these springs is very similar to those of San Diego, though of lower temperature. They are used both for bathing and for drinking. Madruga is more easily accessible from the metropolis than is San Diego. There is also a good physician resident in the village. CHAPTER X. The Fish-Market of Havana. -- The Dying Dolphin. -- Tax upon the Trade. -- Extraordinary Monopoly. -- Harbor Boats. -- A Story about Marti, the Ex-Smuggler. -- King of the Isle of Pines. -- The Offered Reward. -- Sentinels in the Plaza de Armas. -- The Governor General and the Intruder. -- "I am Captain Marti!" -- The Betrayal. -- The Ex-Smuggler as Pilot. -- The Pardon and the Reward. -- Tacon's Stewardship and Official Career. -- Monopoly of Theatricals. -- A Negro Festival. The fish-market of Havana doubtless affords the best variety and quality of this article to be found in any city of the world, not even excepting Madras and Bombay, where the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal enter into rivalry with each other as to their products. The scientist Poey gives a list of six hundred species of fishes indigenous to the shores of Cuba. The supply of the city is not only procured from the neighboring waters, but fishermen come regularly a distance of over a hundred miles to the ports of the island, from Florida and Yucatan, with their small cutters well loaded. It was through the means afforded by these fishing crafts that communication was kept up between the Cuban patriots at Key West and their friends on the island, and no doubt smuggling was also carried on by them, until they came under the strict surveillance of the revenue officers. The long marble counter of the Marti fish-market, at the end of Mercaderes Street, affords a display of the finny tribe which we have never seen equaled elsewhere. Every hue and combination of iris colors is represented, while the variety and oddity of shapes is ludicrous. Even fishing on the coast and the sale of the article are virtually government monopolies; indeed, everything is taxed and double taxed in Cuba; the air one breathes would be, could it be measured. Fish are brought into this market, as at many other tropical ports, alive, being preserved in wells of salt water which also act as ballast for the fishing vessels. One morning, among others brought to the Marti market a dolphin was observed, but as it is not a fish much used for the table why it came hither was not so clear to us. Being curious as to the accuracy of the poetical simile of changing colors which characterize its dying hours, the just landed dolphin was closely watched. The varying and multiform hues were clearly exhibited by the expiring fish. First its skin presented a golden shade, as if reflecting the sun, this changing gradually into a light purple. Presently the body became silvery white, followed slowly by alternating hues of pearl and yellow, and finally death left it of a dull, lustreless gray. The market is about two hundred feet long, with one broad marble table extending from end to end. The roof is supported by a series of arches resting upon pillars. One side is entirely open to the street, thus insuring good ventilation. It is not far from the cathedral, and in the vicinity of the shore, but is in some measure superseded by the large central Mercado de Tacon in the Calzada de la Reina, one block from the Campo de Marte. In this latter market we saw shark's flesh sold for food and freely bought by the negroes and Chinese coolies. The monopoly granted in Tacon's time to the famous smuggler whose name the fish-market on Mercaderes Street still bears has reverted to the government, which requires every fisherman, like every cab driver, to pay a heavy tax for the privilege of following his calling. The boatman who pulls an oar in the harbor for hire is obliged to pay the government for the simple privilege. A writer in a popular magazine lately compared these harbor boats of Havana to Venetian gondolas; but even poetical license will not admit of this. They do, however, almost precisely resemble the thousand and one boats which besprinkle the Pearl River at Canton, being of the same shape, and covered in the stern by a similar arched frame and canvas, the Chinese substituting for this latter the universal matting. The Havana boatmen have so long suffered from the extortion of the Spanish officials that they have learned the trick of it, and practice the same upon travelers who make no bargain with them before entering their tiny vessels. The fish monopoly referred to was established under the governorship of Tacon, and is of peculiar origin. We cannot do better, perhaps, by way of illustrating his arbitrary rule, than to relate for the reader's benefit the story of its inauguration and enforcement. One of the most successful rogues whose history is connected with that of modern Cuba was one Marti, who during his life was a prominent individual upon a limited stage of action. He first became known as a notorious and successful smuggler on the coast of the island, a daring and reckless leader of desperate men. At one time he bore the pretentious title of King of the Isle of Pines, where he maintained a fortified position, more secure in its inaccessibility than for any other reason. From hence Marti dispatched his small fleet of cutters to operate between Key West and the southern coast of Cuba, sometimes extending his trips to Charleston, Savannah, and even to New Orleans. With the duty at ten dollars a barrel on American flour legitimately imported into the island, it was a paying business to smuggle even that prosaic but necessary article from one country to the other, and to transport it inland for consumption. By this business Marti is said to have amassed a large amount of money. He is described as having been a tall, dark man of mixed descent, Spanish, Creole, and mulatto. His great physical strength and brute courage are supposed to have given him precedence among his associates, added to which he possessed a large share of native shrewdness, cunning, and business tact. His masquerading capacity, if we may believe the current stories told of him, was very remarkable, enabling him to assume almost any disguise and to effectually carry it out, so as to go safely among his enemies or the government officials and gain whatever intelligence he desired. Little authentic information can be had of such a man, and one depends upon common report only in making up a sketch of his career; but he is known to have been one of the last of the Caribbean rovers, finally turning his attention to smuggling as being both the safer and more profitable occupation. The southern coast of Cuba is so formed as to be peculiarly adapted to the business of the contrabandists, who even to-day carry on this adventurous game with more or less impunity, being stimulated by the excessive and unreasonable excise duties imposed upon the necessities of life. When Tacon first arrived in the colony he found the revenue laws in a very lax condition. Smuggling was connived at by the venal authorities, and the laws, which were so stringent in the letter, were practically null and void. It is said that Marti could land a contraband cargo, at that time, on the Regla side of Havana harbor in broad daylight without fear of molestation. The internal affairs of the island were also in a most confused condition; assassinations even in the streets of Havana were frequent, and brigandage was carried on in the near environs of the city. The Governor seemed actuated by a determination to reform these outrages, and set himself seriously about the business. He found that the Spanish vessels of the navy sent hither to sustain the laws lay idly in port, the officers passing their time in search of amusement on shore, or in giving balls and dances on board their ships. Tacon saw that one of the very first moves essential to be made was to suppress the wholesale system of smuggling upon the coast. The heretofore idle navy became infused with life and was promptly detailed upon this service, coasting night and day along the shore from Cape Antonio to the Point of Maysi, but to little or no good effect. A few captures were made, but the result was only to cause a greater degree of caution on the part of the contrabandists. In vain were all the measures taken by the officials. The smuggling was as successful as ever, and the law was completely defied. At last, finding that his expeditions against the outlaws failed, partly from their adroitness and bravery and partly from want of pilots capable of guiding attacking parties among the shoals frequented by the smugglers, a large and tempting reward in gold was offered to any one of them who would desert his comrades and act as pilot to the King's ships. At the same time a double reward was offered for the person of Marti, dead or alive, as he was known to be the leader of the desperate men who so successfully defied the authorities. These offers were fully promulgated, and care was taken that those who were most interested should be made aware of their purport. But the hoped-for result did not ensue. There was either too much honor among the guilty characters to whom the bribe was offered to permit them to betray each other, or they feared the condign punishment which was the portion of all traitors among them. The government had done its best, but had failed to accomplish its object. It was a dark, cloudy night in Havana, some three or four months subsequent to the offering of the rewards to which we have referred. Two sentinels were pacing back and forth before the main entrance of the Governor's palace which forms one side of the area inclosing the Plaza de Armas. The military band had performed as usual that evening in the Plaza and had retired. The public, after enjoying the music, had partaken of their ices and favorite drinks at La Domenica's and found their way to their homes. The square was now very quiet, the stillness only broken by the music of the fountain mingled with the tread of the two sentinels. The stars looked calmly down from between the rifts of hanging clouds which crowded one another onward as though bound to some important rendezvous, where they were to perform their part in a pending storm. A little before midnight a tall figure, wrapped in a half military cloak, might have been observed watching the two guards from behind the marble statue of Ferdinand. After observing that they paced their apportioned walk, meeting each other face to face, and then separated, leaving a brief moment when the eyes of both were turned away from the entrance they were placed to guard, the stranger seemed to calculate the chances of passing them without being discovered. It was an exceedingly delicate manoeuvre, requiring great care and dexterity. Watching for the favorable moment the purpose was, however, accomplished; the tall man in the cloak at a bound passed within the portal and quickly secreted himself in the shadows of the inner court. The sentinels paced on undisturbed. The individual who had thus stealthily effected an entrance within the gates of the palace now sought the broad marble steps which led to the Governor's business suite of rooms, with a confidence that evinced a perfect knowledge of the place. A second sentinel was to be passed at the head of the stairs, but, assuming an air of authority, the stranger gave a formal military salute and passed quickly forward as though there was not the least question as to his right to do so. The drowsy guard promptly presented arms, doubtless mistaking him for some regular officer of the Governor's staff. The stranger boldly entered the Governor's reception-room and closed the door behind him. In a large chair sat the commander-in-chief before a broad table, engaged in writing, but he was quite alone. An expression of undisguised satisfaction passed across the weather-beaten countenance of the new-comer at this state of affairs, as he coolly cast off his cloak, tossed it carelessly over his arm, and proceeded to wipe the perspiration from his face. The Governor, looking up with surprise and fixing his keen eyes upon the intruder, asked peremptorily:-- "Who enters here unannounced and at this hour?" "One who has important information to impart to the government," was the quiet reply. "But why seek this manner of audience?" "For reasons, Excellency, that will soon appear." "How did you pass the guard unchallenged?" "Do not mind that for the present, Excellency." "But I do mind it very seriously." "It can be explained by and by." "Very well," said the Governor, "speak quickly then. What is your business here?" "Excellency, you have publicly offered a handsome reward for any information concerning the contrabandists," continued the stranger. "Is it not so?" "Ha!" said the Governor, "is that your errand here? What have you to say about those outlaws? Speak, speak quickly." "Excellency, I must do so with caution," said the stranger, "otherwise I may condemn myself by what I have to communicate." "Not so," interrupted Tacon, "the offer"-- "I know, Excellency, a free pardon is promised to him who shall turn state's evidence, but there may be circumstances"-- "The offer is unconditional, as it regards pardon." "True, but"-- "I say you have naught to fear," continued Tacon; "the offered reward involves unconditional pardon to the informant." "You offer an additional reward, Excellency, for the discovery of the leader of the contrabandists, Captain Marti." "Ay." "It is a full revelation I have come hither to make." "Speak, then." "First, Excellency, will you give me your knightly word that you will grant a free pardon to me, a personal pardon, if I reveal all that you require?" "I pledge you my word of honor," replied the Governor. "No matter how heinous in the eyes of the law my offenses may have been, still you will pardon me under the King's seal?" "Why all this reiteration?" asked Tacon impatiently. "Excellency, it is necessary," was the reply. "I will do so, if you reveal truly and to any good purpose," answered the Governor, weighing carefully in his mind the purpose of all this precaution. "Even if I were a leader among these men?" The Governor hesitated but for a single moment, while he gave the man before him a searching glance, then said:-- "Even then, be you whom you may, if you are able and willing to pilot our ships and reveal the rendezvous of Marti and his followers, you shall be rewarded and pardoned according to the published card." "Excellency, I think that I know your character well enough to fully trust these words, else I should not have ventured here." "Speak, then, and without further delay. My time is precious," continued the Governor with manifest impatience, and half rising from his seat. "It is well. I will speak without further parley. The man for whom you have offered the largest reward--ay, dead or alive--is before you!" "And you are"-- "Captain Marti!" Tacon had not expected this, but supposed himself talking to some lieutenant of the famous outlaw, and though no coward he instinctively cast his eyes towards a brace of pistols that lay within reach of his right hand. This was but for a moment; yet the motion was not unobserved by his visitor, who, stepping forward, drew a couple of similar weapons from his own person and laid them quietly on the table, saying:-- "I have no further use for these; it is to be diplomacy for the future, not fighting." "That is well," responded the Governor; and after a few moments of thought he continued: "I shall keep my promise, be assured of that, provided you faithfully perform your part, notwithstanding the law demands your immediate punishment. For good reasons, as well as to secure your faithfulness, you must remain under guard," he added. "I have anticipated that, and am prepared," was the reply. "We understand each other then." Saying which he rang a small silver bell by his side, and issued a verbal order to the attendant who responded. In a few moments after, the officer of the watch entered, and Marti was placed in confinement, with directions to render him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. His name was withheld from the officers. Left alone, the Governor mused for a few moments thoughtfully over the scene which we have described, then, summoning the officer of the guard, demanded that the three sentinels on duty should be relieved and brought at once before him. What transpired between them was not made public, but it was known on the following day that they had been condemned to the chain-gang for a whole month. Military law is rigid. On the subsequent day, one of the light-draught corvettes which lay under the guns of Moro Castle suddenly became the scene of the utmost activity, and before noon had weighed anchor and was standing out of the harbor. Captain Marti was on board acting as pilot, and faithfully did he guide the government ship in the discharge of her errand among the bays and shoals of the southern coast. For more than a month he was engaged in this piloting to all the secret haunts and storage places of the contrabandists, but it was observed that very few stores were found in them! On this famous expedition one or two small vessels were taken and destroyed in the bays of the Isle of Pines, but not one of the smugglers was captured. Information of the approach of the would-be captors was always mysteriously conveyed to them, and when a rendezvous was reached the occupants, it was found, had fled a few hours previously! The amount of property secured was very small, but still the organization which had so long and so successfully defied the government was broken up, and the smugglers' place of rendezvous became known. Marti returned with the ship to claim his reward. Tacon was well satisfied with the result and with the manner in which the ex-smuggler had fulfilled his agreement. The officials did not look very deeply into the business, and they believed that Marti had really betrayed his former comrades. The Governor-General summoned him to his presence and said to Marti:-- "As you have faithfully performed your part of our agreement, I am prepared to fulfill mine. In this package you will find a free and unconditional pardon for all your past offenses against the law. Mark the word _past_ offenses," reiterated the Governor. "Any new disloyalty on your part shall be as promptly and rigorously treated as though these late services had never been rendered. And here is an order upon the treasury for the sum"-- "Excellency, excuse me," said the pardoned smuggler, stepping back, and holding up his hand in significance of declining the reward. "What does this mean?" asked Tacon. "Permit me to explain, Excellency." "What, more conditions?" asked the Governor. "The pardon, Excellency, I gladly receive," continued Marti. "As to the sum of money you propose to give me, let me make you a proposal." "Speak out. Let us know what it is." "The treasury is poor," said the ex-smuggler, "I am rich. Retain the money, and in place of it guarantee me alone the right to fish on the coast of Cuba, and declare the business of supplying the people with fish contraband, except to me and my agents. This will amply compensate me, and I will erect a public market at my own expense, which shall be an ornament to the city, and which at the expiration of twenty-five years shall revert to the government." "So singular a proposition requires to be considered," said the Governor. "In the mean time I will await your commands," said Marti, preparing to leave. "Stay," said the Governor. "I like your proposal, and shall probably accede to it; but I will take a day to give it careful thought." As Tacon said, he was pleased with the idea from the outset. He saw that he was dealing with a thorough man of business. He remembered that he should always have the man under his control, and so the proposal was finally accepted and confirmed. The ci-devant smuggler at once assumed all the rights which this extraordinary grant gave to him. Seeking his former comrades, they were all employed by Marti on profitable terms as fishermen, and realized an immunity from danger not to be expected in their old business. Having in his roving life learned where to seek fish in the largest quantities, he furnished the city bountifully with the article, and reaped a large annual profit, until the period expired for which the monopoly was granted, and the market reverted to the government. Marti, in the mean time, possessing great wealth, looked about him to see in what enterprise he could best invest it. The idea struck him that if he could obtain some such agreement relating to theatricals in Havana as he had enjoyed in connection with the fishery on the coast, he could make a profitable business of it. He was granted the privilege he sought, provided he should build one of the largest and best appointed theatres in the world on the Paseo, and name it the Tacon Theatre. This agreement he fulfilled. The detailed conditions of this monopoly were never made public. Many romantic stories are told relating to Captain Marti, but these are the only ones bearing upon the subject of our present work which are believed to be authentic. Of all the Governors-General who have occupied that position in Cuba, none are better known at home or abroad than Tacon, though he filled the post but four years, having been appointed in 1834, and returning to Spain in 1838. His reputation at Havana is of a somewhat doubtful character, for although he followed out with energy the various improvements suggested by Arranjo, yet his modes of procedure were often so violent that he was an object of terror to the people generally rather than one of gratitude. It must be admitted that he vastly improved the appearance of the capital and its vicinity, built a new prison, rebuilt the Governor's palace, constructed several new roads in the environs, including the Paseo bearing his name, and opened a large parade-ground just outside the old city walls, thus laying the foundation of the new city which has sprung up in the formerly desolate neighborhood of the Campo de Marte. Tacon also practically suppressed the public gaming-houses, but this radical effort to check an inherent vice only resulted in transferring the gambling-tables of the private houses devoted to the purpose into the public restaurants, which was not much of an improvement. In one important matter he was more successful; namely, in instituting a system of police, and rendering the streets of Havana, which were formerly infested with robbers, as secure as those of most of our American cities. But his reforms were all consummated with a rude, arbitrary arm, and in a military fashion. Life or property were counted by him of little value, if either required to be sacrificed for his purpose. Many people fell before his relentless orders. There was undoubtedly much of right mingled with his wrongs, but if he left lasting monuments of energy and skill behind him, he also left many tombs filled by his victims. Notwithstanding all, there seemed to be throughout his notable career a sort of romantic spirit of justice--wild justice--prompting him. Some of the stories still current relating to him go far to show this to have been the case, while others exhibit the possibilities of arbitrary power, as exercised in the contract with Captain Marti. On January 6th, the day of Epiphany, the negroes of Havana, as well as in the other cities of the island, make a grand public demonstration; indeed, the occasion may be said to be given up to them as a holiday for their race. They march about the principal streets in bands, each with its leader got up like a tambour major, and accompanied by rude African drum notes and songs. They are dressed in the most fantastic and barbarous disguises, some wearing cow's horns, others masks representing the heads of wild beasts, and some are seen prancing on dummy horses. All wear the most gorgeous colors, and go from point to point on the plazas and paseos, asking for donations from every one they meet. It is customary to respond to these demands in a moderate way, and the greatest reasonable latitude is given to the blacks on the occasion; reminding one of a well-manned ship at sea in a dead calm, before the days of steam, when all hands were piped to mischief. But what it all means except improving a special occasion for wholesale noise, grotesque parading, and organized begging, it will puzzle the stranger to make out. Among the colored performers there is but a small proportion of native Africans, that is, negroes actually imported into Cuba; most of them are direct descendants, however, from parents who were brought from the slave coast, but it must be remembered that none have been imported for about thirty years. The Isle of Pines, which has been more than once alluded to in these notes, is situated less than forty miles south of Cuba, being under the jurisdiction of the Governor-General of Havana. It is forty-four miles long and nearly as wide, having an area of between twelve and thirteen hundred square miles. It is supposed that there are about two thousand inhabitants, though Spanish statistics are not to be relied upon. Like Cuba, it has a mountain range traversing the middle for its whole length, but the highest portion does not reach quite two thousand feet. The island has several rivers and is well watered by springs. The climate is pronounced to be even more salubrious than that of Cuba, while the soil is marvelously fertile. An English physician, who, with a patient, passed a winter at Nueva Gerona, which has a population of only a hundred souls, says the climate is remarkably bland and equable, especially adapted for pulmonary invalids. The coast is deeply indented by bays, some of which afford good anchorage, though the island is surrounded by innumerable rocky islets or keys. The Isle of Pines is very nearly in the same condition in which Columbus found it in 1494, containing a large amount of precious woods, and some valuable mines of silver, iron, sulphur, quicksilver, and quarries of beautifully variegated marble. It is reached by special steamers from Havana, not oftener than once a month. CHAPTER XI. The Havana Lottery. -- Its Influence. -- Hospitality of the Cubans. -- About Bonnets. -- The Creole Lady's Face. -- Love of Flowers. -- An Atmospheric Narcotic. -- The Treacherous Indian Fig. -- How the Cocoanut is propagated. -- Cost of Living in Cuba. -- Spurious Liquors. -- A Pleasant Health Resort. -- The Cock-Pit. -- Game-Birds. -- Their Management. -- A Cuban Cock-Fight. -- Garden of the World. -- About Birds. -- Stewed Owl! -- Slaughter of the Innocents. -- The Various Fruits. There is a regularly organized lottery in Havana, to which the government lends its name, and which has semi-monthly drawings. These drawings are made in public, and great care is taken to impress the people with the idea of their entire fairness. The authorities realize over a million dollars annually by the tax which is paid into the treasury on these most questionable enterprises. The lottery is patronized by high and low, the best mercantile houses devoting a regular sum monthly to the purchase of tickets on behalf of their firms. One individual of this class told the writer that no drawing had taken place within the last ten years at Havana in which the firm of which he was a member had not been interested to the extent of at least one doubloon, that is, one whole ticket. The mode usually is, however, to purchase several fractional parts of tickets, so as to multiply the chances. On being asked what was the result of the ten years of speculation in this line, the reply was that the books of the firm would show, as it was entered therein like any other line of purchases. Curious to find an authentic instance as an example, the matter was followed up until the result was found. It seemed that this house had averaged about four hundred dollars per annum expended for lottery tickets, that is, four thousand dollars in the last ten years. On the credit side they had received in prizes about nineteen hundred dollars, making a loss of twenty-one hundred dollars. "But then," remarked our informant, "we may get a big prize one of these days,--who knows?" The lottery here proves to be as great a curse as it does in Italy, where its demoralizing effects are more apparent. The poorer classes, even including the slaves and free negroes, are regular purchasers, and occasionally a prize is realized among them, which stimulates to increased ventures. A few years since, some slaves upon a plantation near Alquizar purchased a single ticket, clubbing together in order to raise the money. These Africans drew a prize of forty thousand dollars, which sum was honestly paid to them, and they purchased their freedom at once, dividing a very pretty amount for each as a capital to begin business on his own account. "And pray what became of those liberated men?" we asked of our informant. "Singular to say I can tell you," he answered. "Others felt the same interest you express, and they have been followed in their subsequent career. There were sixteen of the party, who realized equal portions of the prize. They were valuable slaves, and paid an average of fifteen hundred dollars each for their free papers. This left them a thousand dollars each. Two returned to Africa. Four joined the insurgents at Santiago, in 1870, and were probably shot. The remainder drank themselves to death in Havana, or died by fevers induced through intemperate habits." "Did you ever know a man, white or black, who drew a prize of any large amount, who was not the worse for it after a short time?" we asked. "Perhaps not," was his honest reply. A miserable creature came into the vestibule of the Telegrafo Hotel one day begging. After he had departed we were told that a few years ago he was possessed of a fortune. "Why is he in this condition?" we asked. "He was engaged in a good business," said our informant, "drew a large prize in the lottery, sold out his establishment, and gave himself up to pleasure, gambling, and drink. That is all that is left of him now. He has just come out of the hospital, where he was treated for paralysis." Honestly conducted as these lotteries are generally believed to be, their very stability and the just payment of prizes but makes them the more baleful and dangerous in their influence upon the public. As carried on in Havana, the lottery business is the most wholesale mode of gambling ever witnessed. Though some poor man may become comparatively wealthy through their means, once in twenty years, yet in the mean time thousands are impoverished in their mad zeal to purchase tickets though it cost them the last dollar they possess. The government thus fosters a taste for gambling and supplies the ready means, while any one at all acquainted with the Spanish character must know that the populace need no prompting in a vice to which they seem to take intuitively. No people, unless it be the Chinese, are so addicted to all games of chance upon which money can be staked. Spaniards, and especially Cuban Spaniards, receive credit for being extremely hospitable, and to a certain extent this is true; but one soon learns to regard the extravagant manifestations which so often characterize their domestic etiquette as rather empty and heartless. Let a stranger enter the house of a Cuban for the first time, especially if he be a foreigner, and the host or hostess of the mansion at once places all things they possess at his service, yet no one thinks for a single moment of interpreting this offer literally. The family vehicle is at your order, or the loan of a saddle horse, and in such small kindnesses they are always generous; but when they beg you to accept a ring, a book, or a valuable toy, because you have been liberal in your praise of the article, you are by no means to do so. Another trait of character which suggests itself in this connection is the universal habit of profuse compliment common among Cuban ladies. Flattery is a base coin at best, but it is current here. The ladies listen to these compliments as a matter of course from their own countrymen or such Frenchmen as have settled among them, but if an American takes occasion to express his honest admiration to a Creole, her delight is at once manifest. Both the French and Spanish are extremely gallant to the gentler sex, but it requires no argument to show that woman under either nationality is far less esteemed and honored than she is with us in America. The bonnet, which forms so important a part of a lady's costume in Europe and America, is rarely worn by the Creoles, and strangers who appear on the streets of Havana with the latest fashion of this ever varying article are regarded with curiosity, though so many American and English ladies visit the island annually. In place of a bonnet, when any covering is considered desirable for the head, the Cuban ladies generally wear a long black veil, richly wrought, and gathered at the back of the head upon the clustered braid of hair, which is always black and luxuriant. More frequently, however, even this appendage is not seen, and they drive in the Paseo or through the streets with their heads entirely uncovered, save by the sheltering hood of the victoria. When necessity calls them abroad in the early or middle hours of the day, there is generally a canvas screen buttoned to the dasher and extended to the top of the calash, to shut out the too ardent rays of the sun. Full dress, on all state occasions, is black, but white is universally worn by the ladies in domestic life, forming a rich contrast to the olive complexions of the women. Sometimes in the Paseo, when enjoying the evening drive, these fair creatures indulge in strange contrasts of colors in dress. They also freely make use of a cosmetic called cascarilla, made from eggshells finely powdered and mixed with the white of the egg. This forms an adhesive paste, with which they at times enamel themselves, so that faces and necks that are naturally dark resemble those of persons who are white as pearls. There is one indispensable article, without which a Cuban lady would feel herself absolutely lost. The fan is a positive necessity to her, and she learns its coquettish and graceful use from childhood. Formed of various rich materials, it glitters in her tiny hand like a gaudy butterfly, now half, now wholly shading her radiant face, which quickly peeps out again from behind its shelter, like the moon from out a passing cloud. This little article, always costly, sometimes very expensive, in her hand seems in its eloquence of motion almost to speak. She has a witching flirt with it that expresses scorn; a graceful wave of complacence; an abrupt closing of it that indicates vexation or anger; a gradual and cautious opening of its folds that signifies reluctant forgiveness; in short, the language of the fan in the hand of a Cuban lady is a wonderfully adroit and expressive pantomime that requires no interpreter, for, like the Chinese written language, it cannot be spoken. It may be the prodigality of nature in respect to Flora's kingdom which has retarded the development of a love for flowers among the people of the island. Doubtless if Maréchal Niel roses, Jacqueminots, jonquils, and lilies of the valley were as abundant with us in every field as clover, dandelions, and buttercups, we should hardly regard them with so much delight as we do. It is not common to see flowers under cultivation as they are at the North. They spring up too readily in a wild state from the fertile soil. One cannot pass over half a league on an inland road without his senses being regaled and delighted by the natural floral fragrance, heliotrope, honeysuckle, sweet pea, and orange blossoms predominating. The jasmine and Cape rose, though less fragrant, are delightful to the eye, and cluster everywhere among the hedges, groves, and coffee estates. There is a blossoming shrub, the native name of which we do not remember, but which is remarkable for its multitudinous crimson flowers, so seductive to the humming-birds that they hover about it all day long, burying themselves in its blossoms until petal and wing seem one. At first upright, a little later the gorgeous bells droop downward and fall to the ground unwithered, being poetically called Cupid's tears. Flowers abound here which are only known to us in our hothouses, whose brilliant colors, like those of the cactus, scarlet, yellow, and blue, are quite in harmony with the surroundings, where everything is aglow. There was pointed out to us a specimen of the frangipanni, a tall and nearly leafless plant bearing a milk-white flower, and resembling the tuberose in fragrance, but in form much like our Cherokee rose. This plant, it will be remembered, was so abundant and so pleasant to the senses as to attract the attention of the early explorers who accompanied Columbus across the sea. There seems to be at times a strange narcotic influence in the atmosphere of the island, realized more especially inland, where the visitor is partially removed from the winds which commonly blow from the Gulf in the after part of the day. So potent has the writer felt this influence that at first it was supposed to be the effect of some powerful and medicinal plant abounding in the neighborhood; but on inquiry it was found that this delightful sense of ease and indolent luxuriousness was not an unusual experience, particularly among strangers, and was solely attributable to the narcotic of the soft climate. By gently yielding to this influence one seemed to dream while awake, and though the sense of hearing is diminished, that of the olfactories appears to be increased, and pleasant odors float on every passing breeze. One feels at peace with all human nature, and a sense of voluptuous ease overspreads the body. Others have experienced and remarked upon this sensation of idle happiness. The only unpleasant realizing sense during the enjoyment of this condition is the fear that some human voice, or some chance noise, loud and abrupt, may arouse the dreamer from his trance. Specimens of the Indian fig, as it is called here, will be sure to attract the visitor's eye on his inland excursions. It clasps, entwines, and finally, serpent-like, kills the loftiest forest monarchs, and taking their place, firmly roots itself and becomes a stately tree, fattening upon its ill-gotten possession. Its unfading leaf of vivid green is beautiful to look upon, in spite of its known and treacherous character. In many respects it typifies the Spanish discoverers of this beautiful isle, who gradually possessed themselves of its glorious heritage by the destruction of its legitimate owners. The manner in which that prolific tree, the cocoanut palm, is propagated was a curious and interesting study for a leisure hour, the germination having been with us heretofore an unsolved riddle. Within the hard shell of the nut, among the mass of rich creamy substance, near the large end, is a small white lump like the stalk of a young mushroom, called the ovule. This little finger-like germ of the future tree gradually forces itself through one of the three eyes always to be found on the cocoanut. What giant power is concealed within that tiny ovule, apparently so soft and insignificant! Having pierced its way through the first shell, it then gradually rends the outer coat of fibrous covering and curves upward towards the light. Into the inner shell which it has vacated, it throws little fibrous threads which slowly absorb the albumen, and thus sustain its new life as it rapidly develops. First a few leaves grow upward, which from the very outset begin to assume the pinnate form of the cocoanut leaf, while, stretching earthward, a myriad of little threads of roots bury themselves in the ground. Though the tree will grow to a height of sixty feet or more, these roots will never individually exceed the size of the fingers on one's hand. In five or six years the tree will produce its first cluster of cocoanuts, and for several years will go on increasing in fruitfulness and yielding a bountiful crop for fifty or sixty years. It was a constant wonder how these cocoanut trees could sustain an upright position with such a weight of ripening fruit clustered beneath the shade of their tufted tops. As regards the cost of living in the island, it may be said to average higher to the stranger than in the United States. At the city hotels and large boarding houses the charge is modified from four or five dollars per day; if a special bargain is made for a considerable period, it is customary to give a reduction on transient rates of ten or fifteen per cent. Among the small towns in the interior, at the houses of entertainment, which are wretchedly poor as a rule, the charges are exorbitant, and strangers are looked upon as fair game. This, however, is no more so than in continental Europe, where, though the accommodations are better, the general treatment is the same. The luscious and healthful fruits of the country form a large share of the provisions of the table in Cuba, and are always freely provided. A fair quality of claret wine, imported from Spain, is also regularly placed before the guest free of charge, it being the ordinary drink of the people; but beware of calling for other wines, and particularly champagne, unless you are prepared to be swindled by the price charged in your bill. Of course you get only imitation champagne,--that is to be expected; you do the same nearly everywhere. There is not enough pure champagne manufactured in Europe to supply the Paris and London markets alone. The mode of cooking is very similar to the French, plus the universal garlic, which, like tobacco, appears to be a prime necessity to the average Spanish appetite. One does not visit Cuba, however, with the expectation of finding all the niceties of the table which are ordinary comforts at home, and therefore he is quite content to enjoy the delightful fruits of the country, the novel scenery, the curious vegetation, and the captivating climate, which cannot fail to compensate for many small annoyances. One of the most pleasant and healthful resorts for a temporary home on the island is probably the small but thrifty town of Guines, situated about forty-five miles from Havana, with which it is connected by rail; indeed, this was the first railroad constructed in Cuba, that between Matanzas and Havana being the second. Both were mainly the result of American enterprise and capital. There are now a little over nine hundred miles of railroad in operation, and more is urgently demanded to open internal communication with important sections. The water communication along the southern and northern coasts is mostly depended upon, and a very well organized system is sustained by three or four lines of domestic steamers. The immediate locality of Guines is thought to be one of the most salubrious and best for invalids on the western division of the island, and is largely resorted to by Americans. It has generally more of the comforts considered necessary for persons in delicate health than can readily be obtained in Havana, and one has here the quiet and retirement which it is impossible to find in the metropolis. Here will be seen, as in all towns large or small in Cuba, a curious place of amusement of circular form, called a "pit," where the natives indulge their national passion for cock-fighting and gambling combined. It is astonishing how pugnacious and fierce these birds become by careful training; the instinct must be in them or it could not be so developed. When brought together and opposed to each other in battle, one must die, and often both do so, for they will fight as long as they can stand on their feet. The pit is always crowded, and the amount of money which changes hands daily in this cruel mode of gambling is very considerable. Women not infrequently attend these contests, but only those of the pariah class, certain back seats being reserved for them, while here and there may be seen a shovel-hatted priest, as eager in the result as the professionals themselves. The cock-pit is a circular building, thirty or forty feet in diameter, resembling on the outside a huge haystack. The size, however, is regulated according to the population of the immediate neighborhood. The seats are raised in a circle, one above another, about a central ring in which the contest takes place. The ground is covered with sawdust or tan. The birds are of a native game breed, and are subject from chickenhood to a peculiar course of treatment. The English game-cock is prized here only for crossing with the native breed. He cannot equal the Spanish bird in the necessary qualities of pluck and endurance. The food of the game-cock when in training is regulated with great care, carefully weighed, and a certain number of ounces is given to him three times a day, so that the bird, like a race-horse, is never permitted to grow fat, but is kept in what is called fighting condition. Some days before a contest they are fed with a few ounces of raw meat once during the twenty-four hours, which, being kept always a little hungry, they devour with avidity. Greater care as to diet and exercise could not be taken by pugilists training for a conflict. The feathers of these fighting-cocks are closely cropped in a jaunty style; the neck and head, to the length of three inches, is completely plucked of all feathers, the comb being trimmed close to the crown. The flesh which is thus left bare is daily rubbed with rum until it becomes hardened and calloused. Brief encounters are permitted among them under proper restrictions, when they are young. No fear is felt that they will seriously injure each other, until they are old enough to have the sharp steel gaffs affixed upon the spurs with which nature has supplied them. Then, like men armed with sword and dagger, they attack each other with fatal earnestness, making the blood flow at every stroke. It is singular that the birds are so determined upon the fight that no amount of loud cries, or challenges between the betters, or jeers by the excited audience, disturbs them in the least. The author witnessed one of these exhibitions at Guines. The fighting-ring of the cock-pit was some twelve feet in diameter, the seating capacity being arranged for about a hundred persons or more, and each bench was fully occupied. The two birds pitted against each other were carefully weighed, and the result was announced to the audience. They were then passed in review, held in the hands of their respective owners, and betting at once commenced as to which would win the victory. In the mean time the two birds seemed quietly awaiting their time, and by the knowing way in which both surveyed the surroundings and the assembled people, they really appeared as if they understood the business in hand. There was no struggling on their part to get out of the hands of those who held them. Presently they were passed into the care of the umpires, two of whom officiated, and who then affixed the steel gaffs to the spurs of the contestants. The two birds were then placed on the ground inside of the ring, opposite each other. No sooner did they feel themselves fairly on their feet than both crowed triumphantly, eying each other with fell intent. Then commenced a series of bird-tactics, each partially advancing and pretending to retreat as if to draw on his antagonist, pecking the while at imaginary kernels of corn on the ground. In the mean time the audience almost held its breath in anticipation of the cunningly deferred onset. Presently the two birds, as if by one impulse, rushed towards each other, and a simultaneous attack took place. The contest, when the birds are armed with steel gaffs, rarely lasts more than eight or ten minutes before one or both are so injured as to end the fight. The money staked upon the fight is won by those backing the bird which survives, or is longest in dying. When the artificial spurs are not used, and the birds fight in their natural state, the battle sometimes lasts for an hour, but is always fatal in the end to one or the other, or both. Eyes are pecked out, wings and legs broken, necks pierced again and again; still they fight on until death ensues. During the fight the excitement is intense, and a babel of voices reigns within the structure, the betting being loud, rapid, and high. Thus in a small way the cock-fight is as cruel and as demoralizing as that other national game, the terrible bull-fight, indigenous to Spain and her colonies. Cuba has justly been called the garden of the world, perpetual summer smiling upon its shores, and its natural wealth and possibilities baffling even the imagination. The waters which surround it, as we have seen, abound with a variety of fishes, whose bright colors, emulating the tints of precious stones and the prismatic hues of the rainbow, astonish and delight the eye of the stranger. Stately and peculiar trees enliven the picturesque landscape. Throughout the woods and groves flit a variety of birds, whose dazzling colors defy the palette of the artist. Here the loquacious parrot utters his harsh natural notes; there the red flamingo watches by the shore of the lagoon, the waters dyed by the reflection of his scarlet plumage. It would require a volume to describe the vegetable and animal kingdom of Cuba, but among the most familiar birds are the golden robin, the bluebird, the catbird, the Spanish woodpecker, the gaudy-plumed paroquet, and the pedoreva, with its red throat and breast and its pea-green head and body. There is also a great variety of wild pigeons, blue, gray, and white; the English lady-bird, with a blue head, scarlet breast, and green and white back; the indigo-bird, the golden-winged woodpecker, the ibis, and many smaller species, like the humming-bird. Of this latter family there are said to be sixty different varieties, each sufficiently individualized in size and other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas. The nest was a marvel of perfection, the cotton being bound cunningly and securely together by the long horse-hairs, of which there were not more than three or four. Human fingers could not have done it so deftly. Probably the bird that built the nest and laid the eggs did not weigh, all fledged, over half an ounce! Parrots settle on the sour orange trees when the fruit is ripe, and fifty may be secured by a net at a time. The Creoles stew and eat them as we do pigeons; the flesh is tough, and as there are plenty of fine water-fowl and marsh birds about the lagoons as easily procured, one is at a loss to account for the taste that leads to eating parrots. The brown pelican is seen in great numbers sailing lazily over the water and dipping for fish. Strange is the ubiquity of the crows; one sees them in middle India, China, and Japan. They ravage our New England cornfields, and in Ceylon,--equatorial Ceylon,--they absolutely swarm. When one, therefore, finds them saucy, noisy, thieving, even in Cuba, it is not surprising that the fact should be remarked upon, though here the species differs somewhat from those referred to, being known as the Jack-crow or turkey-buzzard. In the far East, like the vulture, the crow is considered a natural scavenger or remover of carrion, and the same excuse is made for him in Cuba and Florida. But is he not more of a freebooter and feathered bandit,--in short, a prowling thief generally? Nature has few birds or animals upon her varied list with which we would find fault, but the crow,--well, having nothing to say in its favor, let us drop the subject. Parrots, paroquets, tiny indigo birds, pedorevas, and robins,--yes, these are all in harmony with mingled fragrance and sunshine, but the coal-black crow, with his bad habits and hoarse bird-profanity, bah! When these West Indian islands were first settled by Spanish emigrants, they were the home of myriads of birds of every tropical variety, but to-day the feathered beauties and merry songsters have been entirely driven away from some of the smaller islands, and decimated on others, by the demand for bird's wings with which to deck ladies' bonnets in Europe and America. Sportsmen have found it profitable to visit the tropics solely for the purpose of shooting these rainbow-colored creatures for ornaments. Aside from the loss to general interest and beauty in nature caused by this wholesale destruction of the feathered tribe, another and quite serious result has been the consequence. A plague of vermin has followed the withdrawal of these little insect-killers. It is so natural to look for them amid such luxuriant vegetation that they become conspicuous by their absence. Now and again, however, the ears are gratefully saluted by the trilling and sustained notes of some hidden songster, whose music is entirely in tune with the surrounding loveliness, but truly delightful song-birds have ever been rare in the low latitudes, where there is more of color than song. Those agriculturists who possess sufficient means confine themselves solely to the raising of sugar, coffee, and tobacco, the former principally employing capital. Indian corn, which the first settlers found indigenous here, is quite neglected, and when raised at all it is used before ripening, almost universally, as green fodder; very little is ripened and gathered as grain. It is found that horses and cattle can be kept in good condition and strength, while performing the usual labor required of them, by feeding them on a liberal allowance of cornstalks, given in the green state, before the corn has begun to form on the cob. The Cubans will tell you that the nourishing principle which forms the grain is in the stalk and leaves, and if fed in that state before ripening further, the animals obtain all the sustaining properties which they require. The climate is particularly adapted to the raising of oranges, but there is very little attention given to propagating this universally popular fruit, more especially since the increased production which has taken place on the other side of the Gulf Stream in Florida. Three years after the seed of this fruit is deposited in suitable soil in Cuba the tree becomes ten or twelve feet in height, and in the fourth year rarely produces less than a hundred oranges, while at ten years of age it commonly bears three and four thousand, thus proving, with proper care, extremely profitable. It will be remembered that it is the longest lived of succulent fruit trees. There are specimens still extant in Cuba known to be one hundred years old. The oranges produced in Florida are of equally good quality, and bring a better price in the market, but the crop is subject to more contingencies and liability to loss than in Cuba. The frost not infrequently ruins a whole season's yield in the peninsula in one or two severe nights, while frost is never experienced upon the island. It seems unreasonable that when the generous, fruitful soil of Cuba is capable of producing two or three crops of vegetables annually, the agricultural wealth of the island should be so poorly developed. Thousands upon thousands of acres of fertile soil are still in their virgin condition. It is capable of supporting a population of almost any density,--certainly from eight to ten millions of people might find goodly homes here, and yet the largest estimate at the present time gives only a million and a half of inhabitants. When one treads the fertile soil and beholds the clustering fruits in such abundance, the citron, the star-apple, the perfumed pineapple, the luscious banana, and other fruits for which our language has no name, not forgetting the various noble woods which caused Columbus to exclaim with pleasure, and to mention the palm and the pine growing together, characteristic types of Arctic and equatorial vegetation, we are struck with the thought of how much Providence and how little man has done for this Eden of the Gulf. We long to see it peopled by men who can appreciate the gifts of nature, men who are willing to do their part in recognition of her fruitfulness and who will second her spontaneous bounty. Nowhere on the face of the globe would well-directed, intelligent labor meet with a richer reward, nowhere would repose from labor be so sweet. The hour of rest here sinks upon the face of nature with a peculiar charm; the night breeze, in never-failing regularity, comes with its gentle wing to fan the weary frame, and no danger lurks in its breath. It has free scope through the unglazed windows, and blowing fresh from the broad surface of the Mexican Gulf, it bears a goodly tonic to the system. Beautifully blue are the heavens and festally bright the stars of a tropical night, where familiar constellations greet us with brighter radiance and new ones charm the eye with their novelty. Preëminent in brilliancy among them is the Southern Cross, a galaxy of stars that never greets us in the North. At midnight its glittering framework stands erect. That solemn hour past the Cross declines. How glorious the nights where such a heavenly sentinel indicates the watches! "How often have we heard our guides exclaim in the savannas of Venezuela," says Humboldt, "or in the deserts extending from Lima to Truxillo, 'Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend.'" Cuba is indeed a land of enchantment, where nature is beautiful and bountiful, and where mere existence is a luxury, but it requires the infusion of a sterner, a more self-reliant, self-denying and enterprising race to test its capabilities and to astonish the world with its productiveness. CHAPTER XII. Traveling by Volante. -- Want of Inland Communication. -- Americans Profitable Customers. -- The Cruel National Game. -- The Plaza de Toros. -- Description of a Bull-Fight. -- The Infection of Cruelty. -- The Romans and Spaniards Compared. -- Cry of the Spanish Mob: "Bread and Bulls!" -- Women at the Fight. -- The Nobility of the Island. --The Monteros. -- Ignorance of the Common People. -- Scenes in the Central Market, Havana. -- Odd Ideas of Cuban Beggars. -- An Original Style of Dude. -- A Mendicant Prince. The volante, the national vehicle of Cuba, and until latterly the only one in common use upon the island, has been several times spoken of. It has been superseded, especially in Havana, just as steam launches are crowding out the gondolas on the canals of Venice. Our present notes would be quite incomplete without a description of this unique vehicle. It is difficult without experience to form an idea of its extraordinary ease of motion, or its appropriateness to the peculiarities of the country roads, where only it is now in use. At first sight, with its shafts sixteen feet long, and wheels six yards in circumference, one would think that it must be very disagreeable to ride in; but the reverse is the fact, and when seated the motion is most agreeable, like being rocked in a cloud. It makes nothing of the deep ruts and inequalities upon the execrable roads, but sways gently its low-hung, chaise-like body, and dashes over and through every impediment with the utmost facility. Strange as it may seem, it is very light upon the horse, which the postilion also bestrides. When traveling any distance, a second horse is added on the left, abreast of the first, and attached to the volante by an added whiffletree and traces. When there are two horses the postilion rides the one to the left, thus leaving the shaft-horse free of other weight than the vehicle. If the roads are very rough, which is their chronic condition, and there is more than usual weight to carry, a third horse is often added, and he is placed abreast with the others, to the right of the shaft horse, being guided by a bridle rein in the hands of the calisero, as he is called. Heretofore the wealthy people took great pride in these volantes, a purely Cuban idea, and they were ornamented for city use at great expense with silver trimmings, and sometimes even in gold. A volante equipped in this style, with the gayly-dressed negro postilion, his scarlet jacket elaborately trimmed with gold or silver braid, his high jack-boots with big silver buckles at the knees, and huge spurs upon his heels, was quite a dashing affair, more especially if a couple of black-eyed Creole ladies constituted the freight. Were it not for the few railroads and steamboat routes which are maintained, communication between the several parts of the island would be almost impossible. During the rainy season especially, inland travel is impracticable for wheels. China or Central Africa is equally well off in this respect. Nearly all transportation, except it be on the line of the railroads, is accomplished on mule-back, or on the little Cuban horses. The fact is, road making is yet to be introduced into the island. Even the wonderful volante can only make its way in the environs of cities. Most of the so-called roads resemble the bed of a mountain torrent, and would hardly pass for a cow-path in America. Nothing more clearly shows the undeveloped condition of the island than this absence of means for internal communication. In Havana and its immediate environs the omnibus and tramway afford facilities which are liberally patronized, though when the latter was first introduced it was considered such an innovation that it was most bitterly opposed by the citizens. Like the railroads, the tramway was the result of foreign enterprise, and has doubled the value of property in any direction within a couple of leagues of the city proper. One of the most petty and most annoying experiences to which the traveler is subjected is the arbitrary tax of time and money put upon him by the small officials, of every rank, in the employment of the government. By this system of small taxes upon travelers, a considerable revenue is realized. Where this is known, it keeps visitors away from Cuba, which is just what the Spaniards pretend to desire, though it was found that the Creoles did not indorse any such idea. Americans leave half a million dollars and more annually in Havana alone, an estimate made for us by competent authority. Passports are imperatively necessary upon landing, and if the visitor desires to travel outside of the port at which he arrives a fresh permit is necessary, for which a fee is charged. In vain do you show your passport, indorsed by the Spanish consul at the port from which you embarked in America. The official shrugs his shoulders, and says it is the law. Besides, you are watched and your movements recorded at police headquarters; though in this respect Berlin is quite as uncomfortable for strangers as is the city of Havana. Despots must hedge themselves about in every conceivable way. Be careful about the contents of your letters sent from or received in Cuba. These are sometimes delivered to their address, and sometimes they are not. Your correspondence may be considered of interest to other parties as well as to yourself, in which case an indefinite delay may occur in the receipt thereof. Of all the games and sports of the Spaniards, that of the bull-fight is the most cruel, and without one redeeming feature to excuse its indulgence. During the winter season, weekly exhibitions are given at Havana on each recurring Sunday afternoon, the same day that is chosen for the brutal sport in Madrid and other Spanish peninsular cities. The arena devoted to this purpose will seat about ten thousand persons. The ground upon which the fight takes place occupies about an acre, and is situated on the Regla side of the harbor, in the Plaza de Toros. The seats are raised one above another, in a complete circle, at a secure height from the dangerous struggle. Sometimes, in his furious onslaughts, the bull throws himself completely over the stout boards which separate him from the spectators, when a wild stampede occurs. On the occasion of the fight witnessed by the author, after a shrill flourish of trumpets a large bull was let loose from apartments beneath the seats, the door of which opened into the arena. The poor creature came from utter darkness, where he had been kept for many hours, into a blaze of bright sunlight, which confused him for a moment, and he pawed the ground excitedly, while he rolled his big fierce eyeballs as though he suspected some trick had been played upon him. Presently, having become accustomed to the light, he glared from one side to the other as if to take in the situation, and see who it was that dared to oppose him. In the ring, distributed here and there, were some half a dozen professional fighters on foot, called banderilleros and chulos, besides which there were two on horseback, known as picadors. The former held scarlet flags in their hands, with which to confuse and tease the bull; the latter were armed with a long pole each, at the end of which was a sharp piece of steel capable of wounding the bull, but not deeply or dangerously. These fighters were a hardened set of villains, if the human countenance can be relied upon as showing forth the inner man. They rushed towards the animal and flaunted their flags before his eyes, striving to excite and draw him on to attack them. They seemed reckless, but very expert, agile, and wary. Every effort was made to worry and torment the bull to a state of frenzy. Barbs were thrust into his neck and back by the banderilleros, with small rockets attached. These exploded into his very flesh, which they burned and tore. Thrusts from the horsemen's spears also gave harsh, if not dangerous wounds, so that the animal bled freely at many points. When the infuriated beast made a rush at one of his tormentors, they adroitly sprang on one side, or, if too closely pressed, these practiced athletes with a handspring leaped over the high board fence. Whichever way he turned the bull met a fresh enemy and another device of torment, until at last the poor creature was frantically mad. The fight then became more earnest, the bull rushing first at one and then another of his enemies, but the practiced fighters were too wary for him; he could not change position so quickly as they could. Finally, the bull turned his attention to the horses and made madly first at the one which was nearest, and though he received a tearing wound along his spine from the horseman's spear, he ripped the horse's bowels open with his horns and threw him upon the ground, with his rider under him. The men on foot rushed to the rescue and drew off the bull by fresh attacks and by flaunting the flags before his eyes. In the mean time, the rider was got out from beneath the horse, which lay dying. The bull, finding that he could revenge himself on the horses, transferred his attention to the other and threw him to the ground with his rider, but received another long wound upon his own back. Leaving the two horses lying nearly dead, the bull again turned upon the banderilleros, rushing with such headlong speed at them that he buried his sharp horns several inches in the timbers of the fence. It was even a struggle for him to extract them. The purpose is not to give the bull any fatal wounds, but to worry and torment him to the last degree of endurance. This struggle was kept up for twenty minutes or more, when the poor creature, bleeding from a hundred wounds, seemed nearly exhausted. Then, at a sign from the director, there was a grand flourish of trumpets, and the matador, a skillful swordsman and the hero of the occasion, entered the ring to close with the bull, singly. The other fighters withdrew and the matador advanced with a scarlet flag in one hand and his naked sword in the other. The bull stood at bay, too much worn by the fight and loss of blood to voluntarily attack this single enemy. The matador advanced and lured him to an attack by flaunting his flag. A few feeble rushes were made by the bleeding animal, until, in a last effort to drive his horns into this new enemy, he staggered heavily forward. This time the matador did not leap to one side, but received the bull upon the point of his Toledo blade, which was aimed at a spot just back of the horns, where the brain meets the spinal column. As the bull comes on with his head bent down to the charge, this spot is exposed, and forms a fair target for a practiced hand. The effect was electrical. The bull staggered, reeled from side to side for an instant, and then fell dead. Four bulls were destroyed in a like manner that afternoon, and, in their gallant fight for their lives, they killed seven horses, trampling their riders in two instances almost fatally, though they are protected by a sort of leather armor on their limbs and body. During the fight with the second bull, which was an extremely fierce and powerful creature, a young girl of eighteen dressed in male attire, who was trained to the brutal business, took an active part in the arena with the banderilleros. One remarkable feat which she performed was that of leaping by means of a pole completely over the bull when he was charging at her. At Madrid, where the author witnessed a similar exhibition, the introduction of a young girl among the fighters was omitted, but otherwise the performance was nearly identical. At the close of each act of the murderous drama, six horses gayly caparisoned with bells and plumes dashed into the arena led by attendants, and chains being attached to the bodies of the dead animals, they were drawn out at great speed through a gate opened for the purpose, amid another flourish of trumpets and the shouts of the excited multitude. The worst of all this is that the influence of such outrageous cruelty is lasting. It infects the beholders with a like spirit. In fact, it is contagious. We all know how hard the English people became in the time of Henry VIII. and Bloody Mary. In this struggle of the bull ring there is no gallantry or true bravery displayed on the part of the professional fighters. They run but little personal risk, practiced as they are, sheltered and protected by artificial means and armed with keen weapons, whereas the bull has only his horns to protect himself from his many tormentors. There is no possible escape for him; his fate is sealed from the moment he enters the ring. All the true bravery exhibited is on his part; he is always the attacking party, and were the exhibition to be attempted in an open field, even armed as they are, he would drive every one of his enemies out of sight. The much-lauded matador does not take his position in front of the animal until it is very nearly exhausted by loss of blood and long-continued, furious fighting. In our estimation, he encounters far less risk than does the humblest of the banderilleros or chulos, who torment the bull face to face in the fullness of his physical strength and courage. Still, instances are not wanting wherein these matadors have been seriously wounded and even killed by a frantic and dying bull, who has roused himself for a last final struggle. Whatever colonial modification the Spanish character may have apparently undergone in Cuba, the Creole is Castilian still in his love for the cruel sports of the arena. Great is the similitude also between the modern Spaniard and the ancient Roman in this respect. As the Spanish language more closely resembles Latin than does the Italian, so do the Spanish people show more of Roman blood than the natives of Italy themselves. _Panem et circenses_ (bread and circuses!) was the cry of the old Roman populace, and to gratify their wishes millions of sesterces were lavished, and hecatombs of human victims slain in the splendid amphitheatres erected by the masters of the world in all the cities subject to their sway. And so _pan y toros_ (bread and bulls!) is the imperious demand of the Spaniards, to which the government is forced to respond. The parallel may be pursued still further. The proudest ladies of Rome, maids and matrons, gazed with liveliest interest upon the dying gladiators who hewed each other in pieces, or on the Christians who perished in conflict with the wild beasts, half starved to give them battle. So the señoras and señoritas of Madrid, Seville, Malaga, and Havana enjoy, with keen delight, the terrible spectacle of bulls slaughtered by picadors and matadors, and gallant horses ripped up and disemboweled by the horns of their brute adversaries. It is true that the ameliorating spirit of Christianity is evinced in the changes which the arena has undergone. Human lives are no longer designedly sacrificed wholesale in the bloody contests, yet the bull-fight is sufficiently barbarous and atrocious. It is a national institution, indicative of national character. To look upon the serenity of Cuban ladies, driving in the Paseo or listening to the nightly music in the Plaza de Isabella, one could not possibly imagine them to be lacking in tenderness, or that there was in them sufficient hardihood to witness such exhibitions as we have described, and yet one third of the audience on the occasion spoken of was composed of the gentler sex. They are almost universally handsome, being rather below the average height of the sex with us, but possessing an erect and dignified carriage. Their form, always rounded to a delicate fullness, is quite perfection in point of model. Their dark hair and olive complexions are well matched,--the latter without a particle of natural carmine. The eyes are a match for the hair, being large and beautifully expressive, with a most irresistible dash of languor in them,--but not the languor of illness. It is really difficult to conceive of an ugly woman with such eyes as they all possess in Cuba,--the Moorish, Andalusian eye. The Cuban women have also been justly famed for their graceful carriage, and it is indeed the poetry of motion, singular as it may appear, when it is remembered that for them to walk abroad is such a rarity. It is not the simple progressive motion alone, but also the harmonious play of features, the coquettish undulation of the face, the exquisite disposition of costume, and the modulation of voice, that engage the beholder and lend a happy charm to every attitude and every step. The gentlemen as a rule are good-looking, though they are much smaller, lighter, and more agile than the average American. The lazy life they so universally lead tends to make them less manly than a more active one would do. It seems to be a rule among them never to do for themselves that which a slave can do for them. This is demonstrated in the style of the volante, where the small horse is made not only to draw the vehicle, but also to carry a large negro on his back as driver. Now, if reins were used, there would be no occasion for the postilion at all, but a Spaniard or Creole would think it demeaning to drive his own vehicle. With abundance of leisure, and the ever present influences of their genial clime, where the heart's blood leaps more swiftly to the promptings of the imagination and where the female form earliest attains its maturity, the West Indians seem peculiarly adapted for romance and for love. The consequent adventures constantly occurring among them often culminate in startling tragedies, and afford plots in which a French feuilletonist would revel. The nobility of Cuba, so called, is composed of rather homespun material, to say the least, of it. There may be some fifty individuals dubbed with the title of marquis, and as many more with that of count, most of whom have acquired their wealth and position by carrying on extensive sugar plantations. These are sneeringly designated by the humble classes as sugar noblemen, and not inappropriately so, as nearly all of these aristocratic gentlemen have purchased their titles outright for money. Not the least consideration is exercised by the Spanish throne as to the fitness of these ambitious individuals for honorary distinction. It is a mere question of money, and if this be forthcoming the title follows as a natural sequence. Twenty-five thousand dollars will purchase any title. Such things are done in other lands, but not quite so openly. And yet the tone of Cuban society in its higher circles is found to be rather aristocratic and exclusive. The native of Old Spain does not endeavor to conceal his contempt for foreigners of all classes, and as to the Creoles, he simply scorns to meet them on social grounds, shielding his inferiority of intelligence under a cloak of hauteur, assuming the wings of the eagle, but possessing only the eyes of the owl. Thus the Castilians and Creoles are ever at antagonism, both socially and politically. The bitterness of feeling existing between them can hardly be exaggerated. The sugar planter, the coffee planter, the merchant, and the liberal professions stand in the order in which we have named them, as regards their relative degree of social importance, but wealth, in fact, has the same charm here as elsewhere in Christendom, and the millionaire has the entrée to all classes. The Monteros or yeomanry of the island inhabit the less cultivated and cheaper portions of the soil, entering the cities only to dispose of their surplus produce, and acting as the marketmen of the populous districts. When they stir abroad, in nearly all parts of the island, they are armed with a sword, and in the eastern sections about Santiago, or even Cienfuegos, they also carry pistols in the holsters of their saddles. Formerly this was indispensable for self-protection, but at this time weapons are more rarely worn. Still the arming of the Monteros has always been encouraged by the authorities, as they form a sort of militia at all times available against negro insurrection, a calamity in fear of which such communities must always live. The Montero is rarely a slaveholder, but is frequently engaged on the sugar plantations during the busy season as an overseer, and, to his discredit be it said, he generally proves to be a hard taskmaster, entertaining an intuitive dislike to the negroes. An evidence of the contagious character of cruelty was given in a circumstance coming under the author's observation on a certain plantation at Alquizar, where a manifest piece of severity led him to appeal to the proprietor in behalf of a female slave. The request for mercy was promptly granted, and the acting overseer, himself a mulatto, was quietly reprimanded for his cruelty. "You will find," said our host, "that colored men always make the hardest masters when placed over their own race, but they have heretofore been much employed on the island in this capacity, because a sense of pride makes them faithful to the proprietor's interest. That man is himself a slave," he added, pointing to the sub-overseer, who still stood among the negroes, whip in hand. The Montero sometimes hires a free colored man to help him in the planting season on his little patch of vegetable garden, in such work as a Yankee would do for himself, but these small farmers trust mostly to the exuberant fertility of the soil, and spare themselves all manual labor, save that of gathering the produce and taking it to market. They form, nevertheless, a very important and interesting class of the population. They marry very young, the girls at thirteen and fifteen, the young men from sixteen to eighteen, and almost invariably rear large families. Pineapples and children are a remarkably sure crop in the tropics. The increase among them during the last half century has been very large, much more in proportion than in any other class of the community, and they seem to be approaching a degree of importance, at least numerically, which will render them eventually like the American farmers, the bone and sinew of the land. There is room enough for them and to spare, for hardly more than one tenth of the land is under actual cultivation, a vast portion being still covered by virgin forests and uncleared savannas. The great and glaring misfortune--next to that of living under a government permitting neither civil nor religious liberty, where church and state are alike debased as the tools of despotism,--is their want of educational facilities. Books and schools they have none. Barbarism itself is scarcely less cultured. We were told that the people had of late been somewhat aroused from this condition of lethargy concerning education, and some effort has recently been made among the more intelligent to afford their children opportunities for instruction. But at the present writing, the Egyptian fellah is not more ignorant than the rural population of Cuba, who as a mass possess all the indolence and few of the virtues of the aborigines. There is one highly creditable characteristic evinced by the Monteros as a class, and that is their temperate habits in regard to indulgence in stimulating drinks. As a beverage they do not use ardent spirits, and seem to have no taste or desire for the article, though they drink the ordinary claret--rarely anything stronger. This applies to the country people, not to the residents of the cities. The latter quickly contract the habit of gin drinking, as already described. There is one prominent vice to which the Monteros are indisputably addicted; namely, that of gambling. It seems to be a natural as well as a national trait, the appliances for which are so constantly at hand in the form of lottery tickets and the cock-pits that they can hardly escape the baleful influences. There are some who possess sufficient strength of character and intelligence to avoid it altogether, but with the majority it is the regular resort for each leisure hour. One of their own statesmen, Castelar, told the Spaniards, not long since, that gambling was the tax laid upon fools. Perhaps the best place at which to study the appearance and character of the Monteros is at the Central Market, where they come daily by hundreds from the country in the early morning to sell their produce, accompanied by long lines of mules or horses with well-laden panniers. It is a motley crowd that one meets there, where purchasers and salesmen mingle promiscuously. From six to nine o'clock, A. M., it is the busiest place in all Havana. Negroes and mulattoes, Creoles and Spaniards, Chinamen and Monteros, men and women, beggars, purchasers, and slaves, all come to the market on the Calzada de la Reina. Here the display of fruits and vegetables is something marvelous, both in variety and in picturesqueness of arrangement. This locality is the natural resort of the mendicants, who pick up a trifle in the way of provisions from one and another, as people who do not feel disposed to bestow money will often give food to the indigent. This market was the only place in the city where it was possible to purchase flowers, but here one or two humble dealers came at early morn to dispose of such buds and blossoms as they found in demand. A blind Chinese coolie was found sitting on the sidewalk every morning, at the corner of the Calzada de la Reina, just opposite the market, and he elicited a trifle from us now and again. One morning a couple of roses and a sprig of lemon verbena were added to his small gratuity. The effect upon that sightless countenance was electrical, and the poor mendicant, having only pantomime with which to express his delight, seemed half frantic. The money fell to the ground, but the flowers were pressed passionately to his breast. Did it remind him, we thought, of perfumes which had once delighted his youthful senses in far-off Asia, before he had been decoyed to a foreign land and into semi-slavery, to be deprived of health, liberty, sight, hope, everything? The Cuban beggars have a dash of originality in their ideas as to the successful prosecution of their calling; we mean those "native and to the manor born." Some of them possess two and even three cadaverous dogs, taught to follow closely at their heels, as they wander about, and having the same shriveled-up, half-starved aspect as their masters. One beggar, who was quite a cripple, had his daily seat in a sort of wheelbarrow, at the corner of Paseo Street, opposite the Plaza de Isabella. This man was always accompanied by a parrot of gaudy plumage, perched familiarly on his shoulder. Now and then the cripple put some favorite bird-food between his own lips, which the parrot extracted and appropriated with such promptness as to indicate a good appetite. Another solicitor of alms, quite old and bent, had an amusing companion in a little gray squirrel, with a collar and string attached, the animal being as mischievous as a monkey, now and then hiding in one of the mendicant's several pockets, sometimes coming forth to crack and eat a nut upon his owner's shoulder. A blind beggar, of Creole nationality, sat all day long in the hot sun, on the Alameda de Paula near the Hotel San Carlos, whose companion was a chimpanzee monkey. The little half-human creature held out its hand with a piteous expression to every passer-by, and deposited whatever he received in his master's pocket. These pets serve to attract attention, if not commiseration, and we observed that the men did not beg in vain. The acme of originality, however, was certainly reached in the case of a remarkable Creole beggar whose regular post is on the west corner of the Central Market. This man is perhaps thirty-five or forty years of age, and possesses a fine head, a handsome face, and piercing black eyes. He is of small body, and his lower limbs are so withered as to be entirely useless; so he sits with them curled up in a low, broad basket, in which he is daily brought to the spot, locomotion in his case being out of the question. He wears the cleanest of linen, and his faultless cuffs and ruffled shirt-bosom are decked with solid gold studs. He is bareheaded, but his thick black hair is carefully dressed, and parted with mathematical precision in the middle. He wears neither coat nor vest, but his lower garments are neatly adapted to his deformity, and are of broadcloth. This man does not utter a word, but extends his hand pleasantly, with an appealing look from his handsome eyes, which often elicits a silver real from the passer-by. We acknowledge to having been thus influenced more than once, in our morning walks, by a sympathy which it would be difficult to analyze. We had seen a colored dude selling canes at Nassau, but a dude mendicant, and a cripple at that, was a physical anomaly. CHAPTER XIII. Introduction of Sugar-Cane. -- Sugar Plantations. -- Mode of Manufacture. -- Slaves on the Plantations. -- African Amusements. -- The Grinding Season. -- The Coffee Plantations. -- A Floral Paradise. -- Refugees from St. Domingo. -- Interesting Experiments with a Mimosa. -- Three Staple Productions of Cuba. -- Raising Coffee and Tobacco. -- Best Soils for the Tobacco. -- Agricultural Possibilities. -- The Cuban Fire-Fly. -- A Much-Dreaded Insect. -- The Ceiba Tree. -- About Horses and Oxen. The first sugar plantation established in Cuba was in 1595, nearly three hundred years since. These plantations are the least attractive in external appearance, but the most profitable pecuniarily, of all agricultural investments in the tropics, though at the present writing there is a depression in prices of sugar which has brought about a serious complication of affairs. The markets of the world have become glutted with the article, owing to the enormous over-production in Europe from the beet. The plantations devoted to the raising of the sugar-cane in Cuba spread out their extensive fields, covered with the corn-like stalks, without any relief to the eye, though here and there the graceful feathery branches of the palm are seen. The fields are divided off into squares of three or four acres each, between which a roadway is left for ox-teams to pass for gathering purposes. On some of the largest estates tramways have been laid, reaching from the several sections of the plantation to the doors of the grinding-mill. A mule, by this means, is enabled to draw as large a load as a pair of oxen on plain ground, and with much more ease and promptness. About the houses of the owner and the overseer, graceful fruit trees, such as bananas and cocoanuts, with some flowering and fragrant plants, are grouped, forming inviting shade and producing a picturesque effect. Not far away, the low cabins of the blacks are half hidden by plantain and mango trees, surrounded by cultivated patches devoted to yams, sweet potatoes, and the like. Some of the small gardens planted by these dusky Africans showed judgment and taste in their management. Chickens and pigs, which were the private property of the negroes, were cooped up just behind the cabins. Many of these plantations employ from four to five hundred blacks, and in some instances the number will reach seven hundred on extensive estates, though the tendency of the new and improved machinery is to constantly reduce the number of hands required, and to increase the degree of intelligence necessary in those employed. Added to these employees there must also be many head of cattle,--oxen, horses, and mules. The annual running expenditure of one of these large estates will reach two hundred thousand dollars, more or less, for which outlay there is realized, under favorable circumstances, a million five hundred thousand pounds of sugar, worth, in good seasons, five cents per pound at the nearest shipping point. There are a few of the small estates which still employ ox-power for grinding the cane, but American steam-engines have almost entirely taken the place of animal power; indeed, as we have shown, it will no longer pay to produce sugar by the primitive processes. This creates a constant demand for engineers and machinists, for whom the Cubans depend upon this country. We were told that there were not less than two hundred Bostonians at the present time thus engaged on Cuban estates. A Spaniard or Creole would as soon attempt to fly like a bird as to learn how to run a steam-engine or regulate a line of shafting. It requires more intelligence and mechanical skill, as a rule, than the most faithful slaves possess. A careful calculation shows that in return for the services of this small band of employees taken from our shores, this country takes eighty per cent. of all the sugar produced upon the island! Twelve per cent. is consumed by peninsular Spain, thus leaving but eight per cent. of this product for distribution elsewhere. During the grinding season, which begins about the first of December and ends in April, a large, well-managed sugar plantation in Cuba is a scene of the utmost activity and most unremitting labor. Time is doubly precious during the harvesting period, for when the cane is ripe there should be no delay in expressing the juice. If left too long in the field it becomes crystallized, deteriorating both in its quality and in the amount of juice which is obtained. The oxen employed often die before the season is at an end, from overwork beneath a torrid sun. The slaves are allowed but four or five hours sleep out of the twenty-four, and being worked by watches during the night, the mill does not lie idle for an hour after it is started until the grinding season is closed. If the slaves are thus driven during this period, throughout the rest of the year their task is comparatively light, and they may sleep ten hours out of the twenty-four, if they choose. According to the Spanish slave code,--always more or less of a dead letter,--the blacks can be kept at work in Cuba only from sunrise to sunset, with an interval of two hours for repose and food in the middle of the day. But this is not regarded in the sugar harvest season, which period, after all, the slaves do not seem so much to dread, for then they are granted more privileges and are better fed, given more variety of food and many other little luxuries which they are known to prize. On Sunday afternoons and evenings on most of the plantations the slaves are given their time, and are permitted, even in the harvest season, to amuse themselves after their own chosen fashion. On such occasions the privilege is often improved by the blacks to indulge in native African dances, crude and rude enough, but very amusing to witness. The music for the dancers is supplied by a home-made drum, and by that alone, the negro who plays it being to the lookers-on quite as much of a curiosity as those who perform the grotesque dances. This humble musician writhes, wriggles, twists himself like a corkscrew, and all the while beats time, accompanying his notes with cries and howls, reminding one of the Apache Indian when engaged in a war dance. It is astonishing to witness to what a degree of excitement this negro drummer will work himself up, often fairly frothing at the mouth. A buxom wench and her mate step forward and perform a wild, sensuous combination of movements, a sort of negro can-can, like those dancing girls one sees in India, striving to express sentiments of love, jealousy, and passion by their pantomime, though these negroes are far less refined in their gestures. When these two are exhausted, others take their place, with very similar movements. The same drummer labors all the while, perspiring copiously, and seeming to get his full share of satisfaction out of the queer performance. This is almost their only amusement, though the Chinese coolies who have been distributed upon the plantations have taught the negroes some of their queer games, one, particularly, resembling dominoes. The author saw a set of dominoes made out of native ebony wood by an African slave, which were of finer finish than machinery turns out, delicately inlaid with ivory from alligators' teeth, indicating the points upon each piece. We were told that the only tool the maker had with which to execute his delicate task was a rude jack-knife. We have said that the negroes find in the singular dance referred to their one amusement, but they sometimes engage among themselves in a game of ball, after a fashion all their own, which it would drive a Yankee base-ball player frantic to attempt to analyze. The sugar-cane yields but one crop in a year. There are several varieties, but the Otaheitan seems to be the most generally cultivated. Between the time when enough of the cane is ripe to warrant the getting-up of steam at the grinding-mill and the time when the heat and the rain spoil its qualities, all the sugar for the season must be made; hence the necessity for great industry on the large estates. In Louisiana the grinding season lasts but about eight weeks. In Cuba it continues four months. In analyzing the sugar produced on the island and comparing it with that of the mainland,--the growth of Louisiana,--chemists could find no difference as to the quality of the true saccharine principle contained in each. The Cuban sugar, compared with beet-sugar, however, is said to yield of saccharine matter one quarter more in any given quantity. In society the sugar planter holds a higher rank than the coffee planter, as we have already intimated; merely in the scale of wealth, however, for it requires five times the capital to carry on a sugar estate that would serve for a coffee estate. Some of the large sugar plantations have been owned and carried on by Jesuit priests--we were about to write ex-Jesuit priests, but that would not be quite correct, for once a member of this order one is bound to it for all time. The priest or acknowledged member of the organization may be forced for prudential reasons to temporarily change his occupation, but he cannot sever himself from the responsibilities which he has once voluntarily assumed. There was a time when much of the landed and fertile property of the island was controlled by the Church,--in fact owned by it, though often by very questionable titles. The original owners, under cunning pressure, perhaps on a threatened death-bed, were induced to will all to the Church; or as an act of deep penance for some crime divulged at the confessional, they yielded up all. To preserve this property and possibly to cause it to produce an income for the Church, certain priests became active planters. Extreme ecclesiastic rule, as has been said, is greatly modified in Spain and her colonies, the natural reaction of the hateful days of the Inquisition. As the sugar plantation surpasses the coffee in wealth, so the coffee estate surpasses the sugar in every natural beauty and attractiveness. A coffee plantation, well and properly laid out, is one of the most beautiful gardens that can well be conceived of, in its variety and loveliness baffling description. An estate devoted to this purpose usually covers a hundred acres, more or less, planted in regular squares of one acre or thereabouts, intersected by broad alleys lined with palms, mangoes, bananas, oranges, and other fruits; as the coffee, unlike the sugar cane, requires partial protection from the ardor of the sun. Mingled with the trees are lemons, limes, pomegranates, Cape jasmines, and a species of wild heliotrope, fragrant as the morning. Occasionally in the wide reach of the estate there is seen a solitary, broad-spreading ceiba, in hermit-like isolation from other trees, but shading a fragrant undergrowth. Conceive of this beautiful arrangement, and then of the whole when in flower; the coffee, with its milk-white blossoms, so abundant that it seems as though a pure white cloud of snow had fallen there, and left the rest of the vegetation fresh and green. Interspersed in these fragrant alleys dividing the coffee plants is the red of the Mexican rose, the flowering pomegranate, the yellow jasmine, and the large, gaudy flower of the penon, shrouding its parent stem in a cloak of scarlet. Here too are seen clusters of the graceful yellow flag, and many wild flowers, unknown by name, entwining their tender stems about the base of the fruit trees. In short, a coffee plantation is a perfect floral paradise, full of fragrance and repose. The writer's experience was mainly gained at and about the estate of the late Dr. Finley, a Scotch physician long resident upon the island. He had named his plantation after the custom with a fancy title, and called it Buena Esperanza. Here was seen the mignonette tree twenty feet high, full of pale yellow and green blossoms, as fragrant as is its little namesake, which we put in our conservatories. There were also fuchsias, blue, red, yellow, and green, this last hue quite new to us. The night-blooming cereus was in rank abundance, together with the flor de pascua, or Easter flower, so lovely in its cream-colored, wax-like blossom. The Indian poui, with its saffron-colored flowers, was strikingly conspicuous, and there too was that pleasant little favorite, the damask rose. It seemed as if all out-doors was an exotic garden, full of marvelous beauty. What daily miracles nature is performing under our only half-observant eyes! Behold, where the paths intersect each other, a beautiful convolvulus has entwined itself about that dead and decaying tree, clothing the gray old trunk with pale but lovely flowers; just as we deck our human dead for the grave. It was the revolution in San Domingo which gave the first great stimulus to the culture of the coffee plant in Cuba, an enterprise which has gradually faded out in the last decade, though not absolutely obliterated. The refugees from the opposite shore sought shelter wherever they could find it among the nearest islands of the Archipelago, and large numbers made their new homes in the eastern department of Cuba, near the cities of Trinidad and Santiago. Here they turned lands which had been idle for three and four centuries into smiling gardens, and the production of the favorite berry became very profitable for a series of years, many cargoes being shipped annually to this country from the two ports just named. The production of sugar, however, has always maintained precedence, dividing the honor to-day only with tobacco in the manufactured state. Coffee does not figure to any extent in the statistics of exports. Exorbitant taxation and the cruel ravages of civil war, in the coffee districts especially, are largely the cause of the loss of an important and profitable industry. Some amusing experiments with a mimosa or sensitive plant served to fill a leisure hour at Buena Esperanza, under our host's intelligent direction. It grew wild and luxuriantly within a few feet of the broad piazza of the country-house. Close by it was a morning-glory, which was in remarkable fullness and freshness of bloom, its gay profuseness of purple, pink, and variegated white making it indeed the glory of the morning. It was a surprise to find the mimosa of such similar habits with its neighbor, the morning-glory, regularly folding its leaves and going to sleep when the shades of evening deepened, but awaking bright and early with the first breath of the morn. So sensitive is this most curious plant, so full of nerves, as our host expressed it, that it would not only shrink instantly, like unveiled modesty, at the touch of one's hand, but even at the near approach of some special organisms, ere they had extended a hand towards it. Five persons tried the experiment before the sixth illustrated the fact that touch was not absolutely necessary to cause the leaves to shrivel up or shrink through seeming fear. Our host even intimated that when the mimosa had become familiar with a congenial person its timidity would vanish, and it could be handled gently by that individual without outraging its sensibility. Of this, however, we saw no positive evidence. If Mr. Darwin had supplemented his chapters on the monkey by a paper relating to the mimosa, he might possibly have enabled us to find a mutual confirmation in them of some fine-spun theory. The three great staple productions of Cuba are sugar, the sweetener; coffee, the tonic; and tobacco, the narcotic of half the world. The first of these, as we have shown, is the greatest source of wealth, having also the preference as to purity and excellence over any other saccharine production. Its manufacture also yields molasses, which forms an important article of export, besides which a spirituous liquor, called aguardiente, is distilled in considerable quantities from the molasses. The cane, which grows to about the size of a large walking-stick, or well-developed cornstalk, is cut off near the ground and conveyed in the green state, though it is called ripe, to the mill, where it is crushed to a complete pulp between stones or iron rollers. After the juice is thus extracted the material left is spread out in the sun to dry, and is after being thus "cured" used for fuel beneath the steam-boilers, which afford both power to the engine and the means of boiling the juice. Lime-water is employed to neutralize any free acid as well as to separate the vegetable matter. The granulation and crystallization are effected in large flat pans, or now more commonly by centrifugal machines, rotating at great speed. It is then crushed and packed either in hogsheads or in boxes for exportation; canvas bags are also being largely employed, as they are easier to pack on board ship, and also to handle generally. A plantation is renewed when deemed necessary, by laying the green canes horizontally in the ground, when new and vigorous shoots spring up from every joint, showing the great fertility of the soil. Coffee was introduced by the French into Martinique in 1727, but it did not make its appearance in Cuba until forty years later, or, to be exact, in 1769. The decadence of this branch of agriculture is due not only to the causes we have already named, but also to the inferior mode of cultivation adopted on the island. It was predicted some years before it commenced, and when the crash came the markets of the world were also found to be greatly overstocked with the article. While some planters introduced improved methods and economy in the conduct of their estates, others abandoned the business altogether, and turned their fields either into sugar-raising, fruits or tobacco. Precisely the same trouble was experienced in the island of Ceylon, which was at one time a great coffee-raising centre, but now its planters are many of them abandoning the business, while others adopt new seed and new methods of culture. In Cuba it was found that the plants had been grown too closely together and subjected to too close pruning, while the product, which was gathered by hand, yielded a mixture of ripe and unripe berries. In the countries where coffee originated, a very different method of harvesting is adopted. The Arabs plant the coffee-shrubs much farther apart, allow them to grow to considerable height, and gather the crop by shaking the tree, a method which secures only the ripe berries. After a few weeks, or even days, the field is gone over a second time, when the green berries have become fit to gather, and readily fall to the ground. A coffee estate well managed, that is, combined with the rearing of fruits and vegetables intermingled, thus affording the required shade for the main crop, proves fairly profitable in Cuba to-day, and were this industry not hampered and handicapped by excessive taxes, it would attract many new planters. The coffee ripens from August to December, the nuts then becoming about the size of our cherries. The coffee-berry is the seed of the fruit, two of which are contained in each kernel, having their flat surfaces together, surrounded by a soft pulp. The ripe berries are dried by exposure to the sun's rays, then bruised in a mill, by which means the seeds are separated from the berry. They are then screened to cleanse them, after which they are bagged, and the coffee is ready for market. Some planters take great care to sort their crop by hand, in which operation the negro women become very expert. By dividing the berries into first and second qualities as to size and cleanliness, a better aggregated price is realized for the entire harvest. Not only are the coffee estates much more pleasing to the eye than the sugar plantations, but they are also much more in harmony with the feelings of the philanthropist. There is here no such exigency in getting in the harvest, leading to the overwork of the slaves, as on a sugar estate in the grinding season. Indeed, we were assured that it was quite possible to carry on a coffee estate with white labor. When, heretofore, a negro has been brought to the block in Havana, or any other Cuban city, the price realized for him has always been materially affected by the question whether he had been employed on a sugar estate in the grinding season. If he had been thus employed it was considered that his life has been unduly shortened, and he sold accordingly at a lower price. At the present time few negroes are bought or sold, as their market value has become merely nominal. There is no good reason why white labor is not suited to the coffee and tobacco estates. When the field labor upon the sugar estates is almost wholly performed by machinery, that is, the cane cut by a reaper, there will be so much less exposure to the sun that white hands, under proper management, can perform it. Tobacco, indigenous to both Cuba and the United States, is a great source of revenue upon the island. Its cultivation involves considerable labor and expense, as the soil must be carefully chosen and prepared, and the crop is an exhaustive one to the land; but the cultivation does not require machinery, like sugar-cane, nor quite so much care as does the growing coffee. It is valued in accordance with the locality from which it comes, some sections being especially adapted to its production. That of the greatest market value, and used in the manufacture of the highest-cost cigars, is grown in the most westerly division of the island, known as the Vuelta de Abajo (Lower Valley). The whole western portion of Cuba is not by any means suitable to the production of tobacco. The region of the best tobacco is comprised within a small parallelogram of very limited extent. Beyond this, up to the meridian of Havana, the tobacco is of fine color, but of inferior aroma. From Consolacion to San Christoval the tobacco is very "hot,"--to use a local phrase,--harsh, and strong, and from San Christoval to Guanajay the quality is inferior up to Holguin y Cuba, where better tobacco is produced. The fertile valley of Los Guines produces poor smoking-tobacco, but an article excellent for the manufacture of snuff. On the banks of the Rio San Sebastian, are also some estates which produce the very best quality of tobacco. Thus it will be seen that certain properties of soil operate more directly in producing a fine grade of tobacco than any slight variation of climate. Possibly a chemical analysis of the soil of the Vuelta de Abajo would enable the intelligent cultivator to supply to other lands the ingredients wanted to make them produce equally good tobacco. A fairly marketable article, however, is grown in nearly any part of the island. Its cultivation is thought to produce a full ten per cent. upon the capital invested, the annual crop of Cuba being estimated in value at about twenty-three million dollars. The number of tobacco planters is said to be about fifteen thousand, large and small. On many tobacco farms the labor is nearly all performed by white hands. Some coolies and some negroes are also employed even on small estates. When it is remembered that so small a portion of the land is under cultivation, and yet that Cuba exports annually a hundred million dollars worth of sugar and molasses, besides coffee, tobacco, fruits, and precious woods, it will be realized what might be accomplished, under a liberal system of government, upon this gem of the Caribbean Sea. Cacao, rice, plantains, indigo, and cotton, besides Indian corn and many nutritious vegetables, might be profitably cultivated to a much larger degree than is now done. It is a curious and remarkable fact, suggesting a striking moral, that with the inexhaustible fertility of the soil, with an endless summer that gives the laborer two and even three crops a year, agriculture generally yields in Cuba a lower percentage of profit than in our stern Northern latitudes, where the farmer has to wrench, as it were, the half-reluctant crop from the ground. It must be remembered that in Cuba there are numerous fruits and vegetables not enumerated in these pages, which do not enter into commerce, and which spring spontaneously from the fertile soil. In the possession of a thrifty population the island would be made to blossom like a rose, but as it now is, it forms only a garden growing wild, cultivated here and there in patches. None of the fine natural fruits have ever been improved by careful culture and the intelligent selection of kinds, so that in many respects they will not compare in perfection with our average strawberries, plums, pears, and peaches. Their unfulfilled possibilities remain to be developed by intelligent treatment. The plantain, which may be said to be the bread of the common people, requires to be planted but once. The stem bears freely, like the banana of the same family, at the end of eight months, and then withering to the ground renews itself again from the roots. Sweet potatoes once planted require care only to prevent their too great luxuriance, and for this purpose a plough is passed through them before the wet season, and as many of the vines as can be freely plucked up are removed from the field. The sugar-cane, on virgin soil, will last and prove productive for twenty years. The coffee shrub or tree will bear luxuriantly for forty or fifty years. The cocoanut palm is peculiar to all tropical climates, and in Cuba, as in the Malacca Straits and India, bears an important share in sustaining the life of the people, supplying milk, shade, and material for a hundred domestic uses. It grows in luxuriant thriftiness all over the island, in high and low land, in forests, and down to the very shore washed by the Gulf Stream. It is always graceful and picturesque, imparting an oriental aspect to everything which surrounds it. It is estimated that over ten million acres of native forests, covered by valuable wood, still remain untouched by the woodman's axe, especially on and about the mountain range, which extends nearly the entire length of the island, like the vertebræ of an immense whale. About the coffee plantations, and indeed throughout the rural portions of the country, there is a curious little insect called a cocuyo, answering in its general characteristics and nature to our firefly, though it is quadruple its size, and far the most brilliant insect of its kind known to naturalists. They float in phosphorescent clouds over the vegetation, emitting a lurid halo, like fairy torch-bearers to elfin crews. One at first sight is apt to compare them to a shower of stars. They come in multitudes immediately after the wet season sets in, prevailing more or less, however, all the year round. Their advent is always hailed with delight by the slave children, as well as by children of a larger growth. They are caught by the slaves in any desired numbers and confined in tiny cages of wicker, giving them sufficient light in their cabins at night for ordinary purposes, and forming the only artificial light permitted them. We have seen a string of the little cages containing the glittering insects hung in a slave-cabin in festoons, like colored lamps in fancy-goods stores in America. The effect of the evanescent light thus produced is very peculiar, but the number of insects employed insures a sufficiently steady effect for ordinary purposes. These little creatures are brought into Havana by young Creole children and by women, for sale to the ladies, who sometimes in the evenings wear a small cage hung to the wrist containing a few of the cocuyos, and the light thus produced is nearly equal to a small candle. Some ladies wear a belt of them at night, ingeniously fastened about the waist, others a necklace, and the effect is highly amusing. In the ballroom they are worn in the flounces of ladies' dresses, where they glisten very much like diamonds and other precious stones. Strange to say, there is a natural hook near the head of the firefly, by which it can be attached to the dress without apparent injury to it. The town ladies keep little cages of these insects as pets, feeding them on sugar, of which they appear to be immoderately fond. On the plantations, when a fresh supply is desired, one has only to wait until evening, when hundreds can be secured with a thread net at the end of a pole. By holding a cocuyo up in the out-door air for a few moments, large numbers are at once attracted to the spot. In size they are about an inch long, and a little over an eighth of an inch in breadth. There is an insidious and much dreaded insect with which the planters have to contend on the sugar and coffee plantations, but which is not met with in the cities; namely, the red ant, a much more formidable foe than any one not acquainted with its ravages would believe. These little creatures possess a power altogether out of proportion to their insignificant size, eating into the heart of the hardest wood, neither cedar, iron-wood, nor even lignum-vitæ being proof against them. They are not seen at the surface, as they never touch the outer shell of the wood whose heart they are consuming. A beam or rafter which has been attacked by them looks as good as when new, to the casual observer, until it is sounded and found to be hollow, a mere shell in fact. Even in passing from one piece of timber to another, the red ant does so by covered ways, and is thus least seen when most busy. The timbers of an entire roof have been found hollowed out and deprived entirely of their supporting strength without the presence of the insect enemy being even suspected until chance betrayed the useless character of the supports. For some unknown reason, upright timbers are rarely attacked by them, but those in a reclining or horizontal position are their choice. These destructive red ants are nearly always to be found in tropical countries, as in India, Batavia, and Sumatra, where they build mounds in the jungle half the size of the natives' cabins. They may be seen marching like an invading army in columns containing myriads across the fields of southern India. The interior landscape, more particularly of the middle district of the island, is here and there ornamented by fine specimens of the ceiba, or silk-cotton tree, which is often seen a hundred feet in height, with stout and widespread branches, giving the idea of great firmness and stability. It sends up a massive sinewy trunk for some fifty feet, when it divides into branches covered with a dense canopy of leaves, expanded like an umbrella, and forming a perfect shade against the power of the torrid sun. The ceiba is slow of growth, but attains to great age, specimens thriving when Columbus first landed here being, as we were assured, still extant. Next to the royal palm, it is the most remarkable of all the trees which loom up beneath the brilliant purple skies of Cuba. The negroes have a superstition that the ceiba is a magic tree haunted by spirits, a singular notion also shared by the colored people of Nassau, though these two islands are so many hundreds of miles apart and have never had any natural connection. There is certainly something weird in the loneliness and solitary grandeur of the tree. Next to the palm and ceiba in beauty and picturesqueness of effect is the tamarind tree, with its deep green and delicate foliage, presenting a singular and curious aspect when thickly looped on every branch with hanging chocolate-colored pods. Under the noonday sun, sitting in the deep shade of some lofty ceiba, one may watch with curious eyes the myriads of many-hued, broad-winged butterflies, mingling orange, crimson, and steel-blue in dazzling combinations, as they flit through the ambient atmosphere with a background of shining, evergreen foliage, the hum of insects and the carol of birds forming a soft lullaby inviting sleep. Naturalists tell us that no less than three hundred distinct species of butterflies are found in Cuba, ranging in size from a common house-fly to a humming-bird. The day dies with a suddenness almost startling, so that one passes from sunshine to starlight as if by magic. Then the cocuyo takes up the activity of insect life, flashing its miniature torches over the plantations, and peeping out from among the dense foliage, while the stars sing their evening hymn of silent praise. The Cubans have a peculiar mode of harnessing their oxen, similar to that seen in the far East and also in some parts of Europe, as at San Sebastian, on the Bay of Biscay. A stout wooden bar is placed at the root of the horns, and so securely bound to them with thongs that the animal draws, or rather pushes, by the head and frontlet, without chafing. The Cuban oxen have a hole pierced in their nostrils, through which a metallic ring is secured, and to this a rope is attached, serving as reins with which to guide the animal. This mode of harnessing certainly seems to enable the oxen to bring more strength to bear upon the purpose for which they are employed than when the yoke is placed, as is the case with us, about the throat and shoulders. The greatest power of horned animals undoubtedly lies in the head and neck, and the question arises whether in placing the yoke on the neck and breast we do not get it out of reach of the exercise of that strength, and cause the animal to draw the load behind him by the mere force of his bodily weight and impetus. The West Indian animal is small, and often of the cream-colored breed, mild-eyed and docile, of which one sees such choice specimens in Italy and especially on the plains of Lombardy. Not quite satisfied with the conclusion first arrived at, we gave this subject of the harnessing of oxen a second consideration, and in carefully watching the operation of the frontlet-bar we detected at least one very cruel and objectionable feature in this mode of harnessing. The animals are necessarily so bound to the bar that to move their heads one way or the other is a simple impossibility, while our mode of yoking oxen leaves them very much at liberty in the use of their heads, thus enabling them to shake off flies and other biting insects which may tease them, whereas the eyes of a Cuban ox are often seen infested with flies which he cannot get rid of while in harness, however he may be beset by them. This alone, in a climate where biting insects swarm all the year round, is a most serious objection to the frontlet-bar as compared with the yoke. The Cuban horse deserves more than a mere mention in this connection. He is a remarkably valuable animal, especially adapted to the climate and to the service required of him. Though small and delicate of limb he can carry a great weight, and his gait is not unlike that of our pacing horses, though with much less lateral motion, and is remarkably easy for the rider, certainly forming the easiest gait combined with rapidity of motion possessed by any breed. He has great power of endurance, is a small eater, requiring no grain as a general thing, but is satisfied with the green leaves and stalks of the corn, upon which he keeps in good condition and flesh. He is a docile little creature, easily taught and easily taken care of. The Cuban horse knows no shelter except the heavens above him, for there are no barns in Cuba; but he will no more wander away from his master's door, where he stands at nearly all hours of the day with the saddle on his back, than would a favorite dog. The Montero inherits all the love of his Moorish ancestors for the horse, and never stirs abroad except upon his back. He considers himself established for life when he possesses a good horse, a sharp Toledo blade, and a pair of silver spurs. Being from childhood accustomed to the saddle, it is natural for him to be a good rider, and there are none better even in Arabia. He is apt to tell big stories about his little horse, intimating its descent direct from the Kochlani, or King Solomon's breed, and to endow it with marvelous qualities of speed and endurance. The Montero is never heard to boast of his wife, his children, or any other possession, but he does "blow" for his horse. One of this class stood beside his pony one warm afternoon opposite the Hotel Telegrafo, where a few of the guests were seated under the broad veranda. The sleek, well-formed animal elicited some complimentary remarks, which gratified the owner, who spoke English after the style of his people. He indulged in praises of the horse, especially as to the ease and steadiness of his gait, and offered a bet that he could ride round the outside of the Campo de Marte on him and return to the spot where he stood, at ordinary speed, carrying a full glass of water without spilling a tablespoonful of the liquid; such is the ease of motion of these animals trained to what is called the paso gualtrapeo. Four corners were to be turned by the Cuban, as well as half a mile of distance accomplished. The small bet suggested was readily taken, and the full tumbler of water brought out of the house. The Cuban mounted his pony and rode round the park with the speed of a bird, easily winning his bet. The visitor, as he proceeds inland, will frequently observe on the fronts of the dwellings attempts at representations in colors of birds and various animals, resembling anything rather than what they are apparently designed to depict. The most striking characteristics are the gaudy coloring and the remarkable size. Pigeons present the colossal appearance of ostriches, and dogs are exceedingly elephantine in their proportions. Space would not be adequate to picture horses and cattle. Especially in the suburbs of the cities this fancy may be observed, where attempts at portraying domestic scenes present some original ideas as to grouping. If such ludicrous objects were to be met with anywhere else but in Cuba they would be called caricatures. Here they are regarded with the utmost complacency, and innocently considered to be artistic and ornamental. Noticing something of the same sort in Vevay, Switzerland, not long since, the author found on inquiry that it was the incipient art effort of a Spanish Creole, who had wandered thither from the island. The policy of the home government has been to suppress, so far as possible, all knowledge of matters in general relating to Cuba; especially to prevent the making public of any statistical information regarding the internal resources, all accounts of its current growth, prosperity, or otherwise. Rigidly-enforced rules accomplished this seclusiveness for many years, until commercial relations with the "outside barbarians" rendered this no longer possible. No official chart of Havana, its harbor, or that of any other Cuban city has ever been made public. Spain has seemed to desire to draw a curtain before this tropical jewel, lest its dazzling brightness should tempt the cupidity of some other nation. Notwithstanding this, our war department at Washington contains complete drawings of every important fortification, and charts of every important harbor in Cuba. Since 1867 we have been connected with Cuba by submarine cable, and through her with Jamaica since 1870. The local government exercises, however, strict surveillance over telegraphic communications. The political condition of Cuba is what might be expected of a Castilian colony, ruled and governed by such a policy as prevails here. Like the home government, she presents a remarkable instance of the standstill policy, and from one of the most powerful and wealthy kingdoms of Europe, Spain has sunk to the position of the humblest and poorest. Other nations have labored and succeeded in the race of progress, while her adherence to ancient institutions and her dignified contempt for "modern innovations" have become a species of retrogression, which has placed her far below all her sister governments. The true Hidalgo spirit, which wraps itself up in an antique garb and shrugs its shoulders at the advance of other nations, still rules over the realm of Ferdinand and Isabella, while its high-roads swarm with gypsies and banditti, as tokens of decaying power. CHAPTER XIV. Consumption of Tobacco. -- The Delicious Fruits of the Tropics. -- Individual Characteristics of Cuban Fruits. -- The Royal Palm. -- The Mulberry Tree. -- Silk Culture. -- The Island once covered by Forests. -- No Poisonous Reptiles. -- The Cuban Bloodhound. -- Hotbed of African Slavery. -- Spain's Disregard of Solemn Treaties. -- The Coolie System of Slavery. -- Ah-Lee draws a Prize. -- Native African Races. -- Negroes buying their Freedom. -- Laws favoring the Slaves. -- Example of St. Domingo. -- General Emancipation. The consumption of tobacco in the form of cigars is almost incredibly large in Cuba, and for the city of Havana alone it has been estimated to amount to an aggregate cost of five million dollars per annum. Every man, woman, and child appears to be addicted to the habit. It strikes a Northerner as rather odd for a lady to sit smoking her cigarette in her parlor, but this is not at all rare. The men of all degrees smoke everywhere, in the dwelling-house, in the street, in the theatre, in the cafés, and in the counting-room; eating, drinking, and truly it would also seem, sleeping, they smoke, smoke, smoke. At the tables d'hôte of the hotels it is not unusual to see a Cuban take a few whiffs of a cigarette between the several courses, and lights are burning close at hand to enable him to do so. If a party of gentlemen are invited to dine together, the host so orders that a packet of the finest cigarettes is frequently passed to his guests, with a lighted taper, in the course of the meal, and at its close some favorite brand of the more substantial cigar is furnished to all. Thus, tobacco is consumed on every occasion, in the council-chamber, the court, at funerals, in the domestic circles, at feasts, and on the out-door drive. The slave and his master, the maid and her mistress, boy and man, all, all smoke. It seems odd that one does not scent Havana far out at sea before the land is sighted. We were told that gentlemen who have the means to procure them smoke on an average what is equivalent to a dozen cigars per day, and those of the other sex addicted to the habit consume half that quantity. Of late the larger proportion, however, takes the form of cigarettes, which are far more subtle in effect when used to excess. The consequence of this large home consumption, in addition to the export of the article, is that a very numerous class of the population is engaged in the manufacture, and little stores devoted solely to this business are plentifully sprinkled all about the metropolis. The imperial factory of La Honradez, already described, occupies a whole city square, and is one of its curiosities, producing from three to four million cigarettes per diem. This house enjoys special governmental protection, and makes its annual contribution to the royal household of Madrid of the best of its manufactured goods. A snuff-taker is rarely to be met with, and few, if any, chew the weed, if we except the stevedores and foreign sailors to be seen about the shore and shipping. Havana has no wharves, properly speaking; vessels are loaded and discharged by means of lighters or scows. The negroes become passionately fond of the pipe, inhaling into their lungs the rich, powerful narcotic and driving it out again at their nostrils in slow, heavy clouds, half dozing over the dreamy effect. The postilion who waits for a fare upon the street passes half his time in this way, dreaming over his pipe of pure Havana, or renewing constantly his cigarette. The price of manufactured tobacco in Cuba is about one half that which we pay for the same article in America, either at wholesale or retail, as shipping expenses, export duty, and import duty must be added to the price charged to the consumer. In discussing this habit one naturally looks back about four hundred years, recalling the amazement of the Spanish discoverers, when they first landed here, at seeing the Indians smoking a native weed which was called tobacco. The practice was, at that time, entirely unknown in Europe, though now indulged in as a luxury by nearly half the population of the globe. We have only a partial idea at the North of the true character of tropical fruits, since only a small portion of them are of such a nature as to admit of exportation, and such as are forwarded to us must be gathered in an unripe condition in order to survive a short sea-voyage. The orange which we eat in Boston or New York, therefore, is a very different-flavored fruit from the same when partaken of in Havana or Florida. The former has been picked green and ripened on shipboard, as a general thing; the latter was perhaps on the tree an hour before you ate it, ripened under its native skies and upon its parent stem. So of the banana, one of the most delightful and nutritious of all West Indian fruits, which grows everywhere in Cuba with prodigal profuseness,--though we are told that as regards this fruit it is claimed that, like some varieties of our pear, it ripens as well off the tree as on it; and the same is the case with some other fleshy fruits. After the banana has attained its full growth, the final process of ripening commences, as it were, within itself; that is to say, the fruit ceases to depend upon the tree for sustenance or farther development. The pulp becomes gradually sweetened and softened, chiefly by the change of the starch into more or less of soluble sugar. When the bananas are shipped to our Northern markets they are as green as the leaves of the trees on which they grew. Most of us have seen cartloads of them in this condition landing at our city wharves. Placed in an even temperature and in darkness they will ripen and become as yellow as gold in a very few days. The banana and plantain differ from each other much as an apple and a potato differ; the latter should always be cooked before eating, but the former may be either eaten raw or cooked, according to the taste. The banana is gathered at three different stages of its growth. At a quarter of its maturity it is rather milky, and contains much starch. Roasted in ashes, or boiled in water, it forms a very nourishing food, and is a good substitute for bread. If eaten at three fourths of its growth it is less nourishing, but contains more sugar. Lastly, when perfectly ripe, it develops an acrid principle, both wholesome and palatable. The fig banana is a favorite species, and forms a universal dessert in the ripe state with the Creoles. A frequent reference is made to it in these notes because of its importance. The enormous productiveness of the plant and its nutritious character assure to the humble classes an abundant subsistence. People may go freely into the wild lands and find edible bananas at any time, without money and without price. In the cities the charge for them is so moderate that a person must be poor indeed who cannot afford a liberal quantity of them daily. Some of the other fruits are the mango, pomegranate, pineapple, zapota, tamarind, citron, fig, cocoa, lemon, rose-apple, and breadfruit. Japan, India, and Ceylon afford nothing more fascinating or strange in their vegetable kingdoms than this favored isle. The fruits are simply wonderful in variety and perfection. One eats eggs, custard, and butter off the trees. Though all these fruits are universally eaten, the orange seems to be the Creole's favorite, and if he be a person of even ordinary means, he seldom rises in the morning until he has drunk his cup of coffee and eaten a couple of oranges, brought fresh and prepared for him by a servant. The practice is one into which the visitor falls very pleasantly, and finds it no less refreshing than agreeable. It seems to rain oranges in Havana. They are scarcely less cheap than the luscious banana. The rose-apple grows on one of the most symmetrical trees in Cuba, with strong, oval, glossy leaves. The blossoms are large, white, and of pleasant odor, followed by a round fruit about as large as a well-developed California peach, with a smooth skin, cream-colored within and without. The pulp is as firm as a ripe seckel pear, and the taste is so strong of otto-of-rose that more than one at a time palls upon the palate. It is much used among the Cubans as an agreeable flavoring for soups and puddings. Of the fruit trees the lemon is perhaps the most attractive to the eye; for though small and dwarfish, yet it presents the flowers, small green lemons, and the ripe yellow fruit all together, reminding one of the Eastern alma. The green leaves when young are nearly as fragrant as the lemon verbena. The mammee is a curious fruit growing on lofty, umbrageous trees, appearing as musk-melons would look if seen hanging in elm-trees. Large and high-flavored, the fruit is solid in texture like the American quince. The flavor of the mammee resembles our peach, though not quite so delicate. Its color when ripe is a light yellow. The mango is nearly as abundant and prolific as the banana, and yet it came originally from the far East. It grows upon a very handsome tree, the leaves being long, lanceolate, polished, and hanging in dense masses of dark-green foliage. In size it is like a full-grown New England apple tree. The mango is about thrice the size of an egg plum, and when ripe is yellow in color, and grows in long pendant bunches. When this fruit is at its best it is very juicy, and may be sucked away like a grape. The negroes are immoderately fond of it, and when permitted to do so are apt to make themselves ill by their greediness. The cocoa-nut tree grows to the height of fifty feet and more, differing from the royal palm by its drooping nature. At its summit is a waving tuft of dark green, glossy, pinnate leaves, from ten to fifteen feet in length, like mammoth plumes, immediately under which are suspended the nuts in heavy bunches, often weighing three hundred pounds. When the nut has attained nearly its full size, it is said to be in the milk, and it then furnishes a delightful, cooling, and healthful beverage. In taste it is sweetish, and its effect is that of a slight diuretic. The sapotilla is a noble fruit tree, with feathery, glossy leaves. The blossoms are white and bell-shaped, with an agreeable perfume like an apple-blossom. The fruit is round, about the size of a peach, the skin being rough and dark like a russet apple or a potato, but when fully ripe it is delicious, and melts away in the mouth like a custard. The pineapple, that king of fruits, though in itself presenting such a fine appearance, is the plainest of all in its humble manner of growth. It is found wild in Cuba, and there are several varieties cultivated, none quite equal, it seemed to us, to those found in Singapore and other equatorial islands. Its style of growth is the same in either hemisphere. It grows singly upon its low stem, reaching to a height of eighteen or twenty inches above the ground. A single fruit-stem pushes up from the earth, blossoms, and in about eighteen months from the planting it matures a single apple, weighing three or four pounds and upwards; and what a royal fruit it is! A field well covered with the yellow, ripening apples is a very beautiful sight. Though the plant produces but one apple at a time, it will continue to yield an annual crop for three or four years, if cultivated. It is raised from slips, planted much as our farmers set out young cabbages or lettuce. The custard-apple grows wild, but is also cultivated and thereby much improved. Its color externally is green, and it has a tough skin, is of a subacid flavor, and as full of little flat black seeds as a shad is of bones. It is much used in Cuba for flavoring purposes, and is soft and juicy, each specimen weighing from a pound to a pound and a half. The star-apple is so called because when cut through transversely its centre presents the figure of a star. Even when quite ripe the interior is green in color. Its flavor is exquisite, like strawberries and cream, and it is eaten with a spoon, the outside skin forming as it were a shell or cup. The guava tree is small and resembles our young cherry trees. The fruit is about the size of the lime, which it much resembles. It is made little use of in its natural condition, but is in universal demand as a preserve; the jelly made from it is famous all over the world. When it is freshly cut, one will scent a whole room for hours with its distinctive flavor. The pomegranate, a general favorite in the torrid zone, flourishes in Cuba, but is seen in much greater perfection in Africa. It is doubtful if it is indigenous here, though it is now found in such abundance, and as much depended upon for a food supply as apples are with us. Doubtless the reader has seen the bush in bearing in our hothouses, the fruit when cut being full of red seeds glistening like rubies. The tamarind is a universal and thrifty tree in the island, lofty and umbrageous, a quick grower and yet long-lived. The fruit is contained in a pod,--like a full, ripe pea-pod,--covering mahogany-colored seeds. The pulp when ripe and fresh is as soft as marmalade, and quite palatable; its flavor is sugared acid. Steeped in water it forms a delightful and cooling beverage, much used as a drink in the tropics. The orange, lime, lemon, and citron are too well known to require detailed description. The wild or bitter orange is much used for hedges: its deep green glossy foliage and its fragrant blossoms and its golden fruit make such hedges strikingly effective. The rind of the bitter orange is used to make a sweetmeat with which we are all familiar. More than once the Moorish garden of the Alcazar, at Seville, and the garden of Hesperides, at Cannes, were recalled in hours of delightful wanderings among the orange groves of Cuba. Yet these latter are neglected, or at least not generously cultivated, no such care being given to them as is bestowed upon the orange orchards of Florida; but the glowing sun and ardent breath of the tropics ask little aid from the hand of man in perfecting their products. The fruits and flowers of the American Archipelago--"air-woven children of light"--are not only lavishly prolific, but perfect of their kind. No wonder that scientists and botanists become poetical in their descriptions of these regions. The royal palm, so often alluded to, grows to the height of seventy feet, more or less. It is singular that it should have no substance in the interior of its trunk, though the outside to the thickness of a couple of inches makes the finest of boards, and when seasoned is so hard as to turn a board-nail at a single stroke of the hammer. It is remarkable also that a palm tree which grows so high has such tiny, thread-like roots, which, however, are innumerable. The top of the palm yields a vegetable which is used as food and when boiled is nutritious and palatable, resembling our cauliflower. Though there are many species of palm in Cuba, one seldom sees the fan-palm, which forms such a distinctive feature in equatorial regions as at Penang and Singapore. Humboldt thought that the entire island was once a forest of palms, mingled with lime and orange trees. The mulberry tree, if not indigenous, was found here at so early a period that it is a matter of doubt as to its having been imported from other lands. It grows to great perfection, and has led to several attempts in the direction of silk-raising, the silkworm also proving more prolific even than in Japan. Some of the fine, hard fancy woods of Cuba were employed in the finish of apartments in the Escurial palace near Madrid. Ebony, rosewood, fustic, lancewood, mahogany, and other choice woods are very abundant, especially the mahogany, which grows to enormous size. The exportation of them has only taken place where these woods were best located for river transportation to harbors on the coast. The interior of the island is so inaccessible that it has hardly been explored. There are fertile valleys there of two hundred miles in length and thirty in width, with an average temperature of 75°, a maximum of 88°, and a minimum of 52°, thus affording a most perfect and healthful climate, favorable to human and to vegetable life, and it should be remembered that malarial diseases or yellow fever are unknown in the districts removed from the coast, and no one ever heard of sunstroke in Cuba. It is somewhat remarkable that there should be no poisonous animals or reptiles in the island, but so we were creditably informed. Snakes of various species abound, but are considered entirely harmless, though they are sometimes destructive to domestic fowls. During a pleasant trip between San Antonio and Alquizar in a volante with a hospitable planter of that region, this subject happened to be under discussion, when we saw in the roadway a snake six or eight feet long, and as large round as the middle of one's arm. On pointing it out to our friend, he merely told us its species, and declared that a child might sleep with it unharmed. In the mean time it was a relief to see the innocent creature hasten to secrete itself in a lime hedge close at hand. Lizards, tarantulas, and chameleons are frequently seen, but are considered to be harmless. One often awakes in the morning to see lizards upon his chamber wall, searching for flies and insects, upon which they feed. The Cuban bloodhound, of which we hear so much, is not a native of the island, but belongs to an imported breed, resembling the English mastiff, though with larger head and limbs. He is by nature a fierce, bloodthirsty animal, but the particular qualities which fit him for tracing the runaway slaves are almost entirely acquired by careful training. This is accomplished by experts in the business, who are sometimes Monteros, and sometimes French overseers of plantations who are out of work or regular engagement. Each estate keeps some of these dogs as a precautionary measure, but they are seldom called into use of late, for so certain is the slave that he will be instantly followed as soon as missed, and inevitably traced by the hounds, that he rarely attempts to escape from his master unless under some peculiarly aggravating cause. It may even be doubted whether a slave would be pursued to-day were he to attempt to escape, because slavery is so very near its last gasp. In one respect this is an advantage to the negroes, since the master, feeling this indifference, grants the blacks more freedom of action. So perfect of scent is the Cuban bloodhound that the master has only to obtain a bit of clothing left behind by the runaway and give it to the hound to smell. The dog will then follow the slave through a whole population of his class, and with his nose to the ground lead straight to his hiding-place. For three centuries Cuba has been the hotbed of African slavery. Few, if any, have been imported during the last thirty years, that is to say since 1855, during which year some cargoes were successfully run. In 1816, the Spanish government, in a solemn treaty, declared its conviction of the injustice of the slave trade. On the 23d of September, 1817, in consideration of four hundred thousand pounds sterling paid as an equivalent by Great Britain, Spain ratified a treaty proclaiming that the slave trade should cease throughout all the dominions of that country on the 30th day of May, 1820, and that it should not afterwards be lawful for any Spanish subject to purchase slaves. It was further declared by the home government that all blacks brought from Africa subsequent to that date should be at once set free, and the vessel on which they were transported should be confiscated, while the captain, crew, and others concerned should be punished with ten years' penal servitude. Yet, as all the world knows, this was nothing more than a dead letter so far as Cuba was concerned, and so late as 1845, statistics show an arrival of imported slaves from Africa of fifteen thousand negroes annually, for the previous twenty years. Tacon, Governor-General from June, 1834, until April, 1838, like his predecessors and successors made no secret of receiving seventeen dollars per head,--that is one doubloon,--on every slave landed. Other officials spent their fees on themselves or hoarded them for a fortune to be enjoyed on returning home to Spain, but Tacon expended his in beautifying Havana and its environs. That the home government secretly fostered the slave trade, notwithstanding the solemn treaty entered into with Great Britain, no one pretends to deny. The coolie system, which was latterly substituted for that of the importation of Africans, was commenced in 1847, but it was only slavery under another form, being in point of humanity even more objectionable. Fully seventy per cent. of the Chinese coolies died during the eight years they were bound by their contract to serve their masters! Even after that period was completed, unjust laws and schemes were adopted to retain their services whenever the planters desired it; but the truth is, the planters, after a thorough experience, were generally glad to get rid of the Mongolians. All of them were decoyed from home under false pretenses and large promises, and only arrived in Cuba to find themselves virtually slaves. But there was no help for them. They were thousands of miles from China, in a land of whose language they knew nothing, and so they were obliged to submit. If after their term of service expired they succeeded in reaching Havana, or other Cuban cities, and by becoming fruit peddlers or engaging in any other occupation tried to earn sufficient money to carry them back to their native land, they still were brutally treated by all parties, and were ever at the mercy of the venal police. On the plantations they received perhaps a little more consideration than the blacks, simply because they were less tractable and more dangerous on account of their greater degree of intelligence and keener sense of the wrong done them. The planter, always short of laborers, has heretofore been willing to pay the shipping-agencies four hundred dollars for a newly-arrived coolie, whose services he thus secured for eight years, the coolies at the expiration of the period to receive a mere nominal sum, out of which they have mostly been cheated by some means or other. The whole business of coolie importation is vile beyond measure, and must have included in its aggregate over three hundred thousand Chinese. There are still believed to be some sixty thousand left upon the island, most of whom remain because they have no means of returning to their native land. Half of these subsist by begging. Broken in health and spirits, they await the coming of that final liberator who is the last friend of suffering humanity. The Chinese are best adapted to the work of the cigar factories, where they excel in the occupation of cigar and cigarette making, and many hundreds are thus employed in Havana. But they are totally unfit for plantation labor, under the hardships of which their feeble frames succumb. They prove themselves very good servants in the cities, being very quick to learn, and ready to adapt themselves to any light occupation. A Chinaman is sly, cunning, and, to a certain degree, enterprising; but he must be trusted cautiously. As a house-servant, footman, cook, or waiter he is admirable. Here, in this to him foreign land, he cannot suppress his instinct for gambling; it seems to be born in him, and he will often lose in an hour the hard accumulation of months, or even years. As to the lottery, he is always the purchaser of portions of tickets at every drawing, and occasionally becomes a winner. A thrifty Chinaman, for there are some such even in Havana, bearing the characteristic name of Ah-Lee, connected with a bricabrac store on the Calzada de la Reina, held a lucky number in the lottery drawn during our brief stay at the Hotel Telegrafo. When the prizes were announced, he found that he was entitled to five hundred dollars. The agents tried to pay Ah-Lee in Cuban currency, but he was too smart for them, and showed them their own announcement promising to cash all prizes, with the usual discount, in gold. So Ah-Lee got his prize finally in gold. We were told by one whose experience was extensive, and whose testimony was worthy of respect, that the coolies would lie and steal with such apparent innocence as to deceive the most wary, and that as regards their moral nature it seemed to be totally undeveloped. For our own part we still sympathize with John. He has been so outrageously cheated and abused from the hour when he stepped on board the transport ship which brought him from China up to the present time that he has learned the trick of it. If he is not strong enough to demand his rights, we certainly hope that he may have sufficient cunning to obtain them by outwitting his adversaries. In their slave condition the Chinese coolies and the negroes were at times so affected by a spirit of superstition as to cause them to commit suicide, the latter actuated, as it seemed, by a feeling of despair, the former through a vindictive spirit towards their masters. Both were also moved by a superstitious conviction that their spirits would at once be returned to their native land, to inhabit a sort of spirit paradise or intermediate state between earth and heaven. It is very strange that so peculiar and so similar a belief should be indigenous in the minds of such distinctive races. At the period when the free importation from Africa was carried on, the most difficult thing the planters had to contend with was a proneness to suicide on the part of those slaves who were newly imported, and who entertained this same remarkable idea. Though we abhor the entire system of Cuban labor, yet it cannot be denied that the slaves, so far as material comfort goes, are better lodged, fed, and cared for than four fifths of the population of Ireland and India, and, furthermore, this comparison will hold good as regards a large portion of continental Europe. A well-fed, well-kept negro is twice as valuable, twice as serviceable to his master as a neglected one, and no one knows this better than the master who governs his slaves on purely mercenary grounds, and is yet very careful to supply liberally their physical wants. These slaves are descended from various African tribes, whose characteristics are so marked as to be easily discernible even by strangers. The Congoes are small in stature, but very agile and good workers, and in past years they have been a favorite tribe. The Fantees are a larger race of negroes, hard to manage, and possessing a revengeful nature. Those from the Gold Coast are still more powerful in body, but are good-natured and well-liked by planters. The Ebros are less black than those already named, almost mulatto in complexion, and make favorite house servants. The Ashantees are of another prominent tribe, and are also popular as plantation hands, but not numerous. The tattooed faces, bodies, and limbs of a large portion of the slaves, especially of the hands upon the plantations, shows their African nativity, while the smooth skin and generally greater degree of intelligence of others show them to have been born in slavery upon the island. These latter are mostly sought for service in the cities. They are remarkably healthy when not overworked, and form the most vigorous part of the population. When an epidemic breaks out among the blacks, it seems to carry them off by wholesale, proving much more fatal than among the whites. Cholera, small-pox, and pneumonia sometimes sweep them off at a fearful rate. It is a curious fact that if a negro is really ill, he requires just twice as much medicine to affect him as a white person. There are said to be three hundred thousand free negroes on the island, of whom comparatively few are found inland upon the plantations; they are all inclined to congregate in the cities and large towns, where, truth compels us to say, they prove to be an idle and vicious class, and as a body useless both to themselves and to the public. There are believed to be at present in Cuba about one hundred and forty thousand male and about sixty thousand female slaves. To carry on the great industry of the island as systematized by the planters, this number of hands is entirely inadequate. It is sometimes asked how there came to be so many free negroes in the island. It should be clearly understood that the laws which govern Cuba are made by the home government, not by the planters or natives of Cuba, and that indirectly these laws have long favored emancipation of the blacks. For many years any slave has enjoyed the right to go to a magistrate and have himself appraised, and upon paying the price thus set upon himself he can receive his free papers. The valuation is made by three persons, of whom the master appoints one, and the magistrate two. The slave may pay by installments of fifty dollars at a time, but he owes his full service to his master until the last and entire payment is made. If the valuation be twelve hundred dollars, after the slave has paid one hundred he owns one twelfth of himself, and the master eleven twelfths, and so on. Until all is paid, however, the master's dominion over the slave is complete. There has also long been another peculiar law in operation. A slave may on the same valuation compel his master to transfer him to any person who will pay the money in full, and this has often been done where slave and master disagree. This law, as will be seen, must have operated as it was designed to do, as a check upon masters, and as an inducement for them to remove special causes of complaint and dissatisfaction. It has also enabled slaveholders of the better class, in the case of ill-usage of blacks, to relieve them by paying down their appraised value and appropriating their services to themselves. All this relates to the past rather than the present, since, as we have explained, the relationship of slave and master is now so nearly at an end as to render such arrangements inoperative. There was a law promulgated in 1870,--the outgrowth of the revolution of 1868, which dethroned Isabella II.,--declaring every slave in Cuba to be free after reaching the age of sixty, and also freeing the children of all slaves born subsequent to that year. But that law has been ignored altogether, and was not permitted even to be announced officially upon the island. In the first place, few hard worked slaves survive to the age of sixty; and in the second place, the children have no one to look after or to enforce their rights. Spain never yet kept troth with her subjects, or with anybody else, and the passage of the law referred to was simply a piece of political finesse, designed for the eye of the European states, and more particularly to soothe England, which country had lately showed considerable feeling and restlessness touching the disregard of all treaties between herself and Spain. The slaves who still remain upon the plantations appear in all outward circumstances to be thoughtless and comparatively content; their light and cheerful nature seems to lift them above the influence of brutal treatment when it is encountered. That they have been called upon to suffer much by being overtasked and cruelly punished in the past, there is no doubt whatever, but it may be safely stated that their condition has been greatly improved of late. The owners are obliged by law to instruct the slaves in the Catholic faith, but this has never been heeded to any extent by the planters, though all the children are baptized in infancy. The law relative to the treatment of the negroes also prescribes a certain quantity and quality of food to be regularly furnished to them, but the masters are generally liberal in this respect, and exceed the requirements of the law, as their mercenary interest is obviously in that direction. The masters know by experience that slaves will not work well unless well fed. With no education or culture whatever, their intelligence remains at the lowest ebb. "With plenty of food and sleep," said an owner to us, "they are as easily managed as any other domestic animals." Until latterly the slaves have been carefully watched at night, but nearly all these precautions against their escaping from servitude seem to have been dropped. They are no longer locked up in corral, their special night quarters. Of course they are kept within certain bounds, but the rigorous surveillance under which they have always lived is no longer in force. The two sexes are nominally separated, but as there is no strict recognition of the marital relation, and free intercommunication between them really exists, the state of morality may be imagined. It has always been customary for mothers to receive certain consideration and partial relief from hard labor during a reasonable period prior to and subsequent to their confinement, with encouraging gifts from the masters, which has caused them generally to covet the condition of maternity. Still the proportion of female slaves on the plantations has always been so small, compared with that of the other sex, that not nearly so many children are born as would be supposed. Female slaves have generally been sent to town service, even when born on the plantations. It has always been clearly understood that the births on the part of the negroes in Cuba have not nearly kept pace with the number of deaths among them, even under apparently favorable circumstances. One has not far to look for the reason of this. Promiscuous intercourse is undoubtedly the predisposing cause, which is always an outgrowth of a largely unequal division of the sexes. On the plantations the male negroes outnumber the females ten to one. In the cities the males are as five to one. When the slave trade was carried on between Africa and the island, the plan was to bring over males only, but it was hardly practicable to adhere strictly to the rule, so women were not declined when a cargo was being made up and nearly completed. Thus a disparity was inaugurated which has continued to the present day, with only a slight equalizing tendency. The present plan of freeing the slaves recommends itself to all persons who fully understand the position, and if it be honestly carried out will soon obliterate the crime of enforced labor upon the island. A sudden freeing of the blacks, that is, all at once, would have been attended with much risk to all parties, although justice and humanity demand their liberation. France tried the experiment in St. Domingo, and the result was a terrible state of anarchy. Not only did she lose possession of the island, but the people settled down by degrees into all the horrors of African savagery, even to cannibalism. England followed, and generously paid the British planters of Jamaica for all their slaves, giving the latter unconditional freedom. Of course this ruined the island commercially, but it was strict justice, nevertheless. Extreme measures are open to objection even in behalf of justice. It was hoped that the freed negroes of Jamaica would become thrifty and industrious, earning fair wages, and that crops would still be remunerative, but it was not so. The negro of the tropics will only work when he is compelled, and in the West Indies he has scarcely more to do, as it regards sustaining life, than to pluck of the wild fruits and to eat. The sugar plantations of Jamaica have simply ceased to exist. Every reasonable Cuban has long realized that the freedom of the blacks was but a question of time, and that it must soon be brought about, but how this could be accomplished without rendering them liable to the terrible consequences which befell St. Domingo was a serious problem. The commercial wreck of Jamaica had less terror for them as an example, since of late their own condition could in that respect hardly be worse. Therefore, the manumitting of one slave in every four annually, so organized that all shall be free on January 1, 1888, is considered with great favor by the people generally, except the most radical of old Spaniards. All are thus prepared for the change, which is so gradually brought about as to cause no great shock. It is not unreasonable to believe that the instantaneous freeing of all the slaves would have led to mutual destruction of whites and blacks all over the island. CHAPTER XV. Slave Trade with Africa. -- Where the Slavers made their Landing. -- An Early Morning Ride. -- Slaves marching to Daily Labor. -- Fragrance of the Early Day. -- Mist upon the Waters. -- A Slave Ship. -- A Beautiful but Guilty Brigantine. -- A French Cruiser. -- Cunning Seamanship. -- A Wild Goose Chase. -- A Cuban Posada. -- Visit to a Coffee Estate. -- Landing a Slave Cargo. -- A Sight to challenge Sympathy and Indignation. -- Half-Starved Victims. -- Destruction of the Slave Ship. The author's first visit to the island of Cuba was during the year 1845, at a period when the slave traffic was vigorously, though surreptitiously carried on between Africa and the island. The trade was continued so late as 1853, and occasional cargoes were brought over even later, slavers having been captured on the south coast two years subsequent to the last named date. The slave vessels generally sought a landing on the south side, both as being nearest and safest for them, but when they were hard pressed they made a port wherever it could be most easily reached. A favorite point at the time of which we speak, was in the Bay of Broa, on the south coast, nearly opposite to the Isle of Pines. It was here in 1845 that the author witnessed a scene which forms the theme of the following chapter. A superior knowledge of all the hidden bays and inlets of the south side gave the contrabandists great advantages over any pursuing vessel, and their lighter draught of water enabled them to navigate their small crafts where it was impossible for a heavy ship to follow. We were on a brief visit to the coffee estate of Don Herero, near Guines, and having expressed a desire to visit the southern coast, our host proposed that we should do so together on the following day. We were to start on horseback quite early in the morning, so as to accomplish the distance before the heat of the sun should become oppressive. The early day is almost as beautiful as the evenings of this region, a fact to which we were fully awakened at an early hour, after a refreshing night's sleep. Don Herero was already awaiting us on the broad piazza, which we reached in time to see the slaves, directed by an overseer, file past the house towards the field. "A couple of hours before sunrise," said our host, "is the best time for them to work, and we add these two hours to their noon rest, so that it divides the labor to better advantage and avoids the midday heat." There were perhaps seventy or eighty of this gang of slaves, one fifth only being women. Don Herero went among them and exchanged some pleasant words, mostly with the women, one of whom, evidently in a delicate situation, he singled out and led aside, directing her to return to the huts. It seemed that she had prepared to go to the field, but he did not approve of it, and she acquiesced good naturedly. It was observed also that he gave her a piece of money with a pleasant word, bidding her to purchase some coveted piece of finery,--probably a gaudy "bandana," of whose bright colors the negro women are very fond, binding them turban-fashion about their curly heads. Another passion among the Cuban negresses is a desire for large hoop earrings. Silver, or even brass will answer, if gold cannot be obtained. As we rode off that delicious morning towards our destination, mounted upon a couple of bright little easy-going Cuban ponies, with their manes and tails roached (that is, trimmed closely, after a South American fashion), the cool, fresh air was as stimulating as wine. At first we passed down the long avenue of palms which formed the entrance of the plantation, and which completely embowered the road, like the grand old oaks one sometimes sees lining the avenues to rural English estates. The delicious fragrance of the morning atmosphere, still moist with dew, the richness of the foliage, and the abundance of fruit and flowers were charming beyond description. We glided along at an easy gait over the roads, which in this thickly populated district were smooth and admirably kept, lined on either side by hedges of the flowering aloe, intermingled with many sweet-scented shrubs, all trimmed with mathematical precision. But the gayest and prettiest hedges were composed of the bitter orange, all aglow with small yellow fruit, hanging in almost artificial regularity and abundance. This immediate district was at that time in possession of wealthy owners, who vied with each other in rendering their surroundings attractive to the eye. Now and again we met little gangs of trusted slaves, who had been sent out on special errands, all of whom recognized Don Herero, and made him a respectful obeisance, which he very carefully returned. There is a strict degree of etiquette sustained in regard to these small matters between the slaves and whites, which goes far in maintaining respect and discipline. A ride of a couple of leagues or more brought us finally to a gentle rise of ground, which opened to our view the ocean, and a line of coast extending for many miles east and west. It was still quite early, and a morning mist hung over the quiet Caribbean Sea, which stretches away southward towards the Isle of Pines and the more distant isle of Jamaica. A gentle breeze began at that moment to disperse the mist and gradually in conjunction with the sun to lift the veil from the face of the waters. For a considerable time, however, only a circumscribed view was to be had, but Don Herero observed that the mist was quite unusual; indeed, that he had seen such a phenomenon but once or twice before on Cuban shores. He assured us that with the exercise of a little patience we should soon be rewarded by a clear and extensive view. So dismounting and lighting our cigars we leaned upon the saddles of the horses and watched the wreaths of the mist bank gradually dissolving. To the eastward there jutted out a promontory with a considerable elevation, behind which the sun began to show his florid countenance. Presently the indistinct outline of a graceful tracery of spars and cordage greeted the eye through the misty gauze, growing steadily more and more distinct and gradually descending towards the sea level, until at last there lay before us in full view, with a look of treacherous tranquillity, the dark, low hull of a brigantine. "A slaver!" was the mutual and simultaneous exclamation which burst from our lips as we gazed intently on the small but symmetrical vessel. Don Herero looked particularly intelligent, but said nothing. There could be no doubt as to the trade which engaged such a clipper craft. No legitimate commerce was suggested by her appearance, no honest trade demanded such manifest sacrifice of carrying capacity. It was very natural that her guilty character should add interest to her appearance and cause us to examine her very minutely. A short distance from where we stood there was gathered a group of a dozen or more persons, who silently regarded the brigantine, but they evinced no surprise at her appearance there so close to the shore. She was of a most graceful model, perfect in every line, with bows almost as sharp as a knife. The rig was also quite unusual and entirely new to us. Her deck was flush fore and aft. Not so much as an inch of rise was allowed for a quarter-deck, a style which gave large stowage capacity below deck, the level of which came up to within a couple of feet of the cappings of the bulwarks. As we have before intimated, it required no interpreter to indicate what business the brigantine was engaged in. A single glance at her, lying in so unfrequented a place, was enough. The rakish craft was of Baltimore build, of about two hundred tons measurement, and, like many another vessel turned out by the Maryland builders, was designed to make successfully the famous middle passage to or from the coast of Cuba, loaded with kidnapped negroes from the shores of Africa. The two requisites of these clippers were great speed and large stowage capacity for a human freight. At first it appeared as though Don Herero had purposely brought us here to witness the scene, but this he insisted was not the case, declaring that the presence of the slaver was a surprise to him. Be that as it may, it was clear that a cargo of negroes was about to be landed, and certain rapid signals had been exchanged by flags from a neighboring hut ever since the mist lifted. Repulsive as the idea was to a Northerner, still it would do no good to avoid the sight, and so we resolved to witness the disembarkation. Our friend, though a slaveholder, was so more by force of circumstances than through his own choice; he did not defend the institution at all. His solemn convictions were entirely against slavery, and he more than once said he heartily wished that some means might be devised which should gradually and effectually relieve the planters from the entire system and its many troubles. Don Herero now lies in one of the tombs in the Campo Santo, near Havana, but were he living he would doubtless rejoice at the present manner of solving a question which was so involved in perplexity during the last of his days. While we were exchanging some remarks upon the subject, our attention was suddenly drawn towards another striking object upon the waters of the bay. Nearly a league beyond the slaver, looming up above the mist, we could now make out three topmasts, clearly defined, the stately set of which, with their firm and substantial rig, betrayed the fact that there floated beneath them the hull of a French or an English man-of-war, such as was commissioned at that time to cruise in these waters for the purpose of intercepting and capturing the vessels engaged in the African slave trade. "A cruiser has scented the brigantine," said Don Herero. "It certainly appears so," we affirmed. "Unless there be sharp eyes on board the little craft, the cruiser will be down upon her before her people even suspect their danger." "The brigantine can hardly escape, at any rate," we suggested. "Don't be too sure," said Don Herero. It was impossible for our friend to suppress the nervous anxiety which so manifestly actuated him as he viewed the new phase of affairs. "Look! Look!" he exclaimed. While he spoke, a drapery of snow-white canvas fell like magic from the spars of the slaver, ready to catch the first breath of the breeze which the stranger was bringing down with him, though the larger vessel was still partially wrapped in a thin bank or cloud of fog. A couple of long sweeps were rigged out of either bow of the brigantine, and her prow, which just before was heading shoreward, was swung to seaward, while her canvas was trimmed to catch the first breath of the on-coming breeze. "This looks like business," said Don Herero with emphasis, at the same time shading his eyes with both hands to get a better view of the situation. "Can you define the new-comer's nationality?" we asked. "Not yet." "See! she is now in full sight." "French!" exclaimed Don Herero, as the tri-colors were clearly visible hanging from her peak. "What will the cruiser do with the brigantine?" we asked. "First catch your hare," said our friend. Our host then explained that the slaver had evidently intended to land her cargo under cover of the night, but had been prevented by the mist from coming to anchor in time. Fog, being so seldom known on this coast, had not entered into their calculations. She had most likely felt her way towards the shore by soundings, and was waiting for full daylight when we discovered her. While this explanation was being made, the brigantine had already got steerage way upon her, aided by the steady application of the sweeps, and her sharp bow was headed off shore. Nothing on the sea, unless it were a steamer, could hold speed with these fly-aways, which were built for just such emergencies as the present. The gradually freshening breeze had now dispersed the mist, and the two vessels were clearly in view from the shore and to each other. The remarkable interest of the scene increased with each moment. Don Herero, with all the excitability of his nationality, could hardly contain himself as he walked rapidly back and forth, always keeping his eyes towards the sea. The cruiser had come down under an easy spread of canvas, wearing a jib, three topsails, fore, main, and mizzen, and her spanker. It did not appear as if she had any previous intimation of the presence of the slaver, but rather that she was on the watch for just such a quarry as chance had placed within reach of her guns. The moment she discovered the brigantine, and at a signal which we could not hear upon the land, a hundred dark objects peopled her shrouds and spars, and sail after sail of heavy duck was rapidly dropped and sheeted home, until the mountain of canvas began to force the large hull through the water with increasing speed. In the mean time the lesser craft had been by no means idle. In addition to the regular square and fore and aft sails of a brigantine, she had a mizzen-mast stepped well aft not more than four feet from her taffrail, upon which she had hoisted a spanker and gaff-topsail, thus completing a most graceful and effective rig, and spreading a vast amount of canvas for a vessel of her moderate tonnage. It was quite impossible to take one's eyes off the two vessels. It was a race for life with the slaver, whose people worked with good effect at the sweeps and in trimming their sails to make the most out of the light but favorable wind that was filling them. The larger vessel would have made better headway in a stiff breeze or half a gale of wind, but the present moderate breeze favored the guilty little brigantine, which was every moment forging ahead and increasing the distance between herself and her enemy. "Do you see that commotion on the cruiser's bow?" asked our friend eagerly. "Some men are gathered on the starboard bow," was our answer. "Ay, and now she runs out a gun!" That was plain enough to see. The cruiser trained a bow-chaser to bear on the slaver, and the boom of the gun came sluggishly over the sea a few seconds after the puff of smoke was seen. A quick eye could see the dash of the shot just astern of the brigantine, where it must have cast the spray over her quarter-deck. After a moment's delay, as if to get the true range, a second, third, and fourth shot followed, each ricochetting through and over the slight waves either to starboard or port of the slaver, without any apparent effect. The brigantine, still employing her sweeps, and with canvas well trimmed, took no notice of the shots. Every time the gun was discharged on board the cruiser, it became necessary to fall off her course just a point or two in order to get a proper aim, and her captain was quick to see the disadvantage of this, as he was only assisting the slaver to widen the distance between them. It would seem to the uninitiated to be the easiest thing possible to cripple the brigantine by a few well directed shots, but when sailing in the wake of an enemy this is by no means so easily done. Besides, the distance between the two vessels, which was considerable, was momentarily increasing. Notwithstanding that the broad spread of canvas on board the slaver made her a conspicuous mark, still, so far as could be seen or judged of by her movements, she remained untouched by half a dozen shots, more or less, which the cruiser sent after her as she slipped away from her big adversary. We could even see that the sweeps were now taken in, showing that the master of the slaver considered the game to be in his own hands. "The brigantine steers due south," said our friend, rubbing his hands together eagerly. "She will lead the Frenchman a wild goose chase among the Cayman Isles, where he will be most likely to run aground with his heavy draught of water. The sea round about for leagues is underlaid by treacherous coral reefs. We shall see, we shall see," he reiterated. "But they must certainly have a good pilot on board the cruiser," we ventured to say. "Undoubtedly," replied Don Herero, "but the brigantine is built with a centre-board, thus having, as it were, a portable keel, and can sail anywhere that a man could swim, while the cruiser, with all her armament, must draw nearly three fathoms. A ship will sometimes follow a chase into dangerous water." "True," we responded, "the brigantine's safety lies in seeking shoal water." "You are right, and that will be her game." In half an hour both vessels were hull down in the offing, and were soon invisible from our point of view. The early ride and subsequent excitement had developed in us a healthy appetite, and we were strongly reminded of the fact that we had not breakfasted. We were near the little hamlet of Lenore, where there was a small inn, which we had passed on the way, and towards which we now turned our horses' heads. A breakfast of boiled eggs, fried plantains, and coffee was prepared for us and well served, much to our surprise, supplemented by a large dish of various fruits, ripe and delicious. Don Herero had left us for a few moments while the breakfast was preparing, and it must have been owing to his intelligent instructions that we were so nicely served, for, as a rule, country posadas in Cuba are places to be avoided, being neither cleanly nor comfortable. For strangers they are not entirely safe, as they are frequented by a very rough class of people. These idlers do not indulge in spirituous liquors to excess, partaking only of the light Cataline wine in universal use both in Spain and her colonies. Intemperance is little seen outside the large cities, but gambling and quarreling are ever rampant among the class who frequent these posadas. In the present instance there were a dozen and more individuals in the Lenore inn who were more or less connected with the expected arrival of the slave brigantine, and the disappointment caused by the arrival upon the scene of the French cruiser had put them all in a very bad humor. Angry words were being exchanged among them in the large reception apartment, and Don Herero suggested that we should finish our cigars under an inviting shade in the rear of the posada. At our host's suggestion a neighboring coffee plantation was visited, and its floral and vegetable beauties thoroughly enjoyed. It was in the very height of fragrance and promise, the broad expanse of the plantation, as far as the eye could extend, being in full bloom. Some hours were agreeably passed in examining the estate, the slaves' quarters, and the domestic arrangements, and also in partaking of the hospitalities of the generous owner, after which we rode back to Lenore. "We must not miss the closing act of our little drama," said Don Herero, significantly. "The closing act?" we inquired. "Certainly. You do not suppose we have yet done with the brigantine?" "Oh, the brigantine. Will she dare to return, now the cruiser has discovered her?" "Of course she will, after dropping her pursuer. Strange that these French cruisers do not understand these things better; but so it is." And Don Herero explained that the French cruisers watched the southern coasts of the island, while the English cruised on the northern shore, attempted to blockade it, and also cruised farther seaward, on the line between Africa and Cuba. A couple of American men-of-war, engaged in the same purpose of suppressing the slave trade, patrolled the African coast. It was nearly night before we got through our dinner at the posada. Just as we were preparing to leave the table, the landlord came in and announced to Don Herero that if we desired to witness the close of the morning's business in the bay, we must hurry up to the plateau. We hastened to our former position, reaching it just in time to see the brigantine again rounding the headland. She now ran in close to the shore, where there seemed to be hardly water sufficient to float her, but the exactness and system which characterized her movements showed that her commander was not a stranger to the little bay in which he had brought his vessel. All was instantly bustle and activity, both on board and on shore. There were not more than twenty people to be seen at the shore, but each one knew his business, and went about it intelligently. There was no more loud talking or disputation. These men, all armed, were accustomed to this sort of thing, and had evidently been awaiting the slaver's arrival for some days. They were a rough-looking set of desperadoes, among whom we recognized several who had been at the posada. The brigantine was quickly moored as near to the shore as possible, and a broad gangway of wood was laid from her deck to a projecting rock, over which a long line of dark objects was hurried, like a flock of sheep, and nearly as naked as when born into the world. We walked down to the landing-place, in order to get a closer view. The line of human beings who came out from below the deck of the slaver were mostly full-grown men, but occasionally a woman or a boy came out and hastened forward with the rest. As we drew nearer, one or two of the women, it was observed, had infants in their arms, little unconscious creatures, sound asleep, and so very young that they must have been born on the voyage. How the entire scene appealed to our indignation and sympathy! What misery these poor creatures must have endured, cooped up for twenty-one days in that circumscribed space! They were all shockingly emaciated, having sustained life on a few ounces of rice and a few gills of water daily distributed to them. The atmosphere, thoroughly poisoned when so confined, had proved fatal to a large number. As we stood there, one dark body was passed up from below the deck and quietly dropped into the bay. Life was extinct. It was quite impossible to suppress a shudder as we looked upon the disgraceful scene, which being observed Don Herero said,-- "They look bad enough now, but a few days in the open air, with a plenty of fresh vegetables, fruits, and sweet water to drink, will bring them round. They will get a good bath directly at the first river they cross, which is the thing they most require." While our friend was speaking, four tall, gaunt, fierce-looking negroes passed us, shackled two by two at the wrists. Their eyes rolled curiously about, full of wonder at all they saw, everything was to them so strange. They knew no more than children just born what was in store for them. "Poor fellows!" we ejaculated. Perhaps they detected sympathy in the tone of voice in which the words were uttered. They could not understand their purport, but all four were observed to turn their eyes quickly towards us, with an intelligent expression. "These are Ashantees," said Don Herero. "They have thriven but poorly on their small allowance of nourishment, but they will improve rapidly like the rest, now they have landed. They belong to a powerful tribe in Africa, and are rarely captured and sold to the factories on the coast. They are sturdy and serviceable fellows, but they must be humored. The lash will not subdue them. They bring a high price in Havana for harbor workers." Hastening back to the posada, a large basket of cassava bread and an abundance of ripe bananas and oranges, with half a dozen bottles of wine, were procured. With these, carried by a couple of colored boys, we hastened back to the landing-place in time to distribute the refreshments to all the women and boys. The balance of the provisions were dealt out to the few men who had not already been hurried away from the spot. It is impossible to describe the surprise and grateful expression upon those dusky faces among the half-famished creatures, as they eagerly swallowed a portion of the wine, and ate freely of the delicious fruit and nourishing bread. We were told afterwards that there were about three hundred and fifty of these poor creatures originally embarked, and over three hundred were landed. Perhaps between thirty and forty had died on the passage, unable to sustain life under such awful circumstances, packed, as they necessarily were, almost like herring in a box. Once a day, in fair weather, thirty or forty at a time were permitted to pass a half hour on deck. That was all the respite from their confinement which they enjoyed during the three weeks' voyage. The horrors of the "middle passage" have not been exaggerated. "They must have lost many of their number by death, on the voyage," we suggested to Don Herero, as we observed their weak and tremulous condition. "Doubtless," was the response. "And what do they do in that case?" "They have the ocean always alongside," was his significant reply. "They throw them over as they did that body just now?" we asked. "Exactly. And many a poor sick creature is cast into the sea before life is extinct," he continued. "That is adding murder to piracy," was our natural and indignant rejoinder. "Hush!" said Don Herero, "these are sensitive people, and desperate ones, as well. I should find it difficult to protect you if they were to overhear and understand such words." We realized that his remarks were true enough. We were in a land of slavery, and that meant that everything evil was possible. The last of the living freight had been landed, and arranged in marching trim they were turned with their faces inland, staggering as they went, their swollen and cramped limbs hardly able to sustain the weight of their bodies. They were all secured with handcuffs, twenty in a lot, between whom,--there being ten on a side,--a pole was placed, and each was fastened by a chain running through the steel handcuffs to the pole. An armed Spaniard directed each lot. The faces of all were quite expressionless. They had just endured such horrors packed beneath the deck of the brigantine that the present change must have been welcome to them, lame as they were. We had been so completely engaged in watching the colored gangs and in moving up to our lookout station of the early morning that our thoughts had not reverted to anything else, but as the last lot filed by there boomed over the waters of the bay the heavy report of a gun, at once calling our attention seaward. A change had come over the scene. That which has taken some space to relate had transpired with great rapidity. Night had settled over the scene, but the moon and stars were so marvelously bright as to render objects almost as plain as by day. The ocean lay like a sheet of silver, luminous with the reflected light poured upon it by the sparkling skies. Looking towards the southeast, we saw the French cruiser rounding the headland which formed the eastern arm of the little bay, and she had already sent a shot across the water aimed at the brigantine. Don Herero had prognosticated correctly. The slaver had led the cruiser a fruitless chase and lost her among the islands, and then returning to her former anchorage had successfully discharged her cargo. Her tactics could not have been anticipated by the cruiser, yet had an armed party been left behind in boats, the brigantine might have been captured on her return. But then again, if the cruiser had left a portion of her crew at this point, the slaver would have been notified by the friends on shore, and would have sought a landing elsewhere. The brigantine had cast off her moorings and was now standing seaward, with her sails filled. We could distinctly see a quarter boat leave her side manned by some of her crew, who at once pulled towards the nearest landing. At the same time a bright blaze sprang up on board the slaver just amidships, and in a moment more it crept, like a living serpent, from shroud to shroud and from spar to spar, until the graceful brigantine was one sheet of flame! It was dazzling to look upon, even at the distance where we stood, the body of high-reaching flame being sharply defined against the background of sky and blue water. While we watched the glowing view the cruiser cautiously changed her course and bore away, for fire was an enemy with which she could not contend. Presently there arose a shower of blazing matter heavenward, while a confused shock and a dull rumbling report filled the atmosphere, as the guilty brigantine was blown to atoms! Hemmed in as she was there could be no hope of escape. Her mission was ended, and her crew followed their usual orders, to destroy the ship rather than permit her to fall a prize to any government cruisers. CHAPTER XVI. Antique Appearance of Everything. -- The Yeomen of Cuba. -- A Montero's Home. -- Personal Experience. -- The Soil of the Island. -- Oppression by the Government. -- Spanish Justice in Havana. -- Tax upon the Necessities of Life. -- The Proposed Treaty with Spain. -- A One-Sided Proposition. -- A Much Taxed People. -- Some of the Items of Taxation. -- Fraud and Bankruptcy. -- The Boasted Strength of Moro Castle. -- Destiny of Cuba. -- A Heavy Annual Cost to Spain. -- Political Condition. -- Pictures of Memory. Everything in Cuba has an aspect of antiquity quite Egyptian. The style of the buildings is not unlike that of the Orient, while the trees and vegetable products increase the resemblance. The tall, majestic palms, the graceful cocoanut trees, the dwellings of the lower classes and many other peculiarities give to the scenery an Eastern aspect quite impressive. It is impossible to describe the vividness with which each object, artificial or natural, house or tree, stands out in the clear liquid light where there is no haze to interrupt the view. Indeed, it is impossible to express how essentially everything differs in this sunny island from our own country. The language, the people, the climate, the manners and customs, the architecture, the foliage, the flowers, all offer broad contrasts to what the American has so lately left behind him. It is but a long cannon shot, as it were, off our southern coast, yet once upon its soil the stranger seems to have been transported to another quarter of the globe. It would require but little effort of the imagination to believe one's self in distant Syria, or some remoter part of Asia. One never tires of watching the African population, either in town or country. During the hours which the slaves are allowed to themselves, they are oftenest seen working on their own allotted piece of ground, where they raise favorite fruits and vegetables, besides corn for fattening the pig penned up near by, and for which the drover who regularly visits the plantations will pay them in good hard money. Thus it has been the case, in years past, that thrifty slaves have earned the means of purchasing their freedom, after which they have sought the cities, and have swelled the large numbers of free negroes who naturally tend towards these populous centres. Some become caleseros, some labor upon the water-front of the town as stevedores, porters, and the like, but the majority are confirmed idlers. In the cities even the slaves have always had a less arduous task to perform than those on the plantations. They are less exposed to the sun, and are as a rule allowed more freedom and privileges. The women never fail to exhibit the true negro taste for cheap jewelry. A few gaudy ribbons and a string of high-colored glass beads about the neck are greatly prized by them. Sometimes the mistress of a good looking negress takes great pleasure in decking her immediate attendant in grand style, with big gold finger rings, large hoop earrings, wide gold necklace, and the like. A bright calico gown and a flaring bandana kerchief bound about the head generally complete the costume of these petted slaves. There was one sight observed in the church of Santa Clara of significance in this connection. Before the altar all distinction ceased, and the negress knelt on the same bit of carpet beside the mistress. The native soil of Cuba is so rich that a touch of the hoe prepares it for the plant. It is said to be unsurpassed in the world in this respect, and only equaled by Australia. The Monteros have little more to do than to gather produce, which they carry daily to the nearest market, and which also forms their own healthful and palatable food. Nowhere are the necessities of life so easily supplied, or are men so delicately nurtured. And yet to our Northern eye these Monteros seemed rather a forlorn sort of people, forming a class by themselves, and regarded with disdain by the Spaniards and most Creoles, as our Southern slaveholders used to regard the poor whites of the South. If one may judge by appearances they are nearly as poor in purse as they can be. Their home, rude and lowly, consists generally of a cabin with a bamboo frame, covered by a palm-leaf roof, and with an earthen floor. There are a few broken hedges, and numbers of ragged or naked children. Pigs, hens, goats, all stroll ad libitum in and out of the cabin. The Montero's tools--few and poorly adapted--are Egyptian-like in primitiveness, while the few vegetables are scarcely cultivated at all. The chaparral about his cabin is low, tangled, and thorny, but it is remarkable what a redeeming effect a few graceful palms impart to the crudeness of the picture. The Montero raises, perhaps, some sweet potatoes, which, by the bye, reach a very large size in Cuban soil. He has also a little patch of corn, but _such_ corn. When ripe it is only three or four feet in height, or less than half the average of our New England growth, the ears mere nubbins. This corn grows, however, all the year round, and is fed green to horses and cattle. All this is done upon a very small scale. No one lays in a stock of anything perishable. The farmer's or the citizen's present daily necessities alone are provided for. Idleness and tobacco occupy most of the Montero's time, varied by the semi-weekly attractions of the cock-pit. The amount of sustaining food which can be realized from one of these little patches of ground, so utterly neglected, is something beyond credence to those who have not looked bountiful nature in the face in Cuba. While traveling in the vicinity of Guines, the author stopped at one of these lonely Montero homes to obtain water and refreshment for his horse. These were promptly furnished in the form of a pail of water and a bundle of green cornstalks. In the mean time the rude hospitality of the cabin was proffered to us, and we gladly sat down to partake of cocoanut milk and bananas. One of the family pets of the cabin consisted of a tall white bird of the crane species, which, regardless of goat, kid, hens, chickens, and children, came boldly to our side as though accustomed to be petted, and greedily devoured the banana which was peeled for him and cut into tempting bits. One wing had evidently been cut so that the bird could not fly away, but his long, vigorous legs would have defied pursuit, had he desired to escape. Four children, two of each sex, two of whom were white and two mulatto, quite naked, and less than ten years of age, kept close to the Montero's Creole wife, watching us with big, wondering eyes, and fingers thrust into their mouths. What relationship they bore to the household was not clearly apparent. On rising to depart and attempting to pay for the entertainment, the master of the cabin, with true Cuban hospitality, declined all remuneration; but a handful of small silver divided among the children satisfied all, and we parted with a hearty pressure of the hand. The richest soil of the island is black, which is best adapted to produce the sugar-cane, and is mostly devoted, if eligibly located, to that purpose. To a Northerner, accustomed to see so much enrichment expended upon the soil to force from it an annual return, this profuseness of unstimulated yield is a surprise. The red soil of Cuba, which is impregnated with the oxide of iron, is less rich, and is better adapted to the coffee plantation. The mulatto-colored earth is considered to be inferior to either of the others named, but is by no means unproductive, being preferred by the tobacco growers, who, however, often mingle a percentage of other soils with it, as we mingle barnyard refuse with our natural soil. Some tobacco planters have resorted by way of experiment to the use of guano, hoping to stimulate the native properties of the soil, but its effect was found to be not only exhausting to the land, but also bad for the leaf, rendering it rank and unfit for delicate use. Coal is found near Havana, though it is of rather an inferior quality, and, so far as we could learn, is but little used, the planters depending mostly upon the refuse of the cane with which to run their boilers and engines. Trees have been only too freely used for fuel while accessible, but great care is now taken to utilize the cane after the juice is expressed. Trees, which are so much needed in this climate for shade purposes, have mostly disappeared near Havana. When Columbus first landed here he wrote home to Spain that the island was so thickly wooded as to be impassable. The lovely climate and beautiful land are rendered gloomy by the state of oppression under which they suffer. The exuberant soil groans with the burdens which are heaped upon it. The people are not safe from prying inquiry at bed or board. Their every action is watched, their slightest words noted and perhaps distorted. They can sing no song of liberty, and even to hum an air wedded to republican verse is to provoke suspicion. The press is muzzled by the iron hand of power. Two hours before a daily paper is distributed on the streets of Havana, a copy must be sent to the government censor. When it is returned with his indorsement it may be issued to the public. The censorship of the telegraph is also as rigorously enforced. Nor do private letters through the mails escape espionage. No passenger agent in Havana dares to sell a ticket for the departure of a stranger or citizen without first seeing that the individual's passport is indorsed by the police. Foreign soldiers fatten upon the people, or at least they eat out their substance, and every town near the coast is a garrison, every interior village a military depot. Upon landing, if well advised, one is liberal to the petty officials. Chalk is cheap. A five-dollar gold-piece smooths the way wonderfully, and causes the inspector to cross one's baggage with his chalk and no questions asked. No gold, no chalk! Every article must be scrupulously examined. It is cheapest to pay, humiliating as it is, and thus purchase immunity. As a specimen of the manner in which justice is dispensed in Havana to-day, a case is presented which occurred during our stay at the Telegrafo Hotel. A native citizen was waylaid by three men and robbed of his pocket-book and watch, about fifty rods from the hotel, at eight o'clock in the evening. The rascal who secured the booty, threatening his victim all the while with a knife at his throat, instantly ran away, but the citizen succeeded in holding on to the other two men until his outcries brought the police to the spot. The two accomplices were at once imprisoned. Three days later they were brought before an authorized court, and tried for the robbery. Being taken red-handed, as it were, one would suppose their case was clear enough, and that they would be held until they gave up their accomplice. Not so, however. The victim of the robbery, who had lost a hundred and sixty dollars in money and a valuable gold watch, was coolly rebuked for carrying so much property about his person, and the case was dismissed! Had the sufferer been a home Spaniard possibly the result would have been different. The inference is plain and doubtless correct, that the official received half the stolen property, provided he would liberate the culprits. Sometimes, as we were assured, the victim outbids the rogues, and exemplary punishment follows! Flour of a good commercial quality sells at present in Boston for six dollars per barrel. Why should it cost fourteen dollars in Havana and other ports of Cuba? Because Spain demands a tax of one hundred per cent. to be paid into the royal treasury upon this prime necessity of life. This one example is sufficient to illustrate her policy, which is to extort from the Cubans every possible cent that can be obtained. The extraordinary taxation imposed upon their subjects by the German and Austrian governments is carried to the very limit, it would seem, of endurance, but taxation in Cuba goes far beyond anything of the sort in Europe. Spain now asks us to execute with her a "favorable" reciprocity treaty. Such a treaty as she proposes would be of very great benefit to Spain, no doubt, but of none, or comparatively none, to us. Whatever we seemingly do for Cuba in the matter of such a treaty we should do indirectly for Spain. She it is who will reap all the benefit. She has still upon her hands some fifty to sixty thousand civil and military individuals, who are supported by a miserable system of exaction as high and petty officials in this misgoverned island. It is for the interest of this army of locusts in possession to keep up the present state of affairs,--it is bread and butter to them, though it be death to the Cubans. Relieved of the enormous taxation and oppression generally which her people labor under in every department of life, Cuba would gradually assume a condition of thrift and plenty. But while she is so trodden upon, so robbed in order to support in luxury a host of rapacious Spaniards, and forbidden any voice in the control of her own affairs, all the treaty concessions which we could make to Spain would only serve to keep up and perpetuate the great farce. Such a treaty as is proposed would be in reality granting to Spain a subsidy of about thirty million dollars per annum! This conclusion was arrived at after consultation with three of the principal United States consuls on the island. Cuba purchases very little from us; she has not a consuming population of over three hundred thousand. The common people, negroes, and Chinese do not each expend five dollars a year for clothing. Rice, codfish, and dried beef, with the abundant fruits, form their support. Little or none of these come from the United States. The few consumers wear goods which we cannot, or at least do not produce. A reciprocity treaty with such a people means, therefore, giving them a splendid annual subsidy. Taxed by the government to the very last extreme, the landlords, shopkeepers, and all others who work for hire have also learned the trick of it, and practice a similar game on every possible victim. Seeing a small desirable text book in a shop on the Calle de Obrapia, we asked the price. "Two dollars, gold, señor," was the answer. "Why do you charge just double the price one would pay for it in Madrid, Paris, or New York?" we asked. "Because we are so heavily taxed," was the reply, and the shopman went on to illustrate. Each small retail store is taxed three hundred dollars for the right to do business. As the store increases in size and importance the tax is increased. A new tax of six per cent. on the amount of all other taxation has just been added, to cover the cost of collecting the whole! A war tax of twenty-five per cent. upon incomes was laid in 1868, and though the war has been ended ten years it is still collected. Every citizen or resident in Havana is obliged to supply himself with a document which is called a cedula, or paper of identification, at an annual cost of five dollars in gold. Every merchant who places a sign outside of his door is taxed so much per letter annually. Clerks in private establishments have to pay two and one half per cent. of their quarterly salaries to government. Railroads pay a tax of ten per cent. upon all passage money received, and the same on all freight money. Petty officials invent and impose fines upon the citizens for the most trifling things, and strangers are mulcted in various sums of money whenever a chance occurs, generally liquidating the demand rather than to be at the cost of time and money to contest their rights. The very beggars in the streets, blind, lame, or diseased, if found in possession of money, are forced to share it with officials on some outrageous pretext. All these things taken into consideration show us why the shopkeeper of Havana must charge double price for his merchandise. We have only named a few items of taxation which happen to occur to us, and which only form a commencement of the long list. It is nearly impossible at present to collect a note or an account on the island. Several of the guests at the Telegrafo had come from the United States solely upon these fruitless errands, each having the same experience to relate. Dishonest debtors take advantage of the general state of bankruptcy which exists, and plead utter inability to meet their obligations, while others, who would gladly pay their honest debts if it were possible, have not the means to do so. There is considerable counterfeit paper money in circulation, and we were told that the banks of the city of Havana actually paid it out knowingly over their own counters, mixed in with genuine bills,--a presumed perquisite of the bank officers! This unprecedented fraud was not put a stop to until the merchants and private bankers threatened to have the doors of the banks closed by popular force if the outrage was longer continued. Could such a public fraud be carried on under any other than a Spanish government? It is not pleasant to record the fact, but it is nevertheless true that the Spaniards in Cuba are artful, untruthful, unreliable even in small things, with no apparent sense of honor, and seeking just now mainly how they can best avoid their honest obligations. As evil communications are contagious, the Cubans have become more or less impregnated with this spirit of commercial dishonesty. It must be admitted that of true, conscientious principles neither party has any to spare. The writer has often been asked about Moro Castle. Much has been said about its "impregnable" character, but modern military science will not recognize any such theory. A thousand chances are liable to happen, any one of which might give the place into the hands of an invading force. Has it not already been twice taken? Though it may be said that auxiliary forts have been added since those experiences, nevertheless modern artillery would make but short work of the boasted defenses of Havana, and would knock the metropolis itself all to pieces in a few hours, while lying out of range from Moro Castle. No invading force need attack from the seaward side, unless it should be found particularly desirable to do so. The place could be easily taken, as the French took Algiers, by landing a sufficient force in the rear. With the exception of the fortresses in and about Havana, the island, with its two thousand miles of coast line and nearly one hundred accessible harbors, is certainly very poorly prepared to resist an invading enemy. Cuba's boasted military or defensive strength is chimerical. That the island naturally belongs to this country is a fact so plain as to have been conceded by all authorities. In this connection one is forcibly reminded of the words of Jefferson in a letter to President Monroe, so long ago as 1823, wherein he says: "I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico and the countries and the isthmus bordering it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being." Is it generally known that Cuba was once freely offered to this government? During the presidency of Jefferson, while Spain was bowed beneath the yoke of France, the people of the island, feeling themselves incompetent to maintain their independence, sent a deputation to Washington city proposing its annexation to the federal system of North America. The President, however, declined to even consider the proffered acquisition. Again, in 1848, President Polk authorized our minister at Madrid to offer a hundred million dollars for a fee simple of the island, but it was rejected by Spain. Completely divided against itself, the mystery is how Cuba has been so long sustained in its present system. Spain has crowded regiment after regiment of her army into the island. It was like pouring water into a sieve, the troops being absorbed by death almost as fast as they could be landed. The combined slaughter brought about by patriot bullets, hardships, exposure, fever, and every possible adverse circumstance has been enormous beyond belief. In spite of all this sacrifice of human life, besides millions of gold expended annually, what does Spain gain by holding tenaciously to her title of the island? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The time has long passed when the system of extortion enforced upon the Cubans served to recuperate the royal treasury. The tide has entirely changed in this respect, and though the taxation has been increased, still the home government is mulcted in the sum of six or eight millions of dollars annually to keep up the present worse than useless system. The deficit of the Cuban budget for the present year, as we were credibly informed, could not be less than eight millions of dollars. How is Spain to meet this continuous drain upon her resources? She is already financially bankrupt. It is in this political strait that she seeks a one-sided treaty with the United States, by means of which she hopes to eke out her possession of the island a few years longer, through our liberality,--a treaty by which she would gain some thirty millions of dollars annually, and we should be just so much the poorer. As regards the final destiny of Cuba, that question will be settled by certain economic laws which are as sure in their operation as are those of gravitation. No matter what our wishes may be in the matter, such individual desires are as nothing when arraigned against natural laws. The commerce of the island is a stronger factor in the problem than mere politics; it is the active agent of civilization all over the world. It is not cannon, but ships; not gunpowder, but peaceful freights, which settle the great questions of mercantile communities. Krupp's hundred-ton guns will not control the fate of Cuba, but sugar will. We have only to ask ourselves, Whither does the great commercial interest of the island point? It is in the direction in which the largest portion of her products find their market. If this were England, towards that land her industry and her people would look hopefully, but as it is the United States who take over ninety per cent. of her entire exports, towards the country of the Stars and Stripes she stretches out her hands, and asks for favorable treaties. At the present moment she has reached a crisis, where her condition is absolutely desperate. The hour is big with fate to the people of Cuba. As long as European soil will produce beets, the product of the cane will find no market on that side of the Atlantic. Cuba must in the future depend as much upon the United States as does Vermont, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, or any other State. The effort to bring about a reciprocal treaty of commerce with us is but the expression of a natural tendency to closer bonds with this country. Thus it will be seen that as regards her commercial existence, Cuba is already within the economic orbit of our Union, though she seems to be so far away politically. The world's centre of commercial gravity is changing very fast by reason of the great and rapid development of the United States, and all lands surrounding the union must conform to the prevailing lines of motion. It is with infinite reluctance that the temporary sojourner in Cuba leaves her delicious shores. A brief residence in the island passes like a midsummer night's dream, while the memories one brings away seem almost like delusive spots of the imagination. Smiling skies and smiling waters; groves of palms and oranges; the bloom of the heliotrope, the jasmine and the rose; flights of strange and gaudy birds; tropic nights at once luxurious and calm; clouds of fireflies floating like unsphered stars on the night breeze; graceful figures of dark-eyed señoritas in diaphanous drapery; picturesque groups of Monteros, relieved by the dusky faces and stalwart forms of the sons of Africa; undulating volantes, military pageants, ecclesiastical processions, frowning fortresses, grim batteries, white sails, fountains raining silver; all these images mingle in brilliant kaleidoscopic combinations, changing and varying as the mind's eye seeks to fix their features. Long after his departure from the enchanting island, the traveler beholds these visions in the still watches of the night, and again listens to the dash of the sea-green waves at the foot of the Moro and the Punta, the roll of the drum and the crash of arms upon the ramparts, or hears in fancy the thrilling strains of music from the military band in the Paseo de Isabella. If it were possible to contemplate only the beautiful that nature has so prodigally lavished on this Eden of the Gulf, shutting out all that man has done and is doing to mar the blessings of heaven, while closing our eyes to the myriad forms of human misery that assail them on every hand, then a visit to or a residence in Cuba would present a succession of unalloyed pleasures, delightful as a poet's dream. But the dark side of the picture will force itself upon us. The American traveler, keenly alive to the social and political aspects of life, appreciates in full force the evils that challenge his observation at every step. If he contrasts the natural scenery with the familiar pictures of home, he cannot help also contrasting the political condition of the people with that of his own country. The existence, almost under the shadow of the flag of the freest institutions the earth ever knew, of a government as purely despotic as that of the autocrat of Russia is a monstrous fact that must startle the most indifferent observer. To go hence to Cuba is not merely to pass over a few degrees of latitude,--it is to take a step from the nineteenth century back into the dark ages. In the clime of sunshine and endless summer, we are in the land of starless political darkness. Lying under the lee of a land where every man is a sovereign is a realm where the lives, liberties, and fortunes of all are held at the will of a single individual, who acknowledges fealty only to a nominal ruler more than three thousand miles across the sea. In close proximity to a country where the taxes are self-imposed and so light as to be almost unfelt is one where each free family pays over five hundred dollars per annum, directly and indirectly, for the support of a system of bigoted tyranny, scarcely equaled elsewhere,--forming an aggregate sum of over twenty-six millions of dollars. For all this extortion no equivalent is received. No representation, no utterance, for tongue or pen are alike proscribed; no share of public honors, no office, no emolument. The industry of the people is crippled, their intercourse with other nations is hampered in every conceivable manner, and every liberal aspiration of the human soul stifled in its birth. Can good morals and Christian lives be expected of a people who are so down-trodden? Salubrious in climate, varied in production, and most fortunately situated for commerce, there must yet be a grand future in store for Cuba. Washed by the Gulf Stream on half her border, while the Mississippi pours out its riches on one side and the Amazon on the other, her home is naturally within our own constellation of stars, and some of those who read these pages may live to see such a consummation. 
34306	----	FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS OR UNDER SCHLEY ON THE BROOKLYN Old Glory Series BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER AUTHOR OF "UNDER DEWEY AT MANILA" "A YOUNG VOLUNTEER IN CUBA" "RICHARD DARE'S VENTURE" "OLIVER BRIGHT'S SEARCH" "TO ALASKA FOR GOLD" ETC. _ILLUSTRATED BY_ A. B. SHUTE BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY LEE AND SHEPARD. _All Rights Reserved._ Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. [Illustration: "THE FLAGSHIP BEGAN THE FIRING."] PREFACE "FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS," although a complete story in itself, forms the third volume of the "Old Glory Series," tales depicting the various campaigns in our late war with Spain. In "Under Dewey at Manila" we followed Larry Russell's adventures on board of the flagship _Olympia_ during the memorable contest off Cavite; in "A Young Volunteer in Cuba" we marched and fought with Ben Russell in that notable campaign leading up to the surrender of Santiago; and in the present volume are narrated the haps and mishaps of Walter Russell, who joins Commodore Schley's flagship, the _Brooklyn_, and sails with the Flying Squadron from Hampton Roads to Key West, thence to Cienfuegos, and at last succeeds in "bottling up" Admiral Cervera's fleet in Santiago Bay. The long blockade and the various bombardments are described, and then follow the particulars of that masterly battle on the part of the North Atlantic Squadron which led to the total destruction of the Spanish warships. Walter Russell's bravery may seem overdrawn, but such is far from being a fact. That our sailors were heroes in those days we have but to remember the sinking of the _Merrimac_, the _Winslow_ affair, and a score of deeds of equal daring. "The hour makes the man," and the opportunity likewise makes the hero. Walter was brave, but he was no more so than hundreds of others who stood ready to lay down their lives in the cause of humanity and for the honor of Old Glory. Like his two brothers, his religious belief was of the practical kind, and he went into battle convinced that so long as he did his duty according to the dictates of his conscience, an all-wise and all-powerful Providence would guide him and watch over him. The author cannot refrain from saying a word about the historical portions of the present work. They have been gleaned from the best available authorities, including the reports of Admiral Sampson, Commodore Schley, and a number of captains who took part in the contest; also the personal narratives of one man who was on board the _Merrimac_ at the time that craft was sunk, and of a number who have made the _Brooklyn_ their home for several years past, and who will probably remain on the pride of the Flying Squadron for some time to come. In presenting this third volume, the author begs to thank both critics and the public for the cordial reception accorded to the previous volumes, and trusts that the present story will meet with equal commendation. EDWARD STRATEMEYER. NEWARK, N.J., March 1, 1899. CONTENTS I. WALTER DETERMINES TO ENTER THE NAVY II. A VISIT TO THE NAVY-YARD III. A CHASE AND ITS RESULT IV. ON THE WAY TO THE "BROOKLYN" V. SOMETHING ABOUT WAR AND PRIZE MONEY VI. A GLIMPSE OF THE PRESIDENT VII. A TALK ABOUT SPANISH SAILORS VIII. THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS IX. COMMODORE WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY X. WALTER SHOWS HIS PLUCK XI. THE SAILING OF THE FLYING SQUADRON XII. AN ADVENTURE OFF CHARLESTON XIII. IN WHICH THE GOLD PIECE COMES TO LIGHT XIV. KEY WEST, AND THE LAST OF JIM HASKETT XV. FROM CIENFUEGOS TO SANTIAGO BAY XVI. THE FINDING OF ADMIRAL CERVERA'S FLEET XVII. IN WHICH THE "MERRIMAC" IS SUNK XVIII. WALTER'S ADVENTURE ON SHORE XIX. CARLOS, THE REBEL SPY XX. IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY XXI. THE FLIGHT TO THE SEACOAST XXII. THE LANDING OF THE MARINES AT GUANTANAMO XXIII. IN A SPANISH PRISON XXIV. BACK TO THE "BROOKLYN" AGAIN XXV. THE BOMBARDMENT OF THE SANTIAGO BATTERIES XXVI. IN WHICH THE ARMY OF INVASION ARRIVES XXVII. THE SPANISH FLEET AND ITS COMMANDER XXVIII. "THE ENEMY IS ESCAPING!" XXIX. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH FLEET XXX. FINAL SCENES OF THE GREAT FIGHT XXXI. TOGETHER ONCE MORE--CONCLUSION LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "The flagship began the firing" "He bent over Walter again" "The President bowed in return" "'See here, I want to talk to you!'" "'I'll get square on all of you!'" "With a final lurch the _Merrimac_ went down" "'Surrender, or I'll shoot you where you stand!'" "Rammer in hand, Walter edged close to the muzzle" FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS CHAPTER I WALTER DETERMINES TO ENTER THE NAVY "Well, Walter, I suppose the newspapers are going like hot cakes this morning." "They are, Mr. Newell. Everybody wants the news. I ran out of 'Globes' and 'Heralds' before seven o'clock, and sent Dan down for fifty more of each." "That was right. It's a windfall for us newsdealers, as well as a glorious victory to match. It makes me think of my old war days, when I was aboard of the _Carondelet_ under Captain Walke. We didn't sink so many ships as Dewey has at Manila, but we sank some, and smashed many a shore battery in the bargain, along the banks of the Mississippi. What does that extra have to say?" and Phil Newell, the one-legged civil-war naval veteran, who was also proprietor of the news-stand, took the sheet which Walter Russell, his clerk, handed out. "There is not much additional news as yet," answered Walter. "One of the sensational papers has it that Dewey is now bombarding Manila, but the news is not confirmed. But it is true that our squadron sunk every one of the Spanish warships,--and that, I reckon, is enough for one victory." "True, my lad, true; but there is nothing like keeping at 'em, when you have 'em on the run. That is the way we did down South. Perhaps Dewey is waiting for additional instructions from Washington. I hope he didn't suffer much of a loss. Some papers say he came off scot free, but that seems too good to be true." "The news makes me feel more than ever like enlisting," continued the boy, after a pause, during which he served out half a dozen newspapers to as many customers. "What a glorious thing it must be to fight like that and come out on top!" "Glorious doesn't express it, Walter. Why, if it wasn't for this game leg of mine, and my age being against me, I'd go over to the navy-yard to-day and reënlist, keelhaul me if I wouldn't!" "But what of the stand?" "The stand could take care of itself--until the Dons were given the thrashing they deserve for making the Cubans suffer beyond all reason." Phil Newell threw back his head and gave a laugh. "That puts me in mind of something that happened when the Civil War started. A young lawyer in New York locked up his office and pasted a notice on his door: 'Gone to the front. Will be back when the war is over.' I'd have to put up something similar, wouldn't I?" "I wish you and I could go together, Mr. Newell." "So do I, Walter, but I'm over sixty now, and they want young blood. By the way, what of that brother of yours down in New York?" "Ben has joined the militia of that State, and is now at Camp Black waiting to be sworn into the United States service. I wish he had come on to Boston." "Well, Uncle Sam wants soldiers as well as sailors, or he wouldn't call for a hundred and twenty-five thousand volunteers. But give me the deck or gun-room of a warship every time. Nothing finer in the world. I served for nearly ten years, and I know." Walter smiled, and then waited on several additional customers. "My youngest brother, Larry, takes to the ocean," he answered. "He is out on the Pacific now, somewhere between the Hawaiian Islands and Hong Kong. He was always crazy for a boat when we were at home in Buffalo together, and spent all his spare time on Lake Erie." "Going to Hong Kong, eh? That's not so far from the Philippines. It is a pity he is not with Commodore Dewey. It would be a feather in his cap when he got home." A steady stream of customers for five minutes broke off the conversation at this point, and throwing down his newspaper, Phil Newell--he never wanted to be called Philip--entered the stand to help his young assistant. The stand was situated in the heart of Boston, just outside of one of the leading hotels, and trade at this hour in the morning, eight o'clock, was always brisk. When there came a lull later on, Walter turned again to his employer. "Mr. Newell, what if I do enlist? Can you spare me?" he questioned. "What! do you really mean it, Walter?" "I do, sir. As you know, I've been thinking the matter over ever since this war with Spain started." "But you've got to have your guardian's consent, or they won't take you." "I've got it in my pocket now. I wrote to him last week, and he answered that, as Ben had already joined the soldiers, I could do as I pleased, but I mustn't blame him if I was killed." "Which you wouldn't be likely to do, if you were killed dead, so to speak," laughed Phil Newell. Then he slapped Walter on the back, for twenty odd years on land had not taken his "sea-dog" manners from him. "Enlist, my lad, enlist by all means, if you feel it your duty. Of course I don't like to lose such a handy clerk, but Uncle Sam can have you and welcome." "Didn't you say there was a young man named Gimpwell looking for this position?" "Yes, and he wants it badly, for he has a sick sister to support." "Has he any experience?" "Oh, yes; he tended a railroad stand for several years." "Then, perhaps you could break him in without much trouble--if I went away." "Do you want to go at once?" "If I am to enlist, then it seems to me the quicker the better. I see by the papers that some of our warships are still at Hampton Roads and Key West, but there is no telling when they will start for Cuban waters. Besides, I've been thinking that if I could manage it, I should like to get aboard of the _Brooklyn_, the flagship of Commodore Schley's Flying Squadron, which is now at Hampton Roads awaiting orders." "It's not so easy to pick your ship, my lad. However, if you wish, you can go over to the navy-yard this afternoon and see what you can do,--and I'll go along and leave Dan in charge here," concluded Phil Newell. Walter Russell was one of three brothers, of whom Ben was the eldest and Larry the youngest. Their home had been in Buffalo, where at the death of their mother, a widow, they had been turned over to the care of their step-uncle, Mr. Job Dowling, an eccentric old bachelor, whose prime object in life was to hoard up money. In the two volumes previous to this, entitled respectively, "Under Dewey at Manila," and "A Young Volunteer in Cuba," I related how the boys found it impossible to remain under Job Dowling's roof, and how they ran away, each to seek fortune as he might find it. Larry drifted first to San Francisco and then to Honolulu, the principal city of the Hawaiian Islands, where he shipped on a vessel bound for Hong Kong. From this ship he was cast overboard with a Yankee friend named Luke Striker, and both were picked up by the flagship _Olympia_ of the Asiatic Squadron and taken to Manila Bay, there to serve most gallantly under the naval commander whose name has since become a household word everywhere. As Walter had intimated, Larry was a sailor by nature, and it was likely that he would follow the sea as long as he lived. Ben and Walter had gone eastward, but at Middletown, in New York State, they had separated, Walter to drift to Boston, and Ben to make his way to New York. At the latter city the eldest of the Russell brothers had secured employment in a hardware establishment, but this place was burned out, and then Ben enlisted in the 71st Regiment of New York, while his intimate friend, Gilbert Pennington, joined Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and both went to Cuba, there to fight valorously in that campaign which led to the surrender of Santiago and caused Spain to sue for peace. As Walter had written to Larry, the recital of the former's adventures in getting from Middletown to Boston would fill a volume. He had stolen a ride on the cars from Middletown to Albany, and during this wild trip his hat blew off and was not recovered. He was put off the train just outside of the capital city; and, stopping at a farmhouse to inquire the way, had his clothing torn by a bull-dog that was more than anxious to get at what was beneath the garments. Walter hardly knew what to do, when a tramp put in an appearance, and sent a well-directed stone at the dog's head, causing the beast to slink away. The tramp introduced himself as Raymond Cass, a bricklayer, out of luck, and bound for Boston on foot. He proposed that they journey together, and Walter rather hesitatingly consented. They moved eastward in company for two days, when, on awakening one morning, Walter found Raymond Cass missing. The boy's coat was also gone, and with it his entire capital,--forty-seven cents. The pair had made their bed in the haymow of a large barn, and while Walter was searching for the tramp, the owner of the place came up and demanded to know what the youth was doing on his premises. Walter's tale was soon told, and Farmer Hardell agreed to give him a week's work in his dairy, one of the dairymen being sick. For this Walter received four dollars, and an old hat and a coat in addition. Leaving Cornberry, the name of the hamlet, Walter had struck out once more for Boston, but this time steering clear of all tramps, of the Raymond Cass type or otherwise. He was sparing of his money, and the first day out earned his dinner and a packed-up lunch for supper, by putting in two panes of glass for an old lady who had waited for a week for a travelling glazier to come around and do the job. In addition to this, the lad worked for two days at a village blacksmith's establishment during the absence of the regular helper who had gone to his aunt's funeral in another place, and also found a regular position with a florist, who had a number of large greenhouses up the Charles River. Walter was not used to working where there was so much glass, and on the third day he allowed a step-ladder he was using to slip. The ladder crashed through several hot-bed frames, and poor Walter was discharged on the spot, without a cent of pay. The boy's next move had been to the river, where he had obtained a position on a freight steamboat. His duty was to truck freight on and off, and the work blistered his hands and gave him many a backache. But he stuck to it for two weeks, thereby earning fourteen dollars, and with this capital entered Boston. Walter had not expected an easy time finding a situation in the Hub, but neither had he anticipated the repeated failures that one after another stared him in the face. For over a week he tramped up and down, without so much as a "smell of an opening," as he afterwards wrote to his brothers. In the meanwhile his money diminished rapidly, until more than two-thirds of it was gone. A deed of kindness had obtained for him the position with Phil Newell. Chancing to walk along School Street one afternoon, he had seen two boys beating a small boy unmercifully. The small boy had turned into Province Street, and the big boys had followed, and here they had thrown the little fellow down, and were on the point of kicking him, when Walter rushed up and flung both back. "You brutes, to attack such a small boy!" he had cried. "Clear out, or I'll call a policeman, and have you both locked up." "We told him to keep back at de newspaper office," growled one of the big fellows. "Do it again, Dan Brown, and we'll give it to you worse," and then as Walter advanced once more, both took to their heels and disappeared. Dan Brown had been very grateful, and questionings had elicited the information that the lad worked for Phil Newell, as a paper carrier and to do errands. "His regular clerk, Dick Borden, left yesterday," Dan had continued; "perhaps you can get the job." And Walter had lost no time in following the small youth to Newell's place of business. Here Dan's story was told, and the lad put in a good word for Walter, with the result that the youth was taken for a week on trial. How well Walter pleased the old naval veteran we have already seen. He had now occupied the place as head clerk for nearly two months, and his salary had been increased from four dollars a week to six. He boarded with Dan's mother, in a little suite of rooms on a modest side street, not a great distance from the Common. It must not be supposed that Job Dowling, who held a good deal of money in trust for the boys, had allowed them to run off without making an effort to bring them back. Larry was out of his reach, but Ben and Walter were not, and the miserly man had descended upon Ben in New York and tried his best to "make things warm," as Ben had mentioned in a letter to Larry. But Job Dowling had overreached himself by attempting to sell a watch and some jewelry which had belonged originally to Mr. and Mrs. Russell, heirlooms which were not to be disposed of under any circumstances. On his trip to New York after Ben, the articles had been stolen from him at the Post-office--something that had so frightened Job Dowling that he had consented to Ben's enlisting in the army with scarcely a murmur, fearful the youth might otherwise have him brought to book for what had happened. A vigorous search had been made for the thief, but he was not found. Later on, when Ben was in the army, Job Dowling received information that caused him to reach the conclusion that the thief had gone to Boston. The miserly guardian of the boys returned to his home in Buffalo and, as much worried as ever, wrote to Walter to keep an eye open for the missing property. Walter did as requested, but in such a large place as the Hub the youth had little hope of ever seeing the precious heirlooms again. CHAPTER II A VISIT TO THE NAVY-YARD There was a rush of business at the news-stand between twelve and one o'clock, but shortly after one this died away, and inside of half an hour Phil Newell told Walter that they might be on their way--"If you are bound to enlist in Uncle Sam's service," he added. Walter made sure that the paper containing Job Dowling's permission for him to enter the navy was safe in his coat pocket, and then announced his readiness to depart. The owner of the stand called up Dan Brown and gave him a few directions, and in another minute Newell and Walter had boarded a Charlestown car and were off. "I haven't been over to the navy-yard for several years," remarked Phil Newell, as they rode along. "I used to know several of the boys that were there, but they've grown too old for the service. I reckon the yard is a busy place these days." And a busy place it proved to be as they turned into Chelsea Street, and moved along the solid granite wall which separates the yard from the public thoroughfare. From beyond came the creaking of hoists, and the ringing of countless hammers and anvils, for the government employees were hard at work, fitting out a warship or two and converting several private vessels into naval craft. "I don't know if I'm just right about this," went on Phil Newell, as they headed for one of the numerous buildings near the wall, after being passed by a guard. "It may be that they want to keep strangers out, now the war is on, and you'll have to go elsewhere to sign articles. But I know old Caleb Walton is here, and he'll tell me all he can, and set us straight." Walter's heart beat violently, for he began to realize that the step he was about to take was a serious one. Who knew but that, after getting into the navy, he might be sent to the Philippines or to the coast of Spain? Already there was some talk of carrying the war into the enemy's home waters. "But I don't care," he said to himself. "If Larry can ship for Hong Kong, I guess I'm safe in shipping to anywhere. But I do hope I can get on the _Brooklyn_, or on some other ship of the Flying Squadron." "Hi, there, Phil Newell! What brought you here, you old landlubber?" came a cry from their left, and Phil Newell turned as swiftly as his wooden leg permitted, to find himself confronted by the very individual he had started out to find. "Caleb Walton!" he ejaculated joyfully, and held out his bronzed hand. "I just came in to see you. Here is a young friend of mine who wants to sign articles under Uncle Sam. Do you think you can take him in?" "Take him in?" Caleb Walton held out his hand, brown and as tough as a piece of leather. "Sure we can take him in, if he's sound,--and glad to get him." He gave Walter's hand a grip that made every bone crack. "So you want to enlist, eh? Go right over to yonder office, and they'll soon put you through a course of sprouts," and he laughed good-naturedly. "But, hold on, Caleb," interposed Newell, as the seaman was about to show Walter the way. "He don't want to sign articles and go just anywhere. He would like to get aboard the _Brooklyn_." "That is what half of all who come here want," answered Caleb Walton. "I reckon they think Commodore Schley's Flying Squadron is going to settle the whole war by going after that Spanish fleet said to be at Cadiz, or thereabouts. Well, the lad better come with me. I belong to the _Brooklyn_ now." "You!" came from both Phil Newell and Walter simultaneously. "I thought you were stationed here?" continued the wooden-legged man. "I was, but I've just received orders to join the _Brooklyn_ and bring at least fifteen men with me. It seems they are short-handed and can't get the men at Norfolk. If this lad wants to go with me, now is his chance. What's his handle?" "My name is Walter Russell, sir. But--but are you going to join the _Brooklyn_ at once?" stammered Walter, never having dreamed that he would be taken away on the spot. "Uncle Sam doesn't wait long when he picks his man," replied the old gunner, for such Caleb Walton was. "Orders were to leave Boston to-night, but I fancy we'll be kept until to-morrow night, for we are shy three men, not counting you. Come on." And he led the way to the building he had previously pointed out. "He's all right, and you're in luck," whispered Phil Newell, when he got the chance. "Cotton to Caleb Walton, and you'll have a friend worth the making." How true were Newell's words the chapters to follow will prove. The building to which Caleb Walton led them was one in which were situated the main business offices of the yard. This was now a busy place, and they had to fairly push their way through the crowd of seamen, officers, and workmen, who kept coming and going, on one errand or another. Several telephones were ringing, and from a corner came the steady click-click of a telegraph sounder. "Uncle Sam has his shirt sleeves rolled up and is pitching in," whispered Caleb Walton. "Here we are. Captain Line, here is another man for my party." "He's rather a boy," rejoined Captain Line, as he gave Walter a searching glance. "Is your father with you?" "My father is dead," answered Walter, softly. "Here is my guardian's consent." And he handed over the sheet. "That seems to be correct. Walton, take him over to the examination room. And hurry up, for I must catch the four-fifty train for New York." The "course of sprouts" had begun, and almost before he knew it, Walter had been passed upon as able-bodied. Time was pressing, and in a quarter of an hour the youth received a slip of paper signed and sealed by Captain Line. "That is good for your passage to Fortress Monroe," he said. "You will make the journey in company with Walton and a number of others. When you get there you will report to Lieutenant Lee, who will have you transferred to the _Brooklyn_,--unless the flagship has already sailed, in which case you will be assigned to some other ship." "And when do I start, sir?" "Walton will have the orders inside of the next hour. Go with him, and he will tell you what to do." Then came a bang of the curtain to a roller-top desk, a shoving back of a revolving chair, and in a twinkle Captain Line had disappeared from view. Truly, Uncle Sam and all under him were rushing things. Walter wished very much to visit the dry dock and the great west basin, filled as both were with vessels in various stages of construction, alteration, or repair, but he felt if he was to leave that night he must be getting back to Boston and to his boarding-house, to pack his "ditty box," as Phil Newell had dubbed his valise, for all such receptacles are called ditty boxes in the navy. "All right, Walter, you go ahead," said Newell. "I'll stay with Caleb and let you know just when you are to leave, so you won't be left behind." And in a moment more the youth had run out of the navy-yard and was on board of another car. He made one transfer, and in less than half an hour entered Mrs. Brown's home. "Why, Mr. Russell, what brings you?" queried Dan's mother, surprised at his appearance, for he rarely showed himself during the day excepting at the dinner and the supper hours. "I've enlisted, Mrs. Brown, and I'm to get off to-night or to-morrow," he answered. "You can let Mr. Keefe have my room now. I'm glad that it won't be left empty on your hands." "So am I, Mr. Russell, for a poor widow can't afford to have a room vacant long," replied Mrs. Brown, with a faint smile. "So you have really entered the navy? Well, I wish you all the luck in the world, and I hope you will come out of the war a--a--commodore, or something like that." And she wrung his hand. Walter's belongings were few, and soon packed away in his valise. Then he ran downstairs again and bid Mrs. Brown good-by and settled up with her. "I'll write to you and Dan some time," he said, on parting. "Well, did you make it?" was Dan's question, when Walter appeared at the news-stand. "I did, Dan." And the protégé of Uncle Sam told his youthful friend the particulars. "I'm glad you got on the _Brooklyn_," said Dan, with a shake of his curly head. "She's going to lick the Spaniards out of their boots, see if she ain't!" And his earnestness made Walter laugh. Dan was but eleven, yet he read the newspapers as closely as do many grown folks. The afternoon papers were now coming in and trade picked up, so that Walter had to help behind the counter. While he was at work a tall, thin boy sauntered up and gazed at him doubtfully. "That's George Gimpwell," whispered Dan. "Didn't the boss say something about hiring him?" "He did, Dan. Call him over." The errand boy did so. "Russell wants to see you," he explained. "I believe you were speaking to Mr. Newell about this situation," began Walter. "Well--er--I asked him if he had any opening. I want work the worst way," sighed George Gimpwell. "Of course, I don't want to do you out of your job." "That's all right; I've just enlisted in the navy," replied Walter, and he could not help but feel proud over the words. "So if you want this situation, you had best remain around here until Mr. Newell gets back." "I will." George Gimpwell's face brightened. "So you've enlisted? I wanted to do that, but I was too tall for my weight, so they told me." "So you've enlisted?" broke in a gentleman standing by. "Glad to hear it, young man; it does you credit." And buying a magazine, he caught Walter by the hand and wished him well. Soon it became noised around on the block that Newell's clerk was going to join the _Brooklyn_, and half a dozen, including the clerk of the hotel, came out to see him about it. In those days, anybody connected with our army or navy was quite a hero, and somebody to be looked up to, people unconsciously told themselves. It was after seven o'clock, and Walter was wondering if anything unusual had delayed his employer, when Phil Newell hove into appearance. "It's all right, my lad, don't worry," he said at once. "You don't leave until to-morrow noon. You are to meet Caleb Walton at the New York and New England railroad depot at exactly eleven o'clock, and all of the others of the crowd are to be there too. The government wants to get you down to Norfolk as soon as it can, and will, consequently, send you by rail instead of by water." "Hurrah! that will make a jolly trip," cried Walter. "If only I could stop off at New York, take a run out to Camp Black, and see Ben." "I doubt if you'll be given time to stop anywhere, time seems to be so precious. Caleb Walton thinks the Flying Squadron will up anchors before another week is out." "Well, I don't care how quickly they leave--after I am on board," laughed the youth, much relieved that nothing had occurred whereby he had been left behind. George Gimpwell now came up again, and soon he was engaged to take Walter's place. Phil Newell promised him five dollars weekly, and as Walter had gotten six, the good-hearted newsdealer put the extra dollar on Dan's salary, much to that lad's delight. Eight o'clock found Walter at the stand alone, and it was then that he penned the letter mailed to Ben, as mentioned in a previous volume, stating he had enlisted and was making a strong "pull" to get on the _Brooklyn_. "I won't say I am on her until it's a fact," he thought, as he sealed up the communication, stamped it, and placed it in the corner letter-box. The stand was located in a niche of the hotel, and was open only in the front, above the counter. At night this space was closed by letting down two large shutters attached to several hinges and ropes. "I reckon this is the last time I'll put these shutters down," thought Walter, as he brought one down on the run. He was about to drop the second, when a burly man, rather shabbily dressed, sauntered up, and asked for one of the weekly sporting papers. "I'm thinking of going to the theatre," he said, somewhat unsteadily, and now Walter learned by a whiff of his breath that he had been drinking. "What's the best variety show in town?" "I'll give it up," said the youth, laughingly. "I haven't been to a show since I came to Boston, and that's a number of weeks ago." "Humph! What do you do with yourself nights?" "I'm here up to eight or half past, and after that I either go home or to one of the public reading rooms, or to the Young Men's Christian Association Hall." "Humph! that must be dead slow." The man lurched heavily against the counter. "What time is it now?" "About half past eight. I haven't any watch, so I can't tell you exactly." "I've got a watch right here," mumbled the newcomer, still leaning heavily on the counter. "Here it is. But your light is so low I can't see the hands. Turn it up." Walter obligingly complied, and the fellow tried again to see the time, but failed. "Strike a match," he went on; "I ain't going to no theatre if it's as late as you say it is." Walter did not like the man's manner, but not caring to enter into any dispute, he lit a match as requested, and held it down close to the timepiece, which lay in the man's open palm. "Only eight-twenty," grumbled the fellow, slowly. "I knew you was off. You don't--What's up?" And suddenly he straightened himself and stared at Walter. "I want to know where you got that watch," demanded the youth, excitedly. "That watch?" The man fell back a pace. "What do you--ahem--why do you ask that question, boy?" "Because I know that watch," was Walter's ready reply. "It was stolen from my uncle in New York only a few weeks ago!" "Was it?" The man's face changed color. "You--you're mistaken, boy," he faltered, and fell back still further, and then, as Walter leaped over the counter, he took to his heels and started down the half-deserted street at the best speed at his command. CHAPTER III A CHASE AND ITS RESULT Walter knew that watch, which had belonged first to his father and then his mother, quite well, but if there was anything needed to convince him that there was no mistake in the identification, it was furnished by the hasty and unceremonious manner in which the partly intoxicated wearer was endeavoring to quit the scene. "If he was honest, he wouldn't run!" thought the youth. "Ten to one he's the thief who took the grip from Uncle Job." He started after the fleeing one. "Come back here!" he shouted. "Stop, thief!" But the man did not stop; instead, he tried to run the faster. But he did not turn any corners, and consequently, aided by the electric lights, Walter could see him for quite a distance ahead. The youth ran but a few yards, then turned and clashed back to the stand. Bang! the second shutter came down with a crash, and in a trice he had the padlock secured. Then off he set, satisfied that a form in the distance was the one he wanted to overtake. "What's the matter?" questioned a policeman on the second corner, as he clutched Walter by the arm. "What are you running for?" "Didn't I call out to catch the thief?" answered the youth, sharply. "Let me go. If you weren't so dead slow, you'd be doing something, instead of standing there looking at the moon." And on he went again, the officer shaking his fist after him, half of the opinion that Walter was trying to joke him. At this hour of the evening the street was far from crowded, and Walter kept the man ahead in sight with comparative ease. Four blocks were covered, when the fellow paused and looked back. Seeing he was being followed, he turned and darted into a small side street. Here were a number of warehouses and several tenements. The door to one of the latter stood open, and he lost no time in seeking the shelter of the dark hallway. "That's the time I made a bad break," he muttered thickly. "When I came up to Boston with that stuff I reckoned I was safe. I wonder if he'll follow me to here? He had better not, unless he wants a broken head." In the meantime, Walter had reached the corner of the side street and come to a halt. The narrow thoroughfare was but dimly lighted, and not a soul was in sight. "He turned in here,--I am certain of that," said the boy to himself. "More than likely he is in hiding in some dark corner. I wonder if I hadn't better call an officer?" With this intention he gazed around, but no policeman was in view, and he did not think it advisable to go back for the guardian of the peace before encountered. He entered the side street slowly and cautiously, peering into every nook and corner, and behind every bill-board, box, and barrel as he moved along. He had just passed the tenement where the man was in hiding when the sounds of muffled voices broke upon his ears, and the front door was thrown back with a bang. "Who are you, and what are you doing in here?" came in an unmistakable Irish voice. "Excuse me--I--I made a mistake," was the answer; and now Walter recognized the tones of the fellow who had the watch. "I am looking for a man named Harris." "Well, he doesn't live here,--so you had better get out." "Will you--er--tell me who lives next door?" asked the man Walter was after, in a lower tone, evidently wishing to gain time ere leaving the building. "A man named Casey and another named Barton live there. There ain't a Harris on the block. If you----" "Hold him, please," burst in Walter, mounting the tenement steps. "He has a watch that was stolen from my uncle." "Shut up, boy!" answered the man fiercely. "My watch is my own, and this is all a mistake." "There is no mistake. Hold him, will you?" "I've got him," came from the gloom of the hallway. "I thought he was a sneak or something by the way he was tip-toeing around here." "You are both of you crazy. I never stole a thing in my life. Let go, both of you!" And then the man began to struggle fiercely, finally pushing the party in the hallway backward, and almost sending Walter headlong as he darted down the tenement steps and continued his flight along the side street. As Walter went down, he made a clutch at the man's watch-chain, or rather the chain which belonged among the Russell heirlooms. He caught the top guard and the chain parted, one half remaining in the boy's hand, and the other fast to the timepiece. "Help me catch him!'" gasped the youth, as soon as he could get up. His breast had struck the edge of one of the steps, and he was momentarily winded. "I will," answered the man who lived in the tenement. "Stop there!" he called out, and set off in pursuit, with Walter beside him. But the Irishman was old and rheumatic, and soon felt compelled to give up the chase. "I can't match ye!" he puffed, and sank down on a step to rest; and once again Walter continued the chase alone. Had the thief, Deck Mumpers, been perfectly sober, he might have escaped with ease, for he was a good runner, and at this hour of the evening hiding-places in such a city as Boston, with its many crooked thoroughfares, were numerous. But the liquor he had imbibed had made him hazy in his mind, and he ran on and on, with hardly any object in view excepting to put distance between himself and his pursuer. He was heading eastward, and presently reached a wharf facing the harbor and not a great distance from the Congress Street bridge. Here there was a high board fence and a slatted gate, which for some reason stood partly open. Without a second thought, he slipped through the gateway, slid the gate shut, and snapped the hanging padlock into place. "Now he'll have a job following me," he chuckled. "I wonder what sort of a place I've struck?" And he continued on his way, among huge piles of merchandise covered with tarpaulins. Walter had come up at his best speed and was less than a hundred feet away when the gate was closed and locked. "You rascal!" he shouted, but Deck Mumpers paid no attention to his words. "Now what's to do?" the boy asked himself, dismally. He came up to the gate and examined it. It was all of nine feet high, and the palings were pointed at the top. Could he scale such a barrier? "I must do it!" he muttered, and thrust one hand through to a cross brace. He ascended with difficulty, and once slipped and ran a splinter into his wrist. But undaunted he kept on until the top was gained, then dropped to the planking of the wharf beyond. Several arc lights, high overhead, lit up the wharf, and he ran from one pile of merchandise to another. Half the wharf was thus covered, when he suddenly came face to face with Deck Mumpers. The thief had picked up a thick bale stick, and without warning he raised this on high and brought it down with all force upon Walter's head. The boy gave a groan, threw up both hands, and dropped like a lump of lead, senseless. "Phew! I wonder if I've finished him?" muttered the man, anxiously. "Didn't mean to hit him quite so hard. But it was his own fault--he had no right to follow me." He bent over Walter and made a hasty examination. "He's breathing, that's certain. I must get away before a watchman shows up." He started to go, then paused and bent over Walter again. With a dexterity acquired by long practice in his peculiar profession, he turned out one pocket after another, transferring the cash and other articles to his own clothing. Then, as Walter gave a long, deep sigh, as if about to awaken, he took to his heels once more. He was in no condition to climb the wharf fence as Walter had done, but helped himself over by the use of several boxes; and was soon a long distance away. [Illustration: HE BENT OVER WALTER AGAIN.] When Walter came to his senses and opened his eyes, the glare from a bull's-eye lantern struck him, and he saw a wharf watchman eyeing him curiously. "What are you doing here, young fellow?" were the watchman's words. "I--I--where is he?" questioned the youth, weakly. "He? Who?" "The thief--the man who struck me down?" "I haven't seen anybody but you around here." "A thief who has my uncle's watch came in here, and I followed him, and he struck me down with a club. When--how long is it since you found me here?" "Several minutes ago. I thought you were drunk at first, and was going to hand you over to an officer." "I don't drink." Walter essayed to stand up, but found himself too weak. "Gracious, my head is spinning around like a top!" he groaned. "You must have got a pretty good rap to be knocked out like this," commented the watchman kindly. "So the man was a thief? It's a pity he wasn't the one to be knocked down. Do you know the fellow?" "I would know him--if we ever meet again. But I fancy he won't let the grass grow under his feet, after attacking me like this." "I'll take a run around the wharf and see if I can spot any stranger," concluded the watchman, and hurried off. Another watchman was aroused, and both made a thorough investigation, but, of course, nobody was brought to light. By the time the search was ended, Walter felt something like himself, and arose slowly and allowed the watchmen to conduct him to their shanty at one side of the wharf. Here he bathed his face, picked the splinter from his wrist, and brushed up generally. A cup of hot coffee from one of the watchmen's cans braced him up still further. "It must be ten o'clock, isn't it?" he asked. "Ten o'clock!" came from the man who had found him. "I reckon that clip on the head has muddled you. It's about three o'clock in the morning." "Three o'clock in the morning!" repeated Walter. "Then I must have been lying out there for several hours. That thief has escaped long ago." And his face fell. "Yes, he's had plenty of time, if he did the deed as long ago as that. Did he have anything else besides your uncle's watch?" "I don't know, but it's likely. You see my uncle came to New York from Buffalo to sell some heirlooms which were left to my brothers and myself when our folks died. The heirlooms were in a travelling-bag, and consisted of the watch and chain, two gold wedding rings, and a diamond that a grandfather of mine once picked up in Australia. My uncle left his bag standing in the post-office for a few minutes, and when he got back the grip was gone. The police hunted everywhere for the thief, but all that could be discovered was that it looked as if the rascal had come to Boston. To-night--or rather, last evening--a man came up and showed the watch, which I know only too well, as it has a little horseshoe painted on the dial plate. I tried to collar the fellow, but he ran away, and after stopping in a tenement house, he came here. Now I suppose he is miles away--perhaps out of the city altogether." "That's so, yet there is no telling, lad. The best thing you can do is to report to the police without delay--if you are able to do it." "Yes, I guess I am able, although my head aches a good bit, I can tell you that. I am much obliged for what you have done for me." "Oh, that's all right--hope you get your belongings," replied the watchman, and led the way to the gate, which he unlocked. Soon Walter was on the street, and walking as rapidly as his condition permitted to the police station. At this hour of the night he found only a sergeant and several roundsmen in charge. The sergeant listened with interest to what he had to say. "I remember that case--it was reported to here from New York some time ago. The pawnshops were ransacked for the jewelry and the watch, but nothing was found. So you are certain you would recognize the man again if you saw him?" "I am--unless he altered his appearance a good deal. He had a small, dark moustache, but otherwise he was clean-shaven." "Come into the rear office and look over our album of pickpockets and sneak-thieves. That is what this fellow most likely is--and a peculiar one too. No first-class criminal would do this job as he is doing it." "He drinks heavily--he was partly intoxicated when I met him," said Walter, as he followed the station official into a rear office. "Then that accounts for it. A man can't be a really successful criminal unless he keeps his wits about him. Here is the album. Look it over carefully, and let me know if you see anybody that looks like your man." And he left Walter to himself and reëntered the outer office, to hear the reports of the roundsmen coming in. The book given to Walter was a thick one, filled with cards, photos, and tin-types of criminals. Under each picture was written a name, usually accompanied by several aliases, and also a number, to correspond with the same number in the criminal register. "Gracious, but they keep pretty good track of them," thought Walter, as he turned over page after page. "Who would think all these good-looking men were wrong-doers? Some of them look a good deal more like ministers." Walter had gone through half the book, and the photographs were beginning to confuse his already aching head, when a certain picture arrested his attention. "I've found him!" he cried out. "That's the fellow, although he is minus that moustache of his!" "Did you call?" asked the sergeant, coming to the door. "I've found him. This is the man. His name is given as Deck Mumpers, alias Foxy Mumpers, and Swiller Deck." "If he is called Swiller Deck, he must drink a good deal," said the sergeant, with a laugh. "You are sure of this identification?" "I am. But he wants a moustache put on that picture." "We take them bare-faced if we can. This photo was taken in Brooklyn." The officer turned to an official register. "Deck Mumpers, age forty-two, height five feet seven inches, weight one hundred and thirty-two pounds. Round face, big ears, broad shoulders, poor teeth. Sent to Sing Sing in 1892 for two years, for robbery of Scott diamonds. A hard drinker when flush. Now wanted for several petty crimes in New York. Came originally from South Boston, where he was in the liquor business." The sergeant turned again to Walter. "I guess you have struck your man. I'll send out the alarm. What is your address?" "I have just joined the navy and am bound for the _Brooklyn_. But I can leave you my uncle's name and address, and he can come on to Boston from Buffalo, if it's necessary." "That will do, then," answered the sergeant. He brought forth a book in which to put down the details of the affair. While he was writing, Walter slipped his hand into his pocket to see if the slip of paper he had received at the navy-yard was still safe. The paper was gone. CHAPTER IV ON THE WAY TO THE "BROOKLYN" "Oh, what luck!" "What is the matter now?"' "My order for a railroad ticket from Boston to Fortress Monroe is gone!" "Is that true? Perhaps Deck Mumpers cleaned you out after he struck you down," suggested the sergeant, quickly. "Feel in your pockets." Walter did so, and his face blanched. "He did--everything,--my money, keys, cash,--all are missing. What in the world shall I do now?"' "How much money did you have?" "About twenty dollars. The main thing was that railroad ticket order. If that is gone, how am I to get to Norfolk?" "Was your name mentioned on the paper?" "Yes, sir." "Where was it to be presented? any particular depot?" "Yes, the New York and New England railroad depot." "Then the best thing to do is to ring the railroad folks up and have the bearer of the order detained, if the slip is presented," went on the police officer, and stepping to the telephone he rang up central and had the necessary connection made. "Is this the ticket office of the New York and New England railroad depot?" he questioned. "Yes," came the reply over the wire. "A navy-yard order for a ticket from here to Norfolk, or Fortress Monroe, has been stolen. It is made out in the name of Walter Russell. If it is presented, hold the party having it and communicate with police headquarters." "Is the name Walter Russell?" was the excited query, and Walter's heart began to sink as he seemed to feel what was coming. "Yes." "That order has already been filled. It was presented about ten o'clock last night." "I've missed it!" groaned the youth, and dropped into a chair. "What will the navy-yard people say to this when they hear of it?" "I don't see how they can blame you," returned the sergeant, kindly, "seeing as you were knocked senseless by the thief. Deck Mumpers has got the best of it so far." He called through the telephone for a description of the party having the order, and soon learned it must have been Mumpers beyond a doubt. "Can't you telegraph to Norfolk to have him arrested when he arrives?" asked Walter suddenly. "You don't think he'll go all the way to Norfolk, do you?" smiled the police officer. Then he turned again to the telephone. "What kind of a ticket did that party get on the order?" he asked. "First-class, with sleepers." "He got a first-class ticket. Ten to one he'll not use it at all, but sell the pasteboard at some cut-rate ticket office right here in Boston and then buy another ticket for somewhere else." "I see!" cried Walter. "But if the ticket was sold here, could we trace it?" "It is not likely, for many first-class tickets are alike. We might trace the sleeping-car checks, but I doubt if Mumpers will try to do anything with those." "But he may use the ticket," ventured Walter, hardly knowing what else to say. "Oh, possibly. I'll have the men at the various stations keep an eye open for the rascal," concluded the sergeant, and after a few more words Walter left the station. It must be confessed that the youth was considerably out of sorts. "I start off to recover some stolen property and end by losing more," he groaned. "I'm not fit to join the navy, or do anything." And he gave a mountainous sigh. It was almost five o'clock, and knowing Dan would soon be on hand with Gimpwell to open the stand, he walked slowly in that direction. To keep up his courage he tried to whistle, but the effort was a dismal failure. Walter was naturally very light-hearted, but just now no one looking at his troubled face would have suspected this. Reaching the stand, he opened the shutters and put out the light which he had forgotten to extinguish. Soon the first bundles of papers came along, and he sorted them over and arranged them for sale and for Dan's route. The work was almost done when the carrier came along, followed immediately by the new clerk. "Hullo, I didn't know you'd be here!" cried Dan. "Why didn't you come home last night? Mother expected you to use the room, and you paid for it." "I wish I had used the room," answered Walter, and went over his tale in a few words, for Dan must be off, to serve several men with newspapers before they themselves started off to their daily labors. "Say, but that's too bad!" cried the errand boy. "I've got two dollars, Walter. You can have the money if it will do you any good." "Thanks, Dan, I want to see Mr. Newell first. But it's kind of you to make the offer." "I'd offer you something, Russell," put in the new clerk. "But the fact is I haven't even car-fare; had to tramp over from Charlestown." Phil Newell put into appearance shortly before seven o'clock, coming a little earlier than usual, to see that Gimpwell got along all right. Calling him aside, Walter told of what had happened. He was getting sick of telling the story, but, in this case, there was no help for it. "Douse the toplights, but you've run on a sunken rock, and no mistake, Walter," cried the old naval veteran. "So he cleaned you out completely, eh?" "Yes, Mr. Newell. I don't care so much for the money, but that order for the railroad ticket--" "It's too had; too bad!" Phil Newell ran his hand through his bushy hair. "I don't believe the navy-yard authorities will issue a duplicate order." "Neither do I." "You see, some sailors wouldn't be none too good for to get such a paper and then sell it for what she would fetch." "Yes, that's the worst part of it. I shouldn't want them to think I was--was getting in on them--or trying to do so." "The best thing to do, as far as I can see, is to call on Caleb Walton and get his advice." "Where does he live?" "In Charlestown, only a few blocks from the Bunker Hill monument. I don't know the number, but it's on Hill Street, and I know the house." "Will you go with me? If I haven't the number--" "To be sure I'll go with you, just as soon as I can set the new clerk on his proper course." "And, Mr. Newell, would you mind--that is, would you make me a--a loan--" faltered Walter. "Out with it, my boy, how much do you want? I told you before I'd be your friend, and what Phil Newell says he means, every trip." "You are very kind, sir. I don't know how much I want. I had twenty dollars and thirty-five cents, and Mr. Walton said that was more than enough to see me through until pay day came along." "Then here are twenty dollars." The proprietor of the news-stand pulled a roll of small bills from his pocket and counted out the amount. "You can pay me back when you recover your money, or else out of your pay money, if they don't collar that thief. Have you had breakfast yet?" "No, sir." "Then you had better get a bite while I instruct Gimpwell. I'll be ready for you in quarter of an hour." Fifteen minutes found them on the way, taking a car which took them directly over to Charlestown, along the navy-yard and up Hill Street. "Here we are," cried Phil Newell, as he stopped the car. "And just in time, for there is Caleb Walton leaving his house now." "What brings you up?" demanded the gunner, when confronted. "Well, this is certainly a mess," he continued, after he had been told. "No, I'm certain they won't issue a duplicate order, for Captain Line is out of the city." "But we might try and see what we can do," insisted Phil Newell. "To be sure; come on." And the three set off for the navy-yard. Here it looked at first as if nothing could be gained, but finally one of the higher officers took it upon his own shoulders to give Walter a new order, at the same time saying something about charging it up to the Emergency Account. "Well, that's a big relief," murmured Walter, on coming away. "I feel as if a thousand pounds were taken from my heart." And he certainly looked it. "I must leave you now," said Caleb Walton. "Be sure and be at the depot on time, and take care of that new order." "It's pinned fast in my pocket," said the youth. "If it goes, so does my coat." On returning to the news-stand, Walter procured some paper and an envelope, and in the reading-room of the hotel sat down and wrote a long letter to his uncle, Job Dowling, telling of his enlistment in the navy and of what had happened during the night. "I think you ought to come to Boston," he concluded. "If the police can't do anything, a detective ought to be set on this Deck Mumper's track. You are holding a good deal of money in trust for Ben, Larry, and me, and for my part, I would spend a good deal rather than see father's watch and his and mother's wedding rings gone forever,--not to mention grandfather's diamond, which alone is worth at least two hundred dollars. Write to me concerning this, and send the letter to the _Brooklyn_, Off Fortress Munroe, Va." This letter was mailed without delay, and soon after Walter bade Phil Newell, Dan, and several others good-by, and, grip in hand, walked to the depot. Here he found several jackies already assembled, and soon learned that they were members of Walton's party. In a few minutes Walton himself came hurrying down Federal Street, with several green hands in tow. "All here?" he demanded, and began to "count noses." Only one man was missing, and he soon put in an appearance, and all entered the depot and procured their tickets. Then Walter asked about the stolen order, but the clerk had heard nothing new concerning it. "You were mighty lucky to get another order," he said with a grin. "Next time they may make you walk the tracks." The train was in, and hurrying out to the long shed, they found their proper places. Soon there came a sharp jerk, the train moved off; and the long journey southward was begun. For a seat-mate Walter had a typical Yankee lad, one from the coast of Maine, a young fellow who knew but little about warships, but who had spent several years on the rolling deep, in voyages to South America, to Nova Scotia, and elsewhere. His name was Silas Doring, and Walter found him talkative, although not objectionably so. "Yes, I couldn't hardly wait till I got to Boston," said Si, for that was what he said all of his friends "to hum" called him. "We'll lick the Spanish out of their boots, see if we don't!" "You are bound for the _Brooklyn_?" asked Walter. "Thet's it, if they want me, otherwise I'm booked for the _Texas_. Putty good for a boy from Maine to go on the _Texas_, ain't it, he! he! But I don't care much. They can put me on the _San Francisco_ if they want to--so long as they give me a chance at them tarnal Dons. When the _Maine_ was blowed up, why, I jest jumped up an' down an' up an' down with rage. 'Si Doring,' sez I, 'Si Doring, are you a-going to let such an insult an' crime go by unnoticed? Not much!' sez I. 'I'll join the navy, an' help blow all of the Spanish to Jericho,'--an' I'm going to do it!" And the Yankee lad struck his fist into his open palm with a thump of energy. "I wish I knew as much about ships as you do," ventured Walter. "I've been on two trips across Lake Erie, and know something, but I'm afraid I'll feel like a fish out of water when I get on a man-o'-war." "We'll keep our eyes and ears open, and try to learn--that's the only way. I know every rope on a merchantman, kin name 'em from fore royal stay to topping lift, but that ain't the hundredth part on it. We've got to learn our vessel jest as a person has got to learn a new city and its streets, fer boats ain't built one like another, not by a jugful! And after we have learned the ship, we've got to learn the guns, and the fire-drill, and how to clear ship for action, and a lot more, not to say a word about learning how to knock out them Dons, as some calls 'em. Oh, we'll have our hands full after we get on board, don't forget it!" And Si Doring shook his head vigorously. On and on sped the train until Hyde Park was reached. Here a brief stop was made, and several persons including a sailor got on board. The sailor came through the car as if looking for somebody and finally found Caleb Walton and shook hands. "Yes, I'm bound for Norfolk, too," Walter and Si Doring heard him remark. "By gum!" whispered the Yankee sailor. "I wonder if thet chap is going with us?" "Do you know him?" asked the boy. "Know him? jest guess I do! His name is Jim Haskett, and he used to be the mate of the _Sunflower_, a three-master from Penobscot. I sailed under him once, and he was the hardest man on shipboard I ever got next to. If he gets in the navy, he'll make everybody under him dance to his pipings, and worse." "If that's the case, I sincerely hope he isn't assigned to my ship," was Walter's comment. "I haven't any use for a bully, big or little." "I owe Jim Haskett many an old score; I would like to get the chance to even up," went on the Yankee. "But I've enlisted to do my duty and lick the Spanish, and if Haskett leaves me alone, I'll leave him alone. Here he comes now." And Si straightened up. The former mate of the _Sunflower_ passed down the aisle slowly. When he saw the Yankee he started and then scowled at him. "Have you enlisted?" he asked, in a voice that was far from pleasant. "I have," returned Si. "Got any objections, Haskett?" "Humph!" was the only answer, and the ex-mate of the _Sunflower_ passed on, to drop into a vacant seat some distance behind them. "Oh, he's a corker," whispered the Yankee, and Walter nodded to show that he agreed with him. Walter was destined to many an encounter with Jim Haskett before his first term in the navy should come to an end. CHAPTER V SOMETHING ABOUT WAR AND PRIZE MONEY Commodore George Dewey's great victory over Admiral Montojo occurred on May 1, 1898, and was the first to be scored during our war with Spain. Previous to this time, matters had moved along swiftly, but with no definite results. Following the wanton destruction of our battleship _Maine_ in the harbor of Havana, in February, popular indignation arose to a fever heat against the country which had offered the American flag several insults in the past, and which was now engaged in a ruthless effort to put down the long-standing rebellion in Cuba, be the cost what it might. For many months our President, Congress, and the people had watched, with anxious eyes, the progress of events in Cuba--had seen the Cubans doing their best to throw off the yoke of Spanish tyranny and oppression. From a little uprising here, and another there, the rebellion spread all over what was no longer "the ever-faithful isle," until rich and poor, those of Cuban-Spanish blood, and those whose ancestors had been negroes and Indians, became involved in it. At first there was no army, only bands of guerillas, who fled to the mountains whenever a regular Spanish force presented itself, but soon the conflict assumed a definite shape, a rebel army was formed, to be commanded by Generals Gomez, Antonio Maceo, Calixto Garcia, and others, and then Spain awoke to the realization that Cuba, her richest colonial possession, with the possible exception of the Philippines, was about to break away from her. This crisis filled the rulers in Spain with alarm, for Cuba had turned into her treasury millions of _pesetas_ every year, for which the island got little or nothing in return. "Cuba must, and shall be subdued," was the cry, and thousands of soldiers were transported from Spain and elsewhere, to be landed at Havana, Santiago, and other points. These soldiers immediately took possession of all the larger cities, causing those in rebellion to withdraw to the villages and to the forests and mountains. A bloody warfare lasting between two and three years followed, and thousands of the rebels, including the noble Antonio Maceo, one of the best negro patriots that ever existed, were slain. In addition to this, millions of dollars' worth of property were destroyed, in the shape of torn-up railroads, burnt sugar and tobacco plantations, and sacked villages and towns. Every owner of property was compelled to take sides in the conflict, and if he did not side with those who waited upon him, then his property was either confiscated or destroyed. The Spanish authorities had started out to crush the rebellion on the spot. As time went by and the rebels grew stronger and stronger, those in command saw that extreme measures must be resorted to, or the campaign would prove a failure. The majority of the Cuban men were away from their homes. At once orders were issued to drive all the defenceless women and children into the cities held by the Spanish. This was accomplished under the pretext that Spain wished to keep them from harm. Once driven into the larger places, these women and children were not fed and cared for, but were allowed to either live upon the charity of those about them, or starve. These poor people were called _reconcentrados_, and it is a matter of record that before the war closed nearly three hundred thousand of them gave up their lives through neglect and lack of food. The people of the United States had stood by mutely and seen the war waged against the rebels who well deserved their liberty, but no one could stand by and see women, children, and helpless old men starved to death. At once it was proposed to send relief ships to Cuba, but Spain frowned at this, saying that such relief was only one way of helping those who had taken up arms against her. At this time there were many Americans in Havana and elsewhere in Cuba, and as a matter of self-protection the battleship _Maine_ was sent down to Havana harbor to see that no harm came to them. How the battleship was blown up and over two hundred and fifty lives lost, has already been told in the previous volumes of this series. A Board of Inquiry was appointed by the President, and it was soon settled that the explosion which had wrecked the warship had come from the outside and that Spain was responsible for the loss. Spain denied the charge; and the war was practically on. The first movement of the authorities at Washington was to blockade the city of Havana and a large portion of the coast to the east and the west of that port. This work was intrusted to Commodore (afterwards Admiral) Sampson, and he left Key West with the North Atlantic Squadron on the morning of April 22, and in a few days had a grand semicircle of warships stationed on the outside of Havana, Matanzas, Mariel, Cardenas, Bahia Honda, Cabanas, and other ports of lesser importance. Later on, other ports were likewise blockaded, and these portions of Cuba suddenly found themselves cut off from the outside world. Sampson wished to bombard Havana and bring the Spanish stationed there to terms at once, but this suggestion was overruled, as it was imagined that Spain might be brought to terms without such a great loss of life. As soon as the blockading of the ports mentioned began, the President called for volunteers, and how nobly all our states responded we have already learned in "A Young Volunteer in Cuba." The regular army was also hurried to the south-east and concentrated at Tampa and other points, while the volunteers remained in their various state camps, waiting to be mustered into the United States service. Of the grand movement to Cuba we shall hear later. The news of Commodore Dewey's glorious victory, as related in "Under Dewey at Manila" thrilled our people as they had not been thrilled for years. In the army and the navy were men from both the North and the South, and sectionalism was now wiped out forever, and all stood shoulder to shoulder under Old Glory, fighting for the sake of Humanity. The battle-cries were "Free Cuba!" and "Remember the _Maine_!" and certainly none could have been more inspiring. The blockading of so long a coast line required a great many warships, and as it was not deemed advisable to place all our big vessels on this duty, the authorities lost no time in buying or leasing a number of ocean steamers and coast craft and converting them into vessels of war. These vessels required a great number of men, and the Naval Reserves were in great demand, as were also volunteers for the regular navy. This was the reason that Walter and those with him were taken on so quickly. Had he applied for enlistment into the navy during times of peace, he would have found an entrance far more difficult, for Uncle Sam is growing more and more particular every day as to the class of men he allows to tread the decks of his men-o'-war. Shortly after Havana and its neighboring ports were blockaded, it was rumored that Spain would send over a powerful fleet to bombard New York or some other principal city along our eastern seacoast. This caused a good deal of uneasiness, and steps were immediately taken to fortify all principal points and mine many of the harbor entrances. Patrol boats were also placed on duty, to give the alarm at the first sight of an enemy. In some cases channel buoys were removed, and lighthouse lamps were left unlit, so that no Spanish vessel might creep in under cover of darkness. Acting Rear-Admiral Sampson, as he was officially designated, was kept busy watching the blockade along the northern coast of Cuba, and in distributing his auxiliary vessels to such points as would be most advantageous. This being the case, Commodore Schley, next in command, was left at Hampton Roads, near Fortress Monroe, Virginia, with what was known as the Flying Squadron, a number of the fastest warships riding the Atlantic. The Flying Squadron was to wait until the Spanish fleet started westward, when it was to do its best toward doing as Dewey had done to Montojo's fleet, "find it and engage it"; in plain words, to fight it to the bitter end. Great things were expected of the Flying Squadron, and in this the people were not to be disappointed, as we shall see. The trip by rail from Boston to the South proved full of interest to Walter, who loved riding on the cars. So far two transfers had been made, one at New York, and the other at Baltimore, but at neither city was any time allowed for seeing the sights. "It's a case of get there," explained Caleb Walton. "You see, that Spanish fleet may sail for the United States at any moment, and then Schley will be bound to go out on a hunt for it in double-quick order." "I see that the Spanish Cape Verde Squadron has joined the fleet at Cadiz, which is ready for sea," observed Walter, pointing to a morning newspaper he had purchased on the train. "There are four first-class cruisers, the _Viscaya_, the _Almirante Oquendo_, the _Infanta Maria Teresa_, and the _Cristobal Colon_, besides two or three torpedo-boat destroyers. At Cadiz there are the _Pelaya_, _Alfonso XIII._, and several other ships. If they all come over here, it seems to me they may make matters mighty warm for us." "We want 'em warm," interrupted Si Doring. "I wouldn't give a rap for a milk-and-water battle. Let us have it hot, say I, hot,--and knock the Spanish to kingdom come!" "They won't dare to send all of the ships over," said Caleb Walton. "They must guard their own coast. If they don't, some of our ships may slip over there and make it interesting for them." "Do you think we'll carry the war to Spain?" asked Walter, with deep interest. "There is no telling, lad. Some folks have it that half of Europe will be mixed up in this muss before it's over. One thing is certain, Dewey's victory at Manila isn't going to be such a smooth thing out there, for the Filipinos are in a state of revolt and won't want us to govern them any more than they want the Spanish; and besides, Germany, France, and other nations have big interests there." "Well, I guess the best we can do is to look out for our little end," smiled the boy. "As for the rest, the authorities at Washington must settle that." "Well said, lad; you and I couldn't run the government if we tried. But we can do our duty, and that will be to obey orders and take what comes." "How is it that you got Jim Haskett to enlist?" asked Si. "Oh, that fellow is after prize money," was the gunner's reply. "He has been reading of the luck down around Havana, and he wants the chance to earn a few hundred extra. Well, maybe he'll get it." "I've heard of prize money before, but I don't exactly know what it is," observed Walter. "It's the money got out of a captured ship when she's sold. You see, when a ship is captured she's taken to some port and turned over to a prize court, and if she doesn't turn out a Scotch prize she is knocked down under the hammer." "I know what you mean by knocking her down under the hammer. But why doesn't the rule apply to a Scotch vessel?" At this query of Walter's Caleb Walton burst into a roar of laughter. "It's easy to see you're a landsman," he said. "I didn't say a Scotch vessel; I said a Scotch prize--a ship captured illegally, and one that must be given back to her owners. I don't know where that term came from, but it's what the men in the navy always use." "I see." "A legitimate prize is sold, and then the money is divided. If the vessel captured was the equal of that taking her, then all the prize money goes to her captain and crew; but if the captured ship is inferior, then her takers get only half of the money, and Uncle Sam keeps the balance." "And what part would I get if my ship took a prize?" went on Walter, more interested than ever, for the question of prize money had not appealed to him before. "You would get a share according to your regular pay--perhaps one dollar out of every five or ten thousand." "That wouldn't be much--on a small craft." "You are right, lad, but it would be a tidy amount on a big warship worth two or three millions. The division of the prize money is regulated according to law, so there can't be any quarrelling. The commander of a fleet gets one-twentieth, the commander of a ship one-tenth of that coming to his ship (when there are more ships than one interested in the prize), and so on, and we all get our money even if we are on temporary leave of absence." "But what does Uncle Sam do with his share?" put in Si. "His share is put into a fund that is used toward paying naval officers, seamen, and marines the pensions due them. These pensions are, of course, not as large as those of the army, but they are considerable." "Well, I hope we strike a big prize, or half a dozen little ones," said Walter. "On a pay of eleven dollars a month a fellow can't expect to get very rich." "Do your duty, lad, and you may rise before the war is over." The old gunner caught Walter by the arm. "Come with me," and Caleb Walton arose, and led the way to the smoking-car. Wondering what was meant by this movement, Walter followed. "I want to have a quiet talk with you," went on Caleb Walton, after they were seated in a secluded corner. "Do you smoke?" "No, sir." "You're just as well off. But I must have my pipe." Caleb Walton drew forth a brier-root, filled it with a dark mixture of tobacco, and lit it. "Ah, that's just right. And now to business." And he threw one leg over the other. For a moment he gazed thoughtfully at Walter, and the boy wondered what was coming next. He was satisfied that it must be of more than ordinary importance, otherwise the old gunner would not have asked him to come to the smoking-car, away from their companions. CHAPTER VI A GLIMPSE OF THE PRESIDENT "You see it's this way," began Caleb Walton, after gazing for a moment at Walter. "Phil Newell is your friend, isn't he?" "Yes, indeed!" responded the boy, warmly. "Exactly--likewise he is my friend, too. We served together for years, and I sometimes looked up to Phil as a kind of elder brother. Well, after you left us at the navy-yard he and I had a long talk about you, and he made me promise to keep my eye on you--do you understand?" "I think I do." "Now, keeping an eye on you is out of the question unless you are placed where I can see you." "But aren't we both to go aboard of the _Brooklyn_?" cried Walter. "Yes, according to the course we're steering now. But both being on the _Brooklyn_ doesn't cover the bill. I expect to be in charge of one of the guns--will be if Bill Darworthy is still in the hospital. Now if you enter as a mere boy, or even as a landsman, it may be that you'll never get around to where I am. You must remember that the _Brooklyn_ is a big ship, and all the men on her are divided into classes,--officers, petty officers, seamen, gunners, marines, and so on,--and one class is pretty well separated from another." "I presume that is so, but I never thought of it before." "Even seamen are divided into seamen gunners, apprentices and the like, and if you went on as a mere boy you might not see me once a week, unless we happened to be off duty at the same time." "I see what you are driving at, Mr. Walton; you--" "Avast there, Walter, no mister for me, please. I'm plain Caleb Walton." "Well then, Walton, you want to get me attached to that gun you hope to have placed in your charge?" "Now you've struck the bull's-eye, lad. The thing of it is, can I manage it?" "I'm sure you must know more about that than I do. I'll like it first-rate if you could, for I--well, to be plain, I like you." Caleb Walton held out his horny hand. "The liking is mutual, Walter, and there's my fist on it. Now I have an idee." The old gunner took several puffs at his pipe. "I know Captain Cook of the _Brooklyn_ tolerably well--served under him for a short spell, and once did a little private business for him. Now, Captain Cook won't do a thing as is out of his line of duty, but still----" "He may aid you in having me assigned to the gun you expect to have charge of?" finished Walter. "That's it. I think I can work the deal--almost sure of it,--but you must help me." "What must I do?" "Say nothing and leave it all to me, and if my plan goes through, don't tell any one that you were favored. If you do, you'll only make enemies." "I'll remember that. But what of Haskett, Doring, and the others?" "I'd like to have Doring in my gang--he's the right sort. I don't want that scowling Jim Haskett, not after what Doring has told me of him. But he's out of it, anyway, for he enlisted as a first-class seaman, at twenty-six dollars per month." "I wish I knew a little more about a warship," said the youth, longingly. "The more I hear, the less I seem to know." "It will all come to you in time, and when you are on board I'll show you all I can. It would do no good to talk about guns and the like until I can point out the different parts to you, for you wouldn't know a breech-block from a priming-wire until you laid eyes on it." "But how is a ship commanded? Won't you tell me something about that?" "Of course you mean a warship, not a merchantman. Well, the highest officer is, of course, the captain, although the vessel may be the flagship of a commodore or an admiral." "And what of a commodore and an admiral? You see I'm awfully green, when it comes down to the navy. My younger brother Larry is the real sailor in our family." "You'll get there, lad; anybody will who is in for learning as you are. An admiral is the highest officer in any navy, and he commands everything that floats, from battleship to despatch tug. Next to him is the vice-admiral. In the United States navy these offices don't exist any more, having died out with the deaths of Admiral Porter and Vice-Admiral Rowan." "But the newspapers speak of Admiral Sampson." "He is acting rear-admiral, but holds only the office of commodore. He commands a fleet of warships, while a commodore commands only a squadron; that is, four or six, usually, although he may have more at times. His ships are generally divided into two divisions." "I understand. Please go on." "Well, as I said before, the captain really commands the ship. Next to him are the commander and the lieutenant-commander. The first of these takes orders from the captain and issues them to those under him. The lieutenant-commander is called the executive officer, and he's always put down as the hardest worked man on the ship. What he does would fill a book, and he rarely gets leave of absence, for nobody can spare him." "But what does he do?" "Well, in the first place he sees that the whole crew keeps straight, and he keeps a conduct book for reference. He hears all complaints and straightens out all difficulties. He sees to it that the ship is kept clean, and he has the say about arranging messes. He must also station the hands for the various fire, sail, and boat drills, the gun exercises, and the drills with small-arms and cutlasses. Then every night at eight o'clock he receives the reports of petty officers, to show that each department is O. K. up to that hour. And there is a lot more besides." "Thanks, but I don't care to be an executive officer," smiled Walter. "But perhaps he gets well paid for it." "He earns from twenty-eight hundred to three thousand dollars per year. The commander gets five hundred more than that. A commodore gets five thousand a year, and a rear-admiral six thousand, when at sea. When on shore all these figures are slightly reduced." "Those are nice salaries." "That is true. But don't forget that everybody on the ship in the shape of an officer must board himself. The crew does that too, but Uncle Sam makes them an allowance for that purpose." "Don't the higher officers get anything?" "They have a ration allowed them--that or thirty cents. Of course such a ration cuts no figure with a commander or a captain." "I suppose that's so. But please go on. Who is next to the executive officer?" "The junior lieutenant, and then come the ensigns and naval cadets; that is, those young fellows from Annapolis who are studying up to become higher officers." "And after that what?" "Then come the warrant officers, that is, those warranted by our President, and they include boatswain, gunner, carpenter, and sail-maker. And you mustn't forget the marines--the soldier-sailors." "Gracious, what a lot! Any more?" "We are not half through, lad, but the others will explain themselves by their titles, such as chief engineer, chief surgeon, paymaster, and chaplain. The chaplain holds the relative position to a captain or a commander, but his whole duty is to hold church and keep the men from going wrong, morally and spiritually. Besides these, we have boatswain's mate, gunner's mate, and the like. Then among the seamen the leading men are called captains; as, for instance, captain of the top, captain of the afterguard, and like that. You'll soon get to know them all, never fear." "How will I know them--by their uniforms?" "By their uniforms, and also by the stripes and devices they wear. Don't you see this flaming spherical shell of silver that I wear? That shows that I am a gunner and have seen over twenty years of service. If I was a gunner with less time to my credit, the shell would be of gold." "And does everybody wear some device?" "Everybody, from a rear-admiral with his two silver stars and anchor down to the apprentice who has his figure 8 knot. If I get to be a chief gunner, I'll wear two crossed cannons instead of this shell." "And if you got to be a captain, what would you wear?" "A silver spread eagle, with an anchor at each end, on my shoulders." "That's another deal to learn. I should think a fellow would get mixed on all these stars, eagles, shells, cannons, and the rest." "It takes time to learn, lad. Let me give you a bit of advice. If you meet another person on shipboard and you are in doubt about it, salute. You may be making a mistake, but it will be a mistake on the right side." "I'll remember that. But I feel as if I had more than ever to learn. Can't I get some book and study it?" "I've got such a work in my valise. I'll get it for you," concluded Caleb Walton, and he arose. "But remember about that other thing--mum is the word." "I certainly shall remember," and Walter smiled. "I'm awfully glad I've found such a friend as you," and he squeezed the old gunner's hand. They returned to the other car, and soon Walter was deeply interested in the volume which Caleb Walton loaned him. It was a technical work, issued by the authority of the Navy Department, and contained all that he desired to learn, and a deal besides. "Going to learn your duty as soon as possible, eh?" observed Si Doring, as he looked over the boy's shoulder. "That's right. If you want to know anything about sails or knots, call on me." "What's the matter with calling on me?" put in the voice of Jim Haskett, as he slid into the seat behind them, and leaned over. "I reckon I know as much as Doring about a ship, and maybe a leetle more." At this Si Doring fired up on the instant. "See here, Haskett, I ain't under ye no longer, remember that!" he cried. "I don't want you to talk to me, or about me. I owe you one, and more, and I ain't forgetting it--remember that!" "Oh, don't get on a high horse," growled the former mate of the _Sunflower_. "I won't talk to you if you don't want me to." "And ye needn't talk about me, either. Think ye know a leetle more about a ship than I do, eh? Well, maybe Captain Pepperill didn't think so, when you let the _Sunflower_ split her foremast in that blow off--" "I wasn't responsible for that!" interrupted Jim Haskett, his surly face growing red. "You let the past drop, and I'll let it drop." He glared savagely at Si, then turned to Walter. "Do you want some p'ints explained, Russell?" "Thank you, but I would just as lief study this book for the present," answered Walter, coldly, and somewhat astonished to learn that Haskett knew his name. "Maybe I can make some p'ints clearer. I'm an old sea-dog, you know." "I think Doring can explain all I wish to know," continued the boy, feeling he ought to stick up for the Yankee who had made himself so agreeable since leaving Boston. "Don't want my advice, then?" "I think not." "All right, then, suit yourself. If you want to cotton to such a fellow as Doring, you can do so, but"--he lowered his voice--"I reckon you are making a mistake." And then, before either Walter or Si could answer, he bounced up, and strode down the aisle and into the smoker. The train was approaching Washington, and shortly after this conversation it rolled into the depot at the Capitol city, and came to a standstill. "We stop here for fifteen minutes," said the porter to Walter, when questioned on the point. "Give you sailor-boys time to stretch your shoah legs." And he grinned, having been on a warship himself once, serving as a "striker,"--one who waits on the mess tables. "Let us take a few minutes' walk; I am all cramped up," said Walter to his Yankee friend; and Si readily agreed. Caleb Walton was willing they should go, but warned them not to stay too long. "Fifteen minutes don't mean sixteen; remember that," he called after them. "I should like to spend a few days here," observed Walter, as he and his companion hurried on. "The Capitol, patent offices, and other buildings must be very interesting." "I'd rather see President McKinley," returned the Yankee. "My, but he must have his hands full these days!" "Do you want to see the President?" questioned a man who was just passing them. "If you do, he's in his carriage three blocks below here. There's a cave-in of a sewer, and his carriage just stopped." "Then here's our chance, Si!" cried Walter, eagerly. "Come on; we can make it if we run. I wouldn't miss seeing the President for a good deal!" "Thet's me!" burst out the Yankee. "Off we go!" And he started to run, his long legs giving Walter all he could do to keep up with him. The three blocks were covered, and they came to where the cave-in was located, but only some very ordinary vehicles were in sight. "We're too late!" grumbled Si, crestfallen. "Come on back." "Too late for phwat?" asked an Irishman standing near the sewer. "We wanted to see the President." "Sure an' there goes his carriage down beyant." And the Irishman pointed to a side street. It was still less than a block away, and without stopping to think twice they made after it, and came up just as it was turning a corner. A very trim driver sat on the box of the turn-out, and on the rear seat, the sole occupant of the carriage, sat our country's chief executive. "Hurrah!" shouted Walter, impulsively, and waved his cap, and Si did the same. Several others bowed and tipped their hats, and the President bowed and tipped his silk hat in return. Then the carriage rolled swiftly away. [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT BOWED IN RETURN.] "It was him all right enough," exclaimed Si, enthusiastically, and with a total disregard for grammar. "He looks jest like his pictures, only a little more care-worn. I suppose he loses lots o' sleep these nights." "Yes, indeed. Being the President isn't the easiest berth in the world. If I--" Walter broke off short. "Our train--I'll wager a dollar we'll miss it!" "Creation! don't say that!" gasped Si; and then both took to their heels as if running the race of their lives. CHAPTER VII A TALK ABOUT SPANISH SAILORS "The train is gone!" It was Walter who gasped out the words, as he and his companion rushed upon the depot platform. In the distance they could see the end of the rear car just vanishing from view in a cloud of dust. "Thet's so!" groaned Si, panting for breath, for they had done their best to reach the depot in time. "What's to be the next move?" And he looked anxiously at his companion. "I'm sure I don't know," was Walter's slow answer. "I--I almost wish I hadn't seen the President--now." "Can't we take a later train?" "I don't know if the tickets will be good. Certainly we'll have no sleeping accommodations for to-night." "Who cares for that, so long as we get to Fortress Monroe? Come on, let us see what can be done." And Si led the way to the ticket office. The ticket-seller was busy, and it was several minutes before they could get to him. "Yes, there will be another train in an hour and a quarter," he said. "About your tickets, did you have stop-over privileges?" "We did not--we didn't intend to stop over," answered Walter. "Then I don't believe the conductor will accept them." "Gee shoo!" groaned Si, dismally. "Do you mean to say we've got to pay the fare from here to our destination? Why, it will take all I've got with me, and maybe more." "There ought to be some way of having our tickets fixed up," said Walter. "Can't we go to the main office and see about them?" "Certainly, if you desire," rejoined the ticket seller, and turned to a number of others who were waiting impatiently to be served. The main offices of the railroad company were not far distant, and hither they made their way. Inside, a young clerk learned what they wanted, and then took them to an inner apartment. "Government fares, eh?" questioned the elderly gentleman to whom they had been conducted. "What was the reason you didn't catch your train?" "We lingered to see President McKinley, who was out in his carriage," said Walter. "We got so interested we forgot the time until we were just about a minute late." "Well, I can't blame you much for wanting to see the man you are fighting under," said the railroad official. "Let me see your tickets." And, taking them, he wrote upon the back of each in blue pencil. "There you are, but you'll have to ride in an ordinary coach." "We don't care if it is a freight," put in Si, earnestly. "We want to get there." And, after both had thanked the official for his kindness, they withdrew. "We're all right so far," observed Walter, as "to kill time," they walked slowly down one of the broad avenues for which our Capitol city is famous. "The question is, what will Caleb Walton think of us when he finds us missing?" "I hope he doesn't think we are trying to desert!" cried Walter, to whom this idea had not before occurred. "Some fellows wouldn't be any too good to desert, Walter. Only last week a lot of fellows deserted on their way from one of the western states. They got to Chicago, where they wanted to go, and that was the last seen of them. They were like tramps--willing to do anything for a free ride on the cars. But they ran the risk of being court-martialled for it." "I think the fact that we had our tickets fixed up will go to show what our intentions were, Si. However, we have put our feet into it, and must take what comes." After a walk of half an hour, both felt hungry and entered a modest-looking restaurant on a side street. They had just ordered a cheap meal each, when a newsboy entered with a bundle of afternoon newspapers. "Have a paper, sir? Extra, sir; all about the Flying Squadron going to sail. Only one cent, sir." "What's that?" questioned Walter. "Here, give me a paper." And he grasped the sheet eagerly, while Si also purchased one of another sort. Soon both were devouring the "scare-heads" showing upon each. THE FLYING SQUADRON READY TO SAIL! Schley and His Warships May Leave Hampton Roads To-night! The Spanish Fleet Said To Be On Its Way Westward! Has It Sailed for Cuba or Will It Bombard Some City on Our Coast? The Authorities Very Reticent, but a Strict Watch To Be Kept from Maine to Florida for the Appearance of the Enemy! "By ginger, they're a-comin' over here, sure pop!" burst from the Yankee youth's lips. "Supposing they bombard New York? Why, I heard tell that they could lay out in the harbor and plant a shell right on the top of Trinity Church, or come up to Boston Harbor and knock the top off of the Bunker Hill monument!" "Our ships and forts won't give them the chance to come so close, Si. But what I'm thinking of is, supposing the warships sail before we can get on board?" "Thet's so!" Si Doring heaved a long sigh. "Why didn't we wait some other time for to see the President? If we miss the ships, I don't know what we'll do. We'll be stranded." "Oh, I presume, they'll put us on some other vessel. But my heart was set on getting aboard the _Brooklyn_." And Walter sighed, too. Both had lost interest in eating, and swallowed the food mechanically. Then, without waiting, they hurried back to the depot, bound that the next train should not slip by. The route to Fortress Monroe was by way of Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Newport News. Soon the train came along and they got aboard. The cars were comfortable, but not nearly so elegant as the one previously occupied. "It is odd to me to see separate cars for negroes and whites," observed Walter, after the journey had begun. "We don't have any such thing up North." "They will be done away with in time, I guess," answered Si. "By the way, I see in this newspaper that among the first troops to be sent to Cuba will be two regiments of negroes. Hurrah for those boys, say I." It was growing dark, and soon the car lamps were lighted. The boys read their newspapers through from end to end, and Walter learned that the volunteer regiments were everywhere being sworn into the United States service as rapidly as possible. "I wonder who will get to the front first?" he mused. "It would be odd if they should send Ben to the Philippines instead of Cuba. If only Larry was with me to go into the navy. I am sure he would enjoy this sort of service." And thus musing, he dropped asleep, never dreaming of the part his younger brother had taken in the contest of Manila Ray. "Richmond! Change cars for James City, Williamsburg, and Newport News!" Such was the cry which awoke him. He arose sleepily, to find Si snoring heavily. "Si, wake up!" he cried, and shook his companion. "We have to change here." "Change--for what?" questioned the Yankee, as he blinked his eyes in the glare of an electric light. "How far have we got?" "Richmond. Come--the other train leaves in a few minutes." It was early morning, and the depot platform was deserted excepting for the passengers that left the train. Soon the second train rolled in, and they found a double seat, and proceeded to make themselves comfortable. "By ginger! I never thought of 'em before," remarked Si, suddenly. "What?" "Our satchels, that we left in that first train." "I had mine checked through." "I didn't, because I wanted to look over some things of mine on the way down." Si shook his head in dejection. "Say, but ain't I running up against the worst luck ever was! I'll bet a new pocket-knife the satchel is gone when I get to the end of this trip." "Oh, I hope not, Si. Did it contain much of value?" "It had my clothing in, a Bible that my mother gave me, and a ten-dollar gold piece that I've been carrying around for twelve years for luck, because it was given to me by a South American rain-maker, a kind of water-witch I met in San Luiz, Brazil. And that ain't the worst on it, either. The grip wasn't locked." "It's too bad. But let us hope it's all right, Si. Anyway, I wouldn't worry until you know the truth," said Walter, trying to put a bright face on the matter, and then he dropped asleep again, and the Yankee youth presently followed his example. Luckily the train ran right through from Newport News to Hampton, which is within two miles and a half of Old Point Comfort and Fortress Munroe. The ride proved uneventful, and when they reached Hampton they fell directly into the arms of Caleb Walton. "What does this mean?" demanded the old gunner, as he caught each by the arm. "Missed the train, eh? I told you to be careful." "We'll know better next time," answered Walter. "But what of the Flying Squadron? Has it sailed?" "Not yet, but the ships may leave Hampton Roads at any hour. I made up my mind to wait for this train and then go on. I sent the others ahead." "What of my satchel?" put in Si. "It's in the baggage room. But hurry up; every hour counts just about now." And he led the way to where the bag had been left. "Here is a big wagon bound for the fort," said Walton, as they left the station. "We'll ride down on that, for the soldiers in charge gave me permission, should you show up." The wagon was loaded with blankets, and the pile made a soft seat. Soon there came a crack of a whip, and they were off, down a sandy highway leading directly to the sea. Soon the salt air filled their nostrils. "Oh, we're in good shape to give the Dons a hot reception, if they show themselves around here," said one of the soldiers, in reply to a question from Walter. "We've got some of the finest guns in the country at the fort, and can reach a ship ten or twelve miles out in the harbor." "I should like very much to inspect a real fort," answered the youth. "The guns must be even more complicated than on board a warship." "The disappearing guns are very fine. But I doubt if you could get permission to go through now--at least, not until you were duly enlisted into the navy and had your uniform on. You know we have strict orders to keep all outsiders at a distance. We don't want any Spanish spies to get plans of our hidden batteries and the fort itself." "Would they dare to try to get them?" asked Si. "'Pears to me that would be a mighty risky piece of business." "Certainly they would try. You mustn't think that all Spaniards are cowards--even if the authorities are responsible for blowing up the _Maine_. They'll give us a good shake up, if they get the chance." "I don't think so," said Caleb Walton. "They are not as up-to-date as we are. I know we can beat 'em at gun practice every round." "Don't brag. Wait till the war is over." "I'm not bragging--only talking facts, sergeant. I have a friend at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and he wrote to me about the gunners on the _Vizcaya_, when that Spanish warship was lying off Staten Island this spring. He said they were--well tired, I reckon we'd call it,--and didn't have any drills worth mentioning all the while the ship was there. Now you know that won't do." "Oh, yes, I know a man must keep at his drills if he doesn't want to grow rusty." "Besides that, you must remember that four-fifths of their sailors don't enlist for themselves. They are shanghied out of the seaport towns, made drunk, and taken on the ships like so many cattle, and they are lucky if they get away inside of ten or fifteen years. And in addition the cat-o'-nine tails is always dangling afore their eyes. Now a man treated like that can't make a good sailor, for the simple reason that he knows he has been treated unjustly, and he can't take an interest in his duties." "Gracious, don't you think you are stretching it a bit?" put in Walter. "What of their officers?" "Nearly every one of them comes from the ranks of the nobility, and that takes a good deal of ambition from the men, too, knowing it will be next to impossible for them to rise, even to a petty office. Now in our navy it's totally different. A man enlists of his own free will, he is treated fairly even though subject to rigorous discipline, and if it's in him he can rise to quite a respectable office and earn a good salary--and he's certain to get his money, while the Spanish sailors and soldiers go without a cent for months and months." "T know what you say about wages is true," said the sergeant in command of the army wagon. "I have it from a friend who left Havana when Lee, our consul, came away, that the majority of the Spanish troops stationed about the city hadn't seen a pay-day for nearly a year." "And then there is another thing," continued Caleb Walton. "The Spaniards have little mechanical ability, and before this war broke out they had a great number of engineers and the like who were foreign born--Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans principally. Now those men won't stay on Spain's warships during this little muss,--at least the Englishmen and Germans won't,--and a green hand at a marine engine can do more damage in ten minutes than a ship-yard can repair in a month. Take it, all in all, therefore, I think we have the best of it," concluded the old gunner. CHAPTER VIII THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS By the time Fortress Monroe was reached it was quite dark, so but little could be seen outside of those sturdy and frowning walls behind which were concealed the heavy guns intended to protect the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. The warships rode at anchor some distance beyond. To the squadron had just been added the protected cruiser _Minneapolis_, and the _New Orleans_ and _St. Paul_ were also expected, and all was a buzz of excitement alongshore. "They'll be off before long," said one old soldier. "I know because I saw one of the captains saying good-by to his family. Such a parting means a good deal." "I understand a Spanish warship was sighted last night," put in another. "We may have a fight right here unless Schley keeps his eyes open." "Oh, he's got the _Scorpion_ out on scout duty--she can take care of any sneak work," was the answer. He referred to the gunboat _Scorpion_ of the auxiliary navy, which was doing duty just beyond the capes. The _Scorpion_ was fast, and carried a strong searchlight, so it was likely nothing could pass her without being detected and the alarm being given. Alarms were numerous, but they were likewise all false, for no Spanish ship of war came anywhere near our coast. A boat was in waiting at the wharf, and Walter, Si, and the others were ordered aboard without delay. The boat was manned by eight sturdy jackies. "Up oars!" came the command, and up went the eight blades straight into the air; "Let fall!" and the oars fell into the water; "Give way!" and the blades moved in a clock-like stroke, and they were off to the ships. It was destined to be many a day before Walter should set foot on land again. "Halt! who goes there?" came suddenly from out of the darkness, and Walter saw that they were lying beside what looked to be a bulging wall of dark-colored steel. "Aye! aye!" was the answer, and there followed a short talk. "Got ten of them, sir," said the wardroom officer, in charge of the small boat. Then a rope ladder was thrown down, and the newcomers clambered aboard the warship that was to be their home for so long to come. Walter gazed about him eagerly, but that look was hardly satisfactory, for to the darkness was now added a heavy fog through which the ship's lights shone but faintly. All had their baggage, and without ceremony they were told to fall in, and were then marched below by order of the officer of the deck. "This looks like home to me," exclaimed Caleb Walton, as he gazed around the berth deck. "I went over the _Brooklyn_ many a time when she was up at the navy-yard, so I know her from stem to stern." He took Walter by the arm. "Here is the baby I hope to manage," he whispered, and pointed to one of the starboard monsters, whose long muzzle pointed frowningly outward. "Isn't she a daisy?" "I suppose she is," was the boy's reply. "But how in the world do you manage such a mass of metal? Surely a man can't do it by hand." "It might be done by hand, but nowaday everything is worked by electricity and hydraulic pressure. You'll learn it all after you have been on board awhile. At present just do what you are told and keep your eyes open." Supper had been served some time before, but as it was not intended to let the newcomers go hungry, a table was set and they messed together. The swinging table and the tableware all interested Walter, especially when he was provided with his own personal cup, plate, spoon, knife, and fork. "As a gunner I'll mess with the other warrant officers," exclaimed Caleb Walton, in reply to a question about messes from Walter. "You see, there are a great number of tables. The commodore is entitled to dine alone, so is the captain and the commander, while the other officers have what they call the wardroom mess. Then there are the steerage mess, for midshipmen, ensigns, and clerks; the master-at-arm's mess, for yeomen, machinists, boiler-makers, and so on; and three or four other messes besides, including that to which you will belong. We gunners dine with the boatswain, sail-maker, and carpenter." The meal was a plain one, of bread and butter, coffee, cold corned beef, and apple sauce, but it was well cooked, and all the new men and boys ate heartily. As soon as it was finished, Walton hurried off to interview Captain Cook, if he could obtain that privilege. "Well, where are we going to sleep? I don't see any beds," said one of the boys, a timid lad named Paul Harbig. His query brought forth a roar. "Your bed is rolled up and lashed away, Paul," answered Si, who had rather taken to the little lad. "Do you see those gratings over yonder?" "Yes." "Well, all the hammocks for this deck are stowed away behind that. When it comes time to go to bed, we'll get them out, fasten them up to the hooks you see about you, and there you are. And let me tell you there is nothing finer nor a good canvas hammock to sleep in. I'll take it before I take a greasy, dirty bunk in a buggy fo'castle every time." "But a fellow may fall out," suggested Paul. "If you're afraid of that, get a rope's-end and tie yourself in," answered Si, philosophically. "But you won't tumble, unless we strike some putty rough weather." The order was now passed to bring along all baggage, and Walter and Si picked up their satchels. Thinking to take out several things he needed, the Yankee youth opened his bag and put his hand inside. "By ginger!" came from him in an undertone, but loud enough for Walter to hear. "What's up, Si?" "Thet ten-dollar gold piece is gone!" "Are you sure? Perhaps it has slipped among some of the clothing." "I'll soon see," was the quick response, and the Yankee youth dumped the articles out in a heap. Sure enough, the golden eagle was gone. "Somebody has robbed me," came in a groan. "Now who did it, do you suppose?" "I'm sure I don't know. It might have been done here or on the train, or at the depot." Si looked around him sharply. Not far away stood Jim Haskett, watching him intently. As soon as the ex-mate of the _Sunflower_ saw that he was noticed he turned away. "I've got half a notion Haskett was the one to play me foul," he whispered to Walter. "What do you think?" "He wouldn't be much of a man to rob a messmate of ten dollars." "Oh, you don't know Haskett. He's as close as he is brutal. Once we got up a list to give Captain Pepperill a birthday present, but Haskett, although he was first mate, only gave twenty-five cents,--no more than Cooley, the cook, chipped in. In his eyes a ten-dollar gold piece is a big lot of money." "It wouldn't do you any good to accuse him if you wasn't pretty certain he was guilty," returned Walter, cautiously. "You don't want to get into trouble right after coming on board. If you raised a row, they might put both you and Haskett in the brig." "I'm going to ask him about it, anyway," answered the Yankee youth. "See, he is looking at us, and it 'pears to me as if he was enjoying himself to see me in trouble." Leaving his satchel and scattered clothing as they were, Si advanced upon Haskett and without ceremony caught the man's shoulder. "Haskett, I want to ask you something," he said, in a low tone. "Do you know anything about this, or don't you?" "I don't know--" The ex-mate of the _Sunflower_ stopped short. "What are you talking about, Doring?" "I left my satchel on the train, as you know. A ten-dollar gold piece is missing. I want to know----" "What! do you accuse me of taking it?" demanded the man, wrathfully. "I asked you if you knew anything about it." "No, I don't. I've got my own affairs to look after. More than likely the car porter took your money--if you really had that amount." "Well, I'm going to find that gold piece sooner or later, as sure as my name is Si Doring," exclaimed the Yankee youth, determinedly, and with a shake of his head he rejoined Walter and Paul Harbig. The officer who had previously taken them in charge now came forward and assigned them to their various sleeping places. This matter was readily arranged, for one of the main features of the cruiser _Brooklyn_ is her commodious berthing quarters, there being two complete decks, running from end to end of the ship, for this purpose, also an extra forecastle, so that the vessel can accommodate a thousand men if required--a number nearly double that of her usual crew. "It's a big hotel, with one room on a floor," thought Walter, as he took the hammock assigned to him. He was glad to find Si on one side of him and Paul Harbig on the other. Si showed both boys how to take their canvasses and sling them. This work was just completed, when Caleb Walton came back with a broad smile on his face. "It's all right," he whispered to Walter. "The captain treated me better than I thought he would. He called up the chief gunner, and we had a talk, and you are to take the place of a man named Silvers, who has gone lame through having a cat-block fall on his foot. If you'll only mind yourself, and study up as I tell you, you'll have the chance of your life." "Study! I'm ready to begin right off," answered Walter, earnestly. "I'm just crazy to get at that gun you pointed out to me. Can't you show me something to-night?" Caleb Walton laughed outright. "Don't try to learn it all before you go to bed, Walter," he said. "Of course, you know more than some landlubbers who think that on warships of to-day they handle the guns as they used to, when one man took the powder and ball from the powder-monkeys, another rammed them home in the gun, and the gunner sighted his piece and pulled the string. Those days are gone, and a head gunner like myself has very little to do, even if the position is a responsible one. Come, I'll get permission to go below, and show you just how a big gun is served from start to finish. Folks talk about 'the man behind the gun' when they really mean from eight to twelve men." The two hurried off, and presently descended an iron staircase which seemed to lead into the very bowels of the ship. At last they came to a steel trap-door, barred and locked. "Below this door is one of the magazines," explained Caleb. "It contains the ammunition for the eight-inch guns in the turret above. The keys to the magazine are in the captain's cabin, and can only be had on special order and by certain persons. The magazines are kept locked continually, excepting when in use or when being inspected. All of them are connected with huge water tanks, so at the first sign of a fire they can be flooded, thus lessening the danger of an explosion." "Yes, I remember the Spaniards tried to prove that the _Maine_ blew up from one of her magazines." "Such a thing couldn't happen in the American navy, because the discipline is too strict. Now, when a gun is being served, several men in the magazine get out the shells for the shellmen, who load them on the ammunition hoist over there, which is nothing more than a warship dumbwaiter. The hoist takes the shells up to the guns, in this case in the forward turret. Other hoists supply the rear turret and the secondary battery and other guns, including the rapid-firing weapons in the military tops." "You mean those platforms around the upper ends of the two masts?" "Exactly. The tops are the places for the sharpshooters and the range-finders." "The range-finders?" "Exactly. You see, it is a difficult matter to get an exact range on an enemy several miles off, and we have to try to get the range in various ways. One of the simplest ways is to station two range-finders in the tops, as far away from each other as possible. Each man gets a bead on the enemy with his glasses, and then proceeds to get the angle between the bead and an imaginary line drawn between his station and that taken by the other fellow. The three points--that is, the two range-finders and the enemy--form a triangle, and having one line and the two angles to work on, the working out of the problem gives the distance the gunners are hunting for." "That makes pointing a gun nothing but a mathematical problem doesn't it?" "It makes it partly a mathematical problem, lad. But having the distance isn't everything, for that will only give us the height at which a gun should be elevated in order to make its charge cover that distance and hit the mark, instead of flying over it or ploughing the water below it. After getting the distance we have to calculate on how the enemy's vessel is moving, if she is under steam, and then, most important, we have to let the gun go off at just the right motion of our own craft. In some navies they discharge the guns on the upward roll of the ship, and in others on the downward roll. My private opinion on that point is, a downward roll in clear weather, and an upward roll in a choppy sea, when you don't know just what is coming next." "I see. Firing a gun isn't so easy as one would imagine." "Easy enough if you want to waste ammunition, as those Spaniards did at Manila. Gun practice is expensive, and Spain hasn't any money to waste in that direction. Come, we'll have to get up to sleeping quarters now," concluded the old gunner, as a drum beat was heard sounding throughout the warship. "That's tattoo. It will soon be two bells, nine o'clock, and then comes pipe down." "All right, I'm willing enough to go to sleep," said Walter. "But just one question more. How do you count the time by bells on a warship?" "Just the same as on any ship, lad. The bell strikes at each half-hour, starting at half-past twelve at night, which is one bell. This makes one o'clock, two bells, half-past one, three bells, and so on, up to four o'clock, which is eight bells, when you start again from the beginning. By this means the day and night are divided into periods of time called watches, as morning watch, middle watch, dog watch, and the like. You'll get the lay of it soon," finished Walton, and then, having reached the berth deck, the pair separated for the night. CHAPTER IX COMMODORE WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY In a couple of days Walter began to feel at home on the flagship, and he could no longer be termed a "greeny," strictly speaking, although there were still a great number of things for him to learn. He was much interested in the _Brooklyn_ as a whole as well as in detail, and was proud to learn that this armored cruiser was the largest of the class in our navy, having a displacement of 9215 tons, as against her sister ship, the _New York_, which had a displacement of about a thousand tons less. "This ship is just four hundred feet and six inches long," said Caleb. "She don't look so long as she rides the water, but as a city block is ordinarily two hundred feet deep, so to speak, she would cover two blocks of a side street, providing the street was sixty-five feet wide, for her to rest in. That's pretty big, eh?" "And how much water does she draw, Walton?" "Draws twenty-four feet, which is the height of an ordinary two-story house. Her three smokestacks are about a hundred feet high each, and that gives her fires a first-class draught, sailing or standing still." "I'm awfully glad I'm on her," smiled Walter. "Oh, I do hope we have a fight with the Dons. I want to see the big guns go off. I know the main battery, as you call it, has eight 8-inch guns. How many guns are there besides?" "There are twelve 5-inch rapid-fire guns, twelve 6-pounders, four 1-pounders, four Colts, and two field guns. Besides, we carry four torpedo tubes." "We're a regular floating arsenal!" exclaimed Walter. "It must make things shake when they all get to firing." "You'll think you've struck the infernal regions, lad, if we ever do get them all a-going. Yes, the _Brooklyn_ is nothing but a floating fort. She's an unusual type, because she has an extra high forecastle deck. Some folks don't think that makes her a beauty, but they must remember that warships aren't built altogether for looks, although to my mind she's as handsome as any of 'em. The high bow enables us to carry our forward guns eight feet higher than those on the _New York_, and it will come in mighty handy if we ever want to run full steam after an enemy in a heavy sea which would drown out a ship with a low freeboard." "And why is she called an armored cruiser?" "Because she is protected by steel plating three inches thick on her sides and on her deck, and under this is an additional protection of coal and of cocoa-fibre, for keeping out water. It would surprise you to see how the sides and deck, as well as the bottom, are built, were they taken apart for examination." Discipline Walter found very strict, and once he had donned his uniform he was kept employed from sunrise to sunset, his duties being largely similar to those performed by his brother Larry on the _Olympia_. Early in the morning he was aroused by the blare of a bugle, or the roll of a drum, and given but a few minutes in which to dress and roll up his hammock and put it away. Then came the work of washing down the deck, followed by breakfast, and later all hands were called to quarters, to attend some drill, sometimes at the guns, sometimes at the hose pipes scattered about in case of fire, and occasionally with small-arms and with cutlasses. Each afternoon there was a "run around," lasting from ten minutes to half an hour. In this the men fell in singly or in pairs, and ran around and around the deck, at first slowly until "second wind" was gained, and then faster and faster. This is the one chance a jackie gets of stretching his legs while on board of his ship, and how he does enjoy it! Taking them as a whole, Walter found the ship's company a jolly crowd, with but few men of the Jim Haskett stamp among them. The men connected with the guns were a particularly brotherly set, and the youth soon felt thoroughly at home among them. He was always willing to do anything asked of him, and in return the best gunners on the vessel did not hesitate to give him "points" whenever he asked for them. One jocularly called him The Questioner, but Walter did not mind, and went on picking up all the information possible. On his second morning on board Walter was talking to Si when a low roll of drums reached their ears. "Hark!" cried the Yankee boy. "Two ruffles. Do you know what that means? The commodore is either leaving or coming on board. They always give a high officer that salute, or a similar one." "Let us see him if we can," exclaimed Walter, who had not yet caught sight of the commander of the squadron. They crowded to an open port and were just in time to see Commodore Schley descend by the swinging ladder to the gig. Soon the little craft shot out of sight through the fog, for the day was far from clear. "He looks like a fighter," remarked Walter. "He has quite a record, hasn't he?" "Yes, indeed, I was reading about him only last week. He was in the Civil War, operating along the Mississippi, and after that he saw a lot of fighting besides." "I know all about our commodore," said a gunner standing near. "My father fought with him on the Mississippi, and also when Port Hudson, in Louisiana, was taken. He is named after General Winfield Scott,--Winfield Scott Schley,--for his father and the general were warm friends." "It's a good name for a fighter; for certainly nobody fought better than did General Scott, through the war with Mexico," was Walter's comment. "Schley entered the Naval Academy in 1856 and remained until 1861, when the war broke out," continued the gunner. "They say he graduated at the head of his class and was so well liked that he was given sea-duty on the frigate _Potomac_, and in 1862 he was made a master, and ordered on the _Winona_, of the Gulf Squadron. "After the Civil War was over, he was sent to the Pacific, and there he aided in the suppression of an outbreak among the Chinese coolies in the Chin Chi Islands. The United States consulate at this place was in danger of being mobbed, but Schley took a hundred marines ashore, and knocked the whole uprising in the head in short order." "No wonder he's a commodore," said Walter; and Si nodded approvingly. "It wasn't long before the young officer was made a lieutenant-commander, and coming back from the Pacific, he was placed in charge of a department at the Naval Academy. He remained ashore for three years, then went to the coast of Africa, on the _Benicia_, where he took part in a number of contests, and helped clear the Congo River of pirates, and overthrew the forces defending the Salu River in Corea, another bit of work for which he was warmly praised." "Oh, he's a corker," cried Si, enthusiastically. "I'm not done yet," went on the gunner, who loved to talk about the exploits of his old commander. "Of course you have heard how the Greely Expedition to the North Pole got lost and couldn't get back home. Well, it was Schley who went after them, and found Greely and six of his companions at Cape Sabine and brought them safely back. For this Congress voted him a medal, and President Arthur raised him to the full rank of captain and made him Chief of the Bureau of Equipment, a very important office in the Naval Department. But Schley couldn't stand it on land, he must have the rolling ocean under him, and so he gave up his berth ashore and took command of the _Baltimore_." "I remember about that," put in Walter. "I was reading about John Ericsson, the inventor of the monitor. When Ericsson died, the body was sent to Sweden, his fatherland, on the _Baltimore_ under Schley." "Exactly, and the King of Sweden gave Schley a medal to commemorate the event, at a grand gathering at Stockholm. From Sweden Schley took the _Baltimore_ to Southern waters, and while off the coast of Chili he smoothed out what threatened to become a serious difficulty between that country and ours on account of some of Uncle Sam's jackies being stoned on the streets of Valparaiso. For this the Navy Department was extremely grateful, and he went up several points on the register, so that it didn't take him long to become a commodore." "He's certainly a man worth sailing under," said Walter. "I suppose he is married?" "Yes, and has several children--but that don't interest me," concluded the gunner, who was an old bachelor, with a peculiar dislike for the gentler sex. Since the time that Si had spoken to Haskett about the missing money, the seaman had steered clear of both the Yankee lad and Walter. Perhaps he was afraid that Si would accuse him openly of the theft of the gold piece, or perhaps he was afraid of Caleb Walton, who was continually around and ready to champion his "boys," as he had dubbed both. But there was one boy who could not get away from him, and that was Paul Harbig. "You're just the right sort to take to," said Haskett, as he caught Paul by the arm one morning, while both were coming from mess. "You're too much of a real little man to have anything to do with that Russell boy or Si Doring." "Oh, I like them both very much!" answered Paul, and attempted to pass on. With a frown Haskett caught him by the arm and swung him back. "See here, I want to talk to you," he cried uglily. "Has Si Doring been telling you any yarns about me?" [Illustration: "SEE HERE, I WANT TO TALK TO YOU."] "You let go of me," was Paul's only answer. "I don't want anything to do with you." "Answer my question." "I haven't got to." And now Paul did his best to get away. He had just twisted himself loose when Jim Haskett struck him a cruel blow on the head. "You--you brute!" gasped the boy, as the tears came. He was about to try retreating again, when Haskett caught him once more. "Now answer me, or I'll thrash the life out of you," he hissed into Paul's ear. "And mind you tell the truth." "He said that he had a--a--" the boy broke off short. "I won't tell you, there! Now let go!" And he began to squirm. "I know what he said," blustered Haskett. "Said he had had a ten-dollar gold piece in his valise, didn't he?" "Ye-es." "And he accused me of taking it, eh?" "He didn't say so outright. He said you had been where you could get at the bag." "It amounts to the same thing. As a matter of fact I couldn't get at the bag any more than could you, or Russell, or Walton, or any of the others." "I suppose that is so. Now let me go." "I will in a minute, but I want to tell you something, for it's not nice to have folks taking you to be a thief," went on Haskett, tactfully. "I haven't said anything about the affair." "Perhaps not, Paul, but Doring talks, and I reckon so do Russell and Walton. During the past couple of days I've found more than one fellow aboard the _Brooklyn_ looking at me queer-like, and I can put two and two together as quick as the next man. If I allow this to go on, there won't be a soul speak to me after a while." "I shan't say a word--I'll promise you." "It's Russell who will talk the most, I reckon," went on Haskett, with apparent bitterness. "Russell, the very fellow who ought not to say a word." "I'll caution him, if you want me to," went on Paul, who was tender-hearted and very willing to help anybody out of trouble. "Caution Russell! Not for the world. See here, I'll tell you something, and you can tell Doring or not, just as you please. To the best of my knowledge Russell is the thief." "Walter!" ejaculated Paul. "Oh, no, you must be mistaken. Why, why--how could he get at the satchel? He was with Doring." "I don't know about that. But I'm almost positive Russell is guilty." "Have you any proof? You shouldn't say such a thing unless you have," retorted Paul, anxious to stick up for Walter, who had served him several good turns since they had become acquainted. "I've got more proof against Russell than Doring has against me," answered Jim Haskett, boldly. "And what is more, I can prove what I've got to say." "But what have you to say?" came in a cold, heavy voice behind Haskett, and turning swiftly the former mate of the _Sunflower_ found himself confronted by Caleb Walton. The old gunner's face looked stern and angry. "Why--er--where did you come from?" stammered the seaman. "I asked you what you have to say against Walter Russell," demanded Caleb. "Come, out with it, or by the jumping beeswax, I'll wipe up this deck with you!" And he doubled up his fists. "I'm not afraid, if you want to fight, Walton," replied Haskett, recovering somewhat from his fright. "What I said about Russell, I'll stick to." "But what have you got to say? out with it," was the old gunner's demand. "I've got this much to say. I think Russell took Doring's gold piece, and I am not the only one that does either. If you think I'm wrong, ask Cal Blinker, the shellman. He heard almost as much as I did." "Heard what?" "Heard Russell talk in his sleep. It was last night. I got up to get a drink of water and slipped and roused up Blinker. Then, when I went to the water tub, I passed Russell's hammock. He was dreaming and talking about the gold piece and saying that Doring would never learn that he had it, and a lot more about hiding it under the gun. He went on about the money and about hiding it for fully ten minutes. If you don't believe me, go to Blinker about it." CHAPTER X WALTER SHOWS HIS PLUCK "And is that all you have to say?" asked Caleb Walton, after a few seconds of silence, during which he gazed so sharply at Jim Haskett that the fellow felt compelled to drop his eyes. "Because a fellow dreams about a gold piece, must you accuse him of stealing?" "That's all right, too," responded Haskett, doggedly. "I know he wouldn't dream that way unless there was something in the wind. I'm satisfied he took the money." "And I am satisfied that he is innocent," cried Caleb. "That boy would never steal a cent from anybody." "Why, he was after a thief himself before he left Boston," put in Paul, who had now sought protection behind the old gunner. "Well, suit yourselves," answered Haskett, with a shrug of his somewhat rounded shoulders. "But let me tell you that I won't allow Russell, Doring, or anybody else to speak of me as having taken the money--mind that!" And he shook his fist savagely. "Here comes Walter now," announced Paul. "Walter, come here!" he called out, before Caleb could stop him. At once Walter came up, an inquiring look upon his manly face, which was now becoming sunburnt through exposure on deck. "What do you want, Paul?" he asked. "It's only some of Haskett's nonsense," answered Caleb, ere the boy could speak. "Tell us, lad, do you remember dreaming anything about Si's gold piece?" For the instant Walter looked puzzled, then his face brightened. "I do," he answered. "What of it?" "Tell us what you dreamed first." "Why--I--I can't remember exactly, excepting that I was having a good lot of worry about it," he stammered. "You know how dreams come and go." "To be sure, Walter." "You dreamt about the money you hid, didn't you?" said Haskett, sneeringly. "The money I hid? I hid no money." "Oh no, of course not!" "See here, Haskett, what do you mean?" And Walter strode over to the seaman, his face flushing deeply. "Do you mean to insinuate that I took Si's gold piece and hid it away?" "He just does," burst out Paul. "And he says you talked in your sleep about it, too." "It is false--at least, it is false that I took the money. I might have dreamed about it and talked in my sleep. We are not accountable for what we do when we are sleeping." "Perhaps you took the gold piece when you were asleep," said Haskett, squinting suggestively at those surrounding him. "The gold piece was taken while Si and I were left behind in Washington. It was taken by somebody on the train." "That's your story--and you've been trying to lay the thing at my door. But I shan't stand it--not me," stormed Haskett. "I heard what you said in your sleep, and so did Cal Blinker. If anybody is guilty, it is you!" And he pointed his long, bony finger full in Walter's face. By this time a crowd of a dozen or more had gathered round, realizing that a quarrel of some sort was in progress. "It's about a gold piece," said one. "Haskett says Russell took it. Say, fellows, we don't want anything to do with a thief." "Not much we don't!" answered a messmate. "Heave him overboard if he is guilty." "This matter ought to be reported to the officer of the deck," put in a third. "If there is a thief on board, no man's ditty-box will be safe." At Haskett's concluding remark Walter's face grew as red as a beet, then deadly pale. For a moment he stood stock still, breathing heavily. Suddenly he leaped forward with clenched fist and struck Haskett a stunning blow on the chin which sent the seaman staggering up against a gun-carriage. "That, for talking to me in this fashion!" he exclaimed. "Oh!" grunted the ex-mate of the _Sunflower_, as he caught at the gun just in time to prevent himself from falling to the deck. "You--you young rascal, what do you mean by hitting me?" "A fight! a fight!" cried several, and soon a crowd of about fifty jackies surrounded the pair. "Wasn't that a pretty blow though! And he's only a boy, too!" came from a gunner's mate. "I'll fix you for this!" went on Haskett, putting one hand to his chin, where a lump was rising rapidly. "I never before allowed anybody to hit me--leastwise a boy." And he rushed at Walter with a fierceness which boded the youth no good. "Don't you hit him, Haskett," put in Caleb, catching the seaman by the arm. "If you do, you'll have to settle this affair with me." "He hit me." "And you as much as said he was a thief." "And so he is." "I am not, and I've a good mind to hit you again for saying so," burst out Walter, and before anybody around could separate them he and Haskett had closed in. Several ineffective blows were struck on each side, when they were pulled apart. "This won't do, Walter," whispered Caleb. "If you're not careful, you'll spend a week in the brig." "But--but it's awful to have him say I'm a--a--" "I know, I know. But keep cool, lad; it's best, take my word for it. You've been on board only a few days, but you have made lots of friends, while I reckon most of the men have already sized up Haskett for the meanest chap on board." "He has no right to talk about me." "He says you and Si Doring talked about him." Haskett now pushed his way forward again. "I don't want trouble with the officers, so we'll let this matter drop for the present," he blustered. "But I'll remember you, and some day you'll be mighty sorry we had this little mix-up." And muttering some more that nobody could understand he strode off, the majority of the crowd gazing after him curiously. "Ran away from a boy!" said one old tar. "He must be a regular coward, and no mistake!" Many wanted Walter to relate his version of what had brought the encounter about, but Caleb hurried the lad away to a corner, where he took a wash up and brushed off his clothing. "I want to interview that Cal Blinker," said the youth. "Where can I find him?" "Down around the forward ammunition hoist," answered Paul, and Walter hurried off, accompanied by his friends. "Yes, I did hear you say something about a gold piece," the shellman admitted. "You didn't talk very plainly and I understood very little. Haskett said he understood every word. Well, maybe he did. I've been in the navy so long that the noise of the big guns has affected my hearing." "Did I say I stole the piece?" insisted Walter. "I don't know as you did. All I could make out was 'ten dollars in gold' and 'the gun--just the place.'" This was all Cal Blinker had to say. He was rather old and it was plain to see that he wanted nothing to do with the controversy, one side or the other. Si Doring had been attending a special boat drill, and it was not until an hour had passed that he came below and heard what had occurred. Without hesitation he slapped Walter on the shoulder. "Don't you take this to heart," he said. "No matter what that mean old rascal of a Haskett says, he'll never make me believe that you are anything but perfectly straight. I believe yet that he took the gold piece and that some day I'll be able to prove it." And there the incident, for the time being, dropped. The manner in which Walter had "sailed into Haskett," as Caleb expressed it, made the youth many friends among the crew, for if there is one thing a jack tar loves it is to see a messmate stand up for himself. "You're all right, you are," said more than one, and caught Walter's hand in a grip calculated to break the bones. Several, who had thought to play a few tricks on the "greeny," reconsidered their ideas on the subject and concluded that it was best not to run any chances with such a spirited lad. For some time Walter was afraid that the executive officer would hear of the encounter and bring him to book for it; but if the "mix-up" was reported, nothing came of it. As a matter of fact, Uncle Sam's officers just then had affairs of more importance requiring their attention. For every hour on board of the warships composing the Flying Squadron increased the anxiety concerning the Spanish ships which it was felt were preparing to make a quick dash for Cuba or for our own coast. How soon would these warships sail, and where would they make their presence felt? those were the all-important questions commodore and captains asked of each other. "They'll most likely try to break the blockade at Havana," said one. "No, they'll bombard one of our down-east seacoast cities," said another. "I think they'll rush through the Suez Canal to fight Dewey," was the conclusion reached by a third. Under-officers and men speculated quite as much as did their superiors, arriving at equally opposite conclusions. "They have our whole seacoast and Cuba to pick from," Commodore Schley said. "They will go where they can do the most good--to their way of thinking. I think they'll go to Cuba or Porto Rico." How correct the commander was history has shown. Although the _Scorpion_ was patrolling the ocean just outside of the capes, a strict watch was kept on every one of the warships, night and day. Rumors were numerous, and one was to the effect that the Spaniards had a submarine craft in their service and that this boat would soon arrive along our eastern seacoast, to destroy the shipping from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico. In these days, when we know the truth, we can afford to laugh at such a report, but to the jackies on the warships, who remembered only too well the fate of the _Maine_, it was no laughing matter. Even when off duty, many would go on the spar deck and lie flat, gazing into the dark waters for the best part of a night, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unknown terror, should it come to that vicinity. Sunday, with its deeply impressive church service, came and went, and still the squadron lay at anchor. In the meantime it was rumored that Sampson would soon take his most powerful vessels from the blockade and bombard Havana. The newspapers reported this, but if such was the plan of the Navy Department, it was altered at the last moment. On May 12 came news of a fierce fight in the harbor of Cardenas, a seaport a hundred and twenty miles east of Havana. In an attempt to effect a landing, the torpedo boat _Winslow_ had her boiler blown to pieces and several men were killed and injured, among them Ensign Worth Bagley, who was thus the first American officer to fall in the war. Two other warships, the _Wilmington_ and the _Hudson_, also took part in the contest, but were repulsed after a gallant onslaught lasting over an hour. "This is war," said Caleb, as he read the news from the paper that one of the gunners had just brought on board. "Those fellows on the _Winslow_ caught it hot. Think of running right into that harbor and having a shell drop and smash your boiler and send the live steam all over you. I tell you Ensign Bagley was a plucky one, all honor to his memory." The next day brought even more important news. Dewey had gained a foothold in the Philippines, the main city of Cuba was in a state of blockade, and now Rear-Admiral Sampson had shifted the scene of action to Porto Rico, by shelling the forts of San Juan, the principal city of Spain's only other possession in the West Indies. "We're getting there!" cried Caleb, excitedly. "We'll soon give the Dons all they want." "If Sampson succeeds in making the San Juan forts surrender, the whole city will be at our mercy," said Walter. "Hurrah for the American navy, and every ship and man in it." "We are bound to get them on the run," put in Si. "Here is another report about a fight at Cienfuegos. Where is that?" "On the southern coast of Cuba," answered Walter, who had always had a good head for geography, and who, since the war had started, had studied the map of Cuba closely. "Havana, San Juan, and Manila! Say, but this is becoming a war of magnificent distances." "It's a naval war, that's what it is," said Caleb. "If we--hullo! Did any of you see this telegram?" He pointed to his newspaper. "The Spanish Squadron under Admiral Cervera has slipped away from Cape Verde Islands and is undoubtedly bound westward." "And here is another report that some strange vessels, supposed to be warships, have been sighted off Martinique, Windward Island," added Walter, quickly. "I'll wager we leave soon!" "But where to--the Windward Islands?" queried Si. "That's for Commodore Schley to decide. Rest assured he'll find this Admiral Cervera sooner or later, just as Dewey found old Admiral Montojo." The news was spreading, and officers and men gathered in knots to discuss the situation. As for Commodore Schley and Captain Cook, they smiled knowingly, but said nothing. Everybody in the Flying Squadron remembered what Dewey and his men had accomplished, and all were on their mettle accordingly. CHAPTER XI THE SAILING OF THE FLYING SQUADRON "We are off at last!" It was Walter who broke the news, as he came tumbling down the stairs to the berth deck, where Si and Caleb were engaged in a friendly game of checkers on the top of a ditty-box. "Off!" cried the old gunner, and leaped up, scattering the men on the checkerboard in all directions. "Who told you?" "The signal has just been hoisted on the military mast. I couldn't read it, but Sandram could and he translated it for me." Caleb waited to hear no more, but rushed on deck, with Walter and the others following. The news was true, the signal flew the words, "Weigh anchor and follow the flagship," and the heavy black smoke was pouring in dense volumes from every warship's funnels. "I wonder where we are bound?" questioned Walter, whose heart was thumping within him at the thought war might soon become a stern reality to him. "Of course we are going after Admiral Cervera's ships." "I reckon that's right, but there's no telling," responded Caleb. "The officers don't consult us when they want to move, you know." And he said this so dryly that both Walter and Si had to laugh. The warships at hand were four in number,--the _Brooklyn_, which I have already described, and the _Massachusetts_, _Texas_, and _Scorpion_. With them was the collier _Sterling_, loaded to the very rail with huge bags of coal, for the exclusive use of the Flying Squadron. The _Massachusetts_ was a battleship of the first-class, a sister ship to the _Indiana_. She had a displacement of over ten thousand tons, and a speed of sixteen knots per hour. Her massive armor was eighteen inches thick--enough to withstand some of the heaviest shots ever fired from any gun. Her armament consisted of a main battery of four 13-inch and eight 8-inch guns and four 6-inch slow-fire guns. The secondary battery comprised twenty 6-pounders, four 1-pounders, four Gatlings, and two field-guns. Besides this she carried three torpedo tubes and an immense quantity of small-arms. Captain Francis J. Higginson was in charge, with Lieutenant-Commander Seaton Schroeder. The _Texas_ was a battleship of the second class, her displacement being only 6315 tons. She had the honor to be the first vessel built when our navy began its reconstruction, in 1886. Her armor was just one foot thick, and she could speed along at the rate of nearly eighteen knots an hour. Two 12-inch and six 6-inch slow-fire guns made up her main battery, while her secondary battery counted up six 1-pounders, four Hotchkiss and two Gatling guns. There were two torpedo tubes. The _Texas_ was under the command of Captain John W. Philip and Lieutenant-Commander Giles B. Harber. The _Scorpion_ was a despatch boat of the gunboat pattern, with a displacement of six hundred tons, and a rapid-firing battery of four 5-inch and six 6-pounders. She was a swift craft, and had done duty as a scout for a long time. The signal to weigh anchor was hoisted on the flagship at four o'clock in the afternoon, and inside of half an hour the Flying Squadron and the collier were standing down Hampton Roads toward the capes, each ploughing the waters at a twelve to fifteen knot rate. The wharves alongshore were lined with people, who waved their hats and their handkerchiefs, and shouted out their best wishes for the departing ones. "Remember the _Maine_, boys, and send us a good account of yourselves!" shouted one old Southern veteran, as he shook a partly empty coat sleeve at them. "I wish I was younger; I'd go along and fight as well for the old stars and stripes as I once did for the stars and bars." "Now you're talking," responded a Union veteran. "That other quarrel was our own, eh, neighbor? Let foreign nations keep their hands off Uncle Sam's family and the children seeking his protection. Three cheers for Old Glory and Free Cuba!" And the cheers were given with a will, while Fortress Monroe thundered out a parting salute. A number of other vessels, including the protected cruisers _Minneapolis_ and _New Orleans_ and the auxiliary cruiser _St. Paul_ had been left behind, to join their sister ships later on. The _New Orleans_ was a warship but recently purchased from the Brazilian government, and formerly known as the _Amazonas_. The _St. Paul_ had formerly been a trans-Atlantic steamer, and was commanded by Captain Charles E. Sigsbee, who had so gallantly stuck to his post until the last moment when the _Maine_ was destroyed. Each of the warships had a harbor pilot on board and proceeded under a full head of steam for the passage between the capes, which were passed a little after seven o'clock in the evening. Leaving Cape Henry well to starboard, the pilots were dropped, and the warships, taking the middle course, as it is termed, disappeared from the gaze of those who had watched their departure so eagerly. "We're out for a fight now, sure enough," said Caleb, as he and Walter went below, each to the mess to which he had been assigned. "Orders are to prepare for action, so I've just been told." "I noticed that lights were being extinguished," answered the youth. "Do you suppose they are afraid that the Spanish warships are coming up this way?" "No telling, lad. It's a game of hide and seek, until one fellow or the other sneaks up and thumps his opponent in the neck. I only hope we're in it to do the first thumping." Mess was scarcely over when there came a call to quarters. Ports were closed with massive steel covers, the battle hatches were put down, and the big guns were carefully loaded. Watches had, of course, already been established, and now the men were ordered to take turns at standing by the guns. "Which way are we pointing, eastward or down the coast?" questioned Walter of Si, who had come up during his off hours to take a look at the cloudy sky from which only a few stars were peeping. "We are moving almost directly southward," was the slow reply of the Yankee youth, after a long look overhead. "And where will that bring us to, Si?" "It will take us to Cape Hatteras first, and if we keep on long enough it will bring us to the neighborhood of San Salvador Island. But I reckon we'll change our course after Hatteras is passed." "Isn't Hatteras a bad point to pass?" "Is it? You just ought to try it in dirty weather. Many a craft has left her hulk off that cape. But such a craft as the _Brooklyn_, with her high bow, ought to weather almost anything. To my mind, the worst thing we can run into is a fog-bank, and that's just what we are likely to do in this vicinity." The regular lights of the warship had been extinguished, but behind its hood the great searchlight glowed and spluttered, ready to be turned to one point or another at a second's notice. All was quiet on board, save for the rumble and quiver of the powerful engines which were driving this floating fort on her way through the rolling ocean. While daylight lasted the vessels kept more or less apart, but with the coming of night they closed in, and the fretting and puffing little _Scorpion_ darted ahead on picket guard. Walter's duty at his gun came to an end at midnight, and none too soon for the lad, whose head had suddenly begun to spin around like a top. "I guess I'm getting seasick," he murmured to Si; and the Yankee lad at once led him away to a secluded corner, where he might have matters all his own way, and where none might look on and enjoy his misery. Once Haskett started to pass some uncomplimentary remarks about Walter, but a single stern look from Caleb silenced the seaman, who tumbled into his hammock without another word. For several days Jim Haskett had kept his distance, but he was only biding his time to "even up," as he termed it. "I'll make young Russell feel mighty sore before I'm done with him," was what he promised himself. Walter was expected to go on duty again at four o'clock, but he was in no condition for service, and sent Caleb word to that effect. Paul took the message and soon returned with a reply. "You're to take it easy until you're all right," said Paul. "Walton will fix it up so there will be no trouble." "He's the best friend a fellow ever fell in with," sighed Walter. "If I hadn't met him I don't know what I should have done." "Oh, you would have taken care of yourself," answered Paul, lightly. He had not yet forgotten the attack Haskett had sustained at Walter's hands. Daybreak found the squadron running into the first of a series of fog-banks. At once the speed of each warship was reduced, and presently it became necessary to use the fog-horns and ship-bells. In the meantime all hands were put through several drills, "to get them into fighting trim," as the officer of the deck explained. The drills lasted until dinner time, and in some way they made Walter feel much better. As a matter of fact, his spell of seasickness was of short duration, and once gone, the malady never returned. "I'm a fine specimen of a jackie, am I not?" he said to Caleb, with a faint smile, on first presenting himself. "Why, a Spaniard could knock me over with a feather." "Don't you go for to find fault with yourself," was the old gunner's reply. "I've known men who have been on the ocean for years to get sick the first day out. It's something they can't overcome, try their best. Why, I saw several officers of the marines as sick as so many dogs." Mess over, Walter went on deck for a breath of fresh air. They had just left a fog-bank and were standing out boldly into the ocean. The youth sauntered slowly forward as far as the rules permitted. "Sail O!" came suddenly from the military mast. "Where away?" demanded the officer on the bridge. "Dead ahead, sir." "Is she flying any flag?" "I think not, sir." "What does she look like?" "I can't make out very well, for she is running into the fog. I don't know but that she looks a bit like a warship," continued the lookout, after some hesitation. Without delay Commodore Schley and Captain Cook were notified. A brief consultation took place, and it was decided to pursue the unknown craft and find out what she was and where she was going. CHAPTER XII AN ADVENTURE OFF CHARLESTON The news that a strange vessel was in sight soon travelled throughout the ship, and all who could do so, crowded to the spar deck, while the officers stationed themselves on the forecastle, bridge and other points of vantage. There was no necessity to give the order, "Clear ship for action!" for the _Brooklyn_ was already cleared. Moreover, all the big guns contained their charges of eight-inch and other shells. The six-pounders and the Colts were now "provided," as it is termed, and then there was nothing to do but to lie by the guns and await further orders. Immediately upon notification that a strange sail was in sight, the flagship had run up a signal to the _Scorpion_, "Follow the unknown ship to the southward," and away darted the little gunboat at a rate of speed which caused the mighty waves of the Atlantic to wash her decks from end to end. Presently the sea proved almost too heavy for her and she had to reduce her speed, and the _Brooklyn_ went ahead, her high freeboard sending the water to port and starboard with scarcely an effort. Once, however, she did get caught below an unusually high crest and all on the forward deck received a liberal drenching. "Fire a shot across her bow!" was the order given, when the strange craft again emerged from a fog-bank, and boom! one of the smaller guns belched forth. The echoes of the shot had scarcely died away when the unknown ship was seen to hoist the British flag. "Only a Britisher!" sighed Caleb, when the news came down to him. "And I thought we were going to have the profit of a nice Spanish prize." Not caring to go entirely by the flag displayed, since the unknown ship had acted so strangely, the _Scorpion_ was again sent forward to make an investigation. In quarter of an hour she came up within hailing distance. "What ship is that?" was bawled out through a megaphone. "British steamer _Elsie_. What gunboat is that?" "The _Scorpion_, of the United States navy. Where are you bound and what have you on board?" "Bound for Norfolk, Virginia, with a cargo of phosphate rock." "Why didn't you show your flag before?" "Well, to tell the truth we were afraid we had run into some Spanish warships, and that England might be mixed up in this muss, in which case we didn't want to become a Spanish prize. How is it? are we in it yet?" "No, Uncle Sam is running this war without outside help," was the concluding remark, and then the two vessels separated; and the Flying Squadron proceeded on its way. Saturday found the course of the _Brooklyn_ changed to southwest by south. "We are still hugging the coast," explained Si. "I shouldn't wonder if we are to make a stop somewhere, say at Charleston or Savannah." "Perhaps the commodore has word that the Spanish ships are sailing for our south-east coast," suggested Walter. "My! what a nasty day it is going to be." He referred to the mist, which was so heavy that it felt almost like rain. For May, the weather was raw and cold, and all hands were glad to stay below decks as much as possible. On this day another long exercise at the gun was had, and Walter learned more thoroughly than ever how the charge was raised from the ammunition hoists to the gun, pushed into place by the mechanical rammer, and how the gun was moved up, down, or sideways by merely touching this button or that wheel or lever. "It's wonderful!" he observed. "I suppose it would be next to impossible to move such a big gun by hand." "Oh, it can be done," answered Caleb. "In the old navy they used to do it by hand, and each gun had ten to sixteen men to man it. In those days they had no device to lessen the shock of the recoil as we have now. Instead of having a water cushion for the gun to strike on, they used a heavy rope in the back, and sometimes the rope broke, and the gun did more damage flying backward than the charge did flying forward." "They didn't have any breech-loaders in those days, did they?" "They had some in the Civil War, but not many before that. Everything in the way of powder and ball had to be put into the muzzle, and was rammed home by hand. The first breech-loading guns were clumsy affairs, and not a few accidents were had by guns going off before the breeches were properly locked." "And what about sighting the pieces?" "Oh, they have had dozens of devices for getting a correct aim, some pretty good and some decidedly bad. In the old navy the guns didn't carry near so far as they do now, and your old-time gunner was just what his name calls for, for he sighted the piece and fired it himself. But the old times are gone, and I expect one of these days all the work still left will be done by machinery, and a dozen men sitting up in the conning tower will control the warship from stem to stern." Walter laughed at this. "I reckon we're some time off from that yet, Walton. But it is wonderful how much the commander can control by using his bells, annunciators, speaking-tubes, and electrical indicators. I guess that is a great improvement on the old way of yelling orders through a speaking-trumpet and having a dozen middies rushing around telling this man and that what to do." "No doubt of it, lad. But when it's all done and said, you must remember one thing--we have still to prove the worth of our floating forts in war times. Dewey did well at Manila, but it may be that the Spanish warships out there weren't in the best condition. Now this Admiral Cervera, whom we are after, has ships that are thoroughly up to date, and when his outfit meets ours, then--well, we'll see what we will see," concluded the old gunner. That afternoon Walter took his first lesson in making knots. He had had some idea concerning a variety of knots which had been taught to him by Larry, when he and his younger brother were sailing about Lake Erie, but those which were now exhibited were truly bewildering. "The single bend and figure of 8 are easy enough," he sighed. "But when you come to that sheep-shank and bowline upon the bight, as you term them, it grows confusing." "This is only the beginning," answered Caleb. "After you know the knots, you'll want to learn the hitches--half-hitch, rolling-hitch, and so on,--and after that you'll want to take up the splices, and then the different kinds of tackle,--long-tackle, single-whip, and all that. I reckon those will keep your mind busy for a week or two. To be sure, those things belong more to a seaman than a gun-hand, but it's good to know how to do, in case you are called upon at some time." The night came on with a storm in the air. As before, all the lights were extinguished, and the different watches took their turns at the guns. Walter had just turned in when a shout rang out. "Another vessel in sight!" As rapidly as possible the lad leaped up. "Is it a Spanish warship?" he asked. "Don't know," answered Caleb, laconically, but leaped to the gun, with Walter and the others following. But it was only another scare, for the vessel in sight proved to be a merchantman bound for a northern port. The big searchlight of the _Brooklyn_ was turned upon her, and instantly every light on the merchantman went out and the ship sneaked away with all sails set. No effort was made to pursue her. "The captain of that craft will report falling in with a big Spanish fleet; see if he don't," said Caleb; and the old gunner was right, as a newspaper of a few days later proved. By noon on Sunday Charleston Harbor was sighted, and a few hours later the squadron came to anchor near Charleston Bar, nine miles from the city. "The _Sterling_ isn't in sight," said Walter, as he came on deck and took a look behind. "I wonder if the heavy sea was too much for the collier." "Oh, she'll turn up sooner or later," answered Si. "But a boat loaded as she was isn't the safest thing to sail around such a point as Cape Hatteras, I can tell you that." The collier came in before night, reporting a thoroughly disagreeable trip. A lighthouse tender was at hand, ready to take the mail ashore, as well as to deliver letters and special messages. The messages were at once delivered to Commodore Schley. "I wonder how long we'll stop here," said Walter. "I wouldn't mind a run ashore, just to see what the city looks like." "There goes a signal to the _Texas_," said Si, as the signalman took up his flag and began to wig-wag. "Wait a moment till I read what he is saying." "Can you read it?" asked Walter, in deep interest. "Certainly, it's easy enough." Si began to spell to himself. "'W-h-a-t, what--i-s, is--y-o-u-r, your--b-e-s-t, best--r-a-t-e, rate--o-f, of--s-p-e-e-d, speed--n-o-w, now?' He is asking what the _Texas_ can do at once, so far as speed is concerned. That means something important. Hold on, here comes the answer." Again the Yankee youth began to spell. "Might go fifteen and a half knots." Then the signalman on the _Brooklyn_ sent another message. "We are off on business now." And the signal went up for the squadron to weigh anchor again. "We're off for a fight!" ejaculated Walter. "But tell me about that wig-wagging, Si; how do they signal the letters?" "It's easy enough. You take a small flag of some bright color, attached to a pole six or eight feet long. As soon as you attract the attention of the other fellow, you begin to use the flag in three motions, to the right, the left, and down in front. To the right means one, to the left means two, and down in front means three. Now all the letters are represented by combinations of numbers, and all you have to do is to learn the combinations and spell ahead. It's easy enough when one gets the hang of it. At night you can use a lantern instead of a flag." "That is easy," commented Walter. "But what about those signals at the masthead. Can you read those?" "No. In those, most every flag represents a letter, or a word, or sentence; but to read the signal you have got to have either the international signal code-book, or else the United States Navy code-book. The navy code is locked up in the captain's cabin, and the book is weighted with lead, so that if anything happens, it can be heaved overboard and sunk, thus keeping it out of the enemy's hands." "I declare, signalling isn't so difficult, after all," cried Walter. "To me it looked like a perfect jumble." "The trouble with flags is, that when there's no wind they won't straighten out so you can see 'em," put in Caleb, who had joined the pair. "Lanterns are more to be depended upon, and they have a new system now, called the Ardois electric, in which they use four powerful electric lights, so that the signals can be read at a distance of several miles. You'll learn all about them if you stay in the navy long enough." CHAPTER XIII IN WHICH THE GOLD PIECE COMES TO LIGHT "Where now?" was the question which more than one man on board of the _Brooklyn_ asked himself. But no answer was forthcoming. The commodore, captain, and commander knew, of course, but they kept the information to themselves. In war it is a rule not to let the enemy know what you are doing until you do it, and so a strict guard was kept, so that no information might leak out. Yet Spanish spies in Canada learned a good deal, and notified the home government as quickly as it could be done. From Charleston the course was almost due south, and both Si and Caleb came to the conclusion that the flagship and her sister craft were bound for Cuban waters. "Perhaps we're going to join in the blockading of Havana," remarked the old gunner. "Oh, I hope not," said Walter. "Riding in one spot day after day must be awfully tiresome. I'd like to hunt the Spaniards out and do them battle, as Dewey did. He didn't waste any time." Dewey's name was to be heard constantly, for the jackies never got done talking about this first great victory of the war. Some of them had served on the _Olympia_, _Boston_, and other vessels of the Asiatic Squadron, and they described just how these boats were built, and what parts they must have taken in the contest. "Don't grow impatient, Walter," said Caleb. "We'll run up against something soon--perhaps more than you care for. It's easy enough to think of sinking an enemy's ship. Supposing he puts a few thirteen-inch shells through your craft, and you begin to go down--what then?" "I'll make the best of it," returned the boy, calmly. "I enlisted to fight for Uncle Sam, and I'm willing to take what comes." Jim Haskett was passing when Walter made this remark, and his lip curled with a sneer. "That boy is too big for his boots," muttered the seaman. "I can't see what the other men find in him to like." Jim Haskett was more sour than ever, for his disagreeable ways had lost to him the few friends he had picked up when first coming on board. The fact that Si and Walter were growing more popular every day caused him fairly to grate his teeth with rage. "I'll fix him, see if I don't," he told himself that night. "They shan't tell everybody that I took that gold piece--when I didn't touch his bag." Jim Haskett was one of those mean, unscrupulous men, who do a wrong and then try to argue themselves into thinking that it is all right. It was not true that he had taken the ten-dollar gold piece from Si's bag, but it _was_ true that he had found the Yankee boy's satchel overturned and partly open, and had closed it up and locked it, and afterward found the money on the floor of the car within a few feet of where the bag had stood. Any fair-minded man would have told himself that the gold piece must be the one lost by Si; but Haskett was not fair-minded, and it was doubtful if the man could ever become so, any more than a dwarfed and crippled tree can be forced to become straight and upright. On Monday morning, the day after leaving Charleston Bar, Haskett heard Caleb tell Walter and Si that the gun must be cleaned and oiled. "We'll go over the piece from top to bottom to-morrow," said the old gunner, "and if there is anything more that you don't understand I'll explain it to you." "This is my chance," said Haskett to himself, and lost no time in bringing forth the gold piece from the place where he had hidden it. Watching his opportunity, when Caleb, Si, and Walter were asleep that night, he secreted the piece in a corner of the track upon which the gun-base revolved. Inside of half an hour after breakfast the next day, Walter, stripped to the waist, was working over the gun, in company with his friends and Steve Colton, the second gun-captain, and Carl Stuben, the hose-man. All were supplied with cotton waste, polishing-paste, and rags, and in a short while the bright portions of the gun shone like a mirror. "There, I reckon that will suit the chief gunner," was Caleb's remark as he stood back to inspect the work. "No piece on the starboard side brighter than this, I'll wager my month's pay." Si was bending down under the gun, swabbing up some oil which had run down from one of the working joints. Suddenly the Yankee youth threw down his swab and caught up something which shone in spite of the dirt upon it. "My gold piece, as sure as you're born!" he ejaculated, after he had made an inspection at the porthole. "Now how in creation did that get there?" He looked at Caleb, and half unconsciously both turned to Walter. "What's that?" asked the youth. "My gold piece--I found it hidden under the gun-track," answered Si. Walter's face turned red, as he remembered what Jim Haskett had said concerning his talking in his sleep. "Why, Si--are--are you sure it is your piece?" he faltered. "Certainly. There is the date, 1876--centennial year, and here is a scratch I once made with my jack-knife. It's the very one that was taken from my bag, beyond any doubt." Si continued to look at Walter, while Caleb suddenly turned and gazed out of the porthole, while Stuben, the hose-man, whistled softly to himself. "Why, Si, have you got your money back?" cried Paul, who had just chanced up. "Yes." "And where did you find it?" "Under the gun, by the track." And Si pointed out the place with his forefinger. "Under the gun! Why, that is where Haskett said Walter hid it!" was Paul's comment, before he stopped to think twice. "I mean--that is, Haskett said something about it," he stammered. "I know he did," answered the Yankee youth, coldly. Walter's face was burning hotly now, and he could scarcely trust himself to speak. "Si, do you think I put that money there?" he asked in a strained voice. "I'm sure I don't know what to think," was the dogged answer, and now Si turned his gaze away. "Haskett said--well, you know what,--and Cal Blinker backed him up in it," he went on, hesitatingly. "Yes, I know what Haskett and Blinker said," answered Walter. "But--but--do you think I stole your money?" The words would scarcely come, but he forced them out. "I don't say that, Walter; but the whole thing looks mighty queer." "I have it!" burst out Caleb. "Perhaps Walter put the money there when he was asleep. Folks often do queer things when they have the nightmare." "Yes, but if he put it there while he was asleep, how did he come by it in the first place?" questioned Si, bluntly. "Perhaps he took it out of the bag while he was asleep on the train," suggested Caleb. "You had the bag with you all the way from Boston, didn't you?" "Yes." "And Walter bunked with you, too?" "He did." "Then it's as plain as day," went on the old gunner. "Walter took the money while you were asleep on the train and hid it away in his clothing, or somewhere. When he got on board he took to sleep-walking and put the piece under the gun. Of course he doesn't know anything about the transaction." Again all eyes were turned upon Walter, whose face was as red as ever. "Perhaps that's true--but it's mighty queer," murmured Colton, the second gun-captain. "I don't believe I did anything of the sort!" cried the youth, at last. "I can give you my word on it that I never saw Si's money until just now. To my mind, this whole matter is a job put up by Jim Haskett. He took the money, and then when Si raised such an ado about it he was afraid to get it changed or to spend it, and he watched his chance to get rid of it. He's down on me, and when he heard me mutter in my sleep he formed his plan to get me into trouble. I'm going to find Haskett on the spot." And off he rushed before anybody could detain him. Haskett was discovered mending his jacket, which had become torn the evening before. "What do you want?" he asked, as Walter ran up and caught him fiercely by the arm. "I want you to own up to your dirty trick on me," answered the boy. "You thought you had me, but your little plot won't work." "What do you mean?" blustered Haskett, although he knew well enough what was coming. By this time the crowd had followed Walter, and they gathered round the pair. Soon Haskett had heard all there was to say. "Don't lay it off on me," he cried. "I knew Russell was guilty from the start. Si Doring can think as he pleases. As for me, I'm glad that I'm not training with a night-walker--or a thief." Walter leaped forward with blazing eyes. But before he could strike out, Caleb caught him, while another man held Haskett. Then, before anything more could be done or said, Si stepped to the front. "Haskett, I lost the money, and I think I ought to have the biggest say in this matter. If you played a trick on Walter, you are the meanest man that ever trod the deck of a ship. If you didn't, let me say that I don't think Walter stole the gold piece, although he may have taken it while he was asleep and not responsible for his doings." "Thank you for saying that, Si," came from Walter. "But I don't think I took it even when asleep. To my mind Haskett is guilty, and nobody else." "If I wasn't held--" began Haskett, when a young seaman named George Ellis, chief yeoman of the _Brooklyn_, stepped forward and asked to know what the trouble was about. "I think I can tell something about this," said George Ellis, after the matter had been explained. "You just hold your jaw!" stormed Haskett. "You don't know anything." "I know what I see," answered the chief yeoman, pointedly; and something in his manner attracted such attention that all in the crowd gathered around to learn what he might have to say. CHAPTER XIV KEY WEST, AND THE LAST OF JIM HASKETT George Ellis was known to be an upright honest man, and one whose word was worth taking upon every occasion. He had an education above that of the ordinary man in the navy, and was anxious to make something of himself while in the service of his country, never dreaming, alas! that his life was so soon to be taken from him during our struggle in the cause of humanity and Cuban freedom. "And what did you see?" questioned Caleb, as all eyes were turned upon Ellis, inquiringly. "It was last night," answered the Range Finder, for such was the man's popular title, given him because he was so good at determining distances. "I was rather feverish and couldn't sleep. I walked the berth deck for a while and then went up to Walton's gun and stood leaning out of the porthole, gazing at the water. "Presently I heard a slight noise behind me, and turning around I saw in a dim way the figure of a man behind me. He was bending down under the gun, as if he was hunting for something. I was just on the point of speaking to him when he straightened up and slunk away as silently as a ghost. I watched him, and when he got under the rays of the electric light I got a good look at his face." "And was it this man?" cried Si, pointing to Jim Haskett. "It was." With a cry of anger Si leaped upon Haskett and bore him to the deck. "You good-for-nothin' rascal!" he panted. "Will try to shove off your dirty tricks on Walter, eh? So you stole my money and then got afraid to use it? Take that, and that, and that!" Each _that_ was a blow in the face, one on the cheek, another on the nose, and a third directly in Haskett's left eye. They were heavy, and Haskett roared with pain. "Let up!" he sputtered. "Let go of me,"--the latter to Caleb, who still held him. "Oh, my eye! Is this fair fighting, two to one?" "It is as fair as you treated Walter," answered Caleb. "Give him another, Si; he deserves it." And Si followed directions by planting a blow on Haskett's neck, something which spun the former mate of the _Sunflower_ around like a top. At last Haskett broke loose and backed away. "I'll get square on all of you!" he foamed, shaking his fist first at Caleb and then at the others. "I'm not done yet." [Illustration: "I'LL GET SQUARE ON ALL OF YOU!"] "I've a good mind to report you," put in Walter. "I reckon you'd be good for a month in irons, on bread and water." At this Haskett grew pale. "The officers won't believe your story. Ellis, and the rest of you haven't any witnesses," he replied, but his voice shook. "Just wait; my day will come some time." And then, as Si started to advance again, he beat a hasty retreat. "That settles that mystery," remarked Caleb, when the excitement was over. "I calculate, Walter, that you are not sorry the way matters came out." "No, indeed." Walter turned to George Ellis. "I owe you one for your kindness. I'll not forget it." "That's all right--I only did what any fair-minded fellow would do," answered the chief yeoman, and strolled away. It was time for dinner, and Walter hurried off arm in arm with Si, who was still somewhat worked up over what had happened. "Walter, don't you go for to imagine I thought you guilty," said the Yankee boy. "I know you are honest to the core." "Even if I do talk in my sleep," said Walter, from whose heart a great load had been lifted. Once more the course of the Flying Squadron had been changed and now they were making straight for the coast of Florida. Tuesday passed quietly, although the same vigilance prevailed as before. It was evident, come what might, Commodore Schley did not mean to allow the enemy to catch him napping. They had passed through the Straits of Florida, and now they turned to the westward, past a number of the Florida Reefs. Far across the ocean could be seen the low-lying shore, backed up by stately palms and other trees. The weather was now much warmer. "You see, we are drawing closer to the equator," remarked Caleb. "I reckon we are bound for Key West." And his surmise proved correct, for they dropped anchors in Key West Harbor early on the morning following. "What a lot of warships around here," cried Walter, as he came on deck. "What is that big fellow over yonder?" "That is the _Iowa_," answered the old gunner. "You can well say big fellow, for the _Iowa_ is the largest seagoing battleship we possess. She has a displacement of over eleven thousand tons and can speed in any sea at over seventeen knots. She carries four 12-inch guns and a whole host of others. Her armor belt is solid steel, fourteen inches thick." "She's a beauty. I wonder if she will go out with us?" "That is according to what Rear Admiral Sampson has to say about it, lad. You see, this campaign in Atlantic waters is largely in his hands." The _Iowa_ lay quite close, and during the day several messages were transmitted from one warship to the other by means of the wig-wag system. Walter had now mastered the mysteries of wig-wagging and amused himself by spelling out the messages as they passed to and fro. A salute had been fired when the commodore entered the harbor, eleven rounds being shot off. "If he was a rear-admiral, he'd get thirteen guns," explained Caleb. "You see the salute varies from the President down. McKinley gets twenty-one guns, the Vice-President or Secretary of the Navy nineteen guns, a foreign minister fifteen guns, a consul seven guns, and so on. By counting the guns every man on the ships can tell what sort of a dignitary has arrived." It was a cloudy day, and the air was so close that Walter was glad enough to take it easy. Presently he saw a boat leave the side, containing several petty officers and George Ellis and Jim Haskett. "I wonder where they are going," said Walter to Si. "Some special business for Captain Cook," answered Paul, who stood near. "Oh, but Haskett is in an ugly mood to-day. It will be a big wonder if he and Ellis don't get into a fight before they come back." "Ellis is too much of a gentleman to fight with any one," returned Walter. "By the way, what is his real position on board?" "He is chief yeoman," replied Si. "He is going ashore to look after some ship's stores, so I heard him tell one of the paymasters." The small boat was soon out of sight, and Walter turned away to seek the shade, for it was growing hotter and hotter. "If this is a sample of weather in the torrid zone, what shall we do when we get into Cuban waters?" he observed. "We are not very far from Cuban waters now," said the Yankee youth. "We could make Havana in six or seven hours if it was necessary." "I wonder how the people of that city feel, Si, all cooped up as they have been for so long." "I reckon they wish they had some fighting ships to come out after us, Walter. I've heard it said that General Blanco hardly knows how to turn himself, food is so scarce and so many idlers are about. It wouldn't surprise me if they had a riot there, if they haven't had one already. Even soldiers won't keep quiet when the grub fails." But little could be seen of Key West outside of the numerous shipping. Presently a couple of petty officers came along with marine glasses and one pointed out to his companion several Spanish prizes in the port. "They'll be worth a good bit of money to the sailors on the blockade," he added. "I wish we were in for a share of the spoils." "There are several transports," said Caleb, on joining his friends. "They are fitting out to go to Tampa. It won't be long before an army of invasion starts for Cuba." "I wonder if my brother Ben will go along," mused Walter, but just then to get word from his older brother was impossible. Inside of two hours the small craft came back. Somewhat to his surprise Walter saw that Jim Haskett was missing. He would not have thought much of this had it not been that the _Brooklyn_ was already preparing to continue on her trip. "Haskett did not come back," he announced to Si. "I'll wager something is wrong." "Oh, I guess not," said the Yankee youth; nevertheless, he, too, began to watch for the former mate of the _Sunflower_. Several hours later Walter passed George Ellis on the upper deck and saluted. The chief yeoman hesitated and then called Walter to him. "I suppose you and your friend will be interested to know that James Haskett has been left behind at Key West under military arrest," he began. "Indeed! And what for, if I may ask?" "For getting into a rough-and-tumble fight with a soldier named Grumbell. It seems Grumbell once owned a fishing-smack down East, and Haskett failed to settle up on a cargo of fish he sold for Grumbell three years ago. They had a quarrel of words and then got to blows, and Haskett hit a captain of the regulars who tried to separate them. Both he and the soldier are now in prison, and I rather imagine it will go pretty hard with the seaman, for striking a captain is no light offence." And after a few words more, George Ellis passed on. Of course Walter lost no time in carrying the news to his friends. All listened with interest, and Si said he was glad Haskett was gone. "And I hope he doesn't ever come back," he added. And Jim Haskett never did come back, nor did Walter ever set eyes on the man again. For quarrelling with the soldier and striking the captain of the regulars, Jim Haskett was dishonorably discharged from the navy, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment at hard labor. Thus, in a roundabout way, was the rascal made to suffer the punishment he so richly deserved. CHAPTER XV FROM CIENFUEGOS TO SANTIAGO BAY From Key West the Flying Squadron set sail direct for Cienfuegos. The _Brooklyn_, _Massachusetts_, _Texas_, and _Scorpion_ left together, and were followed, twenty-four hours later, by the _Iowa_, mentioned in the previous chapter, and by the _Castine_ and the collier _Merrimac_. Cienfuegos is a town of good size lying on a small bay on the south coast of Cuba, about midway between the eastern and western extremities. For several days the Navy Department had been watching, or trying to watch, the movements of the Spanish squadron, satisfied at last that it was somewhere in Cuban waters. One report had it that Admiral Cervera was at Cienfuegos, another that he was at Santiago de Cuba, many miles to the eastward. Commodore Schley was now sent out to bring the truth to light, were it possible to do so. The rainy season, as it is termed, was at its height in this vicinity, and the showers came down nearly all day, striking the hot metal decks, and converting the water into something closely resembling steam. It was so muggy and uncomfortable that hardly any of the jackies could sleep, and more than one poor fellow was overcome and had to be carried to the sick bay for treatment. "If that Spanish squadron has passed Santiago and Cienfuegos, and is crawling up around the western turn of Cuba, it won't be long before we see some hot work," observed Caleb, as he lounged at a porthole, devoid of any clothing but his shirt and trousers. "Any kind of work would be hot," said Walter, laughingly. "Why, I think a fellow could cook eggs on deck." "Puts me in mind of a voyage I took to South America," put in Si, who had just soused his head into a bucket of water, and was dripping from nose, ears, and chin in consequence. "We lay off the mouth of the Amazon for two days, waiting to get on a cargo of rubber. It was right under the equator, and the tar just poured out of all our seams. One afternoon I ran across the deck in my bare feet, for I was taking a swim, and as true as I live I blistered my feet." "Oh, that's nothing," returned Caleb, dryly. "I was under the equator once, off the coast of Columbia in the bark _Sally D_. The captain let us go fishing in the jolly-boat. We caught about a dozen fish and threw 'em in the bottom as fast as they came in, and when we got back to the bark hang me if the first two fish we had brought up weren't baked as nice as you please, all fit for the captain's table." And Caleb turned away and began to whistle softly to himself, while Si continued his ablutions without another word. Among old sailors, "matching yarns" is a constant pastime, and the stories sometimes told would shame even a Baron Munchausen. The watch on board of the warship was now more strict than ever, and the men slept at their guns, sometimes not seeing a hammock for several nights. Everybody, from the captain down to the apprentices, felt that a crisis could not be far off. It must not be imagined that while Commodore Schley was skirting the southern coast of Cuba, the northern coast was neglected, for such was not the case. The blockade of Havana and vicinity still continued, and in addition Rear-Admiral Sampson took his own flagship, the _New York_, and several other warships, and sailed eastward, thinking to occupy the St. Nicholas Channel. Thus, if Admiral Cervera tried to gain the vicinity of Havana by the northern coast, he would be likely to fall in with Sampson; if he took the southern way, Schley would intercept his path. By keeping his ships in the St. Nicholas Channel Sampson remained ever ready to dash northward should the Spanish destroyers take a new course and show themselves along our own coast. "We are coming in sight of land," cried Walter, toward nightfall, two days after leaving Key West. "I suppose this is some port on the southern coast of Cuba." "It is Cienfuegos Bay," returned Caleb. "I just heard one of the officers say so. We're to lie at anchor until morning, and then perhaps the fun will commence." At this announcement Walter's heart beat quickly, and it must be admitted that he did not sleep a wink that night for speculating on what the morrow might bring forth. In this particular, his thoughts were not far different from those of every one else on board. Daybreak brought more rain, and the big warship rode on the long swells of the ocean grim and silent. Not far away lay the _Texas_, and several newcomers could be seen approaching from a distance. "This looks like business," observed Si to Walter, and the boy nodded. Immediately after breakfast the signal was hoisted to clear ship for action, and once more the jackies rushed to their various places and got into fighting trim. Then the great engines of the _Brooklyn_ began to work, and they crept slowly toward the entrance to the harbor. "If Cervera is there, he keeps himself pretty well hidden," remarked one of the officers, within hearing of Walter. "I don't see anything that looks like a warship." Presently the flagship came to a halt, and the _Texas_ steamed past her and quite close to the harbor. Here the Spaniards had a small land battery, but it kept silent. The inner portion of the bay was hidden from view by a high spur of land. What to do next was a problem. If the Spanish squadron was really there, it would be foolhardy to rush in and do battle while the enemy would have the support of the shore battery. Commodore Schley thought the matter over and, ever on the alert, decided to play a waiting game. Sunday passed without anything unusual developing, and so did the day following. The strain on the men at the guns was great, for they were on duty constantly. Night and day the bosom of the outer bay was closely watched, for it was known that Cervera had with him one or two torpedo-boat destroyers, and these were dreaded more than anything else. "Let one of those torpedo destroyers get near us, and we'll go up as quickly as did the _Maine_," said Caleb. "I'm not afraid of the dagos, but let me get out of the way of a torpedo boat every time." And this opinion was shared by all Walton's messmates. "There's another boat coming up," announced Si, at six o'clock on Tuesday morning. "Walton, what do you make her out to be?" "She's the _Marblehead_," was the old gunner's answer, after a long look at the craft. "And she's got despatches for the commodore," he added, as the signal went up and a small boat put off for the _Brooklyn_. Soon Commander McCalla of the _Marblehead_ came on board, and a long conference with Commodore Schley resulted, after which the newly arrived officer departed for his own warship with all possible speed. McCalla's mission was to communicate with the Cuban insurgents who were encamped near Cienfuegos, with a view to ascertaining if Admiral Cervera's ships were really in the harbor. The morning passed quietly, and by noon the _Marblehead_ and her commander returned. The Cuban spies had made an investigation, and not a single ship of war belonging to Spain had been found, outside of a little harbor vessel of small moment. It was now thought that if Admiral Cervera was not at Cienfuegos he must either be on his way hither or at Santiago. Accordingly, toward evening, the squadron received orders to sail for Santiago. "We're off for Santiago Bay," said Caleb. "And if we don't find the dagos there, I'll give up where they are. Perhaps they have gone back to Spain." He continually alluded to the Spaniards as dagos,--a term which became quite common among soldiers and sailors during the war, although many referred to the enemy as the Dons. It had cleared off, and the sun shone down fiercely on the deck and elsewhere. Inside of the steel turrets the air was stifling, and no one could remain at his post over a couple of hours. From below, the engineers, firemen, and coal-heavers came up constantly for a whiff of fresh air. "We're badly enough off," remarked Walter. "But look at those poor chaps. Why, some of the firemen look ready to melt." "Yes, and the worst of it is they never get any credit when it comes to a battle," added Caleb. "Now to my mind, the engineer who sticks to his engine during a battle, obeying orders and running the risk of having a shot plough through a boiler and scald him to death, is just as much of a hero as the chap behind a gun--and in one way he's more of a hero; for if the ship should start to sink, a gunner has got the chance to leap overboard and swim for it, while the man below is likely to be drowned like a rat in a trap." "And the coal-heavers work harder than negroes," put in Paul. "Just think of the tons and tons of coal they shovel every twenty-four hours when we are under full steam. I'm quite certain such work would break my back." "Oh, life on a warship isn't all a picnic," was Si's comment. "If a fellow enlists to have an easy time of it, he deserves to get left. I enlisted to serve Uncle Sam, and I'm going to do it--if Providence will give me the chance." As Commodore Schley sailed toward Santiago from Cienfuegos, Rear-Admiral Sampson, gaining additional information concerning the whereabouts of the enemy, moved slowly and cautiously eastward toward Cape Maysi and the Windward Passage. Thus, if Cervera was where he was supposed to be, he was bound to be discovered before many more days passed. "Do you know anything about Santiago Bay?" asked Si of Walter. "I've travelled to South America and Central America, but I never stopped anywhere in Cuba." "I know only what the geographies teach," answered Walter. "It is on the south side of Cuba, a hundred and some odd miles from the eastern end of the island. It is said to be a very pretty harbor, about eight miles long and one to two miles wide. Santiago, which is the next largest Cuban city to Havana, is located on the northeast shore. I heard Caleb say that the entrance to the harbor is shaped like the neck of a crooked bottle, and that on the eastern side there is a strong fortress called Morro Castle, and opposite to it a heavy concealed battery called La Zocapa. Somehow, it's in my mind that we'll see a good deal of the harbor before we come away," concluded the boy. CHAPTER XVI THE FINDING OF ADMIRAL CERVERA'S FLEET "Well, this doesn't look much like fighting." It was Paul who uttered the remark. The youngest member of the gunners' crowd rested in the shadow of one of the long guns, half asleep. Near by sat Walter and Si, each writing letters, although there was no telling when the communications would be taken from the _Brooklyn_ and sent home. At Key West Walter had looked for some word from Ben and from Job Dowling, but none had come. "I'd like to know if my uncle went to Boston, and if he learned anything concerning that Deck Mumpers and the stolen heirlooms," Walter observed to Si, after nodding to Paul, in agreement that it didn't look like fighting. "Well, you'll have to possess your soul in patience," answered the young Yankee. "But oh, this is dead slow!" And thrusting his letter into an envelope, he addressed it and laid it away. Several days had been spent around the mouth of Santiago Bay, without anything being brought to light. If the Spanish fleet was within the harbor, it knew enough to keep out of sight, that was certain. "If I was Commodore Schley, I'd rush past old Morro and make short work of this," grumbled Paul, stretching himself and yawning. "Why, we'll all die of laziness if this keeps on." "I hear the _Merrimac_ has broken down," put in Caleb, who had just come below. "That means another wait of twenty-four hours or more, even if Cervera isn't in the harbor. Why under the sun must those dagos play such a game of hide-and-seek? Why can't they come up and fight like men?" "Perhaps Admiral Cervera is bombarding some of our cities at this very moment--" began Si, when a sudden loud hurrah caused all hands to leap up and make for the deck. "What's up?" came from a hundred throats. "The _Iowa_ has just signalled that she has seen a big Spanish warship showing her nose around the harbor point!" was the wild answer. "We've found the Dons at last!" And then came another hurrah and a wild yell. "Let us get at 'em! Down with the Spaniards! Remember the _Maine_ and Dewey's victory at Manila!" Commodore Schley was on the afterbridge of the flagship. As the yelling broke loose, he smiled grimly. "Yes, they must be in there," he said to Captain Cook. "And if they are, they'll never get home." Prophetic words, as the events of just five weeks later proved. Owing to the heavy swells of the ocean, the warships under the commodore's command had drifted somewhat apart, but now, when it was known definitely that Admiral Cervera's ships were in the harbor before them, the various craft were signalled to draw closer, until they lay within four to six miles of the entrance. This may seem a long way off to some of my readers, but it must be remembered that guns of the present day can carry as far as ten to twelve miles when put to it, and a destructive fire can be maintained at seven or eight miles. The night that followed was a trying one, for no one knew but that Admiral Cervera's warships might come dashing out of the bay at any instant ready to do them deadly battle. The _Brooklyn_ had long since been stripped for action, many articles of wood being thrown overboard, to avoid splinters when shot and shell began to fall. The small boats were covered with strong nets, also to keep splinters away, and everywhere throughout the ship the hoses were connected with the water-plugs, to be used in case of fire, and all water-tubs were kept filled for a like purpose. The magazines were kept open, and every gun, big and little, stood ready to be fired at the word of command. Even the wardroom tables were cleared off and covered with the sick-bay cloths, and the surgeons saw to it in a quiet way that their bandages, knives, and saws were ready to hand. "Say, but that looks like war, eh?" whispered Paul, jerking his thumb in the direction of one of the improvised operating tables. "Gracious, it's enough to give a fellow a cold shiver." "Then don't look that way, Paul," answered Walter. "As Si said, life here isn't expected to be a picnic. We may gain lots of glory, but we'll have to work for it,--and maybe suffer, too." It was the 30th of May, Decoration Day, but no services of a special character were had, although the Civil War was talked of by a dozen veterans of both the North and the South, who were now standing once more shoulder to shoulder, as Washington, Jefferson, and a hundred other patriots of old had intended that they should stand, once and forever. "We're under the stars and stripes to stay," said one man who had worn the gray at Gettysburg. "Just let those Dons show themselves, and we'll lick 'em out of their boots." The man's name was Berkeley, and he was as good a soldier as he was a sailor, and wore both Union and Confederate medals for bravery. Walter had just fallen into a light doze early in the morning when a dull booming awoke him with a start, and made him leap to his feet. "What is that--guns firing?" he asked. "That's it, lad," came from Caleb. "The commodore is giving his defiance to the enemy, I reckon. There she goes again," he went on, as half a dozen sullen reports rolled over the water. "I just wish we were in this." A Spanish warship, the _Christobal Colon_, had again showed herself at the entrance to Santiago Bay, and the _Iowa_, the _Massachusetts_, and the _New Orleans_, had been ordered to move to within seven thousand yards and open fire. Away they darted, and passed and re-passed the harbor entrance twice, firing as they sailed. What damage was done it was impossible to tell, but that the _Colon_ was hit seemed very probable, for she soon disappeared. The shore batteries also took part, and sent one big shell directly over the _Iowa_, where it burst with a noise that was deafening, but without doing any damage. "Gracious! what a racket!" exclaimed Walter, as he watched the bombardment from afar. "Racket!" repeated Caleb, who stood beside him. "Why, lad, this is nothing to what we'll have when we get mixed up. I only hope the commodore signals us to line up for the scrap," he went on, for Commodore Schley had left the _Brooklyn_ temporarily, and hoisted his pennant on the _Massachusetts_. But the signal did not come, much to the old gunner's disappointment. By dark the bombardment was at an end. It had been brought about by the commodore with the view to ascertain the strength of the enemy, his ability to shoot straight, and the number and location of the shore batteries. Now this information was gained, and it was likely to be of great value in the near future. It had been decided, should Admiral Cervera's fleet be discovered in Santiago Bay, that Commodore Schley should unload the collier _Merrimac_ as quickly as possible, and then sink the craft directly across the channel at the narrow entrance. If this was accomplished, it would make it impossible for the Spanish warships to escape until the sunken wreck was blown up and cleared away, and in the meantime several other available American vessels could be hurried to the scene of action. A number of spies had been sent ashore, and at last the commodore was positive that the enemy was just where he wanted him. "And now we'll sink the _Merrimac_ and bottle him up," he said. The _Merrimac_ was an iron steamboat of five thousand tons' burden. She had previously been a "tramp" steamer; that is, one going from port to port, picking up any cargo that came to hand. She carried a large quantity of coal for the various ships, and, as we already know, had followed the Flying Squadron from Key West to Cienfuegos and the present ocean territory. She was a heavily built craft, carrying two masts, and just the right sort for the plan now at hand. A heavy salute on the morning of June 1 announced the coming of Admiral Sampson with a number of additional warships,--the _New York_, _Oregon_, _Mayflower_, _Porter_, and others. The _New York_, it may be added here, was a cruiser, similar to the Brooklyn, only somewhat smaller. The _Oregon_ was a battleship of the first class, of over ten thousand tons' displacement, and carried four 13-inch, eight 8-inch, and four 6-inch guns in her main battery, over twenty guns in her secondary battery, besides several Gatling guns and three torpedo tubes. This noble vessel had just made a record for herself by steaming, at full speed, from San Francisco, around Cape Horn, to our eastern coast, without a break-down,--a journey without precedent for a heavy battleship, so far as our own navy was concerned. In the past, foreign critics had imagined that our vessels were not quite as good as theirs in thoroughness of build; now these critics were silenced, and they stood looking on, and wondering what those "clever Yankees" would do next. The _Merrimac_ had been under the command of Captain James Miller, but now she was eased of a large quantity of her coal, and turned over to Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson, an assistant naval constructor. Hobson had his plans arranged in detail for sinking the _Merrimac_, and all he asked for was a crew of six or seven men, to aid him in running the collier into the harbor channel. "I know it looks like certain death to go in," he said, "and therefore I want only volunteers with me." "You can get them easily enough," said Rear-Admiral Sampson, with a smile. "I know a hundred men on the _New York_ who will be only too anxious to go, no matter how dangerous the mission." Volunteers were called for, and, to the credit of our navy, be it said, that the crews of the different ships offered themselves almost to a man. "We can die only once," said one old gunner; "take me!" "I'd like to go, captain," said Caleb, appealing to Captain Cook. "Can't you put me on the list somehow?" "I'll go," said Walter, readily, and Si said the same. Paul was so young that he knew they would not take him. Of course where only seven men were wanted and hundreds had begged to be allowed to go there were numerous disappointments. At last the list was made up of the following--names to be remembered by every patriotic young American: Lieutenant Hobson, in command; O. W. Deignan, helmsman; G. F. Phillips, engineer; F. Kelley, fireman; J. Murphy, coxswain; G. Charette, mine batteries; D. Montague, anchor hand; R. Clausen, extra wheelman. The men were all experienced sailors, and fully realized the extreme peril which awaited them, when they should run the _Merrimac_ in directly under the fire of Morro Castle and the La Zocapa battery. A start was made late on Wednesday night, the _Merrimac_ cruising up and down before the harbor entrance, trying to gain a favorable opportunity for entering. But none showed itself, and by orders of the rear-admiral the attempt was postponed until the night following. In the meantime a catamaran was built and attached to the _Merrimac's_ side, to be used in getting away in case the small boats became disabled when the craft was wrecked. CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH THE "MERRIMAC" IS SUNK "It's too bad we can't get places on the _Merrimac_," observed Walter to Si, as the two walked to their quarters after the selection of men had been made. "If Lieutenant Hobson succeeds in getting the collier up in the harbor entrance and sinking her, it will be a big feather in his cap." "My idea is that the heavy guns of old Morro will blow the _Merrimac_ clean out of the water before she gets within quarter of a mile of where she is to be sunk," answered the Yankee lad. "Those on board are running the greatest risk of their lives." "But the glory, Si!" "No glory if you're killed." "But you said you would go." "So I would--but I wouldn't expect to come back alive. I'll wager we never see Hobson again, nor none of his men." The fierce heat of the day had given Walter a headache. As evening came on it grew worse, and he was not able to sleep during the night. "I hope I'm not getting the Cuban fever," he remarked to Caleb, who had offered several simple remedies ready at hand. "Better report and go on the sick list," advised the old gunner. "If it's fever, the sooner you take it in hand the better." At first Walter demurred, but finally, as the ache in his head began to creep all over him, he reported to one of the surgeons. "I don't want to go into the sick bay," he said, "but I wish you would give me something." "Yes, you need something," was the answer. "We don't want any men to get down so soon. We may have to stay on the blockade here for some time, if Cervera refuses to come out and fight us." "Or we block him in with the wreck of the _Merrimac_," said Walter, with a faint smile. "Oh, that will be only a temporary check, to give Admiral Sampson time to get his fleet into shape and give the army authorities time to send on an army of invasion. The army is already gathering at Tampa," replied the surgeon. The medicine was forthcoming, and Walter was at once given a big dose and told to repeat every two hours. "It has quinine in it and will make your ears ring and your head buzz, but that won't hurt you," said the surgeon. "If you feel worse by to-morrow morning, report to me again." This was at eight o'clock. By noon Walter felt as if a buzz saw was in full operation in his head, while he could not hear at all. But he continued to take the medicine, and rested in a hammock slung up in the coolest spot to be found between decks. "Oh dear!" he murmured, when left alone. "How my head does spin around! If I get very sick, whatever will become of me?" And he buried his face in his jacket sleeve, to suppress a groan that was bound to come. By nightfall he was worse, if anything, and both Caleb and Si advised him to go into the sick bay for further treatment. But he shook his head. "No, I reckon I can stand it till morning," he said. "There may be a turn for the better by that time." Midnight found him on deck, under the impression that the fresh night air would do him some good. To tell the truth, he was hardly responsible for what he was doing, for his head was in a worse whirl than at any time previous. He staggered to the side and leaned over. The warship rose and fell on the bosom of the ocean, and the water danced and twinkled before his eyes. Nobody was near him. How it all happened he could never tell afterward. He must have leaned over too far, or slipped, for suddenly he seemed to awake as by a shock, and felt himself going down and down into the greenish element which washed up against the _Brooklyn's_ sides. He tried to scream, but his mouth filled with water and he could only splutter. When at length he arose to the surface, the waves had carried him a hundred feet away from the ship. He tried to cry out, but he was too weak to utter more than a whisper. He threw out his hands and began to swim in a mechanical way. But instead of carrying him back whence he had come, the mighty waves lifted him closer and closer to shore. Ten minutes had passed, and Walter felt that he could keep up no longer, when he came into contact with a large box which had at one time been filled with naval stores, but which, on being emptied, had been thrown overboard from one of the warships. The box was over four feet in length and built of heavy slatting, and afforded a fair degree of buoyancy. Lying across the top of the receptacle he floated on, wondering in a bewildered way how this strange adventure was going to end. "If only I could get to one of our ships," he thought. "If I don't, I must either drown or else be cast up on the coast, in which case the Spaniards will most likely capture me. If I--Oh, there is a ship now!" Walter was right; a two-masted vessel was bearing directly down upon him. The vessel carried no lights and moved along as silently as a ghost. "I'll be run down!" was the boy's agonizing thought, when, on coming within a few hundred feet, the craft began to turn in a small circle. Then, when halfway around, her engines came to a stop and she drifted idly on the waves. A chain was dangling from the vessel's stern. It was but three yards away, and making a frantic leap Walter clutched it and hung fast. Scarcely had this been accomplished than the steamer moved off again, dragging him behind her. In his weak state it is a wonder that Walter was not compelled to relinquish his hold; but life is sweet to us all, and he hung on grimly, and setting his teeth, began to climb up the chain hand over hand. In a few minutes he reached the taffrail, fell, rather than climbed, over, and dropped unconscious on the deck. How long he lay in this state Walter did not know. He came to his senses to find himself being shaken by somebody bending over him. "What are you doing here?" was the rough demand. "Don't you know that all of the regular crew were ordered off at three o'clock?" "I--I--where am I?" stammered Walter, sitting up. "Where are you? Don't you know?" "No, sir." "You're on board of the _Merrimac_." "The _Merrimac_!" echoed the boy, and attempted to rise to his feet. He was still very weak, but otherwise his involuntary bath had done him much good. "Exactly; the _Merrimac_. How dare you remain on board against orders?" "I didn't remain on board. I--I fell off of my own ship, the _Brooklyn_, and came near drowning, when this vessel came along and I managed to catch hold of a chain that is dragging over the taffrail. I climbed up and then--then I don't remember anything more." "Humph! that's a likely story. How did you happen to fall overboard?" went on the man, who was one of the volunteers on this never-to-be-forgotten expedition. In a few words Walter told him. By this time the youth felt stronger, and got up on his feet. "I hope I shan't be in the way," he said, as he concluded. "You had better keep out of the way," was the grim return. "Come forward, and I'll report the matter to Lieutenant Hobson. If you have to go in with us, the best thing you can do is to strip off your clothing, and buckle a life preserver around you--just as the rest of us have done. Of course if you were on the _Brooklyn_ you know what we intend to do, and let me tell you we've some mighty hot work ahead of us." And throwing him a life preserver, the man stalked off, leaving Walter standing on the forward deck of the collier in the darkness. It was a little after three o'clock in the morning, and the _Merrimac_ was headed north-northeast, directly for the harbor entrance. From far ahead shone a Spanish flashlight, located on a hill, and by steering for this, Lieutenant Hobson knew the craft would be taken just where he wanted her. Walter was but lightly attired, and without stripping off any more clothing he placed the life preserver around him, under the arms. "When the _Merrimac_ goes down, we may not even have the catamaran to fall back on," he thought. Boom! It was the report of one of the Spanish guns on shore, and a heavy shot whizzed over the bridge of the _Merrimac_, where Lieutenant Hobson and the helmsman were standing, and fell into the waves on the starboard side. The aim was so close that the wind from the shot carried off the helmsman's cap! Other shots soon followed, and in the excitement of the moment Walter's presence on board was forgotten. The _Merrimac_ was now running at a tremendous rate of speed, her fires roaring fiercely and her boilers threatening to burst at any instant. Quivering from stem to stern under such high pressure, she shot into the harbor entrance and straight for the narrowest part of the channel. By this time the Spanish guns from all sides were sending down on her a shower of shot and shell, awful to contemplate. Seeing he could do nothing, Walter ran for the shelter of one of the companionways. "Put the wheel hard a-port!" came the order from the bold commander, who, if he was excited did not show it. "Lively now!" "Ay, ay, sir!" came from the helmsman, and the wheel went over, and was lashed fast. "She isn't coming over!" came another cry, a moment later, and while shot and shell were flying, in all directions. "What's the matter there? Charette, go down and look at the steering gear." At once Charette ran off at his best speed. He was gone but a moment, and came back all out of breath. "One of the rudder chains has been shot away, sir," he reported. "Shot away!" came from several. "That's bad." To this Hobson did not answer, but instantly ordered the engines stopped. "And open the sea-valves and come up," he added. "There is not a minute to lose now, lads, if we want to sink her and escape alive." Morro Castle and the battery opposite had heretofore been firing alone, but now came shots from Smith Cay, up the harbor, and from a Spanish warship which was bearing down upon the scene. "We must fire the mines now!" Walter heard somebody say. "Fire them as closely together as possible, and then make for the starboard side amidships." This order had scarcely been given when the wires attached to the mines were touched off. A sullen roar from beneath the _Merrimac_ followed, and the vessel was thrown high up in the air, while great columns of water spouted up on every side. Then slowly but surely the collier began to sink. CHAPTER XVIII WALTER'S ADVENTURE ON SHORE Although the _Merrimac_ had been blown up and was sinking, the Spaniards continued to fire upon her without interruption, and as before, the air was filled with solid shot, bursting shells, and the whistling of leaden messengers from rapid-firing rifles. The order to gather at the starboard was a wise one, for this spot was the best protected on the deck, as the port side was settling rapidly. To take to a small boat or the catamaran would have been the height of foolishness, for a strong searchlight was being thrown on the scene, and the men would have been picked off by the Spanish gunners at will. With the others Walter rushed to starboard and found a hiding-place close to the rail. "I wonder what will happen next," he muttered. He was certain that something would take place very soon, for the waves of the harbor channel were already rolling over a portion of the _Merrimac's_ deck. A few anxious minutes passed, when suddenly the doomed collier gave a heavy list to starboard, and Walter found himself sliding along the rail and unable to stop himself. "Hold on!" shouted somebody. "Who is that?" Still weak, and with the flying spray drenching his face, Walter could not answer, and in a second more the questioner had disappeared amid the gloom, smoke, and flying water. Again came a lurch of the collier, and Walter was hurled flat and sent spinning against the smoke-stack. As he arose he saw Lieutenant Hobson and his men climbing over the starboard rail. Realizing, even in his bewildered state of mind, that he could not do better than to follow them, he, too, made for the rail, going over at one point as the courageous commander of the expedition went over at another. The crew were swimming for the catamaran, which had been shoved off from the _Merrimac's_ side, and Walter came after them. Hardly had the catamaran been gained, than, with a final lurch and quiver, the _Merrimac_ went down, partly across the narrow channel, but not exactly in the position in which she would have been placed had not the rudder chain been shot away. [Illustration: WITH A FINAL LURCH THE MERRIMAC WENT DOWN.] As the craft sank, a yell came from the Spanish battery nearest at hand, the gunners thinking they had sunk an American man-o'-war and not dreaming that the sinking had been done by those on board and purposely. But none of the Americans paid any attention to these cries, all thinking only of escape, now the work of the night was over. A steam launch under the command of Ensign Joseph Powell had been moving up and down the harbor waiting for a chance to pick Hobson and his men up. But a Spanish picket boat lay between those on the catamaran and the launch, so escape in this direction was now cut off. The float was still attached by a long rope to the wreck of the _Merrimac_, and the men were now ordered to remain where they were, clinging to the catamaran with only their heads showing above water. "If you try to swim away, the Spanish sharpshooters will pick you off as quick as a wink," was the word passed around. Thus cautioned, all the brave crew remained where they were until daylight began to show itself. Then a large launch steamed up, carrying several oarsmen, half a dozen sharpshooters, and Admiral Cervera himself. "Do you surrender?" came in Spanish, while every sailor on the catamaran was carefully covered. "We surrender as prisoners of war," was Lieutenant Hobson's reply, and then he and his men were ordered to swim to the launch one at a time and give up their arms, if they had any. This was done, and the steam launch returned to the _Reina Mercedes_, one of the Spanish warships. Later on, Hobson and his men were sent ashore under a strong guard, marched up a hill to Morro Castle, and turned over to General Toral, the military governor of Santiago Province. When he made the leap for the catamaran Walter was not as fortunate as those around him. He entered the water close to the _Merrimac_, and when the great collier sank, the suction drew him under, and he went so far down that he fancied he would never come up. His breath was gone, a gulp partly filled him with water, and when at last the surface of the bay was again reached he came up more dead than alive. He set out to swim instinctively, the life preserver holding him up, although it had not been light enough to counteract the suction of the sinking ship. Where he was going he did not know, for the glare of the searchlight and the splashing of shots on the water was perfectly bewildering. "I'm lost!" he thought a dozen times. "O God, help me to get out alive!" And that prayer was answered, for presently his foot touched bottom and he saw land ahead,--a bit of sandy beach between Morro Castle and a battery located on Estrella Cove, for the tide was coming in, and had carried him up the harbor instead of down. As Walter waded out of the water he heard several pickets shouting to each other in Spanish. Without waiting for them to come nearer, he dove out of sight in some bushes back of the beach, and then started to walk to a woods still further inland. So far, the intense excitement had kept him up, but now came the reaction, and he felt as sick as he had while on the _Brooklyn_. His head began to spin and strange lights flashed before his eyes, while chills crept up and down his backbone. "I reckon I'm in for a spell of sickness, whether I escape or not," he groaned, and reaching the woods, threw himself down under a mahogany tree to rest. Walter thought he could not sleep, but presently the pain became less and he sank into a troubled slumber. He roused up to find a tall, fine-looking negro shaking him. As soon as he opened his eyes, the negro began to question him in Spanish. "I can't understand you," said the youth, and shook his head. "_Americano_, mistair?" questioned the negro, and Walter nodded. "You come from big fight, maybe?" he went on, brokenly. "What fight do you mean?" "Fight down by Morro last night. Spanish sink your ship, maybe, not so?" And the negro laughed. "Our men did the sinking. But who are you? a Spaniard?" "No, me Cuban, Carlos Dunetta." "My name is Walter Russell, but I suppose it might be Smith for all the difference it makes to you," replied Walter, moodily. "What do you intend to do? turn me over to the Spanish authorities?" "To de Spanish? No, no!" Carlos Dunetta leaned forward. "_Cuba libre!_ 'Member de _Maine_! Not so?" And he smiled broadly. "Now you are talking!" ejaculated Walter, joyfully. "You are an insurgent, I suppose. Do you belong to General Garcia's troops?" Again the negro leaned forward. "Carlos Dunetta spy for de general," he whispered. "Come, want to get away, must hurry!" And he took hold of Walter's arm. Their course was directly into the woods, under broad mahogany and grenadillo trees, and over rough rocks overgrown with rank vines. Insects and bugs were numerous and spider-webs hung everywhere. "Udder men all caught and taken to prison," said the Cuban as they progressed. "I hear dat from udder spy." "Well, I'm not out of the woods yet," said Walter, seriously. "Woods safe place in daytime," answered the negro, not catching his true meaning. They had progressed less than half a mile when Walter began to lag behind. "I can't go any farther," he declared. "I've been sick and I'm about used up." "Sick? What is de mattair?" "I don't know--unless it is malarial fever." At the word "fever" Carlos Dunetta drew down the corners of his broad mouth. "Fever? Dat is werry bad--_Americano_ canno stand dat. Maybe I best carry you to Josefina's hut. Josefina she my sistair. She take care of you if so you be sick." The tall negro took Walter upon his back with ease and continued on his way. Presently they reached a trail, and passing along this for the distance of a hundred yards, came within sight of a long, low hut, thatched with palm. The negro gave a peculiar whistle, and immediately a short, fat negro wench put in an appearance, followed by a man of twenty-five or thirty. The man was fairly well dressed, and evidently a Cuban of Spanish descent. "It is all right, Carlos!" cried the wench. "This is Señor Ramona." "Señor Ramona!" exclaimed the negro, and rushing up he dropped Walter and took the out-stretched hand of the Cuban gentleman. A long talk in Spanish, followed, of which Walter understood hardly a word. Yet he felt certain the pair were talking about the American warships outside of the harbor, the blowing up of the _Merrimac_, and about himself. Suddenly the negro ran back to him, at the same time calling the wench. "You sick--I forget," he said. "Come; nice bed here." And he pointed to a grass hammock suspended from one of the rear corner posts of the hut to a near-by tree. "You lay dare; Josefina make good drink for you; den you feel bettair." Walter was glad enough to accept the invitation, for standing unaided was now out of the question. As soon as he was in the hammock the negro woman ran off for a wet bandage, which she tied tightly over his forehead. Carlos Dunetta evidently had an important message for Señor Ramona, for no sooner was the talk between the pair at an end, than the Cuban brought out a horse from the shelter of the trees, and dashed down the trail at a breakneck speed. "Me watch, warn you if any Spaniards come," said Carlos, on returning to Walter's side. "You bettair rest, or get fever werry bad." "Do you suppose there is any hope of my getting back to my ship?" "De ship dat blow up?" "No, a big warship out there," and Walter waved his hand in the direction of the coast. At this, the tall negro shrugged his shoulders. "Carlos can take you to de shore--but no got boat. Maybe you swim, not so?" "Well, hardly," answered Walter. "I may be a pretty good swimmer, but four or five miles is too much for any man." The negro retired, and Walter lay back watching the woman, who had brought out several bags filled with herbs. Selecting some of the herbs, the woman steeped them in water, and poured the tea into an earthen bowl, sweetening the concoction with sugarcane ends. Bringing the bowl to Walter, she motioned for him to drink. The youth had expected an unsavory mess, but he found the tea very pleasant to the taste, and ten minutes after he had taken half the contents of the bowl he was in a sound slumber, from which he did not awaken until nearly nightfall. In the meantime Josefina removed the life preserver and made him otherwise as comfortable as possible, proud to think she was serving _un Americano_ who was battling against the enemies of her beloved Cuba. "You had bettair come into de house now--night air werry bad for you," announced Carlos, as Walter sat up in the hammock and stared around him. "How feel now? weak?" "I--I dreamed I was back on the _Brooklyn_ and sailing for home," was the hesitating reply. "My head feels better, but I'm afraid my legs have gone back on me," Walter went on, as on trying to stand he found he must support himself against the tree. "This is the queerest spell of sickness I ever had." "Never mind--if only so be dat de fever is broken," said Carlos, seriously. "Come." And he about carried Walter into the hut. Usually negro huts in Cuba are dirty and full of vermin, but this was an exception. In her younger days, Josefina had worked for a titled lady of Santiago, and there had learned cleanliness quite unusual to those of her standing. In a corner of the hut was a pile of fresh sugarcane husks covered with a brown spread, and to this she motioned Walter, and here he rested until the following morning. CHAPTER XIX CARLOS, THE REBEL SPY "Well, I'm not out of my troubles yet, but I suppose I'm better off than those fellows who were captured and taken off to some Spanish dungeon." It was Walter who mused thus, as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. The herb tea Josefina had made for him had "touched the spot" and he felt quite like himself again. The native Cubans have to fight fevers constantly, and, consequently, know a great deal about proper remedies. "Will you eat?" questioned Carlos, who sat by, smoking a cigarette, while Josefina busied herself in preparing a morning meal of rice-cakes and strong coffee. "I haven't much appetite, but I suppose I ought to eat if I want to get back my strength. But see here," Walter went on. "I can't pay you a cent for what you are doing for me, for I have no money with me." "Dat's all right; Josefina and me no want pay--we glad to do for you," answered Carlos; and Josefina smiled so broadly that her eyes were fairly closed. The rice-cakes were well done, and Walter ate several of them, and also sipped at the heavy black coffee, sweetened with sugarcane drippings. The meal over, Carlos leaped up and lit a fresh cigarette. "You stay here and I go to shore--see if you can get to ship," he said. "If Spaniards come, Josefina show you where to hide, so no can find you." "I'll have to stay, for I can't walk the distance to the shore--yet. By the way, where am I?" "Dis place back of Estrella, 'bout halfway to Aguadores, on the Guama River. Can see warships from mouth of Guama." "Yes, I've heard of the Guama. Some of the fellows on board ship said we might capture that point, or Guantanamo Bay, so as to have a place to coal when the ocean was rough. You are going to the shore?" "If Spanish pickets let me," grinned Carlos. "Werry strong Spanish guard around here now. Werry much afraid American soldiers come." "Perhaps they will come, if Sampson needs help," replied Walter, but without knowing that the army of invasion at Tampa was already preparing to leave for Cuba, and his own brother Ben with it. After Carlos was gone, Walter tried to carry on a conversation with Josefina, but as the wench's English vocabulary was as limited as was the boy's knowledge of Spanish, the talk soon lagged. "_Cuba libre!_ 'Member de _Maine_!" she said over and over again, and smiled that awful smile that almost caused Walter to burst into a fit of laughter. During the morning she made him some more tea and insisted upon his drinking it, greatly to the benefit of his health and strength, as he soon realized. It was growing late in the afternoon, and Walter was wondering when Carlos would get back, when the sound of a rifle-shot from a distance startled him. Before he could get to the doorway of the hut, Josefina was outside and speeding up the trail in the direction her brother had taken. "Get back!" It was the voice of Carlos, and he was running beside his sister, who kept up with him, despite her weight. "The Spaniards are coming." "Soldiers?" gasped Walter. "Yes; ten or fifteen. They caught me going through de pickets, but I knocked one so, and anodder so, and got away. Come wid me, before da catch you!" And he took hold of Walter's arm and turned him to the back of the hut. Wondering what would happen next, but remembering what had been said about a hiding-place, the youth followed Carlos to the rear wall of the structure. Here, directly against the logs, grew a tall ebony tree. "Dat tree hollow," explained the Cuban. "Climb to limb and drop inside. Josefina haul us out when Spanish go 'way." And he gave Walter a lift up. The lower branches were but twelve feet from the ground, and were easily gained. Carlos came up also. "Let me drop first," he said. "Den you come on top of me. Be quick, or too late!" And down he went into darkness, and Walter came after. The hollow portion of the tree was not over twenty inches in diameter, and it was a lucky thing for both inside that neither was stout nor broad of shoulder. As it was, they stood breast to breast with difficulty, and yet not daring to make a sound. A shout came from the trail, sounding in strange contrast to the song Josefina had begun to sing--an old-fashioned Cuban ditty about a sailor and his lass. Soon the soldiers drew closer, and several came around to the side of the hut. "Ho! within there!" came in Spanish. "Where is that wretch we are after?" "Wretch!" answered Josefina, in pretended surprise. "Whom do you mean, kind sirs?" "You know well enough--the tall fellow who knocked over our guards and ran in this direction." "I have seen nobody; I have been busy washing," answered Josefina, pointing to a few articles of wearing apparel which lay soaking in a water-butt. "You cannot humbug us!" cried the leader of the Spanish detachment, in a fury. "Tell me where they are, or I'll run you through!" And he ran at Josefina with pointed sword. It is doubtful if he intended to carry out his threat, but the wench thought him in earnest, and the yell she gave would have done credit to a cannibal of the South Sea Islands. The cry of terror from his sister was more than Carlos Dunetta could stand, and in a twinkle he placed his hands on Walter's shoulders, shoved himself upward, and showed himself at the top of the opening. "Let my sister alone, you dogs!" he burst out. "Let her alone!" And leaping to the ground, he made after the Spaniard with a drawn machete, a long knife used in the sugarcane fields and employed by the insurgents as a favorite weapon. There was a cry of alarm, and then came two shots in quick succession, followed by a fall close to the foot of the tree. "You have killed my brother!" shrieked Josefina. "Oh, Carlos, Carlos, what shall I do now?" "Back with you, you good-for-nothing woman!" came from the leader of the Spanish detachment. "I thought we were on the right trail. We ought to shoot you for lying to us." At that moment came a deep groan of pain, showing that Carlos was not yet dead. He had been shot in the arm and through the back, but the wounds were not dangerous, although painful. Without paying attention to what more the Spaniards had to say, Josefina busied herself over the body of her brother, laying him out on the grass and binding up his wounds with such rags as were handy. While she was doing this the Spaniards began an excited conversation among themselves, of which, of course, Walter understood not a word. "Your brother had a very convenient hiding-place in the tree," suggested the leader of the detachment, a greasy, lean-faced corporal, who rejoiced in the name of Pedro Ruz. "Had he not shown himself, it is doubtful if we should have located him." "You are bad men to shoot him--I want nothing to do with you," was Josefina's only response. "Go--and leave my brother to me." "Leave him here!" burst out Pedro Ruz. "No, no, he goes with us as a prisoner. If I am not mistaken, he is the spy Captain Coleo has been after these many days." "You cannot take him away--a journey will kill him." "He must go--whether it kills him or not. He can ride on the back of the horse one of my men is bringing up. Captain Coleo will want to interview him before nightfall. And let me tell you, if it is discovered that he has been carrying information to the rebels or those Yankee pigs out in the waters beyond the bay, why, so much the worse for him, that's all." And Corporal Ruz shrugged his shoulders suggestively. In a moment more the horse was brought forward, a beast as lean as its owner, since fodder in that territory was becoming a scarce article. Since Carlos could not move himself, he was lifted up to the saddle in anything but a gentle fashion. Josefina began to expostulate, but the only attention paid to her was by one of the men, who snatched at her arm and hurled her backward. "You must learn to mind your betters," said the soldier. "Our worthy corporal knows his business." "I will search the man, to see if he carries any despatches," put in Corporal Ruz. "Ha, you rascal, let me get at that breast pocket of yours. And, Camara, climb up into the tree and look into that hole. There may be something worth finding there." CHAPTER XX IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY As Walter did not understand what was said, he was not aware of his peril until the Spanish soldier began to climb the tree. Then he realized the truth, and his heart sank within him. "It's all up with me now," he half groaned. "I wonder what they will do with me after they find me." Reaching the top of the opening, the soldier paused and shouted something to his companions regarding the darkness of the hole below. "Light a match and drop it down," ordered Corporal Ruz. "This rascal carries nothing," he went on, disappointedly, having found Carlos's pockets empty of anything of value. The negro did carry a message, but it was on a small patch of thin paper, which had been rolled up tightly and concealed in his thick woolly hair. The match was lit and dropped, and all ablaze it landed upon Walter's head. He caught it in silence and put it out, but the movement was noticed from above. "There is some one else in the tree--a white man," cried the soldier. "Come out of that!" he continued. Walter guessed what the command meant, and as further concealment would have been useless he attempted to crawl from the hole. But this was not so easy, and in the end the soldier had to lend a hand, and then both leaped to the ground together. "_Un Americano!_" ejaculated Corporal Ruz. "_De donde viene V.?_" he added, asking Walter where he came from. At this the boy shook his head. "I don't understand you," he said. "_No habla V. castellano?_" continued the corporal, asking if he did not speak Spanish. Again Walter shook his head. "Yankee pig!" murmured the corporal, using a term quite common in Cuba during the war. "Why does he not learn our beautiful language? Does he expect we will learn his dirty English?" He turned to the soldier who had discovered Walter, and between them they searched the lad's clothing thoroughly, and even took off his shoes and stockings. "Nothing," growled the under-officer. "It is strange." Carlos had been almost unconscious, but was now recovering. "We are in serious trouble, I am afraid," said Walter, addressing him; but Carlos pretended not to understand, not wishing the Spaniards to know that he spoke English, for then they would have been more certain than ever that he was a spy. In a few minutes the entire party had left the hut and was making its way along the trail, Carlos on horseback and the others walking, Walter between the corporal and a Spanish private, and Josefina bringing up in the rear as if unwilling to leave her brother. The soldiers were eight in number, and each was armed with a Mauser rifle of recent pattern. They were a hungry-looking set and their uniforms were sadly in need of repair. Six were of middle age, but the other two were no older than Walter, for conscription into the Spanish army begins at as early an age as it does in the navy--some of the soldiers and sailors being scarcely fifteen to sixteen years old! The course of the party was upward, over rocks and trailing vines, and through a woods where hardly a breath of air was stirring. The heat soon made Walter's head ache again, and he was glad enough when a small Spanish camp was gained and he was allowed to sit down in the shade of a plantain and rest. The encampment was in the open, the only shelter being that provided for the officer in charge, Captain Coleo--a bit of dilapidated canvas stretched between four trees fifteen or twenty feet apart. Under this shelter were located a couple of hammocks, a small folding table for writing, and a camp chair. Walter found Captain Coleo a thorough gentleman despite his surroundings. He was well educated and spoke English fluently, with a soft accent which under other circumstances would have been quite pleasing. "So you are an American youth?" he said, after he had listened to his corporal's report and examined Carlos. "And where did you come from, and what are you doing here?" Feeling there would be no use in concealing the truth, Walter told his story. At the mentioning of the _Merrimac_ the Spanish captain's brow grew dark. "It was a brave deed, but it will do your countrymen small good," he said. "The boat is not directly across the channel, so the harbor pilots have discovered. All of your comrades are now prisoners in Morro Castle, and I presume that is where I shall have to send you." "As a prisoner of war?" "As a prisoner of war. And you can be thankful that in trying to escape you were not shot down," continued Captain Coleo. Walter was very thirsty, and said so. "You look as if you were getting ready to have the fever," was the captain's comment, and he had a soldier bring Walter a tin cup full of _guarapo_, water sweetened with sugarcane ends, and said to be healthier than the plain article. Good water in Cuba is scarce, and although Walter did not know it, it was only the captain's natural good-heartedness that obtained for him what he wanted. It had threatened rain for some hours, and as nightfall came on, the first drops of a violent tropical storm descended. Soon from a distance came the rumble of thunder, and spasmodic flashes of lightning lit up the woods. The soldiers huddled under the shelter of a clump of low trees, while Captain Coleo sought the protection of the canvas, accompanied by Walter, Carlos, and a guard. Walter's hands had been bound behind him, and he was allowed to sit on a small block of wood beside one of the hammocks in which the wounded negro reclined. "We will not move to Santiago to-night," said the Spanish captain. "I think the storm will clear away by morning." He was busy making out a report, and sat at his little table for the purpose, a spluttering Mambi taper fastened to a stick driven into the soil being his only light. The taper went out half a dozen times, but there was nothing to do but to light it again, and this Captain Coleo did without the least show of impatience. To him war was a business, and he was satisfied to take matters just as they came. The guard trudged around and around the patch covered by the canvas, his rifle on his shoulder and the never-failing Spanish cigarette in his mouth. Occasionally he glanced toward Walter and the negro, but his interest in the prisoners soon gave way to his own discomforts, and he gave them no more attention. Presently Walter felt a hand steal over his shoulder. "What you think--we run for it, maybe?" whispered Carlos. "I'd like to run, but we may get shot," whispered Walter in return. At this Carlos shrugged his shoulders. With two Mauser bullets in him the tall negro rebel was still "game." It was such men as he who had kept this unequal warfare in Cuba going for three long years despite Spain's utmost endeavors to end the conflict. "Raise up a bit and I untie rope," he said, as the guard made another round and walked from them. "Maybe we can go when big thunder and lightning come--not so?" "All right--I'll go you," cried Walter, lowly, and in a bit of Western slang. "A fellow can't die but once, and I have no desire to be taken to the dungeon of Morro Castle, or to any other Spanish lockup." He raised up, and in a trice Carlos had the cords about his wrists unloosened. Captain Coleo still sat writing. But now the taper went out again and he paused to relight it. At that instant came a blinding flash of lightning and a loud peal of thunder which startled the few horses the camp possessed and caused them to prance about madly. "Now!" cried Carlos, and with one quick leap he cleared six feet of ground between the hammock and the nearest patch of woods. Walter also leaped, and away they went side by side through the wind, rain, and darkness. Crack! crack! It was the reports of two Mausers, and the ping of a bullet from the Spanish captain's pistol followed. Walter felt a strange whistling by his ear, and putting up his hand found it covered with blood. The bullet from the pistol had scratched the side of his head. Had his aim been an inch closer, gentlemanly Captain Coleo would have killed the youth on the spot. "You are hit?" queried Carlos, breathing heavily, for loss of blood had made him weak. "I--I reckon it's not much!" panted Walter. "But hurry up--they are coming after us!" The boy was right; both the captain and the guard were following the pair with all possible speed, while three others brought up in the rear, the other soldiers remaining behind to manage the horses, three of which had broken their tethers and were bounding down the trail at a breakneck speed. Could he manage to escape? Such was the one question which Walter asked himself as he stumbled on in the darkness. A very few minutes would suffice to answer the all-important query. CHAPTER XXI THE FLIGHT TO THE SEACOAST Carlos knew the wood well, and now he took hold of Walter's hand. "Put udder arm up, or get hurt maybe," he said. "Nasty trees around here." And Walter found this was true, for presently a low and twisted branch caught him and flung him flat on his back. Had his arm been down he must have been knocked senseless. The Spanish captain and the guard came crashing along behind them, shouting "_Alto!_" (Halt) at the top of their lungs. Captain Coleo was very much chagrined that they had gotten away so easily, and blamed the guard roundly. The latter did not dare to answer back, and felt he must catch the fleeing prisoners or suffer for it. The course had been straight ahead, but now Carlos turned to the southward. Presently they came to a halt at the edge of a mountain torrent. The pursuers were still on the track and drawing closer. "Jump and go ahead; I will come after," panted Carlos, who could run no more. "Don't wait!" he added, as he saw Walter hesitate. "But yourself--" began Walter. "Never mind--go!" broke in the negro; and Walter made the leap over the stream and ran on. Instantly Carlos sought the shelter of a near-by tree and became silent. "I do not see them, _capitan_," observed the guard, as he and Captain Coleo reached the spot. "Have they crossed, do you think?" "I will see, Rampo," was the answer, and the captain hurried on in the direction Walter had taken. Scarcely was he out of sight than with set teeth Carlos came forth from the shadow of the tree and crawled up behind Rampo as silently as a panther seeking its prey. A quick, nervous clutch and the negro had the soldier's Mauser. Then came a heavy swing of the butt, and with hardly a groan the Spanish guard went down with a broken skull. "_Cuba libre!_" muttered Carlos, grimly. "That for Maceo, our fallen hero!" referring to Antonio Maceo, the patriot who had led the rebels in eastern Cuba for several years, only to be shot down at last in ambush. In the meantime Walter ran on, not knowing where he was going, and hardly caring, if only his liberty might be assured to him. Occasionally a flash of lightning lit up the scene, but this only served to make the general darkness more intense. Soon his foot caught in an exposed tree-root, and he went headlong, and rolled over and over to the bottom of a hollow filled with rank vegetation, foul-smelling moss, and brackish water. Before he could collect his scattered senses he heard the Spanish captain coming up. He arose slowly to his feet, but, struck by a sudden idea, remained in the hollow, ankle-deep in water, and screened from view by the vegetation previously mentioned. A flash of lightning revealed the captain and at the same time uncovered the youth. For a second both stood spellbound, then the Spaniard drew his pistol. "Surrender!" he shouted; and the former mildness in his tone of voice was now missing. "Surrender, or I'll shoot you where you stand." [Illustration: "SURRENDER, OR I'LL SHOOT YOU WHERE YOU STAND."] "Don't shoot," answered Walter, readily. "I'll come out." "Where is that Cuban rebel?" "I don't know." "You don't know? Ha! don't fool with me, lad--I am in no humor for it now." "Well, I don't know, and that is all there is to it. We separated several minutes ago." "I do not believe you--he is hiding somewhere in the hollow. Tell me where, or as sure as I stand here, I will put a bullet through your head." And the pistol was aimed straight at Walter. Before the youth could remonstrate, indeed, before he had time to think, the crack of a Mauser penetrated the damp air. A second of silence followed, and then, to Walter's amazement, Captain Coleo sank down where he stood, a ball through his brain. "I hit him! what a fine shot!" The words came from Carlos, as he emerged into the opening, the rifle still in hand. "That makes number two, for de udder rascal is laid low with a broken head. Señor, we are in luck, but let us make de most of our chance." "But--but--is he dead?" asked Walter, in a hoarse whisper. To him such a proceeding seemed little less than murder. "Dead? To be sure he is dead. But don't let dat worry you. See de blood on your left ear, where he tried to serve you as I served him. Come, before de udder soldiers arrive." And, catching Walter by the arm, Carlos hurried him away. "And this is war!" thought the boy. "Oh, how cruel! how barbarous! But Carlos is right, the captain tried to kill me." He drew a long breath. "I'm glad I wasn't the one to knock him over." The pair had gone on about a hundred yards further when they came out on a broad highway, used principally as an ox-team road. Here Carlos called a halt again, to get his breath and take a view of the situation. "Hark--a horse come!" he ejaculated suddenly, and slipped a cartridge into the Mauser rifle, for he had taken the ammunition box from the dead soldier. "Back, out of sight--ah!" Walter ran to the shelter of a tree. But at the same time the negro bounded forward, throwing the rifle to the ground. It was no horseman approaching, only one of the animals that had broken away during the heavy thunder and lightning. Making a clutch at the beast's bridle, Carlos held fast and brought the horse to a sudden halt. "We in luck," he observed, as Walter came out of hiding. "Mount wid me, and we'll soon be miles away!" "You get into the saddle, and I'll ride behind," answered Walter, who saw how weak Carlos now was. And thus they went on until several miles had been covered. Presently, from a distance, the youth heard the booming of the surf. "Is that from the seacoast?" he asked; and the negro nodded. "And where are we?" "We close to de ocean, two or three miles east from San Juan hill. We stop pretty soon--werry much tired." And Carlos closed his eyes. He would have fallen from the horse had not Walter held him fast. "Turn to left at first cross-road," he muttered, and then fainted. "Poor chap!" thought the boy. "He kept up well, with two bullets in him. I must do what I can for him." And he urged the horse on, at the same time keeping his eyes open for the side road mentioned. Soon it came into view, and five minutes later he found himself at the entrance to a hut similar to that occupied by Josefina, who had now disappeared entirely from the scene. Beyond the hut the road lost itself in a wilderness of small brush. The hoof-strokes of the horse had been observed, and soon several men, Cubans and negroes, came from the building. "Carlos!" cried several. They turned to Walter. "What does this mean, señor?" came in Spanish. "Spaniards," answered Walter, and pointed behind him. Then he pointed to the gun and to the wounds Carlos had received, and also showed his own bloody ear and scalp. The dumb language was instantly comprehended, and two men carried the unconscious negro into the hut, while others took charge of the horse and conducted Walter inside. The lad found the small abode crowded with insurgents, who had come in to escape the drenching rain, and the air was heavy with the smoke of cigarettes and the smell of a stew seasoned with garlic, which was cooking over a lire in the rear. A constant flow of conversation was kept up, of which he understood only an occasional word. Poor Carlos was in a bad way, and by morning it was easy to see he could be removed only with difficulty. Yet he was cheerful, or tried to be so, and smiled when Walter came to him. "I have news for you," he said, in his broken English. "Your warships fight, bang, bang, bang! down by the water, at Aguadores and udder places. Think ships go up by Guantanamo Bay, maybe. If sailors land, you have a chance to join them--not so?" "I just hope some of our boys do land, and that right away!" cried Walter. "Can't I get somebody to show me the way to the seacoast?" "Gilberto, my brudder, show the way. But not to-day. Maybe to-morrow or next day--when it is safe." Gilberto had just come in; a stout negro as short as his brother was long, but a rebel fighter to the core. He, too, could speak a little English and said he had been a sailor. "Sail from Santiago to Philadelphia twice with ore," he said. "Very nice country, America; me like de people. Only werry cold in winter; no like dat--make go dis way." And he gave a shiver. Later on, Walter learned that the entire district was rich in minerals and that large quantities of these were shipped from Santiago and from a near-by town called Baiquiri. The day passed slowly, and so did the next. In the meanwhile the Cubans came and went. They were a detachment of Garcia's army, the main body of which was located many miles further northward. They were watching the seacoast and trying to communicate with the American ships of war, which could be seen on fair days lying in the offing. They knew that once a landing was effected by the Americans, Uncle Sam would speedily supply them with what they so greatly needed--clothing, guns, and ammunition. Once these were obtained, they felt that they could secure their independence. They had yet to learn that the trained soldiers of Spain could be conquered only by the equally, or better, trained soldiers of the States. On the morning of the third day, and while they could distinctly hear the sounds of heavy firing in the vicinity of Morro Castle and the Estrella battery, Walter and Gilberto started off, each on horseback. The youth felt once more like himself, for the Cubans had continued to give him drinks of herbs which had entirely banished the lurking fever in his system. Before leaving Walter heard from the negress Josefina. She had escaped injury, and fled to the northward, there to join a great number of women and children, the wives and young people of the insurgents. The course lay along a stretch of tableland and then up the side of a small mountain. At one point on the mountain top there was a clearing, and here a distant view could be obtained of the ocean to the south of the "Pearl of the Antilles," as Cuba had often been termed. "Your ship's over dare," explained Gilberto, pointing with his long fingers. "Might see dem if we had glass like dis." And he shut up one hand and placed it over the other, in imitation of a spyglass. "Do the Spaniards guard the coast?" "To be sure, señor, very heaby guard, too, at Aguadores and Guantanamo Bay." "Then we'll have to go slow when we get near the water's edge." "We no go to water right away, señor--wait till we see de coast clear. Gilberto find you good hiding-place and bring eating, and there you stay till I say come--not so?" "I suppose that will be best. I'm sure I don't want to be taken prisoner again," concluded Walter, very positively. On they went, down the opposite side of the mountain. They were now travelling in an easterly direction, and before night many miles were covered. At last they came to a series of rocks overlooking the ocean, but situated at least a quarter of a mile back from the beach proper. "Here is a good place to hide; Gilberto know it well," said the guide, and pointed out a rude cave. "Here _Americano_ can stay many days and Spaniards not find him. You take it easy, and I bring food to you." And then Gilberto hurried off alone. Walter was glad to rest, for the travelling even on horseback had been very trying. He sat down, and in half an hour Gilberto returned with some bread, some jerked beef, and a number of other eatables, done up in a bit of coffee sacking. "Dere, dat last two, t'ree days," said the guide. "Now lay low, as _Americano_ say, and Gilberto come back one day or udder. I take horses, and say _buenas noches_." And with this good night, Gilberto disappeared down the trail, leaving Walter to himself. Strange as it may seem, the youth never saw or heard of either Gilberto or Carlos again. CHAPTER XXII THE LANDING OF THE MARINES AT GUANTANAMO While Walter was in the depths of the Cuban wilderness, trying to escape from the Spanish soldiers, history, so far as it concerned our war with Spain, was moving forward rapidly. As soon as it was felt that Cervera could not escape from Santiago Bay without running the risk of a fearful battle with Admiral Sampson's or Commodore Schley's squadron, preparations were made to send an army of invasion forward. For such an army a safe landing-place must be secured, and with this in view, the American warships began the bombardment of various places along the coast, from Santiago Bay to Guantanamo Bay, twenty odd miles farther eastward. The first of these heavy bombardments took place on the sixth of June, and was directed against Morro Castle, the batteries at Punta Gorda and Zocapa, and at the village of Aguadores, already mentioned. Aguadores is several miles to the eastward of Santiago Bay, to the rear of the rocky promontory upon which Morro Castle is located, and it was felt that if once a footing could be obtained here, the actual invasion by the soldiers would become an easy matter. The bombardment lasted many hours, and the various batteries were much damaged and the Spanish warship, the _Reina Mercedes_, was so badly riddled that she was later on sunk in the channel, thus blocking the outlet to the bay more completely than ever. No damage was done to the American ships. Through this bombardment a landing was effected at Baiquiri, not far from Aguadores, by a small body of marines, who burned up some Spanish stores and spiked a number of old-fashioned guns. Following this attack came one upon Guantanamo and the other settlements clustered around the shores of the bay of that name. Here the fighting was as fierce as before, but before it was over a body of marines from the _Oregon_ were landed, and later on came six hundred marines from the _Panther_. The Spaniards stood their ground for only a short while and then fled to the mountains, and the American flag was hoisted amid a wild cheering from the troops at hand and those on the warships. No sooner had the landing-places at Guantanamo, Baiquiri, and Aguadores been secured than the army of invasion under General Shafter left Key West for these points, the particulars of which expedition have already been related in "A Young Volunteer in Cuba." Walter slept "like a rock" during the first night in the cave, being thoroughly exhausted by his long ride. He did not awaken until long after the sun had come up, and for the moment could not realize where he was. A scanty breakfast was speedily despatched, and he walked out to inspect his surroundings. Mindful of what Gilberto had told him about the enemy, he was careful how he exposed himself, and at the first sign of anything suspicious he ran to cover. Thus the day passed away slowly. In vain he tried to make out some of the warships far out at sea. To his naked eye they were but specks on that ceaseless tide which glared like molten lead in the fierce rays of the sun. On the following night the youth underwent a curious experience. He had just thrown himself down to rest when, without warning, the cave was filled with a light that was dazzling. Thinking a fire must have suddenly descended upon him, he leaped up, when, as silently as it had come, the light disappeared. "Now, what in the world does that mean?" he asked himself, and started for the cave opening, when, swish! the light came back, almost blinding him. Then he understood it all. "It's a searchlight from one of our ships!" he cried, half aloud. "If only they could see me and take me on board!" He watched for the light to reappear, but it never showed itself again, being trained upon Morro Castle and the entrance to Santiago Harbor. On the third day in the cave Walter's stock of provisions gave out. No one had come near him, and the loneliness of his situation was maddening. "I can't stand this any longer," he mused. "I must get out, if only to hunt for something to eat." Fortunately for him, Gilberto had left him a pistol and several rounds of cartridges. To be sure, the weapon was an old-fashioned affair, but it was better than nothing, and soon the youth was out in the woods to the rear of the rocks trying to scare up something to shoot. The woods had been well ransacked by both Spaniards and Cubans, but several hours' hunt yielded two birds, besides some half-ripe plantains and some nuts. Walter was about to return to the cave to cook the birds when from a distance he heard loud shouting, and presently came the rapid discharge of firearms. "A battle of some kind is on," he thought, and ran to where he had discovered an ox-cart trail. He had scarcely reached the shelter of a clump of bushes, when a detachment of Cubans, closely followed by two companies of Spanish cavalrymen, rushed past, both parties firing as they moved. "This is getting hot," thought the youth, and started to retreat, when he heard more soldiers coming from the direction of the cave. As there now seemed no help for it, he crossed the trail and plunged along a side path, leading eastward,--a trail running directly to Guantanamo. Walter felt that the best thing to be done was to put distance between himself and his enemies, and he did not stop running until several miles had been covered. He had, meanwhile, crossed one small mountain stream, and now he found himself on the bank of another. There was no bridge, and the watercourse looked rather dangerous to ford. "I might as well follow the bank down to the ocean," he reasoned. "But I must have something to eat first." And finding a secluded nook, he built a tiny fire and broiled his two little birds, both of which made hardly a meal. Then, obtaining the purest drink possible from the river, he continued his journey. By nightfall Walter had covered many miles, yet no ocean came to view, and now he felt that he must be lost in the wilds of the island. As this conclusion forced itself home to him he smiled grimly. "Lost in Cuba, and I came down here to help man a gun on the _Brooklyn_," he muttered. "Was there ever such a turning-around before! I wonder what I had best do next." This was not an easy question to answer. It was already dark under the thick trees, and to spend the night in such a spot was not pleasant to contemplate. At last he came to a clearing. Here he was about to settle down, under the shelter of a small cliff of rocks, when something appeared that caused him to yell with all the strength of his lungs. It was a snake, five feet long, and it advanced rapidly, hissing as it came. Walter had met snakes before, harmless reptiles not half as big as the present one. But he did not know but that this reptile might be poisonous, and gaining the top of the rocks he blazed away with the pistol, not once, but several times. The last shot hit the snake in the tail, and away it darted, out of sight and into the river. "Ugh! what a horrible creature!" he murmured, as he stood still, watching for the possible reappearance of the reptile. "I wish I was out of this. I'd give a year's wages to be safe on board of the _Brooklyn_ once more." The words had just left Walter's lips, when he heard a movement behind him. Turning swiftly, he beheld a Spanish soldier gazing at him from a distance of less than fifty feet. The soldier had his rifle, and now the weapon was aimed at the boy's head. "_Alto!_" came the Spanish command to halt. "_Americano!_" Walter's surprise was complete, yet he kept his wits about him. As the Spaniard raised his gun, the youth made a quick leap for the shelter of a near-by tree. Bang! went the Mauser, and the bullet clipped the tree bark. Then Walter took aim, and trembling in spite of himself, pulled the trigger of his pistol. The enemy was hit in the shoulder, and uttered a deep cry of pain. "If there are others with him I'm in for it now!" thought the boy, and took to his heels along the bank of the watercourse. From behind came a cry for help and another to arms, and in less than a minute a whole company of Spaniards were in wild pursuit. A dozen shots rang out, but Walter was not hit, and plunged on. But he was no match for his pursuers, and they gradually drew closer and closer. Then the youth stumbled and fell, and ere he could arise he found himself surrounded. CHAPTER XXIII IN A SPANISH PRISON The Spaniards who had taken Walter a prisoner were the most villanous the youth had ever beheld. They were all short, thin, and exceedingly yellow, as though suffering from tropical complaints, and looked more than half starved. Their clothing was in rags, for they had been in the wilds of the island, thousands of miles from home, for nearly two years, and a heartless, or poverty-stricken, military department had failed to supply them with what they absolutely needed. None of them could speak English, and several talked volubly in Spanish, at which Walter could do nothing but shake his head and shrug his shoulders. He was motioned to arise, and as he did so his pistol was taken from him, and presently his hands were fastened tightly behind his back. The course of the party was along the river to a rude bridge, over which Walter was marched in double-quick time. They emerged upon a narrow highway, along which they encountered half a dozen detached Spanish companies, some moving eastward and others in the opposite direction. "I'm in for it now," thought the youth. "Escaping from this crowd will be out of the question." Night was well advanced when they turned into a small settlement fronting Guantanamo Bay. Here were half a dozen log houses thatched with palm, while not far off was the office of a mineral company, now deserted by the proprietors, for business in this section of Cuba had long since come to a standstill. Without ceremony Walter was taken to one of the log huts and thrust inside. The place was scarcely twenty feet square and was crowded with fifteen or sixteen insurgents, whites and negroes, who huddled on the floor, making themselves as comfortable as possible in their miserable surroundings. On the outside of the hut eight Spanish soldiers stood on guard, with rifles ready to shoot down the first prisoner that attempted to escape. "_Un Americano!_" exclaimed one of the prisoners, a bright looking Cuban, as he edged his way to Walter's side. "You are in a sorry plight, boy." "What a vile-smelling place!" murmured Walter. "How long have you been here?" "Two days and nights, with only some stale bread and soup to eat,--and the soup was made of mouldy meat. Oh, that we were free!" "_Silencio!_" roared one of the guards, and poked his rifle end into the doorway. "I will shoot the first prisoner who dares to speak again!" he added in Spanish. Walter wished to question him, but did not dare, and so remained silent. It was past midnight, and presently most of the prisoners went to sleep. Huddled in a corner, the lad gave himself up to his dismal reflections. Daybreak found the Spanish soldiers very active, and catching a glimpse of them through the open doorway, Walter felt that some important movement was contemplated. As a matter of fact the marines from the _Panther_ had landed, and the Spaniards were going to do their best to either capture them or drive them back to our warships. Before noon the firing in the distance was heavy, and the Spaniards could be seen rushing their commands hither and thither, as though hardly knowing how to conduct the campaign which had been thrust upon them. Evidently they realized that landing force was too large for them, for they gradually fell back, occupying that night the settlement where the prison was located. On the day following, the attack upon both sides was renewed. The rattle of musketry was almost constant, and before long several bullets hit the prison itself. The prisoners were about to remonstrate at this when, on looking out, they discovered that their late guards had fled, leaving them to do as they pleased. "_Cuba libre!_" yelled the insurgents and lost no time in piling into the open air. Not far away lay several dead Spaniards, and rushing up to the corpses they stripped them of their arms, after which they disappeared into the brush. "I wonder if the army of invasion has come," was Walter's thought, as he, too, sought the open air. A short sword lay beside a writing-table under a near-by shelter, and he appropriated the weapon. "I'm going to join our men or know the reason why!" And away he went toward the water, which could now be seen quite plainly between the rocks and hills. The marines, after fighting from early afternoon until the following morning, were now intrenched on a small hill, protected in front by a dense chaparral. They were utterly worn out, and it was found necessary to reënforce them by men from the _Marblehead_ and other vessels. Several field-guns had been brought ashore, and although the firing from the Spaniards was heavy, our gallant men held the ground they had first claimed. "Halt! Who comes there?" came the command, from a thicket, and Walter stopped short, although the words, spoken in true English, filled him with joy. "Are you an American?" questioned the youth, eagerly. "I am, and who are you?" "Walter Russell, cruiser _Brooklyn_. Oh, but am I not glad to get back among the boys again!" "From the _Brooklyn_? What are you doing ashore here?" questioned the marine, a bronzed but evidently a good-natured man of middle age. "It's a long story. I've been a prisoner twice, and I was afraid I was about done for when the guards up and ran away from the prison and let me and a crowd of Cubans escape. How can I get back to my ship?" "You're asking me too much now. Go down yonder and report to our commander. I reckon there ain't no call to rouse up the corporal of the guard, with everybody utterly worn out. You're true blue--I can see that by the cut of your jib." Inside of five minutes more Walter found himself surrounded by half a dozen officers, including a major of marines, who questioned him closely regarding his adventures and concerning the various detachments of Spanish soldiers that he had encountered. "You've been through a good deal, lad," said the major, slapping Walter on the shoulder. "I dare say you wouldn't like to go through it again." "No, indeed! The Spaniards are--are brutes!" exclaimed the youth. "I only hope we send them from Cuba a-flying. I think they and the Cubans must have been fighting for the past three years like a lot of cats and dogs. It's high time Uncle Sam took a hand." This reply brought forth a hearty laugh from those gathered around. Walter, young as he was, had hit the nail right on the head, as later events proved. The major of marines did not see how the lad could be transferred to the _Brooklyn_, which was a good many miles off, in the direction of Santiago. "You'll have to remain here until some boat bound for Commodore Schley's flagship chances along," he said. "At present only the _Marblehead_, _Suwanee_, and _Porter_ are here, but others are coming and going constantly." "And what of the army of invasion?" asked Walter, with keen interest. "I believe it has already left Key West. I know it started from Tampa several days ago." "Was the Seventy-first New York with the troops?" "They were. Why do you ask?" "My brother is a member of that regiment. Hurrah! He'll be down here soon," concluded Walter. He was now dismissed, and lost no time in hunting up one of the marines' cooks, who speedily filled him up with meat, bread and butter, and coffee. "We're not living like kings, you see," said the cook, but grinning to see how the food disappeared. "You're living like kings in comparison to the way the Cubans and the Spaniards are living. If the army comes up and besieges Santiago, I'll wager the city will go hungry in no time," returned the boy. During the balance of the day the marines were kept busy resisting several additional attacks from the Spaniards. The onslaughts were heavy and determined, but each time the enemy was beaten back, and at nightfall Old Glory still waved from the flagstaff where it had originally been run up. A foothold had been gained by our side which was not to be taken from us. Walter had selected a cosy corner to rest in and was sleeping soundly when a sudden alarm rang out. "The Dons! They are coming over a thousand strong! To arms, everybody!" And then came a grand rush. The report was true; the Spanish column had organized a midnight attack, feeling they knew the ground much better in the dark than would their opponents. On they came, yelling like demons, while the marines stood their ground firmly and fearlessly. "I must do my share of fighting," thought the boy, and bounced up with the rest. He had already been supplied with a carbine and ammunition, and now he lost no time in attaching himself to the nearest company at hand. "Don't send me back, captain; I can shoot as well as the rest, I think." "All right, lad, come on," was the answer. "Company, attention! By columns of fours--forward, march!" And away they went, up a small hill. Then came the order to halt, and the company broke up into a broad skirmish line. "Take aim! Fire!" And then and there Walter did his first actual fighting for Uncle Sam and our own glorious stars and stripes. The determined front shown by our marines non-plussed the Spaniards for a few minutes, and they came to a halt. But then they advanced again, and the fire from each side became hot and irregular. The battle had thus waged for the best part of an hour, and the Americans felt that they must be beaten back by sheer force of numbers, when reënforcements came up, and in addition one of the warships steamed close to shore, and threw the rays of her powerful searchlight upon the enemy. As soon as the Spaniards were located the warship trained its rapid-firing guns inland, and then the enemy beat a hasty retreat. "Hurrah! The fight is ours!" shouted Walter, enthusiastically. "See them run!" "It was lucky for us the warship came up," put in a marine beside him. "Those dagos ain't going to give ground without a big fight, that's certain." It was nearly daylight when the company returned to the camp and was dismissed. Walter was more worn out than ever, but too excited to sleep. "At present I'd just as lief be a marine," he observed to his side partner in the contest. "Oh, don't worry, your ships will have their hands full when Cervera takes it into his head to come out and fight," was the answer. "You'll have no such walkover as Dewey had at Manila--I'll promise you that." At noon a lieutenant of marines came up to where Walter stood, watching a drill which was in progress. "Are you Walter Russell, of the _Brooklyn_?" he asked. "I am, sir," and Walter saluted. "Then you had better hurry down to the shore. There is a steam launch there, and I heard the officer in command say he was bound for the _Iowa_ and the _Brooklyn_. If you want to get on your ship, I presume he will take you along." Walter waited to hear no more, but ran for the landing-place with all possible speed. The boat had come in with despatches and was to leave again inside of ten minutes. The officer in charge was close at hand, and the youth's situation was speedily explained. "All right, I'll take you," was the brief answer. "Go aboard and forward." And the officer turned away. Walter did as directed; and a few minutes later the steam launch left the landing-place and steamed down Guantanamo Bay toward the ocean, or to be more particular perhaps, the Caribbean Sea. CHAPTER XXIV BACK TO THE "BROOKLYN" AGAIN The steam launch was the neatest craft of the kind Walter had ever seen, and he had come in contact with a great number while sailing on Lake Erie. It was fifty-five feet long, about twelve feet wide, and as beautiful a boat as a designer could plan. It was manned by eight stalwart men, all well drilled to their duties, and carried in addition six marines, each of whom was a sharpshooter, and also a rapid-firing gun of small caliber. The launch rode the waves like a thing of life and easily made ten miles an hour. Soon Guantanamo was left behind, and they began to creep up the coast in the direction of Baiquiri. In the bow was a lookout, who had a marine glass which was constantly turned shoreward. "A flag!" said the lookout, about noontime, and immediately the launch came to a stop. "Where is it, Parkhurst?" asked the officer in charge of the craft. "Yonder, just below that stretch of rocks, sir," answered the lookout, and handed over his glasses. The commander of the launch took a long look, then ordered the craft turned to starboard, and they steamed into a little harbor not a great distance from a tiny Cuban settlement. A small boat was thrown out, the commander and two launch hands leaped in, and it at once advanced. Then those on the larger craft saw a dozen men rush from the shelter of some brush, one holding a white and the other a Cuban flag. The small boat was beached in true nautical style, and the Cubans and Americans entered into a conversation lasting the best part of half an hour. Letters were exchanged, and then the party broke up as rapidly as it had gathered. Although Walter did not know it, the letter delivered by the American commander was for the rebel leader, General Calixto Garcia, while that received in return was for Admiral Sampson and General Shafter. All related to the landing of the army of invasion, now so close at hand. The conference over, the launch darted on her way, and dinner was served, to the officers and sharpshooters first, and then to the crew and Walter. "Oh, we're doing some fine work along this coast," said one of the crew to the youth, while eating. "Those Dons will be greatly astonished some day--when our boys in blue fall on 'em." It was night before the _Brooklyn_ came into view, looking exactly as she had when Walter had so unceremoniously left her. How the youth's heart beat at the sight of his ship! How would those on board receive him, and what would they say when his story was told? "Russell!" exclaimed the officer of the deck, when he came up over the side. "Why, we all thought you had fallen overboard and been drowned." "I came pretty near being drowned," was the reply. "You can't imagine, sir, how glad I am to get back!" "But where have you been?" "I've been on the _Merrimac_, among the Cubans and the Spaniards, and in a Spanish prison, besides being down to Guantanamo Bay with the marines from the _Panther_, sir." "Great Scott, boy, do you expect me to believe all that!" burst out the officer, in sheer astonishment. "As you will, sir; it's true, though." "But--but--let me see; you said you were on the _Merrimac_?" "Yes, sir." "And on shore among the Cubans, and then among the enemy?" "Yes, sir." "And then among the marines at Guantanamo Bay?" "Exactly, sir. I escaped from a Spanish prison, and was lucky enough to fall in with the marines by accident. I fought with them too, sir." "Russell, after you disappeared Surgeon Barker said you had been sick--had been troubled with some sort of fever in your head. Don't you believe you went out of your head entirely, and imagined all this?" "No, sir." "Well, I reckon that's the truth of the matter, and the best thing you can do is to turn yourself over to the surgeon again for further treatment. How is your head?" And the officer of the deck placed his hand on Walter's forehead. "Ah, rather hot, as I thought. You had better go to bed." And he turned away. "I don't think I'll go to bed just yet," murmured Walter, and lost no time in reaching the berth deck. Here he came up behind Si and Caleb playing one of their favorite games of checkers, while Paul stood looking on. "Crown that man," Caleb was saying, when he chanced to glance up, "Walter! or is it a ghost?" he fairly yelled, and leaped up, scattering board and men in all directions. "Walter, where on earth did you come from?" And he reached out his hand. "It is Walter, back from the grave!" ejaculated Si, and grasped the other hand, while Paul caught the youth by the neck. "We thought you were drowned!" said all three, simultaneously. "They said you had gone out of your mind, and committed suicide," added Paul. "Well, I didn't commit suicide, and I'm as well as ever," was the merry return. "But--but--I don't believe you'll think I'm telling the truth when I give you my story." "That depends on what sort of a yarn you spin," returned Caleb, dryly. "Where have you been--sinking Cervera's fleet single-handed?" "Not quite, but I've been pretty close to the fleet, and pretty close to the Spaniards." And dropping on a box Walter told his story, interrupted every few minutes by some newcomer who advanced to shake him by the hand, for since joining them he had made many friends among the jackies and petty officers. "I don't wonder the officer of the deck wouldn't believe you, lad," remarked Caleb, when he had finished. "It's a big yarn; beats Jonah and the whale all to pieces--not but what _that's_ a true story, seeing as how it's in the Good Book. You are certain you wasn't taken down with the fever while you were on shore?" "Not enough to lose my mind." "I believe Walter," put in Si. "But if I were you I wouldn't tell this tale to the others," he added in a lower tone. "They'd be jealous of you, you know." "I don't care, I'm telling the simple truth," answered Walter, stoutly. That evening word was passed to him to report at the captain's cabin, and he went, just as soon as he could slip on his best suit of clothing, wash up, and comb his hair, for on board of every man-o'-war a visit to "headquarters" is a big thing to any of the crew, and a "sprucing up" is, consequently, indispensable. This was the first time Walter had visited the cabin of the _Brooklyn_, and the elegant surroundings immediately caught his eye. But in days gone by, before he had been compelled to live with the miserly Job Dowling, he had been used to a home furnished just as handsomely, and therefore the surroundings did not overawe him. There was a small table in the centre of the cabin, at one end of which sat Commodore Schley, looking over a map of the Cuban coast. At the other end of the table sat Captain Cook, the firm and strict, yet well-beloved commander of the flagship. "You sent for me, sir," said Walter, as he came in, "toed the mark," and saluted. "You are Walter Russell?" asked Captain Cook, while Commodore Schley dropped the map and looked on with interest. "Yes, sir." "You have been absent from the ship ever since June the second, or third?" "Yes, sir. But I couldn't help it. I was sick and fell overboard,--and I've had a whole lot of adventures since." "So the officer of the deck tells me," answered the captain, dryly. He looked at the commander of the squadron. "Commodore Schley, would you like to ask Russell any questions?" At this the commodore smiled and pulled meditatively at the little goatee he wore. "Russell, you can tell us your story in detail. But do not take over ten minutes," he said, and covered his eyes with his hands, as if in deep thought--one of his favorite attitudes. Standing as before and still "toeing the mark," Walter told his story again, simply but forcefully. Whether his hearers were listening or not he could not tell, for not a word was said until he had finished. Then, however, came a flood of questions concerning the spot at which he had landed after leaving the _Merrimac_, the names of the various Cuban and Spanish leaders that he had encountered, and the names of the marines with which he had fought. He was also questioned about the trails and their conditions. "Could loaded wagons get over them, in your estimation?" asked Commodore Schley. "Not very well, sir. In one place I saw an ox-team with a load of fruit, and the load was in danger of being dumped every minute. Some of the paths are not fit for a pack-mule to use." "What of the Cubans you met? Were they well armed?" "A few of them had guns, but most of them had nothing but their machetes, sir. Ammunition, I was told, was very scarce." "What of food?" "That was scarce, too." And Walter smiled. "A good eater would starve to death on what both the Spaniards and the Cubans have to offer." "Do the Spaniards expect an army of invasion--that is, did you hear any talk on the subject?" "I caught a few words, sir. I cannot speak Spanish myself." Commodore Schley mused for a moment. "That is all," he said, addressing Captain Cook. "The boy has certainly had some remarkable adventures. He is better off than poor Lieutenant Hobson." "That's true," responded the commander of the _Brooklyn_. He turned to Walter. "You can go, Russell; if we want you again, we will send for you." "Yes, sir," was the youth's reply, and, saluting, he turned and left the cabin. The interview had been a very formal one, but he was proud to think that he had come into personal contact with his gallant captain and his equally gallant commodore. CHAPTER XXV THE BOMBARDMENT OF THE SANTIAGO BATTERIES When Walter returned to his friends he was immediately surrounded and asked what had happened in the cabin. "Did the commodore slap you on the back and call you a bully boy?" queried Si. "Well, hardly," answered Walter, with a quiet smile. "They plied me with questions and said I had had some remarkable adventures; that's all." "Didn't praise you?" queried Caleb. "No." "Didn't rush up and shake hands even?" put in Paul. "Not at all. I saluted and toed the mark, and kept toeing it until I left." At this Paul's face fell. "Why, I thought you would be right in it, Walter," he said. "I guess you've been reading some dime and half-dime colored-cover novels, Paul. I imagine that is the way they do in such books." "That's it. Why, I've got a story about 'Dewey's Boy Bodyguard.' The hero in that overheard a plot against Dewey, and Dewey clasped him to his breast and made him a captain of marines." "Indeed! And you believe such a yarn?" "Dewey couldn't make the boy a captain of marines, not if he was an admiral twice over," put in Caleb. "Those yarns are pure trash. Paul, you had better study some good book on gunnery, and try to become a gun captain." "I thought the story was slightly overdrawn," said Paul, growing red in the face. "There is another about the 'Boy Hero of Havana,' who saves General Lee's life at the time the Americans are getting out of Havana. I suppose that is untrue, too." "To be sure, Paul. General Lee was in no great danger at that time. Of course some of the sensational papers had to make the most of it, and they reported that he was travelling around with a six-shooter in his pocket, and a detective dogging his footsteps. As a matter of fact he walked around with nothing but a white cotton umbrella, to keep the sun off." "I'll burn the whole batch of colored stuff up," cried the apprentice; and he did, at the big galley fire. No one on board ever caught him reading dime and half-dime novels again. Although the marines had established themselves fairly well at and near Guantanamo, the Spaniards were determined to drive them off, and to hold this landing and a number of others, several of the warships were kept busy bombarding the enemy's strongholds and in firing with Gatling guns at the Spanish soldiers whenever they put into appearance along the coast. The day after Walter came on board the _Brooklyn_, which remained on the blockade off Santiago Bay, the _Texas_, _Marblehead_, and _Suwanee_ ran into Guantanamo Bay and attacked the fort at Caimanera, a small village not far from Guantanamo. The attack began at two o'clock in the afternoon, and in less than two hours the fort was in ruins, and those who had garrisoned it were fleeing inland for their lives. Caimanera was thus taken, but to hold it was as difficult as it was to hold Guantanamo. Many of the people were in sympathy with the Spanish government, and some went so far as to soak the streets and some of the houses with coal oil that the town might be burned down at a minute's notice. While this was going on, Admiral Sampson determined to make another attack on the outer defences of Santiago Harbor, only sparing Morro Castle, in which it was understood that Lieutenant Hobson and his men were confined. It was weary waiting for the transports to arrive with the army, and something must be done to tear down the numerous fortifications the Spaniards were constructing. The orders for the bombardment were issued on Wednesday evening; and at once a subdued but excited talk took place among the various crews of the blockading squadrons, which now numbered the following ships, along with a few others of lesser importance:---- First squadron, under the direct command of Admiral Sampson, the flagship _New York_, battleships _Iowa_ and _Oregon_, protected cruiser _New Orleans_, gunboat _Mayflower_, torpedo boat _Porter_, and the sprightly _Scorpion_. The second squadron, under Commodore Schley, embraced the flagship _Brooklyn_, battleships _Massachusetts_ and _Texas_, and the _Marblehead_ and _Vixen_. Other vessels, such as the _Indiana_, _Dolphin_, and _Suwanee_, were kept busy plying between the blockading fleet and Guantanamo Bay and surroundings. It was half-past three in the morning when the men were called up and served with coffee. Among the first on hand was Walter. "Now for a first real use of our gun," he said to Si. "I've been aching for this ever since I enlisted." Before four o'clock came the call to quarters, and the men ran to their various stations, and stripped for action, most of them wearing little more than an undershirt and a pair of trousers. The weather was frightfully hot, and the interior of the cruiser was little better than a bake-oven. Possibly this was one reason why the thoughtful admiral planned the attack for so early in the day. Silently the warships steamed for the mouth of the harbor, and took up their various positions in a grand semicircle, the heavy fighting ships in the centre, and the torpedo boats on the ends, ready to take care of any infantry fire, should the Spaniards hurry their soldiers to the shore. The big ships kept at a distance of three thousand yards--not quite two miles. "We're a long way off," observed Walter, as he assisted in loading the "Polly," as Caleb had named his gun. "Twenty-nine hundred yards!" came the report from the range-finder; and the crew went to work to elevate the gun accordingly. In the meantime, the magazines had been opened, the ammunition hoists set in motion, and powder, shot, and shell were delivered everywhere from barbette to fighting-top. "We're near enough to blow 'em sky-high if we strike 'em right," muttered the old gunner, who, with the smell of powder in the air, was in his element. "How about that hose, Stuben?" he went on to the hose-man. "Dot hose it's all right alretty," answered Carl Stuben, a round-faced German, who was an American citizen, even though he did speak the language but brokenly. Heretofore Walter had had but little to do with the man, yet they got along very well together. It was too dark to begin firing, and for half an hour the ships lay quiet, every man ready to obey a command the instant it was given. This was a nerve-trying test for Walter, who wondered how the thing would sound when all of the ships began firing. Slowly it grew lighter, and the men became more anxious. The guns were trained on the shore batteries to the west of the harbor entrance, while other ships covered the batteries on the east. Boom! It was a broadside from the _New York_, directed against the battery below El Morro. Instantly every other warship present responded in a deafening crash and a shock to be heard many miles away. At once the air became filled with the smoke, and on shore the dirt and masonry of the batteries were seen to fly in all directions. "Oh, my!" gasped Walter, as the gun before him belched forth its mass of flame and smoke. "What a noise! Did--did we hit anything?" "I hope we did," answered Steve Colton, the second gun captain, laconically; and then came the order to unlock the breech of the gun. As the breech fell back a cloud of smoke swirled into the sponson hood, impregnated with the odor of saltpetre, which caused Walter and several of the others to cough violently. "Never mind; you'll get used to it before you die," went on Colton. The gun being opened, Carl Stuben caught up his hose-pipe, turned on the nozzle and sent a stream of cold water through the gun, to both clean and cool the interior. By the time this was accomplished the hoist had another shell ready, and this was shoved in by the mechanical rammer. Brown prismatic powder followed, with a small quantity of black prismatic powder behind it, as a primer. Then the breech-block was swung into position and locked again, and the electrical connections were adjusted. All this had been done almost in the time it takes to tell it, but the next shot was not discharged at once, since the various gunners had strict orders to take their time and make every discharge count. It was not like a pitched battle where every moment counted. But though the gunners took their time, there were so many ships and so many guns that the firing was continuous--a spiteful cracking of rapid-firing guns, mingled with the thunder-claps of the gigantic thirteen-inch guns and the solid banging of the eight-inch and eight and ten pounders. "This is war and no mistake," remarked Walter. In ten minutes his undershirt had become as black as a stove-cloth, and he himself looked almost like a negro. In the meantime the perspiration was streaming from every pore of his body. "War!" shouted Caleb. "Why, lad, this is nothing. If only Cervera would come out, then you would see some fun." The order had been passed to lessen the charges in the big guns and elevate them more, in order to secure a plunging fire. The effect of this change in tactics was soon apparent, as shot and shell began to drop directly into the Spanish strongholds or behind them. Soon one of the batteries was completely silenced, and a cheer went up from the warship nearest to it. It must not be imagined that the Spaniards took this attack quietly. No sooner had the American warships opened than they returned the fire with equal fierceness. But although at an elevation, and using guns which were stationary, their aim was wild, and only a few of their shots took effect. As one battery after another was silenced, several of the warships elevated their guns still more and put in large charges of powder, and, as a result, one shell was carried far up the harbor to where the _Vizcaya_ lay and burst directly over her deck, doing considerable damage and injuring several sailors and an under-officer. Presently a terrific explosion rent the air. One of the shots from the _Texas_ had landed in a powder magazine and sent it skyward. The spectacle thus caused was magnificent, and for a moment all in the squadrons watched the timbers, rocks, and dirt as they sailed through the air, some coming down inland and some falling with loud splashes into the sea. "That's a shot worth making!" cried Caleb. "Hurrah for the man as trained that gun!" And the cheer was given with a will. CHAPTER XXVI IN WHICH THE ARMY OF INVASION ARRIVES "Maybe I ain't hot and tired, Walter. I could sleep standing up and go in an ice-house and do it." It was Si who spoke, as he was washing himself in a bucket of water set on the gun-track. The water had been fresh when Si began his ablutions and was now dirty, but the Yankee youth was still far from clean, for gun smoke and gun dirt have a disagreeable knack of getting into the pores of one's skin. The bombardment had lasted over an hour and every land battery had been silenced. Yet, as the American ships drew away, one or two guns spat out spitefully after them. "You'll feel all right in an hour or two, Si," answered Walter. "Oh, but wasn't it glorious! I could stand such bombarding for a week. What a sight it was when that powder magazine went up." "Such a bombardment costs Uncle Sam a good many thousand dollars," put in Caleb, leaving the gun to get a drink of water from the tub standing by. "A week of it would put a big hole in his pocket, large as it is." "I presume that is so, Walton. But say, why don't we run in and finish things, now we have knocked the batteries out?" "Better ask the admiral, lad; he's the one who knows. Remember, we didn't touch Morro Castle nor that fortification on Smith Cay,--and those Spanish warships are somewhere around the bend, out of sight. I reckon the time ain't quite ripe for running in yet. If we run in now and do up that Spanish fleet, we haven't men enough to take Santiago itself. We must wait until Shafter arrives with his army." "But why did we go at them at all for, then?" "To keep 'em from becoming too well fortified. Now they'll have their hands full for several days repairing damages, and in the meantime our army may arrive--at least, I hope it does." Si had been right about the heat. Even in the United States we had a spell of uncommonly hot weather, and down here, under the tropical sun, it was "sizzling," as Walter expressed it. During the noon hour no one thought of going on deck unless it was absolutely necessary. Refreshments of any kind were at a premium, and when a society known as the Colonial Dames sent on a number of boxes of oranges and lemons for distribution, the jackies could hardly contain themselves for joy. Cuban sugar was easily obtained, and lemonade and orangeade became the order of the hour. Having been away on shore, Walter had not felt the monotony on shipboard so much, but those who had been on the blockade for nearly three weeks felt fearfully bored, especially as reading matter was scarce. Every scrap of a newspaper was saved and passed around, and poor Paul was collared and tossed up in a canvas hammock for having burnt the penny-dreadfuls previously mentioned. "Mail! mail! mail!" such was the welcome cry which rang through the _Brooklyn_, several days after the bombardment just described. The news caused a commotion, and all who could rushed on deck and peered eagerly over the side as several heavy mail sacks were hoisted on board. Hardly anybody could wait for the mail to be distributed. "Three letters for me, and a bundle of newspapers!" cried Walter, joyfully. "Here's luck and no mistake." He studied the various post-marks for a moment. "One from Boston, in my uncle's handwriting; one from Tampa, Florida, and that's from Ben; and one from--yes--Hong Kong, China, and that must be from dear old Larry. Now which shall I read first? Oh, I must hear from Larry first." And dropping on deck he tore open the letter from the other side of the world and perused it eagerly. "Well, I never!" came from him, a few minutes later. "Si, Walton, listen to this! My brother Larry was with Dewey at Manila and helped whip the Dons! Oh, but Larry's the boy, after all! Just read the letter for yourselves." And he tossed it over. Ben's letter came next, a rather short communication, for Ben had never been much of a boy to write. "I am high private in the best company of the Seventy-first regiment of New York," he wrote. "We are down here at Lakeland, near Tampa, getting into condition to invade Cuba. At present things are slow and awfully hot, but we look for livelier times ahead and that keeps up our spirits. My chum, Gilbert Pennington, has joined Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. I hope we go to Cuba together. "I suppose you are quite a jack tar by this time and walk with a regular swagger. Larry is now a bigger fellow than either of us, for he was on the _Olympia_, Dewey's flagship, at the battle of Manila Bay. He wrote me all about it and said he would write to you, too, so I suppose you already have the letter. "Uncle Job seems to be coming around to his senses--with giving both you and me permission to take care of ourselves. If I were you, I would not let up on him about going to Boston. Those heirlooms ought to be located, and he is the man who must push the work, even if it does cost a few dollars. I want father's watch, and I am sure you and Larry want the wedding rings. "I have made many friends while in the army, but I also have two enemies, Gerald Holgait and Dwight Montgomery, and I am afraid that sooner or later they will try to play me some mean trick. However, I will be on my guard against them. Good-by and good luck to you." "I hope Ben does come down," mused Walter. "And if he has any enemies of the Jim Haskett sort he had better look out." And then he turned to the communication from Job Dowling. "My dearest nephew," began the guardian, and the term of address made Walter smile. "Your letter was a big surprise to me, and I ain't over it yet. That you should meet that thief gets me, and I don't understand it nohow. However, I packed my valise (my new one that cost me a dollar thirty-five, although Wilson says it is worth the money) and the next day I took the cars for Boston on a ticket I got at cut rates, although it was tolerably dear even at that. When I got to Boston I introduced myself to Mr. Phil Newell, the one-legged man you used to work for, and he took me to police headquarters, and now I am stopping here at a boarding-house on Hammond Street. The police sent a detective to me, and he is going to find them heirlooms and that rascal of a Deck Mumpers, or whatever his name is, or know the reason why. If he finds the things, I'm to give him two hundred dollars in cash; if he don't, I pay his travelling expenses and no more. I wouldn't make such a bargain, but I know all you boys want the things back and I can't do the running after the thief. It's a waste of money, but it can't be helped. I want to show you and Ben and Larry that your uncle means well in spite of what you think of him. "Newell says for me to tell you he will send you a bundle of newspapers. He says he knows how lonely life on board of a man-of-war gets sometimes. I hope you don't get hurt, if you get into a fight down in Cuba. Keep out of the sun, and write when you can, care of Newell's news-stand--for I stop there every day, after the detective's report. The detective hopes to get the things back before this week is out. "Your loving uncle, "JOB DOWLING." The letter was a mere scrawl, horribly mis-spelled, and it took Walter fully quarter of an hour to decipher it. "Well, Uncle Job is turning over a new leaf," he thought, as he put it away. "I only hope that detective is all right, and don't hoodwink him into paying over his money for nothing. I reckon the letters Ben and I wrote him scared him pretty well, otherwise he wouldn't agree to pay two hundred dollars if the heirlooms are recovered." Caleb had read Larry's letter with much interest. One portion of it, relating to the narrow escape from disaster during the battle, interested him not a little. "Your brother had a close shave," he said. "To fire a gun when the breech is unlocked is a fearful thing." "I don't see how it could happen on board of such a ship as the _Brooklyn_," answered Walter. "Everything works like clockwork here." "You don't know how a thing would work in the middle of a battle, lad. Men get excited, and sometimes the jarring of the shots breaks the electric connections. More than likely that gunner was firing his piece by hand at the time. I've done the same, when the electric connection gave out. Last month I heard from a friend of mine, a gunner on the _New Orleans_, that used to be a Brazilian warship. They couldn't get their electric-firing apparatus into shape nohow, and had to do everything by hand,--and that is the time accidents occur. But somebody ought to have been watching that breech-block--your brother or somebody else." And then Caleb turned away to his duties. Larry had written that he was now in Hong Kong, and did not know whether he would go back to Dewey's squadron, or return to the United States. "You'll hear from me again soon, one way or another," he added in a postscript. For a day or two, all of Walter's spare time was spent over the newspapers his former employer had been kind enough to send him, but drills and other duties must not be neglected, and now that the army of invasion was hourly expected, discipline on the warships became more rigid than ever. At last, one clear morning, a cry echoed and reëchoed from one warship to another:-- "The transports are in sight! General Shafter's army has arrived!" What a shouting, cheering, and yelling broke loose! Jackies flew to the deck, and up the military masts, and all other points of vantage. Yes, the news was true, over thirty transports were coming up from the direction of Guantanamo Bay, having rounded Cape Maysi some hours previously. The army of invasion had really arrived, nearly seventeen thousand strong. As that vast fleet came up, convoyed by fourteen warships, it presented a most imposing appearance, and guns boomed loudly to welcome it. "Is the Seventy-first on board?" was Walter's question; and when at last he heard that it was, his heart beat quickly. "Ben must be there!" he thought. And Ben _was_ there, and thinking of Walter at the same time. "Santiago is doomed now," said Caleb, as he surveyed the scene. "That's so," put in Si, tossing up his cap. "And old Cervera must either come out and fight, or haul down his colors. Oh, but won't we just smash things when that army is landed!" And Walter agreed with both of them. As soon as it could be arranged, the army was landed at Baiquiri, Siboney, and other points, Guantanamo being reserved as a coaling station for the warships. After the first landing, a strong detachment of regulars and Rough Riders was thrown out, and then followed the battles of La Guasima, San Juan, and El Caney, described in detail in the previous volume of this series. The soldier boys fought bravely, and Ben Russell and his chum, Gilbert Pennington, were well to the front, as we know. The landing of the troops was no easy matter, for the surf ran high, and it was feared that the Spaniard might make a heavy onslaught at any instant. All the small boats of the warships were called into use, to land men and army stores, and while this work was in progress, many of the ships began to bombard various points along the coast, for the purpose of confusing the enemy, so that they would not realize the truth of what was taking place. The ruse succeeded, and during the landing the Spaniards remained comparatively quiet, hardly knowing in what direction to turn, or what to do, since the Americans were covering over a hundred miles of rugged coast-line. The debarkation at an end, the _Brooklyn_ returned to her position on the blockade. All hands knew that something important would soon happen, and, consequently, everybody slept thenceforth "with one eye open." "Cervera must not be allowed to escape, night or day, under any circumstances," was the order passed, and it was to be obeyed to the letter. CHAPTER XXVII THE SPANISH FLEET AND ITS COMMANDER "Now that we are so anxious to catch Admiral Cervera and smash his ships, I should like to know something about the man and his command," remarked Walter, a few days after the army had landed. He addressed George Ellis, who, in his quiet, gentlemanly way had taken a liking to the youth. The two were seated in the shadow of one of the forward guns, taking it easy, for the morning drills were over and it yet lacked half an hour to mess time. Slowly the _Brooklyn_ rose and sank on the waves of the Caribbean Sea, four miles outside of Santiago Bay. This was the usual distance in the daytime. At night, despite the danger of an attack by a torpedo destroyer, the warships came in much closer, and the glare of the searchlights never left Morro Castle or the narrow harbor entrance. "I know very little about Admiral Cervera excepting that he has been in the Spanish navy for many years and is said to be one of the finest gentlemen that ever trod the deck of a ship. Why he ever allowed himself to be bottled up like this is more than I can understand. I imagine, though, that he was on his way to Havana, to break the blockade there, when he heard that Admiral Sampson was coming for him one way and our commodore the other, and he concluded that the best thing he could do would be to scoot into the bay yonder and save himself and possibly Santiago. They say he carried a lot of guns and ammunition for the Spanish army. He can distribute those as well at Santiago as he can at Havana, for I understand General Toral here is as hard up as Blanco is at the other city." "And what of the ships under him? They say he has six. Do you know how big they are?" went on Walter. "He has four warships and two torpedo destroyers," answered the chief yeoman. "I got that straight from Lieutenant Blue, who went ashore for Admiral Sampson, made a detour of seventy miles, and from the top of a high hill saw the ships in the harbor through his powerful glasses." "Somebody said all the big ships were armored cruisers." "That is true, and three of them, the _Vizcaya_, the _Almirante Oquendo_, and the _Maria Teresa_, are sister ships, of seven thousand tons each. Each is about three hundred and sixty feet long and can speed at eighteen to nineteen knots an hour. They carry about five hundred men each, and every one has a main battery of two 11-inch Hontoria and ten 5.5-inch Hontoria guns, with a secondary battery of eight 6-pounders, ten 1-pounders, several machine guns; and they also carry six torpedo tubes each." "And what of the fourth cruiser?" "She is the _Cristobal Colon_, the fastest of the lot, even though her displacement is two hundred tons short of the others. They say she can run eighteen knots an hour with ease and twenty knots if she is put to it. Her armor belt is six inches thick, alongside of twelve inches on the other cruisers. She also carries about five hundred men, and she has a main battery of two 10-inch and five 6-inch guns, and a secondary battery of rapid-firing rifles, 6 and 10 pounders and two Maxim guns. Her torpedo tubes number four." "Then they are no small fry to battle with," observed Walter. "When their batteries break loose they ought to do some talking." "They will talk. We mustn't expect any walkover, if Cervera ever comes out of his hole." "And what of the two torpedo boats?" "They are sister ships, the _Pluton_ and _Furor_, each of three hundred and eighty tons displacement. They say that each has a speed of twenty-seven knots an hour, and both are equipped with the latest appliances for such crafts, carrying regular, automatic, and rapid-fire guns, and also fourteen-inch Schwartzkopff torpedo tubes." "I should say they would be good things to keep out of the way of," exclaimed Walter. "We've got our eyes wide open for them, lad. To be sure, one or another of them may play us some dirty trick of a dark night--but that is one of the risks to be taken in war times," concluded the chief yeoman, as a petty officer called him away. All on board the warships waited eagerly for news from the army of invasion. It was known that the Rough Riders had had a severe skirmish at La Guasima, but that was all, so far as the jackies went. Possibly the officers knew more, but if so, they kept the knowledge to themselves. "Another dull week will come to an end to-morrow," remarked Si, as he and Walter were on their way to the mess table. "Oh, but I'm sick of laying around looking at old Morro. If only those ships would come out, we'd sink them all in less than two hours; I feel sure of it." Si's growl was becoming a universal one, even the officers grumbling a good deal. All wanted to fight Cervera's fleet, and the more the Spanish admiral kept himself hidden, the more angry did they become. Many almost begged to have their ships forced into the harbor, no matter what the consequences--they stating that anything would be better than this everlasting waiting. The blockade had now lasted five long weeks. In the meantime, matters elsewhere had not been idle. Chagrined over Dewey's victory at Manila, Spain resolved to send another fleet to the Philippines by way of the Suez Canal, taking, for this purpose, almost all the warships left in her home waters. As soon as this was brought to light, our own naval board decided to send an American fleet to the coast of Spain, and Commodore Watson was placed in command of the expedition. But before the American warships could sail, the Spanish fleet, having gone through the Suez Canal, turned back for home, and the American warships remained where they were, and Dewey was left unmolested at Manila, so far as Spanish operations were concerned, although the insurgents under General Aguinaldo soon began to give him a great deal of trouble. Saturday morning dawned misty but hot. From a great distance could be heard the rattle of musketry, showing that the army of invasion was slowly but surely advancing. "They're in it all right enough--" began Si, when there came a sudden call to quarters, and at the same time the _Brooklyn's_ engines began to move and she headed for Santiago Bay. "Hullo, what does this mean?" "Perhaps we are going to force an entrance!" ejaculated Walter. "Hurrah, if we do!" "Better not count your chickens before they are hatched," remarked Caleb, who had just rolled from his hammock. They soon learned the truth of the movement. The shore batteries were again to be bombarded, and this time not even Morro Castle was to be spared, it having been ascertained that Hobson and his men had been removed to safe quarters. "Down with old Morro; we'll show the Dons a thing or two!" was the cry, and off rushed the men to their guns, their eyes brighter than they had been for many a day, for Morro Castle had been an eyesore to all. The flagship _New York_ was leading the fleet, which, as before, soon ranged up in a semicircle. Inside of five minutes every vessel had her station. "Cast loose and provide!" The now familiar cry was scarcely needed, for the jackies were already at work, stripped, as before, of all their superfluous clothing. Shot and powder were quickly handled, and the flagship began the firing, which immediately broke forth in all its fury, deafening everybody and sending forth a great cloud of smoke which hung over the warships like a pall. "Morro's flag is down!" came the shout. It was true. A gunner on the noble _Oregon_ had taken careful aim and cut the flagstaff in two. The falling of the Spanish emblem was greeted with a wild cheer. At once the Spaniards tried to put another flag up, but it was some time ere they succeeded, and then it was a tiny affair, hardly visible excepting with a glass. "We'll try for that battery yonder!" exclaimed Caleb, during the height of the bombardment. "I think those fellows have been firing this way ever since they started." He had scarcely spoken when bang! something hit the armor plate directly under their gun, hurling the gunner, Walter, and several others back by the shock. "They've struck us, but the shot didn't pierce our armor," remarked Caleb, calmly, as he got up. "All right, you villains, here's the compliment returned!" And he made his preparations with care. The shot following was the best they had yet placed. It struck into a battery on the west shore of the harbor entrance, ploughed up the foundation of a six-pound gun, and sent the piece flying high into the air. "My, but that was immense!" cried Walter, while Si and the others cheered wildly. "Give them another!" And they did give the battery another, and then a dozen more, until at last the place was silenced, showing that what was left of the gunners had fled. At half-past seven came the order to cease firing, but it was fully twenty minutes later before the last of the warships' guns were discharged. By this time not only the batteries but also old Morro were filled with gaping holes. It is more than likely that if the fleet had sought to enter the harbor at this time it could have done so with comparative ease. The work at the gun had been very hot, and as soon as they were able to do so, Walter and Si scurried to the upper deck to get a bit of fresh air. "It fairly stews the fat out of a fellow," grumbled Si, running the perspiration from his forehead with his forefinger. "I'll bet I'm ten pounds lighter than before this blockade began." "Never mind; it's one of the fortunes of war--" began Walter, when of a sudden a strange whir and a singing sound filled the air. It was a shell, fired from Morro Castle, just as the _Brooklyn_ was turning away. "Look out!" yelled Si, and dropped down, but the words were still on his lips when the shell exploded, sending the fragments flying in all directions. Both boys were struck, and with a groan Walter fell senseless to the deck. CHAPTER XXVIII "THE ENEMY IS ESCAPING!" "Is he dead, surgeon?" "Oh, doctor, he'll live--say he'll live!" Caleb and Si had followed the senseless form of Walter to the sick bay of the warship, the Yankee youth with the blood streaming from a deep cut in his left cheek. Both were in distress for fear their comrade was seriously injured. "Yes, he'll live, but he has had a narrow escape," was the reply of the medical man in charge of the case. "The bit of shell scraped his left temple, as you see. Had it come a little closer, it would have gone through his brain." Walter had been placed on a swinging cot, and now his head was bound up. Before this operation was over he opened his eyes. "Whe--where am I?" he stammered. "Wh--what hit me?" "Praise God, he's himself again!" murmured Caleb, reverently. "I was afraid he was a goner." "So was I," whispered Si. "And I don't know how I could spare Walter--he seems so like a brother." "You must lie quiet for a while," said the surgeon. "You'll be all right by to-night." And then he gave Walter some medicine to brace his nerves, for they had been sadly shattered by the shock. The remainder of that Saturday was spent in bed. On this memorable day the fighting on land had been even more fierce than on the sea. The army of invasion had taken the various outposts of Santiago, and the very city itself now lay at General Shafter's mercy. It was felt that a day or two longer would bring matters to a climax. When Walter joined his comrades after supper he looked rather pale and scared. Almost silently he took Si's hand and wrung it. "You are all right?" he whispered. "No hurt to speak of," was the answer. "But we were pretty close to death. Oh, Si, I never realized before how quick one could be put out of this world!" "Neither did I, Walter. After this I'm going to--well--I'm going to attend church more regularly, that's all. I never did take much to sech matters afore, like you do." "It's always well to be prepared for death, Si--I'm going to try to be prepared after this," was Walter's low answer, and in the darkness of the berth deck they clasped hands again. They understood each other pretty well, these boys. On Sunday morning the sun arose clear and strong, and early in the day an awning was spread over the quarterdeck of the flagship _Brooklyn_, and preparations were made to pass a hot day as comfortably as possible. "We will rest to-day," was the word passed around, and the jackies were not sorry, for the bombardment on Saturday morning had tired them out. The _Brooklyn_ rested about three miles out from Santiago Bay, and not far off lay the _Texas_. Between the two ships the long, green waves rose and fell, only making a soft slish-slish as they struck the vessels' sides. The jackies lolled here, there, and everywhere, some talking, some reading old newspapers which from frequent handling would scarcely hold together, while a few studied the Bibles they had brought with them. Presently from the _Texas_ came the musical bugle-call for church service. "I'd like to go on board of her once," said Walter to Si, as they listened to the bell that followed. "She's certainly a fine-looking craft." "Three bells," put in Caleb, as he came up. "Come on, lads, first Sunday in the month, remember, and the Articles of War have got to be hearkened to." "That's so; I had forgotten," answered Walter. And he and the others dropped below, to don their cleanest and neatest "rigs," for general muster. Soon the call came, and from all parts of the big cruiser the men hurried to their various divisions, while the higher officers buckled on their swords, and the executive officers prepared to make their inspections. On the quarterdeck, near the hatchway, sat Commodore Schley, musing thoughtfully, as he gazed over the waters in the direction of Morro Castle. The fighting commodore undoubtedly felt as hot as anybody, for he wore a thin, black alpaca coat and an equally thin, white summer hat. He was now in sole command of the blockading fleet, for the _New York_ had carried Admiral Sampson many miles away, to confer with General Shafter. For some time there had been smoke in the harbor entrance in front of the warships, and many were wondering what it meant. "Must be a supply boat for the batteries," said several under-officers, and this theory was accepted as correct. Nevertheless, Commodore Schley glanced toward that smoke more than once. "We are going to have general muster, commodore," announced Captain Cook, as he presented himself, followed by Executive Officer Mason, and the commander of the fleet _pro tem._ nodded. But those keen eyes were still bent shoreward. Suddenly, from the forward bridge there came a yell through a megaphone, a yell that electrified everybody who heard it. "After bridge there! Report to the commodore and the captain that _the enemy's ships are coming out of the harbor_!" There was no necessity to report, for commodore, captain, and all others heard the cry. There was a second of silence. Could this news be true? Then came the command of the executive officer. "_Clear ship for action!_" "Hurrah! the enemy is coming out at last! To your guns, boys! Remember the _Maine_!" These and a score of other cries rang out, while men rushed hither and thither, dropping one garment or another as they ran, and kicking shoes right and left, for no jackie will do work worth the counting unless he is barefooted. Everybody had on his best clothing, but that did not matter, and down into the grimy depths of the big vessel dropped the firemen, coal heavers, and all the rest of the "black gang," as they are termed, for steam must be gotten up in a tremendous hurry or the enemy would surely get away. Ton after ton of coal was thrown onto the fires, and the firemen coaxed and coaxed until the black lumps grew first red and then white, and converted the water in the boilers into high-pressure steam. "Fire up! for the sake of the ship's honor, fire up!" came in a hoarse cry down the speaking-tube, and the men did fire up as never before, until all were ready to drop from the terrific heat. And all this while the engineers were watching their engines, oiling this part and that, and making every pound of steam do its utmost to send the great armored cruiser dashing and hissing through the sea to that point where the Spanish fleet was trying to escape. For Admiral Cervera could stand it no longer inside of the harbor. With the army of invasion at the very outskirts of Santiago, and with the American fleet beyond his bay of refuge, something must be done, and done quickly. He would run for it,--run at the top of his speed--and trust to luck, if not Providence, to get out of range and reach Cienfuegos or Havana. Santiago Bay was "too hot to hold him." It was the big prow of the _Maria Teresa_ that first showed itself, quickly followed by the _Vizcaya_, _Oquendo_, and _Colon_, with the torpedo boats _Pluton_ and _Furor_ bringing up closely in the rear. All were under a full head of steam, and the thick smoke shot up in heavy clouds from every funnel. For an instant all seemed to pause at the gateway to the sea, then, led by the _Maria Teresa_, they turned westward along the coast. To this side of the blockade now lay but three American warships, the _Brooklyn_, _Texas_, and the little _Vixen_. If he could only get out of range of these, Admiral Cervera felt that he would, for the time being at least, be safe. Boom! It was a three-pounder, fired from the _Iowa_, lying some distance to the eastward of the _Texas_. She, too, was flying the signal, "The enemy is escaping," in red and white and blue flags. Beyond the _Iowa_, still further eastward, lay the pride of the western coast, the mighty _Oregon_, and it was this ship that first started up her engines in pursuit, having, by chance, a good head of steam up. And as the _Oregon_ turned in one direction, the little _Resolute_ turned in the other, to carry the news to the absent rear-admiral. Three minutes had not yet passed, yet a complete transformation had occurred on the _Brooklyn_. Five hundred men had scuttled to as many different directions, battle hatches had been lowered, water-tight compartments closed, hose attached and decks wet down, fire tubs filled, magazines opened, hoists put into operation, and ammunition delivered to turret, decks, and to the fighting-tops. Down below, fire had been started under four fresh boilers, and a dozen different connections between engines made. Nor was this all. Splinter nets had been spread as before, all useless woodwork thrown overboard, and the surgeons' operating tables made ready. The warning gun from the _Iowa_ was followed by a gun from the _Texas_, and then the _Brooklyn_ helped to "open the ball" with her forward eight-inch guns. Another great naval battle, fully equal to that of Manila Bay, was now on. "It's a question of do or die, boys!" cried Caleb, as he worked over the heavy gun before him. "Hustle now, as you never hustled before, or the dagos will get away. Now then, Polly, do the best you can!" And _bang!_ went the gun, with a noise that was deafening. Ten minutes later Walter felt as if his hearing had left him entirely, so incessant was the firing. The first fire from the enemy came from the _Maria Teresa_, and was an eleven-inch shell directed at the _Brooklyn_. Hardly had this been discharged when the _Indiana_, coming up behind the _Iowa_, took a long-range chance and sent a shell directly upon the _Teresa's_ deck, doing not a little damage. Then the firing became general, and shot and shell was hurled in every direction. So far, the _Brooklyn_ had been headed directly for the harbor entrance, commodore and captain being intent upon cutting off the enemy's westward flight, if possible. This course soon brought the _Maria Teresa_, _Vizcaya_, and the _Brooklyn_ into close proximity, and presently all were lost to view in a dense cloud of smoke, from which shot long streaks of fire, as battery after battery was discharged at close range. "Give it to 'em!" was the cry that rang throughout the _Brooklyn_. "Don't let up on 'em! We must do as well as Dewey did, and better! Remember the _Maine_, and three cheers for Uncle Sam!" Such cries were truly inspiring, but presently the men became silent, as the work began to tell upon them, and they realized what a fearful task still lay before them. "The second ship's flag is down!" was the welcome news which soon drifted down from the fighting-tops. It was true, the _Vizcaya's_ big silk flag had been riddled completely and the halyard shot away; but soon another flag was run up. Later on the _Brooklyn's_ flag also came down, but it did not remain so more than two minutes before a jackie had it up again. The battle had but fairly begun, and the _Brooklyn_ and the _Maria Teresa_ were having it "hot and heavy," when suddenly the bow of the _Vizcaya_ began to turn swiftly. At once a cry rang out. "That ship is going to ram the _Brooklyn_! See, she is turning full toward her!" The warning proved true. The _Vizcaya_ was turned fairly and squarely for Commodore Schley's flagship. Bells were ringing on board of her for "Full speed ahead." On and on she came, like a demon of the deep, in one wild, terrible effort to ram the vessel Walter was on and sink her! CHAPTER XXIX THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH FLEET "We are lost!" "That ship will cut us in half!" "Give her a broadside, boys, before we go down!" These and a hundred other cries rang out, as the _Vizcaya_ came leaping over the waves on her awful mission of death and destruction. Then gun after gun roared out, sending shot and shell on the enemy's deck. If this was their last hour on earth, these brave jackies were going to make the most of it. But commodore, captain, and executive officer were all on the alert and were not to be caught napping. As the _Vizcaya_ came on, the necessary orders were given, and the _Brooklyn_ began to turn in a twelve-point circle to starboard. Like a flash she swept past the warship dashing on to destroy her, and then the command rang out, "Give her another broadside!" And the port guns, twenty in number, vomited out their death-dealing shots and shells, raking the Spanish deck from end to end, and killing and wounding a great number of sailors and officers. To this awful fire was added that from the _Oregon_, which now came up to assist the flagship. Realizing that the plan to ram the _Brooklyn_ was a failure, the _Vizcaya_ started westward once more. It was now high time to turn attention to the two torpedo-boat destroyers, _Pluton_ and _Furor_, that were coming out of the harbor at a speed of twenty knots per hour. Once these destroyers gained the open sea, to catch them would be impossible. Like long, steel arrows glistening in the sunlight, they darted through the greenish waves and for a moment hid themselves behind their big sisters. Then on came the _Gloucester_, a converted yacht, commanded by Lieutenant Wainwright. Wainwright had been executive officer of the _Maine_ when she was blown up in Havana Harbor, and had vowed more than once to sink something if only he were given a chance. Like an avenging angel the _Gloucester_, but lightly armed, bore down upon the torpedo boats and sent shot after shot into them. Then the destroyers began to turn, as if to sink the little enemy who dared to molest them, but now it was too late,--the big warships were coming to the _Gloucester's_ aid. It was the _Oregon_ and the _Iowa_ that first came to the converted yacht's assistance, and as the destroyers turned, first one way and then another, as if to ram or to run, a perfect hailstorm of shot and shell landed on their sides and decks, churning up the water into a milk-white froth, and causing the destroyers to look like gigantic whales lashing themselves in their death throes. The noise was even greater than it had been before, and the smoke made the heavens above look as if a violent thunderstorm was at hand. Finding they could not withstand such a combined attack, and with the _Texas_ hurrying to the scene, the destroyers turned tail, as if to make for the shore. As the turn was made a huge shell, flying over the masts of the _Gloucester_, hit the _Pluton_ directly amidship, and with a crash and a splutter she broke and sank, leaving the still living members of her crew struggling in the boiling waters for their lives. Left to herself, the _Furor_ again paused, like some wild animal seeking in vain for cover. She started to get behind the _Oquendo_, but, in spite of the fire from the shore batteries, the _Gloucester_ went in after her, with every available gun doing its utmost, and fairly filling her with small holes. At last the destroyer could stand it no longer, and with a lurch she struck on a reef and began to break. In a moment more the water poured over her sides, and her crew was compelled to surrender. The instant the surrender was made, the converted yacht, from being an angel of vengeance, became an angel of mercy, and to gallant Lieutenant-commander Wainwright fell the honor of rescuing hundreds of wounded and drowning Spaniards who must otherwise have perished. Such was the close of this running fight. At the front, the four big warships were still trying to push on, with the _Brooklyn_, _Oregon_, _Iowa_, _Texas_, and _Indiana_ in the chase. With a full head of steam the noble _Oregon_ reached a position between Commodore Schley's flagship and the _Texas_, and every vessel in the line belched forth its messengers of death and destruction. Presently a cry echoed throughout the squadron regarding the _Oquendo_. "She is on fire! See, she is burning in three places!" The report was true. A shell had burst near the quarterdeck of the warship, and now high to the sky arose a column of yellowish red smoke. Then the flames burst out of her bow. In vain the Spaniards tried to man their fire-hose. A shower of projectiles from the fighting-tops of our own ships assailed them and drove them to shelter, while the big guns continued to "pump up" shot and shell as never before. But the _Oquendo_ was no worse off than the _Maria Teresa_, if as badly. She staggered on, and a few minutes later passed her sister ship as if looking for aid, when aid could not be given. "The _Maria Teresa_ is on fire!" was the next cry, but a few minutes later. "Down goes Cervera's flag! Hurrah, boys, we've got em 'on the run! Give it to 'em hot!" Yes, the admiral's flag was down, and so was the mast that had held it. Would the Spanish emblem go up again? All watched anxiously, and meanwhile the _Brooklyn_ continued to pour in her hottest fire. "She's going ashore!" rang through the American flagship. "She's burning up!" and then came a heavy shot from the _Brooklyn_, another from the _Texas_, and staggering like a thing of life, the _Maria Teresa_ ran for the beach, a mass of seething and roaring flames. Admiral Cervera's doom was sealed. Five minutes later the _Oquendo_ was also cast on the shore. Four of the enemy's ships had been laid low, but the great fight was by no means over. Shot and shell were flying around the _Vizcaya_ and _Cristobal Colon_, but both warships kept on their way, the _Colon_ slowly but surely forging to the front. Both Spanish ships were returning the Americans' hot fire, and many a shot hit the _Brooklyn_ and many a shell burst over her deck. But as yet no serious damage had been inflicted. But a calamity was at hand, as rapid in its execution as it was appalling. Near the forward eight-inch turret George Ellis was standing, watching the struggle of the enemy's ships to escape. "Ellis, give us the range again!" shouted Captain Cook. "I'll have it in a moment, captain," answered the chief yeoman, and took up his stadiometer. Making his calculation, he turned to Commodore Schley, who was but a short distance away. "It is fourteen hundred yards to the _Vizcaya_, sir," he said. These were the last words he ever uttered, for an instant after there was the whistling of a shell, and those standing around were horrified to see Ellis's headless body drop to the deck below. The poor fellow had been killed instantly, in the very midst of his duties. What a shock this was to those about him I will leave my readers to imagine. Never until now had they realized what this awful war meant. "Poor Ellis, he was such a fine man!" murmured one comrade as he turned away. And then his face grew even more sober. "But he's the first on board of this ship. What of those poor Dons yonder, who are going down by the wholesale?" And though they were enemies, his heart beat in sympathy for the poor wretches who were struggling madly amid shot, shell, fire, and water for their lives. Fortunately the _Iowa_ was already coming to the succor of the defeated ones. "We're going to catch it now, lad," remarked Caleb to Walter, as he pointed through a rift in the cloud of smoke hanging over the gun. "There are two of the enemy's ships, and they are both going to pound us. Where in the world are our other vessels?" "The _Oregon_ is coming up!" came from the after-deck, a minute later. "And the _Texas_ isn't far behind." Around the gun it was suffocating, and every hand was ready to drop. Indeed, fainting fits were frequent, but the most that could be done for a sufferer was to either throw some water over his head or yell out to the surgeons' helpers to carry the men to the ward room for treatment. As the _Brooklyn_ was struck here and there, splinters began to fly, and a number were injured, although no one seriously. The _Texas_ had done wonderful work on the _Maria Teresa_ and the _Oquendo_, and now did her best to keep to the front of the chase. But the speed was too great for her, and gradually she dropped behind, although still continuing to throw shot and shell after the _Vizcaya_ that had dropped some distance behind the _Colon_. It was now apparent to all that if any vessel was going to get away it was to be the _Colon_, for her speed was greater than the _Vizcaya_ and as yet she had hardly been touched. "The _Vizcaya_, boys, the _Vizcaya_!" came the cry from the quarterdeck. "Don't let her screen the _Colon_!" "We'll pound 'em both!" was the answer. "Remember the _Maine_! Remember Manila Bay!" And then the mighty guns of the _Brooklyn_ and _Oregon_ roared out swifter than ever, and the _Vizcaya_, doing her best to sink one or the other of the American warships, was raked as if passing through a blizzard of fire, until her men were forced again and again from their posts, and at last the guns were abandoned. Then fire caught the craft in its awful embrace, and rolling from side to side, she, too, sought for a harbor of refuge, but found none. Down came her colors, and at the same instant she struck with a crash on the rocks. The fight had started at quarter to ten. Now it was but quarter past eleven,--just an hour and a half,--and all the Spanish ships but one had been destroyed. Such is the appalling swiftness of modern naval warfare. Where in olden days jack tars had fought for hours, they now fought for minutes. But the destruction of the _Vizcaya_ had taken time, and the _Colon_ was forging onward, panting and throbbing like a thing of life trying to escape from unspeakable terrors. Down in the bowels of the warship the furnaces were at a white heat, and the engineers had long since pushed their engines far past the danger point. "Faster! faster!" came the cry from the deck and tower. "It will be better to blow up than to allow the Yankee pigs to sink us. We must save at least one ship!" And the engines pounded and quivered, threatening each instant to blow into a million pieces. For once Don Quixote was making the run of his life. Unable to stand the heat, Walter had obtained permission to lay off for a few minutes and get some fresh air. A look from the spar deck had showed him the _Colon_ dashing far ahead, enveloped in a thin line of smoke. Every few seconds a flash of fire would come from her stern guns, but the marksmanship was poor and no serious damage was done to the _Brooklyn_. The boy returned to his gun to find Caleb and the others in deep perplexity. Something was wrong with a shell, and it had become wedged in the gun and could not be pushed forward to its proper place or hauled back. "We can't use Polly any more!" groaned Caleb. "I'll fix her!" cried Si Doring, and caught up a rammer. In a moment the brave Yankee lad was crawling out over the smoking piece toward the muzzle. But he had scarcely reached the outward end of the gun than the _Brooklyn_ gave a lurch and down he slipped over the side and into space! CHAPTER XXX FINAL SCENES OF THE GREAT FIGHT "Si has fallen overboard!" The cry came from half a dozen throats at once, and Walter's heart almost stopped beating, so attached had he become to the Yankee lad. "If he's overboard, he'll be sucked under and drowned," he groaned. "I wonder if I can see anything of him." Without a second thought he leaped on the gun and began to crawl out, on hands and knees, as perilous a thing to do, with the vessel going at full speed, as one would care to undertake. "Come back!" roared Caleb, trying to detain him. "You'll go overboard, too." At that moment came a cry from below, and looking down the steel side of the _Brooklyn_, Walter beheld Si clinging to a rope ladder, one of several flung over, to be used in case of emergency. "Si, are you all right?" he called loudly. "I--reckon--I--I am," came with a pant. "But I had an awful tumble and the wind is about knocked out o' me." And then Si began to climb up to the deck. "He's on the ladder and he's all right," shouted Walter, to those still behind the gun. Then a sudden idea struck him. "Hand me another rammer, Stuben." "Mine cracious! don't you try dot," cried the hose-man. "You vos fall ofer chust like Si." "Yes, come in here," put in Caleb, and Paul also called upon him to return. "I'm all right," was the boy's reply. "Give it to me, Stuben." And catching the rammer from the hose-man, Steve Colton passed it forward. "In war we have got to take some risks," he reasoned, as Caleb gave him a severe look. "Then why didn't you get out on the gun, Steve?" was the old gunner's dry response; and the second gun captain said no more. Rammer in hand, Walter edged closer and closer to the muzzle of the Polly. The _Brooklyn_ was moving up and down over the long green waves, sending the spray flying on both sides of the bow. He gave one look down, felt himself growing dizzy, and then kept his eyes on the gun. [Illustration: RAMMER IN HAND, WALTER EDGED CLOSE TO THE MUZZLE.] At last the muzzle was gained, and not without difficulty the rammer was inserted. The projectile had not been very tightly wedged, and a firm pressure sent it backward, so that Caleb could catch it and pull it out through the breech. Then throwing the rammer aboard, Walter lost no time in coming in again. He had been exposed to the direct fire of the enemy, but no shot had come near him. "Boy, you're too plucky," exclaimed Caleb, catching him by the shoulder. "You ought to be flogged for your daring. Let me see your hands. Ah, just as I thought; both of 'em blistered. Go and put some sweet oil on 'em, and a bit of flour. I'll bet the end of Polly is red-hot." "Well, it is pretty hot," replied Walter, and then he was glad enough to follow Caleb's advice, for both hands smarted a good deal. Soon Si joined him, to get something for his hands also. The _Colon_ had now drawn out of range, so firing would have been a useless waste of ammunition. Down to the gunners came the order: "Cease firing." And a moment later, "All hands on deck for an airing." What a laughing and shouting ensued as the jackies poured up, to secure the best viewing places they could within the ship's regulations. Hot, tired, ready to drop from exhaustion, they shook hands with each other, sang, laughed, and whistled. "Three cheers for Commodore Schley!" came suddenly from somebody, and the cheers came with vigor, and a tiger, and then came a cheer for Captain Cook and a cheer for the _Oregon_, coming up with ever increasing speed. The _Oregon's_ men cheered in return, and for a moment one would have thought this was holiday-making instead of grim war. The _Colon_ was close to shore, while the _Brooklyn_ and the _Oregon_ lay from two to three miles out to sea. Some miles farther westward the Cuban shore slopes southward to Cape Cruz. If the _Colon_ kept on her present course she would have to make for the cape, thus coming down toward the American warships. "We will catch her there," said Commodore Schley, confidently. The _Oregon_ was flying the signal "Remember the _Maine_" from her masthead, and as she drew still closer to the _Brooklyn_, another shout of approval went up. The two warships would fight the _Colon_ between them, if only they could get within range. It was now noontime, and a hasty mess was served all around, and the men continued to air themselves, something easy to do with the ponderous ship speeding the waters at an eighteen-knot rate. Suddenly from the _Oregon_ came the boom of a thirteen-inch gun, and the shell fell just astern of the _Colon_, sending the water up like a fountain. The battle was again on. "Now for it!" cried Caleb, as the Spanish warship turned southward down the coast, and the Polly spoke up as fiercely as at any time during the contest. "The Spaniards are losing heart!" came the cry, a few minutes later. "They ain't doing half the firing they were!" It was true; the _Colon_ was running short of ammunition, and her officers saw what a hopeless fight a contest with the _Brooklyn_ and _Oregon_ would prove to be. With shot and shell falling all around him, Captain Moreu hauled down his flag and sent his ship ashore at Rio Tarquino. The battle was won, and Dewey's magnificent victory at Manila, which the world in general had declared was a miracle that could not be matched, had been duplicated. Henceforth American warships and American sailors would stand as the equals of any nation on the face of the globe. And now that the contest was over what was to follow? To me, the hours that came after are even greater in honor than those glorious hours of victory. Already down the shore, the work of rescuing the sailors and marines from the _Maria Teresa_, _Oquendo_, and _Vizcaya_ had begun, and now the crews of the _Brooklyn_ and _Oregon_ turned in to aid the wounded and the dying, and those in danger of drowning, on the _Colon_. Boat after boat went out, close to the sinking cruiser, now burning fiercely, with abandoned guns going off, loose powder and shells exploding, and magazines in danger of tearing all asunder. Amid such perils did our noble jackies work, hauling man after man from the ship, or from the water, and taking them to our own warships, there to be cared for as tenderly as though they were our own. Some of the Spaniards could not understand this treatment. They had been told that the Americans were butchers and had no hearts, and when they realized the truth many burst into tears of joy. When the battle was all over, some of our officers and men could not comprehend what had been accomplished--that a whole fleet of Spanish warships had been destroyed, that hundreds of men had been killed and many more wounded and taken prisoners, and that the loss to our side had been but one man killed, a handful wounded, and no ship seriously damaged. "It was an act of Providence," said more than one, and Captain Philip of the _Texas_ spoke thus to his crew, as he gathered all around him on this never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, so bright and clear:-- "I wish to make confession that I have implicit faith in God and in the officers and crew of the _Texas_, but my faith in you is only secondary to my faith in God. We have seen what He has done for us, in allowing us to achieve so great a victory, and I want to ask all of you, or at least every man who has no scruples, to uncover his head with me and silently offer a word of thanks to God for His goodness toward us all." The thanks were given, some dropping upon their knees to deliver them, and this outpouring of hearts travelled from one ship to another throughout the entire fleet. "Poor Ellis!" said Walter; "the only seaman to give up his life! It's too bad!" And when George Ellis's body was buried with all naval honors he wept as bitterly as did anybody on board of the flagship. The victory had been gained, but the work of the fleet was not yet over. The army still occupied the outskirts of Santiago, and General Shafter had sent word to General Toral that unless he surrendered, the city would be shelled Monday morning. At a conference with Admiral Sampson, later on, it was decided that the fleet should take part in the bombardment even if it was necessary to force an entrance into the harbor. Without delay our warships were gotten into condition for this task. But the bombardment did not come--for the reason that both on land and sea the enemy had had enough of fighting. Several days passed, and the conditions of a surrender were discussed. In the meantime Lieutenant Hobson and his men were released and turned over to us in exchange for a number of Spanish prisoners. Several of the men remembered seeing Walter, and were glad to learn that the youth had escaped. The battle on sea had taken place on July the third, and my readers can imagine what a glorious Fourth of July followed, not only among the soldiers and sailors, but among our people at large. All over the land cannons boomed, pistols cracked, rockets flared, bells pealed forth, and bands played for the marching of thousands. It was a real old-fashioned "Yankee Doodle time," as one down-east paper put it, and North, South, East, and West united in celebrating as never before. Less than two weeks later Santiago surrendered, a peace protocol followed; and the war with Spain came to an end. CHAPTER XXXI TOGETHER ONCE MORE--CONCLUSION "And now that business is finished, an' I'm most awfully glad on it; yes, I am!" It was Job Dowling who spoke. The uncle and guardian of the three Russell boys was sitting by the side window of his home in Buffalo. In his lap lay a small, flat package, which had been wrapped in heavy brown paper and well sealed. In his hand was an open letter which he had just finished reading. "It was a dreadful price to pay thet detective," he resumed. "But I couldn't git them hairlooms back no other way, and I'm afraid the boys would raise the roof ef I didn't git 'em back. It's a comfort to know thet thief was caught and is going to be tried for even a wuss crime than stealin' them rings an' the watch an' the Australian diamond. I hope they give him about twenty years in prison." He paused to put the package away in his dilapidated secretary. "So Ben is coming home this week? I wonder what he'll have to say when he faces me? Somehow, I don't know wot I'm going to say myself." And he dropped into his chair again. Job Dowling was a different man from what he had been. The determined stand taken by Larry, Walter, and Ben had opened his eyes to the knowledge that he had no mere children to deal with, but boys who were almost men, and who were fully capable of taking care of themselves. His visit to New York, when he was robbed of the Russell heirlooms, had caused him considerable loss of self-confidence, and the trip to Boston after the thief had awakened him to the fact that, after all, he was of but little importance in this world. His efforts to help the police recover the heirlooms had been laughed at, and even the detective had shown him plainly that he was hindering more than he was helping. Finally he had returned home in disgust, and the detective had finished the work on the case alone, recovered everything, and sent Deck Mumpers to jail to stand trial on half a dozen charges. The detective's bill had been over two hundred dollars, a sum the paying of which had nearly given Job Dowling a fit; but now the whole thing was settled and he was awaiting Ben's return, for the gallant young volunteer had been shot in the left arm on the day before Santiago surrendered, and was coming home on sick leave. Ding! ding! it was a double ring at the front-door bell, and before Mrs. Graham, the new housekeeper, and a great improvement on the tartar-like Mrs. Rafferty, could get to the door, Job Dowling was there himself. "Ben an' Walter!" he exclaimed, as he found himself confronted by two nephews instead of one, as expected. "Well--er, how is this?" "How do you do, Uncle Job!" exclaimed Ben, extending his hand. "Aren't you glad to see me too, Uncle Job?" put in Walter. "Why--er--of course, of course!" came with a stammer; and Job Dowling held out both of his bony hands. "Come right in. This is Mrs. Graham, my new workwoman." And the lady of the house, dressed in a neat wrapper and with a clean kitchen apron on, came forward and bowed. "Knows a sight more than Mrs. Rafferty did," went on the uncle, in a whisper. "I didn't know Walter was coming on till day before yesterday," continued Ben. "We met quite by accident in New York, and we made up to come on together and surprise you." "I see--I see." Job Dowling was still very nervous, and he could hardly tell why. At one instant he thought he ought to quarrel with them, the next that it would be quite proper to embrace them and tell them they were forgiven and could henceforth do as they saw proper. But he chose a middle course and did neither. "Sit down and make yourselves to hum, and, Mrs. Graham, you had best get a few extry chops--three won't be enough. Tell Boggs to send me the best on the stand." At this order Walter nudged Ben, and both looked at each other and smiled. "He's reforming," whispered the young sailor. "Only give him time, and he'll be all right." "Yes, Mr. Dowling," put in the housekeeper. "And you said something about pie yesterday, when Master Ben should come. What of that?" "Ah, yes, so I did, so I did." The former miser wrinkled his brow. "How much does a pie cost?" "Ten and twenty cents." "Boys, do you think you could eat a twenty-cent pie?" "Do we?" cried Walter. "Just try us and see, Uncle Job." And now he clasped his guardian half affectionately by the shoulder. "Then get the twenty-cent pie, Mrs. Graham, and be sure an' pick out the best. You--er--have the other things?" "Yes, sir--potatoes, green corn, and coffee." "Very good." And as the housekeeper retired, Job Dowling turned to the boys again. "And how is your arm, Ben? Not seriously hurt, I trust?" "It's only a scratch," was the answer. "And you, Walter?" "I'm all right. But how have you been, Uncle Job, and what of that stolen stuff?" "Oh, I'm only tolerable--got quite some rheumatism. The hairlooms is all safe--but they cost me two hundred and twenty-seven dollars an' a half to git 'em!" And the guardian nodded to emphasize his words. "Well, they're worth it," answered Ben, promptly; and Job Dowling did not dare dispute the assertion. "Where are they?" "In the desk. I'll show 'em to you, and then ye can both tell me all about yer adventures on the water and in Cuby." The heirlooms had just been brought out, and Ben was examining the watch, when a form darkened the window opening,--the form of a boy dressed in a natty sailor suit. All looked up in wonder, and all cried out in unison:---- "Larry!" "Ben, Walter, and Uncle Job!" came from the youth who had fought so gallantly under Dewey at Manila. "Here's a family gathering, for sure!" And with a light leap he cleared the window-sill and actually fell into his brothers' arms, while Job Dowling looked on with a half smile on his wrinkled face. "I couldn't remain away from the United States any longer," explained Larry, when, an hour after, all sat down to the really excellent dinner Job Dowling had provided. "While I was at Hong Kong I got a good chance to ship on a steamer for San Francisco, and we came home on the double-quick, for the government had chartered the vessel to carry troops to the Philippines. Maybe I'll go back under Dewey some time, but not just yet. I've got some prize money coming to me, I don't know yet how much, and I'll lie off to see." "And I've got prize money coming, too," added Walter. "I like the navy first-rate, and shall stick to it for the present, even if I have a chance of being mustered out." "I haven't any prize money coming, but I am to be a second lieutenant of volunteers," put in Ben. "Our regiment is to be mustered out very soon, and then I'm going to try for something else in the same line." "And what is that, Ben?" asked Job Dowling and the other boys together. "I'm going to try for a commission in the regular army." "Hurrah! that's the talk!" came from Larry. "And if you stay in the army, I'll see what I can do toward working my way up in the navy." Then both lads looked toward their guardian. Job Dowling scratched his chin in perplexity, and cleared his throat. "All right, boys--I should say young men, fer ye ain't none o' ye boys no more--go an' do as ye please, I ain't got nothin' agin' it. You have all done yer duty to Uncle Sam, an' thet bein' so, it stands to reason ye are capable o' doin' yer duty to yerselves an' to me. To look back it 'pears to me thet I made some kind of a mistake at the start with ye, an' so I say, you willin' an' me willin', we'll take a fresh start,--an' there's my hand on't." "Uncle Job, you're a--a brick!" came from Walter, and a general handshaking followed, and then, as Mrs. Graham came on with a coffee-pot and the dessert, Ben arose with the cup in his hand. "Boys, let us drink Uncle Job's health in a cup of coffee!" "We will!" came from his brothers. "And eat it, too,--in a piece of that pie!" concluded the ever-lighthearted Larry. * * * * * Here we will bring to a close the story of Walter Russell's adventures while "Fighting in Cuban Waters," which has taken us through a thrilling naval campaign and shown us what true American pluck can accomplish even under the most trying circumstances. As my readers know, the Russell boys had a large inheritance coming to them, and now that Job Dowling had come to his senses regarding a proper treatment of them, it was to be hoped that matters would move much more smoothly for all concerned. Through Larry it was learned that his old-time friend, Luke Striker, was still with Dewey in Philippine waters and had been promoted to the position of first gun-captain on board the _Olympia_, much to the old Yankee's credit and delight. Frank Bulkley, Ben's soldier chum, was still sick with the fever, but was at his home in the metropolis, and was out of danger, which was much to be thankful for, considering what awful havoc that fever had made with the army of invasion. Walter's friends were all on the _Brooklyn_, and it was not long before the lad was anxious to get back to them, for he had become very much attached to the noble flagship that had rendered such a good account of herself in the mighty conflict with Cervera's fleet. Gilbert Pennington, Ben's friend of the Rough Riders, was in Cuba, but expected to come north shortly. Gilbert had an offer of a position as bookkeeper with an importing firm in New York, but was destined to see a good deal more of fighting ere he settled to work behind a desk. When Ben spoke of trying for a commission, and Larry said he should remain in the navy, both thought that fighting for the American army and navy was at an end. This supposition was correct so far as Spain was concerned, but the insurgents in the Philippines under General Aguinaldo refused to recognize Uncle Sam's authority, and it was not long before a large army had to be sent to Manila and other points, to coöperate with Dewey in restoring peace and order. Ben could not resist the temptation to join these soldiers in a distant clime, and with more fighting in view, Larry hastened to rejoin the _Olympia_. In another volume, to be entitled, "Under Otis in the Philippines; Or, A Young Officer in the Tropics," we shall follow the future adventures of these two brothers, and shall also see more of Gilbert Pennington, Luke Striker, and several others of our old acquaintances. And now, for the time being, good-by to all our friends, and especially to Walter Russell, the American lad who made such a record for pluck while "Fighting in Cuban Waters." By EDWARD STRATEMEYER THE OLD GLORY SERIES UNDER DEWEY AT MANILA Or the War Fortunes of a Castaway. A YOUNG VOLUNTEER IN CUBA Or Fighting for the Single Star. FIGHTING IN CUBAN WATERS Or Under Schley on the Brooklyn. "'Under Dewey at Manila' is a thoroughly timely book, in perfect sympathy with the patriotism of the day. Its title is conducive to its perusing, and its reading to anticipation. For the volume is but the first of the Old Glory Series, and the imprint is that of the famed firm of Lee and Shepard, whose name has been for so many years linked with the publications of Oliver Optic. As a matter of fact, the story is right in line with the productions of that gifted and most fascinating of authors, and certainly there is every cause for congratulation that the stirring events of our recent war are not to lose their value for instruction through that valuable school which the late William T. Adams made so individually distinctive. "Edward Stratemeyer, who is the author of the present work, has proved an extraordinarily apt scholar, and had the book appeared anonymously there could hardly have failed of a unanimous opinion that a miracle had enabled the writer of the famous Army and Navy and other series to resume his pen for the volume in hand. Mr. Stratemeyer has acquired in a wonderfully successful degree the knack of writing an interesting educational story which will appeal to the young people, and the plan of his trio of books as outlined cannot fail to prove both interesting and valuable."--_Boston Ideas._ "Stratemeyer's style suits the boys."--JOHN TERHUNE, _Supt. of Public Instruction, Bergen Co., New Jersey._ "'The Young Volunteer in Cuba,' the second of the Old Glory Series, is better than the first; perhaps it traverses more familiar ground. Ben Russell, the brother of Larry, who was 'with Dewey,' enlists with the volunteers and goes to Cuba, where he shares in the abundance of adventure and has a chance to show his courage and honesty and manliness, which win their reward. A good book for boys, giving a good deal of information in a most attractive form."--_Universalist Leader._ THE BOUND TO SUCCEED SERIES RICHARD DARE'S VENTURE Or Striking Out for Himself. OLIVER BRIGHTS SEARCH Or The Mystery of a Mine. TO ALASKA FOR GOLD Or The Fortune Hunters of the Yukon. "In 'Richard Dare's Venture,' Edward Stratemeyer has fully sustained his reputation as an entertaining, helpful, and instructive writer for boys."--_Philadelphia Call._ "'Richard Dare's Venture,' by Edward Stratemeyer, tells the story of a country lad who goes to New York to earn enough to support his widowed mother and orphaned sisters. Richard's energy, uprightness of character, and good sense carry him through some trying experiences, and gain him friends."--_The Churchman_, New York. "A breezy boy's book is 'Oliver Bright's Search.' The author has a direct, graphic style, and every healthy minded youth will enjoy the volume."--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._ "'Richard Dare's Venture' is a fresh, wholesome book to put into a boy's hands."--_St. Louis Post Dispatch._ "'Richard Dare's Venture' is a wholesome story of a practical boy who made a way for himself when thrown upon his own resources."--_Christian Advocate._ "It is such books as 'Richard Dare's Venture' that are calculated to inspire young readers with a determination to succeed in life, and to choose some honorable walk in which to find that success. The author, Edward Stratemeyer, has shown a judgment that is altogether too rare in the makers of books for boys, in that he has avoided that sort of heroics in the picturing of the life of his hero which deals in adventures of the daredevil sort. In that respect alone the book commends itself to the favor of parents who have a regard for the education of their sons, but the story is sufficiently enlivening and often thrilling to satisfy the healthful desires of the young reader."--_Kansas City Star._ "Of standard writers of boys' stories there is quite a list, but those who have not read any by Edward Stratemeyer have missed a very goodly thing."--_Boston Ideas._ BY EVERETT T. TOMLINSON THE WAR OF 1812 SERIES COMPRISING The Search for Andrew Field The Boy Soldiers of 1812 The Boy Officers of 1812 Tecumseh's Young Braves Guarding the Border The Boys with Old Hickory Mr. Tomlinson, who knows the "ins and outs" of boy nature by heart, is one of the most entertaining and at the same time one of the most instructive of living writers of juvenile fiction. In his younger days a teacher by profession, he has made boys and their idiosyncrasies the absorbing study of his life, and, with the accumulated experience of years to aid him, has applied himself to the task of preparing for their mental delectation a diet that shall be at once wholesome and attractive; and that his efforts in this laudable direction have been successful is conclusively proven by his popularity among boy readers. LIBRARY OF HEROIC EVENTS STORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION _First Series_ STORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION _Second Series_ By OLIVER OPTIC All-Over-the-World Library. A Missing Million; or, The Adventures of Louis Belgrade. A Millionaire at Sixteen; or, The Cruise of the "Guardian Mother." A Young Knight Errant; or, Cruising in the West Indies. Strange Sights Abroad; or, Adventures in European Waters No author has come before the public during the present generation who has achieved a larger and more deserving popularity among young people than "Oliver Optic." His stories have been very numerous, but they have been uniformly excellent in moral tone and literary quality. As indicated in the general title, it is the author's intention to conduct the readers of this entertaining series "around the world." As a means to this end, the hero of the story purchases a steamer which he names the "Guardian Mother," and with a number of guests she proceeds on her voyage.--_Christian Work, N. Y._ All-Over-the-World Library. Second Series. American Boys Afloat; or, Cruising in the Orient. The Young Navigators; or, The Foreign Cruise of the "Maud." Up and Down the Nile; or, Young Adventurers in Africa. Asiatic Breezes; or, Students on the Wing. The interest in these stories is continuous, and there is a great variety of exciting incident woven into the solid information which the book imparts so generously and without the slightest suspicion of dryness. Manly boys will welcome this volume as cordially as they did its predecessors.--_Boston Gazette._ All-Over-the-World Library. Third Series. Across India; or, Live Boys in the Far East. Half Round the World; or, Among the Uncivilized. Four Young Explorers; or, Sight-seeing in the Tropics. Pacific Shores; or, Adventures in Eastern Seas. Amid such new and varied surroundings it would be surprising indeed if the author, with his faculty of making even the commonplace attractive, did not tell an intensely interesting story of adventure, as well as give much information in regard to the distant countries through which our friends pass, and the strange peoples with whom they are brought in contact. This book, and indeed the whole series, is admirably adapted to reading aloud in the family circle, each volume containing matter which will interest all the members of the family.--_Boston Budget._ 
36348	----	OUR ARTIST IN CUBA, PERU, SPAIN AND ALGIERS. LEAVES FROM _THE SKETCH-BOOK OF A TRAVELLER_. 1864-1868. BY GEORGE W. CARLETON. "Let observation, with expansive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru." [Illustration] NEW YORK: Copyright, 1877, by _G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers_. LONDON: S. LOW & CO. MDCCCLXXVII. OUR ARTIST, [Illustration: colophon] HIS MARK. CONTENTS. PAGE CUBA, 5 PERU, 57 SPAIN, 109 ALGIERS, 131 [Illustration] AN APOLOGY. The Author of these unpretending little wayside sketches offers them to the Public with the hesitating diffidence of an Amateur. The publication a few years ago, of a portion of the drawings was attended with so flattering a reception, that a new edition being called for, it is believed a few more Leaves from the same vagabond sketch-book may not be intrusive. The out-of-the-way sort of places in which the Author's steps have led him, must always present the most enticing subjects for a comic pencil; and although no attempt is here made to much more than hint at the oranges and volantes of Cuba, the earthquakes and buzzards of Peru, the donkeys and beggars of Spain, or the Arabs and dates of Algiers, yet sketches made upon the spot, with the crispy freshness of a first impression, cannot fail in suggesting at least a panoramic picture of such grotesque incidents as these strange Countries furnish. The drawings are merely the chance results of leisure moments; and Our Artist, in essaying to convey a ray of information through the glasses of humor, has simply multiplied with printers' ink his pocket-book of sketches, which, although caricatures, are exaggerations of actual events, jotted down on the impulse of the moment, for the same sort of idle pastime as may possibly lead the reader to linger along its ephemeral pages. NEW YORK, _Christmas_, 1877. PART I. CUBA. [Illustration: colophon] CUBAN SKETCHES. SICK TRANSIT. THE SPANISH TONGUE. TWO BOOBIES. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR. A COLORED HERCULES. AN AGREEABLE BATH. THE CUBAN JEHU. A CELESTIAL MAID. IGLESIA SAN FRANCISCO. A STATUE ON A BUST. A CUBAN MOTIVE. A TAIL UNFOLDED. AN INFLUENZA. MONEY IN THY PURSE. FLEE FOR SHELTER. SUGAR AND WATER. THE RIDE. GREEN FIELDS. A COCK-FIGHT. A SEGAR WELL-LIGHTED. RATHER COOL. SHALL REST BE FOUND. TAKE YOUR PICK. ALL ABOARD. A SPANISH RETREAT. THE MATANZAS CAVE. SPIDERS AND RATS. HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. BELLIGERENTS. A SHADY RETREAT. MATERFAMILIAS. A SPANISH GROCER. CULINARY DEPARTMENT. COLORED HELP. A BUNDLE OF CLOTHES. VERY MOORISH. A BUTTON-SMASHER. CHACUN A SON GOUT. WHITE PANTALOONS. NATURE'S RESTORER. CARNIVAL ACQUAINTANCE. AGRICULTURAL. BEAUTY AT THE BALL. A COT IN THE VALLEY. A DISAPPOINTMENT. A COLORED BEAUTY. DOLCE FAR NIENTE. CORNER STONES. LOCOMOTION. A SUDDEN DEPARTURE. THE START.--THE STEAMSHIP COLUMBIA. AT SEA. [Illustration: First day out.--The wind freshens up a trifle as we get outside Sandy Hook; but our artist says he is'nt sea-sick, for he never felt better in his life.] IN THE GULF OF MEXICO. [Illustration: A "Booby"--as seen _from_ the ship's deck.] [Illustration: A "Booby"--as seen _on_ the ship's deck.] ARRIVAL AT HAVANA. [Illustration: A side elevation of the colored gentleman who carried our luggage from the small boat to the Custom House.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE MERCADERES. [Illustration: The first volante driver that our artist saw in Havana.] VIEW FROM OUR WINDOW AT THE HOTEL ALMY. [Illustration: The old Convent and Bell Tower of the Church of San Francisco,--now used as a Custom House.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE TENIENTE RE. [Illustration: A Cuban Cart and its Motive Power.--Ye patient Donkey.] AT THE CAFE LOUVRE. [Illustration: Manners and Customs of a Cuban with a Cold in his Head.] THE [WICKED] FLEA OF HAVANA. [Illustration: PART I.--The beast in a torpid condition.] [Illustration: PART II.--When he "smells the blood of an Englishmun."] THE NATIONAL VEHICLE OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Manner and Custom of Harnessing ye Animiles to ye Cuban Volante.] A COCK-FIGHT IN CUBA. [Illustration: I.--Chanticleer as he goes in.] [Illustration: II.--Chanticleer considerably "played out."] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE LAMPARILLA. [Illustration: The cool and airy style in which they dress the rising colored generation of Havana.] THE CUBAN TOOTH-PICK. [Illustration: Two ways of carrying it--behind the ear, and in the back-hair.] THE CAPTAIN GENERAL'S QUINTA. [Illustration: View of the Canal and Cocoa Tree; looking East from the Grotto.] THE DOMESTIC INSECTS OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Agitation of the Better-Half of Our Artist, upon entering her chamber and making their acquaintance.] A LITTLE EPISODE IN THE CALLE BARRATILLO. [Illustration: A slight difference arises between the housekeeper's cat and the butcher's dog, who has just come out in his summer costume.] STREETS OF HAVANA.--CALLE COMPOSTELLA. [Illustration: The Free Negro.--An every-day scene, when the weather is fine.] AN INTERIOR IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Kitchen, chief-cook and bottle-washer in the establishment of Mrs. Franke, out on the "Cerro."] HEADS OF THE PEOPLE. [Illustration: A portrait of the young lady, whose family (after considerable urging) consents to take in our washing.] PRIMITIVE HABITS OF THE NATIVES. [Illustration: Washing in Havana.--$4 00 a dozen in gold.] WASHING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: I.--My pantaloons as they went _in_. II.--My pantaloons as they came _out_.] CARNIVAL IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A Masquerade at the Tacon Theatre.--Types of Costume, with a glimpse of the "Cuban Dance" in the background.] A MASK BALL AT THE TACON. [Illustration: Our artist mixes in the giddy dance, and falls desperately in love with this sweet creature--but] LATER IN THE EVENING, [Illustration: When the "sweet creature" unmasks, our Artist suddenly recovers from his fit of admiration. Alas! beauty is but mask deep.] STREETS OF HAVANA--CALLE OBRAPIA. [Illustration: The Cuban Wheelbarrow--In Repose.] STREETS OF HAVANA--CALLE O'REILLY. [Illustration: The Cuban Wheelbarrow--In action.] FIRST HOUR! SECOND HOUR!! THIRD HOUR!!! [Illustration: Our Artist forms the praiseworthy determination of studying the Spanish language, and devotes three hours to the enterprise.] BED-ROOMS IN CUBA. [Illustration: The Scorpion of Havana,--encountered in his native jungle.] SEA-BATHS IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist having prepared himself for a jolly plunge, inadvertently observes an insect peculiar to the water, and rather thinks he won't go in just now.] HOTELS IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A cheerful Chinese Chambermaid (?) at the Fonda de Ingleterra, outside the walls.] HIGH ART IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A gay (but slightly mutilated) old plaster-of-Paris girl, that I found in one of the avenues of the Bishop's Garden, on the "Cerro."] LOCOMOTION IN THE COUNTRY. [Illustration: A Cuban Planter going into town with his plunder.] SHOPPING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist just steps around the corner, to look at a "sweet thing in fans" that his wife has found.] [Illustration: RESULT!] THE NATIONAL BEVERAGE OF HAVANA. [Illustration: Our Artist indulges in a _panale frio_ (a sort of lime-ade), at the Café Dominica, and gets so "set up," that he vows he won't go home till morning.] THE LIZARDS OF CUBA. [Illustration: Our Artist, on an entomological expedition in the Bishop's Garden, is disagreeably surprised to find such sprightly specimens.] SMOKING IN HAVANA. [Illustration: An English acquaintance of Our Artist wants a light for his paper segar; whereupon the waiter, according to custom, brings a live coal.] THE MUSQUITOS OF HAVANA. [Illustration: A midsummer's night dream.--Our Artist is just the least bit disturbed in his rest, and gently remonstrates.] PUBLIC SERVANTS IN CUBA. [Illustration: A gay and festive Chinese brakeman, on the railroad near Guines.--The shirt-collar-and-pair-of-spurs style of costume.] ONE OF THE SENSATIONS IN CUBA. [Illustration: The Great Cave near Matanzas.--Picturesque House over the Entrance.] THE GREAT CAVE NEAR MATANZAS. [Illustration: A section of the interior--showing the comfortable manner in which our artist followed the guide, inspected the stalactites, and comported himself generally.] THE OUTSKIRTS OF MATANZAS. [Illustration: One of the Fortifications.--Sketched from the end of the _Paseo_, on a day hot enough to give anything but a donkey the brain fever.] ARCHITECTURE IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: A romantic little _tienda mista_ (grocery store) on a corner, in the Calle Ona.] A _CAFFETAL_ NEAR MATANZAS. [Illustration: Our Artist becomes dumb with admiration, at the ingenious manner of toting little niggers.] THE PICTURESQUE IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: A singular little bit, out of the Calle Manzana.] A SUGAR PLANTATION, NEAR THE YUMORI. [Illustration: Our Artist essays to drink the milk from a green Cocoa:] [Illustration: Fatal effect.--An uncomfortable sensation!] A BED-CHAMBER IN MATANZAS. [Illustration: First night at the "Gran Hotel Leon de Oro."--Our artist is accommodated with quarters on the ground-floor, convenient to the court-yard, and is lulled to sleep by a little domestic concert of cats, dogs, donkeys, parrots and game-cocks.] ECONOMY IS WEALTH. [Illustration: Showing the manner in which one ox accomplishes the labor of two, in San Felipe.] THE SUBURBS OF CALABAZAR. [Illustration: A Planter's Hut, and three scraggly Palm Trees in the dim distance.] PLANTATIONS NEAR MARIANAO. [Illustration: A Colored Beauty toting Sugar Cane from the field to the grinding mill.] ARCHITECTURE IN HAVANA. [Illustration: A conglomerate _Esquina_, on the corner of Calle Obispo and Monserate.] LAST NIGHT IN HAVANA. [Illustration: Alarm of Our Artist and Wife, upon going to their room to pack, and discovering that a Tarantula has taken possession of their trunk.] PART II. PERU. [Illustration] PERUVIAN SKETCHES. FRIENDLY COUNSELS. GOOD FOR DIGESTION. A DISAGREEABLE BERTH. AN EYE FOR AN EYE. A COLORED RECEPTION. WHO KNOWS? (NOSE). THE NAKED TRUTH. DISCRETION IN VALOR. A PANAMA LAUNDRESS. BLACK WARRIORS. A MAN FOR A' HAT. MUSIC HATH CHARMS. DOMESTIC BLISS. A CHARIOT RACE. A BIT OF A CHURCH. AN ANTIQUE. HOT WEATHER. FAMILY ARRANGEMENT. WHAT AN ASS! HEADS OF THE PEOPLE. A HAPPY FAMILY. BY THEIR FRUITS. LAND AT LAST. A BEAST OF BURDEN. CALLAO CATHEDRAL. A NIGHT ADVENTURE. A BAGGAGE TRAIN. A RUNAWAY. CATHEDRAL AT LIMA. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC. A WATER-CARRIER. A ROOSTER. A BAG OF CUFFEY. A CHIME OF BELLS. BIRDS OF A FEATHER. DOG-DAYS. A CHINA BOWL OF SOUP. PORK BUSINESS. THING OF BEAUTY. WHEN SHALL WE THREE. FONDEST HOPES DECAY. UNHAND ME! RAT-IFICATION MEETING. NOTHING VENTURE. A BACK SEAT. A GREAT SELL. AN EXCELLENT VIEW. A BEGGARLY SHOW. BREAD-BASKETS. A DEAD-HEAD. THE START--STEAMSHIP "HENRY CHAUNCEY." FROM NEW YORK TO ASPINWALL. [Illustration: Sea-sickness being a weakness of Our Artist, he determines to be fore-armed, and accordingly provides himself with a few simple preventives, warmly recommended by his various friends.] IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA. [Illustration: Our Artist, having indulged rather freely in the different preventives, gets things mixed, and wishes that his friends and their confounded antidotes were at the bottom of the Dead Sea.] ARRIVAL AT ASPINWALL. [Illustration: First impressions of the city and its inhabitants.--Colored citizens on the dock, awaiting the steamer's advent.] ISTHMUS OF DARIEN. [Illustration: View from the window of a Panama railroad car--showing the low-neck and short-sleeve style of costume adopted by the youthful natives of Cruces.--Also a sprightly specimen of the one-eared greyhound indigenous to the country.] A VIEW IN PANAMA. [Illustration: The old and weather-beaten church of Santa Ana--and in the foreground, with basket on her head, baby under one arm, and bowl of milk supported by the other, a colored lady of West Indian descent, vulgarly known as a "Jamaica nigger."] AN AFTERNOON AT PANAMA. [Illustration: Deeming it always incumbent upon the traveller to invest in the products of the country, Our Artist provides himself with a good sensible Panama hat, and thus with wife and "mutual friend," he peacefully and serenely meanders around among the suburbs of the city.] A STREET SCENE IN PANAMA. [Illustration: Our Artist, with the naked eye, beholds a pig, a fighting-cock, and a black baby, all tied by the leg, at the humble doorway of the residence of a colored citizen, in the principal street of the capital of Central America.] IN THE BAY OF PANAMA. [Illustration: Our Artist wanders about the sleepy little neighboring island, Taboga, where the English steamers lie, and sketches, among other picturesque bits, the clean little whitewashed cathedral in the dirty little Broadway of Taboga.] STEAMSHIP "CHILE." FROM PANAMA TO CALLAO. [Illustration: Crossing the equinoctial line, Our Artist discovers that the rays of a vertical sun are anything but bracing and cool.] PAYTA--A SEAPORT IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist, having understood that this town is chiefly remarkable for its fine breed of mules, ironically inquires of a native Venus if this can be considered a good specimen. The N. V. treats Our Artist with silent, stolid, Indian contempt.] NATURAL HISTORY IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist visits a coasting-vessel just arrived from Guayaquil, loaded with every variety of tropical fruit, and a sprinkling of tame monkeys, parrots, alligators, white herons, iguanas, paroquets, spotted deer, etc.] ARRIVAL AT CALLAO--THE HARBOR. [Illustration: The landing-boat being a trifle too much loaded by the head, Our Artist finds it somewhat difficult to steer.] ARCHITECTURE IN CALLAO. [Illustration: The little one-story Cathedral on the Plaza, which the earthquakes have so frantically and so vainly tried to swallow up or tumble down.] ARRIVAL AT LIMA. [Illustration: Triumphal entry of Our Artist and his much-the-better-half; reviving the brilliant days of Pizarro and his conquering warriors, as they entered the "City of the Kings."--The Peruvian warriors in the present century, however, conquer but the baggage, and permit the weary traveller to walk to his hotel at the tail-end of the procession.] THE CATHEDRAL AT LIMA. [Illustration: An after-dinner sketch (rather shaky) from our balcony in the Hotel Morin, on the Grand Plaza.] DOMESTICS IN PERU. [Illustration: One of the waiters at our hotel, clad in the inevitable _poncho_--A genuine native Peruvian, perhaps a son of "Rolla the Peruvian," who was "within."] A PERUVIAN COOK. [Illustration: Peeping into the kitchen one day, Our Artist perceives that a costume, cool and negligé, may be improvised by making a hole in a coffee-bag and getting into it.] STREETS OF LIMA--CALLE JUDIOS. [Illustration: Almost every other street in Lima has a stream of filthy water or open sewer running through the middle of it, offering rich fishing-grounds to the graceful _gallinazos_ or turkey-buzzards, who thus constitute the street-cleaning department of the municipal government.] CELESTIALS IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist is here seen resisting the tempting offer of a bowl of what appears to be buzzard soup, in front of one of the Chinese cook-shops that abound in the neighborhood of the market at Lima.] DOLCE FAR NIENTE--A DREAM OF PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist before going to Lima, during little poetical siestas, had indulged in lovely romantic reveries, the burden of which he sketches in his mind's eye, Horatio--but] THE SAD REALITY. [Illustration: Alas! too frequently his thirsty eye is met only by such visions as the above--and the lovely beauties of Lima, where are they?] BEDROOMS IN PERU. [Illustration: A section of the inner-wall to our chamber at the Hotel in Lima.--The condition of things at the witching hour of night, judging by the sounds.] STREETS OF LIMA.--CALLE PALACIO. [Illustration: A young Peruvian accompanying its mamma to market in the morning.] STREETS OF LIMA--CALLE PLATEROS. [Illustration: A picturesque little _mirador_ or lookout at the corner of Calle Plateros and Bodegones, opposite the Hotel Maury, with balconies _ad lib._] OCCUPATIONS IN LIMA. [Illustration: The _panadero_, or baker, as he appears on his mite of a donkey, rushing round through the streets of Lima, delivering bread to his customers.] CARRIAGES AND PAVEMENTS IN LIMA. [Illustration: Our Artist, after a hearty dinner, extravagantly engages a three-horse coupé, and goes out for a regular, genuine, native Peruvian ride. That his bones are unbroken, and that he is yet alive to tell the tale, remains to him an unfathomable mystery.] COSTUMES IN LIMA.--THE SAYA Y MANTO. [Illustration: Our Artist has heard a good deal about the magnificent eyes of the Limanian women; but as he never sees more than one eye at a time, he can't say much about them, with any regard for the truth.] HEAD-DRESSES IN LIMA.--THE MANTO. [Illustration: The Señoritas look very prettily sometimes, with their black mantillas thrown gracefully over their heads, (_See Geographies, etc._,) but when you come across a party possessing a decided nose, in profile, the effect is rather startling.] REVOLUTIONS IN PERU. [Illustration: Our apartments look out upon the Grand Plaza, where the fighting usually takes place; and as the windows are mostly broken by the balls of the last Revolution, (Nov. 6, 1865,) and it's about time for another, Our Artist gets into ambuscade every time he hears a fire-cracker in the street.] THE WAR WITH SPAIN. [Illustration: Two native and dreadfully patriotic Peruvian soldiers on review before their superior officer.] MARTIAL MUSIC IN PERU. [Illustration: The National Hymn, with variations, as rendered by the Royal Band in front of President Prado's palace on the Grand Plaza.] FINE ARTS IN PERU. [Illustration: A hasty sketch of Mistress Juno and her peacocks, as represented by fresco in the doorway of a Lima palace--Calle Ayachucho.] DARK AGES OF PERU. [Illustration: The old unfinished church and deserted monastery of San Francisco de Paula--Calle Malambo.] LOCOMOTION IN SOUTH AMERICA. [Illustration: What the country people would do down there, if the jackasses were only long enough.--What they _do_ do, is but slightly caricatured by Our Artist.] HAIR-DRESSING IN LIMA. [Illustration: Ladies' style as seen at the theatre. Also Our Artist before and after he had his hair cut in the latest Lima fashion.] A FRUIT-STALL AT CHORRILLOS. [Illustration: Our Artist, as he appeared when stricken with amazement at the huge clusters of white grapes that are everywhere, for a mere song, sold in Peru.] SHOPPING IN PERU. [Illustration: A Peruvian materfamilias, having bought a few simple house-keeping articles in town, is here seen returning to her mountain home, accompanied by her purchases.] THE FLEAS OF LIMA. [Illustration: Having been nearly devoured by these carnivorous little devils, Our Artist sprinkles himself with Turkish flea-powder one night before retiring, and is charmed at the rapid and parabolic manner with which they desert him.] THE LLAMAS OF PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist had heretofore fancied that it would be immensely jolly to ride one of these singular beasts of burden; but when he encounters this one, on a lonely road outside the walls one day, he begs to be excused.] TERPSICHORE IN PERU. [Illustration: Our Artist assists at a mask-ball in the Jardin Otaiza, and is puzzled at the nationality of the costumes worn by the dancers.] CHURCH ORNAMENTS IN LIMA. [Illustration: The statues in the niches and on the spires of the Cathedral look very well in the daytime; but at night, when the turkey-buzzards roost on their heads, the solemnity of the thing is somewhat marred.] THE BELLS OF LIMA. [Illustration: Lima is full of churches, and the churches are full of bells; and as they ring and bang away from dewy eve till early morn, their cadences are calculated to disturb somewhat the peaceful slumbers of Our Artist.] PERUVIAN BARK--IN THE ROUGH. [Illustration: Our Artist is treated to plenty of this quinine (canine) salutation, whenever and wherever he pays a visit in Lima.] TRANSPORTATION IN PERU. [Illustration: "This pig went to market," but as he wouldn't go decently, he was tied upon the back of the ever-patient donkey, and so, _nolens volens_, came to Lima, crossing the bridge over the Rimac, where Our Artist sketched him.] PRIESTS AND FRIARS OF LIMA. [Illustration: A theological discussion of the gravest import takes place between three jolly Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church--a Dominican, a Mercedarian, and a Buena-Muertean. Scene--The square in front of the church of San Francisco, with its crooked cross.] ENTOMOLOGY IN SOUTH AMERICA. [Illustration: Our Artist doesn't want to say anything against the insects of Peru; but the way in which one of his hands swelled up, after a bite from some unknown varmit in the night, was, to say the least, alarming.] LOTTERIES IN PERU. [Illustration: Having invested in the semi-monthly Lima lottery, Our Artist feels so confident of drawing the $4,000 prize, that he gets extravagant, wears his good clothes, and smokes one-dollar cigars; but a revulsion of feeling takes place after the drawing produces nothing for him but blanks.] CURIOSITIES OF PERU. [Illustration: Having been informed by a musty old sepulchral monk that the remains of Pizarro might be seen behind this grating, Our Artist tremblingly gazes therein--but as it is pitch dark, he doesn't recognize Pizarro.] A COUP D'OEIL IN LIMA. [Illustration: A picturesque view of the great stone bridge over the rapid river Rimac, showing the towers of the church Desamparados, the Arch with illuminated clock, and the spire of Santo Domingo.--Sketched with about ninety-seven Peruvian beggars looking over Our Artist's shoulder.] LAST DAY AT LIMA. [Illustration: A visit to the Museum--which contains a not very remarkable collection of Peruvian antiquities--and where Our Artist sees all that remains of the once magnificent Atahualpa, last king of the Incas. Alas, poor Yorick! To this complexion must we come at last.--Fit sketch wherewith to end this strange, eventful history of "Our Artist in Peru."] PART III. SPAIN. [Illustration] A SPANISH OVERCOAT. [Illustration: Our Artist, upon his arrival in "Sunny Spain," is overtaken in the Pyrenees, on the French Frontier, by a terrific snow-storm, and is compelled to provide himself, at BAYONNE, with an Overcoat of the Country.] HACKMEN IN SPAIN. [Illustration: Portraits of the three Hackmen, who (upon our arrival at the City of BURGOS, in the dead of night,) meet us at the Rail Road station, and propose accompanying us to our Hotel.] A CITIZEN OF VALLADOLID. [Illustration: Here is a faithful portrait of the Old Party who entered the cars at VALLADOLID; carrying with him a few travelling conveniences.] A MADRID HAT. [Illustration: This is a Spanish Dandy at the Grand Opera House in MADRID:--first, with his cigarette and new Hat of the period; second, after his Hat had been sat upon by a fat old Señora, during the third act of Lucia di Lammermoor.] LOTTERIES IN SPAIN. [Illustration: Nearly all the Lottery tickets in Spain are publicly sold in the streets by Beggars: and _this_ is the sort of Vagabond in MADRID to whom Our Artist confided $16 for a ticket that won a prize of $5.] SIGHT-SEEING IN SPAIN. [Illustration: There are so many hundred apartments to be seen in the famous PALACE OF THE ESCORIAL, that Our Artist is obliged to follow his Brigand of a Guide rather rapidly, in order to view them all in one day.] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. [Illustration: Our Artist sees from the car-window, at a Rail-Road Station near Toledo, what, at a first glance, appears to be a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte,--but: (_see next page_.)] A RAIL-ROAD OFFICIAL. [Illustration:---- the Statue suddenly becomes animated and revolves; and the side-view reveals a CIVIL GUARD, with carbine and knapsack beneath his big military cloak.] ARCHITECTURE IN CORDOVA. [Illustration: A picturesque little half Moorish and half Spanish dwelling house, in the Calle Jesus Maria; with a couple of Priests in earnest discussion.] BALCONIES IN SEVILLE. [Illustration: Sketch of a private residence in Calle San Pablo; from the upper Balcony of which, Our Artist had a rose thrown to him, while a cloaked Assassin of a probable Lover, glowered savagely at him from the doorway.] IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA. [Illustration: The Barber of Seville, according to Rossini's Opera, and according to the way in which he is popularly believed to disport himself.--(_See next page._)] A BARBAROUS PROCEEDING. [Illustration: The Barber of Seville, as he actually exists in that city, and precisely as he appeared while operating upon our Artist, one day, in the Calle de las Sierpes.] A CAFÉ IN SEVILLE. [Illustration: Our Artist discovers, one day, in the Calle Tunidores, not exactly the most fashionable Café in SEVILLE, but a Café glorying in the ambitious name of JULIUS CÆSAR!] TYPES OF SPANISH CHARACTER. [Illustration: Fellow Passengers in the Diligence to MALAGA--one, a corpulent and famous Bull-Fighter, and the other, an envious and admiring follower of the same ennobling Profession.] SPANISH STAGE-COACHES. [Illustration: The light and graceful antediluvian Diligence that transported us up the Sierra Nevada Mountains, from MALAGA To LOJA.] LOCOMOTION IN SPAIN. [Illustration: This sketch is an attempt to display the general character and construction of one of the seven Mules that drew our Diligence over the hills from MALAGA To LOJA.] THE SPANISH GUITAR. [Illustration: A characteristic little sketch of a Guitar Player, in the window of a second-story dwelling, on the Alemeda de Verano, at GRENADA.] BEGGARS IN SPAIN. [Illustration: Our Artist, having in a generous moment, distributed a handful of copper coins to the poor of GRENADA, finds himself, thereafter, in all his strolls about the ALHAMBRA, at the Head of such a Procession as this!] THE ALHAMBRA. [Illustration: Sketch of the famous Gate of Justice, the principal modern Entrance to the far-famed Moorish Palace of THE ALHAMBRA--with a little Spanish Flirtation going on in the corner.] THE ALHAMBRA. [Illustration: Outline Sketch of an Ancient Moorish Well, inside the enclosure of the ALHAMBRA; with a bit of the Old Wall.] A SPANISH VEGETABLE MARKET. [Illustration: A sketch in GIBRALTAR--This fellow was seen wandering around the streets, selling vegetables to the natives, and steering his Donkey by the tail.] PART IV. ALGIERS. [Illustration] LANDING IN AFRICA. [Illustration: We leave Gibraltar by Steamer, and upon reaching the city of NEMOURS, Our Artist and his Better-Half are taken ashore from the small boat by the Natives in this summary manner!--A couple of inviting Hotel-keepers are awaiting them on the beach.] AN ARAB BEGGAR. [Illustration: One of the first Objects that greets the eagle eye of Our Artist, as he wanders around the streets of NEMOURS, is this cheerful "What-is-it," who mournfully begs for a few grains of corn.] AFRICAN WATER CARRIERS. [Illustration: Sketch of a fantastic little Fountain in one of the streets of the City of ORAN.] BED-ROOMS IN AFRICA. [Illustration: This is the sort of Thing that you find meandering round on your pillow, when you retire to your Chamber for the night, at the Hotel in ORAN.] ANOTHER ARAB BEGGAR. [Illustration: This Gentleman, who accosted us in the suburbs of ORAN, assured us in tremulous accents that he had eaten nothing in seventeen days--and we saw no reason for doubting his word.] LOCOMOTION IN AFRICA. [Illustration: Upon our arrival in the City of ALGIERS, we are much amused at the first vehicle we see; where a diminutive donkey is hitched in front of an enormous horse.] COSTUMES IN AFRICA. [Illustration: Alarm of Our Artist, as he, for the first time, encounters a Moorish maiden, as she appears around the corner from a dark and narrow street, in the Kasbah quarter of the City of ALGIERS.] SOLDIERS IN AFRICA. [Illustration: A French Zouave off duty, as he appeared while listening to the Military Band that played every afternoon in the Place du Gouvernment, ALGIERS.] A STREET IN ALGIERS. [Illustration: The Rue Staoueli--a narrow street in the old Arab Quarter of ALGIERS, where the houses nearly touch each other at their tops.] MANUFACTURES IN AFRICA. [Illustration: Sketch in the Rue Kasbah.--A couple of Moorish Jews, engaged in silk spinning, at the door of their palatial residence.] MOORISH SHOP-KEEPER. [Illustration: This graceful and fairy-like Will-o'-the-Wisp, sold us some lovely silk embroideries, in ALGIERS, the like of which, Solomon, in all his glory never dreamed of.] FINE ARTS IN AFRICA. [Illustration: We visit the not very interesting Museum in ALGIERS, and sketch, among other curious objects, a Cast of an Arab Martyr [one Géronimo], who had been buried alive in a box of Plaster of Paris.] JARDIN D'ESSAI, ALGIERS. [Illustration: Merely a sketch (for the last page of this little book) of a Date-Palm Tree, in ALGIERS, with a couple of Arabs trying to get in its shade.] * * * * * =THE UNITED STATES LIFE INSURANCE CO.= This company is one of the oldest in this city, and has a high reputation for conservative and skilful management. Its Board of Directors comprises a number of the best known, most influential, and wealthiest of our merchants and bankers. Its officers are men of proved integrity and ability. The annual statement, submitted last January, and accepted by the State Commissioner of Insurance as correct, shows the assets to be $4,654,274, and the surplus, as already stated, to be over $800,000, or more than twenty per cent, of all the liabilities. The United States Life Insurance Co. is known in Life Insurance circles as one of the most carefully handled institutions in the city. So well has it been managed that its business has increased rather than retrograded during the past year, as bad as it has been for all kinds of business. And its losses have been less this year than in any of the five preceding. Its officers are among the best known and most highly esteemed citizens of New York. JAMES BUELL, Esq., the President, is the President of the Importers and Traders' Bank, a man whose name is a synonym for integrity and skill in finance, and its stockholders are men equally well known in business circles, and hold an equal share of public esteem. =Organized 1850.= =JAMES BUELL, _President_.= C. P. FRALEIGH, Sec'y. T. H. BROSNAN, Supt. Agencies. HENRY W. BALDWIN, Supt. Middle Department, Office: Drexel Building, cor. Wall & Broad Streets, NEW YORK. OUR =ARTIST IN CUBA,= PERU, SPAIN AND ALGIERS [Illustration] BY GEORGE W. CARLETON. [Illustration] Price 50 Cents. 
36679	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) AN AMERICAN BY BELLE WILLEY GUE BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY BELLE WILLEY GUE All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. TO THE MEMORY OF HIM WHOM WE ALL DELIGHT TO HONOR AS FIRST IN PEACE ... FIRST IN WAR ... AND FIRST IN THE HEARTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN ... GEORGE WASHINGTON AN AMERICAN INTRODUCTION There are many characteristics that are essential to true Americanism; among these, none is more prominent than an inborn desire, not only to obtain personal liberty, but, also, to see justice done to others. We, as Americans, say, with loving pride, that we are citizens of that _one fair land whose single boast has always been that it was free_. Oppression of the weak and ignorant, by those who are wiser and stronger than they, has, always, aroused in us pronounced, and, often, openly expressed, indignation. More than once, have we, as a nation, arrayed ourselves upon the side of the down-trodden and pitiful, and, in every such instance, we have greatly increased and enhanced the well-being of those whose cause we have espoused. We have never gone out of our way to look for trouble, being more inclined to attend to our own affairs than to oversee those of our neighbors, and, yet, when, repeatedly, gross acts of injustice and cruelty have been forced under our observation, we have, at times, been aroused to a state of what we have honestly believed to be righteous indignation, and, in these circumstances, we have conducted ourselves in accordance with our ability and the fervor of our convictions. Prior to the evening of February fifteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, our relations with the government of Spain were amicable; while we, as a people, sympathized, to some extent, with the uprisings of native Cubans, yet, those who were at the head of our national affairs did not, in any instance, uphold or palliate the unlawful acts of the insurrectionists; but, during the hours of darkness of that never-to-be-forgotten night, a dastardly and totally inexcusable deed, in spite of the recent renewal of our friendly intercourse with the Spanish government, made of that nation a foe to be contended against with all the might that was in us. While our only object, in the beginning of the Spanish-American war, was to teach the Spaniard the lesson he had so richly deserved to learn, at the same time, as the results of autocratic misrule were brought, more and more closely, under our direct observation, we took much honest pride in the reflection that we were not only resenting, as became free and enlightened men and women, an injury to our own well-beloved country, but that we were, at the same time, giving to a people, whose necks were raw and bleeding from the yoke of a tyrannical exercise of absolute power, an opportunity to throw off that yoke, and become, in due time, a self-governed and a self-respecting and an independent nation. Our short and fiery encounter with Spain demonstrated, as many years of unbroken peace and prosperity had not done and never could do, the invincibility of American arms, and the unexampled superiority of American daring, devotion, inventive genius and self-adjusting prowess; it was supposed that we had a very inadequate naval equipment, and that our standing army was very small, besides being poorly trained; in spite of this widely spread supposition, our troops won many brilliant victories upon the sea as well as on the land. The same spirit that saved the day for freedom and the right at Bunker Hill and Bennington animated the descendants of those gallant and intrepid warriors, who, soon after the heroic birth of our Republic, defended the cause they deemed to be a sacred one with all that they held dear, when they, too, went to meet the carefully trained and richly caparisoned phalanxes of those who bowed their heads and bent their suppliant knees unto an earthly king. An American volunteer is as nearly unconquerable as any merely human being can ever really be; his whole being is entirely devoted to the principle for the vindication of which he is about to enter into bodily combat; he is not hampered or bound down by anything that does not meet with the approval of his own conscience; physically, mentally, and morally, he is the equal of any enemy against whom he may be pitted; above him there floats a flag that has never been defeated, behind him are glorious deeds of valor that are well worthy of emulation, and before him are the hopes and aspirations of those who, with their feet firmly planted upon solid ground, practical, energetic and capable, yet, always, move among their fellows, seeing visions, dreaming dreams. Shortly before the beginning of the Spanish-American war, there were some, across the water, who dared to complacently imagine that the glowing spark of patriotism, implanted in the breast of every true American at the time of his birth, had lost its kindling power; those who were depending upon this erroneous idea must have had their complacency somewhat rudely shaken when it became known, all over the world, that, within ten days after President McKinley issued a call for one hundred and twenty-five thousand volunteers, seven hundred and fifty thousand eager patriots answered to that call, offering their energies and, if needs be, their lives, to the service of the land they loved and honored. After thirty-three years of peace, the fighting men of America buckled on their armor, bade a tearful farewell to their homes and families, and, determined, enthusiastic and buoyant, went, blithely, forward to meet, and conquer, a foreign foe; there was not one among these who did not realize and consider the seriousness of the enterprise he had started out upon, yet neither was there one who did not add, in every way within his power, to the light-hearted joyousness, and gentle, childish humor, with which our fearless and devoted "boys" undertook to secure the freedom and general well-being of the Island people, as well as to resent the insult that had been offered to our own country. The central figure of the Spanish-American war, from its hasty inception until its brilliant and triumphant close, was that of a gallant gentleman, mounted on a high-lifed horse ... as sternly devoted to principle and duty as any Puritan had ever been, as full of the bounding joy of life as any boy who followed him, leader, comrade, friend and brother, fearless, resourceful, primitive, refined, highly educated, yet as simple-hearted as an innocent child, bold, yet cautious and careful, unselfish, yet richly endowed with worldly wisdom, respected almost to the height of reverence, yet looked upon as a cheery, helpful companion, by those with whom he was most closely associated ... THEODORE ROOSEVELT ... a typical American, using that word in its widest and loftiest sense. After the close of our struggle with Spain, we discovered that we had not only given, but, also, derived, many benefits as the results of that short, but decisive, conflict; we had acquired considerable territory over which to extend the advantages to be gained from our educational and commercial institutions; we had come into such close contact with the people of these, and adjacent, territories that we were enabled to understand their needs and their desires, more fully than we could, otherwise, have done; we had presented to the powers ruling the Old World an object lesson as to the people of the United States of America being, at any and all times, and under every possible circumstance, fully able to take care of themselves, as well as all that, intrinsically, belongs to them; we had set before the mighty nations of Europe an example of the proper attitude of the strong toward the weak; we had bound together, in a common, just and righteous cause, all factions, all clans, all religions, and all parties, in short, we had bound together the entire population of our well-beloved country, and in such a way that the bonds were indissoluble, unbreakable, and permanent. While we are, above all things, a peaceful and a law-abiding people, yet we not only can, but always will, defend our altars and our homes against any harm that may be threatened to them; while we do not seek an encounter with any government other than our own, yet at the same time, we are not afraid to meet any nation on the face of the earth, in open combat, giving our enemy the privilege of selecting his own weapons and following out his own ideas as to legitimate warfare. The blood of the sturdy and militant Anglo-Saxon, flowing, now, in Yankee veins, is richer and more life-supporting than it was before the Mayflower landed her precious freight of human strength and more than human aspiration upon Plymouth Rock. All the fond hopes and all the high ambitions, all the daring and all the deep devotion, all the practical achievements and all the airy dreams, of their revered forefathers, are, now, alive and potent, although, it may be, hidden, in the breasts of all my fellow-countrymen. If all the titles that have ever been bestowed by human beings upon each other ... all the names that indicate the possession of wealth or fame or place or power upon the earth ... should be displayed before my eyes, and I be asked to select but one among them all to be the one by which I would be known, I would without a moment's hesitation, choose AN AMERICAN. PLOT Ruth Wakefield, as the daughter of the United States Consul to Cuba, has lived in a beautiful home which her father prepared for his family on a height above Havana harbor since early childhood. Having lost both her natural protectors ... her parents ... through earthly death, she has been much alone with trusty servants, as she has found little companionship among the natives of Cuba. However, she has found a highly respected friend in Father Felix, Priest of the village of San Domingo; to him she has confided her great anxiety concerning some prisoners confined, ex communicado, in the village jail, at the end of the prado, or central park of the village. "The Lady of the mansion on the hill," as she is known among the villagers, has not, though, told the Priest her real reason for wishing the freedom of the political prisoners. Victorio Colenzo is a handsome but unscrupulous fellow of mixed blood, being part Spanish and part Cuban; he has found the lonely American girl and has courted her with such dash and apparent sincerity that she has married him secretly, not even informing Father Felix of her union with the attractive stranger. This man is among the political prisoners and it is to free him from bondage that Ruth Wakefield has furnished Father Felix with means with which to overpower and overawe those who have him in charge. Ruth Wakefield is herself deceived, for in the village is a girl, named Estrella, whose lover Victorio Colenzo is known to be by her associates, among whom is another of her lovers ... Manuello ... a native Cuban. This man is also in the San Domingo bastile. Father Felix, at the head of a procession of his followers, breaks into the jail and confronts the keepers with a crucifix which he holds before them, commanding them to release the prisoners; superstitious terror finally induces them to yield to his demands; in the confusion, Manuello contrives to sever the handsome head of Victorio Colenzo from his strong and manly body, so that his corpse is found when the doors are finally thrown open to the people; Estrella finds this body and weeps above it. Father Felix meets Ruth Wakefield by appointment to report as to what he has done, and, in this manner, she discovers the perfidy of her so-called husband. She confesses the truth to Father Felix who sympathizes deeply with her as he knows her to be innocent. She visits the morgue and meets Estrella whom she befriends and, eventually, adds to her household. She has among her servants, a unique character, named Mage, who has been her nurse in babyhood and who is always faithful to her in her own strange way; this old woman, throughout the entire twenty-one chapters of this story, continues to perform unexpected and startling deeds. Old Mage accompanies her dear young lady when she goes to San Juan and is stationed not far from the battle-field of San Juan Hill. Here, as elsewhere, she continues to exhibit her own individual characteristics as her central and almost sole idea is to protect and assist Ruth Wakefield, whom, although she regards her with unlimited respect and is entirely devoted to her interests, she still thinks of as the small child she loved before they landed upon the Island of Cuba; realizing how different she is from those around her, only increases the worship of her faithful attendant, who, on the other hand, does not hesitate to use language that will express what she wishes those whom she is addressing to fully understand. Manuello has a primitive, passionate, unbridled and selfish nature; he is wildly in love with Estrella and because she has selected another lover he has committed murder; with this man out of his way, he hopes to succeed with Estrella and goes to her intimate friend, Tessa, to find out how she actually feels about the death of her lover, Victorio Colenzo; Tessa secretly adores Manuello; she is, also, a native Cuban, but her nature is more sluggish than that of Manuello and she has a dog-like affection for Estrella, who has become separated from her own family as a child and is a member of the household of Manuello, being known as his half-sister among the villagers; the handsome peon makes love to little Tessa but she is loyal to Estrella and does what she can to contribute to her happiness, although, when Manuello becomes a fugitive and has been wounded, she ministers to him in a deserted cabin up among the hills where it is almost entirely hidden in a jungle of weeds and rank vegetation. This cabin is the scene of many pitiful endeavors on the part of little Tessa who resists the desires of Manuello to make her his mistress although she dearly and devotedly loves him. Here, at one time, she is secretly followed by Estrella who is led to suspect some secret by Tessa's actions; Estrella informs Father Felix of the situation. Tessa, in one of her struggles with Manuello, has wounded him in one cheek with a knife which she happened to have in her hand. Father Felix visits the hut and Manuello, after severely wounding poor little Tessa, so that she is unable to leave the place, disappears, but turns up again, after the battle of Camp McCalla in a temporary hospital where Ruth Wakefield and Estrella are acting as nurses. Old Mage takes a hand in this affair and so frightens Manuello that he escapes from the hospital although he is wearing many bandages, and, painfully, but determinedly, reaches the deserted hut where he hopes to hide until he has recovered from his wounds. As he approaches the hut he realizes that someone is within it and looks through a small window, seeing Tessa lying on the rude bed she originally prepared for him, and, beside her, kneeling on the floor, Father Felix who has found the weak and suffering girl and is engaged in prayer; Manuello breaks into the cabin and attempts to thrust the Priest aside so that he may wreak his vengeance on the helpless woman. Father Felix, however, proves to be a worthy antagonist and does not hesitate to use his strength in the defense of the innocent, even though it becomes necessary for him to seriously injure the young man who is like a wild beast foiled of its prey. This struggle in the deserted hut, with the wounded girl looking on, continues for some time, but the younger man is finally overpowered, and, seeing himself to be at the mercy of his antagonist, becomes the penitent sinner and confesses to the Priest who labors with him lovingly and ministers to his spiritual condition. The two men then improvise a stretcher and place Tessa upon it, after which they carry the girl to the door of her own home in the village. Here, the Priest dismisses Manuello and tells him to go in peace. The young man then limps back to the deserted hut and remains there unmolested for some time when he disappears again from the neighborhood. The Americanism of Ruth Wakefield is pronounced. Father Felix is equally devoted to their common country. These two often confer as to possible complications connected with international affairs; at one of these consultations, Estrella happens to be present and declares that she believes that she, also, is an American and that she wishes to serve under the same flag as that to which the other two have so often pronounced themselves to be devoted. She offers to assist Ruth in every way she can should there be an occasion that would demand their help. Ruth Wakefield is awake in her own room and looking down upon Havana harbor on the night of February 15th, 1898 and sees the blowing up of the Maine with her own eyes; Father Felix also sees this and hurries up the hill to talk matters over with Ruth; they form plans as to what they can do for their own country and in the service of the down-trodden people of Cuba whose sufferings under Spanish tyranny they have so often witnessed. Ruth opens her home and offers it as a refuge to all those who wish to escape from Spanish oppression. Father Felix keeps Ruth well informed as to military matters and, when, on June 10th, 1898, our stars and stripes are waving, for the first time, over Cuban soil, Ruth Wakefield is standing beside Father Felix, who has become an army chaplain, at the window of a temporary hospital which her wealth has made possible. This hospital is situated near Santiago and many American soldiers as well as many Cuban scouts are cared for within its shadowy rooms. After the battle of San Juan Hill on July 1st 1898, Ruth Wakefield is one among many volunteer nurses who went to the assistance of a righteous cause. She stands beside a little cot and meets a man who speaks to her of "Teddy" and of the grand and glorious work that he had done that day; with this bond between them, they soon become friends. Ruth, as one who has authority, moves from cot to cot and, so, comes to stand beside the murderer of her husband or him whom she had called so, for Manuello evened up some of his wickedness by serving nobly in the battle of San Juan Hill and died in consequence of that day's dreadful harvest of human forms. Estrella, too, and Father Felix, come to stand beside his cot, but Ruth is all alone when his soul leaves the clay that it has been inhabiting for awhile, and, so, she realizes as never before, that the man she knew as husband was beneath her in every way and in that terrible and heart-rending moment, she begins to learn the way to forget the first wild love of her young womanhood and find the steps that lead to saner, quieter and happier hours and days and years. Ruth is given privileges that are not accorded to many near a bloody battle-field, and, when she leaves the hospital for the night on July 1st, 1898, she drives her team along a lonely road, hoping to leave behind her, not only the scenes she has just been among, but, also, the thoughts that those scenes have awakened in her mind. She thinks she is going directly away from the recent battle-field. Her team is startled by the sudden rising of a man near the road and runs away, throwing her out upon the ground; she climbs over a low embankment beside the road and finds herself among the dead; she is almost stupefied by this knowledge, but, soon, her instincts for helping those who are in trouble rise above her fears and she cries aloud and calls ... asking if any there are in need of help that she can give to them. A faint voice answers her and she seeks it out and finds an officer who has been stricken down at the head of his squad of men; they are all lying in a disordered heap and Ruth is obliged to lift one dead body off of the man who seems to be alive. Having found him, she proceeds, from her knowledge as a nurse, to aid him ... finds a wound from which his life-blood is flowing fast and forms a tourniquet with a silken scarf she happens to be wearing. He revives enough to whisper to her, naming her, on the instant "Tender Heart" by which title he afterwards addresses her. Having rendered all the aid she can, she speeds away, without fear, now, as she has an object in her flight, until she secures help when she returns and removes the one whom she has found among the dead to the hospital, where, after a long period of suffering and faithful nursing, he recovers sufficiently to accompany her when she returns to her home. Here he proves himself to be worthy of her love which is bestowed upon him with the approval of Father Felix and even of old Mage. Ruth's home has been destroyed by fire and her entire estate has suffered much from vandalism and from enemies of Cuba and of her own country as well, but she still has plenty with which to rebuild her home and to assist many in the village of San Domingo who require aid and comfort from those who are stronger than they are. Among other patients in her temporary hospital near Santiago, Ruth discovers one who is a Spanish spy, for she remembers meeting him when he was a Spanish officer under most distressing circumstances, when it had been his great desire to do a grievous wrong to a young, ignorant girl whom Ruth rescued from his vile clutches. Ruth hesitates to report this case to the authorities as she is well aware of the fate meted out to spies, and she compromises by telling the facts to Father Felix, who, while he is very tender of the innocent, is just and stern where hypocrites and liars are concerned. The good Priest soon disposes of the Spanish spy. Father Felix distinguishes himself in many ways during the hostilities between the opposing forces in the Spanish-American war and does much good, for he does not hesitate to do anything that he finds to do regardless of whether it is in the line of his profession or not. He has many experiences as thrilling as the one in the deserted hut with Manuello. He throws himself into many a breach ... wins many a hard-fought battle, and, through it all maintains not only his religious attitude toward all mankind, but manifests a gracious and uplifting love for all who dwell upon the earth, and, at the end of his activities, resumes the humble station he occupied at first, for, as he believes, he can do more good right there in the little village of San Domingo than in a wider and more elevated station. Many refugees leave Santiago during, and directly after, the naval battle of Santiago; among these are very many wealthy women who are forced to leave their splendid homes and flee, in silken garments, with the riff-raff of the city. Some among these wealthy women sought to help in temporary hospitals, and one of them, at least, came to that which Ruth Wakefield had endowed; this woman was noticeable in many ways, being of superior intelligence as well as birth and breeding; she, soon, became proficient as a nurse, and when Ruth sees her standing close beside Estrella in the hospital, she suddenly recognizes a subtle resemblance between the two young women and calls their attention to the fact. And, so, it develops that Estrella finds her own blood-kin ... her own loving sister ... there in that shadowy hospital, for it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by a little trinket that the girl has always worn about her neck ... a little cross of golden memories, through which, and through the girl herself, her lineage is traced, so that she remains with her own kin, and does not return to the little village where she suffered so much sorrow. Tessa, with the stolidity of the Cuban peasant, seems to entirely recover both from her wounded leg and her wounded heart, for she marries a sturdy workman who supplies the earthly wants of Tessa and her numerous progeny. If she ever remembers the romantic days through which she has passed, her appearance belies the fact, for she becomes, apparently, contented with her lot in life. AN AMERICAN CHAPTER I About the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, there had been aroused in the hearts of the people of the United States a strong feeling of pity and compassion toward the inhabitants of the Island of Cuba who were under the ironshod heel of Spain and who had made many appeals for help to our own government in one way and in another. The time was ripe for a revolution among the dark-skinned populace of the large cities of the Island Empire and many confusing circumstances combined to add to the confusion of sentiments entertained toward the government by those who suffered from its rulings. Many indignities had been heaped upon the Cubans by those who claimed to represent the young King Alfonso XIII, who, in his far-away palace in old Madrid was as unconscious of what was done in his name, very many times, as he would have disapproved of it had he known it. The young King and his mother, the Queen _regent_, tried, in every way within their power, to adjust matters amicably between their rebellious subjects and those whom they had sent across the sea to govern them, but they found this a very difficult matter indeed, and between the fiery tempers of the natives and the over-bearing arrogance of the officers who represented them, the poor crowned heads of sunny Spain certainly had a pretty hard time of it. The Queen mother was naturally a gentle and a very highly educated and studious woman, while the boy King was as far from being the typical idea of a reigning tyrant as a handsome, well-trained young fellow could well be. But those who represented these two crowned heads were of quite another pattern as to character and disposition and many were the cruelties charged to the account of certain ones among their number due to the opportunities afforded them of gratifying their lowest impulses and following along the paths that led, for the time being, into what seemed to them to be very pleasant pastures and beside very still waters, which, as is well known, often, besides being still, run deep. One evening, just as dusk was falling over the little town of San Domingo, there appeared, passing along one of the quiet, shadowy narrow streets, a rather strange procession ... well in advance of the rest of the motley company appeared a village Priest bearing in his hand a crucifix which he held before him as if to fend off something evil ... he was dressed, as is the custom of the Catholic Priests of Cuba, in the flowing vestments of his office and the long cord that was knotted round his ample waist had a huge cross dangling from the end of it which struck against his well-formed legs as he strode along with head held high as if he saw beyond the things of earth and gazed upon some beatific vision which upheld him and lifted him above his immediate environment. Indeed, there was one who walked beside him though he, himself, was unaware of it, except subconsciously, for Father Felix, as this Priest was known, was wandering among strange thoughts as he passed along that almost silent little street, that one sad evening. He had been, for many peaceful years, the Priest who had officiated at almost all the public meetings of the village, but, never in his life devoted, as it was to the consideration of holy, high and spiritual matters, had he been called upon to conduct so weird a service as he was, then, about to do. He wondered, as he marched along, whether he was doing just exactly right in leading these, his simple-minded followers, into what it seemed to them they must do, that night ... he wondered whether, even now, he would not better turn to those who followed after him and call to them to halt and to consider well before they took another single step that might, each one of them, be an irrevocable and a much-to-be-regretted step, for it might lead to what they could not know of ways that might, as well as not, prove very winding and even thorn-strewn ways for those who followed along them. And Father Felix knew that he, alone of all that little company, was gifted with the power to reason out a fair and just conclusion from the premises presented to them all; he knew that he alone had enough of education to even understand the meaning of the words that had been spoken to them all ... he knew that those who came along that little street behind him had trusted to him most implicitly, for many years, in matters that required thought, and, although they had been the ones to beg him to take the step that they were then about to take, he knew that, even then, right at the last, had he been minded to, he might, yet, turn their minds away from what they seemed to be so set upon. He knew that, if he wished to do so, he could make them see the matter under their consideration in quite another light from what they saw it in at that time ... he knew that he could bend their wills to make them match with his own will for he had done this very many times before ... he was a natural leader, and being well equipped for leadership, he took that place as if it were his natural right ... and so it seemed to be. Any stranger, glancing along the line of human beings that followed Father Felix and his upheld crucifix, would have noticed many weak and vacillating faces ... many weak and vacillating wills as evidenced by the expressions on those weak and vacillating faces ... many wills that could be bent by anyone who had a strong and capable and domineering mind, and Father Felix had a mind like that ... a natural leader's most commanding mind ... he was a man to win respect wherever he might go ... a man to dominate the wills of those about him ... a man to lead the crowd ... a man to guide the minds of those he met, and, after having occupied the one place in the village that commanded the respect of all, for long, of course they looked to him for guidance and followed where he led as little children follow after the one full-grown human being in their midst. But, as they marched along, full many whispers ran along that motley little company and gave some prescience of the clamor that would come if all their bridled tongues should really become loose again, for, now, they only spoke in whispers dreading discovery of what they were about to do by some of those against whose orders they were doing it. "I wonder what the Governor would say if he could know the thing that we're about to do," a beardless youth began, as he edged a little nearer to his mother's side, "I wonder what would happen to us, now, if he discovered our intention." The mother only put her finger on her lips and shook her head at him, but, later on, when they had gone a little further on their journey, she whispered to him: "I hope the Governor will never know who did what we're about to do, at least, for, if he should discover which of us accomplished the purpose that all the villagers are interested in, we would suffer for our temerity in doing this ... I almost wish we had not joined this mob, my boy ... I almost wish, at least, that I had left you home to mind the house while I will be away from it," and, then, she ended, sadly, "God knows if we shall ever be allowed to see our home again." There was one who walked among that little company, that evening, who was not as the rest in very many ways, and, yet, her lot was cast in with the rest for she had lived in that small village since her infancy, and, so, it seemed to her and them as well, that she was one of them and, so, must be among them even then, when they were casting in their lots, at Father Felix' instigation, with the ones who so violently opposed the reigning powers that they were held, then, and had been so held, for many weary months, as _incommunicado_ in the village jail or prison in the wide and beautiful and picturesque great prado in the very centre of the town. The girl who, in very many ways, was different from all the rest was walking in the very centre of the little crowd and, as the others jostled against her, her great blue eyes stared almost vacantly, as it seemed, around her like a startled fawn's when something unknown ventures near to its retreat within its native forest. She drew her slender figure up to its full height, and she was taller than the rest of those who walked beside her, when someone whispered to her: "What think you of all this, Estrella? Is it to your taste to be a part of those who, in their puny strength, contend against the strong? Do you think that you'll enjoy the future that we are advancing to? What do you think will happen to us when we reach the prado, anyway? Do you think the Governor has found out what we are going to do and if he does what action will he take? I'm more than half afraid myself ... I don't deny that I'm afraid ... how do you feel about it all?" "I don't believe I know just how I _do_ feel, Tessa," said the taller girl, "I think that I'm afraid, too ... I know my knees are trembling a very little, so I must be scared the same as you say you are. Let us keep as close together as we can, so, if anything happens to one it will be sure to happen to us both ... it seems to me ..." she ended, dreamily, "that even death itself could not be much worse than the things that we've endured just lately, here." And then the two young creatures shuddered at the very thought of death and huddled just as close together as they could and marched along among the rest as quietly as if they had not been afraid of anything at all. At last they reached the prado and Father Felix paused and held his crucifix even a little higher than he had done all along and waited for the little company to assemble directly in front of him, when he stretched his arms out wide in silent blessing on their undertaking, and proceeded toward the little prison that stood at one end of the prado facing the great public square where games were held when _fiestas_ were in order. But it was for no festal undertaking that they had gathered there, that evening; silent preparations were making as they halted ... battering rams were being raised and carried forward by the men and tears and flowers seemed to be the offering of the women in the crowd to the ones they hoped to liberate from the dark, forbidding precincts of the edifice before them. Father Felix motioned those who held the battering rams to hold them in their hands in readiness for instant action at a word from him ... then he called aloud to him who kept the keys to bring them forth and give them to him, or he would be, in case that his request should be refused, compelled, in spite of his strong desire to avoid all violence if possible, to use force in effecting the object for which the multitude surrounding him, outside, had gathered there. He waited, patiently, for several minutes, but, as he received no answer to his demand, he called again: "Bring forth the keys at once!" he cried raising his voice so that it carried far beyond the limits of the building that stood there before him, "bring them forth unless you wish to force me to use violence for I am determined to liberate the prisoners you hold within, and, if you do not bring to me the keys so that I may open the strong doors with them, why, then, I'll be obliged to break down the barriers that are between the ones you hold within that prison and the freedom that is their natural right. Once more do I command you ..." he cried in a stentorian voice, using the quality of voice that he employed when he intoned with due solemnity, the holy mass, "bring forth to me the keys that I may liberate my children that you hold without the right to hold them, or, if you refuse to do my bidding, then may the consequences of what will follow that refusal be upon your own head...." As, still there was no answer from the dark and gloomy precincts of the edifice before him, he prepared to carry out the threats that he had made. First, he commanded those who held the battering rams in readiness to advance until they were the proper distance from the doors for the use of their rude weapons, then he told the others to await his word but to be in readiness, each one, to follow where he led, then, holding high his crucifix and calling most devoutly, on the name of God, he came as near to those who were about to use the battering rams as he could do and not impede their movements, then he cried: "Advance and give no quarter! Do your duty as I have instructed you to the full extent of it! Follow me, my little children, God is good and He will care for us in this our desperate undertaking." As the heavy detonation of the strokes of those who held the battering rams rang through the building, cries were heard as if of those who were in agony and many shuddered at the sound for well they thought they knew its cause ... it seemed to them that they would be too late ... that those they sought to rescue were even at that moment being foully murdered in their cells because they were about to save them from the fate that they had been condemned to undergo. The fair Estrella clung to her dark little friend and whispered to her: "Tessa, it is more terrible than we imagined it would be ... what shall we do? How can we bear to go yet nearer to the horror that the prison hides from us? Tessa ... little Friend ..." she ended, "I'm awfully afraid ... are you?" "I'm almost scared to death myself, Estrella," Tessa whispered back, "I know I'll die of fright alone if this keeps on much longer ... hear that scream! It's very terrible!" But, then, all sounds were hushed, for prison doors that had been locked as tight as any prison doors could be had yielded to the heavy blows that had been rained upon them and, as they opened, they could plainly see, in the dim light that fell within that prison's entrance, that they had been, indeed, too late for him who lay at his full length across the entrance to the prison, for his body had been twisted in its fall so that his head that had been almost severed from it lay askew as if its eyes, that stared as wildly and as full of earthly horror as dead eyes could, had been trying to discover something strange about the figure that, but only lately, was as full of life and vigor as was any figure standing there without that prison door. Estrella gazed at that still figure ... then she screamed in almost more than human agony and darted forward till she crouched beside it as it lay there at the entrance to the prison ... straightening the handsome head, she lifted it until it rested in her lap, and, then, she softly smoothed the dark and clustering curls that hung above the broad, full brow, and looked within the great brown eyes that stared at her, or so it seemed, as if the owner of them had been walking in his sleep, and then she pressed her virgin lips upon the full, be-whiskered mouth of him whose head she held within her lap. She fainted, then, and fell across the body of the man who lay across the entrance to that prison, and Father Felix lifted her and laid the senseless, almost severed head upon the floor again, and supported her until he left her with her little friend, outside, among the crowd. And then the village Priest came back and led the men who held the battering rams within the prison to the cells of those they wished to liberate and commanded them to break down those doors as they had broken down the other ones, but, here, he found his way was barred, for, just as soon as blows began to fall upon the doors of those narrow cells those within those cells began to call to them and caution them that, if the doors were broken down, they'd find the prison-guards behind them with their loaded guns and the prisoners told their friends that those loaded guns were pointed at their breasts and would be fired at them just as soon as their cell-doors gave way. When Father Felix heard this ultimatum he thought that all his efforts had been useless and his deep-laid plans of no avail until he heard a voice behind him softly whisper ... a voice that he had never heard before: "Be not weary in well-doing. The cell-doors will open and the prisoners come forth alive if you but use the proper means to bring about that end. Call out to those you wish to succor, now, and tell them to be of good cheer for deliverance is at hand." The soft voice drifted away into silence, then, but the village Priest obeyed its mandates and reassured the ones within those narrow cells and gave them courage to withstand the threats of instant death that faced them there. And, then, he turned to those who waited his commands and told them that help was very near ... that, waiting there within the corridors of that small prison were those who'd come from far to bring to them assistance ... the kind of help that loaded guns would not affect. Then, he told them of the punishment that would await the ones who disobeyed the orders he was just about to give ... a punishment that would not only last through earthly life but would go on into eternity ... a punishment that would not only blast the earthly tenements but would condemn the souls of those who chose to act in opposition to his orders to everlasting torment. And, then, he turned to those who, breathlessly, were waiting for the orders he was just about to give, and said to them: "When I have counted up to three, prepare to break the doors down ... when I have counted up to six, if so be they remain unopened, go on and break them in!" he stopped a moment, then, to ascertain whether his followers fully understood the instructions he was giving to them ... seeing all of them alert, he continued, "to you who are within, I make this unalterable statement. Choose between a longer lease of earthly life and instant death! Choose between forgiveness for your past sins or everlasting punishment! Open these doors from within or we will break them down and those whose human bodies we will find, lying stark and cold in earthly death, will not be those of our dear friends who are your prisoners, for there are those within those cells of whose presence you are unaware but who are potent in the cause of right and truth and justice. I will now proceed to count ... one ... two ... three ..." at that, he heard a key thrust rapidly within a lock, but, as it was unturned, he went on counting, "four ..." he heard another key inserted in a lock, "five ..." he waited just a second longer, then, than he had done before, hoping that the keys would turn before the final number had to come, but, as they did not do that, he opened his mouth to pronounce the fatal word and was about to utter it, when, suddenly, all the cell-doors opened and the prison-guards within had fallen on their knees in superstitious terror of what they did not know, and, so, instead of uttering the fatal number, good Father Felix said, "Thank God!" and raised his crucifix and pronounced a blessing on them all, both prisoners and those who'd guarded them. CHAPTER II When Father Felix ceased to be engaged in silent prayer he lowered the crucifix he held in his right hand and placed it in the bosom of the robe he wore and welcomed those who came from out that gloomy prison-cell with praises and with prayers upon their trembling lips; he took their hands in his and held them for a moment as they passed in slow procession, for they were very weak from fasting and from long confinement, on their way out into the open light of day. The first of all who passed from out those gloomy cells was he who'd called to Father Felix to stay the hands of those who sought to liberate the prisoners ... he was taller than the rest of those who crowded out into the corridor and they seemed to follow him as if he were their natural leader. He only paused a moment when he reached the side of the Priest and hurried on as if he sought someone whom he hoped to find among the motley multitude who surged around the broken doors that led into the prado where most of the women were assembled waiting for the more desperate action of the men who'd gone inside the prison. The liberated prisoner, although he, too, was weak and worn as all of his companions were, yet rushed with rapid strides from side to side of the excited mob whose clamor, now released, quite filled the prado with vociferous shouts of joy, until he seemed to find the object of his hasty search, for, when he came to where Estrella lay supported by her little friend upon a hastily constructed bed of straw and grass, he stooped above her anxiously and leaned to look within her face, but, when her wide and terror-stricken eyes looked into his, he turned away as if he had not found the one he was in search of after all. Estrella raised herself upon one elbow and rested on the ready shoulder of her little friend while she gazed after his retreating form with an eagerness not unmixed with sudden fear; it seemed as if the girl were fascinated by him, and, yet, dreaded his approach, for she did not even speak to him although she knew that he had been one of those whom they had come to liberate and had looked forward to greeting him when he should be released. But the horror that had been thrust upon her at the very entrance of that dark and gloomy prison had quite unnerved her and had made her shrink from any contact with the prisoners who, now, came trooping out and mingled with the crowd by which they were soon, as it seemed, absorbed. Then, suddenly, a trumpet blast rang through the wide and spacious prado and a company of mounted cavalry, with naked swords uplifted, rode madly in among the crowd and scattered it as chaff is scattered by a furious wind ... cries of agony were heard as some were trampled by the horses, tortured by the cruel spurs which their infuriated riders were driving into their tender skins, and many men and women fell into disordered heaps of human misery in wildly scrambling toward a place of temporary safety. The soldiers gave no quarter to the fleeing masses of the people but kept driving all of them who stood upon their feet at all toward the open streets of the little village that led out of the prado, ordering them to cease from disturbing the peace and calling upon them in the name of the young King, Alfonso XIII, to disperse at once and to return to their homes in the village without delay. The most of those within the prado had been driven out before the commanding officer of the soldiers noticed that the prison doors were open, even then, at first he did not perceive just what the crowd had been collected for, or he might have given other orders than he had. When he beheld the broken doors he marvelled greatly, for this was an unlooked-for and unprecedented method of liberating political prisoners in San Domingo and the commanding officer did not know just what action to take in the matter but felt that he must wait for further orders from his superiors in command before taking any drastic steps to quell the evident uprising of public opinion. Father Felix had seen the soldiers as they dashed into the prado and he hastened outside the prison intending to meet them and hold some colloquy with their leader, but, when he had reached the centre of the prado the soldiers were driving the crowd out at the farther end of the enclosure, so that, instead of meeting the leader of the soldiery he came upon his own people as they lay in disordered heaps or staggered to their feet. Observing Estrella and Tessa crouched back against a wall as far away from the soldiers as they could manage to put themselves, he approached them and asked them what they knew about this new phase of the tumultuous doings of the day. The two girls greeted him joyfully for they had had their fill of horror and welcomed the Priest who represented to them the sanctity of the church: "Father Felix," cried the little Tessa, "tell us what we are to do next and where we are to go and what we are to do when we get there, for we are dreadfully upset and poor Estrella has had a terrible shock and is still weakened from her fainting fit, while I am just as I have been right along ... scared half to death." The good Priest stopped beside the girls long enough to tell them to quietly go to their own homes and stay indoors until morning, then he passed on to the other groups, and, where he could do so, assisted them to leave the prado, preparatory to seeking their own places of abode where he advised them all to remain if possible without molestation from the authorities. When Father Felix had reached the little cluster of people surrounding the liberated prisoner whom we have mentioned before, he came to a halt, and, beckoning the young man referred to to follow him, he passed on out of ear-shot of the rest and said to him: "I wish that you would explain to me how it happens that Estrella is in need of help and you, although free, are not by her side. How does it happen, Manuello, that your half-sister has only her little friend, Tessa, to lean upon, while your strong arms are without a burden?" The young fellow hung his head as if ashamed, for a moment, before he answered Father Felix, and seemed to ponder deeply over his reply to the good Priest's intimate question: "I can tell you about that in a very few words, Father," he at length summoned courage to say, "I have only within the past few most delightful moments been freed from a loathesome dungeon and have been receiving the felicitations of some of my friends on my fortunate escape. I did not realize that Estrella needed my services ... if so, of course I will at once offer them to her." Bowing low before Father Felix, he put his right hand to his head as if to doff its covering, but, finding it bare except for his thick mop of dishevelled brown hair, he smiled, instead, and, suiting his actions to his words, approached the two girls who still remained where Father Felix had left them as if afraid to move: "Allow me!" he cried, gayly, extending one strong arm to each of the maidens, "Accept my escort to whatever place you desire to go!" Estrella seemed to take no notice of the offered arm, but Tessa eagerly laid hold of the proffered protection and snuggled her small person against the tall figure of the young fellow who turned to her companion as if to discover the cause of her apparent coolness. "Why so silent, fair Lady?" he inquired, "Have you no congratulations to offer me upon my recent harrowing experience and subsequent and most fortunate escape?" Estrella did not answer him at first, but gazed intently into his eager face as if to read there the inner motives that prompted his lightly-spoken words. After she had looked into his face for a few seconds of earnest scrutiny, she said to him: "Manuello, why did you not speak to me when we first met after your liberation from the prison? Why have you spent the time since then among the others instead of looking after my interests? Have you ceased to care for me during your incarceration? What have I done to deserve such treatment from you? Have I not treated you as a sister should? In what way have I offended you, Manuello?" As she uttered these words her fair face flushed with the tide of deep emotion that swept over it and her blue eyes grew dark and full of feeling. She placed one of her hands on his arm, lightly, but held herself aloof from contact with his person. He recognized this attitude of hers by standing a little more erectly and holding the arm on which her hand had been laid, stiffly extended a little from his body: "How suddenly affectionate you have become, my soft and yielding sister! It seems to me that I remember how earnestly you plead with me to cease embracing you whenever opportunity was afforded to me, before I went to prison for my sins.... I think you are the girl who used to say to me 'please, Manuello, don't hold my hand so tightly! You are too rough!' I do not wish to be considered rough by any woman, and, so, I am more cautious in approaching your sacred person, now that I have had time to reflect upon your many words." "How can you speak so to her, Manuello," exclaimed the dark-skinned Tessa, "now that you are free once more? Poor Estrella has had a most terrible experience, here, tonight ... you ought to comfort instead of scolding her." The tender-hearted little girl looked up at the big man reproachfully and reached around his back to pat Estrella's shoulder, but he only stalked along between the two girls, sullenly and almost silently. At length, they reached the little cottage where Estrella and her family lived and Tessa ran along a little further to her own home while Manuello and his half-sister entered their own dwelling. It happened that they were alone, at first, as the other members of the little family had not yet returned from the prado, and, in that interval of time, considerable was said and done by both of them. "Manuello," said the girl, putting one hand on each of his broad shoulders, "have you no pity for me, now that Victorio is dead? You must have seen his poor, mangled body lying there at the entrance of the prison, Manuello ... can you tell how he came to die just as he and all the rest were about to be released from prison?" Her tear-stained face was very near to his and his own lips began to tremble before he mustered courage to answer her: "Of course, I'm sorry for you, Estrella," he began haltingly and slow, "of course I pity you as well as any other woman whose lover's newly dead. As to how he happened to be killed ... why, I guess you will never know just what did happen in that prison when those battering rams began to rock it by their impact ... I am certain that I cannot give you much explanation as I, myself, was one of those who suffered, although you do not seem concerned as to that in any way." "You escaped alive, Manuello, and poor Victorio did not for his poor head was almost severed from his body ..." said Estrella, weeping violently, with deep-drawn sobs of agony, "I lifted him and tried to hold his head upon my lap ... oh, Manuello," she continued, clinging to him involuntarily, "it was very terrible!" Her sufferings seemed to move him for he put his arms about her shoulders and drew her head forward until it rested on his broad and palpitating breast: "Poor little girl!" he murmured, softly, stroking her fair hair, "Poor little Estrella! I _am_ sorry for you ... I _do_ pity you, though why you chose Victorio for your lover was always beyond my comprehension." CHAPTER III When Father Felix left the prado he went directly to the church where he officiated, and, thence, into the small refectory behind it; here, he removed the flowing vestments he had worn when engaged in the enterprise which we have described in a previous chapter of this book, and assumed a more conventional and handy garb for he had work to do that would require all the strength of his arms and all the muscles of his broad back; he had set himself a task that was never meant for priestly hands to do, and, in the doing of it, he would need all the strength that years of careful living and an inherited and bounding health had bestowed upon him. He, at once, began preparations for the work he had to do, and, to begin with, he adjusted the heavy cross which he always wore about his neck so that it would hang exactly in front of him and not over-balance his body by being on one side or the other; this cross had been a relic much prized by him of an old Priest with whom he had studied and whose sainted memory he revered almost as much as that of the saints whom he had been taught to worship along with the Virgin Mary and The Babe of Bethlehem; then, he put on next to his skin a hair-cloth shirt so constructed as not to scratch and yet to be very warm; over this he placed a heavy riding-coat which had been given to him by one of those who attended the services he conducted in the church; these garments, together with heavy breeches and warm, woolen stockings worn under heavy boots, completed, with the addition of a broad-brimmed hat, a disguise that would deceive almost any person who was acquainted with his ordinary appearance. Having clothed himself to his own satisfaction, he took a heavy stick he had handy in his strong right hand and proceeded to leave the vicinity where he was accustomed, at all hours, to be found, and, stealthily and quietly, exercising all the precaution of which he was capable, he proceeded up the street that ran behind the little church with as much of haste as was consistent with the object of his journey. When he had gone about two blocks from the church he turned sharply to his left and proceeded about as far again up the street that led away from the village, then, turning again to his left, he walked briskly for another block or two, when he came to a sharp turn and paused as if in doubt as to just which turn to take, when, suddenly, as if from the ground at his feet, he heard a low voice addressing him in no uncertain language: "Turn toward the right side of this street," whispered the voice, "take the right-hand side of this street and then turn again toward the left when you have gone for two more blocks toward the right. You will find the object of your search has been in waiting for you for some hours and is now growing impatient ... so make all possible haste, good Father Felix ... make all possible haste for she is sore pressed with fatigue and fear." When the voice had ceased speaking to him, Father Felix followed the direction it gave him, implicitly, and found, indeed, as it had assured him, the object of the night-journey he had just made, waiting for him with great impatience, coupled with much fear and dread of consequences; he hastened to reassure her as soon as he reached her side by saying softly to her: "Be of good cheer, dear Madam. The work that you commissioned me to do has been well done and all of the prisoners excepting one are now at liberty. Unfortunately, one of our friends lost his life just before the wide doors of the prison were burst open ... no one seems to know how this came about, but we found his dead body across the very entrance as if, indeed, he had been about to join our ranks outside when death overtook and stopped him." "Which of the prisoners was killed?" asked the woman who had been waiting there for his coming, eagerly and apprehensively. "I do not suppose that you were acquainted with the young fellow ..." answered the good Father Felix, soothingly, "he was called Victorio Colenzo ... he was the lover of a girl I know very well and she was with the crowd, who followed me; she dashed into the entrance of the prison and held his head, which had been almost severed from its body, in her lap until she fainted and became mercifully unconscious of her horrible surroundings ... the poor girl was almost crazed with agony and regret, for she had flouted him to some extent because of his revolutionary sentiments...." He had gotten that far in his narrative little thinking of the intense interest it had for the woman listening to it, until he happened to look earnestly at her when he saw, in an instant, that it held for her great personal appeal; he stopped at that knowledge and waited for her to explain the situation if so be she wished to do so; at length, between low-drawn sobs, she said, falteringly: "You say Victorio Colenzo was the lover of some light girl you know? Indeed, you are much mistaken. Instead of being any girl's lover, he belonged solely to me. He was my own dearly beloved husband, Father Felix. I had not yet told you of our marriage for I wanted you to think of me only in my own personal right, but I am the widow of the man whose shameful and horrible death you have just been describing to me ... I am the weeping widow of Victorio Colenzo, Father Felix, and, if it be in my power, his death shall be avenged in blood!" As she ceased speaking she put her hands before her face and gave way, utterly, to her great sorrow, for she had but spoken the solemn truth although no one of her many acquaintances suspected that she was a married woman at all. Father Felix was dumbfounded by the intelligence the young woman had just given to him and pitied her from the very bottom of his tender heart and he blamed his blundering tongue for giving to her such a shock as he had just been the cause of; at the same time he could not blame himself as much as he might have done had he not known of the marriage contract of Estrella and this same man of whom he had been speaking; he hastened to place this young girl in the right light before his companion by saying: "My dear Madam, as to the girl of whom I was just speaking, she is in every sense of the word a good girl and innocent of any wrong intention; if there is a sinner in this matter it was he who is now not to be condemned by any human being, for he has gone before his Maker Who will mete out to him whatever is his just dessert. I am deeply grieved that I should have caused you this deep grief at this time, but, as the circumstances are, you would have been obliged to know it very soon in any case." The young woman who had been waiting for the Priest to come to her to make his report as to how he had done the work that she had set for him to do, was beautiful as any dream of womanhood could ever be. Her great gray eyes, that shone like stars upon a misty night, were lifted to his face and questioned him as to the truth of his last statement while they plainly showed the almost holy faith she had in all he did: "Dear Father Felix," she said, finally, stifling as best she could the sobs that shook her slender figure, "dear Father Felix, I know you speak the truth, and, yet, it does not seem to me that he could have ever been a hypocrite such as a man would have to be to be what you infer he was. He was my darling husband ... if he, also, was the lover of a trusting girl, then he sinned most grievously ... it breaks my heart," she ended, clasping her soft, white hands together spasmodically, "it breaks my heart to think he could be such a villain as you say he was. Dear Father Felix," she began again, for hope will sometimes come upon the very heels of wild despair, "dear Father Felix, are you sure that this man who is newly dead can be the Victorio Colenzo that I know ... the man who is ... I hope he is ... my own dear husband? The one I mean was a prisoner with the others you have liberated ... it was for his sake alone that I arranged to have you do the work you've done ... might it not be that you have been mistaken in the man? Might there not have even been two men bearing the same name within that prison?" Eagerly and hopefully, she questioned the good Priest. He sadly shook his head and said to her: "The young man whose body lay within the entrance to the prison when we had battered down the door, was tall and very dark ... his hair was like a raven's wing for blackness ... his eyes were like the falcon's in their keenness ... he was a handsome fellow in every possible way and the girl, Estrella, of whom I spoke, fairly worshipped him although her own family flouted her for doing so, as he only came to see her at long intervals and seemed ashamed to be seen with her ... seldom ever went out anywhere with her, but they were plighted lovers ... that I know ... they came to me together, one evening, in the church, and I blessed their future union, believing him to be an honest man and knowing her to be a gentle, true and loving girl." "I fear he was my husband, Father Felix.... I fear the very one I hoped to liberate has lost his life and lost his honor, too. Father Felix, tell me how to bear this great and hopeless sorrow! _Is_ there any way to bear a sorrow such as this one is? _Can_ I shut my Husband's memory from my heart because I can no longer have respect for him? _Is_ there any way," she wailed, pleadingly, "_is_ there any way to bear a sorrow such as this one is? _Tell_ me, good Father, _tell_ me, is there any way of escape for me who am as innocent as is this young girl of whom you have just spoken? Is there some way in which I can assist her, Father Felix? Perhaps it is my duty, under these circumstances, to hunt her up and try to help her, who is, also, as it were, a widow of my darling Husband. Must I do this, Father? Would it be my duty, as the wife of Victorio Colenzo, to look this girl up and try to help her bear her sorrow on account of his death?" The good Priest looked at her in deep amazement, but he answered her as calmly as he could command his voice to speak: "No, my Daughter, no ... that would be going beyond reason as to duty. It might be right for you to send her something if she were in need of monetary assistance.... I do not think she is, however, I do not think Estrella is in need of anything to live upon ... they had not been married, you understand ... she was not his wife as you were ... only just he'd promised he would marry her, sometime. No, you owe her nothing more than womanly sympathy in her bereavement and you do not need to see her at all, for that matter. It would give you unnecessary pain, it seems to me. As for her, if we can, we will let her remain in ignorance of the character of him she loved ... she would the sooner repair the injury, it seems to me, if she could still respect his memory. It must be doubly hard for you, my Daughter, to lose him and respect for him at the same time ... yet, it would have been a terrible knowledge for you to have gained ... that he had misled this innocent girl ... even during his life. A man has little thought of the women who love him when he plays fast and loose with more than one of them at a time, anyway. I wish I knew what words to say to you to make you strong to bear this misery, dear Daughter ... you must bear it all alone, I know that much ... only God in His great Mercy, can assist you in this matter ... only He can tell you what to do or how to endure your agony of spirit, for only He can understand your heart. I am but a feeble instrument in God's Own Hands, my dear, afflicted Daughter.... I am but a very feeble instrument.... I wish I knew the way to help you bear this thing. I wish that I could say the fitting word to turn your mind to other thoughts, for only in the mind can fitting help be found ... only the spiritual side of your strong nature can uphold you now." He'd kept on talking to her hoping to alleviate her pain in some degree ... hoping that her fits of violent and heart-breaking weeping would grow farther and farther apart until they would cease altogether so that, being calmer, she could better face this heavy burden that was hers, and hers alone, to bear. Seeing no cessation of her sobs and moans of agony of spirit, he began to speak of other matters, hoping to distract her mind and turn her thoughts to other things, thereby giving her an opportunity to face the sorrow that had come upon her so suddenly with more strength than she would have if she continued to dwell on it alone. So he bethought him of the soldiery and of their coming riding into the prado and he began to tell her of this phase of the adventure he had on her account, mainly. She listened calmly to this narrative and even asked some questions, haltingly, but, just as soon as that account was ended, she began again to ask concerning poor Victorio: "Where have they taken his remains, good Father? Where can I find my darling Husband's body? How can I bear to have to see his face which has always to my knowledge been so full of life and youth and perfect health lying stark and still with no expression in his glorious dark eyes that always looked so lovingly at me? Father Felix, even now, it seems to me that there must be some mistake about my Husband's being the same man who was the lover of this girl you know about.... I think that I will see her ... there ... beside my darling Husband's body and decide the matter for myself instead of listening to the tales that have been told to me. That is how I think I will proceed," she ended, then, quite calmly, as it seemed, for secretly she then began to hope that it was not her husband, after all, "That is how I will proceed about this terrible calamity, Father Felix. I will see this girl beside the body of the man she says has been her lover ... he may not be my darling Husband, after all." And so their conference ended, he giving her explicit directions as to where Victorio's body had been placed, and she thanking him for carrying out her wishes even though, as it seemed then, the very thing she had him do the work for had failed her utterly. Father Felix went back, then, to the refectory, with this complicated matter bearing hard upon his heart. He pitied both the suffering women very much and wished to help them both if so be he could find the proper way to do the task in. He pondered deeply on the various situations he'd surprised in carrying out the project of the woman he had met, that night; she had not told him of her plans in their entirety, and, so, it seemed, the very plans she doted on the most had very far miscarried and the work, so far as she had been concerned, had not only been as futile as any work could ever be, but, also, it had brought to her a new and horrible calamity besides the failure of her plans and loss of him she evidently deeply loved as tender women love but only once in all their human lives, perhaps, for Victorio Colenzo had been a man to claim the love of tender women ... he was very tall and very handsome, too; his deep, dark eyes were very full of loving expression and his strong arms, folded close about a tender woman's yielding form, would lift her spirit up and make her almost wild with joy and gladness. And, as it looked now, those strong arms had been folded, not only round his own wife's tender form, but, also, about, at least, one other woman's, too. Good Father Felix reflected on the fraility of man and pondered deeply on the tenderness of women, but he did not, even then, reach the very root of the whole matter, for he, being what he was, would not be very likely ever to know the heights and depths, as well, of human love, for he had always been a religious devotee in spite of his great strength of limb ... he'd only used his bodily powers to forward the work to which his whole life was devoted utterly, and, so, good Father Felix could not fully understand a man such as Victorio Colenzo must have been to leave the record that he'd left behind him when he died, there, in the entrance to that dark and gloomy prison, just as he had been about to come again, a free man, into the glorious light of day. CHAPTER IV Father Felix had prepared the widow of Victorio Colenzo for the sight she would behold when she went to the rude dwelling where they had laid the form of the prisoner whose dead body had been found lying in the entrance to the prison on the day the people battered down the doors and set at liberty several political prisoners confined therein, but no one could, really, prepare a woman for the vision presented to her eyes when she entered the cottage that had been turned into a temporary morgue, for more than one of those engaged in the deadly strife with the soldiery in the prado after the deliverance of the prisoners had given up his earthly life, either at the time of the attack or afterwards from wounds inflicted either intentionally or inadvertently by those who had been sent to the prado to quell an uprising of the Cuban populace. As the woman we have before described entered the rude shelter where the dead bodies of several of the residents of the little village lay, she was surprised and grieved by the number of the dead and, also, by the many mourners who crowded among the slabs on which the bodies lay, for there was little of orderly array there, everything being of the rudest and most primitive pattern as the reigning government did not wish to dignify those who had opposed it even after death had taken from their limbs the power to oppose anything in the world of men and women. The woman, who was of a higher class than most of those assembled there, was treated with marked deference as became her superior position both as to wealth and education, for the widow of Victorio Colenzo occupied a proud place in her own right, having been, for a long time, the occupant of a large and beautiful residence that commanded a wide view of the harbor of Havana and was situated on an elevation above the little village of San Domingo; this home had been hers long before she had ever met the handsome peon whom she had acknowledged as her husband to Father Felix after having learned of his death. It was through her own instigation that the man had taken the position which had, subsequently, placed him among the prisoners for offenses against the reigning government who had been liberated under her direct orders and with her pronounced sanction, although she had not actually taken part in the work which she had directed. This woman was of another type entirely as compared with the others in that small dwelling and walked among them almost haughtily in spite of her eagerness in the search after evidence that would convince her that she had not been utterly mistaken in the man she had secretly married, believing him to represent the finest and highest example of patriotic courage and devotion that she had met during the whole of her long residence in the Island of Cuba. She had come to the Island, in her first youth, as the daughter of the American Consul who represented the United States in the council chambers where were gathered those who discussed affairs of state with the ruling Spanish powers; her father had purchased the beautiful site on which he had built the home that was still hers, although both of her parents had died, there in Cuba, within the past few years; the girl had been left practically without living relatives, and, so, loving her Island home, she had remained there in spite of the solicitations of many American friends who had visited her in Cuba and urged her to return to the United States with them; she was of a reticent and retiring disposition, loving a good book more than almost anything else in the world, and being surrounded by a splendid library, her time was fully and pleasantly occupied, as she had trustworthy retainers who followed her mandates because they loved to fulfill them and pitied her loneliness while they almost worshiped her superior manners and style of speech as well as of living; Father Felix, alone, understood her mental attainments and was greatly bewildered when she told him that she had married Victorio Colenzo as he considered her far removed from the peons who were the regular inhabitants of the Island and among whom he labored as a missionary rather than as an equal, although his deep humility of manner always led them to believe that he was on their own level of intelligence, while the aloofness of this one woman set her apart from all of her neighbors and made her seem to them like a being from another and a higher world. As she walked among the slabs on which the dead bodies had been laid, that morning, for she had come down from her home early, having slept, during the past night, only the few hours preceding her meeting with Father Felix, as she hoped to have her doubts set at rest and to be assured that the man she had secretly united to herself by marriage was still worthy of her respect and love which she had given to him without further knowledge of his character than what he chose to exhibit to her in their infrequent meetings prior to his declaration of undying worship and deep and overpowering love for herself as well as of patriotic zeal which latter emotion she fully sympathized with, as she regarded it as similar in many ways to her own feeling for her much-beloved land which was all the more powerful because of her isolation from others of her own nation, she representing, to herself at least, the whole of the entire broad expanse of the United States; it was this sympathy with the ardent patriotism of Victorio Colenzo that had led to her present plight for, believing him to possess the strong feelings for his native land which he had professed to her to have, she had urged his participation in the plot which, on its discovery by the Spanish authorities, had plunged him, with others, into the prison from which, through her own earnest efforts, they had just been liberated, or, at least, a part of them. Now, she reached the side of the farthest slab in that small room, and noticed, at once, crouching down beside it, a fair-haired girl who seemed, beyond all doubt, the one bereft by the condition of the body lying there, so straight and still, beneath the rude pall that had been thrown over it so that even its face was hidden from sight. She softly touched the mourner on the shoulder nearest to her and whispered: "My poor Girl, for whom do you mourn? Is it the body of your brother lying here, or, yet," she went on, hesitatingly, for a horrible suspicion began to thrust its ugly head before her vision, "can he who lies here so quietly have been, maybe, your husband? You are young but I know well that the girls, here, marry very young...." She ended haltingly, for the girl had raised her lovely face, tear-stained and drawn by sorrow, and looked up into the face that bent so near to her own: "He was my plighted husband, Lady; he _would_ have been my husband had death not intervened to take him from me! I _love_ him so ..." she suddenly screamed in agony, "I _love_ him so ... Victorio! Why have you left me all alone in a cruel world to be a widow before I was a wife? Victorio...." And, then, she rose, as one who had that right, and turned the pall back from the countenance of him who lay there on that senseless slab. The other woman did not scream, as poor Estrella had ... she did not even move, indeed, but stood as if she had been carved from marble, for her face was almost just as pale as death itself ... the pulsing blood receded from her cheeks and from her trembling lips ... she stood so tall and still that the poor girl became conscious of her in spite of her own grief and wondered if she, also, sought to find some one she loved among the dead; with that thought in her mind, she stepped back from the corpse she had been leaning over, and said to her who stood there silently as if her interest in the affairs of life had, suddenly, ceased: "I beg your pardon for my selfishness. Are you, too, one of those who lost some loved one yesterday? Do you seek, here, in this sad place, the body of one whom you've loved as I have loved the man who lies here ... dead ... before me?" The older girl was silent, for she could not talk to poor Estrella as she wished to do ... as she had meant to do in case her worst fears had to be realized; she did not wish to add a single hair's weight to the sorrow that the poor girl felt for him who had been false to both of those trusting women who stood there beside his corpse; she did not wish to harm the innocent girl, for she could see how true and loving she had been by gazing, only for a moment, in her wide, blue eyes, and, yet, it was her right and, perhaps, it was also her duty, to the man who had been her earthly husband, to claim his body and to bury it as would become the husband of a woman such as she had, always, been; but, as he'd always begged her to keep secret their marriage which had taken place in Havana instead of having Father Felix marry them at his request, for political reasons, he had told her, with the thought that she, being an American, might complicate his position with the Spanish government, as he had occupied a place of trust under the Governor, until the proper time would come to expose his actual feelings for his native land. And, so, she had to think of this side of the complicated problem presented to her by her strange position while she stood there with that weeping, loving, sympathetic, untaught girl clinging to her hand and questioning her. At length, having collected a little of her usual unselfish consideration for the people living on the Island, she turned to poor Estrella and said to her, softly, and, yet, without condescension in her manner: "Yes, my poor Girl, I, also, seek someone I love among the newly dead.... I, also, wish to find the man I loved as you have loved the man who lies here on this slab.... I, also...." Then, her courage failed her utterly and she fainted dead away, even as poor Estrella, herself, had, when she had first beheld the body of the man who had made love to both of them. The fair-haired girl bent over the older woman and lifted her in her strong arms and carried her into the outer air and found the carriage where it waited for its mistress and placed her in the care of those who served her; then, for the first time, she realized who the lady was who'd found her there beside her dead, as she supposed, for Victorio had no family in San Domingo, having only come there recently, and having held himself as somewhat superior to the most of his own countrymen whom he met, so poor Estrella claimed his body as having been his sweetheart, since he had, as she believed, no wife in all the world, for he had often told her he had never found a woman he could love before he met her. Now, she helped to chafe the hands of her who lay there in that costly carriage with her brown hair making a soft frame for her pale face which lay upon the lap of one who loved her with the kind of love an ignorant, older woman gives to one she much admires and who is far superior to her in every possible way; this woman smoothed the fluffy hair back from the high white brow, now, and spoke to her as if she were her baby instead of one whom she looked up to and respected: "There ... there! My Pretty! Open your sweet eyes and look at your own loving Mage!" she said, as the long, brown lashes that fringed the delicate white lids still brushed the rounded cheeks that were almost as white as the smooth brow. "Look up at me and let me see your shining eyes, again!" "Her heart is beating, now, more regularly," said Estrella, for her hand had sought the other's bosom to see if she still lived at all. "She breathes more easily, too. I think she will recover very soon ... poor Lady! She sympathized with me in my great sorrow so deeply that she fainted. How sweet and dear she is!" she added, softly, as a shudder shook the form before her. "How very sweet and dear she is. You _must_ love her very much indeed.... I never happened to see her before today, but I know who she is, now, and how very kind she has been to so many of our people." "I wish the color would creep back into her cheeks ..." moaned Mage. "Her cheeks are almost always rosy as the dawn ... it seems so strange to see them white ... she don't look natural to me this way ... you should see her when she thinks her husband's coming to the house ... _then_ her cheeks are like a flame of light ... her eyes are just as bright as stars at midnight ... there! They've opening, now ... my Pretty ... my own pretty Dear ... Mage is here ... I'm right here by you Dearie ... there! I'm afraid she's fainted away, again. She seemed to look at you, Estrella, stand farther back so, when she opens her eyes next time, she'll see just me ... she knows old Mage loves her always ... she knows her own old Mage would take good care of her no matter what would come.... Dearie ... I am right here ... old Mage is close beside you...." At that, the woman lying there within her faithful arms, stirred softly, and, once again, her glorious gray eyes opened, and she looked at poor old Mage whose face was all distraught with many wrinkles and with deep anxiety for her. Then she raised herself to a sitting posture and put her hands before her eyes as if to hide some horrible spectre from her sight, and, then, she looked at poor Estrella standing there not knowing what to do, for Mage would not allow her, even now, to come a single step nearer to her mistress, and then she spoke: "My poor Girl," she said, "My poor Girl, I too, sought to find the man I loved, but his body is not here. I pity you with all my heart and wish that I could help you bear your sorrow. Come to me and I will try to help you ... come this evening, just at sunset, to my house. I think you know which one it is.... Mage, you tell her where to come." For she had reached the limit of her endurance, for the moment, and old Mage, seeing her evident distress, hurriedly told Estrella where to come to find her mistress, and gave the orders to the coachman to drive home at once. And, then, Estrella went again into the habitation of the dead and the other woman, with her heart like lead within her breast, went back to her own place and left the body of the man she'd called her husband for a few short months lying there upon that senseless slab with the weeping girl beside it. CHAPTER V When the evening shadows were falling over the almost palatial home of Ruth Wakefield, the young girl whom she had begged to come to her climbed the rugged height upon which the former United States Consul had erected his residence hoping to occupy it long after his term of office should expire as he had found the climate very beneficial to the health of his entire family, as it seemed, and desired to have a fitting place of abode during the childhood of his only and much-loved child, who, now, a sorrowing widow and a humiliated wife, was sitting idly waiting to receive poor Estrella, not knowing, certainly, just what she would do or say when she had to really face the situation into which she had been forced by untoward circumstances. As Estrella reached the rear door, to which she had gone by an almost unerring instinct, feeling strange and unnatural among the rich surroundings, old Mage appeared to welcome her, as she had been directed by her mistress to do; the old woman was greatly in doubt as to the condition of affairs in the home she loved to be a part of and had longed to get hold of the peon girl alone. There was something about Ruth Wakefield that commanded the respect of even the lowest among those who knew her ... her natural refinement had been accentuated by her seclusion from the outer world and by her almost constant thought of higher and better matters than the gross and humdrum affairs of the daily life by which she was surrounded. Yet, she always entered into practical affairs with vigor and entire understanding, so that, while she was counted as a dreamer of dreams beyond the earth, yet she was acknowledged to be eminently practical and able to attend to her own business affairs with no danger of being over-reached by those with whom she dealt as to monetary matters, as her natural acumen in such matters had been sharpened by various experiences of a more or less unpleasant character, such as the loss of certain sums of money through trusting to the honor of some of those with whom she had had sympathy in their need, for she had discovered that, when it comes to money, people are very apt to forget their obligations entirely, only attending to that part of life when in need themselves and not considering the fact that, unless one gets what is one's due, at least to some extent, one cannot, on the other hand, meet one's own obligations, so that the lonely girl had learned some hard lessons by practical knowledge of human nature gained in the only school where such knowledge can be gained ... experience. But old Mage was of a far different type of womankind ... true as steel to her beloved young lady as she always called her in her thoughts, although she often found verbal fault with her to her fair and tender face ... fond of gossip and garrulous to an almost alarming extent yet she could keep a secret as inviolate as even Ruth Wakefield herself. At this moment, her great desire was to worm out of poor Estrella whatever it was that had made her own young lady faint that morning ... she was not worried about the poor girl's loss of him she had called her lover except in so far as it affected her own people as she was fond of distinguishing them, for old Mage, although uneducated and almost unaware of her own nationality as her mother had died at her birth and her father had immediately deserted her, yet prided herself on being far superior to the natives among whom she dwelt, for she had come to Cuba with the Wakefield family, having been employed by them as nurse for the small Ruth and having stuck tightly to her charge from that time on. So that, when she faced the poor, ignorant, as she secretly considered Estrella, girl, it was with an air of superiority as belonging to a higher race than she, for it is a fact that uneducated persons feel any elevation above their fellows much more strongly than those who have had more insight into the humble attainments of even the wisest of human beings, for those who have been permitted to climb the heights of thought have had a glimpse of the vastness and unattainable grandeur of which even the highest human intellect must only be a spectator ... an humble and admiring witness of the matchless beauty and majestic splendor that dwell beyond and yet beyond the vision of the keenest human imagination. But old Mage seldom allowed herself even to wonder about what she could not understand, being content with the plane of existence upon which she found herself and finding amusement and profit as well in attending to the various small duties of her daily life as she performed those duties through love and pride. Having seated the girl who was almost overpowered, already, by the unknown glamour of wealthy surroundings, she proceeded to follow out her own ideas and to attempt to satisfy her own curiosity before apprising Ruth of the arrival of her invited guest. She began by commiserating the girl upon her recent loss, little dreaming that, in this way, she would find out far more than had been her own desire, for old Mage, while she had never liked the young man who, for the past few months, had been an almost daily visitor at the home she dearly loved, yet had tried to think that her young lady had chosen wisely, even if unconventionally, when she had married him, as it was very hard for her ever to really question any object upon which Ruth had set her heart, it having been one of the criticisms of the parents of the little girl that old Mage had always indulged her slightest whim and always satisfied at least her own conscience by finding some good reason for the indulgence; in the present instance, she had often said to herself: "My poor child is alone so much with her own thoughts and what she gets out of all those big books," for what anyone could find in the way of company in a book which required so much labor, in her own case, to decipher at all was a mystery to her, "and she needs company ... a woman needs a man around to make love to her and this fellow is good at that what with his guitar and his mandolin and his fine voice, not to speak of his wonderful dark eyes and his curly black hair and his strong, powerful figure ... it is too bad that he is only a native Cuban instead of an American ... that is too bad ... but..." she would end, brightly, "he can be naturalized if we ever go back to the States." So, now, when she turned to Estrella with the conventional question as to the identity of her lover on her ready tongue, she little dreamed of the consequences: "My poor girl," she began, "you were to have been married, they tell me, to the man who was found dead at the entrance to the prison, last night.... I wonder if I happened to know him ... what was his name?" She had asked the question idly, wishing only to engage the girl in conversation to find out whatever she could. "My lover was a wonderful man ..." declared Estrella; "he was not a common man at all ... he was superior to all the men I know or ever have known ... he was the handsomest as well as the most intelligent man among the whole people of this Island, I think.... I know I never saw anyone either so handsome or so smart as was my dear Victorio.... I don't suppose you would ever have met him for he was not a servant and yet he was a Cuban ... he was a wonderful man and I was to have been his wife and he was most foully murdered there in that hateful prison." And the poor bereft creature began to moan and sob and wring her hands in agony of spirit. This was not at all what Mage desired to do ... to get the girl all wrought up before her young lady even saw her, so she tried to comfort and calm her by speaking rather sharply to her as she knew hysteria can only be overcome by the application of fierce remedies, or, at least, that is what she had been taught, so, in order to cauterize the wound her words seemed to have made, she said: "You say your lover was a superior man ... was he, then, a leader among the political prisoners who were liberated?" "Indeed he was ..." proudly answered the bereaved girl. "Victorio Colenzo was a leader where-ever he went ... why ..." But even her pride in her dead lover did not hide from her the effect his name had had on poor old Mage for she had crumpled down in her chair as if she had received a stroke of some kind and seemed as if paralyzed, for her poor old mouth fell open, revealing its entire innocence of teeth; she gasped for breath for a moment and then demanded: "Say that name again! What kind of looking man was he?" Hastening to comply with the demand made on her, the girl proceeded, proudly: "His name was Victorio Colenzo and he was the handsomest man in the whole of Cuba, I believe ... his eyes were very dark and expressive and his hair was the very most beautiful curly hair that ever grew on any human head ... he was tall and strong and handsome in every way and, yet," she ended dreamily, "and, yet, he never loved a woman in his life before he found me." Old Mage had other words upon her lips than those which she said after having hauled herself up sharply, remembering how unprotected her dear young lady was and wishing, above all else, even her own almost insatiable curiosity, to shield her from any harm: "It must be a great comfort to you to know that, now that he is dead and gone," she said to the girl, though what she added in her own mind may as well not be recorded here, for, with all the fierceness of the far-famed tiger with her young, old Mage, in her own primitive mind, was wishing several distinct kinds of punishment would fall, in its immediate future, upon the soul of the man who had brought sorrow to her dear, innocent lamb. As far as the girl was concerned she felt that she had had more than her just deserts already and wished to relieve her young lady of any further torture regarding the mixed matter, for old Mage, though an ignorant woman in many ways, had lived a great many observant years among human men and women, and, now, that her experience might serve to protect Ruth in this hard crisis of her young womanhood, she threw herself and all her previous knowledge of the world right into the breach. She reflected only for a few moments after having made the diplomatic speech referred to above, before she decided on a course of immediate action. To begin with, she decided to clear the decks, as it were, of the obstruction of the girl's presence in the home of the wronged wife; she went about this with precision and dispatch, for, once she had settled on any certain course, old Mage was like a mild whirlwind, scattering everything before her: "Well," she began, eyeing the girl suspiciously, wondering whether she had any inkling of the exact situation, "I suppose you have folks to live with and are not in need of anything much?" "I am alone in this wide world," declared Estrella, "for I am but a foster child among the people who have brought me up ... my parents I know nothing of but believe that I am not of Cuban blood.... I think ..." she hesitated, "I think ... I am ... an American, the same as the sweet young lady who lives here with you." The last few words almost undid old Mage's stern resolve, but she kept her one idea of saving her young lady from further annoyance in view and answered this appeal: "It don't make much difference in this world _who_ you are but it does matter _what_ you are ... now, I take it, you are a good girl and will marry some good man when you have recovered from this loss ... you are too young to feel this as deeply as you might ... I hope so, anyway ..." she temporized, seeing the look of despair that settled on Estrella's really beautiful and innocent features, "and my young lady wanted me to help you if you needed any help for she feels so sorry that your lover happened to be killed just as he was about to get free ... she wanted me to tell you ..." but at that point in her benevolent intention she was interrupted by the appearance of the mistress of the place, and ended, rather lamely, "she wanted me to tell you to come to her as soon as you got here." "Why, Mage," said Ruth in her usual sweet, low voice, "you had not told me that Estrella had come ... have you been waiting for me very long?" she kindly asked the girl. "No, Madam," said Estrella feeling the immense difference in their positions in spite of the evident indisposition and tender youth of the other woman, "I have only rested for a few moments after my climb to the top of the hill. It was very kind," she added, "of you to ask me to come and the cool air of the evening has refreshed my head for it has been aching terribly, all day." "Can't you find some sort of refreshments for her, Mage?" asked Ruth, feeling sorry for the other's plight. "Maybe a good cup of tea would give you added strength to bear your great sorrow ... we women," she said while her sweet, low voice trembled, "we women are but weak and yet often the very heaviest of sorrows is laid upon us.... I do not know the reason for this ... I do not understand ... but I believe that we are all but a part of a very great plan which is beyond our comprehension while we are here in this finite world, and I hope ..." she had the look of one of God's good angels on her face as she said it, "and I hope to know more about this great plan when I have passed beyond this world and all its many disappointments. You have had a terrific blow, my poor Girl," she went on, kindly. "You alone must bear this grief but God has sent other human beings into this human life so that we may help each other, if only by our mutual sympathy, when we must meet what it seems almost impossible for us to bear alone ... so," she ended, "so, maybe I have been sent to try to give you courage to go on in life when your future must look dreadfully black to you." "It surely does look black ..." moaned poor Estrella, "Victorio was all I had to lean upon in this wide world for I don't belong to the people where I live and Manuello persists in making love to me and I can't bear to have him touch me after having known the love of a man who never even looked at any other woman but me, and who was," her pride in her dead lover again taking the ascendency in her emotions, "the handsomest and smartest man who ever came to Cuba." "The low-lived pup!" said old Mage, who had just come in with the tea-tray in her hands and heard the last few words, but she made this remark to herself alone and would have ground her teeth in making it had it not happened that she had mislaid those triumphs of the dentist's art, for old Mage was the proud possessor of two entire sets of teeth, although she seldom could lay her hands on them as she invariably removed them from her mouth each time she wished to eat anything, having grown so accustomed to gumming her food that the teeth were dreadfully in her way. She set the tea-tray with its array of cups and saucers down and added several little concoctions of her own making to the little feast before she began, thinking to change the subject: "Dear Miss Ruth, I wish you could have seen little Tid-i-wats a few minutes ago; she was out in the big yard and I wanted her to come back in her own place so as to be safe and so instead of going to pick her up as you know very well she won't allow anyone to do except yourself, I just got one of her saucers and a silver spoon and pounded on the edge of the saucer with the spoon, and here she came fairly bounding along the driveway; she galloped, Miss Ruth, just like a little colt out in one of our own big pastures, back home." "The dear little Dadditts!" exclaimed her young lady, using a pet name of her own making. "How cute she must have looked ... she is so little," she explained to Estrella, "she is so very small and so very cute ... I have had her with me, now, for ... how long is it, Mage?" for she knew the old woman enjoyed being asked for information, "since we came from America the last time?" "Let me see ..." answered Mage, deliberating, "it must be anyway twelve years and Tid-i-wats was not a young cat, even then, for she had raised one family of kittens at least ... she must be thirteen or more years old, my Dear," she said to the young girl, hoping to attract her attention to herself and so leave Ruth free from her immediate scrutiny, "just think of that! You must come with me, when you have had your tea, and see the cute little yard we have for her and then you must look over the grounds with me. Miss Ruth is not feeling very well, today, although she has such a healthy-looking, rosy face, and, so, I'll entertain you while you're here; Miss Ruth is a great reader and her eyes are not very strong ... sometimes the sun hurts them awfully." And Ruth let here have her way, that time, as she found that she could scarcely endure the calm, blue, staring eyes of the girl and listen to her innocent gabble concerning her own husband; so she called old Mage into another room and cautioned her to be very kind to poor Estrella and gave her quite a sum of money to hand to her, thinking, in this manner to defray the funeral expenses of the man whom she had believed to be the very soul of honor fired with an almost holy patriotism. Old Mage received her directions quietly enough and used her own good judgment as to carrying them all out; her main idea was to relieve her mistress and this she did by assuring her that she would look after the girl and would ask her to come to see them again when she had in some measure recovered from her sorrow. What she was saying to her own self we will not record but she relieved her own feelings, while attempting to help Estrella who was as innocent as her own young lady was, as she could see, for old Mage was seldom mistaken in her estimate of women, although men, as she expressed it, quite often "pulled the wool over her eyes." CHAPTER VI As the young girl descended the hill to the little village she reflected upon the splendor of the home she had just quitted and wondered if such wealth as was displayed there could take the place of the companionship of a loved and loving human being; she remembered the very sad expression of the great gray eyes into which she had peered for a few fleeting moments and she marveled at the memory, for, as it seemed to the inexperience of Estrella, Ruth Wakefield should have been as happy as a queen indeed for she had the proud position, almost, of Royalty among the peons to whose constant society she, herself, had had to be accustomed from her earliest recollection of society at all. In spite of her own great sorrow on account of the sudden death of Victorio Colenzo she felt comforted, somehow, by the memory of the vital nearness of the woman who was so much her superior, as it seemed to her, in every possible way; she could not know that in Ruth Wakefield's gentle bosom there throbbed a deeper and more lasting agony than any that she, herself, had ever experienced ... she only saw her own position among those who had little sympathy for her, as all the girls she knew well, except little Tessa, envied her as having been the sweetheart of a man they all admired, and the young men, feeling that she was superior, in many ways, to the girls of their own type, were jealous of the handsome Colenzo who had won so easily what they had failed to even attract. Chief among these latter was Manuello who called himself her half-brother, half in derision and half in rough sport, for well he knew that no similar blood flowed through their veins as Estrella had been taken care of by his own mother simply from motives of pity for a deserted and helpless orphan; this loving and unselfish mother had passed away some time before the opening of this tale and Estrella had taken full charge of the household affairs of the family among whom she had grown up, as being the eldest of the girls, having always been of a domestic turn of mind and wishing to repay the kindness of those who had cared for her when she was unable to do so. As she walked along she remembered several little duties for her to perform yet that night, although she felt that she wished to devote her entire attention to the funeral arrangements that she had made for poor Victorio whose mangled remains still lay at the improvised morgue in the village. Reflecting on these arrangements, she remembered the money that old Mage had given to her which was yet clutched in the hand that had received it; hearing a slight noise in the path ahead of her, she hastily thrust the money into the bosom of her gown and advanced, cautiously, for there was much unrest all over the Island of Cuba at this time and no one was really safe, either at home or abroad, as the Governor-General had issued positive orders to arrest without question all those who were, in any manner, detrimental to the ruling powers. Estrella was aware, in a dim and uncertain way, of existing conditions, and, having been a participant in the recent uprising, she was afraid that she might be detained by the government, in which case, how she could attend to the sorrowful duty of the morrow was a problem too big for her to solve on the spur of the moment; with the thought of this danger in her mind, she stepped carefully to one side of the narrow path, hoping that whoever or whatever had made the noise she had heard would pass on up the hill without observing her; she was standing as still as possible, fairly holding her breath and involuntarily clutching at the bundle of money in her dress, when she became conscious of the approach of someone or something from behind her and jumped, like a startled fawn, back into the path and down the hill at top speed; she knew that she was followed but did not stop until she had reached the door of the little cottage where she made her home; as she pushed madly at the door it yielded to her touch too quickly to have been moved by herself alone, and, hurridly entering, she found herself face to face with Manuello who pulled her hastily inside and barred the simple door, saying testily: "Why did you startle me so? Had I not known your step, I would have kept you out until you had told me who you were ... don't you know that we, who have made ourselves conspicuous in the recent uprising, are being closely watched by the authorities and are liable to arrest at any moment? Why do you expose us in this manner by staying out after nightfall and perhaps bringing the soldiers who are stationed in the block-houses upon us? Is it not enough that you are marked as being the sweetheart of our dead leader? Must you even stray about the country-side after dark?" "Manuello ..." panted the poor girl, "I was so frightened ... someone was in the path and I jumped to one side and then someone came behind me and I ran! I did not mean to do wrong ... I went to see the lady at the mansion on the hill ... she asked me to come for she pitied me because of Victorio's death.... I am sorry if I did wrong by going, Manuello ... I hope you will forgive me ..." she ended, pleadingly, leaning against the door with one hand over her fluttering heart and looking up into his angry eyes. His countenance softened in a moment as he gazed upon her delicate beauty, and stretching out his arms he said to her: "Rest, little Sister, here, here upon my breast. All the others are asleep and you and I are alone. I would not scold you for the world, but we must all be as cautious as we can for we are living in very dangerous times." Estrella evaded his offered embrace and hastened into her own little room after bidding him a short goodnight; she wondered, vaguely, what it was that had startled her in the path, but, in spite of everything, her healthy youth soon asserted itself and she was lost to her little world upon the earth with all its many disappointments and unknown turnings. The day upon which Estrella made her visit to the mansion on the hill, as the residence of Ruth Wakefield was popularly known in the village of San Domingo, was a memorable one in the history of the Spanish-American war for it happened to be the fifteenth day of February in the year of our Lord and Master 1898. Upon that fateful day secret preparations had been made by the agents of some of those who were then in power over the people of Cuba ... secret mines had been laid and large quantities of explosives had been placed in Havana Harbor with a set purpose in view; many of those who had been incarcerated in political prisons had been kept in total ignorance of the movements of Spanish troops in Cuba but most of the inhabitants of the Island had known that, for some time, some definite object with reference to our own United States was being considered by those who directed the Spanish soldiery. Among those who had been apprised of what had been going on during the confinement of those who had been liberated the night before in San Domingo was Manuello; during the absence of Estrella from their home, that evening, this redoubtable warrior had been hobnobbing with the Spanish soldiers in the block-house nearest to the village and had discovered something of the plot to blow up a United States battleship in Havana Harbor; as it was known that the _Maine_, an armored cruiser of the second-class, had been lying in the harbor for some weeks, the young fellow was especially nervous, and, hearing Estrella's flying feet approaching their dwelling, he dreaded some new horror. The little village of San Domingo was wrapped in the first sound slumber of the night. Good Father Felix had been dreaming, for some hours, of the heavenly home he hoped, sometime, to reach; old Mage had long ago forgotten all about her defense of her dear young lady, that day, and Estrella was far away from every human care. But Ruth Wakefield was one of those who never sleep right through the dark hours of any night; from her earliest recollection, she had been wide awake, with a clarified vision of the affairs of daily life as well as of those that were quite beyond the world of men and women who were yet embodied, about the hour of two A.M., and, when she had some especially knotty problem to solve, she seldom slept for more than an hour or so at a time, but would waken to a consciousness of the facts of her human existence with a shock that would almost always cause her to jump as if struck a blow, which, indeed, was the exact state of affairs, only the blow was a mental one. On this one night, having lost the most of the sleep she should have had upon the previous one, her bodily strength was almost entirely exhausted so that she sunk into a deep and dreamless sleep during the first part of the evening and woke, with a start, about nine P.M. Rising from her bed, as was her custom upon awakening in the night, she approached one of the large windows of her own room facing Havana Harbor; she could see the lights from the various vessels lying at anchor and imagined that she could make out those of the _Maine_, which, as it represented her own native land to her, was, naturally, of deep interest to her; she fell to imagining how it would seem to return to the United States on that great ship lying so peacefully and appearing to be so stanch and strong in the harbor below her window ... she wondered if it might not be better for her, now that she no longer had the keen interest in Cuba that she had only recently had, to go back to her own country and so possibly forget the dark eyes and lying lips of the man to whom she had given her virginity only to find it flouted and treated with disdain; for, try as she would to vindicate Victorio Colenzo, she was too just and reasonable to deny to herself that he had acted the part of a sneaking villain both to her and to poor, trusting Estrella, who had not had to see her dream of him lying in fragments at her feet, but who still believed that he had spoken the truth to her when he had told her that she was the only woman he had ever loved; she was too young to know that this statement is a regular trite and tried prevarication, common to almost all male lovers. But Ruth, at present, was laboring under no delusions with regard to the man she had married, although his dead body was still unburied and she had not so much as said a prayer over his remains ... she knew beyond all shadow of doubt that he had been untrue to both of the women he had professed to love in San Domingo, and her mind was much distraught as she sat at her window and, gazed down upon Havana Harbor upon that memorable evening of February fifteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight. She had been watching a little boat plying back and forth between the wharf and the battleship which she had picked out among the other black hulks in the harbor as being the _Maine_, and was speculating, idly, what it could be about, as it seemed busily engaged in something of importance, when, all at once, a mighty detonation shook the entire harbor and the adjacent shore, making even her own stout residence tremble, and, where the majestic battleship had, only just a moment before, been a thing of beauty and power, there was nothing but a wild mass of flying débris and a raging furnace of belching, flaming fire. Ruth Wakefield realized, even as the terrific explosion occurred, that here was a turning point in the affairs of state and that, in all probability, her own country would, after this, become involved in the war that had been raging in Cuba, then, for about three years; it was with mingled feelings of dismay and dread that she surveyed the activity that very soon became apparent both in the harbor and in the city of Havana; she could see the lights of the rescuing boats as they circled about the scene of the wreck and even hear the groans and supplications of some of the severely wounded survivors, for the night was clear and the light wind carried the sounds from the harbor up to her window so that her very acute hearing told her that this was no casual accident, but, in all probability, a carefully planned holocaust in which her own much-loved native land would, inevitably be involved. Manuello was one of the first to rush out upon the streets of the little village after the terrific noise of the explosion had rolled away; he passed hastily from cottage to cottage asking the inmates if they were aware of the cause of it, for, being a little below the level of Havana Harbor, the inhabitants of San Domingo could not command a view of it. As no one seemed able to give him any explanation of the disturbing detonation, he even dared to approach one of the block houses held by the Spanish soldiery; here, he found everything in confusion and excitement ... men were hastily arming themselves so as to be in readiness for whatever orders might come from their superiors, and Manuello found no one among them who seemed much better informed than he, himself, was; he imagined that what he had heard had been the result of the consummation of the plans upon which he had stumbled earlier in the evening and started to climb to the top of the hill upon which Ruth Wakefield's residence was located in order to gain a view of Havana Harbor. Manuello had almost reached the very top of the hill before he realized that he had come out into the night without a weapon of any kind, and, no sooner had he made this disconcerting discovery than he became aware of some sort of movement directly in his rear; wishing to avoid whatever it might be, he hastily concealed himself and waited for the approach of his unseen companion in the darkness; the steps he had heard came along the path hastily, yet steadily, and the owner of them soon appeared; as he passed Manuello, the young fellow made out that the new-comer was none other than the village Priest who, as it seemed likely, was bent upon the same errand as the hidden peon; Father Felix kept on, sturdily, climbing the grade to the mansion on the hill; having reached the house he at once disappeared inside it and Manuello was again alone upon the hillside. Gaining a point of vantage, Manuello looked down upon Havana Harbor, and, at once, decided upon the course that he must pursue to cover himself from danger of suspicion as to the possibility of his having participated in the terrible calamity that had befallen the United States battleship, for Manuello knew the exact location of the different ships then anchored in Havana Harbor as he had in his possession a map of it upon which he had drawn certain black crosses which indicated the positions of different vessels, also certain ingenious little flourishes told him the nationality of the various ships, so that he felt as sure as if he were right upon the scene that the battleship _Maine_ had been blown up in Havana Harbor, that fateful evening, and he knew that there would be a searching investigation made as to what had caused the explosion, so that Manuello had this little problem to consider as well as the one concerning the sudden and mysterious death of Victorio Colenzo just as he was about to be liberated from the prison at San Domingo; for Manuello knew far more concerning that casualty than he had imparted to Estrella when she had so diligently inquired of him about it. Father Felix found Ruth Wakefield and her little, frightened household fully awake as well as fully aware of the nature of the episode that had startled him to such an extent that he had climbed the hill to ascertain the safety of the inhabitants of the mansion on the hill, for the good Priest pitied the mistress of the mansion far more than he did the poor girl in the cottage, knowing that added refinement often makes more poignant a sorrow that would inevitably be hard for any human heart to bear. CHAPTER VII All over the little village of San Domingo, on the morning of February sixteenth, 1898, the news spread like wild-fire that the United States battleship, _Maine_, had been blown up in Havana Harbor. Manuello, having secreted his map in what he considered to be a safe place, and having remained quietly inside his own domicile during the balance of the night preceding the general acceptance of the the salient facts concerned in the great disaster, ventured forth at daylight, hoping to discover the condition of the public mind with regard to it. The first place he visited was one of the block-houses where he had hob-nobbed with the soldiers before the news of the explosion had reached them; here he found closely shut mouths and stern countenances meeting him on every side, as he was known to be engaged in stirring up strife and dissatisfaction among the peons of whom, to some extent, now that Victorio Colenzo was dead, he was an acknowledged leader; the soldiers, knowing nothing of what action would be taken by their own government, much less of how far the resentment of the powerful nation involved in the disaster would carry them, thought that discretion was, by all means, the better part of valor, in this instance, and, accordingly, had no private conversation with Manuello at all, being careful to have several of their number within ear-shot of every word he uttered; he, realizing the situation, after some few moments, went quietly away, glad, indeed, to escape so easily from among the armed hosts of Spain, for his own native country had been under the heel of Spanish oppressors for more than three years, at this time. From the block-house, the young fellow proceeded to the dwelling of little Tessa for he had a sort of mild affection for her, knowing how profoundly she admired him and being flattered by her preference, while his own heart was set on Estrella, to win whom he had, indeed, committed a most terrible crime, for it had been his hand that had almost severed the handsome head of Victorio Colenzo from his strong and agile body, he having taken advantage of the confusion in the prison at the time of the liberation of the political offenders to vent his own jealous spite upon the natural leader of them all, little dreaming that he had cut off in his prime the husband of the lady of the mansion on the hill, but only congratulating himself on having removed from his own path a dangerous rival in the affections, not only of Estrella, but also of all of those with whom he, Manuello, hoped to advance his own interests; for Victorio Colenzo was a man to be feared by all those who opposed him as Manuello knew very well; now that his dead body was lying there in the little improvised morgue, it seemed to the young Cuban that his great influence would soon die away, and, so far as Estrella was concerned, he felt pretty sure of her as she was so near to him and would, naturally, lean upon him in trouble. So that, he felt quite complacent as to the recent turns in his affairs, when he entered the rude home of little Tessa; he found that small, dark young woman standing quietly beside a window watching his approach; she turned to him, when another member of the family had admitted him, eagerly and expectantly: "What do you think, Manuello?" she inquired. "What will be the result of last night's terrible disaster? Shall we, now, have the Americans to fight as well as the Spanish? Will the great United States hold us responsible for this crime? I wondered, right away, what you would think about it all and am so glad you have come over early. Is dear Estrella as well as we could expect under her distressing circumstances? Will the body of her lover be buried, today? Will this new trouble make any difference with the burial of the bodies in the morgue? Tell me everything you know, Manuello. Don't pay any attention to my questions ... just go ahead and tell me!" She had come near to him as she kept asking questions, and was now beside him and had grasped the collar of his short jacket, for Manuello was something of a dude among his associates and was very particular as to his appearance, being proud of his straight, strong figure and broad shoulders which towered above many of the heads of his companions, so that little Tessa had to stretch her small, dark hands well above her smooth, black head in order to cling as closely as she desired to him. The young fellow looked down into the eager face lifted toward his own and hesitated a little while before he answered her; diplomacy had become so much a part of his acquired habit that, even when it was unnecessary, as in the present instance, for Tessa trusted him implicitly, he still employed it: "To begin with," he said, as if issuing a decree from a judgment-seat, "I do not think that the blowing up of the battleship, last night, will make our case in Cuba much harder than it already is ... in fact, it might be that the American government would resent the loss of their property and the murder of their sailors sufficiently to induce them to assist us in our struggle for independence from the tyranny of Spain." He looked about him anxiously, as he made this last statement, for he knew that agents of the government might be in hiding almost anywhere. "As to the burial of Victorio Colenzo," he pronounced the name with some braggadocio, "and the rest, this disaster should make no difference as to that, for when human beings die they have to be buried somehow, no matter what happens." It was with secret satisfaction that he explained this last matter, for, so far as he was concerned, the sooner the body of his victim was under the ground the better he, himself, would feel, "and as to Estrella, as soon as she recovers from the loss of her handsome lover, I think she will listen to reason again and be the same nice girl she was before she ever met this stranger who came among us like a whirlwind and who has left us as suddenly as he appeared among us. Now, little Tessa," he ended, "I think that I have answered all of your questions ... suppose you answer some of mine ... for example," and he bent his bold eyes on her little face, "why are you growing to be so beautiful? Whom do you love more than anything else in the world? When will you be a married woman? Do you like me as well as you did when we were little children? Do you think that Estrella will ever marry me, now that she has lost her new lover? Are you my little friend in this matter and will you assist my cause with Estrella?" seeing a look of consternation spread over her countenance, he ended his category with, "Who is _your_ lover, little Tessa? I know you must have one for you have grown to be very fair and winsome since we were shut up in that hateful prison." "Manuello," said the girl, "I don't believe that I will ever marry.... I have no lover and I am not beautiful. Estrella does not love you, now, but she may learn to do so. I wish her to be very happy and if being your wife would make her so, and I see no reason why a girl could not be happy as your wife, Manuello, then I will do what I can to further your cause with her. I know she is in deep sorrow, today, and I intend to do all that I can to help her. Of course you know what arrangements have already been made. Father Felix will take charge of the ceremonies, I understand. I will accompany poor Estrella to the burial place. You may tell her that I will soon be with her." The simplicity and truth of the young and innocent girl affected even the hardened heart of the murderer and the evident adoration with which she regarded him also had its effect upon him, so that Manuello trembled, inwardly, in spite of all his hardihood and determination to force his passionate love upon Estrella, as he intended only to use poor little Tessa's admiration for him to influence the older and fairer woman; the very fact that Estrella was, very evidently, not of his own race had a powerful attraction for his untutored imagination and, in secret, he often dwelt upon her difference from all the other women of his acquaintance, while he assumed toward herself an air of superiority, hoping thereby to attract her to himself as being above all of the others of their acquaintance; now that his successful rival was out of his way the young fellow looked forward to an early conquest of the heart and hand of Estrella, and, now that the Americans had become involved in the Cuban war, he hoped for the defeat of the Spaniards as he never had before. Therefore, he could well afford to be a little condescending to the young girl who still clung to his hands as if to her only hope of happiness and looked up adoringly into his smiling eyes. Stooping toward her a little, he suddenly raised her in his strong arms and lifted her small, eager face to a level with his own; her lips were very near to his and were trembling for that very reason, so he stilled them by holding them for a passionate moment against his virile mouth. Tessa yielded to his embrace without thinking of its import for Manuello was a strong and healthy man, full of the electrical attraction that goes with those of his build, and, like many uneducated human beings, the animal side of his nature was more fully developed than any other part of it so that almost any healthy young woman appealed to him in some degree and Tessa's evident affection for himself added to her power in this respect. The two young beings were placed in the situation in which we have described them for only a very short space of earthly time, but it was sufficient to build up a barrier around Manuello that separated him from all the rest of the young men known to the simple-minded girl with whom he was only playing at making love, for all of that sacred emotion of which he was capable had been laid at the feet of the girl who had scoffed at his advances, for some years. When he had set her, gently, upon her small feet again, Manuello addressed the small maiden in an almost wheedling tone, for he thought that he could, now, better control her feelings than before the episode of the past few moments: "You _do_ like me as much as before I was put away in prison, don't you, little Tessa? Estrella's aloofness from me on account of her crazy notions about Victorio Colenzo has not affected you with regard to me, has it? I can depend upon you as upon a faithful little friend, I believe I can, anyway ... how about that, little Girl?" He bent his black eyes upon her as he asked the question, and, with his picturesque costume, dark face, up-tilted _mustachio_, as black as his heavy, curling hair, and his strong and agile figure, in many ways, he was as handsome as anyone upon whom Tessa's eyes had ever rested, for, to her simple mind, Victorio had been too much inclined toward intellectual pursuits to really appeal very strongly to her untutored mind and she had never been able to understand why Estrella preferred him to Manuello; now, she answered the latter in no uncertain language: "Of _course_ you can depend on my friendship ... of _course_ I would always do anything I could to help you ... even ..." her voice shook over the words, "even with the woman whom you love and prefer to all the other women whom you know ... Estrella," she said this firmly as if to convince even herself of the truth of the statement. "Estrella _is_ superior to the rest of us girls around here ... she is of another race of people, I believe ... a superior race, I guess ... anyway," she ended naïvely, "I love her and do not blame _you_, Manuello, for doing the same thing." It took a good deal of courage and loyalty combined for the girl to make the remarks we have just recorded here with her small mouth yet tingling from the kisses, for Manuello had not been chary of their number while he had the opportunity to bestow them, of the man whom she almost worshiped as earthly women adore merely human men, but she had waded through the above sentences, bravely, and felt better after having passed through what was an ordeal for her to undergo. Manuello scarcely knew how to meet this plain exposition of the matter under consideration and quickly changed the subject of conversation, not wishing to go too far, all at once, with Tessa, as that might complicate his relations with Estrella, and, yet, feeling the need of some stanch friend, in case he should have need of one, for he realized, dimly, that he might easily be in danger, at any time, for various good reasons, for he had been implicated in many of the plots of the revolutionists as well as having secrets of his own to cover up; he was naturally cautious as far as his own safety was concerned and did not wish to involve himself any farther than seemed best for his own interests with Tessa, and, yet, he desired to have her assistance ready at hand in case he should have need of anything so feeble. He had now fixed her previous regard for him upon a vital memory, so that she would not soon forget the few moments she had passed encircled by his arms, and this was all he cared to do in that line, at present.... Later on, in case Estrella still remained obdurate ... why ... that would be a far different matter; he had now arranged for himself a secret harbor in the simple heart of this uneducated girl, so that, if pursued too closely by cruel storms, out on the open sea, he could retire to it at will. As for Tessa, after she had made her declaration of love for Estrella, she felt that she had performed her full duty in that matter, and went about her preparations for the affairs of that day, with an even lighter heart than before Manuello's short visit, for, after all, she had discovered that she was not at least repulsive to the man she had secretly loved for almost as long as she could remember anything, for they had grown up in San Domingo together and he had always been identified with her daily life; the beauty of her personal dream regarding the tall Cuban had been her motive in assisting in the liberation of the prisoners, mentioned in the beginning of this narrative, as she had small sympathy with Estrella's adoration of Victorio Colenzo, although she was willing to have her intimate girl-friend feel exactly as she had felt and pitied her with all her loving heart, now that she had lost, in such a terrible manner, the man she loved and who, as they both had believed, loved her. CHAPTER VIII When Manuello left the dwelling of the little woman of whose affection he was certain he hastened home to find out what attitude the woman he loved would take toward the new conditions in Cuba, as well as to ascertain what preparations she was making for the burial of the man whose earthly life he had, himself, taken, although she was far from imagining anything of the kind concerning either her dead lover or her so-called half-brother. He found Estrella much perturbed as was to have been expected under the circumstances for he knew that she had been deeply enamored of the handsome stranger whose dead body was now being prepared for interment by the village undertaker to whom Estrella had given the money presented to her by old Mage, so that the man's body was being taken care of through the charity of his wife which had been bestowed upon his sweetheart neither of whom had been known to him at all a few months before. As the hour for the funeral exercises drew near, a handsome carriage drew up in front of the humble door where Estrella made her home; from within it emerged no less a person than old Mage herself who had been sent by Ruth Wakefield to escort the sorrowing girl to and from the rude graveyard where the body of her own husband would be placed, that day; she had told good Father Felix what to do as to the simple services but had decided to absent herself from them, not being sure as to how much endurance she would have and being determined not to add to the grief of the innocent girl who had been deceived by the man whose name she had assumed but never been known by in her own family, even, as, at his especial request, she had kept the marriage hidden from all of her acquaintances except the few members of her own little household who were devoted to her and her interests and went about among the villagers very little, as what business they had was transacted in Havana instead of San Domingo. Estrella was pleased and flattered by this attention from the lady of the mansion on the hill and entered the carriage to find Father Felix already there, for the carriage had been sent to the refectory before it came to her own home; she remembered the message little Tessa had sent to her so she asked old Mage to go to her dwelling for her, which was done, and completed the sad little group that rode directly behind the rude wagon which took the place of a hearse and which carried the body of Victorio Colenzo to its last earthly resting-place. The grief of the young girl was very pitiful and, as they turned away from the narrow grave, old Mage felt moved to try to comfort her a little by distracting her attention from her sorrow; seeing Manuello lurking in the background as the funeral party were about to leave the cemetery, she said to Estrella: "Will your brother ride home with us? I remember his face for he has brought fruit to our door and he told me, once, that you were his half-sister." The poor girl stifled her sobs long enough to listen to the old woman's remark but made no other answer to it than to shake her head; little Tessa turned her face in the direction indicated by old Mage and saw Manuello with a look of diabolical triumph mingled with fear and hatred on his dark face so that, in spite of her love for him, his expression frightened her and made even her turn away from the sight of the great change in his countenance from what she had seen resting there only that morning. Ruth Wakefield had spend the hour devoted to the funeral exercises of her own husband very quietly and in entire solitude; she was accustomed to the latter condition and there was no one among her acquaintances in whom she cared to confide except the good Priest who had done what he could to console and sustain her spirit through this trial that had been forced upon her by untoward circumstances and her own faith in humanity; she watched her own carriage descend the hill and pass into the little village ... she saw the small funeral procession as it wended its way along the palm-lined street ... she watched it enter the gate of the little cemetery and even saw poor Estrella as she alighted from the vehicle and leaned upon the arm of her small friend as she approached the open grave that was to contain the mortal remains of the man who had been, if only for a short space of time, her own husband ... and yet she did not faint ... she did not cry out ... she had had her fight with her own nature and she had won out after a hard struggle; all that was left of the love she had entertained for the handsome Cuban who had entered into her life so disastrously, was an open wound which time alone could ever heal. When old Mage returned to the mansion on the hill she sought out her young lady and would have, in her usual garrulous manner, reported everything that she had noticed during her absence had she received encouragement to do so; on the contrary, she found Ruth, apparently, deeply interested in a large volume which she had placed on a table before her chair; she rested her head on her hands, from time to time, and only looked up to welcome her old nurse, then resumed the perusal of the page she happened to have open at the time of her entrance into the library. Ruth Wakefield had always found her chief delight among her many good books; she browsed among them for mental sustenance and for spiritual solace and found rich pasturage; it had been said of her, while she was yet a small child, that, in case it ever became necessary to perform a surgical operation upon any part of her delicate body, an anæsthetic would not be essential, as all that she would need would be to have someone read aloud to her from some fine piece of literature. So, in the terrible affliction that had so recently befallen her, it was as natural for her to go to her books for comfort as it would have been for another woman to go to some understanding friend, for that was what Ruth Wakefield found among her books ... understanding and safe friends who would never betray her secrets or her confidence in them ... who would never deceive and torture her and who represented to her the finest and best impulses in human nature as well as those higher sentiments to which she always clung and which, now, in this crisis of her life, carried her safely over what might have crazed a mind less well poised than hers. The morning after the funeral exercises of Victorio Colenzo, Father Felix ascended the hill upon which Ruth Wakefield's home was located and sought her out, for the good Priest was much perturbed because of her present condition and went to see her with the intention of advising her to leave Cuba, at least for a time, as the situation with regard to her own country was almost certain to become acute, after the disaster of a few nights previous, and it seemed to him to be imprudent for a young woman to remain alone with only retainers about her among the wild people among whom he labored; for Father Felix knew far more of the nature of these people than many others possibly could and he realized that the wealth surrounding the Wakefield residence was in itself a menace to the fair owner of it; although he, himself, intended to remain among his parishioners under all circumstances, it did not seem to be a wise procedure for an unprotected woman to do so. He had studied the situation over from many view-points and had settled on the best course, according to his judgment and knowledge of the situation, for her to pursue, and he, now, laid this course before her with the benevolent intention of assisting her to follow it in every way within his limited power: "My dear Miss Ruth," he began, hesitatingly, for he was not sure of just what effect either her husband's violent death or the recent explosion in the harbor would have on her sensitive nature, "I wish that you would consider your own situation very carefully; you are now alone here except for those who are under your employ, and the people of the surrounding country are in a high state of excitement. At almost any moment, now, your own native land, to which you are devoted, may declare itself to be in a state of war with Spain, following the blowing up of the battleship; in that case, your situation, here, would be even more precarious than it is at present and it is far from being secure, even now; what I had thought of proposing to you is that you, at once, gather together what you consider to be the most precious of your worldly possession, here, and place them in some storage building in Havana, leaving the house, here, with as few valuables as possible inside of it, then, with probably your old nurse as a companion and charge, return at once to your own country, anyway, until the war-cloud that is now hanging over Cuba has been lifted; it looks to me," he ended, "as if that would not be for some years yet ... of course America is a powerful country and if she takes this matter up in earnest, it may be that it will come to an end more quickly than I fear it may." He waited, quietly, then, for Ruth to think over his remarks; she had regarded him earnestly while he had been speaking, and, now, sat with her hands folded in her lap for a few minutes before she spoke: "Father Felix," she began, at length, "Father Felix, I appreciate the reasons that prompted you to come to me and advise me as you have just been doing; I understand that you consider me unfit to cope with the present situation under my circumstances and I wish to inform you that I do not intend to run away from my duty any more than you do. I take it for granted, Father, that you expect to remain with your people no matter what may come to them? I believe that the more need they may have of you, the more anxious you will be to serve them. Now I," she continued, earnestly and unwaveringly, "I have not done my full duty, up to now, among these people to whom you have devoted all of your energies; I feel that I owe my fellow-beings more than I have given to them in many ways, for I have been very much of a recluse, as you know, loving my books and enjoying my home and the natural beauties I have delighted in all around me; it may be, that, in the crisis that seems imminent, I may find some good work that will wholly absorb my energies ... it may be ..." she said, while a high resolve settled over her sensitive features, "it may be, good Father Felix, that I may be permitted to do almost as much good in our little world as you, yourself, are doing and have already done. Would you bar me from the proud privilege of sharing your labor and of receiving some measure of the rich reward which is awaiting you?" Father Felix gazed upon her as if upon a being already translated beyond the common things of earth, and, realizing the firmness of her evident resolve, he extended his hands toward her in blessing. As she bowed her head to receive it there was a rapt look upon her face such as the holy angels who welcome the souls of the newly dead must have upon their features ... the inner consciousness of Ruth Wakefield shone through her earthly lineaments and transfigured them so that they were even more fair than they had been before. "My Daughter," said the good Priest, "forgive me for proposing what I did; I did not fully understand you; from this time on, I hope that we may find much good work that we can do in common, for I would be proud and glad to be engaged with you upon our Father's business. Let us consult with each other in our plans for the betterment of the poor people among whom our lot in life has been cast. I was going to speak to you about the girl, Estrella," he went on, watching her face while he talked; "she is in need of different surroundings than she has at present, for she is not of the race of those with whom she has been staying; the young man who calls her his half-sister knows very well that she has none of his blood in her veins, and he is almost constantly tormenting her with offers of his heart and hand, when the poor girl is really a mourner for the man whom she believed, as you did, to be worthy of a good woman's love. The girl is strong and willing and capable beyond the common run of the people among whom she has spent her life thus far. I believe she would fully appreciate kindness and would repay it in every way in her power. What I have just thought of is, perhaps, impossible for you to do, at present, but it may be that, in the future, you may consider it. If you could bring yourself to have her in your home she would be safe from harm and might be a very great help to you if you carry on the work that is now in your mind to do. For," he rose to his feet and walked rapidly from one end of the room to the other, "if America declares war on Spain with a view to the independence of Cuba, there will be much heroic work for you and me to do, my dear Daughter ... there will be much work for us two to perform." Ruth Wakefield also rose ... it seemed to her that the situation demanded that she meet it on her feet.... "Father Felix," she said calmly and softly, "Father Felix, have Estrella brought to me, today; let us begin our good work at once. There is nothing that my beloved country can demand of me that I would not be glad to give to its sacred cause. I believe that I can do more for my native land, here, in Cuba, at the present time, than if I should return to it, now. It may be that an American, with some degree of wealth and intelligence, can be of service, here, at this critical juncture in her country's history." "Our native land could not have a better representative, my Daughter. As you know, I, also, am an American and I am proud, indeed, to claim you as a fellow-countryman. From now on we will more fully understand each other and I shall be glad to consult with you about many important matters. I will proceed at once to carry out your instructions with regard to the young girl of whom we have been speaking, for I feel that her case is one of peculiar importance, since I fully believe that she, also, is an American, although I have been unable, up to this time, to trace her parentage beyond the fact that a man, presumably her father, left her in the care of the woman who brought her up as one of her own children, in the little village below here. The poor girl has had a sorry life so far and really deserves better treatment than she has received, or so it seems to me from my finite stand-point. I do not presume to question the wisdom or justice of God, but, often, I am puzzled when I see the innocent suffer and the guilty escape punishment here in this world; I always trust in our heavenly Father implicitly, and, yet, at times, I am sorely put to it to furnish reasons for certain people having been placed in certain environments. I believe that all this will be explained to us in good time, but many things are hard to understand while we remain finite beings with only the intelligence that has been bestowed upon humanity to reason with. Conscience," he went on almost as if talking to himself, "conscience is our infallible guide and was given to us so that we would never be without direction in whatever circumstances we may be placed. Now, in this instance ... I honestly thought that I was doing right to come here this morning and advise you as I did, and, yet, God, in His great Wisdom, guided you, at once, into the only path that you were ever meant to walk in ... the path that will lead you on to the peace that passeth human understanding." After a little rather desultory conversation, with which he hoped to lighten the outlook of the lonely woman, the good Priest wended his solitary way down the hill and back to the scene of most of his labors among the ignorant people whom he hoped to help toward a better enlightenment, and, as he walked slowly down the path leading to the village, he turned and looked back at the mansion on the hill, crossed himself, and murmured: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." CHAPTER IX When Estrella reached the mansion on the hill she found its mistress quietly awaiting her outside the dwelling; she welcomed the young girl with out-stretched hands, saying: "Father Felix has done well, indeed, to send you to me so quickly, Estrella. I want you to feel perfectly at home, here. Old Mage will take you to your own room and tell you what little duties you may assume if you wish to do so. When you have arranged these little domestic matters, come to me in the library and we will talk over some plans I have in which I think you will be interested when you have somewhat recovered from your recent loss. I know, from my own experience, that there is but one way to carry sorrow through one's daily life and that is to be busy. If one has enough physical energy and nervous strength, one can accomplish a great deal of good in the world in spite of personal sorrow. You are young and have not had an easy life so far ... it may be that I can assist you so that, from now on, you and I may be able to help each other in doing good work among those who are weaker than we are." Old Mage was only too willing to take charge of the girl, for, while she did not really like the idea of having her in the family, yet, she was aware that Ruth needed companionship and she enjoyed having a goodly number of people around her as her life consisted, mainly, of what each day brought into it, for old Mage, while she was a good woman and a faithful friend, was not a thinker and made few plans for the future. She led Estrella to the room that Ruth had arranged to have her occupy, and, having explained certain little matters to her concerning the daily round of life in the house, she began to question her as to what she had learned regarding the explosion in Havana Harbor and what she thought as to the probability of the United States declaring war on Spain on account of it. The girl had little information to give to the old woman for she had been too much absorbed by her own recent grief to even think of any of the consequences that might follow the accident ... it seemed to her that if the whole United States navy were blown up, it would make small difference to her now that she had lost Victorio for he had represented to her everything that meant happiness for her in the future; she had yet to learn many things that would, eventually, bring to her the kind of happiness that is lasting and to be depended upon when all that is transitory and ephemeral has passed beyond knowledge and memory. At length, old Mage wearied of quizzing Estrella and left her to her own thoughts which were confused and uncertain; she did not understand why the lady of the mansion had condescended to ask her to come to her for Father Felix had left her in doubt as to any reason, only telling her that Miss Ruth desired her to come to her, at least for a time, to act as a sort of companion as she was alone a great deal; he did not explain to her that there might be work for her to do in the near future, leaving that part to Ruth, very wisely. Father Felix led his little flock into fresh pastures when he felt that they were ready for such a change but he reflected deeply before doing this and hoped, in the case of the girl under consideration, that companionship with one as unselfish and intrinsically good and noble as Ruth Wakefield would do more for her character than any counsel he could give to her; the good Priest was well aware that the handsome, young, dashing Cuban had fascinated both the women and he felt sure that, had he lived long enough in the same world with them, he would have broken both their hearts, for it was his nature, evidently, to gather flowers wherever he found them and throw them away to wither and die; Father Felix was a normal human being as well as a spiritual leader and he recognized facts with regard to human nature as he found them, not being deceived by appearances as a less intellectual person would have been, or as a man possessed of weaker masculine traits than those that had been bestowed upon him. There was one among his parishioners of whose case he was doubtful ... he was very anxious concerning Manuello for he knew that the young man had some sort of guilty secret that he had confessed to no one and this was one reason influencing him in his endeavor to extricate the innocent Estrella from her immediate surroundings; he knew that, in the troubled condition of the country, Manuello would be almost certain, with his wild and untutored nature, to get into some sort of tangle with authorities and supposed that the trouble he was well aware of as being on the young fellow's conscience had something to do with existing Spanish laws; he, himself, in breaking down the doors of the prison in order to liberate this man among the rest of the prisoners, had been guilty of violating a strict mandate and knew that he was liable to arrest at any time, but, now that America might come into the struggle on her own account, instead of simply through sympathy with the wrongs of the people of Cuba, he realized that his own case had taken on a new color, for, as he had told Ruth Wakefield, Father Felix was a native American and loved his own country devotedly, although he had been acting as a missionary in Cuba for some years of his active life in the priesthood; he was dwelling on the state of mind of Manuello, sitting quietly in his own place in the refectory, the evening after the events related in the preceding chapter, when he heard a hasty knock at his door and immediately opened it to admit the subject of his thoughts. The young man entered as if upon a desperate errand and sat down in the first chair he found without waiting for the invitation of the Priest, a proceeding that, alone, showed the condition of his mind: "Good Father," he began without introduction, "where is Estrella? She has not been home for some hours and none of the family seem to know much about her; all they told me was that I was to come to you for information ... and here I am." The Priest looked into his eager face and pitied while he condemned him, for he could see that he greatly mourned the absence of the girl whom he had decided in his own heart to have for his own. "Manuello," said Father Felix, at length, having regarded him with a sympathetic smile, "you must accept the situation as calmly as you can. I have to tell you that Estrella has found another home than yours and will, from this on, be under good care and will, I hope, find happiness later on in her career ... she is a good girl and deserves to be happy," he concluded, benevolently. "Do you mean," demanded Manuello, "that I am not to see her any more? That I am to be shut out from her life? I want to know," he rose to his feet, "I demand to know what you have done with her? Have you placed her in some convent?" His voice had risen as he added question to question and he faced the Priest with a fierce expression on his dark and lowering features. His attitude had no effect on Father Felix who was without bodily fear and knew that, in the present instance, at least, he stood upon safe ground, having, as he well knew, removed the girl from danger from the very being who, now, glared at him: "My Son," he said, "my Son, compose yourself. I will brook no demonstration of vile anger from you. Estrella has been put beyond your power. I do not know," he went on, coolly, "just what it is that is upon your conscience at present, but I do know there is something that will not bear a close investigation by the authorities, and I advise you to have a care how you conduct yourself in the future. Cuba will have need of your strong arm and I hope that you will use it in her service." Cowed by the sternness of the tone of voice in which he had been addressed as well as by his own guilty knowledge, Manuello, silently, and without thanks or regrets of any kind, left the refectory, slamming the door after him ... an indignity that few would dare to place upon their record; giving vent, inwardly, to the curses he did not dare to utter, he retraced his steps to his own home, intending to get what information he could from the other members of his family as to how Estrella went away; reaching his domicile, he, at once, began to ply his father, who had returned from his daily toil, with various inquiries, but found him not only uncommunicative but, apparently, also uninformed as to what had taken place during his absence; all that the other members of the family knew was that Father Felix had come hurriedly to the house and had a short conversation with Estrella when she had packed a few personal effects, of which, indeed, the poor girl had but few, and left the place, telling them she would see them again from time to time and leaving kind farewells for both himself and his father. Then he remembered how intimate Estrella had always been with Tessa and decided his best course would be to go to her little friend, being well aware that any information she might have she would gladly give to him; he was hurrying along, intent upon this new hope of relief from his anxiety regarding the woman he imagined himself to be deeply in love with, when, all at once, he became aware that someone was following his footsteps, guardedly and yet with determination; immediately upon this knowledge, there stalked into the foreground of his consciousness the fear of discovery of his recent crime; the intimation of the Priest that he had suspected it had stirred within him the instinct of self-protection and he hastened his progress along the familiar and narrow street, hoping to out-distance his pursuer, whoever he might happen to be. It seemed to him that he was succeeding in this last effort and he was congratulating himself upon his own celerity, when a hand was laid rather heavily upon his shoulder and a loud and insistent voice declared him to be the prisoner of the owner of it. Instantly, Manuello became a beast of prey, cornered in its lair, and furious with all the animal instincts of self-preservation. He squirmed away from the heavy hand and whirled around to face his would-be captor and looked directly into the muzzle of a very capable gun held in steady hands that seemed well accustomed to its use. "Up wid ye'er fists, ye dirty spalpeen ye!" commanded the man behind the gun, using his own rich native brogue in the excitement of the moment. "Hould 'em right there ..." he went on, as Manuello, instinctively, though sullenly, obeyed him, "til I snap these putty bracelets on ye'er wrists!" fumbling in his pocket with one hand while he held the gun in the other, steadying it against his shoulder, for he had come prepared, knowing his prospective prisoner to be a desperate character. "There, now!" having completed his search and placed a handcuff on one of Manuello's wrists. "Up wid that one and over to its mate!" But his prisoner was indeed a desperate man and did not intend to yield to arrest as easily as it had appeared, at first; raising the manacled wrist, he brought the steel bracelets down on the red head of the Irishman, felling him to the ground; then it was but the work of a moment to secure the loaded gun, and, after that, the tables were completely turned for Manuello immediately became the master of the situation; looking hastily about him to be sure that he was unobserved, he was about to complete the utter defeat of the man who had given him such a terrific fright by beating his brains out with the clubbed gun, when he heard his own name spoken in a soft, low, scared voice; turning, he beheld little Tessa standing behind him. "Oh, Manuello," she cried, breathing pantingly, "what has happened here? Are you hurt? There is blood on your wrist ... and ..." here she stopped in consternation, "what else have you here?" for the Irishman had done, at least, a part of his work well, having locked the handcuff which the young man had almost forgotten he was wearing, "Take the hateful thing off, dear Manuello ... do take it off ... I don't like to see it on your wrist." "Easier said than done, my dear little Girl!" declared the victim, smilingly. "But we can fix that somehow; in the meantime, we will let this fellow lay where he has fallen. Someone of his tribe will, likely, be along, soon, and they can take care of each other. Come along, Tessa, we will see what we can do with this piece of jewelry ... it is rather unwieldy ... I don't like the look of it." The home of the young girl was not far distant and thither they repaired; after repeated efforts to file through or break the manacles, Tessa bethought herself of one possible method of releasing Manuello and acted upon her idea at once; running out upon the street she approached the place where the soldier had fallen, for he wore the uniform of the Spanish army, intending to feel in all of his pockets for a key that would unlock the handcuffs. As she drew near to the spot she heard low voices and crept along in the shadow of the shrubbery that lined the narrow street until she was within ear-shot; then she realized that two more soldiers had joined their fallen comrade whom they had resuscitated, so that he was relating to them something of the circumstances that had led to his present plight: "Ye see, b'ys," he was saying, "I wanted to arrist the spalpeen myself becase I think he is not only a revolutionist, but, also, a mhurderer ... a fella we arristed yesterday tould me that he thinks _this_ wan killed the leader of thim all ... seems he was jealous of him ... they both wanted the same ghirl...." Tessa, realizing that her errand was useless, turned to go back silently, but the words she had heard had burned themselves into her brain, and when she was again beside Manuello he seemed far different to her than he had before; she found him almost crazy from fear of discovery as he had failed in all of his efforts to free himself from the device that had been placed upon his wrist. "Did you get the key?" he demanded, almost fiercely. "Where is it? This cursed thing is almost killing me!" Frightened at his expression and regretting her inability to help him, the girl began to cry, lifting her apron to her eyes to wipe away her tears; as she did so, the young man said to her, angrily: "Well ... _stand_ there and cry while I am suffering ... you'll do a lot of good that way ... hustle out and see if you can't find some tool to get this thing off of me ... go to the village blacksmith and tell him some lie or other ... ask him how you can get an iron off your little sister's leg ... do something ... someone will come in and find me this way!" "Even if they did, Manuello ... you are not under arrest ... the man don't know where you are, now; but I'll go and try to find some way to help you ... of course I will ..." said the generous-hearted girl, "I am _so_ sorry for you, and, now, that Estrella is gone...." She hurried out, then, leaving the young fellow in no pleasant mood, for he had much to reflect upon and a pair of heavy handcuffs hanging to one wrist is not conducive to a man's happiness. Tessa soon returned and had to report that her efforts in his behalf were, again, unsuccessful, for the blacksmith had only said: "Bring the child to me and I will do what I can for her." Manuello was, now, almost in despair and he was wise enough to know that cursing, while it might relieve his feelings to some extent, would not really help the situation, so he pulled his sleeve down as far as he could over the manacled wrist and proceeded to find out what he could concerning Estrella. Tessa would have felt much freer than she did had she not remembered the words of the soldiers concerning the crime of which they suspected the young man, and only told him that Estrella had come running to her, that morning, and had told her that she was going away for a while but that she would see her again, soon. Manuello had to content himself with this, hoping to find out more from Tessa within a day or so, and went away, divided between a desire to revenge himself upon the man who had tried to arrest him and self-congratulation upon his escape, but most of all he pondered how to get the hateful handcuffs from his wrist, for, besides being painful and unwieldly, he knew that they would attract attention to him. CHAPTER X Manuello was almost desperate regarding the manacles still clamped firmly on his wrist; it left his right hand free and he could use the fingers of the left hand, so he bound the wrist, placing the second handcuff above the one that was locked and laying it as close to the wrist as possible; he left his hand free as he could and simply told his family that he had cut the arm when engaged in practicing with the machete in the use of which weapon the Cuban insurgents were especially accomplished; this explanation of his supposed wound was sufficient and no one had any idea of the actual facts except Tessa and she was both too loyal to the young man and too frightened because of the reported crime he had committed to do anything but keep his secret inviolate; he depended upon her acknowledged affection for him and had no doubt that she would defend him if occasion required such a proceeding; his chief anxiety, at present, was to find out the where-abouts of Estrella, for he was of a fiery and passionate nature and the disappearance of the girl but added to his desire for her. On the morning after the accident he had sustained he started out with the determination to discover where Estrella had gone, for, as she had said that she would soon see his own family as well as little Tessa, he reasoned that she could not have gone very far away; so he began his search by climbing to the top of the hill behind the village, intending to try to locate her hiding-place by the simple method of checking off in his own mind impossible localities for concealment and then deciding which of the probable ones to investigate; having reached the point of vantage he wished, he began by cutting out the refectory ... then his own home ... then Tessa's dwelling-place ... then numerous small houses where he knew it would be practically impossible for another human being to be entertained in. Just as he had reached this point in his revery, his attention was attracted to the mansion on the hill, and he began to observe, closely, the movements of every one who came to or went from the house; he did not really suspect that Estrella was there, but his mind wandered idly over the residences within his view and lighted upon the mansion on the hill as something different from the other dwellings he could see. As he watched the gateway of Ruth Wakefield's residence, he noticed, emerging from it, old Mage whom he remembered as being there, in what he considered to be the capacity of an upper servant; he looked at the old woman because she happened to be in his line of vision and not because he had any curiosity concerning her movements; but the nature of the errand upon which she seemed to be bound not only surprised, but amused, him, for she carried in her hand a large basket of choice cut flowers, and, from time to time, as she walked along, she stooped to gather dried leaves that had fallen in the pathway with which she seemed trying to conceal the contents of her basket; she seemed satisfied, at last, and ceased to gather leaves, while she quickened her pace to a sort of slow amble which gait she maintained until she had passed beyond Manuello's view; he wondered, idly, why she covered the flowers, and was about to move to a point which commanded a more perfect view of the pathway, when his attention was again attracted to the gateway of the Wakefield residence. This time, it was quite a different person who appeared between the high stone pillars ... a tall woman, evidently young and active, plainly but serviceably dressed, stood, for a moment, shading her eyes with her hand from the glaring sunlight, peering down the pathway along which old Mage had just been walking; she remained in this position but a very short time, however, for she was, soon, joined by another woman who seemed as much interested as she had been in watching the pathway; as the two young creatures stood there, side by side, Manuello could not but remark upon the similarity of their forms and general appearance ... both were evidently strong and agile ... both seemed possessed of bounding health and youthful vigor; it seemed to him that one of the women looked more sturdy than the other one did, but, as she was wearing a wide and drooping hat, such as many of the natives of the Island were accustomed to wear, he could not see her face; as she approached the woman who had first appeared in the gateway, there was something in her manner that seemed familiar to the young fellow, and, as she put one hand, gently, on the other's shoulder, he, again, seemed to recognize something familiar in the movement; then she spoke, and, although he was too far away to hear her words, he knew the tones of her voice, and realized that his search for Estrella was ended. As this knowledge was fully impressed upon him he cast about in his mind as to what method of procedure to take to bring about his desired end which was to see and talk with the girl, himself, as soon as possible; first, he thought to approach the house as a fruit-peddler, but put that thought aside as unlikely to attain his object ... then, he decided to spy around the place until he located Estrella's own room, intending to bring his guitar and sing under her window some native love-songs, hoping to impress upon her his undying affection and imagining that, now that Victorio was out of the way, his cause would be more likely to succeed than before. He had started out to carry this intention into practice, leaving his original position among the heavy timber that skirted the hill, and going more into the open than before in order to more closely approach the house, when he became aware of another presence in the wooded section that he had just left; he could not make out just what this presence was ... his ideas concerning it were hazy and uncertain, but he felt sure that he was not alone and, now that he had left the timber, it seemed to him that the unknown presence was following close behind him; he turned sharply around but discovered nothing behind him and kept on in the direction he had been proceeding in, although his nerves were keyed up and ready to jump at the slightest sound; suddenly, directly in front of him, he heard a voice saying: "Do not approach any nearer to her. If you insist upon doing so you must take the consequences which are freighted with bitter pain for you." It seemed to Manuello that this voice was within himself and came from his own thoughts and, yet, it seemed, also, to be in the pathway ahead of him, separated from him and yet a part of him; he hesitated, as above everything else, the natives of Cuba are superstitious and Manuello was no exception to this rule; his own criminal record, naturally, made him timid; besides, Estrella's evidently favored position as a member of the household of Ruth Wakefield elevated the girl in his estimation, for everyone in that neighborhood had great respect, amounting almost to veneration, for the inmates of the mansion on the hill. The young man stopped in his progress toward the house and turned his attention, for an anxious moment, to his manacled wrist, which gave him a great deal of uneasiness and some suffering as well; as he held this wrist with his free right hand, he had his back toward the path that led down into the village, and was unaware of the nearness of Father Felix until the good Priest touched him on the elbow; wheeling round, instantly, he faced the only man he was not afraid to meet among his neighbors; for, although the Priest had told him he knew that he possessed a guilty secret, yet he, also was aware of Father Felix' usual kindness and protection exercised over his people, so that it was with a feeling of relief that he discovered who the new-comer was. "My Son," said the Priest, "you are abroad early ... what news have you heard in the village, this morning?" Manuello looked at him searchingly as if to discover why he asked him this question, wondering if he had heard of his own encounter of the evening before, but failing to gain any knowledge of the secret thoughts of the Priest, he said at random: "Everything is about as usual, I guess ... nothing startling seems to have happened during the night." "I heard," began Father Felix, "I heard that a soldier had been struck down by some marauder shortly after the time of your leaving my society, last night, and I thought you might have happened to be in the vicinity of the crime. By-the-way," he went on, solicitously, "what has happened to your left wrist?" "Oh ... that!" said Manuello, carelessly. "That is simply a love token from the machete of a friend of mine while we were sparring for practice; as you said, last night, Cuba may have need of us fighting-men soon, and we wish to be ready to take our proper place when the time for action comes." "Well, be careful of your weapons, my Son ... save your steel for your enemies and those of your native land." Speaking in this manner, the good Priest pursued his journey up the hill and disappeared within the gateway where Manuello had, only very recently, seen Estrella standing with the mistress of the mansion; he decided, under the existing circumstances, to retrace his steps toward the village, contenting himself with the thought that he now knew where Estrella was; he thought that he might as well impart this information to little Tessa, and, also, he wanted to find out whether she had heard anything more about his encounter with the soldier on the street, also if she had thought of any way whereby he might be freed from the manacles which became more and more distressing and uncomfortable. With this thought in his mind, he was approaching Tessa's home when he was intercepted by the very individual he meant to inquire about. "What the divil!" exclaimed the Irishman. "Sky-larking by daylight _this_ toime, me foine high-way-mon?" Manuello had drawn back, prepared to again bring the hated handcuffs down upon the poll of the man before him, if he offered any indignities, when he was surprised to notice a wheedling tone in the voice of his opponent of the evening before. "Indade, mon," began the soldier, "I am in need of those putty bracelets I gave ye, last night; a prisint like them is not bestowed ivry day, I tell yees. The only thanks ye give me was a crack on me head wid em which took away but little of me sinse as I had but little in the beginning.... I might have known betther than to have tackled a foine, up-standin' fella like yees, single-handed. Yer a foine figure of a mon, me Frind, and I'd like mighty well to serve be the side of ye ... how would it _do_, now, fer ye to enlist in the arrmy and give me back me bracelets if I spake a good worrd fer ye wid me Captain?" Manuello looked at him in surprise, but, seeing a chance to get rid of the hateful manacles, decided to agree to the proposition of the other, at least for the time being. "All right," he acquiesced, "go ahead and take these cursed thing off me, first, and then tell me where you want me to go." The wary Irishman watched the face of the Cuban, doubtfully, but, as he really wished to be able to account for the handcuffs, he took the key from his pocket and stepped a little closer to the young fellow in order to use it, being careful to keep a firm hold on his gun the while; just as he was about to unlock the manacles, he heard a slight noise behind him and looked out of the tail of his eye to be horrified by the near proximity of one of his superior officers; instantly, he changed his attitude toward Manuello, dropped the key, and pointed his Mauser rifle straight at the heart of his prisoner. "Ye will ... will yees?" he cried out. "Oi'll see about that, ye Spalpeen! Shtand shtill unless ye want a bullet in yer gullet! Now, Sir," he said politely to the officer, "ef ye'll be ahfter clicking the other bracelet on his right wrist whilst I kape him covered, Oi'll be much obleeged to ye. He's a nasty customer, Sir," he explained, kindly, "and Oi've been havin' a rough toime wid 'em." The Spanish officer stepped gingerly up to the prisoner, seized hold of the manacled wrist and reached for the other uplifted hand; but Manuello had had enough of their society and proceeded to rid himself of it by striking at the officer with his left wrist while he made a grab at the rifle of the Irishman with his right hand; the young Cuban was wiry and his muscles were like taut steel; the officer went down like an ox before the slaughterer but the Irishman discharged his gun regardless of the aim which had been destroyed by the action of the living target; the result was disastrous to all parties for Manuello felt a sharp, stinging pain in one of his legs, but, in spite of this, he clubbed the rifle and brought it down over the skull of the Spanish soldier, limping away, again a conqueror, but sorely wounded, for the bullet had passed clear through the injured limb, tearing through the flesh and bone as is the manner of the long and slender Mauser missile. In this emergency, the young fellow, knowing that he would be hunted after the last encounter, not only because of the crime of which he had tacitly been accused by the soldier but because he had struck down a Spanish officer, and realizing that, with the manacles still locked upon his wrist, he was a marked man, bethought him of a deserted hut far back among the palms that grew all over the Island in tropical profusion; if he could but reach this hut, he thought, and first apprise Tessa of his new mishap, he might hide there while he recovered from his wound which was beginning to give him great pain as it recovered from its first numbness. Walking as erectly as he could under the circumstances and keeping his left wrist well covered by the wide cuff of his jacket-sleeve, he was proceeding along the familiar street, when he met the girl he was in search of, strolling placidly along, little dreaming of the imminent peril in which he had just been placed, for the discharge of the Mauser rifle had been almost as silent as smokeless; telling her in a few hurried sentences of his great need and describing to her the location of the ruined hut he had in mind, Manuello retired from the scene. CHAPTER XI Tessa was very much distressed as to the condition of Manuello and, feeling that he depended upon her alone, cast about in her mind as to how she could assist him; to begin with, she was anxious about the heavy handcuffs hanging to his poor wrist, as she put it in her gentle thoughts of the man whom she suspected of being a murderer; if, however, the charge against him were true, she felt that the crime was committed in the heat of a jealous passion, and being what she was, herself, she excused it for that reason, for a Cuban girl is apt to love as madly and as unreasonably as any man ... to her, Manuello was almost a demi-god ... it had been a hard trial for the little woman to give him up to Estrella, even, and, now that he was in dire need and the girl of his first choice had deliberately deserted him, it seemed to her as if she had the right to let her own wild love guide her in all that she did with regard to him. She was slowly retracing her steps to her own home with the intention of getting some supplies and managing to evade the vigilance of the rest of her family sufficiently to carry them to the man she loved ... her eyes were directed to the path along which she walked, idly, yet, all at once, those dark eyes lighted up with sudden joy and she hastily swooped down, like a fluffy little bird upon a morsel of food, and took into her hand a small and intricate-patterned key; she hoped that this was the key that would unlock the hated manacles from Manuello's wrist and, regarding this as a good omen, she concealed the little deliverer in her bosom, tying it in the corner of the kerchief that was crossed upon her breast. When Tessa had secured what necessities she found available on the spur of the moment, she at once concealed them as far as possible and prepared to ascend the side of the hill toward the ruined hut where Manuello had directed her to come; her heart was fluttering wildly for this was her first secret mission, as she had always had someone near her during her short life on earth: she wound her way among the cactus plants that covered the ground in almost all directions, with an unerring instinct that was of more value to her than any education could have been for the moment, for one unaccustomed to the wild cacti in Cuba might, easily, become bewildered, as it is necessary to walk almost in circles among the thick clumps of prickly foliage. Tessa was young, but the women of Cuba, like those of most tropical countries, mature early in life, and she already had the strong maternal instinct that is a part of normal womanhood; this instinct now directed her to watch over Manuello as if he were, indeed, her child, instead of the man to whom she had given the first wild love of her fiery nature; for women are made that way ... no matter what their own body may demand of them, it is as natural for them to put all personal feeling aside and allow a higher, more unselfish love to rule them entirely, as it is for a man to, first gratify his own desires, and, then, if so be he can without inconvenience to himself in any way, minister to the wants of the woman in the case, all well and good, but if, on the contrary, to care for the woman would, in any way, cause him to exercise self-control and self-sacrifice, why, of course, he seeks another woman as soon as he can well rid himself of the one who has flouted him; I am now speaking of the general run of men ... there are exceptions to this rule, of course, just as there are exceptions to the rule just stated regarding women ... not all women are as little Tessa was, but most of them are and it is indeed fortunate for the world of men and women that this is as it is ... wonderful beyond the ways of human beings is the love of a pure woman ... wonderful and worthy of the highest respect and devotion of any man is the almost angelic love that women often bestow on most unworthy objects. It was so in this case, for, while the girl was winding among the cacti that hindered her advance up the hill, the man was lying in a miserable heap in the corner of the deserted hut, cursing not only his own hard luck, but even the girl on whom he depended for sustenance and care; with maledictions on his tongue and the heavy manacles on his wrist, and with the increasing pain and torment of his undressed wound, the poor fellow was far from appearing much as had the gay peasant who had congratulated himself on having escaped from prison, and, at the same time, having rid himself of his rival in the affections of Estrella, who, now, seemed lost to him. When the girl reached the ruined hut she found the object of her loving care under the circumstances described above, and it took all of her courage to face the situation alone and unaided by surgical skill for they both realized that discovery would be almost certain to be fatal to the man who now lay groaning and cursing by turns, even while his ministering angel in human form knelt at his side and unlocked the handcuffs from his wrist, for, luckily, she had happened upon the very means of deliverance from the manacles for which they had both longed; then Tessa gathered dead palm branches with which she fashioned a rude bed for the sufferer, after which she raised his head upon a small pillow which she had thoughtfully brought with her, for she was a sturdy little peasant and could act as a beast of burden without harm to herself; having fixed him up as comfortably as she could, under the hard circumstances, she insisted upon his eating and drinking some of the refreshments she had carried up the hill for him; she had used what skill she had in bathing and binding the wounded leg, and, as the bullet had gone clear through, there was little else to do so far as that was concerned; then they began to consult as to what method of procedure would be best for them to take; in this, of course, Manuello thought only of himself, as was natural to a man of his type, while little Tessa, as was also natural to one of her trusting and loving disposition, also thought only of his comfort and safety. "I must come to you each day until the wound heals, my dear Friend," said the earnest little woman. "I must bring you what you will need and I must be very careful not to be detected in doing this. I wish ..." she ended, earnestly, "I wish that dear Estrella could come and see you for it would do you more good than anything that I can do for you." "You are a darling little girl, Tessa," said her turbulent patient. "You ought to satisfy any reasonable man; Estrella don't care anything at all about me, and I am beginning to think that I can get along without her as long as I can have you." The adoring look in his dark eyes as he said these words was like manna in the wilderness to little Tessa, for she could not help being pleased to think that, after all, maybe Manuello would fix his affections upon her small person, since Estrella had so often flouted him and shown him plainly by her great preference for Victorio that she did not love him; the name she had just used in her thoughts brought up the hateful suspicion aroused in her by the remarks of the Irishman who had seemed, at first glance, to be a Spaniard, but who, as soon as he opened his mouth to speak, proved his nationality beyond the shadow of a doubt. But the loving girl put her thought aside almost at once ... she did not wish to believe the suspicion to be true and she did not intend to believe it--until she had to, if such a sad time could ever come to her; just at present all the strength of her being was concentrated upon the desire to aid Manuello in whatever manner she could. To further this desire, she arranged a signal whereby he might know that she was coming up the hill and concealed, as well as she could the approach to the hiding-place as well as the hut itself, by throwing, in apparent disorder, as if blown by a strong wind, such branches and twigs as she could find by a hurried search. She did not stay any longer than she thought was necessary for the comfort of her patient for she was determined to continue her care of him if possible and realized that a prolonged absence from her own home might bring suspicion upon them both; as she was leaving, she looked pitifully weak and small to cope with such a complicated situation alone; even Manuello realized, for a moment, the devotion of the girl, and called her over to his side to say a word or two at parting. "Dear little Tessa," he began, "this is going to be a hard task that you have undertaken. I wonder if I am worth all this trouble. Perhaps you would just better turn me over to the soldiers and let them work their will on me; it may be that I will never be able to reward you for all your care; of course, it may, on the other hand, be possible for me to offer you help and comfort when you, yourself, may be in need of it. Now that you have freed me from those shackles, I begin to feel my old strength and courage coming back, and if I ever am again as I was before this last mishap, I will surely reward you somehow for all this sacrifice that you are making for me." This speech, coming from a man in the condition of Manuello, appealed to the little woman so forcibly that she knelt beside his rude couch and laid both her small, dark hands on his brow as she looked deeply into his eyes; this position, being very favorable to the impulse that came over the man as he lay there, made it easy for him to draw her head, with its great mass of black hair, down upon his shoulder; as her cheek was laid against his own, Manuello held her small face closely with both his hands while he kissed first her trembling lips, then each of her eye-lids, for she had closed her eyes in a sort of blind ecstasy, then her low forehead, then the top of her small head and, finally, her quivering chin. The impulse that prompted him to give these welcome caresses lasted only a moment for the pain in his leg was beginning to be very insistent and a groan of agony took the place of the loving words that had been upon his eager tongue during the moment when he forgot his wound, but the effect of those few wild moments of unbridled passion went with the little woman down the hill and covered her small body with a delicious glow that took away much of the terror and apprehension with which she viewed the situation in which she found herself. Ruth Wakefield found Estrella to be much more of a companion than she had thought she would, and found that, in the innocence and naturally responsive disposition of the girl, she could almost forget the tie that had brought them together; had the girl suspected the truth as to Victorio's relations with the mistress of the mansion on the hill, the situation might have been strained or even acute, but, as it was, Ruth only pitied, while she almost envied, the sorrow of the sweetheart of her own husband. On the morning when Manuello had discovered the where-abouts of Estrella, the two women had been watching for Father Felix, intending to consult with him concerning something that they both wished to do and yet were not sure of the wisdom of; when he came, they both waited, anxiously, for his first words, for they depended upon them for enlightenment regarding a question in which they were both much interested. "Miss Ruth and Estrella," he began, addressing both women, "I have great news for you but we must be cautious in discussing what I have to impart to you; if, through our carelessness, the information I am about to give you, should miscarry, it might mean almost as great a disaster as the recent explosion in Havana Harbor. We must be sure that we are not overheard. I think we would better repair to the library, Miss Ruth, if that would meet with your approval. I think we would be more secure from eaves-droppers inside the house than here. I just met Manuello, my Dear," he said speaking to Estrella, "as I came up the path. I do not like to have him lurking around your dwelling-place. I am sure that he is in some sort of hiding from the authorities and I dread to have him near you, for he has an evil look in his eyes, lately. Be very careful, my Daughter, as you go about the place or into the village ... it might even be well for you to remain away from your former home for some time to come. I can carry any news of you that will be necessary for them to know or do any little errands that you may think should be done. By-the-way," he ended, turning his attention, once more, to Ruth, "I met your old nurse hurrying along down toward the village as if in great haste; as she does not often walk down the hill I noticed the circumstances." "Old Mage!" exclaimed Ruth. "Why, I did not know that she had gone out. Do you know anything of this, Estrella? Did she tell you that she had work to do in the village? Was there something that had to be secured for the larder, at once, that would not brook delay? Dear me, I hope she will not over-tire herself. She is not very strong any more and I try to have her, always, take very good care of herself. As you may know, good Father," she went on, "old Mage is almost the only living human friend on whom I can rely and her fealty to me is beyond question. If I should find old Mage untrue to me," she declared, "I would not expect the sun to rise the following morning. I must look into this, and, if you will excuse me for a few moments, I will do so at once." "Now, my Daughter," said the Priest when Estrella and he were left alone, "I wish to say to you, privately, that you must, from this time on, avoid meeting Manuello in any way, both for yourself and also for the well-being of your good friend, Miss Ruth; the fellow is evil-minded, lately, and I believe would not stop at robbery or even, though I greatly regret to think so, _murder_," he uttered the dreadful word softly but emphatically, "if he believed that he would benefit by either crime and I must urge you not to allow him to come here to see you under any possible circumstances. As I said before, I can do what must be done as between your former family and yourself." Estrella gladly acquiesced in this good judgment of Father Felix and agreed to do all in her power to avoid meeting Manuello which she had no desire, personally, to do, as she dreaded his protestations of love as much as she would have dreaded his anger for any other reason in the common affairs of daily life. In a short time, Ruth returned, explaining that old Mage had, indeed, gone down to the village, though for what purpose she had been unable, so far, to discover: they, then, repaired to the library and carefully closed all doors and windows before Father Felix began to tell them what they were so anxious to hear. "My dear Friends," he began, "the information that I have to impart to you is of a very delicate as well as secret nature and must be so regarded by both of you. Estrella, to you, especially, I wish to say that you must not, under any circumstances, breathe a single word of what I will say to you for it is of vital importance to the native land, as I believe, of all three of us. For I have reason to think that you, as well as Miss Ruth and myself, are an American. I know that all of your sympathies are with our native land, at least, and, in trusting you with this information, I am, in a measure, making you one of us in deed and in truth, whether you are so by reason of your birth or not. Before I go any further, I want your assurance of what I believe to be true." He waited a moment for the girl to speak, then, seeing her evident embarrassment, he added, kindly: "You need have no fear of either of us, Estrella. If you have friends in this wide world, you are with two of them at this moment." At these earnest words, the expression of the girl's face changed somewhat and she replied to the implied interrogatory of the Priest: "I, also, believe that I am an American, although I do not know anything of my own parentage beyond what my foster parents have told me. I do not even know," she blushed while she made the statement, "whether my father and mother had been married before my birth.... I have no means of finding out anything more of myself than that I am an honest girl and that I am deeply grateful to both you and Miss Ruth for your great kindness to me in my great sorrow. As far as my fealty to America is concerned," she ended, proudly, "I am as true to that great country as anyone who knows himself to be a citizen of it. I would, gladly, lay my feeble life upon the altar of what I believe to be my native land ... the United States of America." She pronounced the words with reverence and bowed her head as if in prayer, so that Father Felix no longer hesitated, but proceeded, at once: "At this moment, an American squadron is in Asiatic waters, ready to move, at the moment its Commander receives the cablegram from the President of our own country, against the Spaniard, almost on his own territory. By this move it is hoped to so cripple him that we, here, in Cuba, may, with the help of our soldiers and sailors, conquer and drive from the Island those who have so long usurped the places of great power among us." When the good Priest had pronounced these fateful words, he found his two auditors sitting erect, as if at attention, with hands folded in their laps, and eyes fixed upon his face in breathless eagerness. Ruth was the first to break the silence. "I pray the good God," she said, softly and reverently, "I pray God to strengthen the hands of those who are to do this great, good work! I trust that those who will be engaged in battle may be prepared to meet their Maker with clean hearts, if with bloody hands. War," she cried, suddenly, losing her attitude of prayer in the violence of her emotions, "war is a terrible calamity but it seems that, only through war can a nation be purged of such foul crimes as have been committed right here in Cuba." Estrella watched her with flashing eyes and sympathetic expression and the good Priest crossed himself and clenched his fists at the same time, for, had occasion required such action at his hands, it was evident that Father Felix could have changed from the spiritual guide to the fiery enthusiast willing to take his place among the fighting men who would defend what he believed to be a sacred cause. "Now, Father Felix," demanded the practical side of Ruth Wakefield, "what action can we take in this matter to help the good cause? Is there not some preparation that we can make to welcome our soldiers to Cuba, for, of course," she lifted her head, proudly, "our boys will win whatever conflict they may become engaged in ... it is only a question as to how many of them may be injured or even killed in the terrible encounter. Every man in America," said this American woman, "is a soldier if he is needed in that capacity, for every American, man, woman or child, is a _patriot_ ... devoted to the sacred traditions and splendid example of those who followed _George Washington_ to victory over those who had oppressed and insulted them." "My Daughters," said Father Felix, rising, "I must leave you for the present. I will find out what we may do to assist our countrymen and will come again to let you know the result of my search for further information. All we can do, now, is to hold the information I have just given to you inviolate and prepare ourselves, spiritually, to meet whatever emergency may arise. My Daughters," he ended, stretching out his hands in blessing over their bowed heads, "we shall have work to do and we will do it with our might. May God, in His great Mercy, guide us into the path in which He intended us to walk." CHAPTER XII On the day of Manuello's search for the girl he had so madly and hopelessly loved, old Mage made a surreptitious visit to the little cemetery in San Domingo where she had seen the body of Victorio Colenzo laid away in its final resting-place; she went among the new-made graves, of which there were a goodly number for so small a graveyard, until she found the one she sought: she stopped, then, took the dried leaves from the top of her large basket, removed a beautiful bunch of roses, tied, carefully, with a broad blue ribbon, and laid them, softly, upon the top of the mound of fresh earth; after having done this, she took a small object wrapped in tissue paper, from the very bottom of the basket, dug a small hole under the roses and buried it, covering it carefully, packing the ground over it, at first, and, then putting loose earth over the top of the miniature grave, so as to conceal its existence as much as possible, she again laid the roses carelessly over the spot. Having performed this little ceremony, old Mage looked down at her handiwork and said, apparently addressing herself, as no other human being was in sight at the time: "There! _Now_ I hope that she will forget all about him ... she will think that she has mislaid the ring ... I had a hard time to get hold of it. I hope that it will never come to life again any more than him ... let them both lay there together. You lying pup, you!" she cried, shaking her trembling old fist at the grave. "You _lay_ there and don't you ever try to come near my dear young Lady again! The _idea_ of an ignorant thing like you ever daring to come near her, anyway. I wouldn't be so darned mad at you," she ended, "for you were a mighty good-looking fellow and any woman might have been proud of your appearance, once she could overlook your dark skin, but you even fooled _me_, doggone you! You _lay_ there, now, and never do you dare to try to fool any more women ... three of us is enough in _this_ neighborhood, anyway." She drew a long sigh of relief after this speech and hurried out of the cemetery with her empty basket; she had slipped away when she thought no one was observing her and intended to tell Ruth after her return what she had done with the exception of any reference to the ring which, as the reader may have guessed, was the wedding ring that Ruth had, up to this time, kept always on her left hand or in her jewel-case on her little dressing-table before which she always sat when she combed and brushed her long and beautifully luxuriant brown hair; she had taken the ring off the night before, little dreaming that she was touching it for the last time, and sadly laid it among her jewels, thinking of the bright face and laughing dark eyes that had looked so handsome to her when he had put that little ring upon her finger, whispering of his undying love and of the fact that she and she alone was, and had been since his first meeting with her, the entire mistress of his hither-to untouched heart; she had even shed a few tears over the little ring, then, and old Mage, silently witnessing this fact, determined that she should never again have that opportunity; so, after Ruth was sweetly sleeping, the old woman slipped into her room and removed the object of her scorn; she lay awake almost all of that night, planning how to secrete or do away with the visible bond that had united her dear young Lady to an unworthy mate; at length, toward daylight, it seemed to old Mage as if someone had whispered to her what to do with the ring so that poetic justice would be done to the first youthful passion of Ruth Wakefield's innocent life; acting upon this suggestion, for so it seemed to her, feeling sure that she had solved the problem so nearly affecting the life of the one she loved best in all her world, she carried out the plan she instantly formed, and, while she was a very weary old woman, from lack of sleep and unusual exercise, when she again reached her much-loved home, she had within her spirit a sense of satisfaction that was beyond anything she had felt since Ruth had married the man whose grave she had, that morning, visited; she felt, in some sense, to blame for the marriage, as she had not strenuously opposed it, and found herself much in the position she used to occupy when Ruth had been a little tot and she had allowed her to do some small thing of which she knew her parents would not approve. Now, she felt relieved because, as it seemed to her, she had sort of evened up matters, and, after informing Ruth that she had gone to the grave and put the roses there, she never intended to speak of Victorio Colenzo again, and, as far as possible, she intended to rid Ruth of his memory; with this thought in mind, she picked up many little memontos of him which she found lying about the place ... a guitar here and a ribbon there ... a photograph, perhaps, showing the dashing young Cuban in military dress, which much became him, or mounted on a fine horse which he, for the moment, had secured the use of ... even in one picture he appeared standing, proudly, behind Ruth as if protecting her; all of these and anything else that old Mage could find that would inevitably remind Ruth of the man she had married, she destroyed ruthlessly and with inward glee; her object in all this was, really, to protect her dear young Lady, and, yet, at the same time, she had as nearly a fiendish delight as it was possible for her ever to entertain, in, as she naïvely put it to herself, "getting even" with the handsome fellow who had "pulled the wool over" her own eyes as well as the brighter and stronger ones of her young Lady. Ruth Wakefield was never enlightened as to this little by-play, but she reaped the benefits of it in many ways, for it is true that visible reminders are necessary to a great many people, and, even the strongest minds are affected by the sudden sight of something reminding them of some object formerly dear to them; it will give almost anyone a start to come, unexpectedly, upon a picture or almost any tangible token of someone once dear, no matter what may have happened to take away that quality; lovers, by preserving evidence, like withered flowers, pictures, songs and poems, often lay up for themselves future agony of spirit ... the objects that are so dear to them may turn about and rend their inmost souls; full many times, it were better had the love-tokens been destroyed in some such way as old Mage did away with the visible memories attached to the objects which her eager hands closed upon; this secret employment, necessarily long drawn out, as she did not wish to be discovered in her labor of love, took up a good deal of the extra time she found herself in possession of on account of the presence of Estrella in the home, for the girl took up many household duties, gladly and naturally, knowing that in work she could, to some extent, forget her own sorrow, and wishing to lighten the labors of old Mage who was always kind to her. After the information imparted to Ruth by Father Felix, regarding national affairs, she was very thoughtful and very busy, for there were very many ways in which she could make preparations to begin the duties which she expected to take up as soon as occasion would require them of her; she studied into trained nursing and found a sort of school in Havana to which she took Estrella and where they both learned many essential things pertaining to the calling which they were both trying to fit themselves for; in many ways they were both better prepared for the work of caring for the sick and wounded than many women would ever become, no matter how much they would be trained, for they were both earnest and helpful, tender-hearted and serious; in all wars, there are women who seek the familiar association with men which the calling of a nurse entails, with no better object than just the proximity to masculine humanity involved, but there are, also, such women as Ruth Wakefield who had no thought in the matter except to help where help of her should anywhere be needed ... to succor those who were not to blame for the accidents that had befallen them ... who were, indeed, entitled to the tenderest consideration on account of the very accidents which had laid them on the clean, white cots that are stretched along the wards and in the private rooms of the great, shadowy hospitals where tender women bend above the beds of pain and minister to those who lie there, suffering and weak, both in body and spirit. On one of these numerous visits to Havana, Ruth met a man who was an old friend of her father's who was much interested in her lonely life and who came out to her home to consult with her regarding the prospects of her being surrounded by the din and pomp of actual warfare; at first, as he viewed the situation she was placed in, he felt as Father Felix had as to her staying in Cuba, in her immediate future, but listened to her patriotic resolve with high enthusiasm, as he was intensely patriotic himself and loved to think that she was every inch an American although her life had, almost all of it, been spent away from her native land. Just as this man was leaving her home, one day, for he had been making frequent visits there, he turned to look at her as she stood between the pillar-like gate-posts at the entrance to the drive that led to her residence; the picture she made, standing there in the glow of the setting sun, lingered in his memory long after he had ceased to see her as he saw her, then; Ruth was very fond of flowers and often wore a rose tucked in among the coils of her beautiful, shining hair; that evening, her selection among her flowers for this use had been a bunch of English violets; the deep blue of the dainty blossoms accentuated the clear gray color of her star-like eyes ... her healthy skin reflected the sunset after-glow which was beginning to appear in the western sky; her small mouth, with its cute corners, puckered up as if, she used to say when a child, it had been too large to begin with and had been shirred at the corners to make it the desired size, registered each change of her inner feelings; her dress was elegant, yet simple, and her poise was splendid; there are few earthly women who have sufficient poise of manner and of nervous strength; most of them become excited and distraught under slight stress of circumstances, but Ruth Wakefield was an exception to this very general rule; there were very few things that could shake her from her serenity of purpose and intention; one of these things was being a witness to any injustice ... an indignity put upon a weaker creature by a stronger one, whether the creature be gifted with the power to express its feelings in human speech or not; those who knew her best, were well aware of her strong regard for the rights of so-called "dumb animals" ... her loving sympathy went out to every old or poorly cared for horse she saw; she had been heard to say that she would dearly love to have a good pasture, with waving grasses and running water and sheltering trees where she could gather together all the illy-used horses in the world and then just watch them enjoy their surroundings; the smaller creatures, also, were her friends ... little Tid-i-wats, to whom we have already been introduced, was a feline of very uncertain temper and most impulsive and nerve-racking little habits, yet to Ruth she could always go and be sure of a loving reception no matter to what lengths she had gone, for Tid-i-wats was far from being a perfect little cat; she very often reverted to her original type and did things that no cat with a civilized ancestry would have even thought could _be_ done; but she knew that Ruth would only say: "She is not feeling very well, today; she is beginning to show her years a little; I noticed a white hair only today, on her little neck; she is my own old baby-cat, anyway, and I will always take as good care of her as I possibly can." She would watch Ruth, calmly, while she straightened out whatever she, her own self, had made it necessary to straighten, and, then, when the young woman would, finally, sit down, no matter where Tid-i-wats happened to be located at the time, she would very soon land on Ruth's lap with no fear of a scolding even; she took advantage of the gentle disposition of her care-taker, same as so many humans did. Ruth's father's friend looked long and earnestly at the tall, straight, slender figure standing there at the entrance to her almost palatial home and the picture remained in his memory during the balance of his earthly life. While Ruth Wakefield and Estrella were preparing themselves to assist their fellow-countrymen in case they should be needed, events were shaping themselves so that it seemed likely that Cuba would be the stage for the setting of as heroic a play as the world had ever witnessed: Commodore Dewey had bottled up the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and Naval-Constructor Richmond P. Hobson had executed his daring and unheard-of feat although the gallant _Merrimac_ was sunk in Santiago harbor. Soon after the formal declaration of war on April 25, 1898, President McKinley sent forth a call for volunteers to enter the United States army and navy. Instantly, almost, the ranks were more than filled with active, alert, capable men, anxious, each one of them, to do his full share of the work that lay before his beloved land. It was while active preparations for a war carried on in the interests of humanity were progressing rapidly that Theodore Roosevelt became prominent as representing the highest type of American manhood; he threw himself, bodily, into the breach in the interests of his country; there was no personal sacrifice which he was unwilling to make ... no task too hard for him to attempt. He became, at once, an acknowledged and adored leader of the young Americans who crowded around him, loving him like a brother, and, at the same time, revering his quick judgment and his dauntless courage. There is no figure in American history more heroic or more admired than that of Theodore Roosevelt, mounted on a noble horse, in the uniform of a United States Volunteer and wearing a wide campaign hat. Ruth Wakefield was kept well informed as to what was being done by her own people, mainly through the kindness of Father Felix who seldom missed an evening's visit with her and her almost constant companion, Estrella; the two girls, for they were no more than that in spite of what they had passed through, had become the best of understanding friends; the younger girl seldom spoke of her dead lover and Ruth found that the memory of her husband had been forced into the background of her thoughts by the march of passing events. One evening, Father Felix climbed the narrow pathway to the mansion on the hill and found Ruth alone as Estrella, who was her almost constant companion, now, had gone to the village on one of her infrequent visits to her little friend, Tessa. The good Priest was glad to find Ruth alone as he had news of great importance for her ... news that would lead to great developments in the near future; after being assured of their entire privacy, he said: "We will have work to do, my dear Daughter, before many more months have passed by. The American people have endured the sight of the injustice and oppression exercised by the Spanish authorities toward the helpless Cubans for a long time, now, and are becoming more and more determined to break the Spanish rule. You and I must be prepared to assist and succor our own dear boys when they begin to smite the enemy of right and justice, hip and thigh. My course in this work has been made plain before me.... I have applied for the position of Chaplain in the United States service and I trust that they will allow me to accompany my little flock right into the midst of every battle in which they will be engaged. It seems to me that your path in this matter, my Daughter, is, also, plain ... you can turn this charming home into a hospital to which the sorely wounded or those who have fallen ill from any cause may be brought and where they may receive the tender care which they will deserve from every loyal heart and hand. I am certain that you will find work for Estrella as well as for every member of your family, here, in this connection, also you will be ably assisted by many who will flock to your standard when they understand what you are doing. I, myself, will always assist you in every way in my power and I may be able to spare you some uncertainty and, possibly, also, some unpleasantness. My Daughter," he ended, "there will be work for us to do that will require all our strength and courage.... May God, in His great Wisdom, guide and help us." Ruth clasped her hands and bowed her head as Father Felix prayed for God's blessing on whatever enterprise they should be called upon to undertake in the great cause in which they were both enlisted. After the good Priest had disappeared down the narrow path that led to the little village of San Domingo, she sat, for a long time, in deep revery, reflecting on the peace and prosperity that then covered the tropical Island upon which she had lived for so many years and trying to imagine what changes were likely to come in the wake of the probable conflict of two great nations, for Ruth realized that America was meeting a foe worthy of her steel in Spain whose far-famed Armada had been made the subject of song and story; she had no doubt of the final outcome ... whatever America attempted, that she would accomplish ... but how many splendid American men would have to lie upon the bloody battle-fields that would spring up all around her was yet an unsolved problem; and that, she thought, proudly and devotedly, would be her work ... to find those splendid American heroes, and to do for them as much as if each one of them had been her own blood brother ... to succor the wounded and bury the dead. This line of thought led her, inevitably, to the grave already lying under the moonlight so near to her home, and, upon a sudden and almost irresistable impulse, she snatched a wrap from the rack in the hall and started down toward the little cemetery, thinking to bid an eternal farewell to the grave of the man who had been, if only for a few short months, her husband. CHAPTER XIII Ruth descended the hill with firm, sure steps for she was strong in body as well as in spirit; she had reached the gate of the little cemetery before the impulse that had prompted her action had had time to lose any of its power, but, as she opened the gate and realized the lateness of the hour, her natural caution led her to pause for a second and take in her surroundings; she at once became conscious of the sound of a low, sobbing voice saying: "Dear God, I came here all alone hoping that You would forgive him for the crime that he committed if I came to you in secret beside the grave of him whose life he took ... the sin is lying heavily upon his soul and I wish to lift it from him by sacrificing my own peace of mind so that it may be bestowed upon him, for he suffers grievously from his wound, dear God, he suffers very grievously.... I pray that You will put the sorrow for his crime upon me instead of him so that I may help him, for he is greatly in need of more help than I can give him, being but a simple-minded, feeble, little peasant and unfit to carry this heavy load." The supplication ended in a rush of sobs that shook the inner consciousness of her who listened to them, for Ruth was tender-hearted above all her other instincts; she advanced into the little cemetery, then, with far different feelings than the ones that brought her there. The sounds that she had heard came from the same direction she had meant to take to reach the grave of Victorio Colenzo, so she proceeded along the little path that she had followed, in secret, more than once before, for, with Estrella in her home, she could not visit the last resting-place of the body of the man whom she had loved as very young and innocent women will, often, love a creature all unworthy of such affection, except surreptitiously; so that it was easy for her to wind among the simple little head-stones until she came to the grave she sought. The form her eyes could just discern beside the tomb was small and slight and cowering down as if, indeed, in earnest supplication; Ruth advanced until she was standing very near the silent woman and, not wishing to startle and confuse her by a sudden word, she very gently touched her bowed head; instantly, the girl sprang up in wild alarm, for it had taken all her courage to come there at all; Ruth reassured her as quickly as she could by saying, softly: "Do not fear, whoever you may be; I am but another woman like yourself and I wish to help you no matter what it is that is so troubling you; we women should assist each other in this world, for women, as it seems to me, were put into the world to suffer, mainly, so we ought to try to help each other. Tell me what there is that I can do to help you, now." Tessa, for the reader has, no doubt, guessed that it was she, began to sob wildly and clung to the other woman who had come to her so strangely; she could not speak, at first, for crying, and, then, she could not speak for fear of injuring the man she loved, and, so, she did not speak at all, but ran away without one word of explanation, thinking in that way she might avoid discovery. But the incident had shaken Ruth so that the memory of the man whose body lay within that narrow grave grew dim and far away; she knew that he had been unworthy of her love and must have scouted it in secret many times, for, if he had not done so, how could he have made such love to poor Estrella as he had while she, his lawful wife, yet lived upon the earth? Ruth Wakefield had often said that truth was truth no matter where it fell ... she'd even said that she would blame herself when blame was hers to bear, and, so, she could not shield the memory of the newly dead too far, and, so, she turned away from that low grave and never went there again, and, as she slowly climbed the hill that led her to her own loved home, Estrella overtook her in the path and, hand in hand with her who had been wronged as she, herself, had been, she left the memory of the handsome, gay deceiver lying there within the narrow grave that hid his fast decaying body from the world of living men and women; from that time, she did not suffer, in thinking of him, as she had before; there are turning points in every road no matter where it leads to, and this was a turn for Ruth in that sad road where she had strayed, but only for a short and most unhappy, if, at moments, wildly joyous, time. When Tessa left the grave of Victorio Colenzo, she fled in haste and fright; she did not go at once to her own home for she feared that she might be followed; she had become a fugitive as truly as Manuello was, for, now, she was to him as if she were, indeed, his wife, attending to all wants of his that she could satisfy, and, secretly and silently, becoming but the shadow of the gay and pretty girl that she had been before; her friends, who saw her often, noted this sad change, but did not know its cause. Father Felix watched the girl at times and pitied her, for he had learned that she had been devoted to the handsome peasant whom he also was assured was guilty of some crime and, since his disappearance, he had figured out some things that made him almost certain what the crime had been, for the good Priest was much alone and thought more deeply about many things than those who have not followed psychic lines of reasoning. One morning, Father Felix went, again, to visit Ruth, and found Estrella with her, and he asked the girl about her little friend who had been dear to her from early little girlhood; Estrella told him that she had not seen her for some time, as, when she'd gone to visit her, she had been gone, and Tessa had not come to see her as she'd asked her to, for she had left word for her where to come to find her, knowing she could trust her, for she'd always been a true and faithful friend to her. The good Priest pondered for a moment, then he said: "I wish that you would go, at once, to see your little friend; I think that she is at her home at present, and I wish that you would try to discover what it is that is troubling her, for she is most unhappy over something and I wish that you would help her if you can for she is in need of understanding help at this time more than at any time during my acquaintance with her. Go, my Daughter, find your little friend and try to assist her if you can." Estrella, having secured the permission of Ruth, followed the advice of the good Priest and departed on her errand of love and kindness. When Father Felix had been assured of their privacy, he turned to his companion and said: "I have information of importance to give you, my Daughter. We are drawing nearer and nearer to the goal we seek. Our compatriots are growing weary of blockading Havana and other harbors near to us and will very soon advance into the interior of Cuba. When that time comes there will be great suffering all around us and I think that it will be best for you and me to form a sort of secret society with passwords, which, while simple in themselves, will convey to us a secret meaning. You and I must act as one in this matter.... I am sure of your fealty and you can rely upon mine but how many others there are near to us upon whose loyalty we can depend I do not know. Estrella is discreet and thoughtful for an uneducated and untrained girl, but she would have no idea of what course to pursue under complicated or difficult circumstances, so that it may be necessary to keep many events secret from her. There are many spies already in Cuba and there are those among us who would be willing to exchange the lives and property of their best friends for personal emolument. I know one young fellow who has, as I believe, already sold his birthright of truth and honor for a mess of pottage and there are others of his ilk. I rely on you alone in all this village of San Domingo ... you, alone, are strong and capable ... you, alone, are thoroughly American and devoted to your native land. I rely on you, my Daughter, and you may rely on me. Let us now arrange a secret pact between us so that, should we be separated, we may be sure of any word that each may send the other. If I send to you a message adding to the body of it the word _pax_ alone, then I will mean to signify that all is well with me and that I do not know of any secret danger threatening you, but if to the word _pax_ I add _vobiscum_, then you are to be made aware that danger threatens you, while I may, yet, be safe from it, but if I say _Pax vobiscus_ then I'll mean that we are both in danger of a similar nature; if I send these latter words, you are to use all means of safety at your command to seclude yourself from outside notice just as much as possible and to try to find me if you can do so without exposure to yourself; but if I say just _pax_ then I mean what the word implies, and you may go to and from your home with freedom. I will come to see you just as often as I can and I will arrange to have the officers of our own army and navy visit you and then you will use your own good judgment combined with what knowledge they will give to you as to how you will proceed, knowing that my spirit will be with you even if my body cannot be ... even if I should be separated from this perishable body, my Daughter, I think that God would let me come to you to help you.... He would know our need and it is my belief He would supply it. Let us pray to Him for guidance, now, before I leave you for the night. Father in heaven, protect and guide our footsteps while we stay upon this mundane sphere of spiritual action. Help us do what we were meant to do and teach us how to walk in unknown paths which we are, now, about to enter on. May what is just and right be conquerors in conflicts that will, very soon, be carried on about us. May the souls of those about to leave this world be prepared for the great change from this world to another one, and may we, who are Thy humble servants, do the things that will be pleasing in Thy sight. Bless us, now, and guide us unto Thee. Amen." When Estrella reached the home of little Tessa, she found her friend about to go somewhere but where she would not say ... she seemed so much distraught about it that Estrella did not ask the second time where she was going; she could see that she had made some preparations for the journey, for she had a small bag filled with eatables and a jug of home-made vintage in her hands; Estrella plainly saw how distressed she was and how wan and weary, too, and, so, she only stayed a very short time; but, when she went away, she only went just far enough to be where Tessa could not see her ... then she watched her little friend, but only with the kindest thoughts of her, and saw her take an unused, winding path a little ways, then hasten on without a path at all, so far as she could see; she wound among the cacti, fearlessly, as if upon a very important errand, and as if she feared that she would be too late to do the errand she was bent upon; Estrella watched her for a time, and, then, still with the kindest thoughts of Tessa, followed after her, but far enough behind her so she could not see her ... she would stoop behind a friendly bit of brush whenever little Tessa turned around and gazed about her like a startled little bird about to seek its hidden nest; so, unobserved, Estrella followed after her, and came, at length, to that small clearing where the ruined hut had stood for many years; Estrella knew about it, having found it at the same time Manuello had, indeed, for they two used to roam the hills together when they were but little children ... sometimes Tessa went with them, but, oftener, they were alone; and, so, Estrella peered within the ruined hut and saw its occupant as he lay there in bitter pain and wan and weary, too, like little Tessa was; she saw the other girl creep past the tumble-down old door that she had set up at the entrance to the hut to shield its inmate from the winds, and, also, to try to keep the fact that he was there at all unknown; she saw the little tender-hearted woman kneel beside the rude couch on which her restless patient lay and kiss the lips that only moaned her name in anguish and despair; she saw her smooth the black and silky hair back from the brow of Manuello, and, then, she heard the following conversation. "Tell me, little Tessa," said her patient, eagerly, "are you sure you were not seen when you came here, today? I greatly fear that you will yet divulge, in some way, my hiding-place. I could not move a step to save myself, no matter who came here to find me. It is terrible to be like this. I'd rather die than stay here like this for another day.... I wish you'd find a gun, somewhere, and bring it to me the next time you come and let me end the lives of both of us. You are like a little skeleton, yourself.... I wonder what's the matter with you ... are you ill or is it only just the weariness and fright that makes you look so? If you should fail me, I would surely die ... a wounded rat that cannot even run to save itself. Tessa, tell me," he cried out, peevishly, "are you sick? You look so pale today it seems to me you are about to faint away ... and what would I do, then?" "I don't believe that I am sick," she said, cheerfully. "I'm sure I don't know why I'm pale.... It is very warm today, for one thing ... I hurried up the hill ... Estrella came...." At that name, her patient roused again: "Estrella! Are you sure she did not follow you? She could gloat about me, now, if she were minded to ... what did you bring for me to eat, today?" he ended, changing the subject, abruptly. "I'm almost starved to death; I wish you'd come a little earlier, tomorrow." "I will try, dear Manuello, I will try," said little Tessa, gravely. "I always try to come as soon as I can come when I'm alone and can evade the children." Manuello tossed a while in silence, then he asked again: "Are you sure Estrella did not follow you? Look outside and see if there is not someone near the hut. I'm afraid ... I'm dreadfully afraid, somehow, today. I've lain right here, now, all these weeks, and have not been so frightened as I am, somehow, today. Look outside and see!" And, then, Estrella crept away for she could do no good by staying, and she did not wish to harm either one of her old friends on whose distress she looked. Estrella went back to the mansion on the hill, a sadder, it is true, and yet also a wiser woman for she'd seen poor little Tessa's secret burden and Manuello's sorry plight. She went to Father Felix, the next day, to advise with him about what she had seen; he cautioned her not to mention it to anyone she knew, which advice she followed, strictly; it enlightened him to some extent and he pitied little Tessa more than ever, for he knew the sort of man her patient was ... he knew that he was selfish to the very core of him and had no gratitude for anyone who'd helped him; so he pitied little Tessa and began, in many little unknown ways, to help her bear the burden she'd assumed. To begin with, when she came to the confessional, as almost everyone who lived in San Domingo did, he only asked her questions such as she could answer easily ... he did not touch on murder or on lies or on anything that might lead on to surprising her sad secret; he knew her for a simple-minded, loving, tender little girl and he pitied her and did not try to wring from her her secret, knowing that, in all human probability, she would go, some day, to the ruined hut and find no Manuello there to either curse or bless her: in fact, he looked upon this as the most likely of anything that could occur and, when he saw poor little Tessa fading with anxiety and dread, he went, one day, to see the patient in the deserted hut, and, after that, there was no patient there, for Manuello limped away, as he could stand, at last, and hid from even little Tessa for he thought she had betrayed him, after all, and, so, he cursed her with the balance of his rotten luck. CHAPTER XIV June 10, 1898, was a memorable day for Cuba, for, on that date, the glorious flag of our own much-beloved country was unfurled over Cuban soil, upheld and supported by United States troops, for the first time. Father Felix had kept himself well informed as to military matters, and had often consulted with Ruth Wakefield concerning what would actually be needed by our armies when they were finally in the field; in pursuance of the purpose to which they had both devoted their lives and fortunes, these two had established a temporary hospital not far from the city of Santiago, as the good Priest had been informed that one of the next moves of our forces would be in that vicinity; so that, when our starry banner first floated in the breeze at Camp McCalla, Ruth stood beside the new-fledged army Chaplain, and watched, through tear-dimmed eyes, the emblem of our liberty and freedom as it was proudly raised. That night passed quietly, but, for five successive days and nights thereafter, a bitter battle raged in which our blue-clad boys met and finally defeated the Spanish hordes that tried to drive them back or leave their lifeless bodies lying there beneath the blistering sun. When Ruth had sailed from Havana she had brought her little household with her and established them in temporary quarters near the hospital, and, soon, she saw the little white cots filled with sick or wounded Americans and Cuban scouts. Volunteer nurses were immediately in demand as, in many ways, our forces were unprepared to meet the enemy; there are no soldiers in the world as brave ... as fine ... as capable ... as are our own United States Volunteers ... both men and women, and, so, Ruth Wakefield and Estrella, anxious to put into practice what they had learned to do, donned the clean white uniforms they had become accustomed to in the training they had taken in Havana for this very purpose, and, very soon, to the eye of a novice, there were two more trained nurses ministering to the many wants of the boys who lay there on those narrow cots, weak and suffering but triumphant in spite of their pain, for the cause of right had won in the first real conflict upon Cuban soil between the Spaniards and the Americans assisted by Cuban insurgents, who, mainly, acted as spies and scouts, a work to which they were adapted by nature and long practice in a country infested by those whose only object in ruling it had been to gain what they could, in resources and amusement, from the natives, with no thought either for their comfort or advancement along the lines of civilized living. Among the Cuban scouts who had been wounded on that first day of actual combat was one who happened to fall under the care of Estrella for he had been carried in right after her entry into the work of the hospital; this man had been slightly wounded as he was about to give valuable information to one of our own officers, and, perhaps for that reason and because he had shown himself to be particularly useful, he had received even more than the usual attention on the battle-field, for his wound had been dressed more carefully than is customary when first aid is given in the midst of the fray, so that the attending surgeon had declared his condition such that all he needed was tender care, which was why his case had been assigned to a volunteer nurse. Estrella gravely assumed the duty allotted to her, with some misgivings as to her own ability, it is true, but with a strong resolve to do the best she could; as she bent over her patient, she noticed, first, his almost deathly pallor, then a jagged scar that stretched across his cheek and had been lately healed ... the edges of it were yet red and angry looking; the girl bent over him pityingly, and, then, she started back for she had recognized, even in the dim light that pervaded the temporary hospital, the features of Manuello; remembering what she had seen in the ruined hut, she shrank from contact with her old admirer, but, with that memory came the knowledge that he had been wounded while in the performance of a service of benefit to her beloved country, and she did not falter in carrying out the instructions of the surgeon in charge with regard to her patient, thinking that, perhaps, before he had recognized her, she might be transferred to some other part of the hospital. Ruth took her place among the ministering nurses with confidence and courage, for she was one who immediately altogether forgot almost her own identity when asked to help another human being, and, while her sympathy with suffering was remarkable, so that she actually suffered pain herself when witnessing it in others, yet she had always been able to do whatever was required of her in an emergency regardless of any bodily ailment that might be troubling her at the time; now, as she saw all around her strong men laid low by violence, her spirit rose to the occasion and she was, for the time, at least, the very personification of patriotic zeal and her love for her country rose to heights almost undreamed of even by herself; she moved among the little cots freely, lending a hand here and whispering a word of encouragement there; the nurses recognized in her a master spirit, at once, and the surgeons looked into her steady eyes, and, instantly, allowed her privileges seldom granted to anyone outside of their own profession; her very presence seemed to give the sufferers courage to bear their pain, for the light that shone from her clear, gray eyes was above the things of a merely earthly existence and lifted them out of their bodies, to some extent, making them impervious to what would have otherwise been excruciating anguish; surgeons, at that time, did not recognize the mental attitude of their patients, to any great extent, and they marveled at the influence of the mistress of the mansion on the hill, attributing it, in part, to the evident superiority of the young woman to those with whom she had been associated in Cuba. In passing among the little cots, Ruth, at length, came to the one beside which Estrella was standing, anxiously looking into her patient's flushed face, for, with returning strength, Manuello's fever had risen; Ruth put one hand on the girl's shoulder and drew her away from the cot for a moment while she whispered to her: "Do not weary yourself too much, my Dear, for we must keep our strength so as to be able to help others ... you seem distressed ... do you know your patient, personally?" Estrella was only too glad to tell her kind and understanding friend just the situation in which she found herself, so that, when the young Cuban opened his large, dark eyes and looked about him in astonishment, it was upon Ruth's face he gazed instead of on Estrella's whom the former had sent into another part of the work of caring for the wounded. "Where am I?" moaned Manuello. "What has happened to me, now?" "You have been sorely wounded in the service of your country, my brave fellow ... you are now in a hospital where you will receive every possible care and attention," answered Ruth in a low, yet clear tone of voice. "You are in the hands of those who appreciate what you have done and greatly desire to assist in your recovery." Having assured himself that he was among friends, he began to make inquiries as to the nature of his wound, wondering how long it would be necessary for him to remain as he was then, but Ruth only told him that he must not talk and must use every precaution he could to prevent increase of the fever that was now high enough to demand the use of the handy little thermometer that Ruth, in common with the other amateur nurses with whom she had studied, had learned how to operate; she promptly thrust this little fever-gauge into his mouth and told him to keep it there quietly until she took it away; gazing at her as if she were a creature from another world, Manuello lay there quiescent and tractable, all his wild nature being centred upon his desire to again be the free, strong being he had but recently been. Old Mage peered into the room where the cots of the wounded soldiers and sailors had been placed and caught a glimpse of her dear young lady as she stood by the bedside of Manuello; he had just opened his eyes, and, as he lay there with his black curls touching the white pillow, he reminded the old woman very much of another handsome, dark young fellow whom she believed to be lying in his narrow grave in the little cemetery ... the narrow grave in which she had buried the wedding-ring that had brought so much sorrow to the one whom she loved best in all the world: as the old woman looked at the dark face on the pillow she noticed the angry scar that disfigured it and thought that it might have changed the face she remembered as without a blemish so that she would have difficulty in recognizing it; her mind began to travel along the line of thought suggested by this possibility and she determined to rid Ruth of the necessity of attending to her former husband, at least, if her most dire suspicions should prove to be well founded; she at once remembered that she, herself, had not seen the corpse of the man interred as Victorio Colenzo and she knew very well how earthly death will change the appearance of a human being's body ... then she thought of what had been told to her as to how the man had died ... altogether it seemed to her very possible that the man she had seen in the little cemetery on the day of the funeral she had attended with Estrella might have been some one closely resembling Manuello, so that, perhaps, Estrella's foster brother had been buried in the supposed grave of Victorio Colenzo, who, wishing to be free from both entangling alliances he had made in San Domingo, had allowed the name under which he had entered into them to be placed upon the simple head-stone that marked the grave of another man. As soon as old Mage had arrived at the conclusion above described, she acted on it at once by slipping stealthily up to Ruth and whispering to her: "Come away, my Pretty; you are needed; there is someone outside who wishes to speak to you at once. I will take your place." Ruth, thinking the summons important, yielded her place for a moment, intending to return within a very few moments, but no sooner had old Mage assumed charge of the patient than she began to devise ways and means by which she hoped to prolong the stay of her dear young lady, for it seemed to her to be too much for her to bear ... to care for her recreant husband under all the trying circumstances. The first thing that the new nurse did would have been severely criticized by the head surgeon had his attention not been fully occupied in another part of the large room; to begin with, instead of smoothing back the dark hair from the man's forehead as it would seem to one observing her from the rear she was doing, she very deliberately pulled the handful of curls she was clutching, hoping to make him open his eyes so that she could continue her scrutiny of him in order to be as certain as possible of his suspected identity; this ruse succeeded, for Manuello's large, dark brown eyes flew open and were fixed in horror on the face bending over him; it was quite a different countenance than the one he had last seen beside him, for old Mage never had been a beauty and the loss of her teeth had not added to her appearance while the ferocity of her glance was accentuated by the multitude of criss-cross wrinkles which surrounded the light blue eyes out of which she was glaring at him; the words she hissed in his ear added to the confusion under which the helpless man was laboring: "I thought that you were dead and buried out of sight ... you hateful, low-lived pup! How dare you be brought into her place, now? If I did just right, I do believe I'd choke the life out of you while you can't fight back! The girl's here, too ... you must be a devil in human form! You ought to be burning in hell!" The object that had led old Mage to make this attack upon the wounded man was about to be accomplished, for, with a wild scream, he vaulted over the foot of the little cot and bounded through the open doorway as if he were pursued by demons; his temporary nurse did not try to prevent his exit which was what she had longed to bring about, although the manner of his going startled even her, as she had no idea of the effect that her hasty words would have upon the guilty spirit of the man whose crimes, it seemed to him, had found him out; the new wound he had that day received, was not of a nature to impede his progress for a short distance, and he almost instantly disappeared from among the nurses and surgeons; his wild expression so impressed all whom he met before he reached the outskirts of the hospital grounds that he was again a fugitive, hunted, this time, by both friends and enemies. As Ruth was about to return to her patient, for she could find no immediate need of her presence elsewhere, she met an excited nurse who told her of having seen an excessively active young man flying out into the open, clad only in hospital garb. Ruth was hurrying to report the circumstances to the head surgeon and to arrange to have searching parties sent out to bring back her pseudo patient, when, passing the cot where old Mage was still stationed, she noted that it was empty; stopping to inquire the reason for this change, her old nurse hurriedly related the facts concerning the exodus of the young man, while she secretly rejoiced at the success of her strategem, for so she chose to denominate the method she had taken of protecting her dear young lady from the nearness of the man she had married through mistaken confidence. Estrella, having been sent to consult with her friend concerning some matter connected with the welfare of the temporary hospital, came along, just then, and was told what had happened. "Why," she exclaimed, "where has poor Manuello gone? He is not fit to be outside alone. I am afraid I was a coward to leave him when he needed care. Poor little Tessa would have stayed right with him no matter what he said or did. I have not seen her," she mused, "for a long time, now ... not since a number of days before we came away from home.... I wonder where she is." Could Estrella have seen her little friend at that moment, she would have lost all pity for Manuello and added to that she already had for poor Tessa, for she was then suffering from the last encounter she had had with the man who had just fled out into the night; although the little peasant would have been proud to have been made the wife of the man whom she madly loved, yet she resisted the idea of being merely his mistress for Father Felix had forcibly impressed upon the minds of the girls of his flock the virtue of chastity; the consequence of this resistance had been a blow received by herself which had rendered her helpless for the time being, as it had made it impossible for her to walk for any distance, and a slash across one of Manuello's dusky cheeks which she had made with a knife she had happened to have in her hand at the time of his attack. The heart-sick girl was lying on the rude bed she had made for the man who had left her without aid, in the deserted hut into which Estrella had once peered, while her friend, so far away from her, was bemoaning the fate of her ungrateful former lover. She had carried some food and water into the hovel upon the day of her last struggle with Manuello and she could creep about the inside of the small building, so that, being hardy and healthy, she had, at that time, subsisted upon the supplies she had on hand, for several days; she was just beginning to crawl carefully out into the surrounding brush where she was glad to find plenty of ripe cactus-fruit and other wild edibles; she was very lonely and frightened but she took her condition as a punishment for the sins she had committed since she had tried to assist Manuello in spite of the fact that she had known him to be a criminal; she told her beads, over and over, using the small rosary which she had always worn about her neck, and, as she kissed the crucifix attached to the beads, she often prayed for the man who was the direct cause of her pitiable condition, for she believed it to be her plain duty to forgive, even though she could not forget, him. CHAPTER XV When Manuello escaped from the temporary hospital near Camp McCalla, he directed his eager steps toward the place of his nativity, because, as it seemed to him, he would be safer there than he had recently been; it seemed to him that if he could reach the deserted hut where he had been in concealment before, he could rest and recover while he made plans for his future, for he had decided that it would be dangerous for him to follow the American army any longer, at least for a time. In devious ways and through the use of means known only to such as he, he managed to reach a point midway between Santiago and Havana in a much shorter time than would have seemed possible to one unversed in the ways of the wilderness; here he encountered, suddenly and unexpectedly, the good Priest whom he had known from childhood, who, also, seemed hurrying in the direction of Havana. The young man kept away from the habitation of men as much as possible after that, and, footsore and weary, but happy in the thought that he had reached his goal, he arrived, at length, just at sunset, in the outskirts of the village of San Domingo; from there he followed the winding path up which little Tessa had so often toiled in his service, he thought of her but did not regret the blow he had given her; in fact, his anger still burned at white heat whenever he remembered how she had disfigured his features, forgetting altogether what she had done for him, because she had not done everything that he had asked her to do. At length, he reached the vicinity of the deserted hut and stole up to reconnoitre before entering the ruined habitation; he crept up to one of the small windows and peered within; the sight that met his vision startled him to such an extent that he forgot, for the moment, his habitual caution and remained at the window although he had discovered that the hut was occupied; the room he looked into was dimly lit by the rays of the setting sun which penetrated the dense growth of tropical verdure and found their way into the small western aperture that answered the purpose of a look-out toward the village; Tessa was lying, looking very wan and care-worn, upon the rude bed she had arranged for the man who was then staring at her ... in her thin hand was a crucifix which Father Felix had just given to her ... the good Priest was kneeling upon the rough floor beside the couch and the tears were rolling down his cheeks, for the sight before him would have moved far less tender hearts than his; the girl began to speak in a low voice and Manuello strained his power of hearing to catch the faint words which fell from her pale and trembling lips. "Good Father," she began, speaking as if at confession, "I beseech you to have mercy upon your sinful daughter; I have done grievous wrong during my short life and I beg you to intercede with the God of truth and justice before whose judgment seat I will soon appear. I ask you to pray for me, Father Felix, for I am in need of your prayers. I have been a wicked girl in some ways, though not in all, for I have resisted a very strong desire which was a part of my sinful nature and which I believe I have, now, through suffering, gained the victory over." The girl ceased speaking from sheer weakness, then, and the Priest took the crucifix from her shaking hand and attached it to the cord at his waist, then he lifted his clasped hands in earnest and humble supplication: "Father Who art in heaven," he prayed, "listen to us who are in Thy gracious Hands, both here and hereafter. Help me to guide this suffering soul aright and help her to walk where she was meant to walk, whether she regains her health and returns to the life she has had, formerly, or whether she passes out of this narrow existence and goes into eternity before another morning dawns. Look down, dear Father, in mercy on us who are Thy humble servants. Amen." "Father Felix," began the sick girl, "I must confess to you something that has lain heavily upon my conscience for many weeks. I am rejoiced that you have found me for I will die easier to know that you have the secrets that I have been keeping in my heart, being unable to come to the refectory and tell you what I must, now, impart to you. A heinous crime was committed in San Domingo some months ago, as I believe by one whom you and I both know; I have withheld my suspicions from the authorities and, in so doing, I feel that I have done wrong, Father. I wish to tell you all I know, now, and let you do what you think best ... it will relieve my heart of a very heavy load to tell this to you. Manuello...." Before her lips could utter the next word, the door of the hut which had been leaning over the opening designed for it as it had long been guiltless of hinges, was violently thrust aside and the subject of the remarks Tessa was about to make, rudely entered and advanced to the side of the couch upon which the girl was lying; the livid scar upon his dark face combined with the pallor that had followed the fever he had been having, the freshly bandaged wound, the limp that had followed the rough dressing of the bullet-punctured leg of the man, combined with the fierce determination that characterized each one of his movements, altogether made a most unpleasant appearance. Father Felix quietly rose and stepped between the sufferer on the couch and the young Cuban who regarded the Priest with no respect in the expression of his countenance, but rather with contempt and lack of personal fear; he attempted to shove him aside so that he might again look down on the trembling occupant of the rude bed, but found that Father Felix was standing firmly on a sturdy pair of legs which had had good exercise in tramping about the hills and valleys in pursuit of his chosen profession of saving the souls of those who needed his ministrations; Manuello glared at him and snarled out: "Out of my way with your sing-song prayers and your dangling cross! I am a desperate man and do not mean to allow even a Priest to balk either my escape or my vengeance! Stand aside and let me stop that mouth forever!" He again tried to shove the Priest aside, when Father Felix hastily threw off his robe so that it might not impede his movements and closed with the young fellow, grappling with him with arms left bare from the shoulder upon which the biceps muscles stood out in great knots that came and went and rippled underneath the skin; Manuello was surprised at this onslaught for the good Priest's fighting prowess had never, so far, been tested in just this way; but familiarity with certain turns and twists told in the young villain's favor in spite of the freshness and vigor of Father Felix' attack; the poor girl on the floor was unable to interfere and watched the two combatants with horrified eyes as they struggled all over the rude room, sometimes one and sometimes the other seeming about to conquer; neither one of the contestants had a weapon as Manuello had come away from the hospital clad only as the other patients were; in his wild flight he had snatched an outer garment from among the many lying in a heap outside the door through which he had fled, but, with this exception, he wore only what had been put upon him by the surgeons. Like two Titans, the two human beings struggled for supremacy, the one being actuated only by a desire to serve the right, and the other seeming to have been given almost satanic power as he felt that his own life and future freedom depended upon adding two more to his victims, for the Priest had already heard enough to make him find out more and Tessa had been about to confess all she knew to him, so, above everything on earth, the furious Cuban wished to slay the Priest and the poor girl whose only fault had been her yielding to his selfishness. Twice, Manuello's fingers almost closed about the good Priest's throat, and twice did Father Felix lift the other man bodily from the floor and dash him down in a huddled heap in one corner of the room, but neither had quite conquered when an unexpected interference ended the conflict very suddenly. Manuello had crowded Father Felix over toward the tumble-down door of the hut and was about to push him through the opening, or, at least, attempt to do so, when, all at once the young fellow felt his fingers lose their strength and his arms fell away from the body of the Priest ... he was conscious of a strange, tingling sensation all through his shaken nerves; had he been familiar with the action of powerful electric currents, he would have described it as a heavy shock of electricity but, although he could not have altogether explained his sensations, their effect was instantaneous and resulted in the release of Father Felix while his assailant dropped prone upon the floor of the hut and groveled at his feet in abject terror, for he thought the end of his life had come and, in that thought, the murderer became the penitent and, with the fear of death before his mind, he began to mumble broken bits of half-forgotten prayers and to beg for forgiveness for his sins which he knew to be many and grievous. As the changed attitude of his foe became evident to the good Priest he hurried over to the side of the sick girl with assurances of his desire to assist her in every possible way and, with the changed conditions surrounding him, he again put on the robe of his holy office, and, with it, seemed again to be the sedate and quiet leader of the flock he strove to lead into green pastures and beside pleasant waters. Having ministered to Tessa, for the moment, he turned his attention to his late antagonist: "My Son," he said, "you are wounded and spent with the loss of blood; your mind, perhaps, has been turned by your misfortunes so that you did not realize either your words or your actions. I hope that, from this time on, you will fix your mind on better things than thoughts of vengeance or of murder. To begin with, I have a favor to ask of you. Will you help me remove Tessa, here, from this place to her home? She is in need of tender care." "I will do what you tell me to," meekly answered the recent antagonist of the Priest. "I see that I was wrong in imagining you to be my enemy. I think that this last wound has made me crazy for the time, as you have just said. From this time on I will try to be as I have been before ... glad to be guided by your higher wisdom. I humbly ask your pardon for what I have done here, tonight." Manuello bowed his head for his spirit had been broken by the strange happening which we have described, and, at once, his hope began to rise again, that, after all, Father Felix would do him no real harm, for he seemed, again, the kind and loving prelate whom the man had known from his youth up. When some simple preparations had been made, the two men lifted Tessa from the rude couch to the stretcher they had improvised, and, in turn, lifted it, with its light burden, to their shoulders, when, from time to time, they found an open space in the dense underbrush that hid the ruined hut from ordinary observation; thus they descended the hill that led to the village of San Domingo; having reached the door of the home of the girl, in the gathering darkness, they laid the stretcher down and Manuello disappeared as Father Felix knocked for admittance. To say the young fellow was glad to be released from what seemed to him to be the custody of the Priest would be to put his feelings lightly, for, having cleared the ruined hut, he quickly returned to it and, lying on the simple bed Tessa had so lately occupied, he went to sleep, apparently, as sweetly as a new-born infant would. Old Mage wondered, a little, at Estrella's remark concerning Manuello, after he had disappeared; but she finally set her mind at rest by deciding that, whichever of the dashing Cubans she had ousted from Ruth's help, she had done good work, for, as she said to herself, from her view-point it was "good riddance to bad rubbage." The head surgeon made a note of the occurrence and went on about his work, for one man more or less, in time of war, cannot be reckoned as in civil life. Ruth Wakefield had no doubt at all as to the identity of her former patient; when a pure girl has given herself to be the wife of any man she does not, soon, forget his personality, and Ruth knew very well the man she'd cared for had not been the one she'd called her husband ... that his body lay within its narrow grave she felt assured but what lay buried over him old Mage, alone, yet knew; she'd chuckled, many times, as to that burial, and it was hard for her to keep her secret as she longed for the approval that she felt she merited in this small matter, but the thought that Ruth might differ with her as to what she'd done had always, so far, sealed her lips. "There is a time in the affairs of men that, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune," has been said by one who, justly, has been called a master in the art of putting words together; William Shakespeare did not know the actors in this story, but he knew the minds of men as few have known them since his time. Manuello did not know that such a writer as this master of the English language had ever existed, yet he acted on the thought in the above quotation, when, the morning after the events related in this chapter, he again departed from the ruined hut and disappeared, effectually, within the fastnesses that only such as he could know about; every inch, or so it seemed, of territory surrounding Havana was familiar to the Cuban scouts and Manuello had grown up among the cacti and the palms and desolation that followed in the wake of Spanish oppression and injustice. CHAPTER XVI July 1, 1898, at sunset, the fair folds of our own stars and stripes were gently floating over San Juan hill. On that day some of the most heroic deeds in American history had been performed by those who represent the highest types of American virility. Roosevelt's Rough Riders had, that day, advanced behind their intrepid leader, into the very jaws of death and very many of them never came again into the pleasant walks of life they'd known before that fateful day ... very many of them lay scattered over the different heights that led on to the very top of San Juan hill, inert and helpless human tenements that had once held the proud and willing spirits of the men who followed Roosevelt with love and daring. Some of them were picked up and carried to temporary hospitals that had sprung up near the scene of active warfare; in one of these shelters for the wounded Ruth Wakefield stood, that evening, bending low above a little cot on which was stretched a manly form ... the form of one who'd ridden with the rest of those who followed him they called, in brotherly affection, "Teddy," and who was beside him when his horse was shot from under him. "Nurse," he whispered, through the bandages that bound his head, "Nurse, it would have done you good to hear him say 'Forward! Charge the hill!' It would have heartened you could you have seen him, when he was unhorsed, grab a rifle and fire it as he went on up, on foot." "You must not talk," said Ruth. "You must rest quietly, now. We won the hill," she added, proudly. "We won the hill and I'm as proud as anyone could ever be of Roosevelt and of you all who followed after him. I sometimes wish," she ended, "I sometimes wish that I had been a man to go into the battles instead of only caring for the wounded ... yet I'm thankful to be of some assistance to the ones who need the help that I can give to them." "You should have seen," began the man again, "you should have seen our Teddy charge that hill! They do not make a man like that except about once in a century or so ... they do not make such men as that in every age.... I tell you he's a holy terror when it comes to fighting, Nurse! He mowed them down ... he made them crawl and creep.... I always knew he could do more on horseback than any man that ever lived but I never knew, until today, what he could do on foot." "Our Teddy is a wonder.... I agree with you in everything you say of him, but, now," once more she was the nurse in charge, "you must be very still ... that is," she ended, with a happy little turn of thought, "if you ever want to go where Teddy is, again." That was enough to silence him and he lay very still and fixed his eyes upon her face, and, finally, he slept, and rested from his labors for a time; but what he'd said stayed in Ruth's inner consciousness and the heart that throbbed within her beat more proudly after that, because she was, as was the man his comrades praised, an American; to her that title was enough to fill with pride a human heart ... to be a true American ... a citizen of the United States of America ... it seemed to her meant more than any royal appellation ever could; no crown adorned with priceless jewels could replace that name to her; at one time in her life, this question had been asked of her: "What would you do if you must choose between all that you love on earth and fealty to some other than your native land, and this one country that you call your own?" "What would I do?" she answered. "I would not renounce my fealty to my native land.... I would keep God and my conscience and my country ... no one could take them from me ... all the rest I'd leave behind and cleave to them." Ruth Wakefield meant this statement and she proved it later on beyond all shadow of a doubt. When her first patient slept, Ruth went to stand beside another cot for she was always privileged to go wherever she might choose; her help in many ways, including financial aid, had made this hospital possible and she went at will among the other nurses who looked up to her as women will to one who is a natural leader of the ones with whom she associates. She came, at length, to a cot that was apart from all the rest because its occupant had needed to be isolated for good reasons; he was violent, at times, the nurses said ... when his fever rose he soon became delirious and they had hard work keeping him under any sort of control; he was a native scout, they told her ... he had done good work that day upon the side of right, and, so, Ruth went to care for him, for it was just as natural for her to take heavy work as it was natural for the rest to let her do it. Soon after she had taken charge of him, he stirred uneasily and mumbled in his restless sleep ... he spoke a name she'd hoped to never hear again ... the name of him whom she had loved enough to marry.... "Victorio Colenzo," moaned the man, "Victorio Colenzo is dead and I ... I am his murderer ... it was my hand that took his life.... I am a murderer, good Father Felix.... I am the murderer of the man I hated, for he took the girl I loved from me.... I killed him with my own machete and he is dead.... I am the murderer of Victorio Colenzo ... shrive my soul, good Father Felix, for I am about to go before my Maker." The moaning ceased then, and Ruth bent over him to see if he still lived, for she could see his very lips were livid and his eyes seemed set and glazed as if with death's own dews; she put her hand upon his head and looked into his face with earnest pity in her tender eyes, for she was very pitiful and even lenient when faults of anyone except herself were to be considered. "The poor fellow is delirious," she thought. "He does not know what he is saying. Odd that he should use that name. Poor fellow ... he will not last long, I fear. I wonder if Father Felix could come to him." With that thought, she turned to go to try to find the Priest, for he almost always could be found where there was suffering and need of him, but Manuello (for the reader has discovered who her patient was) snatched at her hand as she was just about to go away and said to her: "Please intercede for me, good Angel ... tell them I have never had a chance in all my life ... tell them ... intercede...." and, then, his weak voice died away in moans, again, "Tessa, please," he said, "don't look at me that way!" Again Ruth leaned above his bed, for in his eyes there was a look that seldom comes except when death is near. She felt a gentle hand upon her arm and knew that Estrella stood beside her ... she had come to seek advice from her superior. So they stood ... the widow and the sweetheart, and the murderer of the man they both had loved, as virgins love, lay there before them. Suddenly, he roused himself, as with a last and desperate effort, from the lethargy of death itself ... he looked upon them standing there beside his bed ... the woman he had loved as wild and rough and lawless men will always love a woman and the one who seemed to him as if she were an angel straight from paradise ... he imagined he had passed from life as he had known that word, and was beyond all earthly help; and, so, he did not call for human help but cried aloud on God to save his deathless soul. It was horrible to hear his human lips cry out to God as they were crying then, and Ruth regretted that Estrella stood so near to him whom she had called her foster-brother, for she'd whispered Manuello's name at once, so she sent her to find Father Felix if she could and to bring him there to help this suffering soul. After the girl had gone away, Ruth stood alone beside the cot and looked with great commiseration on the almost senseless clay before her ... on the staring eyes and sullen, dark-skinned pallor of the heavily scarred face ... on the lips that once wore careless smiles but, now, were drawn and pale ... on the broad shoulders and powerful muscled arms. As she gazed at him it seemed to her a very pitiful condition under which he labored; she wondered why it had to be as it was with this strong, untutored man; she wondered why he had to lay his strong, young body on the altar of his passions and see it consumed as it had been by hate and treachery; and, then, she remembered the service upon which he had just been bent ... and her heart yearned over him for that alone; she leaned above his face and searched it for a sign of returning strength but found none there; his eyes stared into hers, it seemed, and then they sought the moving shadows on the canvas overhead. Ruth raised her head from gazing into Manuello's eyes and seemed to see, above the cot on which he lay, another and a different form yet like to that she saw inert before her; it was as if a glorified replica of the man were floating over him; in many ways it was exactly like the Manuello lying there upon that little cot, and, yet, the form was more ethereal ... more delicate ... more beautiful than he could ever be and live upon the earthly plane where he had found so many things to lead him down and seldom found a single thing to lead him higher, or, at least, found anything that he could fully understand, for, although Father Felix tried to show him how to go to climb to better thoughts, he had not seen the steps at all but blundered on along the path he found himself upon. As Ruth began to realize the change that she had seen take place, a rosy flush crept over her fair face, she clasped her hands and bowed her head in silent prayer: "Father in heaven," she thought, "look down in mercy on this soul about to come before You for Your judgment. Have pity on his faults for they were very many ... have mercy on him, for his sins were very heavy in his human life. He did not know the way to go, dear Father ... he could not see the steps at all. Have pity on him for he will have need of pity such as only You can give to him. Amen." And when she lifted up her face again, good Father Felix stood beside her, crucifix in hand. His head was also bowed in silent prayer for he had witnessed many earthly deaths and knew, at once, that Manuello, as he had been known in human life, had passed beyond all human judgment and gone on to his reward or punishment in another world where everything that he had done upon the earth would be accounted for by him and him alone; the good Priest knew, however, that God is good as well as just and he remembered Manuello's ignorance and superstition, too, and hoped that, after he'd been purged of earthly sins by deep repentance, he would come into the light that is God's Smile and shines for all who seek it honestly, no matter what their sins on earth have been, but only after long and terrible remorse for harm that they have done while in the body that God gave them to use and not abuse. The road that leads into the light that is God's Smile is often hedged about by thorns and bitter herbs instead of delicate and fragrant flowers; sometimes poisonous reptiles lurk along the way and strive to strike their fangs within the heart of him who toils there; sometimes, human passions guide a strong man into devious and sinful acts as Manuello had been guided, more than once; he'd yielded to them just because he had not learned the way to handle them and they had mastered him and made of him their slave instead of being what he ordered them to be; he'd thrown the remnant of his human life into the balance in the cause he really loved ... the cause of freedom for his native land. And Ruth and Father Felix thought of him as of a patriot only as they stood beside the cot on which his lifeless body lay; they covered up his face as gently as if they had not known of any sin committed by the hands now lying still and cold and helpless ... they closed his staring eyes as softly as they would have closed the eyes of any human being who will read these words had he or she been left for them to care for when the soul had left its earthly tenement; disembodied Spirits often linger near to such as these who stood beside that cot, for they know that they are like to them in very many ways, though yet abiding in a human frame ... they know that such as Ruth and Father Felix feel the same, sweet, almost holy joy that comes to those who meet and make welcome the ones who leave the earth-plane, newly dead; though death, I trust, is only just the change that frees a soul from earthly burdens and releases it from earthly darkness, so that it may climb, when it is purged of earthly sins, into the light that is the Smile of God and shines for all who seek it earnestly. I do not think that there can be an everlasting hell except for those who wish to dwell in darkness. I do not think there can be perpetual punishment except for those who do not wish to climb beyond it. Ruth and Father Felix felt that this was so, although the good Priest tried to think far otherwise, and, yet, deep down within his inner consciousness, he felt that God, although He is so just, yet pities those who err and welcomes all who wish to put their sins behind them in the path they find themselves upon, no matter whether they may find that path upon the earthly plane or on a higher one. They turned away from that white cot with almost God-like pity in their inmost hearts for him who lay there, or for him who had just left his body lying there upon that little cot. Ruth sought Estrella so that she might not, again, behold the face of him, who, for the love of her, had done a fearful crime; she wished to save the girl for she had been as innocent of wrong as she, herself, had been; both had been led away by human passion, it is true, but led within the bounds of human law, and, so, according to that human law, neither one was culpable ... the man, alone, had sinned, and whether it had been because he had been stronger, every way, than were the women in the case, we cannot judge. 'Tis God alone must judge us all, and may He guide us all, at last, into the light that is His holy Smile. CHAPTER XVII When Ruth had left the cot where Manuello died, she, first, found Estrella and told her what had happened after she had gone, and, then, as she had liberty to go where she desired, she started out, just as the dusk was falling, to drive along an unknown road, which as she thought must lead away from the battle-field; she felt secure for armed men of her own race and nation were patrolling all the roads surrounding the hospital; the freshness of the coming night appealed to her and, under its enticing influence, she went much farther than she meant to do; her horses often shied at little heaps that seemed to take on most fantastic shapes with the increasing darkness. She knew full well of what these little heaps had been made up, and, yet, surrounded as she was by horror, she did not feel afraid, for she was lifted up by patriotic fervor and a great desire to help where help of her was needed as were so many of the Red Cross nurses whom she met; splendid women volunteered their services as nurses during the progress of the Spanish-American war, and wore, with pride and reverence, the brilliant cross that indicated what the calling they had chosen was; Ruth Wakefield served her country with her might and wore her uniform as proudly and conscientiously as any General could; she drove along that lonely, unknown road as quietly and fearlessly as if her horses trotted over the finest boulevard in some populous city of her own United States and firmly held within her strong and steady hands the lines that guided the high-lifed team she had secured for her own use since coming to take charge of the hospital which she had endowed with her own funds. Suddenly and without warning, her team was startled by a man who rose to his full height and stood erect and tall beside the road as if he'd risen from the heaps of dead that lay beside the way; the horses soon became unmanageable and overturned the vehicle, so that Ruth suddenly found herself thrown against a slight embankment lining the road, while her frightened team turned back toward the hospital; her first thought was of them, but, remembering that, only a few miles back, she had passed one of the patrols, she hoped the team would be secured and taken into safety; then, shudderingly, she realized that she was all alone in a strange and hostile neighborhood, and, acting on a sudden impulse, she hastily climbed over the embankment as she thought she heard a noise approaching on the road; she turned and started back but kept herself concealed as much as possible behind the friendly embankment. As she proceeded she began to feel a sort of faintness, almost amounting to nausea, creeping over her and dreaded the long walk to the hospital, but decided to go on until she saw an armed man dressed in the uniform of the United States army; she wondered, at first, why she felt faint and almost sick, and, then, she realized that the offensive odors that assailed her sensitive olfactory nerves were those that rise when material bodies have been deprived of the higher life that gave them animation ... that the horrors of a bloody battle-field surrounded her, and, as she advanced slowly and with dreadful anticipation ... as she even stumbled over more than one unconscious form, that, only a few short hours before, had been as full of bounding life as she was then, she thought of what the suffering must be of those who lay among the dead, perhaps for weary, pain-filled hours, alive yet helpless; the thought was a terrific one for any tender-hearted woman to entertain, and Ruth had always been particularly thoughtful of the comfort of anyone who happened to be near to her, and, so, she soon became enthused with the idea that she might search among the heaps of dead and find, maybe, someone who lived and might, if he were rescued, yet be happy in the world she lived in, and, so, she softly called to see if anyone could hear her voice and guide her to the object of her search: "Are any here who are in need of earthly help?" she asked. "If any here can hear my voice, pray answer me and tell me where to come to find you." She waited for an answer but none came, at first; and then it seemed to her as if she heard a far-off whisper far away ... she listened breathlessly ... it came again and, then, she followed it until she found the one from whom the whisper came. He lay among a heap of bodies tossed about as if they had found death together; one whose body lay across his own, Ruth lifted, though she shuddered while she did it, for the stark, stiff form was that of one who'd, only lately, been as full of life as she was then; she laid it softly down and sought the one whose whisper she had heard; her hand crept up, along a rough and blood-soaked uniform, until it found a face and found it warm with sentient life; she was electrified by joy at finding one who lived among the dead, and hastened, then, to separate him from the other bodies lying all around him; it was as if they'd followed after him ... as if he'd been a leader of the rest ... for he was well in front of all of them and yet they were so near that, when they fell, they fell together, all around the one whose life she sought to save. She was intent on saving life and did not shrink although her gentle hand found many bloody wounds in searching for the one from which his life-blood flowed full fast; she found the place, at last ... a deep flesh-wound that touched an artery in his right arm ... she had a silken scarf about her throat, and, wrapping this about the arm above the wound, she made a tourniquet by using a small surgical instrument which she always carried for that purpose in the pocket of her nurse's apron which she still wore; this stopped the flow of blood at once, and, as the brachial artery was untouched, the man gained strength enough to whisper: "Tender Heart ... I'm going to name you right away. Tender Heart, how did you happen here ... at night ... alone?" "I think I came to find you," answered Ruth. "I thought my horses ran away and dumped me on the ground, but, now, I think I came here just to find you and to bind that poor arm. Now I'll go to bring assistance to you just as soon as I can do so." "Tender Heart," he whispered, for his voice was growing fainter, "if I should not be here when you come again, good-bye.... God bless and keep you safe from harm." She knew the meaning of the words and almost flew along, although she often stumbled as she went among the bodies lying there upon the blood-soaked ground; she reached the hospital at last ... the time seemed long to her ... and, there, in front of it, stood her two frightened horses, looking all around as if in search of her; she soothed them with her reassuring voice, and then she found a vehicle adapted to the use she wished to put it to, and two assistants from the hospital staff; thus equipped, she took the lines again and drove along the road again but with a different object than the one she'd had before; turning off the road, she found the object of her search and the assistants lifted him upon the stretcher they had brought and, very soon, the man lay, white and spent with loss of blood, but conscious, in a little cot, and Ruth, forgetting her own needs, stood there beside it. "Tender Heart," said her new patient, after he had been refreshed and bandaged thoroughly, "Tender Heart, I'm very grateful to you. Let me introduce myself to you ... your name, you see, I know. I am one of the five men who answered Roosevelt when he asked for volunteers to follow him to gain the very top of all the ridges that cropped up about San Juan hill." He smiled, "I think you know me, now, as I know you. We're both Americans.... I know that, too ... we both love Teddy.... I could see your eyes flash at the mention of his name. He is a man among men. I wish you could have heard him when he said 'I did not think you would refuse to follow where I would lead.' I stood beside his horse as he said those sad words ... the others followed, then. They followed Teddy up that hill ... they took it, too. We won the day. The Spaniards fled before us. You know me, now," he ended, whimsically, "just as well as I know you." "Yes," said Ruth, "I know you, now, and you know me ... we're both Americans and both of us love Teddy and are proud of him and what he did this day. And, now, you'd better go to sleep and rest up for we still have work to do ... the Spaniard is not conquered, yet. They'll need us both and so we must do all we can to keep our strength. I'm going, now. Good-bye until tomorrow." "Goodnight, Tender Heart," he said. "Goodnight." Ruth went, then, to the little cottage where she found old Mage and Tid-i-wats awaiting her; Estrella stayed on duty in the hospital where she had learned to do her work with neatness and dispatch. Ruth always told old Mage the happenings of the day as they were seated at their evening meal; her old nurse loved to listen to her animated account of every little thing that she remembered that she'd seen or heard about; she had an unusual memory of small details and a most graphic power of description; these she employed to interest and amuse her old nurse who had been alone with little Tid-i-wats, almost all day; in recounting recent events she passed as lightly as possible over the occurrences of the battle-field where she had found and rescued one who had been left as dead among the lifeless bodies of the slain; she did not wish to shock old Mage too much and, somehow, she did not wish to speak of him she'd rescued ... somehow, she feared that her auditor, who was always eager for romantic episodes would, maybe, choose to enter into rhapsodies concerning the possibilities of her own future if she talked too much about the handsome stranger, for remembering how he'd looked resting, as she'd seen him last, upon the little cot, his dark-blue eyes regarding her with whimsical tenacity, she freely acknowledged to herself that he was handsome and distinguished in appearance; so she changed the subject when old Mage began to question her too closely about him, and, in the changing of the subject, the rosy flush that was so much a part of her expression, crept over her fair face and lighted up her deep gray eyes until her countenance was glorified, as if her inner consciousness shone through her delicate and expressive features; old Mage observed this blush and speculated on its cause and wondered whether Ruth had found another man more worthy of affection than the one she hoped she had almost forgotten. When Ruth returned, the next day, to the hospital, she went among the little cots until she came to that one where he lay ... the man she'd helped to rescue from a slow and very painful death; she found him lying wide awake and very thoughtful: "Tender Heart," he said, "Tender Heart, you've come to me, again; I've longed for you and now you're here beside me." She rested one of her soft hands upon the cot and his hand searched for hers and found it; then their fingers intertwined and clung together for a moment only, but the memory of that hand-clasp lingered with them forever after; it was as if their very souls had intermingled in that clasping of their hands ... it was as if their spirits swung, together, out ... far out ... beyond the things of earth ... and, then, still farther out and on and up into eternal peace and lasting joy and gladness ... it was as if they had been translated into disembodied spirits while they still remained on earth ... as if a higher and a holier love than any earthly love can ever be had sought them out and found them there within that shadowy hospital ... it was as if they had gone on into the astral world and left their human bodies where they seemed to be themselves ... as if they had been separated from the material surroundings that seemed to be about them. Ruth blushed until the rosy flush crept up to her brown hair that seemed to frame her face, and looked at the soft fingers that his hand had held and then she smoothed his pillow with them as she said: "I'm very glad to find that you are better than you were last night. I surely hope that you'll recover very rapidly. I'm told that men like you will soon again be needed. It is reported that another battle will be fought not very far from here." "I surely hope," he said and said it very earnestly, "I surely hope that I'll be able to take my part in whatever engagement is entered into by our troops, and if, perchance, I should be left again upon a battle-field, I trust that you will come and find me, Tender Heart, I trust that you will find me and, if it pleases you, I hope you'll keep me, Tender Heart." She blushed again at that and simply said: "Now you must go to sleep and rest and gain what strength you can, for men like you," she ended, archly, "for men like you are almost always needed very badly." Ruth Wakefield was no flirt and never had been one; she was quickwitted and she had a wide command of language, and she smiled as she went on upon her rounds among the little cots when she remembered that neither of them really knew the other's name; she liked the name he'd given to her ... she liked the way he said it ... she liked the fine expression of his speaking countenance ... she liked his eyes ... she liked his manly way of meeting whatever came to him with courage and with cheerful readiness to serve the country they both loved ... her heart went out to him in very many ways, and, then, she looked again at those soft fingers that his hand had held ... she seemed to feel again the subtle, unexplainable, electric thrill that crept through all her being at his touch ... that seemed to answer to the look within his eyes ... the accent on his tongue, and, then, she blushed again and went about her work within that shadowy hospital where many strong men lay in bitter pain with renewed courage and with a new and hither-to unknown tenderness. She stood, at length, beside a cot whereon lay one whose face was hidden while surgeons dressed a gaping wound he had received upon his head; Ruth stopped and gave her scissors that she always carried in the pocket of her apron to the one who needed them for use in cutting away the dark hair that grew along the edges of the wound; it clung in tiny ringlets and was black as night and very soft and thick.... Ruth could not help remembering, that her hands had often strayed among such soft and dark and clinging ringlets, but she shuddered as she thought of them and of Estrella who had deemed herself to be the only woman Victorio Colenzo had ever loved, and, then, she wondered if all men were like to that one she had married thinking him to be as he professed to be ... judging him to be as truthful as she was ... she wondered if the man she had just left would be like that under similar circumstances ... he was ready in his hints at tenderness ... was he, too, perhaps, a gay deceiver? While her thoughts were rambling on in this way, her eyes were idly looking at the man who lay upon his face and writhed under the stitches that the surgeons took to close the gaping wound upon his head; he turned his face an instant toward her and she recognized him as a Spanish officer she'd seen in San Domingo under most distressing circumstances; she had gone, as she had often done before, to minister to the needs of those who were among the poorer classes in the village, one day, and found before a hovel a most richly caparisoned horse held by an orderly; inside, there knelt upon the floor a young and pretty peasant girl; she was imploring this same officer who lay upon that little cot not to make her go with him to be his helpless slave; Ruth rescued her and told the man to go his way in no uncertain language; now, he lay there dressed as if he were an American soldier; she recognized him perfectly for his face had often haunted her, it was so sinister and devilish. She sought out Father Felix, then, and told him what she had discovered, and he took what steps were necessary in the matter, for he who'd named Ruth Tender Heart had named her very well indeed; it seemed to her she could not bear to turn this Spanish spy over to the proper authorities, and, yet, she knew it was her duty to do that very thing, so the good Priest helped her to do her duty as he'd promised her he would, and, after that, there was a wall at sunrise and a platoon of armed men, and, then, that Spanish spy soon disappeared. CHAPTER XVIII We intimated when we first began this tale that Father Felix was a man to be admired, not only for his strong religious zeal, but for his great virility and patriotic fervor. Never had he shown these qualities more fully than during the naval battle of Santiago which engagement took place shortly after the events narrated in the last chapter; there was work to do on land as well as on the water at that crucial time; more than 18,000 helpless persons ... men, women and children ... marched out of the beleagued city seeking safety in the open country surrounding it; among these were many wealthy women of the higher class whose delicate silken garments were bedraggled and torn by the hardships of the journey which it was necessary to make on foot over muddy roads and through barbed wires which had been stretched irregularly all around Santiago and its vicinity by the Spanish soldiery for the purpose of turning back the invading Americans who were advancing upon them. Among these women there was one who reached the hospital over which Ruth Wakefield presided; she was bespattered and weary and sick at heart, but there was a light in her dark eyes and a steadiness in her firm hand that appealed to Ruth at once and made her single this one woman from among all who came to her that day for help; as soon as she had changed her apparel and washed the grime of travel from her person, she asked to be allowed to assist the others who were at work among the little cots that were now filled with suffering humanity; she took her place so quietly that it seemed to those among whom she moved that she had almost always been right there and would always continue to be there; Estrella liked her from the first of their acquaintance and the older woman found the girl so pleasing that whenever she could do so, she gave her hand a little squeeze or patted her upon her shoulder to make her know that they two were congenial and going on, together, toward the same loved goal; this silent association became at once a bond between these two who, in their nurse's uniforms, looked enough alike to be twin sisters ... they had the same dark eyes and sensitive and drooping lips ... they had the same fair skins, although Estrella had been tanned by more outside exposure than the other had ... they moved in the same way and both were tall and straight and lithe and quick; Ruth noticed them together and at once began to wonder why they looked so much alike ... then she thought of what Estrella'd told her as to what she knew of her own family, and, immediately, Ruth began to speculate and piece together little circumstances and then she soon began to hope that poor Estrella, maybe, might, in this way, find her own people; so she asked some kindly questions of the woman who had come to them that day, and she found that she had had a little sister, long ago ... a little sister who had disappeared and whom they'd mourned as dead for many years; Ruth told her all she knew about the girl ... all except her intimate association with the man whom, she, herself, had married; she did not feel that she could speak of him to this dark stranger ... anyway, it would not matter, now, and if Estrella wished to speak about it later on, then she could do so; they called the girl, then, and found she had a little dainty cross of gold that she had always worn about her neck.... Manuello's mother had preserved it for her while she was an infant thinking it might prove the child's identity, so that the ones who'd cared for her might be profited thereby, and, since she knew about it, she, herself, had held it sacred as the only link that bound her to her unknown family ... and so it proved, indeed, the link that proved her as the sister of the lady who had come to them that day from the beleaguered city of Santiago. Estrella's blood, it seemed, was Spanish ... she had descended from the ones who knew the roses of Castile ... she'd always seemed far different from the peasants among whom she'd lived until she met Ruth Wakefield who recognized in her a higher strain ... a higher nature ... than she found in any of the peasants whom she met in San Domingo; old Mage, even, looked upon Estrella differently than on the other servants whom she always treated with great condescension, for she felt herself above the most of them as she was always nearer to her dear young lady than any of them were; Ruth trusted her with Tid-i-wats, for one thing, which separated her from all the rest, for Tid-i-wats, was most abrupt in very many ways, and, sometimes, even went so far as to just sink her long, sharp claws right through whatever garments anybody wore, so that they found and often even penetrated the skin beneath the garments; she would do this deed in such a loving way that many who were sadly scratched by her would try to smile and take this punishment as if it were but joy and gladness ... old Mage squirmed sometimes, 'tis true, beneath this discipline that Tid-i-wats gave very freely, but she never put her down or turned against her,--only saying: "Tid-i-wats! Good land! Your blessed little claws are very sharp indeed," and, then, she'd often turn to Ruth and add, "I tell you Tid-i-wats is just as young and spry as she ever was ... no one would ever think how old she is if he could feel her claws." When Estrella found that she was not alone, but had a family, and a loving, wealthy sister, old Mage was very glad indeed ... she'd found the girl a little in her way for many reasons; Ruth deferred to her a little, pitying her so much, and old Mage knew that if Ruth pitied anybody very much she might, in time, begin to love the person whom she put her tender pity on, and, then, to the old nurse, Estrella always brought up the memory of the man who had deceived her ... made her think him to be far better than he'd ever been ... and, so, altogether, Estrella's good fortune pleased old Mage in very many pleasant ways. To say that Ruth was glad to have Estrella find her people was to put the case too lightly altogether; she was far too unselfish not to rejoice in her good fortune even though her going might mean great human loneliness for her: she had in her own inner consciousness a kind of spiritual and lasting strength on which she always leaned when outside companionship failed her in any way ... she never was alone although she often seemed to be so ... in fact, Ruth Wakefield often found herself to be alone among a crowd of human beings ... it seemed to her their many diverse thoughts disturbed the peace of mind she always longed to have ... her pity was so great ... her sympathy so broad ... and sorrows and sore trials are so common to the entire race of men and women ... that she seldom found much joy among the people whom she met; she gave most liberally to all she came in contact with ... she gave encouragement and comfort and sympathy and help ... but seldom did she find a human being who could give her anything at all for any length of time, at least: "They come and they go," she often sadly said. "It seems to me that there is nothing steadfast in this world except the God on whom I always lean when all else fails me.... I wish I _could_ find something strong enough to tie my faith to ... I _wish_ I could ... it would be wonderful to know that I could always find good, solid ground beneath my human feet ... it would be wonderful to feel that nothing mattered between another human being and myself ... to feel that nothing, good or bad, could ever really change our feelings toward each other ... but I'd have to know for sure that it was so ..." she'd add, "I'd have to know for sure, I'd have to try it out somehow ... so many things have slipped away from me ... so very many things ... I'd have to know for sure, somehow, before I'd dare to trust too much." While these personal matters were taking the attention of some of those within the shadowy hospital, Father Felix was undergoing an altogether different experience. The good Priest had, more than once, covered the entire eight miles of entrenchments around Santiago on foot and with a heavy pack containing supplies on his broad back; during the time that elapsed between the naval battle of Santiago and the surrender of the city on Sunday, July 17, 1898, he had marched with his little flock of soldiers over many stony trails and through many miry passes, and, while the engagement itself was in progress, he had performed many heroic deeds and, more than once, he had fervently thanked God for his sturdy strength of arm and limb because he was thereby enabled to give material as well as spiritual aid to those who came within the reach of his hands; had anyone been watching a certain shady spot near Santiago on July 3, 1898, he might have witnessed a peculiar scene. A rather short thick-set man, dressed as an army Chaplain and wearing a crucifix attached to a strong chain around his neck, was bending over one who lay there in the shade; he seemed to be examining the man to see if life remained in his body, and, yet, he always held the crucifix before the face of him who lay there as if he wished him to behold it, in case his earthly eyes should evermore see anything; he tried in every way he could to gain some recognition of his holy office from the man over whose earthly tenement he was then bending, but, as he did not succeed in this, he gently laid the crucifix upon the apparently pulseless breast, and went his way to find, perhaps, another one to whom he might administer the final consolation of the church whose dogmas he believed in. The man he'd left behind him stirred uneasily, and, as he writhed and twisted there, the crucifix slid off his breast and fell upon the ground; it lay where it had fallen until Father Felix came again and brought with him another sufferer; he looked upon the breast of his first charge and did not see his crucifix ... it lay beneath the body of the one he'd left it with; he gently said: "I left my crucifix with you, my Friend ... I thought it might be a consolation to you if you came to life again at all. I do not see the crucifix ... could anyone have taken it during my absence, I wonder?" "I'm sure I don't know anything about your crucifix, good Sir," the man replied in a weak voice. "I have other things to fix my mind on than anything like that. For one thing, I am wounded and I need a surgeon more than I do Priests or crosses." "I'll supply that need as far as I am able," Father Felix said. "I know I am an amateur and yet I have set broken limbs and tied up arteries and sewed up wounds full many times because there was no one better near enough to do it. Where are you hurt, my Friend?" "I am not hurt at all, you blundering old fool, you ..." the man began. "I'm dead and buried ... killed completely ... that is all ... and I don't want any old woman's work. Go get a surgeon for me ... quick! I'm losing lots of blood ... I need a surgeon, I tell you ... go get me one!" Father Felix did not say a word in answer to this tirade for he had heard full many such remarks since he had been at work among the soldiers, and, so, he bound the wounds of the second sufferer he'd brought before he stopped the flow of blood from his first charge, for, well he knew the loss of some good red blood might make it easier for him to help the man ... he was too full of life and anger ... too full of unrepented viciousness ... for the good Priest to help him very much, and, so, he let him lay there in the shade and curse and fume and rage until he worked his evil temper off a little; then he gently said to him: "Now, if you think that I can help you any, I will do all I can for you, Friend, but if you'd rather lie there on the ground and take the name of God in vain, why, I must let you do so. There is no one within hail except myself, who knows a thing about surgery, unless this man, here, does; I do not know about that part but he is wounded, too, so that I guess I am your only hope here on the earth at present. May I see your hurt and maybe bind it up and make your suffering less than it is, now?" Sheepishly, the man looked up at him, and moved a little so the crucifix became exposed; Father Felix quickly picked it up and put the chain around his neck again, and then he added to the things that he had said before: "I'm sure I'm very glad I found my crucifix ... it is of value to me for it has been the means of consolation to a great many sufferers from this sad war; it seems to help so many to behold the sufferings of One Who gave His precious life to save the lost and suffering souls who wander on the earth. He loved you, Sir, and, in His Name, I love you, too, and wish to help you, though you flout my work in your behalf. I am an amateur, but I can bind the only wound I see about you, Sir. Shall I do it, Sir, or not? I'd like to do the work the very best I could, but, if you say me nay, I'll leave it as it is." The man grinned like a bashful boy, but he bowed his head in assent and Father Felix went to work and bound his wound and left him lying there beside the other sufferer and went to find another man to help; his stocky legs and muscular arms came in quite handily, that time, for, when he came back to the shady spot, he bore one on his shoulder who looked and seemed as if already dead and gone beyond the things of earth but Father Felix laid him gently down and knelt beside him while he gently laid his recovered crucifix upon his almost pulseless breast; the first man watched the operation silently, and, then, he moved a little farther from the deepest of the shade and said: "Better bring him over here. It's better in the shade. I'll make a little more room here beside me and maybe I can help some in the dressing of his wounds." "I thank you, Sir," the Priest replied. "I surely thank you kindly, but this man has gone, I fear, beyond our earthly aid; and, yet, I could not bear to leave him lying out there in the sun; the heat is terrible out there and flies and insects gather round and many lying out there suffer from their stings. I'll leave my crucifix, here, on his breast, and, if he moves or speaks, will you please tell him I will be right back?" And then good Father Felix made another solemn trip to that sad battle-field and brought another man into the shade; and he whom he had brought there, just before, lay silently ... the silent crucifix upon his breast. The priest leaned down to listen for his breathing, then, and raised his head with joy depicted on his countenance. "He lives!" he cried aloud. "This poor fellow is alive! Perhaps it may be possible for us to bring him into consciousness again. Now, Sir," he addressed the man he had first brought into the friendly shade, "maybe you can help me. Take one of his hands between your own and rub it just as hard as you can rub it, Sir; that's right ... now, take the other one and do the same with it. Your strong vitality will maybe help his weakness, Sir. We two together may be instruments in God's Hands to bring him back to earthly life again." He put some drops of cordial on his tongue and chafed his limbs and turned him over many times until he saw some signs of returning consciousness and then he raised him up and rested his head upon his helper's breast and held the crucifix before his face so he would see it if his eyes would open; and his helper held the hands of him who seemed about to die and gazed with eagerness into his countenance. The good Priest saw this look upon his helper's face and joyed to see it there instead of the malevolent expression that had rested on his rather handsome features only a short time before. At length, the sufferer resting on the other's breast opened his wide eyes and gazed upon the crucifix and motioned that it be brought nearer to his dying lips; he kissed it, then, devoutly, and his deathless spirit passed to Him Who gave it life at first. Father Felix gently laid his body down upon the ground and placed the crucifix upon his cold, still breast, and, then, he said to him who watched it all in silence: "You see, Sir, some are happier to have the crucifix to kiss before they go to meet their Maker; I did not know that you felt as you said you did about it. I beg your pardon, Sir ... I humbly beg your pardon." CHAPTER XIX On July 17, 1898, United States troops marched into and took possession of the city of Santiago, thereby completing the assurance of independence to Cuba. On that auspicious day Ruth Wakefield closed her temporary hospital and turned over to its new owner the little cottage which she had built to shelter her small family during her stay near Santiago; with tears of joy as well as sorrow, she had said good-bye to Estrella and her new-found relatives who were about to return to the home of the latter; Father Felix had decided to return to his little flock at San Domingo as he felt that his work with the army was finished, so that, in his company and with old Mage and Tid-i-wats safely ensconced near to her, she sailed upon the first steamer going toward Havana after there was no longer need of her help among the American soldiers. It was with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow that she left the scene of her recent activities ... she was carrying with her many sad memories of heroism and of suffering borne with patriotic patience ... her heart was heavy when she reflected upon the horrors she had witnessed, but her spirit was loyal to the sacred cause for which so many splendid lives had been sacrificed ... she could see, with prophetic vision, a happy and prosperous race of people taking the place of the down-trodden and pitiful company of cowering peasants with which she had been all too familiar ... it seemed to her that she could see the smiling faces of many happy children crowding along the narrow streets of the small villages of Cuba ... it seemed to her that she could almost hear old men relating the long-past horrors that had been common under the iron heel of the Spanish oppressor ... relating these remembered facts to those who shook their heads, half doubtingly, as they listened to them. Ruth herself, was looking forward with bright anticipation to her return to her own beloved home ... dear to her, not only because of its intrinsic attractiveness, but also because of the precious memories it held of her parents whom she constantly mourned for and kept alive within her loving heart; for so it is, as I believe, that those who are beyond the earth yet live among us who are yet in human form; I think that those who are made welcome in the hearts of men and women continue, often, their stay within the circle of humanity; so long as mortals remember and long for them, so long will they care to wander among the hills and mountains and along the pleasant valleys and by the oceans and the rivers of the earth; if they should be forgotten by all humanity, it does not seem to me that they would often wish to look upon the moonlight or the sunlight of our world; if nowhere in our world their spirits could find a resting-place, it seems to me they would not care to stray among mortal men and women. Freed souls, as I believe, are not compelled to associate with those who are uncongenial to them; they do not have to yield their finest taste and dearest wishes, as so many mortals do, to what is far beneath them ... far beneath their inner consciousness of right and wrong. They do not, as I hope, just because they made some sad mistake, go on suffering for dreary years, as many women have, because they saw no way of sure release except through death itself. It is a pitiful but well-established fact that many wives and mothers have borne long years of martyrdom because, in their first youth, they made unfortunate matrimonial alliances. There are so very many ways to put on binding-chains in human life; there are so many changes common to most mortals, steadfastness and truth are such rare qualities, that I sometimes wonder how men and women manage even as well as they do. Sometimes, we criticize our fellow-men and fellow-women pretty harshly, but, then, perhaps, we only see one side, and if we could look down from some great height, perhaps we, then, would marvel that they do as well as they do, now, with human life. There have been those who honestly expected that, when they would leave their earthly tenements, they would go to sleep, when they had gone across the unknown river that they knew as death's cold stream, and, maybe, sleep a thousand years or so; they must have dreaded that last, long sleep, especially if they, as might have happened, had never been very sound or very quiet sleepers ... if they had always seemed to be on guard and wakened at the slightest unfamiliar sound ... the thought that they would just lie silently within the narrow grave they must have known it was intended they should be put in must have been a most unpleasant one; they must have edged around it all they could and seldom mentioned it to anyone around them, and, yet, that horrid thought ... that last, long sleep ... must have, often, been present in their waking thoughts, and must have, even, sometimes, haunted them in their dreams. But I believe that we go right on living when we leave the earth-plane; I believe that most of us will be wide awake and conscious from the very start of that larger life that we will, then, begin to live. I hope that we will find that we do not have to sleep at all unless we choose to do so. Ruth Wakefield kept the memories of her parents in her heart and so she always had them with her where she went, and, now, that she was going back where they and she had spent so very many happy years together, it was natural that she should think of them even more than common; a feeling of deep sadness stole across her mind whenever she reflected on her parents and their home, somehow; she could not account for this at all ... she could not satisfy herself that she had any real reason for this feeling of sadness ... but it would creep over her in spite of her efforts to banish it from her mind; old Mage felt this and tried to cheer her dear young lady up ... little Tid-i-wats felt it and rubbed against her lovingly and purred her little happy song of comfort and content ... and, yet, Ruth Wakefield dreaded, while she longed for, her own home, and, as the vessel they were on drew near to Havana, this feeling of unaccountable sadness deepened with the girl ... she drew her breath in sharply and a deep and heart-felt sigh broke from her lips as they reached the landing-place and left the wild and treacherous waters far behind them. Father Felix wondered if this evident sadness and dread were due, in part, to the experiences through which they had both passed, and also, the thought of the man whom Ruth had married surreptitiously would often cross the mind of the good Priest, for he knew well she often must remember him and his dashing, dark and manly beauty; old Mage almost cursed him in her fierce old heart when she noticed that Ruth was sad although she'd always been so glad to come back home. "It's that fellow's fault!" she grumbled to herself. "It's all his fault ... I hope he's good and dead by this time! I'm sure I'd help to make him so, most willingly! What did he want to come into her young life and almost ruin it for? The low-lived pup!" They started out, as dusk was falling, the day they reached Havana, to go to San Domingo, and, then, home; Father Felix went with them as far as his refectory, and there he bade them a cheerful good-bye and said he'd come up, soon, and see them in their home again. Ruth, somehow, feared to say good-bye to the good Priest and kept his hand in hers much longer than was her wont with any man ... he was a bulwark for anyone who clung to him for strength ... his was a nature strong and good and clean and kind.... Ruth felt this more than usually, that evening, and dreaded to go on without him; he noticed this strange mood in her and said with cheery acquiescence: "Perhaps I'd better go on up the hill with you, my Daughter. I can as well as not. No one awaits me except my little choir-boys and they have managed a long time without me. If you will wait a moment while I look about a bit, I'll just go on up with you and see you nicely settled in your own old place and then I'll come back here and settle down myself." Suiting his actions to his words, the good Priest looked around and climbed the hill with Ruth and her small retinue; the path seemed so familiar with the shadows falling all around it, that she laughed and said to Father Felix: "I am a coward, after all ... afraid of friendly wind-mills like Don Quixote ... having had to do so much with Spaniards may have made me like them in some degree at least.... I wonder if Cervantes was afraid, himself, of things that no one ought to be afraid of! I wonder if Sancho Panza was afraid, too ... was Rozinante...." And, then, she stopped, for they had reached what had been, once, the outer gate of her palatial residence; there was no gate there ... there was no residence ... there was no life there ... it was the tomb of hope and home for her; the dwelling had been razed completely ... in its stead were only smouldering ruins ... all her precious memories ... her visible and tangible reminders of her parents ... had been swept away ... she had paid an awful price for helping those who needed help from her. Father Felix stood beside her with his hand upon her shoulder ... he could not say a word of consolation or of any sort of help ... he was dumbfounded by it all; old Mage sunk down upon the ground and wept, and Tid-i-wats came close to Ruth and rubbed against her garments; stooping, then, she picked her little pet up and held her closely clasped within her sheltering arms; then she went to her old nurse and said to her: "Do not despair, my dear old Friend. God will provide for us, some way. This is a dreadful thing, but we must make the very best of it that we can possibly. I will try to think of some way whereby we may be sheltered for this one night that is before us and then I hope to find some way to rebuild a portion of the residence we used to have here on this blessed spot. Let's bear this, dear old Friend. Let's think we gave our home to save this country for the people who inhabit it and may their homes be just as full of peace and comfort and joy and gladness as this one that is gone has been for all who came beneath its friendly roof." The Father Felix stood beside her and said: "My Daughter, come with me; I'll house you all for this one night at least; I'll find a way tomorrow, somehow, for you, so that you may go on in the path that you were meant to walk in. My Daughter, let us pray for guidance in this unexpected sorrow. Let us pray." They knelt there underneath the friendly stars and the good Priest prayed, earnestly: "Dear, kind and loving Father," then he said, "look down upon us as we kneel before Thee, here; direct us with Thy holy Wisdom, for we falter and are cast down with the burden of this day. Direct the feet of her who has been sorely stricken, here, tonight; direct her feet so that she may go on upon the path that Thou hast pointed out to her. Help her to go on with courage and devotion to the cause for which she has made this great and almost overpowering sacrifice. Help her to show in all her acts, henceforth, the same sweet resignation to Thy Will that she has shown so far. And help me, Father, help Thy humble servant who is but feeble and who often fails in doing all he should for Thee and for Thy children, help Thy humble and most unworthy servant to stand as if he were a pillar, so that she may lean upon him if her courage falters, or if she should stumble or grow weak in walking in the path that she was meant by Thee to walk upon. Look down in mercy on Thy servants as we kneel before Thee here. Amen." Tid-i-wats endured this, patiently, until he went beyond the common run of prayers for him when they had been together, then she squirmed and twisted in Ruth's arms, and, finally, escaped her altogether; then old Mage corraled her and the two of them had quite a little conversation on the side: "You naughty little thing! You must behave yourself and be a nice little lady. Can't you see what's happened to us without making us a lot of trouble, too?" And Tid-i-wats said, plainly: "I'll do just as I please, you mean old thing you! Don't you _dare_ to hold me when I want to get away! I'll show you what my claws will do to you, old Mage! You let me go this minute!" Then she used some language only known to cats and those who know the devious ways of little petted cats. Then Ruth turned to her and whispered: "Little Dadditts! Little Tid-i-wats! Be a nice lady, now ... be a very nice little lady, now. Dadditts ... little bit of Dadditts...." Then she held her close and tried to comfort her and gain some comfort for herself, but her tears would come to think how happy they had always or most always been in that fine home which seemed so much a part of life to Ruth that, now that it was gone from her, life seemed a sordid and a sorry thing. But she went with Father Felix, quietly, to the refectory and there they all found comfort and refreshment, for the good Priest always had prepared himself to entertain some unexpected guests, and, with returning security and peace, his parishioners had brought some supplies to welcome him on his return; so they fared quite well considering what had met them when they reached the place where Ruth had thought to find rest from her arduous toil; instead, she had to meet renewed unrest and many problems to be solved in her near future. CHAPTER XX When Ruth Wakefield awoke the next morning after her arrival in the village of San Domingo, she became conscious of her surroundings with a sudden start; at first, she scarcely realized just where she was, for her long trip on the boat following her strenuous and nerve-wracking labor of the past few weeks, had left her very weary in mind as well as in body, so that her sleep had been profound and restful; she looked about her wonderingly and did not recognize anything near to her except little Tid-i-wats who was cuddled up in a little soft round ball right beside her pillow; then, from the adjoining room, she began to hear old Mage, who was, evidently, making her customary strenuous efforts to continue her slumbers. Gradually, Ruth remembered the desolation to which she had returned, and, hastily dressing, she left the refectory intending to go at once to the spot where her much-loved home had been, and ascertain, under the light of day, the extent of her loss, also, she wished to make some plans, while she could do so quietly and unobserved, as to the future of her little family, who, as it seemed, was now without a roof to shelter them. She slowly and cautiously ascended the hill; the pathway was almost obliterated by the growth of the wild things that had been allowed to run riot over it and she followed it more by instinct than anything else; as she gained the point from which the proud edifice she had so loved used to become visible to anyone approaching it, the fact that no buildings of any kind were in sight pressed upon her inner consciousness, and it was only with great effort that she proceeded at all; somehow, she had hoped, she now found, that the hasty survey they had made the night before might have been overdrawn in some respects and the corroboration of her worst fears was hard for her to bear; but she had become accustomed, from long endurance, to meet whatever came with calmness and courage; so she straightened her slim, tall figure to its full height, and advanced with the air of a soldier marching forth to meet the foe. She had passed the spot where the entrance gates had been; the pillars on either side of the entrance were almost entirely demolished and there was nothing to be seen of the gates themselves; all along the driveway débris was piled in disordered heaps; evidently, no one had been here, or so it seemed at a first glance, anyway, for some time; vegetation had even partially covered a part of the ruins of the dwelling itself; with repeated gasps of horror, she ran from what had been the front entrance to her home to first one side and then the other; finally, she sat down, disconsolately, like Niobe, amid the ruins of her former happiness; she knew that she was where her library had been; here she had found her most satisfying, lasting happiness, surrounded as she had been by the books she had loved; she could see the half-burned remains of many of her favorites lying all around her; thinking to save some portion of one of these, she picked it up, fondly, and laid it in her lap, while she bent over it searching for some word of comfort or some sustaining sentence; it seemed to her that some of the authors she had so dearly loved and almost reverenced, would surely come to her aid in this dire calamity ... it almost seemed to her as if one or more of them would actually speak to her in such a way as to impress her mind with their fine thoughts. Suddenly, she became conscious of the nearness of some human being; looking up, surprised and even alarmed, she beheld the man whose life she had been instrumental in saving after the battle of San Juan Hill. "Tender Heart," he said, softly, "Tender Heart, what have we here? Why are you so sad? You came to me in grievous trouble and I, it seems, have found you under similar circumstances. Tender Heart," he pleaded, "Tender Heart, let me help you as you helped me if I can do so." She turned and looked into his eyes ... she rose to her feet and took one hesitating step toward him ... she stretched out both her hands, and, somehow, then, she felt his strong arms fold themselves around her yielding form ... she felt his heart beat very near to hers ... she felt his lips against her hair ... and, then, she turned her face from his broad shoulder where it had found a resting-place, and, as her lips met his, it seemed to her that, after all, she had come home; a feeling of deep security and sweet peace crept over her: "Tender Heart," he murmured very near to her small, shell-like ear, for she had, once more, put her head against his shoulder, "Tender Heart, you do not know my name.... I am, to you, but one of those five men who volunteered, at once, to follow Teddy up San Juan Hill.... I am, to you, but only him you rescued from almost certain death upon that bloody battle-field. Are you sure you are not making a mistake, sweet, trusting Tender Heart, to grant me this great privilege, knowing as little of me as you do?" He waited for her answer, for some time, but, then, he waited willingly indeed, for her soft nearness was enough to make him very happy; when her answer came she spoke in such low tones he had to listen very closely ... he had to put his arms about her a little closer than they had been yet ... he had to lift her from the ground and bring her soft, red mouth upon a level with his head, indeed ... and then, he heard her say: "I know you just as well as you know me. We do not know each other's names ... we do not need to know them ... now ... I only know I love you, Dear ... and, now, I know that you love me." And, then, he set her feet upon the ground again and looked down into her clear, gray eyes, and found within their shining depths the very things he wanted most to know; and she looked up and saw a man who was a man indeed ... a man on whom she knew that she could lean ... a man whom she would love to walk beside ... a man of whom she could be always proud. Standing there, they gazed into each other's eyes and read their future in them ... read the happiness that they might know together on the earth, and, then, they saw beyond the chance and change that seem to to govern earthly things, and saw themselves together in some higher, better sphere. They plainly saw, there, in each other's eyes, the promise of another, more etherial world, where they might spend long ages of eternal joy and gladness in each other's company. Father Felix found them so, for he had followed Ruth to see if he could help her meet the problems that confronted her; the good Priest hesitated for only a moment before he said: "My Daughter, I trust that you have found true happiness. Sir, I do not know you very well, but I can give you most profound assurance that you have found a jewel among women; if she has any faults I have not found them, yet, and I have spent full many happy hours in her society; my work is to find faults, if so be I can trace them out; I am a hunter, and a most successful one, of human frailties, and, when I give you my most profound assurance that I have not found a fault in this one woman, the statement is worthy of respect. "Your coming at this time is most propitious, for I was almost at my wit's end as to how to help her bear the direful calamity that has just come upon her. She has not remembered half she's lost, and, now that she has found you, Sir, I trust that she will nevermore remember much of it, but that she will go on, with you beside her, leaving far behind her in her earthly path sad memories of happy days that nevermore can come to her." The man, then, gave to Father Felix his right hand and kept his left arm round Ruth's slender waist: "I do not doubt your word," he answered the good Priest. "I feel that every single word of what you've said is strictly true, and, yet, I have some fault to find with this young lady, here; she came away and did not leave a message behind for me, and I have had a weary, most disheartening time since she departed. I came to San Domingo, I traced her that far, easily, and, then, I found a little girl named Tessa something, who said she knew the very place to find her in ... she said she knew she'd go where, once, the mansion on the hill had stood ... and, so, I came straight here, and, so, I've found her. Tender Heart," he asked, "have you told the good Priest how we met?" Then Ruth blushed her pretty, fleeting, characteristic little blush, and said: "Father Felix knows me even better than I know myself, for he has told me many times what I would do before I did it. Father Felix knows me better, even, that _you_ do," then she turned to Father Felix, laughing like a happy little child, and added, "He don't even know my name and I have no idea what _his_ is; he calls me Tender Heart because I am so easily misled by tenderness and I call him ... why, I have never called him anything at all." "Yes, you have!" he interrupted, eagerly. "You called me 'Dear' just now ... so she is Tender Heart and I am Dear and that's enough, I think, don't you?" The good Priest smiled upon them almost condescendingly, for he was far above such little human twists and turns, or so he seemed to be at least, and so he was in very truth, for he had had his romance ... he had seen the grave close over the bright curls of one he dearly loved who loved him just as dearly as he did her; it was after that that he had taken up the work he did so well; he left his human happiness behind him in that narrow grave and looked beyond it to a higher, better kind of happiness; Ruth knew a little of this romantic sorrow for the good Priest had imparted it to her, and, so, her tender eyes filled up with sudden tears and her low, sweet voice trembled into even softer cadences than usual as she said: "Dear Father Felix, you are more to me than any loving brother that a woman ever had ... you are the only one who ever understood my human sorrow and I think that you will fully understand my human happiness. I wish with all my heart that you could be as happy as we are," her fair face flushed again, "for you deserve far more of happiness than I do ... as for him," she added, archly, "as for him ... do not be too sure of perfect human happiness for him.... I am but a mere child in very many ways.... I have so very much to learn.... I'm sure I'll always do the very best I can, but whether that will be the very best that could be done, of course I do not know." "I'll risk it, anyway, and I will risk it gladly, joyfully," the man averred. "I'd go again upon that bloody battle-field if you'd be sure to find me, Tender Heart," he ended, "if only in that way we two were meant to meet." When Ruth went back to the refectory she found old Mage and Tid-i-wats as lively as two crickets and as cheery as could be ... she introduced the man whose life she'd saved, or so it seemed, to them, and each of them acknowledged the introduction in her own peculiar way; old Mage stared at the man and sized him up most shrewdly, and, then, she gave her verdict very plainly by her manner of addressing him: "I'm glad to see you, Sir," she said. "I'm surely very glad to see you for I've often heard my dear young lady speak of you; I hope you'll stay around here near to us for we will have another home to build and Tid-i-wats and I are not much help to her.... I'm growing to be an old woman, now, and Tid-i-wats is so peculiar that she never is much help to anyone." And, then, the little cat came close to him and smelled his hands and rubbed against his legs, and, finally, when he sat down, she jumped up in his lap and settled down and twisted round and licked herself and washed her face and made herself entirely at home; and then she looked up at old Mage and Ruth and whispered to them that she liked him very well indeed, and, so, he was adopted into that small family. CHAPTER XXI An author who has been considered by very many people to be a most successful writer, one whose words have set before very many eyes vivid pictures of individual characteristics and national events as well, whose Indians are known all over the world, and whose historical novels will be eagerly perused as long as there are American eyes to read the pages of any book at all, used to make a sort of summary of the principal events in the lives of his very interesting characters: it always seemed to me that there was something very wholesome and satisfying in the way he finished up his books, and, so, I'd like to relate just a little more about the people I have tried to picture in this little book of mine. Ruth Wakefield found her earthly mate when she found him whose life she helped to save upon the battle-field at night, and spent full many happy years in his society; they built a modern home upon the site of the mansion on the hill and did much good among the peasants living near to them; the man became the author of very many books, and Ruth assisted him in very many ways. Old Mage and little Tid-i-wats lived out the span of earthly life allotted to each one of them, beneath the tender eye and ready hand of her who loved them both, and, when the time that had been set for them to leave this world behind them, came, Ruth Wakefield staid beside them to the very last, and ministered to them as no one else would ever do. The man she'd found had named her well when he said "Tender Heart!" to her, that night upon the battle-field. Her heart was very tender, always, except with reference to herself; she often did upbraid herself and never gave herself much credit; she often mourned, in secret, over her few brief memories of the wild, impulsive, almost insane, so-called love of him she'd married in her untried youth; she often said: "Poor Boy! Poor, lost and misled Boy! I ought to have treated him far differently than I did; his earthly path crossed mine for some good reason, I presume; and I did not do all the things I might have done, when I was near enough to help him, for him ... yet ..." she always ended, "I did the very best I could do for him, it seemed to me, at the time I had the opportunity, and I always meant and prayed to do just right. I went wrong, somehow ... or he had gone too far along a certain road before I ever met him for me to turn him back ... anyway, I pity him with all my heart and hope that he is happy where he's gone.... I hope he's found the very place he belongs in.... I know I always think of him with tender pity and no resentment, although, according to the standards of the world, he did me grievous wrong. Poor lost and misled Boy! He often looked so sad and desperate ... I wish I had done better by him while I had the chance." Her tender heart was uppermost in almost all she did except when she was doing for herself, and, then, she'd say: "My tastes are very simple ... I do not need very much of this world's goods ... it takes so very little happiness to make me almost wild with joy.... I've had to look on sorrow often, and, when I come to Joy, I bask in it as if it were God's holy sunshine." But, if it should be that old Mage or Tid-i-wats or anyone of all of those who were dependent on her, from time to time, for she, somehow always seemed to accumulate those who needed her help round her, why, then it was quite different to Tender Heart ... then, she'd say and say with vigor: "Of _course_ I can arrange to have it that way! Why, certainly, if that would bring happiness, I'll fix it right away." And sure enough she would arrange it, no matter what it meant for her of loneliness or labor ... no matter if she had to go along a lonely road that had been full of peace and happiness for her before the one who left her lonely had come into her daily life and made it hard for her, in that way, while the days were going by, yet made a grievous change again, in going; she set her teeth and did the things she had to do to make the other person happy, or to do the things he said would make him happy, then she turned her face toward her own life, cheerfully, although her hours were often very sad and lonely. But this was all before she met the man whose life she'd helped to save upon that battle-field ... all before she'd lost her cherished home and built another one. From that time on unto the end of earthly life for her, she found sweet satisfaction and content, for she had found a steadfast love to lean upon, a strong and true and virile human being, whose tastes were similar to hers, who loved his native land, America, with all his heart, as she did, too. It heartens all humanity to meet a happy pair who are congenial. It gives all other human beings courage to go on upon the path that has been set for them to go upon, to know that there is happiness if only they could find the way to reach it. Estrella soon forgot the handsome lover over whom she mourned so bitterly; the memory of him soon became a wild, sweet dream, and had she met him as he was in San Domingo, after she had found her proper place in life, it is probable that she would have turned away from him; life's contrasts have so much to do with early love that it is often difficult to know what love is really like; Estrella, when she was an unknown waif, was differently placed than she was later on. Victorio Colenzo would not have seemed the same to her that he did when she was but an unknown, simple girl; education made a change in her ... her sister looked to that. She grew to be a splendid woman, in very many ways, and married one who was her peer. Poor little Tessa seems the most forlorn of all the characters in this book. She tried so hard and failed so utterly in almost all she ever did. But Father Felix watched her tenderly, and helped her on, and, finally, one day, he married her to one who loved her truly in his own rude way, to one who was a sturdy peasant like herself, who had no romance in him, but who was true to her, and kind, as kindness goes among his sort of people; he provided for her and their children; she had many more necessities and even luxuries than most of those who were associated with her. She, sometimes, dreamed of Manuello; she never knew how his life ended. Ruth Wakefield looked her up, from time to time, but did not tell her very much about the Spanish-American war or those who entered into it; she knew she could not really understand much more than would the helpless baby at her ample breast, for Tessa did not stay the slim, small person that she was at first; she grew to be as wide, almost, as she was tall, and seemed to be quite happy as she was. She always limped a little from the blow that Manuello gave to her; the deep, sad scar he left upon her gentle heart could not be seen, and it, somehow, grew over as her flesh and family increased. Estrella always remembered her and sent her many costly and curious things which were her constant delight. She loved to display these mementoes of her girlhood's friend; her children, and her heavy husband, too, were, always proud of them. It seems to me that, when such souls as animated little Tessa's form leave this world behind them for all time, it must be that they find some soft, warm places, where they can sit at ease and watch dear little children play, and, maybe, join them in their play, and dream of happy hours, and forget all the trials of their lives upon the earth. The course of human life will, sometimes, like a placid river, flow along for many years without a single change that is any more disturbing than a little, gentle ripple or an easy turn; then, all at once, like the water, that has been so clear and still, when it has reached the rapids and becomes a raging, turbid torrent, so human life may, suddenly, be stirred to its very depths; something may transpire that will call for the most sublime courage and the most strenuous endeavor, combined with the most harrowing self-sacrifice. Like a stroke of lightning out of a calm summer sky, more than one great event in our national history has thrust itself upon our startled consciousness. At these times, leaders have appeared who have taken their places at the head of affairs as naturally and as calmly as if they had been, always, guiding those who followed after them, although, perhaps, before the time that they were needed, they were, comparatively, unknown. And so, it seems to me, it will be always. There is a Plan, an infinite, a just, a universal Plan, to which all things, mundane or otherwise, must, in the end, conform. To keep ourselves informed as to the part that we were meant to take in this great Plan, it seems to me, should be our constant study and our constant strong desire. The light of truth and understanding, that is God's Smile, looks up into our faces from the heart of every flower, whether bathed in moonlight, or shining underneath the sun; the simplest soul or the grandest intellect, alike, may bask beneath this light and feel its healing power. I love, above all else, the God of truth and right and justice, Who rules all worlds and watches over everything that lives and moves and has its being in His whole universe. It seems to me that there is implanted, although it may be completely covered up, at times, in the nature of every human being, a reverence and a most affectionate regard, that rests upon implicit faith, for Him Who gave to us, at the very beginning of of our human lives, an infallible guide ... conscience, or inner consciousness of right and wrong ... which, if always heeded, will show us where to go and what to do, no matter what vicissitudes, disappointments or sorrows we may meet. And, next to God, it seems to me, it is both natural and right to love the land of one's nativity. I know I hold in my regard, above all personal advantages, above all temporal happiness or praise, America ... the great United States ... _that one fair land whose single boast has always been that it was free_. 
36878	----	RAMBLES [Illustration] BY LAND & WATER. RAMBLES BY LAND AND WATER, OR NOTES OF TRAVEL IN CUBA AND MEXICO; INCLUDING A CANOE VOYAGE UP THE RIVER PANUCO, AND RESEARCHES AMONG THE RUINS OF TAMAULIPAS, &c. "He turns his craft to small advantage, Who knows not what to light it brings." By B. M. NORMAN, AUTHOR OF RAMBLES IN YUCATAN, ETC NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY PAINE & BURGESS. NEW ORLEANS: B. M. NORMAN. 1845. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by PAINE & BURGESS, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. Stereotyped by Vincent L. Dill, 128 Fulton st. Sun Building, N. Y. C. A. Alvord, Printer; Cor. of John and Dutch sts. PREFACE. The present work claims no higher rank than that of a humble offering to the Ethnological studies of our country. Some portions of the field which it surveys, have been traversed often by others, and the objects of interest which they present, have been observed and treated of, it may be, with as much fidelity to truth, and in a more attractive form. Of that the reading public will judge for itself. But there are other matters in this work, which are now, for the first time, brought to light. And it is the interest, deep and growing, which hangs about every thing relating to those mysterious relics of a mysterious race, which alone emboldens the author to venture _once more_ upon the troubled sea of literary enterprise. Had circumstances permitted, he would have extended his researches among the sepulchres of the past, with the hope of securing a more ample, and a more worthy contribution to the museum of American Antiquities. He has done what he could, under the circumstances in which he was placed. From what he has been enabled to accomplish, alone and unaided, he hopes that others, more capable, and better furnished with "the sinews" of travel, will be induced to make a thorough exploration of these regions of ruined cities and empires, and bring to light their almost boundless treasures of curious and interesting lore. The field is immense. It is, as yet, scarcely entered upon. No one of its boundaries is accurately ascertained. The researches made, and the materials gathered, are yet insufficient to enable us to solve satisfactorily the great problem of the origin of the races, that once filled this vast region with the arts and luxuries of civilization, and reared those mighty and magnificent structures, and fashioned those wonderful specimens of sculptured art, which now remain, in ruins, to perpetuate the memory of their greatness, though not of their names. The exploration and illustration of these marvels of antiquity, belong appropriately to American literature. They should be accomplished by American enterprise. If not soon attempted, the honor, the pleasure, and the profit, will assuredly fall into other hands. Enough has already been done, to awaken a general interest and curiosity among the wonder-seeking and world-exploring adventurers of Europe; and, if we do not speedily follow up our small beginnings, with an efficient and thorough survey, the Belzonis, and the Champollions of the Old World, will have anticipated our purpose, and borne away forever the palm and the prize. But who shall undertake the arduous achievement? Who shall be responsible for its faithful execution? If the difficulties are too great for individual enterprise, could it not be accomplished by a concert of action between the numerous respectable Historical and Antiquarian Societies of our country? What more interesting field for their united labors? Which of them will take the hint, and set the ball in motion? It is only required, that when it is done, it should be well done--not a mere experiment in book-making, a catch-penny picture book, without plan, or argument, or conclusion, leaving all the questions it proposed to discuss and solve, more deeply involved in the mist than before--but a substantial standard work, complete, thorough and conclusive, such as all our libraries would be proud to possess, and posterity would be satisfied to rely upon. There are men among us of the right kind, with the taste, the courage, the zeal, and the skill both literary and artistic, to do the work as it should be done. But they have not the means to go on their own account. They must be sent duly commissioned and provided, prepared and resolved to abide in the field, till they have traversed it in all its length and breadth and investigated and decyphered so far as it can now be done, every trace that remains of its ancient occupants and rulers--and the country, and the world, will reap the advantage of their labors. The author does not presume to flatter himself, that he has done any thing, in his present or any other humble offering, towards the accomplishment of such a work as the above suggestion proposes. He is fully conscious of his incompetence to such an undertaking. His main desire, and his highest aim, has been to present the matter in such a light, as to awaken the attention, and stimulate the interest of those who have the means, the influence, and the capacity to do it ample justice. And yet, he would not be true to himself, if he did not declare, that, in the effort to secure this end, he has used his utmost endeavor to afford, to the reader of his notes, a just equivalent for that favorable regard, which is found in that wholesome impulse which ought invariably and naturally to precede the perusal of any book. _New Orleans, October, 1845._ CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGE VOYAGE FROM NEW ORLEANS TO HAVANA.--DESCRIPTION OF THE CAPITAL OF CUBA, 21 Introductory remarks, 21 Departure from New Orleans, 23 Compagnons de Voyage, 24 Grumblers and grumbling, 24 Arrival at Havana, 25 Passports.--Harbor of Havana, 26 Fortifications.--Moro Castle, 27 The city, its houses, &c., 28 An American Sailor, 29 Society in Havana, 30 Barriers to social intercourse, 31 Individual hospitality, 32 Love of show, 33 Neatness of the Habañeros, 34 CHAPTER II. PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF HAVANA.--THE TOMB OF COLUMBUS, 35 The Tacon Theatre, 35 The Fish Market, 36 The Cathedral 36 Its architecture--paintings--shrines, 37 Decline of Romanism, 38 The Tomb of Columbus, 39 The Inscription, 40 Reflections, 40 Burial, and removal of his remains, 41 Ceremonies of his last burial, 41 Reception of remains at Havana, 42 The funeral procession, 43 The Pantheon, 43 Mr. Irving's reflections, 44 Plaza de Armas, 44 A misplaced monument, 45 Statue of Ferdinand VII., 45 Regla--business done there, 46 Going to decay, 47 Material for novelists, 48 CHAPTER III. THE SUBURBS OF HAVANA, AND THE INTERIOR OF THE ISLAND, 49 Gardens.--Paseo de Tacon, 49 Guiness, an inviting resort for invalids, 50 Scenery on the route.--Farms--hedges--orange groves, 51 Luxuriance of the soil, 52 Sugar and Coffee plantations, 52 Forests and birds, 53 Arrival at Guiness.--The town, 53 Valley of Guiness, 54 Buena Esperanza, 54 Limonar--Madruga--Cardenas--Villa Clara, 55 Hints to invalids, 55 Dr. Barton, 56 Splendors of a tropical sky, 57 The Southern Cross, 58 CHAPTER IV. GENERAL VIEW OF THE ISLAND OF CUBA, ITS CITIES, TOWNS, RESOURCES, GOVERNMENT, &C. 59 Political importance of Cuba, 59 Coveted by the nations, 60 Climate and forests, 61 Productions and Population, 62 Extent--principal cities, 63 Matanzas.--Cardenas, 64 Principe.--Santiago 65 Bayamo--Trinidad.--Espiritu Santo, 66 Government of Cuba, 66 Don Leopold O'Donnell.--Count Villa Nueva, 67 General Tacon, his services, 67 State of Cuba when appointed governor, 68 Change affected by his administration, 69 His retirement, 70 Commerce of Cuba with the United States, 70 Our causes of complaint, 71 The true interests of Cuba, 71 State of education, 72 Low condition of the people, 73 Discovery of Cuba, 73 Early History.--Velasquez.--Narvaez, 74 Story of the Cacique Hatuey, 75 The island depopulated, 76 Rapidly colonized by Spaniards, 77 Seven cities founded in four years, 77 Havana removed.--The Gibraltar of America, 77 Possibility of a successful attack, 78 CHAPTER V. DEPARTURE FROM HAVANA.--THE GULF OF MEXICO.--ARRIVAL AT VERA CRUZ, 79 The British mail steamer Dee, 79 Running down the coast, 80 Beautiful scenery--associations, 81 Discoveries of Columbus.--The island groups, 82 The shores of the continent, 83 The Columbian sea, 84 The common lot of genius, 85 Sufferings of the great.--Cervantes,--Hylander, &c., 86 Associations, historical and romantic, 87 Shores of the Columbian sea, 88 Wonderful changes wrought by time, 89 Peculiar characteristics of this sea, 90 Arrival at Vera Cruz.--Peak of Orizaba 90 Castle of St. Juan de Ulloa, 91 The harbor and the city 92 Best view from the water--houses--churches, 93 Suburbs--population, 94 Health--early history, 95 The old and new towns of Vera Cruz, 96 CHAPTER VI. SANTA ANNA DE TAMAULIPAS AND ITS VICINITY, 97 The old and new towns of Tampico, 97 The French Hotel, 98 Early history of Tampico.--Grijalva, 98 Situation of the new town--health, 99 Commerce of the place--smuggling, 100 Foreign letters--mails, 101 Buildings--wages--rents--tone of morals, 102 Gambling almost universal, 103 The army.--The Cargadores, 104 The Market Place--monument to Santa Anna, 105 A national dilemma, 106 "The Bluff"--Pueblo Viejo, 107 Visit to Pueblo Viejo, 108 Its desolate appearance.--"La Fuente," 109 Return at sunset.--Beautiful scenery, 110 The Rancheros of Mexico, 110 The Arrieros, 111 A home comparison, 111 CHAPTER VII. CANOE VOYAGE UP THE RIVER PANUCO.--RAMBLES AMONG THE RUINS OF ANCIENT CITIES, 113 An independent mode of travelling, 113 The river Panuco--its luxuriant banks, 114 A Yankee Brick Yard, 115 Indians--their position in society, 116 An Indian man and woman, 117 Topila Creek.--"The Lady's Room," 118 Fellow lodgers, 119 An aged Indian, 120 Ancient ruins--site of an aboriginal town, 121 Rancho de las Piedras 122 The Topila hills--mounds, 122 An ancient well, 123 A wild fig tree--mounds, 124 An incident--civil bandoleros, 125 CHAPTER VIII. FURTHER EXPLORATIONS OR THE RUINS IN THE VICINITY OF THE RANCHO DE LAS PIEDRAS, 127 Situation of the ruins, 127 Discoveries--a female head 128 Description--transportation to New York, 129 Colossal head, 130 The American Sphinx, 132 Conjectures, 134 Curiously ornamented head, 136 A mythological suggestion, 137 Deserted by my Indian allies, 138 A thrilling adventure, 139 The escape, 140 A road side view, 140 CHAPTER IX. VISIT TO THE ANCIENT TOWN OF PANUCO.--RUINS, CURIOUS RELICS FOUND THERE, 141 Route along the banks of the river, 141 Scenery--rare and curious trees, 142 Panuco and its inhabitants, 143 Language--antiquarian researches--Mr. Gallatin, 144 Extensive ruins in the vicinity of Panuco, 145 Sepulchral effigy, 145 Custom of the ancient Americans.--A conjecture, 147 An inference, and a conclusion, 148 Ruins on every side--Cerro Chacuaco, &c. 149 A pair of vases, 150 CHAPTER X. DISCOVERY OF TALISMANIC PENATES.--RETURN BY NIGHT TO TAMPICO, 151 Two curious ugly looking images, 151 Speculations, 152 Humbugs, 153 The blending of idolatries, 154 Far-fetched theories, 155 Similarity in forms of worship evidence of a common origin, 156 Ugliness deified--Ugnee--Gan--Miroku, 157 The problem settled, 158 The Chinese--Tartars--Japanese, 159 Return to the "Lady's Room," 160 Travelling by night--arrival at Tampico, 161 Rumor of war--attitude of the French, 161 Mexicans check-mated, 162 Backing out, 163 Dii Penates, 164 CHAPTER XI. EXCURSION ON THE TAMISSEE RIVER.--CHAPOTÉ, ITS APPEARANCE IN THE LAKES AND THE GULF OF MEXICO, 165 Once more in a canoe, 165 The Tamissee--its fertile banks, 166 Wages of labor--a promising speculation, 167 The Banyan.--The Royal Palm, 168 Extensive ruins.--Mounds on Carmelote creek, 169 A Yankee house.--The native Mexicans, 170 The chapoté in the lakes of Mexico, 171 The chapoté in the gulf of Mexico, 172 New Theory of the Gulf Stream, 172 Comparative temperature of the Gulf Stream and the Ocean, 174 Objections to this new Theory, 175 Another Theory, not a new one, 177 Tampico in mourning, 178 CHAPTER XII. GENERAL VIEW OF MEXICO, PAST AND PRESENT.--SKETCH OF THE CAREER OF SANTA ANNA. 179 Ancient Mexico--its extent--its capital, 180 Its imperial government--its sovereigns, 181 Its ancient glory.--The last of a series of monarchies, 182 Extent and antiquity of its ruins, 183 Present condition of Mexico, 184 Population--government--transfer of power, 185 The Revolution--Iturbide, 186 Internal commotions--Factions, 187 Santa Anna, his origin and success 188 Victoria.--Santa Anna in retirement, 189 Pedraza,--Santa Anna in arms again, 189 Guerrero--Barradas defeated by Santa Anna, 190 Bustamente President.--Pedraza again, 190 Santa Anna President.--Taken prisoner at San Jacinto, 191 Returns to Mexico, and goes into retirement, 191 In favor again.--Dictator--President, 192 Paredes--Herrera--Santa Anna banished, 193 Literature in Mexico--Veytia--Clavigero, 194 Antonio Gama,--The inflated character of the Press, 195 Preparing to depart--annoyances, 196 Detained by illness,--Kindness of the American Consul, 197 Departure--at home, 198 CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO AMERICAN RIDDLES, 199 Baron Humboldt's caution, 199 Enigmas of the Old World but recently solved, 200 The two extremes of theorists, 201 A medium course, 202 Previous opinions of the author confirmed, 203 Absence of tradition respecting American buildings, 203 Nature and importance of tradition, 204 The Aztecs an imaginative people, 205 Supposed effect of the conquest upon them, 206 The Aztecs not the only builders,--The Toltecs 207 Extensive remains of Toltec architecture,--A dilemma, 208 Character and condition of these ruins, 208 Evidently erected in different ages, 209 Origin of the builders--sceptical philosophies, 210 The solitary tradition, 211 Imaginary difficulties--tropical animals, 212 A new Giant's Causeway, 212 The Aborigines were not one, but many races, 213 No head of the American type found among their sculptural remains, 213 Art an imitation of nature--copies only from life, 214 Inference from the absence of the Indian type, 214 American ruins of Asiatic origin, 215 Migratory habits of the early races of men, 215 Overflowings of the populous north, 215 Conclusion, 216 LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. PAGE. VIGNETTE TITLE PAGE. MORO CASTLE, HAVANA. 27 PEAK OF ORIZABA. 90 CASTLE OF SAN JUAN DE ULLOA, VERA CRUZ. 91 INDIAN MAN AND WOMAN. 117 FEMALE HEAD. 128 COLOSSAL HEAD. 130 THE AMERICAN SPHINX. 132 CURIOUSLY ORNAMENTED HEAD. 136 A SITUATION. 139 A ROAD SIDE. 140 SEPULCHRAL EFFIGY. 145 A PAIR OF VASES. 150 TRAVELLING BY NIGHT. 161 TALISMANIC PENATES. 164 FRAGMENTS OF IDOLS. 178 RAMBLES BY LAND AND WATER. CHAPTER I. VOYAGE FROM NEW ORLEANS TO HAVANA. DESCRIPTION OF THE CAPITAL OF CUBA. Introductory remarks.--Departure from New Orleans.--Compagnons de voyage.--Their different objects.--Grumblers and grumbling.--Arrival at Havana.--Passports.--The Harbor.--The Fortifications.--The City.--Its streets and houses.--Anecdote of a sailor.--Society in Cuba.--The nobility.--"Sugar noblemen."--Different grades of Society.--Effects upon the stranger.--Charitable judgment invoked.--Hospitality of individuals.--General love of titles and show.--Festival celebration.--Neatness of the Habañeros. Who, in these days of easy adventure, does not make a voyage, encounter the perils of the boisterous ocean, gaze with rapture upon its illimitable expanse, make verses upon its deep, unfathomable blue--if perchance the Muse condescends to bear him company--plant his foot on a foreign shore, scrutinize the various objects which are there presented to his view, moralize upon them all, contemplate nations in their past, present and future existence, swell with wonder at the largeness of his comprehension--and return, if haply he may, to his native land, to pour into the listening ears of friends and countrymen, the tale of his ups and downs, his philosophic gatherings, with undisguised complacency? Whose history does not present a chapter analogous to this? We might almost write one universal epitaph, and apply it to every individual who has flourished in the present century.--"He lived, travelled, wrote a book, and died." And, seeing that in this auspicious age, when the public mind is alive "To every peril, pain and dread of woe, That _genius_ condescends to undergo--" when it seems disposed to appreciate the toil of intellectual effort, by the deference which it pays, the obedience it yields, and the signal support which it gives, to the meritorious productions of the historian, the statesman and the scholar; when we behold the power of discrimination so strikingly developed in the fact, that men are infinitely more regaled with the simple, truthful narrative, than with the ponderous tome of fictitious events, however pleasing the fabrication is made to appear;--who, it may be asked, I care not whether he has washed his hands in the clouds, while tossed upon the summit of a troubled wave, or looked out upon the world, from Alps highest peak, or whether he has leaned over the side of an humble canoe, to disturb the tranquil waters of some placid stream, above the bosom of which, his modest aspirations will never suffer him to rise,--who that has _travelled_, it matters not _how_, can do otherwise than exclaim, "Oh that my words were now written--Oh that they were printed in a book!" Though not disposed to allow that no higher sentiment than this prevalent _cacoethes scribendi_ has influenced me in the present attempt, I am, nevertheless, so thoroughly convinced of its epidemic prevalence at the present time, that I am resolved neither to wonder nor complain, if friends as well as foes, "gentle readers" as well as carping critics, should set it down as only and unquestionably a symptom. I shall retain my own opinion, however, albeit I do not express it; and, contenting, nay congratulating myself with being in good company, shall complacently set out upon another "ramble," and sit down to another book, whenever "the stars propitious shine," or health, or business, drives me away from my quiet pursuits at home. It is no slight gratification, it must be allowed, to be enabled, by so feeble an effort, to make all one's friends, as well as a portion of the great world unknown, _compagnons de voyage_ in all our rambles--to bring them into such a magnetic communication with our souls, that they shall at once see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and enjoy, without the toil and weariness of travel, all that is worthy of remembrance and record, in our various adventures by sea and land. On the 20th of January, 1844, in company with sixty fellow passengers, I turned my back upon the crescent city, and embarked on board the Steam Ship Alabama, Captain Windle, bound from Now Orleans to Havana. Many of our number, like myself, were in pursuit of health and pleasure, some were braving the dangers and enduring the privations of the passage, for the purpose of amassing wealth in the sugar and coffee trade; and others were seeking, what they probably will never find this side the grave, a happier home than the one they were leaving behind them. With a variety of humors, but for the most part with light hearts, we committed ourselves to the mercy of a kind Providence, a capricious element, and a competent and gentlemanly captain; and, setting aside such regrets as the sensitive mind cannot but indulge, in bidding adieu to the land of its birth, the companions of youth, and the faithful friends of after years, to visit distant and dangerous regions, to invite disease and brave death in many forms, we were probably as happy and merry a company as ever pursued their trackless path over the bounding deep. Our ship and its regulations were unexceptionable, our table was sumptuously spread, and the weather, all that the most fastidious invalid could desire. To the above description of our company, I ought, perhaps, to make an exception in favor of a few professional grumblers from our fatherland. "Those John Bulls" of our company, ceased not their murmurings and repinings, until the recollection of imaginary wrongs, was swallowed up in the experience of real and substantial suffering, in the land of their glorious anticipations. But we must not marvel at, or find fault with, the redeeming trait of British character. It has long been universally admitted that John Bull is a grumbler. Whether it is a "streak in the blood," a universal family characteristic, or a matter of national education, I know not; but it certainly belongs to the species, as truly and distinctively as a light heart and a gay deportment do, to their neighbors on the other side of the channel. It matters not whether you speak of the King or the Queen, the Royal Patronage or the doings of Parliament, of England, or France, or the moon, he is always ready with a loud and argumentative complaint, drawn from his own experience. If you sympathize with him, well; if not, his indifference to your regard will certainly match your stoicism. Talk to him about Church affairs; and, in all probability, he will find a "true bill" against every Ecclesiastical officer, from his Grace down to the humblest subordinate. Still, if it be a redeeming trait, why should we not respect it as such? True, it does not sound well, to hear one speak in terms of approbation respecting a _grumbler_. But surely, it must be simply because we are not accustomed to view this character in its proper light. A popular English writer observes, that "it is probably this harsh and stubborn but honest propensity, which forms the bulwark of British grandeur abroad, and of British freedom at home. In short, it is this, _more than any thing else_, which has contributed to make, and still contributes to keep England what it is." No--it will never answer to make war upon a character like that of Bull. We may occasionally introduce him to the reader, but it shall be with a just appreciation of his _imprint_, and a profound regard for his material substance. After sixty hours delightful sail, we passed the celebrated castle of the Moro, and entered the harbor of Havana. Contrary to our expectations, we were permitted to land with but little delay or inconvenience, except that which arose from "Elnorte," or a dry norther, which was blowing when we arrived, and rendered our landing a little uncomfortable. The thermometer stood at 70°, and the "_natives_" were shivering under the severity of the cold! The traveller, visiting this Island, should furnish himself with a passport, issued or verified by the Spanish Consul, at the port from which he embarks. When furnished with this ihdispensable credential, if he pay a strict regard to the laws of the island, little difficulty is to be apprehended; but, neglecting this, he will be subject to fines and the most vexatious delays; and, probably, he will be prevented from landing. Strangers proceeding into the interior, for a period not exceeding four months, must also be prepared with a license from the Governor to that effect, countersigned by the Consul of the nation to which he belongs. This requisition is undoubtedly made upon the unsuspecting traveller, in consequence of impositions practiced by foreigners, during the recent difficulties which have taken place in Cuba. Thus will undisguising honesty ever suffer in the faults of a common humanity. The harbor of Havana is one of the best in the world. The entrance into it is by a narrow channel, admitting only one vessel at a time, while its capacious basin within, is capable of containing more than a thousand ships. The view of the harbor, as you approach it from without, with its forest of masts, and the antique looking buildings and towers of the city, contrasting powerfully with the luxuriant verdure of the hills in the back-ground, is scarcely second to any in the world, in panoramic beauty and effect; while the view sea-ward, after you enter the sheltered bay, the waters of the Gulf Stream lashing the very posts of the narrow gateway by which you came in, presents one of those bold and striking contrasts, which the eye can take in, and the mind appreciate, but which no pencil can pourtray, no pen describe. [Illustration: MORO CASTLE.] The celebrated Moro, resting upon its craggy eminence, frowns over the narrow inlet. The Cabañas crowning every summit of the hills opposite the city, is a continuous range of fortifications of great extent, from whose outer parapet, elevated at least a hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, a most commanding view of the city and its beautiful environs is obtained. These fortifications are said to have cost forty millions of dollars. Within a mile on the opposite shore from the Moro, is still another fortress, so situated upon a considerable height, that its batteries could easily sweep the whole space between. Looking down from these frowning battlements upon the busy scene below, I was struck with the variety of flags, from almost every nation under heaven, blending their various hues and curious devices, amid the thick forest of masts that lay at my feet. But of all the gay and flaunting streamers that waved proudly in the morning breeze, the stripes and stars, the ensign of freedom, the pride of my own green forest land, appeared always most conspicuous. The city of Havana stands on a plain, on the west side of the harbor, but is gradually, with its continually increasing population, stretching itself up into the bosom of the beautifully verdant hills by which it is surrounded. Its general appearance is that of a provincial capital of Spain. There is an air of antiquity about this, and the cities of Mexico, which has no similitude in the United States. The streets, which are straight and at right angles to each other, are McAdamized, and, in good weather, are remarkably clean; but, during the rainy season, they become almost impassable. They are also very narrow, and without any side walks for the foot passenger. The houses, many of which are one story high, with flat roofs, have a general air of neatness, and comfort. They are usually either white or yellow washed. Many of them are of the old Moorish style of architecture, dark and sombre, as the ages to which it traces back its origin. The doors and windows reach from the ceiling to the floor, and would give an airy and agreeable aspect to the buildings, were it not for their massive walls, and the iron gratings to the windows, which remind one too strongly of the prison's gloom. It is here, however, that the females enjoy the luxury of the air, and display their charms. They are never seen walking in the streets. Those who cannot afford the expense of a _volante_, arraying themselves with the same care as they would for a promenade, or a party, may be seen daily peering through their grated windows upon the passers by, and holding familiar conversation with their friends and acquaintances in the streets. Many a bright lustrous eye, and fairy-like foot, have I thus seen through the wires of her cheerful cage, which were scarcely ever seen beyond it. A characteristic anecdote is related of an American sailor, who saw several ladies looking out upon the street, through their grated parlor windows. Supposing them to be prisoners, and sympathizing with their forlorn condition, he told them to keep up a good heart,--and then, after observing that he had been in limbo himself, he threw them a dollar, to the great amusement of the spectators, who understood the position of the inmates. But notwithstanding the gloomy appearance of the windows, the houses are well ventilated by interior courts, which permit a free circulation of air,--a commodity which is very desirable in these latitudes. The floors are of flat stone or brick, the walls stuccoed or painted,--and the traveller, judging from the external appearance, is led to imagine that within, every desirable accommodation may be obtained. In this, however, he is disappointed, and must content himself with some privations. Huge door-ways and windows, a spacious saloon, together with solidity of construction, are the chief objects to which the architect in this country seems to direct his attention. The main entrance answers the purpose of a coach-house; and it is no uncommon thing to see the _volantes_ occupying a very considerable portion of the parlor. The amount demanded for rent, in proportion to similar accommodations in other cities, is exorbitant. The present population of the city and its suburbs, is about 185,000. Society in Havana,--and it is the same throughout the island--is a singular anomaly to the stranger. It is neither that of the city, nor that of the country alone--neither national, oecumenical, nor provincial, nor a mixture of all. There are three distinct classes of what may be termed respectable society--the Spanish, the creole, and the foreigner. Among the former, with here and there an individual of the second grade, there are some who have purchased titles of nobility, at prices varying from thirty to fifty thousand dollars. They are often distinguished by the ludicrous sobriquet of "sugar noblemen," most of them having acquired their titles from the proceeds of their sugar plantations. Besides these, there are some few who have obtained the coveted distinction, as a reward for military services. Though more honorably obtained, the title is of less value to such, as they rarely have the means to support the style, which usually accompanies the rank. There are some sixty or seventy persons in the island, thus distinguished, who cannot, as a matter of course, condescend to associate in common, with the untitled grades below them. Neither do they maintain any social relations among themselves. The proud Spaniard despises the creole, and, titled or plebeian, will have nothing to do with him, beyond the necessary courtesies of business. Then the "nobleman," who has worn his dearly bought honors _twenty years_, esteems it quite beneath his dignity to exchange civilities with those _novi homines_, who are but ten years removed from the vulgar atmosphere of common life;--while he, in his turn, is quite too green to stand on a par with those, whose ancestors, for two or three generations back, have been known to fame. The same impassable distinctions exist among the plebeian grades of society. The Spaniard hates the foreign resident, and will have no intercourse with him, except so far as his interest, in the ordinary transactions of business, requires. He despises the creole, who, in his turn, hates the Spaniard, and is jealous of the foreigner. The result of this position of these antagonist elements of society is, that there is no such thing as general social intercourse among the inhabitants of Cuba, and scarcely any chance at all for the stranger, to be introduced to any society but that of the foreign residents. As these are from almost all nations, the range, for any particular one, is necessarily small. This being the case, with the constitution of society in Cuba, it would be extremely difficult for a temporary sojourner correctly to delineate the character of its inhabitants, perhaps, even unfair to attempt it. He can never see them, as they see each other. He can rarely learn, from his personal observation, any thing of society, as a whole, though he may often have favorable opportunities of becoming favorably acquainted with individual families. And here, two remarks seem to me to be demanded, before leaving this subject. First, that in all cases where such marked distinctions, and deeply rooted jealousies exist between the different sections of society, the open slanders and covert insinuations of the one against the other, should be received with the most liberal allowances for prejudice. Envy and contempt are, by their very natures, evil-eyed, uncharitable, and arrant liars. They see through a distorted medium. They judge with one ear always closed. And he who receives their decisions as law will generally abuse his own common sense and good nature, by condemning the innocent unheard. Secondly, if the society which Cuba might enjoy may be judged of by the known urbanity and hospitality of individuals, it might become, by the breaking down of these artificial barriers, the very paradise of patriarchal life. I know of nothing in the world to compare with the free, open-handed, whole-souled hospitality which the merchant, or planter, of whatever grade, lavishes upon those, who are commended to his regard by a respectable introduction from abroad. With such a passport, he is no longer a stranger, but a brother, and it is the fault of his own heart if he is not as much at home in the family, and on the estate of his friend, as if it were his own. There is nothing forced, nothing constrained in all this. It is evidently natural, hearty, and sincere, and you cannot partake of it, without feeling, however modest you may be, that you are conferring, rather than receiving a favor. This remark may be applied, with almost equal force, to many of the planters in our Southern states, and in the other West India Islands. Many and many are the invalid wanderers from home, who have known and felt it, like gleams of sunshine in their weary pilgrimage, whose hearts will gratefully respond to all that I have said. What a pity then, that such noble elements should always remain in antagonism to each other, instead of amalgamating into one harmonious confraternity, mutually blessing and being blessed, in all the sweet humanizing interchanges of social life. Much as the inferior grades of society envy and dislike those above them, they all display the same love of show, the same passion for titles, trappings, and badges of honor, whether civil or military, whenever they come within their reach. And when attained, either temporarily or permanently, their fortunate possessors do not fail to look down on those beneath them, with the same supercilious pride and self gratulation, which they so recently condemned in others. I saw some striking, and to me, exceedingly ludicrous developments of this trait of character, during the progress of a festival celebration, in honor of the day, when queen Isabel was declared of age, and all the military and civil powers swore allegiance to her Catholic Majesty. The ceremonies of this celebration were continued through three days. The Plaza, and the quarters of the military, were splendidly illuminated with variegated lamps, and the buildings, public and private, were hung with tapestry and paintings, interspersed with small brilliant lights. Business was entirely suspended, and the streets were thronged with gay excited multitudes, arrayed with every species of finery, and decked with every ornament of distinction, which their circumstances, or position in society, would allow. Reviews of troops, and sham fights on land and sea, in which the Governor, and all the high dignitaries of the island, took part, occupied a portion of the time, the remainder being filled up with balls, masquerades, and a round of other amusements. I do not know that it has been remarked by any other writer, but I observed it so often as to satisfy myself that it was a general characteristic of the better classes of the Habañeros, that they have a singular antipathy to water. After a shower of rain, they are seldom seen in the streets, except in their _volantes_, till they have had time to become perfectly dry. When necessity compels them to appear, they walk with the peculiar circumspection of a cat, picking their way with a care and timidity that often seems highly ludicrous. They are neat and cleanly in their persons, almost to a fault, and it is the fear of contracting the slightest soil upon their dress, that induces this scrupulous nicety in "taking heed to their steps." CHAPTER II. PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF HAVANA, AND THE TOMB OF COLUMBUS. The Tacon Theatre.--The Fish Market.--Its Proprietor.--The Cathedral.--Its adornments.--View of Romanism.--Infidelity.--The Tomb of Columbus.--The Inscription.--Reflections suggested by it.--The Removal of his Remains.--Mr. Irving's eloquent reflections.--A misplaced Monument.--Plaza de Armas. Among the public buildings in Havana, there are many worthy of a particular description. Passing over the Governor's House, the Intendencia, the Lunatic Asylum, Hospitals, etc., to which I had not time to give a personal inspection, I shall notice only the Tacon Theatre, the Fish Market, and the Cathedral. The Tacon Theatre is a splendid edifice, and is said to be capable of containing four or five thousand spectators. It has even been stated, that, at the recent masquerade ball given there, no less than seven thousand were assembled within its walls. This building was erected by an individual, at an expense of two hundred thousand dollars. It contains three tiers of boxes, two galleries, and a pit, besides saloons, coffee-rooms, offices, etc., etc. A trellis of gilded iron, by which the boxes are balustraded, imparts to the house an unusually gay and airy appearance. The pit is arranged with seats resembling arm-chairs, neatly covered, and comfortably cushioned. The Habañeros are a theatre-going people, and bestow a liberal patronage upon any company that is worthy of it. The Fish Market is an object of no little interest in Havana, not only for the rich variety of beautiful fishes that usually decorate its long marble table, but for the place itself, and its history. It was built during the administration of Tacon, by a Mr. Marti, who, for a service rendered the government, in detecting a gang of smugglers, with whom it has been suspected he was too well acquainted, was permitted to monopolize the sale of fish in the city for twenty years. Having the prices at his own control, he has made an exceedingly profitable business of it, and is now one of the rich men of the island. He is the sole proprietor of the Tacon Theatre, which is one of the largest in the world, and which has also the privilege of a twenty years monopoly, without competition from any rival establishment. The Fish Market is one hundred and fifty feet in length, with one marble table extending from end to end, the roof supported by a series of arches, resting upon plain pillars. It is open on one side to the street, and on the other to the harbor. It is consequently well ventilated and airy. It is the neatest and most inviting establishment of the kind that I have ever seen in any country; and no person should visit Havana, without paying his respects to it. The Cathedral is a massive building, constructed in the ecclesiastical style of the fifteenth century. It is situated in the oldest and least populous part of the city, near the Fish Market, and toward the entrance of the port. It is a gloomy, heavy looking pile, with little pretensions to architectural taste and beauty, in its exterior, though the interior is considered very beautiful. It is built of the common coral rock of that neighborhood, which is soft and easily worked, when first quarried, but becomes hard by exposure to the atmosphere. It is of a yellowish white color, and somewhat smooth when laid up, but assumes in time a dark, dingy hue, and undergoes a slight disintegration on its surface, which gives it the appearance of premature age and decay. In the interior, two ranges of massive columns support the ceiling, which is high, and decorated with many colors in arabesque, with figures in fresco. The sides are filled, as is usual in Roman Catholic churches, with the shrines of various Saints, among which, that of St. Christoval, the patron of the city, is conspicuous. The paintings are numerous; and some of them, the works of no ungifted pencils, are well worthy of a second look. The shrines display less of gilding and glitter than is usual in other places. They are all of one style of architecture, simple and unpretending; and the effect of the whole is decidedly pleasing, if not imposing. This effect is somewhat heightened by the dim, uncertain light which pervades the building. The windows are small and high up towards the ceiling, and cannot admit the broad glare of day, to disturb the solemn and gloomy grandeur of the place of prayer. It has been observed by residents as well as by strangers, that the attendance on the masses and other ceremonies of the Roman church, has greatly diminished within a few late years. I have often seen nearly as many officiating priests, as worshippers, at matins and vespers. They are attended, as in all other places, chiefly by women, and not, as the romances of the olden time would have us suppose it once was, by the young, the beautiful, the warm-hearted and enthusiastic, but by the old and ugly, so that a looker-on might be led to imagine that the holy place was only a _dernier resort_, and refuge for those, for whom the world had lost its charms. That there were some exceptions, however, to this remark, my memory and my heart must bear witness--some, whose graceful, voluptuous figures, bent down before their shrines, their beaming faces and keen black eyes scarce hidden by their mantillas, might have furnished a more stoical heart than mine with a very plausible excuse for paying homage to them, rather than to the saints, before whose shrines they were kneeling. In the various religious orders of this church, there has been a corresponding diminution of numbers and zeal. The convents of friars, in Havana, have been much reduced, and but few young men are found, who are disposed to join them; so that, in another generation, they may become quite extinct, unless their numbers are replenished from the mother country. The Government has taken possession of their buildings, and converted them to other uses, and pensioned off their inmates, allowing a premium to those who would quit the monastic life, and engage in secular business. Among the people, infidelity seems to have taken the place of the old superstition. Their holy-days are still kept up, because they love the excitement and revelry, to which they have been accustomed. Their frequent recurrence is a great annoyance to those who have business at the Custom House, and other public offices, while they add nothing to the religious or moral aspect of the place. Sunday is distinguished from the other days of the week, only by the increase of revelry, cock-fighting, gambling, and every other species of unholy employment. These are certainly no improvement upon the customs of other days, for blind superstition is better than profaneness, and ignorance than open vice. But, in one respect, the protestant sojourner in Havana may feel and acknowledge that times have changed for the better, since he is not liable now, as formerly, to be knocked down in the street, or imprisoned, for refusing to kneel in the dirt, when "the host" was passing. In this Cathedral, on the right side of the great altar, is "The Tomb of Columbus." A small recess made in the wall to receive the bones, is covered with a marble tablet about three feet in length. Upon the face of this is sculptured, in bold relief, the portrait of the great discoverer, with his right hand resting upon a globe. Under the portrait, various naval implements are represented, with the following inscription in Spanish. ¡O Restos é Imagen del grande Colon! Mil siglos durad guardados en la Orna, Y en la remembranza de nuestra Nacion. On the left side of the high Altar, opposite the tomb, hangs a small painting, representing a number of priests performing some religious ceremony. It is very indifferent as a work of art, but possesses a peculiar value and interest, as having been the constant cabin companion of Columbus, in all his eventful voyages, a fact which is recorded in an inscription on a brass plate, attached to the picture. The Lines on the tablet may be thus translated into English. O Remains and Image of the great Columbus! A thousand ages may you endure, guarded in this Urn; And in the remembrance of our Nation. Such is the sentiment inscribed on the last resting place of the ashes of the discoverer of a world. An inscription worthy of its place, bating the arrogance and selfishness of the last line, which would claim for a single nation, that which belongs as a common inheritance to the world. It is a pardonable assumption however; for, where is the nation, under the face of heaven, that would not, if it could, monopolize the glory of such a name? The glory of a name! Alas! that those who win, are so seldom allowed to wear it! Through toil and struggle, through poverty and want, through crushing care and heart-rending disappointments, through seas of fire and blood, and perhaps through unrelenting persecution, contumely and reproach, they climb to some proud pinnacle, from which even the ingratitude and injustice of a heartless world cannot bring them down; and there, alone, deserted and pointed at, like an eagle entangled in his mountain eyrie, amid the screams and hootings of inferior birds, they die,--bequeathing their greatness to the world, leaving upon the generation around them a debt of unacknowledged obligation, which after ages and distant and unborn nations, shall contend for the honor of assuming forever. The glory of a name! What a miserable requital for the cruel neglect and iron injustice, which repaid the years of suffering and self-sacrifice, by which it was earned! Columbus died at Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506, aged 70 years. His body was deposited in the convent of St. Francisco, and his funeral obsequies were celebrated with great pomp, in the parochial church of Santa Maria de la Antigua. In 1513, his remains were removed to Seville, and deposited, with those of his son, and successor, Don Diego, in the chapel of Santo Christo, belonging to the Carthusian Monastery of Las Cuevas. In 1536, the bodies of Columbus and his son were both removed to the island of Hispaniola, which had been the centre and seat of his vice-royal government in this western world, and interred in the principal chapel of the Cathedral of the city of San Domingo. But even here, they did not rest in quiet. By the treaty of peace in 1795, Hispaniola, with other Spanish possessions in these waters, passed into the hands of France. With a feeling highly honorable to the nation, and to those who conducted the negotiations, the Spanish officers requested and obtained leave to translate the ashes of the illustrious hero to Cuba. The ceremonies of this last burial were exceedingly magnificent and imposing, such as have rarely been rendered to the dust of the proudest monarchs on earth, immediately after their decease, and much less after a lapse of almost three centuries. On the arrival of the San Lorenzo in the harbor of Havana, on the 15th of January, 1796, the whole population assembled to do honor to the occasion, the ecclesiastical, civil, and military bodies vying with each other in showing respect to the sacred relics. On the 19th, every thing being in readiness for their reception, a procession of boats and barges, three abreast, all habited in mourning, with muffled oars, moved solemnly and silently from the ship to the mole. The barge occupying the centre of these lines, bore a coffin, covered with a pall of black velvet, ornamented with fringes and tassels of gold, and guarded by a company of marines in mourning. It was brought on shore by the captains of the vessels, and delivered to the authorities. Conveyed to the Plaza de Armas, in solemn procession, it was placed in an ebony sarcophagus, made in the form of a throne, elaborately carved and gilded. This was supported on a high bier, richly covered with black velvet, forty-two wax candles burning around it. In this position, the coffin was opened in the presence of the Governor, the Captain General, and the Commander of the royal marines. A leaden chest, a foot and a half square, by one foot in height, was found within. On opening this chest, a small piece of bone and a quantity of dust were seen, which was all that remained of the great Columbus. These were formally, and with great solemnity pronounced to be the remains of the "_incomparable Almirante Christoval Colon_." All was then carefully closed up, and replaced in the ebony sarcophagus. A procession was then formed to the Cathedral, in which all the pomp and circumstance of a military parade, and the solemn and imposing grandeur of the ecclesiastical ceremonial, were beautifully and harmoniously blended with the more simple, but not less heartfelt demonstrations of the civic multitude--the air waving and glittering with banners of every device, and trembling with vollies of musketry, and the ever returning minute guns from the forts, and the armed vessels in the harbor. The pall bearers were all the chief men of the island, who, by turns, for a few moments at a time, held the golden tassels of the sarcophagus. Arrived at the Cathedral, which was hung in black, and carpeted throughout, while the massive columns were decorated with banners infolded with black, the sarcophagus was placed on a stand, under a splendid Ionic pantheon, forty feet high by fourteen square, erected under the dome of the church, for the temporary reception of these remains. The architecture and decorations of this miniature temple, were rich and beautiful in the extreme. Sixteen white columns, four on each side, supported a splendidly friezed architrave and cornice, above which, on each side, was a frontispiece, with passages in the life of Columbus figured in bas-relief. Above this, rising out of the dome of the pantheon, was a beautiful obelisk. The pedestal was ornamented with a crown of laurels, and two olive branches. On the lower part of the obelisk were emblazoned the arms of Columbus, accompanied by Time, with his hands tied behind him--Death, prostrate--and Fame, proclaiming the hero immortal in defiance of Death and Time. Other emblematic figures occupied the arches of the dome. The pantheon, and the whole Cathedral, was literally a-blaze with the light of wax tapers, several hundred of which were so disposed as to give the best effect to the imposing spectacle. The solemn service of the dead was chanted, mass was celebrated, and a funeral oration pronounced. Then, as the last responses, and the pealing anthem, resounded through the lofty arches of the Cathedral, the coffin was removed from the Pantheon, and borne by the Field Marshal, the Intendente, and other distinguished functionaries, to its destined resting place in the wall, and the cavity closed by the marble slab, which I have already described. "When we read," says the eloquent Mr. Irving, "of the remains of Columbus, thus conveyed from the port of St. Domingo, after an interval of nearly three hundred years, as sacred national reliques, with civic and military pomp, and high religious ceremonial; the most dignified and illustrious men striving who should most pay them reverence; we cannot but reflect, that it was from this very port he was carried off, loaded with ignominious chains, blasted apparently in fame and fortune, and followed by the revilings of the rabble. Such honors, it is true, are nothing to the dead, nor can they atone to the heart, now dust and ashes, for all the wrongs and sorrows it may have suffered: but they speak volumes of comfort to the illustrious, yet slandered and persecuted living, showing them how true merit outlives all calumny, and receives it glorious reward in the admiration of after ages." Near the Quay, in front of the Plaza de Armas, is a plain ecclesiastical structure, in which the imposing ceremony of the mass is occasionally celebrated. It is intended to commemorate the landing of the great discoverer, and the inscription upon a tablet in the front of the building, conveys the impression that it was erected on the very spot where he first set foot upon the soil of Cuba. This, however, is an error. Columbus touched the shore of Cuba, at a point which he named Santa Catalina, a few miles west of Neuvitas del Principe, and some three hundred miles east of Havana. He proceeded along the coast, westward, about a hundred miles, to the Laguna de Moron, and then returned. He subsequently explored all the southern coast of the island, from its eastern extremity to the Bay of Cortes, within fifty miles of Cape Antonio, its western terminus. Had he continued his voyage a day or two longer, he would doubtless have reached Havana, compassed the island, and discovered the northern continent. The Plaza de Armas is beautifully ornamented with trees and fountains. It is also adorned with a colossal statue of Ferdinand VII.; and during the evenings, when the scene is much enlivened by the fine music of the military bands stationed in the vicinity, it is the general resort of citizens and strangers;--the former of whom come hither to enjoy the cheering melody of the music and the freshness of the breeze,--the latter, for the purpose of doing homage to the memory of him whose footsteps are supposed to have sanctified the ground. Here, and around the sepulchre of the departed, a holy reverence seems to linger, which attracts the visitor as to "pilgrim shrines," before which he bends with respect and admiration. The village of Regla, one of the suburbs of Havana, is situated on the eastern side of the harbor, about a mile from the city, and having constant communication with it, by means of a ferry. It is a place of about six thousand inhabitants, and is the great depot of the molasses trade. Immense tanks are provided to receive the molasses, as it comes in from the neighboring estates. I say the _neighboring_ estates, for the article is of so little value, that it will not pay the expense of transportation from any considerable distance; and very large quantities of it are annually thrown away. In some places you may see the ditches by the road side filled with it. In others, the liquid is given to any who will take it away, though in doing so, they are expected to pay something more than its real value for the hogshead. The greater part of the molasses that comes to Regla from the interior, to supply the export trade of Havana, is brought in five gallon kegs, on the backs of the mules, one on each side, after the manner of saddle-bags, or panniers. A common mule load is four or six kegs, equal to half, or two-thirds of a barrel. Large quantities are also transported in lighters from all the smaller towns on the coast, much of it coming in that way from a distance of more than a hundred miles. A large proportion of the article shipped from this port hitherto, having been unfit for ordinary domestic uses, and suitable only for the distillery, the trade in it has been greatly diminished by the operation of the mighty Temperance reform, which has blessed so large a portion of our favored land. I have not the means at hand to show the precise results; but will venture to assert, from personal observation and knowledge of the matter, that the exports of this article from Cuba to this country, for distilling purposes, have fallen off more than one half in the last ten years. The concentration of this once active and lucrative traffic at Regla, gave it, in former times, the aspect of a busy, thriving place. Now, it looks deserted and poor. It was formerly one of the many resorts of the pirates, robbers, and smugglers, who infested all the avenues to the capital, and carried on their business as a regular branch of trade, under the very walls of the city, and in full view of the custom-house and the castle. Thanks to the energetic administration of Tacon, they have no authorized rendezvous in Cuba now. Regla is consequently deserted. Its streets are as quiet as the green lanes of the country. Its houses are many of them going to decay. Its theatre is in ruins, and the spacious octagonal amphitheatre, once the arena for bull-fighting, the favorite spectacle of the Spaniards, both in Spain and in the provinces, and much resorted to from all quarters in the palmy days of piracy and intemperance, is now in a miserably dilapidated condition; affording the clearest proof of the immoral nature and tendency of the sport, by revealing the character of those who alone can sustain it. Tacon and temperance have ruined Regla. The only amusement one can now find in Regla, is in listening to the wild and frightful stories of the robbers and robberies of other days. It is scarcely possible to conceive that scenes such as are there described, as of daily, or rather nightly occurrence, could have taken place in a spot now so quiet and secure, and without any of those dark, mysterious lurking places, which the imagination so easily conjures up, as essential to the successful prosecution of the profession of an organized band of outlaws. The system set in operation by Tacon, is still maintained; and mounted guards are nightly seen scouring the deserted and comparatively quiet avenues, offering an arm of defence to the solitary and timid traveller, and a caution to the evil-disposed, that the stern eye of the law is upon them. Volumes of entertaining history, for those who have the taste to be entertained by the marvellous and horrible, might be written on this spot. And I respectfully recommend a pilgrimage to it, and a careful study of its scenery and topography, to those young novelists and magazine writers, who delight to revel in carnage, and blood, and treachery. CHAPTER III. THE SUBURBS OF HAVANA, AND THE INTERIOR OF THE ISLAND. The Gardens.--The Paseo de Tacon.--Guiness an inviting resort.--Scenery on the route.--Farms.--Hedges of Lime and Aloe.--Orange Groves.--Pines.--Luxuriance of the Soil.--Coffee and Sugar Plantations.--Forests.--Flowers and Birds.--The end of the Road.--Description of Guiness.--The Hotel.--The Church.--The Valley of Guiness.--Beautiful Scenery.--Other Resorts for Invalids.--Buena Esperanza.--The route to it.--Limonar.--Madruga.--Cardenas, etc.--Cuba the winter resort of Invalids.--Remarks of an intelligent Physician.--Pulmonary Cases.--Tribute to Dr. Barton.--The clearness of the Moon.--The beauties of a Southern Sky.--The Southern Cross. The neighborhood of Havana abounds with pleasant rides, and delightful resorts, in which the invalid may find the sweetest and most delicious repose, as well as invigorating recreation; while the man of cultivated taste, and the devout worshipper of nature, may revel in a paradise of delights. Among the many attractive localities, in the immediate vicinity of the city, the gardens of the Governor and the Bishop are pre-eminent. Outside the city wall is the "Paseo de Tacon," which is a general resort, not only for equestrians and pedestrians, but also for visitors in their cumbrous _volantes_. The stranger will find himself richly rewarded on a visit to this frequented resort. It consists of three ways: the central, and widest, for carriages; and the two lateral, which are shaded by rows of trees and provided with stone seats, for foot passengers. It presents a lively and picturesque scene, crowded as it is with people of all classes, neatly, if not elegantly dressed. A delightful excursion to Guiness occupies but four or five hours by rail-road. It is much frequented by invalids, as an escape from the monotonous routine of city life, and presents many advantages for the restoration of health, and the gratification of rural tastes and pursuits. Surrounded by luxurious groves of orange and other fruit trees,--by coffee and sugar plantations,--in full view of the table lands, proximating towards the mountains, and enjoying from November till May, a climate unequalled perhaps by any other on the face of the globe; the fortunate visitor cannot but feel that, if earth produces happiness in any of its charmed haunts, "the heart that is humble might hope for it here;" and the invalid, forgetting the object of his pursuit, might linger forever around its rich groves and shady walks. During three months of the year, the thermometer ranges about 80° at sunrise, seldom varying more than from 70° to 88°. Nearer the coast, there is more liability to fever. In the trip to Guiness, we did not fly over the ground as we often do on some of the rail-roads of our own country, the rate seldom exceeding fifteen miles an hour. And it would be more loss than gain to the passengers to go faster. The country is too beautiful, too rich in verdure, too luxuriant in fruits and flowers, and too picturesque in landscape scenery, to be hurried over at a breath. Passing the suburbs of the city, and the splendid gardens of Tacon, the road breaks out into the beautiful open country, threading its arrowy way through the rich plantations and thriving farms, whose vegetable treasures of every description can scarcely be paralleled on the face of the earth. The farms which supply the markets of the city with their daily abundance of necessaries and luxuries, occupy the foreground of this lovely picture. They are separated from each other, sometimes by hedges of the fragrant white flowering lime, or the stiff prim-looking aloe, (_agave americana_,) armed on every side with pointed lances, and lifting their tall flowering stems, like grenadier sentinels with their bristling bayonets, in close array, full twenty feet into the air. Those who have not visited the tropics, can scarcely conceive the luxuriant and gigantic growth of their vegetable productions. These hedges, once planted, form as impenetrable a barrier as a wall of adamant, or a Macedonian phalanx; and wo to the unmailed adventurer, who should attempt to scale or storm those self-armed and impregnable defences. Within these natural walls, clustered in the golden profusion of that favored clime, are often seen extensive groves of orange and pine apple, whose perennial verdure is ever relieved and blended with the fragrant blossom--loading the air with its perfume, till the sense almost aches with its sweetness--and the luscious fruit, chasing each other in unfading beauty and inexhaustible fecundity, through an unbroken round of summers, that know neither spring time, nor decay. There is nothing in nature more enchantingly wonderful to the eye than this perpetual blending of flower and fruit, of summer and harvest, of budding brilliant youth, full of hope and promise and gaiety, and mature ripe manhood, laden with the golden treasures of hopes realized, and promises fulfilled. How rich must be the resources of the soil, that can sustain, without exhaustion, this lavish and unceasing expenditure of its nutritious elements! How vigorous and thrifty the vegetation, that never falters nor grows old, under this incessant and prodigal demand upon its vital energies! It is so with all the varied products of those ardent climes. Crop follows crop, and harvest succeeds harvest, in uninterrupted cycles of prolific beauty and abundance. The craving wants, the grasping avarice of man alone exceeds the unbounded liberality of nature's free gifts. The coffee and sugar plantations, chequering the beautiful valleys, and stretching far up into the bosom of the verdant hills, are equally picturesque and beautiful with the farms we have just passed. They are, indeed, farms on a more extended scale, limited to one species of lucrative culture. The geometrical regularity of the fields, laid out in uniform squares, though not in itself beautiful to the eye, is not disagreeable as a variety, set off as it is by the luxuriant growth and verdure of the cane, and diversified with clumps of pines and oranges, or colonnades of towering palms. The low and evenly trimmed coffee plants, set in close and regular columns, with avenues of mangoes, palms, oranges, or pines, leading back to the cool and shady mansion of the proprietor, surrounded with its village of thatched huts laid out in a perfect square, and buried in overshadowing trees, form a complete picture of oriental wealth and luxury, with its painful but inseparable contrast of slavery and wretchedness. The gorgeous tints of many of the forest flowers, and the yet more gorgeous plumage of the birds, that fill the groves sometimes with melody delightful to the ear, and sometimes with notes of harshest discord, fill the eye with a continual sense of wonder and delight. Here the glaring scarlet flamingo, drawn up as in battle array on the plain, and there the gaudy parrot, glittering in every variety of brilliant hue, like a gay bouquet of clustered flowers amid the trees, or the delicate, irised, spirit-like humming birds, flitting, like animated flowerets from blossom to blossom, and coqueting with the fairest and sweetest, as if rose-hearts were only made to furnish honey-dew for their dainty taste--what can exceed the fairy splendor of such a scene! But roads will have an end, especially when every rod of the way is replete with all that can gratify the eye, and regale the sense, of the traveller. The forty-five miles of travel that take you to Guiness, traversing about four-fifths of the breadth of the island, appear, to one unaccustomed to a ride through such garden-like scenery, quite too short and too easily accomplished; and you arrive at the terminus, while you are yet dreaming of the midway station, looking back, rather than forward, and lingering in unsatisfied delight among the fields and groves that have skirted the way. San Julian de los Guiness is a village of about twenty-five hundred inhabitants, and one of the pleasantest in the interior of the Island. It is a place of considerable resort for invalids, and has many advantages over the more exposed places near the northern shore. The houses in the village are neat and comfortable. The hotel is one of the best in the island. The church is large, built in the form of a cross, with a square tower painted blue. Its architecture is rude, and as unattractive as the fanciful color of its tower. The valley, or rather the plain of Guiness, is a rich and well watered bottom, shut in on three sides by mountain walls, and extending between them quite down to the sea, a distance of nearly twenty miles. It is, perhaps, the richest district in the island, and in the highest state of cultivation. It is sprinkled all over with cattle and vegetable farms, and coffee and sugar estates, of immense value, whose otherwise monotonous surface is beautifully relieved by clusters, groves, and avenues of stately palms, and flowering oranges, mangoes and pines, giving to the whole the aspect of a highly cultivated garden. I have dwelt longer upon the description of Guiness, and the route to it, because it will serve, as it respects the scenery, and the general face of the country, as a pattern for several other routes; the choice of which is open to the stranger, in quest of health, or a temporary refuge from the business and bustle of the city. One of these is Buena Esperanza, the coffee estate of Dr. Finlay, near Alquizar, and about forty miles from Havana. One half of this distance is reached in about two hours, in the cars. The remainder is performed in _volantes_, passing through the pleasant villages of Bejucal, San Antonio, and Alquizar, and embracing a view of some of the most beautiful portions of Cuba. Limonar, a small village, embosomed in a lovely valley, a few miles from Matanzas--Madruga, with its sulphur springs, four leagues from Guiness--Cardenas--Villa Clara--San Diego--and many other equally beautiful and interesting places, will claim the attention, and divide the choice of the traveller. An intelligent writer remarks that, "with the constantly increasing facilities for moving from one part of this island to the other, the extension and improvement of the houses of entertainment in the vicinity of Havana, and the gaiety and bustle of the city itself during the winter months, great inducements are held out to visit this 'queen of the Antilles;' and perhaps the time is not far distant, when Havana may become the winter _Saratoga_ of the numerous travellers from the United States, in search either of health or recreation." He then proceeds to suggest, what must be obvious to any reflecting and observing mind, that those whose cases are really critical and doubtful, should always remain at home, where attendance and comforts can be procured, which money cannot purchase. To leave home and friends in the last stages of a lingering consumption, for example, and hope to renew, in a foreign clime and among strangers, the exhausted energies of a system, whose foundations have been sapped, and its vital functions destroyed, is but little better than madness. In such cases, the change of climate rarely does the patient any good, and particularly if accompanied with the usual advice--to "use the fruits freely." Those, however, who are but slightly affected, who require no extra attention and nursing, but simply the benefit a favorable climate, co-operating with their own prudence in diet and exercise, and who are willing to abide by the advice of an intelligent physician on the spot, may visit Cuba with confidence, nay, with positive assurance, that a complete cure will be effected. This is the easiest, and, in most cases, the cheapest course that can be pursued, in the earlier stages of bronchial affections. As a lover of my species, and particularly of my countrymen, so many of whom have occasion to resort to blander climates, to guard against the insidious inroads of consumption, I cannot leave this subject, without making use of my privilege, as a writer, to say a word of an eminent physician, residing in Havana, who enjoys an exalted and deserved reputation in the treatment of pulmonary diseases. I refer to Dr. Barton, a gentleman whose name is dear, not only to the many patients, whom, under providence, he has restored from the verge of the grave, but to as numerous a circle of devoted friends, as the most ambitious affection could desire. His skill as a physician is not the only quality, that renders him peculiarly fitted to occupy the station, where providence has placed him. His kindness of heart, his urbanity of manners, his soothing attentions, his quick perception of those thousand nameless delicacies, which, in the relation of physician and patient, more than any other on earth, are continually occuring, give him a pre-eminent claim to the confidence and regard of all who are brought within the sphere of his professional influence. To the stranger, visiting a foreign clime in quest of health, far from home and friends, this is peculiarly important. And to all such, I can say with the fullest confidence, they will find in him all that they could desire in the most affectionate father, or the most devoted brother. In the interior of the island, I observed that the moon displays a far greater radiance than in higher latitudes. To such a degree is this true, that reading by its light was discovered to be quite practicable; and, in its absence, the brilliancy of the Milky Way, and the planet Venus, which glitters with so effulgent a beam as to cast a shade from surrounding objects, supply, to a considerable extent, the want of it. These effects are undoubtedly produced by the clearness of the atmosphere, and, perhaps, somewhat increased by the altitude. The same peculiarities have been observed, in an inferior degree, upon the higher ranges of the Alleghany mountains, and in many other elevated situations, where, far above the dust and mists of the lower world, celestial objects are seen with a clearer eye, as well as through a more transparent medium. In this region, the traveller from the north is also at liberty to gaze, as it were, upon an unknown firmament, contemplating stars that he has never before been permitted to see. The scattered Nebulæ in the vast expanse above--the grouping of stars of the first magnitude, and the opening of new constellations to the view, invest with a peculiar interest the first view of the southern sky. The great Humboldt observed it with deep emotion, and described it, as one appropriately affected by its novel beauty. Other voyagers have done the same, till the impression has become almost universal, among those who have not "crossed the line," that the southern constellations are, in themselves, more brilliant, and more beautifully grouped, than those of the northern hemisphere. In prose and poetry alike, this illusion has been often sanctioned by the testimony of great names. But it is an illusion still, to be accounted for only by the natural effect of _novelty_ upon a sensitive mind, and an ardent imagination. The denizen of the south is equally affected by the superior wonders of the northern sky, and expatiates with poetic rapture upon the glories which, having become familiar to our eyes, are less admired than they should be. If any exception should be made to the above remarks, it should be only with reference to the Southern Cross, which, regarded with a somewhat superstitious veneration by the inhabitants of these beautiful regions, as an emblem of their faith, is seen in all its glory, shedding its soft, rich light upon the rolling spheres, elevating the thoughts and affections of the heart, and leading the soul far beyond those brilliant orbs of the material heavens, to the contemplation of that "Hope, which we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." It would be an easy task to enlarge upon the wonders of the sky, but how shall man describe the works of HIM "who maketh Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades, and _the Chambers of the South_?" CHAPTER IV. GENERAL VIEW OF THE ISLAND OF CUBA, ITS CITIES, TOWNS, RESOURCES, GOVERNMENT, ETC. Its political importance.--Coveted by the Nations.--National Robbery and Injustice.--Climate of Cuba.--Its Forests and Fruits.--Its great staples, Sugar and Coffee.--Copper mines.--Population.--Extent and surface.--Principal cities.--Matanzas.--Cardenas.--Puerto del Principe.--Santiago de Cuba.--Bayamo.--Trinidad de Cuba.--Espiritu Santo.--Government of the Island.--Count Villa Nueva.--Character and Services of Tacon.--Commerce of Cuba.--Relations to the United States.--Our causes of complaint.--The true interests of Cuba.--State of Education.--Discovery and early history of the Island. Cuba is the largest, richest, most flourishing, and most important of the West India Islands. In a political point of view, its importance cannot be rated too high. Its geographical position, its immense resources, the peculiar situation, impregnable strength, and capacious harbor of its capital, give to it the complete command of the whole Gulf of Mexico, to which it is the key. It is certainly an anomaly in the political history of the world, that so weak a power as that of Spain, should be allowed to hold so important a post, by the all-grasping, ambitious thrones of Europe--to say nothing of the United States, where decided symptoms of relationship to old England begin to appear. It has often been found easy, where no just cause of quarrel exists, to make one; and it is a matter of marvel that the same profound wisdom and far-reaching benevolence, that found means to justify an aggressive war upon China, because, in the simplicity of her semi-barbarism, she would not consent to have the untold millions of her children drugged to death with English opium--cannot now make slavery, or the slave trade, or piracy, or something else of the kind, a divinely sanctioned apology for pouncing upon Cuba. That she has long coveted it, and often laid plots to secure it, there is no doubt. That it would be the richest jewel in her crown, and help greatly to lessen the enormous burdens under which her tax-ridden population is groaning, there can be no question. But, the science of politics is deep and full of mysteries. It has many problems which even time cannot solve. And then, as to these United States--how conveniently might Cuba be annexed! How nicely it would hook on to the spoon-bill of Florida, and protect the passage to our southern metropolis, and the trade of the Gulf. We can claim it by an excellent logic, on the ground that it was once bound closely to Florida, the celebrated de Soto being governor of both; and Spain had no more right to separate them, in the sale and cession of Florida, than she or her provinces had, afterwards, to separate Texas from Louisiana. It is a good principle in national politics, to take an ell where an inch is given, especially when the giver is too weak to resist the encroachment--and it has been so often practised upon, that there is scarcely a nation on earth that can consistently gainsay it. The annexation fever is up now, and I suggest the propriety of taking all we intend to, or all we want, at a sweep--lest the people should grow conscientious, and conclude to respect the rights of their weaker neighbors. But, to be serious, let us take warning from the past, and learn to be just, and moderate, in order that we may be prosperous and happy. The epitaph of more than one of the republics of antiquity, might be written thus--_ruit sua mole_. Much as has been said, and that with great justice and propriety, of the delightful climate of Cuba, it is subject to no inconsiderable changes, and the invalid, who resorts thither in quest of health, must be on his guard against those changes. The "wet northers," that sometimes sweep down upon the coast, are often quite too severe for a delicate constitution to bear; and a retreat to the interior becomes necessary. During the prevalence of these winds, the southern side of the island is the favorite resort. Fortunately, these chilly visitors are few and far between, seldom continuing more than three or four days, with as many hours of rain. In the absence of these, the climate is as perfect as heart can desire, resembling, for the most part, that of the south of France. Notwithstanding the large tracts of cultivated plantations and farms, which make this beautiful island a perfect garden, it has extensive forests of great beauty and value. The palm, whether found in clusters or alone, is always a magnificent tree, and is useful for a variety of purposes--its trunk for building, its leaves for thatching, and several kinds of convenient manufactures, and its seeds for food. Mahogany abounds in some parts, and other kinds of hard wood suitable for ship building, a business which has been carried on very extensively in the island. The vine attains to a luxuriant growth, so as often to destroy the largest trees in its parasitical embrace. The orange and the pine-apple, both of a delicious flavor, abound on all sides. Indian corn, the sweet potatoe, rice, and a great variety of other important edibles are extensively cultivated, giving wealth to some, and sustenance to thousands. The great staples of Cuba, however, and the principle sources of her immense wealth, are sugar and coffee. These are produced in the greatest abundance. The annual exports amount to about six hundred and fifty millions pounds of sugar, and eighty-four millions of coffee. The exports of tobacco are about ten millions pounds in the leaf, besides three hundred and ten millions of manufactured cigars. There are also large exports of molasses, honey, wax, etc. There are copper mines of great value in the south east part of the island, in the neighborhood of Santiago. They were worked a long time, but for some reason were abandoned for more than a century. More recently they have been re-opened, and are now esteemed the richest copper mines in the world. They are worked principally by an English company, and the ore is sent to England to be smelted. The annual amount is not far from a million and a half of quintals. The whole population of Cuba is estimated at a little over a million, 420,000 whites, 440,000 slaves, and 150,000 free colored persons. The annual revenue of the island, obtained from heavy taxes upon the sales of every species of property, and from duties export as well as import, is twelve millions of dollars. This is all drawn from its 420,000 whites, averaging nearly thirty dollars a head. Of this amount, but very little is expended in the island, except for the purpose of holding the people in subjection. Four millions go into the coffers of the mother country. The island of Cuba is nearly eight hundred miles in length, from east to west, varying in breadth from twenty-five to one hundred and thirty miles. Its coast is very irregular, deeply indented with bays and inlets, and surrounded with numerous islands and reefs, making a difficult and dangerous navigation. It has many excellent harbors, that of Havana being, as has already been said, one of the best in the world. A range of mountains, rising into the region of perpetual barrenness, traverses the entire length of the island, dividing it into two unequal parts, the area of the southern portion being rather the larger of the two. There are also many other isolated mountain peaks and lofty hills, in different parts of the island, some of them beautifully wooded to their very summits, and others craggy, barren, precipitious, and full of dark caverns and frightful ravines. The principal places, after Havana, are Matanzas, Cardenas, Puerto del Principe, Santiago, St. Salvador, Trinidad, and Espiritu Santo. Besides these there are some half a dozen smaller cities, twelve considerable towns, and about two hundred villages. The principal seaports are all strongly fortified. Matanzas is situated on the northern shore, about sixty miles east of the capital. It contains, including its suburbs, about twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom rather more than half are whites, and about one sixth are free blacks. It commands the resources of a rich and extensive valley, and its exports of coffee, sugar, and molasses, are very large. The bay of Matanzas is deep and broad, and is defended by the castle of San Severino. The harbor at the head of this bay, is curiously protected against the swell of the sea, during the prevalence of the north-east winds, by a ledge of rocks extending nearly across it, leaving a narrow channel on each side, for the admission of vessels. The city is built upon a low point of land between two small rivers, which empty themselves into the bay, and from which so heavy a deposit of mud has been made, as materially to lessen the capacity of the harbor. The anchorage ground for vessels is, consequently, about half a mile from the shore, and cargoes are discharged and received by means of lighters. Cardenas is comparatively a new place, the first settlement having been made less than twenty years ago. It now numbers about two thousand inhabitants. It is finely situated at the head of a beautiful bay, fifty miles eastward of Matanzas. This bay was once a famous resort for pirates, who, secure from observation, or winked at by the well-feed officials, brought in the vessels they had seized, drove them ashore on the rocks, and then claimed their cargoes as wreckers, the murdered crews not being able to claim even a salvage for their rightful owners. In the exhibition of scenes like this, the bay of Cardenas was not alone, or singular. Many an over-hanging cliff, and dark inlet of that blood-stained shore, could tell a similar tale. The rail-road from this place to Bemba, eighteen miles distant, passes through a beautiful tract of country, and affords to the traveller a view of some of the most picturesque scenery that is to be found in the island. Owing to its fine harbor, and its facilities of communication with the rich tract of country lying behind it, this place will become a formidable rival to Matanzas, when its port shall be thrown open to foreign commerce. At present, there is no custom house here, and all the produce is transported in lighters to Matanzas or Havana, to be sold. It has not depth of water for the largest class of vessels, but the greater part of those usually employed in the West India trade, can be well accommodated. Puerto del Principe, situated in the interior of the island, about midway between its northern and southern shores, and more than four hundred miles eastward from Havana, contains a population of twenty-four thousand--fourteen thousand being whites, and about six thousand slaves. This district is celebrated for the excellent flavor of its cigars. It is a place of considerable importance, and the residence of a lieutenant-governor. Santiago de Cuba, is on the southern coast, about one hundred miles from the eastern extremity of the island, and nearly seven hundred south-east of Havana. Its population is twenty-five thousand, of whom nearly ten thousand are whites, and eight thousand slaves. It has a fine, capacious harbor, scarcely second to that of Havana, and strongly defended by a castle, and several inferior batteries. It has a large trade in sugar, coffee, and molasses. About twelve miles from the city, westward, is the town of Santiago del Prade, near which the rich copper mines, before mentioned, are situated, giving employment in one way or another, to nearly all of its two thousand inhabitants. Bayamo, or St. Salvador,--sixty miles west of Santiago, numbers nearly ten thousand souls. Manzanilla, thirty miles south from this, has three thousand. Trinidad de Cuba, two hundred miles further west, and about two hundred and fifty from Havana, has a population of thirteen thousand, of whom six thousand are whites, and four thousand five hundred, free colored. Espiritu Santo, thirty-five miles eastward from Trinidad, has less than ten thousand inhabitants in the city, and thirty-four thousand in the whole district, of whom twenty-two thousand are whites, a very unusual proportion in these islands. In their general features, in the style of the buildings, in the character of the people, their occupations, modes of living, customs of society, etc., etc., all these places bear a close resemblance to each other, varying only in location, and the lay of the land, and the forms of the rivers and bays about them. The government of Cuba is a military despotism, whose edicts are enforced by an armed body of more than twelve thousand soldiers. The Captain General is appointed by the crown of Spain, and is a kind of vice-roy, exercising the functions of commander-in-chief of the army, Governor of the western province of the island, President of the provincial assembly, etc. The present incumbent, Don Leopold O'Donnell, enjoys a great share of popularity. He holds no civil jurisdiction over the eastern province, of which Santiago is the capital. The governor of that province is entirely independent of the Captain General, except in military matters, and is amenable only to the court of Madrid. The Intendente, Count Villa Nueva, recently re-instated in that office, is said to be very desirous to ameliorate the burdens of the planting interest; and in his efforts to secure this result, he has evinced the good sense and prudence, which are usually followed with success. His integrity and talents, together with the fact that he is the only "native" who was ever exalted to high official rank, have secured for him the unbounded confidence and affection of the people. His power is distinct from that of the Governor, and is in no way dependent upon it. He exercises certain legal rights, such as the entire control of the imports and exports, and is, in fact, the sole manager of all the financial concerns of the colony. By this arrangement, the purse and the sword are entirely separated, and the dangers to be apprehended from the abuse of power, greatly diminished. No attempt to illustrate the position, resources, and character of Cuba, at the present time, would do justice to its subject, or to the feelings of its author, without an honorable and grateful mention of the name of Tacon. And no one who has visited the island, or who feels any interest in its welfare, or any regard for the lives and fortunes of those who hold commercial intercourse with its inhabitants, can withhold from the memory of that truly great and good man, the well-earned tribute of admiration and gratitude. He was a rare example of wisdom and benevolence, firmness and moderation, and seems to have been raised up by Providence, and qualified for the peculiar exigency of his time. He has, no doubt, been eminently useful in other stations in his native land; else he would never have been known to his monarch, as fitted for the difficult task assigned him here. But, if he had never acted any other part on the stage of life--if the term of his public and private usefulness had been limited to the brief period of his chief magistracy in Cuba, he had won a fame nobler than that of princes, fairer, worthier, and more enduring than that of the proudest conquerors earth ever saw. The memorial of such a man can never be found in marble, or in epitaph. It is written in the prosperity of a people, and of the nations with whom they hold commercial intercourse. It lives, and should for ever live, in the gratitude, admiration and reverence of mankind. When General Tacon was appointed Governor General of Cuba, Havana was literally a den of thieves, a nursery of the foulest crimes, a school where the blackest conceptions of which the human heart is capable, and the most diabolical inventions of mischief, were not only seen to escape punishment, but were officially tolerated and encouraged. A spirit of venality and almost incredible corruption prevailed in the judicial and financial departments; and the subaltern magistrates, if not actual partakers, by receiving their share of the booty, connived at every variety of robbery and plunder. No natural or civil rights were regarded--no one's life or property was held sacred. Murders in the open street, and under the broad blaze of a sunlit sky, were fearlessly committed; slaves and pirates unblushingly perambulated the streets, discussing their fiendish machinations, and perpetrating deeds of darkness, over which humanity should weep. Specie transported from one part of the city to another, required the protection of an armed force. Such was the aspect, and such the lamentable state of affairs, both public and private, in Havana, at the time that Tacon came into power. The measures adopted by him for the introduction of order and the purification of the whole political system, were no less wise and judicious, than his fearlessness, promptness and perserverance in enforcing them, were deserving of the highest commendation. His labors were truly Herculean, and his success in cleansing this Augean stable most signal. During his elevation to power, which continued four years, the aspect of things in Havana was completely changed. Order supplanted confusion, and wholesome authority succeeded to anarchy and misrule. Individuals became secure in the possession of life and property; strangers and foreigners no longer felt themselves surrounded by lawless bandits, and compelled, by the absence of law, order and discipline, to take the law into their own hands, or abandon, at the first appearance of violence, the protection of their rights, property and life. The man who formerly walked abroad in Havana, was forced to feel, and to act accordingly: that "his hand was against every man, and every man's against him." This Solon of Cuba was the originator and promoter of most of the principal improvements which now adorn the city and surrounding country, many of which bear his name. This bloodless revolution was accomplished without any additional public expense or burdensome tax upon the people, by a wise administration and righteous application of the ordinary resources of the government. Such, and more, were the blessings bestowed upon Cuba by Tacon. Such are the glorious results of the public career of one whose highest ambition and whose proudest aim seemed to be, the elevation of his countrymen--the welfare, security and happiness of mankind. As we honor and revere the names of Washington and La Fayette, so should the dwellers on that island ever love and cherish the name of the illustrious Tacon. At the expiration of four years, he voluntarily retired to Spain, and was succeeded in the government by General Espeleta. "May the shadow of Tacon never be less;" or, as they say in his own native tongue, "_viva ustéd múchos âños_." The commerce of Cuba is with the world; yet its importance as a trading mart is chiefly realized by its nearest neighbor, the United States. Its annual imports and exports, which nearly balance each other, amount to about twenty-five millions of dollars each. Of the imports, during the last year, which may be taken as a fair average, it received five millions two hundred and forty thousand dollars, or more than one-fifth, from the United States. Of the exports, during the same period, we received nine millions nine hundred and thirty thousand dollars, within a fraction of two-fifths. In addition to this, its commerce with the different ports of Europe, South America, and other parts of the world, furnished profitable freights to a large number of our carrying ships, and employment to our hardy seamen. We are in duty bound, therefore, to regard this miniature continent, hanging on our southern border, with a favorable eye, and to cultivate with it the most neighborly relations. It is true, we have had some cause of complaint in our intercourse hitherto, and we may not soon look for its entire removal. The imposts upon our productions are severe and disproportionate, the port-charges onerous, and the incidental exactions unreasonable and vexatious. We are often subjected to frivolous delays, and unjust impositions, in the adjustment of difficulties at the custom house, and in the recovery of debts in the courts of law. We have also, in times past, been severe sufferers from the depredations of well known and almost licensed pirates, who, in open day, and under the walls of the castle, have plundered our property, and butchered our seamen. Still, with all the offsets which the most ingenious grumbler could array, we owe much to the "Queen of the Antilles," and _might_ have more occasion for regret, than for gratulation, should she ever be transferred to the crown of England, or annexed to the territories of the United States. If her people were prepared for self-government--if the incongruous elements of society there could, by any possibility, amalgamate and harmonize, the establishment of an independent government would doubtless promote her own happiness, and benefit us and the world. The luxuriant plains, and valleys, and hill-sides of this beautiful isle, have capacities amply sufficient to sustain a population ten times as large as that which it now contains. Burdened, and almost crashed under the weight of their own taxes, ruled with a rod of iron, and held in almost slavish subjection by the bristling bayonets of a mercenary foreign soldiery, who, under the pretence of defending them from invasion or insurrection, eat out their substance, and rivet their chains--the million who now reside there, with the exception of a few overgrown estates among the planters and merchants, find, for the most part, a miserable subsistence. There is probably no class of people in any portion of the United States, so miserably poor and degraded, as the mass of the Monteros and free blacks of Cuba. Give them a fostering government, and free institutions, educate them, make men of them, and throw wide open to all the avenues to comfort, wealth and distinction--and there is no spot on the face of the globe that would sustain a denser population than this. The exports from the United States to Cuba consist of lumber of various kinds, codfish, rice, bacon, lard, candles, butter, cheese. The first two articles are almost exclusively from the Northern States, the third from the Southern, the remainder from all. The imports hence are of all the productions of the island. The cause of education in this lovely land is lamentably low. In the large cities and towns, respectable provision is made for the wants of the young in this respect. The Royal University at Havana, embracing among its advantages, schools of medicine and law, offers very considerable facilities to the industrious student. There are also several other lesser institutions in the city, with schools, public and private, for teaching the elementary branches of a common education. Some of these are tolerably well sustained; but the range they afford, and the talent they command, is comparatively so limited, that most of those who are able to bear the expense, prefer sending their sons to the United States or Europe, to complete their education. No other place in the island is so well provided in this respect as the capital. Arrangements are made, in most of the towns and interior districts, for gratuitous instruction. In some cases, this provision is wholly inadequate. In others, it is regarded with indifference by the class for whose benefit it is designed. Their abject poverty and destitution of the common comforts of life, seems to cramp all their energies, and dishearten them from any attempt to better the condition of their children. And, indeed, under their present civil and political institutions, but few advances could be made, even if the people were ambitious to improve. For the government, like all despotisms, is jealous of the intelligence of its subjects, well knowing that a reading, thinking people must and will be free. Cuba was the fifth of the great discoveries of Columbus, and by far the most important of the islands he visited. San Salvador, Conception, Exuma and Isabella, which he had already seen and named, were comparatively small and of little note, though so rich and beautiful, that they seemed to the delighted imagination of the discoverer, the archipelago of Paradise, or the "islands of the blest." It is very remarkable, that, though he skirted the whole of the southern, and more than half the northern coast of Cuba, following its windings and indentations more than twelve hundred miles, till he was fully convinced that it was a part of a great continent, and not an island; yet he made no attempt to occupy it, or to plant a colony there. It was not even visited during his life-time, and he died in the full conviction that it was not an island. He gave it the name of Juana, in honor of the young prince John, heir to the crowns of Castile and Leon. It afterwards received the name of Fernandina, by order of the king in whose name it was occupied and held. But the original designation of the natives finally prevailed over both the Spanish ones, which were long since laid aside. It is understood to be derived from the Indian name of a tree, which abounded in the island. In 1511, about five years after the death of Columbus, his son and successor, Diego, in the hope of obtaining large quantities of gold, which was then growing scarce in Hispaniola, sent Don Diego Velasquez, an experienced and able commander, of high rank and fortune, to take possession of Cuba. Panfilo de Narvaez was the second in command in this expedition. The names of both these knights are conspicuous in the subsequent history of Spanish discovery and conquest, in the islands, and on the continent, but more especially in their relation to Cortes, the great conqueror of Mexico. The inhabitants of Cuba, like those of Hispaniola, and some of the other islands, were a peaceful effeminate race, having no knowledge of the arts of war, and fearing and reverencing the Spaniards as a superior race of beings descended from above. They submitted, without opposition, to the yoke imposed upon them. It was for the most part, a bloodless conquest, yielding few laurels to the proud spirits who conducted it, but rich in the spoils of spiritual warfare to the kind-hearted and devoted Las Casas, subsequently Bishop of Chiapa, who accompanied the army in all its marches, the messenger of peace and salvation to the subjugated Indians. According to the record of this good father, the indefatigable missionary of the cross, only one chief residing on the eastern part of the island, offered any resistance to the invaders; and _he_ was not a native, but an emigrant from Hispaniola, whence he had recently escaped, with a few followers, from the cruel oppression of their new masters, to find repose on the peaceful shores of Cuba. Alarmed and excited by the appearance of the Spanish ships approaching his new found retreat, Hatuey called his men together, and in an eloquent and animated speech, urged them to a desperate resistance, in defence of their homes and their liberty. With scornful irony, he assured them that they would not be able successfully to defend themselves, if they did not first propitiate the god of their their enemies. "Behold him here," said he, pointing to a vessel filled with gold, "behold the mighty divinity, whom the white man adores, in whose service he ravages our country, enslaves us, our wives and our children, and destroys our lives at his pleasure. Behold the god of your cruel enemies, and invoke his aid to resist them." After some slight ceremonies of invocation, in imitation of the rites of Christian worship, which they had learned from their oppressors, they cast the gold into the sea, that the Spaniards might not quarrel about it, and prepared for their defence. They fought desperately, resolved rather to die in battle, than submit to the cruel domination of the invaders. They were nearly all destroyed. The Cacique Hatuey was taken prisoner, and condemned to be burned alive, in order to strike terror into the minds of the other chiefs and their people. In vain did the benevolent missionary protest against the cruel, unchristian sacrifice. He labored diligently to convert the poor cacique to the Christian faith, urging him most affectionately to receive baptism, as the indispensable requisite for admission to heaven. His reply is one of the most eloquent and bitterly taunting invectives on record. Enquiring if the white men would go to heaven, and being answered in the affirmative, he replied--"then I will not be a christian, for I would not willingly go where I should find men so cruel." He then met his death with heroic fortitude, or rather with that stoical indifference, which is a common characteristic of the aborigines of America; preferring even a death of torture to a life of servitude, especially under the hated Spaniards, who had shown themselves as incapable of gratitude, as they were destitute of pity, and the most common principles of justice. The army met with no further opposition. The whole island submitted quietly to their sway, and the unresisting inhabitants toiled, and died, and wasted away under the withering hand of oppression. It is probable, from all accounts, that the population, at the time of the conquest, was nearly, if not quite as great, as it is at the present time; though some of the Spanish chroniclers, to cover the cruelty of so dreadful a sacrifice, greatly reduce the estimate. Whatever were their numbers, however, they disappeared like flowers before the chilling blasts of winter. Unaccustomed to any kind of labor, they fainted under the heavy exactions of their cruel and avaricious task-masters. Diseases, hitherto unknown among them, were introduced by their intercourse with the strangers; and, in a few years, their fair and beautiful inheritance was depopulated, and left to the undisputed possession of the merciless intruders. In four years after the subjugation, Velasques had laid the foundation of seven cities, the sites of which were so well selected, that they still remain the principal places in the colony, with the exception of Havana, which was originally located on the southern shore, near Batabano, but afterwards abandoned on account of its supposed unhealthiness. Its present site, then called the port of Carenas, was selected and occupied in 1519. So much has been said of the impregnable strength of Havana, that I shall venture, at some risk of repetition, as well of being out of place with my remarks, to say a few words more on that point. The position of the Moro, the Cabañas, and the fortress on the opposite eminence, has been sufficiently illustrated. I know not that any thing could be added to these fortifications, to make them more perfect, in any respect, than they are. They confer upon Havana a just claim to be called, as it has been, "The Gibraltar of America." In effecting this, nature has combined with art, in a beautiful and masterly manner, so that the stranger is struck, at the first glance, with the immense strength of the place, and the thought of surprising or storming it, would seem to be little short of madness. But let it be remembered that the _impregnable_ Gibraltar was successfully attacked, and is now in possession of the conquerors. The _inaccessible_ heights of Abraham were scaled in a night, and Quebec still remains to show what seeming impossibilities courage and skill united can achieve. With the exception of the Moro, all the great fortifications at Havana, are of comparatively recent construction. They have been erected since the memorable seige of 1762, when, after one of the most desperate and sanguinary conflicts on record, the English fleet and army succeeded in capturing the city. The Spaniards say, that the final and successful sortie was made in the afternoon, while their generals was taking their _siesta_--a cover for the shame of defeat, about as transparent as that of the Roman sentinels at the tomb of Christ, whom the wily priests induced to declare, that "his disciples stole him away while they slept." There is no question, however, that, notwithstanding the great strength of this place, and its entire safety from any attack by sea, it could be assailed with effect, by the landing of efficient forces in the rear, in the same manner as these other places, just mentioned, were taken, and as the French have recently succeeded in capturing Algiers. CHAPTER V. DEPARTURE FROM HAVANA.--THE GULF OF MEXICO.--ARRIVAL AT VERA CRUZ. The Steamer Dee.--Running down the coast.--Beautiful scenery.--Associations awakened by it.--Columbus.--The scenes of his glorious achievements.--The island groups.--The shores of the continent.--"The Columbian sea."--Disappointments and sufferings, the common inheritance of genius.--Cervantes, Hylander, Camoens, Tasso.--These waters rich in historical incidents.--Revolutions.--Arrival at Vera Cruz.--The Peak of Orizaba.--Description of Vera Cruz.--Churches.--The Port.--San Juan de Ulloa.--Scarcity of Water.--The suburbs.--Population.--Yellow Fever. The British Royal mail steamer Dee, arriving at Havana on one of her regular circuits, presented a very favorable opportunity to gratify a disposition for change. Accordingly, on the 10th of February, I embarked on board of her, with the intention of touching at Vera Cruz, and thence proceeding to Tampico, and such other interesting points as my time and health would allow. The "Dee" is one of a Line of Steamers, built by a company in London, to carry the mails, which are placed in charge of an officer, acting under the direction of the British government. This company receives from the government, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds annually. The vessels average about one thousand tons each, and are so built as to be readily altered into men-of-war, should they be required to strengthen the English naval power. The Dee consumes about thirty-five tons of coal per day. Her average speed, however, under the most favorable circumstances, does not exceed eight and a half knots an hour. She is commanded by a sailing master of the British navy, whose salary is about fifteen hundred dollars per annum. She has been in service only two years, but has the appearance of being a much older vessel; a circumstance caused no doubt by the "retrenchments" consequent upon the unlimited extravagance of the company's first outfit. Her so-called "accommodations" were very inferior, and the table was miserably furnished, but the service of plate, emblazoned with heraldic designs, was, unquestionably, beautiful. We steamed out of the harbor at sunrise, the ever wakeful Moro looking sternly down upon us as we passed under its frowning battlements; and, being favored with delightful weather, skirted the coast as far as we could, and took our departure from Cape Antonio. Nothing can exceed the beauty and sublimity of the natural scenery thus presented to our view, between Havana and the point of the Cape. The broad rich plains, the gentle slopes, the luxuriant swells, the hills clothed with verdure to their very crowns, the lofty mountains with their abrupt and craggy prominences and ever changing forms, make up a landscape of the richest and rarest kind, beautiful in all its parts, and exceedingly picturesque in its general effect. The hills, with highly cultivated plantations, extending from the lovely valleys below, in beautiful order and luxuriance, far up towards their forest-crowned summits, looked green and inviting, as if full of cool grottos and shady retreats; while the far-off mountains where "Distance lent enchantment to the view," seemed traversed with dark ravines and gloomy caverns, fit abodes for those hordes of merciless banditti, whose predatory achievements have given to the shores and mountain passes of Cuba, an unenviable pre-eminence in outlawry. The motion of our oaken leviathan, sweeping heavily along through the quiet sea, created a long, low swell, which, like a miniature tide, rose gently upon the resounding shore, washing its moss-covered bank, and momentarily disturbing the echoes that lingered in its voiceless caves. It was painful to feel that I was leaving those beautiful shores, never, in all probability, to revisit them. A gloomy feeling took possession of my soul, as if parting again, and for ever, from the shores of my early home. Then came up, thronging upon the memory and the fancy, a multitude of historical associations, suggested by the land before me, and the sea on whose bosom I was borne--associations of the most thrilling and painful interest, and yet so wonderfully arrayed in the gorgeous drapery of romance, that I would not, if I could, dismiss them. Albeit, then, I may be in imminent danger of running into vain repetitions, in giving indulgence to the melancholy humor of the hour, I cannot refrain from following out, in this place, where a clear sky and an open sea leave me no better employment, some of those reflections, which, if indulged in at all, might, perhaps, with equal appropriateness have found a place in one of the previous chapters. With Cuba, one of the earliest, and the most important of the great discoveries of Columbus, behind me--the shores of Central America, the scene of his last and greatest labors in the cause of science, before me--and the wide expanse of sea, which witnessed all his toils, and sufferings, around me on every side--how could I do otherwise than recall to mind all that he had accomplished, and all that he had endured, in this region of his wonderful adventures! Here was the grand arena of his more than heroic victories, the theatre of his proud triumph over the two great obstacles, which, in all ages have opposed the march of mind--the obstinate bigotry of the ignorant, and the still more obstinate ignorance of the learned. Behind me, far away toward the rising sun, was the little island of San Salvador, where the New World, in all its elysian beauty, its virgin loveliness, burst upon his view. Conception, Fernandina, and Isabella, the bright enchanting beacons rising out of the bosom of the deep, to guide his eager prow to Cuba, the "Queen of the Antilles," were there too, slumbering on the outer verge of the coral beds of the Bahamas. Nearer, and full in view, its mountain peaks towering to the skies, and stretching its long arm nearly three hundred leagues away toward the south-east, lay the beautiful island I had just left, the richest jewel of the ocean, the brightest gem in the crown of Spain. Farther on in the same direction, and dimly descried from the eastern promontories of Cuba, were the lofty peaks of St. Domingo, beautifully flanked by Porto Rico on the right, and Jamaica on the left. Then, farther still, sweeping in a graceful curve toward the outermost angle of the Southern continent, and completing the emerald chain, which nature has so beautifully thrown across the broad chasm that divides the eastern shores of the two Americas, lay the windward cluster of the Caribbean islands, terminating with Trinidad, in the very bosom of the Gulf of Paria. Returning westward, along the coast of Paria, where Columbus first actually saw the continent, and traversing the whole extent of the Caribbean Sea, you might reach the shores of Honduras, where he again touched the shores of the continent, and finished, amid the infirmities of age, and the sufferings consequent upon a life of toil, hardship and exposure, his great achievement of discovery, his career of usefulness and glory. Coming northward, toward the point whither we were then tending, and rounding Cape Catoche into the Gulf of Mexico, you would behold the true Eldorado which they all sought for, and which the brave Cortes afterwards found--the golden mountains and golden cities of Anahuac. Northward still, some two hundred leagues, the "Father of rivers" pours his mighty current into the bosom of the Gulf, after watering and draining the richest and broadest valleys in the world, and linking together, by its various and extended branches, the mighty fraternity of republics, spread over the vast territories of the North. I pity the man, whoever he may be, and of whatever nation, who can visit these islands, or traverse these seas, for the first time, without feeling as if he were treading on enchanted ground. Every country, every sea has its peculiar history, and its peculiar associations. There is much to interest the heart, and inflame the imagination in the dark legends of the Indian archipelago--in the classic memories and time-hallowed monuments of the "Isles of Greece," and of the shores and bays, the mountains and streams of all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean--in the rock-bound coast of the North Sea--in the basaltic columns and gigantic caverns of the Emerald Isle;--but they do not, in my view, either or all of them, surpass, in the deep interest and moral grandeur of the associations they awaken, the shores that then surrounded me--the American Isthmus, and the American archipelago. The American archipelago!--the Mediterranean of the Western World, with its beautiful clusters of magnificent islands--why not call it, as Bradford long ago suggested, THE COLUMBIAN SEA? Surely, if the Florentine merchant has been permitted to rob the great Genoese discoverer of the honor of conferring his own illustrious name upon the two vast continents, which his genius and perseverance brought to light, while the whole world has quietly sanctioned the larceny--we, who know the equity of his claims, and feel how shamefully he has been abused, might at least do him the lardy justice to affix his name, in perpetuo, to this sea, which, by universal acknowledgment, he was the first to traverse and explore--the scene of his glorious triumph over the narrow and ignorant prejudices of his day, as well as of his romantic adventures, toils and sufferings. What must have been the emotions of Columbus when he first traversed these waters, and beheld these lovely islands! For, even now, with the mind already prepared by the full and elaborate descriptions of geographers and travellers, they are beheld by the voyager, for the first time, with sensations of surprise and delight. The objects of wonder with which he and his crew were surrounded--the variation of the compass, the regularity of the winds, and other phenomena, of the existence of which they could not possibly have been apprised, must have been truly exciting. Think of his astonishment on landing, to find myriads of people, disposed to regard him and his adventurous crew, as beings of a superior order, whom they were almost ready to adore. And then, pray that the veil of oblivion may be thrown over the fiendish requital which, in after years, succeeded this hospitable reception. It is any thing but agreeable to a generous heart, to witness or contemplate the strivings of a noble mind, with the cares and anxieties of life, having some magnificent project in view, but hindered from carrying it forward, by the stern demand of a starving household, or the want of that _golden_ lever, which, with or without a place to stand upon, has power to move the world. With but few exceptions, it has ever been the case, that men of genius have struggled with adversity,-- Have felt the influence of malignant star, And waged with fortune an eternal war. Fortune seldom smiles upon the sons of science. Rarely, indeed, does she condescend to become the companion of genius. It was not until Columbus had touched the master passion of his royal patrons, that he could induce them to grant him assistance. When he had convinced the king of the great pecuniary advantage to be derived to the crown from his enterprise, and the queen of the vast accessions to the holy church, in bringing new territories under her sway, and converting nations of heathen to the Christian faith,--then, and not till then, did they consent to favor his expedition. Absorbed with their one idea of planting the standards of Castile and of the Cross on the marble palaces of the Alhambra, they had no time to consider, no treasure to sustain, such magnificent schemes of discovery. Should Columbus be succored, when Cervantes, suffered and hungered for bread? Was it not the cold treatment Cervantes received, that wrung from his subdued spirit the humiliating complaint, that "the greatest advantage which princes possess above other men, is that of being attended by servants as great as themselves?" But why should we seek out, dwell upon, and hold up to the execration of the world, these instances of royal littleness, injustice, and ingratitude, when the world is, and always has been, full of such exhibitions of human nature? Was not Hylander compelled to sell his notes on Dion Casseus for a _dinner_? Did not Camoens, the solitary pride of Portugal,--he who after his death was honored by the appellation of "_the great_,"--beg for bread? Has not a Tasso from the depths of his poverty, besought his cat to assist him with the lustre of her eyes, that he might pen his immortal verse? Yes,--and one simple story would tell the fate of a Homer, Ariosto, Dryden, Spenser, Le Sage, Milton, Sydenham, and a mighty host of others, who, after having spent their lives in the cause of letters, and of human advancement and liberty, were neglected by their countrymen, and suffered to die in obscurity, if not in poverty and want! The Columbian Sea! divided by the projecting peninsulas of Yucatan and Florida, and the far-stretching walls of Cuba and Hispaniola, into two great sections, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico--how full of interest, historical and romantic, how curious, how wonderful in many of the phenomena it exhibits! Here is the inexhaustible fountain head of that inexplicable mystery of nature, the Gulf Stream, which, without any visible adequate supply, throws its mighty current of calid water, thousands of miles across the cold Atlantic. Here European civilization, and European depotism first planted its foot in the elysian fields of the west. Here the dreadful work of subjugation, and extermination commenced a work, which, in three brief centuries, under the banners, too, of the Prince of Peace, and in the name of Christianity, has blotted from the face of the earth a mighty family of populous nations, some of them far advanced in civilization and refinement, leaving only here and there a scattered and almost exhausted tribe, bending under the yoke of slavery, or flying before the continual encroachments of the white man. It is difficult to say to which quarter of this sea one should turn, in order to gather up the incidents and associations, which shall most deeply touch the heart, and excite the imagination. On the east, these beautiful, luxuriant islands, the first seen and visited, where the great, the noble, the generous-hearted discoverer was received as a god by the simple and hospitable natives, and afterwards calumniated, oppressed, deserted by his friends, and left by his envious foes to pine a whole year on the shores of Jamaica, with no shelter but the wreck of his last vessel--where too he was shamefully imprisoned, and then sent home in chains, deprived of his honors and his rights. On the west, the golden regions of Mexico, where the Montezumas reigned with a degree of splendor rivalling the most brilliant dynasties of the Old World--where civilization, and the arts of refinement, were enjoyed to a degree unknown to many of the most powerful nations of antiquity--where pyramids, temples, and palaces, whose extent and magnificence might have vied with those of Egypt and Syria, still remain in ruins to attest the departed glory of the Aztec races--and where the marvellous, the scarcely credible adventures of Cortes, and his little hand of brave invaders, brought desolation and wo on all that sunny region. On the south, the great continent, the scene of similar adventures--the theatre of oppression, of civil discord, of revolution, of a perpetual struggle for power, but, it may be hoped, ere long of republican liberty. On the north--what shall I say--the fairest and best portion of the wide earth--the home of liberty--the home of our fathers--in a word, which contains a depth of meaning that belongs to no other in any language--home! How wonderfully have these shores changed hands and masters, since the day when Columbus gave them all to Spain. What has she now left? The entire continent of South America, the golden regions of the Isthmus, the broad savannahs of Florida, and the boundless prairies of the great west, have all been wrested from her iron and oppressive rule. And, of all that rich cluster of islands, that lie along the eastern boundary of this great sea--only Cuba and Porto Rico now acknowledge her sway. How bitterly the wrongs she inflicted upon the hapless natives of these fair lands, have recoiled upon her own head, and upon the heads of all her representatives in the New World. Scarcely for one moment have they held any of their ill-gotten possessions in peace. Revolt and revolution have swept over them in quick succession, like the Sirocco of the desert, burying millions of merciless oppressors in the same graves with the millions of the oppressed. Anarchy, confusion, bloodshed, and civil discord and commotion, have been the lot of their inheritance. And even to this day, except in the islands above named, wherever the Spanish race remains in the ascendancy, the seat of its power is, as it were, the crater of a volcano, where society, no less than the earth, heaves and groans and trembles with the throes of inward convulsion. Look yonder, as we near the shores of Mexico. Clouds of dust and smoke--the thunders of artillery, the falling of successive dynasties, mingle with the terrible din of the earthquake, and the sulphureous belchings of subterraneous fires, and send up their angry shouts, and voices of wailing to the skies, till the whole civilized world is disturbed by their incessant broils. How long shall it be? When shall this land have rest? When shall the curse of war, which has been laid upon it for so many centuries, be revoked? Heaven speed the day. There are some features which have been noticed by voyagers, as peculiar to these waters. Whether they do not belong to inland seas, and to bays and gulfs generally, my personal observation does not enable me to determine. The color of the water is a less decided blue than that of the ocean. This phenomenon I am at a loss to explain, having always supposed that the color of the sea was only the reflection of the azure depths of the sky, and that, consequently, in the clear atmosphere, and the deep blue heavens, of the tropics, it would show a deeper tinge of cerulean than elsewhere. It is also remarked that there is seldom known here, the long equable swell, and gentle undulation, of the open ocean, but a short pitchy sea, which, in small craft, is very disagreeable, but is less noticeable in the larger class of vessels. The gulf is subject to periodical calms in the summer, and to violent gales from the north in the autumnal months. Of the Chapoté, an asphaltic ebullition on the surface of the sea, I shall speak more fully in another place, in connection with a similar phenomenon observed in the lakes of Mexico. We arrived at Vera Cruz on the 15th of February. The voyage proved agreeable--especially to those of our party who were subject to sea-sickness, and who could therefore well appreciate their entire freedom from the unpalatable, and often ludicrous effects produced by the unceremonious movement of the waves, when uncontrolled by the irresistible agency of steam. Indeed, we all felt strongly convinced, that steam navigation is the _ne plus ultra_ of travelling at sea. [Illustration: THE PEAK OF ORIZABA.] Long before we made the land, the grand and lofty peak of Orizaba, with its spotless mantle of eternal snow, rearing its hoary head seventeen thousand feet above us, presented itself to our view. The highest ranges of the Alleghanies, and the lofty summits of the Catskill, of my own country, were familiar to my boyish days--but, I was little prepared to behold a scene like this--a scene which caused the wonders of my childhood to dwindle almost into nothing. Art, with all her charms, may, and often does, disappoint us--but Nature, never. The conception of Him who laid the foundations of the mountains, cannot be approached even by the most aspiring flight of the imagination. [Illustration: CASTLE OF SAN JUAN DE ULLOA.] The first object that strikes the eye, in approaching Vera Cruz by water, is the Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, with the spires and domes of the churches peering up in the distance behind it. It stands alone, upon a small rocky island, on one side of the main entrance to the harbor, and only about half a mile from the wall of the city, and consequently has complete command of the port. The entrance on the other side, is so barred with broken reefs and ledges, that it can only be used by small craft in favorable weather. The Castle is circular, strongly built, and heavily mounted. Its principal strength, however, is in its position, inaccessible except by water, and its guns pointing every way, leave no side open to the attack of an enemy. It has never been reduced but once, and then its natural ally, the city, was against it. The sea was in the hands of its enemies, and all communication with the outer world was cut off. It held out bravely while its provisions lasted, and then yielded to famine, and not to arms. This was in 1829, during the last dying struggles of Spain to hold on to her revolted provinces in Central America. Our pilot brought us to anchor in the harbor, or roadstead, under the walls of this celebrated old castle, and within a few rods of the landing. An unexpected visit from a "Norther," gave me an opportunity which would not otherwise have presented itself, of paying my respects to the town. "Vera Cruz Triunfante," the Heroic City, as it is styled in all public documents, in consequence of the prowess of its citizens in taking the Castle San Juan de Ulloa, which, as above stated, surrendered from starvation, lies in a low, sandy shore; and, like all American Spanish towns, has few attractions for the stranger, either in its general appearance, or in the style of its architecture. The town is laid out with great regularity. The streets are broad and straight, at right angles with each other, and are well paved, which, unfortunately, is more than can be said of many of the paved cities in the United States. The side-walks are covered with cement, and are altogether superior to those of Havana. The houses are generally well constructed to suit the climate. Many of them are large, some three stories high, built in the old Spanish or Moorish style, and generally enclosing a square courtyard, with covered galleries. They have flat roofs, and parti-colored awnings, displaying beneath the latter a profusion of flowers. The best view of Tera Cruz is from the water. There are, within and outside the walls, seventeen church establishments, the domes or cupolas of which may be seen in approaching it from that direction, with quite an imposing effect. The port is easy of access, but very insecure, being open to the north, and consequently subject to the terrible "northers," which, in more senses than one, during the winter season, prove a scourge to this coast. It is well defended by a strong fort, situated on a rock of the island of St. Juan de Ulloa, about half a mile distant. The name of this island, and the castle upon it, are associated with some of the most terrible scenes of blood and cruelty, that have given to the many revolutionary struggles of that ill-fated country, an unenviable pre-eminence of horror. The form of the city is semi-circular, fronting the sea. It is situated on an arid plain, surrounded by sand hills, and is very badly supplied with water,--the chief reliance being upon rain collected in cisterns, which are often so poorly constructed as to answer but very little purpose. The chief resource of the lower classes, is the water of a ditch, so impure as frequently to occasion disease. An attempt was made, more than a century ago, to remedy this evil, by the construction of a stone aqueduct from the river Xamapa; but, unfortunately, after a very large sum had been expended on the work, it was discovered that the engineer who projected it, had committed a fatal mistake, in not ascertaining the true level, and the work was abandoned in despair. The outside of the city looks solitary and miserable enough. The ruins of deserted dwelling houses, dilapidated public edifices, neglected agriculture, and streets, once populous and busy, now still and overgrown with weeds, give an air of melancholy to the scene, which it is absolutely distressing to look upon, and which the drillings of the soldiery, and "all the pomp and circumstance" of warlike parade, were insufficient to dispel. The population of this place is now about six thousand. In 1842, two thousand died of black vomit, the greater portion of whom were the poor, half-enslaved Indians, brought from their healthy mountain homes, to serve as soldiers on the deadly coast. This dreadful scourge made its appearance on the continent of America, in 1699, where it was introduced by an English ship from the coast of Africa, loaded with slaves; inflicting upon the country, at the same instant, two of the greatest curses which the arch-enemy of our race could have devised. The infectious disease we cannot lay to the charge of England. It was one of those accidents which can only be referred to the mysterious visitations of that all-wise, but inscrutable providence, which rules over all the affairs of our little world. But for the other, and not less hideous evil, the introduction of slavery, that Government is directly responsible; and, however high and noble the principles of benevolence, by which the present race of Englishmen are actuated in their endeavors to procure universal emancipation, it ill becomes them to reproach us, or our fathers, for the existence of a curse among us, which their own government forced upon us, and their own fathers supplied and sustained, with a zeal and perseverance worthy of a better cause. Ages of penance and contrition, will not wipe out this dark stain from the British escutcheon. Vera Cruz is more subject to the yellow fever, than perhaps any other place on the coast. This is chiefly owing to the filthy ditch before spoken of, from which the lower classes are compelled to obtain a part of their supply of water, and to the pools of stagnant water, which abound among the sand hills in the vicinity. If these could be drained off, and the city supplied with wholesome water, there can be no doubt it would fare as well in the matter of health, as any other place on the coast, instead of being regarded, as it is now, by the Spanish physicians, as the source and fountain-head of yellow fever for the whole country. There is scarcely any season of the year exempt from its ravages, but it prevails most in the rainy season, particularly in September and October. The history of Vera Cruz, as a place of importance to the Spaniards, commences with the very first steps of the conquest. The name of San Juan do Ulloa, was given to the island where the Castle now stands, by Grijalva, on his pioneer visit to the place, in 1518, where he was so roughly handled by the "natives." Cortes, after touching at Cozumel, made a landing at this place, in 1519. He afterwards laid the foundation of a colony in the vicinity, at the mouth of the river Antigua. It was from this point that he set out on his adventurous march to the capital of the Aztec empire--an adventure seemingly the most rash and ill advised, but in its results, the most triumphant, in the annals of history. The present site of Vera Cruz, which was founded by Count de Monterey, near the close of the sixteenth century, and is sometimes, by way of distinction, called Vera Cruz Nueva, is not the same as that of the ancient city, planted by Cortes. That was situated fifteen miles to the north from the city of our day, and was called "La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz"--The rich town of the true cross. The harbor of the old town is far better than that of the new, which, in fact, is no harbor at all, but an open roadsted, exposed to every blast from the north. No good reason has been assigned for the removal. One historian has suggested that it was owing to the unhealthiness of the old town. If so, it is no mean illustration of the sagacity of the unfortunate fish, that, in attempting to escape his inevitable fate, "jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire." CHAPTER VI. SANTA ANNA DE TAMAULIPAS, AND ITS VICINITY. The old and new towns.--The French Hotel.--Early history of the place.--Remains of an ancient Indian town.--Situation of Pueblo Nuevo.--Health of the place.--Commerce.--Smuggling.--Corruption in Public Offices.--Letters and Mails.--Architecture.--Expense of living.--Tone of morals. Gaming.--The soldiery.--Degraded condition of the Indians.--The Cargadores.--The market place.--Monument to Santa Anna.--The Bluff.--Pueblo Viejo.--Visit to the ruins.--Desolate appearance of the place.--"La Fuente."--Return at sunset.--The Rancheros of Mexico.--The Arrieros. On the 17th of February, we bade adieu to Vera Cruz, and sailed along the coast, northwardly, for Tampico, distant over two hundred miles. The passage was a very favorable one; and we arrived at our destination on the evening of the following day. Coming to anchor outside the bar, a launch from the shore, manned by naked Indians, was soon at our service, to take us up to the city. It was a pull of six miles on the river Panuco. On our way up, we passed Pueblo Viejo, or the old town of Tampico, on our left, once a place of considerable trade, but now deserted, and comparatively in ruins. Two miles above this place, we landed at the mole, as it is called, where our luggage underwent the usual vexatious examinations; after which, permission was given us to enter the town of Santa Anna de Tamaulipas, known also as the Pueblo Nuevo, or New Town of Tampico. I was soon ensconced in a hotel, kept by a Frenchman. It was a sad place. The accommodations, if such a word can, with any propriety, be used in reference to such a house, were as uninviting as could be desired. The house was, in all respects, uncomfortable and dirty, and the charges $2,50 per day. But a shelter, in this country, though a poor one, is something to be thankful for; and, in the almost universal absence of comfort, one often has occasion to be grateful for any thing that bears a distant resemblance to it. With this kind of philosophy, I endeavored to console myself in the present instance, remembering that my situation was not quite as bad as it might be, nor indeed as it oftentimes had been in other places. Santa Anna de Tamaulipas stands on what was once the site of a populous Indian town, which was first visited by Juan de Grijalva, in 1518. This "hopeful young man and well behaved," as he is described by one of the old historians, was the captain of the second expedition, sent from Cuba, to explore the large and rich islands, as they were then supposed to be, lying to the west, part of which were discovered by Columbus in 1502 and 1503, and part by Juan Dias de Solis and Vincent Yañez Pinzon, in 1506. At this place, Grijalva had a severe conflict with the "natives," who defended "their altars and their homes" with great bravery. The old historians of the conquest agree that Cortes, who followed Grijalva, and finally succeeded in reducing the whole country to the Spanish yoke, met with a warm reception on the Panuco. Few places were more ably defended, or more reluctantly surrendered by the Indians. But few traces remain of the ancient city, or of its brave inhabitants. Yet occasionally, in digging for the foundations of buildings recently erected, the bones, and sometimes complete skeletons, of that unfortunate race are found, as well as remains of their household utensils. Fifteen years ago, this place was occupied only by a few Indian huts, and Pueblo Viejo, the old town, was in its most flourishing condition. But the superior advantages of this position were too apparent to be longer overlooked by the searching eye of commercial enterprise. The bank of the river is very bold, and the water of sufficient depth to allow vessels to anchor close to the shore; and the navigation inland is uninterrupted for more than a hundred miles. The town is laid out in regular squares. The site is a sort of low flat shelf of land, forming the terminus of a rocky peninsula, above and back of which there is a cluster of lakes or ponds, having an outlet into the Panuco. These ponds, like those in the vicinity of Vera Cruz, are fruitful of yellow fever, which annually ravages this devoted coast. This terrible scourge, which seems to be one of the settled perquisites of the place, together with the formidable bar at the mouth of the river, are serious drawbacks to the prosperity of the town. Were it possible to remove them, I think there is little doubt that Santa Anna de Tamaulipas would soon become one of the most flourishing seaport towns in Mexico. Its local situation is favorable--it is the nearest point on the coast to the richest of the mining districts, and the place from which the greater portion of the specie is exported. It has also a considerable business in dye-woods and hides. But the commerce of Santa Anna de Tamaulipas has been declining for several years, and, unless some new impulse is given to it, by some such improvements as are above suggested, it must continue to decline. The little business that is now done there, is chiefly in the hands of foreigners. Smuggling was once carried on here to a very great extent; but the severe and stringent regulations of the government, have nearly succeeded in breaking it up. Or, to speak with more perfect accuracy, the business has changed hands, and that, which was before done through the venality of the subordinates, is now carried on by the direct connivance of the heads of the departments, who have contrived to monopolize to themselves this lucrative traffic, and thus, by robbing the government, to enrich themselves and the merchants at the same time. There is probably no country in the world, where there is such utter destitution of good faith and common honesty, on the part of those who contrive to secure the offices of trust. It is a remark of almost universal application, though it will probably apply with peculiar emphasis to the custom house department, where the largest amount of spoils are necessarily to be found. The most glaring cases of fraud are constantly occurring. Thousands of dollars are weekly passed over to the officials, which never find their way into the treasury; and thousands that have gone in are missing, having never honestly found their way out. But little attention is paid to these instances of corruption. The criminals, though well known, are allowed to retain their stations; or, if by chance removed, through the complaints of those who are eager to step into their places, they are only elevated to more important and lucrative offices, where they have a wider field of operation, and a better chance to serve themselves, _and those who appointed them_. How far we of the United States may be placing ourselves in the condition of those who live in glass houses, by thus throwing stones at the Mexicans, I know not. But it is my candid opinion, shrewd and cunning as we are allowed to be in all matters of finance, that we are quite out-done in these matters by our more southern neighbors. Letters arriving or departing by ship, cannot be delivered, without first passing through the Post Office. The charges, which are very high, are regulated by weight, as under the new system in the United States. No captain, or consignee, is permitted to receive a letter, without the government stamp, under a heavy penalty. Whether the same restriction and penalty is laid upon passengers and travellers, I am not informed; but it would be very difficult to carry them without observation, as every nook and corner of every trunk, box, or bag, is searched, as well as the linings of every article of dress, and even of your boots and shoes. All letters are liable to seizure and inspection, and they are often broken, when any cause of jealousy or suspicion arises. The ordinary mails in the northern part of the country, are more regular than rapid, being, for the most part, transported on the backs of the Indians. Of course, neither money, nor valuable documents of any kind, are entrusted to this conveyance. An armed _conducta_ performs this service between the mines and the capital, and between the capital and the principal seaports. In the buildings of Santa Anna de Tamaulipas, there is no uniformity of style, and no pretensions to beauty. American, English, and Spanish, are intermingled with the rude hut of the Indian. The population is as motley and heterogeneous as can well be conceived; and with the variety of feature, expression, manners, costume and no costume, ranks under what may be termed _the picturesque_. Notwithstanding the gradual decline of business here, rents and wages are extremely high, and the prices paid for every article of consumption are so enormous, that I should scarcely be believed if I should name them. And this, too, among a beggarly-looking, half-naked population. The average range of the thermometer is from 86° to 92°. As might be expected, from what has been said already, the general tone of morals in society is by no means elevated. The native, or Creole population, are, for the most part, shamefully ignorant and debased, and, with few exceptions, destitute of moral principle. They are extremely jealous of foreigners, and seem to regard every stranger coming among them as an unwelcome intruder. As far as I had an opportunity of judging, which was not inconsiderable, I should say that, as a race, they are as destitute of ambition to improve, as they are of education. There is no taste among them for the cultivation of the fine arts, which once flourished in this ill-fated country; whether among the remote ancestors of the present Indian tribes, or among other and nobler races of men, it is not easy now to decide. The almost universal resource of the Creoles, is the gaming table, at which numbers of them spend a large portion of their time. In this miserable and demoralizing recreation, I am sorry to be obliged to say, that the "natives" are not the only sharers. Strangers, who resort here for business, whether English, American, Spanish or French, with a few rare and honorable exceptions, sustain and encourage them by their example. Large amounts are sometimes lost and won, though, for the most part, the stakes are light; the passion being rather for gaming, and its attendant excitements, than for winning. The Indians, another and inferior class of natives, though nominally free, are in fact slaves. They are the drudges and bearers of burdens, for the whole community. They are ignorant, indolent and unthrifty to the last degree, and seem to have no idea of the possibility of bettering their condition. Like their superiors, they are much addicted to gaming, though necessarily on a very limited scale. In their condition of desperate poverty, they have little to lose; but that little is daily put at stake, and lost, or rather thrown away, with as much coolness and indifference, as if the inexhaustible mines of their golden mountains were all their own. And it not unfrequently happens, that, having lost his last _maravedi_, he stakes himself upon another throw, and becomes the temporary slave of the winner. The laws, though they do not recognize slavery in the abstract, are so constructed, as to admit of this arrangement. The consequence is, that vast numbers, whom indolence or improvidence have reduced to the necessity of running in debt to their white neighbors, are as truly slaves, as they were before the revolution. It is from the native Indians, that the rank and file of the Mexican army is, for the most part, supplied. A greater burlesque upon the name of a soldier can scarcely be conceived--a debased, insolent, drunken, half-naked rabble, in comparison with which Colonel Pluck's famous regiment would have made a display so brilliant, as to make all Philadelphia stare. It is a marvel to me how they can accomplish any thing with such a miserable set of ill-appointed, semi-civilized beings, especially, when their enlistment is for the most part compulsory, while they fight for self-constituted, tyrannical, unfeeling masters, and not for themselves, or their children. I should suppose that a single company of well disciplined Anglo-Saxon soldiers, would be more than a match for an ordinary Mexican army. If it was with such regiments as these, that Santa Anna undertook to reduce the refractory province of Texas, it is no matter of surprise that a handful of Yankee adventurers were able, not only to keep him at bay, but to put him, and his army of scarecrows, completely to route. The Indian, as I have before remarked, is the abject slave of the Mexican; and upon him devolves every kind of menial labor. The "Cargadores," who act as porters, are seen in all the streets. They carry the heaviest burdens, such as bales, barrels, boxes, etc. upon their backs; dray and draft horses being unknown here. Others are seen in the market places, and lying about the public streets, houseless, and almost naked, objects at once of pity and disgust to those unaccustomed to such sights. No means are employed, and no desire manifested, on the part of their superiors, to improve their character or condition. Politically, the Mexican regards them as his equals, while he treats them far worse than even the English do their slaves, either at home or abroad. The Market Place of Tampico is a rude open square, without embellishment, natural or artificial, one corner of which is occupied with stalls or tables, for meats and vegetables, which are guarded and dealt out by as motley a set of beggars as I had ever seen, as uninviting group of caterers as can well be imagined. The tarriers at home can little realize the many disagreeable offsets to the pleasure one derives from visiting foreign lands; while the traveller learns, by a painful daily experience, to appreciate all the little conveniences and proprieties, as well as the thousand substantial comforts of home. In the centre of this square, a monument is to be erected in honor of the celebrated General Santa Anna, commemorating his successful encounter with the old Spanish forces, in this place, in the year 1829, during the last struggles of Mexico to throw off the yoke of Spain, and establish an independent government. The foundation of this monument is finished, and the builders are waiting the arrival of the column from New York, where, as I was informed, Italian artists are employed in completing it. It is intended to be worthy of the name of the distinguished man in whose honor it is reared, and of the event which it is designed to commemorate. How the two can be fitly blended in one inscription, it is difficult to conceive. The victory which Santa Anna achieved over the Spanish oppressors of the struggling province, may indeed have a claim to be recorded on the enduring marble; but, for the honor due to a _name_ like that of the exiled hero of San Jacinto, a name so long associated with every species of tyranny and oppression, of treason to his country, and of treachery alike to friend and to foe--how shall it be appropriately expressed? In what terms of mingled eulogium and execration shall it be couched? "_The_ NAME _and the_ EVENT!" It will doubtless be an easy matter to frame an inscription suitable to the _event_--but to illustrate the glory of the _name_--_hoc opus, his labor est_. In a state of society like that which has existed in Mexico, for many years past, it would seem a difficult task to erect monuments to illustrate the services of their great men. Revolution succeeding revolution, and dynasty chasing dynasty, in rapid succession like the waves of the sea, a successful leader has scarcely time to reach the post his high ambition has aimed at, and procure a decree for a triumph and a monument, before a rival faction has obtained possession of all the outposts, and begins to thunder under the walls of the capital. One after another, they have risen, and fallen, and passed away, some of them for ever, and some only to rise again with more rapid strides, and then to experience a more ruinous fall, than before. The monument which was begun yesterday in honor of one successful hero, may, to-morrow, be consecrated to the victory won over him by his enemy; and then, perhaps, be thrown down to give place to another, which commemorates the overthrow of both. How many times the government of Mexico is destined to be overturned and remodeled, before the completion of the Tampico monument, and what will be the position of the man for whose honor it was originally designed, when the column shall be ready to be placed on its pedestal, it would be hazardous to conjecture. It may not be unsafe, however, to predict, that neither this, nor any other column, or statue, erected in Mexico, will confer upon Santa Anna a greater notoriety than he now enjoys, or in any way alter the world's estimate of his true character. Impartial history has marred the beauty of many a monumental tablet, and converted that which was meant for glory, into a perpetual memorial of shame. A few yards from the Market place is a bold bluff of rock, fronting the Panuco, from the top of which we have an extensive view of the surrounding country. Near this place, the River Tamissee, which drains the adjacent lagoons, forms its junction with the Panuco, which sweeps gracefully along from the southwest, broken and diversified by a number of low wooded islands, which disturb, but beautify its course. On the opposite shore, at some distance, lies the lagoon of Pueblo Viejo, and beyond that, but within sight from this bluff, the ruins of the old town, situated on a beautiful plateau, or table land, flanked by the spires of the Cordilleras. The low lands of the suburbs are filled with rude huts of the Indians, built chiefly of bamboo, and covered with the palm-leaf. A more squalid state of misery than is exhibited among this class, both here and in the town, it has never fallen to my lot to witness. Not satisfied with this distant view of the ruins of the Pueblo Viejo, I determined to form a nearer acquaintance with them, by a personal visit. The American Consul, and his accomplished lady, very kindly accompanied me thither, in a canoe, under the guidance of an Indian. We descended the Panuco a short distance, and passed into a bayou communicating with one of the great lagoons, near which the old town is situated. The locale is decidedly agreeable and picturesque. Though in the uplands, it lies at the foot of a steep and thickly wooded hill, which affords a variety of romantic retreats, and commanding look-outs for the surrounding country. But, however much they might have been improved and valued in former times, they are now deserted, and forgotten. An almost death-like tranquillity reigns in the forsaken streets and environs, forming a melancholy contrast to the half European, and comparatively bustling aspect of its now more prosperous rival. The houses are low-built, with flat roofs. The façades of some of them show, in the faded gaiety, and dubious taste of their coloring, what they were in the palmy days of the Pueblo Viejo's early glory. Many of them had court-yards and porticos. One group of old buildings, of Spanish architecture, situated near the humble church that consecrated the public square, shows many marks of its ancient grandeur, even in its present state of desolation and decay. It is painful to stroll through the streets of a city of our own times, once full of life and bustle, but now falling into the decrepitude of a premature old age. It is like walking among the sepulchres of the living; and the few signs of life that remain, only serve to give intensity to the shadows of night that are deepening around it. Here, there was nothing to relieve the melancholy aspect of the scene. The people, both masters and slaves, were poor, listless and inactive; their dwellings were comfortless and uninviting, and their lands miserably neglected and unproductive. A death-like incubus seemed to hang on the whole place. We traversed the whole length of the streets, through the suburbs, to visit "La Fuente," which is situated in a small dell at the foot of the hill which overhangs the town. It is a beautiful spot, ornamented with every variety of flower. Its source was concealed from view. "La Fuente" is an artificial stone reservoir, of considerable length, beautifully overshadowed with trees, from whose branches depends a kind of curtain of interwoven vines, falling in the most luxuriant festoons on every side. It is not now, as perhaps it has been in former days, a place of public resort for recreation. It is the general laundry of Tampico; and its margin is daily crowded, not with sylphs and naiads, but with a motley set of Indian women, more appropriately compared to ancient sybils, or modern gypsies. It was, altogether, the most remarkable and striking scene that had fallen under my view in my recent travels, and one that would figure well in the hands of the author of the "Twice Told Tales," or the "Charcoal Sketches." To their notice I commend it, with free license to make what use they please of my poor description. The sun was setting when we returned to Santa Anna de Tamaulipas. We paddled slowly away, pausing occasionally to admire--with my agreeable companions--the brilliant effect of the last rays of day light upon the lakes, woods and mountains, and the luxuriant foliage, realizing more fully than I had ever been able to do before, the rare beauty of those remarkable lines of Beattie-- Oh! how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms that nature to her votary yields, The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields, All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven-- Oh! how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven! Winding between verdant banks, through the broken channel, into the beautiful Panuco, we reached the mole before night-fall, well satisfied with the adventures of the day. Before leaving the town, I wish to introduce to the reader two classes of men, who are somewhat peculiar in their appearance, characters and habits, as well as somewhat important in their relations to the business of the country. The _Rancheros_ are a mixed race of Mexican and Indian blood. They live on the Ranches, or large cattle farms, and act as drovers. They are brave, and full of life and vivacity, but profoundly ignorant of every thing beyond their immediate occupations. There is an air of independence, and a fearlessness of manner, in the Ranchero, which is quite imposing. Sallying forth on his sinewy horse, encased in leather, with the ready lasso at his saddle bow, he seems, though in coarse attire, the embodiment of health, strength and agility. The _Arrieros_, the muleteers of the country, have their peculiarities, the most striking of which, and by far the most agreeable, is, that they are honest. For this virtue they are proverbial, as indeed they should be in a land where it is scarcely known in any other class of society. Many of them pride themselves much upon their vocation, which frequently passes down from father to son, through several generations. They are civil, obliging and cheerful. They have, as a class, the entire confidence of the community, and millions of property are confided to their care. Their honesty and trustworthiness remain unimpaired amid all the political changes of the country. Often as they are compelled to change masters, they serve the new with the same fidelity as the old, and a stranger, or even an enemy, as well as a friend. Although this rigid honesty and trustworthinesss, in this class of persons in Mexico, is worthy of remark and of all praise, I take pleasure in stating, from my own personal observation, that it is not peculiar to that country. The same class of persons in many parts of the United States, are distinguished for the same virtue. Our common stage drivers and mail carriers, although their employment is of the hardiest character, and their general associations such as to expose them to many of the worst temptations of taverns, bar-rooms, and other kindred influences, are as well known for their integrity and faithfulness, in the trusts committed to them, as for their skill and fearlessness in the management of their teams. It is the common custom, in many parts of the country, to employ these men in conveying remittances from the interior, to the banks, or merchants, in the seaport towns. Thousands and thousands of dollars are daily sent in this way, without receipt or acknowledgement, and with perfect reliance on the faithfulness of the carrier. And I do not remember an instance, in that part of the country where I have been most acquainted, in which this confidence has been misplaced. If the Mexican _Arriero_ is deserving of more credit for his virtue, in consequence of the inferior tone of morals in the community about him, we would not willingly deprive him of it. At the same time, we confess to a patriotic pride in finding, for every thing that is "lovely and of good report" in foreign lands, an offset of something equally good, or better, at home. CHAPTER VII. CANOE VOYAGE UP THE RIVER PANUCO. RAMBLES AMONG THE RUINS OF ANCIENT CITIES. An independent mode of travelling.--The river and its banks.--Soil and productions.--A Yankee brick yard.--Indian huts.--Their manner of living.--Their position in society.--Their dress, stature and general appearance.--Arrival at Topila Creek.--Mr. Coss' rancho.--The Lady's Room.--Company at night.--An aged Indian.--His ignorance of the past.--Mounds.--Ruins of an ancient town.--Rancho de las Piedras.--Topila Hills.--Numerous Mounds.--An ancient well.--A wild fig-tree.--Extensive ruins.--An evening scene.--Attack of the Bandaleros.--Happy escape. On the evening of the 14th of March, 1844, I took a temporary leave of Tampico, and proceeded up the river Panuco, with the intention of visiting, and as far as my time and means might allow, of exploring the ruins then known to exist, and of seeking others which I supposed might be found, in that vicinity. My mode of conveyance was as primitive and independent, as can well be imagined. In my own hired canoe, with an Indian to paddle me along, I felt that I was master of my own time and movements, and enjoyed, for a season, a perfect freedom from the ordinary restraints and responsibilities of social life. Leaving care, and business, and the world behind, and committing my little all to the favoring smiles of an omnipresent Providence, I threaded my way through the circuitous windings of that romantic stream, with a resolute purpose to enjoy every thing, and be annoyed at nothing, however strange it might be. This disposition is essential to the comfort of the traveller, in any strange land, and especially in one that is barbarous, or semi-civilized; and, under whatever circumstances it is put in requisition, it is its own sufficient reward. The river Panuco rises among the lakes near the city of Mexico, and winds its meandering way, under several different names, the principal of which is "Canada," till it debouches into the Gulf of Mexico, six miles below Tampico. It is navigable about one hundred and forty miles, for all vessels that can pass the bar at its mouth; and yet, owing to its circuitous course, the distance _by land_, from this head of navigation to Tampico, is not more than forty miles. The river seldom swells so as to overflow its banks. The land, on either side, was found, on examination, to be a deep, rich loam, capable of producing corn, sugar, tobacco and rice. The sugar cane found in this region is extremely productive. It grows in height from fourteen to twenty feet, and requires re-planting but once in nine or ten years. It will be a glorious region for amateur planters and speculators, when "the area of freedom" shall have extended to the Isthmus of Panama. Ebony, rose-wood, dye-woods of various kinds, and sarsaparilla, are cut here in great abundance, and are important articles of exportation. The banks of this river, though beautifully arrayed in the verdure of nature, want that humanizing interest, that peculiar utilitarian charm, which cultivation and occupation alone can impart. Our progress, therefore, though always presenting something new to the eye, seemed comparatively slow and tedious, with little of life, but that which we carried along with us, to disturb its quiet monotony. As the evening of the first day was setting in, we stopped at a brick yard, the property of two enterprising kind-hearted Americans, by whom we were hospitably entertained, and who informed us that our day's journey had been made, by travelling a distance of eighteen miles. The new town of Santa Anna de Tamaulipas, brought into requisition, and gave employment to many of our countrymen. And, when the making of brick became lucrative, our good-natured hosts determined to lose no time in taking advantage of the occasion. The adventure was accordingly made, and a few years' thrift has placed their affairs in a hopeful and healthy condition. But, like all other foreigners in this country, they are heartily tired of remaining here, and are looking forward with much anxiety to the happy day, when they shall be enabled to return to their native land; for, such are the decrees of the government, that, in direct violation of treaty, an open warfare is kept up against the rights and interests of all emigrants,--but, more particularly, those from the United States,--many of whom are sacrificing their property and prospects of affluence, and leaving the country in utter disgust. Early the following morning, we proceeded on our course up the river, stopping, occasionally, to visit the rude huts of the Indians. The huts are formed principally of mud, with thatched roofs, and present a most uncomfortable appearance; whilst the poor, degenerated occupants, derive a mean and scanty support, from a small strip of land along the banks of the river, their chief object being the cultivation of corn for their own use. Pieces of clay, put rudely together and baked, are the common utensils for cooking their food; and a few upright sticks or reeds, driven into the mud floor, with a hide stretched over them, constitute their most luxurious bed. Indolent and filthy, they work only to meet their own immediate wants; and, so degraded is their condition, that gaming and cock-fighting are their principal pastimes. The inebriating bowl, also, is eagerly sought by them, and a large portion of their earnings is spent in this riotous way, even under the guidance of their priests, at the celebration of a marriage, or on the occasion of a christening. The Indians of Central America, bear as little resemblance to those of our country generally, as the Spaniards among whom they dwell do, to us. They do not, in any place, live by themselves, as independent tribes. They have no peculiar habits of life, or of warfare--no hunting--no sports peculiar to themselves--and none of the customs of their ancestors preserved, to distinguish them from the mass of people about them. It is only their complexion, their poverty, and generally degraded condition, that marks the difference between them and their neighbors. They occupy nearly the same position there, as the free blacks do in the United States, with this difference in favor of the latter--that there is nothing in the spirit of our institutions, civil, _or religious_, that prevents them from attaining a respectable education, and a comfortable independence. [Illustration: AN INDIAN MAN AND WOMAN.] Ordinarily, the men wear trousers,--sometimes shirts of cotton,--but, in many parts of the country, owing to the prohibition of certain qualities and textures, this luxury is fast disappearing, and the more primitive dress of _skins_ is taking its place. The _rebosa_, a narrow scarf, thrown over the head and shoulders, is indispensable to females. No matter what constitutes the other portion of their covering, even though, as is oftentimes the case, their wardrobe is so scanty as scarcely to cover their limbs, yet this is considered paramount. On one occasion, I remember to have seen a female, with a rebosa upon her head, which cost no less than twenty-five dollars, whilst her body was miserably covered with a sort of under garment, or petticoat, such as few of our common street beggars would be willing to wear. These people are of the usual color and stature of the Mexican Indians, but not so finely formed as the majority of them are,--nor have they that good expression, so prominent among the people of the southern portions of Mexico. They seem, moreover, to be entirely destitute of that spirit of religion, which their manifest appreciation of some religious rites, would naturally lead us to expect. Altogether, they are the most unfavorable specimen of the natives that have fallen under my observation. Before night-fall of the second day of our voyage, we reached the mouth of the Topila Creek, a distance of twenty miles from the brick-yard. Continuing our course up that stream about three miles, we came to a rancho, or cattle-farm, belong to a Mr. Coss, of Tampico, brother of the celebrated general of Texan memory. Before I left Tampico, this gentleman gave me a letter to his major-domo, a half-breed, who received us with great attention. The letter being very explicit on the subject of _accommodation_, I could not but fare well in this respect,--and it may yet, perhaps, be gathered from the sequel, that I was treated more like a prince than a common traveller. Arriving at the place, we were ushered into a bamboo house, with mud walls, and floors of the same primitive material. This house contained no less than two apartments. One of these, sustained the distinguished appellation of "_the lady's room_"--and it was now my privilege to become its _sole_ occupant. In one corner of the room, stood a bedstead, without bed or bedding; and a dressing-table, decorated with sundry condemned combs, oil-bottles, scissors and patches, occupied another; whilst a demijohn of aguardiente, and other interesting ornaments, such as saddles, guns, and swords, filled up the picture. However, as I intended to make this place my head-quarters, while exploring the hills and river banks in the neighborhood, I at once resolved to be satisfied with "the lady's room," and such other good things as the place afforded. Accordingly, at an early hour, I spread out my blanket, and retired for the night;--"deep into the darkness peering--long I lay there, fondly dreaming," as before observed, that I was "alone in my glory." But, alas! the soft reflections of dreamy hours were disturbed by an unexpected visit from a goodly number of well-disciplined, noxious little animals, who introduced themselves to me in a most significant, yet unceremonious manner. No remarks being made respecting the object of their visit, I was left to infer, that the kindness of the major-domo had moved him to organize a new company of lancers, for my especial benefit. After many unsuccessful attempts to induce this unsolicited force to withdraw, my attention was politely called to another quarter. Having been strongly impressed, I was now fully convinced, of the immediate presence of sundry young pigeons, many of whom, protected by their maternal parents, were perched in the crevices of the wall over my head. These, together with the game fowls, setting under my bed, contributed much to destroy that confidence which, until now had not been disturbed, that I had actually secured the undivided occupancy of that unique apartment. Of course, it was unnecessary to arouse me in the morning. Before sunrise, I found myself well equipped for the explorations of the day. The mules being in readiness, I started in company with a guide, and rode five miles to another rancho, where, as I was informed, there lived an Indian upwards of a hundred years of age. I found him, to my surprise, a hale and sturdy man--though he could give me no intelligence respecting the objects of my research. Indeed, so suspicious are these people of the designs of strangers, that it was with the utmost difficulty I could convince him, as well as others, that my only motive in visiting the country, was to acquaint myself with the ancient places of their forefathers; not, as they supposed, to roam in quest of gold and silver mines. Supposing that, in a man so much beyond the ordinary limit of human life, whose memory might extend back almost one-third of the way to the era of the Spanish conquest, and who was now in the full possession of his faculties, I had found a rare and enviable opportunity to pry into the mysteries of the past, and learn something of the history of the remarkable people, who once occupied this whole region, and filled it with monuments of their genius, taste, and power;--I employed all my ingenuity to draw out of him whatever he knew. But it was pumping at an exhausted well. Of facts, of history, in any form, he had nothing to tell. He seemed not to have a thought that there was anything to be told, except one vague unsatisfactory tradition, the only one existing among the inhabitants in all this region, that once on a time--they have no conception when, whether a hundred or a thousand years ago--"giants came from the North, as was prophesied by the gods, killed and destroyed the people, and continued on to the South." This tradition, bearing a strong analogy to one which prevails among nearly all the aboriginal tribes of the Mississippi Valley, and the wilds of the west, seems to be the only connecting link between the present generation, and that mysteriously interesting blank--the exterminated obliterated Past. In the vicinity of this rancho, in an easterly direction from it, I found, in several considerable mounds, the first traces of ancient art that had greeted my eyes. One of these mounds was more than twenty-five feet in height, and of a circular form. At its sides, a number of layers of small, flat, well-hewn stones were still to be seen. Scattered about, in its immediate neighborhood, were also many others of a larger size, and of different forms. These had apparently once been used for the sides of door-ways and lintels. They were perfectly plain, without any mark or sign of ornament. Upon this spot once stood one of those ancient Indian towns, the memorials of whose departed greatness and glory are so often met with, in every part of this interesting country. The ruins in this place are ruins indeed, so dilapidated as not to afford, at the present time, the remotest clue to the manners and customs of the builders, or the degree of civilization to which they may have attained. I traversed the whole ground, as well as the rank vegetation, and wild animals would permit, and found my way back to the Topila at dark,--congratulating myself on having been able to accomplish so much, in the way of exploration, with no other protection than the untanned skin of an American, while that of a rhinoceros seemed absolutely necessary to the undertaking; for both the animal and vegetable kingdoms appeared to be combined against the intrusion of man. On the morning of the next day, I set out with a party of Indians, on a visit to the _Rancho de las Piedras_, distant about two leagues and a half, in a south-east direction. We made our way, slowly, and wearily, as usual, threading the thick wilds with much toil and fatigue, until we reached a rise of land, or plateau, near a chain of hills running through this section of country, and known as the Topila Hills. Here I found stones that were once evidently used for buildings. Proceeding on our way, we came to other and clearer evidences of ancient art. These were mounds, the sides of which had been constructed of loose layers of smooth and uniform blocks of concrete sandstone;--but most of the layers had fallen from their original position, and were found in large masses near the elevation. The blocks of stone, with a surface eighteen inches square, measured about six inches in thickness, and appeared to have been laid without mortar, or other adhesive material. I observed about twenty of these mounds, contiguous to each other, and varying in height from six to twenty-five feet,--some being of a circular, and others of a square form; but, unlike most of those found in other parts of the country, they were not laid out with any degree of regularity. On the top of one of the largest, there had evidently been a terrace, though it was difficult, in its present dilapidated state, to define its outlines, or judge of its extent. The principal elevation covers an area of about two acres. At the base of this mound, was a slab of stone about seven inches in thickness, well hewn, and of a circular form, having a hole through the centre, and resting upon a circular wall, or foundation, the top of which was level with the ground. This stone measured four feet nine inches in diameter. On removing it, I discovered a well, filled up with broken stone and fragments of pottery. Stone coverings in wells have been found in the ancient works on the main branches of Paint Creek, Ohio, bearing a strong resemblance to the one here noticed; and it is also worthy of remark, that wells covered in this way, strongly resemble the descriptions we have of those used in the patriarchal ages. How much of an argument might be made, from such an isolated circumstance as this, to confirm the opinion entertained by some able writers, that the aboriginal inhabitants of America were the descendants of Abraham, the lost ten tribes, who revolted under Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, and were carried away into Assyria, I shall not undertake to decide. Many a fair theory, however, has been erected upon a foundation no broader than this, nor more substantial; and many a volume has been written to sustain the shadowy fabric. I should have stated above, that the upper side of the stone removed, bore evidence of having been originally wrought with ornamental lines; but these lines were so much obliterated by time and exposure to the weather, that they could not now be traced. On the top of this mound, a wild fig-tree, more than a hundred feet high, grows luxuriantly, indicating by its size and age, that the mound on which it stands, is not the work of modern builders. The walls of the smaller mounds had invariably fallen inwards, a circumstance which led to the conjecture that they had been used as burying places. For, as the bones within would, in process of time, decay and moulder into dust, the loose walls, having no cement to hold them together, would gradually settle in upon the ashes of the dead. The ground for several miles around, was strewn with loose hewn stones, of various shapes, and broken pieces of pottery, evidently parts of household utensils; also, fragments of obsidean, which no doubt had been used as the knives and spears of a people, respecting whom, little is known at this day, except that they were a warlike race, and far advanced in the arts of civilization. The nearest point now known, where this mineral can be obtained, is _Pelados_, near the Real del Monte, in the vicinity of the city of Mexico. The celebrated "Mountain of Flints," which, though but twenty-four miles in extent, cost the indefatigable Cortes, and his brave band, twelve days of the most painful toil to surmount, lies still farther off, in the south western part of Yucatan. An incident of a somewhat startling character, which occured to me here, while it illustrates another feature in the state of society in these parts, and the character of the people whom the traveller sometimes has to deal with, will serve to bring the present chapter to close; leaving the interesting curiosities discovered among the ruins, and a yet more thrilling adventure which befel me, to form the material for a separate chapter. It was evening. The day had been spent in rambling and climbing about the time hallowed ruins of those old deserted cities, and searching among the mouldering relics of antiquity, for something to identify the dead with the living, or to serve as a satisfactory link between the past and the present. My Indian comrades and myself were cosily discussing our forest fare, each indulging in his own private reflections, and totally unsuspicious of any interruption to our humble meal, when we were suddenly surrounded by a band of those grim-looking, dark-bearded, heavily-whiskered gentlemanly-looking like highwaymen, that infest almost every part of the country. They immediately dismounted, and made us prisoners, seizing us by the hand as if they would bind us, to prevent our escape. We made no resistance, for we were unprepared for defence, and entirely at their mercy. Here, now, was trouble enough. What a poor finale to my brief and unprofitable adventures, to be murdered in cold blood by these merciless banditti, or made a hopeless captive in some of their mountain fastnesses! My position, feelings, and reflections, can be better imagined than described. Having surveyed us from crown to toe, with the utmost scrutiny, and compared notes respecting our appearance, and the prospect of obtaining any satisfaction in our blood, they drew forth from their bags--the huge and fearful looking horse-pistol?--No. The long, glittering, keen-edged, high-tempered dirk, drunk with the blood of numberless victims of their rapacious cruelty?--No. The slender stiletto, so delicately formed, and so exquisitely polished, as to insinuate itself into the vitals, ere the parted epidermis had realized the rent it had made in passing?--No. The savage cutlass?--the heavy, fierce-looking, trenchant broad-sword?--No. Not these--nor any of them,--but, unexpected, and unheard of, even among civilized highwaymen--they drew out an ample store of substantial food, and invited us to partake of their supper. We did not shrink from their professed hospitality. We made ourselves of their party for the moment, and spent an hour, or more, in their company, with great glee, and with mutual satisfaction--after which, they mounted and rode off, and we took to our hammocks and our dreams. By what token we escaped, I was not able to conjecture. Whether, as my vanity might have suggested, it was to be attributed to my good looks, or to my Spanish sombrero, flannel shirt, and bandolero air, or to the influence of some propitious star, just then in the ascendant, is a mystery yet to be explained. If I may have the same good fortune in escaping the censure of the reader, upon whose patience these trifling sketches have been inflicted, it will afford me a gratification that will far more than overbalance all the pains and inconveniences that I have suffered, from being brought into conflict with insects, wild beasts, and robbers. CHAPTER VIII. FURTHER EXPLORATION OF THE RUINS IN THE VICINITY OF THE RANCHO DE LAS PIEDRAS. Situation of the Ruins.--Their probable antiquity.--A remarkable female head.--Description of it.--Where found.--Brought to New York.--Another head.--Difficulty of getting at it.--Its collossal proportions.--A particular description.--Indians disposed to leave me, but induced to remain.--The American Sphinx.--Description.--Conjectures of its origin and design.--Curiously ornamented head.--Its peculiar features.--Exploring the ruins a difficult work.--Annoyances.--Deserted by the Indians.--A delicate situation.--A fortunate escape. These ruins are situated, as near as I could calculate with the primitive instruments constructed for the occasion, in longitude 98° 31´ west, and latitude 22° 9´ north, covering a space of several miles square, and have every appearance of being the remains of a single town. The whole place is completely covered with trees of the largest growth, so thickly interspersed with the rankest vegetation, that even the sun, or daylight itself, can scarcely find its way among them. So very dense and dark is the forest, and so constant and extensive the decomposition of vegetable matter going on beneath it, that it impregnates the whole region with a humid and unwholesome atmosphere. It is true, that these circumstances have, in a great degree, hastened the dilapidation of the works of human skill around; but, nevertheless, they furnish indisputable evidence of the great antiquity of those works. [Illustration: FEMALE HEAD.] Among these ruins, I found a remarkable head, which, with various other relics of antiquity from the same interesting region, I had the honor of depositing in the collection of the New York Historical Society. This head, or rather face, a drawing of which I have the pleasure of here presenting to the reader, resembles that of a female. It is beautifully cut from a fine sandstone, of a dark reddish hue, which abounds in this vicinity. The face, which is of the ordinary life size, stands out, in full relief, from the rough block, as if it were in an unfinished state, or as if designed to occupy a place among the ornamental work of a building. In several of its features, the lines are decidedly Grecian, and the symmetry and beauty of its proportions have been very much admired. How and where the artist may have obtained his model, and how far the existence of it may be deemed to confirm the statements of Plato and Aristotle, and favor the conjecture of an early settlement on this continent by the Phoenician navigators, I shall not now stay to inquire. This striking figure I found, lying among vast piles of broken and crumbling stones, the ruins of dilapidated buildings, which were strewed over a vast space. It was in a remarkably good state of preservation, except the nose, which was slightly mutilated; not sufficiently so, however, to lose its uniformity, or destroy the beautiful symmetry of its proportions. The fillet, or band of the head-dress, which conceals the frontal developments, is unlike any thing found among the sculptured remains in this country, or worn by any of the native tribes. On discovering this remarkable piece of sculpture--remarkable considering the place where it was found--I immediately commenced making a drawing of it. But, before completing the sketch, I was so struck with its singular beauty and perfection, that I determined to lay violent hands on it, and bring it away with me; fearing that a mere drawing would not be sufficient evidence, to the incredulous world, of the existence of such a piece of work among the ruins of places, which had been built and peopled, according to the commonly received opinion, by a race of semi-barbarians. It was a work of no little labor and difficulty to secure it. But I finally succeeded in giving it a comfortable and a safe lodgment on the back of my mule, and so brought it to the bank of the river, where I em_bark_ed it in a canoe. It had several narrow escapes by the way, but was, at length, safely landed in New York. [Illustration: COLOSSAL HEAD.] I also discovered among the rubbish, in this place, and not far from the spot where the above described Grecian head was found, another large stone, with a head well sculptured upon its surface, in bold relief, as represented in the accompanying engraving. It was buried up in a mass of superincumbent ruins, and was only brought to light in the course of my laborious excavations. On removing the loose stones and dust which covered it--the labor of nearly a whole day--it stood as represented in the sketch. The face was not so finely chiselled, nor had it the same regular classic beauty of feature and proportion, as the one first seen and described; but still there is much in its general appearance to attract attention. It is different from any thing heretofore discovered on this side of the Atlantic. The features, like those of the head which I brought away with me, are decidedly those of the Caucasian race, bearing no resemblance to those of any of the tribes on this continent. The ears are rather large, and the hair is represented rather by a series of regular flutings, than by any attempt at the wavy lines, which are ordinarily deemed essential to grace in this capital ornament. A band, or collar, passes round from the back of the neck, close to, and supporting the face, and meeting in a point, a few inches below the chin. The stone on which this figure was cut was circular, twelve feet in diameter, and three in thickness. The head, covering more than half its area, was of course of colossal proportions. The periphery of this mighty wheel was geometrically accurate and regular, and smoothly chiselled off, and would have served well, in ancient times, to fulfil the tartarean destiny of Sisyphus, or, in these modern times, for a Yankee mill-stone. It was a laborious task to clear away the stones and dirt that had been accumulating about it, perhaps for ages. But the sight of it, when placed in an upright position, amply repaid me for all the toil and fatigue, which it cost me to effect it. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I could keep my Indian allies at work. The influence of presents and coaxing was exhausted, long before I had attained my purpose with regard to this colossal figure-head. I then turned preacher, and addressed myself to their superstitious notions with some effect; calling up my little stock of proverbial wisdom, to stimulate them to new exertions, and giving them to understand that I expected to find something better than loose and broken stones, in turning up the soil, and rummaging among the ruined sepulchres of the departed. They did not comprehend the drift of my oracular discourse; but, like many other sermons, too profound for the comprehension of the hearers, it increased their reverence for the preacher, and made them more submissive to my orders. The next object which arrested my attention, was one, the sight of which carried back my imagination to ages of classic interest, and to the marvels of human art and power, on the banks of the river of Egypt. It was not perhaps a Sphinx, in the language of the critical and fastidious antiquarian; but sure I am, that no one, however scrupulous for the honor of oriental antiquities, could see it, without being strongly reminded of the fabulous monster of Thebes, and secretly wishing that he was so far an Oedipus, as to be able to solve the inexplicable riddle of its origin and design. It was the figure, as represented in the accompanying engraving, of a mammoth _turtle_, with the head of a man boldly protruded from under its gigantic shell. The figure of the amphibious monster measured over six feet in length, with a proportional width, and rested upon a huge block of concrete sandstone. The back was correctly and artistically wrought, displaying the exact form, and all the scale lines of the turtle in good proportion. There were also, in many parts distinctly visible, fainter lines, to show that the peculiar arabesque of that ornamental shield had not been overlooked by the artist. [Illustration: THE AMERICAN SPHINX.] All the other parts were equally true to nature. It was much broken and mutilated, especially the human protuberance; but not sufficiently so to destroy the evidences of the skill with which it had been designed, and of the masterly workmanship with which it had been wrought. This head must, originally, have been an unusually fine specimen of ancient American art. Like all the others found in this region, it has the Caucasian outline and contour, and in its finish and expression, is strongly marked with the unmistakable impress of genius. It is rare, among these works, to meet with an entire head, like this. They are generally half buried in the rock from which they were hewn, as if designed to be placed in some conspicuous position in the façade, or interior wall of a building. This work gives the head complete, and the posterior developments of the cranium, as the phrenologist would say, are those of an intellectual and moral cast--that is to say, they are quite subordinate to the frontal developments. The forehead was originally high and broad, though the mutilated appearance of the upper part, as given in the plate, would leave a different impression. The nose, as far as it remains is beautifully shaped and finely chiselled, as are also the lips, the chin, and the ears. It is only for me to describe things as I saw them, leaving it to others, more profound than myself in antiquarian researches, to frame appropriate theories for their explanation. But I could not avoid the temptation to pause a little over this singular curiosity, with a lurking disposition to catechise conjecture, respecting its probable signification and end. But it was all in vain--a mere reverie of guess-work, without beginning or clue. Whether it was the offspring of a simple freak of the imagination of the artist;--whether it was one of the symbols of the worship of that unknown race, for whom the artist exercised his unholy craft of making "gods which are yet no gods;"--whether it was a quaint hieroglyphical memorial of some remarkable epoch in their history--some luckless Jonah half swallowed by a turtle, and for ever struggling to escape;--whether it was the emblematic device of a club of artistic gourmands, the sign to be placed over the door of their banqueting hall, designed to acknowledge and illustrate the intimate union and sympathy, the identity of nature, between man and beast, in those who "make a god of their belly;"--these are alternatives of conjecture, upon which we may speculate as we will, but from which it is neither safe nor easy to make a definite choice. The probable history and design of "the American Sphinx"--for such I have taken the liberty to name it--will, I trust, be made a matter of more sober and successful enquiry by some future traveller, more skilled than I can profess to be in antiquarian researches. It is an ample field, strewn on every side with subjects of the deepest interest. And he who shall first, by means of these only records that remain, scattered, disconnected, and crumbling into hopeless decay, decypher some legible tale of probability, and unravel a leading clue to the history of these now inexplicable relics, will win and deserve the admiring gratitude of all, who are curious to investigate the ever changing aspects of human society. I had scarcely met with any thing, in all my rambles, more full of exciting interest, than the field I was now exploring; and I never so much regretted being alone. For a well read antiquarian to talk with--for a curioso in hieroglyphical lore to trace out the mystic lines, and give an intelligent signification to the grotesque images about me--I would have given my last maravedi, and the better half of my humble stock of provisions. Fragments of various kinds, and of every size and form, lay scattered around me, on every side, in the immediate vicinity of this "American Sphinx," affording in their shapes, though mutilated and imperfect, and in the lines of sculpture still traceable upon many of them, satisfactory _prima facie_ evidence of having once composed the ornamental decorations of immense and splendid edifices, which now lay in utter ruins at my feet. The place where I stood had evidently been the site of a large city, thronged with busy multitudes of human beings, whose minds were cultivated and refined, whose hearts throbbed high with human affections, and human hopes, and who doubtless dreamed, as we do, that their works would make their names immortal. But where are they? A thousand echoes, from the hills and walls around, answer--_where_? [Illustration: AN ORNAMENTED HEAD.] Proceeding with my excavations, and turning over large masses of earth, and stones of every size and shape, I was at length rewarded with the discovery of another figure, somewhat resembling, but in many respects unlike, those which I have already shown. A sketch of it is given in the above engraving. It was merely the face, standing out in full relief from the block, which was entirely cut away from the top and bottom, but left, in two nearly circular projections, at the sides. The head ornaments are striking and peculiar. They are not, as might be supposed from their appearance in the reduced scale of the engraving, miniature heads. If they were, I should venture to find in them another item of Grecian mythology, and boldly assume that the head was that of Jupiter, with three young Minervas in the act of issuing from his pregnant brain. Nor would the appearance of three, instead of one, in any manner stagger my faith, since it is well known, that America exceeds all other parts of the world in human and animal fecundity, as well as in the fertility of its soil. And why not equally so in its mythological reproductions? But, alas! for one of the most promising theories that ever was conceived, these ornaments are only balls, with slight indentations, connected together by a band running across the top of the head, and terminating at the sides, just above the ears. A phrenologist might possibly discern in them, the overgrown diseased developments of the intellectual organs residing in that part of the cranium. The ears of this figure are monstrous, being nearly half the size of the face. The features, and the whole contour of the face, like the other two, will be seen to be entirely Caucasian, having no element of the Indian or American, in any of its lines. It is seventeen inches in length, twenty one in breadth, including the huge ears, and ten in thickness. It was found in the side of a large pile of ruins, the remains of dilapidated walls and buildings, of which it had evidently formed one of the ornamental parts. There were fragments of others of the same general character, but none in so good preservation as this, which require a distinct description. It required but a few days to examine this part of the country,--and I was really glad when the time expired;--for, besides the immense labor of cutting every step of our way through a dense shrubbery, which covers most of the country, and a wilderness of trees and thickets, matted and woven together with thousands of creepers, together with plants, rendered almost impenetrable by their thorns, which, like spears, would pierce at every movement,--we had also to contend with myriads of insects of which the reading world has already heard so much from learned travellers, that it might be deemed a work of supererogation to speak of them again, and which, it will be observed are herein named, only in connection with other obstacles of greater magnitude,--such as the poisonous tarantula, which is often disturbed from its stony bed, and the tiger of the country, sometimes started from the thickets! But, to be _deserted_ in this extremity, is a thing not easily to be borne. Yet so it was. My recently enlisted Indian comrades, being entirely out-done and astonished, gave me up as a wild or crazy man, and fled to their homes! Thus forsaken,--but not until after a week of research, I returned in safety to "the lady's room," where I found my Indian allies had arrived some days before me. While pursuing my solitary researches, after my aids had absconded, I was obliged to satisfy myself with such objects of curiosity as lay upon the surface, without any effort to remove obstructions, or excavate among the ruins. There was little to be gained in this way. Moreover, as I have hinted above, there was much discomfort, and no little danger, in remaining alone, as will be seen by the following incident. [Illustration: A SITUATION.] I had swung my hammock, as usual, between two trees, and, having lighted my watch-fires in the open space around, had passed a comfortable night, with no other intrusion than dreams of home, and the musical hum of musquitoes. Very early in the morning, I was startled by a rustling in the thicket near by. Lifting myself up, in some alarm, I was by no means gratified, or quieted, by the appearance of a full grown tiger, creeping stealthily along through the rank growth of grass and weeds, which skirted the thicket, and peering at me, as if he had not yet provided himself a breakfast. Happily, my fires were still burning, and the sight of them brought the intruder to a pause. I seized my gun, and made ready to give him the best reception in my power, in case he should show any disposition to cultivate a further acquaintance. In this situation, certainly not very agreeable to me, whatever it might have been to my unwelcome forest visitor, we remained more than two hours, intently eyeing each other, as if preparing for the deadly contest. They were hours of as painful and absorbing suspense, as any that I ever experienced. I had little doubt that one or the other of us must fall a sacrifice to this ill considered and unexpected meeting. But I was disappointed. Whether it was want of appetite, or a disrelish for the smoke of my watch-fires, or an instinctive apprehension of other fires, and a more distasteful smoke, in reserve for him, I know not, and did not care to ask him. But, after several times changing his position from side to side, as if seeking a favorable point of attack, he slunk away, as cautiously as he came, turning wistfully round several times, in his retreat, as if half resolved not to leave me, or somewhat suspicious that his escape would be interrupted. I had many misgivings about his return during the day, feeling that I would rather risk such a meeting in my hammock, guarded by the watch-fires, than in my solitary and unprotected rambles through the forest. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. VISIT TO THE ANCIENT TOWN OF PANUCO. RUINS. CURIOUS RELICS FOUND THERE. The route.--Scenery.--The wild Fig Tree.--Panuco.--Its history.--Present appearance of the town.--Language.--Ruins in the vicinity.--Discovery of the sepulchral effigy.--Description of it.--Situation in which it was found.--Resemblance to figures on the tomb of the Knights Templar.--A conjecture.--An influence.--A conclusion.--Extensive ruins of Cerro Chacuaco, and other places.--Vases found there.--Probably of modern date. During my sojourn in the interior, I made another exploring excursion, in order to visit the ancient town of Panuco; where I was received with the greatest kindness and hospitality, both by the white and the half-breed inhabitants of the place. My route lay along the banks of the river, and across the prairies; the common road being by a bridle path, through the woods, and never successfully travelled, but with the greatest care and watchfulness. The ranchos and milpas, (small farms) assumed a better appearance than was expected; and we passed several fields of ripe corn and cane, owned principally, by Indians. But even here, every thing, whether Indian or Mexican, wears a primitive look. Proceeding up the river, which retained its width of half a mile, we found the scenery on either side continually improving as we went, and opening new views of the most picturesque and romantic beauty. I visited many of the Indian huts that lay in our way, the occupants of which were very civil; but it was quite impossible here, as in other places, to convince the people, that acquisition of _gold_ was not the object of my visit,--a circumstance which may, perhaps, in some degree, account for the fact, that I could obtain from them so little information respecting the neighboring country. The wild fig-tree, which bears a small fruit, resembling that of the cultivated tree in Louisiana, grows here to a vast extent and beauty, having, from its wide-spreading branches, suckers, which hang down and touch the ground, where they take root and grow in size equal to the original trunk,--thus giving to the tree, the appearance of a frame house with supporters and rafters. This beautiful tree also resembles the Banyan of South America, and belongs to that class. There are, likewise, in this vicinity, many other trees of curious and rare growth, some of which, being filled with fruit and blossoms at the same time, present a most unusual and pleasing appearance. Others, adorned with parasitical plants, intertwined with graceful vines and fragrant with flowers, afford a paradise for birds of the most brilliant plumage, and give indescribable richness and beauty to the scene. Panuco is an old town of the _Huestacos_, and is subject to occasional inundations during the rainy season. According to Bernal Diaz, this is the place conquered by Cortes, at so great an expense of life and treasure. At the period of the conquest, this was a position of much consequence, as may be inferred from the fact, that the conqueror petitioned Charles the Fifth to add its government to that of New Spain. This request being granted, a garrison was accordingly placed there, and commended to the guardian care of _St. Stephen_,--a name which holds its influence there to the present day. It was the powerful and heroic race of the Huestacos that once dwelt here; a race so hated by the ruthless invaders of Mexico, that, if they had had power to accomplish their fiendish desire, not a vestige of that noble people would have been found remaining. But, even the wasting influences of time, and that desolating bigotry which rioted in the destruction of every thing that was not consecrated, or, more properly speaking, desecrated to the idolatry of Rome, has not been found sufficient to destroy the marks of their genius, or entirely to obliterate the memory of their deeds, and the monuments of their greatness. The remains of pyramids, dwellings, household utensils, ornaments and weapons, all tend to convince me that the arts once flourished upon the spot, where now dwells a listless, idle race of Mexicans, retrograding as the year rolls on, even more rapidly than the decay of the ruins around them. Panuco is the only town above Tampico, on the Panuco River, and contains only about four thousand inhabitants. It is beautifully located on the banks of the river, in the state of Vera Cruz, about thirty leagues from Tampico, by water, and fifteen by land. It is not laid out with any degree of regularity. The streets of the town look deserted, and wear a melancholy aspect. The houses are of bamboo, with mud walls, which have been once apparently white-washed, and thatched roofs. There are no public buildings, little or no business, and only a few shops, established chiefly for the sale of intoxicating liquors. The language spoken by the Indians, in this region, might, with much propriety, be termed an amalgamation of many different dialects, in which that of the Huestaco predominates. Father Tapia Zenteno, made an effort to render it into form;--but, he did not succeed very well,--the confusion of tongues being more than a match for his etymological skill. Indeed, I imagine there are few in this region, who would not faint under the task. It might well be taken for a modern representation of Babel, or, perhaps, for an abortive attempt to harmonize the discordant elements of that ancient Pandemonium of Tongues. The learned Mr. Gallatin, the venerable president of the "New York Historical Society," and of the "Ethnological Society of New York," has recently published in the "Proceedings" of the last mentioned body, a dissertation, in which he shows conclusively, that the languages of North and Central America, belong, grammatically, to the same family, however much they may differ in words. We have reason to be grateful, that the researches of the Antiquarian in our own country, have furnished the lovers of Ethnological lore, with much valuable material for the development of a science which has, within a few short years, arrived at an eminent degree of importance. [Illustration: SEPULCHRAL EFFIGY.] In the vicinity of the town of Panuco, are ruins of ancient places, scattered over an area of several miles. Their history is entirely unknown to the inhabitants; nor do any of them, as far as I could learn, manifest the slightest curiosity to ascertain who were the builders, or in what manner they have been exterminated from their ancient inheritance. I could not discover the trace of a tradition, or conjecture, on the subject, among any of the people, though I sought for it with great diligence. Several days were employed in exploring this neighborhood, our toils being lightened, occasionally, by the discovery of things new and strange. Among the rest, there was one, which I deem a very remarkable curiosity; so much so, that I shall satisfy myself with presenting that to the reader, as the sole representative of the ruins of this interesting spot. It was a handsome block, or slab of stone, of this form, [Illustration] measuring seven feet in length, with an average of nearly two and a half in width, and one foot in thickness. Upon its face, was beautifully wrought, in bold relief, the full length figure of a man, in a loose robe, with a girdle about his loins, his arms crossed on his breast, his head encased in a close cap, or casque, resembling the Roman helmet, (as represented in the etchings of Pinelli,) without the crest, and his feet and ankles bound with the ties of sandals. The edges of this block were ornamented with a plain raised border, about an inch and a half square, making a very neat and appropriate finish to the whole. The execution was equal to that of the very best that I have seen among the wonderful relics of this country, and would reflect no discredit upon the artists of the old world. Indeed, I doubt not, that the discovery of such a relic among the ruined cities of Italy or Egypt, would send a thrill of unwonted delight and surprise through all the marvel-hunting circles, and literary clubs, of Europe, and make the fortune of the discoverer. The figure is that of a tall, muscular man, of the finest proportions. The face, in all its features, is of the noblest class of the European, or Caucasian race. The robe is represented as made with full sleeves, and falling a little below the knees, exposes the fine proportions of the lower limbs. This block, which I regarded with unusual interest, and would by all means have brought away with me, if it had been in my power, I found lying on the side of a ravine, partially resting upon the dilapidated walls of an ancient sepulchre, of which nothing now remains but a loose pile of hewn stones. It was somewhat more than four feet below the present surface of the ground, and was brought to light in the course of my excavations, having accidently discovered a corner of the slab, and the loose stones about it, which were laid open by the rush of waters in the rainy season, breaking out a new and deep channel to the river. The earth that lay upon it was not an artificial covering. It bore every evidence of being the natural accumulation of time; and a very long course of years must have been requisite to give it so deep a burial. I caused the stone to be raised, and placed in a good position for drawing. The engraving on the opposite page is a correct and faithful sketch of this wonder of ancient American art, as I left it. Those of my readers who have visited Europe, will not fail to notice a resemblance between this, and the stones that cover the tombs of the Knights Templar, in some of the ancient churches of the old world. It must not be supposed, however strongly the prima facie evidence of the case may seem to favor the conjecture, that this resemblance affords any conclusive proof, that the work is of European origin, or of modern date. The material is the same as that of all the buildings, and works of art, in this vicinity, and the style and workmanship are those of the great unknown artists of the Western Hemisphere. According to Gomara, it was customary with the ancient Americans, to place the figure of a deceased king on the "chest" in which his ashes were deposited. Is it improbable, when we take into view the progress which the arts had made among these unknown nations, as evinced by the ruins I have recently visited, and others scattered over all this region, that this "chest" was sometimes, nay generally, of stone? That it was in fact, in the language of oriental antiquity, a sarcophagus? And is it not possible, that the tablet which I have here brought to light, is that of one of the monarchs of that unknown race, by whom all these works were constructed? I am strongly of opinion that it is so, and that a further and deeper exploration in the same vicinity, would discover other relics of the same kind, and open to the view of the explorer, the royal cemetery of one of the powerful nations of Anahuac. If I am justified in this conjecture,--and it is impossible to convey to the reader any adequate impression of the collateral and incidental evidences, which, to one on the spot, spring up at every step, to give color and support to such a conjecture,--then may I venture one step farther, and infer that the ruins of this vicinity, are those of a capital city, a royal residence of one of those ancient empires--the seat of its court--the place of the sepulchres of its kings. There is nothing either in the magnitude and extent of the ruins, or in the traces of elaborate art expended in their construction and finish, to throw a shade over such an inference. The area occupied by them is sufficiently vast for the metropolis of any empire, ancient or modern. The ruins are those which might have belonged to palaces and temples, as magnificent and extensive as any that have yet been discovered in the Western World. The style and finish of those that are sufficiently preserved to justify an opinion, are as elaborate and complete, as the most perfect specimens of ancient American art that have fallen under my observation. While the evidences are not slight, that a vast area of similar remains lies buried under the soil, which, for ages has been accumulating upon them, by natural deposit during the rainy seasons, and the gradual abrasion of the adjacent mountains. If the above inference be deemed admissible, it cannot be thought extravagant to conclude, that these ruins are of very ancient date, and belong to the history of a people, much older than any respecting whom we have any authentic records--a people who had probably passed away before the era of the Spanish conquest. It seems to me impossible to come to any other conclusion. And I cannot avoid expressing my surprise, at the apparent ease with which some writers have arrived at a different result. As an argument on the subject may not be acceptable to all my readers, I will not cumber this part of the work with any further speculations, but reserve them for a closing chapter, which can be omitted by those whose minds are made up, or who do not feel interested to go below the surface, in order to unravel the enigmas of time. There are other ruins, situated south of Panuco, at the distance of about three leagues. They are known as the ruins of "Cerro Chacuaco." They are represented as covering an extent of about three leagues square, with unquestionable evidence that they were all comprised within the bounds of one vast city. I may also mention those of "San Nicholas," distant five leagues on the south west, and those of "A la Trinidad," about six leagues in nearly the same direction. There are also other ruins, of which I obtained some information, at a still greater distance. Indeed, it would appear that the whole region is full of them, on every side--melancholy memorials of the immense numbers, as well as of the mighty power and wealth of the ill-fated race, that once flourished here. As far as I could rely upon the information received, all these ruins present the same general features, as those which I have already described. It is probable that they all belong to the same period, and were built by the same race; and the evidence is clear to my mind, that that race was much more ancient, and further advanced in the arts of civilized life, than any of the American races now remaining, or any whose history has come down to us. It was among the ruins of "Cerro Chacuaco," that the two vases represented below, were found. They are made of the common clay of the country, well wrought and handsomely formed, and could not have been made as they are, without some mechanical contrivance. The head on the first and larger one is decidedly that of the negro, with low, retreating forehead, flat nose, and thick lips. From this circumstance, I should judge it to be of recent origin, as there is no evidence that any of the African race were ever found in America, till they were introduced there as slaves in the sixteenth century. The natives, degraded as they are at the present day, are not unskilful in the manufacture of pottery, for common uses; and these, though of a higher finish than any that I have seen there, might have been lost, or left among the ruins, by some passing traveller. I am the more inclined to this opinion, from the circumstance that the people here take no interest whatever in examining the ruins, and would never think of going beneath the surface, to find anything that might be buried under them. I therefore conclude that these must have been found in some open place, above ground, where they could not have lain many years, without crumbling into decay. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. DISCOVERY OF TALISMANIC PENATES.--RETURN BY NIGHT TO TAMPICO. Speculations upon the images.--Superstitious reliance of the natives upon them in seasons of sickness.--Blending of idolatries.--Clue to the solution of a great problem.--Far-fetched theories.--The New World peopled from the Old.--Similarity in the objects and forms of worship, good evidence of similarity of origin.--Peculiar ugliness and obesity of many of the idols of Asia.--Ugnee, of Hindostan.--Gan, of China.--Fottei, of Japan.--Conclusion to be drawn from these facts.--Confirmed by the claims of the Chinese to the first discovery of America.--Still further by the analogy between the languages of America and those of Tartary.--Predilection of idolatry for ugliness.--Return by night to Tampico.--Rumors of war.--French retailers.--Mexico backing out. In the course of my explorations among these interesting and melancholy relics of by-gone ages, I discovered two very singular and grotesque looking images, which have given rise to no little speculation in my own mind. I have the pleasure of presenting, at the close of the chapter, correct drawings of these to the reader. The originals are deposited in the museum of the New York Historical Society. I had little doubt, when I discovered these images, that they once figured in the idolatrous worship of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country; but what place to assign them in that mysterious Pandemonium,--whether to call them god or devil, whether to class them with the deities that preside over the affections, or to give them rank with those of a more intellectual character, I have been utterly at a loss to conjecture. I have been somewhat inclined, of late, to lean to the opinion that they belong to the former class, as I found images of the same kind in use among the Indian women, who wore them suspended about their necks, and attributed to them something like a talismanic influence. They are especially relied upon in seasons of sickness,--but, whether supposed to have power to frighten away, by their pre-eminent ugliness, the ugliest shapes of disease, or to conciliate the genius of health, by awakening his sympathies for the dreadful ills which flesh is heir to, and the monstrous deformities in human frame, which are often the result of disease,--or whether the contemplation of them is intended to sustain and solace the sufferer, in any condition, however lamentable and hideous, to which she may have been reduced, by keeping continually before her eyes the representation of one more hideous and lamentable still, I was not able to determine; nor is it, perhaps, material to the interests of science or religion, or the melioration of suffering humanity in a more enlightened age, and among more civilized races of men, that this point should be settled beyond the possibility of a doubt; since it is by no means probable, even if it could be proved, by the most incontestable evidence of numberless personal certificates, and well authenticated cases of positive relief, or almost miraculous cures, that the ladies of our day, and in our highly favored country, could be induced to substitute them for the infallible, health-imparting, life-restoring panaceas, catholicons, medicated lozenges, sugar-crusted pills, vegetable anodyne restoratives, medicinal rejuvenescent cordials, magnetic rings, _et id omnes genus_, whose name is legion, promising immortal life and beauty to all who are so fortunate as to secure a seasonable share of their influence. It was not with any view to set up an opposition to this well disciplined army of the inveterate and the veteran enemies to the continued reign of death and disease in our world, that I brought home with me some of these remarkable images: nor is it with any hope of raising a successful competition with regularly-educated, duly licensed and long established physicians, whether of the old school or the new, whether they administer their homoeopathic infinitesmals upon the point of a cambric needle, or shovel in their allopathic doses by the cartload, that I have ventured upon this learned and profound disquisition upon the remarkable discovery, which it was my fortune to make. And I beg leave here to give due and solemn notice to all the world, that, if this singular accident should chance to be the means of introducing a new epoch in American therapeutics, I hold myself, my heirs, executors, administrators and assigns, utterly and for ever exempt from all and singular the consequences and results thereof. In the present use of these talismanic images, there is a very singular, and, I am inclined to think, an unexampled blending of the old pagan idolatry of the Indians, with the image worship of their newly adopted religion. They are all, as the reader is no doubt aware, regarded as converts to the Christian religion, under the instruction of the Priests of the Church of Rome. They are, for the most part, very scrupulous in observing all the customs and requirements of that church. The images I here refer to are hollow, with a small aperture near one of the shoulders. They are filled with balls, about as large as an ordinary pea, which are supposed to have been made of the ashes of victims sacrificed, in former days, to these gods. In this manner they were consecrated to demon-worship. Whether, in their present accommodation to a species of Christian idolatry, these balls are regarded as a substitute for "beads," or as "relics" of martyrs to a faith in an "unknown god" and an unknown form of worship, I am unable to say. I only know that the images, with their contents, are regarded with a profoundly superstitious interest, and relied upon in seasons of peculiar peril. It may, perhaps, be thought, that I am making too much capital out of a very trifling circumstance, if I should say, that in the course of my meditations upon these ugly little demons, I imagined I had found in them, the means of solving one of the great problems which have divided and perplexed philosophers, ever since the discovery of our continent. But I deny "the soft impeachment;" I protest strenuously against the unkind imputation. If the falling of an apple led Sir Isaac Newton to the discovery of one of the great first principles and fundamental laws of nature,--if the clattering of the lid of his mother's tea-kettle, unfolded to the inquisitive mind of Watt, the powers and mysteries of _steam_, that semi-omnipotent agent in the affairs of our little world,--if the earth's profile, as sketched on the disc of the moon in an eclipse, convinced the sagacious mind of Columbus, that he could get round on the other side, without danger of falling off,--who shall presume to say, that this discovery of a pair of ugly little personages, belonging to the system of idol divinities of an unknown race of people, will not prove to the inquiring mind of some other, though less profound philosopher, the clue by which the great mystery of their origin shall at length be effectually solved? I will not answer for it, that my theory in this case shall be as far fetched, ingenious or elaborate, as many others that have gained the favor and support of learned and worthy names. I only engage to make out as good a case as some of my predecessors in the same wide field;--those, for example, who have undertaken to show that the abroginal inhabitants of America, are the descendants of Abraham and probably the lost ten tribes, who were carried away into Assyria, in what is termed the first captivity under Shalmaneser. These learned theorists have considered their case fully, and incontestably made out, when they have discovered ten words in a thousand of the language, to bear some distant, and, in many cases, fanciful resemblance to words of the same import in the ancient Hebrew; or when they have traced, in their religious rites and usages, some slight analogies with the imposing ceremonials of the Mosaic ritual. In drawing their sage conclusions from these attenuated premises, they have not troubled themselves to consider what an overwhelming effect it would have upon their theory, to weigh the nine hundred and ninety words in a thousand, which have not the most distant resemblance to the Hebrew, or the multitude of idolatrous rites, and heathenish mummeries, which were utterly and irreconcilably at variance with the spirit and letter of the ancient Scriptures. It is easy enough to make a theory, and to support it manfully, as long as you can keep your eyes shut to every fact that militates against it. But alas! the great majority of such creations vanish as soon as the eyes are opened, even as the pageant of a dream vanishes before the morning light. But, not to lose sight of my own good theory, let us return to my little images, and to the thoughts which they have suggested, in relation to the long agitated, and still unsettled question of the origin of the first inhabitants of this continent. In the first place,--I take it for granted, that the new world, as it is called, was peopled from the old. For, no one who takes the Bible as his guide, will suppose that more than one pair was created, or doubt that the residence of that first pair, and their immediate descendants, was in Asia. And if any one rejects the testimony of the Bible, my argument is not intended for him. In the second place,--it will be admitted that a close correspondence in the forms of worship, and in the appearance and character of the objects of worship, is one of the best grounds for supposing a similarity of origin in any two races of people. There is scarcely any thing of which nations are more tenacious, and by which they can be more safely recognized and identified, than the forms and ceremonies of their religion. Strange and inexpicable as it is, they change oftener and more easily in matters of _Faith_, than in matters of _Form_. Nearly three thousand years ago, it was laid down as a principle not to be questioned, that the religion of a people, especially of idolaters, was not liable to sudden and voluntary change. _Pass over the isles of Chittim and see, and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be any such thing. Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit._ Now, to bring these principles to bear upon the object I have in view, let it be observed,--First, that, in the mythology of all the pagan nations, in Asia, many of the idols they worship, are the most monstrous and hideous deformities imaginable. Ugliness, in every conceivable shape, is deified. Secondly,--some of the ugliest of these deities are distinguished for their obesity. Thirdly,--as an example of these, take _Ugnee_, the regent of fire, among the Hindoos, who is represented as a very corpulent man, riding on a goat, with copper colored eye brows, beard, hair and eyes. His corpulency is held by the Brahmins, as an indication of his _benevolence_, and his readiness to grant the desires of his worshippers. Fourthly,--among the idols of China, some are described as monstrous figures, hideous to behold. Among the number is _Gan_, who has a broad face, and a prodigious great belly. Fifthly,--_Fottei_, who is sometimes called _Miroku_, one of the best, and most prominent of the Japanese deities, is represented with the same deformity, a huge distended belly. Another circumstance, not inapposite to our purpose is this, that the worshippers of _Miroku_, in Japan, expect to receive from his benevolent assistance, among other good things, _health_, riches, and _children_. Now, put these facts together, and associate with them the facts of the existence of similar images of worship among the natives of America, and of the reliance of those natives upon them for aid in times of sickness, and will it not go far to prove a positive relationship between them and the inhabitants of Hindostan, China, or Japan? I trust no one will presume to dispute it, after the pains I have taken, and the learning and research I have displayed in proving it. The problem of ages may be considered as settled. It is no longer a vexed question. The reader will be pleased to observe, that the Japanese god Miroku, is expected to give to his votaries _health_ and _children_. Does not this last circumstance bear with unanswerable weight and significancy, upon my position; and prove, beyond the possibility of doubt or peradventure, that the Aborigines of America, emigrated from Japan? The images which I have discovered, and which form the subject of this erudite disquisition, are worn, as I have before remarked, by the _women_ of America, in the time of sickness. Now, it is an established fact, that, in all nations and in all ages, the one great and laudable desire of woman is, that she may be blessed with children. For this she suffers, and for this she prays. The reliance, therefore, of the women of Japan and the women of America, upon these ugly-looking, corpulent little demons, to assist them in attaining this one prevalent, paramount desire, establishes the sameness of their origin, and leaves no lingering doubt in my mind, and, of course, none in the mind of the intelligent and candid reader, that, wherever the _men_ of those almost exterminated races may have come from, they certainly brought their _wives_ from Japan. If it were desirable to go farther to prove my point, I might allude for strong confirmation, to the fact, as laid down in an old writer, that the Chinese claim to have discovered America, more than two hundred years before Columbus attempted to cross the Atlantic. It was in the year 1270, that China was overrun by the Tartars; and it is given out, that a body of one hundred thousand inhabitants, refusing obedience to their new masters, set sail, in one thousand ships, to find a new country, or perish in the enterprise. The origin of Mexico is thus accounted for. And nothing is more natural than to suppose, that, in making up so magnificent an expedition, they would find some of their Japanese neighbors desirous to accompany them. In addition to this, the learned philologists, who have investigated the languages of the Aboriginal nations, with a view to tracing their origin, have found, in the names of places and things, many striking correspondencies with the language of Japan. And Barton, one of our own countrymen, has published a very elaborate treatise on the subject, in which he undertakes, and, as he thinks, successfully, to prove, that the language originally spoken in both the Americas, are radically one and the same with those of the various nations, which are known by the general name of Tartars. Having got my hand in, and feeling somewhat encouraged by the singular success of the above triumphant philosophical disquisition, I am strongly tempted to trespass upon the patience of the reader, while I proceed to inquire into the probable reasons why the worshippers of idols, who have the choosing of their own gods, so generally delight in those of grotesque and ugly shapes, and unseemly proportions. Since our fellow-creatures, even our wives and our children, are loved and cherished in proportion as they are rendered lovely to the sight by the graces of form, feature, complexion and expression, how happens it that those objects of adoration, who are supposed to preside over and control the interest and destinies of men, in all their relations to each other, and the dearest objects of their affections, should be clothed in forms of the most unnatural and disgusting appearance? But I forbear. I had passed several days among the ruins of Panuco. They were days of unusual mental excitement, and bodily fatigue. There was enough around me to occupy and interest me many days longer. But I was unprepared for the investigation. I had gratified, but by no means satisfied, my curiosity; and my attention was now necessarily turned from the sepulchres of the dead, towards the dwellings of the living. I gathered up my little stock of relics, consisting chiefly of idol images, found among the dilapidated temples and dwellings of the departed, and, with no little difficulty, conveyed them in safety to "the lady's room." Taking a last farewell of this apartment, and of the friends who entertained me there, I betook myself again to my canoe, bestowing my little demons carefully in the bottom, and covering them, with my hammock, and other travelling apparatus. The voyage down the river was as quiet and beautiful as can be conceived. The greater part of it was performed at night, under favor of a full moon, through fear of being surprised by the natives, who, in that event, either from superstition or jealousy, would, no doubt, have deprived me of my small collection of idols. [Illustration: TRAVELLING BY NIGHT.] I arrived at Tampico in the early part of April. Mine host of the French Hotel was as ready to receive me, as on my first arrival in the city, and his "accommodations" were equally inviting. The city was in a state of considerable excitement, in consequence of the daily expectation of the declaration of War by France. The Mexican Congress had, sometime before, passed a law, forbidding any foreigner to carry on a retail business in Mexico, after a certain specified time, on peril of confiscation. This law deeply affected the interests of a considerable number of Frenchmen, who, under the protection of the previous statutes, had established themselves in the country, investing their little all in the retail business. It was, in fact, a decree of banishment, without any alleged fault on their part, and with the certain sacrifice of all their property. The day arrived when the invidious law was to go into effect. The French retailers, acting under instructions from their government, and a promise of protection in any event, took a careful inventory of their goods, locked up their stores, placed the keys, with the certified inventory, in the hands of their Consuls, and waited the result. It was a quiet and dignified movement on the part of France, a sort of silent defiance which could not be misunderstood. But it was amusing to witness the different effects of this state of things, upon the different classes of French residents. Some of them, with an air of perfect nonchalance, as if fearing no power on earth, and knowing no anxiety beyond the present moment, improved the season as a holyday, a sort of carnival extraordinary, devoted to visiting, dancing, and all kinds of sports. Others, of a more mercurial temperament, blustered about the streets, flourishing their arms with the most violent gesticulations, scowling fearfully, swearing huge oaths of vengeance, and seemingly taking the entire affairs of the two nations into their own hands. It was a windy war. And sure I am, if the Mexican rulers had seen the fuming, and heard the sputtering of all these miniature volcanoes, they would have felt the seat of power tremble beneath them. The result of this movement proved, as thousands of similar movements have done before, that "wisdom is better than weapons of war." The Mexicans were completely _non-plus'd_. The offensive law was not violated in any case, and they had no handle for a further act of oppression. The foreign residents only stood on the defensive, and thus put the government in the wrong. They felt their position, and made a precipitate retreat. After a few days of awkward dalliance, they issued new instructions to the local authorities, informing them that they had misinterpreted the law, and misunderstood its purport. It was thus virtually abrogated, and the business of foreigners has since been suffered to flow on in its ordinary channels. It is not, perhaps, quite as awkward a matter for a _nation_ to _back out_ from the position it has deliberately taken with reference to another, as for an _individual_ to find himself compelled to do the same thing with reference to his antagonist. The responsibility is divided among so many--the body politic having no soul of its own--that there can be little, if any, personal feeling in the matter. And patriotism, which is a personal virtue wherever it exists, has generally so little to do with such movements, that we leave it out of the question altogether. But, agreeable or disagreeable, backing out is the only safe course, where the weak have given offence to the strong. It is a position and a movement that poor, divided, distracted Mexico, has become quite familiar with. And there is good reason to apprehend that she will yet have more experience of the same kind. Her present relations to the United States, and the ground she has taken in reference to the independence and annexation of Texas, leave little room for doubt, that she will, ere long, take another lesson in the tactics of retreat. As long as private ends are to be promoted by it, or the interests of a political clique advanced, so long she will bluster and threaten. More than this she will never even attempt to do. For the most selfish of her political leaders, and the most violent of her blustering patriots, knows too much to stake his all, and the all of his country, upon the cast of a die, which might, by possibility, turn up a war with the United States. The probability is, with regard to this very law, of which I have before spoken, that it was never intended to go into full effect. It was a mere money-getting experiment--a contrivance to levy black mail, in the name of the state, upon the foreign residents. They took it for granted, while passing the law, that the parties against whose interests it was aimed, would at once propose to buy off, and that large bribes would be offered to secure exemption from its effects. And the only chagrin they experienced, in finding themselves out-generaled by a sagacious adversary, arose from the necessity of relinquishing the expected booty. But let me not longer detain the reader from his promised introduction to the Talismanic Images, the ugly little divinities of the ancient dames of Anahuac. _Ecce Dii Penates!_ [Illustration] CHAPTER XI EXCURSION ON THE TAMISSEE RIVER. CHAPOTÉ, ITS APPEARANCE IN THE LAKES AND THE GULF OF MEXICO. Once more in a canoe.--The Tamissee river.--Fertility of its banks.--Wages on the plantations.--Magnificent trees.--Mounds on Carmelote creek.--Entertained by a Yankee.--Character and condition of the people.--The Chapoté--Observed on the lakes in the interior of Mexico.--Seen also in the Gulf.--Article in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine.--Speculations of the writer upon the Gulf Stream.--Supposed connection with the Pacific ocean.--Objections to this theory.--Another view of the matter.--Insects.--Return to Tampico. The city in mourning. It was not enough for me to know that I had _arrived_ at Tampico. I soon became uneasy; and, being desirous to make the best use of my time, my thoughts were immediately turned upon resuming my paddle in some other direction. Accordingly, in the evening of an early day, I found myself once more in a canoe, with an Indian for a companion, going up the Tamissee River, for the purpose of visiting the creeks that empty into it at different points, and of ascertaining what ruins might be found in their vicinity. This river rises at the foot of the mountains near Victoria, and falls into the Panuco at Tampico. It is navigable about forty leagues, for any vessel that can pass the bar, at which the depth of water is only eight or nine feet. The average depth of the stream is eight fathoms,--and a ship of a hundred guns, might haul up close to the side of its banks. This river rises and falls but little, and there are no towns situated upon its margin. Its crystal waters are well stocked with fish, of various kinds. The scenery, on either side, is exceedingly beautiful, opening occasionally, as you pass along, the most picturesque landscapes, and then completely embowering you in the shade of the luxuriant trees, that overhang the stream. The borders of the Tamissee, with a soil of exceeding richness and fertility, are under Indian cultivation, and supply the market of Tampico with fruit and vegetables. The plantain is in great request there, and plantations for cultivating it are numerous and extensive. Its growth is luxuriant, and its flavor particularly rich and agreeable. Sugar cane grows almost spontaneously, and in such abundance that credulity itself is staggered at the thought. One planting, without further care or labor, is all that it requires of human attention, for fifteen or twenty years. I measured a cane which had been planted nine years. It was vigorous and thrifty, as if of last year's planting, had grown to the enormous length of twenty-one feet, and exhibited forty-five joints. The product of the juice, though not perhaps in full proportion to the size of the plant, is much greater than that of the ordinary cane. Thirty-two gallons of the juice will yield no less than twelve pounds of sugar. This is considered only a fair average. That this gigantic cane is in very tall company, will be seen from the fact that the bamboo, which I have often measured, grows to the height of sixty feet. Wages, on these plantations, including the amount of one dollar allowed in rations of corn, are seven dollars per month, which, if properly husbanded, and prudently expended, would afford a comfortable subsistence to the laborer. But the Indians, who perform all this kind of labor, are, as I have before had occasion to remark, proverbially lazy and shiftless. Great difficulty is experienced, in all this country, in keeping them steadily at any kind of work. To find one of them so industrious and thoughtful, as to have any thing in advance of the absolute wants of the day, would be matter of astonishment. They work only when they are hungry, and stop as soon as they are fed. The instincts of nature alone can rouse them to make any exertion, unless compelled by some superior force, or a contract from which they cannot escape. The price of the ordinary sugar, in this vicinity, is only about two cents per pound; but the clay-clarified is worth from twelve to fourteen cents, a price which, it would seem, would amply remunerate the manufacturer. And yet I do not know of an establishment of the kind in any section of this country. If any enterprising Yankee should take the hint, and realize a fortune in the enterprise, I trust he will bear in mind, as he retires, that "one good turn deserves another." In pursuing my different routes through the woods, and along the water courses, of Mexico, I have often been struck with the immense size, and luxuriant foliage of the trees. The Banyan, or wild fig, in particular--of which I had occasion to take some notice before--with its numerous gigantic trunks, propping up its great lateral branches, from which they had originally descended in slender suckers, often covers an immense area. Possessing within itself the material for a vast forest, it presents to the beholder a magnificent and imposing spectacle. From some points of view, when favorably situated, it has the aspect of a vast natural temple, with its "long drawn aisles" and its almost endless colonnades supporting a roof overgrown with trees, and walls hung with clustering vines. The gloomy recesses within, would seem a fitting altar-place for the bloody rites of that dark idolatry, which once overshadowed these beautiful regions. The fan palm, called here _palma real_ or royal palm, rises from seventy to eighty feet in height. It is a magnificent tree, and whether seen in clusters, or alone, is always beautiful. With its tall straight trunk, and its richly tufted crown of fringed leaves, waving and trembling in every breath of air that stirs, and glistening in the sun with a beautiful lustre, it has a glory and a grace peculiar to itself. It was so abundant in this region, at the time of the conquest, that the Panuco was then called the Rio des Palmas, the River of Palms. A great variety of other trees are met with here, of magnificent size and splendid foliage, waving their brilliant branches in the breeze, and presenting strong inducements to the traveller continually to pause in wonder and admiration. In good sooth, it may be said that "man is the only thing that dwindles here." Having hauled up under a tree, made fast our canoe, and spread my blanket over me, I passed a comfortable night, as I had often done before, in the same primitive way. In the morning, I continued on my way two or three leagues farther up the river, where I found ruins, similar, in their general character, to those I have already described. They covered a considerable space, and were buried in some places, beneath masses of vegetable mould, and in others, overgrown with trees of immense size and great age. I wandered up and down among them, for a considerable time, sometimes cutting my way through the thick forest, and sometimes clambering over piles of broken stones, and long dilapidated walls, till I was quite weary with my labors. But I made no discoveries of sufficient interest to require a particular description. Every thing was so utterly ruinous, that it was impossible to trace out the lines of a single building, or determine the boundaries of the city, in any direction. Some distance farther up, on Carmelote Creek, there are other ruins, in the midst of which there are seventeen large mounds, of a somewhat peculiar construction. Though in a pretty good state of preservation, I found that the walls were not built of stone. I penetrated one of them to some distance, but discovered nothing but earth and mortar, and broken pieces of pottery, with a few rude specimens of carved images, cut in concrete sandstone. Some of the latter were as large as life. One of these I brought away with me; also several fragments of Penates, some of which are represented in the engraving at the close of this chapter. The mortar in these mounds seems to have been placed in layers at the bottom of the walls, but for what purpose I could not discover. It was not used as a cement, for, as I have said, there were no stones to be cemented. It was my opinion that these mounds were erected as places of burial, but there were no bones to be found, nor other traces of human remains. At night, I came to a house, which seemed more like home than any thing I had seen in Mexico. The very sight of it was refreshing to the traveller. The arrangements were all made with good taste and judgment, and a due regard to comfort. The grounds were pleasantly laid out, and beautifully ornamented with trees and flowers. On inquiry, I learned, as might have been expected, that this inviting looking place was built and occupied by a thriving Yankee, who had brought with him to Mexico his good notions of husbandry and house-keeping. He gave me a hearty welcome to his house, and entertained me, for the night, with the greatest kindness and hospitality. If there were a few more such hospitable, home-like resting-places, distributed here and there among these interesting regions, it would be vastly more agreeable and comfortable to the jaded traveller, who attempts to explore their time-honored ruins. The native Mexicans, in these parts, are an indolent, haughty, overbearing race. Still adhering to the barbarous policy of old Spain, they hold the people of every nation except their own, however much they may be in advance of them, in utter contempt. They are decidedly the most disagreeable class of people in this country. There is little intelligence or information among them. Education is at a very low ebb. There are some bright exceptions to this general remark; but they are lamentably few and far between. Whether a good school-master would be well sustained in this region, is a question which I am not prepared to answer; but certain I am he would find ample scope for the exercise of his vocation--a native soil wholly unoccupied, except with weeds. In pursuing my adventures, I stopped frequently at the different _milpas_ that lay in the way; but nothing like thrift or comfort was any where visible. A rude hovel with mud walls, and a single room, is all they aspire to, in the way of a dwelling. The land is rich and fruitful to excess, and the lounging, listless Indian is the only insurmountable obstacle to its profitable cultivation and improvement. In the hands of our southern planters, or of the sturdy farmers of the northern and western states, this whole region would become a paradise of perennial fruits and flowers, and teem with the golden treasures of every clime under heaven. In some of the fresh water lakes, in the interior, the "chapoté," a species of asphaltum, is found bubbling up to the surface. When washed upon the borders, it is gathered, and used as a varnish upon the bottoms of canoes. It has a peculiar pungent smell, like that of liquid asphaltum, and possesses, I think, some of its qualities. I have observed a remarkable phenomenon, of the same kind, out of sight of land, in the Gulf of Mexico, where the waters bubble up in the same manner, and accompanied with a similar smell. There can be no doubt that the ebullition and effluvia observed in the Gulf, are the effect of the same cause, which produces the asphaltic substance on the surface of the Lakes. This Asphaltic deposite in the Gulf, it appears, has attracted the notice of others, and from it a theory has recently been formed, to account for that hitherto unexplained, or not satisfactorily explained phenomenon, the Gulf Stream. The article appears in the August number of Hunt's Merchant's Magazine. As I had remarked upon the circumstance before that article was published, and furnished my remarks to the writer, as a confirmation of his statements, each of them having been made without a knowledge of the other, I think it not amiss to present, in this place, the substance of his theory, and the reasons upon which it is founded. I shall then have an opinion of my own to present, which differs materially from his. The opinion of the writer is, that the Gulf Stream is not caused by the trade winds forcing into the Caribbean Sea, between the South Caribbee Islands and the coast of South America, a large quantity of water which can only find vent into the North Atlantic, by the Florida channel. In his view, there are serious objections to this theory. First, the water in the Gulf Stream is hotter than that of any part of the Atlantic, under the equator, and therefore it cannot be that, which supplies this never failing current. Secondly, the water of the Stream is hotter in deep water, where the current begins, or rather where it has become regular and strong, than it is in the Gulf, on soundings, where there is little or no current, indicating that it comes not from the shores, but from the bottom in deep water. Thirdly, the appearance, in the Gulf, of bubbles of asphaltum constantly rising to the surface, and spread over it for a considerable distance. It has been collected in quantities sufficient to cover vessels chains, and other portions of the equipments. It is of a bituminous character, offensive to the smell, and becomes hard on exposure to the sun, forming a durable varnish, and doing better service on iron than any paint. Fourthly, the volume of the Gulf Stream is sometimes so great, that the Florida channel is not sufficient to give it outlet, and the excess passes off to the south of the Island of Cuba. This has been noticed to such an extent, that vessels, in sailing across from Cape Catoche, the eastern extremity of Yucatan, to Cape Corientes or Antonio, are often driven by it very much to the eastward of their course. It is manifest that such a current could not exist, if the Gulf Stream were supplied by waters driven from that direction, as the two currents would counteract and destroy each other. From these premises, the inference of the writer is, that nothing less than an ocean subsidiary to the Atlantic could supply the immense quantity of water, which is continually flowing out of the Gulf, with the force of an independent stream. And because this portion of the Atlantic is separated from the Pacific only by a narrow Isthmus, and the water in the Pacific is known to be constantly higher than that in the Atlantic, a passage under the Isthmus would necessarily create a powerful current. This passage he supposes to exist, to afford the supply necessary to keep the Gulf Stream perpetually in action. And, as the regions through which the supposed passage is formed, are known to be volcanic, the supposition accounts for the high temperature of the water, as well as for the force of the current. With regard to the temperature of the water in the stream, it is stated, that its average, off the Capes of Florida, is 86°, and in latitude 36, it is 81°; while the mean temperature of the atmosphere, under the equator, is 74°, and of the water of the Atlantic, in the same place, not above 60°. It appears, then, that the water of the Stream, in passing out of the Gulf is some 26° hotter than that of the ocean, which, under the old theory, is supposed to supply it. There is an error, either of the author, or of the printer, in these figures. The temperature of the Gulf Stream is correctly given; but he has evidently placed that of the ocean under the tropics, too low. It does not materially affect his argument, however, since it is undoubtedly a fact, notwithstanding the assertions of another writer, who has undertaken to reply to the article in question, that the water of the Gulf Stream, after it leaves the tropics, is warmer by some degrees, than the average of any part of the ocean under the tropics. On this point, the argument in Hunt's Magazine will not, I imagine, be controverted. The suggestion, that the water which constitutes this stream, is derived from the Pacific, forced by its superior elevation there, through a subterranean passage, across or under the Isthmus, is certainly original, and ingenious. But, to my view, it is liable to as many objections, as the old one which it is intended to displace. It is indeed, as the writer says, a bold conjecture, having nothing to support it, except the volume of water required for the constant supply of the great stream, and the asphaltic ebullition, which first suggested the theory, and gave rise to the discussion. Both these circumstances, I imagine, can be disposed of in a very satisfactory manner, without resorting to the supposition of this mysterious communication between the two great oceans. It is, in my view, a serious objection to the above-named theory, that there is no evidence whatever, on the Pacific coast, of any such submarine discharge of its surplus waters, as is here supposed. The natural, and almost inevitable effect of such an offlet would be the formation, at the place of discharge, of a mighty whirlpool, another Maelstrom, whose wide sweeping eddies would gather into its fearful vortex, and swallow up in inevitable destruction, whatever should venture within the reach of its influence. Whether such a phenomenon exists on that coast, I do not know; but it certainly is not described in any geography, nor laid down on any atlas, which has ever fallen under my notice. Another objection, almost, if not quite as fatal to this "bold conjecture," is the fact, that upon the established and well known principles of hydrostatic pressure, a discharge, such as is here supposed, could not long continue without reducing the two oceans to the same level. The immense volume of the discharge which requires such a conjecture to account for it, would surely, in the long course of ages, exhaust the surplus in the Pacific, and then the stream would cease to flow. So that the fact of the Pacific still maintaining its elevation, would seem to be conclusive evidence that no such equalizing communication exists. It may be further argued against this new theory, and it seems to me with great plausibility, that the appearance of the "chapoté" on the surface of the inland lakes, demonstrates the inconclusiveness of the main inference, on which the theory is based. Wherever the supposed subterranean passage may be, the volcanic fires, which are supposed to heat the water, and to furnish the asphaltic element, must necessarily lie below it; while the passage itself must, with equal certainty, lie below the bottom of the lakes. Now, if the asphaltic ebullition finds its way up through the lakes, would it not, certainly, and from necessity, carry the water along with it? And should we not expect to find a jet of salt water in the midst of the lake, or such an infusion of salt as to change the character of the lake? If it be replied to this, that the level of the lake is higher than that of the sea, another, and equally formidable difficulty will result. For, as water must always find its level, through the same opening by which the asphaltum rises, the water of the lake would inevitably leak out, and lose itself in the mighty current. While, therefore, I am, equally with the writer in the Merchants' Magazine, dissatisfied with the old theory of water from the south, forced into the Gulf by the trade winds, and compelled to find a northern outlet--which, from the nature of the case, the formation of the land, and the ordinary phenomena of the seas where it is held to originate, appears, at the first blush, absurd and impossible. I am constrained to say that his "bold conjecture" deserves no better name than he has given it. My own view of the case is, that the true cause of this singular phenomenon must be sought in the bottom of the Gulf itself--in a perpetual submarine volcano, which, like a gigantic cauldron, is for ever sending up to the surface its heated currents, mingled with bituminous ebullition from the heart of the earth. I have taken some pains to examine the water in the immediate vicinity of these asphaltic bubbles, and have found it always considerably warmer than in any other part of the Gulf. It did not occur to me then, to compare it with the known temperature of the stream, after it is formed into a current; but I have no doubt that it will be found so to agree, as to afford substantial confirmation to these views. Neither the ebullition here spoken of, nor the idea of submarine volcanoes in the Gulf, is intended to be presented as any thing new. The former was observed, and commented upon, by several of the early voyagers, who followed in the track of Columbus, more than three hundred years ago. It was then attributed to the existence of volcanic fires beneath the bed of the ocean. The latter is an opinion long since put forth, by some shrewd observer, I know not whom, in whose mind the insuperable objections to the old theory created a necessity for another and a better. Whether it is the true one, it is perhaps impossible for human sagacity to say. But that it is far more plausible, and more consistent with all the known facts in the case, than the other, I think, cannot be denied. The insects in this region are inconceivably numerous and annoying,--so much so, that I was actually compelled to relinquish my researches; not however, until I had very little reason to anticipate any thing more of interest. Thus defeated, I changed my course; and, turning the head of my canoe towards home, was once again in Tampico, but apparently not in the same city, of that name, which I had so recently left, to perform my pilgrimage to the cities of the dead. The place was enveloped in deep mourning. The shops were closed, colors were hanging mournfully at half-mast, and the officers of the Mexican army were engaged in suspending effigies in various parts of the town, on which the zealous population might vent their pious spite. It was Good Friday; and the effigies thus exposed to the brunt of a well meant, but harmless popular indignation, were intended as representatives of Judas Iscariot. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII. GENERAL VIEW OF MEXICO, PAST AND PRESENT. SKETCH OF THE CAREER OF SANTA ANNA. Ancient Mexico.--Its extent.--Its capital.--Its government.--Its sovereigns.--The last of a series of American Monarchies.--Some evidences of this.--Great antiquity of some of the ruins.--Population of Mexico.--Its government as a colony.--The Revolution.--Its leaders.--Iturbide.--Distracted state of the country.--Santa Anna.--His public career.--Pedraza.--Guerrero.--Barradas at Tampico.--Defeated by Santa Anna.--Bustamente.--Pedraza again.--Santa Anna made President.--Revolt of Texas and Yucatan.--Battle of San Jacinto.--Santa Anna a prisoner.--Released, returns in disgrace.--Out again.--Loses a leg.--Dictator.--President.--Put down by Paredes.--Banished.--Probable result.--The Press.--Departure for home. Hanging Judas Iscariot in effigy, eighteen centuries after he had hung himself in despair for his treachery, and raising a monumental tablet to Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, seemed to me to be somewhat incongruous amusements. But these Mexicans will have their way, however strange it may be. Leaving them to choose for themselves, in these matters, I propose, before taking leave of Tampico, to give a brief sketch of the history and present condition of Mexico, and of the career of the singular man, who has acted so prominent a part in the revolutions which have recently convulsed that unhappy country. The ancient Mexico was comprised within much narrower limits, than those which now bound the Republic. Yet, owing to the remarkable formation of the country, beginning with its low plains, and tropical valleys along the sea board, and gradually ascending, plateau above plateau, into the region of perpetual winter, it embraced every variety of climate, and yielded almost every production, that was known on the face of the earth. In the midst of one of the most beautiful and luxuriant plateaus, situated midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and measuring a little more than two hundred miles in circumference, with lofty, snow-crowned walls on every side, stood the Queen City, Tenochtitlan, now called Mexico, the metropolis of the Aztec empire, the seat of civilization, of art, of luxury, of refinement--"the Venice of the Western world." It was founded in the early part of the fourteenth century, and soon became the seat of a flourishing empire, and the central point of power to a triad of nations. Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan, bound together by a league of perpetual amity, which was faithfully maintained and preserved through a long period of unexampled warfare, subdued to their united sway, all the neighboring tribes and nations of Anahuac. In process of time, the power and influence of Mexico overtopped that of its confederates, and Tezcuco and Tlacopan became little better than tributaries to the central empire of the Montezumas. The government of this ancient empire was an absolute monarchy, and was maintained in a style of truly Oriental pomp and magnificence. Their monarch supported his state with all the proud dignity, and stately ceremonial of the most refined courts of the old world. His attendants were princes, who waited on him with the most obsequious deference. The form of presentation was much the same as now prevails in the royal saloons of Europe, the subject never presuming to turn his back upon the throne, but carefully stepping backward to the door, in retiring from the royal presence. Whether this circumstance is sufficient to prove that Europe was peopled from Mexico--an opinion gravely put forth, and sturdily maintained, by at least one old writer--I shall not now stop to inquire. The body-guard of the sovereign was composed of the chief nobles of the realm, who, like the great feudal lords of Europe, held sway over extensive estates of their own, and could call into the field, at any moment, an immense army of subject retainers. The royal palaces were extensive and magnificent, and comprised apartments, not only for the private accommodation of the royal household, but for all the great purposes of the state--halls of council, treasuries for the public revenue, etc. etc. Mexico was indeed a city of palaces, interspersed with temples and pyramids, rivalling in splendor and luxury, as well as in extent, many of the proudest capitals of the Old World. This splendid monarchy, which was probably at the very acme of its glory, when discovered and overturned by the remorseless invaders from Spain, was the last of a series of powerful and highly refined dynasties, that had successively flourished and passed away, in the beautiful regions of Central America. Two mighty oceans on the east and west, two mighty continents on the north and south, and embracing, in the singular arrangement of its slopes and levels, all the climates and productions of both and of all, it seems to have been, for ages, we know not how far back, the theatre of all the art, the seat of all the power, the centre of all the refinement and luxury, of the western hemisphere. There are some remarkable works of art, and wonderful traces of ancient civilization in South America, as well as some singular remains of a once numerous and powerful people in the north. But the Isthmus was the Decapolis of Ancient America. "The tabernacles of its palaces were planted _between the seas_, in the glorious mountain." Here was its Babylon, its Nineveh, its Thebes, its Palmyra. And here, splendid in ruins, with no voice to tell of their ancient founders, or of the millions who once thronged their busy streets, they still remain, an instructive but painful lesson on the instability of human affairs, the brevity of a terrestrial immortality. I have said that Mexico was the last of a series of splendid monarchies that had flourished, and passed away, in Central America. The evidences of the truth of this statement are too numerous, and too clear, to admit of a doubt. The ruins of extensive and magnificent cities, which abound on every side, like the sepulchres and monuments of the departed, are the melancholy memorials, which cannot be gainsayed, of the gigantic power and fruitful resources of the Past. Palenque, Copan, and many more in the south--Uxmal, Chi-chen, Ticul, Kabah, Mayapan, etc., in the central regions of Yucatan--Panuco, Cerro Chacuaco, and others without a name, in the north--these are but a part of the remains of ancient grandeur that lie buried under the soil, and hidden in the almost impervious forests of this luxuriant clime. Their name is legion. Some of them were deserted and in ruins at the period of the Spanish Conquest, and are occasionally spoken of by the historians of that day with wonder and amazement. Some were evidently occupied by other races than the builders, inferior in taste and refinement, if not in physical power; and some, though not then in utter ruins, were, as at the present day, waste and without inhabitant,-- Desolate, like the dwellings of Moina,-- The fox looked out of the window, The rank grass waved round its head. In the remains of these ruined cities, there are not only the evidences derived from their different degrees of dilapidation and decay, to prove that they originated in different and far distant ages, but others which show them to be the works of distinct races of people. The plan and architecture of the buildings, the style and finish of the ornamental parts, the forms and features of the sculptured heads, differ as widely as those of Egypt and Greece, and as clearly prove the workmanship of different periods, and different artists. Some writers have undertaken to trace in these ruins, evidences of three distinct ages of American civilization. Without entering into an argument on the subject, I would simply remark, that, whether three, or five, or more, no conclusion seems to my mind capable of a more perfect substantiation, than this, that these ruins extend far back into the remotest ages of antiquity, and form a continuous chain of connection between the earliest settlers in America, and the Toltecs and Aztecs, of whom we have something like authentic history. I go farther, and say that this chain is probably complete in its parts, though the links are separated, and cannot now be brought together again. They are all there, but so scattered and confounded together, that he who attempts to assign them a place and a date, or to build a theory upon their apparent relations to each other, will probably soon find himself "in wandering mazes lost," and rather amuse, than convince or instruct his readers. These statements are, for the most part, drawn from the most reliable sources, and confirmed, as far as I have had opportunity, by my own observation. I shall take the liberty to regard them as facts. Intending to refer to them in the concluding chapter, and to draw from them some inferences in support of the opinions I have formed respecting the origin of the ancient American races, and the probable epoch of the ruins I have had the pleasure to explore, I shall make no further comment upon them here; but proceed to a brief epitome of the present condition of the empire of the Montezumas. The population of Mexico is as mixed and various as that of any other portion of the globe. It includes, at least, seven distinct races. First, the Europeans, or foreign residents, called Chapetones, or Gapuchins. Secondly, Creoles, or native whites of European extraction. Thirdly, the Mestizoes, the offspring of whites and Indians. Fourthly, Mulattoes, the offspring of whites and blacks. Fifthly, the Aboriginal Indians. Sixthly, Negroes. Seventhly, Zamboes, or Chinoes, the offspring of negroes and Indians. There is also a sprinkling of Chinese and Malays, and natives of the Canaries, who rank as whites, and are known by the general name of Islenos, or Islanders. While Mexico remained a colony of Spain, from the conquest in 1519, till the Revolution in 1810, all the power and influence, and nearly all the wealth, was confined to the first class. The revolution transferred it to the second, and expatriated the first. And this was almost its only result; for it does not seem to have been attended with any of the ordinary blessings of freedom to the common people, either in lightening their burdens, or elevating their moral condition. The government of the colony was that of a Viceroy, the proud servant of a proud master in Spain, and amenable only to him for his acts. The people had no voice either of council or remonstrance. It was passive submission to absolute power. Whether that power became more severe and oppressive, in the early part of the present century, than it had been, or whether the increased numbers, wealth and ambition of the Creoles induced a desire to take the power into their own hands, or whether it was the mere contagion of rebellion and independence, diffusing itself over a continent reserved as "the area of Freedom," and separated by wide oceans from the despotisms of the Old World, it is not easy now to decide. The struggle was long and severe. Monarchy held on to the golden mountains of Mexico with a desperate though feeble grasp. Independence was declared, by the congress of Mexico, in 1813, but it was not finally and fully achieved until 1829, when the Spanish residents were expelled from the country. The contest for independence, as is usually the case, brought out the patriotism, talent and genius of the native population. Several of the leaders distinguished themselves in the eyes of the world. Among the most prominent were Guerrero, Hidalgo, Moreles and Victoria. In 1820, the Viceroy, who was still struggling to support the tottering throne, commissioned General Iturbide, who had been successful in several engagements with the Creoles, to reduce them to submission. Iturbide was born to be a traitor. No sooner was the army placed at his control, than he betrayed his trust, joined the cause of the revolutionists, and proclaimed Mexico independent. This was in 1821. A congress assembled in 1822, to form a constitution. But Iturbide, traitor to the cause he had just adopted, caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor, under the title of Augustin the First. Opposed by a powerful and resolute party, rendered desperate by their success hitherto, this self-constituted Emperor was compelled to abdicate in the course of a year, and retire to Europe, the proper theatre for legitimate tyrants. Returning to Mexico in 1824, with a view, as was supposed, to avail himself of the distractions of the country, to assert anew his claims to the imperial dignity, he was seized and shot, as soon as he had landed. From the first outbreak of the Revolution to the present time, Mexico has been torn and distracted with internal wars. The long struggle for Independence, was succeeded, as soon as that end was achieved, by other and more bitter struggles for personal or party ascendency. A constitution was adopted in 1823. The government established by it, is a confederated Republic, modelled in most respects, after that of the United States--a government exactly suited to make an intelligent and virtuous people happy, but not adapted to a community composed of restless, unprincipled, ambitious factionists, on the one hand, and an ignorant, bigoted rabble, on the other. Faction after faction has arisen, plan after plan has been proposed, adopted, and instantly discarded for another, till it has become as difficult to say what is, or has been at any particular period, the actual government of Mexico, as to predict what it will be to-morrow. If the intelligence of the people had been such as to justify the comparison,--if there had been more real patriotism, more sincere love of liberty among the principal actors in these bloody dramas, one might say, that the Florentine Histories of the middle ages had been re-enacted in Mexico. How different the struggle, both in its manner and in its results, in our own blessed land. But let us not triumph over our less favored and weaker neighbors. Let us rather devoutly thank heaven that our fathers loved liberty more than power, and laid broad and deep the foundations of intelligence, virtue and religion,--not superstition, and a bigoted devotion to forms, or a blind submission to ecclesiastical authority, but the religion which recognizes God as supreme, and all men as equal,--on which to raise the glorious superstructure of rational freedom. Let us see to it, that, while we enlarge the superstructure, we do not neglect the foundations. It was during the temporary ascendency of Iturbide, that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, now more notorious than illustrious, became a conspicuous actor on this turbulent stage. He was a native of the department of Vera Cruz. Here, without enjoying any adventitious advantages of birth or family, he succeeded, by his talents and industry, in securing great local influence, and gradually rose to wealth and power. Except Bolivar, there is, perhaps, no one among the many distinguished agitators of Spanish America, whose career has been signalized by so many extraordinary vicissitudes of good and evil fortune, or who has rilled so large a space in the eye of the world, as Santa Anna. On the promulgation by Iturbide of the plan of Iguala, (February 24, 1821,) Santa Anna, at the head of the irregular forces of the neighborhood, succeeded by a _coup de main_, in driving the Spaniards out of Vera Cruz, of which he was immediately appointed governor. The Spaniards, however, still held the castle of San Juan de Ulloa, from which they were not for a long time dislodged; and, of course, Santa Anna's position was one of great importance. Meanwhile, differences arose between Santa Anna and the Emperor Augustin, who had come down to Jalapa to direct the operations against the Spaniards. Santa Anna repaired to Jalapa to confer with Iturbide; and, being treated harshly, and deprived of his command, immediately left Jalapa, hurried back to Vera Cruz, in anticipation of the intelligence of his disgrace, raised the standard of revolt, and, by means of his personal authority with the troops of the garrison, commenced hostilities with the Emperor. Thereupon Guadalupe Victoria, whose name was endeared to the Mexicans by his previous unsuccessful efforts in the revolution, and who was living concealed in the mountains, emerged from his hiding place, called around him his old republican companions in arms, expelled Iturbide, and established the Mexican republic with a federal constitution, in imitation of that of the United States. Santa Anna, who, by first taking up arms, had contributed so largely to this result, thinking himself not duly considered in the new arrangements, sailed from Vera Cruz with a small force March 1823, and landing at Tampico, advanced through the country to San Luis Potosi, assuming to be protector of the new republic. But not possessing influence enough to maintain himself in this attitude, he was compelled to submit to the government, and to remain for several years in retirement at Manga de Clavo. The termination of Victoria's presidency, however, in 1828, enabled Santa Anna to re-appear on the stage. Pedraza had been regularly elected President; on hearing of which, Santa Anna rose in arms, and by a rapid march, seized upon and intrenched himself in the castle of Perote. Here he published a plan, the basis of which was to annul the election of Pedraza, and confer the presidency on Guerrero. But, being successfully attacked here by the government forces, he was compelled to flee, and took refuge in the mountains of Oajaca, to all appearance an outlaw and a ruined man. The signal of revolution, however, which he had given at Perote, was followed up with more success in other parts of the country. Pedraza was at length driven into exile, Guerrero was declared President in his place, and Santa Anna was appointed to the command of the very army sent against him, and to the government of Vera Cruz, and after the inauguration of Guerrero, April 1829, he became Secretary of War. While these events were in progress, the Spanish government was organizing its last invasion of Mexico. Barradas, the commander of the Spanish forces, landing at Tampico, July 27, 1829. Santa Anna was entrusted with the command of the Mexican troops, and at length compelled the Spaniards to capitulate, September 11, 1829, which put an end to the war of independence. Guerrero had been in office but a few months, when another revolution broke out. The Vice-President, Bustamente, gathered a force at Jalapa, and pronounced against Guerrero, December 1829, who was at length taken prisoner, and executed for treason; Bustamente assuming the presidency. Santa Anna, after feebly resisting, had at length joined, or at least acquiesced in, the movement of Bustamente; and remained in retirement for two or three years, until, in 1832, he on a sudden pronounced against the government, compelled Bustamente to flee, and brought back Pedraza from exile, to serve out the remaining three months of the term for which he had been elected to the presidency. In the progress of events, Santa Anna had now acquired sufficient importance to desist from the function of President maker, and to become himself President. This took place in May, 1833. His presidency was filled with pronunciamentos and civil wars, which produced the consummation of the overthrow of the federal constitution of 1824, and the adoption, in 1836, of a central constitution. Though most of the Mexican States acquiesced in the violent changes, by which they were reduced to mere departments, under the control of military commandants, Texas on the northeast, and Yucatan on the south-east, refused to submit to the military dominion of whatever faction of the army might happen to hold power in the city of Mexico: and Santa Anna at length took command in person of the army organized for the reduction of Texas. The battle of San Jacinto, the capture of Santa Anna, his release by Houston on conditions, which he afterwards refused to fulfil, his visit to this country, and his subsequent return to Mexico, are events familiarly known in the United States. When Santa Anna marched on Texas, first Barragan, and then Coro, exercised the functions of the presidency for a while, until, under the new constitution, Bustamente, having returned from exile, was elected President; the temporary unpopularity of Santa Anna, and his retirement in disgrace to Manga de Clavo, having left the field open to the friends of Bustamente. Sundry _pronunciamentos_ followed; of which, one of the most dangerous, headed by Mejia, gave to Santa Anna the opportunity of emerging from his retirement. He vanquished Mejia, and caused him to be shot on the field of battle. This exploit gave to Santa Anna a new start in public affairs; so that when the French Government, in 1838, resolved to punish Mexico for its multiplied aggressions on the subjects of France in Mexico, and proceeded to attack Vera Cruz, the command of the Mexican troops were committed to Santa Anna. On this occasion he received a wound, which rendered the amputation of one of his legs necessary; and his services, at this time, seemed to have effaced, in the eyes of the Mexicans, the disgrace of his defeat at San Jacinto. Santa Anna took no part in the unsuccessful movement of Urrea against Bustamente, in 1840; but in 1841, there broke out a revolution, commenced by Paredes, at Guadalajara, into which Santa Anna threw himself with so much vigor and zeal, that Bustamente was again compelled to flee, and the plan of Tacubaya, with the agreement of La Estanzuela, was adopted; in virtue of which, the constitution of 1836 was abolished, and Santa Anna himself was invested with the powers of dictator, for the purpose of re-constituting the republic. Under these auspices, and amid all the calamities of a protracted but unsuccessful attempt to reduce Yucatan to submission, (for Yucatan at length made its own terms,) a new constitution was adopted, June 13, 1843, entitled, "Basis of Political organization of the Mexican Republic," and Santa Anna was elected President. Santa Anna resigned his dictatorship, and entered upon office as the new President, in January, 1844; but before the expiration of the year, Paredes again pronounced at Guadalajara, and this time against Santa Anna. The chief ostensible causes of this movement, were various administrative abuses committed by Santa Anna and his ministers, and especially an abortive attempt of his administration to raise money for an expedition against Texas. When the revolution broke out, Santa Anna was at Magna de Clavo, the presidency being provisionally held, during his absence from the capital, by Canalizo. Instantly, on hearing the tidings of the movement at Guadalajara, Santa Anna, in open violation of one of the articles of the new organic basis, was placed in command of the army, and rapidly traversed the republic, from Jalapa to Queretara, with all the forces he could raise, to encounter Paredes. But the departments which he had left behind him speedily revolted, not excepting even Vera Cruz; and though his faction in the capital, including Canalizo and the ministers, endeavored to sustain him by proclaiming him dictator, their efforts were vain. He was compelled to retrograde, and at length was routed, and obliged to surrender himself a captive to the new administration, headed by Herrera, which has released him with the penalty of ten years' exile. Defeated, banished, and in disgrace with the world, it is still difficult to determine what will be the ultimate fate of this hero of half a score of revolutions. He is now, or, more properly speaking, he was when last heard from, living in luxurious retirement, on one of the most splendid estates in Cuba, a few miles from Havana. With immense wealth at his command, ambitious as ever of power, he is but waiting a favorable opportunity to thrust himself again into the quarrels of his ill-fated country. Money will accomplish any thing there, good or evil. And if, through any of his emissaries, he can once more gain access to the army, one year's income from his rich estates will buy them over to a new revolution, and the exiled dictator will once more place his wooden foot upon the necks of his conquerors, and of the people. This may be his position before the expiration of the present year. It may be, before the ink is dry which records the peradventure. It may be, at this very moment. "_Nous verrons ce que nous verrons._" Of literature, properly speaking, there is none in Mexico. There are a few scholars and learned men, in the church and at the bar. But their presence is not felt, their weight is not realized, in any estimate we attempt to make of the national character. Veytia, a native of Puebla, who flourished about the middle of the last century, has done much to illustrate the early history of the nations of Anahuac; tracing out, with great patience and fidelity, the various migrations of its principal races, and throwing much light on their history and works. He was an industrious able critic, and though but little known, deserves the highest credit for his valuable contributions to ancient American literature. Clavigero, a native of Vera Cruz, a voluminous and elaborate writer on the same subject, whose works are well known and highly approved, has rectified many of the inaccuracies of foreign writers, and done much to concentrate the scattered rays of native tradition, and give form and substance to previous antiquarian researches. Antonio Gama, a native of Mexico, and a lawyer, was a ripe scholar, distinguished for patient investigation, severe accuracy, and an impartial desire to arrive at the truth, without reference to a preconceived opinion or theory. He was a thorough master of some of the native languages, and, to an extent as great as the nature of the case admitted, of the native traditions and hieroglyphics. These, together with their systems of arithmetic, astronomy and chronology, he has illustrated with uncommon acuteness and ability. His works are but little known, but of great value to those who would follow a safe guide amid the labyrinths of antiquarian lore. Other worthy names might be added to these. But let these suffice to show that there is nothing in the climate unfavorable to letters. It is a rich, a glorious field; but, trampled by tyranny, or convulsed with revolutions and civil wars, there has scarcely been a moment, during the present century, when the scholar, however much disposed to retirement, could close the door of his study, and feel himself secure from interruption. It is hardly fair, therefore, to measure the literary capacity of Mexico, by its present fruits, or to judge of her scholars by the issues of the Press in such turbulent times. There are but few newspapers in the country, and these are not conducted with the most consummate ability. The bombastic, bragadocio style, with which they are often inflated, if it be not intended for carricature, might almost vie with Baron Munchausen's happiest specimens of that kind of composition. The comments of the government organ, published at the capital, are often extremely bitter upon every thing which relates to the United States. In some remarks respecting the monument commemorating the battle of Bunker Hill, the editor observes,--"The people of Boston make much ado about its completion"--and then adds,--"if Mexico should raise monuments for all such _trivial_ occurrences in her history, the whole country would be filled with them." A little farther on, speaking of the Peninsular War, he says,--"they may do--but Wellington never yet knew what it was to face a breast-work of Mexican bayonets."!!! Alas! for Wellington, and the glory of British arms! What was Waterloo to San Jacinto! On preparing to leave Tampico, I experienced considerable difficulty, and no small expense in procuring the necessary passports. Stamps, for permits of baggage, were required. My baggage had to undergo a very annoying examination, with a view to the discovery of specie that might be concealed therewith, which pays an export duty of six per cent. To such a provoking extent is this examination carried, that the insolent officers thrust their hands, like Arabs, into the bottoms of your pockets, in pursuit of your small loose change. I took passage in the Mexican schooner Belle Isabel, for New Orleans, in company with twenty other passengers. We embarked in the river, and, though hoping for a short passage, it was with sensations of discomfort, amounting almost to consternation, that I ascertained, after every thing was on board, that water and provisions had been laid in, sufficient only for a passage of forty-eight hours. After protesting to the American Consul, and lodging my complaint with the Captain of the port, against the villainous purpose of the master and consignee of the vessel, to put us upon allowance, and experiencing much delay, some further supplies were sent on board. We remained in the river some time, being unable to pass the bar, in consequence of the shallowness of the water in the channel. The annoyances experienced from the vermin, with which the vessel abounded, and the motley character of the passengers, made up of negroes, mulattoes, and Mexicans, rendered my position quite intolerable; and even sickness, which filled up the measure of my troubles, was a not unwelcome excuse for parting with such disagreeable associates. This affords me a favorable opportunity, and I embrace it with heartfelt pleasure, of paying, in part, a debt of gratitude to Captain Chase, the American Consul at Tampico, and his accomplished and kind-hearted lady, who, during a severe and protracted illness, attended me with a kindness that will not soon be forgotten. The tender and patient attentions, which they bestowed upon a sick countryman, in a strange land, were such as might have been expected from a brother and sister, and were rendered doubly valuable to the recipient, by the full hearted cheerfulness and benevolence which characterized them. God bless them both! May they never want a friend and comforter in any of the trials that may fall to their lot. More fortunate in my next attempt to leave Tampico, I secured a passage in the Pilot Boat Virginia, and, after a short and agreeable voyage, arrived at the Crescent City on the 8th of June, satisfied, for the present, with my adventures, and glad to greet the kind faces of familiar friends, and share the comforts which can only be found at home. _At home!_ yes, here I am once more, in my own quiet home, having performed three voyages by sea, embracing a distance of some two thousand miles, besides sundry rambles and pilgrimages in the interior, and all this, with only two "hair-breadth 'scapes by field or flood"--scarcely enough, I fear, to spice my narrative to the taste of the age. CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO AMERICAN RIDDLES. Humboldt's caution.--Antiquities of the Old World long involved in mystery, now explained. Ancient ruins never fully realized by description.--The two extremes of theorists.--A medium.--My own conclusion.--Reasons for it.--1. Absence of Tradition.--Necessity and importance of tradition.--Most likely to be found among the Aztecs.--An attempt to account for its absence.--Answered.--The Toltecs and their works.--A choice of conclusions.--2. Character and condition of ruins.--Widely different from each other.--The works of different and distant ages.--Probable origin of the people.--One universal tradition, its relevancy to the question.--Variety of opinions.--Variety of ancient works.--Conclusion. The great problems of the origin of the American races, and of American civilization, though volumes have been written upon them, are yet unsolved. Whether, according to the inquisitive and sagacious Humboldt, we ought to regard it as lying "without the limits prescribed to history, and even beyond the range of philosophical investigation," or whether we may look upon it as still open to the examination of those who are curious in ancient lore, must be determined rather by the ultimate result of our discoveries, and of the speculations based upon them, than upon the exaggerated notions of the difficulty of the question, which the first confused revelations of the travelled enquirer may seem to suggest. I am by no means convinced in my own mind, that this question is one which cannot now be reached, or which must be looked upon as every year receding farther and farther from our grasp. The antiquities of the old world, buried for so many ages in midnight oblivion, had remained through a long course of centuries, the standing enigma of Time. With the help even of some imperfect records from the archives of ancient history, and the aid of what seemed to be a fair line of tradition, the origin and purpose of many of them, and the hidden meaning of their hieroglyphical embellishments, had continued to be an inexplicable mystery quite down to our own times. Much learned investigation, from acute observers, and profound reasoners, had been expended upon them, without arriving at any satisfactory result. And yet, after all, the nineteenth century has expounded the riddle. The lapse of ages, instead of scattering beyond recovery the dim, uncertain twilight that hung about these august monuments of the solemn Past, has miraculously preserved it, as it were embalmed by a magic spiritual photography, to be concentrated into a halo of glory around the brow of Champollion. May it not be so with the now mysterious relics of the ancient races of America? It may be remarked, and I think the remark cannot fail to commend itself to the good sense of every reflecting mind, that no description, however perfect, or however faithfully and ably illustrated by the art of the engraver, can convey any adequate idea of the character of these ruins, or furnish, to one who has not seen them with his own eyes, the basis of a rational argument upon their origin. Were it possible to transport them entire to our own fields, and reconstruct them there, in all their primitive grandeur and beauty, it would not help us to solve the mystery--it would not convey to us any just notion of what they have been, or what they are. To be realized and understood, they must be studied where they are, amid the oppressive solitude of their ancient sites, surrounded with the luxuriant vegetation and picturesque scenery of their native clime, the clear transparent heaven of the tropics above them, and their own unwritten, unborrowed associations lingering dimly about them. There are two errors, lying at the two extremes of the broad area of philosophical inquiry, into which men are liable to fall, in undertaking the discussion of questions of this nature. The one leads to hasty conclusions upon imperfect, ill-digested premises; the other shrinks from all conclusions, however well supported, and labors only to deepen the shadows of mystery, which hang about its subject. One forms a shallow theory of his own, suggested by the first object he meets with on entering the field--or, perhaps borrows that of some equally superficial observer who had gone before him, or even of some cloistered speculator, who has never ventured beyond the four walls of his own narrow study--and, clinging to it with the tenacity of a parental instinct to its first born impression, sees nothing, hears nothing, conceives nothing, however palpable and necessary, that will not illustrate and aggrandize his one idea. The most convincing proofs are lost upon him. Demonstration assails him in vain. He started with his conclusion in his hand, and it is no marvel if he comes back as ignorant as he went, having added nothing to his argument, but the courage to push it somewhat more boldly than before. Another enters the field, thoroughly convinced that it is impossible to come to any conclusion at all. He fears to see any thing decisive, lest it should compel him to favor an opinion. He dreads an object that suggests a definite idea, lest it should draw him perforce to support some tangible theory. He stumbles blindfold over palpable facts, and clearly defined analogies, and converses only with shadows. His philosophy consists in leaning to whatever embarrasses a conclusion, and following only those contradictory lights, which perplex the judgment, and prevent it from arriving at a precise and positive inference. Unsafe as it is to trust to the guidance of a mere theorist, there is little satisfaction in attempting to follow the timid lead of the universal doubter. Is it not possible to find a medium course?--to proceed with philosophic prudence and caution, taking due heed to all our steps, and yet to look facts and analogies boldly in the face, listen fearlessly to all their suggestions, collate, compare, and digest every hint and intimation they put forth, and venture, without exposing ourselves to the uncharitable imputation of dogmatism, to form and express a definite opinion? If any thing would deter _me_ from so bold a step, it would be the formidable array of eminent names in the list of the doubters. When so many of the wisest have given it up as hopeless, it requires no less courage than skill to assume to be an Oedipus. But, having already, on a former occasion, been driven to a positive inference from the narrow premises afforded by the question, and being answerable therefor at the bar of public criticism, I have less at stake than I should otherwise have, upon the opinion which I have now to offer. I am free to acknowledge then, that the impressions formed by my first "rambles" among the ruined cities of Yucatan, have been fully confirmed by what I have now been permitted to see in Mexico. I am compelled, in view of all the facts and analogies which they present, to assign those ruins, and the people who constructed them, to a very remote antiquity. They are the works of a people who have long since passed away, and not of the races, or the progenitors of the races, who inhabited the country, at the epoch of the discovery. To this conclusion I am led, or rather driven, by a variety of considerations, which I will endeavor to state, with as much brevity and conciseness as the nature of the case will admit. The first consideration to which I shall allude, in support of the opinion above expressed, is the absence of all tradition respecting the origin of these buildings, and the people by whom they were erected. Among all the Indian tribes in all Central America, it is not known that there is a solitary tradition, that can throw a gleam of light over the obscurity that hangs about this question. The inference would seem to be natural and irresistible, that the listless, unintellectual, unambitious race of men, who for centuries have lingered about these ruins, not only without knowing, but without caring to know, who built them, cannot be the descendants, nor in any way related to the descendants, of the builders. Tradition is one of the natural and necessary elements of the primitive stages of society. Its foundations are laid deep in the social nature of man. And it is only because it is supplanted by other and more perfect means of transmission, as civilization advances, that it is not, always and every where, the only channel of communication with the past, the only link between the living and the dead. In all ages, among all nations, where written records have been wanting, tradition has supplied the blank, and, generation after generation, the story of the past has been transmitted from father to son, and celebrated in the song of the wandering bard, till, at length, history has seized the shadowy phantom, and given it a place and a name on her enduring scroll. This is the fountain head of all ancient history. True, it is often so blended with the fabulous inventions of poetry, that it is not always easy to sift out the truth from the fiction. Still, it is relied upon in the absence of records: while the very fable itself is made subservient to truth, by shadowing forth, in impressive imagery and graceful drapery, her real form and lineaments. What else than fable is the early history of Rome? Now, if these ruins of America are of comparatively modern date, if, as some have undertaken to show, they were constructed and occupied by the not very remote ancestors of the Indian races who now dwell among them, in a state of abject poverty and servitude, is it reasonable, is it conceivable, that there should not be found a man among them acquainted with their ancient story, claiming affinity with their builders, and rehearsing in song, or fable, The marvels of the olden time? With these splendid and solemn reminiscences always before their eyes, with all the hallowed and affecting associations that ever linger about the ancient homes of a cultivated people,--the temples of its worship, the palaces of its kings and nobles, the sepulchres of its founders and fathers, always present and constantly renewed to their minds, is it possible they could, in three brief centuries, forget the tale, and lose every clue to their own so gloriously illustrated history. I cannot admit it. I cannot conceive of it. The attempt to lay aside, or narrow down, this argument from tradition, or the absence of it, in order to arrive at an easy explanation of the mystery of these ruined cities, appears to me to be unphilosophical in another point of view. If I understand aright the character and history of the people who once flourished here, this is just the region, and they are just the people, where this kind of evidence would exist and abound. The Aztecs were a highly imaginative and poetical people. The picture writing, which prevailed among them, and in which they had attained so high a degree of perfection, was precisely the material on which to build traditionary lore, and cultivate a taste for it among the common people. It was the poetry of hieroglyphics--a national literature of tropes and figures. It selected a few prominent comprehensive images, as the representatives of great events. Strongly drawn and highly colored, these would impress themselves powerfully on the minds and memories of the people, and be associated with all that was dear to their hearts. Their personal histories, their family distinctions, their national pride, would all be involved in them, and all have a part in securing their faithful preservation and transmission. Inexhaustible fountains of national song and poetical fable, they would be recited in their public assemblies, and handed down from generation to generation. They would be to America what the Homeric poems were to Greece, and many long ages would not obliterate or destroy them. It has been argued, by way of anticipating such views as these, that the unexampled severities and oppressions of the Spanish conquerors, broke the spirit of these once proud nations, and so trampled them in the dust, as to annihilate those sentiments and affections, which form the basis of national pride and traditionary lore. It is a violent assumption, unsupported by any parallel in history, ancient or modern. Remove them from their ancient inheritance, transplant them to other climes, surround them with other scenes, amalgamate them with other people, and they may, in process of time, forget their origin and their name. But, in the midst of their father's sepulchres, with their temples, their pyramids, their palaces, all around them, Their native soil beneath their feet, Their native skies above them,-- it is inconceivable, impossible. At this point I shall probably be interrupted, by the inquisitive reader, with the question, whether I am not overturning my own position, by insisting that the ancient Aztecs, and their works, must necessarily live in tradition, while I allow that the Mexican Indians retain no memory of their ancestors. I conceive not. The ruins to which I refer, are not those of the Mexican and Tezcucan cities, which were sacked by the Spaniards, almost demolished, and then rebuilt in a comparatively modern style of architecture. Of those we need no native tradition. The Spanish histories have told us all that we can know of them. But even of these, as the Spaniards found them, we have no certain evidence that the people who then occupied them, were the _sole_ builders. We have both tradition and history to justify us in asserting that they were not. Another race had preceded them, and filled the country with their works of genius and art. The Toltecs, whose advent into the territory of Anahuac, is placed as far back as the seventh century of the Christian era, were not inferior to the Aztecs in refinement, and the knowledge of the mechanic arts. To them the Aztec paintings accord the credit of most of the science which prevailed among themselves, and acknowledged them as the fountain head of their civilization. The capital of their empire was at Tula, north of the Mexican valley, and the remains of extensive buildings were to be seen there at the time of the conquest. To the same people were ascribed the ruins of other noble edifices, found in various places throughout the country, so vast and magnificent, that, with some writers, "the name, _Toltec_, has passed into a synonyme for _architect_." Following in their footsteps, and acknowledging them as their teachers, it would not be strange if the Aztecs should, in some instances, have occupied the buildings _they_ left behind, and employed the remnant that still remained in the country, in erecting others. But, without insisting upon this conjecture, it is clear that there were other and earlier builders than the Aztecs. The Toltecs passed away, as a nation, a full century, according to the legend, before the arrival of the Aztecs. Their works filled the country. Accounts of them abounded in the Tezcucan tablets. They were celebrated by the Aztec painters. They were still magnificent and wonderful in ruins, when the Spaniards arrived. And yet, among the present race of Indians in Mexico, there is no tradition respecting them, no knowledge of their origin, no interest whatever in their history. From these premises, we have a choice of two conclusions. Either the ruined buildings and cities of Anahuac are not the work of the comparatively modern race of Aztecs, or the present Indians are not the descendants of that race. That the former conclusion is true, I think there cannot be a doubt. The latter _may_ be true, also, to a great extent. That refined and haughty people may have wasted entirely away under the grinding yoke of their new task-masters, and the indolent inefficient slaves, that remain as their nominal representatives, may be only the degenerate posterity of inferior tribes, the vassals of the Mexican crown. Another consideration which strongly favors the view I have taken, with respect to the antiquity of these ruins, is the character of the ruins themselves, and the condition in which they are found. That they do not all belong to one race, nor to one age, it seems to me no careful or candid observer can deny. They are of different constructions, and different styles of architecture. They are widely different in their finish and adornments. And they are in every stage of decay, from a habitable and tolerably comfortable dwelling, to a confused mass of undistinguishable ruins. In all these particulars, as well as in the gigantic forests which have grown up in the walls and on the terraces of some of them, and the deep deposit of vegetable mould which has accumulated upon others, they are clearly seen to belong to different and distant ages, and consequently to be the work of many different artists. That some of them were the work of the Toltecs, is well substantiated, as we have already seen. What portion of the great area of ruins to assign to them, I know not. But if, as one of the most cautious and judicious historians supposes, they were the architects of Mitla, Palenque and Copan, thus fixing the date of those magnificent cities several centuries anterior to the rise of the Aztec dynasty, they could not have been the _first_ of the American builders. _Their_ works are still in a comparatively good state of preservation, and may remain, for ages to come, the dumb yet eloquent monuments of their greatness; while others, not only in their immediate vicinity, but in different parts of the country, are crumbled, decayed, scattered, and buried, as if long ages had passed over them, before the foundations of the former were laid. There is every thing in the style and appearance of the ruins to favor this conclusion, and to confirm the opinion, that some of them are farther removed in their origin from the Toltecs, than the Toltecs are from us. Some of those described in the preceding chapters of this work, are manifestly many ages older than those of Chi-chen, Uxmal and others in Yucatan, which I visited on a former occasion. Having extended these remarks somewhat farther than I intended, perhaps I ought to apologize to the reader for asking his attention, a few moments, to another problem growing out of this subject, which has given rise to more discussion, and been attended with less satisfaction in its results, than any other. I refer to the origin of the ancient American races. From what quarter of the globe did they come? And how did they get here? The last question I shall not touch at all. It will answer itself, as soon as the other is settled. And, if that cannot be settled at all--if we are utterly foiled in our efforts to ascertain whence they came--it will be of little avail to inquire for the how. The learned author of "The Vestiges of Creation," and other equally profound speculators of the Monboddo school, would probably find an easy way to unravel the enigma, on their sceptical theory of the progressive generation of man. But regarding the Mosaic history as worthy not only of a general belief, but of a literal interpretation, I cannot dispose of the question in that summary way. I would rather meet it with all its seemingly irreconcilable difficulties about it, or not meet it at all, than favor the subtle atheism of these baptized canting Voltaires, and relinquish my early and cherished faith, that man is the immediate offspring of God, the peculiar workmanship of his Divine hand. There is nothing soothing to my pride of reason, nothing grateful to my affections, nothing elevating to my faith, in the idea that man is but an improved species of monkey, a civilized ourang-outang, with his tail worn off, or driven in. There is but one solitary tradition among all the American races, bearing upon the general question of their origin; and that, singularly enough, is universal among them. It represents them as coming from northwest. From what other portion of the world, from what distance, at what time, and in what manner, it does not in any way declare, or intimate. Whether it was five centuries ago, or fifty, there is not, I believe, a single tribe that pretends to know, or to guess. And yet there is not a tribe on this side the great northern lakes, among whom this general tradition of the migration of their ancestors from the northwest, is not found. There are many and various traditions among them in respect to other matters, presenting many and curious coincidences with the traditionary and fabulous history of some of the oldest nations in the world. But, on this point, the origin of their own races, they have nothing to say, except that, at a remote period of antiquity, their fathers came from the northwest. With such an index as this, pointing so decidedly and unchangeably to Behring's strait, where the coast of Asia approaches within fifty miles of that of America, it would seem, at first sight, that the question might be easily answered. And so it could be, but that some authors are more fond of conjecture than of certainty, of doubt than of probability. To those who believe, with Moses, that the peopling of the earth commenced in Asia, there is manifestly no mode of accounting for the population of America, so natural as that to which this one omni-prevalent tradition points. It would have been considered abundantly sufficient and satisfactory, if it had not been continually involved with other questions, on the solution of which it does not necessarily depend. One writer, for example, thinks it impossible that these people could have come to America, by way of Behring's Strait, because there are _animals_ in the tropical regions who could not have come that way. Be it so. The question relates not to animals, but to _men_. By whatever other way they might have come, it is not at all probable that they would have brought tigers, monkeys, or rattle-snakes with them. If it could be proved, by authentic and unquestionable records, that they crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific in ships, the mystery of the tropical animals would still remain to be solved. Another, and it is a numerous class, whose imagination is inflamed with fancied resemblances in the languages, customs, traditions and mythology of the Indian races, to those of particular nations in the old World, deems it absolutely necessary to construct some other ancient, but now obliterated highway, to our shores, from those parts of Europe or Asia, nearest to that from which his favorite theory supposes them to have sprung. To some, Iceland was the natural stepping stone, a half-way house, from the North of Europe. To others, a chain of islands once stretched from the shores of Africa to those of South America--a sort of Giant's Causeway from Continent to Continent, miraculously thrown up for the purpose of stocking this Western World with men and animals, and then, like a useless draw-bridge, as miraculously laid aside. Other theories, not less extravagant than these, have been invented, and strenuously maintained, for the benevolent purpose of accommodating the poor Aborigines with an easy passage from their supposed birth place to their present homes. Yet, strange to say, those obstinate and ungrateful savages all persist in declaring that, when their ancestors arrived in this country, they came by way of the northwest. It is one of the prominent errors of most of the writers on this subject, that, with the exception of the Esquimaux, they aim to find a common origin for all the American tribes. True, there is a common type to all the North American Indians, and there is good reason to suppose that they sprung from a common stock. But it is not so with the nations of Central and South America, or rather with those of them whose mighty works have given rise to these discussions. I think it cannot be questioned, that there were among them, the representatives of many different nations or races. Of this the sculptured heads we have exhibited from among the ruins of their ancient cities, bear witness. Compare the outlines and features of the heads represented on pages 128, 130, 136, and 178, of the present work, first with each other, then with the different representations of the human head, as found among these ancient relics by other travellers, and then again with the types of the four great divisions of the human family. The comparison exhibits this curious result, that the American, or Indian type, has no representative among these sculptured figures; while almost every variety of the Caucasian and Mongolian is found there. If the portrait of Montezuma, in the second volume of Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, be taken as a genuine likeness, it is plain that he did not belong to the American race. There is no mark of the Indian about it. It will be admitted, I suppose, that Art, in all ages, and among all nations, is but a humble imitator of Nature. The Sculptor, and the Painter, works always by a model. His _beau ideal_ is the highest form of living beauty which he sees around him. He may select and combine the features of several subjects, to make a perfect whole. But these features are all those of the living beings with whom he is conversant, and represent the race to which he belongs. And whenever he departs from the living model, except to select and combine, his figures become invariably grotesque, ridiculous and disgusting. Was it because the ancient American artists, at the time when their works of art were executed, had never seen a specimen of what we call the American race, that there is no good representation of the Indian head among their works? We are not surprised that the African is wanting there; for, notwithstanding the "Giant's Causeway" above alluded to, no individual of that race seems ever to have visited the shores of America, except by compulsion. They were unknown to the Aborigines, till they were introduced by the whites, as slaves. Shall I venture to infer, from the absence of the Indian type, that that race was also unknown here, at the time when these artists flourished on the American soil? Were all these great works constructed and finished before the present races of Indians found their way into that part of the Continent? How old, then, are the works? Who were the builders? From what part of the great human family did they spring? In treating banteringly of the "Talismanic Penates," in my tenth chapter, I presumed to draw from them some evidence of the Asiatic origin of the people by whom they were cherished. The figures on the 178th page are representatives of originals found only in that part of the world. The solitary tradition referred to above, points in the same direction. Did Tartary, China, or Japan, furnish to America, ages ago, a race of sculptors and palace-builders? In the early ages of the world's history, the families of men were far more unsettled, and migratory in their habits, than they now are. It was not an uncommon thing for whole nations to change their abodes at once. The north of Europe, and the adjacent regions of Asia, like an over-populous hive, sent out many swarms of restless adventurers, to overrun and occupy the fairer fields of the south. Goths, Vandals, Huns, swept over the land, in successive deluges, that threatened to overturn every vestige of ancient civilization. But the mighty flood rolled back from the walls of Rome, and carried with it the arts and sciences, and the enervating luxuries of the south. In all these desperate encounters of barbarism with civilization, there was an extensive interchange, and blending of nations and races. Each melted into each, like the glaciers of the mountain, and the lakes of the valley, blended and lost in the stream that bears them both to the ocean. The same irruptions, the same amalgamations of conquerors with the conquered, took place in earlier ages, in the far east. And there is no violent improbability in supposing, that the overcharged fountain of humanity, in the central regions, sometimes overleaped its eastern barriers, as well as its western, and, meeting with no resistance, as in the south, spread itself quite to the shores of the Pacific, and thence into the neighboring continent of America. This may have been done at many different and distant periods, even back to the dispersion of Babel. Who shall say it was not so? We know almost as little of ancient eastern Asia, as of ancient America. But we _do_ know that it _might_ have furnished all the races that are known, or supposed, to have existed here. If we had not authentic records for the irruptions of the northern hordes, and for the great crusades of the Middle Ages, the Old World would furnish enigmas, as difficult to be solved, as those of the New. 
38203	----	A TRIP TO CUBA. BY MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE. BOSTON. TICKNOR AND FIELDS. M DCCC LX. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE DEPARTURE 1 II. NASSAU 10 III. FROM NASSAU TO CUBA 20 IV. THE HARBOR OF HAVANA 30 V. HAVANA--THE HOTELS 40 VI. HAVANA--YOUR BANKER--OUR CONSUL--THE FRIENDLY CUP OF TEA 48 VII. HAVANA--THE JESUIT COLLEGE 57 VIII. SAN ANTONIO DE LOS BAÑOS 66 IX. THE MORRO FORTRESS--THE UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA--THE BENEFICENZA 79 X. CAN GRANDE'S DEPARTURE--THE DOMINICA--LOTTERY-TICKETS 94 XI. COMPANY AT THE HOTEL--SERVANTS--OUR DRIVE--DON PEPE 111 XII. MATANZAS 132 XIII. THE PASEO--THE PLAZA--DINING OUT 145 XIV. GAME-CHICKENS--DON RODRIGUEZ--DAY ON THE PLANTATION--DEPARTURE 157 XV. RETURN TO HAVANA--SAN ANTONIO AGAIN 177 XVI. SAN ANTONIO--CHURCH ON SUNDAY--THE NORTHER--THE S. FAMILY 190 XVII. EDUCATION--LAST NIGHT IN SAN ANTONIO--FAREWELL 202 XVIII. SLAVERY--CUBAN SLAVE LAWS, INSTITUTIONS, ETC. 212 XIX. FAREWELL! 238 A TRIP TO CUBA. CHAPTER I. THE DEPARTURE. Why one leaves home at all is a question that travellers are sure, sooner or later, to ask themselves,--I mean, pleasure-travellers. Home, where one has the "Transcript" every night, and the "Autocrat" every month, opera, theatre, circus, and good society, in constant rotation,--home, where everybody knows us, and the little good there is to know about us,--finally, home, as seen regretfully for the last time, with the gushing of long frozen friendships, the priceless kisses of children, and the last sad look at dear baby's pale face through the window-pane,--well, all this is left behind, and we review it as a dream, while the railroad-train hurries us along to the spot where we are to leave, not only this, but Winter, rude tyrant, with all our precious hostages in his grasp. Soon the swift motion lulls our brains into the accustomed muddle. We seem to be dragged along like a miserable thread pulled through the eye of an everlasting needle,--through and through, and never through,--while here and there, like painful knots, the _dépôts_ stop us, the poor thread is arrested for a minute, and then the pulling begins again. Or, in another dream, we are like fugitives threading the gauntlet of the grim forests, while the ice-bound trees essay a charge of bayonets on either side; but, under the guidance of our fiery Mercury, we pass them as safely as ancient Priam passed the outposts of the Greeks,--and New York, hospitable as Achilles, receives us in its mighty tent. Here we await the "Karnak," the British Mail Company's new screw-steamer, bound for Havana, _viâ_ Nassau. At length comes the welcome order to "be on board." We betake ourselves thither,--the anchor is weighed, the gun fired, and we take leave of our native land with a patriotic pang, which soon gives place to severer spasms. I do not know why all celebrated people who write books of travels begin by describing their days of sea-sickness. Dickens, George Combe, Fanny Kemble, Mrs. Stowe, Miss Bremer, and many others, have opened in like manner their valuable remarks on foreign countries. While intending to avail myself of their privilege and example, I would nevertheless suggest, for those who may come after me, that the subject of sea-sickness should be embalmed in science, and enshrined in the crypt of some modern encyclopædia, so that future writers should refer to it only as the Pang Unspeakable, for which _vide_ Ripley and Dana, vol., page. But, as I have already said, I shall speak of sea-sickness in a hurried and picturesque manner, as follows:-- Who are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin, with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite bloodless, and to every offer of good cheer, their "No, thank you," is as faintly uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of dangerous defiance to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves the roast-beef offers at the same time a slice of fat;--this is too much; a panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous and complete. The ghost of what each man was disappears through the trap-door of his state-room, and the hell which the theatre faintly pictures behind the scenes begins in good earnest. For to what but to Dante's "Inferno" can we liken this steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are these sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the _alti guai_ rehearsed by the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,--"Nice mutton-chop, Sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?" Cries of "No, no!" resound, and the wretched turn again, and groan. The Philanthropist has lost the movement of the age,--keeled up in an upper berth, convulsively embracing a blanket, what conservative more immovable than he? The Great Man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours. But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself as if, like Farinata,-- "avesse l'inferno in gran dispetto,"-- "he had a very contemptible opinion of hell." Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch away. The Captain comes and says,--"It is true you have a nasty, short, chopping sea hereabouts; but you see, she is spinning away down South jolly!" And this is the Gulf-Stream! But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge features and voices,--the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,--the Steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends my description of our sea-sickness. For, as for betraying the confidences of those sad days, as for telling how wofully untrue Professors of Temperance were to their principles, how the Apostle of Total Abstinence developed a brandy-flask, not altogether new, what unsuccessful tipplings were attempted in the desperation of nausea, and for what lady that stunning brandy-smasher was mixed,--as for such tales out of school, I would have you know that I am not the man to tell them. Yet a portrait or so lingers in my mental repository;--let me throw them in, to close off the lot. No. 1. A sober Bostonian in the next state-room, whose assiduity with his sea-sick wife reminds one of Cock-Robin, in the days when he sent Jenny Wren sops and wine. This person was last seen in a dressing-gown, square-cut night-cap, and odd slippers, dancing up and down the state-room floor with a cup of gruel, making wild passes with a spoon at an individual in a berth, who never got any of the contents. Item, the gruel, in a moment of excitement, finally ran in a stream upon the floor, and was wiped up by the Steward. Result not known, but disappointment is presumable. No. 2. A stout lady, imprisoned by a board on a sofa nine inches wide, called by a facetious friend "The Coffin." She complains that her sides are tolerably battered in;--we hold our tongues, and think that the board, too, has had a hard time of it. Yet she is a jolly soul, laughing at her misfortunes, and chirruping to her baby. Her spirits keep up, even when her dinner won't keep down. Her favorite expressions are "Good George!" and "Oh, jolly!" She does not intend, she says, to lay in any dry goods in Cuba, but means to eat up all the good victuals she comes across. Though seen at present under unfavorable circumstances, she inspires confidence as to her final accomplishment of this result. No. 3. A woman, said to be of a literary turn of mind, in the miserablest condition imaginable. Her clothes, flung at her by the Stewardess seem to have hit in some places, and missed in others. Her listless hands occasionally make an attempt to keep her draperies together, and to pull her hat on her head; but though the intention is evident, she accomplishes little by her motion. She is perpetually being lugged about by a stout steward, who knocks her head against both sides of the vessel, folds her up in the gangway, spreads her out on the deck, and takes her up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, where, report says, he feeds her with a spoon, and comforts her with such philosophy as he is master of. N.B. This woman, upon the first change of weather, rose like a cork, dressed like a Christian, and toddled about the deck in the easiest manner, sipping her grog, and cutting sly jokes upon her late companions in misery,--is supposed by some to have been an impostor, and, when ill-treated, announced intentions of writing a book. No. 4, my last, is only a sketch;--circumstances allowed no more. Can Grande, the great dog, has been got up out of the pit, where he worried the Stewardess and snapped at the friend who tried to pat him on the head. Everybody asks where he is. "Don't you see that heap of shawls yonder, lying in the sun, and heated up to about 212° Fahrenheit? That slouched hat on top marks the spot where his head should lie,--by treading cautiously in the opposite direction you may discover his feet. All between is perfectly passive and harmless. His chief food is pickles,--his only desire is rest. After all these years of controversy, after all these battles, bravely fought and nobly won, you might write with truth upon this moveless mound of woollens the pathetic words from Père la Chaise:--_Implora Pace_." But no more at present, for land is in sight, and in my next you shall hear how we found it, and what we saw at Nassau. CHAPTER II. NASSAU. Nassau looked very green and pleasant to us after our voyage;--the eyes enjoy a little fresh provision after so long a course of salt food. The first view of land is little more than "the feeling of the thing,"--it is matter of faith, rather than of sight. You are shown a dark and distant line, near the horizon, without color or features. They say it is land, and you believe, it. But you come nearer and nearer,--you see first the green of vegetation, then the form of the trees,--the harbor at last opens its welcome arms,--the anchor is dropped,--the gun fired,--the steam snuffed out. Led by a thread of sunshine, you have walked the labyrinth of the waters, and all their gigantic dangers lie behind you. We made Nassau at twelve o'clock, on the sixth day from our departure, counting the first as one. The earliest feature discernible was a group of tall cocoa-nut trees, with which the island is bounteously feathered;--the second was a group of negroes in a small boat, steering towards us with open-mouthed and white-toothed wonder. Nothing makes its simple impression upon the mind sophisticated by education. The negroes, as they came nearer, suggested only Christy's Minstrels, of whom they were a tolerably faithful imitation,--while the cocoa-nut trees transported us to the Boston in Ravel-time, and we strained our eyes to see the wonderful ape, Jocko, whose pathetic death, nightly repeated, used to cheat the credulous Bostonians of time, tears, and treasure. Despite the clumsiest management, the boat soon effected a junction with our gangway, allowing some nameless official to come on board, and to go through I know not what mysterious and indispensable formality. Other boats then came, like a shoal of little fishes around the carcass of a giant whale. There were many negroes, together with whites of every grade; and some of our number, leaning over the side, saw for the first time the raw material out of which Northern Humanitarians have spun so fine a skein of compassion and sympathy. Now we who write, and they for whom we write, are all orthodox upon this mighty question. We have all made our confession of faith in private and in public; we all, on suitable occasions, walk up and apply the match to the keg of gunpowder which is to blow up the Union, but which, somehow, at the critical moment, fails to ignite. But you must allow us one heretical whisper,--very small and low. The negro of the North is an ideal negro; it is the negro refined by white culture, elevated by white blood, instructed even by white iniquity;--the negro among negroes is a coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick-skulled creature, ugly as Caliban, lazy as the laziest of brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any in the world. View him as you will, his stock in trade is small;--he has but the tangible instincts of all creatures,--love of life, of ease, and of offspring. For all else, he must go to school to the white race, and his discipline must be long and laborious. Nassau, and all that we saw of it, suggested to us the unwelcome question whether compulsory labor be not better than none. But as a question I gladly leave it, and return to the simple narration of what befell. There was a sort of eddy at the gangway of our steamer, made by the conflicting tides of those who wanted to come on board and of those who wanted to go on shore. We were among the number of the latter, but were stopped and held by the button by one of the former, while those more impatient or less sympathizing made their way to the small boats which waited below. The individual in question had come alongside in a handsome barge, rowed by a dozen stout blacks, in the undress uniform of the Zouaves. These men, well drilled and disciplined, seemed of a different sort from the sprawling, screaming creatures in the other boats, and their bright red caps and white tunics became them well. But he who now claimed my attention was of British birth and military profession. His face was ardent, his pantaloons were of white flannel, his expression of countenance was that of habitual discontent, but with a twinkle of geniality in the eye which redeemed the Grumbler from the usual tedium of his tribe. He accosted us as follows:-- "Go ashore? What for? To see something, eh? There's nothing to see; the island, isn't bigger than a nut-shell, and doesn't contain a single prospect.--Go ashore and get some dinner? There isn't anything to eat there.--Fruit? None to speak of; sour oranges and green bananas.--I went to market last Saturday, and bought one cabbage, one banana, and half a pig's head;--there's a market for you!--Fish? Oh, yes, if you like it.--Turtle? Yes, you can get the Gallipagos turtle; it makes tolerable soup, but has not the green fat, which, in _my_ opinion, is the most important feature in turtle-soup.--Shops? You can't buy a pair of scissors on the island, nor a baby's bottle;--broke mine the other day, and tried to replace it; couldn't.--Society? There are lots of people to call upon you, and bore you to death with returning their visits." At last the Major went below, and we broke away, and were duly conveyed to _terra firma_. It was Sunday, and late in the afternoon. The first glimpse certainly seemed to confirm the Major's disparaging statements. The town is small; the houses dingy and out of repair; the legend, that paint costs nothing, is not received here; and whatever may have been the original colors of the buildings, the climate has had its own way with them for many a day. The barracks are superior in finish to anything else we see. Government-House is a melancholy-looking _caserne_, surrounded by a piazza, the grounds being adorned with a most chunky and inhuman statue of Columbus. All the houses are surrounded by verandas, from which pale children and languid women in muslins look out, and incline us to ask what epidemic has visited the island and swept the rose from every cheek. They are a pallid race, the Nassauese, and retain little of the vigor of their English ancestry. One English trait they exhibit,--the hospitality which has passed into a proverb; another, perhaps,--the stanch adherence to the forms and doctrines of Episcopacy. We enter the principal church;--they are just lighting it for evening service; it is hung with candles, each burning in a clear glass shade. The walls and ceiling are white-washed, and contrast prettily with the dark timbering of the roof. We would gladly have staid to give thanks for our safe and prosperous voyage, but a black rain-cloud warns us homeward,--not, however, until we have received a kind invitation from one of the hospitable Islanders to return the next morning for a drive and breakfast. Returning soon after sunrise to fulfil this promise, we encounter the barracks, and are tempted to look in and see the Sons of Darkness performing their evolutions. The morning drill is about half over. We peep in,--the Colonel, a lean Don Quixote on a leaner Rosinante, dashes up to us with a weak attempt at a canter; he courteously invites us to come in and see all that is to be seen, and lo! our friend the Major, quite gallant in his sword and scarlet jacket, is detailed for our service. The soldiers are black, and very black,--none of your dubious American shades, ranging from clear salmon to _café au lait_ or even to _café noir_. These are your good, satisfactory, African sables, warranted not to change in the washing. Their Zouave costume is very becoming, with the Oriental turban, caftan, and loose trousers; and the Philosopher of our party remarks that the African requires costume, implying that the New Englander can stand alone, as can his clothes, in their black rigidity. The officers are white, and the Major very polite; he shows us the men, the arms, the kits, the quarters, and, having done all that he can do for us, relinquishes us with a gallant bow to our Host of the drive and breakfast. The drive does something to retrieve the character of the island. The road is hard and even, overhung with glossy branches of strange trees bearing unknown fruits, and studded on each side with pleasant villas and with negro huts. There are lovely flowers everywhere, among which the Hibiscus, called South-Sea Rose, and the Oleander, are most frequent, and most brilliant. We see many tall groves of cocoa-nut, and cast longing glances towards the fruit, which little negroes, with surprising activity, attain and shake down. A sudden turn in the road discloses a lovely view of the bay, with its wonderful green waters, clear and bright as emerald;--there is a little beach, and boats lie about, and groups of negroes are laughing and chattering,--quoting stocks from the last fish-market, very likely. We purchase for half a dollar a bunch of bananas, for which Ford or Palmer would ask us ten dollars at least, and go rejoicing to our breakfast. Our Host is a physician of the island, English by birth, and retaining his robust form and color in spite of a twenty-years' residence in the warm climate. He has a pleasant family of sons and daughters, all in health, but without a shade of pink in lips or cheeks. The breakfast consists of excellent fried fish, fine Southern hominy,--not the pebbly broken corn which our dealers impose under that name,--various hot cakes, tea and coffee, bananas, sapodillas, and if there be anything else not included in the present statement, let haste and want of time excuse the omission. The conversation runs a good deal on the hopes of increasing prosperity which the new mail-steamer opens to the eyes of the Nassauese. Invalids, they say, will do better there than in Cuba,--it is quieter, much cheaper, and the climate is milder. There will be a hotel very soon, where no attention will be spared, etc., etc. The Government will afford every facility, etc., etc. It seemed indeed a friendly little place, with delicious air and sky, and a good, reasonable, decent, English tone about it. Expenses moderate, ye fathers of encroaching families. Negroes abundant and natural, ye students of ethnological possibilities. Officers in red jackets, you young ladies,--young ones, some of them. Why wouldn't you all try it, especially as the Captain of the "Karnak" is an excellent sailor, and the kindest and manliest of conductors? CHAPTER III. FROM NASSAU TO CUBA. The breakfast being over, we recall the Captain's parting admonition to be on board by ten o'clock, with the significant gesture and roll of the eye which clearly express that England expects every passenger to do his duty. Now we know very well that the "Karnak" is not likely to weigh anchor before twelve, at the soonest, but we dare not for our lives disobey the Captain. So, passing by yards filled with the huge Bahama sponges, piles of wreck-timber, fishing-boats with strange fishes, red, yellow, blue, and white, and tubs of aldermanic turtle, we attain the shore, and presently, the steamer. Here we find a large deputation of the towns-people taking passage with us for a pleasure excursion to Havana. The greater number are ladies and children. They come fluttering on board, poor things, like butterflies, in gauzy dresses, hats, and feathers, according to the custom of their country; one gentleman takes four little daughters with him for a holiday. We ask ourselves whether they know what an ugly beast the Gulf-Stream is, that they affront him in such light armor. "Good heavens! how sick they will be!" we exclaim; while they eye us askance, in our winter trim, and pronounce us slow, and old fogies. With all the rashness of youth, they attack the luncheon-table. So boisterous a popping of corks was never heard in all our boisterous passage;--there is a chorus, too, of merry tongues and shrill laughter. But we get fairly out to sea, where the wind, an adverse one, is waiting for us, and at that gay table there is silence, followed by a rush and disappearance. The worst cases are hurried out of sight, and going above, we find the disabled lying in groups about the deck, the feather-hats discarded, the muslins crumpled, and we, the old fogies, going to cover the fallen with shawls and blankets, to speak words of consolation, and to implore the sufferers not to cure themselves with brandy, soda-water, claret, and wine-bitters, in quick succession,--which they, nevertheless, do, and consequently are no better that day, nor the next. But I am forgetting to chronicle a touching parting interview with the Major, the last thing remembered in Nassau, and of course the last to be forgotten anywhere. Our concluding words might best be recorded in the form of a catechism of short questions and answers, to wit:-- "How long did the Major expect to stay in Nassau?" "About six months." "How long would he stay, if he had his own way?" "Not one!" "What did he come for, then?" "Oh, you buy into a nigger regiment for promotion." These were the most important facts elicited by cross-examination. At last we shook hands warmly, promising to meet again somewhere, and the crimson-lined barge with the black Zouaves carried him away. In humbler equipages depart the many black women who have visited the steamer, some for amusement, some to sell the beautiful shell-work made on the island. These may be termed, in general, as ugly a set of wenches as one could wish not to see. They all wear palm-leaf hats stuck on their heads without strings or ribbons, and their clothes are so ill-made that you cannot help thinking that each has borrowed somebody else's dress, until you see that the ill-fitting garments are the rule, not the exception. But neither youth nor sea-sickness lasts forever. The forces of nature rally on the second day, and the few who have taken no remedies recover the use of their tongues and some of their faculties. From these I gather what I shall here impart as SERIOUS VIEWS OF THE BAHAMAS. The principal exports of these favored islands are fruits, sponges, molasses, and sugar. Their imports include most of the necessaries of life, which come to them oftenest in the form of wrecks, by which they obtain them at a small fraction of the original cost and value. For this resource they are indebted to the famous Bahama Banks, which to their way of thinking are institutions as important as the Bank of England itself. These banks stand them in a handsome annual income, and facilitate large discounts and transfers of property not contemplated by the original possessors. One supposes that somebody must suffer by these forced sales of large cargoes at prices ruinous to commerce,--but _who_ suffers is a point not easy to ascertain. There seems to be a good, comfortable understanding all round. The Owners say, "Go ahead, and don't bother yourself,--she's insured." The Captain has got his ship aground in shoal water where she can't sink, and no harm done. The friendly wreckers are close at hand to haul the cargo ashore. The Underwriter of the insurance company has shut his eyes and opened his mouth to receive a plum, which, being a good large one, will not let him speak. And so the matter providentially comes to pass, and "enterprises of great pith and moment" oftenest get no further than the Bahamas. Nassau produces neither hay nor corn,--these, together with butter, flour, and tea, being brought chiefly from the United States. Politics, of course, it has none. As to laws, the colonial system certainly needs propping up,--for under its action a man may lead so shameless a life of immorality as to compel his wife to leave him, and yet not be held responsible for her support and that of the children she has borne him. The principal points of interest are, first, the garrison,--secondly, Government-House, with an occasional ball there,--and, third, one's next-door neighbor, and his or her doings. The principal event in the memory of the citizens seems to be a certain most desirable wreck, in consequence of which, a diamond card-case, worth fifteen hundred dollars, was sold for an eighth part of that sum, and laces, whose current price ranges from thirty to forty dollars a yard, were purchased at will for seventy-five cents. That was a wreck worth having! say the Nassauese. The price of milk ranges from eighteen to twenty-five cents a quart;--think of that, ye New England housekeepers! That precious article, the pudding, is nearly unknown in the Nassauese economy; nor is pie-crust so short as it might be, owing to the enormous price of butter, which has been known to attain the sum of one dollar per pound. Eggs are quoted at prices not commendable for large families with small means. On the other hand, fruits, vegetables, and sugar-cane are abundant. The Nassauese, on the whole, seem to be a kind-hearted and friendly set of people, partly English, partly Southern in character, but with rather a predominance of the latter ingredient in their composition. Their women resemble the women of our own Southern States, but seem simpler and more domestic in their habits,--while the men would make tolerable Yankees, but would scarcely support President Buchanan, the Kansas question, or the Filibustero movement. Physically, the race suffers and degenerates under the influence of the warm climate. Cases of pulmonary disease, asthma, and neuralgia are of frequent occurrence, and cold is considered as curative to them as heat is to us. The diet, too, is not that "giant ox-beef" which the Saxon race requires. Meat is rare and tough, unless brought from the States at high cost. We were forced to the conclusion that no genuine English life can be supported upon a _régime_ of fish and fruit,--or, in other words, no beef, no Bull, but a very different sort of John, lantern-jawed, leather-skinned, and of a thirsty complexion. It occurred to us, furthermore, that it is a dolorous thing to live on a lonely little island, tied up like a wart on the face of civilization,--no healthful stream of life coming and going from the great body of the main land,--the same moral air to be breathed over and over again, without renewal,--the same social elements turned and returned in one tiresome kaleidoscope. Wherefore rejoice, ye Continentals, and be thankful, and visit the Nassauese, bringing beef, butter, and beauty,--bringing a few French muslins, to replace the coarse English fabrics, and buxom Irish girls to outwork the idle negro women,--bringing new books, newspapers, and periodicals,--bringing the Yankee lecturer, all expenses paid, and his drink found him. All these good things, and more, the States have for the Nassauese, of whom we must now take leave, for all hands have been piped on deck. We have jolted for three weary days over the roughest of ocean-highways, and Cuba, nay, Havana, is in sight. The worst cases are up, and begin to talk about their sea-legs, now that the occasion for them is at an end. Sobrina, the chief wit of our party, who would eat sour-sop, sapodilla, orange, banana, cocoa-nut, and sugar-cane at Nassau, and who has lived upon toddy of twenty-cocktail power ever since,--even she is seen, clothed and in her right mind, sitting at the feet of the Prophet she loves, and going through the shawl-and-umbrella exercise. And here is the Morro Castle, which guards the entrance of the harbor,--here go the signals, answering to our own. Here comes the man with the speaking-trumpet, who, understanding no English, yells out to our captain, who understands no Spanish. The following is a free rendering of their conversation:-- "Any Americans on board?" "Yes, thank Heaven, plenty." "How many are Filibusteros?" "All of them." "Bad luck to them, then!" "The same to you!" "_Caramba_," says the Spaniard. "---- ----," says the Englishman. And so the forms of diplomacy are fulfilled; and of Havana, more in my next. CHAPTER IV. THE HARBOR OF HAVANA. As we have said, there were some official mysteries connected with the arrival of our steamer in Nassau; but these did not compare with the visitations experienced in Havana. As soon as we had dropped anchor, a swarm of dark creatures came on board, with gloomy brows, mulish noses, and suspicious eyes. This application of Spanish flies proves irritating to the good-natured Captain, and uncomfortable to all of us. All possible documents are produced for their satisfaction,--bill of lading, bill of health, and so on. Still they persevere in tormenting the whole ship's crew, and regard us, when we pass, with all the hatred of race in their rayless eyes. "Is it a crime," we are disposed to ask, "to have a fair Saxon skin, blue eyes, and red blood?" Truly, one would seem to think so; and the first glance at this historical race makes clear to us the Inquisition, the Conquest of Granada, and the ancient butcheries of Alva and Pizarro. As Havana is an unco uncertain place for accommodations, we do not go on shore, the first night, but, standing close beside the bulwarks, feel a benevolent pleasure in seeing our late companions swallowed and carried off like tidbits by the voracious boatmen below, who squabble first for them and then with them, and so gradually disappear in the darkness. On board the "Karnak" harmony reigns serene. The custom-house wretches are gone, and we are, on the whole, glad we did not murder them. Our little party enjoys tea and bread-and-butter together for the last time. After so many mutual experiences of good and evil, the catguts about our tough old hearts are loosened, and discourse the pleasant music of Friendship. An hour later, I creep up to the higher deck, to have a look-out forward, where the sailors are playing leap-frog and dancing fore-and-afters. I have a genuine love of such common sights, and am quite absorbed by the good fun before me, when a solemn voice sounds at my left, and looking round, I perceive Can Grande, who has come up to explain to me the philosophy of the sailor's dances, and to unfold his theory of amusements, as far as the narrow area of one little brain (mine, not his) will permit. His monologue, and its interruptions, ran very much as follows:-- I.--This is a pleasant sight, isn't it? _Can Grande._--It has a certain interest, as exhibiting the inborn ideal tendency of the human race;--no tribe of people so wretched, so poor, or so infamous as to dispense with amusement, in some form or other. _Voice from below._--Play up, Cook! That's but a slow jig ye're fluting away at. _Can Grande._--I went once to the Five Points of New York, with a police-officer and two philanthropists;--our object was to investigate that lowest phase of social existence.---- Bang, whang, go the wrestlers below, with loud shouts and laughter. I give them one eye and ear,--Can Grande has me by the other. _Can Grande._--I went into one of their miserable dance-saloons. I saw there the vilest of men and the vilest of women, meeting with the worst intentions; but even for this they had the fiddle, music and dancing. Without this little crowning of something higher, their degradation would have been intolerable to themselves and to each other.---- Here the man who gave the back in leap-frog suddenly went down in the middle of the leap, bringing with him the other who, rolling on the deck, caught the traitor by the hair, and pommeled him to his heart's content. I ventured to laugh, and exclaim, "Did you see that?" _Can Grande._--Yes; that is very common.--At that dance of death, every wretched woman had such poor adornment as her circumstances allowed,--a collar, a tawdry ribbon, a glaring false jewel, her very rags disposed with the greater decency of the finer sex,--a little effort at beauty, a sense of it. The good God puts it there;--He does not allow the poorest, the lowest of his human children the thoughtless indifference of brutes.---- And there was the beautiful tropical sky above, starry, soft, and velvet-deep,--the placid waters all around, and at my side the Man who is to speak no more in public, but whose words in private have still the old thrill, the old power to shake the heart and bring the good thoughts uppermost. I put my hand in his, and we descended the companion-way together, and left the foolish sailors to their play. But now, on the after-deck, the Captain, entreated and in nowise unwilling, takes down his violin, and with pleasant touch gives us the dear old airs, "Home, Sweet Home," "Annie Laurie," and so on, and we accompany him with voices toned down by the quiet of the scene around. He plays too, with a musing look, the merry tune to which his little daughter dances, in the English dancing-school, hundreds of leagues away. Good-night, at last, and make the most of it. Coolness and quiet on the water to-night, and heat and mosquitoes, howling of dogs and chattering of negroes to-morrow night, in Havana. The next morning allowed us to accomplish our transit to the desired land of Havana. We pass the Custom-house, where an official in a cage, with eyes of most oily sweetness, and tongue, no doubt, to match, pockets our gold, and imparts in return a governmental permission to inhabit the island of Cuba for the space of one calendar month. We go trailing through the market, where we buy peeled oranges, and through the streets, where we eat them, seen and recognized afar as Yankees by our hats, bonnets, and other features. We stop at the Café Dominica, and refresh with coffee and buttered rolls, for we have still a drive of three miles to accomplish before breakfast. All the hotels in Havana are full, and more than full. Woolcut, of the Cerro, three miles from the gates, is the only landlord who will take us in; so he seizes us fairly by the neck, bundles us into an omnibus, swears that his hotel is but two miles distant, smiles archly when we find the two miles long, brings us where he wants to have us, the Spaniards in the omnibus puffing and staring at the ladies all the way. Finally, we arrive at his hotel, glad to be somewhere, but hot, tired, hungry, and not in raptures with our first experience of tropical life. It must be confessed that our long-tried energies fall somewhat flat on the quiet of Woolcut's. We look round, and behold one long room with marble floor, with two large doors, not windows, opening in front upon the piazza and the street, and other openings into a large court behind, surrounded by small, dark bedrooms. The large room is furnished with two dilapidated cane sofas, a few chairs, a small table, and three or four indifferent prints, which we have ample time to study. For company, we see a stray New York or Philadelphia family, a superannuated Mexican who smiles and bows to everybody, and some dozen of those undistinguishable individuals whom we class together as Yankees, and who, taking the map from Maine to Georgia, might as well come from one place as another, the Southerner being as like the Northerner as a dried pea is to a green pea. The ladies begin to hang their heads, and question a little:--"What are we to do here? and where is the perfectly delightful Havana you told us of?" Answer:--"There is nothing whatever to do here, at this hour of the day, but to undress and go to sleep;--the heat will not let you stir, the glare will not let you write or read. Go to bed; dinner is at four; and after that, we will make an effort to find the Havana of the poetical and Gan Eden people, praying Heaven it may not have its only existence in their brains." Still, the pretty ones do not brighten. They walk up and down, eyeing askance the quiet boarders who look so contented over their children and worsted-work, and wondering in what part of the world they have taken the precaution to leave their souls. Unpacking is then begun, with rather a flinging of the things about, interspersed with little peppery hints as to discomfort and dulness, and dejected stage-sighs, intended for hearing. But this cannot go on,--the thermometer is at 78° in the shade,--an intense and contagious stillness reigns through the house,--some good genius waves a bunch of poppies near those little fretful faces, for which a frown is rather heavy artillery. The balmy breath of sleep blows off the lightly-traced furrows, and after a dreamy hour or two all is bright, smooth, and freshly dressed, as a husband could wish it. The dinner proves not intolerable, and after it we sit on the piazza. A refreshing breeze springs up, and presently the tide of the afternoon drive sets in from the city. The _volantes_ dash by, with silver-studded harnesses, and postilions black and booted; within sit the pretty Señoritas, in twos and threes. They are attired mostly in muslins, with bare necks and arms; bonnets they know not,--their heads are dressed with flowers, or with jewelled pins. Their faces are whitened, we know, with powder, but in the distance the effect is pleasing. Their dark eyes are vigilant; they know a lover when they see him. But there is no twilight in these parts, and the curtain of the dark falls upon the scene as suddenly as the screen of the theatre upon the _dénouement_ of the tragedy. Then comes a cup of truly infernal tea, the mastication of a stale roll, with butter, also stale,--then, more sitting on the piazza,--then, retirement, and a wild hunt after mosquitoes,--and so ends the first day at Woolcut's, on the Cerro. CHAPTER V. HAVANA. THE HOTELS. "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Yes, truly, if you can get it, Jack Falstaff; but it is one thing to pay for comfort, and another thing to have it. You certainly pay for it, in Havana; for the $3 or $3.50 _per diem_, which is your simplest hotel-charge there, should, in any civilized part of the world, give you a creditable apartment, clean linen, and all reasonable diet. What it does give, the travelling public may like to learn. Can Grande has left Woolcut's. The first dinner did not please him,--the cup of tea, with only bread, exasperated,--and the second breakfast, greasy, peppery, and incongruous, finished his disgust; so he asked for his bill, packed his trunk, called the hotel detestable, and went. Now he was right enough in this; the house is detestable;--but as all houses of entertainment throughout the country are about equally so, it is scarcely fair to complain of one. I shall not fear to be more inclusive in my statement, and to affirm that in no part of the world does one get so little comfort for so much money as on the Island of Cuba. To wit: an early cup of black coffee, oftenest very bad; bread not to be had without an extra sputtering of Spanish, and darkening of the countenance;--to wit, a breakfast between nine and ten, invariably consisting of fish, rice, beefsteak, fried plantains, salt cod with tomatoes, stewed tripe and onions, indifferent claret, and an after-cup of coffee or green tea;--to wit, a dinner at three or four, of which the inventory varieth not,--to wit, a plate of soup, roast beef, tough turkeys and chickens, tolerable ham, nameless stews, cayota, plantains, salad, sweet potatoes; and for dessert, a spoonful each of West India preserve,--invariably the kind you do not like,--oranges, bananas, and another cup of coffee;--to wit, tea of the sort already described;--to wit, attendance and non-attendance of negro and half-breed waiters, who mostly speak no English, and neither know nor care what you want;--to wit, a room whose windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, inclose no glass, and are defended from the public by iron rails, and from the outer air, at desire, by clumsy wooden shutters, which are closed only when it rains;--to wit, a bed with a mosquito-netting;--to wit, a towel and a pint of water, for all ablutions. This is the sum of your comforts as to quantity; but as to their quality, experience alone can enlighten you. Taking pity on my exile at the Cerro, Can Grande and his party invite me to come and spend a day at their hotel, of higher reputation, and situated in the centre of things. I go;--the breakfast, to my surprise, is just like Woolcut's; the dinner _idem_, but rather harder to get; preserves for tea, and two towels daily, instead of one, seem to constitute the chief advantages of this establishment. Domestic linens, too, are fairer than elsewhere; but when you have got your ideas of cleanliness down to the Cuban standard, a shade or two either way makes no material difference. Can Grande comes and goes; for stay in the hotel, behind those prison-gratings, he cannot. He goes to the market and comes back, goes to the Jesuit College and comes back, goes to the Banker's and gets money. In his encounters with the sun he is like a prize-fighter coming up to time. Every round finds him weaker and weaker, still his pluck is first-rate, and he goes at it again. It is not until three, P. M., that he wrings out his dripping pocket-handkerchief, slouches his hat over his brows, and gives in as dead-beat. They of the lovely sex meanwhile undergo, with what patience they may, an Oriental imprisonment. In the public street they must on no account set foot. The Creole and Spanish women are born and bred to this, and the hardiest American or English woman will scarcely venture out a second time without the severe escort of husband or brother. These relatives are, accordingly, in great demand. In the thrifty North, Man is considered an incumbrance from breakfast to dinner,--and the sooner he is fed and got out of the way in the morning, the better the work of the household goes on. If the master of the house return at an unseasonable hour, he is held to an excuse, and must prove a headache, or other suitable indisposition. In Havana, on the contrary, the American woman suddenly becomes very fond of her husband:--"he must not leave her at home alone; where does he go? she will go with him; when will he come back? Remember, now, she will expect him." The secret of all this is that she cannot go out without him. The other Angel of deliverance is the _volante_, with its tireless horses and _calesero_, who seems fitted and screwed to the saddle, which he never leaves. He does not even turn his head for orders. His senses are in the back of his head, or wherever his Mistress pleases. "_José, Calle de la Muralla, esquina á los oficios_,"--and the black machine moves on, without look, word, or sign of intelligence. In New York, your Irish coachman grins approval of your order; and even an English flunkey may touch his hat and say, "Yes, Mum." But in the Cuban negro of service, dumbness is the complement of darkness. You speak, and the patient right hand pulls the strap that leads the off horse, while the other gathers up the reins of the nigh, and the horses, their tails tightly braided and deprived of all movement, seem as mechanical as the driver. Happy are the ladies at the hotel who have a perpetual _volante_ at their service! for they dress in their best clothes three times a day, and do not soil them by contact with the dusty street. They drive before breakfast, and shop before dinner, and after dinner go to flirt their fans and refresh their robes on the Paseo, where the fashions drive. At twilight, they stop at friendly doors and pay visits, or at the entrance of the _café_, where ices are brought out to them. At eight o'clock they go to the Plaza, and hear the band play, sitting in the _volante_; and at ten they come home without fatigue, having all day taken excellent care of Number One, beyond which their arithmetic does not extend. "I and my _volante_" is like Cardinal Wolsey's "_Ego et Rex meus_." As for those who have no _volantes_, modesty becomes them, and quietness of dress and demeanor. They get a little walk before breakfast, and stay at home all day, or ride in an omnibus, which is perhaps worse;--they pay a visit now and then in a hired carriage, the bargain being made with difficulty;--they look a good deal through the bars of the windows, and remember the free North, and would, perhaps, envy the _volante_-commanding women, did not dreadful Moses forbid. One alleviation of the tedium of hotel-life in the city is the almost daily visit of the young man from the dry-goods' shop, who brings samples of lawns, linen dresses, piña handkerchiefs, and fans of all prices, from two to seventy-five dollars. The ladies cluster like bees around these flowery goods, and, after some hours of bargaining, disputing, and purchasing, the vendor pockets the golden honey, and marches off. As dressmakers in Havana are scarce, dear, and bad, our fair friends at the hotel make up these dresses mostly themselves, and astonish their little world every day by appearing in new attire. "How extravagant!" you say. They reply, "Oh! it cost nothing for the making; I made it myself." But we remember to have heard somewhere that "Time is Money." At four in the afternoon, a negress visits in turn every bedroom, sweeps out the mosquitoes from the curtains with a feather-brush, and lets down the mosquito-net, which she tucks in around the bed. After this, do not meddle with your bed until it is time to get into it; then put the light away, open the net cautiously, enter with a dexterous swing, and close up immediately, leaving no smallest opening to help them after. In this mosquito-net you live, move, and have your being until morning; and should you venture to pull it aside, even for an hour, you will appall your friends, next day, with a face which suggests the early stages of small-pox, or the spotted fever. The valuable information I have now communicated is the sum of what I learned in that one day at Mrs. Almy's; and though our party speedily removed thither, I doubt whether I shall be able to add to it anything of importance. CHAPTER VI. HAVANA. YOUR BANKER. OUR CONSUL. THE FRIENDLY CUP OF TEA. One is apt to arrive in Havana with a heart elated by the prospect of such kindnesses and hospitalities as are poetically supposed to be the perquisite of travellers. You count over your letters as so many treasures; you regard the unknown houses you pass as places of deposit for the new acquaintances and delightful friendships which await you. In England, say you, each of these letters would represent a pleasant family-mansion thrown open to your view,--a social breakfast,--a dinner of London wits,--a box at the opera,--or the visit of a Lord, whose perfect carriage and livery astonish the quiet street in which you lodge, and whose good taste and good manners should, one thinks, prove contagious, at once soothing and shaming the fretful Yankee conceit. But your Cuban letters, like fairy money, soon turn to withered leaves in your possession, and, having delivered two or three of them, you employ the others more advantageously, as shaving-paper, or for the lighting of cigars, or any other useful purpose. Your Banker, of course, stands first upon the list,--and to him accordingly, with a beaming countenance, you present yourself. For him you have a special letter of recommendation, and however others may fail, you consider him as sure as the trump of the deal at whist. But why, alas, should people, who have gone through the necessary disappointments of life, prepare for themselves others, which may be avoided? Listen and learn. At the first visit, your Banker is tolerably glad to see you,--he discounts your modest letter of credit, and pockets his two and a half _per cent_, with the best grace imaginable. If he wishes to be very civil, he offers you a seat, offers you a cigar, and mumbles in an indistinct tone that he will be happy to serve you in any way. You call again and again, keeping yourself before his favorable remembrance,--always the same seat, the same cigar, the same desire to serve you, carefully repressed, and prevented from breaking out into any overt demonstration of good-will. At last, emboldened by the brilliant accounts of former tourists and the successes of your friends, you suggest that you would like to see a plantation,--you only ask for one,--would he give you a letter, etc., etc.? He assumes an abstracted air, wonders if he knows anybody who has a plantation,--the fact being that he scarcely knows anybody who has not one. Finally, he will try,--call again, and he will let you know. You call again,--"Next week," he says. You call after that interval,--"Next week," again, is all you get. Now, if you are a thorough-bred man, you can afford to quarrel with your Banker; so you say, "Next week,--why not next year?"--make a very decided snatch at your hat, and wish him a very long "good-morning." But if you are a Snob and afraid, you take his neglect quietly enough, and will boast, when you go home, of his polite attentions to yourself and family, when on the Island of Cuba. _Our Consul_ is the next post in the weary journey of your hopes, and to him, with such assurance as you have left, you now betake yourself. Touching him personally I have nothing to say. I will only remark, in general, that the traveller who can find, in any part of the world, an American Consul not disabled from all service by ill-health, want of means, ignorance of foreign languages, or unpleasant relations with the representatives of foreign powers,--that traveller, we say, should go in search of the sea-serpent, and the passage of the North Pole, for he has proved himself able to find what, to every one but him, is undiscoverable. But who, setting these aside, is to show you any attention? Who will lift you from the wayside, and set you upon his own horse, or in his own _volante_, pouring oil and wine upon your wounded feelings? Ah! the breed of the good Samaritan is never allowed to become extinct in this world, where so much is left for it to do. A kind and hospitable American family, long resident in Havana, takes us up at last. They call upon us, and we lift up our heads; they take us out in their carriage, and we step in with a little familiar flounce, intended to show that we are used to such things; finally, they invite us to a friendly cup of tea,--all the hotel knows it,--we have tarried at home in the shade long enough. Now, people have begun to find us out,--_we are going out to tea_! How pleasant the tea-table was, how good the tea, how more than good the bread-and-butter and plum-cake, how quaint the house of Spanish construction, all open to the air, adorned with flowers like a temple, fresh and fragrant, and with no weary upholstery to sit heavy on the sight, how genial and prolonged the talk, how reluctant the separation,--imagine it, ye who sing the songs of home in a strange land. And ye who cannot imagine, forgo the pleasure, for I shall tell you no more about it. I will not, I, give names, to make good-natured people regret the hospitality they have afforded. If they have entertained unawares angels and correspondents of the press, (I use the two terms as synonymous,) they shall not be made aware of it by the sacrifice of their domestic privacy. All celebrated people do this, and that we do it not answers for our obscurity. The cup of tea proves the precursor of many kind services and pleasant hours. Our new friends assist us to a deal of sight-seeing, and introduce us to cathedral, college, and garden. We walk out with them at sunrise and at sunset, and sit under the stately trees, and think it almost strange to be at home with people of our own race and our own way of thinking, so far from the home-surroundings. For the gardens, they may chiefly be described as triumphs of Nature over Art,--our New England horticulture being, on the contrary, the triumph of Art over Nature, after a hard-fought battle. Here, the avenues of palm and cocoa are magnificent, and the flowers new to us, and very brilliant. But pruning and weeding out are hard tasks for Creole natures, with only negroes to help them. There is for the most part a great overgrowth and overrunning of the least desirable elements, a general air of slovenliness and unthrift. In all artificial arrangements decay seems imminent, and the want of idea in the laying out of grounds is a striking feature. In Italian villas, the feeling of the Beautiful, which has produced a race of artists, is everywhere manifest,--everywhere are beautiful forms and picturesque effects. Even the ruins of Rome seem to be held together by this fine bond. No stone dares to drop, no arch to moulder, but with an exquisite and touching grace. And the weeds, oh! the weeds that hang their little pennon on the Coliseum, how graciously do they float, as if they said,--"Breathe softly, lest this crumbling vision of the Past go down before the rude touch of the modern world!" And so one treads lightly, and speaks in hushed accents; lest, in the brilliant Southern noon, one should wake the sleeping heart of Rome to the agony of her slow extinction. But what is all this? We are dreaming of Rome,--and this is Cuba, where the spirit of Art has never been, and where it could not pass without sweeping out from houses, churches, gardens, and brains, such trash as has rarely been seen and endured elsewhere. They show us, for example, some mutilated statues in the ruins of what is called the Bishop's Garden. Why, the elements did a righteous work, when they effaced the outlines of these coarse and trivial shapes, unworthy even the poor marble on which they were imposed. Turning from these, however, we find lovely things enough to rebuke this savage mood of criticism. The palm-trees are unapproachable in beauty,--they stand in rows like Ionic columns, straight, strong, and regular, with their plumed capitals. They talk solemnly of the Pyramids and the Desert, whose legends have been whispered to them by the winds that cross the ocean, freighted with the thoughts of God. Then, these huge white lilies, deep as goblets, from which one drinks fragrance, and never exhausts,--these thousand unknown jewels of the tropics. Here is a large tank, whose waters are covered with the leaves and flowers of beautiful aquatic plants, whose Latin names are of no possible consequence to anybody. Here, in the very heart of the garden, is a rustic lodge, curtained with trailing vines. Birds in cages are hung about it, and a sweet voice, singing within, tells us that the lodge is the cage of a yet more costly bird. We stop to listen, and the branches of the trees seem to droop more closely about us, the twilight lays its cool, soft touch upon our heated foreheads, and we whisper,--"Peace to his soul!" as we leave the precincts of the Bishop's Garden. CHAPTER VII. HAVANA--THE JESUIT COLLEGE. The gentlemen of our party go one day to visit the Jesuit College in Havana, yclept "_Universidad de Belen_." The ladies, weary of dry goods, manifest some disposition to accompany them. This is at once frowned down by the unfairer sex, and Can Grande, appealed to by the other side, shakes his shoulders, and replies, "No, you are only miserable women, and cannot be admitted into any Jesuit establishment whatever." And so the male deputation departs with elation, and returns with airs of superior opportunity, and is more insufferable than ever at dinner, and thereafter. They of the feminine faction, on the other hand, consult with more direct authorities, and discover that the doors of Belen are in nowise closed to them, and that everything within those doors is quite at their disposition, saving and excepting the sleeping-apartments of the Jesuit fathers,--to which, even in thought, they would on no account draw near. And so they went and saw Belen, whereof one of them relates as follows. The building is spacious, inclosing a hollow square, and with numerous galleries, like European cloisters, where the youth walk, study, and play. We were shown up-stairs, into a pleasant reception-room, where two priests soon waited on us. One of these, Padre Doyaguez, seemed to be the decoy-duck of the establishment, and soon fastened upon one of our party, whose Protestant tone of countenance had probably caught his attention. Was she a Protestant? Oh, no!--not with that intelligent physiognomy!--not with that talent! What was her name? Julia (pronounced _H_ulia). Hulia was a Roman name, a Catholic name; he had never heard of a Hulia who was a Protestant;--very strange, it seemed to him, that a Hulia could hold to such unreasonable ideas. The other priest, Padre Lluc, meanwhile followed with sweet, quiet eyes, whose silent looks had more persuasion in them than all the innocent cajoleries of the elder man. Padre Doyaguez was a man eminently qualified to deal with the sex in general,--a coaxing voice, a pair of vivacious eyes whose cunning was not unpleasing, tireless good-humor and perseverance, and a savor of sincerity. Padre Lluc was the sort of man that one recalls in quiet moments with a throb of sympathy,--the earnest eyes, the clear brow, the sonorous voice. One thinks of him, and hopes that he is satisfied,--that cruel longing and more cruel doubt shall never spring up in that capacious heart, divorcing his affections and convictions from the system to which his life is irrevocably wedded. No, keep still, Padre Lluc! think ever as you think now, lest the faith that seems a fortress should prove a prison, the mother a step-dame,--lest the high, chivalrous spirit, incapable of a safe desertion, should immolate truth or itself on the altar of consistency. Between those two advocates of Catholicity, Hulia Protestante walks slowly through the halls of the University. She sees first a Cabinet of Natural History, including minerals, shells, fossils, and insects, all well-arranged, and constituting a very respectable beginning. Padre Lluc says some good words on the importance of scientific education. Padre Doyaguez laughs at the ladies' hoops, which he calls Malakoffs, as they crowd through the doorways and among the glass cases; he repeats occasionally, "_Hulia Protestante?_" in a tone of mock astonishment, and receives for answer, "_Si, Hulia Protestante_." Then comes a very creditable array of scientific apparatus,--not of the order employed by the judges of Galileo,--electric and galvanic batteries, an orrery, and many things beside. The Library interests us more, with some luxurious Classics, a superb Dante, and a prison-cage of forbidden works, of which Padre Lluc certainly has the key. Among these were fine editions of Rousseau and Voltaire, which appeared to be intended for use; and we could imagine a solitary student, dark-eyed and pale, exploring their depths at midnight with a stolen candle, and endeavoring, with self-torment, to reconcile the intolerance of his doctrine with the charities of his heart. We imagine such an one lost in the philosophy and sentiment of the "Nouvelle Héloise," and suddenly summoned by the convent-bell to the droning of the Mass, the mockery of Holy Water, the fable of the Real Presence. Such contrasts might be strange and dangerous. No, no, Padre Lluc! keep these unknown spells from your heart,--let the forbidden books alone. Instead of the Confessions of Jean Jacques, read the Confessions of St. Augustine,--read the new book, in three volumes, on the Immaculate Conception, which you show me with such ardor, telling me that Can Grande has spoken of it with respect. Beyond the Fathers you must not get, for you have vowed to be a child all your life. Those clear eyes of yours are never to look up into the face of the Eternal Father; the show-box of the Church must content them, with Mary and the saints seen through its dusty glass,--the august figure of the Son, who sometimes reproved his Mother, crowded quite out of sight behind the woman, whom it is so much easier to dress up and exhibit. What is this other book which Parker has read? Padre Doyaguez says, "Hulia, if you read this, you must become a Catholic." Padre Lluc says, "If Parker has read this book, I cannot conceive that he is not a Catholic." The quick Doyaguez then remarks, "Parker is going to Rome to join the Romish Church." Padre Lluc rejoins, "They say so." Hulia Protestante is inclined to cry out, "The day that Parker becomes a Catholic, I too will become one"; but, remembering the rashness of vows and the fallibility of men, she does not adopt that form of expressing _Never_. Parker might, if it pleased God, become a Catholic, and then the world would have two Popes instead of one. We leave at last the disputed ground of the Library and ascend to the Observatory, which commands a fine view of the city, and a good sweep of the heavens for the telescope, in which Padre Lluc seemed especially to delight. The Observatory is commodious, and is chiefly directed by an attenuated young priest, with a keen eye and hectic cheek; another is occupied in working out mathematical tables;--for these Fathers observe the stars, and are in scientific correspondence with Astronomers in Europe. This circumstance gave us real pleasure on their account,--for science, in all its degrees, is a positive good, and a mental tonic of the first importance. Earnestly did we, in thought, commend it to those wearied minds which have undergone the dialectic dislocations, the denaturalizations of truth and of thought, which enable rational men to become first Catholics, and then Jesuits. For let there be no illusions about strength of mind and so on,--this is effected by means of a vast machinery. As, in the old story, the calves were put in at one end of the cylinder and taken out leather breeches at the other, or as glass is cut and wood carved, so does the raw human material, put into the machine of the Catholic Church, become fashioned according to the will of those who guide it. Hulia Protestante! you have a free step and a clear head; but once go into the machine, and you will come out carved and embossed according to the old traditional pattern,--you as well as another. Where the material is hard, they put on more power,--where it is soft, more care; wherefore I caution you here, as I would in a mill at Lowell or Lawrence,--Don't meddle with the shafts,--don't go too near the wheel,--in short, keep clear of the machinery. And Hulia does so; for, at the last attack of Padre Doyaguez, she suddenly turns upon him and says, "Sir, you are a Doctrinary and a Propagandist." And the good Father suffers her to depart in peace. But first there is the chapel to be seen, with its tawdry and poor ornamentation,--and the dormitories of the scholars, with long double rows of beds and mosquito-nettings. There are two of these, and each of them has at one end a raised platform, with curtains and a bed, where rests and watches the shepherd of the little sheep. Lastly, we have a view of the whole flock, assembled in their play-ground, and one of them, looking up, sees his mother, who has kindly accompanied our visit to the institution. Across the distance that separates us, we see his blue eyes brighten, and, as soon as permission is given, he bounds like a young roe to her arms, shy and tender, his English blood showing through his Spanish skin,--for he is a child of mixed race. We are all pleased and touched, and Padre Lluc presently brings us a daguerreotype, and says, "It is my mother." To us it is an indifferent portrait of an elderly Spanish woman,--but to him, how much! With kindest mutual regard we take leave,--a little surprised, perhaps, to see that Jesuit priests have mothers, and remember them. CHAPTER VIII. SAN ANTONIO DE LOS BAÑOS. "Far from my thoughts, vain world, begone!" However enchanting Havana may prove when seen through the moonlight of memory, it seems as good a place to go away from as any other, after a stifling night in a net, the wooden shutters left open in the remote hope of air, and admitting the music of a whole opera-troupe of dogs, including Bass, Tenor, Soprano, and Chorus. Instead of bouquets, you throw stones, if you are so fortunate as to have them,--if not, boot-jacks, oranges, your only umbrella. You are last seen thrusting frantic hands and feet through the iron bars, your wife holding you back by the flannel night-gown which you will persist in wearing in this doubtful climate. At last it is over,--the fifth act ends with a howl which makes you hope that some one of the performers has come to grief. But, alas! it is only a stage _dénouement_, whose hero will die again every night while the season lasts. You fall asleep, but the welcome cordial has scarcely been tasted when you are aroused by a knock at the door. It is the night-porter, who wakes you at five by appointment, that you may enjoy your early coffee, tumble into a hired _volante_, and reach, half dead with sleep, the station in time for the train that goes to San Antonio. Now, whether you are a partisan of early rising or not, you must allow that sunrise and the hour after is the golden time of the day in Cuba. So this hour of starting,--six o'clock,--so distasteful in our latitudes, is a matter of course in tropical climates. Arriving at the station, you encounter new tribulations in the registering and payment of luggage, the transportation of which is not included in the charge for your ticket. Your trunks are recorded in a book, and, having paid a _real_ apiece for them, you receive a paper which entitles you to demand them again at your journey's end. The Cuban railways are good, but dear,--the charge being ten cents a mile; whereas in our more favored land one goes for three cents, and has the chance of a collision and surgeon's services without any extra payment. The cars have windows which are always open, and blinds which are always closed, or nearly so. The seats and backs of seats are of cane, for coolness,--hardness being secured at the same time. One reaches San Antonio in an hour and a half, and finds a pleasant village, with a river running through it, several streets of good houses, several more of bad ones, a cathedral, a cockpit, a _volante_, four soldiers on horseback, two on foot, a market, dogs, a bad smell, and lastly, the American Hotel,--a house built in a hollow square, as usual,--kept by a strong-minded woman from the States, whose Yankee thrift is unmistakable, though she has been long absent from the great centres of domestic economy. Mrs. L----, always on the watch for arrivals, comes out to receive us. We are very welcome, she hints, as far as we go; but why are there not more of us? The smallest favors should be thankfully received, but she hears that Havana is full of strangers, and she wonders, for her part, why people will stay in that hot place, and roast, and stew, and have the yellow fever, when she could make them so comfortable in San Antonio. This want of custom she continues, during our whole visit, to complain of. Would it be uncharitable for us to aver that we found other wants in her establishment which caused us more astonishment, and which went some way towards accounting for the deficiency complained of? wants of breakfast, wants of dinner, wants of something good for tea, wants of towels, wants of candles, wants of ice, or at least of the cooling jars used in the country. Charges exorbitant,--the same as in Havana, where rents are an ounce a week, and upwards; _volantes_ difficult,--Mrs. L. having made an agreement with the one livery-stable that they shall always be furnished at most unreasonable prices, of which she, supposably, pockets half. On the other hand, the village is really cool, healthy, and pretty; there are pleasant drives over dreadful roads, if one makes up one's mind to the _volante_, and delightful river-baths, shaded by roofs of palm-tree thatch. One of the best of these is at the foot of Mrs. L.'s inclosure, and its use is included in the privileges of the house. The water is nearly tepid, clear, and green, and the little fish float hither and thither in it,--though men of active minds are sometimes reduced to angle for them, with crooked pins, for amusement. At the hour of one, daily, the ladies of the house betake themselves to this refreshment; and there is laughing, and splashing, and holding of hands, and simulation of all the Venuses that ever were, from the crouching one of the bath, to the triumphant Cytherea, springing for the first time from the wave. Such are the resources of the house. Those of the neighborhood are various. Foremost among them is the _cafetal_, or coffee-plantation, of Don Juan Torres, distant a league from the village, over which league of stone, sand, and rut you rumble in a _volante_ dragged by three horses. You know that the _volante_ cannot upset; nevertheless you experience some anxious moments when it leans at an obtuse angle, one wheel in air, one sticking in a hole, the horses balking and kicking, and the postilion swearing his best. But it is written, the _volante_ shall not upset,--and so it does not. Long before you see the entrance to the plantation, you watch the tall palms, planted in a line, that shield its borders. An avenue of like growth leads you to the house, where barking dogs announce you, and Don Juan, an elderly gentleman in slippers and a Panama hat, his hair, face, and eyes all faded to one hue of grayness, comes out to accost us. Here, again, Hulia Protestante becomes the subject of a series of attacks, in a new kind. Don Juan first exhausts his flower-garden upon her, and explains all that is new to her. Then she must see his blind Chino, a sightless Samson of a Cooly, who is working resolutely in a mill. "_Canta!_" says the master, and the poor slave gives tongue like a hound on the scent. "_Baila!_" and, a stick being handed him, he performs the gymnastics of his country, a sort of war-dance without accompaniment. "_El can!_" and, giving him a broom, they loose the dog upon him. A curious tussle then ensues,--the dog attacking furiously, and the blind man, guided by his barking, defending himself lustily. The Chino laughs, the master laughs, but the visitor feels more inclined to cry, having been bred in those Northern habits which respect infirmity. A _real_ dismisses the poor soul with a smile, and then begins the journey round the _cafetal_. The coffee-blossom is just in its perfection, and whole acres in sight are white with its flower, which nearly resembles that of the small white jasmine. Its fragrance is said to be delicious after a rain; but, the season being dry, it is scarcely discernible. As shade is a great object in growing coffee, the grounds are laid out in lines of fruit-trees, and these are the ministers of Hulia's tribulation; for Don Juan, whether in kindness or in mischief, insists that she shall taste every unknown fruit,--and as he cuts them and hands them to her, she is forced to obey. First, a little negro shins up a cocoa-nut tree, and flings down the nut, whose water she must drink. One cocoa-nut she endures,--two,--but three? no, she must rebel, and cry out, "_No mi gusta!_" Then she must try a bitter orange, then a sour bitter one, then a sweet lemon, then a huge fruit of triple verjuice flavor. "What is it good for?" she asks, after a shuddering plunge into its acrid depths. "Oh," says the Don, "they eat it in the castors instead of vinegar." Then come _sapotas_, _mamey_, Otaheite gooseberries. "Does she like bananas?" he cuts a tree down with his own hand, and sends the bunch of fruit to her _volante_;--"Sugar-cane?" he bestows a huge bundle of sticks for her leisurely rodentation;--he fills her pocket with coral beans for her children. Having, at last, exhausted every polite attention, and vainly offered gin, rum, and coffee, as a parting demonstration, Hulia and her partner escape, bearing with them many strange flavors, and an agonizing headache, the combined result of sun and acids. Really, if there exist anywhere on earth a Society for the promotion and encouragement of good manners, it should send a diploma to Don Juan, admonishing him only to omit the vinegar-fruit in his further walks of hospitality. We take the Sunday to visit the nearest Sugar-plantation, belonging to Don Jacinto Gonzales. Sun, not shade, being the desideratum in sugar-planting, there are few trees or shrubs bordering the sugar-fields, which resemble at a distance our own fields of Indian corn, the green of the leaves being lighter, and a pale blue blossom appearing here and there. The points of interest here are the machinery, the negroes, and the work. Entering the sugar-house, we find the _Maquinista_ (engineer) superintending some repairs in the machinery, aided by another white man, a Cooly, and an imp of a black boy, who begged of all the party, and revenged himself with clever impertinence on those who refused him. The _Maquinista_ was a fine-looking man, from the Pyrenees, very kind and obliging. He told us that Don Jacinto was very old, and came rarely to the plantation. We asked him how the extreme heat of his occupation suited him, and for an answer he opened the bosom of his shirt, and showed us the marks of innumerable leeches. The machinery is not very complicated. It consists of a wheel and band, to throw the canes under the powerful rollers which crush them, and these rollers, three in number, all moved by the steam-engine. The juice flows into large copper caldrons, where it is boiled and skimmed. As they were not at work, we did not see the actual process. Leaving the sugar-house, we went in pursuit of the _Mayoral_, or Overseer, who seemed to inhabit comfortable quarters, in a long, low house, shielded from the sun by a thick screen of matting. We found him a powerful, thick-set man, of surly and uncivil manners, girded with a sword, and further armed with a pistol, a dagger, and a stout whip. He was much too important a person to waste his words upon us, but signified that the major-domo would wait on us, which he presently did. We now entered the Negro quarter, a solid range of low buildings, formed around a hollow square, whose strong entrance is closed at nightfall, and its inmates kept in strict confinement till the morning hour of work comes round. Just within the doorway we encountered the trader, who visits the plantations every Sunday, to tempt the stray cash of the negroes by various commodities, of which the chief seemed to be white bread, calicoes, muslins, and bright cotton handkerchiefs. He told us that their usual weekly expenditure amounted to about twenty-five dollars. Bargaining with him stood the Negro-Driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,--the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a blanket or coverlet. From this we turned to the Nursery, where all the children incapable of work are kept. The babies are quite naked, and sometimes very handsome in their way, black and shining, with bright eyes and well-formed limbs. No great provision is made for their amusement, but the little girls nurse them tenderly enough, and now and then the elders fling them a bit of orange or _chaimito_, for which they scramble like so many monkeys. Appeals are constantly made to the pockets of visitors, by open hands stretched out in all directions. To these "_Nada_"--"Nothing"--is the safe reply; for, if you give to one, the others close about you with frantic gesticulation, and you have to break your way through them with some violence, which hurts your own feelings more than it does theirs. On _strict_ plantations this is not allowed; but Don Jacinto, like Lord Ashburton at the time of the Maine treaty, is an old man,--a very old man; and where discipline cannot be maintained, peace must be secured on any terms. We visit next the Sugar-house, where we find the desired condiment in various stages of color and refinement. It is whitened with clay in large funnel-shaped vessels, open at the bottom, to allow the molasses to run off. Above are hogsheads of coarse, dark sugar; below is a huge pit of fermenting molasses, in which rats and small negroes occasionally commit involuntary suicide, and from which rum is made.--N. B. Rum is not a wicked word in Cuba; in Boston everybody is shocked when it is named, and in Cuba nobody is shocked when it is drunk. And here endeth the description of our visit to the sugar-plantation of Don Jacinto, and in good time, too,--for by this it had grown so hot, that we made a feeble rush for the _volante_, and lay back in it, panting for breath. Encountering a negress with a load of oranges on her head, we bought and ate the fruit with eagerness, though the oranges were bitter. The jolting over three miles of stone and rut did not improve the condition of our aching heads. Arriving at San Antonio, we thankfully went to bed for the rest of the morning, and dreamed, only dreamed, that the saucy black boy in the boiling-house had run after us, had lifted the curtain of the _volante_, screeched a last impertinence after us, and kissed his hand for a good-bye, which, luckily for him, is likely to prove eternal. CHAPTER IX. THE MORRO FORTRESS--THE UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA--THE BENEFICENZA. The Spanish government experiences an unwillingness to admit foreigners into the Morro, their great stronghold, the causes of which may not be altogether mysterious. Americans have been of late especially excluded from it, and it was only by a fortunate chance that we were allowed to visit it. A friend of a friend of ours happened to have a friend in the garrison, and, after some delays and negotiations, an early morning hour was fixed upon for the expedition. The Fort is finely placed at the entrance of the harbor, and is in itself a picturesque object. It is built of a light, yellowish stone, which is seen, as you draw near, in strong contrast with the vivid green of the tropical waters. We approached it by water, taking a row-boat from the Alameda. As we passed, we had a good view of a daily Havana spectacle, the washing of the horses. This being by far the easiest and most expeditious way of cleaning the animals, they are driven daily to the sea in great numbers, those of one party being tied together; they disport themselves in the surge and their wet backs glisten in the sun. Their drivers, nearly naked, plunge in with them, and bring them safely back to the shore. But for the Morro. We entered without difficulty, and began at once a somewhat steep ascent, which the heat, even at that early hour, made laborious. After some climbing, we reached the top of the parapet, and looked out from the back of the Fortress. On this side, if ever on any, it will be taken,--for, standing with one's back to the harbor, one sees, nearly on the right hand, a point where trenches could be opened with advantage. The Fort is heavily gunned and garrisoned, and seems to be in fighting order. The outer wall is separated from the inner by a paved space some forty feet in width. The height of both walls makes this point a formidable one; but scaling-ladders could be thrown across, if one had possession of the outer wall. The material is the coralline rock common in this part of the island. It is a soft stone, and would prove, it is feared, something like the cotton-bag defence of New Orleans memory,--as the balls thrown from without would sink in, and not splinter the stone, which for the murderous work were to be wished. A little perseverance, with much perspiration, brought us to a high point called the Lantern, which is merely a small room, where the telescope, signal-books, and signals are kept. Here we were received by an official in blue spectacles and with a hole in his boot, but still with that air of being the chiefest thing on God's earth common to all Spaniards. The best of all was that we had brought a sack of oranges with us, and that the time was now come for their employment. With no other artillery than these did we take the very heart of the Morro citadel,--for on offering them to the official with the hole, he surrendered at once, smiled, gave us seats, and sitting down with us, indeed, was soon in the midst of his half-dozenth orange. Having refreshed ourselves, examined the flags of all nations, and made all the remarks which our limited Spanish allowed, we took leave, redescended, and reëmbarked. One of our party, an old soldier, had meanwhile been busily scanning the points and angles of the fortress, pacing off distances, etc., etc. The result of his observations would, no doubt, be valuable to men of military minds. But the writer of this, to be candid, was especially engaged with the heat, the prospect, the oranges, and the soldiers' wives and children, who peeped out from windows here and there. Such trifling creatures do come into such massive surroundings, and trifle still! Our ladies, being still in a furious mood of sight-seeing, desired to visit the University of Havana, and, having made appointment with an accomplished Cuban, betook themselves to the College buildings with all proper escort. Their arrival in the peristyle occasioned some excitement. One of the students came up, and said in good English, "What do you want?" Others, not so polite, stared and whispered in corners. A message to one of the professors was attended with some delay, and our Cuban friend, having gone to consult with him, returned to say, with some embarrassment, that the professor would be happy to show the establishment to the ladies on Sunday, at two P. M., when every male creature but himself would be out of it; but as for their going through the rooms while the undergraduates were about, that was not to be thought of. "Why not?" asked the ladies. "For your own sake," said the messenger, and proceeded to explain that the appearance of the _skirted_ in these halls of learning would be followed by such ill-conduct and indignity of impertinence on the part of the _shirted_ as might be intolerable to the one and disadvantageous to the other. Now there be women, we know, whose horrid fronts could have awed these saucy little Cubans into decency and good behavior, and some that we wot of, whether possessing that power or not, would have delighted in the fancied exercise of it. What strong-minded company, under these circumstances, would have turned back? What bolting, tramping, and rushing would they not have made through the ranks of the astonished professors and students? The Anniversary set, for example, who sweep the pews of men, or, coming upon one forlorn, crush him as a boa does a sheep. Our silly little flock only laughed, colored, and retreated to the _volantes_, where they held a council of war, and decided to go visit some establishment where possibly better manners might prevail. Returning on the Sunday at the hour appointed, they walked through the deserted building, and found spacious rooms, the pulpits of the professors, the benches of the students, the Queen's portrait, a very limited library, and for all consolation, some pleasant Latin sentences over the doors of the various departments, celebrating the solace and delights of learning. This was seeing the College, literally; but it was a good deal like seeing the Lion's den, the Lion himself being absent on leave,--or like visiting the Hippopotamus in Regent's Park on those days in which he remains steadfastly buried in his tank, and will show only the tip of a nostril for your entrance-fee. Still, it was a pleasure to know that learning was so handsomely housed; and as for the little rabble who could not be trusted in the presence of the sex, we forgave them heartily, knowing that soberer manners would one day come upon them as inevitably as baldness and paternity. Let me here say that a few days in Havana make clear to one the seclusion of women in the East, and its causes. Wherever the animal vigor of men is so large in proportion to their moral power as in those countries, women must be glad to forego their liberties for the protection of the strong arm. One master is better for them than many. Whatever tyranny may grow out of such barbarous manners, the institution springs from a veritable necessity and an original good intention. The Christian religion should change this, which is justifiable only in a Mohammedan country. But where that religion is so loosely administered as in Cuba, where its teachers themselves frequent the cockpit and the gaming-table, one must not look for too much of its power in the manners and morals of men. The Beneficenza was our next station. It is, as its name signifies, an institution with a benevolent purpose, an orphan asylum and foundling hospital in one. The State here charitably considers that infants who are abandoned by their parents are as much orphaned as they can become by the interposition of death,--nay, more. The death of parents oftenest leaves a child with some friend or relative; but the foundling is cut off from all human relationship,--he belongs only to the hand that takes him up, where he has been left to die. Despite the kind cruelty of modern theories, which will not allow of suitable provision for the sufferer, for fear of increasing the frequency of the crime by which he suffers, our hearts revolt at the miserable condition of these little creatures in our great cities, confounded with hopeless pauperism in its desolate asylums, or farmed out to starve and die. They belong to the State, and the State should nobly retrieve the world's offence against them. Their broken galaxy shows many a bright star here and there. Such a little wailing creature has been found who has commanded great actions and done good service among men. Let us then cherish the race of foundlings, of whom Moses was the first and the greatest. The princess who reared him saw not the glorious destiny which lay hid, as a birth-jewel, in his little basket of reeds. She saw only, as some of us have seen, a helpless, friendless babe. When he dedicated to her his first edition of the Pentateuch---- But nay, he did not; for neither gratitude nor dedications were in fashion among the Jews. We found the Beneficenza spacious, well-ventilated, and administered with great order. It stands near the sea, with a fine prospect in view, and must command a cool breeze, if there be any. The children enjoy sea-bathing in summer. The Superintendent received us most kindly, and presented us to the Sisters who have charge of the children, who were good specimens of their class. We walked with them through the neat dormitories, and observed that they were much more airy than those of the Jesuit College, lately described. They all slept on the sackings of cots, beds being provided only in the infirmary. In the latter place we found but two inmates,--one suffering from ordinary Cuban fever, the other from ophthalmia.--N. B. Disease of the eyes does not seem to be common in Cuba, in spite of the tropical glare of the sun; nor do people nurse and complain of their eyes there, as with us. We found a separate small kitchen for the sick, which was neat and convenient. The larger kitchen too was handsomely endowed with apparatus, and the Superintendent told us, with a twinkle in his eye, that the children lived well. Coffee at six, a good breakfast at nine, dinner at the usual hour, bread and coffee before bed-time;--this seemed very suitable as to quantity, though differing from our ideas of children's food; but it must be remembered that the nervous stimulus of coffee is not found to be excessive in hot climates; it seems to be only what Nature demands,--no more. The kind Nun who accompanied us now showed us, with some pride, various large presses set in the wall, and piled to the top with clean and comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An Ecclesiastic was hearing them;--they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking little fellows, ranging apparently from eight to twelve years of age. They had good play-ground set off for them, and shady galleries to walk up and down in. Coming from their quarter, the girls' department seemed quiet enough. Here was going on the eternal task of needle-work, to which the sex has been condemned ever since Adam's discovery of his want of wardrobe. Oh, ye wretched, foolish women! why will ye forever sew? "We must not only sew, but be thankful to sew; _that little needle_ being, as the sentimental Curtis has said, the only thing between us and the worst that may befall." These incipient women were engaged in various forms of sewing,--the most skilful in a sort of embroidery, like that which forms the border of _piña_ handkerchiefs. A few were reading and spelling. One poor blind girl sat amongst them, with melancholy arms folded, and learned nothing,--they told us, nothing; for the instruction of the blind is not thought of in these parts. This seemed piteous to us, and made us reflect how happy are _our_ Blinds, to say nothing of our Deafs and Dumbs. Idiocy is not uncommon here, and is the result of continual intermarriage between near relations; but it will be long before they will provide it with a separate asylum and suitable instruction. But now came the saddest part of the whole exhibition,--a sight common enough in Europe, but by some accident hitherto unseen by us. Here is a sort of receptacle, with three or four compartments, which turns on a pivot. One side of it is open to the street, and in it the wretched parent lays the more wretched baby,--ringing a small bell at the same time, for the new admittance. The parent vanishes, the receptacle turns on its pivot,--the baby is within, and, we are willing to believe, in merciful hands. The sight of this made, for the first time, the crime real to me. I saw at a flash the whole tragedy of desertion,--the cautious approach, the frightened countenance, the furtive act, and the great avenging pang of Nature after its consummation. What was Hester Prynne's pillory, compared to the heart of any of these mothers? I thought too of Rousseau, bringing to such a place as this children who had the right to inherit divine genius, and deserting them for the sordid reason that he did not choose to earn their bread;--the helpless mother weeping at home, and begging, through long years, to be allowed to seek and reclaim them. Well, here were the little creatures kindly cared for; yet what a piteous place was their nursery! Some of the recent arrivals looked as if ill-usage had been exhausted upon them before they were brought hither. Blows and drugs and starvation had been tried upon them, but, with the tenacity of infancy, they clung to life. They would not die;--well then, they should live to regret it. Some of them lay on the floor, deformed and helpless; the older ones formed a little class, and were going through some elementary exercise when we passed. The babies had a large room allotted to them, and I found the wet-nurses apportioned one to each child. This appeared a very generous provision, as in such establishments elsewhere, three and even four children are given to one nurse. They had comfortable cribs, on each of which was pinned the name of its little inmate, and the date of its entrance;--generally, the name and age of the child are found written on a slip of paper attached to its clothing, when it is left in the receptacle. I saw on one, "Cecilio, three weeks old." He had been but a few days in the establishment. Of course, I lingered longest in the babies' room, and longest of all near the crib of the little Cecilio. He was a pretty baby, and seemed to me the most ill-used of all, because the youngest. "Could they not bear with you three weeks, little fellow?" I said. "I know those at whose firesides such as you would have been welcome guests. That New York woman whom I met lately, young, rich, and childless,--I could commend you to her in place of the snarling little spaniel fiend who was her constant care and companion." But here the Superintendent made a polite bow, saying,--"And now your Worships have seen all; for the chapel is undergoing repairs, and cannot be visited." And so we thanked, and departed. CHAPTER X. CAN GRANDE'S DEPARTURE.--THE DOMINICA.--LOTTERY-TICKETS. I have not told you how Can Grande took leave of the Isle of Rogues, as one of our party christened the fair Queen of the Antilles. I could not tell you how he loathed the goings on at Havana, how hateful he found the Spaniards, and how villanous the American hotel-keepers. His superlatives of censure were in such constant employment that they began to have a threadbare sound before he left us; and as he has it in prospective to run the gauntlet of all the innkeepers on the continent of Europe, to say nothing of further lands, where innkeepers would be a relief, there is no knowing what exhaustion his powers in this sort may undergo before he reaches us again. He may break down into weak, compliant good-nature, and never be able to abuse anybody again, as long as he lives. In that case, his past life and his future, taken together, will make a very respectable average. But the climate really did not suit him, the company did not satisfy, and there came a moment when he said, "I can bear it no longer!" and we answered, "Go in peace!" It now becomes me to speak of Sobrina, who has long been on a temperance footing, and who forgets even to blush when the former toddy is mentioned, though she still shudders at the remembrance of sour-sop. She is the business-man of the party; and while philosophy and highest considerations occupy the others, with an occasional squabble over virtue and the rights of man, she changes lodgings, hires carts, transports luggage, and, knowing half-a-dozen words of Spanish, makes herself clearly comprehensible to everybody. "We have found a Spanish steamer for Can Grande;" but she rows thither in a boat and secures his passage and state-room. The noontide sun is hot upon the waters, but her zeal is hotter still. Now she has made a curious bargain with her boatmen, by which they are to convey the whole party to the steamer on the fourth day. "What did you tell them?" we asked. "I said, _tres noches_ (three nights) and _un dia_, (one day,) and then took out my watch and showed them five o'clock on it, and pointed to the boat and to myself. They understood perfectly." And so, in truth, they did; for, going to the wharf on the day and at the hour appointed, we found the boatmen in waiting, with eager faces. But here a new difficulty presented itself;--the runner of our hotel, a German whose Cuban life has sharpened his wits and blunted his conscience, insisted that the hiring of boats for the lodgers was one of his (many) perquisites, and that before his sovereign prerogative all other agreements were null and void.--N. B. There was always something experimentative about this man's wickedness. He felt that he did not know how far men might be gulled, or the point where they would be likely to resist. This was a fault of youth. With increasing years and experience he will grow bolder and more skilful, and bids fair, we should say, to become one of the most dexterous operators known in his peculiar line. On the present occasion he did not heed the piteous pleadings of the disappointed boatmen, nor Sobrina's explanations, nor Can Grande's arguments. But when the whole five of us fixed upon him our mild and scornful eyes, something within him gave way. He felt a little bit of the moral pressure of Boston, and feebly broke down, saying, "You better do as you like, then," and so the point was carried. A pleasant row brought us to the side of the steamer. It was dusk already as we ascended her steep gangway, and from that to darkness there is, at this season, but the interval of a breath. Dusk too were our thoughts, at parting from Can Grande, the mighty, the vehement, the great fighter. How were we to miss his deep music, here and at home! With his assistance we had made a very respectable band; now we were to be only a wandering drum and fife,--the fife particularly shrill, and the drum particularly solemn. Well, we went below, and examined the little den where Can Grande was to pass the other seven days of his tropical voyaging. The berths were arranged the wrong way,--across, not along, the vessel,--and we foresaw that his head would go up and his feet down, and _vice versâ_, with every movement of the steamer, and our weak brains reeled at the bare thought of what he was to suffer. He, good soul, meanwhile was thinking of his supper, and wondering if he could get tea, coffee, and chocolate, a toasted roll, and the touch of cold ham which an invalid loves. And we beheld, and they were bringing up the side of the vessel trays of delicious pastry, and festoons of fowls, with more literal butcher's meat. And we said, "There will be no famine on board. Make the most of your supper, Can Grande; for it will be the last of earth to you, for some time to come." And now came silence, and tears, and last embraces; we slipped down the gangway into our little craft, and looking up, saw bending above us, between the slouched hat and the silver beard, the eyes that we can never forget, that seemed to drop back in the darkness with the solemnity of a last farewell. We went home, and the drum hung himself gloomily on his peg, and the little fife _shut up_ for the remainder of the evening. Has Mr. Dana described the Dominica, I wonder? Well, if he has, I cannot help it. He never can have eaten so many ices there as I have, nor passed so many patient hours amid the screeching, chattering, and devouring, which make it most like a cage of strange birds, or the monkey department in the Jardin des Plantes.--_Mem._ I always observed that the monkeys just mentioned seemed far more mirthful than their brethren in the London Zoological Gardens. They form themselves, so to speak, on a livelier model, and feel themselves more at home with their hosts. But the Dominica. You know, probably, that it is the great _café_ of Havana. All the day long it is full of people of all nations, sipping ices, chocolate, and so on; and all night long, also, up to the to me very questionable hour when its patrons go home and its _garçons_ go to bed. We often found it a welcome refuge at noon, when the _douche_ of sunlight on one's _cervix_ bewilders the faculties, and confuses one's principles of gravitation, toleration, etc., etc. You enter from the Tophet of the street, and the intolerable glare is at once softened to a sort of golden shadow. The floor is of stone; in the midst trickles a tiny fountain with gilded network; all other available space is crowded with marble tables, square or round; and they in turn are scarcely visible for the swarm of black-coats that gather round them. The smoke of innumerable cigars gives a Rembrandtic tinge to the depths of the picture, and the rows and groups of nodding Panama hats are like very dull flower-beds. In the company, of course, the Spanish-Cuban element largely predominates; yet here and there the sharper English breaks upon the ear. "Yes, I went to that plantation; but they have only one thousand boxes of sugar, and we want three thousand for our operation." A Yankee, you say. Yes, certainly; and turning, you see the tall, strong Philadelphian from our hotel, who calls for everything by its right name, and always says, "_Mas! mas!_" when the waiter helps him to ice. Some one near us is speaking a fuller English, with a richer "_r_" and deeper intonation. See there! that is our own jolly captain, Brownless of ours, the King of the "Karnak"; and going up to the British lion, we shake the noble beast heartily by the paw. The people about us are imbibing a variety of cooling liquids. Our turn comes at last. The _garçon_ who says, "I speke Aingliss," brings us each a delicious orange _granizada_, a sort of half-frozen water-ice, familiar to Italy, but unknown in America. It is ice in the first enthusiasm of freezing,--condensed, not hardened. Promoting its liquefaction with the spoon, you enjoy it through the mediation of a straw. The unskilful make strange noises and gurglings through this _tenuis avena_; but to those who have not forgotten the accomplishment of suction, as acquired at an early period of existence, the _modus in quo_ is easy and agreeable. You will hardly weary of watching the groups that come and go, and sit and talk in this dreamy place. If you are a lady, every black eye directs its full, tiresome stare at your face, no matter how plain that face may be. But you have learned before this to consider those eyes as so many black dots, so many marks of wonder with no sentence attached; and so you coolly pursue your philosophizing in your corner, strong in the support of a companion who, though deeply humanitarian and peaceful, would not hesitate to punch any number of Spanish heads that should be necessary for the maintenance of your comfort and his dignity. The scene is occasionally varied by the appearance of a beggar-woman, got up in great decency, and with a wonderful air of pinched and faded gentility. She wears an old shawl upon her head, but it is as nicely folded as an aristocratic mantilla; her feet are cased in the linen slippers worn by the poorer classes, but there are no unsavory rags and dirt about her. "That good walk of yours, friend," I thought, "does not look like starvation." Yet, if ever there were a moment when one's heart should soften towards an imposing fellow-creature, it is when one is in the midst of the orange _granizada_. The beggar circles slowly and mournfully round all the marble tables in turn, holding out her hand to each, as the plate is offered at a church collection. She is not importunate; but looking in each one's face, seems to divine whether he will give or no. A Yankee, sitting with a Spaniard, offers her his cigar. The Spaniard gravely pushes the cigar away, and gives her a _medio_. More pertinacious is the seller of lottery-tickets, male or female, who has more at stake, and must run the risk of your displeasure for the chance of your custom. Even in your bed you are hardly safe from the ticket-vender. You stand at your window, and he, waiting in the street, perceives you, and with nods, winks, and showing of his wares endeavors to establish a communication with you. Or you stop and wait somewhere in your _volante_, and in the twinkling of an eye the wretch is at your side, to bear you company till you drive off again. At the Dominica he is especially persevering, and stands and waits with as much zeal as if he knew the saintly line of Milton. Like the beggar, however, he is discriminative in the choice of his victims, and persecutes the stony Yankee less than the oily Spaniard, whose inbred superstitions force him to believe in luck. Very strange stories do they tell about the trade in lottery-tickets,--strange at least to us, who consider them the folly of follies. Here, as in Italy, the lotteries are under the care of the State, and their administration is as careful and important as that of any other branch of finance. They are a regular and even reputable mode of investment. The wealthy commercial houses all own tickets, sometimes keeping the same number for years, but more frequently changing after each unsuccessful experiment. A French gentleman in Havana assured me that his tickets had already cost him seven thousand dollars. "And now," said he, "I cannot withdraw, for I cannot lose what I have already paid. The number has not been up once in eight years; its turn must come soon. If I were to sell my ticket, some one would be sure to draw the great prize with it the week after." This, perhaps, is not very unlike the calculations of business risks most in vogue in our great cities. A single ticket costs an ounce (seventeen dollars); but you are constantly offered fractions, to an eighth or a sixteenth. There are ticket-brokers who accommodate the poorer classes with interests to the amount of ten cents, and so on. Thus, for them, the lottery replaces the savings-bank, with entire uncertainty of any return, and the demoralizing process of expectation thrown into the bargain. The negroes invest a good deal of money in this way, and we heard in Matanzas a curious anecdote on this head. A number of negroes, putting their means together, had commissioned a ticket-broker to purchase and hold for them a certain ticket. After long waiting and paying up, news came to Matanzas that the ticket had drawn the $100,000 prize. The owners of the negroes were in despair at this intelligence. "Now my cook will buy himself," says one; "my _calesero_ will be free," says another; and so on. The poor slaves ran, of course, in great agitation, to get their money. But, lo! the office was shut up. The rascal broker had absconded. He had never run the risk of purchasing the ticket; but had coolly appropriated this and similar investments to his own use, preferring the bird in the hand to the whole aviary of possibilities. He was never heard of more; but should he ever turn up anywhere, I commend him as the fittest subject for Lynch-law on record. Well, as I have told you, all these golden chances wait for you at the Dominica, and many Americans buy, and look very foolish when they acknowledge it. The Nassauese all bought largely during their short stay; and even their little children held up with exultation their fragments of tickets, all good for something, and bad for something, too. If you visit the Dominica in the evening, you find the same crowd, only with a sprinkling of women, oftenest of your own country, in audacious bonnets, and with voices and laughter which bring the black eyes upon them for a time. If it be Sunday evening, you will see here and there groups of ladies in full ball-dress, fresh from the Paseo, the _volante_ waiting for them outside. All is then at its gayest and busiest; but your favorite waiter, with disappointment in his eyes, will tell you that there is "_no mas_" of your favorite _granizada_, and will persuade you to take I know not what nauseous substitute in its place; for all ices are not good at the Dominica, and some are (excuse the word) nasty. People sit and sip, prolonging their pleasures with dilatory spoon and indefatigable tongue. Group follows group; but the Spaniards are what I should call heavy sitters, and tarry long over their ice or chocolate. The waiter invariably brings to every table a chafing-dish with a burning coal, which will light a cigar long after its outer glow has subsided into ashy white. Some humans retain this kindling power;--_vide_ Ninon and the ancient Goethe;--it is the heart of fire, not the flame of beauty, that does it. When one goes home, tired, at ten or eleven, the company shows no sign of thinning, nor does one imagine how the ground is ever cleared, so as to allow an interval of sleep between the last ice at night and the first coffee in the morning. It is the universal _siesta_ which makes the Cubans so bright and fresh in the evening. With all this, their habits are sober, and the evening refreshment always light. No suppers are eaten here; and it is even held dangerous to take fruit as late as eight o'clock, P. M. The Dominica has still another aspect to you, when you go there in the character of a Citizen and Head of family to order West India sweetmeats for home-consumption. You utter the magic word _dulces_, and are shown with respect into the establishment across the way, where a neat steam-engine is in full operation, tended by blacks and whites, stripped above the waist, and with no superfluous clothing below it. Here they grind the chocolate, and make the famous preserves, of which a list is shown you, with prices affixed. As you will probably lose some minutes in perplexity as to which are best for you to order, let me tell you that the guava jelly and marmalade are first among them, and there is no second. You may throw in a little pine-apple, mamey, lime, and cocoa-plum; but the guava is the thing, and, in case of a long run on the tea-table, will give the most effectual support. The limes used to be famous in our youth; but in these days they make them hard and tough. The marmalade of bitter oranges is one of the most useful of Southern preserves; but I do not remember it on the list of the Dominica. Having given your order, let me further advise you to remain, if practicable, and see it fulfilled; as you will otherwise find divers trifling discrepancies between the bill and the goods delivered, which, though of course purely accidental, will all be, somehow, to the Dominica's advantage, and not to yours. If you are in moderate circumstances, order eight or ten dollars' worth; if affluent, twenty or thirty dollars' worth; if rash and extravagant, you may rise even to sixty dollars; but you will find in such an outlay food for repentance. One word in your ear: do not buy the syrups, for they are made with very bad sugar, and have no savor of the fruits they represent. And this is all I can tell about the Dominica, which I recommend to all of you for refreshment and amusement. We have nothing like it in New York or Boston,--our _salons_ of the same description having in them much more to eat, and much less to see. As I look back upon it, the place assumes a deeply Moorish aspect. I see the fountain, the golden light, the dark faces, and intense black eyes, a little softened by the comforting distance. Oh! to sit there for one hour, and help the _garçon's_ bad English, and be pestered by the beggar, and tormented by the ticket-vender, and support the battery of the wondering looks, which make it sin for you, a woman, to be abroad by day! Is there any Purgatory which does not grow lovely as you remember it? Would not a man be hanged twice, if he could? CHAPTER XI. COMPANY AT THE HOTEL.--SERVANTS.--OUR DRIVE.--DON PEPE. I do not mean to give portraits of the individuals at our hotel. My chance acquaintance with them confers on me no right to appropriate their several characteristics for my own convenience and the diversion of the public. I will give only such general sketches as one may make of a public body at a respectful distance, marking no features that can fix or offend. Our company is almost entirely composed of two classes,--invalids and men of business, with or without their families. The former are easily recognizable by their sad eyes and pallid countenances; even the hectic of disease does not deceive you,--it has no affinity to the rose of health. There is the cough, too,--the cruel cough that would not be left at the North, that breaks out through all the smothering by day, and shakes the weak frame with uneasy rocking by night. The men of business are apt to name their firm, when they introduce themselves to you. "My name is Norval, Sir,--Norval, Grampian, & Company. I suppose you know the firm." "We do not, indeed; but we murmur, in return, that we have an Uncle or a Cousin in business, who may, very likely, know it. "What is your Uncle's firm?" will be the next question. "Philpots Brothers." "Excellent people,--we have often done business with them. Happy to make your acquaintance, Sir." And so, the first preliminaries being established, and each party assured of the other's solvency, we glide easily into a relation of chat and kind little mutualities which causes the periods of contact to pass smoothly enough. We found among these some manly, straightforward fellows, to whom one would confide one's fortunes, or even one's widow and orphans, with small fear of any flaw in their trustworthiness. Nor was the more slippery class, we judged, without its representatives; but of this we had only hints, not experience. There were various day-boarders, who frequented our table only, and lodged elsewhere. A few of these were decorous Spaniards, who did not stare, nor talk, nor gobble their meals with unbecoming vivacity of appetite. They were obviously staid business-men, differing widely in character from the street Spaniard, whom I have already copiously described. Some were Germans, thinned by the climate, and sharpened up to the true Yankee point of competition; very little smack of Father-land was left about them,--no song, no sentimentality, not much quivering of the heart-strings at remembrance of the old folks at home, whom some of them have not seen in twenty years, and will never see again. To be sure, in such a hard life as theirs, with no social surroundings, and grim Death meeting them at every corner, there is nothing for it but to be as hard and tough as one's circumstances. But give me rather the German heart in the little old German village, with the small earnings and spendings, the narrow sphere of life and experience, and the great vintage of geniality which is laid up from youth to age, and handed down with the old wine from father to son. I don't like your cosmopolitan German any better than I do your Englishman done to death with travel. I prize the home-flavor in all the races that are capable of home. There are very many Germans scattered throughout Cuba, in various departments of business. They are generally successful, and make very good Yankees, in the technical acceptation of the word. Their original soundness of constitution enables them to resist the climate better than Americans, and though they lose flesh and color, they rarely give that evidence of a disordered liver which foreign residents in tropical countries are so apt to show. The ladies at the hotel were all our own countrywomen, as we see them at home and abroad. I have already spoken of their diligence in sewing, and of their enthusiasm in shopping. Their other distinctive features are too familiar to us to require illustration. Yet upon one trait I will adventure. A group of them sat peaceably together, one day, when a file of newspapers arrived, with full details of a horrible Washington scandal, and the murder consequent upon it. Now I must say that no swarm of bees ever settled upon a bed of roses more eagerly than our fair sisters pounced upon the carrion of that foul and dreadful tale. It flew from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, as if it had been glad tidings of great joy,--and the universal judgment upon it caused our heart to shudder with the remembrance that we had heard some one somewhere propose that female offenders should be tried by a jury of their own sex. It was a real comfort, a few days later, to hear this sad subject discussed by a circle of intelligent Englishwomen, with good sense and good feeling, and with true appreciation of the twofold crime, the domestic treason and the public assassination. In passing, I must say of this English circle that it is charming, and that the Britannic Consul has the key of it in his pocket. Wherefore, if any of you, my friends, would desire to know four of the most charming women in Havana, he is to lay hold upon Mr. Consul Crawford, and compel him to become his friend. Mr. Dana recounts his shopping in Havana, whereof the beginning and ending were one dress, white and blue, which he commendably purchased for his wife. But does Dana know what he had to be thankful for, in getting off with one dress? Tell him, ye patient husbands, whose pockets seem to be made like lemons, only to be squeezed! Tell him, ye insatiate ones, who have new wants and new ideas every day! Dana's dress was, probably, an _holan batista_, which he calls "_Bolan_";--it was, in other words, a figured linen cambric. But you have bought those cambrics by the piece, and also _piñas_, thin, gossamer fabrics, of all degrees of color and beauty, sometimes with _pattern flounces_,--do you hear? And you have bought Spanish table-cloths with red or blue edges, with bull-fights on them, and balloon-ascensions, and platoons of soldiery in review, and with bull-fighting and ballooning napkins to match. And you have secured such bales of transparent white muslins, that one would think you intended to furnish a whole troupe of ballet-girls with saucer petticoats. Catalan lace you have got, to trim curtains, sheets, pillow-cases, and kitchen-towels with. And as for your fans, we only hope that the stories you tell about them are true, and that Kitty, Julia, and Jemima at home are to divide them with you; for we shrewdly suspect that you mean, after all, to keep them, and to have a fan for every day in the year. Let a man reflect upon all this, added to the inevitable three dollars and fifty cents _per diem_, with the frequent refreshment of _volantes_ and ices at the Dominica, and then say whether it pays to take a partner, not of a frugal mind, to Havana for the season. I had intended to give some account of the servants at Mrs. Almy's; but my gossip runs to such lengths that I must dismiss them with a few words. Ramon, the porter, never leaves the vestibule; he watches there all day, takes his meals there, plays cards there in the evening with his fellow-servants, and at night spreads his cot there, and lies down to sleep. He is white, as are most of the others. If I have occasion to go into the kitchen at night, I find a cot there also, with no bed, and a twisted sheet upon it, which, I am told, is the chrysalis of the cook. Said cook is a free yellow, from Nassau, who has wrought in this kitchen for many years past. Heat, hard work, and they say drink, have altogether brought him to a bad pass. His legs are frightfully swollen, and in a few days he leaves, unable to continue his function. Somebody asks after his wife. "She has got a white husband now," he tells us, with a dejected air. She might have waited a little,--he is to die soon. Garcia is the kind waiter with the rather expressive face, who is never weary of bringing us the rice and fried plantain which form, after all, the staple of our existence in Cuba. The waiters all do as well as they can, considering the length of the table, and the extremely short staple of the boarders' patience. As a general rule, they understand good English better than bad Spanish; but comparative philology has obviously been neglected among them. Luis is a negro boy of twelve, fearfully black in the face and white in the eye; his wool cropped to entire bareness. He is chiefly good at dodging your orders,--disappears when anything is asked for, but does not return with it. Rosalia is the chambermaid, of whom I have already spoken, as dexterous in sweeping the mosquitos from the nets,--her afternoon service. She brings, too, the morning cup of coffee, and always says, "Good morning, Sir; you want coffee?"--the only English she can speak. Her voice and smile are particularly sweet, her person tall and well-formed, and her face comely and modest. She is not altogether black,--about mahogany color. I mention her modesty because, so far as I saw, the good-looking ones among the black women have an air of assumption, and almost of impudence,--probably the result of flattery. With all this array of very respectable "help," our hostess avers that she has not a single person about her whom she can trust. Hence the weary look about her eyes and brow, speaking of a load never laid down. She attends to every detail of business herself, and is at work over her books long after her boarders have retired to rest. But the one of all the servants who interests us most is Alexander, Mrs. Almy's own slave. He is, like Rosalia, of mahogany color, with a broad forehead and intelligent eyes. His proud, impatient nature is little suited to his position, and every day brings some new account of his petulant outbreaks. To-day he quarrelled with the new cook, and drew a knife upon him. Mrs. Almy threatens continually to sell him, and at this the hearts of some of us grow very sick,--for she always says that his spirit must be broken, that only the severest punishment will break it, and that she cannot endure to send him to receive that punishment. What that mysterious ordeal may be, we dare not question,--we who cannot help him from it; we can only wish that he might draw that knife across his own throat before he undergoes it. He is trying to buy his own freedom, and has something saved towards it. He looks as if he would do good service, with sufficient training. As it is, he probably knows no law, save the two conflicting ones, of necessity and his own wild passions. One of the sad thoughts we shall carry away from here will be that Alexander is to be sold, and his spirit broken. Good Mrs. Almy, do have a little patience with him! Enlighten his dark mind; let Christianity be taught him, which will show him, even in his slave's estate, that he can conquer his fellow-servant better than by drawing a knife upon him. Set him free? Ah! that is past praying for; but, as he has the right to buy himself, give him every chance of doing so, and we, your petitioners, will pray for him, and for you who need it, with that heavy brow of care. I have called the negroes of Nassau ugly, clumsy, and unserviceable. The Cuban negroes make, so far, a very different impression upon me. One sees among them considerable beauty of form, and their faces are more expressive and better cut than those of the Nassau blacks. The women are well-made, and particularly well-poised, standing perfectly straight from top to toe, with no hitch or swing in their gait. Beauty of feature is not so common among them; still, one meets with it here and there. There is a massive sweep in the bust and arms of the women which is very striking. Even in their faces, there is a certain weight of feature and of darkness, which makes its own impression. The men have less grace of movement, though powerful and athletic in their make. Those who are employed at hard work, within-doors, wear very little clothing, being stripped to the loins. One often has a glimpse of them, in passing the open smithies and wheelwrights' shops. The greatest defect among the men is the want of calf. The narrow boots of the postilions make this particularly discernible. Such a set of spindleshanks I never saw, not even in Trumbull's famous Declaration of Independence, in which we have the satisfaction of assuring ourselves that the fathers of our liberty had two legs apiece, and crossed them in concert with the utmost regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as uncomfortable to the _calesero_ as the Scottish instrument of torture of that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in kicking when he is up, show that he has ample room in them. Very jolly groups of Spanish artisans does one see in the open shops at noon, gathered around a table. The board is chiefly adorned with earthen jars of an ancient pattern filled with oil and wine, platters of bread and sausage,--and the ever fragrant onion is generally perceptible. The personal qualities of these men are quite unknown to us; but they have an air of good-fellowship which gives pleasure. We hired a carriage this afternoon,--we and two others from Boston. We had a four-wheeled barouche, with two horses, which costs two dollars an hour; whereas a _volante_ can be hired only at eight dollars and a half per whole afternoon,--no less time, no less money. As it holds but two, or, at the utmost, three, this is paying rather dear for the glory of showing one's self on the Paseo. The moment we were in the carriage, our coachman nodded to us, and saying, "_A la tropa_," galloped off with us in an unknown direction. We soon fell in with a line of other carriages, and concluded that there was something to be seen somewhere, and that we were going to see it. Nor were we mistaken; for in due time, ascending a steep acclivity, we came upon "_la tropa_," and found some ten thousand soldiers undergoing review, in their seersucker coats and Panama hats, which, being very like the costume of an easy Wall-Street man in August, had a very peaceful appearance on so military an occasion. The cavalry and infantry had nearly concluded their evolutions when we arrived. The troops were spread out on a vast plateau. The view was magnificent. The coachman pointed to one immovable figure on horseback, and said, "Concha." We found it was indeed the Captain-General; for as the different bands passed, they all saluted him, and he returned their courtesy. Unluckily, his back was towards us, and so remained until he rode off in an opposite direction. He was mounted on a white horse, and was dressed like the others. He seemed erect and well-made; but his back, after all, was very like any one else's back. _Query_,--Did we see Concha, or did we not? When all was over, the coachman carefully descended the hill. He had come hither in haste, wishing to witness the sport himself; but now he drove slowly, and indulged in every sort of roundabout to spin out his time and our money. We met with a friend who, on our complaint, expostulated with him, and said,--"Señor, these gentlemen say that you drive them very slowly (_muy poco á poco_)." To the which he,--"Señor, if gentlemen will hire a carriage by the hour, and not by the afternoon, they must expect to get on very softly."--_Mem._ A white driver is always addressed as _Señor_, and I have occasionally heard such monologues as the following:--"Señor, why do you drive me this way? Curse you, Señor! You don't know anything, Señor! You are the greatest ass I ever encountered." The coachman takes it all coolly enough; the "Señor" spares his dignity, and he keeps his feelings to himself. The writer of this has already spoken of various disappointments, in the way of seeing things, incidental to the position of the sex in Cuba. She came abroad prepared for microscopic, telescopic, and stereoscopic investigation,--but, hedged in on all sides by custom and convenience, she often observed only four very bare walls and two or three very stupid people. What could she see? Prisons? No. Men naked and filthy, lying about, using very unedifying language, and totally unaccustomed to the presence of Lady-visitors. She invoked the memory of Mrs. Fry and the example of Miss Dix. "Oh, they were saints, you know." "Only because they went to prisons, which you won't let me do."--Bull-fight? No. "How could you go back to Boston after seeing a bull-fight, eh?" "As if married life were anything else, eh?" And so on.--Negro ball? "Not exactly the place for a lady." "Miss Bremer went." "Very differently behaved woman from you." "Yes, virtue with a nose, impregnable." But there is something she can go to see,--at least, some one,--the angelic man, Don Pepe, the wise, the gentle, the fearless, whom all the good praise. Yes, she shall go to see Don Pepe; and one burning Sunday noon she makes a pilgrimage through the scorching streets, and comes where he may be inquired for, and is shown up a pair of stairs, at the head of which stands the angelic man, mild and bland, with great, dark eyes, and a gracious countenance. He ushers us into a room furnished with nothing but books, and finds two chairs for us and one for himself, not without research. Now I will not pretend to say that Don Pepe occupied himself with me after the first kind greeting, nor that my presence occasioned him either pleasure or surprise. My companion was a man after his own heart, and, at first sight, the two mounted their humanitarian hobbies, and rode them till they were tired. And when this time came, I went away and said nothing. Yet I knew that I had seen a remarkable man. Don Pepe de la Luz is a Cuban by birth, and his age may number some sixty years. He inherited wealth and its advantages, having received somewhere a first-rate education, to which he has copiously added in subsequent years. He is a Liberal in politics and religion, a man of great reason and of great heart. In affairs of state, however, he meddles not, but contents himself with making statesmen. Like all wise Philanthropists, he sees the chief source of good to man in education, and devotes his life, and in a degree, his fortune, to this object. The building in which we found him was a large school, or rather college, founded by himself, and carried on in a great measure through his efforts. This college is upon the same literary footing as the University of Havana; and Don Pepe's graduates pass examinations and receive diplomas in the last-named institution. He himself rarely leaves its walls; and though he has house and wife elsewhere, and the great world is everywhere open to him, he leads here a more congenial life of ascetic seclusion, study, and simplicity. "Oh, noble instinct of good men, to stay and do their duty! This let us celebrate above all daring, wit, and beauty." Don Pepe has been abroad as much as it profits a man to be,--but has not lost his own soul there, as an American is apt to do. He has known the best men in Europe and America. The best languages, he possesses them; the best books, here they are, piled all about his room. The floor is carpeted with them; there are cases all around the walls; and a large parallelogramic arrangement in the middle of the room, stuck all with books, as a pincushion with pins. True, there is not in their arrangement that ornateness of order observable in Northern libraries; dust even lies and blows about; and though he can find his favorites, _we_ should be much puzzled to find any volume where it ought to be. But it looks as if the master were happy and undisturbed here, and as if the housemaid and her hated broom were as far off as the snow and frost. In person, Don Pepe is not above the middle height. He is a fairly developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated, but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are wise, kind, and full of Southern fire. Don Pepe has had some annoyances from the government,--probably in the more sanguine period of his life. The experience of years has taught him the secret of living peaceably with all men. He can be great and good himself, without perpetually quarrelling with those who can be neither. He spoke with warm interest of his scholars. "They have much capacity," he said; "but we want a little more of that _air_ you spoke of just now, Doctor." That air was Liberty. Reader, have you ever been in a place where her name was contraband? All such places are alike. Here, as in Rome, men who have thoughts disguise them; and painful circumlocution conveys the meaning of friend to friend. For treachery lies hid, like the scorpion, under your pillow, and your most trusted companion will betray your head, to save his own. I am told that this sub-treason reached, in the days of the Lopez invasion, an incredible point. After every secret meeting of those affected to the invaders, each conspirator ran to save himself by denouncing all the others. One Cuban, of large fortune and small reputation, being implicated in these matters, brought General Concha a list of all his confederates, which Concha burned before his face, unread. Piteous, laughable spectacle! Better be monkeys than such men; yet such work does Absolutism in government and religion make of the noble human creature! God preserve us ever from tyrants, spies, and Jesuits! Don Pepe does not tell us this; but we have much pleasant talk with him about books, about great men in Europe, and lastly about Prescott, whom he knew and honored. We took leave of him with regret. He accompanied us to the head of the stairs, and then said, "Ah! my dear Madam, my liver will not suffer me to go down." "I am glad it is not your heart," I rejoined, and we parted,--to meet again, in my thoughts, and perhaps elsewhere, in the dim vista of the future. CHAPTER XII. MATANZAS. A hot and dusty journey of some six hours brought us to Matanzas at high noon. Our companions were Cubans, Spaniards, Americans, and game-chickens, who travel extensively in these parts, sometimes in little baskets, with openings for the head and tail, sometimes in the hands of their owners, secured only by a string fastened to one foot and passed over the body. They seem to be objects of tender solicitude to those who carry them; they are nursed and fondled like children, and at intervals are visited all round by a negro, who fills his mouth with water, and squirts it into their eyes and under their feathers. They are curiously plucked on the back and about the tail, where only the long tail-feathers are allowed to grow. Their tameness in the hands of their masters is quite remarkable; they suffer themselves to be turned and held in any direction. But when set down, at any stage of the journey, they stamp their little feet, stretch their necks, crow, and look about them for the other cock with most belligerent eyes. As we have said that the negro of the North is an ideal negro, so we must say that the game-cock of Cuba is an ideal chicken, a fowl that is too good to be killed,--clever enough to fight for people who are too indolent and perhaps too cowardly to fight for themselves,--in short, the Gladiator of the Tropics. Well, as we have said, we and they arrived at our journey's end in the extreme heat of the day; and having shown our paper and demanded our trunks, we beat an instantaneous retreat before the victorious Monarch of the skies, and lo! the Ensor House, dirty, bare, and comfortless, was to us as a fortress and a rock of defence. Here I would gladly pause, and giving vent to my feelings, say how lovely I found Matanzas. But ever since Byron's time, the author is always hearing the public say, "Don't be poetical," etc., etc.; and in these days both writer and reader seem to have discovered that life is too short for long descriptions,--so that when the pen of a G. P. R. James, waiting for the inspirations of its master, has amused itself with sketching a greater or less extent of natural scenery, the rule of the novel-reader is invariably, "Skip landscape, etc., to event on thirty-second page." Nevertheless, I will say that Matanzas is lovely,--with the fair harbor on one hand and the fair hills on the other, sitting like a mother between two beautiful daughters, who looks from one to the other and wonders which she loves best. The air from the water is cool and refreshing, the sky is clear and open, and the country around seems to beckon one to the green bosom of its shades. "Oh, what a relief after Havana!" one says, drawing a full breath, and remembering with a shudder the sickening puffs from its stirring streets, which make you think that Polonius lies unburied in every house, and that you nose him as you _knows_ not, as you pass the door and window-gratings. With this exclamation and remembrance, you lower yourself into one of Mr. Ensor's rocking-chairs,--twelve of which, with a rickety table and a piano, four crimson tidies and six white ones, form the furniture of the Ensor drawing-room,--you lean your head on your hand, close your eyes, and wish for a comfortable room with a bed in it. A tolerable room you shall have; but for a bed, only a cot-bedstead with a sacking bottom,--further, nothing. Now, if you are some folks that I know, you will be able to establish very comfortable repose on this slender foundation, Nature having so amply furnished you that you are your own feather-bed, bolster, sofa-cushion, and easy-chair, a moving mass of upholstery, wanting only a frame to be set down in and supported. But if you should be one of Boston's normal skeletons, pinched in every member with dyspepsia, and with the mark of the beast Neuralgia on your forehead, then your skin will have a weary time of it, holding your bones, and you will be fain to entreat with tears the merciful mediation of a mattress. Now I know very well that those of my readers who intend visiting Cuba will be much more interested in statistics of hotels than in any speculations, poetical or philosophical, with which I might be glad to recompense their patience. Let me tell them, therefore, that the Ensor House is neither better nor worse than other American hotels in Cuba. The rooms are not very bad, the attendance not intolerable, the table almost commendable. The tripe, salt-fish, and plantains were, methought, much as at other places. There were stews of meat, onions, sweet peppers, and _ochra_, which deserve notice. The early coffee was punctual; the tea, for a wonder, black and hot. True, it was served on a bare pine table, with the accompaniment only of a bit of dry bread,--no butter, cake, nor _dulces_. But Mr. Ensor has heard, no doubt, that sweet things are unwholesome, and is determined, at whatever cost to his own feelings, to keep them out of the way of his guests, who are, for the time, his children. Then there is an excellent English servant called John, whom, though the fair Ensor did berate him, we must enumerate among the comforts of the establishment. There is a dark corner about _volantes_, which they are disposed to order for you at a very unreasonable profit; but as there are plenty of livery stables at hand, and street _volantes_ passing all the time, it will be your own fault if you pay six dollars where you ought to pay three. The first thing to be done at Matanzas is to drive out and see the Cumbre, a hill in the neighborhood, and from it the valley of the Yumori. The road is an improvement on those already described;--the ruts being much deeper and the rocks much larger, the jolting is altogether more complete and effective. Still, you remember the doctrine that the _volante_ cannot upset, and this blind faith to which you cling carries you through triumphantly. The Cumbre is lofty, the view extensive, and the valley lovely, of a soft, light green, like the early leaves and grass of spring, dotted everywhere with the palms and their dark clusters. It opens far, far down at your feet, and on your left you see the harbor quiet and bright in the afternoon sun, with a cheering display of masts and pennons. You would look and linger long, but that the light will wane, and you are on your way to Jenks his sugar-plantation, the only one within convenient distance of the town. Here the people are obviously accustomed to receive visitors, and are decently, not superfluously, civil. The _major-domo_ hands you over to a negro who speaks English, and who salutes you at once with, "Good-bye, Sir!" The boiling here is conducted in one huge, open vat. A cup and saucer are brought for you to taste the juice, which is dipped out of the boiling vat for your service. It is very like balm-tea, unduly sweetened; and after a hot sip or so you return the cup with thanks. A loud noise, as of cracking of whips and of hurrahs, guides you to the sugar-mill, where the crushing of the cane goes on in the jolliest fashion. The building is octagonal and open. Its chief feature is a very large horizontal wheel, which turns the smaller ones that grind the cane. This wheel is turned after the following manner. In the centre of the building, and as it were in the second story, stands a stout post, to which are attached, at equal distances, six horizontal bars, which are dragged round by six horses, vehemently flogged by the like number of slaves, male and female. This is really a novel and picturesque sight. Each negro is armed with a short whip, and their attitudes, as they stand, well-balanced on the revolving wheel, are rather striking. Liberal as they were of blows and of objurations to the horses, all their cries and whipping produced scarcely a tenth of the labor so silently performed by the invisible, noiseless slave that works the steam-engine. From this we wandered about the avenues, planted with palms, cocoas, and manifold fruit-trees,--visited the sugar-fields, where many slaves were cutting the canes and piling them on enormous ox-carts, and came at last to a great, open field, where many head of cattle were quietly standing. Our negro guide had not been very lavish or intelligible in his answers to our numerous questions. We asked him about these cattle. "Dey cows," he replied. We asked if they gave milk, and if butter was made on the plantation. He seemed quite puzzled and confused, and finally exclaimed,--"_Dat cows no got none wife_." Coming nearer, we found that the cows were draught oxen, employed in dragging the canes and other produce of the plantation. Jenks his garden we found in good order, and beautiful with many plants in full blossom; but Jenks his house seemed dreary and desolate, with no books, a wretched print or so, dilapitated furniture, and beds that looked like the very essence of nightmare. Nothing suggested domestic life or social enjoyment, or anything ----; but as Jenks is perfectly unknown to us, either by appearance or reputation, we give only a guess in the dark, and would suggest, in case it may displease him, that he should refurnish and repaint a little, and diffuse an air of cheerfulness over his solitary villa, remembering that Americans have imaginations, and that visitors will be very apt to construct an unknown host from his surroundings. The second thing to be done in Matanzas, if you arrive on Saturday, is to attend military mass at the Cathedral on Sunday morning. This commences at eight o'clock; but the hour previous may be advantageously employed in watching the arrival and arrangement of the female aristocracy of Matanzas. These enter in groups of twos and threes, carrying their prayer-books, and followed by slaves of either sex, who bear the prayer-carpet of their mistresses. The ladies are wonderfully got up, considering the early hour; and their toilettes suggest that they may not have undressed since the ball of the night before. All that hoops, powder, and puffery can do for them has been done; they walk in silk attire, and their hair is what is technically termed dressed. Some of them bring their children, bedizened like dolls, and mimicking mamma's gestures and genuflection in a manner more provoking to sadness than to satire. If the dressing is elaborate, the crossing is also. It does not consist of one simple cross, "_in nomine Patris_," etc.; they seem to make three or four crosses from forehead to chin, and conclude by kissing the thumb-nail, in honor of what or whom we could not imagine. Entering the middle aisle, which is divided from the rest by a row of seats on either side, they choose their position, and motion to the dark attendant to spread the carpet. Some of them evince considerable strategic skill in the selection of their ground. All being now in readiness, they drop on their knees, spread their flounces, cross themselves, open their books, and look about them. Their attendants retire a little, spread a handkerchief on the ground, and modestly kneel behind them, obviously expecting to be saved with the family. These are neatly, sometimes handsomely dressed. In this _status_ things remain until the music of the regiment is heard. With a martial sound of trumpets it enters the church, and fills the aisles, the officers taking place within the chancel, and a guard of honor of eight soldiers ranging on either side of the officiating priest. And now our devotions begin in good earnest; for, simultaneously with the regiment, the _jeunessé dorée_ of Matanzas has made its appearance, and has ranged itself along the two long lines of demarcation which separate the fair penitents from the rest of the congregation. The ladies now spread their flounces again, and their eyes find other occupation than the dreary Latin of their missals. There is, so to speak, a lively and refreshing time between the youths of both sexes, while the band plays its utmost, and _Evangel_, _Kyrie_, and _Credo_ are recited to the music of Trovatore and Traviata. That child of four years old, dressed in white and gold flounces, and white satin boots with heels, handles her veil and uses her eyes like Mamma, eager for notice, and delighted with the gay music and uniforms. The moment comes to elevate the Host,--thump goes the drum, the guard presents arms, and the soldiers, instead of kneeling, bend forward, in a most uncomfortable manner. Another thump, and all that is over; the swords are returned to their sheaths, and soon, the loud music coming to an end, the regiment marches out of church, very much as it marched in, its devotional experiences being known to Heaven alone. Ladies and lovers look their last, the flounces rise in pyramids, the prayer-carpets are rolled up, and with a silken sweep and rush, Youth, Beauty, and Fashion forsake the church, where Piety has hardly been, and go home to breakfast. To that comfortable meal you also betake yourself, musing on the small heads and villanous low foreheads of the Spanish soldiery, and wondering how long it would take a handful of resolute Yankees to knock them all into---- But you are not a Filibuster, you know. CHAPTER XIII. THE PASEO--THE PLAZA--DINING OUT. "As this Sunday is Carnival, you cannot do better than drive about the city, and then go to the Plaza to see the masks. My partner's wife, with whom you have now so comfortably breakfasted, will call for you in her _volante_ this afternoon, between five and six o'clock. She will show you the Paseo, and we will go and see the masks afterwards." So spoke a banker, who, though not _our_ banker, is our friend, and whose kind attentions we shall ever recall, when we remember Cuba. So he spoke, and so it befell. The pretty American lady, Cubanized into paleness, but not into sallowness, called at the appointed hour, and in her company we visited the principal streets, and the favorite drive of the Matanzasts. The Paseo is shorter than that of Havana, but much prettier. We found it gay with _volantes_, whose fair occupants kept up an incessant bowing and smiling to their friends in carriages and on horseback. The Cubans are generally good riders, and their saddle-horses have the easiest and pleasantest gait imaginable. The heat of the climate does not allow the severe exercise of trot and gallop, and so these creatures go along as smoothly and easily as the waves of the sea, and are much better broken to obedience. The ladies of Matanzas seem to possess a great deal of beauty, but they abuse the privilege of powder, and whiten themselves with _cascarilla_ to a degree that is positively ghastly. This _cascarilla_ is formed by the trituration of egg-shells; and the oval faces whitened with it resemble a larger egg, with features drawn on it in black and red. In spite of this, they are handsome; but one feels a natural desire to rush in amongst them with a feather duster, and lay about one a little, before giving an available opinion of their good looks. If the Paseo was gay, the streets of the city were gay also; the windows filled with faces and figures in full dress, with little groups of children at the feet of the grown people, like the two world-famous cherubs at the feet of the Madonna di San Sisto. There were crowds of promenaders too, everywhere, interspersed with parties of maskers, who went about screaming at the public with high, shrill voices. Leaving the _volante_, we descend to the Plaza, where is now the height and centre of movement, we find it flanked on all sides with little movable kitchens, where good things are cooked, and with tables, where they are sold and eaten. Fried cakes, fish, and meats seem the predominant bill of fare, with wine, coffee, and fruits. The masks are circulating with great animation; men in women's clothes, white people disguised as negroes, and negroes disguised as whites, prodigious noses, impossible chins and foreheads; the stream of popular fancy ran chiefly in these channels. We met processions consisting of a man carrying a rat in a cage, and shouting out, "Catch this rat!" followed by a perfect stampede of wild creatures, all yelling, "Catch that rat!" at the top of their voices. The twanging of the guitar is heard everywhere, accompanied by the high nasal voices of the natives, in various strains of monotony. In some spots the music is more lively, accompanied by the shaking of a gourd filled with dry seeds, which is called _ghirra_, and whose "chick-a-chick, chick-chick" takes the place of the more poetical castanets;--here you find one or more couples exhibiting their skill in Cuban dances, with a great deal of applause and chattering from the crowd around. Beside those of the populace, many aristocratic groups parade the Plaza, in full dress, crowned with flowers and jewels;--a more motley scene can hardly be imagined. Looking up, one sees in curious contrast the tall palms with which the Plaza is planted, and the quiet, wondering stars set in the deep tropical heavens. But in our evening's programme, tea has been omitted; now, what availeth a Bostonian without his tea? By eight o'clock, we are pensive, "most like a tired child at a show,"--by half-past eight, stupid,--by nine, furious. Two hours of folly, taken on an empty stomach, alarm us for our constitution. A visit to the _café_ is suggested and adopted. It proves to be crowded with people in fancy attire, who have laid aside their masks to indulge in beer, orgeat, and sherbet. While our Cuban friends regale themselves with sour-sop and _zapote_ ice sweetened with brown sugar, we call for a cup of delicious Spanish chocolate, which is served with a buttered toasted roll, worthy of all imitation. Oh, how much comfort is in a little cup of chocolate! what an underpinning does it afford our spiritual house, a material basis for our mental operations! In its support, we go it a little longer on the Plaza, see more masks, hear more guitars and "catch this rat!" and finally return, in a hired _volante_, to the Ensor House, where rest and the bedless cots await us. But we have friends in Matanzas, real born Cubans, who will not suffer us to remain forever in the Ensor House. They send their _volante_ for us, one day, and we visit them. Their house, of the inevitable Cuban pattern, is richly furnished; the marbles of the floor are pure and smooth, the rug ample and velvety; the wainscoting of the walls, so to speak, is in handsome tiling,--not in mean, washy painting; the cane chairs and sofas are fresh and elegant, and there is a fine Erard piano. The Master of the house is confined to his room by illness, but will be happy to see us. His son and daughters speak English with fluency. They inform us, that the epidemic colds which prevail in Cuban winters are always called by the name of some recent untoward occurrence, and that their father, who suffers from severe influenza, has got the President's Message. We find Don José in a bedroom darkened by the necessary closing of the shutters, there being no other way of excluding the air. The bedsteads are of gilded iron, with luxurious bedding and spotless mosquito-nettings. His head is tied up with a silk handkerchief. He rises from his rocking-chair, receives us with great urbanity, and expresses his appreciation of the American nation and their country, which he himself has visited. After a short interview we leave him, but not until he has placed his house and all it contains "_á la disposition de Usted_." We are then shown the pretty bedroom of the young ladies, whose toilettes are furnished in silver, the bath lined with tiling, the study, and the dining-room, where luncheon awaits us. We take leave, with a kind invitation to return and dine the next day, which, upon mature deliberation, we accept. The _volante_ comes for us next day, with Roqué, brightest of all living _caleseros_, fixed in his boots and saddle. After a pleasant drive we attain the house, and are received by its hospitable inmates as before. The interval before dinner, a tolerably long one, is filled up by pleasant chitchat, chiefly in English. The lady of the house does not, however, profess our vernacular, and to her understanding we lay siege in French, Italian, and laughter-provoking Spanish. Before dining we pay a second visit to the host, who is still busy digesting the President's Message. Obviously, the longer he has it under consideration, the worse he finds it. He has nausea from its bragging, his head aches with its loudness, and its emptiness fills him with wind. We are at our wits' end to prescribe for him, and take our leave with grave commiseration, telling him that we too have had it, but that the symptoms it produces in the North are a reddening in the cheek and a spasmodic contraction of the right arm. Now comes great dinner on. A slave announces it, and with as little ceremony as may be we take our places. And here we must confess that our friend the banker had rendered us an important service. For he had said,--"Look not upon the soup when it is hot, neither let any victuals entice thee to more than a slight and temporary participation; for the dishes at a Cuban dinner be many, and the guest must taste of all that is presented; wherefore, if he indulge in one dish to his special delectation, he shall surely die before the end." And it came to pass that we remembered this, and walked through the dinner as on egg-shells, gratifying curiosity on the one hand, and avoiding satiety on the other; with the fear of fulness, as it were, before our eyes. For oh, my friends! what pang is comparable to too much dinner, save the distress of being refused by a young woman, or the comfortless sensation, in times of economy, of having paid away a five-dollar gold piece in place of a silver quarter of a dollar? But you, Reader, would like more circumstantiality in the account of this dinner, which united many perfections. It was handsome, but not splendid,--orderly, but not stately,--succulent, but not unctuous. It kept the word of promise to the smell and did not break it to the taste. It was a dinner such as we shall wish only to our best friends, not to those acquaintances who ask how we do when they meet us, and wish we were dead before we part. As for particulars, we should be glad to impart much useful information and many choice receipts; but the transitory nature of such an entertainment does not allow one to improve it as one could wish. One feature we remember, which is that the whole dinner was placed on the table at once, and so you had the advantage of seeing your work cut out before you. None of that hope deferred, when, after being worried through a dozen stews and _entrées_, you are rewarded at last with an infinitesimal fragment of the _rôti_. Nor, on the other hand, the unwelcome surprise of three supplementary courses and a dessert, when you have already dined to repletion, and feel yourself at peace with all the world. Here all was fair play; you knew what to expect and what was expected of you. Soup, of course, came first,--then fish,--then meat stewed with potatoes and onions,--then other meat with _ochra_ and tomatoes,--then boiled chicken, which is eaten with a _pilaff_ of rice colored with saffron,--then delicious sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, and vegetables of every sort,--then a kind of pepper brought, we think, from the East Indies, and intensely tropical in its taste,--then a splendid roast turkey, and ham strewed with small colored sugar-plums,--then ---- well, is not that enough for one person to have eaten at a stretch, and that person accustomed to a Boston diet? Then came such a display of sweetmeats as would exercise the mind of a New England housekeeper beyond all power of repose,--a pudding,--a huge tart with very thick crust,--cakes of _yuca_,--a dish of cocoa-nut, made into a sort of impalpable preserve, with eggs and sugar,--then a course of fruits,--then coffee, of the finest quality, from the host's own plantation,--and then we arose and went into the drawing-room, with a thankful recollection of what we had had, and also a thankful assurance that we should have no more. A drive by moonlight was now proposed, to see the streets and the masks, it being still Carnival. So the _volante_ was summoned, with its smiling, silent Roqué, and the pretty daughter of the house took seat beside us. The streets around the Plaza proved quite impassable from the crowd, whose wild movements and wilder voices went nigh to scaring the well-trained horses. The little lady was accustomed, apparently, to direct every movement of her charioteer, and her orders were uttered in a voice high and sweet as a bird-call. "_Dobla al derecho, Roqué! Roqué, dobla al derecho_!" Why did not Roqué go mad, and exclaim,--"Yes, Señorita, and to heaven itself, if you bid me so prettily!" But Roqué only doubled as he was bid, and took us hither and thither, and back to the nest of his lady-bird, where we left her and the others with grateful regrets, and finally back to the Ensor House, which on this occasion seemed to us the end of all things. CHAPTER XIV. GAME-CHICKENS--DON RODRIGUEZ--DAY ON THE PLANTATION--DEPARTURE. As there are prejudices in Cuba and elsewhere, touching the appropriate sphere of woman, Hulia was not taken to the Cockpit, as she had demanded and expected,--not to see the chickens fight, but to see the Spaniards see it. Forgive her, ye Woman's-Righters, if on this occasion she was weak and obedient! You would have gone, no doubt,--those of you who have not husbands; but such as have must know how much easier it is to deal with the article man in his theoretical than in his real presence. You may succeed in showing by every convincement that you are his natural master and superior, and that there is every reason on earth why you should command and direct him. "No!----," says the wretch, shaking his fist, or shrugging his shoulders; and whatever your intimate convictions may be, the end is, that you do not. Propitiated by that ready obedience which is safest, dear Sisters, in these contingencies, the proprietor of Hulia takes her, one morning, to see the establishment of a man of fortune in the neighborhood, where one hundred and forty game-chickens are kept for training and fighting. These chickens occupy two good-sized rooms, whose walls are entirely covered with compartments, some two feet square, in each of which resides a cock, with his little perch and drinking-vessel. They are kept on allowance of water and of food, lest they should get beyond fighting weight. Their voices are uplifted all day long, and on all moonlight nights. An old woman receives us, and conducts us to the training-pit, pointing out on the way the heroes of various battles, and telling us that this cock and the other have won _mucho dinero_, "much money." Each has also its appointed value;--this cock is worth forty dollars, this four ounces, this one six ounces,--oh, he is a splendid fellow! No periodal and sporadic hen-fever prevails here, but the _gallo-mania_ is the chronic madness of the tropics. The training-pit is a circular space inclosed with boards, perhaps some twelve feet in diameter. Here we find the proprietor, Don Manuel Rodriguez, with a negro assistant, up to the ears in business. Don Manuel is young, handsome, and vivacious, and with an air of good family that astonishes us. He receives us with courtesy, finds nothing unusual in the visit of a lady, but is too much engrossed with his occupation to accord us more than a passing notice. This is exactly as we could wish,--it allows us to study the Don, so to speak, _au naturel_. He is engaged at first in weighing two cocks, with a view to their subsequent fighting. Having ascertained their precise weight, which he registers in his pocket-memorandum, he proceeds to bind strips of linen around their formidable spurs, that in their training they may not injure each other with them. This being accomplished,--he all the while delivering himself with great volubility to his black Second,--the two cocks are taken into the arena; one is let loose there; the negro holds the other, and knocks the free fowl about the head with it. Sufficient provocation having been given, they are allowed to go at each other in their own fashion, and their attacks and breathing-spells are not very unlike a bout of fencing. They flap, fly at each other, fly over, peck, seize by the neck, let go, rest a moment, and begin again, getting more and more excited with each round. The negro separates them, when about to draw blood. And as for Don Manuel, he goes mad over them, like an Italian _maestro_ over his favorite pupil. "_Hombre, hombre!_" he cries to the negro, "what a cock! By Heaven, what a couple! _Ave María santísima!_ did one ever see such spirit? _Santísima Trinidad!_ is there such fighting in all Matanzas?" Having got pretty well through with the calendar of the saints, he takes out his watch;--the fight has lasted long enough. One of the champions retires to take a little repose; another is brought in his place; the negro takes him, and boxes him about the ears of the remaining fowl,--brushing him above his head, and underneath, and on his back, to accustom him to every method of attack. Don Manuel informs us that the cock made use of in this way is the father of the other, and exclaims, with an air of mock compassion, _Pobre padre!_ "Poor father!" The exercise being concluded, he takes a small feather, and cleans out therewith the throat of either chicken, which proves to be full of the sand of the arena, and which he calls _porquería_, "dirt." We leave Don Manuel about to employ himself with other cocks, and, as before, too much absorbed to give our departure much notice. Strange to say, Hulia is so well satisfied with this rehearsal, that she expresses no further desire to witness the performance itself. We learn subsequently that Don Manuel is a man of excellent family and great wealth, who has lavished several fortunes on his favorite pursuit, and is hurrying along on the road to ruin as fast as chickens' wings can carry him. We were very sorry, but couldn't possibly interfere. Meantime, he appeared excessively jolly. Our kind friends of the dinner were determined to pay us, in their persons, all the debts of hospitality the island might be supposed to contract towards strangers and Americans. Arrangements were accordingly made for us to pass our last day in Matanzas at a coffee-plantation of theirs, some four miles distant from town. They would send their travelling _volante_ for us, they said, which was not so handsome as the city _volante_, but stronger, as it had need to be, for the roads. At eleven o'clock, on a very warm morning, this vehicle made its appearance at the door of the Ensor House, with Roqué in the saddle,--Roqué with that mysterious _calesero_ face of his, knowing everything, but volunteering nothing until the word of command. Don Antoñico he tells us, has gone before on horseback;--we mount the _volante_, and follow. Roqué drives briskly at first, a slight breeze refreshes us, and we think the road better than is usual. But wait a bit, and we come to what seems an unworked quarry of coral rock, with no perceptible way over it, and Roqué still goes on, slowly indeed, but without stop or remark. The strong horses climb the rough and slippery rocks, dragging the strong _volante_ after them. The _calesero_ picks his way carefully; the carriage tips, jolts, and tumbles; the centre of gravity appears to be nowhere. The breeze dies away; the vertical sun seems to pin us through the head; we get drowsy, and dream of an uneasy sea of stones, whose harsh waves induce headache, if not sea-sickness. We wish for a photograph of the road;--first, to illustrate the inclusive meaning of the word; second, to serve as a remembrance, to reconcile us to all future highways. Why these people are content to work out their road-tax by such sore travail of mind and body appeareth to us mysterious. The breaking of stone in state-prison is not harder work than riding over a Cuban road; yet this extreme of industry is endured by the Cubans from year to year, and from one human life to another, without complaint or effort. An hour or more of these and similar reflections brings us to a bit of smooth road, and then to the gate of the plantation, where a fine avenue of palms conducts us to the house. Here resides the relative and partner of our Matanzas friends, a man of intelligent and humane aspect, who comes to greet us, with his pleasant wife, and a pretty niece, their constant guest. The elder lady has made use of her retirement for the accomplishment of her mind. She has some knowledge of French and Italian, and, though unwilling to speak English, is able to translate from that language with entire fluency. The plantation-house is very pretty, situated just at the end of the palm-avenue, with all the flowers in sight,--for these are planted between the palms;--it has a deep piazza in front, and the first door opens into one large room, with sleeping-apartments on either side. Opposite this door is another, opening upon the court behind the house, and between the two our chairs are placed, courting the draught.--_N. B._ In Cuba, no one shuns a draught; you ride, drive, sit, and sleep in one, and, unless you are a Cuban, never take cold. The floor of this principal room is merely of clay rubbed with a red powder, which, mixed with water, hardens into a firm, polished surface. The house has but one story; the timbers of the roof, unwhitened, forming the only ceiling. The furniture consists of cane easy-chairs, a dining-table, and a pretty hammock, swung across one end of the room. Here we sit and talk long. Our host has many good books in French and Spanish,--and in English, Walter Scott's Novels, which his wife fully appreciates. A walk is proposed, and we go first to visit _los negros chiquitos_,--_Anglicè_, "the small niggers," in their nursery. We find their cage airy enough; it is a house with a large piazza completely inclosed in coarse lattice-work, so that the _pequeñuelos_ cannot tumble out, nor the nurses desert their charge. Our lady friend produces a key, unlocking a small gate which admits us. We found, as usual, the girls of eight and upwards tending the babies, and one elderly woman superintending them. On our arrival, African drums, formed of logs hollowed out, and covered with skin at the end, were produced. Two little girls proceeded to belabor these primitive instruments, and made a sort of rhythmic strumming, which kept time to a monotonous chant. Two other girls executed a dance to this, which, for its slowness, might be considered an African minuet. The dancing children were bright-looking, and not ungraceful. Work stops at noon for a recess; and the mothers run from the field to visit the imprisoned babies, whom they carry to their own homes and keep till the afternoon-hour for work comes round, which it does at two, P. M. We went next to the negro-houses, which are built, as we have described others, contiguous, in one hollow square. On this plantation the food of the negroes is cooked for them, and in the middle of the inclosed square stood the cooking-apparatus, with several large caldrons. Still, we found little fires in most of the houses, and the inmates employed in concocting some tidbit or other. A hole in the roof serves for a chimney, where there is one, but they as often have the fire just before their door. The slaves on this plantation looked in excellent condition, and had, on the whole, cheerful countenances. The good proportion of their increase showed that they were well treated, as on estates where they are overworked they increase scarcely or not at all. We found some of the men enjoying a nap between a board and a blanket. Most of the women seemed busy about their household operations. The time from twelve to two is given to the negroes, besides an hour or two after work in the evening, before they are locked up for the night. This time they improve mostly in planting and watering their little gardens, which are their only source of revenue. The negroes on this estate had formed a society amongst themselves for the accumulation of money; and our friend, the Manager of the plantation, told us that they had on his books two thousand dollars to their credit. One man alone had amassed six hundred dollars, a very considerable sum, under the circumstances. We visited also the house of the mayoral, or overseer, whose good face seemed in keeping with the general humane arrangements of the place,--as humane, at least, as the system permits. The negroes all over the island have Sunday for themselves; and on Sunday afternoons they hold their famous balls, which sometimes last until four o'clock on Monday morning. Much of the illness among the negroes is owing to their imprudence on these and like occasions. Pneumonia is the prevalent disease with them, as with the slaves in our own South; it is often acute and fatal. Everything in Cuba has such a tendency to go on horseback, that we could not forbear asking if dead men did, and were told that it was so,--the dead negroes being temporarily inclosed in a box, and conveyed to the cemetery on the back of a horse. Our friend, seeing our astonishment, laughed, and told us that the poor whites were very glad to borrow the burial-horse and box, to furnish their own funerals. Dinner was served at four o'clock, quite informally, in the one sitting-room of the house. A black girl brushed off the flies with a paper fly-brush, and another waited on table. The dinner was excellent; but I have already given so many bills of fare in these letters, that I will content myself with mentioning the novelty of a Cuban country-dish, a sort of stew, composed of ham, beef, mutton, potatoes, sweet potatoes, _yuca_, and yams. This is called _Ayacco_, and is a characteristic dish, like eel-soup in Hamburg, or salt codfish in Boston;--as is usual in such cases, it is more relished by the inhabitants than by their visitors. On the present occasion, however, it was only one among many good things, which were made better by pleasant talk, and were succeeded by delicious fruits and coffee. After dinner we visited the vegetable garden, and the well, where we found Candido, the rich negro who had saved six hundred dollars, drawing water with the help of a blind mule. Now the Philanthrope of our party was also a Phrenologist, and had conceived a curiosity to inspect the head of the very superior negro who had made all this money; so at his request Candido was summoned from the well, and ordered to take off his hat. This being removed disclosed the covering of a cotton handkerchief, of which he was also obliged to divest himself. Candido was much too well bred to show any signs of contumacy; but the expression of his countenance varied, under the observation of the Phrenologist, from wonder to annoyance, and from that to the extreme of sullen, silent wrath. The reason was obvious,--he supposed himself brought up with a view to bargain and sale; and when informed that he had a good head, he looked much inclined to give somebody else a bad one. He was presently allowed to go back to his work; and our sympathies went with him, as it would probably take some days to efface from his mind the painful impression that he was to be sold, the last calamity that can happen to a negro who is in kind hands. We now wandered through the long avenues of palm and fruit trees with which the estate was planted, and saw the stout black wenches at their out-door occupations, which at this time consisted chiefly in raking and cleansing the ground about the roots of the trees and flowers. Their faces brightened as their employers passed, and the smaller children kissed hands. Returned to the house, we paused awhile to enjoy the evening red, for the sun was already below the horizon. Then came the _volante_, and with heartfelt thanks and regrets we suffered it to take us away. And who had been the real hero of this day? Who but Roqué, fresh from town, with his experience of Carnival, and his own accounts of the masked ball, the Paseo, and the Señorita's beaux? All that durst followed him to the gate, and kissed hands after him. "_Adios, Roqué! Roqué, adios!_" resounded on all sides; and Roqué, the mysterious one, actually smiled in conscious superiority, as he nodded farewell, and galloped off, dragging us after him. As we drove back to Matanzas in the moonlight, a sound of horses' feet made us aware that Don Antoñico, the young friend who had planned and accompanied our day's excursion, was to be our guard of honor on the lonely road. A body-servant accompanied him, like-wise mounted. Don Antoñico rode a milk-white Cuban pony, whose gait was soft, swift, and stealthy as that of a phantom horse. His master might have carried a brimming glass in either hand, without spilling a drop, or might have played chess, or written love-letters on his back, so smoothly did he tread the rough, stony road. All its pits and crags and jags, the pony made them all a straight line for his rider, whose unstirred figure and even speech made this quite discernible. For when a friend talks to you on the trot, much gulping doth impede his conversation,--and there is even a good deal of wallop in a young lady's gallop. But our friend's musical Spanish ran on like a brook with no stones in it, that merely talks to the moonlight for company. And such moonlight as it was that rained down upon us, except where the palm-trees spread their inverted parasols, and wouldn't let it! And such a glorification of all trees and shrubs, including the palm, which we are almost afraid to call again by name, lest it should grow "stuck up," and imagine there were no other trees but itself! And such a combination of tropical silence, warmth, and odor! Even in the night, we did not forget that the aloe-hedges had red in them, which made all the ways beautiful by day. Oh! it was what good Bostonians call "a lovely time"; and it was with a sigh of fulness that we set down the goblet of enjoyment, drained to the last drop, and getting, somehow, always sweeter towards the bottom. For it was set down at the Ensor House, which we are to leave to-night, half-regretful at not having seen the scorpion by which we always expected to be bitten; for we had heard such accounts of it, patrolling the galleries with its venomous tail above its head, that we had thought a sight might be worth a bite. It was not to be, however. The luggage is brought; John is gratified with a _peso_; and we take leave with entire good-will. I mention our departure, only because it was Cuban and characteristic. Returning by boat to Havana, we were obliged to be on board by ten o'clock that evening, the boat starting at eleven. Of course, the steamer was nowhere but a mile out in the stream; and a little cockle-shell of a row-boat was our only means of attaining her. How different, ye good New Yorkers and Bostonians, from your afternoon walk on board the "Bay State," with valise and umbrella in hand, and all the flesh-pots of Egypt in ----, well, in remembrance! After that degree of squabbling among the boatmen which serves to relieve the feelings of that habitually disappointed class of men, we chose our craft, and were rowed to the steamer, whose sides were steep and high out of water. The arrangements on board were peculiar. The body of the main deck was occupied by the _gentlemen's_ cabin, which was large and luxurious. A tiny after-cabin was fitted up for the ladies. In the region of the machinery were six horrible staterooms, bare and dirty, the berths being furnished simply with cane-bottoms, a pillow, and one unclean sheet. Those who were decoyed into these staterooms endured them with disgust while the boat was at anchor; but when the paddle-wheels began to revolve, and dismal din of clang and bang and whirr came down about their ears, and threatened to unroof the fortress of the brain, why then they fled madly, precipitately, leaving their clothes mostly behind them. But I am anticipating. The passengers arrived and kept arriving; and we watched, leaning over the side, for Don Antoñico, who was to accompany our voyage. Each boat had its little light; and to see them dancing and toppling on the water was like a fairy scene. At last came our friend; and after a little talk and watching of the stars, we betook ourselves to rest. Many of the Dons were by this time undressed, and smoking in their berths. As there was no access to the ladies' cabin, save through the larger one, she who went thither awaited a favorable moment and ran, looking neither to the right hand nor the left. The small cabin was tolerably filled by Cuban ladies in full dress.--_Mem._ They always travel in their best clothes.--The first navigation among them was a real balloon-voyage, with collisions; but they soon collapsed and went to bed. All is quiet now; and she of whom we write has thrown herself upon the first vacant bed, spreading first a clean napkin on the extremely serviceable pillow. Sleep comes; but what is this that murders sleep? A diminutive male official going to each berth, and arousing its fair occupant with "Doña Teresita," or whatever the name may be, "favor me with the amount of your passage-money." No comment is necessary; here, no tickets,--here, no Stewardess to mediate between the unseen Captain and the unprotected female! The sanctuary of the sex invaded at midnight, without apology and without rebuke! Think of that, _those_ passengers who have not paid their fare, and, when invited to call at the Captain's office and settle, do so, and be thankful! The male passengers underwent a similar visitation. It is the Cuban idea of a compendious and economic arrangement. And here ends our account of Matanzas, our journey thither, stay, and return. Peace rest upon the fair city! May the earthquake and hurricane spare it! May the hateful Spanish government sit lightly on its strong shoulders! May the Filibusters attack it with kisses, and conquer it with loving-kindness! So might it be with the whole Island--_vale_! CHAPTER XV. RETURN TO HAVANA--SAN ANTONIO AGAIN. Not many days did we tarry in Havana, on our return. We found the city hot, the hotel full, the invalids drooping. The heat and the confined life (many of them never crossed the threshold) began to tell upon them, and to undo the good work wrought by the mild winter. They talked of cooling breezes, and comfortable houses, with windows, carpets, and padded sofas. Home was become a sort of watchword among them, exchanged with a certain subdued rapture. One of them was on the brink of a longer journey. He had been the worst case all winter, and since our arrival, had rarely left his room. A friend was now come to take him to his father's house, but he failed so rapidly, that it was feared the slender thread would be broken before the sailing of the steamer should allow him to turn his face homewards. The charities of the Cubans, such as they are, do not extend to the bodies of dead Protestants,--for them is nothing but the Potter's Field. This gross Priest, that shameless woman shall lie in consecrated ground, but our poor countryman, pale and pure as he looked, would defile the sainted inclosure, and must be cast out, with dogs and heretics. So there was a sort of hush, even in the heartless hotel-life, and an anxious inquiry every morning,--"Is he yet alive?" "Just alive," and for a moment, people were really interested. But the day of departure came at last, and he was carried on board in a chair, his coffin following him. His closed eyes were too weak to open on the glorious tropical noon, and take a last leave of its beauty, and of the dry land he was never to see again; for he died, we afterwards learned, the day before the vessel reached New York, without pain or consciousness. And many thus depart. In this very hotel died glorious Dr. Kane, having, like a few other illustrious men, compressed all the merits of a long life in the short years of youth. When he was carried from these walls, a great concourse rose up to attend him, and when the procession passed the Governor's palace, the dark Concha himself, the centre of power and despotism, stood at the gate, hat in hand, to do reverence to the noble corpse. A practical word àpropos of these things. A flight to the tropics is apt to be like a death-bed repentance, deferred to the last moment, and with no appreciable benefit. Not only giving,--everything is done twice which is done quickly,--Time and Disease having between them a ratio too mysterious and rapid for computation. Ye who must fly, wounded, from the terrible North, fly in season, before the wound festers and rankles,--otherwise you escape not, bringing Death with you. Do not rush moreover to a hotel in the heart of Havana, and falling down there, refuse to be removed. Pulmonary patients rarely profit in Havana, whose climate is tainted with the sea-board, and further, with all the abominations of the dirtiest of cities. Santa Cruz has a better climate than Cuba,--so has Nassau, but in Cuba there are better places than Havana. San Antonio is better,--Guines, Guanabacoa, even Matanzas, are all healthier. Best of all is to reside on a coffee or sugar-plantation in the interior, but to attain this object, special letters are necessary,--as before observed, neither _your_ Banker, nor _our_ Consul, will help you to it. We find little news in Havana. B. has gone to Trinidad de Cuba,--C. has gone to New Orleans. The Bachelor who daily treated to oranges is among the departed, and remembering his benefactions, we wish him a safe return and continuance of celibacy. Carnival has been gay,--Concha gave a Ball, and our Consul plucked up heart and went, and introduced eight of our countrywomen, elegantly dressed, no doubt, and not speaking a word of Spanish, nor the Consul neither,--one of the requisites of an American foreign Official being that he shall be capable of no foreign language. This rule has been rigorously adhered to by the Administration for twenty years past, and in some instances, a tolerable ignorance of English has been added, as a merit of supererogation. However, to return to the Ball, one of the ladies performed in Boarding-school French, and as far as looks went, they made a decidedly good impression. The little English Lords are expected,--Ladies, do not flutter so!--it is not the fascinating English Lord who has glittered like a diamond for two years past on the finger of Washington diplomacy. These are Boys, and by all accounts, good ones. There is an Englishman at the hotel already, and he quarrels with his victuals in a manner that is awful, quite reminding one of the stories of unthankful children, whom the wolves get. And he labors with the unknown Spanish like a ship at sea, and steers for this dish and that with undistinguishable orders. Though I know him not, I must help him when I see him struggling so for his dinner, winking, pointing, and sputtering to the waiters without result. The wretch has been in Italy, and would make the softer idiom serve his turn here. "_Riso, eh, riso, riz, rice_," says he, with extended index. "_Trae el arroz al Señor_" comes timely to his aid, and with a few more helpings he is fed, though not satisfied. So irrational, so unappeasable is his appetite, that one cannot help thinking he has heard the story of the Belly and the Members in his youth, and has determined to avenge the injured ganglion of its ancient tormentors. But among so many faces, remembered and sketched with little pleasure, there is one whose traits I must record as a labor of love. It belonged to one of the recent arrivals at the hotel, and was first seen in strong contrast with the countenance of the gluttonous Englishman, which it regarded with grave wonder. Expressive dark eyes, fine brows, heavy black hair, and a clear skin, subdued by ill-health, were its principal points of interest, but such enumeration can give you no more idea of its charm than an auctioneer's catalogue of furniture can suggest the features of a happy home. I had heard of its owner, but had never seen her before, yet we met somehow like people who had known each other, and a few commonplace phrases ended in a dialogue like this: "Are you A?"--"Yes,--are you B?"--"Yes;" and eternal friendship, though not sworn, set in immediately, and still perseveres. Modesty forbids us to praise our friend,--the very epithet "my friend," says the utmost we can say for any one. So I must not further celebrate my new-found treasure, who from this moment became the companion of all my steps in Cuba. I will only say that she was an apple-blossom of our Northern Spring, grafted upon a noble Southern stock, and turning her face now to the regions of the sun for healing warmth. Readers! you have all heard of her,--you would all give your ears to know her name. Keep them, you shall not. In this pleasant company we sought San Antonio again. My friend was not doing well in Havana, and the graceful head was bowed every day lower by pain and weakness. But once out of the pent-up city, the head rose like a lily after rain, and all the little journey was pleasure and surprise. The tangled thickets, the new trees, the strange flowers, filled her with admiration. This was Cuba. Havana was, what is everywhere almost alike, the World. And soon we came to the clear, low-running river, with its green, bushy banks. And the next whistle of the steam-engine, like a fairy horn, called up the pretty village, with its streets and bridges, its one church, and its diminutive Plaza. We walk along the newly paved street, lined with small dwellings built of palm and plaster. The naked children are playing at the doors, the fathers and mothers are making cigars, or smoking them, the soldiers are walking vacantly about, and the small shopkeepers are looking out from behind their dull counters, piled with the refuse of the better markets. Here is the American Hotel, and just opposite, the eternal piano is playing "Norma," as it always did twelve hours out of twenty-four, and was a nuisance. But let me not grumble, for at the door of that house stand Mariquilla and Dolores, to welcome me back, and, hearing their voices, Norma leaves the instrument of her revenge, and comes out to embrace me. It is pleasant, is it not, to arrive where some one is glad to see you? These kind people quite warm my heart with their welcome. Mrs. L. at the hotel, too, is always glad to see a boarder, especially if he have with him a trunk that looks like staying. So we are fèted all around, and have the best rooms given us, and are happy. In the evening, I betake myself to the house opposite, which was familiar to me in my earlier visit, but of which I now speak for the first time. Its inmates are in comfortable, though moderate circumstances, and their habits are the type of Cuban village-life. Here I meet the accustomed circle,--fie! they have no _circle_, but sit in two long parallel lines, and rock, and smoke at each other. Papa is a small, slight Spaniard, with good manners and no teeth. Mamma is not more than forty,--a massive, handsome woman, with that dignity of expression which is beyond beauty,--she is simple in her dress, and quiet in all her ways, but her thoughtful eyes make you remember her. Mariquilla is a buxom girl, some thirty years of age, who uses ten cosmetics in her bath, and still preserves a tolerably fresh complexion. Dolores is quiet and gentle, and spends her days in taking care of two little motherless children, whose father brings them every morning, and takes them away at night. Maria Luisa, whom I call Norma, is the only daughter of the family. She is pretty and modest, slight and small, like her father, but with fine eyes. She is a great Belle, we are told, in the neighborhood, and her musical accomplishment is considered prodigious. Besides these we find Dotor Hernandez, the village Physician, an Aragonese, thick-set and vigorous, with a good honest face, and Juanito, the Music-Master, a youth of eighteen, from Barcelona, with straight black hair, a pock-marked countenance, and a pair of as mischievous black eyes as ever looked demurely into the mysteries of the divine art. He is just offering cigarettes to all the family. Mamma has taken one, so have Dolores and Mariquilla,--he hands me the little packet with: "_Te fuma, Hulita?_" and seems rather surprised at my refusal, supposing doubtless that women of a certain age smoke, all over the world. One small lamp dimly illuminates this family party. When music is proposed, two candles, not of wax, are lighted, and placed on the piano. I sing a song or two, which they are good enough to call "_muy bonito_," and then, Maria Luisa, invited in turn, thunders through "Norma," from Overture to Finale. Oh! I have not described the piano,--it is a grand one, and bears the name of Stoddard. It should be about sixty years old, and would seem to have been through three generations and ten boarding-schools. It is a sort of skeleton piano, empty of music, and the rattling of its poor old bones makes mine ache. After the Opera, dancing is proposed. Juanito is disabled with a lame hand, and Maria Luisa volunteers to play the new _contra-danza_. It is christened "the Atlantic Telegraph," and is full of jerks and interruptions, having nothing very definite about it. We have learned the _contra-danza_ of Dolores, on a former occasion, but now they all say "Hulita must dance with the Doctor," and to that consummate honor she resigns herself. That distinguished functionary divests himself of his cigar, polishes his perspiring forehead with his handkerchief, and offers himself as a candidate for her hand. "_Vamos_," he says, and they begin a slow, circling measure, to a music which is nondescript. Quiet work this, none of your spasmodic Waltzes, kicking Polkas, and teetotum jigmarigs. This gentle revolution seems imitated from the movement of the planets, or perhaps the dance of the seasons,--gravity pervades it,--it is a slow eternity. The rest of the family group has resolved itself into couples,--we all go round and round, and suddenly confront each other for a right and left, and look delighted, and then go round again. This dreamy performance goes on, until we have just sense enough left to remember that there is such a thing as bed-time. We break off, inquire the hour, find it late, say that we must go, which occasions no surprise. The piano ceases,--the candles are put out. There is a general kissing and "_Buenas noches_, _Hulita_." Dotor Hernandez sees us home. We pass every evening at the house opposite, and all the evenings are like this. CHAPTER XVI. SAN ANTONIO--CHURCH ON SUNDAY--THE NORTHER--THE S. FAMILY. The least shrub has its blossom, if you only know how to find it. The dullest country town in New England has its days when people hear speeches and get drunk, the one act illustrating the morals, the other the manners of the community. In like manner, the smallest village in Cuba has its Sunday, when the imprisoned women go to church in their best clothes, the men attend cockfights, and in the evening there is ball or sermon, according as the Church makes feast or fast. The population of San Antonio does not seem particularly given to weekday devotion, nor indeed do you anywhere in Cuba find men and women praying in the churches, as you do in Rome. There is a degree of sobriety among the people in all things, partly Spanish, it may be, partly the result of the extreme climate,--certain it is, that the Cuban Spaniard has not, either in pleasure or devotion, the extravagance of the French or Italian. The church at San Antonio was always open, but I always found it empty, except on the one Sunday morning when I went thither to observe manners and customs. High mass was at eight o'clock, and was in all respects a miniature of the same ceremonial as described at Matanzas, the accompaniment of martial music and the regiment being left out. The body of the church was covered with prayer-carpets, which were closely occupied by kneeling figures. The display of good dresses and good looks was cheerful and invigorating. There was less flouncing and fanning, methought, than in the larger town; but no doubt the usual telegraphy was carried on, only in a more covert manner, as became the severer exigencies of village decorum. The priest went through his harmless little functions at the altar with what seemed to be a calico Dalmatique on his back, but we have no doubt that it was a brocade of creditable thickness. What he said was, of course, inaudible. Juanito was at the organ, perched sideways in a high gallery, so that his impish face and dancing eyes formed a part of the picture. Though nearer heaven in his position, he looked more full of the devil (pardon the expression) than we had ever seen him. With him were three young choristers, laboring away at the "Kyrie Eleison,"--he made the fourth in the Quartette, and played the accompaniment, too, losing, moreover, nothing of what went on below. The music was good, very like something of Mozart's, but when subsequently interrogated, Juanito declared it to have been a _Capriccio_ of his own. We can only say, that if it was not Mozart's, we shall certainly hear of Juanito some day, as a composer. The two old beggars who take off their tattered hats with such stately humility all the week, were here to-day, but did not beg in church. Item, they do not chatter like their Italian brethren in the trade, but commence a slow statement of their grievances, which you interrupt with "_nada_," nothing, when they walk sadly away. A Cuban generally gives them something, and always without rebuke. In the church was, too, a kneeling figure of Christ, neither divine nor human, fastened to a platform, with four lanterns at the four corners,--it is carried through the streets on Fridays in Lent for devotion, and the priests chant, and bear candles before it. Well, Mass is over, and we walk back to the hotel,--and here is our pretty neighbor, Maria Luisa, watching at the door to see the people come from church. "What, not at Mass, Maria Luisa?" "No, I'm so sorry, but Papa is away, and Dolores has a cold, and Mariquilla has been sitting up with a sick friend, so there was no one to go with me." Clearly, there is a laxity in matters of religion in the house opposite. On the other hand public opinion, even in San Antonio, would never have permitted Maria Luisa, or any other female under sixty to have walked the quiet streets without escort, upon whatever errand of piety or of charity. Scarcely to the bedside of a dying mother might she go, unattended by a suitable companion. We pass the remainder of the Sunday in quiet resignation to the heat, the thermometer standing at 86 in the shade, (say, on the fourth of March,) and letter-writing causing one to perspire like a wood-sawyer, or a stout youth in the Polka. For the nobler sex, there is the cockpit,--all the _cafés_ and billiards too are full of soldiers and countrymen,--one hears the click of the balls throughout the quiet streets. Towards sunset we walk out, and find the village alive with little groups of people, and the windows of the houses, at least the window-gratings, filled with the best women in the best dresses. Some of them are well got-up. All look cool, easy, and indolent. Here and there is seen amongst them the glimmer of a furtive cigar. We pass the Cavalry Barracks, once a spacious monastery, and see the horses gathered in from their wide pasture for the night. They obey the voice, and with a little driving, make a tolerable charge at the arched doorway, and carry it in style. The sense of smell too is regaled with the savory odors of the soldiers' supper, and looking in at a grating, we see huge stewpans simmering over charcoal fires,--the rest in darkness, for it now grows late. The men are a stouter looking set than the regiment we saw at Matanzas, but the horses have not the bone and muscle requisite for heavy action,--they could only make respectable light-horse. Returning home, we meet our friends of the house opposite going to "_Sermon_," as they tell us, for this is Lent, and not Carnival. Mamma wears a black veil,--the others are bareheaded. We have still tea to look forward to, but under such difficulties! we have given a dollar for a teapot which in Boston should cost twenty-five cents. Our precious pound of black tea, brought from home, has not yet given out, but how hard is it to make Antonio, the head-waiter, put the tea in the pot, make the water boil, and pour it boiling over the tea. Yet this sacred rite we accomplish every evening. It has the solemnity of a religious observance, for where the tea-table is, there is home. After tea, a chair by the well in the middle of the Court, and a silent feast of tropical starlight. The lady of the house is chattering nothings with that queer Californian, who looks as much like a spoiled preacher as anything. The excitable Carolinian has got some one to hear him abuse Cuba, and glorify Charleston. Yonder at the left angle the flare of a lamp betrays the kitchen, and in the next compartment of the picture Polonia, the slave washer-woman, who has been kept at the ironing-table all day, vents her feelings in passionate snatches of talk, shakes her kerchiefed head, tosses her arms about, and returns to the ironing with more determination than ever. Poor slave,--a great debt was piled up against her before she was born, and the labor of all her life cannot work it out. Bankrupt must she die, and hand down the debt, sole inheritance, to her children. So the world to the slave is a debtor's prison, with a good or bad Jailer, and for utmost alleviation, an occasional treat all round. And while the cooking, and chattering, and ironing goes on about us, Reader, you and I will ponder this, sitting by the well, under the stars set an hundred thousand miles deep in the dark velvet of the tropical heavens. This was Sunday, and with the next day came one of those changes which resemble in kind, not in degree, the caprices of our own Continental climate. The day has been a little less genial than usual, still we are all comfortably seated at dinner, when a sudden wind shakes the house, and blowing in furiously at the blinds, threatens to make the tablecloth fly over our heads. A fierce shower of rain follows,--our table is set in a gallery inclosed on one side only with Venetian blind-work, and through this the rain rushes at us like a volley of canes flung into the pit of a theatre. It grows dark, and for an hour or so, very cold. There is an instantaneous closing of doors and wooden window-shutters, and we of the Dinner protect ourselves from the wet and chill with the few warm garments we have with us,--for is not the bulk of our solid clothing laid up at Havana in that sea-trunk which we could wish never to open again? We pass the remainder of the afternoon under hatches, as it were. The rain soon exhausts itself, but the cold wind continues for some days. This is the Norther, fatal to yellow fever, but fatal also to those who are ill of it, and dreaded by all patients whatever. To us, the storm being over, the wind is only chilly, bringing with it a dull sky, and the desire for exercise, but the invalids shrivel up in it like rose-leaves in a frost,--the hectic gives place to deadly pallor, and the purple hues that mark the orbit of the eye come out, stronger than ever. Meeting, they interrogate each other's faces with anxious looks, as if wishing to see what headway their little community could keep against the common foe. The aspect of the streets is changed. The women scarcely appear, save where you see the heads of three or four of them in a row, looking through the small square breathing-hole cut in the window-shutters, and giving one the idea of so many people standing erect in their coffins. The men walk moodily about, each one enveloped in the dark folds of a Spanish cloak, or _capa_, of which the material varies from fine to coarse, but the shape is always the same. These solemn, stalking figures so resemble the _mysterious personages_ of the theatre, the bandits, spies, disguised lovers, and other varmint, that we saw for once where the stage has preserved a tradition of real life, these costumes having been, no doubt, long since imitated from Spain, and never changed. What crime is this grave man meditating, with heavy brow and splendid eyes? Murder or conspiracy, at least. No, he only wants to purchase a string of onions at that shop at the corner. And this melancholy hero with the pale olive complexion, dark as the stage-Romeo after he has bought the poison? He enters yonder door to refresh himself with a glass of _aguardiente_, and a game of billiards. At the house opposite, Dolores complains of "_muchisima flussion_,"--a most severe cold. "Is it the President's Message?" we ask. "No, in San Antonio they call the cold '_el Polvorin_,' after the powder-magazine that exploded, last year, in Havana." We tell Dotor Hernandez that he must cure Dolores, and he promises her a "_vomitivo_" next morning, the very mention of which considerably hastens her convalescence. The health of the village is suffering from the Norther, the Doctor has his hands full. Mariquilla must give us some account of the sick friend she is nursing. "He has a _Calentura_, (fever of the country,) with delirium. They treat him with leeches, bleeding, borage tea, mustard at the feet; around the head bread with oil, vinegar, and pepper, as a _preventivo_." "Why," cried one of us, "you have seasoned him and stuffed him with herbs, fit for roasting." Dotor Hernandez gravely explains and defends his practice. While the Norther is in full force, we go to pay a visit to Don Juan Sanchez, a man of wealth and position in San Antonio, and proprietor of large estates in the neighborhood. Don Juan is not at home,--his wife, Doña Tomasita, and the Tutor, an elderly Frenchman, receive us. She is young, but the mother of seven children. At our request, the nursery is reviewed in the parlor, as follows: Enter Manuel, eight years of age, enveloped in the stage cloak, and with the utmost gravity of countenance. He marches up to us, and startles us by inquiring after our health, in very good English. Enter Tomas Ignacio, seven years of age, also in a _capa_, and grave. This infant addressed us in French, and took a seat beside his brother. He was followed by two noble imps, of six and five, dressed in the same manner, and with the same decorum. These four creatures in linen suits, with black cloaks, were positively imposing, and it was not until Dolorita, the baby, had begun to howl in her mother's arms, and Ricardo, the three-year old, to tumble on the floor at her feet, that we could feel we were in the presence of lawless, spontaneous childhood. Before we departed, Doña Tomasita kindly placed her whole house, and all her earthly goods at our disposition, and we, with great moderation, claimed only the right of exit at her front door. CHAPTER XVII. EDUCATION--LAST NIGHT IN SAN ANTONIO--FAREWELL. One of our number, visiting the public schools of San Antonio one day, found the course of studies for boys of very respectable extension,--it comprised all the usual elementary branches, including the History of Spain, such a history of that country at least as is good for Cuban boys to learn. For the education of girls, a single hour was reserved, and into this were crowded the necessary reading and writing, a little instruction in accounts, and the geography of the island. My friend remonstrated against this unequal division of the spoils of time, but those in authority insisted that it was according to the rights of Nature, as follows. _American._ Do you mean to say that boys should be taught five or six hours a day, and girls only one? _Schoolmaster._ Certainly. _American._ Why do you make this difference? _Schoolmaster._ Because women need so much less education than men. _American._ Why is that? _Schoolmaster._ They have less mind, in the first place, and then their mode of life demands less cultivation of what they have. _American._ What knowledge do you consider necessary for a woman? only reading and writing, I suppose. _Schoolmaster._ Yes, and a little arithmetic. They must fill up the rest of their time with sewing, and household matters. _American._ But supposing you were required to add something to this small amount of instruction, what would it be? _Schoolmaster_ (after some reflection). I scarcely know, unless indeed _a slight coloring of Grammar_. Our American, now excited, brings in view the good of the race. "Do you not think," he says, "that by elevating the organism of the mothers, you elevate the intellectual chances of the whole race? Stupid mothers will have stupid sons,--the results of culture are inherited." The master replies that that is not his business, but Don Juan, who happens to be present, being appealed to, assents, and thinks it might be as well if a mother could have an idea. So far, so good, but a jealous-hearted woman to whom the conversation was reported smiled to observe how both American and Cuban made woman subservient to the interests of the race. "And if she should never be a mother," said this one, "educate her for herself, that she may give good counsel, and discern the noble and the beautiful. For women are good to inspire men, as well as to bear them, and for their own sakes, they have a right to know all that elevates and dignifies life." And this brings to mind another brief conversation overheard in one of our voyages. _Young Wife_ (holding up a number of the "Atlantic Monthly"). Ought women to learn the alphabet, dear? what do you think? _Young Husband._ Oh! certainly--don't they have to teach it? But the time draws nigh for us to leave San Antonio. Our return passages are engaged in the next Isabel. If this steamer prove such a Bird of Gladness as the papers and her consignees say, then our once weary voyage will become a veritable translation,--only three days of sunshine, smoothness, and turtle-soup for luncheon, and you land in Charleston in undisturbed equilibrium of manners and of dress. Well, more of this anon. But to-night is our last night in San Antonio. We have danced our last _contra-danza_ with Dotor Hernandez, and had our last chat with Maria Luisa and her mother. Juanito was there, that evening, and as we were all in a musical mood, he played through whole piano-forte arrangements of "Norma" and "Lucia," and we all screamed through the score, some six notes too high for the voice, Papa and Mamma applauding us, and did wonders in "Casta Diva" and "_Chi mi frena_." But this is all at an end, and one of us stands alone at her open window, and looks for the last time on the quiet scene,--just before her is the little pasture where the goats pick up a scanty subsistence all day, and where shadows and moonlight play such wild freaks at night. This morning, as she sat at that window and worked, two men in haste carried a coffin past it. She always sees coffins, and sometimes writes about them,--that one gives tone to her thoughts to-night. For the house opposite is now dark and still,--the parlor where Mariquilla embroiders her chemises, and Dolores pulls lint for the sick is silent and deserted. The trees stand up there in the moonlight, and the river runs among its shallows so near that one hears its voice. And Hulita thinks: fifty years from this time--that river will be running just as it is now, and those trees, or others like them, will be standing at the angle of the picture as I now see them, but where shall we, friends of to-day, be? Dead, or old enough to die. Juanito will be a man in years, then, with white hairs, scarcely remembering the American lady who praised his compositions in church-music. The Dotor, Papa, and Mamma cannot be alive, Maria Luisa will be a Grandmother, and if Hulita lives, her infirmities will make death a welcome deliverance. So she envies that moon, the trees, the river, who can all stay and be eternal. She saw the coffin to-day,--very like she will see the whole no more. Good-night, dear moon, dear shadows, dear unlearned, unsophisticated people,--I shall leave you to-morrow, forget you never. And the next day comes the bustle of departure, and packing of trunks, for we are to take the afternoon train down to Havana. Doña Tomasita sends a parting gift of fruit, as much as one man and one stout boy can carry. The fruit is as follows: one bushel of golden, honeyed oranges,--oh! the glory of all oranges are those of this island,--the same quantity of _chaimitos_ and _mameys_, and a huge fagot of sugar-cane. We hasten to share these good creatures with those immediately at hand, having lauded Doña Tomasita to the skies and paid her messengers. What could be carried away we took with us. Then came the parting with Polonia, who wrung her hands as usual, and cried out: "Know thou, girl, that I shall miss thee much." "And I thee, too, thou dear old half-mad charcoal figure,--thou art human, though black, and canst ache over the ironing-table as well as another. Let these few reals console thee, as far as may be, for the loss of my sympathy. If we ever get the Island, I will help thee to ease and good wages. "But not so to thee, roguish Antonio. 'Art thou not free and perfidious? We intrusted a sum of money to thine hand to pay the negro baggage-carrier, and to slightly fee thyself, and we ascertain all too late, by the complaints of the injured negro, that thou didst slightly fee him, and pay thyself for services never rendered. Wherefore dread our coming, or the Day of Justice, by whomsoever administered!'"---- We have taken affectionate leave of the family of the house opposite, promising to write, with the remainder of our mortal lives as the vague term of fulfilment. A trinket or two made the younger ones happy, while the whole family solemnly united to bestow on me a little set of vignettes of Cuba, folded fan-fashion, and purchasable for the sum of five reals. Not without much explanation was it delivered to me,--this was the Cock-fight, this the Bull-fight, this the Tacon theatre. I received these instructions without any of that American asperity which led a celebrated Chief Justice to say: "There are some things, Mr. Counsel, which the Court is supposed to know," and gratefully departed. We walked to the _dépôt_, in the hot afternoon sun, our smaller pieces conveyed on a barrow, and the huge trunk resting, for fifty cents, on the head of a stalwart negro.--_Mem._ A negro could carry the round earth on his head, if he could only get it there. And here came the discovery of Antonio's vileness,--he had had an eighth of an ounce, wherewith to pay the carriers. According to the bargain, as rehearsed to us, he was to pay them a dollar and three fourths, which would leave him three reals for himself. He professed to have done this with so ingenuous an air, that we were a little ashamed of so small a fee, and added thereto the small remnant of our change. Only at the last moment, when the train was puffing and smoking alongside, did the poor blacks venture to say that one dollar was very little for carrying all those trunks. Our hearts were stirred, but the train was there, the purse empty, and Antonio out of sight. Wherefore, let him, as before said, avoid our second coming. But there never was a departure without an omission. Something you have forgotten that you meant to take, or you have brought with you something that should have been left. Wending your way from an English mansion of splendid hospitality, a stray towel has found its way into your portmanteau. Before you have discovered this, a confidential letter from the housekeeper overtakes you informing you of the fact, and begging you to return the missing article at once, which you do for six stamps, with a slight tingle in the cheek. In the present instance we have taken nought that was not ours, but we have left an article of domestic dignity and importance. Stranger, if you should ever sit at that tea-table in the hotel at San Antonio, with the lamp smoking under your nose, and the three tasteless dishes of preserves spread before your sight, a cup of astringent nothingness being offered to you, and a choking stale roll forming the complement of your evening service,--if there and thus you should see a white teapot, with bands of blue, that looks as if it had seen better days, oh then remember us! For we had scarcely settled ourselves in the cars, when a pensive recollection came over us. It was too late to do anything,--we only touched the shoulder of our friend, who was as usual intent upon palms and scenery, and remarked, with a look of melancholy intelligence, "The Teapot is left behind!" CHAPTER XVIII. SLAVERY--CUBAN SLAVE LAWS, INSTITUTIONS, ETC. It is not with pleasure that we approach this question, sacred to the pugilism of debate. Nor is it worth while to add one word to the past infinity of talk about it, unless that word could have the weight of a new wisdom. We Americans, caught by the revolutionary spirit of the French, make them too much our models, and run too much to grandiloquent speech, and fine moral attitudinizing. The attitudes do not move the world,--the words do not change the intrinsic bearings of things. They whom we attack, the fight being over, sit down and wipe the dust from their faces,--we sit and wipe the sweat from ours,--something stronger than their will or ours passes between us,--it is the great moral necessity which expresses the will of God. We and they are two forces, pulling in opposite ways to preserve the equilibrium of a third point, which we do not see. We must keep to our pulling, they cannot relinquish theirs. The point of solution that shall reconcile and supersede the differences is not in sight, nor has the wisest of us known how to indicate it. Meanwhile, the calm satisfaction with which some of us divide our national moral inheritance, giving them all the vices, and ourselves all the virtues, is at once mournful and ridiculous. Why are we New Englanders so _naïve_ as not to see this? When the representative of a handful of men rises to speak, and, alluding to the progress which a great question has made in twenty years, says: "This is all our doing,--behold our work and admire it!" we cannot, but pause and wonder if merely that irruption of bitter words can have produced so sweet a fruit. In this view, what becomes of the moral evolution of the ages, of the slow, sure help of Time, showing new aspects, presenting new possibilities? What becomes of human modesty, which is nearly related to human justice? I preface with these remarks, because, looking down from where I sit, I cannot curse the pleasant Southern land, nor those who dwell in it. Nor would I do so if I thought tenfold more ill of its corruptions. Were half my body gangrened, I would not smite nor reproach it, but seek with patience an available remedy. This is the half of our body, and the moral blood which brings the evil runs as much in our veins as in theirs. Looking at realities and their indications, we see a future for the African race, educated by the enslavement which must gradually ameliorate, and slowly die out. We see that in countries where the black men are many, and the white few, the white will one day disappear, and the black govern. In South Carolina, for example, the tide of emigration has carried westward the flower of the white population. In Charleston, all the aristocratic families have their mulatto representatives, who bear their names. There are Pinckneys, Pringles, Middletons, and so on, of various shades of admixture, living in freedom, and forming a community by themselves. There are even mulatto representatives of extinct families, who alone keep from oblivion names which were once thought honorable. These things are indications of changes which will work themselves slowly. Noble efforts have hemmed the evil in, and the great soul of the World watches, we believe, at the borders, and will not suffer the sad contagion to creep over them into the virgin territories. But where the Institution sits at home, with its roots undergrowing the foundations of society, we may be sad, but we must be patient. The enfranchisement of a race, where it is lasting, is always accomplished by the slow and solid progress of the race itself. The stronger people rarely gives Freedom to the weaker as a boon,--when they are able, they rise up and take it with their own hands. It is an earning, not a gift, nor can the attributes which make liberty virtual and valuable be commanded, save under certain moral conditions. A man is not noble because he is free, but noble men constituting a nation become free. Let the wounds of Africa first be stopped,--let her lifeblood stay to enrich her own veins. The enslaved population of Cuba and our own South must, under ordinary circumstances, attain in time a condition in which Slavery shall be impossible. But our business is with what actually exists. We will leave what shall and should be to the Theorists who invent it, and to God who executes it, often strangely unmindful of their suggestions. The black and white races are, by all accounts, more mingled in Cuba, than in any part of our own country. People who have long been resident there assure us that some of the wealthiest and most important families are of mixed blood. Animadvert upon this as you will, it is nevertheless certain that it weaves close bonds of affinity between them, and ties of Nature which, though ignored, cannot be unfelt. I have not seen in Cuba anything that corresponds to our ideal separation of the two sets of human beings, living in distinctness one from the other, hating and wronging each other with the fierceness of enemies in the death-grapple. The Negro cannot be so hated, so despised,--it is not in the nature of things. His _bonhommie_, his gentle and attachable nature do not allow it. Nor can he, in return, so hate. There is a great familiarity between the children of the two races. They play, and run about, and are petted together. We made a visit at a Creole house, where the youngest child, a feeble infant of six months, was suckled by a black nurse. "You must see the nurse's Baby," they all said, and the little daughter of the house ran to fetch her, and soon returned, bringing her by one arm, the way in which their own mothers carry them. She was an uncommonly handsome infant, scarcely older than her white foster-brother, but greatly in advance of him in her powers of locomotion. She was, according to custom, entirely naked, but her shining black skin seemed to clothe her, and her fine back and perfect limbs showed that she throve in nudity. She ran about on all fours like some strange creature, so swift and strong was she, and meeting with a chair, pulled herself up by it, and stood dancing on one foot, holding out the other. The family all gathered round her, admiring her color and her shape, and the little girl finally carried her off in triumph, as she had brought her. The slave children wear oftenest no clothing until five or six years old. They look well-fed and healthy, only the prevalence of umbilical Hernia shows a neglect of proper bandaging at birth,--the same trouble from the same cause is very observable in the south of Italy. The increase of the slaves is, of course, an important test of their treatment,--it is small throughout the Island, and amounts to little save on the best plantations. There is now a slow improvement in this respect. The repression of the slave-trade has caused such a rise in the price of negroes, that it is become better economy to preserve and transmit their lives than to work them off in eight or ten years, leaving no posterity to supply their place. Vile as these motives seem, they are too near akin to the general springs of human action for us to contemn them. Is it otherwise with operatives in England, or with laborers in Ireland? Emigration lessens their numbers, and raises their value,--it becomes important to society that they shall be fed and sustained. One wrong does not excuse another, but where a class of wrongs is universal, it shows a want of moral power in the race, at which the individual cannot justly carp. Even the race of Coolies, hired at small wages for eight years, and exploitered for that time with murderous severity, have found a suicidal remedy that nearly touches their selfish masters. So many of them emancipated themselves from hard service by voluntary death, that it became matter of necessity to lighten the weight about their necks, and to leave them that minimum of well-being which is necessary to keep up the love of life. The instinct itself is shown to be feeble in the race, whereas the Negro clings to life under whatever pains and torment. The Coolies are valued for their superior skill and intelligence, but as men will treat a hired horse worse than a horse of their own, so they were, until they happily bethought them of killing themselves, more hardly used than the Negroes. Would that horses in the North had the same resource. If the wretched beast, harnessed, loaded, and beaten over the face and head by some greater brute in human shape, could only "his quietus make" by himself, and be found hanging in his stall, what a revolution would there be in the ideas of Omnibus-drivers and Carmen! Self-assassination is, surely, the most available alleviation of despotism. When Death is no longer terrible to the Enslaved, then let the Enslaver look to it. True, we have heard of horrible places in the interior of the Island, where the crack of the whip pauses only during four hours in the twenty-four, where, so to speak, the sugar smells of the blood of the slaves. We have heard of plantations whereon there are no women, where the wretched laborers have not the privileges of beasts, but are only human machines, worked and watched. There, not even the mutilated semblance of family ties and domestic surroundings alleviates the sore strain upon life and limb. How can human creatures endure, how inflict this? Let God remember them, as we do in our hearts, with tears and supplication. We have seen too, here and there, fiendish faces which looked as if cruelty and hardness might be familiar to them. The past history of Spain shows to what a point that nation can carry insensibility to the torment of others. Yet the Creoles seem generally an amiable set of people, enduring from the Spanish government much more than they in turn inflict on those beneath them. Nor can we believe that even the Spaniard can be a more dreaded tyrant than the Yankee, where the strong nature of the latter has been left coarse and uncultured, or brutalized by indulgence in vice. The nervous energy of his race makes him a worse demon than the other, while the peaceable and pious traditions of his youth, turned against him, urge him yet further from the sphere of all that is Christian. The slave laws of Cuba are far more humane than our own. It is only to be doubted whether the magistrates in general are trustworthy in carrying them out. Still, it is the policy of the Government to favor the Negroes, and allow them definite existence as a third class, which would be likely to range with the Government in case of civil war. It is affirmed and believed by the Cubans that the colonial President has in his hands orders to loose the slaves throughout the Island, at the first symptoms of rebellion, that they may turn all their old rancors against their late masters. The humane clauses of which we speak are the following:-- In the first place, every slave is allowed by law to purchase his own freedom, when he has amassed a sum sufficient for the purchase. He can moreover compel his master to receive a small sum in part payment, and then, hiring himself out, can pay the residue from his wages. The law intervenes also, if desired, to fix the price of the slave, which it will reduce to the minimum value. Every slave has the right to purchase his child before birth for the sum of thirty dollars, a fortnight after, for fifty, and so on, the value of course rising rapidly with the age of the child. Again, a slave who complains of ill-treatment on the part of his master may demand to be sold to another, and a limited space of time is allowed, during which he can exert himself to find a purchaser. These statutes do not seem to contemplate the perpetuity of slavery as do our own institutions. What a thrill of joy would run through our Southern and South-Western states, if every slave father and mother had the power to purchase their own offspring for a sum not altogether beyond their reach. How would they toil and starve to accumulate that sum, and how many charitable friends would invest the price of a dress or shawl in such black jewels, which would be the glory of so many black mothers. On the other hand, it is to be feared that the ignorance and poverty of the slaves may, in many places, make the benevolent intention of these statutes null and void. Official corruption, too, may impede their operation. In many parts of our own South, superior enlightenment and a more humane state of public feeling may do something to counterbalance the inferiority of legislation. Still, Americans should feel a pang in acknowledging that even in the dark article of slave laws they are surpassed by a nation which they contemn. Slaves are not sold by public auction, in Cuba, but by private sale. Nor are they subject to such rudeness and insult as they often receive from the lower whites of our own Southern cities. The question now rises, whether in case of a possible future possession of the Island by Americans, the condition of the blacks would be improved. There is little reason to think so, in any case, as our own unmitigated despotism would be enforced; but if their new masters were of the Filibuster type, they might indeed sing with sorrow the dirge of the Creole occupation, and betake themselves to the Coolie expedient of obtaining freedom at small cost. Not in such familiarity live the Creoles and Spaniards. Here, the attitudes are sharply defined. Oppression on the one hand and endurance on the other appear in a tangible form, and the oppression is conscious, and the endurance compulsory. The Spanish race is in the saddle, and rides the Creole, its derivative, with hands reeking with plunder. Not content with taxes, customs, and prohibitions, all of which pass the bounds of robbery, the Home Government looses on the Colony a set of Officials, who are expected to live by peculation, their salaries being almost nominal, their perquisites, whatever they can get. All State-offices are filled by Spaniards, and even Judgeships and Professorates are generally reserved to them. A man receives an appointment of which the salary may be a thousand dollars per annum. He hires at once an expensive house, sets up a _volante_, dresses his wife and daughters without economy, lives in short at the rate of ten times that sum, and retires after some years, with a handsome competency. What is the secret of all this? Plunder,--twofold plunder, of the inhabitants, and of the Home Government. And this, from the lowest to the highest, is the universal rule. We spoke of customs and prohibitions. Among the first, that on flour seems the most monstrous imposition. No bread-stuffs being raised on the Island, the importation of them becomes almost a condition of life, yet every barrel of wheaten flour from the States pays a duty of eight dollars, so that it becomes cheaper to ship the flour to Spain, and re-ship it thence to Cuba, than to send it direct from here. Of prohibitions, the most striking is that laid upon the vine, which flourishes throughout the Island. It may be cultivated for fruit, but wine must on no account be made from the grape, lest it should spoil the market for the Spanish wines. Among taxes, none will astonish Americans more than the stamp-tax, which requires all merchants, dealers, and bankers to have every page of their books stamped, at high cost. Of course, no business contracts are valid, recorded on any other than stamped paper. To these grievances are added monopolies. All the fish caught on the Island is held at the disposition of Señor Marti, the _Empresario_ of the Tacon theatre. This man was once a pirate of formidable character,--after some negotiation with the Tacon Government, he gave up his comrades to justice, receiving in return his own safety, and the monopoly of the fish-market. The price of this article of food is therefore kept at twenty-five cents a pound. These compromises are by no means uncommon. The public Executioner of Havana is a Negro whose life, once forfeit to the State, was redeemed only by his consenting to perform this function for life. He is allowed only the liberty of the Prison. One of our party, visiting that Institution, found this man apparently on the most amicable terms with all the inmates. The _Garrote_ being shown, he was asked if it was he who garroted Lopez, and replied in the affirmative, with a grin. Our friend inquired of him how many he had garroted: "How can one tell?" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "so many, so many!" The prisoners chatted and smoked with him, patting him on the back,--making thus that discrimination between the man and his office which is at the bottom of all human institutions. Of the great sums of money received by the Government through direct and indirect taxation, little or nothing revisits the people in the shape of improvements. The Government does not make roads, nor establish schools, nor reform criminals, nor stretch out its strong arm to prevent the offences of ignorant and depraved youth. The roads, consequently, are few and dangerous,--a great part of the Island being traversable only on horseback. There is little or no instruction provided for the children of the poorer classes, and the prisons are abominable with filth, nakedness, and disorder of every kind. There is the same espionage, the same power of arbitrary imprisonment as in Austria, Rome, and Naples, only they have America near them, and in that neighborhood is fear to some, and hope to others. The administration of justice would seem to be one of the worst of all the social plagues that abide in the Island. Nowhere in the world have people a more wholesome terror of going to law. The Government pays for no forms of legal procedure, and a man once engaged in a civil or criminal suit, is at the mercy of Judges and Lawyers who plunder him at will, and without redress. If a man is robbed, the Police come to him at once with offers of assistance and detection. It is often the case that he denies and persists in denying the robbery, rather than be involved in the torment of a suit. Much of what we narrate was common to all the civilized world, an hundred years ago, but the Cubans do not deserve to be held under the weight of these ancient abuses. They are not an effete people, but have something of the spring of the present time in them, and would gladly march to the measure of the nineteenth century, were it not for the decrepit Government whose hand has stiffened with their chains in it. The portrait of the vulgar Queen hangs in nearly every place of note,--she is generally painted at full length, in a blue dress. So coarse and weak is her face that one would think those interested would keep it out of sight, that the abstract idea of royalty might not be lowered by so unqueenly a representation. But this is unjust, for what crowned head of the present day is there that has anything intrinsically august in its aspect? The Cubans, considered in comparison with the Spaniards, form quite as distinct a people as the Americans, compared with the English. Climate and the habits of insular life have partly brought about this difference, but it has also a moral cause,--a separate interest makes a separate people. The mother-countries that would keep their colonies unweaned must be good nurses. The intermingling of the black element in the Creole race is, as I have said, strongly insisted upon by competent judges,--it is evidently not purely Caucasian, and there seems to be little reason for supposing that it perpetuates any aboriginal descent. The complexion, and in some degree the tastes of these people give some color to the hypothesis of their indebtedness to the African race. The prevailing color of the Creole is not the clear olive of the Spaniard, nor the white of the Saxon,--it is an indescribable, clouded hue, neither fair nor brown. We have seen children at a school who were decidedly dark, and would have been taken for mulattoes in the North,--they had straight hair, vivacious eyes, and coffee-colored skins,--those whom we interrogated called them "_Criollos_" as if the word had a distinct meaning. We could not ascertain that they were considered to be of black descent, though the fact seemed patent. In this school, which we saw at recess only, some of the mischievous boys amused themselves with dragging their comrades up to us, and saying: "Señora, this boy is a mulatto." The accused laughed, kicked, and disclaimed. The taste of the Cubans, if judged by the European standard, is bad taste. They love noisy music,--their architecture consults only the exigencies of the climate, and does not deserve the name of an art. Of painting they must have little knowledge, if one may judge by the vile daubs which deface their walls, and which would hardly pass current in the poorest New England village. As to dress; although I have whispered for your good, my lady friends, that the most beautiful summer-dresses in the world may be bought in Havana, yet the Creole ladies themselves have in general but glaring and barbaric ideas of adornment, and their _volante_-toilette would give a Parisienne the ague. The Creoles then, as a race, do not incline to plastic art, nor to the energetic elegancies of life. Theirs is not the nature to grapple with marble or bronze, or with the more intellectual obstacles of Painting. One art remains to them, common to all early civilizations, first in history, first too in rank,--they are Poets. Not only is a facility for versification common amongst them, but they have some names which the real halo adorns. Of these, Heredia, Placido, and Milanés are best known. This seems a very natural manifestation in their case. Held in check by the despotism of the tropical sun, and excluded from social and political action by the more barbarous despotism of Spain, their minds are turned inward, and their energies flow in the channel of contemplation. For Poetry is the freedom of the oppressed,--it is one voice leaping up where a thousand arms are chained, but the thousand hear it, and take courage. In the dreamy tropical life, the beautiful surroundings must bear some fruit. Those glorious growths of tree and flower, those prickly hedges with the sudden glare of a red sword among them, those inconceivable sunsets and nights without parallel,--these things must all write themselves upon the sensitive Southern nature, and the language in which they write themselves is poetry. How far a wider sphere of action may develop in them more hardy and varied powers is a question not to be solved in the existing state of things. It does not seem likely that the Cubans will ever by their own act abolish slavery. The indolence and mechanical ineptitude which enter into their characters will make them always a people to be waited on. Perhaps no nation, living below a certain parallel, would be capable of such a deed. The far-off English, in their cool island, could emancipate the slaves in their own Indies, but the English dwelling among them would never have relinquished the welcome service; nor is it likely that the men of our own far South will ever conceive as possible another social _status_ than the present relations between master and slave. From the North the impulse must come, and however clogged and sanded with unutterable nonsense of self-gratulation and vituperation of the brother man, we must welcome it. The enslaved race too, gradually conquering the finer arts of its masters, will rise up to meet the hand of deliverance, having in due course of time reached that spiritual level at which enslavement becomes impossible. Sismondi, in the second volume of his Essays, has some sensible remarks on the farming system as pursued in Tuscany, where the farmer is employed on long leases, receiving one half the profits of the farm worked by him. Sismondi sufficiently sets forth the advantages of this over all other systems of leasing and underletting, as it allows the husbandman a well-being in direct proportion to the thoroughness and persistency of his labors. After speaking of the apparent failure of English emancipation, he ascribes the idleness of the freed blacks to their entire want of interest in the landed property about them, and proposes associating them in this way to the interests of their would-be employers. For the world can hardly afford that these people should merely feed and grovel in the sun, when all the tillage of the tropics lies fitted to their hand. Nor will it much longer afford, let us hope, that the human tool shall work without the advantage that individual will and interest alone can give him. They who thus consent to use the man without his crowning faculties are like those who would purchase the watch without the main-spring. How all this is to end, doth not yet appear. The abstract principles of right and wrong we know, but not the processes, nor the duration of their working out in history. All the white handkerchiefs in Exeter Hall will not force the general Congress of Nations to decide questions otherwise than by the laws of convenience and advantage. England as a power has never lifted a finger nor a breath against Russian serfdom or Austrian oppression; and the Spanish government she is determined to uphold in Cuba is reeking with abominations of which she cannot afford to be cognizant. I know that God has in His power swift miracles of redemption. He can command the sudden Exodus of a wronged people, and can raise bloody waves of wrath over the heads of their oppressors. But we cannot call down these wonders, nor foretell their appointed time. Meantime, the ram's horn Fantasias which our modern Prophets have so long been performing against the walls of the southern Jericho do not seem to have had the Divine commission to overthrow them. I feel that any one in the North who gives a mild, perhaps palliative view of slavery, will be subject to bitter and severe censure. But this should surely make no difference to us in the sincere and simple statement of our impressions. Intellectual justice revolts from the rhetorical strainings, exaggerations, and denaturalizations of facts which the Partisan continually employs, but which the Philosopher and Historian must alike reject. Moral justice dissents from the habitual sneer, denunciation, and malediction, which have become consecrated forms of piety in speaking of the South. Believe me, in so far as we allow personal temper, spite, or uncharity, place in our treatment of a holy cause, in so far we do it wrong. Believe me, too, that the actual alleviations which often temper the greatest social evils should not be left out of sight, lest an atheistic despair should settle on the minds of men. The overruling mercy of God is everywhere,--in the North and in the South it has its work of consolation and of compensation. It absolves us from no possible reform, from no labor for the amelioration of the condition of our fellow-men. But as it limits alike the infliction and endurance of wrong, and sets bounds which the boldest and wickedest dare not pass, we must not paint the picture of what is, without it. So, with thoughts reverting to the slow and mighty operations in the World of Nature, which seem to have their counterpart in the World of Life and Fate,--trusting in the wisdom of the gray-haired centuries, even when the half-grown ones call them Fool, I finish my Chapter of philosophizing, somewhat, no doubt, to the relief of my Reader, but very much more to my own. CHAPTER XIX. FAREWELL! Farewell to Havana! the pleasant time is over. We are to return where we belong. Not with undue sentimentalism of sorrow, as though it were greater loss to see beautiful places and forsake them, than to have staid at Pudding-gut Point, Coxackie, or Martha's Vineyard all one's life, having beheld and regretted nothing else. When travellers tear themselves from the maternal bosom of Rome, a pang is inevitable, and its expression allowable. Even meretricious Paris sometimes harpoons an honest American heart more deeply than is fit. But there are those, born and bred amongst us, who return from their foreign travel with wide-mouthed lamentation over the past enjoyment. Others snippingly accost one with: "I cannot bear your climate,"----. "Strange," I reply, "since it bore you." We are not so deeply moved at leaving Havana, though to go to sea is always as unnatural an act as having a tooth pulled. The green earth reminds us that it is our element, and the slowly counted palms nod to us: "Remember,--remember!" We indulge ourselves in a last drive, and take kind farewell of the gay streets, the Plaza, the Paseo, and the Cerro, with its blue villas and palm-bordered gardens. Beautiful those gardens are in their own way,--Nature refusing to be kept down, but excusing her irregularities by their wild and graceful results. There is Count Fernandino's garden,--we have not described that, have we? Palms, flowers, fruit-trees, a marble pavilion with a marble Venus, a bath-house painted in fresco, paved with fine tiling, and lit through stained glass, an ethereal trellis and canopy of fairy-like iron-work, painted coral-red, and hung with vines, whose industry in weaving themselves is almost perceptible to the eye,--still, shady walks, and evermore palms. We passed a morning there with some botanical friends, and had much explained to us that we cannot possibly remember. This we did retain, that there are known on the island sixty varieties of palms, and that this garden contains at least forty of them. And here is Doña Herrera's garden, which we visited one morning, with our friends of the Cup of Tea, (_vide_ earlier letters). How soft and dewy was it in the morning light! the flowers had still the dreamy starlight in them. We ran about like children, admiring at every moment something new and strange. In the middle of the garden was a fairy lake, with a little mock steamboat upon it, the paddles being moved by hand. There were gas fixtures disposed throughout the grounds, which are lighted on the occasion of a _fête champêtre_. What a time the young people must have of it, then! There is an Aviary, too, with the remnant of a collection of tropical birds, and a small Menagerie, with a fox, a monkey, and a 'coon. We ask permission to see the house, and our friends having sent in their good names, Doña Maria walks slowly out to meet us. She is a plain, elderly woman, short and stout, with a pleasant voice and gentle manners. She has rather a splendid nest, for a bird of such sober plumage, but all its adornments are in good taste. She shows us first a cool Banqueting-room, where the table is invitingly laid for her Ladyship's own breakfast,--it is painted in fresco, and opens on the garden,--then come the Drawing-rooms, then an exquisite Bedroom hung with blue, the bed and mosquito-netting being adorned with rich lace, then a Picture-gallery, which serves as an Oratory, a cabinet in the wall containing and concealing the altar. Then comes a small room, adorned by her Ladyship's own hands, with paper flowers and stuffed birds, lighted by a pretty, tiny glass dome, and then, endless thanks, good Doña Maria, and farewell forever. For as I love not stuffed birds, nor paper flowers, no, nor mass neither, it is not likely that I shall bear your Ladyship company in Heaven, even should both of us get there, which, while we continue to live and sin, must be considered as uncertain. Other visions unroll themselves as we review our Havana days and ways. Our voyage up the spire of the Cathedral, with swimming eyes and dizzy head. Our friends go bravely through it, and ascend even the last little rickety wooden staircase, calling back for us as the chimney-sweeper sings out from the top of the chimney. Where is Hulia? holding on to a beam with frantic eagerness, deaf to entreaty and encouragement. She is persuaded at last to relinquish it, and is hoisted, pushed, and dragged to the top where, opening her unwilling eyes, she seeks the first strong point of masonry, and hugs it, admiring the view in convulsive sentences, as occasion demands. The point is tolerably lofty, and the view extensive, but one loses many of its beauties in looking down from such an elevation. We must remember this, and not ascribe to St. Simeon Stylites too great an advantage in the enjoyment of natural scenery. Then, after the perilous descent, our exploration of the Cathedral itself, with its shrine of porphyry, and little other adornment,--the pious thoughtfulness of the Sacristan, who, when we pass the host, tells us that "His Majesty is there," and his look of amazement when we do not bow or bend the knee at this intelligence. Then, that refreshing season in the Sacristy, with a graceless young Sub-Deacon, intent upon extending to us all the hospitalities of the church. "Here is the incense,"--he burns some of it under our nostrils; "here is the wine for the Sacrament,--taste of it," and he pours out a tolerable portion, and, handing it to us to sip, tosses off the residue with a smack. "Here is the oil and salt for baptism,--you won't like that, but you may taste it if you choose." And then, he tumbles over all the priest's garments. "This crimson brocade is for high feasts,--this green for common occasions,--this black velvet for funerals,--this white scarf is for marriages." You really begin to regard the Priest as a sort of chameleon, whose color changes with the spiritual food he lives on. Rascal-neophyte, you will be as sanctimonious as the priest himself some day, and as sincere. But all this is in the past, and we have got really to our last of Havana. The last purchases have been made; by great economy we have accomplished a little extravagance. The farewell visits have been paid,--we have paid also the necessary four dollars for the privilege of leaving the Island. Copious leave-takings follow, between ourselves and our long companions at the Hotel,--follow the Bill and servants' fees,--and then, having been waked after a short night's rest, there remains no further excuse for our not taking the boat at early morning, and delivering ourselves into their hands who are to return us to our native country. So, Havana is done with. We are sad and sorry to leave it, but do not sentimentalize, recalling Sheridan's sensible lines:-- "Oh, matchless excellence! and must we part? Well, if we must, we must, and in that case, The less is said, the better." There is a large party of us known to each other in our late wanderings; and as we meet on board, we make a tolerable attempt at cheerfulness. But the thought of the Northern cold lies heavy upon every heart, for though it is late in March, we know where the east wind is now, and will be for two months to come. We are soon in motion, and, casting a last look towards our sky-blue hotel, we see some of the Almy-ites waving flags of truce at us. We seize whatever is at hand, and make the usual frantic demonstrations. Farewell, Morro Castle! farewell, Isla de Cuba! We have nothing left us now but the Steamer. This is the Isabel, greatly be-puffed in the Charleston papers, but rarely praised, one should think, by those who have been in her. Breakfast is served us in a cabin without ventilation, where to breathe is disgusting, to eat, impossible. We explore our state-room,--the thermometer stands at 100° in it, but the day is hot, and we do not suspect any other reason for its high temperature. From these dens we emerge as quickly as possible to the open air, and get ourselves on deck. The Southern seas are always detestable; and though there is no wind to speak of, it soon gets rough, and people stiffen in their places, and go to sleep, or go below, and are never heard of more. Dinner is eaten mostly on the upper deck, but the demand is not large. Iced champagne proves a friend in need. We reach Key West early in the afternoon. The landing is ugly, and though we stop an hour or more, we are expressly told "ten minutes," in order that the Captain may not be bothered with our going on shore. We have here a last look at the cocoa-palm, which grows along the coast. White sea-corals are brought for sale; many turtles are taken on board and laid on their backs, their fins being tied together; also, an invalid in a chair, in the last stages of decline. The turtles remain, for the fifty-six hours that follow, helpless and untended. So piteous do they seem, that one of us suggests "the last sigh of the turtle" as a commemorative title for the aromatic soup that is to follow. And this is all of Key West. On going below at bed-time, our bare feet find the floor of the state-room scorching hot. On inquiry, we find ourselves directly over the boiler,--a pleasant situation in an American steamer. We consider ourselves nearer translation than ever before, and go to sleep trying to show just reason why we should not be blown up, as better people have been, before morning. Next morning--Oh let me here breathe a word of advice to those who plough the Southern seas. Rise early in the morning, if you mean to rise at all, for the sea is quietest then, before the wind is up; and if you are once dressed and on deck, you have a chance. Next morning none were able to get up who were not up by six o'clock,--for by that time the day's work was begun, and people only staid and stiffened where they were. Now do not fear, I have described sea-sickness once and for all; this paper shall not be nauseous with new details. But for love of the dear old Karnak, I must show up this pinchbeck Isabel; this dirty, disorderly floating prison, where no kind care alleviated one's miseries, and no suitable diet helped one's recovery. On board the Karnak, Steward, Stewardess, and Captain followed you up with the zeal of loving-kindness. Here, the hateful black servants flit past you like a dream. If you try to detain them, they vanish with a grin, and promising to return, take care to avoid you in future. N. B.--I call them hateful, because of the true American steam-boat breed, smirking, supercilious, and unserviceable. There, mattresses and cushions were plentifully supplied, and you might lie on deck, if you could not sit up. Here, not even a pillow could be brought. You sit all day bolt upright in a miserable wooden chair, holding your aching head first with this hand, now with that, and wondering that your suffering body can hold together so long. There, the log, the daily observation, the boatswain's whistle, the pleasant bells ringing the hour. Here, no log, no observation, no boatswain, no bells. There, in a word, comfort and confidence; here, distrust and disgust. But we drop the parallel. To us, that dark day was as a vision of familiar faces, strangely distorted and discolored, of friends, usually kind and attentive, who sit grimly around, and looking on one's misery, do not stir to help it. There is a pillow, ah! if somebody would only lay it under this heavy head, that cannot be held up by the weary hand any longer. Henry there is going to do it,--he has got the pillow,--no, he puts it under his own head, regarding me with the glare of a sickly cannibal. One good creature flings half of her blanket over my shivering knees. I know not her name, nor her nature, but I know that she is blessed, and worthy of Paradise. Going below for a moment, I pass through the after-cabin, and see such a collection of wretches as would furnish forth a Chamber of Horrors to repletion. With tossed clothes, disordered hair, and wild eyes, they lie panting for air, which they don't get. We are better off up-stairs, and I return to my wooden chair and end of a blanket, with enthusiasm. But the day passes, and at night we are down again in the state-room over the boiler, with the ports screwed up, and no air to temper the heat. No matter, our weary skeleton refuses to be kept upright any more,--we lie and sleep. And at two in the morning, one of the strong-minded, who could not sleep, arose, and found that the sea was down, and that the ports might be opened, only that the man who had charge of them was asleep. Wherefore she aroused the slumbering traitor with the wholesome clarion of a woman's tongue, and he got up and fumbled about till he found the port-wrench, wherewith he unscrewed all the ports, and we took heart, and revived. The next day was all smooth sailing,--we ate our victuals on deck, and were thankful. And that evening, say at six o'clock, we made the welcome port of Charleston, and went on shore, hoping never to leave it more. Let me not forget to say that at the last moment, when all possibility of service was over, the faithless blacks came about us, and were full of hopes that we were better, smiling and lingering very much as if they expected a fee. But if any of us were weak enough to comply with their desires, for the honor of human nature suffer me to draw a veil over such base compliance, and let the World think they got only what they deserved, which is little enough in any case, and in theirs, nothing. * * * * * And now, Reader, if I have one, farewell. The Preacher who speaks even to one, has his congregation before him, but the poor Scribbler is left to his own illusions, and calls up for himself a gorgeous Public, where perhaps he has only himself for company. Still, it is safest to imagine a Public; and having imagined one, I here take a kind leave of it. If any have followed me along in my travels, and wished me God-speed, I hereby thank them heartily. If any have treated with discourtesy a true word here and there which does not tally with their own notions, so much the worse for them, and for any cause which cannot bear sincerity. And so, wishing that you might all see the pleasant things I have described, and thinking that you cannot have been half so weary in reading these pages as I have been in writing them, I will prolong no further the sweet sorrow of parting, only God bless you, and Good-bye. THE END. * * * * * The following changes have been made in the text. (note of the etext transcriber) two in the morning, One of the strong-minded,=>two in the morning, one of the strong-minded, he looked much inclined to give Somebody else a bad one=>he looked much inclined to give somebody else a bad one 
43420	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. OFF SANTIAGO WITH SAMPSON THE "Stories of American History" Series. By JAMES OTIS, Author of "Toby Tyler," "Jenny Wren's Boarding House," etc. Each story complete in one volume; with 17 original illustrations by L. J. Bridgman. Small 12mo, neatly bound in extra cloth, 75 cents each. =1. When Dewey Came to Manila.= =2. Off Santiago with Sampson.= Two new volumes on the recent Spanish-American War, in the author's deservedly popular "Stories of American History" Series. =3. When Israel Putnam Served the King.= =4. The Signal Boys of '75=: A Tale of the Siege of Boston. =5. Under the Liberty Tree=: A Story of the Boston Massacre. =6. The Boys of 1745= at the Capture of Louisburg. =7. An Island Refuge=: Casco Bay in 1676. =8. Neal the Miller=: A Son of Liberty. =9. Ezra Jordan's Escape= from the Massacre at Fort Loyall. Dana Estes & Co., Publishers, Boston. [Illustration] OFF SANTIAGO WITH SAMPSON BY JAMES OTIS AUTHOR OF "JENNY WREN'S BOARDING-HOUSE," "JERRY'S FAMILY," "THE BOYS' REVOLT," "THE BOYS OF 1745," ETC. Illustrated BOSTON DANA ESTES & COMPANY 1899 Copyright, 1899 BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U. S. A. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. "KEEP OUT" 11 II. KEEP IN 31 III. OFF SANTIAGO 48 IV. THE MERRIMAC 66 V. THE CHASE 86 VI. TEDDY'S DADDY 103 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE THE MARIA TERESA IN FLAMES _Frontispiece_ AT THE GATEWAY 12 TALKING WITH THE LONGSHOREMAN 17 THE MERRIMAC 22 TEDDY COMES ON BOARD THE MERRIMAC 27 SETTING THE HIDING-PLACE IN ORDER 34 TEDDY DISCLOSES HIMSELF 41 THE FLEET 51 "'THIS 'ERE STEAMER IS GOIN' TO BE SUNK'" 57 THE TEXAS 63 SAILORS FROM THE TEXAS 68 KEEPING WATCH OF THE BROOKLYN 73 THE SINKING OF THE MERRIMAC 79 THE SUNKEN MERRIMAC 83 TEDDY TRIES TO ASSIST THE WOUNDED SAILOR 90 THE TEXAS IN THE FIGHT 99 OFF SANTIAGO WITH SAMPSON. CHAPTER I. "KEEP OUT." It was a small but by no means feeble-looking boy who stood in front of a driveway disclosed by the opening of huge gates which, until they had been swung inward, appeared to have been a portion of the high fence of boards. There was seemingly no inducement for a boy to linger in this vicinity, unless, indeed, it might have been the sign posted either side the gate, on which was painted in letters rendered conspicuous because of the vivid colouring, the forbidding words, "Keep Out." "I'll not keep out 'less I'm minded to, an' him as can hold me this side the fence needs to be spry on his feet," the small boy said, half to himself, and with a gesture of defiance which told he had not been accustomed to obeying commands that might be evaded. Through the gateway nothing could be seen save enormous heaps of coal, some enclosed in pens formed of planks as if to prevent them from mingling with the others, and between all a path or road of no more than sufficient width to permit the passage of a cart. In the distance, a rough building abruptly closed the view, and beyond it the puffing of steam and rattle of iron implements told of life and activity. [Illustration] Outside the fence, it was as if this certain portion of the city had been temporarily deserted; but one could hear the rumble of wheels over the pavements on either hand, giving token that the coalyard was situated just beyond the line of city traffic. The boy gazed into the uninviting-looking place as if fascinated, only glancing up now and then at the signs which mutely forbade his entrance, and, as if unconscious of his movements, stole slowly nearer and nearer the gateway until he stood directly on the line that separated the yard from the sidewalk. "If I wanted to go in, it's more'n a couple of signs that could keep me out," he muttered, threateningly, and then, with one backward glance to assure himself that no unfriendly policeman was watching from the distance, the boy darted forward, taking refuge behind the nearest heap of coal, lest an enemy should be lurking near at hand. Save for the hum of labour everywhere around, he heard nothing. No guardian of the smutty premises appeared to forbid his entrance, and after waiting a full minute to make certain it was safe to advance yet farther, he left one place of partial concealment for the next in his proposed line of march. So far as he could see, there was no other guardian of the yard save the two signs at the entrance, and the only purpose they served was to challenge him. Grown bolder as the moments passed without bringing to light an enemy, the lad advanced more rapidly until he stood, partially concealed by one of the pens, where it was possible to have a full view of all that was being done in this place to which the public were not supposed to be admitted. If the intruder had braved the unknown dangers of the yard simply in order to gratify his curiosity, then had he paid a higher price than the view warranted. The building, which from the street appeared to mark the end of the enclosure, was a structure wherein puffing engines, grimy men, long lengths of moving chains, and enormous iron cars or boxes were sheltered from the sun or rain. In front of it a wooden wall extended down into the water,--a pier perhaps it might be called,--and at this pier, held fast by hemp and iron cables, lay a gigantic steamer built of iron. The intruder gave no heed to the busy men and machinery within the building. The vessel, so powerful, but lying there apparently helpless, enchained his attention until he had made mental note of every spar, or boat, or cable within his range of vision. Then, suddenly, from somewhere amid the chains, and cars, and puffing steam, came the shrill blast of a whistle, and as if by magic all activity ceased. The engines no longer breathed with a heavy clank; cars and chains came to a standstill, and men moved quietly away here or there as if having no more interest in the hurly-burly. One of the weary labourers, his face begrimed with coal-dust until it was not possible to distinguish the colour of his skin, took from its near-by hiding-place a dinner-pail, and came directly toward where the small boy was overlooking the scene. Within two yards of the lad the dusty man sat down, brushed the ends of his fingers on his trousers, rather from force of habit than with any idea of cleansing them, and without further delay began to eat his dinner. The boy eyed him hungrily, looked around quickly to make certain that there were no others dangerously near, and stepped out from behind his screen of coal. "You'd better keep an eye out for the watchman," the man said, speaking indistinctly because of the bread in his mouth, and the boy replied, defiantly: "I'd like to see the watchman 'round here that I'm 'fraid of, an' besides, he couldn't catch me." "What'er you doin' here?" "Nothin'." "A boy of your size has got no business to be loafin' 'round doin' nothin'." "I might be eatin' if I had a chance; but there hasn't been much of an openin' for me in that line this quite a spell." "Hungry?" "Give me a piece of that bread an' I'll show yer." "Don't you do anything for a livin'?" the man asked passing the lad a generous slice from the loaf. "Course I do." "What?" "Anything that pays. I've sold papers some since the Spaniards got so funny; but it ain't any great snap, only once in awhile when the news is humpin' itself. A feller gets stuck mighty often, an' I'm thinkin' of tryin' somethin' else." "Where's your folks?" "I ain't got any to speak of now, since my father got giddy an' went off to war." "Out for a soldier, eh?" "Not a bit of it! He shovels coal aboard one of them big steamers that's down smashin' the life out'er Cuby, that's what he does, an' he's nobody's slouch, dad ain't!" "What's your name?" "Teddy Dunlap." "Want more bread?" The boy leaned over in order to look into the dinner-pail, and then said, promptly: "I've had enough." "Don't think you're robbin' me, 'cause you ain't. I believe in feedin' well, an' this is only my first pail. There's another over there that I'll tackle later." Teddy glanced in the direction pointed out by his new acquaintance, and, seeing a pail half concealed by some loose boards, at once stretched out his hand, as he said: "If you've got plenty, I don't care if I do have another piece of that bread." "Can't you earn enough to keep you in food?" and the man gave to the boy a most appetising sandwich. "Say, that's a dandy! It's half meat, too! Them you get down-town don't have more'n the shadow of a ham bone inside the bread! Course I make enough to buy food; but you don't think I'm blowin' it all in jest for a spread, eh?" "Runnin' a bank?" "Well, it's kind'er like that; I'm puttin' it all away, so's to go down to Cuby an' look after the old man. He allers did need me, an' I can't see how he's been gettin' along alone." "Where's your mother?" "Died when I was a kid. Dad an' me boomed things in great shape till he got set on goin' to war, an' that broke it all up." "Did he leave you behind to run wild?" [Illustration] "Not much he didn't, 'cause he knows I can take care of myself; but he allowed to make money enough so's we could buy a place out in the country, where we'd have an imitation farm, an' live high. Oh, I'm all right, an' every time I catch a sucker like you there's jest so much more saved toward goin' down to Cuby. You see I never did take much stock in dad's kitin' 'round fightin' Spaniards, an' since he left it seems as if I was mighty foolish to let him go, so I'm bound to be where he is, when things come my way." "Look here, Teddy," and the dust-begrimed man spoke in a more kindly tone to the boy, "If your father is a coal-passer in the navy, an' that's what he seems to be, 'cordin' to your story, you couldn't see very much of him, even though you was on board his vessel all the time." "Don't yer s'pose I know that? I ain't sich a baby that I count on bein' right under his nose; but I'm goin' to be somewhere near the old man in case he needs me." "It seems as if you might get down to Cuba easier than earnin' the money to pay your passage." "How?" and Teddy ceased eating for the instant to look at this new friend who had made a suggestion which interested him more than anything else could have done. "Why don't you try to work your passage? Now, here's this 'ere steamer, loadin' with coal for the navy--perhaps goin' to the very ship your father is on. If you could jolly the captain into takin' you to do odd jobs, it would be a snap, alongside of payin' for a ticket an' trustin' to luck after gettin' there." "Well, say! That would be a great racket if it could be worked! Is it a dead sure thing that the steamer's bound for our war-vessels?" "That's what, though it ain't to be said that she'll be goin' to the very craft your father's on. All I know is Uncle Sam has bought this coal, an' it's bein' taken out to our navy somewhere 'round Cuba." "I don't reckon any but them what enlists can go aboard the steamer, an' the snap can't be worked, for I've tried four times to get taken on as a sailor." "But bless your heart, this 'ere craft is only a chartered collier." "A what?" "I mean she's only a freighter that Uncle Sam has hired to carry coal. You won't find enlisted men aboard of her." "An' do you really think there's a chance for me?" "I can't say as to that, lad; but I'd make a try for a berth aboard if my mind was set on goin' into that part of the world, which it ain't. The captain went below not ten minutes before the noon-whistle sounded, an' he's likely there this minute." Teddy gazed inquiringly at this new acquaintance for an instant, as if suspicious that the man might be making sport of him, and then marched resolutely toward the end of the pier, with the half-eaten sandwich almost forgotten in his hand. After perhaps five minutes had passed, he returned, looking disappointed, but not disheartened, and seating himself by the side of the owner of the two dinner-pails, resumed operations upon the sandwich. "See the captain?" "Yep." "Didn't want a boy, eh?" "Guess not; he said he'd give me two minutes to get out of the cabin, an' I thought perhaps I'd better go." "Quite natural, lad, quite natural; I'd done the same thing myself. There couldn't have been any very great harm worked, though, in askin' the question." "It stirred him up considerable; but I guess he'll get over it without any very bad spell," Teddy said, grimly, and after a brief pause, added, reflectively, "It seems as though some men hated boys; I've seen them as would take a good deal of trouble to kick a feller if he stood the least little bit in the way, an' I never could understand it." "Perhaps there's more'n you in the same box; a brute's a brute whether he be old or young, an' age always makes 'em worse. It's a pity, though, that you didn't strike one of the right kind, because if you're set on gettin' down where the fightin' is goin' on, this 'ere steamer would have been the safest way." "Do you know when she's likely to leave?" Teddy asked, after a long pause, during which he had been gazing intently at the gilt letters, _Merrimac_, on the vessel's rail. "Some time to-night, I reckon. We've been workin' night an' day at the loadin', an' it's said that she'll leave the dock within an hour after the last scoopful has been put aboard." "How long will it take her to get there?" "I can't say, lad, seein's I don't rightly know where she's bound; but it shouldn't be a long voyage at the worst, for such as her." [Illustration] Again Teddy gazed at the gilt letters on the rail, as if in them he saw something strange or wonderful, and when the owner of the dinner-pails had come to an end of his meal, the boy said, abruptly: "Do you know the watchman here?" "Watchman! I haven't seen any yet, though I reckon likely there is one around somewhere; but he ain't agitatin' himself with doin' much watchin'." "Is the yard open all the time?" "I haven't seen the gates closed yet; but most likely that's because the work has been pushed on so fast, there hasn't been time to shut 'em. Look here, lad!" and now the man sat bolt upright, staring as intently at the boy as the latter had at the gilt letters, "Is it in your head to stow away on that steamer?" "Sim Donovan did it aboard a English steamer, an' I've heard it said he had a great time." "Yes, I reckon he did, if the captain was the usual sort," the dust-begrimed man replied, grimly. "I could keep out of sight a whole week, if it was for the sake of comin' across dad," the boy added, half to himself. "That's what you think now, lad; but it ain't the easy work you're countin' on. As a general rule, stowaways get it mighty tough, an' I'd sooner take my chances of swimmin', than to try any such plan." "If a feller kept under cover he couldn't get into much trouble." "But you can't stay in hidin' any great length of time, lad. You'd have to come out for food or water after a spell." "Not if I took plenty with me," Teddy replied, in the tone of one who has already arrived at a conclusion. "It looks easy enough while you're outside; but once shut in between decks, or cooped up in some small hole, an' you'd sing a different tune." "I wouldn't if it was a case of seein' dad when we got there." "But that's the trouble, my boy. You don't know where the steamer is bound. She might be runnin' straight away from him, an' then what would you do?" "You said she was goin' to carry the coal to our vessels, didn't you?" "Yes; but that don't mean she'll strike the very one your father is workin' on." "I'll take the chances," and now Teddy spoke very decidedly. For an instant it was as if the owner of the two dinner-pails would attempt to dissuade him from the hastily formed determination, and then the man checked himself suddenly. "I like to see a boy show that he's got some backbone to him, an' it may be you'll pull out all right. It'll be an experience you'll never forget, though, an' perhaps it won't do any harm." "How can it?" Teddy asked, sharply. "Them as have tried it might be able to explain more'n I can; there's no call for me to spend wind tryin' to tell what you won't listen to, so I'll hold my tongue. I'm bound to say this much, though, which is that you're certain to catch it rough when the time comes for showin' yourself." "That'll be all right; I can stand a good deal for the sake of seein' the old man once more." Having said this, Teddy turned his head away as if no longer inclined for conversation, whereupon the owner of the two dinner-pails surveyed him admiringly. "I wouldn't wonder if you had considerable sand in you, Teddy Dunlap," he said, musingly. "An' even though it seems a queer thing for a grown man to do, I'm minded to give you a lift along what's goin' to prove a mighty hard road." "Meanin' that you're willin' to help me?" the lad asked, his face brightening wonderfully. "It's little I can do, an' while I ought'er turn you over to the police in order to prevent your makin' a fool of yourself, I'll see the game out so far as I can. What have you got by way of an outfit?" "I don't need any." "You must have food and water." "I ain't broke, an' it won't be any great job to buy as much grub as will keep me goin' for a spell." "That's the same as all stowaways figger, an' the consequence is that they have to show themselves mighty soon after the ship sails. I ain't advisin' you to try the game; but if you're set on it, I says, says I, take all you'll need for a week, an' then perhaps there'll be a turn in affairs that'll help you out of a bad hole. Here are my pails; they're yours an' welcome. Fill 'em both with water, or perhaps cold tea would be best; buy whatever will be most fillin', an' walk aboard as bold as a lion within the next hour. Them as see you are bound to think you're waitin' upon some of the workmen, an' not a word will be said. The hidin' of yourself is easy enough; it's the comin' out that'll be rough." "Say, you're what I call a dandy!" and Teddy laid his hand on the man's knee approvingly. "I was mighty lucky to come across one of your kind." "I ain't so certain about that. Before twenty-four hours have gone by you may be wishin' you'd never seen me." "I'll risk that part of it, an' if you really mean for me to have the pails, you'll see me go aboard the steamer mighty soon." "They're yours, my boy, an' I only hope you'll come out of the scrape all right." "Don't worry 'bout that; it'll be a terrible spry captain that can make me cry baby when I'm headin' toward where dad is. Be good to yourself!" Teddy took up the pails, and as he turned to go out of the yard his new acquaintance asked, solicitously: "Got money enough to buy what'll be needed? If you haven't there's some odd change about my clothes that--" "I'm well fixed, an' that's a fact. Ever since the idea came to me of huntin' dad up, I've kept myself in shape to leave town on a hustle. You're mighty good, just the same." "I'm makin' an old fool of myself, that's what I'm doin'," the man replied, angrily, and then turned resolutely away, muttering to himself, "It's little less than sheer cruelty to let a lad like him stow away on a collier. There ain't one chance in a thousand of his findin' the father he's after, an' the odds are in favour of his havin' a precious hard time before gettin' back to this town." [Illustration] Then a whistle sounded as a warning that the labourers must return to their tasks, and a moment later the building was alive once more with the hum and whir of machinery, the clanking of great chains, and the voices of men. One of the steamer's hatches was already on and battened down. A second was being fastened in place, and the final preparations being made told that the enormous hold had been nearly filled with the black fuel needed by the war-ships. Every man, whether a member of the vessel's crew, or one of the labourers employed for the lading, was intent only on his own business, and among all that throng it is probable that but one gave any heed to a small boy who came rapidly down through the yard carrying two tin pails in his hands, and a large paper parcel under his arm. That single workman, who was giving heed to other than his own special work, nodded in the most friendly fashion as the lad passed near where he was standing, and whispered, gruffly: "God love you, lad!" The boy winked gravely, and then, setting his face seaward, marched boldly up on the steamer's deck, glancing neither to the right nor the left, lest it should be observed that he was not familiar with his surroundings. The man, who a few moments previous had been the possessor of two dinner-pails, watched carefully as the small lad walked rapidly forward, and only when the latter was lost to view did he give heed to his own work, saying half to himself as he took up the task once more: "I've half a mind to blow on the boy even now, for it's a cruel shame to let him take the chances of stowin' away with but little hope of ever findin' his father." As if in pursuance of this thought he took a step forward, and then checked himself, adding, thoughtfully: "It would be more cruel to stop the little shaver just when he believes he's workin' his plan so smooth. Better let him go his own course, an' trust that them he comes across will remember the time when they were lads." CHAPTER II. KEEP IN. Teddy Dunlap's father was formerly a coal-passer on a steam-tug, and many times had the lad, while spending the day with his parent, seen an ocean-going steamer at close range, while the small craft went alongside the larger one for business purposes. At such times the boy seldom lost an opportunity of boarding the big vessel, and thus it was that he had a general idea of where he might the most readily find a hiding-place this day when he was venturing so much in the hope of meeting his only relative. The dinner-pails and the parcel under his arm would have done much toward warding off suspicion as to his purpose, had any one observed him; but every person on deck, whether member of the crew or temporarily employed to make the ship ready for sea, was so intent on his duties as to have no thought for a lad who appeared to be attending strictly to his own business. Even if any one aboard had observed Teddy particularly, the natural thought would have been that he had come to deliver the parcel and pails to one of the workmen, and so long as the boy had been permitted to come over the rail, it was reasonable to suppose he had due authority for being there. Teddy knew full well that his chances for successfully stowing away in the vicinity of the main cabin, the engine-room, or the deck-houses, were exceedingly slight, for such places were visited by many; but down in the very eyes of the ship, where were located the quarters for the seamen, was more than one dark, out-of-the-way hole into which he could creep with but little fear of being discovered. Turning his head neither to the right nor the left, and moving rapidly as if it was his desire to be ashore again as soon as possible, the boy went into the forecastle--the sailors' parlour. The dark, ill-ventilated place, filled with noisome odours, had at that moment no living occupants save the rats who had grown bold through long tenancy. The crew were all on deck, for at this time, when quick despatch was necessary, no skulking would be allowed, and had Teddy's friend with the dinner-pails attended to the arrangements, the boy could not have had a better opportunity. He might be even boisterously noisy, and there was little likelihood any would come to learn the cause of the uproar until after the steamer had left the coal-sheds to begin her long voyage straight toward the enemy's islands. Being in a certain degree aware of this last fact, Teddy set about making his arrangements for the ticketless voyage in a methodical fashion, there being no reason why he should allow himself to be hurried. The crew on board the good steamer _Merrimac_ had neither better nor worse quarters than those to be found on any other craft of her class; but to a lad whose experiences of seafaring life had been confined to short excursions around the harbour, this "sea parlour" was by no means inviting, and save for the incentive which urged him forward, Teddy Dunlap might have allowed himself to become disheartened even before it had been proven that he could take passage secretly. "It ain't so _awful_ tough," he said to himself, "an' daddy will be all the more glad to see me after knowin' I've had a hard time gettin' to him." This last thought was sufficient to strengthen his failing courage, and straightway he set about searching for a hiding-place where he might remain concealed until the steamer should come alongside Commodore Schley's flag-ship, the _Brooklyn_, whereon was his father. Then--but there would be time enough to form plans for showing himself when he had nothing better with which to occupy his attention. The forecastle was well filled with sea-chests, bedding, which as yet had not been put in place, and such like goods as seamen would naturally bring with them on a reasonably long voyage, therefore Teddy found it difficult to judge as to what might be the general arrangements for stowage after the steamer should be under way; but he had good reason to believe it was necessary to find some place so small that it could not well be utilised by the men. When, after some search, he came upon a narrow, dark, doorless closet, partially filled with coils of rope, bolts of canvas, and what appeared to be a general assortment of odds and ends, it seemed as if he had indeed found that for which he was looking. There was little chance this small den would be required for other than what it was then used, and he had only to fear that some of the articles it contained might suddenly be needed, when he must of a necessity be discovered by whosoever should be sent to overhaul the goods. [Illustration] "I'll have to take the chances," Teddy said to himself, having considered well this possibility of discovery. "It ain't likely they'll want anything out of here till after the steamer is at sea, an' then it'll be too late to send me ashore." Once having decided that this was to be his abiding-place during the time he could remain in hiding on board the _Merrimac_, Teddy set about making such bestowal of the goods as would best serve to his comfort, arguing with himself that he might not have another opportunity for putting the new quarters into decent shape. Understanding that once the steamer was at sea she would be tossed about by the waves until it might be difficult for him to remain in whatever place he pleased, the boy's first care was to make of the rope and canvas a barricade to hold the remainder of the goods in proper position, and, this done, there was little else possible, save to unroll a bolt of the sail-cloth that it should serve as a bed. "It's a good deal snugger than I expected, an' the dark part of it don't count," he said to himself, contentedly, as he wedged the two tin pails filled with water, and his store of provisions, inside the largest coil of rope. "When there ain't too much noise I can hear the crew talkin', and that'll help out big if a feller happens to get lonesome. Them signs on the coal-yard said 'keep out,' an' I come in; now I ought'er put up one that says 'keep in,' an' perhaps I'll go out quicker'n I'm countin' on. Anyhow it's a case of keepin' in mighty snug, 'less I want to run up against that captain once more, an' I'm thinkin' he'd be an ugly customer." Teddy Dunlap was well content. He believed his store of provisions and water was sufficient to keep both hunger and thirst at a distance during such time as it might be necessary for him to remain there in hiding, and when the short term of imprisonment should come to an end, he would be with his father. What more could any twelve-year-old boy ask for? It was while counting up his reasons for being thankful that the stowaway fell asleep, the heat, the darkness, and the comparative quiet all contributing to make his eyelids heavy, and he was yet unconscious when two noisy, bustling little tugs, one either side of the big vessel, towed her down the harbour. The voyage had begun, and, apparently, there was no suspicion in the minds of the officers that the _Merrimac_ had on board other than her regularly shipped crew. When Teddy awakened he felt comfortable both in mind and body; the steamer was rising and falling on the ocean swell, but not to such a degree as inconvenienced him in the slightest, and the many odours with which his nostrils were assailed passed almost entirely unnoticed. He believed, because of the pounding of the waves, that the _Merrimac_ was rushing through the waters at a sharp pace, and this supposed fact was in itself sufficient to counterbalance any defects he may have discovered in his hiding-place, for the greater the speed the sooner he might see his father. Not until after he had been awake several moments was it possible to distinguish, amid the varied noises, the sound of human voices; but he was finally able to do so, and became greatly cheered thereby. "Now, this ain't goin' to be so bad," he said to himself, contentedly. "I'll know everything that's goin' on, 'cause it won't be a big job to crawl out far enough to hear the men talk, an' a feller couldn't be better fixed, not if he'd paid two prices for a ticket." Then the idea came to Teddy Dunlap that he was hungry, and he laughed gently at the thought that it was only necessary to stretch out his hand in order to satisfy the desire. "Talk 'bout your palace-cars! They ain't a marker 'longside this way of travellin'. I don't have to wait for any tousled-headed nigger to bring my order, 'cause here it is!" Straightway the boy began to satisfy his hunger, doing it in an economical fashion, for he was not minded to exhaust his supply on the first day of leaving port. He drank sparingly of the water, but yet taking sufficient to quench his thirst, and when the meal was come to an end lay back on the canvas bed luxuriously, congratulating himself again and again, upon his determination to go in search of his father. The motion of the steamer grew more violent; but Teddy was proof against such rolling as the _Merrimac_ was indulging in then. There remained the same buffeting of the waves which told of progress; told that the distance between himself and his father was rapidly being lessened, and this was sufficient for the stowaway. The plunging of the steamer was to Teddy Dunlap no more than the violent rocking of a cradle would be to an infant; it prevented him from remaining quiet as would have been pleasant, but did not drive slumber from his eyelids. In less than ten minutes after having partaken of the meal he was again wrapped in slumber, and during a full twenty-four hours he alternately slept and ate; but at the end of that time was more than ready for a change of programme. Then it was that his eyes refused to close; the folds of canvas, which at first had seemed as soft as any fellow could have asked for, became hard as iron, and he suddenly discovered that he was sore and lame from having been flung about when the vessel rolled. The hardships of a stowaway's life suddenly became a reality, and instead of congratulating himself upon being on board the _Merrimac_, he began to speculate upon the probable length of the voyage. He hungered to hear the voices of the men more distinctly, and spent full two hours gently moving the dunnage around so that he might crawl out near the entrance to this seeming cave. When he had gotten so far into the forecastle that no more than two coils of rope hid him from view of the watch below, and understood it would be dangerous to advance any farther, he learned that it was impossible to hear any more than such words as were spoken in the loudest tone. There was little hope of being able to realise what might be going on around him by such means. Then came a most dismal twenty-four hours, when the _Merrimac_, met full in the teeth by a gale of wind, staggered, plunged, and rolled her way along, every wave striking the iron hull with a force that caused Teddy to wince, and then came that deathly sickness which those who sail upon the sea are sometimes forced to endure. There were many hours when the stowaway believed the steamer was about to go to the bottom, and he fancied death was the only relief from his agony. He even ceased to think of his father, and considered no person save himself, wondering why he had been so foolish as to believe it might be wise to search for Commodore Schley's flag-ship. More than once while the malady had a firm hold upon him, did he decide to throw himself upon the mercy of whosoever might chance to be in view when he emerged from the hiding-place, and perhaps if the sickness had been less severe, his adventures would have ended as do the greater number of such exploits. Once having recovered, however, his heart became braver, even though he learned that nearly all the water had been spilled while the steamer was tossing about so wildly, and his store of provisions, which had seemed so large when he came on board, was nearly exhausted. After this the hours passed more slowly, and each moment the imprisonment seemed more irksome. It was only with difficulty he could force himself to remain screened from view, and more than once did he venture dangerously near the entrance to his floating cave in the hope of seeing a human face, but yet he kept his secret forty-eight hours longer, when the provisions, as well as the water, had come to an end. He had ceased to speculate upon the meeting with his father, but thought only of how long he could endure the pangs of hunger and thirst, and even the fear of the commander's possible brutality faded away as he dwelt upon the pleasure of having sufficient to eat and drink. And finally, as might have been expected, the moment arrived when he could no longer hold his courage against the suffering, and he made preparations to discover himself. How long he had been cooped up in that narrow place it was impossible for him to so much as guess; he did not try to compute the number of hours that had elapsed since he last tasted food or water; there was only in his mind an intense desire to receive the punishment for having stowed away, in order that he might the sooner satisfy the cravings of his stomach. "It's no use to hold on any longer; the voyage ain't comin' to an end for weeks an' weeks, an' I'll be dead in another day if I don't have somethin' to eat. I'll go out this minute, an' take whatever they give me in the way of a floggin', for waitin' won't make things any better." Having arrived at this decision, Teddy Dunlap began to attack the cordage which screened the entrance to his retreat as if each strand of rope was a deadly enemy to be overcome without loss of time, and when he had thrown down the last obstacle he stood blinking and winking in the not overly strong light of the forecastle, confronted by a short, round-faced sailor, who surveyed him in mingled fear and astonishment. "Where--who--what--oh, a stowaway, eh?" the little man cried, after having expressed on his glistening face, in rapid succession, fear, astonishment, and bewilderment. "Well, I'll eat my hat if I ever heard of a lad stowin' away on a collier what's out on an errand like ours!" [Illustration] "Yes, I'm a stowaway, an' I don't care who knows it!" Teddy cried, in a tone of desperation. "I held in just as long as any feller could, an' it seems as if I was next door to bein' dead, I'm so thirsty an' hungry!" "You won't count triflin' things like that after you've come face to face with the captain, lad," and the little man appeared as truly sorrowful as any one of a like jolly countenance ever can, however saddening the situation. "Will he let in to me pretty tough?" "I'm thinkin' that anything else you've had in that line will seem a good deal like a joke, alongside of what he'll deal out, an' that ain't the worst of it." "What else can he do?" and Teddy looked up timidly, absolutely frightened out of his hunger. "This 'ere is the next thing to a government steamer, seein's we're on naval service, an' the captain is like to turn you over to the first cruiser we meet, for extra punishment. I don't know how Uncle Sam treats them as stows away on his vessels, but I'll go bail it ain't with any very tender hand." Teddy Dunlap looked around the forecastle, searching for some one to whom he could appeal, for he believed this jolly-looking little sailor was trying to play upon his fears; but the sea-parlour was empty. If he had waited forty-eight hours for an opportune time in which to make his appearance, he could not have come at a better moment. "What's the use tryin' to scare a feller almost to death?" he asked, piteously. "I've got to take the dose, of course; but there's no need of your rubbin' it in." "I ain't comin' any game on you, lad, an' that's the solemn truth. While I never saw the captain of this 'ere steamer till I came aboard, I'll eat my hat if he ain't a tartar when you rub his fur the wrong way, an' I'm tryin' to think if there ain't some way of gettin' you out of the scrape." "I'd go back into my hole if I had somethin' to eat an' drink." "Where'd you come from?" Teddy pointed to his late place of concealment, and the jolly little man said, quite cheerfully: "That's the very thing for you to do, my son. I don't want to see you abused, an' it'll be hard lines if between us you can't be got off this bloomin' steamer without everybody's knowin' that you've cheated Uncle Sam out of a passage." "Can you get me somethin' to eat?" Teddy asked, imploringly. "I will if it takes every cent that's comin' to me in the way of wages, to square the cook. Tell me what brought you here, sonny? You can stand jest behind this dunnage, an' we'll be able to talk quite comfortable." That the little man would be a real friend there could be no doubt, and without hesitation Teddy told him the whole story, neither adding to nor taking therefrom, and saying, by way of conclusion: "Of course it'll be all right when I come across daddy, for there ain't no captain of a coal-steamer who'd dare give it to me very rough while he was around." "An' your father is aboard the _Brooklyn_, eh?" "Yes; he shipped as coal-passer." "Well, I don't rightly know what he'll be able to do for you in case we come across him, which is doubtful; but from what I've seen of skippers since this war begun, I'm thinkin' our captain will swing a pretty heavy hand, unless he meets some other feller who holds a bigger commission." "You talk as if I couldn't find daddy," Teddy interrupted. "He's aboard the flag-ship." "That's what I heard you say; but it ain't any proof we'll come across him. This 'ere cargo of coal is goin' where it's most needed, an' we may never find any of Schley's fleet." "But we're goin' right where the war-vessels are." "See here, my son, Commodore Schley's fleet ain't the only squadron in this war by a long chalk, an' we might work at coalin' the navy from now till we're gray-headed without comin' across him. I'm afraid the chances of findin' your father are slim; but I'm bound to help you out'er the snarl that bloomin' longshoreman got you into, if it so be I can. Get back into the hole, an' I'll see what can be found in the way of grub." Teddy, more disheartened because of the doubt expressed as to the possibility of finding his father, obeyed the little man's order without remonstrance, and once alone again, gave himself up to the most disagreeable thoughts, absolutely forgetting for the moment that he had supposed himself on the verge of starvation a short time previous. As yet he had not absolutely divulged his secret, save to the little sailor who had promised to be his friend, and it might be possible that at some port he could slip on shore without the knowledge of any save this one man. But all such counted for nothing at the moment, in view of the possibility that he had, perhaps, made the venture in vain. There was another and yet more alarming view to be taken of the situation. He might be forced to go ashore in a strange harbour, for it was hardly within the range of probability that he could return in the _Merrimac_ to the home port, and then there was the ugly chance that possibly there would be great difficulty in finding his way back. "I've made the biggest kind of a fool of myself!" he wailed, very softly; "but I won't let anybody know that I'm willin' to agree to it. When a feller gets into a muss he's bound to crawl out of it an' keep his upper lip stiff, else folks will have the laugh on him. It ain't so certain but I'd better go straight on deck an' take my dose; the captain won't be likely to kill me, an' the sooner it's over the easier I'll feel." It is not certain but that Teddy Dunlap might have put this new proposition into execution at once, had it not been for the coming of the little sailor, who said, in a cheery tone: "Here you are, my hearty, salt horse an' tea! I reckon you can worry along on that for a spell, an' meanwhile I'll keep my weather eye liftin' for you. Things may not be more'n half as bad as they look, an' even that'll be tough enough." "I've been thinkin' I'd better have it out with the captain now, an' then I wouldn't be dreadin' it." "What's the sense of picklin' a rod for your own back when you may run away from it? Hold on here for a spell, an' I'll get the lay of the land before anything foolish is done." "You're mighty good to me," Teddy murmured, softly, as he took the hook-pot of tea and strip of cold meat from the sailor's hands. "What's your name?" "Bill Jones--Snippey, some of the hands call me when they want to be funny. I reckon we'd best not do any more chinnin', for the port watch will be in here precious soon, an' there's more'n one man who'd make life hot for you if he had the chance. I know what sailors are, lad, seein's I've been one myself, man an' boy, these thirty years, an' their foolin' is pretty tough play for one like you. Lay low till I give the word, an' if there don't seem to be any way out of this snarl within the week, then it'll be time enough to let the old man have a whack at your hide." CHAPTER III. OFF SANTIAGO. It was really wonderful how changed everything appeared to Teddy Dunlap after his interview with Bill Jones. As a matter of course there had been no enlargement of his hiding-place, and yet it seemed as if he could move about more freely than before. He was forced to remain in quite as cramped a position, but it no longer seemed painful. Although the sailor had given him no encouragement that he might succeed in the task he had set himself, but, on the contrary, appeared to think it a hopeless one, Teddy felt positive that the moment was very near at hand when he would be clasped once more in his father's arms. He had come out from his hiding-place weak and despairing, choosing the most severe punishment that could be inflicted rather than longer endure the misery which had been his constant companion during so many days, and now, even before partaking of the meat and tea, all was forgotten in the belief that he would soon be with his father. It was as if some other boy had taken Teddy Dunlap's place, and this second lad was strong where the other had been weak. He made a hearty meal, rearranged his bed so that he might be nearer the entrance to the hiding-place in case the sailor found it necessary to communicate with him hurriedly, and then indulged in more refreshing sleep than had visited his eyelids during the past forty-eight hours. When Teddy awakened, however, much of this new courage had vanished, and again he allowed himself to look forward into the future, searching for trouble. He had no means of knowing whether it was day or night, for the sunlight never came into this hole; but, because of the silence in the forecastle, it seemed probable the crew were on deck. The steamer rode on an even keel, save for a sluggish roll which told she was sailing over calm seas, and the air had suddenly grown stifling hot. Creeping so near the entrance that there was great danger of being discovered by such of the men as might come that way, Teddy waited with feverish impatience for some word from Bill Jones, and it seemed as if a full day must have passed before the voice of the jolly little sailor was heard. "Well, my hearty, you're in great luck, an' no mistake. I wouldn't have believed things could have gone so nearly your way, if I hadn't seen 'em with my own eyes." Before the sailor ceased speaking, Teddy had come out from his hiding-place regardless of possible discovery, and appeared to be on the point of rushing up the narrow companionway. "Hold on, you young rascal! Do you count on jumpin' right into the captain's arms?" and Bill Jones seized the lad by the shirt collar, pulling him backward with no gentle force. "Where was you headin' for?" "Ain't it time for me to go on deck?" Teddy asked, speaking with difficulty because of the sailor's firm clutch. "Time? I reckon not, unless you're achin' for a taste of the rope's end. Our skipper ain't any very mild tempered man at the best of times, an' this is one of his worst days, for everything has been goin' wrong end foremost jest when he wants to see the ship in apple-pie order." "I thought you said somethin' about my bein' in luck, an' the only thing of the kind that could come to me, would be to know father was on deck." "I don't reckon you'll see him aboard the _Merrimac_ for some time to come, though you're nearer to him this minute than I ever allowed you'd be in this part of the world." "What do you mean?" and Teddy literally trembled with the impatience of anticipation. "Sampson's fleet is dead ahead. His vessels are the very ones we've come to coal, an' if that ain't luck enough for a stowaway, I'd like to know what you could call it?" "Is the _Brooklyn_ anywhere near?" and Teddy did his best to speak calmly. "Dead ahead, I tell you." "Will we run right alongside of her?" "I don't allow you've any claim to count on luck like that; but we're hard by Sampson's fleet, and it'll be strange if we can't find a chance of lettin' your father know where you are." "Find a chance? Why, I'll go right on deck an' yell to him. He's bound to come out when he hears me." [Illustration] There was in this remark something which struck Bill Jones as being so comical that he burst into a hearty laugh, and then, realising that his messmates on deck might come down to learn the cause of such unusual mirth, he partially checked himself, gurgling and choking in the efforts to suppress his merriment, until it appeared that he was on the point of being strangled. "Go on deck an' yell to him," he muttered in the intervals between what appeared to be spasms. "Say, lad, it's precious lucky the weather is so hot that the crew have been driven out, else we'd had 'em all down on us, for I can't hold in, no matter how hard I try. So you think it's only a case of goin' on deck an' yellin', to bring your father right over the rail!" "He'd come if he heard me," Teddy replied, sharply. "I ain't so certain 'bout that, for coal-passers don't have the choice of promenading a battle-ship's deck. The officers generally have somethin' to say about capers of that kind. Besides, you might yell yourself black in the face, even if the _Merrimac_ was layin' close alongside the _Brooklyn_, an' he'd never be any the wiser. You seem to have the idee that one of Uncle Sam's vessels is built something after the pattern of a tugboat." "But I've got to get at him somehow," Teddy said, in perplexity, the new and great joy which had sprung up in his heart dying away very suddenly. "True for you, lad; but it ain't to be done in the way you're figgerin' on, an', besides, havin' come along so smooth this far, I'm not countin' on lettin' you run your nose against such a thistle as the captain is like to be. It ought'er be enough that we've struck into the very fleet you wanted to find, an' a boy what can't wait a spell after all the good fortune you've had, ain't fit to be scurryin' 'round here huntin' for his father." "I'll go right back into the hole, an' wait till you tell me to come out," Teddy said, meekly, understanding full well what his plight would be should this friendly sailor turn against him. "Now you're talkin' sense," Bill Jones said, approvingly. "I was countin' on cheerin' you up a bit, by tellin' of where the _Merrimac_ had fetched up, an' didn't allow to set you off like a wild Injun. Hot down here, eh?" "It's kind'er warm, an' that's a fact." "So much the better, because the crew will stay on deck, an' you'll have more of a chance to move around. It's only a case of layin' low for three or four days, an' then we'll see what your father can do toward gettin' you out." "How will you let him know where I am?" "There'll be plenty of show for that if we come alongside the _Brooklyn_; I can manage to send him word, I reckon." The conversation was brought to an abrupt close by the appearance of a sailor's feet as he descended from the deck, and Bill Jones turned quickly away, pretending to be overhauling his sea-chest, while Teddy made all haste to regain his "hole." Now it was that the stowaway had every reason to congratulate himself upon the fair prospects which were his, when it had seemed positive that much trouble would come before the venture was ended, and yet the moments passed more slowly than at any time since he had voluntarily become a prisoner. With each hour his impatience increased, until it was with difficulty he could force himself to remain in hiding. While he believed his father was very far away, there appeared good reason for remaining hidden; but now, with the _Brooklyn_ close at hand, it seemed as if he must make his whereabouts known without loss of time. Fear as to what terrible punishment the captain of the _Merrimac_ might inflict, however, kept him in his proper place, and before many hours passed Bill Jones brought him further intelligence. "The _New York_ is to take on the first of the coal," he said, leaning over the barricade of rope, and whispering to the impatient prisoner. "I'm thinkin' we'll get around to the _Brooklyn_ before all the cargo is gone, an' then this game of hide will come to an end--if your father is a smarter man than the average of us." The jolly little sailor had no time to say more, for one of the petty officers interrupted the stolen interview by calling loudly for "Bill Jones," and while obeying the summons the sailor muttered to himself, "I wish the boy was well clear of this steamer; it seems as if he was under my wing, so to speak, an' I can't make out how any man, lower in rank than a full-fledged captain, can take him aboard one of Uncle Sam's ships." Fortunately Teddy had no misgivings as to the future, after his father had been made aware of his whereabouts. He believed it would be the most natural thing in the world for him to step on board the _Brooklyn_ as a guest, and the possibility that a coal-passer might not be allowed to invite his friends to visit him never entered the lad's mind. Bill Jones, however, was seriously troubled as to the outcome of the affair, as has been seen. He had promised to aid the stowaway, as he would have promised to aid any other lad in trouble, for the jolly little sailor was one ever ready to relieve the distress of others, no matter how great might be the cost to himself; and now, having taken the case in hand, his anxiety of mind was great, because he was by no means as certain of his ability to carry it through successfully as he would have Teddy believe. Within four hours after the sailor reported that the _Merrimac_ would speedily begin to take out her cargo, the prisoner in the forecastle became aware that the steamer was at a standstill. For the first time since leaving port the screw was motionless, and the absence of that pounding which marked the revolutions of the shaft caused a silence that for a few moments seemed almost painful. Shortly afterward, when Bill Jones came to bring a fresh supply of provisions and water, he reported that the _New York_ was taking on coal. "The other ships are certain to need a supply, an' we're bound to come alongside the _Brooklyn_ sooner or later," he said, cheerily, and Teddy replied, with a sigh: "It seems like a terribly long while to wait; but I s'pose I can stand it." "I reckon it's a case of havin' to, lad, unless you're willin' to take the captain's medicine, an' that's what I wouldn't like to tackle." "It's as if I'd been here a full month, an' accordin' to what you say I'm mighty lucky if I have to stay only two or three days more." "You're lucky if you get out in a week, so don't go to countin' the minutes, or time will be long in passin'." Twice during the next twenty-four hours did Teddy have an opportunity of speaking with his friend, and then he knew that the _Merrimac_ was alongside the _Massachusetts_. "You see we're goin' the rounds of the fleet, an' it's only a question of the coal holdin' out, to finally bring us to the _Brooklyn_," Bill Jones said, hurriedly, for there was no opportunity of lengthy conversations while the crew were engaged in transferring the fuel. Another long time of waiting, and Bill Jones appeared at the entrance to the hiding-place in a state of the greatest excitement. "Somethin's got to be done right away, lad, an' I'm clean beat as to how we'll figger it out. This 'ere steamer is goin' to be sunk!" "Sunk!" Teddy cried in alarm, clutching Bill frantically by the arm, as if believing the _Merrimac_ was even then on the point of going down. "That's jest it, an' we're to be shifted to the other vessels, gettin' a berth wherever one can be found." "What will make her sink?" "She's to be blowed up! Wrecked in the harbour of Santiago de Cuba, so the Spaniards who are inside can't get out!" Teddy looked around him in bewilderment and alarm, understanding not one word of the brief explanation. [Illustration] "You see the Spanish fleet is inside the harbour, and the mouth of it ain't more'n three hundred feet wide. This steamer will be blowed up right across the channel, an' there the Spaniards are, bottled up tight till our fleet gets ready to knock 'em into splinters." "But what'll become of me? I'll have to face the captain after all!" "I reckon there's no help for it, lad, because it don't stand to reason that you want to go down with the ship." "How long before you'll sink her?" "_We_ sha'n't have anything to do with it, lad. It's what you might call a precious fine job, an' 'cordin' to the way everybody looks at it, them who do the work ain't likely to come back again." "Why not?" "Look here, lad, if you was goin' on deck an' set off three or four torpedoes under your very feet, what do you think would be the show of gettin' ashore alive?" Teddy made no effort to weigh the chances; his own affairs were in such a precarious condition that there was no room in his mind for anything else. "I'd better have gone to the captain when I first made up my mind that it had to be done, an' it would be over by this time," he said, with a long-drawn sigh. "It wouldn't have been over till you got ashore, because pretty nigh every sailor thinks it his bounden duty to make things lively for a stowaway. You've saved yourself from bein' kicked an' thumped jest so many days as I've been coddlin' you up, an' there's a good deal in that." "Are we anywhere near the _Brooklyn_?" "She was five or six miles away when I saw her last--" "Five or six miles!" "Yes; did you allow she laid within hail?" "I thought from what you said that we was right among the fleet." "So we are, lad; but these big ships don't huddle very close together, an' ten miles off is called bein' mighty near at hand. I can't stop here chinnin' much longer, so listen sharp. When the time comes, an' it's precious near at hand now, you'll have walk up to the medicine-box like a little man, so kind'er be bracin' yourself for what's sure to happen. I'll watch till the captain appears to be in good humour, an' out you pop." Teddy nodded his head; there was too much sorrow and disappointment in his heart to permit of speech, and Bill Jones was so pressed for time that he failed to give due heed to the boy's mental condition. "Be ready when I come back next time!" the sailor whispered, warningly, and then ran on deck, leaving the stowaway in a most unenviable frame of mind. When Teddy's mouth was parched with thirst, and his stomach craving for food, he had brought himself to believe that he could submit without a murmur to whatever punishment the captain might see fit to inflict; but now it seemed different. During a very long time he had been cheering himself with the belief that before the close of this hour or the next he would be with his father, and such a sudden and startling change in affairs caused him deepest despair. Crawling into the narrow hiding-place, he gave full sway to the grief which had come upon him like a torrent, for once Captain Miller knew of his having stowed away, so he argued to himself, there would no longer be any hope of communicating with his father. To his mind he had not only failed in the purpose set himself, but would be more widely separated from his father than ever before, and it is little wonder, with such belief in his heart, that the boy ceased longer to battle against his sorrow. He was lying face downward upon the canvas when Bill Jones came to announce that the moment had arrived when he should brave the ordeal of facing Captain Miller, and the sailor was forced to speak several times in a loud tone before the lad realised that his friend was near at hand. "Come, Teddy," the little sailor said, soothingly, "it'll be over after awhile, an' perhaps won't be so bad as we've figgered, for the old man ain't tearin' 'round dreadful mad. Let's get on deck in a hurry, so's not to think about it too long, an' I'll stand right by your side till matters are settled one way or the other." "I might as well stay right here, an' be sunk when the steamer goes down," the boy wailed. "Nonsense, lad; after havin' the pluck to come thus far in search of your father, you mustn't lose heart now. Be a man, Teddy, an' count on me for a friend so long as the trouble lasts." It was not possible for Bill Jones to arouse the boy to a proper show of courage until after fully half an hour had passed, and then the two came out into the sunlight, both looking much as if having just been detected in the most heinous of crimes. The dazzling sunlight nearly blinded the boy, who had been shrouded in darkness so many days, and forced him to cover his eyes; therefore he failed to see the look of surprise and bewilderment on Bill Jones's face immediately they came on deck. During several moments he was in such a daze as to be virtually unconscious, and then he heard his companion ask: "Where is the _Merrimac's_ crew?" "They've been set aboard the _New York_ for a spell, seein's how this ain't likely to be a very pleasant craft to sail in after we get through with her," a strange voice replied, and Teddy opened his eyes. The deck of the collier appeared to be thronged with sailors in naval costume, all of whom were apparently bent on doing the greatest amount of destruction in the shortest possible space of time. Not far away to windward was a huge war-vessel, looking more like some submarine monster than anything built by man, and in the distance others of the same kind, cruising to and fro, or lying quietly upon the ocean, rising and falling with the heavy swell. All this picture Teddy took in with a single glance, and then his attention was diverted by Bill Jones, who said to the sailor with whom he had first spoken: "Ain't we to take our dunnage out?" "I reckon that'll be done after a spell; but just now it's a case of hurry, an' what a few old shellbacks like you may consider dunnage, ain't taken into account." "Where is Captain Miller?" "I saw him goin' toward the flag-ship. It seems he's got the biggest kind of a bee in his bonnet because Lieutenant Hobson is to be given the chance of killin' himself an' his crew, when he claims the right because of havin' been in command of this 'ere collier." [Illustration] Teddy was wholly at a loss to understand the meaning of the conversation, and he looked at the little sailor, who now appeared perplexed rather than jolly, until the latter said, speaking slowly, as if in a maze of bewilderment and doubt: "I'm all at sea, lad, about this 'ere business; but it begins to look as if you wouldn't have any very hard time with the old man to-day. He's got somethin' else on his mind that's of more importance than a worthless little stowaway like you." "He'll come back, won't he?" Teddy asked, yet unable to gather any clear idea of the situation. "Unless he comes soon, there won't be anything left of the _Merrimac_, an' that's a fact," Bill Jones replied, pointing here and there to where a hundred men or more were busily at work, seemingly trying to make a wreck of the collier. "I s'pose they're bent on gettin' out of the old hooker all that's of any value, before sinkin' her, an' it looks as if they'd finish the job in a jiffy." "Where's the _Brooklyn_?" "See here, my son, we've no time to bother our heads about her just now. It's enough for you that we can't get speech with your father, an' unless I'm way off my reckonin', here's the chance to pull out of what promised to be a bad scrape for you." Teddy remained silent, for the very good reason that he was at a loss for words, and after a short pause, Bill Jones exclaimed, as if a happy thought had at that instant come into his mind: "Hark you, lad, our men have gone over to the _New York_, an' so long as we don't follow them it'll be plain sailin'. We'll watch our chance, go aboard the nearest ship, so it ain't the admiral's flag-ship, as bold as lions, an' it'll be believed that you belong to our crew. Unless Captain Miller shows himself, you'll be livin' on the fat of the land." "But when he comes?" "We won't bother our heads about anything of the kind. It's enough for us to know you've slipped out of the smallest kind of a hole without a scratch, and we'll take all the enjoyment that comes our way, at Uncle Sam's expense." CHAPTER IV. THE MERRIMAC. There was no good reason why, as Bill Jones had suggested, Teddy could not successfully pose as one of the _Merrimac's_ crew. The undertaking in hand was so important, with such great advantages to be derived from its accomplishment, that for the time being it was as if every officer and man in the American squadron had no thought save concerning the work upon the steamer to be sunk. That the situation may be made more plain, as it was to Teddy before he had been on board the _Texas_ two hours, the following description of the daring venture is quoted from an article written the very day Bill Jones and his protégé sought shelter on the battle-ship:[1] "The mines in the narrow, tortuous channel, and the elevation of the forts and batteries, which must increase the effectiveness of the enemy's fire, and at the same time decrease that of our own, reinforced by the guns of the Spanish fleet inside, make the harbour, as it now appears, almost impregnable. Unless the entrance is countermined it would be folly to attempt to force its passage with our ships. "But the Spanish fleet is bottled up, and a plan is being considered to drive in the cork. If that is done, the next news may be a thrilling story of closing the harbour. It would release a part of our fleet, and leave the Spaniards to starve and rot until they were ready to hoist the white flag. "'To drive in the cork,' was the subject nearest Rear-Admiral Sampson's heart, and he at once went into consultation with his officers as to how it could best be done. One plan after another was discussed and rejected, and then Assistant Naval Constructor Richmond Pearson Hobson proposed that the big collier _Merrimac_, which then had on board about six hundred tons of coal, be sunk across the channel in such a manner as to completely block it. "The plan was a good one; but yet it seemed certain death for those who should attempt to carry it out as proposed. Lieutenant Hobson, however, claimed that, if the scheme was accepted, he should by right be allowed to take command of the enterprise. "The end to be attained was so great that Admiral Sampson decided that the lives of six or seven men could not be allowed to outweigh the advantage to be gained, and Lieutenant Hobson was notified that his services were accepted; the big steamer was at his disposal to do with as he saw fit." This was the work which had been begun when Bill Jones brought Teddy Dunlap on deck that he might confess to being a stowaway, and it is little wonder that matters on board the collier were in seeming confusion. On the night previous Lieutenant Hobson had received the notification that his services were accepted, and at an early hour next morning the work of making the _Merrimac_ ready for destruction had begun. A dozen boys would have attracted no attention just then, and the lad, who had mentally nerved himself to meet the captain of the steamer, failed in finding any one to hear his confession. Bill Jones, however, was quick to see the possible advantage to be gained, and Teddy had not fully recovered from his bewilderment before the little sailor was forcing him over the rail into one of the _Texas's_ boats, which had just come alongside. [Illustration] "Turned out of house an' home, eh?" one of the sailors asked, with a laugh, and there was no question but that the boy, as well as the man, had a right to be taken aboard the battle-ship. The officers had all left the boat, therefore the two were not subjected to any searching examination, and once on board the big vessel, it was supposed, as a matter of course, that they had been regularly detailed to that ship. Strange as it may seem, these two who had but just come from the _Merrimac_ knew less regarding her proposed ending than any other, and, therefore, were most deeply interested in such information as was to be picked up from the crew. Before having been on board an hour they knew as much as has been set down at the beginning of this chapter, and, for the time being at least, they, like all around them, had little thought save for the daring adventure which was to be made by Lieutenant Hobson and six men. "It's a mighty brave thing to do," Bill Jones said confidentially to Teddy as the two were on the gun-deck, having concluded a most satisfactory repast; "but I wouldn't want a hand in it." "Why not?" Teddy asked, in surprise, for he had been turning the matter over in his mind until having come almost to envy those who were to brave death in the service of their country. "Because I ain't what might rightly be called a fightin' man; owin' to my bein' undersized, most likely. I take real pride in the deeds of others, but can't seem to get my own courage where it belongs. I'm only what you might call a plain, every-day sailor, with no fightin' timber in me, else I'd been in the navy long before this." "Do you think they will live to sink the _Merrimac_?" Teddy asked, thoughtfully. "There's no doubt in my mind but that they'll hold on to life long enough to do the work, but it's afterward that the trouble will begin. Every Spanish gun within range will open fire on 'em, an' what chance have they got of comin' out alive?" "When will they start?" "It'll be quite a spell before they get the steamer ready to make the dive, 'cordin' to my way of thinkin'. In the first place, as I'm told, there are to be plenty of torpedoes put in position inside the old hooker, an' it'll take some time to made them ready. Anyway, you're snug as a bug in a rug now--" "Until Captain Miller comes aboard," Teddy interrupted. "Have no fear of him," the little sailor said, as if the subject was not worthy of consideration. "When he comes, if he ever does, it isn't to this part of the ship that he'll pay a visit. Officers spend their time aft, an' small blame to 'em. It may be, Teddy Dunlap, that he'll see you; but the chances are dead against it, so take all the comfort you can--" "I ought to be huntin' for daddy." "Well, you can't, leastways, not while we're aboard this craft, but you can count on comin' across him before this little scrimmage is ended off Santiago, an' then I warrant there'll be all the chance you need." "But what am I to do on board here?" Teddy asked, anxiously. "It don't stand to reason that we'll be allowed to loaf around as if we owned the whole vessel." "That's the way you look at it; but my idees are different. Uncle Sam will keep us for a spell, that's certain, an' until he gets tired of the job we needn't worry our heads. You might live to be a thousand years old without strikin' another job as soft as the one we've got on our hands this blessed minute, so I say, make the most of it." "It's different with you; but I'm only a stowaway, an' stand a good show of gettin' into a heap of trouble when the officers of this ship find out that I've no business to be here." "I don't figger that way," Bill Jones replied, with a light and airy manner. "It doesn't stand to reason you should have been left aboard to go down with the steamer, eh?" "They might have set me ashore." "An' had a precious good job doin' it. Look ye, Teddy Dunlap, are you countin' yourself of so much importance that a battle-ship is to leave her station for no other reason than to put you ashore?" "I didn't mean it that way. You see they ought to do somethin' with me--" "Then wait till they get ready, an' don't borrow trouble. This crossin' of bridges before you come to 'em is likely to make life mighty hard for a young chap like yourself, an' considerin' all you've told me, I wonder at it." Teddy could say nothing more. It surely seemed reasonable Bill Jones knew what it was proper he should do, and from that moment he resolved to "take things easy," as his friend advised, rather than fret over what couldn't be mended. Therefore it was he ceased to worry, although at the same time keeping a sharp watch over the _Brooklyn_, and by such a course saw very much of what happened off Santiago during those months of June and July, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight. Surely the stowaway had no cause to complain of his treatment by the crew of the _Texas_. Every man did his best to make these waifs from the doomed steamer feel perfectly at home, and when Bill Jones brought his sea-chest aboard, as he did the day following their abandonment of the _Merrimac_, there was not a man on the battle-ship who did not suppose Teddy's dunnage was in the same capacious receptacle. Rations were served to the stowaway the same as to any member of the crew, and then he and Bill Jones were called upon for some trifling duty, but as the latter said, there was no more work than was good for them by way of exercise. In the most pleasant fashion possible the time passed until the _Merrimac_ was made ready for her doom, and these two comrades, for it can well be supposed they were become fast friends, saw all the preparations without being obliged to do any of the disagreeable work. There was hardly an hour during these days of labour when the two did not hear Lieutenant Hobson's plans discussed, and they knew to the slightest detail all he proposed to do. [Illustration] "Here is the way he'll sink our craft, 'cordin' to all I've heard," Bill Jones said to Teddy when the two were alone for a short time on the afternoon after it had been reported on board the _Texas_ that everything was ready for the desperate venture. "He'll run at about ten-knot speed until four hundred yards or less past the Estrella battery, or, in other words, till he's in the narrowest part of the channel. Then he'll put the helm hard aport, stop the engines, drop the anchors, open the sea connections, touch off the torpedoes, an' leave the old hooker blockin' up the entrance to Santiago Harbour." "He can't do all that alone," Teddy suggested. "Of course he can't, else why is he takin' a crew with him? I'm told that this is the exact way he counts on workin' it. There'll be four men on deck besides himself, an' two in the engine-room; all of 'em will be stripped down to their underclothes, an' with revolvers an' ammunition strapped in water-tight packin' to their waists. One will be forward with an axe to cut the lashings of the anchor when the word is given. Of course Hobson signals the engineers to stop the engines, then the fellow forward cuts the anchor loose; some one below smashes the sea connections with a sledge-hammer when the machinery stops, and all hands jump overboard, countin' on swimmin' to the boat that's bein' towed astern. The lieutenant himself touches the button that explodes the torpedoes, an' then over he goes; it's a case of every man for himself once the work is begun. The steamer is bound to go down athwart the channel, an' there you have the entrance to Santiago Bay shut up as tight as Admiral Sampson can wish." Teddy did not venture any criticism. He had heard the subject discussed so often that there was nothing new he could suggest, and it seemed wisest to hold his tongue. On the close of this day word was passed among the crew of the _Texas_ that the venture would be made during the coming night, and the two visitors from the _Merrimac_ were on deck from sunset until sunrise. The work of preparing the big collier was continued throughout the entire night, and just at daybreak she got under way, as if to begin the voyage which it seemed certain could end only with the death of all; but before the men on the battle-ship had time to give her a parting cheer, she put back to her station, because, as some of the men declared, the admiral had given positive orders for her to wait until another night. Twenty-four hours of additional preparation; as many of speculation and discussion among those who were refused an opportunity to offer their lives as a sacrifice, and then came the moment when Teddy was awakened from his sleep by Bill Jones, who said, as he shook the lad roughly: "Get on deck, my hearty, get on deck! This time there'll be no mistake as to the sailin', an' if you want to see the last of the _Merrimac_, now's your chance!" The stowaway did not wait for a second invitation, and a moment later he formed a small portion of the human fringe which overhung the _Texas's_ rail, peering out across the waters where, by the pale light of the moon, could be seen the doomed steamer. It was even possible to distinguish the forms of her crew as they stood well forward, much as though taking a last look at the fleet, and, near at hand, the tiny launch from the _New York_, which was to follow the collier in with the hope of picking up some of her brave crew when they leaped into the water. Among all that throng of men on the _Texas_ hardly a word was spoken as the _Merrimac_ slowly got under way. Every one remained silent as if under the spell cast by the bravery of those who were literally taking their lives in their hands that the starry flag might wave triumphant. Boldly the collier steamed in toward the coast, being lost to view immediately she got under the shadow of the high hills at the entrance of the bay, and a mile or more astern the tiny launch puffed her way along as if conscious that this morning's work was of extreme importance. Then both craft were swallowed up by the gloom, and yet that throng of men overhanging the _Texas's_ rail remained motionless, waiting with an anxiety that was most intense for some sign which would give token of their shipmates' fate. During half an hour every man waited in keenest suspense, never one venturing to so much as speak, and then from the heights at the entrance of the harbour the flash of a gun streamed out. It came almost in the nature of a relief, for every one knew that the _Merrimac_ was nearing her destination at last. The suspense was at an end, whatever might be the result, and even Teddy Dunlap believed he could predict the close of that most desperate venture. Within ten seconds after the first flash, another was seen, then a third, and a fourth, until it was no longer possible to count them. The heights guarding the channel appeared to be ablaze; but yet not a sound could be heard. The blockading squadron were so far away that the reports were lost in the distance. Then the eager men found tongue, and it was as if each spoke at the same instant, giving no heed as to whether his neighbour replied. During full twenty minutes these silent flashes could be seen in the distance, and then they died away just as the gray light of the coming dawn appeared in the eastern sky. "It's all over!" Bill Jones said, as he laid his hand on Teddy's shoulder. "I reckon the old _Merrimac_ is layin' in the channel to keep the Spaniards from sneakin' out; but them as carried her in so bravely are past all troubles of this world's makin'. It's great to be a hero; but the glory of it is soon over!" "Do you suppose they've all been killed?" Teddy asked in a whisper, for it was much like speaking in the presence of the dead. "There's little doubt of it, lad. Think you a craft like the _Merrimac_ could stand the storm of shot and shell that was poured on her from the time we saw the first flash? Just bear in mind that every puff of flame betokened a chunk of iron large enough to sink this 'ere battle-ship, if it struck her fairly, an' you can have a fair idee of how much chance those poor fellows stood." [Illustration] Among all the crew there was hardly one who did not share this opinion with Bill Jones. To them, the heroes who went smilingly to their death had left this world for ever, and yet the men continued to overhang the rail, awaiting the return of the launch, with the idea that when she arrived they might hear something of importance. Not until three hours later did the little craft show herself, and then she came out from under the shadow of the land followed by a shower of missiles from the big guns ashore. The men on the _Texas_ were forced to wait some time before learning what information she brought, for the launch went directly to the _New York_, as a matter of course, and several hours elapsed before the crew heard all that could then be told. This was to the effect that the tiny boat followed the collier until fire was opened upon the doomed steamer, and she was so enshrouded by smoke as to be lost from view. Then the launch was headed in under the batteries, where she remained until daylight on the lookout for a swimmer. At five o'clock in the morning no sign of life had been seen, and the little craft made for the fleet, followed by a rain of shot from the shore batteries. While crossing the harbour entrance one spar of the _Merrimac_ was seen sticking out of the water, and thus it was known that the little band of braves had done their work faithfully, at whatever cost to themselves. There was neither jest nor careless word among the crew of the battle-ship during this forenoon; even Bill Jones remained almost absolutely silent. It seemed that they stood in the presence of death, and more than one acted as if believing he was taking part in the funeral services of those who had so lately been among them. Teddy had seen every man who went to make up that devoted crew, and to him it was as if his personal friends had met their death; but in such a brave fashion that it would have been almost a crime to mourn their taking off. Then, like a flash of lightning from a clear sky, came the joyful news that every man among that band who had devoted themselves to death, was yet among the living, and comparatively uninjured. It was almost incredible information, and yet, because of its source, no one could doubt it. At two hours past noon, while the men of the _Texas_ were sheltering themselves from the burning rays of the sun and discussing for the hundredth time the last probable moments of their shipmates, a steam-launch, carrying a white flag, put out from the harbour, making directly for the flag-ship _New York_. At the time no one fancied for a single moment that the coming of this craft could have any connection with those who had left the station to wreck the _Merrimac_, but there were some who suggested that the Spaniards were ready to surrender, and, in support of this theory, cited the fact that the royal squadron was bottled up so tightly it could never be used against the United States. Others declared that the Spanish admiral was about to make an offer of compromise, and not a few believed the flag of truce had to do with the capitulation of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Not a man was prepared for the news which floated from ship to ship, no one could say exactly how; but in less than an hour from the time the launch made fast alongside the _New York_, it was known that she brought a message from Admiral Cervera, commander of the Spanish fleet, to the effect that the crew of the _Merrimac_ had been captured, and were held as prisoners of war. [Illustration] Lieutenant Hobson was uninjured, and only two of the party had been wounded slightly. It seemed too good to be true, but when the men realised that this information must be correct, that it had been sent by a generous enemy, they spent a good five minutes cheering alternately for those who had escaped after having gone down into the very jaws of death, and for that gallant Spaniard who, recognising bravery even in his foe, had taken the trouble to announce the safety of those who were battling against him. "It's what I call a mighty fine thing for the old admiral to do," Bill Jones said, as he held forth to a gun's crew with whom he and Teddy messed. "It ain't every officer as would go out of his way to send such news as that, an' if Admiral Cervera should ever fall into my hands as a prisoner of war, he can count on bein' treated like a white man." There was a roar from Bill's auditors at the intimation that the commander of the Spanish fleet might ever be captured by that sailor, for by this time all had come to know him as a "plain, every-day sailor, with not a fightin' timber in him;" but not a man within sound of his voice cared to contradict him. On that night, after the subject of the venture and its sequel had been discussed until worn threadbare, the little sailor said to Teddy, as if telling him some important truth: "You'll see great doin's now, lad, an' it wouldn't give me such a terrible surprise to know that the war was ended within the next twenty-four hours, for them bloomin' Spaniards in Santiago must understand by this time that the sooner they give in whipped, the less of a lickin' they're like to get." And Teddy, thinking more of his own condition than the glory of the country, asked, with no slight distress of mind: "If it should come to a stop as soon as that, how could I ever get word to father? Of course the _Brooklyn_ would go right home, an' I'd be left here." "I'll take care of that, lad," Bill Jones replied, in a tone of assurance. "Never you have a fear but that I'll see she don't leave this station till you've had a chance to go on board long enough to sort out the coal-passers." FOOTNOTE: [Footnote 1: "The Boys of '98."] CHAPTER V. THE CHASE. Bill Jones found time to change his opinion as to the speedy termination of the war after the _Merrimac_ had been sunk at the entrance of Santiago Bay. Instead of displaying any anxiety to surrender, the Spaniards on the island appeared to be making every preparation for a stubborn defence, and the fleet of war-vessels had little opportunity to do much more than blockade duty. Teddy Dunlap, looked upon by the crew of the _Texas_ as a lad who had every right to be among them, might have enjoyed this cruising to and fro, keeping watch over the entrance to the harbour, now and then overhauling a suspicious-looking vessel that ventured too near, and at times throwing shells ashore from the big guns, but for the fact that he burned with impatience to be with his father. The _Brooklyn_ remained in view nearly all the time, now so close at hand that it seemed as if the two ships must immediately come within hailing distance, and again so far away that she appeared only as a tiny speck against the white sky, yet the stowaway was as completely separated from his father as if they were thousands of miles apart. "If only the captains couldn't talk with those little flags, it might be that the ships would come side by side!" he said, with a long-drawn sigh, to Bill Jones. "There'll never be any need for them to sail nearer than within sight, an' I won't get a chance to speak to father,--perhaps not this year." "The prospect don't look very encouragin' just at the present time, an' that's a fact," Bill said, thoughtfully, filling his pipe with unusual care. "Two or three days ago it seemed as if the war was mighty nigh at an end; but now there 'pears to be a good deal of fight left in the Dagoes." "An' while we're loafin' 'round here, Captain Miller will come aboard some fine day. Then where'll I be?" "Right here, my lad, an' there's no use lookin' ahead. He won't come the sooner, or stay away any longer, no matter how much you fuss, so why not save the wear an' tear of thinkin'?" "See here," and Teddy leaned forward to look the little sailor full in the eyes, "do you believe I'll ever have a chance of lettin' daddy know where I am?" "It stands to reason there must be a show for it in course of time." "When?" "Now you're askin' me a question I ain't in condition to answer. It may be two or three weeks, or, then again, the show might come sudden, within an hour. At sea you can't ever tell what's goin' to happen, Teddy Dunlap, an' there's nothin' for it but to keep your ears an' eyes open all the time, ready to jump on the first promisin' chance that comes your way." There is no good reason why such a conversation as this should be set down, save that it is similar to a hundred others which were held between the two comrades during the weeks which followed the sinking of the _Merrimac_, when Teddy Dunlap, without effort on his part, was transformed from a stowaway to a lad apparently in the employ of Uncle Sam. Never for a single moment did he lose sight of the possible fact that either the _Brooklyn_ or the _Texas_ might be ordered away from this particular station, in which case it was reasonable to suppose that many months must elapse before he could inform his father of his whereabouts. There was grave danger the two might be separated so widely that months, perhaps years, would elapse before they could meet again, and Teddy was never comfortable in mind, but, despite all the good advice given by Bill Jones, continued to look out into the future, searching for trouble. Meanwhile both he and the little sailor were kept at work on board the _Texas_ exactly as if they had been regularly enlisted; but the duties were so light among such a large number, that he who complained of the work must indeed have been an indolent fellow. And while Teddy worried over his own seeming troubles, the two nations continued at war, killing and wounding men at every opportunity, and ever striving to strike some decisive blow. As a matter of course Teddy and Bill Jones took their small part in the bombardment of the batteries at the entrance to Santiago Harbour two days after the _Merrimac_ had been sunk. The _Texas_ was the third vessel in the first column, headed by the _Brooklyn_, when, shortly after sunrise, the fleet steamed inshore and opened fire with the heavy guns. It was to the boy as if he went into action almost by the side of his father, and he worked with a will at whatsoever was set him to do, although at times the terrific roar literally stunned him, while the heat was so great that it seemed as if he was on the verge of suffocation during every moment of the four hours the bombardment continued. Then the squadron steamed back to its blockading station, and at no time had the _Brooklyn_ and _Texas_ been so near each other as to have rendered it possible for Teddy to see his father, even though the latter had stood on the battle-ship's deck every moment. Again and again, as the days passed, did the _Texas_ go into action, and at no time were the little stowaway and his small comrade remiss in their duties. They did their full share of the work, despite Bill Jones's assertion that he was only a "plain, every-day sailor with no fightin' timber about him," and as the weeks wore on these two became more and more closely identified with the battle-ship to which chance had sent them. When the ship was sent to bombard the works at Matamoras, and a Spanish shell struck near the stern on the port side, passing through the hull three feet below the main-deck line, and exploding on the berth-deck, killing one man and wounding eight, Teddy's search for his father nearly came to an end. A fragment of the shell passed within ten inches of the boy's head, striking down a sailor just beyond him, and Teddy won the admiration of every man on board by springing to the relief of the poor fellow whose leg had been shattered, instead of taking flight, as might quite naturally have been expected. [Illustration] Later, when the _Texas_ had withdrawn from the action, man after man congratulated the lad upon his behaviour, predicting that he would in time prove himself worthy of serving under such a commander as Captain Philip, and otherwise bestowing so much praise that at the first opportunity he said confidentially to Bill Jones: "It makes me ashamed to have them say so much about how I acted. It wasn't different from what any other feller would have done, because I forgot all about the danger when Baker fell." "I'm thinkin' you're out of your reckonin' there, lad, for accordin' to my idee, there ain't a boy in a thousand who'd handled himself as well as you did. Now I'm no fightin' man, as I've said before, but your keepin' such a stiff upper lip, when there was precious good chance of bein' killed, did me solid good. I knew you had sand, from the first minute of settin' eyes on you, but never suspected there was so much of it." "You're talkin' worse than the others, even when I'm tellin' the truth about not knowin' there was any danger. I only saw poor Baker, an' thought I might help him." "It ain't what you thought, lad, but what you did, that counts, an' now if Captain Miller comes aboard I'm willin' to guarantee he won't be allowed to kick up any row because of your stowin' away on the _Merrimac_. The crew wouldn't allow any funny business with you, after this day's work. Don't you see how much nearer your father we are than we were this mornin'?" "What do you mean?" "Just what I say, lad. You've made for yourself a standin' on board this ship, an' now when the time comes right I'm goin' to tell your story to one of the petty officers, askin' him to see it reaches Captain Philip's ears. Once that's been done, Teddy Dunlap, we'll be hailin' the _Brooklyn_ with signals flyin' to tell the coal-passers that one of 'em has got a son on board this craft." "Do you suppose any such plan might work?" Teddy asked, breathlessly. "There ain't a shadow of doubt about it in my mind." "Why don't you do it now? I've given up hopin' this war is pretty near at an end, an' am hungry to see daddy." "Better wait awhile longer, my boy. It's a little too soon to show ourselves very big, 'cause it ain't no ways certain the captain has had time to hear of what you did. We'll hold off a spell, an' then, when the signs come right, you'll see me put this business along in great shape." Because of this promise, and also owing to the many words of praise which were showered upon him by the men, Teddy Dunlap believed, as he had several times before, that the hour was very near at hand when he would be with his father once more; but, as in the past, he was doomed to disappointment during more days than he cared to count. The "signs" never came so nearly right as to give Bill Jones courage to take the responsibility of telling Teddy's story to those who would repeat it to Captain Philip, and these two refugees from the _Merrimac_ remained aboard the _Texas_, much to the satisfaction of the crew. It was known to them, as to every one on the warships, that hot fighting was going on ashore in the vicinity of Santiago, and at frequent intervals the big vessels steamed toward the land, in this direction or that, to shell the Spanish camps; but they were at such a distance from the scene of action that such work had little the appearance of warfare. In fact, the air of plain, every-day business about the operations rendered it difficult to believe the huge shot and shell which were hurled landward carried in their wake death and destruction to many. When one of the _Texas's_ big guns was discharged, Teddy could hear the roar, and feel the concussion, as a matter of course; he could also see the missile as it sped through the air; but he had no means of knowing where it struck, neither did he have a view of the desolation and ruin it caused, therefore, like many another man aboard the battle-ship, he came to look upon this work of war as nothing more than harmless practice. The day was near at hand, however, when the stowaway and his little comrade were to have all too good a view of the butchery and inhumanity of war. It was on Sunday morning, the third day of July. The crew of the _Texas_ had been mustered for religious services, and while Bill Jones and Teddy waited in their proper places for the coming of the chaplain, the sailor whispered: "To-morrow mornin' I'm goin' to start in on your business, lad. So far as I can see, the fleet is likely to be here a year or more before the Spaniards are ready to surrender Santiago, and if I don't bring you to the captain's notice soon, all your good behaviour when the shot came aboard will have been forgotten." "I'm afraid we've waited too long already," the lad replied, with a sigh, for the hope had been so long deferred that his "heart was sick" indeed for a sight of his father. "I reckon not, Teddy; but if I've made a mistake in holdin' off, it was done through fear I might speak too soon." "Don't think I'm blamin' you," the boy replied, quickly, pressing his comrade's arm in a friendly fashion. "If you never did anything more, I'd feel as if you'd been mighty good to me, for I couldn't have run across many sailors who'd lay themselves out to help a stowaway." "That part of it is--" Bill Jones was interrupted by a shout,--Teddy will never know who uttered it, or what the words were,--and instantly, without the slightest apparent cause, all was seeming confusion on board the ship. It was to the lad as if the very air bristled with excitement; he saw men darting here and there, heard sharp, quick words of command, and as if at the very same instant, the _Texas_ seemed to leap forward with a bound, huge clouds of black smoke suddenly pouring out of her stacks. "The Spaniards! The Spaniards!" Bill Jones yelled in the lad's ear, at the same time pointing toward the entrance to the harbour, from out of which could be seen the dark hull of an enemy's ship. It was as if in that small fraction of time very much took place. Teddy saw long lines of signal-flags run up to the _Brooklyn's_ masthead; he heard the roar of a 6-pounder as the _Iowa_ fired the first shot at the foe, and understood, rather than saw, that every vessel in the squadron was under a full head of steam almost immediately. At one instant the blockading squadron lay motionless and apparently lifeless off the harbour, rocking lazily on the long swell, and then, before one could speak, as it were, every listless hull was a war machine, quivering with life, and pouring forth deadly shot and shell. The transformation was so sudden and complete that it is little wonder Teddy and Bill Jones stood transfixed with astonishment until the chase was well under way. One after another of the Spanish cruisers came at full speed out of the harbour which it had been believed was closed by the hull of the _Merrimac_, and as each ship rounded the point her guns were discharged at the Yankee squadron. The dense smoke pouring out of their stacks; the clouds of spray from their bows, glistening like diamonds in the sunlight of that Sabbath morning as it was thrown aft by the fierce impetus of the huge vessels to mingle with the smoke that came from every gun; the roar and thunder of the discharges; the shrieking of the missiles, and the spouting of water as the metal fell short, made up a scene of war in its most terrific phase. On the other side, three battle-ships and an armoured cruiser dashing forward at the full speed of their engines; the heavy reverberations of guns; black clouds and white of smoke from coal and from burning powder; men stripped to the waist and working at the pieces with a fury, haste, and energy that could not have been increased had each individual member of the crew been fighting against a personal foe, and words of command, encouragement, or hope, which were heard on every hand, thrilled the boy who had trembled before the supposed wrath of a collier's captain, until each nerve was tingling with excitement,--each pulse bounding with the hot blood that leaped in feverish throbs from artery to artery. Teddy Dunlap was in the very midst of what but few had ever seen,--a sea-battle with the mightiest ships in the world as combatants. It was while the lad and his elderly comrade stood like statues, gazing at the wondrous, terrible sight around them, that the former saw a huge shell leave the turret of the _Iowa_, rise on the arc of a circle in the air, cleaving its way directly toward the _Teresa_, the foremost of the fleeing ships. Teddy was still following the missile with his eyes when it struck the Spaniard's hull, cutting its way through as if no resistance was offered, and it seemed that the huge mass had but just disappeared when great volumes of smoke and flame burst from the aperture made by the shell, telling that the first of the enemy's fleet was already vanquished. Then came a mighty yell from every man aboard the _Texas_ as well as the _Iowa_, for the gun had been aimed with a precision worthy a Yankee gunner whose forefathers, perhaps, had been forced to shoot accurately in order to save their scalps from the lurking Indian. This cry of satisfaction had not yet died away when the _Maria Teresa_ was headed for the beach, with smoke and flame enveloping all her after part,--a wreck before she had more than cleared the harbour's mouth. "There's one of 'em done for, an' in short order!" Bill Jones screamed, dancing to and fro like a crazy person, and if he made any further remark Teddy failed to hear it, because of the cheers of triumph which came from every vessel in the American fleet. The enemy had counted on cutting his way through the blockading squadron, but the first of his vessels had come to grief before the chase was fairly begun. As the _Teresa_ swung round in order to gain shoal water before the fire should completely envelop her, Teddy saw two small, swift, low-lying steamers come out from behind her with a speed which seemed like that of the wind, and the little sailor cried, in tones nearly resembling fear: "There are the destroyers! The _Pluton_ and _Furor_! Our ships are not speedy enough to keep out of their way! Now is the Spaniard's chance to pay for the loss of the _Teresa_!" Teddy had heard of these torpedo-boats, and knew what it was possible for them to do unless, perchance, they might be checked at long range, and yet the commanders of the Yankee battle-ships apparently gave no heed to the dangerous enemies which had been designed for the sole purpose of destroying such as they. Straight toward the _Brooklyn_ these formidable craft were headed, and the stowaway involuntarily cried aloud in terror, for was not his father on board that vessel which appeared to be in such peril? Then, coming up swiftly, as a hawk darts out upon its prey, the lad saw the little yacht _Gloucester_ swim directly inshore to meet these mighty engines of destruction, when one well-directed shot from their guns would have sent her to the bottom, crushed out of all semblance of a vessel. At that moment Teddy and Bill Jones saw what much resembled the attack of a fly upon two huge spiders. The tiny _Gloucester_ steamed straight down upon the destroyers, cutting them off from their intended prey, and pelting them with shells from her small 6-pounders, but doing the work with such accuracy and precision of aim that it seemed as if the battle was no more than begun before these two mighty machines turned toward the shore to follow the _Teresa_, but sinking even while one could say they were beaten. "Hurrah for Wainwright! Bully little _Gloucester_!" Two hundred voices rose high with shouts of triumph and exultation that the Yankee gunners had not only done their work well, but with bravery such as could not be excelled, and meanwhile the big ships went tearing madly on lest the _Vizcaya_, the _Cristobal Colon_, and the _Almirante Oquendo_, all that were left of the Spanish fleet, should escape them. The _Iowa_ and the _Texas_ had selected the _Vizcaya_ as their prey, and while the remainder of the fleet stretched away in pursuit of the other ships, these two cut off the big Spaniard, forcing her to fight whether she liked or not. [Illustration] Teddy and Bill Jones stood on the port side of the _Texas_, all unconscious that they were exposed to any chance shot the Spaniard might send aboard, and realising nothing save the fever of battle. The odour of burning powder was in their nostrils, and life or death, danger or safety were alike the same. The _Texas_ literally reeled under their feet as her big guns were discharged full at the _Vizcaya_, which ship was hurling shot and shell with reckless rapidity and inaccuracy of aim. The roar of the pieces was like the crashing of thunder; the vibrations of the air smote one like veritable blows, and enormous smoke clouds rolled here and there, now shutting off all view, and again lifting to reveal the enemy in his desperate but ill-directed flight. "Can we sink her?" Teddy asked once, when the two comrades were so closely enveloped by the pungent vapour that it was impossible to distinguish objects five feet away, and the little sailor cried, in a delirium of excitement: "Sink her, lad? That's what we're bound to do!" "She is workin' her guns for all they are worth, an' I've heard it said that even a ship like this would go down if a big shell struck fairly." "Ay, lad, an' so she would, I reckon; but we'll have yonder Spaniard under the water before her gunners can get the range. Every shot of ours is hittin' its mark, an' they're not comin' within half a mile of us! Sink her! We'll--" Even as Bill Jones spoke, the 12-inch gun in the _Texas's_ forward turret was discharged. The smoke rolled aside at the same instant, and the two watchers saw a huge shell dart forth, speeding directly toward the ship that had so lately been a friendly visitor in the harbour of New York. It struck its mark fairly, crashed through the iron plating as if through paper, and then Teddy saw the mighty vessel reel under her death-stroke when the shell exploded. Another howl of triumph; half naked men danced to and fro in their excitement; the gunners rushed out from the turrets gasping for breath, but yelling with savage joy, and the _Vizcaya's_ bow was headed toward the shore! The fourth vessel of the enemy's fleet had been disabled, and there only remained the two mighty ships in the distance, from the smoke-stacks of which poured forth long rolls of black smoke, flecked with sparks and burning brands, that told of the desperate efforts being made to escape. CHAPTER VI. TEDDY'S DADDY. The _Maria Teresa_ and the _Vizcaya_ were in flames, heading for shoal water that they might not carry down with their blackened hulks the men who had defended them, although feebly, and there was no longer any reason why the _Texas_ should remain in that vicinity. The _Iowa_ swung inshore to make certain the ruin was as complete as it appeared from the distance, and when the royal ensign was hauled down that a white flag might be hoisted on the _Vizcaya_, Captain Philip gave the word which sent the _Texas_ ahead in chase after the survivors of what had, less than half an hour previous, been a mighty fleet. As one who witnessed the battle has already written concerning this particular time and the wonderfully one-sided engagement, his words had best be quoted: "Huge volumes of black smoke, edged with red flame, rolled from every port and shot-hole of the _Vizcaya_, as from the _Teresa_. They were both furnaces of glowing fire. Though they had come from the harbour to certain battle, not a wooden bulkhead, not a partition in the quarters either of officers or men had been taken out, nor had trunks and chests been sent ashore. Neither had the wooden decks or any other wooden fixtures been prepared to resist fire. Apparently the crew had not even wet down the decks." It was the experience of a full lifetime, to witness the destruction of these four fighting-machines, and yet Teddy Dunlap and his little comrade almost forgot what they had seen in the excitement of the race, as their ship leaped forward in that mad chase which was to end only with the wrecking of all those vessels that had sailed out of the harbour to make their way past the Yankee fleet. The two comrades were conscious of nothing save the throbbing and quivering of their own ship, as, under press of every ounce of steam that could be raised, the _Texas_ dashed onward, overhauling first this Yankee vessel and then that, flinging the spray in showers over her deck, and rolling from side to side in the heavy swell as she tore onward at a rate of speed that probably she had never before equalled. It was a race to the death; now and then the hatches were opened that some one of the engineer's crew, exhausted by almost superhuman efforts and the excessive heat, might be brought up from those fiery depths below, while others took the place of him who had fallen at the post of duty, and the speed was never slackened. On, on, over the long swell, every man aboard in the highest possible state of excitement, eager that the _Texas_ should be in at the death, and ahead, straining every nerve as it were, fled the Spaniards, knowing full well that there could be but one ending to such a race. "It's Yankee grit an' Yankee skill that's winnin' this fight!" Bill Jones cried, excitedly, forgetting that he was only a "plain, every-day sailor, with no fightin' timber about him," and at every onward leap of the ship his body swayed forward as if he was eager for a fray. But neither Bill Jones nor any man aboard the _Texas_, save those brave souls in the very bowels of the gallant ship, had any opportunity to display personal bravery. The fight ended when the chase did, for then nothing was left of those mighty Spanish ships save blackened hulks. The _Oregon_ was sending 13-inch projectiles after the _Oquendo_ at every fair opportunity, and the _Texas_, more than holding her own with the other vessels, was coming up astern with a speed that threatened to bring the long race to a speedy conclusion. Then, suddenly, although all had been expecting it, the _Almirante Oquendo's_ bow was headed toward the shore,--she saw the uselessness of further flight,--and all the pursuers, save the _Texas_, hauled off in pursuit of the _Cristobal Colon_. Standing with a group of _Texas_ men, Teddy and Bill Jones saw the Spaniard near the line of surf, and as their vessel's speed was checked there came a roar mightier than when the battle was first opened; the doomed ship rocked to and fro as if she had struck a sunken reef, there was an uprending of the iron decks, and then came a shower of fragments that told of the tremendous explosion within the hull of the _Oquendo_. Now it was the Yankee crew burst once more into shouts of triumph; but before the first cheer arose on the morning air Captain Philip cried: "Don't cheer; the poor devils are dying!" Then it was that every man realised what had, until this moment, been absolutely forgotten: the game in which they were such decided victors was one of death! While they were triumphantly happy, scores upon scores of the enemy were dying,--mangled, scalded, drowning,--and on the instant, like a flash of light, came the terrible fact that while they rejoiced, others were suffering a last agony. "Don't cheer; the poor devils are dying!" At that instant Teddy Dunlap understood what might be the horror of war, and forgetting the joy and exultation which had been his an instant previous, the lad covered his eyes with his hand,--sick at heart that he should have taken even a passive part in that game which could be ended only by suffering and death. Later, after the men were sufficiently calm to be able to discuss intelligently the doings of that day when the full Spanish fleet was destroyed by Yankee vessels who throughout all the action and chase sustained no injury whatsoever, it was learned that more than six hundred human beings had been sent out of the world in less than four hours, and nearly eighteen hundred men were taken prisoners by the American vessels. Teddy Dunlap was like one in a daze from the instant he realised what all this thrilling excitement meant, until Bill Jones, who had been ordered to some duty below, came to his side in the greatest excitement. "What do you think of that, lad?" he cried, shaking the boy vigorously as he pointed seaward, and Teddy, looking in the direction indicated by his outstretched finger, but without seeing anything, asked, hesitatingly: "Is it the _Cristobal Colon_?" "Of course it isn't, my lad! That vessel is a wreck off Tarquino Point, so we heard half an hour ago. Don't you see the ship here almost alongside?" "Oh, yes, I see her," Teddy replied, with a sigh of relief. "There's been so much that is terrible goin' on around us that it's like as if I was dazed." "An' that's what you must be, lad, not to see that here's the _Brooklyn_ nearer alongside than she's like to come again for a year or more." "The _Brooklyn_!" Teddy cried, now aroused from the stupefaction of horror which had come upon him with the knowledge of all the suffering caused that day. "The _Brooklyn_!" "Ay, lad, an' her launch is alongside makin' ready to transfer some of the prisoners. Now's our chance, when such as we don't amount to a straw in view of the great things that have been done this day, to slip over on a little visit to your daddy!" Probably at no other time could such a thing have been done by two members of the crew; but just now, when every man and officer was overwhelmed by the fever of victory, little heed was given to the movements of any particular person. Therefore it was that Teddy Dunlap and the little sailor had no difficulty in gaining the _Brooklyn's_ deck without question or check, and the first person they saw on clambering aboard was a coal-passer, stripped to the waist and grimy with dust and perspiration, who stared with bulging eyes at the boy who followed close behind Bill Jones. "Teddy!" "Daddy!" "I reckon this is no place for me," Bill Jones muttered as he made his way forward, and if the "plain, every-day sailor with no fightin' timber about him" had sufficient delicacy to leave father and son alone at such a time, surely we should show ourselves equally considerate. * * * * * It is enough to say that Teddy's troubles were at an end after a short visit with his father, and that he did not leave the _Texas_ immediately. Captain Philip came to hear the boy's story, and an opportunity was given him to enlist for so long a term as his father was bound to the _Brooklyn_. Since the purpose of this little story was only to tell how the stowaway found his father, there is no excuse for continuing an account of Teddy's experience off Santiago with Sampson; but at some future time, if the reader so chooses, all that befell him before returning home shall be set down with careful fidelity to every detail. THE END. 
43636	----	Our Little Cuban Cousin The Little Cousin Series BY MARY HAZELTON WADE _Ten volumes, illustrated_ [Illustration] _PREVIOUSLY ISSUED_ =Our Little Japanese Cousin= =Our Little Brown Cousin= =Our Little Indian Cousin= =Our Little Russian Cousin= _NOW READY_ =Our Little Cuban Cousin= =Our Little Hawaiian Cousin= =Our Little Eskimo Cousin= =Our Little Philippine Cousin= =Our Little Porto Rican Cousin= =Our Little African Cousin= Each volume illustrated with six full-page plates in tints, from drawings by L. J. Bridgman Cloth, 12mo, with decorative cover, per volume, 50 cents net. (Postage, 6 cents additional) [Illustration] L. C. PAGE & COMPANY, New England Building, Boston [Illustration: MARIA] Our Little Cuban Cousin By Mary Hazelton Wade _Illustrated by_ L. J. Bridgman [Illustration] Boston L. C. Page & Company _MDCCCCII_ _Copyright, 1902_ By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ Published, June, 1902 Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Preface LARGEST of all the fair West Indian Islands which lie in our open doorway is Cuba. The great south doorway to the United States and all North America, you know, is the Gulf of Mexico. But recently, as we all remember, we have had war and bloodshed at this doorway. The Spanish government, in trying to subdue its rebellious province of Cuba, brought great hardship and suffering upon the Cuban people, our neighbours, and our government at last decided that such things must not be at our very doorway. So to-day Cuba is free, and the great trouble of war is over and past for her. Yet, though war no longer troubles the Cuban people, they have many new hardships and difficulties to contend with, and need the friendly help of their more fortunate neighbours scarcely less than before. Now, in order that we may be able to help our friends and neighbours, the Cubans, we must know them better, and surely we shall all feel a stronger interest than ever before in their welfare. So we shall be glad to meet and know our little Cuban neighbour, Maria. We shall ask to have what Maria says translated for us, for most of us do not understand the Spanish language, which Maria speaks. We must remember, too, to pronounce her name as if it were spelled Mahreeah, for that is the way she and her family pronounce it. Our Cuban cousins, you know, like our cousins in Porto Rico, are descended from the dark-eyed, dark-haired Spanish people. Their forefathers came over seas from Spain to Cuba, as the English colonists came across the ocean to our country, which is now the United States. Yet we must remember that the Spanish people and the English people are near akin in the great human family. They both belong to the white race; and so we shall call our black-eyed little neighbour our near cousin. Welcome, then, to our little Cuban cousin! Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. DANGER 9 II. THE PICNIC 17 III. LEGENDS 29 IV. NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOURS 37 V. SUGAR 45 VI. THE QUARTERS 53 VII. HOME AGAIN 61 VIII. STARTLING NEWS 64 IX. FIRST YEARS IN THE NEW WORLD 72 X. THE MERRIMAC 81 XI. VICTORY 90 XII. HAVANA 97 List of Illustrations PAGE MARIA _Frontispiece_ "'I COUNTED THREE DIFFERENT FORTS OF THE ENEMY'" 21 "THEY SAT BACK IN THE LOW, BROAD SEAT" 39 "THE MACHINES MADE A STEADY, GRINDING SOUND" 50 "'IT IS LIKE A BIG LIZARD'" 76 "THE AMERICAN FLAG WAS WAVING AND PEACE RULED IN THE LAND" 100 Our Little Cuban Cousin CHAPTER I. DANGER. "MARIA! Maria! Maria!" was the low call from some unknown direction. It sounded like a whisper, yet it must have travelled from a distance. Low as it was, the little girl dozing in the hammock in the lemon grove was awake in an instant. She sprang out and stood with hands shading her eyes, looking for the owner of the voice. She well knew what it meant. Ramon was the only one who had agreed to call in this way. It was a sign of danger! It meant, "The enemy are coming. Look out and get ready." Shouldn't you think our little Cuban cousin would have trembled and cried, or at least run for protection to her mother? Maria was only nine years old. She was a perfect fairy of a child, with tiny hands and feet and soft black eyes. But she was used to war by this time. She never knew when she went to sleep at night but that her home would be burnt down by the cruel Spaniards before the end of another day. Ramon got up before sunrise this morning. He had been away from home for several hours. He had gone out in the country "to look around," as he said. From his own front door the burning roofs of the houses of old friends not a mile distant could be seen the night before. The Spanish troops must be near. Who could say but that the boy's own home would suffer next? He was tall and active, and he longed very much to help his people. They had suffered much from their Spanish rulers and now they were working hard for freedom. But Ramon's father had been ill for a long time. He was growing weaker every day. The boy's mother looked very sad at times. Her eyes filled with tears when she said: "My dear boy, you must not leave us now. Your duty lies at home. You must be your father's right hand and protect your little sisters and myself." The Diaz children lived in a cosy little home in the country. It was only a few miles from Havana. Their father had a small sugar plantation. He had been able to raise enough sugar to buy everything the family needed until lately. But now times were very hard. It was not easy to sell the sugar; besides this, the good man and his family were in constant danger. What had they done? you ask. Nothing. They did not love their Spanish rulers, to be sure, and they believed their countrymen were fighting justly to free their beautiful island home. They would help these countrymen, or insurgents, as they were called, if they had a chance. But Maria's father had never, himself, fought against the Spaniards. He was a quiet, kindly gentleman, and he had no love for war. What did the Spaniards care for that? They might say to themselves: "This man has a pleasant home. He raises sugar. He may give food and shelter to those daring Cuban soldiers. Then they can keep up their strength and be able to keep up the fight against us all the longer." So far Maria's home had been spared. Although many other houses near her had been burned, hers stood safe and unharmed yet. But "To-morrow is another day," the child often repeated to herself, after the manner of her people. That meant, "Although I am safe now, no one knows what will come next." Then Maria would sigh for a moment and look sad. But she was naturally merry and gay, and the next moment would be dancing about and humming a lively tune. What news was her brave brother bringing this morning? As soon as he came in sight, Maria ran to meet him. The sun was very hot and the little girl's head was bare, but she did not think of these things. The Spaniards! The Spaniards! made the only picture she could see. As soon as she was within easy call, Ramon told her that a company of the enemy was only two miles away. He had been very close to them. He had even heard them talking together while he hid in the bushes. "Just think, Maria," he exclaimed, "they were laughing at the easy time they would have in breaking our spirit. They said that before long they would starve us into giving up. I rather think they won't. Do you know, Maria, I believe God will send us help if we are only patient. The Americans live so near us, I don't see how they can help taking our part, when they know the way we are treated. But come, we must hurry and tell father the news. He will know what we ought to do to get ready for a visit to-day." The children hurried to the house, and soon every one was in a state of the greatest excitement. When Señor Diaz was told of the approach of the Spaniards, he said, in his gentle voice, "We would best have a picnic." The children looked greatly astonished at the idea of a picnic at such a time, but their father went on to explain. He had often thought of the coming of the Spanish troops. He had made a plan in case he should hear of their approach. The house should be locked up; all the family should go down to the shore of a small lake a quarter of a mile back in the woods. The path that led to this lake was so hidden that a stranger would not know it was there. Ramon could lead the oxen; the father thought that he was strong enough to guide the horse to the picnic-ground. If the Spaniards found no one about the house, and no animals worth capturing, they might possibly pass by without doing any harm. Señora Diaz and old black Paulina got a hasty luncheon ready. Maria said she must certainly take her sewing materials, for she was going to embroider some insurgent emblems. Her little sister, Isabella, carried her pet kitten in her arms, and cried because the parrot must be left behind. "He'll be so lonesome," she said; "and I just know he'll call 'Isabella' all day long." The dear little girl cried hard, but everybody's hands were so full that Mr. Poll was left in the house. A big linen cloth was stretched over the cage. If kept in the dark, he would probably be still, and not attract the attention of the soldiers, if they stopped and looked in. The black man servant, Miguel, stayed behind to shut up the chickens in barrels, but would follow the rest of the party in a few moments. The path led in and out through the beautiful southern woods. There were cocoanut-palms and ebony and mahogany trees, while underneath were creeping vines and bushes, making a close thicket of underbrush. There was no talking. The family crept along as quietly as possible, lest they should be heard and followed. For by this time the enemy must be very near. CHAPTER II. THE PICNIC. IN a few minutes the lake was in sight. It was a very pretty sheet of water. A tiny boat rocked to and fro close to the shore, for Ramon and Maria often came here to row about the quiet lake. Ramon soon had two hammocks swinging between the trees for his father and mother. The lunch was spread out on the ground, as it was already past the time for the noonday meal. "What did they have to eat?" you ask. There were some delicate white rolls, that Paulina knew how to make so nicely. There was guava jelly to eat on the rolls; fresh lemons and newly made sugar from which to make a refreshing drink. Besides these, there was plenty of cold fried chicken. Could any children have a nicer picnic lunch than this, even if a long time had been spent in getting ready for it? The guava jelly looked just as clear and beautiful as that which is brought to America, and sold here at such a high price. Did you ever see it in the stores of Boston or New York, and think how nice it must taste? Perhaps your mother has bought it for you when you were getting well after a long illness, and wished to tempt your appetite by some new dainty. Maria has several guava-trees near her home. Paulina makes so much jelly from the ripe fruit that perhaps the little girl does not realise how nice it is. After the lunch, Señor Diaz stretched himself in one of the hammocks for a quiet rest. He was very tired after his walk through the woods. He was also troubled over the sad state of things in his country, and was worried that he was not strong enough to take a more active part against the enemy. His wife lay down in the other hammock for a noonday nap, after which she promised to help Maria in her sewing. Paulina gathered the remains of the lunch and put things in order, while the three children rowed around the lake. "Won't you hear me read out of my primer, Maria?" said Isabella. "Ramon, dear, give your oars a rest, and float for a little while. You can listen, too, and I know you'll like my lesson to-day." The little girl was just learning to read, and she had a book printed by the insurgents. No one had to urge her to study, for even her own little primer was made up of stories about the war. She had tucked her loved book in the loose waist of her dress when she left the house. No one had noticed it before. [Illustration: "'I COUNTED THREE DIFFERENT FORTS OF THE ENEMY'"] "Why, yes, my darling sister, certainly I will listen, and help you with the big words, too," answered Maria, while Ramon drew in his oars, and lay back in the boat with a pleasant smile. Of course the words were all Spanish, because that was the only language the children had ever learned. Isabella read: "My papa is in the army of the Cubans. He fights to make us free. Do you hear the cannon roar? Our men will bring victory. Long live Cuba!" When Isabella came to the word "victory," Maria had to help her. It was such a big word for the six-year-old child to pronounce. She looked at it again and again, repeating it slowly to herself. Then she said: "I'll never fail on that word again, Maria, no matter where it is. How I would like to see it in great big letters on a silk banner! I'd wave it all day long." This was a good deal for such a little girl to say, but then, you know, she was living in the midst of war. "Good for you," said her brother; "we'll all live yet to see the words of your primer come true. Long live free Cuba! I say. But come, let's go on shore, and play war. You and Maria can be the Spaniards, and I'll be the insurgent army. You just see how I will make short work of taking you prisoners." The children landed under a big cotton-tree. They made a fort out of dead branches which they gathered. This fort was to belong to the Spanish troops. The two girls placed themselves behind it, and stood ready to defend themselves. It was not many minutes before Ramon took them by surprise, and dragged them to the boat, which stood for the Cuban headquarters. "Do you know," said the boy, when they stopped to rest a few minutes from their sport, "I counted three different forts of the enemy during my tramp this morning. The cowardly Spaniards don't dare to march very far away from those forts. They really don't give our men a chance to have a good fair battle. They think by having plenty of forts they can keep our soldiers from getting into the cities. Then they will scare the rest of us who live in the country from feeding them. In that way we will be starved into giving in. We'll see, that's all." By this time Maria could see that her mother had waked up and left the hammock. "She will be ready to help me with my work now," said Maria. "Don't you want to come and watch me embroider, Isabella?" The two girls were soon sitting beside their mother, while Ramon went with Miguel on a hunt for birds. The insurgent emblems which Maria was so eager to make were to be given to the Cuban soldiers. They were to wear beneath their coats. Suppose that an insurgent should stop at any place, and ask for food and rest; how would the people know that he was true to his country, and not a friend of the Spaniards? He could show his little piece of flannel with the watchword of the Cubans embroidered upon it. That was the only thing needed. The people would be safe now in giving him help. Maria did her work very nicely. She made a scalloped edge with red silk all around the white cloth. A crimson heart on a green cross must then be made, with underneath these words: "Be of good cheer. The heart of Jesus is with me." Two hours went by before Ramon came back. Miguel and he were bringing a large net full of birds. Of course, they had done no shooting. That would not have been wise when Spanish soldiers might be near to hear the noise. No, they had searched through the woods till they found some sour orange trees. The fruit was ripe now and there were sure to be numbers of parrots around. They could be caught in the net that Miguel had brought from the house that morning. They had to creep along very quietly so as to take the birds by surprise. They had great success, it seemed; but what would the family do with a dozen dead parrots? Eat them, to be sure. Paulina would make a fine stew for dinner that very night. That is, of course, if they were fortunate enough to find the house still standing when they reached home. The flesh of this bird is tough, and one wonders that Ramon and Maria are so fond of parrot stew. In Cuba there are many nicer birds for eating. But each one has his own tastes. No two people are alike, we have found out long ago. "I discovered something in the woods that I want to show you girls," said Ramon. "It's only a little ways off. Won't you come, too, mamma? It's the dearest little nest I ever saw in my life. It must belong to a humming-bird." Ramon's mother and the children followed him till the boy stopped in front of a low bush. Hidden away under the leaves was the tiny nest. It was no bigger than a large thimble. It was made of cotton, bound together with two or three horse-hairs. "I'm sure I couldn't have sewed it as well as that," said Maria. "See how the threads are woven in and out. It's wonderful what birds can do. But look at the eggs, mamma dear. See! there are two of them. They aren't any bigger than peas." Just then the children heard a fluttering of tiny wings. It was Mrs. Humming-Bird who had come home. She was troubled at the sight of the strangers. "Did you ever before see such a small bird?" whispered Isabella. "She looks like a butterfly, and a small one, too. Aren't her colours beautiful?" "We would best let her go back to her nest, now, my dears," said Señora Diaz. "You can watch, Ramon, and find out when the baby birds hatch. We shall all like to see them, I'm sure." They left the bush and turned back toward the lake. Ramon stopped again, however, when they came to a small lace-wood tree. "You know you asked me to get you some of the wood to trim your doll's dress, Isabella. Here is a good chance to get it. I'll follow you in a few minutes." Ramon took out his knife, and soon the young tree was cut away from the roots. It would take some time to strip off the bark. It must be done carefully and peeled off in one piece, so as to leave the pith of the tree quite smooth and whole. Several strips of delicate lace could be obtained from this pith. Now Isabella would be able to dress her doll in great elegance. She could ruffle the lace on the waist and flounces of the doll's skirt and make it look as beautiful as though it cost a good deal of money. Isabella herself has a dress trimmed with the lace, but Paulina needs to be very careful when she irons it. It was growing dark when Ramon arrived at the shore with his tree. "We will go back now," said Señor Diaz, "and see if the soldiers have left us our home." All were soon making their way back to the house, which they found unharmed. Nothing had been touched by the enemy. Perhaps they had not thought it worth while to stop. At any rate, there was great joy in the Diaz family that evening as they sat on the balcony, sipping cups of hot sweetened water. The times were so hard they could not buy coffee, and _guaraba_, as they called it, was the next best thing. Maria is very fond of it. The children were so tired from the day's excitement that by eight o'clock they were quite ready to go to dreamland. Isabella started first. She went up to her father and, placing her tiny hands across her breast, looked up into his eyes with a sweet, solemn look. He knew at once what it meant. She was asking an evening blessing before leaving him for the night. Every one in the room stopped talking; all bowed their heads while the kind father said: "May God bless my darling child, and all others of this household." Maria and Ramon followed Isabella's example, and soon the children were sound asleep. Isabella dreamed that she taught her loved parrot to say "Liberty," and was delighted at her success. CHAPTER III. LEGENDS. THE next morning it rained quite hard, so the children had to stay in the house. "What shall we do with ourselves?" said Maria. "Oh, I know. We'll ask father to tell us stories." "What shall it be to-day?" he asked. "Do you want a tale of old Spain, or shall it be the life of Columbus; or maybe you would like a fairy story?" "A fairy story! A fairy story!" all cried together. "Very well, then, this shall be a tale that our people heard in Europe a thousand years ago. "It was long before Columbus dreamed of his wonderful voyages across the Atlantic. It was before people had even thought of the idea of the roundness of the earth. They had such queer fancies in those days. Few men dared to sail far into the West. They believed that if they did so they would come into a place of perfect darkness. "Still they had one legend of a land across the Atlantic that was very beautiful. Many of our greatest men believed in it. It was called the Island of Youth, and people who reached it could live for ever, and never grow old." "What made them think there was such a place?" asked Maria, with wide-open eyes. "They had heard that long ago there was a very brave young man. He had a wonderful horse as white as the foam of the ocean. Strange to say, this horse could carry him through the water more safely than the stoutest boat. As he was looking for adventure, he started off on the back of his fairy steed to cross the ocean. "After he had travelled for some distance, he stopped to kill a giant who had enchanted a princess. When the giant was dead, and the beautiful maiden was free once more, he travelled on till he came to a land where the trees were loaded with birds. The air was filled with their sweet music. "He stayed in this land for a hundred years. He was merry and gay all the time. He was never ill, and never tired." "But wasn't he lonesome?" asked Ramon. "I should think he would wish for other company besides the birds." "Oh, there were many other people there, of course, and as our traveller was fond of shooting, he had great sport hunting the deer. "But at last something happened to make him think of his old home and friends. It was a rusty spear that came floating to the shore one day. It must have travelled across the ocean. The young man grew sad with longing for the scenes of his early days. He mounted his white steed once more, plunged into the ocean, and at last reached his own home. "But think, children. It was a hundred years since he had seen it. His old friends were all dead. The people seemed like dwarfs. I suppose he must have grown in size and strength while away on the Island of Youth. At any rate, his own home was not what he expected to find it. He had no wish to live longer. He lay down and died. The Island of Youth had not been such a great blessing to him, after all. "Another story used to be told in Spain of the Island of Seven Cities. It was a legend of our own Cuba, for all we know. People said that a thousand years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, an archbishop was driven away from Spain. Why was it? He was untrue to his king. He sailed far from his country with a goodly company of men and women. "After a long voyage they reached a land which they called Antilla. There were people already living here. They were kind and gentle. "The archbishop divided the land into seven parts. He built churches and other fine buildings. He got the natives to help him. All lived together in peace and happiness. "But look, children, the rain has stopped falling, and the sun is shining. You can go outdoors now, and amuse yourselves. Before you leave, however, let me ask you a question in geography. "Cuba is shaped like what animal? Think how long and narrow it is, and of the ridge of mountains running through the centre of the island. I will give you until to-morrow to guess the answer. "And, by the way, did you ever think that our home is really the top of a row of mountains reaching up from the floor of the ocean? Ah, what wonders would be seen in the valleys below us, if we could journey under the water, and explore it for ourselves!" Just as the good man stopped speaking, Miguel knocked at the door. Two ragged little girls were standing at his side. They were strangers. Where had they come from during the hard rain of the morning? It seemed that Miguel had been tramping through the woods after game. He did not care for the rain. He was a good-natured servant, and was always ready to make pleasant surprises for the family. When he was about four miles from home, he came upon an unexpected camp. There were about thirty people in it. There, on the mountainside, they had made rough huts to live in. There were not only men and women, but little children, also. They had been here for two or three weeks. What a sad story they had to tell! It was the old story. They wished to be peaceful; they did not join the army of the Cubans. Still, they might possibly help them in some little way. But they did not go to the great city. They fled to the woods on the mountainside. They kept themselves from starving by gathering berries and wild fruit. Their children were sent out every morning to the country homes which were not too far off to beg for food and help. "Poor little children!" exclaimed Maria, when Miguel had finished his story. "We will help you all we can, won't we, papa?" And the child's eyes were full of tears, as she said: "We may be homeless like them, yet." Isabella ran to call her mother and ask her help. Clothing was collected, and all the food the family could spare was put into baskets. It was far too large a load for the little girls to carry, so Ramon and Miguel went with them. "What a good servant Miguel is!" said Señor Diaz to his wife, after they were gone. "So many of the blacks are lazy, and only think of their own comfort. But Miguel is always good-natured and ready to help." CHAPTER IV. NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOURS. IT was a beautiful Sunday morning. The birds were singing gaily outside. Maria opened her eyes. Perhaps she would have slept longer if she had not been wakened by a sound in the next room. It was Ramon who was calling. "Say, Maria, what shall we do to-day while father and mother are gone to church? Let's go over to the plantation. You know we've been invited ever so many times, and it is such fun watching the men at work." "All right," said Maria, "but there's no hurry. We will wait till after the folks have gone before we start." Just beyond the home of the Diaz children was an immense sugar plantation. It covered at least a square mile of land. The rich planter who owned it employed more than a hundred black men. It was cutting season now, and the work was carried on day and night, both Sundays and week-days. Sunday afternoon, however, was a half-holiday, even in the busiest time, and the black people then gave themselves up to merrymaking, no matter how tired they were. [Illustration: "THEY SAT BACK IN THE LOW, BROAD SEAT"] By nine o'clock Señor Diaz and his wife had left home in the oddest-looking carriage you ever heard of. It was a _volante_. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It looked somewhat like an old-fashioned chaise. It had immense wheels, and the shafts were at least sixteen feet long. We think at once, how clumsily one must move along in such a carriage. But it is not so. It is the best thing possible for travelling over the rough roads of Cuba. It swings along from side to side so easily that a person is not bumped or jostled as he would be in any other kind of carriage. But one does not see many new volantes in Cuba now. They are going out of fashion. Señor Diaz was very proud of this carriage when it was new. It was trimmed with bands of silver. It had beautiful silk cushions. Even now, the good man and his wife looked quite elegant as they sat back in the low, broad seat. Isabella sat between them. Miguel rode on the horse's back as driver. He wore a scarlet jacket trimmed with gold braid. He had on high boots with spurs at his heels. He felt very proud. It made very little difference to him that his coat was badly torn and the braid was tarnished. These were war-times and one could not expect new clothes. "If the people at the great house invite you to stay till evening, you may do so," said Señor Diaz to his two older children just as he was driving away. "I know you will be gentlemanly, Ramon; and Maria dear, my little daughter will certainly be quiet and ladylike." Away swung the volante down the road, while Ramon and Maria put on their wide straw hats and started across the fields for the rich sugar planter's home. They looked very pretty as they moved along under the shade-trees. Both were barefooted; Maria wore a simple white dress, and Ramon a linen shirt and trousers. They reached their neighbour's grounds in a few minutes. They soon found themselves in front of a large, low house with beautiful gardens and shade-trees around it. But of what was the house made? It was of the same material as Maria's home, yet we see nothing like it in our own country. It was neither brick, nor wood, nor stone. Maria would say to us: "Why, this is 'adobe,' and it keeps out the sun's hot rays nicely. Don't you know what adobe is? It is a mixture of clay and sand dried by the sun. Some people call it unburnt brick. It was nearly white when the house was new, but now you see it is quite yellow." There was no glass in the window-cases. In such a warm land as Cuba glass would keep out the air too much, and the people inside would suffer from the heat. But there were iron bars across the casements; there were also shutters to protect the house from the sun and rain. The children went in at the door, opened by a black servant. She looked kind and pleasant, and showed two rows of white teeth as she smiled at the young visitors. A gorgeous yellow bandanna was wound around her head. "Come right in, little dears. Massa and missus will be glad to see you; little Miss Lucia has been wishing for company to-day." She led Ramon and Maria into a large sitting-room with two rows of rocking-chairs opposite each other. They stretched nearly from one end of the room to the other. There was scarcely any other furniture. A minute afterward, Lucia opened the door. She was about Maria's age and very pretty. But she was dressed like a grown-up young lady. She carried in her hand a dainty little fan, which she moved gracefully as she talked. "Oh, I am so glad to see you," she cried. "But let us go out into the garden; it is much pleasanter there; don't you think so? I want to show you my sensitive plant. Did you ever have one?" Maria and Ramon had heard their father speak of this plant, but they had never happened to see one themselves. They followed Lucia out on the balcony. A morning-glory vine was trailing up the trelliswork. It was bright with its delicate blossoms, pink and blue and purple. Close beside it was the sensitive plant. "It came up of itself," said Lucia. "That is, you know, it was not planted by any one. You see its leaves are wide open now. It is keeping the morning-glory blossoms company. Perhaps they are talking together. Who knows? But when night comes it will close up in the same way as the petals of its next-door neighbour." "Now, Ramon, just touch the leaves gently." "Why, it acts as if afraid of me, doesn't it?" said the boy. "See how it shrinks away, even before I take hold of it. I declare, it knows more than some animals." "Would you like to ride around the plantation? We have three ponies; so each one of us can have one," said their little hostess. Her visitors were delighted at the idea. While a servant was sent for the ponies the children sat down under a royal palm-tree. It stood at least sixty feet high. Its trunk was perfectly straight. Far up at the top was the wide-spreading plume of leaves. There were no branches at the sides. "I just love this tree," said Lucia. "It seems so strong as well as beautiful. Isn't it queer that the trunk of such a big tree should be hollow?" "I think it queerer still that the roots should be so small and fine," answered Ramon. "Did you ever eat what is found at the top of the royal palm? Everybody says it is delicious." "Yes, we had it boiled once for a dinner-party," said Lucia. "It was delicious, but you know it kills the tree to take it off; so father says it is almost wicked to get it. I think he is right." CHAPTER V. SUGAR. BY this time the ponies had been brought up, and the young riders started off. How high the sugar-canes stood! The children could not see over the tops, even from their ponies' backs. The long, narrow leaves hung down much like our own Indian corn. Far up on each plant was a feathery white plume. The stalks were now a golden yellow colour. This was Mother Nature's sign that the cane was full of sap. At Maria's home the cane had been already cut and made into sugar. But there were only two or three fields. Here, on Lucia's plantation, there were hundreds of acres. The men had been working for weeks already, and it was not yet half cut. "Oh, look, Ramon!" said Maria, "see that dear little black baby asleep between the canes. She can't be more than two years old. The other children must have gone away and forgotten her." Ramon jumped down, and, picking up the little tot, lifted her up in front of him on the pony's back. She had been waked up so suddenly that she began to cry. But when the others smiled at her she rolled her big eyes around, and soon began to laugh. She was going to have a ride with white children, and that was a grand event in her life. A turn in the rough road showed an ox-cart ahead. How small the Cuban oxen are! But they are such gentle, patient creatures, a child could drive them. How they pushed ahead with their heavy load! When they were young a hole had been bored through the centre of their nostrils, and an iron ring was passed through. When the oxen were harnessed a rope was fastened on each side of this ring. The black driver held the ends of the rope, and guided the oxen. He had no whip, for it was not needed. "Let's follow him up to the top of the hill," said Lucia. "He must carry his load to the boiler-house that way, and I do like to watch the oxen go down a steep place. There, see! The man will not even get off; he's perfectly safe." As the heavily loaded wagon passed over the brow of the hill, the oxen squatted down like dogs, and seemed to slide rather than walk, till they reached the foot. "Bravo!" shouted Ramon. "I'd trust such creatures anywhere. They ought to be rewarded with a good supper to-night. And now that they have reached level ground see how well they trot along. These dear little ponies cannot do much better." The children still followed the ox-cart, and soon reached the sugar-mill. Immense machines were crushing the canes, and the sap was flowing into great tanks from which it was afterward taken to be boiled. "What does the molasses come from?" you may ask. All Cuban children would tell you at once that it is the drippings from the newly made sugar. Lucia's father does not sell his molasses, as do many other planters. He thinks it is not worth while. You cannot guess what use he makes of it. His work-people spread it on the ground to make it richer for the next year's crop. His wife does not think of having it used in cooking, either, as American women do, and so Lucia has never tasted gingerbread in her life. Perhaps you feel sorry for her. Never mind. She enjoys sucking the juice from the fresh sugar-cane as well as the black children on her father's plantation; she has as much of this as she wishes, so she never misses the molasses cookies and cakes you like so much. "Lucia, how is it your father keeps on having the cane cut?" asked Ramon, as the children stood watching the sap boiling down to sugar. "You know, don't you, a new law has been passed ordering the work stopped? It is all because the Spaniards are afraid that the poor insurgents will get food and help from the sugar planters." "Yes, I know," answered Lucia. "I heard father talking about it. He said he had paid the government a large sum of money to let him keep on. So he's all right. But perhaps I ought not to have said this, for it is his own business, and I should not repeat what I hear." The children entered the sugar-mill, and stood watching the workers. Every one was so busy that no notice was taken of the young visitors. Here were great troughs full of the canes which were being crushed by heavy rollers; the juice was flowing fast into the tanks below. And there were the caldrons full of the boiling syrup; by their sides stood men with long, heavy skimmers stirring the juice, and taking off the scum which rose to the surface. [Illustration: "THE MACHINES MADE A STEADY, GRINDING SOUND"] There were large, shallow pans close by, where the sugar was placed to cool. The air was full of the sweet smell of the sugar; the engines were clanking noisily; the machines made a steady, grinding sound, and, above all, the cries of the negroes could be heard, as they called to each other at their work. A few minutes was long enough for the children to stay in this busy, steaming place. Then they went out again into the bright, clear air. After giving the black baby into the charge of one of the negro girls who was standing near by, our little cousins mounted their ponies, and rode slowly back to the house. They passed field after field where men were cutting down the tall sugar-canes. How rapidly they moved along, leaving the ground quite clear, as they passed over it! Was it such hard work? They certainly bent over very much as they lifted the heavy, clumsy tools in their hands. These tools looked somewhat like long cheese-knives, only they were much thicker and heavier. Ramon would say, "Why, those are machetes. I wish I could use one now in defending my country. Many a brave insurgent has nothing else to fight with excepting the machete he brought from his little farm. No guns can be obtained, for the Spaniards hold the cities, and will not allow any weapons to get to the Cubans. But those machetes will do great good yet." As the boy watched the men working, he was thinking how differently he would like to use the machete, but he did not say anything of this kind to Lucia. He was just a little afraid that her father was not as anxious for Cuba to be free as he and his own parents were. When the children reached the house, Lucia's parents insisted that Ramon and Maria should spend the day, and a delicious luncheon was now waiting for them. "This afternoon," said the planter, "you may go over to the quarters and see the fun. You know it is a half-holiday, and there will be great good times among the blacks." CHAPTER VI. THE QUARTERS. AFTER a little rest in the garden, the children started out once more. This time they chose to walk, taking Lucia's big dog with them for company. Even before they started, they could hear the sound of drums and shouting and laughter coming from the quarters. They did not have far to go before they came upon a crowd of black children. The boys were having a game of ball. It was so confused it would be hard to describe it. It certainly could not be called baseball, nor anything like it. And here were the cabins, built close together. Cocoanut and mango trees shaded the little huts. Near each one was a small garden where the people raised the vegetables they liked best. Okra was sure to be seen here, for what old mammy could be satisfied with her Sunday dinner unless she had some of this delicious plant in at least one of the dishes? Here also was the chicota, much like our summer squash, and corn, on which the pigs must be fattened. As for fruits, there were custard-apple and sour-sop trees, the maumee, looking much like a melon; besides many other things which grow so easily in the warm lands. Chickens were running about in every direction, while there seemed as many pens with pigs grunting inside as there were cabins. How happy the people all seemed! That is, all but a baby here and there who had been forgotten by his mother and was crying to keep himself company as he sprawled about on the ground. And how grand the women thought themselves in the bright red and yellow bandannas wound around their heads! You may be sure that all of the jewelry the people owned was worn that day. Maria could not help smiling at one young girl who had immense rings in her ears, three chains of glass beads around her neck, heavy brass rings on her fingers, and broad bracelets that clinked together on her arms. She strutted around as proudly as the peacocks near by. They are handsome birds, but very vain and silly, like this poor black girl who seemed to admire herself so greatly. She tossed her head from side to side as she got ready to lead the dance. The drummer bent to his work with all his heart; one pair of dancers after another took their places, and moved in perfect time with faster and faster steps. The crowd of bystanders watched them in admiration. Under the shade of a mango-tree two black children were playing a game of dominoes. "What a nice set it is," said Ramon to his sister. "I am going to ask them if they bought it. It must have cost quite a big sum for them to spend." The older of the two players heard Ramon's words. He looked up with a proud smile that made his mouth stretch from ear to ear as he said: "I made them all myself, little master. I got the wood from an ebony-tree." "But of what did you make the white points set into the dominoes?" asked Ramon. "They look like ivory." "I cut them out of alligator's teeth, little master. Now didn't I do well?" This was said with another broad grin and a big roll of his eyes that made Lucia and Maria laugh in spite of themselves. "Well, I should say so," answered Ramon. "You deserve a medal. But can you read and write? A boy as smart as you ought to go to school." "No, little master. But that doesn't trouble me any. I don't need any learning," was the answer. And no doubt the little fellow had no idea but that he was as well off as any one need be. He could play in the sunshine all day long and he had plenty of good food. Wasn't his mother a fine cook, though! He was right in thinking so, too, for she could make the nicest "messes" out of the herbs and vegetables growing in the little garden behind the cabin. There were melons and plantains in abundance; salt fish or jerked beef to eat every day, and a long sleep at night on a straw bed in the cabin. Oh, life was a lovely thing! And what should the little black boy know of the cruel war and the Cuban children who had been driven away from their homes? To be sure, he had heard sad stories in his life, but they were about the old times when his people were brought to Cuba as slaves. He had listened to his father's tales of slavery, although he himself had been free ever since he was a little child. The boy's grandfather was born far away in Africa where the sun was always hot. He had lived a wild, happy life in his little village under the palm-trees by the side of a broad river. As he grew up he hunted the panther and the elephant, and made scarecrows to frighten away the monkeys from the corn-fields. He was very happy. But one day a band of white men took the village by surprise. They took many other prisoners besides himself. The poor blacks were put in chains and driven on board boats in which the white men had come to the place. Down the river they sailed, never more to see their little thatched homes and have gay feasts under the palms. At last they came to the great ocean, where a large vessel was waiting for them. As they were packed away in the hold of the vessel, no notice was taken of their cries except a lash of the whip, now and then, across their bare backs. Then came the long voyage, and the dreadful seasickness in the crowded hold of the vessel. Many died before the shores of Cuba came in sight. But when those who still lived were able once more to stand on dry land they were too weak and sick to care where they should go next. In a few days, however, they found themselves working under masters on the sugar plantations, and making new homes and friends among those who were slaves like themselves. The little domino player told Manuel that his grandfather worked so faithfully that after awhile he was given a part of each day for his own use. In this way he earned money enough to buy his own freedom as well as his wife's. But he had children growing up who were still slaves. He wished them to be free also. Then came an order from the Spanish rulers that all the slaves should be gradually given their liberty. But this was not till many years after their black brothers in America had been set free by that great man, President Lincoln. CHAPTER VII. HOME AGAIN. AFTER Ramon and Maria got home that night they told Paulina about their visit to the quarters, and their talk with the little domino player. Paulina knew him well, and said he was a very bright and good boy. "Some of those little negroes are too lazy," she declared, "but Pedro is always busy. I wish he could go to school, for he will make a smart man." She went on to tell more of the old days. There was one story of which she was very fond. It was of a cargo of slaves who were being brought to Cuba. They outwitted their masters. This was the way they did it. After the ship had been sailing for many days, it began to leak badly. The water poured in so fast that all hands were kept busy pumping it out. It seemed, after a while, to rush in faster than the men could get it out. The ship's carpenter went around the vessel, and hunted in every part, but could not find a single leak. "It is the work of the evil one," cried the captain. The slaves wrung their hands, and wailed, while the crew worked at the pumps till they were quite worn out. When it seemed as though the ship must soon sink, an island came in sight. The Spaniards quickly lowered provisions and water into the small boats, and rowed away, leaving the slaves to die, as they supposed. But they had no sooner got well out of reach than the ship began to rise out of the water. The black people could be seen dancing about on the deck in delight. The sails were set to the wind, and away sped the vessel. How was it possible? This was the whole story. The prisoners had gotten hold of some knives, with which they cut through the outer planking of the vessel. Of course, it began to leak sadly. But when the carpenter searched for these leaks the slaves had cleverly filled the holes with plugs packed with oakum, and he could not find them. In this way the whole cargo of negroes succeeded in getting out of the clutches of the Spaniards. Old Paulina chuckled as she told the story and thought of the cleverness of her people. CHAPTER VIII. STARTLING NEWS. IT was a pleasant evening in February. The children felt gay and happy, for their father was getting so much stronger. Why, this very day he had walked with them a mile in an excursion to a cave. Miguel had told them such wonderful things about it, they begged their father to take them there. Although they lived so near, they had never happened to visit it before. When they reached the spot, they were obliged to crouch down in order to enter the cave. The opening was merely a small hole between the rocks. But, as they crept down under the ground, the passage grew wider, and led into a large room. "Do you suppose Robinson Crusoe's cave was anything like this?" Maria asked her brother. But the answer was, "I don't think so; you know it was not beautiful. And see here, Maria, look at those shining pendants hanging from the roof. They are as clear as diamonds. Oh, look down beside your feet; there are more of those lovely things; they are reaching up to meet those coming from above." "What makes them, papa?" Señor Diaz then explained to the children that there must be a great deal of lime in the rocks overhead, and that, when the water slowly filtered through the roof of the cave, it brought with it the lime which formed in these wonderful crystals. "People pay great sums of money for precious stones," said their father, "but what could be more beautiful than these shining pyramids! The pendants hanging from the roof are called stalactites. Those reaching up from the floor of the cave are stalagmites. Do you suppose you can remember such hard words, my dear little Isabella? But come, children, I have something else to show you here." He led the children to a little pond, in which they could dimly see, by the light of the torch, fish sporting about in the water. "Those fishes are happy as can be, yet they are perfectly blind. I made some experiments years ago that led me to discover it. You see how dark it is. The creatures living here would have no use for eyesight, so they gradually became blind. We can only keep the organs of our body in good condition by using them." It was no wonder the children enjoyed the day with their father, as he always had so much of interest to tell them. This evening, as they sat on the balcony, Maria was talking about the fish that lived in darkness, when Ramon suddenly exclaimed: "Look! look! the garden is fairly alive with lights. The cucujos are giving us a display of fireworks. Let's catch them, and have some fun. Except in the rainy season, it is not often that we see so many." He ran into the house for a candle, and the three children were soon chasing the cucujos along the walks. The light of the candle attracted the insects, then it was an easy matter to catch hundreds of them in a fine thread net. We should call them fireflies, but they are much larger and more brilliant than any insect we have ever seen. As they floated along above the flowers, Maria said they always made her think of fairies with their torch-bearers. The light was soft and cloud-like, yet it was bright enough to show the colours of the flowers, although the night was quite dark. "Why not make a belt of them for your waists, as well as necklaces and bracelets?" Ramon asked his sisters. "Then you can go in and show yourselves to mother. You can tell her you are all ready for a party." "All right," answered the girls. "But you must help us, Ramon." How could the children do such things without hurting the beautiful little creatures, we wonder. But they knew a way, as they had done them before. Each cucujo has a tiny hook near its head, which can be fastened in a person's clothing without harming it in the least. Grown-up ladies in Havana often adorn themselves in this way when going to a party. They look very brilliant, I assure you. It was not many minutes before Maria and Isabella were fairly ablaze with lights. Then they danced into the house to be admired by their parents. "Now let's take them off and put them in those wicker cages you made last summer, Ramon," said Isabella. "I'm sure the poor little things are tired of hanging from our clothes. They must wish to fly around once more. They will not mind being shut up in the cages for a day or two, if we give them plenty of sugar to eat." "All right, but I wouldn't keep them shut up long enough to make pets of them," said her brother. "I cannot help believing they would rather be free." As he said these words, there was a step on the garden walk, and a moment later a strange man stood in front of the children. "Is your father at home?" he asked. "I have a message for him." Ramon hurried into the house. Señor Diaz came out and spoke with the stranger in low tones. When he went back into the sitting-room he carried in his hand a piece of paper that looked perfectly blank. The stranger had disappeared again into the darkness. "What did the children's good father do with that paper?" you ask. He went quickly to his desk and put it under lock and key. Nothing could be done with it till the morning sun should light up the eastern sky. "Then what?" you curiously ask again. If we could have watched Señor Diaz, we should have seen him go to his desk once more, take out the precious paper, and go over it with a hair pencil dipped in a bottle of colorless liquid. After that, we should have seen Maria running with the paper to the window, where the sun's rays would dry it quickly. Lo and behold! writing began to appear which threw the whole family into a great state of excitement. These were the words: "The U. S. warship _Maine_ has been blown up. The Americans are roused. They believe without doubt that the Spaniards are the doers of the terrible deed. Victory shall be ours at last, for the United States will now surely take our part against Spain." There was no signature to the letter. That very night Maria's household were wakened by a brilliant light pouring into their windows. It came from the burning plantation where Lucia had her home. When morning dawned there was no trace of a building left on the whole place. No person was injured, however, but Lucia and her parents went to friends in Havana. The rich planter had become a poor man in a single night. Who had set the fire? It was probably the insurgents, who had discovered that the planter was a friend of the Spaniards and was secretly working against the freedom of Cuba. CHAPTER IX. FIRST YEARS IN THE NEW WORLD. "PAPA dear," said Maria, one evening not long after this, "why did our people ever leave Spain and come here to make a home for themselves? Of course, they had heard what a beautiful island it is, but was that the only reason?" "They had indeed heard this, my child, but they also believed they could become rich by raising sugar-cane or tobacco. Great fortunes were made in the old days on the plantations here. My own grandfather was a very wealthy man. "But you know the story of Cuba since then. The heavy taxes and the cruel laws of Spain caused my relatives, as well as thousands of other families, to lose their fortunes. We have tried to free ourselves many times but have not succeeded yet." "Well, don't be sad, papa dear; the good time is coming quickly now, you know. We have not had as hard a time as the poor savages Columbus found here, anyway. How I do pity them!" said Maria, with her eyes full of tears. "Yes, they had a sad time of it indeed," her father went on. "They thought at first the white men were angels and the boats they sailed in were beautiful birds that had brought the visitors straight from heaven. But they soon changed their minds. "Columbus was greatly excited when he looked upon the plants and trees so different from any he had ever seen. He said: 'I will call this place the "Pearl of the Antilles,"' and so it has been called to this day. He also wrote of it, 'It is as much more grand and beautiful than any other land as the day is brighter than the night.' "I suppose you know, Maria, that Columbus visited Cuba four times, and yet he never discovered that it was an island." "I wish you would tell me more about the savages he found here," Maria said. "Of course, I know there is not a trace of them left in the land. Their hard work in the mines and the cruel treatment of the Spaniards soon killed them off. Oh, it is a wicked, wicked shame!" "Their skins were bronze in colour, like the Indians of North America; but they did not know where their own people came from. Once they were asked this question by one of the white strangers. They only answered by pointing their hands upward. It was as much as to say, 'From heaven!' "The women had long and beautiful hair, but the men had no beards whatever. They painted their bodies with the red earth so common on the island, and adorned their heads with the feathers of brilliant birds. "They lived mostly in the open air, and slept in hammocks under the trees. They made their hammocks out of the wild cotton you have seen growing in the fields. The women spun and wove this into the only cloth they ever used. "They had no gardens. They had no need to plough and plant, for nature gave them all they needed. There were many fruits growing wild then, as now. They picked the delicious mangoes, bananas, and custard-apples which were so plentiful. They gathered the yams and maize which also grew wild all over the island. What more could they wish?" "I should think they would have liked a little meat once in awhile," said Maria, who had been very much interested in everything her father said. [Illustration: "'IT IS LIKE A BIG LIZARD'"] "Certainly," he replied, "these savages liked hunting, and often brought home game to be roasted. They were very fond of the meat of the iguana. You have often seen this reptile, Maria." "Oh, I know," she replied; "Ramon shot one only the other day. It is like a big lizard." "Yes, that is true. The Indians also hunted the voiceless dog, as we sometimes call the creature even now. I hardly know why the Spaniards gave it such a name. It is more like a rabbit than any other animal. There were great numbers on the island in the old times." "You said the Indians slept mostly in hammocks," said Maria. "Didn't they have any houses?" "Oh, yes, but they stayed in them very little, except during the rains. They built them of wood and palm leaves. They were clustered together in villages. Sometimes there were two or three hundred houses in one settlement, while several families used one house in common." "How did they defend themselves?" Maria asked, as her father stopped speaking. "They had lances pointed with sea shells, and wooden swords," he replied. "These were more for show than for use, for you know they were a sober, peaceful people. Such weapons would have been of little use if they had tried to fight with the Spaniards. The easiest thing would have been for them to leave the island and seek a new home. But they were not wise enough for that, although they had large canoes in which they might have travelled to some distance. They dug them out of the trunks of trees. Some of them were large enough to hold fifty men. Their oars were well shaped, but they used them only as paddles. They had no row-locks. "They were a happy people, although quiet and serious in most of their ways. They used to dance and sing at their merry-makings, and their music was quite sweet." "Papa dear, if you are not too tired, won't you tell me again about the great Spaniard who was entertained by the Indians? It was before they learned to fear the white strangers, and they still believed they were friends." "Let me see, little daughter. Oh, yes, now I know whom you mean. I told you that story long ago. I am surprised you should remember it. "It was Bartholomew Columbus, who was sent to act as governor during the admiral's absence. He passed from one place to another on the island to collect tribute from the chiefs. These chiefs had already learned how eager the Spaniards were for gold; so they gave it to the governor freely and cheerfully. That is, of course, those who had it. But if they could not give this they presented the white man with quantities of the wild cotton. "There was one chief who prepared a grand entertainment in honour of his visitors. A procession of women came out to meet them, each one bearing a branch of the palm-tree. This was a sign of submission. After the women, came a train of young girls with their long hair hanging over their graceful shoulders. "A great feast was spread in the chief's palace and the visitors were entertained with music and dancing. When night came, a cotton hammock was given to each to sleep in. "For four days the feasting and games and dancing were kept up. Then the visitors were loaded with presents and their dark-coloured hosts kept them company for quite a distance as they journeyed onward to the next stopping-place. "Could any people do more to show themselves friendly than these poor, gentle savages? Ah! how sadly they were repaid for their trust in the white men! "But come, we have thought enough about the past. Let us return to the present and the great things that are daily happening around us." CHAPTER X. THE MERRIMAC. EVERY day now was full of excitement for the Diaz family. Letters were often brought to the house by some secret messenger. Each time they told of some new and surprising event. The insurgents were braver than ever before. They dared more because they knew of the good friends coming to help them. Yes, the United States was getting troops ready to meet the Spaniards on Cuban soil. And our great war-ships were gathering also. They, too, were coming to help Cuba. The great battle-ship _Oregon_ was speeding through two oceans that she, also, might take part. The eyes of the whole world were watching her voyage, and millions of people were praying for her safety. How we love the _Oregon_ to-day and the brave captain and sailors who brought her safely through her long journey! One little American boy, only nine years old, felt so sorry for the suffering children of Cuba that he wrote these words: "War, war, war on Spain, Who blew up our beautiful, beautiful _Maine_. Think of the poor little Cuban dears, Think of their hardships, their sorrows, their tears, Who die every day for the want of some food; Wouldn't you be in a fighting mood? Then hurrah! for the soldiers who nobly do fight In the cause of the weak and for Nature's great right." This is not very good poetry, but it shows the deep feeling of our children for their little Cuban cousins. Maria, in her pretty little home under the palm-trees, was spared, yet, as she and we knew, there were thousands of children no older than herself who suffered and died before Cuba was free. Our little cousin was delighted when she knew that the American fleet was actually close to the shores of her land. But the Spanish war-vessels were here too. They were lying in the harbour of Santiago. It was at the other end of the island, but news passed from one to another very quickly among the insurgents. Ramon drew pictures of the two fleets as he imagined they looked. He made new pictures every day. How he longed to see them with his own eyes! I really fear that he would have run away from home and joined the army at this exciting time, if he had not loved his parents so dearly. Why did the Spanish fleet stay in the harbour of Santiago? Why did they not go out and meet the American war-ships? Were they afraid? It certainly seemed so. They believed they were in a very safe place. There was only a narrow entrance to the harbour. It was defended at each side of this opening, for on the left were new batteries which had lately been set up, and on the right was the grand old Morro Castle which had stood there for hundreds of years. In the olden times it had defended Cuba against her enemies more than once. "Morro" means hill, and the fortress at Santiago was well named, for it is built on a rocky promontory several hundred feet high, at the junction of the open sea and the San Juan River. Mines were sunk in the narrow entrance to the harbour so that, if the American ships should dare to enter, they would explode these mines and be destroyed like the _Maine_. It was no wonder the Spanish admiral thought they were safe in staying where they were. Then it happened that a young American thought of a plan by which the Spaniards might be caught in a trap. His name was Lieutenant Hobson. It was a very daring plan, but he was a wonderfully brave man. He said to Admiral Sampson, who commanded the American fleet: "Let me take the _Merrimac_. It is a coaling vessel and very heavy. It has six hundred tons of coal on board. We can place torpedoes in different parts of the ship. A few men can help me sail her into the channel. When the narrowest part is reached we will fire off the torpedoes and escape from her before she sinks. That is, we will do so if we can. But the _Merrimac_ will be across the narrow channel and the Spanish ships cannot get out. Our own ships will then be free to attack another part of the island. The Spanish seamen will have to remain where they are till they are glad to surrender." Admiral Sampson had thought of many plans, but he liked this one of Lieutenant Hobson's best of all. But who should be chosen to go with the brave man on this dangerous errand? Chosen! Why, there were hundreds who asked to share his danger, and only six could go with him. You would have thought it was some great festival they longed to take part in, if you could have seen how disappointed the men were, who had begged to go and were refused. But no, it was a fight with death. To begin with, the _Merrimac_ must pass the batteries and Morro Castle. She and those on board might easily be destroyed before she reached the place where the work was to be done. And then, when her own torpedoes should be fired off, how could Hobson and his men expect to escape from the sinking ship? But they were risking their lives in the cause of those who needed their help. You and I know now that they were brought safely through all the dangers which surrounded them. The _Merrimac_ passed the guns of the Morro unharmed, for the Spaniards were poor marksmen. She reached the narrow channel where Hobson meant to do his great work. But a shot from the batteries knocked away her rudder, so they could not steer her across the narrow channel. Then a great mine exploded under her and tore a big hole in her side. She began to sink. Hobson and his men lay flat upon the deck. Shells and bullets came whizzing about them. They dared not rise, even though the ship was breaking apart as the shells crashed through her sides. At length the _Merrimac_ had sunk so low that the water was up to her deck. A raft floated close to the men. It was one they had brought with them to help in escaping. They caught hold of the edges and kept their heads above water. Just then a Spanish launch drew near. The men on board were about to fire when Hobson cried out and asked if an officer were in the boat, as he wished to surrender. Admiral Cervera, the commander of the Spanish fleet, had himself sent the boat. He ordered the firing to cease and accepted Hobson and his men as prisoners of war. When the news of Hobson's brave deed reached Maria, she could think of nothing else for days afterward. She would picture him in his cell at Morro Castle, looking out to sea where the American fleet were still cruising. "How proud of him they must all be!" she cried to Ramon. "They can't be any prouder of him than we are to have such friends as he," the boy replied. "Why, he will be looked upon now as one of the greatest heroes the world ever knew. I shall always be proud of Morro Castle because of his having been confined there. "You know, we went all over the place when we were little, Maria. I believe he is kept prisoner in that part of the castle which is built over the water cave. You know we heard that he can look far out on the sea from his windows. "Think of the dungeons underneath, where people were locked up years ago. We peeked into one of them that day we visited the fortress and I remember how dark and damp they were. I do hope Hobson is treated well and won't have to stay at Morro very long." CHAPTER XI. VICTORY. IT was only a few mornings after the news of Hobson's brave venture. The children were out in the garden, where Ramon had discovered a chameleon on a grass plot. It was a sunny day, so perhaps that was the reason the chameleon's skin was such a bright green. "You know how gray they look on dull days," said Ramon. "Perhaps if I should put him on the branch of that tree, now, he would change to a brownish tint, to look as much as possible like it. He's a stupid little thing, though. If he does change colour, I don't believe he knows it himself. Mother Nature takes care of him, you know, and makes him change as a kind of protection. He has no way of defending himself, but if he is of the same colour as the substance around him, it is hard for his enemies to find him. "Oh, dear! it makes me laugh when I think of a battle I once saw between two chameleons. They stood facing each other. Their small eyes glared as they slowly opened and shut their jaws like pairs of scissors. They moved about once a minute. I did not have time to see which won the battle; it took too long a time for them to do anything." As the children stood watching the lizard they heard the sound of hoofs down the road. Then there was a cloud of dust as a horseman came riding rapidly along. He turned in at the driveway. "What news? What news?" cried Ramon, who rushed to meet him. It was an old friend of the family who had given secret help to the Cuban soldiers throughout their struggle for freedom. "Of course, you knew the American troops had landed, didn't you? Well, run in and ask your father to come out. I can only stop a moment and I have much to tell him." The gentleman had hardly stopped speaking before Señor Diaz appeared on the veranda. He was told about the position of the Americans not far from Santiago. They had met General Garcia, the brave leader of the insurgents. The Cuban and American armies were now working together. Battles had already been fought with the common enemy. But that which interested the children most was the story of the Rough Riders and their daring charges at El Caney and San Juan Hill. Many of these Rough Riders were men who had led a wild life on the plains in America. Some of them had no book-learning; they were not what one usually calls "gentlemen;" but they were great horsemen and brave soldiers. They feared nothing in the world. They were commanded by Colonel Wood, and had been recruited by Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, who had been out on the plains among them when a young man. He admired their spirit and was glad to be their commander now. He knew their ways. He led them up the San Juan heights when the enemy was protected by forts and shooting right and left at the Americans. But the Rough Riders charged onward with great courage and gained the summit. They took possession of the blockhouse at the top, and killed most of the Spaniards and drove the rest away. It was a glorious fight and a glorious victory. "A few more deeds like that, and war and trouble will be ended for us," said the gentleman as he rode away to carry the good news to others. "Hurrah for Lawton and Roosevelt!" shouted Ramon as he danced about the garden. "Santiago will soon be out of the hands of the Spaniards, and they will be clearing out of Cuba altogether. It seems as though I could not rest without shaking hands with our American friends." The dear boy did not have long to wait, for the very next day came the news that the Spanish fleet had been destroyed. It had tried to escape out of the harbour, but had been discovered by the watchful Yankees. In a few hours all of Spain's war-ships had been sunk or driven ashore. What was now left for Cuba's tyrants? The battle-ships of the Great Republic were ranged along her shores unharmed and strong as ever. The Spanish troops were shut up in the city without hope of escape. Surrender was the only thing possible to ward off great loss of life on both sides. The Spanish commander made a formal surrender to General Shafter, and Spain's empire in the West Indies came to an end almost on the very spot where it had begun four hundred years before. And now the mines were taken out of the harbour and our battle-ships could enter in safety. As our vessels glided inside one after another they made a wonderful picture. The harbour seemed alive with boats, and it looked like a floating city. Still grander was the sight on land when thousands gathered around the governor's beautiful palace at Havana to see the stars and stripes of America unfurled. As the flag spread its folds to the breeze, the band struck up the air we love so well. It was the "Star Spangled Banner." Boom! boom! went the cannon, and thousands of American and Cuban hearts were filled with joy. "Victory! Victory!" shouted Ramon, when the good news reached him that night. And "Victory!" cried little Isabella, who added with all her childish might, "Long live Cuba." Even the parrot echoed the words of the children. He seemed to feel that something very great must have happened, for his voice was shriller than usual. In fact, the family could have no peace in the house, even if there were peace all over Cuba, till Master Poll's cage had been covered with a thick, dark cloth, and he was made to believe that night had suddenly fallen upon his home. CHAPTER XII. HAVANA. "CHILDREN, would you like to go to Havana and visit our good friend Señor Alvarez for a week? He has invited us all to come and talk over the good fortune that has come to our land. You can have a good time seeing the sights." Of course the children were delighted at their father's words; so it came to pass that Maria found herself, a day or two afterward, in a beautiful home in the very heart of the great city. It was a grand house to her childish eyes. It was all of stone, covered with a yellowish stucco. It was at least a hundred years old, she was told. It was built around the four sides of an open square, and had no piazzas on the outside like her own home. But the court inside was very beautiful. A fountain played here all day long, and there were blossoming plants standing in pots on the marble floor. The family spent much of their time on the verandas in this court. It was far pleasanter than inside the house, where the windows were so heavily barred that they made one not used to the custom feel almost as if he were in a prison. The doors of the house were bullet-proof to make it safe against attack. There was but one entrance to the house, and that led directly into the court. Here the family carriage always stood unless it was in use. The gentleman who lived here had one son, a little older than Ramon. He showed the children all around the city. As they went from place to place, he told them how hard his father had worked to raise money for the Cuban soldiers. His mother sold all her jewels, that she might help, too. But they had to do this secretly, of course. If the Spaniards had discovered it, they might have lost their lives. This boy's name was Blanco. He was a fine, manly fellow, and was looking forward now to coming to America. "I shall go to Harvard College," he told Maria. "I wish to be a minister, but I'm afraid if I do become one, I shall not feel like praying for the Spaniards." The boy's heart was still bitter, but perhaps he will feel more kindly when he grows older. One day he took his young friends out to Morro Castle. Havana has a hill fortress of that name, as well as Santiago. Although Hobson and his men had never been imprisoned in this one, yet the Diaz children were glad to see it. It stood on a rocky point reaching into the sea. The great guns were still pointing out between the masses of yellow stone. But they were silent. The American flag was waving and peace ruled in the land, although soldiers were on guard here and all through the city. [Illustration: "THE AMERICAN FLAG WAS WAVING AND PEACE RULED IN THE LAND"] At the far end of the fortress was a tall lighthouse. It stood like a sentinel to stand watch against possible danger. Once upon a time a wall reached from the great fort in both directions around the city of Havana. But now there was scarcely a trace of it left. "How narrow and dirty the streets are," said Maria as they left the Morro. "I must say I would rather live in the country, if I could choose for myself." "It doesn't matter so much about the width of the streets," said Blanco, "or the poor sidewalks, either. Because, you know, we almost always ride. The working people are the ones who walk. But I do not like the dirt. That is all the fault of the Spaniards. They taxed us enough, but they kept the money for themselves. "Last summer I was very sick with yellow fever. Mother thought I would not get well. She said she believed we had so much of this dreadful disease because the city is allowed to be so unclean. "But look quickly at that Punch and Judy show! Let's stop and watch it. There is a man playing the harp to make it more entertaining." The children leaned out of the carriage to see the show. Isabella had never seen Punch and Judy before, and she was greatly delighted. In a few minutes they moved on, but soon stopped again, for here stood a man turning a hand-organ with a monkey beside him dressed in a most ridiculous little suit of clothes. The monkey was dancing to the music. Suddenly he gave a spring and landed in the carriage right in Maria's lap. Off came the monkey's cap into his little hands, and with the most solemn look it was held up to each of the children in turn. "Take that, you poor little beggar," said Ramon as he put a silver coin into the cap. Down jumped the monkey and off he scampered to his master. There were many odd sights for the little country cousins. Among them were Chinese peddlers showing the pretty ornaments which had been brought across the ocean. Once the children passed a cow that was being led home after her morning's work. She had gone with her master from house to house, stopping long enough at each place for her to give as much milk as the people wished. The cow was followed by a man leading a long train of mules. They were laden with empty baskets. They, too, were going home, as they had left their loads at the markets in the city. The sun was quite hot and the party hurried home to rest during the noon hours, for, of course, every one took a nap at this time of the day. They might not all lie down; perhaps some of those who had stores in the busy part of the city would not leave their places of business; they might only lean back and doze in their chairs; but they would certainly keep quiet and close their eyes, if nothing more. It made one think of the story of the "Sleeping Beauty" to see Havana at twelve o'clock, noon, in the summer season. As for Maria, the dainty maiden quite enjoyed her rest at the great city house. She could lie very comfortably in a hammock while a little negro girl kept off the flies and mosquitoes with a big fan. She needed the nap in the city more than at home because she was awakened so early by the bells. Perhaps the children enjoyed Sunday more than any other day during their stay in the city, for it was then that they visited the cathedral containing the tomb of Columbus. There were many churches and grand buildings in Havana, but none could interest the children like this. It was not very far from the house, but they all went in the carriage, carrying with them the mats to kneel on during the service. It was a grand old stone building, overgrown with moss. There were many bells in the two high towers. They were pealing loudly as the party drove up. "Just think how old it is," whispered Maria to her brother as they entered the building. "Blanco says that some of the bells were brought from Spain more than two hundred years ago. Do look at the beautiful marble pillars, Isabella. Isn't it a grand place?" It was not yet time for the service to begin, so Blanco led the children to the tomb of Columbus, where his ashes had rested for so many years. It was at the right of the high altar. All that could be seen was a marble tablet about seven feet square. Above it stood a bust of the great discoverer. "They say that Spain has asked the right to have the ashes, and America is going to let her take them. But we shall still have the tomb and the grand old cathedral where they have rested so long," said Blanco. "Now come and admire the altar." It stood on pillars of porphyry and was fairly covered with candlesticks, images, and gaudy decorations. Somehow they did not go well with the simple beauty of the rest of the church. But the children admired it, for they were ready to admire everything. When the service was over, they drove out by the governor-general's palace. It was his no longer, however. The American general who had charge of the city lived here now. No doubt he enjoyed the beautiful gardens and ponds. He was very active in improving the city. Yes, the work had already begun, and in a few months Maria would no longer be able to complain of the dirt in Havana. She could say again, but with a different thought in her busy little mind, "To-morrow is another day." Yes, although it is but a short time since Maria's visit to Havana, even now everything is changed in the Diaz family. The good father no longer worries; he is fast getting to be a strong, healthy man. He has a fine position under the new government, and Maria lives in a new home just outside the city of Havana. She is rapidly learning to speak English, while one of her dearest friends is a little American girl who has lately made her home in Cuba. THE END. THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES By MARY HAZELTON WADE FIRST SERIES These are the most interesting and delightful accounts possible of child-life in other lands, filled with quaint sayings, doings, and adventures. The "Little Japanese Cousin," with her toys in her wide sleeve and her tiny bag of paper handkerchiefs; the "Little Brown Cousin," in whose home the leaves of the breadfruit-tree serve for plates and the halves of the cocoanut shells for cups; the "Little Indian Cousin," who lives the free life of the forest, and the "Little Russian Cousin," who dwells by the wintry Neva, are truly fascinating characters to the little cousins who will read about them. Four volumes, as follows: =Our Little Japanese Cousin= =Our Little Brown Cousin= =Our Little Indian Cousin= =Our Little Russian Cousin= Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth decorative, with 6 full-page illustrations in tints, by L. J. Bridgman. Price, per volume $0.50 _net_ (postage extra) Price, per set, 4 vols., _boxed_ 2.00 _net_ (postage extra) "Juveniles will get a whole world of pleasure and instruction out of Mary Hazelton Wade's Little Cousin Series.... Pleasing narratives give pictures of the little folk in the far-away lands in their duties and pleasures, showing their odd ways of playing, studying, their queer homes, clothes, and playthings.... The style of the stories is all that can be desired for entertainment, the author describing things in a very real and delightful fashion."--_Detroit News-Tribune._ THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES By MARY HAZELTON WADE SECOND SERIES The great success and prompt appreciation which this charming little series met last season has led to its continuation this year with a new set of child characters from other lands, each as original and delightful as the little foreign cousins with whom the little cousins at home became acquainted in last season's series. Six volumes, as follows: =Our Little Cuban Cousin= =Our Little Hawaiian Cousin= =Our Little Eskimo Cousin= =Our Little Philippine Cousin= =Our Little Porto Rican Cousin= =Our Little African Cousin= Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth decorative, with 6 full-page illustrations in tints by L. J. Bridgman. Price, per volume $0.50 _net_ (postage extra) Price, per set, 6 vols., boxed 3.00 _net_ (postage extra) "Boys and girls, reading the tales of these little cousins in different parts of the world, will gain considerable knowledge of geography and the queer customs that are followed among strange people."--_Chicago Evening Post._ "Not only are the books interesting, but they are entertainingly instructive as well, and when entertainment can sugar-coat instruction, the book is one usually well worth placing in the hands of those to whom the knowledge will be useful."--_Utica Observer._ "To many youthful minds this little series of books may open up the possibilities of a foreign world to which they had been total strangers. And interest in this wider sphere, the beyond and awayness, may bear rich fruit in the future."--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._ COSY CORNER SERIES It is the intention of the publishers that this series shall contain only the very highest and purest literature,--stories that shall not only appeal to the children themselves, but be appreciated by all those who feel with them in their joys and sorrows,--stories that shall be most particularly adapted for reading aloud in the family circle. The numerous illustrations in each book are by well-known artists, and each volume has a separate attractive cover design. Each, 1 vol., 16mo, cloth $0.50 _By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON_ =The Little Colonel.= The scene of this story is laid in Kentucky. Its heroine is a small girl, who is known as the Little Colonel, on account of her fancied resemblance to an old-school Southern gentleman, whose fine estate and old family are famous in the region. This old Colonel proves to be the grandfather of the child. =The Giant Scissors.= This is the story of Joyce and of her adventures in France,--the wonderful house with the gate of The Giant Scissors, Jules, her little playmate, Sister Denisa, the cruel Brossard, and her dear Aunt Kate. Joyce is a great friend of the Little Colonel, and in later volumes shares with her the delightful experiences of the "House Party" and the "Holidays." =Two Little Knights of Kentucky=, WHO WERE THE LITTLE COLONEL'S NEIGHBORS. In this volume the Little Colonel returns to us like an old friend, but with added grace and charm. She is not, however, the central figure of the story, that place being taken by the "two little knights," Malcolm and Keith, little Southern aristocrats, whose chivalrous natures lead them through a series of interesting adventures. =Cicely and Other Stories for Girls.= The readers of Mrs. Johnston's charming juveniles will be glad to learn of the issue of this volume for young people, written in the author's sympathetic and entertaining manner. =Big Brother.= A story of two boys. The devotion and care of Steven, himself a small boy, for his baby brother, is the theme of the simple tale, the pathos and beauty of which has appealed to so many thousands. =Ole Mammy's Torment.= "Ole Mammy's Torment" has been fitly called "a classic of Southern life." It relates the haps and mishaps of a small negro lad, and tells how he was led by love and kindness to a knowledge of the right. =The Story of Dago.= In this story Mrs. Johnston relates the story of Dago, a pet monkey, owned jointly by two brothers. Dago tells his own story, and the account of his haps and mishaps is both interesting and amusing. _By EDITH ROBINSON_ =A Little Puritan's First Christmas:= A STORY OF COLONIAL TIMES IN BOSTON. A story of Colonial times in Boston, telling how Christmas was invented by Betty Sewall, a typical child of the Puritans, aided by her "unregenerate" brother, Sam. =A Little Daughter of Liberty.= The author's motive for this story is well indicated by a quotation from her introduction, as follows: "One ride is memorable in the early history of the American Revolution, the well-known ride of Paul Revere. Equally deserving of commendation is another ride,--untold in verse or story, its records preserved only in family papers or shadowy legend, the ride of Anthony Severn was no less historic in its action or memorable in its consequences." =A Loyal Little Maid.= A delightful and interesting story of Revolutionary days, in which the child heroine, Betsey Schuyler, renders important services to George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and in the end becomes the wife of the latter. =A Little Puritan Rebel.= Like Miss Robinson's successful story of "A Loyal Little Maid," this is another historical tale of a real girl, during the time when the gallant Sir Harry Vane was governor of Massachusetts. =A Little Puritan Pioneer.= The scene of this story is laid in the Puritan settlement at Charlestown. The little girl heroine adds another to the list of favorites so well known to the young people in "A Little Puritan Rebel," etc. _By OUIDA (Louise de la Ramée)_ =A Dog of Flanders:= A CHRISTMAS STORY. Too well and favorably known to require description. =The Nürnberg Stove.= This beautiful story has never before been published at a popular price. =A Provence Rose.= A story perfect in sweetness and in grace. =Findelkind.= A charming story about a little Swiss herdsman. _By MISS MULOCK_ =The Little Lame Prince.= A delightful story of a little boy who has many adventures by means of the magic gifts of his fairy godmother. =Adventures of a Brownie.= The story of a household elf who torments the cook and gardener, but is a constant joy and delight to the children who love and trust him. =His Little Mother.= Miss Mulock's short stories for children are a constant source of delight to them, and "His Little Mother," in this new and attractive dress, will be welcomed by hosts of youthful readers. =Little Sunshine's Holiday.= An attractive story of a summer outing. "Little Sunshine" is another of those beautiful child-characters for which Miss Mulock is so justly famous. _By JULIANA HORATIA EWING_ =Jackanapes.= A new edition, with new illustrations, of this exquisite and touching story, dear alike to young and old. =Story of a Short Life.= This beautiful and pathetic story will never grow old. It is a part of the world's literature, and will never die. =A Great Emergency.= How a family of children prepared for a great emergency, and how they acted when the emergency came. =The Trinity Flower.= In this little volume are collected three of Mrs. Ewing's best short stories for the young people. =Madam Liberality.= From her cradle up Madam Liberality found her chief delight in giving. _By FRANCES MARGARET FOX_ =The Little Giant's Neighbors.= A charming nature story of a "little giant" whose neighbors were the creatures of the field and garden. =Farmer Brown and the Birds.= A little story which teaches children that the birds are man's best friends. Miss Fox has an intimate knowledge of bird life and has written a little book which should take rank with "Black Beauty" and "Beautiful Joe." =Betty of Old Mackinaw.= A charming story of child-life, appealing especially to the little readers who like stories of "real people." _By WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE_ =The Farrier's Dog and His Fellow.= This story, written by the gifted young Southern woman, will appeal to all that is best in the natures of the many admirers of her graceful and piquant style. =The Fortunes of the Fellow.= Those who read and enjoyed the pathos and charm of "The Farrier's Dog and His Fellow" will welcome the further account of the "Adventures of Baydaw and the Fellow" at the home of the kindly smith among the Green Hills of Tennessee. _By FRANCES HODGES WHITE_ =Helena's Wonderworld.= A delightful tale of the adventures of a little girl in the mysterious regions beneath the sea. =Aunt Nabby's Children.= This pretty little story, touched with the simple humor of country life, tells of two children, who, adopted by Aunt Nabby, have also won their way into the affections of the village squire. _By CHARLES LEE SLEIGHT_ =The Prince of the Pin Elves.= A fascinating story of the underground adventures of a sturdy, reliant American boy among the elves and gnomes. =The Water People.= A companion volume and in a way a sequel to "The Prince of the Pin Elves," relating the adventures of "Harry" among the "water people." While it has the same characters as the previous book, the story is complete in itself. _By OTHER AUTHORS_ =The Story of Rosy Dawn.= By PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE. The Christmas of little Wong Jan, or "Rosy Dawn," a young Celestial of San Francisco, is the theme of this pleasant little story. =Susanne.= By FRANCES J. DELANO. This little story will recall in sweetness and appealing charm the work of Kate Douglas Wiggin and Laura E. Richards. =Millicent in Dreamland.= By EDNA S. BRAINERD. The quaintness and fantastic character of Millicent's adventures in Dreamland have much of the fascination of "Alice in Wonderland," and all small readers of "Alice" will enjoy making Millicent's acquaintance. =Jerry's Adventures.= By EVELYN SNEAD BARNETT. This is an interesting and wholesome little story of the change that came over the thoughtless imps on Jefferson Square when they learned to know the stout-hearted Jerry and his faithful Peggy. =A Bad Penny.= By JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT. No boy should omit reading this vivid story of the New England of 1812. =Gatty and I.= By FRANCES E. CROMPTON. The small hero and heroine of this little story are twins, "strictly brought up." It is a sweet and wholesome little story. =The Fairy of the Rhône.= By A. COMYNS CARR. Here is a fairy story indeed, one of old-fashioned pure delight. It is most gracefully told, and accompanied by charming illustrations. =A Small Small Child.= By E. LIVINGSTON PRESCOTT. "A Small Small Child" is a moving little tale of sweet influence, more powerful than threats or punishments, upon a rowdy of the barracks. =Peggy's Trial.= By MARY KNIGHT POTTER. Peggy is an impulsive little woman of ten, whose rebellion from a mistaken notion of loyalty, and her subsequent reconciliation to the dreaded "new mother," are most interestingly told. =For His Country.= By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe," etc. A sweet and graceful story of a little boy who loved his country; written with that charm which has endeared Miss Saunders to hosts of readers. =La Belle Nivernaise.= THE STORY OF AN OLD BOAT AND HER CREW. By ALPHONSE DAUDET. All who have read it will be glad to welcome an old favorite, and new readers will be happy to have it brought to their friendly attention. =Wee Dorothy.= By LAURA UPDEGRAFF. A story of two orphan children, the tender devotion of the eldest, a boy, for his sister being its theme and setting. With a bit of sadness at the beginning, the story is otherwise bright and sunny, and altogether wholesome in every way. =Rab and His Friends.= By Dr. JOHN BROWN. Doctor Brown's little masterpiece is too well known to need description. The dog Rab is loved by all. =The Adventures of Beatrice and Jessie.= By RICHARD MANSFIELD. The story of two little girls who were suddenly transplanted into the "realms of unreality," where they met with many curious and amusing adventures. =A Child's Garden of Verses.= By R. L. STEVENSON. Mr. Stevenson's little volume is too well known to need description. It will be heartily welcomed in this new and attractive edition. =Little King Davie.= By NELLIE HELLIS. The story of a little crossing-sweeper, that will make many boys thankful they are not in the same position. Davie's accident, hospital experiences, conversion, and subsequent life, are of thrilling interest. =The Sleeping Beauty.= A MODERN VERSION. By MARTHA B. DUNN. This charming story of a little fishermaid of Maine, intellectually "asleep" until she meets the "Fairy Prince," reminds us of "Ouida" at her best. =The Young Archer.= By CHARLES E. BRIMBLECOM. A strong and wholesome story of a boy who accompanied Columbus on his voyage to the New World. His loyalty and services through vicissitudes and dangers endeared him to the great discoverer, and the account of his exploits will be interesting to all boys. =The Making of Zimri Bunker:= A TALE OF NANTUCKET. By W. J. LONG, Ph. D. This is a charming story of Nantucket folk by a young clergyman who is already well known through his contributions to the _Youth's Companion_, _St. Nicholas_, and other well-known magazines. The story deals with a sturdy American fisher lad, during the war of 1812. =The King of the Golden River:= A LEGEND OF STIRIA. By JOHN RUSKIN. Written fifty years or more ago, and not originally intended for publication, this little fairy tale soon became known and made a place for itself. =Little Peterkin Vandike.= By CHARLES STUART PRATT. The author's dedication furnishes a key to this charming story: "I dedicate this book, made for the amusement (and perchance instruction) of the boys who may read it, to the memory of one boy, who would have enjoyed as much as Peterkin the plays of the Poetry Party, but who has now marched, as they will march one day, out of the ranks of boyhood into the ranks of young manhood." =Will o' the Mill.= By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. An allegorical story by this inimitable and versatile writer. Its rare poetic quality, its graceful and delicate fancy, its strange power and fascination, justify its separate publication. BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE =The Little Colonel's House Party.= By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by Louis Meynell. One vol., library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 =The Little Colonel's Holidays.= By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. One vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.50 =The Little Colonel's Hero.= By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. One vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative, fully illustrated $1.20 _net_ (postage extra) In these three stories Mrs. Johnston once more introduces us to the "Little Colonel," the dainty maiden who has already figured as the heroine of two previous stories, "The Little Colonel" and "Two Little Knights of Kentucky," and who has won her way into the hearts of old and young alike. She is more winsome and lovable than ever. Since the time of "Little Women," no juvenile heroine has been better beloved of her child readers than Mrs. Johnston's "Little Colonel." =A Puritan Knight Errant.= By EDITH ROBINSON, author of "A Little Puritan Pioneer," "A Little Puritan's First Christmas," "A Little Puritan Rebel," etc. Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.20 _net_ (postage extra). The charm of style and historical value of Miss Robinson's previous stories of child life in Puritan days have brought them wide popularity. Her latest and most important book appeals to a large juvenile public. The "knight errant" of this story is a little Don Quixote, whose trials and their ultimate outcome will prove deeply interesting to their reader. =Ye Lyttle Salem Maide:= A STORY OF WITCHCRAFT. By PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE. _New illustrated edition._ One volume, large 12mo, cloth, gilt top $1.50 A tale of the days of the reign of superstition in New England, and of a brave "lyttle maide," of Salem Town, whose faith and hope and unyielding adherence to her word of honor form the basis of a most attractive story. A very convincing picture is drawn of Puritan life during the latter part of the seventeenth century. =In Kings' Houses:= A TALE OF THE DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE. By JULIA C. R. DORR, author of "A Cathedral Pilgrimage," etc. _New illustrated edition._ One volume, large 12mo, cloth, gilt top $1.50 The story deals with one of the most romantic episodes in English history. Queen Anne, the last of the reigning Stuarts, is described with a strong yet sympathetic touch, and the young Duke of Gloster, the "little lady," and the hero of the tale, Robin Sandys, are delightful characterizations. =Gulliver's Bird Book.= BEING THE NEWLY DISCOVERED STRANGE ADVENTURES OF LEMUEL GULLIVER, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME DESCRIBED AND ILLUSTRATED. By L. J. BRIDGMAN, author of "Mother Goose and Her Wild Beast Show," etc. With upwards of 100 illustrations in color, large quarto, cloth $1.50 This is a most amusing and original book, illustrated with startlingly odd and clever drawings. If we may accept the account given in the preface, that renowned explorer, Lemuel Gulliver, left behind him certain memoirs which have remained unknown to the public up to the present day. Having now been brought to light and given to the world, these records establish beyond a doubt their author's claim to be regarded as the discoverer of the Bouncing Ballazoon and a host of other creatures unknown to Darwin and Huxley. ='Tilda Jane=. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe," etc. One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth, decorative cover $1.50 "No more amusing and attractive child's story has appeared for a long time than this quaint and curious recital of the adventures of that pitiful and charming little runaway. "It is one of those exquisitely simple and truthful books that win and charm the reader, and I did not put it down until I had finished it--honest! And I am sure that every one, young or old, who reads will be proud and happy to make the acquaintance of the delicious waif. "I cannot think of any better book for children than this. I commend it unreservedly."--_Cyrus Townsend Brady._ =Miss Gray's Girls;= OR, SUMMER DAYS IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. By JEANNETTE A. GRANT. With about sixty illustrations in half-tone and pen and ink sketches of Scottish scenery. One vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 A delightfully told story of a summer trip through Scotland, somewhat out of the beaten track. A teacher, starting at Glasgow, takes a lively party of girls, her pupils, through the Trossachs to Oban, through the Caledonian Canal to Inverness, and as far north as Brora, missing no part of the matchless scenery and no place of historic interest. Returning through Perth, Stirling, Edinburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford, the enjoyment of the party and the interest of the reader never lag. =Chums.= By MARIA LOUISE POOL. Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. One vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 "Chums" is a girls' book, about girls and for girls. It relates the adventures, in school and during vacation, of two friends. It is full of mingled fun and pathos, and carries the reader along swiftly to the climax, which is reached all too soon. =Little Bermuda.= By MARIA LOUISE POOL. Illustrated by Louis Meynell. One vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 Young people will follow eagerly the adventures of "Little Bermuda" from her home in the tropics to a fashionable American boarding-school. The resulting conflict between the two elements in her nature, the one inherited from her New England ancestry, and the other developed by her West Indian surroundings, gave Miss Pool unusual opportunity for creating an original and fascinating heroine. =Black Beauty:= THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A HORSE. By ANNA SEWELL. _New Illustrated Edition._ With twenty-five full-page drawings by Winifred Austin. One vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative, gilt top $1.25 There have been many editions of this classic, but we confidently offer this one as the most appropriate and handsome yet produced. The illustrations are of special value and beauty. Mr. Austin is a lover of horses, and has delighted in tracing with his pen the beauty and grace of the noble animal. =Feats on the Fiord:= A TALE OF NORWEGIAN LIFE. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. With about sixty original illustrations and a colored frontispiece. One vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative $1.00 This admirable book deserves to be brought to the attention of parents in search of wholesome reading for their children to-day. It is something more than a juvenile book, being really one of the most instructive books about Norway and Norwegian life and manners ever written. =Timothy Dole.= By JUNIATA SALSBURY. With twenty-five illustrations. One vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative $1.00 The youthful hero starts from home, loses his way, meets with startling adventures, finds friends, kind and many, grows to be a manly man, and is able to devote himself to bettering the condition of the poor in the mining region of Pennsylvania. =Three Children of Galilee:= A LIFE OF CHRIST FOR THE YOUNG. By JOHN GORDON. Beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred illustrations. One vol., library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 There has long been a need for a life of Christ for the young, for parents have recognized that their boys and girls want something more than a Bible story, a dry statement of facts, and that, in order to hold the attention of the youthful readers, a book on this subject should have life and movement as well as scrupulous accuracy and religious sentiment. =Three Little Crackers.= FROM DOWN IN DIXIE. By WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE, author of "The Farrier's Dog," etc., with fifty text and full-page illustrations, by E. B. Barry. One vol., library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 A fascinating story for boys and girls, of a family of Alabama children who move to Florida and grow up in the South. =Prince Harold, a Fairy Story.= By L. F. BROWN. With 60 full-page illustrations by Vitry. One vol., large 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.50 A delightful fairy tale for children, dealing with the life of a young Prince, who, aided by the Moon Spirit, discovers, after many adventures, a beautiful girl whom he makes his Princess. =The Fairy Folk of Blue Hill:= A STORY OF FOLK-LORE. By LILY F. WESSELHOEFT, author of "Sparrow the Tramp," etc., with fifty-five illustrations from original drawings by Alfred C. Eastman. One vol., library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.00 A new volume by Mrs. Wesselhoeft, well known as one of our best writers for the young, and who has made a host of friends among the young people. =Larry Hudson's Ambition.= By JAMES OTIS, author of "Toby Tyler," etc. Illustrated by Eliot Keen. One vol., library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.25 James Otis, who has delighted the juvenile public with so many popular stories, has written the story of the rise of the bootblack Larry. Larry is not only capable of holding his own and coming out with flying colors in the amusing adventures wherein he befriends the family of good Deacon Doak; he also has the signal ability to know what he wants and to understand that hard work is necessary to win. =The Adventures of a Boy Reporter= IN THE PHILIPPINES. By HARRY STEELE MORRISON, author of "A Yankee Boy's Success." One vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated $1.25 A true story of the courage and enterprise of an American lad. It is filled with healthy interest, and will tend to stimulate and encourage the proper ambition of the young reader. =The Young Pearl Divers:= A STORY OF AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURE BY LAND AND BY SEA. By LIEUT. H. PHELPS WHITMARSH, author of "The Mysterious Voyage of the _Daphne_," etc. Illustrated with twelve full-page half-tones by H. Burgess. One vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative $1.00 This is a splendid story for boys, by an author who writes in vigorous and interesting language of scenes and adventures with which he is personally acquainted. =The Voyage of the Avenger:= IN THE DAYS OF THE DASHING DRAKE. By HENRY ST. JOHN. With twenty-five full-page illustrations by Paul Hardy. One vol., tall 12mo, cloth decorative, gilt top $1.50 A book of adventure, the scene of which is laid in that stirring period of colonial extension when England's famous naval heroes encountered the ships of Spain, both at home and in the West Indies. 
51040	----	CUBAN FOLK-LORE L. ROY TERWILLIGER HAVANA AVISADOR COMERCIAL PRINTING HOUSE 30, AMARGURA ST. 1908 SUPERSTITION AND WITCHCRAFT IN CUBA Nowhere will one find such a mass of superstitious customs practiced, as in Cuba; especially among the black and mestizos, and even the educated whites, while not admitting their belief in witchcraft have a wholesome fear of the Brujo or witch doctor. It is probable that most of these queer practices were introduced by the blacks who brought their strange beliefs from Africa. The belief in the Evil Spirit was doubtless the result of their early contact with the aboriginal Cubans, who worshipped the devil. Ñañiguismo is a form of superstition in which Catholicism and witchcraft are mingled in bewildering confusion. The society of Ñáñigos was first introduced in Cuba in 1836 by a cabildo of the Carabalí nation; many conjectures as to its origin have been put forward, but it is most probable that a priest or Chief of the African institution called Ñanguitua, was brought to Cuba as a slave and here resumed his official character among his enslaved countrymen. The first Juego or chapter was founded in Regla and called the Apapa Epi; it was officially sanctioned and licensed by the government. The African order disbelieved in God and the worship of idols and fetiches prevailed: in fact was one of the principal causes of the organization of the society. Brujos or members of the order who were supposed to possess supernatural powers were consulted in all cases of sickness. Slave holders claimed that "the gente de nación (imported slaves) refused to be doctored by other means than their own brujos and corporal punishment was absolutely necessary to overcome their stubbornness". Whites and even mulatoes were at first refused admission to the society, but in 1863 a traitor to the original chapter sold for twenty cents the secrets of the order to a society of white and mulatoes who by means of the secret pass words and signs gained admittance to the hall where an initiatory session was in progress and demanded that their chapter be recognized by the head Juego. A severe battle was the outcome of this high-handed manner of securing the administration of the initiation rites, but eventually resulted in the formation of the Ocolio Ñáñigos, an order in which whites and half castes were admitted. Many catholic rites were introduced in the new order, which however did not entirely displace their belief in their former idols. The Ñáñigos about this time began to assume a vicious character and soon became a serious menace to society; the degenerate whites who became Ñáñigos soon displaced the old negro kings or chiefs and introduced many new customs, most of which were not to be desired in a civilized country. It is a curious fact that the avatism or reversion of half breeds almost always result in excesses. Religious dances of an indecent character were introduced and more revolting rites of initiation installed. Rivalry among the different chiefs sprung up and dissensions among the various orders soon assumed a bloody aspect. Sanguinary battles among the negros and half castes were common every feast day and resulted in stringent laws being passed against the entire organization. After the entrance of whites and mulatoes in the different orders the cross became one of the most important symbols of the order. The great seal was used only by the head chapter at Regla, each district having a different symbol. All initiatory rites were performed by the chief of the district and the Carabali tongue was used exclusively. The novice was marked on the forehead with blood in the sign of the cross + on the breast +/o|o/+ and on the back o/o|o/o after which he was struck several times with the palo Mocongo, a cane covered with skin and mounted with precious metals; this was to test his courage; many other ceremonies were practiced. The novice being declared a fit candidate for membership, blood was mixed with aguardiente and drunk by the new member and a wild scene of revelry wound up the ceremony. Under the severe laws passed, Ñañiguismo shrunk to insignificant proportions and the different chapters were supposed to have been broken up. During the last few years it has been on the increase, the character however having somewhat changed. But little can be learned of this society, at present a recent criminal cases brought to light the fact that the very rites of initiation were criminal in their character, a novice in the society must wound some stranger and drink the flowing blood before the last rites are administered. The Society is governed by a King, who is represented in each district by a "Father of the Community" or Chief Doctor, who has at his command the Brujos or Conjurors. Santa Baraba, the patron saint of the order is no less than a savage idol with a Catholic name. There are annual fiestas in honor of this Saint, where only members of the Society are admitted, but I was fortunate enough to witness from a friendly roof the sacred dance and battle with the devil. Clothed only in long strings of feathers, the Brujo who played the part of "leading man", prostrated himself before the sacred image and lighted the sacrificial flames. Goats, black cocks and other animals were brought forward by the devotees and beheaded. Fruit also was offered. The nature of the sacrifice most acceptable to the Mabruja is communicated in advance to each of the Saint's followers, through the medium of the Brujo. It is certain that most of the time the exigencias of the saint do not pass the sacrifice of a fat cock, or a goat whose head is consumed by the flames (while the father of the community eats the rest of the victim), but cases have presented where the dagger or poison, have been ordered to remove some obstruction from the path of private individuals, whose money has influenced the saint to decree their death. Sacrificial dances are always at night and the weird, scantily clad figure of the officiating priest can easily be likened to that of some demon tending the infernal fires. After the sacrifice, the low monotonous moaning of the tom-tom announces that the ball has opened. Twisting his body in painful contortions, the brujo dances about the sacred fire, gaining momentum with each round until he at last resembles a human pin-wheel; now slower and slower he dances, scanning the faces of his fear-stricken followers for a victim, until at last his hypnotic eye fixes upon an aged negress, who falls screaming to earth in convulsed fear. She is possessed of a Mabruja or Evil Spirit, who has inconsiderately taken possession of the old lady's person, without her leave, and the "doctor" wants to extract it; apparently the operation becomes painful to the old lady, who would doubtless have much rather been left in quiet possession of his satanic majesty. After much manoeuvring, the doctor announces that the Mabruja was vanquished and has left his country woman, who still sits in comical amazement where she had fallen; to one who has really entered the inner life of the country districts of Cuba this is no strange sight. One of the most abhorrent practices of witchcraft is the use of Love Philters composed of ingredients of a nature too horrible to mention. It is needless to say that this custom is practiced almost solely by the lowest class of society, but in so great respect and fear are its results held that almost the first advice one receives on arriving in Cuba, is to never accept refreshments in a strange house, for fear that they may contain this concoction; many tales are told of young men who by means of this drug have been lured into attachment for women of shady complexion and still more shady reputation. The Piedra Imán, a sort of lodestone, plays an important part in the practice of witchcraft; sacrifices of animals are made to this stone whose absorbent qualities cause it to greedily suck the blood of the victims. In sickness and love this stone is always in evidence. Are you dying of unrequited love? No need to worry while a dozen old witches are aching for the opportunity of relieving your heart (and pocket). For gold a small stone will be placed in your possession and if you carefully follow directions, luck will attend your affairs with Cupid. To succeed it is necessary to secure a strand of hair (pulled, not cut) and the parings of your loved one's nails; these are mixed with steel filings and placed with the "stone" in a metal box. On Mondays the "stone" is strictly teetotal and only water may be offered, but as Friday draws near, the "God" develops a taste for strong liquor and wine must be given it. Woe betide the mortal who neglects the "little God's" taste in drinks. Has disease laid its foul hand on your person? No need to worry; any witch doctor will recommend the following recipe. Rx 1 Pair half burned candles. 7 Grains of corn. 7 Copper pennies. 7 Clean pebbles. 1 Head of a black cock. 7 Pieces glass. Wrap carefully in red cloth, this enclose in black cloth, over all wrap a large white handkerchief and place in public highway, await developments.... An innocent wayfarer comes down the highway, sees the ownerless package and gleefully makes off with it. Oh joy! you are already feeling better, and the one who so fondly imagines he has found a fortune wrapped up in a napkin, has only brought down upon his head the load of your disease! Barrenness need no longer bring grief to those who long for the patter of little feet about their home. Secure a white child and with the help of a brujo extract its heart and take in small doses!! It is impossible to dispute the fact of this and other horrible cannibalistic practices to which the superstitious negros are addicted; the public can scarcely have forgotten the developments of the noted "Gabriel Case" when a number of Brujos were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and one at least received the death penalty. Not only in the greater joys and griefs of life is witchcraft used, but in the petty annoyances of everyday life. The dread combination of sprinkling salt in an old shoe and placing it upon an upturned broom, has caused many an unwelcome guest to hasten his departure. Some of the common superstitions are: never twist an empty chair. Never read by the light of two candles; you are mocking death. A moth flying about you at night means that you are to receive a letter. A match which continues burning after being thrown away will bring you money. A dog scratching the floor of a house is digging his master's grave. He will soon die. If a hearse passes a person twice during the same funeral, he will be its next occupant. Never cross the arms over the head; your mother or nearest relation will die. Never sweep the crumbs from a table with a paper; it will bring disgrace to your family. In former years, when the milk man brought his cows along to town and milked them before your door, there was a curious belief that if a cow bawled in front of a house where a sick person lay, that person would die. If a mass is not said for the repose of a soul, the newly dead will come at night and pull the feet or carry off the blanket of the nearest relation. A black moth flying at night means that there will be a death in the house. Should an eyelash fall, you will receive a visit from a long forgotten friend. If an owl hoots as it flies over a house, somebody in that house will die. That there is "something" in witchcraft it is impossible to deny. The fear and reverence in which the brujos are held is far more powerful than their fear of the law, as has been shown in several recent criminal cases. Is it not possible that the something, is mesmerism, that the subjects are mesmerized by their own belief in the brujo, or that the brujo himself has acquired the power of hypnotism though unconscious of the source or nature of this power, a "power" that makes him different from other men? Superstition is a serious menace to the advancement of Cuba. THE PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS OF CUBA Fortunately for history, most early Spanish expeditions were accompanied by such observers as Las Casas, Cortés, Gomara and Oviedo, who although differing in minor details and unreliably eulogistic of their own expeditions and leaders have agreed on their accounts of the habits of the Indians as found at the time of the discovery. Bartolomé Las Casas in particular made a study of the Indians and in so far as possible sought to relieve their sufferings. Separated by but a narrow stretch of water from the other islands of the West Indies, Cuba was inhabited by an entirely different race of men. The Caribes, who infested the smaller islands, were a warlike tribe of anthropophagi who terrorized the shores of Cuba by frequent and bloody excursions, carrying off many captives for their cannibalistic feasts. The Indians of Cuba were of the Siboneyes tribe, excepting those about Bayamo and Baracoa, who were of the Caribe nation. In these two localities deformed skulls have been found identical with those collected at Guadalupe, the principal seat of the Caribes. Several hypotheses have been given of the origin of the Siboney Indians. Some writers claim them as descendants of the Mayas of Yucatan, but Bachiller y Morales disposes this on the radical difference of the characters of the two tribes. With the exception of the Floridians and the Araucanians of Chile; the Siboneyes are unlike all other American Indians. Abbe Don J. Ignatius Molina writing of the Araucanian about the year 1800 says, "The natives of this part of the New World being of a mild character, much resembling that of the Southern Asiatics," and again: "The features of both (hill or plain tribes) are regular; they have round faces, small animated eyes full of expression, a nose rather flat, a handsome mouth, even and white teeth, muscular and well shaped limbs and small flat feet." Of the Siboneyes Bachiller y Morales says: "They did not present the robust muscularity of the North American Indian nor did the expression of their faces assume the bloody instincts of the Caribe. In color light olive, they were tall straight limbed men of peaceful disposition who lived mainly by the chase and agriculture." On the strength of this resemblance some writers have concluded that the Siboneyes were descendants of the Araucanians. This disagrees with the traditions of the Siboneyes themselves who claim to have immigrated from Florida; first driving from the island the males of a nation who were inferior to themselves in number and civilization; moreover the Indians of Cuba long had tradition of the wonderful land of Cantio or Florida. Washington Irving in his "Spanish Voyages of Discovery" says: "The belief of the existence in Florida, of a river like that sought by Juan Ponce, was long prevalent among the Indians of Cuba, and the caciques were anxious to discover it." Geographical conditions would also favor the theory of the Siboneyes coming originally from Florida. Evidence of an earlier race in Cuba has been discovered in the caves of the eastern part of the island. Skulls differing greatly from both those of the Siboneyes and Caribes have been found, as well an stone implements, which most authors agree were not used by the Siboneyes. It is probable that the Siboney tradition of their coming originally from Florida is correct. At the time of discovery, Cuba was divided politically into thirty different states as follows: Sabeneque, Cayaguaya, Manibon, Bani, Barajogua, Sagua, Baracoa on the north coast; Hanamano, Jagua, Guanjaya, Magon, Omapai, Guanaros, Cueiba, Cucanajani, Macaca, Boyuca, Bajatiquiri and Masi on the south coast; Cuanajami, Guanejuanica, Marien, Habana, and Canauei touching both coasts; Macoriges, Calacon, Bayamo, Maeye and Cuamaj in the interior. Each state was independent and was governed by a king or cacique who was absolute ruler of the nation: subject to no laws and holding the power of life and death over his subjects, this power was seldom used arbitrarily, the cacique appearing more in the role of a father to his people. The subjects of the kingdom were called tainos probably signifying citizens or subjects; they were of different rank; the naitains or naitanos formed the nobility or commanding part, the naboris or anaboris the vassals or laboring class, who were divided into different groups, each group under the authority or command of a naitains. As a mark of distinction the nobles wore the hair tied high up on the head and on feast days adorned themselves with feathers, gold shells, etc. The hair of the vassal was cut straight about the ears. The national laws were few and severe, theft being the crime most severely punished. The convicted thief was impaled on a large stick and suspended between two upright posts until life was extinct. As among many uncivilized races most of the manual work was performed by women. Among the Siboneyes married men were exempt from agricultural presents, but assisted in gold washing, etc. They were obliged however, to live separate from their families for some time before going on a gold hunting expedition. "Los hombres casados iban en busca de oro á los ríos como los demás, pero se abstenían de la cohabitación y trato mujeril antes, para que no se les turbara la vista". The primitive Cubans were of an amorous disposition, somewhat indolent. Polygamy was permitted, but seldom practiced except among the ruling classes; promiscuous intercourses and unnatural crimes were ascribed to the Siboneyes by the early settlers. Narvaez gave this as his excuse for the massacres of the entire Indian village of Caonao. Their acts were very ceremonious especially when receiving a visit from a neighbouring cacique. The receiving cacique was borne forth in a litter preceded by a number of women who were slightly clothed, and who scattered palm leaves before the approaching guest. A visit was always attended by great feasting, where nobles acted as servants to the visiting cacique, during the feast the women entertained their lords by songs and dancing; a number of young girls were always appointed to the service of a welcome visitor as a peace offering. They in common with other West Indian nations had a tradition of the formation of the world. Lucuo (God) formed the world, we know he made all things; he came from a country beyond the clouds peopled by spirits and souls. The world was first formed without mountains or water, but under the influence of the sea sunk forming mountains and bringing fair water. Lucuo formed the first man of wheat; when he was finished he touched the image on the stomach with his foot changing it into two grand Lucayos, male and female to whom nine divine offsprings were born. The first Nounm (the moon) was very proud and boastful of his brilliancy but when Huin (the sun) was born and showed his shining face Nounm became ashamed and hid himself only coming out at night when Huin is absent. The other offsprings were given charge of the elements. Cuasima was chief of the Cemi inferior gods who were the offsprings of Lucuo and the first woman. Lucuo lived a long time with his people and taught them the first principles of agriculture. Taking an old man aside he buried a stick in the ground and told him to dig in the same place after nine months had passed; at the end of this period the old man dug up the place as directed and found yuca growing. The Behique or doctors of the tribe exerted an important influence. They were charged with the perpetuation of the nations history or traditions, which were taught to the children of the nobility in the form of songs which were chanted by them on feast days. The Behique was also at the head of their religion. Their prayers were directed not to the creator by but to the Mabuya or bad spirit their belief being as "God is good it is not necessary to gain his protection; the devil is bad and it is therefore better for us to adore and propitiate him so that he will work us no ill." Their intercessions were made through the medium of the Cemi inferior Gods of whom stone images were erected, and who acted as messengers to the greater Gods. Each Behique had his own particular Cemi called Cochexi who was solely at the command of that special Behique; the Cochexi of some Behique, were regarded as superior to others. The Cemi also had charge of all natural objects such as the springs, the rain, thunder, and dew. Diseases were very rare and also very violent among the Siboneyes; the Behique cured their followers by medical preparations of herbs and roots, together with magical symbols and by blowing upon them; after fasting and pretending to hold direct communication with their Cemi. Twice a year great religious feasts were held when the Behiques fasting weeks in advance living only on the juices of certain grains appearing weak and emaciated. After the usual sacrifices to the Cemi they worked themselves into a religious ecstasy; while in this condition they were questioned on subjects of interest, such as the probability of war, battles and death, their answers being received as coming direct from the Gods. At their fiesta or Gloritas wonderful dances were held several taking hold of each other's hands then moved themselves to the rhythm of a slow chant and the music of the tom-tom, a hollow trunk of a tree covered by the skin of some wild animal. It was their custom to dance until so exhausted that they fell to the ground. During the dances wine was passed from one to another and drunk without spilling or interrupting the dance. Men and women danced together only on the occasion of a great victory or on the birth or death of a cacique, when no wine was drunk. The Siboneyes were armed with the bow and arrow, dart and mace; the arrow and dart were tipped with fish bones; the mace was a heavy club made of hardwood and seems to have been their favorite weapon. They also construed clever traps to ensnare game. They had a primitive idea of weaving and wove cloth from the wild cotton plant that appears to have been indigenous to Cuba. Fire was made by rubbing a piece of hard wood between two pieces of softer wood. Fishing was one of their pursuits many of the houses of the noble were built upon piles along the shores of streams; this was probably a means of securing themselves against surprise by the cannibals. The hardships to which the Siboneyes were subjected has caused them to rapidly disappear, with the exception a possible few among the mountains of Santiago. The race has entirely disappeared even as early as 1532 but 5,600 of the original population of two hundred thousand (according to Las Casas 1.000.000) remained in 1511. Moreover in 1553, Fray Luis Beltran writing of the travels in Cuba in 1551 claims they were entirely exterminated. "Los 200.000 indios que entonces contenía serían exterminados por los tratamientos de que eran víctimas." SOME CUBAN SHRINES In Cuba as in all pro-Catholic countries the natives have a host of saints to whom they attribute various supernatural powers; they are held in greater or less esteem according to the miraculous cures they have achieved or the concessions they have granted their followers. Each family or individual has a special saint to whom they appeal in times of trouble or sickness. Sometimes however when a saint has repeatedly proved inefficient or has failed to grant the wishes of a devotee, it is cast aside or exchanged for one that has been recommended by a friend. It is no unusual thing to hear one lady advising another to try such and such a saint. "Rece á San José, él me ha concedido todo lo que yo le pedí". Pray to San José he grants all I ask him. There are also a number of saints who are specially efficient in certain diseases or conditions. One always prays to San Blas to cure throat trouble, and young ladies know that San Nicolas with gladly assist them to secure good (rich) husbands, San Ramón protects them during pregnancy and San Lázaro during child-birth. Sta. Bárbara makes timid hearts brave in times of war; Santo Domingo cures fever, Santa Lucia looks after the eyes, San Antonio protects from fire; and so in every case that may be presented there is some saint (or saintess) who has taken that disease or ill for their special power of benefaction. When an article is lost San Antonio de Padua is in disgrace until it is found. The figure of the saint is placed head-down-wards and if some time elapses without the lost object being recovered the image is bound to a chair back and severely whipped for failing in his duty; if the lost object still remains undiscovered the infant which always accompanies the saint is cut away from the image and the following couplet repeated "San Antonio Bendito si no me concedes lo que te pido no te devuelvo tu niño." "Blessed San Antonio if you do not grant what I ask, I will not return your child" this last resource rarely fails in causing the recovery of whatever is missing. "El Señor Milagroso" the miracle worker, is an image treasured as one of the most valued religious possession of Matanzas. Although the church has offered many thousands of dollars for its possession, and its owner is in comparatively poor circumstances, it still remains in the hands of a private family. It has been handed down through many generations of the Castro family and is at present in the possession of Sr. Arturo Castro who has built a shrine where all are welcome to visit and revere the saint. This saint is supposed to instantly answer the prayer of those who are in great danger. A curious story is connected with the image of a snake twined about the body of a man that is placed before in the saint. During the revolution of 1868 when many well to do families were temporarily reduced to needy circumstances an old man was accustomed to visit his married son about the time of the mid-day meal. The son who found it difficult to fill the all too many mouths of his own household one day ordered the meal to be kept back until his father had gone. The father came and failing to see the usual preparations for breakfast in progress inquired if the meal had already been served, he was given to understand that it had and left the house somewhat nettled as was natural. The dish was now ordered to be placed on the table with the least possible delay. As moments passed and no food appeared the master of the house went to the kitchen to inquire the causes of delay and there found the servant struggling to lift the cover from a kettle. Angry at the inability to perform so apparently simple a task he gave the cover a pull ... and then slowly from the boiling liquid appeared the shining coils of a monstrous serpent, which wound itself about the body of the selfish son! ... imagine the confusion and consternation in which the household was thrown on seeing their master in the coils of this huge monster. The master finding it impossible to release himself from the coils of the serpent and realising that this was the punishment of God for deceiving his parent vowed to present the Señor Milagroso a silver image of the incident. El Santo Sudario is a saint out-lawed and unrecognized by the authorities of the church; persons found wearing the reliquary containing the prayer to the saint are accounted rebels against the church and are excommunicated. This saint is the patron of robbers and assassins, and of people who are in constant danger of death by violence or drowning. El Santo Sudario or Just Judge protects its followers against fire, wild animals, bullets, death by drowning, and hanging, it is in great request by soldiers or sailors. During the Spanish regime in Cuba it became a misdemeanor to have an image of the saint in one's possession it being believed by the authorities that it gave criminals immunity against detection or arrest. A laughable accident in connection with the saint happened to the knowledge of the writer. During the last political unpleasantness an officer of the government forces was pressed to accept a present of a reliquary of El Santo Sudario to protect him against the dangers of battle incredulous of its power but willing to please his friend he accepted the gift and placed it about his neck. The reliquary encased in a red silk bag to prevent its chafing the skin was soon forgotten. While taking account of the casualties after a very active skirmish the officer was astonished and somewhat frightened to have his attention called to an apparently severe wound he himself had received in the breast. Glancing down sure enough a huge stain of blood had appeared on the front of his uniform. Feeling no pain and the wound appearing in such a vital place the officer imagined himself booked for the long voyage. Frantically tearing open his clothing in haste to stop the bleeding he found to his surprise that the red silk bag, containing the reliquary was dripping with perspiration and had run through his clothing. The Shrine of La Santa Imagen in the Hermitage of Monserrat, Matanzas, is the Mecca of the Spanish residents of Cuba, who annually in the 8th of November journey from all parts of the Island to attend the fiesta of Monserrat. This saint is supposed to have the power to grant three wishes to those who fulfill their vows during the year. The many offerings of gold and silver about the altar offer eulogiastic proof of the faith and esteem in which the saint is regarded. These objects are vowed to the saint in times of sickness or despair and usually take the form of a miniature representative of the parts of the body that are made well by the intercession of the saint. Vows of humility are also made to the saint. One devout more believer has passed the whole of each fiesta on his knees for than 20 years, in fulfillment of a vow made when he received intelligence of a fatal accident to his only daughter that happened while he was far from home. He vowed to the Holy Image that if he were allowed to reach the bedside of the child before she passed away he would perform this act of humility as long as he lived in gratitude for the saint's intercession in his behalf. For some special favor shown young girls will promise Our Lady Carmelo to use no other dress for a certain period than that prescribed by the Order of the Sisters of Carmelo, a dusty brown with black girdle. La Señora del Cobre is the patron saint of Cuba. This saint is a wooden image placed on El Cobre hill near Santiago of Cuba. This Image has a touch of the wanderlust often disappearing during the night and returning, covered with sand and sea weed. Once some accident befell it and it was picked far out at sea by a fishing boat and returned to its place. 
45457	----	[Illustration: He looked as if he meant to hit her, and Linda recoiled in terror. (Page 50)] LINDA CARLTON'S ISLAND ADVENTURE By EDITH LAVELL [Illustration: Linda and airplane] THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York Copyright MCMXXXI THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Linda Carlton's Island Adventure _Made in the United States of America_ Contents CHAPTER PAGE I _The "Ladybug"_ 7 II _The Aviation Job_ 25 III _Kidnapped_ 40 IV _Captive_ 56 V _Escape_ 71 VI _The Enemy in the Autogiro_ 85 VII _The Smash-Up_ 96 VIII _The Chief of Police_ 107 IX _Two Prisoners_ 123 X _Susie Disappears_ 138 XI _The Island in the Ocean_ 158 XII _The Money-Bags_ 172 XIII _The Broken Motor-Boat_ 182 XIV _Searching Parties_ 194 XV _The Empty Island_ 209 XVI _Searching the Ocean_ 224 XVII _On to Cuba_ 237 XVIII _Luck for Ted and Louise_ 251 XIX _The Return_ 263 XX _Conclusion_ 275 LINDA CARLTON'S ISLAND ADVENTURE CHAPTER I _The "Ladybug"_ "There's a young lady here to see you, Linda," announced Miss Emily Carlton, coming into her niece's room the morning after the latter's return from the St. Louis Ground School. The girl had just graduated, winning both commercial and transport licenses, and, besides that, she was registered as the only feminine airplane mechanic in the country. "Who is she, Auntie?" inquired Linda, rubbing her eyes and peering out the window into the lovely June sunshine. What a wonderful day! Too beautiful to spend on the ground! But she sighed as she recalled that at the moment she did not possess a plane. "A reporter, I believe," replied the older woman. "Miss Hawkins, from the 'News'." "But I haven't done anything to get into the newspapers," objected Linda. "My dear child, you don't have to! Aren't you the only girl who ever flew the Atlantic alone? That's enough to keep you in the spotlight forever." "But I don't like spot-lights," Linda insisted, starting to dress. "Couldn't you get rid of her, Auntie?" Miss Carlton shook her head. "I tried to, dear. But she wouldn't go. She wants to know your summer plans. I told her you'd probably just spend a quiet vacation with me at Green Falls, where we were last year. But she didn't believe me. She said you weren't the type to take your vacations quietly." Linda laughed. "I guess she's right, Aunt Emily." The latter looked troubled. She had been trying for a year--ever since Linda's father had given her an Arrow Pursuit bi-plane for graduation--to keep the girl out of the air as much as possible, but she had not succeeded. The Carltons were comfortably well-off, and it was Miss Carlton's wish that Linda go in for society, and make a good marriage. But though Linda enjoyed occasional parties as much as any normal young person, she had a serious purpose in life, to make flying her career just as a young man would. "You won't go to Green Falls--with all the rest of the crowd?" asked Miss Carlton, anxiously. "I can't, Aunt Emily. I--I--can't spare the time. I am trying to get a job." "A job? But you don't need money. Your father's business is dong nicely----" "Oh, it isn't the money I want," interrupted the girl. "It's the experience." Linda finished dressing and came down stairs to meet the young woman who was waiting for her. The latter insisted that she eat her breakfast while they talked. "Honestly, I haven't done a thing interesting to the world since my ocean flight!" Linda said. "Except win my licenses, and all the graduates' names have already been listed in the papers." The reporter smiled at her as if she were a child. "My dear girl," she explained, "you are front-page news now, no matter what you do. You are Queen of the Air, and will be until some other woman does something more daring than your flight to Paris alone. So everything you do interests the public. Naturally they want to know what you are planning for the summer. Flying to South America, or Alaska? And what kind of plane do you intend to buy next, since you sold your Bellanca in Paris?" Linda yawned, and fingered her mail--a great pile of letters beside her plate. Invitations, mostly from the younger set in Spring City, for she was very popular. "I'm afraid I don't know yet," she replied, simply. "Maybe if you read your mail--" suggested the reporter. "She is to be a bridesmaid at Miss Katherine Clavering's wedding next week," supplied Miss Carlton, entering the dining-room. As usual, social events were all-important to her, especially affairs with the Claverings, the richest people in Spring City. Katherine, or "Kitty," as her friends all called her, was to be married to Lt. Hulbert of the U. S. Flying Corps, and her brother Ralph made no secret of his devotion for Linda. If he had had his way, they would have been married last Christmas, and aviation jobs would be out of the question for Linda Carlton at the present time. The girl searched through her mail rapidly, and picked out a letter which interested her above all others. It was from the Pitcairn Autogiro Company in the East. As she read it, her blue eyes lighted up with enthusiasm, and she examined the enclosed circular with excited interest, completely forgetting her visitor. The reporter waited patiently for a minute or two. "Well, what's it all about, Miss Carlton?" she finally inquired. Linda looked up at her as if she were startled, and suddenly remembered her caller. She handed her the circular. "I am going to buy an autogiro," she announced, with decision. "A what?" demanded her aunt, thinking Linda referred to some kind of automobile. "A new car?" The reporter smiled. "A flying bug?" she demanded. Miss Carlton gasped in horror. A bug! What would her niece be up to next? "Linda!" she exclaimed. "It's a plane, Aunt Emily," the girl explained. "You ought to like it. It's the very safest kind there is. In the eight or nine years since it was invented, nobody has been killed with one." Miss Carlton looked doubtful. "No airplane is safe," she remarked. "This isn't an airplane. It's an autogiro." "But it flies?" "Of course." Linda showed her the picture. It was indeed a queer looking object, with its wind-mill-like arrangement on top, and its absence of big wings. As the reporter had observed, its appearance was very like a huge bug. "They do say it's unusually safe," corroborated the latter. "You'll have to take a ride in it, Miss Carlton." "Not I!" protested the older woman. "Firm earth is good enough for me.... No, it looks dangerous enough to me." Linda smiled; she could never convince her aunt of the joy of flying, or of the minimum risk, if one were a careful pilot. She was glad that her father was more broad-minded; if he weren't, she would still be on the ground. "And where will you go with your Flying Bug, Miss Carlton?" asked the reporter, tapping her pencil on her note-book. "Not on any long flight," replied the girl, to her aunt's relief. "My aim is to get some sort of aviation job." "What would you like to do?" "Anything connected with planes. I prefer flying, but I'd be satisfied at the beginning with ground work.... If you will write down your telephone number, Miss Hawkins, I will call you up when I have decided definitely just what my plans will be." "Thank you very much!" exclaimed the other girl, rising. "I think you are a peach, Miss Carlton. Some celebrities are so mean to us reporters." "I'm afraid I'm not a real celebrity," laughed Linda. "I'll be forgotten by the public this time next year. I sincerely hope that more and more girls and women will be doing things in aviation, so that my little stunt will seem trivial. That is progress, you know." Scarcely had the visitor gone before Miss Carlton was begging Linda to open her other letters. "The Junior League picnic is tomorrow," she said. "And Dot Crowley is giving a luncheon in honor of Kitty Clavering.... There are probably a lot more things, too...." Rather listlessly Linda opened her letters. It was not the same, she thought, without Louise to share everything. Louise Haydock--Louise Mackay now--had been her chum all through school, where they were so inseparable that they were always referred to by their friends as the "double Ls." The other girl's marriage had meant a sharp break to Linda, for the Mackays had moved to Wichita, Kansas, where Ted was employed as a flyer. As if Miss Carlton understood her niece's thoughts, she remarked that Louise was coming for Kitty's wedding. Linda's eyes shone with joy. "Flying?" she inquired, as a matter of course. "Yes. She and Ted are arriving some time tonight. Mrs. Haydock called up, and asked me to tell you." Linda could not read her mail for a few minutes, so intense was her happiness at this splendid news. "Ted can go with me to see about the autogiro!" she exclaimed. "I do so want his opinion!" "Go where?" "To Philadelphia, where the Pitcairn Company is located." Again Miss Carlton looked annoyed, almost shocked. "You don't mean to say you'll take time to fly to Philadelphia, with all your engagements?" Linda nodded. "I'll be here for the wedding, Aunt Emily. Don't worry about that. But nothing else is particularly important." Miss Carlton groaned. What could you do with a girl like Linda? You might as well have a boy! The mail was finally opened and sorted, and Linda dutifully went to a dinner dance at the Country Club that evening with Ralph Clavering. But she was tense all evening, for she was hoping every moment that Louise would arrive. About midnight the young couple dashed in, radiant in their happiness. To everyone's amusement Louise flew into Linda's arms in the middle of the dance floor. "How do you get that way?" demanded Ralph, pretending to be angry. "As if it isn't enough to endure every fellow in the room tapping me when I'm dancing with Linda, without having girls do it too!" But the double Ls scarcely heard him. They were so enraptured at seeing each other again. "I'm going to stay a week!" announced Louise. "Luckily, Ted has some business in Philadelphia and New York, and he'll be flying back and forth." "Philadelphia!" exclaimed Linda. "Isn't that great! Can we go with him there?" "Of course we can, if you don't mind a squeeze. The plane isn't very big," explained Louise. "But then, we're not fat. Ted'll be tickled to death to have company--he hates flying alone. But why do you want to go to Philadelphia, Linda?" "To buy an autogiro!" "You always were crazy about those things. Remember the time you gave up a dance to fly one?" "I certainly do. And you wouldn't go with me." "Well, there was a reason," laughed Louise, making no secret of her admiration for her husband.... "I think Ted'll go day after tomorrow," she continued. "We thought we'd enjoy resting a day, and taking in the Junior League picnic." "Fine!" agreed Linda. "That will give everybody a chance to see you. Besides, Aunt Emily would die if I missed that affair. Remember the one last year. Didn't we have fun?" "We certainly did," smiled Louise, reminiscently. "But it seems like more than a year ago--so much has happened." "I wasn't even flying then," observed the other. "And I hadn't met Ted!" "You're a real bride, Lou!" returned Linda, affectionately. "But you're just the same old dear!" The following day was just as delightful as it had been the previous year, and the picnic another success. To Linda it was all the more enjoyable, because of the novelty of seeing her old friends again after the separation caused by a year at the school in St. Louis. Ted went along with Louise, and entered into all the sports, just as if he had been born and brought up with the crowd in Spring City. Moreover, he was delighted at the prospect of having the two girls go with him the next day, and appeared almost as enthusiastic about the autogiro as Linda herself. The weather continued perfect, and the three happy young people took off from Spring City the following morning. An excellent mechanic himself, Ted always kept his plane in tip-top condition, and it was a rare thing indeed for him even to encounter a minor accident. This flight proved no exception; straight and swift through the June skies he flew to the field outside the city of Philadelphia where the autogiros were on display. "You really expect to buy one today, Linda?" asked Louise, as she climbed out of the plane. "Yes--if Ted gives his approval," replied the capable aviatrix. She had always had the greatest confidence in this young red-haired pilot, who had taken her on her first flight, and who had saved her and his wife from disaster upon two occasions. "Are you sure that it can go fast enough to suit you, Linda?" asked Ted. "It can travel a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, and that ought to satisfy me. If I were entering any air-races, I'd want a special racing plane anyhow, for the occasion. But I'm not going out for races. I want to take a job, and I think an autogiro will be the most convenient plane I can have, to take with me anywhere I want to go. I shan't have to depend on big fields for landing." "Right-o," agreed the young man. They walked across the field and were shown a model by an enthusiastic salesman. As the reporter had said, it did look like a flying bug, with its odd wind-mill-like rotor on top, and its small stub-like wings, which were there mainly to mount the lateral controls or ailerons. "It isn't so pretty as the Arrow," remarked Louise. "Handsome is as handsome does," returned Linda. "If we'd had an autogiro that time in Canada, when our gas leaked out, a forced landing wouldn't have been disastrous." "Why?" "Because the rotor takes care of that, after the engine is dead," explained Linda. "An autogiro can come down vertically at a slower rate than we did with our parachutes." "I'll never forget how scared I was that time we jumped off," remarked her companion. "You know, it's one thing to see other people do it--in the air, or at the movies--and its something else to step off into space yourself. That all-gone feeling!" "I don't mind it any more now--it doesn't seem any worse than dropping ten stories in an elevator. But I know what you mean." "Well, I have never had to jump since," Louise informed her. "But," she continued as they walked around the autogiro, "isn't there really any danger of crashing?" "You can crash, of course," laughed Linda. "If you steer straight for another plane, or a tree. But tail-spins are practically impossible; they say no matter what happens the autogiro settles to the ground like a tired hen. It's the principle of centrifugal force--it can't fail." "Oh, yeah?" remarked Louise, hiding a yawn. "What I want your opinion on, Ted," added Linda, turning to the young man, "is the engine. You know more about engines than I do." "I'm not so sure of that last," he replied, modestly. "Looks O.K. to me--I've been examining it while you girls chattered." The salesman, who had been listening to the conversation, suddenly burst into a smile. He had been wondering where he had seen that girl before. Now he knew! Her pictures had been in every newspaper in the country. She was Linda Carlton, of course! "You're Miss Carlton, aren't you?" he demanded, excitedly. "The girl who flew to Paris alone?" "Yes," answered Linda, indifferently. She didn't want to talk ancient history now. "This is a P C A--2, isn't it?" she inquired, to bring the man to the subject of autogiros. "Yes. Fifteen thousand dollars. I suppose it's not necessary to tell _you_ what instruments it is equipped with--an experienced flyer like yourself can recognize them by a glance into the pilot's cock-pit." "Yes, I see them. And I had a circular besides.... It's complete, all right. The only thing I don't like about it is the separate passenger's cock-pit. My Arrow Pursuit had a companion cock-pit." "You can always talk to your passenger through the speaking-tube," the salesman reminded her. "Yes, of course----" "And nobody you take along now-a-days will be as talkative as I always was on our trips together," Louise observed, with a smile. "Talkative!" repeated Linda, "All you ever wanted to do was sleep! Every time I looked at you on that flight to Canada, you were peacefully dozing!" "And she still has a bad habit of dropping off," teased Ted. "So long as that's the only way I 'drop off,' I'm satisfied," concluded Louise. In spite of their frivolous talk, Linda had been thinking seriously about the autogiro, and had entirely made up her mind about it. "I'll take it," she announced. "If you surely approve of it, Ted." "I do, absolutely." The salesman looked at her in amazement. Never had he made such an easy sale before. But he did not meet people like Linda Carlton every day! "Don't you want to try it out?" he suggested. "I can show you how to fly it in a few minutes." "I have flown one before," she told him. "But I would like to take it up for a few minutes if you don't mind. Am I to have this particular one? I have a certified check in payment." The salesman blinked his eyes in further consternation. The check right there, the girl ready to take the plane home with her! It was a moment before he could catch his breath. "Of course," he finally managed to answer. "I'll have her started for you immediately. And--would your friends care to go up with you?" "Sure!" exclaimed Ted. "We're your best friends, aren't we, Linda? So oughtn't we to be privileged with the first ride?" "You certainly are!" replied the famous aviatrix, squeezing Louise's hand in her excitement and delight. "Come on!" It was the Mackays' first flight in an autogiro, and though they were very much crowded in the passenger's cock-pit, they insisted that that only added to the fun. With a sureness which Ted watched in admiration, Linda took off and flew round and round the field, putting the new plane through all sorts of tests, proving conclusively that all the claims for it were well-founded. Fifteen minutes later they came slowly down to earth, landing on the exact spot from which Linda had taken off. "Unscramble yourselves!" she cried to her passengers, as she climbed out of the cock-pit. "Let's go pay our bill." "She's great, Linda!" approved Louise, as her husband helped her out. "I'm for her, even if she is a funny-looking bug." "Sh!" cautioned Linda, solemnly. "You might hurt her feelings. She's--she's--a lady!" "Ladybug!" exclaimed Louise, with a sudden burst of inspiration. "Ladybug is right!" agreed her chum enthusiastically. "You've named her for me, Lou!" CHAPTER II _The Aviation Job_ "It's marvelous!" exclaimed Linda, as the salesman came to meet her after her test-flight in the autogiro. "Will you have her filled with gas and oil, while I sign the contract? I'll take her with me." The salesman smiled at Ted Mackay. "In the same way any other woman would buy a hat," he remarked, to Louise's amusement. "You found it easy to fly, Miss Carlton?" he inquired. "Wonderful!" she replied. "So simple that a child could almost do it! It certainly is the plane of the future, or of the present, I should say." "We'll probably see one perched on everybody's roof within the next five years," teased Louise, although in reality she shared her chum's admiration for it. While the mechanics gave the autogiro a thorough inspection, the little group strolled to the office to sign the papers and to meet the president of the company. The salesman introduced Mr. Pitcairn, and added, proudly, "This is _the_ Miss Carlton, of world-wide fame! The only woman who ever flew the Atlantic alone! And I have had the honor, to sell Miss Carlton an autogiro!" Linda blushed as she shook hands, and her eyelids fluttered in embarrassment. She could never get used to public admiration. Immediately she began to talk about her new possession. "I want it for every-day flying," she explained. "I think it will be wonderful for that." "We believe that it is," agreed the older man. "And we are honored indeed, Miss Carlton, that you have chosen it. It will be a feather in our cap." "Miss Carlton never thinks of things like that," remarked Louise. "But I guess we're glad that she doesn't!" While Linda signed the necessary papers, and handed her check to the salesman, the president inquired what her plans included now that she had graduated from the Ground School with such success. "I don't exactly know," she replied. "I want to get some kind of aviation job--I am more interested in the use of planes in every-day life than I am in races and spectacular events, though I understand that these have their place. Of course I haven't found anything to do yet, but I mean to try." "You expect to give your whole time to flying?" asked the other. He had thought, naturally, that a girl in Linda Carlton's circumstances would just do it for sport. "Yes--a regular full-time job. I'm not sure what--not selling planes, for I don't believe I'd care for that. And not the mail--unless I can't get anything else. You don't happen to know of any openings, do you, Mr. Pitcairn?" "Let me see," he said. "Things are a little slow now. Of course there are the air-transportation companies, but their routes are about as cut-and-dried as the mail pilot's.... I take it you would rather have a little more excitement.... There's crop dusting, during the summer. You have heard of that, no doubt?" "Yes, I have read about it." "You know, then, that one plane flying over a field can spray as many plants in a day as a hundred of the ordinary spraying machines?" His listeners gasped in astonishment. What marvelous advances in progress aviation was bringing about! "I happen to know of a company in the South that is just forming," he continued. "Because of lack of capital, they are in great need of pilots with planes of their own. If you are interested, I am sure they would be glad to take you on." "That sounds very interesting," agreed Linda, eagerly. "I'm sure I'd like that. And an autogiro ought to be especially adapted for this kind of thing. I could fly so low--and land so easily----" "Exactly! Incidentally, you'd be doing our company a big favor by showing the public new uses for an autogiro. If Miss Carlton, of international reputation, flies anywhere, the account of it is sure to be in the newspapers!" "I wouldn't count too much on that, Mr. Pitcairn," protested Linda, modestly. "I really am not 'news' any more.... But I shall be grateful for the name of this firm, if you will write it down for me. Where is it located?" "In Georgia--the southern part," he informed her. "Here is the address," he added, handing her a card. "And I will write myself today to tell them of their good fortune!" "Georgia!" repeated Louise. "It's going to be awfully hot there, Linda. Compared with Green Falls--or even Spring City." "Why not pick a job in Canada?" suggested Ted. "You'd like Canada, if you didn't choose the coldest part of the year to visit it." Louise shuddered at the memory of their adventure during the preceding Christmas holidays. "I never want to see Canada again!" she said. "And I don't believe Linda does either!" It was not the memory of that cold night in the Canadian woods, or of the cruelty of the police, however, that made Linda frown and hesitate now. Nor did the heat of the South trouble her--weather was all in the day's work to her. But the thought of the distance between Georgia and Ohio, and what such a separation might mean to her Aunt Emily, deterred her from accepting the offer immediately. It hardly seemed right to be away all winter and spring, and then to go far off again in the summer. "Would I have to promise to do this all summer, if I took it on?" she inquired. "No, certainly not. A month would be enough, for the first time. That would give you August with your family, Miss Carlton, before you accepted a regular aviation job in the fall." This sounded much better to Linda, and she promised to write within the nest week, if her father agreed. It was lots of fun riding back to Spring City in her autogiro the following day, although she flew alone, for Louise wanted to return with Ted. Without a mishap of any kind she brought the "Ladybug" down on the field behind her house. When she entered her home, she found that her father had arrived during her absence. He was waiting for her in the library. "Daddy!" she cried, joyfully, for Mr. Carlton's visits were always a pleasant surprise to his only child. "You came at just the right time! Come out and see my Bug!" "Must you call it that, Linda?" asked her Aunt Emily, who, like all good housekeepers detested every sort of insect. Linda laughed. "Take a look at it, Aunt Emily, and see whether you could think of a better name." Miss Carlton peered through the screen door. "Where is it?" she asked. "Come out on the porch, and you can see it," replied Linda. Dragging her father and her aunt each by a hand, she gleefully skipped through the door. "There!" she cried, as one who displays a marvel. At the top of the hill, on the field behind the lovely Colonial house, they saw the new possession. Or rather, the top of the autogiro, for it was not wholly visible. "It looks like a clothes-dryer to me," remarked Miss Carlton. "Or a wind-mill." "But you agree that I couldn't call it my 'Clothes-dryer,' or my 'Wind-mill,' don't you, Aunt Emily? The words are too long. Besides, Lou thought of the cleverest name--the 'Ladybug.' But you needn't worry, Auntie, she won't ever creep into your spotless house!" "I should hope not!" "In a way, Emily," observed Linda's father, "it's a good name as far as you are concerned. You hate planes--and you hate bugs!" "Only, Aunt Emily is going to love my autogiro," insisted Linda, putting her arm affectionately about the older woman, who had been the only mother she had ever known. "One of my biggest reasons for choosing an autogiro was because it is the safest flying machine known." Her tone grew soft, so low that her father could not hear, and she added, with her head turned aside, "I do want you to know that I care about your feelings, Aunt Emily." Miss Carlton's eyes grew misty; Linda had always been so sweet, so thoughtful! Her niece couldn't help it, if she had a marvelous brain, and a mechanical mind. No wonder she wanted to use them! "It's going to be the ambition of my life to convert Aunt Emily to flying," she announced, in a gay tone. "See if I don't, Daddy!" "I hope so," he said. "How about taking me up for a little fly?" "A fly?" repeated Linda, playfully. "You a fly--and my new plane a bug! Oh, think of poor Aunt Emily!" "Now, Linda, I do believe you're getting silly!" But already she was pulling her father down the steps, eager to show off her beloved possession. Mr. Carlton proved almost as enthusiastic as his daughter about it. When they returned to the house, he laughingly told his sister that he was thinking of buying one for himself, to use to fly back and forth from New York, where his business was located. Miss Carlton groaned. "Then we'll have two flying maniacs in the house!" she exclaimed. "No--Linda and I will usually be up in the air," he corrected, "not often in the house." Linda had scarcely time to change from her flyer's suit into an afternoon dress, and no chance at all to talk with her father about Mr. Pitcairn's suggestion about a job, when Ralph Clavering drove over to see her. Linda was delighted, of course; here was another person to whom she could display her autogiro. Ralph was a licensed pilot, too, although with him flying was only a secondary interest, and he had never had his own plane. "Come out and see my 'Ladybug'!" she insisted. "And wouldn't you like to try her out? I might let you!" "No, thanks, Linda--I'd be sure to do something wrong. Besides, I'd rather talk to you--those things make such an infernal noise. No, just show it to me, and then let's go and have a game of tennis before supper, if you're not too tired." "I've almost forgotten how to play," replied the girl. "But I'll try. If you will come out and see my 'Ladybug' first." After they had examined the autogiro, and were driving to the Country Club in Ralph's roadster, the young man turned the conversation to the topic of vacation at Green Falls, the resort at which Linda's aunt, and most of her friends, had spent the preceding summer. Ralph told Linda about a new motor boat that he was getting, and spoke of the contests in all sorts of sports that would be repeated this year. "How soon do you think you can get off, Linda?" he concluded eagerly. "Not till August, I'm afraid," she replied, to his dismay. "August!" he repeated, in horror. "You're not going to pull some new stunt on us, are you, Linda? Fly the Pacific--or the Arctic Ocean?" The girl laughed, and shook her head. "I'm through with stunts for a while, Ralph--you needn't worry about that. No; what I am planning now is steady work. I expect to take a job, as soon as Kit's wedding is over." "A job? Where?" "In Georgia, probably." She went into details about the proposition. "You would!" he muttered, sulkily. "And pick out such a hot spot, that nobody would want to go with you.... Linda, why can't you be sensible like other girls--like my sister Kit, for instance?" "Kit?" "Yes. And get married." He leaned over hopefully, and put his hand on her arm. Now that Linda had accomplished her ambition in flying the Atlantic, perhaps she would be willing to settle down to marriage and a normal life. But she drew away, smiling. "Don't, Ralph!" she warned him. "Remember that you promised me you wouldn't ask me till you had finished college." "All right, all right," he muttered, irritably, resolving that he wouldn't again. Let her wait awhile! She'd probably get tired of working after she'd had a taste of it for a month in that hot climate. They met Dot Crowley and Jim Valier at the tennis courts, and doubled up with them for a couple of sets. But they were badly beaten, for these two were the best team at the Club. After dinner that evening Linda had a chance to tell her father and her aunt of her proposed plan for the coming month, and won their consent, when she announced her intention of spending August at Green Falls. To Miss Carlton she put the all-important question of clothes; the older woman promised to get her half a dozen flyer's suits of linen for the trip. During the next week Linda accepted enough invitations to satisfy even her Aunt Emily, and she wore one new dress after another, and flitted from tennis match or picnic to tea or dance, as the program happened to be. The grand finale was Kitty's wedding, at the girl's beautiful home just outside of Spring City. It was a gorgeous affair, and Linda could not help thinking how Bess Hulbert, the Lieutenant's sister, would have enjoyed it, had she not given her life in the attempt to win the big prize which Linda herself had captured. Personally, she did not like the affair nearly so much as Louise's simple wedding at Easter. Linda was quiet as she drove home beside her Aunt Emily in the limousine. She could not help wondering whether this event did not mark the end of her girlhood, the beginning of her career as a self-supporting woman--out in the world. No longer would she be free to come and go as she liked, to see her old friends at any and all hours of the day and evening. The thought was a little saddening, and she sighed. Her aunt laid her hand over her niece's. "Why the sigh, dear?" she inquired. "Tired?" Linda nodded. "Yes--and weddings are so solemn--so sort of sad, aren't they, Auntie? To the other people, I mean--for of course there's nothing sad about Kit and Tom. But it means I won't see them much----" "It isn't their wedding that causes that, dear," Miss Carlton reminded her. "Kitty and Tom will be back and forth often, I think, for they are not living far away.... But it's you who are leaving the rest, Linda. Oh, if you only wouldn't go so far away, dear!" "I guess you're right, Aunt Emily," admitted the other. "But I can't have my cake and eat it too. There isn't any flying job in Spring City." Miss Carlton was silent; there was no use in going over the old argument. Instead, she asked: "How soon do you go, Linda?" "Tomorrow--if the weather is good. I received my map and my instructions several days ago. I'm all ready. The Ladybug's in perfect shape." "If you only didn't have to go alone!" sighed the older woman. "Yes. If I only had Lou!" "Couldn't you take some other girl?" "As a matter of fact, I did suggest such a thing to Dot Crowley. She's competent, you know--has her pilot's license--and she's such a peach of a girl. I know we'd get along beautifully together. But she's all tied up with a tennis match, and can't possibly leave now." Little did Linda think, as she took off the following morning in the bright June sunshine, how deeply she was to regret this decision of Dot's, how she was to wish a hundred times within the next week that she had some companion who was a friend. For the people she fell among proved to be the worst sort of associates. CHAPTER III _Kidnapped_ As there was no particular hurry about the trip South--it was only June twentieth--Linda decided to go slowly and to stop often. What a marvelous way to see the country, at the most beautiful time of the year! In an autogiro the flight would never become monotonous, for she could fly low enough to watch the landscape. Ohio--Kentucky--Tennessee--Georgia! Each day she could travel through a different state, putting up each night at a hotel. Fortunately her Aunt Emily had given up worrying about her staying alone in strange cities. For Linda had already proved herself capable of taking care of herself. "It is because Linda is always so dignified," Mr. Carlton had remarked to his sister. "The girls who make chance acquaintances, and permit familiarities are usually looking for it. Linda's mind is on her plane--on her navigation--and she is too absorbed to be bothered. I think we are safe, Emily, in trusting her." "I suppose so," Miss Carlton had agreed. "Though of course she'll always be a little girl to me." The day after the wedding was warm and the skies were clear; the Ladybug was in perfect condition, and her forty gallon tank was filled with gasoline, so Linda decided to carry out her plan. While her Aunt Emily packed her lunch basket and a box with an emergency supply of food, the girl called Miss Hawkins on the telephone as she had promised. "But don't put it into the paper until after I start," begged Linda. "I always like to slip off quietly, without any fuss." "I'll save it for the evening editions," agreed the reporter. "And then you'll be well on your way.... And, thank you again, Miss Carlton." An hour later she bade her aunt good-by, and was off. Heading her plane south-west, she would avoid the mountains in Kentucky, and pass over the blue-grass region, of which she had so often read. It was an ideal day for a flight, and her heart beat with the same exultation she had always felt when she was in the air; there was no feeling to compare with it on earth. Someone had said it was like being in love--but Linda Carlton had never been in love herself. For several hours this sense of joy possessed her; then, as noontime came, and she landed to eat her lunch, she suddenly grew lonely. If only Louise were with her! She sighed as she thought that from now on she would probably be traveling alone. It grew hotter in the afternoon as she progressed farther south, but her engine was functioning so beautifully that she hated to stop. Then the sun went down, and the coolness was so delightful after the heat that she continued on her course longer than she had planned, and did not land until she had crossed the border into Tennessee. There she followed a beacon light that led to an airport, and brought the Ladybug down to earth. No sooner had she brought the autogiro to a stop than a group of curious people surrounded her. "What do you-all call this?" drawled a big, good-natured looking man, with the typical Southern accent. "It's a new one on me." Linda smiled and explained, asking that the autogiro be housed for the night, and inquired her way to the hotel. "The hotel ain't so good," replied the man. "But I can direct you to a fine boarding-house." Everybody that Linda met in this little town was kindness itself. She found herself in a pleasant home, with a marvelous supper of real old-fashioned Southern cooking, all ready for her. It appeared to be the custom to eat late in the South; no one thought it strange that she should want her supper at nine o'clock. These good people's hospitality only served to strengthen her confidence in the fact that she was safe in traveling alone. For this reason the shock was all the greater for her when that trust was so rudely shaken later on during the trip. Linda liked the town so well that she decided to remain a day, and go over her Ladybug herself. For, she argued sensibly, if no one there had ever heard of an autogiro before, it stood to reason that there would be little chance of a competent inspection by anyone but herself. Although Miss Hawkins, the reporter, had published the facts concerning her trip that evening, the news had not reached this town in Tennessee immediately. It was not until the next day that the story was reprinted, and someone discovered that this stranger in the autogiro who was visiting them was Linda Carlton of international fame. Then the news spread like wild-fire about the town, and the band was gotten out to give the girl a royal welcome. It was hardly necessary, with all this celebration, to wire her aunt of her safe arrival in Tennessee; nevertheless Linda did so, as she had promised when she left home. Her next day's journey brought her across Tennessee, over the mountains where she had a chance to test her plane's climbing ability, and into Georgia. Here again she was received with hospitality. It seemed almost as if she were making a "good-will" flight, so delighted were the people to greet her and make her at home. A long flight lay ahead of her--across Georgia, the largest state in the southeast. Over the mountains in the northern part, across cotton and rice and sweet-potato plantations, towards the coast. The weather was hot and dry; she grew tired and thirsty, and the thought of her friends, enjoying the cool breezes at Green Falls made her envious for a while. But she carried plenty of water in her thermos flasks, and she reminded herself that she was having a more thrilling experience than they could possibly have. Tonight she could rest--and sleep. Her head ached and her body was weary, as she looked at her map and tried to find out just where she was from the land-marks. Dismay took hold of her as she realized that she must have gone off of her course--beyond her destination. The ground below appeared marshy, in many spots entirely covered with water, in which water-lilies and rushes grew in abundance. Where could she possibly be? Panic seized her as she realized that this was no place to land. Even an autogiro couldn't come down in a swamp. She circled around, and went back. If the light only held out until she reached some sort of level, hard ground! She thought of her flight over the ocean, when she had been so absolutely alone, and she felt the same desolation, the same fierce terror. Where was she? Where was she going? Wild-eyed, she studied her map. Then she located herself. This must be the Okefenokee Swamp, in the southeastern part of Georgia. That lonely, forsaken land, some parts of which had never been penetrated by a white man! Treacherous, dangerous ground, which would mean certain death if she attempted to land! Miles and miles of desolation, that only an Indian could safely explore! There was nothing to do but head the plane towards the west, in hope of passing over the swamp. The sun had set, and darkness was coming on, but Linda could still see the ground beneath her. The water grew scarcer, and trees--pine and cypress--here and there dotted the land. But still the earth looked marshy, too treacherous for a landing. A terrifying thought seized her when she remembered that she had not filled her gasoline tank that morning. Glancing at the indicator, she saw that she had only three gallons left. Would that be enough to take her out of this "trembling land," which was the meaning of the Indian word, "Okefenokee"? It was like a horrible night-mare, watching the decreasing gasoline supply, the fading light, and the trees and the swamp beneath her. Her breath came in gasps; the idea of death in a swamp was more horrible than that of drowning in the middle of the Atlantic, for the former would be a lingering torture. But at last to her delight she saw the trees widen, and a level stretch of dry sand below. This must be an island, she concluded, for she had read that there were half a dozen or so of these in the swamp, and that they were several miles in length. If this were true, she could land, and be safe for the night at least. She brought her autogiro lower, and with her flash-light and her glasses examined the ground. Yes, there was space enough for a landing, with a plane like hers. She uttered a gasp of relief. But she had rejoiced too soon, for when she lifted her eyes from the ground to the level of her plane she was startled breathless by the sight of another plane, which had come out of nowhere, apparently, and was rushing madly at her. As if it were actually aiming to crash into her! As if this were warfare, and the oncoming plane an enemy, intent upon her destruction! In that instant she realized that this was an old plane--possibly one of those abandoned by the Army--one that would not now pass inspection. No wonder it was tipping so strangely; it must be out of the pilot's control. Linda did the only thing possible, for she was too low to turn. She dropped gracefully to the ground, avoiding a tree by a few inches. Thank goodness, it was solid beneath her! The other plane was landing too, she observed, landing with a speed that was ten times that of the autogiro, in a space that was far too small. The inevitable occurred; Linda closed her eyes as she saw it about to crash. A terrifying thud followed; then a scream of fright--and Linda opened her eyes to see the plane on its side, nosed into a bank of bushes. Had it not been for that undergrowth, the wreck would have been far worse than it was. Linda had turned off her engine, and she jumped out of the autogiro immediately and rushed to the scene of the disaster. What a smash it was! No one would ever fly that plane again! Two people were lying tangled up in the wreckage, whether dead or alive Linda could not immediately tell. At her approach the man in the rear cock-pit opened his eyes and began to move his hands and legs. "Got a good knife, Linda?" he yelled, to the girl's profound astonishment. "I'll get one," she replied, wondering how he could possibly know her name. Or was he delirious, and thought he was talking to some other Linda? Hurrying back to her own plane she took out her thermos flasks and her tool-kit, and returned to the spot of the wreck. It was too dark now to see the men distinctly, until she turned on her flash-light. As she came closer, she saw that the man who had spoken was wriggling himself free. His face was scratched, blood was running down his hands, but he apparently was not seriously hurt. "Lucky this is an open plane," he muttered. "Now give me a hand, me girl!" Linda did not like his tone, but she could not refuse to help a human being in distress. Gradually he crawled out. "Now for Susie!" he announced, as he raised himself unsteadily on his legs. Linda gasped. Was the other occupant a woman? A thrill of relief passed over her, for she had been terrified at the idea of being alone with such a hard-looking man in this desolate spot. "A girl?" she stammered, pressing close to the plane. "Yeah. Me wife. Her name's Susie." Linda flashed the light under the wreckage of the plane, and distinguished a young woman in a flyer's suit. She was unconscious. Without another word they both set silently to work to disentangle her. At last they dragged her out--still unconscious. But she evidently was still alive, though the man remarked that her arm must be broken--and maybe an ankle or two. He seemed very matter-of-fact about it all. "What's in that flask?" he demanded abruptly, of Linda. "Water," she replied. "Water!" he snarled angrily. "Water!" He looked as if he meant to hit her, and Linda recoiled in terror. "Go hunt my flask in that wreck!" he commanded. "Do it yourself!" returned Linda, with sudden spirit. "How do I know that that plane won't burst into flames any minute?" She was surprised at her sudden display of independence; she had always depended upon Louise to stick up for their rights. But she had risen to the occasion, now that she was alone. The man started to swear, when suddenly the girl on the ground opened her eyes. "Take care, Slats!" she begged, to Linda's astonishment. "We'll need this girl and her plane--for I can't fly now!" The man called "Slats" subsided, and went over to the wreckage. Linda bent over the injured "Susie," and put the flask of water to her lips. Like the man's, the girl's face was scratched and bleeding, and she began to moan of the pain in her wrist. Her helmet had been pushed off, and her blond hair hung about her face. Her lips were painted a brighter red than even blood could have colored them. "Where are you hurt?" asked Linda, wiping the girl's face with her handkerchief, and pushing the hair out of her eyes. "My wrist, worst. And this ankle. And my back." "If I have enough gasoline, we'll take you to a hospital in my plane." "No! No!" cried the girl, in terror. "Why not?" questioned Linda. "You'll find out," replied the other, mysteriously, closing her eyes in pain. Linda had no way of guessing what she meant, so she sat waiting in silence until the man returned. Five minutes later he appeared with a tank of gasoline, and a flask of brandy, which he gave to his wife to drink. "We're ready to go now, Linda," he announced. "You can help me carry Susie over to your Bug." Again Linda started violently at the mention of her own name. "Do you really know me?" she asked. "Sure we do! You're Linda Carlton. Think you're about the smartest thing there is in the air today. Bought one of them new-fangled bugs. Ain't that right?" "Partly," admitted Linda, wincing at the slur in his remark. "But how could you possibly know?" "Because we are out to get you. Wasn't your story in all the newspapers, tellin' all about this trip of your'n? And ain't your Bug the easiest thing to spot in the air?" "Out to get me!" repeated Linda. "Do you mean that you wanted to kill me?" "No, lady. You're more use to us alive than dead--for a while, anyway. No. Our gang decided we could pick up a hundred grand easier by kidnapping you than by swiping jewelry. It was my idea!" He swelled with pride, believing himself exceedingly clever. "And that's what you get for wanting to have your picture and glories in the papers all the time!" Linda listened wild-eyed to this information, and edged closer to Susie, as if her only protection would be found in the girl. "So now these is your orders: You fly us to our camp tonight, and we'll keep you there. You can sleep with Susie. We won't hurt you, if you do what we tell you, and don't get fresh, or try to get away. Once you do that, we shoot. And believe me, I can aim--O.K. I've had a sight of practice in my business! I'm a mighty successful man--in my line." "And what is your line, outside of kidnapping?" asked Linda. "High-class robbery. Banks. Big jewels. We don't never hold up nobody on the street, for a few dollars. Too petty for us! Nope! We're big men. Slick! Clever! Ask Susie!" "Does Susie like all this?" "Sure she does. We winter in Europe, and South America, and she struts around with all the big dames, flashing diamonds and duds that make 'em all look pale.... Now come along!" It was useless to argue or talk any more, so Linda did as she was told, and together they got Susie into the passenger's cock-pit of the autogiro. Her husband sat with her, holding his pistol up threateningly at the back of Linda's head. "Go where I tell you!" he ordered. "I haven't much gas," she protested. "I've got an extra flask here. But I'm not pouring it in till we need it, which I don't think we will. The camp ain't far--on Black Jack Island." "Black Jack Island," Linda repeated to herself. "What an appropriate name!" She was terrified, of course, but there was nothing to do except follow directions, and in a few minutes she brought the plane down on the island that the man had specified. "Leave the Bug here, Linda," he commanded, as he lifted Susie out of the plane. "And go ahead of me, as I tell you." For several minutes the little procession made their way to the center of the island, over the white sand towards the cypress and pine trees that grew in greater profusion. Linda did not look back, but she knew that while "Slats" carried Susie with one arm, he kept his pistol at her back with his other hand. At last, by the aid of her flash-light, Linda spied several tents set up near together, and a welcome smell of food cooking greeted her as she advanced. "Stop here!" came the order. "This is where you spend the night!" CHAPTER IV _Captive_ Linda and her companions stopped in front of a large tent that was dimly lighted within by a lantern. Two men were standing inside--one bending over an oil cook-stove, the other at the door. "We got Linda!" announced "Slats" triumphantly. "Without even smashing her plane!" He pushed through the doorway, past the other man, and deposited Susie on a cot by the wall of the tent. The man at the stove, a big, fat, repulsive looking brute, turned around and uttered an ugly, "Hah!" "Susie hurt?" inquired the tall, thin man who had been standing at the edge of the tent. "Yeah. Crashed her plane. I've got some scratches meself, but I ain't whinin'!" "My ankle's broken!" sobbed Susie, unable to suffer any longer in silence. "Hurry up and get some bandages, Doc!" Linda, who had been standing perfectly still during this conversation, was startled by the use of the name "Doc." Was it possible that this man was a physician? If so, wouldn't he perhaps be above the level of the others--and might she not expect, if not sympathy, at least fair play from him? But "Slats" instantly shattered her hopes with his explanation. "This is the 'Doc,' Linda," he said. "We call him that because he fixes up all our aches and cuts for us. In a profession like our'n, it ain't safe to meddle with 'saw-bones' and hospitals. They keep records." Linda smiled at the idea of calling robbery a "profession," but she made no comment. "So long as you'll be with us fer a while," continued her captor, "I'll interduce you to everybody. That there cook is 'Beefy.' Ain't he a good ad for his own cookin'?" Linda nodded; she could hardly be expected to laugh at such a poor joke under the circumstances. "You can go over and wash--there's water in Susie's tent--if you want to, while the 'Doc' fixes Susie up. Then we'll eat." Glad to be alone for a moment, Linda stepped across to the tent which the man had indicated, hidden behind some pine trees a few yards away. Guiding herself by her flash-light, she found the entrance, and dropped down on a cot inside. Letting the light go off, she sat, dry-eyed and utterly hopeless, staring into the darkness. What terrible fate was hanging over her, she dared not imagine. Would they torture her, perhaps, if her father refused to raise the ransom, and called the police to his aid? In these last few hours she had learned to realize how infinitely crueler human-beings were than the elements of nature. The ice and snow, the cold winds of Canada, or the vast, trackless depths of the Atlantic could never bring about such untold agony as these fiends in human form. She almost wished that she had gone down, like Bess Hulbert, in the ocean, before she had lived to learn how evil men could be. A call from the mess-tent, as she supposed the larger one to be, aroused her from her unhappy meditations, and she hastily turned on the light and washed from a pitcher of water on a soap-box in Susie's tent. When she returned to the group, she found them already seated about a board table, plunging into the food like hungry animals. Susie, who sat with her bandaged ankle propped up on a box, was the only one who ate with any manners at all. But it had been a long time since Linda had tasted food, and she was too hungry to be deterred by the sight of "Beefy" putting his fingers into his plate. So she sat down next to Susie, and silently started to eat. She found the meal exceedingly good, and was surprised at her own appetite, for she hardly expected to be able to enjoy anything under the circumstances. The lantern threw a weird, ghastly light over the strange, ugly faces about her, and the silence was unbroken, except by the noise and clatter of eating. A tenseness took possession of her; she wished desperately that somebody would say something. It was exactly like a horrible dream, whose spell could not be destroyed. And still no one uttered a word until the meal was concluded. "You girls can go to bed now," Slats announced, finally. "I'll carry you over, Susie, and give you a gun, in case Linda tries to sneak off in the night." He smiled with vicious triumph. "I'm afraid that wouldn't do me any good," replied Linda, trying to make her voice sound normal. "I haven't an idea where I am." "On Black Jack Island, in the Okefenokee Swamp," he again told her. "With water all around you. Get that! You can't get away, without a boat or a plane. And I'm tellin' you now, I seen to it that your Bug's bone-dry!" With a conceited grin, he leaned over and picked up his wife so roughly that she cried out in pain. When they were alone, the girls took off some of their outer garments, and lay down on their cots. Linda longed to talk, but she was afraid to begin, for fear it would only lead to some sort of punishment. So she lay still, trying to forget her troubles, to believe everything would come out right in the end, when her father paid the ransom. She was just dozing off, when she was abruptly aroused by agonized sobs from her tent-mate. She sat up and asked her companion whether there was anything she could get her. But Susie did not answer; she continued to cry wildly like a child of six. "Oh, my ankle! My ankle!" she moaned. And then she used worse language than any Linda had ever heard--from man or woman. Linda was sorry for her, but she could not help contrasting this girl's cowardice in the face of physical pain with Dot Crowley's, when the latter had met with a similar accident, and had smiled bravely at the hurt. She thought, too, of Ted Mackay's courage in the hospital, and Susie suffered by the comparisons. "Is there anything I can do?" she asked, again. "No. Only take me to a _real_ doctor--or a hospital." "I'd be glad to, if your husband would let me fly my plane!" "Well, he won't!" There followed more oaths. "What does he care--so long as he ain't the one that's hurt?" She continued to cry hysterically, until a snarling order came from without the tent. "Shut up your noise!" bawled her husband, and Susie softened her sobbing. Linda lay very still, thinking. Dared she suggest that the other girl deceive her husband--or would she only be punished for such an idea? She decided to give it a try. "You must know where the men keep the gasoline," she whispered. "Wouldn't you rather have your ankle fixed right, and not run the chance of being a cripple for life?" "What do you mean?" demanded Susie, raising her head from her pillow. "I mean--wait till the men are asleep, and then you tell me where the gas is, and we'll sneak off. I'd take you to a hospital, and I'd promise never to tell on you." "And lose all that ransom money? Slats'd never forgive me!" "But what good's money, if you're a cripple?" countered Linda. "Yeah--I see what you mean," agreed Susie. "Only we'd never get away with it. They'd hear us gettin' out--remember I can't walk by myself.... No, Linda--it's no go." Disappointed, Linda dropped back on the cot, seeing that further argument was no use, and, fortunately, fell quickly asleep. Had she not been so tired, she would probably have been disturbed during the night, for Susie tossed and moaned without any regard for her companion. But Linda slept the sleep of exhaustion. Just as dawn was beginning to show a faint light through the door of the tent, Linda was rudely awakened by a gruff voice. Startled, she looked into the unpleasant face of Susie's husband, and she shuddered as she recalled where she was. The thought flashed into her mind that soldiers and criminals were usually shot at sunrise, and her hands shook with fear. What was the man going to do to her? "Get up, Linda!" he commanded. "You're working today." "Working?" "Yeah. Flying." "Where?" she demanded, with a trace of hope. If she were allowed to fly, there might be some hope of escape. "Across the swamp. To an island out in the ocean." "Oh!" An island! It sounded like imprisonment. She thought of Napoleon on St. Helena, and she remembered the stories of the cruelties to the French convicts, sentenced to die on an island. Terrible climate, probably, reeking with disease. A slow death that would be far greater torture than being shot--hours of lingering agony, when she would think of her father and her aunt, and of the suffering that she was causing them! And, worst of all, no one to rescue her, as Ted had twice saved her from disasters that were not half so dreadful! But she did not cry; she was disgusted with tears after the way that Susie had carried on the night before, over her sprained ankle. After all, it was no one else's fault that she had selected this job; she had taken it on, and she must see it through, no matter what the outcome. When she had washed and dressed, she walked over to the big tent, where she found breakfast ready. Bacon and eggs and coffee--and even oranges! Evidently they meant to feed her well--for this much she could be thankful. She ate in silence with the three men, for Slats did not carry Susie to the table. When they had finished, and the men were lighting their pipes, Slats pushed back his tin plate and began to talk. "Our idea in running you down was to get a neat little ransom, Linda," he repeated, with the same triumphant grin which she had grown to loathe. She winced, too, at each repetition of her first name, though there was no way that she could stop him from using it. "We figgered your old man could come across with a couple hundred thousand to get you back. When we get ready, we'll let him know. But in the meantime, we ain't ready." He winked knowingly at Beefy, and a cold shiver of fear crept over Linda. If they would only get the thing over quickly! Anything would be better than the awful suspense. The speaker laughed at her expression of terror. "Don't be scared, Linda. We ain't a goin' a hurt you.... It just happens we need you for a couple days in our business." "Your business?" she faltered. "Yeah. We got some jewelry right here in this tent worth about a hundred grand. We fly across to an island with it, where a steamer picks it up and gets it to our agent in South America." "But what has that to do with me?" asked Linda. Did they mean to leave her on the island, or send her to South America? "Just this: we're usin' your Bug and you as pilot fer the job. Susie's the only one of our gang can fly, and now she and the Jenny are busted, we'll use you. Get me?" Linda nodded, sadly. So she was to be made to play a criminal part in their ugly game! How she wished they would be caught! "And you needn't scheme to get away," Slats added. "Because I'll be right behind you, with me gun loaded!" Linda made no reply; after all there was nothing to be said. She must take his orders, or be instantly killed. "Ready now?" he inquired, satisfied with her silence. "We always work early in the day. Maybe you better come over with me and take a look at your plane, and I'll give you some gas. See if she's O.K." Dutifully Linda accompanied the man to the edge of the island, and there was the autogiro, safe and sound as ever--her only friend in the world, it seemed! She looked about her at the marshy water, the trees and vegetation of the swamp, and then up into the sky, which she searched vainly for an airplane. But except for the birds, there was no sign of life in that desolate, vast expanse of land and sky. Not a human habitation in sight! Desperately, she wished that she could think of some plan to outwit this lawless gang, but everything seemed hopeless, as long as Slats carried that pistol aimed at her head. So she meekly inspected the autogiro and climbed into the cock-pit. Her companion was in a good humor; he was enjoying the whole situation immensely, pleased at his own cleverness. He liked to fly, and he admired the autogiro; he even went so far as to say he believed he'd keep this one for Susie. Linda said nothing, but she was thinking what a mistake that would be for him to make. Much as she would hate to lose her autogiro, she realized that its possession would give the gang away to the police. It was one thing to steal jewelry and money, and another to take a plane, of a make of which there were only perhaps a hundred in existence. They flew over the trees, eastward to the prairie land, and then on through the coastal plain to the Atlantic Ocean. Whether they were crossing Florida or Georgia, Linda did not know, and for once she was not interested in the country. The sun rose as they came to the water, but that beautiful sight, too, made no impression upon the unhappy girl. Nothing but the sight of a plane or a boat--the promise of rescue--could have any meaning for her. On and on she went, leaving the land behind them, until finally they sighted an island possibly five miles out. The man behind her shouted to her to land, and she circled about, finally coming down on the beach. As she brought her autogiro to earth, she was once more impressed by the loneliness, the barrenness of it all. No habitation of any kind, not even a tent! Motionless she sat in the cock-pit, wondering whether she couldn't get away while this thief was unloading his treasure. Slats, however, was too wise for any such trick; he commanded Linda to get out of the plane, and help him carry a heavy box across the island where a growth of bushes concealed a hole in the ground, which was evidently the pre-arranged hiding-place. In silence they buried the treasure and returned to the autogiro. Retracing their course under his direction, Linda flew back to the encampment. Here they found the others finishing their lunch, and Susie was sitting with them, apparently much brighter and better, for she was laughing and talking to her companions. As Linda and her captor finished their meal, a stranger put in his stealthy appearance at the door of the tent. He was well-dressed, in riding-breeches, and clean-shaven. Linda's heart gave a wild bound of hope. Was it possible that this man was an officer of the law, and the criminals were caught? But Beefy's greeting to the visitor instantly dispelled her hopes. "Hello, Jake!" he exclaimed. "What's new?" "Everything ripe for tonight," announced the new-comer, briefly. "Ready to start now?" Slats stood up. "O.K. with me," he said. "Want some grub first, Jake?" "No--I just ate." The stranger turned smilingly to Linda. "And how's the most famous girl-pilot in the world?" Linda recoiled in horror. So he too knew all about the plot to catch her! Another member of this terrible gang! As she did not answer, he shrugged his shoulders. "Got the lines out about her yet?" he inquired, of the other men. "No," replied Slats. "We had a smash-up--wrecked Susie and the Jenny, so we'll need Linda to fly her plane for us till this job's over tonight. I'll give you the high sign when I'm ready to let her old man know." The four men stood together at the door of the tent. "We're leaving for a day--maybe two," Slats informed Linda. "But Susie's watching you, with a gun. And your plane's dry, so I wouldn't advise to try any get-away. There's swamps everywhere.... "So long...." A moment later the girls heard the men tramp away to the boat that the new-comer had brought to the edge of the island. CHAPTER V _Escape_ It was with a sigh of relief that Linda watched her captors disappear. Not that she had any hope of getting free--without gasoline--but at least she would not see those dreadful men for a few hours. Susie was not nearly so bad. "I hope you can cook," remarked the latter, surveying her bandaged ankle. "Oh, yes," replied Linda. "I've often camped out before." "Then we can enjoy ourselves for a while. I'm glad to get rid of that gang.... And, Linda--how 'bout if we be friends? No use making things worse by getting mad at _me_." "True," admitted Linda, though she wondered what she could possibly find in common with the other girl that might inspire friendship. Seeing a kettle of water steaming on the oilstove, she set herself to the task of washing the dishes. "Wish I could help," remarked Susie, in a friendly tone. "But after this there won't be so many dishes--for just the two of us." "When do you expect them back?" inquired her prisoner. "Tomorrow morning, probably. If they get their loot." "Suppose they get caught?" suggested Linda. "They won't. Don't worry! They've been planning this crack for months, and you can bet everything's all set just right. They never get caught." Linda sighed. It wasn't very promising. "Tell me how you got into a gang like this?" she asked, suddenly. "I fell for Slats," replied the other girl. "Thought he was a rich guy--he spent so much money on me. I was working as a clerk at an airport, and learning to fly. We ran off and got married." "But when you discovered that he wasn't straight, why didn't you leave him?" "Couldn't. He said he'd hunt me down, and 'bump me off,' if I did. And he meant it, too. Slats isn't afraid of anything.... I saw right away that he didn't want a wife, but a pilot, who'd do what he said.... The only fun I get out of it is in the winter, when we go to Europe or South America, and live like swells. Then he lets me spend all the money I want." "But doesn't it make you feel dreadful--at night, sometimes, or when you're alone--to think of leading such a wicked life?" "Now, Linda, be yourself!" answered Susie, flippantly. "No preaching! From you, or anybody else!" Linda turned away and completed her task in silence. What was the use of talking to a person like that? She knew now what was meant by the term "hard-boiled." If ever a word described anyone, that word described Susie. She wondered, as she worked, whether it would be worth-while to repeat her suggestion of the night before. Susie's ankle was so much better today that she would not be so eager to get to a real doctor. Still, there could be no harm in trying. "Wouldn't you like to go off in my autogiro today?" she inquired, without turning around. Her companion laughed bitterly. "Not a chance!" she replied. "Didn't you see Beefy take that big can to the boat with him? That was _gas_." "Oh!" exclaimed Linda, her hopes dashed to the ground. "You mean they don't trust you?" "They don't trust anybody!" announced the other girl, emphatically. "It don't pay--in a game like theirs." "Would you have gone with me?" inquired Linda. "If they hadn't taken it?" "I don't know. My ankle's better. But I'm sick and tired of Slats, though I guess I'd miss the cash and the excitement. And I guess I'd be too scared he'd get me in the end if I double-crossed him." Linda was silent. Now that this hope was frustrated, she must think of something else. Surely this was her chance of escape--with the men away, and her only companion a cripple. But the swamp--the dreadful swamp was all about her. How far into the depth of the Okefenokee she was, she did not know. It was all a vast unexplored wilderness to her. "Alive with snakes and wild animals, and alligators, I suppose," she mused. Yet nothing savage could be worse than those three fiends in human flesh who were holding her captive. She determined to face anything rather than them. Yes; she would run away, if it meant swimming the swamp! There was no use loading herself down with food, she concluded, for most of her trip would be through the water. She would stop at her plane and take out some chocolate, and her knife; thus lightly equipped, she would face the wilderness alone. "Linda," said Susie, interrupting these thoughts, "will you go to my tent and get me a magazine I have there? I think it's under the cot." Linda nodded, repressing a smile. She would go, but she would not come back! Stepping into the smaller tent, she dropped the flap, and picked up her flash-light. Then, raising the wall on the other side, she crept out through the trees to the edge of the island and circled about until she reached the autogiro. This would give her a few minutes extra before Susie should realize that she had gone. As she stood there beside her plane for a moment, wondering whether she would ever see it again, she had her first real sight of the Okefenokee Swamp from the ground. Cypress and slash pine trees grew in abundance, and heavy moss hung about. In the water all around her, she noticed rushes and water-lilies, and ferns grew everywhere in profusion. Beneath the surface, she could see thick vegetation; would this, she wondered, support her weight if she were to attempt to walk in it? In the afternoon sunlight the water, the trees, were perfectly still; except for the birds, the silence was profound. How desolate it was! Her wrist-watch informed her that it was already four o'clock. Five hours more, and darkness would come on, enveloping everything in a blackness such as a city-dweller never sees. Even the sky might be hidden by the trees, and the wild animals would be prowling stealthily about in search of food. She shuddered and hesitated. "But I have an even chance with the animals," she thought. "And with those thieves, I am sure to lose!" So valiantly, she stepped out into the water. The depth was not great at this point, and she discovered that, though the soft muck sunk beneath her feet, she could still make progress. The hard rains of July and August had not yet set in, and the "bays," as the stretches of shallow water were called, had not risen to any great height. Laboriously she waded onward, choosing a thick growth of trees in the distance as her goal. Surely, she thought, where the trees could grow there must be some dry land. If she could make that spot by nightfall, she could hide in their depths and sleep. Then tomorrow she could press on to the westward, and perhaps reach the end of the swamp. It was a slow, weary progress that she accomplished, and she had to pick her way carefully, measuring the depth of the water with a stick which she had cut from a pine on Black Jack Island, but she kept resolutely on until her watch registered seven o'clock. Then, all of a sudden, the stick sunk so deeply into the muck that she knew she would have to swim, and she hastily ate the chocolate which was to be her evening meal, and plunged forward to swim. As the time slowly passed, she watched Black Jack Island fading in the distance, and hope swelled in her heart. She was nearing land at last--perhaps only an island--but even if she were not out of the swamp, at least she would be away from her enemies. She smiled when she pictured the consternation and anger of the men at finding her gone. She swam on for some distance, now and then pausing to cut the grasses that became entangled about her legs. Her shoes were heavy, but she hated to take them off, for they were a help in the shallow water. After an hour of this exercise, she was utterly exhausted, and she looked about her in dismay. What if she should drown now, in the midst of her own country--after she had conquered the Atlantic Ocean successfully? The thought was absurd; she steeled herself to press forward, for she was coming nearer to that bank of trees. Surely, there lay safety! Had she but known it, she was now entering one of the so-called "Gator Roads" of the swamp--channels of water which the alligators followed. But it looked promising to the tired, hungry girl. The foliage was growing thicker now, and the water-way narrowing. Some distance on, the trees met overhead, and beautiful moss hung from their branches, shutting out the setting sunlight, and forming a lovely green bower. But Linda was scarcely conscious of this beauty, for she was breathing with difficulty, panting with fatigue. If she could only make that bank--where the land seemed firm! A big tree had fallen across the water, and she managed to reach it, and to cling to it for support while she rested. Her feet hung down in the muck, and she realized that the water was comparatively shallow. She wanted to laugh aloud in her relief. Pulling herself up by her hands, she decided to walk the log to the bank, and had just poised herself upon its rather perilous round surface, when she encountered the greatest shock in her life thus far. Not ten yards away, in the very water where she would have been now, had she not mounted the log--was an alligator, at least eight feet long! Brave as she was usually in the face of other dangers, she let out a piercing scream of terror at the sight of this horrible monster. "Now I've got to walk the log!" she thought. "It's death if I fall off!" She watched the alligator a minute or two while she regained her self-control, and made sure that he was not moving. Then, with eyes straight ahead, she started to walk the log. Once, toward the middle, she swayed, but it was only for a second. She straightened herself staunchly and marched on--to dry land. Oh, the joy of feeling her feet on firm ground again! To know that whatever misfortune might come on the morrow, she was safe for that night at least! She could not drown, or be tortured by enemies; her only danger would come from snakes. She would take the precaution to explore her sleeping-place thoroughly before she lay down. Weary as she was, she did not stop until she had gone farther into the island. The trees were denser here than they had been at Black Jack; it would be more difficult to land an autogiro, if by chance Susie should follow her. Nevertheless, she resolved to stay hidden as much as possible. Away from the shore, she finally dropped to the ground and took off her wet shoes and stockings. "Not that it will do me much good in the morning to start off dry," she thought bitterly. "But anyhow, I don't want to sleep in them." And then she removed her outer garments. "Wouldn't supper taste good!" she said aloud, envying Susie that well-filled larder at the camp. But Linda knew that there was no danger of her starving so soon, after that big noon-day meal, and she put the thought of food from her mind. Water she could not forget so easily. After half an hour's thirst, she decided to risk a drink from the swamp. Had she but known that the water of the Okefenokee is not poisonous, she would have enjoyed her drink more. The "peat" gives it a queer taste, but it is harmless. She was relieved, in her return to the water, to see that the alligator had gone--which way, she could not tell. Though she was desolately lonely in that vast abandoned wilderness, she did not care for the companionship of so ugly a beast! When she returned to the spot which she had selected for her camp, she took her knife from its wet case and cut a few stout sticks from a tree. With these she would explore the ground before she lay down, and keep them at her side while she slept, as some sort of protection from snakes. As with the water, however, Linda's fears regarding snakes proved unnecessary, for the report of a large number of these in the Okefenokee Swamp had been proved by hunters to have been exaggerated. As a matter of fact, Linda did not see one during her entire visit to the swamp. She waited until the daylight had faded, and darkness completely enveloped the landscape before she lay down to rest. The stars were still visible here and there through the trees, and, as upon the occasion of her lonely flight to Paris, they somehow seemed friendly. After an hour or so, she slipped off to sleep. Only once during that strange, desolate night did she awaken, and that was when something cold and wet suddenly touched her face. She started up fearfully, seizing a stick with one hand and her knife with the other, squinting her eyes for snakes. Her flash-light had of course been thrown away during her swim, so she could not immediately identify the enemy that had awakened her. She laughed out loud when she finally saw what it was. She had rolled over against her shoes, which were still cold and clammy with water! She went back to sleep again, and did not awaken until the sun was well up in the sky. She had no way of telling the exact time, for her watch refused to go after its bath in the swamp, but Linda judged from the sun that it must be nine o'clock at least. Her clothing was dry, at any rate, and her shoes only a little damp. But what a sight she was, she thought, after that long swim! She went down to the water's edge to wash, and to drink the water that must serve as her breakfast, and looked carefully about her--into the sky, and on the water--for the sight of her enemies. For she had no doubt that as soon as the thieves returned, they would go in search of her, believing that she could not have gotten far away. She was relieved to see nothing, no sign of human beings anywhere, and she paused to watch some wild birds fly past overhead. Everything was peaceful and quiet--like a Sunday morning in the country. It was hard to believe that wickedness existed in such a beautiful world. Then, abruptly, she noticed the soft swish of water not far away from her, and she looked up quickly, expecting to see the alligator again. In that awful second, her worst fears were realized. A canoe, with two men aboard, was coming straight towards her. The thieves! They had sighted her--they were wildly waving their arms. It was too late to hide! CHAPTER VI _The Enemy in the Autogiro_ Defeated, miserable, hopeless, Linda sank to the ground and buried her face in her hands, waiting for the dreaded approach of her enemies. Oh, the cruelty of fate, to deliver her to them again, after her superhuman effort to escape! Bitter tears rushed to her eyes, scalding her face, and she sat as one expecting death, listening to the rhythmic dip of the paddles, as the canoe came closer and closer. She kept her face hidden until the sound ceased, informing her thereby that the craft had stopped at her side. Tensely she waited for the harsh snarl of her captor's voice. But to her incredulous amazement, she heard instead the soft, deep, well-bred tones of a Southerner! "Can we be of any help to you, Miss?" inquired the speaker. Linda looked up instantly into the kind eyes of two exceedingly attractive young men. "Oh! Please!" she gasped, the tears still running from her eyes. "Yes, please!" And then, for the first time in her life, Linda Carlton fainted. When she came to, she was lying on the ground, with two strangers bending over her, one offering her water, and the other hot coffee from a thermos bottle. A warm glow of happiness surged over her as she realized that she was among real human beings--not animals, or criminals. Though not naturally impulsive, she longed to throw her arms about these boys and weep with gratitude. If they had been girls, she would not have hesitated a moment. Instead, she sat up and smiled her sweetest smile, so that, bedraggled as she was, she was still beautiful. The boys, man-like, each urged his particular offering upon her. "Put that coffee down, Hal!" commanded the tall, fair youth at her right. "A lady who has just fainted doesn't want coffee." "I do, though," Linda assured him. "I want water, and coffee--and anything else you have to eat. I fainted from hunger as much as from anything else." The boy called "Hal" looked pleased at her acceptance of his gift, and he hurried back to the canoe for some food. "Are you alone?" asked the other, who remained at Linda's side. "And how do you happen to be here?" "It's a long story," replied the girl, wondering just how much of it she had better tell. It was all so incredulous, that perhaps they wouldn't believe her if she did tell them. "First have some food," suggested the boy who had gone to the canoe. "How long has it been since you ate?" "Only yesterday noon--and I even had some chocolate about six o'clock. But after that I waded and swam from Black Jack Island to this place--whatever it is." "This is 'Billy's Island,'" the boys informed her. "Named after 'Billy Bowlegs,' the Indian who once lived here.... But, Great Guns!" exclaimed Hal, "that's five miles at least! Nobody ever tried to swim the Okefenokee Swamp before!" "Well, it seemed like twenty-five," remarked Linda. "And I hope nobody ever has to try it again." She did not go on with her story immediately, for she was too busy eating bananas--one right after another. Nothing had ever tasted so good! Meanwhile, the boys introduced themselves as Hal--short for Harold--Perry, and Jackson Carter, both Juniors at the University of Florida. "We're both on the archery team at college," Jackson explained. "And we take a little trip into the Okefenokee each summer, to try out our bows and arrows on the wild game here. We camp each night on one of the islands." "Then you know the Swamp pretty well," remarked Linda, with relief. They would be able to take her back to civilization. "The southern end of it--yes," replied Hal. "Now tell us who you are," urged Jackson Carter, regarding Linda with silent admiration. There was no doubt about it, she certainly was an attractive girl. Linda hesitated a moment, and determined not to mention her first name. She was tired of all the publicity and disaster which her ocean flight had brought her. Besides, these boys might think she was just posing as Linda Carlton, the famous aviatrix, in order to impress them. She would tell them only her middle name, instead. "I am Ann Carlton, from Ohio," she replied. "I was flying my new plane when I got lost over the swamp, and had to come down on the first dry land I saw, because my gas was running low, and I didn't know how far the water extended." "Smashed your plane?" inquired Hal, evidently satisfied with the explanation. "No. But unfortunately I fell among a gang of thieves, and they stole it, and tried to hold me prisoner on Black Jack Island. But yesterday I got away, as I told you." Both boys gazed at Linda in admiration and wonder. What a plucky girl she must be! "Thieves in the swamp!" repeated Hal. "Not Indians?--a lot of Indians used to live here, and they might have come back." "No. White men--and one girl. Regular thieves, the kind that rob banks and jewelry stores." "But what were they doing? Hiding from justice?" "I don't think so," answered Linda. "Because I don't think anybody suspects them in particular. They have a regular camp on Black Jack Island, and they bring whatever they steal there, and transfer it by airplane to an island in the Atlantic Ocean, where it's picked up by another partner in a boat." Jackson let out a whistle. "Pretty slick, aren't they? But they'll get caught sometime." "I sincerely hope so. Unfortunately, though, nobody could identify them as thieves, because they haven't been caught before." "You could," remarked Hal. "Yes, if I ever see them again. Do we have to pass Black Jack Island to get out of the swamp?" "I'm afraid so--but we needn't go very close to it--it's some distance from the regular 'Gator Road' we always follow." "'Gator Road'?" repeated Linda. "There aren't any roads in the swamp, are there?" "They're water channels," Hal explained. "Short for alligator-roads." Linda shuddered. "I saw an alligator last night," she told them. "I hope we don't meet any more." "You poor girl!" exclaimed Jackson. "It seems to me you've had most every dreadful experience anybody could have in the last twenty-four hours!" "But they're over now," laughed Linda, wondering what the boys would say if she told them the real account of the kidnapping. Even now Jackson Carter was looking at her strangely. She seemed like such a nice girl--but what sort of family could she have come from, that would allow her to roam around the country unchaperoned and alone? He himself was of an old-fashioned Southern family, who regarded such independence in young women as mere boldness. Yet Linda Carlton seemed anything but ill-bred, or bold. "Aren't your family worried about you, Miss Carlton?" he inquired. "So far away--in an airplane?" "They must be by now," she replied with a pang of distress. "I had promised to wire them every day--and it's been three nights now since I could. My aunt probably is afraid I have been killed." "Your aunt?" "Yes. My mother is dead, and my aunt has always taken care of me." "But she lets you do pretty much as you please I take it. You northern girls certainly are different." "Well, not exactly." Linda could not explain without telling the whole story of her life, so she decided to let the matter pass. "Hadn't we better be pushing on, if we expect to get out of the swamp before dark?" "Yes," replied Hal. "But don't set your heart on that, Miss Carlton. I don't know whether we can or not. But we'll get past Black Jack Island, and at least as far as Soldiers' Camp Island." "Soldiers' Camp Island?" repeated Linda. "Yes. The story goes that some Civil War soldiers deserted, and hid there. I don't know how true it is, but it certainly is a good place to hide." "Don't I know!" sighed Linda. They climbed into the canoe, putting Linda on some blankets in the center, and started upon their journey. For the first time since her visit to the swamp, Linda was at last able to enjoy its beauty. The thick ferns, the cypress trees growing in abundance, the pines and the water-lilies! What a difference a boat could make! Yesterday she hated the rushes and the moss; today she found everything lovely. Avoiding the island where the thieves were camped, the boys made a wide circle, and did not pass even in sight of it. With each mile of progress, Linda's spirits rose higher and higher, until finally she suggested that they sing. She just had to find some outlet for her joy and thanksgiving. "It must be long after noon," remarked Jackson, as they finished a familiar college song. "Hadn't we better eat?" "I see an island ahead--I think it's Soldiers' Camp," replied Hal. "Wouldn't it be nice to stop and make some coffee?" "I'm hot enough without any fire or hot coffee," returned Jackson, wiping the perspiration from his face. "But I would like to stretch my legs." "Let me do the cooking!" urged Linda, eagerly. "I'd love to prove some use to you, after all the trouble I've made." "You haven't been any trouble!" protested Jackson, whose admiration for Linda had been growing by leaps and bounds, in spite of the fact that he could not wholly approve of her. For the past three hours he had been sitting in the stern of the canoe, gazing at her lovely profile, listening to the charm of her soft voice. Yet he knew he had better not allow himself to care for this girl; she was just the type his mother disapproved of, and with Jackson Carter, his mother's wishes were supreme. They pulled up to the island and unloaded the canoe. There were all sorts of supplies--bacon, canned beans, fruit, and biscuits, as well as tea, coffee, sugar and canned milk. Even a little folding stove to set over a fire, and a coffee-pot. "What a perfectly delightful spot!" exclaimed Linda, as she walked some distance inland. "Look at these lovely little houses! Why, I could almost live in them myself!" What she referred to were the clumps, here and there, of cypress trees and overgrowing vines and evergreens, which, as a matter of fact, the hunters often used to camp in during their visits to the swamp. They were very attractive indeed, and would afford complete privacy, Linda thought, if she were obliged to spend another night in the Okefenokee. The boys made a fire on the edge of the water, and Linda insisted that they go off for half an hour while she prepared the meal. She laughed and sang as she toasted the dry biscuits and the bacon, and boiled the coffee. What fun it was to picnic when you were among friends--even if they were very new ones! When the boys came back, they each proudly displayed a wild goose, as proof of their ability with the bow and arrow. Then, like three happy, carefree school-children, they sat down to their meal, having forgotten all about the thieves for the time being. The shock was all the more terrible, therefore, when they suddenly looked up into the sky and saw the autogiro overhead. Linda was the first to identify the plane, to guess what danger they were in. She stumbled to her feet, pulling Jackson with her, and just as she opened her mouth to tell them to flee with her into the depths of the island, a shot rang out from the autogiro, and a bullet whizzed past the little group, so innocently enjoying their picnic! CHAPTER VII _The Smash-Up_ The robbery which was so carefully planned by the gang of thieves who had kidnapped Linda Carlton, was highly successful. One of the largest banks in Jacksonville was entered just before closing time on the afternoon of June 23rd by four masked robbers, who calmly took thousands of dollars in cash and securities, and escaped to a waiting car, without being identified or caught. By a secret route these men suddenly disappeared--whither, no one but Linda and Susie knew. By midnight they were back again in the swamp, and by dawn they had reached Black Jack Island. Exhausted from their journey, three of the men dropped down on their cots and fell instantly asleep. The fourth--Susie's husband--stopped to look into his wife's tent. Flashing the light inside, he peered through the doorway. There was Susie, sleeping peacefully on her cot. But the other bed was empty! "Susie!" he yelled in alarm. "Where's Linda?" The girl awakened abruptly, and sat up, blinking her eyes at the unexpected light. For a moment she could not think what he meant. Then she remembered her prisoner. "She's gone," she replied. "Beat it this afternoon." "How?" he demanded roughly, coming over and shaking her by the arm. Susie winced, and pulled herself free. "You leave me alone!" she warned him. "How do I know how Linda got away? Could I run after her?" "No, but you might 'ave watched her!" snarled Slats. "Didn't I tell you to?" "Watching wouldn't keep her here," retorted Susie. "Is her Bug still there?" he inquired. "Yeah. I hobbled over and took a look myself." "Oh, you did, did you?" Then, worn out and disappointed, Slats started to swear. Susie sat still, regarding him with contempt. How vulgar such language sounded, when you actually stopped and listened to it! She did not realize it at the time, but just the few hours which she had spent with Linda Carlton had given her a new view-point. Or rather, had brought back her training as a child, before she had "gone bad." When the man's anger had spent itself in violent words, he began to wonder how on earth Linda could have escaped. "No human being could get far in this here bog, without a boat or a plane!" he exclaimed. "She must be around here somewhere." "Why don't you go look for her!" demanded Susie, with a sneer. She was beginning to be glad that Linda had gotten away. Her husband turned on her savagely. "Look a here, Susie, if you helped that kid to get away--!" He held up his fist threateningly. "I'll make you sorry! Give you a dose of the medicine I was saving for Linda!" "What do you mean?" she demanded, trembling. "This gun!" he replied. "Well, I didn't," she hastened to assure him. "Linda slipped off when I wasn't watching.... But do you mean you were going to shoot Linda?" "Sure, you fool! That's what kidnappers always do. Bait the big fish till they get the cash, then kill the victim, and ship the corpse. If we sent Linda back alive, she'd have us in the Pen in no time. Our game'd be up." Susie shivered; she had not realized that the men had any intention of going to that end. True, Slats had once killed a bank messenger, but Susie always excused him on the ground of self-defense. "Hard-boiled" as she was, the idea of shooting an innocent girl like Linda Carlton was too much for her to approve. She felt suddenly sick with the horror of it all. Slats sat down for a moment on the empty cot, while he thought things over. Linda Carlton must not escape to tell the world of her experience and to give such accurate descriptions of the gang that they would have to be caught. Aside from the matter of the ransom which the kidnapping ought to bring them, they dared not let her go. The case called for immediate action. "Can you fly that Bug, Susie?" he demanded, abruptly breaking the silence. "I guess so," replied the girl. "They say they're easier than airplanes." "O.K. Then we're off. Get dressed as quick as you can." "But Slats," protested Susie, rubbing her injured ankle, "don't forget I've been hurt!" "Rats!" was his unsympathetic reply. "Get busy. I'll be getting the gas, and some grub. We'll need coffee--and a lot of it." Distasteful as the plan was, Susie could do nothing but obey. But she was feeling very miserable as she ate her breakfast, very sorry for the "poor, brave kid," as she called Linda, very resentful against her husband. The latter helped her down to the autogiro and put her into the pilot's cock-pit, where she sat for some minutes examining the controls. The dawn had changed into daylight, and the swamp was beautiful in the early morning sunrise. But, like Linda Carlton, Susie did not even notice it. Impatient at the delay, her husband demanded, "Got the idea how to run her?" "Sure," she replied, listlessly. "Start her up and climb in.... Where do you want to go!" "Circle all around--flying low, so that we can spot the kid if she's here. If we don't see her in the water, we'll stop at some of the islands, and look there. She can't 'ave got out of this swamp." "O.K.," agreed Susie. Without much difficulty the girl ran the autogiro along the edge of the island until it rose into the air. It was easy enough to keep it flying; the test would come when she had to make a landing. But Susie decided never to worry about anything until the time came. Luck was usually with her; her only serious crash had been the one of two days previous, and, after all, there was a reason for that. Slats, who spurned learning how to fly, because he considered his a master-mind, above such practical work, was, nevertheless, enjoying the ride. He congratulated himself upon his own cleverness in securing this new plane for the gang. "Like her, Susie?" he shouted, through the speaking-tube. The girl nodded, indifferently. "You can have her!" he announced, proudly, as if he were giving her a costly present of his own purchasing. Susie drew down the corners of her lips in scorn, but made no reply. Didn't he realize that she would never dare fly this autogiro where anyone could see her? That the police all over the country would be on the look-out for this very plane? She was understanding for the first time that money was not much use without freedom. As she sat in the cock-pit, silently thinking things over, she made up her mind not to try to help Slats in his search. She would have to continue to guide the plane, of course, for she never for one moment forgot the pistol that her husband kept ready to enforce his orders with. But she would not attempt to spot Linda, nor would she inform him if she did happen by chance to see the girl. No; it would be better to let "the poor kid" die by natural causes in the swamp than for her to be killed by Slats in cold-blooded murder. Over the trees and tropical plants of the swamp they continued to fly, until the sun rose directly overhead, and they knew that it was noon. All the while Slats kept his eyes glued to the ground, without any success. Not a sign of human life did he see. Movements in the swamp--yes--snakes and birds, and even an alligator--but no girl! Yet he felt sure that even if Linda were hiding, she would come out at the sound of the plane, for by this time she would realize that escape was impossible. Driven by the pangs of hunger, she would have to surrender to her fate. But noon passed, and they found no trace of her. Perhaps she was dead by this time, the man thought bitterly--killed by a snake, or drowned in the treacherous water! He would not mind that, if he could only find her dead body. Without it, without the assurance that she was not still at large, he dared not seek a reward. What a lot of money he would be losing! "We'll land on an island, and have some grub," he shouted to his companion. "Fly south to 'Soldiers' Camp.'" "O.K.," replied the girl, beginning to doubt her ability to make a landing. But she was afraid to disobey--and besides, they had to come down sometime. After that things happened with a rapidity that must have startled the peaceful bird-life in the Okefenokee Swamp. Approaching the island, Susie and her husband spotted the carefree picnic at the same moment, and the former made a sudden, sharp turn in the hope of hiding the sight from Slats. At the same instant, he took out his pistol and fired at the group--at Linda in particular--missing her only because of Susie's rapid change of the position of the plane. The sharp angle had its effect upon the pilot; she lurched over, striking her injured ankle against the rudder, swerving the plane violently to the other side. Panic-stricken, she tried to right the plane, but she had not even throttled the engine down to a landing speed. The inevitable crash followed. With an impact that was frightful, the autogiro headed for a tree with relentless speed, struck it and bounced thirty feet into the air. By some miracle Susie, crouched as she was in the cock-pit, was not thrown out, but her husband, who had not taken the precaution to wear a safety-belt, was bounced wildly into the air, and landed, face-downward, on a rock. During all this excitement, Linda and her companions stood tensely rooted to the spot, the girl gripping Jackson Carter's hand as if he were her one support. As the crash came, she dropped her head on his shoulder and moaned aloud, totally unconscious of the fact that the young man was still little more than a stranger to her. A cry from Susie aroused her to the fact that the girl was still alive. Ignoring the man who had brought about the catastrophe by his hasty shot, all three young people rushed to Susie's aid. The plane was only partially turned over; the rotor and the wheels were injured, and the nose smashed, but it did not look to Linda as if there had been any serious harm to the engine. Susie's head was cut, and two teeth were knocked out, but apparently no bones had been broken. Very carefully the boys lifted her from the cock-pit and laid her on the ground. "I have a first-aid kit in the canoe," said Hal, immediately. "I'll get it and fix up this cut. It doesn't seem awfully deep." "Does it hurt very much, Susie?" asked Linda, offering her a drink of water. "Not as much as my ankle. And my poor mouth! Without these teeth! My looks are ruined!" "No, they're not," answered Linda, comfortingly. "Any good dentist can fix you up so nobody will ever know the difference." Still no one said anything about the man who was lying so silently on the rock a dozen yards away. It was Hal Perry, returning from the canoe, who made the announcement which they had all been secretly expecting. "The man with the gun is dead," he said, quietly, not knowing how Susie would take the news. "So he got his at last," muttered the latter, with a certain grim satisfaction. "Nobody--not even his widow--is goin' to shed a single tear!" CHAPTER VIII _The Chief of Police_ Half an hour after the accident, Susie expressed a desire to eat, and Linda hastened to supply her with food. While the girl ate her lunch, the little group discussed their plans. "Is my bag still in the autogiro?" asked Linda, surveying the disreputable suit which she had worn for three days. What a relief it would be to get into clean clothing! "It was when we left," replied Susie. "If it didn't bounce out when we crashed.... Linda," she added apologetically, "I'm awful sorry about your plane. I--I--didn't mean to crack it up." "I know you didn't, Susie. I think it can be repaired, if we can get the new parts to this forsaken place. Probably we can--by airplane." Jackson Carter, who had been only half listening to this conversation, interrupted by telling the girls that he and Hal would take care of the burying of the criminal. "Unless," he added, turning to Susie, "you would want to take the body back to your home?" "We haven't any home," Susie admitted sadly. "And no friends, outside the gang.... No, it's better for him to lie here in this swamp--where he meant to plant Linda." The implication was lost to the boys, who did not know the story of the kidnapping, and who thought of Linda as "Ann." "Then first we'll help you get your bag out of the autogiro, Miss Carlton," offered Jackson. "You can go back into one of those little 'houses,' and change into clean clothing, if you want to, while we attend to the burying." "Wait a minute," urged Linda. "I think we ought to decide what we'll do about tonight. We can't all four get into that canoe, so Susie and I had better stay here, hadn't we? You could wire my aunt for me, couldn't you?" To Linda's amazement, before either of the boys had a chance to reply, Susie put in a protest. "It ain't safe for you to be here an hour more than you have to," she said. "Don't forget there's still three rough guys hot on your trail.... No, I'll stay alone, if you leave me some grub, and a blanket. You can come back for me when you bring somebody to fix your plane." This generous offer came as a complete surprise to Linda; she had not realized before that this girl had swung over to her side. What a splendid sign it was! Susie must have decided to cut free from these criminals, now that her husband was dead. "That's great of you, Susie," replied Linda. "And you needn't worry that I'll ever tell the authorities anything bad about you! I was afraid I oughtn't to leave you alone--but if you really don't mind----" The other girl shrugged her shoulders. "I'll get along O.K. I'm used to being left by myself. But don't stay away too long." The arrangements suited the boys perfectly, for they were anxious to be out of the swamp as soon as possible. With fast paddling, they ought to be able to reach a little town in Florida by dark, where they believed that they could hire an automobile to take them home. Fifteen minutes later Linda stepped out from the enclosure, dressed in a pale blue voile--the only dress she carried in her bag, for she had shipped her trunk to Atlanta, where she had expected to report for work. The wearing of clean clothing was a pleasure second only to that of using a comb and a tooth-brush. She felt like a different girl. If she had seemed pretty to Jackson Carter before, in that disheveled green linen suit, she was radiantly beautiful now. Returning from his gruesome task, he stood still, lost in admiration. Linda laughed at his amazement. "Do I look like another girl?" she inquired. "The same girl--glorified," he answered, with awe. Having unloaded the canoe of its food and blankets, and assured themselves that Susie was able to hobble around with the aid of a stick, the three young people pushed off. It was only three o'clock; all these occurrences--the crash, the death of the criminal, his burial--had taken place in less than two hours! For some time the boys paddled forward in silence, each of the three occupants of the canoe lost in his or her own thoughts. Hal was going over the exciting events of the last two hours; Jackson was thinking of Linda--or "Ann"--Carlton, and wondering whether her hiding her head on his shoulder had meant that she cared for him. Linda's mind, however, was occupied with the immediate future--with the part she might play in assisting the police to catch those arch criminals who were still at large. It was she who first broke the silence. "What would be the nearest large city to this southern end of the swamp?" she inquired. "Jacksonville, Florida," replied Hal, immediately. "That's where we both live." "Then that's where I want to go," announced Linda. "Have they a good police department?" "Best in the country," boasted Jackson.... "Miss Carlton," he added, "would you stay at our home while you are in the city?" "I'd love to," agreed the girl immediately. All through the South, until she had lost her way in the Okefenokee, she had met with this same southern hospitality, and had found it charming. Jackson Carter was overjoyed at her acceptance, yet he was a little fearful of the reception his mother would give to a girl who was so different from all his other friends. Surely, however, the older woman must see how fine Miss Carlton was, and accept her for her own lovely charm. The hours passed swiftly and the daylight was fast fading when the boys finally informed Linda that she was out of the swamp. With a prayer of thanksgiving, she gave it one last look, hardly able to believe her good fortune. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she had been miserably lost in its depths. Now she was free to live again in civilization, untortured by the fears that had held her in such terror for the last three days. Leaving the canoe in a boat-house on the bank of the small stream which they had been following out of the swamp, they walked to the nearest village and asked for the Post Office. Here Linda made arrangements to send a wire to her aunt, in which, however, she did not mention the fact that she had been kidnapped. "Have been lost in Okefenokee Swamp," she wrote. "But not hurt. Wire me at Jacksonville, Fla. Love--Linda." Her next move was to send for her trunk from Atlanta, and to wire for new parts for the autogiro, and while the boys looked up a place to eat supper, she bought a Jacksonville newspaper. She hoped there would be nothing in it about her, for she hated so much publicity. The first item that struck her eye was the announcement of the Jacksonville Bank robbery. More than a hundred thousand dollars had been stolen--in cash and securities--by four masked bandits on the afternoon of June twenty-third, and still no trace of them had been found. "That money must be at Black Jack Island," she thought, resolving to get this information to the police early the following day. She had to go through the paper twice before she found her own name. It was only a tiny notice, among the aviation briefs, and copied from an Ohio paper--stating the fact that Linda Carlton, world-famous aviatrix, had not been heard from for three days, and asking that the air-ports of Georgia report any sight of her autogiro. Linda breathed a sigh of relief, as she saw how inconspicuous this notice was. For some reason she did not want Jackson Carter or Hal Perry to connect her with the famous flyer, and she longed above everything to keep the story of the kidnapping from her aunt's ears. The boys came back with the information that they had found a place to eat, and took Linda to a little frame house where a widow ran a sort of restaurant. The cottage was run-down and out-of-repair, but everything inside was neat and clean, and the food, though plain, was excellent. "How long will it take us to get to Jacksonville?" inquired Linda, as they finished the meal. "Two or three hours," replied Hal. "Providing we have no mishaps. Why?" Linda repressed a sigh. She was very tired, and longed intensely for sleep in a real bed. These last two nights in the swamp had taken their toll of her vitality. "If only we had a plane!" she said. "It wouldn't do me any good," remarked Jackson. "I've never been in one--and I've promised my grandmother I won't fly until I'm twenty-one." "Oh, I'm so sorry," offered Linda, with genuine sympathy. Life without flying seemed a dreary thing to her. The only car which the boys had been able to hire was a dilapidated Ford that looked as if it would hardly last the trip. But it proved to be better than its appearance; over the lovely hard roads of Florida it traveled comparatively smoothly. To Linda's amazement, she found when they reached Jacksonville that she had slept most of the way. The short rest had freshened her considerably, and she suddenly decided to go to the Police Headquarters that night. It was her duty to report the crash of her plane, and the death of that criminal. She wished that she had thought to ask Susie his real name--she was going to feel rather silly calling him "Slats." With this purpose in mind, she asked Jackson what time it was. "Half-past nine," was his reply. "Why?" "Because I think I ought to report to the Police tonight about those thieves. I understand that it was a bank in Jacksonville that they robbed." "Which bank?" demanded the boy, excitedly. "'The First National,' the paper says." At this information, Jackson Carter dropped back in his seat and groaned. His mother's bank--where all of her money was kept! The bank of which his uncle was president! This was going to mean trouble to the whole Carter family. "Will you please take my bag to your house, and leave the address with me?" asked Linda, not knowing what Jackson was suffering. "I'll take a taxi out to your home, after I see the Chief of Police." "Yes, yes, of course," agreed the young man, still absorbed in his own thoughts. It was a late hour to visit the Chief of Police, but when Linda explained her reason to an officer at the City Hall, the latter sent for the chief immediately. When Captain Magee came in a few minutes later, Linda was impressed with his appearance and delighted with his dignified and courteous manner. She smiled at him confidently; how different he was from those officers of the law with whom she had come in contact in Canada! "I am going to tell you my whole story, if you will promise not to repeat the part about the kidnapping to the newspapers," she began. "I don't want my people at home to hear of that--for, after all, it is over now, and I am safe." "Kidnapping!" repeated the officer. "You don't mean to say that you have been kidnapped?" "Yes. My name is Linda Ann Carlton--I am the girl who flew the Atlantic in May." She blushed, for she hated to talk about herself, or to appear to boast about her own exploits, but this time it was necessary. "Here in Jacksonville, among friends, I am going to be known as Ann Carlton, because I want to avoid publicity." Her blue eyes became pleading, and she asked, in an almost child-like tone, "You won't tell on me, will you, Captain Magee?" He smiled. "No, I won't tell. Unless it becomes necessary." "Thank you so much! Well, to continue: I bought a new autogiro and flew down here to report to a company in Atlanta about a job spraying crops, and the newspapers printed the route of my flight. Early in the evening of June 22nd I lost my way over the Okefenokee Swamp, and finally landed on an island. A plane had been chasing me, as I later learned after it landed--or rather crashed--beside mine. The man in it held me at the point of a gun and compelled me to fly my autogiro to their camp on Black Jack Island, where I was to be held for a ransom. _That man was the chief of the gang of bandits that robbed the Jacksonville bank._" She paused a moment for breath, and the Captain leaned forward eagerly. The story, which might have seemed incredulous to an ordinary person, was perfectly believable to him. He was used to the ways of criminals. "But how did you get away?" he demanded. "I never should have, if it hadn't been for this bank robbery," she explained. "While the men went off, I escaped, and was picked up by a couple of Jacksonville boys in a canoe." Linda went on to relate the happenings of the afternoon, concluding with the death of the ring-leader of the gang, whom she knew only as "Slats." She spoke lightly of Susie, showing her merely as a weak pawn in her husband's hands. The criminals' method of disposing of their stolen valuables was another interesting point in her story, and she told Captain Magee about the barren island in the ocean. "Now whether this stuff is still on the island or at the camp," she concluded, "I don't know. But I am ready to go and help you find out." "You mean you are actually willing to go back into that swamp?" the officer asked. "To show us the way?" "Of course! That's why I came to you tonight. So that we can make arrangements for tomorrow." "But it may be very dangerous, Miss Carlton! These men will be armed, and will shoot at sight." "I'll take a chance. Can we go tomorrow morning? By plane?" "By airplane?" "Yes. Any other way would be too slow. They may have escaped already." "But an airplane will be so much noisier than a boat. They'll hear you coming." "We'll have to take that chance." She stood up. "If you will get a plane, Captain Magee--a large one--I will fly it, to save space. Then we can take two or three armed guards." "How do you know that you can fly any plane I happen to get, Miss Carlton?" he inquired, incredulously. "You see, I'm a transport pilot," she explained. "We have to be able to manage most anything.... Can you send a car out for me to the Carters' home, early in the morning?" She handed the Captain the address. "Yes. I'll telephone as soon as I can make all the arrangements," he agreed, seeing that he could not change her from her purpose. Linda thanked him and hurried out to the waiting taxi. It was growing late, long after ten o'clock, and she was anxious to be in bed. Jackson Carter himself came to the door when she rang the bell. "Where is your mother?" she asked, immediately, for there was no sign of a hostess inside. "She is ill," replied the young man. "The bad news about the bank--a great deal of our money was lost--knocked her terribly. She hasn't told grandmother, or it might kill her. So I had the maid get the guest room ready, and hope that you will excuse them both." Linda nodded; she had no way of knowing that Mrs. Carter had protested about entertaining this girl whom Jackson had "picked up" on his canoe trip, and had stubbornly refused to see her. The woman had worked herself into such a state of nerves over her losses and over this incident that she had actually made herself ill. "I'm so sorry," said Linda, sympathetically. "If I weren't so tired, I'd go to a hotel, for this is no time for your mother to be bothered with a guest. But I'll just stay tonight, and leave early tomorrow. I'm flying to the swamp again with the police officers." "Ann!" cried Jackson aghast, using her name unconsciously. "Don't, please! It's dangerous--you may be killed.... And, and, besides----" "Besides, what?" "Besides, it isn't done. You shouldn't go off to lonely places like that, without an older woman along." Linda smiled. "I can't be bothered with social codes at a time like this," she said. "I have to do all I can to get that money back. Think of the hundreds of people hurt by that bank robbery--if the bank is forced to close its doors! Including your own mother and grandmother! No, I just have to go." "Let me go instead," he suggested. "You wouldn't know just where the camp is. It's pretty well hidden, and I know the only spot where a landing is possible. Besides, you can't fly a plane." "You mean you will pilot the plane yourself? Your autogiro's broken." "Oh, it'll be another plane--a hired one. Now please don't argue any more, Mr. Carter--you sound like my aunt--and let me go to bed. And will you ask one of the servants to waken me at seven o'clock?" "Good night, then, Miss Carlton," he said, almost sorrowfully, for it seemed like the end of what might have been a wonderful friendship for Jackson Carter. CHAPTER IX _Two Prisoners_ Linda's telephone call came early the following morning, and after a simple breakfast served by the cook, she left in the car which Captain Magee sent. Not one of the Carter family appeared at the meal, and there was no message of any kind. Linda, however, attributed this to Mrs. Carter's illness, and wrote a polite note of thanks to her hostess. She found three plain-clothes men waiting for her at the police station, and they joined her in the car which then took them to the airport. A large cabin plane, capable of accommodating six persons, had been wheeled out on the runway, awaiting their arrival and two service men were standing beside it. "You are sure you can pilot her, Miss?" inquired one of these men, skeptically. Linda opened her bag and took out her two licenses--mechanic's and transport pilot's--and handed them to him. "A mechanic!" he exclaimed, in amazement. "Gee whiz! Will wonders never cease? It's the first time I ever laid eyes on a lady-mechanic!" Linda laughed. "May I look the plane over before we start?" she asked. "And will you map out the quickest course to Okefenokee Swamp! I want to get into the southern part of it--Black Jack Island, if you know where that is." With a grin the man disappeared to consult some one in the hangar, and Linda went ahead with the examination. "There ought to be plenty of room in here to bring back any prisoners we may get," she said, cheerfully. "I think too, that you had better send for some food and water, Sergeant--for we can't tell how long we may be gone." When she announced herself satisfied with the inspection, she and her three companions climbed into the cabin while the mechanic fired the engine. The plane taxied along the runway and rose gracefully into the air, to the admiration of the three officers, none of whom could fly. "You're there with the goods, Miss Carlton!" shouted the one named "Worth," who apparently was in charge of the expedition. "Don't praise me too soon," returned Linda. "That was child's play. But wait till it comes to landing on that island in the swamp. There is only one spot big enough, in a plane like this." "Well, we got plenty of gas," remarked Worth, cheerfully. "I'm not afraid. I'm enjoying the flight. It isn't every day that we go up in the skies on our job." Linda was enjoying it, too. She flew carefully, watching her map, her instruments, and the landscape below. They flew over the island where they had left Susie, and Linda made a mental note of the location, in case she should be able to pick the girl up on the return trip. It was difficult to keep her direction, for the swamp, covered as it was with grasses and trees, seemed like an unbroken, monotonous expanse from the air, but Linda had succeeded in spotting the little stream down which the boys had paddled the canoe, and she resolved to follow that to the place where they had picked her up. After that it ought to be easy to locate Black Jack Island and the camp of the thieves. But it was not as simple as she had hoped, even after she had located the island. Again and again she circled about, looking for a space large enough to make a landing. Finally she found what must be the edge of the island, for the water came up unevenly, but this beach appeared very small. It was one thing to bring the autogiro safely to earth in a place like this, and another to land a big plane. When she had selected her spot, she determined to try "fish-tailing." She glided with considerable speed toward her field; as she approached it, she swung her airplane from side to side, exposing the flat side of the plane's body to the air so as to kill the speed. Her companions, who had no idea what she was doing, looked at Linda in alarm. Had she lost control of the plane, and were they about to be dashed to pieces? But a glance at their pilot's calm, confident expression allayed their fears. This girl knew what she was doing! They need not be afraid. Often at the ground school she had been compelled to land on a given spot--such as a square of canvas; it was no wonder that she now felt sure of herself. A moment later she came down on the very mark that she had selected. "Pretty neat!" exclaimed Worth, in admiration. Linda turned off the engine and prepared to get out of the plane. But the Sergeant stopped her. "You stay in here, Miss Carlton!" he ordered. "This is no place for a girl." "But I have to show you where the camp is," she protested. "Then show us from here! And remember, too, that you are our pilot. If anything happened to you, we couldn't get out of this swamp." Linda saw the reasoning in this last argument, and agreed to remain inside of the cabin until she should be summoned. She sat there tensely, while the three men advanced cautiously towards the trees at the center of the island. They had not gone more than a dozen yards when a shot rang out from behind a tree, and a bullet whizzed past over their heads. A cry burst from Linda's lips, then an exclamation of relief at the assurance that her companions were unhurt. "So they're still here!" she thought, excitedly, clasping her hands so tightly together that they grew numb with the pressure. "Oh, if the men only get them without being shot!" The officers' pistols replied rapidly to the shot from the thieves, in such quick succession that Linda could almost imagine that she was in an actual war zone. But the volley lasted only a moment, for the thieves were short of bullets since "Slats'" disappearance, and before anyone was hurt, "Beefy" and "Jake" surrendered to Sergeant Worth. Watching the whole proceeding from the window of the plane, Linda drew a deep sigh of relief. Then suddenly she remembered the third member of the gang--the man nick-named "Doc." Where was he? Hiding in the background, waiting to shoot them all down when they were off guard? Cautiously, therefore, Linda leaned out of the side of the plane and called to Sergeant Worth to come back to her. Leaving the two thieves in charge of the other men, who instantly handcuffed them, Worth returned to the airplane, smiling over his easy victory. With his assistance Linda jumped out of the cabin and whispered her warning into his ear. The man scowled in disappointment. "This fellow may be waiting for you, Miss Carlton," he said. "You stay right here--behind the plane, while I go find out where he is." Linda did as she was told, expecting every moment to hear renewed shooting. "Where's your other man?" she heard Worth shout, as he approached the prisoners. "Gone!" snarled Jake. "Two of 'em sneaked off. Double-crossed us, and took the kale!" "Money? What money?" demanded Worth, instantly, hoping to surprise the man into a confession. "Nothin'. None of your business," muttered Jake, seeing that he had made a mistake by saying too much. "You needn't try to hide anything," remarked the officer, contemptuously. "We know all about the bank robbery--and other jobs, too--that you fellows can account for. You'll serve plenty of time!" Impatient at the delay, Linda felt that she had to be at the scene of action, to hear what had happened to the "Doc," who evidently was not on the island. She ran forward, just in time to hear Jake's explanation. "One fellow made off with the girl in the plane yesterday morning," he said. "The other guy must have beat it later on in the day--while us two was still asleep. Took the boat and the cash. We ain't got nothin' here of any value--outside of food.... Huh! Why, if there ain't Linda herself!" Angry as she was at this insolent manner of addressing her, Linda could not help smiling at the man's consternation. But she was terribly disappointed to learn that the money was gone. That meant that they had failed to accomplish the main purpose with which she had set out--to restore to the innocent bank depositors the savings which they had lost through no fault of their own. "Perhaps the money's over on the island in the ocean," she suggested hopefully. "I had to help bury some boxes of jewels there while I was a prisoner--and those may still be there, too. Shall we fly over immediately, Sergeant Worth?" "You know the way?" the latter inquired, in surprise. His admiration for this plucky girl was growing every minute. "Oh, yes, I think so. We can make these men direct us if I forget. They are sure to know." After a hasty search of Black Jack Island was completed--to make sure that the third man was not still in hiding--the party returned to the airplane, and Linda made ready to take off once more. This was an exceedingly difficult feat, with a large plane, but the experienced aviatrix calculated everything before she made the attempt, and the airplane left the ground at the exact time that she had planned. She directed it eastward now, out over the Georgia coast, on to the Atlantic. She remembered the course perfectly, spotting the identical island without any help from the prisoners, and landed on the wide barren beach without any difficulty. Once they were out of the plane she recalled even the hiding-place, where "Slats" had placed the jewels, and she led the way through the underbrush. Unrolling the stone, and pushing the sand aside at her direction, the detectives brought out the three tin boxes which Linda herself had been forced to help conceal. Opening them up right there by twisting the locks, the officers gazed at their contents in speechless amazement. Two diamond necklaces, a string of real pearls, innumerable rings and pins and watches. And a bracelet of priceless emeralds! "Whew!" exclaimed Sergeant Worth, the perspiration running down his face. "The Van Tyn diamonds!" declared one of the detectives. "And these pearls solve the mystery of that robbery at the Kenworthy estate!" "Yeah. And that big jewelry store in Atlanta!" added another, breathlessly. "Say, does this uncover a lot of money? I'll tell the world!" "It'll mean a nice little reward for Miss Carlton," remarked Sergeant Worth, with a smile. Linda shook her head. "No, I don't want it," she said. "If there is any reward, it can be divided among you men. You faced the guns!" "But Miss Carlton----" Linda held up her hand. "I mean it," she said. "If you can't use it yourselves, perhaps your wives--or your children can." "It would mean heaven to me," murmured one of the detectives--a quiet man, who had scarcely spoken during the entire flight. "My child needs an operation----" "Then it's settled," concluded Linda. Suddenly she glanced timidly at Sergeant Worth, almost as if she were about to ask a favor. "Could we eat, Sergeant?" she asked. "I'm so hungry." "Why of course!" replied the latter. "I'm sorry, I'd forgotten all about lunch--but it must be way past noon. Griggs," he added to one of his men, "you go and unload that basket." It was an oddly assorted group that sat down to that picnic lunch on the beach--the two thieves, the three police officers, and the slender, fair-haired girl in her linen flying suit. Linda could not help smiling to herself as she thought of what Jackson Carter's horror would be at her association with people like these. Yet how foolish he was! One look at Sergeant Worth's face, kindly as it was, assured her that she was well protected with him at her side. She wished that she might stop at Soldiers' Camp Island on the return trip, but it was out of her way, and already the plane was loaded to its capacity. So she mapped her return trip in a straight line back to the city of Jacksonville. Late that afternoon she landed at the airport, where the group separated, the detectives and the prisoners taking one taxi to the police station, Linda taking another to a hotel. It was only when she was quietly in her own room, with her bag unpacked, that she realized how tired she was. What a strain she had been through! How she longed for relaxation of some kind! If only she had Louise with her--or somebody else from Spring City! She rested for an hour before dinner, but the thought of eating alone was not pleasant, with only a newspaper for her companion. She brightened, however, when the idea came to her to call her Aunt Emily on the long-distance wire. It would mean a great deal to hear that dear, familiar voice. She did not have time after dinner to put in the call immediately, for just as she was leaving the dining-room, she was herself summoned to the telephone. Who could it be, she wondered. Nothing interesting, probably, for none of her friends knew where to get her. No doubt it was Captain Magee, congratulating her on the success of the afternoon. To her surprise, it was Jackson Carter who said, "Hello! "Can I drive in to the hotel to see you, Ann?" he asked. "How is your mother, Mr. Carter?" she inquired, instead of answering his question. "She's all right." "Am I to meet her?" The young man coughed in embarrassment. He would have liked to have kept the truth from her, but he could not lie to a girl like Linda Carlton, any more than he could lie to his mother. "I guess I better tell you, Ann--mother's old-fashioned--and--she doesn't approve of you. She says I may not invite you out here again. I'm awfully sorry--I've tried to make her understand-----" "Please don't bother," interrupted Linda, coolly. "Perhaps it is better that an acquaintance like ours end as casually as it started.... Good-by, Mr. Carter. And thank you again for rescuing me." "Ann! Ann! I can't let you go out of my life----" But she had quietly replaced the receiver. The tears came to her eyes, but she told herself that she was foolish. She would probably have to get used to things like this, if she meant to do a man's work in the world. It was worth it. Oh, the glorious feeling of power which she had experienced that morning when she stepped into that huge plane, and knew that she could control its flight! The satisfaction of conquering difficulties, solving problems, being of use to others as she had been today! Yes, it was worth all the snubs of every society woman in the United States! For a moment she sat beside the telephone, waiting to get control of herself, when she suddenly heard a beloved voice behind her. Two voices--three voices--then two pairs of arms around her neck! Dot Crowley's and Louise Mackay's--and Ted was standing behind them! "Oh!" she gasped, squeezing both girls at once. "Am I dreaming? It's too good to be true!" "Are you O.K., darling?" demanded Louise, kissing her chum again and again. "When we read about your long flight south, and then heard nothing of you for three days, we got worried. So we managed to hop off." "You angels!" cried Linda. "Oh, I might have known you would! When everything looked blackest----" "You mean about being lost in the Okefenokee Swamp?" "Worse than that.... Let me call Aunt Emily, while you get a room, and I'll tell you the whole story after that.... But first tell me how long you can stay." "Ted and I can only stay till tomorrow morning," replied Louise, "so long as you are all right. But Dot'll keep you company--she thought you might be lonely----" "That isn't half of it!" interrupted Linda. "I was so lonely tonight that I couldn't eat. I just felt sick. Worse, far worse than my flight to France, because that was over quickly, and this just seemed to stretch out interminably." "Now do call your Aunt," urged Dot. "She must be dying to hear from you--and we'll have you all evening. By the way, I'm rooming with you?" "Nowhere else in the world!" exclaimed Linda, giving the girl an extra hug in her joy. "Room 420--and I'll be there in a minute!" CHAPTER X _Susie Disappears_ When Linda entered her hotel bed-room after the conversation with her Aunt Emily over the long-distance wire, she found two pleasant surprises awaiting her. The first of these that she saw was her trunk, sent on from Atlanta. The second was a telegram from the Pitcairn Autogiro Company. Her new roommate, who was bending over her own suit-case, looked up expectantly. "Good news, Linda?" she inquired. "Splendid!" replied the other girl. "The parts for my 'Ladybug' have been shipped from Miami, where the company has some autogiros on exhibition. They'll be at the Jacksonville Airport tomorrow." "Then your Ladybug is damaged?" asked Dot, who had heard nothing of the story as yet, beyond the bare facts that had been in the newspapers. All that she had read was that Linda Carlton, famous aviatrix, who had been lost in the Okefenokee Swamp for several days, had turned up in Jacksonville, Florida. "Yes, quite a smash-up," answered Linda. "But I wasn't in it. Another girl was flying----" She stopped abruptly. "Wait till Lou and Ted are with us, Dot, so I can tell the story all at once. I'm rather fed up with it myself. I'd loads rather hear what you've been doing at Spring City." "O.K.," agreed her companion, cheerfully, and proceeded to report to Linda all the news that she could remember. "What I can't understand," remarked Linda, a few minutes later, as she unpacked her trunk and took a flowered chiffon which she decided to wear, "is how everyone finds me at this hotel. I didn't know where I'd be staying when I sent those telegrams yesterday." "I can answer that," replied Dot, immediately. "It's your friends at the City Hall. The Chief of Police there directed us. It was Ted's idea to go to him, for I never would have thought of it." "Ted knows that Lou and I have a failing for police stations and Court Houses," laughed Linda, recalling their experience in Canada the previous winter. Five minutes later the girls joined the young Mackays on a cool upper porch of the hotel, where they were able to be by themselves. It was then that Linda told her story, first extracting a promise from the group never to mention the kidnapping episode to anyone else, lest the news get back to her Aunt Emily. The other girls listened in amazement, now and then interrupting with exclamations of horror at the outrage of it all. Ted sat grimly silent, more angry than anyone. "And if you hadn't escaped, we probably shouldn't have gotten there in time," observed Louise. "To rescue you, I mean. Because of course they meant to kill you in the end." "Did you realize that at the time?" asked Dot. "Not exactly," replied Linda. "Though I really feared something much worse. I thought they would imprison me on that island in the ocean, and let me die of starvation. And I was horribly afraid of those men. I tried to keep with Susie until they went away." "It was that bank robbery that saved your life," remarked Louise. "And spelled ruin for them. If they hadn't been so greedy----" "Exactly!" exclaimed Linda. "That's one reason why I feel it's my solemn duty to try to catch the fourth man, and get that money back. I'm really the only person who could identify him--except Susie." "Do you honestly think she'll reform?" asked Dot. "I hope so. If those new parts for the autogiro really come tomorrow, we'll fly over and get her, Dot." "I'm crazy to see her," returned the latter. "And I'd enjoy going to the jail to see those two prisoners, and gloat over their punishment!" "Dot's as vindictive as I am!" joked Louise. "Remember all the dark futures I used to wish for Bess Hulbert?" "Poor Bess!" sighed Linda. "She certainly got hers----" Thinking that the girls had heard enough of Linda's unpleasant experiences, Ted interrupted them by suggesting that they all go somewhere and have something to eat. "If it's cool, I'm for it," agreed Louise, jumping up and putting her hand through her husband's arm. "You're not too tired, are you, Linda?" she inquired. "Not a bit!" protested the girl. "I feel like a new person since you three arrived.... There's a lovely screened tea-garden across the street that looks awfully attractive. Shall we go there?" Linda was right in her impression; the place was charming. Instead of the customary artificial flowers or tiny bouquets so often seen in restaurants, real rose-bushes showered their profusion of fragrance all about the edges of the screen garden. Surprisingly, every one was hungry; the three visitors because they had eaten only a light picnic supper, Linda because she had been too homesick to eat much alone. The food proved as delightful as the surroundings, and they all enjoyed it immensely. While Dot was, eating her ice, she noticed some people that she seemed to remember--sitting at a table in back of Linda. But she could not place them. "Linda," she said softly, "see that young man over there at that table back of you--to the right--with an older woman? Don't turn around now, he's staring at us.... He looks sort of familiar to me, and I'm positive I've seen that woman before. Do you know them, or are they people I have met at Palm Beach sometime, one of those winters when we went to Florida?" Linda waited a moment, and then casually turned her head in the direction which Dot had indicated. The boy was Jackson Carter! In relating her story of the rescue by the two boys in the canoe, Linda had not even mentioned their names, and had omitted entirely her visit to the Carter home. After her telephone conversation with Jackson this evening, she had decided to forget all about him. She noticed that Dot was smiling and nodding. "I remember her now," she explained. "A Mrs. Carter--she chummed a lot with mother at Palm Beach. And that's her son--he wasn't more than fourteen the last time I saw him.... I think I'll go over and speak to them." Linda flushed and tried to hide her embarrassment by talking to Louise and Ted about their flight. But Dot came back in a moment. "I've got an invitation for us, Linda!" she announced. "Finish your lemon ice, and come over and meet the Carters. All of you!" Linda hesitated. She did not know what to say. Evidently Jackson had not recognized her, or else was deliberately concealing the fact that he knew her. "All right," agreed Louise, rising and pulling Ted by the hand, for her youthful husband was still shy about meeting the people whom he termed the "four hundred." But his manners were as good as anyone's, and Louise was always proud of him. They stepped over to the table, Linda reluctantly following them. "Mrs. Carter, I want you to meet Mrs. Mackay--our chaperon." Dot winked slyly at Louise. "And Miss Linda Carlton, the famous aviatrix! And Mr. Mackay.... And this is Mr. Carter." The young people bowed in recognition of the introduction, but Jackson gave no sign that he had ever seen Linda before. "Mrs. Carter says that so long as our chaperon is leaving tomorrow, we must come over and stay at her house, Linda," Dot said. "You see, Mrs. Carter," she continued, turning to the older woman, "we're not so strict in the North about chaperons as you are here--but Linda's aunt would like to be. It really worries her to have her niece batting around alone in an airplane." Horribly embarrassed, her eyelids fluttering so that she could not see anybody distinctly, Linda tried to summon words to decline the invitation. It would be impossible for her to accept. "We'd love to have you, girls," Mrs. Carter assured them. "For as long as you can stay.... How I would enjoy seeing your mother, Dorothy! You must tell me all about her." "I'm awfully sorry," stammered Linda, still avoiding Jackson's eyes, "but I'm afraid we can't possibly make it. The fact is, I am expecting to get my autogiro tomorrow, and that will take us away from Jacksonville." "Bring it out to our place!" urged the young man, with the deepest pleading in his tone. It was the first time that he had spoken, and everybody was surprised at his eagerness. That is, everybody except Linda--who had heard the same pleading over the telephone a few hours before. His mother smiled approvingly. She was glad to see that her son was interested in Dorothy Crowley, for the Crowleys were wealthy people, of unquestionable social position. But, had she known it, Jackson did not even see Dot. He was lost in admiration of Linda--or Ann, as he thought of her. In her pale chiffon dress she looked absolutely ravishing. How could he ever have doubted that she was of good family? "No, thank you ever so much, but we can't possibly," Linda repeated. "We--or rather I--have work to do. Of course if Dot wants to go----" She looked at the other girl fearfully. How she would hate to lose her! Dot's reply, however, was reassuring. "No, Mrs. Carter, I must stick with Linda. It isn't often that my mother gives in and lets me go off like this, and I mean to take advantage of it Besides, there's adventure ahead!" Mrs. Carter sighed; these modern girls were beyond her comprehension. She was thankful that her only child was a boy. While Dot was saying good-by, explaining that the Mackays had to be up early in the morning, Jackson managed a whisper to Linda. "When can I see you, Ann? I just _must_!" Linda smiled; she was in command of herself again. She had won in a difficult situation. "Some time when we both winter at Palm Beach or Miami," she replied, lightly, as she nodded good-by to his mother. The young man's interest in Linda had not escaped Dot's notice. When they had left the restaurant, she remarked, teasingly: "You certainly made a hit, my dear. But I'm just as glad you turned down their invitation. The Carters have a marvelous home, I believe, but they're about 1890 vintage. They don't know that there was a War." "Well, we really haven't any time to lose," was her companion's reply. "I'm almost afraid now that Susie will be gone when we get to that island. And I'm in a hurry to help the police trace that other thief with the money." "Adventure is right!" laughed Dot, as the girls said good-by to Ted and Louise, and went to their room. The Mackays left soon after dawn the following morning, but Linda and Dot had decided to have a good sleep. They did not waken until after ten o'clock, when they heard the telephone ringing in their ears. It was Dot who answered it. "Oh, hello, Jackson!" she said, with a wink at Linda. "I used to call you by your first name, so I suppose I might as well now. How's everything?" "Just fine," replied the young man. "And Dot--may I speak to Miss Carlton?" "O.K.," answered the girl, holding the telephone towards Linda. "Not awake yet!" yawned Linda, burying her head in the pillow. "She says she's not awake yet," explained Dot, laughingly. "Better call later, Jackson--after we get some breakfast." Replacing the telephone, she turned to her roommate. "That big boy certainly fell for you, Linda!" she exclaimed, still unaware of the fact that Jackson had not met her for just the first time. "Well, I didn't fall for him," the other stated, firmly. "And Dot, please, from now on I'm not at home when he calls." Dot was surprised at this announcement; it was unlike Linda not to be friendly to everybody. Why had she taken such a dislike to a young man as handsome as Jackson Carter? "May I ask you a personal question, Linda?" she inquired. "Why certainly, Dot!" "Are you engaged to Ralph Clavering--and is that why you're turning other men away?" Linda laughed at the idea. "No, Dot--I'm not engaged to anybody. And I don't want to be. I want to be free for a while. But not from my girl-friends!" she added hastily, reaching over and giving Dot a hug. "Oh, Dot, if I could ever tell you what it meant to me to have you three breeze in last night! Honestly, I was awfully low." "It was Lou's idea," explained Dot. "I guess she thought you would be--so far away from everybody--even if you hadn't been in any difficulty." "Lou's a peach," observed Linda. They ordered a tray sent up to their room, and lingered lazily over their breakfast. Before they had finished the telephone rang again. This time it was the Jacksonville Airport, informing Linda that the new parts for her autogiro had arrived. "I'll have to hurry!" she said to Dot. "I don't want to lose a minute now." "Just what are your plans, Linda?" asked the other girl, as she, too, started to dress. "Go to the airport and have the parts for the Ladybug put into a plane. Then fly to Soldiers' Camp Island, taking another mechanic along. I'll help this man fix the autogiro--collect Susie--and fly back here." "You really believe you can fix it in one day?" "Yes, of course. Why not!" "Well," said Dot slowly, "I think if you don't mind, I'll stay here. You'll need all the space you can get in your plane to carry those parts to the wreck. And I'd be fearfully bored standing around while you work." "I guess you're right," agreed Linda. "It would be better for me to take two men--a pilot and a mechanic. Because I can't fly this hired plane back again--I'll have to pilot the Ladybug." "And you have to bring Susie too," Dot reminded her. Linda lost no time in getting ready, and she was pleased to have left the hotel before Jackson Carter had a chance to telephone again. She found a "repair" plane waiting for her at the airport, and she made note of the new parts for the autogiro that were already packed into it. Two men were prepared to go with her--one a pilot, the other a mechanic. For once in her life Linda was to ride as a passenger. The day was hot and dry, but over the swamp the air seemed cooler and fresher. The rainy season was late, everybody said; by this time of year the swamp was usually flooded. As the plane flew over the desolate expanse, Linda smiled to herself at the familiarity of the landscape. She was getting to be an authority on the Okefenokee Swamp; she never need fear again being lost in its southern part, at least. Although the pilot had a reliable map, he found Linda's directions helpful, and before noon they came down on Soldiers' Camp Island. The first thing that struck their notice was the autogiro, still leaning over on its side, looking pathetically helpless in its plight. But Susie was not in sight. While the men unloaded their tools and the new parts for the damaged plane, Linda went in search of the girl she had left there two days before. It was queer, she thought, that Susie had not come out to meet them at the sound of their motor. Was it possible that she was sick--or only asleep? The island was a comparatively large one, several miles in length, and Linda decided immediately to explore it. Susie might be waiting somewhere within its depths, helpless or hurt, if she had fallen on her injured ankle. It would be necessary to make a thorough search. Linda ran back to the autogiro to inquire whether the men needed her help, and explained what she was about to do. "We don't need you yet, Miss," replied the mechanic. "Later on, when she's almost finished, you can help me look her over, and take her up for a test." "By the way, Miss Carlton," put in the pilot, "did you think to bring any food for lunch? I only brought water." Linda shook her head regretfully. How could she have been so stupid? Had her excitement over regaining her autogiro destroyed all her common sense? "I'm awfully sorry," she said. "I just plain forgot! And I usually have some in the autogiro, but those thieves took it out.... Wait, though! There may be some on the island. We left a half a dozen cans with this girl." A search of the little "houses" farther in on the island revealed what she had been hoping for--the remainder of the supplies the boys had left with Susie, consisting of two cans of baked beans, tea, coffee, sugar and canned milk. This ought to be enough for their lunch, and she ran back immediately to the men with the good news. For the next two hours Linda searched the island diligently, calling Susie by name at frequent intervals. But no answer came in reply, and she found no trace of the girl. Susie had completely vanished. Weary and hungry she returned to the shore of the island where the men were working, and was delighted at the progress they had made. The job was almost finished. "I can't find the girl," she told them. "But I've collected enough fire-wood to cook our coffee and beans. We'll have our lunch in a little while." Two hours later the autogiro was finished, ready for its flight back to Jacksonville. The engine was running smoothly; Linda climbed into the cock-pit and took it up in the air for a test flight. She found everything satisfactory; dipping low, she gave the others the signal to leave. With her Ladybug in the lead, the two planes made record time back to Jacksonville. "She's as good as new," she told the mechanic joyfully, after both planes had landed, and she was paying her bill. "I wish I could fly her right over to my hotel." "I believe you almost could," remarked the man, admiringly. "Land her at the front entrance, like a taxi-cab!" "I'm afraid I'll have to take an ordinary cab," sighed Linda, spotting one out near the gate. "Thanks a lot--and good-by! I'm in a hurry to be back." It was after six when Linda ascended the steps of her hotel, and found Dot waiting for her on the porch, trying in vain to keep cool. "Where's Susie?" she demanded, immediately. "Gone!" replied Linda. "I searched the whole island carefully--but not a sign of her!" "Where could she go?" demanded Dot. "Do you 'spose some canoe picked her up--maybe those same boys that rescued you?" Linda shook her head. Not those boys, any way! "What I'm afraid of is that the fourth man of the gang--the only one who escaped, you know--picked her up in his boat." "Not so good--not so good," muttered her companion. "No, it isn't. Just when I thought Susie had reformed, too--and cut free from those criminals!" Linda uttered a deep sigh. "Well, let's forget her," suggested the other girl, cheerfully. "I've been waiting all afternoon to take you for a swim--so let's go, and have our dinner later. I understand there's a marvelous pool a couple of blocks away." Linda's face brightened. What could possibly be better on such a hot day! "Let's go!" she exclaimed. "Lead me to it." After her disappointment at losing Susie, and her strenuous day in the heat, the relaxation of swimming in the lovely out-door pool was exactly what Linda needed. The water was cool and refreshing, and the surroundings charming. For half an hour Linda swam lazily about, resting now and then on her back, occasionally mounting the board for a dive. At last she felt that she had had enough, and seated herself on the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the water, and watching Dot perform all sorts of fancy dives, for the other girl was a real champion. "What a marvelous girl Dot is," Linda was thinking, when she was suddenly startled by the sound of a masculine voice, almost in her very ear. "Ann! Think of finding you here!" Linda squirmed a little, thinking that the man must have made a mistake in thinking she was some other girl. For the time being, she forgot all about her middle name. "Miss Carlton," insisted the voice. Turning about, she saw Jackson behind her, "How do you do?" she said, coolly. The young man became embarrassed at her manner. He did not know what to say. "Miss Crowley is a marvelous diver," he muttered, though it wasn't that that he wanted to talk about. "Yes, I think so," agreed Linda. There was a silence. The girl made no effort to be entertaining. "You really are the girl who flew across the ocean alone, and won that big prize?" he persisted. "Yes." Linda made a half-hearted gesture to repress a yawn. Jackson Carter needn't think he could buy her favor by flattery! "But why didn't you tell Hal and me that, when we found you in the swamp?" "It had no particular bearing on the subject, that I could see." "If my mother had known that----" "If your mother didn't wish to receive me at her home," interrupted Linda, "there was no reason in the world why she should. Everyone has a right to her own opinion!" "But now that we've been formally introduced, it's different," he urged. "Please tell me how long you'll be in Jacksonville." "We're leaving tomorrow," she said, rising. "And will you please excuse me--as I see Dot going to the dressing-room?" CHAPTER XI _The Island in the Ocean_ "I certainly am sorry we don't have Susie with us," remarked Dot, as the girls sat down to their late dinner that evening, after their refreshing swim. "I thought she'd be better than a 'talkie' for amusement." "Yes, you would have enjoyed her, Dot," agreed Linda, picking up the menu and studying it with a great deal of interest. "I'm going to order everything here, Dot. I'm simply starved." "So am I, though I ought to be ashamed to admit it. You should have seen the lunch I ate!" "And you should have seen my lunch!" returned Linda. "We forgot to carry anything, but fortunately Susie had left beans and coffee on the island." "Is that all you had?" Linda nodded, and gave her order to the waiter. "I'd certainly like to know where Susie is now," she remarked, after she had satisfied the sharpest pangs of hunger with an iced fruit-cup. "Yes, so would I," agreed Dot. "Her disappearance will make it a lot harder to trace that other thief.... Do you really expect to do anything about hunting him, Linda?" "Indeed I do! Tomorrow's only the twenty-seventh, and I don't have to report to Atlanta until July first. I'm going to use those four days." "But what could you possibly do?" inquired Dot. "How would you know where to go--without even a suggestion from Susie?" "I have a theory," explained the other girl. "Wait till I eat some of this beef-steak, and I'll tell you about it." "I'm crazy to hear it, because I'll be with you all the time. Mother said I must start back home the first of July--the day you go to Atlanta. I have my ticket bought." For a few moments Linda ate her dinner in silence, enjoying every mouthful as only a hungry person can. Then, lowering her voice so that there was no danger of being overheard, she told her chum her plan. "I've thought it all out," she began. "This is what must have happened: That thief--the 'Doc,' as the gang called him--took the boat and the money the day after the bank robbery, when he woke up and found that Susie and her husband had flown away in the autogiro, and the other two were still asleep. His idea was to get out of the swamp to the St. Mary's or some other river, that would take him to the ocean." "And get on a steamer?" demanded Dot. "But Linda, if he did that, he's out of the country by now." "I'm not so sure of that. A canoe trip like that would take a good while--the Okefenokee is fifty miles at least from the coast. And he'd be afraid to take a train--or an automobile, for fear of being seen. Besides, I don't think he'd take a steamer right away. He'd want to go to that island first." "In his canoe?" inquired the other, skeptically. "No, of course not. He'd hire a motor-boat--or steal one." "I still don't understand why he'd want to get to that island," remarked Dot. "For two reasons," explained Linda. "One because he expected to pick up those jewels--which we have already taken away--and the other reason is that the gang has arrangements with some party that owns a steamer, to stop at the island on certain specified dates. That would be his way of getting out of the country." "It does sound plausible," admitted Dot. "What a brain you have, Linda!" "Not a bit of that, Dot! It's only that I've been so closely associated with these criminals that I'm beginning to see their motives." "And where does Susie come into all this?" "The man must have seen her on Soldiers' Camp Island, from his canoe. Or rather, he saw the wrecked autogiro, and knew she must be there." "And forced her to go with him?" "Probably. He didn't want to take any chances, leaving her free to help the police." Linda paused for a moment to eat the salad with which she had been served, and glanced about the dining-room. No one seemed to know her, or notice her--for that she was sincerely thankful. It was not until they had finished their dinner and found a cool, secluded spot on the veranda, that she went on with her plan. "What I mean to do," she said quietly, "is to fly back to the camp on Black Jack Island early tomorrow. Not that I expect to find anyone there--but merely to get my direction--to go on to that island in the ocean. I don't know its name, so I couldn't look it up on the map." "You really expect to catch those two on that island?" asked Dot, excitedly. "Will you take the police along?" "No! I don't want to tell them a word about all this, except to say that I am going scouting about the country, and to ask for a couple of revolvers.... And, in answer to your first question, I don't really expect to find Susie and the 'Doc' there yet. But I believe they'll be along soon." "And we wait for them there?" "Yes. Take them unawares. Susie will probably be on our side, and we can plan something with her.... Of course this is all only theory. Maybe there isn't a thing in it. That gang was slick; they seemed to know how to drop right off the face of the earth. And I believe this man may be the cleverest of them all. He was quiet; it's the boasting kind, like Susie's husband, who usually get caught first.... So you can see why I don't want any of the police along." "We better take plenty of food, though," remarked Dot. "We will take some--but don't forget that we can easily fly back to the coast each night. The island is only a few miles out--it's nothing in a plane." "True," admitted the other. "And we'll keep our room here at the hotel, for we want some place as headquarters. We'll put a few over-night necessities into my bag." "O.K. I'll order a roast chicken and a chocolate cake from the dining-room tonight." "Oranges, too," added Linda. "They always taste so good. I mustn't forget to fill my thermos-bottles, either." They went to bed early that night, in order to get a good start on the following morning. Dot, who was particularly enthusiastic about the chocolate cake, carried the basket of food, while Linda took the handbag. They arrived at the City Hall immediately after breakfast, and were ushered right into Captain Magee's office. "No news of the fourth man yet," he said, after he had greeted Linda and been introduced to Dot. "But I've sent out a call for him by radio, so that all ships are to be warned to be on the look-out for a fellow of his description." "There's something else I want to tell you," added Linda, "that may help to spot him. There is probably a girl with him." Then, rather reluctantly, she told what she knew of Susie, begging the Captain not to punish her too severely if she were found. "And now," she concluded, "Miss Crowley and I want to do a little scouting ourselves--in the autogiro--and I want to know whether you will lend us a couple of .38s for the undertaking." The Captain smiled whimsically. What an unusual girl Linda Carlton was! No wonder she had done things no other girl had even tried. "Of course I will," he said. "Though such a request is rather out of the ordinary----" "This is an extraordinary occasion," remarked Linda. "Don't you want a detective to go with you?" he asked. "No, thank you, we haven't room in the autogiro. Besides, we don't want to waste his time--for it may be only a wild goose chase. But if you will lend us a couple of revolvers, I think we shall be safe." "Can you shoot?" "If it is necessary. But I don't think it will be. The girl got to be very friendly with me, after her husband was killed. If I had only gotten to her in time, I think I could have saved her. As it is, she may not have joined the man of her own free will. You see she had been hurt, and was partially helpless. So he could do most anything he liked with her, if he had her alone." "Well, good luck to you!" said the Captain. "I certainly take off my hat to a plucky pair of girls." When Linda and Dot arrived at the airport they found the Ladybug in readiness for its second flight into the swamp. Linda inspected her, and piled in the equipment. "I feel as if the Okefenokee Swamp were my home," she remarked, as she headed the autogiro in that direction. "I could almost fly it blind!" "Don't!" warned Dot. "Your friend the Doc is still at large, and he may be watching for us with a gun." This was Dot's first view of the swamp, and as they approached it, she was amazed at the vast expanse of it, stretching out in every direction. "It's huge, isn't it?" she shouted to Linda, through the speaking-tube. "Forty miles long and thirty wide," was the reply. "But we see only the southern end of it." Conversation was difficult, so the girls gave it up until they came to Black Jack Island, where Linda had been held a prisoner. "Shall we get out?" she asked her companion. "Or go straight on to the ocean?" "Let's get out," replied Dot. "They might possibly be here, you know. Besides, I'm crazy to see their camp." Linda brought the autogiro to earth and the girls climbed out cautiously, their revolvers in readiness, lest the enemy appear. But there was no human sound--nothing but the birds and the insects. "Watch out for snakes, Dot!" warned Linda. "I'd almost rather meet the Doc than a snake, I believe." They walked carefully towards the camp only to find it absolutely deserted. "Let's look all around," suggested Linda, who remembered everything only too well. "We'll begin with the mess-tent." Quietly at first, they snooped around, peering into boxes of provisions, looking under the cots, behind the tents, and, when they were quite sure that they were alone, they began to act more natural, to laugh and joke with each other. Linda showed Dot the tent which she had shared with Susie that one night of her captivity, and they both smiled over the sight of the magazine which had led to Linda's escape. "We could even stay here all night if we had to," Dot remarked. "Seems comfortable enough." Linda shuddered. "Never again!" she protested. "But we may as well eat some lunch before we fly to that island. I'm hungry." "And thirsty. But it isn't so hot here as it was in Jacksonville." "No. And the island out in the ocean ought to be cooler yet. You may like it so well that you'll want to spend the summer there. Only it has no tents or cots, like this camp." "Thank you, I'd rather not play Robinson Crusoe," replied Dot. "Poor man!" sighed Linda. "If he'd only had an airplane, how simple it would have been for him." They ate their lunch, and then, for the third time, Linda flew across the Okefenokee and over the coastal plain of Georgia--out to the barren island in the ocean where the treasure had been hidden. The desolate loneliness of the spot impressed her companion. "You suggested this as a summer resort!" she remarked, when they had landed. "Why, I don't even see a fishing-boat!" "That's just the trouble," replied Linda. "The first time I flew here--with Susie's husband--I looked about desperately for somebody to shout to for help. And there wasn't a soul! Nothing but ocean and sky.... Do you have your revolver handy, Dot?" "Yes. Right here. But I don't know much about shooting." "I'm sure we shan't have to. I just want to explore. But 'be prepared' is our motto." "I will be. I won't shoot you, either, Linda--you can count on me for that." Climbing out of the autogiro they walked towards the center of the island where the sand was soft and the underbrush thick. Perhaps, thought Linda, there might be more hiding places than the one hole which she knew; it would be worth while to make a thorough search. On and on they plodded, the sand sinking into their shoes, the sun beating down upon them with full blast, for what trees there were, were not high enough to afford much shade. It was difficult to find the hiding place in such monotonous desolation, but at last she came to the spot. "Somebody's been here since I came with the police!" she said to Dot, "because we left the stones as we found them. But it looks as if the hole is empty." She was correct in her surmise. After five minutes of pushing the sand away, Linda had assured herself that nothing was there. "Let's go down to the opposite shore from the one we came in on," suggested Dot. "And explore that." "All right," agreed Linda. "If you can stand walking through this sand again...." She stopped abruptly, peering towards the shore. An instant later she dragged the other girl to the ground. "The Doc!" she whispered, hoarsely. "I saw him down by the water--maybe there's a boat coming!" "What shall we do?" demanded Dot, clutching her revolver tightly. "Wait till he gets on--and follow in the autogiro. I've got plenty of gas.... Let's be creeping back to the Ladybug." The girls kept well hidden behind the underbrush, crawling along on their hands and knees. Suddenly Dot stopped; she had struck something solid. A canvas bag--two bags, stuffed full with something. Could it be the money? Breathless, they both stopped while Linda untwisted with her pen-knife the coarse pieces of wire around the tops of the bags, and dumped out the contents. Money in an amount they had never seen before! Hundred dollar bills in rolls that they had no time to count, bonds in thousand-dollar denominations! "Hide it quickly, Dot!" whispered Linda. "In your pockets, your riding-breeches--stuff some of it in my clothes--while I re-fill these bags with sand.... And have your revolver ready." CHAPTER XII _The Money-Bags_ Linda's theories regarding the fourth member of the gang of thieves had been only partially correct. As she had surmised, the "Doc" slipped off in the canoe from Black Jack Island while his companions slept, and he did stop at Soldiers' Camp. But it was not he who compelled Susie to go with him, but the girl herself who insisted upon accompanying him. Susie's desire to reform had been sincere while Linda was with her. She had actually meant to cut free from the gang and go back to a normal mode of life--earning her living as she had done when she met her husband. No more sneaking about in fear of the law, no more hiding in that desolate camp in the Okefenokee Swamp! She would get a job at an airport, and take up flying again. She might even become famous--like Linda Carlton! But unfortunately, after the famous aviatrix left her alone, her enthusiasm faded, and her faith in her ability to make a "come-back" died as suddenly as it was born. How could she ever hope to be free from the stain of her last two years of living--since her marriage to "Slats"? If Linda did not turn her over to the police authorities, someone else would. She might have to serve five or ten years in prison. As the afternoon passed, she grew more and more miserable, more anxious to get away. If only she had a boat! If her ankle were not so painful, and her bandaged head not so conspicuous! If there were only some way for her to escape! Having no appetite, she made no pretense at preparing any supper for herself. There was still some cold tea left from lunch; she decided to make that her meal, and an hour later she fell asleep where she was, right on the shore of the island. The sun was rising over the swamp when she awakened the following morning, and she sat up with difficulty, cramped by her uncomfortable position in sleep. "I might as well be dead--with Slats," she thought, morbidly, as she viewed the desolation around her. Again she tried to rise, when the soft sound of a paddle, dipping into the quiet water attracted her attention. She waited breathlessly. Were the boys coming back so soon? Not long afterward a canoe came into sight. Susie's heart leaped with joy when she recognized who was guiding it. The Doc! "Doc!" she cried. "Bill Rickers!" she added, using the man's real name. "It's Susie!" The man pulled up to the island, amazed at finding her there. In the dawning light he saw the autogiro, lying half on its side. "Where's Slats?" he demanded. "Dead," answered the girl, immediately. "We had a wreck.... Will you take me with you?" she begged. "I'm almost crazy here all by myself." "I wanted to make a get-away alone," he muttered. "You have the money!" she cried, jumping at once to the correct conclusion. "Where are the other two men?" "Asleep at Black Jack Island." "And where are you going?" "Out of the swamp--across the state, and then over to our island. The yacht's due there tomorrow--I want to be ready to go with it." "O.K. with me," agreed Susie, as if she had been invited to go. "Let's push off now--or wait--we'll eat some breakfast. There's beans and cold tea." "Maybe you could be some use," remarked the man, as he ate the meager breakfast. "If we could get a plane. And I am sorry for you, Kid--all alone here with Slats dead." Susie gave him no chance to change his mind. Hobbling out to the little "house" where the boys had put the blanket and the extra food, she picked up the former, smoothed her dress and her hair, and returned to announce herself ready. They pushed off again, following the little stream out of the swamp. "How do you expect to get across the state?" asked the girl, wearily, when late that afternoon, they brought their canoe to a landing. She had slept a little in the boat, but she was still very tired. "Hitch-hike, I reckon," was the reply. "If we go hirin' any cars, somebody might get suspicious. Once at the coast, I count on rentin' a little fishing-boat from some fellow--one big enough to take us to the island." "I can't hitch-hike," objected Susie. "Don't then,--stay here," answered the man, indifferently. "You know I can't do that, either. Let's go to that house over there, and see if we can't get some supper. Maybe they have an old Ford or a team of horses." "You foot the bill?" he asked, shrewdly. With all that money in his possession, this man had no intention of spending any of it on anyone but himself. Susie considered a moment. She hadn't any money at all--she always got what she wanted from her husband. But she owned some costly jewelry. "I'll give you this diamond," she offered, "if you get me safe out of the country. And no walkin'!" "O.K.," he muttered, his greedy eyes gleaming at the sight of the beautiful jewel. "You win. Go ask the woman yourself." It was thus, by strange coincidence, that Susie and the Doc rode across Georgia that evening in the same Ford that had driven Linda and the boys to Jacksonville the night before. They reached a seaport town a little after midnight, and Susie succeeded in finding a house to stay in, though her companion preferred to remain out-doors, for he said he "didn't trust nobody." In the morning, when she joined him, he had rented an old motor-boat from a fisherman. "Rent" was the word he used, but he had not the slightest intention of returning it. "You can run her, Susie," he said. "You're better at engines than I am, and she'll need coaxing. I'll steer." It was a difficult cruise, for at times the engine coughed and died, and Susie had to try all sorts of methods to start her up again. When they finally came within sight of the island, the motor sputtered its last and refused to function any longer. The man managed to get the boat inshore by riding the waves, and using the oars kept at the bottom of the boat for just such an emergency. About the time Linda Carlton and Dot Crowley were eating their lunch on Black Jack Island, Susie and the Doc were making their landing. They pulled in at the opposite shore from the one which the girls later used in the autogiro. The man's first concern was with the hiding-place where he expected to find the boxes of jewels. His disappointment was keen when he discovered that they had been taken away. "The cops has found us out!" he snarled angrily at Susie, as if it were her fault. "They'll be back again--I'll bet you! We gotta get out of here!" "How?" demanded Susie. "Not in that boat?" "Nope. Maybe the yacht will be along early, but it ain't likely. It usually runs after dark." Dumping his bags in the sand not far from the hole, he tried to think what would be best to do. "We gotta act quick, Susie--if the cops come. No use tryin' to put up a fight--with only one gun, and them two bags to guard.... You watch on that other shore, and I'll go back to the one we came in on. Whatever they come in--airplane or boat--we gotta swipe. Hide if you see anything comin', give 'em a chance to get into the island--and grab their boat. Give me a signal----" "How?" she interrupted. "You take the gun, and shoot when you're ready to push off.... If I see anybody on my side, I'll whistle, as near like a bird as I can." He grinned to himself; if the police came in anything but an airplane, he wouldn't bother with Susie. Let her face the music! "O.K. But I couldn't run, Doc. Don't forget that." "I ain't forgettin'," he returned. They separated, and for two hours waited tensely, keeping a sharp look-out for the rescuing yacht, hoping against hope that it would arrive before the police. But at three o'clock their worst fears were realized. Susie saw the autogiro coming towards them, and hobbled off into the depths of the island to conceal herself. Lying flat on the sand, she was not able to identify the people who got out of the plane, but she could see that they both wore riding-breeches, and she believed they were men. So she kept still until they had disappeared into the underbrush. Then she began to creep laboriously, in a round-about fashion, to the autogiro. Susie's progress was slow; she did not reach the plane until after Linda and Dot had succeeded in emptying the bags of the money, and refilled them with sand. The girls had just recognized the man on the shore, and were creeping farther into the island, out of sight of him, when the shot of the pistol rang out above the roar of the ocean. They had no way of knowing that Susie had fired it. A moment later they heard the rustle and crackle of underbrush, as the man came towards them. From her hiding place, now some distance from the bags, Linda raised her head cautiously, and saw the thief retrieve the bags with a grab. Then he dashed back to the shore, circled the island on the harder sand, and reached the opposite shore, where the autogiro was standing. "Why doesn't he come after us?" whispered Linda, in amazement. "He will soon, I'm afraid," replied Dot hoarsely, clutching her revolver tightly. "But I'm going to shoot if he does!" "So am I," answered Linda, calmly. "We've got the advantage--we're hidden." Tensely they waited for five minutes--possibly ten; then something they had not thought of happened. The engine of the autogiro began to roar! "They're stealing the Ladybug!" cried Linda, aghast at such a calamity. "Susie must be with him! Dot, we can't let them do that!" Regardless of the danger, Linda jumped up excitedly, and rushed to a clearing, where she had a view of the shore. She was just in time to see her beloved autogiro taxi along the beach and rise into the air. Dot dashed to her side, and the two girls stood together in helpless agony of spirit. "Prisoners!" cried Dot, at last, dropping her useless revolver into the sand. "Robinson Crusoes!" added Linda, bitterly. "No better off! No plane!" "With thousands of dollars!" groaned her companion, ironically. "Where money is no good at all!" CHAPTER XIII _The Broken Motor-Boat_ The two girls continued to stand perfectly still on the sand, gazing at the retreating autogiro, which apparently was flying out farther over the ocean, and circling about in a strange manner. "Why don't they fly towards the coast--towards Georgia?" demanded Dot, in bewilderment. Linda took her spyglasses out of her pocket, and squinted through them at the plane. "I see a boat!" she exclaimed. "It must be that yacht the gang had arrangements with--to pick up the stuff they steal.... Yes, and that's another island.... Look, Dot--see if I'm right." The other girl took the glasses, and confirmed Linda's statement. "Yes, it is.... And the Ladybug's landing on it.... Two people getting out--must be Susie and the Doc--and boarding the boat.... Linda! They're leaving the plane on the island!" It was true indeed; taking turns at the glasses, the girls watched the yacht push off into the ocean. "And here we are--and there's the Ladybug!" remarked Linda, grimly. "Just out of reach! The question is--how to get to her." "Swim," suggested Dot. "Maybe you could, Dot. But I'd be afraid of sharks." "No, I don't think I'll try it either. Besides, the currents probably awfully strong." "Oh, if Jackson and Hal would only rescue us now!" lamented Linda. "I wouldn't treat them a bit coolly." The truth of that situation flashed upon Dot. "Was it Jackson Carter who rescued you before, Linda?" she asked. Linda blushed. "Yes--it was," she admitted. "Then why did you treat him so cruelly? I should think you would have been everlastingly grateful." "I was. Till his mother snubbed me--and he even doubted that I was a nice girl, just because I was traveling about alone. Then, when you introduced me, he wanted to be friends. Naturally I was hurt." "I don't blame you! But Mrs. Carter is terribly old-fashioned." While they were talking they had been slowly advancing towards the beach. Suddenly Linda spied a pile of articles near the spot where the autogiro had taken off. "Look, Dot!" she cried. "There's our stuff on the shore! The basket! My over-night bag--and I guess that other box is my tool kit, that I always keep in the plane! Come on!" Breathlessly they dashed down to the shore and found that their belongings had indeed been tossed out of the autogiro. "This proves that Susie's our friend!" cried Linda, hopefully. "She must have done this." "Fine friend--to steal the plane!" returned Dot. "She didn't have to go with that man!" "Maybe not.... I'm afraid I can't understand her," mourned Linda. "Half good, and half bad----" "Don't worry about Susie," urged her companion. "We have enough to think about for ourselves.... Still, it is nice that we eat tonight. Aren't we lucky to have that food?" Dot's forced cheerfulness brought their wretched plight back to Linda. How selfish she had been, to drag this other girl into this wretched business, when she came South to enjoy a holiday! "Oh, Dot!" she wailed, "I can't tell you how sorry I am--about bringing you in on this! I had no right to let you come. Your mother will never forgive me. It was different with Lou. When she set out on those wild adventures with me, her parents knew what to expect." "Cheer up, we're not dead yet," was the reassuring reply. "Things aren't so black. Our enemy is safely out of the country, I take it, and Captain Magee is sure to look us up soon, when he doesn't hear from us. Besides, a friendly boat may come along at any minute." "Dot, you're one girl in a thousand!" cried Linda, giving her chum a hug. "You're just an old peach, not to be complaining. And for my own sake, I'm so thankful you're with me! Just imagine how I'd feel all alone!" "Well, let's enjoy ourselves while the food lasts. Let's carry it inshore farther, and find a camping place. You have matches in your pocket?" "Always!" replied Linda, thinking of her experience in Canada, when she had lost her matches with her plane. "I keep my pockets as full as a man's now, so if I am separated from my plane, I'm not helpless." "Wise girl! You're learning, Linda. In a year or two you can do exploring, like Byrd--if there are any places left to explore." "I guess Aunt Emily will make me sit home with folded hands after this," remarked Linda, soberly. "If we aren't rescued soon, it will be bound to get into the newspapers." She stooped over and opened her tool-box, in which she carried all sorts of things besides actual tools. A flash-light, a knife, wire and string, even nails and nuts. And down in the corner she found several cans of food, which she thought the bandits had taken out when they emptied the plane of its gas that first day in the swamp. "This is going to be a big help," she said. "We might even build a boat----" "Out of underbrush?" asked Dot, sarcastically. "Why, there isn't a decent tree on the whole island." "I'm afraid you're right," sighed Linda. "Well, come on--let's get farther in, and take this money out of our clothing. Money can be a nuisance sometimes," she added, jokingly. They picked up their possessions, Linda taking the tool-box, and Dot the bag and basket of food, and hunted the shadiest spot they could find for their camp. Then they set about diligently unloading the money, and stuffing it into the over-night bag, which they first emptied of its contents. "Let's see what we have to keep us alive," suggested Dot, peering into the basket. "Three quarters of a chicken, ten oranges, almost a whole cake, four bananas, and eight rolls, besides that stuff you found. And one thermos bottle full of water--and another half full." "It's the lack of water that's going to make it hardest," observed Linda. "If only the ocean weren't salty." "Well, maybe we shan't even need all this! If we rig up some kind of signal of distress----" "What shall we use? Clothing?" "We might take hundred dollar bills," laughed Dot. "They're the most worthless things we have now." "True. Only think how glad the people will be to get them back. Mrs. Carter, for instance.... I have it!" exclaimed Linda, brightly. "Our pajamas! Lucky we put them into the bag! We won't need them in the day-time, and no boat could see a signal at night anyway." "Good idea!" approved her chum. "Now let's leave all this stuff here, and explore the island. We might find something--and anyhow, it will give us something to do." Arm in arm they returned to the beach, where the sand was harder, and began to circle the island. They had gone half way around--to the opposite shore--when they both spied the old motor boat at the same moment. So great was their joy that they jumped up and down, hugging each other wildly. "Of course that's what the man came in!" cried Linda. "We might have known he and Susie couldn't swim the ocean!" They started to race to the boat, and arrived together. Dot immediately set about examining it for leaks, while Linda gave her attention to the engine. "It's broken," she said. "But I'm sure I can fix it. You know how I love to take motors apart. Just give me a day----" "Darling, you can have a week if you want!" agreed Dot, wild with happiness and relief. "We can make our food last." "A day or maybe two ought to be enough. Then we can get to that other island and retrieve the Ladybug, before anybody even misses us!" "It seems to be pretty sound," said Dot. "No leaks, or anything. And there are even a couple of oars in the bottom, if the engine won't go." "Oars wouldn't take us far, with such a heavy boat. But I'm sure I can fix the motor, and there's a can of gasoline here, besides what's in the tank.... But I don't believe I better start now--I'd just get it apart, and the daylight would be gone. I'll get up early tomorrow...." "Suits me," agreed the other. "Now let's go back to our camp and fix some supper." Both girls felt exceedingly cheerful as they collected sticks and lighted a fire. From one of Linda's cans they took out tea, but the rest they left unopened. The beans and jam and biscuits would keep until after the picnic food was gone. "I have a bright idea," remarked Dot, as she ate a leg of chicken. "Why couldn't we make chicken soup, out of the bones and sea-water? You have to put salt in it anyway, don't you?" "Yes, but I'm afraid it would be too salty. It would make us so thirsty we'd want to drink all our water at once.... Still, we might try. We wouldn't be wasting anything." "Too bad we haven't sore throats," said Dot, still in a mood for joking. "Sore throats!" repeated Linda, in amazement. "What's the connection between chicken soup and sore throats?" "Nothing--I was only trying to think up ways to use salt water. We always have to gargle with salt water, at home, when we have sore throats. Doesn't your Aunt Emily make you do that?" Her companion laughed. "No, we always use Listerine. But it's an idea. Think up some more, Dot--we'll get some uses for it yet!" They drank very sparingly of the water in the thermos bottle--one cup apiece--and decided to limit themselves to that at each meal. Sometimes they would substitute oranges--how thankful they were that they had brought so many! Their light-hardheartedness diminished as the sun went down and darkness settled over the island. The loneliness of the night, the solemn roar of the ocean, the isolation of the island, appalled them. Not a human being except themselves--not a human sound! But they had each other, and this comfort was so overwhelming to Linda, that it shut out all her other troubles. She could not help exulting every few minutes over the joy of having a companion, and Dot was thankful that she was there, so long as Linda had to meet with such a fate. Yes, surely, they would make the best of things. They slept well that night, for the sand, covered with leaves the girls had plucked, made a soft bed. A breeze from the ocean was so cooling that Linda had to pull their slickers over them as a covering. The stars shone in a friendly sky; hand in hand, as Linda and Lou had so often slept, the two girls dropped off into unconsciousness. Their first thought upon awakening, after remembering where they were, was the autogiro. Their second was the motor-boat. They could not eat any breakfast until they had made sure that both of these were still safe. "That island doesn't look very far away, does it?" Dot remarked, after they had satisfied themselves upon these two questions. "No, it doesn't," agreed Linda, taking out her spyglasses. "Only, you can't tell by appearances--they're so deceiving on the ocean." They went back to their camp and breakfasted on oranges and rolls, finishing off with chocolate cake. "Because we might as well enjoy it while it is fresh," Dot said laughingly. Neither girl ever had to worry about indigestion. All day long Linda worked on the engine, with her companion at her side, watching her in admiration. All that day and the next. On the evening of the twenty-ninth of June she announced that she was finished. The engine was condescending to run! "Tomorrow we get the Ladybug!" Linda announced, exultantly. "And get back to Jacksonville in time to keep our engagements for July first!" They were very happy as they sat beside their camp fire that night, eating their supper of baked beans and crackers and oranges. Happy and light-hearted, never thinking to glance at the sky, and to guess the meaning of the dark clouds that were gathering. Had they only done so, they might have gone to the autogiro that night in their repaired motor-boat--and saved their relatives and friends all the anguish and anxiety that they were to experience during the coming days. But neither Linda nor Dot gave the weather a thought; they went to sleep that night in the joyful expectation of returning to Jacksonville the following day. At dawn the storm came, pouring down upon them in torrents, arousing the ocean to terrifying waves, shutting out the sight of the island where the autogiro was waiting--imprisoning the girls once more in their desolate loneliness. And now practically all of their food was gone! CHAPTER XIV _Searching Parties_ When Linda Carlton and Dorothy Crowley left Jacksonville Airport on the morning of June twenty-seventh in the Ladybug, and flew into the Okefenokee Swamp, they fully expected to telephone to their families that night, or at least to send a wire to them, as they had promised. So when Miss Emily Carlton heard nothing from her niece she became anxious, and directed her chauffeur to drive her to Mrs. Crowley's cottage. Both women were established at Green Falls for the summer, which was the favorite resort of all Linda's friends from Spring City. It was there that the girl had called her aunt from Jacksonville, the night that Dot and the Mackays had arrived. Only one telegram had she received since that time. Mrs. Crowley, who was less inclined to be nervous than Miss Carlton, tried to reassure the latter, saying that she realized how busy the girls would be. But when June twenty-eighth passed without any word from them, she too became alarmed, and together the two women put in a long distance call to Captain Magee at Jacksonville. Briefly he told them what he knew--of Linda's decision to go "scouting," as she called it. And of her request for the revolvers. The shock of that piece of news was almost too much for Miss Carlton. She jumped to the conclusion that the girls were dead. "Aren't you doing a thing to find them, Captain?" she demanded, harshly. "I was thinking about it," he replied. "But after all, they've only been gone two days----" "You don't know my niece!" interrupted the unhappy woman. "Linda always wires or telephones me every day, when she goes on these flying trips. She doesn't forget. It's because she can't--she has been injured or killed!" "I hope not," he replied. "But I will send a plane over the Okefenokee Swamp tomorrow, Miss Carlton," he promised. The two women gazed at each other in helpless dismay at the conclusion of this conversation. What could they possibly do, aside from informing the newspapers--a decision which they carried out immediately. Accordingly, on June twenty-ninth, every newspaper in the country stated the fact that Linda Carlton, the famous aviatrix who had flown to Paris alone, was missing again--somewhere in Georgia--probably in the Okefenokee Swamp, with a chum, Miss Dorothy Crowley of Spring City, who was also a pilot. The unhappy news instantly produced the effect which Miss Carlton hoped it would accomplish. It aroused no fewer than five searching parties, all bent upon locating these two popular girls. Captain Magee's men were the first to go. Summoning Sergeant Worth, he commandeered a plane from the airport, and directed the pilot to fly over the swamp, searching from the air by means of spyglasses. The second party was composed of the girls' fathers, both of whom were in New York City at the time. Mr. Crowley telephoned Mr. Carlton, and after sending a wire to their families, they boarded a Florida train together. The third volunteers were two young men at Green Falls, two college boys who considered Linda and Dot their special girl-friends, though neither of them was engaged, Jim Valier and Ralph Clavering heard the sad news at the out-door pool at Green Falls, just as they were about to join a group of young people for a swim. Kitty Hulbert, Ralph's married sister, read the head-lines aloud. "Jim," muttered Ralph, when Kitty finished, "let's do something! We can take a plane to Florida--and go on a search from there." "O.K.," agreed the other boy, and quietly and quickly the two young men disappeared from the group. The story came to the Mackays in Washington, where Ted had business on his return from Georgia. The instant that Louise read it, she jumped up in excitement. "We must go, Ted!" she cried. "You can get your vacation now." "I'll wire immediately," he agreed, without an instant's hesitation, and he went out to make the necessary arrangements and to order his plane in readiness. The fifth and last party was none other than Linda's two latest admirers, the two young men she had mentioned to Dot in the hope of a rescue--Jackson Carter and Hal Perry. All in all, it ought to have been enough to satisfy Miss Carlton that every effort was being made to find the girls and to bring them back to safety. The airplane from the police department was the first of these groups to get into action, the first to enter the swamp. Yet it did not actually enter it, but merely flew above it, for the pilot, less experienced than Linda herself, did not believe it possible to come down on one of those islands. For hours, however, he circled about, over the bog, and the cypress-trees, while Sergeant Worth in the rear cock-pit scanned the landscape with his spyglasses. But neither man saw any trace of the autogiro or the girls, and late that afternoon they had to return in discouragement to Captain Magee. "I couldn't even locate that camp on the island," Worth said. "The one where we got the prisoners, you know. Unless you have the exact directions, it's hard to find anything in that swamp.... And--I don't see much use in trying again." Captain Magee looked exceedingly grave; he was genuinely worried. He blamed himself for letting the girls go alone. But there had been nothing official about the project--he had not really expected that they would run into the criminal. Besides, Linda Carlton had seemed so capable, and both girls were so eager to go. "We mustn't give up, Worth," he said quietly. "It's more important to find these girls than a dozen criminals. We owe it to them, to their families--to the whole country. Everybody has admiration and affection for Miss Linda Carlton, after all she has done.... You'll have to go back tomorrow--or get another man, if you feel too discouraged." "No, I'm only too glad to help," the other assured him. "I would do anything in the world for Miss Carlton. But I don't see how it can do any good. A scouting party in boats would be much more likely to be successful." "We'll try that, too, as soon as I can get some men together. But tomorrow you fly out over the ocean to that island where the thieves had the jewels. The girls might be stranded there. Take another pilot, and a bigger plane." Worth looked doubtful. "We haven't any way of locating that island, either," he said. "It was Miss Carlton who took us there before, and I have no idea where it is." "Just do your best, Worth," urged the Captain. "Fly around all the islands near the Georgia coast, keeping a sharp look-out for the autogiro." "Rain or shine? It looks like a storm tomorrow." "Yes, whatever the weather, you must go--or get someone else." So, in spite of the terrible downpour and the high winds of June thirtieth, a cabin monoplane flew across Georgia and out over the ocean to a group of islands just off the coast. Three men were aboard--two experienced pilots, one of whom was also a mechanic--besides the police officer. Leaving the coast behind, they flew out into the grayness that was ocean and sky. The waves were high, the sea rough and angry, and the rain was coming down in sheets, blinding their vision, but they pressed on, two of the men keeping their spyglasses on the water, watching for islands. They passed over several, but they were small, with little or no place to land. Eagerly the men watched for some sign of human life, some signal, some glimpse of the autogiro. "They'd never be alive if we did find them," remarked Worth, gloomily. "And if they did run into that gangster, he'd surely have made away with them." "If only it would clear up," grumbled the pilot. "So we could see something!" They were flying much lower now, for it was comparatively safe over the water, and despite the weather, they were able to spot the islands. All of a sudden the mechanic uttered a sharp cry. "There she is! Look! Over there!" "Miss Carlton?" demanded Worth, excitedly. "Where?" "Not the girl! The plane--the autogiro! See--that island to the west! See the wind-mill on top?" "By George! You're right!" agreed Worth, a thrill running up and down his spine. Thank Heaven, he hadn't given up! The pilot directed the plane over the island and circled about, landing finally some distance from the autogiro. A glance at the latter assured them that it had not been wrecked. Why, then, hadn't the girls come back? Was it possible that all this scare had risen to alarm the world for the simple reason that Linda Carlton had run out of gas? The three men climbed out of the cabin and shouted as loud as they could, since the girls had evidently failed to hear their plane, above the noise of the storm and the roar of the ocean. Eagerly they waited for a reply. But when none came, fear crept over them all. Had the girls died of starvation, or was there foul play of some kind? With gloomy forebodings, they walked about the beach, seeking evidence of some kind to tell the story of what had happened. Finding nothing, the mechanic began to examine the autogiro. She was undamaged, unhurt--everything in order, gasoline in the tank. The engine started easily in answer to his test, and ran smoothly until he turned it off. No, the gallant little Ladybug could not be blamed for whatever disaster had taken place! Then, forgetful of the weather, the three men set out to search the island thoroughly. Buckled in oil-skin coats, they felt protected themselves, but Worth shuddered as he thought of these girls alone in such desolation, with no roof to cover them, no food to satisfy their hunger, or water for their thirst. Gloomy and discouraged they plowed through the wet sand, calling the girls' names. Finally, abandoning the hope of finding them alive, they set themselves to the gruesome task of looking among the underbrush for their bodies. At last they gave up. "We'll fasten a canvas sheet over these bushes, so that we can locate the island, and we'll pin a note on it to say that we'll be back," decided Worth, "in case they are alive. One of you men take the autogiro, and the other the plane, and we'll go back now." The rain was abating somewhat, and the two planes made the return trip without any mishaps, arriving at the Jacksonville Airport before dark that evening. A wildly enthusiastic crowd, which had collected in spite of the weather, greeted them with resounding cheers. The Ladybug was back again--safe and sound! Women cried with joy, men threw their hats into the air, children clapped their hands and whistled. In a miniature way it was a demonstration like the one given Lindbergh upon his arrival at the French Flying Field. But it was a false rejoicing, and the gayety was quickly changed into despair when the pilot reported that the girls themselves had not been found. Weary and disappointed, the crowd turned away, and Sergeant Worth told the sad story to the newspaper reporters who waited to interview him, before he returned to the police headquarters. Captain Magee was terribly affected by the news. Linda Carlton might have been his own daughter, from the grief which he could not conceal. Two well-dressed young men were waiting in his office when Worth arrived, and they listened to the grim account. They were the first of the rescue parties to arrive from the North--Jim Valier and Ralph Clavering. "These two young men are friends of Miss Carlton and Miss Crowley," explained the Captain. "They want to go into the swamp tomorrow in a boat.... Perhaps the girls have reached the main-land, or perhaps that autogiro was stolen, and they never were on the island at all.... Anyhow, we'll search the swamp again. Will you go with them, Worth?" "Certainly," agreed the sergeant, though he felt as if it would be fruitless. Those girls were at the bottom of the ocean, he was sure! "A light motor-boat ought to be able to go up that little stream," continued the Captain. "I will have one ready at the edge of the swamp tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. If you young men will come here at nine, I'll send you over there in a car." Jim and Ralph expressed their thanks to the officer, and promised to be on hand at the arranged time in the morning. But, like Sergeant Worth, they were exceedingly discouraged; they had little hope of success. When they awakened the following morning, which was the first day of July--the day that Linda should have reported to Atlanta--they found that it was still raining, although the storm had ceased, giving way to a dismal drizzle. What an unpleasant day to start off on an excursion like theirs, that was gloomy at best! Yet the weather did not deter them from their purpose, nor did it stop Hal Perry and Jackson who started earlier that morning in their canoe. But it was difficult with a motor-boat, and all three of the men were unfamiliar with the swamp and its little streams. No one knew where to turn off, as Jackson and Hal had learned from many vacations, and after pushing ahead for two or three hours, they found themselves off their course--grounded. "It's no use," muttered Worth. "We can't make it in a motor-boat. Magee's never been in the swamp, or he would have known. We'll have to turn back and get a canoe!" "A whole day wasted!" growled Ralph angrily, as if it were the sergeants fault. "A day! When every minute is precious!" "Well, it's nobody's fault," remarked Worth. "The sooner we get back the better." "Nobody's fault!" repeated Ralph. "No--ignorance is O.K.--if it pertains to the police! They shouldn't know a thing about the country around them!" "No use getting mad at policemen, Ralph," drawled good-natured Jim Valier. "Haven't you learned from driving a car that it doesn't pay? Besides, they're always right." "No, we're often very wrong," said Worth, humbly and seriously. "And maybe you don't think I care, Mr. Clavering, about finding those girls. But I do! I haven't thought about a thing but that for the last three days." Ralph made no answer, but applied his attention to searching the landscape with his glasses. But, like everybody else thus far, he found nothing. Discouraged and silent, they managed to push the boat into the deeper water and to turn it around. All that afternoon they spent in retracing the progress they had made, and returned to the Captain's office just before supper. "You want to try it again in canoes?" asked Captain Magee. "Yes," replied Ralph. "Without any of your police this time. No use taking an extra man--it only means more provisions to carry." "True. But you must be careful of snakes and alligators." The boys looked none too pleased at the idea, but when they remembered that Linda and Dot, if still alive, would be subjected to the same perils, they were all the more eager to go. This time, they decided, they would do it scientifically; they would go prepared with a map of the swamp, equipment, food, and rifles. And above all, a compass! And they would not give up until they had searched every part of that dismal Okefenokee Swamp! So, cheered by the optimism of youth and the promise of another day, the boys slept well that night. CHAPTER XV _The Empty Island_ The same morning upon which Ralph Clavering and Jim Valier went into the Okefenokee Swamp in a canoe, the fourth searching party arrived. Delayed by a stop-over in Norfolk, Virginia, where Ted had some business for the company, he and Louise did not reach the Jacksonville Airport until the morning of July second. Leaving the plane at the field, they taxied immediately to the City Hall, arriving there a little after ten. They did not expect any good news about the missing girls, for they had read the papers and had inquired the latest word at the airport. They had gazed at the Ladybug, so forlorn and desolate in the hangar, and their fears were dark. Even Louise, who was usually optimistic, believed this time it was the end. Yet how dreadful it was! That Linda Carlton, so young, with such a glorious future before her, should perish like this before she was twenty! When she had the whole world at her feet--a world she had won not through mere beauty and charm--although she was both beautiful and charming, but through her courage, her ability, her modesty! Louise made no attempt to hide the tears that rolled down her cheeks; even her husband's strong arm about her shoulders could not stop her sobs. "Don't give up yet, dear!" he urged. "Why, you and I haven't even had our try." The girl smiled bravely through her tears. "I know, Ted dear. I'll try to remember." Her eyes brightened with genuine hope. "It always has been _you_ who have rescued her! Maybe you will this time." "We're going to make a bigger effort than ever before," he reassured her. "Because this time I have you to help me." The minute they entered the City Hall they saw that something had happened. Louise's heart gave a wild leap of excitement. Were Linda and Dot safe? But no. If they were, somebody would be shouting the news from the house-tops--and no one was looking particularity jubilant. There was a crowd outside, but it was not an exulting one. Was it possible that they had found the girls--dead? In spite of the heat of the day, a cold shiver of horror crept over Louise, and she clung tightly to her husband's arm. They had little difficulty in passing through the crowd to the captain's office, for the latter had given orders to his men that Miss Carlton's and Miss Crowley's friends and relatives were to be admitted immediately, whenever they appeared. As they entered the room, they saw half a dozen officials standing around, several in plain clothes, with only badges to identify them. And on a chair by the desk, opposite Captain Magee, a strange young woman was sitting. The girl was flashily dressed--or over-dressed--in the latest style. A long green gown trailed almost to the floor, not quite concealing a bandaged ankle. Her little, off-the-face hat of the same bright color was decorated with a diamond bar-pin. Her lips and her cheeks were painted, and there was a gap in her mouth where two front teeth had been knocked out. The Captain nodded to the Mackays to sit down, and he continued the questions he was putting to this young woman. "You might as well confess if you know where that man is--with all the bank's money!" he was saying. "I know your scheme. Pretending you don't know where he escaped, so that you won't be locked up, and can get back to him!" His eyes narrowed, and he lowered his voice to an uncanny whisper. "But we'll keep you here till you tell where that thief is!" "I can't tell you--when I don't know!" she persisted. "He ran off from me--he never wanted me with him anyway. I'll swear to it, Sir, if you think I'm lyin'.... Besides, he hasn't got that money." "Then where is it?" "Linda--and the cops she had with her--tricked us, double-crossed us, by swiping the money and fillin' the bags with sand. The Doc was in such a Hurry to get away from those cops, he never found it out till we were on that yacht. He was afraid to go back." Captain Magee leaned forward eagerly at the mention of Linda Carlton's name. She was far more important than the money that had been stolen. "Miss Carlton?" he demanded. "With the police? Where did you see her?" Susie shook her head. "No, I didn't actually see her. But I saw her Bug, with her stuff in it--a bag and a basket of food. I tossed them out of the plane, too, so she wouldn't starve when we swiped the plane. You can put that down to my credit." "You stole the autogiro?" "No. Only borrowed it. Left it on an island--you can get it when you want it." "We have it.... Now, suppose instead of my asking you questions, you tell us the whole story, Miss----?" "_Mrs._ Slider, if you please," she said. "I am a widow." She lowered her eyes dramatically, enjoying the sensation of holding the center of the stage. "Well," she began, "after my husband got killed in the plane accident that Linda probably told you about, she and I got to be quite good friends. I even promised to leave the gang and go straight, for I never really took part in any of their stealing myself--believe it or not! Linda left me on that island in the swamp, and promised to come back for me when she came for the Bug." "But you weren't there when Miss Carlton returned!" Captain Magee reminded her. "No. I got terrible lonesome. If you ever spend a night in the swamp with only a dead man for company--oh, he was buried all right, but it was spooky just the same--you'd excuse me for takin' the first way out, Sir. The Doc come along, in his canoe, and I promised him my diamond ring if he'd take me away.... Well, we got out of the swamp in his boat, and hired a Ford across Georgia. Then we took a motor-boat out to that island in the ocean." Everyone waited breathlessly; at last the girl was coming to the part they all longed to hear about--the part of the story in which Linda Carlton figured. Pausing dramatically, Susie asked for a glass of water. "Go on!" urged the captain, as soon as she had drained it. "It was a terrible boat," she finally continued. "An awful old one. You can imagine going ten miles out to sea in a thing like that! The engine gave out----" "Never mind all that!" commanded the officer, impatiently. "Come to the point." "Yes, Sir.... Well, we got to the island finally, and waited for the yacht that was to pick us up and take us to Panama, but before she come along, the autogiro arrived. Linda--and the police, of course." "Did you see them--the police, I mean?" was the next question. "No, we didn't. We were too scared, so we hid till they got out of the plane and searched the island. Then we grabbed the bags and ran for the plane. I flew the Bug out to sea, and in a few minutes we spotted our yacht, and signaled it to stop on another island. That's where we left Linda's plane.... When we got to Panama, the Doc slipped off, and I got caught.... So you see there's nothing to punish _me_ for--you got the autogiro back, and the cops, or Linda, took the money----" "There were no policemen with Miss Carlton," Captain Magee informed Susie. "Only another girl. But they are lost." "They must be still on that island, waiting for you to come for them. Nothing could hurt them, and they had some food...." This was enough for Ted Mackay. Jumping to his feet, he announced his intention of flying there immediately. "Give me the latitude and longitude of that island!" he demanded. "There isn't a moment to lose!" "The what?" asked Susie, wrinkling her nose. "Show me where it is on a map," explained Ted. "Yeah," agreed Susie, pointing out the island on a map of the Georgia coast, which the Captain took from his desk. "But what's the grand rush?" "You've forgotten the storm we just had!" said the young man. "The girls may be sick or dead by this time." "Girls," repeated Susie, significantly. "It beats everything the way they fooled us--in their riding-breeches! If the Doc ever finds out he ran away from a pair of girls----" "Never mind all that, Mrs. Slider," interrupted Captain Magee, signaling to the prison matron to take the girl away.... "Now, Mr. Mackay, is there anything I can do for you, before you go?" "You might get me a taxi," replied Ted. "To take my wife and myself to the airport." "Take my private car," offered the Captain, rising to say good-by. "And good luck to you!" Louise was so excited at the whole occurrence that she could scarcely sit still in the limousine, as it sped over to the airport. "If we only aren't too late! Ted, do you suppose they're starved? What does it feel like to starve to death? Or to die of thirst?" "I wouldn't worry too much about thirst," he reassured her. "Because of that big rain we had. They could get water from it, you know." "I never thought of that!" "The worst is over now, I'm sure," continued Ted. "Five days isn't so long, and the girl said they had food. Besides, it wasn't cold. Think of that time you girls were lost in Canada!" Louise shuddered; she could still remember that long, hopeless night very vividly, when she and Linda had jumped from parachutes down into the snow of the Canadian Woods, and how they had been forced to keep walking to avoid freezing to death. "Still, we found a shack to sleep in. And Linda and Dot haven't even a blanket to cover them in all that storm!" "Well, they were together, that's one thing to be thankful for." "Yes--and I'm glad Linda's companion is Dot. Of all our crowd at Spring City, Dot Crowley is the nicest girl--after Linda, of course. Most of the girls, like Kitty Clavering--Kitty Hulbert, I mean--or Sue Emery, would be pitying themselves so that they'd make Linda miserable. But not Dot. She always sees the bright side of everything." "And wasn't it clever the way they got hold of that money, and fooled that bandit!" exulted Ted. "My, but that was slick. And think what it's going to mean to that bank and its depositors! Because if that fellow hadn't been fooled, he'd have made off with it. I don't believe they'll ever find him now." "I guess nobody will care if he never comes back to the United States!" agreed Louise. They arrived at the airport and found the plane in readiness, wheeled out on the runway, and Ted took time to give it an inspection himself, while Louise ran off to get the necessary supplies--some food and water, and a first-aid kit, as a necessary precaution. She borrowed sweaters and knickers from the supply at the airport, for she reasoned that Linda and Dot would be chilled and drenched from the rain. Dry clothing ought to be a god-send, even if they used it only on the short trip back in the plane. Inside of an hour they took off. It was still drizzling, but Ted was such an experienced navigator that he had no difficulty at all in flying in any kind of weather, and he found the island from Susie's directions. Shortly after noon, he brought it down on the beach. A feeling of apprehension stole over Louise, when she saw neither of the girls on the shore to greet them. In spite of the noise of ocean, surely they would have heard the plane! Why weren't they there? Ted turned off the motor, and looked about expectantly. "Do you suppose they're both sick--or injured?" faltered Louise. She did not add, "or dead," but she could not help thinking it. "Maybe they didn't hear us. Let's shout together--'Linda and Dot!' If they hear their first names, they'll know we're friends, maybe recognize our voices. You see they may be hiding--for fear it's that gangster returning." "I never thought of that," replied Louise, more hopefully. "All right--both together when I count three. "One--two--three!" "LINDA AND DOT!" Their voices rose clearly over the splashing of the waves, and they waited tensely. But there was no reply! They waited, and tried again.... Still silence.... Louise put out her hand, and grasped her husband's, in fear. "What does it mean?" she cried, in anguish. "Is this surely the right island? There seemed to be a lot of them." "Maybe it isn't" he answered, optimistically. "That girl seemed to be telling the truth--but she was a queer one. Besides, she might not be sure which island it was.... Anyway, we'll search. If Linda and Dot were here, we'll see some evidences of their camp--burnt out fires, or worn paths, or something. Come on, let's start!" Arm in arm they began their search, stepping carefully through the underbrush, now and then stopping to call, "Linda" or "Dot," in the hope that the girls might only have been asleep. They did not have to go far before they saw that at least someone had been here recently, for there was a path worn through the underbrush. Farther and farther in they went, until they came to a small cluster of pine trees. And here, sure enough, they found the remains, or rather the ashes, for the place had been left neat, of a camp fire. The sight of this forsaken spot brought sudden tears to Louise's eyes. "They've been dragged off and killed! I just know it!" she moaned. "Don't cry, please, dear," begged Ted. "We're not sure yet. This may not be their island--their fire. Somebody else may have camped here. Let's look about a bit." Slowly they walked around the place, examining the ground for some forgotten belonging that would identify the former campers. Noticing a pile of leaves where someone had evidently made a bed, Louise kicked them aside with her foot, and she saw an empty matchbox. It wasn't much, but it was something, and she leaned over and picked it up. The letters on the lid leaped out at her like living tongues. Marked with a purple rubber-stamp over the trade-mark, were the words: "J. Vetter, Spring City, Ohio." The explanation was only too plain. No one but Dot and Linda could have used that box. Louise dropped to the ground in an agony of wretchedness, and buried her face in her hands. Even the optimistic Ted found all his hopes blasted by this little box. Gloom spread over his features, and he sat down beside his wife, comforting her as best he could. For fifteen minutes, perhaps, they remained motionless, overcome by the thought of their friends' awful death. The food which they had brought with the idea of sharing a gay picnic lunch with Dot and Linda was forgotten. Though they had not eaten since breakfast, neither Ted nor Louise could have swallowed a mouthful. At last Ted got up, gently raising Louise to her feet. Each silently decided to make one more search--a gruesome one this time--for the girls' bodies. Round and round the island they walked, looking carefully, among the underbrush, near to the beach, even scanning the water with their spyglasses. But they saw nothing. That one matchbox had been their only evidence. Like good campers to the end, Linda and Dot had burned every trace of rubbish. It was mid-afternoon when Ted realized that Louise was faint from hunger and thirst, and he made her sit down while he brought some supplies from the plane. She drank the water eagerly, but she could not eat. For Louise Mackay was going through the deepest tragedy of her young life: her first experience with the loss of a loved one. During the entire flight homeward she kept her hand on Ted's knee, but she did not utter a word. CHAPTER XVI _Searching the Ocean_ Louise and Ted Mackay did not go to the police headquarters that night. They were too miserable, too discouraged by the outcome of their excursion to the island. After leaving the plane at the airport, Ted called Captain Magee on the telephone, and briefly related the results of their flight. Supper was a dreary affair for them both. It was only by putting forth a tremendous effort that they ate at all--in an attempt to stave off exhaustion. The ice cream, at least, tasted good to Louise, for she was still very hot. The worst ordeal of all came after the meal, just as the saddened young couple were passing through the hotel lobby to take the elevator to their room. Louise suddenly recognized two familiar figures at the desk, two men who had just arrived with their luggage. Mr. Crowley and Mr. Carlton--the fathers of the two unfortunate girls! The tears which Louise had bravely forced back ever since her collapse at the discovery of the matchbox on the island, rushed to her eyes again. How could they ever tell these two men the terrible news? For an instant she hoped they would not see her or her husband, that she could at least put off the evil tidings until the morning. But it was not to be. Linda's father recognized her instantly, and came quickly towards her. "Louise!" he exclaimed, holding out his hand. "And Ted! Any news?" Louise could not answer for the sob that was choking her, and Ted, shy as he always was, knew it was his duty to explain. "Bad news, Sir," he said. "We had information this morning that the girls were stranded on an island in the ocean, and that their autogiro had been stolen from them. As you probably read in the newspaper, it was found yesterday.... We--Lou and I--flew to the island where the girls were supposed to be, this afternoon, and found evidences of their camp--burnt out fires--but no trace of the girls." Mr. Carlton looked grave. "But they may have been rescued," suggested Mr. Crowley, who had the same optimistic disposition as his daughter. "Possibly," admitted Ted. "But if they had, wouldn't we have heard? The whole country is waiting for news of those two brave girls." "I'm afraid you're right," agreed Mr. Carlton, darkly. "Yes, you must be right. Foul play----" "Or the ocean!" put in Louise. "Oh, the cruel, dreadful ocean! If it couldn't swallow Linda up on her flight to Paris, it had to have its revenge now!" "Have you had your dinner, Sir?" asked Ted of Mr. Carlton. "Yes. On the train. Suppose we get our rooms--I'll ask for a private sitting-room--and then we can all go up and discuss the matter together from every angle, and decide upon what is the best thing for us to do." Louise brightened at this ray of hope. "Then you're not going to give up yet, Mr. Carlton?" she inquired. "Never, till we find them--dead or alive. We're going to think of no news as good news." Mr. Crowley nodded his approval. "I have a week's vacation," added Ted, "and I shall be at your service." "Thank you, my boy," answered Mr. Carlton, gratefully. He was a great admirer of Ted Mackay, ever since he had recovered from his prejudice against him because he was the son of a ne'er-do-well. The new-comers made their arrangements at the desk, and were fortunate enough to secure a very pleasant suite. Louise and Ted went up in the elevator with them, and Mr. Carlton ordered coffee to be sent to the room. They settled down into the easy chairs and Louise poured the iced-coffee. The evening was hot, but there were large windows on three sides of the sitting-room, and a lovely breeze was blowing. Mr. Carlton brought out cigars and offered one to Ted. "But I suppose you'd rather have a cigarette," he said, when Ted refused. "No thank you, Sir. I never smoke. A great many of us pilots don't. We want to keep as fit as possible." Mr. Carlton nodded. Linda had never expressed any desire to smoke, and he supposed it was for the same reason. "There are two places where the girls might be," he said slowly, as he puffed on his cigar. "On another of those small islands, off the coast, or in some boat--on the ocean. If they had reached the coast, we should have heard of it." "A boat!" repeated Louise, with sudden inspiration. "There was that broken down motor-boat, that the girl and the gangster used to get to the island! Could Dot and Linda have gone off in that?" "What boat?" demanded Mr. Carlton and Mr. Crowley, both at once. Louise explained by repeating most of the story which they had heard from Susie that morning. "Funny we didn't think of that before," observed Ted. "Come to remember, I didn't see any boat this afternoon. Did you, Lou?" "No, I didn't. And we searched the whole island," she explained to the older men. "We'd surely have seen it if there had been one." "This sounds hopeful!" exclaimed Mr. Crowley, joyfully. "If it didn't have a leak----" "But didn't you say that it was broken?" asked Mr. Carlton. "The girl said the engine was broken, but as far as I know, the boat itself was sound," replied Ted. "Linda could fix the engine!" cried Louise, almost hysterical in her relief. For the first time since the finding of the matchbox, she actually believed that Linda and Dot were still alive. "We'll work on that theory, anyway," decided Mr. Carlton. "And go out on the ocean tomorrow." Before they could discuss their plans any further, the telephone on the desk interrupted them, and Mr. Carlton was informed that there were two young men who wanted to see him--Ralph Clavering and James Valier. "Well, of all things!" exclaimed Mr. Carlton, who had not even known that the boys had started South. "Yes," he added to the clerk on the phone, "ask them to come up right away, by all means." "Who? What?" demanded Louise, eagerly. "Any news?" "I don't know yet. Ralph and Jim are here." "They would be," smiled Louise. Linda could never get away from Ralph Clavering, no matter how far she went. A minute later the boys appeared, dressed in camping clothes, looking very unlike the neat, immaculate young men they always appeared to be at Spring City, or at Green Falls. Even if they took part in athletics at home, their white flannels were always spotless. But now, except for the fact that their faces were clean and shaved, they looked like tramps. Ralph and Jim were just as much surprised to see Ted and Louise as the latter were at their visit. "Where in the world have you been?" demanded Louise, in amazement at their appearance. "You both look as if you had been ship-wrecked and lost besides." "We have," muttered Jim, sinking wearily into a seat, and extending his long legs in front of him. "Please pardon our slouching, Lou--but we're dead." "But where have you been?" repeated Mr. Carlton. "In the Okefenokee Swamp!" answered Ralph. "And if Lou weren't here, I'd tell you what it's like, in no uncertain language!" Mr. Carlton smiled, and yet he was horror stricken. If these boys found it so dreadful, what must it have seemed like to Linda? "Tell us about it!" he urged. "But wait, have you had your supper?" "Yes. We had food along with us. We left the canoe at the edge of the stream, and taxied back here, because we have rooms in this hotel. They told us at the desk that 'Miss Carlton's father had arrived,' so we didn't wait even to change our clothing. We had to get the news of the girls immediately." "I'm afraid there isn't much to tell," sighed Louise. "At least nothing hopeful." Briefly she repeated what she and Ted had been doing all afternoon, as a result of Susie's capture and story, and she displayed the matchbox, with the name of Spring City stamped on its lid. "I recall Linda's getting that from her aunt," remarked Ralph, dolefully. "She asked for half a dozen boxes, and Miss Carlton got them right away, so she wouldn't forget." "Now tell us what you boys have been doing," urged Mr. Crowley. "And Louise, why don't you pour them some of this iced-coffee? It really is very refreshing." Briefly Ralph told his story, aided now and then by Jim. Their second expedition into the swamp had been as useless as their first, though they admitted the superiority of a canoe over a motor-boat, if one knew where to go. But they had become hopelessly lost in a couple of hours, in spite of their maps, and, as time passed, they became all the more certain that the girls were not in the swamp. They decided to turn back, in order to concentrate their efforts on the islands near where the autogiro had been found. Susie's story naturally confirmed their suspicions, and they instantly agreed with Mr. Carlton to abandon all further search of the Okefenokee. "I believe the thing to do," announced the latter, after serious contemplation, "is to hire a yacht, and cruise all along the Georgia and Florida coast. The most reasonable explanation to me is that Linda and Dot are adrift somewhere in that motor-boat. Either the engine is broken beyond repair, or the gasoline has given out." "Or that terrible storm has wrecked them," faltered Louise, who could not silence her fear of the ocean. "Upset that little boat, and----" "Don't, Lou!" cried Jim. "Don't even think of things like that, unless we find an empty boat!" "I'll try not to," she promised. "Well, whatever has happened, the ocean is the place for us to be, if we hope to rescue the girls," concluded Mr. Carlton, "You all agree on that point?" Everyone assented, and Ralph and Jim expressed their desire to get into action immediately. "We ought to be able to get a yacht tomorrow," continued Mr. Carlton. "Because of the publicity of this affair someone who has one ready will probably be glad to rent it to us on the spot. I think I'll go to the newspaper office tonight, and have the request broadcast by radio." "Great!" exclaimed Louise, jumping up excitedly. "And can we all go with you tomorrow, on the cruise, I mean, Mr. Carlton?" "You can do just as you prefer--go with me, or use your own plane to fly around over the islands." "I think that would be the better plan for us, Sir," put in Ted. "And we can keep in touch with you by signals." The group separated at last, the older men to call their families by long-distance, the young people to get a good night's sleep after their strenuous day. In the morning they re-assembled at breakfast, when Mr. Carlton announced the good news that he had been offered a yacht by a wealthy man in Jacksonville. "He even refused to take any rent for it, much as I urged him to," he added. "And he's lending us the crew besides. It seems too good to be true." "All of which goes to show just how popular Linda is--with everybody!" explained Louise. "Oh, we simply must find her!" There were no preparations to be made for the cruise, because the owner of the yacht assured Mr. Carlton that everything was in readiness, so by ten o'clock on the morning of July third, the little party, composed of the two fathers and the two boy-friends of the lost girls stepped aboard the boat. It was a beautiful little yacht, complete in every detail. Under any other circumstances the men would have been overjoyed at the prospect of such a pleasant trip. As it was, they were too worried to think of anything but Linda and Dot. "What a marvelous time we could be having if the girls were aboard!" lamented Ralph. "Dance and play bridge all day, every day, with no other fellows to cut in on us, and take them away! I say, Jim, we might even come back engaged if we had a chance like that!" "Much more likely they'd be so sick of us they'd never want to see us again!" returned the other, shrewdly. "No--cruising's all right. But I'd rather be in Green Falls if Linda and Dot were with us." "Maybe this will teach Linda a lesson," grumbled Ralph. Then he suddenly remembered her job, with the Spraying Company in Atlanta. He couldn't pretend to be sorry if she lost it. The speedy little yacht cruised all day along the coast, while the men played bridge, and smoked, and ate the most excellent meals, cooked and served by an efficient staff. But underneath all this comfort ran an under-current of anxiety, especially towards evening, when darkness came on, and no sign of the girls had been seen. Several airplanes had flown over their heads during the day, and once they saw Ted's plane. Dropping low, Louise waved her handkerchief, which was the pre-arranged signal to tell them that the flyers had found nothing, and Ralph waved his in return, conveying the same information. Should they have anything to report, Ted announced that he would put his plane through a series of stunts, and, in the case of the yacht's making a discovery, Jim Valier promised to climb up on the rail. But the airplane and the yacht passed each other with only a dismal fluttering of handkerchiefs. "Something's bound to happen tomorrow," said Jim, as he crawled into his bunk that night. "It'll be the fourth of July!" "By Jove! It will!" exclaimed Ralph. "We ought to get some bang-up excitement!" But the thing that happened was what they had all been silently dreading--the fate which only Louise had mentioned, that night in the hotel sitting-room. About noon--off the coast of Florida--Jim Valier spotted an overturned old motor-boat, bouncing helplessly about on the ocean! CHAPTER XVII _On to Cuba_ When the storm came at dawn on the thirtieth of June, it awakened Linda first. As the rain descended upon the slickers that covered the girls, and upon their faces, Dot merely buried her head sleepily under the raincoat, but Linda sat bolt upright on the bed of leaves. The wind was howling about the lonely island, and the rain was pouring down in sheets. The blackness of it all was terrifying, yet she knew that she must get up. "Dot!" she whispered, hoarsely. "Wake up!" Her companion opened her eyes sleepily as she pushed the slicker aside. "Yes.... Why Linda, it's--pouring!" "It certainly is." Linda was slipping on her shoes and her knickers over her pajamas. "We've got to rescue the boat." "Why?" "Because water mustn't get into the gasoline. And because the tide might come up high enough to wash the boat out to sea." "O.K.," replied Dot, now quite wide awake. "I'm with you, Linda--in just a second." Holding on to each other's hands, they made their way with difficulty down to the beach where the boat had been left, and together they dragged it back and covered it with one of the slickers. Panting from the effort, they dropped back on the sand and sat down, not bothering about the rain that was descending relentlessly upon them, soaking them to the skin. "We might as well use the other slicker as a roof for ourselves," suggested Dot, as she got to her feet again. "We can hang it over some bushes, and crawl under it." "That's an idea!" approved Linda. "I was wondering how one raincoat could keep us both dry." "It won't keep us dry--we're wet now. But it will protect us from the worst force of this cloud-burst." They went back to their camping site and arranged the slicker as best they could--carefully putting the bag of money and the box of tools under it, before they crawled in themselves. The bushes were wet, and so was the ground, but the girls were saved the discomfort of having the rain actually pour in their faces. They watched the storm for some time, hoping that it would soon abate, and finally, becoming drowsy, they fell asleep again, with their feet sticking out under the covering. Cramped by the awkward position, they awakened in a couple of hours. Daylight had arrived--but not sunlight. It was still raining steadily and dismally. "Don't you suppose we can go today?" asked Dot. "Maybe later on," replied Linda, cheerfully. "There's one thing good about this, Dot. We can get a drink." "How heavenly!" exclaimed the other, sitting up. "But how do we manage it? We won't get much by just opening our mouths!" "Get up carefully. I'm sure there's a lot of water lodging on the top of this slicker. Wait--get the thermos bottles out of the tool-box first. We'll use the cups, and then stand them up to catch the rain as it falls." Linda's surmise was correct; there was so much water on the slicker that it was in danger of collapsing any moment. They dipped their cups into the pool and drank eagerly. How good it tasted to their parched throats! "There must be more down on the boat's cover," suggested Dot. "Let's get it, and pour it into our thermos bottles." When they had carried out this idea, they set the bottles firmly in the sand, and crept back under cover. "Shall we eat?" asked Dot, after watching the rain for some minutes in silence. "Let's wait a while--till noon, if we can. We have only those two oranges and a half a dozen crackers. It'll be something to look forward to." "There's still some tea and sugar--and one can of milk," the other reminded her. "You know we didn't use them, because we couldn't afford the water. Now it'll be different." "I'd forgotten all about that!" exclaimed Linda, smiling. "Let's have tea and one cracker for lunch, and save the oranges for supper." "But how can we ever hope to build a fire in this rain? We'd never find any dry sticks--and if we made one under here, we'd be smoked out." "I hadn't thought of that. But we can make cold tea. If we leave the leaves in the water long enough, they'll flavor it--anyway, that's what I read in an ad one time." "You think of everything, Linda! It's no wonder you've gotten out of a dozen disasters that would have killed an ordinary girl!" "Now Dot!" protested the other girl, modestly. "Just so long as we get out of this one, I'll be satisfied." To help pass the tediousness of the long gloomy day, the girls took a brisk walk encircling the entire island. Soaked as they were before they started, they decided it would be foolish to stop because of the rain. The sight of the ocean, wild and angry as it was because of the storm, aroused their wonder and admiration, and rewarded them for their wet excursion. In vain they squinted through the spyglasses for a glimpse of the autogiro, but even the island on which it had been left by Susie was obliterated from their vision. It was no wonder, therefore, that they did not see the plane which brought Sergeant Worth and the two pilots to that other island. All unaware that Ladybug had flown home that afternoon, the girls finally settled down after dark to try to sleep under their improvised roof. When they awakened the following morning, they were disappointed not to see the sun. It was still raining, but no longer in torrents; the storm had slackened to a monotonous drizzle. "We better go," said Linda, as they breakfasted on tea and two crackers apiece. "I can keep the engine pretty well covered up. And this rain may keep up for days." "I shouldn't care to keep up this reducing diet for days," observed Dot. "If we were only too fat, Linda, how we would welcome such a chance to starve ourselves!" "Yes.... If--Oh, Dot, don't you wish we had a thick steak now--smothered in mushrooms----" "With creamed potatoes and fresh peas----" "Fruit salad and cheese wafers----" "Meringues, salted nuts, and coffee!" Both girls suddenly laughed out loud. "Anyway, we can both have our drinks of water," concluded Dot. "And they say thirst is worse than hunger." "We'll fill both thermos bottles before we push off," said Linda. "But I'm counting on reaching the Ladybug before noon, and then we ought to get to the Georgia coast by two o'clock." "Where we eat that dinner!" added Dot. Carrying their belongings, they walked down to the beach in their rain-soaked clothing, and pushed the boat out towards the water. The ocean was still so high and so rough that Linda hesitated a moment. "Do you think we can make it?" asked Dot, noticing the expression of doubt on her companion's face. "Yes, I think so. That island didn't look far, yesterday." "That's true. But I can't see it now, Linda. Suppose the storm had washed the Ladybug away--or even the whole island?" Linda shuddered, realizing that there was that possibility. She took the glasses from her pocket, and peered through them in the direction she remembered the island to be. "I can't see a thing but ocean," she stated. "The waves are so high. But let's go in that direction anyway. It must be there." She turned to the motor-boat and attempted to start the engine, but for some minutes she labored in vain, for the engine refused to catch. Was everything in the world against them, Dot silently wondered, as she watched Linda repeat her efforts with infinite patience. At last, however, there was a sputter, and the motor started. The girls pushed the boat into the water and climbed into it. It would have been great sport riding the waves, had it not been for the grave danger attached. This was no sporting contest, with a life-guard in readiness to rescue them if anything went wrong! It was a race between life and death. The wind had died down, however, and the sea was gradually growing calmer. Up and down the little boat bobbed, now in the trough of a wave, seemingly under a mountain of water--now rising again to a height that made the girls think of a scenic-railway at a pleasure park. Dot screamed with excitement, but Linda's lips were set in a firm line of determination, her attention riveted on the engine. By some miracle, it seemed to the girls, the little boat forged triumphantly ahead, with its motor running smoothly. A feeling of confidence was gradually taking the place of fear, and Dot strained her eyes for the island that was their goal. Half an hour later she spotted it, and almost upset the boat in her joy. "There it is, Linda!" she cried, excitedly. "Oh, Linda, we're saved! We're----" She stopped suddenly, hardly able to believe her eyes. The autogiro was gone! "What's the matter, Dot?" asked Linda, unable to understand the abrupt end of her chum's rejoicing. "Anything wrong!" "Yes.... The Ladybug's gone!" "What? Oh, it can't be!" Linda's voice was hoarse with terror. "Look again, Dot--you have the glasses." Dot squinted her eyes, but was rewarded by no trace of the plane. "You take a look, Linda," she suggested. "Maybe you can see better." The other girl eagerly caught the glasses which her companion tossed, and with trembling fingers held them to her eyes. The island was in plain sight now, but it was a ghastly fact that the autogiro had completely disappeared. Linda continued to gaze at the barren spot, her eyes fixed and staring, as if she were looking at death itself. Then, dropping the glasses into her lap, she seemed to be thinking intently. "It's true, Dot," she said, in an expressionless tone. "Yet that must be the right island.... Something has happened.... I don't know whether the wind could have lifted the Ladybug--or whether that gangster came back for it.... In any case, there's only one thing for us to do." "Yes?" faltered Dot, biting her lips to keep back the tears. She must not fail Linda now, in her darkest hour. "Turn the boat around, and make for the shore. We mustn't waste another drop of gasoline. It--won't last forever." "Shall we go back to our island--if we can find it?" asked Dot, as she turned the wheel. "No, we'll go straight west.... Or is that the west? Oh, if we only had a compass, or the sun to guide us.... But that must be the right direction." Linda was speaking bravely, trying to keep her voice normal, and her companion took heart from her manner. The boat went forward in the opposite direction, presumably towards the coast. Half an hour passed in silence, each girl intent upon her task. Linda took out her extra can of gasoline and filled the tank. Once Dot drank some water from the thermos bottle and reminded Linda of hers. All the while they continued to keep a sharp look-out for the coast. Another hour passed, and the girls' hunger began to assault them. The rain continued to fall, and weariness stole over them both. They were too weak and too tired to talk. At last Linda broke the silence by asking Dot to take another good look for the coast through the glasses. She did not add that it was vital this time, that the gasoline was running very low. On a rough sea like this, oars would be out of the question, even if the girls had been as strong as boys. "I can't see anything but water," was the reply. But just at that moment Linda saw something that held her speechless with terror. The boat was springing a leak! Water appeared to be pouring in by the bucket-full! As the significance of this catastrophe dawned upon Linda, her throat grew dry and parched; the words with which she meant to tell Dot choked her so that she could not speak. How, oh how could she possibly inform her brave chum of what was literally their death sentence! It was Dot, however, who spoke instead. Rather, she cried out hysterically, "Linda, I see a boat! A steam-boat! Coming towards us!" "Where?" gasped the other girl, her heart beating wildly between hope and fear. "Right ahead! Look! You can see her without the glasses now!" Linda shot a swift glance at the approaching boat, then looked again at the floor, where the water was fast deepening. Would the rescue come in time? And would the boat stop at their signal of distress? Wild with excitement, both girls raised their arms and waved desperately at the approaching craft, until it was only fifty yards away. Then they both shouted with a power and volume that they would not have believed they possessed. The oncoming boat decreased its speed until it was almost beside the girls' sinking craft. To their overwhelming joy and relief, they saw that it was stopping. A man appeared on the deck, and called to them in a pleasant voice. "In trouble, girls?" "Our boat's sinking!" shouted Linda to Dot's amazement, for the latter was still unaware of the immediate tragedy that was threatening them. "Can you take us aboard?" "Sure!" he replied. "Wait till I get a rope ladder." While he was gone, Linda pointed to the water in the boat, which by this time Dot had seen, and signaled to the other girl to say nothing of their experiences to this man, until they learned more about him. Linda's recent association with criminals had made her exceedingly wary. "Pull up closer," instructed the man, as he returned with the ladder. "Now, can you climb?" "Easily!" Dot assured him. "We're in knickers, anyhow." "May we throw our stuff on board first?" inquired Linda, picking up the bag which contained, besides their few possessions, all the bank's money. "Sure! Anything breakable in it?" "Only a couple of mirrors," returned Dot, who had regained her cheerfulness with amazing speed. "And we're not afraid of bad luck," she added. A moment later the girls climbed to safety, and pressed their rescuer's hand in gratitude. It seemed like a miracle to them both, and the old seaman was like an angel from heaven. "How soon will we get to the coast?" asked Linda eagerly. The man shook his head. "We can't go to the coast," he replied. "We're headed for Cuba." "But we must get back as soon as possible," pleaded Linda, beginning to wonder whether she was about to be kidnapped again. "You were headed for the open ocean," the seaman informed her, to both girls' consternation. "And that's where we have to go. I can't stop at the United States.... I'm awfully sorry...." CHAPTER XVIII _Luck for Ted and Louise_ Linda and Dot stood still on the deck of the old boat, grasping the rail with their hands, and looking intently at their rescuer. He was a typical old seaman, with tanned, roughened face, a gray beard, and kindly blue eyes. "That was a narrow escape," he remarked. "What do you girls mean by going out on a rough sea like this, in a shell like you had?" "We couldn't help it," Linda replied. "And we thought the boat was safe. We didn't know it was going to spring a leak.... Would it take very long to run us to the coast, Mr.--Captain----?" "Smallweed," supplied the man. "And everybody calls me 'Cap'n'." "Well, would it, Captain Smallweed?" repeated Linda, amused at the name. He ought to be at home on the island they had just come from, she thought--there were so many "small weeds" growing there! "Too long fer me to stop," he replied, to the girls' dismay. "I got to get back to my family, in Havana." His blue eyes twinkled. "Why? What have you girls got in that bag, that's so important to deliver in a hurry?" "You think we're boot-leggers!" laughed Dot. "Don't you, Captain?" "I wouldn't be surprised at anything," he answered, smiling. "I've seen just as nice lookin' girls as you----" "I'm afraid we're not very nice looking," sighed Linda, surveying their drenched, bedraggled clothing. "But we're really not boot-leggers.... We want to get back so that we can telephone to our families. They probably think that storm was the end of us." "Well, I'm sorry, but I can't go off my course. Like to, if I had the time----" "Well, if you can't, you can't--that's all there is to it," said Linda, philosophically. "We're glad to be alive at all, and I don't suppose a couple of days will make any difference." "How long do you think it will take you to get to Cuba?" put in Dot anxiously. There was no use fussing, of course, but she could not forget that her mother and father would be frantic by this time. "I'm reckonin' on dockin' at Havana the fourth of July. This is only the first, but these are stormy seas, and we have to expect delays.... Now come on inside, out o' this drizzle. You girls are drenched--I'll have to give you the only cabin I got. To get yourselves dry in." Stooping over, he picked up Linda's tool-box, and finding it heavy, eyed it suspiciously. "You girls gangsters?" he asked, unexpectedly. "Got any guns on you?" Both girls felt themselves growing red at this accusation, yet they could not deny it wholly. "That box has the tools in it which I used to fix up the engine of the motor-boat," Linda finally explained. "And you can take our word that we're not gangsters." But they were exceedingly nervous as they followed the Captain to the cabin where there were two bunks, one on top of the other. Suppose he should decide to search them--and find not only the two revolvers, but all that money besides! He would never believe their story! "When you get dry, I'll take you over the whole boat," he said. "I carry tobacco up the coast every couple of months. Used to have a sail-boat--that was the real thing! But this little lady's speedy--and better in a storm like we just had." "How can we ever thank you enough, Captain Smallweed?" cried Dot, suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude for their safety. "Our fathers will send you a handsome reward when we get back home." "Never mind that," smiled the man. "I've got a girl of my own--she's married now--but she's still a kid to me, and I know how I'd want her treated.... Now, you can bolt this door if you want to, so there won't be any danger of either of the two other fellows aboard coming in accidentally--and you can get yourselves dry." "There's--there's just one thing, Captain," stammered Linda. "We're dreadfully hungry. Could we have a piece of bread, or anything to eat?" "You poor kids!" he exclaimed, in a fatherly tone. "Come on down to the kitchen, and you can help yourselves." Though the food he provided was not the steak dinner they had been dreaming about on the island, it tasted good to those two starved girls. Captain Smallweed made tea for them, and brought out bread and smoked sausages, and Linda and Dot ate every crumb of the repast. "We were marooned on an island during that storm," Linda explained. "And we have had nothing but a couple of oranges and a few crackers for two days." "Well, you'll get a good supper," the Captain promised them. "That's why I'm not givin' you more now. I'll knock on your door about eight o'clock, if you ain't awake before then. That's when we usually eat." When the girls were finally alone in their cabin, they gazed first at their bag of money, then at each other, and suddenly started to laugh. It was such a ridiculous situation. During those lonely days of exile on the island they had pictured their return so differently. It would be a grand occasion, with exciting telephone calls to their families, a marvelous dinner at a hotel, perhaps a radio broadcast of their safe landing! Instead of all that, here they were, stowed away in a shabby boat, suspected of crime, and feasting on stale bread and hot dogs for their banquet! Worst of all there would be three weary days of waiting before informing the world of their safety! Yet they were thankful indeed that they had been rescued at all, and by a man as kind-hearted as the old sea captain. "I don't really think he'll bother any more about that bag," said Linda, as she took off her wet shoes. "If only we can get it back to Jacksonville safely, from Cuba! If we only had the Ladybug!" "It's a mystery where she could have vanished to," observed Dot. "But I suppose that is a small thing, compared to saving our lives." "You'll never go anywhere with me again," sighed Linda. "Dot!" she exclaimed abruptly, "I'd forgotten all about my job!" "I hadn't forgotten I was to start back North today," remarked the other girl. "Jim Valier was going to motor over and meet me at the station when my train came in." "Poor Jim!" sighed Linda, little thinking that the young man had no intention of doing that. "He'll have a good wait. But Jim can always sleep, on any occasion." "I guess he won't expect me.... We must be reported as missing by now--in all the newspapers." "Of course. I'd forgotten...." The girls wrapped themselves in blankets and slept the rest of the afternoon, to waken in time to see the sun, which had appeared at last, just setting over the sea. Their clothing was still damp and disheveled, but they put it on and went up on deck to hunt their benefactor. "We want you to let us cook," announced Dot, as she spied him. "We insist on making ourselves useful." The man smiled pleasantly. "All right," he agreed. "You can--tomorrow. But supper's ready now. Come on down." They followed the Captain into the kitchen, where another man was placing a dish of potatoes on the wooden table, which did not boast of a cover. "Meet Steve, ladies," her said--"my friend the pilot." The girls nodded, and Dot asked, with anxiety, "But who's guiding the boat now, while Mr. Steve eats his supper?" Both men laughed at her concern. "There's another one besides us. He takes his turn, and so do I. We never all three eat or sleep at the same time." It was a merry meal, though an exceedingly greasy one of fried potatoes and underdone bacon. The coffee, too, was none too good--for it was weak and muddy-looking. Nevertheless, both girls praised the supper extravagantly, for it tasted good to them, but they inwardly resolved to show the men the next day how food ought to be cooked. The next two days passed pleasantly enough, for the girls were able to busy themselves with the meals, and the men's appreciation was plenty of reward for their efforts. In their off hours they relaxed by watching the ocean and scanning the sky for airplanes, the make of which Linda could often guess. Sometimes they played checkers with each other, or with Captain Smallweed, to the latter's delight. But never again was the suspicious-looking tool-box mentioned, until Linda herself handed it over to Steve, saying that she did not want to bother to take it to Havana. By the time July third arrived, their boat was well out of the range of the yacht that was cruising in search of them, and on July fourth--the day that Jim Valier spotted the overturned motor-boat early in the morning--Captain Smallweed docked safely at Cuba. "Where do you girls want to go now?" asked the Captain, as the party stepped ashore. "Want to come along home with me, and meet the wife? She can rig you up in some decent clothes." "Thank you very much," replied Linda, "but we want to get to a telephone as soon as possible, so that we can get in touch with our families. So if you would just get us a taxi, and send us to the best hotel in Havana----" "In those rigs?" inquired the other, in amazement. "Everybody will stare at you! They dress well in Cuba, you know." "Oh, we're past caring about appearances," laughed Linda. "So stop that taxi for us, will you please, Captain?... And thank you a thousand times for all you have done for us." "You'll hear from our fathers soon," added Dot, as she too shook hands with the old man. Cautiously protecting the bag, into which Linda had stuffed the revolvers under the money, the girls taxied to the best hotel in the city. The driver eyed them suspiciously, and the clerk at the desk stared at them as if they were hoboes. But he condescended to assign them a room when they showed evidence of paying in advance. "We want a long-distance wire first of all," announced Linda. "We'd like to telephone from our rooms----" She stopped abruptly, for two slender arms were suddenly thrust about her neck, and kisses were being pressed violently upon her lips and cheeks. Louise Mackay stood behind them! Louise, with her husband, both in flyers' suits. Try as she could, the girl could not utter a word. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she continued to kiss first Linda and then Dot in the wildest ecstasy. "I can't believe it!" she said at last. "Is it really, truly you, Linda darling?" "What's left of us," replied Linda, laughing. "Did you ever see two such sights as we are?" "I never saw anyone or anything in my life that looked half so good to me!" returned Louise, fervently. She stepped back and laid her hand on her husband's arm, for so far Ted had not had a chance to say anything, or be included in the welcome. "Tell me it's true, Ted--that I'm not dreaming!" she urged. "I simply can't believe it." "It's the best, the truest thing in the world," the young man assured her. "We were positive you were dead," Louise explained. "We had so much evidence to prove it--the empty island where you were marooned, the overturned motor-boat that Jim Valier spotted early this morning----" "Jim Valier!" repeated Dot, in amazement. "Where would Jim see our old boat?" "Jim and Ralph and your two fathers are on a yacht, searching for you. They broadcast by radio any news they get. And Ted and I have flown to every island anywhere near the coast. We finished searching them all, so we landed here this morning, just for a rest." "Then you have a plane!" cried Linda, in delight. "You can take us back to Florida! I'd so hate to get into another boat--I simply loathe the sight of them." "Do tell us what happened to you," urged Ted. "I don't understand how we missed you everywhere." "It's a pretty long story," replied Dot. "I think we better phone our families first. They must be almost crazy." "They are," agreed Ted. "You go up in your room and phone them while I go to a radio station and broadcast the news." "And I'll tell you what I'll do in the meanwhile," offered Louise. "I'll go out and buy you some decent clothing!" CHAPTER XIX _The Return_ Until the second of July, Linda's aunt, Miss Emily Carlton, had managed, with Mrs. Crowley's help, to keep hoping that the girls were still alive. Then her brother's long-distance call from Jacksonville, informing her that he was going to sea in a yacht in search of Linda and Dot confirmed all the fears she was secretly cherishing. That night she collapsed and went to bed a nervous wreck. After once mentioning the fact that Linda was still reported missing in the newspapers, Miss Carlton's housekeeper learned not to speak of the girl again. It seemed as if the older woman could not bear to talk about her niece; in the few days since her disappearance she had aged rapidly. She lay listlessly on her bed, not seeing anyone, not even her dear friend Mrs. Crowley. It was about noon on the fourth of July that the telephone operator informed the housekeeper that Havana was calling Miss Carlton. The good woman replied that her mistress was sick in bed, and that she would take the message for her. Her hands trembled as she awaited what she believed would be the announcement of Linda's death. Faint and far off came the astounding words: "Aunt Emily, this is Linda." "Wait!" cried the woman, shaking as if she had heard a ghost. "I'll get your aunt, Miss Linda." Rushing to the bed-room, she handed Miss Carlton the bed-side telephone. "It's Miss Linda," she whispered. Doubting her senses, the patient sat up and took the instrument. "Hello," she said, doubtfully. "Darling Aunt Emily! It's Linda!" was the almost unbelievable reply at the other end of the wire. Miss Carlton sobbed; she could not say a word. "Aunt Emily? Are you there?" demanded the girl. "Yes, yes--dear! Oh, are you all right? Not hurt?" "Not a bit. Dot and I are both fine--she's talking to her mother now. We're--in Cuba." "Cuba!" repeated the startled woman. "I thought it was the Okefenokee Swamp, or the Atlantic Ocean! Your father and Mr. Crowley are looking for you." "Yes, I know. Ted and Louise are here, and Ted's broadcasting the news of our safe arrival now.... Probably Daddy has heard by this time." "When will you be home, dear?" inquired Miss Carlton. "Soon, I hope.... But we have to stop in Jacksonville first.... Aunt Emily, couldn't you and Mrs. Crowley come to Jacksonville? We're just dying to see you!" Miss Carlton considered; she hated to tell Linda that she was sick in bed. But wait--was she? Wasn't it only nerves after all? Why, this good news made her feel like a different person! "All right, dear," she agreed. "If Mrs. Crowley will, I'll try to arrange it. Shall I send a wire?" "Yes," replied Linda. "To Captain Magee, at the City Hall, Jacksonville. I'll be there in a day or so.... Now good-by, dear Auntie!" While Linda waited for Dot to come back from her call, which the latter had put in from another instrument, she opened the bag and took out their few possessions that were covering the money. They must be very careful not to let anything happen to all that wealth, she thought--they must never go out of the room and leave it, if only for a minute. How dreadful it would be if it were stolen now, after they had successfully brought it through all their dangerous adventures! Dot returned in a couple of minutes, and the girls got ready to enjoy the luxury of a real bath, in a real tub. How good the warm water felt, how wonderful the big, soft bath towels! They spent an hour bathing and washing their hair, and trying to make their nails presentable with Louise's manicure set. They had scarcely finished when the latter returned, followed by a porter carrying innumerable boxes and packages in his arms. "I've bought everything for you from the skin out," she announced gayly, as she put the load on the floor. "Even hats and shoes, though I knew I was taking a chance at them. But I remembered that you and I often wore each other's things at school, Linda, and I judged that Dot would wear a size smaller. I do hope you can wear them, just till you get to your trunks at Jacksonville." "You're an angel, Lou!" cried Linda, excited at the prospect of looking clean and respectable again. "See if you like them," urged Louise. "I got a blue dress for you, Linda, to match your eyes--and a pink one for Dot." "To match my eyes?" teased the latter. All three girls began immediately to untie the packages, and drew out the purchases one after another with exclamations of admiration. Dot said that she was so used to seeing dirty knickers that she had positively forgotten what dainty clothing looked like. "Well, hurry up and dress!" urged Louise. "We want to eat lunch in about ten minutes. Ted means to take off at two o'clock, if you girls think you can be ready by then." "We surely can!" cried Linda, joyfully. She couldn't wait to get back. "You'll burn your old stuff, won't you?" asked Louise. "This bag's a sight, too--why not stuff your old clothing into it, and ask the porter to take it away!" Linda and Dot let out a wild cry of protest at the same moment, and the other girl frowned. "Why not?" she inquired. "Sh!" whispered Linda. "That bag has thousands of dollars in it. Belonging to the Jacksonville bank." "Oh! You really have that money? And kept it all this time?" "Yes. But don't say a word about it out loud. We'll take it with us into the dining-room, and wear our new hats, so nobody will think it queer." They found Ted in the lobby of the hotel as they got out of the elevator, and they went into the dining-room to order the meal that Linda and Dot had been longing for on the island. It tasted good to them, but not so good, they had to admit, as the sausages and stale bread and hot tea which Captain Smallweed provided, when they were almost starved. It was during the meal that they pieced the story together. Linda began by telling of the finding of the money in the bags and the discovery of the last member of the gang on the island. "But why he ran away without shooting us is a mystery to us," put in Dot. "He thought that you had armed policemen with you," explained Louise. "We learned that later from Susie. She was captured a couple of days ago--in Panama." "Where is she now?" demanded Linda, excitedly. "In jail, of course." "And the man they called the 'Doc'?" "No," replied Ted. "Unfortunately he got away--fled the country. Lucky you girls got hold of the money, or the bank would never have seen it again.... And by the way, there's a big reward--ten thousand dollars, I believe." "Ten thousand dollars!" repeated Dot, in amazement. "What do you think of that, Linda?" "Wonderful!" cried the latter, joyously. "Five thousand apiece. Well, I'm glad you're going to get something out of this dreadful experience, Dot--that I selfishly dragged you into. And my part will go towards a new autogiro." "A new autogiro!" exclaimed Louise, in surprise. "You don't need one, Linda. The Ladybug's safe and sound--at the Jacksonville airport." "What? You mean that?" Linda seized the other girl's hand in almost incredulous rapture. "How did it get there?" "The police found it that day it stormed so. And a pilot flew it back to Jacksonville." Linda and Dot gazed at each other in full realization at last of the mysterious disappearance of the plane which they had mourned as lost forever. If Linda was eager to get back to Jacksonville before, she was doubly so now. She could hardly contain her excitement during that flight across the Gulf of Mexico and over the state of Florida to the northern part. She kept urging Ted to put on more speed, to let the motor out to its limit, but the young man, realizing the load he was carrying, was not to be tempted beyond his better judgment. They arrived at Jacksonville just as it was growing dusk, and flew over the city, now so familiar to them all, to the airport on its outskirts. Gracefully the skillful pilot swooped down the field to his landing. The usual number of employees came out to greet them, but hardly had the girls climbed out of the plane when a resounding shout went up over the field. Linda Carlton and Dorothy Crowley had been recognized! A crowd collected immediately, a crowd that had been prepared by Ted's radio message that afternoon, to welcome the two popular girls back to civilization. It was all that Linda and Dot could do to wave and shout greetings in return. "I just want one look at my Ladybug," said Linda. "If you good people will let me get through----" At this request, an accommodating official picked her right up on his shoulder, and carried her, amid the laughter of the crowd, triumphantly to the hangar where the autogiro was housed. "Oh, you dear Ladybug!" whispered Linda, not wanting anyone to think she was silly, but so overcome with joy that she had to say something. No one but a pilot could understand the genuine affection which she felt for her autogiro. "I'll be over to fly you tomorrow," she added, under her breath. Then, turning to the man who had conducted her across the field, she asked him whether he could as easily take her to the waiting taxi-cab. They were off at last, waving and smiling to the enthusiastic crowd. "Be sure to stay in Jacksonville till Saturday," the people begged them. "We're going to celebrate for you then!" The girls nodded, and the taxi driver sped away with orders to go straight to the City Hall. Captain Magee, who had received a call from the airport, was ready and waiting for them. Ted carried the shabby, worn bag into his office, and Linda put it into the Captain's hands herself. "The bank's money," she explained. "And the two revolvers. We never had to use them at all." "But we'd have died without them," added Dot. "Of fright--if nothing else." In vain Captain Magee tried to tell the girls how wonderfully brave he thought they had been, but he was so overcome by feeling that he groped for words and stammered--ending by pressing both Linda's and Dot's hands in silence. "Two young girls like you--" he finally managed to say--"succeeding where the police and everybody else failed! Capturing a hundred thousand dollars by a clever trick----" "Is there really that much?" inquired Dot. "Of course we never counted it." The officer smiled at their unconcern. In spite of all their ability, they still seemed like children to him. "By the way, Miss Carlton," he said, "I had a wire from your aunt this afternoon. She will arrive in Jacksonville Saturday morning--accompanied by Mrs. Crowley." This final piece of good news was just what the girls needed to complete their perfect day. Their eyes lighted up with happiness, and they squeezed each other's hands in joy. "And your fathers ought to be back tomorrow. I'll send them straight to the hotel," he added. "So don't go away." "Wild horses couldn't drag us!" returned Linda. "We're just dying to see them.... Now, good-by, Captain Magee.... We must go and get some dinner." So, back in the hotel in Jacksonville, Dot Crowley and Linda Carlton spent their first enjoyable evening for a week--celebrating their safe return with their dear friends, the Mackays. CHAPTER XX _Conclusion_ The girls' first visitor the following day was not, as they had hoped, the party from the yacht, but a woman. "Who can it be?" demanded Dot, for the clerk at the desk had not sent up a name with the message. "A reporter, probably," yawned Linda. "They'll be hot on our trail now, Dot. That was one good thing about the island--we didn't have to read newspapers or give interviews." "You're not wishing you were back again?" "Never!" affirmed Linda, surveying the breakfast tray which she and Dot had been luxuriously enjoying. "I don't care for cold tea and crackers as a steady diet." "But what shall we do about this visitor?" persisted her companion. "The clerk's still waiting for our reply." "Oh, tell him to send her up, I suppose. After all, the poor girls have to earn a living." As Dot gave the message over the telephone, Linda surveyed the room with a frown of distaste. "It's not so neat, Dot--to receive a caller," she remarked. "Maybe we ought to have gone downstairs." "Think I better try to call him back?" "No, I guess it's too late now--the girl's probably on the elevator by this time. Anyhow, it really doesn't matter. Newspaper women are usually awfully good sports." To their amazement and chagrin, it was not a reporter to whom, a moment later, Dot opened the door. A beautifully dressed woman stood before them, smiling nervously. It was Mrs. Carter--Jackson Carter's mother! "How do you do, Mrs. Carter!" exclaimed Dot. "Do come in--if you can pardon the appearance of this room." The older woman seemed scarcely to notice the unmade beds or the open trunks. She nodded to Linda as she entered, but she appeared like a person with something serious on her mind. "How did you know where to find us?" inquired Dot, after she had cleared a chair for their visitor. "It's in all the papers," the latter replied. "Haven't you read about yourselves? Why, everybody in town thinks you two girls are simply marvelous! Rescuing that money was a miracle in itself--an act of courage that Jacksonville will always be grateful to you for." "It's awfully nice of you to say so," murmured Dot, for Linda remained silent. Somehow the latter could never feel at home with this woman. "Our city is planning a parade and celebration in your honor," she continued. "And the Daughters of the Confederacy would like to invite you to a dinner and reception afterwards. That is one of the reasons why I came to see you--to extend the invitation in person." "It's extremely kind of you," assented Dot. "We'll be delighted to accept, won't we, Linda?" "Why, yes--of course--only--" Linda paused, hoping that she was not appearing rude. "Except what, my dear!" asked Mrs. Carter. "Well, it's marvelous of you to do it for us, but you see our fathers are coming--and Dot's mother--and my Aunt Emily----" "But they are included, of course! There will be both men and women at the banquet, and my brother-in-law, the president of the bank that was robbed, hopes to present you girls with the reward." "Oh, it's going to be great fun, Linda!" exclaimed Dot, excitedly. "We've just got to be there!" "Yes, it will be charming," agreed the other girl. "We'll be delighted to come--if we may bring our friends." There seemed nothing more to say, yet Mrs. Carter made no move towards going. To fill an awkward pause, Dot inquired how Jackson was. "Jackson has been away since the first of July," replied the older woman. "I haven't heard anything from him, and I am quite anxious, though he warned me he couldn't write. He and his chum, Hal Perry, went into the Okefenokee Swamp to search for you girls." "The Okefenokee Swamp!" repeated Linda. It seemed ages since she had been lost in that desolate expanse. "Yes. And I wondered, Miss Carlton, whether you would be willing to fly up to the northern end, up towards Camp Cordelia, and look for them. Oh, I don't mean go into the swamp again--that would be too dreadful--but just fly around it." "Yes, of course," agreed Linda, not knowing what else to say. "If you will let me wait until my Daddy comes, so I can take him with me." "Naturally!" Mrs. Carter rose at last, but she still appeared to be embarrassed. "There is something else I want to say to you, Miss Carlton. An apology, this time. I know now that you are the same girl my son rescued in the swamp and brought home to our house. The girl to whom I was so rude.... I--I want to beg your pardon." It was a great deal from a woman of Mrs. Carter's dignity and importance, and Linda was deeply touched. "This is very sweet of you, Mrs. Carter," she said. "And of course I understand how you felt at the time. I'm only too glad to forget all about it.... And," she added, holding out her hand, "I'll go to your son's rescue, as he has twice gone to mine--as soon as my Daddy comes." Still the visitor hesitated, even after she had shaken hands with both the girls, and had reached the doorway. "Would you girls consider bringing your families out to our home, to spend the weekend with us?" she asked, more as one seeking than as one bestowing a favor. Dot did not answer this time; she looked inquiringly at Linda. "It would be lovely," replied the latter, with genuine enthusiasm. "But I am afraid there are too many of us. You see there are two friends with us now--Mr. and Mrs. Mackay, who picked us up in Havana--and there are two more with our fathers on the yacht. With my aunt and Dot's mother, it will make ten in all. And that is too big a crowd for any place but a hotel!" "Not at all!" protested Mrs. Carter. "I should love it. We have plenty of room, and plenty of servants--and we enjoy house-parties. How I shall look forward to seeing your mother, Dorothy!... You will come, won't you, girls--as soon as the whole party is together?" With such a pressing invitation as this, they could not do otherwise than graciously accept, and, satisfied at last, Mrs. Carter bade them good-by. There was no opportunity to discuss this unexpected visit, for no sooner had this caller departed than others began to arrive. Louise dashed into the room on her return from breakfasting with Ted in the dining-room, and before Dot and Linda could repeat the invitation to her, news came that the yachting party had arrived. The reunion of the two girls with their fathers was touching to see. For some minutes they clung to one another in the lobby of the hotel, regardless of the strangers about. Ralph Clavering and Jim Valier stood in the background, unnoticed. About three o'clock that afternoon Linda suddenly remembered her promise to Mrs. Carter in regard to flying over the Okefenokee Swamp in search of Jackson, and she suggested to her father that they go to the airport immediately. Mr. Carlton shook his head decidedly. "No, daughter," he said. "You will never have my consent again to fly within fifty miles of that dismal swamp!" "But we must be within fifty miles of it now," returned Linda. "Shall we leave Jacksonville?" "Now, Linda! You know what I mean." "But how shall I tell Mrs. Carter? I promised, you know." "You can leave that to me," he replied. "I'll explain." But it was not necessary to do this, for the woman telephoned herself almost immediately to say that the boys had arrived by automobile half an hour ago. She concluded by reminding Linda that she was expecting the whole party the following day for luncheon. Saturday dawned clear and bright, and the parade was scheduled for the early morning, before the sun's rays became blistering. Linda and Dot occupied seats of honor on the canopied grandstand, beside the Mayor, and they bowed and smiled to everyone that passed by. Miss Carlton and Mrs. Crowley arrived just in time to witness the demonstration, in honor of their two brave girls. Transcriber's notes: - Table of contents inserted at beginning of book. 
8380	----	[Illustration: The Death of Rodriguez] CUBA IN WAR TIME BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society Author of "Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America," "The Princess Aline," "Gallegher," "Van Bibber, and Others," "Dr. Jameson's Raiders," etc., etc. ILLUSTRATED BY FREDERIC REMINGTON NEW YORK. R. H. RUSSELL 1897 *[Note: Before Spanish-American War] CONTENTS List of Illustrations Author's Note Cuba in War Time The Fate of the Pacificos The Death of Rodriguez Along the Trocha The Question of Atrocities The Right of Search of American Vessels ILLUSTRATIONS The Death of Rodríguez A Spanish Soldier Guerrillas with Captured Pacificos A Spanish Officer Insurgents Firing on Spanish Fort Fire and Sword in Cuba A Spanish Guerrilla Murdering the Cuban Wounded Bringing in the Wounded Young Spanish Officer The Cuban Martyrdom Regular Cavalryman--Spanish One of the Block Houses Spanish Cavalry One of the Forts Along the Trocha The Trocha Spanish Troops in Action Amateur Surgery in Cuba Scouting Party of Spanish Cavalry An Officer of Spanish Guerrillas A Spanish Picket Post General Weyler in the Field Spanish Cavalryman on a Texas Broncho For Cuba Libre NOTE These illustrations were made by Mr. Frederic Remington, from personal observation while in Cuba, and from photographs, and descriptions furnished by eye-witnesses, and are here reproduced through the courtesy of Mr. W. R. Hearst. AUTHOR'S NOTE After my return from Cuba many people asked me questions concerning the situation there, and I noticed that they generally asked the same questions. This book has been published with the idea of answering those questions as fully as is possible for me to do after a journey through the island, during which I traveled in four of the six provinces, visiting towns, seaports, plantations and military camps, and stopping for several days in all of the chief cities of Cuba, with the exception of Santiago and Pinar del Rio. Part of this book was published originally in the form of letters from Cuba to the _New York Journal_ and in the newspapers of a syndicate arranged by the _Journal_; the remainder, which was suggested by the questions asked on my return, was written in this country, and appears here for the first time. RICHARD HARDING DAVIS. Cuba In War Time When the revolution broke out in Cuba two years ago, the Spaniards at once began to build tiny forts, and continued to add to these and improve those already built, until now the whole island, which is eight hundred miles long and averages eighty miles in width, is studded as thickly with these little forts as is the sole of a brogan with iron nails. It is necessary to keep the fact of the existence of these forts in mind in order to understand the situation in Cuba at the present time, as they illustrate the Spanish plan of campaign, and explain why the war has dragged on for so long, and why it may continue indefinitely. The last revolution was organized by the aristocrats; the present one is a revolution of the _puebleo_, and, while the principal Cuban families are again among the leaders, with them now are the representatives of the "plain people," and the cause is now a common cause in working for the success of which all classes of Cubans are desperately in earnest. The outbreak of this revolution was hastened by an offer from Spain to make certain reforms in the internal government of the island. The old revolutionary leaders, fearing that the promise of these reforms might satisfy the Cubans, and that they would cease to hope for complete independence, started the revolt, and asked all loyal Cubans not to accept the so-called reforms when, by fighting, they might obtain their freedom. Another cause which precipitated the revolution was the financial depression which existed all over the island in 1894, and the closing of the sugar mills in consequence. Owing to the lack of money with which to pay the laborers, the grinding of the sugar cane ceased, and the men were turned off by the hundreds, and, for want of something better to do, joined the insurgents. Some planters believe that had Spain loaned them sufficient money with which to continue grinding, the men would have remained on the _centrals_, as the machine shops and residence of a sugar plantation are called, and that so few would have gone into the field against Spain that the insurrection could have been put down before it had gained headway. An advance to the sugar planters of five millions of dollars then, so they say, would have saved Spain the outlay of many hundreds of millions spent later in supporting an army in the field. That may or may not be true, and it is not important now, for Spain did not attack the insurgents in that way, but began hastily to build forts. These forts now stretch all over the island, some in straight lines, some in circles, and some zig-zagging from hill-top to hill-top, some within a quarter of a mile of the next, and others so near that the sentries can toss a cartridge from one to the other. The island is divided into two great military camps, one situated within the forts, and the other scattered over the fields and mountains outside of them. The Spaniards have absolute control over everything within the fortified places; that is, in all cities, towns, seaports, and along the lines of the railroad; the insurgents are in possession of all the rest. They are not in fixed possession, but they have control much as a mad bull may be said to have control of a ten-acre lot when he goes on the rampage. Some farmer may hold a legal right to the ten-acre lot, through title deeds or in the shape of a mortgage, and the bull may occupy but one part of it at a time, but he has possession, which is better than the law. It is difficult to imagine a line drawn so closely, not about one city or town, but around every city and town in Cuba, that no one can pass the line from either the outside or the inside. The Spaniards, however, have succeeded in effecting and maintaining a blockade of that kind. They have placed forts next to the rows of houses or huts on the outskirts of each town, within a hundred yards of one another, and outside of this circle is another circle, and beyond that, on every high piece of ground, are still more of these little square forts, which are not much larger than the signal stations along the lines of our railroads and not unlike them in appearance. No one can cross the line of the forts without a pass, nor enter from the country beyond them without an order showing from what place he comes, at what time he left that place, and that he had permission from the commandante to leave it. A stranger in any city in Cuba to-day is virtually in a prison, and is as isolated from the rest of the world as though he were on a desert island or a floating ship of war. When he wishes to depart he is free to do so, but he cannot leave on foot nor on horseback. He must make his departure on a railroad train, of which seldom more than two leave any town in twenty-four hours, one going east and the other west. From Havana a number of trains depart daily in different directions, but once outside of Havana, there is only one train back to it again. When on the cars you are still in the presence and under the care of Spanish soldiers, and the progress of the train is closely guarded. A pilot engine precedes it at a distance of one hundred yards to test the rails and pick up dynamite bombs, and in front of it is a car covered with armor plate, with slits in the sides like those in a letter box, through which the soldiers may fire. There are generally from twenty to fifty soldiers in each armored car. Back of the armored car is a flat car loaded with ties, girders and rails, which are used to repair bridges or those portions of the track that may have been blown up by the insurgents. Wherever a track crosses a bridge there are two forts, one at each end of the bridge, and also at almost every cross-road. When the train passes one of these forts, two soldiers appear in the door and stand at salute to show, probably, that they are awake, and at every station there are two or more forts, while the stations themselves are usually protected by ramparts of ties and steel rails. There is no situation where it is so distinctly evident that those who are not with you are against you, for you are either inside of one circle of forts or passing under guard by rail to another circle, or you are with the insurgents. There is no alternative. If you walk fifty yards away from the circle you are, in the eyes of the Spaniards, as much in "the field" as though you were two hundred miles away on the mountains. [Illustration: A Spanish Soldier] The lines are so closely drawn that when you consider the tremendous amount of time and labor expended in keeping up this blockade, you must admire the Spaniards for doing it so well, but you would admire them more, if, instead of stopping content with that they went further and invaded the field. The forts are an excellent precaution; they prevent sympathizers from joining the insurgents and from sending them food, arms, medicine or messages. But the next step, after blockading the cities, would appear to be to follow the insurgents into the field and give them battle. This the Spaniards do not seem to consider important, nor wish to do. Flying columns of regular troops and guerrillas are sent out daily, but they always return each evening within the circle of forts. If they meet a band of insurgents they give battle readily enough, but they never pursue the enemy, and, instead of camping on the ground and following him up the next morning, they retreat as soon as the battle is over, to the town where they are stationed. When occasionally objection is made to this by a superior officer, they give as an explanation that they were afraid of being led into an ambush, and that as an officer's first consideration must be for his men, they decided that it was wiser not to follow the enemy into what might prove a death-trap; or the officers say they could not abandon their wounded while they pursued the rebels. Sometimes a force of one thousand men will return with three men wounded, and will offer their condition as an excuse for having failed to follow the enemy. About five years ago troops of United States cavalry were sent into the chapparal on the border of Mexico and Texas to drive the Garcia revolutionists back into their own country. One troop, G, Third Cavalry, was ordered out for seven days' service, but when I joined the troop later as a correspondent, it had been in the field for three months, sleeping the entire time under canvas, and carrying all its impedimenta with it on pack mules. It had seldom, if ever, been near a town, and the men wore the same clothes, or what was left of them, with which they had started for a week's campaign. Had the Spaniards followed such a plan of attack as that when the revolution began, instead of building mud forts and devastating the country, they might not only have suppressed the revolution, but the country would have been of some value when the war ended. As it is to-day, it will take ten years or more to bring it back to a condition of productiveness. The wholesale devastation of the island was an idea of General Weyler's. If the captain of a vessel, in order to put down a mutiny on board, scuttled the ship and sent everybody to the bottom, his plan of action would be as successful as General Weyler's has proved to be. After he had obtained complete control of the cities he decided to lay waste the country and starve the revolutionists into submission. So he ordered all pacíficos, as the non-belligerents are called, into the towns and burned their houses, and issued orders to have all fields where potatoes or corn were planted dug up and these food products destroyed. These pacificos are now gathered inside of a dead line, drawn one hundred and fifty yards around the towns, or wherever there is a fort. Some of them have settled around the forts that guard a bridge, others around the forts that guard a sugar plantation; wherever there are forts there are pacificos. In a word, the situation in Cuba is something like this: The Spaniards hold the towns, from which their troops daily make predatory raids, invariably returning in time for dinner at night. Around each town is a circle of pacificos doing no work, and for the most part starving and diseased, and outside, in the plains and mountains, are the insurgents. No one knows just where any one band of them is to-day or where it may be to-morrow. Sometimes they come up to the very walls of the fort, lasso a bunch of cattle and ride off again, and the next morning their presence may be detected ten miles away, where they are setting fire to a cane field or a sugar plantation. [Illustration: Guerrillas With Captured Pacíficos] This is the situation, so far as the inhabitants are concerned. The physical appearance of the country since the war began has changed greatly. In the days of peace Cuba was one of the most beautiful islands in the tropics, perhaps in the world. Its skies hang low and are brilliantly beautiful, with great expanses of blue, and in the early morning and before sunset, they are lighted with wonderful clouds of pink and saffron, as brilliant and as unreal as the fairy's grotto in a pantomime. There are great wind-swept prairies of high grass or tall sugar cane, and on the sea coast mountains of a light green, like the green of corroded copper, changing to a darker shade near the base, where they are covered with forests of palms. Throughout the extent of the island run many little streams, sometimes between high banks of rock, covered with moss and magnificent fern, with great pools of clear, deep water at the base of high waterfalls, and in those places where the stream cuts its way through the level plains double rows of the royal palm mark its course. The royal palm is the characteristic feature of the landscape in Cuba. It is the most beautiful of all palms, and possibly the most beautiful of all trees. The cocoanut palm, as one sees it in Egypt, picturesque as it is, has a pathetic resemblance to a shabby feather duster, and its trunk bends and twists as though it had not the strength to push its way through the air, and to hold itself erect. But the royal palm shoots up boldly from the earth with the grace and symmetry of a marble pillar or the white mast of a great ship. Its trunk swells in the centre and grows smaller again at the top, where it is hidden by great bunches of green plumes, like monstrous ostrich feathers that wave and bow and bend in the breeze as do the plumes on the head of a beautiful woman. Standing isolated in an open plain or in ranks in a forest of palms, this tree is always beautiful, noble and full of meaning. It makes you forget the ugly iron chimneys of the _centrals_, and it is the first and the last feature that appeals to the visitor in Cuba. But since the revolution came to Cuba the beauty of the landscape is blotted with the grim and pitiable signs of war. The sugar cane has turned to a dirty brown where the fire has passed through it, the _centrals_ are black ruins, and the adobe houses and the railroad stations are roofless, and their broken windows stare pathetically at you like blind eyes. War cannot alter the sunshine, but the smoke from the burning huts and the blazing corn fields seems all the more sad and terrible when it rises into such an atmosphere, and against so soft and beautiful a sky. People frequently ask how far the destruction of property in Cuba is apparent. It is so far apparent that the smoke of burning buildings is seldom absent from the landscape. If you stand on an elevation it is possible to see from ten to twenty blazing houses, and the smoke from the cane fields creeping across the plain or rising slowly to meet the sky. Sometimes the train passes for hours through burning districts, and the heat from the fields along the track is so intense that it is impossible to keep the windows up, and whenever the door is opened sparks and cinders sweep into the car. One morning, just this side of Jovellanos, all the sugar cane on the right side of the track was wrapped in white smoke for miles so that nothing could be distinguished from that side of the car, and we seemed to be moving through the white steam of a Russian bath. The Spaniards are no more to blame for this than are the insurgents; each destroy property and burn the cane. When an insurgent column finds a field planted with potatoes, it takes as much of the crop as it can carry away and chops up the remainder with machetes, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Spaniards. If the Spaniards pass first, they act in exactly the same way. Cane is not completely destroyed if it is burned, for if it is at once cut down just above the roots, it will grow again. When peace is declared it will not be the soil that will be found wanting, nor the sun. It will be the lack of money and the loss of credit that will keep the sugar planters from sowing and grinding. And the loss of machinery in the _centrals_, which is worth in single instances hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in the aggregate many millions, cannot be replaced by men, who, even when their machinery was intact, were on the brink of ruin. Unless the United States government interferes on account of some one of its citizens in Cuba, and war is declared with Spain, there is no saying how long the present revolution may continue. For the Spaniards themselves are acting in a way which makes many people suspect that they are not making an effort to bring it to an end. The sincerity of the Spaniards in Spain is beyond question; the personal sacrifices they made in taking up the loans issued by the government are proof of their loyalty. But the Spaniards in Cuba are acting for their own interests. Many of the planters in order to save their fields and _centrals_ from destruction, are unquestionably aiding the insurgents in secret, and though they shout "Viva España" in the cities, they pay out cartridges and money at the back door of their plantations. [Illustration: A Spanish Officer] It was because Weyler suspected that they were playing this double game that he issued secret orders that there should be no more grinding. For he knew that the same men who bribed him to allow them to grind would also pay blackmail to the insurgents for a like permission. He did not dare openly to forbid the grinding, but he instructed his officers in the field to visit those places where grinding was in progress and to stop it by some indirect means, such as by declaring that the laborers employed were suspects, or by seizing all the draught oxen ostensibly for the use of his army, or by insisting that the men employed must show a fresh permit to work every day, which could only be issued to them by some commandante stationed not less than ten miles distant from the plantation on which they were employed. And the Spanish officers, as well as the planters--the very men to whom Spain looks to end the rebellion--are chief among those who are keeping it alive. The reasons for their doing so are obvious; they receive double pay while they are on foreign service, whether they are fighting or not, promotion comes twice as quickly as in time of peace, and orders and crosses are distributed by the gross. They are also able to make small fortunes out of forced loans from planters and suspects, and they undoubtedly hold back for themselves a great part of the pay of the men. A certain class of Spanish officer has a strange sense of honor. He does not consider that robbing his government by falsifying his accounts, or by making incorrect returns of his expenses, is disloyal or unpatriotic. He holds such an act as lightly as many people do smuggling cigars through their own custom house, or robbing a corporation of a railroad fare. He might be perfectly willing to die for his country, but should he be permitted to live he will not hesitate to rob her. A lieutenant, for instance, will take twenty men out for their daily walk through the surrounding country and after burning a few huts and butchering a pacifico or two, will come back in time for dinner and charge his captain for rations for fifty men and for three thousand cartridges "expended in service." The captain vises his report, and the two share the profits. Or they turn the money over to the colonel, who recommends them for red enamelled crosses for "bravery on the field." The only store in Matanzas that was doing a brisk trade when I was there was a jewelry shop, where they had sold more diamonds and watches to the Spanish officers since the revolution broke out than they had ever been able to dispose of before to all the rich men in the city. The legitimate pay of the highest ranking officer is barely enough to buy red wine for his dinner, certainly not enough to pay for champagne and diamonds; so it is not unfair to suppose that the rebellion is a profitable experience for the officers, and they have no intention of losing the golden eggs. And the insurgents on the other side are equally determined to continue the conflict. From every point of view this is all that is left for them to do. They know by terrible experience how little of mercy or even of justice they may expect from the enemy, and, patriotism or the love of independence aside, it is better for them to die in the field than to risk the other alternative; a lingering life in an African penal settlement or the fusillade against the east wall of Cabañas prison. In an island with a soil so rich and productive as is that of Cuba there will always be roots and fruits for the insurgents to live upon, and with the cattle that they have hidden away in the laurel or on the mountains they can keep their troops in rations for an indefinite period. What they most need now are cartridges and rifles. Of men they have already more than they can arm. People in the United States frequently express impatience at the small amount of fighting which takes place in this struggle for liberty, and it is true that the lists of killed show that the death rate in battle is inconsiderable. Indeed, when compared with the number of men and women who die daily of small-pox and fever and those who are butchered on the plantations, the proportion of killed in battle is probably about one to fifteen. I have no statistics to prove these figures, but, judging from the hospital reports and from what the consuls tell of the many murders of pacificos, I judge that that proportion would be rather under than above the truth. George Bronson Rae, the _Herald_ correspondent, who was for nine months with Maceo and Gomez, and who saw eighty fights and was twice wounded, told me that the largest number of insurgents he had seen killed in one battle was thirteen. Another correspondent said that a Spanish officer had told him that he had killed forty insurgents out of four hundred who had attacked his column. "But how do you know you killed that many?" the correspondent asked. "You say you were never nearer than half a mile to them, and that you fell back into the town as soon as they ceased firing." [Illustration: Insurgents Firing on a Spanish Fort "One Shot for a Hundred"] "Ah, but I counted the cartridges my men had used," the officer replied. "I found they had expended four hundred. By allowing ten bullets to each man killed, I was able to learn that we had killed forty men." These stories show how little reason there is to speak of these skirmishes as battles, and it also throws some light on the Spaniard's idea of his own marksmanship. As a plain statement of fact, and without any exaggeration, one of the chief reasons why half the insurgents in Cuba are not dead to-day is because the Spanish soldiers cannot shoot well enough to hit them. The Mauser rifle, which is used by all the Spanish soldiers, with the exception of the Guardia Civile, is a most excellent weapon for those who like clean, gentlemanly warfare, in which the object is to wound or to kill outright, and not to "shock" the enemy nor to tear his flesh in pieces. The weapon has hardly any trajectory up to one thousand yards, but, in spite of its precision, it is as useless in the hands of a guerrilla or the average Spanish soldier as a bow and arrow would be. The fact that when the Spaniards say "within gun fire of the forts" they mean within one hundred and fifty yards of them shows how they estimate their own skill. Major Grover Flint, the _Journal_ correspondent, told me of a fight that he witnessed in which the Spaniards fired two thousand rounds at forty insurgents only two hundred yards away, and only succeeded in wounding three of them. Sylvester Scovel once explained this bad marksmanship to me by pointing out that to shift the cartridge in a Mauser, it is necessary to hold the rifle at an almost perpendicular angle, and close up under the shoulder. After the fresh cartridge has gone home the temptation to bring the butt to the shoulder before the barrel is level is too great for the Spanish Tommy, and, in his excitement, he fires most of his ammunition in the air over the heads of the enemy. He also fires so recklessly and rapidly that his gun often becomes too hot for him to handle it properly, and it is not an unusual sight to see him rest the butt on the ground and pull the trigger while the gun is in that position. On the whole, the Spanish soldiers during this war in Cuba have contributed little to the information of those who are interested in military science. The tactics which the officers follow are those which were found effective at the battle of Waterloo, and in the Peninsular campaign. When attacked from an ambush a Spanish column forms at once into a hollow square, with the cavalry in the centre, and the firing is done in platoons. They know nothing of "open order," or of firing in skirmish line. If the Cubans were only a little better marksmen than their enemies they should, with such a target as a square furnishes them, kill about ten men where they now wound one. With the war conducted under the conditions described here, there does not seem to be much promise of its coming to any immediate end unless some power will interfere. The Spaniards will probably continue to remain inside their forts, and the officers will continue to pay themselves well out of the rebellion. And, on the other hand, the insurgents who call themselves rich when they have three cartridges, as opposed to the one hundred and fifty cartridges that every Spanish soldier carries, will probably very wisely continue to refuse to force the issue in any one battle. [Illustration: *Fire and sword in Cuba] The Fate Of The Pacificos As is already well known in the United States, General Weyler issued an order some months ago commanding the country people living in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and Matanzas to betake themselves with their belongings to the fortified towns. His object in doing this was to prevent the pacificos from giving help to the insurgents, and from sheltering them and the wounded in their huts. So flying columns of guerrillas and Spanish soldiers were sent to burn these huts, and to drive the inhabitants into the suburbs of the cities. When I arrived in Cuba sufficient time had passed for me to note the effects of this order, and to study the results as they are to be found in the provinces of Havana, Matanzas and Santa Clara, the order having been extended to embrace the latter province. It looked then as though General Weyler was reaping what he had sown, and was face to face with a problem of his own creating. As far as a visitor could judge, the results of this famous order seemed to furnish a better argument to those who think the United States should interfere in behalf of Cuba, than did the fact that men were being killed there, and that both sides were devastating the island and wrecking property worth millions of dollars. The order, apart from being unprecedented in warfare, proved an exceedingly short-sighted one, and acted almost immediately after the manner of a boomerang. The able-bodied men of each family who had remained loyal or at least neutral, so long as they were permitted to live undisturbed on their few acres, were not content to exist on the charity of a city, and they swarmed over to the insurgent ranks by the hundreds, and it was only the old and infirm and the women and children who went into the towns, where they at once became a burden on the Spanish residents, who were already distressed by the lack of trade and the high prices asked for food. The order failed also in its original object of embarrassing the insurgents, for they are used to living out of doors and to finding food for themselves, and the destruction of the huts where they had been made welcome was not a great loss to men who, in a few minutes, with the aid of a machete, can construct a shelter from a palm tree. So the order failed to distress those against whom it was aimed, but brought swift and terrible suffering to those who were and are absolutely innocent of any intent against the government, as well as to the adherents of the government. It is easy to imagine what happened when hundreds of people, in some towns thousands, were herded together on the bare ground, with no food, with no knowledge of sanitation, with no covering for their heads but palm leaves, with no privacy for the women and young girls, with no thought but as to how they could live until to-morrow. It is true that in the country, also, these people had no covering for their huts but palm leaves, but those huts were made stoutly to endure. When a man built one of them he was building his home, not a shelter tent, and they were placed well apart from one another, with the free air of the plain or mountain blowing about them, with room for the sun to beat down and drink up the impurities, and with patches of green things growing in rows over the few acres. I have seen them like that all over Cuba, and I am sure that no disease could have sprung from houses built so admirably to admit the sun and the air. I have also seen them, I might add in parenthesis, rising in sluggish columns of black smoke against the sky, hundreds of them, while those who had lived in them for years stood huddled together at a distance, watching the flames run over the dry rafters of their homes, roaring and crackling with delight, like something human or inhuman, and marring the beautiful sunlit landscape with great blotches of red flames. The huts in which these people live at present lean one against the other, and there are no broad roads nor green tobacco patches to separate one from another. There are, on the contrary, only narrow paths, two feet wide, where dogs and cattle and human beings tramp over daily growing heaps of refuse and garbage and filth, and where malaria rises at night in a white winding sheet of poisonous mist. The condition of these people differs in degree; some are living the life of gypsies, others are as destitute as so many shipwrecked emigrants, and still others find it difficult to hold up their heads and breathe. [Illustration: A Spanish Guerrilla] In Jaruco, in the Havana province, a town of only two thousand inhabitants, the deaths from small-pox averaged seven a day for the month of December, and while Frederic Remington and I were there, six victims of small-pox were carried past us up the hill to the burying ground in the space of twelve hours. There were Spanish soldiers as well as pacificos among these, for the Spanish officers either know or care nothing about the health of their men. There is no attempt made to police these military camps, and in Jaruco the filth covered the streets and the plaza ankle-deep, and even filled the corners of the church which had been turned into a fort, and had hammocks swung from the altars. The huts of the pacíficos, with from four to six people in each, were jammed together in rows a quarter of a mile long, within ten feet of the cavalry barracks, where sixty men and horses had lived for a month. Next to the stables were the barracks. No one was vaccinated, no one was clean, and all of them were living on half rations. Jaruco was a little worse than the other towns, but I found that the condition of the people is about the same everywhere. Around every town and even around the forts outside of the towns, you will see from one hundred to five hundred of these palm huts, with the people crouched about them, covered with rags, starving, with no chance to obtain work. In the city of Matanzas the huts have been built upon a hill, and so far neither small-pox nor yellow fever has made headway there; but there is nothing for these people to eat, either, and while I was there three babies died from plain, old-fashioned starvation and no other cause. The government's report for the year just ended gives the number of deaths in three hospitals of Matanzas as three hundred and eighty for the year, which is an average of a little over one death a day. As a matter of fact, in the military hospital alone the soldiers during several months of last year died at the rate of sixteen a day. It seems hard that Spain should hold Cuba at such a sacrifice of her own people. In Cardenas, one of the principal seaport towns of the island, I found the pacíficos lodged in huts at the back of the town and also in abandoned warehouses along the water front. The condition of these latter was so pitiable that it is difficult to describe it correctly and hope to be believed. The warehouses are built on wooden posts about fifty feet from the water's edge. They were originally nearly as large in extent as Madison Square Garden, but the half of the roof of one has fallen in, carrying the flooring with it, and the adobe walls and one side of the sloping roof and the high wooden piles on which half of the floor once rested are all that remain. Some time ago an unusually high tide swept in under one of these warehouses and left a pool of water a hundred yards long and as many wide, around the wooden posts, and it has remained there undisturbed. This pool is now covered a half-inch thick with green slime, colored blue and yellow, and with a damp fungus spread over the wooden posts and up the sides of the walls. Over this sewage are now living three hundred women and children and a few men. The floor beneath them has rotted away, and the planks have broken and fallen into the pool, leaving big gaps, through which rise day and night deadly stenches and poisonous exhalations from the pool below. The people above it are not ignorant of their situation. They know that they are living over a death-trap, but there is no other place for them. Bands of guerrillas and flying columns have driven them in like sheep to this city, and, with no money and no chance to obtain work, they have taken shelter in the only place that is left open to them. With planks and blankets and bits of old sheet iron they have, for the sake of decency, put up barriers across these abandoned warehouses, and there they are now sitting on the floor or stretched on heaps of rags, gaunt and hollow-eyed. Outside, in the angles of the fallen walls, and among the refuse of the warehouses, they have built fireplaces, and, with the few pots and kettles they use in common, they cook what food the children can find or beg. One gentleman of Cardenas told me that a hundred of these people called at his house every day for a bit of food. Old negroes and little white children, some of them as beautiful, in spite of their rags, as any children I ever saw, act as providers for this hapless colony. They beg the food and gather the sticks and do the cooking. Inside the old women and young mothers sit on the rotten planks listless and silent, staring ahead of them at nothing. I saw the survivors of the Johnstown flood when the horror of that disaster was still plainly written in their eyes, but destitute as they were of home and food and clothing, they were in better plight than those fever-stricken, starving pacíficos, who have sinned in no way, who have given no aid to the rebels, and whose only crime is that they lived in the country instead of in the town. They are now to suffer because General Weyler, finding that he cannot hold the country as he can the towns, lays it waste and treats those who lived there with less consideration than the Sultan of Morocco shows to the murderers in his jail at Tangier. Had these people been guilty of the most unnatural crimes, their punishment could not have been more severe nor their end more certain. [Illustration: Murdering the Cuban Wounded] I found the hospital for this colony behind three blankets which had been hung across a corner of the warehouse. A young woman and a man were lying side by side, the girl on a cot and the man on the floor. The others sat within a few feet of them on the other side of the blankets, apparently lost to all sense of their danger, and too dejected and hopeless to even raise their eyes when I gave them money. A fat little doctor was caring for the sick woman, and he pointed through the cracks in the floor at the green slime below us, and held his fingers to his nose and shrugged his shoulders. I asked him what ailed his patients, and he said it was yellow fever, and pointed again at the slime, which moved and bubbled in the hot sun. He showed me babies with the skin drawn so tightly over their little bodies that the bones showed through as plainly as the rings under a glove. They were covered with sores, and they protested as loudly as they could against the treatment which the world was giving them, clinching their fists and sobbing with pain when the sore places came in contact with their mothers' arms. A planter who had at one time employed a large number of these people, and who was moving about among them, said that five hundred had died in Cardenas since the order to leave the fields had been issued. Another gentleman told me that in the huts at the back of the town there had been twenty-five cases of small-pox in one week, of which seventeen had resulted in death. I do not know that the United States will interfere in the affairs of Cuba, but whatever may happen later, this is what is likely to happen now, and it should have some weight in helping to decide the question with those whose proper business it is to determine it. Thousands of human beings are now herded together around the seaport towns of Cuba who cannot be fed, who have no knowledge of cleanliness or sanitation, who have no doctors to care for them and who cannot care for themselves. Many of them are dying of sickness and some of starvation, and this is the healthy season. In April and May the rains will come, and the fever will thrive and spread, and cholera, yellow fever and small-pox will turn Cuba into one huge plague spot, and the farmers' sons whom Spain has sent over here to be soldiers, and who are dying by the dozens before they have learned to pull the comb off a bunch of cartridges, are going to die by the hundreds, and women and children who are innocent of any offense will die with them, and there will be a quarantine against Cuba, and no vessel can come into her ports or leave them. All this is going to happen, I am led to believe, not from what I saw in any one village, but in hundreds of villages. It will not do to put it aside by saying that "War is war," and that "All war is cruel," or to ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" In other wars men have fought with men, and women have suffered indirectly because the men were killed, but in this war it is the women, herded together in the towns like cattle, who are going to die, while the men, camped in the fields and the mountains, will live. It is a situation which charity might help to better, but in any event it is a condition which deserves the most serious consideration from men of common sense and judgment, and one not to be treated with hysterical head lines nor put aside as a necessary evil of war. [Illustration: Bringing in the Wounded] The Death Of Rodriguez Adolfo Rodríguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer, who lives nine miles outside of Santa Clara, beyond the hills that surround that city to the north. When the revolution broke out young Rodríguez joined the insurgents, leaving his father and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was taken, in December of 1896, by a force of the Guardia Civile, the corps d'élite of the Spanish army, and defended himself when they tried to capture him, wounding three of them with his machete. He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government, and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning, before sunrise. Previous to execution, he was confined in the military prison of Santa Clara, with thirty other insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, one after the other, on mornings following the execution of Rodríguez. His execution took place the morning of the 19th of January, at a place a half-mile distant from the city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Rodríguez had lived for nineteen years. At the time of his death he was twenty years old. I witnessed his execution, and what follows is an account of the way he went to death. The young man's friends could not be present, for it was impossible for them to show themselves in that crowd and that place with wisdom or without distress, and I like to think that, although Rodríguez could not know it, there was one person present when he died who felt keenly for him, and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spectator. There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when the squad of soldiers marched out from town it was still shining brightly through the mists, although it was past five o'clock. It lighted a plain two miles in extent broken by ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high grass and with bunches of cactus and palmetto. In the hollow of the ridges the mist lay like broad lakes of water, and on one side of the plain stood the walls of the old town. On the other rose hills covered with royal palms that showed white in the moonlight, like hundreds of marble columns. A line of tiny camp fires that the sentries had built during the night stretched between the forts at regular intervals and burned brightly. But as the light grew stronger, and the moonlight faded, these were stamped out, and when the soldiers came in force the moon was a white ball in the sky, without radiance, the fires had sunk to ashes, and the sun had not yet risen. So, even when the men were formed into three sides of a hollow square, they were scarcely able to distinguish one another in the uncertain light of the morning. There were about three hundred soldiers in the formation. They belonged to the Volunteers, and they deployed upon the plain with their band in front, playing a jaunty quickstep, while their officers galloped from one side to the other through the grass, seeking out a suitable place for the execution, while the band outside the line still played merrily. A few men and boys, who had been dragged out of their beds by the music, moved about the ridges, behind the soldiers, half-clothed, unshaven, sleepy-eyed, yawning and stretching themselves nervously and shivering in the cool, damp air of the morning. Either owing to discipline or on account of the nature of their errand or because the men were still but half awake, there was no talking in the ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning on their rifles, with their backs turned to the town, looking out across the plain to the hills. The men in the crowd behind them were also grimly silent. They knew that whatever they might say would be twisted into a word of sympathy for the condemned man or a protest against the government. So no one spoke; even the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, and the men in the crowd did not mix together, but looked suspiciously at one another and kept apart. As the light increased a mass of people came hurrying from the town with two black figures leading them, and the soldiers drew up at attention, and part of the double line fell back and left an opening in the square. With us a condemned man walks only the short distance from his cell to the scaffold or the electric chair, shielded from sight by the prison walls; and it often occurs even then that the short journey is too much for his strength and courage. [Illustration: Young Spanish Officer] But the merciful Spaniards on this morning made the prisoner walk for over a half-mile across the broken surface of the fields. I expected to find the man, no matter what his strength at other times might be, stumbling and faltering on this cruel journey, but as he came nearer I saw that he led all the others, that the priests on either side of him were taking two steps to his one, and that they were tripping on their gowns and stumbling over the hollows, in their efforts to keep pace with him as he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in advance of them. He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, pointed beard, great wistful eyes and a mass of curly black hair. He was shockingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a Neapolitan than a Cuban. You could imagine him sitting on the quay at Naples or Genoa, lolling in the sun and showing his white teeth when he laughed. He wore a new scapula around his neck, hanging outside his linen blouse. It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with at such a time, but I confess to have felt a thrill of satisfaction when I saw, as the Cuban passed me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not arrogantly nor with bravado, but with the nonchalance of a man who meets his punishment fearlessly, and who will let his enemies see that they can kill but can not frighten him. It was very quickly finished, with rough, and, but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it came to the square, and the condemned man, the priests and the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in and the line closed behind them. The officer who had held the cord that bound the Cuban's arms behind him and passed across his breast, let it fall on the grass and drew his sword, and Rodriguez dropped his cigarette from his lips and bent and kissed the cross which the priest held up before him. The elder of the priests moved to one side and prayed rapidly in a loud whisper, while the other, a younger man, walked away behind the firing squad and covered his face with his hands and turned his back. They had both spent the last twelve hours with Rodriguez in the chapel of the prison. The Cuban walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and turned his back to the square and faced the hills and the road across them which led to his father's farm. As the officer gave the first command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light which had just begun to show above the hills. He made a picture of such pathetic helplessness, but of such courage and dignity, that he reminded me on the instant of that statue of Nathan Hale, which stands in the City Hall Park, above the roar of Broadway, and teaches a lesson daily to the hurrying crowds of moneymakers who pass beneath. The Cuban's arms were bound, as are those of the statue, and he stood firmly, with his weight resting on his heels like a soldier on parade, and with his face held up fearlessly, as is that of the statue. But there was this difference, that Rodriguez, while probably as willing to give six lives for his country as was the American rebel, being only a peasant, did not think to say so, and he will not, in consequence, live in bronze during the lives of many men, but will be remembered only as one of thirty Cubans, one of whom was shot at Santa Clara on each succeeding day at sunrise. The officer had given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out silently what I had already observed with some satisfaction, that the firing squad were so placed that when they fired they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme end of the square. Their captain motioned his men to lower their pieces, and then walked across the grass and laid his hand on the shoulder of the waiting prisoner. It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been. The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of bullets in his back. He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he had heard the command given, had heard the click of the Mausers as the locks caught--and then, at that supreme moment, a human hand had been laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear. You would expect that any man who had been snatched back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded his head gravely, and, with his shoulders squared, took up a new position, straightened his back again, and once more held himself erect. As an exhibition of self-control this should surely rank above feats of heroism performed in battle, where there are thousands of comrades to give inspiration. This man was alone, in the sight of the hills he knew, with only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but that which lay within himself. [Illustration: The Cuban Martyrdom] The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men once more leveled their rifles, the sword rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had stumbled. He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or sound, and did not move again. It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie there, that it could be ended so without a word, that the man in the linen suit would not get up on his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, as he apparently had started to do, to his home; that there was not a mistake somewhere, or that at least some one would be sorry or say something or run to pick him up. But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the priests returned--the younger one, with the tears running down his face--and donned their vestments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while the squad stood uncovered, and the men in hollow square shook their accoutrements into place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for the order to march, and the band began again with the same quickstep which the fusillade had interrupted. The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to remember that it had walked there of itself, or noticed that the cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where the figure had first stood. The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a great snake, and then broke into little pieces and started off jauntily, stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to the music. The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close to it that the file closers had to part with the column to avoid treading on it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on it, some craning their necks curiously, others giving a careless glance, and some without any interest at all, as they would have looked at a house by the roadside or a passing cart or a hole in the road. One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, and fell forward just opposite to it. He grew very red when his comrades giggled at him for his awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on either side of the band. They had forgotten it, too, and the priests put their vestments back in the bag and wrapped their heavy cloaks about them, and hurried off after the others. Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly toward it from the town, driving a bullock cart that bore an unplaned coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning mists. At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disc of heat, and filled the air with warmth and light. The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in it, and at the sight of it a rooster in a farmyard near by crowed vigorously and a dozen bugles answered the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes of the reveille, and from all parts of the city the church bells jangled out the call for early mass, and the whole world of Santa Clara seemed to stir and stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just begun. But as I fell in at the rear of the procession and looked back the figure of the young Cuban, who was no longer a part of the world of Santa Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with the scapula twisted awry across his face and the blood from his breast sinking into the soil he had tried to free. [Illustration: Regular Cavalryman--Spanish] Along The Trocha This is an account of a voyage of discovery along the Spanish trocha, the one at the eastern end of Cuba. It is the longer of the two, and stretches from coast to coast at the narrowest part of that half of the island, from Jucaro on the south to Moron on the north. Before I came to Cuba this time I had read in our newspapers about the Spanish trocha without knowing just what a trocha was. I imagined it to be a rampart of earth and fallen trees, topped with barbed wire; a Rubicon that no one was allowed to pass, but which the insurgents apparently crossed at will with the ease of little girls leaping over a flying skipping rope. In reality it seems to be a much more important piece of engineering than is generally supposed, and one which, when completed, may prove an absolute barrier to the progress of large bodies of troops unless they are supplied with artillery. I saw twenty-five of its fifty miles, and the engineers in charge told me that I was the first American, or foreigner of any nationality, who had been allowed to visit it and make drawings and photographs of it. Why they allowed me to see it I do not know, nor can I imagine either why they should have objected to my doing so. There is no great mystery about it. Indeed, what impressed me most concerning it was the fact that every bit of material used in constructing this backbone of the Spanish defence, this strategic point of all their operations, and their chief hope of success against the revolutionists, was furnished by their despised and hated enemies in the United States. Every sheet of armor plate, every corrugated zinc roof, every roll of barbed wire, every plank, beam, rafter and girder, even the nails that hold the planks together, the forts themselves, shipped in sections, which are numbered in readiness for setting up, the ties for the military railroad which clings to the trocha from one sea to the other--all of these have been supplied by manufacturers in the United States. This is interesting when one remembers that the American in the Spanish illustrated papers is represented as a hog, and generally with the United States flag for trousers, and Spain as a noble and valiant lion. Yet it would appear that the lion is willing to save a few dollars on freight by buying his armament from his hoggish neighbor, and that the American who cheers for Cuba Libre is not at all averse to making as many dollars as he can in building the wall against which the Cubans may be eventually driven and shot. If the insurgents have found as much difficulty in crossing the trocha by land as I found in reaching it by water, they are deserving of all sympathy as patient and long-suffering individuals. A thick jungle stretches for miles on either side of the trocha, and the only way of reaching it from the outer world is through the seaports at either end. Of these, Moron is all but landlocked, and Jucaro is guarded by a chain of keys, which make it necessary to reship all the troops and their supplies and all the material for the trocha to lighters, which meet the vessels six miles out at sea. A dirty Spanish steamer drifted with us for two nights and a day from Cienfuegos to Jucaro, and three hundred Spanish soldiers, dusty, ragged and barefooted, owned her as completely as though she had been a regular transport. They sprawled at full length over every deck, their guns were stacked in each corner, and their hammocks swung four deep from railings and riggings and across companionways, and even from the bridge itself. It was not possible to take a step without treading on one of them, and their hammocks made a walk on the deck something like a hurdle race. [Illustration: One of the Block Houses-From a photograph taken by Mr. Davis] With the soldiers, and crowding them for space, were the officers' mules and ponies, steers, calves and squealing pigs, while crates full of chickens were piled on top of one another as high as the hurricane deck, so that the roosters and the buglers vied with each other in continual contests. It was like traveling with a floating menagerie. Twice a day the bugles sounded the call for breakfast and dinner, and the soldiers ceased to sprawl, and squatted on the deck around square tin cans filled with soup or red wine, from which they fed themselves with spoons and into which they dipped their rations of hard tack, after first breaking them on the deck with a blow from a bayonet or crushing them with a rifle butt. The steward brought what was supposed to be a sample of this soup to the officer seated in the pilot house high above the squalor, and he would pick out a bean from the mess on the end of a fork and place it to his lips and nod his head gravely, and the grinning steward would carry the dish away. But the soldiers seemed to enjoy it very much, and to be content, even cheerful. There are many things to admire about the Spanish Tommy. In the seven fortified cities which I visited, where there were thousands of him, I never saw one drunk or aggressive, which is much more than you can say of his officers. On the march he is patient, eager and alert. He trudges from fifteen to thirty miles a day over the worst roads ever constructed by man, in canvas shoes with rope soles, carrying one hundred and fifty cartridges, fifty across his stomach and one hundred on his back, weighing in all fifty pounds. With these he has his Mauser, his blanket and an extra pair of shoes, and as many tin plates and bottles and bananas and potatoes and loaves of white bread as he can stow away in his blouse and knapsack. And this under a sun which makes even a walking stick seem a burden. In spite of his officers, and not on account of them, he maintains good discipline, and no matter how tired he may be or how much he may wish to rest on his plank bed, he will always struggle to his feet when the officers pass, and stand at salute. He gets very little in return for his efforts. One Sunday night, when the band was playing in the plaza, at a heaven-forsaken fever camp called Ciego de Avila, a group of soldiers were sitting near me on the grass enjoying the music. They loitered there a few minutes after the bugle had sounded the retreat to the barracks, and the officer of the day found them. When they stood up he ordered them to report themselves at the cartel under arrest, and then, losing all control of himself, lashed one little fellow over the head with his colonel's staff, while the boy stood with his eyes shut and with his lips pressed together, but holding his hand at salute until the officer's stick beat it down. These soldiers are from the villages and towns of Spain; some of them are not more than seventeen years old, and they are not volunteers. They do not care whether Spain owns an island eighty miles from the United States, or loses it, but they go out to it and have their pay stolen, and are put to building earth forts and stone walls, and die of fever. It seems a poor return for their unconscious patriotism when a colonel thrashes one of them as though he were a dog, especially as he knows the soldier may not strike back. The second night out the ship steward showed us a light lying low in the water, and told us that was Jucaro, and we accepted his statement and went over the side into an open boat, in which we drifted about until morning, while the colored man who owned the boat, and a little mulatto boy who steered it, quarreled as to where exactly the town of Jucaro might be. They brought us up at last against a dark shadow of a house, built on wooden posts, and apparently floating in the water. This was the town of Jucaro as seen at that hour of the night, and as we left it before sunrise the next morning, I did not know until my return whether I had slept in a stationary ark or on the end of a wharf. [Illustration: Spanish Cavalry-From photographs taken by Mr. Davis] We found four other men sleeping on the floor in the room assigned us, and outside, eating by a smoking candle, a young English boy, who looked up and laughed when he heard us speak, and said: "You've come at last, have you? You are the first white men I've seen since I came here. That's twelve months ago." He was the cable operator at Jucaro; and he sits all day in front of a sheet of white paper, and watches a ray of light play across an imaginary line, and he can tell by its quivering, so he says, all that is going on all over the world. Outside of his whitewashed cable office is the landlocked bay, filled with wooden piles to keep out the sharks, and back of him lies the village of Jucaro, consisting of two open places filled with green slime and filth and thirty huts. But the operator said that what with fishing and bathing and "Tit-Bits" and "Lloyd's Weekly Times," Jucaro was quite enjoyable. He is going home the year after this. "At least, that's how I put it," he explained. "My contract requires me to stop on here until December of 1898, but it doesn't sound so long if you say 'a year after this,' does it?" He had had the yellow fever, and had never, owing to the war, been outside of Jucaro. "Still," he added, "I'm seeing the world, and I've always wanted to visit foreign parts." As one of the few clean persons I met in Cuba, and the only contented one, I hope the cable operator at Jucaro will get a rise in salary soon, and some day see more of foreign parts than he is seeing at present, and at last get back to "the Horse Shoe, at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford street, sir," where, as we agreed, better entertainment is to be had on Saturday night than anywhere in London. In Havana, General Weyler had given me a pass to enter fortified places, which, except for the authority which the signature implied, meant nothing, as all the cities and towns in Cuba are fortified, and any one can visit them. It was as though Mayor Strong had given a man a permit to ride in all the cable cars attached to cables. It was not intended to include the trocha, but I argued that if a trocha was not a "fortified place" nothing else was, and I persuaded the commandante at Jucaro to take that view of it and to vise Weyler's order. So at five the following morning a box car, with wooden planks stretched across it for seats, carried me along the line of the trocha from Jucaro to Ciego, the chief military port on the fortifications, and consumed five hot and stifling hours in covering twenty-five miles. [Illustration: One of the Forts along the Trocha-From a photograph taken by Mr. Davis] The trocha is a cleared space, one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards wide, which stretches for fifty miles through what is apparently an impassable jungle. The trees which have been cut down in clearing this passageway have been piled up at either side of the cleared space and laid in parallel rows, forming a barrier of tree trunks and roots and branches as wide as Broadway and higher than a man's head. It would take a man some time to pick his way over these barriers, and a horse could no more do it than it could cross a jam of floating logs in a river. Between the fallen trees lies the single track of the military railroad, and on one side of that is the line of forts and a few feet beyond them a maze of barbed wire. Beyond the barbed wire again is he other barrier of fallen trees and the jungle. In its unfinished state this is not an insurmountable barricade. Gomez crossed it last November by daylight with six hundred men, and with but the loss of twenty-seven killed and as many wounded. To-day it would be more difficult, and in a few months, without the aid of artillery, it will be impossible, except with the sacrifice of a great loss of life. The forts are of three kinds. They are best described as the forts, the block houses and the little forts. A big fort consists of two stories, with a cellar below and a watch tower above. It is made of stone and adobe, and is painted a glaring white. One of these is placed at intervals of every half mile along the trocha, and on a clear day the sentry in the watch tower of each can see three forts on either side. Midway between the big forts, at a distance of a quarter of a mile from each, is a block house of two stories with the upper story of wood, overhanging the lower foundation of mud. These are placed at right angles to the railroad, instead of facing it, as do the forts. Between each block house and each fort are three little forts of mud and planks, surrounded by a ditch. They look something like a farmer's ice house as we see it at home, and they are about as hot inside as the other is cold. They hold five men, and are within hailing distance of one another. Back of them are three rows of stout wooden stakes, with barbed wire stretching from one row to the other, interlacing and crossing and running in and out above and below, like an intricate cat's cradle of wire. One can judge how closely knit it is by the fact that to every twelve yards of posts there are four hundred and fifty yards of wire fencing. The forts are most completely equipped in their way, but twelve men in the jungle would find it quite easy to keep twelve men securely imprisoned in one of them for an indefinite length of time. The walls are about twelve feet high, with a cellar below and a vault above the cellar. The roof of the vault forms a platform, around which the four walls rise to the height of a man's shoulder. There are loopholes for rifles in the sides of the vault, and where the platform joins the walls. These latter allow the men in the fort to fire down almost directly upon the head of any one who comes up close to the wall of the fort, where, without these holes in the floor, it would be impossible to fire on him except by leaning far over the rampart. Above the platform is an iron or zinc roof, supported by iron pillars, and in the centre of this is the watch tower. The only approach to the fort is by a movable ladder, which hangs over the side like the gangway of a ship of war, and can be raised by those on the inside by means of a rope suspended over a wheel in the roof. The opening in the wall at the head of the ladder is closed at the time of an attack by an iron platform, to which the ladder leads, and which also can be raised by a pulley. In October of 1897 the Spanish hope to have calcium lights placed in the watch towers of the forts with sufficient power to throw a searchlight over a quarter of a mile, or to the next block house, and so keep the trocha as well lighted as Broadway from one end to the other. As a further protection against the insurgents the Spaniards have distributed a number of bombs along the trocha, which they showed with great pride. These are placed at those points along the trocha where the jungle is less thickly grown, and where the insurgents might be expected to pass. Each bomb is fitted with an explosive cap, to which five or six wires are attached and staked down on the ground. Any one stumbling over one of these wires explodes the bomb and throws a charge of broken iron to a distance of fifty feet. How the Spaniards are going to prevent stray cattle and their own soldiers from wandering into these man-traps it is difficult to understand. [Illustration: The Trocha-From a photograph taken by Mr. Davis] The chief engineer in charge of the trocha detailed a captain to take me over it and to show me all that there was to see. The officers of the infantry and cavalry stationed at Ciego objected to his doing this, but he said: "He has a pass from General Weyler. I am not responsible." It was true that I had an order from General Weyler, but he had rendered it ineffective by having me followed about wherever I went by his police and spies. They sat next to me in the cafés and in the plazas, and when I took a cab they called the next one on the line and trailed after mine all around the city, until my driver would become alarmed for fear he, too, was suspected of something, and would take me back to the hotel. I had gotten rid of them at Cienfuegos by purchasing a ticket on the steamer to Santiago, three days further down the coast, and then dropping off in the night at the trocha, so while I was visiting it I expected to find that my non-arrival at Santiago had been reported, and word sent to the trocha that I was a newspaper correspondent. And whenever an officer spoke to the one who was showing me about, my camera appeared to grow to the size of a trunk, and to weigh like lead, and I felt lonely, and longed for the company of the cheerful cable operator at the other end of the trocha. But as I had seen Mr. Gillette in "Secret Service" only seventeen times before leaving New York, I knew just what to do, which was to smoke all the time and keep cool. The latter requirement was somewhat difficult, as Ciego de Avila is a hotter place than Richmond. Indeed, I can only imagine one place hotter than Ciego, and I have not been there. Ciego was an interesting town. During every day of the last rainy season an average of thirty soldiers and officers died there of yellow fever. While I was there I saw two soldiers, one quite an old man, drop down in the street as though they had been shot, and lie in the road until they were carried to the yellow fever ward of the hospital, under the black oilskin cloth of the stretchers. There was a very smart officers' club at Ciego well supplied with a bar and billiard tables, which I made some excuse for not entering, but which could be seen through its open doors, and I suggested to one of the members that it must be a comfort to have such a place, where the officers might go after their day's march on the mud banks of the trocha, and where they could bathe and be cool and clean. He said there were no baths in the club nor anywhere in the town. He added that he thought it might be a good idea to have them. The bath tub is the dividing line between savages and civilized beings. And when I learned that regiment after regiment of Spanish officers and gentlemen have been stationed in that town--and it was the dirtiest, hottest and dustiest town I ever visited--for eighteen months, and none of them had wanted a bath, I believed from that moment all the stories I had heard about their butcheries and atrocities, stories which I had verified later by more direct evidence. From a military point of view the trocha impressed me as a weapon which could be made to cut both ways. What the Spaniards think of it is shown by the caricature which appeared lately in "Don Quixote," and which shows the United States represented by a hog and the insurgents represented by a negro imprisoned in the trocha, while Weyler stands ready to turn the Spanish lion on them and watch it gobble them up. It would be unkind were Spain to do anything so inconsiderate, and besides, the United States is rather a large mouthful even without the insurgents who taken alone seem to have given the lion some pangs of indigestion. If the trocha were situated on a broad plain or prairie with a mile of clear ground on either side of it, where troops could manoeuvre, and which would prevent the enemy from stealing up to it unseen, it might be a useful line of defence. But at present, along its entire length, stretches this almost impassable barrier of jungle. Now suppose the troops are sent at short notice from the military camps along the line to protect any particular point? Not less than a thousand soldiers must be sent forward, and one can imagine what their condition would be were they forced to manoeuvre in a space one hundred and fifty yards broad, the half of which is taken up with barbed wire fences, fallen trees and explosive bomb shells. Only two hundred at the most could find shelter in the forts, which would mean that eight hundred men would be left outside the breastworks and scattered over a distance of a half mile, with a forest on both sides of them, from which the enemy could fire volley after volley into their ranks, protected from pursuit not only by the jungle, but by the walls of fallen trees which the Spaniards themselves have placed there. A trocha in an open plain, as were the English trochas in the desert around Suakin, makes an admirable defence, when a few men are forced to withstand the assault of a great many, but fighting behind a trocha in a jungle is like fighting in an ambush, and if the trocha at Moron is ever attacked in force it will prove to be a Valley of Death to the Spanish troops. [Illustration: Spanish Troops in Action] The Question Of Atrocities One of the questions that is most frequently asked of those who have been in Cuba is how much truth exists in the reports of Spanish butcheries. It is safe to say in answer to this that while the report of a particular atrocity may not be true, other atrocities just as horrible have occurred and nothing has been heard of them. I was somewhat skeptical of Spanish atrocities until I came to Cuba, chiefly because I had been kept sufficiently long in Key West to learn how large a proportion of Cuban war news is manufactured on the piazzas of the hotels of that town and of Tampa by utterly irresponsible newspaper men who accept every rumor that finds its way across the gulf, and pass these rumors on to some of the New York papers as facts coming direct from the field. It is not surprising that one becomes skeptical, for if one story proves to be false, how is the reader to know that the others are not inventions also? It is difficult to believe, for instance, the account of a horrible butchery if you read in the paragraph above it that two correspondents have been taken prisoners by the Spanish, when both of these gentlemen are sitting beside you in Key West and are, to your certain knowledge, reading the paragraph over your shoulder. Nor is it unnatural that one should grow doubtful of reported Cuban victories if he reads of the taking of Santa Clara and the flight of the Spanish garrison from that city, when he is living at Santa Clara and cannot find a Cuban in it with sufficient temerity to assist him to get out of it through the Spanish lines. But because a Jacksonville correspondent has invented the tale of one butchery, it is no reason why the people in the United States should dismiss all the others as sensational fictions. After I went to Cuba I refused for weeks to listen to tales of butcheries, because I did not believe in them and because there seemed to be no way of verifying them--those who had been butchered could not testify and their relatives were too fearful of the vengeance of the Spaniards to talk about what had befallen a brother or a father. But towards the end of my visit I went to Sagua la Grande and there met a number of Americans and Englishmen, concerning whose veracity there could be no question. What had happened to their friends and the laborers on their plantations was exactly what had happened and is happening to-day to other pacificos all over the island. Sagua la Grande is probably no worse a city than others in Cuba, but it has been rendered notorious by the presence in that city of the guerrilla chieftain, Benito Cerreros. Early in last December _Leslie's Illustrated Weekly_ published half-tone reproductions of two photographs which were taken in Sagua. One was a picture of the bodies of six Cuban pacificos lying on their backs, with their arms and legs bound and their bodies showing mutilation by machetes, and their faces pounded and hacked out of resemblance to anything human. The other picture was of a group of Spanish guerrillas surrounding their leader, a little man with a heavy mustache. His face was quite as inhuman as the face of any of the dead men he had mutilated. It wore a satisfied smile of fatuous vanity, and of the most diabolical cruelty. No artist could have drawn a face from his imagination which would have been more cruel. The letter press accompanying these photographs explained that this guerrilla leader, Benito Cerreros, had found six unarmed pacificos working in a field near Sagua, and had murdered them and then brought their bodies in a cart to that town, and had paid the local photographer to take a picture of them and of himself and his body guard. He claimed that he had killed the Cubans in open battle, but was so stupid as to forget to first remove the ropes with which he had bound them before he shot them. The photographs told the story without any aid from the letter press, and it must have told it to a great many people, judging from the number who spoke of it. It seemed as if, for the first time, something definite regarding the reported Spanish atrocities had been placed before the people of the United States, which they could see for themselves. I had this photograph in my mind when I came to Sagua, and on the night that I arrived there, by a coincidence, the townspeople were giving Cerreros a dinner to celebrate a fresh victory of his over two insurgents, a naturalized American and a native Cuban. The American was visiting the Cuban in the field, and they were lying in hiding outside of the town in a hut. The Cuban, who was a colonel in the insurgent army, had captured a Spanish spy, but had given him his liberty on the condition that he would go into Sagua and bring back some medicines. The colonel was dying of consumption, but he hoped that, with proper medicine, he might remain alive a few months longer. The spy, instead of keeping his word, betrayed the hiding place of the Cuban and the American to Cerreros, who rode out by night to surprise them. He took with him thirty-two guerrillas, and, lest that might not be enough to protect him from two men, added twelve of the Guarda Civile to their number, making forty-four men in all. They surrounded the hut in which the Cuban and the American were concealed, and shot them through the window as they sat at a table in the light of a candle. They then hacked the bodies with machetes. It was in recognition of this victory that the banquet was tendered to Cerreros by admiring friends. [Illustration: Amateur Surgery in Cuba] Civilized nations recognize but three methods of dealing with prisoners captured in war. They are either paroled or exchanged or put in prison; that is what was done with them in our rebellion. It is not allowable to shoot prisoners; at least it is not generally done when they are seated unconscious of danger at a table. It may be said, however, that, as these two men were in arms against the government, they were only suffering the punishment of their crime, and that this is not a good instance of an atrocity. There are, however, unfortunately, many other instances in which the victims were non-combatants and their death simply murder. But it is extremely difficult to tell convincingly of these cases, without giving names, and the giving of names might lead to more deaths in Sagua. It is also difficult to convince the reader of murders for which there seems to have been no possible object. And yet Cerreros and other guerrillas are murdering men and boys in the fields around Sagua as wantonly and as calmly as a gardener cuts down weeds. The stories of these butcheries were told to me by Englishmen and Americans who could look from their verandas over miles of fields that belonged to them, but who could not venture with safety two hundred yards from their doorsteps. They were virtually prisoners in their own homes, and every spot of ground within sight of their windows marked where one of their laborers had been cut down, sometimes when he was going to the next _central_ on an errand, or to carry the mail, and sometimes when he was digging potatoes or cutting sugar cane within sight of the forts. Passes and orders were of no avail. The guerrillas tore up the passes, and swore later that the men were suspects, and were at the moment of their capture carrying messages to the insurgents. The stories these planters told me were not dragged from them to furnish copy for a newspaper, but came out in the course of our talk, as we walked over the small extent which the forts allowed us. My host would say, pointing to one of the pacificos huddled in a corner of his machine shop: "That man's brother was killed last week about three hundred yards over there to the left while he was digging in the field." Or, in answer to a question from our consul, he would say: "Oh, that boy who used to take care of your horse--some guerrillas shot him a month ago." After you hear stories like these during an entire day, the air seems to be heavy with murder, and the very ground on which you walk smells of blood. It was the same in the town, where any one was free to visit the _cartel_, and view the murdered bodies of the pacíficos hacked and beaten and stretched out as a warning, or for public approbation. There were six so exposed while I was in Sagua. In Matanzas they brought the bodies to the Plaza at night when the band was playing, and the guerrillas marched around the open place with the bodies of eighteen Cubans swinging from the backs of ponies with their heads hanging down and bumping against the horses' knees. The people flocked to the sides of the Plaza to applaud this ghastly procession, and the men in the open cafés cheered the guerrilla chief and cried, "Long live Spain!" Speaking dispassionately, and with a full knowledge of the details of many butcheries, it is impossible for me to think of the Spanish guerrillas otherwise than as worse than savage animals. A wild animal kills to obtain food, and not merely for the joy of killing. These guerrillas murder and then laugh over it. The cannibal, who has been supposed hitherto to be the lowest grade of man, is really of a higher caste than these Spanish murderers--men like Colonel Fondevila, Cerreros, and Colonel Bonita--for a cannibal kills to keep himself alive. These men kill to feed their vanity, in order that they may pose as brave soldiers, and that their friends may give them banquets in hotel parlors. If what I say seems prejudiced and extravagant it may be well to insert this translation from a Spanish paper, _El Pais_: "There are signs of civilization among us; but the truth is that we are uncultured, barbaric and cruel. Although this may not be willingly acknowledged, the fact is that we are committing acts of savagery of which there is no counterpart in any other European country." [Illustration: Scouting Party of Spanish Cavalry] "Let us not say a word of the atrocities perpetrated at the Castle of Montjuich; of the iniquitous and miserable massacre of the Novelda republicans; of the shootings which occur daily in Manila; of the arbitrary imprisonments which are systematically made here. We wish now to say something of the respect due to the conquered, of generosity that should be shown to prisoners of war, for these are sentiments which exist even among savage people. "The Cuban exiles who disembark at Cadiz are sent on foot to the distant castle of Figueras. 'The unfortunate exiles,' a letter from Carpió says, 'passed here barefooted and bleeding, almost naked and freezing. At every town, far from finding rest for their fatigue, they are received with all sorts of insults; they are scoffed and provoked. I am indignant at this total lack of humanitarian sentiment and charity. I have two sons who are fighting against the Cuban insurgents; but this does not prevent me from denouncing those who ill-treat their prisoners. I have witnessed such outrages upon the unfortunate exiles that I do not hesitate to say that nothing like it has ever occurred in Africa.'" I do not wish what I have said concerning the Florida correspondents to be misunderstood as referring to those who are writing, and have written from the island of Cuba. They suffer from the "fakirs" even more than do the people of the United States who read the stories of both, and who confound the sensation-mongers with those who go to find the truth at the risk of their lives. For these latter do risk their lives, daily and hourly, when they go into these conflicts looking for the facts. I have not been in any conflict, so I can speak of these men without fear of being misunderstood. They are taking chances that no war correspondents ever took in any war in any part of the world. For this is not a war--it is a state of lawless butchery, and the rights of correspondents, of soldiers and of non-combatants are not recognized. Archibald Forbes, and "Bull Run" Russell and Frederick Villiers had great continental armies to protect them; these men work alone with a continental army against them. They risk capture at sea and death by the guns of a Spanish cruiser, and, escaping that, they face when they reach the island the greater danger of capture there and of being cut down by a guerrilla force and left to die in a road, or of being put in a prison and left to die of fever, as Govin was cut down, as Delgardo died in prison, as Melton is lying in prison now, where he will continue to lie until we have a Secretary of State who recognizes the rights of the correspondent as a non-combatant, or at least as an American citizen. The fate of these three American correspondents has not deterred others from crossing the lines, and they are in the field now, lying in swamps by day and creeping between the forts by night, standing under fire by the side of Gómez as they stood beside Maceo, going without food, without shelter, without the right to answer the attacks of the Spanish troops, climbing the mountains and crawling across the trochas, creeping to some friendly hut for a cup of coffee and to place their despatches in safe hands, and then going back again to run the gauntlet of Spanish spies and of flying columns and of the unspeakable guerrillas. When you sit comfortably at your breakfast in New York, with a policeman at the corner, and read the despatches which these gentlemen write of Cuban victories and their interviews with self-important Cuban chiefs, you should remember what it cost them to supply you with that addition to your morning's budget of news. Whether the result is worth the risk, or whether it is not paying too great a price, the greatest price of all, for too little, is not the question. The reckless bravery and the unselfishness of the correspondents in the field in Cuba to-day are beyond parallel. It is as dangerous to seek for Gómez as Stanley found it to seek for Livingston, and as few men return from the insurgent camps as from the Arctic regions. In case you do not read a New York paper, it is well that you should know that the names of these correspondents are Grover Flint, Sylvester Scovel and George Bronson Rae. I repeat, that as I could not reach the field, I can write thus freely of those who have been more successful. [Illustration: An Officer of Spanish Guerrillas] The Right of Search of American Vessels On the boat which carried me from Cuba to Key West were three young girls, who had been exiled for giving aid to the insurgents. The brother of one of them is in command of the Cuban forces in the field near Havana. More than once his sister had joined him there, and had seen fighting and carried back despatches to the Junta in Havana. For this she and two other young women, who were also suspected, were ordered to leave the island. I happened to sit next to this young lady at table on the steamer, and I found that she was not an Amazon nor a Joan of Arc nor a woman of the people, with a machete in one hand and a Cuban flag in the other. She was a well-bred, well-educated young person, speaking three languages. This is what the Spaniards did to these girls: After ordering them to leave the island on a certain day they sent detectives to the houses of each on the morning of that day and had them undressed and searched by a female detective to discover if they were carrying letters to the Junta at Key West or Tampa. They were searched thoroughly, even to the length of taking off their shoes and stockings. Later, when the young ladies stood at last on the deck of an American vessel, with the American flag hanging from the stern, the Spanish officers followed them there, and demanded that a cabin should be furnished them to which the girls might be taken, and they were then again undressed and searched by this woman for the second time. For the benefit of people with unruly imaginations, of whom there seem to be a larger proportion in this country than I had supposed, I will state again that the search of these women was conducted by women and not by men, as I was reported to have said, and as I did not say in my original report of the incident. Spanish officers, with red crosses for bravery on their chests and gold lace on their cuffs, strutted up and down while the search was going on, and chancing to find a Cuban suspect among the passengers, ordered him to be searched also, only they did not give him the privacy of a cabin, but searched his clothes and shoes and hat on the main deck of this American vessel before the other passengers and myself and the ship's captain and his crew. In order to leave Havana, it is first necessary to give notice of your wish to do so by sending your passport to the Captain General, who looks up your record, and, after twenty-four hours, if he is willing to let you go, visés your passport and so signifies that your request is granted. After you have complied with that requirement of martial law, and the Captain General has agreed to let you depart, and you are on board of an American vessel, the Spanish soldiers' control over you and your movements should cease, for they relinquish all their rights when they give you back your passport. At least the case of Barrundia justifies such a supposition. It was then shown that, while a passenger or a member of a crew is amenable to the "common laws" of the country in the port in which the vessel lies, he is not to be disturbed for political offenses against her government. When the officers of Guatemala went on board a vessel of the Pacific Mail line and arrested Barrundia, who was a revolutionist, and then shot him between decks, the American Minister, who had permitted this outrage, was immediately recalled, and the letter recalling him, which was written by James G. Blaine, clearly and emphatically sets forth the principle that a political offender is not to be molested on board of an American vessel, whether she is in the passenger trade or a ship of war. Prof. Joseph H. Beale, Jr., the professor of international law at Harvard, said in reference to the case of these women when I first wrote of it: "So long as a state of war has not been recognized by this country, the Spanish government has not the right to stop or search our vessels on the high seas for contraband of war or for any other purpose, nor would it have the right to subject American citizens or an American vessel in Cuban waters to treatment which would not be legal in the case of Spanish citizens or vessels. "But the Spanish government has the right in Cuba to execute upon American citizens or vessels any laws prevailing there, in the same way as they would execute them upon the Spaniards, unless they are prevented by the provisions of some treaty with the United States. The fact that the vessel in the harbor of Havana was flying a neutral flag could not protect it from the execution of Spanish law. "However unwise or inhuman the action of the Spanish authorities may have been in searching the women on board the _Olivette_, they appear to have been within their legal rights." [Illustration: A Spanish Picket Post] The Spanish Minister at Washington has also declared that his government has the right of search in the harbor of Havana. Hence in the face of two such authorities the question raised is probably answered from a legal point of view. But if that is the law, it would seem well to alter it, for it gives the Spanish authorities absolute control over the persons and property of Americans on American vessels, and that privilege in the hands of persons as unscrupulous and as insolent as are the Spanish detectives, is a dangerous one. So dangerous a privilege, indeed, that there is no reason nor excuse for not keeping an American ship of war in the harbor of Havana. For suppose that letters and despatches had been found on the persons of these young ladies, and they had been put on shore and lodged in prison; or suppose the whole ship and every one on board had been searched, as the captain of the _Olivette_ said the Spanish officers told him they might decide to do, and letters had been found on the Americans, and they had been ordered over the side and put into prison--would that have been an act derogatory to the dignity of the United States? Or are we to understand that an American citizen or a citizen of any country, after he has asked and obtained permission to leave Cuba and is on board of an American vessel, is no more safe there than he would be in the insurgent camp? The latter supposition would seem to be correct, and the matter to depend on the captain of the vessel and her owners, from whom he receives his instructions, and not to be one in which the United States government is in any way concerned. I do not believe the captain of a British passenger steamer would have allowed one of his passengers to be searched on the main deck of his vessel, as I saw this Cuban searched; nor even the captain of a British tramp steamer nor of a coal barge. The chief engineer of the _Olivette_ declared to me that in his opinion, "it served them just right," and the captain put a cabin at the disposal of the Spanish spies with eager humility. And when one of the detectives showed some disinclination to give back my passport, and I said I would keep him on board until he did it, the captain said: "Yes, you will, will you? I would like to see you try it," suggesting that he was master of his own ship and of my actions. But he was not. There is not an unwashed, garlicky, bediamonded Spanish spy in Cuba who has not more authority on board the _Olivette_ than her American captain and his subservient crew. Only a year ago half of this country was clamoring for a war with the greatest power it could have selected for that purpose. Yet Great Britain would have been the first to protect her citizens and their property and their self-respect if they had been abused as the self-respect and property and freedom of Americans have been abused by this fourth-rate power, and are being abused to-day. Before I went to Cuba I was as much opposed to our interfering there as any other person equally ignorant concerning the situation could be, but since I have seen for myself I feel ashamed that we should have stood so long idle. We have been too considerate, too fearful that as a younger nation, we should appear to disregard the laws laid down by older nations. We have tolerated what no European power would have tolerated; we have been patient with men who have put back the hand of time for centuries, who lie to our representatives daily, who butcher innocent people, who gamble with the lives of their own soldiers in order to gain a few more stars and an extra stripe, who send American property to the air in flames and murder American prisoners. The British lately sent an expedition of eight hundred men to the west coast of Africa to punish savage king who butchers people because it does not rain. Why should we tolerate Spanish savages merely because they call themselves "the most Catholic," but who in reality are no better than this naked negro? What difference is there between the King of Benin who crucifies a woman because he wants rain and General Weyler who outrages a woman for his own pleasure and throws her to his bodyguard of blacks, even if the woman has the misfortune to live after it--and to still live in Sagua la Grande to-day? If the English were right--and they were right--in punishing the King of Benin for murdering his subjects to propitiate his idols, we are right to punish these revivers of the Inquisition for starving women and children to propitiate an Austrian archduchess. It is difficult to know what the American people do want. They do not want peace, apparently, for their senators, some through an ignorant hatred of England and others through a personal dislike of the President, emasculated the arbitration treaty; and they do not want war, for, as some one has written, if we did not go to war with Spain when she murdered the crew of the _Virginius,_ we never will. [Illustration: General Weyler in the Field] But if the executive and the legislators wish to assure themselves, like "Fighting Bob Acres," that they have some right on their side, they need not turn back to the _Virginius_ incident. There are reasons enough to-day to justify their action, if it is to be their intellects and not their feelings that must move them to act. American property has been destroyed by Spanish troops to the amount of many millions, and no answer made to demands of the State Department for an explanation. American citizens have been imprisoned and shot--some without a trial, some in front of their own domiciles, and American vessels are turned over to the uses of the Spanish secret police. These would seem to be sufficient reasons for interfering. But why should we not go a step farther and a step higher, and interfere in the name of humanity? Not because we are Americans, but because we are human beings, and because, within eighty miles of our coast, Spanish officials are killing men and women as wantonly as though they were field mice, not in battle, but in cold blood--cutting them down in the open roads, at the wells to which they have gone for water, or on their farms, where they have stolen away to dig up a few potatoes, having first run the gauntlets of the forts and risked their lives to obtain them. This is not an imaginary state of affairs, nor are these supposititious cases. I am writing only of the things I have heard from eye witnesses and of some of the things that I have seen. President Cleveland declared in his message to Congress: "When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurgents has become manifest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle for its re-establishment has degenerated into a strife which is nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject-matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge!" These conditions are now manifest. A hopeless struggle for sovereignty has degenerated into a strife which means not the useless, but the wanton sacrifice of human life, and the utter destruction of the subject-matter of the conflict. What further manifestations are needed? Is it that the American people doubt the sources from which their information comes? They are the consuls all over the island of Cuba. For what voice crying in the wilderness are they still waiting? What will convince them that the time has come? If the United States is to interfere in this matter she should do so at once, but she should only do so after she has informed herself thoroughly concerning it. She should not act on the reports of the hotel piazza correspondents, but send men to Cuba on whose judgment and common sense she can rely. General Fitzhugh Lee is one of these men, and there is no better informed American on Cuban matters than he, nor one who sees more clearly the course which our government should pursue. Through the consuls all over the island, he is in touch with every part of it, and in daily touch; but incidents which are frightfully true there seem exaggerated and overdrawn when a typewritten description of them reaches the calm corridors of the State Department. More men like Lee should go to Cuba to inform themselves, not men who will stop in Havana and pick up the gossip of the Hotel Ingleterra, but who will go out into the cities and sugar plantations and talk to the consuls and merchants and planters, both Spanish and American; who can see for themselves the houses burning and the smoke arising from every point of the landscape; who can see the bodies of "pacificos" brought into the cities, and who can sit on a porch of an American planter's house and hear him tell in a whisper how his sugar cane was set on fire by the same Spanish soldiers who surround the house, and who are supposed to guard his property, but who, in reality, are there to keep a watch on him. He should hear little children, born of American parents, come into the consulate and ask for a piece of bread. He should see the children and the women herded in the towns or walking the streets in long processions, with the Mayor at their head, begging his fellow Spaniards to give them food, the children covered with the red blotches of small-pox and the women gaunt with yellow fever. He should see hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of machinery standing idle, covered with rust and dirt, or lying twisted and broken under fallen walls. He will learn that while one hundred and fifty-six vessels came into the port of Matanzas in 1894, only eighty-eight came in 1895, and that but sixteen touched there in 1896, and that while the export of sugar from that port to the United States in 1894 amounted to eleven millions of dollars, in 1895 it sank to eight millions of dollars, and in 1896 it did not reach one million. I copied these figures one morning from the consular books, and that loss of ten millions of dollars in two years in one little port is but a sample of the facts that show what chaos this war is working. [Illustration: Spanish Cavalryman on a Texas Broncho] In three weeks any member of the Senate or of Congress who wishes to inform himself on this reign of terror in Cuba can travel from one end of this island to the other and return competent to speak with absolute authority. No man, no matter what his prejudices may be, can make this journey and not go home convinced that it is his duty to try to stop this cruel waste of life and this wanton destruction of a beautiful country. A reign of terror sounds hysterical, but it is an exact and truthful descriptive phrase of the condition in Cuba. Insurgents and Spaniards alike are laying waste the land, and neither side shows any sign of giving up the struggle. But while the men are in the field fighting after their fashion, for the independence of the island, the old men and the infirm and the women and children, who cannot help the cause or themselves, and who are destitute and starving and dying, have their eyes turned toward the great republic that lies only eighty miles away, and they are holding out their hands and asking "How long, O, Lord, how long?" Or if the members of the Senate and of Congress can not visit Cuba, why will they not listen to those who have been there? Of three men who traveled over the island, seeking the facts concerning it, two correspondents and an interpreter, two of the three were for a time in Spanish hospitals, covered with small-pox. Of the three, although we were together until they were taken ill, I was the only one who escaped contagion. If these other men should die, they die because they tried to find out the truth. Is it likely, having risked such a price for it that they would lie about what they have seen? They could have invented stories of famine and disease in Havana. They need not have looked for the facts where they were to be found, in the seaports and villages and fever camps. Why not listen to these men or to Stephen Bonsai, of the _New York Herald_, in whom the late President showed his confidence by appointing him to two diplomatic missions? Why not listen to C.E. Akers, of the _London Times_, and _Harper's Weekly_, who has held two commissions from the Queen? Why disregard a dozen other correspondents who are seeking the truth, and who urge in every letter which they write that their country should stop this destruction of a beautiful land and this butchery of harmless non-combatants? The matter lies at the door of Congress. Each day's delay means the death of hundreds of people, every hour sees fresh blood spilled, and more houses and more acres of crops sinking into ashes. A month's delay means the loss to this world of thousands of lives, the unchecked growth of terrible diseases, and the spreading devastation of a great plague. [Illustration: For Cuba Libre] It would be an insult to urge political reasons, or the sure approval of the American people which the act of interference would bring, or any other unworthy motive. No European power dare interfere, and it lies with the United States and with her people to give the signal. If it is given now it will save thousands of innocent lives; if it is delayed just that many people will perish. THE END. 
33848	----	[Etext transcriber's note: The use of Spanish accents in this text varies and has not been altered (ie. both Senor and Señor [tilde n], Senora and Señora [tilde n], José [acute accented letter e] and Jose appear; both Nunez and Nuñez [tilde n], Marti and Martí [acute accented i], Carreno and Carreño appear [tilde n].) Several typographical errors have been corrected (Almandares=>Almendares, Donate=>Donato, etc.).] [Illustration: JOSÉ MARTÍ The first great apostle and martyr of the Cuban War of Independence, José Martí, was born in Havana on January 28, 1853, and fell in battle at Dos Rios on May 19, 1895. He was a Professor of Literature, Doctor of Laws, economist, philosopher, essayist, journalist, poet, historian, statesman, tribune of the people, organizer of the final and triumphant cause of Cuban freedom. He suffered imprisonment in Spain and exile in Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States, doing his crowning work in the last-named country as the vitalizing and energizing head of the Cuban Junta in New York. His fame must be lasting as the nation which he founded, wide as the world which he adorned.] THE HISTORY OF CUBA BY WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON A.M., L.H.D. Author of "A Century of Expansion," "Four Centuries of the Panama Canal," "America's Foreign Relations" Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign Relations in New York University _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ VOLUME FOUR [Illustration] NEW YORK B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, INC. 156 FIFTH AVENUE 1920 Copyright, 1920, BY CENTURY HISTORY CO. _All rights reserved_ ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL LONDON, ENGLAND. PRINTED IN U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I 1 Cuba for the Cubans--Era of the War of Independence--Organization of the Cuban Revolutionary Party--Vigilance of the Spanish Government--The Sartorius Uprising--The Abarzuza "Home Rule" Measure--Beginning of the War of Independence--José Marti, His Genius and His Work--Members of the Junta in New York--Independence the Aim--Marti's Departure for Cuba--Association with Maximo Gomez--Death of Marti--His Legacy of Ideals to Cuba. CHAPTER II 19 Aims and Methods of the Junta--Efforts to Avoid American Complications--Filibustering Expeditions--Contraband Messenger Service--Attitude of the Various Classes of the Cuban People Toward the Revolution--No Racial nor Partisan Differences--The Spanish Element--The Mass of the Cuban People United for National Independence. CHAPTER III 29 The First Uprising--Failure in Havana--Success in Oriente--Response of the Spanish Authorities--Superior Numbers of the Spanish Forces--Early Complications with the United States-Seeking Terms with the Patriots--Grim Reception of an Envoy--Ministerial Crisis at Madrid over Cuban Affairs--Martinez Campos, "Spain's Greatest Soldier," Sent to Cuba--His Conciliatory Policy--His Military Preparations--Antonio Maceo--Uprisings in Many Places--Provisional Government of the Patriots--Campos's Barricades--Campos Beaten by Maceo. CHAPTER IV 47 Declaration of Cuban Independence--First Constitutional Convention--The First Government of Ministers--Founders of the Cuban Government--Desperate Efforts of Campos--Disadvantages of the Cubans--Plantation Work Forbidden--Campaigns by Maceo and Gomez--Losses of the Spaniards at Sea--Reenforcements from Spain Welcomed--Cuban Headquarters at Las Tunas--Invasion of Matanzas--Defeat and Narrow Escape of Campos--Action of the Autonomists--Loyalty Pledged to Campos--State of Siege in Havana--Campos Recalled to Spain. CHAPTER V 65 General Marin--General Weyler the New Captain-General--His Arrival and Remorseless Policy--Cuban Elections a Farce--The Trocha--A War of Ruthless Destruction--Many Filibustering Expeditions--Interest of the United States Government--Diplomatic Controversies--Efficiency of the Provisional Government--Strengthening the Trocha--Activity of Maceo--His Betrayal and Death--Campaigns of Gomez and Others--Calixto Garcia--The Great Advance Westward--President Cleveland's Significant Message to the United States Congress. CHAPTER VI 82 Bad Effects of Maceo's Death--Weyler in the Field Against Gomez--Daring and Death of Bandera--Dissensions in the Camp of Gomez--Weyler's Concentration Policy--A Practical Attempt at Extermination--Senator Proctor's Observations--President McKinley's Message--Crisis in Spain--Weyler Recalled and Succeeded by Ramon Blanco--Further Attempts at Reform and Conciliation--Condition of Cuba--The Revolutionists Uncompromising--The Ruiz-Aranguren Tragedy--Organization of the Autonomist Government--Attitude of the Spaniards--Visit of the Maine to Havana--Destruction of the Vessel--The Investigations--Futile Efforts of the Autonomist Government CHAPTER VII 103 The Destruction of the Maine not the Cause of American Intervention--Causes Which Led to the War--Diplomatic Negotiations--German Intrigue--President McKinley's War Message--His Attitude Toward the Cuban People--Spanish Resentment--Declaration of War--American Agents Sent to Cuba--Attitude of Maximo Gomez--Supplies, not Troops, Wanted--Blockade of the Cuban Coast--Spanish Fleet at Santiago--Landing of the American Army--Operations at Santiago--Services of the "Rough Riders"--Naval Battle of Santiago--Surrender of the Spanish Army--The Armistice. CHAPTER VIII 118 Departure of the Spanish Forces from Cuba--Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain--Cuba to be Made Independent--The Cuban Debt--First American Government of Intervention--The Roll of Spanish Rulers from Velasquez in 1512 to Castellanos in 1899--Relations between Americans and Cubans--Disbandment of the Provisional Government and Demobilization of the Cuban Army--A Mutinous Demonstration--Paying Off the Cuban Soldiers. CHAPTER IX 139 American Occupation of Cuba--General Wood's Administration at Santiago--His Antecedents and Preparation for His Great Work--A Formidable Undertaking--Conquering Pestilence--Organization of the Rural Guards--American Administration at Havana and Throughout the Island--Grave Problems Confronting General Brooke--Agricultural and Industrial Rehabilitation--Reorganizing Local Government--Triumphal Progress of Maximo Gomez--Unification of Sentiment Among the People--Finances of the Island--Church and State--Marriage Reform--Franchises Refused--The Census--Improving the School System. CHAPTER X 158 General Brooke Succeeded by General Leonard Wood--Favorable Reception of the Soldier-Statesman--A Cabinet of Cubans--Efficient Attention Paid to Public Education--Cuban Teachers at Harvard--Caring for Derelict Children--Public Works--Sanitation--Port Improvements--Roads--Paving--The Heroic Drama of the Conquest of Yellow Fever--Work of General Gorgas--A Home of Pestilence Transformed into a Sanitarium--Reforms in Court Procedure--Cleaning Up the Prisons--The First Election in Free Cuba--Rise of Political Parties--Taxation and the Tariff--Increase of Commerce. CHAPTER XI 185 Preparations for Self-Government--Call for a Constitutional Convention--The Election--Meeting of the Convention--General Wood's Address--Organization of the Convention--Framing the Constitution--Debates over Church and State, and Presidential Qualifications--Signing of the Constitution--No Americans Present at the Convention--General Provisions of the Constitution--Relations between Cuba and the United States--Controversy between the Two Governments--Origin of the "Platt Amendment"--Attitude of the Cubans Toward It--Malign Agitation and Misrepresentation--A Mission to Washington--Final Adoption of the Amendment. CHAPTER XII 204 Text of the Constitution of the Cuban Republic--The Nation, Its Form of Government, and the National Territory--Cubans and Foreigners--Bill of Rights--Sovereignty and Public Powers--The Legislature--The President--The Vice-President--The Secretaries of State--The Judicial Power--Provincial and Municipal Governments--Amendments. CHAPTER XIII 240 Election of the First Cuban Government--Candidates for the Presidency--Tomas Estrada Palma Chosen by Common Consent--General Maso's Candidacy--The Election--Close of the American Occupation--A Festal Week in Havana--Transfer of Authority to the Cuban Government--The Cuban Flag at Last Raised in Sovereignty of the Island--President Roosevelt's Estimate of General Wood's Work in Cuba--President Palma's Cabinet--His First Message--The United States Naval Station--Reciprocity Secured after Discreditable Delay at Washington. CHAPTER XIV 259 Admirable Work of the Palma Administration--Rise of Sordid Factionalism--José Miguel Gomez, Alfredo Zayas and Orestes Ferrara--Character of the Liberal Party, and of the Conservative Party--Conspiracy to Discredit an Election--An Abortive Insurrection--Pino Guerra's Intrigues--The Rebellion of José Miguel Gomez--President Palma's Unpreparedness and Incredulity--His Faith in the People--The Crisis--Suggestions of the American Consul-General--American Intervention sought--Ships and Troops Sent--Arrival of Mr. Taft--His Negotiations with the Rebels--His Yielding to Their Threats--Resignation of Estrada Palma--Mr. Taft's Pardon to the Rebels--Charles E. Magoon Made Provisional Governor--Estimate of President Palma and His Administration. CHAPTER XV 283 Mr. Magoon's Administration--Recognition of the Liberals--The Offices Filled with Liberal Placeholders--Execution of Many Public Works--A New Census Taken--New Electoral Law--Proportional Representation--New Elections Held--Split in the Liberal Party--The Presidential Campaign--Bargain between José Miguel Gomez and Alfredo Zayas--General Menocal and Dr. Montoro--The Victory of the Liberals--Changes in Provincial and Municipal Administrations--Revision of Laws--Settling Church Claims--End of the Second Intervention. CHAPTER XVI 297 Administration of President José Miguel Gomez--His Cabinet Sketch of His Career--Sketch of Vice-President Zayas--Army Reorganization--New Laws--The President's Sensitiveness to Criticism--Officials in Politics--Charges of Profligacy and Corruption--Clash with the Veterans' Association--The United States Interested--Quarrels between Gomez and Zayas--Formidable Negro Revolt Suppressed--Reluctance to Settle Claims--Outrage Upon an American Diplomat--Amnesty Bill--The Lottery Established--The "Dragado" Scandal--The Railroad Terminal. CHAPTER XVII 312 The Fourth Presidential Campaign--Candidacy and Career of Mario G. Menocal--His Brilliant Work in the War of Independence and in the Sugar Industry--Sketch of Enrique José Varona--Dr. Rafael Montoro's Distinguished Career--His Diplomatic Services and Literary Achievements--President Menocal's Cabinet--His Aims and Plans for His Administration--First Message to Congress--Factional Obstruction--Paying Off Old Debts--Trying to Abolish Gambling--The Civil Service--Controversy Over the Asbert Amnesty Bill--A Small Insurrection. CHAPTER XVIII 328 Reelection of President Menocal--Features of the Campaign--Liberal Conspiracy to Invalidate the Election by Revolutionary Means--Disputed Elections--The Double Treason of José Miguel Gomez--Outbreak of a Carefully Planned Insurrection--Intrigues of Orestes Ferrara in the United States--Vigorous Military Action of President Menocal--American Assistance Wisely Declined--Capture of the Rebel Chieftain--Efforts of the Insurgents at Devastation--Continuance of the Rebellion by Carlos Mendieta--Dr. Ferrara Warned by the American Government--Attempts to Assassinate President Menocal--Clemency Shown to Criminals--Attitude of the United States Government--Some Plain Talk from Washington. CHAPTER XIX 346 Cuba's Entry into the War of the Nations--President Menocal's War Message--Prompt Response of Congress--Sentiments of the Cuban People--German Propaganda--Attitude of the Church--Liberal Intrigues with Germans--Seizure of German Ships--Conservation and Increased Production of Food--Military Services--Generous Subscriptions to Liberty Loans--Mrs. Menocal's Leadership in Red Cross Work--Noble Activities of the Women of Cuba--Moral and Spiritual Effect of Cuba's Participation in the War. CHAPTER XX 355 Marti's Epigram on the Revolution--How It has been Fulfilled by the Cuban Republic--The Sense of Responsibility--Progress in Popular Education as a Criterion--Great Gain in Health--Enormous Growth of the Sugar Industry--Commerce of the Island--Stable Finances--Sanitary Efficiency--Military Reorganization--Statesmanship of President Menocal--Cuba's Unique Situation Among the Countries of the Globe--Significance of the Record Which She has Made from Velasquez to Menocal. ILLUSTRATIONS FULL PAGE PLATES José Marti _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE The Prado 16 Maximo Gomez 44 José Antonio Maceo 74 Bay and Harbor of Havana 98 Old and New in Havana 134 Leonard Wood 158 University of Havana 164 Carlos J. Finlay 172 The Capitol 204 Tomas Estrada Palma 248 The President's Home 268 The Academy of Arts and Crafts 288 Mario G. Menocal 312 Enrique José Varona 316 Rafael Montoro 320 Senora Menocal 352 Boneato Road, Oriente 358 TEXT EMBELLISHMENTS Ricardo del Monte 2 Julian del Casal 6 José Ramon Villalon 13 George Reno 21 La Punta Fortress, Havana 33 Aniceto G. Menocal 50 General Weyler 66 William McKinley 87 Antonio Govin 95 Admiral Cervera 110 Admiral Schley 110 Old Fort at El Caney 112 Theodore Roosevelt 113 Monuments on San Juan Hill 114 Admiral Sampson 115 Peace Tree near Santiago 116 Part of Old City Wall of Havana 122 Gonzalez Lanuza 146 Evelio Rodriguez Lendian 162 Antonio Sanchez de Bustamente 165 Almendares River, Havana 167 Old Time Water Mill, Havana Province 169 Street in Vedado, Suburb of Havana 176 Aurelia Castillo de Gonzalez 192 Scene in Villalon Park, Havana 247 Flag of Cuba 250 Coat of Arms of Cuba 251 William H. Taft 276 José Miguel Gomez 298 Dr. Alfredo Zayas 300 Birthplace of Mario G. Menocal 313 Dr. Juan Guiteras 321 General D. Emilio Nuñez 328 José Luis Azcarata 341 Francisco Dominguez Roldan 357 José A. del Cueto 359 Dr. Fernandez Mendez-Capote 360 General José Marti 360 Eugenio Sanchez Agramonte 362 Academy of Sciences, Havana 364 THE HISTORY OF CUBA CHAPTER I Cuba for Cuba must be the grateful theme of the present volume. We have seen the identification of the Queen of the Antilles with the Spanish discovery and conquest of America. We have traced the development of widespread international interests in that island, especially implicating the vital attention of at least four great powers. We have reviewed the origin and development of a peculiar relationship, frequently troubled but ultimately beneficent to both, between Cuba and the United States of America. Now, in the briefest of the four major epochs into which Cuban history is naturally divided, we shall have the welcome record of the achievement of Cuba's secure establishment among the sovereign nations of the world. The time for the War of Independence was well chosen. That conflict was, indeed, a necessary and inevitable sequel to the Ten Years' War and its appendix, the Little War; under the same flag, with the same principles and issues, and with some of the same leaders. Indeed we may rightly claim that the organization of the Cuban Republic remained continuous and unbroken, if not in Cuba itself, at least in the United States, where, in New York, the Cuban Junta was ever active and resolute. The Treaty of Zanjon ended field operations for the time. It did not for one moment or in the least degree quench or diminish the impassioned and resolute determination of the Cuban people to become a nation. We have said that the War of Independence was inevitable. That was manifestly so because of the determination of the Cubans to become independent. It was also because of the failure of the Spanish government to fulfil the terms and stipulations of the Treaty of Zanjon, concerning which we have hitherto spoken. It must remain a matter of speculation whether that government ever intended to fulfil them. It is certain that few thoughtful Cubans, capable of judging the probabilities of the future by the actualities of the past, expected that it would do so. We may also regard it as certain that even a scrupulous fulfilment of those terms, while it might have postponed it, would not and could not permanently have defeated the assertion of Cuban independence. [Illustration: RICARDO DEL MONTE Journalist, critic, poet and patriot, Ricardo del Monte was born at Cimorrones in 1830, and was educated in the United States and Europe. In Rome he was attached to the Spanish embassy. In Spain he was a journalist with liberal and democratic tendencies. He returned to Cuba in 1847 and edited several papers in Havana, including, after the Ten Years War, _El Triunfo_ and _El Pais_, the organ of the Autonomists. He was a writer in prose and verse of singular power and grace, his works ranking in style with the best of modern Spanish literature. He died in 1908.] The Cuban Revolutionary Party, which as we have said never went out of existence, was reorganized for renewed activity in New York in April, 1892; from which time we may properly date the beginning of the War of Independence. Its leader was Jose Marti, of whom we shall have much more to say hereafter; but he did not accept the official headship of the Junta. That place was taken by Tomas Estrada Palma, the honored veteran of the Ten Years' War, who at this time was the principal of an excellent boys' school at Central Valley, New York. He was the President of the Junta. The Secretary was Gonzalo de Quesada, worthy bearer of an honored name; a fervent patriot and an eloquent orator. The Treasurer was Benjamin Guerra, an approved patriot, and the General Counsel was Horatio Rubens. This New York Junta, meeting at No. 56 New Street, New York City, was the real head of the whole movement. But it was supplemented by many other Cuban clubs elsewhere. There were ten in New York, 61 at Key West, Florida; 15 at Tampa, two at Ocala, two in Philadelphia, and one each at New Orleans, Jacksonville, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, and St. Augustine. There were also six in the island of Jamaica, two in Mexico, and one in Hayti. The multiplication of these organizations and their increasing activity did not escape the observation of the Spanish government, which realized that revolution was in the air, and that it behooved it to do something to counteract it if it was to avoid losing the last remains of its once vast American empire. Accordingly early in 1893 the Cortes at Madrid enacted a bill extending the electoral franchise in Cuba to all men paying each as much as five pesos tax yearly. The Autonomist party at first regarded this concession with doubt and suspicion, but finally decided to give it a trial and participated in the elections held under the new law. But the result was unsatisfactory; owing, it was openly charged, to gross intimidation and frauds by the Government. The sequel was increased activity of the revolutionary organizations. The Spanish government was vigilant and strenuous. It sent more troops to Cuba, and it sent a large part of its navy to American waters, to patrol the Cuban coast, to cruise off the Florida coast, and to guard the waters between the two, in order to prevent the sending of filibustering expeditions or cargoes of supplies from the United States to Cuba. These efforts were so efficient that no important expeditions got through. But in spite of that fact an insurrection was started in Cuba in the spring of 1893. The leaders were two brothers, Manuel and Ricardo Sartorius, of Santiago de Cuba. On April 24 they put themselves at the head of a band of twenty men and, at Puernio, near Holguin, they proclaimed a revolution. The next day they were joined by eighteen more, and by the time they had marched to Milas, on the north coast, the band was increased to 300, while other bands, in sympathy with them, were formed at Holguin, Manzanillo, Guantanamo, and Las Tunas. This movement, however, was purely a private enterprise of the Sartorius Brothers; in which they presumably expected to be supported by a general uprising of the Cuban people. As a matter of fact there was no such uprising. The people seemed indifferent to it. The juntas and clubs in New York and elsewhere knew nothing about it. The Executive Committee of the Autonomist Party in Cuba adopted resolutions condemning it and giving moral support to the Spanish government, and the Cuban Senators and Deputies in the Cortes at Madrid took like action. Meantime the Spanish authorities in the island acted promptly and with vigor. The Captain-General summoned a council of war on April 27, and sent troops to the scene of revolt, and directed the fleet to exercise renewed vigilance to prevent aid from reaching the insurgents from the United States. The next day martial law was proclaimed throughout the province of Santiago de Cuba, and four thousand troops, divided into seven columns, were in hot pursuit of the revolutionists. The numbers of the latter rapidly dwindled through desertions and in a couple of days all had vanished save the two brothers and 29 of their followers. On May 2 these all surrendered, on promise of complete pardon, a promise which was fulfilled, and on May 9 martial law was withdrawn and the abortive revolt was ended. This occurrence moved the Spanish government, however, to further efforts to placate the Cubans, and in 1894 the Minister for the Colonies, Senor Maura, proposed a bill for the reorganization of the insular government. The six provincial councils were to be merged into a single legislature. With this was to be combined an Executive Council, or Board of Administration, to administer the laws; consisting of the Governor-General as President, various high civil and military functionaries, and nine additional members named by Royal decree. This arrangement was strongly opposed and finally defeated, whereupon Senor Maura resigned. Later in the same year the Cabinet was reorganized with him as Minister of Justice and with Senor Abarzuza, a follower of Emilio Castelar, the Spanish Republican leader, as Minister for the Colonies. The Prime Minister was Praxedes Sagasta, the leader of the Spanish Liberals, and a statesman of consummate ability. There was much complaint by Conservatives that the Captain-General in Cuba, Emilio Calleja, favored the native Autonomists over the Loyalists or Spanish party. Despite this, Senor Abarzuza, after taking much counsel with the Prime Minister and others, planned radical action in behalf of Cuban autonomy, hoping to establish a new regime which, he fondly hoped, would allay discontent, abate disaffection, and confirm Cuba in her traditional status of the "Ever Faithful Isle." Accordingly he entered into long and earnest consultation with the leaders of the various political parties in Spain, including the Carlists and Radical Republicans, and also with representative Loyalists and Home Rulers--otherwise Spaniards and Autonomists--of Cuba. Never, indeed, was a more thorough attempt made to secure the judgment of all parties and thus to frame a measure that would be satisfactory to all. Moreover, an exceptionally reasonable and conciliatory spirit was shown by all the leading politicians, of all shades of opinion, so that it seemed for a time that the resulting bill, framed by Senors Sagasta and Abarzuza, would be accepted with scarcely a word of criticism and would mark the opening of a new era in colonial affairs. [Illustration: JULIAN DEL CASAL During his brief life, from 1863 to October 21, 1891, Julian del Casal, invalid and misanthrope though he was, made a brilliant record in the world of letters, and gave to Cuban poetry its greatest modern impulse. Most of his life was spent in penury, on the meagre earnings of a hack journalist, but his memory is cherished as that of one of the foremost men of letters of his time.] The bill was drafted. It was in purport a West Indies Home Rule bill. Its salient feature was the establishment in Cuba of an Insular Council, which would be the local governing body of the colony. Of it the Spanish Viceroy, or Captain General, would be the President; and of course he would continue to be appointed by the Crown. Of the members of the Council, one half would be appointed by the Crown, from among certain specified classes of the inhabitants of Cuba; and the other half would be elected by the suffrages of the Cuban people. This body would have, subject only to the veto of the Captain-General, control of all insular affairs, including supervision of provincial and municipal councils. It would also, subject to the approval of the Madrid government, legislate for the regulation of immigration, commerce, posts and telegraphs, revenue, and similar matters. On the face of it the measure promised great improvement in the government of the island, and the investing of the people of Cuba with a very large measure of self-government, both legislative and executive. It was the last and probably the best voluntary attempt ever made by Spain to give Cuba self-government. Unfortunately for Spain there were two fatal flaws in the scheme; one subjective, one objective. The former was the fact that the appointment of half the members of the Council by the Crown would assure in that body a constant majority devoted to and subservient to the Crown, and that circumstance, together with the veto power, would prevent the possibility of any legislation not entirely pleasing to Madrid. That made the thing quite unacceptable to all Cubans whose aim was the independence of the island or even genuine autonomy and home rule. The other flaw was the fact that while Cuban Loyalists and Autonomists were called into consultation over the bill, and gave it their approval, Cuban advocates of Independence were not called; they would not have entered into conference; and they were irrevocably committed against any scheme that did not provide for the complete separation of the island from Spain and the creation of an entirely independent government. The bill was adopted by the Spanish Chamber of Deputies by a practically unanimous vote, on February 14, 1895, and was likewise adopted by the Senate. In Cuba it was regarded by the Autonomists as not satisfactory, in that it retained too much power for the Crown. As for the party of Cuban Independence, it looked upon it as unworthy of serious consideration. Ten days after its passage by the Chamber of Deputies, the Cuban Revolution was proclaimed. The reproachful comment has been made by some writers that the Cuban leaders started the revolution at that date, February 24, 1895, in order to defeat the beneficent designs of Spain in granting autonomy to the island, and that if they had not done so, the Abarzuza law would have been generally accepted and successfully applied, and Cuba would have remained a colony of Spain, contented, loyal and prosperous. For this strange theory there is no good foundation. It had been made perfectly clear for more than two years preceding that no such arrangement--indeed, that nothing short of complete separation from Spain--would satisfy the Cuban people. Moreover, preparations had been copiously made for the revolution, long before the passage of this measure. Cubans in the United States, of whom there were many, had contributed freely of their means for the purchase of arms and ammunition. There were considerable stocks of arms in Cuba which had remained concealed since the Ten Years' War, and these had been added to by surreptitious shipments from the United States. It is a matter of record that considerable quantities of first rate Mauser rifles were obtained from the arsenals of the Spanish government, being secretly purchased from custodians who were either corrupt or in sympathy with the revolutionists. Efforts were also made to land expeditions from the United States. One formidable party was to have sailed from Fernandina, Florida, a month before the passage of the Abarzuza law, but it was checked and disbanded by the United States authorities. The year 1895 was not inappropriate for the beginning of a war which should annihilate the Spanish colonial empire and should add a new member to the world's community of sovereign nations. In almost every quarter of the globe great things were happening. At the antipodes Japan was completing her crushing defeat of China and was thus bringing herself forward as one of the great military and naval powers. The ancient empire of Siam was establishing an enlightened constitutional and parliamentary system of government. In Africa the epochal conflict between Boer and Briton was developing inexorably, and France was about to achieve the conquest of Madagascar. In Europe, Nicholas II was newly seated upon the throne of the Czars, and the strange resignation of the Presidency by Casimir-Perier threw France into such a crisis as she had scarcely known before since the foundation of the Republic. Nearer home, Peru and Ecuador were convulsed with revolution, and the controversy between Venezuela and British Guiana began to loom acute and ominous. In such a setting was the War of Cuban Independence staged. The foremost director of that war, its organizer and inspirer, was José Marti; one of those rare geniuses who have appeared occasionally in the history of the world to be the incarnation of great ideals of justice and human right. He was indeed many times a genius: Organizer, economist, historian, poet, statesman, tribune of the people, apostle of freedom, above all, Man. In himself he united the virtues, the enthusiasm and the energising vitality which his countrymen needed to have aroused in themselves. To his disorganized and disheartened country he brought a magic personality which won all hearts and inspired them all with his own irrepressible and indestructible ideal, National Independence. Marti was a native Cuban, born in Havana on January 28, 1853. In his mere boyhood he became an eloquent and inspiring advocate of the ideal to which he devoted his life and which he did so much to realize; and at the outbreak of the Ten Years' War, when he was scarcely yet sixteen years old, the Spanish government recognized in him one of its most formidable foes and one of the most efficient propagandists of Cuban independence. For that reason, before he had a chance to enter the ranks of the patriot army, he was deported from the island and doomed to exile. He made his way to Mexico, thence to Guatemala, and there, a lad still in his teens, became Professor of Literature in the National University of that country--a striking testimonial to his erudition and culture. After the Treaty of Zanjon he was permitted to return to Cuba, but he was one of those whom the Spanish government most feared, and he was therefore kept under the closest of surveillance by the police. It was not in his nature to dissemble, or to be afraid. He quickly came before the public in a series of memorable orations, memorable alike for their sonorous eloquence, their cultured erudition, and their intense patriotism; in which he set forth the deplorable state in which Cuba still lay, after her ten years' struggle for better things, and the need that the work which had been so bravely undertaken by Cespedes and his associates should be again undertaken and pressed to a successful conclusion. His orations seemed to have the effect attributed to Demosthenes in his Philippics: They made his hearers want to take up arms and fight against their oppressors. This of course brought upon him the wrath of Spain. He was arrested, and since he was altogether too dangerous a person to be set free in exile, he was carried a close prisoner to Spain. But he quickly made his escape and found asylum in the United States of America; and there his greatest work for Cuba was achieved. Porfirio Diaz had invited him to make his home in Mexico, where he might have risen to almost any eminence in the state, but he declined. "I must go," he said, "to the country where I can accomplish most for the freedom of Cuba from Spain. I am going to the United States." In New York City, where he made his home, he engaged in literary work, and was for some time a member of the staff of the New York _Sun_. But above all he devoted his time, thought, strength and means to organizing the Cuban revolution. He gathered together in the Cuban Revolutionary Party all the surviving veterans of the Ten Years' War, Cuban political exiles--like himself--the remnants of Merchan's old "Laborers' Associations," and welded them into a harmonious and resolute whole. He also traveled about the United States, in Mexico and Central America, and in Jamaica and Santo Domingo, wherever Cubans were to be found, rousing them to patriotic zeal and organizing them into clubs tributary to the central Junta in New York. In Cuba itself many such clubs were organized, in secret, which maintained surreptitious correspondence with the New York headquarters. We have already mentioned some of those with whom he surrounded himself: Tomas Estrada Palma, the President of the Junta; Gonzalo de Quesada, its Secretary, who lived to see the Republic established and to become its Minister to Germany, where he died; Benjamin F. Guerra, its Treasurer; and Horatio Rubens, its Counsel, who had been trained in the law office of Elihu Root. Others of that memorable and devoted company were General Emilio Nunez, afterward Vice-President of the Cuban Republic; and Dr. Joaquin Castillo Duany, formerly an eminent physician in the United States Navy, who had distinguished himself in the relief of the famous Jeannette Arctic expedition. These two had charge of the filibustering or supply expeditions which were surreptitiously dispatched from the United States to Cuba. At first General Nunez had charge of all, but when Dr. Duany came from Cuba the work was divided, and the former devoted himself to the coast from Norfolk to the Rio Grande, while the latter supervised that from Norfolk to Eastport, Maine. Dr. Duany and his brother had been prominent citizens and officials in Santiago de Cuba. As soon as the War of Independence began they joined the patriot forces, and Dr. Duany was made Assistant Secretary of War in the Provisional Government. As such, he ran the Spanish blockade of the island, in company with Mr. George Reno, another ardent patriot, and bore to New York authority from the Provisional Government for the issuing of $3,000,000 of Cuban bonds. He also carried with him in a little satchel $90,000 in cash, which had been contributed by various patriotic residents of Cuba. Another of Marti's associates in New York was Dr. Lincoln de Zayas, a brilliant orator, afterward Secretary of Public Instruction of the Cuban Republic; a man greatly loved by all who knew him. Dr. Enrique Agramonte, brother of that gallant Ignacio Agramonte who was a leader in the Ten Years' War and was killed in that conflict, was a member of the Junta in New York, who inspected and selected all the men who were to go on filibustering expeditions; a keen judge of the physical, mental and moral fitness of all the candidates who presented themselves before him. Colonel José Ramon Villalon was also active in the Junta; and he has since been Secretary of Public Works at Havana under President Mario G. Menocal. Nor must Ponce de Leon, a publisher and bookseller, of No. 32 Broadway, New York, be forgotten. His office was frequently the meeting place of the conspirators, if so we may call the patriots, and he and his two sons--one a physician, the other in charge of the archives of the Cuban government--were among the most earnest and efficient workers for the cause of independence. [Illustration: JOSE RAMON VILLALON José Ramon Villalon, Secretary of Public Works, was born at Santiago in 1864. He was sent to Barcelona to be educated and later studied at the Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., where he graduated as civil engineer in 1899. On the outbreak of the war he accompanied General Antonio Maceo on his famous raid in Pinar del Rio province, and was present at the engagements of Artemisa, Ceja del Negro, Montezuelo, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel of engineers. While serving under Maceo he designed and constructed the first field dynamite gun, now in the National Museum in Havana. After the war he was made Secretary of Public Works under the military government of General Leonard Wood. Col. Villalon is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the Academy of Sciences (Havana), and the Cuban Society of Engineers.] The ideal of Marti and these associates was unequivocally that of Cuban independence. They had no thought of accepting or even considering mere autonomy under Spanish sovereignty, or any promises of reforms in the insular government. They might not have been inexorably opposed to annexation to the United States, had opportunity for that been offered. They might have accepted it, in fact, for the sake of getting entirely away from Spain; for that would at least have meant independence from Spain. But as a matter of fact, annexation was not considered. It was never discussed. It formed no part of the programme, not even as an alternative. Although a poet and a seer, Marti was one of the most practical of men. He realized with Cicero that "endless money forms the sinews of war." One of his first cares, therefore, was to finance the revolution. To that end he made a direct appeal to Cuban workmen--and women, too--wherever he could get into contact with them, to give one tenth of their weekly wages to the cause of Cuban independence. Probably never before or since in the world's wars has such a system of voluntary tithing been so successfully conducted. It seemed as though every Cuban in the United States responded. Wealthy men gave one tenth of their large incomes, and Cuban girls in cigar factories gave one tenth of their small wages. In many cases they did more, giving one day's wages each week. Indeed, this is said to have been the general rule in the cigar and cigarette factories of the United States. Next to Marti himself, Lincoln de Zayas was perhaps the most successful money raiser. Numerous speakers and canvassers went to all parts of the country where Cubans might be found, soliciting funds. Appeal was also made to Americans, but not so much for pecuniary aid as for sympathy and moral aid. But in fact much money was given by liberty loving Americans. John Jacob Astor, afterward a Colonel in the United States army in the war of intervention, gave $10,000. William E. D. Stokes, of New York, was also a large contributor and manifested much interest in the cause, presumably in part because his wife was a Cuban. Most of this work of Marti's was done in 1893 and 1894. His original plan was to launch a vast plan of numerous invasions of the island and simultaneous uprisings in all the provinces in 1894. He purchased and equipped three vessels, the _Amadis_, the _Baracoa_ and the _Lagonda_, only to suffer the mortification and very heavy loss of having them seized by the American authorities for violation of the neutrality law. Undaunted and undismayed, he renewed his efforts, and at last had the satisfaction of seeing the revolution openly begun at Baire, near Santiago, on February 24, 1895. And then occurred one of the most lamentable and needless tragedies of the whole war--indeed, of all the history of Cuba. It was not in Marti's generous and valiant spirit to remain at the rear and send others forward to face the fire of the foe. Accordingly, as soon as the revolution was started, he went from New York to Santo Domingo to confer with the old war horse of the Ten Years' conflict, Maximo Gomez, and from that island he issued his manifesto concerning the purposes and programme of the revolution. Well would it have been for him and for Cuba had he remained there, or had he returned to New York, to continue the work which he had been so successfully doing. But because of a thoughtless clamor in the press and on the part of the public he was moved to proceed to Cuba with Gomez. They landed in a frail craft at Playitas on April 11, with about 80 companions, many of them veterans of the Ten Years' War. They at once joined the cavalry forces of Perico Perez, and plunged into the thick of the fighting; Marti showing himself as brave in battle as he had been wise in council. Meantime a Provisional Government had been formed, by the proclamation of Antonio Maceo, with Tomas Estrada Palma as Provisional President of the Cuban Republic, Maximo Gomez as Commander in Chief of the Army, and José Marti as Secretary General and Diplomatic Agent Abroad. This appointment was agreeable to Marti, and would have meant the most advantageous utilization of his masterful talents for the good of Cuba. But it was not possible for him immediately to begin such duties. He was with the army in the interior of the island, and his approach to the coast whence he was to sail on his mission must be effected with caution. While Gomez set out for Camaguey, Marti turned toward the southern coast, intending to go first to Jamaica, whence he could take an English steamer for New York or any other destination he might select. Marti had with him an escort of only fifty men, and soon after parting company with Gomez he was led by a treacherous guide into a ravine where he was trapped by a Spanish force outnumbering the Cubans twenty to one. The Cubans fought with desperate valor, Marti himself leading a charge which nearly succeeded in cutting a way through the Spanish lines. But the odds were too heavy against them, and without even the satisfaction of taking two or three Spanish lives for every life they gave, the Cubans were all slain, Marti himself being among the last to fall. Word of the conflict reached Gomez, and he came hastening back, just too late to save his comrade, and was himself wounded in the furious attack which he made upon the Spaniards in an attempt at least to recover Marti's body. But his vengeful valor was ineffectual. Marti's body was taken possession of by the Spaniards, who demonstrated their appreciation of his greatness, though he was their most formidable foe, by bearing it reverently to Santiago and there interring it with all the honors of war. [Illustration: THE PRADO Havana's most fashionable residence street and driving thoroughfare extends from the gloomy Punta fortress along the line of the ancient city wall, past the Central Park to Colon Park, shaded with laurels and lined with handsome homes and clubs. In 1907 a hurricane wrecked many of the great laurels, as well as the royal palms of Colon Park, but in the genial climate of Cuba the ravages of the elements were rapidly repaired. The Prado was officially renamed by the Cuban Republic the Paseo de Marti, in honor of José Marti, but the old name still clings inseparably to it.] Thus untimely perished the man who should have lived to be known as the Father of His Country. But he left a name crowned with imperishable fame. A Spanish American author has said that the Spanish race in America has produced only two geniuses, Bolivar and Marti. If that judgment be too severe in its restriction, at least it is not an over-estimate of those two transcendent patriots. Marti left, moreover, an example and an inspiration which never failed his countrymen during the subsequent years of war. Their loss in his death was irreparable, but they were not inconsolable; for while he perished, his cause survived. That cause was well set forth by him in the manifesto which he issued at Monte Cristi, Hayti, on March 25, 1895, and which read as follows: "The war is not against the Spaniard, who, secured by his children and by loyalty to the country which the latter will establish, shall be able to enjoy, respected and even loved, that liberty which will sweep away only the thoughtless who block its path. Nor will the war be the cradle of disturbances which are alien to the tried moderation of the Cuban character, nor of tyranny. Those who have fomented it and are still its sponsors declare in its name to the country its freedom from all hatred, its fraternal indulgence to the timid Cuban, and its radical respect for the dignity of man, which constitutes the sinews of battle and the foundation of the Republic. And they affirm that it will be magnanimous with the penitent, and inflexible only with vice and inhumanity. "In the war which has been recommenced in Cuba you will not find a revolution beside itself with the joy of rash heroism, but a revolution which comprehends the responsibilities incumbent upon the founders of nations. Cowardice might seek to profit by another fear under the pretext of prudence--the senseless fear which has never been justified in Cuba--the fear of the negro race. The past revolution, with its generous though subordinate soldiers, indignantly denies, as does the long trial of exile as well as of the respite in the island, the menace of a race war, with which our Spanish beneficiaries would like to inspire a fear of the revolution. The war of emancipation and their common labor have obliterated the hatred which slavery might have inspired. The novelty and crudity of social relations consequent to the sudden change of a man who belonged to another into a man who belonged to himself, are overshadowed by the sincere esteem of the white Cuban for the equal soul, and the desire for education, the fervor of a free man, and the amiable character of his negro compatriot. "In the Spanish inhabitants of Cuba, instead of the hateful spite of the first war, the revolution, which does not flatter nor fear, expects to find such affectionate neutrality or material aid that through them the war will be shorter, its disasters less, and more easy and friendly the subsequent peace in which father and son are to live. We Cubans commenced the war; the Cubans and Spaniards together will terminate it. If they do not ill treat us, we will not ill treat them. Let them respect us and we will respect them. Steel will answer to steel, and friendship to friendship." It may be that not all the generous and altruistic anticipations of this exalted utterance were fully realized. It may be confidently declared that all were sincerely meant by their author; and the world will testify that seldom if ever was a war begun with nobler ideals than those thus set forth by Jose Marti. CHAPTER II We have said that there was no consideration of annexation to the United States, on the part of the organizers and directors of the Cuban War of Independence. Neither was there much if any thought of intervention by the United States in Cuba's behalf; though that was what ultimately occurred. No doubt, if ever a fleeting thought of that passed through a Cuban patriot's mind, he esteemed it "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But it was not reckoned to be within the limits of reasonable possibility. Certainly it was never discussed, and it may be said with even more positiveness that there was never any attempt to bring it about by surreptitious means. The charge was occasionally made, in quarters unfriendly to the Cuban cause, that the Junta was endeavoring to embroil the United States in a war with Spain. That was absolutely untrue. No such effort was ever made by any responsible or authoritative Cuban. It might rather be said that the Junta was solicitous to avoid so far as possible danger of complications between the United States and Spain. For example, it did not encourage Americans to enter the Cuban army, but discouraged them from so doing and often rejected them outright. An expert ex-Pinkerton detective was employed by the Junta to serve constantly in its New York office. His duties were in part to detect if possible any spies or Spanish agents who might come in and want to enlist with, of course, the intention of betraying the cause. But he also did his best to dissuade all but Cubans from enlisting. He was under directions from the Junta to warn all American applicants, of whom there were many, that they had better not enter the Cuban service: First, because they did not realize the formidable and desperate character of the undertaking in which they were seeking to participate; second, because the Junta could give them no assurance of pay, or even of food; and third, because they were sure soon to grow tired of the arduous discouraging, up-hill campaign which was before them. The only men who were wanted, and the only men who were generally accepted were Cubans, whose patriotic interest in the island would enable them to endure cheerfully what would be intolerable to an alien. They were believed by the Junta to be the only men who would permanently stand the test. As a matter of fact only a very few Americans were accepted; probably not more than forty or fifty all told. They were accepted partly because they were so insistent and persistent in their desires and demands, and partly because of some qualifications which made them of special value. They were chiefly sharpshooters who had formerly served in the United States army. When they were accepted they were reminded that they were forfeiting all claim upon the United States government for protection or rescue, no matter what might befall them. Thus if they were killed or captured and ill treated in any way by the Spanish they would be debarred from appealing to the United States, and there would be no danger of any friction between the United States and Spain on their account. The only way in which the Junta deliberately incurred the risk of causing international trouble was in the organization and dispatching of filibustering and supply expeditions from the United States to Cuba. Of course, all such performances were illegal. Spain protested and raged against them, and the United States government sincerely and indefatigably strove to prevent them. But it was to no avail. The expeditions kept going. For two years there was an average of one a month, carrying men, arms and ammunition, and other supplies. [Illustration: GEORGE RENO] Another important traffic between Cuba and the United States was that in information between the patriots in the island and the Junta in New York. The chief agent in this perilous but essential work was Mr. George Reno, who has since served in important capacities under the civil government of the Cuban Republic. It was his duty periodically to run the blockade between the little town of Guanaja and Nassau. The former was a little place of a few hundred inhabitants on the Bay of Sabinal, on the northern coast of Camaguey; and the latter was the capital of New Providence Island in the British Bahamas, the favorite resort of blockade runners during the Civil War in the United States, and since then the terminus of a cable line running to Jupiter, on the Florida coast. At Nassau Dr. Indalacio Salas, a Cuban physician, who had lived there many years, represented the Junta and acted as a sort of Cuban postmaster; receiving letters and messages from Cuba and forwarding them to the United States, and vice versa. This contraband messenger service between Cuba and Nassau was one of the romantic features of the campaign of which the public knew nothing. The trips were made in a little sloop-rigged yacht, carrying three or four men, and while they afforded no spectacle to the public eye and did not figure in the news as did various filibustering expeditions, they were often of vital importance to the patriot cause, and they were fraught with much peril. The passage of several hundred miles was made across the Great Bahama Bank and the Tongue of Ocean; perilous waters dotted with reefs and rocks and subject to violent storms, and closely watched at the south by Spanish cruisers. The portion of the trip nearest the Cuban coast was generally made at night, to avoid the Spaniards, but the darkness added to the peril in other respects. This service was the chief though not the sole means of communication between the Cuban patriots and the rest of the world. Some correspondence was smuggled out of Havana on American steamers, but that was perilous work and was seldom attempted. Some was carried by a Cuban sailor in a little cat-rigged boat, with which he made trips when occasion offered between some point on the southern coast of Oriente and the island of Jamaica. On these trips, both from Nassau and Jamaica, were carried not only letters and communications of all sorts but also important supplies of medicines, surgical instruments, and other small articles which were often of indispensable value. The service was therefore of the greatest possible value to the Cubans, and it was arduous and perilous to those who rendered it. It was performed, however, without remuneration or compensation of any kind, save the satisfaction of aiding the patriot cause. The Cuban revolution had no money with which to pay salaries, but all men served for the sake of Cuba Libre. The attitude of the people of Cuba toward the revolution, so far as at this early date they knew what was going on, was varied according to their occupations, interests and relationships. The professional classes, the lawyers, physicians, educators, men of letters and others, for the most part wished for complete separation from Spain, and aided the cause of independence with their money and their influence. There were, however, some of them, including not a few of the most estimable and most patriotic men on the island, whose faith was not able to forecast victory. They saw on the side of the Cubans lack of money, lack of arms and ammunition, and lack of that direct connection with the outer world which was indispensable for support; and on the side of Spain plenty of money, equipment and communications, and an army of 200,000 trained soldiers thrown into a territory about the size of the State of Pennsylvania, together with an inflexible resolution never to surrender the island but to suppress every insurrection at no matter what cost. It was surely not strange that they regarded such odds as too formidable to be overcome, by even the most ardent and self-sacrificing patriotism, and therefore thought that the course of greater wisdom would be to persuade, compel or otherwise prevail upon Spain to bestow upon the island a genuine and satisfactory measure of autonomy. The merchants and commercial classes very largely consisted of Spaniards, a fact which sufficiently indicates their attitude. They were not only resolutely committed against the revolution, and indeed against autonomy, but they were almost incredibly bitter against the Cuban Independence party. It was from those classes that the notorious "Cuban Volunteers" had been recruited in the Ten Years' war, men who, though living in Cuba and enriching themselves from her resources, were "more Spanish than Spain." They corresponded with the Tories of the American Revolution, and not merely the Tories who sat in their chairs and railed against the Revolution, but rather those who took up arms in the British cause, and who allied themselves with the Red Indians with tomahawk and scalping knife. The animus of these Spaniards in Cuba was not, generally speaking, love of Spain, nor yet hatred of the Cubans, but rather greed of gain. They were not patriotic, but simply sordid. With Cuba under Spanish domination, they were enabled to amass great wealth, and they wanted such conditions and such opportunities of enrichment continued. That was not an exalted attitude, and it was naturally odious to the Cuban patriots who were serving without pay and sacrificing their all for the independence of the island and for the attainment of a degree of material prosperity as well as of civic and spiritual enfranchisement immeasurably beyond the sordid conceptions of these selfish time-servers. The attitude of another important though less numerous and less demonstrative class, the manufacturers of sugar and tobacco, varied greatly according to the individual. Some were Spaniards; and they, like the merchants, were inflexibly opposed to the revolution, for similar reasons. Some were Autonomists, and they inclined toward compromise. They did not want their lands to be ravaged and their cane fields and buildings to be burned in war; not because they would hesitate at any necessary sacrifice for the welfare of Cuba but because they regarded such sacrifices as unnecessary. Some were members of the Cuban Independence party, and they cordially and eagerly supported the revolution; saying: "Let our fields and buildings be burned. If it is necessary in order to free the island that our property shall be ruined, let it be ruined!" This patriotic attitude of some of the great property-owners, who had most to lose through the ravages of war but who were ready to risk all, was finely displayed in the very midst of the conflict. There were in the Province of Santa Clara two very wealthy Cuban women, sisters. They were Marta Abreu, who became the wife of the Vice-President of the Cuban Republic, and who died in France, and Rosalie Abreu, whose home is preeminently the "show place" of Cuba and is perhaps the most beautiful residence in all the tropical regions of the world. These women gave large sums of money for the revolution and made many sacrifices for it, beside running great risks of utter disaster to their fortunes. They were both in Paris when news came of the death of Antonio Maceo, the brilliant and daring commander who had carried the war westward into Havana and Pinar del Rio and who fell in battle in the former province. His death was a disaster well calculated to shake the fortitude of the patriots, if not to strike them with despair. But immediately upon hearing the news Marta Abreu sent a cable dispatch to Benjamin Guerra, the Treasurer of the Junta, urging him not to be discouraged but to "keep the good work going," and adding that she and her sister were each mailing him a check for $50,000. Such a spirit was indomitable. The small farmers of the island, or "guajiros," the peasantry and rural workingmen, were strongly in favor of the revolution, although it meant unspeakable hardships to them. They sent their families up into the mountains, where they would be comparatively safe from the actual fighting, and where the old men, the women and the children could cultivate little patches of ground, planted with sweet potatoes, yucca and other food plants, which would supply them with nourishment and also contribute to the feeding of the patriot army. Then the men joined the ranks of the revolutionary army. It should be added that among the most eager recruits were many sons of Autonomists. Their fathers deprecated the war, but the sons realized its necessity. There were even some sons of Spanish Loyalists in the patriot army, who fought faithfully for the Cuban cause against their own fathers. The priesthood of the island was absolutely against the revolution and in favor of maintaining the sovereignty of the Spanish crown in Cuba. There may have been a few exceptions, of priests who not only favored independence but who actually went into the field with the patriot army and fought for it. But apart from them the Church was solidly for Spain. The great majority of the priests had come from Spain, and remained Spaniards at heart and in political sympathy. They preached from their pulpits against the revolution, and undoubtedly exerted considerable influence in that direction. That fact was not forgotten after the war, and it explained the very general antipathy toward or at least lack of sympathy with the Church which then and thereafter prevailed among the men of Cuba. The women, even the most patriotic, largely remained faithful to the Church and subject to its spiritual influence, but the men renounced it because of what they regarded as its unfaithfulness to the cause of Free Cuba. There were at this time happily no racial nor partisan differences among the patriots of Cuba. There were white men, there were negroes, and there were those of mixed blood. But the same spirit of independence animated them all, and they fought side by side in the field, and sat side by side in council, with never a thought of prejudice. Antonio Maceo, one of the most honored and trusted patriot generals, was a mulatto, but he was regarded as the peer of any of the white commanders, white men gladly served under him, and we have already seen how his death was regarded by the Abreu sisters, who were aristocrats of the purest Creole blood. It was only in later years, after Cuban independence had been attained, that so much as an attempt was made at the raising of race issues in Cuba, and then only through the exercise of the most sinister and unworthy influences for sordid ends. Nor were there partisan differences. Indeed at this time the Cuban Independence Party was a harmonious unity. There were no symptoms of any factional division. The rise of partisanship did not occur until after the war of independence had been won and, if we may for a moment anticipate the course of events, until it was realized that the United States really meant to keep its word and make Cuba an independent Republic. For, truth to tell, when the United States intervened in the conflict between Cuba and Spain, in the spring of 1898, while there was assured confidence throughout the island that the end of Spanish rule was at hand, there was also a general belief that annexation to the United States was inevitable. The great majority of the Cuban people probably did not know of the pledge which was appended to the Declaration of War, that the United States would withdraw and leave Cuba to self-government, and they assumed that American intervention meant American conquest and annexation. The comparatively few who did know about it had little expectation that it would ever be fulfilled. Even if the United States made the promise in good faith, something would happen to prevent its being carried out. When at last it was found that the United States was in earnest, and that Cuba was indeed to have independence, just as though she had won it without aid, there was surprise amounting almost to stupefaction, there was unbounded exultation, and there was, unhappily, division of the people into antagonistic parties. Of these we shall hear more hereafter. Thus was the issue joined. The great mass of the Cuban people was united and harmonious in its determination at last to achieve that independence of the island for which so many men during so many years had wished and worked and suffered. The Spanish party was implacable; and the Autonomists were largely unsympathetic--not all, for some in time joined the revolution; but the Cuban Independence party, comprising the large majority of the population, was resolute and irrepressible in its course. CHAPTER III The war was on. Marti and his comrades had planned to have a simultaneous uprising in all six provinces on February 24. In each a leader was appointed, an organization was formed, and such supplies as could be obtained were provided. But in only three provinces did an actual insurrection occur. These were Oriente, or Santiago as it was then called, Santa Clara, and Matanzas; the extreme eastern and the two central provinces. In Oriente uprisings occurred at two points, under Henry Brooks at Guantanamo, and at Los Negros under Guillermon Moncada. In Matanzas there were also two uprisings; one at Aguacate, on the Havana borderline, under Manuel Garcia, and one at Ybarra. In Santa Clara the chief demonstration was near Cienfuegos, under General Matagas. The uprising in Havana was to have been under the leadership of Julio Sanguilly, but in some way never satisfactorily explained he was betrayed and arrested and the outbreak did not occur. There were not a few who at first suspected and even charged that Sanguilly himself had betrayed the cause, for Spanish money, but his sentence to life imprisonment by the Spanish authorities seemed abundantly to disprove this charge. The insurgents naturally made most headway at first in Oriente. There were fewer Spanish troops in that province and there were more mountain fastnesses for refuge in case of enforced retreat, than in the more densely settled and populated central provinces. We have already seen that a numerous company of patriots marched from Baire to Santiago to present to the Spanish commander there, General Jose Lachambre, their demands for the independence of Cuba. That officer of course rejected their demands, and on their retirement sent Colonel Perico Perez after them with 500 troops, to capture or disperse them. But Perez and his men did neither. Instead, they joined the insurgents under Henry Brooks, and were among the foremost to do effective work against the Spaniards. Maso Parra recruited a strong band near Manzanillo, but instead of fighting there proceeded to Havana Province, accompanied by Enrique Cespedes and Amador Guerra, in hope of raising the standard of revolution where Sanguilly had failed. The Spanish forces were so strong there, however, as to overawe most of the Cubans, or at any rate to make it seem more expedient to put forward their chief efforts in other places. In Matanzas the earliest engagements were fought by troops under Antonio Lopez Coloma and Juan Gualberto Gomez, with indifferent results. Another sharp conflict occurred at Jaguey Grande, and there were yet others at Vequita; at Sevilla, where the patriots defeated 1,500 Spanish regulars commanded by General Lachambre; at Ulloa, at Baire, and at Los Negros. A belated uprising in Pinar del Rio under General Azcuy came speedily to grief, as did another near Holguin. By the early days of March the entire movement seemed to have subsided save in the southern parts of Oriente. The Spanish authorities had acted promptly and vigorously. The revolution began on February 24. The very next day a special meeting of the Spanish Cabinet was held at Madrid, as a result of which the Minister for the Colonies, Senor Abarzuza, authorized Captain-General Callejas to proclaim martial law throughout Cuba. This was in fact done by Callejas before Abarzuza's order reached him, and he also put into operation the "Public Order law" which provided for the immediate punishment of anyone taken in the performance or attempt of a seditious act. The Captain-General had at his disposal at this time nominally six regiments of infantry and three of cavalry, two battalions of garrison artillery and one mountain battery, aggregating about 19,000 men, and nearly 14,000 local militia, remains of the notorious Volunteers of the Ten Years' War; a total of nearly 33,000 men. But these figures were delusive. Callejas himself reported, on his return to Spain two or three months later, that half of the regular forces existed only on paper, and that the militia was altogether untrustworthy. He had learned the latter fact by bitter experience when at the very beginning Perico Perez and his 500 men had deserted to the Cuban cause. The fact is that the leaven of patriotism had begun to work even among the old Volunteers and still more among their sons, and many of them came frankly over to the cause which they or their fathers had formerly so savagely opposed. Callejas's forces were very weak in artillery, but that did not greatly matter, since the revolutionists at this time had none at all. He enjoyed the great advantage of having possession of all the large towns and cities along the coast with their fortifications both inland and seaward; fortifications which were somewhat antiquated but still sufficiently effective against ill-armed insurgents without artillery. The Spanish navy in Cuban waters comprised five small cruisers and six gunboats; not a formidable force, but infinitely superior to that of the revolutionists, which consisted of nothing at all. It assisted in protecting the coast towns, and served for the transportation of troops and supplies, but its chief function was to guard the coast against filibustering and supply expeditions. Although the Spanish forces were very considerably superior to the revolutionists numerically as well as in equipment and abundance of supplies, Calleja realized that they would not be sufficient to cope with the patriots on their own ground and in the increasing numbers which he prudently anticipated would rally to their standard. Accordingly early in March he sent to Spain an urgent call for large reenforcements for both army and navy, declaring that he could not hold his own, much less suppress the revolt, without them, and giving warning that unless he received them promptly he would not be responsible for the consequences. In response a battalion of regulars was immediately transferred to Cuba from Porto Rico, and 7,000 more were sent from Spain. All the civil prefects throughout the island were replaced with military officers. In Havana and elsewhere all prominent Cubans suspected of complicity or even sympathy with the revolution were arrested and imprisoned. The Morro Castle at Havana was crowded with the best citizens of the metropolitan province. But this attempt at repression only added fuel to the flame. The revolution burst out anew in the Province of Oriente, and when Callejas ordered the local troops of Havana to proceed thither, they mutinied and refused to go. In such circumstances Callejas, who at first had affected to regard the outbreak as mere sporadic brigandage, now openly confessed that it was an island-wide revolution. Complications with the United States also speedily arose. The arrest of Julio Sanguilly and others at Havana has been mentioned. These men had been in the United States for years, and had become naturalized citizens of that country, wherefore the United States consul-general at Havana, Ramon O. Williams, made formal demand that they should be tried before a civil court and should have the benefit of counsel, instead of being summarily disposed of by court martial. This was a legitimate demand, which had to be granted, but it incensed Callejas so much that he asked the Spanish government to demand Williams's recall; which that government very prudently did not do. At Santiago, also, two American sailors, who had landed there in a small boat, and had been arrested as filibusters, made appeal to the American consul there, who also insisted that they should have a civil trial; as a result of which they were acquitted. [Illustration: LA PUNTA FORTRESS, HAVANA] While thus careful to protect the rights of its citizens, native or naturalized, the United States government was equally energetic in its endeavors to prevent violations of the neutrality law by filibustering expeditions, and went to great expense and pains therein. It watched and guarded all Atlantic and Gulf ports to prevent the departure of such expeditions, and gave hospitality to a Spanish cruiser which lay at Key West to watch for and intercept them. Hannis Taylor, the American Minister at Madrid, assured the Spanish government that the United States would do all that was in its power to prevent such expeditions from departing from its shores, and that promise was fulfilled with exceptional efficiency. Indeed, the United States administration incurred much popular censure for its energy in stopping the sailing of vessels which were suspected of carrying supplies to Cuba; for it did stop a number of them, to the very heavy pecuniary loss of the patriots. Nevertheless some vessels were successful in eluding the vigilance of the federal guards, and that fact gave umbrage in Spain; so that while at home the American government was charged with hostility to the Cuban cause, in Spain it was charged with too greatly favoring it. With the receipt of reenforcements, Callejas made renewed efforts to suppress the revolution; though he had little heart in the matter and seemed to realize the hopelessness of the task. Practically all the fighting was in Oriente. Colonel Santocildes made an unsuccessful attack upon the patriots near Guantanamo on March 10, and a week later Colonel Bosch had an equally unsatisfactory meeting with them under Brooks and Perez near Ulloa. So strong were the insurgents becoming in that province that they began to exercise the functions of civil government, in the carrying of mails and the collection of taxes. Beside Henry Brooks and Perico Perez, under whom were the largest forces, Bartolome Maso, who had returned from Havana, held Manzanillo with a thousand troops, Jesus Rabi occupied Baire and Jiguani with 1,500, and Quintin Banderas, Amador Guerra and Esteban Tomayo had among them 2,000 more. After his repulse at Guantanamo the Spanish Colonel Santocildes went to Bayamo, where he was attacked and routed with heavy loss. A few days later, on March 24, a battle was fought at Jaraguana between Amador Guerra, with 900 Cubans, and Colonel Araoz, with 1,000 Spanish regulars, in which the latter suffered the heavier losses, though they finally compelled the Cubans to retire from the field. At this time an effort was made by both the Captain-General and some leaders of the Cuban Autonomists to make terms with the revolutionists. With the assent and cooperation of Callejas a commission of Autonomists, headed by Juan Bautista Spotorno,--who had once been for a time President of the Cuban Republic, shortly after the Ten Years' War,--proceeded to Oriente and sought a conference with Bartolome Maso at Manzanillo. That sturdy patriot received them grimly. He listened to their proposals in ominous silence. Then, in a voice all the more menacing for its repression of passion, he addressed Spotorno: "You were once President of the Cuban Republic in the Field?" "Yes, Bartolome; you know that." "You then as President issued a decree of death against anyone who should seek to persuade the Cuban government to accept any terms short of independence?" "Yes, but...." "Then, Bautista Spotorno, for this once, go in peace; but go very quickly, lest I change my mind as you have changed yours. And be assured that if you or any of your kind ever come hither with such proposals again, I shall execute upon you or upon them your own decree!" The next day Jose Marti and Maximo Gomez issued in Hayti the manifesto which we have already cited, which had the result of assuring all wavering or doubtful Cubans that the most authoritative leaders of their nation were directing the revolution, and that it was to be indeed a struggle to a finish. There was another result. The Spanish Captain-General, Emilio Callejas, despaired of coping with the steadily rising storm, and on March 27 he placed his resignation in the hands of the Queen Regent of Spain. That sovereign immediately summoned a Cabinet council, herself presiding. It was no longer the Liberal Cabinet of Praxedes Sagasta. That body had fallen a few days before, in a political crisis which had arisen in Madrid over a newspaper controversy about Cuban affairs. An advanced Liberal paper, _El Resúmen_, had imputed cowardice to army officers who, it said, were always eager to serve in Cuba in time of peace, but shunned that island whenever there was fighting going on. At this a mob of officers attacked and wrecked the offices of the paper, and the next evening attacked the offices of _El Heraldo_ and _El Globo_, which had denounced their doings. The next day all the papers of Madrid notified the government that they would suspend publication unless assured of protection against such outrages. General Lopez Dominguez approved the conduct of the riotous officers and demanded that the editors of the papers be delivered to him for trial by court martial. The Prime Minister, Sagasta, replied that that would not be legal, since all press offences against the army short of treason must be tried before civil juries. Then Marshal Martinez Campos, who as Captain-General had ended the Ten Years' War in Cuba, led a deputation of army officers to demand of Sagasta that he should suppress _El Resúmen_ and have more strict press laws enacted. Sagasta refused and, finding his support in the Cortes untrustworthy in the face of military bullying, offered the resignation of the Ministry, on March 17. The Queen Regent invited Campos to form a Ministry, but he declined; though he announced that all newspaper men attacking the army would be shot, and he arbitrarily haled before military tribunals a number of editors, while other journalists fled the country. The Queen Regent then called upon Canovas del Castillo, the Conservative leader, to form a cabinet, and on March 25 he did so, despite the fact that his party was in a minority in the Cortes, and it was this Conservative cabinet which the sovereign consulted four days later concerning the resignation of Callejas and affairs in Cuba in general. It was decided to accept Callejas's resignation, with special thanks for his loyal services, to appoint Martinez Campos to succeed him, to ask fresh credits of $120,000,000 for the expenses of the war, to send large reenforcements to Cuba, and to increase the peace footing of the Spanish army from 71,000 to 82,000 men. The troops in Cuba were at once to be increased to 40,000 men, and 40,000 more were to be added, if needed, in four months. Thus did Spain rouse herself to fight her last fight for the retention of her last American possession. It was not, however, until April 15 that Callejas received a message from the Queen Regent, formally accepting his resignation, thanking him for "the activity, zeal and ability" with which he had conducted the military operations against the revolutionists, complimenting all the forces under his command for their valor, and directing him to return to Spain by the next steamer that sailed from Havana after the arrival of his successor. And his successor landed the very next day, at Guantanamo. There was much adverse comment among Spaniards in Cuba upon this summary recall of Callejas. The explanation of it was that the government regarded him as culpable for letting the revolution gain so great headway, but it did not deem it politic to censure him publicly, or at all until he was back at Madrid. As for Martinez Campos, he promised on his acceptance of the appointment that he would quickly suppress the revolt, as he had done the Ten Years' War; and doubtless he expected that he would be able to do so. Indeed, in sending Martinez Campos to Cuba, Spain "played her strongest card." He had long been known as "Spain's greatest General," and also as the "King-Maker," since it was he who had restored the Bourbon dynasty to the throne. He was undoubtedly a soldier of great valor, skill and resource. He was also a statesman of more than ordinary ability, and had been for a time Prime Minister of Spain, and for fifteen years had been making and unmaking ministries at will. Now, at the age of sixty-four he was still in the prime of his powers and at the height of his popularity and influence. His departure from Madrid for Cuba was attended with demonstrations, both official and popular, which could scarcely have been exceeded for royalty itself. He reached Guantanamo on April 16, and on the following day assumed his office. It was not until a week later that he reached Havana. There he was received with unbounded rejoicings by the Spanish party, and with sincere satisfaction by the Autonomists, while it must be confessed that many Cuban patriots regarded his coming with dismay. There could be no doubt that it portended the putting forth of all the might of Spain against the revolution, under the command of a great soldier-statesman who had never yet failed in an undertaking. On the very day after his arrival at Guantanamo the new Captain-General issued a proclamation to the people of Cuba. In it he pledged himself to fulfil in good faith all the reforms which had been promised in his own Treaty of Zanjon and in subsequent legislation by the Spanish Cortes, provided the loyal parties in Cuba would give him their support; this admission of dependence upon the people being obviously a bid for popularity. The parties in question were, of course, the Spaniards, who were divided into Conservatives and Reformists, and the Autonomists, or Cuban Home Rulers. They or their leaders at once pledged him their support, and the Spaniards gave it, for a time. But a number of the Autonomists were dissatisfied because he would promise nothing more than the fulfilment of reforms which had never been regarded as sufficient, and on that account refused him their support. Instead, they gave it to the revolutionists, and many of them, especially the younger men, actually joined the revolutionary army, or went to Jamaica or the United States to assist in the raising of funds and the equipping of expeditions. It was thus at this time that the disintegration of the once influential Autonomist party began. To the revolutionists he tried to be conciliatory. He offered full and free pardon to all who would lay down their arms, excepting a few of the leaders, and he doubtless expected that there would be a numerous response. It does not appear that there was any favorable response whatever. If any insurgents did surrender themselves--of whom there is no record--they were outnumbered a hundred to one by the Autonomists who at that time were transformed into revolutionists. Campos did not rely, however, upon his proclamation for the suppression of the insurrection. He set to work at once with all his consummate military skill and his knowledge of the island and of Cuban methods of warfare, to organize a military campaign of victory. He made General Garrich governor of the Province of Oriente, with General Salcedo in command of the First Division, at Santiago, and General Lachambre of the Second Division, at Bayamo. He undertook the organization of numerous bodies of irregular troops, to wage a guerrilla warfare against the Cubans similar to that which the Cubans themselves waged successfully against Spanish regulars. When he found his troops from Spain disinclined toward such work, or unsuited to it, he sought the services of young Spaniards who had for some years been settled in Cuba, such as had been so ready to serve in the former war. They generally declined, whereupon he sought to draft them into the service, and at that they threatened mutiny. As a last resort he sent for Lolo Benitez, a life prisoner at Ceuta. This man had been a guerrilla leader, on the Cuban side, in the Ten Years' War, but had been guilty of cruelties which caused the Cubans to repudiate him. He had been captured by the Spaniards and sent to the penal colony in Africa for life. But Campos brought him back and gave him a free pardon and commission as lieutenant colonel in the Spanish army, on condition that he would conduct a guerrilla warfare against his own countrymen. When this was done, and when under this man were placed numerous criminals released from Cuban jails, there were vigorous protests from Spanish officers against such degradation of the Spanish army, and warnings that such unworthy tactics would surely react against their author. The official attitude of the Spanish government was at this time set forth by the Spanish Minister to the United States, Senor Dupuy de Lome. He belittled the reports of Spanish oppressions and of Cuban uprisings. "There is very little interest," he said, "being taken in the revolt by the people of Havana. I think the uprising will speedily be put down. The arrival of General Martinez Campos has brought order out of chaos. He has shown clearly to the people that their interests will be protected, and as a result has caused a feeling of security. He is every inch a soldier, not a toy fighter. He is loyal to his country, but he is humane, and as far as possible he will treat his enemies leniently. In the case of the leaders of the revolt, however, severe justice will be meted out." Meantime the revolution was proceeding. The most formidable figure in its ranks in Cuba was that of Antonio Maceo, the mulatto general who above most of his colleagues possessed a veritable genius for war, both in strategy and in direct fighting. He had come of a family of fighters, and had been born in Santiago in 1849, and had fought in the Ten Years' War. He was highly gifted with the qualities of leadership among men, with valor and resolution, with keen foresight and great intelligence. He was probably the ablest strategist in the War of Independence, and personally the most popular commander. At the end of March he arrived in Cuba from Costa Rica with an expedition well equipped with rifles and small field pieces. With him were his brother Jose Maceo, Flor Crombet, Dr. Francisco Agramonte, and several other officers. The landing was made at Baracoa, the Spanish gunboats which were watching the coast being successfully eluded. Soon after landing the patriots were attacked by General Lachambre's troops at Duaba, but the latter were repulsed with considerable loss. A part of the expedition was then sent around by sea to Manzanillo, on a British schooner. That vessel was wrecked and in consequence its captain and crew were captured by the Spaniards, who put the captain to death. Dr. Agramonte was one of several members of the expedition who were also taken, but he, being an American citizen, escaped court martial and was more leniently dealt with by a civil court, on the demand of the American consul at Santiago. In a short time this masterful leader, Antonio Maceo, had control of practically all of the Province of Oriente outside of a few fortified coast cities and camps. The Captain-General, vainly imagining that the insurrection would be confined to that province, sent thither all available troops, leaving Havana, Matanzas and the others with scarcely more than police guard. Thus greatly outnumbered, Maceo wisely resorted not so much to guerrilla warfare as to what may be called Fabian tactics. He maintained his army in complete organization and observed all the rules of civilized warfare. But he also maintained a high degree of mobility, avoiding any general engagement, and wearing out the morale of the Spaniards with forced marches, surprise attacks, and all the bewildering and baffling tactics of which so resourceful and alert a commander was capable. Early in April he was indeed in much peril, being almost completely surrounded by superior forces near Guantanamo, and actually suffering severe losses at Palmerito; but he cut his way out by desperate fighting in which he also showed himself a master hand. The most serious loss at that time was the death of the brave revolutionist Flor Crombet. He was killed not by Spaniards but by a traitor in his own command, whom Maceo presently detected and hanged. Soon after the affair at Palmerito, however, Maceo captured El Caney, in the very suburbs of Santiago, and seized the rich supplies in the Spanish arsenal at that place. The sending of so many troops from the other provinces to Oriente emboldened the patriots of Havana and Matanzas to take up arms, and uprisings occurred at various places, particularly at Cardenas and the city of Matanzas. In the city of Havana itself a daring attempt was made to seize Cabanas and El Morro, liberate the political prisoners, and destroy the magazines if they could not be held. To encourage these movements Maceo sent detachments of his forces from Oriente westward, into Camaguey, then still known as the Province of Puerto Principe. Jesus Rabi occupied Victoria las Tunas, near the boundary of the latter province, and soon had bands operating beyond the border. There was an Autonomist organization at Camaguey, which at first disavowed the revolution and gave its adherence to the Captain-General, but it became demoralized upon the approach of the revolutionary forces, and many of its members were soon serving zealously in Maceo's ranks. The arrival of Jose Marti and Maximo Gomez in Cuba at the middle of April, as already related, almost simultaneously with the arrival of Martinez Campos, was promptly followed by increased activity on the part of the Cubans. Floriano Gascon organized a force of negro miners at Juragua, and inflicted a crushing defeat upon a Spanish garrison at Ramon de las Jaguas; the Spanish commander being afterward tried by Spanish court martial and condemned to death for inefficiency. At the end of the month a Spanish force was entrapped and almost destroyed by Jose Maceo, near Guantanamo. The first half of May was also marked with much fighting in the southern part of Oriente, in which the revolutionists were generally successful. Railroads were destroyed to break Spanish lines of communication, valuable supplies were captured, and Martinez Campos was made to realize the formidable character of the insurrection which he had so confidently promised to suppress. Mention has already been made of the Provisional Government which was proclaimed by Maceo early in April. On May 18 this was succeeded by another organization elected by a convention of delegates consisting of one representative of each 100 revolutionists actually in the field. Bartolome Maso, who had been in control of the district of Bayamo since early in March, was unanimously chosen President; Maximo Gomez was designated as Commander in Chief of the army; and Antonio Maceo was made Commander of the Division of Oriente. The next day occurred the tragedy of Marti's death, whereupon Tomas Estrada Palma, who had formerly been Provisional President, was named to succeed him as the delegate at large of the Cuban Republic to the United States and other countries; Manuel Sanguilly being later associated with him at Washington. All through that summer the strife continued, steadily extending its area westward into Camaguey and Santa Clara. Campos endeavored to confine the war to Oriente, by stretching a line of 4,000 Spanish troops across the island at the western boundary of that province, but on June 2 Maximo Gomez broke through that line, crossed the Jobabo River, and entered Camaguey. There he was joined by a nephew of Salvador Cisneros, Marquis of Santa Lucia, with a large force, and by Marcos Garcia, mayor of Sancti Spiritus, who came across from the Province of Santa Clara. With these reenforcements Gomez soon had control of all the southern part of Camaguey, and on June 18 the Captain-General was compelled to declare that province in a state of siege. [Illustration: MAXIMO GOMEZ The foremost military chieftain of the War of Independence, Maximo Gomez y Baez, was a Cuban by adoption rather than birth, having been born at Bani, Santo Domingo, in 1838. He was an officer in the last Spanish army in that island, and went with it thence to Cuba. There he became disgusted with the brutality of the Spanish officers toward the Cubans, personally assaulted his superior, General Villar, and quit the Spanish service, returning to Santo Domingo, where he engaged in business as a planter. At the beginning of the Ten Years' War he returned to Cuba, joined the patriots, and did efficient service, rising to the chief command. After that war he returned to his plantation in Santo Domingo, but in 1895 joined José Marti in leading the Cuban War of Independence. Thereafter his story was the story of the Cuban cause. Declining to be considered a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, he retired to private life after the establishment of independence, and died in 1905, full of years and honor.] Then Campos attempted a second barricade. He placed a line of troops across the island from Moron to Jucaro, near the western boundary of Camaguey, to prevent Gomez from going on into Santa Clara province. This was the line along which was afterward built a military railroad, and on which was constructed the famous "Trocha" or barrier of ditches, wire fences and block houses. It almost coincided with the line of demarcation between the two ecclesiastical dioceses into which the island was divided. But this attempt to confine the insurrection was no more successful than the other. Indeed it was folly to try to shut the revolution out of Santa Clara when it was already there. Marcos Garcia had left behind him many fervent patriots at Sancti Spiritus, and these soon organized a formidable force under the competent lead of Carlos Ruloff, and took the field, advancing northward and westward as far as Vega Alta. General Zayas and other patriotic leaders operated in the southern part of Santa Clara, and soon that province was almost as fully aflame with revolution as Oriente itself. This was the more significant, because it was a populous and opulent province, where the inhabitants had much to lose through the ravages of war. But like the Romans in the "brave days of old," the Cubans of the revolution "spared neither lands nor gold, nor limb nor life," for the achievement of their national independence. Meantime in Oriente the Cubans were more than holding their own. They suffered a sore loss in the death of the dashing champion Amador Guerra, who was treacherously slain in the moment of victory at Palmas Altas, near Manzanillo. But Henry Brooks landed supplies of artillery and ammunition at Portillo; Jesus Rabi almost annihilated a strong Spanish force in a defile near Jiguani and thus frustrated General Salcedo's plans to surround Maceo's camp at San Jorge; and on July 5 Quintin Bandera and Victoriano Garzon attacked and dispersed a newly landed Spanish army and captured its stores of arms and ammunition. These reverses for his arms exasperated Campos into the issuing of a proclamation on July 7, in which, while still offering pardon to all who voluntarily surrendered, he threatened death to all who were captured under arms, and exile to African prisons to all who were convicted of conspiring against the sovereignty of Spain. Following this, Campos, "Spain's greatest soldier," took the field in person. Of this there was need, for Maceo was besieging Bayamo, capturing all supplies which were sent thither, and threatening the Spanish garrison with starvation. Campos hastened to the relief of that place with General Santocildes and a strong force. But Maceo did not hesitate to measure strength with Campos. He attacked him openly at Peralejo, out-manoeuvered him and out-fought him and came very near to capturing him with his whole headquarters staff. Campos was indeed saved from capture only by the desperate valor of Santocildes, who lost his life in defending him: but he did lose his entire ammunition train and was compelled to retreat with the remnant of his shattered forces into Bayamo and there undergo the humiliation of being besieged by the "rebels" whom he had affected to despise. There he remained for a week, until General Suarez Valdez could come with an army, not to defeat the Cubans but to help Campos to flee in safety over the road by which he had come. Then, when the Spaniards had concentrated more than 10,000 troops at Bayamo for a supreme struggle the wily Maceo quietly and swiftly removed his forces to another scene of action. Meantime in the far east of the province the patriots besieged the fort in Sabana and would have forced its surrender had not Spanish reenforcements arrived from Baracoa for its relief. The fort was destroyed, however, and the place had to be abandoned by the Spanish. Also at Baire, where the revolution began, Jesus Rabi captured a Spanish fort and its garrison. Everywhere throughout Oriente the Spaniards were on the defensive, while in every other province, even in Pinar del Rio, the revolution was ominously gaining strength. CHAPTER IV It now seemed opportune to effect a more complete organization of the civil government of the Cuban Republic, and for that purpose a convention was held in the Valley of the Yara, at which on July 15 a Declaration of Cuban Independence was proclaimed, and on August 7, near Camaguey the action of May 18 was confirmed and amplified, Bartolome Maso being retained as President; Maximo Gomez as Vice-President and Minister of War; Salvador Cisneros as Minister of the Interior; Gonzalo Quesada as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, with residence in the United States; Antonio Maceo as General in Chief of the Army; and Jose Maceo as Commander of the Army of Oriente. This was not, however, a finality. A national Constitutional Convention was called, at Najasa, near Guiamaro, in the Province of Camaguey, at which were present regularly elected representatives from all six provinces of the island. It afterward removed to Anton, in the same province, where it completed its labors on September 23, when the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba was completed and promulgated. Salvador Cisneros y Betancourt, Marquis of Santa Lucia, was chosen by acclamation to preside over the deliberations of this important body, and associated with him were the ablest and best minds of the Cuban nation. This Constitution provided for the government of Cuba by a Council of Ministers, until such time as the achievement of independence and the signing of a treaty of peace with Spain should make it practicable for a Legislative Assembly to be convoked and to meet for the performance of its functions. The Council of Ministers was to consist of six members: a President, Vice-President, and Secretaries of War, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Treasury. This Council was to have full governmental powers, both legislative and administrative, civil and military; to levy taxes, contract loans, raise and equip armies, declare reprisals against the enemy when necessary, and in the last resort to control the military operations of the Commander in Chief. Treaties were to be made by the President and ratified by the Council. It was provided, however, that the treaty of peace with Spain, when made, must be ratified not only by the Council but also by the National Legislative Assembly which was then to be organized. No decree of the Council was valid unless approved by four of the six members, including the President. The President had power to dissolve the Council, in which case a new Council had to be formed within ten days. It was required that all Cubans should be obliged to serve the republic personally or with their property, as they might be able. But all property of foreigners was to be exempt from taxation or other levy, provided that their governments recognized the belligerency of Cuba. It was provided that there should be a national judiciary entirely independent of the legislature and executive. Under this system the Council was organized as follows: President, Salvador Cisneros y Betancourt, of Camaguey; Vice-President, Bartolome Maso, of Manzanillo, Oriente; Secretaries--of War, Carlos Roloff, of Santa Clara; of Foreign Affairs, Rafael Portuondo, of Santiago; of the Treasury, Severa Pina, of Sancti Spiritus; of the Interior, Santiago J. Canizares, of Los Remedios. Each Secretary appointed his own Deputy, who should have full power when taking his chief's place, as follows: War, Mario G. Menocal, of Matanzas; Foreign Affairs, Fermin G. Dominguez; Treasury, Joaquin Castillo Duany, of Santiago; Interior, Carlos Dubois, of Baracoa. The Commander in Chief was Maximo Gomez; the Lieutenant-General, or Vice-Commander in Chief was Antonio Maceo, and the Major Generals were Jose Maceo, Maso Capote, Serafin Sanchez, and Fuerto Rodriguez. Tomas Estrada Palma was minister plenipotentiary and diplomatic agent abroad. Later Bartolome Maso and General de Castillo were made special envoys to the United States. Salvador Cisneros, the President, has already been frequently mentioned in this history. He came of distinguished ancestry, the names of Cisneros and Betancourt frequently occupying honorable places in the annals of Cuba. Born in 1832, he was by this time past the prime of life, but he was just as zealous and efficient in the cause of Cuban freedom as he was when he sacrificed his title of Marquis of Santa Lucia, and sacrificed his estates, too, which were confiscated by the Spanish government, when he joined the Ten Years' War, later to succeed the martyred Cespedes as President. Of Bartolome Maso, too, we have spoken much. He also was advanced in years, having been born in 1831, and he, too, had served through the Ten Years' War and had in consequence of his patriotism lost all his estates. Carlos Roloff, the Secretary of War, was a Pole, who had come to Cuba in his youth and settled at Cienfuegos; bringing with him the passionate love of freedom which had long been characteristic of the Poles. He fought through the Ten Years' War and gained distinction therein, by his valor and military skill. Mario G. Menocal, the Assistant Secretary of War, was a native of Jaguey Grande, Matanzas, at this time only twenty-nine years old. He came of a family eminent in Cuban history, and indeed in the history of North America, since he was a nephew of that A. G. Menocal who was perhaps the most distinguished and efficient of all the engineers and surveyors for the Isthmian Canal schemes, both at Nicaragua and Panama. He himself was, even thus early in life, one of the foremost engineers of Cuba. [Illustration: ANICETO G. MENOCAL] Rafael Portuondo y Tamayo, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, was another young man--born at Santiago in 1867--of distinguished family and high ability. His Assistant Secretary, Fermin Valdes Dominguez, was one of the most eminent physicians of Havana, and was one of those students who, as hitherto related, were falsely accused by the Volunteers of desecrating an officer's grave. He escaped the fate of shooting, which was meted out to one in every five of his comrades, but was sent to life-long penal servitude at Ceuta. After the Treaty of Zanjon he was released and returned to Havana, where he attained great distinction in his profession. Severa Pina, Secretary of the Treasury, belonged to one of the oldest families of Sancti Spiritus. His Assistant, Dr. Joaquin Castillo Duany, has already been mentioned as one of the organizers of the Cuban Junta in New York. He had served on the United States Naval relief expedition which went to the Arctic regions in quest of the survivors of the _Jeannette_ exploring expedition. Santiago J. Canizares, Secretary of the Interior, was one of the foremost citizens of Los Remedios, and his Assistant, Carlos Dubois, enjoyed similar rank at Baracoa. Meantime Martinez Campos was straining every effort to fulfil his promise of victory. At the middle of July he had nearly 40,000 regular infantry, more than 2,500 cavalry, more than 1,000 artillery and engineers, 4,400 civil guards, 2,700 marines, and nearly 1,200 guerrillas. His navy comprised 15 vessels, to which were to be added six which were approaching completion in Spain and 19 which were being purchased of other European nations. Thus his troops outnumbered the Cubans by just about two to one. For the latter aggregated only 24,000, of whom 12,000 were under Maceo in Oriente, 9,000 in Camaguey under Gomez, and 3,000 under Roloff and Sanchez in Santa Clara. In August large reenforcements for Campos arrived from Spain, and they were no longer, as before, half trained boys, but were the very flower of the Spanish army. They brought the total that had been sent to Cuba up to 80,000, of whom 60,000 were regular infantry. However, probably between 18,000 and 20,000 must be subtracted from those figures, for killed, deserted, and died of yellow fever and other diseases. But even if thus reduced to 60,000, the Spanish were still twice as many as the Cubans, who had increased their forces to not more than 30,000. The plans of campaign gave the Cubans, however, a great advantage. Fully half of the Spaniards had to remain on garrison duty in the cities and towns, especially along the coast, so that the number free to take the field against the Cubans was no greater than that of the latter. With numbers anywhere near equal, the Cubans were almost sure to win, because of their superior morale and their better knowledge of the country. The Cubans suffered much, it is true, from lack of supplies, and this lack became the more marked and grievous as the Spaniards increased their naval forces and drew tighter and tighter their double cordon of vessels around the island. Several costly expeditions which were fitted out in the United States during the year came to grief, being either restrained from sailing by the United States authorities or intercepted and captured by the Spanish. One such vessel, fully laden with valuable supplies, was seized at the mouth of the Delaware River, as it was setting out for Cuba, and the cargo was confiscated. The company of Cubans in command of the vessel were arrested and brought to trial, but were acquitted since the mere exportation of arms and ammunition in an unarmed merchant vessel was no violation of law. Far different was the fate of any such who were captured by the Spanish at the other end of the voyage, as they were approaching the Cuban coast. The mildest fate they could expect was a term of many years of penal servitude at Ceuta. Such was the sentence imposed upon sailors who were guilty of nothing more than smuggling the contraband goods into Cuba. As for Juan Gualberto Gomez and his comrades in an expedition which presumptively was intended for fighting as well as smuggling, twenty years at Ceuta was their sentence. During the summer of 1895 a severe but necessary order was issued by the Cuban commander in chief. This, addressed to the people of Camaguey Province, directed the cessation of all plantation work, save such as was necessary for the food supply of the families there resident; and also strictly forbade the supplying of any food to the Spanish garrisons in the towns and cities. Disobedience to these orders, it was plainly stated, would mean the destruction of the offending plantation. It was the purpose of General Gomez to deprive the Spaniards of all local supplies and make them dependent upon shipments of food, even, from Spain. This meant, no doubt, much hardship to the Cuban people. But there was little complaint, and it was seldom that the rule was violated. Whenever a flagrant violation was detected, the torch was applied, and canefield and buildings were reduced to ashes. There was also much destruction of railroads, bridges, telegraph lines and what not, to deprive the Spanish of means of transport and communication. It was a fine demonstration of the patriotism of the Cuban people that they almost universally acquiesced in this plan of campaign, without demur and without repining, although it of course meant heavy loss and untold inconvenience and often severe suffering, to them. They realized that they were at war, and that war was not to be waged with lace fans and rosewater. At the end of September, after the close of the Constitutional Convention, preparations were made for renewing the military campaign with more aggressive vigor. Jose Maceo was assigned to the command of the eastern part of Oriente, General Capote and General Sanchez took respectively the northern and southern parts of the western half, and General Rodriguez led the advance into Camaguey. Maximo Gomez himself accompanied Rodriguez's army, and was presently joined by Antonio Maceo, and together they planned the great campaign of the war, which was conceived by Gomez and executed by Maceo. This was nothing less than the extension of the war into every province and indeed every district and village of the island, by marching westward from Oriente to the further end of Pinar del Rio. Early in October Antonio Maceo set out to join Gomez in Camaguey, taking with him 4,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. At San Nicolas he suffered a setback at the hands of General Aldave and a superior force of Spaniards, but resolutely continued his progress. Gomez meanwhile pushed on into Santa Clara, established headquarters near Las Tunas, where he could be in touch with expeditions from Jamaica, and began the aggressive against the Spaniards around Sancti Spiritus. Roloff, meanwhile, was operating at the northern part of the province, at Vueltas. Martinez Campos himself was in the field near Sancti Spiritus, but failed to check the Cuban advance. In fact, at almost every point the campaign was going steadily against the Spanish; so much against them that Campos feared to let the truth be known to the world. Accordingly he issued a decree forbidding the publication of any news concerning the war save that which was officially given out at his headquarters or by his chief of staff at Havana. Only Spanish and foreign--no Cuban--correspondents were permitted to accompany the army, and they only on their compliance with the rules. Still Campos appeared to cherish the thought that he could end the war by compromise, through pursuing a policy of leniency toward at least the rank and file of the insurgents; and in this he had the support of the Madrid government. That government had staked its all upon him, and was naturally disposed to give him a free hand and to approve everything that he did. However, it insisted that the rebellion must be crushed and that no further reforms for Cuba could be considered until that was done. It was feeling the strain of the war severely, especially since its last loan for war funds had to be placed at more than fifty per cent discount. October was a disastrous month for the Spanish at sea. One of their gunboats was wrecked on a key, and another, which had just been purchased in the United States, was boarded and seized by a party of revolutionists in the Cauto River, stripped of all its guns and ammunition, and disabled and scuttled. General Enrique Collazo, who earlier in the season had several times been baffled in such attempts, at last got away from Florida with a strong party of Cubans and Americans and effected a safe landing in Cuba. A little later Carlos Manuel de Cespedes did the same, bringing a large cargo of arms. Two expeditions also came from Canada, under General Francisco Carillo and Colonel Jose Maria Aguirre. The latter, by the way, was an American citizen who had been arrested in Havana at the very beginning of the war, along with Julio Sanguilly, but was released at the very urgent insistence of the United States government. Sanguilly, who was suspected by some Cubans of having betrayed their cause, was held, tried, and condemned to life imprisonment; a fact which cleared him of suspicion of complicity with the Spaniards. Maceo advanced through Camaguey and on November 12 reached Las Villas with an army of 8,000 men. Gomez had meanwhile moved northward almost to the Gulf coast, and was operating with 5,000 men between Los Remedios and Sagua la Grande, where he joined forces with Sanchez, who had marched westward, and with Roloff, Suarez, Cespedes and Collazo. He established headquarters near the Matanzas border, where he was in touch with Lacret, Matagas and other guerrilla leaders who were actively engaged in the latter province. In that same month Maceo fought a pitched battle with General Navarro, near Santa Clara, and a few days later Gomez similarly fought General Suarez Valdes in the same region. These were two of the greatest battles of the war, in point of numbers engaged and losses suffered, and were both handsomely won by the Cubans. In view of these losses, Campos welcomed the arrival of 30,000 additional troops from Spain, under General Pando and General Marin. He also resorted to recruiting troops in some of the South American countries, particularly in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, thinking to find them hardier and better able to endure the climate and the hardships of Cuba than men from the Peninsula. Such recruiting was not regarded with favor in those countries, where sympathy was generally on the side of the Cubans; but a considerable number of adventurers were found who were willing to serve for good pay as soldiers of fortune. More and more, too, the Spanish soldiery indulged in excesses against the inhabitants of Cuba as well as against the revolutionists in the field, and the conflict showed symptoms of degenerating into the savagery which marked it at a later date. It is to be recalled to the credit of Campos that he resisted all such tendencies, and that he indeed sent back to Spain two prominent Generals, Bazan and Salcedo, because of their barbarous methods and their criticisms of his humanity. General Pando, on arriving with the fresh troops from Spain, was placed in command at Santiago; General Marin was assigned to Santa Clara; General Mella operated in Camaguey; and General Arderius was charged with the hopeless task of guarding Matanzas, Havana and Pinar del Rio from invasion by the revolutionists. The Cuban government, of President Cisneros and his colleagues, established its headquarters at Las Tunas, and there approved another military proclamation by the Commander in Chief, ordering the burning of all cane fields and the laying waste of all plantations which were providing or were likely to provide supplies to the Spaniards, and threatening with death all persons found giving the Spaniards aid or comfort. One notable blow was struck at the south, before the final advance was made toward Havana and the west. This was at the middle of December. Campos himself was at Cienfuegos, with 20,000 troops, and Gomez and Maceo decided to give him battle. The redoubtable negro farmer, Quintin Bandera, from Oriente, who at the age of sixty-three years had become one of the most agile, daring and successful guerrilla leaders, raided the Spanish lines and drew out a considerable force, upon which the Cubans fell at Mal Tiempo, thirty miles north of Cienfuegos. Only a couple of thousand men were engaged on each side, but it was one of the most significant battles of the war, because it was the first in which the Cubans relied upon the machete, and the result of the experiment made that fearful weapon thereafter their favorite arm, particularly in cavalry charges, and it struck a terror into the hearts of the Spanish soldiers such as nothing else could do. The machete was an enormous knife, as long as a cavalry sabre or longer, with a single edge as sharp as a razor on a blade almost as heavy as the head of a woodsman's axe. It had been used on sugar plantations, for cutting cane, and was so heavy that a single stroke was sufficient to cut through half a dozen of the thickest canes. Swung by the expert and sinewy arm of a Cuban soldier, it would sever a man's head from his body, or cut off an arm or leg, as surely as the blade of a guillotine. At Mal Tiempo a whole company of Spanish regulars was set upon by Cuban horsemen armed with nothing but machetes, and every one of them was killed. Turning swiftly away from Mal Tiempo, where they had both been present, Gomez and Maceo led their troops swiftly to the northwest and before Campos realized what their objective was they were raiding and defeating Spanish troops around Colon, in the east central part of the Province of Matanzas, between Campos and Havana. The distracted Captain-General hastened thither and, learning that they were retiring eastward toward the town of Santo Domingo, in Santa Clara, directed his course thither; only to find himself outwitted by the Cubans who had really moved further toward Colon. At last he came into contact with them, and with Emilio Nunez who had joined them, near the little village of Coliseo, and there he was badly worsted in the fight, and came near to losing his life, his adjutant being shot and killed at his side. The coming of night saved him from further losses. But then the Cubans, pursuing Fabian tactics, withdrew to Jaguey Grande, in Santa Clara, well content with their achievement, where they took counsel over plans for the great drive which was to carry them through Matanzas and Havana clear into Pinar del Rio. Campos made the best of his way hastily back to Havana, in a far different frame of mind from that in which he had come to Cuba eight months before. He had at that time in the island more than 100,000 troops in active service. Since his appointment as Captain-General nearly 80,000 men had been sent thither from Spain. In addition there were the Volunteers, or what was left of them. According to Spanish authorities at Havana at that time the Volunteers numbered 63,000. True, they would not take the field. But they were serviceable for police and garrison duty in cities and towns, thus permitting all the regular army to be put into the field. The same authorities declared that with the Volunteers, marines and all other branches, Campos had at his disposal 189,000 men. It is probable that the entire force under Gomez and Maceo in that first invasion of Matanzas did not exceed 10,000 men. These things gave "Spain's greatest General" much food for thought; not of the most agreeable kind. It gave others food for thought; the Spanish Loyalists of both Constitutionalist and Reformist predilections, and the dwindling but still resolute body of Cuban Autonomists. The last-named were at this desperate conjuncture of affairs Campos's best friends. The Constitutionalists were hostile to him. They had from the first disapproved his moderate and humane methods, wishing to return to the savagery of Valmaseda in the Ten Years' War. The Reformists were hesitant; they had little faith in Campos, yet they doubted the expedience of openly repudiating him. The Autonomists, having faith in his sincerity, respecting his humanity, and deploring the devastation and ruin which was befalling Cuba, urged that he should be supported loyally in at least one last effort to pacify the island and abate the horrors of civil war. The intellectual and moral power of the Autonomists carried the day. The Reformists first and then the Constitutionalists agreed to join them in making a demonstration of loyalty and confidence to the Captain-General, to cheer and sustain him in the depression--almost despair--which he was certainly suffering. So the representatives of all three factions appeared publicly before Campos. For the Constitutionalists, Santos Guzman spoke; an intense reactionary, who could not altogether conceal his feelings of disapproval of Campos's liberal course, or his realization of the desperate plight in which the country was at that time. But he made an impassioned pledge of the loyalty of his party to the Captain-General. For the Autonomists, Dr. Rafael Montoro was the spokesman, one of the foremost orators and scholars of the Spanish-speaking world. He had been a Cuban Senator in the Spanish Cortes, and perhaps more than any other man in Cuba commanded the respect and confidence of all parties, Spanish and Cuban alike. He also pledged to Campos the unwavering support of the Autonomists in what he believed sincerely to be the best policy for both Cuba and Spain. A representative of the Reformists spoke to the same effect. Then Campos responded with a frank confession that he had meditated resignation, fearing that he had lost the united confidence of the various parties; but that after this demonstration of loyalty, he would continue his military and civil administration with restored hope of success in pacifying the island. We have called the Autonomists at this time the best friends of Campos. It might be possible, however, to argue successfully that they were his worst friends, or at least badly mistaken friends. It might have been better, that is to say, for him to have persisted in retirement at that time, instead of merely postponing the day of wrath. For his renewed efforts either to crush or to pacify the revolutionists were vain. At the very moment when he was gratefully listening to those pledges of loyal support, Gomez and Maceo were pushing unrelentingly forward, not merely through Matanzas but far into Havana province itself. And like Israel of old, they were guided or accompanied by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. The plantations near the capital were sources of supply for the Spanish, and they must be destroyed. It seemed savage to doom canefields and factories to the torch. But it was more humane to do that and thus make the island uninhabitable for the Spaniards, than to lose myriads of lives in battle. Moreover, the destruction of the sugar crop, then ripe for harvest, would do more than anything else to cripple the financial resources of Spain in the island. All Spain wanted of Cuba, said Gomez, grimly but truly, was what she could get out of it. Therefore if she was prevented from getting anything out of it she would no longer desire it but would let it go. So night after night "the midnight sky was red" with the glow of blazing canefields and factories, and day after day the tropic sun was half obscured by rolling clouds of smoke from the same conflagrations; while behind them the advancing armies left a broad swath of blackened desolation, above which gaunt, tall chimneys towered solitary, above twisted and ruined machinery, grim monuments of the passing of the destroyer. Day after day the inexorable terror rolled toward the capital. On the last day of the year the vanguard of the patriot army was at Marianao, only ten miles from Havana, and every railroad leading out of the city was either cut or had suspended operations. Two days later Campos proclaimed martial law and a state of siege in the Provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio. Thus the new year opened with the entire island involved in the War of Independence. Nor was it merely a nominal state of war. Already Pinar del Rio was overrun by bands of Cuban irregulars, who destroyed the cane fields of Spanish Loyalists and ravaged the tobacco plantations of the famous Vuelta Abajo. But this was not enough. On January 5, 1896, Gomez, leaving Maceo and Quintin Bandera to hold Campos in check at Havana, drove straight at the centre of the Spanish line which strove to bar his progress westward, broke through it, and marched his whole army into Pinar del Rio. That was the beginning of the end for Campos. In desperation he flung all available troops in a line across the western part of Havana Province vainly hoping, since he had not been able thus to keep him out of Pinar del Rio, that thus he could keep Gomez shut up in that province, deprived of supplies or succor. Meantime he sent three of his ablest generals, Luque, Navarro and Valdez, into the western province, in hope of capturing Gomez. But the wily Cuban chieftain played with them, marching and countermarching at will and wearing them out, until he had completed his work there. Then as if to show his scorn at Campos's military barriers, he burst out of Pinar del Rio and reentered Havana, sweeping like a besom of wrath through the southern part of that province, and defeating the army of Suarez Valdez near Batabano. Then, while all the Spanish columns were in full cry after Gomez, Maceo crossed the border into Pinar del Rio at the north, and marched along the coast as far as Cabanas, destroying several towns on his way. From Batabano the Cubans under Gomez and Angel Guerra turned northward again, and by January 12 were at Managuas, in the outskirts of Havana, from which the sound of firing could be heard in the capital itself. The railroads had been stopped before, and now all telegraph communication with Havana was cut, save that by submarine cable. The city was not merely in a technical state of siege but was actually besieged, and if Jose Maceo and Jesus Rabi, who were on the eastern border of the province, had been able promptly to join Gomez and Bandera, Havana would probably have been captured. In this state of affairs the Spanish inhabitants of the city were frantic with fear, and with faultfinding against Campos for his inability to protect them from the revolutionists. The Volunteers mutinied outright refusing to serve longer under his orders unless he would alter his policy to one of extreme severity. The Spanish political leaders openly inveighed against him. In these circumstances Campos invited the leaders of the various parties, the very men who shortly before had pledged their support to him, to meet him again for a conference. They came, but in a different spirit from before. Santos Guzman was first to speak. He declared that the Constitutionalists had lost confidence in the Captain-General and did not approve his policy, and that they could no longer support him. The spokesman of the Reformists was less violent of phrase but no less hostile in intent and purport. From neither of the factions of the Spanish party could Campos hope for further support. There remained the Cuban Autonomists, and with a constancy which would have been sublime if only it had been exercised in a better cause, they reaffirmed their loyalty to Campos and to his policy and renewed their pledges of support. But this was in vain. Campos realized that a Spanish Captain-General who had not the support and confidence of the Spanish party would be an impossible anomaly. He would not resign, but he reported to Madrid the state of affairs, and placed himself, like a good soldier, at the commands of the government; excepting that he would not change his policy for one of ruthless severity. If he was to remain in Cuba, his policy of conciliation, in cooperation with the Autonomists, must be maintained. The answer was not delayed. On January 17 a message came from Madrid, directing Campos to turn over his authority to General Sabas Marin, who would exercise it until a permanent successor could be appointed and could arrive; and to return forthwith to Spain. Of course there was nothing for him to do but to obey. In relinquishing his office to his temporary successor he spoke strongly in defence of the policy which he had pursued. Later, out of office, he talked with much bitterness of the political conspiracies which had been formed against him by the Spaniards of Cuba, of their moral treason to the cause of Spain, and of the sordid tyranny which they exercised. He declared that Spain herself was at fault for the Cuban revolution, which never would have occurred if the island had been treated as an integral province of Spain and not as a subject and enslaved country; and he prophesied that the verdict of history would be, as it had been in the case of Central and South America, that Spain had lost her American empire through the perverse faults of the Spaniards themselves. "My successor," he added, "will fail." Three days later he sailed for Spain. CHAPTER V The administration of General Marin lasted only a few weeks, but it was marked with strenuous doings. His first effort was to do what Campos had failed to do, namely, to maintain an impassable barrier between Pinar del Rio and Havana. He massed troops on the line between Havana and Batabano, and took command himself at the centre, hoping to draw Maceo into a general engagement. But Maceo sent Perico Diaz with 1,400 men from Artemisia to create a diversion just north of the centre, which was done very effectively, Diaz and General Jil drawing a large Spanish force into a trap and inflicting terrible slaughter with a cavalry machete charge. Taking advantage of this, Maceo with a small detachment easily crossed the trocha at the south. At once the Spanish forces all rushed in that direction, to head off Maceo and to prevent him from joining Gomez, whereupon the remainder of Maceo's troops crossed the trocha at the centre and north. After raiding Havana Province at will, and capturing fresh supplies, Maceo returned to Pinar del Rio, fought and won a pitched battle at Paso Real, won another at Candelaria, where the Spanish General Cornell was killed, and captured the city of Jaruco and its forts with 80 guns. By this time the new Captain-General had arrived. This was General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau; the man most of all desired--and indeed earnestly asked for--by the Volunteers and other extremists among the Spanish party in Cuba, the man most undesired by the Autonomists, and the man most hated by the Cuban revolutionists. He had made himself unspeakably odious in the Ten Years' War as the chief aid of Valmaseda in his savage outrages, and he was confidently expected to renew in Cuba the horrors of that campaign; as he did. Upon the announcement of his appointment the Autonomists largely abandoned hope of any amicable arrangement, and those of them who were mayors or other officers promptly resigned their places, being unwilling to serve under him. Many of them left Cuba altogether, dreading the horrors which they knew were impending. As for the masses of the Cuban people, they flocked to the standard of the revolution in greater numbers than before. Within a month after Weyler's arrival at Havana, more than 15,000 fresh recruits were following the banners of Gomez and Maceo. [Illustration: GENERAL WEYLER] It was on February 10 that Weyler landed in Cuba. He promptly issued a number of decrees addressed to both the Spanish Loyalists and the Cuban Revolutionists. He chided the former for their indifference and fears, warned them that they must expect to make sacrifices and endure sufferings, and demanded of them that they should themselves undertake the guardianship of their cities and towns so as to release all his troops for service in the field. The latter he threatened with all possible pains and penalties if they persisted in their contumacy. Death or life imprisonment was to be the fate of all who circulated news unfavorable to the government, who interfered with the operation of railroads, telegraphs or telephones, who by word of mouth disparaged Spain or Spanish soldiers or praised the enemy, who aided the enemy in any way, or who failed to help the government and to injure the revolutionists at every opportunity. All inhabitants of Oriente, Camaguey and the district of Sancti Spiritus in Santa Clara were required to register at military headquarters and receive permits to go about their business. Later he ordered all persons living in rural districts to move into fortified towns, and confiscated the property of all who were absent from their homes without leave. It should be added that at the beginning of his administration he sought to curb and even reproved and punished the cruelties of his subordinates. In spite of the repudiation of Campos and his policy of pacification, and the accession of Weyler and his policy of severity, the Spanish Prime Minister, Canovas del Castillo, determined to make another attempt at amicable settlement. Elections for a new Cortes were to be held, and he directed that they should be held in Cuba as well as in the Peninsula. To that end it was desirable to raise the state of siege in at least the three western provinces, and on March 8 Weyler issued an order which he hoped would conduce to that end. The civil guard, or rural military police, was to be restored to duty, amnesty was offered to all insurgents who surrendered within fifteen days and who had not been guilty of burning or confiscating property, and all others were to be treated as bandits, to be put summarily to death. All loyal inhabitants were required actively to assist in repairing railroads, telegraph lines, etc. A similar proclamation was issued for the other provinces. The elections were set for April 12, and were then held. The Reformist faction of Spaniards refused to take part in them, not approving the policy of Weyler. The Cuban Autonomists also refused to vote, or to nominate candidates, excepting for Deputies from the University of Havana and the Economical Society of Havana. They did this at great risk to themselves, because Weyler after trying persuasions resorted to the most ominous threats against them if they would not take part in the elections, and there really was much danger that at least their leaders would be arrested and imprisoned for treason. The outcome was that only Constitutionalists voted, and only their candidates were elected; representing an insignificant fraction of the Cuban people. Meantime the war raged unceasingly. Having failed to keep the Cubans from invading Pinar del Rio, and then from emerging from that province, Weyler again formed a trocha from Havana to Batabano to prevent them from moving further east. But both Gomez and Maceo broke through, the former marching into the heart of Matanzas and playing havoc with the sugar plantations, and the latter going southward to the Cienaga de Zapata and thence into Santa Clara, where he received strong reenforcements from Oriente and Camaguey. Then, when Weyler was massing his troops in Santa Clara, Maceo with 10,000 men swept back to the very gates of Havana. With the adoption of Weyler's policy as announced in his proclamations, the war became a campaign of destruction on both sides, each burning towns in order that they might not be occupied by the other. In this fashion in a few weeks there were burned or laid in ruins in Pinar del Rio the towns of Cabanaz, Cayajabos, Vinales, Palacios, San Juan Martinez, Montezuelo, Los Arroyos, Cuano, San Diego, Nunez, Bahia Honda, Hacha and Quiobra; in Havana there perished La Catalina, San Nicolas, Nueva Paz, Bejucal, Jaruco, Wajay, Melena and Bainoa; in Matanzas, Los Ramos, Macagua, Roque, San Jose and Torriente; and in Santa Clara, Amaro, Flora, Mata, Maltiempo, Ranchuelo, Salamanca and San Juan. Many other towns were partially destroyed. On March 13 Maceo attacked Batabano, one of the most strongly defended Spanish coast towns, took 50 guns and much ammunition, and destroyed the town. Nine days later Gomez sent troops into the city of Santa Clara, and captured 240,000 rounds of ammunition. He established his headquarters so near Las Cruces that General Pando fled from that place to Cienfuegos; for which cowardice he was recalled to Spain, as were several other generals. Maceo, after his exploit at Batabano, returned to Pinar del Rio, routed General Linares at Candelaria and another Spanish army at Cayajibaos, and destroyed part of the town of Pinar del Rio. Filibustering was now rife. In spite of the vigilance of the United States government and of the Spanish navy, numerous expeditions carried men and arms to the Cuban patriots. Those which were successful were little heard of by the public, while those which failed often attracted much attention. General Calixto Garcia, one of the most resolute and daring veterans of the Ten Years' War, sent one on the steamer _Hawkins_, which was lost at sea. He organized another on the British steamer _Bermuda_, which was detained by the United States authorities on February 24, and he was arrested and tried for "organizing a military expedition," but was acquitted. A little later he reorganized the expedition and reached Cuba with it in safety. Enrique Collazo and others sent an expedition from Cedar Keys on the _Stephen R. Mallory_, which was detained, for a time, but finally got off and landed most of the cargo in Matanzas. The Danish steamer _Horsa_ was seized by the United States authorities for carrying a military expedition. The _Commodore_ carried a cargo of arms safely from Charleston, S. C. The _Bermuda_ took another expedition from Jacksonville under Col. Vidal and Col. Torres, but was attacked by a Spanish gunboat before all the cargo was landed, and took to flight, throwing the rest of the cargo overboard. Other successful expeditions in the early part of 1896 were five on the steamer _Three Friends_, one of which was led by Julian Zarraga and one by Dr. Joaquin Castillo Duany; three on the _Laurada_, of which one was led by Juan Fernandez Ruiz and one by Rafael Portuondo; several led by Rafael Cabrera, one by General Carlos Roloff, and one by Juan Ruiz Rivera. One came from France, under Fernando Freyre y Andrade, bringing 5,000 rifles and 1,000,000 cartridges. President Cleveland issued a warning, that all violators of the United States neutrality laws would be prosecuted and severely punished, and General Weyler offered large rewards for information leading to the capture of such expeditions, but the chief effect was to stimulate Cuban patriots to greater efforts, if also to increased precautions. Much attention was meanwhile paid to Cuban affairs by the United States government, not only in trying to check filibustering but also in looking after the rights--and wrongs--of American citizens, and also in seeking an ending of a war which was commercially ruinous and humanely most distressing. Several joint resolutions were introduced in the Congress at Washington, for recognizing the Cubans as belligerents, for inquiry into the state and conditions of the war, for intervention, and for recognizing the independence of the Cuban Republic. There were finally adopted on April 6 resolutions favoring recognition of Cuban belligerency and the tender of good offices for the settlement of the war on the basis of Cuban independence. It was of course necessarily left to the discretion of the President to execute these designs. He did not deem it expedient to recognize Cuban belligerence, but he did promptly, on April 9, direct the American Minister at Madrid to make the tender of good offices for ending the war on the basis of reforms which would be satisfactory to the Cuban people. True, it had been made clear that the great mass of the Cuban people would accept nothing short of independence; but the American Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, believed that if a genuine measure of Home Rule were granted and put into effect, the Cubans and their friends in the United States would withdraw their support from the revolution and thus constrain the revolutionists to yield and accept the compromise. To this overture of the United States government Spain made no reply; nor did it to a similar suggestion offered by the Pope. But Tomas Estrada Palma, speaking for the Cuban Junta in New York and for Cubans and Cuban sympathizers throughout the United States, declared that they were not at all interested in any such scheme, and that they would consider nothing short of absolute independence. The Spanish government did, indeed, consider a scheme of so-called autonomy, somewhat resembling that of Senor Abarzuza at the beginning of the war; but in the speech from the throne at the opening of the Cortes on May 11 it was frankly recognized that the revolutionists would accept nothing short of independence, and that therefore it would be expedient to attempt any such reforms until the insurrection had been subdued by force of arms; which was, of course, General Weyler's policy. There were numerous diplomatic controversies between Spain and the United States over Cuban affairs. The American Consul-General at Havana, Ramon O. Williams, intervened in behalf of numerous American citizens who had been arrested for complicity in the revolution, insisting upon their trial by civil and not by military courts. In the case of five American sailors taken on a filibustering expedition, death by shooting was ordered by Weyler, but the Spanish government quashed the sentence and ordered a civil trial on Mr. Williams's threat to close the Consulate and thus suspend relations. Antagonism between the consul and the Captain-General became so intense that Mr. Williams offered to resign his office, but the President requested him to remain. However he finally retired, at his own volition, and was succeeded on June 3 by Fitzhugh Lee; who proved equally resolute in his protection of American interests. Meantime, what of the revolutionary civil government of the Republic of Cuba? At the beginning it was a fugitive in the mountain fastnesses of the Sierra Maestra, in the southern part of Oriente, between Santiago and Manzanillo. Thence it removed to Las Tunas, in the same province. But after the great eastward drive by Gomez and Maceo it established itself permanently in the Sierra de Cubitas, in the Province of Camaguey, midway between the city of Camaguey and the north coast of Cuba. There it remained, in a practically impregnable stronghold, and there it surrounded itself with such military industries as it was capable of conducting--largely the manufacture of dynamite, machetes, and of clothing. From that capital it directed an efficient administration of the major part of the island. It levied and collected taxes, and gave to about two-thirds of the island a mail service at least as efficient as that of the Spanish government had ever been. A complete judicial and police system was maintained, and was more respected by the people than that of Spain. In brief it was substantially true, as President Cisneros declared, that the island was peaceful, law-abiding and well-governed, excepting in those places where the Spanish invaders were making trouble! But the Spanish did make trouble. Weyler once more strove to place an impassable barrier between Pinar del Rio and Havana, to keep Maceo shut up in the former province. He constructed it so strongly, with ditches, block houses, barbed wire fences, artillery and what not as to make it almost impossible of passage. Then he put 10,000 of his best troops west of it, to fight Maceo, and distributed 28,000 more along the trocha to keep Maceo from breaking out. The result was most unfortunate for the Spanish troops west of the trocha. They were there to hunt down Maceo. Instead, Maceo hunted them. If they ventured to attack him, he repulsed them. More often he attacked them, and almost invariably routed them. At Lechuza he cut to pieces Colonel Debos's column and drove its survivors to the shelter of a gunboat at the shore. At Bahia Honda and Punta Brava the Spanish were badly beaten. In the Rubi Hills a Spanish force was all but annihilated, and the commanders began to clamor for reenforcements; though Maceo had only 11,000 men, and the Spanish had 50,000 along the trocha to keep him from crossing it. During the summer the campaign slackened a little, though Maceo won several spirited engagements and maintained his control of practically all the province excepting parts of the coast. In the early fall, with his army increased to 20,000 he resumed the aggressive; using for the first time a dynamite gun which thoroughly demoralized the Spaniards. Near Pinar del Rio city, at Las Tumbas Torino, at San Francisco, at Guayabitos and at Vinales, he defeated the enemy and inflicted heavy losses. The same record was made early in October at San Felipe, at Tunibar del Torillo, at Manaja, at Ceja del Negro, and Guamo. A solitary Spanish victory was won at Guayabitos. Like the general government at Cubitas, Maceo had headquarters in the mountains, and there guarded effectively a large and fertile region, where supplies ample for feeding his army could be produced. He also conducted workshops for the manufacture of arms and ammunition. Against this position, in his rage and desperation, Weyler himself in November led an army of 36,000 picked troops, with six Generals. For several days attack after attack was made, every one being repulsed by Maceo with heavy loss to the Spaniards, until at last, with a third of his army destroyed, Weyler abandoned the attempt and retreated. Unfortunately, on December 4 Maceo with his staff and a small force decided to undertake a secret expedition to seek a conference with leaders in Havana Province. They accordingly crossed the Bay of Mariel in a small boat and thus reached the eastern side of the trocha. Messages were sent to revolutionary chiefs in Havana and Matanzas, asking them to come to a council of war at a designated point near Punta Brava, familiar to them all as secure rendezvous. A few came promptly, but in some way the secret of the meeting became known to the Spanish. In consequence, on December 7, while he was expecting the arrival of more of his friends, Maceo heard the sound of firing at the outposts of his camp. Riding to the scene, he found Spanish troops attacking him. He rallied his troops and under his directions they were soon mastering the enemy, when a shot struck Maceo and he fell mortally wounded; his last words, referring to the progress of the skirmish, being, "It goes well." [Illustration: JOSÉ ANTONIO MACEO Born at Santiago de Cuba in 1849, of a family of patriots and brave fighters, and dying in battle at Punta Brava, near Havana, on December 7, 1896, José Antonio Maceo was one of the most gallant soldiers in the Ten Years' War and one of the very foremost chieftains of the War of Independence. Gifted with military genius and with leadership of men, he was the greatest strategist and the most popular commander in the Liberating Army, and the greatest terror to the foe. Partly of Negro blood, he was an equal honor to both races, and finely typified in himself their union in the cause of Cuban independence. A monument to his imperishable memory crowns Cacagual Hill, where his remains were buried.] At his fall his troops were panic stricken and gave way, so that the Spaniards occupied the field and plundered and stripped the dead. It was said that they did not know that it was Maceo whom they had killed until a native guide who was with them recognized his body. While they were still plundering the dead Cuban reenforcements under Pedro Diaz came up, furious at the loss of their peerless chief, and a desperate fight ensued, which ended in the rout of the Spaniards and the recovery of Maceo's body by the Cubans. When the defeated Spaniards got back to headquarters and reported that they had slain Maceo, they were not believed. It was not considered possible that he had crossed the trocha. But a little later convincing confirmation came to them from a Cuban source. This was furnished when Dr. Maximo Zertucha, who had been Maceo's surgeon-general and who was the only member of his staff who had survived the disastrous fight at Punta Brava, came to Spanish headquarters and surrendered himself. He explained that he did so because he had seen Maceo killed, and he regarded the loss of that leader as certainly fatal to the cause of the Cuban revolution. The Spanish authorities accepted his surrender and granted him full amnesty, a circumstance which caused many Cubans to suspect that he had betrayed his chief, by sending word of his whereabouts to the Spanish commander. Of this there appears, however, to have been no proof. Thus perished Antonio Maceo, who would have been the generalissimo of the Cuban forces but for the prudent fear that maligners might then have spread successfully the damaging libel that the revolution was nothing but a negro insurrection; a fear which he himself felt, and on account of which he insisted that Maximo Gomez should be the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolutionary armies. Thus perished Antonio Maceo, a soldier and a man without a superior in either of the contending armies, and a commander, indeed, who, in personal valor, in strategic skill, in resource, in resolution, in knowledge of the art of war, and in all the elements of military greatness, was worthy to be ranked among the great captains of all lands and of all time. The loss of him was irreparable. But it was not fatal to the Cuban cause. Thereafter the effort of every Cuban soldier and patriot was to increase his own efficiency to some degree, so that the aggregate would atone for the loss that had been sustained. While Maceo was thus baffling the Spanish in the far west of the island, Gomez and his lieutenants were more than holding their own in the other five provinces. Jose Maceo in April marched from Oriente all the way to the western side of Havana, where he was joined by Serafin Sanchez, Rodriguez, Lacret, Maso, Aguirre and others, until nearly 20,000 Cubans were gathered there. Gomez remained in Santa Clara, where the Spaniards had a precarious foothold at Cienfuegos, protected by their fleet. Colonel Gonzalez, commanding in the district of Remedios, routed the forces of General Oliver. Then, the Spanish power in the three great eastern provinces having been rendered negligible, a general movement westward was undertaken, following in the trail of the two Maceos. Gomez himself took supreme command, and Collazo, Calixto Garcia and others marched their forces to join him. Calixto Garcia, after only Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, was the foremost chieftain of the patriots, and not unworthy to rank with them in a trinity of military prowess. He was now advanced in years, having been born in 1839, at Holguin, Oriente. From childhood a fervent patriot, at the outbreak of the Ten Years' War he took the field under Donato Marmol. His native bent for military achievement assured him advancement, and at Santa Rita and Baire he was a Brigadier General under Gomez. In 1871 he besieged Guisa and Holguin, and then, when Gomez marched westward into Camaguey, thence to force passage of the trocha between Jucaro and Moron, Garcia was left in supreme command in Oriente. In that capacity he was active, triumphing at Santa Maria, Holguin, Chaparra, the siege and capture of Manzanillo, and at Ojo de Agua de los Melones. Then came the incident which for the time ended his military career and which gave him that scar in the centre of his forehead which was ever after so conspicuous a feature. At San Antonio de Baja he and only twenty of his men were surprised and surrounded by a large force of Spaniards. Seeing that escape was impossible, and having vowed never to fall alive into the hands of Spain, he put the muzzle of a pistol beneath his chin and fired. The bullet passed through the tongue, the roof of his mouth, behind his nose, and out at the centre of his forehead. But not thus was he to die. The Spaniards took him to a hospital at Santiago, where he recovered, and then sent him to prison in Spain; whence he returned to Cuba after the Treaty of Zanjon. He was a leader in the "Little War"; then, enjoying the respect and friendship of Martinez Campos, he went back to Spain and for a time was a bank clerk at Madrid. Thus he was engaged when the War of Independence began. Suspected and watched, he was not able to escape until a year later. But on March 24, 1896, he landed at Baracoa with an important expedition, and thereafter he was a raging and consuming flame of war. The westward march was marked with victory. On May 14 Colonel Segura's whole battalion was captured. On June 9 and 10 near Najasa General Jiminez Castellanos was soundly beaten and forced to retreat to Camaguey. Then, hoping to bar the Cubans from Santa Clara, the Spanish reconstructed the eastern trocha, from Jucaro to Moron, and sent forces inland from Santiago and other coast towns to create a back fire in Oriente. Calixto Garcia turned upon these latter, and routed them on the Cauto River, at Venta de Casanova, and near Bayamo, and captured great stores of supplies. At Santa Ana several stubbornly contested battles occurred between Garcia and General Linares, in which the latter was finally worsted. At Loma del Gato on July 5 the Cubans under Jose Maceo and Perequito Perez defeated the forces of General Albert and Colonel Vara del Rey, but at the heavy cost of Maceo's death. Meanwhile Juan B. Zayas, Lacret and others penetrated Havana Province at will, in guerrilla warfare; but Zayas was finally killed in an engagement near Gabriel. During the rainy season there was comparatively little activity, but in the fall the advance westward began in earnest. Garcia captured Guaimaro, and Gomez pushed on to Camaguey, but left the place to be dealt with by Garcia and hastened on, with Rodriguez, Rabi, Bandera and Carrillo. He crossed the trocha with ease, penetrated Santa Clara, and was soon in Matanzas, where Aguirre joined them with 3,200 men. He put an end to sugar making throughout most of the province, and then encamped in the Cienaga de Zapata, leaving a number of active guerrilla bands to harass and menace Havana. In the latter province at the beginning of December Raoul Arango and Nicolas Valencia attacked the town of Guanabacoa, only five miles from Havana, and seized great stores of supplies. Beyond the western trocha Ruiz Rivera succeeded Antonio Maceo in command, and carried on his work with much success. Thus the second year of the war drew to a close with the patriots despite some heavy losses decidedly in the ascendant, and the Spanish campaign of ruthless severity no more successful than that of moderation and conciliation had been. One other incident of the year 1896 was highly significant. At the beginning of December the President of the United States, Mr. Cleveland, in his annual message to Congress, discussed the Cuban problem very fully and frankly. He practically reasserted the historic policy toward that island first enunciated by John Quincy Adams, as quoted in a preceding volume of this history. He reasserted the Monroe Doctrine. He made it clear that the United States had special interests in Cuba, which not only all other nations but also Spain herself must recognize and acknowledge. Concerning the war he said, most justly: "The spectacle of the utter ruin of an adjoining country, by nature one of the most fertile and charming on the globe, would engage the serious attention of the government and people of the United States in any circumstances. In point of fact, they have a concern with it which is by no means of a wholly sentimental or philanthropic character. It lies so near us as to be hardly separated from our territory. Our actual pecuniary interest in it is second only to that of the people and government of Spain. It is reasonably estimated that at least from $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 of American capital are invested in plantations and in railroad, mining and other business enterprises on the island. The volume of trade between the United States and Cuba, which in 1889 amounted to about $64,000,000, rose in 1893 to about $103,000,000, and in 1894, the year before the present insurrection broke out, amounted to nearly $96,000,000. Beside this large pecuniary stake in the fortunes of Cuba, the United States, finds itself inextricably involved in the present contest in other ways both vexatious and costly." Then he added, in words the purport of which was unmistakable: "When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurrection has become manifest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle for its reestablishment has degenerated into a strife which means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject-matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge." To those who knew Mr. Cleveland, and who appreciated the care with which he selected every word in all important addresses, this could have but one meaning. It meant that American intervention was inevitable. Note that he did not say "_If_ the inability of Spain _should_ ... a situation _would_ ..." as though the thing were still problematic. No; but he said plumply "When the inability of Spain _has_ become manifest ... a situation _will_ be presented...." In his mind the thing was certain to come. It had already come, and only awaited disclosure and recognition. Remember, too, that of all men of his time Mr. Cleveland was one of the most opposed to "jingoism," and meddling with the affairs of other lands; while to any suggestion of conquest and annexation of Cuba to the United States he would have offered the most resolute opposition of which he was capable. In view of those facts, that utterance in his message was of epochal import. It foreshadowed precisely what did occur less than a year and a half later. It was in effect a declaration of intervention and of war with Spain in behalf of Cuban independence, made more than a year before the steamer _Maine_ entered Havana harbor. CHAPTER VI We have said that the death of Antonio Maceo moved Cuban patriots to redouble their efforts to atone for the grievous loss which their cause had thus suffered. Unfortunately not all of them were capable of so doing, while those who did so were unable to make devotion and zeal take the place of consummate military genius. In consequence, despite the utmost efforts of Gomez and his colleagues matters went badly for the revolution through most of the following year. Gomez himself indeed felt that he had lost his right arm. He was at La Reforma, near Sancti Spiritus, at the beginning of 1897, and he summoned the other revolutionary leaders to meet him there, to concentrate their forces, and to plan a new campaign. They came promptly and eagerly, some of them unfortunately thus leaving without protection important strategic points and centers of revolutionist industry, which were pounced upon and captured by the Spanish. When the patriot forces were thus gathered it was expected that there would be immediately undertaken a general advance westward, into Matanzas and Havana; for which it was believed the Cuban army was strong enough, and which the Spanish were not believed to be able to resist. Instead, Gomez decided first to effect the reduction of Arroyo Blanco. This was a small and unimportant town in the Province of Camaguey, near the Santa Clara border; containing a Spanish garrison under Captain Escobar. Gomez first summoned Escobar to surrender, in order to avoid the destruction which would be caused by the bombardment of the place with a dynamite gun, which he threatened to begin forthwith. Escobar defied him, and the bombardment was undertaken, but proved ineffective, and before Gomez could capture the place strong Spanish reenforcements arrived and the attempt had to be abandoned. Thereafter Gomez contented himself with sending several strong bands westward, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Spaniards wherever they could, while he himself remained near Sancti Spiritus, also engaging in irregular operations. There he was presently menaced by Weyler himself. That formidable foe had practically achieved the conquest of Pinar del Rio. After Maceo's death the Cuban forces in that province had largely dispersed, some abandoning the struggle altogether as hopeless, and others going to the east, to join themselves with Gomez, Garcia or other surviving leaders. Only a few roving bands remained. Accordingly Weyler announced that the western province was pacified. That was sufficiently true; but it was conspicuously true in the sense expressed by Tacitus, and Byron. They had made a solitude, and called it peace. Seldom had any comparable region been so thoroughly devastated and desolated. Then Weyler felt himself free to lead his army elsewhere. He set out from Havana with an imposing array of troops, and marched through the heart of the province and of Matanzas, into Santa Clara. On the way there was little fighting to do, not even to beat off guerrilla bands. His attention was given, therefore, to devastating the country, and to driving the inhabitants into "concentration camps," where they were doomed to starve to death by thousands. By the end of February he was triumphantly encamped at the foot of the Guamuhaya Mountains, between Santa Clara and Trinidad, and had the satisfaction of having wrought vast destruction upon the property of Cubans and upon the essential supplies of the Cuban army. A few weeks later Quintin Bandera with a small force came from Camaguey and, by wading through the shallow water of the Bay of Sabanabamar, got around the trocha and joined Gomez. The latter directed him to continue westward, and to harass the Spaniards with guerrilla attacks. This was done, and Bandera proceeded as far as Trinidad. Then failing to receive necessary support he turned back, and on July 4 was killed in a skirmish at Pelayo. East of the trocha Calixto Garcia continued his formidable career against such Spanish forces as remained in that region. He captured Las Tunas after forty-eight hours of almost incessant fighting. In Matanzas and Havana the revolutionary bands were badly broken up by the Spaniards, and they seemed to lack efficient leadership. Their leader, General Lacret, fell into an unfortunate controversy with Gomez over his treatment of Cubans who disregarded government orders, especially in their attitude toward the Spaniards. Gomez, remorseless, would have had them shot as traitors, but Lacret insisted upon more lenient treatment of them, realizing that they were almost literally "between the devil and the deep sea" and were therefore entitled to sympathetic consideration. The outcome was that Gomez relieved Lacret of his command and appointed Alexander Rodriguez in his place, in Matanzas. That officer failed to command the loyalty of his troops, and the result was that the latter generally deserted and dispersed. Mayia Rodriguez was then ordered to the scene, but was unable to collect a sufficient force, and remained in Santa Clara, hemmed in by the Spanish. General Jose Maria Aguirre, who died in December, 1896, was succeeded in command in the Province of Havana by Nestor Aranguren, who performed some creditable minor operations, particularly against Spanish railroad communications, but achieved nothing of real importance. His lieutenant, General Adolfo Castillo, in the southern part of the province, was killed in battle, in September, and was succeeded by Juan Delgado. The Spanish General Parrado in October marched without opposition as far as Los Palos, and there received the surrender of a small Cuban band; and in November General Pando with a powerful army made his way without serious opposition from Havana to the western part of Oriente. It was during this year that Weyler's ever infamous "concentration" policy, which was really a policy of extermination, reached its infernal climax and was then repudiated and abandoned. This system, as already related, was decreed on October 21, 1896. It required all Cubans, men, women and children, to leave their homes in the rural regions and enter concentration camps. These were simply huge pens, enclosed with fences and barbed wire and guarded by Spanish soldiers. There the hapless prisoners were huddled together, without shelter from the elements, and with little or no food save such as could be procured by stealth. There was none to be had within the enclosures, of course, and the prisoners could not go out to get any, even if any was to be found in the devastated country around them. Their friends outside seldom dared approach the camps to bring them food, because as they had not themselves surrendered as commanded by Weyler, they were liable to be shot at sight. Elsewhere Cubans by thousands were driven into towns and cities which were still under Spanish control, and were there kept prisoners within the Spanish lines. They were not quite so badly off as those in the concentration camps, though the difference was not great. They had no means of obtaining food, save as the municipal authorities, more merciful than Weyler, opened "soup kitchens" and thus in charity kept some of them from starvation. As it was the mortality from starvation, disease and exposure was appalling. As it was reported that many of these sufferers were American citizens, the President of the United States asked Congress to appropriate $50,000 for their relief. This was done, and the sum was sent to the Consul-General at Havana. He was, however, able to reach only a small proportion of the sufferers, and thus was presently compelled to report that he had been unable to expend more than a fraction of the sum at his disposal. This monstrous policy of waging war against non-combatants, including women and children, did more perhaps than anything else to crystallize public opinion throughout the United States against Weyler and against the Spanish government which he represented and which was responsible for him, and to strengthen the demand that was being made for intervention in behalf of humanity. This demand was made not merely by the "yellow press," which was inspired by sordid and sinister motives, but also by the most thoughtful, disinterested and upright men of America. Fitzhugh Lee, the highly competent and trustworthy consul-general at Havana, officially reported in December, 1897, that in the Province of Havana alone there had been 101,000 of the "reconcentrados," of which more than half had died. About 400,000 innocent and unoffending persons, chiefly women and children, had been transformed into imprisoned paupers, to be sustained by charity or to die of disease and famine. Senator Proctor, of Vermont, one of the foremost members of the United States Senate, made a personal tour of investigation in such parts of the island as were accessible, and reported to his colleagues that "It is not peace, nor is it war; it is desolation and distress, misery and starvation." The people of the United States thus came to the conclusion that the Spanish were unable to subdue the Cubans, and that the Cubans were unable to expel the Spanish, and that the war was therefore nothing but a campaign of destruction and extermination, which would end only when one side was exhausted or extirpated. It was impossible that a civilized and humane nation should regard such a spectacle at its very doors with indifference. We have hitherto quoted the significant remarks of President Cleveland on the subject in his message of December, 1896, clearly foreshadowing intervention. His successor, President McKinley, in his message of just a year later, in December, 1897, expressed in slightly different language the identical convictions and purposes. He said: [Illustration: WILLIAM MCKINLEY] "The near future will demonstrate whether the indispensable conditions of a righteous peace, just alike to the Cubans and to Spain, as well as equitable to all our interests so intimately involved in the welfare of Cuba, is likely to be attained. If not, the exigency of further and other action by the United States will remain to be taken. When that time comes, that action will be determined in the line of indisputable right and duty.... If it shall hereafter appear to be a duty imposed by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization, and to humanity, to intervene with force, it shall be without fault on our part, and only because the necessity for such action will be so clear as to command the support and approval of the civilized world." If McKinley, a less aggressive and more conciliatory man than Cleveland, spoke a little less positively than his predecessor, in that he employed the hypothetical form, the purport of his words was the same. The one a Democratic President, the other a Republican President, long before that incident of the _Maine_ which has incorrectly been regarded by some as the cause of the American war with Spain, openly and in the most explicit manner contemplated the prospect of forcible intervention in Cuba and of consequent war. Meantime Spain herself passed through a political crisis, which made a change in her Cuban administration. Loud protests were made there against the ruthless and inhuman policy of Weyler, but the Prime Minister, Canovas del Castillo, was deaf to them and persisted in retaining Weyler in command. But on August 8 Canovas was assassinated by an Anarchist, and was succeeded by General Azcarraga, Minister of War, who continued his policy unchanged. But on September 29 the whole Cabinet resigned, and on October 4 Sagasta, the Liberal leader, became Prime Minister. He promptly recalled Weyler and appointed General Ramon Blanco to be Captain-General of Cuba in his stead. Weyler departed, breathing wrath and hatred against Cuba and against America, and predicting failure for his successor, even as Campos had predicted it for Weyler himself. Blanco arrived at Havana on November 1, 1897, with the purpose, as he had announced before sailing, of putting sincerely into effect the reforms which Sagasta had outlined, reforms which would, he believed, be acceptable to the Cuban people. He found the condition of affairs in the island to be far worse than it had been reported, or than he had expected. The "reconcentrados" had been dying and were still dying by tens of thousands. The soldiers had not been paid for months and in consequence were disaffected and mutinous, and were looting to obtain food which they had no money to buy. Both the Spanish and the Cuban Autonomists were profoundly dissatisfied; while the Revolutionists, though making no progress, were as implacable as ever. He at once ordered the concentration camps to be abolished, saying that he would not make war upon women and children, and he secured a credit of $100,000 from the Spanish government to assist the Cuban peasantry in the rehabilitation of their ruined farms. All American citizens were released from prison, as were also many Cubans who were under sentence of death. Cuban refugees and exiles were invited to return home, and every facility possible was afforded for the resumption of sugar making and agriculture. He then undertook to put into effect a system of home rule which he fondly hoped would satisfy the Autonomists and would bring the masses of the Cuban people over to the side of that party. Let us review briefly the state of Cuba at this epochal time, the ending of 1897 and the beginning of 1898, the ultimate climax of four centuries of Cuban history. The War of Independence had been in progress less than three years. Five successively unsuccessful Captains-General had striven to conquer a brave people resolved to be free. No fewer than 52,000 Spanish soldiers had lost their lives in battle or from disease, 47,000 had been returned to Spain disabled, 42,000 were in hospitals unfit for duty, and 70,000 regulars and 16,000 irregulars still kept up the fatuous struggle. The infamies of Weyler had destroyed by starvation and disease 250,000 Cubans, the majority of them women and children, reducing the population of the island to 1,100,000 Cubans intent on independence and 150,000 Spaniards opposed to their having it. The Cuban army consisted of 25,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry, fairly well armed, with some artillery. Maximo Gomez was Commander in Chief. Major-General Calixto Garcia commanded in Camaguey and Oriente, with Pedro Perez, Jesus Rabi and Mario G. Menocal as his lieutenants. Major-General Francisco Carrillo commanded in Santa Clara, aided by Jose Rodriguez, Hijino Esquerra, Jose Miguel Gomez and Jose Gonzales. In the western three provinces Major-General Jose Maria Rodriguez commanded, with Pedro Betancourt, Alexandra Rodriguez, Pedro Vias and Juan Lorente as his chief aids. The civil government of the Republic had been changed somewhat, Bartolome Maso being President, Domingo Mendez Capote Vice-President and Secretary of War, Andreas Moreno Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Ernesto Fonts-Sterling Secretary of Finance, and Manuel Silva Secretary of the Interior. This organization, with its provincial and municipal subordinates, was performing the functions of government under great difficulties, yet much more efficiently and to a much wider extent throughout the island, than the Spanish administration. The uncompromising attitude of the Revolutionists, and the hopelessness of any attempt at amicable adjustment of affairs, was at this time strikingly shown in a tragic incident. It was in December, 1897. There was in Havana a young Spanish officer named Joaquin Ruiz, who had formerly served as a civil engineer, and had been intimately associated with Nestor Aranguren, another young engineer who had become a leader of the Revolutionists and had made himself particularly active and annoying to the Spanish in the Province of Havana. The two were close friends, and were both men of charming personality. The Spanish authorities in Havana determined to use this friendship in an attempt to seduce Aranguren into betraying or at least deserting the patriot cause. So Ruiz was directed to open a correspondence with Aranguren, with a view to securing a personal interview with him. Aranguren wrote to Ruiz that he would be glad to meet him personally, but could not do so if he came on any political errand; and he warned him that for him to come to the Cuban camp with any proposal of Cuban surrender or acceptance of autonomy would subject him to the penalty of death, which would infallibly be carried out. Despite this warning, and presumably against his own better judgment, Ruiz obeyed the orders of his superiors, and undertook the errand. He had no safe conduct. He bore no flag of truce. He went through no agreement between the commanding officers of the respective sides. He went in the circumstances and manner of a spy; and his purpose was to persuade, if possible, a Cuban officer to betray his trust and become a traitor to his own cause. When in these circumstances Ruiz reached Aranguren, the latter was so distressed that it is said he burst into tears and, embracing his old friend, exclaimed, "Why have you come? It will mean your certain death! I cannot save you!" And such indeed was the case. Aranguren was devoted to his friend, but still more to Cuba. Ruiz was taken before a court martial. He made no defence. He admitted the character and purpose of his errand. And he received the sentence of death with the fortitude of a brave man. An attempt was made by the Spanish authorities to exploit Ruiz as a martyr to Cuban savagery, but it recoiled upon their own heads. It was shown that they had unworthily employed a brave and devoted soldier in a discreditable errand, and that he had been dealt with according to the stern but just rules of war. It was also demonstrated that Cuban patriots were not thus to be corrupted. By a strange turn of fate, only a few weeks later Nestor Aranguren was killed by the Spanish during one of his daring raids against Havana. It was said that he was betrayed by a Spaniard who had become one of his followers for the purpose of avenging Ruiz. His body fell into the hands of the Spanish, and, despite their former assumed wrath over the execution of Ruiz, they treated it with all respect and interred it in the Columbus Cemetery at Havana, close to the grave of Ruiz. This was not the only incident of the sort. Only a few weeks after the death of Ruiz a civilian named Morales went to the camp of Pedro Ruiz, in the Province of Pinar del Rio, with proposals for compromise on the basis of autonomy. He was promptly taken before a court martial, tried, condemned, and put to death. Whether Blanco himself was responsible for this policy of sending emissaries to the Cuban camp with proposals which he would not venture to make openly in an accredited manner to the Cuban government, did not appear. The presumption, because of his known character, is that he was not, and indeed that he was not aware that they were being made. There is even reason for thinking that after the Morales case was brought to his attention, he prohibited any more such clandestine and illegal enterprises. Tragic as the incidents were, and especially regrettable as was the sacrifice of such a man as Ruiz, it was well to have it made unmistakably clear that the Cubans were not inclined to end the war by surrender or by compromise, but were intent upon fighting it out to the end. In such circumstances Blanco strove for the last time to defeat the Cuban national desire for independence. He probably realized in advance the certainty of failure. He had been Captain-General before, succeeding Campos after the Ten Years' War and during the Little War, and he must have known the temper of the Cuban people and the unwillingness of the great majority of them to accept the delusive scheme of autonomy which Spain was fitfully offering, and in which he himself never had any real faith and which, indeed, he had never favored. But he was a loyal Spanish soldier, of the better type, and he was personally as little odious to the Cubans as any Spanish Captain General could be, for he had never been notably tyrannical or cruel. The decree of autonomy was adopted by the Spanish government on November 25, 1897, largely because of the urgings--to use no stronger term--of the United States, and was promulgated by Blanco in Cuba early in December. The scheme provided for universal suffrage; a bi-cameral Legislature consisting of a Council of eighteen elected members and seventeen appointed by the crown, and a House containing one elected member for each 25,000 inhabitants. To this Legislature were nominally committed most of the functions of government. But it was provided that "The supreme government of the colony shall be exercised by a Governor-General." That was the crux of the whole matter. That made the Captain-General, or Governor-General as he was thereafter to be called, the practical dictator of the island. To this entirely illusive and delusive scheme, the remnant of the Autonomist party gave adherence with a devotion worthy of a better cause. The Reformist faction of the Spanish party also, though not so readily, approved it. The intransigent Constitutionalists would have none of it. Tenuous and futile as were its apparent concessions to the Cubans, they were far too much for these insular Bourbons to be willing to grant. They socially ostracised Blanco, and before the system was to go into effect they called a convention at Havana to protest and to foment against it. The president of the party, the Cuban-born Marquis de Apezteguia, was indeed in favor of giving autonomy a trial. But he could not control the party whose other members were almost unanimously against it. They had defeated and expelled Campos. Now they resolved to do the same with Blanco. At the convention Apezteguia was rebuked and repudiated, though left in office. A telegram of sympathy was sent to Weyler. Speeches were made denouncing the United States, its President and its Congress. A resolution was adopted condemning and opposing autonomy, and another declaring that Constitutionalists would not vote nor take any part in public affairs. [Illustration: ANTONIO GOVIN Antonio Govin, born at Matanzas in 1849 and deceased in Havana in 1914, was a jurist, publicist, orator and patriot of distinction. He was Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Havana, and was the author of a number of volumes on law and on Colonial history. He was one of the founders and strong advocates of the Autonomist party and a member of the Autonomist cabinet.] In the face of these circumstances, Blanco organized his Autonomist Cabinet. The date was January 1, 1898. The place was the historic throne room of the Captain-General's palace. There were present beside the Cabinet the various foreign consuls and the dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church. A small crowd of the people gathered outside, but the public in general paid little attention to the event. Yet the Cabinet which then came into brief existence was a body of men that in other circumstances would have commanded most favorable attention. The nominal head, President of the Cabinet without portfolio, was José Maria Galvez, a lawyer and orator, the author of the Autonomist manifestoes of 1879 and 1895. The real head, the most forceful and influential member, not only, indeed, of the Cabinet but of the whole Autonomist party, was Dr. Rafael Montoro, the "Cuban Castelar" as his friends used to call him. He had long been an advocate of real autonomy, he had been the chief founder of the Autonomist party, he had been a Cuban Deputy to the Spanish Cortes, he had signed the Autonomist manifestoes of 1879 and 1895, and he had approved the insular reforms proposed by Canovas del Castillo. As lawyer, orator, scholar, writer, he had no superior if indeed a peer in Cuba. It was the inscrutable tragedy of a great career that he identified himself with the Autonomist movement. He was Minister of Finance. The Minister of Justice was Antonio Govin, also one of the original Autonomists, a man of great courage and ability, who on the failure of the Autonomist regime left Cuba and settled in the United States. Francisco Zayas, an accomplished educator, was made Minister of Instruction. Laureano Rodriguez, a Peninsular Spaniard, was Minister of Agriculture, Labor and Commerce. Eduardo Dolz, a Reformist, was also a member, who was supposed to be the special representative of the Spanish crown. Two other men, not Ministers but high in Autonomist councils, Senors Amblard and Giberga, were regarded by the Spanish party as traitors who were really in league with the Revolutionists. Blanco swore in these Ministers, addressed them with an exhortation to support autonomy and to suppress the revolution, and gave them as the watchword of their administration "Long live Cuba, forever Spanish!" For a few days the glamor and the illusion lasted. Some inconspicuous revolutionists yielded to Spanish blandishments and surrendered; to whom the honest and chivalrous Blanco granted in good faith the amnesty which he had promised. Some Cuban refugees returned from the United States. The Autonomists--the few who still remained; for the majority had by this time joined the Revolutionists, gone into exile, or been imprisoned--declared their adherence to the new order of affairs and professed satisfaction with it. Apparently they accepted at face value the explanations which were voluminously put forth by the government, to the effect that the system was practically identical with that of Canada, under which that country had long been contented, loyal and prosperous. Technically, no doubt, there was a tolerably close analogy between the two. It was quite true that the powers reserved to the Spanish crown in Cuba through the Governor-General were similar to those reserved to the British crown in Canada through the Viceroy. But the decisive factor in the case, which the Autonomists apparently ignored, was this, that while in Canada it was an unwritten but unbroken law that the crown did not exercise its powers save in accordance with the will of the people, it was morally certain that in Cuba the Spanish crown would exercise its powers to the full, whether the people liked it or not. The Cuban Autonomists in the United States, where many of them deemed it prudent to remain, did not suffer from the illusions of their compatriots in Cuba, and generally expressed dissatisfaction with the scheme, or at least reserved their judgment upon it. The Spanish Reformists in Cuba also approved the scheme. They had deserted and betrayed Campos, and had been ignored by Weyler. Now they struggled to return to public recognition and influence. True, they had never before wanted or approved autonomy. But they saw that now they must do so or remain in retirement. So they joined hands with the Cuban Autonomists, congratulated the Spanish government, and pledged their loyalty to Blanco. This gave the Spanish government ground for its exultant belief that these two parties had united in its support, and would probably control the island in behalf of autonomy. But there were still the Constitutionalists to be reckoned with. They were implacable. They had shown in their convention a few weeks before their hostility to autonomy. They had ostracised Blanco. Now they proceeded to further extremes. They organized riotous disturbances in Havana, and made violent demonstrations against Blanco and, which was in some respects more serious, against the American government and the American citizens in Cuba. So ominous did these disturbances become at the middle of January that the Consul-General, Fitzhugh Lee, was driven to request the sending of a war ship to Havana harbor for the protection of American citizens. In consequence, on January 24 the cruiser _Maine_ was sent to Havana. This action was taken after consultation with the Spanish government, in which that government expressed great pleasure at the prospect of thus having a friendly visit of the American vessel to Cuban waters, and arranged to have its own cruiser the _Vizcaya_ make a return visit to New York. This was not satisfactory, however, to the Spanish Minister at Washington, Senor Dupuy de Lome, who having failed to bring President McKinley to his own point of view of Cuban affairs, showed plainly his animosity against that gentleman, and wrote a letter to a personal friend characterizing the President as a vacillating and time-serving politician. This letter through some clandestine means was placed in the hands of the United States Secretary of State, who at once sent for the Minister and asked him plumply if he had written it. The latter of course acknowledged that he had. Thereupon the Secretary cabled to the American Minister at Madrid to request the Spanish government to recall the offending envoy. This the Spanish government would doubtless have done, but for the fact that De Lome forestalled such action by cabling his resignation an hour before the dispatch of the Secretary of State reached Madrid. The Spanish government then sent Senor Polo y Bernabe to be its Minister at Washington. [Illustration: THE BAY AND HARBOR OF HAVANA The capital of Cuba is seated upon the shore of a spacious and beautiful bay, the entrance to which is between the two bold headlines crowned respectively by the Morro Castle and La Punta fortress, while the domes and spires of the great city have for a background the central mountain range of the island. The harbor of Havana is one of the most secure and commodious in the world, and in commercial importance, measured by tonnage of shipping, ranks among the foremost in the Western Hemisphere.] There next occurred the greatest and most mysterious tragedy of the entire revolutionary period. On the evening of February 15, at twenty minutes before ten o'clock, a violent explosion occurred under or in the forward portion of the _Maine_ as she lay in Havana harbor, sufficient to lift the hull some distance above its normal level. A few seconds later another and more violent explosion followed, which so completely destroyed the forward part of the ship that most of it could never be found. The remainder of the vessel almost immediately sank, in about six fathoms of water. Of the complement of 360, two officers and 264 men were killed, and of the remainder 60 were wounded. Captain Sigsbee, commander of the _Maine_, telegraphed to Washington that all judgment upon the matter should be suspended until after full investigation. Blanco telegraphed to Madrid that the catastrophe was doubtless due to an accident within the ship, and the Madrid government promptly expressed regret and sympathy. In the United States there was a great outburst of grief and rage. Even the most restrained and conservative could not help a degree of suspicion of foul play, though of course not on the part of the Spanish government. A semi-criminal faction, in the "yellow" press, clamored furiously for war, charging Spaniards, even the Spanish government, with direct and malicious responsibility for the tragedy, and even publishing the grossest of falsehoods for the sake of inflaming popular sentiment. Too large a proportion of the nation was swayed by these latter sordid and sinister influences. But at least the government kept its head, and acted with admirable discretion; though for so doing the President incurred the virulent animosity of the chief clamorer for war, an animosity which was persistently maintained until it culminated in the incitement of a criminal Anarchist to assassinate the President. When the explosion occurred, and Blanco learned what it was, it is said that he shed tears and exclaimed, "This is the beginning of the end!" Despite his message to his government, he probably feared that there had been foul play, and he realized what effect, in any case, the incident would have upon Spanish-American relations. As for the Cuban revolutionists, both in Cuba and in the United States, they were almost stunned by two emotions. The hideous atrocity of the thing was overwhelming, and they grieved at the loss of the American sailors as though they themselves had been Americans. At the same time they could not be blind nor insensible to the almost certain sequel. They felt that, as Blanco said, it was the beginning of the end, and that now American intervention was practically assured. The Spanish government proposed a joint investigation into the disaster, but the United States government declined and conducted a thorough investigation of its own, through a board of eminent official experts. The report was that the loss of the ship was not due to any accident or to any negligence on the part of the officers and crew. The first explosion was external to the hull, as if caused by a torpedo or mine, and it caused the second explosion, which was that of the ship's magazines. The Spanish government then conducted an investigation of its own, resulting in a report that both explosions were within the ship and were presumably purely accidental. It may be added that a final examination in after years, when a cofferdam was built about the hulk and it was floated and then taken out to sea and sunk in deep water, fully confirmed the report of the American investigating board. It is to be recalled that Ramon O. Williams, who had only a little while before retired from the office of American Consul-General at Havana, and was particularly well informed and judicious, earnestly warned the United States government against sending a ship to Havana, because the harbor was very elaborately mined, and there was a bitter and truculent feeling among the Spaniards against the United States; wherefore the danger of some untoward occurrence was too great to be incurred without a more pressing necessity than was then apparent. But despite his warning the _Maine_ was sent. She was conducted by a Spanish official pilot to her anchorage at a buoy between Regla and the old custom house. Whether a mine was attached to that buoy or not is unknown, though Mr. Williams was confident that one was. His theory was that some malignant Spanish officer, who had access to the keyboard of the mines, perhaps through connivance with some other fanatic, watched to see the tide swing the ship directly over the mine and then touched the key and caused the explosion. That would account for the enormous hole which was blown in the side of the ship, and which could not have been caused by any little mine or torpedo which might have been floated to the side of the ship, but must have been produced by a very large mine planted deep beneath the hull. The findings of the American board of investigation were reported officially to the Spanish government, and the President in a message to Congress expressed confidence that Spain would act in the matter according to the dictates of justice, honor and friendship. The Spanish government replied that it would certainly do so, and it presently proposed to submit the whole subject to investigation by impartial experts, and to determination by arbitration. But this proposal was not made until April 10, when so much else had occurred to strain relations between the two countries that it could not be entertained by the United States. Meantime the Autonomist government in Cuba, with a devotion that was pathetic to behold, persisted in its efforts to justify its existence. An electoral census was taken, though of course it could not cover more than a small fraction of the island, and on March 27 an "election" of Cuban Deputies to the Cortes was held. In fact there was no popular voting at all. A list was prepared of eligible candidates, twenty of them being Autonomists and Reformists, or supporters of the government, and ten representing the Constitutionalist opposition. The list was submitted to the Governor-General and approved by him, and the candidates were declared to have been duly elected. Jose Maria Galvez, the president of the Autonomist cabinet, reported to the President of the United States that the new government was satisfactorily performing its functions, and entreated him to give no encouragement to the revolutionists which would militate against its success. In April there was another "election" for members of the two houses of the Insular Legislature. On May 4 that Legislature met, chose Fernando del Casco as President of the Assembly, and confirmed the Autonomist cabinet in its place; and it continued patiently and valiantly to hold sessions, make laws, and act as though it were a real government, exercising real authority over the island, all through the period of the American war with Spain and the practical siege of the island by the American navy. When the Spanish forces yielded and a protocol for peace was signed, on August 12, the Legislature held its last meeting, and was declared dissolved by Blanco in October. The Autonomist Cabinet continued to exercise its functions, at least nominally, until the end of Spanish sovereignty in Cuba. CHAPTER VII There could be no greater mistake than that which has been too often and too persistently made, in regarding the destruction of the _Maine_ as the cause of American, intervention in Cuba. The declarations of policy which we have already quoted from the messages of President Cleveland and President McKinley, the former fourteen months and the latter two months before that vessel went to Havana, are ample indications of the purpose of the American government to intervene unless there were a satisfactory amelioration of Cuban affairs. But there was no such amelioration, and therefore war was declared. It unquestionably would have been declared just the same, perhaps at a later and perhaps at an earlier date, if there had been no _Maine_ at all. Beginning before the destruction of the _Maine_, and accelerated after that event, both sides were preparing for war. Nevertheless diplomatic negotiations continued, chiefly conducted by the American Minister, Stewart L. Woodford, at Madrid. In order to facilitate such negotiations, President McKinley withheld the report on the _Maine_ from Congress for a time. Spain asked that the pacification of Cuba, which the United States was urging, be left to the Autonomist Legislature, which was to meet on May 4. The United States, declaring that it did not want Cuba but did want peace in Cuba, proposed an armistice to begin at once and to last until October 1, itself meantime to act as mediator between the Cubans and Spain. Spain replied that an armistice would be granted, to last at the pleasure of the Spanish commander, if the Cubans would ask for it themselves; and that already General Blanco had abandoned the "concentration" system. This was of course regarded as entirely unsatisfactory to the United States, but the peace-loving President McKinley hesitated to report to Congress his dissatisfaction with it. Meantime the Pope semi-officially expressed to both governments his earnest desire for the maintenance of peace; but to no effect. The German government, strongly sympathizing with Spain and seeking to foment ill-feeling between the United States and Great Britain, had its Ambassador at Washington, Dr. Von Holleben, form a cabal of the chief members of the Diplomatic Corps, to call on the President with what amounted to a suggestion of mediation, maliciously persuading the British Ambassador to act as spokesman of the delegation, in order that any resentment or odium should fall upon him and his country; but the President with admirable temper and resolution declined with thanks all foreign meddling in a controversy which concerned only the United States and Spain. The Spanish government proclaimed on April 10 a suspension of hostilities, in deference to the wishes of the Pope and of the great European powers. It was reported officially to the United States government that this armistice was granted without conditions, though General Blanco's proclamation declared that it was to continue only at the pleasure of the Spanish commanders. The Cuban government, through Maximo Gomez, replied that it had not sought the armistice and would not accept it unless Spain agreed to evacuate Cuba. The President of the United States at last, on April 11, laid the whole matter before Congress in a message which for calm moderation in the presence of unspeakable provocation, for convincing logic, for lofty and unselfish benevolence, for keen and just perception of existing conditions, and for valorous resolution to deal with them in the only satisfactory way, must take high rank among the great historic state documents of the world. After reviewing the story of the Cuban revolution and the condition into which it had plunged the island, he said: "The war in Cuba is of such a nature that, short of subjugation or extermination, a military victory for either side seems impracticable." Then, recounting the efforts of the United States to effect a just settlement by negotiation, he added: "The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests which give us the right and duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop. In view of these facts and these considerations I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquillity and the security of its citizens as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes." It is to be observed that the President spoke of the war "between the government of Spain and the Cuban people"--the Cuban people, not the Cuban government. There had as yet been no official recognition of the Cuban government, either as independent or as belligerent, and the President could therefore not properly refer to it. At the same time he spoke of "the Cuban people" and not of merely a part of them, recognizing by inference that fact that the Cuban people were substantially a unit in revolting against Spain and in demanding independence. Spain made it dear that she bitterly resented what she regarded as the unwarrantable meddling of the United States in Cuban affairs, and that she would prefer war to yielding to that meddling. France and Austria, at German suggestion, made one more effort at mediation by the great powers, but abandoned it when Great Britain refused to have anything to do with it and indicated clearly her sympathy with the United States. Finally, on April 20 President McKinley signed the act of Congress which was made in response to his message of April 11. That memorable act, the Magna Charta of the Cuban Republic, declared that the people of Cuba were and of right ought to be free and independent; that it was the duty of the United States to demand, and it accordingly did demand, that Spain should immediately relinquish her authority and government in Cuba and withdraw her military and naval forces from that island and its waters; that the President be authorized to employ the army and navy of the United States as might be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect; and that the United States disclaimed any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over Cuba, except for the pacification thereof, and asserted its determination, when that was accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people. Before signing this act the President cabled its substance to General Woodford at Madrid, in an ultimatum to the Spanish government, giving Spain three days in which to comply with the demands. Before the three days expired the Spanish Minister at Washington asked for his passports and departed, and the Spanish government notified General Woodford that diplomatic relations between the two countries were at an end. He thereupon took his passports and departed. It should be added that on April 21 the Autonomist government of Cuba issued a proclamation to the people of the island, urging them to unite in support of the Spanish government in its resistance to the war of conquest which the United States was about to wage for the seizure and annexation of the island. The success of the United States, it added, would mean that Cuba would be subjugated, dominated and absorbed by an alien race, opposed to Cubans in temperament, traditions, language, religion and customs. Thus the War of Independence entered a new and final phase, with the armed might of the United States assisting that Cuban cause the success of which had already become practically certain. The Cuban army rapidly grew in numbers and improved in morale, and was of course abundantly supplied with arms and ammunition, while the sending of reenforcements and supplies to the Spaniards was interfered with by the United States navy. As soon as the state of war began three United States agents were sent to Cuba, to investigate the condition and strength of the revolutionary army, and to arrange for its reenforcement and for cooperation between it and the American troops. Lieutenant Henry Whitney was thus sent to visit Maximo Gomez in the centre of the island; Lieutenant A. S. Rowan was sent to Oriente, and Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Dorst was sent to Pinar del Rio. Lieutenant Whitney reached the camp of Gomez in Santa Clara Province on April 28, found affairs in a most promising state, and arranged for the prompt forwarding of supplies and of a considerable company of Cubans who had been enlisted in the United States for the revolutionary army. Gomez had an effective force of 3,000 men, and reenforcements of 750 under General Lacret, with supplies of food and munitions, were promised him. But the expeditions, in two steamers, failed to reach him, and after waiting for them on the coast for two weeks, until his supplies of food were exhausted, he was compelled to disband his army. Domingo Mendez Capote, Vice-President of the Cuban Republic, hastened to Washington, to explain to the government the urgent need of sending supplies, and as a result renewed efforts were made to land expeditions, but with little success. The mission of Lieutenant-Colonel Dorst to Pinar del Rio was similarly unsuccessful. A few United States troops were landed under protection of the fire of gunboats, on May 12, but an attempt to deliver a great cargo of rifles and cartridges to the Cubans was defeated by the Spaniards, and the American troops were compelled to return to their ship and depart. In Oriente Lieutenant Rowan was more successful, owing to the fact that few Spanish forces remained in that province. He found the Spanish, indeed, in possession of only the three towns of Santiago, Bayamo and Manzanillo, and the forts along the railroad; and on April 29 they evacuated Manzanillo, which was thereupon occupied by Calixto Garcia. Lieutenant Rowan reported to Washington that Garcia was able to put 8,000 efficient troops in the field, and presently considerable supplies were sent to him with little difficulty. Perhaps the most significant information obtained by these American envoys, and particularly by Lieutenant Whitney in his visit to the Cuban Commander in Chief, was that the Cubans, while exulting in American intervention, did not welcome but rather deprecated American invasion of the island. Maximo Gomez said frankly that he would prefer that not a single American soldier should set foot on the island, unless it were a force of artillery, which was an arm in which the Cubans were sorely lacking. All he asked was that the United States should supply the Cubans with arms and ammunition, and prevent supplies from reaching the Spaniards. If that were done, the Cubans would do the rest, and would expel the Spanish from the island without the loss of a single drop of American blood. The reasons for this reluctance to have American troops invade the island were chiefly two. One was a certain praiseworthy pride in Cuban achievements and a desire to retain for Cubans the credit of winning their own independence. Gomez and his comrades had been fighting to that end for years, and they wanted the satisfaction of completing the job and of gaining for Cuba herself the glory of victory. The other reason was the very natural fear that American invasion and occupation of the island would mean American annexation, or at least perpetual American domination of Cuban affairs. It seemed contrary to human nature, contrary to all the experience and examples of the past, that it should not be so. Of course, there was the promise in the act of intervention, that the United States would leave the government of the island to its own people. But it is probable that only a very small percentage of Cubans ever so much as heard of it, while it would be surprising if more than a small minority of those who did know of it had any real confidence that it would be fulfilled. It will be recalled that a very considerable proportion of the people of the United States regarded that pledge as mere "buncombe" and declared unhesitatingly that it would not be permitted for one moment to stand in the way of the annexation of Cuba. Truly, it would have been miraculous if Cubans had esteemed the integrity of an American promise more highly than Americans themselves. [Illustration: ADMIRAL CERVERA] [Illustration: ADMIRAL SCHLEY] The first weeks of the war were confined chiefly to naval operations. A blockade of Cuban ports was established and pretty well maintained, beginning along the central and western part of the north coast on April 22. A number of small Spanish vessels were captured, and there were some bombardments of shore towns and exchanges of shots with Spanish gunboats. Despite the vigilance of the American scouts and blockading squadrons, Admiral Cervera with several powerful Spanish warships, sailing from Cadiz on April 8 and touching at Martinique on May 11, succeeded in entering the harbor of Santiago on May 19. There he was soon besieged by a more powerful American fleet under the command of Commodore, afterward Admiral, Schley; who on June 1 was joined by Admiral Sampson, who thereafter took command. Lieutenant Victor Blue was sent ashore on June 11, to make a long detour to the hills back of the city, from which he was able to see and identify the Spanish ships. Meantime Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson with seven picked men in the early morning of June 3 took the big coal hulk _Merrimac_ in to the narrowest part of the harbor entrance and there sunk it with a torpedo, hoping thus to block the passage and prevent Cervera's ships from coming out. The exploit was not entirely successful, the vessel not being sunk at quite the right point, though it did make exit much more difficult. Hobson and his comrades were taken prisoners by the Spaniards, but were treated with distinguished courtesy and consideration in recognition of their daring exploit. Thereafter the blockading fleet kept close watch day and night upon the harbor mouth, brilliantly illuminating it with searchlights all night, to prevent the escape of the Spanish fleet. Meanwhile General Nelson A. Miles, commander of the United States army, was preparing for an invasion of the island. The Fifth Army Corps was organized at Tampa, Florida, under the command of Major-General William R. Shafter, and on June 14 was embarked on a fleet of 37 transports. This fleet sailed around Cape Maysi to the southern coast of Cuba, and on June 21 was off Santiago. General Shafter and Admiral Sampson went ashore to confer with General Calixto Garcia at his camp at Acerradero, and found the situation by no means as encouraging as they had hoped. Garcia had only about 3,500 Cubans in his force, and they were not all well armed, and there were 1,000 more at Guantanamo. General Shafter's army numbered fewer than 16,000 men. Against these the Spaniards under General Linares numbered about 40,000. Averse as the Cubans had been to the landing of American troops, General Garcia accepted the inevitable, and promptly offered to place all his men under General Shafter's command. General Shafter accepted the offer, though he reminded General Garcia that he could exercise no control over the troops beyond what he, Garcia, authorized. He of course saw to it that they were abundantly supplied with arms and ammunition, Garcia's troops were then employed very effectively in protecting the landing of the American troops, at Daiquiri; 6,000 of them being put ashore on June 22 and the remainder in the next two days. General Henry W. Lawton promptly led the advance to Siboney, from which the Spaniards were driven, being pursued after their evacuation by the Cubans under General Castillo. [Illustration: OLD FORT AT EL CANEY, WRECKED BY FIGHTING OF JULY, 1898] The next attack was made upon the Spaniards at Las Guasimas, an action in which material aid was rendered by Cubans, and which resulted in the Spaniards being driven back a mile or more. By June 25 the Americans were on the Ridge of Sevilla, looking down upon Santiago, only six miles away, and two days later their outposts were within three miles of the city. There followed on July 1 a desperate contest at the fortified village of El Caney, resulting in the capture of that place by storm, with great slaughter of the Spanish, who held their ground with stubborn valor. Simultaneously an attack was made by another part of the American forces upon Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill, where heavy losses were sustained on both sides. The climax of this engagement was a charge of Wheeler's division, the Tenth Cavalry, against the Spanish entrenched lines. The van of this division was occupied by the "Rough Riders" regiment, an organization recruited chiefly among western plainsmen and "cowboys" by Theodore Roosevelt, who had resigned the Assistant Secretaryship of the Navy thus to engage in active service. The charge was led by Colonel Roosevelt in person, though he was in fact second in command of the regiment, the chief command of which he had declined in favor of his friend Leonard Wood, who was destined to play one of the greatest parts in the establishment of Cuban independence. In this hot engagement the Americans were also completely victorious. [Illustration: THEODORE ROOSEVELT] General Pando was now rushing 8,000 Spanish troops from the west to reinforce General Linares at Santiago, and Calixto Garcia with his Cuban forces undertook to hold him in check, though he was greatly outnumbered by the Spanish. On July 2 fighting was resumed, the Spanish assuming the aggressive, and before the day was done the Americans, greatly outnumbered and exhausted by the incessant fighting and the heat of the weather, began seriously considering withdrawal from positions which they feared they would not be able to hold. General Shafter urged Admiral Sampson to aid him by making an attack upon the city with his fleet, but the latter demurred on account of the danger of entering a mined harbor. It was arranged that the two commanders should meet again for another council of war on the morning of July 3, and Admiral Sampson actually started up the coast toward Siboney for that purpose, when a dramatic event in a twinkling transformed the whole situation. [Illustration: MONUMENTS ON SAN JUAN HILL, NEAR SANTIAGO] This was the unexpected emergence of the Spanish fleet from the Santiago harbor, on the morning of July 3, in a desperate attempt to break through the American blockade and fight their way around to Havana. In Admiral Sampson's temporary absence the command devolved upon Admiral Schley, and orders instantly were given to close in and engage the Spanish ships. The latter were four in number, the _Maria Teresa_, the _Vizcaya_, the _Colon_ and the _Oquendo_, with two torpedo boats, _Pluton_ and _Terror_. Admiral Sampson quickly retraced his course but did not arrive until the close of the fight, which raged for hours, along the coast for fifty miles westward from Santiago. The result was the destruction of every one of the Spanish ships and the killing of one-third of their crews. Admiral Cervera with 1,200 men surrendered. On the American side only one man was killed and three were wounded, and not one of the ships was seriously damaged. [Illustration: ADMIRAL SAMPSON] The Spaniards now knew that Santiago was doomed, though they continued to hold out with stubborn valor. On the night of July 4 they sank a vessel in the harbor mouth, in emulation of Hobson's deed, to shut the American fleet out, but failed to get it in the right place. Preparations were made for a joint attack by army and fleet on July 9, a truce being arranged until that date, and thereafter more or less continuous fighting prevailed, without important results, for three days. On July 12 General Toral, who had taken the Spanish command in place of General Linares, who was wounded at San Juan Hill, entered into negotiations with General Miles and General Wheeler, and on July 17 terms of surrender were adopted. All the Spanish troops in Oriente save 10,000 at Holguin, were surrendered, about 22,000 in all. Some minor naval operations followed at Manzanillo and Nipe, but there was no more serious fighting. For all practical purposes the war was ended. [Illustration: PEACE TREE NEAR SANTIAGO, UNDER WHICH SPANISH COMMANDER OF SANTIAGO CAPITULATED JULY 16, 1898] The next step was taken in behalf of Spain by the French Ambassador at Washington, Spain having committed to the French government the care of her diplomatic interests in America. M. Cambon on July 26 inquired of President McKinley if he would consider negotiations for peace. The President replied on July 30 that he was willing to discuss peace on the basis of certain conditions, the first of which was that Spain should relinquish all claim of sovereignty over or title to the island of Cuba, and should immediately evacuate that island. That was significant. It indicated that the United States purposed to fulfil its pledge concerning the independence of Cuba. The next condition was that Spain should cede to the United States the island of Porto Rico. But there was no hint at her cession of Cuba to the United States. She was merely to renounce her own sovereignty. These conditions were accepted by the Spanish government through M. Cambon on August 12; the naval and military commanders on both sides were ordered to cease hostilities, the blockade of Cuba was discontinued; and the War of Independence was at a triumphant end. CHAPTER VIII Following the protocol and the cessation of hostilities, two major tasks were to be performed. One was to remove the Spanish forces from the island and to establish permanent terms of peace, and the other was to organize and establish a permanent Cuban government. The former of these was promptly undertaken, by the governments of the United States and Spain. A joint commission arranged the details of evacuation, which was a formidable undertaking because of the number of persons to be transported and the paucity of shipping facilities at the command of the Peninsular government. The city of Havana was not evacuated until January 1, 1899, and the last Spanish troops were not removed from the island until the middle of February following. There were about 130,000 officers and soldiers transported, together with some 15,000 military and civilian employes and their families. Simultaneously the task of treaty-making proceeded. President McKinley on August 26 appointed five Commissioners to conduct the negotiations. They were William R. Day, Secretary of State, Chairman; Cushman K. Davis, Senator; William P. Frye, Senator; Whitelaw Reid, Ambassador; and Edward D. White, Justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. White found himself unable to serve, and on September 9 George Gray, Senator, was appointed in his place. The Spanish government named as Commissioners five of Spain's foremost statesmen: Eugenio Montero Rios, Buenaventura d'Abarzuza, Jose de Garnica, Wenceslao Ramirez de Villa Urrutia, and Rafael Cerero. The Commissioners began their deliberations in Paris on October 1. The first question discussed was the disposition of Cuba, and over it strong disagreement arose on two major points. The Spanish Commissioners declined to recognize the existence of any Cuban government, and argued that as there was no such government, and as Spain in relinquishing sovereignty over the island could not let that sovereignty lapse but must transfer it to some other responsible and competent power, the United States should accept cession of Cuba to it; which Spain was willing to grant. The American Commissioners replied that the United States was pledged not to annex the island, and as a matter of fact did not intend to do so and therefore could not and would not accept cession of the island to itself. Spain in the protocol had agreed to renounce her sovereignty without any stipulations further, and by that arrangement she must abide. The United States would, however, make itself responsible for the due observance of international law in Cuba so long as its occupation of the island lasted. The Spaniards were reluctant to yield, as a matter of pride and sentiment preferring to give Cuba to the United States rather than to surrender it to the insurgent Cubans. But the American Commissioners were resolute, and on October 27 the first article of the treaty was adopted; to wit: "Spain relinquishes all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba. "And as the island is, on its evacuation by Spain, to be occupied by the United States, the United States will, so long as such occupation shall last, assume and discharge the obligations that may under international law result from the fact of its occupation for the protection of life and property." This was clear and unmistakable notice to the world that the American government intended to fulfil its pledge, not to annex Cuba but to render that island to the control and government of its own people. True, not yet were all convinced that this would be done. The Spaniards were courteously skeptical. A considerable faction in the United States, half "Jingo" and half sordid, insisted that the island must be annexed. The majority of Cubans, inclined to judge all governments by their bitter experiences with that of Spain, were frankly incredulous, not understanding how any government could be thus altruistic and self-denying. The second point of dispute was that of the Cuban debt. The Spanish government for years had been charging against Cuba the cost of maintaining an army for its subjugation and the costs of suppressing the various insurrections that had occurred, and the Commissioners proposed that all that enormous debt should be saddled upon the island and made a first charge upon its customs revenues. To this the American Commissioners demurred. Cuba had for centuries been "the milch cow of Spain," and had given to Spain far more than she had ever received in return. It would be monstrous injustice to burden a people with the cost of subjugating them and keeping them in slavery. In the end the Spanish Commissioners yielded, and no mention was made in the treaty of any debt resting upon Cuba. It was further agreed that both parties should release and repatriate all prisoners of war, and that the United States would undertake to obtain such release of all Spanish prisoners held by the Cubans. Each party relinquished all claims for indemnity of any and every kind which had arisen since the beginning of the Cuban war. Spain relinquished in Cuba all immovable property belonging to the public domain and to the crown of Spain; such relinquishment not impairing lawful property rights of municipalities, corporations or individuals. Spanish subjects were to be free to remain in Cuba or to remove therefrom, in either event retaining full property rights; and in the former case being free to become Cuban citizens or to retain their allegiance to Spain; and they were to be secured in the free exercise of their religion. There were various other stipulations, such as are customary in treaties, intended to assure Spain and Spaniards of equitable treatment and relationships in Cuba. It was added that the obligations of the United States in Cuba were to be limited to the period of its occupation of that island; but upon the termination of that occupation the United States promised to advise the succeeding Cuban government to assume the same obligations. The treaty was finally agreed to and signed on December 10, 1898, and it was ratified by the United States Senate on February 6, 1899. General Ramon Blanco meanwhile, on November 26, 1898, resigned the Governor-Generalship of Cuba and returned to Spain. To General Jiminez Castellanos was left the unwelcome duty of holding nominal sway for a few weeks and then surrendering the sovereignty of four centuries to an alien power. Already American troops were in actual occupation and control of nearly all the island. In the latter part of December, 1898, the Seventh Army Corps, commanded by Major-General Fitzhugh Lee, was brought into the outskirts of Havana in readiness for the final function which was to be performed on the first day of the new year. The end came. It was on January 1, 1899. Four hundred and six years, two months and three days before, the first Spaniard had landed upon Cuban soil and had planted there the quartered flag of Leon and Castile in token of sovereignty. Now, after all that lapse of time, largely, it must be confessed, ill spent and ill-improved, the Spanish flag was finally to be lowered and withdrawn, in token of the passing away of Spanish sovereignty forever from the soil of Cuba. [Illustration: PART OF OLD CITY WALL OF HAVANA, STILL STANDING] The ceremonies were brief and simple; far more brief and simple, we may well believe, than were those with which the imaginative and exuberant Admiral proclaimed possession of the island centuries before. The official representatives of Spain and the United States met at noon in the Hall of State in the Governor's Palace, the scene of so many proud and imperious events in Spanish colonial history. On the one side the chief was General Jiminez Castellanos, the last successor of Velasquez. On the other, Major-General John R. Brooke. The one was the last of a long, long line of Spanish Governors-General; the other was the first of a brief succession of American Military Governors who were soon to give way to an unending line of native Cuban Republican Presidents and Congresses. With a sad heart, with tear-suffused eyes, and with a hand that trembled to hold a pen far more than ever it had to wield a sword, General Jiminez Castellanos signed the document which abdicated and relinquished Spanish sovereignty in that Pearl of the Antilles which was nevermore to be known as the "Ever Faithful Isle." The crimson and gold barred banner of Spain descended. The Stars and Stripes rose in its place. The deed was done. The final settlement was made with Spain. For three hundred and eighty-seven years Spain had been the sovereign of Cuba, exercising her power through one hundred and thirty-six administrations, of which the first was one of the longest and the last was one of the shortest. It will be worth our while to recall the roll, which bears some of the noblest and some of the vilest names in Spanish history: _No._ _Date_ 1 1512 Diego Velasquez, Lieutenant-Governor 2 1524 Manuel de Rojas, Lieutenant-Governor, provisional 3 1525 Juan de Altamirano, Lieutenant-Governor 4 1526 Gonzalo de Guzman, Lieutenant-General 5 1532 Manuel de Rojas, Lieutenant-Governor, provisional 6 1535 Gonzalo de Guzman, Lieutenant-Governor 7 1538 Hernando de Soto, Governor-General 8 1544 Juan de Avila, Governor-General 9 1546 Antonio Chavez, Governor-General 10 1550 Gonzalo Perez de Angulo, Governor-General 11 1556 Diego de Mazariegos, Governor-General 12 1565 Francisco Garcia Osorio, Governor-General 13 1568 Pedro Menendez de Avilas, Governor-General 14 1573 Gabriel Montalvo, Governor-General 15 1577 Francisco Carreno, Governor-General 16 1579 Gaspar de Torres, Governor-General, provisional 17 1581 Gabriel de Lujan, Captain-General 18 1589 Juan de Tejada, Captain-General 19 1594 Juan Maldonado Balnuevo, Captain-General 20 1602 Pedro Valdes Balnuevo, Captain-General 21 1608 Gaspar Ruiz de Pereda, Captain-General 22 1616 Sancho de Alguizaz, Captain-General 23 1620 Geronimo de Quero, Captain-General, provisional 24 1620 Diego Vallejo, Captain-General 25 Aug. 14, 1620 Francisco de Venegas, Captain-General 26 Juan Esquivil, Captain-General, provisional 27 Juan Riva Martin, Captain-General, provisional 28 1624 Garcia Giron de Loaysa, Captain-General, provisional 29 1624 Cristobal de Aranda, Captain-General, provisional 30 1625 Lorenzo de Cabrera, Captain-General 31 1630 Juan Bitrian de Viamontes, Captain-General 32 1634 Francisco Riano de Gamboa, Captain-General 33 1639 Alvaro de Luna, Captain-General 34 1647 Diego de Villalba, Captain-General 35 1653 Francisco Xeldes, Captain-General 36 1655 Juan Montano, Captain-General 37 1658 Juan de Salamanca, Captain-General 38 1663 Rodrigo de Flores, Captain-General 39 1664 Francisco Dairle, Captain-General 40 1670 Francisco de Ledesma, Captain-General 41 1680 Jose Fernandez de Cordoba, Captain-General 42 1685 Andres Munibe, Captain-General, provisional 43 Manuel Murguia, Captain-General, provisional 44 1687 Diego de Viana, Captain-General 45 1689 Severino de Manraneda, Captain-General 46 1695 Diego de Cordoba, Captain-General 47 1702 Pedro Benites de Lugo, Captain-General 48 1705 Nicolas Chirino, Captain-General, provisional 49 .... Luis Chacon, Captain-General, provisional 50 1706 Pedro Alvares Villarin, Captain-General 51 1708 Laureano de Torres, Captain-General 52 1711 Luis Chacon, Captain-General 53 1713 Laureano de Torres, Captain-General 54 1716 Vicente Baja, Captain-General 55 1717 Gomez de Alvarez, Captain-General 56 1717 Gregorio Guazo, Captain-General 57 1724 Dionisio Martinez, Captain-General 58 1734 Juan F. Guemes, Captain-General 59 1745 Juan A. Tineo, Captain-General 60 1745 Diego Pinalosa, Captain-General 61 1747 Francisco Cagigal, Captain-General 62 1760 Pedro Alonso, Captain-General 63 1761 Juan de Prado Portocarrero, Captain-General 64 July 1, 1762 Ambrosio Villapando, Count of Riela, Captain-General 65 June, 1765 Diego Manrique, Captain-General 66 July, 1765 Pasual Jimenez de Cisners, Captain-General, provisional 67 March 19, 1766 Antonio M. Bucarely, Captain-General 68 1771 Marques de la Torre, Captain-General 69 June, 1777 Diego J. Navarro, Captain-General 70 May, 1781 Juan M. Cagigal, Captain-General 71 1782 Luis de Unzaga, Captain-General, provisional 72 1785 Bernardo Troncoso, Captain-General, provisional 73 .... Jose Espeleta, Captain-General, provisional 74 .... Domingo Cabello, Captain-General, provisional 75 Dec. 28, 1785 Jose Espeleta, Captain-General 76 Apr. 20, 1789 Domingo Cabello, Captain-General, provisional 77 July 8, 1790 Luis de las Casas, Captain-General 78 Dec. 6, 1796 Juan Bassecourt, Captain-General 79 May 13, 1799 Salvador de Muro, Captain-General 80 Apr. 14, 1812 Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, Captain-General 81 July 2, 1816 Jose Cienfuegos, Captain-General 82 Apr. 20, 1819 Juan M. Cagigal, Captain-General 83 Mar. 3, 1821 Nicolas de Mahy, Captain-General 84 July 2, 1823 Sebastian Kindelan, Captain-General, provisional 85 May 2, 1823 Dionisio Vives. Given absolute authority by royal decree, 1821 86 May 2, 1832 Mariano Rocafort. Given absolute authority by royal decree, 1825 87 June 1, 1834 Miguel Tacon. Given absolute authority by royal decree of 1825 88 From June 1, 1834, Lt.-Gen. Miguel Tacon y to Apr. 16, 1838 Rosique, Captain-General 89 From Apr. 16, 1838, Lieut. Gen. Joaquin Espeleta to Feb., 1840 y Enrille 90 Feb., 1840, to May Lieut. Gen. Pedro Tellez 10, 1841 de Gironm, Prince of Anglona 91 From May 10, 1841, Lieut. Gen. Geronimo Valdes to Sept. 15, 1843 y Sierra 92 From Sept. 15, to Lieut. Gen. of the Royal Oct. 26, 1843 Navy, Francis Xavier de Ulloa, provisional 93 From Oct. 26, 1843, Lieut. Gen. Leopoldo to Mar. 20, 1848 O'Donnell y Joris, Count of Lucena. 94 From Mar. 20, 1848, Lieut. Gen. Federico Roncali, to Nov. 13, 1850 Count of Alcoy 95 From Nov. 13, 1850, Lieut. Gen. Jose Gutierrez to Apr. 22, 1852 de la Concha 96 From Apr. 22, 1852, Lieut. Gen. Valentin Canedo to Dec. 3, 1853 Miranda 97 From Dec. 3, 1853, Lieut. Gen. Juan de la to Sept. 21, 1854 Pezuela, Marquis of de la Pezuela 98 From Sept. 14, 1854, Lieut. Gen. Jose Gutierrez to Nov. 24, 1859 de la Concha, Marquis of Habana, second time 99 From Nov. 14, 1859, Lieut. Gen. Francisco Serrano, to Dec. 10, 1862 Duke de la Torre 100 From Dec. 10, 1862, Lieut. Gen. Domingo Dulce to May 30, 1866 y Garay 101 From May 20, 1866, Lieut. Gen. Francisco Lersundi to Nov. 3, 1866 102 From Nov. 3, 1866, Lieut. Gen. Joaquin del to Sept. 24, 1867 Manzano y Manzano on which date he died 103 From Sept. 24, 1867, Lieut. Gen. Blas Villate, to Dec. 12, 1867 Count of Valmaseda 104 From Dec. 13, 1867, Lieut. Gen. Francisco Lersundi to Jan. 4, 1869 105 From Jan. 4, 1869, Lieut. Gen. Domingo Dulce to June 2, 1869 y Garay, second time 106 From June 2, 1869, Lieut. Gen. Felipe Ginoves to June 28, 1869 del Espinar, provisional 107 From June 28, 1869, Lieut. Gen. Antonio Fernandez to Dec. 15, 1870 y Caballero de Rodas 108 From Dec. 15, 1870, Lieut. Gen. Blas Villate, to July 11, 1872 Count of Valmaseda 109 From July 11, 1872, Lieut. Gen. Francisco Ceballos to Apr. 18, 1873 y Vargas 110 From Apr. 18, 1873, Lieut. Gen. Candido Pieltain to Nov. 4, 1873 y Jove-Huelgo 111 From Nov. 4, 1873, Lieut. Gen. Joaquin Jovellar to Apr. 7, 1874 y Soler 112 From Apr. 7, 1874, Lieut. Gen. José Gutierrez to May 8, 1875 de la Concha, Marquis of Habana 113 From May 8, 1875, Lieut. Gen. Buenaventura to June 8, 1875 Carbo, provisional 114 From June 8, 1875, Lieut. Gen. Blas Villate, to Jan. 18, 1876 Count of Valmaseda, third time 115 From Jan. 18, 1876, Lieut. Gen. Joaquin Jovellar to June 18, 1878 y Soler. He was under Martinez Campos, who was the general in chief 116 From Oct. 8, 1876, Lieut. Gen. Arsenio Martinez to Feb. 5, 1879 Campos 117 From Feb. 5, 1879, Lieut. Gen. Cayetano Figueroa to Apr. 17, 1879 y Garaondo, provisional 118 From Apr. 17, 1879, Lieut. Gen. Ramon Blanco to Nov. 28, 1881 y Erenas 119 From Nov. 28, 1881, Lieut. Gen. Luis Prendergast to Aug. 5, 1883 y Gordon, Marquis of Victoria de las Tunas 120 From. Aug. 5, 1883, Lieut. Gen. of Division to Sept. 28, 1883 Tomas de Reyan y Reyna, provisional 121 From Sept. 28, 1883, Lieut. Gen. Ignacio Maria to Nov. 8, 1884 del Castillo 122 From Nov. 8, 1884, Lieut. Gen. Ramon Fajardo to Mar. 25, 1886 e Izquierdo 123 From Mar. 25, 1886, Lieut. Gen. Emilio Calleja to July 15, 1887 e Isasi 124 From July 15, 1887, Lieut. Gen. Saba Marin y to Mar. 13, 1889 Gonzalez 125 From Mar. 13, 1889, Lieut. Gen. Manuel Salamanca died Feb. 6, 1890 y Begrete 126 From Mar. 13, 1889, General of Division Jose to Apr. 4, 1890 Sanchez Gomez, provisional 127 From Apr. 4, 1890, Lieut. Gen. Jose Chinchilla to Aug. 20, 1890 y Diez de Onate 128 From Aug. 20, 1890, Lieut. Gen. Camilo Polavieja to June 20, 1892 y del Castillo 129 From June 20, 1892; Lieut. Gen. Alejandro Rodriguez died July 15, 1893 Arias 130 From July 15, 1893, General of Division Jose to Sept. 5, 1893 Arderius y Garcia, provisional 131 From Sept. 5, 1893, Lieut. Gen. Emilio Calleja to Apr. 16, 1895 e Isasi 132 From Apr. 16, 1895, Captain Gen. Arsenio Martinez to Jan. 20, 1896 Campos 133 From Jan. 20, 1896, Lieut. Gen. Savas Marin y to Feb. 11, 1896 Gonzalez 134 From Feb. 11, 1896, Lieut. Gen. Valeriano Weyler to Oct. 31, 1897 y Nicolau 135 From Oct. 31, 1897, Capt. Gen. Ramon Blanco to Nov. 30, 1898 y Erenas 136 From Nov. 30, 1898, Lieut. Gen. Adolfo Jimines to Jan. 1, 1899, Castellanos at 12 noon. There must be added an unwelcome note. The Spaniards--not their high officials--left most ungraciously. It is not to be wondered at that they were sad, that they were sullen, that they were resentful; that they were fearful lest the Cubans should rise against them at the last moment and inflict upon them vengeance for the treasured wrongs of many years. But there was of course no such uprising. The Cubans wished to make the day an occasion of great public celebration, but the authorities--Cuban and American as well as Spanish--would not permit it. It was not courteous to exult over a beaten foe. Besides, any such celebration would have caused great danger of trouble. What was inexcusable, however, was the condition in which the Spanish left all public buildings. They looted and gutted them of everything that could be removed. They destroyed the plumbing and lighting fixtures. They broke or choked up the drains. They left every place in an indescribably filthy condition. There was nothing in all their record in Cuba more unbecoming than their manner of leaving it. Such was the last detail of the settlement with Spain. The settlement with Cuba came next. Indeed, it was concurrently undertaken. And it was by far the more formidable task of the two. It was necessary to arrange for the transfer of the temporary trust of the United States to a permanent Cuban authority, and to do so in circumstances and conditions which would afford the largest possible degree of assurance of success. It is said that when the American flag was raised at Havana in token of temporary sovereignty, on January 1, 1899, an American Senator among the spectators exclaimed, "That flag will never come down!" There were also, doubtless, those among the Cuban spectators who thought and said that it should never have been raised, but that sovereignty should have been transferred directly from Spain to Cuba. Both were wrong; as both in time came to realize. It was necessary for the sake of good faith and justice that the American flag should in time come down and give place to the flag of Cuba. It was equally necessary for the sake of the welfare of Cuba and of its future prosperity and tranquillity that there should be a period of American stewardship preparatory to full independence. There was, as we have already indicated, some friction between Cubans and Americans at the time of intervention in the Spring of 1898. The Cubans thought that the American army should not enter Cuba at all, save with an artillery force to serve as an adjunct to the Cuban army. On the other hand, Americans were too much inclined to disregard the Cuban army and Provisional Government, to forget what the Cubans had already achieved, and to act as though the war were solely between the United States and Spain. When the actual landing of Shafter's army was made, however, the Cubans accepted the fact loyally and gracefully, and gave the fullest possible measure of helpful cooperation. The Provisional Government of the Cuban Republic, as soon as hostilities were ended and negotiations for peace had begun, decided to summon another National Assembly to determine what should be done during the interval which should elapse before the United States placed the destinies of Cuba in the hands of Cubans. This decision was made at a meeting at Santa Cruz on September 1, at which were present the President, Bartolome Maso; the Vice-President, Mendez Capote; and the three Secretaries, Aleman, Fonts-Sterling and Moreno de la Torre. It was felt, and not without reason, that the Insular government and its forces had not received the recognition which was their due. Calixto Garcia and Francisco Estrada had given valuable participation in the siege and capture of Santiago, yet they were not permitted by General Shafter to participate in the ceremony of the surrender of the Spanish forces, or even to be present on that exultant occasion. When the Americans thus took possession of Santiago and Oriente, the Cuban government, military and civil, was ignored, and General Leonard Wood was made Military Governor just as though there was no Cuban government in existence. [Illustration: OLD AND NEW IN HAVANA The architecture of Havana ranges from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, and specimens of all five centuries may in some places be found grouped within a single scene; with electric lights and telephones in buildings which were standing when Francis Drake threatened the city with conquest.] During the months of the American blockade of the island, moreover, the Cubans had suffered perhaps even more than the Spanish from lack of supplies. It was felt that while it was well thus to deprive the Spanish army of supplies, the Cuban people ought not to have been left to suffer. After the armistice affairs remained in a distressing condition. The Cuban army was without food and without pay with which to purchase food; and the Provisional Government was powerless to help it or to help the starving civilian population. It had no funds, and of course could not now raise any either by taxation or by loans. Late in November some relief was afforded by the sending of food from the United States, but on the whole the conditions were unsatisfactory, and did not conduce to cordial confidence between the Cubans and the Americans. The National Assembly which had been called on September 1 met at Santa Cruz on November 7, and resolved upon the disbandment of the Provisional Government, and the appointment of a special Commission to look after Cuban interests during the period of American occupation. This Commission consisted of Domingo Mendez Capote, President; Ferdinand Freyre de Andrade, Vice-President; and Manuel M. Coronado and Dr. Porfirio Caliente, Secretaries. The army organization was to be retained, for the present, with General Maximo Gomez as Commander-in-Chief. The real crux of the situation, at the moment, was the demobilization of the Cuban army. This could not be done--Gomez would not consider it--until the men could be paid, and there was no money with which to pay them. Among the 36,000 men on the rosters, there were said to be 20,000 who had served two years or more, and who were entitled to pay. Gomez issued an appeal to the army and to the Cuban people generally to accept loyally the temporary American occupation and to cooperate with the Americans in the reestablishment of order and the development of governmental institutions, in order that at the earliest possible moment Cuba might be able to assume the whole task of self government. At the same time he urgently requested the United States government to advance money with which to pay off the soldiers, in order that the army might be disbanded and the men might return to their homes and their work, and thus restore the industrial prosperity of the island. For this purpose he suggested the sum of $60,000,000, not only for actual pay but also for compensation for the losses which the officers and men had suffered during the war. He was inclined to keep his men under arms until the United States should relinquish control of Cuba to the Cubans, or should fix a date for so doing; and toward the end of January, 1899, he mustered all his forces in the Province of Havana, and made his staff headquarters in the former palace of the Captain-General. Meantime the Commission of the Cuban National Assembly recommended that the men be granted furloughs, to enable them to go to work in response to the great demand for labor that was arising throughout the island. This course was pursued to a considerable extent. Ultimately the United States government granted the sum of $3,000,000 for the purpose of paying off the soldiers. This was not a loan, to be repaid, but was an outright gift, being the remainder of the sum of $50,000,000 which had been voted to the President at the beginning of the war to use at his discretion. It was given on the conditions that every recipient should prove his service in the army and should surrender a rifle. To this latter requirement, which meant the disarming of the Cubans, General Gomez strongly objected, but in the end he acquiesced and agreed to carry out the plan as soon as the money was at hand. Thereupon some other Cuban officers disputed his right to commit the Cuban army to any such arrangement. They were dissatisfied with the small amount, and they insisted that only the Cuban Assembly had power to act upon the American offer. They added that they would refuse to obey the orders of General Gomez, and would look to the Assembly for justice. It should be added that these officers were not those who had been most active and efficient in the field. General Gomez ignored this mutinous demonstration, and proceeded with arrangements to receive and distribute the $3,000,000; whereupon the Assembly came together and on March 12 impeached General Gomez and removed him from office as Commander-in-Chief, the charge being that he had failed in his military duties and had disobeyed the orders of the Assembly. This scandalous performance was ignored by Gomez, and was condemned by the great majority of the Cuban people. It was also ignored by the American authorities. General Brooke continued his negotiations with Gomez, and finally reached an agreement. The terms were as follows: Every Cuban soldier who had been in service since before July 17, 1898, and who was not in receipt of salary from any public office, upon delivery of his arms and equipments was to receive $75 in United States gold. The arms and equipments were to be surrendered to municipal authorities, and to be placed and kept in armories, under the charge of armorers appointed by General Gomez, as memorials of the War of Independence. The Cuban Commissioners protested against and resisted this settlement, but finally yielded when they saw all the soldiers accepting it. They continued for some time, however, to manifest disaffection and distrust toward the United States, and to propagate doubt whether that country would ever fulfill its promise to make Cuba independent. Some agitators went so far as to try to provoke insurrections against the American administration. But all such things met with no encouragement from General Gomez or from any of the real leaders of the Cuban people, who expressed the fullest confidence in the good faith of the United States and did their utmost to lead the nation to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity which had been placed before it. Day by day the magnitude of that opportunity became more apparent, as did the practical beneficence of the American administration. CHAPTER IX American occupation of Cuba, formal and complete, did not begin, as we have seen, until January 1, 1899, when the ceremonial transfer of sovereignty was effected at Havana. But nearly six months before that epochal date actual occupation and administration was begun on an extensive scale and in a most auspicious manner. With singular appropriateness this was effected at that city which nearly four centuries before had been the first capital and metropolis of the island, and in that Province which had been the scene of the first Spanish settlements in Cuba and which had been more perhaps than all the rest of the island the scene and the base of operations of the revolution for independence. The surrender of Santiago by General Toral on July 17, 1898, made the American army master of that city and practically of the Province of Oriente. Having the power and authority of government, the Americans had necessarily to assume the full responsibility of it; and this was promptly done. Even in advance of the date named, on July 13, the day after negotiations for the capitulation began, in anticipation of what was to occur President McKinley decreed that, pending further orders, existing Spanish laws should be maintained in the occupied territory. As soon as the protocol was signed on August 12, General Henry W. Lawton was appointed Military Governor of the Province of Oriente and commander in chief of the American forces. This was an honor due to that gallant officer, because of his leadership in the act of invasion and conquest. But Lawton was a soldier rather than an administrator, and his services were indispensable in the field. Accordingly, after brief but most honorable occupancy of the governorship, he was succeeded on September 24 by a man who combined the qualities of soldier and administrator in a uniquely successful and triumphant degree, and whose advent in Cuba was auspicious of inestimable advantage to that country and to its relations with the United States and with the world. Indeed, though the fact was unrecognized at the time, it is not too much to say that Leonard Wood bore in his hand and mind and heart the destinies of Cuba. There might, it is true, have been found some other man who as a soldier would have pacified the island and would have held it firmly in the grasp of peace. There might have been found a sanitarian and physician who would free the island of pestilence. There were financiers who might have placed its fiscal interests upon a sound basis. There were jurists who could have revised its laws. There were statesmen who could have supervised and directed its general governmental affairs, both domestic and foreign. But there was need that all these qualities should be combined in and all these activities should be performed by one man. Leonard Wood was at this time still a young man, scarcely thirty-eight years of age. Born at Winchester, New Hampshire, the son of an eminent physician and a descendant of a Mayflower Pilgrim, he had in boyhood engaged in seafaring pursuits, and then had been thoroughly trained for the medical profession at Harvard University. Obeying the promptings of patriotism, perhaps with some unrecognized pre-intimation of the vast services which he was destined to render to his country and to the world, he turned away from prospects of professional preferment and profit to undertake the arduous and often thankless tasks of an army surgeon. He was appointed to that duty from the state of Massachusetts on January 5, 1886, as an Assistant Surgeon, and five years later was promoted to the rank of Captain. The nominal rank is, however, a slight indication of the merit of his services, for in the very first year of his army life he was credited with "distinguished conduct in campaign against Apache Indians while serving as medical and line officer of Captain Lawton's expedition"; for which he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. At the beginning of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence, Theodore Roosevelt resigned the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which he had filled with distinction and to the great profit of the country, in order to organize from among the cowboys and frontiersmen of the West his famous regiment of "Rough Riders." But he would not himself accept the supreme command of it. His unerring judgment of men led him to select Leonard Wood for the Colonelcy, under whom he was himself glad to serve as Lieutenant-Colonel. So it was that Wood first went to Cuba, as Colonel of the First Regiment of United States Cavalry Volunteers. There soon followed the achievements at Guasimas and at San Juan Hill, to which reference has already been made, in recognition of his services in which on July 8, 1898, he was promoted to be Brigadier General, and on December 7 following to be Major General of Volunteers. It may be added that he was promoted to these same ranks in the regular army respectively on February 4, 1901 and August 8, 1903. With these antecedents, on September 24 he entered upon the task of governing Santiago and the Province of Oriente. It was a position of unique responsibility and power. The President's order made it incumbent upon him to administer the existing municipal laws so far as in his own judgment they were properly applicable to the new state of affairs. That was all. Otherwise he was thrown absolutely upon his own resources, with no treaty obligations or government promises to bind him. He was simply a "benevolent despot," intent upon tranquillizing and rehabilitating that vast eastern province of Cuba by methods of his own devising. It was a region at once the most unruly and the most impoverished in Cuba, and it had for its capital a plague-smitten city. For six months he labored there, and in that short period he so far advanced the work of reconstruction that thereafter Oriente served as an example and a model for all the other provinces of Cuba. Sympathetic, alert, untiring, frank, without vanity or ostentation, resolute, diplomatic, and always supremely just, General Wood's personality stood to the people of Cuba for qualities seldom if ever before associated with the occupant of the governor's palace, while his energy in fighting disease, relieving distress, reviving industry and maintaining order revealed to them as the Spanish régime never had done the beneficence of enlightened government. It would be impossible to estimate too highly the value of his services during those few months at Santiago, in commending to Cubans the benevolent purposes and attitude of the Americans toward them and in disclosing to them the vast material and moral benefits which would accrue to them through self-government wisely administered. He began his work at Santiago in gruesome circumstances. An epidemic of smallpox and yellow fever was raging, and clouds of smoke hung over the city from the funeral pyres where were being burned many of the bodies for which burial was impossible. The city was reeking with filth. Half the people were threatened with starvation. Lawlessness and complaints of grievances were rife. He had to be at once sanitarian, steward and judge. He labored heroically at all three tasks, and performed them so well that in a few weeks Santiago seemed like a new city. Of course there was much to do in other places in the province. In Holguin there were three thousand cases of smallpox, of which he treated 1,200 in hospitals. He sent thither as nurses 600 thoroughly vaccinated immunes, not one of whom contracted the disease. Hundreds of infected buildings, of flimsy construction, were burned, while all others were thoroughly disinfected, and the epidemic was conquered. Early the next year General Wood sought a well earned rest in a brief visit to his former home in Boston, leaving, as he thought, affairs in Santiago in a securely satisfactory condition. But he was compelled to hasten back in July, 1899, to deal with another outbreak of disease. On his arrival he found both the city and his own army camp in the grip of malignant yellow fever. It was a time for heroic action, and that was what he performed. In a day he removed his troops to healthful places on the adjacent hills, and then subjected the city to such a cleansing and scientific sanitation as neither it nor any other Cuban city had ever known. The island and the world looked on with interest, to see if thus he could cope with and suppress the epidemic. He succeeded. Not yet had the theory of Dr. Carlos J. Finlay, that mosquitoes were the sole propagators of the disease, been practically tested and applied, though it had been propounded by that eminent Cuban physician many years before. That immortal achievement was postponed for Messrs. Reed, Carroll, Agramonte and Lazear to effect, under General Wood's subsequent administration at Havana. But even without it, by means of strenuous sanitation, the epidemic of July, 1899, was conquered, and Santiago was made clean and sound. Another achievement of General Wood's at Santiago in the latter part of 1898 proved highly successful and was soon afterward extended to the other provinces of the island. This was the organization of the Rural Guards, a force which became invaluable for the policing of the rural portions of the island; just as Pennsylvania and some others of the United States are cared for by State Police. General Wood selected for this service officers and soldiers of the Cuban Army in the War of Independence who were recommended for their good character and efficiency. By the end of the year 1898 he had about 300 of these troopers patrolling the roads of Oriente, in the districts where such guardianship was most needed, with admirable results. The value of this service was observed and appreciated by the officers of the other provinces, and at the beginning of 1899 the system was introduced into all the provinces excepting Matanzas, where the same purpose was served by a mounted police force maintained by the larger municipalities. In the city of Havana the Military Governor, General Ludlow, held a conference with General Mario G. Menocal, of the Cuban Army, who had been invited to become Chief of Police in that city under the American administration, and with him worked out the details of the organization of Rural Guards in the suburbs of the capital and the rural portions of Havana Province. They formed a force of 350 men for service there, and thus quickly made all that region, even in the more or less disturbed period immediately following the war, noteworthy for its security and orderliness. When at the end of the American occupation the Rural Guards were transferred to the Cuban Government, they comprised 15 bodies, numbering 1,605 officers and men, stationed at 247 different posts. Meantime American occupation and administration were established throughout the island. Immediately upon the transfer of sovereignty on January 1, 1899, John R. Brooke, Major General commanding the Division of Cuba, and Military Governor, issued a proclamation to the people of the island. He told them that he came as the representative of the President, to give protection to the people and security to persons and property, to restore confidence, to build up waste plantations, to resume commercial traffic, and to afford full protection in the exercise of all civil and religious rights. To the attainment of those ends, all the efforts of the United States would be directed, in the interest and for the benefit of all the people of Cuba. The legal codes of the Spanish sovereignty were to be retained in force, with such changes and modifications as might from time to time be found necessary in the interest of good government. The people of Cuba, without regard to previous affiliations, were invited and urged to cooperate in these objects by the exercise of moderation, conciliation and good-will toward one another. The island was divided for administrative purposes into seven departments, corresponding with the provinces and with the city of Havana forming the seventh. The commanders of these departments, under General Brooke, were: Havana City, Gen. William Ludlow; Havana Province, Gen. Fitzhugh Lee; Pinar del Rio, Gen. George W. Davis; Matanzas, Gen. James H. Wilson; Santa Clara, Gen. John C. Bates; Camaguey, Gen. L. H. Carpenter; Oriente, Gen. Leonard Wood. A civil government was organized on January 12, by the appointment of the following Cubans as Ministers of State: Secretary of the Department of State and Government, Domingo Mendez Capote; Secretary of Finance, Pablo Desvernine; Secretary of Justice and Public Instruction, Jose Antonio Gonzalez Lanuza; Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce, Industries and Public Works, Adolfo Saenz Yanez. Later in the spring of that year the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio were united in one department, as were Matanzas and Santa Clara, and Camaguey and Oriente. [Illustration: GONZALEZ LANUZA A distinguished jurist, penologist, and man of letters, Gonzalez Lanuza, was born in Havana on July 17, 1865. He rose to eminence at the bar and on the bench, became professor of penal law in the University of Havana, and was the author of several important works on jurisprudence. He was an agent of the revolution in Havana in 1895, and Secretary of the Cuban Delegation in New York. During General Brooke's Governorship he was Secretary of Justice and Public Instruction, and during President Menocal's first term was Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a delegate to the Pan-American Congress at Rio de Janeiro in 1906.] The problems which confronted the American military administrators and their Cuban colleagues of the civil government were manifold and grave. There was the work of sanitation, which was undertaken on lines similar to those which General Wood had pursued in Santiago. The city of Havana had the advantage of the services of General Ludlow, an expert engineer and sanitarian. Then there was the work of feeding a starving population. So vast had been the ravages of war, so great had been the destruction of resources, that one of the most fertile and productive countries in the world was unable for a time to provide food for its own inhabitants, although their numbers had been diminished by one-fourth by the horrors of war. In these circumstances the American government was compelled to establish a system of food distribution, on very liberal lines. In Havana alone more than 20,000 persons were dependent upon it to save them from actual starvation. So well was the system administered, however, and so vigorously did the Cubans themselves apply themselves to self-help that within five months it was found possible to abolish the general system of food supply, and to restrict such work to such cases of special need as are liable to occur in any community. In thus redeeming the island from threatened if not actual famine, the American government undoubtedly did much, but the Cuban people themselves did far more. Self-help and mutual aid were the order of the day. All who could do so hastened to secure employment, either upon their own property or on the land or in the establishments of others. Planters whose fields had been ravaged and whose buildings had been destroyed borrowed money wherever they could, when necessary, for rehabilitation. If they could not raise money to pay their employes, they pledged them an interest in the proceeds of the coming harvest. The small farmers, who had lost all their implements and had no money to buy others to replace them, worked almost without tools, or borrowed and loaned among themselves so that a single plow would serve for half a dozen, and even hoes and spades were similarly passed from garden to garden. In the absence of horses and mules, plows were actually drawn by teams of four or six men, in such cases doing, perhaps, little more than to scratch the surface of the soil, though even this was sufficient to enable the planting of seed. Reference has been made to the borrowing of money by the planters for the rehabilitation of their estates. This was no easy task, because of the extent to which they were already overburdened with debts. Nearly all the land in Cuba was mortgaged, for a large percentage of its value. The census which was taken by the American authorities in 1899 showed a total real estate valuation in the entire island of only $323,641,895. These amazingly low figures were due, of course, to the depreciation of values through the ravages of war. But upon that valuation there was an aggregate mortgage indebtedness of no less than $247,915,494; or more than 76 per cent. Obviously, the borrowing capacity of Cuban real estate had been exhausted. During the war, with the impairment of industry which then prevailed, it was impossible for farmers to pay off their mortgages, and accordingly the Spanish government, in May, 1896, decreed that all mortgages then maturing should be extended for a year, during which time all legal steps for collection of them should be halted. In Oriente and Camaguey, however, the grace thus granted was for only a month. Successive extensions of the grace carried it to April, 1899, when the American administration was in control. A final extension was then granted, to April, 1901. Still another problem, and one which proved peculiarly embarrassing, was that of local or municipal government. The island was divided into six provinces, thirty-one judicial districts, and one hundred and thirty-two municipalities, and these last named were each divided into sub-districts and these again into wards. These all had their local officials and local systems of finance, and these latter were found by the Americans to be in serious confusion. It was necessary to reform them, but in the doing of this almost endless friction arose. Such matters so closely touched the Cuban people that they were naturally jealous and resentful of alien interference and dictation. At the same time the Americans considered it necessary to supervise the reorganization of local government as a basis for satisfactory general government. Each side became more or less irritated against the other, with unfortunate results. An interesting personal factor at this time, whose influence was on the whole helpful to the American government, was found in General Maximo Gomez. There is no question that he felt himself somewhat ill-treated by the Americans, as Calixto Garcia had felt at the surrender of Santiago. During the first month of the American rule at the capital he held aloof, remaining at his home at Remedios. But in February he came to Havana and had such a reception as probably no other man in Cuban history had ever enjoyed. From Remedios to Havana he proceeded through an almost unbroken series of popular demonstrations of the most enthusiastic kind, and at the capital he was greeted as a conquering hero and as the unrivalled idol of the people whose independence he had won. The only discordant note came from a small body of politicians identified with that Assembly which both Gomez and the American government had declined to recognize, and which Gomez had strongly antagonized in the matter of paying off and demobilizing the Cuban army. But that opposition to him did not lessen the affection and reverence with which the great mass of the Cuban people regarded the grim and grey old champion of their wars. It is to be recorded, too, that while he was thus being received by the people, his own attitude toward them was no less significant. At every place through which he passed on his journey to Havana, and at every gathering at which he was entertained in that city, he spoke to the people, tersely and vigorously, as became a soldier; exhorting them to forget the differences of the past, even their righteous wrath against the Spaniards, and to unite and work together harmoniously and efficiently to complete in peace the great task for Cuba's welfare which had so far been advanced in war. The result, at least for a time, was marvellous. Cuban and Spaniard, Revolutionist, Autonomist and Constitutionalist, for a time joined hands. At one of the chief public receptions given to Gomez in Havana, the flags of Cuba, of the United States, and of Spain were equally displayed, and were all three greeted with applause. That spirit did not, it is true, always thereafter prevail. But it was of incalculable profit to Cuba to have it so strongly aroused and manifested at that crucial period in her history. During the administration of General Brooke the police force of Havana was completely reorganized, with the assistance of John B. McCullagh, formerly Superintendent of Police in New York. This was done as promptly as possible after the installation of American rule, and by the beginning of March, 1899, the peace and security of the Cuban capital were safeguarded by an admirable uniformed force of about a thousand men. Under the command of General Mario G. Menocal as Chief this body of men rendered Havana as efficient service, probably, as that in any American city of similar size. Police work in Havana, it should be understood, differs considerably from that in cities of the United States, for the reason that drunkenness and its attendant disorder and petty brawls are substantially unknown in the Cuban metropolis, and therefore one of the most prolific causes of arrests in American cities is there non-existent. When the American administration took charge of Cuban affairs it found the insular treasury quite empty. The departing Spaniards had seen to that. But a careful, honest and thrifty management of finances soon provided the island with a good working income. By the first of September, 1899, fully $10,000,000 had been received in revenue from different sources. Major E. F. Ladd of the United States army was made Treasurer and Disbursing Officer of the customs service, and a little later he was appointed Auditor and then Treasurer of the island. In those capacities he showed admirable efficiency and greatly ingratiated himself with the people; ranking as one of the most successful members of the American governing staff. His administration was the more appreciated by Cubans because of the welcome reform of the taxation system which was at that time effected. The old Spanish tax system had been abominable, and that of the short-lived Autonomist regime of 1897-1898 changed it chiefly with the result of adding to the confusion. Early in 1899, therefore, radical reforms were undertaken. An order was issued on February 10 remitting all taxes due under the old Spanish law which had remained unpaid on January 1, with the exception of taxes on passengers and freight which had according to custom been collected and were held by the railroad companies. All taxes on the principal articles of food and fuel were abolished, as were also all municipal taxes on imports and exports. These taxes had formerly been very burden-some and were a source of much grievance and irritation, and their abolition was very gratifying to the Cuban people, who began to appreciate what it meant to have a government whose prime object was to serve them and not to plunder them. One tax was greatly increased, namely, the excise tax upon all alcoholic liquors, and this was made a part of the revenue of the municipalities instead of the state, thus compensating the municipalities for the loss of the tax on merchandise. Despite the temperate habits of the Cuban people, the very general consumption of some form of alcoholic drink made this impost amount to a considerable sum. A matter which urgently needed reform, but which unfortunately was reformed with more zeal than diplomacy, caused much dissension in that first year of American administration. That was the marriage law. Under Spanish government marriage was held to be exclusively a function, indeed, a sacrament, of the Roman Catholic church, and could not legally be performed by any other authority; though in later years there had been made a provision for the civil marriage of non-Catholics. But since to resort to the latter meant to incur a certain social reproach, few couples ever availed themselves of it. Of course loyal members of the church could not do so, the religious ceremony being imperative for them. With the departure of the Spanish government from the island a complete separation of church and state occurred, and it was held imperative to provide a new law of marriage. The old system had become odious, it may be explained, because of the large fees which many ecclesiastics charged for performance of the ceremony, and because, on account of those fees, many couples among the poorer elements of the population, decided to dispense with the marriage ceremony altogether; a practice not conducive to social order, and frequently causing serious embarrassment and litigation over the inheritance of property. Unfortunately in trying to reform the system the new government went too far toward the opposite extreme. The author of the new law was Senor Jose Antonio Gonzalez Lanuza, the Secretary of Justice, and it made civil marriage compulsory, though it permitted a supplementary religious ceremony at the pleasure of the parties. "Hereafter," it said, "only civil marriages shall be legally valid." It fixed the legal fee for marriages at one dollar. The intention of the law was doubtless good, and it might be argued that it should not have caused offence, since it did not interfere with religious marriage ceremonies. There is no doubt that it was very strongly favored by a large part of the Cuban nation. When it was proposed to repeal or to modify it materially the vast majority of municipal governments in the island, all of the judges of the Supreme Court, a majority of the judges of first instance, and half of the Provincial Governors, urged its retention unchanged. The clergy of the Roman Catholic church, however, opposed it vigorously and persistently, and it was finally deemed desirable to modify it so as to make either civil or religious marriage valid. The objection to it had been, of course, that by invalidating religious marriages it cast a certain slur upon the church. It is interesting to recall, however, that the law in its objectionable form was the work of a Cuban jurist, while in its amended and acceptable form it was the work of an American and conformed with the law in the United States, where civil and religious marriage ceremonies are equally legal and valid. In order to protect the island against undue exploitation by American speculators and "promoters," a law of the American Congress in February, 1899, forbade the granting of franchises or concessions of any kind during the period of American occupation and control. It was not pretended that there was no need of any such grants, but it was prudently contended that they should wait until the Cubans themselves had full control of the insular government. The wisdom of this was apparent, and the law was generally approved, even by those who most clearly saw the desirability of developing the resources and industries of the island by the building of railroads, tramways, telegraph lines, etc. It was better for these to wait for a year or two than to incur the suspicion that an American administration had granted Cuban franchises to American promoters on terms which a Cuban government would not have approved. A most important enterprise during the Brooke administration was the taking of a thorough census of the island. This was ordered by President McKinley on August 17, 1899, and was taken early in the ensuing fall. The island was divided into 1,607 enumeration districts, and the work of canvassing was given chiefly to Cubans. Among the canvassers were 142 women; the first women ever employed in government work in Cuba. The census was not a mere enumeration, but comprised a multiplicity of details concerning the age, nativity, citizenship, conjugal condition, literacy, etc., of the people, and also concerning agriculture and the other occupations in which they were engaged. The populations of the provinces were as follows, compared with the figures of the census of 1887: Provinces 1899 1887 Pinar del Rio 173,082 225,891 Havana 424,811 451,928 Matanzas 202,462 259,578 Santa Clara 356,537 354,122 Camaguey 88,237 67,789 Oriente 327,716 272,379 -------- ------- Totals 1,572,845 1,631,687 These figures are significant. There should, of course, have been a considerable increase in population in those twelve years. Instead, there was a considerable decrease. The entire number of normal increase, plus the 58,842 actual decrease, may be taken as representing the loss through the war. It will also be observed that the loss of population was in the three western provinces, where the Spanish most held sway during the war, and that there was no loss but a considerable increase in the three eastern provinces, which were largely controlled by the Cubans. The population by sexes and race was as follows: Male 815,205 Female 757,592 Native white 910,299 Foreign white 142,098 Negro 234,738 Mixed 270,805 Chinese 14,857 The report of citizenship was: Cuban 1,296,367 Spanish 20,478 In suspense 175,811 Other aliens 79,525 Unknown 616 The total number of illegitimate children, of all ages, was 185,030; a discreditably high number, attributed largely to the former expensive marriage system. The statistics of education were distressing. The number of children under ten years of age who were attending or had attended school was only 40,559, and the number who had not attended was 316,428. The number of persons ten years old and over who could read and write was only 443,670; those who could neither read nor write were 690,565--an appalling proportion of illiteracy, reflecting most discreditably upon the Spanish government of the island. The number of persons of "superior education" in the whole island was only 19,158. Nor were the statistics of industry much more satisfactory. The following were the totals for the island: Agriculture, fisheries and mining 299,197 Trade and transportation 79,427 Manufactures and mechanics 93,074 Professional 8,736 Domestic and personal 141,936 No gainful occupation 950,467 Another supremely important measure which was adopted during the closing weeks of General Brooke's administration, though its complete working out was reserved for his successor, was suggested by some of the census figures which we have just quoted. It was realized that the need of education was of all Cuban popular needs the most urgent. Accordingly on November 2, 1899, General Brooke ordered the organization of a new bureau in the Department of Justice and Public Instruction, at the head of which should be a Superintendent of Schools. The first incumbent of that office was Alexis E. Frye, who drafted another order, promulgated by General Brooke on December 6 and practically constituting a new school law for Cuba. It provided for the formation of Boards of Education and the opening of primary and grammar schools in all communities by December 11, 1899, or as soon thereafter as possible. That was the beginning of the popular education of the Cuban people. After these things, General Brooke was on December 20 relieved of his command in Cuba. He issued a brief farewell proclamation to the people, calling attention to the progress which had been made in good government, and toward complete self-government and independence; every word of which was amply justified by facts. He was a soldier rather than an administrator, and he was nearing the age of retirement from active service. His administration had been beset with difficulties; it had made some mistakes, and it had done much good work. He was charged by some with having entrusted the powers of government too largely to his Cuban Secretaries; while others commended him for that very circumstance. His inclination was toward a bureaucracy, but it was a Cuban and not an alien bureaucracy. It cannot be denied that he laid much of the foundation of subsequent achievements and of successful Cuban government. It was under his governorship that General Ludlow cleansed the city of Havana, that the Customs service and the treasury were reorganized, and that provision was made for a comprehensive system of public schools. CHAPTER X General Brooke was succeeded by General Leonard Wood. He had also in a measure been preceded by him. General Wood had at Santiago been the real pioneer in American administration in Cuba. He laid the first foundations there. General Brooke at Havana enlarged upon those foundations. Then came General Wood to Havana to complete the structure. It was with the fame and prestige of his great victory over pestilence at Santiago, and of all his other achievements in Oriente, that he came to Havana on December 20, 1899, to be Military Governor of all Cuba. He was received not alone with the fullest measure of formal ceremony and official salutation, from both Cubans and Americans, but also with such an outpouring of popular welcome as few men have received anywhere and as nobody save perhaps Maximo Gomez had ever received at Havana. The attitude and sentiment of the people toward him were well expressed by an editorial writer in the Havana journal _La Lucha_, who said: "General Wood has shown great capacity for government and management while in command of the eastern end of the island. In that mountainous and rugged district, where passions and impulsive characters predominate, in that country where a strong rebellious spirit has been agitated for a long time, General Wood knew how to calm that spirit, how to establish moral peace and to cheer the hearts of all. He has been seen to practise a policy of harmony and ample liberty. We saw him, first of all, promulgate the habeas corpus in the province he commanded, and he decreed that constitutional measure when the embers of the fire of domestic and international war were still smoking. In material things, General Wood cleansed the eastern cities and embellished them.... His government will prepare us for a broader life and give us the blessings of peace and liberty. As a man of clear mind and solid education, he will know how to study and to solve skilfully the economic and political problems that circumstances may introduce into the country. As he is a man of energy, he will be able to withstand every unhealthy influence. His policy will be eminently liberal, but at the same time it will be a guarantee for all who labor and produce. He will not associate himself with agitators but with statesmen." [Illustration: LEONARD WOOD Soldier, scientist, statesman, administrator, it has been the fortune of Leonard Wood to render invaluable services to two nations. Born at Winchester, New Hampshire, on October 9, 1860, and educated in medicine at Harvard University, he became first a surgeon and then an officer of the United States army. After a brilliant career in Indian fighting in the Southwest he went to Cuba in 1898 as colonel of the cavalry regiment of "Rough Riders" and did notable work in the battles around Santiago. He was Military Governor of Santiago and Oriente, and later Military Governor of Cuba, in which places he transformed the sanitary, economic and political conditions of the island, and ushered it into its career of independent self-government. Since then he has served the United States with great distinction in the Philippines, and as the foremost officer of the army at home; not the least of his benefactions to the nation being his great campaign of education and awakening in preparation for what he saw to be America's inevitable participation in the World War.] Such was the just estimate which Cuba placed upon her new Governor. Of his actual reception the same journal that we have quoted said: "Although promising nothing, he speaks volumes by his quiet democratic manner of taking charge of affairs. He has captivated everyone." The new Governor was welcomed on his arrival at Havana by an extraordinary and quite unprecedented gathering of representative men from all parts of the island; such a gathering as Havana had never seen before. He promptly entered into the fullest possible conference with them, to learn their views and to impart his own to them, and as a result of his intercourse with them he was able, on January 1, 1900, to gather about himself a noteworthy Cabinet, commanding in an exceptional measure the confidence of the Cuban people. It was thus composed: Secretary of State and Government, Diego Tamayo. Secretary of the Treasury, Jose Enrique Varona. Secretary of Justice, Louis Estevez. Secretary of Public Works, Jose Ramon Villalon. Secretary of Education, Juan Bautista Barreiro. Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, Ruiz Rivera. The selection of these men commanded the cordial approval of the Cuban people. Said _La Lucha_: "The new Cabinet contains men whose honest names are guarantees that the moral and material interests of the country are to be conserved." To this _La Patria_ added: "General Wood is obviously imbued with the best intentions. Although the council of Cubans convened by him is not an elected body, it does represent the wishes of the Cuban people." It will of course be observed that not one of General Brooke's cabinet was retained by General Wood. All were new men. Moreover, he increased their number by two, making a separate department of Education instead of lumping it with Justice, and making another of Public Works, instead of leaving it grouped with Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. This latter change was significant of two things. One was the increasing amount of actual governmental work that was devolving upon the administration. The other was the increased importance which, in General Wood's mind, attached to Education and Public Works. He rightly conceived them to be the two prime needs of Cuba. The cabinet did not remain as thus organized, however, very long. On May 1 Ruiz Rivera resigned the Secretaryship of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, and was succeeded by Perfecto Lacoste; and Louis Estevez resigned the portfolio of Justice and was succeeded by Juan Bautista Barreiro, who in turn was succeeded in the Department of Education by Jose Enrique Varona, while the last named was succeeded as Secretary of the Treasury by Leopoldo Cancio. Finally on August 11 Senor Barreiro retired altogether and was succeeded in the Department of Justice by Miguel Gener y Rincon. We have said that General Brooke was charged with letting his administration be controlled by his Secretaries. There was an inclination in some quarters to charge General Wood with exactly the reverse. He was not autocratic nor domineering. But he was Governor. He was the actual as well as the nominal head of the government. Realizing that he would be held personally responsible for everything that was done,--as he was,--he rightly determined to exercise his authority in everything that was done. Then, if he was blamed, he would not be blamed for the fault of somebody else. The significance which we have attributed to his Cabinet enlargement was promptly demonstrated. Of the three subjects to which he most devoted his attention, public education came first. He had deemed it worthy of a Cabinet Department all for itself. He at once set about organizing that department _de novo_. Mr. Frye had done good work as Superintendent of Schools; but he had also done much of dubious merit. He had organized too many schools too rapidly, and with too little system. Perhaps that was partly the fault of the law, which bade him on December 6 to get them all going by December 11, if possible. But then, he was responsible for the law. He opened hundreds of schools. But most of them were pretty poor affairs, with no proper text-books, no desks, no equipment and supplies; they were not graded nor classified, and they were conducted without proper system or order. Such schools General Wood regarded as of little value, and he took prompt measures, though at the cost of a somewhat acrimonious controversy with Mr. Frye, to improve the system under which they were being created. On January 24 he issued an order creating a Board of Superintendents of Schools, instead of leaving the work to one man, and he appointed as its members Mr. Frye, Esteban Borrero Echeverria, and Lincoln de Zayas. The Board continued to act under the law of December 6, but applied it in a somewhat different way, with impressive results. It opened a great many more schools than Mr. Frye had done, and saw to it that they were better equipped than his had been. Within six months the number of schools was increased from 635 to 3,313. Indeed, on March 3 it was found necessary to put on brakes, by issuing an order that no more new schools should be opened for the present. That year more than $4,000,000, or nearly a fourth of the total revenue of Cuba, was spent on public schools. [Illustration: EVELIO RODRIGUEZ LENDIAN One of the foremost educators of Cuba, Dr. Evelio Rodriguez Lendian, was born at Guanabacoa in 1860, and was educated at the University of Havana, where he is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Letters. He is also President of the Academy of History, and Director of the Athenaeum. He has written a number of books and has great repute as a public speaker.] In addition to primary and grammar schools, which were made universal, trade schools of various kinds were established. In the principal cities, especially in Havana, there were free schools of stenography and type-writing. These latter were designed partly to supply a competent and up-to-date clerical force to the various government offices, and partly to promote modern business methods in private concerns. Of course they provided profitable occupation to a large number of persons who otherwise might have been out of employment. The creation of the public schools also provided employment for several thousand persons, as teachers. These were almost entirely Cubans and, as in the United States, were very largely young women. Considering the paucity of numbers of those reported by the census as possessing "superior education" it was extraordinary that a sufficient staff of teachers could be obtained. Normal schools for the training of teachers in modern methods of education were established, and were largely attended by young Cubans eager to participate in the work of advancing the intellectual interests and indeed also the social and industrial interests of their country. An admirable impetus, of inestimable value, was given to the work of Cuban education in 1900 when Harvard University, General Wood's alma mater, invited Cuban teachers to the number of a thousand to spend the summer at that institution, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a great summer school in pedagogy and other sciences was conducted. Recognizing the immense value of such a visit from many points of view, the American administration in Cuba agreed to pay each teacher one month's salary for the purpose of the excursion, and to provide transportation from their homes to Havana or other convenient ports, whence their further travel was provided for by the Quartermaster's Department of the United States. On arriving at Cambridge they were received and entertained during their stay by a committee specially appointed by Harvard. They were thus enabled to have without cost an extended and singularly interesting and enjoyable excursion, such as many of them had never had before, to receive stimulus, suggestion and instruction in the most approved methods of education and school management, and--perhaps most important of all--to come into direct touch with the people and institutions of the great northern republic with which their own country had and was destined always to have the closest of relations. The school system of the island was strictly removed from politics, both local and general, and was taken from the control of the municipalities and placed directly and solely under that of the national government. Thus was assured a fine degree of uniformity in the quality and methods of teaching. Thus also the poorer districts, which could with difficulty have maintained any kind of schools at all, were enabled to have as good service as the richest communities. The salaries paid to teachers were good, comparing favorably with those paid in the United States. [Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF HAVANA Cuba is enviably distinguished for providing not only elementary but higher education, even of the best university grade, practically without cost to the children of her citizens. The University of Havana, which is the crown of the whole educational system of the country, was founded in 1728, and formerly was housed in the old convent of Santo Domingo. But in 1900 under the American administration of General Leonard Wood, it was removed to the fine site of the former Pirotecnica Militar, near El Principe.] There was, it must be confessed, some criticism of this elaborate and expensive educational establishment. It was urged by some that approximately one-fourth was entirely too large a proportion of the national revenue to devote to this purpose, and that it would be to the greater benefit of the island to spend less money on schools and more on public works of various kinds. It was also pointed out that the average cost of educating each pupil in the Cuban schools was more than $26, while the average cost in the whole United States was less than $23, and in the Southern States, with which it was assumed that Cuba was properly to be compared, it was less than $9. Of course there was involved in these criticisms a triple fallacy. One was the notion that public works were neglected or sacrificed for the schools. That, as we shall see, was not so; a comparably great system of such works proceeding _pari passu_ with the development of the school system. Another was, that the cost was too high. Naturally the cost was much higher in the first year than it would be after the system was well established. It was in fact much lower than in those parts of the United States where the schools were efficient and the educational system was creditable. The third fallacy was in thinking that Cuba was to be compared with the Southern States, the backward condition of whose school systems had long been regarded as a reproach and a disgrace. In endowing Cuba with a school system it would have been indecent for the United States to take for the standard its own poorest and most discreditable systems. It was necessary that it should take rather the best that it had as an example to be emulated. It may be added that these criticisms were made chiefly by General Wood's American critics, and by those who ignorantly and arrogantly regarded Cuba as an inferior country for which an inferior system was good enough. The Cubans themselves with practical unanimity gave to the work their hearty and grateful approval. [Illustration: ANTONIO SANCHEZ DE BUSTAMENTE One of the most eminent jurists and orators of Cuba, Dr. Antonio Sanchez de Bustamente, was born on April 13, 1865, and was educated at the University of Havana. He is a Senator, President of the Cuban Society of International Law; President of the National Academy of Arts and Letters; Dean of the Havana College of Lawyers, and Professor of International, Public and Private Law in the University of Havana.] There was other work to do for the children of Cuba beside that of the ordinary schools. The war had been disastrous to domesticity. Thousands of homes had been entirely destroyed, the parents slain, the houses burned, the children left to wander as waifs. In that genial clime, amid that profusion of the fruits of nature, these orphans did not necessarily starve or perish. Many of them lived practically as wild creatures of the woods. Many of them also were cared for in some fashion by the families whose homes had not been destroyed, for it was not in the Cuban heart, even the most poverty-stricken, to turn a suppliant from the door. But it was not fitting that these children should be left as waifs and charges upon the people. Under General Brooke's administration an excellent Department of Charities was organized, which gathered up and cared for thousands of them, and this work was continued during General Wood's administration. The children were partly placed in families which were willing to receive them, or in asylums and schools. Seeing that there was among them a certain proportion of defectives and delinquents, and that many were in need of useful training, correctional and industrial schools for both boys and girls were opened, and did admirable work. The second object of General Wood's special interest was that of public works. Concerning that, two salient facts must be borne in mind. One is, that the prohibition of franchises and concessions during the American occupation materially militated against the making of many improvements; although it was on the whole a desirable restriction. The other is that many of the most urgent public works during the first year or two were those connected with sanitation and the renovation of public buildings, prisons, etc. During the first year of the intervention, under General Brooke, heroic work was done by General Ludlow in removing from the streets of Havana the accumulated filth of years. But that was only a beginning. In the next two years the work had to be continued and extended to every city and town on the island. Water supplies had to be provided, and sewer systems. Above all, there had to be an extensive, persistent and, in the very nature of the case expensive campaign against yellow fever and malaria, the two traditional scourges of Cuba. To these works General Wood addressed himself with efficient energy, and to them he devoted an appropriate proportion of the public funds. [Illustration: ALMENDARES RIVER, HAVANA] We have seen that the total cost of the schools in 1900 was more than $4,000,000. But as a considerable part of this was non-recurring expense for buildings, etc., the actual cost of maintenance was much less. The following figures show the apportionment of expenditures: For Education, non-recurring $ 337,460 For Education, maintenance 3,672,000 ---------- Total for school system $4,009,460 For Public Works construction $1,786,700 For Sanitation 3,029,500 ---------- Total for Public Works $4,816,200 Despite the complaints of American critics that too much money was spent on schools in proportion to other things, therefore, it appears that much less was spent on them than on public works. Perhaps such complaints would have been less numerous and less bitter if General Wood had been willing or able to give profitable contracts and franchises to American speculators. Much attention was paid to port improvements, naturally, in order to facilitate and promote the commerce which was essential to the prosperity of the island. The lighthouse service was placed under the most competent charge of General Mario G. Menocal, who conducted it with approved efficiency until the needs of his personal affairs compelled him to retire from public office. A thoroughly organized postal service was established throughout the island and was so well managed that by the end of the period of intervention it was within ten per cent. of being self supporting, or as near to self supporting as that of the United States had generally been. This was certainly a remarkable achievement in view of the fact that so large a proportion of Cubans were illiterate and therefore unable to make use of postal facilities. For general purposes of public works the island was divided into six districts. At the head of each district was a Chief Superintendent of Public Works, with a staff of assistants. The principal undertakings, apart from sanitation, were the construction of roads and the building of bridges and culverts, and these were judiciously planned so as to unite the various districts of the island with improved highways, and to open up rich agricultural regions with transportation facilities. [Illustration: OLD TIME WATER MILL, HAVANA PROVINCE] These undertakings involved General Wood in the disposition of an unpleasant controversy which had been left over from General Brooke's administration, which in turn had received it from the old Spanish government. In 1894 the Spanish authorities of Havana decided to have that city largely repaved and re-sewered, and asked an American firm somewhat noted for its political influence, that of Michael J. Dady & Co., of Brooklyn, New York, to submit plans. A year later it accepted some of this firm's proposals, payment for the work to be made in bonds of the City of Havana. But the oncoming of the war caused postponement of the project, and it was not until December, 1898, just before the Spanish evacuation, that the corporation of Havana finally accepted the proposals and authorized the issue of bonds. The American authorities, however, who were about to take over the control of the city, protested against being thus saddled with a scheme of Spanish making, and accordingly the last Spanish Governor, General Castellanos, very properly declined to approve and sign the ordinance; declaring that it and all similar projects, which would have to be executed under American control, should await American approval. A few days later the transfer of sovereignty occurred, and General Ludlow, as Governor of Havana, decided to set aside the Dady proposals altogether and to proceed with the work himself. This was doubtless an economical and logical course to pursue. But under the old Spanish law, which was still in force, Dady & Co. claimed to have certain rights in the matter. The matter remained in suspense for the whole of General Brooke's administration, with a succession of engineers from the United States making and remaking plans for the work and with Dady & Co.'s interests undecided. Apparently the United States government--for the whole matter was controlled by the Engineering Bureau of the War Department at Washington--was reluctant to challenge Dady & Co. to a trial of their claims in court, and was unwilling to seek a compromise with them, but was seeking by interminable postponements, changes of plan and delays to tire them out and induce them voluntarily to withdraw. But that was something which that astute and resolute corporation showed no inclination to do. Meanwhile very important public works were at a stand-still. This was an intolerable state of affairs, and General Wood in the spring of 1901 determined to end it after the manner of Alexander's disposition of the Gordian knot. He paid Dady & Co. $250,000 in satisfaction of their claims, which was possibly less than the courts would have awarded them if the case had been carried before them, and then ordered bids to be solicited for the doing of the work. The only bid received was from Dady & Co., and the Washington authorities refused to sanction acceptance of it on the ground that it was too high. The plans were altered and new bids solicited, and the Havana Ayuntamiento voted to award the contract to the lowest bidders, McGivney & Rokeby. But before the contract was closed Dady & Co. on a plea of having misunderstood the plans offered a reduction of their bid below that of their competitors; whereupon the Ayuntamiento reconsidered its vote and ordered the contract to be made with Dady & Co. But the Washington authorities refused to sanction this change, apparently being averse to letting Dady & Co. have the job at any figure, and the result was that the whole matter remained at a deadlock until after the end of the American occupation. From some points of view the greatest achievement of General Wood's administration was that of the conquest of disease, and it was one in which he as a physician and man of science took peculiar interest. When he fought and temporarily overcame yellow fever at Santiago, there was no application of the immortal theory of Dr. Finlay, but it was supposed that the pestilence spontaneously arose from filth. The same was true of General Ludlow's subsequent cleansing of Havana; he supposing that by the removal of filth the sources of infection would be removed. But when he observed that the dreaded disease occurred where there was no filth, General Wood concluded that it must have another source, and decided to give Dr. Finlay's theory a practical test. In 1900 therefore a medical commission was formed, composed of Drs. Walter Reed, U. S. A., James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, and Jesse W. Lazear, who, with the heroic cooperation of soldiers of the United States army, who were willing to risk their lives in experiments for the welfare of humanity, undertook an elaborate series of demonstrations which were epochal in the history not alone of Cuba but also of the whole world. Reed took the initiative. He applied to General Wood for permission to undertake the work, including the conducting of experiments on persons who were not immune against the fever, which of course was a most perilous venture. He also asked for a considerable sum of money with which to reward volunteers who would thus submit themselves to deadly peril. General Wood did not hesitate for a moment. He granted the permission, appropriated the money, and entered into the momentous enterprise with helpful sympathy and untiring zeal. [Illustration: CARLOS J. FINLAY Born at Camaguey on December 3, 1833, of English parents, and dying on August 20, 1915, Dr. Carlos J. Finlay left a name which greatly adorns the science of Cuba and which occupied a conspicuous place on the roster of the benefactors of humanity. He was educated in France and at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and rose to eminence in his profession. He first of all men propounded the theory that _Stegomiya fasciata_ mosquito was the active and sole agent in the communication of yellow fever, and personally, under the Governorship of Leonard Wood, demonstrated the correctness of that theory and thus freed Cuba from its most dreaded pestilence and blazed the way for a like achievement in all other lands. For this epochal service to the world many foreign governments bestowed distinctions and decorations upon him. Though technically retaining the British citizenship with which his father endowed him, he devoted his life to Cuba and filled with high efficiency the place of chief of the Bureau of Sanitation.] The scene of the drama--for it was one of the most dramatic and heroic performances in human history--was Camp Lazear, fittingly named for the brave man who was a martyr to the cause of health, a few miles from Quemados, in the outskirts of Havana. Before the work at the camp was begun, however, two experiments were made by members of the commission, who thus demonstrated their personal readiness to incur any peril which might confront the volunteers for whom they were calling. Dr. Carroll was first. He deliberately caused himself to be bitten by a mosquito which twelve days before had gorged itself with the blood of a yellow fever patient. Note that he did this with the expectation, indeed with the hope, that he would thus be infected with one of the deadliest of diseases. He sought to prove not that there was no danger in a mosquito bite, but on the contrary that there was the greatest possible danger. And his anticipations were fully realized. In due time after the bite he was stricken with yellow fever in a particularly severe form; from which, however, he happily recovered. Dr. Lazear came next. At about the same time with Carroll he made a similar experiment upon himself. Apparently the insect by which he caused himself to be bitten had not itself been infected. At any rate Lazear did not develop the disease. At this he was disappointed, and he determined to expose himself again. Accordingly he was thoroughly bitten by another mosquito, in the yellow fever ward of the hospital. He noted the fact and all its results most carefully, as though he had been experimenting upon some inanimate object. In due time the disease manifested itself in its most malignant form. Everything possible was of course done for him, but in vain. He died of the disease which he had voluntarily contracted for the sake of saving others from it; one of the world's great martyrs to the cause not merely of science but of humanity. So Camp Lazear was founded and was named after this hero. There were erected two large frame buildings, one for infected mosquitoes and one for infected clothing. The mosquito building was divided into two parts by a permanent wirecloth partition, impervious to even the smallest mosquito, but of course permitting free circulation of air. All the windows and doors were securely screened in like manner, so that it was impossible for mosquitoes to pass in or out. This building was ventilated in the most thorough manner. Three men entered it and lived there for a fortnight. One of them entered the compartment which was infested with fever-infected mosquitoes, and was bitten by them. The others remained in the other compartment which was free from mosquitoes but through which the same air circulated and in which all other conditions were identical with those in the insect room. The result was that the man who was bitten developed the fever, while the others, though fully as susceptible to it as he, showed no signs of it. Such was the convincing demonstration of the mosquito house. The clothing building was kept free from mosquitoes, but was well stocked with the clothing and bedding of yellow fever patients. There were the beds in which men had died of the fever, soiled with their vomit and other excreta. The room was purposely deprived of ventilation, so that its air should constantly be heavy with the reek of disease and death. Into that indescribably loathsome place brave men entered, and there they lived for weeks, wearing the soiled clothing and sleeping in the soiled beds of those who had died of the pestilence. But not one of them contracted the fever. Not one sickened. All emerged from the noisome place at the end of the experiment in perfect health. Such was the convincing demonstration of the infected clothing house. One thing more remained. There was one remote possibility that the men who had remained free from the fever, in the noninfected room of the mosquito house and in the infected clothing house, were in some unsuspected way immune against the disease. To determine this, one of each of the companies permitted himself to be bitten by an infected mosquito, with the result that he promptly developed the disease. That was the final, complete and crowning demonstration which made Camp Lazear forever famous in the annals of humanity. At a single stroke the pestilence which had been the haunting horror of the tropics was potentially conquered. Dr. Reed proclaimed to the world that the specific agent in the causation of yellow fever was a germ or toxin in the blood of a patient during only the first three days of the attack, which must be transmitted by the bite of a mosquito inflicted upon its victim at least twelve days after taking it from the blood of the first patient. In no other way was it possible to convey the infection. The notion that it was conveyed through the air, in the breath of patients, in their soiled clothing or the discharges of their bodies, was baseless. That historic achievement was alone sufficient to make that first year of General Wood's administration in Cuba forever gratefully famous. Of course the lesson thus learned was at once put into effect with all possible thoroughness. War was declared upon the death-dealing mosquito. In February, 1901, the campaign was begun by Major William C. Gorgas, U. S. A., the chief sanitary officer of Havana. Every case of yellow fever was immediately reported, and the patient was rigidly isolated during the three days in which his blood was infective. All the rooms of his house and the adjacent houses were closed to prevent the escape of possible infected mosquitoes, and were then thoroughly fumigated so as to destroy every insect within them. In this way the spread of the disease was prevented. At the same time measures were taken to exterminate the mosquitoes altogether, by depriving them of breeding places. It was ascertained that the insect required for propagation a certain amount of stagnant water, in which its eggs might be deposited and hatched. Steps were therefore taken to drain or otherwise get rid of all pools, or to apply to them a film of oil which would prevent the insects from using them, and to screen carefully all vessels and other receptacles in which water was necessarily kept. These were the same methods which Major--since Major General--Gorgas a few years later applied with distinguished success for the elimination of yellow fever from the Isthmus of Panama and thus rendered possible the construction of the interoceanic canal. [Illustration: STREET IN VEDADO, SUBURB OF HAVANA] Begun in February, 1901, this work in Havana was so vigorously and skilfully prosecuted that before summer every case of yellow fever had disappeared from that city and its environs. During the summer a few cases occurred, but the last of them was disposed of early in September. That was the last case of yellow fever to originate in a city which for a century and a half had annually been scourged by that disease. Since that date the only cases that have been known there have been a few which were imported from less sanitary ports--at one time Havana had to establish a fever quarantine against United States ports! Thus the island which had long suffered reproach as the especial home of one of the deadliest of diseases, as a veritable plague-spot, which American life insurance companies forbade their policy holders to visit, became noted for its freedom from that scourge and for its general salubrity. A similar campaign was also conducted against another variety of mosquito which, by a like series of experiments, had been proved to be the propagating medium of so-called malarial fevers; with highly gratifying results. Among the important reforms effected by General Wood was that of the entire system of law and justice. It began with the penal institutions. When the Americans assumed control, they found the old Spanish prison system still in existence. Most of the prisons were antiquated, unsanitary and inhuman structures, to enter which was ominous for the body, the mind and the soul. There was no segregation of prisoners according to age or degree of criminality. Mere boys, sentenced for some slight misdemeanor, were herded in with adult felons of the most hardened and incorrigible type. Many had been confined for months, even years, awaiting trial. They had been arrested, locked up in default of bail, and then practically forgotten. Of these many were innocent of any wrong-doing; while some of those who were probably guilty were kept in confinement awaiting trial for a much longer term than they could have been sentenced for under the law if they had been tried and found guilty. This shocking state of affairs was vigorously attacked during the first year of the American occupation, and it was thoroughly reformed before that occupation ended. There was a prompt disposal of all untried cases. Where it was possible, the prisoners were at once brought to trial. But in many cases there was nobody to appear against them; perhaps through lapse of time all the witnesses were dead; and it was impossible to make even a show of prosecuting them. Such persons simply had to be set at liberty. The system of jurisprudence was so modified as to assure prompt trials thereafter. The management of the prisons was made to aim at the reformation of the prisoners and not simply at their vindictive punishment. In some prisons schools were opened, to give the inmates instruction which would conduce to their right living after their release. Of course the buildings were renovated as far as possible, so as to make them sanitary and as comfortable as prisoners have a right to expect their prisons to be. This led, under General Wood's administration, to a general revision of the system of courts, court procedure and jurisprudence. In the first year of intervention, indeed, General Ludlow established a Police Court in Havana. This was not authorized by Governor Brooke, and was regarded as of doubtful legality. Nevertheless it remained in operation and undoubtedly served a good purpose in disposing promptly of most of the petty cases of arrest for misdemeanor. So valuable was it that General Wood, on becoming Governor, determined to place its legal status on the surest foundation possible, by issuing an official order for its creation and recognition. In this he did not himself escape criticism, not from Cubans but from Americans. The same people, or the same kind of people, who had blamed him for paying so much attention to Cuban education now declared that he had no business to meddle in any way with the judicial system of Cuba. That was not what America had intervened for. To such objections little attention was paid. General Wood rightly regarded it to be his business to do anything in any department of government that would promote the ends of justice and good government and the welfare of the Cuban nation. Police courts were therefore established not only in Havana but also in the other cities. The Department of Justice was moved to examine into the conduct of all the courts. When judges were found to be unjust, corrupt, incompetent, or otherwise unfit to serve, they were removed. Competent clerks were appointed, and they and all other court employes were put on fair salaries, the fee system which formerly prevailed and which was so susceptible of abuse, being abolished. Competent and trustworthy lawyers were employed at state expense to serve as counsel for those who were too poor to hire them. It was under General Wood, in his first year of administration and the second year of American intervention, that Cuban civil government was elaborated, that an election system was devised and put into effect, and that political parties had their rise. The Civil Governors of the Provinces were now all Cubans: Of Pinar del Rio, Dr. J. M. Quilez; of Havana, General Emilio Nunez; of Matanzas, General Pedro Betancourt; of Santa Clara, General Jose Miguel Gomez; of Camaguey, General R. Lopez Recio; of Oriente, General Demetrio Castillo. It was General Wood's wise and just policy to fill Cuban offices with Cubans to the fullest possible extent. Therefore it was determined in the spring of 1900 to hold an election for municipal officers throughout the island. An order was issued on April 18, appointing the election for June 16, for officers to be installed on July 1 for a term of one year. The officers to be chosen were Mayors, or Alcaldes; members of City Councils or Ayuntamientos; municipal treasurers and judges, and judges of the police courts. The preparations for the election were made and a new electoral law was drafted by a commission of fifteen members, appointed by General Wood. Of the fifteen, thirteen were Cubans and two were Americans. The Cubans were representative of the various political parties into which the people of the island were beginning to divide themselves. It cannot be said that the meetings and deliberations of the commission were particularly harmonious. In the end two reports were submitted to the Governor, of which he selected for adoption that presented by the minority. It comprised the new elections law, which he promulgated on April 18 in the proclamation calling for the election. This law provided that a voter must be a male Cuban, native of Cuba or born of Cuban parents while they were temporarily visiting abroad, or a Spaniard included within the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898, who had not elected to retain his Spanish allegiance; he must be twenty-one years old, and must have lived in his municipality for at least thirty days immediately preceding registration; and he must be able to read and write; or own property worth $250 in American gold; or have served in the Cuban army prior to July 18, 1898, and have been honorably discharged therefrom. The ten consecutive days from May 6 to May 16 were appointed as days of registration. The total number of voters registered was 150,648, which was a little more than fifty per cent, of the total number of men of voting age, which had been shown by the census of 1899 to be 297,765. However, there were some thousands of adult males in the island who had elected to retain their allegiance to Spain, and therefore could not vote, so that the number registered was considerably more than one half of the possible voters. At the election on June 16 the total vote cast was 110,816. There were some protests and complaints of fraud and illegal voting, and it is not improbable that there were some such abuses; as there have been known to be in other lands, even in the United States of America. On the whole the elections were probably reasonably fair and honest; they were peacefully and quietly conducted; and they gave much encouragement to the expectation that the people of Cuba would prove themselves worthy of the opportunity of self-government which was being placed before them. At this election there were three parties. The Union Democratic was composed of the more conservative element, including many of the old Autonomist party, and it was largely inclined toward annexation to the United States, or toward a permanent and efficient protectorate by that country. Its numbers were few, and it took little part in the election. The Nationals and the Republicans ranged from liberal to radical, and between the two in principle there was no perceptible difference. These parties did not long survive, but were transformed and merged into the Conservative and Liberal parties of later years. Political parties in Cuba had their origin about the time of American intervention in the war. That was an assurance that Cuba was to have her independence and become self-governing, and that made it seem worth while to form into parties. The full development did not come, however, until it was seen that the United States intended to keep its word by leaving the government and control of Cuba to the people of the island, and that conviction did not come to the general Cuban mind until some time after the United States entered the war. It first began to arise in considerable strength when the United States government forbade the granting of any franchises or concessions during the American occupation. That certainly looked as though the Americans expected to get out of the island at an early date. As the administration of General Wood went on, constantly increasing the participation of Cubans in the government, the confidence in American good faith increased, and of course the organization of parties became more complete. There were then, however, as there are now, no such differences between the parties on matters of political economy or administrative and legislative policy, as exist in other lands. They are simply the "Ins" and the "Outs." One party is in office and wants to stay in. The other is out and wants to get in. In their methods, however, the two differ widely. The Conservatives have been consistently in favor of constitutional and lawful measures, the maintenance of peace and the safeguarding of life and property. They have always been willing to accept and abide by the result of an election, even though it were against them. The Liberals, on the other hand, as we shall more convincingly see in the course of this narrative, have been in favor of practically any means which would enable them to gain control of affairs. They have on several occasions not hesitated to involve the island in revolution, provided that they would be able to profit from it by gaining office. In this first election for municipal officers there was little partisan rivalry, and indeed that did not rise to any great pitch until the end of the first intervention and the establishment of a purely Cuban government. The chief partisanship was really personal. Each important military or political leader had his own following. Such rivalries were not yet, however, acrimonious or sufficient to have any material effect upon the progress of public affairs. Reference has been made to the reform of the taxation system which included the abolition of a number of annoying and oppressive imposts. There followed a revision of the tariff on imports, for the dual purposes of promoting commerce and industry and of providing a revenue for the insular government. In December, 1898, the United States had ordered maintenance of the old Spanish tariff, with certain modifications, chiefly dictated by the change of relations between Cuba and the United States. Subsequently other modifications were made from time to time as the need or desirability of them became apparent through experience. But on June 15, 1900, an entirely new tariff law went into effect, framed chiefly by American experts and following pretty closely the general lines of the American tariff system. Naturally it was calculated to encourage commerce between Cuba and the United States, particularly by the admission of products of the latter country into Cuban markets at a minimum of cost. In view of the scarcity of food in Cuba and the devastated condition of much of the agricultural lands, American food products, both meats and breadstuffs, thus gained easy access to the Cuban market. This seemed anomalous, since Cuba was an agricultural country capable of producing a large surplus of food for export instead of needing imports of food. It was obvious, however, that this feature of the tariff would be merely temporary, and in fact it was materially modified by the increase of rates on such imports very soon after the establishment of the Cuban government. Despite the fact that during the year about three million dollars' worth of food was imported, the total of Cuban imports was less than in the preceding year; a circumstance due to the change in tariff rates. At the same time there was a very considerable increase in exports. It was an interesting circumstance, also, that there was a decrease in trade with the United States; a pretty effective reply to the complaint which some made that the new tariff had been improperly framed so as to give the United States a monopoly of Cuban trade. It did give the United States some advantages which that country had not enjoyed before, but on the whole it was probably as fair and impartial as it could well have been made. Commercial reports showed that Cuban imports from the United States were $26,513,613 in 1900 and $25,964,801 in 1901; and that Cuban exports to the United States were $31,371,704 in 1900 and $43,428,088 in 1901. Thus Cuban purchases from the United States were decreasing slightly, while Cuban sales to the United States were greatly increasing, and the balance of trade was growing more and more largely in Cuba's favor. CHAPTER XI The supreme work of the Government of Intervention, from the political point of view, was to prepare Cuba for complete self-government and then to relinquish the control of the island to its own people. It was with that end in view that General Wood filled all possible offices with Cubans. It was also to the same end that the municipal election was held in June, 1900, under a new election law. Soon after that election there came a call for another, of vastly greater importance. On July 25, 1900, the President of the United States authorized General Wood as Military Governor of Cuba to issue a call for the election of a Cuban Constitutional Convention, which should be representative of the Cuban people and which should prepare the fundamental law of the independent insular government which was about to be erected. General Wood issued the call, fixing September 15 as the date of the election. This call repeated and reaffirmed the Congressional declaration of April 20, 1898, concerning the purpose of the United States not to annex Cuba but to "leave the government and control of the island to its people." It also called upon the people of Cuba, through their Constitutional Convention, not only to frame and adopt a Constitution, but also, "as a part thereof, to provide for and agree with the Government of the United States upon the relations to exist between that government and the Government of Cuba." That was a most significant thing. It made it quite clear that the United States expected and intended that some special relations should exist between the two countries, apart from those ordinarily provided in treaties. Comment, criticism and protest were provoked; some temperate, some intemperate. Most of the unfavorable comments, and by far the most severe, came from the United States and were obviously animated by political hostility to the President. In Cuba the chief objection was based upon the ground that the island was thus required to do something through a Constitutional Convention which that body was not intended to do but which should be done by the diplomatic department of the government; and also to put into the Constitution something which did not belong there but which should be determined in a treaty. In this there was obviously much logical and moral force, and that fact was appreciated by General Wood, and by the government at Washington, with the result that assurances were presently given that the order would be satisfactorily modified. On the strength of this assurance, which was given in undoubted good faith, Cubans generally prepared for the coming election and for the great work which lay beyond it. They had been so disturbed by the original form of the order that many had declared that they would not participate in the election or serve as delegates to the Convention. The promise of modification mollified them, and thereafter all went smoothly and auspiciously. The call for the election was issued on August 11. The qualifications for suffrage which were prescribed were the same as those in the preceding municipal election, and were generally accepted as fair and just. The election was held on September 15, and it passed off in very much the same fashion as its predecessor. Only a moderate degree of popular interest was manifested in it, and the vote cast was not a large one. The candidates were divided among the three parties already mentioned, but all save one were elected from the two radical organizations, the Nationals and the Republicans. Just one, Senor Eliseo Giberga, of Matanzas province, was returned by the Conservative Union Democrats. There were a few charges of fraud, but they were vague and general in terms and were not formulated nor pressed, and in the main the result of the polling was accepted in good part. The number of delegates from each province had been prescribed in the call for the election. The roll of the convention comprised the names of many of the foremost members of the Cuban nation, distinguished in war, in statecraft and in science, and was well representative of all parts and parties of the island. The convention met for the first time on November 5, 1900, at two o'clock in the afternoon. All the delegates were present, and a great multitude of the people gathered in and about the palace to witness the spectacle and to pay honor to the occasion. They were not alone from the capital, but from all parts of Cuba. Every province and almost every important municipality was represented. Expectant optimism prevailed. There was only one note of uncertainty. That was concerning the promised modification of the order concerning relations with the United States. The modification had not yet been announced. There were a few who began to doubt whether it would ever be; but most put faith in the Military Governor and were sure that he would keep his word. He did. At the appointed moment, when all were assembled, General Wood called the Convention to order and addressed it briefly. "It will," he said, "be your duty, first, to frame and adopt a Constitution for Cuba, and when that has been done, to formulate what, in your opinion, ought to be the relations between Cuba and the United States. The Constitution must be adequate to secure a stable, orderly and free government. When you have formulated the relations which, in your opinion, ought to exist between Cuba and the United States, the Government of the United States will doubtless take such action on its part as shall lead to a final and authoritative agreement between the people of the two countries to the promotion of their common good." He also reminded the Convention that it had no authority to take any part in the existing government of the island, or to do anything more than was prescribed in the order for its assembling. In thus speaking he was in fact reading to the Convention official instructions from Washington; in which the order concerning Cuban and American relations was materially modified. There was nothing in the revised version about making the agreement a part of the Constitution. The Convention was merely to express its opinion on the subject, to serve as a basis for further negotiations. General Wood emphasized this point distinctly, and it was received with entire satisfaction by the Convention and by the public. Having thus delivered to the Convention its instructions and having expressed his personal good will and wishes for its success, General Wood retired and the Convention was left to its own counsels and devices. Thereupon Pedro Llorente, the oldest of the delegates, took the chair by common consent as temporary president, and Enrique Villuendas, the youngest delegate, similarly occupied the desk of the secretary. A fitting oath of office was administered to all by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the island; containing a formal renunciation of all other citizenship and allegiance than Cuban, because several delegates had become naturalized citizens of the United States and it was necessary for them thus to resume their status as Cubans. On the principle that "What was good enough for us when we were struggling in the field is good enough for us here," the rules of the Cuban Revolutionary Congress were adopted to govern the Convention. Finally Domingo Mendez Capote was elected permanent President of the Convention, and Alfredo Zayas and Enrique Villuendas permanent Secretaries. There followed the usual experience of such bodies: Divided counsels, cross purposes, and what not; all gradually working together toward a common end. A few public sessions were held, at which there was more speechmaking than work, but after a few weeks private sessions and a great deal of committee work became the rule. There was no division on party lines, and there was a lack of dominant leadership; both favorable circumstances. Much attention was given to studying and analyzing the constitutions of all other republics in the world, in order to learn their good features and to avoid their errors and weaknesses. The constitution of the United States was of course among those studied, but rather less regard was paid to it than to others, for two reasons. One was, a desire to avoid even the appearance of making Cuba a mere appanage to or imitation of its northern neighbor, and the other was the very practical thought that the constitutions of Latin republics might be better suited to the Latin republic of Cuba than that of an Anglo-Saxon republic. By January 21 the Constitution was drafted in form sufficiently complete to permit it to be read to the whole convention in a public session, and thereafter there were daily discussions of its various provisions. Differences of opinion ranged from mere verbal form to the substance of the most momentous principles. There was a characteristic passage of verbal arms over a phrase in the preamble. That paragraph after stating the purpose of the Convention and of the Constitution, closed by "invoking the favor of God." When this was read the venerable Salvador Cisneros, formerly President of the Republic, moved that the phrase be stricken out. Manuel Sanguilly made a long and dramatic speech, arguing with much passion that it really did not matter whether the phrase were included or not, but that it would best be left in, because that might please some and could hurt nobody. Then the dean of the convention, Pedro Llorente, made an impassioned appeal for the retention of the words, to prove to the world that the Cubans were not a nation of infidels and atheists. In the end the phrase was retained. Another animated debate arose over the question of religious freedom and the relations of church and state, which was ended by the adoption of an article guaranteeing freedom and equality for all forms of religion that were in accord with "Christian morality and public order," and decreeing separation of church and state and forbidding the subsidizing of any church. The question of suffrage was intensely controversial. There were those who dreaded the result of giving the ballot to tens of thousands of ignorant and illiterate men. Yet to disfranchise them would mean thus to debar thousands who had fought for Cuban independence in the late war, and it was not unreasonably feared that it would also cause dissatisfaction and resentment which would culminate in disorder and insurrection. In the end universal equal suffrage was adopted. The most bitter debate of all, however, was over the qualifications of the President of the Republic. A strong and persistent effort was made to imitate the Constitution of the United States by requiring him to be a native citizen. But that would have debarred Maximo Gomez, who was born in Santo Domingo. For that reason the proposed restriction was passionately opposed by all the friends of Gomez, and also by many who were not his friends and who would have opposed his candidacy for the Presidency but who felt that it would be disgraceful to put such a slight upon the gallant old hero of the two wars. On the other hand, the restriction was urged chiefly for that very reason, that it would debar Gomez; for, idolized as he was by the great mass of the Cuban people, he had a number of unrelenting enemies, especially among these politicians whom he had opposed and overruled in the matter of the Cuban Assembly and the payment of soldiers at the end of the war. After several days of acrimonious discussion the friends of Gomez won by a narrow margin, and the offensive proposal was rejected. There were many other controversial points, less personal and more worthy of debate in such a gathering on bases not of personality but of principle. The governmental powers of the Provinces gave rise to debates resembling those over state rights in America. The recognition of Cuban debts was a momentous matter. The method of electing Senators was also much discussed, as was the principle which the Military Administration had adopted of having the state and not the provinces or municipalities control public education. The right of the government to expel objectionable aliens was the theme of a long and spirited discussion. With all the animation, sentiment and rhetoric in which Latin debaters and orators more freely indulge than do the more phlegmatic Anglo-Saxons, all of these questions were very seriously considered according to their merits, and were disposed of on that same basis. There was no haste, and there was no undue delay; while everything was done "decently and in order." It took the Federal Convention of the United States four months of secret sessions to frame its Constitution, and its career was marked with many violent scenes, including the withdrawal of the representatives of one of the chief states from the Convention. The Cuban Convention had no incidents so unpleasant as that, and it completed its work in three months and a half. [Illustration: AURELIA CASTILLO DE GONZALEZ Aurelia Castillo de Gonzalez, poet and essayist, was born in Camaguey in 1842, spent much time in European travel, and then settled in Havana. She first attracted literary attention by her elegy on "El Lugareno" in 1866, and since that time has been an incessant contributor to Cuban literature in verse and prose. She is the author of a fine study of the Life and Works of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, of a volume of fables, and a number of satires. Her complete works (to date) were published in five volumes in 1913.] February 21, 1901 was the crowning day. Ten days before the draft of the Constitution, as yet unsigned, had been published in pamphlet form. On the date named the Convention was to give it validity by signing it. The public was admitted to view the scene, the consuls of foreign powers were in attendance as specially invited guests, and a fine military band discoursed patriotic and classical music. The Constitution, finally engrossed, was read aloud, and then one by one the delegates marched up to the President's desk and affixed their signatures. When the last name was written, all stood while the band played the national anthem of Cuba. The President of the Convention, Mendez Capote, made a graceful address of congratulation and good wishes; and the Convention adjourned, its work well ended. We have said that at the opening session, immediately after his introductory address, the American Military Governor left the hall. He did not revisit it, and neither he nor any American officer was ever present at any meeting of the Convention; nor was any American representative present at the closing function of the signing of the Constitution. The purpose of that abstention was obvious. It was to avoid so much as the appearance or the suspicion of American meddling or dictation in the work of the Convention. General Wood had told the Convention that it had nothing to do with his government of the island. Conversely he wished to show that he and his government had nothing to do with the work of the Convention. The Constitution thus auspiciously brought into existence declares Cuba to be a sovereign republic. The powers of government are much more centralized than those in the United States. The six Provinces have no such rights as have the states of America, though they have a liberal measure of local governmental power. They are not states or provinces, however, but mere departments--fractions of the whole instead of integral units. Each has a Governor and an elected Assembly. So each city and town has a mayor and a council. Municipalities have the power to levy taxes for local needs. The control of railroads and telegraphs is a national function, and the judicial system is also national. There is freedom of speech, of press and of worship. No prisoner may be held longer than twenty-four hours without judicial process. Congress consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives. There are six Senators from each department, elected by the municipalities for six years, one third retiring every two years. Representatives are elected from districts by the people for four years, there being one member to every 25,000 inhabitants. Senators and Representatives must be twenty-five years old, and if not native citizens must have been naturalized eight years. The President and Vice-President are elected for four years by the people through electoral colleges, with a provision for minority representation, each citizen voting for only two-thirds of the number of electors to which his district is entitled. Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed for life by the President with the ratification of the Senate. The civil law and constitutional guarantees can be suspended in case of emergency only by Congress when it is in session, but by the President when Congress is not in session. The House of Representatives may impeach the President, when the Senate may suspend him from office, try him, and upon conviction remove him permanently. Amendments of the Constitution must be voted by two-thirds of both Houses and ratified by a popular convention specially called for the purpose. There can be no question that this was a highly creditable production, and one which amply merited the qualified approval which was given to it by Elihu Root, Secretary of War of the United States, when he said: "I do not fully agree with the wisdom of some of the provisions of this Constitution. But it provides for a republican form of government; it was adopted after long and patient consideration and discussion; it represents the views of the delegates elected by the people of Cuba; and it contains no features which would justify the assertion that a government organized under it will not be one to which the United States may properly transfer the obligations for the protection of life and property under international law, assumed in the Treaty of Paris." The first part of the Convention's work was thus done. There remained the second part, the expression of Cuban opinion as to what ought to be the relations between that island and the United States. Over this a most unfortunate controversy arose, chiefly provoked and fomented, however, not by Cubans but by the partisan enemies of the President of the United States and of his policy, who did not scruple to intrigue against him in the affairs of foreign lands. It will be recalled that this hatred of him, provoked largely because of his insistence on fulfilling the pledge of Cuban freedom instead of seeking to serve certain sordid interests by forcibly annexing the island, culminated in the assassination of President McKinley at the incitement of his political foes. The opposition to him and to his policy in Cuba was continued unabated against his successor, President Roosevelt; and it was most unfortunate for both countries that the establishment of Cuban self-government and the determination of her relations to her northern neighbor, had to be effected in such circumstances. The United States government had to deal on the one hand with those who insisted that it should have no more special relations with Cuba than any other country had; and on the other with those who demanded the repudiation of the Congressional pledge and the forcible annexation of the island. In those circumstances it was not strange that many Cubans were disinclined to make any such arrangement as had been required in the call for the Convention. They recalled that the United States had declared that "Cuba is of right and ought to be free and independent," and they were not disposed to look beyond that declaration. Three considerations were too much overlooked on both sides, save by the thoughtful American and Cuban statesmen who finally solved the problem. One was that the United States had for nearly a century exercised a certain degree of protection or supervision over Cuba. It had repeatedly forbidden European powers to meddle with the island, and had for many years guaranteed and protected Spain in her possession of it. It was held to be only reasonable that a similar degree of interest should be maintained in the island in its independent status. The second point was that in the Treaty of Paris in 1898 the United States had incurred a certain moral if not a legal responsibility for the future of Cuba. The third was the much less specific yet by no means negligible consideration that the United States had intervened in Cuba to put an end to conditions which had become intolerably offensive to it, and it was therefore equitably entitled to take all proper precautions against a recurrence of such conditions. In pursuance of the requirements of the call for the Convention, then, immediately after the signing of the Constitution, a committee was appointed to draft a project concerning relations with the United States. It consisted of Diego Tamayo, Gonzalo de Quesada, Juan Gualberto Gomez, Enrique Villuendas, and Manuel Ramon Silva. These gentlemen conferred with General Wood, to learn the wishes of President McKinley, and then drafted a scheme which they presented to the Convention and which that body adopted on February 27. Unfortunately between the President's wishes and the committee's project there were radical differences. The President, through his Secretary of War, Elihu Root, had on February 9 expressed with much circumstance and detail and a wealth of argument the relationship which the United States government regarded as essential. It amounted to this: That the Cuban government should never make any treaty or engagement which would impair its independence, nor make any special agreement with any foreign power without the consent of the United States; that it should contract no public debt in excess of the capacity of the ordinary revenues of the island; that the United States should have the right of intervention for the preservation of Cuban independence and the maintenance of a stable government; that all the acts of the American Military Administration should be validated; and that the United States should be permitted to acquire and to hold naval stations in Cuba at certain points. The Committee of the Convention reported that in its judgment some of these conditions were unacceptable, inasmuch as they impaired the independence of Cuba. So it proposed and the Convention adopted proposals to this effect: That Cuba should never impair her independence by any agreement with any power, not excepting the United States; that she should never permit her territory to be used as a base or war against the United States; that she accepted the obligations expressed and implied in the Treaty of Paris; that she should validate the acts of the Military Government "for the good government of Cuba"; and that the United States and Cuba should regulate their commercial relations by means of a reciprocity treaty. Obviously, there was a wide divergence between the two schemes. It was unfortunate that the American Congress was about to adjourn, on March 4, and was reluctant to reassemble in special session, and also that the political passions to which we have referred were raging at so high a pitch. In more favorable circumstances the matter would have been settled diplomatically without friction or ill-feeling. There was, indeed, a very considerable conservative party in Cuba, probably comprising a majority of the substantial, well informed and orderly inhabitants, who favored some such scheme of American supervision and control as that which had been proposed, and if there had been a little more time for calm deliberation they would probably have won the Convention and the whole island to their point of view. Unhappily the government at Washington determined to finish the matter up before Congress adjourned on March 4, and in the short time which intervened the passionate voice of faction was much more in evidence man the thoughtful and measured voice of patriotic counsel. Senator Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut, one of the ablest and fairest-minded men in that body, was the Chairman of the Committee on Relations with Cuba. It was probably he who suggested the modification which was made in the instructions to the Convention. He now declared that--which was perfectly true--the United States Congress had no power to approve, reject, or in any way amend or modify the Cuban Constitution. Cuba was entitled to establish her own government without let or hindrance. But he also held that by virtue of the grounds of its intervention in Cuban affairs the United States possessed certain rights and privileges in that island above those of other powers, and that it was in duty bound, for the sake of both Cuba and itself, to provide in some assured way for the permanent safe-guarding of those special interests. These views were approved by the best thought of both countries, and ultimately prevailed. In accordance with the views thus expressed, Senator Platt prepared as an addendum to the Army Appropriation bill, on February 25, the historic measure known as the Platt Amendment. This, consisting of eight brief paragraphs, embodied the very points which the President had already made on February 9, with the addition of three more. One of these was, that the Cuban government should maintain the work of sanitation already so auspiciously begun, for the protection of its own people and also the people of the United States from epidemic pestilence; a requirement which was probably quite superfluous, seeing that the Cubans were as intent as the Americans upon the elimination of yellow fever and malaria. The second was, that the Isle of Pines should be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto being left for future adjustment by treaty. This extraordinary demand was a bad blot upon the measure, and it is difficult to understand how it ever was permitted to be inserted at the behest of some unscrupulous and sordid scheme of exploitation. Happily, subsequent treaty agreements and court decisions defeated its purpose and confirmed Cuba in her title to the Isle of Pines. The third was the requirement that Cuba should make this Platt Amendment either a part of her Constitution or an ordinance under it and appended to it, and should also embody it in a permanent treaty with the United States. At this the storm broke. The great mass of the conservative and thoughtful people of Cuba, while they regretted the need of it, recognized the necessity of such an arrangement, and earnestly favored the acceptance of the Platt Amendment, even with the one or two objectionable features. But the radicals vigorously opposed it, and in their opposition were greatly encouraged by the factional enemies of the President in the United States, who broke all bounds of decency, and not only raged against him there but organized a propaganda in Cuba itself, to incite Cubans to oppose and resist the United States. In this the foremost of such agitators were doubly false. They were not only stirring up a foreign people against their own country, but they were doing so with the deliberate and malignant hope of precipitating an armed conflict between the two countries which would result in the conquest and forcible annexation of Cuba. While pretending to sympathize with Cuba and to resent the alleged American impairment of her sovereignty, they were really scheming for the utter destruction of Cuban independence. Agitation, discussion, proposals and counter proposals, upon none of which could the Convention agree, continued week after week. At the end of March the question arose of sending a Commission to Washington to see the President. This was opposed violently, chiefly at the incitement of American emissaries, who busied themselves in Cuba in urging the rejection of everything that promised a settlement of the controversy. On April 1 some unscrupulous intriguer caused a message to be telegraphed from Washington to the effect that if a Commission came it would not be received; and this was received in Havana just as the Convention was about to vote to send such a Commission. Naturally, the Commission was not sent. On April 9, having learned that the message was unofficial and mischievous, the Convention reconsidered the matter and by an overwhelming majority voted to send a commission. Again mysterious dispatches came from Washington, saying that the President was resolute in refusing to recognize any Cuban envoys, and in consequence the sending of the Commission was delayed. Then the proposal was made that the Convention should reject the Platt Amendment outright, and afterward send a Commission to Washington; and this was actually carried, though by mistake, some members voting exactly contrary to the way they intended. Then it was voted to send a Commission, with special instructions to try to secure the inclusion of a commercial treaty in the Platt Amendment. With this in view the Convention on April 15 designated five members of such a Commission. They were Mendez Capote, the President of the Convention; Diego Tamayo, Leopoldo Berriel, Pedro Gonzales Llorente, and Rafael Portuondo; but as Dr. Berriel could not go, General Pedro Betancourt was named in his place. The Commission sailed for Washington on April 20. General Wood also sailed on the same day, though on another steamer. The Cubans reached Washington four days later, and the next day, in contradiction to the false dispatches which had been sent, they were courteously received by President McKinley. After a brief interview he introduced them to the Secretary of War, to whose department Cuban affairs, under a Military governor, belonged. He received them most cordially. Indeed, he had strongly wished them to come to Washington for a conference. He told them frankly that the Platt Amendment must stand, just as it was, and that it must be accepted and adopted by Cuba before any further steps could be taken for the establishment of a Cuban government. Then, at their request, he gave a detailed explanation of what the United States government conceived to be the meaning, the purpose and the effect of each of the provisions of that instrument. He especially showed that it was merely a logical continuation of long established American policy; that it was intended not for the gain of the United States but for the protection of Cuba; and that it would in no way interfere with the domestic self-sovereignty of the Cuban people, or with the rank of Cuba as an independent nation among the nations of the world. The Committee returned to Havana and reported to the Convention the results of its mission, and the Convention resumed consideration of the American demands in the new light of Mr. Root's exposition of them. Faction was still furious. Enemies of the President in the United States went to Cuba or sent word thither, urging the radical element to hold out to the bitter end against the Platt Amendment, saying that it would need only a little longer resistance to compel the American government to abandon it altogether. Counsels were divided in the Convention, and numerous proposals of substitutes for the Amendment or for parts of it were made, but upon none of them could the Convention agree. Some of the most radical members suggested that the Convention adjourn without day. But on the whole wiser counsels prevailed. The Commission had been much impressed by Mr. Root's candid and cogent presentation of the case. It had also become convinced that if the Amendment were adopted a liberal reciprocity measure would be granted which would be of vast value to Cuban commerce and industry. Consideration of the subject continued until the latter part of May. On May 28 the question of adoption of the Platt Amendment with certain qualifications was presented to the Convention for a final vote. The Convention divided equally. There were fourteen ayes and fourteen nays. Thereupon the President, Mendez Capote, cast the deciding ballot. He voted aye. This caused a renewal of the storm. Diego Tamayo and Juan Gualberto Gomez were especially outspoken in their denunciation of all who had voted for the measure, and some of the former's remarks were so severe that their retraction was required. The qualified acceptance of the Amendment was not, however, satisfactory to the Washington government, and the Convention was promptly informed of that fact. In consequence the matter was reopened, and on June 12, after a brief and temperate debate, a final vote was taken on unconditional acceptance and adoption of the Platt Amendment. The result was sixteen ayes to eleven nays. That ended the matter. The Amendment had become a permanent addendum to the Cuban Constitution, and the relations between the island's future government and the United States was irrevocably determined. There was little further criticism. The American agitators and speculators who had been inciting the Cubans to resistance, in order thus to make them compass their own ruin, abandoned their execrable intrigues for other ventures elsewhere, while the Cubans who had been their dupes, relieved of their pernicious influence, soon began to appreciate the reasonableness of most of the provisions of the Amendment and the very material benefits which it would bestow upon Cuba. CHAPTER XII The concretion of Cuban history is in the Constitution of the Cuban Republic. In that document are realized the hopes of a patient but resolute people. In it are embodied the ideals for which Lopez fought and died; for which Cespedes strove; for which Marti pleaded and taught and planned; for which Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo battled against desperate odds; for which Estrada Palma gave the ripe statesmanship of a devoted life. There were provisional constitutions before, drafted in mountain camps in the intervals between battles, but they represented aspirations rather than achievements. It was reserved for the time of triumph, when the Spaniard was forever driven from the Cuban shores, and the Pearl of the Antilles was no more made to adorn an alien diadem, for the statesmanship of the island in calm deliberation to frame the instrument which was to confirm and safeguard for all time that which had been won with the blood of innumerable martyrs, and which was to erect the Cuban people into the Cuban Nation. [Illustration: THE CAPITOL The Capitol, the new government building at Havana, is one of the great public works of the administration of President Menocal. It occupies a fine site in the heart of the city, and will architecturally rank among the noteworthy government buildings of the world. In the contrast between it and ancient La Fuerza, its original predecessor, is suggested the whole span of Cuban history.] We shall profitably pause for a space in our narrative, to note what manner of Constitution it was that was thus adopted: We, the delegates of the people of Cuba, in national convention assembled for the purpose of framing and adopting the Fundamental Law under which Cuba is to be organized as an independent and sovereign State, and be given a government capable of fulfilling its international obligations, preserving order, securing liberty and justice, and promoting the general welfare, do hereby ordain, adopt, and establish, invoking the favor of God, the following Constitution: TITLE I THE NATION, ITS FORM OF GOVERNMENT, AND THE NATIONAL TERRITORY ARTICLE 1. The people of Cuba constitute themselves into a sovereign, independent State and adopt a republican form of government. ART. 2. The island of Cuba and the islands and islets adjacent thereto, which up to the date of the ratification of the treaty of Paris, of December 10, 1898, were under the sovereignty of Spain, form the territory of the Republic. ART. 3. The territory of the Republic shall be divided into the six provinces which now exist, each of which shall retain its present boundaries. The determination of their names corresponds to the respective provincial councils. The provinces may by resolution of their respective provincial councils and the approval of Congress annex themselves to other provinces, or subdivide their territory and form new provinces. TITLE II CUBANS ART. 4. Cuban nationality is acquired by birth or by naturalization. ART. 5. Cubans by birth are: 1. All persons born of Cuban parents whether within or without the territory of the Republic. 2. All persons born of foreign parents within the territory of the Republic, provided that on becoming of age they apply for inscription, as Cubans, in the proper register. 3. All persons born in foreign countries of parents natives of Cuba who have forfeited their Cuban nationality, provided that on becoming of age they apply for their inscription as Cubans in the register aforesaid. ART. 6. Cubans by naturalization are: 1. Foreigners who having served in the liberating army claim Cuban nationality within six months following the promulgation of this constitution. 2. Foreigners domiciled in Cuba prior to January 1, 1899, who have retained their domicile, provided that they claim Cuban nationality within six months following the promulgation of this constitution, or if they are minors within a like period following the date on which they reach full age. 3. Foreigners who after five years' residence in the territory of the Republic, and not less than two years after the declaration of their intention to acquire Cuban nationality have obtained naturalization papers according to law. 4. Spaniards residing in the territory of Cuba on the 11th day of April, 1899, who failed to register themselves as such in the corresponding register within one year thereafter. 5. Africans who were slaves in Cuba, and those "emancipated" referred to in article 13 of treaty of June 28, 1835, between Spain and England. ART. 7. Cuban nationality is lost: 1. By the acquisition of foreign citizenship. 2. By the acceptance of employment or honors from another government without permission of the Senate. 3. By entering the military service of a foreign nation without the said permission. 4. In cases of naturalized Cubans, by their residence for five years continuously in the country of origin, except when serving an office or fulfilling a commission of the Government of the Republic. ART. 8. Cuban nationality may be reacquired in the manner to be provided by law. ART. 9. Every Cuban shall be bound: 1. To bear arms in defense of his country in such cases and in such manner as may be determined by the laws. 2. To contribute to the payment of public expenses in such manner and proportion as the laws may prescribe. TITLE III FOREIGNERS ART. 10. Foreigners residing within the territory of the Republic shall be on the same footing as Cubans: 1. In respect to protection of their persons and property. 2. In respect to the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by Section first of the following title, excepting those exclusively reserved to citizens. 3. In respect to the enjoyment of civil rights under the conditions and limitations prescribed in the law of aliens. 4. In respect to the obligation of obeying the laws, decrees, regulations, and all other statutes that may be in force in the Republic, and complying with their provisions. 5. In respect to submission to the jurisdiction and decisions of the courts of justice and all other authorities of the Republic. 6. In respect to the obligation of contributing to the public expenses of the State, province, and municipality. TITLE IV RIGHTS GUARANTEED BY THIS CONSTITUTION SECTION FIRST INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ART. 11. All Cubans are equal before the law. The Republic does not recognize any personal prerogatives. ART. 12. No law shall have retroactive effect, except when penal and favorable to the defendant. ART. 13. Obligations of a civil nature arising out of contracts or other acts or omissions shall not be nullified by either the legislative or the executive power. ART. 14. The penalty of death shall in no case be imposed for offenses of political character, said offenses to be defined by law. ART. 15. No person shall be detained except in the cases and in the manner prescribed by law. ART. 16. Every arrested person shall be set at liberty or placed at the disposal of the competent judge or court within twenty-four hours immediately following the arrest. ART. 17. All arrests shall be terminated, or turned into formal imprisonments, within seventy-two hours, immediately after the delivery of the arrested person to the judge or court of competent jurisdiction. Within the same time notice shall be served upon the interested party of the action taken. ART. 18. No person shall be imprisoned except by order of a competent judge or court. The order directing the imprisonment shall be affirmed or reversed, upon the proper hearing of the prisoner, within seventy-two hours next following the committal. ART. 19. No person shall be prosecuted or sentenced except by a competent judge or court, by virtue of laws in force, prior to the commission of the offense, and in the manner and form prescribed by said laws. ART. 20. Every person arrested or imprisoned without the formalities of law, or outside of the cases foreseen in this constitution or the laws, shall be set at liberty at his own request or that of any citizen. The law shall determine the form of summary proceedings to be followed in this case. ART. 21. No one shall be bound to testify against himself, neither shall he be compelled to testify against his consort, nor against his relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity. ART. 22. The secrecy of correspondence and other private documents is inviolable, and neither shall be seized or examined except by order of a competent authority and with the formalities prescribed by the laws. In all cases matters therein contained not relating to the subject under investigation shall be kept secret. ART. 23. Domicile is inviolable; and therefore no one shall enter at night the house of another except by permission of its occupant, unless it be for the purpose of giving aid and assistance to victims of crime or accident; or in the daytime, except in the cases and in the manner prescribed by law. ART. 24. No person shall be compelled to change his domicile or residence except by virtue of an order issued by a competent authority and in the cases prescribed by law. ART. 25. Every one may freely express his ideas either orally or in writing, through the press, or in any other manner, without subjection to previous censorship; but the responsibilities specified by law, when attacks are made upon the honor of individuals, the social order, or the public peace, shall be properly enforced. ART. 26. The profession of all religions, as well as the practice of all forms of worship, is free, without any other restriction than that demanded by the respect for Christian morality and public order. The church shall be separated from the state, which in no case shall subsidize any religion. ART. 27. All persons shall have the right to address petitions to the authorities, to have them duly acted upon, and to be informed of the action taken thereon. ART. 28. All the inhabitants of the Republic have the right to assemble peacefully, without arms, and to associate with others for all lawful pursuits of life. ART. 29. All persons shall have the right to enter or leave the territory of the Republic, to travel within its limits, and to change their residence, without necessity of safe conducts, passports, except when otherwise provided by the laws governing immigration, or by the authorities, in cases of criminal prosecution. ART. 30. No Cuban shall be banished from the territory of the Republic or prohibited from entering it. ART. 31. Primary instruction shall be compulsory and gratuitous. The teaching of arts and trades shall also be gratuitous. Both shall be supported by the State, as long as the municipalities and Provinces, respectively, may lack sufficient funds to defray their expenses. Secondary and superior education shall be controlled by the State. All persons however, may, without restriction, learn or teach any science, art, or profession, and found and maintain establishments of education and instruction, but it pertains to the State to determine what professions shall require special titles, what conditions shall be required for their practice and for the securing of diplomas, as well as for the issuing thereof as established by law. ART. 32. No one shall be deprived of his property, except by competent authority, upon proof that the condemnation is required by public utility, and previous indemnification. If the indemnification is not previously paid, the courts shall protect the owners and, if needed, restore to them the property. ART. 33. In no case shall the penalty of confiscation of property be imposed. ART. 34. No person is bound to pay any tax or impost not legally established and the collection of which is not carried out in the manner prescribed by the laws. ART. 35. Every author or inventor shall enjoy the exclusive ownership of his work or invention for the time and in the manner determined by law. ART. 36. The enumeration of the rights expressly guaranteed by this Constitution does not exclude other rights based upon the principle of the sovereignty of the people and the republican form of Government. ART. 37. The laws regulating the exercise of the rights which this Constitution guarantees shall be null and void if said rights are abridged, restricted, or adulterated by them. SECTION SECOND RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE ART. 38. All Cubans of the masculine sex, over twenty-one years of age, have the right of suffrage, except the following: 1. Those who are inmates of asylums. 2. Those judicially declared to be mentally incapacitated. 3. Those judicially deprived of civil rights on account of crime. 4. Those serving in the land or naval forces of the Republic when in active service. ART. 39. The laws shall establish rules and methods of procedure to guarantee the intervention of the minorities in the preparation of the census of electors, and in all other electoral matters, and its representation in the House of Representatives and in the provincial and municipal councils. SECTION THIRD SUSPENSION OF CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTIES ART. 40. The guaranties established in articles 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, and 27, section first of this title, shall not be suspended either in the whole Republic, or in any part thereof, except temporarily and when the safety of the state may require it, in cases of invasion of the territory or of serious disturbances that may threaten public peace. ART. 41. The territory in which the guaranties mentioned in the preceding article are suspended shall be ruled during the period of suspension according to the law of public order which may have been previously enacted. But neither the said law, nor any other, shall order the suspension of other guaranties not mentioned in the said article. Nor shall any new offenses be created, or new penalties not established by the law which was in force at the time of the suspension, be ordered to be inflicted during the same. The executive power is hereby forbidden to exile or expel from the country any citizen thereof, or compel him to reside at any other place farther than one hundred and twenty kilometers from his domicile. Nor shall it detain any citizen for more than ten days, without delivering him to the judicial authorities, or repeat the detention during the time of the suspension of guaranties. The detained individuals shall be kept in special departments in the public establishments destined for the detention of prisoners charged with common offenses. ART. 42. The suspension of the guaranties specified in article 40 shall be ordered only and exclusively by means of a law, but if Congress is not in session, it can be ordered by a decree of the President of the Republic. But the President shall have no power to suspend the guaranties more than once during the period intervening between two sessions of Congress, or for an indefinite period of time, or for a period longer than thirty days, without calling at the same time Congress to meet. In all cases the President shall report the facts to Congress, in order that it may act as deemed proper. TITLE V THE SOVEREIGNTY AND THE PUBLIC POWERS ART. 43. The sovereignty is vested in the people of Cuba, and from the said people all the public powers emanate. TITLE VI THE LEGISLATIVE POWER SECTION FIRST THE LEGISLATIVE BODIES ART. 44. The legislative power is vested in two elective bodies, to be known as the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate; the two together constituting the Congress. SECTION SECOND THE SENATE, ITS MEMBERSHIP AND ITS POWERS ART. 45. The Senate shall consist of four Senators for each Province, to be elected in each one for a period of eight years by the provincial councilors, and by double that number of electors forming with the councilors an electoral college. One-half of the electors shall consist of citizens paying the greatest amount of taxes, and the other half shall possess the qualifications required by law. But it is necessary for all of them to be of full age and residents of the Province. The election of electors shall be made by the provincial voters one hundred days before that of the senators. The Senate shall be renewed by halves every four years. ART. 46. No one shall be a senator who has not the following qualifications: 1. To be a Cuban by birth. 2. To be over thirty-five years of age. 3. To be in the full enjoyment of civil and political rights. ART. 47. The Senate shall have the following exclusive powers: 1. To try, sitting as a tribunal of justice, the impeachment of the President of the Republic, upon charges made against him by the Chamber of Representatives, for crimes against the external security of the State, against the free exercise of the legislative or judicial powers, or for violation of the constitutional provisions. 2. To try, sitting as a tribunal of justice, the impeachment of the secretaries of state, upon charges made against them by the Chamber of Representatives, for crimes against the external security of the State, the free exercise of the legislative or judicial powers, violation of the constitutional provision, or any other crime of political character determined by law. 3. To try, sitting as a tribunal of justice, the impeachment of the governors of Provinces, upon charges made against them by the provincial councils or by the President of the Republic for any of the crimes named in the foregoing paragraph. When the Senate sits as a tribunal of justice, it shall be presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and shall not impose any other penalty than that of removal from office, or removal from office and disqualification from holding any public office; but the infliction of any other penalty upon the convicted official shall be left to the courts declared by law to be competent for the purpose. 4. To confirm the nominations made by the President of the Republic for the positions of Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, diplomatic representatives and consular agents of the nation, and all other public officers whose nominations require the approval of the Senate in accordance with the law. 5. To authorize Cuban citizens to accept employment or honors from foreign governments or to serve in their armies. 6. To approve the treaties entered into by the President of the Republic with other nations. SECTION THIRD THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ITS MEMBERSHIP AND ITS POWERS ART. 48. The House of Representatives shall consist of one representative for each twenty-five thousand inhabitants or fraction thereof over twelve thousand five hundred, elected for the period of four years by the direct vote of the people and in the manner provided by law. The House of Representatives shall be renewed by halves every two years. ART. 49. No one shall be a Representative who has not the following qualifications: 1. To be a Cuban citizen by birth or by naturalization, provided in the latter case that the candidate has resided eight years in the Republic, to be counted from the date of his naturalization. 2. To have attained to the age of twenty-five years. 3. To be in full possession of all civil and political rights. ART. 50. The power to impeach before the Senate the President of the Republic and the cabinet ministers, in the cases prescribed in paragraphs first and second of article 47 corresponds to the House of Representatives. But the concurrence of two-thirds of the total number of Representatives, in secret session, shall be required to exercise this right. SECTION FOURTH PROVISIONS COMMON TO BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS ART. 51. The positions of Senator and Representative are incompatible with the holding of any other paid position of Government appointment, except a professorship in a Government institution, obtained by competitive examination prior to the election. ART. 52. Senators and Representatives shall receive from the State a pecuniary remuneration, alike for both positions, the amount of which may be changed at any time; the change shall not take effect until after the renewal of the legislative bodies. ART. 53. Senators and Representatives shall be inviolable for their votes and opinions in the discharge of their duties. Senators and Representatives shall only be arrested or indicted upon permission of the body to which they belong, if Congress is then in Session, except in case of flagrante delicto. In this case, and in the case of the arrest or indictment being made when Congress is not in session, the fact shall be reported, as soon as practicable, to the respective House for proper action. ART. 54. Both Houses of Congress shall open and close their sessions on the same day; they shall meet in the same city, and neither shall move to any other place, or adjourn for more than three days, except by common consent. Nor shall they begin to do business without two-thirds of the total number of their members being present, or continue their sessions without the attendance of an absolute majority. ART. 55. Each House shall be the judge of the election of its respective members and shall also pass upon their resignations. No Senator or Representative shall be expelled from the House to which he belongs, except upon grounds previously determined, and to the concurrence of at least two-thirds of the total number of its members. ART. 56. Each House shall frame its respective rules and regulations, and elect from among its members its president, vice-presidents and secretaries. But the president of the Senate shall not discharge his duties as such, except in case the Vice-President of the Republic is absent or acting as President. SECTION FIFTH CONGRESS AND ITS POWERS ART. 57. Congress shall assemble, without necessity of previous call, twice in each year, each session to last not less than forty working days. The first session shall begin on the first Monday in April and the second on the first Monday in November. It shall meet in extra session in such cases and in such manner as may be provided by its rules and regulations and when called to convene by the President of the Republic in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution. In both cases it shall only consider the express object or objects for which it assembles. ART. 58. Congress shall meet in joint session to proclaim, after counting and verifying the electoral vote, the President and Vice-President of the Republic. In this case the president of the Senate, and in his absence the president of the House of Representatives, as vice-president of the Congress, shall preside over the joint meeting. If upon counting the votes for President it is found that none of the candidates has an absolute majority of votes, or if the votes are equally divided, Congress, by the same majority, shall elect as President one of the two candidates having obtained the greatest number of votes. Should more than two candidates receive the highest number of votes--no one obtaining an absolute majority--two or more having secured the same number, Congress shall elect from said candidates. The method established in the preceding paragraph shall be also employed in the election of Vice-President of the Republic. The counting of the electoral vote shall take place prior to the expiration of the Presidential term. ART. 59. Congress shall have the following powers: 1. To enact the national codes and the laws of a general nature; to determine the rules that shall be observed in the general, provincial, and municipal elections; to issue orders for the regulation and organization of all services pertaining to the administration of national, provincial, and municipal government; and to pass all other laws and resolutions which it may deem proper relating to other matters of public interest. 2. To discuss and approve the budgets of the revenues and expenses of the Government. The said revenues and expenses, except such as will be mentioned hereafter, shall be included in annual budgets which shall be available only during the year for which they shall have been approved. The expenses of Congress, those of the administration of justice, and those required to meet the interest and redemption of loans, shall have, the same as the revenues with which they have to be paid, the character of permanent and shall be included in a fixed budget which shall remain in force until changed by special laws. 3. To contract loans, with the obligation, however, of providing permanent revenues for the payment of the interest and redemption thereof. All measures relating to loans shall require the vote of two-thirds of the total numbers of the members of each House. 4. To coin money, fixing the standard, weight, value, and denomination thereof. 5. To regulate the system of weights and measures. 6. To make provisions for regulating and developing internal and foreign commerce. 7. To regulate the services of communications and railroads, roads, canals, and harbors, creating those required by public convenience. 8. To levy such taxes and imposts of national character as may be necessary for the needs of the government. 9. To establish rules and proceedings for obtaining naturalization. 10. To grant amnesties. 11. To fix the strength of the land and naval forces and provide for their organization. 12. To declare war and approve treaties of peace negotiated by the President of the Republic. 13. To designate, by means of a special law, the official who shall act as President of the Republic in case of death, resignation, removal, or supervenient inability of the President and Vice-President. ART. 60. Congress shall not attach to appropriation bills any provision tending to make changes or reforms in the legislation or in the administration of the Government; nor shall it diminish or abolish revenues of permanent character without creating at the same time new revenues to take their place, except in case that the decrease or abolition depend upon the decrease or abolition of the equivalent permanent expenses. Nor shall Congress appropriate for any service to be provided for in the annual budget a larger sum of money than that recommended in the estimates submitted by the Government; but Congress may by means of special laws create new services and reform or give greater scope to those already existing. SECTION SIXTH INITIATIVE, PREPARATION, APPROVAL, AND PROMULGATION OF LAWS ART. 61. The right to initiate legislation is vested without distinction in both houses of Congress. ART. 62. Every bill passed by the two houses, and every resolution of the same which has to be executed by the President of the Republic, shall be submitted to him for approval. If they are approved, they shall be signed at once by the President. If they are not approved, they shall be returned by the President, with his objections, to the house in which they originated, which shall enter said objections upon its journal and engage again in the discussion of the subject. If after this new discussion two-thirds of the total number of the members of the house vote in favor of the bill or resolution as originally passed, the latter shall be referred with the objections of the President, to the other house, where it shall be also discussed, and if the measure is approved there by the same majority it shall become law. In all these cases the vote shall be by yeas and nays. If within ten working days immediately following the sending of the bill or resolution to the President, the latter fails to return it, it shall be considered approved and shall become law. If within the last ten days of a session of Congress a bill is sent to the President of the Republic, and he wishes to take advantage of the whole time granted him in the foregoing paragraph for the purposes of approval or disapproval, he shall acquaint the Congress with his desire, so as to cause it to remain in session, if it so wishes, until the end of the ten days. The failure by the President to do so shall cause the bill to be considered approved and become law. No bill totally rejected by one house shall be discussed again in the same session. ART. 63. Every law shall be promulgated within ten days next following its approval by either the President or the Congress, as the case may be, under the provisions of the preceding article. TITLE VII THE EXECUTIVE POWER SECTION FIRST THE EXERCISE OF THE EXECUTIVE POWER ART. 64. The executive power shall be vested in the President of the Republic. SECTION SECOND THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC, HIS POWERS AND DUTIES ART. 65. To be President of the Republic the following qualifications shall be required. 1. To be a Cuban by birth or naturalization, and in the latter case to have served in the Cuban armies in the wars of independence for at least ten years. 2. To be over forty years of age. 3. To be in the full enjoyment of civil and political rights. ART. 66. The President of the Republic shall be elected by presidential electors on the same day, in the manner provided by law. The term of office shall be four years, and no one shall be President for three consecutive terms. ART. 67. The President, before entering on the discharge of the duties of his office, shall take oath or affirmation before the supreme court of justice to faithfully discharge his duties and comply and cause others to comply with the constitution and the laws. ART. 68. The President of the Republic shall have the following powers and duties: 1. To approve and promulgate the laws, and obey and cause others to obey their provisions. To enact, if Congress has not done so, such rules and regulations as may be necessary for the proper execution of the laws; and to issue all orders or decrees which may be conducive to the same purpose or to any other purposes of government and the administration thereof in the Republic, provided that in no case the said orders or decrees are at variance with the provisions of the law. 2. To call Congress, or the Senate alone, to meet in extra session in the cases set forth in the constitution, or when in his opinion the meeting may be necessary. 3. He shall adjourn Congress when no agreement can be reached between the two houses on the question of adjournment. 4. To transmit to Congress at the beginning of each session, and whenever he may deem it advisable, a message relating to the acts of his administration, showing the general condition of the affairs of the Republic, and recommending the adoption of such laws and measures as he may deem necessary or advisable. 5. To submit to Congress through either one of the Houses, before the 15th of November, a draft of the annual budget. 6. To furnish Congress all the information desired by it on every matter of business which does not require secrecy. 7. To conduct all diplomatic negotiations and conclude treaties with foreign nations, provided that these treaties be submitted for approval of the Senate, without which requisite they shall be neither valid nor binding upon the Republic. 8. To freely appoint and remove the Secretaries of State, giving Congress information of his action. 9. To appoint, with the approval of the Senate, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, and the diplomatic and consular agents of the Republic. If the vacancy occurs at a time in which the Senate is not in session, he shall have power to make the appointment of said functionaries ad interim. 10. To appoint all other public officers recognized by law, whose appointment is not entrusted to some other authority. 11. To suspend the exercise of the rights enumerated in article 40 of the constitution in the cases and in the manner set forth in articles 41 and 42. 12. To suspend the resolutions passed by the provincial and municipal councils in the cases and in the manner set forth in this constitution. 13. To order the suspension of the governors of provinces in case they exceed their powers or violate the laws; but in these cases he shall report the fact to the Senate, in the manner and form determined by law, for such action as may be proper. 14. To prefer charges against the governors of provinces in the cases set forth in paragraph 3 of article 47. 15. To grant pardons according to the provisions of the law, except in the case of public functionaries convicted for wrongs done in the exercise of their functions. 16. To receive diplomatic representatives and admit consular agents of other nations. 17. To dispose of the land and sea forces of the Republic as chief commander of the same. To provide for the defense of the national territory, reporting to Congress what he may have done on the subject. To provide for the preservation of peace and public order in the interior of the country. If there is danger of invasion or of any rebellion breaking out and gravely threatening the public safety, Congress not being in session at the time, the President shall call it to convene without delay for such action as may be deemed proper. ART. 69. The President shall not leave the territory of the Republic without the permission of Congress. ART. 70. The President shall be responsible before the Supreme Court for the common offense he may commit during his term of office, but he shall not be prosecuted without previous permission of the Senate. ART. 71. The President shall receive from the State a salary which may be changed at any time, but the change shall not go into effect until the next following presidential term. TITLE VIII THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC ART. 72. There shall be a Vice-President of the Republic, who shall be elected in the same manner and for the same period of time as the President, and jointly with him. To be Vice-President the same qualifications set forth in this constitution to be President shall be required. ART. 73. The Vice-President of the Republic shall be the President of the Senate, but he shall vote only in case that the votes of the Senators are equally divided. ART. 74. In case of temporary or permanent absence of the President of the Republic, the Vice-President shall act in his place. If the absence is permanent, the Acting President shall continue in office until the end of the presidential term. ART. 75. The Vice-President shall receive from the State a salary which may be changed at any time, but the change shall not go into effect until the next following presidential term. TITLE IX THE SECRETARIES OF STATE ART. 76. For the transaction of the executive business the President of the Republic shall have as many Secretaries of State as the law may determine, and no one shall be a Secretary of State who is not a Cuban citizen in the full enjoyment of his civil and political rights. ART. 77. All decrees, orders and decisions of the President of the Republic shall be counter-signed by the secretary of State to whom the matter corresponds. Without this signature no decree, order or decision of the President shall have binding force nor shall it be obeyed. ART. 78. The secretaries of state shall be personally responsible for the measures signed by them, and jointly and severally for the measures agreed upon or authorized by them at a cabinet meeting. This responsibility does not exclude the personal and direct responsibility of the President of the Republic. ART. 79. The secretaries of state shall be impeachable before the Senate by the House of Representatives in the cases mentioned in the second paragraph of article 47. ART. 80. The secretaries of state shall receive from the State a salary, which may be changed at any time, but the change shall not go into effect until the next following presidential term. TITLE X THE JUDICIAL POWER SECTION FIRST THE EXERCISE OF THE JUDICIAL POWER ART. 81. The judicial power is vested in a Supreme Court of Justice and in all the other tribunals which may be established by law. The law shall regulate the respective organization and powers of these tribunals, the manner of exercising their powers, and the qualifications required of the judicial functionaries. SECTION SECOND THE SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE ART. 82. To be Chief Justice or Associate Justice of the Supreme Court the following qualifications shall be required: 1. To be a Cuban by birth. 2. To be over thirty-five years of age. 3. To be in the full enjoyment of civil and political rights and not to have been condemned to any corporal punishment for common offenses. 4. To have in addition to the foregoing qualifications any one of the following: To have practiced in Cuba, during ten years at least, the profession of lawyer; or have discharged for the same length of time judicial functions, or have taught law for the same number of years in an official establishment. The following persons are also eligible for the positions of Chief Justice or Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, even if not having the qualifications set forth in clauses 1, 2, and 3 of this article: (a) Those who have served in the judiciary of the time determined by law in a position of equal or immediately inferior category. (b) Those who, previous to the promulgation of this constitution, served as justices of the supreme court of the island of Cuba. The time of service in the judiciary shall be computed as time of practice of law for the purpose of qualifying the lawyers to be appointed justices of the supreme court. ART. 83. The Supreme Court shall have the following powers, in addition to those already vested or hereafter to be vested in it: 1. To take cognizance of cases on a writ of error. 2. To decide conflicts of jurisdiction between courts immediately inferior to it, or not having a common superior. 3. To take cognizance of the cases to which the State on the one side and the provinces or municipalities on the other, are parties. 4. To decide as to the constitutionality of the laws, decrees, and regulations when a question of that effect is raised by any party. SECTION THIRD GENERAL RULES REGARDING THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE ART. 84. Justice shall be administered gratuitously throughout the entire territory of the Republic. ART. 85. The courts shall take cognizance of all cases, whether civil, criminal, or between the Government and private parties. ART. 86. No judicial commissions or extraordinary tribunals, no matter under what name, shall ever be created. ART. 87. No functionary of the judicial order shall be suspended or removed from his office except for crime or any other grave cause, fully proven, and always after being heard. Nor shall he be transferred without his consent to any other place, unless it is for the manifest benefit of the public service. ART. 88. All judicial functionaries shall be personally responsible, in the manner and form determined by law, for the violations of law which they may commit. ART. 89. The salaries of judicial functionaries shall not be changed except at the end of periods of more than five years, and by means of a law. The law, however, shall not give different salaries to positions whose rank, category, and functions are equal. ART. 90. The courts for the forces of land and sea shall be governed by a special organic law. TITLE XI THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT SECTION FIRST GENERAL PROVISIONS ART. 91. A province consists of the municipal districts established within its limits. ART. 92. Each province shall have a governor and a provincial council elected directly by the people, in the manner and form established by law. The number of councilors in each province shall not be less than eight nor more than twenty. SECTION SECOND THE PROVINCIAL COUNCILS AND THEIR POWERS ART. 93. The provincial councils shall have the following powers: 1. To resolve upon matters concerning the provinces which, under the constitution, treaties or laws, are not within the general jurisdiction of the State or the exclusive jurisdiction of the municipal councils. 2. To frame the budget of their expenses, providing at the same time for the necessary revenue to meet them, provided that this is done in a manner not inconsistent with the system adopted by the State. 3. To contract loans for public works of provincial interest, provided that at the same time sufficient revenue is raised to meet the payment of interest and principal when due. Such loans shall not be carried into effect unless they are approved by two-thirds of the municipal councils of the province. 4. To impeach before the Senate the governor of their respective province, in the case set forth in paragraph 3 of article 47, when two-thirds of the total number of provincial councilors decide in secret session that this should be done. 5. To appoint and remove, according to law, the provincial employes. ART. 94. The provincial councils shall have no power to diminish or abolish revenue of permanent character without creating at the same time other revenue to take its place, except in case that the decrease or suppression is due to the decrease or suppression of equivalent permanent expenses. ART. 95. The resolutions of the provincial councils shall be sent to the governor of the province. If approved, they shall be signed by him; if not, they shall be returned with his objections to the council, wherein the subject shall be again discussed. If after the second discussion the resolution is approved by two-thirds of the total number of councilors it shall become a law. If the governor does not return the resolution within ten days from the date of reference it shall be considered approved and shall become a law. ART. 96. The resolutions of the provincial councils may be suspended by the governor of the province or by the President of the Republic, whenever, in their opinion, they are contrary to the constitution, the laws, or any resolutions passed by the municipal councils in due exercise of their functions; but the right to take cognizance of and pass upon the claims which may arise out of the said suspension shall be reserved to the courts of justice. ART. 97. Neither the provincial councils not any section or committees, selected from their members or from persons not members thereof, shall intervene in matters belonging to any class of elections. ART. 98. The provincial councilors shall be personally responsible before the courts in the manner determined by law for whatever may be done by them in the exercise of their functions. SECTION THIRD THE GOVERNORS OF PROVINCES AND THEIR POWERS ART. 99. The governors of provinces shall have the following powers: 1. To comply and cause others to comply, as far as their provinces are concerned, with the laws, decrees, and general rules and regulations of the nation. 2. To publish such resolutions of the provincial councils as have force of law, and comply and cause others to comply with them. 3. To issue orders, instructions, and rules for the proper execution of the resolutions of the provincial council, if the latter has not done so already. 4. To call the provincial councils to convene in extra session whenever in his own judgment the same may be necessary. The subjects to be discussed in this session shall be set forth in the call. 5. To suspend the resolutions of the provincial and municipal councils in the cases set forth in this constitution. 6. To order the suspension of mayors, in case they have exceeded their powers, violated the constitution or the laws, acted in contravention to the resolutions of the provincial councils, or failed to do their duty. The suspension shall be reported to the provincial council in the manner and form established by law. 7. To appoint and remove the employes of their offices in the manner provided by law. ART. 100. The governors shall be responsible before the Senate in the cases set forth in this constitution, and before the courts of justice, according to the provisions of the law, in all other classes of offenses. ART. 101. The governors shall receive from the provincial treasury a salary, which may be changed at any time, but the change shall not take effect until after a new governor's election is held. ART. 102. In case of temporary or permanent vacancy of the position of governor of the province, the president of the provincial council shall act in his place. If the vacancy is permanent, the acting governor shall continue in the discharge of his duties as such until the end of the term. TITLE XII THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT SECTION FIRST GENERAL PROVISIONS ART. 103. The municipal districts shall be governed by municipal councils, consisting of aldermen or councilors directly elected by the people, in the number and in the manner provided by law. ART. 104. There shall be in each municipal district a mayor elected by the people by direct vote in the manner and form established by law. SECTION SECOND THE MUNICIPAL COUNCILS AND THEIR POWERS ART. 105. The municipal councils shall have the following powers: 1. To resolve on all matters exclusively relating to their own municipal districts. 2. To prepare the budget of their expenses, providing at the same time, on condition, however, that this is done in a manner consistent with the general system of taxation of the Republic. 3. To resolve on the negotiation of loans, providing at the same time the permanent revenue necessary to meet the interest and principal when due. In order that these loans may be carried into effect, they shall have to be approved by two-thirds of the electors of the municipal district. 4. To appoint and remove the municipal employes in the manner established by law. ART. 106. The municipal councils shall not decrease or suppress any revenues of permanent character without establishing at the same time some other revenues which may take their place, except in case the decrease or suppression is due to the decrease or suppression of the equivalent permanent expense. ART. 107. The resolutions of the municipal councils shall be referred to the mayor. If approved by him, they shall be authorized with his signature; if not, they shall be returned, with his objections, to the municipal council, wherein they shall be again discussed. If, after a second discussion, two-thirds of the total number of councilors vote in favor of the resolution it shall become a law. When the mayor does not return the resolution, within ten days after the date of reference, it shall be considered approved and become a law. ART. 108. The resolutions of the municipal councils may be suspended by the mayor, the governor of the province, or the President of the Republic, when in their opinion they are contrary to the constitution, the treaties, the laws, or the resolutions passed by the provincial councils within the sphere of their powers. But the right to take cognizance and pass upon the claims which may arise out of said suspension shall be reserved to the courts of justice. ART. 109. The members of the municipal councils shall be personally responsible before the courts of justice, in the manner and form established by law, for the acts done by them in the performance of their duties. SECTION THIRD THE MAYORS AND THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES ART. 110. Mayors shall have power: 1. To publish such resolutions of the municipal councils as may have force of law, and execute and cause the same to be executed. 2. To administer the municipal affairs, issuing orders and instructions as well as rules for the better execution of the resolutions of the municipal councils, whenever the latter may fail to do so. 3. To appoint and remove the employes of their respective offices in the manner provided by law. ART. 111. The Mayors shall be personally responsible before the courts of justice, in the manner prescribed by law, for all acts performed by them in the discharge of their functions. ART. 112. Each Mayor shall receive a salary, to be paid by the municipal treasury, which may be changed at any time; but such change shall not take effect until after a new election for Mayor has been held. ART. 113. In case of vacancy, either temporary or permanent, of the office of Mayor, the president of the municipal council shall act as Mayor. Should the absence be permanent, the substitute shall act until the end of the term for which the Mayor was elected. TITLE XIII THE NATIONAL TREASURY ART. 114. All property existing within the territory of the Republic not belonging to provinces, municipalities or private individuals or corporations, shall belong to the State. TITLE XIV AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION ART. 115. The Constitution shall not be amended, in whole or in part, except by resolution passed by two-thirds of the total number of members of each House of Congress. Six months after the resolution to amend the Constitution has been passed, a constitutional convention shall be called to assemble for the exclusive and specific purpose of either approving or rejecting the amendment. Each House shall, in the meantime, continue to perform its duties with absolute independence of the convention. Delegates to the said convention shall be elected by each province at the rate of one for every fifty thousand inhabitants, in the manner that may be provided by law. TRANSIENT PROVISIONS First. The Republic of Cuba does not recognize any other debts or obligations than those legitimately contracted in favor of the revolution by commanders of bodies of the liberating army, subsequent to the twenty-fourth day of February, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, and prior to the nineteenth day of September of the same year, on which date the Jimaguayu Constitution was promulgated; and the debts and obligations contracted afterward, by the revolutionary government, either by itself or through its legitimate representatives in foreign countries. Congress shall examine said debts and obligations and decide upon the payment of those which are found legitimate. Second. Persons born in Cuba, or children of native-born Cubans, who, at the time of the promulgation of this Constitution, are citizens of any foreign nation shall not enjoy the rights of Cuban nationality without first renouncing expressly the foreign citizenship. Third. The time of service of foreigners in the wars of independence of Cuba shall be counted as time of naturalization and residence, for the acquisition of the right granted to naturalized citizens in article 49. Fourth. The basis of population established in relation to the election of representatives in Congress, and of delegates to the constitutional convention, in articles 48 and 115, may be changed by law whenever, in the judgment of Congress, the change becomes necessary through the increase in the number of inhabitants, shown by censuses to be periodically taken. Fifth. At the time of the first organization of the Senate, the Senators shall be divided into two groups for the purpose of their renewal. Those forming the first group shall cease in their duties at the expiration of the fourth year, and those forming the second group at the expiration of the eighth year. It shall be decided by lot which of the two Senators from each province shall belong to either group. The law shall provide the method to be followed in the formation of the two groups into which the House of Representatives shall be divided for the purpose of its partial renewal. Sixth. Ninety days after the promulgation of the electoral law, which shall be framed and adopted by the constitutional convention, an election shall be held of the public functionaries provided by the Constitution, to whom the transfer of the Government of Cuba, in conformity with the provisions of Order No. 301 of Headquarters Division of Cuba, dated July twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred, is to be made. Seventh. All laws, decrees, regulations, orders and other provisions which may be in force at the time of the promulgation of this Constitution shall continue to be observed, in so far as they do not conflict with the said Constitution, until legally revoked or amended. Hall of sessions of the Constitutional Convention, Havana, February twenty-first, nineteen hundred and one. The Constitutional Convention, acting in conformity with the order of the Military Governor of the island, of July 25, 1900, by which it was called to assemble, resolves to attach, and does hereby attach to the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba adopted on February twenty-first ultimo, the following. APPENDIX ARTICLE I. The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, nor in any way authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes, or otherwise, lodgment in or control over any portion of said island. ART. II. That said Government shall not assume or contract any public debt to pay the interest upon which, and to make reasonable sinking-fund provision for the ultimate discharge of which, the ordinary revenues of the island, after defraying the current expenses of Government, shall be inadequate. ART. III. That the Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Peace on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba. ART. IV. That all acts of the United States in Cuba during its military occupancy thereof are ratified and validated, and all lawful rights acquired thereunder shall be maintained and protected. ART. V. That the Government of Cuba will execute, and, as far as necessary, extend the plans already devised, or other plans to be mutually agreed upon, for the sanitation of the cities of the island, to the end that a recurrence of epidemic and infectious diseases may be prevented, thereby assuring protection to the people and commerce of Cuba, as well as to the commerce of the southern ports of the United States and the people residing therein. ART. VI. That the Isle of Pines shall be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto being left to future adjustment by treaty. ART. VII. That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defence, the Government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States. ART. VIII. That, by way of further assurance, the Government of Cuba will embody the foregoing provisions in a permanent treaty with the United States. Hall of sessions, June twelfth, nineteen hundred and one. CHAPTER XIII After the Constitution, the Government. On October 14, 1901, General Wood as Military Governor of Cuba issued an order for the holding of a general election throughout the island on December 31, that day to be a legal holiday. At that election there were to be chosen Presidential and Senatorial Electors, Members of the House of Representatives, Governors of Provinces or Departments, and members of Provincial Assemblies or Councils. At the same time it was announced that the election of President, Vice-President and Senators, by the electoral colleges, would take place on February 24, 1902. A provisional election law was also promulgated at that time. This order brought acutely to the fore the question of Presidential candidates. There were several of them, but none of them could be regarded as a party candidate for the reason that there were then practically no parties. The three which had existed had gradually dissolved, merged into each other, and left the Cuban people free to follow purely individual leaders again. Maximo Gomez was naturally looked to as the foremost candidate for the Presidency, and despite the bitterness of some politicians against him there is little doubt that if he had consented to be a candidate he would have stood alone and been elected practically without opposition. No man deserved the honor more than he. But it was more than an honor. It was a tremendously serious responsibility. Now Gomez was not the man to shirk responsibility. But he was not a man, either, to accept it rashly. He knew his own limitations. He knew, too, the requirements of the place. There was needed a scholar and statesman, rather than a "rough and ready" bushwhacking soldier. So he would not even consider the offer of the nomination. "I was never intended," he said, "to become the President of any country. I think too much of Cuba to become her President." Calixto Garcia, who after the death of Antonio Maceo stood second to Gomez as a commander, and who was General-in-Chief of the eastern half of the island, had won a splendid reputation for efficient work in Oriente and Camaguey, and was a man of great force and ability, and of much popularity among the Cuban people. But he died at Washington of pneumonia soon after the close of the war. With these two great chieftains of Cuba's wars thus out of the running, the choice by common consent fell upon Tomas Estrada Palma; and a better choice could not have been made. We have already seen something of his work as the head of the Cuban Junta in New York. He was now past the prime of life, having been born at Bayamo in 1837, but he was in full mastery of his ripe intellectual and physical powers. The son of a rich and distinguished family, he was sent in his youth to Seville to study law, and for a time practised it with much success in Cuba. But he was a patriot, and when the Ten Years' War began he entered the Cuban ranks and had a distinguished career in the field, as also in the councils of the Republic in the field. Unfortunately he was captured by the enemy and was sent to Spain, where he was a prisoner until the end of the war. Then he went to Honduras, became Postmaster-General of that country, and married the accomplished daughter of President Guardiola. Thence he went to the United States and for some years was the head of an admirable private school for boys at Central Valley, New York; most of his pupils being from Cuba and other Latin-American countries. At the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1895 the veteran patriot promptly offered himself for any service that he could perform. Though nearing the age of three score, he would gladly have taken up his rifle again and gone into the field. But there was more important and more profitable work for Cuba to be done than that would have been, and he entered upon it with zeal, as the head of the Cuban Junta in New York. Especially after the death of Marti, he was the guiding spirit of that organization, and as such, at least in the eyes of America and of the world at large, he was the actual head of the Cuban revolution, even more than the President of the Provisional Government in the patriot stronghold in the mountains of Cubitas. He was not merely the very active head of the working organization of the Junta, which supplied the Cuban army with the sinews of war, but he was the diplomatic representative of Cuba, though only informally recognized, at Washington. He was at this time still in the United States, and was making no effort whatever to secure the Presidential nomination. Doubtless he would have been quite content not to receive it, and would have given his heartiest and most efficient support to any other man who might have been chosen. But there was a spontaneous turning of all Cuban eyes and minds and hearts toward him as the man of all best fitted to inaugurate the independent republican sovereignty of the insular state as its first President. He was the choice of no party--parties were yet inchoate--but of the Cuban people. In similar fashion General Bartolome Maso was put forward for Vice-President. Of him we have already heard much in these pages; a stern old warrior patriot of Oriente, who had done inestimable service in the field in the two wars, and who had been President of the Revolutionary Government--its last President, in the mountains of Cubitas, at the time of the American intervention. A man of fine education, of unblemished integrity, of sterling patriotism, he commanded the respect and affection of all who knew him; though it must be confessed that he was personally little known at the capital or in the western half of the island. For a time there seemed every prospect that these two men, so admirably chosen, would be elected without contest. But at the end of October there was a schism. Estrada Palma was favorably inclined toward the Platt Amendment, while Bartolome Maso remained outspoken against it. The sequel was that all the politicians of whatever factions who were opposed to that instrument joined in putting Maso forward as a candidate not for the Vice-Presidency but for the Presidency, in opposition to Palma. On October 31 Maso issued an address announcing his candidacy, which, he said, he had been induced to accept "in order to preserve the nationalism and patriotism of the country"; and he added that the American intervention had been "perverted into a military occupation approaching a conquest." This was exaggeration, though entirely sincere; Maso lacking the broad international vision necessary to appreciate the relationships with the United States and the rest of the world upon which Cuba was about to enter. But it made a strong appeal to a number of diverse and incongruous elements, including some of the former Autonomists, many of the Spaniards, and a number of Negroes who were inclined to form a race party of their own. There followed an animated but orderly and amicable campaign of mass meetings and stump speeches, quite after the American style. At one time the followers of Maso appeared to be numerous, and claimed that they were sixty per cent. of the citizens of Cuba. But such claims were illusory. Nearly all important leaders, from Maximo Gomez down, were on the side of Estrada Palma, and before the actual trial of strength at the polls Maso withdrew from the campaign, leaving Palma alone in the field. The supporters of Maso explained that his candidacy was withdrawn because there was no prospect of a fair election. They objected to some provisions of the election law, and complained that they were not fairly represented on the boards of registration and election. They even alleged that frauds were being committed in the registration, and they asked that the election be postponed in order that there might be another registration over which they should have a larger measure of supervision. This request was refused, whereupon they withdrew from all participation in the election. A manifesto was issued, denouncing the Central Board of Elections as "a coalition of partisans" and declaring that "neither in official circles in the United States nor in Cuba does the intention exist to see that the elections are carried out with sufficient legality to reflect the real wishes of the Cubans." These imputations were unwarranted, and most regrettable; and were rightly regarded by the great majority of Cubans as a practical confession of the weakness of the Maso faction. The elections were duly held on the day appointed, and were conducted with admirable quiet, order and dignity. The unfortunate feature of them was that only a very light vote was polled. Not only did the supporters of Maso pretty generally abstain from voting, but many of Palma's followers, knowing that there was no real contest, did not take the trouble to go to the polls. Commenting upon the circumstances, General Wood reported: "I regret to state that a large portion of the conservative element, composed of property owners, and business and professional men, did not take such an interest in the elections as proper regard for the welfare of their country required, and consequently the representation of this element among the officials elected has not been proportionately as large as the best interests of the island demand." Despite the abstention of Maso's followers from voting, eight members of that faction were elected in the sixty-three members of the Electoral College. On February 24 the Electoral College met and elected Tomas Estrada Palma to be President and Luis Estevez to be Vice-President of the Republic of Cuba. President Roosevelt, in a message to the Congress of the United States on March 27, reported the progress of Cuba toward self-government, and recommended that provision be made for sending diplomatic and consular representatives thither, and the Secretary of War began preparations for withdrawing the Military Governor and all American officials and forces, and permitting the installation of the native government. It was arranged that the last-named event should occur on May 20, 1902, four years and a month after the American act of intervention. The closing weeks of the American occupation were made busy with the closing up of affairs preparatory to departure. Two new laws relating to railroads were promulgated on February 7 and March 3; laws which the Cubans on assuming the government of the island found so beneficent that they retained them unchanged. Another law on January 24 rearranged the municipalities of the island and abolished a considerable number of them, and still another on March 5 was intended to facilitate the determination of boundaries of estates. Still another, on April 12, was so vigorously opposed by Cubans that it was presently revoked, to the great loss of the island. This was practically an application of the merit system to a part of the civil service, declaring that officials in the judicial and public prosecution services should not be removed from their places without proof of adequate cause. Its revocation left those and all branches of the civil service to be the prey of the spoils system. In April and May there were promulgated orders for systematizing municipal finances, a manual for military tribunals, quarantine regulations, rules for the revenue cutter service, immigration laws, sanitary regulations, and some modifications of the Code of Civil Procedure. These were all practical measures, of undoubted benefit to the island, and all dealt with matters in which American experience was reasonably supposed to be of advantage to Cuba. General Wood on May 5 called the elected members of the Cuban Congress together at the Palace, in the name of the President of the United States, to welcome them and to wish them success in their coming work, and to have them examine and pass upon their own credentials and count and rectify the vote of the Electoral College for President and Vice-President. He also announced to them that the formal transfer of government, from the United States military authorities to the Cuban President and Congress, would take place at noon of May 20. Mendez Capote made a graceful and appreciative reply on behalf of himself and his colleagues, and the two Houses took possession of their respective halls and busied themselves with their credentials and with preparations for the serious work which lay just a little distance before them. [Illustration: SCENE IN VILLALON PARK, HAVANA] Meantime Tomas Estrada Palma was closing up his affairs in the land of which he had been a guest for many years and was preparing to return to the land of his birth to be its chief magistrate. He did not leave the United States until late in April. Instead of going directly to Havana he landed at Gibara, on the northern coast of Oriente, whence he went to Holguin, to Santiago, and then to his old home, which also was destined to be his last, at Bayamo. After a few days' visit there he proceeded to Havana, and arrived in that city on May 11. All the way through the island he was greeted with unbounded enthusiasm, and at every stopping place he was received and entertained with all possible social attention. Havana itself for a week preceding the installation of the government gave itself up to one incessant fiesta. Arches spanned the principal streets, flowers and bunting made the day brilliant with color, and fireworks illumined the night. The night of May 19 was such as the ancient city had never before known. From evening to morning it was one glare of rockets and illuminations, one roar of anticipatory and jubilant cheers and music. If one single inhabitant of the city slept, his name is not recorded. The riot of joy continued unabated until just before noon, when it slackened for a time, only as a mark of respect for the epochal ceremony which was being performed in the great State Hall of the Palace. There, in the very place where less than four years before General Castellanos had abdicated the power of Spain over the last of her American colonies, were gathered the members of the American Government of Intervention, about to retire; the members of the Cuban Government, about to assume authority; the representatives of various foreign powers; and a few private guests of distinction. The central figures were Leonard Wood and Tomas Estrada Palma. The former read a brief note from President Roosevelt, announcing the transfer which was about to be made, and expressing to the Cuban government the sincere friendship and good wishes of the United States, the most earnest hopes for the stability and success of the Cuban government, for the blessings of peace, justice and prosperity and ordered freedom among the people of Cuba and for enduring friendship between the United States and that Republic. [Illustration: TOMAS ESTRADA PALMA "The Franklin of Cuba," Tomas Estrada Palma, was born at Bayamo on July 9, 1835, was educated in Havana and at the University of Seville, Spain, and began the practice of law at his native place. But realizing that under Spanish rule there was little administration of real justice in Cuba, he abandoned his profession, devoted himself to the management of his plantation, and when the Ten Years' War was planned entered the patriotic conspiracy with zeal. He freed his slaves, gave his fortune to the cause, and entered the army. His mother accompanied him to the camp, and in his absence was captured by the Spaniards, who murdered her through starvation and ill-treatment. He became Secretary of the Republic and in March, 1876, was elected President. Betrayed to the enemy, he was imprisoned in Morro Castle, Havana, and afterward in Spain. At the end of the war he went to Honduras, taught school and served as Postmaster-General, and then went to New York State, where he established a school for boys. At the beginning of the War of Independence he again gave himself to the Cuban cause, succeeded Marti as head of the Junta in New York, became first President of the Republic, was forced to resign through a traitorous insurrection and ill-planned intervention, and died on November 4, 1908.] General Wood then addressed the Cuban President and Congress, declaring that he transferred to them the government and control of the island, and that the American military occupation was ended. He reported the amount of public funds which he turned over to the new officials, and called attention to various plans for sewering, paving and other sanitary works which were in course of execution. President Palma responded, accepting the transfer of sovereignty, and expressing his and his countrymen's appreciation of the course which the American government had pursued. Thus the transcendent consummation was achieved, for which during so many weary and tragic years so many Cuban patriots had longed and for which so much treasure had been spent, so much blood had been shed, and so many lives had been sacrificed. "Cuba Libre" was an accomplished fact among the nations of the world. Leaving that memorable scene, General Wood telegraphed to the President of the United States: "I have the honor to report that, in compliance with instructions received, I have this day, at 12 o'clock sharp, transferred to the President and Congress of the Republic of Cuba the government and control of the island, to be held and exercised by them under the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba." One other incident remained. As soon as the brief ceremony with the palace was completed, the American flag was hauled down from that and all other public buildings and the Cuban flag was raised in its place. It is not known whether the American Senator who had predicted that "That Flag will never be hauled down!" was there to see the sight. Certain it is that the people of Cuba were almost--and most pardonably--wild with joy to see their own beautiful emblem at last float in token of sovereignty over their island's capital. The Cuban flag flying over the Palace and over the Morro Castle was the supreme consummation of their patriotic dreams and visions. [Illustration: FLAG OF CUBA] The red, white and blue flag of Cuba, though then first raised in unchallenged sovereignty, was then by no means a new thing. It was already more than half a century old, and had been the guidon of brave men in three bloody wars. It was designed by the first great Cuban revolutionist, Narciso Lopez, and by his comrade, Miguel Teurbe Tolon, of Matanzas, a gifted poet and ardent patriot, and it was first displayed by Lopez in his raid upon and capture of the city of Cardenas, on May 19, 1850. The five bars, alternately blue and white, represented the five provinces into which the island was at that time divided; the red triangle represented the blood of patriots which was being shed in the cause of liberty; and the white star was the star of Cuba's hope. After the death of Lopez the flag disappeared. But when the Ten Years' War began many flags of that same design were made, the workroom being in a house on Warren Street in the City of New York, and thereafter it remained familiar to every Cuban patriot. [Illustration: COAT OF ARMS OF CUBA] The coat of arms of the Republic of Cuba displays the colors of the flag, and by their side the Royal Palm, perhaps the most notable of the trees in Cuba. The tree springs from a grassy plain, at the back of which is a mountain range; agriculture and mining being thus typified. Across the top of the shield extends a landscape-seascape, representing the ocean, with Florida at one side and Yucatan at the other, while between them lies the Key, Cuba. From the far horizon rises the sun. Above all is the Cap of Liberty, while around the shield are twined branches of oak and laurel. No more just and fitting estimate of the great work of intervention which thus, on May 20, 1902, was consummated, has ever been made than that which was uttered only a few weeks later by President Roosevelt, in speaking before a distinguished audience at Harvard University. He said: "Four years ago Leonard Wood went down to Cuba, has served there ever since, has rendered her literally invaluable service; a man who through these four years thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up the standard of political and social life in that island, to clean it physically and morally, to make justice even and fair in it, to found a school system which should be akin to our own, to teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as government righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men." That was the work which Leonard Wood did in Cuba; that was the work which the United States government did by and through him; the consummation of which was denoted in that unique act of withdrawing the American flag and raising the Cuban flag in its place. Fortunate was it, however, that the results of that work, the teachings of the American occupation, the meaning of the American flag, were not and could not be withdrawn when the Stars and Stripes came down. Just as the colors and indeed the essential pattern of the flag remained, in different arrangement, so the essential spirit of American republicanism remained, to be manifested not any longer by American interveners but by the Cuban people themselves. It was a marvellous achievement, that of those four years. It was such as the world had not seen equalled, at any other time or in any other place. It was creditable in the highest degree to the Cuban people themselves. It was creditable to the United States, for its intervention at its own great cost and for its scrupulous keeping of its faith. It was creditable to many individual actors in the great drama, both insular and continental, who displayed unsurpassed fidelity, self-sacrifice and heroism in the cause of Cuban liberation. But the simple truth and justice of history would be impaired if the chief credit were not given, _primus inter pares_, to the great American administrator, conquering soldier and constructive statesman, who from first to last was the guiding genius of Cuban rehabilitation. The works of Durham in Canada, and of Cromer in Egypt, form splendid passages in the history of benevolent colonial administration. But there was a more difficult work performed not for a dependent colony which would return compensation to the Mother Country or to the suzerain power but for an alien land and people, presently to become entirely independent of their benefactor. He found the Pearl of the Antilles war-ravaged and faction-rent; her fields desolated, her industries destroyed; her women widowed and her children orphaned; her treasury empty and her debts heavy and pressing; her government abolished and her laws inadequate; with famine, pestilence and hopelessness stalking throughout the land. It was his work to heal the wounds of war and to unite the people of all classes and parties for the common good; to assist the revival of agriculture and the rebuilding of industry; to care for the widowed and the orphaned; to replenish the public treasury and to discharge the debt of honor to the veterans of the War of Independence; to organize efficient government and out of his own constructive genius to conceive and to promulgate needed and beneficent laws; to feed the hungry until they could feed themselves, to banish pestilence until a lazar-house became a health resort, and to inspire with hope and faith triumphant a people who for a generation had striven with the demons of despair. With such a labor successfully achieved, through the exercise of a tact, a perseverance, a resourcefulness and an administrative genius not surpassed in his day and generation, we may not wonder that he was universally beloved by all the Cuban people regardless of class, of previous condition or of political predilections; that the only cloud resting upon the brilliance of the consummation of Cuban independence proceeded from the fact of his departure from the island and the people he had so greatly served; and that, not waiting for the slow tributes of remote posterity, the Cuban people of his own day hold in their supremest confidence, gratitude, respect and enduring affection the name, the memory and the vital personality of Leonard Wood. President Palma had already selected the members of his Cabinet on May 17, three days before the transfer. It contained six members, chosen without regard to party, for the President was not a partisan. As a matter of fact, however, it contained representatives of all three of the old parties, which were at this time in course of dissolution and reorganization into the two which have since divided the Cuban people between them. Diego Tamayo was the Secretary of Government, having charge of the postal service, the signal service, sanitation, and the Rural Guard. Carlos Zaldo was Secretary of State and of Justice. Emilio Terry was Secretary of Agriculture. Manual Luciano Diaz was Secretary of Public Works; Eduardo Yero was Secretary of Public Instruction; and Garcia Montes was Secretary of Finance. The President presented his first message to Congress on May 28. He spoke with gratitude of the disinterested intervention and services of the United States, and with confidence of Cuba's ability to fulfil her duties as a sovereign State. He recommended care in the preparation of the budget, and the formulation of measures for the encouragement of cattle-raising and the growing of sugar and tobacco. Just then, owing to the great increase of European beet sugar growing the Cuban sugar trade was in an unsatisfactory state, but he hoped to improve it by securing a reciprocity treaty with the United States which would admit Cuban sugar to the markets of that country free of tariff duty. He also promised to promote the building of much-needed railroads. He urged the cultivation of cordial relations and commercial intercourse with all nations, but especially with the United States. As a special act of grace, a number of Americans who had justly been sentenced to terms in Cuban prisons under the Government of Intervention received pardons. These included three men, Rathbone, Neely and Reeves, who had been sentenced for ten years for frauds in the Cuban postoffice, the only serious scandal of the American administration. Two of the items in the Platt Amendment were soon taken up by the United States government, and were settled in a way eminently satisfactory to Cuba. One was the disposition of the Isle of Pines. It was decided by the State Department at Washington that when the American government was withdrawn from Cuba, control of the Isle of Pines was transferred to the Cuban government, to be held and exercised by it unless and until some other disposition should subsequently be effected. In time Cuban ownership of the isle was definitively confirmed by the government of the United States. The other point was that of American naval stations. A report was made by Rear-Admiral Bradford of the United States Navy, recommending the establishment of naval stations at Triscornia, in Havana Harbor; and at Guantanamo, east of Santiago; and the establishment of coaling stations at Nipe Bay and Cienfuegos. The Cubans were not inclined to object to any of these excepting the first-named, to which their objection was reasonable and convincing. It would not be agreeable, they thought, to have the flag of a foreign power flying right in front of their own capital and at the very gate of the harbor of that capital, so that foreign vessels would pass by it and salute it equally with the Cuban flag. This objection was recognized and respected by the United States government, which waived all claim to Triscornia, and on July 2, 1903, contented itself with land for naval stations at Guantanamo, one of the finest harbors in the world, on the south coast of Oriente, and Bahia Honda, another superb harbor, on the north coast of Pinar del Rio. Of these only Guantanamo has actually been utilized. The matter of reciprocity between the United States and Cuba was taken up, but it was long before anything was effected. General Wood had urged that a reduction of at least 33-1/3 per cent. should be made in the sugar duty in favor of Cuba, as absolutely essential to the prosperity of the island, and President Roosevelt urged upon Congress in the strongest possible manner the desirability of some such action, partly for the sake of Cuban prosperity, and partly for the fulfilment of America's moral duty toward that island. Indeed, such commercial relations had been promised to Cuba, and it was bad faith to withhold them. Of course the commercial interests of Europe, both in sugar and all other wares, were earnestly opposed to any such arrangement, and they had their governments exert all possible influence to prevent its being made. There were also large beet sugar interests in the United States which strenuously opposed any reduction of the tariff on Cuban sugar. President Roosevelt had a long and desperate battle with Congress over the matter, before he finally prevailed upon it grudgingly and imperfectly to make a reciprocity agreement, from which the United States would profit much more than Cuba. This was on March 29, 1903. Meantime, because of the American refusal to grant reciprocity, Cuba suffered acute economic depression approximating disaster. The insular treasury had scarcely enough money with which to pay current expenses, and the government was driven to the imposition of burden-some taxes upon many articles to save itself from bankruptcy. The reciprocity treaty was finally ratified by the American Senate on March 29, 1903. But it did not at once go into effect. There was needed Congressional legislation to make it effective, and this was not supplied. After discreditable delay on the part of the lawmakers, President Roosevelt called Congress together in special session on November 10, 1903, for the express purpose of having it take the needed action for putting the treaty into operation. "I deem," he said, "such legislation demanded not only by our interest but by our honor.... When the acceptance of the Platt Amendment was required from Cuba by the action of the Congress of the United States, this government thereby definitely committed itself to the policy of treating Cuba as occupying a unique position as regards this country. It was provided that when the island became a free and independent republic she should stand in such close relations with us as in certain respects to come within our system of international policy; and it necessarily followed that she must also to a certain degree become included within the lines of our economic policy.... We gave her liberty. We are knit to her by the memories of the blood and courage of our soldiers who fought for her in war; by the memory of the wisdom and integrity of our administrators who served her in peace and who started so well on the difficult path of self-government. We must help her onward and upward; and in helping her we shall help ourselves.... A failure to enact such legislation would come perilously near a repudiation of the pledged faith of the nation." Thus at last through such gallant urging a measure of justice was secured for Cuba. The unwillingness and delay of Congress formed the most discreditable chapter of the history of America's dealings with Cuba. But the real attitude, the real purpose, the real spirit of the United States toward Cuba, were unmistakably set forth not in the paltering and tergiversation of a sordid Congress, but in the lofty and inspiring words of the great American President. CHAPTER XIV The result of the earnest and efficient work of all departments of the Palma administration, in spite of the fact that the employes had much to learn, and that mistakes were unavoidably made, was that Cuba began almost immediately to establish herself as a nation worthy of consideration, and respected among the other nations of the world. Her commerce and industries were started for the first time on a stable basis, and the general feeling of confidence, not only in the natural resources of the island, but in the protection that had been promised Cuba by her sister republic on the north, all tended to start the new republic along the right lines. In a very short time after reciprocity with the United States was secured funds began to accumulate in the treasury, and by the end of the first Palma administration over $20,000,000 had accrued to the credit of the country, and a large amount of constructive work had been undertaken in various parts of the island. Yet more than $4,000,000 had been spent on public works, and every village with 25 children had a school. It was the accumulation of this money in the treasury, and the rapid success along commercial and other lines that seemed to attend the republic during President Palma's administration, that served to excite desire and envy among the more or less restless and unscrupulous elements, who did not form a part of the Palma government. Some of these outsiders were men of much ability, and many of them were excellent orators. All of them were familiar with the methods in Latin American republics of securing control of the government through revolution, force and violence. It was then that parties began to be formed, although these were divided into many groups, each surrounding its own political hero, who, in these days, was necessarily a man with a supposed military record. They eventually resolved themselves into two groups, the Moderado, who were in many respects the parents of the present Conservative party now in power under President Menocal, and the Liberal, under the leadership of Dr. Alfredo Zayas, an able lawyer and a shrewd political leader. During the Palma administration and especially at the beginning of the electoral campaign of 1905, another aspirant for presidential honors suddenly appeared in the person of General José Miguel Gomez, a man with no very brilliant record as a soldier, although he had taken part in the Ten Years' War, but who had a strong local following as Governor, under President Palma, of the Province of Santa Clara. General Gomez was an astute, clever, farseeing, active politician, with a considerable degree of originality and ability. Another man intimately connected with the history of Cuba was Gomez's chief clerk when Governor of the Province of Santa Clara, Orestes Ferrara, a gentleman of Italian birth, of somewhat reckless tendencies, who emerged from the War of Independence as a Cuban patriot, and was recognized as such by the Liberal party. Mr. Ferrara was a lawyer, a writer, a finely educated diplomat and an excellent speaker. All of these qualities succeeded in making him an important factor in influencing the destinies of the republic in its early days. During the first years of the Palma administration, the Moderado and Liberal parties gradually shaped themselves into the present Conservative and Liberal parties; organizations which differ in political methods rather than in principles; if by principles we mean fundamental doctrines of political economy or statecraft, such as form the issues of division between parties in most other countries. They also differ largely in personnel. Throughout the agricultural regions the Conservatives prevail. That is because farmers, large and small, care little for office holding but do care a great deal for that tranquillity of the country which is essential to progress and prosperity. They have a material stake in the country's welfare, which is conserved by constitutional order rather than by revolution. On the other hand, in the cities may be found the great strength of the Liberal party; composed of men who own no real estate, and many of whom have no business or steady occupation of any kind, who have nothing to lose from economic and social disturbance but on the contrary may gain something by getting into public employment through a change of government. Such men are numerous in all cities of all countries, and they become the facile followers of designing and unscrupulous politicians. In the United States such men are described as "feeding at the public crib." In Cuba the corresponding phrase, equally expressive, is "nursing at the public bottle"--epitomised in the one word, "botella." It is not to be inferred that all Cuban Liberals are of this class, or that Conservatives are universally men of substance; but the dominant elements of the two parties are such as we have described. The restless and irresponsible Liberal masses have for leaders men of unquestioned ability, but unfortunately too often of more personal ambition of a sordid kind than sense of moral responsibility or sincere devotion to their country's best interests. It will thus be seen that on more than one occasion men who were intellectually qualified to serve the Republic in the most efficient manner prostituted their talents to catering to the passions of the ignorant and idle, and made tools of them for their own selfish advancement, to the great detriment and greater menace of the Republic. In this deplorable state of affairs have been the main springs of most of the troubles which the young Republic has thus far suffered in its political and governmental affairs. The Conservative party is confined very largely to the owners of property, men of good reputation and business standing. In other words, it consists of men who have nothing to gain through a revolution, and everything to lose during a period of upheaval which means destruction, not alone of actual property, but of the assets of the country, especially its credit and standing in the markets of the world. Small holders of property in the country districts, farmers, merchants, planters and stock raisers, are naturally allied with the Conservative party, or the party of law and order, as are the owners of the big sugar estates and the mills in which the staples are produced, since the cane fields become an immediate prey of those elements who wish to depose the government or bring about an intervention, through which they sometimes gain in the confusion that follows a change of government. To this party belong the majority of the professional men, the old Autonomistas, and those men who have a genuine interest in the welfare of Cuba, not only in her present, but in her future, and who realize that uprisings, strikes and all allied movements tend naturally to discourage investments in property, and to destroy credit and the good name of the island. Such, then, in general terms, was the development of political parties in Cuba which occurred as soon as it was realized that it was worth while to have them. As long as Cuba was under Spanish domination, there was no use in parties. So long as there was doubt concerning the intentions of the United States in Cuba, there was little encouragement to their formation. But the moment the Stars and Stripes actually went down from the Palace and from the Morro, the great fact dawned upon the Cuban mind that what many had scarcely dared to expect or to hope for was actually achieved. Cuba was independent. For that reason her political controversies were thereafter to be domestic, and there was opportunity, even perhaps desirability, of division of the population into parties. This indeed was well, in principle. There is nothing more stimulating to citizenship or more conducive to good government in a republic than a healthful and amicable division of the citizens into parties, on grounds of principle. In a monarchy, the opposition party is one of protest and revolt. In a republic both parties are devoted to the governmental system, and differ only as to the principles of economics or what not on which it should be conducted. The lamentable feature of the Cuban case was that--chiefly, no doubt, because of antecedent conditions, because of centuries of ruthless repression of all national or civic aspirations--there had been no development of theories and principles of government to serve as bases for party division. It could not be said, for example, that this party was for a protective tariff and that one was for free trade, that one was for state rights and the other for national sovereignty. Such distinctions did not exist, and party divisions without them were therefore on less creditable lines. We have said that there were no questions of principle. But there was one supreme question of principle, on which after all the division was made. But that was a question to which there was only one side for a worthy political party to take. At the beginning of Estrada Palma's administration, as we have indicated, he was not identified with any political party. He was broad-minded, and conceived himself to be not the leader of a party but the chief executive of the whole Cuban nation. He selected for his Cabinet the men whom he thought best fitted for the places, regardless of their political affiliations. He would probably have been glad to go through his entire administration as a non-partisan President, occupying in that respect a position similar to that of a constitutional sovereign, who traditionally "has no politics." Indeed, he maintained this independent and impartial attitude until the spring of 1905. Then he found it impossible to get measures passed by Congress, which he wanted and which the country needed, unless he affiliated with party leaders. The result was that he practically associated himself with the Moderados, or Conservatives as they are now known. This of course gave great umbrage to the Liberals, which was greatly increased when some of that party were removed from office because of their unsatisfactory service and their places were filled with Conservatives. And this was the beginning of the Liberal insurrection which led to the resignation and death of Estrada Palma. In the last days of President Palma's first term of office it was discovered that José Miguel Gomez had Presidential aspirations. He not only stated to the Moderate or Conservative party that he wanted to be President of the Republic of Cuba, but he declared that he proposed to succeed President Palma as such. This privilege was refused him on the ground that the President, owing to his fair administration of the government during the four years of his service, was entitled to a second term. To this argument, General Gomez replied that if the Conservative party to which he had pretended to belong would not make him its Presidential nominee, he would go to the opposition and seek the nomination. This he at once proceeded to do, and with the assistance of Mr. Ferrara he persuaded the Liberals that, controlling the votes of the Province of Santa Clara, he held the balance of power. He also prevailed upon Dr. Alfredo Zayas to retire as a Presidential candidate, and to acquiesce in his running for election on the Liberal ticket; promising at the same time that, no matter what the result of the election might be, Dr. Zayas should have the nomination and his support four years afterward. It is interesting to observe that this promise was never fully kept, and that the two Liberal leaders have ever since been bitter enemies. The Presidential nominees of the two parties, in November, 1906, on the part of the Conservatives, were Estrada Palma, the President of Cuba, and on the part of the Liberals, José Miguel Gomez, ex-leader of the Moderados of the Province of Santa Clara. The Liberals, a few days before the election, feeling apparently that it would go against them, began the old tactics so prevalent in some South American republics, and practised by Maso's followers in 1901, of proclaiming proposed election frauds on the part of their opponents, then in control of the government, and predicting all manner of illegal practices and intimidation. At ten o'clock on the morning of election day, telegrams, announcements, and orders from Liberal leaders were posted at all voting places in the various cities and country districts, directing members of that party to keep away from the polls, on the ground that the election frauds which had been arranged by the Conservatives could not possibly be overcome, and that the correct thing to do was to refuse to vote, as a protest against the government in power. These were obviously issued with a view of discrediting in advance an election which the Liberals could not hope to win. The Conservatives, of course, voted, and, as might be expected under those circumstances, the Palma government succeeded itself, with a few changes in the Cabinet, and everything seemed to promise well for the future. Within a year, however, threats of coming trouble, whispers of discontent, and reports of incipient uprisings could be heard in the cafés and public resorts throughout the island, and the agents of the secret service warned President Palma that a serious crisis was impending. This the President refused to credit, staging that there could be no possible reason for a revolution. The island was prosperous, work was plentiful for all who cared to labor; there were no conditions present to justify a revolution or uprising, and suspicions of anything of the kind must therefore be unjustified. In spite of President Palma's confidence, however, the plotting went on almost openly. His confidence in the people was known to all the Liberals, and they took advantage of it. The first real outbreak occurred before the slightest preparation had been made to deal with it. One night in the month of July, 1905, a group of thirty armed men suddenly appeared at the barracks of the Rural Guards, shot a dozen of them to death as they lay sleeping on their cots, seized their arms, ammunition and horses, and fled into the country, shouting the cry of "Revolution against the Palma government!" General Alejandro Rodriguez, a tried veteran of the War of Independence, and chief of the Rural Guards, gave an immediate order that they should be captured, dead or alive, and before ten o'clock the next morning nearly all of them had been taken and confined in the jails of Havana, where afterwards they were tried and convicted. These men in their defense claimed that the president of the Senate, Señor Moru Delgado, a prominent Liberal leader, had promised to meet them at daylight, on the morning of the assassination, with a body of three hundred armed and mounted Liberals, who were to start a revolution against President Palma; but did not fulfill his promise. The men who had been convicted were permitted to remain in jail until, as is too often the custom in some Latin American countries, they were freed by a general amnesty bill which had been forced through Congress by the Liberal party. The tendency to revolt against the Palma government apparently subsided with the arrest of these first disturbers, but, during the following January, 1906, reports of trouble in the extreme western portion of the island came to the notice of the officials. The leader was Pino Guerra, who, through his popularity as an accordion player at country dances, had secured election to the House of Representatives; and who with his taste for games of chance, at which he was generally unlucky, had got into debt to the amount of $7,000. His creditors in these debts were persistent, and this fact was given by him in a letter to General Fernando Freyre de Andrade, President of the House of Representatives, as an excuse for the revolution which he started. Pino Guerra indeed intimated that if someone would extend to him a little personal loan of $7,000 he would refrain from causing any trouble to the government. General Freyre de Andrade, being a politician who believed in compromise and that even a poor end would justify the means, suggested to Guerra that he knew of $3,000 that had been appropriated for some purpose and not used, which might possibly be turned over, if his creditors would take it on account. "General" Guerra, as he called himself, consulted with his creditors, and they concluded to accept the offer, if they could get the cash. So the embryo revolutionist was conducted to the presence of the President, where the whole matter was explained by General Freyre de Andrade. To their surprise, President Palma promptly refused to have any of the treasury funds used to buy--or to pay blackmail to--a revolutionist. So "General" Guerra retired to nurse his resentment and to plan mischief; until some six weeks later when he started the uprising that was locally known as "Mr. Taft's picnic," because the leaders asserted that the capturing of the Palma government would be nothing more than a picnic, and assured Mr. Taft on his arrival to straighten out affairs that they really had not intended to assassinate President Palma, although three or four distinct plots had been made for that purpose; that they only meant to capture him, put him on the government yacht, and carry him to some remote part of the country and give him just a "pleasant picnic." [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT'S HOME The new Presidential Palace, which replaces in its functions the old home of the Spanish Governors, is of striking architecture and impressive size, affording ample room for many other functions than the mere housing of the President and his family; and in completeness of its appointments and beauty of its furnishings and internal decorations must rank among the finest official residences in the world.] President Palma was repeatedly warned by the secret service, of which Pepe Jerez Varona was the chief, that serious trouble was coming through the propaganda of the Liberal party whose leaders had taken the position that the late election had been fraudulent and that the Liberals had been prevented from casting their votes, which they said was sufficient excuse for the uprising that was imminent. Local bands of the so-called "Constitutional Army" soon began to make their appearance throughout the central districts of the island. Each of these was headed by some prominent Liberal chieftain; among others, those at Havana by General Loinaz Castillo, in Pinar del Rio by Pino Guerra, and in Santa Clara by Orestes Ferrara, afterward President of the House of Representatives. The real promoters, instigators, and chiefs of the movement were General José Miguel Gomez, afterward President of the Republic; Carlos Garcia, later Minister to England; and Juan Gualberto Gomez, the trusted agent of Alfredo Zayas and leader of the negro Liberals of the island. Convincing proofs, in the form of documents over the signatures of these men, were found showing their treason to the republic. They did not actually lead the insurgent bands, because they were arrested and imprisoned just as they were setting out to do so. President Palma was advised that they should be tried and executed, but he protested against the courts taking such action, on the ground that he could not bring himself to sanction the execution of men, some of whom had in former days been his companions in arms. In the meantime, the revolutionary force swept through various parts of the island, seizing horses, mules, beef cattle and produce, breaking open groceries and general stores, helping themselves to anything that suited their fancy, occasionally giving in exchange what was known as _vale_, or a receipt, to the owner, and if the owner happened to be an able bodied man, they usually compelled him to join the so-called "Constitutional Army." Congress at that time happened to have a Liberal majority, and it refused to consider or vote upon the budget of the coming year, thus practically compelling President Palma to use as the basis of expenditures the budget of the preceding year. The Liberals boasted that they had thus compelled the President technically to violate the Constitution, and that they were therefore justified in calling themselves the Constitutional Party and in forcing him out of the Presidency. The Cuban republic at this time had an armed force of about two thousand men, scattered throughout the island. These were the Rural Guards, and they were efficient, and as a rule loyal to the Palma government; but they were not sufficient in number to protect the sugar estates, and other properties. As before, President Palma refused, until the last moment, to believe that a serious uprising or revolution against his government was possible, on the ground that Cuba, although a young republic, had been very prosperous, that money was plentiful, that work was abundant for any man who cared to occupy himself, and that there was no real reason that would justify or cause a revolution. He cited the history and motives of previous revolutions in Cuba, and of those that had occurred in many other countries, insisting that this uprising could not be serious, and that the people of Cuba would not support it. Unfortunately he was not a politician. He had lived too many years in the safe and sane atmosphere of the United States, and did not realize the intense desire on the part of some of the people in Latin American countries to get into office, regardless of their qualifications or the means employed to accomplish their sordid purposes. All of this resulted in a sad lack of preparation. President Palma's Secretary of Finance, Colonel Ernesto Fonts-Sterling, and General Rafael Montalvo, Secretary of Public Works, realized the threatening dangers and urged immediate action; and finally against the President's will, twenty machine guns were ordered from the United States, and shipped to Cuba, together with 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition. A call for volunteers was then issued, and in response numerous Americans from various parts of the island, and others from Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, in company with patriots of Cuba, came immediately to the side of the government. But the masses of the Cubans were very tired of war, and manifested a peculiar reluctance to assume responsibility, and to act in line with their consciences and best judgment, wherefore the call was not highly successful. Fourteen hundred veterans of the War of Independence, under the command of General Pedro Betancourt, of Matanzas, made response, and presented themselves in Havana for orders. A machine gun corps was formed, the gunners composed largely of Americans who had seen service in the war on the Mexican border, and who soon became excellent marksmen. Many of President Palma's counsellors urged immediate action to suppress the revolution with a firm hand. But he hesitated too long, hoping that some other way out of the difficulty would be discovered. In this emergency the United States Consul General, Mr. Frank Steinhart, suggested to President Palma that he should request the assistance of the United States, and urged that a commission of military men be sent from Washington, backed by a certain display of naval or military force sufficient to discourage the revolution and to convince the Liberal leaders that further wanton destruction of property would not be tolerated. Mr. Steinhart also assured him that he would see to it that such a commission would come with a full understanding of the situation, and with the power and spirit to assist him in maintaining peace and order. President Palma made this request to which the United States promptly responded by sending the gunboat _Bancroft_, and a company of marines who immediately came ashore at Havana. Following the _Bancroft_ came other steamers, one of which brought the Secretary of War, William H. Taft, Robert Bacon, Assistant Secretary of State, and Major-General Frederick Funston, with several of his aides. In fuller explanation of these circumstances some official correspondence may pertinently be cited. On September 8, 1906, Consul General Steinhart sent the following confidential telegram to the State Department: "Secretary of State, Cuba, has requested me, in name of President Palma, to ask President Roosevelt to send immediately two vessels; one to Havana and other to Cienfuegos; they must come at once. Government forces are unable to quell revolution. The government is unable to protect lives and property. President Palma will convene Congress next Friday, and Congress will ask for our forcible intervention. It must be kept secret and confidential that Palma asked for vessels. No one here except President, Secretary of State and myself know about it. Very anxiously awaiting reply." The State Department at Washington replied to this on September 10th: "Your cable received. Two ships have been sent, due to arrive Wednesday. The President directs me to state that perhaps you had not yourself appreciated the reluctance with which this country would intervene. President Palma should be informed that in the public opinion here it would have a most damaging effect for intervention to be undertaken until the Cuban government has exhausted every effort in a serious attempt to put down the insurrection and has made this fact evident to the world. At present the impression certainly would be that there was no real popular support of the Cuban government, or else that the government was hopelessly weak. As conditions are at this moment we are not prepared to say what shape the intervention should take. It is, of course, a very serious matter to undertake forcible intervention, and before going into it we should have to be absolutely certain of the equities of the case and of the needs of the situation. Meanwhile we assume that every effort is being made by the Government to come to a working agreement which will secure peace with the insurrectos, provided they are unable to hold their own with them in the field. Until such efforts have been made, we are not prepared to consider the question of intervention at all." On September 10, Consul-General Steinhart cabled again: "Your cable received and directly communicated to the President, who asks ships remain for a considerable time to give security to foreigners in the island of Cuba and says that he will do as much as possible with his forces to put down the insurrection, but if unable to conquer or compromise, Cuban Congress will indicate kind of intervention desirable. He appreciates reluctance on our part to intervene, especially in view of Secretary Root's recent statements. Few, however, understand Cuban situation, and a less number are able to appreciate same. This, of course, without any reference to superior authority. Palma applied public funds in public work and public education, and not in purchase of war materials. Insurrectionists for a considerable time prepared for present condition, hence government's apparent weakness at the commencement. Yesterday's defeat of rebels gives Government hope. Attempts useless from start." On September 12, Consul-General Steinhart again cabled. "Secretary of State the Republic of Cuba at 3:40 to-day delivered to me memorandum in his own handwriting, a translation of which follows, and is transmitted notwithstanding the previous secret instructions on the subject. The rebellion is increasing in Provinces of Santa Clara, Habana and Pinar del Rio, and Cuban Government has no elements to contend with it, to defend the towns and prevent the rebels from destroying property. President Estrada Palma asks for American intervention and begs President Roosevelt to send to Habana with the greatest secrecy and rapidity 2,000 or 3,000 men to avoid any catastrophe in the capital. The intervention asked for should not be made public until American troops are in Habana. The situation is grave and any delay may produce massacre of citizens in Habana." The next day, Mr. Steinhart again cabled: "President Palma, the Republic of Cuba, through me officially asked for American intervention because he can not prevent rebels from entering cities and burning property. It is doubtful whether quorum when Congress assembles next Friday, tomorrow. President Palma has irrevocably resolved to resign and to deliver the government of Cuba to the representative whom the President of the United States will designate, as soon as sufficient American troops are landed in Cuba. This act on the part of President Palma to save his country from complete anarchy and imperative intervention come immediately. It may be necessary to land force of _Denver_ to protect American property. About 8,000 rebels outside Habana. Cienfuegos also at mercy of rebels. Three sugar plantations destroyed. Foregoing all resolved in Palace." On September 14, Consul-General Steinhart finally cabled: "President Palma has resolved not to continue at head of the government, and is ready to present his resignation even though present disturbances should cease at once. The Vice President has resolved not to accept the office. Cabinet ministers have declared that they will previously resign. Under these conditions it is impossible that Congress will meet for the lack of a proper person to convoke same to designate new President. The consequences will be the absence of legal power, and therefore the prevailing state of anarchy will continue unless government of the United States will adopt measures necessary to avoid this danger." On that day President Roosevelt wrote to Robert Bacon, the Assistant Secretary of State, enclosing a letter to Senor Gonzalo de Quesada, the Cuban minister to the United States for publication in the public press, in which he begged the Cuban patriots to band together, to sink all differences and personal ambitions, and to rescue the island from the anarchy of civil war; closing the letter as follows: "I am sending to Habana the Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, and the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Bacon, as special representatives of this Government, who will render such aid as is possible toward these ends. I had hoped that Mr. Root, the Secretary of State, could have stopped in Habana on his return from South America, but the seeming imminence of the crisis forbids further delay." Messrs. Taft and Bacon reached Cuba on September 19, 1906. Before leaving the ship they were informed that the Secretary of State and Justice of President Palma's cabinet would call at their convenience. They invited him on board at once and had a short talk with him. They were informed that immediately on publication of the President's message, President Palma had directed a cessation of hostilities on the part of the government forces, and that the insurgents had done likewise. Messrs. Taft and Bacon then called upon President Palma. They told him that they regarded themselves as intermediaries and Peace Commissioners, and did not wish to negotiate with rebels in arms without his permission. He suggested that negotiations be conducted between the two political parties, rather than between himself and the insurgents, and suggested that the Vice-President, Mendez Capote, for the Moderate party, and Senator Alfredo Zayas, head of the Liberal party, be the negotiators. He added that General Menocal on behalf of the veterans of the War of Independence had previously attempted, on September 8, to bring about a compromise, but without avail. [Illustration: William H. Taft] President Palma told Mr. Taft very earnestly and somewhat pathetically of his efforts to teach his people the knowledge of good government gained from his twenty years of residence in the United States, and his association with the American people, and called attention to his successful handling of Cuban finances, to the economy of expenditures of his government, to the fact that he had at all times encouraged the investment of foreign capital, and to the prosperity of his four years as President. He deplored what he regarded as a lack of patriotism on the part of the leaders of the insurrection, and cited a number of instances to prove that they were actuated by motives of greed and desire for office. His demeanor was dignified and earnest, and what he said made a deep impression. The Americans then went to the home of the American Minister at Marianao, a suburb of Havana, where the insurgents had outposts just across the bridge, about 1,000 yards from the minister's house. There they conferred, as President Palma had suggested, with Señors Capote and Zayas, with the Secretary of Government, General Rafael Montalvo, who had charge of mobilizing the forces of the government; with General Rodriguez, and with the American Consul General, Mr. Steinhart, who had been eight years in the island, understood its conditions, and spoke its language. It was explained to Mr. Taft that some of the leaders of the revolution had been apprehended, and at present were incarcerated in the penitentiary, but that they could be summoned to the home of the American Minister, if he so desired. He did desire it, and the Liberal leaders were brought from their prison. They included Jose Miguel Gomez, Gualberto Gomez, Carlos Garcia, and others of the group. Senator Alfredo Zayas remained present, and when Mr. Taft asked for a statement from the prisoners regarding the causes of the revolution and their purposes and demands, he acted as counsel and spokesman. Dr. Zayas stated that the election of the President and his government had been absolutely fraudulent; that armed soldiers had prevented the approach of the Liberals to the polls; that they had absolute proof that the votes would never be counted but that the whole proceeding would be a farce, and that, as a protest against such frauds and miscarriage of justice, they had deliberately refrained from going to the polls after ten o'clock in the morning; that the results of the election had been absurd and ridiculous; that the Liberals were greatly in the majority in the island, "as every one knew," and that the government, as constituted, was an imposition on the people, weak, inefficient and corrupt. He added that he and his compatriots wanted nothing more than that which they were in a position to enforce, and which they would have enforced had it not been for the suspension of hostilities which had been acquiesced in by the Liberals only out of deference to Mr. Taft and his commission. In other words, Dr. Zayas stated that they wished the immediate resignation of President Palma, his cabinet, and all members of Congress who had secured their seats at the last election; and he intimated that the judges of the courts who had been appointed by the Conservative party were corrupt and incompetent, and should be replaced by better men. In fact, they demanded the removal of the entire administration, and the annulment of the results of the last election. Against this Mr. Taft protested, stating that Dr. Zayas's suggestions were decidedly radical; that so far as Estrada Palma was concerned, he had been elected with at least the moral support of the United States government; that Washington knew and trusted him and had every reason to believe him a thoroughly honest man; and that he could not consent to any move so sweeping as that which Dr. Zayas suggested. Dr. Zayas immediately withdrew his objection to President Palma, stating that, on second thought, his retention as President would preserve the republican form of government, and save the island from a political change that should be avoided if possible. Therefore, Mr. Palma was more than welcome to remain as President of the Republic; but every other condition expressed with reference to Congress, the cabinet and the courts, must be enforced, and at once. That was the ultimatum given to Mr. Taft by the leaders of the Liberals. This ultimatum was conveyed at once to President Palma, together with the intimation that it was a bad mess all around, and that, since a force variously estimated at between twelve and twenty thousand men surrounded the City of Havana, and property was in danger, and since Orestes Ferrara had already notified the commission that if the demands were not acquiesced in, three of the large sugar plantations in the neighborhood of Cienfuegos would be given over to the torch at daylight the next morning, it was probably best to yield to the demands of the Liberals, and practically to let them have their way, in the interest of peace, brotherhood and conservation of the rights of property. This astounding and unworthy attitude on the part of the Commission deeply hurt President Palma, who had with good cause expected not only its moral aid but probably also the military support of the armed force that came to Cuba, at least as long as the policy of his government could be justified. This mental attitude was not however indicated by any word that came from his lips. With unmoved dignity he bowed in uncomplaining acquiescence, and said that he entirely understood the situation; that Mr. Taft would receive his resignation as President, by word of mouth and in writing, as quickly as it could be dictated to his secretary; and that he would retire at once from the Presidency of Cuba. Against this action Mr. Taft protested, though he himself had obviously made it necessary, and explained that arrangements had been made, at his suggestion, in which Dr. Zayas as leader of the Liberals had acquiesced, to the effect that Mr. Palma should remain as President of the Republic, although the Liberals demanded the expulsion of all other members of the administration. President Palma thanked Mr. Taft for his expression of faith in him personally, but absolutely refused to consider the withdrawal of his resignation, stating with impregnable logic, which Mr. Taft could not refute, that if his cabinet, his Congress and his courts were fraudulent, or held their positions illegally, he himself, having been elected at the same time, and in the same manner, was not the real President of Cuba. Therefore, he refused to remain longer in office. He added with punctilious courtesy that he would take the liberty of eating his supper in the palace with his family, since it was prepared, but he would not remain within its walls another day. When this attitude of the President was communicated to the members of the Cuban Congress, a meeting was at once called, at which, after a great deal of animated discussion, a joint committee was appointed, consisting of twenty-four men, to wait upon and expostulate with President Palma, but after several hours of pleading, they were unsuccessful in persuading him to change his mind. So came the fall of the Palma government, whereupon Secretary Taft assumed complete charge and control of the affairs of the Cuban Republic. The insurgent leaders signed a formal agreement to surrender, in which they promised to restore to their owners the horses and other property which they had seized, though as a matter of fact none of them did so; since, for good measure, perhaps, Mr. Taft through military decree gave to the rebels an absolute deed of ownership of the horses they had stolen from the stables and fields of their rightful owners. It took them nearly two weeks to disarm and disperse. Then Mr. Taft issued a proclamation granting "a full and complete amnesty and pardon to all persons who have directly or indirectly participated in the recent insurrection in Cuba, or who have given aid or comfort to persons participating therein, for offenses political in their nature and committed in the course of the insurrection and prior to disbandment." This amnesty, he added, was to be "considered and construed as covering offenses of rebellion, sedition or conspiracy to commit the same, and other related offenses." Finally, Mr. Taft announced on October 13 the turning over of the government of the island, with the full power which he himself had exercised, to Mr. Charles E. Magoon, and on that same date Mr. Magoon accepted and was installed in the office, thus beginning the second Government of Intervention. The general feeling of Cubans at that time was divided. The pessimistic elements rather suspected that the United States, having been called there a second time, might never leave. On the other hand, the thinking class, and those who had experienced the United States government and its various administrations in Cuba, especially under General Leonard Wood, were confident that it was only a temporary régime that circumstances had made necessary, and they hoped that out of it much good would come. Thus ended the most pathetic and tragic incident in the history of the Cuban Republic, and the one which was on the whole most discreditable to the United States. Nothing could have been more deplorable than that a statesman of the great ability, the lofty ideals and especially the generally judicial mind of Mr. Taft should thus weakly and illogically have yielded to a vile conspiracy, manifested through lawless threats and unproved clamor, against a Chief of State who in validity of title, in purity of character, in unselfish devotion to the public good, and in potential efficiency of enlightened administrationship, was not unworthy to be ranked even in the same category with the great President under whom Mr. Taft himself held his commission. Estrada Palma, according to Mr. Taft's intimation, had erred. History will forever record that he erred chiefly if not solely in assuming, in his own transparent integrity, that other men were as honest as himself. He was, his enemies asserted, weak. But intelligence and justice must discern and declare that his only weakness was in an over-confidence in the people to whose service he had given all the best of his life and in whose loyalty and support he imagined that he could securely trust. He could not, in the greatness of his own soul, bring himself to believe it possible for men, for men calling themselves Cuban patriots, to do such things as those which Jose Miguel Gomez and Alfredo Zayas and Orestes Ferrara and their coparceners did. He was not moved by weakness, but by a desire to protect Cuba from the ravages of sordid revolution and from the unscrupulous exploitation of bushwhacking bandits, and to preserve for the Cuban people and their Republic the good name which had been so fairly and as he thought fully established during the years of his first administration. His place in the annals of Cuba is secure. His rank among the constitutional executives of the world is enviably high. There has been in Cuba or elsewhere no more honest administration than his, and none that more intelligently, unselfishly and untiringly strove to fulfil its every duty to the state. Its untimely fall is not to be charged against any subjective fault of its own, but to the unscrupulous malice of sordid foes, the apathy of the people in whom too great confidence had been reposed, and to the inexplicable betrayal by those who should have supported and protected it but who instead consented to its destruction. CHAPTER XV Mr. Magoon came to Cuba but little known to Cubans and unfamiliar with what was before him. During this second American intervention there were some radical changes in the administration, and more public works were undertaken than President Palma had ventured upon. The consensus of opinion among American officers, all the officers who had accompanied Mr. Magoon, was that the Palma administration had made a mistake in allowing so much money to accumulate in the treasury. It had become a temptation to those who were not in power, and it would have been better to have the money expended along lines that would tend to advance the republic rather than to permit it to accumulate. So it was realized that if it was not expended during Mr. Magoon's administration, it would be spent, and probably largely wasted, if not actually misappropriated, by the Liberals if they should secure control of the government. The most unfortunate thing in connection with the visit of Mr. Taft, and therefore with the administration of Mr. Magoon, was that the Liberals had apparently gained their ends. The majority of thoughtful and patriotic Cubans had expected the intervention of the United States to result in the upholding of law, order and justice in the support of President Palma and his administration. They had expected that Mr. Taft would take time to investigate the case thoroughly, and that he would insist at the outset, as an indispensable preliminary to his entering into conference with them, that the Liberal insurgents should surrender their arms and ammunition, return the property which they had stolen, and submit themselves loyally to the constitutional government of the island; and that after that, but only after it, he would see to it that justice was done to them as to all parties and all people. That course was unfortunately not taken. Mr. Taft entered into conference with unrepentant and defiant rebels whose followers were at the moment in arms, threatening and preparing to make further criminal assaults upon property and life. He regarded or at least treated them as no less worthy of a hearing and of being taken into conference than the President himself; and despite his protests he concluded the sorry performance by practically ousting President Palma and his cabinet at the behest of these lawless insurgents. The sequel was tragedy. Estrada Palma died, not of pneumonia but of a broken heart. Nor was that all. Encouragement was given to the lawless and criminal elements of the island, and to those who resort to violence, insurrection and revolution as the means of attaining their political ends, which has been felt ever since and which has repeatedly given rise to attempts to repeat the performance which then was so successful. Recognition was given to the Liberals, through what were doubtless good but certainly were mistaken motives, and the Liberals insisted upon maintaining that recognition and profiting from it. So when a Council, or Consulting Board, of eleven members was formed with General Enoch H. Crowder as chairman, it contained only two Conservatives and one man of doubtful affiliations. Three members, Senors Garcia Kohly, Viondi and Carrera, did not belong to the August revolutionists but were members of the Moderado party, which had supported Estrada Palma. They acted as "Independents" on the Commission, though they were intimately associated with the Liberals, and as "Independents" they participated in the municipal elections. But later they joined the Liberals outright. All the rest of the Commission, or Consulting Board, were Liberals who had actually taken part in the rebellion. No appointment to office could be made without the sanction of that Board, and the result was that the Second Government of Intervention was packed with Liberal placeholders. Competent men, who had served the State well under President Palma's administration, were dismissed and replaced by incompetents whose sole recommendation was that they were Liberals. Now the voters of Cuba are as a rule easily impressed, and do not always appreciate the possibility, through hard work, of transforming a minority into a majority. They delight in being at once on the winning side, and therefore pay much attention to determining not so much which of two rival and contending parties is really right and deserving of support, as which side is going to win. The fact that the Liberal leaders, who previously had had almost no recognition, social, political or official, suddenly came to the front, and with the apparent acquiescence of the United States, or of the commission appointed in Washington, were exerting great influence, seemed a pretty sure indication, or at least was so interpreted, that the United States had changed its ideas with regard to the government in Cuba, and was favoring, and probably would continue to favor and sustain the Liberal party. That was one of the reasons why the Liberals won their next election. In fact they pointed to it as evidence of America's moral support, and frequently referred to and displayed an order, said to have been issued through mistake, which provided that every man who had stolen a horse, and who confessed his theft frankly, should have full proprietary title to that horse and need not surrender it to the owner. The order is still on the statute books, a memento of the American intervention. That was resented by the better citizens; it discouraged many people who had had great confidence in the United States, and it illustrates not the general policy of the second government of intervention, but some of the unfortunate things that took place under that intervention, that seemed to the better class in Cuba, as mistaken. Mr. Magoon spent the larger part of the money found in the treasury on public works, the building of roads, and various enterprises for the best interests of the island. It is claimed that in some instances the contracts became a source of graft, and that the roads were not built according to specifications. At any rate, they were built, and were sorely needed, and the results on the whole were excellent. Of the $26,000,000 left by the Palma administration nearly every dollar was expended at that time. Although the second Government of Intervention was theoretically and nominally, and doubtless meant to be actually, quite non-political and impartial as between the Cuban parties, the very circumstances of its origin made it appear to favor the Liberals. It had come into power by accepting the resignation of the Palma administration, which was practically Conservative, at the demand of the Liberals. The Liberals thus enjoyed all through its duration the prestige of victory, without having to bear any of the responsibility of being in office, or incurring any of the odium which is almost inevitable to every human government which has not learned to achieve the impossible task of pleasing everybody. There was no such foundation work to do as had been done under the first Intervention, and the American government busied itself principally with routine matters, and with making it possible for the Cubans to resume control of their own affairs. One of the most important undertakings at this time from a non-political point of view was the taking of a new census. This was not done on so elaborate a scale as the preceding census of 1899, but was more strictly an enumeration of the people, for purposes of apportionment, etc. It was taken under the direction of the American Government of Intervention in 1907, the actual work on it being done by a staff of Cuban canvassers and statisticians, and it was believed to have been accurately and comprehensively done. The work of compiling the new census of Cuba which was taken in 1907 was continued in the early part of 1908 and was completed and results were published at the end of March of that year. The total population of the island was reported to be 2,048,980, and out of this number 419,342 were citizens and entitled to vote. It was then arranged to hold municipal and provincial elections on August 1, and a national election on November 14. These elections would be essential parts of the processes by which the United States government would bring its second intervention to a close and restore the island to the control and government of its own people. The electoral law under which they were to be conducted was promulgated for the August election on April 1 and for the November election on September 11, 1908. This law had three salient and characterizing features. The first was that it established a system of permanent election boards which were charged with the work of conducting the elections. In each municipality there was to be a board of three members. In each department or province there was to be a board of five members of whom two were to be representatives of the two principal political parties of the island while the other three were to be non-political members, officials of the courts or representatives of the education department. The second salient feature of the law was a system of compulsory registration. This provided for the making and keeping by the election boards of lists of all persons in the island who were entitled to vote. The basis of these lists was the census of 1907, and it was provided that the lists should be revised, corrected and amplified by the election boards every year. The third and perhaps the most important feature of the law was its provision for proportional representation. This secured minority representation, giving each of the important political parties membership in legislative bodies and also in the Electoral College representation in proportion to the number of votes polled. Under the constitution of Cuba the right of suffrage is guaranteed to every adult male in full enjoyment of his ordinary civil rights. This of course bestows the franchise upon a great number of illiterate persons. The commission which revised the electoral law in 1908 carefully considered the question of undertaking in some way to deal with the illiterate vote so that it would not be, as it seemed on the face to be, a potential menace to the state. It was finally decided however, that it would be impracticable and inadvisable to attempt in any way to modify the constitution. Provisions were, however, adopted whereby alien residents of the island, although not permitted to vote, were made eligible for election as members of municipal councils and also as associate members of municipal commissions. [Illustration: THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS The Academy of Arts and Crafts is one of the notable institutions which make Havana an important centre of culture, both theoretical and applied. This great school of technology was opened in 1882, and occupies a fine building of dignified and impressive academic architecture.] The provincial and municipal elections occurred on August 1. There were in the field three major political parties, namely, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Historical Liberals. The latter two were formed by a split which had occurred in the Liberal party. The principal faction was led by Jose Miguel Gomez, who claimed to be representative of the original and only simon pure Liberals, and who regarded the other faction as an illegitimate schism. The followers of Gomez accordingly called themselves the Historical Liberal Party, but were popularly known as the Miguelistas. The other faction was led by Alfredo Zayas and called itself simply the Liberal Party, being popularly known as the Zayistas. There was another insignificant faction which had been known as the National Independent Party but which now merged itself with the Zayistas. The third party was of course the Conservative. The result of the elections of August 1 was the polling of 269,132 votes or about 60 per cent. of the registration. The Conservatives elected their candidates for Governor in the three provinces of Pinar del Rio, Matanzas and Santa Clara. In the municipalities of the island the Conservatives elected twenty-eight mayors, the Miguelistas thirty-five and the Zayistas eighteen. The elections were conducted quietly and legally, no serious charges of intimidation or fraud were made, and the results were loyally accepted by men of all parties. The campaign for the Presidential election was then continued with much zeal. The results of the election of August 1 were taken deeply to heart by the various Liberal leaders as demonstrating to them that the split in their party would be fatal to them in the national election unless it were healed or at least some sort of a modus vivendi were established. Accordingly Jose Miguel Gomez and Alfredo Zayas "got together" and agreed upon a compromise of their claims. It was altogether apparent that Gomez was on the whole the stronger of the two candidates. Also he was the older of the two men. Therefore it was agreed that he should have the first chance at the Presidency of Cuba. He should be the candidate at the coming election of 1908, but if he was successful in being elected he should not seek a second term but at the end of his first should step aside and give his support to Zayas as his successor. With this understanding the party was reunited for the purposes of the campaign. Gomez was made the candidate for the Presidency and Zayas was nominated for the Vice-Presidency. The Conservatives nominated for the Presidency General Mario G. Menocal and for the Vice-Presidency Doctor Rafael Montoro. The campaign was conducted with much spirit and earnestness but generally in a dignified and law abiding manner. The chief stock in trade of the Liberals was abuse of the former administration of Estrada Palma, and of General Menocal as the inheritor of its traditions and policies. There were also many intemperate attacks upon Doctor Montoro because of his former association with the Autonomist party and the brief Autonomist Government during the later part of the War of Independence. How insincere this criticism of Dr. Montoro was appeared a little later when that statesman was appointed to a very important office under the Gomez administration. The election occurred on November 14, under the general supervision of the American Government of Intervention, and was conducted in a peaceful and legal manner, giving no cause for serious complaints on either side. The result of the polling was a decisive victory for the Liberal party. Of the 331,455 votes the Liberals polled 201,199 and the Conservatives 130,256, there being thus a Liberal majority of 70,943. The Liberals carried all six provinces of the island, obtaining their largest majorities in Havana, Santa Clara and Oriente. Gomez and Zayas were assured of the entire electoral vote, though under the law of proportional representation for minorities the Conservatives elected thirty-two members of Congress to the Liberals' fifty-one. Various reasons were assigned for this decisive defeat of General Menocal. One was, that the Liberals were in the public eye as coming men. It was said that as their leaders had never been tried as directors of the Republic, it was time to give them an opportunity to show what they could do. The policy which the Liberals had outlined in advance was very attractive to certain classes of the population. They promised to abolish the law which General Wood had made, prohibiting cock-fighting. They even harked back to "Jack" Cade for inspiration, and promised that when they came into power there should be no necessity for men to work as hard as they had been doing. In token of these two promises they adopted as their pictorial emblem in the campaign a plow standing idle in a weed-grown field without plowman or oxen, and with a fighting cock perched upon its beam. Their campaign cry might therefore appropriately have been "Cockfighting and Idleness!" It is not agreeable to recall that such issues appealed to so large a proportion of the citizens of Cuba that upon them the election of 1908 was won. Much of the stock in trade of the Liberal campaign consisted also in denunciation of General Menocal. The Liberals declared that he was representative of the class and the régime that had practically been dismissed by the United States government in the Second Intervention, namely, the "silk-stocking" or intellectual class, which did not sympathize with the people and with the real cause of popular liberty. It was also pointed out as though it were an opprobrious fact that General Menocal had associated with himself as Vice-Presidential candidate Dr. Rafael Montoro, to whose character and ability not even the Liberals ventured to take exception, but who had been an Autonomist. When this reputed reason for his defeat was mentioned to General Menocal he declared that he was willing to accept it, though he did not believe it to be the true one; adding that after having been associated with Dr. Montoro during the campaign and having intimately exchanged ideas with him, he regarded him, Autonomist though he had been, as one of the best men Cuba had ever produced, and would more gladly be defeated with him than be victorious with the companion of his opponent. The various provincial and municipal officers who had been elected on August 1 took office and the new provincial laws went into effect on October 1, 1908. Because of the persistent failure of the Cuban Congress hitherto to enact new municipal legislation these were the first local officials chosen by the people since the municipal elections which were held under the first American Government of Intervention of 1901. Since 1901 all vacancies occurring in municipal offices had been filled either by the votes of the municipal councils themselves or by appointment of the national government. This was because no provision had been made for their election by the people. Naturally this state of affairs gave great dissatisfaction and repeated demands were made by the Liberals for the removal of the holdover officials. It was also contended by the Liberals that the election of members of the provincial councils in 1905 had been illegal. Under the old law provincial governors and councilmen were elected for four years and half of the council was renewed every two years. Thus half of the council was elected in 1903 and these members took their seats in 1904, and half were again elected in 1905 and took their seats in 1906. The contention of the Liberals was that this latter half, of 1905-1906, were illegal. On April 6, 1908, the terms of councilmen elected in 1903 and seated in 1904 expired, leaving in office only those who had been elected in 1905 and seated in 1906, whom the Liberals affected to regard as having been illegally elected, and who in any case were not sufficient for a legal quorum. The Liberals demanded therefore that all seats be declared vacant and that the powers of the provincial assemblies be vested for the time in the Provisional Government of Intervention. This was done, and the provincial governors were also required to resign. These latter vacancies were filled temporarily by the appointment of United States army officers, who served until October 1, 1908, when they were succeeded by men elected by the Cuban people. There was undoubtedly great need for a thorough revision of the laws of Cuba. Those existing at this time were for the most part a legacy of the old Spanish government and it was quite obvious that laws which had been enacted by a despotic government for the control of a subject colony were not suited for a free and independent republic. They were certainly not in harmony with the constitution which had been adopted. It was an anomalous state of affairs that after the adoption of the constitution Cuban municipalities should continue to be governed under the Spanish provincial and municipal code of 1878. This code gave the Central Government not only intimate supervision over but practical control of all municipal affairs, even to the smallest details, and naturally was very unsatisfactory to the people who were desirous of local home rule as well as of national independence. In fact the efforts of the national authorities to enforce these laws were regarded with displeasure and actually caused strong local antagonism to the national government. Under the second government of intervention, therefore, a commission was organized in 1907 consisting of both Cubans and Americans, the former being the majority, for the purpose of drafting elaborate codes of electoral, municipal, provincial, judiciary and civil service laws. This commission completed its work but all its recommendations were not adopted. Its provincial and municipal codes were however put into effect on October 1, 1908. The general condition of the island during the second American intervention was excellent so far as the maintenance of law and order was concerned. This was largely due to the efficient work of the Rural Guard, the operations of which were directed by a number of American officers detailed for that purpose. While brigandage was not wholly suppressed, it was much diminished and held in check. One of the chief controversies with which the government of intervention had to deal was that with the Roman Catholic church over various properties formerly belonging to it which had been confiscated by the Spanish government. There was some such property in the province of Oriente, a part of extensive estates once held by certain monastic orders. It had been taken by the Spanish government during the Ten Years' War, and at the end of that conflict the government refused to return it, but instead of doing so agreed to make an annual appropriation for the benefit of the church. Upon the separation of State and Church under American intervention in 1899 these appropriations were discontinued, whereupon the church claimed that the property should be restored to it. The validity of this claim was recognized by the American government, but instead of complying with it by actual restoration of the property that government purchased a part of the property from the church at a price mutually agreed upon as satisfactory. It was over the remainder of this property that the controversy was renewed, and it was settled by a similar purchase in 1908. Another such controversy arose over valuable property in Havana, which had been taken from the church by the government for the custom house and other public offices; and it also was settled by fair purchase on July 12, 1907. After the installation of provincial and municipal officers on October 1, 1908, and after the successful conduct of the national election on November 14 following, the American Government of Intervention busied itself chiefly with preparations for withdrawing from the island and returning the control and government to the representative of the Cuban people. This was finally effected on January 28, 1909, when Governor Magoon retired and Jose Miguel Gomez became President of Cuba. The total cost to Cuba of the second American intervention was estimated at about $6,000,000. The general feeling of the responsible people of Cuba concerning the second American intervention was one of extreme disappointment, owing to the fact that they compared it with the intervention under General Wood, or rather with the conduct of affairs under him. That first intervention was under the control of military officers, and when they made up their mind that a thing should be done, it was done, and as a rule well done, and the example which was set in directing affairs of the government, organizing public works, schools, in sanitation, and in auditing, made the second intervention suffer by comparison. CHAPTER XVI Jose Miguel Gomez became President and Alfredo Zayas became Vice-President of the Republic of Cuba on January 28, 1909. With a substantial majority in Congress ready to do his will, and with the immeasurable prestige of success, first over the Palma Administration and later in the contest at the polls, the President was almost all-powerful to adopt and to execute whatever designs he had, either for the assumed welfare of Cuba or for the strengthening of his own political position. He selected a Cabinet of his own supporters, as follows: Secretary of State, Senor Garcia Velez. Secretary of Justice, Senor Divino. Secretary of Government, Senor Lopez Leiva. Secretary of the Treasury, Senor Diaz de Villegas. Secretary of Public Works, Senor Chalons. Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, Senor Foyo. Secretary of Public Instruction and Arts, Senor Meza. Secretary of Sanitation and Charity, Senor Duque. Secretary to the President, Senor Damaso Pasalodos. Not many of these men had hitherto been conspicuous in the affairs of the island, in either peace or war, and their capacity for service was untried. It cannot be said that they were regarded with any large degree of enthusiastic confidence by the nation at large. Yet there was indubitably a general purpose, even among the most resolute Conservatives, to give them a fair trial and to wish them success. Men who had the welfare of Cuba at heart cherished that welfare far above any mere personal or partisan ambitions. [Illustration: JOSE MIGUEL GOMEZ] It would not be easy to imagine a man much more different from the first President of Cuba than his successor, the second President; though indeed the latter was a man of no mean record, especially in war. Jose Miguel Gomez was born in Sancti Spiritus on July 6, 1858. He there obtained his earlier education, which he continued at the Institute of Havana, taking his degree of Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in 1875. He joined the revolutionary forces shortly before the end of the Ten Years' War. When, after the Zanjon Peace, the struggle broke out afresh, in the Little War, Gomez took once more to the field and attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. This outbreak having failed, he returned to his home and devoted himself to managing his father's estate in Sancti Spiritus. When once more the Cuban patriots resumed their struggle for the cause of independence in 1895, he again answered the call to arms. The action of Manajato won for him the rank of Colonel and the command of the Sancti Spiritus brigade. He was subsequently promoted to Brigadier General and then to the rank of Division General, after the battle of Santa Teresa where he was wounded. By the year 1898 he was at the head of the first division of the Fourth Army Corps which operated in Santa Clara Province. In this command he figured in most of the battles fought in that section at the time. The capture of the supposedly impregnable ingenio Canambo in the Trinidad Valley was one of the feats of this campaign. Also the attack and capture of Jibaro, a town defended by a strong contingent, and the operation of strategical importance conducted against Arroyo Blanco, are to the General's credit in this campaign, in which he was effectively assisted by a remarkable staff of young men, who won a reputation for their capability and courage. When the Santa Cruz del Sur Assembly met, at the close of the war against Spain, General Gomez was elected to represent Santa Clara. Shortly after, he formed part of a delegation which was sent to Washington on a diplomatic mission. On his return to Cuba he was appointed Civil Governor of the Province of Santa Clara on March 14, 1899; which position he held until September 27, 1905, when he resigned, having been nominated as the candidate of the Liberal party for the Presidency. His years of office as Governor of Santa Clara were interrupted by his attending the sessions of the Constitutional Convention at Havana, as a delegate from Santa Clara. When General Gomez was defeated by President Estrada Palma, who ran for re-election, conspiracies and agitations were organized which culminated in the revolt of August, 1906, against Estrada Palma's administration. Of this conspiracy and agitation Gomez was the organizer and leader. The Palma Government having proved its inability to quench the uprising, the American authorities intervened, and at the close of that intervention, on January 28, 1909, Gomez was installed as President of Cuba. Of different type entirely, yet not unsuited to work with Jose Miguel Gomez whenever their mutual interests made cooperation desirable, was the new Vice-President, Dr. Alfredo Zayas. He too was a man of conspicuous record, in the War of Independence and afterward, though it had not been made on the field of battle. Alfredo Zayas was born on February 21, 1861, and took his degree of licentiate in administrative law in 1882 at the University of Havana, and the following year in civil and canonic law. He soon acquired a reputation as a lawyer and in the world of letters. During the War of Independence he was the delegate in Havana of the revolutionary party. His activities in this connection having been discovered, he was imprisoned in September, 1896, and was sent to Spain and incarcerated at several of the prisons of the Spanish Government in Africa. After the War of Independence, Dr. Zayas led an active political life. He was the founder and Secretary of the Patriotic Committee, was a prominent member of the Constituent Convention, of which he acted as Secretary, and was foremost in organizing and leading the activities of the National, Liberal-National and Liberal parties. He served as Senator from the Province of Havana. He was one of the jurists who formed the Consultative Committee, appointed to draw up the organic laws of the executive and judicial powers, as well as the laws relating to the provincial and municipal institutions. At different times he occupied the posts of prosecuting attorney, municipal judge, and sub-secretary of Justice. During the revolutionary movement which took place in 1906 against the Estrada Palma administration, Dr. Zayas was president of the revolutionary committee. After the provisional administration which followed the fall of President Palma, he was elected to the Vice-Presidency of the Republic. [Illustration: DR. ALFREDO ZAYAS] Dr. Zayas's life in the world of letters is no less interesting. From 1890-93 he published various periodicals and collaborated in others. He has written several books on Cuban history and studies on the language of the primitive inhabitants of the Island, on bibliography, on questions relating to law and political economy, etc. He is a member of the Academy of History and for eleven years was President of the Sociedad Economica. The armed forces of the American government were of course withdrawn from Cuba on January 28, 1909, at the same time with the retirement of Governor Magoon and the second Government of Intervention, and the maintenance of order was left for a time entirely with the Rural Guard. That body of men had been very efficient during the American intervention and was considered by many to be quite ample for all the military purposes of the island. During 1909, however, President Gomez decided to organize a permanent Cuban army. To the chief command of this he appointed his friend Pino Guerra. The organization consisted of a general staff, a brigade of two regiments of infantry of three battalions each, amounting to about 2,500 officers and men; two batteries of light field artillery and four batteries of mounted artillery, amounting to about 800 officers and men; a machine gun corps of four companies comprising 500 officers and men; and a corps of coast artillery comprising 1,000 officers and men. This force was trained and equipped under the direction of officers of the United States army who were borrowed for the purpose by the Cuban government. The administration of President Gomez was marked with the enactment of many new laws, and of the undertaking of a number of enterprises. One law granted amnesty to all persons excepting those who had been convicted of certain peculiarly odious offenses. Another suspended the duty on the export of sugar, tobacco and liquors which had been imposed by the former Palma administration. On the other hand an additional tax was imposed upon all imports. Early in the administration a perpetual franchise was granted for telephone service throughout the entire Island, an act which was severely criticized on the ground that the President himself was believed to derive pecuniary profit from it. Laws were also enacted in 1909, legalizing cock fighting and establishing the national lottery. In 1910, the second year of this administration, President Gomez began to manifest marked sensitiveness toward the criticisms which were made of his administration, and on February 3, two editors were convicted of libelling him, because they had accused him of deriving profit from governmental activities, and they were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. In April, he appointed to a place in his cabinet Senor Morua, a negro, and the first member of that race to hold cabinet office in Cuba. In July an insurrection occurred in Oriente near the town of El Caney, which was suppressed by the Rural Guards with little difficulty. The active participation of government officers in party politics led to a disturbing incident at the beginning of August. At that time the Secretary of the Treasury, Senor Villegas, attended a convention of the Liberal party where he became involved in a violent quarrel. In consequence, the president ordered that thereafter no member of the Cabinet should be permitted to attend political meetings, or engage in active political work; whereupon Villegas resigned his place in the Cabinet. In November, congressional elections were held to elect half of the members of the House of Representatives. During the campaign the former quarrel in the Liberal party became acute. One faction started a violent agitation for the suppression of all religious orders in the Island, for the abolition of trusts in business, and for the prohibition of the holding of property in Cuba by foreign corporations. The other faction took for the chief plank in its platform the repudiation of the Platt Amendment. An attempt was also made by the negro members of the party to organize a third faction, comprising exclusively the members of their race. Because of these dissensions in the Liberal party the Conservatives made a somewhat better showing at the election than they had done in 1908, but the Liberals were generally successful and secured a majority in Congress. At the opening of the session, President Gomez urged revision of the tariff in order to provide fuller protection for certain manufacturing industries; the building of a new Palace of Justice; and the establishment at state expense of public libraries in the chief cities. During this year an attempt was made to assassinate General Pino Guerra, but it was unsuccessful. The would-be assassin was arrested and Guerra professed to recognize in him an officer of the police who had had some grudge against him. Alfredo Zayas and Frank Steinhart, the former United States Consul General, also made public complaints of attempts to assassinate them, and reported the matter to the Supreme Court, but that tribunal declined to investigate their charges. An attempt was made to connect the attempted assassination of General Guerra with a bill pending before Congress, which provided that the head of the army should not be removed excepting for cause. It was said that this bill was strongly opposed by the Commander of the Rural Guards, and that he had in consequence incited the attempt to assassinate Guerra. There was much public discussion and agitation of this matter, but nothing practical resulted from it. Charges continued to be made increasingly of the profligacy and corruption of the Gomez administration. It was charged, doubtless with much truth, that the number of public offices and office holders had been unnecessarily multiplied to a scandalous extent for the sake of giving profitable jobs to the friends of Liberal leaders. It was also intimated that the Government had subsidized the press to suppress the truth concerning these and other charges, and thus to avoid an open scandal which might result in a third American intervention. Taxation was declared to be excessive and oppressive, amounting in some cases to as much as 30 per cent. of the value of the property. Other charges were that public offices, executive, legislative and even judicial, were practically sold to the highest bidder for cash; that concessions for public utilities were similarly disposed of for the profit not of the public but of members of the Government, and that then extortionate prices were charged to the public for the service rendered; that the natural resources of Cuba were thus being parceled out to speculators for cash; that a bill purporting to be for the improvement of the ports had increased four-fold the expenses of those ports, for the enrichment of a speculative company, and that in general the functions of the government were being perverted to the uses and the personal enrichment of a ring of Liberal politicians. As the date of the electoral campaign of 1912 drew near, the conduct of the administration became such as to incur the menace of another intervention. In January of that year an arbitrary attempt was made by President Gomez to thwart the activities and impair the influence of the Veterans' Association, by forbidding army officers and members of the Rural Guard to attend any of its meetings, on the pretended ground that they were engaged in factional political agitation. As the organization was in no sense a partisan affair, but was composed of men of varying shades of political opinion who had the good of Cuba at heart, and who strove to avert the danger of further intervention by making and keeping the Cuban government above reproach, this decree of the President's was sharply resented and was openly disobeyed by many army officers. When on the evening of Sunday, January 14, 1912, many officers and Rural Guards attended a meeting of the National Council of the Veterans' Association, and were received with much enthusiasm, the situation caused so much disquiet that the United States government felt constrained to send a note of warning to President Gomez, stating that it was much concerned over the state of affairs in Cuba; that the laws must be enforced and order maintained; and that the President of the United States looked to the President and government of Cuba to see to it that there was no need of a third intervention. This note evoked from President Gomez the declaration that matters in Cuba were not in as bad a state as had been reported, and that he had the whole situation well in hand. General Emilio Nunez, the head of the Veterans' Association, declared that that organization would remain firm in its object to guarantee peace, to moralize the Administration, and to spread patriotism in the hearts of the people; and that it protested against that which might be a menace to the freedom and independence of Cuba, with confidence that the people of the United States would never regard its unselfish and patriotic campaign as an excuse for unwarranted intervention. He added that the Association had not sought to annul the law against participation in politics by the army, but resented the charge in the Presidents' decree that it was "playing politics." "Patriotically we shall make every sacrifice, but we shall never resign ourselves to be miserable slaves dominated by irresponsible power untrammelled by laws or principles." The leaders of the Liberal party were by no means a unit in attitude toward the crisis, the antagonism already mentioned between President Gomez and Vice-President Zayas flaming up anew. The newspaper organ of the Zayista faction openly declared: "We are on the brink of an abyss, whither we have been brought by the stubborn stupidity of a portion of the administration and by flagrant contempt for Congress and its enactments. These things have brought on all our existing ills." Orestes Ferrara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, much alarmed at the menace of intervention which might on this occasion have been as disastrous to the Liberals as the former intervention had been to the administration of Estrada Palma, declared that party differences must be dropped and that "We must resign our passions and ambitions to save Cuba from another shameful foreign domination." Meantime the masses of thoughtful, patriotic citizens, disgusted with what they regarded as governmental extravagance and corruption, held themselves in admirable restraint, hoping that the peril of intervention would be in some way avoided until they could have an opportunity of permanently averting it through the election of a government which would give the United States no further cause for anxiety or for even a thought of resuming control of Cuban affairs. The crisis was thus fortunately passed, and the settlement of the Cuban people with the administration of Jose Miguel Gomez was postponed, as was fitting, until the fall elections. There followed a little later another ominous incident, for which President Gomez was largely responsible, but which he repudiated and dealt with in an energetic and efficient manner. The attempt, already referred to, at the organization of a negro party in the election campaign of 1910 was followed in May, 1912, by the outbreak of what seemed to be a formidable negro revolt. The leaders of this movement were two negro friends of Gomez, General Estenoz and General Ivonnet. They had been officers in the War of Independence, and it was said that Gomez had promised them and their negro followers great rewards if they would support him in his campaign for the presidency. When these promises were unfulfilled, these two men went through the Island urging the negroes to organize a political party of their own, which would probably hold the balance of power between the Conservatives and Liberals. Because of their violent agitation to this end they were arrested and imprisoned for a time. Then they were released and treated with much consideration. Indeed, they were offered appointment to offices, which, however, they declined. Instead, they renewed their agitation, and on May 22 an open revolt under their leadership occurred. So serious did the situation appear that an appeal was made to the United States Government, and preparations were actually made to send a naval and military expedition to protect the lives and property of Americans in the Island. President Gomez, however, rallied his military forces with much energy, and on June 14 completely routed the main body of the insurgents, capturing all their supplies of ammunition and provisions. This practically ended the trouble. Estenoz was killed in the fighting, and Ivonnet was captured and then killed; "in an attempt to escape." Another embarrassment for the passing administration occurred in August, 1912, when the United States government called upon President Gomez to make prompt settlement of certain claims which had been pending for two years, amounting to more than $500,000, and growing out of contracts for the waterworks and sanitation of the city of Cienfuegos. President Gomez protested that the Cuban treasury was without funds for the purpose, and that it would be necessary to wait until Congress could make a special appropriation. This reply was not convincing, seeing that payment of these identical claims had been made in a loan of $10,000,000 which the Cuban government had made in New York with the approval of the United States; and it was naturally assumed at Washington either that the money had been spent for other purposes or that it was being purposely withheld by President Gomez on some technicality or for some ulterior motive. As an incident of this controversy, in the closing days of August, the Liberal press of Havana conducted a campaign of vilification against Hugh S. Gibson, the American Chargé d'Affaires in Cuba, which culminated in a personal assault upon that gentleman by Enrique Maza, a member of the staff of one of the papers. This outrage provoked a sharp protest from the Washington government, in terms which implied a menace of action if reparation were not made. This alarmed President Gomez, and caused him to make at least a show of punishing the offender, and to write a long message of apology and pleading to President Taft, in which he promised to deal with Maza and with the newspapers which had been slandering Mr. Gibson, to the full extent of the law, and begged for a reassuring statement of friendship from the United States government. Ultimately Maza was punished by imprisonment, and the penalty of the law was also applied to Senor Soto, the responsible editor of one of the papers which had most libelled the American Charge d'Affaires. The Cienfuegos claim was also paid; but because of it an attempt was made to enact a law excluding all foreign contractors from participation in Cuban public works! The Presidential election occurred on November 1, and resulted, as we shall hereafter see, in assurance that the Liberal party would be retired from power in May of the following year, and that the government of the island would be confided to the hands of those who had striven to uphold the wise and patriotic administration of Estrada Palma. In the few remaining months of his administration President Gomez pursued substantially the same policy that had marked the preceding years. In March, 1913, Congress enacted an Amnesty bill which would have meant a general jail delivery throughout the Island, and which President Gomez was strongly inclined to sign. He was restrained at the last moment from doing so, however, by the energetic protests of the United States government, which indeed were tantamount to an ultimatum; and instead returned the measure to Congress with his veto, and with a recommendation that it be revised so as to avoid the objections of the United States--though he did not directly mention the United States--and then repassed. This was done and the modified bill became a law at the middle of April. In addition to the general extravagance of the Gomez administration, the overcrowding of all government offices with superfluous and incompetent placeholders, and the expenditure of more than $140,000,000 within two and a half years, there were several specific performances which provoked severe censure. One of these was the installation of the National Lottery, which was done by vote of Congress at the dictation of the President. The pretext given for this was that Cubans loved to gamble, and that if they had no lottery of their own they would send their money to Madrid, for chances in the lottery there; and it was better to keep their money in Cuba than to have it sent to Spain. Another act of the administration which incurred strong censure and which was ultimately repealed by the government of President Menocal, with the approval of the courts, was what was commonly known as the "Dragado deal." This was the granting to a speculative corporation composed chiefly of Liberal politicians and called the Ports Improvement Company of Cuba, of an omnibus concession for the dredging of harbors, reclaiming of coastal swamp lands, and similar works; for which the corporation was authorized to collect port fees, including a heavy surtax on imported merchandise, of which a small proportion would go to the government and the remainder to the coffers of the corporation. This concession was granted by President Gomez in 1911, against the advice of the United States government, and against strong and widespread protests from the people and press of Cuba, by whom it was regarded as a monstrous piece of corrupt jobbery. While it was in force, this concession paid millions of dollars a year to its holders, with an almost undiscernible minimum of advantage to the nation. Following this came a bargain with the railroads centering in Havana, by which the arsenal grounds belonging to the Republic and comprising a large and valuable tract lying immediately on the Bay of Havana were given to those companies in exchange for two comparatively small plots which had been occupied by them as a terminal station and warehouse. In addition the railroad companies agreed to build, or to provide the money for building, a new Presidential Palace, which President Gomez hoped to have finished in time for his own occupancy. This exchange was, in itself, undoubtedly a good thing. It gave the railroads an admirable site for the great terminal which they needed and which is now one of the valuable assets of Havana and indeed of Cuba. But the manner in which the bargain was made, the exercise of political influence, and the strong and unrefuted suspicion of the corrupt employment of pecuniary considerations, brought upon the transaction strong reprobation. An ironic sequel was that the work which was done on the proposed new palace was so bad that it presently had all to be torn down. Fortunately there was no relaxation in the maintenance of sanitary measures for the prevention of epidemics, and while there was little or no road building or other such public works those already constructed were generally well maintained. The judgment of thoughtful and impartial men upon the administration of José Miguel Gomez was therefore that it had contained some good and much evil, and that even the good had been done too often in an unworthy if not an actually evil way. It had been the administration of an astute and not over-scrupulous politician, who sought to serve first his own interests, next those of his party and friends, and last those of the nation, and not that of an enlightened and patriotic statesman, seeking solely to promote the welfare of the people who had chosen him to be their chief executive. CHAPTER XVII The fourth Presidential campaign in Cuba began in the spring of 1912. The Liberal administration had given the nation a thorough taste of its quality, with the result that there was a strong reaction against it on the part of many who had been its zealous upholders. The compact between José Miguel Gomez and Alfredo Zayas was, however, carried out, the former not seeking re-election but standing aside in favor of the latter, who accordingly received the Presidential nomination at the convention which was held on April 15. Before this, on April 7, the Conservative convention by unanimous vote and with great enthusiasm nominated General Mario G. Menocal for President, and Enrique José Varona for President. The campaign was conducted with much determination on both sides, but in a generally orderly fashion, and the election, which occurred on November 1, was also conducted in a creditable manner. Although the Liberals had made extravagant claims in advance, the result of the polling was a decisive victory for General Menocal, who easily carried every one of the six provinces. This result was due in part to the popular revulsion against the corruption of the Liberal administration, and partly to the immense popularity of the Conservative candidate and his admirable record as a useful public servant in various capacities. [Illustration: MARIO G. MENOCAL The third President of the Republic of Cuba, General Mario G. Menocal, comes of one of the most distinguished families in Latin America. He was born at Jaguey Grande, Cuba, on December 17, 1866, was educated at Cornell University, New York, and became associated in professional and business work with his uncle, Aniceto G. Menocal, the distinguished canal and railroad engineer. He entered the War of Independence at the beginning and served to the end with distinction. He was defeated for the Presidency in 1908, but was elected in 1912 and reelected in 1916. His history is the history of Cuba for the last seven years.] Mario G. Menocal, who was thus chosen to be the head of the Cuban Republic, came of an old Havana family, traditionally revolutionary, and was born in Jaguey Grande, Matanzas, in December, 1866. When his family emigrated, as a consequence of his father having taken part in the Ten Years' War, Mario Menocal began his education in the United States. He was graduated at Cornell University with the Class of 1888 and took his degree as Civil Engineer. No sooner was he graduated than his uncle, Aniceto G. Menocal, the distinguished engineer of the Isthmian Canals, summoned him to his side to work with him at Nicaragua. In 1893 he went to Cuba as engineer of a French Company to exploit a salt mine at Cayo Romano. He was working on the construction of the Santa Cruz railway in Camaguey when the War of Independence broke out in 1895. On June 5 of that year he joined the forces of Commander Alejandro Rodriguez as a private. At the attack on Fort Ramblazo he was promoted to sergeant, and it was not long before his military talents had won for him the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE AND BOYHOOD HOME OF PRESIDENT MARIO G. MENOCAL, JAGUEY GRANDE, MATANZAS] When the Revolutionary Government was constituted on September 15, 1895, Colonel Menocal was appointed Assistant Secretary of War, and in that capacity assisted Generals Gomez and Maceo in organizing the "invasion" contingent. He later joined the Third Army Corps under Mayia Rodriguez, and remained with it until the beginning of 1896 when he was called by General Calixto Garcia, who had just reached the Island and who made Menocal his Chief of Staff. Thereafter his name was associated with Garcia's brilliant campaign in Oriente. Among the many battles in which Colonel Menocal took part were the hard-fought engagements of La Gloria, Bellezas, Moscones, Hierba de Guinea, and the great struggle at Guantanamo, in July, 1896, against two Spanish columns which were cut apart and were obliged to abandon the Ramon de las Yaguas zone. In August the agricultural regions of Holguin were invaded and the Loma de Heirro fort seized, artillery being used for the first time in the war. This feat caused his promotion to the rank of Colonel. He then was active in the Sierra Maestra Mountains to meet Mendez's expedition. In October, Menocal seized Guaimaro, conducting personally the assault on Fort Gonfan, having captured which, he was made Brigadier General. In November, 1896, he took part in the battles of Alta Conchita and Lugones against Gen. Pando. Later he was present at the siege of Jiguani (April 13, 1897) and at Tuaheque, Jacaibama and Jucaibanita against Vara del Rey and Nicolas Rey, and at Baire he fought at the battle of Ratonera. It was at this time that Gen. Calixto Garcia made him Chief of the 3rd Division of the 2nd Corps, which included the western part of Holguin and Tunas. At the head of these forces he organized the attack and capture of Tunas, which was achieved by Gen. Calixto Garcia, August 30, 1897, Menocal having been wounded in a trench assault. This strategic success won for him an immediate promotion to Division General. In November, 1897, he attacked Fort Guamo on the Cauto River, one of the bloodiest events of the war, and took part in the battles of Cayamos, Monte Oscuro, Nabraga and Aguacatones, succeeding in this latter in seizing Tejeda's supply train. In March, 1898, he was appointed Chief of the 5th Army Corps, to join which he marched at the head of 200 select men, among whom were many prominent figures of the war--many still alive--as General Sartorius, Colonels Aurelio Hevea, Enrique Nunez, Federico Mendizabal, Pablo, Gustavo and Tomas Menocal, Rafael Pena, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, Commander Manuel Secades, Miguel Coyula, Ignacio Weber, Alberto de Cardenas, Antonio Calzades and Domingo Herrera. With this brave contingent, and assisted by the forces of Gen. Agramonte, Gen. Menocal passed the Trocha at its most dangerous point between Ciego de Avila and Jucaro. After a fifty days' march from Holguin, they reached Havana, relieving Gen. Alejandro Rodriguez of his command as Chief of the 5th Army Corps. Gen. Menocal was in this command when the American Intervention came, and cooperated with the American authorities in maintaining public order in Havana while the evacuation of the Spanish troops took place. Then General Ludlow appointed him Chief of the Havana Police, which body he organized, giving posts under him to the most distinguished chiefs of the Province of Havana. In 1899 he was appointed Inspector of Light Houses and subsequently Inspector of Public Works, which offices he resigned to manage Central Chaparra, in June, 1899. It is difficult to speak without danger of apparent exaggeration of the incommensurable work of General Menocal at Chaparra, as a true "captain of industry." There what were formerly barren fields have been transformed by something more than the touch of a magician's wand into the greatest sugar-producing establishment in the world. Nor does it consist merely of the gigantic mills. Houses for homes, schools, stores, churches, surround it, forming a city of no fewer than 30,000 prosperous inhabitants, devoted to the manufacture of sugar. Of this unique community, General Menocal was the chief creator and for years the responsible head. Even it, however, did not monopolize his attention, for he organized and managed also great sugar mills at San Manuel, Las Delicias, and elsewhere. In 1903 General Menocal was appointed by President Palma to be one of a Commission for the negotiation of a loan for the payment of the soldiers of the army in the War of Independence, together with Gonzalo de Quesada and D. Mendez Capote. Three years later he was conspicuous and active in the Veteran movement which strove to avert the necessity of the second American intervention. In 1908, as we have seen, he was nominated for the Presidency, with Dr. Montoro for the Vice-Presidency, but was defeated. Again he was nominated for the Presidency, with Enrique José Varona as candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and was elected for the term of 1913-1917; at the expiration of which he was reelected, with General Emilio Nunez as Vice-President. [Illustration: ENRIQUE JOSÉ VARONA Poet, philosopher and statesman, Enrique José Varona y Pera was born in Camaguey in 1849. Before attaining his majority he had published a volume of poems. Later he was the author of "Philosophical Lectures," "Commentaries on Spanish Grammar and Literature," "The Intellectual Movement in America," "Cain in Modern Literature," "Idealism" and "Naturalism." He was a Deputy from Cuba to the Spanish Cortes; editor of _The Cuban Review_ and _Patria_, the latter the organ of the patriots--in New York--in the War of Independence; Secretary of Finance and Public Instruction during the Governorship of Leonard Wood; and Vice-President of the Republic during the first administration of President Menocal, in 1913-1917. For many years he has been Professor of Philosophy in the University of Havana.] Enrique José Varona, who thus became Vice-President of Cuba in 1913, ranked as one of the foremost scholars and writers of the nation. He was born in Camaguey on April 13, 1849, and in early life adopted the career of a man of letters in addition to serving the public in political matters. He was at once an orator of rare eloquence, a philosopher of profound learning, and a poet of exceptional charm. He served, before the War of Independence, as a Deputy in the Spanish Cortes from Cuba; he wrote the famous plea for Cuban independence entitled "Cuba contra España," which was translated into a number of languages; and under the administration of General Wood was Secretary of Public Instruction and of the Treasury. He was once President of the Anthropological Society of Cuba, and was a Member of the Academy of History. He has written numerous books, comprising philosophical disquisitions, essays on nature and art, and lyrical poetry. Dr. Rafael Montoro, who was refused election to the Vice-Presidency in 1908, has since that date been kept in the service of his country in highly important capacities, and now, as Secretary to the Presidency, is most intimately associated with President Menocal, and exerts an exceptional degree of usefulness in many directions to the national welfare of the Cuban Republic. Rafael Montoro was born in Havana on October 24, 1852. He received his primary education in Havana and in his tenth year was taken to Europe and to the United States. He was a pupil of the Charlier Institute in New York until 1865. Having returned to Havana he took up his preparatory studies at the school of San Francisco de Asis. In 1867 he returned to Europe with his family, which settled in Madrid. Here he spent his youth until 1878, devoting himself to literary and intellectual activities; he contributed to various periodicals, was editor of the "Revista Contemporanea"; second secretary of the Ateneo de Madrid; vice president of the Moral and Political Sciences Section of that institution; second secretary of the Spanish Writers' and Artists' Association, etc. On his return to Cuba he took an active part in constituting and organizing the Liberal Party, which seized the first opportunity to uphold the cause of Colonial Autonomy, calling itself the Autonomist Liberal Party. In 1879 he was elected a member of the Central Junta of the party and in the first elections after Cuba had been granted the right of representation at the Cortes took place, he was elected a Deputy from the province of Havana. Later he continued working for his party as editor of its organ _El Triunfo_, which became _El Pais_, and as an orator in meetings and assemblies. In 1886 he was reelected Deputy to the Cortes from the province of Camaguey and yearly went to Spain during the period of the Legislature, being a member of the Autonomist minority headed by Rafael Maria de Labra. The Sociedad Economica de Amigo del Pais appointed Dr. Montoro a Special Delegate to the Junta de Information which met at Madrid in 1890, the principal economic institutions of Cuba having been previously invited by the Spanish Colonial Department. The purpose of this Junta was to report on the tariff regime of the Island and on the proposed commercial treaty with the United States, as suggested by the famous McKinley Bill of 1890. Towards the middle of 1895 he returned to his activities in Havana as editorial writer of _El Pais_ and member of the Central Junta of the Party. When autonomy was granted in 1898, he formed part, as Secretary of the Treasury, of the Cabinet organized by José Maria Galvez, the head of the party since its foundation in 1878. When Spanish rule came to an end, as a consequence of the war and of the American intervention, and the Autonomist Government ceased, Dr. Montoro retired to private life. In 1900 and 1901 he was appointed to but did not accept the professorship of philosophy and history in the University of Havana. He was a member of the Committee which was to undertake the reform of the Municipal suffrage legislation under Governor Brooke and of the Committee charged by General Wood with the revision of the legislation on the importation tariff. In 1902 Dr. Montoro was appointed by the Palma administration as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. In 1904 he was appointed also Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Germany, which caused him to reside alternately in both countries until 1906 when he was appointed with Gonzalo de Quesada and Gonzales Lanuza a delegate of the Republic to the Third Pan-American International Conference held at Rio de Janeiro. In the same year he was confirmed in both his posts, at London and Berlin, by Governor Magoon, as were the other members of the diplomatic and consular corps, but later he was appointed a member of the Consultive Committee on Laws. In 1907 he was one of the founders of the National Conservative Party, of which he was appointed second vice-president, and was nominated as the Party's candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the Republic, with General Menocal as Presidential Candidate. When General Jose M. Gomez took possession of the Government as President, Dr. Montoro was confirmed in his posts as Minister at Berlin and London, returning to Europe to remain there until 1910, in which year he was appointed by President Gomez a delegate to the Fourth Pan-American International Conference, which took place at Buenos Aires. At this Conference he was elected to preside over the seventh section of Consular documents, Tariff regulations, Census and Commercial Statistics. In 1910 and 1911, respectively, he ceased his posts as Minister at Berlin and London to become Diplomatic Advisor of the State Department. In 1913 he was appointed Secretary of the Presidency under General Menocal to which post he gave an importance which it had lacked theretofore. In this capacity he still is an assiduous and valuable collaborator of the Menocal Administration. Of Dr. Montoro's writings the following have been collected in book form: "Political and Parliamentary Speeches; Reports and Dissertations" (1878-1893), Philadelphia, 1894. "Elements of Moral and Civic Instruction" (1903). Dr. Montoro is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Letters of which he was elected Director in 1812. He was President of the Executive Committee at Havana of the 2nd Pan-American Scientific Congress (1915) and was a member of the High Committee for Cuba of the Pan-American Financial Congress (1917) and of the American Institute of International Law (1916). President Menocal gathered about himself a Cabinet of representative Cubans, selected for their ability rather than on grounds of personal favor or political advantage; two of them, the Secretaries of Justice and Education, being members of the Liberal party. The places were filled as follows: Secretary of Government, Cosimo de la Torriente. Secretary of the Interior, Aurelio Hevea. Secretary of the Treasury, Leopoldo Cancio. Secretary of Health and Charities, Enrique Nuñez. Secretary of Justice, Cristobal de la Guardia. Secretary of Agriculture, Emilio Nuñez. Secretary of Public Works, José Villalon. Secretary of Education, Ezequiel Garcia. [Illustration: RAFAEL MONTORO Called by Cabrera "Our Great Montoro" and by others the "Cuban Castelar," Dr. Rafael Montoro has long been eminent in the public life of Cuba as a scholar, writer, orator, statesman, diplomat, administrator, and unwavering and resolute patriot The record of his services to Cuba, as Ambassador to the foremost courts of Europe, as Secretary to the Presidency, and in other distinguished capacities at home and abroad, forms a brilliant passage elsewhere in this History of Cuba.] The spirit in which the new President began his work, and the spirit which animated his associates in the government, was admirably expressed by him soon after his election and before his inauguration, in a frank, informal but very serious personal conversation. "What," he was asked, "does Cuba need? And what do you expect to accomplish as her President?" "Cuba," replied General Menocal, "needs an honest administration of its governmental affairs; and that is what I can give it and will give it. But more than that, Cuba needs more citizens anxious to develop its marvellous resources and fewer citizens anxious to hold office. I was not elected as a politician, and I have no ambition to succeed as a politician." [Illustration: DR. JUAN GUITERAS One of the foremost physicians and scientists of Cuba, Dr. Juan Guiteras is the son of the distinguished educator Eusebio Guiteras, and was born at Matanzas on January 4, 1852. He collaborated with Dr. Carlos J. Finlay in the discovery and demonstration of the transmission of yellow fever by mosquitoes, and contributed much to the eradication of that and other pestilences from Cuba. Under President Menocal's administration he was made Director of Sanitation. He was a delegate to the second Pan-American Scientific Congress at Washington in 1916.] Reference being made to the menace of revolution, President Menocal said, with emphasis: "There will be no revolution under my administration. There may be outbreaks headed by disappointed politicians or military adventurers, but they will be crushed and their leaders will be punished. The day is past when men of this class can arrest the orderly processes of government. I shall have back of me not only a loyal army, but also a loyal people who are determined to show to the United States and to the world that Cuba realizes her responsibilities and is capable of self-government. I shall appoint honest men, and will guarantee that they honestly administer their duties. I shall urge the passage of honest taxation laws, and have faith that the people will respond by electing men who will assist me to make Cuba worthy of the favors which God has lavished upon her." With such purposes and with such expectations he entered upon his great work. Unfortunately there was not a majority upon which he could depend in Congress to enact the measures which were needed for the welfare of Cuba. Indeed, there was a hostile majority, as we shall see, which deliberately set itself to embarrass and thwart him in his undertakings. But that had merely the effect which obstacles usually have upon men who are really brave and strong. It indeed made his work more difficult, but it did not turn him from his purpose nor defeat his efforts. Rather did it give him all the greater credit and honor, to have achieved so much in the face of so much opposition. General Mario G. Menocal became President and Senor Enrique Jose Varona became Vice-President of Cuba on May 20, 1913, the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the independent Cuban Government. The President delivered his first message to Congress on the following day. It was an eminently practical, statesman-like and businesslike document, in which he modestly promised a wise and prudent administration of his office, and especially an immediate reform of the finances of the Government, which was notoriously much needed. As a small beginning of this reform, he offered to do away with the usual appropriation of $25,000 for Presidential secret service. Many debts had been left over by the former administration and he purposed to address himself to the liquidation of these, so far as they had been honestly contracted. The notorious Dragado concession was repealed on August 4, and a commission was appointed to investigate the methods of the company. As a result of this and other investigations, the former Secretary of Public Works, and Auditor were indicted for misappropriation of public funds, and various other officers were prosecuted. The President desired to obtain a loan of $15,000,000 with which to pay off the debts which had been left to him by his predecessor, and also for urgent road work, and the paving and sewering of the streets of Havana. This was, however, refused him by Congress, and that body, under the domination of the Liberals, refused to pass any budget whatever. President Menocal was therefore compelled to declare the budget of the preceding year still in force, pending the adoption of new financial provisions. Hoping to persuade or to compel Congress to perform its constitutional duty, he called that body together in special session in July and again in October, but on both occasions the Liberals all absented themselves and thus prevented the securing of a quorum. These, it will be observed, were similar to the tactics which the same party in Congress had employed against President Palma in their malignant campaign for the overthrow of his administration. But President Menocal was not thus to be overthrown. When the Liberals in October, a second time, refused to perform their duty he issued a manifesto in which he seriously criticized them and made it plain that no such methods would be permitted to interfere with the legitimate work of Government. Rumors were indeed current that he would resort to compulsion if persuasion failed. The Liberals attempted to reply with a countermanifesto protesting against his action as a usurpation of congressional authority, declaring their opposition to the making of the proposed loan, and pretending that it would be illegal to hold the special session which he had called for October. The President exercised patience and waited until November 2, when the regular session of Congress opened, and the Liberals took their seats. At this time the Liberals practically stultified themselves by agreeing to discuss and finally to approve the loan project which they had formerly opposed. After transacting this and some other business, Congress adjourned in December. Among the reforms which President Menocal promptly undertook to effect was the abolition of the national lottery which had been established during the Gomez administration. In his messages and through the influence of all legitimate presidential influence he strove to abolish this form of legalized gambling. His arguments were that the low price of the tickets, only 25¢, and the appeal which was thus made to the poor and ignorant, to servants and working women as well as to men, had caused great injury and had brought about a certain degree of moral decline among the masses of the people. It had induced many individuals to borrow money and even to steal in order to purchase lottery tickets, in the delusive hope of winning one of the large prizes, which ran up to $100,000, and thus exempting themselves from the necessity of work for the rest of their lives. The lottery, it is true, yielded a considerable revenue each year for the government, but General Menocal regarded this as far more than counter-balanced by the social and moral evil which it wrought, and by the reproach which it brought upon the good name of the Republic. He was unable, however, to persuade Congress to abolish it, partly because of the popular love of gambling which so largely pervades Latin American countries, and partly--perhaps chiefly--because the privilege of selling tickets at wholesale, at a handsome profit, was farmed out to many members of Congress. At the beginning of his administration, President Menocal found all the Government offices crowded with the appointees of the former administration. A great many of them were entirely superfluous and a great many of them were also entirely incompetent to fill their places. There was, therefore, a considerable clearing out of placeholders. There might have been, of course, what is known in America as a "clean sweep," and this was urged by a few of the President's friends. But General Menocal would listen to no such proposition. A Civil Service law had indeed been formulated by the Consulting Commission presided over by General Crowder, and had been in force since 1907, and while an unscrupulous executive might have evaded its provisions, General Menocal was a believer in the merit system, and in secure tenure of office for men who were doing their duty. He therefore refused positively to remove a single man merely because of his political affiliations. So far as placeholders were dismissed, they were dismissed because of incompetence or dishonesty, or because their services were superfluous. As a result of this enlightened policy, it is true, President Menocal was compelled to conduct his administration through the agency of a staff, the majority of which was composed of his political opponents. He even appointed two Liberals to his cabinet, while nearly all the foreign ministers and consuls and important officers of the various departments were members of that party, holding over from the Gomez administration. It cannot be said that this policy was in all cases appreciated by those who personally profited from it, for some of these officeholders did not scruple to engage in intrigues against the President whose generosity retained them in their places. The United States Government retained a certain supervision over some of the acts of the Cuban Government. Thus, as hitherto stated, in March, 1913, an amnesty bill had been passed at the instance of the Gomez administration, which would have set at liberty several hundred political and other prisoners, but it was objected to by Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State of the United States, and was accordingly vetoed. It was again posed in a modified form on April 25, and was again similarly vetoed. In November, 1913, it was once more taken up and revised so as to extend the pardon to those who had participated in the negro insurrection, and to some former officeholders of the Gomez administration who had been indicted. It was also intended that it should extend amnesty to General Ernesto Asbert, Governor of the Province of Havana, to Senator Vidal Morales, and to Representative Arias, who had been indicted for the murder of the Chief of Police of Havana, General Armando Riva; a tragedy which occurred during a police raid on a club, on the evening of July 7. This attempt to extend amnesty to these men caused an acute and prolonged controversy. But on December 9, 1914, the bill was finally passed in a form which granted amnesty to General Asbert, but not to Senator Arias. In this form the United States Government sanctioned its enactment because of the belief that the real burden of guilt rested upon the latter rather than upon the former. This controversy over amnesty to General Asbert meanwhile had serious political effects in Cuba. For a time the so-called Asbert faction of the Liberal party allied itself with the Conservatives in Congress in support of President Menocal and thus gave him a majority in that body. But in the summer of 1914 this faction became reunited with the rest of the Liberal party, and Conservative control of Congress was lost. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senor Gonzales Lanuza, a Conservative, resigned and was succeeded by Senor Urquiaga, a Liberal, on August 31. When at last in February, 1915, the act of amnesty for General Asbert was completed, and he was released and fully rehabilitated, there was a great popular celebration of the event in the City of Havana. The first attempt at insurrection in President Menocal's administration occurred on November 9, 1913, when Crecencio Garcia, a mulatto, undertook to lead a revolt in the province of Santa Clara. It was promptly suppressed by the Rural Guard in a manner which augured well for the promise which the President had made, that there would be no revolutions during his administration; and there were no more such attempts until the great treason of ex-President Gomez. CHAPTER XVIII The fifth Presidential campaign of the Republic of Cuba occurred in 1916. The Conservative candidate for President was General Mario G. Menocal, who was thus seeking reelection, and the candidate for Vice-President was General Emilio Nuñez, of whom we have already heard as the leader of the Veterans' Association in its legitimate and orderly resistance to the corruption and despotism of the Gomez administration, who had had a distinguished career in the Liberating Army in the War of Independence, and who was at this time serving as Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce in the cabinet of President Menocal. [Illustration: GEN. D. EMILIO NUÑEZ] On the Liberal side, in accordance with the compact formerly made between him and José Miguel Gomez, the Presidential candidate was Dr. Alfredo Zayas, and the Vice-Presidential candidate was Carlos Mendieta, a journalist and Representative in Congress, who had long been conspicuous in the practical management of the Liberal Party. The general prosperity which Cuba had been enjoying under the administration of President Menocal excited the envy and cupidity of the Liberal place-seekers and roused them to extraordinary efforts to regain possession of the government. A shameless attempt was made to force a bill through Congress disqualifying a President for reelection unless he resigned his office at least sixty days before the election; but it failed of success. Long in advance of the actual contest a vigorous propaganda was started all over the island on lines similar to those which had been successful in causing the overthrow of Estrada Palma. While few ventured to asperse the character of President Menocal himself, his administration was vilified as corrupt and inefficient. It was charged that he did not, like Gomez, "divide the spoils" with his party followers, that he was both selfish and weak, and that his fatal weakness in office had been more than amply demonstrated, and would justify them in overthrowing his government. The Liberal newspapers asserted that at least three quarters of the inhabitants of the island were not in sympathy with the Conservative position and with the President, but had been deluded into voting for him; that they did not approve of his persistent acquiescence in every little hint and suggestion that might come from the United States; and that having been graduated from an American University, he was more American in his ideas and ideals than he was true Cuban, and deserved defeat at the next election. This was largely for the purpose of preparing the public for the claim, which was made before the polls had been open two hours, that the Liberals were sweeping the country, and that the Conservatives could make no possible or effective showing in the election. In pursuance of this propaganda, it was so arranged that the local boards of the larger towns and cities, where there was an excess of the rank and file of the Liberal party, should rush in their returns. These records were sent in immediately and seemed to indicate a sweeping victory for the Liberal party. The country districts, where were registered the votes of the farmers, the sugar planters, and the people of property who believed in work and the maintenance of law and order, being remote from the capital, came in much later, and in many instances, owing to distance and the uncertainty of travel, reliable returns from these districts were delayed until the next day, so that at midnight it looked as though the election had been carried by the Liberal party. On the following day, however, as the returns began to arrive from the remote districts, a decided change in the aspect of the situation became apparent, and by that night it was seen that a very closely contested election had taken place, and that the result would probably be in doubt, as it was in the United States, for several days. This delay gave occasion for charges and accusations of fraud on both sides, and each prepared itself for a hard struggle. It was discovered that the matter would have to be settled by electoral boards and courts established for that purpose. In the meantime, the Liberals demanded that General Menocal acknowledge his defeat and proclaimed the election of Dr. Zayas on all sides, and openly demanded to have the government immediately turned over to them, or there would be serious trouble in store for the Conservatives and the country. In the meantime, pressure was brought to bear on the United States government, and protection was asked by the Liberals against the manifest danger that they would be cheated of their success at the polls. Threats were also heard that a revolution would undoubtedly follow as a protest against the usurpation, as it was termed, of their legitimate right to take control of the government, and Dr. Alfredo Zayas, in a private conversation with the American minister, hinted at this, and predicted that if a revolution should become necessary, it would undoubtedly be successful, since he knew that two-thirds of the army was with him in sympathy, and would follow the Liberal command to overthrow the Menocal government if he should see fit to give such a command. General Menocal stated very frankly that the determination of the contest must be left to the local boards and to the courts for decision, and whatever that might be, regardless of any injustice that might be imposed upon him and his party, he would acquiesce, and would be the first man to shake the hand of the successful candidate. A similar statement was never made by the Liberals. They continued the cry of fraud, and openly stated that if they did not succeed a revolution would follow. The judges of the courts, excepting the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Senor Pichardo, had been appointed by Gomez, and naturally great pressure was brought to bear on them to "save the constitution," as it was called, for the Liberals. In the decisions that followed, the Conservatives stated frankly that they believed this pressure was producing manifestly unfair decisions, but made at no time any attempt to ignore them or set them aside. The court decided that in two districts, Victoria de las Tunas, in the province of Oriente, and another town in Santa Clara, new elections must be held. In the first one the Liberals had, at four o'clock in the morning previous to the day of election, set fire to the town hall, burning all of the electoral lists, so that an election was absolutely impossible. This was probably due to the fact that Victoria de las Tunas held General Menocal in great esteem, since, owing to his personal valor in leading the charges against the Spanish army, when in command of that town, the Cubans had been victorious. In the city of Santa Clara province, the frauds claimed by both sides rendered it so impossible to determine the true result of the election that a second election was deemed necessary. According to the records of the Liberal party, the vote of these two towns, or possibly either one of them, would determine the election, and Dr. Alfredo Zayas felt quite confident that he would be the successor of General Menocal, and openly so stated. The Conservatives, on the other hand, said, "We can only await and abide by the decisions of the courts, and will surrender nothing until such decisions are handed down." The supporters of Dr. Zayas stated that the soldiers, who had been sent there to maintain order, had been sent there for the sole purpose of preventing the Liberals from approaching the polls. At this General Nuñez, the Vice Presidential candidate, invited Dr. Zayas, the Liberal leader, to accompany him thither and to point out any Liberal in that district who wished to vote, promising that he would furnish a machine and any protection that might be necessary to see that he and every Liberal in the district deposited his vote, and that they together would witness the count. Dr. Zayas never had an opportunity to bring this matter to a decision, owing to the fact that General Gomez, who hated Dr. Zayas bitterly, and who had opposed him in public print more strongly than any other man, saw immediately the possibility of riding into power as the man of the hour, as the real, dominating force of the republic, and as the only man, as he expressed it, able to save the electoral campaign from becoming one of protracted discord and dispute. So he forbade Dr. Zayas to go to the town where the election was to be held, or to accept General Nuñez's invitation, and stated that he was himself tired of the whole thing, and that he was going to take his yacht and go on a fishing trip, which he did, leaving at midnight with about thirty trusted friends, including all of the prominent Liberal leaders. Passing around Cape San Antonio, the yacht anchored off the coast near Tunas de Zaza, and there met a group of men by previous arrangement, and started a revolution or a "popular uprising," as he termed it, against the Menocal government. In the meantime, a carefully laid plot, that had been planned months before, for seizing control of the armed forces of the island was put into execution. On Saturday night, February 14, 1917, without warning, two companies of men stationed at the Columbia barracks, at a previously arranged signal of two shots, jumped from their beds, grabbed their arms and ammunition, and started across the parade ground for the open country, of the west. Although the details of this plot were known, other loyal companies at the command of their officers were called into immediate action, charged the Liberals and captured more than half of them and killed a few of the remainder, who at first had succeeded in escaping. This was the only apparent disloyalty in the western end of the island. Matanzas, Pinar del Rio and Havana remained loyal to the government. Among the forces stationed at the City of Santiago, far removed from the immediate control of the commanding generals of the army, seeds of sedition, which consisted largely of promises of immediate promotion of all officers, were planted. Every sergeant was to be made a captain, every captain a colonel, every lieutenant a major, with promises of increased pay, and the incidental rewards that come to the successful revolutionist. This was also true of the Province of Camaguey, where, at almost the same hour that the uprising took place in Camp Columbia barracks, several companies of men seized control, made prisoners of their comrades who were loyal to the government or shot them dead, captured and imprisoned the civil governors, intimidated the police, or made them prisoners, and took charge of the customhouse and the accumulated funds, and all moneys deposited in banks, belonging to either the state or the federal government. Incidentally all moneys that were accessible were seized at the same time, which belonged to said banks, on the ground that there was no time to discriminate. In the City of Santiago several millions of dollars were thus seized by the three or four Liberal leaders in command. These men, when the failure of the revolution became apparent, escaped from the island, carrying some two or three millions in United States currency and Cuban gold with them, and landed in Santo Domingo, where some of them were afterward captured, while the others escaped to the United States. Securing control of Santiago de Cuba, and having access to the cables, the rebels immediately wired to the revolutionary headquarters in New York, which had been established by Dr. Orestes Ferrara, one of the moving figures in the previous uprising of 1906, in company with Dr. Raimundo Cabrera, for the dissemination of news favorable to the Liberal side. Matter was issued, to be used in the American papers, for the purpose of preparing the United States for the usurpation of the government of Cuba by General Gomez, and defending such action on the ground that it was the only solution of a bad electoral muddle, and that the real choice of the people was General Gomez, who should have been, and was ultimately, the leader of their party. It was said that Dr. Zayas, without justification, had usurped and endeavored to maintain the permanent control of the Liberal party, and that his lack of popularity had been indicated by his defeat four years before. The entire island was represented, and especially the army, as having voluntarily gone over to the side of the Liberals. General Gomez was pictured as having landed and by previous arrangement placed himself at the head of 12,000 men, who were marching upon the City of Havana; while the President of the republic was variously reported as having been shot, and afterward as having fled in abject fear from the palace, and as having at last found shelter in the home of the American minister, Mr. William E. Gonzales. It was added that Havana was under the control of the Liberals, as was the remainder of the island, and that all that was necessary was the triumphant march of General Gomez into the capital, where he would assume authority as Liberal Dictator until the island should assume its normal and peaceful condition, when another election would be called, in which the people would have an opportunity to choose and place the power in the hands of the only real man of destiny, General Gomez. In the Province of Camaguey, the insurgents followed the same program as did those in Oriente, intimidating the police, by firing two volleys into police headquarters and assassinating those men who were forming a council, the civil government and various other officers having been imprisoned. They took immediate control of the railroads, and the rolling stock, placed Liberal or disloyal troops on trains, and started them across the border to Santa Clara, where they joined General Gomez, who, with his men, was marching north to the railroad. In the meantime, General Menocal and the loyal troops of the island, in the west, started a vigorous campaign to prevent the island from falling into the hands of the rebels. Officers whose loyalty was beyond question were placed in command of troops, and sent at once into Santa Clara, Camaguey and Oriente, and one of Cuba's gunboats, with a company of 300 men, was dispatched to the City of Santiago de Cuba, to drive the disloyal element from that place. Colonel Pujol was sent to take measures to restore order in Camaguey. Colonel Collazo and Lieutenant Colonel Lozama and other officials known for their courage, efficiency and valor were placed in command of three separate bodies of troops, with orders to surround Gomez, and give him and his supporters immediate battle, and capture or annihilate them. These men were equipped with machine guns, well armed and prepared for a campaign of extermination, if necessary. In the meantime, the Secretary of Government, Colonel Hevea, who, according to the Cuban law has control over and is responsible for order in the interior districts, traveled by locomotive and automobile, day and night, reporting to the President all that occurred, and giving those orders which seemed wise for suppressing the uprising. The American Minister, representing the sentiment of the United States, which seriously deprecated Cuba's falling into the revolutionary habit, visited the palace every day, with his military aide, then Major Wittemeyer, kept in close touch with Washington, and reported every change in the drama that was being presented in Cuba. In the meantime, one of the Cuban officials had effectively thwarted General Gomez in his proposed triumphant march into Havana, by blowing up the large bridge over the Zaza river, thus preventing the insurrectionists from gaining control of the railroads in the western half of the island. Realizing the grave danger that threatened Cuba in the destruction of the cane through fire, which had already begun on a large scale, and in the stealing, and killing of both cattle and horses on the part of the insurrectionists, Major Wittemeyer, with the authority of the War Department in Washington, communicated to President Menocal the fact that the United States government would gladly land whatever force was deemed necessary to assist in the maintenance of order and the protection of property. This offer the President refused, stating that he believed that there was a sufficient force absolutely loyal to his government to control the situation, adding that he was thoroughly aware of the plans of the Liberals, that he was in close touch with his own command and was confident that his officers would succeed in quelling the insurrection in a comparatively short time. He added that he thought it wise for the government of Cuba to demonstrate its ability to maintain itself, and to suppress any uprising that might occur of that nature, and thus avoid the rather unpleasant task, on the part of the United States, of being compelled to interfere with the personal and political affairs of their sister republic. That General Menocal's prediction was based on sound logic was demonstrated by the fact that within twenty-three days the forces of ex-President Gomez were surrounded, defeated and captured. The General, his son, his aides and his entire staff were taken prisoners and brought to Havana and placed in the penitentiary on Principe Hill. In General Gomez's saddle bags were found military orders instructing his chiefs to burn every sugar plantation on the Island not known to be the property of Liberals, and tear up every mile of railroad, together with information demonstrating that he was preparing to blow up every bridge through the island, thus attempting to prevent the government from sending forces against him. This work of destruction, in so far as possible before the capture, had been carried out to the letter. The railroads along which the revolutionists had control were out of commission for several months, and much valuable property was destroyed. The disappointment in the Liberal ranks consequent upon the capture of General Gomez and his staff, and the inevitable failure of the movement, was general and profound, but the last desperate hope seemed to inspire them to continue the struggle under the leadership of Carlos Mendieta, who had been their candidate for Vice-President. The plan adopted by them was to revert to the desperate methods of some former wars. In brief, it was to divide into small bands, who were to carry on a reign of terror and destruction throughout the island, the purpose of which was solely to bring about another American intervention; the argument was used that they had succeeded in doing this in 1906, and thus had secured a tacit recognition of the Liberal party, and their ultimate control of the government. "We were successful," they argued, "and since the commercial, industrial and political relations between the two republics are so intimate and the Platt Amendment authorizes the United States to enter Cuba at any time when, in their estimation, the circumstances justify such action, if we continue long enough, burn enough, destroy enough, and succeed in keeping up this state of turmoil long enough, the American authorities will, sooner or later, be compelled to come here, and put an end to affairs that will undoubtedly bring about the resignation of Menocal. His life will be made intolerable and our several plans for his assassination, that have heretofore met with misfortune, if followed, will later bear fruit." At the middle of March, Carlos Mendieta, as leader of this bushranging rebellion, issued a manifesto threatening the destruction of foreign property and declaring that there would be no guarantee for the safety of American lives unless the United States undertook the supervision of the elections in Santa Clara and Oriente provinces. In their manifesto the rebels promised to lay down their arms if the government would hold new elections in Santa Clara Province. If the government refused to hold such elections the rebels threatened to continue the revolution and to proclaim Mendieta Provisional President. The activities of the revolutionary conspirators and propagandists in the United States, under the direction of Orestes Ferrara in New York, meanwhile became so offensive that the United States government felt compelled to take action. Accordingly on March 25, the State Department at Washington warned Dr. Ferrara that unless he ceased his pernicious operations he and his associate, Raimundo Cabrera, would be placed under arrest. This had the result of tempering somewhat the zeal of the conspirators, though their propaganda was still furtively maintained. In passing, it may be stated that a part of the general plan--indeed the first step in the proposed uprising--was to assassinate General Menocal, while on his way from the palace to his estate, eight miles distant, known as El Chico. The mayor of the suburb of Marianao, together with the chief of police of that village, and four soldiers, who had agreed for a consideration to take part in the assassination, were stationed at a point carefully selected, with orders to fire a charge of buckshot into the President's back from the step of his automobile, and then behind the screen of trees and underbrush which lined the roadside to make their escape. It was proposed to assassinate the chauffeurs and all others who might be in the car in order to prevent immediate pursuit. Since General Menocal was in the habit of going to his country home every afternoon between five and six, the plan probably would have succeeded, had it not been for an attack of conscience on the part of one of the soldiers, who, after agreeing, lost heart, and a few hours before the departure of the machine hastened to the palace and insisted upon seeing the President, to whom he gave all the details of the plot. The betrayal of the plot by the soldier, who was suspected when he did not make his appearance in company with the others, and the machine not leaving the palace at the usual hour, which was to have been telephoned to the plotters, convinced them that discovery was more than probable. The mayor, with the chief of police, and the others, immediately fled from Marianao. Pursuit was given, in spite of which they resisted capture for several days. Exhausted and wounded, they were finally taken in an old sugar mill near Bahia Honda, in the Province of Pinar del Rio. Not discouraged by this failure, numerous other plans for the assassination of the President were arranged, among others the manufacture of a highly explosive bomb, and an arrangement by which four Liberals agreed to attempt to place or throw it under the President's desk. In order to make this plan work, it was necessary to have some man who could gain access to the palace, and to the office of the President, and this could be done through the assistance of some one of the soldiers who had been stationed on guard duty on the upper floor of the executive mansion. After several months of careful study, one of these soldiers was selected, and after another conference, the matter was settled, and the man was intrusted with the bomb, which was delivered to him at the appointed hour, and with which he ascended the palace stairs and eventually succeeded in reaching the President, to whom he delivered the bomb, with his evidence and the whole story. Of course, this second betrayal of the plans of the conspirators brought about their capture, and they were tried and condemned to various terms in prison. Various other plots were formed, none of which was successful. [Illustration: JOSÉ LUIS AZCARATA SECRETARY OF JUSTICE] As a natural result of the revolution started a few days before, the two additional elections ordered by the Supreme Court, were necessarily postponed, since the island had been thrown into a turmoil by the action of General Gomez. They were, however, afterwards held, and resulted in decided Conservative majorities, which were carried by the electoral boards to the Central Electoral Junta, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Señor Pichardo, and justified that body in announcing the election of General Menocal to a second term as President. In spite of this decision of the courts, which General Menocal had previously agreed to abide by, the insurrectionary elements of the Liberal party still insisted that General Menocal's second term was secured through deliberate and carefully planned frauds and intimidation of the voters at the polls. The fact is that the election laws of Cuba forbid and prevent any soldier from standing even in the doorway of a polling place. He cannot approach nearer than the corner of the building in which the votes are being deposited, nor can he leave his post and come closer to the polls, unless some serious disturbance, where lives are threatened, occurs, with which the police of the district cannot cope. Since the minority is represented during the time of voting, and during the count by a man selected for that purpose, no fraud could well be perpetrated without the consent of someone responsible to the opposition. The army officers who had been led by José Miguel Gomez to revolt, had been captured with arms in their hands, fighting to overthrow the constitutional government of the island; a purpose of which they had made no secret. They were therefore guilty of sedition and treason, and were subject to trial by court martial and to capital punishment upon conviction of their crime. They were thus tried, and some were condemned to death and others to long terms of imprisonment; but the extreme sentence was never executed upon one of them, while many of the prison sentences were shortened and some of the men were pardoned outright. This generous action of President Menocal's was performed through the same spirit of magnanimity that moved Estrada Palma to like clemency, years before; and it was as ill requited. Some of the men whom he had thus saved from the gallows or the firing squad promptly resumed criminal conspiracies against him; while the Liberal party as a whole demanded that the pardoned officers should be at once reinstated in the army with full rank and back pay for the time which they had spent in insurrection and in prison, and railed against President Menocal for not granting that additional act of grace! The government of the United States is naturally always on the side of law and order among its neighbors, and while it of course scrupulously refrains from meddling in their affairs unless under intolerable provocation, as in the case of Cuba in 1898, it has always given and doubtless will always give its sympathy and moral support to those who are striving for peace and progress and the security of life and property. Toward Cuba its attitude is more marked than toward other states, because of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We have seen how it intervened in Cuban affairs for what it supposed to be the restoration of tranquillity in 1906. While unfortunately its influence was on that occasion made to appear as though given to the revolutionary rather than the legitimate side, its intent was unmistakable. In spite of the advantage which they took of its intervention at that time, the Liberal leaders in Cuba have since felt much aggrieved at it for standing in the way of their designs on more than one occasion when they wished to revolt against constitutional order. The United States did not intervene in 1917. It was not, as President Menocal confidently assured it, necessary for it to do so. But it is pleasant to recall that it stood ready to do so, and there is of course no possible doubt as to what the purport of its intervention would have been. During that episode no fewer than five messages were addressed to the people of Cuba by the government of the United States, warning them against any attempt at forcible revolution. They breathed the spirit of the epigram of John Hay in 1903: "Revolutions have gone out of fashion in our neighborhood." Thus on February 19, 1917, the United States made it known to the Cuban government and through it to the Cuban people that-- "The American Government has in previous declarations defined its attitude respecting the confidence and support it gives the constitutional governments and the policy it has adopted toward any disturbers of the peace through revolutionary ventures. The American government again wishes to inform the Cuban people of the attitude it has assumed in view of the present events: "First--The government of the United States gives its support to and stands by the Constitutional Government of the Republic of Cuba. "Second--The present insurrection against the Constitutional Government of Cuba is regarded by the American Government in the light of an anti-constitutional and illegal act, which it will not tolerate. "Third--The leaders of the revolt will be held responsible for the damages which foreigners may suffer in their persons or their property. "Fourth--The government of the United States will examine attentively what attitude it will adopt respecting those concerned in the present disturbance of the peace in Cuba, or those who are actually participating in it." At the beginning of March American Marines and Bluejackets were landed at Santiago, Guantanamo, Manzanillo, Nuevitas, and El Cobre, for patrol duty for the protection of American interests. Again, on March 24 the American government sent a note saying: "It has come to the knowledge of the United States Government that in Cuba propaganda persists that in response to efforts of agents against the constitutional government the United States is studying the adoption of measures in their favor." It was quite true. The remaining insurgents--Gomez and the other principal leaders had already been captured--were declaring that just as in 1906 American intervention had meant the success of the revolution, so now the United States was about to intervene again to the same effect. Wherefore this American note continued: "The constitutional government of Cuba has been and will continue to be sustained and backed by the government of the United States in its efforts to reestablish order throughout the territory of the republic. "The United States government, emphasizing its condemnation of the reprehensible conduct of those rising against the constitutional government in an effort to settle by force of arms controversies for which existing laws establish adequate legal remedies, desires to make known that until those in rebellion recognize their duties as Cuban citizens, lay down their arms and return to legality, the United States can hold no communication whatever with any of them and will be forced to regard them as outside the law and unworthy of its consideration." That was plain talk, and it had its effect. But the climax was yet to come in a final message which stated that if destruction of property, disturbance of public order and deliberate attempts to overthrow the established government were continued, Cuba being an ally of the United States, the United States would be compelled to regard the doers of such deeds as enemies and to proceed against them as such. At that time both the United States and Cuba were at war with Germany, and were therefore allies in offense and defense, and it was quite logical for one ally to regard as its enemy any enemy of the other ally. In brief, any one waging war against the Cuban government was in effect waging war against the government of the United States. That stern logic put a quietus upon the attempted insurrection. "Our last recourse," said one of the rebel leaders, "has been taken from us. There is no use in starting a revolution if it is to be doomed to failure before it begins." CHAPTER XIX Cuba entered the Great War. That fact was the supreme seal to her title-deeds to a place as peer among the nations; placing her in blood-brotherhood with her neighbors. She entered the war almost simultaneously with the United States, though with less delay than that country. At Washington the President addressed Congress on April 2, advising a declaration of war against Germany, and the declaration was made on April 6. At Havana the President delivered his war message on April 6, and on April 7 war was declared. In that impressive and epochal message, the most momentous and solemn that any chief of state can ever utter, President Menocal reviewed in dispassionate detail the criminal record of Germany in her unrestricted submarine warfare, and then continued: "The government of the United States, to which country we are bound by the closest ties, had during the last two years incessantly formulated energetic protests and claims based on the most elemental principles of justice in defence of its citizens who were victims on many occasions of attacks by German submarines; of the liberty of the seas and the respect due the lives and property of neutrals; and revindicating the right to navigate and engage in commerce freely, without restrictions save those sanctioned by international law, by treaties, and by the universal practise of civilized nations. "Since February 1 submarines have attacked and sunk without mercy. Such acts of war without quarter, directed against all nations, to close down the world's commerce under terrible penalties, cannot be tolerated without accepting them as legitimate to-day and always. "Cuba cannot appear indifferent to such violations, which at any moment may be carried out at the cost of the lives and interests of its own citizens. Nor can it, without loss of dignity and decorum, show indifference to the noble attitude assumed by the United States, to which we are bound by ties of gratitude and by treaties. Cuba cannot remain neutral in this supreme conflict, because a declaration of neutrality would compel it to treat alike all belligerents, denying them with equal vigor entrance to our ports and imposing other restrictions which are contrary to the sentiment of the Cuban people and which inevitably in the end would result in conflict with our friend and ally. "In full and firm consciousness that I am fulfilling one of my most sacred duties, although with profound sentiment, because I am about to propose a resolution which will plunge our country into the dangers of the greatest conflagration in history, but without casting odium upon, or without animosity toward, the German people, but convinced that we are compelled to take this step by our international obligations and the principles of justice and liberty, I appeal to the honorable Congress in the use of its executive faculties, with full knowledge of all the antecedents in the case and with the mature deliberation of its important claim, to resolve, as a result of these unjustifiable and repeated acts of aggression by submarines, notwithstanding the protests of neutral governments, among them Cuba, that there has been created and exists a state of war between Cuba and the imperial German government, and adopt all measures necessary, which I reserve to myself the right to recommend at the proper moment, for the maintenance of our rights; to defend our territory; to provide for our security, and to cooperate decidedly to these ends with the United States government, lending it what assistance may be in our power for the defence of the liberty of the seas, of the rights of neutrals, and of international justice." The next day the Cuban Congress adopted the declaration of war, in the exact words of the President's message. A resolution was at the same time introduced and adopted, authorizing the President to organize and to place at the disposal of the President of the United States a contingent of 10,000 men, for military service in Europe. It would be superfluous to dwell upon the causes which led Cuba thus promptly and heartily to commit herself to the side of the Allies in the war. They were largely identical with those which impelled other nations to the same course. There was a resolution to vindicate the sanctity of treaties and the majesty of international law. There was an abhorrence of the infamous practices of the German government and the German army. There was resentment against the gross violation of neutral rights of which Germany had been guilty. There was recognition of the grave menace to popular governments the world over which was presented by the voracious and unscrupulous ambitions of Prussian militarism. There was a feeling that as the war had first been directed against two small nations, on the principle that small states had no rights that large ones were bound to respect, it was incumbent upon other small states to protest against that arrogant attitude. There was a desire to show that Cuba, youngest and one of the smallest of the nations, was ready to take her full part as a nation among nations, in war as well as in peace. There was, also, no doubt a legitimate feeling that in this matter it would be appropriate for Cuba--though of course under no compulsion--to align herself with the great northern neighbor with whom she sustained such close relations. At the same time, backed undoubtedly by German money, and as a part of the German propaganda, financial interests, banks and houses of long standing in Cuba, all of which were eventually placed on a black list, exerted a very strong influence among their customers and through their connections, commercial, social and political, in favor of Germany. They did succeed in influencing and directing the editorial policy of some prominent newspapers, but the chief result of their pernicious activities was to get themselves and their sympathizers into trouble. One of the foremost bankers of Havana, where he had lived for many years and was personally much liked and esteemed in society, while not openly espousing the cause of Germany, after Cuba had declared war, was known to be thoroughly in sympathy with Germany. He with over a hundred other Germans was interned, or kept _incommunicado_, and in his house documents were found demonstrating that he was not only an agent in distributing German propaganda, but also a distributor of funds intended to promote the cause of Germany in Cuba and the West Indies. Another very strong influence that was exerted in Cuba against the attitude of President Menocal and his government was that of many of the clergy of the Roman Catholic church, who openly spoke to their congregations in favor of Germany and against the cause of the Allies. Nor was the Liberal party by any means as loyal to the Allies as the unanimous vote in Congress might seem to suggest. Many of its members either openly or secretly gave their sympathy and influence to the German side. This was partly because of their inveterate opposition to anything advocated by the Conservative government; and partly because of the aid which German interests in Cuba had given, morally, politically and pecuniarily, to the insurrection of José Miguel Gomez in 1917. It was proved in trials in the courts of Cuba, which were held in consequence of the damages wrought by that uprising, that Germans and men of German parentage had conspired to give information to the rebels and to supply them with munitions, and in other ways strove to aid that movement in overthrowing the government. But these seditious and disloyal elements in Cuba were probably no stronger in Cuba than in the United States or other countries. Cuba did not suffer from incendiarism and similar German outrages as did the United States. On the other hand, the Cuban government was fully as strict as that of the United States in taking possession of German property, and in blacklisting all firms and individuals known to be in sympathy with Germany. All trading of any kind with such parties was forbidden; an arrangement being made by which open accounts with them could be closed. A Custodian of Alien Property was also appointed. Even before the declaration of war the Cuban government took strenuous means to prevent violations of neutrality. A few weeks before the declaration of war German agents fitted up a steamer in Havana harbor as a commerce-destroying cruiser, and watched for an opportunity to take her out to the high seas. Learning of these plans, the Cuban government stationed a cruiser alongside that vessel, with guns trained upon her, to prevent the purposed escape. Immediately upon the declaration of war the four German ships which were lying interned in Havana harbor were seized by the Cuban government. It was found that the German crews had seriously damaged the machinery of the vessels, as they did at New York and elsewhere; but the Cuban government had repairs made and then turned the vessels over to the United States. In what we may call the non-military activities of the war, Cuba was notably energetic and efficient. There was close cooperation with the United States government in the matter of food conservation and supply. Cuba was naturally looked to for an increased supply of sugar, for which there was great need; and as a result of inquiries by Mr. Hoover, the United States Food Commissioner, as to what the island could do in that respect, the Cuban Department of Agriculture sent the chief of its Bureau of Information, Captain George Reno, to Washington to confer with Mr. Hoover and to formulate plans for the exercise of the most efficient cooperation possible between Cuba and the United States. Recognizing the desirability if not the necessity that Cuba should not only be able to feed herself during the war but should also export as much food as possible, the insular government took steps at once for the increase of food production to the highest attainable degree, and also for the practice of thrift and economy. In consequence Cuba endured cheerfully the same system of wheatless days and meatless days and rationing in various articles of food that prevailed in the United States; with excellent results. President Menocal also made preparations, at the suggestion of and in conjunction with the United States War Department, for the provision of a detachment of troops for service either in Europe or in any part of the world that the Department at Washington might deem expedient. The best officers of the Cuban army accepted an invitation from the military authorities of the United States to receive instruction in modern military tactics, which had been brought out by the war, and Senator Manuel Coronado patriotically gave a sum sufficient for the building of a number of airplanes, to be used by Cuban aviators. Volunteers for this division were easily secured and the instruction began under the direction of Cuban aviators who had been in the service of France. The War Department of the United States notified the Republic of Cuba that owing to the severe exposure of the men to the freezing water and mud of the trenches of Belgium and France, it was doubtful whether soldiers of tropical countries could withstand the strain upon their health necessarily endured during the winter campaign in Europe, intimating that their services would be far more useful in taking the place of other troops stationed in warmer climates, as the Porto Ricans were taking the place of the marines that were stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. This was a rather severe disappointment to General Pujol and the other officers, who were very anxious to take their places in the line of fire. Noteworthy and most admirable were the achievements of Cuba in the financial operations of the war. Subscriptions were eagerly made to every one of the Liberty Loans, and to the final Victory Loan, with the result that in every case the amount allotted to Cuba was far exceeded. The quota for the third loan was subscribed twice over within five days. In this work not only did banks and commercial houses take part, as a matter of business, but also many private citizens volunteered as canvassers; though indeed the eagerness of people to subscribe made canvassing perfunctory and urging superfluous. [Illustration: SEÑORA MENOCAL It is not alone through the felicitous circumstance of her being the wife of President Mario G. Menocal that Señora Marienita Seva de Menocal is entitled to the distinction--never more appropriate than in her case--of being the "first lady of the land." Her title rests equally upon personal charm, the graces of social hospitality, and womanly leadership of the most efficient kind in philanthropic and patriotic endeavor for the advancement of the public welfare and the confirmation of the integrity and promotion of the prosperity of the Republic; while her indefatigable labors in the great war invested her name with affectionate and grateful distinction in the camps and among the peoples of the Allied nations.] A similar interest was manifested in Red Cross contributions and Red Cross work, with equally gratifying results. In both of these activities a leading and most efficient part was taken by the women of Cuba. In subscribing to the loans they were most generous; in canvassing for subscriptions from others and in collecting and working for the Red Cross they were indefatigable and irresistible. They made it a point of patriotic honor, and almost a condition of social acceptability, to respond in the fullest possible manner to every such call of the war. In Cuba's domestic struggles, the women had suffered cruelly, and their sympathies sprang spontaneously and generously toward the lands of Europe where womanhood was suffering a thousand martyrdoms. Thus as the manhood of Cuba with a unanimity which the few exceptions only emphasized rallied to the call of the President to throw the material and militant might of the Republic on the side of law, of civilization and of democracy, the womanhood of Cuba, with no less unanimity and zeal, followed Señora Menocal in the equally necessary and grateful tasks of the campaign which women even better than men could perform. No tribute could be too high to render to these devoted women, who were always ready to make personal sacrifices of time, of strength, of money, of work, for the cause of humanity. Amid all its historic fiestas and pageants, Havana has seen no fairer or more inspiring spectacle than that of the Red Cross women, Senora Menocal at their head, marching in stately procession through her streets to manifest their devotion to the cause and to arouse others to equal earnestness. The magnitude of the sums raised by the women of Cuba for the war loans and for the Red Cross, and for Cuban hospital units at the front, and the amount of bandages and other hospital supplies and clothing prepared by them for the armies "over there," made proud items in Cuban statistics of the Great War. Thitherto Cuba had often been engaged in war, but it was always in what may be termed selfish war, for her own defence against an alien enemy or for her own liberation from oppressors who, at first kin, had become alien. Now for the first time it was her privilege to engage in a greater struggle than any before, and one which was for her own interests only to the extent to which those interests were involved with and were practically identical with the interests of all civilized nations and of world-wide humanity. Said Thomas Jefferson on a memorable occasion, referring to the relations between America and Great Britain: "Nothing would more tend to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause." Thus we must reckon that affection and confidence between Cuba and the United States were greatly strengthened and confirmed by the fact that they were at least potentially and indeed to some degree actually fighting side by side in the same cause, and that cause not exclusively their own but that of the whole world. Nor was the event without a comparable effect upon Cuba's relations to the world at large. Her sympathies were broadened; her recognition by other powers was extended; and as once she had been a mere pawn in the international game, now she became a vital and potent factor in international affairs. CHAPTER XX "A revolution which comprehends the responsibilities incumbent upon the founders of nations." Those were almost the last words of José Marti, epigrammatically expressive of his purpose in fomenting the ultimate and triumphant revolution of 1895-1898, and of the purpose of those devoted men who caught the standard of liberty from his dying hand and through labors and perils and tragedies incommensurable bore it on to victory. How well that purpose has been served in these scarcely twenty years of the independent Republic of Cuba, how true to Marti's transcendent ideal his successors in Cuban leadership have been, the record which we have briefly rehearsed must tell. On the whole, the answer to the implied interrogatory is gratifying and reassuring. The real leaders of the Cuban nation have comprehended the responsibilities, unspeakably profound and weighty, that rest upon the founders of a nation, and no less upon those who direct the affairs of a nation after its foundation, to the last chapter in its age-long annals. We should go far, very far, before we could find a statesman more appreciative of that responsibility than Tomas Estrada Palma, or one who more manfully strove to discharge its every duty with scrupulous fidelity and with all the discretion and wisdom with which he had himself been plenteously endowed and which he could summon to his council board from among his loyal compatriots. We must regard it as the supreme reproach of José Miguel Gomez that, with all his ability and energy, he lacked that supreme quality, the sense of civic responsibility, which Marti prescribed for Cuba and for Cubans. His shameful and unpardonable treason--a double treason, to his own party partner as well as to the government of his country--was not inspired by the genius of Marti. It did not comprehend the gigantic responsibilities which it so lightly sought to assume, but was marked with the irresponsibility which has characterized so many revolutions in other Latin American countries, and which has brought upon those lands disaster and measureless reproach. Under the third Presidency which Cuba has enjoyed that responsibility is happily comprehended in complete degree. Not even Estrada Palma possessed a higher sense of duty to the state and to the world than Mario G. Menocal, nor gave to it more tangible and efficient exposition. Nor shall we incur reproach of lack of reverence for a great name if we perceive that in certain essential and potent particulars Cuba's third President is even more capable of discharging that responsibility than was the first. The younger, alert, practical man of affairs, expert in the duties of both peace and war, has the advantage over the elder sage whose life for many years had been cloistered in academic calm. We might not inappropriately gauge the extent of Cuba's discharge of her responsibilities as a sovereign nation by the measure of her progress in various paths of human welfare. This is not the place for a comprehensive census of the island, or for a conspectus of its statistics. _Ex pede Herculem._ From a few items we may estimate the whole. In the days of unembarrassed Spanish rule, before that sovereignty was challenged by revolutions, the island had a population of a million souls. It had between two hundred and three hundred teachers, and--in 1841--9,082 children enrolled in schools. That was one schoolchild in every 110 of the population. To-day the island has a population of 2,700,000, and it has 350,000 children enrolled in its schools. That is one child in every eight of the population. The contrast between one-eighth and one-one hundred and tenth is one valid and expressive measure of Cuba's discharge of her responsibility. Under the administration of President Menocal the annual appropriation for public education is more than $10,000,000. There are six great normal schools to train the 5,500 teachers who are needed to care for the 350,000 pupils; and as the national government conducts all the schools there is no discrimination between poor places and wealthy communities, but an equal grade of teaching is maintained in all. Nor does the state stop with primary education, but provides practically free secondary and university education for all who desire it. [Illustration: FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ ROLDÁN SECRETARY OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION] Shall we take public health as another measure of progress? In the half dozen years just before the War of Independence the death rate in Havana was 33 to the 1,000. By 1902 it was reduced to 22, or only a little more than in New York. To-day, under President Menocal, the death rate for all Cuba is only 11.2. In the registration area of the United States it is 14. In the United Kingdom it is 14.2, and Britain vaunts herself upon its lowness. In France it is 19.6; in Argentina it is 21.6; in Chili it is 31.1. There are only three countries in the world with lower rates of mortality than Cuba; and they are New Zealand, with 9.5, Newfoundland with 10.5, and Australia with 10.6. Again, consider what is still the chief industry of Cuba. Before the administration of President Menocal, these were the yearly sugar crops, in tons: 1908 961,958 1909 1,513,582 1910 1,804,349 1911 1,480,217 1912 1,893,687 Compare or contrast those figures with these, under the administration of a President who comprehends his responsibilities: 1913 2,429,240 1914 2,596,567 1915 2,583,845 1916 3,006,624 1917 3,019,936 1918 3,444,605 1919 4,000,000 No less impressive and significant are the figures which indicate the volume of trade between Cuba and the United States. The imports of American goods into Cuba in 1903 were only $23,000,000; in 1908 they were $48,577,000; in 1917 they were $189,875,000. The exports of Cuban goods to the United States were in 1908 only $78,869,000, and in 1917 they were $225,275,000, and in 1919 more than $500,000,000. The balance of trade is thus heavily in Cuba's favor. Small as Cuba is in comparison with some of her neighbors, her commerce with the United States far exceeds theirs. Thus in 1917 the commerce, in both directions, of Brazil with the United States was $180,000,000; of Chili, $205,000,000; of Argentina, $305,000,000; of Mexico, $248,000,000; and of Cuba, $415,150,000. [Illustration: BONEATO ROAD, ORIENTE No country in the world, probably, is more amply equipped with good road--for both industrial and pleasure purposes, than Cuba. Radiating from the capital and other important cities splendid automobile highways give access to all parts of the island, leading not only to cities and ports but also for hundreds of miles through enchanting scenery. Of such highways the Boneato Road, winding through the mountains of Santiago, in the Province of Oriente, is a superb example.] Financially, the administration of President Menocal is to be credited with the cancellation of the heavy and largely unnecessary debts which were left to it by the preceding administration; an achievement which contributed greatly to the improvement of Cuba's international credit. The foreign claims of Great Britain, France and Germany, which had been an embarrassing problem for several years, have been so satisfactorily adjusted that their complete settlement will be effected at a time convenient to all parties concerned. The grave fiscal and economic crisis which followed the beginning of the war of 1914, in practically all the markets of the world was avoided in Cuba by the Economic Defense Bill, and the establishment of a Cuban national monetary system has facilitated exchange and all manner of transactions in Cuba, and has redeemed the country from the reproach of being ridden by and dependent upon foreign coin as its medium of exchange. [Illustration: JOSÉ A. DEL CUETO PRESIDENT OF SUPREME COURT] The sanitary redemption of Cuba was indeed effected under the administration of Leonard Wood in the first American Government of Intervention. But the fortunate condition then attained has been not only fully maintained but constantly and materially bettered through the activity of the public health department of the Menocal administration. New problems in sanitation have arisen, only to be met with promptness, thoroughness and success. One of the most severe tests of the efficiency of the organization against disease occurred when the dreaded bubonic plague was imported; and that efficiency was amply vindicated by the complete eradication of that pestilence within a few weeks. [Illustration: DR. FERNANDO MÉNDEZ-CAPOTE, SECRETARY OF SANITATION] [Illustration: GEN. JOSÉ MARTI, SECRETARY OF WAR] Shortly after his accession to the Presidency, General Menocal effected a complete reorganization of the military system. It was not his purpose to burden the country with unnecessary armaments, but he realized the necessity of a certain degree of militant preparation for emergencies and therefore provided it with a small but efficient army and navy, commensurate with the necessities of the country, and entirely subject, of course, to the control and direction of the people through their civil government. The efficiency of this arm of the Government was well demonstrated at the time already described in these pages when, early in 1917, a widespread revolution was attempted for the purpose of overthrowing the constitutional and legal government of the country. At that time the President showed the same triumphant ability as a military strategist that he had displayed as a civil administrator, in directing the movements of the Government troops from the Palace in Havana. It was due to his vigilance and energy in directing the campaign, as well, of course, as to the able assistance of his staff, that the rebel forces were promptly surrounded and captured and thus a death blow was struck at what we may hope will prove to have been the last attempt at revolution in Cuba. No less remarkable than his energy in war was the President's magnanimity in dealing with his vanquished enemies when peace had been restored, though sometimes against the will of many of his foremost advisers. He led the movement of opinion favorable to harmony and reconciliation, which was finally confirmed by a law of congress granting full amnesty to all civilians who participated in that ill advised insurrection. Instead of using persecution, bitterness and vindictive oppression against his enemies, President Menocal restored good will through the Island by his magnanimous generosity and abundant acts of grace. We have already spoken of President Menocal's admirable course in pointing out where the duty of his country lay in the great crisis of the European war, and in confirming the traditional friendship between Cuba and the United States by making the insular republic an ally of its great northern neighbor in that world-wide conflict. His recommendation of a declaration of war was immediately and unanimously adopted by the Cuban Congress, and thereafter the policy of the republic, under his direction, was one of close cooperation with the United States, and of placing all the resources and energies of the Island at the disposal of the Allied cause. It is worthy of record that the French Government showed its appreciation, not only of his spirit and purpose but of his actual achievements in the war, by conferring upon him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. During these last few years the agricultural, industrial and economical resources of Cuba have been developed to an extent hitherto unknown and undreamed of in the history of the country. Industries have been immensely stimulated, great new enterprises have been created, and an expansion of foreign trade has been attained which makes Cuba in proportion to its size the foremost commercial country of the world. [Illustration: EUGENIO SANCHEZ AGRAMONTE Bearing a name which has been identified with many high achievements in medical and other science, Dr. Eugenio Sanchez Agramonte has added new lustre to it by his own achievements for the health of humanity and for the welfare of his fatherland. He was born in Camaguey on April 17, 1865, and had already attained enviable rank as a physician and sanitarian when, still a young man, he entered the War of Independence. His chief services were rendered as Director of the Sanitary Department of the Army of Liberation, in which place he had the rank of General. He was also Director of the great Casa de Beneficia. After the war he took an active interest in civic affairs, and became the president of the Conservative party. With the election of General Menocal to the Presidency of the Cuban Republic, General Agramonte was elected president of the Senate, which position he held until 1917, when President Menocal appointed him Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor.] According to recent data the foreign trade of Cuba is $800,000,000. Reckoning the population of the Island at about 2,700,000, that means a foreign trade of more than $296 per capita. In the year immediately preceding the outbreak of the European war, and before the great disturbance of commerce caused by that conflict, the foreign trade of the United States of America amounted to only $39 per capita, and even that of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to only $170. Before the enraptured vision of Columbus, Cuba baffled appreciation. To the more discriminating vision of to-day, her future equally baffles while it piques imagination. Louis Napoleon, meditating upon the possibilities of an American Isthmian canal, once said: "The geographical position of Constantinople rendered her the Queen of the ancient world. Occupying, as she does, the central point between Europe, Asia and Africa, she could become the entreport of the commerce of all those countries, and obtain over them immense preponderance; for in politics, as in strategy, a central position always commands the circumference." Then he pointed out the similarity of position of Nicaragua, where he hoped to construct a canal, and argued that it similarly might obtain a like status in the Western World. It needs little suggestion to point out that Cuba fulfils those conditions in a supreme degree. It was not vainly that Spaniards centuries ago called Havana the Key of the Gulf, of the Caribbean, of the Indies, of the Western World. The position of Cuba is unique and incomparable, with relation to the United States, Mexico, Central America and South America, and the two enclosed seas which form the Mediterranean of the American Continents. Of old the treasure fleets of Spain passed by her coasts, and visited her harbors. To-day she is similarly visited by the fleets which ply between North America and South America, and between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Reckoned by routes of traffic on the charted seas, she is the commercial centre of the world. [Illustration: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, HAVANA] It is not with ambition for conquest or for political ascendancy that Cuba exults in that proud position, but merely that she may in the words of her President "show herself worthy of the favors which God has lavished upon her," and make herself a joy unto herself and a convenience and a benefaction to the peaceful world. It is into such an estate that she has now found the sure way to enter, and is indeed confidently and triumphantly entering, through achievements which, though embraced in only half a dozen years, are worthy of a generation of progress and are auspicious of immeasurable generations of progress yet to come; achievements toward which her present Chief of State has greatly and indispensably contributed. The story of Cuba is from Velasquez to Menocal. That is the story which we have tried to tell. But that is by no means the whole history of Cuba. Even of that portion of it we have been able here to give only an outline of the essential facts. But surely the span of four hundred and seven years must not be reckoned as a finality. It is only the beginning of the annals of a land and a people whose place among the nations of the world in honorable perpetuity is now assured as far as it can be assured by human purpose and achievement. These pages are, then, in fact, merely the prologue to records of progress and attainment which shall honor the name of Cuba and adorn the story of the world, "far on, in summers that we shall not see." From Velasquez to Menocal. The span is tremendous, in character as well as in lapse of time. It is a span from the fanatical and ruthless conqueror seeking only his own and his country's advantage, selfish and sordid, to the broad-minded and altruistic statesman and philanthropist, seeking the advantage and the advancement of his fellow men. It is a span, in brief, from the Sixteenth Century age of force to the Twentieth Century age of law. Nevertheless, the span and the contrast involve a certain analogy. It was the work of Velasquez, masterful man of vision that he was, to begin the transformation of a land of aboriginal barbarians into at least a semblance of civilization; the transformation from the primitive, scarcely more than animal, existence of the Cuban autochthones, to the strenuous if sophisticated life of Spain. It has been and is the work of President Menocal and his accomplished and patriotic colleagues to induct the land and people from the discredited remnants of a false colonial system into the clearer light, the fuller life and the immeasurably more spacious and elevated opportunities of a free and independent people who "comprehend the responsibilities incumbent upon the founders of nations." INDEX Abarzuza, Sr. proposes reforms for Cuba, IV, 6. Abreu. Marta and Rosalie, patriotism of, IV, 25. Academy of Sciences, Havana, picture of, IV, 364. Adams, John Quincy, enunciates American policy toward Cuba, II, 258; portrait, 259; on Cuban annexation, 327. Aglona, Prince de. Governor, II, 363. Agramonte, Aristide, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Agramonte, Enrique, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12. Agramonte, Eugenio Sanchez, sketch and portrait, IV, 362. Agramonte, Francisco, IV, 41. Agramonte, Ignacio, portrait, facing. III, 258. Agriculture, early attention to, I, 173, 224; progress, 234; II, 213; absentee landlords, 214; statistics, 223; discussed in periodicals, 250; rehabilitation of after War of Independence, IV, 147. Aguayo, Geronimo de, I, 161. Aguero, Joaquin de, organizes revolution, III, 72; final defeat, 87. Aguiar, Luis de, II, 60. Aguiera, Jose, I, 295. Aguila, Negra, II, 346. Aguilera, Francisco V., sketch and portrait, III, 173. Aguirre, Jose Maria, filibuster, IV, 55; death, 85. Albemarle, Earl of, expedition against Havana, II, 46; occupies Havana, 78; controversy with Bishop Morell, 83. Alcala, Marcos, I, 310. Aldama, Miguel de, sketch and portrait, III, 204. Aleman, Manuel, French emissary, II, 305. Algonquins, I, 7. Allen, Robert, on "Importance of Havana," II, 81. Almendares River, tapped for water supply, I, 266; view on, IV, 167. Almendariz, Alfonso Enrique, Bishop, I, 277. Alquiza, Sancho de, Governor, I, 277. Altamarino, Governor, I, 105; post mortem trial of Velasquez, 107; attacked by the Guzmans, 109; removed, 110. Altamirano, Juan C., Bishop, I, 273; seized by brigands, 274. Alvarado, Luis de, I, 147. Alvarado, Pedro de, in Mexico, I, 86. Amadeus, King of Spain, III, 260. America, relation of Cuba to, I, 1; II, 254. See UNITED STATES. American Revolution, effect of upon Spain and her colonies, II, 138. American Treaty, between Great Britain and Spain, I, 303. Andrea, Juan de, II, 9. Angulo, Francisco de, exiled, I, 193. Angulo, Gonzales Perez de, Governor, I, 161; emancipation proclamation, 163; quarrel with Havana Council, 181; flight from Sores, 186; end of administration, 192. Anners, Jean de Laet de, quoted, I, 353. Annexation of Cuba to United States, first suggested, II, 257, 326; campaign for, 380; sought by United States, III, 132, 135; Marcy's policy, 141; Ostend Manifesto, 142; Buchanan's efforts, 143; not considered in War of Independence, IV, 19. Antonelli, Juan Bautista, engineering works in Cuba, I, 261; creates water supply for Havana, 266. Apezteguia. Marquis de, Autonomist leader, IV, 94. Apodaca, Juan Ruiz, Governor, II, 311. Arana, Martin de, warns Prado of British approach, II, 53. Arana, Melchior Sarto de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 237. Arana, Pedro de, royal accountant, I, 238. Aranda, Esquival, I, 279. Arango, Augustin, murder of, III, 188. Arango, Napoleon, treason of, III, 226. Arango y Pareño, Francisco, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. II; organizes Society of Progress, II, 178; leadership in Cuba, 191; attitude toward slavery, 208; his illustrious career, 305 et seq. Aranguren, Nestor, revolutionist, IV, 85; death, 92. Araoz, Juan, II, 181. Arias, A. R., Governor, III, 314. Arias, Gomez, I, 145. Arignon, Villiet, quoted, II, 26, 94. Armona, José de, II, 108. Army, Cuban, organization of, III, 178; reorganized, 263; under Jose Miguel Gomez, IV, 301. Army, Spanish, in Cuba, III, 181, 295. Aroztegui, Martin de, II, 20. Arrate, José Martin Felix, historian, II, 17, 179. Arredondo, Nicolas, Governor at Santiago, II, 165. Asbert, Gen. Ernesto, amnesty case, IV, 326. "Assiento" compact on slavery, II, 2. Assumption, Our Lady of the, I, 61. Astor, John Jacob, aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Asylums for Insane, II, 317. Atares fortress, picture, II, 103. Atkins, John, book on West Indies, II, 36. Atrocities, committed by Spanish, III, 250; Cespedes's protest against, 254; "Book of Blood," 284; Spanish confession of, 286; war of destruction, 295; Weyler's "concentration" policy, IV, 85. Attwood's Cay. See GUANAHANI. Autonomist party, III, 305; IV, 34; attitude toward Campos in War of Independence, 59; Cabinet under Blanco, 94; earnest efforts for peace, 101; record of its government, 102. Avellanda, Gertrudis Gomez de, III, 331; portrait, facing, 332. Avila, Alfonso de, I, 154. Avila, Juan de, Governor, I, 151; marries rich widow, 154; charges against him, 157; convicted and imprisoned, 158. Avila. See DAVILA. Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, See MENENDEZ. Ayala, Francisco P. de, I, 291. Ayilon, Lucas V. de, strives to make peace between Velasquez and Cortez, I, 98. Azcarata, José Luis, Secretary of Justice, sketch and portrait, IV, 341. Azcarate, Nicolas, sketch and portrait, III, 251, 332. Azcarraga, Gen., Spanish Premier, IV, 88. "Barbeque" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bachiller, Antonio, sketch and portrait, III, 317. Bacon, Robert, Assistant Secretary of State of U. S., intervenes in revolution, IV, 272. Bahia Honda, selected as U. S. naval station, IV, 256. Balboa, Vasco Nuñez de, I, 55, 91. Bancroft, George, quoted, I, 269; II, 1, 24, 41, 117, 120, 159. Banderas, Quintin, revolutionist, IV, 34; raid, 57; death, 84. Baracoa, Columbus at, I, 18; Velasquez at, 60; picture, 60; first capital of Cuba, 61, 168. Barreda, Baltazar, I, 201. Barreiro, Juan Bautista, Secretary of Education, IV, 160. Barrieres, Manuel Garcia, II, 165. Barrionuevo, Juan Maldonado, Governor, I, 263. Barsicourt, Juan Procopio. See SANTA CLARA, Conde. Bayamo, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; Cuban Republic organized there, III, 157. Bayoa, Pedro de, I, 300. Bay of Cortez, reached by Columbus, I, 25. Bees, introduced by Bishop Morell, II, 104; increase of industry, 132. "Beggars of the Sea," raid Cuban coasts, I, 208. Bells, church, controversy over, II, 82. Bembrilla, Alonzo, I, 111. Benavides, Juan de, I, 280. Berrea, Esteban S. de, II, 6. Betancourt, Pedro, Civil Governor of Matanzas, IV, 179; loyal to Palma, 271. Betancourt. See CISNEROS. "Bimini," Island of, I, 139. Bishops of Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, I, 122. "Black Eagle," II, 346. _Black Warrior_ affair, III, 138. Blanchet, Emilio, historian, quoted, II, 9, 15, 24; on siege of Havana, 57, 87. Blanco, Ramon, Governor, IV, 88; undertakes reforms, 89; plans Cuban autonomy, 93; on destruction of _Maine_, 99; resigns, 121. Blue, Victor, observations at Santiago, IV, 110. Bobadilla, F. de, I, 54. Boca de la Yana, I, 18. "Bohio" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bolivar, Simon, II, 333; portrait, 334; "Liberator," 334 et seq.; influence on Cuba, 341; "Soles de Bolivar," 341. Bonel, Juan Bautista, II, 133. "Book of Blood," III, 284. Bourne, Edward Gaylord, quoted, on slavery, II, 209; on Spanish in America, 226. Brinas, Felipe, III, 330. British policy toward Spain and Cuba, I, 270; aggressions in West Indies, 293; slave trade, II, 2; war of 1639, 22; designs upon Cuba, 41; expedition against Havana, 1762, 46; conquest of Cuba, 78; relinquishment to Spain, 92. See GREAT BRITAIN. Broa Bay, I, 22. Brooke, Gen. John R., receives Spanish surrender of Cuba, IV, 122; proclamation to Cuban people, 145; retired, 157. Brooks, Henry, revolutionist, IV, 30. Buccaneers, origin of, I, 269. Buccarelli, Antonio Maria, Governor, II, 110; retires, 115. Buchanan, James, on U. S. relations to Cuba, II, 263; III, 135; Minister to Great Britain, 142; as President seeks annexation of Cuba to U. S., 143. Bull-fighting, II, 233. Burgos, Juan de, Bishop, I, 225. Burtnett, Spanish spy against Lopez, III, 65. Bustamente, Antonio Sanchez de, jurist, sketch and portrait, IV, 165. Caballero, José Agustin, sketch and portrait, III, 321. Caballo, Domingo, II, 173. Cabanas, defences constructed, II, 58; Laurel Ditch, view, facing, 58. Caballero, Diego de, I, 111. Cabezas, Bishop, I, 277. Cabrera, Diego de, I, 206. Cabrera, Luis, I, 198. Cabrera, Lorenzo de, Governor, I, 279; removed, 282. Cabrera, Rafael, filibuster, IV, 70. Cabrera, Raimundo, conspirator in New York, IV, 334; warned, 339. Cadreyta, Marquis de, I, 279. Cagigal, Juan Manuel de, Governor, II, 154; defence of Havana, 155; removed and imprisoned, 157. Cagigal, Juan Manuel, Governor, II, 313; successful administration, 315. Cagigal de la Vega, Francisco, defends Santiago, II, 29; Governor, 32; Viceroy of Mexico, 34. Caguax, Cuban chief, I, 63. Calderon, Gabriel, Bishop, I, 315. Calderon, Garcia, quoted, II, 164, 172. Calderon de la Barca, Spanish Minister, on _La Verdad_, III, 19; on colonial status, 21; negotiations with Soulé, 140. Calhoun, John C., on Cuba, III, 132. Calleja y Isisi, Emilio, Governor, III, 313; proclaims martial law, IV, 30; resigns, 35. Camaguey. See PUERTO PRINCIPE, I, 168. Campbell, John, description of Havana, II, 14. Campillo, Jose de, II, 19. Campos, Martinez de, Governor, III, 296; proclamations to Cuba, 297, 299; makes Treaty of Zanjon and ends Ten Years War, 299; in Spanish crisis, IV, 36; Governor again, 37; establishes Trocha, 44; defeated by Maceo, 46; conferences with party leaders, 59, 63; removed, 63. Cancio, Leopoldo, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 161, 320. Canizares, Santiago J., Minister of Interior, IV, 48. Canning, George, policy toward Cuba, II, 257; portrait, 258. Canoe, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Canon, Rodrigo, I, 111. Canovas del Castillo, Spanish Premier, IV, 36; assassinated, 88. Cape Cruz, Columbus at, I, 20. Cape Maysi, I, 4. Cape of Palms, I, 17. Capote, Domingo Menendez. Vice-President, IV, 90; Secretary of State, 146; President of Constitutional Convention. 189. Carajaval, Lucas, defies Dutch, I, 290. Cardenas, Lopez lands at, III, 49. Caribs, I, 8. Carillo, Francisco, filibuster, IV, 55. Carleton, Sir Guy, at Havana, II, 47. Carranza, Domingo Gonzales, book on West Indies, II, 37. Carrascesa, Alfonso, II, 6. Carreño, Francisco, Governor, I, 219; conditions at his accession, 228; dies in office, 229; work in rebuilding Havana, 231. Carroll, James, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Casa de Beneficienca, founded, I, 335; II, 177. Casa de Resorgiamento, founded, II, 31. Casares, Alfonso, codifies municipal ordinances, I, 207. Castellanos, Jovellar, last Spanish Governor of Cuba, IV, 121; surrenders Spanish sovereignty, 123. Castillo, Demetrio, Civil Governor of Oriente, IV, 180. Castillo, Ignacio Maria del, Governor, III, 314. Castillo, Loinaz, revolutionist. IV, 269. Castillo, Pedro del, Bishop, I, 226. Castro, Hernando de, royal treasurer, I, 115. Cathcart Lord, expedition to West Indies, II, 28. Cathedral of Havana, picture, facing I, 36; begun, I, 310. Cat Island. See GUANAHANI. Cayo, San Juan de los Remedios del, removal of, I, 319. Cazones, Gulf of, I, 21. Cemi, Cuban worship of, I, 55. Census, of Cuba, first taken, by Torre, II, 131; by Las Casas, 176; of slaves, 205; of 1775, 276; of 1791, 277; Humboldt on, 277; of 1811, 280; of 1817, 281; of 1827, 283; of 1846, 283; of 1899, IV, 154; of 1907, 287. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, III, 157; portrait, facing 158; in Spain, 158; leads Cuban revolution, 158; President of Republic, 158; proclamation, 168; negotiations with Spain, 187; removed from office, 275. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, filibuster, IV, 55. Cespedes, Enrique, revolutionist, IV, 30. Cervera, Admiral, brings Spanish fleet to Cuba, IV, 110; portrait, 110; surrenders, 114. Chacon, José Bayoma, II, 13. Chacon, Luis, I, 331, 333. Chalons, Sr., Secretary of Public Works, IV, 297. Chamber of Commerce founded, II, 307. Charles I, King, I, 74; denounces oppression of Indians, 128. Chaves, Antonio, Governor, I, 157; prosecutes Avila, 157; ruthless policy toward natives, 159; controversy with King, 160; dismissed from office, 161. Chaves, Juan Baton de, I, 331. Chilton, John, describes Havana, I, 349. Chinchilla, José, Governor, III, 314. Chinese, colonies in America, I, 7; laborers imported into Cuba, II, 295. Chorrera, expected to be Drake's landing place, I, 248. Chorrera River, dam built by Antonelli, I, 262. Christianity, introduced into Cuba by Ojeda, I, 55; urged by King Ferdinand, 73. Church, Roman Catholic, organized and influential in Cuba, I, 122; cathedral removed from Baracoa to Santiago, 123; conflict with civil power, 227; controversy with British during British occupation, II, 84; division of island into two dioceses, 173; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 26; controversy over property, 294. Cienfuegos, José, Governor, II, 311. Cimmarones, "wild Indians," I, 126; revolt against De Soto, 148. Cipango, Cuba identified with, by Columbus, I, 5. Cisneros, Gaspar Betancourt, sketch and portrait, II, 379. Cisneros, Pascal Jiminez de, II, 110, 127. Cisneros, Salvador, III, 167; sketch and portrait, 276; President of Cuban Republic, 277; President of Council of Ministers, IV, 48; in Constitutional Convention, 190. Civil Service, law, IV, 325; respected by President Menocal, 325. Clay, Henry, policy toward Cuba, II, 261. Clayton, John M., U. S. Secretary of State, issues proclamation against filibustering, III, 42. Cleaveland, Samuel, controversy over church bells, II, 83. Cleveland, Grover. President of United States, issues warning against breaches of neutrality, IV, 70; reference to Cuba in message of 1896, 79; its significance, 80. Coat of Arms of Cuba, picture, IV, 251; significance, 251. Cobre, copper mines, I, 173, 259. "Cockfighting and Idleness" campaign, IV, 291. Coffee, cultivation begun, II, 33, 113. Coinage, reformed, II, 142; statistics of, 158. Collazo, Enrique, filibuster, IV, 55. Coloma, Antonio Lopez, revolutionist, IV, 30. Colombia, designs upon Cuba, II, 262; III, 134; attitude toward Cuban revolution, 223. Columbus, Bartholomew, recalled to Spain, I, 57. Columbus, Christopher, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. I; discoverer of America, I; i; first landing in America, 2; monument on Watling's Island, picture, 3; arrival in Cuba, 11; question as to first landing place, 12; first impressions of Cuba and intercourse with natives, 14; exploration of north coast, 16; end of first visit, 18; second visit, 19; exploration of south coast, 21; at Bay of Cortez, 25; turns back from circumnavigation, 26; at Isle of Pines, 26; final departure from Cuba, 27; diary and narrative, 28 et seq.; death and burial, 33; tomb in Havana cathedral, 34; removal to Seville, 36; removal from Santo Domingo to Havana, II, 181; epitaph, 182. Columbus, Diego, plans exploration and colonization of Cuba, I, 57; attempts mediation between Velasquez and Cortez, 97; replaces Velasquez with Zuazo, 100; rebuked by King, 100. Comendador, Cacique, I, 55. Commerce, begun by Velasquez, I, 68; rise of corporations, II, 19; after British occupation, 98; under Torre, 132; reduction of duties, 141; extension of trade, 163; Tribunal of Commerce founded, 177; Real Compania de Havana, 199; restrictive measures, 200; Chamber of Commerce founded, 307; commerce with United States, III, 2; during American occupation, IV, 184; present, 358. Compostela, Diego E. de, Bishop, I, 318; death, 332. Concepcion, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Concessions, forbidden under American occupation, IV, 153. Concha, José Gutierrez de la, Governor, III, 62, 290. Conchillos, royal secretary, I, 59. Congress, Cuban, welcomed by Gen. Wood, IV, 246; turns against Palma, 269; friendly to Gomez, 303; hostile to Menocal, 323; protects the lottery, 324. Constitution: Cuban Republic of 1868, III, 157; of 1895, IV, 47; call for Constitutional Convention, 185; meeting of Convention, 187; draft completed, 192; salient provisions, 193; Elihu Root's comments, 194; Convention discusses relations with United States, 197; Platt Amendment, 199; amendment adopted, 203; text of Constitution, 304 et seq.; The Nation, 205; Cubans, 205; Foreigners, 207; Individual Rights, 208; Suffrage, 211; Suspension of Guarantees, 212; Sovereignty, 213; Legislative Bodies, 214; Senate, 214; House of Representatives, 216; Congress, 218; Legislation, 221; Executive, 222; President, 222; Vice-President, 225; Secretaries of State, 226; Judiciary, 227; Supreme Court, 227; Administration of Justice, 228; Provincial Governments, 229; Provincial Councils, 230; Provincial Governors, 231; Municipal Government, 233; Municipal Councils, 233; Mayors, 235; National Treasury, 235; Amendments, 236; Transient Provisions, 237; Appendix (Platt Amendment), 238. "Constitutional Army," IV, 268. Contreras, Andres Manso de, I, 288. Contreras, Damien, I, 278. Convents, founded, I, 276; Nuns of Santa Clara, 286. Conyedo, Juan de, Bishop, II, 35. Copper, discovered near Santiago, I, 173; wealth of mines, 259; reopened, II, 13; exports, III, 3. Corbalon, Francisco R., I, 286. Cordova de Vega, Diego de, Governor, I, 239. Cordova, Francisco H., expedition to Yucatan, I, 84. Cordova Ponce de Leon, José Fernandez, Governor, I, 316. Coreal, Francois, account of West Indies, quoted, I, 355. Coronado, Manuel, gift for air planes, IV, 352. Cortes, Spanish, Cuban representation in, II, 308; excluded, 351; lack of representation, III, 3; after Ten Years' War, 307. Cortez, Hernando, Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, I, 72; sent to Mexico by King, 74; agent of Velasquez, 86; early career, 90; portrait, 90; quarrel with Velasquez, 91; marriage, 92; commissioned by Velasquez to explore Mexico, 92; sails for Mexico, 94; final breach with Velasquez, 96; denounced as rebel, 97; escapes murder, 99. Cosa, Juan de la, geographer, I, 6, 53. Councillors, appointed for life, I, 111; conflict with Procurators, 113. Creoles, origin of name, II, 204. Crittenden, J. J., protests against European intervention in Cuba, III, 129. Crittenden, William S., with Lopez, III, 96; captured, 101; death, 105. Crombet, Flor, revolutionist, IV, 41, 42. Crooked Island. See ISABELLA. Crowder, Gen. Enoch H., head of Consulting Board, IV, 284. Cuba: Relation to America, I, 1; Columbus's first landing, 3; identified with Mangi or Cathay, 4; with Cipango, 5; earliest maps, 6; physical history, 7, 37 et seq.; Columbus's discovery, 11 et seq.; named Juana, 13; other names, 14; Columbus's account of, 28; geological history, 37-42; topography, 42-51; climate, 51-52; first circumnavigation, 54; colonization, 54; Velasquez at Baracoa, 60; commerce begun, 68; government organized, 69; named Ferdinandina, 73; policy of Spain toward, 175; slow economic progress, 215; land legislation, 232; Spanish discrimination against, 266; divided into two districts, 275; British description in 1665, 306; various accounts, 346; turning point in history, 363; close of first era, 366; British conquest, II, 78; relinquished to Spain, 92; great changes effected, 94; economic condition, 98; reoccupied by Spain, 102; untouched by early revolutions, 165; effect of revolution in Santo Domingo, 190; first suggestion of annexation to United States, 257; "Ever Faithful Isle," 268; rise of independence, 268; censuses, 276 et seq.; representation in Cortes, 308; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; representatives rejected from Cortes, 351; transformation of popular spirit, 383; independence proclaimed, III, 145; Republic organized, 157; War of Independence, IV, 15; Spanish elections held during war, 67; Blanco's plan of autonomy, 93; sovereignty surrendered by Spain, 123; list of Spanish Governors, 123. See REPUBLIC OF CUBA. Cuban Aborigines; I, 8; manners, customs and religion, 8 et seq.; Columbus's first intercourse, 15, 24; priest's address to Columbus, 26; Columbus's observations of them, 29; hostilities begun by Velasquez, 61; subjected to Repartimiento system, 70; practical slavery, 71; Key Indians, 125; Cimmarones, 126; new laws in their favor, 129; Rojas's endeavor to save them, 130; final doom, 133; efforts at reform, 153; oppression by Chaves, 159; Angulo's emancipation proclamation, 163. "Cuba-nacan," I, 5. "Cuba and the Cubans," quoted, II, 313. "Cuba y Su Gobierno," quoted, II, 354. Cuellar, Cristobal de, royal accountant, I, 59. Cushing, Caleb, Minister to Spain, III, 291. Custom House, first at Havana, I, 231. Dady, Michael J., & Co., contract dispute, IV, 169. Davila, Pedrarias, I, 140. Davis, Jefferson, declines to join Lopez, III, 38. Del Casal, Julian, sketch and portrait, IV, 6. Del Cueta, José A., President of Supreme Court, portrait, IV, 359. Delgado, Moru, Liberal leader, IV, 267. Del Monte, Domingo, sketch, portrait, and work, II, 323. Del Monte, Ricardo, sketch and portrait, IV, 2. Demobilization of Cuban army, IV, 135. Desvernine, Pablo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 146. Diaz, Bernal, at Sancti Spiritus, I, 72; in Mexico, 86. Diaz, Manuel, I, 239. Diaz, Manuel Luciano, Secretary of Public Works, IV, 254. Diaz, Modeste, III, 263. Divino, Sr., Secretary of Justice, IV, 297. Dockyard at Havana, established, II, 8. Dolz, Eduardo, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 96. Dominguez, Fermin V., Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 50. Dorst, J. H., mission to Pinar del Rio, IV, 107. "Dragado" deal, IV, 310. Drake, Sir Francis, menaces Havana, I, 243; in Hispaniola, 246; leaves Havana unassailed, 252; departs for Virginia, 255. Duany, Joaquin Castillo, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Assistant Secretary of Treasury, 50; filibuster, 70. Dubois, Carlos, Assistant Secretary of Interior, IV, 50. Duero, Andres de, I, 93, 115. Dulce y Garay, Domingo, Governor, III, 190, 194; decree of confiscation, 209; recalled, 213. Dupuy de Lome, Sr., Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 40; writes offensive letter, 98; recalled, 98. Duque, Sr., Secretary of Sanitation and Charity, IV, 297. Durango, Bishop, I, 225. Dutch hostilities, I, 208, 279; activities in West Indies, 283 et seq. Earthquakes, in 1765, I, 315; II, 114. Echeverria, Esteban B., Superintendent of Schools, IV, 162. Echeverria, José, Bishop, II, 113. Echeverria, José Antonio, III, 324. Echeverria, Juan Maria, Governor, II, 312. Education, backward state of, II, 244; progress under American occupation, IV, 156; A. E. Frye, Superintendent, 156; reorganization of system, 162; Harvard University's entertainment of teachers, 163; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Elections: for municipal officers under American occupation, IV, 180; law for regulation of, 180; result, 181; for Constitutional Convention, 186; for general officers, 240; result, 244; Presidential, 1906, 265; new law, 287; local elections under Second Intervention, 289; Presidential, 290; for Congress in 1908, 303; Presidential, 1912, 309; Presidential, 1916, disputed, 330, result confirmed, 341. Enciso, Martin F. de, first Spanish writer about America, I, 54. Epidemics: putrid fever, 1649, I, 290; vaccination introduced, II, 192; small pox and yellow fever, III, 313; at Santiago, IV, 142; Gen. Wood applies Dr. Finlay's theory of yellow fever, 171; success, 176; malaria, 177. Escudero, Antonio, de, II, 10. Espada, Juan José Diaz, portrait, facing II, 272. Espagnola. See HISPANIOLA. Espeleta, Joaquin de, Governor, II, 362. Espinosa, Alonzo de Campos, Governor, I, 316. Espoleto, José de, Governor, II, 169. Estenoz, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Estevez, Luis, Secretary of Justice, IV, 160; Vice-President, 245. Evangelista. See ISLE OF PINES. Everett, Edward, policy toward Cuba, III, 130. "Ever Faithful Isle," II, 268, 304. Exquemeling, Alexander, author and pirate, I, 302. "Family Pact," of Bourbons, effect upon Cuba, II, 42. Felin, Antonio, Bishop, II, 172. Fels, Cornelius, defeated by Spanish, I, 288. Ferdinand, King, policy toward Cuba, I, 56; esteem for Velasquez, 73. Ferdinandina, Columbus's landing place, I, 3; name for Cuba, 73. Ferrara, Orestes, Liberal leader, IV, 260; revolutionist, 269; deprecates factional strife, 306; revolutionary conspirator in New York, 334; warned by U. S. Government, I, 239. Ferrer, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 239. Figueroa, Vasco Porcallo de, I, 72; De Soto's lieutenant, 142; returns from Florida in disgust, 145. Figuerosa, Rojas de, captures Tortuga, I, 292. Filarmonia, riot at ball, III, 119. Filibustering, proclamation of United States against, III, 42; after Ten Years' War, 311, in War of Independence, IV, 20; expeditions intercepted, 52; many successful expeditions, 69; warnings, 70. Fine Arts, II, 240. Finlay, Carlos G., theory of yellow fever successfully applied under General Wood, IV, 171; portrait, facing, 172. Fish, Hamilton, U. S. Secretary of State, prevents premature recognition of Cuban Republic, III, 203; protests against Rodas's decree, 216; on losses in Ten Years' War, 290; seeks British support, 292; states terms of proposed mediation, 293. Fish market at Havana, founder for pirate, II, 357. Fiske, John, historian, quoted, I, 270. Flag, Cuban, first raised, III, 31; replaces American, IV, 249; picture, 250; history and significance, 250. Flores y Aldama, Rodrigo de, Governor, I, 301. Florida, attempted colonization by Ponce de Leon, I, 139; De Soto's expedition, 145. See MENENDEZ. Fonseca, Juan Rodriguez de, Bishop of Seville, I, 59. Fonts-Sterling, Ernesto, Secretary of Finance, IV, 90; urges resistance to revolution, 270. Fornaris, José, III, 230. Forestry, attention paid by Montalvo, I, 223; efforts to check waste, II, 166. Foyo, Sr., Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, IV, 297. France, first foe of Spanish in Cuba, I, 177; "Family Pact," II, 42; interest in Cuban revolution, III, 126. Franquinay, pirate, at Santiago, I, 310. French refugees, in Cuba, II, 189; expelled, 302. French Revolution, effects of, II, 184. Freyre y Andrade, Fernando, filibuster, IV, 70; negotiations with Pino Guerra, 267. Frye, Alexis, Superintendent of Schools, IV, 156; controversy with General Wood, 162. Fuerza, La: picture, facing I, 146; building begun by De Soto, I, 147; scene of Lady Isabel's tragic vigil, 147, 179; planned and built by Sanchez, 194; work by Menendez, and Ribera, 209; slave labor sought, 211; bad construction, 222; Montalvo's recommendations, 223; Luzan-Arana quarrel, 237; practical completion, 240; decorated by Cagigal, II, 33. Galvano, Antony, historian, quoted, I, 4. Galvez, Bernardo, seeks Cuban aid for Pensacola, II, 146; Governor, 168; death, 170. Galvez, José Maria, head of Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Garaondo, José, I, 317. Garay, Francisco de, Governor of Jamaica, I, 102. Garcia, Calixto, portrait, facing III, 268; President of Cuban Republic, III, 301; joins War of Independence, IV, 69; his notable career, 76 et seq.; joins with Shafter at Santiago, 111; death, 241. Garcia, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 269. Garcia, Esequiel, Secretary of Education, IV, 320. Garcia, Marcos, IV, 44. Garcia, Quintiliano, III, 329. Garvey, José N. P., II, 222. Gastaneta, Antonio, II, 9. Gelder, Francisco, Governor, I, 292. Gener y Rincon, Miguel, Secretary of Justice, IV, 161. Geraldini, Felipe, I, 310. Germany, malicious course of in 1898, IV, 104; Cuba declares war against, 348; property in Cuba seized, 349; aid to Gomez, 350. Gibson. Hugh S., U. S. Chargé d'Affaires, assaulted, IV, 308. Giron. Garcia, Governor, I, 279. Godoy, Captain, arrested at Santiago, and put to death, I, 203. Godoy, Manuel, II, 172. Goicouria, Domingo, sketch and portrait, III, 234. Gold, Columbus's quest for, I, 19; Velasquez's search, 61; the "Spaniards' God," 62; early mining, 81; value of mines, 173. Gomez, José Antonio, II, 18. Gomez, José Miguel, Civil Governor of Santa Clara, IV, 179; aspires to Presidency, 260, 264; turns from Conservative to Liberal party, 265; compact with Zayas, 265; starts revolution, 269; elected President, 290; becomes President, 297; Cabinet, 297; sketch and portrait, 298; acts of his administration, 301; charged with corruption, 304; conflict with Veterans' Association, 304; quarrel with Zayas, 306; suppresses Negro revolt, 307; amnesty bill, 309; National Lottery, 310; "Dragado" deal, 310; railroad deal, 310; estimate of his administration, 311; double treason in 1916, 332; defeated and captured, 337; his orders for devastation, 337; aided by Germany, 350. Gomez, Juan Gualberto, revolutionist, IV, 30; captured and imprisoned, 52; insurgent, 269. Gomez, Maximo, III, 264; succeeds Gen. Agramonte, 275; makes Treaty of Zanjon with Campos, 299; in War of Independence, IV, 15; commander in chief, 16, 43; portrait, facing 44; plans great campaign of war, 53; controversy with Lacret, 84; opposed to American invasion, 109; appeals to Cubans to accept American occupation, 136; impeachment by National Assembly ignored, 137; influence during Government of Intervention, 149; considered by Constitutional Convention, 191; proposed for Presidency, 240; declines, 241. Gonzalez, Aurelia Castillo de, author, sketch and portrait, IV, 192. Gonzales, William E., U. S. Minister to Cuba, IV, 335; watches Gomez's insurrection, 336. Gorgas, William C., work for sanitation, IV, 175. Government of Cuba: organized by Velasquez, I, 69; developed at Santiago, 81; radical changes made, 111; revolution in political status of island, 138; codification of ordinances, 207; Ordinances of 1542, 317; land tenure, II, 12; reforms by Governor Guemez, 17; reorganization after British occupation, 104; great reforms by Torre, 132; budget and tax reforms, 197; authority of Captain-General, III, 11; administrative and judicial functions, 13 et seq.; military and naval command, 16; attempted reforms, 63; concessions after Ten Years' War, 310. Governors of Cuba, Spanish, list of, IV, 123. Govin, Antonio, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95; sketch and portrait, 95. Grammont, buccaneer, I, 311. Gran Caico, I, 4. Grand Turk Island. See GUANAHANI. Grant, U. S., President of United States, III, 200; inclined to recognize Cuban Republic, 202; prevented by his Secretary of State, 203; comments in messages, 205, 292. Great Britain, interest in Cuban revolution, III, 125; protection sought by Spain, 129; declines cooperation with United States, 294; requires return of fugitives, 310. Great Exuma. See FERDINANDINA. Great Inagua, I, 4. Great War, Cuba enters, IV, 348; offers 10,000 troops, 348; German intrigues and propaganda, 349; attitude of Roman Catholic clergy, 349; ships seized, 350; cooperation with Food Commission, 351; military activities, 352; liberal subscriptions to loans, 352; Red Cross work, 352; Señora Menocal's inspiring leadership, 353. Grijalva, Juan de, I, 65; expedition to Mexico, 66; names Mexico New Spain, 97; unjustly recalled and discredited, 88. Guajaba Island, I, 18. Guama, Cimmarron chief, I, 127. Guanabacoa founded, II, 21. Guanahani, Columbus's landing place, I, 2. Guanajes Islands, source of slave trade, I, 83. Guantanamo, Columbus at, I, 19; U. S. Naval Station, IV, 256. Guardia, Cristobal de la, Secretary of Justice, IV, 320. Guazo, Gregorio, de la Vega, Governor, I, 340; stops tobacco war, 341; warnings to Great Britain and France, 342; military activity and efficiency, II, 5. Guemez y Horcasitas, Juan F., Governor, II, 17; reforms, 17; close of administration, 26. Guerra, Amador, revolutionist, IV, 30. Guerra, Benjamin, treasurer of Junta, IV, 3. Guerro, Pino, starts insurrection, IV, 267, 269; commander of Cuban army, 301; attempt to assassinate him, 303. Guevara, Francisco, III, 265. Guiteras, Juan, physician and scientist, sketch and portrait, IV, 321. Guiteras, Pedro J., quoted, I, 269; II, 6; 42; 207. Guzman, Gonzalez de, mission from Velasquez to King Charles I, I, 85; vindicates Velasquez, 108; Governor of Cuba, 110; marries rich sister-in-law, 116; litigation over estate, 117; tremendous indictment by Vadillo, 120; appeals to King and Council for Indies, 120; seeks to oppress natives, 128; second time Governor, 137; makes more trouble, 148; trouble with French privateers, 178. Guzman, Nuñez de, royal treasurer, I, 109; death and fortune, 115. Guzman, Santos, spokesman of Constitutionalists, IV, 59. Hammock, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Hanebanilla, falls of, view, facing III, 110. Harponville, Viscount Gustave, quoted, II, 189. Harvard University, entertains Cuban teachers, IV, 163. Hatuey, Cuban chief, leader against Spaniards, I, 62; death, 63. Havana: founded by Narvaez, I, 69; De Soto's home and capital, 144; rise in importance, 166; Governor's permanent residence, 180; inadequate defences, 183; captured by Sores, 186; protected by Mazariegos, 194; sea wall proposed by Osorio, 202; fortified by Menendez, 209; "Key of the New World," 210; commercial metropolis of West Indies, 216; first hospital founded, 226; San Francisco church, picture, facing 226; building in Carreño's time, 231; custom house, 231; threatened by Drake, 243; preparations for defence, 250; officially called "city," 262; coat of arms, 202; primitive conditions, 264; first theatrical performance, 264; capital of western district, 275; great fire, 277; attacked by Pit Hein, 280; described by John Chilton, 349; first dockyard established, II, 8; attacked by British under Admiral Hosier, 9; University founded, 11; described by John Campbell, 14; British expedition against in 1762, 46; journal of siege, 54; American troops engaged, 66; surrender, 69; terms, 71; British occupation, 78; great changes, 94; description, 94; view from Cabanas, facing, 96; reoccupied by Spanish, 102; hurricane, 115; improvements in streets and buildings, 129; view in Old Havana, facing 130; street cleaning, and market, 169; slaughter house removed, 194; shopping, 242; cafés, 243; Tacon's public works, 365; view of old Presidential Palace, facing III, 14; view of the Prado, facing IV, 16; besieged in War of Independence, 62; view of bay and harbor, facing, 98; old City Wall, picture, 122; view of old and new buildings, facing 134; General Ludlow's administration, 146; Police reorganized, 150; view of University, facing 164; view of the new capitol, facing 204; view of the President's home, facing 268; view of the Academy of Arts and Crafts, facing 288; new railroad terminal, 311. Hay, John, epigram on revolutions, IV, 343 Hayti. See HISPANIOLA. Hein, Pit, Dutch raider, I, 279. Henderson, John, on Lopez's expedition, III, 64. _Herald_, New York, on Cuban revolution, III, 89. Heredia, José Maria. II, 274; exiled, 344; life and works, III, 318; portrait, facing 318. Hernani, Domingo, II, 170. Herrera, historian, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12; on Hatuey, 62; description of West Indies, 345. Herrera, Geronimo Bustamente de, I, 194. Hevea, Aurelio, Secretary of Interior, IV, 320. Hispaniola, Columbus at, I, 19; revolution in, II, 173; 186; effect upon Cuba, 189. Hobson, Richmond P., exploit at Santiago, IV, 110. Holleben, Dr. von, German Ambassador at Washington, intrigues of, IV, 104. Home Rule, proposed by Spain, IV, 6; adopted, 8. Horses introduced into Cuba, I, 63. Hosier, Admiral, attacks Havana, I, 312; II, 9. Hospital, first in Havana, I, 226; Belen founded, 318; San Paula and San Francisco, 195. "House of Fear," Governor's home, I, 156. Humboldt, Alexander von, on slavery, II, 206; on census, 277; 282; on slave trade, 288. Hurricanes, II, 115, 176, 310. Hurtado, Lopez, royal treasurer, I, 116; has Chaves removed, 162. Ibarra, Carlos, defeats Dutch raiders, I, 288. Incas, I, 7. Independence, first conceived, II, 268; 326; first revolts for, 343; sentiment fostered by slave trade, 377; proclaimed by Aguero, III, 72; proclaimed by Cespedes at Yara, 155; proposed by United States to Spain, 217; War of Independence, IV, 1; recognized by Spain, 119. See WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Intellectual life of Cuba, I, 360; lack of productiveness in Sixteenth Century, 362; Cuban backwardness, II, 235; first important progress, 273; great arising and splendid achievements, III, 317. Insurrections. See REVOLUTIONS, and SLAVERY. Intervention, Government of: First, established, IV, 132; organized, 145; Cuban Cabinet, 145; saves island from famine, 146; works of rehabilitation and reform, 148; marriage law, 152; concessions forbidden, 153; census, 154; civil governments of provinces, 179; municipal elections ordered, 180; electoral law 180; final transactions, 246; Second Government of Intervention, 281; C. E. Magoon, Governor, 281; Consulting Board, 284; elections held, 289, 290; commission for revising laws, 294; controversy over church property, 294. Intervention sought by Great Britain and France, III, 128; by United States, IV, 106. Iroquois, I, 7. Irving, Washington, on Columbus's landing place, I, 12. Isabella, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Isabella, Queen, portrait, I, 13. Isidore of Seville, quoted, I, 4. Islas de Arena, I, 11. Isle of Pines, I, 26; recognized as part of Cuba, 224; status under Platt Amendment, IV, 255. Italian settlers in Cuba, I, 169. Ivonnet, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Jamaica, Columbus at, I, 20. Japan. See CIPANGO. Jaruco, founded, II, 131. Jefferson, Thomas, on Cuban annexation, II, 260; III, 132. Jeronimite Order, made guardian of Indians, I, 78; becomes their oppressor, 127. Jesuits, controversy over, II, 86; expulsion of, 111. Jordan, Thomas, joins Cuban revolution, III, 211. Jorrin, José Silverio, portrait, facing III, 308. Jovellar, Joachim, Governor, III, 273; proclaims state of siege, 289; resigns, 290. Juana, Columbus's first name for Cuba, I, 13. Juan Luis Keys, I, 21. Judiciary, reforms in, II, 110; under Navarro, 142; under Unzaga, 165; under Leonard Wood, IV, 177. Junta, Cuban, in United States, III, 91; New York, IV, 2; branches elsewhere, 3; policy in enlisting men, 19. Junta de Fomento, II, 178. Juntas of the Laborers, III, 174. Keppel, Gen. See ALBEMARLE. Key Indians, I, 125; expedition against, 126. "Key of the New World and Bulwark of the Indies," I, 210. Kindelan, Sebastian de, II, 197, 315. Lacoste, Perfecto, Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, IV, 160. Land tenure, II, 12; absentee landlords, 214. Lanuza, Gonzalez, Secretary of Justice, IV, 146; portrait, 146. Lares, Amador de, I, 93. La Salle, in Cuba, I, 73. Las Casas, Bartholomew, Apostle to the Indies, arrival in Cuba, I, 63; portrait, 64; denounces Narvaez, 66; begins campaign against slavery, 75; mission to Spain, 77; before Ximenes, 77. Las Casas, Luis de, Governor, II, 175; portrait, 175; death, 182. Lasso de la Vega, Juan, Bishop, II, 17. Lawton, Gen. Henry W., leads advance against Spanish, IV, 112; Military Governor of Oriente, 139. Lazear, Camp, established, IV, 172. Lazear, Jesse W., hero and martyr in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Ledesma, Francisco Rodriguez, Governor, I, 310. Lee, Fitzhugh, Consul General at Havana, IV, 72; reports on "concentration" policy of Weyler, 86; asks for warship to protect Americans at Havana, 97; _Maine_ sent, 98; commands troops at Havana, 121. Lee, Robert Edward, declines to join Lopez, III, 39. Legrand, Pedro, invades Cuba, I, 302. Leiva, Lopez, Secretary of Government, IV, 297. Lemus, Jose Morales, III, 333. Lendian, Evelio Rodriguez, educator, sketch and portrait, IV, 162. Liberal Party, III, 306; triumphant through revolution, IV, 285; dissensions, 303; conspiracy against election, 329. Liberty Loans, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 352. Lighthouse service, under Mario G. Menocal, IV, 168. Linares, Tomas de, first Rector of University of Havana, II, 11. Lindsay, Forbes, quoted, II, 217. Linschoten, Jan H. van, historian, quoted, I, 351. Liquor, intoxicating, prohibited in 1780, II, 150. Literary periodicals: _El Habanero_, III, 321; _El Plantel_, 324; _Cuban Review_, 325; _Havana Review_, 329. Literature, II, 245; early works, 252; poets, 274; great development of activity, III, 315 et seq. Little Inagua, I, 4. Llorente, Pedro, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188, 190. Lobera, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 182; desperate defence against Sores, 185. Lolonois, pirate, I, 296. Long Island. See FERDINANDINA. Lopez, Narciso, sketch and portrait, III, 23; in Venezuela, 24; joins the Spanish army, 26; marries and settles in Cuba, 30; against the Carlists in Spain, 31; friend of Valdez, 31; offices and honors, 33; plans Cuban revolution, 36; betrayed and fugitive, 37; consults Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, 38; first American expedition, 39; members of the party, 40; activity in Southern States, 43; expedition starts, 45; proclamation to his men, 46; lands at Cardenas, 49; lack of Cuban support, 54; reembarks, 56; lands at Key West, 58; arrested and tried, 60; second expedition organized, 65; betrayed, 67; third expedition, 70; final expedition organized, 91; lands in Cuba, 98; defeated and captured, 112; death, 114; results of his works, 116. Lorenzo, Gen., Governor at Santiago, II, 347. Lorraine, Sir Lambton, III, 280. Los Rios, J. B. A. de, I, 310. Lottery, National, established by José Miguel Gomez, IV, 310. Louisiana, Franco-Spanish contest over, II, 117; Ulloa sent from Cuba to take possession, 118; O'Reilly sent, 123; Uznaga sent, 126. Louverture, Toussaint, II, 186. Luaces, Joaquin Lorenzo, sketch and portrait, III, 330. Ludlow, Gen. William, command and work at Havana, IV, 144. Lugo, Pedro Benitez de, Governor, I, 331. Luna y Sarmiento, Alvaro de, Governor, I, 290. Luz y Caballero, José de la, "Father of the Cuban Revolution," III, 322; great work for patriotic education, 323; Portrait, frontispiece, Vol III. Luzan, Gabriel de, Governor, I, 236; controversy over La Fuerza, 237; feud with Quiñones, 241; unites with Quiñones to resist Drake, 243; energetic action, 246; tenure of office prolonged, 250; end of term, 260. Macaca, province of, I, 20. Maceo, José Antonio, proclaims Provisional Government, IV, 15; leader in War of Independence, 41; commands Division of Oriente, 43; defeats Campos, 46; plans great campaign, 53; invades Pinar del Rio, 61; successful campaign, 73; death, 74; portrait, facing 74. Maceo, José, IV, 41; marches through Cuba, 76. Machado, Eduard, treason of, III, 258. Machete, used in battle, IV, 57. Madison, James, on status of Cuba, III, 132. Madriaga, Juan Ignacio, II, 59. Magoon, Charles E., Provisional Governor, IV, 281; his administration, 283; promotes public works, 286; takes census, 287; election law, 287; retires, 295. Mahy, Nicolas, Governor, II, 315. Mail service established, II, 107; under American occupation, IV, 168. Maine sent to Havana, IV, 98; destruction of, 98; investigation, 100. Maldonado, Diego, I, 146. Mandeville, Sir John, I, 20. Mangon, identified with Mangi, I, 20. Manners and Customs, II, 229 et seq.; balls, 239; shopping, 242; relations of black and white races, 242; cafés, 243; early society, 248. Monosca, Juan Saenz, Bishop, I, 301. Manrique, Diego, Governor, II, 109. Manzaneda y Salines, Severino de, Governor, I, 320. Manzanillo, Declaration of Independence issued, III, 155. Maraveo Ponce de Leon, Gomez de, I, 339. Marco Polo, I, 4, 20. Marcy, William L., policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Mar de la Nuestra Señora, I, 18. Mariguana. See GUANAHANI. Marin, Sabas, succeeds Campos in command, IV, 63. Markham, Sir Clements, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12. Marmol, Donato, III, 173, 184. Marquez, Pedro Menendez, I, 206. Marriage law, reformed under American occupation, IV, 152; controversy over, 153. Marti, José, portrait, frontispiece, Vol IV; leader of War of Independence, IV, 2; his career, 9; in New York, 11; organizes Junta, 11; goes to Cuba, 15; death, 16; his war manifesto, 17; fulfilment of his ideals, 355. Marti, José, secretary of War, portrait, IV, 360. Marti, the pirate, II, 357. Martinez Campos. See Campos. Martinez, Dionisio de la Vega, Governor, II, 8; inscription on La Punta, 14. Martinez, Juan, I, 192. Martyr, Peter, I, 53. Maso, Bartolome, revolutionist, IV, 34; rebukes Spotorno, 35; President of Cuban Republic, 43; Vice President of Council, 48; President of Republic, 90; candidate for Vice President, 242; seeks Presidency, 243. Mason, James M., U. S. Minister to France, III, 141. Masse, E. M., describes slave trade, II, 202; rural life, 216; on Spanish policy toward Cuba, 227; social morals, 230. Matanzas, founded, I, 321; meaning of name, 321. Maura, Sr., proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 5. McCullagh, John B., reorganizes Havana Police, IV, 150. McKinley, William, President of United States, message of 1897 on Cuba, IV, 87; declines European mediation, 103; message for war, 104. Maza, Enrique, assaults Hugh S. Gibson, IV, 308. Mazariegos, Diego de, Governor, I, 191; a scandalous moralist, 193; defences against privateering, 193; takes charge of La Fuerza, 195; controversy with Governor of Florida, 196; replaced by Sandoval, 197. Medina, Fernando de, I, 111. Mendez-Capote, Fernando, Secretary of Sanitation, portrait, IV, 360. Mendieta, Carlos, candidate for Vice President, IV, 328; rebels, 338. Mendive, Rafael Maria de, III, 328. Mendoza, Martin de, I, 204. Menendez, Pedro de Aviles, I, 199; commander of Spanish fleet, 200; clash with Osorio, 201; Governor of Cuba, 205; dealing with increasing enemies, 208; fortifies Havana, 209; recalled to Spain, 213; conflict with Bishop Castillo, 226. Menocal, Aniceto G., portrait, IV, 50. Menocal, Mario G., Assistant Secretary of War, IV, 49; Chief of Police at Havana, 144, 150; in charge of Lighthouse Service, 168; candidate for President, 290; slandered by Liberals, 291; elected President, 312; biography, 312; portrait, facing 312; view of birthplace, 313; Cabinet, 320; opinion of Cuba's needs, 321; first message, 322; conflict with Congress, 323; important reforms, 324; suppresses rebellion, 327; candidate for reelection, 328; vigorous action against Gomez's rebellion, 335; declines American aid, 337; escapes assassination, 339; reelection confirmed, 341; clemency to traitors, 342; message on entering Great War, 346; fulfilment of Marti's ideals, 355; estimate of his administration, 356; achievements for education, 357; health, 357; industry and commerce, 358; finance, 359; "from Velasquez to Menocal," 365. Menocal, Señora, leadership of Cuban womanhood in Red Cross and other work, IV, 354; portrait, facing 352. Mercedes, Maria de las, quoted, II, 174; on slave insurrection, 368. Merchan, Rafael, III, 174; patriotic works, 335. Merlin, Countess de. See MERCEDES. _Merrimac_, sunk at Santiago, IV, 111. Mesa, Hernando de, first Bishop, I, 122. Mestre, José Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 326. Meza, Sr., Secretary of Public Instruction and Arts, IV, 297. Mexico, discovered and explored from Cuba, I, 87; designs upon Cuba, II, 262; Cuban expedition against, 346; warned off by United States, III, 134; fall of Maximilian, 150. Milanes, José Jacinto, sketch, portrait and works, III, 324. Miles, Gen. Nelson A., prepares for invasion of Cuba, IV, 111. Miranda, Francisco, II, 156; with Bolivar, 335. Miscegenation, II, 204. Molina, Francisco, I, 290. Monastic orders, I, 276. Monroe Doctrine, foreshadowed, II, 256; promulgated, 328. Monroe, James, interest in Cuba, II, 257; promulgates Doctrine, 328; portrait, 329. Monserrate Gate, Havana, picture, II, 241. Montalvo, Gabriel, Governor, I, 215; feud with Rojas family, 218; investigated and retired, 219; pleads for naval protection for Cuba, 220. Montalvo, Lorenzo, II, 89. Montalvo, Rafael, Secretary of Public Works, urges resistance to revolutionists, IV, 270. Montanes, Pedro Garcia, I, 292. Montano See VELASQUEZ, J. M. Montes, Garcia, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 254. Montesino, Antonio, I, 78. Montiel, Vasquez de, naval commander, I, 278. Montoro, Rafael, Representative in Cortes, III, 308; spokesman of Autonomists, IV, 59; in Autonomist Cabinet, 95; candidate for Vice President, 290; attacked by Liberals, 291; biography, 317; portrait, facing 320. Morales case, IV, 92. Morales. Pedro de, commands at Santiago, I, 299. Morals, strangely mixed with piety and vice, II, 229. Morell, Pedro Augustino, Bishop, II, 53; controversy with Albemarle, 83; exiled, 87; death, 113. Moreno, Andres, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 90. Moret law, abolishing slavery, III, 243. Morgan, Henry, plans raid on Havana, I, 297; later career, 303. Morro Castle, Havana, picture, facing I, 180; site of battery, 180; tower built by Mazariegos, 196; fortified against Drake, 249; planned by Antonelli, 261; besieged by British, II, 55. Morro Castle, Santiago, built, I, 289; picture, facing 298. Mucaras, I, 11. Muenster, geographer, I, 6. Mugeres Islands, I, 84. Munive, Andres de, I, 317. Murgina y Mena, A. M., I, 317. Music, early concerts at Havana, II, 239. Nabia, Juan Alfonso de, I, 207. Nancy Globe, I. 6. Napoleon's designs upon Cuba, II, 203. Naranjo, probable landing place of Columbus, I, 12. Narvaez, Panfilo de, portrait, I, 63; arrival in Cuba, 63; campaign against natives, 65; explores the island, 67; errand to Spain, 77; sent to Mexico to oppose Cortez, 98; secures appointment of Councillors for life, 111. Naval stations, U. S., in Cuba, IV, 255. Navarrete, quoted, I, 3, 12. Navarro, Diego Jose, Governor, II, 141, 150. Navy, Spanish, in Cuban waters, III, 182, 225. Negroes, imported as slaves, I, 170; treatment of, 171; slaves and free, increasing numbers of, 229. See SLAVERY. New Orleans, anti-Spanish outbreak, III, 126. New Spain. See MEXICO. Newspapers: _Gazeta_, 1780, II, 157; _Papel Periodico_, 179; 246; publications in Paris, Madrid and New York, 354; El Faro Industrial, III, 18; Diario de la Marina, 18; La Verdad, 18; La Vos de Cuba, 260; La Vos del Siglo, 232; La Revolucion, 333; El Siglo, 334; El Laborante, 335. Norsemen, American colonists, I, 7. Nougaret, Jean Baptiste, quoted, II, 26. Nuñez, Emilio, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; in war, 57; Civil Governor of Havana, 179; head of Veterans' Association, 305; Secretary of Agriculture, 320; candidate for Vice President, 328; election confirmed, 341. Nuñez, Enrique, Secretary of Health and Charities, IV, 320. Ocampo, Sebastian de, circumnavigates Cuba, I, 54. O'Donnell, George Leopold, Governor, II, 365; his wife's sordid intrigues, 365. Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia, hostile to Spain, II, 24, 30. O'Hara, Theodore, with Lopez, III, 46. Ojeda, Alonzo de, I, 54; introduces Christianity to Cuba, 55. Olid, Christopher de, sent to Mexico, I, 88. Olney, Richard. U. S. Secretary of State, attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 71. Oquendo, Antonio de, I, 281. Orejon y Gaston, Francisco Davila de, Governor, I, 301, 310. O'Reilly, Alexandre, sent to occupy Louisiana, II, 123; ruthless rule, 125. Orellano, Diego de, I, 86. Ornofay, province of, I, 20. Ortiz, Bartholomew, alcalde mayor, I, 146; retires, 151. Osorio, Garcia de Sandoval, Governor, I, 197; conflict with Menendez, 199, 201; retired, 205; tried, 206. Osorio, Sancho Pardo, I, 207. Ostend Manifesto, III, 142. Ovando, Alfonso de Caceres, I, 214; revises law system, 233. Ovando, Nicolas de, I, 54. Palma, Tomas Estrada, head of Cuban Junta in New York, IV, 3; Provisional President of Cuban Republic, 15; Delegate at Large, 43; rejects anything short of independence, 71; candidate for Presidency, 241; his career, 241; elected President, 245; arrival in Cuba, 247; portrait, facing 248; receives transfer of government from General Wood, 248; Cabinet, 254; first message, 254; prosperous administration, 259; non-partisan at first, 264; forced toward Conservative party, 264; reelected, 266; refuses to believe insurrection impending, 266; refuses to submit to blackmail, 268; betrayed by Congress, 269; acts too late, 270; seeks American aid, 271; interview with W. H. Taft, 276; resigns Presidency, 280; estimate of character and work, 282; death, 284. Palma y Romay, Ramon, III, 327. Parra, Antonio, scientist, II, 252. Parra, Maso, revolutionist, IV, 30. Parties, political, in Cuba, IV, 59; origin and characteristics of Conservative and Liberal, 181, 261. Pasalodos, Damaso, Secretary to President, IV, 297 Pasamonte, Miguel, intrigues against Columbus, I, 58. Paz, Doña de, marries Juan de Avila, I, 154. Paz, Pedro de, I, 109. Penalosa, Diego de, Governor, II, 31. Penalver. See PENALOSA. Penalver, Luis, Bishop of New Orleans, II, 179. "Peninsulars," III, 152. Pensacola, settlement of, I, 328; seized by French, 342; recovered by Spanish, II, 7; defended by Galvez, 146. Pereda, Gaspar Luis, Governor, I, 276. Perez, Diego, repels privateers, I, 179. Perez, Perico, revolutionist, IV, 15, 30, 78. Perez de Zambrana, Luisa, sketch and portrait, III, 328. Personal liberty restricted, III, 8. Peru, good wishes for Cuban revolution, III, 223. Philip II, King, appreciation of Cuba, I, 260. Pieltain, Candido, Governor, III, 275. Pierce, Franklin, President of United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Pina, Severo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 48. Pinar del Rio, city founded, II, 131; Maceo invades province, IV, 61; war in, 73. Pineyro, Enrique, III, 333; sketch and portrait, 334. Pinto, Ramon, sketch and portrait, III, 62. "Pirates of America," I, 296. Pizarro, Francisco de, I, 54, 91. Platt, Orville H., Senator, on relations of United States and Cuba, IV, 198; Amendment to Cuban Constitution, 199; Amendment adopted, 203; text of Amendment, 238. Pococke, Sir George, expedition against Havana, II, 46. Poey, Felipe, sketch and portrait, III, 315. Point Lucrecia, I, 18. Polavieja, Gen., Governor, III, 314. Police, reorganized, II, 312; under American occupation, IV, 150; police courts established, 171. Polk, James K., President of the United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 135. Polo y Bernabe, Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 98. Ponce de Leon, in Cuba, I, 73; death, 139. Ponce de Leon, of New York, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13. Pope, efforts to maintain peace, between United States and Spain, IV, 104. Porro, Cornelio, treason of, III, 257. Port Banes, I, 18. Port Nipe, I, 18. Port Nuevitas, I, 3. Portuguese settlers, I, 168. Portuondo, Rafael, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, IV, 48; filibuster, 70. Prado y Portocasso, Juan, Governor, II, 49; neglect of duty, 52; sentenced to degradation, 108. Praga, Francisco de, I, 282. Presidency, first candidates for, IV, 240; Tomas Estrada Palma elected, 245; José Miguel Gomez aspires to, 260; candidates in 1906, 265; Palma's resignation, 280; Jose Miguel Gomez elected, 290; fourth campaign, 312; Mario G. Menocal elected, 312; fifth campaign, 328; General Menocal reelected, 341. Prim, Gen., Spanish revolutionist, III, 145. Printing, first press in Cuba, II, 245. Privateers, French ravage Cuba, I, 177; Havana and Santiago attacked, 178; Havana looted, 179; Jacques Sores, 183; Havana captured, 186; Santiago looted, 193; French raids, 220, et seq. Proctor, Redfield, Senator, investigates and reports on condition of Cuba in War of Independence, IV, 87. Procurators, appointment of, I, 112. Protectorate, tripartite, refused by United States, II, 261; III, 130, 133. Provincial governments organized, IV, 179, confusion in, 292. Public Works, promoted by General Wood, IV, 166; by Magoon, 286. Puerto Grande. See GUANTANAMO. Puerto Principe, I, 18, 167. Punta, La, first fortification, I, 203; strengthened against Drake, 249; fortress planned by Antonelli, 261; picture, IV, 33. Punta Lucrecia, I, 3. Punta Serafina, I, 22. Queen's Gardens, I, 20. Quero, Geronimo, I, 277. Quesada, Gonzalo de, Secretary of Cuban Junta, IV, 3; Minister to United States, 275. Quesada, Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 167; proclamation, 169; death, 262. Quezo, Juan de, I, 113. Quilez, J. M., Civil Governor of Pinar del Rio, IV, 179. Quiñones, Diego Hernandez de, commander of fortifications at Havana, I, 240; feud with Luzan, 241; unites with Luzan to resist Drake, 243. Quiñones, Doña Leonora de, I, 117. Rabi, Jesus, revolutionist, IV, 34, 42. Railroads, first in Cuba, II, 343. Raja, Vicente, Governor, I, 337. Ramirez, Alejandro, sketch and portrait, II, 311. Ramirez, Miguel, Bishop, partisan of Guzman, I, 120; political activities and greed, 124. Ramos, Gregorio, I, 274. Ranzel, Diego, I, 295. Recio, R. Lopez, Civil Governor of Camaguey, IV, 180. Recio, Serafin, III, 86. Reciprocity, secured by Roosevelt for Cuba, IV, 256. "Reconcentrados," mortality among, IV, 86. Red Cross, Cuban activities, IV, 353. Redroban, Pedro de, I, 201. Reed, Walter, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Reformists, Spanish, support Blanco's Autonomist policy, IV, 97. Reggio, Andreas, II, 32. Reno, George, in War of Independence, IV, 12; running blockade, 21; portrait, 21; services in Great War, 351. Renteria, Pedro de, partner of Las Casas, I, 75; opposes slavery, 76. Repartimiento, I, 70. Republic of Cuba: proclaimed and organized, III, 157; first representative Assembly, 161; Constitution of 1868, 164; first House of Representatives, 176; Judiciary, 177; legislation, 177; army, 178; fails to secure recognition, 203; Government reorganized, 275; after Treaty of Zanjon, 301; reorganized in War of Independence, IV, 15; Maso chosen President, 43; Conventions of Yara and Najasa, 47; Constitution adopted, 47; Government reorganized, Cisneros President, 48; capital at Las Tunas, 56; removes to Cubitas, 72; exercises functions of government, 72; reorganized in 1897, 90; after Spanish evacuation of island, 134; disbanded, 135; Constitutional Convention called, 185; Constitution completed, 192; relations with United States, 195; Platt Amendment, 203; enters Great War, 346. Revolutions: Rise of spirit, II, 268; in South America, 333; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; attempts to revolt, 344; "Black Eagle," 346; plans of Lopez, III, 36; Lopez's first invasion, 49; Aguero's insurrection, 72; comments of New York _Herald_, 89; Lopez's last expedition, 91; results of his work, 116; European interest, 125; beginning of Ten Years' War. 155; end of Ten Years' War, 299; insurrection renewed, 308, 318; War of Independence, IV, 1; Sartorius Brothers, 4; end of War of Independence, 116; revolt against President Palma, 266; ultimatum, 278; government overthrown, 280; Negro insurrection, 307; conspiracy against President Menocal, 327; great treason of José Miguel Gomez, 332; Gomez captured, 337; warnings from United States Government, 338; revolutions denounced by United States, 343. Revolutionary party, Cuban, IV, 1, 11. Rey, Juan F. G., III, 40. Riano y Gamboa, Francisco, Governor, I, 287. Ribera, Diego de, I, 206; work on La Fuerza, 209. Ricafort, Mariano, Governor, II, 347. Ricla, Conde de, Governor, II, 102; retires, 109. Rio de la Luna, I, 16. Rio de Mares, I, 16. Riva-Martiz, I, 279. Rivera, Juan Ruiz, filibuster, IV, 70; succeeds Maceo, 79. Rivera, Ruiz, Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, IV, 160. Roa, feud with Villalobos, I, 323. Rodas, Caballero de, Governor, III, 213; emancipation decree, 242. Rodney, Sir George, expedition to West Indies, II, 153. Rodriguez, Alejandro, suppresses revolt, IV, 266. Rodriguez, Laureano, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Rojas, Alfonso de, I, 181. Rojas, Gomez de, banished, I, 193; Governor of La Fuerza, 217; rebuilds Santiago, 258. Rojas, Hernando de, expedition to Florida, I, 196. Rojas, Juan Bautista de, royal treasurer, I, 218. Rojas, Juan de, aid to Lady Isabel de Soto, I, 145; commander at Havana, 183. Rojas, Manuel de, Governor, I, 105; adopts policy of "Cuba for the Cubans," 106; second Governorship, 121; dealings with Indians, 126; noble endeavors frustrated, 130; resigns, 135; the King's unique tribute to him, 135. Roldan, Francisco Dominguez, Secretary of Public Instruction, sketch and portrait, IV, 357. Roldan, José Gonzalo, III, 328. Roloff, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 45; Secretary of War, 48; filibuster, 70. Romano Key, I, 18. Romay, Tomas, introduces vaccination, II, 192; portrait, facing 192. Roncali, Federico, Governor, II, 366; on Spanish interests in Cuba, 381. Roosevelt, Theodore, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; portrait, 113; President of United States, on relations with Cuba, 245; estimate of General Wood's work in Cuba, 251; fight with Congress for Cuban reciprocity, 256; seeks to aid President Palma against revolutionists, 275; letter to Quesada, 275. Root, Elihu, Secretary of War, on Cuban Constitution, IV, 194; on Cuban relations with United States, 197; explains Platt Amendment, 201. Rowan, A. S., messenger to Oriente, IV. 107. Rubalcava, Manuel Justo, II, 274. Rubens, Horatio, Counsel of Cuban Junta, IV, 3. Rubios, Palacios, I, 78. Ruiz, Joaquin, spy, IV, 91; death, 92. See ARANGUREN. Ruiz, Juan Fernandez, filibuster, IV, 70. Rum Cay. See CONCEPTION. Rural Guards, organized by General Wood, IV, 144; efficiency of, 301. Ruysch, geographer, I, 6. Saavedra, Juan Esquiro, I, 278. Sabinal Key, I, 18. Saco, José Antonio, pioneer of Independence, II, 378; portrait, facing 378; literary and patriotic work, III, 325, 327. Sagasta, Praxedes, Spanish Premier, proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 6; resigns, 36. Saint Augustine, expedition against, I, 332. Saint Mery, M. de, search for tomb of Columbus, I, 34. Salamanca, Juan de, Governor, I, 295; promotes industries, 300. Salamanca y Negrete, Manuel, Governor, III, 314. Salaries, some early, I, 263. Salas, Indalacio, IV, 21. Salazar. See SOMERUELOS. Salcedo, Bishop, controversy with Governor Tejada, I, 262. Sama Point, I, 4. Samana. See GUANAHANI. Sampson, William T., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; at Santiago, 114; portrait, 115. Sanchez, Bartolome, makes plans for La Fuerza, I, 194; begins building, 195; feud with Mazariegos, 197. Sanchez, Bernabe, II, 345. Sancti Spiritus, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168. Sandoval, Garcia Osorio, Governor, I, 197. See OSARIO. Sanitation, undertaken by Guemez, II, 18; vaccination introduced by Dr. Romay. 192; bad conditions, III, 313; General Wood at Santiago, IV, 142; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Sanguilly, Julio, falls in leading revolution, IV, 29, 55. Sanguilly, Manuel, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 190. San Lazaro watchtower, picture, I, 155; fortified against Drake, 248. San Salvador. See GUANAHANI. Santa Clara, Conde de, Governor, II, 194, 300. Santa Crux del Sur, I, 20. Santa Cruz, Francisco, I, 111. Santiago de Cuba, Columbus at, I, 19; founded by Velasquez, 68; second capital of island, 69; seat of gold refining, 80; site of cathedral, 123; condition in Angulo's time, 166; looted by privateers, 193; fortified by Menendez, 203; raided and destroyed by French, 256; rebuilt by Gomez de Rojas, 258; capital of Eastern District, 275; Morro Castle built, 289; captured by British, 299; attacked by Franquinay, 310; attacked by Admiral Vernon, II, 29; literary activities, 169; great improvements made, 180; battles near in War of Independence, IV, 112; naval battle, 114; General Wood's administration, 135; great work for sanitation, 142. Santiago, battle of, IV, 114. Santiago, sunset scene, facing III, 280. Santillan, Diego, Governor, I, 205. Santo Domingo See HISPANIOLA. Sanudo, Luis, Governor, I, 336. Sarmiento. Diego de, Bishop, makes trouble, I, 149, 152. Saunders, Romulus M., sounds Spain on purchase of Cuba, III, 135. Sartorius, Manuel and Ricardo, revolutionists, IV, 4. Savine, Albert, on British designs on Cuba, II, 40. Schley, Winfield S., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; portrait, 110; at Santiago, 114. Schoener's globe, I, 5. Schools, backward condition of, II, 174, 244, 312. See EDUCATION. Shafter, W. R., General, leads American army into Cuba, IV, 111. Shipbuilding at Havana, II, 8, 33, 113, 300. Sickles, Daniel E., Minister to Spain, offers mediation, III, 217. Silva, Manuel, Secretary of Interior, IV, 90. Slave Insurrection, II, 13; III, 367, et seq. Slavery, begun in Repartimiento system, I, 70; not sanctioned by King, 82; slave trading begun, 83; growth and regulation, 170; oppressive policy of Spain, 266; the "Assiento," II, 2; great growth of trade, 22; gross abuses, 202; described by Masse, 202; census of slaves, 204; rise of emancipation movement, 206; rights of slaves defined by King, 210; African trade forbidden, 285; Negro census, 286; early records of trade, 288; Humboldt on, 288; statistics of trade, 289 et seq.; domestic relations of slaves, 292; dangers of system denounced, 320; official complicity in illegal trade, 366; slave insurrection, 367; inhuman suppression by government, 374 et seq.; emancipation by revolution of 1868, 159; United States urges Spain to abolish slavery, 242; Rodas's decrees, 242; Moret law, 243. Smith, Caleb. publishes book on West Indies, II, 37. Smuggling, II, 133. "Sociedad de Amigos," II, 169. "Sociedad Patriotica," II, 166. "Sociedad Patriotica y Economica," II, 178. Society of Progress, II, 78. Solano, José de, naval commander, II, 147. "Soles de Bolivar," II, 341; attempts to suppress, 343. Solorzano, Juan del Hoya, I, 337; II, 10. Someruelos, Marquis of, Governor, II, 196, 301. Sores, Jacques, French raider, II, 183; attacks Havana, 184; captures city, 186. Soto, Antonio de, I, 292. Soto, Diego de, I, 109, 217. Soto, Hernando de, Governor and Adelantado, I, 140; portrait, 140; arrival in Cuba, 141; tour of island, 142; makes Havana his home, 144; chiefly interested in Florida, 144; sails for Florida, 145; his fate in Mississippi, 147; trouble with Indians, 148. Soto, Lady Isabel de, I, 141; her vigil at La Fuerza, 147; death, 149. Soto, Luis de, I, 141. Soulé, Pierre, Minister to Spain, III, 137; Indiscretions, 138; Ostend Manifesto, 142. South Sea Company, II, 21, 201. Spain: Fiscal policy toward Cuba, I, 175; wars with France, 177; discriminations against Cuba, 266, 267; protests against South Sea Company, II, 22; course in American Revolution, 143; war with Great Britain, 151; attitude toward America, 159; peace with Great Britain, 162; restrictive laws, 224; policy under Godoy, 265; decline of power, 273; seeks to pawn Cuba to Great Britain for loan, 330; protests to United States against Lopez's expedition, III, 59; seeks British protection, 129; refuses to sell Cuba, 135; revolution against Bourbon dynasty, 145 et seq.; rejects suggestion of American mediation in Cuba, 219; seeks American mediation, 293; strives to placate Cuba, IV, 5; crisis over Cuban affairs, 35; attitude toward War of Independence, 40; considers Autonomy, 71; Cabinet crisis of 1897, 88; proposes joint investigation of Maine disaster, 100; at war with United States, 106; makes Treaty of Paris, relinquishing Cuba, 118. Spanish-American War: causes of, IV, 105; declared, 106; blockade of Cuban coast, 110; landing of American army in Cuba, 111; fighting near Santiago, 112; fort at El Caney, picture, 112; San Juan Hill, battle, 113; San Juan Hill, picture of monument, 114; naval battle of Santiago, 115; peace negotiations, 116; "Peace Tree," picture, 116; treaty of peace, 118. Spanish literature in XVI century, I, 360. Spotorno, Juan Bautista, seeks peace, rebuked by Maso, IV, 35. Steinhart, Frank, American consul, advises President Palma to ask for American aid, IV, 271; correspondence with State Department, 272. Stock raising, early attention to, I, 173, 224; development of, 220. Stokes, W. E. D., aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Students, murder of by Volunteers, III, 260. Suarez y Romero, Anselmo, III, 326. Sugar, Industry begun under Velasquez, I, 175, 224; growth of industry, 265; primitive methods, II, 222; growth, III, 3; great development under President Menocal, IV, 358. "Suma de Geografia," of Enciso, I, 54. Sumana, Diego de, I, 111. Tacon, Miguel, Governor, II, 347; despotic fury, 348; conflict with Lorenzo, 349; public works, 355; fish market, 357; melodramatic administration of justice, 359. Taft, William H., Secretary of War of United States, intervenes in revolution, IV, 272; arrives at Havana, 275; negotiates with President Palma and the revolutionists, 276; portrait, 276; conveys ultimatum of revolutionists to President Palma, 279; accepts President Palma's resignation, 280; pardons revolutionists, 280; unfortunate policy, 283. Tainan, Antillan stock, I, 8. Tamayo, Diego, Secretary of State, IV, 159; Secretary of Government, 254. Tamayo, Rodrigo de, I, 126. Tariff, after British occupation, II, 106; reduction, 141; oppressive duties. III, 5; under American occupation, IV, 183. Taxation, revolt against, II, 197; "reforms," 342; oppressive burdens, III, 6; increase in Ten Years' War, 207; evasion of, 312; under American intervention, IV, 151. Taylor, Hannis, American Minister at Madrid, IV, 33. Tejada, Juan de, Governor, I, 261; great works for Cuba, 262; resigns, 263. Teneza, Dr. Francisco, Protomedico, I, 336. Ten Years' War, III, 155 et seq.; first battles, 184; aid from United States, 211; offers of American mediation, 217; rejected, 219; campaigns of destruction, 222; losses reported, 290; end in Treaty of Zanjon, 299; losses, 304. Terry, Emilio, Secretary of Agriculture, IV, 254. Theatres, first performance in Cuba, I, 264; first theatre built, II, 130, 236. Thrasher, J. S., on census, II, 283. Tines y Fuertes, Juan Antonio, Governor, II, 31. Tobacco, early use, I, 9; culture promoted, 300; monopoly, 334; "Tobacco War," 338; effects of monopoly, II, 221. Tobar, Nuñez, I, 141, 143. Tolon, Miguel de, III, 330. Toltecs, I, 7. Tomayo, Esteban, revolutionist, IV, 34. Torquemada, Garcia de, I, 239; investigates Luzan, 241. Torre, Marquis de la, Governor, II, 127; work for Havana, 129; death, 133. Torres Ayala, Laureano de, Governor, I, 334; reappointed, 337. Torres, Gaspar de, Governor, I, 234; conflict with Rojas family, 235; absconds, 235. Torres, Rodrigo de, naval commander, II, 34. Torriente, Cosimo de la, Secretary of Government, IV, 320. Toscanelli, I, 4. Treaty of Paris, IV, 118. Tres Palacios, Felipe Jose de, Bishop, II, 174. Tribune, New York, describes revolutionary leaders, III, 173. Trinidad, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; great fire, II, 177. Trocha, begun by Campos, IV, 44; Weyler's, 73. Troncoso, Bernardo, Governor, II, 168. Turnbull, David, British consul, II, 364; complicity in slave insurrection, 372. Ubite, Juan de, Bishop, I, 123. Ulloa, Antonio de, sent to take possession of Louisiana, II, 118; arbitrary conduct, 120. Union Constitutionalists, III, 306. United States, early relations with Cuba, II, 254; first suggestion of annexation, 257; John Quincy Adams's policy, 258; Jefferson's policy, 260; Clay's policy, 261; representations to Colombia and Mexico, 262; Buchanan's policy, 263; Monroe Doctrine, 328; consuls not admitted to Cuba, 330; Van Buren's policy, 331; growth of commerce with Cuba, III, 22; President Taylor's proclamation against filibustering, 41; course toward Lopez, 60; attitude toward Cuban revolutionists, 123; division of sentiment between North and South, 124; policy of Edward Everett, 130; overtures for purchase of Cuba, 135; end of Civil War, 151; new policy toward Cuba, 151; recognition denied to revolution, 172; aid and sympathy given secretly, 195; Cuban appeals for recognition, 200; recognition denied, 203; protests against Rodas's decrees, 216; offers of mediation, 217; rejected by Spain, 219; increasing interest and sympathy with revolutionists, 273; warning to Spanish Government, 291; effect of reciprocity upon Cuba, 313; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 27, 70; Congress favors recognition, 70; tender of good offices, 71; President Cleveland's message of 1896, 79; appropriation for relief of victims of "concentration" policy, 86; President McKinley's message of 1897, 87; sensation at destruction of _Maine_, 99; declaration of war against Spain, 106; Treaty of Paris, 118; establishment of first Government of Intervention, 132; relations with Republic of Cuba, 195; protectorate to be retained, 196; Platt Amendment, 199; mischief-making intrigues, 200; naval stations in Cuba, 255; reciprocity, 256; second Intervention, 281; warning to José Miguel Gomez, 305; asks settlement of claims, 308; Chargé d'Affaires assaulted, 308; supervision of Cuban legislation, 326; warning to revolutionists, 339; attitude toward Gomez revolution, 343. University of Havana, founded, II, 11. Unzaga, Luis de, Governor, II, 157. Urrutia, historian, quoted, I, 300. Urrutia, Sancho de, I, 111. Utrecht, Treaty of, I, 326; begins new era, II, 1. Uznaga, Luis de, sent to rule Louisiana, II, 126; reforms, 165. Vaca, Cabeza de, I, 140. Vadillo, Juan, declines to investigate Guzman, I, 118; temporary Governor, 119; tremendous indictment of Guzman, 120; retires after good work, 121; clash with Bishop Ramirez, 124. Valdes, historian, quoted, II, 175. Valdes, Gabriel de la Conception, III, 325. Valdes, Jeronimo, Bishop, I, 335. Valdes, Pedro de, Governor, I, 202, 272; retires, 276. Valdes, Geronimo, Governor, II, 364. Valdueza, Marquis de, I, 281. Valiente, José Pablo, II, 170, 180. Valiente, Juan Bautista, Governor of Santiago, II, 180. Vallizo, Diego, I, 277. Valmaseda, Count, Governor, proclamation against revolution, III, 171, 270; recalled for barbarities, 273. Van Buren, Martin, on United States and Cuba, II, 331. Vandeval, Nicolas C., I, 331, 333. Varela, Felix, sketch and portrait, III, 320; works, 321. Varnhagen, F. A. de, quoted, I, 2. Varona, Bernabe de, sketch and portrait, III, 178. Varona, José Enrique, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 159; Vice President, 312; biography, 316; portrait, facing 316. Varona, Pepe Jerez, chief of secret service, IV, 268. Vasquez, Juan, I, 330. Vedado, view in, IV, 176. Vega, Pedro Guerra de la, I, 243; asks fugitives to aid in defence against Drake, 248. Velasco, Francisco de Aguero, II, 345. Velasco, Luis Vicente, defender of Morro against British, II, 58; signal valor, 61; death, 67. Velasquez, Antonio, errand to Spain, I, 77 Velasquez, Bernardino, I, 115. Velasquez, Diego, first Governor of Cuba, I, 59; portrait, 59; colonizes Cuba, 60; hostilities with natives, 61, explores the island, 67; marriage and bereavement, 68; founds various towns, 68; begins Cuban commerce, 68; organizes government, 69; favored by King Ferdinand, 73; appointed Adelantado, 74; seeks to rule Yucatan and Mexico, 85; recalls Grijalva, 88; quarrels with Cortez, 91; sends Cortez to explore Mexico, 92, 94; seeks to intercept and recall Cortez, 97; sends Narvaez to Mexico, 98; removed from office by Diego Columbus, 100; restored by King, 102; death and epitaph, 103; posthumous arraignment by Altamarino, 107; convicted and condemned, 108. Velasquez, Juan Montano, Governor, I, 293. Velez Garcia, Secretary of State, IV, 297. Velez y Herrera, Ramon, III, 324. Venegas, Francisco, Governor, I, 278. Vernon, Edward, Admiral, expedition to Darien, II 27; Invasion of Cuba, 29. Viamonte, Bitrian, Governor, I, 286. Viana y Hinojosa, Diego de, Governor, I, 317. Victory loan, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 353. Villa Clara, founded, I, 321. Villafana, attempts to assassinate Cortez, I, 99. Villafana, Angelo de, Governor of Florida, controversy with Mazariegos, I, 196. Villalba y Toledo, Diego de, Governor, I, 290. Villalobos, Governor, feud with Roa, I, 323. Villalon, José Ramon, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13; Secretary of Public Works, 160, 330. Villalon Park, scene in, IV, 247. Villanueva, Count de, II, 342. Villapando, Bernardino de, Bishop, I, 225. Villarin, Pedro Alvarez de, Governor, I, 333. Villaverde, Cirillo, III, 327. Villaverde, Juan de, Governor of Santiago, I, 276. Villegas, Diaz de, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 297; resigns, 302. Villuendas, Enrique, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188; secretary, 189. Virginius, capture of, III, 277; butchery of officers and crew, 278 et seq.; British intervention, 280; list of passengers, 281; diplomatic negotiations over, 283. Vives, Francisco, Governor, II, 317; despotism, 317; expedition against Mexico, 346. Viyuri, Luis, II, 197. Volunteers, organized, III, 152; murder Arango, 188; have Dulce recalled, 213; cause murder of Zenea, 252; increased activities, 260; murder of students, 261. War of Independence, IV, i, 8; circumstances of beginning, 9; finances, 14; Republic of Cuba proclaimed, 15; attitude of Cuban people, 22; actual outbreak, 29; martial law proclaimed, 30; Spanish forces in Cuba, 31; arrival and policy of Martinez Campos, 38; Gomez and Maceo begin great campaign, 53; Spanish defeated, and reenforced, 55; campaign of devastation, 60; entire island involved, 61; fall of Campos, 63; Weyler in command, 66; destruction by both sides, 68; losses, 90; entry of United States, 107; attitude of Cubans toward American intervention, 108; end of war, 116. Watling's Island. See GUANAHANI. Wax, development of Industry, II, 132. Webster, Daniel, negotiations with Spain, III, 126. Weyler y Nicolau, Valeriano, Governor, IV, 65; portrait, 66; harsh decree, 66; conquers Pinar del Rio. 83; "concentration" policy, 85; recalled, 88. Wheeler, Gen. Joseph, at Santiago, IV, 113, 115. White, Col. G. W., with Lopez, III, 40. Whitney, Henry, messenger to Gomez, IV, 107. Williams, Ramon O., United States consul at Havana, IV, 32; acts in behalf of Americans in Cuba, 72; opposes sending _Maine_ to Havana, 100. Wittemeyer, Major, reports on Gomez revolution to Washington government, IV, 336; offers President Menocal aid of United States, 337. Wood, General Leonard, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; Military Governor of Santiago, 135; his previous career, 140; unique responsibility and power, 141; dealing with pestilence, 142; organizes Rural Guards, 144; portrait, facing 158; Military Governor of Cuba, 158; well received by Cubans, 158; estimate of _La Lucha_, 158; his Cabinet, 159; comments on his appointments, 160; reorganization of school system, 161; promotes public works, 166; Dady contract dispute, 171; applies Finlay's yellow fever theory with great success, 171; reform of jurisprudence, 177; organizes Provincial governments, 179; holds municipal elections, 180; promulgates election law, 181; calls Constitutional Convention, 185; calls for general election, 240; his comments on election, 245; announces end of American occupation, 246; surrenders government of Cuba to Cubans, 249; President Roosevelt's estimate of his work, 251; view of one of his mountain roads, facing 358. Woodford, Stewart L., United States Minister to Spain, IV, 103; presents ultimatum and departs, 106. Xagua, Gulf of, I, 21. Ximenes, Cardinal and Regent, gives Las Casas hearing on Cuba, I, 77. Yanez, Adolfo Saenz, Secretary of Agriculture and Public Works, IV, 146. Yellow Fever, first invasion, II, 51; Dr. Finlay's theory applied by General Wood, IV, 171; disease eliminated from island, 176. Yero, Eduardo, Secretary of Public Instruction, IV, 254. Ynestrosa, Juan de, I, 207. Yniguez, Bernardino, I, 111. Yucatan, islands source of slave trade, I, 83; explored by Cordova, 84. Yznaga, Jose Sanchez, III, 37. Zaldo, Carlos, Secretary of State, IV, 254. Zambrana, Ramon, III, 328. Zanjon, Treaty of, III, 299. Zapata, Peninsula of, visited by Columbus, I, 22. Zarraga, Julian, filibuster, IV, 70. Zayas, Alfredo, secretary of Constitutional Convention, IV, 189; compact with José Miguel Gomez, 265; spokesman of revolutionists against President Palma, 277; elected Vice President, 290; becomes Vice President, 297; sketch and portrait, 300; quarrel with Gomez, 306; candidate for President, 328; hints at revolution, 330. Zayas, Francisco, Lieutenant Governor, I, 205; resigns, 206. Zayas, Francisco, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Zayas, Juan B., killed in battle, IV, 78. Zayas, Lincoln de, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Superintendent of Schools, 162. Zenea, Juan Clemente, sketch and portrait, III, 252; murdered, 253; his works, 332. Zequiera y Arango, Manuel, II, 274. Zipangu. See CIPANOO. Zuazo, Alfonso de, appointed second Governor of Cuba, I, 100; dismissed by King, 102. 
4957	----	This eBook was edited by Charles Aldarondo (www.aldarondo.net). THE HEART'S SECRET: OR, THE FORTUNES OF A SOLDIER. BY LIEUTENANT MURRAY. BOSTON: 1852. PUBLISHER'S NOTE.--The following Novellette was originally published in the PICTORIAL DRAWING-ROOM COMPANION, and is but a specimen of the many deeply entertaining Tales, and gems of literary merit, which grace the columns of that elegant and highly popular journal. The COMPANION embodies a corps of contributors of rare literary excellence, and is regarded as the ne plus ultra, by its scores of thousands of readers. PREFACE. THE locale of the following story is that gem of the American Archipelago; the Island of Cuba, whose lone star, now merged in the sea, is destined yet to sparkle in liberty's hemisphere, and radiate the light of republicanism. Poetry cannot outdo the fairy-like loveliness of this tropical clime, and only those who have partaken of the aromatic sweetness of its fields and shores can fully realize the delight that may be shared in these low latitudes. A brief residence upon the island afforded the author the subject-matter for the following pages, and he has been assiduous in his efforts to adhere strictly to geographical facts and the truthful belongings of the island. Trusting that this may prove equally popular with the author's other numerous tales and novelettes, he has the pleasure of signing himself, Very cordially, THE PUBLIC's HUMBLE SERVANT. DEDICATED TO THE READERS OF GLEASON'S PICTORIAL DRAWING-ROOM COMPANION, FOR WHICH JOURNAL THESE PAGES WERE ORIGINALLY WRITTEN, BY THEIR VERY HUMBLE SERVANT, LIEUTENANT MURRAY. THE HEART'S SECRET. CHAPTER I. THE ACCIDENT. THE soft twilight of the tropics, that loves to linger over the low latitudes, after the departure of the long summer's day, was breathing in zephyrs of aromatic sweetness over the shores and plains of the beautiful Queen of the Antilles. The noise and bustle of the day had given place to the quiet and gentle influences of the hour; the slave had laid by his implements of labor, and now stood at ease, while the sunburnt overseers had put off the air of vigilance that they had worn all day, and sat or lounged lazily with their cigars. Here and there strolled a Montaro from the country, who, having disposed of his load of fruit, of produce and fowls, was now preparing to return once more inland, looking, with his long Toledo blade and heavy spurs, more like a bandit than an honest husbandman. The evening gun had long since boomed over the waters of the land-locked harbor from the grim, walls of Moro Castle, the guard had been relieved at the governor's palace and the city walls, and now the steady martial tread to the tap of the drum rang along the streets of Havana, as the guard once more sought their barracks in the Plaza des Armes. The pretty senoritas sat at their grated windows, nearly on a level with the street, and chatted through the bars, not unlike prisoners, to those gallants who paused to address them. And now a steady line of pedestrians turned their way to the garden that fronts the governor's palace, where they might listen to the music of the band, nightly poured forth here to rich and poor. At this peculiar hour there was a small party walking in the broad and very private walk that skirts the seaward side of the city, nearly opposite the Moro, and known as the Plato. It is the only hour in which a lady can appear outside the walls of her dwelling on foot in this queer and picturesque capital, and then only in the Plaza, opposite to the palace, or in some secluded and private walk like the Plato. Such is Creole and Spanish etiquette. The party referred to consisted of a fine looking old Spanish don, a lady who seemed to be his daughter, a little boy of some twelve or thirteen years, who might perhaps be the lady's brother, and a couple of gentlemen in undress military attire, yet bearing sufficient tokens of rank to show them to be high in command. The party was a gay though small one, and the lady seemed to be as lively and talkative as the two gentlemen could desire, while they, on their part, appeared most devoted to every syllable and gesture. There was a slight air of hauteur in the lady's bearing; she seemed to half disdain the homage that was so freely tendered to her, and though she laughed loud and clear, there was a careless, not to say heartless, accent in her tones, that betrayed her indifference to the devoted attentions of her companions. Apparently too much accustomed to this treatment to be disheartened by it, the two gentlemen bore themselves most courteously, and continued as devoted as ever to the fair creature by their side. The boy of whom we have spoken was a noble child, frank and manly in his bearing, and evidently deeply interested in the maritime scene before him. Now he paused to watch the throng of craft of every nation that lay at anchor in the harbor, or which were moored; after the fashion here, with their stems to the quay, and now his fine blue eye wandered off over the swift running waters of the Gulf Stream, watching for a moment the long, heavy swoop of some distant seafowl, or the white sail of some clipper craft bound up the Gulf to New Orleans, or down the narrow channel through the Caribbean Sea to some South American port. The old don seemed in the meantime to regard the boy with an earnest pride, and scarcely heeded at all the bright sallies of wit that his daughter was so freely and merrily bestowing upon her two assiduous admirers. "Yonder brigantine must be a slaver," said the boy, pointing to a rakish craft that seemed to be struggling against the current to the southward. "Most like, most like; but what does she on this side? the southern shore is her ground, and the Isle of Pines is a hundred leagues from here," said the old don. "She has lost her reckoning, probably," said the boy, "and made the first land to the north. Lucky she didn't fall in with those Florida wreckers, for though the Americans don't carry on the African trade nowadays, they know what to do with a cargo if it gets once hard and fast on the reefs." "What know you of these matters?" asked the old don, turning a curious eye on the boy. "O, I hear them talk of these things, and you know I saw a cargo 'run' on the south side only last month," continued the boy. "There were three hundred or more filed off from that felucca, two by two, to the shore." "It is a slaver," said one of the officers, "a little out of her latitude, that's all." "A beautiful craft," said the lady, earnestly; "can it be a slaver, and so beautiful." "They are clipper-built, all of them," said the old don. "Launched in Baltimore, United States." Senorita Gonzales was the daughter of the proud old don of the same name, who was of the party on the Plato at the time we describe. The father was one of the richest as well as noblest in rank of all the residents of the island, being of the old Castilian stock, who had come from Spain many years before, and after holding high office, both civil and military, under the crown, had at last retired with a princely fortune, and devoted himself to the education of his daughter and son, both of whom we have already introduced to the reader. The daughter, beautiful, intelligent, and witty to a most extraordinary degree, had absolutely broken the hearts of half the men of rank on the island; for though yet scarcely twenty years of age, Senorita Isabella was a confirmed coquette. It was her passion to command and enjoy a devotion, but as to ever having in the least degree cherished or known what it was to love, the lady was entirely void of the charge; she had never known the tenderness of reciprocal affection, nor did it seem to those who knew her best, that the man was born who could win her confidence. Men's hearts had been Isabella Gonzales's toys and playthings ever since the hour that she first had realized her power over them. And yet she was far from being heartless in reality. She was most sensitive, and at times thoughtful and serious; but this was in her closet, and when alone. Those who thought that the sunshine of that face was never clouded, were mistaken. She hardly received the respect that was due to her better understanding and naturally strong points of character, because she hid them mainly behind an exterior of captivating mirthfulness and never ceasing smiles. The cool refreshing sea breeze that swept in from the water was most delicious, after the scorching heat of a summer's day in the West Indies, and the party paused as they breathed in of its freshness, leaning upon the parapet of the walk, over which they looked down upon the glancing waves of the bay far beneath them. The moon was stealing slowly but steadily up from behind the lofty tower of Moro Castle, casting a dash of silvery light athwart its dark batteries and grim walls, and silvering a long wake across the now silent harbor, making its rippling waters of golden and silver hues, and casting, where the Moro tower was between it and the water, a long, deep shadow to seaward. Even the gay and apparently thoughtless Senorita Isabella was struck with delight at the view now presented to her gaze, and for a moment she paused in silence to drink in of the spirit-stirring beauty of the scene. "How beautiful it is," whispered the boy, who was close by her side. "Beautiful, very beautiful," echoed Isabella, again becoming silent. No one who has not breathed the soft air of the south at an hour such as we have described, can well realize the tender influence that it exercises upon a susceptible disposition. The whole party gazed for some minutes in silence, apparently charmed by the scene. There was a hallowing and chastening influence in the very air, and the gay coquette was softened into the tender woman. A tear even glistened in Ruez's, her brother's eyes; but he was a thoughtful and delicate-souled child, and would be affected thus much more quickly than his sister. The eldest of the two gentlemen who were in attendance upon Don Gonzales and his family, was Count Anguera, lieutenant-governor of the island; and his companion, a fine military figure, apparently some years the count's junior, was General Harero of the royal infantry, quartered at the governor's palace. Such was the party that promenaded on the parapet of the Plato. As we have intimated, the two gentlemen were evidently striving to please Isabella, and to win from her some encouraging smile or other token that might indicate a preference for their attentions. Admiration even from the high source that now tendered it was no new thing to her, and with just sufficient archness to puzzle them, she waived and replied to their conversation with most provoking indifference, lavishing a vast deal more kindness and attention upon a noble wolf-hound that crouched close to her feet, his big clear eye bent ever upon his mistress's face with a degree of intelligence that would have formed a theme for a painter. It was a noble creature, and no wonder the lady evinced so much regard for the hound, who ever and anon walked close to her. "You love the hound?" suggested General Harero, stooping to smooth its glossy coat. "Yes." "He is to be envied, then, upon my soul, lady. How could he, with no powers of utterance, have done that for himself, which we poor gallants so fail in doing?" "And what may that be?" asked Isabella, archly tossing her head. "Win thy love," half whispered the officer, drawing closer to her side. The answer was lost, if indeed Isabella intended one, by the father's calling the attention of the party to some object on the Regla shore, opposite the city, looming up in the dim light. Ruez had mounted the parapet, and with his feet carelessly dangling on the other side, sat gazing off upon the sea, now straining his eye to make out the rig of some dark hull in the distance, and now following back the moon's glittering wake until it met the shore. At this moment the hound, leaving his mistress's side, put his fore paws upon the top of the parapet and his nose into one of the boy's hands, causing him to turn round suddenly to see what it was that touched him; in doing which he lost his balance, and with a faint cry fell from the parapet far down to the water below. Each of the gentlemen at once sprang upon the stone work and looked over where the boy had fallen, but it would have been madness for any one, however good a swimmer; and as they realized this and their helpless situation, they stood for a moment dumb with consternation. At that moment a plunge was heard in the water from the edge of the quay far below the parapet, and a dark form was traced making its way through the water with that strong bold stroke that shows the effort of a confident and powerful swimmer. "Thank God some one has seen his fall from below, and they will rescue him," said Don Gonzales, springing swiftly down the Plato steps, followed by Isabella and the officers, and seeking the street that led to the quay below. "O hasten, father, hasten!" exclaimed Isabella, impatiently. "Nay, Isabella, my old limbs totter with fear for dear Ruez," was the hasty reply of the old don, as he hurried forward with his daughter. "Dear, dear Ruez," exclaimed Isabella, hysterically. Dashing by the guard stationed on the quay, who presented arms as his superiors passed, they reached its end in time to see, through the now dim twilight, the efforts of some one in the water supporting the half insensible boy with one arm, while with the other he was struggling with almost superhuman effort against the steady set of the tide to seaward. Already were a couple of seamen lowering a quarter-boat from an American barque, near by, but the rope had fouled in the blocks, and they could not loose it. A couple of infantry soldiers had also come up to the spot, and having secured a rope were about to attempt some assistance to the swimmer. "Heave the line," shouted one of the seamen. "Give me the bight of it, and I'll swim out to him." "Stand by for it," said the soldier, coiling it in his hand and then throwing it towards the barque. But the coil fell short of the mark, and another minute's delay occurred. In the meantime he who held the boy, though evidently a man of cool judgment, powerful frame, and steady purpose, yet now breathed so heavily in his earnest struggle with the swift tide, that his panting might be distinctly heard on the quay. He was evidently conscious of the efforts now making for his succor and that of the boy, but he uttered no words, still bending every nerve and faculty towards the stemming of the current tint sets into the harbor from the Gulf Stream. The hound had been running back and forth on the top of the parapet, half preparing every moment for a spring, and then deterred by the immense distance which presented itself between the animal and the water, it would run back and forth again with a most piteous howling cry; but at this moment it came bounding down the street to the quay, as though it at last realized the proper spot from which to make the attempt, and with a leap that seemed to carry it nearly a rod into the waters, it swam easily to the boy's side. An exclamation of joy escaped from both Don Gonzales and Isabella, for they knew the hound to have saved a life before, and now prized his sagacity highly. As the hound swung round easily beside the struggling forms, the swimmer placed the boy's arm about the animal's neck, while the noble creature, with almost human reason, instead of struggling fiercely at being thus entirely buried in the water, save the mere point of his nose, worked as steadily and as calmly as though he was merely following his young master on shore. The momentary relief was of the utmost importance to the swimmer, who being thus partially relieved of Ruez's weight, once more struck out boldly for the quay. But the boy had now lost all consciousness, and his arm slipped away from the hound's neck, and he rolled heavily over, carrying down the swimmer and himself for a moment, below the surface of the water. "Holy mother! they are both drowned!" almost screamed Isabella. "Lost! lost!" groaned Don Gonzales, with uplifted hands and tottering form. "No! no!" exclaimed General Harero, "not yet, not yet." He had jumped on board the barque, and had cut the davit ropes with his sword, and thus succeeded in launching the boat with himself and the two seamen in it. At this moment the swimmer rose once more slowly with his burthen to the surface; but his efforts were so faintly made now, that he barely floated, and yet with a nervous vigor he kept the boy still far above himself. And now it was that the noble instinct of the hound stood his young master in such importance, and led him to seize with his teeth the boy's clothes, while the swimmer once more fairly gained his self-possession, and the boat with General Harero and the seamen came alongside. In a moment more the boy with his preserver and the dog were safe in the boat, which was rowed at once to the quay. A shout of satisfaction rang out from twenty voices that had witnessed the scene. Isabella, the moment they were safely in the boat, fainted, while Count Anguera ran for a volante for conveyance home. The swimmer soon regained his strength, and when the boat reached the quay, he lifted the boy from it himself. It was a most striking picture that presented itself to the eye at that moment on the quay, in the dim twilight that was so struggling with the moon's brighter rays. The father, embracing the reviving boy, looked the gratitude he could not find words to express, while a calm, satisfied smile ornamented the handsome features of the soldier who had saved Ruez's life at such imminent risk. The coat which he had hastily thrown upon the quay when he leaped into the water, showed him to bear the rank of lieutenant of infantry, and by the number, he belonged to General Harero's own division. The child was placed with his sister and father in a volante, and borne away from the spot with all speed, that the necessary care and attention might be afforded to him which they could only expect in their own home. In the meantime a peculiar satisfaction mantled the brow and features of the young officer who had thus signally served Don Gonzales and his child. His fine military figure stood erect and commanding in style while he gazed after the volante that contained the party named, nor did he move for some moments, seeming to be exercised by some peculiar spell; still gazing in the direction in which the volante had disappeared, until General Harero, his superior, having at length arranged his own attire, after the hasty efforts which he had made, came by, and touching him lightly on the arm, said: "Lieutenant, you seem to be dreaming; has the bath affected your brain?" "Not at all, general," replied the young officer, hastening to put on his coat once more; "I have indeed forgotten myself for a single moment." "Know you the family whom you have thus served?" asked the general. "I do; that is, I know their name, general, but nothing further." "He's a clever man, and will remember your services," said the general, carelessly, as he walked up the quay and received the salute of the sentinel on duty. Some strange feeling appeared to be working in the breast of the young officer who had just performed the gallant deed we have recorded, for he seemed even now to be quite lost to all outward realization, and was evidently engaged in most agreeable communion with himself mentally. He too now walked up the quay, also, receiving the salute of the sentinel, and not forgetting either, as did the superior officer, to touch his cap in acknowledgement, a sign that an observant man would have marked in the character of both; and one, too, which was not lost on the humble private, whose duty it was to stand at his post until the middle watch of the night. A long and weary duty is that of a sentinel on the quay at night. CHAPTER II. THE BELLE AND THE SOLDIER. WHOEVER has been in Havana, that strange and peculiar city, whose every association and belonging seem to bring to mind the period of centuries gone by, whose time-worn and moss-covered cathedrals appear to stand as grim records of the past, whose noble palaces and residences of the rich give token of the fact of its great wealth and extraordinary resources--whoever, we say, has been in this capital of Cuba, has of course visited its well-known and far-famed Tacon Paseo. It is here, just outside the city walls, in a beautiful tract of land, laid out in tempting walks, ornamented with the fragrant flowers of the tropics, and with statues and fountains innumerable, that the beauty and fashion of the town resort each afternoon to drive in their volantes, and to meet and greet each other. It was on the afternoon subsequent to that of the accident recorded in the preceding chapter, that a young officer, off duty, might be seen partially reclining upon one of the broad seats that here and there line the foot-path of the circular drive in the Paseo. He possessed a fine manly figure, and was perhaps of twenty-four or five years of age, and clothed in the plain undress uniform of the Spanish army. His features were of that national and handsome cast that is peculiar to the full-blooded Castilian, and the pure olive of his complexion contrasted finely with a moustache and imperial as black as the dark flowing hair that fell from beneath his foraging cap. At the moment when we introduce him he was playing with a small, light walking-stick, with which he thrashed his boots most immoderately; but his thoughts were busy enough in another quarter, as any one might conjecture even at a single glance. Suddenly his whole manner changed; he rose quickly to his feet, and lifting his cap gracefully, he saluted and acknowledged the particular notice of a lady who bent partially forward from a richly mounted volante drawn by as richly it caparisoned horse, and driven by as richly dressed a calesaro. The manner of the young officer from that moment was the very antipodes of what it had been a few moments before. A change seemed to have come over the spirit of his dream. His fine military figure became erect and dignified, and a slight indication of satisfied pride was just visible in the fine lines of his expressive lips. As he passed on his way, after a momentary pause, he met General Harero, who stiffly acknowledged his military salute, with anything but kindness expressed in the stern lines of his forbidding countenance. He even took some pains to scowl upon the young soldier as they passed each other. But what cared Lieutenant Bezan for his frowns? Had not the belle of the city, the beautiful, the peerless, the famed Senorita Isabella Gonzales just publicly saluted him?-that glorious being whose transcendent beauty had been the theme of every tongue, and whose loveliness had enslaved him from the first moment he had looked upon her-just two years previous, when he first came from Spain. Had not this high-born and proud lady publicly saluted him? Him, a poor lieutenant of infantry, who had never dared to lift his eyes to meet her own before, however deep and ardently he might have worshipped her in secret. What cared the young officer that his commander had seen fit thus to frown upon him? True, he realized the power of military discipline, and particularly of the Spanish army; but he forgot all else now, in the fact that Isabella Gonzales had publicly saluted him in the paths of the Paseo. Possessed of a highly chivalrous disposition, Lieutenant Bezan had few confidants among his regiment, who, notwithstanding this, loved him as well as brothers might love. He seemed decidedly to prefer solitude and his books to the social gatherings, or the clubs formed by his brother officers, or indeed to join them in any of their ordinary sports or pastimes. Of a very good family at home, he had the misfortune to have been born a younger brother, and after being thoroughly educated at the best schools of Madrid, he was frankly told by his father that he must seek his fortune, and for the future rely solely upon himself. There was but one field open to him, at least so it seemed to him, and that was the army. Two years before the opening of our story he had enlisted as a third lieutenant of infantry, and had been at once ordered to the West Indies with his entire regiment. Here promotion for more than one gallant act closely followed him, until at the time we introduce him to the reader as first lieutenant. Being of a naturally cheerful and exceedingly happy disposition, he took life like a philosopher, and knew little of care or sorrow until the time when he first saw Senorita Isabella Gonzales-an occasion that planted a hopeless passion in his breast. From the moment of their first meeting, though entirely unnoticed by her, he felt that he loved her, deeply, tenderly loved her; and yet at the same time he fully realized how immeasurably she was beyond his sphere, and consequently hopes. He saw the first officials of the island at her very feet, watching for one glance of encouragement or kindness from those dark and lustrous eyes of jet; in short, he saw her ever the centre of an admiring circle of the rich and proud. It is perhaps strange, but nevertheless true, that with all these discouraging and disheartening circumstances, Lieutenant Bezan did not lose all hope. He loved her, lowly and obscure though he was, with all his heart, and used to whisper to himself that love like his need not despair, for he felt how truly and honestly his heart warmed and his pulses beat for her. Nearly two entire years had his devoted heart lived on thus, if not once gratified by a glance from her eye, still hoping that devotion like his would one day be rewarded. What prophets of the future are youth and love! Distant as the star of his destiny appeared from him, he yet still toiled on, hoped on, in his often weary round of duty, sustained by the one sentiment of tender love and devotedness to one who knew him not. At the time of the fearful accident when Ruez Gonzales came so near losing his life from the fall he suffered off the parapet of the Plato, Lieutenant Bezan was officer of the night, his rounds having fortunately brought him to the quay at the most opportune moment. He knew not who it was that had fallen into the water, but guided by a native spirit of daring and humanity, he had thrown off his coat and cap and leaped in after him. The feelings of pleasure and secret joy experienced by the young officer, when after landing from the boat he learned by a single glance who it was he had so fortunately saved, may be better imagined than described, when his love for the boy's sister is remembered. And when, as we have related, the proud Senorita Isabella publicly saluted him before a hundred eyes in the Paseo, he felt a joy of mind, a brightness of heart, that words could not express. His figure and face were such that once seen their manly beauty and noble outline could not be easily forgotten; and there were few ladies in the city, whose station and rank would permit them to associate with one bearing only a lieutenant's commission, who would not have been proud of his notice and homage. He could not be ignorant of his personal recommendations, and yet the young officer sought no female society-his heart it knew but one idol, and he could bow to but one throne of love. Whether by accident or purposely, the lady herself only knew, but when the volante, in the circular drive of the Paseo, again came opposite to the spot where Lieutenant Bezan was, the Senorita Isabella dropped her fan upon the carriage-road. As the young officer sprang to pick it up and return it, she bade the calesaro to halt. Her father, Don Gonzales, was by her side, and the lieutenant presented the fan in the most respectful manner, being rewarded by a glance from the lady that thrilled to his very soul. Don Gonzales exclaimed: "By our lady, but this is the young officer, Isabella, who yesternight so promptly and gallantly saved the life of our dear Ruez." "It is indeed he, father," said the beauty, with much interest. "Lieutenant Bezan, the general told us, I believe," continued the father. "That was the name, father." "And is this Lieutenant Bezan?" asked Don Gonzales, addressing the officer. "At your service," replied he, bowing respectfully. "Senor," continued the father, most earnestly, and extending at the same time his hand to the blushing soldier, "permit me and my daughter to thank you sincerely for the extraordinary service you rendered to us and our dear Ruez last evening." "Senor, the pleasure of having served you richly compensated for any personal inconvenience or risk I may have experienced," answered Lieutenant Bezan; saying which, he bowed low and looked once into the lovely eyes of the beautiful Senorita Isabella, when at a word to the calesaro, the volante again passed on in the circular drive. But the young officer had not been unwatched during the brief moments of conversation that had passed between him and the occupants of the vehicle. Scarcely had he left the side of the volante, when he once more met General Harero, who seemed this time to take some pains to confront him, as he remarked: "What business may Lieutenant Bezan have with Don Gonzales and his fair daughter, that he stops their volante in the public walks of the Paseo?" "The lady dropped her fan, general, and I picked it up and returned it to her," was the gentlemanly and submissive reply of the young officer. "Dropped her fan," repeated the general, sneeringly, as he gazed at the lieutenant. "Yes, general, and I returned it." "Indeed," said the commanding officers, with a decided emphasis. "Could I have done less, general?" asked Lieutenant Bezan. "It matters not, though you seem to be ever on hand to do the lady and her father some service, sir. Perhaps you would relish another cold bath," he continued, with most cutting sarcasm. "Who introduced you, sir, to these people?" "No one, sir. It was chance that brought us together. You will remember the scene on the quay." "I do." "Before that time I had never exchanged one word with them." "And on this you presume to establish an acquaintance?" "By no means, sir. The lady recognized me, and I was proud to return the polite salute with which she greeted me." "Doubtless." "Would you have me do otherwise, sir?" "I would have you avoid this family of Gonzales altogether." "I trust, general, that I have not exceeded my duty either to the father or daughter, though by the tone of your remarks I seem to have incurred your disapprobation," replied Lieutenant Bezan, firmly but respectfully. "It would be more becoming in an officer of your rank," continued the superior, "to be nearer his quarters, than to spend his hours off duty in so conspicuous and public a place as the Tacon Paseo. I shall see that such orders are issued for the future as shall keep those attached to my division within the city walls." "Whatever duty is prescribed by my superiors I shall most cheerfully and promptly respond to, General Harero," replied the young officer, as he respectfully saluted his general, and turning, he sought the city gates on the way to his barracks. "Stay, Lieutenant Bezan," said the general, somewhat nervously. "General," repeated the officer, with the prompt military salute, as he awaited orders. "You may go, sir," continued the superior, biting his lips with vexation. "Another time will answer my purpose quite as well, perhaps better. You may retire, I say." "Yes, general," answered the soldier, respectfully, and once more turned away. Lieutenant Bezan was too well aware of General Harero's intimacy at the house of Don Gonzales, not to understand the meaning of the rebuke and exhibition of bitterness on the part of his superior towards him. The general, although he possessed a fine commanding figure, yet was endowed with no such personal advantages to recommend him to a lady's eye as did the young officer who had thus provoked him, and he could not relish the idea that one who had already rendered such signal services to the Senorita Isabella and her father, even though he was so very far below himself in rank, should become too intimate with the family. It would be unfair towards Lieutenant Bezan to suppose that he did not possess sufficient judgment of human nature and discernment to see all this. He could not but regret that he had incurred the ill will of his general, though it was unjustly entertained, for he knew only too well how rigorous was the service in which he was engaged, and that a superior officer possessed almost absolute power over those placed in his command, in the Spanish army, even unto the sentence of death. He had too often been the unwilling spectator, and even at times the innocent agent of scenes that were revolting to his better feelings, which emanated solely from this arbitrary power vested in heartless and incompetent individuals by means of their military rank. Musing thus upon the singular state of his affairs, and the events of the last two days, so important to his feelings, now recalling the bewitching glances of the peerless Isabella Gonzales, and now ruminating upon the ill will of General Harero, he strolled into the city, and reaching La Dominica's, he threw himself upon a lounge near the marble fountain, and calling for a glass of agrass, he sipped the cool and grateful beverage, and wiled away the hour until the evening parade. Though Don Gonzales duly appreciated the great service that Lieutenant Bezan had done him, at such imminent personal hazard, too, yet he would no more have introduced him into his family on terms of a visiting acquaintance in consequence thereof, than he would have boldly broken down any other strict rule and principle of his aristocratic nature; and yet he was not ungrateful; far from it, as Lieutenant Bezan had reason to know, for he applied his great influence at once to the governor-general in the young officer's behalf. The favor he demanded of Tacon, then governor and commander-in-chief, was the promotion to a captaincy of him who had so vitally served the interests of his house. Tacon was one of the wisest and best governors that Cuba ever had, as ready to reward merit as he was to signally punish trickery or crime of any sort, and when the case was fairly laid before him, by reference to the rolls of his military secretary, he discovered that Lieutenant Bezan had already been promoted twice for distinguished merit, and replied to Don Gonzales that, as this was the case, and the young soldier was found to be so deserving, he should cheerfully comply with his request as it regarded his early promotion in his company. Thus it was, that scarcely ten days subsequent to the meeting in the Paseo, which we have described, Lieutenant Bezan was regularly gazetted as captain of infantry, by honorable promotion and approval of the governor-general. The character of Tacon was one of a curious description. He was prompt, candid, and business-like in all things, and the manner of his promoting Lieutenant Bezan was a striking witness of these very qualities. The young officer being summoned by an orderly to his presence, was thus questioned: "You are Lieutenant Lorenzo Bezan?" "Yes, your excellency." "Of the sixth infantry?" "Excellency, yes." "Of company eight?" "Of company eight, excellency." "Your commander is General Harero?" "Excellency, yes." "You were on the quay night before last, were you not?" "Excellency, I was." "And leaped into the water to save a boy's life who had fallen there?" "I did, excellency." "You were successful." "Excellency, I was." "You were promoted eleven months since in compliment for duty." "Yes, excellency." "Captain Bezan, here is a new commission for you." "Excellency you are only too kind to an humble soldier." A calm, proud inclination of the head on the part of the governor-general, indicated that the audience was over, and the young officer returned, knowing well the character of the commander-in-chief. Not a little elated, Lorenzo Bezan felt that he was richly repaid for the risk he had run by this promotion alone; but there was a source of gratification to him far beyond that of having changed his title to captain. He had served and been noticed by Isabella Gonzales, and it is doubtful if he could have met with any good fortune that would have equalled this, in his eye; it was the scheme of his life-the realization of his sleeping and waking dreams. This good fortune, as pleasant to him as it was unexpected, was attributed by the young officer to the right source, and was in reality enhanced and valued from that very fact. "A bumper," exclaimed his brother officers, that day at the mess-table, when all were met. "A bumper to Captain Lorenzo Bezan. May he never draw his sword without cause; never sheathe it without honor!" "But what's the secret of Bezan's good fortune?" asked one. "His luck, to be sure-born under a lucky star." "Not exactly luck, alone, but his own intrepidity and manliness," replied a fellow-officer. "Haven't you heard of his saving the life of young Gonzales, who fell into the bay from the parapet of the Plato?" "Not in detail. If you know about the affair, recite it," said another. Leaving the mess, as did Captain Bezan at this juncture, we will follow the thread of our story in another chapter, and relating to other scenes. CHAPTER III. A SUDDEN INTRODUCTION. IT was again night in the capital; the narrow streets were brilliantly lighted from the store windows, but the crowd were no longer there. The heat of the long summer day had wearied the endurance of master and slave; and thousands had already sought that early repose which is so essential to the dwellers in the tropics. Stillness reigned over the drowsy city, save that the soft music which the governor-general's hand discourses nightly in the Plaza, stole sweetly over the scene, until every air seemed heavy with its tender influence and melody. Now it swelled forth in the martial tones of a military band, and now its cadence was low and gentle as a fairy whisper, reverberating to the ear from the opposite shore of Regla, and the frowning walls of the Cabanas behind the Moro, and now swelling away inland among the coffee fields and sugar plantations. The long twilight was gone; but still the deep streak of golden skirting in the western horizon lent a softened hue to the scene, not so bright to the eye, and yet more golden far than moonlight: "Leaving on craggy hills and running streams A softness like the atmosphere of dreams." At this favorite hour the Senorita Isabella Gonzales and her young brother, Ruez, attended only by the wolf hound, who seemed to be almost their inseparable companion, were once again strolling in the cool and retired walk of the Plato. The lady moved with all the peculiar grace so natural to the Spanish women, and yet through all, a keen observer might have seen the lurking effects of pride and power, a consciousness of her own extraordinary beauty, and the control it gave her over the hearts of those of the other sex with whom she associated. Alas! that such a trait should have become a second nature to one with so heavenly a form and face. Perhaps it was owing to the want of the judicious management of a mother, of timely and kindly advice, that Isabella had grown up thus; certainly it seemed hard, very hard, to attribute it to her heart, her natural promptings, for at times she evinced such traits of womanly delicacy and tenderness, that those who knew her best forgot her coquetry. Her brother was a gentle and beautiful boy. A tender spirit of melancholy seemed ever uppermost in his heart and face, and it had been thus with him since he had known his first early grief-the loss of his mother-some four or five years before the present period of our story. Isabella, though she was not wanting in natural tenderness and affection, had yet outgrown the loss of her parent; but the more sensitive spirit of the boy had not yet recovered from the shock it had thus received. The father even feared that he never would regain his happy buoyancy, as he looked upon his pale and almost transparent features, while the boy mused thoughtfully to himself sometimes for the hour together, if left alone and undisturbed. "Ruez, dear, we've not been on the Plato since that fearful night," said Senorita Isabella, as she rested her hand gently upon the boy's shoulder. "It was a fearful night, sister," said the boy recalling the associations with a shudder. "And yet how clear and beautiful it seemed just before that terrible accident." "I remember," said the boy. "And the slaver in the distance, with her soft white sails and treacherous business." "And the sparkling moon upon the bay." "It was very beautiful; and we have a night now almost its equal." "Did you notice how stoutly that Lieutenant Bezan swam with me?" "Yes, brother. You forget, though, that he is Captain Bezan now," she added. "Father told me so," said the boy. "How fearfully the tide ran, and the current set against us! He held me way up above the water, while he was quite under it himself," continued Ruez. "I was sure he would drown; didn't it seem so to you, sister?" "It did, it did; the deed was most gallantly done," said Isabella, as she stooped down and kissed her brother; "and you will never be so careless again, Ruez?" "No, sister. I shall be more. careful, but I should like to see that Captain Bezan again. I have never seen him since that night, and his barracks are within pistol shot from here." "Hark! what was that?" asked Isabella, starting at some unusual noise. "I heard nothing," said the boy. "There it is again," she continued, nervously, looking around. "Down, Carlo, down," said the boy, sharply to the hound, as it sprang at the same time from a crouching posture, and uttered a deep, angry growl, peculiar to its species. But the animal seemed too much aroused to be so easily pacified with words, and with heavy bounds sprang towards the seaward end of the Plato, over the parapet of which, where it joined a lofty stone wall that made a portion of the stone barracks of the army, a man leaped to the ground. The hound suddenly crouched, the moment it fairly reached the figure of the new coiner, and instead of the hostile attitude, it had so lately he assumed, now placed its fore paws upon the breast of the person, and wagged its tail with evident tokens of pleasure at the meeting. "That is a very strange way to enter the Plato," said Isabella, to her brother, drawing nearer to his side as she spoke. "I wonder who it can be?" "Some friend of Carlo's, for he never behaves in that way to strangers," said the boy. "So it would seem; but here he comes, be he whom he may." "By our lady!" said the boy, earnestly, with a flash of spirit and color across his usually quiet and pale face. "Sister, it is Captain Bezan!" "Captain Bezan, I believe," said Isabella, courtesying coolly to his respectful bow. "The same, lady." "You have chosen a singular mode of introduction, sir," said the Senorita Isabella Gonzales, somewhat severely, as she drew herself up with an air of cold reserve. "It is true, lady, I have done a seemingly rash action; but if you will please to pause for one moment, you will at once realize that it was the only mode of introduction of which a poor soldier like myself could have availed himself." "Our hall doors are always open," replied Isabella Gonzales. "To the high born and proud, I grant you, lady, but not to such as I am." "Then, sir," continued the lady, quickly, "if custom and propriety forbid you to meet me through the ordinary channels of society, do you not see the impropriety of such an attempt to see me as that which you have but just now made?" "Lady, I can see nothing, hear nothing but my unconquerable love!" "Love, sir!" repeated the lady, with a curl of her proud but beautiful lip. "Ay, love, Isabella Gonzales. For years I have loved you in secret. Too humble to become known to you, or to attract your eye, even, I have yet nursed that love, like the better angel of my nature; have dreamed of it nightly; have prayed for the object of it nightly; have watched the starry heavens, and begged for some noble inspiration that would make me more worthy of thy affection; I have read nothing that I did not couple in some tender way with thee; have nursed no hope of ambition or fame that was not the nearer to raise me to thee, and over the midnight lamp have bent in earnestness year after year, that I might gain those jewels of the mind that in intelligence, at least, would place me by thy side. At last fortune befriended me, and I was able by a mischance to him, thy brother, to serve thee. Perhaps even then it might have ended, and my respect would still have curbed the promptings of my passion, had you not so kindly noticed me on the Paseo. O, how wildly did my heart beat at that gentle, kind and thoughtful recognition of the poor soldier, and no less quickly beats that heart, when you listen thus to me, and hear me tell how deeply I love." "Audacity!" said Isabella Gonzales, really not a little aroused at the plainness of his speech. "How dare you, sir, to address such language to me?" "Love dares do anything but dishonor the being that it loves. A year, lady, a month ago, how hopeless was my love-how far off in the blue ether was the star I worshipped. Little did I then think that I should now stand so near to you-should thus pour out of the fullness of my enslaved and devoted heart, ay, thus look into those glorious eyes." "Sir, you are impertinent!" said Isabella, shrinking from the ardor of his expression. "Nay, lady," said the young officer, profoundly humble, "it is impossible for such love as mine to lead to impertinence to one whom I little less than worship." "Leave me, sir!" "Yes, Isabella Gonzales, if you will repeat those words calmly; if you will deliberately bid me, who have so often prayed for, so hoped for such a moment as this, to go, I will go." "But, sir, you will compromise me by this protracted conversation." "Heaven forbid. But for you I would risk all things-life, reputation, all that is valuable to me in life; yet perhaps I am forgetful, perhaps a thoughtless." "What strange power and music there is in his voice," whispered Isabella, to herself. Completely puzzled by his deep respect, his gallant and noble bearing, the memory of his late noble conduct in saving Ruez's life, Isabella hardly knew what to say, and she stood thus half confused, trotting her pretty foot upon the path of the Plato with a vexed air. At last, as if struggling to break the spell that seemed to be hanging over them, she said: "How could one like you, sir, ever dare to entertain such feelings towards me? the audaciousness of your language almost strikes me dumb." "Lady," said the young soldier, respectfully, "the sincerity of my passion has been its only self-sustaining power. I felt that love like mine could not be in vain. I was sure that such affection was never planted in my breast to bloom and blossom simply for disappointment. I could not think that this was so." "I am out of all patience with his impertinence," said Isabella Gonzales, to herself, pettishly. "I don't know what to say to him." "Sir, you must leave this place at once," she said, at last, after a brief pause. "I shall do so, lady, at your bidding; but only to pray and hope for the next meeting between us, when you may perhaps better know the poor soldier's heart." "Farewell, sir," said Isabella. "Farewell, Isabella Gonzales." "Are you going so soon?" asked Ruez, now approaching them from a short distance in the rear, where he had been playing with the hound. "Yes, Ruez," said the soldier, kindly. "You are quite recovered, I trust, from the effects of that cold bath taken off the parapet yonder." "O yes, I am quite recovered now." "It was a high leap for one of your age." "It was indeed," said the boy, with a shudder at the remembrance. "And, O, sir, I have not thanked you for that gallant deed," said Isabella Gonzales, extending her hand incontinently to Captain Bezan, in the enthusiasm of the moment, influenced by the sincerity of her feelings, his noble and manly bearing, and the kind and touching words he had uttered to Ruez. It would be difficult for us to describe her as she appeared at that moment in the soldier's eye. How lovely she seemed to him, when dropping all reserve for the moment, not only her tongue, but her eloquent eyes spoke from the tenderness of her woman's heart. A sacred vision would have impressed him no more than did the loveliness of her presence at that moment. Bending instinctively at this demonstration of gentle courtesy on her part, he pressed her hand most respectfully to his lips, and, as if feeling that he had gone almost too far, with a gallant wave of the hand he suddenly disappeared from whence he had so lately come, over the seaward side of the parapet towards the army barracks. Isabella gazed after him with a puzzled look for a while, then said half to herself and in a pettish and vexed tone of voice: "I did not mean that he should kiss my hand. I'm sure I did not; and why did I give it to him? How thoughtless. I declare I have never met so monstrously impudent a person in the entire course of my life. Very strange. Here's General Harero, Don Romonez, and Felix Gavardo, have been paying me court this half year and more, and either of them would give half his fortune for a kiss of this hand, and yet neither has dared to even tell me that they love me, though I know it so well. But here is this young soldier, this new captain of infantry, why he sees me but half a minute before he declares himself, and so boldly, too! I protest it was a real insult. I'll tell Don Gonzales, and I'll have the fellow dishonored and his commission taken from him, I will. I'm half ready to cry with vexation. Yes, I'll have Captain Bezan cashiered, and that directly, I will." "No you wont, sister," said Ruez, looking up calmly into her face as he spoke. "Yes I will, brother." "Still I say no," continued the boy, gently, and caressing her hand the while. "And why not, Ruez?" asked Isabella, stooping and kissing his handsome forehead, as the boy looked up so lovingly in her face. "Because he saved my life, sister," replied Ruez, smiling. "True, he did save your life, Ruez," murmured the beautiful girl, thoughtfully; an act that we can never repay; but it was most presuming for him to enter the Plato thus, and to--to--" "Kiss your hand, sister," suggested the boy, smiling in a knowing way. "Yes, it was quite shocking for him to be so familiar, Ruez." "But, sister, I can hardly ever help kissing you when you look kind to me, and I am sure you looked very kind at Captain Bezan." "Did I!" half mused Isabella, biting the handle of her Creole fan. "Yes; and how handsome this Captain Bezan is, sister," continued the boy, pretending to be engaged with the hound, whom he patted while he looked sideways at Isabella. "Do you think him so handsome?" still half mused Isabella, in reply to her brother's remarks, while her eye rested upon the ground. "I know it," said the boy, with spirit. "Don Miguel, General Harero, or the lieutenant-general, are none of them half so good looking," he continued, referring to some of her suitors. "Well, he is handsome, brother, that's true enough, and brave I know, or he would never have leaped into the water to save your life. But I'll never forgive him, I'm sure of that, Ruez," she said, in a most decided tone of voice. "Yes you will, sister." "No, I will not, and you will vex me if you say so again," she added, pettishly. "Come, Carlo, come," said Ruez, calling to the hound, as he followed close upon his sister's footsteps towards the entrance of Don Gonzales's house on the Plato. The truth was, Isabella Gonzales, the proud beauty, was pleased; perhaps her vanity was partly enlisted also, while she remembered the frankness of the humble soldier who had poured out his devotions at her feet in such simple yet earnest strains as to carry conviction with every word to the lady's heart. Image, even from the most lowly, is not without its charm to beauty, and the proud girl mused over the late scene thoughtfully, ay, far more thoughtfully than she had ever done before, on the offer of the richest and proudest cavalier. She had never loved; she knew not what the passion meant, as applied to the opposite sex. Universal homage had been her share ever since she could remember; and if Isabella Gonzales was not a confirmed coquette, she was certainly very near being one. The light in which she regarded the advances of Captain Bezan, even puzzled herself; the phase of his case and the manner of his avowal were so far without precedent, that its novelty engaged her. She still felt vexed at the young soldier's assurance, but yet all unconsciously found herself endeavoring to invent any number of excuses for the conduct he had exhibited! "It is true, as he said," she remarked, half aloud to herself, "that it was the only way in which he could meet me on terms of sufficient equality for conversation. Perhaps I should have done the same, if I were a high-spirited youth, and really loved!" As for Lorenzo Bezan, he quietly sought his quarters, as happy as a king. Had he not been successful beyond any reasonable hope? Had he not told his love? ay, had he not kissed the hand of her he loved, at last, almost by her own consent? Had not the clouds in the horizon of his love greatly thinned in numbers? He was no moody lover. Not one to die for love, but to live for it rather, and to pursue the object of his affection and regard with such untiring and devoted service as to deserve, if not to win, success. At least this was his resolve. Now and then the great difference between their relative stations would lead him to pause and consider the subject; but then with some pleasant sally to himself he would walk on again, firmly resolved in his own mind to overcome all things for her whom he loved, or at least to strive to do so. This was all very well in thought, but in practice the young soldier will not perhaps find this so easy a matter. Patience and perseverance are excellent qualities, but they are not certain criteria of success. Lorenzo Bezan had aimed his arrow high, but it was that little blind fellow, Cupid, that shot the bow. He was not to blame for it-of course not. "Ha! Bezan, whence come you with so bright a face?" asked a brother officer, as he entered his quarters in the barracks of the Plaza des Armes. "From wooing a fair and most beautiful maid," said the soldier, most honestly; though perhaps he told the truth as being the thing least likely to be believed by the other. "Fie, fie, Bezan. You in love, man? A soldier to marry? By our lady, what folly! Don't you remember the proverb? 'Men dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.'" "May I wake in that state with her I love ere a twelvemonth," said Lorenzo Bezan, smiling at his comrade's sally and earnestness. "Are you serious, captain?" asked the other, now trying to half believe him. "Never more so in my life, I assure you," was the reply. "And who is the lady, pray? Come, relieve your conscience, and confess." "Ah, there I am silent; her name is not for vulgar ears," said the young soldier, smiling, and with really too much respect to refer lightly to Isabella Gonzales. CHAPTER IV. CUBAN BANDITTI. IT was one of those beautiful but almost oppressively hot afternoons that so ripen the fruits, and so try the patience of the inhabitants of the tropics, that we would have the patient reader follow us on the main road between Alquezar and Guiness. It is as level as a parlor floor, and the tall foliage, mostly composed of the lofty palm, renders the route shaded and agreeable. Every vegetable and plant are so peculiarly significant of the low latitudes, that we must pause for a moment to notice them. The tall, stately palm, the king of the tropical forest, with its tufted head, like a bunch of ostrich feathers, bending its majestic form here and there over the verdant and luxuriant undergrowth, the mahogany tree, the stout lignumvit�, the banana, the fragrant and beautiful orange and lemon, and the long, impregnable hedge of the dagger aloe, all go to show us that we are in the sunny clime of the tropics. The fragrance, too, of the atmosphere! How soft to the senses! This gentle zephyr that only ruffles the white blossoms of the lime hedges, is off yonder coffee plantation that lies now like a field of clear snow, in its fragrant milk-white blossoms; and what a bewitching mingling of heliotrope and wild honeysuckle is combined in the air! how the gaudy plumed parrot pauses on his perch beneath the branches of the plantain tree, to inhale the sweets of the hour; while the chirps of the pedoreva and indigo birds are mingled in vocal praise that fortune has cast their lot in so lovely a clime. O, believe us, you should see and feel the belongings of this beautiful isle, to appreciate how nearly it approaches to your early ideas of fairy land. But, alas! how often do man's coarser disposition and baser nature belie the soft and beautiful characteristics of nature about him; how often, how very often, is the still, heavenly influence that reigns in fragrant flowers and bubbling streams, marred and desecrated by the harshness and violence engendered by human passions! In the midst of such a scene as we have described, at the moment to which we refer, there was a fearful struggle being enacted between a small party of Montaros, or inland robbers, and the occupants and outriders of a volante, which had just been attacked on the road. The traces that attached the horse to the vehicle had been cut, and the postilion lay senseless upon the ground from a sword wound in their head, while the four outriders were contending with thrice their number of robbers, who were armed with pistols and Toledo blades. It was a sharp hand to hand fight, and their steel rang to the quick strokes. In the volante was the person of a lady, but so closely enshrouded by a voluminous rebosa, or Spanish shawl, as hardly to leave any of her figure exposed, her face being hid from fright at the scene being enacted about her. At her side stood the figure of a tall, stately man, whose hat had been knocked over his head in the struggle, and whose white hairs gave token of his age. Two of the robbers, who had received the contents of his two pistols, lay dead by the side of the volante, and having now only his sword left, he stood thus, as if determined to protect her by his side, even at the cost of his life. The robbers had at last quite overmatched the four outriders, and having bound the only one of them that had sufficient life left to make him dangerous to them, they turned their steps once more towards the volante. There were in all some thirteen of them, but three already lay dead in the road, and the other ten, who had some sharp wounds distributed among them, now standing together, seemed to be querying whether they should not revenge the death of their comrades by killing both the occupants of the volante, or whether they should pursue their first purpose of only robbing them of what valuables they possessed. Fierce oaths were reiterated, and angry words exchanged between one and another of the robbers, as to the matter they were hastily discussing, while the old gentleman remained firm, grasping the hilt of his well-tempered sword, and showing to his enemies, by the stern, deep resolve they read in his eye, that they had not yet conquered him. Fortunately their pistols had all been discharged, or they might have shot the brave old man without coming to closer quarters, but now they looked with some dread upon the glittering blade he held so firmly! That which has required some time and space for us to describe, was, however, the work of but a very few moments of time, and the robbers, having evidently made up their minds to take the lives of the two persons now in the vehicle, divided themselves into two parties and approached the volante at the same moment on opposite sides. "Come on, ye fiends in human shape," said the old man, flourishing his sword with a skill and strength that showed he was no stranger to its use, and that there was danger in him. "Come on, ye shall find that a good blade in an old man's hands is no plaything!" They listened for a moment: yes, that half-score of villains held back in dismay at the noble appearance of the old man, and the flashing fire of his eye. "Ha! do you falter, ye villains? do you fear a good sword with right to back it?" But hark! what sound is that which startles the Montaros in the midst of their villany, and makes them look into each other's faces with such consternation and fear? It is a very unfrequented spot-who can be near? Scarcely had the sound fallen on their ears, before three horsemen in the undress uniform of the Spanish infantry, dashed up to the spot at full speed, while one of them, who seemed to be the leader of the party, leaped from his horse, and before the others could follow his example, was engaged in a desperate hand to hand conflict with the robbers. Twice he discharged his pistols with fatal effect, and now he was fighting sword and sword with a stout, burly Montaro, who was approaching that side of the volante where the lady sat, still half concealed by the ample folds of her rebosa, though the approach of assistance had led her to venture so far as to partially uncover her face, and to observe the scene about her. The headlong attack, so opportunely made by the fresh horsemen, was too much for treble their number to withstand, more especially as the leader of them had met with such signal success at the outset-having shot two, and mortally wounded a third. In this critical state of affairs, the remaining banditti concluded that discretion was the better part of valor, and made the best of their time and remaining strength to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the old gentleman and his companion with their three deliverers, quite safe in the middle of the road. "By our lady, sir, 'twas a gallant act. There were ten of those rascals, and but three of you," said the old gentleman, stepping out of the volante and arranging his ruffled dress. "Ten, senor? a soldier would make nothing of a score of such scapegraces as those," replied the officer (for such it was now apparent he was), as he wiped the gore from his reeking blade with a broad, green leaf from the roadside, and placed it in the scabbard. One of the soldiers who had accompanied the officer had now cut the thongs that bound the surviving outrider, who was one of the family attaches of the old gentleman, and who now busied himself about the vehicle, at one moment attending to the lady's wants, and now to harnessing the horse once more. Removing his cap, and wiping the reeking perspiration from his brow, the young officer now approached the volante and said to the lady: "I trust, madame, that you have received no further injury by this unfortunate encounter than must needs occur to you from fright." As he spoke thus, the lady turned quickly from looking towards the old gentleman, who was now on the other side of the vehicle, and after a moment exclaimed: "Is it possible, Captain Bezan, that we are indebted to you for this most opportune deliverance from what seemed to be certain destruction?" "Isabella Gonzales!" exclaimed the young officer, with unfeigned surprise. "You did not know us, then?" she asked, quickly, in reply. "Not I, indeed, or else I should sooner have spoken to you." "You thus risked your life, then, for strangers?" she continued. "You were the weakest party, were attacked by robbers; it only required a glance to realize that, and to attack them and release you was the next most natural thing in the world," replied the soldier, still wiping the perspiration from his forehead and temples. "Father!" exclaimed Isabella, with undisguised pleasure, "this is Captain Bezan!" "Captain Bezan?" repeated the old don, as surprised as his daughter had been. "At your service," replied the soldier, bowing respectfully to Don Gonzales. "Why, sir," said the old man, "what possible chance could have brought you so fortunately to our rescue here, a dozen leagues from the city?" "I was returning with these two companions of my company from a business trip to the south side of the island, where we had been sent with despatches from Tacon to the governor of the department." "No, matter, what chance has brought you here, at all events we owe our lives to you, sir," said Don Gonzales, extending his hand cordially to the young officer. After some necessary delay, under the peculiar circumstances, the horses were finally arranged so as to permit of proceeding forward on the road. The bodies of the servants were disposed of, and all was ready for a start, when Isabella Gonzales turned to her father and pressing his arm said: "Father, how pale he looks!" "Who, my child!" "There, see how very pale!" said Isabella, rising up from her seat. "Who do you speak of, Isabella?" "Captain Bezan, father; see, there he stands beside his horse." "He does look fatigued; he has worked hard with those villains," said the old man. "Why don't he mount? The rest have done so, and we are ready," continued the old man, anxiously. At that moment one of the horsemen, better understanding the case than either Isabella Gonzales or her father, left his well-trained animal in the road, and hastened to his officer's side. It required but a glance for him to see that his captain was too weak to mount. Directing the outrider, who had now mounted one of the horses attached to the volante, and acted as postilion, to drive towards him whom his companion was partially supporting, Don Gonzales asked most anxiously: "Captain Bezan, you are ill, I fear; are you much hurt?" "A mere trifle, Don Gonzales; drive on, sir, and I will follow you in a moment." "He is bleeding from his left arm and side, father," said Isabella, anxiously. "You are wounded-I fear severely, Captain Bezan," said the father. "A mere scratch, sir, in the arm, from one of the unlucky thrusts of those Montaros," he replied, assuming an indifference that his pale face belied. "Ah! father, what can be done for him?" said Isabella, quickly. "I am unharmed," said the grateful old man, "and can sit a horse all day long, if need be. Here, captain, take my seat in the volante, and Isabella, whom you have served at such heavy cost to yourself, shall act the nurse for you until we get to town again." Perhaps nothing, save such a proposition as this, could possibly have aroused and sustained the wounded officer; but after gently refusing for a while to rob Don Gonzales of his seat in the volante, he was forced to accept it even by the earnest request of Isabella herself, who seemed to tremble lest he was mortally wounded in their behalf. Little did Don Gonzales know, at that time, what a flame he was feeding in the young officer's breast. He was too intently engaged in his own mind with the startling scenes through which he had just passed, and was exercised with too much gratitude towards Captain Bezan for his deliverance, to observe or realize any peculiarity of appearance in any other respect, or to question the propriety of placing him so intimately by the side of his lovely child. Isabella had never told her father, or indeed any one, of the circumstance of her having met Captain Bezan on the Plato. But the reader, who is aware of the scene referred to, can easily imagine with what feelings the soldier took his seat by her side, and secretly watched the anxious and assiduous glances that she gave his wounded arm and side, as well as the kind looks she bestowed upon his pallid face. "I fear I annoy you," said the soldier, realizing his proximity to her on the seat. "No, no, by no means. I pray you rest your arm here," said Isabella Gonzales, as she offered her rebosa supported in part by her own person! "You are too kind-far too kind to me," said the wounded officer, faintly; for he was now really very weak from loss of blood and the pain of his wounds. "Speak not, I beseech of you, but strive to keep your courage up till we can gain the aid of some experienced surgeon," she said, supporting him tenderly. Thus the party drove on towards the city, by easy stages, where they arrived in safety, and left Captain Bezan to pursue his way to his barracks, which he did, not, however, until he had, like a faithful courier, reported to the governor-general the safe result of his mission to the south of the island. The story of the gallant rescue was the theme of the hour for a period in Havana, but attacks from robbers on the road, under Tacon's governorship, were too common an occurrence to create any great wonder or curiosity among the inhabitants of the city. But Captain Bezan had got wounds that would make him remember the encounter for life, and now lay in a raging fever at his quarters in the infantry barracks of the Plaza des Armes. CHAPTER V. THE WOUNDED SOLDIER. THE fervor and heat of the mid-day atmosphere had been intense, but a most delightfully refreshing sea breeze had sprung up at last, and after fanning its way across the Gulf Stream, was dallying now with the palms and orange trees that so gracefully surrounded the marble statue of Ferdinand, in the midst of the Plaza, and ruffling the marble basin of water that bubbles forth from the graceful basin at its base. Light puffs of it, too, found their way into the invitingly open windows of the governor's palace, into an apartment which was improved by General Harero. Often pausing at the window to breathe in of the delightful atmosphere for a moment, he would again resume his irregular walk and seemingly absorbed in a dreamy frame of mind, quite unconscious of the outward world about him. At last he spoke, though only communing with himself, yet quite aloud: "Strange, very strange, that this Captain Bezan should seem to stand so much in my way. Curse his luck, the old don and his daughter feel under infinite obligations to him already, and well they may, as to the matter of that. If it was not for the girl's extraordinary stock of pride, we should have her falling in love with this young gallant directly, and there would be an end to all my hopes and fancies. He's low enough, now, however, so my valet just told me, and ten to one, if his physician knows his case, as he pretends, he'll make a die of it. He is a gallant fellow, that's a fact, and brave as he is gallant. I may as well own the fact that's what makes me hate him so! But he should not have crossed my path, and served to blight my hopes, there's the rub. I like the man well enough as a soldier, hang it. I'd like half the army to be just like him-they'd be invincible; but he has crossed my interest, ay, my love; and if he does get up again and crosses me with Isabella Gonzales, why then-well, no matter, there are ways enough to remove the obstacle from my path. "By the way," he continued, after crossing and re-crossing the room a few times, "what a riddle this Isabella Gonzales is; I wonder if she has got any heart at all. Here am I, who have gone scathless through the courts of beauty these many years, actually caught-surprised at last; for I do love the girl; and yet how archly she teazes me! Sometimes I think within myself that I am about to win the goal, when drop goes the curtain, and she's as far away as ever. How queenly she looks, nevertheless. I had much rather be refused by such a woman, to my own mortification, than to succeed with almost any other, if only for the pleasure of looking into those eyes, and reading in silent language her poetical and ethereal beauty-I might be happy but for this fellow, this Captain Bezan; he troubles me. Though there's no danger of her loving him, yet he seems to stand in my way, and to divert her fancy. Thank Heaven, she's too proud to love one so humble." Thus musing and talking aloud to himself, General Harero walked back and forth, and back and forth again in his apartment, until his orderly brought him the evening report of his division. A far different scene was presented on the other side of the great square, in the centre of which stands the shrubbery and fountain of the Plaza. Let the reader follow us now inside the massive stone walls of the Spanish barracks, to a dimly lighted room, where lay a wounded soldier upon his bed. The apartment gave token in its furniture of a very peculiar combination of literary and military taste. There were foils, long and short swords, pistols, hand pikes, flags, military boots and spurs; but there were also Shakspeare, Milton, the illustrated edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and a voluminous history of Spain, with various other prose and poetic volumes, in different languages. A guitar also lay carelessly in one corner, and a rich but faded bouquet of flowers filled a porcelain vase. At the foot of the bed where the wounded soldier lay, stood a boy with a quivering lip and swimming eye, as he heard the sick man moan in his uneasy sleep. Close by the head of the bed sat an assistant-surgeon of the regiment, watching what evidently seemed to be the turning point as to the sufferer's chance for life or death. As the boy and the surgeon watched him thus, gradually the opiate just administered began to affect him, and he seemed at last to fall into the deep and quiet sleep that is generally indicated by a low, regular and uninterrupted respiration. The boy had not only watched the wounded man, but had seemed also to half read the surgeon's thoughts, from time to time, and now marked the gleam of satisfaction upon his face as the medicine produced the desired effect upon the system of his patient. "How do you think Captain Bezan is, to-day?" whispered the boy, anxiously, as the surgeon's followed him noiselessly from the sick-room to the corridor without. "Very low, master Ruez, very low indeed; it is the most critical period of his sickness; but he has gone finely into that last nap, thanks to the medicine, and if he will but continue under its influence thus for a few hours, we may look for an abatement of this burning thirst and fever, and then--" "What, sir?" said the boy, eagerly, "what then?" "Why, he may get over those wounds, but it's a severe case, and would be little less than a miracle. I've seen sicker men live, and I've seen those who seemed less sick die." "Alas! then there is no way yet of deciding upon his case," said the boy. "None, Master Ruez; but we'll hope for the best; that is all that can be done." Ruez Gonzales walked out of the barracks and by the guard with a sad countenance, and whistling for Carlo, who had crouched by the parapet until his young master should come out, he turned his steps up the Calla de Mercaderes to his home. Ruez sought his sister's apartment, and throwing himself upon a lounge, seemed moody and unhappy. As he reclined thus, Isabella regarded him intently, as though she would read his thoughts without asking for them. There seemed to be some reason why she did not speak to him sooner, but at last she asked: "Well, Ruez, how is Captain Bezan, to-day? have you been to the barracks to inquire?" She said this in an assumed tone of indifference, but it was only assumed. "How is he?" repeated Ruez, after turning a quick glance of his soft blue eyes upon his sister's face, as though he would read her very soul. Isabella felt his keen glance, and almost blushed. "Yes, brother, pray, how is Captain Bezan, to-day? do you not know?" "His life hangs by a mere thread," continued the boy, sadly, resuming again his former position. "The surgeon told me that his recovery was very doubtful." "Did he tell you that, Ruez?" "Not those words, sister, but that which was equivalent to it, however." "He is worse, then, much worse?" she continued, in a hasty tone of voice. "Not worse, sister," replied Ruez. "I did not say that he was worse, but the fever rages still, and unless that abates within a few hours, death must follow." Isabella Gonzales sat herself down at an open balcony and looked off on the distant country in silence, so long, that Ruez and the hound both fell asleep, and knew not that she at last left her seat. The warmth and enervating influence of the atmosphere almost requires one to indulge in a siesta daily, in these low latitudes and sunny regions of the earth. "He is dying, then," said Isabella Gonzales, to herself, after having sought the silence and solitude of her own chamber, "dying and alone, far from any kindred voice or hand, or even friend, save those among his brothers in arms. And yet how much do we owe to him! He has saved all our lives-Ruez's first, and then both father's and mine; and in this last act of daring gallantry and bravery, he received his death wound. Alas! how fearful it seems to me, this strange picture. Would I could see and thank him once more-take from him any little commission that he might desire in his last moments to transmit to his distant home-for a sister, mother, or brother. Would that I could smooth his pillow and bathe his fevered brow; I know he loves me, and these attentions would be so grateful to him-so delightful to me. But alas! it would be considered a disgrace for me to visit him." Let the reader distinctly understand the feelings that actuated the heart of the lovely girl. The idea of loving the wounded soldier had never entered the proud but now humbled Isabella's thoughts. Could such a thought have been by any means suggested to her, she would have spurned it at once; but it was the woman's sympathy that she felt for one who would have doubtless sacrificed his life for her and hers; it was a simple act of justice she would have performed; and the pearly tear that now wet her cheek, was that of sympathy, and of sympathy alone. Beautiful trait, how glorious thou art in all; but how doubly glorious in woman; because in her nature thou art most natural, and there thou findest the congenial associations necessary for thy full conception. General Harero had judged Isabella Gonzales well when he said that there was no danger of her loving Lorenzo Bezan-she had too much pride! But let us look once more into the sick room we so lately left, where the wounded soldier lies suffering from his wounds. A volante has just stopped at the barracks' doors, and a girl, whose dress betokens her to be a servant, steps out, and telling her errand to the corporal of the guard, is permitted to pass the sentinel, and is conducted to the sick man's room. She brings some cooling draughts for his parched lips, and fragrant waters with which to battle his fevered temples and burning forehead. "Who sends these welcome gifts to Captain Bezan?" asked the assistant-surgeon. "My lady, sir." "And who is your lady, my good girl, if you please?" he asked. "The Senorita Isabella Gonzales, sir," was the modest reply of the maid. "Ah, yes; her brother has been here this afternoon, I remember," said the surgeon; "the sick man fell asleep then, and has not since awakened." "Heaven grant the sleep may refresh him and restore his strength," said the girl. "Amen, say I to that," continued the surgeon, "and amen says every man in the regiment." "Is he so popular as that?" asked the girl, innocently. "Popular, why he's the pet of the entire division. He's the best swordsman, best scholar, best-in short we could better lose half the other officers than Captain Bezan." "Do you think him any better than he was this morning?" "The sleep is favorable, highly favorable," replied the surgeon, approaching the bedside; "but in my judgment of the case, it must entirely depend upon the state in which he wakes." "Is there fear of waking him, do you think?" asked the girl, in a whisper, as she drew nearer to the bed, and looked upon the high, pale forehead and remarkably handsome features of the young soldier. Though the few days of confinement which he had suffered, and the acute pain he had endured by them, had hollowed his checks, yet he was handsome still. "No," replied the surgeon, to her question; "he will sleep quite long enough from the opiate, quite as long as I wish; and if he should wake even now, it would not be too soon." "How very slightly he breathes," continued the girl, observantly. "Very; but it is a relief to see him breathe in that way," replied the surgeon. "Stay, did he not murmur something, then?" asked the maid. "Possibly," replied the surgeon. "He has talked constantly during his delirium. Pray, my good girl, does he know your mistress very well?" "I think not," was the reply. "But why do you ask that?" "Because he seems constantly to dream and talk about her night and day. Indeed she is all he has spoken of since the height of his fever was upon him." "Indeed!" said the girl, musing at the surgeon's words abstractedly. "Have you not heard your mistress speak of him at all?" "Yes, that is, he once did the family some important service. Do you say that he talked of Senorita Isabella in the hours of his delirium?" "Yes, and in looking into his dressing-case, a few days since, to find some lint for his wounds, I discovered this," said tire surgeon, showing the girl a miniature, painted on ivory with great skill and beauty. "I think it must be a likeness of the Senorita Isabella," continued the surgeon, "though I have never seen her to know her but once." "It is indeed meant for her," said the girl, eagerly scanning the soft and delicate picture, which represented the Senorita Isabella Gonzales as sitting at an open window and gazing forth on the soft, dreamy atmosphere of a tropical sunset. "You think it is like her?" "O, very." "Well, I was sure that it was meant for the lady when I first saw it." "May I bathe his temples with this Florida water?" asked the girl, as she observed the sick man to move slightly and to moan. "Yes, it will have a tendency to rouse him gently, and it is now time for him to wake." The girl smoothed back the dark locks from the soldier's brow, and with her hands bathed his marble-like forehead and temples as gently as she might have done had he been an infant. The stimulating influence of the delicate spirits she was using was most delightful to the senses of the sick man, and a soft smile for a moment breathed his lips, as half awake and half dreaming, he returned thanks for the kindness, mingled with Isabella's name. The girl bent over his couch to hear the words, and the surgeon saw a tear drop upon the sick man's hand from the girl's eyes as she stood there! In a moment more the soldier seemed to arouse, and uttered a long deep sigh, as though relieved from some heavy weight that had long been oppressing him, both mentally and physically. He soon opened his eyes, and looked languidly about him, as if striving to recall his situation, and what had prostrated him thus. The girl stepped immediately back from the bedside, as she observed these tokens, and droping the rebosa that had been heretofore confined, veil-like to the crown of her head, and partially screened her features, but she showed most unmistakable signs of delight, as she read in the soldier's eyes that reason had once more returned to her throne, and that Lorenzo Bezan was once more rational. "How beautiful!" uttered the surgeon, half aloud, as he stood gazing at the girl. "If the mistress be as lovely as the maid, no wonder Captain Bezan has talked of her in his delirium!" "Step hither, step hither, he is awake!" whispered the girl to the surgeon. "And his reason too has returned," said the professional man, as soon as his eyes rested on the wounded soldier's face. "There is hope now!" "Thank Heaven for its infinite mercy!" said the girl, with an earnest though tremulous voice, as she gathered her rebosa about her face and prepared to depart. "He will recover now?" she asked, once more, as she turned towards the surgeon. "With care and good nursing we may hope so," was the reply of the attendant, who still looked earnestly into the face of the inquirer as he spoke. "My lady knew not the pecuniary condition of Captain Bezan at this time, and desired that this purse might be devoted to his convenience and comfort; but she also desires that this may not be known to him. May I trust to you, sir, in this little matter?" "It will give me great pleasure to keep the secret, and to improve the purse solely for the sick man's individual benefit," was the reply. "Thank you, sir; I see you are indeed his friend," she answered, as she bowed low and withdrew. Scarcely had the door closed after the visitor, before the surgeon, turning hastily once more to the miniature he had shown, examined it in various lights, now carefully within a part shaded by the hand, and now as a whole, and now near to, and then at a distance. "I more than suspected it," he exclaimed, with emphasis; "and now I know it; that lady was Senorita Isabella Gonzales, the belle of Havana!" And so indeed it was. Unable longer to restrain her desire to see him who had so infinitely served the interests of herself and her father's house, the proud girl had smothered every adverse prompting in her bosom, and donning her dressing-maid's attire, had thus dressed in humble costume, stepped into a volante, and ordering the calesaro to drive to the infantry barracks, where she knew the sick man was, had entered as we have seen, under pretext of bringing necessities from her pretended mistress to the wounded soldier. Her scheme had succeeded infinitely well, nor would she have betrayed herself to even the surgeon's observant eye, had it not been for that single tear! "What angel was that?" whispered the sick man, to his attendant, who now approached his bedside to administer some cooling draught to his parched lips. "You have been dreaming, my dear fellow," said the discreet surgeon, cautiously, "and are already much better; keep as quiet as possible, and we will soon have you out again. Here, captain, drink of this fruit water, it will refresh you." Too weak to argue or even to talk at all, the sick man drank as he was desired, and half closed his eyes again, as if he thought by thus doing he might once more bring back the sweet vision which had just gladdened his feeble senses. Like a true-hearted fellow as he was, the surgeon resolved not to reveal the lady's secret to any one-not even to his patient; for he saw that this was her earnest desire, and she had confided in part to him her errand there. But those who saw the surgeon in the after part of that day, marked that he bore a depressed and thoughtful countenance. Isabella Gonzales had filled his vision, and very nearly his heart, also, by her exquisite loveliness and beauty! CHAPTER VI. THE CHALLENGE. THE Tacon Theatre is one of the largest in the world, and is situated in the Paseo, just outside the city walls. You enter the parquet and first row of boxes from the level of the street, and above this are four ranges of boxes, besides seats in the parquet for six hundred persons. The gildings are elaborate and beautiful, and the frescoes are done by the first Italian artists; the whole being brilliantly lighted by an immense chandelier in the centre, and lesser ones pendant from the half moon of boxes, and supplied with gas. It is a superb establishment, and when it is filled with the beauty and fashion of the city, it is a brilliant sight indeed. It is nearly a month subsequent to the scene that closed the last chapter of our story, that we would carry the reader with us within the brilliantly lighted walls of the Tacon Theatre. How lively and gay is the prospect that presents itself to the eye-the glittering jewelry and diamonds of the fair senor's and senoritas, casting back the brilliant light, and rivalled in lustre by the sparkle of a thousand eyes of jet. The gilded and jewelled fans rustle audibly (what would a Spanish or Creole lady do without a fan?)-the orchestra dashes off in a gay and thrilling overture, intermingled by the voices, here and there, of merry groups of the audience, while the stately figures of the soldiers on duty are seen, with their many-colored dresses and caps, amid the throng and at the rear of the boxes. In a centre box of the first tier sits Senorita Isabella Gonzales, with her father, brother, General Harero, and a party of friends. All eyes are turned towards the peerless beauty-those of the ladies with envy at her extraordinary charms of person, and those of the young cavaliers and gentlemen with undisguised admiration at the picture of loveliness which met their eyes. Isabella herself sat with an easy and graceful air of unconsciousness, bowing low to the meaningless compliments and remarks of General Harero, and now smiling at some pleasantry of Ruez who was close to her side, and now again regarding for a moment the tall, manly figure of an officer near the proscenium box, who was on duty there, and evidently the officer of the evening. This may sound odd to a republican, but no assembly, no matter how unimportant, is permitted, except under the immediate eye and supervision of the military. "There is Captain Bezan," said Ruez, with undisguised pleasure, pointing towards the proscenium box where the young officer stood. "Yes, I see him, Ruez," replied Isabella, "and it is the first time he has been out on duty, I think, since his dangerous and protracted illness." "I know it is the first time," said the boy, "and I don't think he's hardly able to be out now. How very pale he is looking, Isabella." "Do you think he's very pale, Ruez?" she asked, turning towards the soldier, whose arm and sword were now outstretched, indicating some movement to a file of soldiers on the other side. "He's too ill, I should think, to be out in the night air." "One would certainly think so," answered Isabella. "His company was ordered out to-night," said Ruez, "and though the surgeon told him to remain in, he said he must be with his command." "You seem to know his business almost as well as himself, Master Ruez," said General Harero, who had overheard the remarks relating to Captain Bezan. "The captain and I are great friends, famous friends," replied Ruez, instantly. "He's a noble fellow, and just my idea of what a soldier should be. Don't you think him a fine soldier, General Harero?" asked the boy, most frankly. "Humph!" ejaculated the general, "why, yes, he's good enough for aught I know, professionally. Not quite rough and tough enough for a thorough bred one, I think," was the reply of his superior, who was plainly watching Isabella Gonzales's eyes while he spoke to the boy, and who was anything but pleased to see how often she glanced at Captain Bezan. "I don't know what you may mean by rough and tough, general," said Ruez, with evident feeling evinced in his voice; "but I know, very well, that Captain Bezan is as brave as a lion, and I don't believe there is a man in your service who can swim with such weight as he can do." "May be not," replied the general, with assumed indifference. "Then why say that he's not rough and tough? that means something," continued the boy, with not a little pertinacity in defence of his new friend. "There's some difference, let me tell you, Master Ruez, between facing an enemy with blazing gunpowder before your eyes, and merely swimming a while in cold water." "The very wounds that came so near proving fatal to Captain Bezan, prove that he can fight, general, as well as swim," said Ruez, rather smartly, in reply, while Isabella Gonzales glanced at her brother with evident tokens of satisfaction in her face. "You are enthusiastic in your friend's behalf," said General Harero, coldly. "And well I may be, since I not only owe him my own life, but that of my dear sister and father," continued Ruez, quite equal to the general's remark in any instance. "Certainly, you are right, Master Ruez," said General Harero, biting his lips, as he saw that Isabella was regarding him with more than ordinary attention. In the meantime Lorenzo Bezan remained, as in duty bound, at his post, while many an admiring eye was resting upon his fine figure and martial bearing. He was quite unconscious of being the subject of such particular remark and criticism within the bearing of her he so nearly worshipped-the beautiful Isabella Gonzales. Though his heart was with her every moment, and his thoughts were never off the box, even where she sat, yet it was only now and then that he permitted himself to turn his eyes, as though by accident, towards Don Gonzales and his daughter. He seemed to feel that General Harero was particularly regarding him, and he strove to be less thoughtful of Isabella, and if possible, more observant of his regular duty. It is the duty of the officer of the night for the occasion, to fill the post during the performance, where the young officer now stood, as it commanded a view of the entire house, and was the point, where, by an order from him, he could at once summon a much larger force under arms than that which under ordinary circumstances was required. Each division of the guard was set from this point, therefore Captain Bezan, as was his custom, remained here during the performance. "It must be very tedious to stay thus standing just there," remarked Ruez, pointing to Captain Bezan, and speaking to Isabella. "I should think so," was the reply of his sister, who had often turned that way, to the no small annoyance of the observant General Harero. "A soldier's duty," replied the general, "should content him with his post." It was nearly the middle of the evening's entertainment, when turning his eyes towards the box occupied by Don Gonzales and his party, Captain Bezan caught the eye of Isabella Gonzales, and at the same time observed distinctly the peculiar wave of the fan, with which a Spanish lady invites in a friendly manner the approach of a friend of the opposite sex. He could not be mistaken, and yet was it possible that the belle of all that proud assemblage deigned openly to notice and compliment him thus in public? Impelled by the ardor of his love, and the hope that he had rightly construed the signal, he approached the box from the rear, and stepping to its back, gave some indication to one of his orderlies sufficiently loud in tone to cause Isabella and her father to turn their heads, as they at once recognized the voice of the young officer. "Ah! Captain Bezan," said Don Gonzales, heartily, as he caught the young officer's eye, "glad to see you once more with epaulets on-upon my soul I am." "Thank you, sir," said the soldier, first saluting in due form his superior, and then bowing low and gracefully to Isabella Gonzales, who honored him with a gracious smile. "You are looking comparatively well, captain," said Don Gonzales, kindly. "O yes, sir, I am as well as ever, now," replied the officer, cheerfully. Ruez Gonzales loved Lorenzo Bezan like a brother; first, because he had so materially served him at imminent peril of his own life, and secondly, because he saw in him just such traits of character as attracted his young heart, and aroused it to a spirit of emulation. With the privilege of boyhood, therefore, he sprang over the seats, half upsetting General Harero to get at the young officer's side, which, having accomplished, he seized his hand familiarly. General Harero frowned at this familiarity, and his face grew doubly dark and frowning, as he saw now how closely Isabella was observing the young officer all the while. "I trust you find yourself quite recovered, captain, from your severe illness," said Isabella, reaching by her father, as she addressed Lorenzo Bezan kindly. "I am quite recovered, lady; better, if possible, than before," he replied, respectfully. "Master Ruez has been a constant nurse to me, thoughtful and kind," he continued, as he looked down upon the boy's handsome features with real affection lighting up his own pale face. Ruez only drew the closer to his side at these words, while his father, Don Gonzales, watched both the soldier and his boy with much interest for a moment, then turning to General Harero, he made some earnest and complimentary remark, evidently referring to Captain Bezan, though uttered in a low tone of voice, which seemed to increase the cloud on the general's brow. But the young soldier was too much interested in gazing upon the lovely features of Isabella, to notice this; he seemed almost entranced by the tender vision of beauty that was before him. At the same moment some slight disturbance occurred in a distant part of the extensive building, which afforded a chance for General Harero to turn quickly to the young soldier, and in a sharp tone say: "Your duty calls you hence, sir!" For it moment the blood mantled to the officer's face at the tone of this remark, but suppressing his feelings, whatever they might be, with a respectful acknowledgement of the order, Lorenzo Bezan hastened to the quarter from whence the noise had come, and by at simple direction obviated their trouble immediately. But he remembered the bitter and insulting air of his superior, and it cut him to the quick, the more keenly too as having been given in the presence of Isabella Gonzales. As he returned from this trifling duty, he necessarily again passed the box where were Don Gonzales, amid his party, and seeing Ruez standing there awaiting his return, he again paused for a moment to exchange at word with the boy, and once more received a pleasant greeting from Isabella and her father. At this but reasonable conduct, General Harero seemed nettled and angry beyond all control, and turning once more towards Lorenzo Bezan, with a face black with suppressed rage, said: "It strikes me, sir, that Captain Bezan would consult his own interest, and be best performing his ordinary duty by maintaining his post at the proscenium!" "I proposed to return there immediately, General Harero, and stopped here but for one moment," said the young officer, with a burning cheek, at the intended insult. "Shall I put my words in the form of an order?" continued General Harero, seeing that Bezan paused to assist Ruez once more over the seats to his position in the box. "It is not necessary, general," replied the officer, biting his lips with vexation. "I declare, general," said Isabella, unable longer to remain quiet at his repeated insults to the young officer, "you soldiers are so very peremptory, that you half disconcert me." "It is sometimes necessary," was the quick and stern reply, "to be prompt with young and headstrong officers who do not well understand their duty, or rather, I may say, who knowing their duty, fail to perform it," emphasizing the last part of the sentence. This was intended not only for the lady's ear, but also for that of Lorenzo Bezan, who barely succeeded in commanding his feelings for the moment, so far as to turn silently away to return to his post of observation. The effect of the scene was not lost upon the high-spirited beauty. Isabella had marked well the words and tone of voice with which General Harero spoke, and she saw, too, the effect of his words upon the free, manly spirit of the young soldier, and from that moment, either intentionally, or by accident, she paid no further attention during the whole evening to General Harero, neither turning towards him, nor even speaking to him at all. The general, of course, observed this particularly, desiring as he did to stand in the best possible light as it regarded Isabella's favor, and imputing her conduct to the presence of Captain Bezan, and the conversation that had taken place relative to his duty between Captain Bezan and himself; he hated the young officer more than ever, as being in some degree the cause of preventing the consummation of his hopes as it regarded the favor of the lady. He had long cherished a regard for the beautiful daughter of Don Gonzales, for her personal charms, as well as the rich coffers which her father could boast. As the reader has already surmised, he had been a constant and ardent, though unsuccessful suitor, for no inconsiderable period. It will not, therefore, be wondered at, that he should have felt very sensitive upon this point. As he passed Lorenzo Bezan, therefore, at the close of the performance, in going out of the theatre that night, while still in the most immediate proximity to Isabella Gonzales, her father, and the party with them, he took occasion to speak very loud, and in the most peremptory manner to him, saying: "I find you exceedingly lax, Captain Bezan, as it regards the exercise of your duty and command. You will report yourself to me, after morning parade, for such orders as shall be deemed proper for you under the circumstances, as a public reproof for dereliction from duty." "Yes, general," replied the young officer, with the usual salute to his superior. Still curbing his feelings, the young officer contented himself with a kind glance from Isabella Gonzales, who had overheard the last act of petty tyranny on the general's part, and for that very reason redoubled her passing notice and smiles upon Captain Bezan. The officer marched his company to their barracks, and then sought the silence and quiet of his own room, to think over the events of the past evening. His temples burned still with the angry flush that the insult of his superior officer had produced there, and throwing himself into a chair, he recalled the whole scene at the theatre, from his answering Isabella's friendly signal, until the time when General Harero passed him at the entrance, and for the last time reproved him. He weighed the cause of these repeated attacks upon him by his superior, and could at once divine the cause of them. That was obvious to his mind at the first glance. He could not but perceive the strong preference that General Harero evinced for Isabella Gonzales, nor could he disguise the fact to his own heart that she cared not a farthing for him. It required but a very simple capacity to understand this; any party, not interested in the general's favor, could easily discern it. But the general counted upon his high rank, and also upon the fact that his family was a good one, though his purse was not very long. Lorenzo Bezan remembered not alone the annoyance of that evening. He had not yet forgotten the insult from the general in the Paseo, and coupling that with other events, he saw very well that his commanding officer was decidedly jealous of him. He saw, too, that there was not any chance of matters growing any better, but that on the contrary they must continue to grow worse and worse, since be had determined, come what might, he should pursue his love with the fair lady Isabella. Could he bear to be insulted thus at every turn by such a man as General Harero? No! He felt himself, in courage, intellectual endowments, birth, ay, everything but the rank of a soldier, to be more than his equal. His heart beat quickly when he recollected that the latter taunt and threat had been given in the presence of Don Gonzales and his daughter. The malignity, the unfairness of this attack upon him at this time, was shameful, and deserved to be punished. Brooding upon these things alone and at a late hour of the night, he at last wrought himself up to such a point, perhaps in some degree aggravated by his late wounds, which were hardly yet healed, that he determined he would challenge General Harero to martial and mortal conflict. True this was preposterous in one of his rank, as contending against another so vastly his superior in position and influence; but his feelings had begun to assume an uncontrollable character; he could not bear to think that he had been thus insulted before Isabella Gonzales. It seemed to him that she would think less of him if he did not resent and punish such an insult. In the heat of his resentment, therefore, he sat down and wrote to his superior as follows: "GENERAL HARERO: Sir-Having received, at different periods and under peculiar circumstances, insults from you that neither become me as a gentleman tamely to submit to, nor you as a soldier to give, I do hereby demand satisfaction. It would be worse than folly in me to pretend that I do not understand the incentive that governs you-the actuating motive that has led to these attacks upon me. In my duty as an officer I have never failed in the least; this you know very well, and have even allowed before now, to my very face. Your attacks upon me are, therefore, plainly traceable to a spirit of jealousy as to my better success with the Senorita Gonzales than yourself. Unless I greatly mistake, the lady herself has discovered this spirit within your breast. "Now, sir, the object of this note is to demand of you to lay aside the station you hold, and to forget our relative ranks as officers in the Spanish army, and to meet me on the platform of our individual characters as gentlemen, and render me that satisfaction for the insult which you have placed upon me, which I have a right to demand. A line from you and a friend can easily settle this business. LORENZO BEZAN." This note was carefully sealed and addressed, and so despatched as to reach its destination early on the following morning. It was a most unfortunate epistle for Captain Bezan, and could the young officer have calmly considered the subject, he would never have been so imprudent as to send it to his superior. So long as he bore the petty annoyances of General Harero without murmuring he was strong, that the step he had now taken greatly weakened his cause and position. Perhaps he partly realized this as he sent the note away on the subsequent morning; but he felt too much pride to relent, and so only braced himself to meet the result. The note gave General Harero what he wanted, and placed Captain Bezan completely at his mercy. It gave him the opportunity to do that which he most desired, viz., to arrest and imprison the young officer. Consulting with the governor general, merely by way of strengthening himself, he took his opinion upon the subject before he made any open movement in the premises. This was a wary step, and served in some degree to rob the case of any appearance of personality that it might otherwise have worn to Tacon's eye. As it was, the wary old soldier felt some degree of suspicion in the matter, as was evident by his remarks to the general, who brought the charge. It did not seem very natural that one who had just experienced such favor and promotion should so early be guilty of at breach of discipline. He was accustomed to judge of men and matters with care, and judiciously, and for this reason he now rested his head upon his hand for a moment, upon the table by his side, and after a pause of some minutes thus passed in silence, during which he had considered the verbal charge brought against Lorenzo Bezan by his commanding officer, he once more cast a searching glance upon General Harero. He had never detected him in any small or unfair business, but he had suspected him of being capable of such things. "Is this not the young man whom I have lately promoted for gallantry?" asked the governor-general. "Excellency, yes." "It is strange that he should be guilty of such insubordination." "Very strange, excellency." "You know not the reason that has induced this conduct?" "No--that is--" continued General Harero, as he saw Tacon's piercing eye bent upon him, "I can easily presume." "Have you the letter of challenge that Captain Bezan sent?" "Excellency, yes." "I will see it." "Excellency, at your pleasure," said the general, hoping not to have been obliged to show this document. "Now, if you please, general." "At once, excellency." General Harero produced the letter, and handed it with something very like a blush tinging his sunburnt check, to his commander-in-chief. Tacon read it slowly, pausing now and then to re-read a line, and then, remarked, as he slowly folded it up once more: "A love affair." "Why, your excellency will easily understand that the young officer has dared to lift his eyes to one above his rank, and she cares nothing for him. His causes for complaint are all imaginary." "Well, be this as it may, in that I shall not interfere. He has been guilty of a serious breach of discipline and must suffer for it. You may take the necessary steps at once in the matter, general." "Excellency, yes," said General Harero, hastening away with secret delight, and at once taking such measures as should carry out his own wishes and purposes. The result of the matter was, that before ten o'clock that morning the note conveying the challenge was answered by an aid-de-camp and a file of soldiers, who arrested Captain Bezan for insubordination, and quietly conducted him to the damp underground cells of the military prison, where he was left to consider the new position in which he found himself, solitary and alone, with a straw bed, and no convenience or comfort about him. And it is not surprising that such a situation should have been particularly suggestive to a mind so active as that of Lorenzo Bezan. CHAPTER VII. THE PRISONER. TO know and fully realize the bitter severity exercised in the Spanish prisons, both at Madrid and in Havana, one must have witnessed it. Cold, dark and dreary cells, fit only to act as supports to the upper and better lighted portions of the dismal structure, are filled by those persons who have incurred in any way the displeasure of the military board of commission. Here, in one of the dampest and most dreary cells, immured with lizards, tarantulas, and other vile and unwholesome reptiles, Captain Bezan, but so very recently-risen from a sick bed, and yet smarting under his wounds, found himself. He could now easily see the great mistake he had made in thus addressing General Harero as he had done, and also, as he knew very well the rigor of the service to which he was attached when he considered for a moment, he had not the least possible doubt that his sentence would be death. As a soldier he feared not death; his profession and experience, which had already made him familiar with the fell destroyer in every possible form and shape, had taught him a fearlessness in this matter; but to leave the air that Isabella Gonzales breathed, to be thus torn away from the bright hopes that she had given rise to in his breast, was indeed agony of soul to him now. In the horizon of his love, for the first time since his heart had known the passion, the sun had risen, and the genial rays of hope, like young spring, had commended to warm and vivify his soul. Until within a very short time she whom he loved was to him as some distant star, that might be worshipped in silence, but not approached; but now, by a series of circumstances that looked like providential interference in his behalf, immense barriers had been removed. Thinking over these matters, he doubly realized the misstep he had taken, and the heart of the lone prisoner was sad in the depths of his dreary dungeon. Many days passed on, and Lorenzo Bezan counted each hour as one less that he should have to live upon the earth. At first all intercourse was strictly denied him with any person outside the prison walls, but one afternoon he was delighted as the door of his cell was thrown open, and in the next moment Ruez sprang into his arms. "My dear, dear friend!" said the boy, with big tears starting from his eyes, and his voice trembling with mingled emotions of pleasure and of grief. "Why, Ruez," said the prisoner, no less delighted than was the boy, "how was it possible for you to gain admittance to me? You are the first person I have seen, except the turnkey, in my prison." "Everybody refused me; General Harero refused father, who desired that I might come and see if he could not in some way serve you. At last I went to Tacon himself. O, I do love that man! Well, I told him General Harero would not admit me, and when I told him all--" "All of what, Ruez?" "Why, about you and me, and sister and father. He said, 'Boy, you are worthy of confidence and love; here, take this, it will pass you to the prison, and to Captain Bezan's cell;' and he wrote me this on a card, and said I could come and see you by presenting it to the guard, when I pleased." "Tacon is just, always just," said Lorenzo Bezan, "and you, Ruez, are a dear and true friend." As the soldier said this, he turned to dash away a tear-confinement and late sickness had rendered him still weak. "Captain?" "Master Ruez." "I hate General Harero." "Why so?" "Because sister says it is by his influence that you are here." "Did Isabella say that?" "Yes." "Well, tell me of your father and sister, Ruez. You know I am a hermit here." Lorenzo Bezan had already been in prison for more than ten days, when Ruez thus visited him, and the boy had much to tell him: how General Harero had called repeatedly at the house, and Isabella had totally refused to see him; and how his father had tried to reason with General Harero about Captain Bezan, and how the general had declared that nothing but blood could wash out the stain of insubordination. With the pass that the governor-general had given him, Ruez Gonzales came often to visit the imprisoned soldier, but as the day appointed for the trial drew near, Ruez grew more and more sad and thoughtful at each visit, for, boy though he was, he felt certain of Lorenzo Bezan's fate. He was not himself unfamiliar with military examinations, for he was born and brought up within earshot of the spot where these scenes were so often enacted by order of the military commission, and he trembled for his dearly loved friend. At length the trial came; trial! we might with more propriety call it a farce, such being the actual character of an examination before the military commission of Havana, where but one side is heard, and condemnation is sure to follow, as was the case so lately with one of our own countrymen (Mr. Thrasher), and before him the murder by this same tribunal of fifty Americans in cold blood! Trial, indeed! Spanish courts do not try people; they condemn them to suffer--that is their business. But let us confine ourselves to our own case; and suffice it to say, that Captain Bezan was found guilty, and at once condemned to die. His offence was rank insubordination, or mutiny, as it was designated in the charge; but in consideration of former services, and his undoubted gallantry and bravery, the sentence read to the effect, as a matter of extraordinary leniency to him, that it should be permitted for him to choose the mode of his own death-that is, between the garote and being shot by his comrades. "Let me die like a soldier," replied the young officer, as the question was thus put to him, before the open court, as to the mode of death which he chose. "You are condemned, then, Lorenzo Bezan," said the advocate of the court, "to be shot by the first file of your own company, upon the execution field." This sentence was received with a murmur of disapprobation from the few spectators in the court, for the condemned was one of the most beloved men in the service. But the young officer bowed his head calmly to the sentence, though at close observer might have seen a slight quiver of his handsome lips, as he struggled for an instant with a single inward thought. What that thought was, the reader can easily guess,--it was the last link that bound him to happiness. Lorenzo Bezan had no fear of death, and perhaps estimated his life quite as lightly as any other person who made a soldier's calling his profession; but since his heart had known the tender promptings of love, life had discovered new charms for him; he lived and breathed in a new atmosphere. Before he had received the kind considerations of the peerless daughter of Don Gonzales, he could have parted the thread of his existence with little regret. But now, alas! it was very different; life was most sweet to him, because it was so fully imbued with love and hope in the future. Wild as the idea might have seemed to any one else, the young officer had promised his own heart, that with ordinary success, and provided no extraordinary difficulty should present itself in his path, to win the heart and love of the proud and beautiful Isabella Gonzales. He had made her character and disposition his constant study, was more familiar, perhaps, with her strong and her weak points than was she herself, and believed that he knew how best to approach her before whom so many, vastly higher than himself, had knelt in vain, and truth to say, fortune seemed to have seconded his hopes. It was the death of all these hopes, the dashing to earth of the fairy future he had dreamed of, that caused his proud lip to tremble for a moment. It was no fear of bodily ill. General Harero had accomplished his object, and had triumphed over the young officer, whose impetuosity had placed him within his power. The sentence of death cancelled his animosity to Lorenzo Bezan, and he now thought that a prominent cause of disagreement and want of success between the Senorita Isabella Gonzales and himself was removed. Thus reasoning upon the subject, and thus influenced, he called at the house of Don Gonzales on the evening following that of Captain Bezan's sentence, expecting to be greeted with the usual courtesy that had been extended to him. Ruez was the first one whom he met of the household, on being ushered to the drawing-room by a slave. "Ah! Master Ruez, how do you do?" said the general, pleasantly. "Not well at all!" replied the boy, sharply, and with undisguised dislike. "I'm sorry to learn that. I trust nothing serious has affected you." "But there has, though," said the boy, with spirit; "it is the rascality of human nature;" at the same moment he turned his back coldly on the general and left the room. "Well, that's most extraordinary," mused the general, to himself; "the boy meant to hit me, beyond a doubt." "Ah, Don Gonzales," he said to the father, who entered the room a moment after, "glad to see you; have had some unpleasant business on my hands that has kept me away, you see." "Yes, very unpleasant," said the old gentleman, briefly and coldly. "Well, it's all settled now, Don Gonzales, and I trust we shall be as good friends as ever." Receiving no reply whatever to this remark, and being left to himself, General Harero looked after Don Gonzales, who had retired to a balcony in another part of the room, for a moment, and then summoning a slave, sent his card to Senorita Isabella, and received as an answer that she was engaged. Repulsed in every quarter, he found himself most awkwardly situated, and thought it about time to beat a retreat. As General Harero rose and took his leave in the most formal manner, he saw that his pathway towards the Senorita Isabella's graces was by no means one of sunshine alone, but at that moment it presented to his view a most cloudy horizon. The unfortunate connection of himself with the sentence of Captain Bezan, now assumed its true bearing in his eye. Before, he had only thought of revenge, and the object also of getting rid of his rival. Now he fully realized that it had placed him in a most unpleasant situation, as it regarded the lady herself. Indeed he felt that had not the matter gone so far, he would gladly have compromised the affair by a public reprimand to the young officer, such as should sufficiently disgrace him publicly to satisfy the general's pride. But it was too late to regret now, too late for him to turn back-the young soldier must die! In the meantime Lorenzo Bezan was remanded to his dismal prison and cell, and was told to prepare for the death that would soon await him. One week only was allowed him to arrange such matters as he desired, and then he was informed that he would be shot by his comrades in the execution field, at the rear of the city barracks. It was a sad and melancholy fate for so young and brave an officer; but the law was imperative, and there was no reprieve for him. The cold and distant reception that General Harero had received at Don Gonzales's house since the sentence had been publicly pronounced against Captain Lorenzo Bezan, had afforded unmistakable evidence to him that if his victim perished on account of the charge he had brought against him, his welcome with Isabella and her father was at an end. But what was to be done? As we have said, he had gone too far to retrace his steps in the matter. Now if it were but possible to get out of the affair in some way, he said to himself, he would give half his fortune. Puzzling over this matter, the disappointed general paced back and forth in his room until past midnight, and at last having tired himself completely, both mentally and physically, he carelessly threw off his clothes, and summoning his orderly, gave some unimportant order, and prepared to retire for the night. But scarcely had he locked his door and drawn the curtains of his windows, when a gentle knock at the door caused him once more to open it, when an orderly led in a person who was closely wrapped up in a cloak, and after saluting respectfully left the new comer alone with his superior. "Well, sir, did you obtain me those keys?" asked General Harero. "I did, and have them here, general," was the reply. "You say there is no need of my entering at the main postern." "None. This first key opens the concealed gate in the rear of the guard house, and this the door that leads to the under range of the prison. You will require no guide after what I have already shown you. But you have promised me the fifty ounces." "I have." "And will hold me harmless?" "At all hazards." "Then here are the keys." "Stay; it would be as well for you to be about at the time specified, to avert any suspicions or immediate trouble." "I will be on the alert, general. You may rely upon me in this business, since you pay for my services so liberally." "Good night, sir." "Good night, general." And gathering his cloak about him, the stranger vanished stealthily through the door, which General Harero closed and locked after him. Having consummated the preliminaries to some piece of rascality or secret business that he did not care to make public. More than half of the time allotted to the prisoner for preparation in closing up his connection with life, had already transpired since his sentence had been pronounced, and he had now but three days left him to live. Ruez Gonzales, improving the governor-general's pass, had visited the young officer daily, bringing with him such luxuries and necessities to the condemned as were not prohibited by the rules of the prison, and which were most grateful to him. More so, because, though this was never intimated to him, or, indeed, appeared absolutely obvious, he thought that oftentimes Isabella had selected these gifts, if indeed she had not prepared them with her own hands. A certain delicacy of feeling prevented him from saying as much to her brother, or of even questioning him upon any point, however trivial, as to any matter of a peculiar nature concerning Isabella. Sometimes he longed to ask the boy about the subject, but he could not bring himself to do so; he felt that it would be indelicate and unpleasant to Isabella, and therefore he limited himself to careful inquiries concerning her health and such simple matters as he might touch upon, without risk of her displeasure. Lorenzo Bezan took the announcement of his fate calmly. He felt it his duty to pray for strength, and he did so, and sought in the holy silence and confidence of prayer for that abiding and inward assurance that may carry us through the darkness and the valley of death. Ruez, poor boy, was almost distracted at the realization of the young soldier's fate. Boy though he was, he had yet the feelings, in many respects, of manhood, and though before Lorenzo Bezan he said nothing of his coming fate, and indeed struggled to appear cheerful, and to impart a pleasant influence to the prisoner, yet when once out of his presence, he would cry for the hour together, and Isabella even feared for the child's reason, unless some change should take place ere long. When his mother was taken from him, and their home made desolate by the hand of death, Ruez, in the gentleness and tenderness of his heart, had been brought so low by grief, that it was almost miraculous that he had survived. The influence of that sorrow, as we have before observed, had never left him. His father's assiduous care and kindness, and Isabella's gentle and sisterly love for him, had in part healed the wound, when now his young and susceptible heart was caused thus to bleed anew. He loved Lorenzo Bezan with a strange intensity of feeling. There was an affinity in their natures that seemed to draw them together, and it was strange that strength of consolation and happiness that weak and gentle boy imparted to the stern soldier! In his association of late with Ruez, the condemned officer felt purified and carried back to childhood and his mother's knee; the long vista of eventful years was blotted out from his heart, the stern battles he had fought in, the blood he had seen flow like water, his own deep scars and many wounds, the pride and ambition of his military career, all were forgotten, and by Ruez's side he was perhaps more of a child at heart than the boy himself. How strange are our natures; how susceptible to outward influence; how attunable to harshness or to plaintive notes! We are but as the �olian harp, and the winds of heaven play upon us what times they will! It was midnight in the prison of Havana; nought could be heard by the listening ear save the steady pace of the sentinels stationed at the various angles of the walls and entrances of the courtyard that surrounded the gloomy structure. It was a calm, tropical light, and the moon shone so brightly as to light up the grim walls and heavy arches of the building, almost as bright as if it were day. Now and then a sentinel would pause, and resting upon his musket, look off upon the silvery sea, and perhaps dream of his distant Castilian home, then starting again, he would rouse himself, shoulder the weapon, and pace his round with measured stride. Lorenzo Bezan, the condemned, had knelt down and offered up a prayer, silent but sincere, for Heaven's protection in the fearful emergency that beset him; he prayed that he might die like a brave man, yet with a right feeling and reconciled conscience with all mankind. Then throwing himself upon his coarse straw bed, that barely served to separate him from the damp earthen floor, he had fallen asleep-a calm, deep, quiet sleep, so silent and childlike as almost to resemble death itself. He had not slept there for many minutes, before there was heard a most curious noise under the floor of his prison. At first it did not awaken him, but partially doing so, caused him to move slightly, and in at half conscious, half dreamy state, to suggest some cause for the unusual phenomenon. It evidently worked upon his brain and nervous system, and he dreamed that the executioner had come for him, that his time for life had already expired, and the noise he heard was that of the officers and men, come to execute the sentence that had been pronounced upon him by the military commission. By degrees the noise gradually increased, and heavy bolts and bars seemed to be removed, and a gleam of light to stream across the cell, while the tall form of a man, wrapped in a military cloak, came up through the floor where a stone slab gave way to the pressure applied to it from below. Having gained a footing, the new comer now turned the light of a dark lantern in the direction of the corner where the prisoner was sleeping. The figure approached the sleeping soldier, and bending over him, muttered to himself, half aloud: "Sleeping, by Heaven! he sleeps as quietly as though he was in his camp-bedstead, and not even under arrest." As the officer thus spoke-for his cloak now falling from one shoulder, partially exposed his person and discovered his rank-the strong light of the lantern fell full upon the sleeper's face, and caused him suddenly to awake, and partially rising from the floor, he said: "So soon! has my time already come? I thought that it was not yet. Well, I am ready, and trust to die like a soldier!" "Awake, Captain Bezan, awake!" said the new comer. "I have news for you!" "News!" "Yes." "What possible news can there be that I can feel interested in?" "Rise, and I will tell you," replied the other, while he shaded the lantern with his hand. "Speak on, I am listening," replied Lorenzo Bezan, rising to his feet. "I would speak of your liberty." "My liberty? I am condemned to die, and do you come to mock me?" "Be patient; the way is open, and you may yet escape from death." "And what should interest you, General Harero, in my fate? Your purpose is gained; I am removed from your path; why do you visit me thus at this still hour of the night, and in so extraordinary a manner by a secret entrance to my cell?" "All this matters nothing. I came not here to answer questions. On one condition you are free. I have the means of your escape at hand." "Name the condition," said the prisoner, though without exhibiting the least interest. "There is a vessel which will sail for America with the morning tide; swear if I liberate you that you will take passage in her, and never return to this island." "Never!" said the soldier, firmly. "I will never leave those I love so dearly." "You refuse these terms?" continued the general, in a hoarse tone of voice. "I do, most unhesitatingly. Life would be nothing to me if robbed of its brightest hope." "You will not consider this for a moment? it is your only chance." "I am resolved," said Lorenzo Bezan; "for more than one reason I am determined." "Then die for your obstinacy," said General Harero, hoarse with rage and disappointment. Thus saying, General Harero descended into the secret passage from whence he had just emerged, and replacing the stone above his head, the prisoner heard the grating of the rusty bolts and bars as they were closed after him. They grated, too, most harshly upon his heart, as well as upon their own hinges, for they seemed to say, "thus perishes your last hope of reprieve-your last possibility of escape from the fate that awaits you." "No matter," said he, to himself, at last, "life would be of little value to me now if deprived of the presence of Isabella, and that dear boy, Ruez, and therefore I decided none too quickly as I did. Besides, in honor, I could hardly accept my life at his hands on any terms-he whom I have to thank for all my misfortunes. No, no; let them do their worst, I know my fate is sealed; but I fear it not. I will show them that I can die as I have lived, like a soldier; they shall not triumph in my weakness so long as the blood flows through my veins." With this reflection and similar thoughts upon his mind, he once more threw himself upon the hard damp floor, and after thinking long and tenderly of Isabella Gonzales and her brother, he once more dropped to sleep, but not until the morning gun had relieved the sentinels, and the drum had beat the reveille. CHAPTER VIII. THE FAREWELL. THE apartment in Don Gonzales's house appropriated as Ruez's sleeping room, led out of the main reception hall, and adjoined that of his sister Isabella. Both rooms looked out upon the Plato, and over the Gulf Stream and outer portions of the harbor, where the grim Moro tower and its cannon frown over the narrow entrance of the inner bay. One vessel could hardly work its way in ship shape through the channel, but a thousand might lay safely at anchor inside this remarkably land-locked harbor. At the moment when we would introduce the reader to the house of the rich old Don Gonzales, Isabella had thrown herself carelessly upon a couch in her room, and half sighing, half dreaming while awake, was gazing out upon the waters that make up from the Caribbean Sea, at the southward, and now and then following with her eyes the trading crafts that skimmed the sparkling waters to the north. As she gazed thus, she suddenly raised herself to a sitting position, as she heard the suppressed and most grievous sobs of some one near the room where she was, and rising, she approached the window to discover the cause of this singular sound. The noise that had excited her curiosity came from the next chamber, evidently, and that was her brother's. Stealing softly round to the entrance of his chamber, she went quietly in and surprised Ruez as lay grieving upon a couch with eyes filled with tears. "Why, Ruez, what does this mean? Art sick, brother, that you are so depressed?" asked the beautiful girl, seating herself down by his side. "Ay, sister, sick at heart," said the boy, with a deep drawn sigh. "And why, Ruez?" she continued, gently parting the hair from his forehead. "How can you ask such a question, sister? do you not know already?" he asked, turning his deep blue eyes full upon her. "Perhaps not, brother," replied Isabella, struggling to suppress a sigh, while she turned her face away from her brother's searching glance. "Do you not know, sister, that to-morrow Captain Bezan is sentenced to die?" "True," said Isabella Gonzales, with an involuntary shudder, "I do know it, Ruez." "And further, sister," continued the boy, sagely, "do you not know that we have been the indirect cause of this fearful sacrifice?" "I do not see that, brother," said Isabella, quickly, as she turned her beautiful face fully upon her brother, inquiringly. Ruez Gonzales looked like one actuated by some extraordinary inspiration; his eyes were wonderfully bright, his expression that of years beyond his actual age, and his beautiful sister, while she gazed thus upon him at that moment, felt the keen and searching glance that he bestowed upon her. She felt like one in the presence of a superior mind; she could not realize her own sensations. The boy seemed to read her very soul, as she stood thus before him. It was more than a minute before he spoke, and seemed to break the spell; but at last-and it seemed an age to Isabella Gonzales-he did so, and said: "Sister?" "Well, Ruez?" "Captain Bezan loves you." "Perhaps so." "I say he does love you." "It is possible." "I say he loves you," continued the boy, almost sternly. "Well, brother, what of that?" she asked, with assumed indifference. "It is that, sister, which has led General Harero to persecute him as he has done, and it is that which has led him like a noble spirit to turn to bay." A moment's pause ensued. "Is it not so, sister?" he asked, still looking keenly at her. "Have you not yourself intimated that Captain Bezan was to suffer owing to his interest and services for us?" "You do indeed speak truly, brother," said the lovely girl, breathing more quickly, and half amazed at Ruez's penetration and prophetic manner of speech. "Alas!" said the boy, once more relapsing into his former mood, "that he might be saved!" "Has our father seen the governor-general, Ruez?" asked his sister, earnestly. "Yes." "And to no effect?" "None. Tacon, you know, is most strict in his administration of justice, and he says that if he were to pardon one such breach of military discipline as Captain Bezan as been guilty of, the whole army would at once be impregnated with insubordination." "Would that I could see Captain Bezan, if only for one single moment," murmured Isabella Gonzales, half aloud, yet only to herself. "Do you mean so, sister?" asked Ruez, catching quickly at his sister's words, and with an undisguised expression of delight written upon his handsome countenance. "Yes, no, brother, that is to say, if I could see him with propriety, you know, Ruez; that is what I meant to say." "Nothing easier, than for you to do so, if you desire it," said the boy. "Do you think so, Ruez?" said his sister, somewhat eagerly. "Certainly, Isabella, my pass will serve for you with a trifling disguise." "But our difference in size; besides, you know that my voice--" "Will not be noticed by those stiff sentries, or the turnkey," interrupted the boy. "They do not know me at all, and would not suspect you." "Ah! but I can see many impediments in the way of one of my sex," added Isabella Gonzales, with a deep sigh. Captain Lorenzo Bezan awoke on the day previous to that appointed for his execution, with cheerful spirit. He found no guilt in his heart, he felt that he had committed no crime, that his soul was free and untrammelled. His coarse breakfast of rude cassava root and water was brought to him at a late hour, and having partaken of sufficient of this miserable food to prevent the gnawings of hunger, he now sat musing over his past life, and thinking seriously of that morrow which was to end his career upon earth forever. A strange reverie for a man to be engaged in a most critical period-the winding up of his earthly career. "I wonder," said he to himself, somewhat curiously, "why Ruez does not come to-day? it is his hour-ay, must be even past the time, and the boy loves me too well to neglect me now, when I am so near my end. Hark! is that his step? No; and yet it must be; it is too light for the guard or turnkey. O yes, that is my door, certainly, and here he is, sure enough. I knew he would come." As the prisoner said this, the door slowly opened on its rusty and creaking hinges, and the turnkey immediately closed it after the new comer, who was somewhat closely wrapped in the profuse folds of a long Spanish cloak. Well, Ruez," said Captain Bezan, quite leisurely, and without turning his head towards the door, "I had begun to fear that you would not come to-day. You know you are the only being I see, except the turnkey, and I'm quite sensitive about your visits, my dear boy. However, you are here, at last; sit down." "Captain Bezan, it appears to me that you do not welcome me very cordially," said Isabella Gonzales, in reply, and a little archly. "Lady!" said the prisoner, springing to his feet as though he had been struck by an electric shock, "Senorita Isabella Gonzales, is it possible that you have remembered me at such a time-me, who am so soon to die?" Isabella Gonzales had now thrown back the ample folds of the cloak she wore, and lifting her brother's cap from her head, her beautiful hair fell into its accustomed place, and with a slight blush tinging either cheek, she stood before the young soldier in his cell, an object of ineffable interest and beauty. "Heaven bless you, lady," said the prisoner, kneeling at her feet. "Nay. I pray you, sir, Captain Bezan, do not kneel at such a time." "Ah! lady, how can I thank you in feeble words for this sweet ray of sunshine that you have cast athwart my dark and dreary path? I no longer remember that I am to die-that my former comrades are to pierce my heart with bullets. I cannot remember my fate, lady, since you have rendered me so happy. You have shown me that I did not mistake the throne at which I have secretly worshipped-that, all good and pure as you are, you would not forget Lorenzo Bezan, the poor, the lonely soldier who had dared to tell you how dearly he loved you." As he spoke, Isabella Gonzales seemed for one moment to forget herself in the realizations of the scene. She listened to his thrice eloquent words with eyes bent upon the ground at first, and then gazing tenderly upon him, and now that he had ceased to speak, they sought once more the floor of the room in silence. He could not but construe these delicate demonstrations in his favor, and drawing close to her side, he pressed her hand tenderly to his lips. The touch seemed to act like magic, and aroused her to present consciousness, while she started as if in amazement. All the pride of her disposition was instantly aroused; she felt that for a single moment she had forgotten herself, and to retrieve the apparent acquiescence that she had seemed to show to the condemned soldier's words and tale of love, she now appeared to think that she must assume all the hauteur of character that usually governed her in her intercourse with his sex and the world generally. It was but a simple struggle, and all her self-possession was rallied again to her service and absolute control. "Captain Bezan," she said, with assumed dignity, and drawing herself up in all her beauty of to person to its full height, "I came not hither to hear such talk as this from you, nor to submit to such familiarity, and I trust, sir, that you will henceforth remember your station, and respect mine." The breast of the prisoner heaved with inward emotion, in the struggle to suppress its outward show, and he bit his lips until the blood nearly flowed. His face instantly became the picture of despair; for her words had planted that grief and sorrow in his heart which the fear of death could not arouse there. Even Isabella Gonzales seemed for a moment struck with the effect of her repulse; but her own proud heart would not permit her to recall one word she had uttered. "I would not leave you, Captain Bezan," said she, at length, as she gathered the ample folds of the cloak about her, "without once more tendering to you my most earnest thanks for your great services to our family. You know to what I refer. I need not tell you," she continued, with a quivering lip, "that my father has done all in his power to have your sentence remitted, but, alas! to no effect. Tacon seems to be resolved, and unchangeable." As she spoke thus, spite of all her assumed pride and self-control, a tear trembled in her eye, and her respiration came quickly-almost in sobs! The young soldier looked at her silently for a moment; at first he seemed puzzled; he was weighing in his own mind the meaning of all this as contrasted with the repulse he had just received, and with the estimate he had before formed of her; at last, seeming to read the spirit that had possessed her, he said: "Ah, lady, I bless you a thousand times for that tear!" "Nay, sir, I do not understand you," she said, quickly. "Not your own heart either, lady, else you disguise its truth. Ah! why should all this be so? why should hearts be thus masked?" "Sir, this is positive impertinence," said Isabella Gonzales, struggling once more to summon her pride to sustain her. "Impertinence, lady?" repeated the prisoner, sadly. "That was my word, sir," answered the proud girl, with assumed harshness. "No, it would be impossible for me, on the very brink of the grave, to say aught but the truth; and I love you too deeply, too fervently, to be impertinent. You do not know me, lady. In my heart I have reared an altar to worship at, and that shrine for three years has been thy dearly loved form. How dearly and passionately I have loved-what a chastening influence it has produced upon my life, my comrades, who know not yet the cause, could tell you. To-morrow I must die. While I hoped one day to win your love, life was most dear to me, and I was happy. I could then have clung to life with as much tenacity as any one. But, lady, I find that I have been mistaken; my whole dream of fancy, of love, is gone, and life is no better to me than a burden. I speak not in haste, nor in passion. You must bear me witness that I am calm and collected; and I assure you that the bullets which end my existence will be but swift-winged messengers of peace to my already broken heart!" "Captain Bezan," said Isabella, hesitating, and hardly speaking distinctly. "Well, lady?" "How could you have so deceived yourself? How could you possibly suppose that one in your sphere of life could hope to be united to one in mine?" asked Isabella Gonzales, with a half averted face and a trembling voice, as she spoke. "It was foolhardy, sir; it was more than that; it was preposterous!" "Lady, you are severe." "I speak but truth, Captain Bezan, and your own good sense will sustain it." "I forgot your birth and rank, your wealth-everything. I acknowledge this, in the love I bore you; and, lady, I still feel, that had not my career been thus summarily checked, I might yet have won your love. Nay, lady, do not frown; true love never despairs-never is disheartened--never relinquishes the object that it loves, while there is one ray of light yet left to guide it on. It did seem to me now, when we are parting so surely forever, that it might have been, on your part, more kindly, and that you would, by a smile, or even a tear-drop, for my sake, have thus blessed me, and lightened my heavy steps to the field of execution and of trial." Isabella Gonzales, as she listened to his words, could no longer suppress her feelings, but covering her face with her hands, she wept for a moment like a child. Pride was of no avail; the heart had asserted its supremacy, and would not be controlled. "You take advantage of my woman's heart, sir," she said, at last. "I cannot bear the idea that any one should suffer, and more particularly one who has endeared himself to me and mine by such important service as you have done. Do not think that tears argue aught for the wild tale you have uttered, sir. I would not have you deceive yourself so much; but I am a woman, and cannot view violence or grief unmoved!" "Say, rather, lady," added the soldier, most earnestly, "that you are pure, beautiful, and good at heart, but that pride, that only alloy of thy most lovely character, chokes its growth in your bosom." "Sir!" "Well, Senorita Isabella." "Enough of this," she said, hastily and much excited. "I must leave you now, captain. It is neither fitting that I should hear, nor that you should utter such words as these to Isabella Gonzales. Farewell!" "Lady, farewell," replied the prisoner, more by instinct than by any comprehension that she was actually about to leave him. "I pray you, Captain Bezan, do not think that I cherish any unkind thoughts towards you," she said, turning when at the door; "on the contrary, I am by no means unmindful of my indebtedness to you; but far be it from me to sanction a construction of my feelings or actions which my heart will not second." "Lady, your word is law to me," replied the submissive prisoner. When she had gone, and the rough grating of the turnkey's instruments had done sounding in his ear, Captain Bezan remained a moment looking upon the slot where she had stood, with apparent amazement. He could not realize that she had been there at all; and hardest of all, that she had left him so abruptly. But her "farewell" still rang in his ears, and throwing himself upon his rude seat, with his face buried in his hands, he exclaimed: "Welcome, welcome death! I would that thou wert here already!" After a few moments thus passed, as it were, in the very depths of despair, he rose and walked his dreary cell in a sad and silent reverie, a reviewal of all these matters. "How I have mistaken that beautiful creature, how idolized, how loved her! I knew that there was much, ay, very much, of pride in her heart. I knew the barriers that rose between her and me; but, alas, I thought them not so very at high, so very impregnable. I would not, could not, have believed that she would have left me thus. It was our last farewell. She might have been more kind; might, without much risk of loss of pride have permitted me such a parting as should have rendered my last hours happy! Alas! alas! what toys of fortune we are; what straws for every breeze to shake-for every wind to shatter! "We set our hearts upon an object, and blinded by our warm desires, believe, like children, that which we hope for. I have never paused to think in this matter of my love, I have been led ont too precipitately by the brilliancy of the star that I followed; its light blinded me to all other influences; and, too truly, I feel it, blinded me to reason also. Isabella Gonzales, the belle of this brilliant city, the courted, beloved, rich, proud Isabella Gonzales; what else might I have expected, had one moment been permitted to me for reason, for cool reflection. I was mad in my fond and passionate love; I was blind in my folly, to ever dream of success. But the end will soon be here, and I shall be relieved from this agonizing fever at my heart, this woeful pain of disappointed love, of broken-heartedness." He folded his arms, and permitting his head to sink upon his breast, sat down, the very picture of despair. CHAPTER IX. THE EXECUTION SCENE. THE morning was bright and beautiful that ushered in the day which was appointed for the execution of Captain Lorenzo Bezan, in accordance with the sentence passed upon him. The birds carolled gaily in the little grove that is formed about the fountain which fronts the governor-general's palace and the main barracks of the army, while the fresh, soft air from inland came loaded with delicious flavors and sweet aroma. Nature could hardly have assumed a more captivating mood than she wore at that time. The soldiers, who sauntered about the Plaza, and hung around the doors of the guard house, wore an air quite different from that which the bright and beautiful tropical morning might be supposed to induce. They knew only too well of the tragedy that was that day to enacted; such occasions-the spilling of the tide of life, in cold blood-suited not their chivalrous notions at any time, much less so now, for they loved the officer who was to lose his life-a victim to Harero-whom, again, few men respected, either as a soldier or a man-his character was repulsive to nearly all. "So the captain is to be shot to-day," remarked one of Captain Bezan's own company, to a comrade whom he had just met in the Plaza. "Yes, I had rather it had been--" "Hush, Alonzo," said his companion, observing General Harero walking across the street. "That is he, and he is the only man I ever saw," continued the officer, "that I would like to see shot in cold blood. Poor Bezan, he's sacrificed to the general!" "I wonder what gave the trouble between them." "Don't know; some say there's a lady in the case." "I hadn't heard of that." "Yes, you know he challenged the general?" "Yes," "Well, that was about a lady, in some way; I heard one of the officers say so." "The first file do the business." "Yes, and thankful am I, Alonzo, that you and I are in the fourth section." The hour appointed for the execution of the sentence had nearly arrived, and the steady roll of the drum beat the regiment to which Captain Bezan's company belonged, to the line. His own immediate company was formed on the side of the Plaza at right angles with the rest of the line, in all some thousand rank and file. This company "stood at ease," and the men hung their heads, as if ashamed of the business they were about to perform. In the rest of the line the men exchanged a few words with each other, now and then, quietly, but the company referred to, spoke not a word. to each other. Their officers stood in a little knot by themselves, and evidently felt sad at heart when they remembered the business before them, for their comrade condemned to die had been a universal favorite with them. But a few moments transpired, after the forming of the line, before an aid-de-camp approached and transmitted an order to the first-lieutenant, now commanding the company, and the first file of twelve men were marched away to the rear of the barracks, while the rest of the company were sent to the prison to do guard duty in escorting the prisoner to the ground. It seemed to them as though this additional insult might have been spared to the prisoner-that of being guarded by his late command, in place of any other portion of the regiment being detailed for this service. But this was General Harero's management, who seemed to gloat in his own diabolical purposes. In the meantime the prisoner had risen that morning from his damp, rude couch, and had completed his simple toilet with more than usual neatness. After offering up a sincere prayer, and listening to the words of the priest who had been sent to prepare him for the last hour, he declared calmly that he was ready to die. He had looked for Ruez Gonzales, and wondered not a little that the boy had not come to bid him farewell that morning-a last, long farewell. "Perhaps his young heart was too full for him to do so," said the doomed soldier; "and yet I should have felt happier to see him again. It is strange how much his purity and gentleness of character have caused me to love him. Next to Isabella Gonzales, surely that boy is nearest to my heart. Poor Ruez will miss me, for the boy loves me much." As he mused thus to himself, the steady and regular tread of armed men was heard approaching his prison door, and the young soldier knew full well for what purpose they came. In a few moments after, he who had formerly been his second in command entered the cell and saluted the prisoner respectfully. "Captain Bezan," said the lieutenant, "I need not explain in detail to you the very unpleasant business upon which I have been at this time sent, nor add," continued the officer, in a lower tone of voice, "how much I regret the fate that awaits you." "Nay, Ferdinand," answered Captain Bezan, calmly, "say nothing of the matter, but give me your hand, my friend, and do your duty." "Would to God I could in any way avoid it, Lorenzo," said his brother officer, who had long been associated with him, and who had loved him well. "Regrets are useless, Ferdinand. You know we all have our allotted time, and mine has come. You shall see that I will die like a soldier." "Ay, Lorenzo; but in such a way; so heartlessly, so needlessly, so in cold blood; alas! why were you so imprudent? I am no woman, comrade. You have fought in the same field, and slept in the same tent with me oftentimes, and you know that I have laid the sod upon my companion's breast without a murmur, without a complaint; but this business is too much for me!" "Fie, fie, man," said the prisoner, with assumed indifference; "look upon it as a simple duty; you but fulfil an order, and there's the end of it." "I can't, for the life of me, I can't!" "Why, my good fellow, come to think of it, you should not complain, of all others, since it gives you promotion and the command of our brave boys." A look of deep reproach was the only answer he received to this remark. "Forgive me, Ferdinand, forgive me, I did but jest," he continued, quickly, as he again grasped the hand of his comrade between his own. "Say no more, Lorenzo. Is there aught I can do for you before we march?" "Nothing." "No little boon-no service you would like to trust to a friend and comrade?" "My papers are all arranged and addressed to you, with directions how I should like to have them disposed of. There is nothing else, Ferdinand." "It will be my melancholy pleasure to follow your wishes implicitly," was the reply. "Thank you, Ferdinand." "Is that all?" "All." "Then we must at once away." "One moment-stay, Ferdinand; tell my poor boys who act the executioners, those of the first file, to fire low-at my heart, Ferdinand! You will remember?" "Alas! yes," said his comrade, turning suddenly away from the prisoner. "And tell them, Ferdinand, that I most heartily and sincerely forgive them for the part they are called upon to play in this day's drama." "I will-I will." "That is all. I have no other request, and am prepared now to follow you," he added, with a calm and resigned expression of countenance. The drum beat-the file opened-the prisoner took his position, and the detachment of men whom he had so often commanded amid the carnage of battle and the roar of cannon, now guarded him towards the place of his execution. Lorenzo Bezan had but a little way to march; but still a blush suffused his face as he passed, thus humiliated, through the public Plaza, where he had so often paraded his company before. All eyes were low bent upon him, from the humblest to the highest, for he was well known, and his fate had created much remark among all. He was marched quietly to the rear of the barracks, and as the company filed by the guard house, to the long open space on the city side, just opposite Moro Castle, he distinctly heard a voice from one of the windows say: "God bless and help you, Captain Bezan!" He turned partially round to see the speaker, but no one was visible. He was sure it was Ruez's voice, and wondering why he did not come forward to meet his eye, he marched on to the plain where the entire division of General Harero's command was drawn up to witness the scene. It is difficult to conceive, and much more so to describe, such an impressive sight as presented itself at this moment to the spectator. There was so much mockery in the brilliant uniforms, flaunting plumes and gilded accoutrements of the soldiery, when contrasted with the purpose of the scene, that one could hardly contemplate the sight even for a moment with ordinary composure. The prisoner, attended by a private and two officers, was led to his position, where, divested of his coat, he stood simply in his linen and nether garments, and quietly submitted to have his hands bound behind him, while he exchanged a few pleasant words with those who were about him. At a signal from the provost marshal, one of the officers essayed to bind a handkerchief before his eyes, but at an earnest request to the contrary by the prisoner, he desisted, and in a moment after he stood alone beside the open grave that had been dug to receive his remains! Behind him rolled the ocean, mingling with the waters of the Gulf Stream; on either side were ranged the long line of infantry that formed his division, while in front was ranged his own company, and some ten yards in front of them stood the file of thirteen men who were to be his executioners. They had just been supplied with their muskets by an officer, and were told that one was without ball, that each one might hope his was not the hand to slay his former comrade in arms. Another signal from the provost, and the lieutenant commanding Captain Bezan's company advanced from the rear to the side of the first file to his regular position, at the same time saying in a low voice: "Fire low, my men, as you love our former comrade-aim at his heart!" A glance, and a sad one of intelligence, was all he could receive from the men. Two or three successive orders brought the file to the proper position for firing. At that moment Lorenzo Bezan, with a slight exertion of the great physical strength which he possessed, easily broke the cords asunder that bound his wrists behind him, and dashing the dark hair from his high and manly forehead, he calmly folded his arms upon his breast, and awaited the fire that was to end his existence. The fearful word was given by the officer, and so still was every one, so breathless the whole scene, that the order was distinctly heard through the entire length of the lines. The morning sun shone like living fire along the polished barrels of the guns, as the muzzles all ranged in point towards the heart of the condemned. In spite of the effort not to do so, the officer paused between the order to aim, and that to fire. The word appeared to stick in his throat, and he opened his mouth twice before he could utter the order; but at last he did so, distinctly, though with a powerful effort. The, sharp, quick report of the muskets that followed this order, seemed to jar upon every heart among that military throng, except, indeed, of him who sat upon a large dapple gray horse, at the right of the line, and whose insignia bespoke him to be the commanding officer, General Harero. He sat upon his horse like a statue, with a calm but determined expression upon his features, while a stern smile might be observed to wreathe his lips for an instant at the report of the guns fired by the executing file. But see, as the smoke steadily sweeps to seaward, for a moment it completely covers the spot where the victim stood, and now it sweeps swiftly off over the water. But what means that singular murmur so audible along the line-that movement of surprise and astonishment observed in all directions? Behold, there stood erect the unharmed form of Lorenzo Bezan! Not a hair of his head was injured; not a line of his noble countenance was in the least distorted. As calm as though nought had happened, he stood there unmoved. He had so braced himself to the effort, that nothing human could have unnerved him. Hastily directing an aid-de-camp to the spot with some new order, General Harero issued another to his officers for the lines to be kept firm, and preparations were instantly set about for another and more certain attempt upon the life of the condemned, who seemed to the spectators to have escaped by some divine interposition, little less than a miracle. At that instant there dashed into the area a mounted aid-de-camp, bearing the uniform of the governor-general's suite, and riding directly up to General Harero, he handed him a paper. It was done before the whole line of military and the spectators, all of whom seemed to know as well its purport, as did the general after reading it. "A reprieve! A reprieve!" ran from mouth to mouth along the whole length of the line, until at last it broke out in one wild huzza, defying all discipline. Those nearest to General Harero heard him utter a curse, deep but suppressed, for the surmise of the multitude was correct. Captain Bezan had been reprieved; and, probably, in fear of this very thing, the general of the division had taken upon himself to set the time of execution one hour earlier than had been announced to Tacon-a piece of villany that had nearly cut off the young soldier from the clemency that the governor had resolved to extend to him at the very last moment, when the impressiveness of the scene should have had its effect. Issuing one or two hasty orders, General Harero put spurs to his horse and dashed off the grounds with chagrin but too plainly written in his face not to betray itself. He could even detect a hiss now and then from the crowd, as he passed; and one or two, bolder than the rest, cast epithets at him in vile language, but he paused not to listen. He was no favorite with citizens or soldiers, and hastily dismounting at the door of the palace, he sought his own room with deep feelings of suppressed rage and bitterness. But what was the meaning of those twelve musketeers all missing their aim? So vexed was General Harero at this, that his first order was for their united arrest; but that had been countermanded now, since the governor had reprieved the prisoner; for the general saw that he stood in a false position, in having changed the hour for execution, and did not care to provoke a controversy that might lead to his exposure before the stern justice of Tacon, and he did well to avoid it. It was very plain to officers and men that there had been foul play somewhere, and so excited had the division become by this time, that the officers began to look seriously at each other, fearing an immediate outbreak and disregard of discipline. It was a time to try the troops, if one had ever occurred. They would have stood firm and have received an enemy's fire without wavering; but there seemed some cold-blooded rascality here, in the arriving of the reprieve after the twelve men had fired, even though they did so ineffectually. Quick, stern orders were quickly passed from line to line, the division was wheeled into column, the drums beat a quick march, and the whole column passed up the Calle del Iganasio towards the front of the main barracks, where, lest the symptoms, already referred to, should ripen into something more serious still, orders were issued to keep the division still under arms. In the meantime, Captain Lorenzo Bezan, still as calm as though nought had occurred, was marched back to his cell in the prison, to hear the conditions upon which the reprieve, as dictated by Tacon, was granted. As he passed the guard house again, on his return, he heard his name called as he had heard it when he marched with the guard: "God bless you, Captain Bezan!" "Strange," thought the prisoner-he knew it for Ruez Gonzales's voice at once; "where can that boy be secreted?" He mused for a second of time. This was the portion of the guard room where the officer on duty had loaded the guns for his execution, and from here they had been taken and passed into the hands of the men. It did not require much penetration on the part of the reprieved soldier to understand now the reason why these twelve men had missed their aim! Had they exercised the skill of Kentucky sharp-shooters they could have done no harm; blank cartridges don't kill. But how unexpected, how miraculous it appeared, how strange the sensations of the young officer, after that loud sounding discharge, to find himself standing thus unharmed,--no wound, no bullet whistling by his ears, the dead, sluggish smoke alone enveloping his person for a moment, and then, as it swept away seaward, the shout of the astonished division rang upon his senses. He felt that all eyes were upon him, and adamant itself could not have remained firmer than did he. Few men would have possessed sufficient self-control to bear themselves thus; but he was a soldier, and had often dared the bullet of the enemy. He was familiar with the whistling of bullets, and other sounds that carry on their wings the swift-borne messengers of death. Besides this, there was an indifference as to life, existing in his bosom at that moment, that led him to experience a degree of apathy that it would be difficult for us to describe, or for the reader to realize. He felt as he did when he exclaimed, in his lonely cell in prison, as he was left for the last time by her he so loved--"Welcome, welcome, death! I would that thou wert here already!" How it was accomplished, of course he knew not; nor could he hardly surmise in his own mind, so very strictly is the care of such matters attended to under all like circumstances; but one thing he felt perfectly sure of, and indeed he was right in his conjecture--Ruez had drawn the bullets from the guns! CHAPTER X. THE BANISHMENT. LORENZO BEZAN had hardly reached his place of confinement, once more, before he was waited upon by the secretary of the governor-general, who explained to him the terms on which his reprieve was granted, viz., that he should leave the territory and soil of Cuba by the next homeward bound packet to Spain, to remain there, unless otherwise ordered by special direction of the government. His rank as captain of infantry was secured to him, and the usual exhortation in such cases was detailed, as to the hope that the present example might not be lost upon him, as to the matter of a more strict adherence to the subject of military discipline. Repugnant as was the proposition to leave the island while life was his, Lorenzo Bezan had no alternative but to do so; and, moreover, when he considered the attraction that held him on the spot, how the Senorita Isabella Gonzales had treated him, when she had every reason to believe that it was his last meeting with her, and nearly the last hour of his life, he saw that if she would treat him thus at such a moment, then, when he had not the excuse of remarkable exigency and the prospect of certain death before him, she would be no kinder. It was while exercised by such thoughts as these that he answered the secretary: "Bear my thanks, with much respect, to the governor-general, and tell him that I accept from him his noble clemency and justice, the boon of my life, on his own terms." The secretary bowed low and departed. We might tell the reader how Lorenzo Bezan threw himself upon his bed of straw, and wept like a child-how he shed there the first tears he had shed since his arrest, freely and without a check. His heart seemed to bleed more at the idea of leaving the spot where Isabella lived, and yet to live on himself, elsewhere, than his spirit had faltered at the idea of certain death. Her last cruel words, and the proud spirit she exhibited towards him, were constantly before his eyes. "O," said he, half aloud, "how I have worshipped, how adored that fairest of God's creatures!" At moments he had thought that he saw through Isabella's character-at moments had truly believed that he might by assiduity, perhaps, if favored by fortune, win her love, and, may be, her hand in marriage. At any rate, with his light and buoyant heart, there was sunshine and hope enough in the future to irradiate his soul with joy, until the last scene in his drama of life, added to that of her last cold farewell! He was soon informed that the vessel which was to take him to Spain would sail on the following morning, and that no further time would be permitted to him on the island. He resolved to write one last letter of farewell to Isabella Gonzales, and then to depart; and calling upon the turnkey for writing materials, which were now supplied to him, he wrote as follows" "DEAR LADY: Strange circumstances, with which you are doubtless well acquainted by this time, have changed my punishment from death to banishment. Under ordinary circumstances it would hardly be called banishment for any person to be sent from a foreign clime to the place of his nativity; nor would it appear to be such to me, were it not that I leave behind me the only being I have ever really loved-the idol angel of my heart-she who has been to me life, soul, everything, until now, when I am wretched beyond description; because without hope, all things would be as darkness to the human heart. "I need not review our brief acquaintanceship, or reiterate to you the feelings I have already expressed. If you can judge between true love and gallantry, you know whether I am sincere or otherwise. I could not offer you wealth, Isabella Gonzales. I could not offer you rank. I have no fame to share with you; but O, if it be the will of Heaven that another should call you wife, I pray that he may love you as I have done. I am not so selfish but that I can utter this prayer with all my heart, and in the utmost sincerity. "The object of this hasty scrawl is once more to say to you farewell; for it is sweet to me even to address you. May God bless your dear brother, who has done much to sustain me, bowed down as I have been with misfortune, and broken in spirit; and may the especial blessing of Heaven rest ever on and around you. "This will ever be the nightly prayer of LORENZO BEZAN." When Isabella Gonzales received this note on the following day, its author was nearly a dozen leagues at sea, bound for the port of Cadiz, Spain! She hastily perused its contents again and again. looked off upon the open sea, as though she might be able to recall him, threw herself upon her couch, and wept bitter, scalding tears, until weary nature caused her to sleep. At last Ruez stole into her room quietly, and finding her asleep, and a tear-drop glistening still upon her cheek, he kissed away the pearly dew and awoke her once more to consciousness. He, too, had learned of Captain Bezan's sudden departure; and by the open letter in his sister's hand, to which he saw appended his dearly loved friend's name, he judged that her weeping had been caused by the knowledge that he had left them-probably forever. Lorenzo Bezan should have seen her then, in her almost transcendent beauty, too proud, far too proud, to own even to herself that she loved the poor soldier; yet her heart would thus unbidden and spontaneously betray itself, in spite of all her proud calmness, and strong efforts at self-control. The boy looked at her earnestly; twice he essayed to speak, and then, as if some after thought had changed his purpose, he kissed her again, and was silent. "Well, brother, it seems that Captain Bezan has been liberated and pardoned, after all," said Isabella, with a voice of assumed indifference. "Yes, sister, but at a sad cost; for he has been banished to Spain." "How strange he was not shot, when so many fired at him." "Sister?" "Well." "Can you keep a secret?" "I think so, Ruez," said Isabella, half smiling at the question of her brother. "Well, it's not so very wonderful, since I drew the bullets from the guns!" And Ruez explained to her that he had secreted himself in the house, with the hope that something might turn up to save his friend even yet, and there he had found a chance to draw the bullets from the twelve muskets. After he had told her, she threw her arms about his neck, and said: "You are a dear, good brother." "And for what, sister?" "For saving Captain Bezan's life; for otherwise he had been shot." "But why do you care so much about it, sister?" asked the boy, seriously. "O, nothing, only-that is, you know, Ruez, we owe Captain Bezan so much ourselves for having hazarded his life for us all." Ruez turned away from his sister with an expression in his face that made her start; for he began to read his sister's heart, young as he was, better than she knew it herself. He loved Lorenzo Bezan so dearly himself-had learned to think so constantly of him, and to regard him with such friendly consideration, that no influence of pride could in the least affect him; and though he had sufficient penetration to pierce through the subject so far as to realize that his dearly loved friend regarded his sister with a most ardent and absorbing love, he could not exactly understand the proud heart of Isabella, which, save for its pride, would so freely return the condemned soldier's affection. Well, time passed on in its ever-varying round. Lorenzo Bezan was on his way to Spain, and Isabella and her brother filling nearly the same round of occupation, either of amusement or self-imposed duty. Occasionally General Harero called; but this was put a stop to, at last, by Ruez's pertinently asking him one evening how he came to order the execution of Lorenzo Bezan to take place a full hour before the period announced in the regular sentence signed by the governor-general! Ruez was not the first person who had put this question to him, and he felt sore about it, for even Tacon himself had reprimanded him for the deed. Thus realizing that his true character was known to Don Gonzales and his family, he gave up the hope of winning Isabella Gonzales, or rather the hope of sharing her father's rich coffers, and quietly withdrew himself from a field of action where he had gained nothing, but had lost much, both as it regarded this family, and, owing to his persecution of Captain Bezan, that of the army. Isabella Gonzales became thoughtful and melancholy without exactly knowing why. She avoided company, and often incurred her father's decided displeasure by absenting herself from the drawing-room when there were visitors of importance. She seemed to be constantly in a dreamy and moody state, and avoided all her former haunts and companions. A skilful observer might have told her the cause of all this, and yet, strange to say, so blind did her pride render her, that she could not see, or at least never acknowledged even to herself, that the absent soldier had aught to do with it. Had not Isabella Gonzales treated Lorenzo Bezan as she did at their last meeting, he would never have accepted the governor-general's pardon on the terms offered, nor life itself, if it separated him from her he loved. But as it was, he seemed to feel that life had lost its charm, ambition its incentive for him, and he cast himself forth upon the troubled waters without compass or rudder. And it was precisely in this spirit that he found himself upon the deck of the vessel, whose white wings were wafting him now across the ocean. He, too, was misanthropic and unhappy; he tried to reason with himself that Isabella Gonzales was not worthy to render him thus miserable; that she was a coquette-an unfeeling, though beautiful girl; that even had he succeeded, and fortune favored him in his love, she would not have loved him its his heart craved to be loved. But all this sophistry was overthrown in a moment by the memory of one dear glance, when Isabella, off her guard, and her usual hauteur of manner for the instant, had looked through her eyes the whole truthfulness of her soul; in short, when her heart, not her head, had spoken! Alas! how few of us feel as we do; how few do as we feel! Perhaps there is no better spot than on shipboard for a dreamer to be; he has then plenty of time, plenty of space, plenty of theme, and every surrounding, to turn his thoughts inward upon himself. Lorenzo Bezan found this so. At times he looked down into the still depths of the blue water, and longed for the repose that seemed to look up to him from below the waves. He had thought, perhaps, too long upon this subject one soft, calm evening, and had indeed forgotten himself, as it were, and another moment would have seen the working of what seemed a sort of irresistible charm to him, and he would have cast himself into that deep, inviting oblivion! Then a voice seemed to whisper Isabella's name in his ear! He started, looked about him, and awoke from the fearful charm that held him. It was his good angel that breathed that name to him then, and saved him from the curse of the suicide! From that hour a strange feeling seemed to possess the young soldier. Like him in Shakspeare's "Seven Ages," he passed from love to ambition. A new charm seemed to awake to him in the future, not to the desertion of his love, nor yet exactly to its promotion. An indefinite idea seemed to move him that he must win fame, glory and renown; and yet he hardly paused to think what the end of these would be; whether they would ultimately bring him nearer to the proud girl of his hopes and his love. Fame rang in his ears; the word seemed to fire his veins; he was humble-he must be honored; he was poor-he must be rich; he was unknown-he must be renowned! With such thoughts as these, his pulses beat quicker, his eye flashed, and his check became flushed, and then one tender thought of Isabella would change every current, and almost moisten those bloodshot eyes with tears. Would to God that Lorenzo Bezan could now but shed a tear-what gentle yet substantial relief it would have afforded him. Thus was the exiled soldier influenced; while Isabella Gonzales was, as we have seen, still living on under the veil of her pride; unable, apparently, for one single moment to draw the curtain, and look with naked eye upon the real picture of her feelings, actions, and honest affections. She felt, plain enough, that she was miserable; indeed the flood of tears she daily shed betrayed this to her. But her proud Castilian blood was the phase through which alone she saw, or could see. It was impossible for her to banish Lorenzo Bezan from her mind; but yet she stoutly refused to admit, even to herself, that she regarded him with affection-he, a lowly soldier, a child of the camp, a myrmidon of fortune-he a fit object for the love of Isabella Gonzales, the belle of Havana, to whom princes had bowed? Preposterous! Her brother, whose society she seemed to crave more than ever, said nothing; he did not even mention the name of the absent one, but he secretly moaned for him, until the pale color that had slightly tinged his check began to fade, and Don Gonzales trembled for the boy's life. It was his second bereavement. His mother's loss, scarcely yet outgrown, had tried his gentle heart to its utmost tension; this new bereavement to his sensitive mind, seemed really too much for him. A strange sympathy existed between Isabella and the boy, who, though Lorenzo Bezan's name was never mentioned, yet seemed to know what each other was thinking of. But in the meantime, while these feelings were actuating Isabella and her brother at Havana, Lorenzo Bezan had reached Cadiz, and was on his way to the capital of Spain, Madrid. CHAPTER XI. THE PROMOTION. WE have already given the reader a sufficient idea of Lorenzo Bezan, for him to understand that he was a person possessed of more than ordinary manliness and personal beauty. A distinguished and chivalric bearing was one of his main characteristics, and you could hardly have passed him in a crowd, without noting his fine manly physical appearance, and strikingly intelligent features. Fired with the new ambition which we have referred to in the closing of the last chapter, Lorenzo Bezan arrived in the capital of his native land, ready and eager to engage in any enterprise that called for bravery and daring, and which in return promised honor and preferment. Tacon, governor-general of Cuba, had marked his qualities well, and therefore wrote by the same conveyance that took the young soldier to Spain, to the head of the war department, and told them of what stuff he was composed, and hinted at the possibility of at once placing him in the line of his rank, and of giving him, if possible, active service to perform. Tacon's opinion and wishes were highly respected at Madrid, and Lorenzo Bezan found himself at once placed in the very position he would have desired-the command of as fine a company, of the regular service as the army could boast, and his rank and position thoroughly restored. There was just at that period a revolt of the southern and western provinces of Spain, which, owing to inactivity on the part of government, had actually ripened into a regularly organized rebellion against the throne. News at last reached the queen that regular bodies of troops had been raised and enlisted, under well known leaders, and that unless instant efforts were made to suppress the rising, the whole country would be shortly involved in civil war. In this emergency the troops, such its could be spared, were at once detached from the capital and sent to various points in the disaffected region to quell the outbreak. Among the rest was the company of Lorenzo Bezan and two others of the same regiment, and being the senior officer, young as he was, he was placed in command of the battalion, and the post to which he was to march at once, into the very heart of the disaffected district. Having arrived in the neighborhood of the spot to which his orders had directed him, he threw his whole force, some less than three hundred men, into one of the old Moorish fortifications, still extant, and with the provisions and ammunition he had brought with him, entrenched himself, and prepared to scour and examine the surrounding country. His spies soon brought him intelligence of the defeat of two similar commands to his own, sent out at the same time to meet the insurgents; and, also, that their partial success had very naturally elated them in the highest degree. That they were regularly organized into regiments, with their stands of colors, and proper officers, and that one regiment had been sent to take the fort where he was, and would shortly be in the neighborhood. Lorenzo Bezan was a thorough soldier; he looked to the details of all the plans and orders he issued, so that when the enemy appeared in sight, they found him ready to receive them. They were fully thrice his number, but they had a bad cause and poor leaders, and he feared not for the result. On they came, in the fullness of confidence, after having already participated in two victories over the regular troops; but they had, though a younger, yet a far better and more courageous officer to deal with in Captain Bezan. The fight was long and bloody, but ere night came on the insurgents were compelled to retire, after having lost nearly one third of their number in the contest. The camp of the insurgents was pitched some half mile from the old fort occupied by Captain Bezan and his followers, just beneath the brow of a sheltering undulation of ground. Night overshadowed the field, and it was still as death over the battle field, when Captain Bezan, summoning his followers, told them that the enemy lay yonder in sleep; they could not anticipate a sally, and from a confidential spy he had ascertained that they had not even set a sentinel. "I shall lead you out this night to attack them; take only your weapons. If we are defeated, we shall want nothing more; if victorious, we shall return to our post and our munitions." He had lost scarcely two score of his men in the fight, protected as they were by the walls of the fortress, while the besiegers were entirely exposed to the fire of musketry, and the two small cannon they had brought with them, and so they entered into the daring plan of their commander with the utmost zeal. They were instructed as to the plan more fully, and at midnight, as the last rays of the moon sank below the horizon, they quietly filed forth from the fortress and turned towards the insurgents' camp. Slowly and silently they stole across the plain, without note of drum or fife, and headed by their young commander, until they reached the brow of the little elevation, beyond which the enemy lay sleeping, some in tents, some on the open field, and all unguarded. The signal was given, and the small band of disciplined men fell upon the camp. Lorenzo Bezan with some fifty picked followers sought the head quarters of the camp, and having fought their way thither, possessed themselves of the standards, and made prisoner of the leader of the body of insurgents, and ere the morning sun had risen, the camp was deserted, the enemy, totally defeated, had fled, or been taken prisoners and bound, and the victorious little band of the queen's troops were again housed within the walls of the fortress. But their fighting was not to end here; a second body of the enemy, incensed as much by the loss of their comrades as elated by various victories over other detachments of the army, fell upon them; but they were met with such determined spirit and bravery, and so completely did Lorenzo Bezan infuse his own manly and resolved spirit into the hearts of his followers, that the second comers were routed, their banners taken, and themselves dispersed. These two victories, however, had cost him dear; half his little gallant band had lost their lives, and there were treble their number of prisoners securely confined within the fortress. Fresh troops were despatched, in reply to his courier, to escort these to the capital, and an order for himself and the rest of his command to return to Madrid, forthwith. This summons was of course complied with, and marching the remnant of his command to the capital, Captain Bezan reported himself again at head quarters. Here he found his services had been, if possible, overrated, and himself quite lionized. A major's commission awaited him, and the thanks of the queen were expressed to him by the head of the department. "A major,--one step is gained," said the young soldier, to himself; "one round in the ladder of fame has been surmounted; my eyes are now bent upward!" And how he dreamed that night of Cuba, of rank and wealth, and the power and position they conferred-and still his eyes were bent upward! With a brief period permitted for him to rest and recover from slight wounds received in his late battles, Lorenzo, now Major Bezan, was again ordered to the scene of trouble in the southern district, where the insurgents, more successful with older officers sent against them, had been again victorious, and were evidently gaining ground, both in strength of purpose and numbers. This time he took with him a full command of four companies, little less than four hundred men, and departed under far better auspices than he had done before, resolved, as at the outset, to lead his men where work was to be done, and to lead them, too, on to victory or utter destruction! It was a fearful resolve; but in his present state of feelings it accorded with the spirit that seemed to actuate his soul. But success does not always crown the most daring bravery, and twice were Lorenzo Bezan and his followers worsted, though in no way discouraged. But at last, after many weeks of toil and hardship, he was again victorious, again routed twice his own number, again captured a stand of colors, and again despatched his trophies to the feet of his queen. The civil war then became general, and for nearly a year Lorenzo Bezan and his followers were in the battle field. Victory seemed to have marked him for a favorite, and his sword seemed invincible; wherever he led, he infused his own daring and impetuous spirit into the hearts of his followers, and where his plume waved in the fight, there the enemy faltered. A second and third victory crowned him within another promotion, and a colonel's commission was sent to the adventurous soldier after the hard fought battles he had won for the queen. Once more he paused, and whispered to himself: "Another round in the ladder is gained! have patience, Lorenzo Bezan; fame may yet be thine; she is thy only bride now; alas, alas, that it should be so! that there cannot be one-one dearer than all the world beside-to share with thee this renown and honor, this fame won by the sword on the field of battle; one whose gentleness and love should be the pillow on which to rest thy head and heart after the turmoil and whirlwind of war has subsided!" Scarcely a year had transpired since the condemned soldier had been banished from Cuba, and now from a captaincy he had risen to wear the star of a colonel. No wonder, then, that he thus soliloquized to himself upon the theme of which he dreamed. The life he led, the fierce contests he engaged in, had no effect in hardening the heart of the young soldier: one thought, one single word, when he permitted himself to pause and look back upon the past, would change his whole spirit, and almost render him effeminate. At times his thoughts, spite of himself, wandered far away over the blue waters to that sunny isle of the tropics, where Isabella Gonzales dwelt, and then his manly heart would heave more quickly, and his pulses beat swifter; and sometimes a tear had wet his check as he recalled the memory of Ruez, whom he had really loved nearly as well as he had done his proud and beautiful sister. The boy's nature, so gentle, affectionate and truthful, and yet in emergency so manly and venturesome, as evinced in his drawing the bullets from the guns that would else have taken the life of Lorenzo Bezan, was a theme of oft recalled admiration and regard to the young soldier. Though he felt in his heart that Isabella Gonzales could never love him, judging from the cold farewell that had at last separated them, still fame seemed dear to him on her account, because it seemed to bring him nearer to her, if not to raise a hope in his heart that she might one day be his. At times, in the lonely hours of the night, alone in his tent, he would apostrophize her angelic features, and sigh that Heaven, which had sent so sweet a mould in human form, should have imbued it with a spirit so haughty, a soul so proud as to mar the exquisite creation. "I have thought," he amused to himself, "I that I knew her-that the bright loveliness of her soul would dazzle and outshine the pride that chance had sown there-that if boldly and truly wooed, she would in turn boldly and truly love. It seemed to me, that it was the first barrier only that must he carried by assault, and after that I felt sure that love like mine would soon possess the citadel of her heart. But I was foolish, self-confident, and perhaps have deserved defeat. It may be so, but Isabella Gonzales shall see that the humble captain of infantry, who would hardly be tolerated, so lowly and humble was he, will command, ere long, at least, some degree of respect by the position that his sword shall win for him. Ay, and General Harero, too, may find me composed of better metal than he supposed. There is one truthful, gentle and loving spirit that will sympathize with me. I know and feel that; Ruez, my boy, may Heaven bless thee!" "Count Basterio, what sort of a person is this Colonel Bezan, whose sword has been invincible among the rebels, and who has sent us two stand of colors, taken by himself?" asked the queen, of one of her principal courtiers, one day. "Your majesty, I have, never seen him," answered the count, "but I'm told he's a grim old war-horse, covered with scars gained in your majesty's service." "Just as I had thought he must be," continued the queen, "but some one intimated to us yesterday that he was young, quite young, and of noble family, Count Basterio." "He has displayed too much knowledge of warfare to be very young, your majesty," said the count, "and has performed prodigies during this revolt, with only a handful of men." "That is partly what has so much interested me. I sent to the war office yesterday to know about him, and it was only recorded that he had been sent from Cuba. None of the heads of the department remembered to have seen him at all." "I saw by the Gazette that he would return to Madrid with his regiment to-day," said the count, "when, if your majesty desires it, I will seek out this Colonel Bezan, and bring him to you." "Do so; for we would know all our subjects who are gallant and deserving, and I am sure this officer must be both, from what I have already been able to learn." "Your wish shall be obeyed, your majesty," said the obsequious courtier, bowing low, and turning to a lady of the court, hard by, began to chat about how this old "son of a gun," this specimen of the battle-field would be astonished at the presence of his queen. "He's all covered with scars, you say?" asked one of the ladies. "Ay, senorita, from his forehead to his very feet," was the reply. "It will be immensely curious to see him; but he must look terrifically." "That's true," added the count; "he's grizzly and rough, but very honest." "Can't you have him muzzled," suggested a gay little senorita, smiling. "Never fear for his teeth, I wear a rapier," added the count, pompously. "But seriously, where's he from?" "Of some good family in the middle province, I understand." "O, he's a gentleman, then, and not a professional cut-throat?" asked another. "I believe so," said the courtier. "That's some consolation," was the rejoinder to the count's reply. While the merits of Lorenzo Bezan were thus being discussed, he was marching his regiment towards the capital, after a year's campaign of hard fighting; and the Gazette was right in its announcement, for he entered the capital on the evening designated, and occupied the regularly assigned barracks for his men. CHAPTER XII. THE QUEEN AND THE SOLDIER. IT was a noble and brilliant presence into which Lorenzo Bezan was summoned on the day following his arrival from the seat of war. Dons and senoras of proud titles and rich estates, the high officials of the court, the prime ministers the maids of honor, the gayly dressed pages and men-at-arms, all combined to render the scene one of most striking effect. The young soldier was fresh from the field; hard service and exposure had deepened the olive tint of his clear complexion to a deep nut brown, and his beard was unshaven, and gave a fine classical effect to his handsome but melancholy features. The bright clearness of his intelligent eye seemed to those who looked upon him there, to reflect the battles, sieges and victories that the gallant soldier had so lately participated in. Though neat and clean in appearance, the somewhat sudden summons he had received, led him to appear before the court in his battle dress, and the same sword hung by his side that had so often reeked with the enemy's blood, and flashed in the van of battle. There was no hauteur in his bearing; his form was erect and military; there was no self-sufficiency or pride in his expression; but a calm, steady purpose of soul alone was revealed by the countenance that a hundred curious eyes now gazed upon. More than one heart beat quicker among the lovely throng of ladies, as they gazed upon the young hero. More than one kindly glance was bestowed upon him; but he was impervious to the shafts of Cupid; he could never suffer again; he could love but one, and she was far away from here. Lorenzo Bezan had never been at court. True that his father, and indeed his elder brother, and other branches of the house had the entree at court; but his early connection with the army, and a naturally retiring disposition, had prevented his ever having been presented, and he now stood there for the first time. The queen was not present when he first entered, but she now appeared and took her seat of state. Untaught in court etiquette, yet it came perfectly natural for Lorenzo Bezan to kneel before her majesty, which he did immediately, and was graciously bidden to rise. "Count Basterio," said the queen, "where is this Colonel Bezan, whom you were to bring to us to-day? have you forgotten your commission, sir?" "Your majesty, he stands before you," replied the complaisant courtier. "Where, count?" "Your majesty, here," said the courtier, pointing more directly to our hero. "This youth, this Colonel Bezan! I had thought to sec an older person," said the queen, gazing curiously upon the fine and noble features of the young soldier. "I trust that my age may be of no detriment to me as it regards your majesty's good feelings towards me," said Lorenzo Bezan, respectfully. "By no means, sir; you have served us gallantly in the field, and your bravery and good judgment in battle have highly commended themselves to our notice." "I am little used, your majesty, to courtly presence, and find that even now I have come hither accoutred as I would have ridden on to the field of battle; but if a heart devoted to the service of your majesty, and a willing hand to wield this trusty weapon, are any excuses in your sight, I trust for lenient judgment at your royal hands." "A brave soldier needs no excuse in our presence, Colonel Bezan," replied the queen, warmly. "When we have heard of your prowess in the field, and have seen the stands of colors you have taken from the enemy, far outnumbering your own force, we have thought you were some older follower of the bugle and the drum-some hardy and gray old soldier, whose life had been spent in his country's service, and therefore when we find an soldier like yourself, so young, and yet so wise, we were surprised." "Your majesty has made too much of my poor deserts. Already have I been twice noticed by honorable and high promotion in rank, and wear this emblem to-day by your majesty's gracious favor." As he spoke, he touched his colonel's star. "For your bravery and important services, Captain Bezan, wear this next that star for the present," said the queen, presenting the young soldier with the medal and order of St. Sebastian, a dignity that few attained to of less distinction than her privy councillors and the immediate officers of the government. Surprised by this unexpected and marked honor, the young soldier could only kneel and thank her majesty in feeble words, which he did, and pressing the token to his lips, he placed it about his neck by the golden chain that had supported it but a moment before upon the lovely person of his queen. The presence was broken up, and Lorenzo Bezan returned to his barracks, reflecting upon his singular good fortune. His modest demeanor, his brilliant military services, his handsome face and figure, and in short his many noble points of manliness; and perhaps even the slight tinge of melancholy that seemed ever struggling with all the emotions that shone forth from his expressive face, had more deeply interested the young queen in his behalf than the soldier himself knew of. He knew nothing of the envy realized by many of the courtiers when they saw the queen present him with the medal taken from her own neck, and that, too, of an order so distinguished as St. Sebastian. "What sort of spirit has befriended you, Colonel Bezan?" said one of his early friends; "luck seems to lavish her efforts upon you." "I have been lucky," replied the soldier. "Lucky! the whole court rings with your praise, and the queen delights to honor you." "The queen has doubly repaid my poor services," continued the young officer. "Where will you stop, colonel?" "Stop?" "Yes; when will you have done with promotion?-at a general's commission?" "No fear of that honor being very quickly tendered to me," was the reply; while at the same moment he secretly felt how much he should delight in every stop that raised him in rank, and thus entitled him to positions and honor. Such conversations were not unfrequent; for those who did not particularly envy him, were still much surprised at his rapid growth in favor with the throne, his almost magic success in battle, and delighted at the prompt reward which he met in payment for the exercise of those qualities which they could not themselves but honor. Scarcely had he got off his fighting harness, so to speak, before he found himself the object of marked attention by the nobility and members of the court. Invitations from all sources were showered upon him, and proud and influential houses, with rich heiresses to represent them, were among those who sought to interest the attention if not the heart of the young but rising soldier-he whom the queen had so markedly befriended. Her majesty, too, seemed never tired of interesting herself in his behalf, and already had several delicate commissions been entrusted to his charge, and performed with the success that seemed sure to crown his simplest efforts. So far as courtesy required, Colonel Bezan responded to every invitations and every extension of hospitality; but though beset by such beauty as the veiled prophet of Khorassan tempted young Azim with, still he passed unscathed through the trial of star-lit eyes and female loveliness, always bending, but never breaking; for his heart would still wander over the sea to the vision of her, who, to him, was far more beautiful than aught his fancy had pictured, or his eyes had seen. All seemed to feel that some tender secret possessed him, and all were most anxious as to what it was. Even the queen, herself, had observed it; but it was a delicate subject, and not to be spoken of lightly to him. Lorenzo Bezan had most mysteriously found the passage to the queen's good graces, and she delighted to honor him by important commissions; so two years had not yet passed away, when the epaulets of a general were presented to the young and ambitious soldier! Simply outranked now by General Harero, who had so persecuted him, in point of the date of his commission, he far outstretched that selfish officer in point of the honors that had been conferred upon him by the throne; and being now economical with the handsome professional income he enjoyed, he was fast amassing a pecuniary fortune that of itself was a matter of no small importance, not only to himself, but also in the eyes of the world. Among the courtiers he had already many enemies, simply because of his rise and preferment, and he was known as the favorite of the queen. Some even hinted darkly that she entertained for him feelings of a more tender nature than the court knew of, and that his promotion would not stop at a general's commission, and perhaps not short of commander-in-chief of the armies of Spain. But such persons knew nothing to warrant these surmises; they arose from the court gossip, day by day, and only gained importance from being often repeated. "She delights to honor him," said one lady to another, in the queen's ante-chamber. "Count Basterio says that he will be made prime minister within a twelvemonth." "The count is always extravagant," replied the other, "and I think that General Bezan richly merits the honors he receives. He is so modest, yet brave and unassuming. "That is true, and I'm sure I don't blame the queen for repaying his important services. But he doesn't seen to have any heart himself." "Why not? He treats all with more than ordinary courtesy, and has a voice and manner to win almost any heart he wills. But some dark hints are thrown out about him." "In what respect, as having already been in love?" asked the other lady. "Yes, and the tender melancholy that every one notices, is owing to disappointed affection." "It is strange that he should meet with disappointment, for General Bezan could marry the proudest lady of the court of Madrid." "O, you forget when he came home to Spain he was only an humble captain of infantry, who had seen little service. Now he is a general, and already distinguished." They were nearer right in their surmises than even themselves were aware of. It was very true that Captain Bezan, the unknown soldier, and General Bezan, the queen's favorite, honored by orders, and entrusted with important commissions, successful in desperate battles, and the hero of the civil war, were two very different individuals. No one realized this more acutely than did Lorenzo Bezan himself. No step towards preferment and honor did he make without comparing his situation with the humble lieutenant's birth that he filled when he first knew Isabella Gonzales, and when his hopes had run so high, as it regarded winning her love. Of all the beauty and rank of the Castilian court, at the period of which we write, the Countess Moranza was universality pronounced the queen of beauty. A lineal descendant of the throne, her position near the queen was of such a nature as to give her great influence, and to cause her favor to be sought with an earnestness only second to the service rendered to the queen herself. Her sway over the hearts of men had been unlimited; courted and sought after by the nobles of the land, her heart had never yet been touched, or her favors granted beyond the proud civility that her birth, rank and position at court entitled her to dispense. She differed from Isabella Gonzales but little in character, save in the tenderness and womanliness, so to speak, of her heart-that she could not control; otherwise she possessed all the pride and self-conceit that her parentage and present position were calculated to engender and foster. On Lorenzo's Bezan's first appearance at court she had been attracted by his youth, his fame, the absence of pride in his bearing, and the very subdued and tender, if not melancholy, cast of his countenance. She was formally introduced to him by the queen, and was as much delighted by the simple sincerity of his conversation as she had been by his bearing and the fame that preceded his arrival at the court. She had long been accustomed to the flirting and attention of the court gallants, and had regarded them with little feeling; but there was one who spoke from the heart, and she found that he spoke to the heart, also, for she was warmly interested in him at once. On his part, naturally polite and gallant, he was assiduous in every little attention, more so from the feeling of gratitude for the friendship she showed to him who was so broken-hearted. Intercourse of days and hours grew into the intimacy of weeks and months, and they became friends, warm friends, who seemed to love to confide in each other the whole wealth of the soul. Unaccustomed to female society, and with only one model ever before his eyes, Lorenzo Bezan afforded, in his truthfulness, a refreshing picture to the court-wooed and fashionable belle of the capital, who had so long lived in the artificial atmosphere of the queen's palace, and the surroundings of the Spanish capital. The absence of all intrigue, management and deceit, the frank, open-hearted manliness of his conversation, the delicacy of his feelings, and the constant consideration for her own ease and pleasure, could not but challenge the admiration of the beautiful Countess Moranza, and on her own part she spared no means to return his politeness. CHAPTER XIII. UNREQUITED LOVE. PLEASED, and perhaps flattered, by the constant and unvarying kindness and friendliness evinced towards him by the Countess Moranza, the young general seemed to be very happy in her company, and to pass a large portion of his leisure hours by her side. The court gossips, ever ready to improve any opportunity that may offer, invented all manner of scandal and prejudicial stories concerning the peerless and chaste Countess Moranza; but she was above the power of their shafts, and entertained Lorenzo Bezan with prodigal hospitality. To the young soldier this was of immense advantage, as she who was thus a firm friend to him, was a woman of brilliant mind and cultivation, and Lorenzo Bezan improved vastly by the intellectual peers of the countess. The idea of loving her beyond the feelings a warm friendship might induce, had never crossed his mind, and had it done so, would not have been entertained even for one moment. Of loving he had but one idea, one thought, one standard, and that heart embodiment, that queen of his affections, was Isabella Gonzales. They rode together, read to each other, and, in short, were quite inseparable, save when the queen, by some invitation, which was law of course to the young general, solicited his attendance upon herself. Her friendship, too, was in want, and her interest great for Lorenzo Bezan, and he delighted to shower upon him every honor, and publicly to acknowledge his service in to the throne. "The queen seems very kind to you, general," said the countess, to him. "She is more than kind-she lavish rewards upon me." "She loves bravery." "She repays good fortune in round sums," replied the officer. "But why do you ever wear that sober, sombre, and sad look upon that manly and intellectual face?" "Do I look thus?" asked the soldier, with a voice of surprise. "Often." "I knew it not," replied Lorenzo Bezan, somewhat earnestly. "It seems a mystery to me that General Bezan, honored by the queen, with a purse well filled with gold, and promoted beyond all precedent in his profession, should not rather smile than frown; but perhaps there is some reason for grief in your heart, and possibly I am careless, and probing to the quick a wound that may yet be fresh." The soldier breathed an involuntary sigh, but said nothing. "Yes. I see now that I have annoyed you, and should apologize," she said. "Nay, not so; you have been more than a friend to me; you have been an instructress in gentle refinement and all that is lovely in your sex, and I should but poorly repay such consideration and kindness, were I not to confide in you all my thoughts." The countess could not imagine what was coming. She turned pale, and then a blush stole over her beautiful features, betraying how deeply interested she was. "I hope, general," she said, "that if there is aught in which a person like myself might offer consolation or advice to you, it may be spoken without reserve." "Ah, countess, how can I ever repay such a debt as you put me under by this very touching kindness, this most sisterly consideration towards me?" There was a moment's pause in which the eyes of both rested upon the floor. "You say that I am sad at times. I had thought your brilliant conversation and gentleness of character had so far made me forget that I no longer looked sad. But it is not so. You, so rich in wealth and position, have never known a want, have never received a slight, have never been insulted at heart for pride's sake. Lady, I have loved a being, so much like yourself, that I have often dreamed of you together. A being all pure and beautiful, with but one sad alley in her sweet character-pride. I saw her while yet most humble in rank. I served herself and father and brother, even to saving their lives; I was promoted, and held high honor with my command; but she was rich, and her father high in lordly honors and associations. I was but a poor soldier; what else might I expect but scorn if I dared to love her? But, countess, you are ill," said the soldier, observing her pallid features and quick coming and going breath. "Only a temporary illness; it is already gone," she said. "Pray go on." "And yet I believe she loved me also though the pride of her heart choked the growth of the tendrils of affection. Maddened by the insults of a rival, who was far above me in rank, I challenged him, and for this was banished from the island where she lives. Do you wonder that I am sometimes sad at these recollections? that my full heart will sometimes speak in my face?" "Nay, it is but natural," answered the countess, with a deep sigh. General Bezan was thinking of his own anguish of heart, of the peculiarities of his own situation, of her who was far away, yet now present in his heart, else he would have noticed more particularly the appearance of her whom he addressed. The reader would have seen at once that she received his declaration of love for another like a death blow, that she sat there and heard him go on as one would sit under torture; yet by the strong force of her character subduing almost entirely all outward emotions. There was no disguising it to a careful observer, she, the Countess Moranza, loved him! From the first meeting she had been struck by his noble figure, his melancholy yet handsome and intellectual face, and knowing the gallantry of his services to the queen, was struck by the modest bearing of a soldier so renowned in battle. After refusing half of the gallants of the court, and deeming herself impregnable to the shafts of Cupid, she had at last lost her heart to this man. But that was not the point that made her suffer so now, it was that he loved another; that he could never sustain the tender relation to her which her heart suggested. All these thoughts now passed through her mind. We say had General Bezan not been so intent in his thoughts far away, he might have discovered this secret, at least to some extent. He knew not the favor of woman's love; he knew only of his too unhappy disappointment, and, on this his mind was sadly and earnestly engaged. Days passed on, and the young general saw little of the countess, for her unhappy condition of mind caused her to seclude herself almost entirely from society, even denying herself to him whom she loved so well. She struggled to forget her love, or rather to bring philosophy to her aid in conquering it. She succeeded in a large degree; but at the same time resolved to make it her business to reconcile Lorenzo Bezan to her he loved, if such a thing were possible; and thus to enjoy the consciousness of having performed at least one disinterested act for him whom she too had loved, as we have seen, most sincerely and most tenderly. Thus actuated, the countess resolved to make a confidant, or, at least, partially to do so, of the queen, and to interest her to return Lorenzo Bezan once more to the West Indian station, with honor and all the due credit. It scarcely needed her eloquence in pleading to consummate this object, for the queen already prepossessed in the young soldier's favor, only desired to know how she might serve him best, in order to do so at once. In her shrewdness she could not but discover the state of the countess's heart; but too delicate to allude to this matter, she made up her mind at once as to what should be done. She wondered not at the countess's love for Lorenzo Bezan; she could sympathize with her; for had he been born in the station to have shared the throne with her, she would have looked herself upon him with a different eye; as it was, she had delighted to honor him from the first moment they had met. "Your wish shall be granted, countess," said the queen; "he shall return to Cuba, and with honor and distinction." "Thanks, a thousand thanks," was the reply of the fair friend. "You have never told me before the particulars of his returning home." "It was but lately that I learned them, by his own lips," she answered. "His life is full of romance," mused the queen, thoughtfully. "True, and his bravery, has he opportunity, will make him a hero." "The lady's name-did he tell you that?" asked the queen. "He did." "And whom was it?" "Isabella Gonzales." "Isabella Gonzales?" "Yes, my liege lady." "A noble house; we remember the name." "He said they were noble," sighed the countess, thoughtfully. "Well, well," continued the queen, "go you and recruit your spirits once more; as to Lorenzo Bezan, he is my protege, and I will at once attend to his interests." Scarcely had the Countess Moranza left her presence, before the queen, summoning an attendant, despatched a message to General Bezan to come at once to the palace. The queen was a noble and beautiful woman, who had studied human nature in all its phases; she understood at once the situation of her young favorite's heart, and by degrees she drew him out, as far as delicacy would permit, and then asked him if he still loved Isabella Gonzales as he had done when he was a poor lieutenant of infantry, in the tropical service. "Love her, my liege?" said the young general, in tones almost reproachful, to think any one could doubt it, "I have never for one moment, even amid the roar of battle and the groans of dying men, forgotten Isabella Gonzales!" "Love like thine should be its own reward; she was proud, too proud to return thy love; was it not so, general?" "My liege, you have spoken for me." "But you were a poor lieutenant of infantry then." "True." "And that had its influence." "I cannot but suppose so." "Well," said the queen, "we have a purpose for you." "I am entirely at your majesty's disposal," replied the young soldier. "We will see what commission it best fits so faithful a servant of our crown to bear, and an appointment may be found that will carry thee back to this distant isle of the tropics, where you have left your heart." "To Cuba, my liege?" "Ay." "But my banishment from the island reads forever," said the soldier. "We have power to make it read as best suits us," was the reply. "You are really too good to me," replied the soldier. "Now to your duty, general, and to-morrow we shall have further business with you." Lorenzo Bezan bowed low, and turned his steps from the palace towards his own lodgings, near the barracks. It was exceedingly puzzling to him, first, that he could not understand what had led the queen to this subject; second, how she could so well discern the truth; and lastly, that such consideration was shown for him. He could not mistake the import of the queen's words; it was perfectly plain to him what she had said, and what she had meant; and in a strange state of mind, bordering upon extreme of suspicion and strong hope, and yet almost as powerful fears, he mused over the singular condition in which he found himself and his affairs. It seemed to him that fortune was playing at shuttlecock with him, and that just for the present, at any rate, his star was in the ascendant. "How long shall I go on in my good fortune?" he asked himself; "how long will it be before I shall again meet with a fierce rebuff in some quarter? Had I planned my own future for the period of time since I landed at Cadiz, I could not have bettered it-indeed I could not have dared to be as extravagant as I find the reality. No wonder that I meet those envious glances at court. Who ever shared a larger portion of the honorable favor of the queen than I do? It is strange, all very strange. And this beautiful Countess Moranza-what a good angel she has been to me; indeed, what have I not enjoyed that I could wish, since I arrived in Spain? Yet how void of happiness and of peace of heart am I! Alas, as the humble lieutenant in the Plaza des Armes in Havana, as the lowly soldier whom Isabella Gonzales publicly noticed in the Paseo, as the fortunate deliverer of herself and father, and as resting my wounded body upon her own support, how infinitely happier was I. How bright was hope then in my breast, and brilliant the charms of the fairy future! Could I but recall those happy moments at a cost of all the renown my sword may have won me, how gladly would I do so this moment. This constant suspense is worse than downright defeat or certain misfortune. Is there no power can give us an insight into the hidden destiny of ourselves? is there no means by which we can see the future? Not long could I sustain this ordeal of suspense. Ah, Isabella, what have I not suffered for thy love? what is there I would not endure!" CHAPTER XIV. THE SURPRISE. IT had already been announced among the knowing ones at Havana that there was to be a new lieutenant governor general arrive ere long for the island, and those interested in these matters feel of course such an interest as an event of this character would naturally inspire. Those in authority surmised as to what sort of a person they were to be associated with, and the better classes of society in the island wished to know what degree of addition to their society the new comer would be-whether he was married or single, etc. Isabella Gonzales realized no such interest in the matter; the announcement that there was to be a new lieutenant-governor created no interest in her breast; she remained as she had done these nearly four years, secluded, with only Ruez as her companion, and only the Plato as the spot for promenade. She had not faded during the interim of time since the reader left her with Lorenzo Bezan's letter in her hand; but a soft, tender, yet settled melancholy had possessed the beautiful lineaments and expressive lines of her features. She was not happy. She had no confidant, and no one knew her secret save herself; but an observant person would easily have detected the deep shadow that lay upon her soul. We say she had not faded-nor had she; there was the same soft and beautiful expression in her face, even more tender than before; for it had lost the tinge of alloy that pride was wont to impart to it; where pride had existed before, there now dwelt tender melancholy, speaking from the heart, and rendering the lovely girl far, far more interesting and beautiful. She had wept bitter, scalding tears over that last farewell between herself and Lorenzo Bezan in the prison; she blamed herself bitterly now that she had let him depart thus; but there was no reprieve, no recalling the consequences; he was gone, and forever! Communication with the home government was seldom and slowly consummated, and an arrival at that period from Old Spain was an event. Partly for this reason, and partly because there was no one to write to her, Isabella, nor indeed her father, had heard anything of Lorenzo Bezan since his departure. General Harero had learned of his promotion for gallant service; but having no object in communicating such intelligence, it had remained wholly undivulged, either to the Gonzales family or the city generally. It was twilight, and the soft light that tints the tropics in such a delicate hue at this hour was playing with the beauty of Isabella Gonzales's face, now in profile, now in front, as she lounged on a couch near the window, which overlooked the sea and harbor. She held in her hand an open letter; she had been shedding tears; those, however, were now dried up, and a puzzled and astonished feeling seemed to be expressed in her beautiful countenance, as she gazed now and then at the letter, and then once more off upon the sparkling waters of the Gulf Stream. "Strange," she murmured to herself, and again hastily read over the letter, and examined the seal which had enclosed it in a ribbon envelope and parchment. "How is it possible for the queen to know my secret? and yet here she reveals all; it is her own seal, and I think even her own hand, that has penned these lines. Let me read again: "SENORITA ISABELLA GONZALES: Deeply interested as we are for the welfare of all our loyal subjects, we have taken occasion to send you some words of information relative to yourself. Beyond a doubt you have loved and been beloved devotedly; but pride, ill asserted arrogance of soul, has rendered you miserable. We speak not knowingly, but from supposition grounded upon what we do know. He who loved you was humble-humble in station, but noble in personal qualities, such as a woman may well worship in man, bravery, manliness and stern and noble beauty of person. We say he loved you, and we doubt not you must have loved him; for how could it be otherwise? Pride caused you to repulse him. Now, senorita, know that he whom you thus repulsed was more than worthy of you; that, although he might have espoused one infinitely your superior in rank and wealth in Madrid, since his arrival here, he had no heart to give, and still remained true to you! Know that by his daring bravery, his manliness, his modest bearing, and above all, his clear-sighted and brilliant mental capacity he has challenged our own high admiration; but you, alas! must turn in scorn your proud lip upon him! Think not we have these facts from him, or that he has reflected in the least upon you; he is far too delicate for such conduct. No, it is an instinctive sense of the position of circumstances that has led to this letter and this plain language. (Signed) YOUR QUEEN. "The Senorita Isabella Gonzales." One might have thought that this would have aroused the pride and anger of Isabella Gonzales, but it did not; it surprised her; and after the first sensation of this feeling was over, it struck her as so truthful, what the queen had said, that she wept bitterly. "Alas! she has most justly censured me, but points out no way for me to retrieve the bitter steps I have taken," sobbed the unhappy girl, aloud. "Might have espoused one my superior in rank and fortune, at Madrid, but he had no heart to give! Fool that I am, I see it all; and the queen is indeed but too correct. But what use is all this information to me, save to render me the more miserable? Show a wretch the life he might have lived, and then condemn him to death; that is my position-that my hard, unhappy fate! "Alas! does he love me still? he whom I have so heartlessly treated-ay, whom I have crushed, as it were, for well knew how dearly he loved me! He has challenged even the admiration of the queen, and has been, perhaps, promoted; but still has been true to me, who in soul have been as true to him." Thus murmured the proud girl to herself-thus frankly realized the truth. "Ah, my child," said Don Gonzales, meeting his daughter, "put on thy best looks, for we are to have the new lieutenant-governor installed to-morrow, and all of us must be present. He's a soldier of much renown, so report says." "Doubtless, father; but I'm not very well to-day, and shall be hardly able to go to-morrow--at least I fear I shall not." "Fie, fie, my daughter; thou, the prettiest bird in all the island, to absent thyself from the presence on such an occasion? It will never do." "Here, Ruez, leave that hound alone, and come hither," he continued, to the boy. "You, too, must be ready at an early hour to-morrow to go with Isabella and myself to the palace, where we shall be introduced to the new lieutenant-governor, just arrived from Madrid." "I don't want to go, father," said the boy, still fondling the dog. "Why not, Ruez?" "Because Isabella does not," was the childish reply. "Now if this be not rank mutiny, and I shall have to call in a corporal's guard to arrest the belligerents," said Don Gonzales, half playfully. "But go you must; and I have a secret, but I shall not tell it to you-no, not for the world-a surprise for you both; but that's no matter now. Go you must, and go you will; so prepare you in good season to-morrow to attend me." Both sister and brother saw that he was in earnest, and made arrangements accordingly. The occasion of instating the lieutenant-governor in his high and responsible station, was one of no little note in Havana, and was celebrated by all the pomp and military display that could possibly add importance to the event, and impress the citizens with the sacred character of the office. The day was therefore ushered in by the booming of cannon and the music of military bands, and the universal stir at the barracks told the observer that all grades were to be on duty that day, and in full numbers. The palace of the governor-general was decorated with flags and streamers, and even the fountain in the Plaza des Armes seemed to bubble forth with additional life and spirit on the occasion. It was an event in Havana; it was something to vary the monotony of this beautiful island-city, and the inhabitants seized upon it as a gala day. Business was suspended; the throng put on their holiday suit, the various regiments appeared in full regalia and uniform, for the new lieutenant-commander-in-chief was to review them in the after part of the day. The ceremony of installation was performed in the state hall of the palace, where all the military, wealth, beauty and fashion of the island assembled, and among these the venerable and much respected Don Gonzales, and his peerless daughter, Isabella, and his noble boy, Ruez. The reception hall was in a blaze of beauty and fashion, till patiently awaiting the introduction of the new and high official the queen had sent from Spain to sit as second to the brave Tacon. An hour of silence had passed, when at a signal the band struck up a national march, and then advanced into the reception room Tacon, and by his side a young soldier, on whose noble brow sat dignity and youth, interwoven in near embrace. His eyes rested on the floor, and he drew near to the seat of honor with modest mien, his spurred heel and martial bearing alone betokening that in time of need his sword was ready, and his time and life at the call of duty. Few, if any, had seen him before, and now among the ladies there ran a low murmur of admiration at the noble and manly beauty of the young soldier. The priest read the usual services, the customary hymn and chant were listened to, when the priest, delegated for this purpose, advanced and said: "We, by the holy power vested in us, do anoint thee, Lorenzo Bezan--" At these words, Isabella Gonzales, who had, during all the while, been an absent spectator, never once really turning her eyes toward the spot where the new officer stood, dropped her fan, and sprang to her feet. She gazed for one single moment, and then uttering one long and piteous scream, fell lifeless into her father's arms. This cry startled every one, but perhaps less the cause of it than any one else. He he had schooled so critical a moment ceremony went on quietly and was duly installed. "Alas, alas, for me, what made thee ill?" said the, as he bent over her couch, after. But Isabella answered him not; she was in a half-dreamy, half-conscious state, and knew not what was said to her. Ruez stood on the other side of her couch, and kissed her white forehead, but said nothing. Yet he seemed to know more than his father as to what had made Isabella sick, and at last he proved this. "Why could you not tell Isabella and me, father, that our old friend Captain Bezan was to be there, and that it was he who was to be lieutenant-governor? Then sister would not have been so startled." "Startled at what, Ruez?" "Why, at unexpectedly seeing Captain Bezan," said the boy, honestly. "General Bezan, he is now. But why should she be startled so?" "O, she is not very well, you know, father," said the boy, evasively. "True, she is not well, and I managed it as a surprise, and it was too much of one, I see." And father and brother tended by the sick girl's bedside as they would have done that of an infant. Poor Isabella, what a medley of contradictions is thy heart! The ceremonies of the day passed off as usual; the review took place in the after part of the day, and as General Bezan, now outranking General Harero, rode by his division, he raised his hat to his old comrades in arms, and bowed coldly to their commander. His rise and new position filled the army with wonder; but none envied him; they loved their old favorite too well to envy his good fortune to him; even his brother officers echoed the cheers for the new lieutenant-general. But when the noise, the pomp, and bustle of the day was over, and when alone in his apartment by himself, it was then that Lorenzo Bezan's heart and feelings found sway. He knew full well who it was that uttered that scream, and better, too, the cause of it; he feared that he could neither sleep nor eat until he should see her and speak to her once more; but then again he feared to attempt this. True, his position gave him the entree to all classes now, and her father's house would have been welcome to him; but he would far rather have seen her as the humble Captain Bezan, of yore, than with a host of stars upon his breast. Isabella revived at last, but she scarcely escaped a fever from the shock her system, mental and physical, had received. And how busy, too, wore her thoughts, how never tiring in picturing him with his new honors, and in surprise how he could have won such distinction and honor at the queen's hands, She read again and again the queen's letter. He had no heart to give. That she looked upon-those few words-until her eyes became blind at the effort. And still she read on, and thought of him whom she knew had loved her so dearly, so tenderly, and yet without hope. Isabella Gonzales's pride had received a severe shock. Will she still bow low to the impulsive and arbitrary promptings of her proud spirit, or will she rise above them, and conquer and win a harvest of peace and happiness? The story must disclose the answer; it is not for us to say here. CHAPTER XV. THE SERENAPE. GENERAL HARERO, as we have already intimated, had not, for a considerable period, enjoyed any degree of intimacy with Isabella Gonzales or her father, but actuated by a singular pertinacity of character, he seemed not yet to have entirely given up his hopes in relation to an alliance with her. The arrival of Lorenzo Bezan again upon the island, he felt, would, in any instance, endanger, if not totally defeat any lingering plans he might still conceive in his mind to bring into operation for the furtherance of his hopes; but when his arrival had actually occurred, and under such brilliant auspices for the young soldier, General Harero was enraged beyond control. He sought his quarters, after the review, in a desperate mood, and walked the narrow precincts of his room with bitter thoughts rankling in his bosom, and a burning desire for revenge goading him to action. A thousand ways, all of which were more or less mingled with violence, suggested themselves to his mind as proper to adopt. Now he would gladly have fought his rival, have gone into the field and risked his own life for the sake of taking his; but this must be done too publicly, and he felt that the public feeling was with the new official; besides that, General Bezan could now arrest him, as he had done the young officer when he challenged his superior, as the reader will remember. Dark thoughts ran through his brain-some bearing directly upon Isabella Gonzales, some upon Lorenzo Bezan; even assassination suggested itself; and his hands clenched, and his cheeks burned, as the revengeful spirit possessed him and worked in his veins. While Lorenzo Bezan was absent he was content to bide his time, reasoning that eventually Isabella Gonzales would marry him, after a few more years of youthful pride and vanity had passed; but now he was spurred on to fresh efforts by the new phase that matters had taken, and but one course he felt was left for him to pursue, which one word might express, and that was action! Having no definite idea as to what Lorenzo Bezan would do, under the new aspect of affairs, General Harero could not devise in what way to meet him. That Isabella had been prevented from absolutely loving him only by her pride, when he was before upon the island, he knew full well, and he realized as fully that all those obstacles that pride had engendered were now removed by the rank and position of his rival. He wondered in his own mind whether it was possible that Lorenzo Bezan might not have forgotten her, or found some more attractive shrine whereat to worship. As he realized Isabella's unmatched loveliness, he felt that, however, could hardly be; and thus unsettled as to the state of affairs between the two, he was puzzled as to what course to pursue. In the meantime, while General Harero was thus engaged with himself, Lorenzo Bezan was thinking upon the same subject. It was nearly midnight; but still he walked back and forth in his room with thoughtful brow. There was none of the nervous irritation in his manner that was evinced by his rival; but there was deep and anxious solicitude written in every line of his handsome features. He was thinking of Isabella. Was thinking of her, did we say? He had never forgotten her for one hour since the last farewell meeting in the prison walls. He knew not how she felt towards him now-whether a new pride might not take the place of that which had before actuated her, and a fear lest she should, by acknowledging, as it were, the former error, be led still to observe towards him the same austere manner and distance. "Have I won renown, promotion, and extended fame to no purpose, at last?" he asked himself; "what care I for these unless shared in by her; unless her beautiful eyes approve, and her sweet lips acknowledge? Alas, how poor a thing am I, whom my fellow-mortals count so fortunate and happy!" Thus he mused to himself, until at last stepping to the open balcony window, he looked out upon the soft and delicious light of it tropical moon. All was still-all was beautiful; the steady pace of the sentinel on duty at the entrance of the palace, alone, sounding upon the ear. Suddenly a thought seemed to suggest itself to his mind. Seizing his guitar, from a corner of his room, he threw a thin military cloak about his form, and putting on a foraging cap, passed the sentinel, and strolled towards the Plato! How well he remembered the associations of the place, as he paused now for a moment in the shadow of the broad walls of the barracks. He stood there but for a moment, then drawing nearer to the house of Don Gonzales, he touched the strings of his guitar with a master hand, and sung with a clear, musical voice one of those exquisite little serenades with which the Spanish language abounds. The song did not awake Isabella, though just beneath her window. She heard it, nevertheless, and in the half-waking, half-dreaming state in which she was, perhaps enjoyed it even with keener sense than she would have done if quite aroused. She dreamed of love, and of Lorenzo Bezan; she thought all was forgotten-all forgiven, and that he was her accepted lover. But this was in her sleep-awake, she would not have felt prepared to say yet, even to herself, whether she really loved him, or would listen to his address; awake, there was still a lingering pride in her bosom, too strong for easy removal. But sweet was the pure and beautiful girl's sleep-sweet was the smile that played about her delicate mouth-and lovely beyond the painter's power, the whole expression of soft delight that dwelt in her incomparably handsome features. The song ceased, but the sleeper dreamed on in delightful quietude. Not so without; there was a scene enacting there that would chill the heart of woman, and call into action all the sterner powers of the other sex. Some strange chance had drawn General Harero from his quarters, also, at this hour, and the sound of the guitar had attracted him to the Plato just as Lorenzo Bezan had completed his song. Hearing approaching footsteps, and not caring to be discovered, the serenader slung his guitar by its silken cord behind his back, and wrapping his cloak about him, prepared to leave the spot; but hardly had he reached the top of the broad stairs that lead towards the Calle de Mercaderes (street of the merchants), when he stood face to face with his bitter enemy, General Harero! "General Harero!" "Lorenzo Bezan!" Said each, calling the other's name, in the first moment of surprise. "So you still propose to continue your persecutions towards this lady?" said General Harero, sarcastically. "Persecutions?" "That was my word; what other term can express unwelcome visits?" "It were better, General Harero, that you should remember the change which has taken place in our relative positions, of late, and not provoke me too far." "I spit upon and defy your authority." "Then, sir, it shall be exercised on the morrow for your especial benefit." "Not by you, though," said the enraged rival, drawing his sword suddenly, and thrusting its point towards the heart of Lorenzo Bezan. But the young soldier had been too often engaged in hand to hand conflicts to lose his presence of mind, and with his uplifted arm shrouded in his cloak, he parried the blow, with only a slight flesh wound upon his left wrist. But General Harero had drawn blood, and that was enough; the next moment their swords were crossed, and a few passes were only necessary to enable Lorenzo Bezan to revenge himself by a severe wound in his rival's left breast. Maddened by the pain of his wound, and reckless by his anger, General Harero pressed hard upon the young officer; but his coolness was more than a match for his antagonist's impetuosity; and after inflicting a severe blow upon his cheek with the flat of his sword, Lorenzo Bezan easily disarmed him, and breaking his sword in twain, threw it upon the steps of the Plato, and quietly walked away leaving General Harero to settle matters between his own rage, his wounds and the surgeon, as best he might, while he sought his own quarters within the palace walls. General Harero was more seriously wounded than he had at first deemed himself to be, and gathering up the fragments of his sword, he sought the assistance of his surgeon, in a state of anger and excitement that bid fair, in connection with his wounds, to lead him into a raging fever. Inventing some plausible story of being attacked by some unknown ruffian, and desiring the surgeon to observe his wishes as to secrecy, for certain reasons, the wounded man submitted to have his wounds dressed, and taking some cooling medicine by way of precaution, lay himself down to sleep just as the gray of morning tinged the western horizon. That morning Isabella Gonzales awoke with pleasant memories of her dream, little knowing that the sweet music she had attributed to the creations of her own fancy, was real, and that voice and instrument actually sounded beneath her own chamber window. "Ah, sister," said Ruez, "how well you are looking this morning." "Am I, brother?" "Yes, better than I have seen you this many a long day." "I rested well last night, and had pleasant dreams, Ruez." "Last night," said the boy, "that reminds me of some music I heard." "Music?" "Yes, a serenade; a manly voice and guitar, I should judge." "It is strange; I dreamed that I heard it, too, but on waking I thought it was but a dream. It might have been real," mused Isabella, thoughtfully. "I am sure of it, and though I, too, was but half awake, I thought that I recognized the voice, and cannot say why I did not rise to see if my surmise was correct, but I dropped quickly to sleep again." "And who did, you think it was, brother?" asked Isabella Gonzales. "General Bezan, our new lieutenant-governor," said the boy, regarding his sister closely. "It must have been so, then," mused Isabella, to herself; "we could not both have been thus mistaken. Lorenzo Bezan must have been on the Plato last night; would that I could have seen him, if but for one moment." "I should like to speak to General Bezan," said Ruez; "but he's so high an officer now that I suppose he would not feel so much interest in me as he did when I used to visit him in the government prison." Isabella made no reply to this remark, but still mused to herself. Ruez gazed thoughtfully upon his sister; there seemed to be much going on in his own mind relative to the subject of which they had spoken. At one moment you might read a tinge of anxious solicitude in the boy's handsome face, as he gazed thus, and anon a look of pride, too, at the surpassing beauty and dignity of his sister. She was very beautiful. Her morning costume was light and graceful, and her whole toilet showed just enough of neglige to add interest to the simplicity of her personal attire. Her dark, jetty hair contrasted strongly with the pure white of her dress, and there was not an ornament upon her person, save those that nature had lavished there in prodigal abundance. She had never looked more lovely than at that hour; the years that had passed since the reader met her in familiar conversation with our hero, had only served still more to perfect and ripen her personal charms. Though there had stolen over her features a subdued air of thoughtfulness, a gentle tinge of melancholy, yet it became her far better than the one of constant levity and jest that had almost universally possessed her heretofore. Her eyes now rested upon the floor, and the long silken lashes seemed almost artificial in their effect upon the soft olive complexion beneath their shadow. No wonder Ruez loved his sister so dearly; no wonder he felt proud of her while he gazed at her there; nor was it strange that he strove to read her heart as he did, though he kept his own counsel upon the subject. He was a most observant boy, as we have seen before in these pages, but not one to manifest all of his observations or thoughts. He seemed to, and doubtless did, actually understand Isabella's heart better than she did herself, and a close observer would have noted well the various emotions that his expressive countenance exhibited, while he gazed thus intently at his dearly loved sister. Ruez was a strange boy; he had few friends; but those few he loved with all his heart. His father, sister, and Lorenzo Bezan, shared his entire affection. His inclinations led him to associate but little with those of his own age; he was thoughtful, and even at that age, a day dreamer. He loved to be alone; oftentimes for hours he was thus-at times gazing off upon the sea, and at others, gazing upon vacancy, while his thoughts would seem to have run away with him, mentally and physically. These peculiarities probably arose from his uncommonly sensitive disposition, and formed a sort of chrysalis state, from which he was yet to emerge into manliness. Kissing her cheek, and rousing her from the waking dream that possessed her now, Ruez turned away and left her to herself and the thoughts his words had aroused. We, too, will leave Isabella Gonzales, for a brief period, while we turn to another point of our story, whither the patient reader will please to follow. CHAPTER XVI. A DISCOVERY. "SHE never loved me," said Lorenzo Bezan, in the privacy of his own room, on the morning subsequent to that of the serenade. "It was only my own insufferable egotism and self-conceit that gave me such confidence. Now I review the past, what single token or evidence has she given to me of particular regard? what has she done that any lady might not do for a gentleman friend? I can recall nothing. True, she has smiled kindly-O how dearly I have cherished these smiles! But what are they? Coquettes smile on every one! Alas, how miserable am I, after all the glory and fame I have won!" Lorenzo Bezan was truly affected, as his words have shown him to be. He doubted whether Isabella Gonzales had ever loved him; her scream and fainting might have been caused by surprise, or even the heat. He had been too ready to attribute it to that which his own heart had first suggested. O, if he only dared to address her now-to see her, and once more to tell how dearly and ardently he loved her still-how he had cherished her by the camp fires, in the battle- field, and the deprivations of war and the sufferings of a soldier's wounds. If he could, if he dared to tell her this, he would be happier. But, how did he know that a proud repulse did not await him! Ah, that was the fear that controlled him; he could not bear to part again from her as he had last done. While he was thus engaged in reverie alone, a servant, whom he had despatched on an errand, returned to say that General Harero was very ill and confined to his bed; that some wounds he had accidentally received in quelling some street affray had brought on a burning and dangerous fever. On the receipt of this information Lorenzo Bezan wrote a hasty note and despatched the servant once more for a surgeon to come to his quarters; a demand that was answered by the person sent for in a very few minutes. It was the same surgeon who a few years before had so successfully attended Bezan. The recognition between them was cordial and honest, while the new lieutenant-general told him of General Harero's severe illness, and expressed a wish for him to immediately attend the sick man. "But, General Bezan," said the surgeon, "you have little cause for love to General Harero." "That is true; but still I desire his recovery; and if you compass it by good nursing and the power of your art, remember fifty doubloons is your fee." "My professional pride would lead me to do my best," replied the surgeon, "though neither I nor any other man in the service loves General Harero any too much." "I have reasons for my interest that it is not necessary to explain," said General Bezan, "and shall trust that you will do your best for him, as you did for me." "By the way, general, I have been half a mind, more than once, ever since your return to the island, to tell you of a little affair concerning your sickness at that time, but I feared you might deem it in some measure impertinent." "By no means. Speak truly and openly to me. I owe you too much to attribute any improper motives to you in any instance. What do you refer to?" "Well, general, I suppose on that occasion I discovered a secret which I have never revealed to any one, and upon which subject my lips have been ever sealed." "What was it?" "Your love for Isabella Gonzales." "And how, pray, came you to surmise that?" asked Lorenzo Bezan, in surprise. "First by your half incoherent talk in moments of delirium, and afterwards by finding her portrait, painted probably by yourself, among your effects." "True. I have it still," said Lorenzo Bezan, musingly. "But more than that I discovered from the lady herself?" said the surgeon. "From the lady? What do you mean?" asked General Bezan, most earnestly. "Why she visited you during your illness, and though she came in disguise, I discovered her." "In disguise?" "Yes." "How did you discover her? I pray you tell me all, if you are my friend." "By a tear!" "A tear!" "Yes, because I knew no servant or lady's maid sent to execute her mistress's bidding would have been so affected, and that led me to watch for further discovery." "Did she weep?" "One tear fell from her eyes upon your hands as she bent over you, and it told me a story that I have since sometimes thought you should know." "A tear!" mused General Bezan, to himself, rising and walking up and down his room in haste; "that must have come from the heart. Smiles are evanescent; kind words, even, cost nothing; but tears, they are honest, and come unbidden by aught save the heart itself. Tears, did you say?" he continued, pausing before the surgeon. "As I have said, general." "And she bathed my forehead, you say?" "She did, and further, left with me a purse to be devoted to supplying your wants." "This you never told me of before." "I have had no opportunity, and to speak honestly, it was very well timed and needed." "Money!" mused Lorenzo Bezan. "Money, that is full of dross; but a tear,--I would to Heaven I had earlier known of that." "I hope I have caused you no uneasiness, general." "Enough. Go on your mission to General Harero; save him, if you can; you have already saved me! Nay, do not stare, but go, and see me again at your leisure." The surgeon bowed respectfully, and hastened away as he was directed. That tear had removed mountains from Lorenzo Bezan's heart; he hardly knew what further to do under the circumstances. The earliest impulse of his heart was to seek Isabella, and throwing himself at her feet, beg her to forgive him for having for one moment doubted the affection and gentleness of her woman heart. This was the turning point with him if she had a heart, tender and susceptible, and not coroded by coquetry; he had no fear but that he could win it; his love was too true, too devoted, too much a part of his soul and existence to admit of doubt. Joy once more reigned in his heart. He was almost childish in his impatience to see her; he could hardly wait even for an hour. At last, seating himself at a table, he seized upon pen and paper and wrote as follows: "ISABELLA GONZALES: I know not how to address you, in what tone to write, or even as to the propriety of writing to you at all; but the suspense I now suffer is my excuse. I need not reiterate to you how dearly I love you; you know this, dear one, as fully as any assertion of my own could possibly express it. It is trite that my love for you has partaken in no small degree of a character of presumption, daring, as an humble lieutenant of infantry, to lift my eyes to one as peerless and beautiful as yourself, and of a class of society so far above what my own humble position would authorize me to mingle with. But the past is past, and now my rank and fortune both entitle me to the entree, to your father's house. I mention not these because I would have them weigh in my favor with you. Far from it. I had rather you would remember me, and love me as I was when we first met. "Need I say how true I have been to the love I have cherished for you? How by my side in battle, in my dreams by the camp fire, and filling my waking thoughts, you have ever been with me in spirit? Say, Isabella Gonzales, is this homage, so sincere, thus tried and true, unwelcome to you? or do you, in return, love the devoted soldier, who has so long cherished you in his heart as a fit shrine to worship at? I shall see you, may I not, and you will not repulse me, nor speak to me with coldness. O, say when I may come to you, when look once more into those radiant eyes, when tell you with my lips how dearly, how ardently I love you-have ever loved you, and must still love you to the last? I know you will forgive the impetuosity, and, perhaps, incoherent character of this note. LORENZO BEZAN." We have only to look into the chamber of Isabella Gonzales, a few hours subsequent to the writing of this letter, to learn its effect upon her. She was alone; the letter she had read over and over again, and now sat with it pressed to her bosom by both hands, as though she might thus succeed in suppressing the convulsive sobs that shook her whole frame. Tears, the luxury of both joy and sorrow, where the heart is too full of either, tears streamed down her fair cheeks; tears of joy and sorrow both; joy that he was indeed still true to her, and sorrow that such hours, days, nay, years of unhappiness, had been thus needlessly passed, while they were separated from each other, though joined in soul. O, how bitterly she recalled her pride, and remembered the control it had held over her, how blamed herself at the recollection of that last farewell in the prison with the noble but dejected spirit that in spite of herself even then she loved! She kissed the letter again and again; she wept like a child! "The queen was right-he had no heart to give. A countess? She might have brought him higher title, a prouder name, richer coffers; but he is not one to weigh my love against gold, or lineage, or proud estates, or even royal favor; such, such is the man to whom I owe my very life, my father's life, Ruez's life, nay, what do I not owe to him? since all happiness and peace hang upon these; and yet I repulsed, nay, scorned him, when he knelt a suppliant at my feet. O, how could a lifetime of devoted love and gentleness repay him all, and make me even able to forgive myself for the untrue, unnatural part I have played?" She covered her face with her hands, as if to efface the memory of the conduct which she had just recalled so earnestly, and then rising, walked back and forth in her apartment with all the impetuosity of her Creole blood evinced in the deepened color of her cheek, and the brightness of her beauteous eyes. Then once more seating herself, she sat and trotted her foot impatiently upon the floor. "O, why, why cannot I recall the past; alas, I see my error too late. Pride, pride, how bitterly and surely dost thou bring thine own reward!" She strove to answer the letter that now lay open before her upon the table, but could scarcely hold the pen, so deep and long drawn were the sighs that struggled in her bosom. Sheet after sheet was commenced and destroyed. Tears drowned out the efforts of her pen, and she knew not what to do. She bit her fair lips in vexation; what should she write? Once more she read his note, and full of the feelings it induced, tried to answer it. But in vain; her sheet was bathed in tears before she had written one line. "It is but the truth," she said, to herself, "and I do not care if he knows it." As she thus spoke, she once more seized the pen and wrote: "In vain have I essayed to write to you. Let these tears be your answer! ISABELLA GONZALES." If the beautiful girl had studied for months to have answered the letter of him who loved her so well, it would have been impossible for her to have penned a more touching, more truthful, or more eloquent reply than this. Striking a tiny silver bell by her side, a slave approached, and was despatched with this note at once to the palace of the governor-general. "Why, sister!" said Ruez, entering the room and speaking at the same time, "you look as if you had been weeping. Pray, are you ill?" "Nay, brother, I am not ill. It was but a slight affair; it is all over now. Where's Carlo, Ruez?" The attempt to turn the course of conversation to the dog, was not unobserved by the intelligent boy. He saw at once that there was some matter in his sister's heart that was better to remain her own property, and so, with a kiss, he said no more, but sat down at the window and looked off upon the brilliant afternoon effect of the sun and the light land breeze upon the water. Neither spoke for many minutes, until at last Ruez, still looking off upon the waters of the outer harbor, or Gulf Stream, said: "I wonder where General Bezan keeps himself when off duty?" "Why, brother?" "Because I have called there twice, and have not seen him yet." "Twice!" "Yes." "You know it is but a very few days since he arrived here, brother Ruez, and he must be very busy." "Probably," answered Ruez, stealing a glance towards his sister. "His present duty must engage a large portion of his time, I suppose." "O, yes," said the boy, laughing, "just about one quarter as much of his time as was demanded of him when he was a lieutenant in General Harero's division." "By-the-by, Ruez, they say the general is very ill of some chance wounds." "The general deserves all he got, beyond a doubt, and there is little fear but that he will recover fast enough. He's not one of the sort that die easily. Fortune spares such as he is to try people's temper, and annoy humanity." "But is he decidedly better?" asked Isabella, with some interest. "Yes, the surgeon reports him out of danger. Yesterday he was in a fever from his wounds. I can't conceive how he got them, and no one seems to know much about it." "There's Carlo and father, on the Plato; good-by, sister I'm going to join them." CHAPTER XVII. THE ASSASSIN. THE apartment where General Harero was confined to his bed by the severe wounds he had received, presented much such an aspect as Lorenzo Bezan's had done, when in the early part of this story the reader beheld him in the critical state that the wounds he received from the Montaros on the road had placed him. It was dark and gloomy then. The same surgeon who had been so faithful a nurse to our hero, was now with the wounded officer. Notwithstanding the excitement of his patient's mind, he had succeeded in quieting him down by proper remedies, so as to admit of treating him properly for his wounds, and to relieve his brain, at least in part, from the excitement of feeling that a spirit of revenge had created there. A knock was heard at the door just at the moment when we would have the reader look with us into the apartment, and the surgeon admitted a tall, dark person, partly enveloped in a cloak. It was evening; the barracks were still, and the gloom of the sick room was, if possible, rendered greater by the darkness that was seen from the uncurtained window. At a sign from his patient the surgeon left him alone with the new comer, who threw himself upon a camp-stool, and folding his arms, awaited the general's pleasure. In the meantime, if the reader will look closely upon the hard lineaments of his face, the heavy eyebrow, the profusion of beard, and the cold-blooded and heartless expression of features, he will recognize the game man whom he has once before met with General Harero, and who gave him the keys by which he succeeded in making a secret entrance to Lorenzo Bezan's cell in the prison before the time appointed for his execution. It was the jailor of the military prison. "Lieutenant," said the general, "I have sent for you to perform a somewhat delicate job for me." "What is it, general?" "I will tell you presently; be not in such haste," said the sick man. "I am at your service." "Have I not always paid you well when employed by me, lieutenant?" "Nobly, general, only too liberally." "Would you like to serve me again in a still more profitable job?" "Nothing could be more agreeable." "But it is a matter that requires courage, skill, care and secrecy. It is no boy's play." "All the better for that, general." "Perhaps you will not say so when I have explained it to you more fully." "You have tried me before now!" answered the jailor, emphatically. "True, and I will therefore trust you at once. There is a life to be taken!" "What! another?" said the man, with surprise depicted on his face. "Yes, and one who may cost you some trouble to manage-a quick man and a swordsman." "Who is it?" "Lorenzo Bezan!" "The new lieutenant-general?" "The same." "Why, now I think of it, that is the very officer whom you visited long ago by the secret passage in the prison." "Very true." "And now you would kill him?" "Yes." "And for what?" "That matters not. You will be paid for your business, and must ask no questions." "O, very well; business is business." "You see this purse?" "Yes." "It contains fifty doubloons. Kill him before the set of to-morrow's sun, and it is yours." "Fifty doubloons?" "Is it not enough?" "The risk is large; if he were but a private citizen, now-but the lieutenant-governor!" "I will make it seventy-five." "Say one hundred, and it is a bargain," urged the jailor, coolly. "On your own terms, then," was the general's reply, as he groaned with pain. "It is dangerous business, but it shall be done," said the other, drawing a dagger from his bosom and feeling its point carefully. "But I must have another day, as to-night it may be too late before I can arrange to meet him, and that will allow but one more night to pass. I can do nothing in the daytime." "Very well." "Where shall I be most likely to meet him, think you?" "Possibly after twilight, on the Plato, near the house of Don Gonzales." "I will be on the watch for him, and my trusty steel shall not fail me." Thus saying, and after a few other words of little importance, the jailor departed. Maddened by the short confinement and suffering he had experienced, General Harero resolved to rid himself at once of the stumbling block in his path that General Bezan proved himself to be. A reckless character, almost born, and ever bred a soldier, he stopped at no measures to bring about any desired end. Nor was Lorenzo Bezan's life the first one he had attempted, through the agency of others; the foul stains of murder already rested upon his soul. It was some temporary relief, apparently, to his feelings now, to think that he had taken the primary steps to be revenged upon one whom he so bitterly hated. He could think of nothing else, now, as he lay there, suffering from those wounds, and at times the expression of his face became almost demoniac, as he ground his teeth and bit his lips, in the intense excitement of his passions, the struggle of his feelings being so bitter and revengeful. But we must leave the sick man with himself for a while, and go elsewhere. Lorenzo Bezan had been pressed with the business incident to his new position, and this, too, so urgently, that he had not yet answered the note he had received from her he had loved so dearly. He had placed it next his heart, however, and would seize upon the first moment to answer it, not by the pen, but in person. It was for this purpose, that, on the same evening we have referred to, he had taken his guitar, and was strolling at a late hour towards the Plato. It was the first moment that he could leave the palace without serious trouble, and thinking Isabella might have retired for the night, he resolved at least to serenade her once more, as he had so lately done. It would be impossible to justly describe the feelings that actuated the spirit of the lieutenant-governor. His soul was once more buoyant with hope; he loved deeply, ay, more dearly than ever before, and he believed that he was now indeed loved in return. How light was his heart, how brilliant the expression of his face, as he turned his steps towards the spot where his heart had so often returned when the expanse of ocean rolled between him and the spot so dear to him from association. He hurried forward to the steps that ascended from near the end of the Calle de Mercaderes, on to the Plato, but before he had reached it, there came bounding towards him a large dog, which he instantly recognized to be the hound that had so materially aided him in saving the life of Ruez Gonzales, long before. At the same moment a hand was laid roughly upon his shoulder, but was instantly removed and on turning to see what was the meaning of this rude salutation, the young general discovered a large, dark figure struggling with the hound, who, upon his calling to him, seemed to relinquish the hold he had of the man's throat, and sprang to his side, while the person whom the dog had thus attacked, disappeared suddenly round an angle of the Cathedral, and left Lorenzo Bezan vastly puzzled to understand the meaning of all this. The man must evidently have raised his arm to strike him, else the dog would not have thus interposed, and then, had the stranger been an honest man, he would have paused to explain, instead of disappearing thus. "I must be on my guard; there are assassins hereabouts," he said to himself, and after a moment's fondling of the hound, who had instantly recognized him, he once more drew nearer to the Plato, when suddenly the palace bell sounded the alarm of fire. His duty called him instantly to return, which he was forced to do. It was past midnight before the fire was quenched, and Lorenzo Bezan dismissed the guard and extra watch that had been ordered out at the first alarm, and himself, greatly fatigued by his exertions and care in subduing the fire, which in Havana is done under the direction and assistance of the military, always, he threw himself on his couch, and fell fast asleep. Early the subsequent morning, he despatched a line to Isabella Gonzales, saying that on the evening of that day he would answer in person her dear communication; and that though pressing duty had kept him from her side, she was never for one moment absent from his heart. He begged that Ruez might come to him in the meantime, and he did so at once. The meeting between them was such as the reader might anticipate. The officer told the boy many of his adventures, asked a thousand questions of his home, about his kind old father, Isabella, the hound, and all. While Ruez could find no words to express the delight he felt that the same friend existed in General Bezan, that he had loved and cherished as the captain of infantry. "How strange the fortune that has brought you back again, and so high, too, in office. I'm sure we are all delighted. Father says you richly deserve all the honor you enjoy, and he does not very often compliment any one," said the boy. The twilight had scarcely faded into the deeper shades of night, on the following evening, when Lorenzo Bezan once more hastened towards the Plato, to greet her whom he loved so tenderly and so truly-she who had been the star of his destiny for years, who had been his sole incentive to duty, his sole prompter in the desire for fame and fortune. In the meantime there was a scene enacting on the Plato that should be known to the reader. Near the door of the house of Don Gonzales, stood Isabella and Ruez, and before them a young person, whose dress and appearance betokened the occupation of a page, though his garments were soiled and somewhat torn in places. Isabella was addressing the youth kindly, and urged him to come in and rest himself, for he showed evident tokens of fatigue. "Will you not come in and refresh yourself? you look weary and ill." "Nay, lady, not now. You say this is the house of Don Gonzales?" "Yes." "And are you the daughter of that house?" continued the page. "I am." "I might have known that without asking," said the page, apparently to himself. "Indeed, do you know us, then?" asked Isabella, with some curiosity. "By reputation, only," was the reply. "The fine of beauty travels far, lady." "You would flatter me, sir page." "By our lady, no!" "Where last thou heard of me, then?" "Far distant from here, lady." "You speak and look like one who has travelled a long way," said Isabella. "I have." "Do you live far from here, then?" asked Ruez, much interested in the stranger. "Yes," was the reply. "Lady, I may call on you again," continued the page, "but for the present, adieu." Turning suddenly away, the stranger walked leisurely towards the head of the broad stairs that led from the Plato to the street below, and descended them. At the same moment, Lorenzo Bezan, on his way to Isabella Gonzales, had just reached the foot of the stairs, when hearing quick steps behind him, he turned his head just in time to see the form of the page thrown quickly between the uplifted arm of the same dark figure which he had before met here, and himself-and the point of a gleaming dagger, that must else have entered his own body, found a sheath in that of the young stranger, who had thus probably saved his life. More on the alert than he had been before for danger, Lorenzo Bezan's sword was in his hand in an instant, and its keen blade pierced to the very heart of the assassin, who fell to rise no more. Such, alas, seemed to be the fate of the page who had so gallantly risked, and probably lost, his own life, to protect that of the lieutenant-governor. "Alas, poor youth," said Lorenzo Bezan, "why didst thou peril thy life to save me from that wound? Canst thou speak, and tell me who thou art, and what I shall do for thee?" "Yes, in a few moments; bear me to Don Gonzales's house, quickly, for I bleed very fast!" Lorenzo Bezan's first thought, on observing the state of the case, was to obtain surgical aid at once, and preferring to do this himself to trusting to the strange rabble about him, he turned his steps towards the main barracks, where he expected to find his friendly surgeon whom he had despatched to serve General Harero. He found his trusty professional man, and hastily despatched him to the house of Don Gonzales, bidding him exercise his best skill for one who had just received a wound intended for his own body. We, too, will follow the surgeon to the bedside of the wounded page, where a surprise awaited all assembled there, and which will be described in another chapter. CHAPTER XVIII. THE DISGUISE. WITH the assistance of some passers-by, the wounded page was borne, as he had desired, to Don Gonzales's house, while, in accordance with an order from Lorenzo Bezan, the now lifeless body of the jailor, for he it was who had attempted the life of the lieutenant-governor, was borne away to the barrack yard. At the door of Don Gonzales's house the page was met by Ruez and Isabella; and those who held the wounded boy, hastily telling of his hurt, and the manner in which it was received, carried him, as directed by Isabella, to her brother's room, and a surgeon was at once sent for. "Sister," whispered Ruez, "did you hear what those people said?" "What, brother?" "Why, that the page saved the life of the lieutenant-governor, Lorenzo Bezan?" "Yes." "He must have been hard by, for the page had only just left us." "True." "Yet he was not with the rest who entered the house," continued Ruez. "No," answered Isabella, "some one said he hastened away for a surgeon." "Hark!" "Who called you, just now, sister?" asked the brother. "It was only the groan of that poor boy. I wish they would bring the surgeon." "But he calls your name; go to him, dear Isabella." "O, they have found the surgeon, and here he comes," said his sister. And thus indeed it was. Entering the apartment, the surgeon prepared to examine the wound, but in a moment he called to Isabella, saying: "Lady, this individual is one of thine own sex! and, I am very sorry to say, is mortally wounded." "A woman!" "Yes, lady; see, she would speak to you; she beckons you near." "Lady, I need not ask what that professional man says. I know too well by my own feelings that I must die, indeed that I am dying!" "O, say not so; perhaps there may yet be hopes," said Isabella, tenderly. "Nay, there is none; indeed it is better, far better as it is." "Why, do you wish to die?" asked Isabella, almost shrinking from her. "Yes. There is nought left for me to live for, and it is sweet to die, too, for him, for him I have so dearly, so truly loved!" "Of whom do you speak?" "General Bezan!" "You love him?" "Ay, lady, I believe far better than you can ever do." "Me!" "Yes, for I know your own heart, and his true love for you!" "Who are you?" "That matters not. But where is he? I thought he followed me here." "He went for the surgeon, and I have not seen him," was the reply. Isabella trembled, for at that moment General Bezan, hastening back from the surgeon's, and despatching some matter that occurred by the way, now entered the house, and was greeted most cordially by Don Gonzales and Ruez. And from them he learned the extent of the injury, and, moreover, that the supposed page was a woman, disguised in a page's costume. "Ah, general!" said Don Gonzales, "I fear, this is some little affair of gallantry on your part that will result rather seriously." "Be assured, sir," said the soldier, "that I cannot in any way explain the matter, and that I think there is some decided mistake here." "Let us go to her apartment and see what can be done for her injury," said General Bezan, after a moment's pause, "be she whom she may." Just as they entered the apartment, the surgeon had loosened the dress of the sufferer at the throat, and there fell out into sight the insignia of the golden fleece and cross of St. Sebastian, in a scroll of diamonds that heralded the royal arms of Spain, and which none but those in whose veins coursed royal blood could wear! The surgeon started back in amazement, while Don Gonzales uncovered out of respect to the emblem. Springing to the side of the couch, General Bezan turned the half averted face towards him, while he seized the hand of the sufferer, and then exclaimed: "Is this a miracle-is this a dream-or is this really the Countess Moranza?" "It is the Countess Moranza," replied the suffering creature, while her eyes were bent on Lorenzo Bezan with an expression of most ineffable tenderness. All this while Isabella stood aghast, quite in the rear of them all; but that look was not lost upon her; she shuddered, and a cold perspiration stood upon her brow. Had she lived to see such a sight-lived to see another preferred to herself? Alas, what knew she of the scene before her? was it not a shameless one? Had Lorenzo Bezan deceived this high-born and noble lady, and leaving her to follow him, came hither, once more to strive for her love? Her brain was in a whirlwind of excitement, the room grew dark, she reeled, and would have fallen but for the assistance of Ruez, who helped her to her room, and left her there, himself as much amazed at what he had seen as his sister could possibly be. "Has she gone?" asked the sufferer. "Who, lady?" said the soldier, tenderly. "Isabella Gonzales." "Yes," replied the father. "Do you desire to see her?" "O yes, I must see her, and quickly; tell her I must see her." The father retired; while Lorenzo Bezan said, as he bent over the person of the countess: "Alas, I cannot ask thee now what all this means; you are too ill to talk; what may I, what can I do for thee?" "Nothing, Lorenzo Bezan. Draw nearer-I have loved thee dearly, passionately loved thee, loved thee as a woman can love; it was not designed that I should win thy heart-it was already another's; but it was designed, the virgin be thanked, that though I might not wed thee, I might die for thee!" "O, countess, countess, your words are like daggers to my heart. I have been a thoughtless, guilty wretch, but, Heaven bear me witness, I did not sin knowingly!" "Nay, speak not one word. I am dying even now; leave me for a while. I would be alone with this lady; see, she comes, trembling and bathed in tears!" Lorenzo Bezan, almost crazed with the contending emotions that beset him, knew not what to say-what to do; he obeyed her wish, and left the room, as did also the rest, leaving Isabella and the Countess Moranza alone together. General Bezan walked the adjoining room like one who had lost all self-control-now pressing his forehead with both hands, as if to keep back the press of thoughts, and now, almost groaning aloud at the struggling of his feelings within his throbbing breast. The light broke in upon him; while he had been so happy, so inconsiderate at Madrid, in the society of the beautiful and intelligent woman; while he had respected and loved her like a brother, he had unwittingly been planting thorns in her bosom! He saw it all now. He even recalled the hour when he told her of his love for Isabella Gonzales-and remembered, too, the sudden illness that she evinced. "Alas! how blind I have been, how thoughtless of all else but myself, and my own disappointments and heart-secrets. Next to Isabella, I could have loved that pure and gentle being. I did feel drawn to her side by unspeakable tenderness and gratitude for the consolation she seemed ever so delicately to impart; but for this right hand I would not have deceived her, the virgin bear me witness." The moments seemed hours to him, while he waited thus in such a state of suspense as his frame of mind might be supposed to indicate. The surgeon entered to take his leave. "How is she, sir?" asked Lorenzo Bezan, hastily. "I have not seen her since we left her with Don Gonzales's daughter. She desired to be left alone with her, you remember, and it is best to do as she wishes. My skill can do her no good. She cannot live but a very few hours, and I may as well retire." "There is, then, no hope for her, no possibility of recovery?" "None!" Throwing himself into a chair, Lorenzo Bezan seemed perfectly overcome with grief. He did not weep, no tears came to his relief; but it was the fearful struggle of the soul, that sometimes racks the stout frame and manly heart. The soldier who had passed so many hours on the battle-field-who had breathed the breath of scores of dying men, of wounded comrades, and bleeding foes, was a child now. He clasped his hands and remained in silence, like one wrapped in prayer. He had not remained thus but a short time, when a slave summoned him to the bedside of the dying countess. He found her once more alone. Isabella had retired to her own apartment. "General," said the sufferer, holding out her hand, which he pressed tenderly to his lips! "Forgive me, Countess Moranza, pray forgive me?" "I have nothing to forgive, and for my sake charge yourself with no blame for me. It is my dying request, for I can stay but a little longer. I have one other to make. You will grant it?" "Anything that mortal can do I will do for thee." "Take, then, this package. It contains papers and letters relative to myself, my estates, and to you. Strictly obey the injunctions therein contained." "I will," said the soldier, kneeling. "This promise is sacred, and will make me die the happier," she said, drawing a long sigh. "I have explained to her you love the cause of my singular appearance here, and have exculpated you from all blame on my account." "Ah! but countess, it is terrible that you should have sacrificed your life to save mine." "Say not so; it is the only joy of this moment, for it has saved me from the curse of the suicide!" she almost whispered, drawing him closer to her side as she spoke. "I could not live, save in the light of your eyes. I knew you were poor, comparatively so-that fortune would place your alliance with her you have loved beyond question as to policy. I resolved to follow you-do all in my power to make you happy--ask of you sometimes to remember me--and then--" "O, what then?" said Lorenzo Bezan, almost trembling. "Die by my own hands, in a way that none should know! But how much happier has Heaven ordered it. I could have wished, have prayed for such a result; but not for one moment could I have hoped for it. As it is I am happy." "And I am wretched," said the soldier; "had the choice been offered me of thy death or mine, how quickly would I have fallen for thee, who hast been more than a sister, a dear, kind sister to me." The sufferer covered her face with her hands; his tender words, and his gentle accents of voice, and the truthful expression of his face, for one moment reached her hear; through its most sensitive channel! But the struggle was only for a moment; the cold hand of death was upon her; she felt even the chill upon her system. A slight shudder ran through her frame. She crossed her hands upon her bosom, and closing her eyes, breathed a silent prayer, and pressed the glittering cross that hung about her neck fervently to her lips. Then turning to the soldier she said: "You may well love her, general, for she is very beautiful, and worthy of you," referring to Isabella Gonzales, who had just returned to her apartment. "She is as lovely in person as in mind. But, alas! must I stand here powerless, and see you, but an hour ago so perfectly well, so full of life and beauty, die without one effort to save you?" "It is useless," said the sufferer. "I feel that the surgeon is correct, and I must die very shortly." "O, that I might save you, countess, even by mine own life!" "You would do so, I know you would; it is so like your nature," she said, turning her still beautiful eyes upon him. "I would, indeed I would," answered General Bezan. A sweet smile of satisfaction stole over her pale features as she once more languidly closed her eyes, and once more that ominous shudder stole through her frame. "It is very cold, is it not?" she asked, realizing the chill that her paralyzed circulation caused. "Alas, countess, I fear it is the chill of death you feel!" "So soon? well, I am prepared," she said, once more kissing the cross. "Heaven bless and receive your pure and lovely spirit," he said, devoutly, as she once more replaced her hand within his own. "Farewell, Lorenzo Bezan. Sometimes think kindly of the Countess M-o-r-a-n-z-a!" She breathed no more. That faithful and beautiful spirit had fled to heaven! CHAPTER XIX. THE AVOWAL. THERE had seemed to be a constantly recurring thread of circumstances, which operated to separate Lorenzo Bezan and Isabella Gonzales. Isabella had received a fearful shock in the remarkable occurrences of the last few days. The devoted love of the countess, her self-sacrificing spirit, her risk and loss of her life to save him she loved, all had made a most indelible impression upon her. There was a moment, as the reader has seen, when she doubted the truth and honor of Lorenzo Bezan; but it was but for a moment, for had not his own truthfulness vindicated itself to her mind and heart, the words of the Countess Moranza had done so. That faithful and lovely woman told her also of the noble spirit of devoted love that the soldier bore her, and how honestly he had cherished that love he bore for her when surrounded by the dazzling beauty and flattery of the whole court, and bearing the name of the queen's favorite. All this led her of course to regard him with redoubled affection, and to increase the weight of indebtedness of her heart towards one whom she had treated so coldly, and who for her sake had borne so much of misery. "But ah!" she said to herself, "if he could but read this heart, and knew how much it has suffered in its self-imposed misery, he would indeed pity and not blame me. I see it all now; from the very first I have loved him-from the hour of our second meeting in the Paseo-poor, humble and unknown, I loved him then; but my spirit was too proud to own it; and I have loved him ever since, though the cold words of repulse have been upon my tongue, and I have tried to impress both him and myself to the contrary. How bitter are the penalties of pride-how heavy the tax that it demands from frail humanity! No more shall it have sway over this bosom!" As she spoke, the beautiful girl threw back the dark clustering hair from her temples, and raised her eyes to heaven, as if to call for witness upon her declaration. The proper steps were taken for sending the body of the countess home to Madrid, where it would receive the highest honors, and those marks of distinction which its connection with the royal blood of Spain demanded. Lorenzo Bezan mourned sincerely the loss of one who had been so dear and kind a friend to him. An instinctive feeling seemed to separate Isabella and the lieutenant-governor for a brief period. It was not a period of anxiety, nor of doubt, concerning each other. Strange to say, not one word had yet been exchanged between them since that bitter farewell was uttered in the prison walls of the military keep. No words could have made them understand each other better than they now did; each respected the peculiar feelings of the other. But weeks soon pass, and the time was very brief that transpired before they met in the drawing-room of Don Gonzales's house. Ruez welcomed Lorenzo Bezan as he entered, led him to the apartment, and calling his sister, declared that they must excuse him, for he was going with his father for a drive in the Paseo. Lorenzo Bezan sat for some moments alone, when he heard a light footstep upon the marble floor of the main hall, and his heart throbbed with redoubled quickness. In a moment more Isabella Gonzales stood before him; her eyes bent upon the floor, seemed immovably there; she could not raise them; but she held forth her hand towards him! He seized it, pressed it to his lips again and again, then drawing her closely to his bosom, pressed his lips to her forehead, and asked: "Isabella, Isabella, do you, can you really love me?" "Love you, Lorenzo Bezan?" "Yes, dear one, love me as I have for years loved you." She raised her eyes now; they were streaming with tears; but through them all she said: "I have looked into my heart, and I find that I have ever loved you!" "Sweet words! O, happy assurance," said the soldier, rapturously. "One word will explain all to thee. I was spoiled when in childhood. I was told that I was beautiful, and as I grew older a spirit of haughtiness and pride was implanted in my bosom by the universal homage that was offered to me on all hands. I had no wish ungratified, was unchecked, humored, in short spoiled thy affectionate indulgence, and but for one good influence-that exercised by the lovely character of my dear brother, Ruez-I fear me, I should have been undeniably lost to the world and myself in some strange denouement of my life. A startling and fearful event introduced you to me under circumstances calculated to fix your form and features forever in my memory. It did so. I could not but be sensible of your noble and manly qualities, though seen through what was to my mind a dark haze of humble associations. "This was my first impression of you. You boldly wooed me, told me you loved me above all else. Your very audacity attracted me; it was so novel, so strange to be thus approached. I, who was the acknowledged belle of Havana, before whom the best blood and highest titles of the island knelt, and who was accustomed to be approached with such deference and respect, was half won before I knew it, by the Lieutenant Lorenzo Bezan, on the Plato. Singular circumstances again threw us together, where again your personal bravery and firmness served us so signally. I knew not my own heart even then, though some secret whisperings partly aroused me, and when you were sent to prison, I found my pride rising above all else. And yet by some uncontrollable impulse I visited you, disguised, in prison; and there again I can see how nearly I had acknowledged my true feelings; but once more the secret whisper sounded in my ear, and I left you coldly, nay, almost insultingly. But bitterly have I wept for that hour. "In vain have I struggled on, in vain strove to forget; it was impossible; and yet, never until you sent me that note, have I frankly acknowledged, even to my own heart, the feeling which I have so long been conscious of. Ah, it has been a bitter experience that I have endured, and now I can see it all in its true light, and own to thee freely, that I have loved even from the first." While she had spoken thus, Lorenzo Bezan had gently conducted her to a couch, and seated by her side he had held her hand while he listened and looked tenderly into the depths of her lustrous and beautiful eyes. He felt how cheaply he had earned the bliss of that moment, how richly he was repaid for the hardships and grief he had endured for Isabella's sake. "Ah, dearest, let us forget the past, and live only for each other and the future." "Can you so easily forget and forgive?" she asked him, in softest accents. "I can do anything, everything," he said, "if thou wilt but look ever upon me thus," and he placed his arms about that taper waist, and drew her willing form still nearer to his side, until her head fell upon his shoulder. "There will be no more a dark side to our picture of life, dear Isabella." "I trust not." "And you will ever love me?" "Ever!" repeated the beautiful girl, drawing instinctively nearer to his breast. At that moment, Ruez, returning from the Plato to procure some article which he had left behind, burst hastily into the room, and, blushing like a young girl at the scene that met his eye, he was about to retire hastily, when Lorenzo Bezan spoke to him, not the least disconcerted; he felt too secure in his position to realize any such feeling: "Come hither, Ruez, we have just been speaking of you." "Of me?" said the boy, rather doubtfully, as though he suspected they had been talking of matters quite foreign to him. "Yes, of you, Ruez," continued his sister, striving to hide a tell-tale blush, as her eyes met her brother's. "I have been telling General Bezan what a dear, good brother you have been to me--how you have ever remembered all his kindnesses to me; while I have thought little of them, and have been far from grateful." "Not at heart, sister," said the boy, quickly; "not always in your sleep, since you will sometimes talk in your day dreams!" "Ah, Ruez, you turned traitor, and betray me? well, there can be little harm, perhaps, to have all known now." "Now?" repeated Ruez. "Why do you use that word so decidedly?" "Why, you must know, my dear Ruez," said the general, "that a treaty has been partially agreed upon between us, which will necessarily put all hostilities at an end; and, therefore, any secret information can be of no possible use whatever." "Is it so, Isabella?" asked Ruez, inquiringly, of his sister. "Yes, brother, we are to 'bury the hatchet,' as the American orators say." "Are you in earnest? but no matter; I am going-let me see, where was I going?" "You came into the room as though you had been shot out of one of the port-holes of Moro Castle," said the general, playfully. "No wonder you forget!" The boy looked too full for utterance. He shook the general's hand, heartily kissed Isabella, and telling them he believed they had turned conspirators, and were about to perpetrate some fearful business against the government, and sagely hinting that unless he was also made a confidant of, he should forthwith denounce them to Tacon, he shook his hand with a most serious mock air and departed. It would be in bad taste for us, also, not to leave Isabella and Lorenzo Bezan alone. They had so much to say, so much to explain, so many pictures to paint on the glowing canvass of the future, with the pencils of hope and love, that it would be unfair not to permit them to do so undisturbed. So we will follow Ruez to the volante, and dash away with him and Don Gonzales to the Paseo, for a circular drive. "I left General Bezan and Isabella together in the drawing-room," began Ruez to his father, just as they passed outside of the city walls. "Yes. I knew he was there," said the father, indifferently. "That was a very singular affair that occurred between him and the Countess Moranza." "Queer enough." "Yet sister says that the general was not to blame, in any respect." "Yes, I took good care to be satisfied of that," said the father, who had indeed made it the subject of inquiry. "Had he been guilty of deceiving that beautiful and high-born lady, he should never have entered my doors again. I should have despised him." "He seems very fond of Isabella," continued the boy, after a brief silence. "Fond of her!" "Yes, and she of him," said Ruez. "Lorenzo Bezan fond of my daughter, and she of him?" "Why, yes, father; I don't see anything so very strange, do you?" "Do I? Lorenzo Bezan is but a nameless adventurer--a--a--" "Stop, father--a lieutenant-governor, and the queen's favorite." "That is true," said Don Gonzales, thoughtfully. "Yes, but he's poor." "How do you know, father?" "Why, it is but reasonable to think so; and my daughter shall not marry any one with less position or fortune than herself." "As to position, father," continued the boy, "General Bezan wears orders that you would give half your fortune to possess!" "I forgot that." "And has already carved a name for himself in Spanish history," said Ruez. "True." "Then I see not how you can complain of him on the score of position." "No; but he's poor, and I have sworn that no man, unless he brings as large a fortune as Isabella will have in her own right, shall marry her. How do I know but it may be the money, not Isabella, that he wants?" "Father!" "Well, Ruez." "You are unjust towards the noble nature of that man; there are few men like him in the queen's service, and it has not required long for her to discern it." As the boy spoke, he did so in a tone and a manner that almost awed his father. At times he could assume this mode, and when he did so, it was because he felt what he uttered, and then it never failed of its influence upon the listener. "Still," said Don Gonzales, somewhat subduedly, "he who would wed my peerless child must bring something besides title and honor. A fortune as large as her own-nothing else. This I know Lorenzo Bezan has not, and there's an end of his intimacy with your sister, and I must tell her so this very evening." "As you will, father. You are her parent, and can command her obedience; but I do not believe you can control Isabella's heart," said Ruez, earnestly. "Boy, I do not like thee to talk to me thus. Remember thy youth, and thy years. Thou art ever putting me to my metal." "Father, do I not love thee and sister Isabella above all else on earth?" "Yes, yes, boy, I know it; thou dost love us well; say no more." Ruez had broken the ice. He found that it was time, however, to be silent now, and leaning back thoughtfully in the volante, he neither spoke again, nor seemed to observe anything external about him until he once more entered the Plato and his father's noble mansion. CHAPTER XX. HAPPY FINALE. WHEN Don Gonzales returned from his drive with Ruez, and while he was still thinking upon the subject which the boy had introduced, relative to Lorenzo Bezan and Isabella, he found the general awaiting his return and desiring an interview with him. This was of course granted, and the two retired to the library of Isabella's father, where the soldier resolved to make at once, and in plain terms, an offer of his hand to this daughter of the old house of Gonzales, and to beg her parents permission for their union. Being in part prepared for this proposal, as we have already seen, the father was not taken at all aback, but very politely and considerately listened to his guest. At last, however, when it came his turn to speak, he was decided. "I will tell you honestly, general, that, while I fully realize the great service you have done me and mine; while I cannot but admire the tact, talent, and noble characteristics that have so quickly elevated you to a niche in the temple of fame, still I am a very practical man, and look well to worldly matters and immediate interests. This has been my policy through life, and I have ever found that it was a good and sound one, and carried me on well." "As a general rule, perhaps, it is a very good one," added Lorenzo Bezan, to fill up a pause where he seemed expected to say something. "Now as to the matter which you propose, aside from the matter as to whether Isabella herself would consent, or--" "I beg pardon, sir, for interrupting you, but on that score I have her assurance already." "You are very prompt, sir. Perhaps it would have been it little more in accordance with propriety to have first spoken to me." "You have a right to question the point, and perhaps are correct, but to this there is little consequence attached," said General Bezan, very decidedly. "Well, sir, it is proper to come at once to the point, and I will do so. I have registered an oath; let me tell you, then, that my daughter shall never espouse any man unless his fortune is fully equal to her own, and this oath I shall most religiously keep!" "You have made a strange resolve, sir, and one which will affect your daughter's happiness, no less than it will do mine." "The oath is registered, General Bezan, and if necessary I am prepared to strengthen it by another; for it has been my resolve for years." "You are so decided, sir, that of course no argument on my part would in the least influence you. But I trust you will consider of this matter seriously, at least, and I may again speak to you upon the subject." "I shall always be happy and proud to meet General Bezan as a particular friend in my own house, or elsewhere," continued Don Gonzales, "but there, we must understand each other, our intimacy ceases, or as to the proposal of becoming my son-in-law, you will see that it is totally out of the question, when you remember my religiously registered oath upon the subject." "For the present, then, I must bid you good-day, sir," said the soldier, turning from the apartment, and seeking the governor's palace. When he had left, Isabella's father summoned her to his own room, and telling her at once the conversation he had just passed with General Bezan, reiterated to her that nothing would move him from the resolve, and she must learn to forget the young soldier, and place her affections upon some wealthy planter of the island, who coupled with good looks and a pleasing address, the accompaniments of a full purse and broad estates. Isabella made no reply to her father; she was confounded at the cupidity of his spirit; he had never spoken thus to her before. She loved him dearly, and grieved that he was susceptible of being influenced by such a grovelling consideration, and with a new cloud hovering over her brow, and its shadow shutting out the gleam of hope that had so lately been radiating it, she left him. The reader may well imagine the state of mind in which Lorenzo Bezan sought the privacy of his own apartment in the palace. To fall again from such high hopes was almost more than he could bear, and he walked his room with hurried and anxious steps. Once he sat down to address a letter to Isabella, for he had not seen her since he left Don Gonzales, and he did not know whether her father would inform her of their conversation or not. But after one or two ineffectual efforts, he cast the paper from him, in despair, and rising, walked his room again. To an orderly who entered on business relating to his regular duty, he spoke so brief and abruptly as to startle the man, who understood him only in his better and calmer moods. Again was his cup of bliss, dashed to the earth! "I had some undefined fear of it," he said to himself. "I almost felt there would be some fearful gulf intervene between Isabella and myself, when I had again left her side. O, prophetic soul, though our eyes cannot fathom the future, there is an instinctive power in thee that foretells evil. My life is but a sickly existence. I am the jest and jeer of fortune, who seems delighted to thwart me, by permitting the nearest approach to the goal of happiness, and yet stepping in just in time to prevent the consummation of my long cherished hopes." As he spoke thus, he sat down by the side of his table, and casting his eyes vacantly thereon, suddenly started at seeing the address of his own name, and in the hand of the Countess Moranza. It was the package she had handed to him at her dying moment. In the excitement of the scene, and the circumstances that followed, he had not opened it, and there it had since laid forgotten. He broke the seal, and reading several directions of letters, notes, and small parcels, among the rest one addressed to the queen, he came to one endorsed as important, and bearing his own name, Lorenzo Bezan. He broke the seal and read, "The enclosed paper is my last will and testament, whereby I do give and bequeath to my friend, General Lorenzo Bezan, my entire estates in the Moranza district of Seville, as his sole property, to have and to hold, and for his heirs after him, forever. This gift is a memento of our friendship, and a keepsake from one who cherished him for his true nobility of soul!" Could he be dreaming? was he in his senses? Her entire estates of Moranza, in Seville-a princely fortune given to him thus? He could not believe his senses, and moved about his room with the open letter in his hand, not knowing what he did. It was long before he could calm his excitement. What cared he for fortune, except so far as it brought him near to her he loved. It was this that so sensibly affected him; the bright sun of hope once more burst through the clouds. "Her father says that the suitor of Isabella Gonzales must bring as large a fortune to her as she herself possesses. As large? here I am endowed with the possession of an entire Spanish district-almost a small principality. Fortune? it would outnumber him in doubloons a thousand times over. I happen to know that district-rich in castles, convents, churches, cattle, retainers. Ah, Countess Moranza, but it sadly reminds me of thy fate. Thou didst love me, ay, truly-and I so blind that I knew it not. But regrets are useless; thy memory shall ever be most tenderly cherished by him whom thou hast so signally befriended, so opportunely endowed." The reader may well suppose that Lorenzo Bezan spared no time in communicating the necessary facts to Don Gonzales, which he did in the following brief notice: "Finding, after inquiry, as to your pecuniary affairs, and also after a slight examination of my own that, in relation to the matter of property, I am possessed of a fortune that would be valued many times beyond your own, I am happy to inform you that the only objection you mentioned to my proposal relative to your daughter, is now entirely removed. Concerning the details of this business I shall do myself the honor to make an early call upon you, when I will adduce the evidence of the statement I have made herein. Sincerely yours, LORENZO BEZAN, Lt. Gov. and Gen'l Commanding. Given at the palace, Havana." Don Gonzales was no less surprised on the reception of this note, than Lorenzo Bezan had been when he first discovered the princely gift that the generous countess had endowed him with. To do him justice, it was the only objection he had to Lorenzo Bezan, and he secretly rejoiced that the circumstances stated would enable him to give a free consent to the union of two souls which seemed so completely designed for each other. He called to Ruez, who had already heard the state of affairs from his father, and told him at once; and it was, of course, not long after that Isabella dried her tears, and stilled her throbbing heart by a knowledge that the last objection to the happy union was obviated. Don Gonzales, when he received the letter, and had carefully examined it, even went personally to the palace to tender his congratulations to the young lieutenant-governor, and to tell him that he had no longer any objections to raise as to the proposal which he had so lately taken occasion to make, relative to Isabella. "We, then, have your free consent as to our early union, Don Gonzales?" "With all my heart, General Bezan, and may the virgin add her blessing." "I see, sir, you look anxious as to how I came in possession of this princely fortune." "I am indeed filled with amazement; but the evidence you offer is satisfactory." "At another time I will explain all to you," replied Lorenzo Bezan, smiling. "It is well; and now, sir, this matter of so much importance to my peace of mind is settled." Thus saying, Don Gonzales shook the soldier's hand warmly, and departed, really delighted at the result of the matter, for had not General Bezan brought the requisite fortune, the old Spaniard would have religiously kept his oath; and, if not influenced by honor and consciousness in the matter of fulfilling his sacred promise, he would have been led to do so through fear, he being in such matters most superstitious. Lorenzo Bezan resolved that little time should intervene before he availed himself of the promise of Isabella's father. "Once mine, I shall fear no more casualties, and shall have the right not only to love, but to protect her. We know each other now, better, perhaps, than we could have done save through tho agency of misfortune, and ere to-morrow's sun shall set, I hope to call her mine." As the moon swept up from out the sea that night, and tinged the battlements of Moro Castle, and silvered the sparkling bay with its soft light, two forms sat at one of the broad balcony windows of Don Gonzales's house. It was Lorenzo Bezan and Isabella. They were drinking in of the loveliness of the hour, and talking to each other upon the thousand suggestions that their minds busily produced as connected with the new aspect of their own personal affairs. The arm of the gallant soldier was about her, and the soft curls of her dark hair lay lovingly about his neck as she rested her head upon his shoulder. We might depict here the splendors of the church of Santa Clara, where Isabella and Lorenzo Bezan were united; we might elaborate upon their perfect happiness; state in detail the satisfaction of Don Gonzales, and show how happy was the gentle, thoughtful, kind-hearted and brave Ruez; and we might even say that the hound seemed to realize that General Bezan was now "one of the family," wagging his tail with increased unction, and fawning upon him with more evident affection. But when we say that all were happy, and that the great aim of Lorenzo Bezan's heart was accomplished, the reader will find ample space and time to fill up the open space in the picture. General Harero, fearing the disclosure in some way of his villany in attempting, through his agent, the now dead jailor, the life of Lorenzo Bezan, immediately resigned his post, and sought an early opportunity to return to Spain. Here he fell in a duel with one whom he had personally injured, and his memory was soon lost to friends and foes. "Sister," said Ruez, to Isabella, a few days after her marriage with the lieutenant-governor, "are you going to have Lorenzo Bezan cashiered? Are you going to complain of him, as you promised me you should do?" "You love to torment me, Ruez," said the blooming bride, with affected petulence. "That is not answering my question," continued her brother. "If you don't have a care, I'll complain of you, Ruez, for that piece of business in the guardhouse!" "I've no fear about that now, since it has resulted so well." "That's true; but it is really perplexing to have you always right. I do declare, Ruez, I wish you would do something that will really vex me so that I can have a good quarrel with you." "No you don't, sister." "Yes, I do." "Tut! tut!" said Lorenzo Bezan, entering at that moment; "I thought I heard a pistol discharge." "Only a kiss, general," said Ruez, pleasantly. And this was a sample of the joy and domestic peace of Don Gonzales's family. In Isabella's ignorance of the tender and truthful promptings of her own bosom, we have shown you the HEART'S SECRET, and in the vicissitudes that attended the career of Lorenzo Bezan, the FORTUNES OF A SOLDIER. THE END. 
40265	----	Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. THE GREAT QUEST [Illustration: _I gave a quick jerk,--literally my foot was held,--I lost my balance and all but went over._] THE GREAT QUEST _A romance of 1826, wherein are recorded the experiences of Josiah Woods of Topham, and of those others with whom he sailed for Cuba and the Gulf of Guinea._ BY CHARLES BOARDMAN HAWES Author of "The Mutineers" [Illustration] _Illustrated by_ GEORGE VARIAN _The_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON Copyright, 1920, 1921 By THE TORBELL COMPANY (Publishers of _The Open Road_) Copyright, 1921 By CHARLES BOARDMAN HAWES First Impression, September, 1921 Second Impression, January, 1922 _Printed in the United States of America_ _To_ MY FATHER AND MOTHER CONTENTS I AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE I The Stranger 3 II My Uncle Behaves Queerly 12 III Higgleby's Barn 18 IV Swords and Ships 26 V A Mysterious Project 36 II HANDS ACROSS THE SEA VI Good-bye to Old Haunts and Faces 49 VII A Wild Night 63 VIII The Brig Adventure 81 IX An Old Sea Song 87 III A LOW LAND IN THE EAST X Matterson 99 XI New Light on an Old Friend 109 XII Captain North Again 119 XIII Issues Sharply Drawn 132 XIV Land Ho! 137 IV THREE DESPERATE MEN XV The Island 151 XVI Strangest of All 165 XVII The Man from the Jungle 173 XVIII A Warning Defied 185 XIX Burned Bridges 193 V THE HOUSE ON THE HILL XX Up Stream 201 XXI A Grim Surprise 212 XXII Siege 225 XXIII Sortie 234 VI FOR OUR VERY LIVES XXIV Spears in the Dark 247 XXV Cards and Chess 252 XXVI An Unseen Foe 261 XXVII The Fort Falls 268 XXVIII Down the Current 283 XXIX The Fight at the Landing 295 VII THE LONG ROAD HOME XXX The Cruiser 307 XXXI A Passage at Arms 321 XXXII Westward Bound 332 XXXIII The Door of Disaster 340 XXXIV An Old, Old Story 352 XXXV Eheu Fugaces! 357 ILLUSTRATIONS _I gave a quick jerk--literally my foot was held,--I lost my balance and all but went over_ Frontispiece _Clapping his hand to the wound, the landlord went white and leaned back against the bar_ 78 "_In the name of Heaven, Neil, don't tell! Don't tell!_" 142 _There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton dressed in good sound clothes_ 220 _And with that the two sat down by the board ... and began perhaps the most extraordinary game of chess that ever two men played_ 258 I OLD ACQUAINTANCE [Illustration] THE GREAT QUEST CHAPTER I THE STRANGER One morning early in the summer of 1826, I brushed the sweat from my forehead and the flour from my clothes, unrolled my shirt-sleeves to my wrists, donned my coat, and, with never a suspicion that that day was to be unlike any other, calmly walked out into the slanting sunshine. Rain had fallen in the night, and the air was still fresh and cool. Although the clock had but just struck six, I had been at work an hour, and now that my uncle, Seth Upham, had come down to take charge of the store, I was glad that some business discussed the evening before gave me an excuse to go on an errand to the other end of the village. Uncle Seth looked up from his ledger as I passed. "You are prompt to go," said he. "I've scarce got my hat on the peg. Well, the sooner the better, I suppose. Young Mackay's last shipment of oil was of poor quality and color. The rascal needs a good wigging, but the best you can do is tell the old man my opinion of his son's goods. If he gets a notion that we're likely to go down to nine cents a gallon on the next lot, he'll bring the boy to taw, I'll warrant you. Well, be gone. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll come, and we're like to have a busy day." I nodded and went down the steps, but turned again and looked back. As Uncle Seth sat at his desk just inside the door, his bald head showing above the ledgers, he made me think of a pigeon-holed document concerned with matters of trade--weights and measures, and dollars and cents. He was a brisk, abrupt little man, with keen eyes and a thin mouth, and lines that cut at sharp angles into his forehead and drew testy curves around his chin; and in his way he was prominent in the village. Though ours was a community of Yankees, he had the reputation, in which he took great pride, of being an uncommonly sharp hand at a bargain. That it could be a doubtful compliment, he never suspected. He owned property in three towns besides our own village of Topham; he kept a very considerable balance in a Boston bank; he loaned money at interest from one end of the county to the other, and he held shares in two schooners and a bark--not to mention the bustling general store that was the keystone of his prosperity. If anyone had presumed so far as to suggest that a close bargain could be aught but creditable, Uncle Seth would have shot a testy glance at him, with some such comment as, "Pooh! He's drunk or crazy!" And he would then have atoned for any little trickery by his generosity, come Sunday, when the offering was taken at church. There were, to be sure, those who said, by allusion or implication, that he would beat the devil at his own game, for all his pains to appear so downright honest. But they were ne'er-do-weels and village scoundrels, whom Uncle Seth, although he was said to have known them well enough in early youth, passed without deigning to give them so much as a nod; and of course no one believed the word of such as they. For my own part, I had only friendly feelings toward him, for he was always a decent man, and since my mother died, his odd bursts of generosity had touched me not a little. Grumpy old Uncle Seth! Others might call him "nigh," but for all his abrupt manner, he was kind to me after a queer, short fashion, and many a bank-note had whisked from his pocket to mine at moments when a stranger would have thought him in furious temper. Turning on my heel, I left him busy at his desk amid his barrels and cans and kegs and boxes, and unwittingly set forth to meet the beginning of the wildest, maddest adventure that I ever heard of outside the pages of fiction. As I went down past the church, the parsonage, and the smithy,--the little group of buildings that, together with our general store, formed the hub on which the life of the country for many miles thereabouts revolved,--I was surprised to see no one astir. Few country people then were--or now are--so shameless as to lie in bed at six o'clock of a summer morning. By rights I should have heard the clank of metal, the hum of voices, men calling to their horses, saws whining through wood, and hammers driving nails. But there was no sound of speech or labor; the nail-kegs on which our village worthies habitually reposed during long intervals of the working day were unoccupied; the fire in the blacksmith's forge, for want of blowing, had died down to a dull deep red. Three horses were tugging at their halters inside the smithy, and a well-fed team was waiting outside by a heavy cart; yet no one was anywhere to be seen. Perceiving all this from a distance, I was frankly puzzled; and as I approached, I cast about with lively curiosity to see what could cause so strange a state of affairs. It was only when I had gone past the smithy, that I saw the smith and his customers and his habitual guests gathered on the other side of the building, where I had not been able to see them before. They were staring at the old village tavern, which stood some distance away on a gentle rise of land. My curiosity so prevailed over my sense of duty that I turned from the road through the tall grass, temporarily abandoning my errand, and picked my way among some old wheels and scrap iron to join the men. Their talk only aggravated my wonder. Clearing his throat, the smith gruffly muttered, "It does act like him, and yet I can't believe it'll be him." "Why shouldn't he come back?" one of the farmers asked in a louder voice. "Things done twenty years ago will never be dragged up to face him, and he'd know that." The smith grunted. "Where would Neil Gleazen find the money to buy a suit of good clothes and a beaver hat?" "That's easy answered," a third speaker put in. And they all exchanged significant glances. In the silence that followed I made bold to put a question for myself. "Of whom are you talking?" I asked. They looked closely at me and again exchanged glances. "There's someone up yonder at the inn, Joe," the smith said kindly; "and Ben, here, getting sight of him last night and again this morning, has took a notion that it's a fellow who used to live here years ago and who left town--well, in a hurry. As to that, I can't be sure, but I vum, I'd not be surprised if it was Neil Gleazen after all." I now discerned in one of the rocking-chairs on the porch the figure of a stranger, well dressed so far as we could see at that distance, who wore a big beaver hat set rakishly a trifle forward. He had thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and as he leaned back, with his feet raised against one of the columns that supported the porch-roof, he sent clouds of white cigar-smoke eddying up and away. The others were so intent on their random speculations that, when I asked more about who and what Neil Gleazen was, they ignored my question, and continued to exchange observations in low voices. I could hear little of their talk without forcing myself into their very midst, and of what little I heard I made still less, for it was full of unfamiliar names and reminiscences that meant nothing to me. When some one spoke of Seth Upham, my mother's brother, I was all ears on the instant; but I saw the smith glance at me, and probably he nudged the speaker, for, after a moment's pause, they went on about indifferent matters. I then perceived that I was unlikely to learn more, so I returned to the road and continued on my way. As I passed the tavern I took occasion to see what I could, in courtesy, of the stranger; but he looked so hard at me while I was passing that I could steal only glances at him, unless I gave him stare for stare, which I did not wish to do. So I got only a brief glimpse of tall hat, bold dark eyes under bushy brows, big nose, smooth-shaven chin, and smiling mouth, all of which a heavy stock and voluminous coat seemed to support. I thought that I caught the flash of a jeweled pin in the man's stock and of a ring on his finger, but of that I was not sure until later. Pushing on, I left him in the old inn chair, as proud as a sultan, puffing clouds of white smoke from a long cigar and surveying the village as grandly as if he owned it, while I went about my uncle's business at the other end of the town. But when I had gone far on my way, his dark face and arrogant manner were still in my mind. While I was arguing with surly old Dan Mackay about whale-oil and horses and sugar and lumber, I was thinking of those proud, keen eyes and that smiling, scornful mouth; while I was bargaining with Mrs. Mackay for eggs and early peas, I was thinking of the beaver that the man had worn and the big ring on his finger; and while I was walking back over two miles of country road, on which the sun was now pouring down with ever-increasing heat, I was thinking of how my uncle's name had popped out in the conversation beside the smithy--and how it had popped, so to speak, discreetly back again. I was all eagerness, now, for another and better look at the stranger, and was resolved to stare him out of countenance, if need be, to get it. Imagine, then, my disappointment when, hot and sweaty, I once more came in sight of the tavern and saw the unmistakable figure under the beaver hat walk jauntily down the steps, pause a moment in the road, and, turning in the opposite direction, go rapidly away from me. The stranger should not escape me like that, I thought with a grim chuckle; and warm though I was, I lengthened my stride and drew slowly up on him. As he passed the smithy, he looked to neither right nor left, yet I was by no means sure that he did not see the curious faces that filled the door when he went by. A man can see so much without turning his head! While I toiled on after him, trying to appear indifferent and yet striving to overtake him before he should go beyond the store, where I must turn in, would I or would I not, he passed the church, the parsonage, and the schoolhouse. He wore his hat tilted forward at just such an angle, and to one side over his right eye; swinging his walking-stick nonchalantly, he clipped the blossoms off the buttercups as he passed them; now he paused to light a fresh cigar from the butt of the one that he was smoking; now he lingered a moment in the shade of an old chestnut tree. All the time I was gaining on him; but now the store was hard by. Should I keep on until I had passed him and, turning back, could meet him face to face? No, Uncle Seth would surely stop me. In my determination to get a good look at the man, I was about to break into a run, when, to my amazement, he turned to the left toward the very place where I was going. So close to him had I now come that, when he stood on the threshold, I was setting foot on the lower step. I could see Uncle Seth's clerks, Arnold Lamont, a Frenchman, and Simeon Muzzy, busily at work in the back room. I could see, as before, Uncle Seth's bald head shining above the top of his desk. But my eyes were all for the stranger, and I now saw plainly that in the ring on his finger there flashed a great white diamond. Uncle Seth, hearing our steps, raised his head. "Well?" he said sharply, in the dictatorial way that was so characteristic of him. "Well!" repeated the stranger in a voice that startled me. It was deep and gruff, and into the monosyllable the man put a solid, heavy emphasis, which made my uncle's sharpness seem as light as a woman's burst of temper. Uncle Seth, too, was startled, I think, for he raised his head and irritably peered over the steel rims of his spectacles. "Well," he grumpily responded, "what do you want of me?" "An hour of your time," said the stranger, lowering his voice. "Time's money," returned my uncle. "I'm the lad to transmute it into fine gold for you, Seth Upham," said the stranger. "How do you know my name?" "That's a foolish question to ask. Everyone in town can tell a stranger the name of the man who keeps the village store." My uncle grunted irritably, and brushed his chin with the feather of his quill. "Come," said the stranger, "where's a chair?" "Them that come to this store to loaf," my uncle cried, "generally sit on cracker-boxes. I'm a busy man." He was still looking closely at the stranger, but his voice indicated that, after all, it might not be so hard to mollify him. "Well, I ain't proud," the stranger said with a conciliatory gesture, but without the faintest flicker of a smile. "It won't be the first time I've set on a cracker-box and talked to Seth Upham. I mind a time once when old Parker used to keep the store, and me and you had stole our hats full of crackers, which we ate in the little old camp over by the river." "Who," cried Uncle Seth, "who in heaven's name are you?" He was pale to the very summit of his bald head; unconscious of what he was doing, he had thrust his pen down on the open ledger, where it left a great blotch of wet ink. "Hgh! You've got no great memory for old friends, have you, Seth? You're rich now, I hear. Money-bags full of gold. Well, 'time's money,' you said. You're going to put in a golden hour with me this day." Uncle Seth got up and laid a trembling hand on the back of his desk. "Neil Gleazen! Cornelius Gleazen!" he gasped. The stranger pushed his beaver back on his head, and with the finger on which the diamond sparkled flicked the ash from his cigar. "It's me, Seth," he returned; and for the first time since I had seen him he laughed a deep, hearty laugh. "Well, what'll you have?" Uncle Seth demanded hotly. "I'm an honest man. I'm a deacon in the church. My business is an honest business. There's nothing here for you, Neil! What do you want?" In spite of his apparent anger,--or because of it,--Uncle Seth's voice trembled. "Well, what do you mean by all this talk of an honest man? Ain't I an honest man?" "Why--why--" "Hgh! You've not got much to say to that, have you?" "I--why--I don't--know--" "Of course you don't know. You don't know an honest man when you see one. Don't talk to me like that, Seth Upham. You and me has robbed too many churches together when we was boys to have you talk like that now. You and me--" "For heaven's sake keep still!" Uncle Seth cried. "Customers are coming." Neil Gleazen grunted again. Pushing a cracker-box into the corner behind Uncle Seth's desk and placing his beaver on it, he settled back in Uncle Seth's own chair, with a cool impudent wink at me, as if for a long stay, while Uncle Seth, with an eagerness quite unlike his usual abrupt, scornful manner, rushed away from his unwelcome guest and proceeded to make himself surprisingly agreeable to a pair of country woman who wished to barter butter for cotton cloth. CHAPTER II MY UNCLE BEHAVES QUEERLY The village of Topham, to which, after an absence of twenty years, Cornelius Gleazen had returned as a stranger, lay near the sea and yet not beside it, near the post road and yet not upon it. From the lower branches of an old pine that used to stand on the hill behind the tavern we could see a thread of salt water, which gleamed like silver in the sun; and, on the clearest days, if we climbed higher, we could sometimes catch a glimpse of tiny ships working up or down the coast. In the other direction, if we faced about, we could see, far down a long, broad valley, between low hills, a bit of white road that ran for a mile or two between meadows and marshes; and on the road we sometimes saw moving black dots trailing tiny clouds of dust, which we knew were men and horses and coaches. In Topham I was born, and there I spent my boyhood. I suppose that I was quieter than the average boy and more studious, for I was content to find adventures in the pages of books, and I read from cover to cover all the journals of the day that came to hand. Certainly I was a dreamy lad, who knew books better than men, and who cared so little for "practical affairs" that much passed me by unnoticed which many another youth of no more native keenness would instantly have perceived. When my mother, some years after my father's death, came to live with her brother and keep his house for him, it did not make so great a change in my manner of life as one might have expected. Bustling, smart Uncle Seth ruled the household with a quick, nervous hand; and for the time, as he bent all his energies to the various projects in which he was interested and in which he was more than ordinarily successful, he almost ignored his nephew. It was not strange that after my mother died Uncle Seth should give me more thought, for he was left a second time alone in the world, and except for me he had neither close friend nor blood relation. I think that his very shrewdness, which must have shown him how much a man needs friends, perversely kept him from making them; it built around him a fence of cold, calculating, selfish appraisal that repelled most people whom he might have drawn closer to him. But to me, who had on him claims of a kind, and whom he had come by slow stages to know intimately, he gave a queer, testy, impulsive affection; and although the first well-meant but ill-chosen act by which he manifested it was to withdraw me from my books to the store, where he set me to learn the business, for which I was by no means so grateful as I should have been, both I and his two clerks, Sim Muzzy and Arnold Lamont, to whom long association had revealed the spontaneous generosity of which he seemed actually to be ashamed, had a very real affection for him. It was no secret that he intended to make me his heir, and I was regarded through the town as a young man of rare prospects, which reconciled me in a measure to exchanging during the day my worn volumes of Goldsmith and Defoe for neat columns that represented profit and loss on candles and sugar and spice; and my hard, faithful work won Uncle Seth's confidence, and with it a curiously grudging acknowledgment. Thus our little world of business moved monotonously, though not unpleasantly, round and round the cycle of the seasons, until the day when Cornelius Gleazen came back to his native town. He continued to sit in my uncle's chair, that first morning, while Uncle Seth, perspiring, it seemed to me, more freely than the heat of the day could have occasioned, bustled about and waited on his customers. I suppose that Neil Gleazen really saw nothing out of the ordinary in Uncle Seth's manner; but to me, who knew him so well now, it was plain that, instead of trying to get the troublesome women and their little business of eggs and cloth done with and out of the store as quickly as possible, which under the circumstances was what I should have expected of him, he was trying by every means in his power to prolong their bartering. And whether or not Neil Gleazen suspected this, with imperturbable assurance he watched Uncle Seth pass from one end of the store to the other. When at last the women went away and Uncle Seth returned to his desk, Gleazen removed the beaver from the cracker-box, and blowing a ring of smoke out across the top of the desk, watched the draft from the door tear it into thin blue shreds. "Sit down," he said calmly. I was already staring at them in amazement; but my amazement was fourfold when Uncle Seth hesitated, gulped, and _seated himself on the cracker-box_. "Joe," he said in an odd voice, "go help Arnold and Sim in the back shop." So I went out and left them; and when I came back, Cornelius Gleazen was gone. But the next day he came again, and the next, and the next. That he was the very man the smith and his cronies had thought him, I learned beyond peradventure of a doubt. Strange tales were whispered here and there about the village, and women covertly turned their eyes to watch him when he passed. Some men who had known him in the old days tried to conceal it, and pretended to be ignorant of all that concerned him, and gave him the coldest of cold stares when they chanced to meet him face to face. Others, on the contrary, courted his attention and called on him at the tavern, and went away, red with anger, when he coldly snubbed them. At the time it seemed to make little difference to him what they thought. Strangely enough, the Cornelius Gleazen who had come back to his boyhood home was a very different Cornelius, people found, from the one who, twenty years before, had gone away by night with the town officers hot on his trail. Strange stories of that wild night passed about the town, and I learned, in one way and another, that Gleazen was not the only lad who had then disappeared. There was talk of one Eli Norton, and of foul play, and an ugly word was whispered. But it had all happened long before, much had been forgotten, and some things had never come to light, and the officers who had run Gleazen out of town were long since dead. So, as the farmer by the smithy had said would be the case, the old scandals were let lie, and Gleazen went his way unmolested. That my uncle would gladly have been rid of the fellow, for all his grand airs and the pocketfuls of money that he would throw out on the bar at the inn or on the counter at the store, I very well knew; I sometimes saw him wince at Gleazen's effrontery, or start to retort with his customary sharpness, and then go red or pale and press his lips to a straight line. Yet I could not imagine why this should be. If any other man had treated him so, Uncle Seth would have turned on him with the sharpest words at his command. It was not like him to sit meekly down to another's arrogance. He had been too long a leading man in our community. But Cornelius Gleazen seemed to have cast a spell upon him. The longer Gleazen would sit and watch Uncle Seth, the more overbearing would his manner become and the more nervous would Uncle Seth grow. I then believed, and still do, that if my uncle had stood up to him, as man to man, on that first day, Neil Gleazen would have pursued a very different course. But Uncle Seth, if he realized it at all, realized it too late. At the end of a week Gleazen seemed to have become a part of the store. He would frown and look away out of the window, and scarcely deign to reply if any of the poorer or less reputable villagers spoke to him, whether their greeting was casual or pretentious; but he would nod affably, and proffer cigars, and exchange observations on politics and affairs of the world, when the minister or the doctor or any other of the solid, substantial men of the place came in. I sometimes saw Uncle Seth surreptitiously watching him with a sort of blank wonder; and once, when we had come home together late at night, he broke a silence of a good two hours by remarking as casually as if we had talked of nothing else all the evening, "I declare to goodness, Joe, it does seem as if Neil Gleazen had reformed. I could almost take my oath he's not spoken to one of the old crowd since he returned. Who would have thought it? It's strange--passing strange." It was the question that the whole town was asking--who would have thought it? I had heard enough by now of the old escapades,--drunken revels in the tavern, raids on a score of chicken-roosts and gardens, arrant burglary, and even, some said, arson,--to understand why they asked the question. But more remarkable by far to me was the change that had come over my uncle. Never before had the business of the store been better; never before had there been more mortgages and notes locked up in the big safe; never had our affairs of every description flourished so famously. But whereas, in other seasons of greater than ordinary prosperity, Uncle Seth had become almost genial, I had never seen him so dictatorial and testy as now. Some secret fear seemed to haunt him from day to day and from week to week. Thinking back on that morning when Cornelius Gleazen first came to our store, I remembered a certain sentence he had spoken. "You and me has robbed too many churches together when we was boys--" I wondered if I could not put my finger on the secret of the change that had come over my uncle. CHAPTER III HIGGLEBY'S BARN That Cornelius Gleazen had returned to Topham a reformed and honest man, the less skeptical people in the village now freely asserted. To be sure, some said that no good could come from any man who wore a diamond on his finger, to say nothing of another in his stock, and the minister held aloof for reasons known only to himself. But there was something hearty and wholesome in Gleazen's gruff voice and blunt, kindly wit that quite turned aside the shafts of criticism, particularly when he had made it plain that he would associate only with people of unquestioned respectability; and his devout air, as he sat in the very front pew in church and sang the hymns in a fine, reverberating bass, almost--although never quite--won over even the minister. All were agreed that you could pardon much in a man who had lived long in foreign parts; and if any other argument were needed, Gleazen's own free-handed generosity for every good cause provided it. There were even murmurs that a man with Seth Upham's money might well learn a lesson from the stranger within our gates, which came to my uncle's ears, by way of those good people you can find in every town who feel it incumbent on them to repeat in confidence that which they have gained in confidence, and caused him no little uneasiness. Of the probity of Cornelius Gleazen the village came gradually to have few doubts; and those of us who believed in the man were inclined to belittle the blacksmith, who persisted in thinking ill of him, and even the minister. Unquestionably Gleazen had seen the error of his youthful ways and had profited by the view, which, by all accounts, must have been extensive. It was a fine thing to see him sitting on the tavern porch or in my uncle's store and discoursing on the news of the day. By a gesture, he would dispose of the riots in England and leave us marveling at his keenness. The riots held a prominent place in the papers, and we argued that a man who could so readily place them where they belonged must have a head of no mean order. Of affairs in South America, where General Paez had become Civil and Military Dictator of Venezuela, he had more to say; for General Paez, it seemed, was a friend of his. I have wondered since about his boasted friendship with the distinguished general, but at the time he convinced us that Venezuela was a fortunate state and that her affairs were much more important to men of the world than a bill to provide for the support of aged survivors of the Army of the Revolution, which a persistent one-legged old chap from the Four Corners tried a number of times to introduce into the conversation. There came a day when both the doctor and the minister joined the circle around Cornelius Gleazen. Never was there prouder man! He fairly expanded in the warmth of their interest. His gestures were more impressive than ever before; his voice was more assertive. Yet behind it all I perceived a curious twinkle in his eyes, and I got a perverse impression that even then the man was laughing up his sleeve. This did not in itself set my mind on new thoughts; but to add to my curiosity, when the doctor and the minister were leaving, I saw that they were talking in undertones and smiling significantly. Late one night toward the end of that week, I was returning from Boston, whither I had gone to buy ten pipes of Schiedam gin and six of Old East India Madeira, which a correspondent of my uncle's had lately imported. An acquaintance from the next town had given me a lift along the post road as far as a certain short cut, which led through a pine woods and across an open pasture where once there had been a farmhouse and where, although the house had burned to the ground eight or ten years since, a barn still stood, which was known throughout the countryside as "Higgleby's." The sky was overcast, but the moonlight nevertheless sifted through the thin clouds; and with a word of thanks to the lad who had brought me thus far, I vaulted the bars and struck off toward the pines. My eyes were already accustomed to the darkness, and the relief from trying to see my way under the thickly interwoven branches of the grove made the open pasture, when I came to it, seem nearly as light as day, although, of course, to anyone coming out into it from a lighted room, it would have seemed quite otherwise. Of the old barn, which loomed up on the hill, a black, gaunt, lonesome object a mile or so away, I thought very little, as I walked along, until it seemed to me that I saw a glimmer of fire through a breach where a board had been torn off. Now the barn was remote from the woods and from the village; but the weather had been dry, the dead grass in the old pasture was as inflammable as tinder, and what wind there was, was blowing toward the pines. Since it was plain that I ought to investigate that flash of fire, I left the path and began to climb the hill. Stopping suddenly, I listened with all my ears. I thought I had heard voices; it behooved me to be cautious. Prudently, now, I advanced, and as silently as possible. Now I _knew_ that I heard voices. The knowledge that there were men in the old barn relieved me of any sense of duty in the matter of a possible fire, but at the same time it kindled my imagination. Who were they, and why had they come, and what were they doing? Instead of walking boldly up to the barn door, I began to climb the wall that served as the foundation. The wall was six or eight feet high, but built of large stones, which afforded me easy hold for foot and hand, and from the top I was confident that I could peek in at a window just above. Very cautiously I climbed from rock to rock, until I was on my knees on the topmost tier. Now, twisting about and keeping flat to the barn with both arms extended so as not to overbalance and fall, I raised myself little by little, only to find, to my keen disappointment, that the window was still ten inches above my eyes. That I should give up then, never occurred to me. I placed both hands on the sill and silently lifted myself until my chin was well above it. In the middle of the old barn, by the light of four candles, a number of men were playing cards. I could hear much of what they said, but it concerned only the fortunes of the game, and as they spoke in undertones I could not recognize their voices. For all that I got from their conversation they might as well have said naught, except that the sound of their talking and the clink of money as it changed hands served to cover whatever small noises I may have made, and thus enabled me to look in upon them undiscovered. Nor could I see who they were, for the candle light was dim and flickered, and those who were back to me, as they pressed forward in their eagerness to follow the play, concealed the faces of those opposite them. Moreover, my position was extremely uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous. So I lowered myself until my toes rested on the wall of rock, and kneeling very cautiously, began to descend. Exploring with my foot until I found a likely stone, I put my weight on it, and felt it turn. Failing to clutch the top of the wall, I went down with a heavy thud. For a moment I lay on the ground with my wind knocked out of me, completely helpless. Then sharp voices broke the silence, and the sound of someone opening the barn door instilled enough wholesome fear into me to enable me to get up on all fours after a fashion, and creep cautiously away. From the darkness outside, my eyes being already accustomed to the absence of light, I could see a number of men standing together in front of the barn door. They must have blown out the candles, for the door and the windows and the chinks between the boards were dark. Cursing myself for a silly fool, I made off as silently as possible. I had not recognized one of the players, I had got a bad tumble and sore joints for my trouble, and my pride was hurt. In short, I felt that I had fallen out of the small end of the horn, and I was in no cheerful mood as I limped along. But by the time I came into the village half an hour later, I had recovered my temper and my wind; and so, although I earnestly desired to go home and to bed, to rest my lame bones, I decided to go first to the store and report to Uncle Seth the results of my mission. Through the lighted windows of the store, as I approached, I could see Arnold Lamont and Sim Muzzy playing chess in the back room. They were a strange pair, and as ill matched as any two you ever saw. Lamont was a Frenchman, who had appeared, seemingly from nowhere, ten or a dozen years before, and in quaintly precise English had asked for work--only because it was so exceedingly precise, would you have suspected that it was a foreigner's English. He carried himself with a strange dignity, and his manner, which seemed to confer a favor rather than to seek one, had impressed Uncle Seth almost against his will. "Why, yes," he had said sharply, "there's work enough to keep another man. But what, pray, has brought you here?" "It is the fortune of war," Lamont had replied. And that was all that my uncle ever got out of him. Without more ado he had joined Sim Muzzy, a well-meaning, simple fellow who had already worked for Uncle Seth for some eight years, and there he had stayed ever since. Arnold and Sim shared the room above the store and served both as watchmen and as clerks; but it was Sim who cooked their meals, who made their beds, who swept and dusted and polished. Although the two worked for equally small pay and, all in all, were as satisfactory men as any storekeeper could hope to have, Arnold had carried even into the work of the store that same odd, foreign dignity; and it apparently never occurred, even to petulant, talkative Sim, that Arnold, so reserved, so quietly assured, should have lent his hand to mere domestic duties. Learning early in their acquaintance, each that the other played chess, they had got a board and a set of men, and, in spite of a disparity in skill that for some people must have made it very irksome, had kept the game up ever since. Arnold Lamont played chess with the same precision with which he spoke English; and if Sim Muzzy managed to catch him napping, and so to win one game in twenty, it was a feat to be talked about for a month to come. Through the windows, as I said, I saw them playing chess in the back shop; then, coming round the corner of the store, I saw someone just entering. It was no other than Cornelius Gleazen, in beaver, stock, coat, and diamonds, with the perpetual cigar bit tight between his teeth. A little to my surprise, I noticed that there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. I had been walking fast myself, and yet I had not thought of it as a warm evening: the overcast sky and the wind from the sea, with their promise of rain to break the drouth, combined to make the night the coolest we had had for some weeks. It surprised me also to see that Gleazen was breathing hard--but was he? I could not be sure. Then, through the open door, I again saw Arnold Lamont in the back room. In his hand he was holding a knight just over the square on which it was to rest; but with his eyes he was following Cornelius Gleazen across the store and round behind my uncle's desk, where now there was a second chair in place of the cracker-box. When Gleazen had sat down beside my uncle, he tapping the desk with a long pencil, which he had drawn from his pocket, Uncle Seth bustling about among his papers, with quick useless sallies here and there, and into the pigeonholes, as if he were confused by the mass of business that confronted him,--it was a manner he sometimes affected when visitors were present,--Arnold Lamont put down the knight and absently, as if his mind were far away, said in his calm, precise voice, "Check!" "No, no! You mustn't do that! You can't do that! That's wrong! See! You were on that square there--see?--and you moved so! You can't put your knight there," Sim Muzzy cried. That Lamont had transgressed by mistake the rules of the game hit Sim like a thunderclap and even further befuddled his poor wits. "Ah," said Lamont, "I see. I beg you, pardon my error. So! Check." He again moved the knight, apparently without thought; and Sim Muzzy fell to biting his lip and puzzling this way and that and working his fingers, which he always did when he was getting the worst of the game. Arnold Lamont seemed not to care a straw about the game. Through the door he was watching Cornelius Gleazen. And Cornelius Gleazen was wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. I wondered if it was my lively imagination that made me think that he was breathing quickly. How long would it have taken him, I wondered, to cut across the pasture from Higgleby's barn to the north road? Coming thus by the Four Corners, could he have reached the store ahead of me? Or could he, by way of the shun-pike, have passed me on the road? CHAPTER IV SWORDS AND SHIPS Having succeeded in establishing himself in the society and confidence of the more substantial men of the village, and having discomfited completely those few--among whom remained the blacksmith--who had treated him shabbily in the first weeks of his return and had continued ever since to regard him with suspicion, Cornelius Gleazen began now to extend his campaign to other quarters, and to curry favor among those whose good-will, so far as I could see, was really of little weight one way or another. He now cast off something of his arrogant, disdainful air, and won the hearts of the children by strange knickknacks and scrimshaws, which he would produce, sometimes from his pockets, and sometimes, by delectable sleight of hand, from the very air itself. Before long half the homes in the village boasted whale's teeth on which were wrought pictures of whales and ships and savages, or chips of ivory carved into odd little idols, and every one of them, you would find, if you took the trouble to ask, came from the old chests that Neil Gleazen kept under the bed in his room at the tavern, where now he was regarded as the prince of guests. To those who were a little older he gave more elaborate trinkets of ivory and of dark, strange woods; and the report grew, and found ready belief, that he had prospered greatly in trade before he decided to retire, and that he had brought home a fortune with which to settle down in the old town; for the toys that he gave away so freely were worth, we judged, no inconsiderable sum. But to the lads in their early twenties, of whom I was one, he endeared himself perhaps most of all when, one fine afternoon, smoking one of his long cigars and wearing his beaver tilted forward at just such an angle, he came down the road with a great awkward bundle under his arm, and disclosed on the porch of my uncle's store half a dozen foils and a pair of masks. He smiled when all the young fellows in sight and hearing gathered round him eagerly, and called one another to come and see, and picked up the foils and passed at one another awkwardly. There was an odd satisfaction in his smile, as if he had gained something worth the having. What a man of his apparent means could care for our good-will, I could not have said if anyone had asked me, and at the time I did not think to wonder about it. But his air of triumph, when I later had occasion to recall it to mind, convinced me that for our good-will he did care, and that he was manoeuvring to win and hold it. It was interesting to mark how the different ones took his playthings. Sim Muzzy cried out in wonder and earnestly asked, "Are those what men kill themselves with in duels? Pray how do they stick 'em in when the points are blunted?" Arnold Lamont, without a word or a change of expression, picked up a foil at random and tested the blade by bending it against the wall. Uncle Seth, having satisfied his curiosity by a glance, cried sharply, "That's all very interesting, but there's work to be done. Come, come, I pay no one for gawking out the door." The lively hum of voices continued, and a number of town boys remained to examine the weapons; but Arnold, Sim, and I obediently turned back into the store. "That's all right, lads," Cornelius Gleazen cried. "Come evening, I'll show you a few points on using these toys. I'll make a fencing-master and a good one, I'll have you know, and there are some among you that have the making of swordsmen. You're one, Joe Woods, you're one." I was pleased to be singled out, and went to my work with a will, thinking meanwhile of the promised lessons. It never occurred to me that Cornelius Gleazen could have had a motive that did not appear on the surface for so choosing my name from all the rest. That evening, true to his promise, he took us in hand on the village green, with four fifths of the village standing by to watch, and gave us lessons in thrusting and parrying and stepping swiftly forward and backward. We were an awkward company of recruits, and for our pains we got only hearty laughter from the onlookers; but the new sport captured our imagination, and realizing that, once upon a time, even Cornelius Gleazen himself had been a tyro, we zealously worked to learn what we could, and in our idle moments we watched with frank admiration the grand flourishes and great leaps and stamps of which Gleazen was master. The diamond on the finger of his gracefully curved left hand flashed as he sprang about, and his ruffled shirt, damped by his unwonted exercise, clung close to his big shoulders and well-formed back. Surely, we thought, few could equal his surprising agility; the great voice in which he roared his suggestions and commands increased our confidence in his knowledge of swordsmanship. When, after my second turn at his instruction, I came away with my arms aching from the unaccustomed exertion and saw that Arnold Lamont was watching us and covertly smiling, I flamed red and all but lost my temper. Why should he laugh at _me_, I thought. Surely I was no clumsier than the others. Indeed, he who thought himself so smart probably could not do half so well. Had not Mr. Gleazen praised me most of all? In my anger at Arnold's secret amusement, I avoided him that evening and for several days to come. It was on Saturday night, when we were closing the store for the week, that quite another subject led me back to my resentment in such a way that we had the matter out between us; and as all that we had to say is more or less intimately connected with my story I will set it down word for word. A young woman in a great quilted bonnet of the kind that we used to call calash, and a dress that she no doubt thought very fetching, came mincing into the store and ordered this thing and that in a way that kept me attending closely to her desires. When she had gone mincing out again, I turned so impatiently to put the counter to rights, that Arnold softly chuckled. "Apparently," said he, with a quiet smile, "the lady did not impress you quite as she desired, Joe." "Impress me!" I snorted, ungallantly imitating her mincing manner. "She impressed me as much as any of them." "You must have patience, Joe. Some day there will come a lady--" "No, no!" I cried, with the cocksure assertiveness of my years. "But yes!" "Not I! No, no, Arnold--, 'needles and pins, needles and pins'--" "When a man marries his trouble begins?" Sadness now shadowed Arnold's expressive face. "No! Proverbs sometimes are pernicious." "You are laughing at me!" I had detected, through the veil of melancholy that seemed to have fallen over him, a faint ray of something akin to humor. "I am not laughing at you, Joe." His voice was sad. "You will marry some day--marry and settle down. It is good to do so. I--" There was something in his stopping that made me look at him in wonder. Immediately he was himself again, calm, wise, taciturn; but in spite of my youth I instinctively felt that only by suffering could a man win his way to such kindly, quiet dignity. I had said that I would not marry: no wonder, I have since thought, that Arnold looked at me with that gentle humor. Never dreaming that in only a few short months a new name and a new face were to fill my mind and my heart with a world of new anxieties and sorrows and joys, never dreaming of the strange and distant adventures through which Arnold and I were to pass,--if a fortune-teller had foretold the story, I should have laughed it to scorn,--I was only angry at his amused smile. Perhaps I had expected him to argue with me, to try to correct my notions. In any case, when he so kindly and yet keenly appraised at its true worth my boyish pose, I was sobered for a moment by the sadness that he himself had revealed; then I all but flew into a temper. "Oh, very well! Go on and laugh at me. You were laughing at me the other night when I was fencing, too. I saw you. I'd like to see you do better yourself. Go on and laugh, you who are so wise." Arnold's smile vanished. "I am not laughing at you, Joe. Nor was I laughing at you then." "You were not laughing at me?" "No." "At whom, then, were you laughing?" To this Arnold did not reply. The fencing lessons, begun so auspiciously that first evening, became a regular event. Every night we gathered on the green and fenced together until twilight had all but settled into dark. Little by little we learned such tricks of attack and defense as our master could teach us, until we, too, could stamp and leap, and parry with whistling circles of the blade. And as we did so, we young fellows of the village came more and more to look upon Cornelius Gleazen almost as one of us. Though his coming had aroused suspicion, though for many weeks there were few who would say a good word for him, as the summer wore away, he established himself so firmly in the life of his native town that people began to forget, as far as anyone could see, that he had ever had occasion to leave it in great haste. If he praised my fencing and gave me more time than the others, I thought it no more than my due--was I not a young man of great prospects? If Uncle Seth had at first regarded him with suspicion, Uncle Seth, too, had quite returned now to his old abrupt, masterful way and was again as sharp and quick of tongue as ever, even when Neil Gleazen was sitting in Uncle Seth's own chair and at his own desk. Perhaps, had we been keener, we should have suspected that something was wrong, simply because _no one_--except a few stupid persons like the blacksmith--had a word to say against Neil Gleazen. You would at least have expected his old cronies to resent his leaving them for more respectable company. But not even from them did there come a whisper of suspicion or complaint. Why should not a man come home to his native place to enjoy the prosperity of his later years? we argued. It was the most natural thing in the world; and when Cornelius Gleazen talked of foreign wars and the state of the country and the deaths of Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, and of the duel between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph, the most intelligent of us listened with respect, and found occasion in his shrewd observations and trenchant comment to rejoice that Topham had so able a son to return to her in the full power of his maturity. There was even talk of sending him to Congress, and that it was not idle gossip I know because three politicians from Boston came to town and conferred with our selectmen and Judge Bordman over their wine at the inn for a long evening; and Peter Nuttles, whose sister waited on them, spread the story to the ends of the county. Late one night, when Uncle Seth and I were about to set out for home, leaving Arnold and Sim to lock up the store, we parted with Gleazen on the porch, he stalking off to the right in the moonlight and swinging his cane as he went, we turning our backs on the village and the bright windows of the tavern, and stepping smartly toward our own dark house, in which the one lighted lamp shone from the window of the room that Mrs. Jameson, our housekeeper, occupied. "He's a man of judgment," Uncle Seth said, as if meditating aloud, "rare judgment and a wonderful knowledge of the world." He seemed to expect no reply, and I made none. "He was venturesome to rashness as a boy," Uncle Seth presently continued. "All that seems to have changed now." We walked along through the dust. The weeds beside the road and the branches of the trees and shrubs were damp with dew. "As a boy," Uncle Seth said at last, "I should never have thought of going to Neil Gleazen for judgment--aye, or for knowledge." And when we stood on the porch in the moonlight and looked back at the village, where all the houses were dark now except for a lamp here and there that continued to burn far into the night, he added, "How would you like to leave all this, Joe, and wrestle a fall with fortune for big stakes--aye, for rich stakes, with everything in our favor to win?" At something in his voice I turned on my heel, my heart leaping, and stared hard at him. As if he suddenly realized that he had been saying things he ought not to say, he gave himself a quick shake, and woke from his meditations with a start. "We must away to bed," he cried sharply. "It's close on midnight." Here was a matter for speculation. For an hour that afternoon and for another hour that evening Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen had sat behind my uncle's desk, with their chairs drawn close together and the beaver laid on the cracker-box, and had scribbled endless columns of figures and mysterious notes on sheet after sheet of foolscap. What, I wondered, did it mean? At noon next day, as I was waiting on customers in the front of the store, I saw a rider with full saddlebags pass, on a great black horse, and shortly afterwards I heard one of the customers remark that the horse was standing at the inn. Glancing out of the window, I saw that the rider had dismounted and was talking with Cornelius Gleazen; though the distance was considerable, Gleazen's bearing and the forward tilt of his beaver were unmistakable. When next I passed the window, I saw that Gleazen was posting down the road toward the store, with his beaver tipped even farther over his right eye, his cane swinging, and a bundle under his arm. As I bowed the customers out, Gleazen entered the store, brushing past me with a nod, and loudly called, "Seth Upham! Seth Upham! Where are you?" "Here I am. What's wanted?" my uncle testily retorted, as he emerged from a bin into which he had thrust his head and shoulders in his efforts to fill a peck measure. "Come, come," cried Gleazen in his great, gruff voice. "Here's news!" "News," returned my uncle, sharply; "news is no reason to scare a man out of a year's growth." Neil Gleazen laughed loudly and gave my uncle a resounding slap on the back that made him writhe. "News, Seth, news is the key to fortune. Come, man, come, lay by your pettifogging. Here's papers just in by the post. You ain't going to let 'em lie no more than I am." To my amazement,--I could never get used to it,--my uncle's resentment seemed to go like mist before the sun, and he said not a word against the boisterous roughness of the friend of his youth, although I almost believe that, if anyone else had dared to treat him so, he would have grained the man with a hayfork. Instead, he wiped his hands on his coarse apron and followed Gleazen to the desk, where they sat down in the two chairs that now were always behind it. For a time they talked in voices so low that I heard nothing of their conversation; but after a while, as they became more and more absorbed in their business, their voices rose, and I perceived that Gleazen was reading aloud from the papers some advertisements in which he seemed especially interested. "Here's this," he would cry. "Listen to this. If this ain't a good one, I'll miss my guess. 'Executor's sale, Ship Congress: on Saturday the 15th, at twelve o'clock, at the wharf of the late William Gray, Lynn Street, will be sold at public auction the ship Congress, built at Mattapoisett near New Bedford in the year 1823 and designed for the whale fishery. Measures 349 tons, is copper fastened and was copper sheathed over felt in London on the first voyage, and is in every respect a first-rate vessel. She has two suits of sails, chain and hemp cables, and is well found in the usual appurtenances. By order of the executors of the late William Gray, Whitewell, Bond and Company, Auctioneers.' There, Seth, there's a vessel for you, I'll warrant you." My uncle murmured something that I could not hear; then Gleazen tipped his beaver back on his head--for once he had neglected to set it on the cracker-box--and hoarsely laughed. "Well, I'll be shot!" he roared. "How's a man to better himself, if he's so confounded cautious? Well, then, how's this: 'Marshal's Sale. United States of America, District of Massachusetts, Boston, August 31, 1826. Pursuant to a warrant from the Honorable John Davis, Judge of the District Court for the District aforesaid, I hereby give public notice that I shall sell at public auction on Wednesday the 8th day of September, at 12 o'clock noon, at Long Wharf, the schooner Caroline and Clara, libelled for wages by William Shipley, and the money arising from the sale to be paid into court. Samuel D. Hains, Marshal.' That'll come cheap, if cheap you'll have. But mark what I tell you, Seth, that what comes cheap, goes cheap. There's no good in it. It ain't as if you hadn't the money. The plan's mine, and I tell you, it's a good one, with three merry men waiting for us over yonder. Half's for you, a whole half, mind you; and half's to be divided amongst the rest of us. It don't pay to try to do things cheap. What with gear carried away and goods damaged, it don't pay." Uncle Seth was marking lines on the margin of the newspaper before them. "I wonder," he began, "how much--" Then they talked in undertones, and I heard nothing more. CHAPTER V A MYSTERIOUS PROJECT For three days I watched with growing amazement the strange behavior of my uncle. Now he would sit hunched up over his desk and search through a great pile of documents from the safe; now he would toss the papers into his strong box, lock it, and return it to its place in the vault, and pace the floor in a revery so deep that you could speak in his very ear without getting a reply. At one minute he would be as cross as a devil's imp, and turn on you in fury if you wished to do him a favor; at the next he would fairly laugh aloud with good humor. The only man at whom he never flew out in a rage was Cornelius Gleazen, and why this should be so, I could only guess. You may be sure that I, and others, tried hard to fathom the secret, when the two of them were sitting at my uncle's desk over a huge mass of papers, as they were for hours at a time. On the noon of the third day they settled themselves together at the desk and talked interminably in undertones. Now Uncle Seth would bend over his papers; now he would look off across the road and the meadows to the woods beyond. Now he would put questions; now he would sit silent. An hour passed, and another, and another. At four o'clock they were still there, still talking in undertones. At five o'clock their heads were closer together than ever. Now Neil Gleazen was tapping on the top of his beaver. He had a strange look, which I did not understand, and between his eyes and the flashing of his diamond as his finger tapped the hat, he charmed me as if he were a snake. Even Sim Muzzy was watching them curiously, and on Arnold Lamont's fine, sober face there was an expression of mingled wonder and distrust. Customers came, and we waited on them; and when they had gone, the two were still there. The clocks were striking six when I faced about, hearing their chairs move, and saw them shaking hands and smiling. Then Cornelius Gleazen went away, and my uncle, carefully locking up his papers, went out, too. Supper was late that night, for I waited until Uncle Seth came in; but he made no excuse for his long absence and late return. He ate rapidly and in silence, as if he were not thinking of his food, and he took no wine until he had pushed his plate away. Then he poured himself a glass from the decanter, tasted it, and said, "I am to be away to-morrow, Joe." "Yes, sir," said I. "I may be back to-morrow night and I may not. As to that, I can't say. But I wish, come afternoon, you'd go to Abe Guptil's for me. I've an errand there I want you to do." I waited in silence. "I hold a mortgage of two thousand dollars on his place," he presently went on. "I've let it run, out of good-nature. Good-nature don't pay. Well, I'm going to need the money. Give him a month to pay up. If he can't, tell him I'll sell him out." "You'll what?" I cried, not believing that I heard him aright. "I'll sell him out. Pringle has been wanting the place and he'll give at least two thousand." "Now, Uncle Seth, Abraham Guptil's been a long time sick. His best horse broke a leg a while back and he had to shoot it, and while he was sick his crops failed. He can't pay you now. Give him another year. He's good for the money and he pays his interest on the day it's due." Uncle Seth frowned. "I've been too good-natured," he said sharply. "I need the money myself. I shall sell him out." "But--" "Well?" I stopped short. After all, I could not save Abe Guptil--I knew Uncle Seth too well for that. And it might be easier for Abe if I broke the news than if, say, Uncle Seth did. "Very well," I replied after a moment's thought. "I will go." Uncle Seth, appeased by my compliance, gave a short grunt, curtly bade me good-night and stumped off to bed. But I, wondering what was afoot, sat a long time at table while the candles burned lower and lower. Next morning, clad in his Sunday best, Uncle Seth waited in front of the store, with his horses harnessed and ready, until the tall familiar figure, with cane, cigar, and beaver hat, came marching grandly down from the inn. Then the two got into the carriage and drove away. Some hours later, leaving Arnold Lamont in charge of the store, I set off in turn, but humbly and on foot, toward the white house by the distant sea where poor Abraham Guptil lived; and you can be sure that it made me sick at heart to think of my errand. From the pine land and meadows of Topham, the road emerged on the border of a salt marsh, along which I tramped for an hour or two; then, passing now through scrubby timber, now between barren farms, it led up on higher ground, which a few miles farther on fell away to tawny rocks and yellow sand and the sea, which came rolling in on the beach in long, white hissing waves. Islands in the offing seemed to give promise of other, far-distant lands; and the sun was so bright and the water so blue that I thought to myself how much I would give to go a-sailing with Uncle Seth in search of adventure. Late in the afternoon I saw ahead of me, beside the road, the small white house, miles away from any other, where Abraham Guptil lived. A dog came barking out at me, and a little boy came to call back the dog; then a woman appeared in the door and told me I was welcome. Abe, it seemed, was away working for a neighbor, but he would be back soon, for supper-time was near. If I would stay with them for the meal, she said, they should be glad and honored. So I sat down on the doorstone and made friends with the boy and the dog, and talked away about little things that interested the boy, until we saw Abraham Guptil coming home across the fields with the sun at his back. He shook hands warmly, but his face was anxious, and when after supper we went out doors and I told him as kindly as I could the errand on which my uncle had sent me, he shook his head. "I feared it," said he. "It's rumored round the country that Seth Upham's collecting money wherever he can. Without this, I've been in desperate straits, and now--" He spread his hands hopelessly and leaned against the fence. His eyes wandered over the acres on which he was raising crops by sheer strength and determination. It was a poor, stony farm, yet the man had claimed it from the wilderness and, what with fishing and odd jobs, had been making a success of life until one misfortune after another had fairly overwhelmed him. "It must go," he said at last. As best I could, I was taking leave of him for the long tramp home, when he suddenly roused himself and cried, "But stay! See! The storm is hard upon us. You must not go back until to-morrow." Heavy clouds were banking in the west, and already we could hear the rumble of thunder. It troubled me to accept the hospitality of the Guptils when I had come on such an errand; but the kindly souls would hear of no denial, so I joined Abe in the chores with such good-will, that we had milked, and fed the stock, and closed the barns for the night before the first drops fell. Meanwhile much had gone forward indoors, and when we returned to the house I was shown to a great bed made up with clean linen fragrant of lavender. Darkness had scarcely fallen, but I was so weary that I undressed and threw myself on the bed and went quietly to sleep while the storm came raging down the coast. As one so often does in a strange place, I woke uncommonly early. Dawn had no more than touched the eastern horizon, but I got out of bed and, hearing someone stirring, went to the window. A door closed very gently, then a man came round the corner of the house and struck off across the fields. It was Abraham Guptil. What could he be doing abroad at that hour? Going to the door of my room, which led into the kitchen, I softly opened it, then stopped in amazement. Someone was asleep on the kitchen floor. I looked closer and saw that it was a woman with a child; then I turned back and closed the door again. Rather than send me away, even though I brought a message that meant the loss of their home, those good people had given me the one bed in the house, and themselves, man, woman, and child, had slept on hard boards, with only a blanket under them. Since I could not leave my room without their knowing that I had discovered their secret, I sat down by the window and watched the dawn come across the sea upon a world that was clean and cool after the shower of the night. For an hour, as the light grew stronger, I watched the slow waves that came rolling in and poured upon the long rocks in cascades of silver; and still the time wore on, and still Abe remained away. Another hour had nearly gone when I saw him coming in the distance along the shore, and heard his wife stirring outside. Now someone knocked at my door. I replied with a prompt "Good-morning," and presently went into the kitchen, where the three greeted me warmly. All signs of their sleeping on the kitchen floor had vanished. "I don't know what I shall do, Joe," said Abraham Guptil when I was taking leave of him an hour later. "This place is all I have." I made up my mind there and then that neither Abraham Guptil nor his wife and child should suffer want. "I'll see to that," I replied. "There'll be something for you to do and some place for you to go." Then, with no idea how I should fulfil my promise, I shook his hand and left him. When at last I got back to the store, Arnold Lamont was there alone. My uncle had not returned, and Sim Muzzy had gone fishing. It was an uncommonly hot day, and since there were few customers, we sat and talked of one thing and another. When I saw that Arnold was looking closely at the foils, which stood in a corner, an idea came to me. Cornelius Gleazen had praised my swordsmanship to the skies, and, indeed, I was truly becoming a match for him. Twice I had actually taken a bout from him, with a great swishing and clattering of blades and stamping of feet, and now, although he continued to give me lessons, he no longer would meet me in an assault. As for the other young fellows, I had far and away outstripped them. "Would you like to try the foils once, Arnold?" I asked. "I'll give you a lesson if you say so." For a moment I thought there was a twinkle in the depths of his eyes; but when I looked again they were sober and innocent. "Why, yes," he said. Something in the way he tested the foils made me a bit uneasy, in spite of my confidence, but I shrugged it off. "You have learned well by watching," I said, as we came on guard. "I have tried it before," said he. "Then," said I, "I will lunge and you shall see if you can parry me." "Very well." After a few perfunctory passes, during which I advanced and retreated in a way that I flattered myself was exceptionally clever, and after a quick feint in low line, I disengaged, deceived a counter-parry by doubling, and confidently lunged. To my amazement my foil rested against his blade hardly out of line with his body--so slightly out of line that I honestly believed the attack had miscarried by my own clumsiness. Certainly I never had seen so nice a parry. That I escaped a riposte, I attributed to my deft recovery and the constant pressure of my blade on his; but even then I had an uncomfortable suspicion that behind the veil of his black mask Arnold was smiling, and I was really dazed by the failure of an attack that seemed to me so well planned and executed. Then, suddenly, easily, lightly, Arnold Lamont's blade wove its way through my guard. His arms, his legs, his body moved with a lithe precision such as I had never dreamed of; my own foil, circling desperately, failed to find his, and his button rested for a moment against my right breast so surely and so competently that, in the face of his skill, I simply dropped my guard and stood in frank wonder and admiration. Even then I was vaguely aware that I could not fully appreciate it. Though I had thought myself an accomplished swordsman, the man's dexterity, which had revealed me as a clumsy blunderer, was so amazingly superior to anything I had ever seen, that I simply could not realize to the full how remarkable it was. I whipped off my mask and cried, "You,--you _are_ a fencer." He smiled. "Are you surprised? A man does not tell all he knows." As I looked him in the face, I wondered at him. Uncle Seth had come to rely upon him implicitly for far more than you can get from any ordinary clerk. Yet we really knew nothing at all about him. "A man does not tell all he knows"--He had held his tongue without a slip for all those years. I saw him now in a new light. His face was keen, but more than keen. There was real wisdom in it. The quiet, confident dignity with which he always bore himself seemed suddenly to assume a new, deeper, more mysterious significance. Whatever the man might be, it was certain that he was no mere shopkeeper's clerk. That afternoon Uncle Seth and Gleazen, the one strangely elated, the other more pompous and grand than ever, returned in the carriage. Of their errand, for the time being they said nothing. Uncle Seth merely asked about Abe Guptil's note; and, when I answered him, impatiently grunted. Poor Abe, I thought, and wondered what had come over my uncle. In the evening, as we were finishing supper, Uncle Seth leaned back with a broad smile. "Joe, my lad," he said, "our fortunes are making. Great days are ahead. I can buy and sell the town of Topham now, but before we are through, Joe, I--or you with the money I shall leave you--can buy and sell the city of Boston--aye, or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There are great days ahead, Joe." "But what," I asked, with fear at my heart, "but what is this great venture?" Uncle Seth looked at me with a smile that expressed whatever power of affection was left in his hard old shell of a heart,--a meagre affection, yet, as far as it went, all centred upon me,--and revealed a great conceit of his own wisdom. "Joe," he said, leaning forward on his elbows till his face, on which the light threw every testy wrinkle into sharp relief, was midway between the two candles at the end of the table, "Joe, I've bought a ship and we're all going to Africa." For a moment his voice expressed confidence; for a moment his affection for me triumphed over his native sharpness. "You're all I've got, Joey," he cried, "You're all that's left to the old man, and I'm going to do well by you. Whatever I have is yours, Joey; it's all coming to you, every cent and every dollar. Here,--you must be wanting a bit of money to spend,--here!" He thrust his hand into his pocket and flung half a dozen gold pieces down on the dark, well-oiled mahogany where they rang and rolled and shone dully in the candle-light. "I swear, Joey, I think a lot of you." I suppose that not five people in all Topham had ever seen Uncle Seth in such a mood. I am sure that, if they had, the town could never have thought of him as only a cold, exacting man. But now a fear apparently overwhelmed him lest by so speaking out through his reticence he had committed some unforgivable offense--lest he had told too much. He seemed suddenly to snap back into his hard, cynical shell. "But of that, no more," he said sharply. "Not a word's to be said, you understand. Not a word--to _any one_." When I went back to the store that evening, I sat on the porch in the darkness and thought of Uncle Seth as I had seen him across the table, his face thrust forward between the candles, his elbows planted on the white linen, with the dim, restful walls of the room behind him, with the faces of my father and my mother looking down upon us from the gilt frames on the wall. I knew him too well to ask questions, even though, as I sat on the store porch, he was sitting just behind me inside the open window. What, I wondered, almost in despair, could we, of all people, do with a ship and a voyage to Africa? Had I not seen Cornelius Gleazen play upon my uncle's fear and vanity and credulity? I had no doubt whatever that the same Neil Gleazen, who had been run out of town thirty years before, was at the bottom of whatever mad voyage my uncle was going to send his ship upon. Then I thought of good old Abraham Guptil, so soon to be turned out of house and home, and of Arnold Lamont, who saw and knew and understood so much, yet said so little. And again I thought of Cornelius Gleazen; and when I was thinking of him, a strange thing came to pass. Down in the village a dog barked fiercely, then another nearer the store, then another; then I saw coming up the road a figure that I could not mistake. The man with that tall hat, that flowing coat, that nonchalant air, which even the faint light of the stars revealed, could be no other than Cornelius Gleazen himself. In the store behind me I heard the low drone of conversation from the men gathered round the stove, the click of a chessman set firmly on the board, the voice of Arnold Lamont--so clear, so precise, and yet so definitely and indescribably foreign--saying, "Check!" Through the small panes of glass I saw my uncle frowning over his ledgers. Now he noted some figure on the foolscap at his right, now he appeared to count on his fingers. I turned again to watch Cornelius Gleazen. Of course he could not know that anyone was sitting on the porch in the darkness. When he passed the store, he looked over at it with a turn of his head and a twist of his shoulders. His gesture gave me an impression of scorn and triumph so strong that I hardly restrained myself from retorting loudly and angrily. Then I bit my lip and watched him go by and disappear. "Who," I wondered, "who and _what_ really is Cornelius Gleazen?" [Illustration] II HANDS ACROSS THE SEA [Illustration] CHAPTER VI GOOD-BYE TO OLD HAUNTS AND FACES That some extraordinary thing was afoot next day, every soul who worked in our store, or who entered it on business, vaguely felt. To me, who had gained a hint of what was going forward,--baffling and tantalizing, yet a hint for all that,--and to Arnold Lamont, who, I was convinced as I saw him watch my uncle's nervous movements, although he had no such plain hint to go upon, had by his keen, silent observation unearthed even more than I, the sense of an impending great event was far from vague. I felt as sure as of my own name that before nightfall something would happen to uproot me from my native town, whose white houses and green trees and hedges, kindly people and familiar associations, lovely scenes and quiet, homely life I so deeply loved. The strange light in Cornelius Gleazen's eyes, as he watched us hard at work taking an inventory of stock, confirmed me in the presentiment. My uncle's harassed, nervous manner as he drove us on with our various duties, Sim Muzzy's garrulous bewilderment, and Arnold Lamont's keen, silent appraisal, added each its little to the sum of my convictions. The warmer the day grew, the harder we worked. Uncle Seth flew about like a madman, picking us up on this thing and that, and urging one to greater haste, another to greater care. Throwing off his coat, he pitched in with his own hands, and performed such prodigies of labor that it seemed as if our force were doubled by the addition of himself alone. And all the time Neil Gleazen sat and smiled and tapped his beaver. He was so cool, so impudent about it, that I longed to turn on him and vent my spleen; but to Uncle Seth it apparently seemed entirely suitable that Gleazen should idle while others worked. Of the true meaning of all this haste and turmoil I had no further inkling until in the early afternoon Gleazen called loudly,-- "He's here, prompt to the minute." Then Uncle Seth drew a long breath, mopped the sweat from his face and cried,-- "I'm ready for him, thank heaven! The boys can be finishing up what little's left." I looked, and saw a gentleman, just alighted from his chaise, tying a handsome black horse to the hitching-post before the door. Turning his back upon us all, Uncle Seth rushed to the door, his hands extended, and cried, "Welcome, sir! Since cock-crow this morning we have been hard at work upon the inventory, and it's this minute done--at least, all but adding a few columns. Sim, another chair by my desk. Quick! Mr. Gleazen, I wish to present you to Mr. Brown. Come in, sir, come in." The three shook hands, and all sat down together and talked for some time; then, at the stranger's remark,--"Now for figures. There's nothing like figures to tell a story, Mr. Upham. Eh, Mr. Gleazen? We can run over those columns you spoke of, here and now,"--they bestirred themselves. "You're right, sir," Uncle Seth cried: and then he sharply called, "Arnold, bring me those lists you've just finished. That's right; is that all? Well, then you take the other boys and return those boxes in the back room to their shelves. That'll occupy you all of an hour." No longer able to pick up an occasional sentence of their talk, we glumly retired out of earshot and were more than ever irritated when Gleazen, his cigar between his teeth, stamped up to the door between the front room and the back and firmly closed it. "Why should they wish so much to be alone?" Arnold asked. I ventured no reply; but Sim Muzzy, as if personally affronted, burst hotly forth:-- "You'd think Seth Upham would know enough to ask the advice of a man who's been working for him ever since Neil Gleazen ran away from home, now wouldn't you? Here I've toiled day in and out and done good work for him and learned the business, for all the many times he's said he never saw a thicker head, until there ain't a better hand at candling eggs, not this side of Boston, than I be. And does he ask my advice when he's got something up his sleeve? No, he don't! And yet I'll leave it to Arnold, here, if my nose ain't keener to scent sour milk than any nose in Topham--yes, sir." The idea of Sim Muzzy's advice on any matter of greater importance than the condition of an egg or the sweetness of milk, in determining which, to do him justice, he was entirely competent, struck me as so funny that I almost sniggered. Nor could I have restrained myself, even so, when I perceived Arnold looking at me solemnly and as if reproachfully, had not Uncle Seth just then opened the door and called, "Sim, there's a lady here wants some calico and spices. Come and wait on her." When, fifteen minutes later, Sim returned, closing the door smartly behind him, Arnold asked with a droll quirk, which I alone perceived, "Well, my friend, what did you gather during your stay in yonder?" "Gather? Gather?" Sim spluttered. "I gathered nothing. There was talk of dollars and cents and pounds and pence, and stocks and oils, and ships and horses, and though I listened till my head swam, all I could make out was when Neil Gleazen told me to shut the door behind my back. If they was to ask my advice, I'd tell 'em to talk sense, that's what I'd do." "Ah, Sim," said Arnold, "if only they were to ask thy advice, what advice thee would give them!" "Now you're talking like a Quaker," Sim replied hotly. "Why do Quakers talk that way, I'd like to know. Thee-ing and thou-ing till it is enough to fuddle a sober man's wits. I declare they are almost as bad as people in foreign parts who, I've heard tell, have such a queer way of talking that an honest man can't at all understand what they're saying until he's got used to it." "Such, indeed, is the way of the inconsiderate world, Sim," Arnold dryly replied. Then the three of us put our shoulders to a hogshead, and in the mighty effort of lifting it to the bulkhead sill ceased to talk. As we finally raised it and shoved it into the yard, Sim stepped farther out than Arnold and I, and looking toward the street, whispered, "He's going." I sprang over beside him and saw that the visitor, having already unhitched his horse, was shaking hands with Uncle Seth. Stepping into the chaise, he then drove off. For a space of time so long that the man must have come to the bend in the road, Uncle Seth and Cornelius Gleazen watched him as he went; then, to puzzle us still further, smiling broadly, they shook hands, and turning about, still entirely unaware that we were watching them, walked with oddly pleased expressions back into the store. My uncle's face expressed such confidence and friendliness as even I had seldom seen on it. "Now ain't that queer?" Sim began. "If Seth Upham was a little less set in his ways, I'd--" With a shrug Arnold Lamont broke in upon what seemed likely to be a long harangue, and made a comment that was much more to the point. "Now," said he, "we are going to hear what has happened." Surely enough, we thought. No sooner were we back in the store, all three of us, than the door opened and in came Uncle Seth. "Well," said he, brusquely, and yet with a certain pleased expression still lingering about his eyes, "I expected you to have done more. Hm! Well, work hard. We must have things in order come morning." Arnold smiled as my uncle promptly returned to the front room, but Sim and I were keenly disappointed. "How now, you who are so clever?" Sim cried when Uncle Seth again had closed the door. "How now, Arnold? We have heard nothing." "Why," said Arnold, imperturbably, "not exactly 'nothing.' We have learned that the man is coming back to-morrow." "Are you crazy?" Sim responded. "Seth Upham said nothing of the kind." Arnold only smiled again. "Wait and see," he said. So we worked until late at night, putting all once more to rights; and in the morning, true to Arnold's prophecy, the gentleman with the big black horse, accompanied now by a friend, made a second visit in the front room of the store. This time he talked but briefly with Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen, who had already waited an hour for his arrival. As if eager to see our business for himself, he then walked through the store, examining every little detail of the stock and fixtures, and asked a vast number of questions, which in themselves showed that he knew what he was about and that he was determined to get at the bottom of our affairs. There was talk of barrels of Alexandria superfine flour and hogsheads of Kentucky tobacco; of teas--Hyson, young Hyson, Hyson skin, Powchong and Souchong; of oil, summer and winter; of Isles of Shoals dun fish and Holland gin and preserved ginger, and one thing and another, until, with answering the questions they asked me, I was fairly dizzy. Having examined store and stock to his satisfaction, he then went with Uncle Seth, to my growing wonder, up to our own house; and from what Sim reported when he came back from a trip to spy upon them, they examined the house with the same care. In due course they returned to the store and sat down at the desk, and then the friend who accompanied our first visitor wrote for some time on an official-looking document; Uncle Seth and the strange gentleman signed it; Arnold Lamont, whom they summoned for the purpose, and Cornelius Gleazen witnessed it; and all four drove away together, the gentleman and his friend in their chaise and Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen in our own. "When Seth Upham returns," said Arnold, "we shall be told all." And it was so. Coming back alone in the late afternoon, Uncle Seth and Gleazen left the chaise at the door, and entering, announced that we should close the store early that day. Gleazen was radiant with good-nature, and there was the odor of liquor on his breath. Uncle Seth, on the contrary, appeared not to have tasted a drop. He was, if anything, a little sharper than ever at one moment, a little more jovial at the next, excited always, and full of some mysterious news that seemed both to delight and to frighten him. Obediently we fastened the shutters and drew the shades and made ready for the night. "Now, lads," said Uncle Seth, "come in by my desk and take chairs. I have news for you." Exchanging glances, we did so. Even Sim Muzzy was silent now. We all sat down together, Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen at the desk, Arnold Lamont and I a little at one side, and Sim Muzzy tilting back importantly at a point from which he could watch us all. At the time I thought what an interesting study in character the others made; but since then I have come to think that by my own attitude toward them I revealed more of the manner of youth I myself was, than by their bearing they revealed of the manner of men they were. There was Neil Gleazen, who held his cigar in his left hand and, with the finger on which his great diamond flashed, knocked each bit of ash on the floor so promptly after it formed, that the glowing coal of fire seemed to eat into the dark tobacco and leave no residue whatever. I was confident that he thought more of me both for my good fellowship and for my sound sense than he thought of any of the others present--or in town, for that matter! As for Uncle Seth, who was at once nervous and elated, I must confess, although it did not take me long to learn enough to be heartily ashamed of it, that I was just a little inclined in my own mind to patronize him; for although all my excellent prospects came entirely from his shrewd labors, I felt that he was essentially the big toad in the small puddle. With the others, I smiled at Sim Muzzy. But with regard to Arnold Lamont I was less confident. There had been a world of philosophy in his brief remark that a man does not tell all he knows; and my fencing bout with him was still too fresh in my mind to permit me actually to patronize him. He sat now with his thoughtful eyes intent on my uncle, and of the five of us he was by long odds the most composed. Although I have betrayed my vanity in a none too flattering light, it would be unjust, I truly think, not to add, at the risk of seeming to contradict myself, that I was instinctively kind-hearted, and that I did not lack for courage. "I have news for you, boys," Uncle Seth began, with a manner at once abrupt and a little pompous, but with a warm smile at me. "I hope you'll be glad to hear it, although it means a radical change in the life we've lived together for so many years. First of all, I want to say that each of you will be well looked after." Uncle Seth paused and glanced at Cornelius Gleazen, who nodded as if to encourage him to go on. "Yes, you will be well looked after, however it may appear at first flush. I'll see that no faithful man suffers to my profit, even though I have sold the store." "What's that? You've sold the store?" Sim wildly broke in. "If you've--you've gone and sold the store? What--what?" "Be still, Sim," Uncle Seth interposed. "Yes, I have sold the store. I know that Joe'll not be surprised to hear it; but even he has had only the vaguest hint of what's going forward. The gentleman who was here yesterday and to-day, has bought me out, store and house, lock, stock, and barrel." "The house!" I cried. "Yes," said Uncle Seth shortly. "But what'll I do? And Arnold? And Joe?" Sim demanded. "Oh, Seth Upham! Never did I think to see this day and hear them words." "I'm coming to that," said Uncle Seth. "There'll be room here for the three of you if you want to stay, and there'll be work in abundance in the store; but--ah, lads, here's the chance for you!--there'll be room for you with me, if you wish to come. I have bought a ship--" "A brig," Cornelius Gleazen put in. "A brig," said Uncle Seth, accepting the correction. "The Adventure, a very tidy little craft, and well named." Cornelius Gleazen gave his cigar a harder flick and in a reminiscent voice again forced his way into the conversation. "Ninety-seven foot on deck, twenty-four foot beam, sixteen foot deep, and a good two hundred and fifty ton, built of white oak and copper fastened. Baltimore bow and beautiful rake. Trim as a gull and fast as a duck. Tidy's the word, Seth, tidy." Gleazen's fingers were twitching and his eyes were strangely alight. "Yes, yes," said Uncle Seth, sharply. "But that's not all," Gleazen insisted. "Well, what of it?" Uncle Seth demanded. "Are you going to tell 'em everything?" At this Gleazen paused and looked hard at his cigar. His fingers, I could see, were twitching more than ever. "No," he slowly said, "not everything. Go ahead, Seth." "If you keep putting in, how can I go ahead." "Oh, stow it!" Gleazen suddenly roared. "This is no piffling storekeeper's game. Go on!" As you can imagine, we were all eyes and ears at this brush between the two; and when Gleazen lost his temper and burst out so hotly, in spite of my admiration for the man, I hoped, and confidently expected, to see Uncle Seth come back, hammer and tongs, and give him as good as he sent. Instead, he suddenly turned white and became strangely calm, and in a low, subdued voice went on to the rest of us:-- "We shall take on a cargo at Boston and sail for the West Indies, where we shall add a few men to the crew and thence sail for Africa. I'm sure the voyage will yield a good profit and--" "O Seth, O Seth!" cried Gleazen, abruptly. "That is no manner of way to talk to the boys. Let me tell 'em!" My uncle, at this, drew back in his chair and said with great dignity, "Sir, whose money is financing this venture?" "Money?" Gleazen roared with laughter. "What's money without brains? I'll tell 'em? You sit tight." We were all but dumbfounded. White of face and blue of lip, Seth Upham sat in his chair--_his no longer!_--and Gleazen told us. He threw his cigar-butt on the floor and stepped on it, and drummed on his beaver hat with nimble fingers. "It's like this, lads," he said in a voice that implied that he was confiding in us: "I've come home here to Topham with a fortune, to be sure, and I've come to end my days in the town that gave me birth. But--" his voice now fell almost to a whisper--"I've left a king's wealth on the coast of Guinea." He paused to see the effect of his words. I could hear my uncle breathing hard, but I held my eyes intently on Neil Gleazen's face. "A fit treasure for an emperor!" he whispered, in such a way that the words came almost hissing to our ears. Still we sat in silence and stared at him. "With three good men to guard it," he went on after another pause. "Three tried, true men--friends of mine, every one of them. Suppose I _have_ made my fortune and come home to end my days in comfort? I'd as soon have a little more, _hadn't you_? And I'd as soon give a hand to a hard-working, honest boyhood friend, _hadn't you_? Here's what I done: I said to Seth Upham, who has robbed many a church with me--" At that, I thought my uncle was going to cry out in protest or denial; but his words died in his throat. "I said to him, 'Seth, you and me is old friends. Now here's this little scheme. I've got plenty myself, so I'll gladly share with you. If you'll raise the money for this venture, you'll be helping three good men to get their little pile out of the hands of heathen savages, and half of the profits will be yours.' So he says he'll raise money for the venture, and he done so, and he's sold his store and his house, and now he can't back down. How about it, Seth?" My uncle gulped, but made no reply. Gleazen, who up to this point had been always deferential and considerate, seemed, out of a clear sky, suddenly to have assumed absolute control of our united fortunes. "Of course it won't do to turn off old friends," he continued. "So he made up his mind to give you lads your choice of coming with us at handsome pay--one third of his lay is to be divided amongst those of you that come--" "No, I never said that," Uncle Seth cried, as if startled into speech. "You never?" Gleazen returned in seeming amazement. "The papers is signed, Seth." "But I never said that!" Gleazen turned on my uncle, his eyes blazing. "This from you!" he cried with a crackling oath. "After all I've done! I swear _I'll_ back out now--then where'll you be? What's more, I'll tell what I know." My uncle in a dazed way looked around the place that up to now had been his own little kingdom and uttered some unintelligible murmur. "Ah," said Gleazen, "I thought you did." Then, as if Uncle Seth had not broken in upon him, as if he had not retorted at Uncle Seth, as if his low, even voice had not been raised in pitch since he began, he went on, "Or, lads, you can stay. What do you say?" Still we sat and stared at him. Sim Muzzy, as usual, was first to speak and last to think. "I'll go," he exclaimed eagerly, "I'll go, for one." "Good lad," said Gleazen, who, although they were nearly of an age, outrageously patronized him. With my familiar world torn down about my shoulders, and the patrimony that I long had regarded as mine about to be imperiled in this strange expedition, it seemed that I must choose between a berth in the new vessel and a clerkship with no prospects. It was not a difficult choice for a youth with a leaning toward adventure, nor was I altogether unprepared for it. Then, too, there was something in me that would not suffer me lightly to break all ties with my mother's only brother. After a moment for reflection, I said, "I'll go, for two." Meanwhile, Arnold Lamont had been studying us all and had seen, I am confident, more than any of us. He had taken time to notice to the full the sudden return of all Cornelius Gleazen's arrogance and the extraordinary meekness of Uncle Seth who, without serious affront, had just now taken words from Gleazen for which he would once have blazed out at him in fury. It did not take Arnold Lamont's subtlety to see that Gleazen, by some means or other, had got Seth Upham under his thumb and was taking keen pleasure in feeling him there. Gleazen's attitude toward my uncle had undergone a curious series of changes since the day when, for the first time, I had seen him enter our store: from arrogance he had descended to courtesy, even to deference; but from deference he had now returned again to arrogance. In his attitude on that first day there had been much of the cool insolence that he now manifested; but after a few days it had seemed to a certain extent to have vanished. Rather, the consideration with which he had of late treated my uncle had been so great as to make this new impudence the more amazing. Many things may have influenced Arnold in his decision; but among them, I think, were his gratitude to Uncle Seth, who had taken him in and given him a good living, and who, we both could see, was likely now to need the utmost that a friend could give him; his friendliness for Sim and me, with whom he had worked so long; and, which I did not at the time suspect, the desire of a keen, able, straight-forward man to meet and beat Cornelius Gleazen at his own game. "I will go with you," he quietly said. "Good lads!" Gleazen cried. "One thing more," said I. "Anything--anything--within reason, aye, or without." "Uncle Seth once spoke to me of selling out Abraham Guptil." My uncle now bestirred himself and, shaking off the discomfiture with which he had received Gleazen's earlier words, said with something of his usual sharpness, "The sheriff has had the papers these three days." "Then," I cried, "I beg you, as a favor, let him have a berth with us." "What's that? Some farmer?" Gleazen demanded. "He's bred to the sea," I returned. "That puts another face on the matter," said Gleazen. "Well," said my uncle. "But his lay comes out of the part that goes to you, then." "But," I responded, "I thought of his signing on at regular wages." Then I blushed at my own selfishness and hastened to add, "Never mind that. I for one will say that he shall share alike with us." And the others, knowing his plight, agreed as with a single voice. "Now, then, my lads," Cornelius Gleazen cried, "a word in confidence: to the village and to the world we'll say that we are going on a trading voyage. And so we are! All this rest of our talk," he continued slowly and impressively, "all this rest of our talk is a secret between you four and me and God Almighty." He brought his great fist down on the desk with a terrific bang. "If any one of you four men--I don't care a tinker's damn which one--lets this story leak, I'll kill him." At the time I did not think that he meant it; since then I have come to think that he did. CHAPTER VII A WILD NIGHT Unless you have lived in a little town where every man's business is his neighbor's, you cannot imagine the furor in the village of Topham when our fellow citizens learned that Seth Upham had actually sold his business and his house, and was to embark with Cornelius Gleazen on a voyage of speculation to the West Indies and Africa. The friction with Great Britain that had closed ports in the West Indies to American ships added zest to their surmises; and the unexpected news that that very worthy gentleman, Cornelius Gleazen, who had so recently returned to his old home, was so soon to depart again, sharpened their regrets. All were united in wishing us good fortune and a safe, speedy return; all were keenly interested in whatever hints of the true character of the voyage we let fall, which you can be sure were few and slender. It was such an extraordinary affair in the annals of the village, that the more enterprising began to prepare for a grand farewell, which should express their feelings in a suitable way and should do honor both to their respected fellow townsman, Seth Upham, and to their distinguished resident, Cornelius Gleazen. There was to be a parade, with a band from Boston at its head, a great dinner at the town hall, to which with uncommon generosity they invited even the doubting blacksmith, and a splendid farewell ceremony, with speeches by the minister and the doctor, and with presentations to all who were to leave town. It was to mark an epoch in the history of Topham. Nothing like it had ever taken place in all the country round. And as we were to go to Boston in the near future,--the man who had bought out Uncle Seth was to take over the house and store almost at once,--they set the date for the first Saturday in September. Because I, in a way, was to be one of the guests of the occasion, I heard little of the plans directly, for they were supposed to be secret, in order to surprise us by their splendor. But a less curious lad than I could not have helped noticing the long benches carried past the store and the platform that was building on the green. The formal farewell, as I have said, was to take place on the first Saturday in September, and the following Wednesday we five were to leave town. But meanwhile, in order to have everything ready for our departure, and because we needed another pair of hands to help in the work during the last days at the store, I went on Friday to get Abraham Guptil to join us. He had been so pleased at the chance to ship for a voyage, thus to recover a little of the goods and gear that misfortune had swept away from him almost to the last stick and penny, that I was more than glad I had given him the chance. Well satisfied, accordingly, with myself and the world, I turned my uncle's team toward the home of Abe's father-in-law, where Mrs. Guptil and the boy were to stay until Abe should return from the voyage; and when I passed the green, where the great platform was almost finished, I thought with pleasure of what an important part I was to play in the ceremonies next day. It was a long ride to the home of Abraham Guptil's father-in-law, and the way led through the pines and marshes beside the sea, and up hill and down valley over a winding road inland. The goldenrod beside the stone walls along the road was a bright yellow, and the blue frost flowers were beginning to blossom. In the air, which was as clear as on a winter night, was the pleasant, almost indescribable tang of autumn, in which are blended so mysteriously the mellow odors of stubble fields and fallen leaves, and fruit that is ready for the market; it suggested bright foliage and mellow sunsets, and blue smoke curling up from chimneys, and lighted windows in the early dusk. On the outward journey, but partly occupied by driving the well-broken team, I thought of how Neil Gleazen, before my very eyes, had at first frightened Uncle Seth, and had then cajoled him, and, finally, had completely won him over. I had never put it in so many words before, that Gleazen had got my uncle into such a state that he could do what he wished with him; but to me it was plain enough, and I suspected that Arnold Lamont saw it, too. Although I had watched Gleazen from the moment when he first began to accomplish the purpose toward which he had been plotting, I could not understand what power he held over Uncle Seth that had so changed my uncle's whole character. Then I fell to thinking of that remark, twice repeated, about robbing churches, and meditated on it while the horses quietly jogged along. Never, I thought, should the people of the town learn of my suspicions; they concerned a family matter, and I would keep them discreetly to myself. It was touching to see Abraham Guptil bid farewell to his wife and son. Their grief was so unaffected that it almost set me sniffling, and I feared that poor Abe would make a dreary addition to our little band; but when we had got out of sight of the house, he began to pick up, and after wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, he surprised me by becoming, all things considered, quite lively. "Now," said he, "you can tell me all about this voyage for which I've shipped. It seems queer for a man to sign the articles when he don't know where his lay is coming from, but, I declare, it was a godsend to me to have a voyage and wages in prospect, and you were a rare good friend of mine, Joe, to put my name in like you done." It puzzled me to know just how much to tell him, but I explained as well as I could that it was a trading voyage to the West Indies and Africa, and gave him a hint that there was a secret connected with it whereby, if all went well, we were to get large profits, and let him know that he was to share a certain proportion of this extra money with Arnold, Sim, and me, in addition to the wages that we all were to draw. It seemed to satisfy him, and after thinking it over, he said, "I've heard Seth Upham was getting all his money together for some reason or other. There must be more than enough to buy the Adventure. He's been cashing in notes and mortgages all over the county, and I'm told the bank is holding it for him in gold coin." "In gold!" I cried. "Gold coin," he repeated. "It's rumored round the county that Neil Gleazen's holding something over him that's frightened him into doing this and that, exactly according to order." "Where did you hear that?" I demanded. It was so precisely what I myself had been thinking that it seemed as if I must have talked too freely; yet I knew that I had held my tongue. "Oh, one place and another," he replied. Then, changing the subject, he remarked, "There'll be a grand time in town to-morrow, what with speeches and all. I'd like to have brought my wife to see it, but I was afraid it would make it harder for her when I leave." "She doesn't want you to go?" "Oh, she's glad for me to have the chance, but she's no hand to bear up at parting." Conversing thus, we drove on into the twilight and falling dusk, till we came so near the town that we could see ahead of us the tavern, all alight and cheerful for the evening. "I wonder," Abe cried eagerly, "who'll be sitting by the table with a hot supper in front of him, and Nellie Nuttles to fetch and carry." I was hungry after my day's drive and could not help sharing Abe's desire for a meal at the tavern, which was known as far as Boston and beyond for its good food; but I had no permission thus wantonly to spend Uncle Seth's money, so I snapped the whip and was glad to hear the louder rattling of wheels as the horses broke into a brisk trot, which made our own supper seem appreciably nearer. And who, indeed, would be sitting now behind those lighted windows? Abe's question came back to me as we neared the tavern. The broad roofs seemed to suggest the very essence of hospitality, and as if to indorse their promise of good fare, a roar of laughter came out into the night. As we passed, I looked through one of the windows that but a moment since had been rattling from the mirth within, and saw--I looked again and made sure that I was not mistaken!--saw Neil Gleazen, red-faced and wild-eyed, standing by the bar with a glass raised in his hand. The sight surprised me, for although Gleazen, like almost everyone else in old New England, took his wine regularly, in all the months since his return he had conducted himself so soberly that there had been not the slightest suggestion that he ever got himself the worse for liquor; and even more it amazed me to see beside him one Jed Matthews who was, probably, the most unscrupulous member of the lawless crew with whom Gleazen was said to have associated much in the old days, but of whom he had seen, everyone believed, almost nothing since he had come home. As we drove on past the blacksmith shop, I saw the smith smoking his pipe in the twilight. "It's a fine evening," I called. "It is," said he, coming into the road. And in a lower voice he added, "Did you see him when you passed the inn?" "Yes," I replied, knowing well enough whom he meant. "They've called me a fool," the smith responded, "but before this night's over we'll see who's a fool." He puffed away at his pipe and looked at me significantly. "We'll see who's a fool, I or them that has so much more money and wisdom than I." He went back and sat down, and Abe and I drove on, puzzled and uncomfortable. The smith was vindictive. Could he, I wondered, be right? A good supper was keeping hot for us in the brick oven, and we sat down to it with the good-will that it merited; but before we were more than half through, my uncle burst in upon us. He seemed harassed by anxiety, and went at once to the window, where he stood looking out into the darkness. "Have you heard anything said around town?" he presently demanded, more sharply, it seemed to me, than ever. "I've heard little since I got back," I returned. "Only the smith's ravings. He was in an ill temper as we passed. But I saw Neil Gleazen at the inn drinking with Jed Matthews." "The ungrateful reprobate!" Uncle Seth cried with an angry gesture. "He's drawn me into this thing hand and foot--hand and foot. I'm committed. It's too late to withdraw, and he knows it. And now, now for the first time, mind you, he's starting on one of his old sprees." "He's not a hard drinker," I said. "In all the time he's been in Topham he's not been the worse for liquor, and this evening, so far as I could see, he was just taking a glass--" "You don't know him as he used to be," my uncle cried. "A glass," put in Abe Guptil; "but with Jed Matthews!" "You've hit the nail on the head," Uncle Seth burst out--"with Jed Matthews. God save we're ruined by this night's work. If he should go out to Higgleby's barn with that gang of thieves, my good name will go too. I swear I'll sell the brig." Uncle Seth wildly paced the room and scowled until every testy wrinkle on his face was drawn into one huge knot that centred in his forehead. The only sounds, as Abe and I sat watching him in silence, were the thumping of his feet as he walked and the hoarse whisper of his breathing. Plainly, he was keyed up to a pitch higher than ever I had seen him. At that moment, from far beyond the village, shrilly but faintly, came a wild burst of drunken laughter. It was a single voice and one strange to me. There was something devilish in its piercing, unrestrained yell. "Merciful heavens!" Uncle Seth cried,--actually his hand was shaking like the palsy; a note of fear in his strained voice struck to my heart like a finger of ice,--"I'd know that sound if I heard it in the shrieking of hell; and I have not heard Neil Gleazen laugh like that in thirty years. Come, boys, maybe we can stop him before it's too late." Thrusting his fingers through his hair so that it stood out on all sides in disorder, he wildly dashed from the room. Springing up, Abe and I followed him outdoors and down the road. We ran with a will, but old though he was, a frenzy of fear and anxiety and shame led him on at a pace we could scarcely equal. Down the long road into town we ran, all three, breathing harder and harder as we went, past the store, the parsonage, and the church, and past the smithy, where someone called to us and hurried out to stop us. It was the smith, who loomed up big and black and ominous in the darkness. "They've gone," he said, "they've gone to Higgleby's barn." "Who?" my uncle demanded. "Who? Say who! For heaven's sake don't keep me here on tenterhooks!" "Neil Gleazen," said the smith, "and Jed Matthews and all the rest. Ah, you wouldn't listen to _me_." "And all the rest!" Uncle Seth echoed weakly. For a moment he reeled as if bewildered, even dazed. Whatever it was that had come over him, it seemed to have pierced to some unsuspected weakness in the fibre of the man, some spot so terribly sensitive that he was fairly crazed by the thrust. To Abe and me, both of us shocked and appalled, he turned with the madness of despair in his eyes. "Boys," he said hoarsely, "we've got to be ready to leave. Call Sim and Arnold! Hitch up the horses! Pack my bag and--and, Joe,"--he laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, a mere trembling breath of a whisper,--"here's the key to the house safe. Pack all that's in it in the bed of the wagon while the others are busy elsewhere. O Joe! what a wretched man I am! Why in heaven's name could he not walk straight for just one day more?" Why, indeed? I thought. But I remembered Higgleby's barn, and in my own heart I knew the reason. Secretly, all this time, Neil Gleazen had been hand in glove with his old disreputable cronies; now that he had got Uncle Seth so far committed to this new venture that he could not desert it, Gleazen was entirely willing to throw away his hard-won reputation for integrity, for the sake of one farewell fling with the "old guard." "Go, lads," Uncle Seth cried; "go quickly." He rested a shaking hand on my arm as Abe turned away. "My poor, poor boy!" he murmured. "I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! Heaven keep us all!" "But you?" I asked. "I'm going, if I can, to bring Neil Gleazen back before it is too late," Uncle Seth replied. And with that he set off into the darkness. As we turned back to the store to rouse up Arnold and Sim, I caught a glimpse of the stark white platform on the green, which was visible even in the darkness, and ironically I thought of the farewell ceremonies that were to take place next day. I shall never forget how the store looked that night, as Abe and I came hurrying up to it. The shadows on the porch were as black as ink, and the shuttered windows seemed to stare like the sightless eyes of a blind man who hears a familiar voice and turns as if to see whence it comes. From the windows of the room above, which Arnold and Sim occupied, there shone a few thin shafts of light along the edges of the shades, and the window frames divided the shades themselves into small yellow squares, on which a shadow came and went as one of the men moved about the room. In reply to our cries and knocks, Arnold raised the curtain and we saw first his head, then Sim's, black against the lighted room. "Who is there?" he called, "and what's wanted?" Almost before we had finished pouring out our story, Arnold was downstairs and fumbling at the bolts of the door; and as we entered the dark store, Sim, his shoes in his hand, followed him, even more than usually grotesque in the light from above. "My friends," said Arnold, calmly, "let us now, all four, prove to ourselves and to Seth Upham, the mettle that is in us." We lost no time in idle speculation. Dividing among us all that was to be done, we fell to with a will. Working like men possessed, we packed our own possessions and Uncle Seth's, both at the store and at the barn; and while the others were still busy in the carriage-shed, I hurried back to the house and opened the safe, and brought out bags of money and papers and heaven knows what, and as secretly as possible packed them in the bottom of the wagon. For three hours we toiled at one place and the other; then, hot, tired, excited, apprehensive of we knew not what, we rested by the wagon and waited. "I never heard of anything so rattle-headed in all my life," Sim Muzzy cried, when he had caught his breath. "Seth Upham gets crazier every day. Here all's ready for the grand farewell to-morrow and all of us to be there, and not one of us to leave town until next week, and yet he gets us up at all hours of the night as if we was to start come sunrise. I'm not going to run away at such an hour, I can tell you. Why it may be they'll call on me to make a speech! Who knows?" "We'll be lucky, I fear," said Arnold Lamont, "if we do not start before sunrise." "Before sunrise! Well, I'll have you know--" I simply could not endure Sim's interminable talk. "Watch the goods and the wagon, you three," I said. "I'm going to look for Uncle Seth and see what he wants us to do next." Before they could object, I had left them sitting by the wagon and the harnessed horses, ready for no one knew what, and had made off into the night. Having done all that I could to carry out my uncle's orders, I had no intention of returning until I had solved the mystery of Higgleby's barn. I hurried along and used every short cut that I knew; and though I now stumbled in the darkness, now fell headlong on the dewy grass, now barked my shins as I scrambled over a barway, I made reasonably good progress, all things considered, and came in less than half an hour to the pasture where Higgleby's lonely barn stood. The door of the barn, as I saw it from a distance, was open and made a rectangle of yellow light against the black woods beyond it. When I listened, I heard confused voices. As I was about to advance toward the barn, a certain note in the voices warned me that a quarrel was in progress. I hesitated and stopped where I was, wondering whether to go forward or not, and there I heard a strange sound and saw a strange sight. First there came a much louder outcry than any that had gone before; then the light in the barn suddenly went out; then I heard the sound of running back and forth; then the light appeared again, but flickering and unsteady; then a single harsh yell came all the way across the dark pasture; then the light grew and grew and grew. It threw its rays out over the pasture land and revealed men running about like ants around a newly destroyed hill. A tongue of flame crept out of one window and crawled up the side of the old building. A great wave of fire came billowing out of the door. Sparks began to fly and the roar and crackling grew louder and louder. As I breathlessly ran toward the barn, from which now I could see little streams of fire flowing in every direction through the dry grass, I suddenly became aware that there was someone ahead of me, and by stopping short I narrowly escaped colliding with two men whom, with a sudden shock, I recognized as my uncle and Neil Gleazen. "Uncle Seth!" I gasped out. Nothing then, I think, could have surprised Seth Upham. There was only relief in his voice when he cried, "Quick, Joe, quick, take his other arm." Obediently, if reluctantly, I turned my back on the conflagration behind us, and locking my right arm through Neil Gleazen's left, helped partly to drag him, partly to carry him toward the village and the tavern. "I showed the villains!" Gleazen proclaimed thickly. "The scoundrels! The despicable curs! I showed them how a gentlemen replies to such as them. I showed them, eh, Seth?" "Yes, yes, Neil! Hush! Be still! There are people coming. Merciful heavens! That fire will bring the whole town out upon us." "I showed them, the villains! the scoundrels! the despicable curs! They are not used to the ways of gentlemen, eh, Seth?" "Yes, yes, but do be still! _Do, do_ be still!" "I showed them how a gentleman acts--" The man was as drunk as a lord, but in his thick ravings there was a fixed idea that sent a thrill of apprehension running through me. "Uncle Seth," I gasped, "Uncle Seth, _what has he done_?" "Quick! quick! We must hurry!" "What has he done?" "Come, come, Joe, never mind that now!" For the moment I yielded, and we stumbled along, arm in arm, with Gleazen now all but a dead weight between us. "I showed them!" he cried again. "I showed them!" I simply could not ignore the strange muttering in his voice. "Tell me," I cried. "Uncle Seth, tell me what he has done." "Not yet! Not yet!" "Tell me!" "Not yet!" "Or I'll not go another step!" My uncle gasped and staggered. My importunity seemed to be one thing more than he could bear, poor man! and even in my temper, pity sobered me and cooled my anger. For a moment he touched my wrist. His hand was icy cold. But his face, when I looked at him, was set and hard, and my temper flashed anew. "Not another step! Tell me." Glancing apprehensively about, my uncle gasped in a hoarse undertone, "He has killed Jed Matthews." As people were appearing now on all sides and running to fight the fire, Uncle Seth and I tried our best to lead Gleazen into a by-path and so home by a back way; but with drunken obstinacy he refused to yield an inch. "No, no," he roared, "I'm going to walk home past all the people. I'm not afraid of them. If they say aught to me, I'll show 'em." So back we marched, supporting between us, hatless but with the diamonds still flashing on his finger and in his stock, that maudlin wretch, Cornelius Gleazen. I felt my own face redden as the curious turned to stare at us, and for Uncle Seth it was a sad and bitter experience; but we pushed on as fast as we could go, driven always by fear of what would follow when the people should learn the whole story of the brawl in the burning barn. Back into the village we came, now loitering for a moment in the deeper shadows to avoid observation, now pushing at top speed across a lighter open space, always dragging Cornelius Gleazen between us, and so up to the open door of the tavern. "Now," murmured Uncle Seth, "heaven send us help! Neil, Neil--Neil, I say!" "Well?" "We must get your chests and run. Your money, your papers--are they packed?" "Money? What money?" "Your fortune! You can never come back here. Sober up, Neil, sober up! You killed Jed Matthews." "Served him right. Despicable cur, villain, scoundrel! I'll show them." "Neil, Neil Gleazen!" cried my uncle, now all but frantic. "Well, I hear you." "Oh, oh, will he not listen to reason? Take his arm again, Joe." We lifted him up the steps and led him into the inn, and there in the door of the bar-room came face to face with the landlord, who was hot with anger. "Don't bring him in here, Mr. Upham," he cried; "I keep no house for sots and swine." "What!" gasped my uncle, "you'll not receive him?" "Not I!" "But what's come over you? _But you never would treat Mr. Gleazen like this!_" "But, but, but!" the landlord snarled. "This very night he threw my good claret in my own face and called it a brew for pigs. Let him seek his lodgings elsewhere." "Where are his chests, then?" my uncle demanded. "We'll take his chests and go." "Not till he's paid my bill." For a moment we stood at deadlock, Uncle Seth and I, with Gleazen between us, and the landlord in the bar-room door. Every sound from outside struck terror to us lest the village had discovered the worst; lest at any moment we should have the people about our ears. But the landlord, who, of course, knew nothing of what had been going forward all this time, and Gleazen, who seemed too drunk to care, were imperturbable, until Gleazen raised his head and with inflamed eyes stared at the man. "Who's a swine?" he demanded. "Who's a sot?" Lurching forward, he broke away from us and crashed against the landlord and knocked him into the bar-room, whither he himself followed. "You blackfaced bla'guard!" the landlord cried; and, raising a chair, he started to bring it down on Gleazen's head. I had thought that the man was too drunk to move quickly, but now, as if a new brawl were all that he needed to bring him again to his faculties, he stepped back like a flash and raised his hand. A sharp, hook-like instrument used to pull corks was kept stuck into the beam above his head, where, so often was it used, it had worn a hollow place nearly as big as a bowl. This he seized and, holding it like a foil, lunged at the landlord as the chair descended. The chair struck Gleazen on the head and knocked him down, but the cork-puller went into the landlord's shoulder, and when Gleazen, clutching it as he fell, pulled it out again, the hooked end tore a great hole in the muscles, from which blood spurted. Clapping his hand to the wound, the landlord went white and leaned back against the bar; but Gleazen, having received a blow that might have killed a horse, got up nimbly and actually appeared to be sobered by the shock. Certainly he thought clearly and spoke to a purpose. [Illustration: _Clapping his hand to the wound the landlord went white and leaned back against the bar._] "Now, by heaven!" he cried, "I _have_ got to leave town. Come, Seth, come, Joe." "But your chests! Your money!" my uncle repeated in a dazed way. The events of the night were quite too much for his wits. "Let him keep them for the bill," said Gleazen with a harsh laugh. "Come, I say!" "But--but--" "Come! Hear that?" "Watch the back door," someone was crying. "He's probably dead drunk, but he's a dangerous man and we can't take chances." It was the constable's voice. Gleazen was already running through the long hall, and we followed him at our best speed. As we left the room, the landlord fell and carried down with a crash a table on which a tray of glasses was standing. I would have stayed to help him, but I knew that other help was near, and to tell the truth I was beginning to fear the consequences of even so slight a part as mine had been in the ghastly happenings of the night. So I followed the others, and we noiselessly slipped away through the orchard, just as the men sent to guard the back door came hurrying round the house and took their stations. With the distant fire flaming against the sky, with the smell of smoke stinging in our nostrils, and with the clamor of the aroused town sounding on every side, we hurried, unobserved, through dark fields and orchards, to my uncle's house, where Arnold and Sim and Abe were impatiently waiting. They started up from beside the wagon as we drew near, and crowded round us with eager questions. But there was no time for mere talking. Already we could hear voices approaching, although as yet they were not dangerously near. "Come, boys," my uncle cried, "into the wagon, every one. Come, Neil, come--for heaven's sake--" "Be still, Seth, I am sober." "Sober!" Uncle Seth put a world of disgust into the word. "Yes, sober, curse you." "Very well, but do climb in--" "Climb in? I'll climb in when it suits my convenience." Jostling and scrambling, we were all in the wagon at last. Uncle Seth held reins and whip; Neil Gleazen, who was squeezed in between him and me on the seat, snored loudly; and the others, finding such seats as they could on boxes or the bed of the wagon, endured their discomfort in silence. The whip cracked, the horses started forward, the wheels crunched in gravel and came out on the hard road. Turning our backs on the village of Topham, we left behind us the benches on the green, the fine new platform, the banquet that was already half prepared, and all our anticipations of the great farewell. We went up the long hill, from the summit of which we could see the lights of the town shining in the dark valley, the great flare of fire at the burning barn, and the country stretching for miles in every direction, and thence we drove rapidly away. Thus, for the second time, twenty years after the first, Cornelius Gleazen left his native town as a fugitive from justice. But this time the fortunes of five men were bound up with his, and we whom he was leading on his mad quest knew now only too well what we could expect of our drunken leader. CHAPTER VIII THE BRIG ADVENTURE We drove for a long time in silence, with the jolting of the chaise and the terrible scenes behind us to occupy our minds; and I assure you it was a grim experience. In all the years that have intervened I have never been able to escape from the memory of the burning barn, with the dark figures running this way and that; the shrill cries of Cornelius Gleazen, staring drunk, and his talk of the man he had killed; the landlord at the tavern, with the blood spurting from his shoulder where the hook had pulled through the flesh. In a night the whole aspect of the world had changed. From a care-free, selfish, heedless youth, put to work despite his wish to linger over books, I had become of a sudden a companion of criminals, haunted by terrible memories, and through no fault of my own. After all, I thought, by whose fault was it? Cornelius Gleazen's, to be sure. But by whose fault was I forced to accompany Cornelius Gleazen in his flight? Certainly I was guiltless of any unlawful act--for that matter, we all were, except Gleazen. I had not a jot of sympathy for him, yet so completely had he interwoven our affairs with his that, although the man was a drunken beast, we dared not refuse to share his flight. By whose fault? I again asked myself. For a while I would not accept the answer that came to me. It seemed disloyal to a well-meaning man who at one time and another had given a thousand evidences of his real affection for me, which underlay the veneer of sharpness and irascibility that he presented to the world at large. It seemed to me that I could hear him saying again, "You're all I've got, Joey; you're all that's left to the old man and I'm going to do well by you--"; that I could hear again the clink of gold thrown down before me on the table; that I could feel his hand again on my shoulder, his voice again trembling with despair when he cried, "I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! But now--heaven keep us all!" Yet, as we jounced away over that rough road and on into the night, and as I thought of things that one and another had said, I felt more and more confident that at bottom Seth Upham was to blame for our predicament. To be sure, he had _meant_ well, even in this present undertaking; and though he was said to drive sharp bargains, he lived, I well knew, an honest life. Yet I was convinced that at some time in the past he must have been guilty of some sin or other that gave Neil Gleazen his hold over him. It fairly staggered me to think of the power for good or evil that lies in every act in a man's life. To be sure, had Seth Upham been a really strong man, he would have lived down his mistake long since, whatever it might have been, and would have defied Gleazen to do his worst. But the crime, if such there was, was his, none the less; and that it was the seed whence had sprung our great misfortunes, I was convinced. Looking back at Arnold Lamont, I caught his eye by the light of the rising moon and found great comfort in his steady glance. As if to reassure me further, he laid his hand on my arm and slightly pressed it. On and on and on we drove, past towns and villages, over bridges and under arching trees, beside arms of the sea and inland ponds, until, as dawn was breaking, we came down the road into Boston, with the waters of the Charles River and of the Back Bay on our left and Beacon Hill before us. Here and there in the town early risers were astir, and the smoke climbed straight up from their chimneys; but for the most part the people were still asleep, and the shops that we passed were still shuttered, except one that an apprentice at that very moment was opening for the day. Down to the wharves we drove, whence we could see craft of every description, both in dock and lying at anchor; and there we fell into a lively discussion. As the horses stopped, Gleazen woke, and that he was sick and miserable a single glance at his face revealed. "Well," said he, "there's the brig." "Yes," Uncle Seth retorted, "and if you had kept away from Higgleby's barn, we'd not have seen her for a week to come. We've got you out of that scrape with a whole skin, and I swear we've done well." "It was _sub rosa_," Gleazen responded thickly, "only _sub rosa_, mind you. Under the rose--you know, Seth." "Yes, I know. If I had had my wits about me, you would never have pulled the wool over my eyes." Gleazen laughed unpleasantly. It was plain that he was in an evil temper, and Uncle Seth, worn and harassed by the terrible experiences of the night, was in no mood to humor him. So we sat in the wagon on a wharf by the harbor, where the clean salt water licked at the piling and rose slowly with the incoming tide, while our two leaders bickered together. At last, in anger, Seth Upham cried: "I swear I'll not go. I'll hold back the brig. I'll keep my money. You shall hang." Gleazen laughed a low laugh that was more threatening by far than if as usual he had laughed with a great roar. "No, you don't, Seth," he quietly said. "You know the stakes that you've put up and you know that the winnings will be big. I've used you right, and you're not going to go back on me now--_not while I know what I know_! There's them that would open their eyes to hear it, Seth. I've bore the blame for thirty years, but the end's come if you try to go back on me now." I looked at my uncle and saw that his face was white. His fingers were twisting back and forth and he seemed not to know what to say; but at last he nodded and said, "All right, Neil," and got down from the wagon; and we all climbed out and stretched our stiff muscles. "Here's a boat handy," Gleazen cried. Uncle Seth cut the painter, and drawing her up to a convenient ladder, we began to carry down our various belongings, finishing with the big bags that hours before I had packed so carefully in the bottom of the wagon. Neil Gleazen then seated himself in the stern sheets, Abe Guptil took the oars, and I climbed into the bow. As Uncle Seth was coming on board, Sim Muzzy stopped him. "What about the horses?" he exclaimed. "You ain't going off to leave them, are you? Not with wagon and all. Why, they must be worth a deal of money; they--" "Come, come, you prattling fool," Gleazen called. Uncle Seth, after reflecting a moment, added sharply, "They'll maybe go to pay for the boat we're taking. I don't like to steal, but now I see no way out. Quick! I hear steps." So down came Sim, and out into the harbor we rowed; and when I turned to look, I saw close at hand for the first time the brig Adventure. She was a trim, well-proportioned craft, with a grace of masts and spars and a neatness of rigging and black and white paint that quite captivated me, although coming from what was virtually an inland town, I was by no means qualified to pass judgment on her merits; and I was not too weary to be glad to know that she, of all vessels in the harbor, was the one in which we were to sail. When a sleepy sailor on deck called, "Boat ahoy!" Gleazen gave him better than he sent with a loud, "Ahoy, Adventure!" Then we came up to her and swung with the tide under her chains, until a couple of other sailors came running to help us get our goods aboard; then up we scrambled, one at a time, and set the boat adrift. I now found myself on a neat clean deck, and was taken with the buckets and pins and coiled ropes lying in tidy fakes--but I should say, too, that I was so tired after my long night ride that I could scarcely keep my eyes open, so that I paid little attention to what was going on around me until I heard Uncle Seth saying, "And this, Captain North, is my nephew. If there are quarters for him aft, I'll be glad, of course." "Of course, sir, of course," the captain replied; and I knew when I first heard his voice that I was going to like him. "If he and the Frenchman--Lamont you say's his name?--can share a stateroom, I've one with two berths. Good! And you say we must sail at once? Hm! In half an hour wind and tide will be in our favor. We're light of ballast, but if we're careful, I've no doubt it will be safe. We must get some fresh water. But that we can hurry up. Hm! I hadn't expected sailing orders so soon; but in an hour's time, Mr. Upham, if it's necessary, I can weigh anchor." "Good!" cried Uncle Seth. "Mr. Severance," Captain North called, "take five men and the cutter for the rest of the fresh water, and be quick about it. Willie, take Mr. Woods and Mr. Lamont below and show them to the stateroom the lady passengers had when we came up from Rio. Now then, Guptil, you take your bag forward and stow it in the forecastle, and if you're hungry, tell the cook I said to give you a good cup of coffee and a plate of beans." As with Arnold Lamont I followed Willie MacDougald, the little cabin boy, I was too tired to care a straw about life on board a ship; and before I should come on deck again, I was to be too sick. But as I threw myself into one of the berths in our tiny cubby, I welcomed the prospect of at least a long sleep, and I told Arnold how sincerely glad I was that we were to be together. "Joe," he said, slowly and precisely, "I am very much afraid that we are going on a wild-goose chase. Seth Upham has been kind to me in his own way. He is one of the few friends I have in this world. Now, I think, he would gladly be rid of me. But I shall stay with him to the end, for I think the time is coming when he will need his friends." I am afraid I fell asleep before Arnold finished what he had to say; but weary though I was, I felt even then a great confidence in this quiet, restrained man. He was so wise, so unfathomable. And I felt already the growing determination, which, before we had seen the last of Neil Gleazen, was to absorb almost my very life, to work side by side with Arnold Lamont in order to save what we could of Uncle Seth's happiness and property from the hands of the man who, we both saw, had got my poor uncle completely in his power. CHAPTER IX AN OLD SEA SONG The noise of the crew as they catted the anchor and made sail must have waked me more than once, for to this very day I remember hearing distinctly the loud chorus of a chantey, the trampling of many feet, the creaking and rattling and calling--the strange jumble of sounds heard only when a vessel is getting under way. But strange and interesting though it all was, I must immediately have fallen asleep again each time, for the memories come back to me like strange snatches of a vivid dream, broken and disconnected, for all that they are so clear. When at last, having slept my sleep out, I woke with no inclination to close my eyes again, and sat up in my berth, the brig was pitching and rolling in a heavy sea, and a great wave of sickness engulfed me, such as I had never experienced. How long it lasted, I do not know, but at the time it seemed like months and years. Perhaps, had I been forced to go on deck and work aloft, and eat coarse sea-food, and meet my sickness like a man, I might have thrown it off in short order and have got my sea-legs as soon as another. But coming on board as the owner's nephew, with a stateroom at my command, I lay and suffered untold wretchedness, now thinking that I was getting better, now relapsing into agonies that seemed to me ten times worse than before. Uncle Seth himself, I believe, was almost as badly off, and Arnold Lamont and Willie MacDougald had a time of it tending us. Even Arnold suffered a touch of sickness at first; but recovering from it promptly, he took Uncle Seth and me in his charge and set Willie jumping to attend our wants, which he did with a comical alacrity that under other circumstances would mightily have amused me. I took what satisfaction I could in being able to come on deck two days before Uncle Seth would stir from his bunk; but even then I was good for nothing except to lie on a blanket that Arnold and Willie spread for me, or to lean weakly against the rail. But now, as I watched the blue seas through which the keen bow of the brig, a Baltimore craft of clipper lines, swiftly and smoothly cut its course, the great white sails, with every seam drawn to a taut, clean curve by the wind, the occasional glimpses of low land to the west, and the succession of great clouds that swept across the blue sky like rolling masses of molten silver, I fell to thinking in a dull, bewildered way of all that we had left behind. How long would it be, I wondered, before someone would take charge of the horses we had left on the wharf in Boston? I could imagine the advertisement that would appear in the paper, and the questions of the people, until news should come from Topham of all that had happened. Who then, I wondered, would get the team? Well, all that was done with, and we were embarked on our great adventure. What was to become of us, no human prophet could foretell. Cornelius Gleazen, who years before had got over his last attack of seasickness, welcomed me on deck, with rough good-nature; but something in his manner told me that, from this time on, in his eyes I was one of the crowd, no further from his favor, perhaps, than any of the others, but certainly no nearer it. To me, so weak from my long sickness that I could scarcely stand unaided, this came like a blow, even although I had completely lost my admiration for the man. I had been so sure of his friendly interest! So confident of my own superiority! As I thought of it, I slowly came to see that his kindness and flattery had been but a part of his deep and well-considered plan to work into the confidence of my uncle; that since he had secured his hold upon Seth Upham and all his worldly goods, I, vain, credulous youth, might, for all he cared, sink or swim. "Well," he would say carelessly, "how's the lad this morning?" And when I would reply from the depths of my misery, he would respond briefly, as he strolled away, "Better pull yourself together. There's work ahead for all hands." It was not in his words, you understand, that I found indication of his changed attitude,--he was always a man of careless speech,--but in his manner of saying them. The tilt of his head, and his trick of not looking at me when he spoke and when I replied, told me as plainly as direct speech could have done that, having gained whatever ends he had sought by flattery, he cared not a straw whether I came with him or followed my own inclinations to the opposite end of the earth. So we sailed, south, until we entered the Straits of Florida. Now we saw at a distance great scarlet birds flying in a row. Now schools of porpoises played around us. Now a big crane, speckled brown and white, alighted on our rigging. Now we passed green islands, now sandy shoals where the sea rose into great waves and crashed down in cauldrons of foam. And now we sighted land and learned that it was Cuba. All this time I had constantly been gaining strength, and though more than once we had passed through spells of rough weather, I had had no return of seasickness. It was natural, therefore, that I should take an increasing interest in all that went on around me. With some of the sailors I established myself on friendly terms, although others seemed to suspect me of attempting to patronize them; and thanks to the tutelage of Captain North, I made myself familiar with the duties of the crew and with the more common evolutions of a sailing ship. But in all that voyage only one thing came to my notice that gave any suggestion of what was before us, and that suggestion was so vague that at the time I did not suspect how significant it was. In the first dog watch one afternoon, the carpenter, who had a good voice and a good ear for music, got out his guitar and, after strumming a few chords, began to sing a song so odd that I set my mind on remembering it, and later wrote the words down: "Old King Mungo-Hungo-Ding A barracoon he made, And sold his blessed subjects to A captain in the trade. And when his subjects all were gone, Oh, what did Mungo do? He drove his wives and daughters in And traded for them, too." He sang it to a queer tune that caught my feet and set them twitching, and it was no surprise to see three or four sailors begin to shuffle about the deck in time to the music. As the carpenter took up the chorus, they, too, began to sing softly and to dance a kind of a hornpipe; but, I must confess, I was surprised to hear someone behind me join in the singing under his breath. The last time when I had heard that voice singing was in the village church in Topham, and unless my memory serves me wrong, it then had sung that good hymn:-- "No, I shall envy them no more, who grow profanely great; Though they increase their golden store, and shine in robes of state." It was Cornelius Gleazen, who, it appeared, knew both words and tune of the carpenter's song:-- "Tally on the braces! Heave and haul in time! Four and twenty niggers and all of them was prime! Old King Mungo's daughters, they bought our lasses rings. Heave now! Pull now! They never married kings." They sang on and on to the strumming of the guitar, while all the rest stood around and watched them; and when they had finished the song, which told how King Mungo, when he had sold his family as well as his subjects, made a raid upon his neighbors and was captured in his turn and, very justly, was himself sold as a slave, Cornelius Gleazen cried loudly, "_Encore! Encore!_" and clapped his hands, until the carpenter, with a droll look in his direction, again began to strum his guitar and sang the song all over. As I have said, at the time I attributed little significance to Cornelius Gleazen's enthusiasm for the song or to the look that the carpenter gave him. But when I saw Captain North staring from one to the other and realized that he had seen and heard only what I had, I wondered why he wore so queer an expression, and why, for some time to come, he was so grave and stiff in his dealings with both Gleazen and Uncle Seth. Nor did it further enlighten me to see that Arnold Lamont and Captain North exchanged significant glances. So at last we came to the mouth of Havana harbor, and you can be sure that when, after lying off the castle all night, we set our Jack at the main as signal for a pilot, and passed through the narrow strait between Moro Castle and the great battery of La Punta, and came to anchor in the vast and beautiful port where a thousand ships of war might have lain, I was all eyes for my first near view of a foreign city. On every side were small boats plying back and forth, some laden with freight of every description, from fresh fruit to nondescript, dingy bales, others carrying only one or two passengers or a single oarsman. There were scores of ships, some full of stir and activity getting up anchor and making sail, others seeming half asleep as they lay with only a drowsy anchor watch. On shore, besides the grand buildings and green avenues and long fortifications, I could catch here and there glimpses of curious two-wheeled vehicles, of men and women with bundles on their heads, of countless negroes lolling about on one errand or another, and, here and there, of men on horseback. I longed to hurry ashore, and when I saw Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen deep in conversation, I had great hopes that I should accomplish my desire. But something at that moment put an end for the time being to all such thoughts. Among the boats that were plying back and forth I saw one that attracted my attention by her peculiar manoeuvres. A negro was rowing her at the command of a big dark man, who leaned back in the stern and looked sharply about from one side to the other. Now he had gone beyond us, but instead of continuing, he came about and drew nearer. He wore his hair in a pig-tail, an old fashion that not many men continued to observe, and on several fingers he wore broad gold rings. His face was seamed and scarred. There were deep cuts on cheek and chin, which might have been either scars or natural wrinkles, and across his forehead and down one cheek were two white lines that must have been torn in the first place by some weapon or missile. His hands were big and broad and powerful, and there was a grimly determined air in the set of his head and the thin line of his mouth that made me think of him as a man I should not like to meet alone in the dark. From the top of his round head to the soles of his feet, his whole body gave an impression of great physical strength. His jaws and chin were square and massive; his bull neck sloped down to great broad shoulders, and his deep chest made his long, heavy arms seem to hang away from his body. As he lay there in the stern of the boat, with every muscle relaxed, yet with great swelling masses standing out under his skin all over him, I thought to myself that never in all my life had I seen so powerful a man. Now he leaned forward and murmured something to the negro, who with a stroke of his oars deftly brought the boat under the stern of the Adventure and held her there. Then the man, smiling slightly, amazed me by calling in a voice so soft and gentle and low that it seemed almost effeminate: "Neil Gleazen! Neil Gleazen!" The effect on Cornelius Gleazen was startling almost beyond words. Springing up and staring from one side to the other as if he could not believe his ears, he roared furiously: "By the Holy! Molly Matterson, where are you?" Then the huge bull of a man, speaking in that same low, gentle voice, said; "So you know me, Neil?" "Know you? I'd know your voice from Pongo River to Penzance," Gleazen replied, whirling about and leaning far over the taffrail. The big man laughed so lightly that his voice seemed almost to tinkle. "You're eager, Neil," he said. Then he glanced at me and spoke again in a language that I could not understand. At the time I had no idea what it was, but since then I have come to know well--too well--that it was Spanish. And all the time my uncle stood by with a curiously wistful expression. It was as if he felt himself barred from their council; as if he longed to be one of them, hand in glove, and yet felt that there was between him and them a gap that he could not quite bridge; as if with his whole heart he had given himself and everything that was his, as indeed he had, only to receive a cold welcome. Remembering how haughtily Uncle Seth himself had but a little while ago regarded the good people of Topham, how seldom he had expressed even the very deep affection in which he held me, his only sister's only son, I marveled at the simple, frank eagerness with which he now watched those two; and since anyone could see that of him they were thinking lightly, if at all, I felt for him a pang of sympathy. For a while the two talked together. Now they glanced at me, now at the others. I am confident that they told no secrets, for of course there was always the chance that some of us might speak the tongue, too. But that they talked more freely than they would have talked in English, I was very confident. At last Gleazen said, "Come aboard at all events." Instead of going around to the chains, the big man whom Gleazen had hailed as Molly Matterson stood up in the boat, crouched slightly, and leaping straight into the air, caught the taffrail with one hand. Gracefully, easily, he lifted himself by that one hand to the rail, placed his other hand upon it, where his gold rings gleamed dully, and lightly vaulted to the deck. I now saw better what a huge man he was, for he towered above us all, even Neil Gleazen, and he seemed almost as broad across the chest as any two of us. He gently shook hands with Uncle Seth and Captain North, to whom Gleazen introduced him, again glanced curiously at the rest of us, and then stepped apart with Gleazen and Uncle Seth. I could hear only a little of what they said, and the little that I did hear was concerned with unfamiliar names and mysterious things. I saw Arnold Lamont watching them, too, and remembering how they had talked in a strange language, I wished that Arnold might have appeared to know what they had been saying. Well as I thought I knew Arnold, it never occurred to me that he might have known and, for reasons of his own, have held his tongue. Of one thing I was convinced, however; the strange talk that was now going on was no such puzzle to Captain Gideon North as to me. The more he listened, the more his lips twitched and the more his frown deepened. It was queer, I thought, that he should appear to be so quick-tempered as to show impatience because he was not taken into their counsel. He had seemed so honest and fair-minded and generous that I had not suspected him of any such pettiness. Presently Gleazen turned about and said loudly, "Captain North, we are going below to have a glass of wine together. Will you come?" The captain hesitated, frowned, and then, as if he had suddenly made up his mind that he might as well have things over soon as late, stalked toward the companionway. Twenty minutes afterward, to the amazement of every man on deck, he came stamping up again, red with anger, followed by Willie MacDougald, who was staggering under the weight of his bag. Ordering a boat launched, he turned to Uncle Seth, who had followed him and stood behind him with a blank, dismayed look. "Mr. Upham," he said, "I am sorry to leave your vessel like this, but I will not, sir, I will not remain in command of any craft afloat, be she coasting brig or ship-of-the-line, where the owner's friends are suffered to treat me thus. Willie, drop my bag into the boat." And with that, red-faced and breathing hard, he left the Adventure and gave angry orders to the men in the boat, who rowed him ashore. But it was not the last that we were to see of Gideon North. [Illustration] III A LOW LAND IN THE EAST [Illustration] CHAPTER X MATTERSON "And who," I wondered, as I turned from watching Gideon North go out of sight between the buildings that lined the harbor side, "who will now command the Adventure?" You would have expected the captain's departure to make a great stir in a vessel; yet scarcely a person forward knew what was going on, and aft only Seth Upham and Willie MacDougald, besides myself, were seeing him off. Uncle Seth still stood in the companionway with that blank, dazed expression; but Willie MacDougald scratched his head and looked now at me and now at Uncle Seth, as if whatever had happened below had frightened him mightily. The picture of their bewilderment was so funny that I could have burst out laughing; and yet, so obviously was there much behind it which did not appear on the surface, that I was really more apprehensive than amused. When Uncle Seth suddenly turned and disappeared down the companionway, and when Willie MacDougald with an inquisitive glance at me darted over to the companion-hatch and stood there with his head cocked bird-like on one side to catch any sound that might issue from the cabin, I boldly followed my uncle. The brig was riding almost without motion at her anchorage, and all on deck was so quiet that we could hear across the silent harbor the rattle of blocks in a distant ship, the voice of a bos'n driving his men to greater effort, and from the distant city innumerable street cries. In the cabin, too, as I descended to it, everything was very still. When I came to the door, I saw my uncle standing at one side of the big, round table on which a chart lay. Opposite him sat Neil Gleazen, and on his right that huge man with the light voice, Molly Matterson. None of them so much as glanced at me when I appeared in the door; but I saw at once that, although they were saying nothing, they were thinking deeply and angrily. The intensity with which they glared, the two now staring hard at Seth Upham and now at each other, my uncle looking first at Matterson, then at Gleazen, and then at Matterson again, so completely absorbed my interest, that I think nothing short of a broadside fired by a man-of-war could have distracted my attention. I heard the steps creak as Willie MacDougald now came on tiptoe part way down the companion. I heard the heavy breathing of the men in the cabin. Then, far across the harbor, I heard the great voice of a chantey man singing while the crew heaved at the windlass. And still the three men glared in silence at one another. It was Matterson who broke the spell, when in his almost girlish voice he said; "He don't seem to like me as captain of his vessel, Neil." "You old whited sepulchre," Neil Gleazen cried, speaking not to Matterson, but to my uncle; "just because you've got money at stake is no reason to think you know a sailor-man when you see one. Why, Matterson, here, could give Gideon North a king's cruiser and outsail him in a Gloucester pinkie." My uncle swallowed hard and laughed a little wildly. "If you hadn't got yourself run out of town, Neil Gleazen, and had to leave your chests with all that's in them behind you, you might have had money to put in this vessel yourself. As it is, the brig's mine and I swear I'll have a voice in saying who's to be her master." "A voice you shall have," Gleazen retorted, while the bull-necked Matterson broadly grinned at the squabble; "a voice you shall have, but you're only one of five good men, Seth, only one, and a good long way from being the best of 'em, and your voice is just one vote in five. Now I, here, vote for Molly and, Molly, here, votes for himself, and there ain't no need of thinking who the others would vote for. We've outvoted you already." Uncle Seth turned from red to white and from white to red. "Let it be one vote to four, then. Though it's only one to four, my vote is better than all the rest. The brig's mine. I swear, if you try to override me so, I'll put her in the hands of the law. And if these cursed Spaniards will not do me justice,--" again he laughed a little wildly,--"there's an American frigate in port and we'll see what her officers will say." "Ah," said Gleazen, gently, "we'll see what we shall see. But you mark what I'm going to tell you, Seth Upham, mark it and mull it over: I'm a ruined man; there's a price on _my_ head, I know. But they'll never take me, because I've friends ashore,--eh, Molly? You can do _me_ no harm by going to the captain of any frigate you please. _But_--_But_--let me tell you this, Seth Upham: when you've called in help and got this brig away from your friends what have given you a chance to better yourself, news is going to come to the captain of that ship about all them churches you and me used to rob together when we was lads in Topham. Aye, Seth, and about one thing and another that will interest the captain. And supposing he don't clap you into irons and leave you there to cool your heels,--supposing he don't, mind you,--which he probably will, to get the reward that folks will be offering when I've told what I shall tell,--supposing you come back to Topham from which you run away with that desperate villain, Neil Gleazen,--supposing, which ain't likely, that's what happens, you'll find when you get there that news has come before you. You old fool, unless you and me holds together like the old friends which we used to be, you'll find yourself a broken man with the jail doors open and waiting for you. I know what I know, and you know what I know, but as long as I keep my mouth shut nobody else is going to know. _As long as I keep my mouth shut, mind you._ "Now I votes for Molly Matterson as captain; and let me tell you, Seth Upham, you'd better be reasonable and come along like you and me owned this brig together, which by rights we do, seeing that I've put in the brains as my share. It ain't fitting to talk of _your_ owning her outright." Uncle Seth, I could see, was baffled and bewildered and hurt. With an irresolute glance at me, which seemed to express his confusion plainer than words, he nervously twitched his fingers and at last in a low, hurried voice said: "That's all talk, and talk's cheap--unless it's money talking. Now if you hadn't made a fool of yourself and had to run away and leave your chests and money behind you, you'd have a right to talk." Gleazen suddenly threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Them chests!" he bellowed. "Oh, them chests!" "Well," Uncle Seth cried, wrinkling his face till his nose seemed to be the centre of a spider's web, "well, why not? What's so cursedly funny about them chests?" "Oh, ho ho!" Gleazen roared. "Them chests! Money! There warn't no money in them chests--not a red round copper." "But what--but why--" Uncle Seth's face, always quick to express every emotion, smoothed out until it was as blank with amazement as before it had been wrinkled with petulance. "You silly fool," Gleazen thundered,--no other word can express the vigor of contempt and derision that his voice conveyed,--"do you think that, if ever I had got a comfortable fortune safe to Topham, I'd take to the sea and leave it there? Bah! Them chests was crammed to the lid with toys and trinkets, which I've long since given to the children. Them chests served their purpose well, Seth,--" again he laughed, and we knew that he was laughing at my uncle and me, who had believed all his great tales of vast wealth,--"and they'll do me one more good turn when they show their empty sides to whomsoever pulls 'em open in hope of finding gold." Matterson, looking from one to another, laughed with a ladylike tinkle of his light voice, and Gleazen once more guffawed; but my uncle sat weakly down and turned toward me his dazed face. He and I suddenly, for the first time, realized to the full what we should of course have been stupid indeed not to have got inklings of before: that Neil Gleazen had come home to Topham, an all but penniless adventurer; that, instead of being a rich man who wished to help my uncle and the rest of us to better ourselves, he had been working on credulous Uncle Seth's cupidity to get from him the wherewithal to reëstablish his own shattered fortunes. Of the pair of us, I was the less amazed. Although I had by no means guessed all that Gleazen now revealed, I had nevertheless been more suspicious than my uncle of the true state of the chests that Gleazen had so willingly abandoned at the inn. "Come," said Matterson, lightly, "let's be friends, Upham. I'm no ogre. I can sail your vessel. You'll see the crew work as not many crews know how to work--and yet I'll not drive 'em hard, either. I make one flogging go a long way, Upham. Here's my hand on it. Nor do I want to be greedy. Say the word and I'll be mate, not skipper. Find your own skipper." My uncle looked from one to the other. He was still dazed and disconcerted. We lacked a mate because circumstances had forced us to sail at little more than a moment's notice, with only Mr. Severance as second officer. It was manifest that the two regarded my uncle with good-humored contempt, that he was not in the least necessary to their plans, yet that with something of the same clumsy tolerance with which a great, confident dog regards an annoying terrier, they were entirely willing to forgive his petulant outbursts, provided always that he did not too long persist in them. What could the poor man do? He accepted Matterson's proffered hand, failed to restrain a cry when the mighty fist squeezed his fingers until the bones crackled, and weakly settled back in his chair, while Gleazen again laughed. When he and Gleazen faced about with hostile glances, I turned away, carrying with me the knowledge that Matterson was to go to Africa with the Adventure in one capacity, if not in another, and left the three in the cabin. In the companionway I all but stumbled over Willie MacDougald, who was such a comical little fellow, with his great round eyes and freckled face and big ears, which stood out from his head like a pair of fans, that I was amused by what I assumed to be merely his lively curiosity. But late that same night I found occasion to suspect that it was more than mere curiosity, and of that I shall presently speak again. There were, it seemed to me, when I came up on the quarter-deck of the Adventure, a thousand strange sights to be seen, and in my eager desire to miss none of them I almost, _but never quite_, forgot what had been going on below. When at last Seth Upham emerged alone from the companion head, he came and stood beside me without a word, and, like me, fell to watching the flags of many nations that were flying in the harbor, the city on its flat, low plain, the softly green hills opposite us, and the great fortifications that from the entrance to the harbor and from the distant hilltops guarded town and port. After a while, he began to pace back and forth across the quarter-deck. His head was bent forward as he walked and there was an unhappy look in his eyes. I could see that various of the men were watching him; but he gave no sign of knowing it, and I truly think he was entirely unconscious of what went on around him. Back and forth he paced, and back and forth, buried always deep in thought; and though several times I became aware that he had fixed his eyes upon me, never was I able to look up quickly enough to meet them squarely, nor had he a word to say to me. Poor Uncle Seth! Had one who thought himself so shrewd really fallen such an easy victim to a man whose character he ought by rights to have known in every phase and trait? I left him still pacing the deck when I went below to supper. Because of my long seasickness I had had comparatively few meals in the cabin, and always before there had been the honest face of Gideon North to serve me as a sea anchor, so to speak; but now even Uncle Seth was absent, and as Arnold Lamont and I sat opposite Matterson and Gleazen, with Uncle Seth's place standing empty at one end of the table and the captain's place standing empty at the other, I could think only of Gideon North going angrily over the side, and of Uncle Seth pacing ceaselessly back and forth. Willie MacDougald slipped from place to place, laying and removing dishes. Now he was replenishing the glasses,--Gleazen's with port from a cut-glass decanter, Matterson's with gin from a queer old blown-glass bottle with a tiny mouth,--now he was scurrying forward, pursued by a volley of oaths, to get a new pepper for the grinder. Gleazen, always an able man at his food, said little and ate much; but Matterson showed us that he could both eat and talk, for he consumed vast quantities of bread and meat, and all the while he discoursed so interestingly on one thing and another that, in spite of myself, I came fairly to hang upon his words. As in his incongruously effeminate voice he talked of men in foreign ports, and strangely rigged ships, and all manner of hairbreadth escapes, and described desperate fights that had occurred, he said, not a hundred miles from where at that moment we sat, I could fairly see the things he spoke of and hear the guns boom. He thrilled me by tales of wild adventure on the African coast and both fascinated and horrified me by stories of "the trade," as he called it. "Ah," he would say, so lightly that it was hard to believe that the words actually came from that great bulk of a man, "I have seen them marching the niggers down to the sea, single file through the jungle, chained one to another. Men, women and children, all marching along down to the barracoons, there's a sight for you! Chained hand and foot they are, too, and horribly afraid until they're stuffed with rice and meat, and see that naught but good's intended. They're cheery, then, aye, cheery's the word." "Hm!" Gleazen grunted. "Aye, it's a grand sight to see 'em clap their hands and sing and gobble down the good stews and the rice. They're better off than ever they were before, and it don't take 'em long to learn that." Matterson cast a sidelong glance at me as he leaned back and sipped his gin, and Gleazen grunted again. Gleazen, too, I perceived, was singularly interested in seeing how I took their talk. What they were really driving at, I had no clear idea; but I soon saw that Arnold Lamont, more keenly than I, had detected the purpose of Matterson's stories. "That," said he, slowly and precisely, "is very interesting. Has Mr. Gleazen likewise engaged in the slave trade?" There was something in his voice that caused the two of them to exchange quick glances. Gleazen looked hard at his wine glass and made no answer; but Matterson, with a genial smile, replied: "Oh, I said nothing of engaging in the slave trade. I was just telling of sights I've seen in Africa, and I've no doubt at all that Mr. Gleazen has seen the same sights, and merrier ones." "It is a wonderful thing," Arnold went on, in a grave voice, "to travel and see the world and know strange peoples. I have often wished that I could do so. Now I think that my wish is to be gratified." As before, there was something strangely suggestive in his voice. I puzzled over it and made nothing of it, yet I could no more ignore it than could Matterson and Gleazen, who again exchanged glances. When Matterson muttered a word or two in Spanish and Gleazen replied in the same language, I looked hard at Arnold to see if he understood. His expression gave no indication that he did, but I could not forget the words he had used long ago in Topham before ever I had suspected Neil Gleazen of being a whit other than he seemed. "A man," Arnold had said, "does not tell all he knows." There was no doubt in my mind that Arnold was a _man_ in every sense of the word. Again Gleazen and Matterson spoke in Spanish; then Matterson with a warm smile turned to us and said, "Will you have a glass of wine, lads? You, Arnold? No? And you, Joe? No?" He raised his eyebrows and with a deprecatory gesture glanced once more at Gleazen. I thought of Uncle Seth still pacing the quarter-deck. I suddenly realized that I was afraid of the two men who sat opposite me--afraid to drink with them or even to continue to talk with them. My fear passed as a mood changes; but in its place came the determination that I would not drink with them or talk with them. They were no friends of mine. I pushed back my chair, and, leaving Arnold below, went on deck. CHAPTER XI NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD FRIEND My uncle was still pacing back and forth when I came out into the sunset; then, almost at once, the twilight had come and gone, and I saw him as a deeper shadow moving up and down the deck, with only the faint sound of his feet to convince me that my eyes saw truly. The very monotony of his slow, even steps told me that there was no companionship to be got from him, and at that moment more than anything else I desired companionship. What I then did was for me a new step. Leaving the quarter-deck, I went forward to the steerage and found Sim Muzzy smoking his pipe with the sailmaker. "So it's you," he querulously said, when he recognized me, "Now aren't you sorry you ever left Topham? If I had lost as much as you have by Seth Upham's going into his second childhood, I vow I'd jump overboard and be done with life. You're slow enough to look up your old friends, seems to me." "But," said I, impatiently, "I've been like to die of seasickness. I couldn't look you up then, and you never came near me." "Oh, that's all very well for you to say, but you know I couldn't come aft without a trouncing from that Neil Gleazen--I'm sure I'd like to see something awful happen to him to pay him for breaking up the store!--and you've had plenty of time since. If I didn't show more fondness for my friends than you do, I'd at least have the good grace to stay away from them. You've used me very shabbily indeed, Joe Woods, and I've got the spirit to resent it." The sailmaker, meanwhile, as if he were not listening with vast interest to all that Sim had to say against me, looked absently away and quietly smoked his pipe. But I imagined that I detected in his eyes a glint of amusement at what he assumed to be my discomfiture, and angered as much by that as by Sim's petulance, I turned my back on the two and went on forward to the forecastle, where I found Abraham Guptil, sprawled full length, in quiet conversation with two shipmates. From Abe I got pleasanter greetings. "Here's Joe Woods," he cried, "one of the best friends Abe Guptil ever had. You had a hard voyage, didn't you, Joe? I was sorry to hear you were so bad off, I'd hoped to see more of you." I threw myself down beside Abe and fell to talking with him and the others about affairs aft and forward, such as Captain North and his quarrel with Seth Upham, and the meeting of Gleazen and Matterson, and Sim Muzzy and his irritating garrulousness, and a score of things that had happened among the crew. It was all so very friendly and pleasant, that I was sorry to leave them and go back to my stateroom, and I did so only when I was like to have fallen asleep in spite of myself. But on the quarter-deck, when I passed, I saw Seth Upham still pacing back and forth. He must have known that it was I, for I came close to him and spoke his name, yet he completely ignored my presence. How long he kept it up, I do not know; looking over my shoulder, I saw last, as I went down the companionway, his stooped figure and bowed head moving like a shadow back and forth, and back and forth. Nor do I know just when my drowsy thoughts merged into dreams; but it seems to me, as I look back upon that night, that my uncle's bent figure silently pacing the deck haunted me until dawn. Only when some noise waked me at daybreak, and I crept up the companionway and found that he was no longer there, did I succeed in escaping from the spell. Returning to our stateroom to dress, I came upon Arnold Lamont lying wide awake. "Joe," said he, when I was pulling on my clothes, "I am surprised to hear that Seth Upham ever believed Neil Gleazen to be aught but penniless." I turned and looked at him. How could Arnold have learned of the quarrel between Uncle Seth and Gleazen and Matterson, which only I had witnessed? Or, if he had not learned of the quarrel and what transpired in the course of it, where had he heard the story of Gleazen's empty chests? Perceiving my amazement, he smiled. "I know many things that happen on board this vessel, Joe," he said. "How much," I demanded, "do you know about what happened yesterday?" "Everything," said he. "But how?" I cried. I was at my wit's end with curiosity. "Listen!" I heard a quick step. "Joe," he whispered, "you must never tell. Crawl under your blankets and cover your head so no one can see that you are there." More puzzled, even, than before, I complied. Whatever Arnold had up his sleeve, I was convinced that he was not merely making game of me; and, in truth, I had no sooner concealed myself in my tumbled berth, which was so deep that this was not hard to do, than a gentle tap sounded on the door. "Come in," Arnold said in a low voice. The door then opened and I heard hesitant steps. "Well?" Arnold said, when I had heard the latch of the door click shut again. "If you please, sir," said a piping little voice, which I knew could come from only Willie MacDougald, "if you please, sir, they were laughing hearty at Mr. Upham most of the morning." "Yes?" "Yes, sir, and they said it was a shame for him to ruin his complexion by a-walking all night." "What else?" "Yes, sir, and he was asleep all morning--at least, sir, he was in his berth, but I heard him groaning, sir." "Anything else?" "Yes, sir. They didn't seem to like the way you and Joe Woods acted about their stories of trading niggers, and they said--" "Ha!" That Arnold rose suddenly, I knew by the creaking of his bunk. "And they said, sir--" Willie's voice fell as if he were afraid to go on. "Yes?" "And they said--" "Yes, yes! Come, speak out." "And they said--" again Willie hesitated, then he continued with a rush, but in a mere whisper--"that they was going to get rid of you two." For a long time there was silence, then Arnold asked in the same low voice, "Have they laid their plans?" "They was talking of one thing and another, sir, but in such a way that I couldn't hear." Again a long silence followed, which Willie MacDougald broke by saying, "Please, sir, it was to-day you was to pay me." "Ah, yes." I heard a clinking sound as if money were changing hands; then Willie MacDougald said, "Thank you, sir," and turned the latch. As he left the stateroom I could not forbear from sticking my head out of the blankets to look after him. He was so small, so young, seemingly so innocent! Yet for all his innocence and high voice and respectful phrases, he had revealed a devilish spirit of hard bargaining by the tone and manner, if not the words, with which he demanded his pay; and I was confounded when, as I looked after him, he turned, met my eyes, and instead of being disconcerted, gave me a bold, impudent grimace. "He is a little devil," Arnold said with a smile. "Do you believe what he tells you?" "Yes, he does not dare lie to me." "But," said I, "what of his story that they intend to get rid of us?" Arnold smiled again. "I shall put it to good use." It was evident enough now where Arnold had learned of the quarrel; and as I noted anew his level, fearless gaze, his clear eyes, and his erect, commanding carriage, I again recalled his words,--who could forget them?--"A man does not tell all he knows." More and more I was coming to realize how little we of Topham had known the manner of man that this Frenchman truly was. It was with a paradoxical sense of security, a new confidence in my old friend, that I accompanied Arnold to breakfast in the great cabin, where two vacant places and three plates still laid showed that Gleazen and Matterson had long since come and gone, and that Seth Upham was still keeping aloof in his own quarters. But little Willie MacDougald, appearing as ever a picture of childish innocence, assiduously waited on us; and before we were through, Matterson came below, flung his great body into a chair and, calling for gin, settled himself for a friendly chat. "Yes, lads," he said in his oddly light voice, "I've decided to cast my lot with you. I'm going to ship as mate. Not that I feel I ought,--I really scarce can afford the time for a voyage now,--but Neil Gleazen and Seth Upham wouldn't hear to my not going." He broadly grinned at me, for he knew well that I had heard every word that passed between the three the day before. "Well, lads," he went on, "it's a great country we're going to, and there's great adventures ahead. Yes,--" he spoke now with a sort of humorous significance, as if he were playing boldly with an idea and enjoying it simply because he was confident that we could not detect what lay behind it,--"Yes, there's great adventures ahead. It's queer, but even here in Cuba a young man never knows what's going to overtake him next. I've seen young fellows, with their plans all laid, switched sudden to quite another set of plans that no one, no, sir, not no one ever thought they'd tumble into. It's mysterious. Yes, sir, mysterious it is." That there was a double meaning behind all this talk, I had no doubt whatever, and it irritated me that he should tease us as if we were little children; but I could make no particular sense of what he said, except so far as Willie MacDougald's tale served to indicate that it was a threat; and Arnold Lamont, apparently not a whit disturbed, continued his meal with great composure and, whatever he may have thought, gave no sign to enlighten me. We had so little to say to Matterson in reply, that he soon left us, and for another day we sat idle on deck or amused ourselves as best we could, The crew had numberless duties to perform, such as painting and caulking and working on the rigging. Arnold Lamont and Sim Muzzy got out the chessmen and played for hours, while Matterson watched them with an interest so intent that I suspected him of being himself a chess-player; and Gleazen and Uncle Seth intermittently played at cards. So the day passed, until in the early evening a boat hailed us, and a sailor came aboard and said that Captain Jones of the Merry Jack and Eleanor sent his compliments to Mr. Upham and Mr. Gleazen and would be glad to have all the gentlemen come visiting and share a bowl of punch, at making which his steward had an excellent hand. My uncle seized upon the invitation with alacrity, for it seemed that he had met Captain Jones in Havana two days since. He called to Gleazen and Matterson, saying with something of his old sharp, pompous manner that they certainly must come, too, and that he was going also to bring Arnold, Sim, and me, at which, I perceived, the two exchanged smiles. Sim came running aft, ready to complain at the slightest provocation, but too pleased with the prospect of an outing to burst forth on no grounds at all; Neil Gleazen and my uncle led the way toward the quarter-boat in which we were to go; and Arnold followed them. It did not escape me that both Gleazen and Matterson had held their tongues since the sailor delivered his master's invitation, and that, as they passed me, they exchanged nudges. I was all but tempted into staying on board the Adventure. As I meditated on Willie MacDougald's story, and Matterson's allusions,--how significant they were, I could not know,--the silence of the two alarmed me more than direct threats would have done. Why should Gleazen and Matterson look at each other and smile when all the rest--all, that is, except myself--were going down by the chains ahead of them? Would they not, unless they had known more than we about this Captain Jones and his ship, the Merry Jack and Eleanor, have asked questions, or perhaps even have declined to go? Whatever my thoughts, I had no chance to express them; so over the side I went, close after the rest, and down into the boat where the sailors waited at their oars. To none of us did it occur that it was in any way contrary to the usual etiquette to take Sim Muzzy with us. Except that force of circumstances had placed him in the steerage, his position aboard the Adventure was the same as Arnold's and mine, or even Gleazen's, for that matter. Poor Sim! For once he forgot to complain and came with us as gayly as the fly that walked into the spider's parlor. And yet I now hold the opinion,--I was a long, long time in coming to it,--that after all fate was very kind to Simeon Muzzy. He settled himself importantly in the boat and began to talk a blue streak, as the saying is, about one thing and another, until I would almost have tossed him overboard. Uncle Seth, too, frowned at him, and the strange sailors smiled, and Gleazen and Matterson spoke together in Spanish and laughed as if they shared a lively joke. But Arnold Lamont leaned back and half closed his eyes and appeared to hear nothing of what was going on. All the way to the Merry Jack and Eleanor, which lay about a quarter of a mile from the Adventure, Gleazen and Matterson continued at intervals to exchange remarks in Spanish; and although Uncle Seth and Arnold Lamont completely ignored them, Sim, who by now had got so used to foreign tongues that they no longer astonished and confused him, took it hard that he could make nothing of what they said and went into a lively tantrum about it, at which the strange sailors chuckled as they rowed. Passing under the counter of the vessel, we continued to the gangway; but just as we came about the stern, Arnold touched my hand and by a motion so slight as to pass almost unnoticed drew my attention to a man-of-war that lay perhaps a cable's length away. Under cover of the loud exchange of greetings and the bustle that occurred when the others were going aboard, he whispered, "We are safe for the time being. See! Yonder is a frigate. But either you or I must stay on deck, and if there is aught of an outcry below, he must call for help in such a way that there shall be no doubt of its coming." "What do you mean?" I whispered. "Hush! They are watching us." As we followed the others, Arnold stopped by the bulwark and half leaned, half fell, against it. "Pardon me, gentlemen," he said in that slow, precise voice, "For the moment I am ill. It is a mere attack of dizziness, but I dare not go below. I must stay in the open air. I beg you will pardon me. I intend no rudeness." His face did look pale in the half-light, and the others, whatever their suspicions may have been, said nothing to indicate that they doubted him. When Captain Jones of the Merry Jack and Eleanor came toward us a second time and again with oily courtesy asked us all to the cabin, Gleazen and Matterson made excuses for Arnold, and the rest of us went down into the gloomy space below and left him in the gangway whence he could watch the hills, which were now dark against the evening sky, and the black masts of the frigate, which stood by like sentries guarding our lives and fortunes. There was a fetid, sickening odor about the ship, such as I had never before experienced, and the cabin reeked of rum and tobacco. The skipper had the face of a human brute, and the mate's right hand was twisted all out of shape, as if some heavy weapon had once smashed the bones of it. The more I looked about the dark, low cabin, and the more I saw and heard of the skipper and his mate, the more I wished I were on deck with Arnold. But the punch was brewed in a colossal bowl and gave forth a fragrance of spices, and Sim Muzzy drank with the rest, and for a while the five of them were as jolly as the name of the ship would indicate. CHAPTER XII CAPTAIN NORTH AGAIN First there was talk of old times, for it seemed that Matterson and Gleazen and Captain Jones were friends of long standing. Then there was talk of strange wars and battles, particularly of one battle of Insamankow, of which neither Gleazen nor Matterson had had other news than that which Captain Jones now gave them, and in which it seemed that the British had met with great disaster, although it puzzled me to know wherein such a battle even remotely concerned any of us. After that there was talk of various other things--a murderous plague of smallpox that years before had swept the African coast, a war between the Fantis and Ashantis, a cruiser that they, with oaths and laughter, said had struck her flag in battle with a slaver, a year's journey with desert caravans that traded with the Arabs, and last of all, and apparently most important, curious ways of circumventing the laws of England and America and of bribing Cuban officers of low degree and high. All this, in a stuffy little place where the mingled smells of rum and spices and tobacco hung heavily on the air as they grew stale, filled me with disgust and almost with nausea. Vile oaths slipped out between each two sentences, if by rare chance they were not woven into the very warp of the sentences themselves; such stories of barbarous and unbelievable cruelty were told and retold as I cannot bear to call to mind, to say nothing of repeating; and always I was aware of that sickening odor, now strong, now weak, which I had detected before we went below. The first sign that the others gave of noticing it was when Gleazen threw back his head and cried, "Pfaw! What a stench! The smell is all I have against the trade." Matterson laughed, and Captain Jones with his grand manner said, "You have been too long away from it, Mr. Gleazen." "Too long? That's as may be. An old horse settles easy into harness again." Captain Jones smiled. With apparent irrelevance, but with a reminiscent air, he said; "Too long or no, it's a long time since first we met,--a long, long time, and yet I remember as yesterday what a night we had of it. It began when that blasted Frenchman slipped his cables and sought to beat us up the river. It was you, Gleazen, that saved us then. When your message came, with what haste we landed the boats and towed the old brig straight up stream! Row? We rowed like the devil, and though our palms peeled, we won the race. It was a good cargo you had waiting, too. Only seven died in the passage." In the passage! Already I had suspected, now I knew, that the ship with her fast lines and cruel officers was none other than a slaver; that the smell was the stench of a slave-ship; that in that very cabin men had bartered for human beings. If I could, I would have turned my back on them there and then; the repugnance that I had long felt grew into downright loathing. What would I not have given to be up and away with Arnold Lamont! But I was a mere stripling, alone, so far as help was concerned, in a den of villains crueler than wolves. Though I would eagerly have left them, I dared not; and almost at once something happened that in any case would have held me where I was. Gleazen leaned across the punch-bowl and said to Captain Jones; "Who is there in port will make a good captain for a smart brig with a neat bow, swift to sail and clever to work?" Captain Jones ran his fingers through his stiff, shaggy hair. "Now, let me see," he replied, "there's a man--" Cutting him sharply off, my uncle spoke up, "Gentlemen, I will choose the master of my own vessel." I knew by his voice that he, as well as I, was sickened by the situation in which we found ourselves. Poor Uncle Seth, I thought, how little did he suspect, when he united his fortune with the golden dreams of Neil Gleazen, that he was to travel such a road as this! "Ah!" said Gleazen. "And who will it be?" An unkind smile played around his mouth. "Gideon North, if he will come back to us," said my uncle. "Ah!" Matterson, Gleazen, and Captain Jones exclaimed as if with one breath. For a minute or so the three sat in silence, looking hard at the top of the table; then Matterson with a queer twist of his lips spoke in Spanish. When, after another silence, the captain of the Merry Jack and Eleanor answered at length in the same tongue, Matterson responded briefly, and all three men nodded. A quality so curiously and subtly dramatic pervaded the scene that I remember thinking, as I looked about, what a rare theme it would have made for a painter. I believe that a skillful artist, if he had studied the faces of us all as we sat there, could have put our characters on his canvas so faithfully that he would have been in danger of paying for his honesty with his life, had Matterson or the strange captain had a chance at him in the dark. The very place in which we sat smelled of villainies, and the rat-like captain of the ship was a fit master of such a den. Gleazen now turned to my uncle. "Very well," said he, with an amused smile, "Joe, here, and Arnold Lamont are in good odor with him. Suppose, then, that we let them go ashore and hunt him out and talk matters over. I've no doubt he'll come back. He went off in a tantrum, as a man will when he takes pepper up his nose. You must know where the fellow's staying. You were to send him the money due him. Captain Jones will lend them one of his boats for now, and I'll have our boat ready to take them all off together in, say, three hours' time." As I have said in an earlier chapter of this narrative, by inclination I was a dreamer; and yet I must have been more than a mere dreamer, and worse, not to have scented by those dark looks and cryptic words some trouble or other afoot. It was as if for a long time I had seen the three to be united definitely against us, but as if I now for the first time perceived what a desperately black and sinful alliance they made--it was as if the spectacle struck me into a daze. When Gleazen finished, the other two again nodded, and in the very manner of their nods there was something as cold and deliberate as a snake's eye. Had I been able to rely upon the impressions of the moment, I should have said that time stood as still as the sun upon Gibeon; that for many minutes we stared at one another in mutual suspicion; that the beating of my heart had all but ceased. But the impressions of the moment deceived me. When Gleazen stopped speaking, he hit with his elbow the ink-bottle that stood on the table. It tipped on its side, rolled deliberately across the table, and fell; but before it struck the floor, Matterson, leaning out with a swift, dexterous motion, caught it, tried the stopper, and murmured as if to himself, "There's luck for you! Not a drop is lost." In the time it had taken that bottle to roll across the table, and not a second more, I had suffered that untold suspense. Now the spell was shattered, and hearing someone speaking in an undertone behind me, I turned and caught Captain Jones in the act of giving instructions _in Spanish_ to his negro steward. I was surprised and angry. Though of late I had heard much Spanish, it seemed to me that to speak it under the circumstances was so rude as to verge on open affront. Then Uncle Seth, gulping down his astonishment that Gleazen should so readily accede to his wishes, spoke up for himself; and because I was so deeply interested in whatever he might have to say, I turned my back on the mungo, ceased to watch Captain Jones, and did not notice that the steward went immediately on deck. Nor did I attribute any significance to the sound of oars bumping against the pins, which I soon afterwards heard. Had not Arnold Lamont been waiting on deck with his eyes fixed apparently on the dark outline of the frigate, my stupidity must have cost us even more than it did. "Very well," said Uncle Seth. "I will do as you suggest." "Perhaps," said Gleazen, thoughtfully, "Sim Muzzy, here, would like to go." "Oh, yes," cried Sim, "I'm fair dying for a trip on dry land. Yes, indeed, I'd like to go. I'd like it mightily. You've always said, Mr. Gleazen, I was too thick to do harm. Oh, yes indeed!" Matterson smiled and Captain Jones covered his mouth with his hand, but Gleazen gravely nodded. "Well, Sim, go you shall," said he. "There ain't one of us here but is glad to see an honest man take his fling ashore, and Havana's a city for you. Such handsome women as ride about in their carriages! And such sights as you'll see in the streets! You'll be a wiser man e'er you come back to us, Sim. I swear, I'd like to go myself,--but not to-night! I ain't one to neglect business for pleasure." When he shot a glance at Matterson and Captain Jones, my eyes followed his, and I saw that once more they had fixed their gaze on the top of the table. Now I was actually unable, so baffling had been their change of front, to make up my mind whether they were to be suspected or to be trusted. "Well," said Gleazen, "we are all agreed. Lay down your orders, Seth. They'll carry them out to the last letter." So Uncle Seth told me where to find Gideon North, and Neil Gleazen wrote it on a paper,--_in Spanish_, mind you!--and they put their heads together, every one, to think up such arguments as would induce Captain North to return, all with an appearance of enthusiasm that amazed me and might easily have put my suspicions to shame but for those other things that had happened. "I'll be civil to him," Gleazen cried. "And you can tell him, too, that this is an _honest voyage_. We're to run no race with the king's cruisers, Joe." "Aye," Captain Jones put in, "an able vessel and an honest voyage." "With a mountain of treasure to be got," added Matterson. The three spoke so gravely and straightforwardly now, that I wondered at their insolence; and as Sim and I got up to go, not yet quite believing that in reality, and not in a dream, we were being dispatched into the heart of that strange city, they accompanied us on deck and told Arnold Lamont that he was to go with us on our errand, and saw us safely started in the long boat of the Merry Jack and Eleanor before returning to their punch. I could see that Arnold had no liking for the mission, but while we were in the boat he gave me no explanation of his uneasiness. Indeed, Sim Muzzy talked so much and so fast that, when he once got started, you could scarcely have thrust the point of a needle into his monologue. "She's a slaver," he murmured as we pulled away from the Merry Jack and Eleanor. "A cruel-hearted slaver! Thank heaven, we're never to have a hand in any such iniquity as that." We looked back at the ship, black and gloomy against the sky, with many men moving about on her deck. "You're a silly fool," one of the oarsmen cried, having overheard him, "a man without stomach, heart, or good red blood." "Stomach, is it?" Sim retorted. "I'll have you know I eat my three hearty meals a day and they set well too. I can eat as much victuals as the next man. Why--" And there was no stopping him till the boat bumped against a wharf and we three stepped out. The boat, I noticed, instead of putting back to the ship, waited by the wharf. I turned and looked at the restless harbor, on which each light was reflected as a long, tremulous finger of flame that reached almost to my feet, at the sky, in which the stars were now shining, and at the anchored ships, each with her own story, could one but have read it; then I yielded to Sim's importunate call and in the darkness turned after him and Arnold. What reason was there to suspect that Simeon Muzzy and I stood at a crossroads where our paths divided? Coming to the street, we stopped, and in the light from an open window put our heads together over the paper that Gleazen had written out and given to us with instructions to show it to the first person we met and turn where he pointed. "Why, it's all in foreigner's talk!" Sim exclaimed. "Let me see it," said Arnold. He looked at it a long time and smiled. "I wonder," he said, "do they think we are so very simple?" Now a man came toward us. Before he could pass, Arnold stepped suddenly forward and _addressed him in Spanish_. "Why," cried I, when the passerby had gone, "you, too--do you talk Spanish?" Arnold turned to me with a smile and said, for the second time, "A man does not tell all he knows." Thrusting the paper into his pocket, he continued, "According to the directions that Mr. Gleazen has written down for our guidance, my friends, we should turn to the right. But according to my personal knowledge, which that man confirmed, we shall find Gideon North by turning to the left." To the left, then, we turned; and only Arnold Lamont, who told me of it afterward, saw one of the boatmen, when we had definitely taken our course, leave the boat and run into the darkness in the direction that Neil Gleazen wished to send us. Carriages passed us, and men on horseback, and negroes loitering along the streets. There were bright lights in the windows; and we saw ladies and their escorts riding in queer two-wheeled vehicles that I later learned were called _volantes_. All was strange and bizarre and extraordinarily interesting. Never did three men from a little country village in New England find themselves in a more utterly foreign city. But although Sim and I had our eyes open for every new sight, I was nevertheless aware that Arnold was more alert than either of us, and twice he urged us to keep our eyes and wits about us. Seeing nothing to fear, I inclined to smile at him. I now assumed that I was the bolder and more sophisticated of the two of us. As we tramped along in the darkness, I got over the sense of unreality and felt as much at home in that alien city as if I had been back in the familiar streets and lanes of Boston. Three times Arnold stopped to inquire the way; and the last time the man of whom he asked directions pointed at a house not a hundred yards distant and said, with a bow, "It is there, señor." That he spoke in English, which he had heard Sim and me use, so surprised us that for the moment we were off our guard. I was vaguely aware of hearing many feet trampling along, and afterwards I realized that I had absently noticed the rumble of voices; but the city was all so strange that I thought nothing of either the feet or the voices, and gave all my attention to the stranger. He was turning away, bowing and protesting his pleasure in serving us, when Sim Muzzy said in a wondering tone, "Why, Arnold,--Joe,--how many people there are hereabouts! Look there!" Arnold, turning as the poor fellow spoke, seized my arm. "_Mon dieu!_" he gasped, startled into his native French. Then in English he cried, "Quick, Joe! Quick! _Vite!_ Ha! Strike out, Sim, strike!" Around us there were indeed many men. They were approaching us from ahead and behind. Suddenly, fiercely, three or four of them rushed at us. From his belt Arnold drew a knife and thrust at a man who had caught my collar. I lost no time in leaping free. Two of them, now, were upon Arnold, crying out in Spanish; but he eluded them by a quick turn. I first saw him spring out of their reach, then an arm, flung round my throat, cut my wind. As I throttled, I saw Arnold come charging back again, knife in hand. The blade slashed past my ear so closely that it cut the skin; something spurted over my neck and the back of my head, and the arm that held me fell. Arnold, his hand on my shoulder, dragged me free. Stooping, he picked up a stone and hurled it into the midst of our assailants, eliciting a screech of pain and anger. When I bent to follow his example, I saw a chance light flash on his knife-blade. But where, I thought, is Sim? Then, somewhere in the crowd, I heard him choking and gagging. My first impulse was to rush to his rescue, but instantly I saw the folly of such a course, so greatly were we outnumbered. For a moment Arnold and I held them off. Just behind us was a street corner. As we darted toward it, one man dashed out from the crowd, the rest followed, and a second time, with hoarse shouts, they charged down upon us. They came in a solid phalanx, but we rounded the corner and fled. At top speed we raced down the street and round a second corner. Distancing them for the moment, but with their yells ringing in our ears, we scrambled up over a wrought-iron gate that gave us hold for fingers and feet, through a garden rich with palms and statuary, over another gate and across still another street. There we scaled one gate more, and throwing ourselves down in some dense vines, lay quietly and got back our breath, while our eluded pursuers raced and called on the street outside. The last thing I had heard as we ran was poor Sim Muzzy screaming for help. "Who--wh-wh-o--wh-what--were th-they?" I gasped out. "I believe it to have been a press-gang," Arnold replied. He, too, was gasping for breath, but he better controlled his voice. After a time he added, "Poor Sim! I fear that he is now on his way into the service of the royal navy of Spain." "But," I returned, "they cannot hold an American citizen." "Lawfully," said he, "they cannot." "Then we'll soon have Sim out again." To this, he did not reply. He said merely, "You and I, Joe, must keep it a secret between us that I speak their language." We lay a long time in the garden, with the stars shining above us and yellow lights streaming out of the house, and I thought of how skillfully Arnold Lamont had concealed his interest in what Gleazen and Matterson had said in a language they thought none of us could understand. But when the racing and shouting had gone, and come, and gone again, and when we both were convinced that all danger was past, we rose and stretched ourselves and went up to the house and knocked. As the door swung open, a flood of light poured out into the garden; but we saw only an old negro, who stood like a black shadow in our way and assailed us with a broadside of angry Spanish. His gray head shook with fury, I suppose at finding us in the garden, and he spread his arms to keep us from entering the house. Behind him arose a hubbub, and an angry white man came rushing out. When to his fierce questions Arnold shot back prompt answers, his anger died, and tolerance took its place, and finally a wave of cordiality swept over his face. Stepping back he actually flung the door wide open and with stately bows ushered us into the high-studded hall. Then the negro went bustling down the passage and spoke in a low voice, and I was amazed beyond measure to see Gideon North himself step out of a lighted room. In our flight Arnold, shrewd, quick to think and to act, had led us to the garden in the rear of the very house of which we had come in search. "Well," said Captain North, when, after warm greetings and quick explanations, we were seated together behind closed doors, "of all that rascally crew in the cabin of the Adventure, you two are the only ones I should be glad to see again. How in the name of Beelzebub, prince of devils, did you light upon my lodging-house, and what has brought you here?" Now Gleazen had suggested various arguments by which to bring Captain North back to his command, and not the least of them was an apology of a kind from himself; but they had all lacked sincerity, and as I knew well enough that Gleazen really would be very sorry if we should succeed in our errand, I had wisely determined to have none of them. It is exceedingly doubtful, however, if I should have dared to speak quite as plainly as did Arnold Lamont. "Sir," he said, "we have come on a strange errand. We ask you to return to a ship where you have suffered indignities, to resume a command that you have resigned under just provocation, to help a man who, I fear, has forfeited every right to call upon you for help." "I'm no hand for riddles," said Gideon North. "Talk plain sea-talk." "Sir," said Arnold, "I ask you to come back as captain of the Adventure, to save Seth Upham from his--friends." Arnold smiled slightly. "Blast Upham and his friends!" "As you will. But that pair of leeches will get the blood from his heart, and Joe Woods, his heir, will lose every penny of his inheritance." "Upham should have thought of that before. Leave him alone. He lies in the bed he made." "He, poor man, does not think of it now. Indeed, I fear he's beyond saving." Gideon North got up and went to the barred windows that opened upon the street. "What is this wild-goose chase?" he suddenly demanded. "Exactly what the object is I do not know," Arnold replied. "They talk of a treasure, but they are fit to rule an empire of liars. They are not, I believe, equipped for the slave trade, though of that you are a better judge than I." Still Gideon North stood by the window. Without turning his head, he remarked, "I wonder why _they_ want me back." "They?" At that Arnold laughed. "_They_ do not want you. Not they! Seth Upham insisted against their every wish. We came to your door with a press-gang at our heels. _They_ planned that Joe and I should share Sim Muzzy's fate and never see you again--or them." Thereupon Captain North turned about. "I am interested," he said. "Aye, and tempted." He stood for a while musing on all he had heard; then he smiled in a way that gave me confidence. "We are three honest men with one purpose," he said; "but Gleazen and Matterson are a pair of double-dyed villains. I go into this affair knowing that it is at the risk of my life, but so help me! I'll take the plunge." After a pause he added, "You spend the night with me, lads, and we will go on board together in the morning. That alone will give 'em a pretty start, for I've no doubt they think already that they're well rid of the three of us, and by sun-up they'll be sure of it. What's more, we'll go armed, lads, knives in our belts and pistols in our boots." CHAPTER XIII ISSUES SHARPLY DRAWN We breakfasted next morning with Gideon North, and discussed in particular Gleazen and Matterson and in general affairs on board the Adventure. It seemed ages ago that I had first seen Gleazen on the porch of the old tavern in Topham. I told all I knew of how he had come to town and had won the confidence of so many people, of how the blacksmith alone had stood out against him, and of how that last wild night had justified the blacksmith in every word that he had uttered. Then Arnold Lamont took up the story and told of scores of things that I had not perceived: little incidents that his keen eyes had detected, such as secret greetings passed between Gleazen and men with whom he pretended to have nothing whatever to do; chance phrases that I, too, had overheard, but that only Arnold's native shrewdness had translated aright; until I blushed with shame to think how great had been my own vanity and conceit--I who thought I had known so much, but really had known so little! Then Captain North in blunt language told of things that had happened on board the Adventure, which made Uncle Seth out to be a poor, helpless dupe, and ended by saying vigorously, "Seth Upham is truly in a bad way, what with Gleazen and Matterson; and brave lads though you are, you're not their kind. Unless you two were smarter than human, they'd get you in the end, for they're cruel men, with no regard for human life, and the odds are all in their favor; but three of us in the cabin is quite another matter. We'll see what we can do to turn the cat in the pan. "And now,"--he pushed his dishes away and set his elbows on the table,--"now for facts to work upon. The pair of them are going to Africa with a purpose. Am I not right?" The question required no answer, but Arnold and I both nodded. "A cargo's all well and good, and they've no objection to turning an honest dollar, just because it's honest; but there's more than honest dollars in this kettle of fish." Again we nodded. "Now, then, my lads, let me tell you this: when they've got what they want in Africa, whatever it may be, when they've squeezed Seth Upham's last dollar out of his wallet, when they no longer need honest men on board to protect them from cruising men-o'-war, then, lads, they're going to throw you and me to the sharks. As yet, it is too soon to strike against them. The odds are in their favor still, and as far as we're concerned there's no hope in Seth Upham, for they've got him twirling on a spit. It is for us, lads, to go through with them to the very end, to walk up and shake hands with death and the devil if worst comes to worst, but to be ready always to strike when the iron's hot,--aye, to strike till the sparks fly white." So there we sealed our compact, Arnold Lamont and Gideon North and I, with no vows and with scant assertions, but with a completeness of understanding and accord that gave us, every one, unquestioning confidence in each of our associates. The fate of poor Sim Muzzy, which Arnold and I had so narrowly escaped, was still perilously close at hand; and in returning to the brig, which Gideon North had left in anger, we shared a common danger that bound our alliance more firmly than any pledge would have bound it. Our breakfast eaten, we sorted over some pistols that Captain North had ordered sent from a shop, and chose, each of us, a pair, for which our host insisted on standing scot; then he paid the bill for his lodgings, and, armed against whatever the future might bring, and firmly resolved that Gleazen and Matterson should not beat us in a matter of wits, we went into the street. The day was beautiful almost beyond belief, and the streets of Havana were full of wonderful sights; but with the memory of poor Sim's sad fate in mind, and with our hearts set on the long contest that we must wage, we saw little of what went on around us. Followed by two negroes, who between them carried Captain North's bag, we boldly marched three abreast down through the city to the harbor-side, where we hailed a boatman and hired him to take us out to the brig. Coming up to the gangway, Captain North loudly called, "Ahoy there!" There was a rush to the side of the brig, and a dozen faces looked down at us; but none of them were the faces that we most desired to see. "Ho!" Captain North exclaimed, "they're not here. You there, pass a line, and step lively. Two of you bear a hand to lift this bag on board." At that moment we heard steps, and a newcomer appeared at the rail. It was Cornelius Gleazen. As he stared at us without a word, he appeared to be the most surprised man that ever I had seen. "Good-morning, Mr. Gleazen," Captain North called. "I've got your messages and thank you kindly. I reciprocate all good wishes and I'm sure when anyone comes out with a handsome apology, I'm no man to bear a grudge. I resume command with no hard feelings. Good-morning, sir." By that time he was on deck and advancing aft. I had already seen Cornelius Gleazen in some extraordinary situations, and later I was to see him in certain situations beside which the others paled to milk and water, but never at any other time, from the moment when I first saw him on the porch at the tavern until the day when we parted not to meet again this side of Judgment, did I see Cornelius Gleazen affected in just the way that he was affected then. He backed away from Captain North, replied loudly as if in greeting, still backed away, and finally turned and went below, where evidently he recovered his powers of speech, for up came my uncle with Matterson at his heels. "Captain North," Uncle Seth cried, meeting him with right hand outstretched, "I declare I'm glad you're back again, and I'm sure that all will go well from this time on." There was real pathos in Uncle Seth's eagerness to secure the friendship of the stout captain. In his straight-forward, confiding manner there was no suggestion of his old sharpness and pompousness. To see him looking from one of us to another, so frankly pleased that we had returned, you could not have failed to know that he was sincere, and if any of us had had the least suspicion that Seth Upham had condoned the scheme to have us fall into the hands of the press-gang, he lost it there and then forever. "But where," he cried, glancing down the deck, "where is Sim Muzzy?" Matterson came a step nearer. I saw some of the sailors look curiously at one another. A stir ran along the deck. It was Gideon North who replied. "I am told," he said deliberately, letting his eyes wander from face to face, "that he has fallen into the clutches of a press-gang." "What!" "A press-gang. But of that, Lamont, here, can tell you better than I." And Arnold, in his precise, subtly foreign way, told all that had happened. Completely stunned, my poor uncle went to the rail and buried his face in his hands. As for Matterson, he shook hands with Captain North and nodded at the rest of us impartially. "I'm glad to see you back, sir," he said. "As you know, without doubt, I've shipped as chief mate." "You've what?" Captain North thundered, looking up at the big man before him. "Shipped as chief mate, sir." "Is this true?" the captain demanded, turning on Uncle Seth. "It is," my uncle replied like a man just waking. "Mr. Gleazen and I talked it over--" Captain North interrupted him without ceremony. "Well," said he to Matterson, "I've no doubt you'll make a competent officer." His abruptness left Matterson no excuse for replying; so, when the captain went below, the chief mate stepped over to the rail. There, frowning slightly now and then, he remained for a long time. It did not take Arnold Lamont's intuition to perceive that he, as well as Gleazen, was puzzled and disappointed by the way things had turned out. CHAPTER XIV LAND HO! With Captain North back on board again, we felt great confidence for the future; and while we remained in Havana there was no other attempt, so far as I know, to do us harm. But there was that in the wind which kept us always uneasy; and at no time after the night when Sim Muzzy left us, never to return to the brig Adventure, did we have a moment of complete security. Every one asked questions about poor Sim, and by the way the various ones received our answers they indicated much of their own attitude toward us. Abe Guptil was moved almost to tears, and most of the men forward shook their heads sympathetically, although in my presence, since I was not one of them, they said little. But Matterson would smile with a certain unkind satisfaction, and Neil Gleazen would laugh softly, and here and there some one or other of the men would make sly jests or cast sidelong glances at Arnold and me. Of all the men on board, Seth Upham was conspicuously the most disturbed; and as he gloomily paced the deck,--a practice he continued even after Captain North had returned,--I heard him more than once murmuring to himself, "Sim, Sim, O my poor Sim! Into what a plight I have led you!" Arnold and I suggested in the cabin that we send out a searching party to see what we could learn of Sim's fate, and Uncle Seth urged it madly upon the others; but Gleazen and Matterson would hear nothing of it, and even Gideon North told us frankly that he regarded such measures as hopeless. "The man's gone and I'm sorry," he said; "but I honestly believe it is useless for us to try to help him now." So, reluctantly, we dropped the matter, after reporting it both to the local authorities and to our own consul; for however deeply we distrusted Gleazen and Matterson, in Captain North we had implicit faith. To prepare for the voyage, we took on board in the next few days supplies of divers kinds, and though I had learned much by now of the ways of life at sea, many of the things puzzled me. One day it was a vast number of empty water-casks; another day, more than a hundred barrels of farina; yet another day, a boatload of beans and one of lumber. There were mysterious gatherings in the cabin from which Arnold and I were excluded,--we could not fail to notice that they took place when Captain North was ashore,--but to which gentry with dingy wristbands and shiny faces were bid; and presently we saw stowed away forward iron boilers and iron bars, a great box of iron spoons, a heap of rusty shackles, and still puzzling, although perhaps less so, a mighty store of gunpowder. All this occasioned a long argument between Arnold and Captain North and myself, which fully enlightened me concerning the purpose of the mysterious supplies. But reluctant though we were to take the goods on board, there was nothing that we could do to stop it so long as my uncle, under Gleazen's influence, insisted on it; for as owner of the brig, and in that particular port where contraband trade played so important a part, he could have had us even jailed, if necessary, to carry his point. Our only way to serve him best in the end was to stand by in silence and let the stores, such as they were, go into the hold. All the time my uncle came and went in a silence so deep that, if I had not now and then caught his eyes fixed upon me with a sadness that revealed, more than words, how unhappy he was, I could scarcely have believed that he was the same Seth Upham in whose house I had lived so long. From a person of importance in his own town and a leader among those of us who had set forth with him, he had fallen to a place so shameful that I felt for him the deepest concern, and for the precious villains that were thus dishonoring my mother's brother, the deepest anger. "There are no pirates on the seas nowadays," I remarked one morning to Neil Gleazen who stood beside me watching all that went forward--and all the time I watched his face. "Why then should we set out armed to fight a sloop-of-war? Or ship a pair of small-swords on the cabin bulkhead?" "Trade and barter, Joe," he replied. "The niggers fairly tumble over themselves to buy such tricks. There's money in it, Joe." Then he laughed as if mightily pleased with himself. "But," I persisted, scarcely veiling my impatience, "you've said more than once that trade is not the object of our voyage." "True, Joe." He lowered his voice. "But that's no reason to neglect a chance to turn our money over. Ah, Joe, you're a good lad, and we must have a bout with the foils some day soon. I'm sure we'll get along well together, you and I." He smiled and clapped me on the shoulder; but the old spell was broken, and when he had gone, I ruminated for a long time on one thing and another that had occurred in the past months. That evening, when Arnold and I stood with Gideon North abaft the wheel where there was no one to overhear us, Arnold and the honest captain would have confirmed my worst suspicions, had they needed to be confirmed. But by then I had observed as much as they, and we talked only in such vague terms as pleased our mood. "No! There's more to this voyage than has appeared on the surface even yet," Captain North said in an undertone. "I have heard them talking in Spanish," said Arnold Lamont, "of gold--and of other things--of two men on the coast--and of a ship wrecked at the hour they needed her most. They share a great secret. They have come scarred through more than one fight and have lost the vessel on which they counted to make their fortunes. They are taking us back now, perhaps to fight for them, perhaps to run for them, but always as their creatures. So much I, too, have learned. We must walk circumspectly, my friends. We must keep always together and guard always against treachery. _Mon dieu!_ what men they are!" It was the longest speech I had ever heard Arnold make. Next day, following the arrival of a boatload of as rascally looking mariners as ever attempted to ship on board a reputable vessel, there ensued a quarrel so sudden and violent and so directly concerned with our fortunes, that Arnold and I hung in breathless suspense on the issue. "Gentlemen," Gideon North cried, hammering the cabin table with his fist, "as captain of this brig, I and I alone will say who shall ship with me and who shall not. I'll not have my crew packed with vagabonds and buccaneers. I'll turn those fellows back on shore, be it bag in hand and clothes upon them, or be it as stark naked as they came into this world, and I'll have you leave my crew alone from this day forth." Matterson laughed lightly. "Ah, captain," he said, in bitter sarcasm, "you are so excitable. They are able men. I'll answer for them." "Mr. Matterson," the captain retorted, "it devolves upon you to answer for yourself, which bids fair to be no easy task." "But," roared Gleazen, cursing viciously, "the owner says they're to come. And, by heaven, you'll cram them down your throat." "Stuff and nonsense--" By this time I felt that I could hold my peace no longer. Certainly I was party to whatever agreement should be reached. "You lie!" I cried to Gleazen, "the owner said nothing of the kind!" "How about it, Seth, how about it?" Gleazen demanded, disdainfully ignoring me. "Speak out your orders, speak 'em out or--" the man's voice dropped until it rumbled in his throat "--or--you know what." Poor Seth Upham had thought himself so strong and able and shrewd! So he had been in little Topham. But neither the quick wit nor the native courage necessary to cope with desperate, resolute men was left to him now. "I--I--" he stammered. "Take one or two of them, Captain North, just one or two,--do that for me, I beg you,--and let the rest go." "What!" exclaimed Gideon North. "One or two?" Gleazen thundered, "one or two? Only one or two?" Instantly both men had turned upon my uncle. Both men, their eyes narrowed, their jaws out-thrust, faced him in hot anger. There was a moment of dreadful silence; then, to my utter amazement, my uncle actually got down on his knees in front of Neil Gleazen, down on his marrow bones on the bare boards, and wailed, "In the name of Heaven, Neil, don't tell! Don't tell!" [Illustration: "_In the name of Heaven, Neil, don't tell! Don't tell!_"] While we stared at him, Gideon North, Arnold, and I, literally doubting what our eyes told us was the plain truth, Matterson said lightly, as if he were speaking of a sick and fretful child, "Let him have it, Neil. I hate scenes. Keep only Pedro." Gideon North looked first at my uncle, then at Matterson, and then back at my uncle. As if to a certain extent moved by the scene that we had just witnessed, he said no more; so of five strange seamen, next day all save one went ashore again. That brief, fierce quarrel had revealed to us, as nothing else could have, into what a desperately abject plight my uncle had fallen. At the time it shocked me beyond measure. It was so pitifully, so inexpressibly disgraceful! In all the years that have passed since that day in Havana harbor I have not been able to forget it; to this moment I cannot think of it without feeling in my cheeks the hot blood of shame. The man whom Matterson chose to keep on board the Adventure appeared to be a good-natured soul, and he went by the name of Pedro. What other name he had, if any, I never knew; but no seafaring man who ever met him needed another name. Years afterwards, down on old Long Wharf in Boston, I elicited an exclamation of amazement by saying to a sailor who had slyly asked me for the price of a glass of beer, "Did you ever know a seafaring man named Pedro who had a pet monkey?" By his monkey I verily believe the man was known in half the ports of the world. He came aboard with the grinning, chattering beast, which seemed almost as big as himself, perched on his shoulder. He made it a bed in his own bunk, fed it from his own dipper, and always spoke affectionately of it as "my leetle frien'." The beast was uncannily wise. There was something veritably Satanic in the leers with which it would regard the men, and before we crossed the ocean, as I shall relate shortly, it became the terror of Willie MacDougald's life. So far as most of us could see, we were now ready to weigh anchor and be off; but by my uncle's orders we waited one day more, and on the morning of that day Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen went on shore together. When after a long absence they returned, they had words with Captain North; and though we had become used by now to quarrels between Gleazen and the captain, there was a different tone in this one, which puzzled Arnold and me. Presently the two and my uncle went below, where Matterson joined them; and except for Willie MacDougald, Arnold and I might never have known what took place. But Willie MacDougald, knocking at our stateroom door that night, thrust his small and apparently innocent face into the cabin, entered craftily and said, "If you please, sir, I've got news worth a pretty penny." "How much is it worth?" Arnold asked. "A shilling," Willie whispered. "That is a great deal of money." "Ah, but I've got news that's worth it." "I shall be the judge of that," Arnold responded. Willie squinted up his face and whispered, "They've got new papers." "How so?" Arnold demanded. He did not yet understand what Willie meant. "Why, new papers. Portuguese papers." "Ah," said Arnold. "Forged, I suppose? Shall we not sail under the American flag?" "Ay, ay, sir, but the schooner Shark and the sloop of war Ontario are to be sent across for cruising." "Ah!" "And Seth Upham's sold the brig." "Sold it!" Arnold exclaimed. For the moment both he and I thought that Willie was lying to us. "Ay, ay, sir. To be delivered in Africa. Half the money down, and half on delivery." "What do you mean by that?" "Why, sir," said the crafty youngster, who understood better than either of us the various subterfuges to which African traders resorted in order to elude searching cruisers, "all they have to do to change registry is to say she's delivered to the new owners, and fly a new flag and show the bill of sale." "Go on, go on. Must I drag the story from you word by word?" "Captain North, sir, said he'd be hanged first; and Mr. Gleazen said he'd be hanged anyway; and ain't that worth two bits?" Arnold flung a coin to the grasping little wretch, and he went out and closed the door behind him. It was dark just outside our stateroom, and neither Willie nor we had been able to see anything that might have been there. For half a minute after Willie left us, while he was feeling his way toward the cabin, all was still. Then he suddenly shrieked so wildly that we leaped from our berths. There was a sound of crashing and bumping. Even wilder shrieks filled the air, and we heard a curious chattering and mumbling. Something fell against the stateroom door and cracked a panel, the door flew open, and in toppled Willie with Pedro's monkey grasping him firmly by the throat from its perch on the little fellow's shoulders. "Help, help!" Willie shrieked. "Lord save me! It's the devil! Help! I repent! I repent!" And he tripped and fell with a crash. As he fell, the coin flew out of his hand, and the monkey, seeing the flash of silver, leaped after it, picked it up, fled like a lean brown shadow through the door, and was gone we knew not where. To this day I am not able to make up my mind whether the child's anger or his fear was the greater. Turning like a flash, he saw what it was that had attacked him; yet he made no move to pursue the beast, and from that time on he regarded it with exceedingly great caution and nimbly and prudently betook himself out of its way. Canny, scheming, selfish Willie MacDougald! At peep of dawn we got up our anchors and set sail and put out to sea, carrying with us heavy knowledge of perils and dangers that encompassed us, and sad memories of our old home in Topham, of our old friends in trouble, of high hopes that had fallen into ruin. It comforted me to see Abraham Guptil working with the crew. He stood in good repute with every man on board, from Matterson and Gleazen to little Willie MacDougald, who now was in the steerage watching with great, round eyes all that went on about him. Good Abe Guptil! He, at least, concealed no diabolical craft beneath an innocent exterior. I thought of Sim Muzzy. Poor Sim! Since he had disappeared that night in the clutches of the press-gang, nothing that we had been able to do had called forth a single word of his whereabouts. He had vanished utterly, and though neither Arnold nor I had ever felt any great affection for the garrulous fellow, we both were sincerely grieved to lose an old companion thus unhappily. Now, as our sails filled, we swept past the Merry Jack and Eleanor, and the sight came to me like a shock of ill omen. The black disgrace of her lawless trade, the brutal men who manned her, the sinister experience that had followed so closely our call upon her captain, all combined to make me feel that the shadow she had cast upon us was not easily to be evaded. It was good to turn back once more to solid, substantial Gideon North, firm, wise Arnold Lamont, and kindly, trustworthy Abe Guptil. On them and on me Uncle Seth's fortunes and my own depended, if not indeed our very lives. Mr. Matterson handled the brig from the forecastle and handled her ably. Not even Captain North, who watched him constantly with searching eyes, could find a thing of which to complain. His almost feminine voice took on a cutting quality that reached each man on board and conveyed by its hard, keen edge a very clear impression of what would happen if aught should go astray. But there was that about him which made it impossible to trust him; and Gleazen, seeming by his airs far more the owner than my poor, cowed uncle, stood by Gideon North and looked the triumph that he felt. So we passed between the castle and the battery and showed our heels to Cuba and set our course across the sea and lived always on guard, always suspicious, yet never confirming further our suspicions, until, weeks later, the lookout at the masthead cried, "Land ho!" The low, dark line that appeared far on the horizon, to mark the end of an uncommonly tranquil passage, so pleasantly in contrast to our voyage to Cuba, deepened and took form. There was excitement forward and aft. Gleazen and Matterson clapped hands on shoulders and roared their delight and cried that now,--they were vile-mouthed, profane men,--that now neither God nor devil should thwart them further. Through the ship the word went from lip to lip that yonder lay the coast of Guinea. It had become natural to us in the cabin to align ourselves on one side or the other. Gleazen and Matterson stood shoulder to shoulder, and Gideon North and Arnold Lamont and I gathered a little farther aft. We acted unconsciously, for all of us were intent on the land that we had raised; and my poor uncle, apparently assuming neither friend nor enemy, leaned against the cabin all alone. His face was averted and I could catch only a glimpse of his profile; but I was convinced that I saw his lip tremble. Yonder, in truth, lay the coast of Guinea, and there at last every one of us was to learn the secret of that mad expedition which had so long since set forth from the little New England town of Topham. [Illustration] IV THREE DESPERATE MEN [Illustration] CHAPTER XV THE ISLAND To the dark land on the sky-line, we swiftly drew nearer, and presently saw a low shore where a thread of gleaming white, which came and went, told us unmistakably that great seas were breaking. Of the exact point that we had reached on the coast we still were in doubt, for our charts were poor and Captain North suspected the quadrant of having developed some fault of a nature so technical that I neither understood it at the time nor now remember its name; so we hove to, while Gleazen and Matterson and Gideon North, and eventually Mr. Severance, of whom I saw less and thought more seldom than of any other man in the cabin, put their heads together and argued the matter. Mr. Severance was a good enough man in his place, I suppose, but he was too indolent and self-centred, and too sleepily fond of his pipe, to command attention. For all the headway that the four seemed to be making, they might have argued until the crack of doom, as far as I could see, when from the masthead came the cry, "Sail ho!" Matterson and Gleazen faced about, as quickly as weasels on a stone wall, and Gideon North was not much behind them. "Where away?" "Off the larboard bow!" "What do you make her out?" Captain North demanded. "As yet, sir, she's too far off to be seen clearly." I had known that we were sailing dangerous seas, but nothing else had so vividly brought our dangers home to me as did the scene of desperate activity that now ensued. Hoarse orders went booming up and down the decks. Men sprang to braces and halyards. For a moment the foresail, newly let fall, roared in the wind, then, clapping like thunder, it filled, as the men tailed on tack and sheet, and catching the wind, stiffened like iron. Wearing ship, we set every stitch of our canvas, and with a breeze that drove us like a greyhound through the long, swiftly running seas, went lasking up the coast of Africa, as, intently training glasses across the taffrail, we waited to see more of the strange vessel. Notwithstanding our feverish efforts to elude her, she had drawn slowly nearer, and we made out that she was a schooner and as fleet as a bird. For a time there was talk of the armed schooner Shark, which our own government was reported to have sent out to cruise for slavers. It was with grim interest that we watched her every manoeuvre. Our men forward would constantly turn their heads to study her more closely, and those of us aft kept our eyes fixed upon her. Swift as was the Adventure, it was plain from the first that the schooner was outsailing her in a way that seemed almost to savor of wizardry. "I swear I can see the hangman's knot in her halyard," Gleazen cried, and roundly braced his oath. "Never before did I feel such an itching on my neck." At that Gideon North sternly said, "If she's a government vessel, gentlemen, I can assure you that we will not run from her. We have committed no crime; we carry no contraband. It is not government vessels I fear." "There's reason in that, too!" Gleazen muttered. "Yes, I'd as soon swing, as go over the side with my throat slit." Then, caustically, he added, "No! Oh, no! We've no contraband, you say. So we haven't. But we have enough water-casks for three hundred men, and lumber for extra decks, and shackles and nigger food." Gideon North flamed red and started to respond angrily; but Matterson, with a sly smile, turned the argument off by saying lightly, "If she's the Shark she's sailing under false colors. See! She's broken out the flag of Spain." "Humph," Captain North grunted, "she's a trader at best--" "In either case, Captain North, she is outsailing us, for all our Baltimore bow and grand spread of canvas," Matterson interposed. "But never fear, Captain North, Gleazen and I have a way with us. We have no wish to meet with any ships of war, but from mere pirates and slavers we are not, I beg to assure you, in any great danger." "Humph! The devil looks well after his own." "The devil," Matterson retorted with an ironical smile, "is not so bad a master as some men would make him out to be." Leaning on the rail, we silently watched the swift, strange schooner. Above the horizon, so perfectly did the bright canvas with the sun upon it blend into the background of sky, we could see only the black shadows that appeared on the sails just abaft the masts and stays; but her hull made a clean, bright line against the vivid blue of the sea, and against that same blue the foot of her mainsail stood out as sharp and white as if cut from bone. She continued to gain on us surely all that afternoon, but our apprehensions, which grew keener as she drew nearer, were allayed when she stood out to sea and gave us as wide a berth as we desired. She was a rarely beautiful sight, when, in the early evening, still far out at sea, she passed us; and remembering the Merry Jack and Eleanor in Havana harbor, I could not bear to think that so graceful a craft might carry sordid sights and smells. After a time, as the light changed, her sails turned to a slate-gray touched with dull blue, and with a great blotch of purple shadow down the middle, where mainsail merged into staysail and foresail, and foresail into jib. So grim, now, did she appear in the gathering darkness, that I could have believed almost anything of her. And now she was gone! Lost to sight! Vanished into the distant, almost uncharted waters of the great gulf! Only the memory of her marvelous swiftness and of the changing light on her sails was left to us--that and the memory of one more angry encounter with Gleazen and Matterson. That night, while we lay in those long slow seas which roll in upon the African coast, the two spent hours by the taffrail in low-voiced conversation, and Gideon North sat below over his charts and papers, and Arnold and I strolled about the deck, arm in arm, talking of one project and another. But my uncle, Seth Upham, the man who owned the Adventure, paced the deck alone in the moonlight, now with his head bent as if under the weight of a heavy burden, now with his head erect and with an air of what seemed at some moments wild defiance. An odor of tobacco drifted back to us on the wind from where the carpenter and the sailmaker were smoking together, and we heard the voices of men in the forecastle. When, at daybreak, we resumed our course up the coast, we knew that we were near the end of our journey, for Gleazen and Matterson were constantly conferring together and with Gideon North; and a dozen times in two hours, one or the other of them charged the masthead man to keep a smart lookout. Now Gleazen would lean his elbows on the rail and search the horizon; now he would hand the glass to Matterson and stride the deck in a fury of impatience. Below, the log-book lay open on the cabin table at a blank page, on which there was a rough pencil-sketch of coast and a river and an island. On a chart, which lay half open across a chair, someone had drawn a circle with a pair of compasses, half on land and half on sea; and when Arnold silently drew my attention to it, I saw that in the circle someone had penciled the same sketch that I had seen on the blank page of the log-book. Coast, river, and island! We studied the sketch in silence and talked of it afterward. That evening, for the first time in many hours, we came on Captain North alone by the rail. "Someone has drawn an island on the chart," said Arnold, slowly. Gideon North growled assent. "Well?" said Arnold. "It would seem that the blithering idiots don't know its bearings within a hundred miles, and yet they expect me to bring it straight aboard. One says thus and so; t'other says so and thus. Gleazen talked loudest and I took his word first--like a fool, for he's no navigator. I'd not put such foolishness beyond Seth Upham, but the others ought to know better. Aye! And they do know better." "What island?" I demanded. He shot a keen glance at me. "Hm! Have they said naught to you?" "Not a word." Arnold was smiling. "Nor to you?" Gideon North demanded, seeing him smile. "Nor to me." "Then," said he, "you two know less than I, and I know little enough." "If you know more than we, pray tell us what you can?" "After all," said he, "I only know that we are looking for an island, and that when we find it the deviltry is yet to begin--" He smiled grimly. "We'll yet have a chance to see sparks fly from those weapons Gleazen hung in the cabin. I hear he's a clever man at the smallsword." When he said that, Captain North looked at Arnold and me as if to question us. "Clever?" I replied. "Yes, he's clever, though--" I then saw that Arnold was smiling. I remembered seeing him smile when Gleazen and I were fencing on the green. I remembered his saying that he had not been laughing at me. And now he was smiling again! I stammered with embarrassment and clumsily concluded, "But--but not so very--perhaps not very clever." In the waist I heard Gleazen call in a low voice, "Masthead! You there, wake up!" "Ay-ay, sir," came the man's reply. "Not so loud," said Gleazen. "Have you seen no lights--no land?" "No lights, sir, and no land but the coast yonder, which we've seen these two days." I could just make out that Gleazen was leaning on the bulwark and staring into the northeast. "Did you hear that?" Captain North asked in a whisper. We both had heard it. "I'm thinking," Captain North presently muttered, "that we're like to see more land than will be good for us. Mark the sky to westward." It was banked with clouds. The island, when we found it, which we did early next day, proved to be low and flat and marshy. Behind it, exactly according to the sketch in the log-book and on the chart, lay the mouth of a river. On the mainland in each direction, as far as we could see, and on the bar at the mouth of the river, and on the outer shore of the island, which seemed to be in the nature of a delta, although with deep water behind it where the flow of the river appeared to have kept a Y-shaped channel open, a great surf broke with muffled roar; and in the channel a ruffle of choppy waves indicated that stream and tide combined to make a formidable current. As we bore down on it, Gleazen and Matterson and Seth Upham drew apart and stood smiling as they talked together in undertones. But Captain North and Mr. Severance and some of the older sailors were studying sky and wind and currents, and their frowns indicated that much was amiss. To me, watching Gleazen and Matterson, it seemed strange that men who but a little while ago had been so fiercely eager should all at once become as subdued as deacons before the communion table; and it was only when I edged around until I could see Gleazen's face that I suspected the wild glee that the man was restraining. The light in his eyes and the change in his expression so fascinated me that for the moment I almost forgot Arnold Lamont and Gideon North and the alliance that bound us together, almost forgot my poor uncle and his wild hopes, almost forgot the very island whose low and sedgy shores we were approaching. "Gentlemen," cried Captain North,--his voice startled me as much as those whom he addressed,--"would you wreck this vessel by keeping me here on a lee shore with heaven only knows what weather brewing? Look for yourselves at those clouds in the southwest. If this harbor, of which you were talking yesterday, is within fifty miles of us, we must run for it. If not, we must stand off shore and prepare to ride out the storm." "The harbor, Captain North," Matterson returned, his light voice hard with antagonism, "is much less than fifty miles from here. You will lay by for one hour while we go ashore on that island yonder; then I will pilot you to harbor." "_Mister Matterson!_" said Captain North calmly, turning on the giant of a man beside him, "are you mate or master?" "Captain North," Matterson very quietly replied, "I am mate of this vessel, and as mate I do not dictate. Have I not worked faithfully and well on this voyage? Have I not carried out every order of yours?" It was true, for to the surprise of Gideon North and Arnold and myself, he had made a first-class mate. "But I also am a friend of the owner and as friend of the owner, I spoke just now, forgetting my place as mate, I ask you to pardon me." In his words and his manner there was something so oily and insincere that from the bottom of my heart I distrusted him, and so, obviously enough, did Gideon North. But the man's sudden change of front took the weapons, so to speak, out of the captain's hands; and before he could reply Matterson said, "Mr. Upham, what are your wishes in the matter?" I looked first at my uncle, then I looked back at Matterson, and as I looked at Matterson, I caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Neil Gleazen, who was staring at Uncle Seth with a scowl on his brow and with his lips moving. Turning again to my uncle, I once more saw on his face, now so weak, the pathetically timid expression that I had come to know so well. "If there's no immediate danger--" he began. "There's none at all!" Matterson and Gleazen cried with one voice. "Then let us go ashore, say for merely half an hour." Captain North, with a shrug as of resignation, put the trumpet to his lips and gave orders that brought the brig into the wind with sails ashiver. "Come, lads," Gleazen cried to Arnold and me, "the more the merrier." So into the boat we climbed, and I for one was pleased to find that Abe Guptil had an oar. It was about half a mile from the brig to the island, and when we reached it and hauled out the boat, I pushed ahead of the others. Climbing from the edge of the water up the little incline at the head of the beach, I saw first of all, on the farther shore a quarter of a mile away, the ribs and broken planking of a wrecked ship. Then, before I had taken another step, I saw some little creature running through the grass and looked after it eagerly, to discover what strange kind of animal would inhabit so barren and remote an isle. At first I saw only that the animal was long and gray. Then it came out into plain sight, and I saw that it was a rat--an ordinary rat such as I had seen by the hundreds in old barns and in old ships. And how, I wondered, had an ordinary rat, such as might slink along the wharves at Boston, come to live on that lonely island? Before an answer occurred to me, I saw another running away in a different direction, and another and another. I stopped short and looked about me. Here, there, everywhere were rats. The island was peopled with them. With big gray rats! Then I looked at the bones of that wrecked ship, which stuck up out of the water, and knew that I had found the answer to my question. They were rats from that ship; they had come ashore when she was wrecked. What they lived on, I never knew; but there they had flourished and multiplied and formed in the midst of those blue seas a great rat empire. "Rats!" I heard Gleazen exclaim. "Pfaw! How I hate them!" Throwing sticks ahead of him to drive away the lean, gray vermin, he started across the marshy land toward the old wreck, and the rest of us fell in behind him. Of us all, Matterson showed the least repugnance for the multitude of snaky little beasts that swarmed around us at a distance and watched us with angry eyes as black as shoe buttons. And now we came to the wreck and saw a sight that filled me with horror. In the hold, into which we could look through holes between the ribs and between the beams where the waves had torn away the spar deck, there were five human skeletons chained by their ankle-bones to the timbers. Yet, so far as there was any outward sign, I was the only one to see the skeletons. Matterson and Gleazen looked long and sadly at the old hulk, and Gleazen finally said, "She's done for and gone, Molly. There's not a thing left about her that's worth salving." Matterson gloomily nodded. "Mr. Upham," said he, "we lost two hundred prime niggers that night." I turned away from them, as they stood there talking, and went back to the boat. It would be good, I thought while I waited, to leave the island forever. Whatever the outcome of their talk may have been, the rising wind presently brought them back to the boat in a hurry. We launched her, and tumbled aboard, drenched from head to foot, and after a lively struggle came up alee of the brig. It was plain that we must soon seek shelter, for already the storm was blowing up and the waves came charging down upon us in fierce, racing lines. "Yonder island," Matterson was saying, at the same time marking a diagram on the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other, "yonder island is part of the delta of the Rio Polo. It runs so--and so--and all but the island is washed away. You see, do you not, gentlemen? If Captain North will run straight so,--northeast by east, say,--holding his bearings by the angle of ripples where you see the current veer, and when we are four cables' lengths from the breakers give me the wheel, I will take her over the bar." "Mr. Matterson--" "The responsibility is mine, Captain North, by the owner's orders." "Ah, Mr. Upham," said the captain, with a wry smile, "and is this the kind of support you give me?" Not one word did my uncle say. * * * * * I had seen Pedro's monkey for a while playfully swinging from rope to rope and later scratching its ear as it sat on the companion hatch; but I had not seen it go below, nor had any of the others. To this day no one knows just how it evaded us, for it was forbidden the cabin, and every man on board had orders to head it off if it showed any inclination to go there. Yet the mischievous beast did slip below, and for once succeeded in catching Willie MacDougald off his guard. Willie, it seems, had been engaged in the praiseworthy occupation of spying on Neil Gleazen, and had one eye firmly fixed to the keyhole of the cabin door when the monkey calmly jabbed teeth and claws into the luckless boy's leg. His yell startled every man on deck; but far more than it startled us did it startle the man in the cabin, who had thought himself safe from peeping eyes. First we heard Willie yelling with all the power of his brazen little throat; then the cabin door was flung open with a bang; then suddenly Willie and the monkey literally flew out of the companionway and alighted on deck. The fall was short and neither was much hurt. But when each tried to escape from the other, both started to run in the same direction and Willie, tripping, fell on the monkey. At that, the monkey grabbed Willie's head with its front claws, raked its hind claws across his face, then snatching out two good handfuls of hair, fled triumphantly aloft. Gleazen burst out on deck at that very instant, and seeing nothing of Willie who--luckily for him!--had fallen out of sight round the corner of the cabin, started into the rigging, swearing to skin the monkey alive. Meanwhile Matterson was like to have died laughing at Willie MacDougald,--and, indeed, so were the rest of us!--for between anger and fear, and with half a dozen long scratches across his cheeks, he was in a sad state of mind. I tell you, any ideas of his innocent childhood that we may have entertained completely vanished before the flood of oaths that the little wretch was pouring out, when Gideon North collared him and sent him below with stinging ears. And now, since all that takes so long to tell happened quickly, the breakers were close aboard, when Gleazen, who had followed the scapegrace monkey to the mizzen royal yard, roared in that great voice of his:-- "Sail ho! By heaven, there's a cruiser in the offing." He came down the rigging like a cat, bawling orders as he came, and at the same time Gideon North was giving counter-orders. It seemed for a moment that in that scene of confusion, which suddenly from comedy had changed to the grimmest of grim earnest, we should go on beam-ends into the surf. Seas such as I had never dreamed of were breaking on the bar before us. Overhead a storm was gathering. In the offing, it was reported, there sailed a strange and hostile ship. And in the brig Adventure there were contradictory orders and tangled ropes and men working at cross purposes. Say what you will against Matterson in most respects, in that emergency he was the man who saved us. Throwing the helmsman from the wheel so violently that he fell clean over the companion ladder and down to the spar-deck, he seized the wheel and cried in a voice as hard as steel, "Gleazen, be still! Be still, I say! Now, Captain North, with head yards aback and after yards braced for the starboard tack, we'll make it." Captain North, with an able man at the wheel,--to pay the devil his due,--gave orders in swift succession and the brig came back on her course and rose to meet the breakers. How Matterson so surely and confidently found the exact channel, I do not know. But this I do know: he took the brig in through the breakers without the error of as much as a hair's breadth, straight in along the channel, with never a mark to guide him that I could see, except the belt of tidal chop and the eddies of the intermingling currents, to the comparative quiet of the mouth of a river that led away before us into the mazes of vast swamps and tangled waterways, where mangroves and huge interweaving, overhanging vines and sickly sweet flowers grew in all the riotous luxury of tropical vegetation. To me the calm river seemed an amazing haven from every danger that we had encountered outside. But not so to Matterson. Looking back at the thundering breakers, he thoughtfully shook his head. "Well," said Gleazen significantly, "if worst comes to worst, we can fight." "If worst comes to worst." "Well?" Matterson shook himself like a dog. "It's the niggers," he said in a low voice. "If them infernal witch doctors get wind of us!" Gleazen stared a long time into the mangroves. "It ain't as if we could take an army," Matterson continued. "We've got to take only them we _know_--_know_, mind you. What'd our lives be worth if all these here--" he waved his hand at the crew forward--"if all these here knew. It would pay 'em well to knock us on the head." Still Gleazen stared silently into the tangled swamp. "It would pay 'em well," Matterson repeated. CHAPTER XVI STRANGEST OF ALL Even had I not suspected already that Matterson had brought vessels into the mouth of that river many times before, I could not have doubted it after seeing him bring the Adventure through the narrow channel across the bar, and up to the mouth of the river itself. I marveled that, having been more than a year away from it,--how much more than a year I did not know,--he dared even attempt the passage. But whatever his faults, indecision and fear were not among them, and he had justified his bold course by bringing us safely within the sheltering bar, where the lookouts reported minute by minute every movement of the suspicious distant sail, which approached until from the deck we could see her courses, and then wore ship to haul off shore before the storm caught her. "Bah! The cruising curs!" Matterson scornfully exclaimed. "Captain North, shall I continue to serve as pilot and take the brig up the river?" "Since up the river it seems we are to go," Captain North returned stiffly, "I place the helm and all responsibility in your hands, Mr. Matterson." With that he folded his arms and, with a nod to Seth Upham, withdrew to the weather-rail. My poor uncle! Never was there merer figurehead than he as owner of the brig Adventure. It was pathetic to see him try to maintain his dignity and speak and answer smartly, even sharply as of old, when every man on board knew that if that reckless, high-handed pair, Gleazen and Matterson were at any time to cease tolerating him, his life would be worth no more than the flame of a snuffed candle. He must have been perfectly well aware of the weak part he had played, yet he held up his head and boldly returned Gideon North's glance and nod. Meanwhile Matterson had climbed to the masthead and with glass at eye was studying the stranger. Now he came slowly down again, and said to Gleazen, "She's bearing off in good faith to ride out the storm, Neil. What say? Shall we anchor here behind the bar?" Gleazen shook his head. "There's fair shelter," Matterson persisted. Gleazen waved his hand at the black sky. "But not shelter enough," he said. "If we go up the river," said Matterson in a low voice, "the news will spread from here to the hills." Gleazen smiled unpleasantly. "Look off the larboard bow," he said. We all turned, as did Matterson, and I for one, at first, saw nothing except the vines and great trees on which fell the shadows of the premature twilight that foreran the storm. But Matterson cried out, and Arnold Lamont, seeing my blank expression, touched my arm and pointed at a dark lane of water and said, "See--there--there!" Then I saw something moving, and made out a canoe. In the canoe was a big black negro, with round eyes and flat nose and huge, puffed-out lips. The negro was paddling. Then I saw something else. I could not believe my eyes. I turned to the others, and knew by their faces that they and Arnold had seen it, too, and that Seth Upham had not. Then Gleazen, who was looking hard at Matterson, said with an oath, "The beer is spilt. It's up the river for us." And Matterson nodded. In that canoe, which had already swiftly and silently disappeared among the mangroves, I had seen a white girl. I cannot describe her to you now as she then appeared in the canoe, sitting in front of the great, black canoeman. It was long ago, and even at the time I was so startled, so amazed, that I saw only her white face and great dark eyes looking out at me from the shadowy recesses of the swamp. I felt as if I had been set down suddenly in the midst of a fairy story. I strove against a sense of mystery and danger, a thousand vague terrors. I cannot tell you what the girl looked like; yet, though I seem to deal in contradictions, I have never forgotten that white frightened face and those dark eyes, which had disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. Then, as the sails filled and the Adventure fell off and got steerage-way and slipped up the great, swift river, Matterson spun the wheel with his own hands this way and that. At first the shores were low and sedgy and covered deeply with mangroves; but soon the river widened into a vast mirror, in which we saw reflected towering trees of numberless varieties, with a trailing network of vines and flowers, and from among the leaves, which were unbelievably large, spears of bamboo and cane protruded. As the wind at our backs drove us slowly up stream, notwithstanding the swifter current where we passed through the narrows, we saw plantains, bananas, oranges, lemons, and tall palms. Then between the trunks we saw fields of rice; and then, as we turned a bend where the river once more widened, we saw a settlement before us. In the centre of a clearing stood low houses built of cane and thatched with grass, mud huts grouped here and there, and a large enclosure for some purpose of which I was ignorant. Could the girl I had seen in the swamp have come thither? On all sides people were running this way and that, some of them white, but most of them as black as midnight. So small did the settlement appear, and so sharply was each figure outlined, that it looked for all the world like a toy village in a shop window, or like such a tiny model of a foreign town as sailors sometimes bring home from distant ports. As the anchor gripped the bed of the river, and the men, spraddling out on the footropes and leaning over the yards, clewed up the sails and hauled in the great folds of canvas, the Adventure brought up on her cable and lay with her head into the current. Matterson and Gleazen who had ordered a boat launched and were standing in the gangway, now turned and called to Uncle Seth, who responded by walking toward them with as haughty a manner as if he were heart and soul in their councils and their plans. All three of them got into the boat and there talked for a while in undertones. Then they called Willie MacDougald to come tumbling after them, and all together they hastily went ashore, where I saw that a crowd had gathered to meet them; then the storm, which had so long been threatening, broke with a roar of wind and rain, and Arnold and I, going below, had the cabin for a time to ourselves. Arnold sat down by the cabin table and looked around at ports and doors, and at the dueling swords on the bulkhead, and up at the skylight on which the storm was fiercely beating. "You, too," he said, with a quiet smile, "you, too, Joe, look around at the cabin of this good brig. It has not been a pleasant place to live, but I do believe there are times coming when we shall wish ourselves back again in this very spot." "And what have you learned now of our friends' plans?" I asked. "One does not have to learn so much, Joe." "But what?" Arnold, I knew, was smiling at my impatience, although the light was so nearly gone that I saw him, when he bent forward, only as a deeper shadow in the darkness. Yet the ports and the skylight still were clear enough to be reflected in his eyes when he leaned very close to me, and whatever his doubts, I saw that he showed no sign of fear. "They talked yesterday and to-day--in Spanish--of the men they call Bud and Bull, who share the secret that has brought us all the way from Top--Hark!" Arnold half rose. I myself heard a soft step. When Arnold lifted his hand I saw his knife, now drawn, so far as I knew, for the first time in apprehension of treachery. Then the step--so soft and low--sounded again. I reached for my own pistol. The sound was repeated yet again. It was just outside the door. Then into the cabin crept a low ambling creature, which we both knew at once must be Pedro's monkey. Arnold laughed quietly and sat down again and breathed deeply. "They have discovered--something," he whispered, as if we had suffered no interruption. "That I know well," I said. "But what?" I believed that I, too, had ferreted out the secret, but I was not yet willing to hazard my surmises. "Sh!" He raised his hand to warn me. "Do you not guess?" he whispered. "Try! Until they have got what they have found to the sea, you and I are safe. They must have men to help them who will not turn and rob them. They do not believe in the saying about honor among thieves." "Come," I cried, "stop speaking in riddles. Tell me!" Then, thinking of Cornelius Gleazen as I first had seen him, with the rings flashing on his fingers, I popped out a word that began with D. Arnold smiled and nodded. "Well," I returned, "speak up and tell me if such a voyage as we have come upon is not a far-fetched manner of approaching such an errand as you have described." "In a sense, yes. In a sense, no. They are after other things, too. This good vessel, as we have remarked before, is well found for the trade." Suddenly, he gave me a start by beginning to whistle a lively tune and to drum on the table. His quick ear had detected another step in the companionway. As the step drew near, the monkey, which in our absorption we had quite forgotten, pattered toward the door and slipped out. "What's that? Who's here? Who passed me then?" It was Captain North. Arnold struck a spark into tinder and lighted a candle. "And what, pray, are you two doing here in the dark?" the captain demanded. "We are passing time with talk of our good friends, Gleazen and Matterson," said Arnold. With an angry exclamation, Captain North took the chair opposite us. "Well," said he, "matters have turned out as any sane man might have known they would. That precious little scamp of a cabin boy will tell you no more tales, Lamont." "You mean--" "I'll wager half my wages for the voyage that you and I have seen the last of him. The monkey betrayed the little scamp after all." Although I knew that Willie MacDougald's innocent and childlike face masked a scheming, rascally mind, I could not so calmly see the little fellow go, soul and body, into the power of such men as Gleazen and Matterson, or perhaps worse; and although neither Arnold nor Gideon North, appraising Willie at his true worth, cared a straw what became of him, I was so troubled by his probable fate that I did not listen to the others, who were talking coolly enough about our own predicament, but, instead, got up and walked around the cabin. It seemed very strange to listen to the roaring wind and driving rain and yet feel the brig lying quiet underfoot in the strong, deep current of the river. Now I sat down and listened to a few sentences of their talk; now I got up and once more paced the cabin. For a while I thought about Willie MacDougald; then I thought of the dangers that surrounded us all, and of poor Uncle Seth, once so bold and arrogant, now become little better than a cowardly, pitiful wretch; then I thought of the girl I had seen in the jungle, and strangely enough the memory of her face seemed at once to quiet my wilder fancies and to enable me to think more clearly than before. Becoming aware at last that the storm was passing, I went on deck and saw lights in the clearing where the houses stood. The wind, which had come upon us so suddenly and so fiercely, was subsiding as suddenly as it had arisen, and a deep calm pervaded river, clearing, and jungle. I had not waited ten minutes before I heard the boat on the water. "I swear," I heard Gleazen say in an angry, excited voice, "I swear they're lying to us. Bud'll tell us. News travels fast hereabouts. Bud'll be here soon." They came on board, one at a time, all but Willie MacDougald. Of him there was neither sign nor word. I started forward to question them, then stopped short. Something in their attitude froze and repelled me. Of what use were questions--then, at any rate? For a moment they waited in the gangway, then, all together, they went aft. Leaving them and moving to the farther side of the brig, I looked a long time into the dark, tangled jungle. The clouds had gone and the stars had come out and the dying wind spoke only in slow, distant soughs among the leaves. So blackly repellent was the matted and decaying vegetation, through which dark veins of stagnant water ran, and so grimly silent, that I could not keep from shuddering with a sort of childish horror. Surely, I thought, human beings could not penetrate such depths. Then, almost with my thought, there came across the dark and fever-laden waters of the great swamp, out of the black jungle night, a thread of golden melody. Someone in that very jungle was whistling sweetly an old and plaintive tune. I heard the three, Gleazen, Matterson, and my uncle, turn to listen. By lantern light I saw their faces as they looked intently toward the jungle. So still had the brig now become, that I actually heard them breath more quickly. Then Neil Gleazen cried, "By the Holy, that's either Bud O'Hara or his ghost." With both hands cupped round his mouth, he was about to send a hoarse reply roaring back across the river, when Matterson clutched his hand. "Be still," he whispered. "Here's the answer." And he, in turn, sent back the answering phrase of that singularly mournful and haunting ballad: "I Lost my Love in the Nightingale." CHAPTER XVII THE MAN FROM THE JUNGLE Very slowly Matterson whistled that old tune, "The Nightingale," and very slowly an answer came back to us; then a long silence ensued. The black water of the marsh rose and fell. We could hear it whispering softly as it washed against the tangled roots of the mangroves, and once in a while I could distinguish the long, faint rasp of some branch or vine that dragged across another. But except for those small noises, the place was as still as a house of death; and as we watched and waited, the feeling grew upon me that we must be in the midst of a dream. Then something moved and caught my eye, and a canoe silently shot out upon the river. With a swish and swirl of paddles, she came alongside us and stayed for a moment, like a dragon-fly pausing in its flight, then shot silently back the way she had come. I had seen against the water that there were three men in the canoe when she came; but when she slipped back into the mangroves, I saw that there were only two. Before I had time to question the reason of all this, I saw a man's head rise above the bulwark and knew that he had sprung from the canoe to the chains while the little craft so briefly paused. Climbing over the bulwark and dropping to the deck, the man said in low, cautious voice, "Is it Neil I've been hearing? And Molly?" "Here we be, Bud, us two and Seth Upham." "And sure, do this fine vessel be ours, Neil?" "Ours she is, along with Seth Upham. Come, Bud, here is Mr. Upham, who has joined in with us and gets a half-and-half lay, and here--" "O Neil," the mysterious newcomer drawled, "would he be comin' for naught short of half shares? And where's Molly? Ah, Molly, you've been long away." They all were shaking hands together. "And now," said Matterson, "what news of Bull?" "Of Bull, is it?" the man replied. "Sure, he's sitting on the chest o' treasure. Warnings they give us, that the hill is haunted and all such. Spirits, you know, Neil; spirits, Molly. Sure the niggers know more about them things than we do--indeed they do. It's not I would go agin them rashly. But I fixed 'em, lads." "How?" asked Matterson softly. "Bull laughed at them fit to kill,--which is his way, as you'll remember,--but not I. Says I, 'Laugh if you will; 't is well to be fearless since you're the one to stay.' But I did for him better than the stiff-necked rascal would do for himself. That night I hunted me out an old master wizard and paid him in gold, and didn't he give me a charm that will keep spirits away?" To hear a sober white man talk of charms with all the faith of a credulous child amazed me. I had never dreamed there could be such a man. Pressing closer, I took a good look at this queer stranger, and saw him to be a short, broad fellow, with a square jaw and a face so intelligent that my amazement became even greater. He, in turn, saw me looking at him, and half in a drawl, half in a brogue, asked, "Now who'll this one be?" "He's the young man that came with Mr. Upham," Gleazen replied. "Is he fearless?" asked the strange Bud. "And is he honest?--Aye," he rather testily added, "and is he, too, to share half-and-half?" To that Gleazen returned no answer, but the man's tone made me think of Gleazen himself roaring drunk and staggering away from Higgleby's barn, of Matterson with his voice hardened to a cutting edge, of the master of the Merry Jack and Eleanor, and of the adventurous night when we parted from poor Sim Muzzy. I tell you honestly, I would have given every cent I had in the world and every chance I had of fortune to have been fifteen hundred leagues away. Turning to Matterson, the man went on: "'T is not discreet for the like o' you two to come sailing in by broad daylight with all sail set. Now why couldn't ye ha' come in a boat, say, and let the brig lie off the coast. Then we could 'a' met secret-like and 'a' got away and up the river with no one the wiser. Sure, and there's not a soul in a thousand miles, now, that ain't heard a tale o' Neil and Molly." "The storm was hard upon us," said Matterson. "And a cruiser lay in the offing," said Gleazen. "It would be possible, then," the man returned, "that ye're not as big--not _quite_ as big fools as I took ye to be." Then, as if all had been arranged beforehand, while Matterson and the strange man and Uncle Seth went below to the cabin, Gleazen took me by the arm and led me away from the others. "Joe," he murmured,--and I saw a new, eager glint in his eyes,--"Joe, there's great times coming. I've made up my mind I can trust you, Joe, and I'm going to make you my lieutenant. Yes, sir, I'm going to make you an officer." I wondered what kind of story he would tell next, for by this time I knew him far too intimately to be deceived by his brazen flattery. It was singularly trying for me, man grown that I was, to be treated with an air of patronage that a stripling would have resented, and there were moments when I was like to have turned on Gleazen with a vengeance. But I waited my time. It was not hard to see that my patience need not endure interminably. "You, Joe, are one of us," he continued, "and we're glad to take you into our confidence. But these others--" he waved his hand generally--"we can't have 'em know too much. Now we're going to-night to get things sized up and ready, and what I want to know, Joe, is this: will you--as my lieutenant, you understand--take Arnold and Mr. Severance and Captain North ashore to call on Mr. Parmenter?" "But who," I asked, "is Mr. Parmenter?" "He's an Englishman, Joe, and if you can sort of convey to him--you know what I mean--that we're after hides and ivory, purely a matter of trade, it'll be a good thing, Joe. Mind you, as my lieutenant, Joe." Never had I been so _Joe'd_ in all my life before. When Gleazen had gone, I fairly snorted at my sudden and easy honors. Evidently he told much the same story to the others, except Captain North, with whom Gleazen himself very well knew that such a flimsy yarn was not likely to prevail, and to whom Uncle Seth, accordingly, entrusted some genuine business; and half an hour later we gathered at the rail to go ashore. "Now, then," Captain North said peremptorily, in such a way that I knew he was entirely unaware of my recent appointment as Gleazen's lieutenant, "now then, lads, into the boat all hands together." "One moment!" I cried. "I forgot something." And with that I ran back. In changing my jacket in honor of the call we were to make, I had left my pistol behind me. Of no mind to put off without it, I hurried down to my stateroom. Passing through the cabin, I saw that the four men, Gleazen, Matterson, the strange Bud, and my uncle, were drawing up around the great table, on which they had carelessly thrown a pack of cards. They gave me frowns and hard looks as I passed, and I heard them muttering among themselves at the interruption; but with scarcely a thought of what they said, I left them to their game. No sooner had our boat crunched on the shore than on all sides black figures appeared from the darkness, and landing, we found ourselves surrounded by negroes, who pressed upon us until we fairly had to thrust them back with oars. It was the first time I had set foot on the continent of Africa, and the place and the people and the circumstances were all, to my New England apprehension, so extraordinary and so alarming that I cast a reluctant glance back at the dim lights of the Adventure. But now a door opened, and I saw in the bright rectangle a white man in European clothes; and we went up and shook his hand,--which seemed for some reason to displease him, although he did not actually refuse it,--and were ushered into a large room with a board floor and chairs and tables and pictures, for all the world as if it were a regular house. "Under some circumstances I should no doubt be glad to meet you, gentlemen," he said, with cold reserve, "for no ship has visited us for more than three months. But we hereabouts are not friendly to slavers." "Nor are we," Gideon North retorted. "I think, sir," said Arnold Lamont, soberly and precisely, "that you mistake our errand." He looked at us a long time without saying more, then he quietly remarked, "I hope so." His cold, measured words repelled us and set us at an infinite distance from him. We looked at one another and then at him, and he in turn studied us. We four--for Mr. Severance had accompanied us, although as usual he scarcely opened his mouth--saw a man whose iron-gray hair indicated that he was a little beyond middle age. The lamp that burned beside him revealed a strong, rather sad face; the book at his elbow was a Bible. It came to me suddenly that he was a missionary. "You give us chill welcome, sir," said Gideon North. "What, then, will you have us do to prove that we are not what you believe us?" "Your leaders who were here a little while ago," our host replied, "tried their best to prove it--and failed. Indeed, had I not seen them, I should more readily believe you. It is not the first time that I have seen some of them, you must remember." Gideon North bit his lip. "Have you considered," he asked, "that we may not be in accord with them?" "A man must be known by the company he keeps." "We are in _neither_ sympathy nor accord with them." "It is a virtue, sir, no matter what your circumstances, to be at least loyal to your associates. If you so glibly repudiate your friends, on what grounds should a stranger trust you?" At that Gideon North got up all hot with temper. "Sir," he cried, "I will not stay to be insulted." "Sir," the man returned, "I have insulted, and would insult, no one." "Of that, sir," Gideon North responded, "I will be my own judge." "Captain North," said Arnold, "have patience. One moment and we--" Turning in the door, which he had reached in two strides, our captain cried hotly, "Come, men, come! I tell you, come!" Mr. Severance followed him in silence; Arnold stepped forward as if to restrain him, and I, left for a moment with the missionary, turned and faced him with all the dignity of which I was master. "I am sorry that you think so ill of us," I said. "I am sorry," he replied, "to see a youth with an honest face in such a band as that." I could think of no response and was about to turn and go, when I suddenly remembered our lost cabin boy. "Can you, in any case," I asked, "tell me what has become of our cabin boy, Willie MacDougald?" "Of whom?" "Of Willie MacDougald--the little fellow that came ashore to-day?" "Did he not return to the brig?" "No." The man stepped forward. "No," I repeated, "I have not seen him since." "Then," he returned, "you are not likely ever to see him again." "What do you mean?" I demanded. "What has happened? Where is he?" Getting no answer, I looked around the room at the chairs and tables and pictures,--they had an air of comfort that made me miserably homesick,--and at the well-trimmed lamp from which the light fell on the Bible. Then I turned and went out into the darkness. What had befallen that hardened little wretch? Where under the canopy of heaven could he be? I cared little enough for the mere fate of Willie MacDougald; but as a new indication of the extremes to which Matterson and Gleazen would go, his disappearance came at a time that made it singularly ominous. As I stood, thus pondering, on the rough porch from which I was about to step down and stride into the darkness, where I could make out the figures of negroes of all ages moving restlessly just beyond the light that shone from the windows, I received such a start as seldom has come to me. A hand touched my arm so quietly that for a moment I nearly had an illusion that that miserable little sinner, Willie MacDougald, had returned from the next world to haunt me in this one; a low voice said in my ear, "Stay here with us." I turned. Just beside me stood the girl whom I had seen in the canoe. "Stay here," she repeated. "They have gone." I stammered and tried to speak, and for the first time in my life I found that my tongue was tied. A step rustled in the grass just under the porch; something touched the floor beside my foot; then a huge black hand brushed gently over my shoe and up my leg, and a black, grotesque face, with rolling eyes and round, slightly parted lips, looked up at me, so close to my hand that unconsciously I snatched it away lest it be bitten. Startled nearly out of my wits by this amazing apparition, I gave a leap backward and crashed against the wall, at which the absurd negro uttered a shrill whistle of surprise. The girl tossed her head and stamped her foot, and spoke to the negro in a low voice, which yet was clear enough and sharp enough to send him without a sound into the darkness. For a moment the lights from the window shone full upon her, and I saw that she was proud as well as comely, and spirited as well as generous. The toss and the stamp showed it; the quick, precise voice confirmed it; and withal there was a twinkle of kindliness in her eyes that would have stormed the heart of a far more sophisticated youth than I. Such spirit is little, if at all, less fascinating to a young man than beauty; and when spirit and beauty go hand in hand, he must be a crabbed old bachelor indeed who can withstand the pair. Whatever my theories of life, as I had long since revealed them to Arnold Lamont, I was no Stoic; and though at the time I was too excited to be fully aware of it, I thereupon fell, to the crown of my head, in love. As the negro vanished, she turned on me with that same, queenly lift of her head. "Well, sir, will you stay?" "Why should I stay?" I managed at last to ask. She looked me straight in the eye, "You're not of their kind," she replied. "Father himself thinks that." For the moment I was confused, and thought only of Arnold and Gideon North. "You and he are wrong," I stiffly responded. "I _am_ their kind, and I am proud to be their kind." "Oh," she said, "oh! I beg your pardon." A hurt look appeared in her eyes and she stepped back and turned away. All at once I remembered that she had never seen Arnold and Gideon North; that she had not meant them at all; that she had meant Gleazen and Matterson. It was at the tip of my tongue to cry out to her, to call her back, to tell her the whole truth about our party on board the brig Adventure. I had drawn the very breath to speak, when Gideon North's voice summoned me from the darkness: "Joe, Joe Woods! Where are you?" "Here I am," I cried. "I am coming." Then, when I turned to speak to the girl, I saw that she had gone. I stepped off the porch, tripped, stumbled to my knees, got up again, and strode so recklessly down through the dark to the river that, before I knew I had reached it, I was ankle-deep in water. "Well, my man," cried Gideon North, "you seem to be in a hurry now, though you were long enough starting." Without a word, I got into the boat and took off my shoes and poured out the water. It irritated me to see Arnold looking at me keenly and yet with gentle amusement. I had come to have no small respect for Arnold's unusual insight. All the way back to the brig my head was in such a whirl that, for the first time in my waking moments since we left Cuba, I completely forgot the one fundamental object for which we three were working, to save as far as possible poor Seth Upham and his property from the hands of Cornelius Gleazen and his fellows. Instead I kept hearing the voice that had said, "You're not of their kind," kept seeing the face that I had seen there in the dim light--not at all clearly, yet clearly enough to see that it had a sweet dignity and that it was good to look upon. The boat bumping against the brig woke me from my dreams. Scrambling aboard, I left my shoes in the galley to dry by the stove and ran aft in my stocking feet, and down below. In my eagerness to get dry shoes and stockings I quite outstripped the others, who were loitering in the gangway. It was with no thought or intention of surprising the four men in the cabin that I burst in upon them on my way to my own stateroom. They had pushed cards and chips to one side of the table and had gathered closely round it. In the centre, where their four heads almost met, was a handful of rough stones, which for all I knew might have been quartz. That I had done anything to anger them, when I came down so unceremoniously, I was entirely unaware; but O'Hara, the newcomer, sweeping the stones together with a curse, covered them with his hands; Gleazen faced about and angrily stared at my stockinged feet; and Matterson, rising in fury, snarled through his teeth, "You sniveling, sneaking, prying son of a skulking sea-cook, I swear I'll have your heart's blood!" Before I could turn, the man dived at me straight across the table. I raised my hands to fend him off, with the intention of shoving his head into the floor and planting my feet on the back of his neck; stepped back, tripped and fell. I saw Gleazen lift a chair to bring it down on my head--even then I thought of the irony of my being his "lieutenant"! I saw that wild Irishman, Bud O'Hara, laughing like a fiend at my plight. Then I flung up my feet to receive the blow, and seizing the legs of the chair, twisted it over between Matterson and myself, and got up on my knees. Then in came the others. Spinning on his heel, Matterson, his jaw out-thrust, stood squarely in the path of Gideon North. "You are hasty," I said. "I came in to get my shoes." "Ah," said Bud O'Hara, in biting sarcasm, "and then 't was in the eyes of us that you was looking for trouble." "It was, indeed," I retorted. "And perhaps you didn't see what was going on," he persisted. "I did not," I replied, not knowing what he meant. They looked doubtfully at one another, and then at me, and presently Gleazen said, "Then we're sorry we used you rough, Joe." Meanwhile, I now perceived, the handful of stones had disappeared. All this time my uncle had sat in his chair, looking like a man in a nightmare, and had raised neither hand nor voice to help me. In a way, so amazing was his silence, it seemed almost as if he himself had struck me. I could scarcely believe it of him. When I looked at him in mingled wonder and grief, his eyes fell and he slightly moistened his lips. CHAPTER XVIII A WARNING DEFIED The brig Adventure, two thousand miles from home, lay now in the strong, silent current of a great tropical river, which seemed to me to have an almost human quality. In its depth and strength and silence, it was like a determined, taciturn man. I felt keenly its subtle fascination; I delighted to picture in my mind its course all the way from the mysterious hills far inland, of which Pedro and Gleazen and Matterson told stories filled with trade and slaves and stirring incidents, down to the low, marshy shore, which had already cast a spell upon me. For months since that fearful night when we five fled from Topham, Arnold and Gideon North and I had been holding ourselves ready at every moment to stand up against Gleazen and Matterson and meet them man to man in behalf of my poor, deluded uncle, who now would go slinking about the deck, now would make a pitiful show of his old pompous, dictatorial manner. But when I burst in upon them in the cabin, there had been that in their manner, even after their anger spent itself, which told me more plainly than harshest words that the time for action had come very near. To Arnold, when we were alone in our stateroom, I said, "What would you think, were I to load my pistols afresh?" He looked curiously at me. "You think," said he, slowly, "that there is already need?" "I do," I replied. I felt a new confidence in myself and in my own judgment. I regarded our situation calmly and with growing assurance. Although I did not then realize it, I know now that I was crossing the threshold between youth and manhood. He gravely nodded. "It is a wise precaution," he said at last, "although I prophesy that they will use us further before the time comes when we must fight for our lives." So we both slept that night with new charges in the pistols by our heads, and Arnold, very likely, as well as I, dreamed of the utterly reckless, lawless men with whom we were associated. I question, though, if Arnold thought as much as I of the stern man in the cane house on the riverbank, or if he thought at all of the girl whose white face and dark eyes I could not forget. For another day we continued to lie in the river; but the brig, alow and aloft, bustled with various activities. We sorted out firearms on the cabin floor, and charts and maps on the cabin table, and on the spar-deck we piled a large store of provisions. And in the afternoon Matterson took Captain North in the quarter boat down to the mouth of the river, and there taught him the bearings of the channel. Side by side Arnold and I watched all that went forward, here lending a hand at whatever task came our way, there noting keenly how the stores were arranged. "Well, sir," said Arnold, quietly, when Captain North for a moment stood beside us in preoccupied silence, "are we about to load a cargo of Africans?" "I assure you I'd like to know that," the captain replied, with one of his quick glances. Uncle Seth gave me an occasional curt word or sentence--he was in one of his arrogant moods; Matterson talked to me vaguely and at length of great times ahead; O'Hara watched me with hostile and suspicious glances. And still Arnold and I, whenever occasion offered, put our heads together and made what we could of the various preparations. Our surmises, time showed, were not far wrong. And all this while I had watched the clearing ashore and had seen neither the missionary nor any other white man. When, in the evening, all hands were ordered aft, we on the quarter deck looked down and saw the men standing expectantly to hear whatever was to be said. A thousand rumors had spread throughout the vessel, and of what was really afoot they knew less, even, than Arnold and I. There was Abe Guptil with his kindly face upturned, Pedro with his monkey on his shoulder and what seemed to me a devilish gleam in his eye, and all the rest. As they gathered close under us, the light from the lanterns slung in the rigging revealed every one of them to my curious gaze. "Men," said Captain North, quietly, "Mr. Gleazen has asked me to call you together. There are certain things that he wishes to tell you." As the grizzled old mariner stepped back, Cornelius Gleazen advanced. His beaver, donned for the occasion, was tilted over his eye as of old; his diamonds flashed from finger and throat; he puffed great clouds of smoke from his ever-present cigar. "Lads," he cried in that voice which seemed always so fine and hearty and honest, "lads, that there's no ordinary purpose in this voyage, all of you, I make no doubt, have heard. Well, lads, you're right about that. It is no ordinary purpose that has brought us all the way from Boston. You've done good work for us so far, and if you keep up the good work until the end of the voyage has brought us home again to New England, we ain't going to forget you, lads. No, sir! Not me and Mr. Matterson and Mr. O'Hara--oh, yes, and Mr. Upham! We ain't going to forget you." Reflectively he knocked the ash from his cigar. Leaning over the rail, he said, as if taking all the men into his confidence, "All you've got to do now, lads, is stand by. Captain North will take the brig to sea for one week. There's a reason for that, lads, a good reason. At the end of the week he will bring the brig up off the mouth of the river, and some fine morning you'll wake up and find us back again. "Meanwhile, lads, we're going to make up a little party to go exploring. Me and Mr. Matterson, Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Upham, and Pedro and Sanchez are going. And we are going to take John Laughlin with us, too. It's going to be a hard trip, lads, and you'll none of you be sorry to miss it. Now, then, lay to and load this gear into the boat. Be faithful to your work, and you'll be glad when you see what we're going to do for you." As he turned away, proud of his eloquence, there was a low rumble of voices. I looked first at Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara; then I looked at poor Seth Upham, once as proud and arrogant as any of them. Remembering how in little ways he had been kind to me,--how, since my mother died, his dry, hard affection had gone out to me, as if in spite of him,--I pitied the man from the bottom of my heart. Surely, I thought, he must not go alone into the wilds of Africa with such men as were to make up Gleazen's party. No one had spoken, except in undertones, since Gleazen; some one, I thought, must speak promptly and firmly. For a moment, as I looked at the hard faces of the men whom I must oppose, my courage forsook me utterly; then the new confidence that had been growing within me once more gave me command of myself. Whatever should come of my effort, I was determined that my mother's brother should have at least one honest man beside him. To reason out all this had taken me the merest fraction of the time that it takes to read it. Stepping suddenly forward, I said in a voice so decided that it surprised me as much as anyone, if not more:-- "Mr. Gleazen, I desire to go with you." "And I," said Arnold Lamont. "You young pup," Gleazen bellowed, "who are you to desire this or desire that?" "Then," said I, "I _will_ go with you." "You will not," he retorted. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Matterson and O'Hara were looking at me keenly, but I never let my gaze veer from Gleazen's. "Mr. Gleazen," I said boldly, "Arnold Lamont, Abe Guptil, and I are going to take the places of Pedro, Sanchez, and John Laughlin." He swore a round oath and stepped toward me with his fists clenched, while the men below us fairly held their breath. In a fist fight the man could have pounded me to a pulp, for he was half as heavy again as I; but at the thought of poor Uncle Seth with all his property tied up in that mad venture, with his happiness and his very life in the absolute power of that band of godless reprobates, something stronger than myself rose up within me. At that moment I verily believe I could have faced the fires of hell without flinching. Thinking of the old days when Uncle Seth and my mother and I had been so happy together and of how kind he had been to me in his own testy, abrupt, reserved way, I stepped out and shook my fist in Gleazen's face. Before he could say another word, I cried, "So help me, unless we three go with you and those three stay, we'll keep Seth Upham back and sail away in the Adventure and leave you here forever." Never before could I have spoken thus lightly of what my uncle should, or should not, do. The thought made me feel even more keenly how helpless the poor man had become, and confirmed me in my purpose. It was on the tip of my tongue to add that Gideon North was to come, too, but I thought of how essential it was that someone whom we--Arnold and I--could trust should stand guard upon the brig, and said nothing more, which probably was better, for my words seemed to have struck home. When I threatened to sail away with the Adventure, Gleazen glared at me hard and murmured, with a respect and admiration in his voice that surprised me, "You young cock, I didn't think you had it in you." Throwing overboard the butt of his cigar, which made a bright arc in its flight through the darkness and fell into the water with a smart hiss, he smiled to himself. Matterson whispered to O'Hara, who touched Gleazen's arm. I thought I heard him say, "Too honest to make trouble," as they drew apart and conferred together, glancing now and then at my uncle; then Gleazen nodded and said, "Very well, Joe"; and I knew that for once I had come off victorious. At least, I thought, we are strong enough to stand up for our rights and Uncle Seth's. The men quietly turned away and went forward, a little disappointed that the trouble had blown past and the episode had come to naught. But it had added one more issue to be fought out between Cornelius Gleazen and myself; and though it was over, it was neither forgotten nor forgiven. I had gone into the waist, where I was watching the arms and provisions that the men were loading into the boat we were to take, when I heard a voice at my ear, "I guess--ha-ha!--you come back with plenty nigger, hey?" It was Pedro with his monkey riding on his shoulder. The beast leered at me and clicked its teeth. "No," I replied, "of that I am sure. We are not going after any such cargo as that." "I wonder," he responded. "I t'ink, hey, queer way to get nigger--no barracoon--go in a boat. But dah plenty nigger food below. Plenty lumber. Plenty chain'. What you get if not nigger?" I said nothing. "Maybe so--maybe not," Pedro muttered. His earrings tinkled as he shook his head and moved away. I was surprised to observe that for the moment all work had stopped. Seeing that O'Hara was pointing into the swamp, I stepped over beside him to ascertain what had caught his attention, but found the darkness impenetrable. "I'm telling ye, some one's there," O'Hara muttered with an oath. I saw that Gleazen and Matterson were on the other side of him. Now the men were whispering. "Sh!" "See there--there--there it goes!" "What--Oh! There it is!" I myself saw that something vague and shadowy was moving indistinctly toward us down one of the long lanes of water. Suddenly out of the swamp came a piercing wail. It was so utterly unhuman that to every one of us it brought, I believe, a nameless terror. Certainly I can answer for myself. It was as if some creature from another world had suddenly found a voice and were crying out to us. Then the wail was repeated, and then, as if revealed by some preparation of phosphorus, I indistinctly saw, in the dark of the swamp, an uncouth face, black as midnight, on which were painted white rings and patches. For the third time the cry came out to us; then a voice shrieked in a queer, wailing minor:-- "White man, I come 'peak. Long time past white man go up water. Him t'ief from king spirit. Him go Dead Land. "White man, I come 'peak. We no sell slave. White man go him country so him not go Dead Land. White man, I go." The dim, mysterious face drew away little by little and disappeared. A single soft splash came from the great marsh, then a yell so wild and weird that to this very day the memory of it sometimes sets me to shivering, as if I myself were only a heathen savage and not a white man and a Christian. Three times we heard the wild yell; then far off in the fastnesses of the swamp, we heard an unholy chanting. It was high and shrill and piercing, and it brought to us across the dark water suggestions of a thousand terrors. I felt Bud O'Hara's hand on mine, and it was as cold as death. CHAPTER XIX BURNED BRIDGES "By Heaven!" O'Hara gasped, "the voice has spoke." "Aye, so it has," said Gleazen slowly. "Neil, Molly, sure and we'd best put out to sea. This is no time for us, surely. A month from now, say, we could slip in by night with a boat--" "O'Hara," said Matterson's light, almost silvery voice, "have _you_ turned coward?" "No, not that, Molly! 'T is not I am scairt of any man that walks the green earth, Molly, but spirits is different." "Spirits!" Matterson was softly laughing. "I didn't think, O'Hara, _you'd_ be one to turn black." "Laugh, curse you!" O'Hara cried hotly. "If 'twas you had seen a glimmer of the things I've seen with my own two eyes; if 't was you had seen a man die because he went against taboo; if 't was you had seen a witch doctor bring the yammering spirit back unwilling to a cold body; if 't was you had seen a man three weeks dead get up and dance; if 't was you had seen a strong man fall down without the breath of life in him at all, and all for nothing else but a spell was on him, maybe then you'd believe me. I swear by the blessed saints in heaven, it's throwing our lives away to go up river now; and all I've got to say for Bull is, God help him!" The others were looking at O'Hara curiously. The lantern light on their faces brought out every scar and wrinkle and showed that strong passions were contending within each of them. "It ain't spirits that worries me," said Gleazen, at last, "and it ain't niggers. It's men." He now seemed quite to shake off the spell of the strange voice. "What say, Seth?" He turned to my uncle. To my surprise, Seth Upham rose manfully to the occasion. "Spirits?" he cried. "Nonsense!" O'Hara uneasily shifted his feet. "Ah, say what you like, men," he very earnestly replied, "say what you like against spirits and greegrees and jujus and all the rest. I'll never be one to say there's nothing in them, nor would you, if you'd seen all that I have seen. And I'll be telling you this, men: that voice we heard then was speaking the thoughts of ten thousand fighting niggers up and down this river." "Pfaw!" said Gleazen, stretching his arms. "Niggers won't fight." "That from you, Neil!" I never learned just what lay behind O'Hara's simple thrust, but there was no doubt that it struck a weak link in Gleazen's armor, for he flushed so deeply that we could see it by lantern light. "Well, now," said he, with a conciliatory inflection, "of course I meant it in moderation." All this time Arnold and Gideon North and I stood by and looked and listened. Now, with a glance at us, Matterson said shortly, "Come, come! Enough of that. All hands lay to and load the boat." "I've warned ye," said O'Hara. "At midnight," said Matterson, "_we'll_ go _up_ the river, and Gideon North'll take the brig _down_ the river. Come morning there'll be no stick nor timber of us here. They'll bother no more about us then." "Ye'll never fool 'em," said O'Hara. Matterson turned his back on him, and the work went forward, and for an hour there was only the low murmur of voices. The boat, now ready for the journey, rode at the end of her painter, where the current made long ripples, which converged at her bow. Here and there, lights shone in the clearing and set my imagination and my memory hard at work, but elsewhere the impenetrable blackness of a cloudy night blanketed the whole world. And meanwhile the others were holding council in the cabin. "I think," Arnold Lamont said, "that Matterson and Gleazen underestimate the ingenuity and resources of that black yelling devil." "So they do," said Abe Guptil. "So they do, and I'd be glad enough to be back home, I tell you." What would I not have given to be sleeping once more in Abe's low-studded house beside our wholesome northern sea! Now the others came from the cabin. They walked eagerly. Their very whispers were full of excitement. Even Uncle Seth seemed to have got from somewhere a new confidence and a new hope, so smartly did he step about and so sharply did he speak; and the faint odor of brandy that came with them explained much. We climbed down into the loaded boat and settled ourselves on the thwarts, where Abe Guptil and I took oars. "It's turn and turn about at the rowing," Matterson announced. "We've a long way to go and a current dead against us." I saw Gideon North looking down at us anxiously, and waved my hand. Then someone cast off, and we pulled out into midstream and up above the brig, where we held our place and watched and waited. Soon we heard orders on board the brig. Sails fell from the gaskets and shook free. The men began to heave at the windlass. The brig first came up to the anchors, then, with anchors aweigh, she half turned in the current. Now orders followed in quick succession. We could hear them rigging the fish tackle and catching the hooks on the flukes of the anchors. Blocks rattled, braces creaked, the yards swung from side to side according to the word of command. The sails filled with the light breeze, and coming slowly about, the Adventure gathered steerage-way and went down the river as if she were some gigantic water bird lazily swimming between the mangroves. We watched her go and knew that we seven were now irrevocably left to fend for ourselves. When Gleazen whispered to us to give way, we bent to the oars with a will. For better or for worse, we had embarked on the final stage of our great quest. The lights in the clearing fell astern. The tall trees seemed to close in above us. Alone in the wilderness, we turned the bow of our boat toward the heart of Africa. That we had set forth in complete secrecy on our voyage up river we were absolutely confident. What eyes were keen enough to tell at a distance that the brig had left a boat behind her when she sailed? Gleazen now laughed derisively at O'Hara. "You'd have had us sail away, would you? And wait a month? Or a year, maybe, or maybe two. Ha, ha!" "Don't you laugh at me, Neil," O'Hara replied. "We're not yet out o' the woods." At the man's solemn manner Gleazen laughed again, louder than before. As if to reprove his rashness, as if to bear out every word O'Hara had said, at that very moment the uncanny yell we had heard before rose the second time, far off in the swamp. Three times we heard the yell, then we heard the voice, faint and far away, "White man, I come 'peak. White man boat him sink. White man him go Dead Land." Three times more the wordless wailing yell drifted to us out of the darkness; then we heard a great multitude of men wildly and savagely laughing. Never again did Cornelius Gleazen scoff at O'Hara. His face now, I verily believe, was grayer than O'Hara's. He turned about and stared downstream as if he could see beyond the black wall of mangroves. "Now what'll we do?" he gasped, with a choking, profane ejaculation. "Did you hear that?" Had we heard it! There was not one of us whom it had not chilled to the heart. Our own smallness under those vast trees, our few resources,--we had only the goods that were piled in the boat,--our unfathomable loneliness, combined to make us feel utterly without help or strength. But it was now too late to return. So we bent to our oars and rowed on, and on, and on, against the current of the great river. The only help that remained to us lay in our own right hands and in the mercy of divine Providence. Would Providence, I wondered, help such men as Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara? Nor was that the only doubt that beset us. Although the three accepted us, and in actual fact trusted us, they made no attempt to conceal their enmity; and I very well knew that, besides danger from without our little band, Arnold, Abe, and I must guard against treachery from within it. [Illustration] V THE HOUSE ON THE HILL [Illustration] CHAPTER XX UP STREAM Pulling hard at our oars, we rowed up the river, along the shore and so near it that the shadows of the mangroves almost concealed us. My breath came in quick, hard gasps; the sweat started from my body and dripped down my face; every muscle ached from violent exertion. As I dizzily reeled, I saw, as if it were carved out of wood or stone, Gleazen's staring, motionless face thrust forth squarely in front of my own. Then I flopped forward and Gleazen himself caught the oar from my hands. We had taken the gig for our expedition, because it was light and fast; but although we carried four oars, we used only two of them, mainly because it had been Gleazen's whim to load our baggage between the after thwarts, so that while two men rowed for comparatively short spells, the others could take their ease in bow and stern. And indeed, had our plan to set forth with utmost secrecy not gone awry, it would have been a comfortable enough arrangement. I had not dreamed that Gleazen was so strong; he set a stroke that no ordinary oarsman could maintain; and when Abe Guptil lost time and reeled on the thwart, Matterson slipped into his place and fairly lifted the boat on the water. Of course we could not keep up such a pace for long; but the hard work in a way relieved our anxiety, as hard work does when one is troubled; and after each of us, including Uncle Seth, had taken his turn at the oars until he was dog-tired, we settled down to a saner, steadier stroke, and thus began in earnest the long journey that was to be the last stage of our pilgrimage. By watching the gray lane overhead, where the arching trees failed to meet above the river, since it was literally too dark to see the water, we were able to mark out our course; and skirting the tangled and interwoven roots as nearly as we could, we doggedly fought our way against the current to the monotonous rhythm of swinging oars, loud breathing, and hoarse grunts. The constant whisper of the river so lulled me, weary as I was, that by and by my head drooped, and the next thing that I knew was a hand on my shoulder and a voice at my ear calling me to take my turn at rowing. I woke slowly and saw that Abe Guptil like me was rubbing his eyes, and that my uncle and Arnold Lamont were lying fast asleep on the bottom of the boat. "Come, come," said Gleazen, quietly. "See, now! Mr. Matterson and I've brought us well on our way. Come, get up and row till it is fairly light. Wake us then, and we'll haul the boat up and lie in hiding for the day." Matterson handed over his oar without a word, and Abe and I fell to our task. As the dawn grew and widened in the east, we could see how thickly the roots of the mangroves intertwined. From the ends of the limbs small "hangers," like ropes, grew down and took root in the ground. The trees, thus braced and standing from six to twelve feet in air on their network of tangled, interwoven roots, were the oddest I had ever seen. After a time we came to a large stretch of bush, where innumerable small palms were crowded together so thickly that among them an object would have been completely invisible, even in broad day, at a distance of six feet. In the midst of the bush a great tree grew, and in the top of it a band of monkeys was swinging and racing and chattering in the pale light. In an undertone I spoke to Abe about the monkeys, and he, too, still rowing, turned his head to watch them. Then, at the very moment when we were intent on their antics, a new mood seemed to come over them. I cannot well describe the change, because at first it was so subtle that I felt it, as much as saw it, and I was inclined to doubt if Abe would notice it at all. Yet as I watched the little creatures, which had now ceased their chattering, I suddenly realized that the boat was beginning to drift with the current. By common impulse, attracted by the very same thing, both Abe and I had stopped rowing. As I leaned forward and again swung out my oar, Abe touched my arm. "Hush!" he whispered. "Wait! Listen!" Pausing with arms outstretched, ready to throw all my strength into the catch, I listened and heard a faint _crack_, as of a broken stick, under the tree in which a moment since the monkeys had been hard at play. We exchanged glances. I now realized that daylight, coming with the swiftness that is characteristic of it in the tropics, had taken us unawares. The sun had risen and found Abe and me so intent on a band of monkeys playing in a tree, that we had neglected to wake the others. I put out my hand and leaned over the bags to touch Gleazen, the nearest of the sleepers, when Abe again pressed my arm. Turning, I saw that his finger was at his lips. Although his gesture puzzled me, I obeyed it, and we remained silent for a minute or two while the current carried the boat farther and farther downstream. Every foot that we drifted back meant labor lost, and I was so sorely tempted to put an end to our silence that I was on the point of speaking out, when, distinctly, unmistakably, we heard another crackle in the bush. "Pull," Abe whispered, "pull, Joe, as hard as you can." I leaned back against my oar, heard the water gurgle from under it, saw bubbles go floating down past the stern, and knew that by one stroke we had stopped our drifting. With a second swing of the long blades, we sent the boat once more up against the current. Now we got back into the old rhythm and went on past the dense palms, until we again came to the tangled roots of mangroves. Laying hold of one of the roots, Abe whispered, "Wake 'em, Joe!" They woke testily, and with no thanks to us, even though it was by their orders that we called them. In reply to their questions we told them the whole story, from the strange hush that came over the monkeys to the second crackling among the palms; but they appeared not to take our apprehensions seriously. "Belike it was a snake," said O'Hara, "a big feller, Them big fellers will scare a monkey into fits." "Or some kind of an animal," said Gleazen, curtly. "Didn't I say we was to be called at daylight? When I say a thing I mean it." He impatiently turned from us to his intimates. "How about it, Bud; shall we haul up here for the day?" "Belike it was only a snake," O'Hara replied, "but 'twas near, despite of that. Push on, I say." There was something in the expression of his face as he stared downstream that made me even more uneasy than before. "Not so! The niggers will see us in the open and end us there and then," interposed Matterson. "Moreover, unless the place has changed with the times, there's a town a scant three miles ahead." "Belike 'twas only a serpent," O'Hara doggedly repeated, "but 'tis no place for us here. Let us fare on just half a mile up stream t'other side the river, in the mouth of the little creek that makes in there, and, me lads, let us get there quickly." As we once more began to row, I was confident that O'Hara's talk of a great serpent was poppy-cock for us and for Uncle Seth, and that in any case neither Gleazen nor Matterson nor O'Hara cared a straw about a serpent half a mile away. At the time I would have given much to know just what shrewd guess they had made at the cause of that strange crackling; but they dismissed the subject absolutely, which probably was as well for all concerned; and refusing to speak of it again, they urged Abe and me to our rowing until at their direction we bore across the current and slipped through the trailing branches of the trees, and through the thick bushes and dangling vines, into the well-hidden mouth of a little creek. By then the sun was shining hotly and I was glad enough to lean on my oar and get my breath. * * * * * All that day we lay in the thick vegetation of the creek, which to a certain extent shielded us from the sun, although the warm, damp air became almost unendurable. Much of the time we slept, but always one or another of us was posted as a guard, and at high noon an alarm called us to our weapons. O'Hara, who happened to be standing watch, woke us without a sound, one after another, by touching us with his hand. For a while we saw only the great trees, the sluggish creek, the slow river, and the interwoven vines; then we heard voices, and into our sight there swept a long canoe manned by naked negroes, who swung their paddles strongly and went racing past us down the river. How, I wondered, had O'Hara known that they were coming? Human ears could not have heard their voices as far away as they must have been when he woke us. It was evident, when the blacks had gone, that Matterson and O'Hara had made sense of their mumbled gutteral speech. "I warned ye," O'Hara whispered, glaring at Matterson and Gleazen. "Had we waited, now, say only a month, they'd not be scouring the river in search of us." "Pfaw! Niggers with bows and arrows," Gleazen scornfully muttered. "Yes, niggers with bows and arrows," O'Hara returned. "But I'd no sooner die by an arrow than by a musket-ball." "Die? Who's talking o' dying?" Gleazen whispered. And calmly laying himself down again, he once more closed his eyes. "Sure, and I'd not be one to talk o' dying," O'Hara murmured, as he resumed his guard with a musket across his knees, "was not the curse o' rash companions upon me." Matterson, holding aloof from their controversy, solemnly looked from one of the two to the other. There was that in his eyes which I did not like to see--not fear, certainly, but a look of understanding, which convinced me that O'Hara had the right of it. And now Seth Upham, who had followed all this so sleepily that he did not more than half understand the significance of what had occurred, as of old spoke up sharply, even pompously. In that confused state between sleeping and waking his mind seemed to have gone back to some mood of months before. "That's all nonsense, O'Hara; we're safe enough. Gleazen's right." His words fairly shattered the silence of the marshy woods. He was the first of us to speak in an ordinarily loud voice, and almost before he had finished his sentence a bird about as big as a crow and as black as jet except for its breast and neck, which were snowy white, rose from a tree above us, and with a cry that to me sounded for all the world like a crow cawing, circled high in the air. Hot with anger, O'Hara struck Seth Upham on the mouth with his open hand. That it had been arrant folly for my uncle thus to speak aloud, I knew as well as any other; and the bird circling above us and crying out in its slow flight was liable to draw upon us an attack from heaven only knew what source and quarter. But that O'Hara or any other should openly strike the man who in his own way had been so kind to me was something that I could not endure, and my own temper flamed up as hotly as ever did O'Hara's. Quick as a flash I caught his wrist, even before he had withdrawn his hand, and jerked him from the thwart to his knees. With a devilish gleam in his eye, he threw off my grip and clubbed his musket. Before I could draw my pistol he would have brained me, had not Matterson, with no desire whatever to save me from such a fate, but apparently only eager to have a hand in the affair, seized me from behind, lifted me bodily from my seat, and plunged me down out of sight into the creek. Of what followed, I know only by hearsay, for I was too much occupied with saving myself from drowning to observe events in the boat. But the creek was comparatively shallow, and getting my feet firmly planted on bottom, I pushed up my head and breathed deeply. Meanwhile it seems that Arnold Lamont quietly thrust his knife a quarter of an inch through the skin between two of Matterson's ribs, thus effectually distracting his attention, while Abe Guptil deftly caught O'Hara's clubbed musket in his hands and wrenched it away. As I hauled myself back into the boat, Gleazen sat up and stared, first at the others who, now that Matterson had knocked Arnold's knife to one side, were momentarily deadlocked, then at me dripping from my plunge, then at Seth Upham upon whose white face the marks of O'Hara's hand still showed red. "Between you," he whispered angrily, "you _will_ have half the niggers in Africa upon us." "He talked," O'Hara muttered, pointing at Uncle Seth. "You struck him," I retorted. "'Twas a bird told me they was coming by. 'Twill be that bird surely will tell them we are here." Arnold and Abe and I glared angrily at O'Hara and Matterson and Gleazen, but by common consent we dropped the brief quarrel, and when, after an anxious time of waiting, the canoe had not reappeared, we again lay down to sleep. Yet I saw that Uncle Seth's hand was trembling and that he was not so calm as he tried to appear; and I knew that, although we might go on with a semblance of tolerance, even of friendship, the rift in our little party had grown vastly wider. Waking at nightfall, we made our evening meal of such cooked provisions as we had brought from the Adventure, and pushed through the screen of dense branches, and out on the strongly running, silent river. Again we bent to the oars and rowed interminably on against the stream and into the black darkness. That night we passed a town with wattled houses and thatched roofs rising in tall cones high on the riverbank, and a building that O'Hara said was a _barre_ or courthouse. In the town, we saw against the sky, which the rising moon now lighted, a few orange trees and palms, and under it, close beside the bank of the river, we indistinctly made out a boat, which, Gleazen whispered, was very likely loaded with camwood and ivory. We passed it in the shadow of the opposite shore, rowing softly because we were afraid that someone might be sleeping on the cargo to guard it, and went by and up the river till the pointed roofs of the houses were miles astern. O'Hara and Gleazen and Matterson talked together, and part of their talk was bickering among themselves, and part was of the man Bull who, all alone in the wilderness, was waiting for us somewhere in the jungle, and part was in Spanish, which I could not understand. But when they talked in Spanish, they looked keenly at Arnold and Abe and me, and I found comfort then in thinking that, although Arnold and I now had no chance to exchange confidences, he was hearing and remembering every word of their conversation. And all the time that I watched them, I was thinking of the girl at the mission. Remembering my talk with Arnold long ago, when I had expressed so poor an opinion of all womankind, I felt at once a little amused at myself and a little sheepish. Who would have thought that, at almost my first sight of the despised continent of Africa, I should see a girl whose face I could not forget? That when she spoke to me for the first time, her low, firm voice would so fasten itself upon my memory, that I should hear it in my dreams both sleeping and waking? Poor Uncle Seth! Never offering to take an oar, never exchanging a word with any of the rest of us, he sat with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed. Gleazen and Matterson had dropped even their unkindly humorous pretense of deferring to him. In our little band of adventurers he who had once been so assertive, so brimful of importance, had become the merest nonentity. All that night we went up the river, and all the next day we lay concealed among the mangroves; but about the following midnight we came to a place where the banks were higher and the current swifter. Here O'Hara stood up in the bow of the boat and studied the shore and ordered us now to row, now to rest. For all of two miles we advanced thus, and heartily tired of his orders we were, when he directed us to veer sharply to larboard and enter a small creek, along the banks of which tall water-grass grew right down to the channel. There was barely room for the boat to pass along the stream between the forests of grass which grew in the water on the two sides; but as we advanced, the tall grass disappeared, and the stream itself became narrower and swifter, and the banks became higher. The country, we now saw, was heavily timbered, and we occasionally came to logs, which we had to pry out of the way before we could pass. One moment we would be in water up to our necks, another we would be poling the boat along with the oars, until at last we grounded on a bar over which only a runlet gurgled. There was a suggestion of dawn in the east, which revealed above and beyond the wood a line of low, bare hills; but when I looked at the wood itself, through which we must find our way, my courage oozed out by every pore and left me wishing from the bottom of my heart that I were safe at sea with Gideon North. Piling all our goods on the bank, we hid the boat in the bushes and made camp. "Hard upon daylight, well be starting," said O'Hara, hoarsely. "Sleep is it, you ask? Don't that give you your while of sleep? Be about it. By dark, we'll reach him surely; and if not, we'll be in the very shadow of the hill." The man was all a-quiver with excitement. He jerked his shoulders and twitched his fingers and rolled his eyes. Matterson and Gleazen, too, were softly laughing as they stepped a little apart from the rest of us. I looked at Arnold. He stood with one hand raised. "What was that?" he asked in a low voice. Very faintly,--very, very far away,--we heard just such a yell as we had heard that night when in defiance of the wizard's warning we left the Adventure. Coming to our ears at the particular moment when we most firmly believed that by consummate craft we had so concealed our progress up the river as to escape every prying eye and deceive every hostile black, it both taunted us and threatened us. Three times we heard it, faintly, then silence, deep and ominous, ensued. CHAPTER XXI A GRIM SURPRISE To sleep at that moment would have required more than human self-control. Forgetting every personal grudge, every cause of enmity, we huddled together, seven men alone in an alien wilderness, and waited,--listened,--waited. I, for one, more than half expected, and very deeply feared, to hear coming from the darkness that ghostly voice which had cried to us twice already, "White man, I come 'peak." But, except for the whisper of the wind and the ripple of the creek, there was no sound to be heard. The wind gently stirred the leaves, and the creek sang as it flowed down over the gravel and away through the reeds. The moon cast its pale light upon us, and the remote stars twinkled in the heavens. The cries, after that second repetition, died away, and at that moment did not come back. But our night of adventure was not yet at an end. O'Hara deliberately leveled his index finger at the bed of the stream above us. "Sure, now, and there do be someone there," he whispered. "Watch now! Watch me!" Stepping forward, with a slow, tigerish motion, he slightly raised his voice. "Come you out!" he said distinctly. Then he spoke in a gibberish of which I could make no more sense than if it had been so much Spanish. Before our very eyes, silently, there rose from the undergrowth a great negro with a spear. Arnold Lamont gave a quick gasp and I saw steel flash in the moonlight as his hand moved. Gleazen swore; Matterson started to his feet; Abe Guptil came suddenly to a crouching position. But O'Hara, after one sharply in-drawn breath, uttered a name and whispered something in that same language, which I knew well I had never heard before, and the negro answered him in kind. For a moment they talked rapidly; then O'Hara turned to his comrades and in a frightened undertone said, "The black devils know the worst." "Well?" retorted Gleazen, angrily. "What of it?" "This"--O'Hara's leveled finger indicated the negro--"is Kaw-tah-bah." "Well?" Gleazen reiterated, still more angrily. "The war has razed his village to the ground." Matterson now stepped forward and looked closely into the negro's face. Gleazen followed him. "He laid down eight slave money," said O'Hara. "It was no good. They knew he was our friend. His wives, his children, his old father, all are dead." Now Matterson spoke in the same strange tongue, slowly and hesitantly, but so that the negro understood him and answered him. "He says," O'Hara translated, "that Bull built the house on the king's grave, and they feared him, because he is a terrible man; and because they feared him they left him alone in his house and brought the war to his friend, Kaw-tah-bah. Kaw-tah-bah's people are slaves. His wives, his children, his old father, all are dead. But he did not betray the secret." Again Matterson spoke and again the negro answered. "He says," cried O'Hara, "that Bull is waiting there on the hill by the king's grave." The negro suddenly uttered a low exclamation. Standing as still as so many statues, we heard yet again that faint, unearthly wail far off in the night, a wail, as before, twice repeated. The third cry had scarcely died away, when the negro, with a startled gasp, darted into the brush. O'Hara raised his hand and called to him to come back; but, never turning his head, he disappeared like a frightened animal. Again we were alone in the wilderness. To me, now, all that formerly I had understood only in vague outline had become clear in every detail. I knew, of course, that, after their own ship was wrecked, our quartette of adventurers had sent Gleazen back to America, to get by hook or crook another vessel to serve their godless purposes; and I knew that they had implicated my deluded uncle in something more than ordinary slave trade. Their talk of the man who had stayed behind for a purpose still further convinced me that Arnold had been right; I remembered the rough stones on the table in the cabin the night when I took the four by surprise. But it was only common sense that, if our first guess were _all_ their secret, they would have smuggled such a find down to the coast, and have taken their chance in embarking in the first vessel that came to port. There was more than that of which to be mindful, and I knew well enough what. "I say, now, push forward this very minute," cried O'Hara. "Better travel a bad road by dark in safety than a good road by day that will land every mother's son of us in the place where there's no road back." "The black devils are hard upon us," Gleazen cried. "Lay low, I say. Come afternoon we'll sneak along easy like." "I stand with Bud O'Hara," said Matterson, slowly. "It'll not be so easy to hit us by moonlight as by sunlight." "And once we're with Bull in the little fort that he'll have made for us," Bud persisted, "we'll be safe surely." "It is harder to travel by night," said Arnold. "But it is easier by night than by day to evade an enemy." The others looked at him curiously, as if surprised by his temerity in speaking out; but, oddly, his seemed to be the deciding voice. Working with furious haste, we sorted our goods and made them up into six packs, which we shouldered according to our strength. But as we worked, we would stop and look furtively around; and at the slightest sound we would start and stare. Our determination to go through to the end of our adventure had not flagged when at last we gathered beside the thicket where we had concealed the boat; but we were seven silent men who left the boat, the creek, and the river behind us, and with O'Hara to guide us set off straight into the heart of Africa. O'Hara's long sojourn on the continent, which had made him a "black man" in the sense that he had come to believe, or at least more than half believe, in the silly superstitions of the natives, had served him better by giving him an amazing knowledge of the country. That he was following a trail he had traveled many times before would have been evident to a less keenly interested observer than I. But though he had traveled it ever so many times, it was a mystery to me how he could follow it unerringly, by moonlight alone, through black tangles of forest growth so dense that scarcely a ray stole down on the deeply shadowed path. Passing over some high hills, we came, sweaty and breathless, down into a rocky gorge, along which we hurried, now skirting patches of cotton and corn and yams, now making a long détour around a sleeping village, until we arrived at a wood in a valley where a deep stream rumbled. And all this time we had seen no sign whatever of any living creature other than ourselves. It was already full daylight, and throwing off our burdens, we flung ourselves down and slept. Had our danger been even more urgent, I believe that we could not have kept awake, so exhausted were we; and indeed, we were in greater peril than we had supposed, for all that day, whenever we woke, we heard at no great distance from our place of concealment the thump of a pestle pounding rice. Twelve hours of daylight would easily have brought us to our destination. But it was slow work traveling in the darkness, and we still had far to go. Pushing on again that night, we pressed through a country thickly wooded with tall trees, many of which elephants had broken down in order to feed on the tender upper branches. As we passed them, I was thrilled to see with my own eyes the work of wild elephants in their native country, and should have liked to stop for a time; but there was no opportunity to loiter, and leaving the woods behind us, we came at daylight to a brook, which had cut a deep channel into dark slate rock and blue clay. Here I conjectured that we should camp for another day, but not so: our three leaders were strangely excited. "Sure," O'Hara cried, pointing at a low hill at a distance in the plain, "sure, gentlemen, and there's our port. Where's the man would cast anchor this side of it?" O'Hara, Gleazen, and Matterson stood at one side, and Arnold, Abe, and I at the other, with my poor uncle in the middle. We had not concerted to divide thus. Instinctively and unconsciously we separated into hostile factions, with poor Seth Upham--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, as they say--standing weakly between us. But even so, the enthusiasm of the three was contagious. Weary though we were, we strongly felt it. We had come so far, all of us, and had wondered so much and so often about our mysterious errand, that now, with the end in sight, not one of us, I believe, would have stopped. Casting caution to the winds, we swung down into a wild country and across the broad plain, where, after some three hours of rough hard travel, we came to the foot of the hill. And in all this time, except the patches of tilled land that we had passed, the towns that we had avoided, the thumping of pestles and the occasional sounds of domestic animals, we had seen and heard no sign of human life. It is not strange that for the moment I forgot the threats that had caused us such anxiety. Stopping only to catch our breath and drink and dash over our faces water from a brook, we started up the hill. O'Hara, ahead of us all, was like a mad man in his eagerness, and Matterson and Gleazen were not far behind him. Even Uncle Seth caught something of their frenzy and assumed an empty show of his old pompousness and sharp manner. Up the hill we went, our three leaders first, then, in nervous haste, between the two parties literally as well as figuratively, my uncle, then Arnold and Abe and I, who were soon outdistanced, in that fierce scramble, by all but Uncle Seth. "Do you know, Joe," Abe said in a low voice, as he gave me a hand up over a bit of a ledge, "I'd sooner be home on my little farm that Seth Upham sold from under me, with only my crops and fishing to look forward to, than here with all the gold in Africa to be got? I wonder, Joe, if I'll ever see my wife and the little boy again." "Nonsense!" I cried, "of course you will." "Do you think so? I'm not so sure." As we stood for a moment on the summit of the ledge, I saw that we had chosen a rougher, more circuitous path than was necessary. The others had gone up a sort of swale on our right, where tall, lush grass indicated that the ground was marshy. It irritated me that we should have scrambled over the rocks for nothing; my legs were atremble from our haste. "Of course you will," I repeated testily. Then I saw something move. "See!" I cried. "There goes an animal of some kind." While for a moment we waited in hope of seeing again whatever it was that had moved, I thought, oddly enough, of the girl at the mission; then my thoughts leaped back half round the world to little Topham, and returned by swift steps, through all our adventures, to the spot where we stood. Now the others were bawling at us to come along after them, so Abe and I turned, not having seen distinctly whatever animal there may have been, and followed them up the hill. "Here's the brook!" O'Hara cried, "the brook from the spring!" He was running now, straight up through the tall grass beside the tiny trickle, and we were driving along at his heels as hard as we could go. "Here's the clearing, and never a blade of grass is changed since I left it last! O Bull! Here we are! See, men, see! Yonder on the old grave is the house all wattled like a nigger hut! O Bull! Where are you? But it's fine inside, men, I'll warrant you. He was laying to build it good. He said he'd fix it up like a duke's mansion. O Bull! I say, Bull!" There indeed was the house, on a low mound, which showed the marks of sacrilegious pick and shovel. The posts on which it stood were driven straight down into the hillock. But in reply to O'Hara's loud hail no answer came from that silent, apparently deserted dwelling. O'Hara turned and, as if apologizing, said in a lower voice, but still loud enough for us to hear, "Sure, now, and he must be out somewhere." Then he waited for us, and we gathered in a little group and looked at the wattled hut as if in apprehension, although of course there was no reason on earth why we should have been apprehensive. "Well, gentlemen," said Arnold, very quietly, "why not go in?" Not a man stirred. O'Hara faced about with moodily clouded eyes. "Well, then," he gasped, "he _would_ build it on the king's grave." I am sure that my face, for one, told O'Hara that he only mystified me. "Sure, and he was like others I've seen. More than once I warned him, but he didn't believe in nigger gods. He didn't believe in nigger gods, and he built the house on the king's grave! On the king's grave, mind you! He was that set and reckless." "Gentlemen," said Arnold, again, very quietly, very precisely, "why not go in?" All this time my uncle, as was his way except in those rare moments when he made a pitiful show of regaining his old peremptory manner, had been standing by in silence, looking from one to another of our company. But now he hesitantly spoke up. "He has not been here for some time," he said. Gleazen turned with a scornful grunt. "Much you know whether he has or not," he retorted. "See!" My uncle pointed at the door. "Vines have grown across the top of it." Gleazen softly swore, and Matterson said, "For once, Neil, he's right." Why we had not noticed it before, I cannot say; probably we were too much excited. But we all saw it now, and Gleazen, staring at the dark shadow of the leaves on the door, stepped back a pace. "By Heaven," he whispered, "I don't like to go in." "Gentlemen," said Arnold, speaking for the third time, ever quietly and precisely, "I am not afraid to go in." When he boldly went up to the house ahead of us, we, ashamed to hang back, reluctantly followed. To this day I can see him in every detail as he laid his hand on the latch. His blue coat, which fitted so snugly his tall, straight figure, seemed to draw from the warm sunlight a brighter, more intense hue. His black hair and white, handsome face stood out in bold relief against the dark door, and the green leaves drooped round him and formed a living frame. Setting his shoulders against the door, he straightened his body and heaved mightily and broke the rusty latch. The hinges creaked loudly, the vine tore away, the door opened, and in we walked, to see the most dreadful sight my eyes have ever beheld. There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton dressed in good sound clothes. The arms and skull lay on the table itself beside a great heap of those rough quartz-like stones,--I knew now well enough what they were,--and the bony fingers still held a pen, which rested on a sheet of yellow foolscap where a great brown blot marked the end of the last word that the man they called Bull had ever written. Between the ribs of the skeleton, through the good coat and into the back of the chair in such a way that it held the body in a sitting posture, stuck a long spear. [Illustration: _There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton dressed in good sound clothes._] Of the seven of us who stared in horror at that terrible object, Matterson was the first to utter a word. His voice was singularly meditative, detached. "He never knew--see!--it took him unawares." O'Hara slowly went to the table, leaned over it, and looking incredulously at the paper, as if he could not believe his eyes, burst suddenly into a frenzy of grief and rage. "Lads," he cried, "look there! My name was the last thing he wrote. O Bull, I warned ye, I warned ye--how many times I warned ye! And yet ye _would_, _would_, _would_ build the house on the king's grave. O Bull!" He drew the yellow paper out from under the fleshless fingers and held it up for all of us to see, and we read in a clear flowing hand the following inscription:-- MY DEAR O'HARA:-- Not having heard from you this long time, I take my pen in hand to inform you that I am well and that despite your silly fears, no harm has come of building our house on the sightliest spot hereabouts. Martin Brown, the trader, from whom I bought the hinges and fittings will carry this letter to you and-- There it ended in a great blot. Whence had the spear come? Why had Martin Brown never called for the letter? Or had he called and gone away again? What scenes that page of cheap, yellowed paper, from which the faded brown writing stared at us, had witnessed! It was indeed as if a dead man were speaking; and more than that, for the paper on which the man had been writing when he died had remained ever since under his very hands, undisturbed by all that had happened. How long must the man have been dead, I wondered. The stark white bones uncannily fascinated me. I saw that the feather had been stripped from the bare quill of the pen: could moths have done that? A knife could not have stripped it so cleanly. Abe Guptil, who had been prowling about, now spoke, and we looked where he pointed and saw on the floor under a window the print of a single bare foot as clearly marked in mud as if it had been placed there yesterday. "Hm! He saw that the job was done and went away again," said Gleazen, coolly. I stared about the hut, from which apparently not a thing had been stolen, and thought that it was the more remarkable, because there were pans and knives in plain sight that would have been a fortune to an African black. The open ink-bottle, in which were a few brown crystals, the pen, which was cut from the quill of some African bird, and the faded letter, which was scarcely begun, told us that the spear, hurled through the open window, had pierced the man's body and snuffed out his life, without so much as a word of warning. O'Hara unsteadily laid the letter down and stepped back. His face was still white. "It's words from the dead," he gasped. "So it is," said Matterson, "but he's panned out a noble lot of stones." As if Matterson's effeminate voice had again goaded him to fury, O'Hara burst out anew. "You'd talk o' stones, would ye? Stones to me, that has lost the best friend surely ever man had? A man that would ha' laid down his very life for me; and now the niggers have got him and the ants have stripped his bones! O-o-oh!--" And throwing himself into a rough chair that the dead man himself had made, O'Hara sobbed like a little boy. Matterson and Gleazen nodded to each other, as much as to say that it was too bad, but that no one had any call to take on to such an extent; and Gleazen with a shrug thrust a finger into that heap of stones, slowly, as if he could not quite believe his senses,--little _he_ cared for any man's life!--while those of us who until now had been so hypnotized by horror that we had not laid down our packs dropped them on the floor. "Ants," O'Hara had said: I knew now why the bones were so clean and white; why the feather was stripped from the quill. From the windows of the hut, which stood in a clearing at the very top of the hill, we could see for miles through occasional vistas in the tall timber below us. The edge of the clearing, on all sides except that by which we had approached it, had grown into a tangled net of vines, which had crept out into the open space to mingle with saplings and green shrubs. Half way down the hill, where we had passed it in our haste, I now saw, by the character of the vegetation, was the spring from which issued the brook whose course we had followed. Uncle Seth, who had been striving to appear at ease since the first shock of seeing the single occupant of the house, came over beside me; and after a few remarks, which touched me because they were so obviously a pathetic effort to win back my friendship and affection, said in a louder voice, "Thank God, _we_, at least, are safe!" The word to O'Hara was like spark to powder. Flaring up again, he shrieked, "Safe--_you!_--and you thank God for it! You white-livered milk-sop of a country storekeeper, what is your cowardly life worth to yourself or to any one else? You safe!" He swore mightily. "You! I tell you, Upham, _there_--" he pointed at the skeleton by the table--"_there_ was a _man_! You safe!" Withered by the contempt in the fellow's voice, Uncle Seth stepped back from the window, turned round, and, as if puzzling what to say next, bent his head. As he did so, a single arrow flew with a soft hiss in through the window, passed exactly where his head had just that moment been, and with a hollow _thump_ struck trembling into the opposite wall. There was not a sound outside, not the motion of a leaf, to show whence the arrow came. Only the arrow whispering through the air and trembling in the wall. Uncle Seth, as yellow as old parchment, looked up with distended eyes at the still quivering missile. "Safe, you say?" cried Gleazen with a hoarse laugh, still letting those little stones fall between his fingers. The man at times was a fiend for utter recklessness. "Aye, safe on the knees of Mumbo-Jumbo!" I heard this, of course, but in a singularly absent way; for at that moment, when every man of us was staring at the arrow in the wall, I, strangely enough, was thinking of the girl at the mission. CHAPTER XXII SIEGE Much as I hated and distrusted Cornelius Gleazen,--and in the months since I first saw him sitting on the tavern porch in Topham he had given me reason for both,--I continually wondered at his reckless nonchalance. As coolly as if he were in our village store, with a codfish swinging above the table, instead of a skeleton leaning against it, and with a boy's dart trembling in a beam, instead of an arrow thrust half through the wall--with just such a grand gesture as he had used to overawe the good people of Topham, he stepped to the door and brushed his hair back from his forehead. The diamond still flashed on his finger; his bearing was as impressive as ever. "Well, lads," he said,--and little as I liked him, his calmness was somehow reassuring,--"there _may_ be a hundred of 'em out there, but again there _may_ be only one. First of all, we'll need water. I'll fetch it." From a peg on the wall he took down a bucket and, returning to the door, stepped out. In the clearing, where the hot sun was shining, I could see no sign of life. Pausing on the doorstone, Gleazen shrugged his great shoulders and stretched himself and moved his fingers so that the diamond in his ring flashed a score of colors. He was a handsome man in his big, rakehell way; and in spite of all I knew against him, I could but admire his bravado as he turned from us. Boldly, deliberately, he stepped down into the grass, while we crowded in the door and watched him. After all, it seemed that there was really nothing to be afraid of. The rest of us were startled and angry when O'Hara suddenly called out, "Come back, you blithering fool! Come back! You don't know them, Neil; I say, you don't know them. Come back, I say!" With a scornful smile Gleazen turned again and airily waved his hand--I saw the diamond catch the sunlight as he did so. Then he gave a groan and dropped the bucket and cried out in pain and stumbled back over the threshold. With muskets we sprang to guard door and window. But outside the hut there was no living thing to be seen. There was not even wind enough to move the leaves of the trees, which hung motionless in the sunlight. It was as if we were in the midst of a nightmare from which shortly we should wake up. The whole ghastly incident seemed so utterly unreal! But when we looked at Gleazen, we knew that it was no mere nightmare. It was terrible reality. Blood was dripping from his left hand and running down on his shoe. Through his hand, half on one side of it, half on the other, was thrust an arrow. A second arrow had passed just under the skin of his leg. From the door I could see the bucket lying in the grass where he had dropped it; but except for a pair of parrots, which were flying from tree to tree, there still was no living thing in sight. The vine-hung walls of the forest, which reached out long tendrils and straggling clumps of undergrowth as if to seize upon and consume the space of open ground, stood tall and green and silent. The deep grass waved in the faintest of breezes. Above a single big rock the hot air swayed and trembled. Without even wincing, Gleazen drew the arrow from his hand and, refusing assistance, bound the wound himself. Turning from the door, Arnold went to the table and touched an arm of the skeleton, which fell toward the body and collapsed inside the sleeve with a low rattle. O'Hara raised his hand with an angry gesture. "I mean no irreverence," said Arnold. For a moment the two stood at gaze, then, letting his hand fall, O'Hara stepped over beside Arnold, and they lifted the bones, which for the most part fell together in the dead man's clothes, and laid them by the north wall. "And what," asked Matterson, curiously, "are you two doing now?" Without answering, Arnold coolly swept the stones on the table together between his hands into a more compact pile. "Hands off, my boy," said Gleazen, quietly. "Well?" Gleazen's words had brought a flush to Arnold's cheeks. He himself was nearly as old as Gleazen and was quick to resent the patronizing tone, and his very quietness was more threatening than the loudest bluster. "Hands off," Gleazen repeated; and raising his musket, he cocked it and tapped the muzzle on the opposite side of the table. "This says 'hands off,' too." He glanced around so that we could see that he meant us all. "Matterson, ain't there a sack somewhere hereabouts?" But for the blood on his shoe and the stained cloth round his hand, he gave no sign of having been wounded. From under the table Matterson picked up a bag such as might have been used for salt, but which was made of strong canvas and was grimy from much handling. "He was always a careful man," Gleazen remarked with a glance at the skeleton heaped up in the shadow of the wall. "I thought he would have provided a bag." Gleazen and Matterson then, with pains not to miss a single one, picked up the stones by handfuls and let them rattle into the bag like shot. "And now," said Gleazen, when the last one was in and the neck of the bag was tied, "once more: _hands off!_" Laying the bag beside the skeleton, he took his stand in front of it, with Matterson and O'Hara on his right and left. So far as the three of them were concerned, we might have been killed a dozen times over, had anyone seen fit to attack us. But Abe and I, all the time keeping one eye on the strange scene inside the cabin, had kept watch also for trouble from without, and all the time not a thing had stirred in the clearing. "What," Matterson again asked, still watching Arnold curiously, "what are you going to do now?" Tipping the table up on one side and wrenching off one of the boards that formed the top of it, Arnold placed it across a window, so that there was a slit at the bottom through which we could watch or shoot. "Now, there's an idea!" Gleazen exclaimed. But he never stirred from in front of the skeleton and the bag. "There are nails in the table," said Arnold. Matterson smiled, and taking the board in one hand, tapped a nail against the table to start it, and with the thumb and forefinger of the other hand drew it out as easily as if it had been stuck in putty. "For a hammer," he said lightly, "use the butt of a musket." "Look!" my uncle exclaimed: he was pointing at a good claw-hammer, which hung over the door. The hut fell far short of the duke's mansion that its luckless builder had promised O'Hara, but it had a window in each of three walls, and the door in the fourth, so that, by cutting a hole through the door, we were able, after we had barricaded the windows, to guard against surprise from any quarter without exposing ourselves to a chance shot; and as we had brought four muskets, we were able to give each sentry one well loaded. The silence deepened. The air was fairly alive with suspicion. When Uncle Seth nervously moistened his lips, we all heard him; and when he flushed and shifted his feet, the creaking of a board seemed harsh and loud. "Well," said Gleazen, slowly, "I'll stand in one watch and Matterson here will stand in the other. For the rest, suit yourselves." Another long, uncomfortable silence fell upon us. "Then," said Arnold, at last, "since no one else suggests an arrangement, I would suggest that Mr. Matterson, O'Hara, Mr. Upham, and I stand the first watch; that Mr. Gleazen, Joe Woods, and Abe Guptil stand second watch; and in order to put four men in each watch in turn, since we must have four to guard against surprise from any direction, I suggest that each man, turn and turn about, stands a double watch of eight hours. I myself will take the double watch first." "That is good as far as it goes," Matterson interposed in his light voice. "But a single watch of two hours, with the double watch of four, is long enough. A man grows sleepy sooner with his eye at a knothole than if he is walking the deck." Arnold nodded, "We agree to that," he replied. "Lads," said Gleazen, quite unexpectedly, "let's have an end of hard looks and hard words. Come, Joe,--come, Arnold,--don't take sides against us and good Seth Upham. We're all in this fix together, and, by heaven! unless we stand together and come out together, not one of us'll come out alive." The man now seemed so frank, and in the face of our common danger so genial, that, if I had not still felt the sting of the flattery by which he had deceived me so outrageously in the old days in Topham, I should have been convinced that he was sincere in every word he uttered. As it was, sincere or false, I knew that for the moment he was honest. However his attitude toward us might change when our troubles were past, for the time being we did share a common danger, and it was imperative that we stand together. But to speak of my poor uncle as if he were hand in glove with the three of them and on equal terms exasperated me. Seth Upham's face was drawn and anxious. It was plain that his spirit was broken, and I believed, when I looked at him, that never again would he make a show of standing up to the man who had virtually robbed him of all he possessed. "Sir," said Arnold Lamont, thoughtfully and with that quaint, almost indefinable touch of foreign accent, "that is true. We might say that we don't know what you mean by offering us a truce. We might pretend that we have always been, and always shall be, on the friendliest of terms with you. But we know, as well as you, that it is not so. Since we share a common danger and since our safety depends on our mutual loyalty, we, sir, agree to your offer. A truce it shall be while our danger lasts, and here's my hand that it will be an honest truce." It was easy to see that Gleazen and Matterson were not altogether pleased by his words. They would have liked, I think, to have us apprehend the situation less clearly. But there was nothing to do but make the best of matters; so Gleazen shook Arnold's hand, and we took an inventory of our provisions, which were quite too few to last through a siege of any length. "To-morrow night, surely we can run for it," said O'Hara. "To-night they'll watch us like hawks, but to-morrow night--" Plainly it was that for which we must wait. We divided our food into equal portions, each to serve for one meal,--the meals, we saw, were to be very few,--ate one portion on the spot and settled ourselves to watch and sleep. But before I fell asleep I heard something that still further enlightened me. "Now, why," asked Gleazen, sourly, as he faced the other two in the darkness, "couldn't _one_ of you ha' stayed with Bull, even if the other was fool enough to go a-wandering?" Matterson quietly smiled. "Bud, here, swore he'd never leave him." "We-e-ell," O'Hara drawled, irritably, "you was both of you too long gone and Bull was set in his ways. It was 'Step this side,' and 'Step that!' And 'Those stones are yourn and those are mine and those are for the company.' Says I at last, 'Them that you've laid out for me, I'll take to the coast. Keep the rest of them if you wish.' Says he, 'You'll leave me here to rot.' 'Not so,' says I. 'By hook or by crook Neil will get the vessel surely, and Molly will arrange the market surely, for they're good men and not to be turned lightly off. Do you clean the pocket, and build the house. Surely the pocket that has sent Neil home like a gentleman, and has sent Molly west like a man of business, will provide us at least the wherewithal to buy _one_ cargo. And with a cargo under our own hatches,' says I, 'four fortunes will soon be made.' 'Do you go,' says he, 'and I'll build a house like a duke's mansion to live in, and dig the pocket out and make friends with the niggers, which eventually we will catch, and four fortunes we will make.' So I come away, and you two surely would 'a' done the same if you'd been in my breeches instead of me; and then he went and built his house on the king's grave!" As I lay on the floor, not three feet from the skeleton and from the round bag of quartz-like stones, through half-closed eyes I saw against the door, beyond which the sun was shining with intense heat, the great black shadow that I knew was Matterson, with a musket across his knees; then, so exhausted was I, that I forgot the grim object within arm's length of where I lay, forgot our feud with Matterson and Gleazen and O'Hara, forgot every ominous event that had happened since the Adventure had set sail four days before and moved down the river toward the open sea, and, falling asleep, dreamed of someone whom, strangely, I could not forget. The sun had set and the moon was up when my turn came to go on guard. Taking Matterson's musket and his place by the open door where I could see all that went on without, but where no one outside could see me in the dark of the hut, I settled myself with my back against the jamb. In Matterson's motions as he handed me the musket and went over by the skeleton and lay down, there was the same lithe strength that he had revealed when he lifted himself to the taffrail and boarded the Adventure in Havana harbor. I marveled that he could endure so much with so little drain on his physical powers. "Watch sharply, Joe, there's a brave lad," he said in his light voice. As he crossed the hut and laid his great body on the floor, so slowly yet so lightly, I thought to myself that I had never seen a lazier man. What a power he might have been at sea or ashore, had he had but a tithe of Gleazen's bold effrontery! Although he had shown none of Gleazen's passionate recklessness, he had given no sign of fear under any circumstances that we had yet encountered. I wondered if it were not likely that the man's very quietness, the complete absence of such petulance as Gleazen sometimes showed, sprang from a deep, well-proved confidence in his own might. I was glad that it had fallen to me to guard the door rather than a window. Whereas from the windows one could see only a short space of rough open park and then the intermatted tangle of vines, from the door the vista ran far down the hill to the open glade where, hidden in deep grass, the spring lay. But though I sat with the musket beside me for hours, and though the moon rose higher and higher, revealing every tree and bush, in all my watch I did not see one thing astir outside the hut. I must repeat that we seemed to be living in a dream. We had seen no enemy, heard no enemy. For all the signs and sights that those walls of tangled creepers revealed to us, there might have been no human being within a hundred miles. Yet from behind those walls had come three arrows, and for the time being those three arrows locked us in the hut as fast as if they had been bolts and chains and padlocks. As I watched, I heard someone get up and walk around the hut; and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that it was my uncle. To my surprise he was talking in a low voice. Now what, I wondered, possessed him to stay awake when he might be sleeping. "I must be getting home," I heard him say as he came nearer; and his voice startled me because, although it spoke softly, it was the old sharp, domineering voice that I had known so long and so well in Topham; "I must be getting home. I don't know when I've stayed so late at the store." CHAPTER XXIII SORTIE Night and morning we got little rest. We ate another meal from our slender store; but it was a fearful thing to see how few meals remained; and though in part we satisfied our hunger, our thirst seemed more unendurable than ever. "Eat light and belt tight," O'Hara muttered. "Last night they was watching like cats at a rat-hole. To-night surely they'll not be so eager. It'll be to-night that we can make our dash to the river." Once more the sun was shining on the green, open space around the hut. A huge butterfly, blazing with gaudy tropical colors, fluttered out from some nook among the creepers where it had been hidden, and on slow wings sailed almost up to us, loitered a moment beside a blue flower, and again took flight through the still air to the opposite forest wall. "If Neil Gleazen had as much brains under his hair as he has hair to cover his head," Matterson softly remarked, "we'd have brought enough food so that we'd not have to go hungry." "Food!" Gleazen roared. "Food, is it? You eat like a hog, you glutton. And who was to know that Bull would not have a house full of food to feast us on? Who was to know that Bull would be dead?" At that a silence fell upon us. As usual, though we had agreed to a truce between our two parties, Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara sat on one side of the room, the side where the skeleton and the bag of pebbles lay, and Arnold, Abe and I sat on the other, with poor Uncle Seth wandering about at will between us. There was that in my uncle's manner which I could not understand; and as I watched him, Abe Guptil touched my elbow. "Something queer ails Seth Upham," he whispered. "I know it," I replied. "I don't like to see him act that way." "Nor I." Abe regarded me thoughtfully. "Now ain't it queer how things turn out?" he whispered. "I mind the day you come to my house and told me I'd got to flit. It was a bitter day for me, Joe, and yet do you know, I'd kind o' like to be back there, even if it was all to go through again. I swear, though, I'd never sail again with Mr. Gleazen." There was something so ingenuous in Abe's way of saying that he wished he had never come, that I smiled; but it touched me to remember all that Abe and I had faced together; and Abe himself, with keen Yankee shrewdness, added in an undertone, "It's all very well for O'Hara to talk of making our break to-night. I'm thinking, Joe, it is upon us a storm will break before we get free and clear of this camp." As the sun rose higher and higher, the sunlight steadily grew warmer. The air shimmered with heat, and the house itself became as hot, it seemed, as an oven over a charcoal fire. Sweat streamed from our faces and, having had no water now for nearly twenty-four hours, we suffered agonies of thirst. Never were men in a more utterly tantalizing predicament. Whether or not it was cooler outside the hut than within, it surely could have been no hotter; and from the door straight down the hill to the spring there led a broad, open path. The spring was only a short distance away, and there was, so far as we could see, not a living creature between us and cold water in abundance. Hour after hour the green, deep grass around it mocked us. Yet in the wattled hut, under the thatched roof, we were prisoners. Three arrows, shot by we knew not whom, every one of them now in our own hands, were the only warnings that we had received; but not a man of us dared disobey the message that those three arrows had brought. The day wore on, through the long and dreary watches of the morning, through the tortures of high noon, and through the less harsh afternoon hours. We ate another of our few remaining meals and watched the sun set and the darkness come swiftly. The shadows, growing longer and longer, reached out across the clearing to the trees on the opposite side; and suddenly, darkly, swept up the eastern wall of the forest. As the light vanished, night enfolded us. The stars that flashed into the sky only intensified the utter blackness of the woods. O'Hara uneasily stirred and stretched himself in the darkness like a dog. "Now, lads," he whispered, "now's the time to gather things together. At two in the morning we'll run for it. Then's the hour they'll be sleeping like so many black pigs." Gleazen moved and groaned,--it was almost the first time that he had yielded in the least to the pain of his wound. "Can you travel by yourself, Neil?" Matterson asked. "Or shall I carry you on my back?" When it came to me that the question was no joke, that Matterson actually meant it, I could not keep from staring at him in amazement. He was a tremendous man, but there was something honestly heroic in his offering to carry Cornelius Gleazen's weight back over all those miles. Gleazen smiled and shook his head. "Thanks, Mat," he replied, "but I'll make out to scramble along." The word "scramble," it seemed, caught Uncle Seth's attention, and with a curt nod, he said, "Yes, scramble them; use them any way but boiled. We can't sell cracked eggs in the store, but they're perfectly good to use at home." We all looked in amazement, and Gleazen, in spite of his pain, hoarsely laughed. "Why, Seth," he cried, "are you gone crazy?" My uncle stared blankly at him and continued to pace the room. In the silence that ensued, Gleazen's words seemed to echo and reëcho; though they were spoken quietly, even in jest, their significance was truly terrible. "Gentlemen," said Arnold Lamont in a very low voice, "Seth Upham, I fear, is not well. We must not let him stand guard. _We cannot trust him!_" "Name of heaven!" whispered Matterson, "the man's right. Upham is turning queer." As I watched my uncle, my mother's only brother, the last of all my kin, a choking rose in my throat. He did not see me at all. He saw none of us. In mind and spirit he was thousands of miles away from us. I started toward him, but when his eyes met mine dully and with no indication that he recognized me, I swallowed hard and turned back. Never was a night so long and ghastly! With all prepared for our dash to the river, with Uncle Seth wandering back and forth, and with the rest of us divided into three watches of two each, that overlapped by an hour, so that four men were always on guard, we watched and waited until midnight passed and the morning hours came. When the moon was at the zenith, O'Hara woke Matterson, and we gathered by the packs, which were made up and ready. "Poor Bull!" said O'Hara, brushing his hand across his eyes. "Sure, and I hate to leave him thus. If ever man deserved a decent burial, it's him." "If men got what they deserved," Gleazen briefly retorted, "Bull would never have drove the ship on the island, and we'd never have had to divide up this here find which Bull dug up for us, and Bull would never have had to stand by the hill to get himself killed, in the first place." Each man had tied up his own belongings to suit himself, and had put in his pocket his share of what little food was left. The different packs stood in the middle of the hut, but it was noticeable that, although each man was nearest his own, Matterson was eyeing Gleazen's with a show of keener interest. "Let me carry your bundle, Neil, you with a hole in your leg," he said. "No," Gleazen replied. "I'll never notice the weight of it." "Keep your hand off, Molly. I'll carry my own bundle." "As you please." Matterson turned away and stepped to one side. All this I noticed, at first, mainly, if the truth be known, because I saw how closely Arnold Lamont was noticing it, but later because the manner of the two men convinced me that Gleazen's pack held the bag that the others were so carefully guarding. Now that our food was almost gone, there remained so very little baggage of any kind for us to carry, that there was no good reason that I could see for not putting our odds and ends of clothing and ammunition into, say, two convenient bundles, at which we could take turns during our forced march to the river, or, indeed, for not abandoning the mere baggage altogether. But Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara had planned otherwise. Having allotted to each of us his share of the food that remained, and an equal seventh of our various common possessions, they kept three of the muskets themselves, and gave the fourth to poor Seth Upham, which seemed to me so mad an act that I was on the point of questioning its wisdom, when Arnold caught my eye and signaled me to be still. Gathering in the door of the hut, we looked out into the silent, moonlit glade that led down the hill and through the valley toward the distant river. "Are we all ready, lads?" Matterson asked in his light voice. "Push on, Molly, push on," Gleazen replied. Shouldering his pack, Matterson stepped out into the moonlight. "Now, then," he whispered,--for although we were confident that no enemy within earshot was then awake (it had not been hard for O'Hara to persuade us to his own way of thinking), a spell of silence and secrecy was upon us,--"it's straight for the river, lads, and the devil take the hindermost. If you're too lame to travel, Neil, so help me, I'll carry you." "Push on!" Gleazen returned hoarsely. "Push on to the spring. After that we'll talk if you wish." "We're going home," I thought. Home, indeed! It seemed that at last we had turned the corner; that at last we had passed the height of land and were on the point of racing down the long slope; that at last our troubles were over and done with. A score of figures to express it leaped into my mind. And first of all, best of all, at last we were to get water! Arnold said sharply, "Come, Abe; come, Joe; step along." Bending low, Matterson led the way, I followed close at his heels, and the others came in single file behind me. Seven dark figures, silently slipping from shadow to shadow, we left behind us the hut,--we believed forever!--and headed straight down the hill to the spring; for more than anything else we longed to plunge our faces into cold water and drink until we had quenched our burning thirst. Down the hill to the spring we went, slipping along in single file. All night and all day, without a word, we had endured agony; for it was by showing no sign of life whatever to those who were guarding the hut from the forest that we hoped so to lull their watchfulness that we could escape them just after midnight. And now we were eager almost beyond words for that water which we had so vividly imagined. As we darted into the tall grass, it seemed so completely assured that I swung my pack from my shoulder and broke into a quick trot after Matterson, whose long, swift strides, as he straightened up, had carried him on ahead of me. If a thousand people read this tale, not one of them, probably, will know the full meaning of the word thirst; not one will understand what water had come by then to mean to me. I ran--I tried to run faster--faster! But as I dragged my pack along, bumping at my knees, I was amazed to see Matterson stop. He threw his musket to his shoulder. The hollow boom of it went rolling off through the woodland and echoed slowly away into silence among the mighty trees. Then he threw his hands up, and with a cry fell into the grass, and lay so still that I could not tell where he had fallen. By the flash of his musket I and those behind me had for an instant seen by the spring a grotesque figure dressed in skins and rags, and painted with white rings and bars. When the flash died away, we could see nothing, not even the waving grasses and the black trees against the sky, because momentarily the sudden glare had blinded us. As if impelled by another will than mine, I drew back step by step until I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the others. Whatever quarrels we had had among ourselves were for the time forgotten. "Now, by heaven," Gleazen gasped, "it's back to the hut for all of us!" "But Neil--now, Neil, sure now we can't run away and leave old Molly," O'Hara cried. "Leave him?" Gleazen roared. "We've got to leave him! Where is he? Tell me if you can! Go find him if you like! Hark! See!" With a thin, windy whistle a spear came flying out of the night and passed just over Gleazen's shoulder and his pack. Another with a soft _chug_ struck into the ground at my feet; then, my eyes having once more become accustomed to the moonlight, I saw sneaking into the clearing a score of dark, slinking figures. "They're coming!" I cried. "They're cutting us off! Quick! Quick!" In panic I started back to the hut, with the others at my heels. When they saw the figures that I had seen, Gleazen and O'Hara both fired their muskets, whereupon the figures disappeared and we, deafened by the tremendous reports and blinded again by the bright flashes, ran back as hard as we could go to the hut that so short a time since we had eagerly abandoned; and with Gleazen limping in the rear, fairly threw ourselves across the threshold. Whether our gunfire had done any real damage, we gravely doubted; and now we were both a man and a weapon short. But bitterest of all, and by far the most discouraging, was our intense thirst. "Ah, the black devils," O'Hara muttered between grinding teeth. "Sure, and they planned all that--planned to let us get the water almost between our lips and then drive us back here. The black cowards, they dare not meet us man to man, though they are forty to our one." It was significant that no one spoke of Matterson. The silence as regarded his name marked a certain fatalism, which now possessed us--something akin to despair, yet not so ignoble as despair; something akin to resolution, yet not so praiseworthy as resolution. There seemed, indeed, nothing to say about him. Bull was dead, I thought, and Matterson was dead; and even if the blacks dared not rush upon us and take the hut by storm, they would soon kill us by thirst. We had done our best; if worst came to worst, we would die with our boots on. Meanwhile queer low cries out in the forest were rising little by little to shrill yells and hoots and cat-calls. If we could judge by the sounds, there were hundreds of blacks, if not thousands. "O Bull! You poor, deluded fool!" O'Hara cried. "Now why--why--_why_ did he go and build the house on a king's grave?" Why indeed? It was a fearful thing to hear those cries and yells; yet, although we watched from door and windows a long while, we did not actually see any further sign of danger, until Arnold Lamont, who was guarding the door, said in a subdued voice, "Look--down the hill--half-way down. Something has moved twice." As we gathered behind him, he turned and with a quick gesture said, "Do not leave the windows. Who knows what trick they may try upon us?" My uncle, who seemed for the moment to comprehend all that was going forward, and Abe Guptil and Gleazen, went back to the windows, although it was evident enough that their minds were not so much on their own duty as on whatever it was that had caught Arnold's attention. "See!" said Arnold. There was nothing down there now that seemed not to belong by nature to the place, and I surmised that Arnold had seen only some small animal. But that a black object, appearing and disappearing, had revealed more to the others than to me, I immediately apprehended. "It was fifty feet farther down the hill when I first distinguished it," said Arnold. O'Hara went over to my uncle and I heard him say, "Let me take your gun, since it's loaded, Mr. Upham, and thank you kindly." Returning, he sat down in the door beside Arnold, who had begun meanwhile to load the empty musket that O'Hara had carelessly laid aside. When the thing, whatever it was, moved again, O'Hara raised the gun to his shoulder. "Don't shoot!" Arnold whispered. "And why not?" The thing moved once more. "Will ye look, now! It's come ten feet in this direction," O'Hara whispered. Now Arnold raised his own musket. Again we saw the thing, but so briefly that neither Arnold nor O'Hara had time to fire. Suddenly O'Hara laid his hand on Arnold's shoulder and repeated Arnold's own words:-- "Don't shoot." "This time," Arnold whispered, "I shall shoot." "Wait a bit, wait a bit!" O'Hara gently pressed down the muzzle of the gun. Meanwhile, you must understand, the yelling and hooting had first grown loud and near, then had drawn slowly farther away. It was not easy to let that creature, be it animal or human, come crawling up the hill in the full light of the moon. As the cries died in the distance, the thing moved faster and with less concealment, and I fiercely whispered, "Shoot, Arnold, shoot!" "Wait," he replied and lifted a restraining hand. At the moment I could not understand why he did not do as I said; but as the thing came out into open ground, the same thought that had caused the two to hold their fire occurred likewise to me; and now we saw that we were right. The thing crawling up the hill was a man, and when the man came into the open clearing directly in front of our camp, we saw that it was Matterson. Without a word, followed closely by O'Hara, who laid his gun on the threshold, I leaped out past Arnold and ran down to Matterson and helped him to his feet and led him groaning up to the hut. [Illustration] VI FOR OUR VERY LIVES [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIV SPEARS IN THE DARK "O-o-oh!" he moaned. "They got me. It's a wonder they didn't kill me. But here I am along with old Neil Gleazen." "Where's your bundle?" Gleazen demanded. "Down in the grass by the spring." "Let me tell you, Matterson, it's good I carried my own." Matterson repressed another groan and made no answer. Blood was running from a great gash above his ear and across his cheek, which we hastened to bind to the best of our ability, and he lay down on the floor with his head on his hand. "I'm on the sick list," he said at last, "but I've had water, and if those black sons of hell have not poisoned the spring, I'll call it quits." Matterson's face was a ghastly sight, and already blood had reddened the strip of sacking round his head; but I believe there was not a man of us who would not have taken his wound to have got his chance at water. "If only we could catch a king," Gleazen remarked thoughtfully. "That's the way to end a war in Africa. Catch us a king and make peace on him." "That's one way surely to end a war," said O'Hara, darkly, "but not this war." "And why not this war?" "Because," said O'Hara, "Bull built the house on a king's grave. It's the _spirits_ that are offended." Gleazen laughed unkindly. "Aye, laugh," cried O'Hara, "that's all you know about spirits. Now I'll tell ye, believe me or not as it pleases ye, that the spirit of a nigger is a bad thing to cross. And care as little as ye please for jujus and fetishes and nigger gods, the times are coming when they'd serve you well if you'd not turned them off by laughing at them." "Spirits--" said my uncle in an undertone. "Hm! Hollands, Scotch, and Rye. We must lay in more Hollands, Sim; the stock's getting low. And while you are about it, we'd best take an inventory of our cordials." Gleazen fluently swore, and watched Seth Upham with a keen, appraising look. There was no doubt that in his own wandering mind my uncle was back again in his store in Topham. "I'm thirsty," he said suddenly. "I must get a drink of water. Now where's the bucket? Sim, where's the bucket?" As he fumbled along the wall, we stared at one another with eyes in which there was fear as well as horror. I swallowed hard. Poor, poor Uncle Seth, I thought. What was to become of him? And indeed, for the matter of that, of us all? By this time I had come to see clearly that poor Seth Upham was in no condition to stand up for his own rights, and that, whether or not he could stand up for his rights, he had no chance of getting them from that precious trio, his associates, without a stronger advocate than mere justice. They had promised unconditionally that half the profits of their mad voyage should be his, and by that promise alone they had so cruelly persuaded him to sell home and business and embark in their enterprise. Now, deceived, bullied, flouted, he bade fair to lose not only those gains which were rightfully his, but also his vessel, his stores, and every cent that he had ventured. If there was to be a copper penny saved for him, Arnold, Abe, and I must save it. Through the rough, less pleasant memories of his abrupt, sharp ways--and so often, even when he was in the abruptest and sharpest of moods he had betrayed unconsciously, even unwillingly, his thought of my future, for which he was building, as well as for his own--there came memories of old days, when he and my mother and I had lived so quietly and happily together in Topham. I started up, all at once awakened from my reveries, with Abe's dazed voice ringing in my ears. "Look! Look!" he cried. "Look there!" For the moment, in our horror at my uncle's condition, we had almost forgotten our danger from without. "Look!" Abe cried again. "In heaven's name look there!" We crowded shoulder to shoulder by the window where Abe had stationed himself and saw in the moonlit clearing a strange creature, which came dancing and rolling along from the edge of the forest. It was dressed in skins and rags. It was painted with big white rings and bars. Now it began to utter strange whines and squeals and whimpers, in an unearthly tone that it might have produced by blowing on a split quill. From the corner of my eye I saw that Matterson was biting his lip. At my side I felt O'Hara violently trembling. Out in the moonlight, where the swaying creepers cast dim, spectral shadows, the gibbering, murmuring creature was coming nearer. Its boldness was appalling. I had been brought up in a Christian country and given a Christian education, but even to me that clumsy, dancing wizard, with his unearthly squeals and cries, brought a superstitious fear so keen that I could scarcely control my wits. Small wonder that such tricks impose on credulous savages! "Watch, now!" Gleazen said quietly. He leveled a musket across the window-sill. "Spirits is it? I'll show them." "Don't shoot," O'Hara cried. "Don't shoot, Neil, don't shoot!" He reached past me toward Gleazen; but before he could lay hands on the gun, Gleazen fired. A spurt of flame shot from the muzzle, and as the report went thundering off into the forest the medicine man--wizard--devil--call him what you will--seemed curiously to wilt like a drought-killed plant, but more suddenly than ever plant wilted, and fell in a crumpled heap in the moonlight. "You fool!" O'Hara cried, "you cursed fool! First it was Bull that built the house on a king's grave and now it is you that's killed a devil!" "He's dead enough," Gleazen calmly replied. "Look!" Here and there, along the edge of the forest, men darted into the moonlight. They carried spears, which flashed now and then when the moon fell just so on the points. First they gathered by the body of the wizard and carried it back into the woods. We saw them, a little knot of men with the heavy weight of the fallen mummer in their midst, moving slowly to the wall of vines and through it into the mysterious depths beyond. Then, coming slowly out again, they moved back and forth before the hut as if to appraise our chances of defending it. Then they once more disappeared. All this time they had walked as if in a world of death. Although we had seen their every gesture, we had not heard a sound loud enough to rival the almost imperceptible drone of insects in the grass. But now we heard again that grimly familiar, haunting, wild cry. Three times we heard it, terribly mournful and prolonged; then we heard a voice wailing, "White man, I come 'peak: white man all go Dead Land." The voice died away, a few formless shrieks and yells followed it, and a silence, long and deep, settled upon the clearing. Once more Arnold, Abe, and I stood on one side of the hut, and Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara on the other, with poor Seth Upham wandering aimlessly between us. There was war within and without. There was almost no food. There was no water at all. I thought, then, that I should never see the town of Topham again; and--which oddly enough seemed even harder to endure--I thought that I never again should see the mission on the river. "I swear," O'Hara whispered,--so clearly did I hear the words, as I stood with one eye for the inside of the hut and one for the outside, that I jumped like a nervous girl,--"I swear we've started a war that will reach from here to Barbary before it's done. Hearken to that!" We heard afar off the throbbing of native drums, the roar of distant angry voices, a strange chant sung in some remote African encampment. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV CARDS AND CHESS Hunger and thirst were stripping away the last vestige of our pretended good-will, and our two parties glared at each other in a sullen rage, which seemed visibly to grow more intense, until it was the most natural thing in the world that Arnold should touch with the toe of his shoe a board that ran from one end of the hut to the other and divided the floor approximately into halves. "That side," he said, "is yours. This side is ours. You shall not cross that line. You shall guard the hut from that side; we, from this." Gleazen looked at Matterson, then at O'Hara, then both he and Matterson nodded grim assent. But although a board across the hut divided us into two hostile camps, we shared a peril so imminent and so overwhelming that we dared not for an instant relax our watchfulness toward our enemies in the forest. With one eye on our foes without and one on our foes within, we settled ourselves for another night, which I remember by the agonies of thirst that we endured; and with a certain grim confidence, shared by both parties in the hut, that neither would betray the other, since to do so would be to throw away its own one chance for life, we watched and waited for the dawn. And meanwhile we heard in the forest such a clamor and din as few white men have ever been so unlucky as to hear. First, we heard unseen people running about and furiously screaming; then, here and there through the trees and vines we caught glimpses of flaming torches, which they swung in great circles and again and again touched to the ground. I was convinced that it preluded an attack, and I screwed up my courage and fingered my pistols and tried not to show my fear; but in a brief lull I learned from something that O'Hara was saying to his companions that they were not preparing for an attack; they were mourning for the wizard whom Gleazen had killed, and with the flaming torches they were driving away evil spirits. Now far down the valley we caught glimpses of moving lights; and once in a while, through pauses in the nearer din, we heard a distant droning, by which we knew that the blacks of the countryside were converging upon us from the remotest districts, along their narrow trails, in thin streams like ants. Minute by minute the cries became more general, and rose to such a hideous intermingling of wails and shrieks as I should not have believed could issue from merely human throats. By its volume and extent the uproar was an appalling revelation of the number of those who had surrounded us, and I tell you that we seven men in that hut in the clearing were properly frightened. It seemed a miracle that they did not sweep over us in one great irresistible wave and bear us down and blot us out. Yet such was their superstitious fear of things they did not understand, that from the cover of our frail little hut our few firearms still held them at a distance. Never dreaming that their own power was infinitely superior to ours, attributing the death of their wizard to a witchcraft stronger than his own, they circled round and round us under cover of the forest and dared not come within gunshot. As day broke, and the sun rose like a ball of fire and blazed down on us and doubled the tortures that we had suffered in the night, we heard the drummers who had come to pound their drums by the body of the dead wizard. The drumming throbbed and rolled in waves; bells rang and hands clapped; and all the time there was shrieking and wailing and moaning. They drummed the stars down and the sun up, and when at noon there had been no respite from the din, which by then fairly tortured us, the other three, who had been talking together among themselves, called us to the board across the hut for conference. "Now, men," O'Hara began, "we'll make no foolish talk of being friends together; surely we and you know how much such talk is worth. But we and you know, surely, that if one party of us is killed, the others will be killed likewise; for we are too few to fight for our lives, even supposing as now that every man jack of us is alive and bustling. Is not that so? "Now, lads, there's a chance we can break through their line and run for the river while the niggers is praying and mourning over that corpse yonder." O'Hara stopped as if for us to reply, and I glanced at Arnold, who, meeting my glance, turned to Abe Guptil and thoughtfully said, "Shall we take that chance, Abe?" "Take any chance, is my feeling, Mr. Lamont. Chances are all too few." With a nod at O'Hara, Arnold replied, "We are agreed, I think. As you say, there is a chance. You three shall go first. We will follow." "It's a chance," O'Hara repeated, almost stubbornly. "We are in a mood for chances," Arnold returned. "But you three must go first." When O'Hara frowned, hesitated, and acceded, I wondered if he thought we were gullible enough to let them come behind us. Arnold was quietly smiling, but the others, as they gathered in the door, were grave indeed. There was not one of us who did not know in his heart that our hope was utterly forlorn. Only Arnold--time and again I marveled at him!--sustained that amazing equanimity. Gleazen shouldered his pack, but the others let theirs lie. "How about the rest of the baggage?" Arnold asked, as composedly as if he were setting out from the store in Topham upon a two days' journey. "Leave it to the devils and the ants," Matterson thickly retorted. Both he and Gleazen were lame from their wounds and must have suffered more than any of the rest of us. How they could face the long, forced march, I did not understand; for though hunger and thirst were my only troubles, my head swam when I moved quickly and my limbs were now very light, now heavier than so much lead. But Gleazen had long since shown his mettle, and Matterson, although he staggered when he walked, set his teeth as he leaned against the wall and waited to start. If the truth were told, we had no real hope of getting away; and immediately whatever desperate dreams we clung to were frustrated; for, as we appeared in front of the hut and weakly started down the hill, there came a sudden lull in the mad wailing over the dead wizard; black warriors appeared on all sides of us, and a line of them, like hornets streaming out of their nest, emerged from the forest and massed between us and the spring. "Come, men, it's back to the house," said O'Hara; and back we went, each party to its own side as before, but each turning to the others as if for what pitiful mutual reassurance there could be in such a situation. "There's war from here to the coast," Matterson muttered. "Such a war as never was before." The voice that issued from his dry throat was so thick and husky that I should never have known it for the light, effeminate voice of Matterson. "It's bad," said Gleazen, "but so help me, they'll be cleaning out old Parmenter and putting an end to the sniveling psalm-singers on this river. And then, lads! Ah, then'll be great times ahead, if once we get free and clear of this accursed hornets' nest." In the face of our desperate danger, the man was actually exultant. But I thought of the girl at the mission, and a dread filled my heart, so strong that the room went black and I sat down, literally too sick to stand. With never a word poor Uncle Seth was pacing back and forth across the hut. Of us all, he alone had the liberty of the entire place; but it was a tolerant, contemptuous liberty that the others gave him, and nothing else would have testified so vividly to the way he had fallen in their regard. It seemed incredible that this pale, gaunt, voiceless man, who suffered so much in silence, who without comment or remark let matters take their own course, who resented no indignity and aspired to no authority, could be that same Seth Upham who had made himself one of the leading men of our own Topham. And indeed it was not the same Seth Upham! Something was broken; something was lost. In my heart of hearts, I knew well enough what it was, but I could not bear to put the thought into words. No man in my place, who had a tender regard for old times and old associations, could have done so. There had been no life at all in our last attempt to leave the hut. We faced the future now in the listlessness of despair. Still the extraordinary situation continued unchanged. Apparently, so long as we remained in the hut, we were to be ignored. It seemed as if the black fiends must know how bitterly we were suffering as hour after hour the clamor of their mourning rose and fell; as if they were deliberately torturing us. When Matterson sat down on the floor with his back against the wall, and began to whittle out bits of wood from one of the legs of the table, I watched him with an inward passion that I made no effort to control. He, for one, was responsible for Seth Upham's sad plight, but with a heart as hard as the blade of his knife he calmly sat for hours whittling, and smiling over his work. All that day we heard the tumult in the forest; all that day the sun blazed down on the hut and doubled and trebled the tortures of our thirst; all that day Seth Upham paced the hut in silence; and from noon till late afternoon Matterson whittled at little sticks of wood. Piece by piece there grew before our eyes a set of chessmen. Rough and crude though the men were, they slowly took the familiar shapes of kings and queens and bishops and knights and pawns. When they were done, Matterson hunted through the pockets of the coat that the skeleton still wore, and found a carpenter's pencil, with which he blackened half the men. Then, grunting with pain as he moved, he drew a crude chessboard on the floor squarely in the middle of the hut. "Lamont," said he, "shall we play?" Arnold smiled. "I will play you a game," he said. And with that the two sat down by the board and tossed for white and set up the crudely carved men, and began perhaps the most extraordinary game of chess that ever two men played. [Illustration: _And with that the two sat down by the board ... and began perhaps the most extraordinary game of chess that ever two men played._] There was something admirable in their very bravado. While the rest of us watched the clearing, every man of us suffering from thirst and hunger, the tortures of the damned, those two, swaying sometimes from sheer weakness, played at chess as coolly as if it were one of the games that Arnold and Sim had played of old in my uncle's store at Topham; and although to this day I have never really mastered chess, I knew enough of it to perceive that it was no uneven battle that they fought. As the pawns and knights advanced, and the bishops deployed, and the queens came out into the board, the two players became more and more absorbed in their game, which seemed to take them out of themselves and to enable them to forget all that had happened and was happening. Indeed, it well-nigh hypnotized those of us who were only watching. The ghastly calm of the two, the fierceness with which they fixed their eyes on each move, the coolness with which they ignored the wild clamor, all helped to compose the rest of us, and by their example they made us ashamed of revealing to one another the fears we were struggling against. "Neil," said O'Hara suddenly,--his harsh, hoarse voice startled even the chess-players,--"shall we have a turn at cards? I do believe there's a wonderful solace in such hazards." "Cards!" Gleazen echoed. His own voice was stranger than O'Hara's. "We have no cards." From the pocket of the blue coat on the skeleton O'Hara drew out a dingy old pack, which a dead man's fingers had placed there. "Sure, and I know where to find them," he said. "Never did Bull travel without them." With that the two squatted on the floor, and shuffled the cards with a pleasant whir, and dealt and played and dealt again. It was as if our party had suddenly been transported back to Topham. Such nonchalance was almost beyond my understanding. Matterson, by his cool, bold defiance of danger, seemed to have aroused emulation in every one of us; and Gleazen, always reckless, now talked as lightly and gayly of the games as if it were a child's play to while away the dull hours of a holiday afternoon. For the time, abandoning the agreement that neither side should trespass on the other's half of the hut, Abe and I watched from window to window lest the blacks take us by surprise, and now and then we would see someone observing the hut from under the trees a long gunshot away. But although the wails and yells and moans and the constant drumming over the dead wizard never ceased, no man came from the cover of the vines into the clearing. Now Arnold precisely and clearly said, "Check." Matterson swore and snapped his fingers and moved. Again Arnold moved, and again he said, "Check!" Matterson bent over the board and frowned. After a long delay he moved once more. Instantly Arnold moved again and in his calm voice repeated, "Check!" Matterson looked up at him with a strange new respect in his eyes. "You win!" he cried with an oath. "You've done well. I didn't think you could. You _are_ a chess-player." "I have played a good deal," Arnold quietly replied. "You have played with better men than Sim Muzzy." "Yes." For a moment Arnold hesitated, then he added: "I have beaten at chess a great man. It was like to have cost me my sword and my head." "Your sword?" Matterson repeated slowly. "Your sword and your head?" There was a question in his voice, but Arnold did not answer it. Returning a curt, "Yes," as if regretting that he had said so much, he brushed Matterson's chessmen together, and looked out of the door and down the long slope at the tall green grass beside the spring, which seemed as far away from us as did our own well, thousands of miles away in Topham. And still Gleazen and O'Hara played on. Time and again we heard the whir of shuffling and the slap of cards flung on top of one another. Now the sun was setting. The swift twilight came upon us and faded into darkness, and the card-players also stopped their game. CHAPTER XXVI AN UNSEEN FOE All day Seth Upham had scarcely said a word. From dawn until dark he had paced the hut, apparently buried deep in thought. Only his gaunt, pitiful face revealed the extent to which he shared our tortures. Now for the first time in all that day, to our surprise, he spoke; and his first words confirmed every fear we had felt for him. "The boys ought not to make so much noise," he said. "I must speak to the constable about it." Matterson softly swore and shifted the bandage on his face. Gleazen significantly looked over at me. Abe Guptil stood with his mouth open and stared at Seth Upham. Never boys of a New England town made such an uproar as was going on outside. Those wails and yells and hideous drummings and trumpetings were African in every weird cadence and boisterous hoot and clang. Then, as if the first words had broken a way through his silence, Seth Upham began to talk in a low, hurried voice; and however reluctant we had hitherto been to believe that he was mad, there was no longer any hope for him at all. The man had lost his mind completely under the terrific strain that he had endured. Small wonder when you think of all that had happened: of how, for Cornelius Gleazen's mad project, he had thrown away a place of honor and assured comfort back in Topham; of how he had been driven deeper and still deeper into Gleazen's nefarious schemes by blackmail for we knew not what crimes that he had committed in his young-manhood; of how, even in that alliance of thieves, he had fallen from a place of authority to such a place that he got not even civil treatment; of how he had lost reputation, livelihood, money, and now even his vessel. "I declare, we must put in another constable," he muttered. "Johnson can't even keep the boys in order--In order, did you say? Who else should keep the place in order?--O Sim, if only you had wits to match your good intentions! How can you expect to keep books if you can't keep the stock in order?--" He stopped suddenly and faced the door. "Hark! Who called? I declare, I thought I was a lad again." Moment by moment, as he paced the hut, we watched his expression change with the mood of his delirium,--sometimes I have wondered if the fever of the tropics did not precipitate his strange frenzy,--and moment by moment his emotions seemed to become more intense. Now, pursuing that latest fancy, he talked about his boyhood and told how deeply he repented of the wicked life he had led as a young man; told us, all unwittingly, of unsuspected ambitions that had led him from wild ways into sober ones, and of his youthful determination to win a creditable place in the community; told us of the hard honest work that he had given to accomplish it. Now he revealed the pride he had taken in all that he had succeeded in doing and building, and--which touched me more than I can tell you--how he had counted on me, his only kinsman, to take his place and carry on his work. All this, you understand, not as if he were talking to us or to anyone else, but as if he were thinking out loud,--as indeed he was,--merely running over in his own mind the story of his life. Now he reverted again to his repentance for the wicked youth that he had lived. And now, suddenly, his manner of speaking changed, and from merely thinking aloud he burst out into wild accusation. "The dice are loaded," he cried,--his voice was hoarse and strained with the agonies that he, like all of us, had endured and was still enduring,--"the dice are loaded. I'll not play with loaded dice, Neil Gleazen!" At that Gleazen gasped out a queer whisper. But already Seth Upham's mind was racing away on another tack. "Aye, loaded with the blessed weight of salvation. Didn't my old mother, God bless her, teach me at her knee that a man's soul can never die? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name--" Staring at him in horror, we saw that he was not blasphemous. The words came reverently from his weak lips. He simply was mad. Suddenly in a high-pitched voice, he began to sing, "Low at Thy gracious feet I bend, My God, my everlasting friend." He sang three stanzas of the hymn in a way that appalled every one of those three men who of us all, I think, were least easily appalled--indeed, I think that for once they were more appalled than the rest of us; certainly none of them had Arnold's composure or Abe's obvious, almost overpowering sympathy for poor Seth Upham. Then he stopped and faced about with eyes strangely aflame. In his manner now there was all his old imperiousness and something more, an almost noble dignity, a commanding enthusiasm, which, whether it came from madness alone or whether it had always been in him, got respect even from Matterson and O'Hara. "I am going to meet my God face to face at the throne of Judgment," he cried. It was the first time in days that he had addressed us directly, and he spoke with a fierce intensity that amazed us; then, before we guessed what was in his disordered mind, before a man of us could stop him, he stepped outside the door and flung his arms straight out like a cross, and with his head thrown back marched, singing, into the darkness. "By Heaven!" Gleazen gasped, "he has set sail now for the port of Kingdom Come!" We who remained in the hut, where a spell of silence had fallen, could hear him strongly and clearly singing as he strode down the long, dark vista toward the spring:-- "Lo what a glorious sight appears To our believing eyes! The earth and seas are past away, And the old rolling skies!" It may seem strange to one who reads of that fearful night that we did not rush after him and drag him back. But at the time we were taken completely by surprise, literally stupefied by the extraordinary climax of our days and nights of suffering and anxiety; and even then, I think,--certainly I have later come to believe it,--we felt in our inmost hearts that it was kinder to let him go. He went down the hill, singing like an innocent child. His voice, which but a moment before had been pathetically weak, had now become all at once as clear as silver. And still the words came back from the tall grass by the spring, where creatures ten thousand times worse than any crawling son of the serpent of Eden lay in wait for him:-- "Attending angels shout for joy, And the bright armies sing, Mortals, behold the sacred feet; Of your descending King." Then the song quavered and died away, and there came back to us a queer choking cry; then the silence of the jungle, enigmatic, ominous, unfathomable, enfolded us all, and we sat for a long time with never a word between us. The wailing and drumming over the body of the dead wizard had suddenly and completely ceased. At what was coming next, not a man of us ventured to guess. Gleazen was first to break that ghastly silence. "They got him," he whispered. For once the man was awed. "No," said Arnold Lamont, very quietly, "they have not got him. Unless I am mistaken, his madness purged his soul of its black stains, and he went straight to the God whose name was on his lips when he died." Of that we never spoke again. Some thought one thing; some, another. We had no heart to argue it. Poor Uncle Seth! What he had done in his youth that brought him at last to that bitterly tragic end, perhaps no other besides Cornelius Gleazen really knew, and Cornelius Gleazen, be it said to his everlasting credit, never told. But for all that, I was to learn a certain story long afterward and far away. Not one man in hundreds of thousands pays such a penalty for blasphemous sins of his mature years; and whatever Seth Upham had done, however dark the memory, it had been a boy's fault, which he had so well lived down that, when Cornelius Gleazen came back to Topham, no one in the whole world, except those two, would have believed it of him. In that grim, threatening silence, which enfolded us like a thick, new blanket, we forgot our own quarrel; we almost forgot the very cause for which we had risked, and now bade fair to lose, our lives. We were six men, two of us wounded, three of us arrant desperadoes, but all of us at least white of skin, surrounded by a black horde that was able, if ever it knew its own power, to wipe us at one blow clean off the face of the earth. Now that the terrible thing which had just happened had broken down and done away with every thought of those trivial enmities that fed on such unworthy motives as desire for riches, our common danger bound us, in spite of every antagonism, closer together than brothers. By some strange power that cry which had come back to us when Seth Upham's song ended not only enforced a truce between our two parties, but so brought out the naked sincerity of each one of us, that we knew, each and all, without a spoken word, that for the time being we could trust one another. Gleazen, always reckless, was the first to break the silence. From the wall he took down a pewter mug, which the dead man they called Bull had hung there. Pretending to pour into it wine from an imaginary bottle, he looked across it at Arnold. "This is not the vintage I should choose for my toast," he said with a wry mouth, "but it must serve. Yes, Lamont, it must serve." He raised the mug high. "In half an hour we'll be six dead men. I drink--to the next one to go." Arnold coolly smiled. Pretending to raise a glass and clink it against the mug, he, too, went through the pantomime of drinking. I was not surprised that Abe Guptil was staring at them, his lips parted, or that his face was pale. Although drunk only in make-believe, it was a toast to make a man think twice. I drew a deep breath; I could only admire the coolness of the two. Yet now and then there flashed in Arnold's eye a hint of resourceful determination such as Gleazen probably never dreamed of, a hint of scorn for such theatrical trickery. We were all on our feet now, standing together in our silent truce, when we heard for the last time that sound, so unhappily familiar, the long-drawn wailing cry that, whenever the wizard spoke, had preceded and followed his harangue. Coming from the dark forest beyond the clearing, it brought home to us more vividly than ever the ominous silence that had ensued since Seth Upham fell by the spring. Then that familiar, accursed voice, faint but penetrating, came from the wall of vines:-- "White man, him go Dead Land! "White man, him go Dead Land! "White man, him go Dead Land!" [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVII THE FORT FALLS "Now, by the holy," O'Hara whimpered, "it's fight for our lives, or hand them away like so many maundy pennies." "Fight, is it?" Gleazen roared. And forgetting his stiff wounds, he sprang to his feet. "Load those guns! Name of heaven, be quick!" Why at this particular time the bawling voice of the native should thus have called us to action is not easy to say, for you would think that, having become familiar with it, we should have regarded it with proverbial contempt. But we knew that the deadlock could not last forever; Seth Upham's fate was all too vivid in our minds; and I really think that, in the strange voice itself, there was more than a hint of what was to follow. Forgotten now was the edict that one party should stay on one side of the hut, the other on the opposite side. Forgotten, even, was the bag of stones in Gleazen's pack. Armed with every weapon that the hut afforded, we stood behind door and window and saw a sight that appalled the bravest of us. Straight up the hill from the spring where they had killed Seth Upham there streamed a raging black horde. The rising moon shone on their spears and revealed the endless multitudes that came hard at the heels of the leaders. Their yells reverberated from wall to wall of the forest and even, it seemed to us, to the starry sky above them. As we fired on them, the streamers of flame from our guns darted into the night and the acrid smoke drifted back to us. But though they faltered, this time they came doggedly on. Already in the moonlight we could distinguish individuals; now we could see their contorted features alive with rage and vindictiveness. That they would take the hut by storm, there was not the slightest doubt; nor was there a ray of hope that we should survive its fall. It was a long, long way from Topham to that wattled hut in a clearing on the side of an African hill, and in more ways than one it was a far call from Higgleby's barn. But it was Higgleby's barn that I thought of then--Higgleby's barn in the pasture, with a light shining through a crack between the boards, and a boy scaling the wall under the window; Higgleby's barn in the dark, with tongues of flame running out from it through the grass. Truly, I thought in metaphor, which was rare for me, the fire that sprang up so long ago in Higgleby's barn had already killed Seth Upham, and now it was going to enfold and engulf us all. Then I thought of the mission on the river, and the girl whom I had seen first among the mangroves, then in the darkness on the mission porch. Did the war actually reach to the coast? And would the war wipe out "old Parmenter" as Gleazen had said? By heaven, I thought, it would not and it should not! All this, of course, takes far longer to tell, than it took to go coursing through my mind. In the time it took to think it out, not one black foot struck the ground; not one left the ground. Before that racing army of negroes had advanced another step, the answer had come to me; and now, no longer the boy who had climbed in idle curiosity the wall of Higgleby's barn, but a man to think and act, I cried from my dry throat:-- "Out of the back window, men! O'Hara, help me brace the door! Out of the window and over the hill!" With an oath Gleazen cried, "He's right! They're all coming on us up the hill! The back way's our only chance!" O'Hara, in spite of my call for help, led the way out of the back window; but Arnold paused to jam chairs and boards against the door; and Gleazen, ever reckless, stooped in the darkness and picked something up. As we sprang to the window, he came last of all, and I saw that he, the only one to think of it in that hour of desperate peril, was of a mind to bring his pack--the pack that had held the thing for which we had left our homes and crossed the seas. I saw Matterson clinging to brave Abe Guptil's shoulder, and striving desperately, with Abe's help, to keep pace with O'Hara, who in all this time had not got so much as a scratch. I saw the forest wherein lay our sole hope of safety, and terribly far off it seemed. Then I rolled out into the moonlight, and ran as if the devil were at my heels. Almost at once I heard Gleazen come tumbling after me, and gasp with a frightful oath that the pack had caught and he had left it. As we ran, we kept, as far as possible, the house between us and the blacks, and so intent were they on attacking our little citadel, that for a moment or two they overlooked our flight. We heard their cries as they battered down the door, their eager shouts, their sudden silence, and then the fierce yell of discovery when they saw us in the moonlight. It occurred to me then that, but for my poor uncle's death down by the spring, which had very likely caused them to break their circle and gather there in the open, we should not have had so easy a time of it when we fled over the hill behind the hut. Weak though we were, despair was a mighty stimulus and we ran desperately for the woods; but although we had got a fair start, the pack was now yelping in full cry on our trail. The pitiful futility of it all, I thought. Seth Upham was dead--the stones were lost--we ourselves were hunted for our lives! As I staggered after the others straight into the wall of almost impenetrable vines, I turned in the act of wriggling through it and let fly with my pistol. Compared with the muskets, the pistol made a dainty little spit of fire and sound, but it served to delay the foremost negroes, and with our scanty hopes a little brighter for their hesitation, I struggled on to come up with the others. It was well for us, after all, that O'Hara had taken the lead. Say what you will against him, the man knew the country. First, guided by the general lay of the land, he led us down the hill, through rocks and brush, straight to a stream where we drank and--warned by Arnold Lamont--fought against the temptation to drink more than a tiny fraction of what we desired. Revived by the plunge into water, we turned and followed O'Hara up the stream-bed, bending low so that no onlooker could see us, climbed a great precipitous hill down which the stream tumbled in noisy cascades that hid every sound of our flight, drank again, and kept on up into the rocks away from the water. Not daring to raise our heads above the dry bed of the rainy-season torrent along which we now hurried, we never once looked back down the slope up which we had toiled, panting and puffing and reeling; but behind us, far behind us now, we could hear the shrieks and yells of the disappointed savages, who, having outflanked the timber into which we disappeared, and having wasted many minutes in beating through it, a manoeuvre that their wholesome respect for our firearms had much delayed, had now come out on the brow of the rocky declivity leading down to the creek, and were losing much time, if we could judge by their clamor, in arguing which way we were likely to have gone. I wonder if the whole performance to which we owed our lives was not characteristic of the natives of the African coast? If therein did not lie just the difference between a people so easily led into slavery and a people that never, whatever their weaknesses have been, have yielded to their oppressors? It all happened long ago, and it was my only acquaintance with black warfare; but surely we could never thus have thrown American Indians off the scent. It seemed to me, then, that we had made good our escape and could run straight for the river, and in my enthusiasm I said as much. But Arnold and Abe Guptil shook their heads, and O'Hara significantly raised his hand. "Hark!" I listened, and realized that an undertone of sound, which I had heard without noticing it, as one hears a clock ticking, was the rumble of drums miles and miles away. While I listened, another drum far to the north took up the grim throbbing note, then another to the east. Then, mingling with the swelling voice of all the drums,--how many of them there were, or in how many villages, I had not the vaguest notion,--I heard human voices down the hill on our right, and after a time other voices down the hill on our left. I then knew that however stupid our pursuers might seem, to reach the river was no such easy task as I had hoped. For an hour we lay hidden among the rocks, with the world spread out before us in the moonlight. Here and there were small points of fire, which shone as if they were stars reflected on water,--we knew, of course, that there was no water, and that they must, therefore, be lights of village or camp,--and twice, at a distance of half a mile, men passed with torches. But for the most part we lay shoulder to shoulder, with only the moon and the twinkling points of light to awaken our meditations. I thought of Uncle Seth dead in the grass by the spring down to which he had gone so bravely. I thought of the hut in which, so far as we knew, still lay the skeleton and the bag of pebbles. And while I was thinking thus, I heard to the southeast the sound of gunshots. First came several almost together like a volley, then another and another, then two or three more, and after that, at intervals, still others. O'Hara looked first at the sky and then in the direction of the shooting. "They're attacking a trader's caravan," he said. "There'll be white men in it, surely. The thing for us to do, my lads, is to join up with them. They'll have food." "Aye, but how?" asked Gleazen. As if in answer to his question,--a terribly discouraging answer!--we heard, when we stopped to listen, coming up to us out of the night from every side, near and far, the throbbing of drums. "Aye, 'how?'" O'Hara repeated. "Can we not," I asked, "work down toward them and break through the blacks?" "The war has gone to the coast by now, and they are attacking all comers. But it's us they're keen on the trail of, all because Bull built his house on a king's grave and a blithering idiot killed a devil. 'Tis true, Joe. If we could work down toward them, come three o'clock in the morning, it might happen even as you say." There were no torches, now, to be seen; no voices were to be heard. There were only the fixed lights shining like stars and the steadily throbbing drums. Whether or not, back on our trail, the blacks were still hunting for us, we did not know; but by all signs that we could see, they were settling quietly down for the remainder of the night. "And if it don't happen like you say," O'Hara added as an afterthought, "we'll be nearer the river surely, and there may be hope for us yet." At that he looked at Gleazen and smiled, and Gleazen softly laughed and nudged Matterson, at which Matterson swore, because Gleazen's elbow had touched a wound. Then they all three looked at one another and laughed; and remembering the board in the centre of the hut and the law that neither side should trespass on the part allotted to the other, I heartily wished that we had another such board and another such law. We had agreed upon our truce under the stress of great danger. Take away that danger, I thought, and there would be nothing to keep the old coals of hate from springing into flame anew. Down from the hilltop we went, slowly picking our way among the boulders, to still another brawling stream at the foot. There we drank and waited and reconnoitred, and finally, convinced that we were in no immediate danger, pushed on after our guide, O'Hara. He first led us down the ravine and through a wild and wooded country; but within two miles the sound of drums, which had become louder and nearer, warned us of a village ahead, and, leaving the stream, we climbed a hill, passed through scattered patches of plantains and yams, from which we took such food as would dull the edge of our hunger, came down again into dense timber, worked our way through it, and emerged at last into an open space above a broad plain. And all this long way faithful Abe Guptil had half carried, half dragged the great body of Matterson, who fought hard to keep up with the rest of us and strove to regain the strength that his wound had taken from him, but who despite his bravest efforts, still was sadly weak. As well as we could judge by the interminable drumming, there were villages on our right and on our left and behind us. By the stars we estimated that it was still an hour before dawn, and by lights on the plain we guessed at the location of the camp of which we had come in search. We had already wandered so far from the road by which we had come to the mountain, that it seemed as if only a miracle could bring us back to the place on the river where we had left our boat; but in that respect O'Hara was no mean worker of miracles, for his years in Africa had given him an uncanny judgment of direction and distance. "Yonder will be the river," he said, pointing slightly to the left; "and yonder will surely be the camp where we heard guns firing. Below there'll be a road and the camp will be on the road. I know this place; I've been here before." With that he once more plunged down the steep declivity and through a growth of scrubby trees to a great prairie, where, even as he had said, a road ran in the direction that our journey led us. Fire not long since had burned over the meadow, and spears of grass from fifteen to twenty feet high had fallen across the road and tangled and twisted so that most of the time we had to bend almost double as we walked. But in that early morning hour there were no travelers on the road except occasional deer, which went dashing off through the grass; and it crossed many streams into which we plunged our hot faces. With water for our thirst and plantains for our hunger, we fared on, until, just as dawn was breaking, we came in sight of the red coals of a fire. O'Hara raised his hand and we stopped. "The niggers are ahead of us," he whispered. "Beyond the niggers will be the caravan surely, and beyond the caravan there'll be more niggers." "The question, then, my friends," said Arnold, slowly, "is whether to go round them and on alone, or to go through the blacks and take our chances on a friendly reception from whoever is camping just ahead." "That," said O'Hara, "is the question." "There's no doubt but they're traders," Gleazen muttered. "We'll have to fight before we reach the river. The more on our side, the merrier, I say, when it comes to fighting." By our silence we assented. Arnold raised his hand. "It is by surprise, gentlemen, or not at all. Are you ready?" Breathing hard, we pressed closer together. "Quickly, then! Together, and with speed!" Arnold's voice snapped out the orders as if we were a company of military. There was something so commanding, so martial, in his manner and carriage, yet something that fitted him so well and seemed so much a part of his old, calm, taciturn, wise way, that I felt a sudden new wonder at him, a feeling that, well though I thought I had known him, I never had known him. Then, brought all at once into action by the energy and force of his command, as was every one of the others, I started at the word as did they. Together we ran straight through the camp of sleeping blacks,--so strong was Matterson's spirit, so great his eagerness, that he now kept pace with us almost without help,--straight past the coals of their campfire, over the remnants of their evening meal, over their weapons and shields strewn in the road, and on toward their picket-line. As they woke behind us, bewildered, and groped to learn the cause of the sudden disorder, and realized what was happening, and started up with angry cries, we leaped, one after another, actually leaped, over a black sentry nodding at his post, over a frail barrier that they had thrown up to conceal their movements, and charged down upon a threatening stockade behind which lay the caravan. That the caravan kept better watch than their besiegers, we learned first of all; for even as we leaped the barricade and came racing down the road, a gun went off in our faces and a cry of warning called the defenders from their sleep. "Don't shoot!" O'Hara yelled. "We're white men! Don't shoot!" All now depended on the men of that caravan. Were they friends or foes, honest men or thieves, we had cast the dice, and on that throw our fate waited. I heard Gleazen bellowing in Spanish and Arnold Lamont calling in French; then up I came with Matterson and Abe to the crude, hasty rampart of mud and grass, and over I tumbled upon a man who cried out in amazement and raised his gun to strike me down, only to desist at the sight of my white face, which was no whiter than his own. Arnold was ahead of me; Gleazen and Matterson came in, almost at the same moment; then came Abe; and last of all, dumb with terror, O'Hara, who had tripped and fallen midway between the two barricades and had narrowly escaped perishing at the hands of the negro guards. In we came and about we turned, side by side with the strange whites, and when the hostile spearmen showed signs of rushing upon us, we gave them balls from musket and pistol to remember us by, and they faltered and drew back. But that the end was not yet in sight the thudding of their drums and the growing chorus of their angry yells unmistakably told us. "Ha! Dey t'ink dey git us yet," one of the strangers cried, hearing me speak to Arnold in English. "Dis one beeg war. Where he start, who know? Dey fight, how dey fight! Dey come down upon us--whee! Gun, spear--when we start we have feefty slave. Ten we loos' before war hit us so we know and hit back. Ha! Dis one beeg war!" "How far, tell me," gasped O'Hara, "has the fighting gone?" "Leesten!" The stranger lifted his hand. "Hear dem drum? One here--one dar--one five mile 'way--one ten mile 'way! Oh, ev'ywhere dem drum! Hear dem yell! How far dis war gone--dis war gone clean to Cuba! Dis one beeg war, by damn!" "Has the war," I cried, "reached the mission on the river?" "Ha! You t'ink you see dat meession, hey? Dat meession, he fall down long since time, I'll bet. One good t'ing dat war he do." If only I had never seen the girl by the river, I thought. If only I could have forgotten her! I turned away. Yet even then I would not have spared one iota of my brief memories of that girl with the strong, kind face and quiet voice. If I never saw her again, I still had something to hold fast. How many times, since Seth Upham went down to die by the spring, had I thought of that girl as one of the few people whom I should be glad to see again, and how many times had I wished that she did not think so ill of me! "Tell me, you man, where from you come?" the stranger now asked. "You come _pop_! So! Whee!" At that Gleazen spoke in Spanish, and the man turned like a cat taken unawares and looked at him with shrewd, keen eyes. Then Matterson came up to them and likewise began to talk in Spanish, and others crowded round them. Arnold, after listening for a moment, drew me to one side. "See," he murmured. Following his gesture, I looked around the camp and saw, in the middle of the clearing, thirty or forty cowering negroes bound fast by bamboo withes. Behind them and mingling with them were bullocks and sheep and goats. Moving restlessly about in the light of earliest morning were numbers of male and female slaves; and on every side were baled hides and bundles of merchandise: ivory, rice, beeswax, and even, it was whispered, gold. "I fear, my friend," Arnold said in an undertone, "that our hosts are more to the taste of Gleazen than of ourselves." "You have heard them talking," I whispered. "Tell me what they said." "Only," replied Arnold, "that _we_ have a ship and _they_ have a cargo; that it will be to our mutual advantage to join forces." I looked again at the captive negroes, and again thought of the girl at the mission and of the evil that she had attributed to me. "To join forces," I said,--and in my excitement I spoke aloud,--"in trading human beings? Not that!" The others turned. "What are you two talking about?" Matterson asked quickly in his light voice. "Of one thing and another," I replied, flushing. "Come," said Gleazen, boldly, "let us _all_ talk together." "Dis one beeg war!" the trader cried. "To fight--eet is all we can do. Fighting we go, da's what me, I say. See! Sun, he come up!" "To that," said Arnold, "we all agree. We, sir, will go with you and fight by your side." "Good! Me, I's happy. You brave men. Dis one beeg war, but we make plenty war back again." Then he cried out orders in Spanish, and the camp woke to the activities of the new day; and while some of us held off the blacks, the rest of us ate our morning meal in the first golden sunlight of the dawn, with a hum and bustle of packing and harnessing and herding going on around us. But all the time the drums beat, and far away we would hear now and then calls and shouts that made the strange trader and Gleazen and O'Hara exchange significant glances. As with loaded muskets we fell in to guard the caravan, and the porters lifted their bundles, and the herders goaded their beasts, and the captive negroes started hopelessly on the road to the river, and the sudden hush of voices made the trample of feet seem three times louder than before, we heard guns behind us. "Ha! Dose trade gun, hey?" the trader cried, and fell into Spanish. Wheeling his horse, he anxiously looked back along the road. One thing for which we had crossed the sea was lost in a hut overrun by an army of vengeful savages. There was no fortune left for us, I knew, unless it were a fortune gained by bartering human souls; and at that, which lay at the real bottom of all Neil Gleazen's schemes, my heart revolted. What chance should we have had of saving for Seth Upham his ship and what money was left, even if he had lived? Small chance, I admitted. All day we drove on in a forced march, leaving the war to all appearances far behind us and stopping only at noon, by a clear cold stream in the forest, to eat a hasty meal; and at nightfall, crossing another stretch of prairie, we came to still another forest. "Here," the trader cried, "here ees one fine leetle river! Here we camp one leetle while! Den we go--like fire--when midnight come, mebbe we see one beeg river!" That we, who had come the night before from the house on the king's grave, were ready to rest, I can assure you. Never in all my life have I been so heavy with weariness, nay, with downright exhaustion, as on that evening at the edge of that African forest. The very beasts were weary after the long day's march. The trader's horse hung its head. The bullocks and goats and sheep plodded on before their noisy herders and scarcely quickened their pace at thrust of goad or snap of whip. The captive negroes, wretched creatures doomed to the horrors of the infamous middle passage in the hold of some Cuban or Brazilian slave-ship, wearily dragged along, their chins out-thrust, their hands lashed behind them. The traders' own slaves, bending under the weight of hides and rice and ivory, stumbled as they walked, and even the white men themselves, who had done nothing more than ride or walk over the road, breathed hard and showed drawn faces as they eagerly pushed on or apprehensively looked back. Into the woods we pressed, thanking in our hearts the Divine Providence that here at least there was no throb of drum, no howling of black heathen, no war at all. The aisles between the great trees were cool and green and inviting. The river rippled over rocks and suggested by its music the luxury of bathing; fruits were to be had for the picking, and there was no doubt in my mind that our hosts would butcher a sheep for the evening meal. Water, food, and sleep at that moment seemed more desirable than all the dominions of Africa; and water, food, and sleep, I was confident, were but now at hand. Into the forest we marched, for once relaxing the watchfulness that we had maintained since sunrise, and down the trail to the creek that we could hear murmuring on its way over the rocks and through the underbrush. And there, at the end of our long day's journey, the bushes suddenly blossomed in flame. Guns boomed in our very faces. Up and down the creek fire flashed in long spurts. The wind brought to our nostrils the stinging smell of powder-smoke. Men and beasts were thrown into wild confusion. In the dim light of the forest I saw coming at us from all sides, naked men armed with trade guns and bows and spears and lances. Louder than the shouts and curses behind us, rang the exultant yells before us. CHAPTER XXVIII DOWN THE CURRENT When I was a boy in school, I one day ran across a translation of Homer's Iliad and carried it home and read it afternoons for a week. During those days I lived in the great pictures of the battles on the plains of Troy, and though afterwards I had seldom thought of them, they had never quite faded from my memory. It was far indeed from Homer's Iliad to an ambush in an African forest; but the fight that ensued when we walked into that hornets' nest of black warriors nevertheless brought Homer's story vividly to my mind. The spears, I think, suggested the resemblance; or perhaps the wild swiftness of the fight. First an arrow came whistling through the air and struck one of the men on the throat and went through his neck half the length of the shaft. He spun round, spattering me with dark blood that ran from a severed vein, and went down under the feet of the bullocks without a word. Then the bullocks turned, stampeded by the sight and smell of blood, and crowded back upon the sheep and goats, and the porters dropped their burdens and tried to run. O'Hara threw up his musket and shattered the skull of a huge black who came at him with a knife like the blade of a scythe, and, himself stooping to pick up the knife, grappled with another and died, shrieking, from a spear-thrust up under the ribs. Then one of the porters hurled a bundle at a man who was about to cut him down, and the bundle broke and a shower of yellow gold scattered in front of us, whereupon there was a short, fierce rush for plunder. Side by side with Arnold Lamont and Gleazen, emptying my pistol into the crowd, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the blacks were cutting their way into the heart of the caravan for slaves and booty. Imagine, if you can, that motley horde which had rushed upon us out of the wood. Some, naked except for loin cloths, brandished spears and howled like enraged maniacs; some, in queer quilted armor and helmets with ostrich plumes, clumsily wielded trade muskets; some advanced boldly under the cover of shields and others, ranging through the underbrush, kept up a desultory flight of arrows. It was primitive, unorganized, ferocious war. "_Mon dieu_, what a spectacle!" Arnold exclaimed; then, "Now, my friends, quick! To the left! While the thieves steal, we yet may escape!" Up from the mêlée, streaked with blood and dust, now came the trader. "All, all ees gone!" he wailed, and waved his arms and shrieked and stamped and cursed and jabbered on in Spanish. Had our enemies been content to delay their plundering until they had killed us all, not one of us would have escaped to tell the true story of that bloody day. But at the sight of a rich caravan and loose gold, the blacks, in the twinkling of an eye, were fighting among themselves. "Quick!" again cried Arnold's voice, strangely familiar in the midst of that grotesquely unreal uproar, and as amazingly precise as ever. "Quick, gentlemen! It is our only chance." And with that, he, Gleazen, Matterson, the trader, Abe, and I took to our heels into the bushes. The woods behind the line of the ambush appeared to be deserted. At the foot of a ravine ran the creek. We crossed it by a rude bridge of branches, hastily and silently climbed the opposite bank, and stole off quite unobserved. A hundred yards farther on, at the sound of a great thrash and clatter, we dove into the undergrowth and lay hidden while a band of blacks tore past us to the scene of battle. But getting hastily up as soon as they were out of sight, we resumed our headlong retreat. Every bush and tree darkly threatened us. Great rocks, deeply clothed in moss and tumbled so together as to form damp holes and caves, at once tempted us by their scores of hiding-places and filled us with apprehension lest natives might have hidden there before us. But as if we were playing the old game of follow-my-leader, we scrambled up and down, and in and out, and always hard ahead, until we again heard before us a rumble of voices and pounding feet, and a second time, desperately, flung ourselves into the undergrowth and lay all atremble while half a hundred naked negroes, armed with bows and clubs and spears, came trotting, single file, like wolves, and passed us not fifty feet away. As they disappeared, and while we still dared not move, I saw something stir not five English cubits from my face. I caught my breath and stared at the thing. Ten feet ahead of it; the leaves and ferns rustled, and twenty feet ahead of it then, twitching, it disappeared. I broke out from head to foot in sweat. Unwittingly, we had thrown ourselves down within hand's reach of a great serpent. Whether or not newly gorged, and so too sleepy to resent our nearness, it moved slowly away through the quivering undergrowth. When we had put a mile between ourselves and the plundered caravan, Matterson turned with an oath. "Poor Bud!" he said in his hard, light voice. "At least, we'll hear no more of jujus and devils and king's graves." Gleazen shrugged and turned to the trader. "How far is the river?" he asked. "Mebbe one mile--mebbe two." "Do you, sir, know the road?" Arnold asked. The trader nodded and spread his hands as if in despair. "Know heem? I know heem, yes! T'ree, ten, fifty time I come with slave and ivory and hide--now all gone! Forty prime slave all gone! Ev'ytheeng gone!" Gleazen grunted. "Let us go to the river," said Arnold. "Heem reever go by town," wailed the trader. "Heem beeg town! Walls so high and strong!" "Ah, that is another matter," said Arnold. "But let us go forward at all events. We may, for all that we can tell, strike the river below the town." So forward we went in the darkness, and a slow, tedious journey it was, particularly for Abe and me, who helped Matterson along as best we could; but we avoided the town by the sound of drumming that issued from behind its walls, and having helped ourselves to fruit from the patches of cultivated land that we passed, we at last emerged from the darkness of the woods into the half light of a great clearing, and saw a vast, black, living surface on which strange lights played unsteadily. It seemed unbelievable that it really could be the same river that we had left so long ago,--in the sense of all that had happened, so very long ago,--and yet I knew, as I watched Gleazen and Matterson, that it must be the same. The black, swift current recalled to my mind the toil that we had expended in coming so far to so little purpose. In which direction the creek lay that we had entered on our way to the ill-fated hut, I had not the remotest idea; but I looked a long time downstream toward the mission. Bearing around in a rough half-circle, we worked slowly down the bank, until the walls of the town itself were before us, at a safe distance. "Our boat," said Matterson, grimly, "is fifty miles away." "Wait here," said I. "There'll be canoes under the town. I'll get one." Gleazen made a motion as if to go himself, but Arnold shook his head. "No; let Joe go first. He will learn where the canoes are, and do it more quietly than we." They all sat down by the edge of the water, and, leaving them, I went on alone. It took all the courage I could muster; but having rashly offered, I would not hesitate. For one thing, it gave me time to think, and in a sense I desired to think, although in another sense it came to me that I was more afraid of my own thoughts than of all the walled towns in Africa. The living nightmare through which we had passed had left me worn in body and mind. That Uncle Seth, upon whom once I had placed every confidence, should have died so tragic a death, now brought me a fresh burst of sorrow, as if I realized it for the first time. It seemed to me that I could hear his sharp yet kindly voice speaking to me of little things in our life at Topham. I thought of one episode after another in those earlier days, some of them, things that had happened while my mother was alive; others, things that had happened after her death; all, things that I had almost forgotten long before. My poor uncle, I thought for the hundredth time--my poor, poor uncle! Then suddenly another thought came to me and I straightened up and stood well-nigh aghast. By the terms of my uncle's will, of which more than once he had told me, all that had been his was mine! The river silently swept down between its high banks, past me who stood where the waves licked at my feet, past the black walls of the town, which stood like a sentinel guarding the unknown fastnesses of the continent of Africa, past high hill and low gravel shoal and bottomless morass, past pawpaw and pine palm and mangrove, to the mission and the sea. There I stood, as still as a statue, until after a long time I remembered my errand and, like one just awakened, continued on my way. I found a score of canoes drawn up on the beach under the town, and very carefully placing paddles by one that was large enough for our entire party, I cautiously returned to the others and reported what I had done. Together we all slipped silently along the shore to the canoes, launched the one that I had chosen, and with a last glance up at the pointed roofs of the houses and the sharpened pickets of the stockade, silently paddled, all unobserved, out on the strong current and went flying down into the darkness. It had been one thing to row up stream against that current. It was quite another, and vastly easier, even though three of us were entirely ignorant of handling such a canoe, to paddle down the swift waters of midstream. Exerting always the greatest care to balance the ticklish wooden craft, which the blacks with their crude adzes had hewn out of a solid log, we sent it, even by our clumsy efforts, fairly flying past the trees ashore; and as it seemed that we had struck the river many miles below the creek where we had left our boat, we had hopes that the one night would bring us within striking distance of the open sea. Indeed, I found myself watching every point and bend, in hope that the mission lay just beyond it. Estimating that daylight was still two hours away, we drew in shore at Gleazen's suggestion, to raid a patch of yams or plantains. "A man," he said arrogantly, but with truth, "can't go forever on an empty stomach." Luckless venture that it was--no sooner did the canoe grate on the beach than a wakeful woman in a hut on the bank set up a squealing and squalling. As we put out again incontinently into the river, we heard, first behind us, then also ahead of us, the roll of those accursed native drums. To this very day I abhor the sound of drumming. It has a devilishly haunting note that I cannot escape; and small wonder. We swept on down the current, but now, here and there, the river-banks were alive with blacks, and always the booming of drums ran before us, to warn the country that we were coming. Once, as we passed a wooded point, a spear flew over our heads and went hissing into the water, and I was all for putting over to the other bank. But Arnold, who could use his eyes and ears as well as his head, cried, "No! Watch!" All at once, under the dark bank of the river, there was screaming and splashing and floundering. The torches that immediately flared up revealed what Arnold, and now the rest of us, expected to see, but they also revealed indistinctly another and more dreadful sight: on the shore, running back and forth in great excitement, were many men; but in the troubled water a negro was struggling in vain to escape from the toils of a huge serpent, which was wrapping itself round him and dragging him down into the river where it had been lying in wait. To me, even though I knew that that very negro had been watching for a chance to waylay us, the sight of the poor fellow's horrible death almost overcame me. Not so with Matterson and Gleazen. With a curse, Matterson cried, "There's one less of them now." His light voice filled me with loathing. And Gleazen softly laughed. On down the river we went, with flying paddles, and round a bend. But as we passed the bend, I looked back, and saw coming after us, first one canoe, then two, then six, then so many that I lost all count. How far we had come in that one night, I had little or no idea; but it was easy to see by the attitude of those who knew the river better than I, that the end of our journey was close at hand. Glancing round at our pursuers, Gleazen spoke in an undertone to Matterson, and both they and the trader studied the shore ahead of us. "A scant ten miles," Gleazen muttered; "only ten miles more." I felt the heavy dugout leap forward under the fierce pull of our paddles. The water turned away from the bow in foam, and we fairly outrode the current. But fast though we were, the war fleets behind us were faster. By the next bend they had gained a hundred yards, by the next, another hundred. We now led them by a scant quarter of a mile, and if Gleazen had estimated our distance rightly, they would have had us long before we could reach port. But suddenly, all unexpectedly, round the next bend, not half a mile away, the mission sprang into sight. There it stood, in the early morning sun, as clean and cool and still as if it were a thousand miles away from Africa and all its wars. "Give me your pistols," Arnold cried; and when we tossed them to him and in frantic haste resumed our paddling, he coolly renewed the priming and one by one fired them at our pursuers. That the negroes had a gun we then learned, for they retorted by a single shot; but the shot went wild and the arrows that followed it fell short, and our pistols cooled their eagerness. So we swept in to the landing by the mission, and beached the canoe, and ran up the long straight path to the mission house as fast as we could go, while the black canoemen paused in midstream and let their craft swing with the current. The place, as we came rushing up to it, was so quiet, so peaceful, so free from any faintest sign of the terrible days through which we had passed, that it seemed as if, after all, we had never left it; as if we were waking from a troubled sleep; as if we had spent a thousand years in the still, hazy heat of that very clearing. The face in the window, the opening door, only intensified that uncanny sense of familiarity. The door opened, and the man we had seen before met us. His eyes were stern and inhospitable. "What?" said he. "Must you bring your vile quarrels and vile wars to the very threshold of one whose whole duty here is to preach the word of God?" "Those," cried Arnold, angry in turn, but as always, precise in phrase and enunciation, "are hard words to cast at strangers who come to your gate in trouble." "Trouble, sir, of your own brewing," the missionary retorted. "What you have been up to, I do not know. Nor have I any wish to save your rascally necks from a fate you no doubt richly merit." "Your words are inclusive," I cried. "They certainly include you, young man. If you would not be judged by this company that you are keeping, you should think twice or three times before embarking with it." "Father!" said a low voice. My heart leaped, but I did not turn my head. Down the river, manned by warriors armed to the teeth, came more canoes of the war. Behind them were more,--and more,--and still more. "Come, come, you sniveling parson," Gleazen bellowed, "where are your guns? Where's your powder? Come, arm yourself!" The man turned on him with a look of scorn that no words of mine can properly describe. "You have brought your dirty quarrel to my door," he said in a grim, hard voice. "Now do you wish me to fight your battles for you?" Steadily, silently, the canoes were swinging inshore. I saw negroes running into the clearing. On my left I heard a cry so shrill and full of woe that it stood out, even amid the ungodly clamor of the blacks, and commanded my attention. The man stepped down from the porch. "This," he said, turning, "is a house of peace. I order you to leave it. I will go down and talk with these men myself." "You'll never come back alive!" Matterson cried, and hoarsely laughed. At that the missionary, John Parmenter, merely smiled, and, afraid of neither man nor devil, walked down toward the river and fell dead with a chance arrow through his heart. There was something truly magnificent in his cold courage, and Gleazen paid him almost involuntary tribute by crying, "There, by heaven, went a brave man!" But from the door of the house the girl suddenly ran out. Her face was deathly white and her voice shook, but as yet there were no tears in her eyes. "Father!" she cried, and ran down the path, where occasional arrows still fell, and bent over the dead man. "Come up, you little fool," Gleazen shouted. "Come back!" Then he jumped and swore, as an arrow with a longer flight than its fellows passed above his head. The canoes were drawing in upon the shore, very cautiously, deliberately, grimly, in a great half-moon, and more of them were arriving at every moment. I leaped from the porch and sped down beside the girl. "Come," I cried, "you--we--can do nothing for him." "Is it you?" she said. "You--I--go back!" "Come," I cried hoarsely. "Don't leave him here." I bent over and lifted the body, and staggering under its weight, carried it up into the house and laid it on the couch in the big front room. All this time the noise within and without the mission was deafening. The blacks on the river were howling with fury, and those ashore, who had not already fled to the woods, were wailing in grief and terror. Gleazen and Arnold Lamont had joined forces to organize a defense, the one raving at the arrant cowards who were fleeing from first sight of an enemy, while the other turned the place upside down in search of arms. And still the blacks on the river held off, probably for fear of firearms, though there were indications that as their numbers grew, they were screwing up their courage to decisive action. The girl, suddenly realizing the object of Arnold's search, said quietly, "There are no weapons." Arnold threw his hands out in a gesture of despair. "If you wish to leave," she coldly said, "there is a boat half a mile downstream. You can reach it by the path that leads from the chapel. No one will notice you if you hurry." "Then," I cried, "we'll go and you shall come with us." Gleazen spoke to the trader in Spanish. Abe Guptil was beside me now and Arnold behind me. We three, come what would, were united. A louder yell than any before attracted our attention, and Matterson, who stood where he could see out of the window, called, "They're coming! Run, Neil, run!" At that he turned and fled, with the others after him. I stopped and looked into the girl's gray eyes. "Come!" I cried, "in heaven's name, make haste!" I had clean forgotten that the dead man by whom the girl was standing was her father; but her next words, which were spoken from deepest despair, reminded me of it grimly. "I will not leave him," she said. "You must!" "I cannot." "What," said I, "would he himself have had you do?" Her determination faltered. "Come! You cannot do anything more for him! Come." She shook her head. "Then I shall stay," I said. "No," said she, and I saw that there was a change in her manner toward me. "You will go and I--I--" Then she whistled and cried, "Paul! Paul!" The great black Fantee servant whom I had seen with her in the canoe on that day when first we met, appeared suddenly. "Come," she said. I now saw that Arnold Lamont was running back to the door of the room. "Quick!" he called. "_Mon dieu_, be quick!" He stepped aside and let her go through the door first. CHAPTER XXIX THE FIGHT AT THE LANDING As we ran down the footpath, we heard them after us like hounds on the trail, and I tell you, it galled me to run from that cowardly pack. Oh, for one good fight, I thought! For a chance to avenge Seth Upham, who lay miles away beside the spring at the king's grave, to avenge the stern man who had fallen so bravely in front of the mission! For a chance to show the black curs that we would and could meet them, though the odds against us were a hundred to one! A chance to hold our own with them in defiance of their arms and numbers! The hot pride of youth burned in my cheeks, and I was actually tempted to turn on them there and then; but now I thought of something besides myself, of something besides Seth Upham's rights and my own: I thought of the girl who ran ahead of me so lithely and easily. Be the hazards what they might, be the shame of our retreat ever so great, she must not, while one of us lived, be left to that herd at our heels. So, running thus in headlong flight, out we came on the river bank. There was a boat on the river, made fast to a peg on the bank, and there was a long canoe drawn up in the bushes. But at a great distance, where a narrow channel led through the mangroves, we saw titanic waves rolling on the bar in shining cascades from which the sun was brightly reflected, and which, one after another, hurled ton upon ton of water into a welter of foaming whirlpools. And over the lifting crests of the surf we saw, standing offshore, the topsails of a brig. The prospect of riding that surf in any boat ever built gave me, I confess without shame, a miserably sick feeling; and as if that were not enough, in through the mangroves to the shore in front of us shot three canoes of the war, and cut us off from the river. Our time now had come to fight. With blacks behind us and blacks before us, we could no longer double and turn. The river, we knew, was alive with the canoes of the war. Already the black hornets were swarming through the woods and swamps around us. Three times now we had eluded them; this time we must fight. Our guns were lost and only pistols were left. No longer, as in that fatal hut on the king's grave,--in my heart I cursed the bull-headed stupidity of the man who built it and who had paid but a fraction of the price with his own life!--could we hold them at a distance by fear of firearms. Their frenzy by now brooked no such fear. To the brig, whose topsails we could descry miles off shore, we must win our way; there lay our only hope. I thought of the voice of the wizard--"White man him go Dead Land." Verily to the door of his Dead Land we had come; and it seemed now that we must surely follow Bull and Seth Upham and Bud O'Hara and many another over the threshold. "Men," said Arnold Lamont,--and his voice, calm, precise, cutting, brought us together,--"stones and clubs are not weapons to be despised in an encounter hand to hand." "Have into 'em, then!" Gleazen gasped. "All hands together!" "Mademoiselle," said Arnold, "keep close at our heels." The girl was beside me now. Her eyes were wide, but her lips were set with a courage that rose above fear. "Come," she cried, and set my heart beating faster than ever, if it were possible, "they're upon us from the rear!" Then she spoke to her great negro in a language that I had never heard, and came close behind us when we charged down on the blacks ahead. I fired my pistol and saw that the ball accounted for one of our enemies. I reeled from a glancing blow on the head, which knocked me to my knees; but, rising, I lifted a great rock on the end of a rope, which evidently the girl or her father had used for an anchor,--never negro tied that knot!--and swinging the huge weapon round my head, brought down one assailant with his shoulder and half his ribs broken. Now Arnold fired his pistol; now Matterson pitched, groaning, into the boat. Now, with my bare hand, I parried a spear-thrust and, again swinging my rock, killed a negro in his tracks. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the girl had shoved the canoe into the water. She was calling to us eagerly, but neither I nor the others could distinguish her words. As Gleazen, with an oath, cut the painter of the boat and leaped into her, the impulse of his jump carried her ten feet out from shore; and instantly thrusting out the oars, he started to row away with Matterson and desert us. "Come back, you yellow cur!" Arnold cried. The trader, who had fought industriously but to no great purpose, now ran down the bank and, flinging himself full length into the river, caught the stern of the boat, with outstretched fingers, and dragged himself into her, and at the same moment Abe Guptil, obviously with the intention of holding the boat until the rest of us should have a chance to embark, too, not of saving himself, fought his own way aboard and, in spite of violent efforts to lay hands on the oars, was carried, protesting, away. It is not to be thought that Gleazen had the remotest notion of saving _our_ lives. Having got rid of Arnold and me, he could, as he very well knew, do what he pleased with the brig when once he had silenced Gideon North. But although he had every desire not to help us, he in truth did help us in very spite of himself: no sooner did he appear to be getting safely out into the river, than the blacks, who had us all but at their mercy, suddenly bent every effort to keep him, too, from escaping. "Let them go! Let them go! Oh, will you not come this way?" It was the girl again. There was not a drop of cowardly blood in her veins. She, in the bow of the canoe and her big black servant in the stern, held the craft against the bank. Taking advantage of the momentary respite that we got while the enemy was putting after Gleazen, Arnold and I fairly trembling in our haste--Arnold missed his footing and plunged waist-deep into the river--climbed in after them. All this, which has taken a long time to tell, happened like so many cracks of the whip. Each event leaped sharply and suddenly at the heels of another, so that it was really but a few seconds--at all events less than a minute--after our arrival at the shore when we found ourselves gliding swiftly and noiselessly through a tiny channel among the mangroves, of which Gleazen had never dreamed. A turn of the paddle carried us out of sight of the struggle behind us, and it now appeared that, once out of sight, we were likewise out of mind. "Mademoiselle," said Arnold, with a manner at once so deferential and in itself so proud, that it puzzled me more than a little, "shall we not paddle? Permit me to take your place." "Thank you, no," she said. "It is not fitting--" he began. "I know the canoe, the river and the surf," she said. "It is _safer_ that I keep the paddle." And to my surprise, as well as Arnold's, she did keep it and handled it in a way that would have shamed our efforts had we been permitted to try. It was a strange thing in those days, when most women laced tightly, and fainted gracefully if ever occasion required, and played at croquet and battledore and shuttlecock, to see a slender girl swing a paddle with far more than a man's deftness and skill to make up for what she lacked of a man's strength. But though she appeared so slender, so frail, there was that in her bearing which told us that her life in that wild place had given her muscles of steel. The big Fantee, too, drove the long craft ahead with sure, powerful strokes; so we shot out of the mangroves, out of the mouth of the river, into the full glare of the sun. For a time the sails of the brig had grown small in the distance, but already we saw that she had come about and was standing in again. Why, I wondered, did Gideon North not anchor? Why should he indefinitely stand off and on? How long had he been beating back and forth, and how long would he continue to wait for us if we were not to come? We were long overdue at the meeting-place. "To think," I said, "that now we can go home to Topham!" "To Topham?" said Arnold. There was a question in his voice. "I should be surer of going home to Topham if we were rid of Gleazen. Also, my friend, we must ride that surf to the open sea." The negro in the stern of the canoe now spoke up in gutturals. "See!" Arnold cried. Looking back up the river, we saw Gleazen and Abe Guptil, whom we had outdistanced by our short cut, now rowing madly downstream. Big and heavy though the boat was, they rowed with the strength that precedes despair, and sent her ploughing through the river with a wake such as a cutter might have left. In the stern beside the trader lay Matterson; and though his face, we could see, was streaked with blood, he menaced the negroes upstream with a loaded pistol. Arrows flew, and then a long spear hurtled through the air and struck the bow of the boat. But for all that, they bade fair to get clean away, and none of them appeared aware that we had slipped ahead of them in the race for life. Now we in the canoe had come to the very edge of the surf, where the surge of the breakers swept past us in waves of foam. Beyond that surf was the open sea, the brig and safety. Behind it were more terrors than we had yet endured. For a moment the canoe hung motionless in the boiling surge; then, taking advantage of the outward flow and guided and driven by the hands of the great negro and the white, slender girl, she shot forward like a living creature, rose on the moving wall of an incoming wave, yielded and for a brief space drew back, then shot ahead once more and passed over the crest just before the wave curled and broke. I heard a cry from behind us and knew that the others had discovered us ahead of them. Turning, as we pitched on the heavy seas at a safe distance from the breakers, I watched them, too, row into the surf. I faintly heard Matterson's pistol spit, then I saw Gleazen drive the boat forward, saw her hesitate and swing round, lose way and go over as the next wave broke. Then we saw them swimming and heard their cries. As a mere matter of cold justice we should, I am convinced, have left that villainous pair, Matterson and Gleazen, to their fate. They had been ready enough to leave us to ours. Their whole career was sown with fraud, cruelty, brazen effrontery, and downright dishonesty. But even Arnold and I could scarcely have borne to do that, for the trader was guiltless enough according to his lights, and Abe Guptil was struggling with them in the water. The girl, turning and looking back when she heard their shouts, spoke to the great negro in his own language. The canoe came about. Again we paused, waiting for a lull. Then we shot back on the crest of a wave, back down upon the overturned boat, and within gunshot of the flotilla of canoes that were spreading to receive us. As we passed the wallowing boat I leaned out and caught Gleazen's hands and drew him up to the canoe. The negro cried a hoarse warning, and the canoe herself almost went over; but by as clever use of paddles as ever man achieved, the girl and the negro brought us up on an even keel, and Arnold and I lifted Gleazen aboard, half drowned, and gave a hand to Abe Guptil, who had made out to swim to the canoe. Of Matterson and the trader we saw no sign. Then Abe, himself but newly rescued, gave a lurch to starboard, and with a clutch at something just under water, was whipped, fiercely struggling to prevent it, clean overboard. We could neither stop nor turn; either would have been suicide. Would we or would we not, we went past him and left him, and drove on in the wash of the breaking waves down upon the grim line of canoes. To them we must have seemed a visitation. When I sit alone in the dark I can see again in memory, very clearly, that white girl, her eyes flashing, that great, black Fantee, his bared teeth thrust out between his thick lips. The long breakers were roaring as they swept across the bar and crashed at slow intervals behind us. In those seething waters the fiercest attack would have been futile; the very tigers of the sea must have lain just beyond the wash of the surf, as did the war. To one who has never seen a Fantee on his native coast, the story that I tell of that wild canoe-ride may seem incredible. It was an appalling, horrifying thing to those of us who were forced passively to endure it, who a dozen times were flung to the very brink of death. And yet every word is true. Though I could scarce draw breath, so swiftly did we escape one danger only to meet another, the big black, trained from childhood to face every peril of the coast, with the white girl paddling in the bow, brought the canoe through the surf and shipped no more than a bucket of water. And then that negro and that slim girl turned in the surge, as coolly as if there were no enemy within a thousand miles, and started back, out again through the surf, to the Adventure. Were we thus, I thought, to lose Abe Guptil, whom but now we had rescued--good old Abe Guptil, into whose home I had gone long since with the sad news that had forced him to embark with us on Gleazen's mad quest? The thunder of the seas was so loud that I could only wait--no words that I might utter could be heard a hand's-breadth away. For a moment the canoe hung motionless on the racing waters as a hummingbird hangs in the air, then she shot ahead; and up from the sea, directly in her path, came a tangle of bodies. Leaning out, Arnold and I laid hands on Abe and Matterson; and while the negro held the canoe in place, the girl herself reached back and caught that rascal of a trader by the hair. Now tons of water broke around us and the canoe half filled. Now the big negro, by the might of his single paddle, drove us forward. The wash of water caught us up and carried us on half a cable's length; the negro again fairly lifted us by his great strength; we went in safety over the crest of the next wave, then as we drew the last of the three into the canoe, we began to pitch in the heavy swell of the open sea. With our backs turned forever on the war, we paddled out to meet the brig. Our great quest had failed. We had left a trail of dead men, plundered goods, and a broken mission. But though all our hopes had gone wrong, though Gleazen had lost all that he sought, there was that in his face as he lay sick and miserable in the canoe which told me that he had other strings for his bow; and when I looked up at the brig, I vowed to myself that I would defend my own property with as much zeal as I would have defended my uncle's. "See!" Arnold whispered. "Yonder is a strange ship!" I saw the sail, but I thought little of it at the time. I had grown surprisingly in many ways, but to this very day I have not acquired Arnold Lamont's wonderful power to appraise seemingly insignificant events at their true value. I only thought of how glad I was to come at last to the shelter of the brig Adventure, how strangely glad I was to have brought off the girl from the mission. And when we came up under the side of the brig and saw honest Gideon North and all the others on deck looking down at us, the girl let her paddle slide into the water and bent her head on her hands and cried. VII THE LONG ROAD HOME [Illustration] CHAPTER XXX THE CRUISER Matterson, Gleazen and the trader, Arnold, Abe and I, and the white girl and her great black servant, all were crowded into a frail dugout, which must long since have foundered, but for the marvelous skill of the big Fantee canoeman and the sureness and steadiness with which the girl had wielded her paddle. And now the girl sat with her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she sobbed; and the big black, awed and frightened by the nearness and strangeness of the good Adventure, was looking up at the men who had crowded to the rail above him. As the brig came into the wind and lay beside the canoe, her yards sharply counter-braced, the long seas rose to the gunwale of our heavily laden and waterlogged little craft, and she slowly filled and settled. We should have perished there and then, within an arm's length of the solid planks that promised safety, had not Gideon North acted promptly. As the canoe settled and the water rose, I suddenly found myself swimming, and gave the bottom of the canoe a kick and plunged forward through the water to reach the girl and hold her up. At the same moment, indistinctly through the rush of the waves, I heard Captain North giving orders. Then I saw Abe beside me, swimming on the same errand, and heard someone spluttering and choking behind me; then I came up beside the girl and, seizing one slender wrist, drew her arm over my shoulder and swam slowly by the brig. There was no excitement or clamor. The canoe, having emerged half full of water from those vast breakers on the bar, yet having made out to ride the seas well enough until the girl and the negro stopped paddling, had then quietly submerged and left us all at once struggling in the ocean. Blocks creaked above us and oars splashed, and suddenly I felt the girl lifted from my shoulders; then I myself was dragged into a boat. Thus, after ten days on the continent of Africa, ten such days of suffering and danger that they were to live always as terrible nightmares in the memory of those of us who survived them, we came home to the swift vessel that had belonged to poor Seth Upham. To the story that we told, first one talking, then another, all of us excited and all of us, except Arnold Lamont, who never lost his calm precision and the girl who did not speak at all, fairly incoherent with emotion, Gideon North replied scarcely a word. "The black beasts!" Gleazen cried in a voice that shook with rage. "I'd give my last chance of salvation to send a broadside among them yonder." "Ah, that's no great price," Matterson murmured sourly. "I'd give more than that--many times more, my friend. Think you, Captain North, that a man of spirit would soon forget or forgive such a token as this?" And he pointed at the raw wound the spear had left on his face. Gleazen stepped close beside him. "Hm! It's sloughing," he said. "It's hot and it throbs like the devil," Matterson replied. Arnold also came over to Matterson and looked at the wound. "It needs attention," he commented. "It certainly is not healing as it should." Matterson raised his brows angrily. "Let it be," he returned. With a slight lift of his head, Arnold faced about and walked slowly away. As Matterson angrily glared from one of us to another, the group separated and, turning, I saw our guest standing silently apart. "Captain North," I said slowly, "this lady--" He did not wait for me to finish. "I beg your pardon, ma'am," he cried. "You shall have my own stateroom. I should have spoken before, but that sail troubles me." Thereupon others turned to study the sail, which was bearing down on us, although still some miles away; but I continued to watch the guest whose presence there in the Adventure seemed so strange as almost to savor of magic, as she tried to thank Gideon North. "Don't say a word," he cried. "Not a word! Remember this: I've a wife and daughters of my own, and I wish they were on board to make things comfortable for you. But all we can do, I'm afraid, is give you a chance to make yourself comfortable. Our cabin boy's gone. He went ashore with those damnable villains yonder and never came back." "A little boy?" she suddenly asked. "Aye." "A wicked little rascal?" A strangely roguish light flashed across her face and she smiled as if in spite of herself. Gideon North's chuckle grew into a wide grin. "Ma'am, that's Willie MacDougald to a T. But what do you know of him?" "He ran away from them, and came to us when they had gone up-river, and said that they were going to beat him, and told a terrible story of the wrongs he had suffered. But he could not abide our ways any more than we his,--such a time as he led us with his swearing and thieving and lying!--and when a boat from the American cruiser came ashore while you were gone, he told the men such a story of your search for slaves and of all your gear and goods, they vowed to capture you if they lay off the coast a year and a day, and they laughed at his wretched oaths and made much of him and took him on board. And then--then--" It seemed the thought of all that had happened since swept upon her in a wave almost as overwhelming as one of those breakers through which we had fought our way; for she suddenly turned white and tried to fight back her tears, and for the time could speak no more. "Come, Joe, look alive now!" Captain North roared, trying to mask his kind heart and lively emotions with a pretense of fierceness. "Fetch hot water from the galley to my stateroom! Have the cook bring aft hot coffee and a square meal. I'll take you below myself, ma'am, to show you the way, and I now order you to help yourself to all you need for comfort. Off with you, Joe!" All this time the cook had been gaping from the galley door at what had been going on aft; and so eager was he to get a nearer view of the young lady who had come mysteriously out with us from the river, and to gather up new threads of the extraordinary story Abe Guptil had told forward, that, although he was the laziest Yankee who ever commanded a galley stove, he set out at a dead run aft, with a coffee-pot in one hand and a pail of hot water, which at every moment threatened to spill and scald him, in the other. Captain North at once came on deck again and found the rest of us still intent on the approaching ship, which with all her canvas spread was bearing down upon us like a race-horse. The cook, on his way forward, paused to survey her. The watch, now glancing anxiously aft, now studying the stranger, was standing by for whatever orders should be forthcoming. "Sir," said Arnold, "she means trouble." "We've waited too long already," Captain North replied. Raising the trumpet he cried, "Call up all hands, there, Mr. Severance!" A moment later he looked keenly at Matterson. "Mr. Matterson," he said, "you are exhausted." "I _am_ a little peaked," Matterson said thoughtfully, "a little peaked, but not exhausted." "Will you take your station, sir?" "I will." Still in his wet clothes and cautiously touching his inflamed wound, Matterson went forward to the forecastle. There was something soldierly in his promptness. It was so evident that his strength was scarcely equal to his task, that for his hardihood, little as I liked him, I freely gave him credit. "Mr. Gleazen," said Captain North, "I am afraid we must show her our heels." "If I could lay my hands on the lean neck of William MacDougald," Gleazen growled, "I'd wring his head clean off." "She unquestionably is bearing down on us." "She is." "And she knows--" "She knows," cried Gleazen, "all that Willie MacDougald can tell her of casks and farina and shackles and lumber for extra decks." "And of false papers with which you so carefully provided yourself?" Gideon North's face all this time was as sober as a judge's, but now I saw that he was deliberately tormenting Gleazen with the various preparations the man had made for that unholy traffic in slaves. Although Gleazen himself by now perceived it, his wrath turned on our erstwhile cabin boy rather than on Gideon North. He swore vilely. "Aye," he cried, "we must run--run or hang. And all for the word of a prying, cursing, eavesdropping young rooster that I might have wrung the neck of, any day for months past. If ever I lay hands on his ape's throat--" "I gather, sir," Captain North dryly interposed, "you'll use him harshly." With that he turned his back on Gleazen and raised his trumpet:-- "Lay aloft and loose the main to'g'l'ants'l.--Man the to'g'lant sheets and halyards.--Some of you men, there, stand by the clewl'nes and braces." For a moment he stood, trumpet at lips, watching every motion of the men; then, as those on the yards loosened the sail, he thundered, "Let fall!--Lay in!--Sheet home!" Then, "Hoist away!--Belay the halyards!" As we crowded on sail, the brig leaned before the wind, and for a time we hoped that we were gaining on the stranger; but our hopes were soon dispelled. It seemed queer to run from our own countrymen, but run we did all that afternoon, through the bluest of blue seas, with white clouds flying overhead and low lands on the horizon. In another sense I could not help feeling that Gideon North himself showed quite too little anxiety about the outcome of the race. Yet, as time passed, even his face grew more serious, and all that afternoon, as we braced the yards and so made or shortened sail as best to maintain our speed at every change of wind, an anxious group watched from the quarter-deck of the Adventure the swift vessel that stood after us and slowly gained on us, with her canvas spread till she looked on the blue sea for all the world like a silver cloud racing in the blue sky. The nearer she came, the graver grew the faces about me; for, if the full penalty of the law was exacted, to be convicted as a slaver in those days was to be hanged, and in all the world there was no place where a vessel and her men were so sure to be suspected of slaving as in the very waters where we were then sailing. The track of vessels outward bound from America to Good Hope and the Far East ran in general from somewhere about the Cape Verde Islands to the southeastern coast of Brazil; that of vessels homeward bound, from Good Hope northwest past St. Helena and across the Equator. Thus the western coast of Africa formed, with those two lines that vessels followed, a rough triangle; and looking toward the apex, where the two converged, it served as the base. In that triangle of seas, as blue as sapphire and as clear, occurred horrors such as all human history elsewhere can scarcely equal. There a slaver would leave the lanes of commerce, run up to the coast one night, and be gone the next with a cargo of "ebony" under her hatches, to mingle with the ships inward or outward bound; and there the cruisers hunted. The faces of the crew were sober as the man-of-war, cracking on every stitch of canvas, came slowly up to us at the end of the afternoon. We all knew then that even to keep a safe lead until sunset, it would do us precious little good; for in a clear starlight night our pursuer could follow us almost as well as by day. Arnold Lamont was inscrutable; Gideon North was gravely silent; Matterson and Gleazen were angry and sullen; and the luckless trader, who had escaped from his ambushed caravan only to find himself in a doomed vessel, was yellow with fear. There was not a man, forward or aft, who did not know the incalculable stakes for which we were racing. Pedro with his monkey on and off his shoulder as he worked, Abe Guptil with his nervous, eager step, and all the others, each showing the strain after his own manner, leaped to the ropes at the word of command or fidgeted about the decks in the occasional moments of inaction. Of our passenger I had thought often and with ever keener anxiety. How the fast-approaching end of our race would affect her future I could only guess, and really I was more anxious for her than for myself. But from the moment she went below neither I nor any of the others saw sign or glimpse of her, until, just at sunset, I ran thither to fetch the leather-bound spyglass whose lower power and greater illumination lent itself best to night work. As I clattered down the companionway, I heard someone dart out of the cabin. But when I entered, the girl, as if she had been waiting to see who it was, came back again, so eager for news from above that she could no longer remain in hiding. "Tell me, sir," she said, lifting her head proudly, "has the cruiser overhauled us yet?" "Not yet," I replied. She stood as if waiting for whatever else I had to say; but my tongue for the moment was tied. "If they do?" she said as if to question me. "Heaven help us!" "Come," she cried with some asperity, "don't stand there staring like a gaby! Tell me everything. Have not I a right to know?" "If you wish," I replied, stung by the scorn in her voice. "The chances are that, if we are caught, some of us will hang. Which of us and how many, is a debatable question." She thought it over calmly. "That is probably true. I think, however, that I shall have something to say about which ones will hang." That was a phase of the matter which had not occurred to me. It gave me a good deal of relief, until I met her eyes regarding me still scornfully, and realized what an exhibition of myself I was making. I had been assertive enough hitherto, and I had not lacked confidence where females were concerned; I remembered well the one who so long before had come into my uncle's store in Topham, and how Arnold had smiled at the scorn that I had accorded her. But this young lady somehow was different. She had a fine, quiet dignity that seemed always to appraise me with cool precision. She had shown, once at least, a flash of humor that indicated how lightly, in less tragic circumstances, she could take light things. Now and then she had dealt a keen thrust that cut me by its truth. And yet she treated me kindly enough, too. She had seemed almost glad to have me at her side when we ran together from the mission. "Mistress--" I began; then stopped and clumsily stammered, "I--I don't know your name." "My name?" With the hint of a smile, but with that fine dignity which made me feel my awkwardness many times over, she said, "I am Faith Parmenter." Another pause followed, which embarrassed me still more; then, awkwardly, I reached for the night glass. Things were not happening at all as I had dreamed. "You're long enough finding that glass," Captain North growled when I handed it to him. "Aye, and red in the face, too." I was thankful indeed that the approach of the ship, which had sailed so swiftly as to overhaul even our Baltimore brig, gave him other things to think about. By now the race was almost over. I heard Gleazen talking of bail--of judges--of bribes. I saw the man Pedro twitching his fingers at his throat. I saw Arnold Lamont and Gideon North watching the stranger intently, minute after minute. Taking in our studding-sails and royals, we braced sharp by the wind with our head to westward. At that our pursuer, which had come up almost abreast of us but a mile away, followed our example, sail for sail and point for point, whereupon we hauled up our courses, took in topgallant sails and jib, and tacked. When the stranger followed our manoeuvre, but with the same sail that she had been carrying, she came near enough for us to see that her lower-deck ports were triced up. When we tacked offshore again, she hauled up her mizzen staysail and stood for us; and fifteen minutes later she hauled her jib down, braced her headsails to the mast, and rounded to about half a cable's length to the windward of us on our weather quarter. We had already heard the roll of drums beating the men to their stations, and now Captain North, his glass leveled at her in the half light, cried gloomily:-- "Aye, the tampions are out of her guns already!" "Ship ahoy!" came the deep hail. "What ship is that?" "Train your guns, Captain North!" Gleazen cried fiercely; "train your guns!" "Mr. Gleazen," Gideon North retorted, with a stern smile, "with one broadside she can blow us into splinters. Our shot would no more than rattle on her planks." "Ahoy there!" the deep voice roared, now angrily. "The brig Adventure from Boston, bound on a legitimate trading voyage to the Guinea coast," Captain North replied. "Where are you from?" To his question they returned no answer. The curt order that the speaking-trumpet sent out to us was:-- "Standby! We're sending a boat aboard." We were caught by a cruiser, and there was evidence below that would send us, guilty and guiltless alike, to the very gallows if the courts should impose on us the extreme penalty. Up to this point we had not been certain of the nationality of our pursuers. Too often flags were used to suit the purpose of the moment. But there was now no doubt that the uniforms in the boat were those of our own countrymen. With long, hasty strides, Gleazen crossed the deck to the captain. In his face defiance and despair were strangely mingled. He was nervously working his hands. "Quick now," he cried. "Haul down the flag, Captain North. Break out the red and yellow. Throw over the papers. Over with them, quick!" "I am not sure I wish to change my registry," Gideon North quietly returned. Gleazen swore furiously. "You'll hang with the rest of us," he cried. "I think, sir, that I can _prove my_ innocence." "The casks and shackles will knot the rope round your stiff neck. Aye, Captain North, you'll have a merry time of it, twitching your toes against the sunrise." In fury Gleazen spun on his heel. For once, as his teeth pulled shreds of skin from his lips, the man was stark white. We heard the creak of blocks as the ship lowered her boat, heard the splash of oars as the boat came forging toward us, saw in the stern the bright bars of a lieutenant's uniform. There was not one of us who did not feel keenly the suspense. So surely as the boat came aboard, just so surely would the searchers, primed for their task, no doubt, by that vengeful little wretch, MacDougald, find whatever damning evidence was stowed in the hold; and I was by no means certain that, in the cold light of open court, we who had fought against every suggestion of illegal traffic could prove our innocence. But to Gleazen and Matterson the boat promised more than search and seizure. Whether or not the rest of us effected our acquittal, for those two a long term in prison was the least that they could expect, and the alternative caused even Gleazen's nonchalance to fail him. It is one thing, and a very creditable thing, to face without fear the prospect of an honest death in a fair fight; it is quite another, calmly to anticipate hanging. Still Gleazen stood there in the fleeting twilight, opening and closing his hands in indecision. Still Captain North waited with folded arms, determined at any cost to have the truth and the truth only told on board his brig. The brig slowly rose, and fell, and rose, on the long seas. The men stood singly and in little groups, waiting, breathless with apprehension, for whatever was to happen. A cable's length away, the cruising man-of-war, her ports triced up, her guns run out and trained, rolled on the long seas in time with the brig. We had thought, when we escaped from the enfolding attack of the African war, that all danger was over. Now, it seemed, we must face a new danger, which menaced not only our lives, but our honor. The boat now lay bumping under the gangway. "Come, pass us a line!" the lieutenant cried. Suddenly Gleazen woke from his indecision. Stepping boldly to the rail, he called down in his big, gruff, assertive voice:-- "You men had better not come on board. Mind you, I've given you fair warning." "What's that you're saying?" "You better not come on board. We've got four cases of smallpox already, and two more that I think are coming down." The men in the boat instantly shoved off, and a dozen feet away sat talking in low voices. Obviously they were undecided what to do. To most of us Gleazen's cool, authoritative statement, that the most dread plague of the African coast, the terror alike of traders, cruisers, and slavers, had appeared among us--a downright lie--was so amazing that we scarcely knew what to make of it. I must confess that, little as I liked the means that he took, I was well pleased at the prospect of his gaining his end. But Gideon North, as he had been prompt to shatter at the start Gleazen's first attempt at fraud, promptly and unexpectedly thrust his oar into this one. "That, gentlemen, is not so," he called down to the boat. "We have as clean a bill of health as any ship in the service." "Come, come, now," cried the young officer. "What's all this?" "I'm telling you the truth, and I'm master of this brig." With his hands at his mouth Gleazen, half-pretending to whisper, called, "We're humoring him. He won't admit he has it. But what I've told you is God's honest truth." Captain North started as if about to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Folding his arms, he let the matter stand. I think he, as much as any of the rest of us, was relieved when the boat, after hesitating a long time, during which we suffered keenest anxiety, made about and returned to the ship. Still we dared not breathe easily, lest the commanding officer, refusing to accept his subordinate's report, order a search at all costs. But five minutes later it appeared that, whatever their suspicions may have been, they had no intention of running needless risks, for they came about and made off up the coast. Small wonder that they acted thus! The bravest of captains must have stopped three times to think before ordering his men to dare that terrible disease, the worst scourge of those seas, the terror alike of slavers and cruisers, on the bare word of such as Willie MacDougald that he would find contraband. I have often wondered whether Willie MacDougald was on board the ship, and whether he was responsible for the chase. In the light of all that I heard, I rather think he was, although none of us who searched the decks of the other vessel caught so much as a glimpse of him. But if so, it must have disappointed him deeply that his revenge failed to reach Cornelius Gleazen and Pedro's monkey; and seeing the monkey, which had eluded its owner and strayed aft, perched in the rigging and malevolently eyeing Gleazen himself, I laughed aloud. Then I saw that it was no time for laughing, for Gleazen and Gideon North were standing grimly face to face, and Arnold and Matterson and the trader were gathering close around them. Out of the rumble of angry voices, one came to me more distinctly than any of the others:-- "Mr. Gleazen, it is time that we settled this question once and for all. If you will come below with me, we can reach, I am sure, a decision that will be best for all of us in the Adventure." It was Captain North who spoke. As he moved toward the companionway, I saw that Arnold Lamont was beckoning to me. CHAPTER XXXI A PASSAGE AT ARMS Across the cabin table was spread the big, inaccurate chart of the west coast of Africa, on which Captain North had penciled the rat-infested island and the river. Seeing it now for the first time since he had returned to the brig, Gleazen planted one finger on the picture of the spot where we had found the wrecked ship with the bones of the drowned slaves still chained to her timbers. "Pfaw!" he growled. "If only _she_ was afloat! There was a ship for you! Given her at sea again, handsome and handy, two good men would never 'a' lost their lives. Given that she was not beyond repair, and we might yet kedge her off and plank her and caulk her and rig her anew." "She's done," said Matterson languidly. "Forget her." He laid his head on the table and closed his eyes. "Molly!" There was a new note of concern in Gleazen's voice. He leaned over and shook the man. "Let me be," said Matterson. "Gentlemen," Gideon North interposed, "we are dodging the issue." "Well?" Gleazen angrily raised his head. "There is no issue. We'll sail for the Rio Pongo, lay off and on till the first dark night, then take the cargo that a friend of ours will have ready. Thence, Captain North, we'll sail for Cuba. _I'll_ give the orders now, and _you'll_ carry them out." "How long," I cried hotly, "have you been giving orders on board this vessel?" He turned and glared at me. "If you want facts, Joe, I'll give them to you: I've been giving orders aboard this vessel from the day we sailed from Boston until now--aye, and seeing that they were obeyed, too, you young cub. But if you want fancies, such as are suitable for the young, I've owned the brig only since Seth Upham went mad and got himself killed." "You own the brig?" "Yes, I own the brig." "You lie!" That he merely laughed, enraged me more than if he had hit me. "You lie!" I repeated. "Next," said he, "you'll be telling me that Seth Upham owned her." "That I will, indeed, and it is a small part of what I'll be telling you." "Well, he didn't." The man's effrontery left me without words to retort. "He didn't," Gleazen said again. "Him and I went into this deal share alike. Half to him and half to me and my partners. Ain't he dead? Well, then I keep my half and Molly, here, who is all the partner I've got left now, gets the other half. Ain't that plain? Of course it is. It would be plain enough if we'd got clear with the fortune that was ours by rights. And because we lost the fortune, it's all the plainer that we ought to get something for our trouble." "But, Mr. Gleazen," Arnold interposed, "supposing there were a grain of truth in what you say,--which there isn't,--the rest of us, Joe and Abe and I, still have a sixth part in it all." "That," cried Matterson, bursting into the controversy before Gleazen could find words to meet this new argument, "that is stuff. The sixth part was to come out of Seth Upham's lay; and Seth Upham is dead, so he gets no lay. Therefore you get not a bit more than the wages you signed on for; and if you signed on for no wages, you get nothing." "I can promise you, Matterson," Gideon North said with a smile, "that nothing of that kind goes down under my command." "Then you're likely not to keep your command." The trader, glancing shrewdly from one to another, had edged over beside Gleazen, but now Arnold spoke, as ever, calmly and precisely:-- "Let all that go. About that we do not as yet care. It is a matter to be argued when the time comes. But--what will you take on board for a cargo at Rio Pongo?" As if Arnold's question implied permission for him also to have his say, the trader spread both hands in a gesture of despair at such ignorance as it manifested. "'What weel you get?' Ah, me--" "Yes, what will you get?" Arnold reiterated, quietly smiling at the irony of his question. "We'll get a cargo all right when we get there," Gleazen asserted. "We'll let it go at that. Captain North, bring the brig about on a course, say, of approximately west by north." He bent over the chart. "That will be about right. As for the wind--" "Captain North," said I, "you will do nothing of the kind. Unless we can get an honest cargo, you will head straight back to Boston and sell the Adventure for what she'll bring." "'What weel you get?'" the still amazed trader cried again. "You weel get--" "As for you, Joe,--" Gleazen momentarily drowned out the man's voice,--"you'll get into trouble if you're not careful." "For you, Mr. Gleazen, I don't care the snap of my finger. I'll have my property handled in the way I choose." For a moment Gleazen glared at me in angry silence, and in that moment, the trader found opportunity to finish his sentence, which he did with an air of such pleasure in the tidings he gave, and all the time so completely unconscious of the subtler undercurrents of our quarrel, that to an unprejudiced observer it would have been ludicrous in the extreme. "You weel get--_niggers_! Such prime, stout, strong niggers! It ees a pleasure always to buy niggers at Rio Pongo. Such barracoons! Such niggers!" Although for a long time we had very well known the hidden real object of Gleazen's return to Topham and of the mad quest on which he had led us, this was the first time that anyone had frankly put it into so many words. The anger and defiance with which our two parties eyed each other seemed moment by moment to grow more intense. "Well, there's no need to look so glum about it," said Gleazen at last. "Half the deacons in New England live on the proceeds of rum and notions, and they know well enough what trade their goods are sold in. You may talk all you will of the gospel; they take their dollars, when their ships come home. Your Englishman may talk of his cruisers on the coast and his laws that Parliament made for him; but when the bills come back on London for his Birmingham muskets and Liverpool lead and Manchester cotton, he don't cry bad money and turn 'em down. Why, then, should we? Where there's niggers, there'll be slaves. It's in the blood of them." "Be that as it may," I retorted, "not a slave shall board this vessel." "It appears," Gleazen slowly returned, "that this brig, which is a small craft at best, is not big enough for both of us." "Not if you think you can give yourself the airs of an owner." "Hear that, you! 'Airs of an owner!' Well, I am owner, I think--yes, I will give you a greater honor than you deserve." Suddenly he leaned over and roared at me, "Get down on your knees and apologize, or, so help me, I'll strike you dead on the spot." Quicker than a flash I reached out and slapped him on the face--and as I did so I remembered the time when O'Hara had slapped Seth Upham. With his hand half drawn back as if to seize a chair for a cudgel, he stopped, smiled, spun round and reached for the pair of swords on the bulkhead. Extending the two hilts, he smiled and said, "I shall take pleasure in running you through, my friend." "Not so fast!" It was Arnold who spoke. "I, sir, will take first a turn at the swords with you." "_In_ your turn, Mr. Lamont," Gleazen retorted with an exaggerated bow. "Meanwhile, if you please, you may act as second to Mr. Woods." "Come, enough of this nonsense," cried honest Gideon North, "or I'll clap you both into irons. Dueling aboard my vessel, indeed!" He looked appraisingly from one of us to the other. "I will fight him," I coolly replied. "You will, will you?" "I will." Soberly Gideon North looked me in the eye. Already Gleazen, Matterson, Arnold, and the others were moving toward the companionway. This happened, you must remember, in '27; dueling was not regarded then as it is now. "I am afraid, my boy, it will not be a fair fight." "It will be fair enough," I replied. Rising, Captain North brought out his medicine chest. I followed the others on deck, as if the little world in which I was moving were a world of unreality. All that I knew of swordsmanship, I had learned from Cornelius Gleazen himself; and though I felt that at the end of our lessons I had learned enough to give him a hard fight, it was quite another matter to cross swords that carried no buttons, and to believe that one of us was to die. There was only starlight on deck, and Captain North stepped briskly forward to Arnold and Matterson, who were standing together by a clear space that they had paced off. "Gentlemen," said he, "if they were to wait until morning--" "There would be more light, to be sure," Arnold returned, "but the disadvantage is common to both." Gleazen grumbled something far down in his throat, and I cried out that I would fight him then as well as any time. "If a couple of lanterns were slung from the rigging," Matterson suggested. He moved slowly and now and then touched the hot skin around his wound; but although it still troubled him, he appeared to be gaining strength. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when two men came running aft in response to Captain North's sharp order. Lanterns were lighted and slung, and Cornelius Gleazen and I, with sword in hand, faced each other across a length of clean white deck. It was a long way from friendly combat on the village green at Topham to the bout I now waited to begin, and both for Cornelius Gleazen and for myself the intervening months had piled up a formidable score to be settled. Waiting in silence for our seconds, Arnold and Matterson, to clear away some coiled ropes, we watched each other with a bitter hate that had been growing on his part, I am convinced, since the days when first he had seen me working in my uncle's store, and on mine, certainly, ever since I had become aware of the growing conviction that the friendship he had so loudly professed for me was absolutely insincere. He had cheated, robbed, browbeaten, and, to all practical ends, killed, my uncle. He stood there now, scheming by every means in his power to kill and rob me in my turn. And if he succeeded!--I thought of the girl to whom Gideon North had given up his stateroom. How much did she know of all that was going forward? There had been only one door between her and the quarrel in the cabin. And what fate would be left for her, if I should fall--if Gleazen should override Gideon North and Arnold Lamont? Truly, I thought, I must fight my best. "And, sir," I heard Arnold saying, "if you are able to bear arms after your bout with Mr. Woods, it is to be my turn and you shall so favor me." "That I will," Gleazen replied with a wry smile. I know truly, although I do not understand the reason for it, that after an unusually dramatic experience it is likely to be some trifling, irrelevant little thing that one remembers most vividly. And singularly enough it is a tiny patch on Arnold's coat that I now most clearly recall of all that happened then. I noticed it for the first time when Arnold was speaking; I do not remember that I ever noticed it again. Yet to this day I can see it as clearly as if I had only to turn my head to find it once more before my eyes, slightly darker than the body of the coat and sewed on with small neat stitches. Now Arnold was beside me. "Steady your blade, my boy," he said. "Fence lightly and cautiously." The two swords circled, flashing in the lantern-light, and we came on guard in a duel such as few men have fought. The rolling deck at best gave us unsteady footing. As the lantern swung, the shadows changed in a way that was most confusing. Now we were all but in darkness; now the light was fairly in our eyes. This, I thought, can never be the old Neil Gleazen with whom I used to fence. He was craftier, warier, more cautious now than I had ever seen him, and I took a lesson from him and restrained the impetuousness of the attack I should have launched had foils been our weapons. Now he lunged out like a flash, and all but came in past my guard. I instantly replied by a riposte, but failed to catch him napping. Again he lunged and yet again, and for the third time I succeeded in parrying, but all to no purpose so far as opening the way for a counter-attack was concerned. Now I saw the spectators only as black shadows standing just out of the range of my vision. With every sense I was alert to parry and lunge. Now it seemed very dark except for the light of the lanterns, although before we began to fence, the starlight had seemed uncommonly bright and clear. The whole world appeared to grow dark around me as I fought, until only Cornelius Gleazen was to be seen, as if in the heart of a light cloud. Now I all but eluded his guard. Now I drew blood from his arm--I was convinced of it. I pressed him closer and closer and got new confidence from seeing that he was breathing harder than I. For a moment,--it is a thing that happens when one has concentrated his whole attention on a certain object for so long a time that at last it inevitably wavers,--for a moment I was aware of those around me as well as of the man in front of me. I even heard their hard breathing, their whispered encouragement. I saw that Matterson was standing on my right, midway between me and Gleazen. I saw a sudden opening, and thrusting out my arm, drove my blade for it with all the speed and strength of my body. That thrust, too, drew blood; there was no doubt of it, for Gleazen gave a quick gasp and let his guard fall. Victory was mine; I had beaten him. My heart leaped, and lifting my sword-hand to turn off his blade, I attempted a reprise. I knew by the frantic jerk of Gleazen's guard that he was aware that I had beaten him. I was absolutely sure of myself. But when I attempted to spring back and launch the doubled attack something held my foot. I gave a quick jerk,--_literally my foot was held_,--I lost my balance and all but went over. Then I felt a burning in the back of my shoulder and sat down on deck with the feeling that the lanterns were now expanding into strange wide circles of light, now concentrating into tiny coals of fire. First I knew that Gideon North was bending over me with his medicine chest; then I took a big swallow of brandy and had hard work to keep from choking over it; then I felt cool hands, so firm and small that I knew they could belong to only one person in the Adventure; then I saw Arnold Lamont, sword in hand, facing Cornelius Gleazen. Now why, I wondered, had I been unable to withdraw my foot. Matterson had been all but in my way. He must have thrust out his own foot! "Arnold," I cried incoherently, "beware of Matterson! He tripped me!" Arnold looked down at me and smiled and nodded. "Sir," I heard him saying, as if miles away, "you have beaten a man years younger than yourself by a foul and treacherous trick. I shall kill you." "Kill me?" Gleazen arrogantly roared. "It would take a swordsman to do it." To that Arnold replied in a foreign tongue, which even then I knew must be Spanish. I was no competent witness of what was taking place; but cloudy though my mind was, I did not fail to see that Arnold's taunt struck home, for both Gleazen and Matterson angrily swore. "In Spanish, eh?" Gleazen sneered. "So this is the leaky spigot! No more tales, my fine fellow, shall trickle out through your round mouth, once I have measured your vitals with cold steel." Into my spinning brain there now came a sudden memory of my bout with Arnold long, long ago, when I had gone at him just as arrogantly as ever Neil Gleazen was doing now. I tried to cry out again and could not. I laughed, which was all my strength permitted, and wearily leaned back, and through eyes that would almost close in spite of me, saw Arnold advance under the swinging lantern so swiftly that his sword was like a beam of light flashed by a mirror. His blade sped through Gleazen's guard: Gleazen dropped his sword, staggered, and fell with a crash. I heard Arnold say, "Sir, I am more clumsy than I knew. The rolling deck has saved your miserable life, since I cannot kill a wounded man. But if my hand were in practice, no ship that ever rolled would have turned that thrust." Then a great uproar ensued, and I knew nothing more until I opened my eyes in the cabin, where a hot argument was evidently in progress, since oaths were bandied back and forth and there were hard words on all sides. "As representatives of Josiah Woods, who owns this brig," I heard Arnold say, "Gideon North and I will not permit you, sir, or any other man, to ship such a cargo." The reply I did not understand, but I again heard Arnold's voice, hot with anger. "We will _not_ sail again to that den of pirates and slavers and the iniquitous of all the nations of the world, Havana. If you do not wish to go to Boston,--" he hesitated,--"we will use you better than you deserve. For a profitable voyage, we might compromise, say, on South America." Of what followed I have no memory, for I was weaker than I realized, from loss of blood. The cabin went white before my eyes. The voices all dwindled away to remote threads of sound. I seemed to feel myself sway with the motion of the ship, and opened my eyes again and saw that I was being carried. Then I once more felt cool hands on my forehead, and leaning back, seemed to sink into endless space. I forgot Topham and all that had happened there; I forgot Africa and every event of our ill-fated venture; I even forgot the brig and the duel, and I almost forgot my own identity. But as I existed in a sort of dream-land or fairyland somewhere between waking and sleeping, I did not forget the girl who had come with me out of Africa; and even when I could not remember my own name, I would find myself struggling in a curiously detached way to connect the name Faith, which persisted in my memory, with a personality that likewise persisted, yet that seemed a thing apart from all the world and not even to be given a name. CHAPTER XXXII WESTWARD BOUND At the time I did not know whether it was two days or ten that I lay in that borderland of consciousness. But as I emerged from it into a clearer, more real world, I saw now the girl, now Arnold, now Gideon North, passing before me and sometimes pausing by my berth. One day I found myself eating broth that someone was feeding to me. The next, I saw that the girl was my nurse. The next, I asked questions, but so weakly that I could no more than murmur a faint protest when she smiled and turned away without answering. So it went until a time when my voice was stronger and I would not be put off again. Seizing her sleeve and feebly holding it, I cried as stoutly as I was able, "Tell me--tell me where we are and all that has happened." What she saw through the open port, I could only guess; if it was possible to judge by her face, she saw more than mere sea and sky, with perhaps a wandering sea bird; but she turned and quietly said, "We are at sea, now, and all is going well, and when you are stronger, I'll tell you more." "Tell me now!" I demanded. I would have said more, but I felt that my voice was failing and I did not wish her to perceive it. She hesitated, then impulsively turned. "Just this: you are getting well fast, and he is getting well slowly. We have gone from the coast and the Gulf of Guinea, and are off for South America." Then she went away and left me, and I was troubled by the sadness of her face, although she had had enough, heaven knew! to make her sad. "So," I thought, "we have really abandoned the trade at last! And so Arnold brought down Gleazen! And what of the trader and Pedro? And what are our prospects of profit from a voyage to South America? And what of Seth Upham and--" Then it all came back to me, a thousand memories bursting all at once upon my bewildered brain, and I lived again those days from the hour when I first saw Neil Gleazen on the porch of the inn, through the mad night when we left Topham behind us, through the terrible seasickness of my first voyage, through the sinister adventure in Havana, through all the uncanny warnings of those African witch doctors, up to the very hour when Seth Upham threw wide his arms and went, singing, down to die by the spring. I remembered our wild flight, the battle in the forest, the race down the river, the fall of the mission, and again our flight,--the girl was with us now!--the affair of the cruiser, the quarrel, the duel, and the voices that I heard as I lay on deck. Then I came to a black hiatus. Memory carried me no further and I wearily closed my eyes, having no strength to keep them open longer. Next I knew that good Gideon North was standing over me, his hand on my pulse; there was a sharp throbbing pain in my shoulder where Gleazen's sword had struck home; I was vaguely aware that the girl was sobbing. Now why, I thought, should anything trouble her? It was not as if she, like me, had come up against a wall that she could not pass. I seemed actually to throw myself at that black rigid barrier which cut me off from every event that followed and--my delirious metaphors were sadly mixed--left me balanced precariously on a tenuous column of memories that came to an end high up in a dark open place, like the truck of a ship in a black, stormy night. I heard Gideon North speaking of fever and my wound; then the picture changed and the girl alone was sitting beside me. She was singing in a low voice, and the song soothed me. I did not try to follow the words; I simply let the tune lead me whither it would. Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke my memory had succeeded in passing the barrier that before had balked every effort. Now I remembered things that had happened while I lay in my berth in my stateroom. I put together things that had happened before and after my duel. It was as if I reached out from my frail mast of memories and found accustomed ropes and knew that I could go elsewhere at will. I felt a sudden new confidence in my power to think and speak, and when the girl once more appeared, I cried out eagerly, even strongly, "Now I know what, who, and where I am." At my words she stepped quickly forward and laid her hand on my forehead. The fever had gone. With a little cry she turned, and I heard her say to someone in the cabin, "His face is as cool as my own!" In came Gideon North, then, and in the door appeared Arnold. "Bless me, boy!" Captain North cried, "you're on the mend at last." "I think I am," I returned. "What happened to me?" "Happened to you? A touch of African fever, my lad, on top of a dastardly stab." "Where's Neil Gleazen?" I cried. "Oh, he's getting along better than he deserves. Our friend Lamont, here, spitted him delicately; but he escaped the fever and has had an easier time of it by far than you, my lad." He once more counted my pulse. "Fine," he said in his heartiest voice, "fine enough. Now turn over and rest." "But I've been resting for days and days," I protested. "I want to talk now and hear all the news." "Not now, Joe. Well go away and leave you now. But I'll have cook wring the neck of another chicken and give your nurse, here, the meat. She has a better hand at broth, Joe, my boy, than ever a man-cook had, and I'll warrant, two hours from now, broth'll taste good to you." So I went to sleep and woke to a saner, happier world. In another week I was able to be up on deck and to lie in the open air on cushions and blankets, where the warm sunshine and the fair wind and the gentle motion of the sea combined to soothe and restore me. It was good to talk with Arnold and Captain North, and with Abe Guptil, who, at my request, was ordered aft to spend an hour with me one afternoon; but why, I wondered, did I see so little now of Faith Parmenter? She would nod at me with a smile and a word, and then go away, perhaps to lean on the rail and watch for an hour at a time the rolling blue sea, or to pace the deck as if oblivious to all about her. On that night at the mission weeks before, when neither of us even knew the other's name, she had spoken to me with a directness that had even more firmly stamped on my memory her face as I had first seen it among the mangroves. On that terrible day when her father had gone out from the mission house to die, when dangers worse than death had threatened us from every side, she had cast her fortunes with Arnold's and with mine; in all the weeks of my pain and fever, she had tended me with a gentleness and thoughtfulness that had filled me with gratitude and something more. But now she would give me only a nod and a smile, with perhaps an occasional word! Why, Arnold and even old Gideon North got more of her time and attention than did I. I would lie and watch her leaning on the rail, the wind playing with stray tendrils of her hair, which the sun turned to spun gold, and would suffer a loneliness even deeper than that which I felt when my own uncle, Seth Upham, died by the spring on the side of the hill. Could there be someone else of whom she was always thinking? Or something more intangible and deeper rooted? More and more I had feared it; now I believed it. To see Cornelius Gleazen, his right arm still swathed in many bandages and his face as white almost as marble, eyeing me glumly from his place across the deck, was the only other shadow on my convalescence. With not a word for me,--or for my friends, for that matter,--he would stroll about the deck in sullen anger, for which no one could greatly blame him. He had no desire now to return to our home town of Topham; his bolt there was shot. We had refused him passage to the port of lawless men where no doubt he could have plotted to win back the brig and all that he had staked. Little grateful for the compromise by which he gained the privilege of landing on another continent, he kept company with his thoughts--ill company they were!--and with Matterson. But more than all else, it troubled me to see him watching Faith Parmenter. As I would lie there, I would see him staring at her, unconscious that anyone was observing him. He would keep it up for hours at a time, until I did not see how she--or the others--could fail to notice it; yet apparently no one did notice it. The man, I now learned, and it surprised me, had a cat-like trick of dropping his eyes or looking quickly away. As I grew stronger, I would now and then stand beside her, and we would talk of one thing and another; but without fail there was the wall of reserve behind which I could not go. She was always courteous; she always welcomed me; yet she made her reserve so plain that I had no doubt that it was kindness alone which led her to put up with me. Only once in all that westward voyage did I feel that she accepted me as more than the most casual of acquaintances, and I could see, as I thought it over afterwards, that even then it was because I had taken her by surprise. It came one night just when the sun was setting and the moon was rising. The shadows on deck were long and of a deep umber. The mellow light of early evening had washed the decks and all the lower rigging in a soft brown, while the topsails were still tinted with lavender and purple. We were running before a southeast wind and--though I incur the ridicule of old sailors by saying it--there was something singularly personal and friendly about the seas as they broke against our larboard quarter and swept by us one by one. I know that I have never forgotten that hour at the end of a fair day, with a fair wind blowing, with strange colors and pleasant shadows playing over an old brig, and with Faith Parmenter beside me leaning on the taffrail. We had been talking of trivial things, with intervals of deep silence, as people will, especially in early evening, when the beauty of the great world almost takes away the power of speech. But at the end of a longer silence than any that had gone before it, as I watched her slim fingers moving noiselessly on the rail, I suddenly said, "Why do you never tell me about your own life? In all this time you have not let me know one thing about yourself." As she looked up at me, there was a startled expression in her eyes. "Do you," she said, "wish to know more about me?" "Yes." She looked away again as if in doubt; then, with a little gesture, which seemed for the time being to open a gate in that wall of reserve which had so completely shut her away from me, she smiled and spoke in a low, rather hurried voice. "My story is quickly told. I was born in a little town in Dorset, and there I lived with my father and my mother and nurse, until I was sixteen years old. My mother died then. The years that followed were--lonely ones. It was no surprise to me--to anyone--when my father decided to give up his parish and sail for Africa. We all knew, of course, how bad things were on the West Coast. People said our English ships still kept up the wicked trade. But they were ships from Brazil and the West Indies, manned, I believe, by Spaniards and Portuguese, that gave us the most trouble. There were Englishmen and Americans now and then, but they were growing fewer. We thought we were done with them; then you came. Even after you had come, I told my father that you were not in the trade; but my father already had seen _him_,"--she moved her hand ever so slightly in the direction of Gleazen, who likewise was leaning on the rail at a little distance,--"and he would believe no good of you. If only he could have lived! But you came. And here am I, with only you and an old black servant." She looked up at me with a sudden gesture of confidence that made my heart leap. "I am glad you came," she said. Her hand lay on the rail beside mine, but so much smaller than mine that I almost laughed. She turned quickly with an answering smile, and impulsively I tried to cover her small hand with my larger one. Deftly she moved her hand away. "Are you so silly?" she gravely asked. At that moment I was quite too shy and awkward for my own peace of mind. She seemed suddenly to have stepped away from me as on seven-league boots. I certainly felt that she was angry with me, and I ventured no more familiarities; yet actually she merely moved her hand away and stayed where she was. There was that about her which made me feel like a child who is ashamed of being caught in some ridiculous game; and I think now that in some ways I was truly very much of a child. For a long time we watched in silence the rolling seas, which had grown as black as jet save for the points of light that they reflected from the stars, and save for the broad bright path that led straight up to the full moon. But when the moon had risen higher and had cast its cold hard light on the deck of the brig, Cornelius Gleazen edged closer to us along the rail. "Good-night," she murmured in a very low voice, and gave a little shudder, which, I divined, she intended that I should see. Then, with a quick, half-concealed smile, she left me. All in all, I was happier that night than I had ever been before, I believe, for I thought that we had razed the wall of her reserve. But lo! in the morning it was there again, higher and more unyielding than ever; and more firmly than ever I was convinced that she had not told me _all_ her story; that there was someone else of whom she was thinking, or that some other thing, of which I knew nothing, preyed upon her. CHAPTER XXXIII THE DOOR OF DISASTER On the morning when we sighted land, I saw the big Fantee canoeman standing in the waist and looking with eager eyes at the distant shore. I suppose it was because I was still so weak that it did not thrill me as my first glimpse of Africa had thrilled me. We had known for some time that we were off the La Plata River by the changed color of the water; but the shores that we now saw were mere sandy beaches and low hills, which stretched, Captain North said, from Cape St. Mary up the river itself; and I, having somehow got the notion that I should see grand cliffs and mountains, was sadly disappointed in them. At about nine o'clock in the morning of that first day we passed an island on which there were more seals than I had ever seen in any one place; and at about eleven we came to a small town, whence with light, fair winds we continued on our way up the river toward Montevideo. For our venture into unfamiliar waters we could not have desired better weather than thus far prevailed; but about sunset the wind rose and a dense fog blew in; whereupon Captain North decided to haul off shore a few miles and anchor for the night, which we did about fifteen miles below the city. The wind, meanwhile, was rising to a gale. At eight o'clock, as it was still rapidly increasing, we paid out a considerable length of cable, and the Adventure rode with much less straining than before; but Captain North, I could see, was by no means well pleased with our situation, and as we went below to supper I overheard him say to Matterson, who continued to hold the berth of chief mate, "Tend the cable with care, Mr. Matterson, and keep a good lookout." Whatever Matterson's reply, I lost it; but to this day I remember his giant figure as he stood there on the quarter-deck, his jacket buttoned tight up to his throat, his arms folded, with the wind racing past his gray stubble of a beard. His strength was still impaired by his wound, although at last it had healed clean; but there was no sign of weakness in his bearing. In the dim light and the rising gale he loomed up big, bold, and defiant. Small wonder that I remember him as he looked then! It was almost the last time I ever saw him. We were five at the table that night,--Captain North, Gleazen, Arnold, Faith, and I,--and Abe Guptil served us as steward. With Mr. Severance in his own quarters asleep during his watch below, and with the trader whom we had rescued sent unceremoniously forward to keep company with the cook, we should have had a pleasant time of it but for the presence of Gleazen, whose sullen scowl dampened every word we spoke. Why the fellow ate with us instead of waiting for Matterson, I am sure I do not know, unless it was sheer perversity. Not one of us had a word to say to him, yet there he sat, with his arm in a sling and the folds of bandages showing through his waistcoat as broad ridges, now glaring at Arnold, now eyeing Faith Parmenter; and his few words could have brought little comfort even to him. "How she pitches!" Arnold exclaimed, as wine from his glass fell in a red blot on the cloth. "This wind," said Gleazen gloomily, "puts me in mind of that little yell Seth Upham gave when they got him." His voice sank almost to a whisper. Now, as the brig plunged, Abe Guptil stumbled while crossing the cabin and fell to his knees, yet made out by a desperate effort both to hold his tray upright and to keep the dishes from sliding off against the bulkhead. "Bravo!" cried Gideon North. "Yes, sir," Abe replied, brightly, "that was a clever one and I'm proud of it." It had been impossible to teach him the manners of his new work, but we cared little about that. "Hark!" said Faith. "What was the noise?" "Nothing, so far as I know," Captain North replied. "How she pitches and jumps! Give me a ship under sail, steadied by the wind abeam." "I've heard Bud O'Hara use them very words," said Gleazen. Again silence followed the man's ill-chosen remark. "When we have put our passengers ashore," Arnold began with a significant glance at Gleazen, "shall we--" "Captain North!" Matterson's light voice calling down the companionway brought the old mariner to his feet. Gleazen, who had seemed to be on the point of making some ill-tempered retort, slumped back in his chair as Captain North rose. "What will you have, Mr. Matterson?" "I wish you'd come on deck, sir," came Matterson's reply. "I'm in doubt whether or no we're drifting." "Drifting?" The old man went up with haste, and I followed close at his heels. "I don't like the feel of the lead," he remarked, when, after gaining the deck, he laid hands on the lead-line. "But what with the current of the river and our pitching, I can't be sure. Are those breakers to leeward?" "I think, sir," Matterson replied, "that they are only the white tops of the waves." Matterson showed more genuine deference now than I had ever seen in him before, which in itself went far to convince me that affairs were going badly. "They may be," the old man replied, "but I'm inclined to doubt it." And with that he went aft over the stern into the boat. Evidently the nearer view convinced him that they were indeed breakers, for he returned with surprising agility. "Call 'em up, Joe," he hoarsely cried, "every living soul. We're in a bad way. You, Mr. Matterson, get ready another anchor and send men to clear the cable tier below. Quick now." I heard those in the cabin start to their feet when I called, and a moment later Gleazen burst out and up the ladder. Behind him came Faith, whom he had passed in his rush to the deck; then, a moment later, Arnold, who had stopped to shake Mr. Severance out of a sound sleep. The white crests were nearer now, and approaching at a startling speed. The roar alone told us they were breakers. A wave curled along the rail and a torrent of foam cascaded over the bulwark, washed the length of the deck, and eddied for a moment above the scuppers. The breakers were upon us and all about us. Their deafening roar drowned out every sound in the brig. Then we struck. The man at the wheel was thrown to his knees, but held his place. One or two men succeeded in clinging to the rigging. The rest of us went tumbling up against the rail. I really did not understand the expression on Gleazen's face. I simply could not yet comprehend the terrible danger in which we were placed. To me, being no sailor, anything would have seemed possible at sea; but now, when we were so near port,--indeed, actually in sight of land,--it seemed utterly incredible that we could be in deadly peril. But it was a terrible lesson that put an end to my folly. A second blow followed the first shock of our striking, then a third still heavier, then a sea broke clean across our bows, carrying one poor wretch overboard and driving two more back to the quarter-deck. With a fearful, despairing yell the luckless fellow went past us and down, and as he did so I saw clinging to his shoulders a frightened animal and knew that we had seen the last of Pedro and his monkey. The next sea broke over the whole weather side of the good Adventure, and only by clinging fast to the rigging did any one of us manage to retain his hold on the pounding wreck, which, desperate though her plight was, represented our one chance for life. Now in a voice that rose above the roar of the tempest Gideon North thundered, "Cut away the masts! Cut away the masts!" A lull followed, and for a moment we dared hope that, once the brig was freed of all weight aloft, she would right herself and go over the bar in such a way that we could let go our anchor on the farther side and so bring her up again into the wind. But the lull brought us only despair when the carpenter answered him by shrieking at the top of his voice, "The axe has gone overboard." So swiftly and so mightily had the succession of seas burst over us that of all hands only ten or a dozen were left on board. I could see them in a line clinging precariously to the weather-rail. At first, in dazed horror, I thought Faith Parmenter was not there; then, seeing someone drag her back through the wash of the sea, I myself strove to reach her side. Another sea broke, and again she almost went overboard; then I saw that it was Abe Guptil who was holding her with the strength of two men. Then the great black figure of the Fantee canoeman worked along the rail ahead of me and took a place beside her, opposite to Abe, and helped to hold her in the brig. It was plain to every one of us what the outcome would have been had not a cross-current now thrown the pounding hull at a new angle, so that for a breathing-space those of us who were left alive had opportunity to take other measures for safety. But the very wave that did that also sent the masts by the board and, instead of lightening us, cluttered the decks with a hopeless snarl of ropes and canvas. I was farther forward than the others, and so weak from my long illness that for a moment I could only strive to recover my strength and my breath. I saw them haul the filled boat up to the stern and, by sheer strength and audacity, raise her clear of the breakers, empty out half or two thirds of the water and let her go back again into the sea, where she rode sluggishly. Into that rocking boat, first of all, sprang Matterson. Close after him scrambled the craven trader, and after him Neil Gleazen. "Cast off!" I heard Matterson yell. "She'll founder with another soul aboard her." And off they cast, those three men, abandoning every one of the rest of us to whatever end fate might hold in store. That they should leave behind them those of us who had been from the first their enemies was not surprising; but that they should abandon thus, on a wreck that we all could see was doomed to break up in a few hours, if not literally in a few minutes, a girl who had done them no harm whatsoever, whose only fault lay in coming from quite another world than theirs, was contemptible beyond belief, if for no other reason than that she was but a young girl and they strong men. I would not have believed it of even them. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw them go. But as if to deal them a punishment more fitting than any that we could devise, while the brig was pounding in the breakers, a wave, sweeping clean over her, wrenched the trysail boom about and parted the sheet and flung the boom in a wide half-circle squarely on top of the boat, which it crushed to kindlings. Whether or not it hit any of the three cowardly knaves a direct blow, it left them struggling like so many rats in seas that speedily carried them out of our sight into the darkness. No doubt we should have seen more of their fate had our own plight been less desperate; but the boom, as it swung down on the boat, raked across the taffrail, and those of us who had been clinging there in a long line, losing our hold on what up to that point had represented to us our only chance for safety, threw our arms round the boom and clung fast to that and with it were swept away from the wrecked brig, straight through the breakers that foamed between us and the shore. Holding the boom itself with one arm, I struggled to give Faith what help I could with the other; but we must both have been washed off the leaping spar, had not the big black Fantee canoeman, who all this time had been working closer and closer to his beloved mistress, plunged under the boom and, coming up on the farther side, seized both her and me with a grip like a gorilla's. Meanwhile Abe Guptil, as strong as a bear, in a flash had seen how effective the Fantee's manoeuvre was, and had tried to duplicate it for himself, Arnold, and Gideon North, who had been washed to the farther end of the spar and nearly carried away from it. But he only partly succeeded, for to him the water was not nearly so natural an element as to the mungo, and he began his attempt later and completed it more slowly. Coming up on the far side of the boom, gasping and choking from a wave that struck him squarely in the face, he clasped hands with Arnold and tried to do so with Gideon North; but as his outstretched arm groped for him, the sea tore the old sailor away and we five were left alone on the long spar, two of us on one side and three on the other, with arms and bodies locked around it. Brave Gideon North! There was little time then to feel his loss; but it was to grow upon us more and more and more in the weeks and months to come. Stout-hearted, downright, thoughtful, kind--it is very seldom that one gets or loses such a friend. The spar rolled and turned as it swept toward the shore. Now we were pounded and battered and almost drowned by the breakers; now we got a chance to breathe and regain our strength as we came into deeper, quieter water; now we were swept again through breakers that tossed us, half drowned, into surging shallows. And so, holding fast to one another, we were cast up on the shore in the darkness, where we crawled away from the long waves that licked over the wet sand, and sat down and watched and waited and watched. Twice we heard someone calling aloud, and once I was sure that I saw someone struggling toward us out of the surge. But though we staggered down to the sea and shouted time and again, we got no answer. Slowly the conviction forced itself upon us that we five and some half a dozen sailors who had reached land before us were all who were left alive of the passengers and crew of the brig Adventure; that after all there was no hope whatever for Gideon North, that bravest of master mariners. To such an end had come Cornelius Gleazen's golden dreams! Through suffering and disaster, they had led him to the ultimate wreck of every hope; his own catastrophe had shattered the future of more than one innocent man, and had caused directly the death of many innocent men. It was a wild dawn that broke upon us on that foreign shore. The wind raged and the sea thundered, and black, low clouds raced over our heads. To watch by daylight the terrible cauldron through which we had come by dark was in itself a fearful thing; and beyond it, barely visible through the surf, lay the broken hull of the Adventure. So far as we could discover, there was no living creature in all that waste of waters. My dream of being a prosperous ship-owner lay wrecked beside the shattered timbers of the Adventure; and knowing that, after all my youthful dreams of affluence, I now was a poor man with my way in the world to make, I felt that still another dream, a dearer, more ambitious dream, likewise was shattered. If when I owned the brig and had good prospects Faith Parmenter had withdrawn behind a wall of reserve, if there had been someone else whom she held in greater favor,--of whom she thought more often,--what hope that I could win her now? Starting to walk away from the others, I saw that she was ahead of me, staring with dark, tearless eyes at the stormy sea. I stopped beside her. "I suppose the time of our parting is near at hand," I began. "If I can in any way be of service to you--" "You are going to leave me _now_? _Here?_" There was something in her breathless, anxious voice that brought my heart up into my throat. "Not leave you, but--" "But the time of parting has come?" she said, with a rising inflection. "It has found us in a wild and desolate place,"--she smiled,--"more desolate and less wild than the place from which we sailed. You came to me strangely, sir; you go as strangely as you came." "If I can be of any service to you," I blindly repeated, "I--" Still smiling, she cut me short off. "I thank you, but I think I shall be able, after all, to make shift. If someone--Mr. Lamont, perhaps--will take me to some town where there is--an English church--" She still was smiling, but her smile wavered. Could she, I wondered with a sort of fierce eagerness, have told me _all_ her story? Was there, then, really nothing hidden? "If you--" I began, "if I--" Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and for the first time I dared guess the truth. At what I then said,--the words that opened the gate to the life we two have lived together,--she smiled so brightly through her tears, that for the moment I forgot the dark shore, the stormy seas, and the terrible, tragic night through which we had passed. There was a wealth of affection in Arnold's kind, thoughtful face when we joined the others, and Abe Guptil and the big Fantee, Paul, smiled at us--it was good to see their smiles after the sufferings and sorrow that we all had passed through. "If only Gideon North and Seth Upham were here now!" Abe cried. "Poor Seth!" said Arnold. "What a price he has paid for one passionate blow." "What do you know?" I demanded. Arnold gravely turned, "I _know_ little," he said. "But I have guessed much." "What have you guessed?" "They say in Topham that Neil Gleazen left town in the night and Eli Norton was found dead in the morning." While he paused, we waited in silence. "That, my friends, is why Gleazen for twenty years did not come back. But I once heard Gleazen say, when the mood was on him to torment Seth Upham, let people think what they would, that at least he--Gleazen--_knew_ who killed Eli Norton." "And you think that Seth Upham--" He interrupted me with a Latin phrase--"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." My poor uncle! "You four," said Arnold thoughtfully, "will need money before you once more reach Topham." "But of course you are coming too," I cried. "No, I fear that I should not be content to live always in Topham." Taken aback by his words, I stared at him with an amazement that was utterly incredulous. "You are not coming back with us?" "No." Arnold smiled kindly and perhaps a little sadly. Unbuckling a belt that he had worn since I first knew him, he drew it off and opened it, and I saw to my further amazement that it was full of gold coins. "This," said he, "will go far to pay your expenses." "I cannot take gold from you," I cried. "Do not be foolish, Joe. We are old friends, you and I, and this by rights is as much yours as mine." He thrust the belt into my hands. "It is all for you, but there is enough for our good friend Abe, in case he parts from you before reaching Topham." "But you--" "I have more. I am not, Joe, only that which I have pretended to be in your uncle's store in Topham, where you and I have had happy days together." At my bewildered face, he smiled again. "My real name, Joe, is old and not obscure. I am one of the least illustrious sons of my house; but I myself have served on the staff of the great Bonaparte. "And that--" I could scarcely believe that honest Arnold Lamont was saying these astounding things. "That is why it has been necessary--at least advisable--for me to conceal for so many years my identity. A man, Joe, does not tell all he knows." CHAPTER XXXIV AN OLD, OLD STORY It was spring when we came back to Topham. The sun was warm upon the pleasant fields and gardens, and the blossoms on the fruit trees were thick and fragrant. The loveliest days of all the year were enfolding the pleasant countryside of New England in the glory and peace of their bright skies and soft colors; and as the hired coach that brought us down from Boston, with black Paul, at once proud and uncomfortable in a new suit of white man's clothes, seated stiffly high beside the driver, rolled along the familiar roads, I pointed out to my bride the fair scenes among which my boyhood had been spent. From Montevideo, which we reached on the evening following the wreck,--there an old English clergyman married us,--we had sailed to New York as passengers in a merchant ship; but first we had taken leave of those two good friends, Arnold Lamont, whom we were never to see again, and Abe Guptil, who had bravely insisted on setting out to build anew his fortunes by shipping as second mate of an American bark then in port. From New York a second ship had given us passage to Boston, whence we came over the same road to Topham that I had traveled so long before with Arnold and Sim and Abe and Neil Gleazen and my uncle. We ought, I suppose, to have been a properly anxious young couple, for of the great sum in gold that Arnold had so generously advanced us only a small part remained, and what I should do in Topham, now that Uncle Seth's store was in other hands, I had not the slightest notion. The tower of golden dreams that poor Seth Upham had built in idle moments had fallen into dust; Neil Gleazen's unscrupulous quest had brought only ashes and bitterness; it was from the shadow of a great tragedy that we came into that golden morning in spring. But great as had been those things that Faith and I had lost, we had gained something so deep and so great that even then, when in discovering it we were so happy that the world seemed too good to be real, we had not more than begun to appreciate the wonder and magnitude of it. Thus I came back to Topham after such a year and a half as few men have known, even though they have lived a full century--back to Topham, with all my golden prospects shattered by Gleazen's mad adventure, but with a treasure such that, if all the gold in the world had been mine, I would eagerly have given every coin to win it. With my bride beside me, her hand upon my arm, I rode into sleepy little Topham, past my uncle's house where I had lived for many happy years, past the store where Arnold and poor Sim Muzzy and I had worked together, past the smithy where even now that old prophet, the blacksmith, was peering out to see who went by in the strange coach, and after all was failing to recognize me at the distance, so changed was I by all that had befallen me, up to the door of the very tavern where I had first seen Cornelius Gleazen. There I handed my dear wife down from her seat in the coach, dressed in a simple gown and bonnet that became her charmingly, and turned and saw, waiting to greet me, the very landlord whom last I had seen reeling back from Gleazen's drunken thrust. At first, when he looked at me, he showed that he was puzzled; then he recognized me and his face changed. My fears lest the good man bear me a grudge for my share, small though it was, in that villainous night's work, vanished there and then. "You!" he cried, with both hands outstretched; "why, Joe! why, Joe! We thought you were long since lost at sea or killed by buccaneers--such a story as Sim Muzzy told us!" "Sim Muzzy?" I cried. "Not Sim!" "Yes, Sim!" Then I heard far down the road someone calling, and turned and saw--it was so good that I rubbed my eyes like a child waking from a dream!--actually saw Sim Muzzy come puffing and sweating along, with a cloud of dust trailing for a hundred yards behind him. "Joe, Joe," he cried, "welcome home! Welcome home, Joe Woods!" And as I am an honest man, he fell to blubbering on the spot. "Things are not what they used to be," he managed at last to say. "The new man in the store don't like the town and the townspeople don't like him, and I've been living in hopes Seth Upham would come home and take it off his hands. But who is this has come back with you, Joe, and what's come of Seth Upham?" At that I presented him to my wife, who received him with a sweet dignity that won his deepest regard on the spot; and then I told him the whole sad story of our adventures, or as much of it, at least, as I could cram into the few minutes that we stood by the road. "And so," I concluded, "I have come back to Topham with not a penny to my name, save such few as are left from Arnold's bounty." Sim heard me out in silence, for evidently his own trials had done much to cure him of his garrulity, and with a very sad face indeed he stood looking back over the village where we had lived and worked so long together. "Poor Seth Upham!" he said at last. "Well, there's nothing we can do for him now. And as for Neil Gleazen, he's better dead than back in Topham, for here he'd hang as sure as preaching. Jed Matthews, they say, never moved a muscle after Neil hit him on the head. But as for you, Joe, you're no penniless wanderer." "What do you mean by that?" I asked. "There was all of fifteen thousand dollars on board the brig." "What makes you think that?" "Didn't I help Seth store it in his trunk? 'You're simple, Sim, and honest,' he says to me. 'I'll not have another soul besides you know this, but you're as honest as you are simple,' Them's the words he said, and I was that proud of 'em that I've treasured 'em ever since." I thought of the papers and bags we had stored in the wagon that night when we fled from Topham. "He hid it well," I replied. "But even if he had not hidden it so well, I fear that it would nevertheless be at the bottom of the La Plata River, just as it now is, with the brig, and all the goods that were on board her, and many men that sailed in her, good and bad alike." "But that is not all." "Not all? What do you mean?" "Seth Upham left money in the bank, and I've seen his will with my own eyes. 'Twas found in the safe after we left town, and turned over to Judge Fuller." "But surely, what with buying the brig and taking all his papers, which I looked over myself in the cabin of the Adventure and which were lost, every one, when she broke up, he had nothing left. Why, the brig must have cost a pretty penny." "That may well be, Joe, but there's money in the bank, for all that. Seth Upham had more money tucked away than most people would have believed." I thought this over with growing wonder. "I do believe, my love," I said, "that we shall be able to make a fair start in the world after all, and, which is more, repay certain debts at once." Faith smiled as she looked up at me; then she turned and looked at the quaint old town, which was spread before us in the sun. CHAPTER XXXV EHEU FUGACES! Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare with our African adventures. The press-gang that set upon us in Havana had rushed him away to a Spanish ship, where he was kicked about and cruelly abused, until, at peril of his life, he dropped overboard in the dark and swam to an American schooner, whose captain, hearing his story, took him on board and hid him in the chain-locker until they were well on their way to Boston. Thence Sim had set out on foot for Topham, where he had hired himself once again to tend the store and had led a dog's life ever since. That Sim was right about Uncle Seth's bank accounts and his will, which left all to me, I learned before sunset that very day. The sums were not large in themselves, and taken all together they were small enough compared with the golden dreams my poor uncle had lived in; but they assured Faith and me of comfort at least; and when that evening I called upon the new storekeeper and found him so eager to escape from a town where his short measures and petty deceits had made him unpopular and discontented, that he was not in the mood to haggle over the bargain, I bought back the store on the spot. "There'll be happier days ahead, Sim," said I when I came out. "O Joe, I'm sure of that," he replied, his face bright with smiles; for he had overheard considerable of our discussion. Within the week the papers were signed, and before a fortnight was up Faith and I went out, arm-in-arm, on the old hill road and saw the men break ground for the new house that we were to build. Whether any of the others, unknown to Faith and me, had made their way ashore on the night of the wreck, we never learned; but it was virtually impossible that they should have done so without revealing themselves to those of us who had ranged all that bleak coast the next morning. For honest Gideon North we mourned as for one of the dearest of friends, and of the rest we thought sometimes in the years that followed. But none of them, except our own Abe, ever came to Topham, nor did I ever go back to the sea. Three letters at long intervals brought us news of Arnold Lamont; and to the address that he gave in the first we sent with our reply a draft for the sum that he had so generously lent us when on that wild South American shore we four had set out to begin life anew. They were good letters, and there was no note of complaint in them; yet as I read them and thought of the Arnold Lamont whom I had known so long and, all things considered, so intimately, I could not but feel that in the cities of South America and, later, of Europe he failed, whatever compensations there may have been, to find anything like the peace and quiet happiness that he once had found in our New England town of Topham. The week before the walls of our new house were raised, Faith and I drove together along a road that I had tramped on an autumn afternoon, to the farm where Abe Guptil had lived in the days that now seemed so long ago. We carried with us certain papers, which changed hands in the kitchen where Abe and his little family had slept the night when I was their guest; and so it happened that, when Abe returned from his voyage and came to see me at the store full of honest joy at my good fortune, I sent him off to his own old home with the assurance that the terms by which he was to buy it were such that he need never fear again to lose it. As the town of Topham has grown around us, Faith and I have grown into the town and with it; and although the black Fantee, Paul, who remained the most faithful of servants, was a nine days' wonder in the village, there now are few people left, I imagine, who know all the wild, well-nigh unbelievable, yet absolutely true, story of the year when we first met. A royal fortune may have been lost with Seth Upham and Neil Gleazen in Gleazen's mad quest, but I can say in all sincerity that from his quest I gained a fortune far beyond my deserts. THE END [Illustration: THE COURSE OF THE BRIG ADVENTURE] McGrath-Sherrill Press, Boston 
12409	----	The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, Including The Ladrones, Hawaii, Cuba and Porto Rico. The Story of the Philippines. Natural Riches, Industrial Resources, Statistics of Productions, Commerce and Population; The Laws, Habits, Customs, Scenery and Conditions of the Cuba of the East Indies and the Thousand Islands of the Archipelagoes of India and Hawaii, With Episodes of Their Early History The Eldorado of the Orient Personal Character Sketches of and Interviews with Admiral Dewey, General Merritt, General Aguinaldo and the Archbishop of Manila. History and Romance, Tragedies and Traditions of our Pacific Possessions. Events of the War in the West with Spain, and the Conquest of Cuba and Porto Rico. By Murat Halstead, _War Correspondent in America and Europe, Historian of the Philippine Expedition_. Splendidly and Picturesquely Illustrated with Half-Tone Engravings from Photographs, Etchings from Special Drawings, and the Military Maps of the Philippines, Prepared by the War Department of the United States. _Our Possessions Publishing Co._ 1898 The engravings in this volume were made from original photographs, and are specially protected by copyright; and notice is hereby given, that any person or persons guilty of reproducing or infringing upon the copyright in any way will be dealt with according to law. Inscribed To the Soldiers and Sailors of The Army and Navy of the United States, With Admiration for Their Achievements In the War With Spain; Gratitude for the Glory They Have Gained for the American Nation, And Congratulations That All the People of All the Country Rejoice in the Cloudless Splendor of Their Fame That is the Common and Everlasting Inheritance of Americans. Author's Preface. The purpose of the writer of the pages herewith presented has been to offer, in popular form, the truth touching the Philippine Islands. I made the journey from New York to Manila, to have the benefit of personal observations in preparing a history for the people. Detention at Honolulu shortened my stay in Manila, but there was much in studies at the former place that was a help at the latter. The original programme was for me to accompany General Merritt, Commander-in-Chief of the Philippine Expedition, but illness prevented its full realization, and when I arrived in Manila Bay the city had already been "occupied and possessed" by the American army; and the declaration of peace between the United States and Spain was made, the terms fully agreed upon with the exception of the settlement of the affairs of the Philippines. While thus prevented from witnessing stirring military movements other than those attending the transfer of our troops across the Pacific Ocean, an event in itself of the profoundest significance, the reference of the determination of the fate of the Philippine Islands to the Paris Conference, and thereby to the public opinion of our country, in extraordinary measure increased the general sensibility as to the situation of the southern Oriental seas affecting ourselves, and enhanced the value of the testimony taken on the spot of observers of experience, with the training of journalism in distinguishing the relative pertinence and potency of facts noted. Work for more than forty years, in the discussion from day to day of current history, has qualified me for the efficient exercise of my faculties in the labor undertaken. It has been my undertaking to state that which appeared to me, so that the reader may find pictures of the scenes that tell the Story that concerns the country, that the public may with enlightenment solve the naval, military, political, commercial and religious problems we are called upon by the peremptory pressure of the conditions local, and international, to solve immediately. This we have to do, facing the highest obligations of citizenship in the great American Republic, and conscious of the incomparably influential character of the principles that shall prevail through the far-reaching sweep of the policies that will be evolved. I have had such advantages in the assurance of the authenticity of the information set forth in the chapters following, that I may be permitted to name those it was my good fortune to consult with instructive results; and in making the acknowledgments due. I may be privileged to support the claim of diligence and success in the investigations made, and that I am warranted in the issue of this Story of the Philippines by the assiduous improvement of an uncommon opportunity to fit myself to serve the country. Indebtedness for kind consideration in this work is gratefully acknowledged to Major-General Merritt, commanding the Philippine Expedition; Major-General Otis, who succeeds to the duties of military and civil administration in the conquered capital of the islands; Admiral George Dewey, who improved, with statesmanship, his unparalleled victory in the first week of the war with Spain, and raised the immense questions before us; General F.V. Greene, the historian of the Russo-Turkish war, called by the President to Washington, and for whose contributions to the public intelligence he receives the hearty approval and confidence of the people; Major Bell, the vigilant and efficient head of the Bureau of Information at the headquarters of the American occupation in the Philippines; General Aguinaldo, the leader of the insurgents of his race in Luzon, and His Grace the Archbishop of Manila, who gave me a message for the United States, expressing his appreciation of the excellence of the behavior of the American army in the enforcement of order, giving peace of mind to the residents in the distracted city of all persuasions and conditions, and of the service that was done civilization in the prevention, by our arms, of threatened barbarities that had caused sore apprehension; and, I may add, the Commissioner of the Organized People of the Philippines, dispatched to Washington accompanying General Greene; and of the citizens of Manila of high character, and conductors of business enterprises with plants in the community whose destiny is in the hands of strangers. These gentlemen I may not name, for there are uncertainties that demand of them and command me to respect the prudence of their inconspicuity. This volume seems to me to be justified, and I have no further claim to offer that it is meritorious than that it is faithful to facts and true to the country in advocacy of the continued expansion of the Republic, whose field is the world. Steamship China, Pacific Ocean, September 20, 1898. The Origin of this Story of the Philippines. The letter following is the full expression by the author of this volume of his purposes and principles in making the journey to the East Indies. _Going to the Philippines_. Washington City, D.C., July 18. With the authorization of the Military Authorities, I shall go to the Philippine Islands with General Merritt, the Military Governor, and propose to make the American people better acquainted with that remarkable and most important and interesting country. The presence of an American army in the Philippines is an event that will change broad and mighty currents in the world's history. It has far more significance than anything transpiring in the process of the conquest of the West India possessions of Spain, for the only question there, ever since the Continental colonies of the Spanish crown won their independence, has been the extent of the sacrifices the Spaniards, in their haughty and vindictive pride, would make in fighting for a lost Empire and an impossible cause with an irresistible adversary. That the time was approaching when, with the irretrievable steps of the growth of a living Nation of free people, we would reach the point where it should be our duty to accept the responsibility of the dominant American power, and accomplish manifest Destiny by adding Cuba and Porto Rico to our dominion, has for half a century been the familiar understanding of American citizens. Spain, by her abhorrent system, personified in Weyler, and illustrated in the murderous blowing up of the Maine with a mine, has forced this duty upon us; and though we made war unprepared, the good work is going on, and the finish of the fight will be the relegation of Spain, whose colonial governments have been, without exception, disgraceful and disastrous to herself, and curses to the colonists, to her own peninsula. This will be for her own good, as well as the redemption of mankind from her unwholesome foreign influences, typified as they are in the beautiful city of Havana, which has become the center of political plagues and pestilential fevers, whose contagion has at frequent intervals reached our own shores. In the Philippine Islands the situation is for us absolutely novel. It cannot be said to be out of the scope of reasonable American expansion and is in the right line of enlarging the area of enlightenment and stimulating the progress of civilization. The unexpected has happened, but it is not illogical. It must have been written long ago on the scroll of the boundless blue and the stars. The incident of war was the "rush" order of the President of the United States to Admiral Dewey to destroy the Spanish fleet at Manila, for the protection of our commerce. The deed was done with a flash of lightning, and lo! we hold the golden key of a splendid Asiatic archipelago of a thousand beautiful and richly endowed islands in our grip. This is the most brilliant and startling achievement in the annals of navies. Never before had the sweep of sea power, ordered through the wires that make the world's continents, oceans and islands one huge whispering gallery, such striking exemplification. There was glory and fame in it, and immeasurable material for the making of history. We may paraphrase Dr. Johnson's celebrated advertisement of the widow's brewery by saying: Admiral Dewey's victory was not merely the capture of a harbor commanding a great city, one of the superb places of the earth, and the security of a base of operations to wait for reinforcements commensurate with the resources of the United States of America--the victorious hero fixed his iron hand upon a wonderful opportunity it was the privilege of our Government to secure at large, according to the rights of a victorious Nation for the people thereof--a chance for the youth of America, like that of the youth of Great Britain, to realize upon the magnificence of India; and this is as Dr. Johnson said of the vats and barrels of the Thrale estate--"the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." It is a new departure, but not a matter for the panic or apprehension of conservatism, that the Stars and Stripes float as the symbol of sovereignty over a group of islands in the waters of Asia, that are equal to all the West Indies. If we are strangers there now we shall not be so long. We have a front on the Pacific Ocean, of three great States--Washington, equal to England; Oregon, whose grandeur rolls in the sound of her famous name, and incomparable California, whose title will be the synonym of golden good times forever. The Philippines are southwest from our western front doors. They have been the islands of our sunsets in the winter. Now they look to us for the rosy dawn out of which will come the clear brightness of the white light of mornings and the fullness of the ripening noons, all the year around. With our bulk of the North American continent bulging into both the great oceans, it was foreordained since the beginning when God created the earth, that we, the possessors of this imperial American zone, should be a great Asiatic Power. We have it now in evidence, written in islands among the most gorgeous of those that shine in the Southern seas--islands that are east from the Atlantic and west from the Pacific shores of the One Great Republic--that we may personify hereafter, sitting at the head of the table when the empires of the earth consult themselves as to the courses of empire. Our Course of Empire is both east and west. The contact of American and Asiatic civilization in the Philippines, with the American army there, superseding the Spaniards, will be memorable as one of the matters of chief moment in the closing days of the nineteenth century, and remembered to date from for a thousand years. It is my purpose to write of this current history while it is a fresh, sparkling stream, and attempt something more than the recitation of the news of the day, as it is condensed and restrained in telegrams; to give it according to the extent of my ability and the advantages of my opportunity, the local coloring, the characteristic scenery; the pen pictures of the people and their pursuits; sketches of the men who are doers of deeds that make history; studies of the ways and means of the islanders; essays to indicate the features of the picturesque of the strange mixture of races; the revolutionary evolutions of politics; the forces that pertain to the mingling of the religions of the Occident and the Orient, in a chemistry untried through the recorded ages. It is a tremendous canvas upon which I am to labor, and I know full well how inadequate the production must be, and beg that this index may not be remembered against me. It is meant in all modesty, and I promise only that there will be put into the task the expertness of experience and the endeavor of industry. _Murat Halstead._ Contents. AUTHOR'S PREFACE THE ORIGIN OF THIS STORY OF THE PHILIPPINES CHAPTER I. ADMIRAL DEWEY ON HIS FLAGSHIP. A Stormy Day on Manila Bay--Call on Admiral Dewey--The Man in White--He Sticks to His Ship--How He Surprised the Spaniards--Every Man Did His Duty on May-Day--How Dewey Looks and Talks--What He Said About War With Germany in Five Minutes--Feeds His Men on "Delicious" Fresh Meat from Australia--Photography Unjust to Him CHAPTER II. LIFE IN MANILA. Character of the Filipinos--Drivers Lashing Laboring Men in the Streets--What Americans Get in Their Native Air--The Logic of Destiny--Manila as She Fell Into Our Hands--The Beds in the Tropics--A Spanish Hotel--Profane Yells for Ice--Sad Scenes in the Dining Room--Major-General Calls for "Francisco"--A Broken-Hearted Pantry Woman CHAPTER III. FROM LONG ISLAND TO LUZON. Across the Continent--An American Governor-General Steams Through the Golden Gate--He is a Minute-Man--Honolulu as a Health Resort--The Lonesome Pacific--The Skies of Asia--Dreaming Under the Stars of the Scorpion--The Southern Cross CHAPTER IV. INTERVIEW WITH GENERAL AGUINALDO. The Insurgent Leader's Surroundings and Personal Appearance--His Reserves and Ways of Talking--The Fierce Animosity of the Filipinos Toward Spanish Priests--A Probability of Many Martyrs in the Isle of Luzon CHAPTER V. THE PHILIPPINE MISSION. Correspondence with Aguinaldo About It--Notes by Senor Felipe Agoncillo--Relations Between Admiral Dewey and Senor Aguinaldo--Terms of Peace Made by Spanish Governor-General with Insurgents, December, 1897--Law Suit Between Aguinaldo and Arlacho--Aguinaldo's Proclamation of May 21, 1898 CHAPTER VI. THE PROCLAMATIONS OF GENERAL AGUINALDO. June 16th, 1898, Establishing Dictatorial Government--June 20th, 1898, Instructions for Elections--June 23d, 1898, Establishing Revolutionary Government--June 23d, 1898, Message to Foreign Powers--June 27th, 1898, Instructions Concerning Details--July 23d, 1898, Letter from Senor Aguinaldo to General Anderson--August 1st, 1898, Resolution of Revolutionary Chiefs Asking Recognition--August 6th, 1898, Message to Foreign Powers Asking Recognition CHAPTER VII. INTERVIEW WITH ARCHBISHOP OF MANILA. Insurgents' Deadly Hostility to Spanish Priests--The Position of the Archbishop as He Defined It--His Expression of Gratitude to the American Army--His Characterization of the Insurgents--A Work of Philippine Art--The Sincerity of the Archbishop's Good Words CHAPTER VIII. WHY WE HOLD THE PHILIPPINES. The Responsibility of Admiral Dewey--We Owe It to Ourselves to Hold the Philippines--Prosperity Assured by Our Permanent Possession--The Aguinaldo Question--Character Study of the Insurgent Leader--How Affairs Would Adjust Themselves for Us--Congress Must Be Trusted to Represent the People and Firmly Establish International Policy CHAPTER IX. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AS THEY ARE. Area and Population--Climate--Mineral Wealth--Agriculture--Commerce and Transportation--Revenue and Expenses--Spanish Troops--Spanish Navy--Spanish Civil Administration--Insurgent Troops--Insurgent Civil Administration--United States Troops--United States Navy--United States Civil Administration--The Future of the Islands CHAPTER X. OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MANILA. The Pith of the Official Reports of the Capture of Manila, by Major-General Wesley Merritt, Commanding the Philippine Expedition; General Frank V. Greene, General Arthur McArthur, and General Thomas Anderson, with the Articles of Capitulation, Showing How 8,000 Americans Carried an Intrenched City with a Garrison of 13,000 Spaniards, and Kept Out 14,000 Insurgents--The Difficulties of American Generals with Philippine Troops CHAPTER XI. THE ADMINISTRATION OF GENERAL MERRITT. The Official Gazette Issued at Manila--Orders and Proclamation of Major-General Wesley Merritt, Who, as Commander of the Philippine Expedition, Became, Under the Circumstances of the Capture of Manila, the Governor of That City CHAPTER XII. THE AMERICAN ARMY IN MANILA. Why the Boys Had a Spell of Homesickness--Disadvantages of the Tropics--Admiral Dewey and His Happy Men--How Our Soldiers Passed the Time on the Ships--General Merritt's Headquarters--What Is Public Property--The Manila Water Supply--England Our Friend--Major-General Otis, General Meritt's Successor CHAPTER XIII. THE WHITE UNIFORMS OF OUR HEROES IN THE TROPICS. The Mother Hubbard Street Fashion in Honolulu, and That of Riding Astride--Spoiling Summer Clothes in Manila Mud--The White Raiment of High Officers--Drawing the Line on Nightshirts--Ashamed of Big Toes--Dewey and Merritt as Figures of Show--The Boys in White CHAPTER XIV. A MARTYR TO THE LIBERTY OF SPEECH. Dr. Jose Rizal, the Most Distinguished Literary Man of the Philippines, Writer of History, Poetry, Political Pamphlets, and Novels, Shot on the Luneta of Manila--A Likeness of the Martyr--The Scene of His Execution, from a Photograph--His Wife Married the Day Before His Death--Poem Giving His Farewell Thoughts, Written in His Last Hours--The Works That Cost Him His Life--The Vision of Friar Rodriguez CHAPTER XV. EVENTS OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. No Mystery About the Cause of the War--The Expected and the Inevitable Has Happened--The Tragedy of the Maine--Vigilant Wisdom of President McKinley--Dewey's Prompt Triumph--The Battles at Manila and Santiago Compared--General Shafter Tells of the Battle of Santiago--Report of Wainwright Board on Movements of Sampson's Fleet in the Destruction of Cervera's Squadron--Stars and Stripes Raised Over Porto Rico--American and Spanish Fleets at Manila Compared--Text of Peace Protocol CHAPTER XVI. THE PEACE JUBILEE. The Lessons of War in the Joy Over Peace in the Celebrations at Chicago and Philadelphia--Orations by Archbishop Ireland and Judge Emory Speer--The President's Few Words of Thrilling Significance--The Parade of the Loyal League, and the Clover Club Banquet at Philadelphia--Address by the President--The Hero Hobson Makes a Speech--Fighting Bob Evans' Startling Battle Picture--The Destruction of Cervera's Fleet--The Proclamation of Thanksgiving CHAPTER XVII. EARLY HISTORY OF THE PHILIPPINES. The Abolishment of the 31st of December, 1844, in Manila--The Mystery of the Meridian 180 Degrees West--What Is East and West?--Gaining and Losing Days--The Tribes of Native Filipinos--They Had an Alphabet and Songs of Their Own--The Massacre of Magellan--His Fate Like That of Captain Cook--Stories of Long-Ago Wars--An Account by a Devoted Spanish Writer of the Beneficent Rule of Spain in the Philippines--Aguinaldo a Man Not of a Nation, But of a Tribe--Typhoons and Earthquakes--The Degeneracy of the Government of the Philippines After It Was Taken from Mexico--"New Spain"--The Perquisites of Captain-Generals--The Splendor of Manila a Century Ago CHAPTER XVIII. THE SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES. Important Facts About the Lesser Islands of the Philippine Archipelago--Location, Size and Population--Capitals and Principal Cities--Rivers and Harbors--Surface and Soil--People and Products--Leading Industries--Their Commerce and Business Affairs--The Monsoons and Typhoons--The Terrors of the Tempests and How to Avoid Them CHAPTER XIX. SPECIFICATIONS OF GRIEVANCES OF THE FILIPINOS. An Official Copy of the Manifesto of the Junta Showing the Bad Faith of Spain in the Making and Evasion of a Treaty--The Declaration of the Renewal of the War of Rebellion--Complaints Against the Priests Defined--The Most Important Document the Filipinos Have Issued--Official Reports of Cases of Persecution of Men and Women in Manila by the Spanish Authorities--Memoranda of the Proceedings in Several Cases in the Court of Inquiry of the United States Officers CHAPTER XX. HAWAII AS ANNEXED. The Star Spangled Banner Up Again in Hawaii, and to Stay--Dimensions of the Islands--What the Missionaries Have Done--Religious Belief by Nationality--Trade Statistics--Latest Census--Sugar Plantation Laborers--Coinage of Silver--Schools--Coffee Growing CHAPTER XXI. EARLY HISTORY OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. Captain James Cook's Great Discoveries and His Martyrdom--Character and Traditions of the Hawaiian Islands--Charges Against the Famous Navigator and Effort to Array the Christian World Against Him--The True Story of His Life and Death--How Charges Against Cook Came to Be Made--Testimony of Vancouver, King and Dixon, and Last Words of Cook's Journal--Light Turned on History That Has Become Obscure--Savagery of the Natives--Their Written Language Took Up Their High Colored Traditions and Preserved Phantoms--Scenes in Aboriginal Theatricals--Problem of Government in an Archipelago Where Race Questions Are Predominant--Now Americans Should Remember Captain Cook as an Illustrious Pioneer CHAPTER XXII. THE START FOR THE LAND OF CORN STALKS. Spain Clings to the Ghost of Her Colonies--The Scene of War Interest Shifts from Manila--The Typhoon Season--General Merritt on the Way to Paris--German Target Practice by Permission of Dewey--Poultney Bigalow with Canoe, Typewriter and Kodak--Hongkong as a Bigger and Brighter Gibraltar CHAPTER XXIII. KODAK SNAPPED AT JAPAN. Glimpses of China and Japan on the Way Home from the Philippines--Hongkong a Greater Gibraltar--Coaling the China--Gangs of Women Coaling the China--How the Japanese Make Gardens of the Mountains--Transition from the Tropics to the Northern Seas--A Breeze from Siberia--A Thousand Miles Nothing on the Pacific--Talk of Swimming Ashore CHAPTER XXIV. OUR PICTURE GALLERY. Annotations and Illustrations--Portraits of Heroes of the War in the Army and Navy, and of the Highest Public Responsibilities--Admirals and Generals, the President and Cabinet--Photographs of Scenes and Incidents--The Characteristics of the Filipinos--Their Homes, Dresses and Peculiarities in Sun Pictures--The Picturesque People of Our New Possessions CHAPTER XXV. CUBA AND PORTO RICO. Conditions In and Around Havana--Fortifications and Water Supply of the Capital City--Other Sections of the Pearl of the Antilles--Porto Rico, Our New Possession, Described--Size and Population--Natural Resources and Products--Climatic Conditions--Towns and Cities--Railroad and Other Improvements--Future Possibilities CHAPTER XXVI. THE LADRONES. The Island of Guam a Coaling Station of the United States--Discovery, Size and Products of the Islands CHAPTER XXVII. THE OFFICIAL TITLE TO OUR NEW POSSESSIONS IN THE INDIES. Full Text of the Treaty of Peace with Spain Handed the President of the United States as a Christmas Gift for the People, at the White House, 1898--The Gathered Fruit of a Glorious and Wonderful Victory CHAPTER XXVIII. BATTLES WITH THE FILIPINOS BEFORE MANILA. The Aguinaldo War Upon the Americans--The Course of Events in the Philippines Since the Fall of Manila--Origin of the Filipino War--Aguinaldo's Insolent and Aggressive Acts, Including Treachery--His Agent's Vanity and Duplicity in Washington--Insurgents Under Aguinaldo Attack American Forces--Battle of Manila, February 4 and 5--Heroism of American Troops in Repelling the Insurgents--Aguinaldo's Proclamations--Agoncillo's Flight to Canada--The Ratification of the Treaty of Peace with Spain by the American Senate Followed the Fighting--The Gallantry and Efficiency of the American Volunteers--Another Glorious Chapter of Our War History CHAPTER XXIX. THE AGUINALDO WAR OF SKIRMISHES. The Filipino Swarms, After Being Repulsed with Slaughter, Continue Their Scattering Efforts to Be Assassins--They Plan a General Massacre and the Burning of Manila--Defeated in Barbarous Schemes, They Tell False Tales and Have Two Objects, One to Deceive the People of the Philippines, the other to Influence Intervention--The Peril of Fire--Six Thousand Regulars Sent to General Otis--Americans Capture Iloilo, and Many Natives Want Peace--The People of the Isla of Negros Ask that They May Go with Us--Dewey Wants Battleships and Gunboats, Gets Them, and Is Made an Admiral--Arrival of Peace Commissioners, with Their School Books, Just Ahead of the Regulars with Magazine Rifles--The Germans at Manila Salute Admiral Dewey at Last ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. Frontispiece ... Major-General Merritt, First Governor-General of the Philippines. 2. The President and His Cabinet 3. President McKinley 4. Secretary of State Hay 5. Secretary of the Treasury Gage 6. Secretary of War Alger 7. Secretary of the Navy Long 8. Attorney General Griggs 9. Postmaster General Smith 10. Secretary of the Interior Bliss 11. Secretary of Agriculture Wilson 12. Admiral Dewey, the Hero of Manila 13. Map of the Philippine Islands 14. Photograph and Autograph of Aguinaldo, as Presented by Him to Mr. Halstead, the Author 15. Archbishop of Manila. His Photograph and Autograph Presented to Mr. Halstead, the Author 16. Ex-Consul General Fitzhugh Lee, Now Major-General Commanding 17. Captain Sigsbee, Commander of the Ill-fated Maine 18. Brigadier-General F.V. Greene 19. Government Building in Pampanga 20. Church at Cavite 21. Masacue--Town in Cavite 22. Natives Taking Refreshments 23. Official Map of the Isle of Luzon, Prepared by War Department 24. Official Map by the War Department of the Seat of War in the Philippines 25. Murat Halstead, the Author, at Manila 26. Cathedral of Manila After Earthquake 27. Spanish Re-inforcements Crossing Bridge Over Pasig River 28. Oriental Hotel, Manila 29. The Sultan of Jolo in Mindanao 30. A Beheaded Spaniard--Sign of the Order of Katipunan 31. San Juan del Monte, Where Revolution Started 32. Brigadier-General E.S. Otis 33. Brigadier-General Thomas M. Anderson 34. Military Heroes of Santiago and Porto Rico 35. Major-General Miles 36. Major-General Shafter 37. Major-General Wheeler 38. Major-General Brooke 39. Brigadier-General Wood 40. Colonel Roosevelt 41. Naval Heroes of Santiago 42. Admiral Sampson 43. Admiral Schley 44. Captain Chadwick, of the New York 45. Captain Cooke, of the Brooklyn 46. Captain Clarke, of the Oregon 47. Captain Evans, of the Iowa 48. Captain Higginson, of the Massachusetts 49. Captain Philip, of the Texas 50. Commander Wainwright, of the Gloucester 51. Lieutenant R.P. Hobson 52. General Greene's Headquarters at Manila 53. Manila and Its Outskirts, Showing Malate 54. Principal Gate to the City 55. Loading Buffaloes with Produce in Luzon 56. Filipina Preparing for a Siesta 57. Philippine Author-Martyr, His Wife and His Execution 58. Dr. Rizal 59. Dr. Rizal's Execution 60. Dr. Rizal's Wife 61. The Seat of War in Cavite 62. Attack on Manila, Showing Position of Our Ships and Troops 63. Fortifications of Manila 64. United States Peace Commissioners 65. Senator Frye 66. Senator Gray 67. Ex-Secretary of State Day 68. Senator Davis 69. Whitelaw Reid 70. Flowers of the Philippines 71. Interior of the Fortifications of Manila 72. Fort Santiago at Manila, Where the American Flag Was Raised 73. Dining Room in General Merritt's Palace at Manila 74. An Execution Entertainment on the Luneta 75. Victims Reported Dead After the Execution 76. Aguinaldo and His Compatriots 77. Senor Aguinaldo 78. Senor Montsusgro 79. Senor Natividah 80. Senor Ninisgra 81. Senor Rins 82. Senor Belavinino 83. Senor Covinbing 84. Senor Mascordo 85. Senor Arbacho 86. Senor Pilar 87. Senor Viola 88. Senor Francisco 89. Senor Llansoo 90. Savage Native Hunters 91. Girl's Costume to Show One Shoulder 92. Public Buildings in Manila 93. Fort Weyler, Built by General Weyler When Governor of the Philippines 94. The Destruction of Cervera's Spanish Squadron at Santiago 95. The Luneta--Favorite Outing Grounds of Manila, and a Place for Executing Insurgents 96. Admiral Dewey's Fleet That Won the Battle of Manila Bay 97. The Flagship Olympia 98. The Baltimore 99. The Concord 100. The Raleigh 101. The Boston 102. The Petrel 103. The Monument of Magellinos in the Walled City 104. A Railroad Station North of Manila--Spaniards Airing Themselves 105. The Battle of Manila Bay--In the Heat of the Raging Fight 106. A Suburb of Manila, Showing a Buffalo Market Cart 107. The Cathedral at Manila 108. An Insurgent Outlook Near Manila 109. Display in Manila Photograph Gallery, Insurgent Leaders 110. Group of Filipinos Who Want Independence 111. The Principal Gate to the Walled City 112. A Public Square in Manila 113. A Bit of Scenery in Mindanao, Showing Tropical Vegetation 114. Parade of Spanish Troops on One of Their Three Annual Expeditions to the Southern Islands 115. After an Execution--Prostrate Forms are Men Shot 116. Spaniards Ready to Execute Insurgent Prisoners 117. A Group of the Unconquerable Mohammedans 118. A Native House 119. Riding Buffaloes Through Groves of Date Palms 120. Natives Fishing from a Canal Boat 121. Great Bridge at Manila 122. Southern Islanders--Showing Cocoanut Palms and the Monkey Tree 123. A Review of Spanish Filipino Volunteers 124. A Spanish Festival in Manila 125. Spanish Troops Repelling an Insurgent Attack on a Convent 126. Business Corner in Manila 127. A Native in Regimentals 128. A Country Pair 129. Peasant Costumes 130. Woodman in Working Garb 131. Map of Hawaii 132. Official Map of the Hawaiian Islands 133. Map of Cuba 134. Map of Porto Rico 135. Outline Map of the Philippine Islands 136. A Spanish Dude--An Officer at Manila 137. The Harbor at Manila 138. General E.S. Otis and Staff on Porch of Malacanan Palace, Manila 139. Malacanan Palace and Pasig River, Manila 140. General Otis and Staff, Dining Room, Malacanan Palace, Manila 141. Views in Manila, Philippine Islands 142. View from My Office Window in Palace, Sept. 8, 1898 143. Fountain, Manila, August, 1898 144. Door of Hospital De San Juan Di Dios, Intramuros, Manila, Aug. 29, 1898 145. Sentry Box in Old Manila Wall, August, 1898 146. Dungeons in Old Manila Wall, Sept. 7, 1898 147. Door of Jesuit Church, Manila, Sept. 3, 1898 148. Court Yard of Palace, Manila, Sept, 3, 1898 149. View of Tower of Iglisia De Sta Grum, Manila, Sept. 9, 1898 150. Corner of Old Manila Wall, August, 1898 151. Interior in Palace, Manila, Sept. 4, 1898 152. View of Church of August 30, Manila 153. General Hughes' Temporary Office in Palace 154. Puerto De Gabel, Old Manila Wall, Aug. 29, 1898 155. Views in Manila, Philippine Islands 156. Wash Lady in the River, Manila 157. Soldiers Washing Their Persons and Clothes, Manila 158. Man Rowing Small Boat, Manila 159. Ferry in Canal, Manila 160. Group of Native Women on Canal Bank, Manila 161. Government Launch, Manila 162. View of Canal in New Manila 163. View From My Ferry Crossing River Looking Toward New Town, Manila 164. View of Intramuros From the Water, Manila 165. Women Washing, Manila 166. Barge in Canal, New Town, Half Barge, Half House Boat, Manila 167. Canal Scene in Neuva, Manila 168. Stern of Lighter in Canal, Manila 169. Views in Manila, Philippine Islands 170. Native Woman, with Fruit and Child 171. Native Woman 173. Fruit Woman on Main Bridge 173. Small Boy, With Pup 174. Native Woman on Canal Bank 175. Buffalo, Wagon and Two Coolies 176. Beggar on Main Bridge 177. Views in Honolulu and Manila 178. Leaving Honolulu, Aboard U.S.S. Peru for Manila 179. A Soldier on Deck of Oakland Ferry 180. Three College Men, Corporal Morrow in Center 181. U.S.S. Philadelphia Entering Honolulu Harbor 182. In Camp at Manila 183. Leaving Honolulu, U.S.S. Peru, for Manila 184. U.S.S. Philadelphia, Honolulu Harbor 185. Bridge Over River Naig, Cavite, Connecting Santa Cruz Road with Town of Naig 186. Highway in the Philippines 187. Native House in Suburb of Calamba, Philippines 188. Front and Back View of Native Woven Shirt 189. Malay Women of Jolo Pounding Rice 190. Ancient Cannon Taken from Insurgents 191. Arsenal Grounds in Cavite, Chapel in Front of Commandant's House 192. Bridge Crossing the River at Tambobeng, Manila Province 193. Cane Bridge Over Arm of Bay at Ilo-Ilo, Philippines 194. Sergeant Dan Hewitt, Hero of Caloocan 195. View on Pagsanjan River in the Province of La Laguna 196. Royal Street in Ilo-Ilo, Island of Panay, Philippines 197. Native Dwelling in the Suburbs of Manila 198. The Insurgent Leaders in the Philippines 199. Isabelo Artacho 200. Baldomero Aguinaldo 201. Severino de las Alas 202. Antonio Montenegro 203. Vito Belarmino 204. Pedro Paterno 205. Emilio Aguinaldo 206. Church of San Augustin, Manila 207. Schooner Anchored in Ilo-Ilo Harbor, Philippines 208. Major-General Thomas M. Anderson and Staff, in Command of 1st Division, 8th Army Corps, at Manila 209. Major-General Thomas M. Anderson, Commander of 1st Division, 8th Army Corps, at Manila CHAPTER I Admiral Dewey on His Flagship. A Stormy Day on Manila Bay--Call on Admiral Dewey--The Man in White--He Sticks to His Ship--How He Surprised Spaniards--Every Man Did His Duty on May-Day--How Dewey Looks and Talks--What He Said About War with Germany in Five Minutes--Feeds His Men on "Delicious" Fresh Meat from Australia--Photography Unjust to Him. Steaming across Manila Bay from Cavite to the city on an energetic ferry-boat, scanning the wrecks of the Spanish fleet still visible where the fated ships went down, one of them bearing on a strip of canvas the legible words "Remember the 'Maine,'" the talk being of Dewey's great May-day, we were passing the famous flag-ship of the squadron that was ordered to destroy another squadron, and did it, incidentally gathering in hand the keys of an empire in the Indies for America, because the American victor was an extraordinary man, who saw the immensity of the opportunity and improved it to the utmost, some one said: "There is the Admiral now, on the quarter-deck under the awning--the man in white, sitting alone!" The American Consul at Manila was aboard the ferry-boat, and said to the captain he would like to speak to the Admiral. The course was changed a point, and then a pause, when the Consul called, "Admiral!" And the man in white stepped to the rail and responded pleasantly to the greeting--the Consul saying: "Shall we not see you ashore now?" "No," said the man in white, in a clear voice; "I shall not go ashore unless I have to." Some one said: "This would be a good chance to go. Come with us." The man in white shook his head, and the ferryman ordered full speed, the passengers all looking steadily at the white figure until it became a speck, and the fresh arrivals were shown the objects of the greatest interest, until the wrecks of the Oriental fleet of the Spaniards were no longer visible, and there was only the white walls to see of Cavite's arsenal and the houses of the navy-yard, and the more stately structures of Manila loomed behind the lighthouse at the mouth of the Pasig, when the eyes of the curious were drawn to the mossback fort that decorates as an antiquity the most conspicuous angle of the walls of "the walled city." There was a shade of significance in the few words of the Admiral that he would not go ashore until he must. He has from the first been persistent in staying at Manila. There has been nothing that could induce him to abandon in person the prize won May 1st. His order from the President was to destroy the Spanish fleet. It was given on the first day of the legal existence of the war, counting the day gained, in crossing the Pacific Ocean from the United States to the Philippines, when the 180th degree of longitude west from Greenwich is reached and reckoned. It was thus the President held back when the war was on; and the next day after Dewey got the order at Hongkong he was on the way. The Spaniards at Manila could not have been more astonished at Dewey's way of doing, if they had all been struck by lightning under a clear sky. They had no occasion to be "surprised," having the cable in daily communication with Madrid, and, more than that, a Manila paper of the last day of April contained an item of real news--the biggest news item ever published in that town! It was from a point on the western coast of the island of Luzon, and the substance of it that four vessels that seemed to be men-of-war, had been sighted going south, and supposed to be the American fleet. What did the Spaniards suppose the American fleet they knew well had left Hongkong was going south for? If Admiral Dewey had been a commonplace man he would have paused and held a council of war nigh the huge rock Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay. There is a channel on either side of that island, and both were reputed to be guarded by torpedoes. The Spaniards had an enormous stock of munitions of war--modern German guns enough to have riddled the fleet of American cruisers--and why did they not have torpedoes? They had the Mauser rifle, which has wonderful range, and ten millions of smokeless powder cartridges. Marksmen could sweep the decks of a ship with Mausers at the distance of a mile, and with the smokeless cartridges it would have been mere conjecture where the sharpshooters were located. There are rows of armor-piercing steel projectiles from Germany still standing around rusting in the Spanish batteries, and they never did any more than they are doing. It is said--and there is every probability of the truth of the story--that some of these bolts would not fit any gun the Spaniards had mounted. The Admiral paid no attention to the big rock and the alleged torpedoes, but steamed up the bay near the city where the Spaniards were sleeping. He was hunting the fleet he was ordered to remove, and found it very early in the morning. Still the thunder of his guns seems to thrill and electrify the air over the bay, and shake the city; and the echoes to ring around the world, there is no question--not so much because the Americans won a naval victory without a parallel, as that Dewey improved the occasion, showing that he put brains into his business. They say--that is, some people seem to want to say it and so do--that Dewey is a strange sort of man; as was said of Wolfe and Nelson, who died when they won immortality. Dewey lives and is covered with glory. It has been held that there were not enough Americans hurt in the Manila fight to make the victory truly great. But the same objection applies to the destruction of Cervera's fleet when he ran away from Santiago. General Jackson's battle at New Orleans showed a marvelously small loss to Americans; but it was a good deal of a victory, and held good, though won after peace with England had been agreed upon. The capture of Manila is valid, too. Spain surrendered before the town did. If Dewey had been an every-day kind of man, he would have left Manila when he had fulfilled the letter of his orders, as he had no means of destroying the Spanish army, and did not want to desolate a city, even if the Spaniards held it. He remained and called for more ships and men, and got them. "How is it?" "Why is it?" "How can it be?" are the questions Admiral Dewey asks when told that the American people, without exception, rejoice to celebrate him--that if one of the men known to have been with him May 1st should be found out in any American theater he would be taken on the stage by an irresistible call and a muscular committee of enthusiasts, and the play could not go on without "a few words" and the "Star Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia," "Yankee Doodle," "Dixey" and "My Country, 'tis of Thee"; that the hallelujah note would be struck; that cars are chalked "for Deweyville"; that the board fences have his name written, or painted, or whittled on them; that there are Dewey cigars; that blacksmith-shops have the name Dewey scratched on them, also barn doors; and that if there are two dwelling-houses and a stable at a cross-roads it is Deweyville, or Deweyburg or Deweytown; that there is a flood of boy babies named Dewey, that the girls sing of him, and the ladies all admire him and the widows love him, and the school children adore him. The Admiral says: "I hear such things, and altogether they amaze me--the newspapers, the telegrams, the letters become almost unreal, for I do not comprehend what they say of my first day's work here. There was not a man in the fleet who did not do his duty." The Admiral is told that he need not think to stay away until the people who have him on their minds and in their hearts are tired of their enthusiasm; that he cannot go home undiscovered and without demonstrations that will shake the earth and rend the skies; that the boys will drag the horses from his carriage, and parade the streets with him as a prisoner, and have it out with him, giving him a good time, until it will be a hard time, and he might as well submit to manifest destiny! His country wanted another hero, and he was at the right place at the right time, and did the right thing in the right way; and the fact answers all questions accounting for everything. Still he has a notion of staying away until the storm is over and he can get along without being a spectacle. Why, even the ladies of Washington are wild about him. If he should appear at the White House to call on the President, the scene would be like that when Grant first met Abraham Lincoln. One rough day on the bay I took passage in a small steam-launch to visit the Olympia, where the Admiral's flag floated, to call on him. There was plenty of steam, and it was pleasant to get out a good way behind the breakwater, for the waves beyond were white with anger, and the boat, when departing from partial shelter, had proceeded but two or three hundred yards when it made a supreme effort in two motions--the first, to roll over; the second, to stand on its head. I was glad both struggles were unsuccessful, and pleased with the order: "Slow her up." The disadvantages of too much harbor were evident. The slow-ups were several, and well timed, and then came the rise and fall of the frisky launch beside the warship, the throwing of a rope, the pull with a hook, the stand off with an oar, the bounding boat clearing from four to ten feet at a jump; the clutch, the quick step, the deft avoidance of a crushed foot or sprained ankle, with a possible broken leg in sight, the triumphant ascent, the safe landing, the sudden sense that Desdemona was right in loving a man for the dangers he had passed, the thought that there should be harbors less fluctuating, a lively appreciation of the achievements of pilots in boarding Atlantic liners. The broad decks of the Olympia, built by the builders of the matchless Oregon, had a comforting solidity under my feet. The Admiral was believed to be having a nap; but he was wide awake, and invited the visitor to take a big chair, which, after having accompanied the launch in the dance with the whitecaps, was peculiarly luxurious. The Admiral didn't mind me, and had a moment's surprise about an observer of long ago strolling so far from home and going forth in a high sea to make a call. I confessed to being an ancient Wanderer, but not an Ancient Mariner, and expressed disapprobation of the deplorable roughness of the California Albatross, a brute of a bird--a feathered ruffian that ought to be shot. The Admiral would be picked out by close attention as the origin of some millions of pictures; but he is unlike as well as like them. Even the best photographs do not do justice to his fine eyes, large, dark and luminous, or to the solid mass of his head with iron-brown hair tinged with gray. He is a larger man than the portraits indicate; and his figure, while that of a strong man in good health and form and well nourished, is not stout and, though full, is firm; and his step has elasticity in it. His clean-shaven cheek and chin are massive, and drawn on fine lines full of character--no fatty obscuration, no decline of power; a stern but sunny and cloudless face--a good one for a place in history; no show of indulgence, no wrinkles; not the pallor of marble, rather the glint of bronze--the unabated force good for other chapters of history. It would be extremely interesting to report the talk of the Admiral; but there were two things about him that reminded me of James G. Blaine, something of the vivid personality of the loved and lost leader; something in his eye and his manner, more in the startling candor with which he spoke of things it would be premature to give the world, and, above all, the absence of all alarm about being reported--the unconscious consciousness that one must know this was private and no caution needed. A verbatim report of the Admiral would, however, harm no one, signify high-toned candor and a certain breezy simplicity in the treatment of momentous matters. Evidently here was a man not posing, a hero because his character was heroic, a genuine personage--not artificial, proclamatory, a picker of phrases, but a doer of deeds that explain themselves; a man with imagination, not fantastic but realistic, who must have had a vision during the night after the May-day battle of what might be the great hereafter; beholding under the southern constellations the gigantic shadow of America, crowned with stars, with the archipelagoes of Asia under her feet and broad and mighty destinies at command. It was the next day that he anchored precisely where his famous ship was swinging when I sat beside him; and his words to the representative of three centuries of Spanish misrule had in them an uncontemplated flash from the flint and steel of fixed purpose and imperial force. "Fire another gun at my ships and I will destroy your city." We can hardly realize in America how flagrant Europeanism has been in the Manila Bay; how the big German guns bought by Spain looked from their embrasures; how a powerful German fleet persisted in asserting antagonism to Americanism, and tested in many ways the American Admiral's knowledge of his rights and his country's policy until Admiral Dewey told, not the German Admiral, as has been reported, but his flag lieutenant, "Can it be possible that your nation means war with mine? If so, we can begin it in five minutes." The limit had been reached, and the line was drawn; and Dewey's words will go down in our records with those of Charles Francis Adams to Lord John Russell about the ironclads built in England for the Confederacy: "My Lord, I need not point out to your lordship that this is war." Perhaps the German Admiral had exceeded the instructions of his Imperial Government, and the peremptory words of the American Admiral caused a better understanding, making for peace rather than for war. Next to the Americans the English have taken a pride in Admiral Dewey, and they are in the Asiatic atmosphere our fast friends. They do not desire that we should give up the Philippines. On the contrary, they want us to keep the islands, and the more we become interested in those waters and along their shores, the better. They know that the world has practically grown smaller and, therefore, the British Empire more compact; and they find Russia their foe. They see that with the Pacific Coast our base of operations looking westward, we have first the Hawaiian Islands for producers and a coal station, naval arsenal, dockyards for the renovation and repair and replenishment of our fleets; and they see that we have reserved for ourselves one of the Ladrones, so that we will have an independent route to the Philippines. The Japanese have cultivated much feeling against our possession of Hawaii, the animus being that they wanted it for themselves; and likewise they are disturbed by our Pacific movement, anticipating the improvement of the most western of the Alutian Islands, an admirable station overlooking the North Pacific; all comprehending with Hawaii, the Alutian Island found most available, the Ladrone that we shall reserve and the Philippines, we shall have a Pacific quadrilateral; and this is not according to the present pleasure and the ambition for the coming days, of Japan. England would have approved our holding all the islands belonging to the Spanish, including the Canaries, and Majorca and Minorca and their neighboring isles in the Mediterranean, and take a pride in us. She has been of untold and inestimable service to us in the course of the Spanish War, and her ways have been good for us at Manila, while the Germans have been frankly against us, the Russians grimly reserved, and the French disposed to be fretful because they have invested in Spanish bonds upon which was raised the money to carry on the miserable false pretense of war with the Cubans. One day while I was on the fine transport Peru, in the harbor of Manila, the American Admiral's ship saluted an English ship-of-war coming in that had saluted his flag, and also displayed American colors in recognition that the harbor of Manila was an American port. That was the significance of the flashes and thundering of the Admiral's guns and the white cloud that gathered about his ship that has done enough for celebrity through centuries. Admiral Dewey created the situation in the Philippines that the President wisely chose by way of the Paris Conference to receive the deliberate judgment of the Senate and people of the United States. Dewy has been unceasingly deeply concerned about it. His naval victory was but the beginning. He might have sailed away from Manila May 2d, having fulfilled his orders; but he had the high and keen American spirit in him, and clung. He needed a base of operations, a place upon which to rest and obtain supplies. He had not the marines to spare to garrison a fort save at Cavite, twelve miles from Manila; and he needed chickens, eggs, fresh meat and vegetables; and it was important that the Spanish Army should be occupied on shore. Hence, Aguinaldo, who was in Singapore, and the concentration of insurgents that had themselves to be restrained to make war on civilized lines. One of the points of the most considerable interest touching the Filipinos is that the smashing defeat of the fleet of Spain in Manila Bay heartened them. They have become strong for themselves. The superiority of the Americans over the Spaniards as fighting men is known throughout the islands Spain oppressed; and the bonds of the tyrants have been broken. It should not be out of mind that the first transports with our troops did not reach Manila for six weeks, and that the army was not in shape to take the offensive until after General Merritt's arrival, late in July. All this time the American Admiral had to hold on with the naval arm; and it was the obvious game of Spain, if she meant to fight and could not cope with the Americans in the West Indies, to send all her available ships and overwhelm us in the East Indies. At the same time the German, French, Russian and Japanese men-of-war represented the interest of the live nations of the earth in the Philippines. As fast as possible Admiral Dewey was re-enforced; but it was not until the two monitors, the Monterey and Monadnock, arrived, the latter after the arrival of General Merritt, that the Admiral felt that he was safely master of the harbor. He had no heavily armored ships to assail the shore batteries within their range, and might be crippled by the fire of the great Krupp guns. It was vital that the health of the crews of his ships should be maintained, and the fact that the men are and have been all summer well and happy is not accidental. Admiral Dewey took the point of danger, if there was one, into his personal keeping, by anchoring the Olympia on the Manila side of the bay, while others were further out and near Cavite; and throughout the fleet there was constant activity and the utmost vigilance. There was incessant solicitude about what the desperate Spaniards might contrive in the nature of aggressive enterprise. It seemed incredible to Americans that nothing should be attempted. How would a Spanish fleet have fared for three months of war with us in an American harbor? There would have been a new feature of destructiveness tried on the foe at least once a week. The Spaniards ashore seemed to be drowsy; but the Americans were wide awake, ready for anything, and could not be surprised; so that we may commend as wisdom the Spanish discretion that let them alone. The ship that was the nearest neighbor of Admiral Dewey for months of his long vigil flew the flag of Belgium. She is a large, rusty-looking vessel, without a sign of contraband of war, or of a chance of important usefulness about her; but she performed a valuable function. I asked half a dozen times what her occupation was before any one gave a satisfactory answer. Admiral Dewey told the story in few words. She was a cold-storage ship, with beef and mutton from Australia, compartments fixed for about forty degrees below zero. Each day the meat for the American fleet's consumption was taken out. There was a lot of it on the deck of the Olympia thawing when I was a visitor; and the beef was "delicious." I am at pains to give Dewey's word. While the Spaniards ashore were eating tough, lean buffalo--the beasts of burden in the streets, the Americans afloat rejoiced in "delicious" beef and mutton from Australia. It was explained that the use of cold-storage meat depended upon giving it time to thaw, for if it should be cooked in an icy state it would be black and unpalatable, losing wholly its flavor and greatly its nourishing quality. Australia is not many thousand miles from the Philippines--and one must count miles by the thousands out there. The Belgians have a smart Consul at Manila who is a friend of mankind. One of the incidents in the battle of Manila--all are fresh in the public memory--is that Admiral Dewey did not make use of the conning-tower--a steel, bomb proof, for the security of the officer in command of the ship--the Captain, of course, and the commander of the fleet, if he will. This retreat did not prove, in the battle of Yalu and the combats between the Chileans and Peruvians, a place of safety; but as a rule there is a considerable percentage of protection in its use. Admiral Dewey preferred to remain on the bridge--and there were four fragments of Spanish shells that passed close to him, striking within a radius of fifteen feet. The Admiral, when told there had been some remark because he had not occupied the conning-house in the action, walked with me to the tower, the entrance to which is so guarded that it resembles a small cavern of steel--with a heavy cap or lid, under which is a circular slit, through which observations are supposed to be made. "Try it," the Admiral said, "and you find it is hard to get a satisfactory view." He added, when I had attempted to look over the surroundings: "We will go to the bridge;" and standing on it he annotated the situation, saying: "Here you have the whole bay before you, and can see everything." I remarked: "The newspaper men are very proud of the correspondent of the Herald who was with you on the bridge;" and the Admiral said: "Yes; Stickney was right here with us." There were many reasons for the officer commanding the American fleet that day to watch closely the developments. The Spaniards had, for their own purposes, even falsified the official charts of the bay. Where our vessels maneuvered and the flagship drew twenty-two feet of water and had nine feet under the keel, the chart called for fifteen feet only! It is not a secret that the President wanted Admiral Dewey, if it was not in his opinion inconsistent with his sense of duty, to go to Washington. Naturally the President would have a profound respect for the Admiral's opinion as to the perplexing problem of the Philippines. The Admiral did not think he should leave his post. He could cover the points of chief interest in writing, and preferred very much to do so, and stay right where he was "until this thing is settled." The opinion of the Admiral as to what the United States should do with, or must do about, the political relations of the Philippines with ourselves and others, have not been given formal expression; but it is safe to say they are not in conflict with his feeling that the American fleet at Manila should be augmented with gunboats, cruisers and two or three battle-ships. It was, in the opinion of the illustrious Admiral, when the Peace Commission met in Paris, the time and place to make a demonstration of the sea power of the United States. The personal appearance of Admiral Dewey is not presented with attractive accuracy in the very familiar portrait of him that has been wonderfully multiplied and replenished. The expression of the Admiral is not truly given in the prints and photos. The photographer is responsible for a faulty selection. The impression prevails that the hero is "a little fellow." There is much said to the effect that he is jaunty and has excess of amiability in his smile. He weighs about 180 pounds, and is of erect bearing, standing not less than five feet ten inches and a quarter. His hair is not as white as the pictures say. The artist who touched up the negative must have thought gray hair so becoming that he anticipated the feast of coming years. The figure of the Admiral is strong, well carried, firm, and his bearing that of gravity and determination, but no pose for the sake of show, no pomp and circumstance, just the Academy training showing in his attitude--the abiding, unconscious grace that is imparted in the schools of Annapolis and West Point--now rivaled by other schools in "setting up." The Admiral is of solidity and dignity, of good stature and proportions; has nothing of affectation in manners or insincerity in speech; is a hearty, stirring, serious man, whose intensity is softened by steady purposes and calm forces, and moderated by the play of a sense of humor, that is not drollery or levity, but has a pleasing greeting for a clever word, and yields return with a flash in it and an edge on it. CHAPTER II Life in Manila. Character of the Filipinos--Drivers Lashing Laboring Men in the Streets--What Americans Get in Their Native Air--The Logic of Destiny--Manila as She Fell into Our Hands--The Beds in the Tropics--A Spanish Hotel--Profane Yells for Ice--Sad Scenes in the Dining Room--Major-General Calls for "Francisco"--A Broken-Hearted Pantry Woman. The same marvelous riches that distinguish Cuba are the inheritance of Luzon. The native people are more promising in the long run than if they were in larger percentage of the blood of Spain, for they have something of that indomitable industry that must finally work out an immense redemption for the eastern and southern Asiatics. When, I wonder, did the American people get the impression so extensive and obstinate that the Japanese and Chinese were idlers? We may add as having a place in this category the Hindoos, who toil forever, and, under British government, have increased by scores of millions. The southern Asiatics are, however, less emancipated from various indurated superstitions than those of the East; and the Polynesians, spread over the southern seas, are a softer people than those of the continent. However, idleness is not the leading feature of life of the Filipinos, and when they are mixed, especially crossed with Chinese, they are indefatigable. On the Philippine Islands there is far less servility than on the other side of the sea of China, and the people are the more respectable and hopeful for the flavor of manliness that compensates for a moderate but visible admixture of savagery. We of North America may be proud of it that the atmosphere of our continent, when it was wild, was a stimulant of freedom and independence. The red Indians of our forests were, with all their faults, never made for slaves. The natives of the West Indies, the fierce Caribs excepted, were enslaved by the Spaniards, and perished under the lash. Our continental tribes--the Seminoles and the Comanches, the Sioux and Mohawks, the Black Feet and the Miamis--from the St. Lawrence to Red River and the oceans, fought all comers--Spaniards, French and English--only the French having the talent of polite persuasion and the gift of kindness that won the mighty hunters, but never subjugated them. We may well encourage the idea that the quality of air of the wilderness has entered the soil. When, in Manila, I have seen the men bearing burdens on the streets spring out of the way of those riding in carriages, and lashed by drivers with a viciousness that no dumb animal should suffer, I have felt my blood warm to think that the men of common hard labor in my country would resent a blow as quickly as the man on horseback--that even the poor black--emancipated the other day from the subjugation of slavery by a masterful and potential race, stands up in conscious manhood, and that the teachings of the day are that consistently with the progress of the country--as one respects himself, he must be respected--and that the air and the earth have the inspiration and the stimulus of freedom. The Chinese and Japanese are famous as servants--so constant, handy, obedient, docile, so fitted to minister to luxury, to wait upon those favored by fortune and spurred to execute the schemes for elevation and dominance, and find employment in the enterprise that comprehends human advancement. It must be admitted that the Filipinos are not admirable in menial service. Many of them are untamed, and now, that the Americans have given object lessons of smiting the Spaniards, the people of the islands that Magellinos, the Portuguese, found for Spain, must be allowed a measure of self-government, or they will assert a broader freedom, and do it with sanguinary methods. As Americans have heretofore found personal liberty consistent with public order--that Republicanism was more stable than imperialism in peaceable administration, and not less formidable in war, it seems to be Divinely appointed that our paths of Empire may, with advantage to ourselves, and the world at large, be made more comprehensive than our fathers blazed them out. But one need not hesitate to go forward in this cause, for we have only gone farther than the fathers dreamed, because, among their labors of beneficence, was that of building wiser than they knew, and there is no more reason now why we should stop when we strike the salt water of the seas, and consent to it that where we find the white line of surf that borders a continent we shall say to the imperial popular Republic, thus far and no farther shalt thou go, and here shall thy proud march be stayed--than there was that George Washington, as the representative of the English-speaking people, should have assumed that England and Virginia had no business beyond the Allegheny Mountains, and, above all, no right to territory on the west of the Allegheny and Kanawha, and north of the Ohio river, a territory then remote, inhabited by barbarians and wanted by the French, who claimed the whole continent, except the strip along the Atlantic possessed by the English colonies. Washington was a believer in the acquisition of the Ohio country. He was a man who had faith in land--in ever more land. It is the same policy to go west now that it was then. Washington crossed the Allegheny and held the ground. Jefferson crossed the Mississippi, and sent Louis and Clark to the Pacific; and crossing the great western ocean now is but the logic of going beyond the great western rivers, prairies and mountains then. We walk in the ways of the fathers when we go conquering and to conquer along the Eastward shores of Asia. One of the expanding and teeming questions before the world now, and the authority and ability to determine it, is in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States, is whether Manila shall become an American city, with all the broad and sweeping significance attaching thereto. Manila was not dressed for company when I saw her, for she had just emerged from a siege in which the people had suffered much inconvenience and privation. The water supply was cut off, and the streets were not cleaned. The hotels were disorganized and the restaurants in confusion. The trees that once cast a grateful shade along the boulevards, that extended into the country, rudely denuded of their boughs, had the appearance of the skeletons of strange monsters. The insurgent army was still in the neighborhood in a state of uneasiness, feeling wronged, deprived, as they were, of an opportunity to get even with the Spaniards, by picking out and slaying some of the more virulent offenders. There was an immense monastery, where hundreds of priests were said to be sheltered, and the insurgents desired to take them into their own hands and make examples of them. The Spaniards about the streets were becoming complacent. They had heard of peace, on the basis of Spain giving up every thing, but the Philippines, and there were expectations that the troops withdrawn from Cuba might be sent from Havana to Manila, and then, as soon as the Americans were gone, the islanders could be brought to submission by vastly superior forces. There were more rations issued to Spanish than to American soldiers, until the division of the Philippine Expedition with Major-General Otis arrived, but the Americans were exclusively responsible for the preservation of the peace between the implacable belligerents, and the sanitary work required could not at once be accomplished, but presently it was visible that something was done every day in the right direction. There was much gambling with dice, whose rattling could be heard far and near on the sidewalks, but this flagrant form of vice was summarily suppressed, we may say with strict truth, at the point of the bayonet. The most representative concentration of the ingredients of chaos was at the Hotel Oriental, that overlooked a small park with a dry fountain and a branch of the river flowing under a stone bridge, with a pretty stiff current, presently to become a crowded canal. It is of three lofty stories and an attic, a great deal of the space occupied with halls, high, wide and long. The front entrance is broad, and a tiled floor runs straight through the house. Two stairways, one on either side, lead to the second story, the first steps of stone. In the distance beyond, a court could be seen, a passable conservatory--but bottles on a table with a counter in front declared that this was a barroom, as it was. The next thing further was a place where washing was done, then came empty rooms that might be shops; after this a narrow and untidy street, and then a livery stable--a sort of monopolistic cab stand, where a few ponies and carriages were to be found--but no one understood or did anything as long as possible, except to say that all the rigs were engaged now and always. However, a little violent English language, mixed with Spanish, would arouse emotion and excite commotion eventuating in a pony in harness, and a gig or carriage, and a desperate driver, expert with a villainous whip used without occasion or remorse. The cool place was at the front door, on the sidewalk, seated on a hard chair, for there was always a breeze. The Spanish guests knew where the wind blew, and gathered there discussing many questions that must have deeply interested them. But they had something to eat, no authority or ability to affect any sort of change, and unfailing tobacco, the burning of which was an occupation. The ground floor of the hotel, except the barroom, the washroom, the hall, the conservatory and the hollow square, had been devoted to shop keeping, but the shop keepers were gone, perhaps for days and perhaps forever! Stone is not used to any great extent in house interiors, except within a few feet of the surface of the earth. Of course, there is no elevator in a Spanish hotel. That which is wanted is room for the circulation of air. Above the first flight of stairs the steps have a deep dark red tinge, and are square and long, so that each extends solidly across the liberal space allotted to the stairway. The blocks might be some stone of delightful color, but they are hewn logs, solid and smooth, of a superb mahogany or some tree of harder wood and deeper luxuriance of coloring. The bedrooms are immensely high, and in every way ample, looking on great spaces devoted to wooing the air from the park and the river. The windows are enormous. Not satisfied with the giant sliding doors that open on the street, revealing windows--unencumbered with sash or glass, there are sliding doors under the window sills, that roll back right and left and offer the chance to introduce a current of air directly on the lower limbs. One of the lessons of the tropics is the value of the outer air, and architecture that gives it a chance in the house. It is a precious education. The artificial light within must be produced by candles, and each stupendous apartment is furnished with one tallowy and otherwise neglected candle stick, and you can get, with exertion, a candle four inches long. There is a wardrobe, a wash stand, with pitcher and basin, and a commode, fans, chairs, and round white marble table, all the pieces placed in solitude, so as to convey the notion of lonesomeness. The great feature is the bed. The bedstead is about the usual thing, save that there is no provision for a possible or impossible spring mattress, or anything of that nature. The bed space is covered with bamboo, platted. It is hard as iron, and I can testify of considerable strength, for I rested my two hundred pounds, and rising a few pounds, on this surface, with no protection for it or myself for several nights, and there were no fractures. There is spread on this surface a Manila mat, which is a shade tougher and less tractable than our old style oilcloth. Upon this is spread a single sheet, that is tucked in around the edges of the mat, and there are no bed clothes, absolutely none. There is a mosquito bar with only a few holes in it, but it is suspended and cannot under any circumstances be used as a blanket. There is a pillow, hard and round, and easy as a log for your cheek to rest upon, and it is beautifully covered with red silk. There is a small roll, say a foot long and four inches in diameter, softer than the pillow, to a slight extent, and covered with finer and redder silk, that is meant for the neck alone. The comparatively big red log is to extend across the bed for the elevation it gives the head, and the little and redder log, softer so that you may indent it with your thumb, saves the neck from being broken on this relic of the Spanish inquisition. But there is a comforter--not such a blessed caressing domestic comforter as the Yankees have, light as a feather, but responsive to a tender touch. This Philippine comforter is another red roll that must be a quilt firmly rolled and swathed in more red silk; and it is to prop yourself withal when the contact with the sheet and the mat on the bamboo floor of the bedstead, a combination iniquitous as the naked floor--becomes wearisome. It rests the legs to pull on your back, and tuck under your knees. In the total absence of bed covering, beyond a thin night shirt, the three red rolls are not to be despised. The object of the bed is to keep cool, and if you do find the exertion of getting onto--not into--the bed produces a perspiration, and the mosquito bar threatens suffocation, reliance may be had that if you can compose yourself on top of the sheet (which feels like a hard wood floor, when the rug gives way on the icy surface and you fall) and if you use the three rolls of hard substance, covered with red silk, discreetly and considerately, in finding a position, and if you permit the windows--no glass--fifteen feet by twelve, broadcast, as it were, to catch the breath of the river and the park; if you can contrive with infinite quiet, patience and pains to go to sleep for a few hours, you will be cool enough; and when awakened shivering there is no blanket near, and if you must have cover, why get under the sheet, next the Manila mat, and there you are! Then put your troublesome and probably aching legs over the bigger red roll, and take your repose! Of course, when in the tropics you cannot expect to bury yourself in bedclothing, or to sleep in fur bags like an arctic explorer. The hall in front of your door is twelve feet wide and eighty long, lined with decorative chairs and sofas, and in the center of the hotel is a spacious dining room. The Spaniard doesn't want breakfast. He wants coffee and fruit--maybe a small banana--something sweet, and a crumb of bread. The necessity of the hour is a few cigarettes. His refined system does not require food until later. At 12 o'clock he lunches, and eats an abundance of hot stuff--fish, flesh and fowl--fiery stews and other condolences for the stomach. This gives strength to consider the wrongs of Spain and the way, when restored to Madrid, the imbeciles, who allowed the United States to capture the last sad fragments of the colonies, sacred to Spanish honor, shall be crushed by the patriots who were out of the country when it was ruined. It will take a long time for the Spaniards to settle among factions the accounts of vengeance. One of the deeper troubles of the Spaniards is that they take upon themselves the administration of the prerogatives of him who said "Vengeance is mine." The American end of the dining room contains several young men who speak pigeon Spanish, and Captains Strong and Coudert are rapidly becoming experts, having studied the language in school, and also on the long voyage out. There are also a group of resident Englishmen and a pilgrim from Norway, but at several tables are Americans who know no Spanish and are mad at the Spaniards on that provocation among other things. There is, however, a connecting link and last resort in the person of a young man--a cross between a Jap and Filipino. He is slender and pale, but not tall. His hair is roached, so that it stands up in confusion, and he is wearied all the time about the deplorable "help."' It is believed he knows better than is done--always a source of unhappiness. His name is Francisco; his reputation is widespread. He is the man who "speaks English"--and is the only one--and it is not doubted that he knows at least a hundred words of our noble tongue. He says, "What do you want?" "Good morning, gentlemen"; "What can I do for you?" "Do you want dinner?" "No, there is no ice till 6 o'clock." He puts the Americans in mind of better days. Behind this linguist is a little woman, whose age might be twenty or sixty, for her face is so unutterably sad and immovable in expression that there is not a line in it that tells you anything but that there is to this little woman a bitterly sad, mean, beastly world. She must be grieving over mankind. It is her duty to see that no spoon is lost, and not an orange or banana wasted, and her mournful eyes are fixed with the intensity of despair upon the incompetent waiters, who, when hard pressed by wild shouts from American officers, frantic for lack of proper nourishment, fall into a panic and dance and squeal at each other; and then the woman of fixed sorrow, her left shoulder thin and copper-colored, thrust from her low-necked dress, her right shoulder protected, is in the midst of the pack, with a gliding bound and the ferocity of a cat, the sadness of her face taking on a tinge of long-suffering rage. She whirls the fools here and there as they are wanted. Having disentangled the snarl, she returns to the door from which her eyes command both the pantry and the dining-room to renew her solemn round of mournful vigilance. The Americans are outside her jurisdiction. She has no more idea what they are than Christopher Columbus, when he was discovering America, knew where he was going. When Francisco does not know what the language (English) hurled at him means he has a far-away look, and may be listening to the angels sing, for he is plaintive and inexpressive. He looks so sorry that Americans cannot speak their own language as he speaks English! But there are phrases delivered by Americans that he understands, such as, "Blankety, blank, blank--you all come here." Francisco does not go there, but with humble step elsewhere, affecting to find a pressing case for his intervention, but when he can no longer avoid your eye catching him he smiles a sweet but most superior smile, such as becomes one who speaks English and is the responsible man about the house. There never was one who did more on a capital of one hundred words. His labors have been lightened slightly, for the Americans have picked up a few Spanish words, such as, "Ha mucher, mucher--don't you know? Hielo, hielo!" Hielo is ice, and after the "mucher" is duly digested the average waiter comes, by and by, with a lump as big as a hen's egg and is amazed by the shouts continuing "hielo, hielo!" pronounced much like another and wicked word. "Oh, blanketination mucher mucher hielo!" The Filipinos cannot contemplate lightly the consumption of slabs of ice. The last words I heard in the dining-room of the Hotel Oriental were from a soldier with two stars on each shoulder: "Francisco, oh, Francisco," and the little woman with left shoulder exposed turned her despairing face to the wall, her sorrow too deep for words or for weeping. CHAPTER III From Long Island To Luzon. Across the Continent--An American Governor-General Steams Through the Golden Gate--He Is a Minute-Man--Honolulu as a Health Resort--The Lonesome Pacific--The Skies of Asia--Dreaming Under the Stars of the Scorpion--The Southern Cross. Spain, crowded between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was the world's "West" for many centuries, indeed until Columbus found a further West, but he did not go far enough to find the East Indies. The United States is now at work in both the East and West Indies. Our Manila expeditions steamed into the sunsets, the boys pointing out to each other the southern cross. The first stage of a journey, to go half round the world on a visit to our new possession, was by the annex boat from Brooklyn, and a rush on the Pennsylvania train, that glimmers with gold and has exhausted art on wheels, to Washington, to get the political latitude and longitude by observation of the two domes, that of the Capitol, and the library, and the tremendous needle of snow that is the monument to Washington, and last, but not least, the superb old White House. The next step was across the mountains on the Baltimore and Ohio, the short cut between the East and the West, traversed so often by George Washington to get good land for the extension of our national foundations. The space between Cincinnati and Chicago is cleared on the "Big Four" with a bound through the shadow of the earth, between two rare days in June, and the next midnight, the roaring train flew high over the Missouri River at Omaha, and by daylight far on the way to Ogden. The country was rich in corn and grass, and when one beholds the fat cattle, lamentations for the lost buffalo cease. It is a delight to see young orchards and farmhouses, and cribs and sheds fortified against tornadoes by groves, laid out with irritating precision to confront the whirling storms from west and south. The broad bad lands in which the tempests are raised devour the heart of the continent. I made note of the 888-mile post beyond Omaha, but the 1,000-mile telegraph pole and tree glided away while I was catching the lights and shadows on a fearfully tumbled landscape. The alkali has poisoned enormous tracts, and the tufts of sagebrush have a huge and sinister monotony. Looking out early in the morning there was in our track a "gaunt grey wolf" with sharp ears, unabashed by the roar of the train. His species find occasional scraps along the track and do not fear the trains. Then I saw something glisten in the herbage, and it was a rattlesnake, if it were not a whisky bottle. The gigantic lumps of tawny earth, with castellated crags of stone, ghostly ruins one would say of cities that perished thousands of years before the bricks were made for Babylon. Profound beds for vanished torrents yawned into a scrap of green valley, and the glitter of a thread of water. A town blossomed from a coal mine, and there was an array of driven wells with force pumps to quench the thirst of seething and raging locomotives. A turn in the line and a beautiful cloud formation like billows of white roses, massive, delicately outlined fantastic spires like marble mountains, carved--ah! the cloud comes out clear as if it were a wall of pearl, and there are the everlasting mighty hills with their brows of exquisite snow! These are lofty reservoirs from which the long days glowing with sunshine send down streams of water at whose touch the deserts bloom. The eye is refreshed as we make a closer acquaintance of the mountains. Where water flows and trees "wag their high tops" there is hope of homes. There are canyons that cause one to smile at remembrances of what were considered the dizzy gorges of the Alleghenies. There is a glow as of molten lead in one corner of a misty valley far away. It is Salt Lake, the Dead Sea of America. Beyond this at an immense elevation is a lake with the tinge of the indigo sky of the tropics. If one could stir a portion of the Caribbean Sea into Lake Geneva, the correct tint could be obtained. Thirty miles of snow sheds announce progress in the journey to the Pacific. There is still heat and dust, but beside the road are villages; and there are even fountains. Each stream is a treasure, and its banks are rich with verdure. There are sleek cows on bright grass. The mountains are no longer forbidding. They take on robes of loveliness. The valleys broaden and on the easy slopes there are orchards where the oranges glisten. There are clusters of grapes. We have come upon that magic land, California. There is golden music in the name. This is a conquest. The war in which it was won was not one of philanthropy. We gathered an empire. General Merritt never minded the weather, whether the wind blew or not, and instead of holding his ship for several hours after the appointed time, wanted to know five minutes after 10 o'clock whether the time for starting was not 10 o'clock and by whom the boat was detained. At ten minutes after 10 the gangplank was swung free, with a desperate man on it who scrambled on with the help of long legs and a short rope. As the ship swung from the dock and got a move on there were thousands of men and women exalted with emotion, and there were crowded steamers and tugs toppling with swarming enthusiasts resounding with brass bands and fluttering with streaming flags. The ladies were especially frantic. Spurts of white smoke jetted from forts and there were ringing salutes. Steam whistles pitched a tune beyond the fixed stars. The national airs with thrilling trumpet tones pierced the din, and a multitude of voices joined with the bands giving words and tone to the magnetic storm. How many miles the Newport was pursued I cannot conjecture. There were tall ladies standing on the high decks of tugs that were half buried in the foam of the bay, but as long as they could hold a "Star Spangled Banner" in one hand, and a few handkerchiefs in another, their skirts streaming in grace and defiance before the rising gale, they sang hosannas, and there were attitudes both of triumph and despair as the fair followers, dashed with spray, gave up the chase, passionately kissing their hands god-speed and good-by. This was going to the Indies through the Golden Gate! A breakage of dishes, that sounded as though the ship were going to pieces, belied the prophesy that beyond the bar there was to be no moaning; and the Pacific would not be pacified. However, the reputation of the ocean was good enough to go to sleep on, but the berths squirmed in sympathy with the twisting and plunging ship. It was not a "sound of revelry by night," to which the wakeful listened through the dismal hours, and in the morning there was a high sea--grand rollers crowned with frothy lace, long black slopes rising and smiting like waves of liquid iron. The Pacific was an average North Atlantic, and it was explained by the tale that the peaceful part of this ocean is away down South where the earth is most rotund, and the trade winds blow on so serenely that they lull the navigators into dreams of peace that induce a state of making haste slowly and a willingness to forget and be forgotten, whether-- Of those who husbanded the golden grain Or those who flung it to the winds like rain, The gulls are not our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly spectacle glasses. General Merritt's blue eyes shone like diamonds through the stormy experiences while the young staff officers curled up as the scientists did on the floor, and smiled a sort of sickly smile! The highest compliment that can be paid them is that the group of officers and gentlemen surrounding the commander of the expedition to the Philippines, express his own character. It was funny to find that the private soldiers were better served with food than the General and his staff. There was reform, so as to even up the matter of rations, but the General was not anxious and solicitous for better food. His idea of the correct supper after a hard day's service is a goodly sized sliced onion with salt, meat broiled on two sticks, hard tack, a tin cup of coffee, for luxuries a baked potato, a pipe of tobacco, a nip of whisky, a roll in a blanket and a sleep until the next day's duties are announced by the bugle. As the gentlemen of the staff got their sea legs, and flavored the narration of their experiences with humor, I found myself in a cloudy state and mentioned a small matter to the brigadier surgeon, who whipped out a thermometer and took my temperature, and that man of science gave me no peace night or day, and drove me from the ship into Paradise--that is to say I was ordered to stay at Honolulu. Through a window of the Queen's hospital I saw lumps of tawny gold that were pomegranates shaking in the breeze, another tree glowed with dates, and a broad, vividly green hedge was rich with scarlet colors. I was duly examined by physicians, who were thorough as German specialists. I had, in the course of a few hours, a nap, a dish of broth, a glass of milk, a glass of ice water and an egg nog. That broth flowed like balm to the right spot. It was chicken broth. When I guzzled the egg nog I would have bet ten to one on beating that fever in a week, and the next morning about 4:30, when there was competitive crowing by a hundred roosters, I was glad of the concert, for it gave assurance of a supply of chickens to keep up the broth and the eggs that disguised the whiskey. Two days later I gave up the egg nog because it was too good for me. I knew I did not deserve anything so nice, and suspected it was a beneficence associated with a cloud on my brow. I had the approval of the hospital physician as to egg nog, and he cut off a lot of dainties sent by the Honolulu ladies, who must have imagined that I was one of the heroes of the war. Their mission is to make heroes happy. I was detained under the royal palms, and other palms that were planted by the missionaries, four weeks, and got away on the ship Peru with Major-General Otis, and when we had gone on for a fortnight, as far as from the Baltic to Lake Erie, we saw some rocks that once were Spanish property. As we left Honolulu the air was already a-glitter with Star Spangled Banners. There are three great points to be remembered as to the annexation of Hawaii: 1. There is not to be a continuance of the slavery of Asiatics in the new possession. 2. "Manhood suffrage" is not to be extended to Asiatics, often actually as under strictly conventional constitutional construction. 3. The archipelago is to be a United States territory, but not a State of the United States. Ex-President Harrison says in his most interesting book: "This Country of Ours," which should be one of our national school books: "Out of the habit of dealing with the public domain has come the common thought that all territory that we acquire must, when sufficiently populous, be erected into States. But why may we not take account of the quality of the people as well as of their numbers, if future acquisitions should make it proper to do so? A territorial form of government is not so inadequate that it might not serve for an indefinite time." It is to be remarked of the Hawaiian Islands that they did not possess the original riches of timber that distinguished the West Indies, especially Cuba, where Columbus found four varieties of oranges. One of the features of Hawaiian forestry is the Royal Palm, but it was not indigenous to the islands. The oldest of the stately royalists is not of forty years' growth, and yet they add surprising grace to many scenes, and each year will increase their height and enhance their beauty. Hawaiians will be saved from extinction by miscegenation. There will be no harm done these feeble people by the shelter of the flag of the great republic. The old superstitions prevail among them to an extent greater than is generally understood. I had the privilege of visiting an American home, the background of which was a rugged mountain that looked like a gigantic picture setting forth the features of a volcanic world. Far up the steep is a cave in which the bones of many of the old savages were deposited in the days of civil war and inhuman sacrifices. The entrance was long ago--in the days the Hawaii people describe as "Before the Missionaries." The hole going to the holy cavern was closed, but there is still pious watching over the place of bones, and if there are climbers of the mountain not to be trusted with the solemn secrets of ancient times, they are stalked by furtive watchmen of the consecrated bones, and no doubt the ever alert sentinels would resist violation of the sepulchre in the rocks; and the natives are careful to scatter their special knowledge that the spot is haunted by supernatural shapes and powers. The Americans living in the midst of these mysteries are rather proud of the ghosts they never see, but have to put up with the haunting guard still ministering to the gods that dwelt in the shrines where the shadows of extinct volcanoes fall, long before the masterful missionaries planted their first steps in the high places. After twenty-two days' steaming from San Francisco--Queen's Hospital time not counted--we were directly south of China's Yellow Sea, and within a few hours of sighting the isle of Luzon. Only at Honolulu, all the way from San Francisco, was there a sail or a smoke not of a vessel of the Philippine expedition. All the long days and nights the eye swept the horizon for companionship, finding only that of our associates in adventure, and very little of them. Even the birds seem to shrink from the heart of the watery world spread between America and Asia; and the monsters of the deep are absent. One day, about a thousand miles from California, a story spread of a porpoise at play, but the lonely creature passed astern like a bubble. Bryant sang of the water fowl that flew from zone to zone, guided in certain flight on the long way over which our steps are led aright, but the Pacific zones are too broad for even winged wanderers. The fish that swarm on our coast do not seem to find home life or sporting places in this enormous sea. Only the flying fish disturb the silky scene and flutter with silver wings over the sparkling laces that glisten where the winds blow gently, and woo the billows to cast aside the terrors of other climes and match the sky of blue and gold in beauty; but, unlike the stars, the waves do not differ in glory, and the spread of their splendor, when they seem to roll over a conquered universe, appeals to the imagination with the solemn suggestion not that order rules but that old chaos settles in solemn peace. The days terminate on this abyss in marvelous glories. The glowing spectacle is not in the west alone, but the gorgeous conflagration of the palaces we build in dreams spreads all around the sky. The scene one evening in the vicinity of the sun departing in Asia to light up the morning of the everlasting to-morrow touching America with magical riches, was that of Niagara Falls ten thousand times magnified and turned to molten gold, that burned with inconceivable luster, while the south and north and east were illuminated with strange fires and soft lights, fading and merged at last in the daffodil sky. Then the west became as a forest of amazing growth, and the ship entered its dusky recesses like a hunter for game such as the world never saw--and we looked upon the slow-fading purple islands that are the northern fringes of the greater one of the Philippines, and studied the rather faint and obscure Southern Cross and the stately sheen of the superb constellation of the Scorpion. It is a pity to have to say that the Cross of the South is a disappointment--has to be explained and made impressive by a diagram. It is more like a kite than a cross; has a superfluous star at one corner, and no support at all of the idea of being like a cross unless it is worked up and picked into the fancy. The North Star shines on the other side of the ship, and the Great Dipper dips its pointers after midnight, into the mass of darkness that is the sea when the sun and moon are gone. The voyage from Honolulu to the farther Pacific was not so long that we forgot the American send-off we got in that Yankee city. The national airs sounded forth gloriously and grand. Flags and hankerchiefs fluttered from dense masses of spectators, and our colors were radiant above the roofs. There was, as usual, a mist on the mountains, and over Pearl Harbor glowed the arch of the most vivid rainbow ever seen, and Honolulu is almost every day dipped in rainbows. This was a wonder of splendor. The water changed from a sparkling green to a darkly luminous blue. From the moment the lofty lines of the coast--our mountains now--faded, till the birds came out of the west, the Pacific Ocean justified its name. The magnificent monotony of its stupendous placidity was not broken except by a few hours of ruffled rollers that tell of agitations that, if gigantic, are remote. The two thousand and one hundred miles from California to Honolulu seemed at first to cover a vast space of the journey from our Pacific coast to the Philippines, but appeared to diminish in importance as we proceeded and were taught by the persistent trade winds that blew our way, as if forever to waft us over the awful ocean whose perpetual beauty and placidity were to allure us to an amazing abyss, from which it was but imaginative to presume that we, in the hands of infinite forces, should ever be of the travelers that return. Similar fancies beset, as all the boys remember--the crews of the caravels that carried Columbus and his fortunes. There were the splendors of tropical skies to beguile us; the sea as serene as the sky to enchant us! What mighty magic was this that put a spell upon an American army, seeking beyond the old outlines of our history and dreams, to guide us on unfamiliar paths? What was this awakening in the soft mornings, to the thrilling notes of the bugle? The clouds were not as those we knew in other climes and years. We saw no penciling of smoke on the edges of the crystal fields touched up with dainty ripples too exquisite to be waves--that which is a delight for a moment and passes but to come again, in forms too delicate to stay for a second, save in those pictures that in the universe fill the mind with memories that arc like starlight. The glancing tribes of flying fish became events. We followed the twentieth parallel of longitude north of the equator, right on, straight as an arrow's flight is the long run of the ship--her vapor and the bubbles that break from the waters vanishing, so that we were as trackless when we had passed one breadth after another of the globe, as the lonesome canoes of the Indians on the Great Lakes. CHAPTER IV Interview with General Aguinaldo. The Insurgent Leader's Surroundings and Personal Appearance--His Reserves and Ways of Talking--The Fierce Animosity of the Filipinos Toward Spanish Priests--A Probability of Many Martyrs in the Isle of Luzon. Practically all persons in the more civilized--and that is to say the easily accessible--portions of the Philippine Islands, with perhaps the exception of those leading insurgents who would like to enjoy the opportunities the Spaniards have had for the gratification of greed and the indulgence of a policy of revenge, would be glad to see the Americans remain in Manila, and also in as large a territory as they could command. Spaniards of intelligence are aware that they have little that is desirable to anticipate in case the country is restored to them along with their Mausers and other firearms, great and small, according to the terms of capitulation. They get their guns whether we go and leave them or we stay and they go. It is obvious that the insurgents have become to the Spaniards a source of anxiety attended with terrors. The fact that they allowed themselves to be besieged in Manila by an equal number of Filipinos is conclusive that their reign is over, and they are not passionately in favor of their own restoration. Their era of cruel and corrupt government is at an end, even if we shall permit them to make the experiment. Their assumed anxiety to stay, is false pretense. They will be hurt if they do not go home. The exasperation of the Filipinos toward the church is a phenomenon, and they usually state it with uncandid qualifications of the inadequate definition of the opinions and policy made by General Aguinaldo. Representations of my representative character as an American journalist, that gave me an importance I do not claim or assume to have, caused the appearance at my rooms, in Manila, of insurgents of high standing and comprehensive information, and of large fortunes in some cases. I was deeply impressed by their violent radicalism regarding the priests. At first they made no distinction, but said flatly the priests were the mischiefmakers, the true tyrants, and next to the half-breed Filipinos crossed with Chinese--who are phenomenal accumulators of pecuniary resources--the money-makers, who profited wrongfully by the earnings of others. And so "the priests must go," they said, and have no choice except that of deportation or execution. In few words, if they did not go away they would be killed. When close and urgent inquiry was made, the native priests were not included in the application of this rule. The Spanish priests were particularly singled out for vengeance, and with them such others as had been "false to the people" and treacherous in their relations to political affairs. The number to be exiled or executed was stated at 3,000. The priests are panicky about this feeling of the natives, as is in evidence in their solicitude to get away. They at least have no hope of security if the Spaniards should regain the mastery of the islands. Two hundred and fifty of them in vain sought to get passage to Hongkong in one boat. I was informed on authority that was unquestionable that the eviction or extermination of the Spanish priests was one of the inevitable results of Filipine independence--the first thing to be done. It was with three objects in view that I had an interview with General Aguinaldo: (1) To ascertain exactly as possible his feeling and policy toward the United States and its assertion of military authority; (2) to inquire about his position touching the priests, (3) and to urge him to be at pains to be represented not only at Washington, but at Paris. As regards the latter point, it was clear that the people of the Philippines, whatever they might be, ought to be represented before the Paris conference. No matter what their case was, it should be personally presented, even if the representatives were witnesses against rather than for themselves. In the interest of fair play and the general truth the Philippine population should put in an appearance at the seat of the government of the United States for the information of the President, and at the scene of the conference to testify; and I was sure it would appear in all cases that they were at least better capable of governing themselves than the Spaniards to govern them. There could be no form of government quite so bad as that of the fatal colonial system of Spain, as illustrated in the Philippines and in the Americas. General Aguinaldo was neither remote nor inaccessible. His headquarters were in an Indian village, just across the bay, named Bacoor, and in less than an hour a swift steam launch carried Major Bell, of the bureau of information, a gallant and most industrious and energetic officer, and myself, to water so shallow that we had to call canoes to land in front of a church that before the days of Dewey was riddled by the fire of Spanish warships because occupied by insurgents. The walls and roof showed many perforations. The houses of the village were of bamboo, and there were many stands along the hot and dusty street on which fruit was displayed for sale. The General's house was about as solid a structure as earthquakes permit, its roof of red tile instead of the usual straw. His rooms were in the second story, reached by a broad stairway, at the top of which was a landing of liberal dimensions and an ante-room. The General was announced at home and engaged in writing a letter to General Merritt--then his rather regular literary exercise. There were a dozen insurgent soldiers at the door, and as many more at the foot and head of the stairs, with several officers, all in military costume, the privates carrying Spanish Mausers and the officers wearing swords. We were admitted to an inner room, with a window opening on the street, and told the General would see us directly. Meanwhile well-dressed ladies of his family passed through the audience room from the General's office to the living rooms, giving a pleasant picture of domesticity. The door from the study opened and a very slender and short young man entered with a preoccupied look that quickly became curious. An attendant said in a low voice, "General Aguinaldo." He was unexpectedly small--could weigh but little over 100 pounds--dressed in pure white, and his modesty of bearing would have become a maiden. The first feeling was a sort of faint compassion that one with such small physical resources should have to bear the weighty responsibilities resting upon him. Major Bell had often met him, and introduced me. The General was gratified that I had called, and waited for the declaration of my business. He had been informed of my occupation; the fact that I had recently been in Washington and expected soon to be there again; was from Ohio, the President's state, a friend of his, and had written a book on Cuba, a task which gave me, as I had visited the Island of Cuba during the war, an acquaintance with the Spanish system of governing colonies. The interpreter was a man shorter than the General, but not quite so slight. His hair was intensely black and he wore glasses. He is an accomplished linguist, speaks English with facility and is acknowledged by the priests to be the equal of any of them in reading and speaking Latin. It is to be remarked that while Aguinaldo is not a man of high education he has as associates in his labors for Philippine independence a considerable number of scholarly men. It is related that in a recent discussion between a priest and an insurgent, the latter stated as a ground of rebellion that the Spaniards did nothing for the education of the people, and was asked, "Where did you get your education?" He had been taught by the Jesuits. My first point in talking with Aguinaldo was that the people of the Philippines ought to be strongly represented in Paris, and of the reasons briefly presented, the foremost was that they sought independence, and should be heard before the commission by which their fate would be declared for the present, so far as it could be, by a tribunal whose work was subject to revision. The general's information was that the Paris conference would be opened September 15, an error of a fortnight, and his impression was that the terms regarding the Philippines would be speedily settled, so that there could not be time to send to Paris, but there had been a determination reached to have a man in Washington. It is to be taken into account that this interview was before anything had been made known as to the mission which General Merritt undertook, and that in a few days he set forth to perform, and that the terms of the protocol had not been entirely published in Manila. I told the general it was not possible that the Philippine problem could speedily be solved, and made known to him that the transport China, which holds the record of quick passage on the Pacific, was to sail for San Francisco in three days, and he would do well to have his men for Washington and Paris go on her if permission could be obtained, as there was no doubt it could, and I mentioned the time required to reach Washington and Paris--that one could be on a trans-Atlantic steamer in New York six hours after leaving Washington, that the Philippine commissioners going to Paris should make it a point to see the President on the way, and the whole matter one of urgency, but it was certainly not too late to act. The General said it had been thought a representative of the islands and of the cause of the people should go to Washington, but the man was in Hongkong. He could, however, be telegraphed, so that he could catch the China at Nagasaka, Japan, where she would have to stop two days to take coal. The Washington commissioner might go to Paris, but instructions could not reach him before he left Hongkong, as it would not be desirable to telegraph them. Upon this I stated if it suited his convenience and he would send instructions by me, I was going on the China, and would charge myself with the special confidential care of his dispatches and deliver them to the commissioner at the coaling station, when he should join the ship; and if it was the desire of the General to have it done I would telegraph the President that Philippine commissioners were on the way. These suggestions were received as if they were agreeable, and esteemed of value. The conversation turned at this point to the main question of the future government of the Philippines, and I inquired what would be satisfactory to the General, and got, of course, the answer, "Philippine independence." But I said after the United States had sent a fleet and destroyed the Spanish fleet and an army in full possession of Manila she was a power that could not be ignored; and what would be thought of her assuming the prerogative of Protector? She could not escape responsibility. His views as to the exact line of demarkation or distinction between the rights of the United States and those of the people of the islands should be perfectly clear, for otherwise there would be confusion and possibly contention in greater matters than now caused friction. I endeavored to indicate the idea that there might be an adjustment on the line that the people of the Philippines could manage their local matters in their own way, leaving to the United States imperial affairs, the things international and all that affected them, the Filipinos looking to the administration of localities. I had asked questions and stated propositions as if it were the universal consent that General Aguinaldo was the dictator for his people and had the executive word to say; but when it came to drawing the fine lines of his relations with the United States as the embodiment of a revolutionary movement, he became shy and referred to those who had to be consulted. His words were equivalent to saying his counselors must, in all matters of moment, be introduced. It came to the same thing at last as to his commissioner or commissioners to Washington or Paris, one or both, and he also asserted the purpose of having the congress elected assemble at a railroad town--Moroles, about fifty miles north of Manila--a movement it is understood that is under the guidance of others than the General, the bottom fact being that if there should be a Philippine Republic Aguinaldo's place, in the judgment of many who are for it, would be not that of chief magistrate, but the head of the army. There are others and many of them of the opinion that he is not a qualified soldier. The congress assembled at Moroles, and has made slow progress. It may as well be remembered, however, that the distinctions of civil and military power have been always hard to observe, in Central and South American states, whose early Spanish education has been outgrown gradually, and with halting and bloody steps. General Aguinaldo, then engaged in evolving a letter to General Merritt, has since issued proclamations that yield no share to the United States in the native government of the islands. But there are two things definitely known, as if decreed in official papers, and probably more so; that the Filipinos of influential intelligence would be satisfied with the direction of local affairs and gladly accept the protectorate of the United States on the terms which the people of the United States may desire and dictate. The greater matter is that whenever it is the fixed policy of the United States to accept the full responsibility of ruling the Philippines, neither Aguinaldo nor any other man of the islands would have the ability to molest the steady, peaceable, beneficent development of the potentiality of our system of justice to the people, and the preservation by and through the popular will of the union of liberty under the law, and order maintained peaceably or forcibly according to needs. In continuation of his explanation that he had to refer matters to others called his counselors, disclaiming the presumption in my questions of his personal responsibility for the conduct of the native insurrection, General Aguinaldo said with the greatest deliberation and the softest emphasis of any of his sayings, that the insurgents were already suspicious of him as one who was too close a friend of the Americans, and yielded too much to them, and that there was danger this feeling might grow and make way with his ability to do all that he would like in the way of keeping the peace. There were, he said, inquiries to the effect: What had the insurgents got for what they had done in the capture of Manila? Were they not treated by the Americans with indifference? Major Bell interposed to say that the Americans were in the Philippines not as politicians, but as soldiers, and had the duty of preserving order by military occupation, and it was not possible there could be maintained a double military authority--two generals of equal powers in one city under martial law. There must be one master and no discussion. The United States could take no secondary attitude or position--would treat the insurgents with great consideration, but they of necessity were exclusively responsible for the carrying out of the provisions of the capitulation. This was exactly to the point, and the interpreter cut his rendering of it, using but few words, and they did not cheer up the General and those about him. Evidently they want to know when and where they realize. It had been noticeable that the greater importance Aguinaldo attaches to what he is saying the lower his voice and the more certainly he speaks in a half whisper with parted lips, show-in teeth and tongue; and he has a surprising faculty of talking with the tip of his tongue, extended a very little beyond his lips. There was something so reserved as to be furtive about his mouth, but his eyes were keen, straight and steady, showing decision, but guarding what he regarded the niceties of statement. However, his meaning that there were insurgents who were finding fault with him was not so much indicative of a rugged issue as a confession of impending inabilities. He had nothing to say in response to Major Bell's explicit remark about the one-man and one-country military power, but the action of the insurgents in removing their headquarters--or their capital, as they call it--to a point forty miles from Manila, proves that they have come to an understanding that the soldiers of the United States are not in the Philippines for their health entirely, or purely in the interest of universal benevolence. The Filipinos must know, too, that they could never themselves have captured Manila. It is not inapt to say that the real center of the rebellion against Spain is, as it has been for years, at Hongkong. I reserved what seemed the most interesting question of the interview with the Philippine leader to the last. It was whether a condition of pacification was the expulsion of the Catholic priests as a class. This was presented with reference to the threats that had been made in my hearing that the priests must go or die, for they were the breeders of all trouble. Must all of them be removed in some way or another? If not, where would the line be drawn? The lips of the General were parted and his voice quite low and gentle, the tongue to a remarkable degree doing the talking, as he replied, plainly picking words cautiously and measuring them. The able and acute interpreter dealt them out rapidly, and his rendering gave token that the Filipinos have already had lessons in diplomacy--even in the Spanish style of polite prevarication--or, if that may be a shade too strong, let us say elusive reservation--the use of language that is more shady than silence, the framing of phrases that may be interpreted so as not to close but to continue discussion and leave wide fields for controversy. The General did not refer to his counselors, or the congress that is in the background and advertised as if it were a new force. The words of the interpreter for him were: "The General says the priests to whom objection is made, and with whom we have a mortal quarrel, are not our own priests, but the Spaniards' and those of the orders. We respect the Catholic church. We respect our own priests, and, if they are friends of our country, will protect them. Our war is not upon the Catholic church, but upon the friars, who have been the most cruel enemies. We cannot have them here. They must go away. Let them go to Spain. We are willing that they may go to their own country. We do not want them. There is no peace until they go." I said my information was that the objectionable Orders expressly proscribed by the insurgents were the Dominicans, Augustines, Franciscans and Recollects, but that the Jesuits were not included. This was fully recited to the General, and with his eyes closing and his mouth whispering close to the interpreter's cheek he gave his answer, and it was quickly rendered: "The Jesuits, too, must go. They also are our enemies. We do not want them. They betray. They can go to Spain. They may be wanted there, not here; but not here, not here." The question whether the friars must make choice between departure and death was not met directly, but with repetitions--that they might be at home in Spain, but could not be a part of the independent Philippines; and, significantly, they should be willing to go when wanted, and would be. Two Catholic priests--Americans, not Spaniards--were at this moment waiting in the ante room, to ask permission for the priests Aguinaldo has in prison to go back to Spain, and the General could not give an answer until he had consulted his council. Probably he would not dare to part with the priests, and an order from him would be disregarded. They have many chances of martyrdom, and some of them have already suffered mutilation. Something had been said about my cabling the President as to the Filipinos' determination to send a representative to Paris, and I had tendered my good offices in bearing instructions to a commissioner from Hongkong to meet the China at Nagasaki, the Japanese railway station, where the American transports coal for their long voyage across the Pacific. But that matter had been left in the air. General Aguinaldo had said he would be obliged if I would telegraph the President, and I thought if the decision was that there was to be a Philippine representative hurried to Paris, it was something the President would be glad to know. I was aware there might be a difficulty in getting permission for a special messenger to go on the China to Japan to meet the commissioners going from Hongkong, and I would be willing to make the connection, as I had offered the suggestion. But it was necessary to be absolutely certain of General Aguinaldo's decision before I could cable the President; therefore, as I was, of course, in an official sense wholly irresponsible, I could communicate with him without an abrasion of military or other etiquette. It was the more needful, as it would be a personal proceeding, that I should be sure of the facts. Therefore I asked the General, whose time I had occupied more than an hour, whether he authorized me to telegraph the President that a commission was going to Paris, and desired me to render any aid in conveying information. The General was troubled about the word "authorized," and instead of saying so concluded that I must have a deep and possibly dark design and so he could not give me the trouble to cable. The assurance that it would not be troublesome did not remove the disquiet. I could not be troubled, either, as a bearer of dispatches. The General could not authorize a telegram without consulting. In truth, the General had not made up his mind to be represented in Paris, holding that it would be sufficient to have an envoy extraordinary in Washington. Others, without full consideration, in my opinion, concur in this view. I can imagine several situations at Paris in which a representative Filipino would be of service to the United States, simply by standing for the existence of a state of facts in the disputed islands. I dropped the matter of being a mediator, having planted the Paris idea in the mind of the Philippine leader, who is of the persuasion that he is the dictator of his countrymen, for the sake of his country, until he wishes to be evasive, and then he must consult others who share the burdens of authority, and told him when taking my leave I would like to possess a photograph with his autograph and the Philippine flag. In a few minutes the articles were in my hands, and passing out, there were the American priests in the ante-room, the next callers to enter the General's apartment. Their business was to urge him to permit the Catholic priests held as prisoners by the insurgents--more than 100, perhaps nearly 200 in number--to go home. When the news came that General Merritt had been ordered to Paris, and would pass through the Red sea en route, taking the China to Hongkong to catch a peninsular and oriental steamer, I telegraphed the fact to General Aguinaldo over our military wires and his special wire, and his commissioner, duly advised, became, with General Merritt's aid, at Hongkong a passenger on the China. He is well known to the world as Senor Filipe Agoncillo, who visited Washington City, saw the President and proceeded to Paris. CHAPTER V The Philippine Mission. Correspondence With Aguinaldo About It--Notes by Senor Felipe Agoncillo--Relations Between Admiral Dewey and Senor Aguinaldo--Terms of Peace Made by Spanish Governor-General with Insurgents, December, 1897--Law Suit Between Aguinaldo and Artacho--Aguinaldo's Proclamation of May 24, 1898. When General Merritt decided to hold the China for a day to take him to Hongkong on the way to Paris, I telegraphed Aguinaldo of the movements of the ship, arid received this dispatch from the General: "War Department, United States Volunteer Signal Corps, sent from Bakoor August 29, 1898.--To Mr. Murat Halstead, Hotel Oriente, Manila: Thankful for your announcing China's departure. We are to send a person by her if possible, whom I recommend to you. Being much obliged for the favor. "_A. G. Escamilla_," "Private Secretary to General Aguinaldo." On the same day the General sent the following personal letter: "Dear Sir: The bearer, Dr. G. Apacible, is the person whom was announced to you in the telegram. "I am desirous of sending him to Hongkong, if possible, by the China, recommending him at the same time to your care and good will. Thanking you for the favor, I'm respectfully yours, _Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy_. "Mr. Murat Halstead, Manila. "Bakoor, 29th August, 1898." General Aguinaldo proceeded vigorously to make use of his knowledge that the China would go to Hongkong for General Merritt and sent his secretary and others to me at the Hotel Oriente, but they arrived after I had left the house. They came to the China and General Merritt had not arrived and did not appear until within a few minutes of the start. Then the deputation from the insurgent chieftain had an interview with him, asking that two of their number should go to Hongkong on the China to express fully the views of the insurgent government to to the commissioner, Don Felipe Agoncillo, chosen to represent the Filipinos at Washington and Paris and to ask that he be allowed to go to the United States on the China. When the committee saw General Merritt he was taking leave of Admiral Dewey, and the General, who had not heard of this movement until that moment--the question being entirely new--invited the opinion of the Admiral, who said there was "certainly no objection," and on the contrary, it would be very well to permit the passage of the deputation to Hongkong and of the commissioner appointed from that city to Washington. General Merritt at once in half a dozen words gave the order, and the journey began. General Greene, who reads and translates Spanish with facility and whose Spanish speech is plain, treated with marked courtesy the Filipino committee to Hongkong and thence the commissioner and his secretary from Hongkong to San Francisco, on the way to Washington and Paris. General Greene, while according distinction to the representatives of the insurgents, stated to them that his attentions were personal and he could not warrant them official recognition at Washington or anything more than such politeness as gentlemen receive from each other. The commissioner was Don Felipe Agoncillo, and his secretary, Sixto Lopez. Saturday, September 24, the Salt Lake newspapers contained stories to the effect that the Germans had entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with the Aguinaldo government and would furnish equipments for an army of 150,000 men. We were on the Union Pacific Railroad at the time, and I called the attention of Don Felipe Agoncillo to this remarkable intelligence and asked him what he thought of it. He said emphatically that it was "Nothing," "No true," "Nothing at all," and he laughed at the comic idea. There was also in the Salt Lake newspapers a statement that the Aguinaldo 'government' had sent to President McKinley a letter strongly expressing good-will and gratitude. There did not seem to be much news in this for Don Felipe, but it gave him much pleasure, and he, not perhaps diplomatically but enthusiastically, pronounced it good. _What Agoncillo Approved_. The dispatch marked with his approbation by the Philippine commissioner was the following from Washington, under date of September 23: "The President doubtless would be glad to hear any views these Filipinos might care to set forth, being fresh from the islands and thoroughly acquainted with the wishes of the insurgents. But it would be plainly impolitic and inconsistent for the President, at this date and pending the conclusion of the peace conference at Paris, to allow it to be understood, by according a formal reception to the delegates, that he had thereby recognized the Philippine government as an independent nationality. His attitude toward the Filipinos would be similar to that assumed by him toward the Cubans. As the Filipinos have repeatedly, by public declaration, sought to convey the impression that the United States representatives in Manila have at some time during the progress of the war recognized Aguinaldo as an independent ally, and entered into formal co-operation with him, it may be stated that the government at Washington is unaware that any such thing has happened. Admiral Dewey, who was in command of all the United States forces during the most critical period, expressly cabled the Secretary of the Navy that he had entered into no formal agreement with Aguinaldo. If General Otis followed his instructions, and of that there can be no doubt, he also refrained from entering into any entangling agreements. As for Consul-General Wildman, any undertaking he may have assumed with Aguinaldo must have been upon his own personal and individual responsibility, and would be without formal standing, inasmuch as he has not the express authorization from the State Department absolutely requisite to negotiations in such cases. Therefore, as the case now stands, the peace commissioners are free to deal with the Philippine problem at Paris absolutely without restraint beyond that which might be supposed to rise from a sense of moral obligation to avoid committing the Filipinos again into the hands of their late rulers." Senor Agoncillo, the commissioner of the Philippine insurgents at Paris, made, in conversations on the steamer China, when crossing the Pacific Ocean from "Nagasaka to San Francisco, this statement in vindication of Aguinaldo, and it is the most complete, authoritative and careful that exists of the relations between Admiral Dewey and the insurgent leader: _Brief Notes By Senor Agoncillo_. "On the same day that Admiral Dewey arrived at Hongkong Senor Aguinaldo was in Singapore, whither he had gone from Hongkong, and Mr. Pratt, United States Consul-General, under instructions from the said Admiral, held a conference with him, in which it was agreed that Senor Aguinaldo and other revolutionary chiefs in co-operation with the American squadron should return to take up arms against the Spanish government of the Philippines, the sole and most laudable desire of the Washington government being to concede to the Philippine people absolute independence as soon as the victory against the Spanish arms should be obtained. "By virtue of this argument Senor Aguinaldo proceeded by the first steamer to Hongkong for the express purpose of embarking on the Olympia and going to Manila; but this intention of his was not realized, because the American squadron left Hongkong the day previous to his arrival, Admiral Dewey having received from his government an order to proceed immediately to Manila. This is what Mr. Wildman, United States Consul-General in Hongkong, said to Senor Aguinaldo in the interview which took place between them. A few days after the Spanish squadron had been totally destroyed in the Bay of Manila by the American squadron, the latter obtaining a most glorious triumph, which deserved the fullest congratulations and praise of the Philippine public, the McCullough arrived at Hongkong and her commander said to Senor Aguinaldo that Admiral Dewey needed him (le necesitaba) in Manila and that he brought an order to take him on board said transport, as well as other revolutionary chiefs whose number should be determined by Senor Aguinaldo, and, in fact, he and seventeen chiefs went to Cavite on the McCullough. "Senor Aguinaldo began his campaign against the Spaniards the very day that he received the 1,902 Mauser guns and 200,000 cartridges, which came from Hongkong. The first victory which he obtained from the Spaniards was the surrender or capitulation of the Spanish General, Senor Pena, who was the Military Governor of Cavite, had his headquarters in the town of San Francisco de Malabon, and his force was composed of 1,500 soldiers, including volunteers. "The revolutionary army in six days' operations succeeded in getting possession of the Spanish detachments stationed in the villages of Bakoor, Imus, Benakayan, Naveleta, Santa Cruz de Malabon, Rosario and Cavite Viejo. "On June 9 last the whole province of Cavite was under the control of the provisional revolutionary government, including many Spanish prisoners and friars, 7,000 guns, great quantities of ammunition and some cannon. "At the same time that the province of Cavite was being conquered other revolutionary chiefs were carrying on campaigns in the Batangas, Laguna, Tayabas, Nueva Eziza, Bulcau, Batangas, Pampanga and Morong, which were under control of the revolutionary army by June 12, and such progress was made by the Philippine revolution in the few days of campaign against the Spaniards that by August 3 last it held under conquest fifteen important provinces of the island of Luzon; these provinces are being governed by laws emanating from the provisional revolutionary government and in all of them perfect order and complete tranquility reign. "It is to be noted that the Spanish government has sent to Senor Aguinaldo various emissaries, who invited him to make common cause with Spain against the United States, promising him that the government of the Spanish nation would concede to him anything he might ask for the Philippine people. But Senor Aguinaldo has invariably replied to those emissaries, that it was too late and that he could not consider any proposition from the Spanish government, however beneficial it might be to the Philippines, because he had already pledged his word of honor in favor of certain representatives of the government at Washington. "In view of this positive resolution of Senor Aguinaldo there began forthwith the intrigues of the Spanish enemy directed against the life of Senor Aguinaldo. _Peace Convention of December, 1896._ "Senor Aguinaldo, in his own name and in that of the other chiefs and subordinates, obligated himself to lay down their arms, which, according to an inventory, were to be turned over to the Spanish government, thus terminating the revolution. His Excellency the Governor and Captain-General, Don Fernando Primo de Rivera, as the representative of His Majesty's government in the Philippines, obligated himself on his side (1) to grant a general amnesty to all those under charges or sentenced for the crime of rebellion and sedition and other crimes of that category; (2) to introduce into the Philippines all reforms necessary for correcting in an effective and absolute manner the evils which for so many years had oppressed the country, in political and administrative affairs; and (3) an indemnity of $800,000, payable at the following dates: A letter of credit of the Spanish Filipine Bank for $400,000 against the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hongkong was to be delivered to Senor Aguinaldo on the same day that he should leave Biak-va-Bato, where he had established his headquarters, and should embark on the steamer furnished by the Spanish government (this letter of credit was in point of fact delivered); $200,000 was to be paid to the said Senor Aguinaldo as soon as the revolutionary general, Senor Ricarte, should receive his telegram ordering him to give up his arms, with an inventory thereof, to the commissioner designated by his excellency the Governor and Captain-General, Don Fernando Primo de Rivera; and the remaining $200,000 should be due and payable when the peace should be a fact, and it should be understood that peace was a fact when the Te Deum should be sung by order of his excellency the Governor and Captain-General of the Philippines. "Senor Aguinaldo complied in every respect, so far as he was concerned, with the peace agreement. But the Spanish government did not observe a similar conduct, and this has been deplored and still is deeply deplored by the Philippine people. The general amnesty which was promised has remained completely a dead letter. Many Filipinos are still to be found in Fernando Po and in various military prisons in Spain suffering the grievous consequences of the punishment inflicted upon them unjustly and the inclemencies of the climate to which they are not accustomed. Some of these unfortunates, who succeeded in getting out of those prisons and that exile, are living in beggary in Spain, without the government furnishing them the necessary means to enable them to return to the Philippines. "In vain has the Philippine public waited for the reforms also promised. After the celebration of the compact of June and the disposition of the arms of the revolutionists the Governor-General again began to inflict on the defenseless natives of the country arbitrary arrest and execution without judicial proceedings solely on the ground that they were merely suspected of being secessionists; proceedings which indisputably do not conform to the law and Christian sentiments. "In the matter of reforms the religious orders again began to obtain from the Spanish government their former and absolute power. Thus Spain pays so dearly for her fatal errors in her own destiny! "In exchange for the loftiness of mind with which Senor Aguinaldo has rigidly carried out the terms of the peace agreement, General Primo de Rivera had the cynicism to state in the congress of his nation that he had promised no reform to Senor Aguinaldo and his army, but that he had only given them a piece of bread in order that they might be able to maintain themselves abroad. This was reechoed in the foreign press, and Senor Aguinaldo was accused in the Spanish press of having allowed himself to be bought with a handful of gold, selling out his country at the same time. There were published, moreover, in those Spanish periodicals caricatures of Senor Aguinaldo which profoundly wounded his honor and his patriotism. "Senor Aguinaldo and the other revolutionists who reside in Hongkong agreed not to take out one cent of the $400,000 deposited in the chartered bank and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the only amount which Senor Aguinaldo received from the Spanish government on account of the stipulated indemnity, but to use it for arms in order to carry on another revolution in the Philippines, in case the Spanish government should fail to carry out the peace agreement, at least in so far as it refers to general amnesty and reforms. All the above named revolutionists, Senor Aguinaldo setting the example, resolved to deny themselves every kind of comfort during their stay in Hongkong, living in the most modest style, for the purpose of preventing a reduction by one single cent of the above named sum of $400,000, which they set aside exclusively for the benefit of their country. _Law Suit between Don J. Artacho and Don E. Aguinaldo._ "Senor Artacho, induced by the father solicitor of the Dominicans and the Consul-General of Spain, filed in the courts of that colony a summons against Don E. Aguinaldo, asking for a division of the above-mentioned $400,000 between those revolutionary chiefs who resided in Hongkong. Artacho and three others, who joined the revolution in its last days and rendered little service to it, were the only ones who desired a division of this money; whereas forty-seven revolutionaries, many of whom were most distinguished chiefs, were opposed to it, supporting the resolution which Senor Aguinaldo had previously taken in regard to it. Senor Aguinaldo, in order to avoid all scandal, did everything possible to avoid appearing in court answering the summons of Artacho, who, realizing that his conduct had made himself hated by all Filipinos, agreed in a friendly arrangement to withdraw his suit, receiving in exchange $5,000; in this way were frustrated the intrigues of the solicitor of the Dominican order and of the Spanish Consul, who endeavored at any cost to destroy the $400,000 by dividing it up. "Artacho is now on trial before a judicial court on charges preferred by various revolutionists for offenses which can be proved; he has no influence in the revolutionary party." _Proclamation of General Aguinaldo_. _May 24th_, 1898. Filipinos: The Great Nation North America, cradle of true liberty and friendly on that account to the liberty of our people, oppressed and subjugated by the tyranny and despotism of those who have governed us, has come to manifest even here a protection which is decisive, as well as disinterested, towards us considering us endowed with sufficient civilization to govern by ourselves this our unhappy land. To maintain this so lofty idea, which we deserve from the now very powerful Nation North America, it is our duty to detest all those acts which belie such an idea, as pillage, robbery and every class of injury to persons as well as to things. With a view to avoiding international conflicts during the period of our campaign, I order as follows: Article I. The lives and property of all foreigners, including Chinese and all Spaniards who either directly or indirectly have joined in taking arms against us are to be respected. Article II. The lives and property of those who lay down their arms are also to be respected. Article III. Also are to be respected all sanitary establishments and ambulances, and likewise the persons and things which may be found either in one or the other, including the assistants in this service, unless they show hostility. Article IV. Those who disobey what is prescribed in the preceding articles will be tried by summary court and put to death, if such disobedience shall cause assassination, fire, robbery and violation. Given at Cavite, the 24th of May, 1898. _Emilio Aguinaldo._ It is to be remarked of this semi-official statement that Admiral Dewey did not make any promises he could not fulfill to Aguinaldo; did not assume to speak for the President or the army of the United States, but gave guns and ammunition to the insurgents, who aided him in maintaining a foothold on the shore. The insurgents did not win Dewey's victory, but aided to improve it. Without the aid of the American army Manila might have been destroyed, but could not have been captured intact. General Merritt settled the question of the status of the insurgent army with respect to the capture of Manila in a summary and sound way when he said there could be but one military authority in a military government, and as the commanding general of the Philippine expedition of the United States, he was that authority. CHAPTER VI The Proclamations of General Aguinaldo. June 16th, 1898, Establishing Dictatorial Government--June 20th, 1898, Instructions for Elections--June 23d, 1898, Establishing Revolutionary Government--June 23d, 1898, Message to Foreign Powers--June 27th, 1898, Instructions Concerning Details--July 23d, 3898, Letter From Senor Aguinaldo to General Anderson--August 1st, 1898, Resolutions of Revolutionary Chiefs Asking for Recognition--August 6th, 1898, Message to Foreign Powers Asking Recognition. One of the most critical questions in the situation of the Philippines is the precise position of the leader of the insurgents, General Aguinaldo. His utterances in his official character of leader of the natives who for years have been in rebellion against Spain, have been but fragmentary, as they have come before the people. We give for the public information the consecutive series of proclamations. No. 1. To the Philippine Public: Circumstances have providentially placed me in a position for which I can not fail to recognize that I am not properly qualified, but since I can not violate the laws of Providence nor decline the obligations which honor and patriotism impose upon me, I now salute you, Oh, My Beloved People! I have proclaimed in the face of the whole world that the aspiration of my whole life, the final object of all my efforts and strength is nothing else but your independence, for I am firmly convinced that that constitutes your constant desire and that independence signifies for us redemption from slavery and tyranny, regaining our liberty and entrance into the concert of civilized nations. I understand on the other hand that the first duty of every government is to interpret faithfully popular aspirations. With this motive, although the abnormal circumstances of the war have compelled me to institute this Dictatorial Government which assumes full powers, both civil and military, my constant desire is to surround myself with the most distinguished persons of each Province, those who by their conduct, deserve the confidence of their province to the end that the true necessities of each being known by them, measures may be adopted to meet these necessities and apply the remedies in accordance with the desires of all. I understand moreover the urgent necessity of establishing in each town a solid and robust organization, the strongest bulwark of public security and the sole means of securing that union and discipline which are indispensable for the establishment of the Republic, that is Government of the people for the people, and warding off the international conflicts which may arise. Following out the foregoing considerations I decree as follows: Article I. The inhabitants of every town where the forces of the Spanish government still remain, will decide upon the most efficacious measures to combat and destroy them, according to the resources and means at their disposal, according to prisoners of war the treatment most conformable to humanitarian sentiments and to the customs observed by civilized nations. Article II. As soon as the town is freed from Spanish domination, the inhabitants most distinguished for high character, social position and honorable conduct both in the center of the community and in the suburbs, will come together in a large meeting in which they will proceed to elect by a majority of votes, the chief of the town and a head man for each suburb, considering as suburbs not only those hitherto known as such, but also the center of the community. All those inhabitants who fulfill the conditions above named, will have the right to take part in this meeting and to be elected, provided always that they are friendly to Philippine independence and are twenty years of age. Article III. In this meeting shall also be elected by a majority of votes, three Delegates; one of police and internal order, another of justice and civil registry and another of taxes and property. The delegate of police and internal order will assist the Chief in the organization of the armed force, which for its own security each town must maintain, according to the measure of its resources and in the preservation of order, government and hygiene of its population. The delegate of justice and civil registry will aid the Chief in the formation of courts and in keeping books of registry of births, deaths and marriage contracts, and of the census. The delegate of taxes and property will aid the chief in the collection of taxes, the administration of public funds, the opening of books of registry of cattle and real property, and in all work relating to encouragement of every class of industry. Article IV. The Chief, as President, with the head men and the above mentioned delegates, will constitute the popular assemblies who will supervise the exact fulfillment of the laws in force and the particular interests of each town. The head man of the center of the community will be the Vice President of the assembly, and the delegate of justice its secretary. The head men will be delegates of the Chief within their respective boundaries. Article V. The Chiefs of each town after consulting the opinion of their respective assemblies, will meet and elect by majority of votes the Chief of the Province and three councilors for the three branches above mentioned. The Chief of the Province as President, the Chief of the town which is the capital of the Province, as Vice President, and the above named councilors will constitute the Provincial Council, which will supervise the carrying out of the instructions of this government in the territory of the Province, and for the general interest of the Province, and will propose to this government the measures which should be adopted for the general welfare. Article VI. The above named chiefs will also elect by majority of votes three representatives for each one of the Provinces of Manila and Cavite, two for each one of the Provinces classified as terminal in Spanish legislation, and one for each one of the other Provinces and Politico-Military commands of the Philippine Archipelago. The above named representatives will guard the general interests of the Archipelago and the particular interests of their respective Provinces, and will constitute the Revolutionary Congress, which will propose to this government the measures concerning the preservation of internal order, and external security of these islands, and will be heard by this government on all questions of grave importance. The decision of which will admit of delay or adjournment. Article VII. Persons elected to any office whatsoever in the form prescribed in the preceding article can not perform the functions of the same without the previous confirmation by this government, which will give it in accordance with the certificates of election. Representatives will establish their identity by exhibiting the above named certificates. Article VIII. The Military Chiefs named by this government in each Province will not intervene in the government and administration of the Province, but will confine themselves to requesting of the Chiefs of Provinces and towns the aid which may be necessary both in men and resources, which are not to be refused in case of actual necessity. Nevertheless, when the Province is threatened or occupied by the enemy in whole or in part, the military chief of highest rank therein may assume powers of the Chief of the Province, until the danger has disappeared. Article IX. The government will name for each Province a commissioner, specially charged with establishing therein the organization prescribed in this decree, in accordance with instructions which this government will communicate to him. Those military chiefs who liberate the towns from the Spanish domination are commissioners by virtue of their office. The above named commissioners will preside over the first meetings held in each town and in each Province. Article X. As soon as the organization provided in the decree has been established all previous appointments to any civil office, whatsoever, no matter what their origin or source, shall be null and void, and all instructions in conflict with the foregoing are hereby annulled. Given at Cavite, the 18th of June, 1898. _Emilio Aguinaldo_. No. 2. For the execution and proper carrying out of what is prescribed in the decree of this government concerning the management of the Provinces and towns of the Philippine Archipelago, I decree as follows: _Instructions_. Concerning the Management of the Provinces and towns. (Then follow 45 rules concerning the elections, formation of the police, the courts and the levying and collection of taxes.) Given at Cavite, 20th of June, 1898. _Emilio Aguinaldo_. No. 3. _Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy_, President of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, and General in Chief of Its Army. This government desiring to demonstrate to the Philippine people that one of its ends is to combat with a firm hand the inveterate vices of the Spanish administration, substituting for personal luxury and that pompous ostentation which have made it a mere matter of routine, cumbrous and slow in its movements, another administration more modest, simple and prompt in performing the public service: I decree as follows: _Chapter I._ _Of the Revolutionary Government_. Article I. The dictatorial government will be entitled hereafter the revolutionary government, whose object is to struggle for the independence of the Philippines until all nations, including the Spanish, shall expressly recognize it, and to prepare the country so that a true republic may be established. The dictator will be entitled hereafter President of the Revolutionary Government. Article II. Four secretaryships of government are created; one of foreign affairs, navy and commerce; another of war and public works; another of police and internal order, justice, education and hygiene; and another of finance, agriculture, and manufacturing industry. The government may increase this number of secretaryships, when it shall find in practice that this distribution is not sufficient for the multiplied and complicated necessities of the public service. Article III. Each secretaryship shall aid the President in the administration of questions concerning the different branches which it comprises. At the head of each one shall be a secretary who shall not be responsible for the decrees of the Presidency, but shall sign them with the President, to give them authority. But if it shall appear that the decree has been promulgated on the proposition of the secretary of the department, the latter shall be responsible conjointly with the President. Article IV. The secretaryship of foreign affairs will be divided into three bureaus, one of diplomacy, another of navy and another of commerce. The first bureau will study and dispose of all questions pertaining to the management of diplomatic negotiations with other powers and the correspondence of this government with them. The second will study all questions relating to the formation and organization of our navy and the fitting out of such expeditions as the necessities of the revolution may require; and the third will have charge of everything relating to internal and external commerce, and the preliminary work which may be necessary for making treaties of commerce with other nations. Article V. The secretaryship of war will be divided into two bureaus; one of war, properly speaking, and the other of public works. The first bureau will be subdivided into four sections: One of campaigns, another of military justice, another of military administration, and another of military health. The section of campaigns will have charge of the appointment and formation of the certificates of enlistment and service of all who serve in the revolutionary militia; of the direction of campaigns; the preparation of plans, works of fortification, and preparing reports of battles; of the study of military tactics for the army and the organization of the general staff, artillery and cavalry; and finally, of the determination of all other questions concerning the business of campaigns and military operations. The section of military justice will have charge of everything relating to courts of war and military tribunals; the appointment of judges and counsel and the determination of all questions of military justice; the section of military administration will he charged with the furnishing of food and other supplies necessary for the use of the army; and the section of military health will have charge of everything relating to the hygiene and healthfulness of the militia. Article VI. The other secretaryships will he divided into such bureaus as their branches may require and each bureau will be subdivided into sections according to the nature and importance of the work it has to do. Article VII. The secretary will inspect and supervise all the work of his secretaryship and will determine all questions with the President of the government. At the head of each bureau will be a director and in each section an officer provided with such number of assistants as may be specified. Article VIII. The President will appoint the secretaries of his own free choice and in concert with them will appoint all the subordinate officials of each secretaryship. In order that in the choice of persons it may be possible to avoid favoritism, it must be fully understood that the good name of the country and the triumph of the revolution require the services of persons truly capable. Article IX. The secretaries may be present at the revolutionary congress in order that they may make any motion in the name of the President or may be interpolated publicly by any one of the representatives; but when the question which is the object of the motion shall be put to vote or after the interpolation is ended they shall leave and shall not take part in the vote. Article X. The President of the government is the personification of the Philippine people, and in accordance with this idea it shall not he possible to hold him responsible while he fills the office. His term of office shall last until the revolution triumphs, unless, under extraordinary circumstances, he shall feel obliged to offer his resignation to congress, in which case congress will elect whomsoever it considers most fit. _Chapter II._ _Of the Revolutionary Congress._ Article XI. The Revolutionary Congress is the body of representatives of the Provinces of the Philippine Archipelago elected in the manner prescribed in the decrees of the 18th, present month. Nevertheless, if any Province shall not be able as yet to elect representatives because the greater part of its towns shall have not yet succeeded in liberating themselves from Spanish domination, the government shall have power to appoint as provisional representatives for this Province those persons who are most distinguished for high character and social position, in such numbers as are prescribed by the above named decree, provided always that they are natives of the Province which they represent or have resided therein for a long time. Article XII. The representatives having met in the town which is the seat of the revolutionary government, and in the building which may be designated, will proceed to its preliminary labors, designating by plurality of votes a commission composed of five individuals charged with examining documents accrediting each representative, and another commission, composed of three individuals, who will examine the documents which the five of the former commission exhibit. Article XIII. On the following day the above named representatives will meet again and the two commissions will read their respective reports concerning the legality of the said documents, deciding by an absolute majority of votes on the character of those which appear doubtful. This business completed, it will proceed to designate, also by absolute majority, a President, a Vice President, and two secretaries, who shall be chosen from among the representatives, whereupon the congress shall be considered organized, and shall notify the government of the result of the election. Article XIV. The place where congress deliberates is sacred and inviolable, and no armed force shall enter therein unless the President thereof shall ask therefor in order to establish internal order disturbed by those who can neither honor themselves nor its august functions. Article XV. The powers of congress are: To watch over the general interest of the Philippine people, and the carrying out of the revolutionary laws; to discuss and vote upon said laws; to discuss and approve prior to their ratification treaties and loans; to examine and approve the accounts presented annually by the secretary of finance, as well as extraordinary and other taxes which may hereafter be imposed. Article XVI. Congress shall also be consulted in all grave and important questions, the determination of which admits of delay or adjournment; but the President of the government shall have power to decide questions of urgent character, but in that case he shall give account by message to said body of the decision which he has adopted. Article XVII. Every representative shall have power to present to congress any project of a law, and every secretary on the order of the President of the government shall have similar power. Article XVIII. The sessions of congress shall be public, and only in cases which require reserve shall it have power to hold a secret session. Article XIX. In the order of its deliberations, as well as in the internal government of the body the instructions which shall be formulated by the congress itself shall be observed. The President shall direct the deliberations and shall not vote except in case of a tie, when he shall have the casting vote. Article XX. The President of the government shall not have power to interrupt in any manner the meeting of congress, nor embarrass its sessions. Article XXI. The congress shall designate a permanent commission of justice which shall be presided over by the auxilliary vice president or each of the secretaries, and shall be composed of those persons and seven members elected by plurality of votes from among the representatives. This commission shall judge on appeal the criminal cases tried by the Provincial courts; and shall take cognizance of and have original jurisdiction in all cases against the secretaries of the government, the chiefs of Provinces and towns, and the Provincial judges. Article XXII. In the office of the secretary of congress shall be kept a book of honor, wherein shall be recorded special services rendered to the country, and considered as such by said body. Every Filipino, whether in the military or civil service, may petition congress for notation in said book, presenting duly accredited documents describing the service rendered by him on behalf of the country, since the beginning of the present revolution. For extraordinary services, which may be rendered hereafter, the government will propose said notation accompanying the proposal with the necessary documents justifying it. Article XXIII. The congress will also grant, on the proposal of the government rewards in money, which can be given only once to the families of those who were victims of their duty and patriotism, as a result of extraordinary acts of heroism. Article XXIV. The acts of congress shall not take effect until the President of the government orders their fulfillment and execution. Whenever the said President shall be of the opinion that any act is unsuitable or against public policy, or pernicious, he shall explain to congress the reasons against its execution, and if the latter shall insist on its passage the President shall have power to oppose his veto under his most rigid responsibility. _Chapter III._ _Of Military Courts and Justice._ Article XXV. When the chiefs of military detachments have notice that any soldier has committed or has perpetrated any act of those commonly considered as military crimes, he shall bring it to the knowledge of the commandant of the Zone, who shall appoint a judge and a secretary, who shall begin suit in the form prescribed in the instructions dated the 20th of the present month. If the accused shall be of the grade of lieutenant or higher, the said commandant shall himself be the judge, and if the latter shall be the accused, the senior commandant of the Province shall name as judge an officer who holds a higher grade, unless the same senior commandant shall himself have brought the suit. The judge shall always belong to the class of chiefs. Article XXVI. On the conclusion of the preliminary hearing, the senior commandant shall designate three officers of equal or higher rank to the judge and the military court shall consist of the said officers, the judge, the councilor and the President. The latter shall be the commandant of the Zone, if the accused be of the grade of sergeant or less, and the senior commandant if he be of the grade of lieutenant or higher. This court shall conduct the trial in the form customary in the Provincial courts, but the judgment shall be appealable to the higher courts of war. Article XXVII. The superior court shall be composed of six members, who shall hold rank not less than brigadier generals, and the judge advocate. If the number of generals present in the capitol of the revolutionary government shall not be sufficient the deficiency shall be supplied by representatives designated and commissioned by congress. The president of the court shall be the general having the highest rank of all, and should there be more than one having equal rank, the president shall be elected from among them by absolute majority of votes. Article XXVIII. The superior court shall have jurisdiction in all cases affecting the higher commandants, the commandants of Zones and all officers of the rank of major or higher. Article XXIX. Commit Military Crimes: 1st. Those who fail to grant the necessary protection to foreigners, both in their persons and property, and those who similarly fail to afford protection to hospitals and ambulances, including persons and effects which may be found in possession of one or the other, and those engaged in the service of the same, provided always they commit no hostile act. 2d. Those who fail in the respect due to the lives, money and jewels of enemies who lay down their arms, and of prisoners of war. 3d. Filipinos who place themselves in the service of the enemy acting as spies or disclosing to them secrets of war and the plans of revolutionary positions and fortifications, and those who present themselves under a flag of truce without justifying properly their office and their personality; and 4th, those who fail to recognize a flag of truce duly accredited in the forms, prescribed by international law. Will Commit also Military Crimes: 1st. Those who conspire against the unity of the revolutionists, provoking rivalry between chiefs and forming divisions and armed bands. 2d. Those who solicit contributions without authority of the government and misappropriate the public funds. 3d. Those who desert to the enemy, or are guilty of cowardice in the presence of the enemy, being armed; and, 4th, those who seize the property of any person who has done no wrong to the revolution, violate women and assassinate or inflict serious wounds on unarmed persons and commit robberies or arson. Article XXX. Those who commit the crimes enumerated will be considered as declared enemies of the revolution, and will incur the penalties prescribed in the Spanish penal code, and in the highest grade. If the crime shall not be found in the said code, the offender shall be imprisoned until the revolution triumphs unless the result of this shall be an irreparable damage, which in the judgment of the tribunal shall be a sufficient cause for imposing the penalty of death. _Additional Clauses._ The government will establish abroad a revolutionary committee, composed of a number not yet determined of persons most competent in the Philippine Archipelago. This committee will be divided into three delegations; one of diplomacy, another of the navy and another of the army. The delegation of diplomacy will manage and conduct negotiations with foreign cabinets with a view to the recognition of the belligerency and independence of the Philippines. The delegation of the navy will be charged with studying and organizing the Philippine navy and preparing the expenditures which the necessities of the revolution may require. The delegation of the army will study military tactics and the best form of organization for the general staff, artillery and engineers and whatever else may be necessary in order to fit out the Philippine Army under the conditions required by modern progress. Article XXXII. The government will issue the necessary instructions for the proper execution of the present decree. Article XXXIII. All decrees of the dictatorial government in conflict with the foregoing are hereby annulled. Given at Cavite, the 23d of June, 1898. _Emilio Aguinaldo._ _Instructions._ Desiring to bring about a proper execution of the decree dated the 23d of the present month, and to provide that the administrative measures shall not result hereafter in the paralysis of public business, but that, on the contrary, it shall constitute the best guarantee of the regularity, promptitude and fitness in the transaction of public business, I give the following instructions and decree: (Then follow ten rules concerning the details of installing the government.) Cavite, the 27th of June, 1898. _Emilio Aguinaldo._ _Message of the President of the Philippine Revolution._ If it is true, as it is true, that political revolutions properly understood, are the violent means which people employ to recover the sovereignty which naturally belongs to them, usurped and trampled upon by a tyrannical and arbitrary government, no revolution can be more righteous than that of the Philippines, because the people have had recourse to it after having exhausted all the pacific means which reason and experience could suggest. The ancient Kings of Castile felt obliged to consider the Philippines as a brother people, united to the Spanish in a perfect participation of aims and interests, so much so that when the Constitution of 1812 was promulgated, at Cadiz, on account of the War of Spanish Independence, these islands were represented in the Spanish Cortez; but the interests of the Monastic corporations which have always found unconditional support in the Spanish Government, overcame this sacred duty and the Philippines remained excluded from the Spanish Constitution, and the people at the mercy of the discretionary or arbitrary powers of the Governor-General. In this condition the people claimed justice, begged of the metropolis the recognition and restitution of their secular rights by means of reforms which should assimilate in a gradual and progressive manner, the Philippines to the Spaniards; but their voice was quickly throttled and their sons received as the reward of their self-denial, deportation, martyrdom and death. The religious corporations with whose interests, always opposed to those of the Philippine people, the Spanish Government has been identified, scoffed at these pretensions and answered with the knowledge of that Government that Spanish liberties have cost blood. What other recourse then remained to the people for insisting as in duty bound on regaining its former rights? No alternative remained except force and, convinced of that, it has had recourse to revolution. And now it is not limited to asking assimilation to the Spanish Political Constitution, but it asks a definite separation from it; it struggles for its independence in the firm belief that the time has arrived in which it can and ought to govern itself. There has been established a Revolutionary Government, under wise and just laws, suited to the abnormal circumstances through which it is passing, and which, in proper time, will prepare it for a true Republic. Thus taking as a sole model for its acts, reason, for its sole end, justice, and, for its sole means, honorable labor, it calls all Filipinos its sons without distinction of class, and invites them to unite firmly with the object of forming a noble society, not based upon blood nor pompous titles, but upon the work and personal merit of each one; a free society, where exist neither egotism nor personal politics which annihilate and crush, neither envy nor favoritism which debase, neither fanfaronade nor charlatanism which are ridiculous. And it could not be otherwise. A people which has given proofs of suffering and valor in tribulation and in danger, and of hard work and study in peace, is not destined to slavery; this people is called to be great, to be one of the strongest arms of Providence in ruling the destinies of mankind; this people has resources and energy sufficient to liberate itself from the ruin and extinction into which the Spanish Government has plunged it, and to claim a modest but worthy place in the concert of free nations. Given at Cavite the 23d of June, 1898. _Emilio Aguinaldo._ _To Foreign Governments._ The Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, on its establishment, explained, through the message dated the 23d of June last, the true causes of the Philippine Revolution, showing, according to the evidence, that this popular movement is the result of the laws which regulate the life of a people which aspires to progress and to perfection by the sole road of liberty. The said Revolution now rules in the Provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Mindoro, Tayabas, Laguna, Morong, Bulacan, Bataan, Pampanga, Neuva-Ecija, Tarlac, Pangasinan, Union, Infanta, and Zambales, and it holds besieged the capital of Manila. In these Provinces complete order and perfect tranquility reign, administered by the authorities elected by the Provinces in accordance with the organic decrees dated the 18th and 23d of June last. The Revolution holds, moreover, about 9,000 prisoners of war, who are treated in accordance with the customs of war between civilized nations and humane sentiments, and at the end of the war it has more than 30,000 combatants organized in the form of a regular army. In this situation the chiefs of the towns comprised in the above mentioned Provinces, interpreting the sentiments which animate those who have elected them, have proclaimed the Independence of the Philippines, petitioning the Revolutionary Government that will entreat and obtain from foreign Governments recognition of its belligerency and its independence, in the firm belief that the Philippine people have already arrived at that state in which they can and ought to govern themselves. This is set forth in the accompanying documents, subscribed by the above named chiefs. Wherefore, the undersigned, by virtue of the powers which belong to him as President of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines and in the name and representation of the Philippine people, asks the support of all the powers of the civilized world, and earnestly entreats them to proceed to the formal recognition of the belligerency of the Revolution and the Independence of the Philippines; since they are the means designated by Providence to maintain the equilibrium between peoples, sustaining the weak and restraining the strong, to the end that by these means shall shine forth and be realized the most complete justice in the indefinite progress of humanity. Given at Bacoor, in the Province of Cavite, the 6th day of August, 1898. The President of the Revolutionary Government, _Emilio Aguinaldo_. _Statement_. The undersigned chiefs of towns comprising the Provinces hereinafter named, elected as such in the manner prescribed by the decree of the 18th and the instructions dated the 20th of June last, after having been confirmed in their respective offices by the President of the Government and having taken the prescribed oath before him, have met in full assembly previously called for that purpose for the purpose of discussing the solemn proclamation of Philippine independence. The discussion took place with the prudence and at the length which so important a question demands and, after suitable deliberation, the following declarations were unanimously adopted: The Philippine Revolution records on the one hand brilliant feats of arms, realized with singular courage by an improvised army almost without arms, and on the other the no less notable fact that the people, after the combat, have not entered upon great excesses nor pursued the enemy further; but have treated him, on the contrary, with generosity and humanity, returning at once to their ordinary and tranquil life. Such deeds demonstrate, in an indisputable manner, that the Philippine people was not created, as all believed, for the sole purpose of dragging the chains of servitude, but that it has a perfect idea of order and justice, shuns a savage life, and loves a civilized life. But what is most surprising in this people is that it goes on giving proofs that it knows how to frame laws, commensurate with the progress of the age, to respect them and obey them, demonstrating that its national customs are not repugnant to this progress; that it is not ambitious for power nor honors nor riches aside from the rational and just aspirations for a free and independent life, and inspired by the most lofty idea of patriotism and national honor; and that in the service of this idea and for the realization of that aspiration it has not hesitated in the sacrifice of life and fortune. These admirable--and more than admirable, these wonderful--deeds necessarily engender the most firm and ineradicable convictions of the necessity of leaving the Philippines free and independent, not only because they deserve it, but because they are prepared to defend, to the death, their future and their history. Filipinos are fully convinced that if individuals have need of material, moral and intellectual perfection in order to contribute to the welfare of their fellows peoples require to have fullness of life; they need liberty and independence in order to contribute to the indefinite progress of mankind. It has struggled and will struggle, with decision and constancy, without ever turning back or retrograding before the obstacles which may arise in its path, and with unshakable faith that it will obtain justice and fulfill the laws of Providence. And neither will it be turned aside from the course it has hitherto followed by the unjustifiable imprisonment, tortures, assassinations, and the other vandal acts committed by the Spaniards against the persons of peaceful and defenseless Filipinos. The Spaniards believe themselves released from every legal obligation toward the Filipinos for the sole reason that the belligerency of the Revolution has not been recognized, taking no account of the fact that over and above every law, whether written or prescriptive, are placed with imprescriptible characters, culture, national honor and humanity. No; the Filipinos have no need ever to make use of reprisals because they seek independence with culture, liberty with unconditional respect for the law, as the organ of justice, and a name purified in the crucible of human sentiments. In virtue of the foregoing considerations the undersigned, giving voice to the unanimous aspiration of the people whom they represent, and performing the offices received from them and the duties pertaining to the powers with which they are invested, Proclaim solemnly in the face of the whole world the Independence of the Philippines; Recognize and respect Senor Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy as President of the Revolutionary Government, organized in the manner prescribed by decree of the 23d and instructions of the 27th of June last, and beg the said President that he will ask and obtain from foreign Governments the recognition of its belligerency and independence, not only because this act constitutes a duty of justice, but also because to no one is it permitted to contravene natural laws nor stifle the legitimate aspiration of a people for its amelioration and dignification. Given in the Province of Cavite the 1st day of August, of the year of our Lord 1898, and the first year of Philippine independence. Follow the signatures of the local Presidents of the Provinces of Cavite and many others. The undersigned, Secretary of the Interior, certifies, That the present document is a literal copy of the original, which is deposited in the Secretaryship under his charge; in proof of which he signs it, with the approval of the President of the Revolutionary Government in Bacoor, the 6th day of August, 1898. El Presidente del G. R., _Emilio Aguinaldo_. El Secretano del Interior, _Leandro Ibarra_. _Letter from Senor Aguinaldo to General Anderson._ July 23d, 1898. To Brigadier-General T. M. Anderson, U. S. A., etc., etc., Cavite. In answer to the letter of your Excellency dated the 22nd of the present month, I have the honor to manifest to you the following: That even supposing that the effects existing in the storehouse of Don Antonio Osorio were subject to capture, when I established myself in the plaza (town) of Cavite, Admiral Dewey authorized me to dispose of everything that I might find in the same, including the arms which the Spanish left in the arsenal. But as he was aware that said effects belonged to the personal property (ownership) of a Filipino, who traded with them by virtue of a contribution to the Spanish Government, I would not have touched them had not the owner placed them at my disposition for the purposes of the war. I came from Hong Kong to prevent my countrymen from making common cause with the Spanish against the North Americans, pledging, before, my word to Admiral Dewey to not give place to (to allow) any internal discord because (being) a judge of their desires I had the strong conviction that I would succeed in both objects; establishing a government according to their desires. Thus it is that at the beginning I proclaimed the dictatorship, and afterwards, when some of the Provinces had already liberated themselves from Spanish domination, I established a revolutionary government that to-day exists, giving it a democratic and popular character, as far as the abnormal circumstances of war permitted, in order that they (the Provinces) might be justly represented and administered to their satisfaction. It is true that my government has not been acknowledged by any of the foreign powers; but we expect that the great North American nation, which struggled first for its independence and afterwards for the abolition of slavery, and is now actually struggling for the independence of Cuba, would look upon it with greater benevolence than any other nation. Because of this we have always acknowledged the right of preference as to our gratitude. Debtor to the generosity of the North Americans, and to the favors which we have received through Admiral Dewey, and being more desirous than any other of preventing any conflict which would have as a result foreign intervention which must be extremely prejudicial not alone to my nation, but also to that of Your Excellency, I consider it my duty to advise you of the undesirability of disembarking North American troops in the places conquered by the Filipinos from the Spanish, without previous notice to this government, because as no formal agreement yet exists between the two nations, the Philippine people might consider the occupation of its territories by North American troops as a violation of its rights. I comprehend that without the destruction of the Spanish squadron the Philippine revolution would not have advanced so rapidly; because of this I take the liberty of indicating to Your Excellency the necessities that before disembarking troops you should communicate in writing to this government the places that are to be occupied, and also the object of the occupation, that the people may be advised in due form and (thus) prevent the commission of any transgression against friendship. I can answer for my people, because they have given me evident proofs of their absolute confidence in my government, but I cannot answer for that which another nation, whose friendship is not well guaranteed, might inspire in it (the people); and it is certain that I do this not as a menace, but as a further proof of the true and sincere friendship which I have always professed to the North American people in the complete security that it will find itself completely identified with our cause of liberty. I am, with respect, Your obedient servant, _Emilio Aguinaldo_. CHAPTER VII Interview with the Archbishop of Manila. Insurgents' Deadly Hostility to Spanish Priests--The Position of the Archbishop as He Defined It--His Expression of Gratitude to the American Army--His Characterization of the Insurgents--A Work of Philippine Art--The Sincerity of the Archbishop's Good Words. The intense feeling by the Philippine insurgents against the Spanish priests made it seem very desirable to see the Archbishop of Manila, and he informed two American priests that he would have pleasure in making an expression of his views to me to be placed before the people of the United States. He had been charged with extreme vindictiveness and the responsibility of demanding that the city should be defended to the last extremity, when actually, in the consultation of dignitaries that took place, and the surrender of the capital was demanded by General Merritt and Admiral Dewey, he declared the situation hopeless and that it was a plain duty to prevent the sacrifice of life. He was overruled by the peculiar folly that has caused Spain in the course of the war to inflict heavy and avoidable losses upon herself. Indeed, the war originated in the Spanish state of mind that it was necessary to open fire and shed blood for the honor of the arms of Spain. The Spanish officers knew they could not save Manila from the hands of the Americans while the command of the sea by our fleet was indisputable and we had unlimited reserves to draw upon to strengthen the land forces, irrespective of the swarms of insurgents pressing in the rear and eager to take vengeance for centuries of mismanagement and countless personal grievances. It was the acknowledgment of the Spanish Captain-General, when he received the peremptory summons from Merritt and Dewey to give up the city, that there was no place of refuge for the women and children, the sick and the wounded; and yet it was insisted that the honor of Spain required bloodshed--not much, perhaps, but enough to prove that the army of Spain was warlike. When the American army had been reinforced so as to have 8,000 men ready to take the field, General Merritt and Admiral Dewey had a conference and agreed to send the Spaniards in authority a formal notification that in forty-eight hours they would bombard and assail the defenses of the city of Manila if it were not surrendered. The Spanish reply was that the Americans could commence operations at once, but there was no place where the women and children, the wounded and the sick could go to find a place of security. This was tantamount to a declaration that the Spaniards were sliding into a surrender, but wanted to make a claim to the contrary. The residence of the Archbishop is within the walled city and a very substantial edifice, the stone work confined to the lower story and hardwood timber freely used in massive form instead of stone. His grace was seated at a small table in a broad hall, with a lamp and writing material before him. He is imposing as a man of importance and his greeting was cordial to kindliness. He said his acknowledgments were personally due the American people for the peace of mind he had enjoyed during the occupation of the city by the army of the United States, for its establishment of order and the justice in administration that relieved good citizens from oppression and alarm. He was glad to have Americans know his sensibility on this subject, and wanted me to convey his sentiments to the President. When asked what it was that caused the insurgents to be so ferocious against the priests and resolved on their expulsion or destruction he said the rebels were at once false, unjust and ungrateful. They had been lifted from savagery by Catholic teachers, who had not only been educators in the schools but teachers in the fields. The same Catholic Orders that were singled out for special punishment had planted in the islands the very industries that were sources of prosperity, and the leaders of the insurgents had been largely educated by the very men whom now they persecuted. Some of the persecutors had been in Europe and became revolutionists in the sense of promoting disorder as anarchists. It was the antagonism of the church to murderous anarchy that aroused the insurgents of the Philippines to become the deadly enemies of priests and church orders. It was true in Spain, as in the Philippines, that the anarchists were particularly inflamed against the church. His grace did not seem to have heard of the American anarchist, but the European revolutionist has received a large share of his attention. He produced a box of cigars, also a bottle of sherry, and chatted comfortably and humorously. There was one thing then that he had in his heart--that his anxiety for peace and appreciation of order as enjoyed under the American military government should be recorded and responsibly reported to the people of the United States. The American priests had informed him that I was a friend of long standing of President McKinley, and he again enjoined that I should declare his sentiments to the President. A beautiful work of wood carving was shown on an easel, which had a frame of hard wood, the whole, easel and frame, with elaborately wrought ornamentation, cut out of one tree. It was at once strong and graceful, simple and decorative. The picture was a gold medallion, raised on a plate of silver, an excellent likeness of his grace. It was evident that the refinements of art were known to "these barbarians of the Philippines," for their works testified. His grace announced that he would return my call, and his convenience being consulted, the time was fixed for him to appear at 11 o'clock the next day, Sunday, and he came accordingly, accompanied by three priests, the chaplain of the First California, Father Daugherty who sailed with General Merritt to Manila, and Father Boyle, the superintendent of the famous observatory founded by the Jesuits, who was a typical Irishman of a strong and humorously hearty type. Father Boyle had one of the most perfect methods of speaking English in the Irish way that I have ever heard, and admitted that he had resided in England long enough to be born there; and this was great fun. It is not too much to say that the institution he represented is illustrious. The cathedral of Manila is within the walled city and of immense proportions. It was shattered by an earthquake, and in its reconstruction wood rather than marble was used for the supporting pillars within, but no one would find out that the stately clusters of columns were not from the quarries rather than the forests, unless personally conducted to the discovery. Here 2,000 Spanish soldiers, held under the articles of capitulation, were quartered, consumed their rations and slept, munching and dozing all around the altar and pervading the whole edifice. The other great churches, five in number, in the walled city, were occupied in the same way. The Archbishop was anxious to have the soldiers otherwise provided with shelter, and if not all of them could be restored to their ordinary uses it was most desirable, in his opinion, the cathedral should be. It is estimated that 2,000 of the American soldiers in the expeditionary force are Catholics, and Father Daugherty was anxious to preach to them in English. During the call upon me by the Archbishop this subject was discussed, and the suggestion made that the Americans had tents in great number that they did not occupy and that would probably not be preserved by keeping them stored in that hot and trying climate. They might be pitched on the Luneta, which is beside the sea, and the town thus relieved of 13,000 men, who, herded in churches, produced unsanitary conditions. This seemed reasonable, and the policy of the change would have a tendency to develop an element of good-will not to be despised and rejected. It might be that the cathedral alone could be cleared without delay or prejudice with a pleasant effect, and if so why not? His grace was certainly diplomatic and persuasive in stating the case, and his attendants were animated with zeal that the Americans should have the credit of re-opening the cathedral for worship. It was true the Spanish garrison first occupied it, but if the necessity that its ample roof should protect soldiers from the torrential rains had existed perhaps it had ceased to be imperative. The matter was duly presented to the military authorities, and the objection found to immediate action that the Spanish prisoners of war should not for the time be located outside the walled city. They must be held where they could be handled. Coincident with the call of the Archbishop came Captain Coudert, of the distinguished family of that name in New York, and his grace was deeply interested in that young man and warmly expressed his gratification in meeting an American officer of his own faith. The Archbishop is a man of a high order of capacity, and his influence has been great. His position is a trying one, for it would be quite impossible for him to remain in Manila if the insurgents should become the masters of the situation. The claim of hostile natives that the Spanish priests have an influence in matters of state that make them a ruling class is one that they urge when expressing their resolve that the Friars must go. The Spanish policy, especially in the municipal governments, has been to magnify the office of the priests in political functions. The proceedings of a meeting of the people in order to receive attention or to have legal standing must be certified by a priest. It is the Spanish priest that is wanted in matters of moment, and the laws make his presence indispensable. The Spanish priests are, therefore, identified in the public mind with all the details of misgovernment. The civilized Filipinos profess christianity and faith in the native priests, carefully asserting the distinction. In his conversation with me, General Aguinaldo repeatedly referred to the necessity of consulting his advisers, and said he had to be careful not to offend many of his followers, who thought he had gone very far in his friendship for the United States. He gave emphasis to the assertion that they were "suspicious" of him on that account. It was my judgment at first that the General, in stopping short when a question was difficult and referring to the Council he had to consult, was showing a capacity for finesse, that he really had the power to do or to undo, though he has not a personal appearance of possible leadership. Now this, even, has been modified. His Council seems to be the real center of power. When I was talking with Aguinaldo there were two American priests waiting to propose the deportation of his prisoners who were priests, and he had to refer that question. The Council has decided to keep the priests in confinement, and it is remarked that the General desired to give up his prisoners and was false in saying he favored sending them to Spain. There are misapprehensions in this association. He has no doubt thought well of holding fast his most important hostages. If he personally desired to release the priests, he probably would not venture to do it. He is not so silly as to believe in his own inviolability by bullets, and digestion of poisons; and those who are such savages as to confide in these superstitions are not unlikely to try experiments just to strengthen their faith. The potentiality of Aguinaldo as a personage is not so great as has been imagined, and if he attempts a rally against the American flag he will be found full of weakness. The Archbishop, I was told, had much pleasure in meeting an American he was assured would attempt to be entirely just, and present him according to his own declarations to the people of the United States. He knew very well, unquestionably, the stories circulated in the American camps, that his voice had been loudest and last in urging hopeless war, in telling impossible tales of visionary Spanish reinforcements, and denouncing the Americans as "niggers" and "pigs." It is a fact that Spaniards have cultivated the notion among the rural Filipinos, that Americans are black men, and pigs is their favorite epithet for an American. The radical enemies of His Grace are, no doubt, responsible for unseemly stories about his animosities, for that he and those around him were sincere in their respect for, and gratitude toward the American army of occupation, for its admirable bearing and good conduct, was in itself too obviously true to be doubted. CHAPTER VIII Why We Hold the Philippines. The Responsibility of Admiral Dewey--We Owe It to Ourselves to Hold the Philippines--Prosperity Assured by Our Permanent Possession--The Aguinaldo Question--Character Study of the Insurgent Leader--How Affairs Would Adjust Themselves for Us--Congress Must Be Trusted to Represent the People and Firmly Establish International Policy. If Admiral Dewey, after obeying the order of the President to destroy the Spanish fleet at Manila, had steamed away and sought a station to get coal to drive him somewhere else, there would have been no Philippine question on the other side of the world from Washington City. The Admiral desired to keep open telegraphic communication, and made a proposition to that effect, but the Spanish authorities curtly refused. Then the cable was cut by order of the Admiral, a section removed, and both ends marked by buoys. Reflection caused the Spaniards to regret that they had not consented to keep open the cable, that it might be used under restrictions by both belligerents. They mentioned their change of mind, and were told they were too late. The American Admiral may have been apprehensive, and he had reason to be, that the Spaniards, knowing they would be crushed in the West Indies if they risked a decisive naval engagement there, might send all their available ships of war to the Philippines, and secure a superiority of force, possibly to destroy their enemies at Manila. It is clear now that this is what the Spaniards ought to have tried to do. The Americans were committed to the blockade of Cuba, occupying all the vessels of war they had at hand, and the whole fleet of Spain could have been in the Suez Canal, on the way to Manila when the movement was known to our navy department. Then Admiral Dewey would, of course, have been warned by way of Hong Kong and a dispatch boat, that he should put to sea and take care of his men and ships. The result might have been the temporary restoration of the Philippines to Spain. Our Admiral, six hundred miles from Hongkong, the closest cable connection, could not afford to leave Manila in direct communication with Madrid. It was for this reason and not that he desired to keep out of way or orders, as some able publicists have kindly promulgated, that the Admiral cut the cable. The gravest of his responsibilities came upon him after his victory freed the harbor of declared enemies, and placed the great city at his mercy. If the Spaniards used their big Krupp guns against his ships, he could bombard the city and burn it. He held the keys to the Philippines, with Manila under his guns, and the question before him then was the same before the country now. The question that incessantly presses is, whether the Dewey policy is to be confirmed, and the logic of the stay in the harbor, and the dispatch of troops to take the town made good. We hold the keys of the Philippines. Shall we continue to do so? This question transcends in immediate importance--inevitable consequence--remote as well as near, all the war with Spain has raised. So broad a matter should not be rested on narrow grounds, nor decided with haste. It ought to be scrutinized in all its bearings, and all susceptibilities and material affairs regarded, for it will affect all the people for all time. What are the Philippines? They are the richest prize of soil and climate that has been at hazard in the world for many years--one that would be seized, if it could be done without war, by any of the great nations other than our own without hesitation. The only scruple we need entertain, the sole reason for deliberation, is because it is a duty of the government to be sure when there are imperial considerations to be weighed, that the people should be consulted. It was on this account distinctly, that the President knew the issue of the permanency of the possession of the Philippines was one of peculiar novelty and magnitude, that he permitted it to exist. Spain must have been as acquiescent in this as in yielding the independence of Cuba, and the concession to us without any intermediate formality of Porto Rico. It is not inconsistent with the policy of magnanimity that is generally anticipated after the victory of a great power over a lesser one, that we should hold the Philippines. We have only to keep the power we have in peace, and let it work as a wholesome medicine, and all the islands of the group of which Manila is the central point, will be ours without conflict. In our system there is healing for wounds, and attraction for the oppressed. The holding of the islands by Spain would signify the continued shedding of blood, and drainage of the vital resources of the peninsula. As against Spain the Philippines will be united and desperate unto death, while they would without coercion walk hand in hand with us, and become the greatest of our dependencies--not states, but territories. It would be an act of mercy to Spain to send her soldiers and priests from the Philippines, home. Even if we consent that she may keep her South Sea possession, she will lose it as she has all the rest, for the story of the Philippines is that of Spanish South and Central America, and the modern story of Cuba is the old one of all countries South and West of the Gulf of Mexico and around by way of the Oceans to Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Chili, and the rest had the same bloody stream of history to trace, and sooner or later the tale must all be told. Since Spain has already surrendered Cuba and Porto Rico, the record of the Philippines is the last chapter of her colonial experiences, by which she has dazzled and disgusted the world, attaining from the plunder of dependencies wealth that she invested in oppressive warfare to sustain a depraved despotism and display a grandeur that was unsound, sapping her own strength in colonial enterprises that could not be other than without profit, because the colonies were the property of the crown, and the prey of caste. The Spanish nation was forbidden by their government, not of the people or for the people, to profit by the colonies, and the viceroys, the captain-generals, and the whole official class were corrupted, and inefficient in all things, except methods of tyranny to procure a harvest of gold and silver not from the mines of the metals alone, but from the industries, whatever they were. The people at large were allowed no share in their own earnings, beyond a subsistence so scanty that deep humiliation and grievous hardship were the fateful rewards of labor. It was because the colonial policy of Spain impoverished and degraded the Spaniards at home, through the injustice, greed and profligacy of those abroad, that the huge structure, once so great an imposition upon mankind, a rotten fabric so gilt that the inherent weakness was disguised, has finally fallen into universal and irretrievable ruin. It is well Spain should retain the Canaries and the Balearic group, for they are as Spanish as any peninsular province, and legitimately belong therefore to the kingdom. The application of this principle excludes Spain from the Philippines, and their des- [NOTE: gap in original] been committed by the failure of war to our hands. There is no nation that will dispute our peaceable possession of the Philippines. Any other nation's proprietorship will be challenged. Our authoritative presence in the islands will be a guarantee of peace. Any other assertion of supremacy will be the signal for war. Our assumption of sovereignty over the islands would quickly establish tranquility. Any other disposition of the burning questions now smoldering will cause an outburst of the flames of warfare. The Spaniards in Manila have been transient. They are not rooted in the soil. They all come and go like Captain-Generals, a mere official class, with the orders of the Church participating actively in secular concerns, more active as politicians than as teachers of religion. In the view of the native population it is as indispensable that the priests of Spain shall return to their native land as that the soldiers should go. The deportation of these people would remove classes of consumers and not affect unfavorably a productive industry, or the prosperity of a self-sustaining community, and there would be but rare instances of the severance of family ties. It will be said of the affirmation that, the avowal of the possession of the Philippines as a responsibility without end would be a peace measure, and anything else make for war, does not take into account the attitude of the Philippine Dictator, by proclamation, General Aguinaldo, and his followers. We desire to speak with respect of the General, for he has shown in trying times, under strong temptations, the presence in his character of personal integrity in public matters, and reference is made to his refusal to consent to the division among insurgents alleged to be leaders, of the money paid by the Spaniards for the disarmament of the rebels, when two years ago there was an agreement upon the terms of a truce. This money transaction has been referred to as the sale of their cause by Aguinaldo and his associates, as if they, as individuals, had pocketed the usufruct of the bargain. The money was paid by Spain as an earnest of her sincerity, the Captain-General representing the force and good faith of the kingdom, in granting reforms to the Philippines. On condition of insurgent disarmament the people of the island were to be allowed representation in the Spanish Cortes, the orders of the Church were to be removed from relations to the Government that were offensive to the people. There was a long list of articles of specification of the reforms that were to be granted, the usual liberality of words of promise always bestowed by Spain upon her colonists. The representatives of Spain denied nothing that was asked; and to give weight to the program of concessions, there was paid in hand to Aguinaldo, through a transaction between banks in Manila and Hongkong, four hundred thousand dollars, the first installment of eight hundred thousand dollars agreed upon. [1] The Spaniards probably understood that they were bribing the insurgents and paying a moderate sum to cheaply end the war; and it did not cost the authorities of Spain anything, for they exacted the money from the Manila Bank of Spain, and still owe the bank. Aguinaldo's understanding, acted upon, was different. He accepted the money as a war fund, and has held and defended it for the purchase of arms, and resumed hostilities when all promises of reform were broken, and nothing whatever done beyond the robbery of the bank to bribe the rebel chiefs, which was the Spanish translation. Of course, it was claimed by the enemies of Aguinaldo that he was bought and paid for, but he has maintained the fund, though there were those professors of rebellion, who made claims to a share of the money. The second installment of the money that the rebels were to have been paid is yet an obligation not lifted, and the hostilities were revived as soon as the craft of the Spanish negotiators in promising everything because they meant to do nothing, became obvious. The actual proceedings in this case can be summed up in a sentence: The Spaniards took four hundred thousand dollars out of the Bank of Spain and gave it to the insurgents, for a temporary armistice. General Aguinaldo, though he appears very well in refusing to employ the money paid by Spain as a bribe for himself, has not the elements of enduring strength as the leader of the insurgents. As against the Spaniards he can keep the field, and carry on a destructive guerilla warfare, hopeless on both sides, like that going on in Cuba, when that island was invaded by the American army. But as against American rule the Philippines would cease to be insurgents. The islanders will not be controlled by sentimentalism. Government by the United States would differ from that by Spain, as the two nations are different in character, in the nature of their political institutions, in their progressive movement. America is all active and free, and her freedom would be extended to the islanders. The transformation would be one from the paralysis of despotism to the life of liberty. The words despotism and freedom would instantly have a distinct business meaning. Make known in the city of Manila that the Americans will abandon it, and the reviving hopes of the men of affairs would be instantly clouded, and the depression deepen into despondency and despair. Let it be the news of the day that the Americans will stay, and the intelligence of the city would regard its redemption as assured, every drooping interest revive, and an era of prosperity unknown under the dismal incompetency of Spain, open at once. It is legitimate that there should be freedom of speech as to the details of the proceedings. If our Government should do what Admiral Dewey did when he was the master of Manila, because he had annihilated the Spanish fleet and had the power to destroy the city--cast anchor and stay where we are already in command--the task is neither so complex nor costly as its opponents claim. Our territorial system is one easy of application to colonies. We have had experience of it from the first days of our Government. There is no commandment that a Territory shall become a State in any given time, or ever. We can hold back a Territory, as we have Arizona and New Mexico, or hasten the change to Statehood according to the conditions, and the perfect movement of the machinery requires only the presence in Congress of dominant good sense. Congress is easily denounced, but no one has found a substitute for it, and it is fairly representative of the country. Congress will never gamble away the inheritance of the people. It will probably, in spite of all shortcomings, have its average of ability and utility kept up. Congress may go wrong, but will not betray. Our outlying possessions must be Territories until they are Americanized, and we take it Americans know what that word means. If a specification is wanted as a definition, we have to say the meaning is just what has happened in California since our flag was there. In the case of the Philippines, if we stick, and we do not see how we can help doing so, the President will, in regular course, appoint a Territorial Governor, and as a strong Government capable of quick and final decisions must be made, the Governor should be a military man, and have a liberal grant, by special Act of Congress, of military authority. He should be a prompt, and all around competent administrator. He will not have to carry on war offensive or defensive. He need not be in a hurry to go far from Manila. He will not be molested there. The country will gravitate to him. The opponents of the Republican form of Government, as it is in the United States and the Territories of the Nation will become insignificant in the Philippines. They will have no grievances, except some of them may not be called at once to put on the trappings of personal potentiality. General Aguinaldo would find all the reforms the Spanish promised when they paid him four hundred thousand dollars to prove their good intentions, free as the air. He could not make war against the benignancy of a Government, Republican in its form and its nature, which simply needs a little time, some years maybe, before erasing the wrongs that have had a growth of centuries. The American Governor-General need not send out troops to conquer districts, coercing the people. The people will soon be glad to see the soldiers of the United States, the representatives of the downfall and departure of the instruments of Spain. Aguinaldo and his party have a Congress. It might be an approved beginning of a Territorial Legislature, and the insurgent General might be the presiding officer. There would be abundant reason for the auspicious exercise of all his rights in the public service. As for the cost of the Philippines under our Government, that would fall upon the treasury of the United States. There can be no doubt that it would be for several years a considerable sum, but the public men who favored peace for the liberation of Cuba, did not make counting the cost the most prominent feature of the war they advocated, but accepted the fact that the national honor and fame, the glory of heroism and deeds of daring and sacrifice, are priceless, and their achievement beyond price. There is to be said under this head, that the Philippine Islands are of natural riches almost without parallel. The great isle of Luzon teems with productions that have markets the world over, and it is commonplace for the savages in the mountains to come out of their fastnesses with nuggets of gold to make purchases. Cotton, sugar, rice, hemp, coffee and tobacco, all tropical fruits and woods, are of the products. There is profusion of the riches that await the freedom of labor and the security of capital, and the happiness of the people. Under American government the Philippines would prosper, and it would be one of our tasks to frame legislation. The laws of Congress would be the higher code of law, and the Philippines would desire, and be invited, of course, to send their ablest men to be Territorial representatives in the Congress of the United States. In the name of peace, therefore, and in behalf of the dignity and authority of this Nation--in mercy to the Spaniards, in justice to the Filipinos, it is due ourselves, and should have the favor of all who would see our country expand with the ages, and walking in the footsteps of Washington and Jefferson, finding the path of empire that of freedom and taking our place as a great Power, accepting the logic of our history, and the discharge of the duties of destiny--we should hold on to the Philippines--and when the great distance of those islands from this continent is mentioned, remember that the Pacific may now be crossed in as few days as was the Atlantic forty years ago. The labor questions and the silver questions even come into the Philippines problem to be scanned and weighed. In Eastern Asia, which we have invaded, and a part of which we have appropriated for a time, the people use silver for the measure of value, and in the islands that interest us, as they do not deal in the mysteries of rupees, but in dollars, the facts in the case are plainly within the common understanding. In Manila the Mexican dollar goes in ordinary small exchanges, payment of wages and settlement of bills, for fifty cents; but the banks sell the Mexicans twenty-one of them for ten gold dollars--an American eagle! So far as the native people go, labor and produce are counted in silver, and the purchaser, or employer gets as much for a silver dollar as for a gold dollar. The native will take ten dollars in gold for ten dollars only in all settlements of accounts, and would just as willingly--even more so, accept ten Mexican dollars as ten American dollars in gold coin. Salaries are paid and goods delivered according to the silver standard. Of course, in due time this state of things will pass away, if we hold to the gold standard, but as the case stands the soldiers and sailors of our army and fleet, paid under the home standard, receive double pay, and get double value received for clothing, tobacco and whatever they find they want--indeed, for the necessaries and luxuries of life. The double standard in this shape is not distasteful to the boys. We have both theories and conditions confronting us in these aspects of the silver and labor questions. The Oriental people are obdurate in their partiality for silver. It is the cheaper labor that adheres to the silver standard, partially, it is held, because silver is the more convenient money for the payment of small sums. But labor cannot be expected, at its own expense, to sustain silver for the profit of capital, or rather of the middle man between labor and capital. Labor, so far as it is in politics in this country, should not, without most careful study and deliberation, conclude that its force in public affairs would be abated, and its policy of advancing wages antagonized by the absorption of the Philippines in our country. On the contrary, the statesmanship that is representative of labor may discover that it is a great fact, one of the greatest of facts, that the various countries and continents of the globe are being from year to year more and more closely associated, and that to those intelligently interested, without regard to the application of their views of justice or expediency, in the labor and silver questions--the convictions, the fanaticisms, of the vast silver nations--and enormous multitudes of the people of Asia, touching the silver standard--and the possible progress of labor, as a guiding as well as plodding ability increases incessantly in interest, and must grow in inheritance. As the conditions of progressive civilization are developed our interests cannot be wholly dissevered from those of the Asiatics. We would be unwise to contemplate the situation of to-day as one that can or should perpetuate itself. Suppose we accept, the governing responsibility in the Philippines. It is not beyond the range of reasonable conjecture that American labor can educate the laborers of the Philippines out of their state of servitude as cheap laborers, and lead them to co-operate rather than compete with us, and not to go into the silver question further than to consent that it exists, and is in the simplest form of statement, whether the change in the market value of the two money metals is natural or artificial. It is necessary in common candor to state that the most complete solution of the money metal embarrassments would be through the co-operation of Asia and America. Europe is for gold, Asia for silver, and the Americas divided. Japan is an object lesson, her approximation to the gold standard has caused in the Empire an augmentation of the compensation of labor. This is not wholly due to the change in the standard. The war with China, the increase in the army and navy, and the absorption of laborers in Formosa, the new country of Japan, have combined with the higher standard of value, to elevate wages. All facts are of primary excellence in the formation of the policies of nations. CHAPTER IX The Philippine Islands As They Are. Area and Population--Climate--Mineral Wealth--Agriculture--Commerce and Transportation--Revenue and Expenses--Spanish Troops--Spanish Navy--Spanish Civil Administration--Insurgent Troops--Insurgent Civil Administration--United States Troops--United States Navy--United States Civil Administration--The Future of the Islands. General Frank V. Greene made an exhaustive study of all reports of an official character regarding the area, population, climate, resources, commerce, revenue and expenses of the Philippines Islands, and prepared a memorandum for the general information that is the most thorough and complete ever made, and is the latest and highest authority on all the subjects to which it relates, and they include the solid information the business men of the United States want respecting our Asiatic associations. The memorandum is herewith submitted in substance, and all the particulars of public concern. Area and Population. These islands, including the Ladrones, Carolinas and Palaos, which are all under the Government of Manila, are variously estimated at from 1,200 to 1,300 in number. The greater portion of these are small and of no more value than the islands off the coast of Alaska. The important islands are less than a dozen in number, and 90 per cent. of the Christian population live on Luzon and the five principal islands of the Visayas group. The total population is somewhere between 7,000,000 and 9,000,000. This includes the wild tribes of the mountains of Luzon and of the islands in the extreme south. The last census taken by the Spanish Government was on December 31, 1887, and this stated the Christian population to be 6,000,000 (in round numbers). This is distributed as follows: Per Area. Population. Sq. Mile. Luzon 44,400 3,426,000 79 Panay 4,700 735,000 155 Cebu 2,400 504,000 210 Leyte 3,300 279,000 71 Bohol 1.300 245,000 188 Negros 3,300 242,000 73 ====== ========= === 59,800 5,422,000 91 The density of population in these six islands is nearly 50 per cent. greater than in Illinois and Indiana (census of 1890), greater than in Spain, about one-half as great as in France, and one-third as great as in Japan and China, the exact figures being as follows: Area. Population. Per Sq. Mile. Illinois 56,000 3,826,351 68 Indiana 35,910 2,192,494 61 ------ --------- --- 91,910 6,018,755 64 Spain 197,670 17,565,632 88 France 204,092 38,517,975 189 Japan 147,655 42,270,620 286 China 1,312,328 383,253,029 292 The next most important islands, in the order of population, are: Area. Population. Per Sq. Mile. Mindanao 34,000 209,000 6 Samar 4,800 186,000 38 Mindoro 4,000 67,000 17 Nomblon 600 35,000 58 Masbate 1,400 21,000 15 ------ ------- -- 44,800 518,000 11 Various smaller islands, including the Carolinas, Ladrones and Palaos, carry the total area and Christian population to-- 140,000 6,000,000 43 This is considerably greater than the density of population in the States east of the Rocky Mountains. Owing to the existence of mountain ranges in all the islands, and lack of communication in the interior, only a small part of the surface is inhabited. In many provinces the density of population exceeds 200 per square mile, or greater than that of any of the United States, except Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The total area of the Philippines is about the same as that of Japan, but its civilized population is only one-seventh. In addition to the Christian population, it is estimated (in the Official Guide) that the islands contain the following: Chinese (principally in Manila) 75,000 Moors or Mohametans in Paragon and Jok 100,000 Moors or Mohametans in Mindanao and Basilan 209,000 Heathen in the Philippines 830,000 Heathen in the Carolinas and Palaos 50,000 --------- 1,264,000 The Official Guide gives a list of more than thirty different races, each speaking a different dialect; but five-sixths of the Christian population are either Tagalos or Visayas. All the races are of the Malay type. Around Manila there has been some mixture of Chinese and Spanish blood with that of the natives, resulting in the Mestizos or Half-breeds, but the number of these is not very great. As seen in the provinces of Cavite and Manila, the natives (Tagalos) are of small stature, averaging probably 5 feet 4 inches in height, and 120 pounds in weight for the men, and 5 feet in height, and 100 pounds in weight for the women. Their skin is coppery brown, somewhat darker than that of the mulatto. They seem to be industrious and hard-working, although less so than the Chinese. By the Spaniards they are considered indolent, crafty, untruthful, cowardly and cruel, but the hatred between the Spaniards and the native races is so intense and bitter that the Spanish opinion of the natives is of little or no value. To us they seem industrious and docile, but there are occasional evidences of deceit and untruthfulness in their dealings with us. The bulk of the population is engaged in agriculture, and there were hardly any evidences of manufactures, arts or mining. The greater number seemed to be able to read and write, but I have been unable to obtain any exact figures on this subject. They are all devout Roman Catholics, although they hate the monastic orders. In Manila (and doubtless also in Cebu and Iloilo) are many thousands of educated natives, who are merchants, lawyers, doctors and priests. They are well informed and have accumulated property. They have not traveled much, but there is said to be quite a numerous colony of rich Filipinos in Madrid, as well as in Paris and London. The bibliography of the Philippines is said to number 4,500 volumes, the greater part of which have been written by Spanish priests and missionaries. The number of books on the subject in the English language is probably less than a dozen. Climate. The climate is one of the best known in the tropics. The islands extend from 5 to 21 deg. north latitude, and Manila is in 14d. 35m. The thermometer during July and August rarely went below 79 or above 85. The extreme ranges in a year are said to be 61 and 97, and the annual mean, 81. There are three well-marked seasons, temperate and dry from November to February, hot and dry from March to May, and temperate and wet from June to October. The rainy season reaches its maximum in July and August, when the rains are constant and very heavy. The total rainfall has been as high as 114 inches in one year. Yellow fever appears to be unknown. The diseases most fatal among the natives are cholera and smallpox, both of which are brought from China. Low malarial fever is brought on by sleeping on the ground or being chilled by remaining, without exercise, in wet clothes; and diarrhea is produced by drinking bad water or eating excessive quantities of fruit. Almost all of these diseases are preventable by proper precautions, even by troops in campaign. The sickness in our troops was very small, much less than in the cold fogs at camp in San Francisco. Mineral Wealth. Very little is known concerning the mineral wealth of the islands. It is stated that there are deposits of coal, petroleum, iron, lead, sulphur, copper and gold in the various islands, but little or nothing has been done to develop them. A few concessions have been granted for working mines, but the output is not large. The gold is reported on Luzon, coal and petroleum on Cebu and Iloilo, and sulphur on Leyte. The imports of coal in 1894 (the latest year for which the statistics have been printed) were 91,511 tons, and it came principally from Australia and Japan. In the same year the imports of iron of all kinds were 9,632 tons. If the Cebu coal proves to be good quality there is a large market for it in competition with the coal from Japan and Australia. Agriculture. Although agriculture is the chief occupation of the Philippines, yet only one-ninth of the surface is under cultivation. The soil is very fertile, and even after deducting the mountainous areas, it is probable that the area of cultivation can be very largely extended, and that the islands can support a population equal to that of Japan (42,000,000). The chief products are rice, corn, hemp, sugar, tobacco, cocoanuts and cacao. Coffee and cotton were formerly produced in large quantities--the former for export and the latter for home consumption; but the coffee plant has been almost exterminated by insects, and the home made cotton clothes have been driven out by the competition of those imported from England. The rice and corn are principally produced in Luzon and Mindoro, and are consumed in the islands; the rice crop is about 765,000 tons; it is insufficient for the demand and 45,000 tons of rice were imported in 1894, the greater portion from Saigon, and the rest from Hongkong and Singapore; also 8,669 tons (say 60,000 barrels) of flour, of which more than two-thirds came from China and less than one-third from the United States. The cacao is raised in the southern islands, the best quality of it in Mindanao. The production amounts to only 150 tons, and it is all made into chocolate and consumed in the islands. The sugar cane is raised in the Visayas. The crop yielded, in 1894, about 235,000 tons of raw sugar, of which one-tenth was consumed in the islands and the balance, or 210,000 tons, valued at $11,000,000, was exported, the greater part to China, Great Britain and Australia. The hemp is produced in southern Luzon, Mindoro, the Visayas and Mindanao. It is nearly all exported in bales. In the year 1894 the amount was 96,000 tons, valued at $12,000,000. Tobacco is raised in all the islands, but the best quality and the greatest amount in Luzon. A large amount is consumed in the islands, smoking being universal among the women as well as the men, but the best quality is exported. The amount, in 1894, was 7,000 tons of leaf tobacco, valued at $1,400,000, and 1,400 tons of manufactured tobacco, valued at $1,750,000. Spain takes 30 per cent, and Egypt 10 per cent of the leaf tobacco. Of the manufactured tobacco, 70 per cent, goes to China and Singapore, 10 per cent. to England, and 5 per cent. to Spain. Cocoanuts are grown in southern Luzon and are used in various ways. The products are largely used in the islands, but the exports, in 1894, were valued at $2,400,000. Cattle, goats and sheep have been introduced from Spain, but they are not numerous. Domestic pigs and chickens are seen around every hut in the farming districts. The principal beast of burden is the carabac or water buffalo, which is used for ploughing rice fields, as well as drawing heavy loads on sledges or on carts. Large horses are almost unknown, but there are great numbers of native ponies, from nine to twelve hands high, but possessing strength and endurance far beyond their size. Commerce and Transportation. The internal commerce between Manila and the different islands is quite large, but I was unable to find any official records giving exact figures concerning it. It is carried on almost entirely by water, in steamers of 500 to 1,000 tons. There are regular mail steamers, once in two weeks, on four routes, viz.; Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao; also a steamer every two months to the Carolines and Ladrones, and daily steamers on Manila Bay. These lines are all subsidized. To facilitate this navigation extensive harbor works have been in progress at Manila for several years, and a plan for lighting the coasts has been made, calling for forty-three principal lights, of which seventeen have already been constructed in the most substantial manner, besides sixteen lights of secondary importance. There is only one line of railway, built by English capital, running from Manila north to Dagupan, a distance of about 120 miles. The roads in the immediate vicinity of Manila are macadamized and in fairly good order; elsewhere they are narrow paths of soft, black soil, which becomes almost impassable in the rainy season. Transportation is then effected by sledges, drawn through the mud by carabacs. There are telegraph lines connecting most of the provinces of Luzon with Manila, and cables to the Visayas and southern islands, and thence to Borneo and Singapore, as well as a direct cable from Manila to Hongkong. The land telegraph lines are owned by the Government, and the cables all belong to an English company, which receives a large subsidy. In Manila there is a narrow gauge street railway, operated by horse-power, about eleven miles in total length; also a telephone system, and electric lights. Communications with Europe are maintained by the Spanish Trans-Atlantic Company (subsidized), which sends a steamer every four weeks from Manila and Barcelona, making the trip in about twenty-seven days. The same company also sends an intermediate steamer from Manila to Singapore, meeting the French Messagoric each way. There is also a non-subsidized line running from Manila to Hongkong every two weeks, and connecting there with the English, French and German mails for Europe, and with the Pacific mail and Canadian Pacific steamers for Japan and America. There has been no considerable development of manufacturing industries in the Philippines. The only factories are those connected with the preparation of rice, tobacco and sugar. Of the manufactures and arts, in which Japan so excels, there is no evidence. The foreign commerce amounted, in 1894, to $28,558,552 in imports, and $33,149,984 in exports, 80 per cent, of which goes through Manila. About 60 per cent. of the trade is carried in British vessels, 20 per cent. in Spanish and 10 per cent. in German. The value of the commerce with other countries in 1894 was as follows: In Millions of Dollars (Silver). Imports. Exports. Spain 10.5 2.9 Great Britain 7.1 8.7 China 4.6 6.8 Germany 1.9 --- Saigon .9 --- United States .7 7.4 France .7 1.2 Singapore .4 1.7 Japan .2 1.2 Australia .1 2.6 Other Countries 1.5 .6 ---- ---- 25.6 33.1 It is interesting to note that next to Great Britain we are the largest customers of the Philippines, and that they export to us nearly three times as much as to Spain. On the other hand Spain sells to the Philippines fifteen times as much as we do. The articles of import and their value in 1894 were as follows: In Millions of Dollars (Silver). Spain. Great China. Germany. United Other Total. Britain. States. Countries Cotton Goods 3.9 4.O .4 .3 -- .7 9.3 Cotton Yarns 1.2 .9 .2 .1 -- .1 2.5 Wines 1.8 -- -- -- -- .1 1.9 Russia. Mineral Oils -- -- .2 -- .4 .8 1.4 Iron .2 .7 -- .2 -- .1 1.2 Rice -- -- 1.0 -- -- .1 1.1 Flour -- -- .7 -- .2 -- .9 Sweet Meats .5 -- -- -- -- .3 .8 Paper .4 -- -- .1 -- .2 .7 Linen Goods .1 .1 .1 -- -- .3 .6 Hats .1 -- -- .3 -- .2 .6 Other Articles 2.3 1.4 2.O .9 .1 .9 7.6 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 10.5 7.1 4.6 1.9 .7 3.8 28.6 The articles of export and their value in 1894 were as follows: In Millions of Dollars (Silver). Spain Great China United Austra- Other Total Britain States lia Countries Hemp -- 5.3 .9 6.6 .6 1.1 [2] 14.5 Sugar .4 2.7 4.O .7 1.9 1.3 [3] 11.O Man'f. Tobacco .2 .1 .7 .. .1 .7 [4] 1.3 Leaf Tobacco 1.1 .. .. .. .. .3 1.4 Coffee .3 .. .1 .. .. .. .4 Cocoanuts .. .6 .1 .. .. .. .7 Other Articles .9 .. 1.O .1 .. 1.3 3.3 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 2.9 8.7 6.8 7.4 2.6 4.7 33.16 With these islands in our possession and the construction of railroads in the interior of Luzon, it is probable that an enormous extension could be given to this commerce, nearly all of which would come to the United States. Manila cigars of the best quality are unknown in America. They are but little inferior to the best of Cuba, and cost only one-third as much. The coffee industry can be revived and the sugar industry extended, mainly for consumption in the far East. The mineral resources can be explored with American energy, and there is every reason to believe that when this is done the deposits of coal, iron, gold and lead will be found very valuable. On the other hand, we ought to be able to secure the greater part of the trade which now goes to Spain in textile fabrics, and a considerable portion of that with England in the same goods and in iron. Revenue and Expenses. The budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1897, was as follows: Income. 1st. Direct Taxes $8,496,170 2nd. Indirect Taxes (Customs) 6,200,550 3rd. Proceeds of Monopolies 1,222,000 4th. Lottery 1,000,000 5th. Income of Government Property 257,000 6th. Sundry Receipts 298,300 ----------- Total $17,474,020 Expenses. 1st. General Expenses, Pensions and Interest $1,506,686 2nd. Diplomatic and Consular Service 74,000 3rd. Clergy and Courts 1,876,740 4th. War Department 6,035,316 5th. Treasury Department 1,392,414 6th. Navy Department 3,562,716 7th. Civil Administration 2,195,378 8th. Education 614,395 ----------- Total $17,258,145 The Direct Taxes were as follows: 1st. Real Estate, 5 per cent, on income $ 140,280 2nd. Industry and Commerce 1,400,700 3rd. Cedalas (Poll Tax) 5,600,000 4th. Chinese Poll Tax 510,190 5th. Tribute from Sultan of Jolo 20,000 6th. Railroads, 10 per cent. of Passenger Receipts 32,000 7th. Income Tax, 10 per cent. on Public Salaries 730,000 8th. Sundry Taxes 63,000 ---------- Total $8,496,170 Indirect Taxes were as follows: 1st. Imports $3,600,000 2nd. Exports 1,292,550 3rd. Loading Tax 410,000 4th. Unloading Tax 570,000 5th. Fines and Penalties 27,000 6th. Special Tax on Liquors, Beer, Vegetables, Flour, Salt and Mineral Oils 301,000 ---------- Total $6,200,550 Monopolies: 1st. Opium Contract $ 576,000 2nd. Stamped Paper and Stamps 646,000 ---------- Total $1,222,000 Lottery: 1st. Sale of Tickets, Less Cost of Prizes $ 964,000 2nd. Unclaimed Prizes 30,000 3rd. Sundry Receipts 6,000 ---------- Total $1,000,000 Income of Government Property: 1st. Forestry Privileges $170,000 2nd. Sale and Rent of Public Land and Buildings 85,000 3rd. Mineral Privileges 2,000 -------- Total $257,000 Sundry Receipts: 1st. Mint (Seignorage) $200,000 2nd. Sundries 98,300 -------- Total $298,300 The largest source of income is the Cedala or Poll Tax. Every man and woman above 18 years of age, residing in the Philippines, whether Spanish subject or foreigner, is required to have in his or her possession a paper stating name, age, and occupation, and other facts of personal identity. Failure to produce and exhibit this when called upon renders anyone liable to arrest and imprisonment. This paper is obtained from the internal revenue office annually, on payment of a certain sum, varying, according to the occupation and income of the person from $0.75 to $20.00, and averaging about $3.00 for each adult. An extra sum of 2 per cent. is paid for expense of collection. The tax is collected at the Tribunal in each pueble, and 20 per cent. is retained for expenses of local administration, and 80 per cent. paid to the General Treasury. This tax falls heavily on the poor and lightly on the rich. The tax on industry and commerce is similarly graded according to the volume of business transacted by each merchant or merchantile corporation. The tax on real estate is absurdly low and levied only on municipal property and on the rent, not the value. The tax on imports is specific and not ad valorum; it amounts to about 13 per cent. of estimated values. The free list is very small, nearly everything of commercial value which is imported being subject to duty. The revenue from imports has increased from $566,143 in 1865, to $3,695,446 in 1894. It was about the same in 1897. On the other hand the export tax, which was nothing in 1892, the loading tax, which was nothing in 1893, and the unloading tax, which was nothing in 1894, have all been increased in the last few years in order to meet the expenses of suppressing the insurrection. These three items yielded nearly $2,700,000 in 1897. The monopoly of importing and selling opium is sold, by auction, to the highest bidder for a term of three years. The present contract runs until 1899, and yields $48,000 per month. Every legal document must be drawn up on paper containing a revenue stamp, engraved and printed in Spain, and every note, check, draft, bill of exchange, receipt or similar document must bear a revenue stamp in order to be valid. These stamps and stamped paper yielded a revenue of $646,000 in 1897. The lottery is conducted by the Government--the monthly drawings taking place in the Treasury (Hacienda) Department. The sale of tickets yielded $1,000,000 over and above prizes in 1897. In a report to General Merritt, on August 29th, I recommended that the opium contract be cancelled and the lottery abandoned during our occupation of Manila; and as the poll tax and the tax on industry and commerce had been paid for the most part in the early part of the year, our chief sources of revenue were from the custom house, the sale of stamps and stamped paper, and the sale of such licenses as the law allowed (amusements, liquor saloons, etc.), for the benefit of the city of Manila as distinguished from the general revenue. I estimated the total at about $500,000 per month. The expenses of administering the military government of occupation (apart from the expenses of the army) will consist of the current expenses of the office at the Provost Marshal General's office and its various bureaus--at the custom house, internal revenue office, and other offices--and the salaries of interpreters and minor employes who are anxious to resume work as soon as they dare do so. An estimate of these expenses was being prepared at the time I left, but was not completed. It can hardly exceed $200,000 per month and may be much less. This should leave $300,000 (silver) excess of income per month, to go towards the military expenses of occupation. As soon as it is decided that we are to retain the islands it will be necessary to make a careful study of the sources of revenue and items of expenses for all the islands, with a view to thoroughly understanding the subject, before introducing the extensive changes which will be necessary. Currency. The standard of value has always, until within a few years, been the Mexican milled dollar. The Spanish dollar contains a little less silver and, in order to introduce it and profit by the coinage, the Spaniards prohibited the importation of Mexican dollars a few years since. Large numbers of Mexican dollars remained in that country, however, and others were smuggled in. The two dollars circulate at equal value. All valuations of goods and labor are based on the silver dollar, and a change to the gold standard would result in great financial distress and many failures among the banks and mercantile houses in Manila. Their argument is that while an American ten-dollar gold piece will bring twenty-one silver dollars at any bank or house having foreign connections, yet it will not buy any more labor or any more hemp and sugar from the original producer than ten silver dollars. The products of the country are almost entirely agricultural, and the agricultural class, whether it sells its labor or its products, would refuse to accept any less than the accustomed wages or prices, on account of being paid in the more valuable coin. The result of the change would be that the merchant or employe would have to pay double for what he buys, and would receive no increase for what he sells. While trade would eventually adjust itself to the change, yet many merchants would be ruined in the process and would drag some banks down with them. The Mexican dollar is the standard also in Hongkong and China, and the whole trade of the Far East has, for generations, been conducted on a silver basis. Japan has, within the last year, broken away from this and established the gold standard, but in doing so the relative value of silver and gold was fixed at 32 1/2 to 1, or about the market rate. Public Debt. I was unable to obtain any precise information in regard to the colonial debt. The last book on statistics of imports and exports was for the fiscal year 1894, and the last printed budget was for 1896-7, which was approved by the Queen Regent in August, 1896. Subsequent to this date, according to the statements made to me by foreign bankers, the Cortes authorized two colonial loans of $14,000,000 (silver) each, known as Series A and Series B. The proceeds were to be used in suppressing the insurrection. Both were to be secured by a first lien on the receipts of the Manila custom house. Series A is said to have been sold in Spain and the proceeds to have been paid into the Colonial Office; but no part of them has ever reached the Philippines. Possibly a portion of it was used in sending out the 25,000 troops which came from Spain to the Philippines in the autumn of 1896. Series B was offered for sale in Manila, but was not taken. An effort was then made to obtain subscribers in the Provinces, but with little or no success. The Government then notified the depositors in the Public Savings Bank (a branch of the Treasury Department similar to the postal savings bureaus in other countries) that their deposits would no longer be redeemed in cash, but only in Series B bonds. Some depositors were frightened and took bonds, others declined to do so. Then came the blockade of Manila and all business was practically suspended. No printed report has been made concerning the debt, and I was unable to obtain any satisfactory statement of the matter from the treasury officials. The exact in regard to the Series A bonds can be learned in Madrid; but it will be difficult to learn how many of Series B were issued and what consideration was received for them. As already stated, both series of bonds rest for security on the receipts of the Manila custom house. Spanish Troops. The Spanish prisoners of war number about 13,000, including about 400 officers. The infantry arms are about 32,000, the greater part Mauser model 1895, caliber 28, and the others Remingtons, model 1889, caliber 43. The ammunition is about 22,000,000 rounds. The field artillery consists of about twelve breech-loading steel guns, caliber 3 5-10 inches, and ten breech-loading mountain guns, caliber 3 2-10 inches. There are six horses (ponies) for each gun, but the harness is in bad order. Ammunition, about sixty rounds per gun, with possibly more in the arsenals. There are about 500 cavalry ponies, larger than the average of native horses, with saddles and equipments complete. There is also a battalion of engineers. The fortifications of the walled city are a fine sample of the Vauban type, on which military engineers expended so much ingenuity 150 years ago, and of which Spain possessed so many in her Flemish dominions. The first walls of Manila were built about 1590, but the present fortifications date from a short time after the capture and occupation of the place by the English, in 1762-64. They consist of bastions and curtains, deep, wet ditch, covered way, lunettes, demilunes, hornworks, and all the scientific accessories of that day. They are in a good state of preservation, and mount several hundred bronze guns, but they are chiefly of interest to the antiquarian. On the glacis facing the bay, and also on the open space just south of the walls, are mounted 9-inch breech loaders, four in all, made at Hoatoria, Spain, in 1884. They are well mounted, between high traverses, in which are bomb-proof magazines. These guns are practically uninjured, and Admiral Dewey has the breech blocks. While not as powerful as the guns of the present day of the same caliber, they are capable of effective service. Their location, however, is very faulty, as they are on the shore of the bay, with all the churches, public buildings and most valuable property immediately behind them. On the day after the naval battle Admiral Dewey sent word to the Governor-General that if these guns fired a shot at any of his vessels he would immediately reply with his whole squadron. Owing to their location, this meant a bombardment of the city. This threat was effective; these guns were never afterward fired, not even during the attack of August 13th, and in return the navy did not fire on them, but directed all their shells at the forts and trenches occupied by the troops outside of the suburbs of the city. Within the walled city are the cathedral and numerous churches, convents and monasteries, the public offices, civil and military, military workshops and arsenals, barracks for artillery, cavalry and engineers, storehouses and a few dwellings and shops. The infantry barracks are outside of the walls, four in number; viz.: Neysing, Fortin, Calzada and Fruita. They are modern and well constructed, and will accommodate about 4,000 men. They are now occupied by the United States troops. Under the terms of the armistice the arms laid down by the Spanish troops on August 14th are to be returned to them whenever they evacuate the city, or the American army evacuates it. All other public property, including horses, artillery, public funds, munitions, etc., is surrendered to the United States unconditionally. The question of sending back the troops to Spain is left absolutely to the decision of the authorities in Washington. They are all within the walled city, but as the public buildings are insufficient to accommodate them, they are quartered in the churches and convents. These buildings are not adapted for this purpose; they have no sinks, lavatories, kitchens or sleeping apartments, and there is great danger of an epidemic of sickness if the troops are not soon removed. Pending their removal they are being fed with rations furnished by the United States Commissary Department, and the officers receive from the United States sufficient money for their support. Spanish Navy. At the outbreak of the war the naval force in the Philippines consisted of 10 Cruisers. 19 Gunboats. 4 Armed Launches. 3 Transports. 1 Survey Boat. 37 Of these Admiral Dewey destroyed, on May 1st, ten cruisers and one transport, and he has since captured two gunboats. The Spaniards have sunk one transport and two or three gunboats in the Pasig River. There remain thirteen or fourteen gunboats, which are scattered among the islands. They are of iron, from 140 to 200 tons each, are armed with one breech-loading rifle, caliber 3 6-10 inches, and two to four machine guns, each caliber 44-100 to 1 inch. One of the captured boats, the Callao, under command of Lieutenant Tappan, United States Navy, and a crew of eighteen men, rendered very efficient service in the attack of August 13th. These boats would all be useful in the naval police of the islands. They will, however, probably be scuttled by the Spaniards before the islands are surrendered. The Navy Yard at Cavite has barracks for about 1,500 men (now occupied by United States troops) and has shops and ways for light work and vessels of less than 1,000 tons. Many of the gunboats above mentioned were built there. The shallow depth of water in Canacoa or Cavite Bay would prevent the enlargement of this naval station to accommodate large vessels, and the plan of the Spaniards was to create a large naval station in Subig Bay, on which considerable money has already been spent. Spanish Civil Administration. The Government of the Philippine Islands, including the Ladrones, Carolinas and Palaos, is vested in the Governor-General, who, in the language of the Spanish Official Guide, or Blue Book, "is the sole and legitimate representative in these islands of the supreme power of the Government of the King of Spain, and, as such, is the supreme head of all branches of the public service, and has authority to inspect and supervise the same, not excepting the courts of justice." The office is held by a Lieutenant-General in the Spanish army, and he is also Vice Royal Patron of the Indies, exercising in these islands the ecclesiastical functions conferred on the King of Spain by various Bulls of the Popes of Rome, Captain-General-in-Chief of the Army of the Philippines, Inspector-General of all branches of the service, Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces, and President of all corporations and societies which partake of an official character. What corresponds to his Cabinet, or Ministry, consists of (a) The Archbishop of Manila and four Bishops, who administer ecclesiastical affairs in the five dioceses into which the islands are divided for this purpose; the appointment of parish priests and curates, however, is vested in the Governor-General. The various religious orders which exercise so large an influence in the politics and business of the islands, viz.: Augustinians, Dominicans, Recollects. Franciscans, Capuchins, Benedictines and Jesuits, are all under the management of the Bishops, subject to the supervision of the Pope, and the prerogatives of the King as Royal Patron, which prerogatives are exercised by the Governor-General as Viceroy. (b) The High Court of Justice in Manila, which is the Court of Appeals in civil and governmental cases for all the islands. There are two principal criminal courts in Cebu and Vigan (northern Luzon) and appeal in criminal cases lies to these courts or to the High Court of Manila. In every Province there is a court of primary jurisdiction in both civil and criminal cases. (c) The General, second in command, who is a General of Division in the Spanish army. He is the sub-inspector of all branches of the military service, is Military Governor of the Province and city of Manila and commands all the troops stationed therein, and in the absence or sickness of the Captain General he commands all the military forces in the islands. (d) The General Commandant of Dock Yards and Squadron. This post is filled by a Vice Admiral in the Spanish navy, and he commands the naval forces, ships and establishments in the islands. (e) The Minister of Finance, or Intendente General de Hacienda, who is charged with the collection of customs and internal taxes, the expenditures of public money, and the audit and control of public accounts. (f) The Minister of the Interior, or Director General of Civil Administration, who is charged with all public business relating to public instruction, charities, health, public works, forests, mines, agriculture, industry and commerce, posts and telegraphs and meteorology. For the purpose of local administration the islands are divided into Provinces and Districts, classified as follows: 19 Civil Governments. 24 Political-Military Governments. 23 Political-Military Commands. 15 Military Commands. The most important of the Provinces are Manila, with a population of 400,238 (of which 10 per cent. are Chinese), and Cebu, with 501,076; and the least important districts are Balabas and Corregidor, with 420 and 320 respectively. The governor or commandant has supreme control within his province or district of every branch of the public service, including the Courts of Justice, and each reports to the Governor General. The Guardia Civil or Gendarmerie, is subject only to his orders, and for arrests and imprisonment for political offenses, he is responsible, not to the law, but to the Governor General and the King. The Civil Governments are governed by Civil Governors, of the rank in the Spanish Civil Service of Chiefs of Administration of the second class. The Political Military Governments and Commands are in charges of military and naval officers of various grades, according to their size and importance; ranging from General of Division at Mindanao, Brigadier-Generals at Cebu and Iloilo, Captain in the navy at Paragua, down to Lieutenant at Balabas and Corregidor. The Civil or Military Governor is assisted by a secretary, a judge, an administrator of finances, a postmaster and a captain of police. The affairs of cities are managed by a council (Ayuntamiento) consisting of a president, a recorder (Sindico), one or more mayors (Alcaldo), six to ten aldermen (Regidores) and a secretary. Outside of the cities each province or district is divided into a number of villages or parishes (Pueblos); the total number of these is 1,055; in each there is a parish priest, a municipal captain, a justice of the peace, a school master and school mistress. The number of cities is very small, and the social life of the community depends almost wholly on the form of government of the Pueblos, or villages. In 1893 this was reorganized with the alleged intention of giving local self-government. The scheme is complicated and curious and only an outline of it can be given here. It is contained in full in the Royal Decree of May 19, 1893, a long document, supplemented by still longer regulations for carrying the same into effect. In brief every Pueblo in which there are paid more than 1,000 Cedulas (poll tax) shall have a municipal tribunal consisting of five members, by whom its local affairs and funds shall be managed. The members are a Municipal Captain. Senior Lieutenant. Lieutenant of Police. Lieutenant of Agriculture. Lieutenant of Cattle. And the Village Priest is required to attend all the important meetings. The Captain holds office for four years, and is eligible for indefinite re-election; the Lieutenants hold office for four years also, one-half of them going out of office every two years, and they are ineligible for re-election until two years after the expiration of their term. Both Captains and Lieutenants are elected, on a day designated by the Governor, and in presence of the village priest, and out going Captain, by the Principalia, or body of principal men of the village. The village is subdivided into Barangayes, or group of about 100 families each, and for each Barangay there is a Chief or Headman (Cabeza), who is appointed by the Governor, on the recommendation of the Municipal Tribunal. The Principalia is made up of Former Municipal Captains. Former Municipal Lieutenants. Former Gobernadorcilles. Chiefs of Barangayes. All inhabitants paying more than $50 annually in taxes. The Principalia choose the 12 electors as follows: 6 from the Chiefs of Barangayes. 3 from Former Municipal Captains. 3 from the largest taxpayers. The electors hold office for six years, and one-third go out of office every two years. The municipal Captain must be a resident of the village, more than 25 years of age, read and speak Spanish and be a Chief of Barangay. While the Municipal Tribunal nominally controls the local affairs, yet the Captain has the right to suspend all its acts which he considers against the public welfare, and report the matter to the Provincial Governor, who has power to rescind them; the Captain appoints all village employes, and removes them at will; he can also fine and punish them for petty offenses; he issues orders to the police and collects the taxes. He holds a commission as Delegate or Representative of the Governor General, and, in fact, he exercises within his little bailiwick the same supreme power that the governor exercises in the province, and the Governor General in the whole Archipelago. In each province there is a Junta or Council, whose membership consists of The Administrator of Finance. Two Vicars. The Public Physician. The latter Four Members must be residents of the Capital of the Province, and they are elected by the Municipal Captains, from a list of names submitted to them by the Junta with the approval of the Governor. The functions of this Junta or Council are solely those of inspection and advice. It watches over affairs of the Municipal Tribunals, and reports to the Governor its advice and recommendations concerning them. The Municipal Captain is obliged to deposit the taxes in the Provincial Treasury, the keys of which are held by three members of the Council; he draws out the money in accordance with the municipal budget, and his accounts must be approved by his lieutenants, countersigned by the village priest, passed upon by the Provincial Council, and finally approved by the Governor. The Governor has power to suspend the Municipal Captain or any of his colleagues for a period of three months, and the Governor General can remove one or all of them from office at will; and "in extraordinary cases or for reasons of public tranquility, the Governor shall have power to decree, without any legal process, the abolition of the Municipal Tribunals." (Article 45.) In December, 1896, General Polavieja issued a decree, suspending the elections which were to take place that month for one-third of the municipal electors, and directed the Governors of Provinces to send in names of persons suitable for appointment, together with the recommendations of the village priest in each case. An examination of this unique scheme of village government shows that one-half of the electors are to be chosen from persons holding a subordinate office and appointed by the Governor; that the village priest must be present at all elections and important meetings; that the Captain has all the responsibility, and he must also be of the class holding a subordinate office by appointment of the governor; that the acts of Municipal Tribunal can be suspended by the Captain and rescinded by the Governor; and, finally, if the Municipal Tribunal is offensive to the Governor General he can either remove its members and appoint others in their place or can abolish it altogether. Such is the Spanish idea of self-government; the Minister of the Colonies, in submitting the decree to the Queen Regent, expatiated on its merits in giving the natives such full control of their local affairs, and expressed the confident belief that it would prove "most beneficent to these people whom Providence has confided to the generous sovereignty of the Spanish monarchs." This scheme of government by Municipal Tribunals was highly approved by the natives, except that feature of it which placed so much power in the hands of the Governor and Governor General. This, however, was the essence of the matter, from the Spanish standpoint, and these portions of the Decree were the ones most fully carried out. The natives complained, on the one hand, of the delay in putting the Decree into operation, and on the other hand that so much of it as was established was practically nullified by the action of the Governors. Seeing that the Tribunals had really no power, the members soon turned their sessions (which the Decree required to be secret) into political meetings in favor of the insurrection. So the whole project is thus far a failure: and the local administration is in considerable disorder, apart from that caused by the insurgents. In point of fact self-government and representation are unknown in these islands. The Archbishop and the four Bishops are appointed by the Pope; the Governor General, military and naval officers and all officials with a salary exceeding about $2.000 (silver) are appointed by the King or the Minister of the Colonies. Yet all the expenses are paid from the Philippine Treasury; the salaries of all officials, military, naval, civil and ecclesiastical, the expenses and pensions of the army, navy and church, the cost of the diplomatic and consular service in Japan, China and Singapore, even a portion of the expenses of the Colonial office, Madrid, and of pensions paid to the descendants of Columbus--all come out of the taxes raised in the islands. The natives have no place in the government, except clerks in the public offices at Manila and the petty positions in the villages and the Ayentamientos of cities, where their powers and responsibilities, as we have seen, are at all times limited and subject to revocation whenever disapproved by the Governor. Though the population of the islands is 40 per cent. of that of Spain, they have no representation in the Cortes. There is a widespread report, almost universally believed by native Filipinos and by foreign merchants, and even acknowledged by many Spaniards, that pecuniary dishonesty and corruption exist throughout the whole body of Spanish office-holders, from the highest to the lowest. Forced contributions are said to be levied on the salaries of minor officials; the Regimental Paymasters and Commissaries are said to have sold part of the regimental stores for their own profit, the Collector of Customs and the Minister of Finance to have imposed or remitted fines at the Custom House and Internal Revenue Office, according to payment or non-payment of presents by merchants, the judges and court officials to have "borrowed" from attorneys large sums which are never paid, and even the Governor General is reported to have organized a regular system of smuggling in Mexican dollars, the importation of which was prohibited by law, on a fixed scale of payment to himself. The current report is that Weyler carried away over $1,000,000 as his savings during the three years from 1888 to 1891 that he held the office of Governor General, on a salary of $40,000 a year. Of the proof of these reports I have naturally no personal knowledge, but they are matters of common talk and belief, and they have been stated to me by responsible persons, who have long resided in the islands. As above stated, the Governor General is supreme head of every branch of the public service, not excepting the Courts of Justice. How this power was exercised is shown in the hundreds of executions for alleged political offenses, which took place during the years 1895, 1896 and 1897, by the thousands deported to Mindanao and Fernando Po, and by the number of political prisoners in jail at the time of our entry into Manila. On the first examination which General McArthur, as Military Governor, made of the jail, about August 22nd, he released over 60 prisoners confined for alleged political offenses. One of them was a woman who had been imprisoned for eleven years, by order of the Governor General, but without any charges ever having been presented against her; another was a woman who had been in jail for three years on a vague charge, never formulated, of having carried a basket of cartridges to an insurgent. The day of reckoning for three centuries of this sort of government came when Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish squadron on May 1st, 1898. An insurrection had been in progress from August, 1896, to December, 1897. Unable to suppress it the Government had made a written treaty with the insurgent leaders, paying them a large sum of money and promising to introduce various reforms on condition that they would leave the country. Hardly had the Spanish officials recovered from this when the appalling disaster of the destruction of their fleet occurred under their very eyes. Then followed in rapid succession the naval blockade, the arrival of the insurgent leaders from Hongkong, the raising of the insurgent army, which blockaded Manila on the land side, and finally, the American troops. At the end of 104 days after the destruction of the Spanish fleet, the city surrendered to a combined land and naval attack of the American forces. On the day after the capitulation, the American Commander in Chief issued his proclamation establishing a military government, appointed a Military Governor, a Minister of Finance, a Collector of Customs, Collector of Internal Revenue, Postmaster and Judge of the Provost Court; took possession of all public funds (about $900,000), and all public offices, and as rapidly as possible put this government in operation. The machinery of the Spanish Government was thoroughly disorganized when we entered Manila. The Courts of Justice, except the inferior criminal courts, had not been in session since early in May; the officials had been cut off from communication with the other islands and with Spain for over three months; there had been no customs to collect, and, owing to the entire suspension of business, but little internal revenue; a forced loan of $2,000,000 for military purpose had been extracted from the Spanish-Philippine Bank, and yet the troops were several months in arrears of pay; all government offices outside the walled city had been moved to temporary quarters within the walls and their records had been lost or thrown into confusion; the officials seeing the inevitable end in sight, were intent only on planning for their return to Spain. This disorganization was completed when the American Military officers took charge of the Government, and every Spanish official, without exception, refused absolutely to continue in service. They were immediately dismissed and dispersed. The situation thus created is without precedent in American history. When Scott captured the City of Mexico it was acknowledged on both sides that his occupation was only to be temporary, and there were no insurgents to deal with. When the Americans entered California they found only a scanty population, who were soon outnumbered by the American immigrants. But in the Philippine Islands there is a population of more than 7,000,000, governed by an alien race, whose representatives present in the Islands, including military and naval forces, clergy and civil employes do not exceed 30,000 in number. Against this Government an insurrection is in progress, which claims to have been successful in provinces containing a population of about 2,000,000. The city and province of Manila, with a population of 400,000 more, have been captured and occupied by a foreign army, but whether its occupation is to be temporary or permanent has not yet been decided. Finally, the Government officials of all classes refuse to perform their functions; the desire of most of them is to escape to Spain. It was stipulated in the capitulation that they should have the right to do so at their own expense, and numbers of them, as well as friars, have already taken their departure. The Spanish officials have intense fear of the Insurgents; and the latter hate them, as well as the friars, with a virulence that can hardly be described. They have fought them with success, and almost without interruption for two years, and they will continue to fight them with increased vigor and still greated prospects of success, if any attempt is made to restore the Spanish Government. In its present disorganized condition the Spanish Government could not successfully cope with them; on the other hand, it would not surrender to them. The result, therefore, of an attempted restoration of Spanish power in any of the islands would simply be civil war and anarchy, leading inevitably and speedily to intervention by foreign nations whose subjects have property in the islands which they would not allow to be destroyed. Insurgent Troops. It is very difficult to give figures for the exact numbers of insurgent troops. In his message to foreign governments of August 6th, asking for recognition of belligerency and independence, Aguinaldo claims to have a force of 30,000 men, organized into a regular army. This included the force in the provinces of Luzon outside of Manila. What was in evidence around Manila varied from 10,000 to 15,000. They were composed of young men and boys, some as young as fifteen years of age, recruited in the rural districts, having no property and nothing to lose in a civil war. They have received no pay and, although Aguinaldo speaks in his proclamation of his intention and ability to maintain order wherever his forces penetrate, yet the feeling is practically universal among the rank and file that they are to be compensated for their time and services and hardships by looting Manila. Their equipment consists of a gun, bayonet and cartridge box; their uniform of a straw hat, gingham shirt and trousers and bare feet; their transportation of a few ponies and carts, impressed for a day or week at a time; for quarters they have taken the public building in each village or pueblo, locally known as the Tribunal, and the churches and convents; from these details are sent out to man the trenches. Their food while on duty consists of rice and banana leaves, cooked at the quarters and sent out to the trenches. After a few days or a week of active service they return to their homes to feed up or work on their farms, their places being taken by others to whom they turn over their guns and cartridges. Their arms have been obtained from various sources, from purchases in Hongkong, from the supply which Admiral Dewey found in the arsenal at Cavite, from capture made from the Spaniards. They are partly Mausers and partly Remingtons. Their ammunition was obtained in the same way. They have used it freely and the supply is now rather short. To replenish it they have established a cartridge factory at the village of Imus, about ten miles south of Cavite, where they have 400 people engaged in re-loading cartridges with powder and lead found at Cavite, or purchased abroad. They have no artillery, except a few antique Columbiads obtained from Cavite, and no cavalry. Their method of warfare is to dig a trench in front of the Spanish position, cover it with mats as a protection against the sun and rain, and during the night put their guns on top of the trench above their heads and fire in the general direction of the enemy. When their ammunition is exhausted they go off in a body to get a fresh supply in baskets and then return to the trenches. The men are of small stature, from 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches in height, and weigh from 110 to 130 pounds. Compared with them our men from Colorado and California seemed like a race of giants. One afternoon just after we entered Manila a battalion of the insurgents fired upon the outposts of the Colorado regiment, mistaking them, as they claimed, for Spaniards. The outpost retreated to their support, and the Filipinos followed; they easily fell into an ambush and the support, numbering about fifty men, surrounded the 250 Filipinos, wrenched the guns out of their hands and marched them off as unarmed prisoners--all in the space of a few minutes. Such a force can hardly be called an army, and yet the service which it has rendered should not be underestimated. Between 2,000 and 3,000 Spanish native troops surrendered to it during the months of June and July. It constantly annoyed and harrassed the Spaniards in the trenches, keeping them up at night and wearing them out with fatigue; and it invested Manila early in July so completely that all supplies were cut off and the inhabitants as well as the Spanish troops were forced to live on horse and buffalo meat, and the Chinese population on cats and dogs. It captured the water works of Manila and cut off the water supply, and, if it had been in the dry season, would have inflicted great suffering on the inhabitants for lack of water. These results, it is true, were obtained against a dispirited army, containing a considerable number of native troops of doubtful loyalty. Yet, from August, 1896, to April, 1897, they fought 25,000 of the best regular troops sent out from Spain, inflicting on them a loss of over 150 officers and 2,500 men, killed and wounded, and they suffered still greater losses themselves. Nevertheless, from daily contact with them for six weeks, I am very confident that no such results could have been obtained against an American army, which would have driven them back to the hills and reduced them to a petty guerilla warfare. If they attack the American army this will certainly be the result, and, while these guerilla bands might give some trouble so long as their ammunition lasted, yet, with our navy guarding the coasts and our army pursuing them on land, it would not be long before they were reduced to subjection. Insurgent Civil Administration. In August, 1896, and insurrection broke out in Cavite, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, and soon spread to other provinces on both sides of Manila. It continued with varying successes on both sides, and the trial and execution of numerous insurgents, until December, 1897, when the Governor-General, Primo de Rivera, entered into written agreement with Aguinaldo, the substance of the document, which is in possession of Senor Felipe Agoncillo, who accompanies me to Washington, being attached hereto and marked "A." In brief, it required that Aguinaldo and the other insurgent leaders should leave the country, the Government agreeing to pay them $800,000 in silver, and promising to introduce numerous reforms, including representation in the Spanish Cortes, freedom of the press, amnesty for all insurgents, and the expulsion of secularization of the monastic orders. Aguinaldo and his associates went to Hongkong and Singapore. A portion of the money, $400,000, was deposited in banks at Hongkong, and a lawsuit soon arose between Aguinaldo and one of his subordinate chiefs, named Artacho, which is interesting on account of the very honorable position taken by Aguinaldo. Artacho sued for a division of the money among the insurgents, according to rank. Aguinaldo claimed that the money was a trust fund and was to remain on deposit until it was seen whether the Spaniards would carry out their promised reforms, and if they failed to do so it was to be used to defray the expenses of a new insurrection. The suit was settled out of court by paying Artacho $5,000. No steps have been taken to introduce the reforms, more than 2,000 insurgents who had been deported to Fernando Po and other places are still in confinement, and Aguinaldo is now using the money to carry on the operations of the present insurrection. On the 24th day of April Aguinaldo met the United States Consul and others at Singapore and offered to begin a new insurrection in conjunction with the operations of the United States navy at Manila. This was telegraphed to Admiral Dewey and, by his consent, or, at his request, Aguinaldo left Singapore for Hongkong on April 26th, and, when the McCullough went to Hongkong early in May to carry the news of Admiral Dewey's victory, it took Aguinaldo and seventeen other revolutionary chiefs on board and brought them to Manila Bay. They soon after landed at Cavite, and the Admiral allowed them to take such guns, ammunition and stores as he did not require for himself. With these and some other arms which he had brought from Hongkong Aguinaldo armed his followers, who rapidly assembled at Cavite and, in a few weeks, he began moving against the Spaniards. Part of them surrendered, giving him more arms, and the others retreated to Manila. Soon afterwards two ships, which were the private property of Senor Agoncillo and other insurgent sympathizers, were converted into cruisers and sent with insurgent troops to Subig Bay and other places, to capture provinces outside of Manila. They were very successful, the native militia in Spanish service capitulating with their arms in nearly every case without serious resistance. On the 18th of June Aguinaldo issued a proclamation from Cavite establishing a Dictatorial Government, with himself as Dictator. In each village or pueblo a Chief (Jefe) was to be elected, and in each ward a Nendrum (Cabeza); also in each pueblo three delegates, one of Police, one of Justice, and one of Taxes. These were to constitute the Junta, or Assembly, and after consulting the Junta the Chiefs of pueblos were to elect a Chief of Province and three Counsellors, one of Police, one of Justice, and one of Taxes. They were also to elect one or more Representatives from each Province to form the Bevolutionary Congress. This was followed on June 20th by a decree giving more detailed instructions in regard to the elections. On June 23d another decree followed, changing the title of the Government from Dictatorial to Revolutionary, and of the chief officer from Dictator to President; announcing a Cabinet with a Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marine and Commerce, another of War and Public Works, another of Police and Internal Order, Justice, Instruction and Hygiene, and another of Taxes, Agriculture and Manufactures; the powers of the President and Congress were defined, and a code of military justice was formulated. On the same date a manifesto was issued to the world explaining the reasons and purposes of the Revolution. On June 27th another decree was issued containing instructions in regard to elections. On August 6th an address was issued to Foreign Governments, stating that the Revolutionary Government was in operation and control in fifteen Provinces, and that in response to the petition of the duly elected Chiefs of these Provinces an appeal is made for recognition of belligerency and independence. Translations of these various documents are all apended, marked "B," "C," "D," "E," "F," "G" and "H." The scheme of Government is set forth in the decree of June 23d, marked "D." An examination of this document shows that it provides a Dictatorship of the familiar South American type. All power is centered in the President, and he is not responsible to any one for his acts. He is declared to be "the personification of the Philippine public, and in this view cannot be held responsible while he holds office. His term will last until the Revolution triumphs." He appoints not only the heads of the departments, but all their subordinates, and without reference to Congress. This body is composed of a single Chamber of Representatives from each Province. The election is to be conducted by an agent of the President, and the qualifications of electors are "those inhabitants most distinguished for high character, social position and honorable conduct." If any Province is still under Spanish rule its Representative is to be appointed by the President. Congress is to deliberate on "all grave and transcendental questions, whose decision admits of delay and adjournment, but the President may decide questions of urgent character, giving the reasons for his decision in a message to Congress." The acts of Congress are not binding until approved by the President, and he has power of absolute veto. Congress was to hold its first session at Saloles about September 28th. While this scheme of Government is a pure despotism, yet it claims to be only temporary, and intended to "prepare the country so that a true Republic may be established." It also provides a rude form of governmental machinery for managing the affairs of the Provinces. To what extent it has actually gone into operation it is difficult to say. Aguinaldo claims, in his address of August 6th, that it is in force in fifteen Provinces, whose aggregate population is about 2,000,000. They include the island of Mindoro and about half of Luzon. None of those (except Cavite) have yet been visited by Americans, and all communication with them by the Spanish Government at Manila has been cut off since May 1st. In the province of Cavite and that portion of the Province of Manila outside of the city and of its suburbs, which was occupied by the insurgent troops as well as those of the United States, their military forces, military headquarters, etc., were very much in evidence, occupying the principal houses and churches in every village and hamlet, but there were no signs of Civil Government or administration. It was reported, however, that Aguinaldo's agents were levying taxes or forced contributions not only in the outside villages, but (after we entered Manila) by means of secret agents, in the market places of the city itself. At Aguinaldo's headquarters, in Bacoor, there were signs of activity and business, and it was reported that his Cabinet officers were in constant session there. Aguinaldo never himself failed to claim all the prerogatives due to his alleged position as the de facto ruler of the country. The only general officer who saw him or had any direct communication with him was General Anderson. He did much to thwart this officer in organizing a native wagon train and otherwise providing for his troops, and he went so far, in a letter of July 23d (copy herewith marked "J"), as to warn General Anderson not to land American troops on Philippine soil without his consent--a notice which, it is hardly necessary to say, was ignored. The day before the attack on Manila he sent staff officers to the same General, asking for our plans of attack, so that their troops could enter Manila with us. The same request had previously been made to me by one of his Brigade Commanders, to which I replied that I was not authorized to give the information desired. Aguinaldo did not call upon General Merritt on his arrival, and this enabled the latter to avoid any communication with him, either direct or indirect, until after Manila had been taken. General Merritt then received one of Aguinaldo's staff officers in his office as Military Governor. The interview lasted more than an hour. General Merritt referred to his proclamation as showing the conditions under which the American troops had come to Manila and the nature of the Military Government, which would be maintained until further orders from Washington. He agreed upon the lines outside of the city of Manila, up to which the insurgent troops could come, but no further with arms in their hands. He asked for possession of the water works, which was given, and, while expressing our friendship and sympathy for the Philippine people, he stated very positively that the United States Government had placed at his disposal an ample force for carrying out his instructions, and even if the services of Aguinaldo's forces had been needed as allies he should not have felt at liberty to accept them. The problem of how to deal with Aguinaldo's Government and troops will necessarily be accompanied with embarrassment and difficulty, and will require much tact and skill in its solution. The United States Government, through its Naval Commander, has, to some extent, made use of them for a distinct military purpose, viz.: to harass and annoy the Spanish troops, to wear them out in the trenches, to blockade Manila on the land side, and to do as much damage as possible to the Spanish Government prior to the arrival of our troops, and for this purpose the Admiral allowed them to take the arms and munitions which he had captured at Cavite, and their ships to pass in and out of Manila Bay in their expeditions against other Provinces. But the Admiral has been very careful to give Aguinaldo no assurances of recognition and no pledges or promises of any description. The services which Aguinaldo and his adherents rendered in preparing the way for attack on Manila are certainly entitled to consideration, but, after all, they were small in comparison with what was done by our fleet and army. There is no reason to believe that Aguinaldo's Government has any elements of stability. In the first place, Aguinaldo is a young man of twenty-three years. Prior to the insurrection of 1896 he had been a schoolmaster, and afterward Gobernadorcillo and Municipal Captain in one of the pueblos in the Province of Cavite. He is not devoid of ability, and he is surrounded by clever writers. But the educated and intelligent Filipinos of Manila say that not only is he lacking in ability to be at the head of affairs, but if an election for President was held he would not even be a candidate. He is a successful leader of insurgents, has the confidence of young men in the country districts, prides himself on his military ability, and if a Republic could be established the post he would probably choose for himself would be General-in-Chief of the Army. In the next place, Aguinaldo's Government, or any entirely independent Government, does not command the hearty support of the large body of Filipinos, both in Manila and outside, who have property, education and intelligence. Their hatred of the Spanish rule is very keen and they will co-operate with Aguinaldo or any one else to destroy it. But after that is done they fully realize that they must have the support of some strong nation for many years before they will be in a position to manage their own affairs alone. The nation to which they all turn is America, and their ideal is a Philippine Republic, under American protection--such as they have heard is to be granted to Cuba. But when it comes to defining their ideas of protection and the respective rights and duties of each under it, what portion of the Government is to be administered by them and what portion by us; how the revenues are to be collected, and in what proportion the expenses are to be divided; they have no clear ideas at all; nor is it expected that they should have, after generations of Spanish rule without any experience in self government. The sentiment of this class, the educated native with property at stake, looks upon the prospect of Aguinaldo's Government and forces entering Manila with almost as much dread as the foreign merchants or the Spaniards themselves. Finally, it must be remembered that this is purely a Tagalo insurrection. There are upwards of thirty races in the Philippines, each speaking a different dialect, but five-sixths of the entire Christian population is composed of the Tagalos and Visayas. The former live in Mindoro and the southern half of Luzon, and the latter in Cebu, Iloilo and other islands in the center of the group. The Tagalos are more numerous than the Visayas, but both races are about equal in civilization, intelligence and wealth. It is claimed by Aguinaldo's partisans that the Visayas are in sympathy with his insurrection and intend to send representatives to the congress. But it is a fact that the Visayas have taken no active part in the present insurrection nor in that of 1896, that the Spanish Government is still in full control at Cebu and Iloilo, and in the Viscayas islands, and that Aguinaldo has as yet made no effort to attack them. The Visayas number nearly 2,000,000, or about as many as the population of all the Tagalo Provinces, which Aguinaldo claims to have captured. There is no evidence to show that they will support his pretensions, and many reasons to believe that on account of racial prejudices and jealousies and other causes they will oppose him. Upon one point all are agreed, except possibly Aguinaldo and his immediate adherents, and that is that no native government can maintain itself without the active support and protection of a strong foreign government. This being admitted it is difficult to see how any foreign government can give this protection without taking such an active part in the management of affairs as is practically equivalent to governing in its own name and for its own account. United States Troops and Navy. I assume that the reports received at the War and Navy Departments give all the desired information in regard to the military forces of the United States. At the time I left (August 30th) the Eighth Corps consisted of two divisions, numbering in all about 12,000 men, with 16 field guns and 6 mountain guns. No wagons or animals had then arrived. One regiment was stationed within the walled city guarding its gates, and the captured guns and ammunition; a small force was at Cavite, and the bulk of the troops were in Manila, outside of the walled city. They were quartered in the Spanish barracks, which were all in good condition, and in convents and private houses. The health of the troops was excellent, notwithstanding the extraordinary hardships to which they had been subjected in the trenches before entering Manila. Admiral Dewey had under his command the Charleston, Monterey and Monadnock, which arrived in July and August, the Callao and Leyte, which had been captured from the Spaniards, and the ships which were in the battle of May 1st, viz: Olympia, Boston, Baltimore, Raleigh, Concord, Petrel and McCullough. The health of the squadron was excellent. The Olympia and Concord were being docked and cleaned at Hongkong. Permission to use the docks at Nagansaki during the suspension of hostilities had been declined. United States Civil Administration. We entered Manila on the afternoon of August 13th. On the 14th the capitulation was signed, and the same day General Merritt issued his proclamation establishing a Military Government. On the 15th General McArthur was appointed Military Commander of the walled city and Provost Marshal General of the City of Manila and its suburbs, and on the 17th I was appointed to take charge of the duties performed by the intendente General de Hacienda, or Minister of Finance, and all fiscal affairs. Representatives of the Postoffice Department had arrived on the Steamship China in July and they immediately took charge of the Manila Post-office, which was opened for business on the 16th. The Custom House was opened on the 18th, with Lieutenant-Colonel Whittier as Collector, and the Internal Revenue office, with Major Bement as Collector on the 22nd. Captain Glass of the Navy was appointed Captain of the Port, or Naval Officer, and took charge of the office on August 19th. The collections of customs during the first ten days exceeded $100,000. The collection of internal revenue was small owing to the difficulty and delay in ascertaining what persons had or had not paid their taxes for the current year. The administration of Water Works was put in charge of Lieutenant Connor, of the Engineers, on August 25th, the Provost Court with Lieutenant-Colonel Jewett, Judge Advocate United States Volunteers, sitting as Judge, was appointed and held its first session on August 23rd. The Provost Marshal General has charge of the Police, Fire, Health and Street Cleaning Departments, and the issuing of licenses. The Guardia Civil, or Gendarmerie of the City, proving indifferent and inefficient, they were disarmed and disbanded; the 13th Minnesota regiment was detailed for police duty, and one or more companies stationed in each Police Station, from which patrolmen were sent out on the streets to take the place of the sentries who had constantly patrolled them from the hour of entering the city. The shops were all closed when we entered on Saturday afternoon, the 13th; on Monday some of them opened, and by Wednesday the Banks had resumed business, the newspapers were published, and the merchants were ready to declare goods at the Custom House, the tram cars were running and the retail shops were all open and doing a large business. There was no disorder or pillage of any kind in the city. The conduct of the troops was simply admirable, and left no ground for criticism. It was noted and commented upon by the foreign naval officers in the most favorable terms, and it so surprised the Spanish soldiers that a considerable number of them applied for permission to enlist in our service. At the time I left General McArthur fully established his office as Provost Marshal General, and was organizing one by one the various bureaus connected with it, all with United States military officers in charge; the Provost Court was in daily session, sentencing gamblers and persons guilty of petty disturbances, and a military commission had just been ordered to try a Chinaman accused of burglary. In various public offices I collected the following Spanish funds: At the General Treasury $795,517.71 At the Mint 62,856.08 At the Internal Revenue Office 24,077.60 ----------- $882,451.39 Of this amount there was in Gold Coin $ 4,200.00 Gold Bars 3,806.08 Silver Coin 190,634.81 Copper Coin 297,300.00 Spanish Bank Notes 216,305.00 Accepted Checks 170,205.50 ----------- $882,451.39 The money was counted by a board of officers and turned over to Major C. H. Whipple, Paymaster U. S. A as custodian of Spanish Public Funds. A few thousand dollars in other public offices were still to be collected. The money received at the Custom House and other offices is turned in daily, at the close of business, to Major Whipple. Money for current expenses is furnished to heads of departments on their requisition, by warrant drawn by the Intendente General on the Custodian of Spanish Public Funds. The heads of the departments are to submit their vouchers and accounts monthly to an auditing department, which was being organized when I left. All these public offices and funds were surrendered to me only on threat of using force and on granting permission to file a formal written protest. None of these had been received at the time I left, but the ground of verbal protest was that the officials recognized no authority in these islands but the Governor General appointed by the King of Spain, and without his order they were unwilling to surrender them. On the other hand, I recognized no authority of the Spanish Governor General who was merely a prisoner of war; I acted under the orders of General Merritt as the United States Military Governor, and in accordance with the terms of capitulation. The claim will probably be made by the Spanish officials that as we captured Manila a few hours after the peace protocol had been signed at Washington, this property still belongs to the Spaniards. But I believe that the law in such cases was clearly defined in decisions made by the United States Supreme Court in 1815. We captured Manila, and the capitulation (under which these funds became United States property) was signed by both parties, before either had received any notice of the protocol of suspension of hostilities. On the opening of the Custom House several important questions arose for immediate decision. The first was in regard to Mexican dollars. The importation of these has for several years been prohibited, with a view of forcing the Spanish coinage (which contains less silver) into circulation. The large English banks represented that there was a scarcity of currency, owing to the amount which had been hoarded and sent away during the seige, and they agreed in consideration of being allowed to import Mexican dollars free of duty, to guarantee the notes and accepted checks of the Spanish bank, which should be received by us in payment of customs up to $200,000 at any one time. The Spanish bank was in difficulty, owing to the enormous amount which the Government had taken from it under the form of a forced loan, and any discrimination on our part against it would result in its failure, entailing widespread financial disturbance. As there seemed no reason against allowing the importation of Mexican dollars and many in favor of it, I recommended that the Custom House continue to receive the notes and checks of this bank in payment of customs (for which we were amply protected by the guarantee of the strong English banks) and with General Merrill's approval wrote to these banks authorizing them to import Mexican dollars free of duty until further notice. The next question was in regard to the rate of duties on imports and exports. After a careful consideration of the matter, I recommended that the tariff be not changed until the question had been fully studied and ample notice given. General Merritt approved this and the customs are being collected on the Spanish tariff. About a week after the Custom House was opened certain parties came to me representing that Consul General Wildman, of Hongkong, had informed them that United States goods would be admitted free of duty in Manila, that acting on this they had purchased a cargo of American illuminating oil in Hongkong, and that the payment of the heavy duty on it ($30 per ton, or about 8c per gallon) would ruin them. On consulting Lieutenant Colonel Crowder, Judge Advocate of the Eighth Army Corps, he pointed out the language of paragraph 5 of General Merritt's proclamation, which followed literally the instructions of the President, viz: "The Port of Manila will be open while our military occupation may continue, to the commerce of all neutral nations as well as our own, in articles not contraband of war, and upon payment of the prescribed rates of duty which may be in force at the time of the importation." Under this there was clearly no authority for discriminating in favor of American goods, either coming direct from a United States Port or by transshipment at Hongkong. The Collector of Customs was directed to act accordingly. Another question was in regard to the importation of Chinamen into Manila. The Consul at Hongkong telegraphed to know if they would be admitted. As there had been no time for examining the treaties and laws in force on this subject, I replied with General Merritt's approval that for the present it was not practicable to admit Chinese laborers into Manila. Another very important question which arose was in regard to trade with the other Philippine islands. Nearly all the hemp and the greater part of the sugar is grown in the Visayas. The hemp is bought by foreign merchants in Manila, who bring it there from the other islands, and export it, paying large duties to the Manila Custom House. These merchants were anxious to bring up their stock, of which a large amount had accumulated during the war, and ship it abroad. The ships engaged in this island trade were idle in the Pasig. They belonged to a Spanish corporation, owned entirely by Scotch capital, and had a Spanish Register. The owners were ready to transfer them to the American flag. Could these vessels be allowed to clear for the ports of Cebu and Iloilo, which were in Spanish possession? The Judge Advocate advised me that they could not, without the express authority of the President. I so notified the owners of the ships and the hemp merchants. The day before I left Manila, however, Admiral Dewey received a cable from the Navy Department stating that Spanish ships had been granted the privilege of trading to American ports during the suspension of hostilities, and that American ships could be granted a similar privilege for Spanish ports. I understood that on the strength of this cable General Otis intended to allow the United States Consul at Manila to grant these vessels an American Register and then allow them to clear for the other islands. I do not know what the arrangement, if any was made, in regard to the payment of export duties at Iloilo. Clearly the hemp cannot pay export duties at both Iloilo and Manila, and the Spaniards are not likely to allow it to leave Iloilo free while we collect an export duty on it at Manila. Incidentally, this illustrates the complications and loss that will arise if the islands are subdivided. The principal merchants for all the islands are at Manila, and 90 per cent, of the duties in imports and exports are collected at its Custom House. A large part of the imports are redistributed through the islands; and all the hemp and sugar, which form the principal exports, come to Manila from other islands. If, then, we retain Luzon and give the other islands back to Spain or some other nation, that nation will impose import and export duties on everything coming from or to Manila. The foreign trade of that city as a distributing and collecting point for all the islands will be lost, and its prosperity will be destroyed; moreover, the Government revenue from that trade will be lost. In view of the fact that Spanish officials declined to co-operate or assist in any way in the American government of Manila, the ease and rapidity with which order was maintained, the machinery of government put in operation and business reestablished, after our entry into Manila is very remarkable. For every position in the Government service, legal, administrative, financial, mechanical, clerical, men could be found in our volunteer ranks who were experienced in just that class of work at home, and they took charge of their Spanish positions with promptness and confidence. Even in the matter of language no serious difficulty was encountered, for no less than 30 good interpreters were found in the California and Colorado regiments. The Military Government as now organized and administered, fulfills all the requirements of preserving order and collecting the public revenue. The civil courts, however, have yet to be organized, and their organization will present many difficulties. CHAPTER X Official History of the Conquest of Manila. The Pith of the Official Reports of the Capture of Manila, by Major-General Wesley Merritt, Commanding the Philippine Expedition; General Frank V. Greene, General Arthur McArthur, and General Thomas Anderson, With the Articles of Capitulation, Showing How 8,000 Americans Carried an Intrenched City With a Garrison of 13,000 Spaniards, and Kept Out 14,000 Insurgents--The Difficulties of American Generals With Philippine Troops. One of the most interesting events in the records of the fall of cities, that carried with them decisive factors affecting nations, is that of the conquest of Manila, by the army and navy of the United States in the memorable year of 1898. The victory of Admiral George Dewey May 1st, in the bay of Manila, nigh Cavite, has been celebrated in every clime and in all languages, and the great story if related in this book as one of universal fame, and given in outline and also in pen pictures meant to show the local coloring, and these are incidents most illustrative that are not familiar. The names of the ships and the officers of the victorious fleet, and the force of the contending squadrons in men and guns are herewith presented as an indisputable record. Admiral Dewey held on to his command of the bay and city of Manila, braving all dangers--and they were many--and as fast as the army could be organized and equipped, reinforcements were forwarded. General Wesley Merritt was appointed the Commander in Chief of the expedition to the Philippines, and arrived at Cavite, July 25th. The official history of the operations that forced the surrender of the old Spanish capital in the East Indies has not received the public attention its unusual and instructive character demands, because the reports were not received in the States and given to the public until the Paris peace commission was assembling, and this singularly suggestive detail has been almost neglected. It is here for the first time consecutively arranged, annotated and adjusted, so as to tell the whole story. The part played by the insurgents is one that has not been stated by authority and with precision combining narrative form with the internal evidence of authenticity. The first expeditionary force of the United States to arrive was that of General Thomas Anderson, on June 30, sixty days after Dewey's victory. The second expeditionary force, under General Frank V. Greene, arrived July 17, and the third, under General McArthur, July 30th, five days later than General Merritt, who found Rear Admiral George Dewey's war ships "anchored in line off Cavite, and just outside of the transports and supply vessels engaged in the military service." He was "in full control of the navigation of the bay, and his vessels passed and repassed within range of the water batteries of the town of Manila without drawing the fire of the enemy." This immunity of protected cruisers from the fire of nine-inch Krupp guns with an abundance of ammunition that was, and some that was not serviceable, was due to the terrible prestige of the American Admiral and the consequent power of his word that if fired upon he would destroy the city. Anderson's Americans were, General Merritt reports, disposed as follows: The Second Oregon, detachments of California Heavy Artillery, Twenty-third Infantry, and Fourteenth Infantry occupied the town of Cavite; while Brigadier General F.V. Greene, United States Volunteers, was encamped with his brigade, consisting of the Eighteenth Infantry, Third United States Artillery, Company A, Engineer Battalion, First Colorado, First California, First Nebraska, Tenth Pennsylvania, and Batteries A and B of the Utah Artillery, along the line of the bay shore near the village of Paranaque, about five miles by water and twenty-five miles by the roads from Cavite. The Major General commanding visited General Greene's camp and made a reconnaissance of the position held by the Spanish, and also the opposing lines of the insurgent forces, finding General Greene's command encamped on a strip of sandy land running parallel to the shore of the bay and not far distant from the beach, but owing to the great difficulties of landing supplies "the greater portion of the force had shelter tents only, and were suffering many discomforts, the camp being in a low, flat place, without shelter from the heat of the tropical sun or adequate protection during the terrific downpours of rain so frequent at this season." The General commanding was at once struck "by the exemplary spirit of patient, even cheerful, endurance shown by the officers and men under such circumstances, and this feeling of admiration for the manner in which the American soldier, volunteer and regular alike, accept the necessary hardships of the work they have undertaken to do, has grown and increased with every phase of the difficult and trying campaign which the troops of the Philippine expedition have brought to such a brilliant and successful conclusion." The left or north flanks of General Green's camp extended to a point on the "Calle Real," about 3,200 yards from the outer line of Spanish defenses of the city of Manila. This Spanish line began at the powder magazine, or old fort San Antonio, within a hundred yards of the beach and just south of the Malate suburb of Manila, and stretched away to the Spanish left in more or less detached works, eastward, through swamps and rice fields, covering all the avenues of approach to the town and encircling the city completely." General Merritt defines with firmness and perspicuity his position regarding the Filipinos in these terms: "The Filipinos, or insurgent forces at war with Spain, had, prior to the arrival of the American land forces, been waging desultory warfare with the Spaniards for several months, and were at the time of my arrival in considerable force, variously estimated and never accurately ascertained, but probably not far from 12,000 men. These troops, well supplied with small arms, with plenty of ammunition and several field guns, had obtained positions of investment opposite to the Spanish line of detached works throughout their entire extent; and on the particular road called the "Calle Real," passing along the front of General Greene's brigade camp and running through Malate to Manila, the insurgents had established an earthwork or trench within 800 yards of the powder-magazine fort. They also occupied as well the road to the right, leading from the village of Passay, and the approach by the beach was also in their possession. This anomalous state of affairs, namely, having a line of quasi-hostile native troops between our forces and the Spanish position, was, of course, very objectionable, but it was difficult to deal with, owing to the peculiar condition of our relations with the insurgents, which may be briefly stated as follows: "Shortly after the naval battle of Manila Bay, the principal leader of the insurgents, General Emilio Aguinaldo, came to Cavite from Hongkong, and, with the consent of our naval authorities, began active work in raising troops and pushing the Spaniards in the direction of the city of Manila. Having met with some success, and the natives flocking to his assistance, he proclaimed an independent government of republican form, with himself as president, and at the time of my arrival in the islands the entire edifice of executive and legislative departments and subdivision of territory for administration purposes had been accomplished, at least on paper, and the Filipinos held military possession of many points in the islands other than those in the vicinity of Manila. "As General Aguinaldo did not visit me on my arrival, nor offer his services as a subordinate military leader, and as my instructions from the President fully contemplated the occupation of the islands by the American land forces, and stated that "the powers of the military occupant are absolute and supreme and immediately operate upon the political condition of the inhabitants," I did not consider it wise to hold any direct communication with the insurgent leader until I should be in possession of the city of Manila, especially as I would not until then be in a position to issue a proclamation and enforce my authority, in the event that his pretensions should clash with my designs. "For these reasons the preparations for the attack on the city were pressed, and military operations conducted without reference to the situation of the insurgent forces. The wisdom of this course was subsequently fully established by the fact that when the troops of my command carried the Spanish intrenchments, extending from the sea to the Pasay road on the extreme Spanish right, we were under no obligations, by prearranged plans of mutual attack, to turn to the right and clear the front still held against the insurgents, but were able to move forward at once and occupy the city and suburbs." General Anderson was the first officer of the American army to arrive, and says Admiral Dewey gave him "every possible assistance," and favored him "with a clear statement of the situation." On the second day after he appeared at Cavite, which was one day after General Merritt's departure from San Francisco, he had "an interview with the insurgent chief, Aguinaldo, and learned from him that the Spanish forces had withdrawn, driven back by his army as he claimed, to a line of defense immediately around the city and its suburbs. He estimated the Spanish forces at about 14,000 men, and his own at about the same number. He did not seem pleased at the incoming of our land forces, hoping, as I believe, that he could take the city with his own army, with the co-operation of the American fleet. "Believing that however successful the insurgents may have been in guerilla warfare against the Spaniards, that they could not carry their lines by assault or reduce the city by siege, and suspecting, further, that a hearty and effective co-operation could not be expected, I had at once a series of reconnaissances made to exactly locate the enemy's lines of defense and to ascertain their strength." The date of the impression made on General Anderson's mind as to the displeasure of Aguinaldo is important. The insurgent chief would have preferred the military distinctions to have been reserved for himself. General Anderson says of the Spanish attacks on General Greene's lines: "These conflicts began on the night of July 31, as soon as the enemy had realized that we had taken the places of the Filipinos, and began a system of earthworks to the front of their old line. It may have been merely coincident, but these attacks and sorties began at the time the Captain General of Manila was relieved by his second in command. For more than six weeks the insurgents had kept up a bickering infantry fire on the Spanish trenches, firing occasionally some old siege pieces captured by Admiral Dewey at Cavite and given to Aguinaldo. These combats were never serious, and the Spaniards, so far as I know, made no sorties upon them. But there is no doubt of the fact that the Spaniards attacked our lines with force and vindictiveness, until they were informed that the bringing on of a general engagement would lead to a bombardment of the city. After this there was for several days a tacit suspension of hostilities." As to the situation of General Greene, Brigadier General Merritt says: "The difficulty in gaining an avenue of approach to the Spanish line lay in the fact of my disinclination to ask General Aguinaldo to withdraw from the beach and the 'Calle Real,' so that Greene could move forward. This was overcome by instructions to General Greene to arrange, if possible, with the insurgent brigade commander in his immediate vicinity to move to the right and allow the American forces unobstructed control of the roads in their immediate front. No objection was made, and accordingly General Greene's brigade threw forward a heavy outpost line on the "Calle Real" and the beach and constructed a trench, in which a portion of the guns of the Utah batteries was placed. "The Spanish, observing this activity on our part, made a very sharp attack with infantry and artillery on the night of July 31. The behavior of our troops during this night attack was all that could be desired, and I have, in cablegrams to the War Department, taken occasion to commend by name those, who deserve special mention for good conduct in the affair. Our position was extended and strengthened after this and resisted successfully repeated night attacks, our forces suffering, however, considerable loss in wounded and killed, while the losses of the enemy, owing to the darkness, could not be ascertained. "The strain of the night fighting and the heavy details for outpost duty made it imperative to re-enforce General Greene's troops with General MacArthur's brigade, which had arrived in transports on the 31st of July. The difficulties of this operation can hardly be overestimated. The transports were at anchor off Cavite, five miles from a point on the beach where it was desired to disembark the men. Several squalls, accompanied by floods of rain, raged day after day, and the only way to get the troops and supplies ashore was to load them from the ship's side into native lighters (called 'cascos') or small steamboats, move them to a point opposite the camp, and then disembark them through the surf in small boats, or by running the lighters head on to the beach. The landing was finally accomplished, after days of hard work and hardship; and I desire here to express again my admiration for the fortitude and cheerful willingness of the men of all commands engaged in this operation. "Upon the assembly of MacArthur's brigade in support of Greene's, I had about 8,500 men in position to attack, and I deemed the time had come for final action. During the time of the night attacks I had communicated my desire to Admiral Dewey that he would allow his ships to open fire on the right of the Spanish line of intrenchments, believing that such action would stop the night firing and loss of life, but the Admiral had declined to order it unless we were in danger of losing our position by the assaults of the Spanish, for the reason that, in his opinion, it would precipitate a general engagement, for which he was not ready. Now, however, the brigade of General MacArthur was in position and the Monterey had arrived, and under date of August 6 Admiral Dewey agreed to my suggestion that we should send a joint letter to the Captain General notifying him that he should remove from the city all non-combatants within forty-eight hours." The joint note of General Merritt and Admiral Dewey was as follows: _Headquarters U.S. Land and Naval Forces_, Manila Bay, Philippine Islands, August 7, 1898. The General in Chief Commanding Spanish Forces in Manila. Sir: We have the honor to notify your excellency that operations of the land and naval forces of the United States against the defenses of Manila may begin at any time after the expiration of forty-eight hours from the hour of receipt by you of this communication, or sooner if made necessary by an attack on your part. This notice is given in order to afford you an opportunity to remove all non-combatants from the city. Very respectfully, _Wesley Merritt_, Major-General, United States Army, Commanding Land Forces of the United States. _George Dewey_, Rear-Admiral, United States Navy, Commanding United States Naval Forces on Asiatic Station. The notable words in this are those "against the defenses of Manila," instead of against the city itself--the usual way--the city was to be spared if possible. Manila, August 7, 1898. The Governor-General and Captain-General of the Philippines to the Major-General of the Army and the Rear Admiral of the Navy, commanding, respectively, the Military and Naval Forces of the United States. Gentlemen: I have the honor to inform your excellencies that at half-past 12 to-day I received the notice with which you favor me, that after forty-eight hours have elapsed you may begin operations against this fortified city, or at an earlier hour if the forces under your command are attacked by mine. As your notice is sent for the purpose of providing for the safety of non-combatants, I give thanks to your excellencies for the humane sentiment you have shown, and state that, finding myself surrounded by insurrectionary forces, I am without places of refuge for the increased numbers of wounded, sick, women, and children who are now lodged within the walls. Very respectfully, and kissing the hands of your excellencies, _Formire Jaudenes_, Governor-General and Captain-General of the Philippines. The second paragraph of the Governor-General and Captain-General's letter indicates a sense of helplessness, and credits the insurgents with surrounding the city so that there was no refuge. August 9th there was a second joint note from Major-General Merritt and Rear Admiral Dewey, in the terms following: "The Governor-General and Captain-General of the Philippines. "Sir: The inevitable suffering in store for the wounded, sick, women, and children, in the event that it becomes our duty to reduce the defenses of the walled town in which they are gathered, will, we feel assured, appeal successfully to the sympathies of a general capable of making the determined and prolonged resistance which your excellency has exhibited after the loss of your naval forces and without hope of succor. "We therefore, submit, without prejudice to the high sentiments of honor and duty which your excellency entertains, that surrounded on every side as you are by a constantly increasing force, with a powerful fleet in your front and deprived of all prospect of reinforcement and assistance, a most useless sacrifice of life would result in the event of an attack, and therefore every consideration of humanity makes it imperative that you should not subject your city to the horrors of a bombardment. Accordingly, we demand the surrender of the city of Manila and the Spanish forces under your command." The Captain-General wanted time to hear from Madrid, and was refused. The language of General Greene, in stating the fact that he took possession of the intrenchments of the insurgents, is in these words: "On the morning of July 29, in compliance with verbal instructions received the previous day from the Adjutant-General of the Eighth Army Corps, I occupied the insurgent trenches, from the beach to the Calle Real, with one battalion Eighteenth United States Infantry, one battalion First Colorado Infantry, and four guns--two from each of the Utah batteries--these trenches being vacated at my request by the insurgent forces under Brigadier-General Noriel. As these trenches were badly located and insufficient in size and strength, I ordered another line constructed about 100 yards in advance of them, and this work was completed, mainly by the First Colorado, during the night of July 29-30. The length of this line was only 270 yards, and on its right were a few barricades, not continuous, occupied by the insurgents, extending over to the large rice swamp, just east of the road from Pasay to Paco (shown on the accompanying map). Facing these was a strong Spanish line, consisting of a stone fort, San Antonio de Abad, near the beach, intrenchments of sandbags and earth about seven feet high and 10 feet thick, extending in a curved direction for about 1,200 yards and terminating in a fortified blockhouse, known as No 14, beyond our right on the Pasay road. It faced our front and enveloped our right flank." General Greene, reporting the fighting on his front, says of the Spanish position and first attack. Mounted in and near the stone fort were seven guns in all, viz., three bronze field guns of 3.6 inches caliber, four bronze mountain guns of 3.2 inches caliber, and in the vicinity of Blockhouse No. 14 were two steel mountain guns of 3.2 inches caliber. The line was manned throughout its length by infantry, with strong reserves at Malate and at the walled city in its rear. Shortly before midnight of July 31-August 1 the Spaniards opened a heavy and continuous fire with both artillery and infantry from their entire line. Our trenches were occupied that day by the two battalions of the Tenth Pennsylvania Infantry, one foot battery (H), nearly 200 strong, of the Third Artillery, and four guns, two of Battery A and two of Battery B, Utah Artillery. For about an hour and a half the firing on both sides, with artillery and infantry, was very heavy and continuous, our expenditure of ammunition being 160 rounds of artillery and about 60,000 rounds of infantry. That of the Spaniards was nearly twice as much. The American loss was ten killed and forty-three wounded. General Greene says: "Major Cuthbertson, Tenth Pennsylvania, reports that the Spaniards left their trenches in force and attempted to turn our right flank, coming within 200 yards of his position. But as the night was intensely dark, with incessant and heavy rain, and as no dead or wounded were found in front of his position at daylight, it is possible that he was mistaken and that the heavy fire to which he was subjected came from the trenches near Block House 14, beyond his right flank, at a distance of about 700 yards. The Spaniards used smokeless powder, the thickets obscured the flash of their guns, and the sound of the Mauser bullets penetrating a bamboo pole is very similar to the crack of the rifle itself. "This attack demonstrated the immediate necessity of extending our intrenchments to the right and, although not covered by my instructions (which were to occupy the trenches from the bay to Calle Real, and to avoid precipitating an engagement), I ordered the First Colorado and one battalion of the First California, which occupied the trenches at 9 a. m., August 1, to extend the line of trenches to the Pasay road. The work was begun by these troops, and continued every day by the troops occupying the trenches in turn, until a strong line was completed by August 12, about 1,200 yards in length, extending from the bay to the east side of the Pasay road. Its left rested on the bay and its right on an extensive rice swamp, practically impassible. The right flank was refused, because the only way to cross a smaller rice swamp, crossing the line about 700 yards from the beach, was along a cross-road in rear of the general line. As finally completed the works were very strong in profile, being five to six feet in height and eight to ten feet in thickness at the base, strengthened by bags filled with earth. "The only material available was black soil saturated with water, and without the bags this was washed down and ruined in a day by the heavy and almost incessant rains. The construction of these trenches was constantly interrupted by the enemy's fire. They were occupied by the troops in succession, four battalions being usually sent out for a service of twenty-four hours, and posted with three battalions in the trenches, and one battalion in reserve along the crossroad to Pasay; Cossack posts being sent out from the latter to guard the camp against any possible surprise from the northeast and east. The service in the trenches was of the most arduous character, the rain being almost incessant, and the men having no protection against it; they were wet during the entire twenty-four hours, and the mud was so deep that the shoes were ruined and a considerable number of men rendered barefooted. Until the notice of bombardment was given on August 7, any exposure above or behind the trenches promptly brought the enemy's fire, so that the men had to sit in the mud under cover and keep awake, prepared to resist an attack, during the entire tour of twenty-four hours. "After one particularly heavy rain a portion of the trench contained two feet of water, in which the men had to remain. It could not be drained, as it was lower than an adjoining rice swamp, in which the water had risen nearly two feet, the rainfall being more than four inches in twenty-four hours. These hardships were all endured by the men of the different regiments in turn, with the finest possible spirit and without a murmur of complaint." This is a vivid picture of hard service. General Greene continues: "August 7 the notice of bombardment after forty-eight hours, or sooner if the Spanish fire continued, was served, and after that date not a shot was fired on either side until the assault was made on August 13. It was with great difficulty, and in some cases not without force, that the insurgents were restrained from opening fire and thus drawing the fire of the Spaniards during this period. "Owing to the heavy storm and high surf it was impossible to communicate promptly with the division commander at Cavite, and I received my instructions direct from the major-general commanding, or his staff officers, one of whom visited my camp every day, and I reported direct to him in the same manner. My instructions were to occupy the insurgent trenches near the beach, so as to be in a good position to advance on Manila when ordered, but meanwhile to avoid precipitating an engagement, not to waste ammunition, and (after August 1) not to return the enemy's fire unless convinced that he had left his trenches and was making an attack in force. These instructions were given daily in the most positive terms to the officer commanding in the trenches, and in the main they were faithfully carried out. "More ammunition than necessary was expended on the nights of August 2 and 5, but in both cases the trenches were occupied by troops under fire for the first time, and in the darkness and rain there was ground to believe that the heavy fire indicated a real attack from outside the enemy's trenches. The total expenditure of ammunition on our side in the four engagements was about 150,000 rounds, and by the enemy very much more. "After the attack of July 31-August I, I communicated by signal with the captain of the U. S. S. Raleigh, anchored about 3,000 yards southwest of my camp, asking if he had received orders in regard to the action of his ship in case of another attack on my troops. He replied: "Both Admiral Dewey and General Merritt desire to avoid general action at present. If attack too strong for you, we will assist you, and another vessel will come and offer help. "In repeating this message, Lieutenant Tappan, commanding U. S. S. Callao, anchored nearer the beach, sent me a box of blue lights, and it was agreed that if I burned one of these on the beach the Raleigh would at once open fire on the Spanish fort." General Merritt speaks of the Colorado skirmishers leaving their breastworks when the navy ceased firing on the 13th of August, and advancing swiftly, finding the Spanish trenches deserted, "but as they passed over the Spanish works they were met by a sharp fire from a second line, situated in the streets of Malate, by which a number of men were killed and wounded, among others the soldier who pulled down the Spanish colors still flying on the fort and raised our own." General Greene is complimentary to the officers and who conducted the reconnaissances while he was at Camp Dewey twenty-five days, and states: "Captain Grove and Lieutenant Means, of the First Colorado, had been particularly active in this work and fearless in penetrating beyond our lines and close to those of the enemy. As the time for attack approached, these officers made a careful examination of the ground between our trenches and Fort San Antonio de Abad, and, finally, on August 11, Major J. F. Bell, United States Volunteer Engineers, tested the creek in front of this fort and ascertained not only that it was fordable, but the exact width of the ford at the beach, and actually swam in the bay to a point from which he could examine the Spanish line from the rear. With the information thus obtained it was possible to plan the attack intelligently. The position assigned to my brigade extended from the beach to the small rice swamp, a front of about 700 yards. "After the sharp skirmish on the second line of defense of the Spaniards, and after Greene's brigade moved through Malate, meeting a shuffling foe, the open space at the luneta, just south of the walled city, was reached about 1 p. m. A white flag was flying at the southwest bastion, and I rode forward to meet it under a heavy fire from our right and rear on the Paco road. At the bastion I was informed that officers representing General Merritt and Admiral Dewey were on their way ashore to receive the surrender, and I therefore turned east to the Paco road. The firing ceased at this time, and on reaching this road I found nearly 1,000 Spanish troops who had retreated from Santa Ana through Paco, and coming up the Paco road had been firing on our flank. I held the commanding officers, but ordered these troops to march into the walled city. At this point, the California regiment a short time before had met some insurgents who had fired at the Spaniards on the walls, and the latter in returning the fire had caused a loss in the California regiment of 1 killed and 2 wounded. "My instructions were to march past the walled city on its surrender, cross the bridge, occupy the city on the north side of the Pasig, and protect lives and property there. While the white flag was flying on the walls yet, very sharp firing had just taken place outside, and there were from 5,000 to 6,000 men on the walls, with arms in their hands, only a few yards from us. I did not feel justified in leaving this force in my rear until the surrender was clearly established, and I therefore halted and assembled my force, prepared to force the gates if there was any more firing. The Eighteenth Infantry and First California were sent forward to hold the bridges a few yards ahead, but the second battalion, Third Artillery, First Nebraska, Tenth Pennsylvania, and First Colorado were all assembled at this point. While this was being done I received a note from Lieutenant-Colonel Whittier, of General Merritt's staff, written from the Captain-General's office within the walls, asking me to stop the firing outside, as negotiations for surrender were in progress." And General Greene continues: "I then returned to the troops outside the walls and sent Captain Birkhimer's battalion of the Third Artillery down the Paco road to prevent any insurgents from entering. Feeling satisfied that there would be no attack from the Spanish troops lining the walls, I put the regiments in motion toward the bridges, brushing aside a considerable force of insurgents who had penetrated the city from the direction of Paco, and were in the main street with their flag expecting to march into the walled city and plant it on the walls. After crossing the bridges the Eighteenth United States Infantry was posted to patrol the principal streets near the bridge, the First California was sent up the Pasig to occupy Quiapo, San Miguel, and Malacanan, and with the First Nebraska I marched down the river to the Captain of the Port's office, where I ordered the Spanish flag hauled down and the American flag raised in its place." The insurgents were disposed to disregard the white flag and the process of the capitulation, but "a considerable force" of them was "brushed aside." General Greene's losses before Manila were 16 killed and 66 wounded: his force 5,100. He remarks: "The resistance encountered on the 13th was much less than anticipated and planned for, but had the resistance been greater the result would have been the same, only the loss would have been greater. Fortunately, the great result of capturing this city, the seat of Spanish power in the East for more than three hundred years, was accomplished with a loss of life comparatively insignificant." Captain T.B. Mott, detached from General Merritt's temporarily, served on General Greene's staff, and received this mention: "In posting troops in the trenches, in making reconnaissances, in transmitting orders under fire, and in making reports, he has uniformly exhibited courage, military ability, and sound judgment, the qualities, in short, which are most valuable in a staff officer." Captain Bates, Lieutenant Schieflie, and Captain D.F. Millet, artist and author, are praised for activity, intelligence and valuable service. Millet was with Greene before Plevna, during the Russo-Turkish campaign. Greene was appointed the senior member of the committee to arrange the terms of the capitulation. General Anderson had instructions to extend his line to crowd the insurgents out of their trenches with their consent, but this was not attempted, for that would have brought on an engagement prematurely. Anderson had purchased wire-cutters with insulated handles in San Francisco, and they were useful! Anderson had his trenches with the insurgents. McArthur's division was before a "circulated line of earthworks faced with sand bags," and the problem of the advance was made difficult because "we could not be sure whether our first attack was to be tentative or serious, this depending on action of the navy; second, from our orders not to displace the insurgents without their consent from their position to the right of their guns on the Pasay road. This to the very last the insurgent leaders positively refused to give. Yet, if we could not go far enough to the right to silence their field guns and carry that part of their line, they would have a fatal cross fire on troops attacking blockhouse No. 14. I therefore directed General MacArthur to put the three 2.10 inch guns of Battery B, Utah Volunteer Artillery, in the emplacement of the insurgent gun and to place the Astor Battery behind a high garden wall to the right of the Pasay road, to be held there subject to orders. "I assumed that when the action became hot at this point, as I knew it would be, that the insurgents would voluntarily fall back from their advanced position, and that the Astor Battery and its supports could take position without opposition." General Anderson got a message from General MacArthur. "I knew from this that he wished to push the insurgents aside and put in the Astor Battery. I then authorized him to attack, which he did, and, soon after, the Twenty-third Infantry and the Thirteenth Minnesota carried the advance line of the enemy in the most gallant manner, the one gun of the Utah Battery and the Astor Battery lending most effective assistance." It was General Anderson's opinion that MacArthur should counter march and go to Malate by the beach, but he had gone too far, for "the guns of the Astor Battery had been dragged to the front only after the utmost exertions, and were about being put into battery. At the same time I received a telegram stating that the insurgents were threatening to cross the bamboo bridge on our right; and to prevent this and guard our ammunition at Pasay, I ordered an Idaho battalion to that point." Again the insurgents were making mischief, and General Anderson, as well as General Greene had the experience of the continuance of fire when the white flag was flying. The loss of General Anderson in the taking of the city was nineteen men killed and one hundred and three wounded. He concludes by saying: "The opposition we met in battle was not sufficient to test the bravery of our soldiers, but all showed bravery and dash. The losses show that the leading regiments of the First Brigade--Thirteenth Minnesota, Twenty-third Infantry, and the Astor Battery--met the most serious opposition and deserve credit for their success. The Colorado, California, and Oregon regiments, the Regulars, and all the batteries of the Second Brigade showed such zeal that it seems a pity that they did not meet foemen worthy of their steel." General MacArthur says: "Several hours before the operations of the day were intended to commence, there was considerable desultory firing from the Spanish line, both of cannon and small arms, provoked no doubt by Filipino soldiers, who insisted upon maintaining a general fusilade along their lines." General MacArthur's personal mention is remarkably spirited, and makes stirring reading. We quote: "The combat of Singalong can hardly be classified as a great military event, but the involved terrain and the prolonged resistance created a very trying situation, and afforded an unusual scope for the display of military qualities by a large number of individuals. "The invincible composure of Colonel Ovenshine, during an exposure in dangerous space for more than an hour, was conspicuous and very inspiring to the troops; and the efficient manner in which he took advantage of opportunities as they arose during the varying aspects of the fight was of great practical value in determining the result. "The cool, determined, and sustained efforts of Colonel Reeve, of the Thirteenth Minnesota, contributed very materially to the maintenance of the discipline and marked efficiency of his regiment. "The brilliant manner in which Lieutenant March accepted and discharged the responsible and dangerous duties of the day, and the pertinacity with which, assisted by his officers and men, he carried his guns over all obstacles to the very front of the firing line, was an exceptional display of warlike skill and good judgment, indicating the existence of many of the best qualifications for high command in battle. "The gallant manner in which Captain Sawtelle, brigade quartermaster, volunteered to join the advance party in the rush; volunteered to command a firing line, for a time without an officer, and again volunteered to lead a scout to ascertain the presence or absence of the enemy in the blockhouse, was a fine display of personal intrepidity. "The efficient, fearless, and intelligent manner in which Lieutenant Kernan, Twenty-first United States Infantry, acting assistant adjutant-general of the brigade, and Second Lieutenant Whitworth, Eighteenth United States Infantry, aid, executed a series of dangerous and difficult orders, was a fine exemplification of staff work under fire. "The splendid bravery of Captains Bjornstad and Seebach, and Lieutenant Lackore, of the Thirteenth Minnesota, all wounded, and, finally, the work of the soldiers of the first firing line, too, all went to make up a rapid succession of individual actions of unusual merit." Major General Merritt's account of the capture of the city must be given in full, for there are no words wasted, and he clears the field of all confusion. "The works of the second line soon gave way to the determined advance of Greene's troops, and that officer pushed his brigade rapidly through Malate and over the bridges to occupy Binondo and San Miguel, as contemplated in his instructions. In the meantime the brigade of General MacArthur, advancing simultaneously on the Pasay road, encountered a very sharp fire, coming from the blockhouses, trenches, and woods in his front, positions which it was very difficult to carry, owing to the swampy condition of the ground on both sides of the roads, and the heavy undergrowth concealing the enemy. With much gallantry and excellent judgment on the part of the brigade commander and the troops engaged these difficulties were overcome with a minimum loss (see report of brigade commander appended), and MacArthur advanced and held the bridges and the town of Malate, as was contemplated in his instructions. "The city of Manila was now in our possession, excepting the walled town, but shortly after the entry of our troops into Malate a white flag was displayed on the walls, whereupon Lieutenant-Colonel C. A Whittier, United States Volunteers, of my staff, and Lieutenant Brumby, United States Navy, representing Admiral Dewey, were sent ashore to communicate with the Captain-General. I soon personally followed these officers into the town, going at once to the palace of the Governor-General, and there, after a conversation with the Spanish authorities, a preliminary agreement of the terms of capitulation was signed by the Captain-General and myself. This agreement was subsequently incorporated into the formal terms of capitulation, as arranged by the officers representing the two forces, a copy of which is hereto appended and marked. "Immediately after the surrender the Spanish colors on the sea front were hauled down and the American flag displayed and saluted by the guns of the navy. The Second Oregon Regiment, which had proceeded by sea from Cavite, was disembarked and entered the walled town as a provost guard, and the colonel was directed to receive the Spanish arms and deposit them in places of security. The town was filled with the troops of the enemy driven in from the intrenchments, regiments formed and standing in line in the streets, but the work of disarming proceeded quietly and nothing unpleasant occurred. "In leaving the subject of the operations of the 13th, I desire here to record my appreciation of the admirable manner in which the orders for attack and the plan for occupation of the city were carried out by the troops exactly as contemplated. I submit that for troops to enter under fire a town covering a wide area, to rapidly deploy and guard all principal points in the extensive suburbs, to keep out the insurgent forces pressing for admission, to quietly disarm an army of Spaniards more than equal in numbers to the American troops, and finally by all this to prevent entirely all rapine, pillage, and disorder, and gain entire and complete possession of a city of 300,000 people filled with natives hostile to the European interests, and stirred up by the knowledge that their own people were fighting in the outside trenches, was an act which only the law-abiding, temperate, resolute American soldier, well and skillfully handled by his regimental and brigade commanders, could accomplish. The trophies of Manila were nearly $900,000,000, of which $240,000,000 were copper coin, 13,000 prisoners and 22,000 arms. Three days after the surrender, General Merritt received news of the protocol, and soon was ordered to Paris. In parting he says of the insurgent chief that he had written communication with him on various occasions, and "he recognized my authority as military governor of the town of Manila and suburbs, and made professions of his willingness to withdraw his troops to a line which I might indicate, but at the same time asking certain favors for himself. The matters in this connection had not been settled at the date of my departure. Doubtless much dissatisfaction is felt by the rank and file of the insurgents that they have not been permitted to enjoy the occupancy of Manila, and there is some ground for trouble with them owing to that fact, but notwithstanding many rumors to the contrary, I am of the opinion that the leaders will be able to prevent serious disturbances, as they are sufficiently intelligent and educated to know that for them to antagonize the United States would be to destroy their only chance of future political improvement. The Commanding General's personal acknowledgments are very handsome, as follows: "Brigadier-General E.P. Hughes, my inspector-general at San Francisco, was especially noticeable in accomplishing the instruction of the green troops that came to the city, many of them without arms, clothing, or equipment of any kind. His services will undoubtedly be duly recognized by Major-General Otis, with whom I left him to continue the good work. "I desire especially to express my acknowledgments to Brigadier-General Babcock, my adjutant-general and chief of staff, for his most valuable services from the inception of the campaign in San Francisco to the close of the work at the present time. This officer is too well known to require special mention of his services in any one direction. He was my right arm, not only in the office but in the field, and much of the success that has attended the expedition is due to his individual efforts. "I desire especially to mention Major McClure and Major Whipple, of the pay department, who volunteered their services after they had completed their legitimate duties, and performed excellent work whenever called upon. Major McClure was especially important in his services immediately after the surrender, taking long rides under my orders to the Spanish lines, and bearing instructions to them which resulted in effecting their withdrawal in such manner as to prevent the incursion of the insurgents in the northern portions of the city. Other officers have been named in my special reports and have been recommended for brevets and promotion. "I especially call attention to the services of Captain Mott, as mentioned in the report of Brigadier-General Greene. He was cheerful, willing, intelligent, and energetic in the discharge of the multifarious duties imposed upon him in connection with our troops and trenches during the rainy season, and in the final action showed these rare characteristics which stamp him as a very superior soldier." _The Terms of Capitulation_ The undersigned having been appointed a commission to determine the details of the capitulation of the city and defenses of Manila and its suburbs and the Spanish forces stationed therein, in accordance with the agreement entered into the previous day by Major General Wesley Merritt, United States Army, American commander in chief in the Philippines, and His Excellency Don Fermin Jaudenes, acting General in chief of the Spanish Army in the Philippines, have agreed upon the following: 1. The Spanish troops, European and native, capitulate with the city and its defenses, with all the honors of war, depositing their arms in the places designated by the authorities of the United States, and remaining in the quarters designated and under the orders of their officers, and subject to the control of the aforesaid United States authorities, until the conclusion of a treaty of peace between the two belligerent nations. All persons included in the capitulation remain at liberty, the officers remaining in their respective homes, which shall be respected as long as they observe the regulations prescribed for their government and the laws in force. 2. Officers shall retain their side arms, horses, and private property. 3. All public horses and public property of all kinds shall be turned over to staff officers designated by the United States. 4. Complete returns in duplicate of men by organizations, and full lists of public property and stores shall be rendered to the United States within ten days from this date. 5. All questions relating to the repatriation of officers and men of the Spanish forces and of their families, and of the expenses which said repatriation may occasion, shall be referred to the Government of the United States at Washington. Spanish families may leave Manila at any time convenient to them. The return of the arms surrendered by the Spanish forces shall take place when they evacuate the city or when the American Army evacuates. 6. Officers and men included in the capitulation shall be supplied by the United States, according to their rank, with rations and necessary aid as though they were prisoners of war, until the conclusion of a treaty of peace between the United States and Spain. All the funds in the Spanish treasury and all other public funds shall be turned over to the authorities of the United States. 7. This city, its inhabitants, its churches and religious worship, its educational establishments, and its private property of all descriptions are placed under the special safeguard of the faith and honor of the American Army. _F.V. Greene_, Brigadier-General of Volunteers, United States Army. _B.P. Lamberton_, Captain, United States Navy. _Charles A. Whittier_, Lieutenant-Colonel and Inspector-General. _E.H. Crowder_, Lieutenant-Colonel and Judge-Advocate. _Nicholas de la Petra_, Auditor General Excmo. _Carlos_, Coronel de Ingenieros. _Jose_, Coronel de Estado Major. The Spaniards wanted a long array of specifications as to what the Americans might and should not do, but finally were struck with the sufficiency of the shining simple words, "under the special safeguard of the faith and honor of the American Army." CHAPTER XI The Administration of General Merritt. The Official Gazette Issued at Manila--Orders and Proclamations Showing the Policy and Detail of the Administration of Major-General Wesley Merritt, Who, as Commander of the Philippine Expedition, Became, Under the Circumstances of the Capture of Manila, the Governor of That City. _General Merritt's Proclamation to the Filipinos._ Headquarters Department of the Pacific, August 14, 1898. To the People of the Philippines: I. War has existed between the United States and Spain since April 21 of this year. Since that date you have witnessed the destruction by an American fleet of the Spanish naval power in these islands, the fall of the principal city, Manila, and its defenses, and the surrender of the Spanish army of occupation to the forces of the United States. II. The commander of the United States forces now in possession has instructions from his Government to assure the people that he has not come to wage war upon them, nor upon any part or faction among them, but to protect them in their homes, in their employments, and in their personal and religious rights. All persons who, by active aid or honest submission, co-operate with the United States in its efforts to give effect to this beneficent purpose, will receive the reward of its support and protection. III. The government established among you by the United States is a government of military occupation; and for the present it is ordered that the municipal laws such as affect private rights of persons and property, regulate local institutions, and provide for the punishment of crime, shall be considered as continuing in force, so far as compatible with the purposes of military government, and that they be administered through the ordinary tribunals substantially as before occupation, but by officials appointed by the government of occupation. IV. A Provost-Marshal-General will be appointed for the city of Manila and its outlying districts. This territory will be divided into sub-districts, and there will be assigned to each a Deputy-Provost-Marshal. The duties of the Provost-Marshal-General and his deputies will be set forth in detail in future orders. In a general way they are charged with the duty of making arrests of military, as well as civil offenders, sending such of the former class as are triable by courts-martial to their proper commands, with statements of their offenses and names of witnesses, and detaining in custody all other offenders for trial by military commission, provost courts, or native criminal courts, in accordance with law and the instructions hereafter to be issued. V. The port of Manila, and all other ports and places in the Philippines which may be in the actual possession of our land and naval forces, will be open, while our military occupation may continue, to the commerce of all neutral nations as well as our own, in articles not contraband of war, and upon payment of the prescribed rates of duty which may be in force at the time of the importation. VI. All churches and places devoted to religious worship and to the arts and sciences, all educational institutions, libraries, scientific collections, and museums are, so far as possible, to be protected; and all destruction or intentional defacement of such places or properly, of historical monuments, archives, or works of science and art, is prohibited, save when required by urgent military necessity. Severe punishment will be meted out for all violations of this regulation. The custodians of all property of the character mentioned in this section will make prompt returns thereof to these headquarters, stating character and location, and embodying such recommendations as they may think proper for the full protection of the properties under their care and custody, that proper orders may issue enjoining the co-operation of both military and civil authorities in securing such protection. VII. The Commanding General, in announcing the establishment of military government, and in entering upon his duty as Military Governor in pursuance of his appointment as such by the government of the United States, desires to assure the people that so long as they preserve the peace and perform their duties toward the representatives of the United States they will not be disturbed in their persons and property, except in so far as may be found necessary for the good of the service of the United States and the benefit of the people of the Philippines. _Wesley Merritt_, Major-General, United States Army, Commanding. The general orders following are full of curious interest, as they declare the true intent and meaning of the Philippine Expedition, and define the situation at Manila, with extraordinary precision, and are in the strictest sense by authority: _Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps_ Manila Bay, August 9th, 1898. _General Orders_, No. 3. 1. In view of the extraordinary conditions under which this Army is operating, the Commanding General desires to acquaint the officers and men composing it, with the expectations which he entertains as to their conduct. You are assembled upon foreign soil situated within the western confines of a vast ocean separating you from your native land. You have come not as despoilers and oppressors, but simply as the instruments of a strong free government, whose purposes are beneficent and which has declared itself in this war, the champion of those oppressed by Spanish misrule. It is therefore the intention of this order to appeal directly to your pride in your position as representatives of a high civilization, in the hope and with the firm conviction that you will so conduct yourselves in your relations with the inhabitants of these islands, as to convince them of the lofty nature of the mission which you come to execute. It is not believed that any acts of pillage, rapine, or violence will be committed by soldiers or other in the employ of the United States, but should there be persons with this command who prove themselves unworthy of this confidence, their acts will be considered not only as crimes against the sufferers, but as direct insults to the United States flag, and they will be punished on the spot with the maximum penalties known to military law. By Command of Major-General Merritt: _J.B. Babcock_, Adjutant-General. Official: _Bentley Mott_, Aid. _Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps._ Manila, P. I., August 15th, 1898. _General Orders_, No. 4. 1. In addition to his duties as Division Commander, Brigadier-General T.M. Anderson, U. S. Vols., is hereby assigned to the command of the District of Cavite and will remove his headquarters to that point. The garrison of the District of Cavite will be augmented upon the arrival of the next transports containing troops for this command. 2. In addition to his duties as Brigade Commander, Brigadier-General Arthur MacArthur, U. S. Vols., is hereby appointed Military Commandant of the walled city of Manila, and Provost-Marshal-General of the City of Manila, including all the outlying districts within the municipal jurisdiction. General MacArthur will remove his headquarters within the walled city and will bring with him one strong regiment of his command to take station within the walled town. The Commanding Officer of the 2nd Oregon Vol. Inf., now stationed in the walled city, will report to General MacArthur, and the Companies of the 2nd Oregon Vol. Inf., now at Cavite, will, upon being relieved by other troops, be sent to Manila to join the regiment. General MacArthur will relieve the Civil Governor of his functions, and take possession of the offices, clerks and all machinery of administration of that office, retaining and employing the present subordinate officers of civil administration until, in his judgment, it is desirable to replace them by other appointments. 3. Colonel James S. Smith, 1st California Vol. Inf., in addition to his duties as Regimental Commander, is appointed Deputy Provost-Marshal for the Districts of the city north of the Pasig River, and will report to General MacArthur. Colonel S. Ovenshine, 23rd U. S. Inf., is appointed Deputy Provost-Marshal for the districts of the city, including Ermita and Malate, outside of the walled town and south of the Pasig River, and will report to General MacArthur. 4. Under paragraphs "3" and "4" of the terms of capitulation, full lists of public property and stores, and returns in duplicate of the men by organizations, are to be rendered to the United States within ten days, and public horses and public property of all kinds are to be turned over to the staff officers of the United States designated to receive them. Under these paragraphs the Chief of Artillery at these headquarters, and the Chiefs of the Staff Departments, will take possession of the public property turned over as above, pertaining to their respective departments. The returns of the prisoners will be submitted to the Military Commandant of the City, who will assign the men for quarters in such public buildings and barracks as are not required for the use of United States troops. The horses and private property of the officers of the Spanish forces are not to be disturbed. The Chief Paymaster at these headquarters will turn over such portion of the Spanish public funds received by him, by virtue of this order, to the administration of his office. 5. All removals and appointments of subordinate officers of civil administration, and transfers of funds authorized by this order, must receive the approval of the Commanding General, before action is taken. 6. The Chief Quartermaster and Chief Commissary of Subsistence at these headquarters will establish depots of supply in Manila with as little delay as possible. Quartermaster and Subsistence depots will also be retained at Cavite. By Command of Major-General Merritt: _J. B. Babcock_, Adjutant-General. Official: _Bentley Mott_, Aid. _Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps._ Manila, P. I., August 17th, 1898. _General Orders_ No. 5. 1. In addition to the command of his Brigade, Brigadier-General F. V. Greene, U. S. Vols., will perform the duties hitherto performed by the Intendente General de Hacienda, and will have charge, subject to instructions of the Major General Commanding, of all fiscal affairs of the Government of Manila. 2. Lieutenant-Colonel C. A. Whittier, U. S. Vols., is appointed Collector of Customs, and the Chief Paymaster, Department of the Pacific, will designate a bonded officer of the Pay Department as custodian of all public funds. Both of these officers will report to Brigadier-General Greene for instructions. By Command of Major-General Merritt: _J. B. Babcock_, Adjutant-General. Official: _Bentley Mott_, Aid. _Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps._ Manila, P. I., August 17th, 1898. _General Orders_, No. 6. The Major-General Commanding desires to congratulate the troops of this command upon their brilliant success in the capture, by assault, of the defenses of Manila, on Saturday, August 13, a date hereafter to be memorable in the history of American victories. After a journey of seven thousand miles by sea, the soldiers of the Philippine Expedition encountered most serious difficulties in landing, due to protracted storms raising high surf, through which it was necessary to pass the small boats which afforded the only means of disembarking the army and its supplies. This great task, and the privations and hardships of a campaign during the rainy season in tropical lowlands, were accomplished and endured by all the troops, in a spirit of soldierly fortitude, which has at all times during these days of trial, given the Commanding General the most heartfelt pride and confidence in his men. Nothing could be finer than the patient, uncomplaining devotion to duty which all have shown. Now it is his pleasure to announce that within three weeks after the arrival in the Philippines of the greater portion of the forces, the capital city of the Spanish possessions in the East, held by Spanish veterans, has fallen into our hands, and he feels assured that all officers and men of this command have reason to be proud of the success of the expedition. The Commanding General will hereafter take occasion to mention to the Home Government, the names of officers, men and organizations, to whom special credit is due. By Command of Major-General Merritt: _J. B. Babcock_, Adjutant-General Official: _Bentley Mott_, Aid. _Headquarters of the Provost-Marshal-General and Military Commandant._ City of Manila, P. I., August 18th, 1898. _General Orders_, No. 1. 1. In obedience to the provisions of General Orders, No. 3, dated Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps, Manila, P. I., August l5th, 1898, the undersigned hereby assumes the office and duties of Military Commandant of the walled city of Manila; Provost-Marshal-General of the city of Manila, including the outlying districts within the municipal jurisdiction, and also the functions of Civil Governor. 2. Until further orders the preservation of law and order throughout the city will be maintained according to the arrangements which now obtain. 3. The location of these Headquarters will be at the office of the Civil Governor, corner of San Juan de Letran and Anda Streets, and to the above address will be referred all papers requiring action by the undersigned. To insure prompt investigation, all claims, complaints, and petitions should be presented in the English language. 4. Major Harry C. Hale, Assistant Adjutant-General U. S. Volunteers; aide de camp to the Commanding General, having been assigned for temporary duty at these Headquarters, is hereby appointed Adjutant-General to the undersigned. 5. Colonel S. Overshine having been appointed by proper authority Deputy Provost-Marshal of the districts of the city (including Ermita and Malate) outside of the walled town and south of the Pasig river, will organize and establish his office as soon as possible, and report the location thereof to these Headquarters. 6. Colonel James S. Smith, 1st California Volunteer Infantry, having been appointed by proper authority Deputy Provost-Marshal of the districts of the city north of the Pasig river, will organize and establish his office as soon as possible and report location thereof to these Headquarters. (Sgd.) _Arthur MacArthur_, Brigadier-General U. S. Volunteers. Military Commandant and Provost-Marshal-General. The Official Gazette of Aug. 23 is a record of the organization of the Military Government of Manila. _Office Chief of Police._ _Manila_, P. I. _Order_ No. 1. By command of Brigadier-General MacArthur and Military Commandant, the Thirteenth Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry is designated to perform the police duty of this city and the commanding officer thereof is appointed Chief of Police, and Major Ed. S. Bean, Inspector of Police. Companies D, G, J and S are hereby detailed to at once take charge of the police stations and perform the necessary duties pertaining to the position of police and maintenance of order. C. McC. _Reeve_, Colonel 13th Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry and Chief of Police. Aug. 22d. 1898. _Office Chief of Police._ _Manila_, P. I. _Order_ No. 2. 1. The following is published for the information of the police of this city: 2. Bulletin hoards will be kept in all stations and all orders issued from this office will be posted thereon. 3. Armed native and Spanish soldiers must be disarmed before being allowed to pass through gates, either way. 4. Arrest drunk and disorderly persons. 5. Spanish officers are allowed to wear their side arms. 6. Commanding officers will have their respective districts patroled at least once each hour during the day and night. 7. Shoes must be blacked and all brasses bright and shining at all times. 8. Be courteous in your contact with both natives and Spaniards and see that all soldiers of other commands observe this rule. 9. Particular attention must be given by men at the gates to the saluting of officers in passing through, and particularly so to the general officers. Ed. S. Bean, Major 13th Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, and Inspector of Police. Aug. 22d, 1898. Approved, _Reeve_, Colonel 13th Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry and Chief of Police. _Headquarters of the Provost-Marshal and Military Commandant._ Adjutant-General's Office, City of Manila, P. I., August 22nd, 1898. _General Orders_, No. 3. Colonel McC. Reeve, 13th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, is hereby directed to relieve the Commandante of the Guardia Civil Veterana of his functions, and will take possession of his office and will employ such officers and soldiers of his regiment _as may_ be necessary for the adequate police protection of this city. By Command of Brigadier-General MacArthur, Provost-Marshal-General and Military Commandant, Harry C. Hale, Assistant Adjutant-General. _Order_ No. 3. _Office Chief of Police. Manila_, P.I. To Commanding Officer. _Stations_. Notify all livery stables and other places in your districts, depositing large quantities of manure and other refuse in the streets, that they must cart it away daily, themselves. Failure to do so will result in the arrest of the offending party. _Ed. S. Bean_, Major 13th Minnesota Volunteers, and Inspector of Police. August 22d, 1898. Approved _Reeve_, Colonel 13th Minnesota Volunteers, and Chief of Police. _Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps._ Manila, Philippine Islands, August 22nd, 1898. _General Orders_, No. 8. I. For the maintenance of law and order in those portions of the Philippines occupied or controlled by the Army of the United States, and to provide means to promptly punish infraction of the same, Military Commissions and Provost Courts, composed and constituted in accordance with the laws of war, will be appointed from time to time as occasion may require. II. The local courts, continued in force for certain purposes in proclamation from these headquarters, dated August 14th, 1898, shall not exercise jurisdiction over any crime or offense committed by any person belonging to the Army of the United States, or any retainer of the Army, or person serving with it, or any person furnishing or transporting supplies for the Army; nor over any crime or offense committed on either of the same by any inhabitant or temporary resident of said territory. In such cases, except when Courts Martial have jurisdiction, jurisdiction to try and punish is vested in Military Commissions and the Provost Court, as hereinafter set forth. III. The crimes and offenses triable by Military Commission are murder, manslaughter, assault and battery with intent to kill, robbery, rape, assault and battery with intent to rape, and such other crimes, offenses, or violations of the laws of war as may be referred to it for trial by the Commanding General. The punishment awarded by Military Commission shall conform, as far as possible, to the laws of the United States, or the custom of war. Its sentence is subject to the approval of the Commanding General. IV. The Provost Court has jurisdiction to try all other crimes and offenses, referred to in Section II of this order; not exclusively triable by Courts Martial or Military Commission, including violations of orders or the laws of war, and such cases as may be referred to it by the Commanding General. It shall have power to punish with confinement, with or without hard labor, for not more than six (6) months, or with fine not exceeding Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars ($250.00) or both. Its sentence does not require the approval of the Commanding General, but may be mitigated or remitted by him. V. The Judge of the Provost Court will be appointed by this Commanding General. When in the opinion of the Provost Court its power of punishment is inadequate, it shall certify the case to the Commanding General for his consideration and action. By Command of Major-General Merritt: _J.B. Babcock_, Adjutant-General. Official: _Bentley Mott_, Aid. _Headquarters Department of the Pacific and Eighth Army Corps._ Manila, P.I., August 22nd, 1898. _Special Orders_, No. 32. 1. Upon the recommendation of the Intendente General de Hacienda, Major R.B.C. Bement, Engineer Officer, U.S. Volunteers, is hereby appointed Administrator de Hacienda (Collector of Internal Revenue), and will report without delay to Brigadier-General F.V. Greene, U.S. Volunteers, Intendente General, Manila. 2. The following orders are confirmed: Special Orders No. 5, Headquarters Second Division, Eighth Army Corps, August 6th, 1898, placing First Lieutenant W.G. Haan, 3rd U. S. Artillery, in command of a separate battery to be organized by details from batteries of 3rd U.S. Artillery, to man the Hotchkiss revolving cannon brought on the transport Ohio. 3. Private H.J. Green, Company E, 2nd Oregon Volunteer Infantry, detailed on special duty at these headquarters, will be paid commutation of rations at the rate of seventy-five cents per diem, it being entirely impracticable for him to cook or utilize rations. He will also be paid commutation of quarters at the usual rate. Both commutations to be paid while this man is employed on his present duty and stationed in this city, and to date from and inclusive of the 16th inst. 4. Corporal Jerome Patterson, Company H, 23rd U.S. Infantry, Corporal James Maddy, Company F, 2nd Oregon Volunteer Infantry, Private Emmett Manley, Company D, 23rd U.S. Infantry, Private Robert M. Nichols, Company A, 1st Idaho Volunteer Infantry, Private P.H. Sullivan, Company F, 23rd U.S. Infantry, are hereby detailed on special duty at these Headquarters., and will report at once to the Adjutant-General for duty. 5. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles L. Jewett, Judge Advocate, U.S. Volunteers, is hereby appointed Judge of the Provost Court, for the city of Manila. He will hold the sessions of his court at the headquarters of the Provost-Marshal-General. The Quartermaster Department will provide the necessary offices and office furniture. The Provost Court will be attended by one or more Assistant Provost-Marshal, to be detailed by the Provost-Marshal-General, who will be charged with the duty of enforcing its orders and executing its processes. The form of accusation in the Provost Court will be substantially the same as that used in Courts Martial, and a record of all cases tried, assimilated to that of the summary court, will be kept. 6. Upon the recommendation of the Chief Commissary of the Department of the Pacific, the issue to Spanish Prisoners by Major S.A. Cloman, C.S., U.S. Vols., Depot Commissary, Cavite, P.I., of one (1) box of soap (60 lbs. net) is hereby confirmed. 7. Sergeant Charles H. Burritt, Company C, 1st Wyoming Volunteer Infantry, will report to Lieutenant Morgareidge, 1st Wyoming Volunteer Infantry, on board Steamer Ohio, for temporary duty in unloading commissary supplies. Upon completion of this duty Sergeant Burritt will rejoin his Company. 8. Lieutenant Charles H. Sleeper, 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry, is hereby appointed Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, and will report to Major R.B.C. Bement, U.S. Vols., Administrator de Haciena (Collector of Internal Revenue), for instructions. 9. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles L. Potter, U.S. Vols., Chief Engineer Officer, Eighth Army Corps, will assume charge of the water supply of this city, and will report to Brigadier-General Arthur MacArthur, U.S. Vols., Military Commandant of Manila, for instructions. By Command of Major-General Merritt: _J.B. Babcock_, Adjutant-General. Official: _Bentley Mott_, Aid. The responsibilities of General Merritt in his Manila, campaign were graver than the country understands, and his success was regarded as so much a matter of course that there has been forgetfulness to take into account the many circumstances that gave anxiety preceding decisions that seem easy now that they have been vindicated by events. The departure from San Francisco of the Major-General commanding the Philippine expedition was as well known to the Spanish as to the American cabinet, and there is reason to think there were no important particulars of the sailing of the third division of our Philippine soldiers unknown to enemies. There were in gold coin, a million and a half dollars in the strong box of Merritt's ship, the Newport. The Spanish spies were not as well posted as an average hackman, if they did not report the shipment of gold. It would have been a triumph for Spain to have captured the commanding general and the gold, the Astor Battery and the regular recruits with the headquarters ship, The Spanish were known to have a gunboat or two lurking in the islands within striking distance of our transports, unarmed vessels--except a few deck pieces of field artillery--with more than a thousand men on each. General Merritt wanted the escort of ships of war to make all secure, and application to Admiral Dewey to send one of his war boats, brought the statement that he could not spare a ship. Just at that time he heard of the run by Camara with the Cadiz fleet Eastward on the Mediterranean, and soon he had word that the Pelayo and her companions were in the Suez canal. General Greene had not arrived at Manila at that time, and the monitors Monterey and Monadnock were getting along slowly. Dewey knew he would have to evacuate the scene of his victory in case Camara was fully committed to go to Manila, and wait for the Monitors, and when he got them he said he would return and sink another Spanish fleet, but that was something it might be critical to explain, and General Merritt, after leaving San Francisco, did not get any news for twenty-six days. All that time he would have had no justification for surprise if he had been attacked by a Spanish gunboat, and if the Spaniards had pushed on their Rapide--the converted German liner the Normania--she could have been handled to cut off the American reinforcements on the way to the camps of the little American army already landed. When General Merritt reached Cavite, he found the situation difficult for the army and pushed things as the only way to get out of trouble. He had two armies to deal with, one the Spaniards, fiercely hostile, and the other, the Filipinos, factional and jealous, each outnumbering by five thousand the American forces with which the city was assailed and finally captured. There was no time lost, and if there had been any delay, even two days, the peace protocol would have found our army in the trenches, and the city belonging to the Spaniards. It was the energy of General Merritt, heartily shared by his division commanders, that prevented this embarrassment, which would have been a moral and military misfortune. We have given the General's orders to his troops and the Filipinos after the fall of the city--also his original statement of policy, and noted how cleverly they supported each other, and how smoothly the work of organization and administration is carried on the world is well aware. The orders deputing the officers to discharge certain duties are plain business. There was no departure from the strict, straight line of military government, and the threatened entanglements firmly touched passed away. There was nothing omitted, or superfluous, and the purpose and programme of policy was made clear by events. The confusion overcome by the genius of common sense there was order, all rights respected, the administration was a success from the beginning and continued, and is to be continued--security is established, there is public confidence in the air--the "faith and honor of the army" are inviolable, Manila is ours, and there is peace. If war comes in that quarter of the globe we shall stand on ground that earthquakes cannot shake. CHAPTER XII The American Army in Manila. Why the Boys Had a Spell of Home Sickness--Disadvantages of the Tropics--Admiral Dewey and his Happy Men--How Our Soldiers Passed the Time on the Ships--General Merritt's Headquarters--What Is Public Property--The Manila Water Supply--England Our Friend--Major-General Otis, General Merritt's Successor. The American soldiers in the Philippines were most devoted and cheerful, patient under hardship and pleasantly satisfied that they were as far to the front as anybody and seeing all there was to see during the siege of Manila. They were out in tropical rains, and the ditches they waded were deep with mud unless filled with water. They were harassed by the Spanish with the long-range Mausers at night and insufficiently provided a part of the time with rations. At best they had a very rough experience, but kept their health and wanted to go into the city with a rush. They would rather have taken chances in storming the place than sleep in the mud, as they did for twenty days. When the defenders of Manila concluded that the honor of Spain would be preserved by the shedding of only a little blood in a hopeless struggle and fell back from very strong positions before the advance of skirmish lines, and the American columns entered the city, keeping two armies--the Spaniards and the insurgents--apart, and, taking possession, restored order and were sheltered in houses, it soon began to occur to the boys, who came out of the wet campaign looking like veterans and feeling that they had gained much by experience, that they were doing garrison duty and that it was objectionable. The soldiers who arrived on the Peru, City of Pueblo and Pennsylvania were shocked that they had missed the fight and disgusted with the news of peace. They had made an immense journey to go actively into war, and emerged from the ocean solitude to police a city in time of peace. It was their notion that they lacked occupation; that their adventure had proved an enterprise that could not become glorious. The romance of war faded. Unquiet sensations were produced by the stories that there was nothing to do but go home, and they would soon be placed aboard the transports and homeward bound. Besides, the climate was depressing. The days were hot and the nights were not refreshing. The rations were better and there were dry places to sleep, but there was no inspiring excitement, and it was not a life worth living. War--"the front"--instead of offering incomparable varieties, became tedious--it was a bore, in fact. How could a crowded city and thronged streets be attractive in a military sense, or the scene of patriotic sacrifice, when the most arduous duty was that of police? Was it for this they had left homes in Oregon, Montana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Nebraska, Utah, California and Colorado? There came an episode of homesickness. It was about time in a soldier's life to contrast it with the farms and the villages, the shops, mines and manufactories. They were kept busy on guard and in caring for themselves, in activities as the masters of a strange community, but the novelties of the tropics lost their flavor. What did a man want with oranges when there were apples? What was a rice swamp compared with a corn field? Think of the immeasurable superiority, as a steady thing, of an Irish potato to a banana, or a peach to a pineapple! What was a Chinese pony alongside a Kentucky horse, or a water buffalo with the belly of a hippopotamus and horns crooked as a saber and long as your arm to one who had seen old-fashioned cows, and bulls whose bellowing was as the roaring of lions? The miserable but mighty buffaloes were slower than oxen and, horns and all, tame as sheep--the slaves of serfs! As for the Chinese, if there were no other objection, they should be condemned because too numerous--faithful, perhaps, in a way, but appearing with too much frequency in the swarming streets. And the women, with hair hanging down their backs, one shoulder only sticking out of their dresses, the skin shining like a scoured copper kettle; a skirt tight around the hips and divided to show a petticoat of another tint, a jacket offering further contrasts in colors, slippers flapping under naked heels, faces solemn as masks of death heads--oh, for the rosy and jolly girls we left behind us in tears! How beautiful were the dear golden-haired and blue-eyed blondes of other days! The boys wanted at least tobacco and aerated waters to soothe themselves with, and if there was not to be any more fighting, what was the matter with going home? They also serve, however, who only stand and wait--there are no soldiers or sailors in the world who are in a position of greater interest and usefulness than those of the American army and navy who hold fast with arms the capital city of the Philippines. The army, though much exposed, has not suffered severely from sickness. There has been an intense and protracted strain upon the men of the ships, but they have recovered from the amiable weakness for home, and they are not merely well; they are more than plain healthy--they are hearty and happy! There is the light of good times in their faces. One thing in their favor is they have not been allowed to eat unwholesome food, and the floors of the warboats and every piece of metal or wood that is in sight is polished and glistening with cleanliness. The soldiers will feel better when the postoffice is in working order and they will do better by their organs of digestion when they are not deluged with fizz--that is, pop, and beer made without malt, and the strange, sweetish fruits that at first were irresistible temptations. "Come with me and see the men of the Olympia," said Admiral Dewey, "and see how happy they are, though they have been shut up here four months." And the men did look jolly and bright, and proud of the Admiral as he of them, and they were pleased when he noticed, kindly, the hostile little monkey, who is the mascot, and the other day bit the Captain. The health of the boys was preserved at sea by systematic exercise. Not a transport crossed the Pacific that was not converted into a military school, and each floating schoolhouse had about 1,000 pupils. They were put through gymnastics and calisthenics when, as a rule, they were barefooted and wore no clothes but their undershirts and trousers. There was even a scarcity of suspenders. The drill-masters were in dead earnest, and their voices rang out until the manifestation of vocal capacity excited admiration. The boys had to reach suddenly for heaven with both hands and then bring their arms to their sides with swinging energy. Then they had to strike out right and left to the order "Right!" "Left!" until the sergeant was satisfied. Next each foot had to be lifted and put down quickly at the word of command; then it was needful that the legs should he widely separated in a jump and closed up with vigor; then the spinal columns swayed forward and back and all the joints and muscles had something to do. This was no laughing matter to any one, though it was funny enough from the ordinary standpoint of civil life. This medicine was taken day after day, and seemed to vindicate itself. It was esteemed a good thing for the boys to perspire from exercise. There was no trouble, though, when south and west of Honolulu, in having substantially Turkish baths in the bunks at night, and there were queer scenes on deck--men by hundreds scantily clothed and sleeping in attitudes that artists might have chosen to advantage for life studies. It was necessary for those who walked about, during the hours thus given to repose, where the enlisted men took their rest with their undershirts and drawers around them, to be careful not to tramp on the extended limbs. Once I feared I had hit a soldier's nose with my heavy foot when stepping over him in a low light, and was gratified that my heel had merely collided with a big boy's thumb. He had gone to sleep with his head protected by his hand. I paused long enough to note that the sheltering hand if clinched would have been a mighty and smiting fist; and I was doubly pleased that I had not tramped on his big nose. Not infrequently, when we were steaming along the 20th parallel of north latitude--that is to say, well in the torrid zone--and were wafted by the trade winds that were after us at about our own speed, heavy showers came up in the night and spoiled the luxurious content of those who were spread on the decks. The boys got in good form through the longest journey an army ever made--for the distance is greater from the United States to the Philippines than from Spain--and every week the skill of a soldier in acquiring the lessons of the climate and the best methods of taking care of himself will become more useful, and the tendency will be to settle down to the business of soldiering, make the best of it and accept it as educational--an experience having in it the elements of enduring enjoyments. "The days when I was in Manila, away down in the south seas, but a little way from the island from which came the wild man of Borneo," will be pleasant in remembrance, and there will be perpetually an honorable distinction in identification with an ambitious yet generous enterprise, one of the most remarkable a nation can undertake--not excepting the Roman conquests all around the Mediterranean, and that touched the northern sea, invading England. In the later days of August there were in the prisons of Manila, which answer to the penitentiary and jail in the American States, 2,200 prisoners, one of whom was a Spaniard! The prisons are divided only by a high wall and contain many compartments to assist in classification. There are considerable spaces devoted to airing the prisoners, and one in which the privileged are permitted to amuse themselves with games. The guard consisted, when I visited the place, of sixty-three soldiers from Pennsylvania. There were many women imprisoned. One who had been shut up for more than a year was taken into custody because she had attempted rather informally to retake possession of a house of which she had been proprietor and out of which she had been fraudulently thrown. Her crime was a hysterical assertion of her rights and her uninvited tenants were Spaniards. One of the buildings contained the criminals alleged to be desperate, and as they stood at the windows the chains on their right legs were in sight. It was plainly seen in several cases that the links of the chains used were about three inches long and that three or four turns were taken around the right ankle. In a group of prisoners waiting for supper to be handed them in pans in the open air a large number wore chains. Many of the prisoners were incarcerated as insurgents, having offended by refusing to espouse the Spanish cause or by some other capital criminality in that line of misconduct! A commission was investigating their cases and the Filipinos who had not satisfied the Spanish requirements were represented by an able lawyer who was well informed and disposed to do justice. Sixty-two of the inmates of the penitentiary held for discontent with the Spanish system of government were to be discharged as soon as the papers could be made out. Many most interesting questions arise in connection with the capitulation of the Spanish army. It was agreed that the Spaniards, upon surrendering and giving up the public property, should be entitled to the honors of war. It was expressly understood that the arms the troops gave up were to be retained. In case the Americans abandoned the islands or the Spaniards departed the rifles should be given them, and usage would seem to determine that this return of weapons must include the Mausers in the hands of the troops now prisoners of war and the cartridges they would carry if they took the field. Then arises a difficulty as to the precise meaning of the words "public property." There were laid down by the Spaniards about 12,000 Mausers and Remingtons, and there were 10,000 in the arsenals--22,000 in all. It is admitted that 12,000 personally surrendered rifles go back to the Spaniards, whether they or we go away from the islands--as one or the other is sure to do--but the 10,000 stand of arms in the arsenals come under the head of "public property," and so should be retained permanently by the Americans. The number of ball cartridges a soldier starting out to make a march carries is 100. There were surrendered more than 500 rounds to the man. The public money was public property, of course, and General Greene demanded the keys to the vault containing it. The Spanish authorities objected, but yielded after presenting a written protest. The money consisted of Spanish and Mexican dollars, a lot of silver bars and change fused into one mass, and some gold in the same state, also $247,000 in copper coin, which was regarded, under the old dispensation, good stuff to pay poor wages to poor men and women. There are some fine points about customs. The American flag floats over the city, and the importers and exporters want to know what the charges are and how much the private concessions must be. Some of these people ran around for several days with the object of placing a few hundred Mexican dollars in the hands of officials, where they would do the most good, and could not find anybody ready to confer special favors for hard cash. These pushing business men had been accustomed to meet calls for perquisites, and did not feel safe for a moment without complying with that kind of formality. They turned away embarrassed and disappointed, and were surprised to learn that they were on a ground floor that was wide enough to accommodate everybody. It should be mentioned in this connection, also, a Mexican dollar passes in Manila for 50 cents American. The price of Mexican dollars in the banks of San Francisco and Honolulu is 46 and 47 cents. The way it works is illustrated in paying in a restaurant for a lunch--say for two. If the account is $2 you put down a $5 United States gold piece and receive in change eight Mexican dollars. If you buy cigars at $40 per 1,000 a $20 American gold piece pays the $40 bill. There is now pretty free coinage of Mexican dollars and they answer admirably as 50-cent coins. That is one of the ways in which free coinage of silver removes prejudices against the white metal; no one thinks of objecting to a Mexican dollar as a half-dollar, and our boys, paid in American gold, have a feeling that their wages are raised because all over the city one of their dollars counts two in the settlement of debts. These useful American dollars are admitted free of duty. The headquarters of the American administration in Manila are in the city hall, situated in the walled city, with a park in front that plainly has been neglected for some time. It also fronts upon the same open square as the cathedral, while beyond are the Jesuit College and the Archbishop's palace. Just around the corner is a colossal church, and a triangular open space that has a few neglected trees and ought to be beautiful but is not. A street railroad passes between the church and the triangle, and the mule power is sufficient to carry at a reasonable rate a dozen Spanish officers and as many Chinamen. The fare is 1 cent American--that is, 2 cents Philippine--and the other side of the river you are entitled to a transfer, but the road is short and drivers cheap. There is a system of return coupons that I do not perfectly understand. The truth about the street railway system is that there is very little of it in proportion to the size of the city, but the average ride costs about 1 cent. If the Americans stay there is an opening for a trolley on a long line. There is no matter of business that does not depend upon the question: Will the Americans stay? If they do all is well; if they do not all is ill, and enterprise not to be talked of. The most important bridge across the Pasig is the bridge of Spain. The street railway crosses it. The carriages and the coolies, too, must keep to the left. It is the thoroughfare between the new and old cities, and at all hours of the day is thronged. It is a place favored by the native gig drivers to whip heavily laden coolies out of the way. A big Chinaman with powerful limbs, carrying a great burden, hastens to give the road to a puny creature driving a puny pony, lashing it with a big whip, and scrambles furiously away from a two-wheeler whirling along a man able to pay a 10-cent fare. In other days when one passed this bridge he faced the botanical gardens, which had a world-wide reputation, an attraction being a wonderful display of orchids. There were also beautiful trees; now there are only stumps, disfigurements and desolation--some of the horrors of war. The gardens were laid waste by the Spaniards as a military precaution. As they seem to have known that they could not or would not put up a big fight for the city, what was the use of the destructiveness displayed in the gardens, parks and along the boulevards? The fashion of taking a garden and making a desert of it and calling it one of the military necessities of war is, however, not peculiar to the chieftains of Spain. Crossing the bridge of Spain to the walled city and turning to the right there are well-paved streets bordered with strips of park beside the river, that is rushing the same way if you are going to headquarters; and the object that tells where to turn off to find the old gateway through the wall, with a drawbridge over the grassy moat, is a Monument to Alphonse, whose memory it is the habit of these people to celebrate. Approaching the city hall (headquarters) there is a white-walled hospital to note; then comes a heavy mass of buildings on a narrow street, and the small square already styled in this article a park, and we arrive at the grand entrance of the official edifice. The room devoted to ceremony is so spacious that one must consent that magnitude is akin to grandeur. There is the usual double stairway and a few stone steps to overcome. On the right and left under the second lift of stairs were corded the Spanish Mausers and Remingtons and many boxes of cartridges. I have several times noticed soldiers tramping on loose cartridges as though they had no objection at all to an explosion. You can tell the Mauser ammunition, because the cartridges are in clips of five, and the little bullets famous for their long flight are covered with nickel. The Remington bullets are bigger and coated with brass. Something has been said to the effect that the Remington balls used by the Spaniards are poisonous and that it is uncivilized to manufacture them. The object of the Mauser and Remington system in covering the bullets, the one with nickel and the other with brass, is not to poison, but to prevent the lead from fouling the rifles. The point is almost reached in modern guns of 2,000 and 3,000 yards range where the friction of the gun barrel and the speed of the missile at the muzzle are sufficient to fuse unprotected lead, and at any rate so much of the soft material would soon he left in the grooves as to impair accuracy and endanger the structure of the arm. Right ahead when the first stairs are cleared is a splendid hall, with a pair of gilded lions on a dais, and some of the boys had adorned these beasts with crowns of theatrical splendor. The arms of Spain are conspicuous, and in superb medallions illustrious warriors, statesmen, authors, artists and navigators, look down from the walls upon desks now occupied by American officers. Above this floor the stairs are blocks of hardwood, the full width of the stairway and the height of the step, and this earthquake precaution does not detract from the dignity of the building, for the woodwork is massive and handsome. A marvelous effect might be produced in some of the marble palaces of private citizens in our American cities by the construction of stairways with the iron-hard and marble-brilliant wood that is abundant in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Luzon. The hall in which the city council met, now the place of the provost-marshal's court, is furnished in a style that puts to shame the frugality displayed in the council chambers of our expensively governed American cities, where men of power pose as municipal economists. In the elevated chair of the President, faced by the array of chairs of the Spanish councilmen, or aldermen, sits the provost-marshal judge, and before him come the soldiers who have forgotten themselves and the culprits arrested by the patrol. On the wall above him is a full-length likeness of the Queen Regent--a beautiful, womanly figure, with a tender and anxious mother's solicitous face. She looks down with sad benignity upon the American military government. There is also a portrait of the boy king, who becomes slender as he gains height, and rather sickly than strong. It may be that too much care is taken of him. In the corner room at the end of the corridor Major-General Otis received at his desk the news that Generals Merritt and Greene were ordered home, and that he was the major-general commanding and the chief of the civil, as well as the military department of the government. He had already found much to do and tackled the greater task with imperturbable spirit and a habit of hard work with, his friends say, no fault but a habit that is almost impracticable of seeing for himself almost everything he is himself held responsible for. If he has a weakness of that sort he has a rare opportunity to indulge it to the full extent of his personal resources. He certainly dispatches business rapidly, decides the controverted points quickly and has a clear eye for the field before him. His record is a good one. When the war of the States came on he was a New York lawyer--his home is at Rochester. Near the close of the war he was wounded on the Weldon road, along which Grant was extending his left wing to envelop Petersburg. He was struck by a musket ball almost an inch from the end of the nose, and the course of it was through the bones of the face under the right eye, passing out under the right ear. He was "shot through the head," and suffered intensely for a long time, but maintained his physical vitality and mental energy. His face is but slightly marked by this dreadful wound. He has been a hard student all his life, and is an accomplished soldier, as well as an experienced lawyer. His judicial services in court-martials have been highly estimated. Altogether he is well equipped for executing the various duties of his position. He will "hold the fort in good shape." In an adjacent room, Assistant Adjutant-General Strong, son of the ex-mayor of New York, a young man of much experience in the national guard and a sharp shooter, sticks to business with zeal and knowledge, and in a very few days established a reputation as a helper. So much has been said in disparagement of the "sons of somebodies" that it is a pleasure to put in evidence the cleverness and intelligent industry of Captain Strong, late of the 69th New York, and of Captain Coudert, of New York. General Merritt took possession of the palace of the governor-general, overlooking the river, a commodious establishment, with a pretentious gate on the street, a front yard full of shrubbery and rustling with trees, a drive for carriages and doors for their occupants at the side and a porte cochere, as the general said with a twinkle of his eye, for the steam launch which was a perquisite of the Governor. The commanding general of the Philippine expedition enjoyed the life on the river, along which boats were constantly passing, carrying country supplies to the city and returning. The capacity of canoes to convey fruit and vegetables and all that the market called for was an unexpected disclosure. There were unfailing resources up the river or a multitude of indications were inaccurate. The General's palace is more spacious than convenient; the dining room designed for stately banquets, but the furniture of the table was not after the manner of feasts, though the best the country afforded, and the supply of meat improved daily, while the fruit told of the kindly opulence of the tropics. There was a work of art in the palatial headquarters that the commanding general highly appreciated--a splendid but somber painting of the queen regent in her widow's weeds, holding the boy king as a baby on her right shoulder, her back turned to the spectator, gloomy drapery flowing upon the carpet, her profile and pale brow and dark and lustrous hair shown, her gaze upon the child and his young eyes fixed upon the spectator. This picture has attracted more attention than any other in Manila, and the city is rich in likenesses of the queen mother and the royal boy, who, without fault have upon them the heavy sorrows of Spain in an era of misfortune and humiliation; and it will take some time for the Spanish people, highly or lowly placed, to realize that the loss of colonies, as they have held them, is a blessing to the nation and offers the only chance of recuperation and betterment in Spain's reputation and relations with the world. The governor-general's palace, with General Merritt for General, was a workshop, and the highly decorated apartments, lofty and elaborate, were put to uses that had an appearance of being incongruous. The cot of the soldier, shrouded in a mosquito bar, stood in the midst of sumptuous furniture, before towering mirrors in showy frames, and from niches looked down marble statues that would have been more at home in the festal scenes of pompous life in the sleepy cities of dreamy lands. There was no more striking combination than a typewriting machine mounted on a magnificent table, so thick and resplendent with gold that it seemed one mass of the precious metal--not gilt, but solid bullion--and the marble top had the iridescent glow of a sea shell. This was in the residence of the General, his dining and smoking rooms and bedrooms for himself and staff, the actual headquarters being next door in the residence of the secretary-general. Here was a brilliant exhibition of mirrors, upon some of which were paintings of dainty design and delicate execution, queerly effective. The tall glasses stood as if upon mantles. There were other glasses that duplicated their splendors; through the open doors down the street, which was the one for the contemplation of the gorgeous--and down the street means into the modern end of the city--was the residence of the Spanish Admiral of the annihilated fleet, Montijo. It had been the property of and was the creation of a German, who got rich and got away in good time with $1,000,000 or more, selling his house to one of the rich Chinese, who had the fortune, good, bad or indifferent, to become the landlord of the Admiral whose ships disappeared in a vast volume of white vapor on the May morning when the Americans came and introduced themselves. General Greene's headquarters were in the house the German merchant built, the Chinese millionaire bought, and the Admiral, without a fleet since the 1st of May, rented. The furnishing was rich; there were frescoes that were aglow with the tropic birds and window curtains that were dreams. The vast mansions of the ex-officials were not, however, such as would have been sought as accommodations for the management of the military and other affairs, and there was much lacking to comfort; but as the hotels after the siege were not tolerable, the officers had to discover houses in which they could develop resources, and the public property was that of those who conquered to the extent to which it had belonged to those displaced. The Americans got out of the chaotic hotels soon as possible, for there were some things in them simply not endurable. They rent houses and employ servants and set up housekeeping. The newspaper correspondents have been driven to this, and they are comparatively happy. They have found ponies almost a necessary of life, and food that is fair is attainable, while the flowing hydrants remove a good deal of privation and apprehension. The water is from an uncontaminated stream, and though slightly soiled after heavy rainfalls, it is not poisonous, and that is what many American and European cities cannot truthfully say of their water supplies. The demand for houses by the Americans has raised the views of the proprietors. The street on which the official Spaniards meant to flourish, as Weyler, Blanco and others had done before them, and had not time to reap a harvest of plunder before the days of doom came, would be called by the citizens of Cleveland, O., the Euclid avenue of the town. It runs out to the old fort where the Spaniards made their stand "for the honor of the arms of Spain." The English and German and Chinese successful men reside in this quarter. The majority of those who have provided themselves with houses by the river and fronting on the street most approved, looking out through groves and gardens, are Chinese half-castes, claiming Chinese fathers and Philippine mothers. These are the most rapacious and successful accumulators, and they would all be glad to see the Americans stay, now that they are there, and have shown themselves so competent to appreciate desirable opportunities and understand the ways and means, the acquirements and the dispensations of prosperity as our troops entered the city by the principal residence street, it was noticed that guards were left at all the houses that displayed the British flag--a reward for English courtesy, and the feeling of the troops that the British are our friends. CHAPTER XIII The White Uniforms of Our Heroes in the Tropics. The Mother Hubbard Street Fashion in Honolulu, and That of Riding Astride--Spoiling Summer Clothes in Manila Mud--The White Raiment of High Officers--Drawing the Line on Nightshirts--Ashamed of Big Toes--Dewey and Merritt as Figures of Show--The Boys in White. Recent experiences of the United States excite attention to the fashions of the tropics. In Florida our soldiers who invaded Cuba were in a degree and sense acclimated for the temperature of the island that has been for so long "so near, and yet so far," so wet and yet so hot. But the troops of the Philippine expedition were not prepared by the chilly blasts from the mountains of California for the exceedingly soft airs of Hawaii, though Honolulu was a pleasant introductory school to Manila. Our new possession two thousand miles from the continent, has been preparing for the destiny realized for two generations, and the American ladies who dwell in the islands of perpetual summer in the Pacific, have not submitted wholly to the dominion of the climate and composed themselves to languish in loose and gauzy garments when on the streets. But the Honolulu women, in general, who largely are in the possession of luxuriant proportions, are enveloped in the blandishments of Mother Hubbards, and do not even tie strings about themselves to show where they would have spectators to infer their waists ought to be. They go about flowing and fluttering in freedom, and have all the advantages due the total abandonment of corsets, and suffer none of the horrors of tight lacing recorded in medical publications. The Mother Hubbard gown is not without its attractions, but we can hardly say they are too obvious, and slender figures are lost in voluminous folds that are billowy in the various ways and means of embracing the evolutions of beauty. And the native singers seem fully justified in throwing the full force of their lungs and the rapture of their souls into the favorite chorus, "The Honolulu Girls Are Good Enough for Me." The refrains of the Hawaiian songs are full of a flavor of pathos, and there is the cry of sorrows, that seem to be in the very air, but belong to other ages. The Honolulu females of all races have flung away side saddles with their corsets, and bestride horses and mules with the confidence in the rectitude of their intentions that so besets and befits the riders of bicycles. People would stare with disapproval in Honolulu to see a woman riding with both legs on the same side of a horse, and those wandering abroad in the voluminous folds of two spacious garments disapprove the unusual and unseemly spectacle. It is as hot in some parts of Texas, Arizona and California as in any of the islands of the seas of the South, but we had not been educated in the art of clothing armies for service in the torrid zone, until the Philippine expedition was undertaken, and we were making ready for challenging the Spaniards in their Cuban fastnesses, when it speedily was in evidence that we wanted something more than blue cloth and blankets. The Spanish white and blue stuff and straw hats were to our eyes unsightly and distasteful, and we began with a variety of goods. Our army hats were found good, but we tried nearly all things before holding onto anything as sufficient for trousers and coats. The officers on long journeys speedily resolved, if we may judge from the results, that the suit most natty and nice for wear within twenty degrees of the Equator was the perfect white, and so the snowy figures below shoulder straps became familiar. This did not, of course, indicate acute stages of active service. Never were campaigns more destructive of good looks in clothing, than those in assailing Santiago and Manila, in which the thin stuffs were tested in torrential rain and ditches full of mud. The compensation was that the volunteers fresh from the camps of instruction, put on in a few days the appearance of veteran campaigners. In Manila there was an edifying contrast between the Spaniards who had surrendered and the Americans who did not pause when the Mausers were fired into their ranks, not with the faintest hope of successful resistance, but for the "honor of Spain." The Spanish soldiers had been well sheltered and came out in fairly clean clothes, while the soldiers of our nation closed up dingy ranks, suited for hunting in swamps and thickets, their coats, hats and trousers the color of blasted grass and decayed leaves. The passage of the line from the new to the old clothes was sudden, and the gallant boys in blue were not in the least disconsolate over the discoloration of their uniforms, having reached the stage where it was a luxury to sleep on a floor or pavement, without wasting time to find a soft or quiet spot. The sombre taste of the Spanish ladies in dress, so famous and effective that the black mantillas and skirts, and the fans that do such execution in the hands of the dark-eyed coquettes, as to have sway where empires have been lost and won--control Cuba, but does not dominate the Philippines. The Pope of the period, it will be remembered, divided the new worlds discovered by the navigators of Spain and Portugal, awarding to the best of his knowledge, by a line drawn south from the southern shore of the Caribbean Sea. Portugal holding that to the eastward and Spain that to the westward. Hence the separation of South America between Brazil and the rest of the central and south American states, to await the inevitable end of the evolutions that were the revolutions of independence. Magellines, a Portuguese, who, being slighted in his own country, went over to the Spaniards, and pointed out that by sailing west the east would be attained, and so found the straits that bear his name, and the Ladrones and Philippines, annihilating the Papal boundary line by taking and breaking it from the rear. The conquest of the Philippines by the Spaniards has not been complete as a military achievement or the enforcement of the adoption of customs and costumes according to the habits and taste of the conquerors, who have nibbled at the edges of the vast archipelago, greater in its length and breadth and its natural riches than the West Indies. The Spanish ladies in the Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure of breast and back. There is no expression of immodesty. The woman of the Philippines is sad as she is swarthy, and her melancholy eyes are almost always introspective, or glancing far away, and revising the disappointed dreams of long ago. Profounder grief than is read in the faces of bronze and copper no mourning artist has wrought nor gloomy poet written. Below the jacket, the everlasting blazer, is a liberal width of cloth tightly drawn about the loins, stomach and hips, making no mistake in revelations of the original outline drawings, or the flexibilities which the activities display. There are two skirts, an outer one that opens in front, showing the tunic, which is of a color likely to be gaudy and showing strangely with the outer one. The feet are exposed, and if not bare, clothed only in clumsy slippers with toe pieces, and neither heels nor uppers. Women carry burdens on their heads, and walk erect and posed as if for snap photographs. The young girls are fond of long hair, black as cannel coal, and streaming in a startling cataract to the hips. It seems that the crop of hair is unusually large, and it shines with vitality, as the breeze lifts it in the sunshine. The Philippine boys are still more lightly clad than the girls, who have an eye to queer combinations of colors, and the revelation of the lines that distinguish the female form without flagrant disclosure. There is much Philippine dressing that may under all the surroundings be called modest, and the prevalent expression of the Filipino is that of fixed but bewildered grief. The males are rather careless, and display unstinted the drawings of legs, that are copper-colored and more uniform in tint than symmetry. Two or three rags do a surprisingly extensive service, and all the breezes cause the fluttering of fantastic but scanty raiment. It is a comfort to return to a country where people wear clothing not as a flimsy and inadequate disguise. What will be the influence of our armies bent to the tropics, upon the dress of Americans? It is a question that may be important. The "wheel" has introduced knickerbockers and promises to result in knee breeches. On the transports that have traversed the Pacific the soldiers were fond of taking exercise in undershirts and drawers only and they swarmed from their bunks at night, to sleep on deck, sometimes condescending to spread blankets to take the edge off the cruelty of the hard wood, but reluctant to be encumbered with undershirts. Their favorite night dress was drawers only, and they acted upon the false theory that one cannot take cold at sea. The authority of officers was often necessary to impress the average soldier that he ought to have an undershirt between his skin and the sky. The boys were during their long voyage very sparing in the use of shoes and stockings, and it has perhaps never before occurred in American experiences that there was such an opportunity to study the infinite variety of the big toe, and, indeed, of all the toes. In active army service the care of the feet is essential. The revelations on shipboard disclose the evils of ill-fitting shoes to be most distrusting. One of the claims of West Point for high consideration is in teaching the beauty of white trousers, and our tropical army experiences will extend the fashion. When General Merritt and Admiral Dewey parted on the deck of the China in Manila harbor, both were clad in spotless white, their caps, coats and trousers making a showy combination. There was also a group of sea captains who had gathered to give the Captain of the China a good send-off, and they with the staff officers, were all in radiant white. There was not a boy in blue among them. The illustrious General and Admiral reminded me of Gabriel Ravel, when in his glory as The White Knight. It would be hard to say which wore the nattier cap, but that of the Admiral was of the more jaunty cut, while the General--gold cord for a band and gold buttons, especially became his blue eyes. If the officers of the army, navy and transports could be photographed as they stood in dazzling array, as if hewn from marble, the fashion plate resulting would be incomparably attractive, and in the summers to come we shall find among the influences of our tropical adventure and possessions a heightening of the colors worn by American ladies, and a whitening of the suits of gentlemen, involving the necessity of "calling in" white coats, as well as straw hats on stated days in early September. CHAPTER XIV A Martyr to the Liberty of Speech. Dr. Jose Rizal, the Most Distinguished Literary Man of the Philippines, Writer of History, Poetry, Political Pamphlets, and Novels, Shot on the Luneta of Manila--A Likeness of the Martyr--The Scene of His Execution, from a Photograph--His Wife Married the Day Before His Death--Poem Giving His Farewell Thoughts, Written in His Last Hours--The Works That Cost Him His Life--The Vision of Friar Rodriguez. There is history, romance and tragedy in the martyrdom of Dr. Rizal, whose execution by shooting on the Luneta two years ago is a notable incident of the cruelties of Spanish rule. This was on account of the scholarship, the influence, the literary accomplishments, and the personal distinction of the man. Dr. Rizal was easily the foremost writer his race and country has produced. He was a poet, novelist, political essayist, and historian, and his execution was for the crime of loving his country, opposing the Spaniards, criticising and lampooning the priests. He is called the Tagalo Martyr, for he was of the tribe of Malay origin, the most numerous and rebellious in the Philippine Islands. His fate was shocking. He was an intelligent, learned man, an enthusiastic patriot, who had been educated in Spain and France. For writing a book against Spanish oppression he was exiled to the Island of Dapitan. There he met a young woman of Irish parentage, with whom he fell in love. They were engaged to be married, when, on some pretext, the Doctor was brought back to Manila, sent to Madrid to be tried, and then sent back to Manila. The unhappy girl to whom he was betrothed tells the rest of the story: "Everyone knew that Dr. Rizal was innocent. All that could be brought against him was the publication of his book, and the Spanish officials who tried him had never even read it. Nevertheless, he was condemned to death. I then asked permission to be married to him, and they granted my request, thinking to add to the horror of his martyrdom. The marriage was celebrated by a friar the same day on which he was sentenced. I passed the whole night on my knees in prayer before the prison door, which shut my husband from me. When morning dawned, the Doctor came out, surrounded by soldiers, his hands bound behind his back. They took him to the Luneta, the fashionable promenade of the city, where all military executions take place. The lieutenant in command of the firing party asked my husband where he would prefer to be shot. He replied 'Through the heart.' 'Impossible,' said the lieutenant. 'Such a favor is granted only to men of rank. You will be shot in the back.' A moment after my husband was dead. The soldiers shouted, 'Hurrah for Spain,' and I, 'Hurrah for the Philippines and death to Spain.' I asked for the body. It was refused me. Then I swore to avenge his death. I secured a revolver and dagger and joined the rebels. They gave me a Mauser rifle, and the Philippines will be free." In his poem, filled with his last thoughts--his exalted dreams that had faded, his patriotic sentiments that were bloody dust and ashes, his love for the woman he was allowed to marry a few hours before he was shot, his woeful love for his troop of devoted friends, who would have died for him and with him if the sacrifice then and there had not been hopeless--it will be discovered that he was a true poet, and we give one of his stories that was hostile to the orders of the Church, and a satire on Spanish rule, showing why he was a martyr. The following is a prose translation from the Spanish of the poem Dr. Rizal wrote the night before he was executed: _My Last Thoughts._ Farewell! my adored country; region beloved of the sun; pearl of the Orient sea; our lost Eden! I cheerfully give for thee my saddened life, and had it been brighter, happier and more rosy, I would as willingly give it for thy sake. Unhesitatingly and without regret others give thee their lives in frenzied fight on the battlefield. But what matter the surroundings! Be they cypress, laurel or lilies, scaffold or open country, combat or cruel martyrdom, it is all the same, when for country and home's redress. I die while watching the flushing skies announce through dark mantle the advent of a day. Should it need purple to tint its dawn, here is my blood; I gladly will shed it if only it be gilded by a ray of new-born light. My dreams while only a boy, and when of vigor full, a youth, were always to see thee, jewel of the Orient sea! thy black eyes dry, thy frownless face uplifted, and spotless thine honor. Dream of my life! My fervent anxiety! Shouts the soul that soon is to depart, Hail! It is glorious to fall to give thee flight; to die to give thee life; to die under thy Skies, and in thy maternal bosom eternally to sleep. Shouldst thou find some day over my grave, a lonesome, humble flower, blossoming through the dense foliage, take it to your lips and kiss my soul. Let me feel upon my forehead under the cold tomb your warm and tender breath. Let the moon with her soft and silent light watch over me; let dawn spread its fulgent splendor; let the wind moan with solemn murmur. And should a bird descend and repose upon my cross, let it there proclaim a canticle of peace. Let the burning sun evaporate the dew, spreading through space the notes of my songs. Let a friendly being mourn my early end, praying on calm evenings, when thou also, oh, dear country! should pray to God for me. Pray for all those who died unhonored; for those who suffered unequaled torments; for our poor mothers who silently grieve; for orphans and for widows; for prisoners in torture; and pray for thyself that thou mayest attain thy final redemption. And when the dark shades of night enwrap the cemetery, and the dead are left alone to watch, do not disturb their rest, do not disturb their mystery. Shouldst thou hear chords of a zither, it is I, beloved country! who sings to thee. And when my grave, by all forgotten, is marked by neither cross nor stone, let the ploughman scatter its mould; and my ashes before returning to nothing will become the dust of your soil. Then, I will not mind if thou castest me into oblivion. Thy atmosphere, thy space, thy valleys I will cross. A vibrating, limpid note I will be in your ear; aroma, color, rumor, song, a sigh, constantly repeating the essence of my faith. My idolized country! grief of my griefs! My adored Philippines! Hear my last farewell. I leave them all with thee; my fathers and my loves. I go where there are no slaves, no oppressors, no executioners; where faith is not death; where He who reigns is God. Farewell! fathers and brothers, parts of my soul! Friends of my infancy in the lost home. Give thanks that I should rest from the fatiguing day. Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, my joy. Farewell, beloved beings. To die is to rest. _Jose Rizal._ _The Vision of Friar Rodriguez._ Comfortably seated in an arm chair one night, satisfied with himself as well as with his supper, Friar Jose Rodriguez dreamed of the many pennies that the sale of his little books was drawing from the pockets of the Filipinos, when suddenly, and as if by enchantment, the yellow light of the lamp gave a brilliant, white flash, the air was filled with soft perfume, and without his being able to explain how or wherefrom, a man appeared. This was an old man of medium height, dark complected and thin, whose white beard was a contrast to his glittering vivacious eyes, which gave his face extreme animation. Over his shoulder he wore a long cape; a mitre on his head and a crosier in his hand gave him the aspect of a Bishop. At sight of him, Friar Rodriguez yawning, murmured: "Dreams of my fertile imagin--!" The vision did not permit him to finish the exclamation, but gave him a whack between the shoulders. "Eh! This is no joke!" exclaimed Friar Rodriguez, stroking with one hand the afflicted part while with the other he rubbed his eyes. "I see! It is no dream! But partner!" Incensed at such familiarity, the strange personage began poking Friar Rodriguez severely with his crosier on the stomach. The latter, satisfied by this time that the thrashing was in earnest, exclaimed: "Here! Here! Friar Pedro (Peter)--Is that the way you cancel indulgencies? That was not the agreement." The strange Bishop, aroused to a high pitch of anger, stopped his poking and started to knock Friar Rodriguez on the head, believing it to be a more sensitive part. Unfortunately, Friar Rodriguez's head was too hard for anything, and the crosier fell, broken in two pieces. At last! said the poor friar, who, pale and deadly frightened, had fallen on his knees and was trying to creep away on all fours. At sight of his pitiful condition, the stranger seeded satisfied, and, placing on a table the broken crosier, said with contempt: "Homo sine homine, membra sine spiritu! Et iste appellatur filius meus!" At the sound of that potent voice and language, unknown to him, Friar Rodriguez appeared confounded. The stranger could not be Friar Pedro (Peter) nor any brother in disguise! Impossible! "Et tamen (the stranger continued), tanta est vanita vestra, ut ante me Patrem vestrum--sed video, loguor et non audis!" And shaking in disgust his head, the vision continued speaking in Castillian, but with a foreign accent. "And are you they who call themselves my sons? Has your haughtiness reached such a degree that you not only pretend to be feared and worshiped by governors and governed, but neither recognize nor respect me, whose name you dishonor, and whose condignity you abuse? How do I find you? Insolent with the unfortunate and cowardly towards those who do not fear you! Surge et audi!" His voice was so imperative and his command so expressive, that Friar Rodriguez, although shaking with tremor, made every effort to stand against a corner of the room. Moved by this proof of obedience, so rarely found amongst those who make a vow of humility, the stranger, full of contempt, repressed a sigh and proceeded in a more familiar manner, but without losing dignity. "For you and for your nonsense I have been obliged to leave that region, and come here! And what trouble I had to distinguish and find you amongst the others! With but little difference, you are all alike. 'Empty heads and replete stomachs!' _Up There_, they did not cease to tease me about you all and most especially on your account. It was useless to appear unconcerned. It was not only Lopez de Recalde (Ignatius of Loyole) who with his eternal smile and humble looks made fun of me; nor Domingo (Dominic) with his aristocratic pretensions and little stars of false jewelry on his forehead, who laughed at me; but even the great simpleton of Francisco (Francis), do you understand? tried to poke fun at me; at me, who has thought, argued and written more than all of them together! "Your order is great and powerful," said Ignatius, bending his head. "It resembles one of the Egyptian pyramids; great at the base (you are the base), but the higher it goes the smaller it becomes--what a difference between the base and the apex!" he murmured, while walking away. "Doctor," said Dominic, "why did you not do with your science as I did with the nobility I left as inheritance to my sons? We would all be better off!" "Mon ami, came and said Francis. If God should order me again to earth, to preach as before amongst brutes and animals, I would preach in your convents." And after saying this he roared in such a manner that although small and thin, it seemed as though he would burst. "In vain I answered them that their sons were no better than you are, and that were we to look for skeletons in the closets, we had better wall every crevice. But of no use. How could I argue against three, moreover, having you to defend! Three, did I say? Why! Even Peter, the old fisherman, attracted by the laughter, left his porter's lodge and came to upbraid me for the trick you have played on his priests, taking away from them all their parishes, regardless of the fact that they had been in these islands long before you, and that they were the first to baptise in Cebu and in Luzon. "Of course," he said, "as my sons are lazy and in dissension among themselves, and yours lie and shout louder, they make themselves believed by the ignorant. But I shall be glad when my descendants are extinct." "And so shall I! And I! I wish it was all over with mine!" shouted at once several voices. "But old Peter's revenge did not stop at that. Yesterday he played a hard joke on me. He not only confiscated a package that a Tagalo [5] brought with him, but instead of directing him to the imbecile's department, he took him where we all were. The poor Tagalo carried with him a large collection of little books written by you, which were given him by his Priest, who told him they represented so much indulgency for his next life. As soon as the Indian had arrived everyone _Up There_ knew he had brought books written by an Augustinian monk, and they were snatched away. I tried to hide myself, but I could not. What laughter and what jokes! The little angels came in a body; the Celestial Father's Orchestra lost its time; the Virgins, instead of watching their music sheets read the books and sang most discordantly, and even old Anthony's little pig began grunting and twisting his tail. "I felt ashamed; I could see every one point their finger at me and laugh. But, in spite of all this Zarathustra, the grave and serious Zarathustra, did not laugh. With a humiliating pride he asked me: "'Is that your son, he who pretends that my religion is paganish, and that I am a pagan? Have your sons degenerated to such a degree as to confound my pure religion, root of the most perfect creeds, with Polytheism and Idolatry? Do they know that paganism is derived from pagani, which means inhabitant of the fields, who always were faithful to the Greek and Roman Polytheism? You may answer that they do not know Latin! If so, make then speak more modestly. Tell them that paganus comes from pagus, from which the words pages, payes, paien, paese, pais (country), are derived. Tell those unfortunate that the Zend-Avesta religion was never professed by the rural inhabitants of the Roman country. Tell them that my religion is monotheist, even more so than the Roman Catholic religion, which not only accepted the dualism of my creed, but has deified several creatures. Tell them that Paganism in its widest and most corrupted sense, duly meant Polytheism; that neither my religion nor that of Moses nor Mohammed were ever Pagan religions. Tell them to read your own works, where in every page you refer to the Pagans. Repeat to them that which you said in speaking of the religion of the Manechees (a corruption of my doctrine by you professed) which influenced your works and prevails yet in your religion, and which at one time caused the Roman Catholic Church to vacillate. Yes: I linked the principle of Good and Evil together--Ahura-Mazda; God! But this is not to admit of two Gods, as you, yourself said. To speak of health and sickness is not to admit two healths. And what? Have they not copied my principle of evil in Satan, prince of darkness? Tell them that if they do not know Latin to at least study the religions, since they fail to recognize the true one!' "Thus spoke Zarathustra, or Zoroaster. Then, Voltaire--Voltaire, who had heard what you were saying about his death, accosted me, and grasping me by the hand, effusively thanked me. "'Why so?' I asked him. "'Your sons, mon cher Docteur de l'Eglise,' he answered, 'have proved and continue proving by facts, that which I maintained. And what was it that you maintained? That besides being ignorant, they were liars.' "To this I could not reply, for he was right. You should know that he died when 84 years of age, possessed of all his faculties, and with so lucid a mind that when nearing his end and being importuned to make confession, he said: 'Let me die in peace'--and died. But the worst of it all is, that Voltaire has been pleading with God to take you to Heaven alive and clothed, and when asked why so, he answered 'So that we may have some fun.' "On learning of all the indulgences that the Archbishop had allowed on your books, to allure buyers, old Peter, thumping his bald head, exclaimed: "'Why did I not think of granting indulgencies with the fish I sold, when a fisherman? We would have been rich, and Judas, instead of selling the Master, would have sold sardines and tinapa! [6] I would not have been obliged to cowardly apostatize, and would not have suffered martyrdom. Verily, I say, that my friend down _Below_ leaves me behind in the matter of knowing how to make money; and yet I am a Jew.' "'Of course, don't you know that your friend _Below_ is a Gallego?' [7] Said a little old man who had been _Up There_ but a few years. His name was Tasio, and, addressing himself to me, he continued: "'You are a great Doctor, and although you have contradicted yourself many times, I hold you as a privileged character of vast erudition, for, having written your books, Retractationum, and Confesiones; and since you are so different from your sons who try, when defending themselves, to make black appear white, and white green, I will state my complaints, so that you, as their Father, may put a stop to it all. "'There exists on earth an unfortunate, who, amongst many foolish acts, has committed the following: "'1st. He holds solidary of all that I have said during my earthly life, an Indian called Rizal, only because said Indian has quoted my words in a book that he wrote. As you can see, should we follow such a system of reasoning, Rizal would also agree with the views expressed by friars, policemen, etc., and you, yourself, Holy Doctor, would also be solidary of all that you ascribe to heretics, Pagans, and above all, to Manichees. "'2nd. He wants me to think as he himself does, since he quotes me as saying 'The Bible and the Holy Gospel.' It may be well that he, as all fanatics, should believe that these are one and the same thing. But I, having studied the original Hebraic Bible, know, that it does not contain the Gospel. That the Jewish Bible, being a history of creation, treasure and patrimony of Jewish people, the Jews, who do not accept the Gospel, should be authority. That as the Latin translation is incorrect, the Catholics could not lay down the Law, notwithstanding their habit of appropriating everything to themselves, and of misconstruing to their advantage the translation of the original text. Besides, the Gospels, with the exception of that written by Saint Mathew, were written in Greek later than the Bible, and conflict in every respect with the Law of Moses, as proved by the enemity between Jews and Christians. How, then, could I, knowing all this, express myself as a fanatic, or as an ignorant monk? I do not exact from any monk the speech of a free-thinker and therefore, they should not exact that I express myself as a monk would. Why do they want me to consolidate under one name two distinct things, which, to a certain extent contradict each other? Let the Christians do so, but I must not, and cannot. If I call them separately, it is in accordance with the thought inspiring two works, two legislations, two religions, on which they want to found the Catholic Religion. Your son, moreover, reasons finely, when he says: 'I did not know that the Gospels were different from the Bible, and not a principal part of it.' Tell him, Holy Father, that in every country a part, no matter how principal may it be, is always different from the whole, for instance: The principal thing in Friar Rodriguez is his habit: but his habit is different from Friar Rodriguez, as otherwise there would be one dirty Friar Rodriguez, another shining, another creased, another wide, short, long, greasy, etc. On the other hand, the habit is different from the monk, because a piece of cloth, no matter how dirty, could never be presumptuous, despotic, ignorant or obscurantistic. "'3d. To prove the existence of a Purgatory, he quotes: 'Saint Mathew says in Chapter twelfth, thirty-sixth verse----.' But he quotes wrongly, as from that verse cannot be derived the existence of a Purgatory, nor anything of its kind. The Hebrew text says: 'Wa 'ebif 'omar lakam kij 'al kal abar reg ashar idabbru 'abaschim yittbu heschboun biom hammischphat'; the Greek text, 'Lego de hynun hote pan rema argon, ho ean lalesosin hoi anthropoi, apodosousi peri auton logon en hemera kriseos.' All these translated into Latin say: 'Dicto autem vobis, quoniam omne verbum otiosum quod locuti fucrint homines, reddent rationem de co in die judicii,' which, translated into English means, '_And I say to you, that on the Day of Judgment, men shall have to account for every idle word_.' From all these texts, you can see, Holy Doctor, that the only thing to be derived is that on the Day of Judgment, Friar Rodriguez will have to give such an account of himself, that very likely it will take him two days to account for all the nonsense he has said. "'I imagine that your son, instead of the thirty-sixth verse, meant to quote the thirty-second, which says: "And all who shall say word against the son of man will be forgiven; but he who says word against the Holy Ghost, shall not be pardoned; neither in this life nor in the next." From this they have tried to derive the existence of a Purgatory. What a fertile imagination! "'4th. Because Saint Ireneus, St. Clement of Alexandria, and Origenes, three in all, although not being the first Christian, had some remote idea of Purgatory, it does not follow that the Christians of the first century did believe in it, unless it could be previously established that three persons represent a totality, even if amongst such a totality existed, contradictory ideas. But, as a proof that was it not so, you, yourself, Holy Doctor, being their father, having flourished in the fourth and fifth century, and supposed to be the greatest amongst the Fathers of the Church, denied most emphatically, in various instances, the existence of a Purgatory. In your CCXCV cermon, beginning by: 'Frecuenter charitatem vestra,' etc., you said very decidedly: 'Nemo se slecipiat fratres; _Duo_ cuim _loca_ sunt et _terius_ non est ullus. Qui cum Christo reguare non meruerit, cum diabolo _absque dubitatione ulla_ perebit.' This translated means, 'Do not deceive yourselves, brethren; there are but two places for the soul and there is no third place. He who should not deserve to live with Christ, _undoubtedly_ will perish.' "'Further on, in de Consolatione mortuorum, you say: 'Sed recedus anima quoe carnalibus oculis non videtur, ab angelis susciptur et collocatur, aut in sinu, Abrahae, si fidelis est, aut in carcerio inferni custodia si peccatrix est.' This means, 'But at the departure of that soul which the eyes of the flesh cannot see, the angels will receive and carry it to the Bosom of Abraham, if it has been faithful; or to Hell, if sinful.' On the other hand, I could quote a large number of your own texts showing that for you, Purgatory was not an impossibility. Add to all this what Saint Fulgentius, who flourished after you during the fifth and sixth century, says in Chapter XIV., of his 'de incarnatione et gratia,' etc.: 'Quicumque regnum Dei non ingreditur, poenis oeternis cruciatur.' That is to say, 'He who could not enter the Kingdom of God, will suffer eternal punishment.' "'5th. Your son either cannot read, or else acts in bad faith; otherwise, how could he, from my estatement, 'The Protestants _do not believe_ in it; neither do the Greek Fathers, because they miss,' etc., try to make 'The Greek Fathers DID NOT believe in a Purgatory?' "'How could he deduct from a present, a past tense and twist the sentences to make from it 'The Holy Greek Fathers?' "'I used '_believe_,' the present tense, although in my time the _Holy Greek Fathers_ did not exist, but simply the fathers belonging to the Greek Church. Moreover, as I was following an historical order, how could I refer to the Protestants, first, and to the _Holy Greek Fathers_ afterwards, who believed what they wished, and who at the time of my earthly life were a past to me? "'And enwrapped in such bad faith, he dares to qualify as a slanderer, imposter and ignoramus, the man who only quoted me! "'But such proceeding is worthy of Friar Rodriguez, who, following his system of confusing a part with the whole, tries to condemn another's book, and mistakes the rays of the sun for the sun itself, all with the purpose of slandering the author and calling him Freemason. "'Tell me, Holy Doctor, after what I have told you, who is the real ignoramus, impostor and slanderer? "'6th. Instead of accusing others of ignorance, and presuming to know everything, he should be careful, because he has not even read your books, notwithstanding you are his father, and that it is his duty to know what you have said. Should he have done so, he would neither have written so much nonsense nor would he have shown the shallowness of his knowledge, which, by the way, he derives from some little books, which, to propagate and maintain obscurantism, were published in Cataluna, [8] by Sarda y Salvany.' "Thus was old Tasio expressing himself, when the voice of the Almighty was heard summoning me to His presence. "Trembling, I approached, and prostrated myself at His feet.' "'Go to Earth,' said the voice, 'and tell those who call themselves your sons that I, having created millions of suns, around which, thousands of worlds, inhabited by millions of millions of beings, created by my infinite Mercy, gyrate, cannot be an instrument to the fulfilment of a few ungrateful creatures' passions, simply handfuls of dust carried away by a gust of wind; insignificant particles of the inhabitants of one of my smallest worlds!' "'Tell them that my Name must not be used to extend the misery or ignorance of their brothers, nor shall they restrain in my Name, intelligence and thought, which I created free. That they must not commit abuses in my Name, cause a tear, nor a single drop of blood to be shed. That they must not represent me as being cruel, revengeful, subject to their whims and executor of their will. Not to represent me, The Fountain of Goodness, as a tyrant, or an unkind Father, pretending that they are the only possessors of Light and Eternal Life. How? I, who have given to each being air, light, life and love, that he may be happy, could I deny to one of the most transcendental, true happiness, for the sake of others? Impious! Absurd! Tell them that I, who am All, and apart from whom nothing exists, nor could exist, I have not and cannot have enemies. Nothing equals me, and no one can oppose my will! "'Tell them that their enemies are not my enemies; that I have never identified myself with them, and that their maxims are vain, insensible, blasphemous! Tell them that I pardon error, but punish iniquity; that I will forgive a sin against me, but will prosecute those who should torture an unfortunate. That being infinitely Powerful, all the sins of all the inhabitants of all the worlds, thousands of times centuplicated, can never dim an atom of my glory. But the least injury to the poor and oppressed I will punish, for I have not created man to make him unhappy nor the victim of his brothers. I am the Father of all existent; I know the destiny of every atom; let me love all men, whose miseries and needs I know. Let each one perform his duty, that I, The God of Mercy, know my own will.' "Thus spoke the Almighty; and I came here to fulfill his command. Now, I say to you: "That the miseries of the unhappy Indian whom you have impoverished and stupefied, have reached the Throne of the Highest. _There_ have arrived so many intelligences obscured and impaired by you! The cry of so many exiles, tortured, and killed at your instigation! The tears of so many mothers and the miseries of so many orphans, combined with the noise of your orgies! Know that there is a God, (perhaps you doubt His existence, and only use His name to advance your ends) who will some day call you to account for all your iniquities. Know that He needs not the money of the poor, nor is it necessary to worship Him by burning candles and incense, saying masses or believing blindly what others say, contrary to common sense. "No! His luminary is greater than your own sun; His flowers more fragrant than those on earth. He suffices to Himself. He created intelligence for no subservient purpose; but that with its use, man could be happy in raising himself to Him. He needs no one. He created man, not for His sake, but for man's own. He is happy for all eternity! "You obstinately uphold the existence of a Purgatory, using even the most ignoble weapons and means to defend your belief. Why, instead of wasting your time in affirming the existence of that which you never saw, do you not preach and practice love and charity amongst yourselves? Why not preach words of comfort and hope, to somewhat soothe the miseries of life, instead of frightening your brothers by tales of future punishment? Why? Because Christ's True Doctrine would bring you no earthly wealth, and all that you look for is gold, and gold! And to satisfy your end and bleed the timid souls, of money, you have invented a Purgatory! Why afflict orphans and widows with dreadful tales of the next life, only to extort from them a few cents? Have you forgotten what the Apostle said? 'Nolo vos ignorare, fratres, de dormientibus, ut non contristenuni, sicut qui spem non habent,' which means, 'I do not wish you to ignore, brethren, that which concerns those who sleep, that you may not be saddened, like those who have lost all hope.' Also, that I, myself, have said? 'Hoec enim est Christianoe fidei summa: vitam veram expectare post mortem,' that is 'Here is then the summary of the Christian faith: to hope for a true life after death.' But you, lacking in charity, and for a vile, greedy interest, live in opposition to Christ, and pretend to be able to mould Divine Judgment. All the strength of your philosophy seems to be derived from your own theory, which denies the existence of souls sufficiently sinners to be condemned, or pure enough to enter the Kingdom of God! By whose authority do you pretend to oppose the judgment of Him who weighs and considers the smallest thought? Who knows it is impossible to expect perfection from beings made of clay, subject to the miseries and oppressions of earthly life? Who told you that He will judge as you, with your narrow, limited intelligence, do? That the miseries of this life are not expiations of sins? "Cease in your avaricious hoarding of wealth! You have now enough. Do not wrench from the poor his last mouthful of bread. "Remember what Saint Fulgentius said: 'Et si mithetur in stagnum ignis et sulphuris qui nudum vestimento non tegit, quid passures est qui vestimento crudelis expoliat? Et si rerum suarem avarus possessor requiem non habebit, quomodo aliaenarum rerum insatiabilis raptor?' Meaning, 'And if he who never clothed the naked is sent to the pond of fire and sulphur, where will he, who cruelly stripped them, go? And if the greedy possessor of his own wealth may never rest, how shall it be with the thief, insatiable in his greed for the wealth of others?' "Preach then, the religion of Hope and Promises, as you, above all, are in need of pardon and forgiveness. Do not speak of rigor, nor condemn others, lest God should hear and judge you according to the laws by you formulated. Bear always in mind Christ's words, 'Vae vobis scribae et Pharisae hypocrite qui clauditis regnum coelorum ante homines; vos non intratis, nec introeunts sinitis intrare!' This means, 'Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, who close to men the Kingdom of God, and neither enter nor allow others to enter!' "Now, to you personally, I will say: You are an unfortunate fool, who speak numberless absurdities, although I could not expect aught else from you, and would not punish you for them. But you have had the audacity of not only insulting others, by which you forgot truth and charity, but praised yourself and called attention to your own praise. "Referring to yourself, you said. This Father, whom I well know (liar, you do not even know yourself), although he may appear a little hard headed (a little hard-headed? Ask my crosier if your head is not harder than stone), never speaks in vain (this is true; every word you say causes as much laughter on earth as in Heaven), nor uses words without first thinking (if such is true, your intelligence is very limited). "For such foolish vanity I ought to punish you severely, so that you would stop forever your senseless writings, saving me the trouble of coming to reprimand you at every instance. "Were I to judge you according to your own theory, you should at least go to your Purgatory. But, after all, you are not so bad, as many learned persons are made to laugh at your writings. "It would be well for your pride if you allowed the Indians to pass by you without taking off their hats or kissing your hand. But then, they would be imprisoned or exiled, and it would not do to increase the wrong you do them. "Shall I make you lame and dumb? No! Your brothers would claim it was a trial of your forbearance, to which God had submitted you. No; you won't catch me on that! "What shall I do with you?" The old Bishop meditated for a few moments, and then, he exclaimed: "Ah! Now I know! Your own sin shall be your punishment! "I condemn you to continue saying and writing nonsense for the rest of your life, so that the world may laugh at you, and also, that on the Day of Judgment you may be judged according to your deserts!" "Amen!" replied Friar Rodriguez. The vision then disappeared; the light of the lamp regained its yellowish flame, and the soft perfume dispersed. On the following day Friar Rodriguez started writing greater nonsense, with renewed energy. Amen! _Jose Rizal._ Note.--The foregoing admirable translations from the writings of Dr. Rizal were made by Mr. F.M. de Rivas, of Chicago. CHAPTER XV Events of the Spanish-American War. No Mystery About the Cause of the War--The Expected and the Inevitable Has Happened--The Tragedy of the Maine--Vigilant Wisdom of President McKinley--Dewey's Prompt Triumph--The Battles at Manila and Santiago Compared--General Shafter Tells of the Battle of Santiago--Report of Wainwright Board on Movements of Sampson's Fleet in the Destruction of Cervera's Squadron--Stars and Stripes Raised Over Porto Rico--American and Spanish Fleets at Manila Compared.--Text of Peace Protocol. The war between Spain and the United States was a long time coming, and there is no more mystery about its cause than doubt as to its decisions. It was foretold in every chapter of the terrible stories of the conflicts between the Spaniards and their colonists, largely of their blood, in Central and South America. The causes of war in Cuba, and the conduct of warfare by Spain in that island were the same that resulted in revolutionary strife in Mexico and Peru, and, indeed, all the nations in the Americas that once were swayed by the sovereignty of Spain. The last of the islands of the Spanish possessions in the hemisphere introduced to the civilized world by Columbus were lost by the western peninsula of Europe, symbolized and personified in the Crown, as the first crumbling fragments of the colonial empires of Spain fell away from her. Only in the case of Cuba there was the direct intervention of the United States to establish "a stable government" in the distracted island, desolated by war, pestilence and famine, that had evolved conditions, of terrible misery incurable from within, and of inhumane oppression that should be resented by all enlightened people. It had long been realized by the thoughtful men of Spain capable of estimating the currents of events, that the time must come, and was close at hand, when the arms of the United States would be directed to the conquest of Cuba. It was not only in the air that this was to be, it was written in the history of Spanish America, and more than that, there was not an Atlas that did not proclaim in the maps of the continents of the Western world, that Cuba would and in the largest sense of right should, become a part of the United States, and must do so in order to be redeemed from the disabilities deeply implanted, and released from having the intolerable burdens imposed by the rule of Spain. The consciousness of the Spaniards, that the shadow of the United States lowered over the misgovernment of Cuba, and that there was a thunder-cloud in the north that must burst--with more than the force of the hurricanes that spin on their dizzy way of destruction from the Caribbean Sea--aroused the fury of passion, of jealous hatred and thirst for revenge, in anticipation of the inevitable, that caused the catastrophe of the blowing up of the Maine, and kindled with the flame of the explosion, the conflagration of warfare in the Indies West and East, that has reddened the seas and the skies with the blood of Spain and the glow of America's victory both in the Antilles and the Philippines, wiping from the face of the earth the last vestiges of the colonial imperialism of Spain that gave her mediaeval riches and celebrity, for which--as the system always evil became hideous with malignant growth, so that each colony was a cancer on the mother country--there has been exacted punishment of modern poverty, and finally the humiliation of the haughty, with no consolation for defeat, but the fact that in desperate and forlorn circumstances there were seen glimpses of the ancient valor in Spanish soldiers, that was once their high distinction among the legions of embattled Europe. The United States was not ready for war. Our regular army was a 16 to 120 Spanish troops in Cuba, our field guns 1 to 6 of Blanco's batteries, our siege train nowhere, and fortified cities to assail; and the ability and industry of the Spaniards as well as their skill and strength in surveying and fortifying military lines, and their food resources were dangerously undervalued. The war was rushed upon the country, contrary to the calm executive judgement of the President. The army and navy were admirable but faulty in hasty equipment, the navy a perfect machine in itself, but without docks and arsenals in the right place for the supply of a fleet in the old battle field of European navies, the West Indies. The energies of the Government were put forth as soon as the war was seriously threatened, and the mighty people arose and swiftly as the aptitudes of Americans in emergencies could be applied, deficiencies were supplied. The first stroke of arms came as a dazzling flash from the far southwest, in the story of the smashing victory of Dewey at Manila. That splendid officer, gentleman and hero did not signal his fleet as Nelson at Trafalgar, that every man was expected to do his duty, but he reported that every man did his duty; and the East Indian fleet of Spain vanished, smashed, burned and sunken by a thunderbolt! The theory of war countenanced by the impetuous and demanded by the presumptuous, was that our aggressive forces must attack Havana. In and around that city were an enormous garrison, abundant military stores, forty miles of trenches defended by sixty thousand men; and far more to be dreaded the deadly climate, the overwhelming rains, the deep rank soil soaked under the tropical sun and the dense vegetation, and still more the pestilence--the ghastly Yellow Fever, and scarcely less poisonous and fatal pernicious malarial fevers, and dysenteries that exhausted as fast as fever consumed. Fortunately, it was decided that the place to attack Havana was Santiago, and there the regular army, with the exception of the regiments sent to the Philippines, was ordered and in due time reinforced by volunteers, safely embarked and disembarked, to become the winners on bloody fields and receive the surrender of the Spanish garrisons of the city and province of Santiago. The vaunted fleet of Cervera, having attempted flight, perished--the wrecks of his fine ships strewing the southern coast of Cuba, where they remain as memorials, like and unlike the distorted iron that was the Maine, in the harbor of Havana, and as the shattered and charred remnants of the fleet of Montejo, at Manila, still cumber the waters of the bay off Cavite, telling the story of the glory of our victorious heroes there. The responsibility of the Chief Magistrate of the United States in the late war was remarkable. Everything of moment was referred to him from the Cabinet officers of the Government, and he gave all the closest attention, making, after conscientious consideration, the decisions that determined the course of action taken. This was true in unusual measure of the Treasury, State, War and Navy Departments. It is well the President resisted while he could the "rush line" in Congress, that strove headlong for war, and strenuously urged in the time gained essential preparations, and that he pressed the war the day it was declared with a hurry message to Admiral Dewey, who won his immortal victory on the other side of the world within a week of his orders by cable to "destroy" the squadron of the enemy that might be found somewhere on the west coast of Luzon. Nearer home there was a harder task. The Spanish army in Cuba was much more formidable on the defensive than in the offensive. There were greater numbers of soldiers of a better class in the service of Spain on the island, than had been supposed, and they did not lack, in the degree believed, discipline, ammunition or provisions. The Spaniards had an effective field artillery, more than one hundred guns, and their Mauser rifles were excellent, far-reaching; and, in field ammunition, they were ahead of us in smokeless powder. Our regiments would have given way before the Spanish rifles, that told no tales except with bolts, that flew invisible, fatal arrows, from the jungles, if the American soldier had not been of stuff that was like pure steel, and marched unflinchingly through the deadly hail, regarding the bitter pelting as a summons to "come on" and carry the trenches and ambuscades by storm. The incapacity of the Spaniards to put down the Cuban Rebellion caused grave misapprehensions, both as to the Spanish and Cuban soldiery, for few Americans understand the conditions of the interminable guerilla warfare, the particular military accomplishment of the Spanish race, impotent in all save the destructive effect upon those not engaged in it. In Congress no impression could be made of the real feebleness of the Cubans, except in bushwhacking, and it is still a puzzle that the immense masses of Spanish troops should be so helpless against the insurgents, and yet so troublesome in harassing invaders. The Cuban army was not a myth, certainly, but it has been a disappointment to those who were swift in shouting its praises, upon information given by the Cuban Key West Bureau of News novelettes. It was well that the attack on Spain in the West Indies was directed upon Santiago and Porto Rico. The former manifestly was a point that commanded the central waters of the West Indies; recently there have been expressions of surprise that the expedition to Porto Rico, finally and handsomely led by Major General Miles, commanding the army of the United States, was so delayed. Investigation from the inside will duly determine that no harm was done in that case by loss of time. Santiago was pointed out by many circumstances as the vital spot of Spanish power in America, where a mortal blow might be delivered. It was in the province where the insurgents had greater strength than in any other part of the island. It was so situated that our fleet in that locality was close to the Windward Passage, east of Cuba, where Columbus was at once perplexed and triumphant, and to Hayti, Jamaica and Porto Rico; and there were several landings where it would be possible to disembark troops, protected by the fire of our ships. More than that, Santiago is the old capital of Cuba, the place where the head of the Cuban church abides, and the scene of the Virginius Massacre--altogether having a place in history almost equal to that of Havana. It was not doubted the sanitary situation of the east end of Cuba was better than that of the west end. Experience shows that this easy assumption was questionable. If we omit the great plague spot, the city of Havana, it will appear that Santiago is in a region as pestilential as can be found in the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio. More than all other associations and conspicuities, the attention of the world was directed to Santiago because Cervera's elusive fleet, short of coal and provisions, and overmatched by the United States navy, took refuge in the deep harbor, hoping to clean his ships, get supplies and escape with coal enough to open a new career. The Spaniards were too slow, and the only ships of Spain that showed a sign of the spirit of enterprise and the capacity of adventure, were bottled up by a relentless blockade. Lieutenant Hobson became famous in a night in his most hazardous effort to use the Merrimac as a cork for the bottle, but fortunately left a gap through which the Spaniards made haste to their doom. When the second fleet of Spain was destroyed, all chance of disputing our supremacy at sea, or of doing anything to guard Spanish interests either in the East or West Indies, was extinguished. There has been no marked features of contention as to the battles of Manila, except in the case of the gratuitous observations of critical persons, whose feelings have been disturbed, that the storming of the town was not bloody enough. The victory, however, was all the greater, for the casualty lists were not long, owing to the management of the Commanding General and the heroic Admiral, who won a battle famous as that at New Orleans, with less bloodshed, but as Jackson's victory was not belittled because he lost but half a dozen men killed, the victories at Manila should not be slighted. The Santiago battles, however, have stirred controversies, and there is a great mass of literature, official and other, subject to endless examination, and perhaps so voluminous as to confuse readers for some generations. The leading and indisputable facts are, that the Spaniards fought well on land, but were ineffectual afloat, in their attempts to inflict injuries, though they put to sea in dashing style, and did not flinch in efforts to evade a superior force, until the fire of the Americans crushed them. In the incidents of warfare on the hills around and the waves before Santiago, it is fair to say that the Spaniards redeemed themselves from imputation of timidity, and fought in a manner not unworthy of the countrymen of the Garrison of Morro Castle, Havana, whose gallantry in resisting the army and fleet of England, in 1762, commanded the respectful regard of their conquerors, and is a glorious chapter in the story of Spain. The Santiago events were most honorable to American arms, and it would lessen the splendor of the reputation of the American soldiers if one failed to do justice to the sturdy fighters they overcame. It is too early or too late for participation in the debates whether civil or acrimonious, as to the merits or faults of those engaged at Santiago, further than to quote that golden sentence from the report of Commodore Schley, that there was "glory enough to go around." We, whatever is said, remember what was done on those hills that have an everlasting place in history. There forever is to be application of marvelous propriety, of the mournful and noble lines of Kentucky's poet, Theodore O'Hara: "On Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead." There was a speedy realization by the country, and all the intelligent peoples of the earth, when our troops were embarked for the Santiago campaign, that the crisis of the war was at hand. No American thought of failure. The only questions were as to the power of the defense of Cuba by Spain, and the cost to us in men and money to overcome the defenders. Those who knew the most about the conditions in Cuba had the least confidence in the efficiency of the Cuban Army. The only body of organized Cubans of importance was that under command of Garcia, and it was the province of which he was in partial occupation that we invaded in force. The public had been considerably interested and entertained by the rousing accounts of the various naval bombardments of Spanish shore fortresses. But the firing from our ships had not materially shaken the Spanish defenses. The sea power had not shattered the shore lines, but found abundant occupation in guarding transports and protecting the troops when landing. It would have been an act of the most gross imprudence and incompetency to have put an army ashore unless the supremacy of the navy on the sea was absolute. More than that, our own cities had to be assured that they were secure from attack. On the 31st of May orders were issued for the embarkation of the army of invasion as follows: 1. The Fifth Army Corps. 2. The Battalion of Engineers. 3. The detachment of the Signal Corps. 4. Five squadrons of cavalry, to be selected by the commanding general of the cavalry division, in accordance with instruction previously given. 5. Four batteries of light artillery, to be commanded by a major, to be selected by the commanding officer of the light artillery brigade. 6. Two batteries of heavy artillery, to be selected by the commanding officer of the siege artillery battalion, with eight (8) siege guns and eight (8) field mortars. 7. The Battalion of Engineers, the infantry, and cavalry, will be supplied, with 500 rounds of ammunition per man. 8. All troops will carry, in addition to the fourteen (14) days' field rations now on hand, ten (10) days' travel rations. 9. The minimum allowance of tentage and baggage as prescribed in General Orders 54, A.G.O., current series, will be taken. 10. In addition to the rations specified in paragraph 8 of this order, the chief commissary will provide sixty (60) days' field rations for the entire command. 11. All recruits and extra baggage, the latter to be stored, carefully piled and covered, will be left in camp, in charge of a commissioned officer, to be selected by the regimental commander. Where there are no recruits available the necessary guard only will be left. 12. Travel rations will be drawn, at once, by the several commands, as indicated in paragraph 8. This was by command of Major-General Shafter. There were delays on account of inadequate facilities for embarkation at Tampa and Port Tampa. Orders for General Shafter to move with not less than 10,000 men were issued on the 7th, and there was delay on account of reports of Spanish ships of war ready to strike a blow at the transports. Twelve squadrons of cavalry not mounted were added to the troops designated in the general order, and June 14th the expedition sailed with 815 officers and 16,072 enlisted men, and had a smooth and uneventful passage. There were several demonstrations for the deception of the enemy, in one of which 500 Cubans were employed. General Shafter was committed by the movements and the ground, as he says in his official report: "To approach Santiago from the east over a narrow road, at first in some places not better than a trail, running from Daiquiri through Siboney and Sevilla, and making attack from that quarter, was, in my judgment, the only feasible plan, and subsequent information and results confirmed my judgment." The disembarkation commenced June 22nd, and all men were ordered to carry "on the person the blanket roll (with shelter tent and poncho), three days' field rations (with coffee, ground), canteens filled, and 100 rounds of ammunition per man. Additional ammunition, already issued to the troops, tentage, baggage, and company cooking utensils left under charge of the regimental quartermaster, with one non-commissioned officer and two privates from each company," Two days were occupied in getting the troops ashore, and the first engagement was on the morning of the 24th, General Young's brigade taking the advance, and finding a Spanish force strongly intrenched on the Santiago road three miles from Siboney. Young's force was 964 officers and men. The enemy were driven from the field. Our loss, 1 officer and 15 men killed, and 6 officers and 46 men wounded. Spanish loss reported 9 killed and 27 wounded. General Shafter says the engagement had "an inspiring effect" upon the men, and "gave us a well-watered country further to the front, on which to encamp our troops," and the rest of the month was occupied in attempting to land rations enough to have a reserve, and "it was not until nearly two weeks after the army landed that it was possible to place on shore three days' supplies in excess of those required for the daily consumption." General Shafter reconnoitered, and formed his plan of battle June 30th, and reports that in the opening of the engagement on July 1st "the artillery fire from El Pozo was soon returned by the enemy's artillery. They evidently had the range of this hill, and their first shells killed and wounded several men. As the Spaniards used smokeless powder it was very difficult to locate the position of their pieces, while, on the contrary, the smoke caused by our black powder plainly indicated the position of our battery." The advantages the Spaniards had in the use of smokeless powder were conspicuous throughout the scenes of fighting both at Santiago and Manila. We had, however, at Santiago a war balloon of the actual service, of which General Shafter says: "General Kent forced the head of his column alongside of the cavalry column as far as the narrow trail permitted, and thus hurried his arrival at the San Juan and the formation beyond that stream. A few hundred yards before reaching the San Juan the road forks, a fact that was discovered by Lieutenant-Colonel Derby of my staff, who had approached well to the front in a war balloon. This information he furnished to the troops, resulting in Sumner moving on the right-hand road, while Kent was enabled to utilize the road to the left." General Shafter officially makes the following reference to his illness at the time: "My own health was impaired by overexertion in the sun and intense heat of the day before, which prevented me from participating as actively in the battle as I desired; but from a high hill near my headquarters I had a general view of the battlefield, extending from El Caney on the right to the left of our lines on San Juan Hill. My staff officers were stationed at various points on the field, rendering frequent reports, and through them by the means of orderlies and the telephone, I was enabled to transmit my orders. "After the brilliant and important victory gained at El Caney, Lawton started his tried troops, who had been fighting all day and marching much of the night before, to connect with the right of the cavalry division. Night came on before this movement could be accomplished. In the darkness the enemy's pickets were encountered, and the Division Commander being uncertain of the ground and as to what might be in his front halted his command and reported the situation to me. This information was received about 12:30 a. m., and I directed General Lawton to return by my headquarters and the El Pozo House as the only certain way of gaining his new position. "This was done, and the division took position on the right of the cavalry early next morning, Chaffee's brigade arriving first, about half-past 7, and the other brigades before noon." Of the hottest of the fight on the 1st of July, General Shafter reports: "Great credit is due to Brigadier-General H. S. Hawkins, who, placing himself between his regiments, urged them on by voice and bugle calls to the attack so brilliantly executed. "In this fierce encounter words fail to do justice to the gallant regimental commanders and their heroic men, for, while the generals indicated the formations and the points of attack, it was, after all, the intrepid bravery of the subordinate officers and men that planted our colors on the crest of San Juan Hill and drove the enemy from his trenches and blockhouses, thus gaining a position which sealed the fate of Santiago. "In this action on this part of the field most efficient service was rendered by Lieutenant John H. Parker, Thirteenth Infantry, and the Gatling gun detachment under his command. The fighting continued at intervals until nightfall, but our men held resolutely to the positions gained at the cost of so much blood and toil. "I am greatly indebted to General Wheeler, who, as previously stated, returned from the sick list to duty during the afternoon. His cheerfulness and aggressiveness made itself felt on this part of the battlefield, and the information he furnished to me at various stages of the battle proved to be most useful." The report of the General Commanding of the further fighting is a model of forcible brevity, in these paragraphs: "Soon after daylight on July 2 the enemy opened battle, but because of the intrenchments made during the night, the approach of Lawton's division, and the presence of Bates' brigade, which had taken position during the night on Kent's left, little apprehension was felt as to our ability to repel the Spaniards. "It is proper here to state that General Bates and his brigade had performed most arduous and efficient service, having marched much of the night of June 30-July 1, and a good part of the latter day, during which he also participated in the battle of El Caney, after which he proceeded, by way of El Pozo, to the left of the line at San Juan, reaching his new position about midnight. "All day on the 2d the battle raged with more or less fury, but such of our troops as were in position at daylight held their ground, and Lawton gained a strong and commanding position on the right. "About 10 p..m., the enemy made a vigorous assault to break through my lines, but he was repulsed at all points. "On the morning of the 3d the battle was renewed, but the enemy seemed to have expended his energy in the assault of the previous night, and the firing along the lines was desultory;" and this was stopped by a letter sent by General Shafter, saying he would be obliged to "shell Santiago," if not surrendered, and non-combatants would be given until 10 o'clock July 4th to leave the city. The reply of the Spanish General was that he would not surrender. Then foreign consuls came within our lines asking more time to remove the women and children. The language of General Shafter reporting the situation at the time and the events following, is here reproduced as of permanent interest: "My first message went in under a flag of truce at 12:30 p.m. I was of the opinion that the Spaniards would surrender if given a little time, and I thought this result would be hastened if the men of their army could be made to understand they would be well treated as prisoners of war. Acting upon this presumption, I determined to offer to return all the wounded Spanish officers at El Caney who were able to bear transportation, and who were willing to give their paroles not to serve against the forces of the United States until regularly exchanged. This offer was made and accepted. These officers, as well as several of the wounded Spanish privates, 27 in all, were sent to their lines under the escort of some of our mounted cavalry. Our troops were received with honors, and I have every reason to believe the return of the Spanish prisoners produced a good impression on their comrades. "The cessation of firing about noon on the 3d practically terminated the battle of Santiago. "A few Cubans assisted in the attack at El Caney, and fought valiantly, but their numbers were too small to materially change the strength, as indicated above. The enemy confronted us with numbers about equal to our own; they fought obstinately in strong and intrenched positions, and the results obtained clearly indicate the intrepid gallantry of the company, officers and men, and the benefits derived from the careful training and instruction given in the company in recent years in rifle practice and other battle exercises. Our losses in these battles were 22 officers and 208 men killed, and 81 officers and 1,203 men wounded; missing, 79. The missing, with few exceptions, reported later. "The arrival of General Escario on the night of July 2, and his entrance into the city was not anticipated, for although it was known, as previously stated, that General Pando had left Manzanillo with reinforcements for the garrison of Santiago, it was not believed his troops could arrive so soon. General Garcia, with between four and five thousand Cubans, was intrusted with the duty of watching for and intercepting the reinforcements expected. This, however, he failed to do, and Escario passed into the city along on my extreme right and near the bay." On the 11th, when the firing ceased and was not resumed "the sickness in the army was increasing very rapidly, as a result of exposure in the trenches to the intense heat of the sun and the heavy rains. Moreover, the dews in Cuba are almost equal to rains. The weakness of the troops was becoming so apparent I was anxious to bring the siege to an end, but in common with most of the officers of the army I did not think an assault would be justifiable, especially as the enemy seemed to be acting in good faith in their preliminary propositions to surrender. "July 12 I informed the Spanish Commander that Major-General Miles, Commander-in-Chief of the American army, had just arrived in my camp, and requested him to grant us a personal interview on the following day. He replied he would be pleased to meet us. The interview took place on the 13th." The Spanish raised many points, as is their habit, and were tenacious about retaining their arms, but yielded, and "the terms of surrender finally agreed upon included about 12,000 Spanish troops in the city and as many more in the surrendered district." July 17th "we met midway between the representatives of our two armies, and the Spanish Commander formally consummated the surrender of the city and the 24,000 troops in Santiago and the surrendered district. "After this ceremony I entered the city with my staff and escort, and at 12 o'clock noon the American flag was raised over the Governor's palace." The men and material surrendered by the Spaniards at Santiago largely exceeded the two English armies and their equipments at Saratoga and Yorktown. The yellow fever appeared in the American camp at Siboney July 4th, and the fact was soon known to the army. General Shafter says of the wounded and sick: "They received every attention that it was possible to give them. The medical officers without exception worked night and day to alleviate the suffering, which was no greater than invariably accompanies a campaign. It would have been better if we had more ambulances, but as many were taken as was thought necessary, judging from previous campaigns." General Joe Wheeler's report of the action of July 1st is a paper full of striking points. The movement into battle began in wading the San Juan river under heavy fire, and the General says: "We were as much under fire in forming the line as we would be by an advance, and I therefore pressed the command forward from the covering which it was formed. It merged into open space, in full view of the enemy, who occupied breastworks and batteries on the crest of the hill which overlooked Santiago, officers and men falling at every step. The troops advanced gallanty, soon reached the foot of the hill and ascended, driving the enemy from their works and occupying them on the crest of the hill. "Colonel Carroll and Major Wessels were both wounded during the charge, but Major Wessels was enabled to return and resume command. General Wyckoff, commanding Kent's Third Brigade, was killed at 12:10. Lieutenant-Colonel Worth took command and was wounded at 12:15. Lieutenant-Colonel Liscum then took command and was wounded at 12:20, and the command then devolved upon Lieutenant-Colonel Ewers, Ninth Infantry. "Upon reaching the crest I ordered breastworks to be constructed, and sent to the rear for shovels, picks, spades, and axes. The enemy's retreat from the ridge was precipitate, but our men were so thoroughly exhausted that it was impossible for them to follow. Their shoes were soaked with water by wading the San Juan River; they had become drenched with rain, and when they reached the crest they were absolutely unable to proceed further. Notwithstanding this condition these exhausted men labored during the night to erect breastworks, furnished details to bury the dead and carry the wounded back in improvised litters." Wheeler's loss was 6 officers and 40 men killed, 29 officers and 288 men wounded, and 10 men missing--total 372, out of a force of 127 officers and 2,536 men. General Bates says that after his brigade remained for some time in the first cross road after wading the San Juan river: "We moved to the right to assault a small hill, occupied upon the top by a stone fort and well protected by rifle pits. General Chaffee's brigade charged them from the right, and the two brigades, joining upon the crest, opened fire from this point of vantage, lately occupied by the Spanish, upon the village of El Caney. "From this advantageous position the Spanish were easily driven from place to place in the village proper, and as fast as they sought shelter in one building were driven out to seek shelter elsewhere. The sharpshooters of my command were enabled to do effective work at this point. The town proper was soon pretty thoroughly cleaned out of Spanish, though a couple of blockhouses upon the hill to the right of the town offered shelter to a few, and some could be seen retreating along a mountain road leading to the northwest. A part of these made a stand in a field among some bowlders. General Lawton observes: "The light battery first opened on a column of Spanish troops, which appeared to be cavalry moving westward from El Caney, and about 2 miles range, resulting, as was afterwards learned, in killing 16 in the column." The General has much to say of a pleasing personal nature. The report of General Kent is of extraordinary merit for the exact detail and local color. Colonel McClernand, he says, "pointed out to me a green hill in the distance which was to be my objective on my left," and as he moved into action, "I proceeded to join the head of my division, just coming under heavy fire. Approaching the First Brigade I directed them to move alongside the cavalry (which was halted). We were already suffering losses caused by the balloon near by attracting fire and disclosing our position. "The enemy's infantry fire, steadily increasing in intensity, now came from all directions, not only from the front and the dense tropical thickets on our flanks, but from sharpshooters thickly posted in trees in our rear, and from shrapnel apparently aimed at the balloon. Lieutenant-Colonel Derby, of General Shafter's staff, met me about this time and informed me that a trail or narrow way had been discovered from the balloon a short distance back leading to the left to a ford lower down the stream. I hastened to the forks made by this road, and soon after the Seventy-first New York Regiment of Hawkins' brigade came up. I turned them into the by path indicated by Lieutenant-Colonel Derby, leading to the lower ford, sending word to General Hawkins of this movement. This would have speedily delivered them in their proper place on the left of their brigade, but under the galling fire of the enemy the leading battalion of this regiment was thrown into confusion and recoiled in disorder on the troops in the rear." The Second and Third Battalions "came up in better order," but there was some delay, and General Kent says: "I had received orders some time before to keep in rear of the cavalry division. Their advance was much delayed, resulting in frequent halts, presumably to drop their blanket rolls and due to the natural delay in fording a stream. These delays under such a hot fire grew exceedingly irksome, and I therefore pushed the head of my division as quickly as I could toward the river in column files of twos parallel in the narrow way by the cavalry. This quickened the forward movement and enabled me to get into position as speedily as possible for the attack. Owing to the congested condition of the road, the progress of the narrow columns was, however, painfully slow. I again sent a staff officer at a gallop to urge forward the troops in rear." The Second Brigade and Third "moved toward Fort San Juan, sweeping through a zone of most destructive fire, scaling a steep and difficult hill, and assisting in capturing the enemy's strong position (Fort San Juan) at 1:30 p.m. This crest was about 125 feet above the general level, and was defended by deep trenches and a loop-holed brick fort surrounded by barbed-wire entanglements." General Hawkins, after General Kent reached the crest, "reported that the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry had captured the hill, which I now consider incorrect. Credit is almost equally due the Sixth, Ninth, Thirteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty-fourth regiments of infantry. Owing to General Hawkins' representations, I forwarded the report sent to corps headquarters about 3 p.m. that the Sixth and Sixteenth infantry regiments captured the hill. The Thirteenth Infantry captured the enemy's colors waving over the fort, but, unfortunately, destroyed them, distributing the fragments among the men, because, as was asserted, 'It was a bad omen,' two or three men having been shot while assisting private Arthur Agnew, Company H, Thirteenth Infantry, the captor. All fragments which could be recovered are submitted with this report. "I have already mentioned the circumstances of my Third Brigade's advance across the ford, where in the brief space of ten minutes it lost its brave commander (killed) and the next two ranking officers by disabling wounds. Yet, in spite of these confusing conditions the formations were effected without hesitation, although under a stinging fire, companies acting singly in some instances, and by battalion and regiments in others, rushing through the jungle, across the stream waist deep, and over the wide bottom thickly set with barbed wire." General Kent says: "The bloody fighting of my brave command can not be adequately described in words. The following list of killed, wounded, and missing tells the story of their valor: "July 1st the loss was 12 officers and 77 men killed, 32 officers and 463 men wounded, 58 men missing. Total loss, 642." The following day the Spaniards resumed the battle, and the losses of Kent's command on the 2nd and 3d of July made up a total loss in three days of 99 killed and 597 wounded, and 62 missing. General Shafter said that before closing his report he desired to dwell upon "the natural obstacles I had to encounter, and which no foresight could have overcome or obviated. The rocky and precipitous coast afforded no sheltered landing places, the roads were mere bridle paths, the effect of the tropical sun and rains upon unacclimated troops was deadly, and a dread of strange and unknown diseases had its effect on the army. "The San Juan and Aguadores rivers would often suddenly rise so as to prevent the passage of wagons, and then the eight pack trains with the command had to be depended upon for the victualing of my army, as well as the 20,000 refugees, who could not in the interests of humanity be left to starve while we had rations." During the Chicago Peace Jubilee, General Shafter made an address at the Armory of the First Illinois Volunteers, and, released from the continual forms of official reports, added much of interest to the story of Santiago. He says of the send-off: "We were twice embarked and twice taken back to Tampa and disembarked. On the first occasion the cause was the appearance of Admiral Cervera's fleet; it requiring the entire navy that was disposable to go after that fleet, and the second time by a report that afterwards turned out to be incorrect, that in the St. Nicholas channel, through which we would have to go, some Spanish cruisers had been seen." When ordered to Tampa to command the first Cuban expedition, he continued: "I took the troops that I thought best fitted and prepared for that service. There were some magnificent regiments of volunteers, but to part of them I had issued arms only two or three days before. They were not properly equipped, and lacked experience. As I had the choice, I took all of the regulars that were there, and with them three regiments of volunteers. They were magnificent men, as perfect as men could be, but, as you know who served in '61, poorly prepared to take care of themselves at first. You recollect it was months before we were prepared, and we made numerous mistakes that led to sickness and death. The same things have occurred again, and they always will continue with troops that are not used to the field, and in this campaign men were taken directly from their camps immediately after being mustered in, and put into the most difficult campaign of modern military history. "I practically had the entire regular army of the United States, twenty of the twenty-five regiments of infantry, five of the ten regiments of cavalry, and five batteries of artillery, with three regiments of volunteers, the Seventy-first New York, the Second Massachusetts, and the regiment known as Roosevelt's rough riders. The last were practically seasoned soldiers. They were men from the frontier, men who had been accustomed for years to taking a little sack of corn meal on their saddles, and a blanket, and going out to sleep out of doors for a week or a month at a time. Of course, they knew how to care for themselves in camp. "Early in June I was called to the telephone in Tampa, and told from the President's mansion in Washington to proceed immediately with not less than 10,000 men to Santiago; that news had been received that day that the fleet of Cervera was surely within that harbor, and that if 10,000 men could be placed there at once the fleet and the city could be captured in forty-eight hours. The horses and mules had been taken off from the ships as well as the men, and the time consumed in reloading the horses and mules allowed me to embark 17,000 men nearly. That was very fortunate for me and our cause." On arrival off Santiago, he, "with Admiral Sampson, went down the coast about twenty miles, and saw General Garcia, and asked him his opinion of the country, what his force was, and whether he was disposed to assist. I found him very willing and very glad to offer his services at once, with 3,000 men that he had with him and another thousand that he had up the country a little further, which were to join us immediately. In sailing along the coast, looking for a landing place, I selected two places--Siboney, a little indentation in the coast about twelve or thirteen miles east of Santiago, and another little bay about eight miles further east, where small streams entered into the sea, making a valley and a sandbar about 150 to 200 yards in extent. All the rest of the coast is abrupt, perpendicular walls of rock from ten to thirty feet high, against which the waves were dashing all the time, and where it is utterly impossible to land. "We had the earnest and able support of the navy and their assistance in disembarking, and the next morning were bombarding the two little places and driving the few hundred Spanish soldiers, that were there away. We began disembarking, and before the end of the day the men were on shore, with 2,000 horses and mules that we had to throw overboard to get ashore, and the artillery." The General noted the loss of 17,000 troops out of 24,000 in the English army that besieged Havana in 1762, at the same time of year that he landed at Santiago, and remarked: "I knew that my entire army would be sick if it stayed long enough; that it was simply a question of getting that town just as soon as possible. I knew the strength, the courage, and the will of my men, or I thought I did, and the result shows that I was not mistaken. It was a question of starting the moment we landed and not stopping until we reached the Spanish outposts, and, therefore, as soon as a division was put on shore it was started on the march. "On the 24th the first engagement took place, in which we had between 800 and 900 men on the American side and probably 1,000 or 1,200 on the Spanish. The enemy was strongly intrenched, showing only their heads, while the American forces had to march exposing their whole bodies to the fire of the enemy. "It is announced by military experts as an axiom that trained troops armed with the present breech-loading and rapid-firing arm cannot be successfully assailed by any troops who simply assault. Of course you can make the regular approaches and dig up to them. The fallacy of that proposition was made very manifest that day when the men composing the advance marched as deliberately over those breastworks as they ever did when they fought with arms that you could only load about twice in a minute and of the range of only 200 or 300 yards. "This army was an army of marksmen. For fifteen years the greatest attention has been paid to marksmanship, and I suppose four-fifths of all the men in that army wore on their breasts the marksman's badge. I had given orders, knowing that the noise of firing is harmless and that shots put in the air are harmless--I had given the strictest orders to all officers that their men should be told not to fire a shot unless they could see something moving, and the firing was to be by individuals, what is called file firing, individual firing. The Spanish troops, not so well drilled in firing as ours, used volley firing, which is very effective against large bodies of troops massed and moving over a plain, but utterly inefficient when used against skirmishers moving over a rough country. In that battle, which lasted two hours, less than ten rounds of ammunition per man was fired by my men, and the losses, notwithstanding my men were exposed, their whole bodies, while the enemy were in trenches, where only their heads could be seen, were about equal. "I saw the commander of that force a few days later in Santiago, and in talking about it he said to me: 'Your men behaved very strange. We were much surprised. They were whipped, but they didn't seem to know it; they continued to advance (laughter and applause), and we had to go away.' He was quite right about it. They did have to go away. "On the 29th we had reached the immediate vicinity of the peaks in front of Santiago, about a mile and a half from the city. On the 30th I carefully reconnoitered the ground as much as one could in the dense undergrowth, and determined where I would make my attack, which was simply directed in front, and to make a direct assault. There was no attempt at strategy, and no attempt at turning their flanks. It was simply going straight for them. In that I did not misjudge my men, and that is where I succeeded so well. (Applause.) If we had attempted to flank them out or dig them out by regular parallels and get close to them my men would have been sick before it could have been accomplished, and the losses would have been many times greater than they were. "The only misfortune, as I judged it, of the first day's fight,but which I have since learned was for the best, was that immediately on our right, and what would be in our rear when we attacked the town, was a little village called El Caney, four miles and a half from Santiago, and whence the best road in the country connected with Santiago. I did not know the exact force there, but it was estimated to be 1,000, and perhaps a little more, and it would, of course, have been very hazardous to have left that force so near in our rear. "Instead of finishing the affair by 9 o'clock, as we expected, it took until 4:30 o'clock in the afternoon before the last shot was fired, and then after a loss of nearly a hundred killed and 250 wounded on our side and the almost total annihilation of the force opposed to us. They had an idea that they would be killed, and when men believe that it is hard to capture them. Just at the close of the battle three or four hundred did attempt to escape, but ran out in front of a brigade that they did not see, and in the course of about three or four hundred yards most of them were dead or mortally wounded, so that probably not more than twenty men on the other side escaped from that battle. It was a most desperate struggle. "Men were killed in the trenches by being knocked on the head with muskets, and one man I was shown two days later with what would be called a tremendous head on him, and the interpreter asked him how that had occurred, and he doubled up his fist and spoke of the soldier that had hit him as a black man, that he had dropped his gun and hit him in the head with his fist. That was pretty close work. "Meanwhile the battle in front of Santiago progressed, with three divisions on our side, one of dismounted cavalry and two of infantry. It was beautifully fought. Every man knew what he had to do, and so did every officer. The orders were that Immediately upon being deployed they were to attack. They did it. Every man kept going, and when one's comrade dropped the rest kept going. The result was that in about two hours the line was taken, and practically that afternoon the battle of Santiago was ended, for those men never advanced beyond that point. "During the night I brought up the division of General Lawton that had been on the right at Caney and put them on the extreme right, where I had intended to have them the day before, and where, had they been, we should probably have taken the town and have gotten only the men that were there, and not the 12,000 that were far beyond our reach who were surrendered a few days later. "On the morning of the 2d a weak attempt was made upon our lines. In that the Spaniards had to expose themselves, while my men were covered. The fight lasted but a little while, and they retreated. "On the morning of July 3 I thought we had so much of an advantage that I could notify the enemy, first, that I wanted a surrender, and, second, if they declined to surrender that they could have twenty-four hours to get the women and children out of town. Of course, civilized people do not fire on towns filled with women and children if they will come out if it can be avoided. The Spanish commander declined very promptly to surrender, but said he would notify the women and children and those that desired to go, but he wanted twenty-four hours more, and said there were a great many people to go out. They began to stream out at once, and for forty-eight hours old men, women, and children poured out until it was estimated that at least 20,000 people passed through our lines and out into the woods in the rear. Of course, there was an immense amount of suffering, and numbers died, especially of the old. Fortunately we were enabled to give them some food, enough so that they existed, but at that time, with the Cuban forces that I had, I was issuing daily 45,000 rations. Forty-five thousand people are a good many to feed when you have such fearful roads and food could only be carried on the backs of mules. "On that morning of the 3d, about an hour after the time for surrendering, Cervera's fleet left the harbor, and went out, as you know, to total annihilation. It was not more than twenty or thirty minutes after they left the mouth of the harbor before, so far as we could hear, the firing had ceased, and 1,700 men were prisoners, 600 were killed, and three or four battleships and some torpedo boats were either on the rocks or in the bottom of the sea--a most wonderful victory, never equaled before in naval history, and due mainly to the magnificent marksmanship of our men, which covered the Spanish decks with such a hail of iron that no sailors on earth could stand against it. "Two days after this I saw General Toral, and I was convinced from conversation with him that he was going to surrender. I had no one but myself to take the responsibility, in fact, I did not want anyone else to do it, but while I was convinced myself it was hard to convince others. I knew that we could capture the town at any time, that we had it surrounded so that they could not possibly get away, although on the night of July 2 2,800 men marched in. I had understood there were 8,000, but when we counted them a few days afterward there were only 2,800. I knew that if we carried that town by force a thousand men at least would be lost to the American army, and a thousand good American men are a good many to expend in capturing a Spanish town (applause), and I did not propose to do it if I could possibly talk them out of it. "General Toral knew just as well as I did that I knew just what he had--that he was on his last rations, and that nothing but plain rice, that we had his retreat cut off, that we had the town surrounded, that he could not hurt us, while we could bombard him and do some little damage, perhaps, and that it was only a question of a few days. "I found out a few days later what the hitch was which caused the delay, for General Toral had told me that he had been authorized by Blanco, the Governor-General, to enter into negotiations and make terms for surrender, and in Cuba you know General Blanco was in supreme command. His authority was such that he could even set aside a law of Spain. Knowing that, I felt sure that after very little delay they would surrender. They desired to get permission from the Madrid government to return to Spain. It was that that delayed them. Immediately upon receiving the permission to return to Spain they surrendered. "I had in line when the fighting was going on, about 13,000 men--not more than that at any time. Inside the Spanish trenches there were about 10,000. There were 11,500 surrendered, and I think about 1,500 of them were sick. The disproportion, considering the difference of situation, is not very great. In fact, I think that 10,000 American soldiers could have kept 100,000 Spaniards out had they been in the same position (applause), although I do not wish to disparage the bravery of the Spanish troops. They are gallant fellows, but they have not the intelligence and do not take the initiative as do the American soldiers; and they have not the bull-dog pluck that hangs on day after day. "Toral made the first proposition to surrender. He said if I would let him take his men and such things as they could carry on their persons and on a few pack mules that they had and guarantee him safe conduct to Holguin, which was fifty-two miles away to the north and in the interior, they would march out. I told him, of course, that was out of the question; that I could not accept any such terms as that, but I would submit it to the President. I did so, and was very promptly informed that only unconditional surrender would be received, but I was at liberty to say to General Toral that if they would surrender they would be carried, at the expense of the United States government, back to Spain. When that proposition was made to him I could see his face lighten up and the faces of his staff, who were there. They were simply delighted. Those men love their country intensely, they had been brought to Cuba against their will, and had stayed there three years, poorly clad, not paid at all, and not well fed, and the prospect of going back to their homes had as much to do with conforming their views to our wishes as anything that was done during the campaign. "Meanwhile ten or twelve days had elapsed and I had received quite a number of volunteer regiments--two from Michigan, the First District of Columbia, a Massachusetts regiment, and an Ohio regiment, the Eighth Ohio--all splendid troops and well equipped, and while they were not there at the hardest of the fighting they were there during the suffering, and everything that soldiers were called upon to do they did like men. "It is a great deal harder to stand up day after day and see companions go from sickness and disease than it is to face the perils of battle. "When I told General Toral that we would carry his men back he said: 'Does that include my entire command?' I said: 'What is your command and where are they?' He replied the Fourth Army Corps; 11,500 men in the city, 3,000 twenty miles in the rear of us; 7,500 he said were up the coast less than sixty miles, and about 1,500 125 to 150 miles off on the northeastern coast. "There were 3,440 odd, and at a place less than sixty miles east there were 7,500 and a few over, because we counted them and took their arms. The result of that surrender was as unexpected to us as probably it was to every person in the United States. There was simply a little army there, which had gone down to assist the navy in getting the Spanish fleet out and capturing that town, and we expected no other result from it than victory at the spot at the utmost, but in attacking the limb we got the whole body. It was expected that, beginning about the first of October, the objective point of the campaign was to be Havana, where we knew there were from 125,000 to 150,000 men, and it was expected that about the first of October a large army would be sent over there, and the battle that would decide the war would be fought in the vicinity of Havana. I think that was the universal feeling. The loss of that city and of those 24,000 men--23,376, to be accurate--so dispirited them that within a week the proposition of Spain to close the war was made, and, happily, the war was ended. "The difficulties of that campaign were not in the fighting. That was the easiest part of it. The difficulties were in getting food and medicine to the front. There was but a single road, a muddy and terrible road, and with five or six wagons going over it the sixth wagon would be on the axle tree, and in taking up some artillery I had fourteen horses on one battery that was usually drawn by four, and even with that number it went out of sight, and we had to leave it and dig it out after the water had subsided." Admiral Sampson's report, dated August 3d, was published October 23d, and covers the conduct of the fleet under his command, in its operations in the West Indies, for about two months prior to the destruction of Admiral Cervera's ships on July 3. It was made up largely of official dispatches and the movements of the fleet, with explanations and comment by the Admiral, and begins with a statement of the determination reached by the Navy department to send a squadron to the Windward Passage for the purpose of observation, because of the information received of the sailing, on April 29, of Admiral Cervera's squadron from the Cape Verde Islands. On the voyage eastward from the naval base at Key West, which began on May 4, Admiral Sampson reports there was experienced endless trouble and delay because of the inefficiency of the two monitors accompanying the other ships, and which had to be taken in tow. Their coal supply was so small that it was at once evident that they must either frequently coal or be towed. The Admiral says: "Had the sea been rough, or had the enemy appeared at this juncture, the squadron would have been in a much better position for an engagement had the monitors been elsewhere. Subsequently, when engaging the batteries of San Juan, it was evident that their shooting was bad. "Owing to the quick rolling of these vessels, even in a moderate sea, they were unable to fire with any degree of accuracy." Among the telegrams received by the Admiral from the department at Washington when off Cape Haytien was the following: Washington, D.C., May 6.--Do not risk or cripple your vessels against fortifications as to prevent from soon afterwards successfully fighting Spanish fleet, composed of Pelayo, Carlos V., Oquendo, Vizcaya, Maria Teresa, Cristobal Colon, four deep sea torpedo boats, if they should appear on this side. _Long_. It was determined to go to Porto Rico, and the squadron arrived off San Juan on the morning of the 12th and the bombardment of that place ensued. Regarding his action at this place the Admiral says: "It was clear to my own mind that the squadron would not have any great difficulty in forcing the surrender of the place, but the fact that we should be held several days in completing arrangements for holding it; that part of our force would have to be left to await the arrival of troops to garrison it; that the movements of the Spanish squadron, our main objective, were still unknown; that the flying squadron was still north and not in a position to render any aid; that Havana, Cervera's natural objective, was thus open to entry by such force as his, while we were a thousand miles distant, made our immediate movement toward Havana imperative. "I thus reluctantly gave up the project against San Juan and stood westward for Havana." Several telegrams are here presented, based on reports that Cervera's squadron had returned to Cadiz and they had in view "to return and capture San Juan, the desire to do so and occupy the place being assured in the event of Admiral Cervera's failure to cross the Atlantic." Shortly after news was received that the Spanish fleet had appeared off Curacao, West Indies, and the squadron under orders from the department proceeded to Key West, to which place the flying squadron under Commodore (now Admiral) Schley had already been ordered. Arrangements were then hurriedly made and the flying squadron, augmented by the other vessels under Commodore Schley, was sent off Cienfuegos, where it was believed the enemy would go, in which case an effort was to be made to engage and capture him. Sampson was given the choice either of the command of the blockading squadron off Havana or at Cienfuegos, Schley in either case to remain with his own squadron. From messages received by the Admiral from the department about May 20 it appears that reports had reached the United States that the Spanish fleet was at Santiago, so the department advised Sampson to send immediately word to Schley to proceed to that place, leaving one small vessel off Cienfuegos. On May 21 instructions were written by Samnson for Commodore Schley and sent to him via the Marblehead regarding the possibility of the Spanish fleet being at Santiago. They are in part as follows: United States Flagship New York, First Rate, Key West, Fla., May 21.--Sir: Spanish squadron is probably at Santiago de Cuba--four ships and three torpedo boat destroyers. If you are satisfied they are not at Cienfuegos proceed with all dispatch, but cautiously, to Santiago de Cuba, and if the enemy is there blockade him in port. You will probably find it necessary to establish communication with some of the inhabitants--fishermen or others--to learn definitely that the ships are in port, it being impossible to see into it from the outside. The Admiral said he felt much concerned as to the delivery of these orders and sent a duplicate by the Hawk with an additional memorandum. The Admiral suggested that if the information did not reach Commodore Schley before daylight of May 23 to mask the real direction he should take as much as possible. He adds: "Follow the Spanish squadron whichever direction they take." The Admiral off Havana gives copies of orders of battle which were to be followed in the event that Cervera left Santiago on the approach of Schley's fleet from Cienfuegos and attempted to cruise around the coast to Havana, in which case the Havana squadron would attempt to intercept him by going east about 200 miles beyond the junction of Santiren and Nicholas Channels. Strict orders were given for screening lights and to see that none were accidentally shown. The squadron was to cruise generally to the eastward in the day and westward during the night. On May 23, as shown by the report, Commodore Schley expressed the belief that the Spaniards were at Cienfuegos. On the 27th the Admiral sent word to Schley, directing him to proceed with all possible speed to Santiago because of information received that the Spaniards were there. The same time orders were sent to have the collier Sterling dispatched to Santiago with an expression of opinion that the Commodore should use it to obstruct the channel at its narrowest part leading into the harbor. The details of the plan were left to the Commodore's judgment, as he (Sampson) had "the utmost confidence in his ability to carry this plan to a successful conclusion, and earnestly wished him good luck." Sampson apparently felt certain of the presence of the Spaniards at Santiago and urged that the harbor must be blockaded at all hazards. Schley in the meantime had proceeded to Santiago, although it appears not the same day Admiral Sampson expected. At one time Commodore Schley contemplated going to Key West with the squadron for coal, but this was abandoned, his collier having been temporarily repaired, and the necessity for a trip to Key West being avoided Santiago was then blockaded. Admiral Sampson arrived at Santiago June 1st. June 8 the Admiral urged upon the department, as he had previously done, to expedite the arrival of the troops for Santiago, the difficulty of blockading the Spanish ships daily increasing. In a memorandum dated June 15, the Admiral says: "The Commander-in-Chief desires again to call the attention of the commanding officers to the positions occupied by the blockading fleet, especially during the daytime, and it is now directed that all ships keep within a distance of the entrance to Santiago of four miles, and this distance must not be exceeded. "If the vessel is coaling or is otherwise restricted in its movements it must nevertheless keep within this distance. If at any time the flagship makes signal which is not visible to any vessel, such vessel must at once approach the flagship or retreating vessel to a point where it can read the signal. "Disregard of the directions which have already been given on this head has led to endless confusion. Many times during the day the fleet is so scattered that it would be perfectly possible for the enemy to come out of the harbor and meet with little opposition. "The Commander-in-Chief hopes that strict attention will be given this order." In the order of battle incidental to the landing of Shafter's army corps June 22, when ships were sent to shell the beach and cover the landing of the men" the following occurs: "The attention of commanding officers of all vessels engaged in blockading Santiago de Cuba is earnestly called to the necessity of the utmost vigilance from this time forward, both as to maintaining stations and readiness for action and as to keeping a close watch upon the harbor mouth. If the Spanish Admiral ever intends to attempt to escape that attempt will be made soon." The Admiral says trouble was experienced in the landing of Shafter's army on account of the wandering proclivities of some of the transports. The progress of the disembarkation was rendered somewhat difficult by a heavy sea, the heaviest during the three weeks the fleet had been stationed there, owing to a stiff blow off the coast of Jamaica. According to a dispatch to Secretary Long, dated June 26, the channel at Santiago not having been obstructed by the sinking of the Merrimac, Admiral Sampson was preparing a torpedo attack to hasten the destruction of the Spanish vessels, although he regretted resorting to this method because of its difficulties and small chance of success. He would not do this, he says, were the present force to be kept there; as it then insured a capture, which he believed would terminate the war. There was contemplated at this time sending a fleet to the Spanish coast; and this expedition was to consist of the Iowa, Oregon, Newark, Yosemite, Yankee, and Dixie, and they were to go to the Azores for orders, en route to Tangier, Morocco. The colliers were to join the fleet at the Azores. On June 30 the Admiral received a communication from Major-General Shafter announcing that he expected to attack Santiago the following morning, and asking that he (Sampson) bombard the forts at Aguadores in support of a regiment of infantry, and make such demonstrations as he thought proper at the harbor's mouth, so as to keep as many of the enemy there as possible. This request was complied with, and on July 1 General Shafter asked that the Admiral keep up his fight on the Santiago water front. On July 2 the following was received from General Shafter. "Terrible fight yesterday, but my line is now strongly intrenched about three-fourths of a mile from town. I urge that you make effort immediately to force the entrance to avoid future losses among my men, which are already heavy. You can now operate with less loss of life than I can. Please telephone answer." A reply was telephoned General Shafter from Admiral Sampson, through Lieutenant Stanton, which said the Admiral had bombarded the forts at the entrance of Santiago and also Punta Gorda battery inside, silencing their fire, and asked whether he (Shafter) wanted further firing on the Admiral's part. The explanation was made that it was impossible to force an entrance until the channel was cleared of mines--a work of some time after the forts were taken possession of by the troops. To this General Shafter replied: "It is impossible for me to say when I can take batteries at entrance of harbor. If they are as difficult to take as those which we have been pitted against it will be some time and at great loss of life. I am at a loss to see why the navy cannot work under a destructive fire as well as the army. My loss yesterday was over 500 men. By all means keep up fire on everything in sight of you until demolished. I expect, however, in time and with sufficient men to capture the forts along the bay." On the 2nd of July, Sampson wrote to Shafter. "An officer of my staff has already reported to you the firing which we did this morning, but I must say in addition to what he told you that the forts which we silenced were not the forts which would give you any inconvenience in capturing the city, as they cannot fire except to seaward. They cannot even prevent our entrance into the harbor of Santiago. Our trouble from the first has been the channel to the harbor is well strewn with observation mines, which would certainly result in the sinking of one or more of our ships if we attempted to enter the harbor, and by the sinking of a ship the object of attempting to enter the harbor would be defeated by the preventing of further progress on our part. "It was my hope that an attack on your part of these shore batteries from the rear would leave us at liberty to drag the channel for torpedoes. "If it is your earnest desire that we should force our entrance I will at once prepare to undertake it. I think, however, that our position and yours would be made more difficult if, as is possible, we fail in our attempt. "We have in our outfit at Guantanamo forty countermining mines, which I will bring here with as little delay as possible, and if we can succeed in freeing the entrance of mines by their use I will enter the harbor. "This work, which is unfamiliar to us, will require considerable time. "It is not so much the loss of men as it is the loss of ships which has until now deterred me from making a direct attack upon the ships within the port." The Admiral says he began making preparations to countermine, and, with the object of arranging an attack upon the batteries at the entrance a visit was arranged to General Shafter, so that the matter might be thoroughly discussed, and combined action take place. He adds: "I had in view the employment of the marines for an assault an either the Morro or Socapa battery, while at the same time assaulting the defenses at the entrance with the fleet." The Admiral says of the sortie and destruction of Cervera's fleet: "This event closes the purely naval campaign, crowning with complete success the anxious work of almost exactly two months." The error of Commodore Schley as to the location of Cervera's fleet, his hesitation in accepting the report of the Spaniards' presence at Santiago, appears to have caused the advancement of Admiral Sampson and subordinated Schley. Out of this came differences of opinion about facts among the close friends of the two distinguished officers. Schley was close at hand when Cervera's run from Santiago took place, while Sampson was out of the way on other duty, and Schley has been charged with an evasive movement of the New York just then that lost valuable time. It is related by the Washington staff correspondent of the Chicago Times-Herald that just after the battle of Santiago, Commodore Schley went aboard the Iowa and hailed Captain Evans with the remark that it had been a great day for the American navy. "But why didn't you obey orders and close in on the mouth of the harbor instead of heading out to sea?" inquired Evans. Commodore Schley's reply was that he was afraid the Vizcaya would ram the Brooklyn. This colloquy referred to a striking maneuver of the flagship Brooklyn early in the engagement at Santiago, which has been commented on before. In justice to Commodore Schley the navy department officers admit the Spanish officers after the battle said that it had been their purpose, on emerging from the harbor, to have the Vizcaya ram the Brooklyn, believing that the Spanish cruisers could outrun the remaining vessels in the American fleet, most of which were battleships, supposed to be of a lower rate of speed than the Spanish cruisers. The action of the Vizcaya as she headed toward the Brooklyn indicated her determination to carry out this programme. But the remark of Captain Evans to the nominal commander of the squadron would under ordinary circumstances have been an act of insubordination and only illustrates the feeling of some of the captains of the fleet toward the Commodore. It has been said that Schley, being ordered to Key West when Cervera appeared in Cuban waters, "proceeded to Cienfuegos, which was thought to be the destination of the Spanish warships. That port commanded the only direct railroad connection with Havana, and had the Spanish fleet gone there Admiral Cervera could have relieved General Blanco with money and munitions of war and received in return supplies necessary for his squadron. It is believed even now that had the Spanish ships been properly supplied and equipped they would have gone to Cienfuegos instead of to Santiago. But subsequent developments have shown that Admiral Cervera was permitted to take only enough coal to carry him to the nearest port, Santiago." Schley credited Cervera with knowing enough to know that Cienfuegos was the better port for his purposes, and therefore adhered to his opinion, and Sampson was made his superior officer. So important have the differences seemed that the Wainwright Board was convened to investigate the parts taken in the Santiago naval battle respectively by Admiral Sampson and Admiral Schley. But in official phrase this board was convened for the purpose of determining the position and courses of the ships engaged in the action at Santiago July 3, and reporting to the Secretary of the Navy. The report is: "U.S.F.S. New York, First Rate, Navy Yard, New York, Oct. 8, 1898.--Sir: In obedience to your order of Sept. 2, 1898, appointing us a board to plot the positions of the ships of Admiral Cervera's squadron and those of the United States fleet in the battle of July 3, off Santiago de Cuba, we have the honor to submit the following report, accompanied by a chart, showing the positions of the ships at seven different times. "These times, as taken by the United States ships engaged, with the incidents noted, are as follows: "No. 1, 9:35 a.m.--Maria Teresa came out of the harbor. "No. 2, 9:50 a.m.--Pluton came out. "No. 3, 10:15 a.m.--Maria Teresa turned to run ashore. "No. 4, 10:20 a.m.--Oquendo turned to run ashore. "No. 5, 10:30 a.m.--Furor blew up and Pluton turned to run ashore. "No. 6, 11:05 a.m.--Vizcaya turned to run ashore. "No. 7, 1:15 p.m.--Colon surrendered. "The chart selected by the board for plotting is H.O. chart No. 716, 1885, West Indies, eastern part of Bahama Islands, with part of Cuba and north coast of San Domingo. This selection was made after a careful comparison with all other charts at hand, as the positions of the principal headlands and inlets and the distances between them on it agree more nearly with the observation of members of the board than those given by any other. "The positions of the United States ships were established by known bearings and distances from the Morro at No. 1, with the exception of the New York, whose position is plotted by the revolutions of its engines during a run of forty-five minutes cast from its position, southeast half south of the Morro, 6,000 yards. Position at No. 2 is plotted by all ships according to their relative bearings from each other, the operations of their engines from 9:35 to 9:50, the evidence of the officers on board them, and the ranges used in firing at the Spanish ships. Position No. 3 is plotted from observations of the officers of the United States ships, with regard to their nearness to each other, and relative bearings of themselves from Teresa, with ranges in use at the time, the performance of the engines, and general heading of the ships. Position No. 4 same as No. 3, substituting Oquendo for Teresa. Position Nos. 5, 6, and 7 are plotted on the same general plan. "Before plotting these positions the board took each ship separately and discussed the data for the position under consideration--this data being obtained from the report of the commanding officers, notes taken during the action, and the evidence of the members of the board. In reconciling differences of opinion in regard to distances, bearings, ranges, etc., full liberty was given to the representative of the ships under discussion to bring in any argument or data he considered necessary, and the board submits this report with a feeling that, under the circumstances, it is as nearly correct as is possible so long after the engagement. Very respectfully, "_Richard Wainwright_, "Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N., Senior Member. "_S.P. Comly_, "Lieutenant, U.S.N. "_L.C. Heilner_, "Lieutenant, U.S.N. "_W.H. Schuetze_, "Lieutenant, U.S.N. "_A.C. Hodgson_, "Lieutenant, U.S.N. "_W.H. Allen_, "Lieutenant, U.S.N. "_Edward E. Capehart_, "Lieutenant, U.S.N. "To the Commander-in-Chief." Measurements upon the chart showing the positions of the vessels at the specified times named in the report will give as fair an idea of the work of the board as can be made without the chart itself. "Position No. 1, 9:35 a.m. When the Maria Teresa came out of the harbor the New York was nine miles east of Morro, accompanied by the Hist and Ericsson. The Brooklyn was three miles southwest of Morro, being two and two-tenths miles from the shore west of the mouth of the harbor. The Texas was eight-tenths of a mile east of the Brooklyn; the Iowa one and eight-tenths miles east and south of the Brooklyn, and the Oregon a half mile east of the Iowa, the Iowa being three miles directly south of Morro. The Indiana was two and two-tenths miles southwest of Morro and the Gloucester one mile almost directly north of the Indiana, a mile and four-tenths from Morro. "Position No. 2, 9:50 a.m. When the Pluton came out all the Spanish vessels had come out of the harbor and their positions were: Maria Teresa two and a half miles southwest of Morro, the Vizcaya, Colon and Oquendo, in the order named, behind the Teresa and from four-tenths to half a mile apart. The position of the American vessels were: The New York had moved up two and one-tenth miles westward. The Brooklyn had started north, swerved to the northeast and toward the mouth of the harbor, and was turning east on the swing it made to the right and around to the westward course; it was eight-tenths of a mile from the Vizcaya. At position No. 2 the Texas first went east a half mile, swinging toward the harbor, then turning to the left it is at No. 2 a half mile directly north of the first position. The Iowa moved by a varying course northwest and was a mile and four-tenths from the Vizcaya, the Oregon being two-tenths of a mile behind the Iowa, the Indiana three-tenths behind the Iowa. The Gloucester's first start was half a mile directly away from the harbor, but swinging to the right, had advanced toward the Spanish ships, being one and seven-tenths miles from the nearest, the Oquendo. "Position No. 3, 10:15 a.m. Maria Teresa turned to run ashore. It was five and one-half miles from Morro. The Vizcaya was two and three-tenths miles westward from the Teresa, the Oquendo one and two-tenths miles, and the Colon one and four-tenths miles in advance of the Teresa. The American vessels were as follows: The New York had come within three miles of Morro, being southeast of that point. The Brooklyn had made its swing to the westward, crossing its track, and was two and one-half miles south and west of the Teresa, and one and three-tenths miles directly south of the Colon, and one and one-tenth miles and a little behind the Vizcaya, one and three-tenths miles and a little in advance of the Oquendo. The Texas was one and two-tenths miles from the Teresa, a little behind it, and one and four-tenths miles from and behind the next Spanish ship, the Oquendo. The Iowa was one and one-tenth miles from the Teresa and a little closer in, but not quite as far west as the Texas. The Oregon had pulled up and passed the Texas and Iowa, being a little further in shore than the Texas and a little further out than the Iowa. It was in advance of the Teresa, being one and seven-tenths miles from that vessel, six-tenths of a mile from and directly in the line of the Oquendo, seven-tenths of a mile from the Colon, and one and two-tenths miles behind the Vizcaya. The Indiana was two miles from the Texas and two and six-tenths miles from the Oquendo, the nearest Spanish vessel. The Gloucester had moved up six-tenths of a mile and was just a mile directly south of Morro. "Position No. 4, 10:20 a. m. Oquendo turned to run ashore. Only five minutes elapsed from position No. 3. All vessels had been running westward without material changes in their positions. The Colon had run one and three-tenths miles, the Vizcaya about one-tenth of a mile less, and swerved to the left, bringing it to within one and one-tenth miles of the Brooklyn. The Iowa was the same distance, but almost directly astern, and the Oregon was one and three-tenths miles from the Vizcaya, but farther out to sea. The Iowa was eight-tenths of a mile from the Oquendo, the Oregon nine-tenths of a mile from the same vessel, and both somewhat in advance of the doomed Spanish ship. The Indiana had advanced eight-tenths of a mile and was two and six-tenths miles away from the Oquendo, the nearest Spanish ship. The New York had advanced nearly a mile, but was not yet abreast of Morro. The Gloucester had run over two miles and was now well west of Morro, but five miles east of the Oquendo. "Position No. 5, 10:30 a. m. Furor blew up and Pluton turned to run ashore. This is ten minutes later than position No. 4. The Gloucester had run a little more than two miles, and was four-tenths of a mile from the Furor and but little further from the Pluton. The New York had run two and two-tenths miles, and was three and three-tenths miles from the Furor, the nearest Spanish ship, and two and two-tenths miles south and a little west of Morro. The Colon had run two and nine-tenths miles, and the Vizcaya two and seven-tenths miles. The Brooklyn had run two and three-tenths miles, and was one and two-tenths miles from the Vizcaya and one and six-tenths miles from the Colon, which was running nearer the shore. The Oregon had sailed two and a half miles, and was one and one-half miles from the Vizcaya, and about the same distance from the Colon. The Texas was one and two-tenths miles astern of the Oregon, two and four-tenths miles from the Oregon. The Indiana was one and one-half miles astern of the Texas. "Position No. 6, 11:05 a.m. Vizcaya turned to run ashore. In thirty-five minutes the Vizcaya had sailed about seven miles, and was off the mouth of the Aserradero River. The Colon had run five and one-half miles further, and was more than that distance in advance of any of the American vessels. The Brooklyn was one and three-tenths miles distant from the Vizcaya and slightly behind it. The Oregon was one and a half miles from the Vizcaya, but nearer the shore and somewhat more astern of the enemy. The Texas was two and seven-tenths miles from the Vizcaya and directly astern of the Oregon. The Iowa was three and two-tenths miles directly astern of the Vizcaya. The New York was five miles behind the Iowa. The Ericsson had kept along with the New York all the time, and was, at this position, one-half a mile in advance of it. The Indiana was nearly four miles behind the Iowa. "Position No. 7, 1:15 p.m. The Colon surrendered. In the two hours and ten minutes from the last position given the vessels had coursed westward a great distance. The Colon had run twenty-six and one-half miles and was off the Tarquino River. The Brooklyn was the nearest American vessel. It had sailed twenty-eight and one-half miles and was three and four-tenths miles from the Colon. The Oregon was four and one-half miles from the Colon and more in shore than the Brooklyn. The Texas was three and four-tenths miles behind the Oregon. The New York was nine and one-half miles from the Colon. No one of the other vessels had come up save the Vixen, which was abreast of the New York. This little vessel in the beginning of the fight steamed out to sea and sailed westward on a course about two and one-quarter miles from that of the nearest Spanish ships. "The tracings of the chart show that the Spanish vessels sailed on courses not more than three-tenths of a mile apart until the Oquendo ran ashore. Then the Vizcaya veered out to sea and the Colon kept nearer the shore, their courses being about seven-tenths of a mile apart. Up to the time the Oquendo went ashore the Iowa, Indiana, Oregon, and Texas sailed on courses within three-tenths of a mile of each other, the Iowa being the nearest and the Texas the farthest from the course of the Spanish ships. The Brooklyn's course was from three-tenths to one-half of a mile outside that of the Texas. The swing to the right which the Brooklyn made at the beginning of the engagement shows an oval four-tenths of a mile across. It crossed the courses of the Texas, Oregon, and Indiana twice while making the turn, but before these vessels had gone over them. The course of the New York after passing Morro was nearer the shore than any other United States vessel except the Gloucester, and a mile behind where the Oquendo turned to run ashore it passed inside the courses of the Spanish vessels. Ten miles west of the Vizcaya disaster it crossed the Colon's track, but followed close the course of that vessel until the latter surrendered. "The Iowa, Indiana, and Ericsson did not go further west than where the Vizcaya ran ashore. The Gloucester stopped by the Maria Teresa and Oquendo, as also did the Hist. The latter vessel was not able to keep pace with the New York and Ericsson, the vessels it was with at the beginning of the battle." Major General Nelson A. Miles was carrying on, as master of the art and science of war, a prospering campaign in Porto Rico, when the protocol of peace between the United States and Spain was signed, and "the war drum throbbed" no longer. It is the testimony of those who have studied the management of the invasion of Porto Rico by the military head of the army, that it was going on guided with consummate skill when the war closed. The American forces had the pleasure in Porto Rico of moving in a country that had not been desolated as Cuba was. The island was a tropical picture of peace, only the glitter of armies breaking the spell. The defenders had the help of good roads, by which they could, on the inner lines, shift their columns with rapidity and ease. But the Porto Rico people were largely favorable to United States sovereignty--just as the Cubans would be if it were not for the selfishness and jealousies, hatreds and scheming, regardless of the favor or prosperity of the people, that the most deplorable warfare known in the later years of the earth has engendered. It was on October 18, 1898, that the American flag was raised over San Juan de Porto Rico. The telegram of the Associated Press contained this announcement of the ceremony and symbol by which was announced the glorious initial chapter of a new dispensation that adds to America's territory one of the loveliest islands of the sea: San Juan de Porto Rico, Oct. 18.--Promptly at noon to-day the American flag was raised over San Juan. The ceremony was quiet and dignified, unmarred by disorder of any kind. The Eleventh Regular Infantry, with two batteries of the Fifth Artillery, landed this morning. The latter proceeded to the forts, while the infantry lined up on the docks. It was a holiday for San Juan, and there were many people in the streets. Rear Admiral Schley and General Gordon, accompanied by their staffs, proceeded to the palace in carriages. The Eleventh infantry Regiment and band, with Troop H of the Sixth United States Cavalry, then marched through the streets and formed in the square opposite the palace. At 11:40 a. m. General Brooke, Admiral Schley, and General Gordon, the United States Evacuation Commissioners, came out of the palace, with many naval officers, and formed on the right side of the square. The streets behind the soldiers were thronged with townspeople, who stood waiting in dead silence. At last the city clock struck the hour of 12 and the crowds, almost breathless and with eyes fixed upon the flagpole, watched for developments. At the sound of the first gun from Fort Morro, Major Dean and Lieutenant Castle, of General Brooke's staff, hoisted the Stars and Stripes, while the band played the "Star Spangled Banner." All heads were bared and the crowds cheered. Fort Morro, Fort San Cristobal, and the United States revenue cutter Manning, lying in the harbor, fired twenty-one guns each. Senor Munoz Rivera, who was President of the recent autonomist council of secretaries, and other officials of the late insular government, were present at the proceedings. Congratulations and handshaking among the American officers followed, Ensign King hoisted the Stars and Stripes over the intendencia, but all other flags on the various public buildings were hoisted by military officers. Simultaneously with the raising of the flag over the Captain General's palace many others were hoisted in different parts of the city. Washington, D. C., Oct. 18.--The War Department has received the following to-day: "San Juan, Porto Rico, Oct. 18.--Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.: Flags have been raised on public buildings and forts in this city and saluted with national salutes. The occupation of the island is now complete. "_Brooke_, Chairman." The two Spanish fleets--of the East and West Indies, were annihilated, the former May 1st, and the latter July 2nd, two months and two days between the events. The respective fleets in Manila bay were as follows: _American Fleet_. Name Class Armanent Men and Officers Olympia Protected Cruiser Four 8-in., ten 5-in., 24 R.F. 466 Baltimore Protected Cruiser Four 8-in., six 6-in., 10 R.F. 395 Boston Par. Ptd. Cruiser Two 8-in., six 6-in., 10 R.F. 272 Raleigh Protected Cruiser One 6-in., ten 5-in., 14 R.F. 295 Concord Gunboat Six 6-in., 9 R.F. 150 Petrel Gunboat Four 6-in., 7 R.F. 100 McCulloch Revenue Cutter Four 4-in 180 _Spanish Fleet_. Name. Class. Armament. Men and Officers *Rema Cristina Steel Cruiser Six 6.2-in., two 2.7, 13 R.F. 370 Castilla Wood Cruiser Four 5.9, two 4.7, two 3.4, two 2.9, 12 R.F. 300 Don Antonio de Ulloa Iron Cruiser Four 4.7, 5 R.F. 173 Don Juan de Austria Iron Cruiser Four 4.7, two 2.7, 21 R.F. 173 Isla de Luzon Steel Ptd. Cruiser Six 4.7, 8 R.F 164 Isla de Cuba Steel Ptd. Cruiser Six 4.7, 8 R.F 164 Velasco Iron Cruiser Three 6-in., two 2.7, two R.F. 173 Marques del Duero Gunboat One 6.2, two 4.7, 1 R.F. 98 General Lezo Gunboat One 3.5, 1 R.F. 97 El Correo Gunboat Three 4.7, 4 R.F. 116 Quiros Gunboat 4 R.F. 60 Villalobos Gunboat 4 R.F. 60 Two torpedo boats and two transports. The American squadron was thus officered: Acting Rear Admiral George Dewey, Commander-in-Chief. Commander B.P. Lamberter, Chief-of-Staff. Lieutenant L.M. Brumby, Flag Lieutenant. Ensign H.H. Caldwell, Secretary. _Olympia_ (Flagship). Captain, Charles V. Gridley. Lieutenant-Commander, S. C. Paine. Lieutenants: C.G. Calkins, V.S. Nelson, G.S. Morgan, S.M. Strite. Ensigns: M.M. Taylor, F.B. Upham, W.P. Scott, A.G. Kavanagh, H.V. Butler. Medical Inspector, A.F. Price; Passed Assistant Surgeon, J.E. Page; Assistant Surgeon, C.H. Kindleberger; Pay Inspector, D.A. Smith; Chief Engineer, J. Entwistle; Assistant Engineer, S.H. DeLany; Assistant Engineer, J.F. Marshall, Jr.; Chaplain, J.B. Frazier; Captain of Marines, W.P. Biddle; Gunner, L.J.G. Kuhlwein; Carpenter, W. Macdonald; Acting Boatswain, E.J. Norcott. _The Boston_. Captain, F. Wildes. Lieutenant-Commander, J.A. Norris. Lieutenants: J. Gibson, W.L. Howard. Ensigns: S.S. Robinson, L.H. Everhart, J.S. Doddridge. Surgeon, M.H. Crawford; Assistant Surgeon, R.S. Balkeman; Paymaster, J.R. Martin; Chief Engineer, G.B. Ransom; Assistant Engineer, L.J. James; First Lieutenant of Marines, R. McM. Dutton; Gunner, J.C. Evans; Carpenter, L.H. Hilton _U. S. Steamship Baltimore_. Captain, N. M. Dyer. Lieutenant-Commander, G. Blocklinger. Lieutenants: W. Braunersreuther, F. W. Kellogg, J. M. Ellicott, C. S. Stanworth. Ensigns: G. H. Hayward, M. J. McCormack, U. E. Irwin. Naval Cadets, D. W. Wurtsbaugh, I. Z. Wettersoll, C. M. Tozer T. A. Karney; Passed Assistant Surgeon, F. A. Heiseler; Assistant Surgeon, E. K. Smith; Pay Inspector, E. Bellows; Chief Engineer, A. C. Engard; Assistant Engineers, H. B. Price, H. I. Cone; Naval Cadet (engineer), C. P. Burt; Chaplain. T. S. K. Freeman; First Lieutenant of Marines, D. Williams; Acting Boatswain, H. R. Brayton; Gunner, L. J. Connelly; Acting Gunner, L. J. Waller; Carpenter, O. Bath. _U. S. Steamship Raleigh_. Captain, J. B. Coghlan. Lieutenant-Commander, F. Singer. Lieutenants: W. Winder, B. Tappan, H. Rodman, C. B. Morgan, Ensigns: F. L. Chidwick, P. Babin. Surgeon, E. H. Marsteller; Assistant Surgeon, D. N. Carpenter; Passed Assistant Paymaster, S. E. Heap; Chief Engineer, F. H. Bailey; Passed Assistant Engineer, A. S. Halstead; Assistant Engineer, J. E. Brady; First Lieutenant of Marines, T. C. Treadwell; Acting Gunner, G. D. Johnstone; Acting Carpenter, T. E. Kiley. _The Concord_. Commander, A. S. Walker. Lieutenant-Commander, G. P. Colvocoreses. Lieutenants: T. B. Howard, P. W. Hourigan. Ensigns: L. A. Kiser, W. C. Davidson, O. S. Knepper. Passed Assistant Surgeon, R. G. Broderick; Passed Assistant Paymaster, E. D. Ryan; Chief Engineer, Richard Inch; Passed Assistant Engineer, H. W. Jones; Assistant Engineer, E. H. Dunn. _The Petrel_. Commander, E. P. Wood. Lieutenants: E. M. Hughes, B. A. Fiske, A. N. Wood, C. P. Plunkett. Ensigns: G. L. Fermier, W. S. Montgomery. Passed Assistant Surgeon, C. D. Brownell; Assistant Paymaster, G. G. Siebells; Passed Assistant Engineer, R. T. Hall. The marvel of the naval engagements that disarmed Spain in both the Indies, is that only one American was killed in the Santiago action, and the only man who lost his life on Dewey's fleet was overcome by heat. The Spaniards were deceived as well as surprised at Manila, the deception being their dependence upon the belief that the Americans would take it for granted that the falsified official charts were correct, and stand off. The course of the American fleet, finding with the lead on the first round 32 feet of water where the chart said 15, dismayed the enemy. The Spanish had but one chance to cripple Dewey, and that was by closing with him, but they never seem, except in the case of the flagship, to have contemplated taking the offensive. In the course of the war crowded with victory, two Spanish fleets were destroyed, two Spanish armies surrendered, thirty-six thousand soldiers and sailors of Spain made prisoners of war, the only heavy losses of Americans were at Santiago, and they happened because in the terrible climate of Cuba in summer, for those unaccustomed to it and forced to be in the rain and sleep on the ground, it was necessary to carry the enemy's lines of defense by assault, because it was certain that delay would be destruction of the troops. The campaign was hurried and short, but such was the effect of the few weeks spent in Cuba that, bloody as were the first days of July, the weeks succeeding witnessed the death from sickness of more soldiers than fell in battle. Not until November 5,1898, did the State Department make public the complete text of the Protocol between the United States and Spain for the preliminary settlement of the war. A copy was cabled to this country from the French translation, but the department here never gave out the text of the document in official form. The Protocol textually is as follows: "Protocol of agreement between the United States and Spain, embodying the terms of a basis for the establishment of peace between the two countries, signed at Washington Aug. 12, 1898. Protocol: William R. Day, Secretary of State of the United States, and his Excellency, Jules Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of France at Washington, respectively possessing for this purpose full authority from the government of the United States and the government of Spain, have concluded and signed the following articles, embodying the terms on which the two governments have agreed in respect to the matters hereinafter set forth, having in view the establishment of peace between the two countries--that is to say: _Article_ I. "Spain will relinquish all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba. _Article_ II. "Spain will cede to the United States the Island of Porto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and also an island in the Ladrones, to be selected by the United States. _Article_ III. "The United States will occupy and hold the City, Bay, and Harbor of Manila, pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace, which shall determine the control, disposition, and government of the Philippines. _Article_ IV. "Spain will immediately evacuate Cuba, Porto Rico, and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and to this end each government will, within ten days after the signing of this protocol, appoint commissioners, and the commissioners so appointed shall, within thirty days after the signing of this protocol, meet at Havana for the purpose of arranging and carrying out the details of the aforesaid evacuation of Cuba and the adjacent Spanish islands; and each government will, within ten days after the signing of this protocol, also appoint other commissioners, who shall, within thirty days after the signing of this protocol, meet at San Juan, Porto Rico, for the purpose of arranging and carrying out the details of the aforesaid evacuation of Porto Rico and other islands now under, Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies. _Article_ V. "The United States and Spain will each appoint not more than five commissioners to treat of peace, and the commissioners so appointed shall meet at Paris not later than Oct. 1, 1898, and proceed to the negotiation and conclusion of a treaty of peace, which treaty shall be subject to ratification according to the respective constitutional forms of the two countries. _Article_ VI. "Upon the conclusion and signing of this protocol hostilities between the two countries shall be suspended, and notice to that effect shall be given as soon as possible by each government to the commanders of its military and naval forces. "Done at Washington in duplicate, in English and in French, by the undersigned, who have hereunto set their hands and seals, the 12th day of August, 1898. "William R. Day. Jules Cambon." CHAPTER XVI The Peace Jubilee. The Lessons of War in the Joy Over Peace in the Celebrations at Chicago and Philadelphia--Orations by Archbishop Ireland and Judge Emory Speer--The President's Few Words of Thrilling Significance--The Parade of the Loyal League, and Clover Club Banquet at Philadelphia--Address by the President--The Hero Hobson Makes a Speech--Fighting Bob Evans' Startling Battle Picture--The Destruction of Cervera's Fleet--The Proclamation of Thanksgiving. The lessons of war--that which has been through it accomplished for the country--the new lands over which our sovereignty is established--the gain in the national character--the increased immensity of the outlook of destiny, found impressive expression in the peace jubilee, the President of the United States participating, and interpreting history with dignity, in great Chicago, the giant of the West and North, and Philadelphia, the holy city of Independence Hall and the liberty bell. Of the celebrations of Peace with honor and victory, the first was that at Chicago, and it will be memorable for remarkable speeches in which many orators rose to the height of the occasion, their speeches worthy of celebrity and certain to give imperishable passages to the school books of the future. We have to pass over much of meritorious distinction, and confine ourselves in the selections for these pages, to the utterances of the President--Archbishop Ireland, whose golden periods of Americanism ring through the land, and the Southern orator, Judge Emory Speer, of Georgia, whose patriotism springs forth and elevates the nobility of his thought, and touches with sacred fire the ruddy glow of his eloquence. "Lead, my country, in peace!" was Archbishop Ireland's passionate exclamation, the key-note of his oration. He said: "War has passed; peace reigns. Stilled over land and sea is the clang of arms; from San Juan to Manila, fearless and triumphant, floats the star spangled banner. America, 'Be glad and rejoice, for the Lord hath done great things.' America, with whole heart and soul, celebrate thy jubilee of peace. "Welcome to America, sweet, beloved peace; welcome to America, honored, glorious victory. Oh, peace, thou art heaven's gift to men. When the Savior of humanity was born in Bethlehem the sky sang forth, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men.' Peace was offered to the world through Christ, and when the spirit of Christ is supreme, there is universal peace--peace among men, peace among nations. "Oh, peace, so precious art thou to humanity that our highest ideal of social felicity must ever be thy sovereignty upon earth. Pagan statesmanship, speaking through pagan poetry, exclaims: 'The best of things which it is given to know is peace; better than a thousand triumphs is the simple gift of peace.' The regenerated world shall not lift up sword against sword; neither shall they he exercised any more in war. "Peace is the normal flow of humanity's life, the healthy pulsation of humanity's social organism, the vital condition of humanity's growth and happiness. "'O first of human blessings and supreme, Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou. Oh peace! thou soul and source of social life, Beneath whose calm inspiring influence Science his views enlarges, art refines, And swelling commerce opens all her ports. Blessed be the man divine who gave us thee.' "The praise of peace is proclaimed beyond need of other words, when men confess that the only possible justification of war is the establishment of peace. Peace, we prize thee. "'But the better thou, The richer of delight, sometime the more Inevitable war.' "'Pasis imponero morem'--to enforce the law of peace: this, the sole moral argument which God and humanity allow for war. O peace, welcome again to America. "War--how dreadful thou art! I shall not, indeed, declare thee to be immoral, ever unnecessary, ever accursed. No; I shall not so arraign thee as to mete plenary condemnation to the whole past history of nations, to the whole past history of my own America. But that thou art ever dreadful, ever barbarous, I shall not deny. War! Is it by cunning design--in order to hide from men thy true nature--that pomp and circumstance attend thy march; that poetry and music set in brightest colors, the rays of light struggling through thy heavy darkness, that history weaves into threads of richest glory the woes and virtues of thy victims? Stripped of thy show and tinsel, what art thou but the slaying of men?--the slaying of men by the thousands, aye, often by the tens, by the hundreds of thousands. "With the steady aim and relentless energy tasking science to its utmost ingenuity, the multitudes of men to their utmost endurance, whole nations work day and night, fitting ourselves for the quick and extensive killing of men. This preparation for war. Armies meet on the field of battle; shot and shell rend the air; men fall to the ground like leaves in autumnal storms, bleeding, agonizing, dying; the earth is reddened by human blood; the more gory the earth beneath the tread of one army the louder the revel of victory in the ranks of the other. This, the actual conflict of war. From north to south, from east to west, through both countries whose flags were raised over the field of battle, homes not to be numbered mourned in soul-wrecking grief, for husband, father, son or brother who sank beneath the foeman's steel or yielded life within the fever tent, or who, surviving shot and malady, carries back to his loved ones a maimed or weakened body. This, the result of war. "Reduced to the smallest sacrifice of human life the carnage of the battlefields, some one has died and some one is bereft. 'Only one killed,' the headline reads. The glad news speeds. The newsboys cry: 'Killed only one.' 'He was my son. What were a thousand to this one--my only son.' "It was Wellington who said: 'Take my word for it, if you had seen but one day of war you would pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again.' It was Napoleon who said: 'The sight of a battlefield after the fight is enough to inspire princes with a love of peace and a horror of war.' "War, be thou gone from my soul's sight! I thank the good God that thy ghastly specter stands no longer upon the thresholds of the homes of my fellow countrymen in America, or my fellow beings in distant Andalusia. When, I ask heaven, shall humanity rise to such heights of reason and of religion that war shall be impossible, and stories of battlefields but the saddening echoes of primitive ages of the race? "And yet, while we await that blessed day, when embodied justice shall sit in judgment between peoples as between individuals, from time to time conditions more repellant than war may confront a nation, and to remove such conditions as the solemn dictates of reason and religion impose was as righteous and obligatory. Let the life of a nation or the integrity of its territory be menaced, let the honor of a nation be assailed, let the grievous crime against humanity be perpetrated within reach of a nation's flag or a nation's arm, reiterated appeals or argument and diplomacy failing, what else remains to a nation which is not so base as to court death or dishonor but to challenge the fortunes of war and give battle while strength remains in defense of 'its hearthstones and its altars'? War, indeed, is dreadful; but let it come; the sky may fall, but let justice be done. War is no longer a repudiation of peace, but the means to peace--to the soul peace a self-sacrificing people may enjoy--peace with honor. "A just and necessary war is holy. The men who at country's call engage in such a war are the country's heroes, to whom must be given unstinted gratitude and unstinted praise. The sword in their hands is the emblem of self-sacrifice and of valor; the flag which bears them betokens their country and bids them pour out in oblation to purest patriotism the life blood of their hearts; the shroud which spreads over the dead of the battlefield is the mantle of fame and of glory. "Happy the nation which has the courage of a just war, no less than that of a just peace, whose sons are able and willing to serve her with honor alike in war and in peace. Happy the nation whose jubilee of peace, when war has ceased, is also a jubilee of victory. "'We love peace, not war, but when we go to war we send it the best and bravest of the country.' These words, spoken a few days ago by the chief magistrate of America, embody a great principle of American life. Six months ago the congress of the United States declared that in the name of humanity war should be waged in order to give to the island of Cuba a stable and independent government. Magnificent patriotism of America. The people of the United States at once rose in their might. They argued not, they hesitated not. America had spoken; theirs was not to judge but to obey. In a moment the money of America, the lives of America, were at the disposal of the chief magistrate of the nation, whose embarrassment was the too generous response to his appeal for means to bring victory to the nation's flag. America had spoken. Partisan politics, sectional disputes instantly were stilled beneath the majesty of her voice. Oft it had been whispered that we had a North and a South. When America spoke we knew that we were but one people; that all were Americans. It had been whispered that social and economic lines were hopelessly dividing the American people, and that patriotism was retreating before the growth of class interests and class prejudices. "But when America spoke there was no one in the land who was not an American; the laborer dropped his hammer; the farmer turned from his plow; the merchant forgot his counting-room; the millionaire closed the door of his mansion; and side by side, equal in love of country; their resolve to serve her, they marched to danger and to death. America can never doubt the united loyalty of her whole population, nor the power which such united loyalty puts into her hand. "And what may I not say in eulogy of the sentiment of humanity, that in union with their patriotism swayed the hearts of the American people, and in their vision invested the war with the halo of highest and most sacred duty to fellow-men? I speak of the great multitude, whom we name the American people. They had been told of dire suffering by neighboring people--struggling for peace and liberty; they believed that only through war could they acquit themselves of the sacred duty of rescuing that people from their sufferings. I state a broad, undeniable fact. The dominating, impelling motive of the war in the depths of the national heart of America was the sentiment of humanity. The people of America offered their lives through no sordid ambition of pecuniary gain, of conquest of territory, of national aggrandizement. Theirs was the high-born ambition to succor fellowmen. "What strength and power America was found to possess. When war was declared, so small was her army, so small her navy that the thought of war coming upon the country affrighted for the moment her own citizens and excited the derisive smiles of foreigners. Of her latent resources no doubt was possible; but how much time was needed to utilize them, and, meanwhile, how much humiliation was possible. The President waved his wand; instantly armies and navies were created as by magic. Within a few weeks a quarter of a million of men were formed into regiments and army corps; vessels of war and transport ships were covering the seas; upon water and land battles were fought and great victories won, from one side of the globe to the other. I know not of similar feats in history. What if in this bewildering rush of a nation to arms one department or another of the national administration was unable to put in a moment its hand upon all the details which a thoroughly rounded equipment required? The wonder is that the things that were done could at all have been done, and that what was done so quickly could have been done so well. The wonder is that this sudden creation of such vast military forces was possible, even in America. "What prowess in action, what intellect in planning, what skill in execution, were displayed by soldiers and seamen, by men and officers. Magnificent the sweep of Dewey's squadron in Manila harbor. Magnificent the broadsides from Sampson's fleet upon Cervera's fleeing ships. Magnificent the charge of regiments of regular infantry, and of Roosevelt's riders up the hills of El Caney. Never daunted, never calculating defeat, every man determined to die or conquer, every man knowing his duty, how to do it--the soldiers and seamen of America were invincible. Spanish fleets and Spanish armies vanished before them as mists before the morning sun; the nations of the earth stood amazed in the presence of such quick and decisive triumphs, at what America had done and at what, they now understood, America could do. The war is ended. It would ill become me to say what details shall enter into the treaty of peace which America is concluding with her vanquished foe. I stand in the presence of the chief magistrate of the republic. To him it belongs by right of official position and of personal wisdom to prescribe those details. The country has learned from the acts of his administration that to his patriotism, his courage, his prudence, she may well confide her safety, her honor, her destiny, her peace. Whatever the treaty of Sapin, America will be pleased when appended to this treaty is the name of William McKinley. "What I may speak of on this occasion is the results of the war, manifest even in this hour to America and to the world, transcending and independent of all treaties of peace, possessing for America and the world a meaning far mightier than mere accumulation of material wealth or commercial concessions or territorial extension. "To do great things, to meet fitly great responsibilities, a nation, like a person, must be conscious of its dignity and its power. The consciousness of what she is and what she may be has come to America. She knows that she is a great nation. The elements of greatness were not imparted by the war; but they were revealed to her by the war, and their vitality and their significance were increased through the war. "To take its proper place among the older nations of the earth a nation must be known as she is to those nations. The world to-day as ne'er before knows and confesses the greatness and the power of America. The world to-day admires and respects America. The young giant of the West, heretofore neglected and almost despised in his remoteness and isolation, has begun to move as becomes his stature; the world sees what he is and pictures what he may be. "All this does not happen by chance or accident. An all-ruling Providence directs the movements of humanity. What we witness is a momentous dispensation from the master of men. 'Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo--with the revolution of centuries there is born to the world a new order of things,' sang the Mantuan poet at the birth of the Augustan age. So to-day we proclaim a new order of things has appeared. "America is too great to be isolated from the world around her and beyond her. She is a world power, to whom no world interest is alien, whose voice reaches afar, whose spirit travels across seas and mountain ranges to most distant continents and islands--and with America goes far and wide what America in the grandest ideal represents--democracy and liberty, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. This is Americanism more than American territory, or American shipping, or American soldiery. Where this grandest ideal of American life is not held supreme America has not reached, where this ideal is supreme America reigns. The vital significance of America's triumphs is not understood unless by those triumphs is understood the triumph of democracy and of liberty. "If it was ever allowed to nations to rejoice over the result of their wars, America may rejoice to-day. Shall we then chant the praises of war and change this jubilee of peace into a jubilee of war? Heaven forbid! "'We love peace, not war.' The greatness of America makes it imperative upon her to profess peace--peace to-day, peace to-morrow. Her mission as a world power demands that she be a messenger, an advocate of peace before the world. Fain would we make her jubilee of peace a jubilee of peace for all nations. At least the message from it to the world shall be a message of peace. "That at times wonderful things come through war, we must admit; but that they come through war and not through the methods of peaceful justice, we must ever regret. When they do come through war, their beauty and grandeur are dimmed by the memory of the sufferings and carnage which were their price. "We say in defense of war that its purpose is justice; but is it worthy of Christian civilization that there is no other way to justice than war, that nations are forced to stoop to the methods of the animal and savage? Time was when individuals gave battle to one another in the name of justice; it was the time of social barbarism. Tribunals have since taken to themselves the administration of justice, and how much better it is for the happiness and progress of mankind. "It is force, or chance, that decides the issue of the battle. Justice herself is not heard; the decision of justice is what it was before the battle, the judgment of one party. Must we not hope that with the widening influence of reason and of religion among men, the day is approaching when justice shall be enthroned upon a great international tribunal, before which nations shall bow, demanding from it judgment and peace? Say what we will, our civilization is a vain boast. "'Till the war drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are furled In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, wrapt in universal law.' "It is America's great soldier who said: "'Though I have been trained as a soldier, and have participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not have been found of preventing the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences, instead of keeping large standing armies, as they do in Europe.' Shall we not allow the words of General Grant to go forth as the message of America? "Some weeks ago the Czar of Russia said: 'The maintenance of general peace and possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations present themselves in the existing condition of the whole world as an ideal towards which the endeavors of all governments should be directed,' and in accordance with those views he invited all nations to send representatives to an international peace congress, in which the question of reducing the armaments of the several countries of the world and otherwise preparing some plan for the prevention of wars might be discussed. "Shall not America send to St. Petersburg a message of good will, a promise of earnest co-operation? America, great and powerful, can afford to speak of peace. Words of peace from her will be the more gracious and timely, as they who do not know her say that, maddened by her recent triumphs, she is now committed beyond return to a policy of militarism and of conquest. "Lead, my country, in peace--in peace for thyself, in peace for the world. When war is necessary, lead, we pray thee, in war; but when peace is possible, lead, we pray thee yet more, lead in peace; lead in all that makes for peace, that prepares the world for peace. "America, the eyes of the world are upon thee. Thou livest for the world. The new era is shedding its light upon thee, and through thee upon the whole world. Thy greatness and thy power daze me; even more, thy responsibilities to God and to humanity daze me--I would say affright me. America, thou failing, democracy and liberty fail throughout the world. "And now know, in the day of thy triumphs and victories, what guards democracy and liberty, what is thy true grandeur. Not in commerce and industry, not in ships and in armies, are the safety and the grandeur of nations, and, more especially, of republics. Intelligence and virtue build up nations and save them; without intelligence and virtue, material wealth and victorious armies bring corruption to nations and precipitate the ruin of liberty. "And now, America, the country of our pride, our love, our hope, we remit thee for to-day and for to-morrow into the hands of the Almighty God, under whose protecting hand thou canst not fail, whose commandments are the supreme rules of truth and righteousness." The Archbishop was followed by Judge Speer, of Georgia: "Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Spain had long been our near and dangerous neighbor. Its people have a degree of reverence almost superstitious for monarchy, and regard republican institutions with great disfavor. It has been said of Spain that some incurable vice in her organization, or it may be in the temper of her people, neutralizes all of the advantages she ought to derive from her sturdy hardihood, her nearly perfect capacity for endurance and the somber genius alike for war, for art and for literature, which has so often marked her sons. While this seems to be true, the Spaniard is not only a formidable antagonist, but there is a wealth of interest and charm in his rich, romantic history which commands the admiration of a generous foeman. This must be accorded, whether we contemplate that ancient people as they alternately resist the aggressions of Carthage and of Rome, the fierce cavalry of Hamilcar, the legions of Scipio, of Pompey and of Caesar, or in more recent times the achievements of their renowned infantry which broke to fragments the best armies of Europe, or the infuriated people in arms against the hitherto unconquered veterans of Napoleon, or but now as with patient and dogged courage, with flaming volleys, they vainly strive to hold the works of Caney and San Juan against the irresistible and rushing valor of the American soldier. In art the Spaniard has been not less famous. In the royal collection of Madrid, in the venerable cathedrals of Seville, in the Louvre, in the London National Gallery, the lover of the beautiful may be charmed by the warmth of color, the accuracy of technique, the rounded outline and saintly salvation of Murillo. "Many a quaint moralist, many a stately poet, many a priestly chronicler attests the genius of Spanish literature, but if these had not been, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had been its title to immortality. The admirable attributes of Spanish character nowhere found warmer appreciation than with our own countrymen. What Prescott did for the statecraft, and stern martial renown of the Spaniards, Washington Irving, with melodious prose and gentle humor, surpassed in his kindly portrayal of Spanish character in his charming romance, The Conquest of Granada. It is perhaps due to the drollery and Addisonian humor of that gifted American that we have never been able to estimate the Spaniard quite so seriously as he estimates himself, or, indeed, as his stern and uncompromising nature deserves. The truth is, Spanish policy has ever been insidiously and persistently inimical to the American people, and has culminated in deeds more atrocious than those which have rendered infamous the baleful memory of Pedro the Cruel. "We all know how in 1492 his holiness, Alexander VI., in order to prevent unseemly collisions between Christian princes, published a bull by which he assigned to Spain all discoveries lying west of an imaginary line drawn 300 leagues to the westward of the Cape Verde islands. All discoveries to the east were confined to Portugal. "All of South America save Brazil and the two Guineas, all Central America, Mexico, the entire territory west of the Mississippi, now embraced by the United States, beautiful Cuba, from whose eastern province of Santiago Ponce de Leon across the lucent waves of the tropical sea coveted the ambrosial forests and fertile meadows of Porto Rico, whence he was to sail to the floral empire of Florida. But this was not all of Spain's magnificent domain. Far across the waters of the South Pacific was the now famous cluster of islands bearing the name of the Spanish king. And from their great cities, via Guam, and Hawaii, and San Francisco, to Acapulco, sailed the famous Manila fleet, huge galleons, loaded to the gunwales with the silken and golden wealth of the orient. Where are her colonies now? The declaration of the senior senator from the noble state of Illinois has been fulfilled: No race outside of her own borders, even if Spanish by origin, has ever been able to endure her reign, and every race which has resisted her ultimately succeeded in withdrawing from her control. "In the meantime the Americans, as declared by the German philosopher, Lessing, were building in the new world the lodge of humanity. The determined malignity of the Spaniard toward the adventurous men of our race who were fringing the Atlantic coast with sparsely peopled and widely separated settlements was promptly disclosed. They had threatened to send an armed ship to remove the Virginia planters. They laid claim to Carolina, and they directed powerful armed expeditions against the young colony of Georgia. They were now to meet, not the helpless savages who had been their victims, but men of that same fighting strain who in this good year breasted the hail of death, swarmed up the heights and planted the colors on the intrenchments of Santiago. "That field where the Georgian and Spaniards on that momentous day in 1742 met is yet called the Blood Marsh. The commander of our colonial forces was James Edward Oglethorpe. To his military genius and the heroism of his slender force is due the fact that the southern territory of the United States was not added to the dependencies of Spain. That illustrious Englishman should ever live in the memory and veneration of the American people. He did more to exclude the Spaniards from American soil than any other man of the English speaking race, save that successor of Washington, the president, who evinces his fervid love of country and graces the occasion by his presence to-day. "Defeated in their scheme of invasion, the Spaniards remained intensely inimical to our fathers. What more striking demonstration of that superintending providence, which administers justice, not only to individuals, but to nations, than the spectacle in this mighty city, builded on the heritage of which Spain would have deprived this people of this gathering of Americans to mark the epoch when the last Spanish soldier has been driven from the last foot of soil of that hemisphere discovered by Columbus. May we not justly exclaim with the psalmist of old: 'Oh, clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.' "It is perhaps impossible for Americans of this day and time to conceive how vast was the control Spain might have exerted over the destinies of our republic. The independence of the United States had been recognized, the constitution had been adopted and the government organized, and yet for many years she claimed without dispute the peninsula of Florida, thence a strip along the gulf extending to and including the city of New Orleans, and she held all of that territory west of the Mississippi extending from the Father of Waters to the Pacific ocean, and from the Gulf of Mexico northward to the undefined boundaries of the British possessions. "Even as it is to-day, that empire mentioned in Bishop Berkely's prophetic stanza, 'Westward the course of empire takes its way,' which sprang into being with the first shot of the simple, God-fearing husbandmen on the green at Lexington extends more than half way across the Pacific ocean, and the miner or the fisherman standing on the ultimate island of Alaska and gazing eastward across the icy waters may with the naked eye behold the dominions of the czar. Nor in this do we include those distant islands, where one May morning, ever to be famous in the annals of our race, the spicy breezes that blow o'er Manila bay were rent by the guns of the noble Dewey as they proclaimed that the genius of liberty had come to rid of cruelty and avarice and crime that charming land 'where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.' "In this connection may it not be well for us and for some of our distinguished representatives now in Paris to consider if it can be ever possible for men with the American and Spanish ideas of government to live in proximity and in peace? Contrast the character of the average American citizen with that of the Spaniard. The native and distinctive modesty of the national character forbids me to pronounce an extravagant eulogium upon the American citizen, but behold him and see what he has done and can do. "While the human intellect has been making prodigious and unheard-of strides, while the world is ringing with the noise of intellectual achievements, Spain sleeps on untroubled, unheeding, impassive, receiving no impression upon it. There she lies at the farther extremity of the continent, a huge and torpid mass, the sole representative now remaining of the feelings and knowledge of the middle ages. And, what is the worst symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Though she is the most backward country in Europe she believes herself to be the foremost. She is proud of everything of which she ought to be ashamed. "How incompatible is the temperament of the American and the Spaniard. "May the worn and wasted followers of Gomez and Garcia come to appreciate the blessings of liberty under the law. No other wish is in consonance with the aims of the American people. We would not, if we could, be their masters. The gigantic power of the country has been put forth for their salvation and for their pacification. Connected with them by bonds of genuine sympathy and indissoluble interest, we will labor with them to secure for them established justice, domestic tranquility, general welfare and the blessings of liberty to themselves and to their posterity. For the common defense, in the blue ether above the beautiful island of Cuba is poised the eagle.' 'Whose golden plume Floats moveless on the storm and in the blaze Of sunrise gleams when earth is wrapt in gloom.' "It was not enough, however, for the American people to recognize the independence of the Spanish-American republics. It soon became our duty to notify the world that in certain eventualities it was our purpose to defend their national existence. The holy alliance, as it was termed, had been formed. The great powers who signed the famous compact declared its purpose to maintain as Christian doctrine the proposition that useful or necessary changes in legislation, or in the administration of states, can only emanate from the free will and well-weighed convictions of those whom God has rendered responsible for power. Whom had God made responsible for power? What is a well-weighed conviction? These are questions about which the irreverent Americans might perchance differ with royalty. We had been lead to believe, and yet believe, that the voice of the people is the voice of God. When, therefore, the absolution of the holy alliance, not content with smothering a feeble spark of liberty in Spain, initiated a joint movement of their arms against the Spanish-American republics, it gave the people of our country the gravest concern. In the meantime our relations with Great Britain had grown cordial. That they may grow ever stronger and more cordial should be the prayer of every man of the English speaking race. An unspeakable blessing to mankind of the struggle from which we are now emerging is the genuine brotherly sympathy for the people of the United States flowing from that land. "And it is returned in no unstinted measure. But two months ago the flagship of Admiral Dewey steamed slowly into the battle line at Manila. As she passed the British flagship Immortalite its band rang out the inspiring air 'See the Conquering Hero Comes,' and as the gorgeous ensign of the republic was flung to the breeze at the peak of the Olympia there now came thrilling o'er the waters from our kinsmen's ship the martial strains of the 'Star Spangled Banner.' "Finally, when our gallant seamen, reposing in fancied security in the scorching blast of the treacherous explosion were cruelly and remorselessly slain, and calm investigation had developed the truth, we had been despicable on the historic page had we not appealed to the god of battle for retribution. The pious rage of seventy millions of people cried aloud to heaven for the piteous agony, for the shameful slaughter of our brethren. Our noble navy was swiftly speeding to its duty. Poetic genius bodied forth the spirit of our gallant seamen as the mighty ships sped on their way. "Let the waters of the orient as they moan through the shell-riven wrecks at Cavite, the booming waves of the Caribbean as fathoms deep it sweeps over Pluton and Furor and breaks into spray on the shapeless and fire-distorted steel of Vizcaya and Oquendo, tell how the navy has paid our debt to Spain. Nor is the renown which crowns the standards of our army one whit less glorious. Nothing in the lucid page of Thucydides nor in the terse commentaries of Caesar, nothing in the vivid narrative of Napier or the glowing battle scenes of Allison, can surpass the story how, spurning the chapparal and the barbed wire, pressing their rifles to their throbbing hearts, toiling up the heights, and all the while the machine guns and the Mausers mowing the jungle as if with a mighty reaper, on and yet right on, they won the fiery crests, and Santiago fell. Well may we exclaim with the royal poet of Israel: "'Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm hath gotten him the victory.' "America! Humane in the hour of triumph, gentle to the vanquished, grateful to the Lord of Hosts, a reunited people forever: "'Great people. As the sands shalt thou become; Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade The multitudinous earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.'" The band burst into the strains of "Dixie" in honor of the Southern birth of Judge Speer, as he concluded his oration. President McKinley, as on other occasions during the program, joined in the hearty applause. Cries of "McKinley," "McKinley," "The President," "The President," were heard all over the hall, and in a moment it was seen that the President was going to respond. Every one stood up. Ex-Governor Oglesby approached the front of the box, and said, "I have the honor to introduce the guest of the occasion, the President." "Leaning forward," we quote the Tribune, "from his box in the earnestness of his utterance, speaking in the tones of emotion having birth in the fullness of heart, President William McKinley, at the Auditorium jubilee meeting yesterday morning gave to the people a message of simple thanks and significant augury. Save for a wave of applause at the mention of American charity, the terse, reverent address was heard in silence. An added hush fell upon the intent throng when the President began the portentous concluding paragraph, and when he ceased speaking and stood before them grave and masterful, the quiet was breathless, tense under the force of repression. Then the meaning of the words of the Executive coursed from heart to brain, and men's minds grasped the fact that they had heard the President's lips declare that he had seen the direction of the flow of the currents of destiny, that he recognized their majesty, and that his purpose was in harmony with the common will--the force working for the retention of the conquered islands in the distant Pacific and for the policy of national growth. "The applause broke the louder for the preceding calm and the deeper for the inspiring motive. Hats were swung and handkerchiefs waved. Men climbed on chairs to lead the cheering and women forgot gloved hands and applauded with energy. At the last, ex-Governor Richard J. Oglesby, who had a seat in the President's box, led in three cheers." The message of the President was: "My Fellow Citizens: I have been deeply moved by this great demonstration. I have been deeply touched by the words of patriotism that have been uttered by the distinguished men so eloquently in your presence. It is gratifying to all of us to know that this has never ceased to be a war of humanity. The last ship that went out of the harbor of Havana before war was declared was an American ship that had taken to the suffering people of Cuba the supplies furnished by American charity, and the first ship to sail into the harbor of Santiago was another American ship bearing food supplies to the suffering Cubans. "I am sure it is the universal prayer of American citizens that justice and humanity and civilization shall characterize the final settlement of peace as they have distinguished the progress of the war. "My countrymen, the currents of destiny flow through the hearts of the people. Who will check them? Who will divert them? Who will stop them? And the movements of men, planned by the master of men, will never be interrupted by the American people." The Philadelphia celebration was a scene of a demonstration of popular interest and patriotic feeling amazing in its multitudinous enthusiasm. The Loyal League was out in full force, the parade was a prodigy of display, and the Clover Club gave a brilliant dinner, and the cleverness of the President's speech carried the club by storm. He said: "I cannot forego making acknowledgment to this far-famed club for the permission it has granted me to meet with you here to-night. You do not seem half so bad at this stage as you have been pictured. No one can unfold the future of the Clover Club. (Laughter.) It has been so gratifying to me to participate with the people of the city of Philadelphia in this great patriotic celebration. It was a pageant the like of which I do not believe has been seen since the close of the great Civil War, when the army of Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, and the navy of Dupont, Dahlgren and Porter gave the great review in the capital city of the nation. And I know of no more fitting place to have a patriotic celebration than in this great city, which witnessed the first consecration of liberty and of the Republic. As I stood on the great reviewing stand, witnessing the soldiers and sailors passing by, my heart was filled only with gratitude to the God of battles, who has so favored us, and gratitude to the brave soldiers and sailors who had won such signal victories on land and on sea, and had given a new meaning to American valor. "It has been especially gratifying to me to participate not only with the people of Philadelphia, but with the people of the great West, where I have recently visited, in doing honor to the American army and the American navy. No nobler soldiers or sailors ever assembled under any flag. You had with you to-day the leaders of Santiago, Porto Rico and Guantanamo. We unfortunately had none of the heroes of Manila with us. But I am sure that our hearts go out to them to-night and to the brave Dewey and Otis and Merritt, and all the other gallant men that are now sustaining the flag in the harbor city of Manila." (A voice, "How about Hobson?") "The American people are always ready for any emergency, and if the Merrimac is to be sunk there is an American officer to do it. He succeeded in doing what our foe has been unable to do, sink an American ship. (Applause.) "I ask you, gentlemen of the Clover Club, to unite with me in toasting the Army and Navy of the United States, without whose valor and sacrifice we could not celebrate the victory we have been celebrating to-day. Not only the men at the front, not only the men on the battleships and in the battle line, but the men at home with ambition to go to fight the battles of American civilization, should be the recipients of the gratitude of the American people." Hobson and his men were a great feature of the parade in the four-in-hand. Hobson, during this visit to Philadelphia was caught, surrounded and captured at his hotel and was forced to make a speech, of which there is this report: "The young officer was plainly embarrassed. His red face suggested it, his trembling voice told it. In a low tone and frequently pausing, as if from a loss of a word, he said: "'Your reception has been so very kind that it seems almost as if I had lost the power to say anything.' "Someone called out: 'Never mind, you had nerve enough to go into Santiago Harbor,' and then the crowd gave three cheers for Hobson. "He began again. 'The incident you have referred to is one you unduly magnify. Believe me, it was really nothing more than a little bit of work, which came to my men and to me to do in the ordinary course of strategy in warfare. That was all it was, a little bit of work, and it is sheer exaggeration to say anything else.' "'Can't agree with you! Can't agree with you!' was the shouted answer from the crowd." At the Clover Club jubilee dinner, Captain "Fighting Bob" Evans gave a wonderfully interesting account of the destruction of Cervera's fleet, closing with a grim picture of war the celebration of peace. He had been speaking of the blockade of Cuba, and insistently called upon to tell about Santiago, said: "Of our little scrap, it was the prettiest mix-up that was ever seen. I want to say that no fleet ever met a braver enemy than we did at Santiago. Those Spaniards stood up and got killed in the best possible shape. Six hundred of them died in less than thirty minutes, so you can see that there was very little flinching on Cervera's ships. "During the fight there were two very interesting moments, the first when the four big cruisers of the enemy came outside of the harbor, firing away with mechanical regularity and presenting a most magnificent spectacle. They were not hitting anything, but that made little difference at that time, they tried hard enough. As we closed in, there came a moment when the fleeing Spanish ships had an almost perfect chance to use their rams on our vessels. I submit now that not a single one changed his course a single inch. They came out of that harbor and ran away, and that was all they attempted to do, fighting as they went. "The second point was when 'Dick' Wainwright misread a signal. I know he won't admit that he did misread it; however, I'll tell you the incident. In the Gloucester Wainwright was just off the harbor mouth when the two Spanish torpedo boat destroyers were noticed making straight at him. The Indiana signaled 'The enemy's torpedo boats are coming out.' Wainwright read it 'Close in and attack enemy's torpedo boats,' and you know the rest of the story. "There was a dramatic picture which I want to call your attention to. It was after the Vizcaya had run ashore, and I had to stop the Iowa, some 400 yards away. I saw the survivors on a sand bar, which was merely a narrow strip of about 200 yards from shore, on either side of a small inlet. On one side a school of hungry sharks were making fierce rushes toward the men, and on the other, the Cubans were shooting away, utterly regardless of the fact that they were fighting a helpless foe. Out in front we were not supposed to be very friendly. "Finally, I saw Captain Eulate, of the destroyed ship, coming toward my vessel in a small boat. Now Eulate is what you call a black Spaniard, one of those fellows that would cry as though his heart would break every few minutes when in trouble. He sat in the stern of a small boat that had belonged to his vessel. She was partly stove in and had about a foot of water, or I should say blood and water, in her bottom. "As I looked down in the gangway I think it was the most horrible sight that I ever witnessed. In the bottom of the boat lay two dead Spaniards, one with his head completely shot away. The Spanish Captain was wounded in three places, and each of the four men who rowed his boat was more or less cut up. We slung a chair over the side and carefully hauled him on board. "As he came up to the starboard gangway the marine guard saluted and he was received with all the honors of his rank. As he stepped toward me he burst into tears, threw his hands up in the air, and then, with a gesture of utter despair, but with all the grace of the pretty gentleman, loosed his sword belt and pressing a fervent kiss on the hilt of the weapon he extended it toward me. Every man on that ship knew that that Spaniard was giving up something of value equal to his life. I am not very good-natured, but I could not take that sword." This met with loud cries of "You did right, Bob," and one lusty-lunged individual announced that there was not a man in the country that would take it. Captain Evans, who recognized the speaker, a friend from the rural districts, answered: "Oh, you don't know what some of those up-country Pennsylvanians would do. It was a pretty good sword." Continuing, Captain Evans said: "I didn't know exactly what to do with the Spanish Captain to get him into our sick bay. As I was about to ask him of his wound he stepped toward the gangway and looked shoreward. About a quarter of a mile off lay the once magnificent vessel in which he had boasted he would tow the Brooklyn back to Spain. "She was burning fore and aft, terrific columns of flame shooting up around her, and suddenly, with a burst of tears, Captain Eulate kissed his hand and bade fond farewell to the burning hulk and said with impassioned voice, 'Adios Viscaya.' As he did this the very same instant there came a tremendous roar and the Vizcaya's magazine blew her superstructure hundreds of feet into the air. Had the incident occurred that way on the stage anybody would have said it was too well timed. "He turned back and we got him into the ship's hospital, where the surgeons placed him on his stomach to shave the hair around a small cut on the back of his head. I stood alongside of him, and rolling his eyes into the starboard corner he said to me, with a rather comical expression, 'I think I have heard of you before.' I told him I did not know how that could have been, and he asked: 'Did you not command the Indiana?' 'Yes,' I said; then he said, shaking his head as well as circumstances would permit, 'Yes, I have heard of you. You are "Bob" Evans.' "I have often wondered just what he referred to. I have a notion that it would fit certain remarks regarding certain language that I was credited with having used in reference to an attack on Havana; language, by the way, which I never used. As I said before, the battle before Santiago was the prettiest imaginable kind of effect. Why, two torpedo boat destroyers came out, and inside of ten minutes we had them sounding. One sounded in 200 fathoms of water and sunk to rest there. The other preferred a berth with her nose on the beach. "The Maria Teresa and Admiral Oquendo were on fire inside of five minutes after the fight had started. They made beautiful sweeps toward the shore, and were regular Fourth of July processions as they swept in on the beach. We helped them along a bit by landing a few shells in the stern. It was a pretty fight, but it should never be forgotten that the Spaniards fought their ships as hard and with as much valor as any men in any ships ever fought." After the first cabinet meeting succeeding the peace jubilee, the President issued his annual Thanksgiving proclamation: "_By the President of the United States_. _A Proclamation_. "The approaching November brings to mind the custom of our ancestors, hallowed by time and rooted in our most sacred traditions, of giving thanks to Almighty God for all the blessings he has vouchsafed to us during the past year. "Few years in our history have afforded such cause for thanksgiving as this. We have been blessed by abundant harvests, our trade and commerce have been wonderfully increased, our public credit has been improved and strengthened, all sections of our common country have been brought together and knitted into closer bonds of national purpose and unity. "The skies have been for a time darkened by the cloud of war; but as we were compelled to take up the sword in the cause of humanity, we are permitted to rejoice that the conflict has been of brief duration and the losses we have had to mourn, though grievous and important, have been so few, considering the great results accomplished, as to inspire us with gratitude and praise to the Lord of Hosts. We may laud and magnify His holy name that the cessation of hostilities came so soon as to spare both sides the countless sorrows and disasters that attend protracted war. "I do, therefore, invite all my fellow citizens, as well those at home as those who may be at sea or sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe Thursday, the twenty-fourth day of November, as a day of national thanksgiving, to come together in their several places of worship, for a service of praise and thanks to Almighty God for all the blessings of the year, for the mildness of seasons and the fruitfulness of the soil, for the continued prosperity of the people, for the devotion and valor of our countrymen, for the glory of our victory and the hope of a righteous peace, and to pray that the Divine guidance, which has brought us heretofore to safety and honor, may be graciously continued in the years to come. "In witness whereof, etc. (Signed) "_William M'Kinley_. "By the President: "_John Hay_, Secretary of State." CHAPTER XVII Early History of the Philippines. The Abolishment of the 31st of December, 1844, in Manila--The Mystery of the Meridian 180 Degrees West--What Is East and West?--Gaining and Losing Days--The Tribes of Native Filipinos--They Had an Alphabet and Songs of Their Own--The Massacre of Magellan--His Fate Like That of Captain Cook--Stories of Long Ago Wars--An Account by a Devoted Spanish Writer of the Beneficent Rule of Spain in the Philippines--Aguinaldo a Man Not of a Nation, But of a Tribe--Typhoons and Earthquakes--The Degeneracy of the Government of the Philippines After It Was Taken from Mexico--"New Spain"--The Perquisites of Captain-Generals--The Splendor of Manila a Century Ago. The 31st of December was abolished in Manila in 1844. Up to that time it had been retained as the discoverers fixed it by pure piety and patriotism. Pope Alexander VI had issued a bull on the 4th of May, 1493, dividing the world into two hemispheres, which was quite correct, though it did not correspond to the secular lines of more modern days. The gracious object of His Holiness was to keep the peace of the world by dividing the lands taken from the heathen between the Spaniards and Portuguese. The East was to belong to Portugal. The line was drawn to include Brazil. The west was the hunting ground for heathen of Spain. The claim of Spain for the Philippines was that they were west. That was the way Magellenas (Magellan), the Portuguese navigator sailed through the straits named for him, and westward found the alleged Oriental islands, in which we, the people of the United States, are now so much interested. When sailing into the sunset seas he picked up a day, and never discovered his error for he did not get home, and the Captain who navigated his ship did not know he was out of time with the European world until he got as far around as the Cape Verde Islands. An added day was held in Manila, as a kind of affirmation of clear title, or trade mark of true righteousness, on the part of Spain. It is one of the enduring puzzles in going around the world that a day is gained or lost, and it is not always a sure thing whether there is a loss or gain. The perplexing problem is increased in its persistence if one sails westward over the 180 Meridian west from Greenwich, and goes beyond that line (which is not the one drawn by Alexander VI)--say to the Philippines, and turns back, as is done in the voyage from San Francisco to Manila, and vice versa. In this case, the mystery of the meridian becomes something dreadful. One loses a day going west and gains one coming east, and it is a difficulty for a clear mind not to become cloudy over the account of loss and gain--or perhaps we may say profit and loss, when the account is closed. "The historian of the Philippine Expedition" lost a Wednesday going out, jumping from Tuesday to Thursday, and found an extra Thursday on the return--celebrated his birthday on another day than that on which he was born, and had to correct the ship account of his board bill, by adding a day. The Captain's clerk had forgotten it because it was not in the Almanac. Ship time begins a day at noon (and ends another), so when we crossed the meridian 180 degrees west at 2 p. m. by the sun, and the day was Thursday and to-morrow was Thursday also, the forenoon was yesterday by the ship. Therefore, Thursday was yesterday, to-day and to-morrow on the same day. The forenoon was yesterday--from 12 to 2 p. m. was to-day--and from 2 p. m. to midnight was to-morrow! It is no wonder "the historian," whose birthday was September the 2nd, found as he was on the west side of the meridian with the mystery that the folks at home in the states had celebrated it for him two days ago--one day he had lost, and the other they had gained. Jagor, the historian of the Philippines, before the days when Admiral Dewey grasped the reins of a thousand islands, and a thousand to spare, says in his "Philippine Islands," that "when the clock strikes 12 in Madrid, it is 8 hours 18 minutes and 41 seconds past 8 in the evening at Manila. The latter city lies 124 degrees 40 min. 15 sec. east of the former, 7 h. 54 min. 35 sec. from Paris. But it depends upon whether you measure time by moving with the sun or the other way. If westward the course of empire takes its way, Manila is a third of a day catching up with Madrid time. If we face the morning and go to meet it Manila is ahead. The absence of the right day for Sunday has long been gravely considered by the missionaries who have gone to heathen lands beyond the mysterious meridian that spoils all the holidays. One might establish a bank on that line and play between days, but there is only one little speck of land on the 180 degree meridian from pole to pole. It may be very well worth considering whether the United States should not reestablish the 31st of December in Manila, and assert that we hold title to the Philippines not only by the victories of the fleet and armies of the United States, but by the favor of Alexander VI, whose bull the Spaniards disregarded after it had grown venerable with three centuries of usage. We quote a Spanish historian who colors his chapters to make a favorable show for his country on this subject, as follows: "From the Spaniards having traveled westwards to the Philippines, there was an error of a day in their dates and almanacs. This was corrected in 1844, when, by order of the Captain-General and the Archbishop, the 31st of December, 1844, was suppressed, and the dates of Manila made to agree with those of the rest of the world. A similar correction was made at the same time at Macao, where the Portuguese who had traveled eastward had an error of a day in an opposite direction." It will be noticed that the authority of the Archbishop was carefully obtained and quoted, but it was beyond his prerogative. The early history of the Philippines bears few traces of the traditions and romances of the natives, but they were in possession of an alphabet when "discovered," and were then, as now, fond of music, singing their own melodies. The Hawaiians were enabled to get their old stories into print because they suddenly fell into the hands of masterful men who had a written language. The Icelanders were too literary for their own good, for they spoiled their history by writing it in poetry and mixing it with fiction, losing in that way the credit that belongs to them of being the true discoverers of America. The Filipinos were spared this shape of misfortune, not that they lacked imagination within a narrow range of vision, but they were wanting in expression, save in unwritten music. Their lyrical poetry was not materialized. The study of the natives must be studied as geology is. Geology and native history have been neglected in the Tagala country. The rocks of the Philippines have not been opened to be read like books. More is known of the botany of the islands than of the formation of the mountains and their foundations. The original inhabitants were Negritos--a dwarfish race, very dark and tameless, still in existence, but driven to the parts of the country most inaccessible. They are of the class of dark savages, who smoke cigars holding the fiery ends between their teeth! The islands were invaded and extensively harassed by Malay tribes--the most numerous and active being the Tagala. Of this tribe is General Aguinaldo, and it is as a man with a tribe not a nation that he has become conspicuous. The other tribes of Malays will not sustain him if he should be wild enough to want to make war upon the United States. The Tagalas are cock fighters and live on the lowlands. They eat rice chiefly, but are fond of ducks and chickens, and they have an incredibly acute sense of smell, not a bad taste in food, and do not hanker to get drunk. The Visayas are also a tribe. The Igolatas are next to the Tagala in numbers and energy. They show traces of Chinese and Japanese blood. There are no Africans in the Philippines, no sign of their blood. This may be attributed to Phillip's prohibition of negro slavery. General Greene, of New York, took with him to Manila a full-blooded black manservant, and he was a great curiosity to the Filipinos. When the English conquered Manila in 1762 they had Sepoy regiments, and held the city eighteen months. A good deal of Sepoy blood is still in evidence. The Chinese have been growing in importance in the Philippines. Their men marry the women of the islands and have large families, the boys of this class being wonderfully thrifty. The children of Englishmen by the native women are often handsome, and of strong organization. The females are especially comely. The early history of the islands consists of accounts of contests with frontier rebels, attacks by pirates, and reprisals by the Spaniards, great storms and destructive earthquakes. It is remarkable that Magellan was, like Captain Cook, a victim of savages, whose existence he made known to civilized people, falling in a sea-side contest. Magellan had converted a captive chief to Christianity and baptised him as King Charles. More than two thousand of his subjects were converted in a day, and the great navigator set forth to conquer islands for the dominion of the Christian King, who lived on the isle of Zebu. The Christian monarch was entertained and received many presents, making return in bags of gold dust, fruit, oil and wine. His Queen was presented with a looking glass, and then she insisted upon baptism, and so great was the revival that Magellan set out to capture more people for the newly made Christian couple--invaded the island of Matau, and with forty-two men landed where the water was shallow, his allies remaining afloat by invitation of Magellan, to see how the Spaniards disposed of enemies. The Spanish landed at night, and on the morning found a great multitude of savages opposed to them, and fought for life, but were overwhelmed by thousands of warriors. The Admiral was in white armor, and fighting desperately, was at last wounded in his sword arm, and then in the face, and leg. He was deserted by his men, who sought to save themselves in the water, and killed many of his enemies, but his helmet and skull were crushed at one blow by a frantic savage with a huge club. There were thirty-two Spaniards killed, and one of the squadron of three ships was burned as there were not men enough to sail all the vessels. There is in Manila, in the walled city, where it is seen every day by thousands of American soldiers, a stately monument to the navigator who found the Philippines, and whose adventurous discoveries insured him immortality. His first landing on the Philippines was March 12th, 1521, less than thirty years after Columbus appeared in the West Indies, believing that he was in the midst of the ancient East Indies, and judging from the latitude in the neighborhood of the island empire of the Great Kahn. [9] "After the death of Magellan, Duarte Barbosa took the command and he and twenty of his men were treacherously killed by the Christian King, with whom they had allied themselves, one Juan Serrano was left alive amongst the natives. Magellan's 'Victory' was the first ship that circumnavigated the globe. "Magellanes passed over to the service of the King of Castile, from causes which moved him thereto; and he set forth to the Emperor Charles V., our sovereign, that the Islands of Maluco fell within the demarcation of his crown of Castile, and that the conquest of them pertained to him conformably to the concession of Pope Alexander; he also offered to make an expedition and a voyage to them in the emperor's name, laying his course through that part of the delimitation which belonged to Castile, and availing himself of a famous astrologer and cosmographer named Ruyfarelo, whom he kept in his service. "The Emperor (from the importance of the business) confided this voyage and discovery of Magellanes, with the ships and provisions which were requisite for it, with which he set sail and discovered the straits to which he gave his name. Through these he passed to the South Sea, and navigated to the islands of Tendaya and Sebu, where he was killed by the natives of Matan, which is one of them. His ships went on to Maluco, where their crews had disputes and differences with the Portuguese who were in the island of Terrenate; and at last, not being able to maintain themselves there, they left Maluco in a ship named the Victory, which had remained to the Castilians out of their fleet, and they took as Chief and Captain Juan Sebastian del Cano, who performed the voyage to Castile, by the way of India, where he arrived with very few of his men, and he gave an account to His Majesty of the discovery of the islands of the great archipelago, and of his voyage." The work of De Morga has value as a novelty, as it is more than a defense--a laudation of the Spanish rule in the Philippines in the sixteenth century. The title page is a fair promise of a remarkable performance, and it is here presented: The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, Siam, Cambodia, Japan and China, at the close of the Sixteenth Century By _Antonio de Morga_. Translated from the Spanish, with Notes and a Preface, and a Letter from Luis Vaez De Torres, Describing His Voyage Through the Torres Straits, by the _Hon. Henry E. J. Stanley_. The original work of De Morga was printed in Mexico in 1609, and has become extremely rare; there is no copy of it in the Bibliotheque Imperiale of Paris. This translation is from a transcription made for the Hakluyt Society from the copy in the Grenville Library of the British Museum; the catalogue of which states that "this book, printed at Mexico, is for that reason probably unknown to Bibliographers, though a book of great rarity." The translator gives a new view to Americans of the part that Spaniards have played in the Philippines. He plunges deep into his subject, saying: "The great point in which Manila has been a success, is the fact that the original inhabitants have not disappeared before the Europeans, and that they have been civilized, and brought into a closer union with the dominant race than is to be found elsewhere in similar circumstances. The inhabitants of the Philippines previous to the Spanish settlement were not like the inhabitants of the great Indian peninsula, people with a civilization as old as that of their conquerors. Excepting that they possessed the art of writing, and an alphabet of their own, they do not appear to have differed in any way from the Dayaks of Borneo as described by Mr. Boyle in his recent book of adventures amongst that people. Indeed, there is almost a coincidence of verbal expressions in the descriptions he and De Morga give of the social customs, habits, and superstitions of the two peoples they are describing; though many of these coincidences are such as are incidental to life in similar circumstances, they are enough to lead one to suppose a community of origin of the inhabitants of Borneo and Luzon." Mr. Consul Farren, Manila, March 13th, 1845, wrote and is quoted in support of this view as follows: "The most efficient agents of public order throughout the islands are the local clergy, many of whom are also of the country. There are considerable parts of these possessions in which the original races, as at Ceylon, retain their independence, and are neither taxed nor interfered with; and throughout the islands the power of the government is founded much more on moral than on physical influence. The laws are mild, and peculiarly favorable to the natives. The people are indolent, temperate and superstitious. The government is conciliatory and respectable in its character and appearance, and prudent, but decisive in the exercise of its powers over the people; and united with the clergy, who are shrewd, and tolerant, and sincere, and respectable in general conduct, studiously observant of their ecclesiastical duties, and managing with great tact the native character." March 29, 1851, Mr. Consul Farren wrote: "Without any governing power whatever, the greatest moral influence in these possessions is that which the priests possess, and divide among the monastic orders of Augustines, Recoletos, Dominicans, and Franciscans (who are all Spaniards), and the assistant native clergy. A population exceeding 3,800,000 souls is ranged into 677 pueblos or parishes, without reckoning the unsubdued tribes. In 577 of those pueblos there are churches, with convents or clerical residences attached, and about 500 of them are in the personal incumbency of those Spanish monks. The whole ecclesiastical subdivisions being embraced in the archbishopric of Manila and three bishoprics." "The Philippines were converted to Christianity and maintained in it by the monastic orders, energetically protected by them (and at no very past period) against the oppressions of the provincial authorities, and are still a check on them in the interests of the people. The clergy are receivers in their districts of the capitation tax paid by the natives, and impose it; they are the most economical agency of the government." The Archbishop of Manila is substantially of this judgment. De Morga opens his address to the reader: "The monarchy of Kings of Spain has been aggrandized by the zeal and care with which they have defended within their own hereditary kingdoms, the Holy Catholic Faith, which the Roman Church teaches, against whatsoever adversaries oppose it, or seek to obscure the truth by various errors, which faith they have disseminated throughout the world. Thus by the mercy of God they preserve their realms and subjects in the purity of the Christian religion, deserving thereby the glorious title and renown which they possess of Defenders of the Faith. Moreover, by the valor of their indomitable hearts, and at the expense of their revenues and property, with Spanish fleets and men, they have furrowed the seas, and discovered and conquered vast kingdoms in the most remote and unknown parts of the world, leading their inhabitants to a knowledge of the true God, and to the fold of the Christian Church, in which they now live, governed in civil and political matters with peace and justice, under the shelter and protection of the royal arm and power which was wanting to them. This boast is true of Manila, and of Manila alone amongst all the colonies of Spain or the other European states. If the natives of Manila have been more fortunate than those of Cuba, Peru, Jamaica, and Mexico, it has been owing to the absence of gold, which in other places attracted adventurers so lawless that neither the Church nor Courts of justice could restrain them." It is against the orders named as worthy exalted praise that the insurgents are most inflamed, and whose expulsion from the islands is certain in case of Philippine jurisdiction. The truth appears to be that the Spanish Colonial system was slower in the East Indies than in the West Indies and South America in producing the revolutionary rebellion that was its logical consequence, and the friars more and more became responsible for official oppression and gradually became odious. It was New Spain--Mexico--that ruled the Philippines, until Mexican independence restricted her sovereignty. When a Commander-in-Chief died in the Philippines, it was sufficient to find amongst his papers a sealed dispatch, as Morga records, "From the high court of Mexico, which carried on the government when the fleet left New Spain, naming (in case the Commander-in-Chief died) a successor to the governorship." It was in virtue of such an appointment that Guido de Labazarris, a royal officer, entered upon those duties, and was obeyed. He, with much prudence, valor, and tact, continued the conversion and pacification of the islands, and governed them, and Morga states that in his time there came the corsair Limahon from China, with seventy large ships and many men-at-arms, against Manila. He entered the city, and having killed the master of the camp Martin de Goiti, in his house, along with other Spaniards who were in it, he went against the fortress in which the Spaniards, who were few in number, had taken refuge, with the object of taking the country and making himself master of it. The Spaniards, with the succor which Captain Joan de Salzado brought them from Vigan, of the men whom he had with him (for he had seen this corsair pass by the coast, and had followed him to Manila), defended themselves so valiantly, that after killing many of the people they forced him to re-embark, and to leave the bay in flight, and take shelter in the river of Pangasinam, whither the Spaniards followed him. There they burned his fleet, and for many days surrounded this corsair on land, who in secret made some small boats with which he fled and put to sea, and abandoned the islands. The change of the name of the islands from Lazarus, which Magellan called them, to the Philippines and the capture of the native town of Manila and its conversion into a Spanish city is related by Morga in these words: "One of the ships which sailed from the port of Navidad in company with the fleet, under the command of Don Alonso de Arellano, carried as pilot one Lope Martin, a mulatto and a good sailor, although a restless man; when this ship came near the islands it left the fleet and went forward amongst the islands, and, having procured some provisions, without waiting for the chief of the expedition, turned back to New Spain by a northerly course; either from the little inclination which he had for making the voyage to the isles, or to gain the reward for having discovered the course for returning. He arrived speedily, and gave news of having seen the islands, and discovered the return voyage, and said a few things with respect to his coming, without any message from the chief, nor any advices as to what happened to him. Don Alonzo de Arellano was well received by the High Court of Justice, which governed at that time, and was taking into consideration the granting of a reward to him and to his pilot; and this would have been done, had not the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief arrived during this time, after performing the same voyage, and bringing a true narrative of events, and of the actual condition of affairs, and of the settlement of Sebu; also giving an account of how Don Alonzo de Arellano with his ship, without receiving orders and without any necessity for it, had gone on before the fleet on entering among the isles, and had never appeared since. It was also stated that, besides these islands, which had peacefully submitted to His Majesty, there were many others, large and rich, well provided with inhabitants, victuals and gold, which they hoped to reduce to subjection and peace with the assistance which was requested; and that the Commander-in-Chief had given to all these isles the name of Philippines, in memory of His Majesty. The succor was sent to him immediately, and has been continually sent every year conformably to the necessities which have presented themselves; so that the land was won and maintained. "The Commander-in-Chief having heard of other islands around Sebu with abundance of provisions, he sent thither a few Spaniards to bring some of the natives over in a friendly manner, and rice for the camp, with which he maintained himself as well as he could, until, having passed over to the island of Panay, he sent thence Martin de Goiti, his master of the camp, and other captains, with the men that seemed to him sufficient, to the side of Luzon, to endeavor to pacify it and bring it under submission to His Majesty; a native of that island, of importance, named Maomat was to guide them. "Having arrived at the Bay of Manila, they found its town on the sea beach close to a large river, in the possession of, and fortified by a chief whom they called Rajamora; and in front across the river, there was another large town named Tondo; this was also held by another chief, named Rajamatanda. These places were fortified with palms, and thick arigues filled in with earth, and a great quantity of bronze cannon, and other large pieces with chambers. Martin de Goiti having began to treat with the chiefs and their people of the peace and submission which he claimed for them, it became necessary for him to break with them; and the Spaniards entered the town by force of arms, and took it, with the forts and artillery, on the day of Sta. Potenciana, the 19th of May, the year 1571; upon which the natives and their chiefs gave in, and made submission, and many others of the same island of Luzon did the same. "When the Commander-in-chief, Legazpi, received news in Panay of the taking of Manila, and the establishment of the Spaniards there he left the affairs of Sebu, and of the other islands which had been subdued, set in order; and he entrusted the natives to the most trustworthy soldiers, and gave such orders as seemed fitting for the government of those provinces, which are commonly called the Visayas de los Pintados, because the natives there have their whole bodies marked with fire. He then came to Manila with the remainder of his people, and was very well received there; and established afresh with the natives and their chiefs the peace, friendship and submission to His Majesty which they had already offered. The Commander-in-Chief founded and established a town on the very site of Manila (of which Rajamora made a donation to the Spaniards for that purpose), on account of its being strong and in a well provisioned district, and in the midst of all the isles (leaving it its name of Manila, which it held from the natives). He took what land was sufficient for the city, in which the governor established his seat and residence; he fortified it with care, holding this object more especially in view, in order to make it the seat of government of this new settlement, rather than considering the temperature or width of the site, which is hot and narrow, from having the river on one side of the city, and the bay on the other, and at the back large swamps and marshes, which make it very strong. "From this post he pursued the work of pacification of the other provinces of this great island of Luzon and of the surrounding districts; some submitting themselves willingly, others being conquered by force of arms, or by the industry of the monks who sowed the Holy Gospel, in which each and all labored valiantly, both in the time and governorship of the adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, and in that of other governors who succeeded him. The land was entrusted to those who had pacified it and settled in it, and heads named, on behalf of the crown, of the provinces, ports, towns, and cities, which were founded, together with other special commissions for necessities which might arise, and for the expenses of the royal exchequer. The affairs of the government, and conversion of the natives, were treated as was fit and necessary. Ships were provided each year to make the voyage to New Sapin, and to return with the usual supplies; so that the condition of the Philippine Islands, in spiritual and temporal matters, flourishes at the present day, as all know. "The Commander-in-Chief, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, as has been said, discovered the islands, and made a settlement in them, and gave a good beginning to their subjection and pacification. He founded the city of the Most Holy Name of Jesus in the provinces of the Pintados, and after that the city of Manila in the island of Luzon. He conquered there the province of Ylocos; and in its town and port, called Vigan, he founded a Spanish town, to which he gave the name of Villa Fernandina. So also he pacified the province of Pangasinan and the island of Mindoro. He fixed the rate of tribute which the natives had to pay in all the islands, and ordered many other matters relating to their government and conversion, until he died, in the year of 1574, at Manila, where his body lies buried in the monastery of St. Augustine. "During the government of this Guido de Labazarris, trade and commerce were established between great China and Manila, ships coming each year with merchandise, and the governor giving them a good reception; so that every year the trade has gone on increasing." The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the Island Samai was called Filipina by Vellalohos, who sailed from Mexico in February, 1543. The capital was fixed at Manila in 1571, a distinction enjoyed three hundred and twenty-seven years. It was in a letter of Lagozpis in 1567 that the name Ilas Filipinos appeared for the first time. The Dutch became very enterprising and venturesome in the Asiatic archipelagoes and gave the Philippines much attention, having many fights with the Spaniards. The Ladrones became well known as a resting place between the islands of Philip and New Spain--Mexico. The Chinese Pirates were troublesome, and the Spaniards, between the natives, the pirates and the Dutchmen, kept busy, and had a great deal of naval and military instruction. There were other varieties of life of an exciting character, in terrible storms and earthquakes. The storm season is the same in the Philippines as in the West Indies, and the tempests have like features. October is the cyclone and monsoon month. The most destructive storm in the island of Luzon of record was October 31st, 1876. Floods rolled from the mountains, and there was a general destruction of roads and bridges, and it is reported six thousand persons were killed. So extensive and exposed is the Bay of Manila, it is one hundred and twenty knots in circumference--that it is not properly a harbor, but a stormy sheet of water. Admiral Dewey's fleet has had low steam in the boilers all the while to quickly apply the power of the engines for safety in case of a visitation from the dreaded typhoon, which comes on suddenly as a squall and rages with tornado intensity. There are many volcanoes in the islands, and they exist from the North of Luzon to the Sulus in the extreme South, a distance as great as from Scotland to Sicily. There is one on Luzon that bears a close resemblance both in appearance and phenomena to Vesuvius. The likeness in eruptions is startling. The city of Manila has repeatedly suffered from destroying shocks, and slight agitations are frequent. Within historic times a mountain in Luzon collapsed, and a river was filled up while the earth played fountains of sand. The great volcano Taal, 45 miles south of Manila, is only 850 feet high, and on a small island in a lake believed to be a volcanic abyss, having an area of 100 square miles. Monte Cagua, 2,910 feet high, discharges smoke continually. In 1814 12,000 persons lost their lives on Luzon, the earth being disordered and rent in an appalling way. There were awful eruptions July 20 and October 24, 1867, forests of great trees buried in discharges of volcanoes. June 3, 1863, at 31 minutes after 7 in the evening, after a day of excessive heat, there was a shock at Manila lasting 30 seconds, in which 400 people were killed, 2,000 wounded, and 26 public and 570 private houses seriously damaged. The greater structures made heaps of fragments. That these calamities have taught the people lessons in building is apparent in every house, but one wonders that they have not taken even greater precautions. The forgetfulness of earthquake experiences in countries where they are familiar, always amazes those unaccustomed to the awful agitations and troubled with the anticipations of imagination. However, there never has been in the Philippines structural changes of the earth as great as in the center of the United States in the huge fissures opened and remaining lakes in the New Madrid convulsions. In a surprising extent the Spanish government in the Philippines has been in the hands of the priests, especially the orders of the church. In the early centuries there was less cruel oppression than in Mexico and Peru. And yet there is in the old records a free-handed way of referring to killing people that shows a somewhat sanguinary state of society even including good citizens. Blas Ruys de Herman Gonzales wrote to Dr. Morga from one of his expeditions, addressing his friend: "To Dr. Antonio de Morga, Lieutenant of the Governor of the Filipine isles of Luzon, in the city of Manila, whom may our Lord preserve. From Camboia." This was in Cochin China, one of the Kings being in trouble, called upon Gonzales, who sympathized with him and wrote of the ceremony in which he assisted: "I came at his bidding, and he related to me how those people wished to kill him and deprive him of the kingdom, that I might give him a remedy. The Mambaray was the person who governed the kingdom, and as the king was a youth and yielded to wine, he made little account of him and thought to be king himself. At last I and the Spaniards killed him, and after that they caught his sons and killed them. After that the capture of the Malay Cancona was undertaken, and he was killed, and there was security from this danger by means of the Spaniards. We then returned to the war, and I learned that another grandee, who was head of a province, wished to rise up, and go over to the side of Chupinanon; I seized him and killed him; putting him on his trial. With all this the King and kingdom loved us very much, and that province was pacified, and returned to the King. At this time a vessel arrived from Siam, which was going with an embassy to Manila, and put in here. There came in it Padre Fray Pedro Custodio. The King was much delighted at the arrival of the priest, and wished to set up a church for him." Unquestionably there was degeneracy that began to have mastery in high places, and this can be distinctly made out early in this century, becoming more obvious in depravity, when Spain fell into disorder during the later years of the Napoleonic disturbances, and the authority and influence of Mexico were eliminated from Spain. I may offer the suggestion and allow it to vindicate its own importance, that if we have any Philippine Islands to spare, we should turn them over to the Republic of Mexico, taking in exchange Lower California and Sonora, and presenting those provinces to California to be incorporated in that State as counties. It was under Mexican rule that the Philippines were most peaceable and flourishing. The late Government of the islands as revealed to the American officers who came into possession of Manila, was fearfully corrupt. It was proven by documents and personal testimony not impeachable, that a Captain-General's launch had been used to smuggle Mexican dollars, that the annual military expedition to the southern islands was a stated speculation of the Captain-General amounting to $200,000, in one case raised to $400,000, that the same high official made an excursion to all the custom houses on the islands ordered the money and books aboard his ship and never returned either, that one way of bribery was for presents to be made to the wives of officials of great power and distinction; one lady is named to whom business men when presenting a splendid bracelet, waited on her with two that she might choose the one most pleasing, and as she had two white arms, she kept both. The frequent changes in Spanish rulers of the islands are accounted for by the demand for lucrative places, from the many favorites to whom it was agreeable and exemplary to offer opportunities to make fortunes. It goes hard with the deposed Spaniards that they had no chance to harvest perquisites, and must go home poor. This is as a fountain of little tears. The city of Manila is not lofty in buildings, because it has been twice damaged to the verge of ruin by earthquakes and many times searched and shaken by tremendous gales, and is situated on the lands so low that it is not uplifted to the gaze of mankind--is not a city upon a hill, and yet it is "no mean city." Antonio de Morga says: "The entrance of the Spaniards into the Philippines since the year 1564, and the subjection and conversion which has been effected in them, and their mode of government, and that which during these years His Majesty has provided and ordered for their good, has been the cause of innovation in many things, such as are usual to kingdoms and provinces which charge their faith and sovereign. The first has been that, besides the name of Philippines, which they took and received from the beginning of their conquest, all the islands are now a new kingdom and sovereignty, to which His Majesty Philip the Second, our sovereign, gave the name of New Kingdom of Castile, of which by his royal privilege, he made the city of Manila the capital, giving to it, as a special favor among others, a coat of arms with a crown, chosen and appointed by his royal person, which is a scutcheon divided across, and in the upper part a castle on the red field, and in the lower part a lion of gold, crowned and rampant, with a naked sword in the dexter hand, and half the body in the shape of a dolphin upon the waters of the sea, signifying that the Spaniards passed over them with arms to conquer this kingdom for the crown of Castile. "The Commander-in-Chief, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, first governor of the Philippines, founded the city of Manila, in the isle of Luzon, in the same site in which Rajamora had his town and fort (as has been said more at length), at the mouth of the river which pours out into the bay, on a point which is formed between the river and the sea. He occupied the whole of it with this town and divided it among the Spaniards in equal building plots, with streets and blocks of houses regularly laid out, straight and level leaving a great place, tolerably square, where he erected the cathedral church and municipal buildings; and another place of arms, in which stood the fort and there also the royal buildings; he gave sites to the monasteries and hospital and chapels, which would be built, as this was a city which would grow and increase every day, as has already happened; because in the course of time which passed by, it has become as illustrious as the best cities of all those parts. "The whole city is surrounded by a wall of hewn stone of more than two and a half yards in width, and in parts more than three, with small towers and traverses at intervals; it has a fortress of hewn stone at the point, which guards the bar and the river, with a ravelin close to the water, which contains a few heavy pieces of artillery which command the sea and the river, and other guns on the higher part of the fort for the defense of the bar, besides other middling-sized field guns and swivel guns, with vaults for supplies and munitions, and a powder magazine, with its inner space well protected, and an abundant well of fresh water; also quarters for soldiers and artillerymen and a house for the Commandant. It is newly fortified on the land side, in the place of arms, where the entrance is through a good wall, and two salient towers furnished with artillery which command the wall and gate. This fortress named Santiago, has a detachment of thirty soldiers, with their officers, and eight artillerymen, who guard the gate and entrance in watches, under the command of an alcalde who lives within, and has the guard and custody of it. "There is another fortress, also of stone, in the same wall, at the ditance of the range of a culverin, at the end of the wall which runs along the shore of the bay; this is named Nuestra Senora de Guia; it is a very large round block, with its courtyard, water and quarters, and magazines and other workshops within; it has an outwork jutting out towards the beach, in which there are a dozen of large and middle-sized guns, which command the bay, and sweep the walls which run from it to the port and fort of Santiago. On the further side it has a large salient tower with four heavy pieces, which command the beach further on, towards the chapel of Nuestra Senora de Guia. The gate and entrance of this is within the city, it is guarded by a detachment of twenty soldiers, with their officers, and six artillerymen, a commandant, and his lieutenant, who dwell within. "On the land side, where the wall extends, there is a bastion called Sant Andres, with six pieces of artillery, which can fire in all directions, and a few swivel guns; and further on another outwork called San Gabriel, opposite the parian of the Sangleys, with the same number of cannon, and both these works have some soldiers and an ordinary guard. "The wall is sufficiently high, with battlements and turrets for its defense in the modern fashions; they have a circuit of a league, which may be traversed on the top of the walls, with many stairs on the inside at intervals, of the same stonework, and three principal city gates, and many other posterns to the river and beach for the service of the city in convenient places. All of these gates are shut before nightfall by the ordinary patrol, and the keys are carried to the guard-room of the royal buildings; and in the morning, when it is day, the patrol returns with them and opens the city. "The royal magazines are in the parade; in them are deposited and kept all the munitions and supplies, cordage, iron, copper, lead, artillery, arquebuses, and other things belonging to the royal treasury, with their special officials and workmen, who are under the command of the royal officers. "Close to these magazines is the powder magazine, with its master, officials, and convicts, in which, on ordinary occasions, thirty mortars grind powder, and that which is damaged is refined. "In another part of the city, in a convenient situation, is the cannon foundry, with its moulds, furnaces, and instrument founders, and workmen, who carry on the works. "The royal buildings are very handsome, with a good view, and very roomy, with many windows opening seaward and to the parade; they are all of hewn stone, with two courts and high and low corridors with thick pillars." The city of to-day verifies the descriptive talent and accuracy of this writer. CHAPTER XVIII The Southern Philippines. Important Facts About the Lesser Islands of the Philippine Archipelago--Location, Size and Population--Capitals and Principal Cities--Rivers and Harbors--Surface and Soil--People and Products--Leading Industries--Their Commerce and Business Affairs--The Monsoons and Typhoons--The Terrors of the Tempests and How to Avoid Them. The island and province of Mindoro lies in the strait of its name and south of Luzon. It has in the center an elevated plain, we quote from the military notes issued by the War Department, from which many sierras extend in different directions to the coast, making the latter rugged and dangerous. The island is of an oval form, with a prolongation of the northern portion toward the west. Though an easy day's sail from Manila, it is one of the least populous islands of the archipelago, being extremely mountainous, covered with dense forests, and in the more level parts near the coast full of marshes, and very unhealthful. The inhabitants of the coast are Tagals, but in the interior there is a low tribe of the Malayan race, probably the indigenes of the island, and called Manguianos, speaking a peculiar language and living in a very miserable manner on the products of a rude agriculture. There are also said to be some Negritos, but of these very little is known. There are many short streams. The island is 110 miles long and has an area of 3,087 square miles. The population is 106,170. There is little known of the mountains of the interior, as the inhabitants dwell mainly on the coasts. Mindoro constitutes one of the provinces of the Philippines under an alcalde. The capital is Calapan, with a population of 5,585. It is situated to the north, on the harbor of its name, defended by a fort of regular construction; it has about 500 houses, among the notable stone ones being the parish, court house and jail, and casa real. It is the residence of the alcalde mayor and several public functionaries. The city is situated 96 miles from Manila. Mount Kalavite is a long-backed promontory, the western slope of which forms Cape Kalavite, and the northern slope Point del Monte; the summit, about 2,000 feet high, appears dome-shaped when seen from the west, but from the north or south it shows a long ridge fairly level; the western end of this ridge is the highest part. The capital of the province, Calapan, is a coast town. The inhabitants are occupied in hunting, fishing, and ordinary weaving. The commerce is insignificant. Sand banks extend in front of the town to a distance of one-half mile. To clear these, the northern Silonai islet should not be shut out by Point Calapan. On this line, near the north edge of the banks, the soundings are 36 to 46 fathoms. The Semirara Islands form a group of eight islands, all surrounded by reefs. Semirara, the largest of the group, is hilly, about 512 feet high at the highest part. The west coast includes several little bays almost entirely obstructed by reefs, on the edge of which are depths of 4 3/4 to 13 fathoms; and off the town of Semirara, which stands on the top of the hill facing the largest bay, the anchorage is very bad, even for coasters. The east coast is bordered by a reef, which extends about a mile from the northeast part of the island; on coming from the north this coast of the island must not be approached within three miles until the town of Semirara bears full west. There is anchorage at the south of the island in 5 to 8 fathoms, sand, during the northeast monsoon. Good coal for steaming purposes was found on the island by Captain Villavicencio, of the Spanish navy. Tablas Island is, mountainous, and on its northern extremity is the peak Cabezo de Tablas, 2,405 feet high; generally the coasts are clear and steep-to. Off the north end are two rocky islets, distant one cable from the coast; the larger one is clear and steep, the smaller one has rocks around it. The west coast of Mindoro Island has no soundings off it excepting in the bays, or within one or two miles of the shore in some places. In the interior double and treble chains of mountains extend through the island, and some low points of land project from them into the sea. Paluan Bay affords excellent shelter in the northeast monsoon, and is also a convenient place for vessels to obtain supplies when passing through Mindoro Strait. The bay is five miles wide at the entrance, of a semi-circular form, running back three miles in a northerly direction. There are no dangers in it. A small river disembogues where good water can be obtained with facility; and on the beach there is plenty of driftwood. The coral projects one-half mile from the entrance of the river, and has 10 and 12 fathoms close to its edge. Care must be taken when working into Paluan Bay, for the squalls come violently off the high land, and very sudden, and at night do not give the least warning. The Calamianes are a group of high islands lying between the northeast end of Palawan and Mindoro, and extending between the parallels of 11 degrees 39 minutes and 12 degrees 20 minutes N., and the meridians of 119 degrees 47 minutes and 120 degrees 23 minutes E. Busuanga, the largest island of the group, is about 34 miles in extent NW. by W. and SE. by E., and 18 miles broad. It is very irregular in form, being indented with numerous deep bays. The islands and reefs which front its northeast side form the western side of Northumberland Strait. These islands form, with the northern part of Palawan and the Cuyos Islands, a province, the capital of which is at Port Tai Tai. The climate of these islands is in general hot and unhealthful. Intermittent fevers and cutaneous diseases prevail, attributable, in all probability, to the great moisture and the insalubrious quality of the drinking water. All these islands are, generally speaking, hilly and broken. The industry of the locality is in collecting Salanganes (edible birds' nests), honey, and wax; but cultivation is not practiced to any great extent. The forests produce good timber for building or cabinet work. Tara Island, when seen from the northward, shows a triple summit to its northwest end; while its southern part looks like a separate island, saddle-shaped. The island does not appear to be permanently inhabited; in March, 1885, it was occupied by parties from Busuanga, burning the grass and digging cassava. Lagat is a small island 334 feet high, surrounded by a reef with a narrow passage between it and the reef off the south of Tara. Botak Island, 800 feet high, is fairly well cultivated. Off its northern end there is a queer pin-shaped rock, and off its southern end are same sharp-pointed rocks. The vicinity has not been sounded. The space included between the Sulu Archipelago to the south and Mindoro to the north, and having the Philippine Islands on the east and Palawan on the west, is distinguished by the name of the Sulu Sea. Although of great depth, 2,550 fathoms, this sea, which is in connection with the China and Celebes seas, and also with the Pacific by San Bernardino and Surigao straits, has a minimum deep-sea temperature of 50.5 degrees, reached invariably at 400 fathoms. As this temperature in the China Sea is at the depth of 200 fathoms, and in the Celebes Sea at 180 fathoms, and in the Pacific at 230 fathoms, it may be inferred that the Sulu Sea is prevented from freely interchanging its waters with those seas by ridges which do not exceed those depths. In the Sulu Sea easterly winds with fine weather prevail in October, and the northeast monsoon is not established until November. In January and February it blows hardest, but not with the force of the China seas, and it is felt strongest before the openings between Panay and Negros, and Negros and Mindanao. At the end of May southwest winds begin to blow, and in a month become established, to terminate in October, bringing with them a season made up of rain squalls and tempests, which take place principally in July and August. In September a heavy mist hangs about the coast of Mindanao. The island and province of Paragua is the most western of the Philippine Archipelago, and is situated to the north of Borneo. It is long and narrow, following a northeast direction, and nearly closes on the southwest the Sea of Mindanao, which enters from the China Sea by Balabac Strait on the south and between Mindoro and Paragua on the north. A chain of high mountains, some 6,560 feet high, runs lengthwise of the narrow belt formed by the island, whose length is 266 miles. The northwest and northeast slopes are narrow. The island has extensive and well protected harbors and bays. The area is 2,315 square miles and the population 45,000. The capital is Puerto Princesa, with a population of 1,589. Panay is divided into three provinces, viz: Capiz to the north, Iloilo to the southeast, and Antique to the southwest. In general it is wild, with very high coasts, except in the northeastern part, where the latter are somewhat marshy. A mountain chain crosses the island from Point Juraojurao on the south as far as Point Potol on the north, following a direction almost parallel to the western coast. Large groups of sierras branch out to the right and left of the central chain; on the eastern slope begins another chain, running northeast to the extreme northeasterly point of the island. Owing to its cragginess, it has a great number of streams running in different directions. The area is 4,540 square miles. The town of Iloilo stands on a low sandy flat on the right bank of a river; at the end of this flat is a spit on which a fort is built, and close to which there is deep water. Vessels of moderate draft (15 feet) can ascend the river a short distance and lie alongside wharves which communicate with the merchant houses, but large vessels must anchor outside near the spit. It is a town of great commercial importance, and a brisk coasting trade is carried on from it. The better class of houses in Iloilo are built on strong wooden posts, 2 or 3 feet in diameter, that reach to the roof; stone walls to the first floor, with wooden windows above, and an iron roof. The poorer class of dwellings are flimsy erections of nipa, built on four strong posts. The roads and bridges are in a deplorable condition and almost impassable in the rainy season. The chief imports are Australian coal, and general merchandise from Europe, but most sailing ships arrive in ballast. The exports are sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, hides, and hemp; it is also the principal place of manufacture of pina, juse, and sinamoya, a tissue greatly in use among the Philippines. In 1883, 93,750 tons of sugar were exported, principally to America. Typhoons do not occur regularly, but in most years the tail of one passes over the place, which suffers also from the visitations of locusts. Provisions of all kinds can be obtained, but the prices are higher than at Manila. In 1886 beef was 12 1/2 cents per pound, bread 11 cents, vegetables 11 cents, fowls $2 per dozen. Water is scarce and is brought across from Guimaras in tank boats; it is supplied to the shipping at the rate of $1 per ton; the Europeans depend mainly upon rain water. There are generally about 500 tons of coal in store, chiefly Australian; it is kept for the supply of local steamers that take in what they require alongside the wharves. Vessels in the roads can have it brought off in bulk in lighters or schooners at a cost of 50 cents a ton. Coolies can be hired at 75 cents per ton, but they will not coal vessels if they can get other work. Notice is required the day before coaling, as men are not kept in readiness. The price of coal in 1886 was $11.00 per ton. There is regular weekly communication with Manila, which is 250 miles distant. The Province of Capiz is bounded on the north by the Archipelago Sea, on the east by the District of Concepcion, on the south by the ridge separating it from Iloilo, and on the southwest by the mountains, separating it from the Province of Antique. Its very high mountains are covered with luxuriant vegetation, and give rise to many rivers which water the valleys of the province. There are gold and copper mines, and much tobacco, sugar, rice, and abaca is raised. During the year three fairs are held, in which articles of the country are bartered. The province is divided into two parts, called Ilaya and Aclan, which are irrigated by the rivers Panay and Adan, respectively. The area is 1,543 square miles and the population 189,171, distributed among 36 pueblos and 287 barrios. The capital is Capiz, with a population of 13,676. It is situated 290 miles from Manila. It has a harbor for vessels of ordinary draft, and highroads to Iloilo, Antique, and the District of Concepcion. There is a steamer kept by the state, stopping at the harbor every 28 days and keeping up communication with Manila, Romblon, Iloilo, and Cebu. The Province of Iloilo is to the southeast of the Province of Capiz and west of Antique. The ground is generally level, and, being irrigated by numerous rivers, is fertile, so that tobacco, cacao, sugar cane, abaca, rice, and maize are grown; besides, there is good pasturage for raising herds of cattle and horses, and gold and other mines are known. The principal industry is the manufacture of fabrics of sinamay, pina, jusi, etc., requiring over 30,000 looms. The dimensions are 99 miles in length by 27 miles in width, and the population is 472,728. The capital is Iloilo, with a population of 10,380. It is situated 355 miles from Manila, and is the residence of the governor, captain of port, and a number of treasury, justice, and fomento officials. It has a pretty cathedral, a seminary, casa real, and court house. It is one of the most mercantile towns of the Visaya group, and has some industries, among which are a machine shop and foundry, a carriage factory, and a hat factory. The Province of Bohol is bounded on the north by the sea between Cebu and Leyte, on the east by the Surigao Sea, on the south by the Sea of Mindanao, and on the west by the channel separating it from Cebu. The province is composed of the islands of Bohol and Dauis. They are somewhat mountainous and well wooded, and coffee, abaca, sugar cane, and tobacco are raised. In the mountains of Bohol game is plenty, and many coal and phosphate of iron mines are supposed to exist. Manufactures consist in fabrics of sinamay and other materials. The area is 1,617 square miles and the population 247,745. The capital is Tagbilaran, with a population of 8,638. It is situated 365 miles from Manila. The island and province of Cebu are the most important of the Visayas, on account of the central position, nature of the soil, and the industry of its numerous inhabitants. It is bounded on the north by the sea separating it from Masbate and Leyte, on the east by the sea separating it from Leyte and Bohol, on the south by the Mindanao Sea, and on the west by the Tanon Channel and the island of Negros. The area is 2,092 square miles and the population 504,076. Great mountain chains cross the island; the chief of these starts at the extreme north between Point Marab on the west and Baluarte on the east, and, continuing south between the two coasts, ends almost in the center of the island. Two other chains run along the coast, and one starts near Carcas, to the southwest of the city of Cebu, terminating on the south in Tanon Point. The coasts are high and the rivers of little importance. The capital is Cebu, with a population of 35,243. It is the mercantile center of the islands, and is situated 460 miles from Manila. It is an Episcopal see, and has a good cathedral, Episcopal palace, casa real, court house, and private edifices, simple but tasty; there is also a post office and telegraph station. On the south, and at the entrance of the channel, is the castle of Point Cauit, and north of this the tower of Mandaui; both these fortifications communicate with the capital by means of a wagon road, the city being midway between them. At the capital reside the politico-military governor, a secretary, judge and attorney-general, a number of public functionaries, a captain of engineers, and the captain of the port. Maktan Island consists of an old coral reef, raised a few feet (8 or 10 at most) above the present sea level. At the northern part of the island, where a convent stands, a low cliff fringes the shore, being an upper stratum of the upheaved reef. The raised reef is here preserved, but over the portion of the island immediately fronting Cebu it has been removed by denudation, with the exception of a few pillar-like blocks which remain, and which are conspicuous from the anchorage. The surface is scooped out into irregular basins and sharp projecting pinnacles and covered in all directions with mud, resulting from the denudation. Nearly all the island is covered by mangroves, but on the part left dry there are plantations of cocoanuts. The only town on the island is Opon, on the west coast, SW. of Mandaui Point in Cebu. It was here that Magellan was killed in 1521, after making the first passage across the Pacific. The town of Cebu is the most ancient in the Philippines; it is the seat of government of the Visayan Islands, which include Cebu, Bohol, Panay, Negros, and Leyte, and it is the residence of a bishop. It is built on a large plain at the foot of the chain of hills that traverse the island throughout its length, and is a well-constructed, thriving place; the merchants' quarter is situated along the port, and includes some well-built stone houses, though many are of old construction. The huts of the Malays, for the most part fishermen, are on the beach, and form the west part of the city. The fort is a triangular edifice of stone, painted red, with an open square in front. The island of Leyte is bounded on the north by the canal separating it from Samar, on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the west by the sea separating it from Bohol and Cebu, and on the south by the one separating it from Mindanao. It is extensive and irregular, having an area of 3,087 square miles and a population of 270,491. A high and abrupt mountain chain crosses the island nearly parallel to the west coast; the coasts are high, with good natural harbors. In the northern part and on the western slopes of the great sierras, streams of potable water and also many lagoons abound. This is different from the eastern part, where the latter are scarce. The principal product of the island is abaca, but rice is also raised and cocoanut oil is extracted. There are unworked mines of gold, magnetite, and sulphur. The capital is Tacloban, with a population of 5,226. It is situated 338 miles from Manila. Among the important towns are Baru, population 12,222; Borauen, 21,290; Cauyaia, 13,732; Dagami, 25,000; Hilongos, 13,713; Jaio, 12,475; Massiu, 18,499; Palo, 17,736; Tauauau, 18,509. The island of Negros is mountainous and wild; its coasts are difficult of access, and the breakers strong, except on the west coast from Point Bulucabo on the north of Palompon on the west, where it is marshy. A high mountain chain crosses it from Point Doong on the north to the harbor and point Bombonon on the south; from the last third extend several ramifications of high mountains, terminating on the coast at the extreme south and in the Sierra Dumaguete. Its streams are not important, being short and of little value. The ground is uneven but fertile. The natives irrigate their estates, and produce tobacco, coffee, sugar cane, and wheat. Manufactures consist in fabrics of abaca and canonegro, of which boat cables are made. The interior of the island, covered with thick forests, is almost unexplored, being inhabited by a few savages. The Province of Western Negros is situated on Negros Island, it is bounded on the north by the Visayas Sea, on the west by the Paragua Sea, and on the south and east by the Province of Eastern Negros. The area is 1,929 square miles, and the population 226,995. The capital is Bacolod, with a population of 6,268. It is the residence of the politico-military governor, the secretary, judge, attorney-general, and several public functionaries. It is situated 379 miles from Manila. The Province of Negros has a population of 94,782--the capital, Dumaguete, 13,613. The Province of Romblon consists of the following six islands: Romblon (the principal one), Tablas, Sibuyan, Banton, Simara, and Maestre Campo. It is bounded on the north by the Tayabas Sea, on the south by the Visayas Sea, on the east by the Sea of Masbate, and on the west by the Sea of Mindoro. The area is 813 square miles, and the population 38,633, distributed among 13 barrios and 3 rancherias of infieles. The capital is Romblon, with a population of 6,764. It is situated on the harbor of the same name at the north of the island, 204 miles from Manila, and is the residence of the politico-military commander. The Island and Province of Samar is situated to the southeast of Luzon, it is bounded en the north by the Strait of San Bernardino, on the south by the Jahanetes Canal, separating it from Leyte Island, on the east by the Pacific Ocean, and on the west by the Visayas Sea. It is very mountainous, with high, steep coasts. A number of sierras and mountains extend in various directions, forming valleys and glens fertilized by numerous rivers, which, however, have little current and volume. The length of the island is 155 miles. The chief products are abaca, rice, and cocoanuts, oil being extracted from the latter. Among the medicinal plants the most highly valued is the catbalonga seed. Commerce is quite active in spite of the few means of communication and the dangerous coasts. The island is visited yearly by tornadoes which devastate crops and cause much damage to agriculture. The high mountains and thick forests of the interior are inhabited by a great number of savages who have sought refuge here. The area is 4,699 square miles, and the population 200,753, distributed among 43 pueblos, 208 visitas, and 3 rancherias of subdued infieles. The capital is Catbalogan, population of 6,459, situated on the harbor and bay of like name on the west of the island 338 miles from Manila, and is the residence of the politico-military governor. The Jolo Archipelago, formed of some 160 islands, is situated southwest of Mindanao and south of Basilan. It is bounded on the south by the Jolo Sea, on the northeast by Mindanao and on the west and southwest by Borneo. The small islands are covered with mangroves, while the large ones have thick forests of good timber, and the natives raise rice, maize, and various alimentary roots, ambergris being found on the coasts. The principal island, called Sulu, or Jolo (ch. 47, 48, 49, 50, p. 285), is occupied in a military way by the Spanish forces, whose chief, or governor, resides in the old capital, which has well-constructed and armed forts, a pier, etc. By royal decree of November 13, 1877, the sultanship was transformed into a civico-military government. The population consists of 500 aborigines, 612 Chinese traders, and 16,000 negroes. Next to Luzon, the island of Mindanao is the most extensive and important of the Philippines. By decree of July 30, 1860, the territorial division of this island was definitely established, and a civico-military government, under the denomination of Mindanao and adjacent islands, was created. It is divided into eight districts. The island is situated between Visayas on the north and Borneo on the south; it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, and on the west by the island of Paragua, the Strait of Balabac, and Borneo. The area is 16,595 square miles, and the population 611,300, of which 211,000 are Christians and the rest Mohammedans and Pagans. It is very extensive and irregular in form, possessing high and extended mountain chains, which have not been entirely explored, and which are grown over with very rich woods. It is inhabited almost throughout the interior by savages. Its rivers, some of great volume, are as follows: On the north coast and Butuan Bay, the Jabonga and Butuan: on the Macajalar coast, the Cagayan; in Eligan Bay, the Malanao and others of minor importance; in the cove of Dapitan, the Palaven. In Port Kakule the greatest rise of tide is seven feet. In Surigao Strait the flood tide sets to the west, and the ebb to the east. The velocity of the stream in the strait reaches six knots at springs. There is a difference of about two hours between the time of high water at Surigao and in Surigao Strait. Fishermen roughly estimate that when the moon rises the ebb tide commences to run in Surigao Strait. From January to June there is but one high water during the twenty-four hours, in Surigao Strait, which occurs during the night. From July to December the same phenomenon takes place, but the time of high water is by day. From observations made by the Spanish surveyors, it appears that the highest tide on the west coasts of the islands of the strait takes place at the same hour as the lowest tide on the east coasts. The Mindanao river disembogues five miles to the south of Palak Harbor by two wide arms, on the northernmost of which is the town of Kota-batu, about 5 1/2 miles from the mouth. The river is navigable for 60 miles by vessels of 3 1/2 feet draught; it flows through a beautiful valley 30 miles in width, which scarcely shows any change of level; the valley is capable of producing tobacco, cacao, sugar, maize, and cotton; but this is only known at present by specimens produced. The course of the river lies SE. for 45 miles from its mouth to the lake Ligauasan, out of which it is seen to flow; from the other side of the lake the direction of the river is NNE. to its source in the Sugut Mountains. At 21 miles from the northern mouth the river divides into two arms, which enter the sea 4 1/2 miles apart. In the northern part of Mindanao is the province of Surigao, bordered on the north by the Surigao Sea, on the east by the Pacific, on the south by the District of Davao, and on the west by the territory of the infieles. It is mountainous, but the Christian population resides on the coasts and in the northern point of the territory. The population is 95,775, distributed among 45 pueblos, 10 barrios, and 30 rancherias of subdued infieles. Abaca and palay are raised, and in the gold washings considerable gold of good quality is found. Military notes on the Philippines affirm that the islands are, in many respects, Spain's best possessions, due to the abundance and variety of products, numerous and good ports, character of inhabitants, and on account of the vicinity of certain countries of eastern Asia, which are now entering upon a stage of civilization and commerce. The group is composed of some 2,000 islands. In 1762 Manila was taken and held by the English for a ransom of 1,000,000 pounds sterling. This, however, was never paid, and the islands were finally returned to Spain. The archipelago extends from 5 degrees 32 minutes to 19 degrees 38 minutes, north latitude, and from 117 degrees to 126 degrees, east longitude. It thus covers about 1,000 miles north and south and 600 east and west. The whole surface of the Philippines is essentially mountainous, the only plains that occur being alluvial districts at the river mouths and the spaces left by the intersection of the ranges. The principal ranges have a tendency to run north and south, with a certain amount of deflection east and west, as the case may be, so that the orographic diagram of the archipelago, as a whole, has a similarity to a fan, with northern Luzon as its center of radiation. While none of the mountain peaks greatly exceed 8,000 feet in height, Apo, in Mindanao, is over 9,000 feet; Halson, in Mindoro, is over 8,900 feet; and Mayon, in Luzon, over 8,200. The latter is an active volcano, which has been the scene of several eruptions during the present century. Extinct or active craters are relatively as numerous in the Philippines as in the eastern archipelago, and as a consequence of these subterranean forces earthquakes are frequent and violent. In 1627 one of the most elevated mountains of Cagayan disappeared, and on the island of Mindanao, in 1675, a passage was opened to the sea and a vast plain emerged. The more recent of the convulsions occurred in 1863 and in 1880. The destruction of property was great, especially in Manila. The general belief is that the Philippines once formed a part of an enormous continent from which it was separated by some cataclysm. This continent probably extended from Celebes to the farthest Polinesian islands on the east, to New Zealand on the south, and the Mariana and Sandwich islands on the north. These islands, according to Ramon Jordana, are divided into two volcanic regions, the eastern and the western. The principal point is the volcano Taal, located in the northeastern portion of the province of Batangas. It is situated on a small island in the center of the Bombon laguna, and has an altitude of 550 feet above sea level. Its form is conical, and the rock is composed of basalt feldspar with a small quantity of augite. The crater is supposed to be 232 feet deep. Its sides are almost vertical, and there are two steaming lagunas at its bottom. In the regions embracing the provinces of Manila, Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, and Pangasinan the soil is mostly composed of clay containing remnants of sea shells, a circumstance which gives rise to the belief that the coast of Manila has risen from the sea in not so remote an epoch. Smooth, dark gray tophus predominates; it forms the bed of the Rio Pasig, and rising forms hillocks in the vicinity of the city of Binangonan. Farther on, trachyte and banks of conchiferous sand predominate. The vast plain of Panpanga extends to the north of Manila Bay, to the south of which is situated Mount Arayat, of doleritic nature. The disposition of the mountain ranges in parallel chains affords space for the development of streams both in Luzon and Mindanao. The larger islands contain inland seas, into which pour countless small streams from the inland hills. Many of them open out into broad estuaries, and in numerous instances coasting vessels of light draft can sail to the very foot of the mountains. Rivers and inland lakes swarm with varieties of fish and shellfish. By reason of Spanish restrictions, but little can be said as to the character of the stream banks and beds. Four of the rivers are navigable, and, by the statements of those who have spent some little time on the islands, most are fordable. Drinking water is obtained by many of the towns from the rivers at points just above tide limits, and the water is said to be good. Bridges are few and crude, but are generally built to withstand heavy strain. The island of Luzon abounds in rivers and streams. The following are the principal water courses: Rio Grande de Cagayan, the source of which is in the northern slope of the Caraballo Norte. It has numerous affluents, among others the Magat and Bangag, and, after a course of about 200 miles, falls into the China Sea in the vicinity of Aparri. Agro Grande starts in the north, in the neighborhood of the ranch of Loo, receives the affluents Tarlag and Camiling, as well as many others, has a course of about 112 miles, and falls into the Gulf of Lingayen. Abra has its origin on the opposite slope to that where Agno Grande takes its rise; runs for about 87 miles, and, after receiving the affluent Suyoc, divides into three arms and falls into the China Sea over the sand bars of Butao, Nioig, and Dile. Rio Grande de la Pampanga is called Rio Chico up to the lake of Canasen, near Arayat, where it changes its name after its junction with Rio Gapan. Its course is a little over 38 miles; it receives the Rio de San Jose and divides into a multitude of arms as it falls into the sea to the north of Manila Bay. Rio Pasig has its source in the Bay Lagoon, and falls after a course of 19 miles into Manila Bay. The military notes on the climate of the Philippines, the official record of the temperature and the gales and typhoons, and directions regarding the handling of ships in the peculiar tempests that prevail at certain seasons around the islands, are of absorbing popular interest, and of striking special usefulness. Climate.--In the region of Manila, the hottest season is from March to June, the greatest heat being felt in May before the rains set in, when the maximum temperature ranges from 80 degrees to 100 degrees in the shade. The coolest weather occurs in December and January, when the temperature falls at night to 60 or 65 degrees, and seldom rises in the day above 75 degrees. From November to February the sky is bright, the atmosphere cool and dry, and the weather in every way delightful. Observations made at the Observatortio Meteorologico de Manila have been compiled by the United States Weather Bureau, covering a record of from seventeen to thirty-two years, from which the following is an extract: Temperature, degrees F.: Mean annual 80 degrees Warmest month 82 degrees Coolest month 79 degrees Highest 100 degrees Lowest 60 degrees Humidity: Relative per cent 78 Absolute grains per cubic foot 8.75 Wind movements in miles: Daily mean 134 Greatest daily 204 Least daily 95 Prevailing wind direction--N.E., November to April; SW., May to October. Cloudiness, annual per cent 53 Days with rain 135 Rainfall in inches: Mean annual 75.43 Greatest monthly 120.98 Least monthly 55.65 The following is the mean temperature for the three seasons, at points specified: Cold. Hot. Wet. Manila 72 degrees 87 degrees 84 degrees Cebu 75 degrees 86 degrees 75 degrees Davao 86 degrees 88 degrees 87 degrees Sulu 81 degrees 82 degrees 83 degrees Seasons vary with the prevailing winds (monsoons or trade winds) and are classed as "wet" and "dry." There is no abrupt change from one to the other, and between periods there are intervals of variable weather. The Spanish description of seasons is as follows: Seis meses de lodo--six months of mud. Seis meses de polvo--six months of dust. Seis meses de todo--six months of everything. The northern islands lie in the track of the typhoons which, developing in the Pacific, sweep over the China Sea from NE. to SW. during the southwest monsoon. They may be looked for at any time between May and November, but it is during the months of July, August, and September that they are most frequent. Early in the season the northern region feels the greatest force, but as the season advances the typhoon gradually works southward and the dangerous time at Manila is about the end of October and the beginning of November. Typhoons rarely, if ever, pass south of 9 degrees N. latitude. Sometimes the typhoon is of large diameter and travels slowly, so far as progressive movement is concerned; at others it is of smaller dimensions, and both the circular and progressive motions are more rapid. However they are always storms of terrific energy and frequently cause terrible destruction of crops and property on shore and of shipping at sea. Thunderstorms, often of great violence, are frequent in May and June, before the commencement of the rainy season. During July, August, September, and October the rains are very heavy. The rivers and lakes are swollen and frequently overflow, flooding large tracts of low country. At Manila the average rainfall is stated to be from 75 to 120 inches per annum, and there the difference between the longest and shortest day is only 1 hour 47 minutes and 12 seconds. This rainfall, immense though it be, is small as compared with that of other parts of the archipelago; e.g., in Liano, NE. of Mindanao, the average yearly downpour is 142 inches. Gales.--The gales of the Philippines may be divided into three classes, known by the local names of Colla, Nortada, and Baguio. The Colla is a gale in which the wind blows constantly from one quarter, but with varying force and with alternations of violent squalls, calms, and heavy rains, usually lasting at least three days; these gales occur during the southwest monsoon and their direction is from the southwest quarter. The Nortada is distinguished from the Colla, in that the direction is constant and the force steady, without the alternations of passing squalls and calms. The Nortada is generally indicative that a typhoon is passing not very far off. These gales occur chiefly in the northern islands, and their direction, as the name implies, is from the northward. Baguio is the local name for the revolving storm known as the typhoon, which, being the more familiar term, will be used in these notes. Typhoons.--These storms have their origin to the east or to the southeast of the Philippines, whence their course is westward, with a slight divergence to the north or south, the average direction appearing to be west by north. They occur in all months of the year, but the greater number take place about the time of the equinoxes. The most violent ones occur at the autumnal equinox, and on an average, two or three occur every year, and sometimes one follows another at a very short interval. It is believed that when one of these typhoons passes a high latitude in September there will be another in October of that year, and one may be looked for in November in a lower latitude. These tempests are not encountered in latitudes below 9 degrees N. The rate of progress of these storms is about 13 miles an hour; in none of those observed has it exceeded 14 miles nor fallen below 11 miles. The diameter of the exterior revolving circle of the storm varies from 40 to 130 miles, and the diameter of the inner circle or calm region, may be estimated at from 8 to 15 miles. The duration of the true typhoon at any one place is never longer than ten hours and generally much less. These storms are always accompanied by abundant rain, with low, dense clouds, which at times limit the horizon to a few yards distance, and are generally accompanied by electrical discharges. The barometer falls slowly for some days before the typhoon, then falls rapidly on its near approach, and reaches its lowest when the vortex is but a little way off. It then rises rapidly as the vortex passes away, and then slowly when it has gained some distance. Near the vortex there are usually marked oscillations. The typhoon generally begins with a northerly wind, light drizzling rain, weather squally and threatening, a falling barometer and the wind veering to the eastward, when the observer is to the northward of the path of the storm, and backing to the westward when he is to the southward of it; the wind and rain increase as the wind shifts, and the storm generally ends with a southerly wind after abating gradually. The following warnings of the approach of a typhoon, and directions for avoiding the most dangerous part of it, are taken from the China Sea Directory: The earlier signs of a typhoon are clouds of a cirrus type, looking like fine hair, feathers or small white tufts of wool, traveling from east or north, a slight rise in the barometer, clear and dry weather, and light winds. These signs are followed by the usual ugly and threatening appearance of the weather which forbodes most storms, and the increasing number and severity of the gusts with the rising of the wind. In some cases one of the earliest signs is a long heavy swell and confused sea, which comes from the direction in which the storm is approaching and travels more rapidly than the storm's center. The best and surest of all warnings, however, will be found in the barometer. In every case there is great barometric disturbance. Accordingly, if the barometer falls rapidly, or even if the regularity of its diurnal variation be interrupted, danger may be apprehended. No positive rule can be given as to the amount of depression to be expected, but at the center of some of the storms the barometer is said to stand fully 2 inches lower than outside the storm field. The average barometric gradient, near the vortex of the most violent of these storms, is said to be rather more than 1 inch in 50 nautical miles. As the center of the storm is approached the more rapid become the changes of wind, until at length, instead of its direction altering gradually, as is the case on first entering the storm field, the wind flies around at once to the opposite point, the sea meanwhile breaking into mountainous and confused heaps. There are many instances on record of the wind suddenly falling in the vortex and the clouds dispersing for a short interval, though the wind soon blows again with renewed fury. In the northern hemisphere when the falling barometer and other signs create suspicion that a typhoon is approaching, facing the wind and taking 10 or 12 points to the right of it, will give the approximate bearing of its center. Thus, with the wind NE., the center will probably be from S. to SSE. of the observer's position. However, it is difficult to estimate the center of the vortex from any given point. This partly arises from the uncertainty as to the relation between the bearing of the center and the direction of the wind, and greatly from there being no means of knowing whether the storm be of large or small dimensions. If the barometer falls slowly, and the weather grows worse only gradually, it is reasonable to suppose that the storm center is distant; and conversely, with a rapidly falling barometer and increasing bad weather the center may be supposed to be approaching dangerously near. Practical Rules.--When in the region and in the season of revolving storms, be on the watch for premonitory signs. Constantly observe and carefully record the barometer. When on sea and there are indications of a typhoon being near, heave to and carefully observe and record the changes of the barometer and wind, so as to find the bearing of the center, and ascertain by the shift of the wind in which semicircle the vessel is situated. Much will often depend upon heaving to in time. When, after careful observation, there is reason to believe that the center of the typhoon is approaching, the following rules should be followed in determining whether to remain hove to or not, and the tack on which to remain hove to: In the northern hemisphere, if the right-hand semicircle, heave to on the starboard tack. If in the left-hand semicircle, run, keeping the wind if possible, on the starboard quarter, and when the barometer rises, if necessary to keep the ship from going too far from the proper course, heave to on the port tack. When the vessel lies in the direct line of advance of the storm--which position is, as previously observed, the most dangerous of all--run with the wind on the starboard quarter. In all cases increase as soon as possible the distance from the center, bearing in mind that the whole storm field is advancing. In receding from the center of a typhoon the barometer will rise and the wind and sea subside. It should be remarked that in some cases a vessel may, if the storm be traveling slowly, sail from the dangerous semicircle across the front of the storm, and thus out of its influence. But as the rate at which the storm is traveling is quite uncertain, this is a hazardous proceeding, and before attempting to cross the seaman should hesitate and carefully consider all the circumstances of the case, observing particularly the rate at which the barometer is falling. Northward of the Equator the current is divided into north and south equatorial currents by the equatorial counter-current, a stream flowing from west to east throughout the Pacific Ocean. The currents in the western part of the Pacific, to the northward of the Equator, are affected by the monsoons, and to the southward of the Equator they are deflected by the coast of Australia. The trade drift, which flows to the westward between the parallels of 9 degrees and 20 degrees N., on reaching the eastern shores of the Philippine Islands again turns to the northward, forming near the northern limit of that group the commencement of the Japan stream. The main body of the current then flows along the east coast of Formosa, and from that island pursues a northeasterly course through the chain of islands lying between Formosa and Japan; and sweeping along the southeastern coast of Japan in the same general direction, it is known to reach the parallel of 50 degrees N. The limits and velocity of the Japan stream are considerably influenced by the monsoons in the China. Sea, and by the prevailing winds in the corresponding seasons in the Yellow and Japan seas; also by the various drift currents which these periodic winds produce. Admiral Dewey has forwarded to the navy department a memorandum on mineral resources of the Philippines prepared at the admiral's request by Professor George W. Becker of the United States geological survey. Only about a score of the several hundred islands, he says, are known to contain deposits of valuable minerals. He includes a table showing the mineral bearing islands and their resources. This table follows: "Luzon, coal, gold, copper, lead, iron, sulphur, marble, kaolin; Sataanduanes, Sibuyan, Bohol and Panaoan, gold only; Marimduque, lead and silver; Mindoro, coal, gold and copper; Carraray, Batan, Rapu Rapu, Semarara, Negros, coal only; Masbete, coal and copper; Romblon, marble; Samar, coal and gold; Panay, coal, oil, gas, gold, copper, iron and perhaps mercury; Biliram, sulphur only; Leyte, coal, oil and perhaps mercury; Cebu, coal, oil, gas, gold, lead, silver and iron; Mindanao, coal, gold, copper and platinum; Sulu archipelago, pearls." The coal, Mr. Becker says, is analogous to the Japanese coal and that of Washington, but not to that of the Welsh or Pennsylvania coals. It might better be characterized as a highly carbonized lignite, likely to contain much sulphur as iron pyrites, rendering them apt to spontaneous combustion and injurious to boiler plates. Nevertheless, he says, when pyrites seams are avoided and the lignite is properly handled, it forms a valuable fuel, especially for local consumption. Not least among the promising resources of the Philippines is a curious natural product. Several vegetable growths appear to possess the faculty of secreting mineral concretions, in all respects resembling certain familiar precious stones. The famous James Smithson was the first to give any real attention to these curious plant gems, but, though there can be no doubt of their authenticity, neither scientist nor merchant has followed this lead. One of the jewels, the bamboo opal, rivals the best stones in its delicate tints of red and green, but it is among the rarest, and 1,000 stems may be cut up before a single specimen be found. CHAPTER XIX Specifications of Grievances of the Filipinos. An Official Copy of the Manifesto of the Junta Showing the Bad Faith of Spain in the Making and Evasion of a Treaty--The Declaration of the Renewal of the War of Rebellion--Complaints Against the Priests Defined--The Most Important Document the Filipinos Have Issued--Official Reports of Cases of Persecution of Men and Women in Manila by the Spanish Authorities--Memoranda of the Proceedings in Several Cases in the Court of Inquiry of the United States Officers. The pages following, showing a cynical disregard of a solemn treaty by the Spaniards, a complete exposure of the reasons the Filipinos had for renewing the war, and the particulars of cases of individual wrongs suffered, as they were made known in the course of legal investigation, have been received direct from Manila, and enable us to complete the story of the Philippines with the testimony that the depravity of bad faith in regard to treaties, and incidents of personal cruelties in Spanish colonial governments, have illustrations in the Philippines as in Cuba, and demand of the American Nation in the hour of victory that Spain shall lose now and forever all her possessions in the East and West Indies, and be restricted to the peninsula and islands--the Canary and Balearic groups--that is, in two words to home rule. The circumstances of the treaty between the Philippine Junta--the treaty of Biyak--and the Spanish authorities, are of great notoriety, but the Philippine story has not until now reached the English speaking peoples. We give it from the official paper: "On signing the Treaty of Biyak na bato, we, the natives of the Philippines and the government of Spain, agreed that between our armies be established an armistice which was to last three years from the date of the mentioned treaty. "The natives were to lay down their arms and turn them over to the Spanish authorities with all their depot (maestranza, a manufactory of ammunition, for repairs of rifles, etc., etc.) their ammunitions and forts. "The Spanish authorities, on the other hand, bound themselves to consent to the reforms (of public opinion amongst) the natives of the country claim; reforms which, according to the text of the decree of 9th August, 1897, the Captain and Guberno General assured us were granted and the execution of which was suspended on account of the insurrection. "The reforms asked for and granted were the following: 1. Expulsion or at least exclaustration of the religious orders. 2. Representation of the Philippines in the Spanish Cortes. 3. Application of real justice in the Philippines, equal for the Indian and for the Peninsular. Unity of laws between Spain and the Philippines. Participation of the Indians in the chief offices of the Civil Administration. 4. Adjustment of the property of the Parishes (church property) and of contributions in favor of the Indians. 5. Proclamation of the individual rights of the Indians, as also of the liberty of the press and of association. "The same Spanish government agreed to pay the liberating government a war indemnity, reduced to the limited sum of 600,000 pesos, in payment of the arms, ammunitions, depots and forts which were surrendered, and in order to indemnify those who were to be obliged to live abroad during the term of the armistice, as an assistance to stay out of the Philippines while they were trying to establish themselves and looking for legitimate and decorous means of existence. "It was agreed in like manner that General Don Fernando Primo de Rivera, Goberno General of the islands, should remain in his post during the time of the armistice, as a guarantee that the reforms be established. "And, finally, said authority promised that he would propose and there would be conceded a very ample amnesty. "Contrary to what was stipulated, the mentioned General was removed from his post shortly after the agreement was signed; and although the liberating government had fulfilled the laying down and delivery of the arms, ammunitions, depot and forts of its general encampment, the reforms were not established, only part of the offered indemnity has been paid and the amnesty remains a project only, some pardons being given. "The government of Madrid, deriding the natives, and with contempt of what had signed as a gentleman the General Commander of their army in the field, tried, instead of carrying out the expulsion or exclaustration of the Priests, to elevate them more, nominating at once for the two bishoprics, vacant in the colonies, two Priests of those same religious orders that oppressed the country and were the first cause of the insurrection, the disorder and the general dissatisfaction in the islands; thus ridiculing the virtue, knowledge and worth of the numerous secular Spanish clergy, and especially of that of the Philippines. "Not contented with this, they have raised and rewarded those Peninsulars who in the Philippines, as in Madrid, more cowardly and miserable still, because they abused their position and the protection of those same authorities who signed the treaty, insulted at banquets, assemblies and through the press, with epithets and jokes offensive and vulgar, the patient natives; as happened with the Peninsular Rafael Comenge, the protege and farcical table companion of the Priest, who amongst us performs the duties of the Archbishopric of Manila; the Minister of War has just conceded the said Comenge the grand cross of military merit, for shouting against us and imputing to us every kind of baseness and vices, knowing that he was lying, and for exacting from the gamblers of the Casino Espanol of Manila, as their president; the contribution of 30,000 pesos, to present General Primo de Rivera with a golden statute of that value, and, a curious coincident, this brave was one of the first who escaped from Manila, full of fear when the news arrived there that an American squadron would attack that port and that the risk he would run was real. "You have seen before now, how that insect Wencestao Retana was rewarded with a cooked up deputyship to the Cortes, that salaried reptile of the Philippine convents, who, with the aid of that tyrant General Weyler, his worthy godfather, the despotic incendiary of the town of Calamba, of ominous memory amongst us, does nothing but vomit rabid foam, insulting us by day and night with calumnies and shrieks, in that paper whose expenses the Procurators of the Manila convents pay. "Prepare yourselves also for seeing that a titled nobility be given to the well known 'Quioguiap' (fecer y Temprado), writer in the 'El Liberat,' of Madrid, who, to be in unison with the priests, does not cease to call us inferior race, troglodytes, without human nature or understanding, big boy; the same who, in order to deprive the rich 'Abellas' (father and son) of Carnarines, of the position they had conquered by their industry, economy and intelligence as almost exclusive purchasers of the Abaco (Manila hemp) of that region, tried and succeeded villainously in having them accused and shot in the camp of Bagumbayan; the same who afterwards sought in vain the reward of his criminal attempts, although conscious of his perverseness, to deliver to himself the produce of their harvest and their labor. "Peace was hardly made, when General Primo de Rivera denied the existence of the agreement and shot day after day those same persons whom he had promised to protect, believing foolishly that, the nucleus of the revolution once destroyed, the insurgents would need thirty or forty years in order to reunite themselves; but he accepted freely the pension of the grand cross of San Fernando, which, as a reward for the peace, he was given. "The same happened with bloodthirsty Monet, the author of the hecatomb of Zambales, who was promoted to the rank of a general and honored by a grand cross; also with his competitor in brutal deeds, General Tejeirs, the assassin of the Bisayos, and with the Vice Admiral Montojo, so severely punished later on, by whose orders the city of Cebu was destroyed and demolished, to revenge the death of an impure Recoleto Priest. "In eloquent contrast with what the natives had to expect, there has not been one single concession or reward for the credulous Pedro A. Paterno, a Filipino, the only real agent of the miracle of the Peace, to whom they have denied even the modest historical title 'Maguinong' (Don). "Add to all these infamies and indignities the removal of General Primo de Rivera, who, we repeat, was bound to remain in Manila during the three years of the armistice, and the nomination in his stead of another governor, General Augusti, who, completely without knowledge of the country, brought with him as his counsellor the unworthy Colonel Olive, the same who had proceeded with the utmost haste and greatest partiality and passion against the pretended chieftains, authors, protectors and followers of the sacred movement begun in August, 1896; who had, as military prosecutor for the 'Captain General,' exacted with insolent cynicism, and with the knowledge and consent of his superior officers, considerable sums of money from those who wished to be absolved, in order to imprison them again when they did not comply with all his extortions; the same who, with shameless partiality worked and used his influence all he could towards the shooting of the immortal Tagalo martyr, Dr. Jose Rizal; the same finally, who, during the command of weak General Blanco and of bloodthirsty and base General Polariyi demanded continually the imprisoning of the so-called 'Sons of the Country,' the descendants of the Europeans, that is, who had amongst us any importance by their learning, their industry, their fortunes or their lineage, and who were not willing to bribe him so as to be left in liberty. "In view of this series of acts of faithlessness, of contempt, of insults, of crimes, and before all, the forgetting of the treaty, so recently as well as solemnly entered upon, those same who signed the treaty of Biyak na bato, have considered themselves free of the obligation to remain abroad and of keeping any longer the promised armistice. "And, taking advantage of the Providential coming to the Philippines of the revenging squadron of the Great Republic of the United States of North America, they come back to their native soil proud and contented, to reconquer their liberty and their rights, counting on the aid and protection of the brave, decided, and noble Admiral Dewey, of the Anglo-Saxon squadron which has succeeded in beating and destroying the forces of the tyrants who have been annihilating the personality and energy of our industrious people, model of noble and glorious qualities. "The moment has come, therefore, for the Filipinos to count themselves and to enter into rank and file in order to defend with zeal and resolution and with a virility of strong men, the soil that saw their birth as well as the honor of their name, making publicly and universally known their competence, ability and their civic, political and social virtues. "Let us all fight united; seconding the revenging and humanitarian action of the North American Republic; and let us learn from her, accepting her counsels and her system, the way of living in order, peace and liberty, copying her institutions, which are the only adequate ones for the nations who wish to reconquer their personality in history, in the period we are passing. "On going to battle, let us inscribe on our flag with clearness and accuracy the sacred legend of our aspirations. "We want a stable government, elected by the people themselves; the laws of which are to be voted for by those same who have to keep them faithfully, conserving or modifying their present institutions in the natural times in the life of nations, but modeling them and taking us their own, the democratic ones of the United States of North America. "We want the country to vote its taxes; those necessary for public services and to satisfy (pay in full) the assistance North America and the corporations, organizations and individuals who help us to rise out of our lethargic state, are rendering us; taking care at the same time to abolish all those which have for basis a social vice or an immoral action, like the lottery, the tax on gambling dens, on galleras (arenas for fights of game cocks) and the farming out of the sale of opium. But before all, may there nevermore appear again that repugnant tax levied on Pederasty, which, to get two thousand pesos offended the universal conscience and the chaste name of 'Chinese Comedies.' "We want plainest liberty in all its bearings, including that of ideas, association and the press, without arriving at lawlessness and disorder; just as it is established in that great, so well regulated Republic. "We want to see the religion of the natives and of those that come to this country rigorously respected by the public powers and by the individuals in particular. "We want Christianism, the basis of present civilization, to be the emblem and solid foundation of our religious institutions, without force or compulsion; that the native clergy of the country be that which direct and teach the natives in all the degrees of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. "We want the maintenance of this clergy to be effected as the different regional governments may see fit, or, as the city councils or popular elective institutions established in every locality may determine. "We want personal property to be absolutely and unconditionally respected; and, as a consequence, the recognition to the land holder of the property he cultivates and has improved by his labor, of the so-called Haciendas of the religious orders, who have usurped them and robbed them by the perverse acts of the confessionary, beguiling the fanaticism of ignorant women and or more than timid aged man, afraid of the vengeance the priests in their innate wickedness might meditate against their families, who extorted from them dues at the last moments of their existence denying them spiritual aid and divine rewards without the cession of their material interests before departing from this earth. "We want the possessions of these land holders to be respected without their being obliged to pay any canon, lease or tax whatsoever of religious character, depressive or unjust, ceasing thus their detainment, anti-juridicial and anti-social, on the part of monarchial orders, rapacious orders whom, on the strength of their being a 'necessary evil,' the ignorant functionaries of Spanish administration, like themselves insatiable extortioners, have been aiding, in disdain of right, reason and equity. "We want in order to consolidate the property, the ominous 'Inspection de Montes,' to disappear and cease in its actual functions, as a disorganizing and fiscalizing center of the titles of property of the natives, which on pretense of investigating and discovering the detainment of State lands, had the custom of declaring the property of the State or of others, such as was already cultivated and producing by the improvements made by the poor peasant, awarding such to their friends or to those who bribe them if the legitimate proprietor refused to give them, in shameless auction, what they asked for as a remuneration for what they called 'shutting their eyes,' as has happened lately, amongst other scandalous cases, in Mindoro, when staking out the limits of the new Hacienda adjudged there to the Recoleto Priests. "We want public administration to be founded and to act on a basis of morality, economy and competence, in the charge of natives of the country or of such others who by their experience and learning can serve us as guides and teach us the basis and the system of those countries who have their economical, political and administrative offices and proceedings simplified and well organized. "We want the recognition of all the substantive rights of the human personality; guaranteed by judicial power, cemented in the principles in force in all the cultured nations; that the judicial authorities, when applying the laws, be penetrated by and identified with the spirit and the necessities of the locality; that the administration of justice be developed by simple, economical and decisive proceedings; and that judges and magistrates have their attributions limited by the functions of a jury and by verbal and public judgment, making thus disappear the actual state of affairs, of which prevarication and crooked dealings are the natural and necessary mark. "We want sensible codes, adapted to our manner of being without differentiation of races and without odious privileges contrary to the principle of equality before the law. "We want the increase and protection of our industries by means of subventions and of local and transient privileges without putting barriers to the general exchange of produce and of mercantile transactions with all the nations of the globe without exception. "We want liberty of banking business, liberty of mercantile and industrial societies and companies, commercial liberty, and that the Philippines cease to be shut up amongst the walls of its convents, to become again the universal market, like that of Hongkong, that of Singapore, that of the Straits, that of Borneo, that of the Moluccas, and that of some of the autonomous colonies of Australia, countries which surround us; and that capital may with confidence develop all the elements of wealth of this privileged soil, without more duties or charges on import and export than those the circumstances of each epoch may require for determined purposes. "We want roads, canals and ports, the dredging of our rivers and other waterways, railroads, tramways and all the means of locomotion and transport, on water and earth, with such help and assistance as may be needed to carry them out within a certain time and develop them conveniently. "We want the suppression of the so-called 'Guardia Civil,' this pretorian and odious institution in whose malignment and inhuman meshes so many Philippine martyrs have suffered and expired; that center of tortures and iniquities, those contemptible flatterers of small tyrants and of the concupiscense of the priests, those insatiable extortioners of the poor native; those hardened criminals animated constantly in their perverseness by the impunity with which their accomplices, the representatives of despotism and official immorality, covered them. "In their stead we want a judicial and gubernatorial police, which is to watch over and oblige the fulfillment of existing laws and regulations without tortures and abuses. "We want a local army, composed of native volunteers, strictly limited to what order and natural defense demands. "We want a public instruction less levitical and more extensive in what refers to natural and positive sciences; so that it may be fitted to industrate woman as well as man in the establishment and development of the industries and wealth of the country, marine and terrestrial mining, forestal and industrial of all kinds, an instruction which is to be free of expenses in all its degrees and obligatory in its primary portion, leaving and applying to this object all such property as is destined to-day to supply the sustainment of the same; taking charge of the administration of such property a Council of Public Instruction, not leaving for one moment longer in the hands of religious institutions, since these teach only prejudice and fanaticism, proclaiming, as did not long since a rector of the university of Manila, that 'medicine and physical sciences are materialistic and impious studies,' and another, that 'political economy was the science of the devil.' "We want to develop this public instruction, to have primary schools, normal schools, institutes of second degree, professional schools, universities, museums, public libraries, meteorological observatories, agricultural schools, geological and botanical gardens and a general practical and theoretical system of teaching agriculture, arts and handicraft and commerce. All this exists already in the country, but badly organized and dispersed, costing the contributors a good deal without practical results, which might have been expected, by the incompetency of the teachers and the favoritism employed in their nominations and remunerations. "We want laws for hunting and fishing, and teaching and regular vigilance for the faithful carrying on of pisciculture, well-known already to the natives, for the advantageous disposing of their marine products, such as conch shell, mother of pearl, pearls, bichi de mer, ray skins, fish lime, etc., and for the raising of all kinds of animals useful for agricultural and industrial purposes and as victuals for the natives and for export. "We want liberty of immigration and assistance for foreign settlers and capitalists, with such restrictions only, when there be an opportunity, as limit actually Chinese immigration, similar to legislature on this point in North America and Australia. "We want, finally, anything that be just, equitable and orderly; all that may be basis for development, prosperity and well being; all that may be a propelling element of morality, virtue and respect to the mutual rights of all the inhabitants, in their minor relations and in those with the foreigner. "Do not believe that the American nation is unbelieving or fanatically protestant, that it take to the scaffold or to the fire those who do not believe determined principles and practice special religious creeds; within that admirable organization, masterly and living model of perfection for the old nations of Europe and Asia, lives and prospers the Roman Catholic Church. "There are some seven million inhabitants who profess that religion directed by natural clergy with their proper ministers, taken from that fold of Christ. "Then there are bishops, archbishops, cardinals of the Roman Church, American subjects, beloved faithful of the Pope Leo XIII. "There then is a Temporal Apostolical Delegate representative of the legitimate successor of St. Peter; there are parsons, canons, dignitaries and provisors, who live and teach in order peace and prosperity, respected by one and all, as you yourselves will be the day the American flag will influence in the spiritual direction of the Philippine people. "Then there are cathedrals, parish churches, temples and chapels, sumptuous and admired, where they adore the same God of the Sinai and Golgotha, where severs and ostensive cult is rendered to Immaculate Virgin Mary and to the Saints you have on your altars and none dare to destroy, attack or prostitute them. "There then are seminaries, convents, missions, fraternities, schools, everything Catholic, richly furnished, well kept up and perfectly managed to the glory of the religion. "There resides His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, a wise Roman Catholic prelate, American citizen, who recently and on occasion of the present war, has ordered, with consent of His Sanctity, that all the catholic clergy of the American nation raise daily prayers to the Most High to obtain the triumph of the arms of their country, for the good of religion and humanity, which cause, in the present conflict legitimately and unquestionably represents that government. "And just as Christ, to be Messiah, had to be according to the prophecies, Jew and of the Tribe of Judah, that is: By right of his political fatherland, as by that of his native soil, of the chosen people, thus amongst you who ever wants to be a clergyman or merit being canon, dignitary, provisor, bishop, archbishop and cardinal, must as an indispensable condition, have been born on your proper soil, as is occurring absolutely in all the civilized nations of the old and new world, with the only exception of the Philippines. "There may be priests, religious congregations, nuns and convents, but submissive to the laws of the country and obliged to admit in their bosom as formerly happened in these isles, as estimable and superior members of such institutions, those feel a vocation for a conventual life, as the noble and generous people of North America will demand, and will, do not doubt it, recognize these your legitimate rights. _Filipinos and Countrymen._ "The protection of the great American Republic will make you respected and considered before the cultured powers, legitimately constituted; and your personality will be proclaimed and sanctioned everywhere. "We have the duty to exact the rights we have just proclaimed and the 'natives' in all the isles and in all their different races, as well as the 'Mestizo Sangley,' as the 'Mestizo Espanol,' and the 'Son of the Country,' we all have the honorable duty of defending ourselves against the whip and the contempt of the Spaniards, accepting the protection and direction of the humane North American nation. _Viva Filipinos_ Hurrah for liberty and right. Hurrah for the Grand Republic of the United States of North America. Hurrah for President McKinley and Rear Admiral Dewey. [ERROR: unhandled comment start] -->_The Junta Patriotica_. "Hongkong, April, 1898." Under the authority of the United States there have been inquiries by a court into the causes of the imprisonment of the inmates of the penitentiary and common jail at Manila, and others who have suffered from the enmities of the members of the government that ceased when the Spanish flag was taken down and the American flag raised. The memoranda following were made in the court proceedings, and state the facts as judicially established. _Fulgencia Tuazon_. This lady was confined in Bilibid seven years ago (though the record shows July 11, 1898,) by order of the Governor-General, on a charge of selling counterfeit stamps. She was tried, and sentenced to six years' confinement; but the Judge accepted a bribe of $900 and released her about a week after her trial. A year afterwards she was again arrested by a new judge on the same charge, and $3,000 was demanded as the price of her liberty. This was refused, and imprisonment followed. She claims to have bought the stamps (which were telegraph stamps), from the Government. _Dorotea Arteaga_. This young lady, who was a school teacher in her native province, Montinlupa, Manila province, was confined in Bilibid, August 8th, 1895, charged with "sacrilege and robbery," and insurrection. She came to Malate to see about her license as a school teacher, and was arrested by the civil guard on the above charge. She claims her arrest was instigated by a priest who had made overtures to her to have carnal intercourse with him, and had attempted the same, and had been repulsed and refused. To cover up his ill-doing he caused her arrest on the charge of having stolen part of the vessels used in the communion service of the Roman Catholic church. She has never been married and the Alcalde says, "Her conduct in prison has been very good." _Senora Maxima Guerrera_. This woman was born in Santa Cruz, in 1838, and has been confined in Bilibid since 1890, though the record shows that she was imprisoned July 11, 1898, by order of the Governor-General. This date, however, is admitted to be an error by the Alcalde, without any explanation of the error. The record shows that she was imprisoned because she objected to the Government taking wood off her property without paying for it. She claims that since her imprisonment, the Government has confiscated $10,000 worth of her property. _Felipe Rementina_. This prisoner was confined in the year 1889, when only 12 years old. At that time a revolution was in progress in the province in which he resided, and he was "captured" by the Spanish forces and sent to Bilibid Carcel. He did not know with what he was charged, and while he was tried, he never received any sentence. _Jose David_. "I was put in here June 13th, 1898. Am a civilian and a 'Katipunan.' Was tried, but never sentenced." The foregoing is the testimony of the prisoner Jose David, and is quoted here as an example of the testimony of some hundreds of others, which is almost identical. Large numbers of the natives seem to be members of the "Katipunan" society, which appears to be a revolutionary brotherhood of some kind. They have been imprisoned for terms varying from one or two months to several years (in some cases ten or twelve years), upon the charge of belonging to this society; in very many cases without trial, and in the majority with no sentence whatever, and, very largely, simply "on suspicion." _Agapito Calibugar_. This man was arrested by the Civil Guard, in July, 1889, in his own house, and was tried but not sentenced, or rather did not know what his sentence was. He was told that his sentence was served out, but he could not be returned to his own province of Negros because the Governor had no ships available for that purpose. He had no idea why he was arrested and tried. There are several other cases similar to this one, in which the charge is "resisting armed forces"--most of which were tried by court martial, and never sentenced. _Gregorio Domingo_. This prisoner was confined in Bilibid Carcel on the 25th of November, 1896, the entry on the prison record against his name being "no se espresa"--"no charge expressed." He was, of course, neither tried nor sentenced, but had been in prison almost two years, with absolutely no reason attempted to be made for his confinement. This case is also cited as an example of many similar ones. _Jose Trabado_. This is the case of a man who was a member of the Katipunan society, but who was tried and sentenced. He was imprisoned in Bilibid Carcel, May 5th, 1898, his sentence being confinement "cardena perpetua"--"in chains forever." He was one of five men who received the same sentence for a like offence. He, with the others, was set free August 31st, 1898. _Silvino De Castro_. In this case the prisoner, who was formerly employed as a clerk in a grocery store, was imprisoned in Bilibid Carcel on the 25th of December, 1897, charged with having stolen $4.50 (Spanish, which represents about $2.25 American). His story was that he was sent out to collect a bill, but lost the said bill, and was therefore accused by his employer of stealing the money, and was imprisoned, He was tried, but never received any sentence. _Don Fernando Sierra_. The prisoner above named is a full-blooded Spaniard, thirty-eight years of age, married, and has one child, three months old. He was confined in Bilibid, May 28, 1893, for "insulting" a civil guard, while drunk, and was tried and sentenced to six years and six months imprisonment. He had already served over five years of this sentence, when he was released September 2nd, 1898. _Cristan del Carmen_. This man was confined in the Carcel De Bilibid, the "common prison," May 4th, 1898, and his offense was that he was "suspected of being an American!" For this heinous crime he was neither tried nor sentenced. _Julian Soriano_. In this case the prisoner was confined in Bilibid, March 25th, 1895, after having been in prison one year in his province on suspicion of being implicated in the killing of a civil guard at a place colled Balauga. He was tried by a sergeant of the civil guard, who caused him to be tortured in order to wring a confession from him. This torture was inflicted by means of a thin rope or cord, tied very tightly around the muscles of the arm above the elbow (cutting into the flesh deeply), and left there in some instances for thirty days. In some cases the men were also hung up, the weight of the body being sustained by the cords around the arms. Several of the prisoners have deep scars on their arms caused by the torture. This man was never sentenced. _Leon Bueno_. The charge against this man was that he had stolen a pig, and he was confined in Bilibid, March 21st, 1893, after being tried and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. He had already served over five years when released Sept. 3, 1898. _Jose Castillo_. This man was confined in Bilibid Carcel, December loth, 1894, charged with "insulting the armed forces of Spain." His version of the reason for his imprisonment is as follows: His cousin and a lieutenant in the guardia civile were very close friends, and the said cousin, wishing to present a cow to the lieutenant, applied to the prisoner for one, which was given to him. Later on the cousin thought he would like to present his friend with another cow, so applied to the prisoner for cow No. 2, and was this time refused. In order to take vengeance on the prisoner, the cousin denounced him to the civil guard lieutenant as a "bandit," and he was arrested and imprisoned as above. The prisoner was sixty years of age. _Anastacio de Mesa_. The story of this prisoner seems to be particularly sad. He was a chorister or sacristan in a Roman Catholic church, with several others, and was arrested, with his companions, by the civil guard, charged with "sacrilege." The truth of the matter, however, seems to be as follows: The prisoner had a sweetheart with whom a lieutenant of the civil guard, named de Vega, appears to have been infatuated. After imprisoning Anastacio de Mesa and his companions upon the above charge, which seems to be without foundation entirely, de Vega took the girl, and compelled her by force and against her will to live with him as his mistress. The girl soon died, her end, no doubt, being hastened by the brutal cruelty of de Vega. These young men, hardly more than boys, were imprisoned on August 3, 1895, after having been tried by court martial, but not sentenced. They have now been liberated. It should be stated that de Vega himself constituted the "court martial" before which these boys were tried. Note.--There are several cases of arrests for "insulting and resisting the armed forces of Spain." In the case of Pedro Javier, the accused was over seventy years old, and in that of Miguel de la Cruz, he was seventy-five years old; while in one or two other cases boys of ten or twelve years of age were arrested on the same charge. CHAPTER XX Hawaii As Annexed. The Star Spangled Banner Up Again in Hawaii, and to Stay--Dimensions of the Islands--What the Missionaries Have Done--Religious Belief by Nationality--Trade Statistics--Latest Census--Sugar Plantation Laborers--Coinage of Silver--Schools--Coffee Growing. The star spangled banner should have been waving in peaceful triumph over our central possessions in the Pacific for five years. Now Old Glory has ascended the famous flag-staff, from which it was mistakenly withdrawn, and is at home. Its lustrous folds are welcomed by a city that is strangely American, in the sense that it is what the world largely calls "Yankee," and does not mean bad manners by the most expressive word that has so vast a distinction. The shops of Honolulu are Americanized. There is a splendid blossoming of the flag of the country. The British parties of opposition have faded out. There is the wisdom in English statesmanship to be glad to see us with material interest in the Pacific Ocean. In this connection there is something better than a treaty. Do not mispronounce the name of the capital city of the Hawaiian Islands. Call it Hoo-noo-luu-luu and let it sing itself. Remember that this city is not on the larger of the islands, but the third in size. The area of Hawaii, the greater island, is 4,210 square miles. Oahu, the Honolulu island, has 600 square miles, with a population of 40,205, and Hawaii has 33,285 people. The area of the islands, told in acres is, Hawaii, 2,000,000; Nani, 400,000; Oahu, 260,000; Kauai, 350,000; Malokai, 200,000; Lauai, 100,000; Nichan, 70,000; Kahloolawe, 30,000. The dimensions of the tremendous volcanoes that are our property now are startling: _Dimensions of Kilauea, Island of Hawaii._ (The largest active Volcano in the World.) Area, 4.14 square miles, or 2,650 acres. Circumference, 41,500 feet, or 7.85 miles. Extreme width, 10,300 feet, or 1.95 miles. Extreme length, 15,500 feet, or 2.93 miles. Elevation, Volcano House, 1,040 feet. _Dimensions of Mokuaweoweo_. (The Summit Crater of Mauna Loa, Island of Hawaii.) Area, 3.70 square miles, or 2,370 acres. Circumference, 50,000 feet, or 9.47 miles. Length, 19,500 feet, or 3.7 miles. Width, 9,200 feet, or 1.74 miles. Elevation, 13,675 feet. _Dimensions of Haleakala_. (The great Crater of Maui, the Largest in the World.) Area, 19 square miles, or 12,160 acres. Circumference, 105,600 feet, or 20 miles. Extreme length, 39,500 feet, or 7.48 miles. Extreme width, 12,500 feet, or 2.37 miles. Elevation of summit, 10,032 feet. Elevation of principal cones in crater, 8,032 and 7,572 feet. Elevation of cave in floor of crater, 7,380 feet. _Dimensions of Iao Valley, Maui._ Length (from Wailuku) about 5 miles. Width of valley, 2 miles. Depth, near head, 4,000 feet. Elevation of Puu Kukui, above head of valley, 5,788 feet. Elevation of Crater of Eke, above Waihee Valley, 4,500 feet. Honolulu's importance comes from the harbor, and the favor of the missionaries. As to the general judgment of the work of the missionaries, there is nothing better to do than to quote Mr. Richard H. Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." He said in that classic: "It is no small thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board, that in less than forty years they have taught this whole people to read and write, to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; given it a literature and translated into it the Bible, and works of devotion, science and entertainment, etc. They have established schools, reared up native teachers, and so pressed their work that now the proportion of inhabitants who can read and write is greater than in New England. And, whereas, they found these islanders a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on the sand, eating raw fish, fighting among themselves, tyrannized over by feudal chiefs and abandoned to sensuality, they now see them decently clothed, recognizing the law of marriage, knowing something of accounts, going to school and public worship more regularly than the people do at home, and the more elevated of them taking part in conducting the affairs of the constitutional monarchy under which they live, holding seats on the judicial bench and in the legislative chambers, and filling posts in the local magistracies." Take away the tropical vegetation and the gigantic scenery and we have here, in our new Pacific possessions, a new Connecticut. The stamp of New England is upon this lofty land, especially in Honolulu, where the spires of the churches testify. There is much that is of the deepest and broadest interest in the possible missionary work here, on account of the remarkable race questions presented. Here are the nations and the people of mixed blood--the Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese--a population immensely representative of Oriental Asia. The measure of success of the missionaries under our flag in dealing with these people can hardly fail to be accepted by the world as a test of the practical results of the labor with the Asiatica. In this connection, the figures following, from the Hawaiian Annual of 1898, furnish a basis of solid information for study: _Table of Religious Belief, By Nationality_. (So Far as Reported in Census Returns, 1896.) Roman Nationalities. Protestants. Catholics. Mormons. Hawaiians................... 12,842 8,427 4,368 Part Hawaiians.............. 3,242 2,633 396 Hawaiian born foreigners.... 1,801 6,622 15 Americans................... 1,404 212 34 British..................... 1,184 180 7 Germans..................... 592 83 2 French...................... 6 57 ..... Norwegians.................. 154 8 ..... Portuguese.................. 146 7,812 1 Japanese.................... 711 49 4 Chinese..................... 837 67 49 South Sea Islanders......... 178 42 3 Other nationalities......... 176 171 7 ====== ====== ===== Totals............... 23,273 26,363 4,886 _Note_.--This table shows but 54,522 of the population (just about one-half) to have made returns of their religious belief. With 21,535 Japanese and 18,429 Chinese (probably Buddhists and Confucians) unreported because not provided for in the schedules, the great difference is largely accounted for. The latest census returns show that of the whole population, 109,020, there are: Males, 72,517; females, 36,503. The latest information of labor, under contract for sugar-making, make the number of males on the island more than double that of the females. There has been an increase of population of more than 50,000 in the eighteen years from 1878 to 1896. The census of the several islands, taken September 27, 1896, shows: Population. Dwellings. Unin- Male. Female. Total. Inhab- habi- Build- Total. ited. ted. ing. Oahu.... 26,164 14,041 40,205 6,685 1,065 60 7,010 Hawaii.. 22,632 10,653 33,285 5,033 955 35 6,027 Molokai. 1,335 972 2,307 651 92 3 746 Lanai... 51 54 105 23 13 .. 36 Maui.... 11,435 6,291 17,726 3,156 650 18 3,824 Niihau.. 76 88 164 31 3 .. 34 Kauai .. 10,824 4,404 15,228 2,320 299 8 2,627 ====== ====== ======= ====== ===== === ====== 72,517 36,503 109,020 17,099 3,081 124 21,104 Hawaii's annual trade balance since 1879 is a notable record: Excess Export Custom House Year Imports. Exports. Values. Receipts. 1880 $3,673,268.41 $4,968,444.87 $1,295,176.46 $402,181.63 1881 4,547,978.64 6,885,436.56 2,337,457.92 423,192.01 1882 4,974,510.01 8,299,016,70 3,324,506.69 505,390.98 1883 5,624,240.09 8,133,343.88 2,509,103.79 577,332.87 1884 4,637,514.22 8,184,922.63 3,547,408.41 551,739.59 1885 3,830,544.58 9,158,818.01 5,328,273.43 502.337.38 1886 4,877,738.73 10,565,885.58 5,688,146.85 580,444.04 1887 4,943,840.72 9,707,047.33 4,763,206.61 595,002.64 1888 4,540,887.46 11,903,398.76 7,362,511.30 546,142.63 1889 5,438,790.63 14,039,941.40 8,601,150.77 550,010.16 1890 6,962,201.13 13,142,829.48 6,180,628.35 695,956.91 1891 7,438,582.65 10,395,788.27 2,957,205.62 732,594,93 1892 4,028,295.31 8,181,687.21 4,153,391.90 494,385.10 1893 4,363,177.58 10,962,598.09 5,599,420.51 545,754.16 1894 5,104,481.43 9,678,794.56 4,574,313.13 524,767.37 1895 5,714,017.54 8,474,138.15 2,760,120.61 547,149.40 1896 7,164,561.40 15,515,230.13 8,350,668.73 656,895.82 The percentage of imports from the United States in 1896 was 76.27; Great Britain, 10.54; Germany, 2.06; France, .25*; China, 4.17; Japan, 3.86. In 1895 the export of sugar was 294,784,819 pounds; value, $7,975,500.41. Nationality of Vessels Employed in Foreign Carrying Trade, 1889-1896. 1889. 1890. 1891. 1892. Nations. No. Tons. No. Tons. No. Tons. No. Tons. American 185 125,196 224 153,098 233 169,472 212 160,042 Hawaiian 44 56,670 35 43,641 21 26,869* *21 4,340 British 22 21,108 16 22,912 33 52,866 30 58,317 German 5 3,337 9 7,070 9 9,005 5 5,978 Japanese .. ....... ... ....... 5 8,239 3 4,701 All others 9 12,268 9 9,980 10 8,401 11 8,201 === ======= === ======= === ======= === ======= Total 269 218,579 293 236,701 311 274,852 722 242,579 Bonded Debt, Etc., Hawaiian Islands, June 30, 1897. Per Cent. Under Loan Act of 1876 7 $ 1,500.00 " " " 1882 6 67,400.00 " " " 1886 6 2,000,000.00 " " " 1888 6 190,000.00 " " " 1890 5 and 6 124,100.00 " " " 1892 5 and 6 82.100.00 " " " 1893 6 650,000.00 " " " 1890 5 222,000.00 ============= 3,337,100.00 Due Postal Savings Bank Depositors 782,074.25 ============= $4,119,174.25 Number and Nationality of Sugar Plantation Laborers. (Compiled from latest Report of Secretary Bureau of Immigration, December 31, 1897.) Hawaii- Portu- Japan- S. S. All Islands. ans. guese. ese. Chinese. Isl'ders. Others. Total. Hawaii 594 980 6,245 2,511 24 232 10,586 Mauai 580 526 2,010 1,114 45 110 4,385 Oahu 197 211 1,331 973 16 55 2,783 Kauai 244 551 3,307 1,691 30 203 6,026 ===== ===== ====== ===== === === ====== Tot.1896 1,615 2,268 12,893 6,289 115 600 23,780 Tot.1895 1,584 2,497 11,584 3,847 133 473 20,120 ===== ===== ====== ===== === === ====== Inc.1896 31 ..... 1,309 2,442 ... 127 3,660 Dec.1899 ..... 231 ...... ..... 18 ... ...... The number of day laborers, 11,917, or a little over one-half of the total force engaged. The Japanese and South Sea Islanders are about evenly divided in their numbers as to term and day service, while Hawaiians and Portuguese show each but a small proportion of their numbers under contract. Minors are reducing in number. Women laborers, numbering 1,024 in all, show a gain of 89 over 1875. Only thirty Hawaiian females are engaged among all the plantations, and confined to one plantation each in Oahu, Kauai and Maui. The Hawaiian Annual of 1898 makes this annotation: During the year various changes have occurred in the labor population of the country; and under the working of the present law, requiring a proportion of other than Asiatic of all immigrant labor introduced, there has already arrived one company of Germans, comprising 115 men, 25 women and 47 children, all of whom found ready engagements with various plantations. Chinese arrivals in 1897 to take the place of Japanese whose terms were expiring, will alter the proportions of these nationalities of plantation labor, and by the new law Asiatic laborers must return to their country at the expiration of their term of service, or re-engage; they cannot drift around the country, nor engage in competition with artizans or merchants. The islands comprising the Hawaiian territory are Hawaii, Mauai, Oaha, Kauai, Molokai, Lauai, Niihau, Kahaalawe, Lehua and Molokini, "The Leper Prison," and, in addition, Nihoa, or Bird Island, was taken possession of in 1822; an expedition for that purpose having been fitted out by direction of Kaahumanu, and sent thither under the charge of Captain William Sumner. Laysan Island became Hawaiian territory May 1st, 1857, and on the 10th of the same month Lysiansky Island was added to Kamehameha's realm by Captain John Paty. Palmyra Island was taken possession of by Captain Zenas Bent, April 15th, 1862, and proclaimed Hawaiian territory in the reign of Kamehameha IV., as per "By Authority" notice in the "Polynesian" of June 21st, 1862. Ocean Island was acquired September 20th, 1886, as per proclamation of Colonel J.M. Boyd, empowered for such service during the reign of Kalakaua. Neeker Island was taken possession of May 27th, 1894, by Captain James A. King, on behalf of the Hawaiian Government. French Frigate Shoal was the latest acquisition, also by Captain King, and proclaimed Hawaiian territory July 13th, 1895. Gardener Island, Mara or Moro Reef, Pearl and Hermes Reef, Gambia Bank, and Johnston or Cornwallis Island are also claimed as Hawaiian possessions, but there is some obscurity as to the dates of acquisition, and it is of record in the Foreign Office articles of convention between Hen. Charles St. Julien, the Commissioner and Political and Commercial Agent of His Majesty the King of the Hawaiian Islands, and John Webster, Esq., the Sovereign Chief and Proprietor of the group of islands known as Stewart's Islands (situated near the Solomon Group), whereby is ceded to the Hawaiian Government--subject to ratification by the King--the islands of Ihikaiana, Te Parena, Taore, Matua Awi and Matua Ivoto, comprising said group of Stewart's Islands. But the formalities do not seem to have been perfected, so that we are not certain that the Stewart's Islands are our possessions. The latest thorough census of the Hawaiian Islands was taken in September, 1896, but the population was closely estimated July 1st, 1897. Japan- Portu- All Other Natives. Chinese. ese. guese. Foreigners. Total Population as per Census, September, 1896 39,504 21,616 24,407 15,191 8,302 109,020 Passengers-Arrivals- Excess over departures, 4th quarter, 1896 ...... 1,377 1,673 ...... 339 3,389 Excess over departures, 6 mos. to July 1, 1897. ...... 2,908 396 58 207 3,569 ====== ====== ====== ====== ====== ====== Total 39,504 25,901 26,476 15,249 8,848 115,978 The following denominations of Hawaiian silver were coined during the reign of Kalakaua, at the San Francisco mint, and imported for the circulating medium of the islands in 1883 and 1884. They are of the same intrinsic value as the United States silver coins and were first introduced into circulation January 14th, at the opening of the bank of Clans Spreckles & Co. in Honolulu. The amount coined was $1,000,000, divided as follows: Hawaiian Dollars...................................$ 500,000 " Half Dollars.............................. 350,000 " Quarter Dollars........................... 125,000 " Dimes..................................... 25,000 Total..............................................$ 1,000,000 Schools, Teachers and Pupils for the Year 1896. ==Teachers.== ==Pupils.== Schools. Male. Female. Total. Male. Female. Government 132 111 169 280 5,754 4,435 Independent 63 72 130 202 1,994 1,840 ==== ==== ==== ==== ====== ====== 195 183 299 482 7,748 6,275 Nationality of Pupils Attending Schools for the Year 1896. Nationality. Male. Female. Hawaiian 3,048 2,432 Part-Hawaiian 1,152 1,296 American 219 198 British 105 151 German 152 136 Portuguese 2,066 1,534 Scandinavian 51 47 Japanese 242 155 Chinese 641 280 South Sea Islanders 15 13 Other foreigners 57 33 ===== ===== 7,748 6,275 Of the Japanese, 8.5 per cent. were born on the islands; of the Chinese, percentage born here, 10.3. Of a total of 41,711 Japanese and Chinese, 36,121 are males and 5,590 females. The figures show that the Asiatics are not at home. The sugar industry in our new possessions has had great prominence agriculturally. The sugar interest of these islands has had a formidable influence in the United States. Recent events and the ascertained certainties of the future show that the people of the United States will soon raise their sugar supply on their own territory. The annexation of these sugar islands was antagonized because there was involved the labor contract system. As a matter of course, the United States will not change the labor laws of the nation to suit the sugar planters of Hawaii, who have been obtaining cheap labor through a system of Asiatic servitude. There is but one solution--labor will be better compensated in Hawaii than it has been, and yet white men will not be largely employed in the cultivation of sugar cane in our tropical islands. The beet sugar industry is another matter. There will be an end of the peculiar institution that has had strength in our new possessions, that brings, under contract, to Hawaii a mass of forty thousand Chinese and Japanese men, and turns over the majority of them to the plantations, whose profits have displayed an unwholesome aggrandizement. Once it was said cotton could not be grown in the cotton belt of our country without slave labor, but the latter trouble is, the cotton producers claim, there is too much of their product raised. A ten-million bale crop depresses the market. Already experiments have been tried successfully to pay labor in the sugar fields by the tons of cane delivered at the mills for grinding. This is an incident full of auspicious significance. A general feeling is expressed in the current saying that coffee raising is "the coming industry." The confidence that there is prosperity in coffee amounts to enthusiasm. Here are some of the statistics of coffee growers, showing number of trees and area, trees newly planted and trees in bearing: No. of Trees or Area. Newly 1 to 3 Trees in Planted. year old. Bearing. J. C. Lenhart, Kaupo 2,000 trs. 4,000 trs. .... Mokulau Coffee Co., Kaupo 2,000 trs. 10,000 trs. 2 acres E. E. Paxton, Kaupo 5,000 trs. 7,000 trs. .... Native Patches throughout Kaupo 10 acres .... .... Lahaina Coffee and Fruit Co., Ltd., Lahaina 10,000 trs. 100,000 trs. 30,000 trs. H. P. Baldwin, Honokahua 35,947 trs. 4,669 trs. 2,641 trs. Waianae Coffee Plantation Co., Waianae 7,500 trs. 23,000 trs. 36,000 trs. C. A. Wideman, Waianae 10,000 trs. 8,500 trs .... Makaha Coffee Co., Ltd., Waianae 112 acres .... .... Lanihau Plantation, Kailua 20,700 trs. 25,000 trs. 10,000 trs. Kona Coffee Co., Ltd., Kailua .... .... 35 acres Geo. McDougal & Sons, Kailua .... 176 acres 105 acres H. C. Achi, Holualoa .... .... 10,000 trs. E. W. Barnard, Laupahoehoe .... .... 30,000 trs. J. M. Barnard, Laupahoehoe .... 5,000 trs. .... John Gaspar, Napoopoo .... 33,000 trs. 16,000 trs. Manuel Sebastian, Kealakekua .... .... 8,000 trs. J. G. Henriques, Kealakekua .... .... 3,000 trs. C. Hooper, Kauleoli .... 2 acres 12 acres J. Keanu, Keei 5 acres 10 acres 16 acres A. S. Cleghorn 3 acres .... 100 acres Mrs. E. C. Greenwell .... 8 acres 25 acres J. M. Monsarrat, Kolo .... 38 acres 40 acres Queen Emma Plantation .... .... 25,000 trs. L. M. Staples Plantation .... 25,000 trs. 12,000 trs. Olaa Coffee Co., Ltd 50 acres 90 acres .... Grossman Bros 100 acres 30 acres .... B. H. Brown 2,260 trs. 2,000 trs. 3,225 trs. Herman Eldart 40,000 trs. 20,000 trs. 7,000 trs. The list of coffee growers is very long. That which is of greater interest is the showing made of the immense number of new trees. The coffee movement steadily gains force and the pace of progress is accelerated. Everybody has not been pleased with annexation. The Japanese are not in a good humor about it. The minister of Japan got his orders evidently to leave for Japan when the news arrived that the question had been settled in Washington, and he left for Yokohama by the boat that brought the intelligence. Japanese journals of importance raise the question as to the propriety of our establishing a coal station here. There is some dissatisfaction among the Hawaiians, who are bewildered. They are children who believe stories in proportion as they are queer. Many of them feel that they have a grievance. The young princess who is the representative of the extinguished monarchy is affable and respected. If the question as to giving her substantial recognition were left to the Americans here, they would vote for her by a large majority. It would not be bad policy for the government to be generous toward her. She is not in the same boat with the ex-Queen. The Americans who have been steadfast in upholding the policy that at last has prevailed are happy, but not wildly so, just happy. Now that they have gained their cause, their unity will be shaken by discussions on public questions and personal preferments. There should be no delay in understanding that in this Archipelago the race questions forbid mankind suffrage, and that our new possessions are not to become states at once, or hurriedly; that it will take generations of assimilation to prepare the Hawaiian Islands for statehood. The objection to the climate of the marvelous islands of which we have become possessed is its almost changeless character. There is no serious variation in the temperature. There is a little more rain in "winter" than in "summer." There is neither spring nor fall. The trade winds afford a slight variety, and this seems to be manipulated by the mountains, that break up the otherwise unsparing monotony of serene loveliness. The elevations of the craters, and the jagged peaks are from one thousand to thirteen thousand feet. If you want a change of climate, climb for cold, and escape the mosquitos, the pests of this paradise. There are a score of kinds of palms; the royal, the date, the cocoanut, are of them. The bread fruit and banana are in competition. The vegetation is voluptuous and the scenery stupendous. There is a constellation of islands, and they differ like the stars in their glories and like human beings in their difficulties. CHAPTER XXI Early History of the Sandwich Islands. Captain James Cook's Great Discoveries and His Martyrdom--Character and Traditions of the Hawaiian Islands--Charges Against the Famous Navigator, and effort to Array the Christian World Against Him--The True Story of His Life and Death--How Charges Against Cook Came to Be Made--Testimony of Vancouver, King and Dixon, and Last Words of Cook's Journal--Light Turned on History That Has Become Obscure--Savagery of the Natives--Their Written Language Took Up Their High Colored Traditions, and Preserved Phantoms--Scenes in Aboriginal Theatricals--Problem of Government in an Archipelago Where Race Questions Are Predominant--Now Americans Should Remember Captain Cook as an Illustrious Pioneer. Regarding the islands in the Pacific that we have for a long time largely occupied and recently wholly possessed, the Hawaiian cluster that are the stepping stone, the resting place and the coal station for the golden group more than a thousand leagues beyond, we should remember Captain Cook as one of our own Western pioneers, rejoice to read his true story, and in doing so to form a correct estimate of the people who have drifted into the area of our Protection, or territory that is inalienably our own, to be thoroughly Americanized, that they may some day be worthy to become our fellow-citizens. Sunday, January 18th, 1778, Captain Cook, after seeing birds every day, and turtles, saw two islands, and the next day a third one, and canoes put off from the shore of the second island, the people speaking the language of Otaheite. As the Englishmen proceeded, other canoes appeared, bringing with them roasted pigs and very fine potatoes. The Captain says: "Several small pigs were purchased for a six-penny nail, so that we again found ourselves in a land of plenty. The natives were gentle and polite, asking whether they might sit down, whether they might spit on the deck, and the like. An order restricting the men going ashore was issued that I might do everything in my power to prevent the importation of a fatal disease into the island, which I knew some of our men now labored under." Female visitors were ordered to be excluded from the ships. Captain Cook's journal is very explicit, and he states the particulars of the failure of his precautions. This is a subject that has been much discussed, and there is still animosity in the controversy. The discovery of the islands that he called the Sandwich, after his patron the Earl of Sandwich, happened in the midst of our Revolutionary war. After Cook's explorations for the time, he sailed in search of the supposed Northwest passage, and that enterprise appearing hopeless, returned to the summer islands, and met his fate in the following December. Captain George Vancouver, a friend and follower of Cook, says, in his "Voyage of Discovery and Around the World." from 1790 to 1795: "It should seem that the reign of George the Third had been reserved by the Great Disposer of all things for the glorious task of establishing the grand keystone to that expansive arch over which the arts and sciences should pass to the furthermost corners of the earth, for the instruction and happiness of the most lowly children of nature. Advantages so highly beneficial to the untutored parts of the human race, and so extremely important to that large proportion of the subjects of this empire who are brought up to the sea service deserve to be justly appreciated; and it becomes of very little importance to the bulk of our society, whose enlightened humanity teaches them to entertain a lively regard for the welfare and interest of those who engage in such adventurous undertakings for the advancement of science, or for the extension of commerce, what may be the animadversions or sarcasms of those few unenlightened minds that may peevishly demand, "what beneficial consequences, if any, have followed, or are likely to follow to the discoverers, or to the discovered, to the common interests of humanity, or to the increase of useful knowledge, from all our boasted attempts to explore the distant recesses of the globe?" The learned editor (Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury) who has so justly anticipated this injudicious remark, has, in his very comprehensive introduction to Captain Cook's last voyage, from whence the above quotation is extracted, given to the public not only a complete and satisfactory answer to that question, but has treated every other part of the subject of discovery so ably as to render any further observations on former voyages of this description wholly unnecessary, for the purpose of bringing the reader acquainted with what had been accomplished, previously to my being honored with His Majesty's commands to follow up the labors of that illustrious navigator Captain James Cook; to whose steady, uniform, indefatigable and undiverted attention to the several objects on which the success of his enterprises ultimately depended, the world is indebted for such eminent and important benefits." Captain George Vancouver pays, in the introduction of his report, a remarkable tribute to Captain Cook, that should become familiar to the American people, for it is one of the features of prevalent Hawaiian literature that the great navigator is much disparaged, and denounced. One of the favorite theories of the missionaries has been that Cook's death at the hands of the savages was substantially the punishment inflicted by God, because the Captain allowed himself to be celebrated and worshipped as a god by the heathen, consenting to their idolatry when he should have preached to them, as was done with so much efficiency nearly half a century later. The fact is the natives had a great deal of "religion" of their own, and defended their superstitions with skill and persistence before yielding to the great simplicities of the Christian faith. Captain Cook, it must be admitted, did not attempt to preach the gospel. The gentleness of the natives turned out to contain a great deal that was most horrible. The closing years of the last century were those of rapid progress in the art of navigation, and Captain Vancouver gives this striking summary of testimony: "By the introduction of nautical astronomy into marine education, we are taught to sail on the hypothenuse, instead of traversing two sides of a triangle, which was the usage in earlier times; by this means the circuitous course of all voyages from place to place is considerably shortened; and it is now become evident that sea officers of the most common rate abilities who will take the trouble of making themselves acquainted with the principles of this science, will, on all suitable occasions, with proper and correct instruments, be enabled to acquire a knowledge of their situation in the Atlantic, Indian or Pacific Oceans, with a degree of accuracy sufficient to steer on a meridianal or diagonal line, to any known spot, provided it be sufficiently conspicuous to be visible at any distance from five to ten leagues. "This great improvement, by which the most remote parts of the terrestrial globe are brought so sasily within our reach, would nevertheless have been of comparatively little utility had not those happy means been discovered for preserving the lives and health of the officers and seamen engaged in such distant and perilous undertakings; which were so peacefully practiced by Captain Cook, the first great discoverer of this salutary system, in all his latter voyages around the globe. But in none have the effect of his wise regulations, regimen and discipline been more manifest than in the course of the expedition of which the following pages are designed to treat. To an unremitting attention, not only to food, cleanliness, ventilation, and an early administration of antiseptic provisions and medicines, but also to prevent as much as possible the chance of indisposition, by prohibiting individuals from carelessly exposing themselves to the influence of climate, or unhealthy indulgences in times of relaxation, and by relieving them from fatigue and the inclemency of the weather the moment the nature of their duty would permit them to retire, is to be ascribed the preservation of the health and lives of sea-faring people on long voyages." "Those benefits did not long remain unnoticed by the commercial part of the British nation. Remote and distant voyages being now no longer objects of terror, enterprises were projected and carried into execution, for the purpose of establishing new and lucrative branches of commerce between Northwest America and China; and parts of the coast of the former that had not been minutely examined by Captain Cook became now the general resort of the persons thus engaged." The special zeal and consistency with which Cook is defended by the English navigators who knew him and were competent to judge of the scope of his achievements is due in part to the venom of his assailants. The historian of the Sandwich Islands, Sheldon Dibble, says: "An impression of wonder and dread having been made, Captain Cook and his men found little difficulty in having such intercourse with the people as they chose. In regard to that intercourse, it was marked, as the world would say, with kindness and humanity. But it cannot be concealed that here and there at this time, in the form of loathsome disease, was dug the grave of the Hawaiian nation; and from so deep an odium it is to be regretted that faithful history cannot exempt even the fair name of Captain Cook himself, since it was evident that he gave countenance to the evil. The native female first presented to him was a person of some rank; her name was Lelemahoalani. Sin and death were the first commodities imported to the Sandwich Islands." We have already quoted Captain Cook's first words on this subject. He had much more to say giving in detail difficulties rather too searching to be fully stated. As for the charge that Cook personally engaged in debauchery, it rests upon the tradition of savages, who had no more idea than wild animals of the restraint of human passion. It was debated among the islanders whether the white men should be assailed by the warriors, and it was on the advice of a native queen that the women were sent to make friends with the strangers; and this was the policy pursued. As for the decline of the natives in numbers, and the "digging the grave of the nation." the horror of the islands was the destruction of female infants, and also the habit of putting aged and helpless men and women to death. The general indictment against Captain Cook is that this amiable race was just about prepared for Christianity when he thrust himself forward as a god, and with his despotic licentiousness destroyed immediate possibilities of progress. In Sandwich Island notes by "a Haole" (that is to say, a white person) we see what may be said on the other side of the picture: "It becomes an interesting duty to examine their social, political and religious condition. The first feature that calls the attention to the past is their social condition, and a darker picture can hardly be presented to the contemplation of man. They had their frequent boxing matches on a public arena, and it was nothing uncommon to see thirty or forty left dead on the field of contest. "As gamblers they were inveterate. The game was indulged in by every person, from the king of each island to the meanest of his subjects. The wager accompanied every scene of public amusement. They gambled away their property to the last vestige of all they possessed. They staked every article, of food, their growing crops, the dollies they wore, their lands, wives, daughters, and even the very bones of their arms and legs--to be made into fishhooks after they were dead. These steps led to the most absolute and crushing poverty. "They had their dances, which were of such a character as not to be conceived by a civilized mind, and were accompanied by scenes which would have disgraced even Nero's revels. Nearly every night, with the gathering darkness, crowds would retire to some favorite spot, where, amid every species of sensual indulgence they would revel until the morning twilight. At such times the chiefs would lay aside their authority, and mingle with the lowest courtesan in every degree of debauchery. "Thefts, robberies, murders, infanticide, licentiousness of the most debased and debasing character, burying their infirm and aged parents alive, desertion of the sick, revolting cruelties to the unfortunate maniac, cannibalism and drunkenness, form a list of some of the traits in social life among the Hawaiians in past days. "Their drunkenness was intense. They could prepare a drink, deadly intoxicating in its nature, from a mountain plant called the awa (Piper methysticum). A bowl of this disgusting liquid was always prepared and served out just as a party of chiefs were sitting down to their meals. It would sometimes send the victim into a slumber from which he never awoke. The confirmed awa drinker could be immediately recognized by his leprous appearance. "By far the darkest feature in their social condition was seen in the family relation. Society, however, is only a word of mere accommodation, designed to express domestic relations as they then existed. 'Society' was, indeed, such a sea of pollution as cannot be well described. Marriage was unknown, and all the sacred feelings which are suggested to our minds on mention of the various social relations, such as husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were to them, indeed, as though they had no existence. There was, indeed, in this respect, a dreary blank--a dark chasm from which the soul instinctively recoils. There were, perhaps, some customs which imposed some little restraint upon the intercourse of the sexes, but those customs were easily dispensed with, and had nothing of the force of established rules. It was common for a husband to have many wives, and for a wife also to have many husbands. The nearest ties of consanguinity were but little regarded, and among the chiefs, especially, the connection of brother with sister, and parent with child, were very common. For husbands to interchange wives, and for wives to interchange husbands, was a common act of friendship, and persons who would not do this were not considered on good terms of sociability. For a man or woman to refuse a solicitation was considered an act of meanness; and this sentiment was thoroughly wrought into their minds, that, they seemed not to rid themselves of the feeling of meanness in a refusal, to feel, notwithstanding their better knowledge, that to comply was generous, liberal, and social, and to refuse reproachful and niggardly. It would be impossible to enumerate or specify the crimes which emanated from this state of affairs. Their political condition was the very genius of despotism, systematically and deliberately conducted. Kings and chiefs were extremely jealous of their succession, and the more noble their blood, the more they were venerated by the common people." Mr. Sheldon Dibble is a historian whose work was published in 1843. He complains most bitterly that the natives bothered the missionaries by trying to give them the benefit of native thought. They wanted to do some of the talking, and said very childish things, and were so intent on their own thoughts that they would not listen to the preachers. But it ought not to have been held to be an offense for a procession of heathen to march to a missionary's house and tell him their thoughts. That was an honest manifestation of profound interest--the slow ripening of a harvest field. Mr. Dibble's book is printed by the Mission Seminary, and Mr. Dibble says, page 21: "We know that all the inhabitants of the earth descended from Noah," therefore, the Hawaiians "must once have known the great Jehova and the principles of true religion." But the historian says on the next page that the Hawaiians were heathen from time immemorial, for, "Go back to the very first reputed progenitor of the Hawaiian race, and you find that the ingredients of their character are lust, anger, strife, malice, sensuality, revenge and the worship of idols." This is the elevation upon which Mr. Dibble places himself to fire upon the memory of the English navigator Captain James Cook. The first paragraph of the assault on Cook is this: "How unbounded the influence of foreign visitors upon the ignorant inhabitants of the Pacific! If the thousands of our countrymen who visit this ocean were actuated by the pure principles of the religion of Jesus, how immense the good they might accomplish! But, alas! how few visitors to the Western hemisphere are actuated by such principles." This is preparatory to the condemnation of Cook in these terms: "Captain Cook allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. The people of Kealakeakua declined trading with him, and loaded his ship freely with the best productions of the island. The priests approached him in a crouching attitude, uttering prayers, and exhibiting all the formalities of worship. After approaching him with prostration the priests cast their red kapas over his shoulders and then receding a little, they presented hogs and a variety of other offerings, with long addresses rapidly enunciated, which were a repetition of their prayers and religious homage. "When he went on shore most of the people fled for fear of him, and others bowed down before him, with solemn reverence. He was conducted to the house of the gods, and into the sacred enclosure, and received there the highest homage. In view of this fact, and of the death of Captain Cook, which speedily ensued, who can fail being admonished to give to God at all times, and even among barbarous tribes, the glory which is his due? Captain Cook might have directed the rude and ignorant natives to the great Jehovah, instead of receiving divine homage himself. "Kalaniopuu, the king, arrived from Maui on the 24th of January, and immediately laid a tabu on the canoes, which prevented the women from visiting the ship, and consequently the men came on shore in great numbers, gratifying their infamous purposes in exchange for pieces of iron and small looking-glasses. Some of the women washed the coating from the back of the glasses much to their regret, when they found that the reflecting property was thus destroyed. "The king, on his arrival, as well as the people, treated Captain Cook with much kindness, gave him feather cloaks and fly brushes and paid him divine honors. This adoration, it is painful to relate, was received without remonstrance. I shall speak here somewhat minutely of the death of Captain Cook, as it develops some traits of the heathen character, and the influence under which the heathen suffer from foreign intercourse." After setting forth the horrible character of the natives, Captain Cook is condemned and denounced because he did not refuse the homage of the ferocious savages, paid him as a superior creature. One of Cook's troubles was the frantic passion the islanders had to steal iron. The common people were the property of the chiefs, and they had no other sense of possession. They gave away what they had, but took what they wanted. Mr. Dibble shows his animus when he charges that Cook did not give the natives the real value of their hogs and fruit, and also that he had no right to stop pilferers in canoes by declaring and enforcing a blockade. This is a trifling technicality much insisted upon. Dibble's account of the death of Cook is this: "A canoe came from an adjoining district, bound within the bay. In the canoe were two chiefs of some rank, Kekuhaupio and Kalimu. The canoe was fired upon from one of the boats and Kalimu was killed. Kekuhaupio made the greatest speed till he reached the place of the king, where Captain Cook also was, and communicated the intelligence of the death of the chief. The attendants of the king were enraged and showed signs of hostility, but were restrained by the thought that Captain Cook was a god. At that instant a warrior, with a spear in his hand, approached Captain Cook and was heard to say that the boats in the harbor had killed his brother, and he would he revenged. Captain Cook, from his enraged appearance and that of the multitude, was suspicious of him, and fired upon him with his pistol. Then followed a scene of confusion, and in the midst Captain Cook being hit with a stone, and perceiving the man who threw it, shot him dead. He also struck a certain chief with his sword, whose name was Kalaimanokahoowaha. The chief instantly seized Captain Cook with a strong hand, designing merely to hold him and not to take his life; for he supposed him to be a god and that he could not die. Captain Cook struggled to free himself from the grasp, and as he was about to fall uttered a groan. The people immediately exclaimed, "He groans--he is not a god," and instantly slew him. Such was the melancholy death of Captain Cook. "Immediately the men in the boat commenced a deliberate fire upon the crowd. They had refrained in a measure before, for fear of killing their Captain. Many of the natives were killed." "Historian Dibble does not notice the evidence that Cook lost his life by turning to his men in the boats, ordering them not to fire. It was at that moment he was stabbed in the back. Dibble represents the facts as if to justify the massacre of the great navigator, because he allowed the heathen to think he was one of their gang of gods. But this presumption ought not to have been allowed to excuse prevarication about testimony. The importance of Dibble's history is that it is representative. He concludes with this eloquent passage: "From one heathen nation we may learn in a measure the wants of all. And we ought not to restrict our view, but, look at the wide world. To do then for all nations what I have urged in behalf of the Sandwich Islands, how great and extensive a work! How vast the number of men and how immense the amount of means which seem necessary to elevate all nations, and gain over the whole earth to the permanent dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ! Can 300,000,000 of pagan children and youth be trained and instructed by a few hands? Can the means of instructing them be furnished by the mere farthings and pence of the church? Will it not be some time yet before ministers and church members will need to be idle a moment for the want of work? Is there any danger of our being cut off from the blessed privilege either of giving or of going? There is a great work yet to be done--a noble work--a various and a difficult work--a work worthy of God's power, God's resources, and God's wisdom. What Christendom has as yet done is scarcely worthy of being called a commencement. When God shall bring such energies into action as shall be commensurate with the greatness of the work--when he shall cause every redeemed sinner, by the abundant influence of His Holy Spirit, to lay himself out wholly in the great enterprise, then there will be a sight of moral sublimity that shall rivet the gaze of angels." We quote this writer as to what became of the remains of Cook: "The body of Captain Cook was carried into the interior of the island, the bones secured according to their custom, and the flesh burned in the fire. The heart, liver, etc., of Captain Cook, were stolen and eaten by some hungry children, who mistook them in the night for the inwards of a dog. The names of the children were Kupa, Mohoole and Kaiwikokoole. These men are now all dead. The last of the number died two years since at the station of Lahaina. Some of the bones of Captain Cook were sent on board his ship, in compliance with the urgent demands of the officers; and some were kept by the priests as objects of worship." The "heart, liver, etc.," were of course given to the children to eat! The bones are still hidden, and presumably not much worshiped. The first of the remains of Captain Cook given up was a mass of his bloody flesh, cut as if from a slaughtered ox. After some time there were other fragments, including one of his hands which had a well known scar, and perfectly identified it. Along with this came the story of burning flesh, and denials of cannibalism. Mr. Dibble speaks of Cook's "consummate folly and outrageous tyranny of placing a blockade upon a heathen bay, which the natives could not possibly be supposed either to understand or appreciate." That blockade, like others, was understood when enforced. The historian labors to work out a case to justify the murder of Cook because he received worship. As to the acknowledgment of Cook as the incarnation of Lono, in the Hawaiian Pantheon, Captain King says: "Before I proceed to relate the adoration that was paid to Captain Cook, and the peculiar ceremonies with which he was received on this fatal island, it will be necessary to describe the Morai, situated, as I have already mentioned, at the south side of the beach at Kakooa (Kealakeakua). It was a square solid pile of stones, about forty yards long, twenty broad, and fourteen in height. The top was flat and well paved, and surrounded by a wooden rail, on which were fixed the skulls of the captives sacrificed on the death of their chiefs. In the center of the area stood a ruinous old building of wood, connected with the rail on each side by a stone wall, which next divided the whole space into two parts. On the side next the country were five poles, upward of twenty feet high, supporting an irregular kind of scaffold; on the opposite side toward the sea, stood two small houses with a covered communication. "We were conducted by Koah to the top of this pile by an easy ascent leading from the beach to the northwest corner of the area. At the entrance we saw two large wooden images, with features violently distorted, and a long piece of carved wood of a conical form inverted, rising from the top of their heads; the rest was without form and wrapped round with red cloth. We were here met by a tall young man with a long beard, who presented Captain Cook to the images, and after chanting a kind of hymn, in which he was joined by Koah, they led us to that end of the Morai where the five poles were fixed. At the foot of them were twelve images ranged in a semicircular form, and before the middle figure stood a high stand or table, exactly resembling the Whatta of Othaheiti, on which lay a putrid hog, and under it pieces of sugar cane, cocoanuts, bread fruit, plantains and sweet potatoes. Koah having placed the Captain under the stand, took down the hog and held it toward him; and after having a second time addressed him in a long speech, pronounced with much vehemence and rapidity, he let it fall on the ground and led him to the scaffolding, which they began to climb together, not without great risk of falling. At this time we saw coming in solemn procession, at the entrance of the top of the Morai, ten men carrying a live hog and a large piece of red cloth. Being advanced a few paces, they stopped and prostrated themselves; and Kaireekeea, the young man above mentioned, went to them, and receiving the cloth carried it to Koah, who wrapped it around the Captain, and afterwards offered him the hog, which was brought by Kaireekeea with the same ceremony. "Whilst Captain Cook was aloft in this awkward situation, swathed round with red cloth, and with difficulty keeping his hold amongst the pieces of rotten scaffolding, Kaireekeea and Koah began their office, chanting sometimes in concert and sometimes alternately. This lasted a considerable time; at length Koah let the hog drop, when he and the Captain descended together. He then led him to the images before mentioned, and, having said something to each in a sneering tone, snapping his fingers at them as he passed, he brought him to that in the center, which, from its being covered with red cloth, appeared to be in greater estimation than the rest. Before this figure he prostrated himself and kissed it, desiring Captain Cook to do the same, who suffered himself to be directed by Koah throughout the whole of this ceremony. "We were now led back to the other division of the Morai, where there was a space ten or twelve feet square, sunk about three feet below the level of the area. Into this we descended, and Captain Cook was seated between two wooden idols, Koah supporting one of his arms, whilst I was desired to support the other. At this time arrived a second procession of natives, carrying a baked hog and a pudding, some bread fruit, cocoanuts and other vegetables. When they approached us Kaireekeea put himself at their head, and presenting the pig to Captain Cook in the usual manner, began the same kind of chant as before, his companions making regular responses. We observed that after every response their parts became gradually shorter, till, toward the close, Kaireekeea's consisted of only two or three words, while the rest answered by the word Orono. "When this offering was concluded, which lasted a quarter of an hour, the natives sat down fronting us, and began to cut up the baked hog, to peel the vegetables and break the cocoanuts; whilst others employed themselves in brewing the awa, which is done by chewing it in the same manner as at the Friendly Islands. Kaireekeea then took part of the kernel of a cocoanut, which he chewed, and wrapping it in a piece of cloth, rubbed with it the Captain's face, head, hands, arms and shoulders. The awa was then handed around, and after we had tasted it Koah and Pareea began to pull the flesh of the hog in pieces and put it into our mouths. I had no great objection to being fed by Pareea, who was very cleanly in his person, but Captain Cook, who was served by Koah, recollecting the putrid hog, could not swallow a morsel; and his reluctance, as may be supposed, was not diminished when the old man, according to his own mode of civility had chewed it for him. "When this ceremony was finished, which Captain Cook put an end to as soon as he decently could, we quitted the Moral." Evidently the whole purpose of Captain Cook in permitting this performance, was to flatter and gratify the natives and make himself strong to command them. The Captain himself was sickened, and got away as quickly as he could without giving offense. This was not the only case in which the native priests presented the navigator as a superior being. Perhaps the view the old sailor took of the style of ceremony was as there were so many gods, one more or less did not matter. Cook never attached importance to the freaks of superstition, except so far as it might be made useful in keeping the bloody and beastly savages in check. Bearing upon this point we quote W.D. Alexander's "Brief History of the Hawaiian People," pages 33-34: "Infanticide was fearfully prevalent, and there were few of the older women at the date of the abolition of idolatry who had not been guilty of it. It was the opinion of those best informed that two-thirds of all the children born were destroyed in infancy by their parents. They were generally buried alive, in many cases in the very houses occupied by their unnatural parents. On all the islands the number of males was much greater than that of females, in consequence of the girls being more frequently destroyed than the boys. The principal reason given for it was laziness--unwillingness to take the trouble of rearing children. It was a very common practice for parents to give away their children to any persons who were willing to adopt them. "No regular parental discipline was maintained, and the children were too often left to follow their own inclinations and to become familiar with the lowest vices. "Neglect of the helpless. Among the common people old age was despised. The sick and those who had become helpless from age were sometimes abandoned to die or put to death. Insane people were also sometimes stoned to death." Again we quote Alexander's History, page 49: "Several kinds of food were forbidden to the women on pain of death, viz., pork, bananas, cocoanuts, turtles, and certain kinds of fish, as the ulua, the humu, the shark, the hihimanu or sting-ray, etc. The men of the poorer class often formed a sort of eating club apart from their wives. These laws were rigorously enforced. At Honannau, Hawaii, two young girls of the highest rank, Kapiolani and Keoua, having been detected in the act of eating a banana, their kahu, or tutor, was held responsible, and put to death by drowning. Shortly before the abolition of the tabus, a little child had one of her eyes scooped out for the same offense. About the same time a woman was put to death for entering the eating house of her husband, although though she was tipsy at the time." Captain Cook seems to have committed the unpardonable sin in not beginning the stated work of preaching the gospel a long generation before the missionaries arrived, and the only sound reason for this is found in Dibble's History, in his statement that the islanders steadily degenerated until the missions were organized. Writers of good repute, A. Fornander, chief of them, are severe with Captain Cook on account of his alleged greed, not paying enough for the red feathers woven into fanciful forms. Perhaps that is a common fault in the transactions of civilized men with barbarians. William Penn is the only man with a great reputation for dealing fairly with American Red Men, and he was not impoverished by it. Cook gave nails for hogs, and that is mentioned in phrases that are malicious. Iron was to the islanders the precious metal, and they were not cheated. A long drawn out effort has been made to impress the world that Cook thought himself almost a god, and was a monster. The natives gave to the wonderful people who came to them in ships, liberally of their plenty, and received in return presents that pleased them, articles of utility. Beads came along at a later day. The natives believed Cook one of the heroes of the imagination that they called gods. He sought to propitiate them and paid for fruit and meat in iron and showy trifles. His policy of progress was to introduce domestic animals. Note the temper of Mr. Abraham Fornander, a man who has meant honesty of statement, but whose information was perverted: "And how did Captain Cook requite this boundless hospitality, that never once made default during his long stay of seventeen days in Kealakeakua, these magnificent presents of immense value, this delicate and spontaneous attention to every want, this friendship of the chiefs and priests, this friendliness of the common people? By imposing on their good nature to the utmost limit of its ability to respond to the greedy and constant calls of their new friends; by shooting at one of the king's officers for endeavoring to enforce a law of the land, an edict of his sovereign that happened to be unpalatable to the new comers, and caused them some temporary inconvenience, after a week's profusion and unbridled license; by a liberal exhibition of his force and the meanest display of his bounty; by giving the king a linen shirt and a cutlass in return for feather cloaks and helmets, which, irrespective of their value as insignia of the highest nobility in the land, were worth, singly at least from five to ten thousand dollars, at present price of the feathers, not counting the cost of manufacturing; by a reckless disregard of the proprieties of ordinary intercourse, even between civilized and savage man, and a wanton insult to what he reasonably may have supposed to have been the religious sentiments of his hosts." This is up to the mark of a criminal lawyer retained to prove by native testimony that Captain James Cook was not murdered, but executed for cause. The great crime of Cook is up to this point that of playing that he was one of the Polynesian gods. Fornander says: "When the sailors carried off, not only the railing of the temple, but also the idols of the gods within it, even the large-hearted patience of Kaoo gave up, and he meekly requested that the central idol at least, might be restored. Captain King failed to perceive that the concession of the priests was that of a devotee to his saint. The priests would not sell their religious emblems and belongings for "thirty pieces of silver," or any remuneration, but they were willing to offer up the entire Heiau, and themselves on the top of it, as a holocaust to Lono, if he had requested it. So long as Cook was regarded as a god in their eyes they could not refuse him. And though they exhibited no resentment at the request, the want of delicacy and consideration on the part of Captain Cook is none the less glaring. After his death, and when the illusion of godship had subsided, his spoliation of the very Heiau in which he had been deified was not one of the least of the grievances which native annalists laid up against him." Contrast this flagrancy in advocacy of the cause of the barbarous natives with the last words Cook wrote in his journal. We quote from "A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean," by Captain James Cook, F.R.S., (Vol. II., pages 251-252): "As it was of the last importance to procure a supply of provisions at these islands; and experience having taught me that I could have no chance to succeed in this, if a free trade with the natives were to be allowed; that is, if it were left to every man's discretion to trade for what he pleased, and in what manner he pleased; for this substantial reason, I now published an order prohibiting all persons from trading, except such as should be appointed by me and Captain Clarke; and even these were enjoined to trade only for provisions and refreshments. Women were also forbidden to be admitted into the ships, except under certain restrictions. But the evil I intended to prevent, by this regulation, I soon found had already got amongst them. "I stood in again the next morning till within three or four miles of the land, where we were met with a number of canoes laden with provisions. We brought to, and continued trading with the people in them till four in the afternoon, when, having got a pretty good supply, we made sail and stretched off to the northward. "I had never met with a behavior so free from reserve and suspicion in my intercourse with any tribe of savages as we experienced in the people of this island. It was very common for them to send up into the ship the several articles they brought for barter; afterward, they would come in themselves and make their bargains on the quarter-deck. "We spent the night as usual, standing off and on. It happened that four men and ten women who had come on board the preceding day still remained with us. As I did not like the company of the latter, I stood in shore toward noon, principally with a view to get them out of the ship; and, some canoes coming off, I took that opportunity of sending away our guests. "In the evening Mr. Bligh returned and reported that he had found a bay in which was good anchorage, and fresh water in a situation tolerably easy to be come at. Into this bay I resolved to carry the ships, there to refit and supply ourselves with every refreshment that the place could afford. As night approached the greater part of our visitors retired to the shore, but numbers of them requested our permission to sleep on board. Curiosity was not the only motive, at least with some, for the next morning several things were missing, which determined me not to entertain so many another night. "At eleven o'clock in the forenoon we anchored in the bay, which is called by the natives Karakaooa, (Kealakeakua), in thirteen fathoms water, over a sandy bottom, and about a quarter of a mile from the northeast shore. In this situation the south point of the bay bore south by west, and the north point west half north. We moored with the stream-anchor and cable, to the northward, unbent the sails and struck yards and topmasts. The ships continued to be much crowded with natives, and were surrounded by a multitude of canoes. I had nowhere, in the course of my voyages, seen so numerous a body of people assembled in one place. For, besides those who had come off to us in canoes, all the shore of the bay was covered with spectators, and many hundreds were swimming around the ships like shoals of fish. We could not but be struck with the singularity of this scene, and perhaps there were few on board who lamented our having failed in our endeavors to find a northern passage homeward last summer. To this disappointment we owed our having it in our power to revisit the Sandwich Islands, and to enrich our voyage with a discovery which, though the last, seemed in many respects to be the most important that had hitherto been made by Europeans, throughout the extent of the Pacific Ocean." This is the end of Cook's writing. His murder followed immediately. He fell by the hands of people for whom his good will was shown in his last words. The concluding pages of the journal answer all the scandals his enemies have so busily circulated. There is a gleam of humor that shows like a thread of gold in the midst of the somber tragedies of the Sandwich Islands, and we must not omit to extract it from "The Voyage of Discovery Around the World" by Captain George Vancouver, when he spent some time in Hawaii, and gives two bright pictures--one of a theatrical performance, and the other the happy settlement of the disordered domestic relations of a monarch. _A Gifted Native Actress and Some Royal Dramatists._ "There was a performance by a single young woman of the name of Puckoo, whose person and manners were both very agreeable. Her dress, notwithstanding the heat of the weather, consisted of an immense quantity of cloth, which was wreaths of black, red and yellow feathers; but, excepting these, she wore no dress a manner as to give a pretty effect to the variegated pattern of the cloth; and was otherways disposed with great taste. Her head and neck were decorated with wreaths of black, red and yellow feathers; but, excepting these, she wore no dress from the waist upwards. Her ankles, and nearly half way up her legs, were decorated with several folds of cloth, widening upwards, so that the upper parts extended from the leg at least four inches all round; this was encompassed by a piece of net work, wrought very close, from the meshes of which were hung the small teeth of dogs, giving this part of her dress the appearance of an ornamented funnel. On her wrists she wore bracelets made of the tusks of the largest hogs. These were highly polished and fixed close together in a ring, the concave sides of the tusks being outwards; and their ends reduced to a uniform length, curving naturally away from the center, were by no means destitute of ornamental effect. Thus equipped, her appearance on the stage, before she uttered a single word, excited considerable applause. "These amusements had hitherto been confined to such limited performances; but this afternoon was to be dedicated to one of a more splendid nature, in which some ladies of consequence, attendants on the court of Tamaahmaah, were to perform the principal parts. Great pains had been taken, and they had gone through many private rehearsals, in order that the exhibition this evening might be worthy of the public attention; on the conclusion of which, I purposed by a display of fireworks, to make a return for the entertainment they had afforded us. "About four o'clock we were informed it was time to attend the royal dames; their theatre, or rather place of exhibition, was about a mile to the southward of our tents, in a small square, surrounded by houses, and sheltered by trees, a situation as well chosen for the performance, as for the accommodations of the spectators; who, on a moderate computation, could not be estimated at less than four thousand, of all ranks and descriptions of persons. "The dress of the actresses was something like that worn by Puckoo, though made of superior materials, and disposed with more taste and elegance. A very considerable quantity of their finest cloth was prepared for the occasion; of this their lower garment was formed, which extended from their waist half down their legs, and was so plaited as to appear very much like a hoop petticoat. This seemed the most difficult part of their dress to adjust, for Tamaahmaah, who was considered to be a profound critic, was frequently appealed to by the women, and his directions were implicitly followed in many little alterations. Instead of the ornaments of cloth and net-work, decorated with dogs' teeth, these ladies had each a green wreath made of a kind of bind weed, twisted together in different parts like a rope, which was wound round from the ankle, nearly to the lower part of the petticoat. On their wrists they wore no bracelets nor other ornaments, but across their necks and shoulders were green sashes, very nicely made, with the broad leaves of the tee, a plant that produces a very luscious sweet root, the size of a yam. This part of their dress was put on the last by each of the actresses; and the party being now fully attired, the king and queen, who had been present the whole time of their dressing, were obliged to withdraw, greatly to the mortification of the latter, who would gladly have taken her part as a performer, in which she was reputed to excel very highly. But the royal pair were compelled to retire, even from the exhibition, as they are prohibited by law from attending such amusements, excepting on the festival of the new year. Indeed, the performance of this day was contrary to the established rules of the island, but being intended as a compliment to us, the innovation was permitted. "As their majesties withdrew, the ladies of rank and the principal chiefs began to make their appearance. The reception of the former by the multitude was marked by a degree of respect that I had not before seen amongst any inhabitants of the countries in the Pacific Ocean. The audience assembled at this time were standing in rows, from fifteen to twenty feet deep, so close as to touch each other; but these ladies no sooner approached in their rear, in any accidental direction, than a passage was instantly made for them and their attendants to pass through in the most commodious manner to their respective stations, where they seated themselves on the ground, which was covered with mats, in the most advantageous situation for seeing and hearing the performers. Most of these ladies were of a corpulent form, which, assisted by their stately gait, the dignity with which they moved, and the number of their pages, who followed with fans to court the refreshing breeze, or with fly-flaps to disperse the offending insects, announced their consequence as the wives, daughters, sisters, or other near relations of the principal chiefs, who, however, experienced no such marks of respect or attention themselves; being obliged to make their way through the spectators in the best manner they were able. "The time devoted to the decoration of the actresses extended beyond the limits of the quiet patience of the audience, who exclaimed two or three times, from all quarters, "Hoorah, hoorah, poaliealee," signifying that it would be dark and black night before the performance would begin. But the audience here, like similar ones in other countries, attending with a pre-disposition to be pleased, was in good humor, and was easily appeased, by the address of our faithful and devoted friend Trywhookee, who was the conductor of the ceremonies, and sole manager on this occasion. He came forward and apologized by a speech that produced a general laugh, and, causing the music to begin, we heard no further murmurs. "The band consisted of five men, all standing up, each with a highly polished wooden spear in the left, and a small piece of the same material, equally well finished, in the right hand; with this they beat on the spear, as an accompaniment to their own voices in songs, that varied both as to time and measure, especially the latter; yet their voices, and the sounds produced from the rude instruments, which differed according to the place on which the tapering spear was struck, appeared to accord very well. Having engaged us a short time in this vocal performance, the court ladies made their appearance, and were received with shouts of the greatest applause. The musicians retired a few paces, and the actresses took their station before them. "The heroine of the piece, which consisted of four or five acts, had once shared the affections and embraces of Tamaahmaah, but was now married to an inferior chief, whose occupation in the household was that of the charge of the king's apparel. This lady was distinguished by a green wreath round the crown of the head; next to her was the captive daughter of Titeeree; the third a younger sister to the queen, the wife of Crymamahoo, who, being of the most exalted rank, stood in the middle. On each side of these were two of inferior quality, making in all seven actresses. They drew themselves up in a line fronting that side of the square that was occupied by ladies of quality and the chiefs. These were completely detached from the populace, not by any partition, but, as it were, by the respectful consent of the lower orders of the assembly; not one of which trespassed or produced the least inaccommodation. "This representation, like that before attempted to be described, was a compound of speaking and singing; the subject of which was enforced by gestures and actions. The piece was in honor of a captive princess, whose name was Crycowculleneaow; and on her name being pronounced, every one present, men as well as women, who wore any ornaments above their waists, were obliged to take them off, though the captive lady was at least sixty miles distant. This mark of respect was unobserved by the actresses whilst engaged in the performance; but the instant any one sat down, or at the close of the act, they were also obliged to comply with this mysterious ceremony. "The variety of attitudes into which these women threw themselves, with the rapidity of their action, resembled no amusement in any other part of the world within my knowledge, by a comparison with which I might be enabled to convey some idea of the stage effect thus produced, particularly in the three first parts, in which there appeared much correspondence and harmony between the tone of their voices and the display of their limbs. One or two of the performers being not quite so perfect as the rest, afforded us an opportunity of exercising our judgment by comparison; and it must be confessed, that the ladies who most excelled, exhibited a degree of graceful action, for the attainment of which it is difficult to account. "In each of these first parts the songs, attitudes and actions appeared to me of greater variety than I had before noticed amongst the people of the great South Sea nation on any former occasion. The whole, though I am unequal to its description, was supported with a wonderful degree of spirit and vivacity; so much indeed that some of their exertions were made with such a degree of agitating violence as seemed to carry the performers beyond what their strength was able to sustain; and had the performance finished with the third act, we should have retired from their theatre with a much higher idea of the moral tendency of their drama, than was conveyed by the offensive, libidinous scene, exhibited by the ladies in the concluding part. The language of the song, no doubt, corresponded with the obscenity of their actions; which were carried to a degree of extravagance that were calculated to produce nothing but disgust, even to the most licentious." From "A Voyage of Discovery," by Captain George Vancouver: _The Reconciliation by Strategy of a King With One of His Queens._ "Tahowmotoo was amongst the most constant of our guests; but his daughter, the disgraced queen, seldom visited our side of the bay. I was not, however, ignorant of her anxious desire for a reconciliation with Tamaahmaah; nor was the same wish to be misunderstood in the conduct and behavior of the king, in whose good opinion and confidence I had now acquired such a predominancy that I became acquainted with his most secret inclinations and apprehensions. "His unshaken attachment and unaltered affection for Tahowmannoo was confessed with a sort of internal self conviction of her innocence. He acknowledged with great candor that his own conduct had not been exactly such as warranted his having insisted upon a separation from his queen; that although it could not authorize, it in some measure pleaded in excuse for her infidelity; and for his own, he alleged, that his high rank and supreme authority was a sort of license for such indulgences. "An accommodation which I considered to be mutually wished by both parties was urged in the strongest terms by the queen's relations. To effect this desirable purpose, my interference was frequently solicited by them; and as it concurred with my own inclination, I resolved on embracing the first favorable opportunity to use my best endeavors for bringing a reconciliation about. For although, on our former visit, Tahowmannoo had been regarded with the most favorable impressions, yet, whether from her distresses, or because she had really improved in her personal accomplishments, I will not take upon me to determine, but certain it is that one or both of these circumstances united had so far prepossessed us all in her favor, and no one more so than myself, that it had long been the general wish to see her exalted again to her former dignities. This desire was probably not a little heightened by the regard we entertained for the happiness and repose of our noble and generous friend Tamaahmaah, who was likely to be materially affected not only in his domestic comforts, but in his political situation, by receiving again and reinstating his consort in her former rank and consequence. "I was convinced beyond all doubt that there were two or three of the most considerable chiefs of the island whose ambitious views were inimical to the interests and authority of Tamaahmaah; and it was much to be apprehended that if the earnest solicitations of the queen's father (whose condition and importance was next in consequence to that of the king) should continue to be rejected, that there could be little doubt of his adding great strength and influence to the discontented and turbulent chiefs, which would operate highly to the prejudice, if not totally to the destruction, of Tamaahmaah's regal power; especially as the adverse party seemed to form a constant opposition, consisting of a minority by no means to be despised by the executive power, and which appeared to be a principal constituent part of the Owhyean politics. "For these substantial reasons, whenever he was disposed to listen to such discourse, I did not cease to urge the importance and necessity of his adopting measures so highly essential to his happiness as a man, and to his power, interest and authority as the supreme chief of the island. All this he candidly acknowledged, but his pride threw impediments in the way of a reconciliation, which were hard to be removed. He would not himself become the immediate agent; and although he considered it important that the negotiation should be conducted by some one of the principal chiefs in his fullest confidence with disdain, was equally hard to reconcile to his feelings. I stood nearly in the same situation with his favorite friends; but being thoroughly convinced of the sincerity of his wishes, I spared him the mortification of soliciting the offices he had rejected, by again proffering my services. To this he instantly consented, and observed that no proposal could have met his mind so completely; since, by effecting a reconciliation through my friendship, no umbrage could be taken at his having declined the several offers of his countrymen by any of the individuals; whereas, had this object been accomplished by any one of the chiefs, it would probably have occasioned jealousy and discontent in the minds of the others. "All, however, was not yet complete; the apprehension that some concession might be suggested, or expected, on his part, preponderated against every other consideration; and he would on no account consent, that it should appear that he had been privy to the business, or that it had been by his desire that a negotiation had been undertaken for this happy purpose, but that the whole should have the appearance of being purely the result of accident. "To this end it was determined that I should invite the queen, with several of her relations and friends, on board the Discovery, for the purpose of presenting them with some trivial matters, as tokens of my friendship and regard; and that, whilst thus employed, our conversation should be directed to ascertain whether an accommodation was still an object to be desired. That on this appearing to be the general wish, Tamaahmaah would instantly repair on board in a hasty manner, as if he had something extraordinary to communicate; that I should appear to rejoice at this accidental meeting, and by instantly uniting their hands, bring the reconciliation to pass without the least discussion or explanation on either side. But from his extreme solicitude lest he should in any degree be suspected of being concerned in this previous arrangement, a difficulty arose how to make him acquainted with the result of the proposed conversation on board, which could not be permitted by a verbal message; at length, after some thought, he took up two pieces of paper, and of his own accord made certain marks with a pencil on each of them, and then delivered them to me. The difference of these marks he could well recollect; the one was to indicate that the result of my inquiries was agreeable to his wishes, and the other that it was contrary. In the event of my making use of the former, he proposed that it should not be sent on shore secretly, but in an open and declared manner, and by way of a joke, as a present to his Owhyhean majesty. The natural gaiety of disposition which generally prevails among these islanders, would render this supposed disappointment of the king a subject for mirth, would in some degree prepare the company for his visit, and completely do away with every idea of its being the effect of a preconcerted measure. "This plan was accordingly carried into execution on the following Monday. Whilst the queen and her party, totally ignorant of the contrivance, were receiving the compliments I had intended them, their good humor and pleasantry were infinitely heightened by the jest I proposed to pass upon the king, in sending him a piece of paper only, carefully wrapped up in some cloth of their own manufacture, accompanied by a message; importing, that as I was then in the act of distributing favors to my Owhyhean friends, I had not been unmindful of his majesty. "Tamaahmaah no sooner received the summons, than he hastened on board, and, with his usual vivacity, exclaimed before he made his appearance that he was come to thank me for the present I had sent him, and for my goodness in not having forgotten him on this occasion. This was heard by everyone in the cabin before he entered; and all seemed to enjoy the joke except the poor queen, who appeared to be much agitated at the idea of being again in his presence. The instant that he saw her his countenance expressed great surprise, he became immediately silent, and attempted to retire; but, having posted myself for the especial purpose of preventing his departure, I caught his hand and, joining it with the queen's, their reconciliation was instantly completed. This was fully demonstrated, not only by the tears that involuntarily stole down the cheeks of both as they embraced each other and mutually expressed the satisfaction they experienced; but by the behavior of every individual present, whose feelings on the occasion were not to be repressed; whilst their sensibility testified the happiness which this apparently fortuitous event had produced. "A short pause, produced by an event so unexpected, was succeeded by the sort of good humor that such a happy circumstance would naturally inspire; the conversation soon became general, cheerful and lively, in which the artifice imagined to have been imposed upon the king bore no small share. A little refreshment from a few glasses of wine concluded the scene of this successful meeting. "After the queen had acknowledged in the most grateful terms the weighty obligations which she felt for my services on this occasion, I was surprised by her saying, as we were all preparing to go on shore, that she had still a very great favor to request; which was, that I should obtain from Tamaahmaah a solemn promise that on her return to his habitation he would not beat her. The great cordiality with which the reconciliation had taken place, and the happiness that each of them had continued to express in consequence of it, led me at first to consider this entreaty of the queen as a jest only; but in this I was mistaken, for, notwithstanding that Tamaahmaah readily complied with my solicitation, and assured me nothing of the kind should take place, yet Tahowmannoo would not be satisfied without my accompanying them home to the royal residence, where I had the pleasure of seeing her restored to all her former honors and privileges, highly to the satisfaction of all the king's friends, but to the utter mortification of those who by their scandalous reports and misrepresentations had been the cause of the unfortunate separtion. "The domestic affairs of Tamaahmaah having thus taken so happy a turn, his mind was more at liberty for political considerations; and the cession of Owhyhee to his Britannic Majesty now became an object of his serious concern." Captain Cook makes a strong plea in his journal that he was the very original discoverer of the Sandwich Islands. Referring to the wonderful extent of the surface of the earth in which the land is occupied by the Polynesial race, he exclaims: "How shall we account for this nation's having spread itself, in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other, in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean! We find it, from New Zealand in the South, as far as the Sandwich Islands, to the North! And, in another direction, from Easter Islands to the Hebrides! That is, over an extent of sixty degrees of latitude, or twelve hundred leagues, North and South! And eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen hundred and sixty leagues, East and West! How much farther, in either direction, its colonies reach, is not known; but what we know already, in consequence of this and our former voyage, warrants our pronouncing it to be, though perhaps not the most numerous, certainly, by far, the most extensive, nation upon earth. "Had the Sandwich Islands been discovered at an early period by the Spaniards, there is little doubt that they would have taken advantage of so excellent a situation, and have made use of Atooi, or some other of the islands, as a refreshing place to the ships, that sail annually from Acapulco for Manilla. They lie almost midway between the first place and Guam, one of the Ladrones, which is at present their only port in traversing this vast ocean; and it would not have been a week's sail out of their common route to have touched at them; which could have been done without running the least hazard of losing the passage, as they are sufficiently within the verge of the easterly trade wind. An acquaintance with the Sandwich Islands would have been equally favorable to our Buccaneers, who used sometimes to pass from the coast of America to the Ladrones, with a stock of food and water scarcely sufficient to preserve life. Here they might always have found plenty, and have been within a month's sure sail of the very part of California which the Manilla ship is obliged to make, or else have returned to the coast of America, thoroughly refitted, after an absence of two months. How happy would Lord Anson have been, and what hardships he would have avoided, if he had known that there was a group of islands half way between America and Tinian, where all his wants could have been effectually supplied; and in describing which the elegant historian of that voyage would have presented his reader with a more agreeable picture than I have been able to draw in this chapter." And yet there seems to be reason for believing that there was a Spanish ship cast away on one of the Hawaiian group, and that their descendants are distinctly marked men yet: There was also a white man and woman saved from the sea at some unknown period, of course since Noah, and they multiplied and replenished, and the islanders picked up somewhere a knack for doing things in construction of boats and the weaving of mats that hint at a crude civilization surviving in a mass of barbarianism. Captain George Dixon names the islands discovered by Captain Cook on his last voyage: "Owhyhee (Hawaii), the principal, is the first to the southward and eastward, the rest run in a direction nearly northwest. The names of the principals are Mowee (Maui), Morotoy (Molokai), Ranai (Lanai), Whahoo (Oahu), Attooi (Kauai), and Oneehow (Niihau)." This account Dixon gives of two curious and rather valuable words: "The moment a chief concludes a bargain, he repeats the word Coocoo thrice, with quickness, and is immediately answered by all the people in his canoe with the word Whoah, pronounced in a tone of exclamation, but with greater or less energy, in proportion as the bargain he has made is approved." The great and celebrated Kamehameha, who consolidated the government of the islands, did it by an act of treachery and murder, thus told in Alexander's history: "The Assassination of Keoua.--Toward the end of the year 1791 two of Kamehameha's chief counsellors, Kamanawa and Keaweaheulu, were sent on an embassy to Keoua at Kahuku in Kau. Keoua's chief warrior urged him to put them to death, which he indignantly refused to do. "By smooth speeches and fair promises they persuaded him to go to Kawaihae, and have an interview with Kamehameha, in order to put an end to the war, which had lasted nine years. Accordingly he set out with his most intimate friends and twenty-four rowers in his own double canoe, accompanied by Keaweaheulu in another canoe, and followed by friends and retainers in other canoes. "As they approached the landing at Kawaihae, Keeaumoku surrounded Keoua's canoe with a number of armed men. As Kamakau relates: 'Seeing Kamehameha on the beach, Keoua called out to him, "Here I am," to which he replied, "Rise up and come here, that we may know each other."' "As Keoua was in the act of leaping ashore, Keeaumoku killed him with a spear. All the men in Keoua's canoe and in the canoes of his immediate company were slaughtered but one. But when the second division approached, Kamehameha gave orders to stop the massacre. The bodies of the slain were then laid upon the altar of Puukohola as an offering to the blood-thirsty divinity Kukailimoku. That of Keoua had been previously baked in an oven at the foot of the hill as a last indignity. This treacherous murder made Kamehameha master of the whole island of Hawaii, and was the first step toward the consolidation of the group under one government." This is one of those gentle proceedings of an amiable race, whose massacre of Captain Cook has been so elaborately vindicated by alleged exponents of civilization. There is found the keynote of the grevious native government in an incident of the date of 1841 by which "the foreign relations of the government became involved with the schemes of a private firm. The firm of Ladd & Co. had taken the lead in developing the agricultural resources of the islands by their sugar plantation at Koloa and in other ways, and had gained the entire confidence of the king and chiefs. On the 24th of November, 1841, a contract was secretly drawn up at Lahaina by Mr. Brinsmade, a member of the firm, and Mr. Richards, and duly signed by the king and premier, which had serious after-consequences. It granted to Ladd & Co. the privilege of "leasing any now unoccupied and unimproved localities" in the islands for one hundred years, at a low rental, each millsite to include fifteen acres, and the adjoining land for cultivation in each locality not to exceed two hundred acres, with privileges of wood, pasture, etc. These sites were to be selected within one year, which term was afterwards extended to four years from date." Of course there are many safeguards, particularly in this case, but the points of the possession of land conceded, the time for the people to recover their rights never comes. One of the difficulties in the clearing up of the foggy chapters of the history of the Hawaiian islands is that within the lifetime of men who were young at the close of the last century, the Hawaiian tongue became a written language, and made the traditions of savages highly colored stories, in various degrees according to ignorance, prejudice and sympathy, accepted as historical. The marvels accomplished by the missionaries influenced them to deal gently with those whose conversion was a recognized triumph of Christendom, and there was an effort to condemn Captain Cook, who had affected to nod as a God, as a warning to blasphemers. Still, the truth of history is precious as the foundations of faith to men of all races and traditions, and the Englishman who surpassed the French, Spaniards and Portuguese in discoveries of islands in the vast spaces of the Pacific Ocean, should have justice at the hands of Americans who have organized states and built cities by that sea, and possess the islands that have been named its paradise because endowed surpassingly with the ample treasures of volcanic soil and tropical climate. There the trade winds bestow the freshness of the calm and mighty waters, and there is added to the bounty of boundless wealth the charms of luxuriant beauty. All Americans should find it timely to be just to Captain Cook, and claim him as one of the pioneers of our conquering civilization. CHAPTER XXII The Start for the Land of Corn Stalks. Spain Clings to the Ghost of Her Colonies--The Scene of War Interest Shifts from Manila--The Typhoon Season--General Merritt on the Way to Paris--German Target Practice by Permission of Dewey--Poultney Bigelow with Canoe, Typewriter and Kodak--Hongkong as a Bigger and Brighter Gibraltar. When Spain gave up the ghosts of her American colonies, and the war situation was unfolded to signify that the fate of the Philippines was referred to a conference, and Aguinaldo announced the removal of his seat of government to Molones, one hour and a half from Manila, the scene of greatest interest was certainly not in the city and immediate surroundings. Then it was plain the American army must remain for some time, and would have only guard duty to perform. The Spaniards had succumbed and were submissive, having laid down their arms and surrendered all places and phases of authority. The insurgents' removal of their headquarters declared that they had abandoned all claim to sharing in the occupation of the conquered city, and their opposition to the United States, if continued in theory, was not to be that in a practical way. Between the American, Spanish and Philippine forces there was no probability of disputed facts or forms that could be productive of contention of a serious nature. There was but one question left in this quarter of the world that concerned the people of the United States, and that whether they would hold their grip, snatched by Dewey with his fleet, and confirmed by his government in sending an army, making our country possessors of the physical force to sustain our policy, whatever it might be, on the land as well as on the sea. Whether we should stay or go was not even to be argued in Manila, except in general and fruitless conversation. Then came the intelligence that General Merritt had been called to Paris and General Greene to Washington, and there was a deepened impression that the war was over. It was true that the army was in an attitude and having experiences that were such as travelers appreciate as enjoyable, and that no other body of soldiers had surroundings so curious and fascinating. The most agreeable time of the year was coming on, and the sanitary conditions of the city, under the American administration, would surely improve constantly, and so would! the fare of the men, for the machinery in all departments was working smoothly. The boys were feeling pretty well, because they found their half dollars dollars--the Mexican fifty-cent piece, bigger and with more silver in it than the American standard dollar, was a bird. A dollar goes further if it is gold in Manila than in an American city, and if our soldiers are not paid in actual gold they get its equivalent, and the only money question unsettled is whether the Mexican silver dollar is worth in American money fifty cents or less. One of the sources of anxieties and disappointment and depression of the American soldiers in Manila has been the irregularity and infrequency with which they get letters. If one got a letter or newspaper from home of a date not more than six weeks old he had reason to be congratulated. The transports trusted with the mails were slow, and communications through the old lines between Hongkong and San Francisco, Yokohama and Vancouver, were not reliably organized. There were painful cases of masses of mail on matter precious beyond all valuation waiting at Hongkong for a boat, and an issue whether the shorter road home was not by way of Europe. This is all in course of rapid reformation. There will be no more mystery as to routes or failures to connect. The soldiers, some of whom are ten thousand miles from home, should have shiploads of letters and papers. They need reading matter almost as much as they do tobacco, and the charming enthusiasm of the ladies who entertained the soldier boys when they were going away with feasting and flattery, praise and glorification, should take up the good work of sending them letters, papers, magazines and books. There is no reason why soldiers should be more subject to homesickness than sailors, except that they are not so well or ill accustomed to absence. The fact that the soldiers are fond of their homes and long for them can have ways of expression other than going home. A few days after the news of peace reached Manila, the transports were inspected for closing up the contracts with them under which they were detained, and soon they began to move. When the China was ordered to San Francisco, I improved the opportunity to return to the great republic. There was no chance to explore the many islands of the group of which Manila is the Spanish Capital. General Merritt changed the course of this fine ship and added to the variety of the voyage by taking her to Hongkong to sail thence by way of the China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, to Paris. Our route to San Francisco, by way of Hongkong, Nagasaki, Sunanaski, Kobe and the Yokohama light, was 6,905 knots, about seven thousand seven hundred statute miles, and gave us glimpses of the Asia shore, the west coast of Formosa and the great ports of Hongkong and Nagasaki. The first thing on the Sea of China, in the month of September, is whether we shall find ourselves in the wild embrace of a typhoon. It was the season for those terrible tempests and when we left Manila the information that one was about due was not spared us. We heard later on that the transport ahead of us four days, the Zealandia, was twenty-eight hours in a cyclone and much damaged--wrung and hammered and shocked until she had to put into Nagasaki for extensive repairs. The rainfall was so heavy during the storm that one could not see a hundred yards from the ship, and she was wrung in so furious a style in a giddy waltz, that the Captain was for a time in grave doubt whether she would not founder. The rule is when one is in the grasp of the oriental whirl to run through it, judging from the way of the wind, the shortest way out. There is a comparatively quiet spot in the center, and if the beset navigator can find the correct line of flight, no matter which way as relates to the line of his journey, he does well to take it. Often in this sea, as in this case, there were uncertainties as to directions. The rain narrowed observation like a dense fog, and there was danger of running upon some of the islands and snags of rocks. The battered vessel pulled through a cripple, with her boats shattered, her deck cracked across by a roller, and her crew were happy to find a quiet place to be put in order. "To be or not to be" an American instead of a Spanish or Asiatic city was the parting thought as the China left Manila Bay, and the dark rocks of Corrigedor faded behind us, and the rugged rocks that confront the stormy sea loomed on our right, and the violet peaks of volcanic mountains bounded our eastern horizon. The last view we had of the historic bay, a big German warship was close to the sentinel rock, that the Spaniards thought they had fortified, until Dewey came and saw and conquered, swifter than Caesar, and the Germans, venturing some target practice, by permission of Dewey, who relaxes no vigilance of authority. Hongkong is 628 miles from Manila, and the waters so often stirred in monstrous wrath, welcomed us with a spread of dazzling silk. The clumsy junks that appeared to have come down from the days of Confucius, were languid on the gentle ripples. The outstanding Asian islands, small and grim, are singularly desolate, barren as if splintered by fire, gaunt and forbidding. Hongkong is an island that prospers under the paws of the British lion, and it is a city displayed on a mountain side, that by day is not much more imposing than the town of Gibraltar, which it resembles, but at night the lights glitter in a sweeping circle, the steep ascent of the streets revealed by many lamps, and here and there the illumination climbs to the tops of the mountains that are revealed with magical efforts of color and form. The harbor is entered by an ample, but crooked channel, and is land-locked, fenced with gigantic bumps that sketch the horizon, and with their heads and shoulders are familiar with the sky. Here General Merritt, with his personal staff, left us, and between those bound from this port east and west, we circumnavigated the earth. Mr. Poultney Bigelow, of Harper's Weekly, who dropped in by the way just to make a few calls at Manila, and has a commission to explore the rivers and lagoons of China with his canoe, left us, in that surprising craft, plying his paddle in the fashion of the Esquimaux, pulling right and left, hand over hand, balancing to a nicety on the waves and going ashore dry and unruffled, with his fieldglass and portfolio, his haversack and typewriter machine that he folds in a small box as if it was a pocket comb, and his kodak, with which he is an expert. He has not only ransacked with his canoe the rivers of America, but has descended the Danube and the Volga. He puts out in his canoe and crosses arms of the sea, as a pastime, makes a tent of his boat if it rains, fighting the desperadoes of all climes with the superstition, for which he is indebted to their imagination for his safety in running phenomenal hazards, that he is a magician. Marco Polo was not so great a traveler or so rare an adventurer as Bigelow, and, having left Florida under a thunder cloud of the scowl of an angry army for untimely criticisms, he has invaded the celestial empire in his quaint canoe, and he can beat the Chinese boatmen on their own rivers, and sleep like a sea bird on the swells of green water, floating like a feather, and safe in his slumbers as a solon goose with his head under his wing. However, he has not a winged boat, a bird afloat sailing round the purple peaks remote, as Buchanan Reed put it in his "Drifting" picture of the Vesuvian bay, for Bigelow uses a paddle. There has been a good deal of curiosity as well as indignation about his papers on the handling of our Cuban expedition before it sailed, and it is possible he was guilty of the common fault of firing into the wrong people. He was in Washington in June, and he and I meeting on the Bridge of Spain over the Pesang in Manila in August, we had, between us, put a girdle about the earth. Some say such experiences are good to show how small the earth is, but I am more than ever persuaded that it is big enough to find mankind in occupation and subsistence until time shall be no more. In the dock at Hongkong was Admiral Dewey's flagship Olympia, and while she had the grass scratched from her bottom, the gallant crew were having a holiday with the zest that rewards those who for four months were steadily on shipboard with arduous cares and labors. H.B.M.S. Powerful, of 12,000 tons displacement, with four huge flues and two immense military masts, presided at Hongkong under orders to visit Manila. The mingling of the English and Chinese in Hongkong is a lively object lesson, showing the extent of the British capacity to utilize Asiatic labor, and get the profit of European capital and discipline, an accumulation that requires an established sense of safety--a justified confidence in permanency. The contrast between the city of Hongkong and that of Manila is one that Americans should study now, to be instructed in the respective colonial systems of England and Spain. Hongkong is clean and solid, with business blocks of the best style of construction, the pavements excellent in material and keeping, shops full of goods, all the appliances of modern times--a city up to date. There are English enough to manage and Chinese enough to toil. There are two British regiments, one of them from India, the rank and file recruited from the fighting tribes of northern mountaineers. There are dark, tall men, with turbans, embodiment of mystery, and Parsees who have a strange spirituality of their own, and in material matters maintain a lofty code of honor, while their pastime is that of striving while they march to push their heads into the clouds. There are no horses in Hongkong, the coolies carrying chairs on bamboo poles, or trotting with two-wheelers, an untiring substitute for quadrupeds, and locomotion on the streets or in the boats is swift and sure. I had an address to find in the city, on a tip at Manila of the presence, of a literary treasure, and my chairmen carried me, in a few minutes, to a tall house on a tall terrace, and the works of a martyr to liberty in the Philippines were located. The penalty for the possession of these books in Manila was that of the author executed by shooting in the back in the presence of a crowd of spectators. The cost of the carriers was thirty cents in silver--fifteen cents in United States money--and the men were as keen-eyed as they were sure-footed, and the strength of their tawny limbs called for admiration. They were not burdened with clothes, and the play of the muscles of their legs was like a mechanism of steel, oiled, precise, easy and ample in force. The China took on a few hundred tons of coal, which was delivered aboard from heavy boats by the basketful, the men forming a line, and so expert were they at each delivery, the baskets were passed, each containing about half a bushel--perhaps there were sixty baskets to the ton--at the rate of thirty-five baskets in a minute. Make due allowances and one gang would deliver twenty tons of coal an hour. The China was anchored three-quarters of a mile from the landing, and a boat ride was ten cents, or fifteen if you were a tipster. The boats are, as a rule, managed by a man and his wife; and, as it is their own, they keep the children at home. The average families on the boats--and I made several counts--were nine, the seven children varying from one to twelve years of age. The vitality of the Chinese is not exhausted, or even impaired. CHAPTER XXIII Kodak Snapped at Japan. Glimpses of China and Japan on the Way Home from the Philippines--Hongkong a Greater Gibraltar--Coaling the China--Gangs of Women Coaling the China--How the Japanese Make Gardens of the Mountains--Transition from the Tropics to the Northern Seas--A Breeze from Siberia--A Thousand Miles Nothing on the Pacific--Talk of Swimming Ashore. Formosa was so far away eastward--a crinkled line drawn faintly with a fine blue pencil, showing as an artistic scrawl on the canvass of the low clouds--we could hardly claim when the sketch of the distant land faded from view, that we had seen Japan. When Hongkong, of sparkling memory, was lost to sight, the guardian walls that secluded her harbor, closing their gates as we turned away, and the headlands of the celestial empire grew dim, a rosy sunset promised that the next day should be pleasant, our thoughts turned with the prow of the China to Japan. We were bound for Nagasaki, to get a full supply of coal to drive us across the Pacific, having but twelve hundred tons aboard, and half of that wanted for ballast. It was at the mouth of the harbor of Nagasaki that there was a settlement of Dutch Christians for some hundreds of years. An indiscreet letter captured on the way to Holland by a Portuguese adventurer and maliciously sent to Japan, caused the tragic destruction of the Christian colony. The enmity of Christian nations anxious to add to their properties in the islands in remote seas was so strong that any one preferred that rather than his neighbors might aggrandize the heathen should prevail. The first as well as the last rocks of Japan to rise from and sink into the prodigous waters, through which we pursued our homeward way, bathing our eyes in the delicious glowing floods of eastern air, were scraggy with sharp pinnacles, and sheer precipices, grim survivals of the chaos that it was, before there was light. I have had but glimpses of the extreme east of Asia, yet the conceit will abide with me that this is in geology as in history the older world, as we classify our continents, that a thousand centuries look upon us from the terrible towers, lonesome save for the flutter of white wings, that witness the rising of the constellations from the greater ocean of the globe. But there are green hills as we approach Nagasaki, and on a hillside to the left are the white walls of a Christian church with a square tower, stained with traditions of triumphs and suffering and martyrdom long ago. Nagasaki is like Hongkong in its land-locked harbor, in clinging to a mountain side, in the circle of illumination at night and the unceasing paddling of boats from ship to ship and between the ships and landings. One is not long in discovering that here are a people more alert, ingenious, self-confident and progressive than the Chinese. As we approached the harbor there came to head us off, an official steam launch, with men in uniform, who hailed and commanded us to stop. Two officers with an intense expression of authority came aboard, and we had to give a full and particular account of ourselves. Why were we there? Coaling. Where were we from? Manila and Hongkong. Where were we going? San Francisco. Had we any sickness on board? No. We must produce the ship doctor, the list of passengers, and manifest of cargo. We had no cargo. There were a dozen passengers. It was difficult to find fault with us. No one was ill. We wanted coal. What was the matter? We had no trouble at Hongkong. We could buy all the coal we wanted there, but preferred this station. We had proposed to have our warships cleaned up at Nagasaki, but there were objections raised. So the job went to the docks at Hongkong, and good gold with it. Why was this? Oh yes; Japan wanted, in the war between the United States and Spain, to be not merely formally, but actually neutral! The fact is that the Japanese Empire is not pleased with us. They had, in imperial circles, a passion for Honolulu, and intimated their grief. Now they are annoyed because that little indemnity for refusing the right to land Japanse labor was paid by the Hawaiian Government before the absorption into the United States. As the Hawaiian diplomatic correspondence about this was conducted with more asperity than tact, if peace were the purpose, it was a good sore place for the Japanese statesmen to rub, and they resent in the newspapers the facile and cheap pacification resulting from the influence of the United States. In addition the Japanese inhabitants, though they have a larger meal than they can speedily digest in Formosa, are not touched with unqualified pleasurable feeling because we have the Philippines in our grasp. If Japan is to be the great power of the Pacific, it is inconvenient to her for us to hold the Hawaiian, the Aleutian and the Philippine groups of islands. The Philippines have more natural resources than all the islands of Japan, and our Aleutian Islands that are waiting for development would probably be found, if thoroughly investigated, one of our great and good bargains. The average American finds himself bothered to have to treat the Japanese seriously, but we must, for they take themselves so, and are rushing the work on new ships of war so that they will come out equal with ourselves in sea power. They have ready for war one humdred thousand men. If we did not hold any part of the Pacific Coast, this might be a matter of indifference, but we have three Pacific States, and there is no purpose to cede them to the Japanese. It would not be statesmanship to give up the archipelagoes we possess, even if we consider them as lands to hold for the hereafter. It is not deniable that the Japanese have good reason to stand off for strict examination the ships of other nations that call at their ports. The British and Chinese have had an experience of the bubonic plague at Hongkong, and the Japanese are using all the power of arms and the artifice of science they possess to keep aloof from the disastrous disease, which is most contagious. The China had called at Hongkong, and hence the sharp attentions at a coaling station where there are about seventy-five thousand inhabitants of the Japanese quarters, which are an exhibit of Old Japan, and most interesting. Nagasaki has, indeed, the true Japanese flavor. If there had been a sick man on our ship we should have been quarantined. Further on we were halted in the night off the city of Kobe, to the sound of the firing of a cannon, for we had dropped there a passenger, Mr. Tilden, the Hongkong agent of the Pacific Mail line, and if our ship had been infected with plague he might have passed it on to Japan! I had gone to bed, and was called up to confront the representative of the Imperial Government of the Japanese, and make clear to his eyes that I had not returned on account of the plague. Authorities of Japan treat people who are quarantined in a way that removes the stress of disagreeableness. All are taken ashore and to a hospital. There is furnished a robe of the country, clean and tidy in all respects. The common clothing is removed and fumigated. It is necessary for each quarantined person to submit to this and also to a bath, which is a real luxury, and after it comes a cup of tea and a light lunch. There was an actual case of plague on an American ship at this city of Kobe not long ago, at least, it was so reported with pretty strong corroborative evidence. The symptom in the case on the ship was that of a fever, probably pneumonia. The man was landed and examined. The plague fever resembles pneumonia at an early stage. The Japanese physicians found signs of plague and the end came soon. The sick man, taken ashore in the afternoon, at nine o'clock was dead, transferred at once to the crematory, in two hours reduced to ashes, and the officers of the ship informed that if they wanted to carry the "remains" to America they would be sealed in a jar and certified. The ship's officers did not want ashes, and the Japs hold the jar. They are so "advanced" that cremation is becoming a fad with them. It would not be surprising to find that the impending danger of the Japanese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to be exactly the right thing for them. They have reached a point where it is worth while to examine the claim of new things with much care before adopting them. We have very high authority to examine all things for goodness sake, before committing ourselves to hold them fast. We had to take aboard eighteen hundred tons of coal at Nagasaki. A fleet of arks with thirty tons of Japanese coal approached and gathered around the ship, which has sixteen places to throw coal into the bunkers. So the coal business was carried on by from twelve to fifteen gangs, each of about ten men and twenty women! The latter were sturdy creatures, modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts. There were not far from thirty bamboo baskets to the gang. One man stood at the porthole, and each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling. There were three men of a gang next the ship, the third one standing in the barge, served with baskets by two strings of women. At the end of the string furthest from the ship the coal was shoveled into the baskets by four men, and there were two who lifted and whirled them to the women. The numbers and order of the laborers varied a little at times from this relation, yet very little, but frequently a lump of coal was passed without using a basket. The work of coaling was carried on all night, and about thirty-six hours of labor put in for a day. There was a great deal of talking among the laborers during the few moments of taking places, and some of it in tones of high excitement, but once the human machine started there was silence, and then the scratching of the shovels in the coal, and the crash of the coal thrown far into the ship were heard. It is, from the American contemplation, shocking for women to do such work, but they did their share with unflinching assiduity, and without visible distress. When the night work was going on they were evidently fatigued, and at each change that allowed a brief spell of waiting, they were stretched out on the planks of the boats, the greater number still, but some of the younger ones talking and laughing. There did not seem to be much flirtation, nothing like as much as when both sexes of Europeans are engaged in the same wheat or barley field harvesting. There were, it is needful to remark, neither lights nor shadows to invite the blanishments of courting. The coal handling women were from fifteen to fifty years of age, and all so busy the inevitable babies must have been left at home. I have never seen many American or European babies "good" as weary mothers use the word, as the commonest Japanese kids. They do not know how to cry, and a girl of ten years will relieve a mother of personal care by carrying a baby, tied up in a scarf, just its head sticking out (I wish they could be induced to use more soap and water on the coppery heads, from which pairs of intent eyes stare out with sharp inquiry, as wild animals on guard). The girl baby bearer, having tied the child so that it appears to be a bag, slings it over her shoulder, and it interferes but slightly with the movements of the nurse; does not discernibly embarrass her movements. The men colliers, it must be admitted, are a shade reckless in the scarcity of their drapery when they are handling baskets in the presence of ladies. They do usually wear shirts with short tails behind, and very economical breechcloths, but their shirts are sleeveless, and the buttons are missing on collar and bosom. The only clothing beneath the knees consists of straw sandals. The precipitation of perspiration takes care of itself. There are no pocket handkerchiefs. Nagasaki has good hotels, a pleasant, airy European quarter, and shops stored with the goods of the country, including magnificent vases and other pottery that should meet the appreciation of housekeepers. There is no city in Japan more typically Japanese, few in which the line is so finely and firmly drawn between the old and the new, and that to the advantage of both. It is hardly possible for those who do not visit Japan to realize what a bitter struggle the people have had with their native land, or how brilliant the victory they have won. The passage of the China through the inner sea and far along the coast gave opportunity to see, as birds might, a great deal of the country. The inner sea is a wonderfully attractive sheet of water, twice as long as Long Island Sound, and studded with islands, a panorama of the picturesque mountains everywhere, deep nooks, glittering shoals, fishing villages by the sea, boats rigged like Americans, flocks of white sails by day, and lights at night, that suggest strings of street lamps. The waters teem with life. Evidently the sea very largely affords industry and sustenance to the people, for there is no botlom or prairie land, as we call the level or slightly rolling fields in America. There was not a spot from first to last visible in Japan, as seen from the water, or in an excursion on the land, where there is room to turn around a horse and plow. The ground is necessarily turned up with spades and mellowed with hoes and cakes, all, of course, by human hands. This is easy compared with the labor in constructing terraces. The mountains have been conquered to a considerable extent in this way, and it is sensational to see how thousands of steep places have been cut and walled into gigantic stairways, covering slopes that could hardly answer for goat pasture, until the shelves with soil placed on them for cultivation have been wrought, and the terraces are like wonderful ladders bearing against the skies. So rugged is the ground, however, that many mountains are unconquerable, and there are few traces of the terraces, though here and there, viewed from a distance, the evidences that land is cultivated as stairways leaning against otherwise inaccessible declivities. I have never seen elsewhere anything that spoke so unequivocably of the endless toil of men, women and children to find footings upon which to sow the grain and fruit that sustain life. It is not to be questioned that the report, one-twelfth, only of the surface of Japan is under tillage, is accurate. The country is more mountainous than the Alleghenies, and some of it barren as the wildest of the Rockies on the borders of the bad lands, and it is volcanic, remarkably so, even more subject to earthquakes than the Philippines. The whole of Japan occupies about as much space as the two Dakotas or the Philippines, and the population is forty-two millions. With work as careful and extensive as that of the agricultural mountaineers of Japan, the Dakotas would support one hundred million persons. But they would have to present the washing away of the soil and the waste through improvident ignorance or careless profligacy of any fertilizer, or of any trickle of water needed for irrigation. One of the features of the terraces is that the rains are saved by the walls that sustain the soil, and the gutters that guide the water conserve it, because paved with pebbles and carried down by easy stages, irrigating one shelf after another of rice or vegetables, whatever is grown, until the whole slope not irreclaimable is made to blossom and the mountain torrents saved in their descent, not tearing away the made ground, out of which the means of living grows, but percolating through scores of narrow beds, gardens suspended like extended ribbons of verdure on volcanic steeps, refreshing the crops to be at last ripened by the sunshine. This is a lesson for the American farmer--to be studied more closely than imitated--to grow grass, especially clover, to stop devastation by creeks, with shrubbery gifted with long roots to save the banks of considerable streams, and, where there is stone, use it to save the land now going by every freshwater rivulet and rivers to the seas, to the irreparable loss of mankind. It is the duty of man who inherits the earth that it does not escape from him, that his inheritance is not swept away by freshets. We are growing rapidly, in America, in the understanding of this subject, beginning to comprehend the necessity of giving the land that bears crops the equivalent of that which is taken from it, that the vital capital of future generations may not be dissipated and the people grow ever poor and at last perish. A ride in a jinrikisha, a two-wheeler, with a buggy top and poles for the biped horse to trot between, from Nagasaki to a fishing village over the mountains, five miles away, passing at the start through the Japanese quarter, long streets of shops, populous and busy, many diligent in light manufacturing work, and all scant in clothing--the journey continuing in sharp climbs alongside steep places and beside deep ravines, the slopes elaborately terraced, and again skirting the swift curves of a rapid brook from the mountains, that presently gathered and spread over pretty beds of gravel, providing abundant fresh water bathing, in which a school of boys, leaving a small guard for a light supply of clothing ashore--the ride ending in a village of fishermen that, by the count of the inhabitants, should be a town--permitted close observation of the Japanese in a city and a village, on their sky-scraping gardens and in the road, going to and coming from market, as well as in places of roadside entertainment; and at last a seaside resort, in whose shade a party of globetrotters were lunching, some of them, I hear, trying to eat raw fish. There could hardly have been contrived a more instructive exhibit of Japan and the Japanese. The road was obstructed in several places by cows bearing bales of goods from the city to the country, and produce from the hanging gardens to the streets, an occasional horse mustered in, and also a few oxen. The beast of burden most frequently overtaken or encountered was the cow, and a majority of the laborers were women. There were even in teams of twos and fours, carrying heavy luggage, men and women, old, middle-aged and young, barefooted or shod with straw, not overloaded, as a rule, and some walking as if they had performed their tasks and were going home. On the road it was patent there was extraordinary freedom from care as to clothing, and no feeling of prejudice or dismay if portions of it esteemed absolutely essential in North America and Europe had been left behind or was awaiting return to the possessor. This applies to both sexes. The day was warm, even hot, and the sun shone fiercely on the turnpike--for that is what we would call it--making walking, with or without loads, a heating exercise. Even the bearing of baskets, and the majority of the women carried them, was justification under the customs of the country for baring the throat and chest to give ample scope for breathing, and there is no restriction in the maintenance of the drooping lines of demarkation, according to the most liberal fashionable allowances, in dispensing with all the misty suggestions of laces to the utmost extent artists could ask, for the study of figures. Beauty had the advantage of the fine curves of full inhalations of the air that circulated along the dusty paths between the sea and the mountains. It is a puzzle that the artists of Japan have not better improved the unparalleled privilege of field and wall sketching, that they enjoy to a degree not equalled within the permission of the conventional construction of that which is becoming in the absence of the daylight habilaments of any great and polite people. The art schools of Japan, out of doors, on the highway, even, cannot fail to produce atmospheric influences of which the world will have visions hereafter, and the Latin quarter of Paris will lose its reputation that attracts and adjusts nature to inspiration. When we had succeeded, at Kobe, in convincing the authorities that none of the passengers on the China had picked up the plague at Hongkong, we put out into the big sea, and shaped our course for the fairer land so far away, not exactly a straight line, for the convexity of the earth that includes the water, for the ocean--particularly the Pacific--is rounded so that the straightest line over its surface is a curved line, if astronomically mentioned. We struck out on the great Northern circle, purposing to run as high as the forty-eighth parallel, almost to our Alutian Islands, and pursued our course in full view, the bald cliffs of Japan changing their color with the going down of the sun. When morning came the purple bulk of the bestirring little empire still reminded us of the lights and shadows of Asia and the missionary labors of Sir Edwin Arnold, which have a flavor of the classics and a remembrance of the Scriptures. "Yonder," said the Captain, "is the famous mountain of Japan, Fugeyana. It is not very clearly seen, for it is distant. Oh, you are looking too low down and see only the foot-hills--that is it, away up in the sky!" It was there, a peak so lofty that it is solitary. We were to have seen it better later, but as the hours passed there was a dimness that the light of declining day did not disperse, and the mountain stayed with us in a ghostly way, and held its own in high communion. As we were leaving Asian waters there came a demand for typhoons that the Captain satisfied completely, saying he was not hunting for them, but the worst one he ever caught was five hundred miles east of Yokohama. The tourists were rather troubled. The young man who had been in the wild waltz of the Zealandia did not care for a typhoon. We had been blessed with weather so balmy and healing, winds so soft and waves so low, that the ship had settled down steady as a river steamboat. We pushed on, but the best the China could do was fourteen knots and a half an hour, near 350 knots a day, with a consumption of 135 tons of coal in twenty-four hours. So much for not having been cleaned up so as to give the go of the fine lines. The China had been in the habit of making sixty miles a day more than of this trip, burning less than 100 tons of coal. As we climbed in the ladder of the parallels of latitude, we began to notice a crispness in the air, and it was lovely to the lungs. It was a pleasure, and a stimulant surpassing wine, to breathe the north temperate ozone again, and after a while to catch a frosty savor on the breeze. We had forgotten, for a few days, that we were not in a reeking state of perspiration. Ah! we were more than a thousand miles north of Manila, and that is as far as the coast of Maine to Cuba. The wind followed us, and at last gained a speed greater than our own; then it shifted and came down from the northwest. It was the wind that swept from Siberia, and Kamschatka's grim peninsula pointed us out. The smoke from our funnels blew black and dense away southeast, and did not change more than a point or two for a week. The Pacific began to look like the North Atlantic. There came a "chill out of a cloud" as in the poetic case of Annabel Lee. There had been, during our tropical experience, some outcries for the favor of a few chills, but now they were like the typhoons. When it was found that they might be had we did not want them. After all, warm weather was not so bad, and the chills that were in the wind that whistled from Siberia were rather objectionable. It was singular to call for one, two, three blankets, and then hunt up overcoats. White trousers disappeared two or three days after the white coats. Straw hats were called for by the wind. One white cap on an officer's head responded alone to the swarm of white caps on the water. The roll of the waves impeded our great northern circle. We could have made it, but we should have had to roll with the waves. We got no higher than 45 degrees. We had our two Thursdays, and thought of the fact that on the mystical meridian 180, where three days get mixed up in one! The Pacific Ocean, from pole to pole, so free on the line where the dispute as to the day it is, goes on forever, that only one small island is subject to the witchery of mathematics, and the proof in commonplace transactions unmixed with the skies that whatever may be the matter with the sun--the earth do move, is round, do roll over, and does not spill off the sea in doing so. At last came shrill head winds, and as we added fifteen miles an hour to this speed, the harp strings in the rigging were touched with weird music, and we filled our lungs consciously and conscientiously with American air, experiencing one of the old sensations, better than anything new. It was figured out that we were within a thousand miles of the continent, and were getting home. When one has been to the Philippines, what's a thousand miles or two! "Hello, Captain Seabury! It is only about a thousand miles right ahead to the land. You know what land it is, don't you? Well, now, you may break the shaft or burst the boilers, fling the ship to the sperm whales, like the one that was the only living thing we saw since Japan entered into the American clouds of the West. We are only a thousand miles away from the solid, sugary sweet, redolent, ripe American soil, and if there is anything the matter we do not mind, why we will just take a boat and pull ashore." But we would have had a hard time if the Captain had taken us up in the flush of the hilarity that laughed at a thousand miles, when the breeze brought us the faint first hints that we were almost home, after a voyage of five thousand leagues. The wind shifted to the south and increased until it roared, and the waves were as iron tipped with blue and silver, hurling their salty crests over our towering ship; and we were in the grasp-- On the Pacific of the terrific Storm King of the Equinox. Mr. Longfellow mentioned the storm wind gigantic, that shook the Atlantic at the time of the equinox--the one that urges the boiling surges bearing seaweed from the rocks; and all those disappointed because they had not bounded on the billows of the briny enough for healthy exercises, were satisfied in the reception by the tremendous Pacific when nigh the shore, which was once the western boundary, but is so no more, of that blessed America, of which her sons grow fonder the farther they roam. God's country, as the boys and girls call it reverently, when they are sailing the seas, was veiled from us in a fog that blanketed the deep. For five thousand miles our ship had been in a remorseless solitude. No voice had come to us; no spark of intelligence from the universe touched us, save from the stars and the sun, but at the hour of the night, and the point of the compass, our navigator had foretold, we should hear the deep-throated horn on Reyes point--it came to us out of the gloomy abyss--and science had not failed. Across the trackless waste we had been guided aright, and there was music the angels might have envied in the hoarse notes of the fog-horn that welcomed the wanderers home. CHAPTER XXIV Our Picture Gallery. Annotations and Illustrations--Portraits of Heroes of the War in the Army and Navy, and of the Highest Public Responsibilities--Admirals and Generals, the President and Cabinet--Photographs of Scenes and Incidents--The Characteristics of the Filipinos--Their Homes, Dresses and Peculiarities in Sun Pictures--The Picturesque People of Our New Possessions. The portrait of President McKinley is from the photograph that seems to his friends upon the whole the most striking of his likenesses. That of the Secretary of State, the Honorable John Hay, is certainly from the latest and best of his photos. The Postmaster General, the Honorable Charles Emory Smith, and Secretary Bliss, are presented in excellent form and the whole Cabinet with unusual faithfulness. Our naval and military heroes in the war that has introduced the American nation to the nations of the earth as a belligerent of the first class, cannot become too familiar to the people, for they are of the stuff that brightens with friction, and the more it is worn gives higher proof that it is of both the precious metals in war, gold and steel. Admiral Dewey, as we have set forth in this volume, is not thus far fairly dealt with in the pictures that have been taken. He is a surprise to those who meet him face to face--so far has photography failed to adequately present him, but the portrait we give is the best that has been made of him. Major-General Merritt retains the keen, clear cut face, and the figure and bearing of an ideal soldier that has characterized him since, as a youth just from West Point, he entered the army and won his way by his courage and courtesy, his brilliant conduct and excellent intelligence, his dashing charges and superb leadership, to a distinguished position and the affectionate regard of the army and the people. In the Indian wars, after the bloody struggle of the States was over, he outrode the Indians on the prairies and was at once their conqueror and pacificator. He ranks in chivalry with the knights, and his work at Manila was the perfection of campaigning that produced conclusive results with a comparatively small shedding of blood. The likeness of the Archbishop of Manila was presented me by His Grace at the close of a personal interview, and represents him as he is. The chapter devoted to him is meant to do him simple justice as a man and priest. The fact that he bestowed upon me in the inscription with which he greatly increased the value of his portrait a military dignity to which I have no title is an expression only of his friendliness. He frankly stated his pleasure in meeting an American who would convey to the President of the United States the message he gave me about the American army, to which he was indebted for security and peace of mind. General Aguinaldo gave me his photograph, and the flag of the Filipinos with him in the effort to establish an independent government, republican in form. One is not always sure of that which happens in the Philippines, even when one reads about it. I am prepared to believe that there is much truth in the dispatch saying a majority of the Congress of the insurgents at Molores favor annexation to the United States. The whole truth probably is that they would gladly have this country their Protector at large, supreme in the affairs international, they to legislate in respect to local affairs. They need to know, however, that their Congress must become a territorial legislature, and that the higher law for them is to be the laws of Congress. The Philippine flag is oriental in cut and color, having red and blue bars--a white obtuse angle--the base to the staff, and a yellow moon with fantastic decorations occupying the field. This flag is one that Admiral Dewey salutes with respect. General Aguinaldo is giving much of his strength to the production of proclamations, and his literary labors should be encouraged. On a September morning two years ago, Dr. Jose Rizal was shot by a file of soldiers on the Manila Luneta, the favorite outing park, bordering on the bay. The scene was photographed at the moment the Doctor stood erect before the firing squad, and the signal from the officer in command awaited for the discharge of the volley killing the most intellectual man of his race. Dr. Rizal is known as the Tagalo Martytr. The Tagalos are of the dominant tribe of Malays. General Aguinaldo is of this blood, as are the great majority of the insurgents. The Doctor is more than the martyr of a tribe. He is the most talented and accomplished man his people and country has produced. A history of Luzon from his pen is a hulky volume full of facts. I was not able to procure all of his books. Anyone in Manila found in possession of one of them during Spanish rule, would have been taken to the ground selected for human butchery in the appointed place of festivity, and shot as he was, making a holiday for the rulers of the islands. He wrote two novels, "Touch Us Not" and "The Filibusters," the latter a sequel of the former. These are books using the weapons put into the hand of genius to smite oppressors in command of the force of arms. The novels are said to be interesting as novels,--rather sensational in their disregard of the personal reputation of his foes, the friars, but all along between the lines there was argument, appeals for the freedom of the Filipinos, for freedom of speech, conscience and country. There are pamphlets printed the size of an average playing card, from thirty to forty pages each, one "Don Rodriguez," and another "The Telephone." These I obtained in Hongkong from the hands of the niece--daughter of the sister of the Doctor,--and she presented me also his poem written when in the shadow of death, of which this volume gives a prose translation. The poem is the farewell of the author to his friends, his country and the world. It is given in prose because in that style the spirit of the poet, indeed the poetry itself, can be rendered with better results, than by striving to sustain the poetic form. The poem would be regarded as happy and affecting in the thought that is in it, the images in which the ideas gleam, the pathos of resignation, the ascendency of hope, if there were nothing in the attendant circumstances that marked it with the blood of historic tragedy. This poetry that it would have been high treason to own in Manila, for it would not have been safe in any drawer however secret, was treasured by the relatives of the martyr at Hongkong. The niece spoke excellent English, and there was at once surprise and gratification in the family that an American should be interested in the Doctor who sacrificed himself to the freedom of his pen, so much as to ascend the steep places of the city to seek his writings for the sake of the people for whose redemption he died. On the page showing the face of the Doctor and the scene of his execution, there are two men in black, the victim standing firm as a rock to be shot down, and the priest retiring after holding the crucifix to the lips of the dying; and the portrait of the beautiful woman to whom the poet was married a few hours before he was killed. It is said that Rizal wanted to go to Cuba, but Captain-General Weyler answered a request from him that he might live there, that he would be shot on sight if he set foot on Cuban soil. Rizal, hunted hard, attempted to escape in disguise on a Spanish troop ship carrying discharged soldiers to Spain, but was detected while on the Red Sea, returned to Manila and shot to death. I stood on the curbstone that borders the Luneta along the principal pleasure drive, between the whispering trees and the murmuring surf of the bay, just where the martyred poet and patriot waited and looked over the waters his eyes beheld, the last moment before the crash of the rifles that destroyed him, and in the distance there was streaming in the sunshine the flag of our country--the star spangled banner, and long, long may it wave, over a land of the free and home of the brave! The picture of the cathedral shows a tower that was shattered from the foundation to the cross by the earthquake of 1863. Ambitious architecture must conform to the conditions imposed by such disasters, and the great edifice is greatly changed. In our gallery we treat Admirals Sampson and Schley as the President set the example. As there was glory for all at Santiago, there was advancement for both. We present them together. The wholesome, manly face of General Lee is in the gallery. His country knows him and thinks of him well. The bombarded church of Cavite shows that shells spare nothing sacred in their flights and concussions. The Bridge of Spain is the one most crossed in passing between the old walled city and the newer town that was not walled, but was formidably intrenched where rice swamps were close to the bay. The public buildings are commodious and would be higher, but the earth is uncertain, and sky-scrapers are forbidden by common prudence. Our picture of the principal gate of the walled city is taken truly, but does not give the appearance of extreme antiquity, of the reality. The wall looks old as one that has stood in Europe a thousand years. Naturally the gallery has many works of art representative of Manila. The shipping in the harbor is an advertisement of a commerce once extensive. Each picture that shows a woman, a man, or tree; a wood-cutter, a fisherman, or a house, opens for the spectator a vista that may be interpreted by the intelligent. A veritable picture is a window that reveals a landscape. That which is most valuable in a gallery like this is the perfect truth not everywhere found, for the eyes that see a picture that is really representative, setting forth the colors, the light, and the substance of things find that which does not fade when the story is told. There is one most hideous thing in our gallery--that of the head of a Spaniard, bleeding, just severed from the body--the weapon used, a naked dagger in a clenched hand--around the ghastly symbol a deep black border. This is one of the ways of the Katapuna society--the League of Blood--have of saying what they would have us understand are their awful purposes. There are terrible stories about this Blood League--that they bleed themselves in the course of their proceedings, and each member signs his name with his own blood--that they establish brotherhood by mingling their blood and tasting it. They are the sworn enemies of the Spaniards, and particularly of the priests. I inquired of Senor Agoncillo, the Philippine commissioner to Paris, whether those bloody stories were true. He scoffed at the notion that they might be so, and laughed and shouted "No, no!" as if he was having much fun. But Agoncillo is a lawyer and a diplomat, and I had heard so much, of this horrid society I did not feel positive it was certain that its alleged blood rites were fictitious. Of one thing I am sure--that the dreadful picture is no joke, and was not meant for a burlesque, though it might possibly be expected to perform the office of a scarecrow. It cannot be doubted that there are oath-bound secret societies that are regarded by the Spaniards as fanatical, superstitious, murderous and deserving death. There is a good deal of feeble-minded credulity among the Filipinos, that is exhibited in the stories told by Aguinaldo. He has many followers who believe that he has a mighty magic, a charm, that deflects bullets and is an antidote for poison. Intelligent people believe this imbecility is one of the great elements of his power--that his leadership would be lost if the supernaturalism attached to him should go the way of all phantoms. Aguinaldo is said not to have faith in the charm, for he takes very good care of himself. We give several views of executions at Manila. As a rule, these pictures are not fine productions of art. They are taken under such conditions of light and background that they are somewhat shadowy. This sinister addition to our gallery seems to be the first time the photographs of executions have been reproduced. The photos were not furtively taken. There is no secrecy about the process, no attempts to hide it from the Spaniards. Executions in the Philippines were in the nature of dramatic entertainments. There were often many persons present, and ladies as conspicuous as at bull fights. There is no more objections offered to photographing an execution than a cock fight, which is the sport about which the Filipinos are crazily absorbed. It is the festal character to the Spaniard of the rebel shooting that permits the actualities to be reproduced, and hence these strange contributions to our gallery. Many of our pictures are self-explanatory. They were selected to show things characteristic, and hence instructive, peasants' customs--women riding buffaloes through palm groves--native houses, quaint costumes. "The insurgent outlook" reveals a native house--a structure of grasses. This is a perfect picture. The southern islanders, and the group of Moors, the dressing of the girls, work in the fields, the wealth of vegetation, the dining room of the Governor-General prepared for company, General Merritt's palatial headquarters before he had taken the public property into his care and suited it to his convenience; the Spanish dude officer, showing a young man contented in his uniform, and a pony pretty in his harness. We reproduce the war department map of the Philippine islands. It will be closely studied for each island has become a subject of American interest. The imprint of the war department is an assurance of the closest attainable accuracy. The map of the Hawaiian islands clearly gives them in their relative positions and proportions as they are scattered broadcast in the Pacific. The Philippine and Hawaiian groups as they thus appear will be found more extensive than the general fancy has painted them. The Philippine Archipelago has been held to resemble a fan, with Luzon for the handle. The shape is something fantastic. It is worth while to note that the distance between the north coast of Luzon and the Sulu Archipelago is equal to that from England to Southern Italy. There are pictures in our gallery that could only be found at the end of a journey of ten thousand miles, and they go far to show the life of the people of a country that is in such relations with ourselves the whole world is interested. There is truthtelling that should be prized in photography, and our picture gallery is one of the most remarkable that has been assembled. CHAPTER XXV Cuba and Porto Rico. Conditions In and Around Havana--Fortifications and Water Supply of the Capital City--Other Sections of the Pearl of the Antilles--Porto Rico, Our New Possession, Described--Size and Population--Natural Resources and Products--Climatic Conditions--Towns and Cities--Railroads and Other Improvements--Future Possibilities. There was the fortune of good judgment in attacking the Spaniards in Cuba at Santiago and Porto Rico, the points of Spanish possession in the West Indies farthest south and east, instead of striking at the west, landing at Pinar del Rio, the western province, and moving upon the fortifications of Havana, where the difficulties and dangers that proved so formidable at Santiago would have been quadrupled, and our losses in the field and hospital excessive. The unpreparedness of this country for war has not even up to this time been appreciated except by military experts and the most intelligent and intent students of current history. The military notes prepared in the War Department of the United States at the beginning of the war with Spain, contain the following of Santiago de Cuba: This city was founded in 1514, and the famous Hernando was its first mayor. It is the most southern place of any note on the island, being on the twentieth degree of latitude, while Havana, the most northern point of note, is 23 degrees 9 minutes 26 seconds north latitude. The surrounding country is very mountainous, and the city is built upon a steep slope; the public square, or Campo de Marte, is 140 to 160 feet above the sea, and some of the houses are located 200 feet high. The character of the soil is reported to be more volcanic than calcareous; it has suffered repeatedly from earthquakes. It is the second city in the island with regard to population, slightly exceeding that of Matanzas and Puerto Principe. So far as American commerce is concerned, it ranks only ninth among the fifteen Cuban ports of entry. It is located on the extreme northern bank of the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, a harbor of the first class and one of the smallest; hence, as is believed, the great liability of its shipping to infection. According to the chart of the Madrid hydrographic bureau, 1863, this harbor is, from its sea entrance to its extreme northern limit, 5 miles long, the city being located 4 miles from its entrance, on the northeastern side of the harbor. The entrance is for some little distance very narrow--not more than 220 yards wide--and may be considered about 2 miles long, with a width varying from one-eighth to five-eighths of a mile. For the remaining 3 miles the harbor gradually widens, until at its northern extremity it is about 2 miles wide. The city is so situated in a cove of the harbor that the opposite shore is only about one-half mile distant. At the wharves from 10 to 15 feet of water is found, and within 300 to 500 yards of the shore from 20 to 30 feet. This, therefore, is probably the anchorage ground. Three or more so-called rivers, besides other streams, empty into this harbor, and one of these, the Caney River, empties into the harbor at the northern limit of the city, so that its water flows from one island extremity through the whole harbor into the sea. The difference here, as elsewhere in Cuba, between low and high tide is about 2 feet. Population in 1877 was 40,835, and 5,100 houses. This city is one of the most noted yellow-fever districts in the island. The population in 1896 was 42,000. The following has been reported: Preparations for mounting new and heavy ordnance is now going on at the entrance of the bay (March 5, 1898). New and heavier guns are also ordered for Punta Blanca, on the right of the bay near Santiago City. Plans have been made for constructing two batteries in the city of Santiago, one about 25 yards in front of the American consulate and the other about two blocks in rear. Cayo Rolones, or Rat Island, located near the middle of the bay, is the Government depository for powder, dynamite, and other explosives. The elevation on the right of the entrance, where stands Castle Morro, is 40 yards above the sea level, while the hill on the left is 20 yards. "La Bateria Nueva de la Estrella" is mounted with four revolving cannons. The fortifications of Havana were carefully covered in the military notes, and thus enumerated: There are fifteen fortifications in and about the city of Havana, more or less armed and garrisoned, besides a work partly constructed and not armed, called Las Animas, and the old bastions along the sea wall of the harbor. These works are as follows: Nos. 1 and 2 are earthen redans on the sea coast, east of Havana. Velazo Battery, just east of, and a part of, El Morro. El Morro, a sea coast fort, with flanking barbette batteries, east of harbor entrance. The Twelve Apostles, a water battery lying at the foot of Morro, with a field of fire across the harbor's mouth. It is a part of Morro. La Cabana, a stone-bastioned work with both land and water front, in rear of El Morro, and directly opposite the city of Havana. San Diego, a stone-bastioned work with only land fronts, east of Cabana. Atares, a stone-bastioned work on hill at southwestern extremity of Havana Bay, near the old shipyard called the arsenal. San Salvador de la Punta, a stone-bastioned work west of harbor entrance, with small advanced and detached work, built on a rock near harbor mouth. La Reina, a stone work, in shape the segment of a circle, placed on the seacoast, at western limits of city, on an inlet called San Lazardo. Santa Clara, a small but powerful seacoast battery of stone and earth, placed about 1 1/2 miles west of harbor. El Principe, a stone-bastioned redoubt west of Havana. Nos. 3 A, 3 B, and 4 are earthen redans on the seacoast west of Havana. There are, in addition, several works built for defense, but now used for other purposes or abandoned. These are: The Torreon de Vigia, a martello tower placed on the inlet of San Lazaro opposite La Reina. The old fort called La Fuerza, built three hundred and fifty years ago, near the present Plaza de Armas, and now used for barracks and public offices. The work called San Nazario, situated north of El Principe, but now used in connection with the present cartridge factory, abandoned for defensive purposes. The partially constructed fort called Las Animas, southeast of Principe, lying on a low hill, partly built but useless and unarmed. The old sea wall extending from near La Punta to the Plaza de Armas, unarmed, and useless except as a parapet for musketry. The old arsenal, on the west of the inner bay, now used as repair works for ships, useless for defense. The old artillery and engineer storehouses near La Punta, probably once used as strongholds, now mere storehouses for munitions of war. There are, besides, in the vicinity of Havana, three old and now useless stone works--one at Chorrera, the mouth of the Almendarez River, about 4 miles from Havana harbor; another at Cojimar, on the coast, about 3 miles eastward of Cabana, and the third at the inlet called La Playa de Mariano, about 7 miles west of Havana. Batteries Nos. 1 and 2 were equipped with, No. 1, four Hontoria 6-inch guns; two Nordenfeldt 6-pounders; No. 2, two Krupp 12-inch guns; four Hontoria 3-inch mortars. The 12-inch Krupps were to stand off battleships attempting to force the harbor, or to bombard the Morro. The Valago battery, a part of the Morro, an out-work on the edge of the cliff, mounting four 11-inch Krupp guns separated by earth traverses. The Morro, commenced in 1589 and finished in 1597, is important for historical associations. It is a most picturesque structure, and is useful as a lighthouse and prison, and is mounted with twelve old 10-inch, eight old 8-inch, and fourteen old 4-inch guns. Cabana, finished in 1774 at a cost of $14,000,000, lies some 500 yards southeast of El Morro, on the east side of Havana Bay. Toward the city it exposes a vertical stone wall of irregular trace, with salients at intervals. Toward the Morro is a bastioned face protected by a deep ditch, sally port, and drawbridge. Eastward and southward a beautifully constructed land front incloses the work. This front is protected by ditches 40 or more feet deep, well constructed glacis, stone scarp, and counterscarp. Cabana is a magnificent example of the permanent fortifications constructed a century ago. Probably 10,000 men could be quartered in it. The entrance to Cabana is by the sally port that opens upon the bridge across the moat lying between Cabana and El Morro. Upon entering, the enormous extent of the work begins to be perceived, parapet within parapet, galleries, casemates, and terrepleins almost innumerable, all of stone and useless. There are no earth covers or traverses, and no protection against modern artillery. Cabana is the prison for offenders against the State, and the scene of innumerable executions. From an exterior or salient corner of the secretary's office of the headquarters there leads a subterranean passage 326 meters long, 2.5 meters wide, and 1.86 high, excavated in the rock. It conducts to the sea, debouching at the mouth of a sewer, 87 meters from the Morro wharf. At exactly 132 meters along the road rising from the Morro pier or wharf to the Cabana, there will be found by excavating the rock on the left of the road, at a depth of 3 meters, a grating, on opening which passage will be made into a road 107 meters long, 1.6 high, and 1.42 wide, leading to the same exit as the Cabana secret way. These passages are most secret, as all believe that the grating of the sewer, seen from the sea, is a drain. The battery of Santa Clara is the most interesting of the fortifications of Havana, and one of the most important. It lies about 100 yards from the shore of the gulf, at a point where the line of hills to the westward runs back (either naturally or artificially) into quarries, thus occupying a low salient backed by a hill. Here are three new Krupp 11-inch guns, designed to protect El Principe, the land side of Havana. It is 187 feet above sea level and completely dominates Havana, the bay, Morro, Cabana, the coast northward, Atares, and from east around to south, the approaches of the Marianao Road, Cristina, and the Western Railroad for about 3 kilometers, i.e., between Cristina and a cut at that distance from the station. Principe gives fire upon Tulipan, the Cerro, the Hill of the Jesuits, and the valley through which passes the Havana Railroad, sweeping completely with its guns the railroad as far as the cut at Cienaga, 2-1/2 to 3 miles away. It dominates also the hills southward and westward toward Puentes Grandes and the Almendarez River, and country extending toward Marianao, also the Calzada leading to the cemetery and toward Chorrera; thence the entire sea line (the railroad to Chorrera is partly sheltered by the slope leading to Principe. This is by all means the strongest position about Havana which is occupied. Lying between it and the hill of the Cerro is the hill of the Catalan Club, right under the guns of the work and about one-half mile away. The Marianao Road is more sheltered than the Havana, as it runs near the trees and hill near the Cerro. The only points which dominate the hill of the Principe lie to the south and southeast in the direction of Jesus del Monte and beyond Regla. On its southern, southeastern, and southwestern faces the hill of Principe is a steep descent to the calzada and streets below. The slope is gradual westward and around by the north. From this hill is one of the best views of Havana and the valley south. El Principe lies about one-half mile from the north coast, from which hills rise in gradual slopes toward the work. It is Havana gossip that El Principe is always held by the Spanish regiment in which the Captain-General has most confidence. The military notes pronounce El Principe undoubtedly the strongest natural position about Havana now occupied by defensive works. Its guns sweep the heights of the Almendares, extending from the north coast southward by the hills of Puentes Grandes to the valley of Cienaga, thence eastward across the Hill of the Jesuits and the long line of trees and houses leading to the Cerro. The country beyond the Cerro is partly sheltered by trees and hills, but eastward El Principe commands in places the country and the bay shore, and gives fire across Havana seaward. The most vulnerable spot in the defenses of Havana is the aqueduct of Isabella II, or the Vento. The water is from the Vento Springs, pure and inexhaustable, nine miles out of Havana. All three of the water supplies to Havana, the Zanja and the two aqueducts of Ferdinand VII and of the Vento, proceed from the Almendares and run their course near to each other, the farthest to the west being the Zanja and to the east the Vento. At Vento Springs is constructed a large stone basin, open at the bottom, through which springs bubble. From this reservoir the new aqueduct leads. It is an elliptical tunnel of brick, placed under ground, and marked by turrets of brick and stone placed along its course. From the Vento Reservoir the new aqueduct crosses the low valley south of Havana, following generally the Calzada de Vento, which becomes, near the Cerro, the Calzada de Palatino, to a point on the Western Railway marked 5 kilometers (about); hence the calzada and the aqueduct closely follow the railway for about a mile, terminating at a new reservoir. The Vento water is the best thing Havana has, and indispensable. The old sources of supply are intolerable. The main water supply is the Zanja. Throughout the most of its course this river flows through unprotected mud banks; the fluids of many houses, especially in the Cerro ward which it skirts, drain into them; men, horses, and dogs bathe in it; dead bodies have been seen floating in it, and in the rainy season the water becomes very muddy. In fine, the Zanja in its course receives all which a little brook traversing a village and having houses and back yards on its banks would receive. The water can not be pure, and to those who know the facts the idea of drinking it is repulsive. This supply had long been insufficient to the growing city, and in 1835 the well-protected and excellent aqueduct of Ferdinand VII was completed. It taps the Almendares River a few hundred yards above filters mentioned, hence carried by arches to the east El Cerro, and for some distance nearly parallel to the Calzada del Cerro, but finally intersecting this. These works are succeeded by the Famous Vento. When Havana is fought for hereafter the fight will be at the Vento Springs. This remark is not made in the military notes, but the military men know it well. When General Miles expected to attack Havana he procured all the accessible surveys and detail of information, official and through special observation and personal knowledge obtainable of the water works. Life could not be sustained many days in the city of Havana without the water of the adorable Vento. A special interest attaches to Havana, as it is to be a city under the control of the United States. The surface soil consists for the most part of a thin layer of red, yellow, or black earths. At varying depths beneath this, often not exceeding 1 or 2 feet, lie the solid rocks. These foundation rocks are, especially in the northern and more modern parts of the city toward the coast of the sea and not of the harbor, Quarternary, and especially Tertiary, formations, so permeable that liquids emptied into excavations are absorbed and disappear. In other parts of the city the rocks are not permeable, and pools are formed. In proportion as the towns of Cuba are old, the streets are narrow. In Havana this peculiarity is so positive that pedestrians cannot pass on the sidewalks, nor vehicles on the streets. Less than one-third of the population live on paved streets, and these are as well paved and kept as clean, it is believed cleaner, than is usual in the United States. The remainder live on unpaved streets, which, for the most part, are very filthy. Many of these, even in old and densely populated parts of the city, are no better than rough country roads, full of rocks, crevices, mud holes, and other irregularities, so that vehicles traverse them with difficulty at all times, and in the rainy season they are sometimes impassible for two months. Rough, muddy, or both, these streets serve admirably as permanent receptacles for much decomposing animal and vegetable matter. Finally, not less, probably more, than one-half the population of Havana live on streets which are constantly in an extremely insanitary condition, but these streets, though so numerous, are not in the beaten track of the pleasure tourist. In the old intramural city, in which live about 40,000 people, the streets vary in width, but generally they are 6.8 meters (about 22 feet) wide, of which the sidewalks occupy about 7.5 feet. In many streets the sidewalk at each side is not even 18 inches wide. In the new, extramural town, the streets are generally 10 meters (32.8 feet) wide, with 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) for the sidewalks, and 7 meters (23 feet) for the wagonway. There are few sidewalks in any except in the first four of the nine city districts. More than two-thirds of the population live in densely inhabited portions of the city, where the houses are crowded in contact with each other. The average house lot does not exceed 27 by 112 feet in size. There are 17,259 houses, of which 15,494 are one-story, 1,552 are two stories, 186 are three stories, and only 27 are four stories, with none higher. At least 12 in every 13 inhabitants live in one-story houses; and as the total civil, military, and transient population exceeds 200,000 there are more than 12 inhabitants to every house. Tenement houses may have many small rooms, but each room is occupied by a family. Generally the one-story houses have four or five rooms; but house rent, as also food and clothing, is rendered so expensive by taxation, by export as well as import duties, that it is rare for workmen, even when paid $50 to $100 a month, to enjoy the exclusive use of one of these mean little houses; reserving one or two rooms for his family, he rents the balance. This condition of affairs is readily understood when it is known that so great a necessity as flour cost in Havana $15.50 when its price in the United States was $6.50 per barrel. In the densely populated portions of the city the houses generally have no back yard, properly so called, but a flagged court, or narrow vacant space into which sleeping rooms open at the side, and in close proximity with these, at the rear of this contracted court are located the kitchen, the privy, and often a stall for animals. In the houses of the poor, that is, of the vast majority of the population, there are no storerooms, pantries, closets, or other conveniences for household supplies. These are furnished from day to day, even from meal to meal, by the corner groceries; and it is rare, in large sections of Havana, to find any one of the four corners of a square without a grocery. The walls of most of the houses in Havana are built of "mamposteria" or rubble masonry, a porous material which freely absorbs atmospheric as well as ground moisture. The mark of this can often be seen high on the walls, which varies from 2 to 7 feet in the houses generally. The roofs are excellent, usually flat, and constructed of brick tiles. The windows are, like the doors, unusually high, nearly reaching the ceiling, which, in the best houses only, is also unusually high. The windows are never glazed, but protected by strong iron bars on the outside and on the inside by solid wooden shutters, which are secured, like the doors, with heavy bars or bolts, and in inclement weather greatly interfere with proper ventilation. Fireplaces with chimneys are extremely rare, so that ventilation depends entirely on the doors and windows, which, it should be stated, are by no means unusually large in most of the sleeping rooms of the poor. Generally in Havana, less generally in other cities, the entrances and courtyards are flagged with stone, while the rooms are usually floored with tile or marble. With rare exceptions the lowest floor is in contact with the earth. Ventilation between the earth and floor is rarely seen in Cuba. In Havana the average height of the ground floor is from 7 to 11 inches above the pavement, but in Havana, and more frequently in other Cuban towns, one often encounters houses which are entered by stepping down from the sidewalk, and some floors are even below the level of the street. In Havana some of the floors, in Matanzas more, in Cardenas and Cienfuegos many are of the bare earth itself, or of planks raised only a few inches above the damp ground. The narrow entrance about 400 yards in width and 1,200 in length, opens into the irregular harbor, which has three chief coves or indentations, termed "ensenadas." The extreme length of the harbor from its sea entrance to the limit of the most distant ensenada is 3 miles, and its extreme breadth 1-1/2 miles; but within the entrance the average length is only about 1, and the average breadth about two-thirds of a mile. However, because of the irregularly projecting points of land which form the ensenadas, there is no locality in the harbor where a vessel can possibly anchor farther than 500 yards from the shore. Its greatest depth is about 40 feet, but the anchorage ground for vessels drawing 18 feet of water is very contracted, not exceeding one-half the size of the harbor. The rise and fall of the tide does not exceed 2 feet. The Cuban city next in celebrity to Havana is Matanzas, and it is one likely to become a favorite of Americans, as the country in the vicinity is distinguished by beauty as well as remarkable for fertility. Matanzas was first regularly settled in 1693. It is in the province of Matanzas, 54 miles west of Havana, by the most direct of the two railroads which unite these two cities, and is situated on the western inland extremity of the bay of Matanzas, a harbor of the first class. Matanzas is divided into three districts, viz, the central district of Matanzas, which, about half a mile in width across the center of population, lies between the two little rivers, San Juan to the south, and the Yumuri to the north; the Pueblo Nuevo district, south of the San Juan, and around the inland extremity of the harbor; and the district of Versalles, north of the Yumuri, nearest to the open sea, as also to the anchorage ground, and, sanitarily, the best situated district in the city. About two-thirds of the population are in the district of Matanzas, and the Pueblo Nuevo district has about double the population of Versalles. Pueblo Nuevo stands on ground originally a swamp, and is low, flat, and only 3 or 4 feet above the sea. The Matanzas district has many houses on equally low ground, on the harbor front, and on the banks of the two rivers which inclose this district; but from the front and between these rivers the ground ascends, so that its houses are from 2 to even 100 feet above the sea; however, the center of population, the public square, is only about 20 feet above sea level. Versalles is on a bluff of the harbor, and its houses are situated, for the most part, from 15 to 40 feet above the sea. The district of Matanzas has ill constructed and useless sewers in only two streets, and no houses connected therewith. So much of this district and of Versalles as is built on the hill slope is naturally well drained, but the Pueblo Nuevo district, and those parts of Matanzas built in immediate proximity to the banks of the river, are very ill drained. Since 1872 Matanzas has had an aqueduct from the Bello spring, 7 miles distant. The supply is alleged to be both abundant and excellent. But of the 4,710 houses in the city 840 stand on the hills outside the zone supplied by the waterworks, while of the remaining 3,870 houses within this zone only about 2,000 get their water from the waterworks company. Hence more than half of the houses of Matanzas (2,710) do for the most part get their supply in kegs by purchase in the streets. There are a few public fountains, as also some dangerous wells. The streets are 30 feet wide, with 24 feet wagon way. Few of them are paved, some are very poor roads, but, for the most part, these roads are in good condition. In the Matanzas district some of the streets are of solid stone, and natural foundation rock of the place, for the superficial soil is so thin that the foundation rocks often crop out. Of this very porous rock most of the houses are built. The houses have wider fronts, larger air spaces in rear, are not so crowded, and are better ventilated than the houses of Havana. As is usual in Cuba, the ground floors are generally on a level with the sidewalk, and some are even below the level of the streets. A heavy rain floods many of the streets of Matanzas, the water running back into and beneath the houses. The porous limestone of which the houses are built greatly favors absorption. The population of Matanzas and suburbs was about 50,000 at the beginning of the war. Porto Rico is not quite as large as Connecticut, but larger than the States of Delaware and Rhode Island. The climate of the island is delightful, and its soil exceedingly rich. In natural resources it is of surpassing opulence. The length of the island is about one hundred miles, and its breadth thirty-five, the general figure of it being like the head of a sperm whale. The range of mountains is from east to west, and nearly central. The prevalent winds are from the northwest, and the rainfall is much heavier on the northern shores and mountain slopes than on the southern. The height of the ridge is on the average close to 1,500 feet, one bold peak, the Anvil being 3,600 feet high. The rainy north and the droughty south, with the lift of the land from the low shores to the central slopes and rugged elevations, under the tropical sun, with the influence of the great oceans east, south and north, and the multitude of western and southern islands, give unusual and charming variety in temperature. Porto Rico is, by the American people, even more than the Spaniards, associated with Cuba. But it is less than a tenth of Cuban proportions. Porto Rico has 3,600 square miles to Cuba's 42,000, but a much greater proportion of Porto Rico than of Cuba is cultivated. Less than one-sixteenth of the area of Cuba has been improved, and while her population is but 1,600,000, according to the latest census, and is not so much now, Porto Rico, with less than a tenth of the land of Cuba, has half the number of inhabitants. Largely Porto Rico is peopled by a better class than the mass of the Cubans. Cuba is wretchedly provided with roads, one of the reasons why the Spaniards were incapable of putting down insurrections. If they had expended a fair proportion of the revenues derived from the flourishing plantations and the monopolies of Spanish favoritisms that built up Barcelona and enriched Captain-Generals, and in less degree other public servants, the rebellions would have been put down. The Spanish armies in Cuba, however, were rather managed for official speculation and peculation, were more promenaders than in military enterprise and the stern business of war. With Weyler for an opponent, Gomez, as a guerilla, could have dragged on a series of skirmishes indefinitely. The story of the alleged war in Cuba between the Spaniards and the Cubans was on both sides falsified, and the American people deceived. Porto Rico does not seem to have appealed so strongly to the cupidity of the Spaniards as Cuba did, and to have been governed with less brutality. The consequence is there has not been a serious insurrection in the smaller island for seventy years, and it falls into our possession without the impoverishment and demoralization of the devastation of war--one of the fairest gems of the ocean. It was October 18th that the American flag was raised over San Juan. The following dispatch is the official record: "San Juan, Porto Rico, Oct. 18.--Secretary of War, Washington, D.C.: Flags have been raised on public buildings and forts in this city and saluted with national salutes. The occupation of the island is now complete. "_Brooke_, Chairman." On the morning of the 18th, the 11th regular infantry with two batteries of the 5th artillery landed. The latter proceeded to the forts, while the infantry lined up on the docks. It was a holiday for San Juan and there were many people in the streets. Rear-Admiral Schley and General Gordon, accompanied by their staffs, proceeded to the palace in carriages. The 11th infantry regiment and band with Troop H, of the 6th United States cavalry then marched through the streets and formed in the square opposite the palace. At 11:40 a. m., General Brooke, Admiral Schley and General Gordon, the United States evacuation commissioners, came out of the palace with many naval officers and formed on the right side of the square. The streets behind the soldiers were thronged with townspeople, who stood waiting in dead silence. At last the city clock struck 12, and the crowds, almost breathless and with eyes fixed upon the flagpole, watched for developments. At the sound of the first gun from Fort Morro, Major Dean and Lieutenant Castle, of General Brooke's staff, hoisted the stars and stripes, while the band played "The Star Spangled Banner." All heads were bared and the crowds cheered. Fort Morro, Fort San Cristobal and the United States revenue cutter Manning, lying in the harbor, fired twenty-one guns each. Senor Munoz Rivera, who was president of the recent autonomist council of secretaries, and other officials of the late insular government were present at the proceedings. Many American flags were displayed. Acknowledgment has been made of the better condition of Porto Rico than of Cuba, but the trail of the serpent of colonial Spanish government appears. Mr. Alfred Somamon writes in the Independent: "The internal administration of the island disposes of a budget of about $3,300,000, and is a woeful example of corrupt officialism. Of this sum only about $650,000 is expended in the island, the remainder being applied to payment of interest on public debt, salaries of Spanish officials, army, navy, and other extra-insular expenditures. But the whole of the revenue is collected in the island." An article of great value by Eugene Deland, appeared in the Chatauquan of September, on the characteristics of Porto Rico, and we present an extract, showing its admirable distinction of accurate information well set forth: "The mountain slopes are covered with valuable timbers, cabinet and dye-woods, including mahogany, walnut, lignum vitae, ebony, and logwood, and various medicinal plants. Here, too, is the favorite zone of the coffee tree, which thrives best one thousand feet above sea level. The valleys and plains produce rich harvests of sugar-cane and tobacco. The amount of sugar yielded by a given area is said to be greater than in any other West Indian island. Rice, of the mountain variety and grown without flooding, nourishes almost any place and is a staple food of the laboring classes. In addition to these products cotton and maize are commonly cultivated, and yams, plantains, oranges, bananas, cocoanuts, pineapples, and almost every other tropical fruit are grown in abundance. Among indigenous plants are several noted for their beautiful blossoms. Among these are the coccoloba, which grows mainly along the coasts and is distinguished by its large, yard-long purple spikes, and a talauma, with magnificent, ororous, white flowers. "Of wild animal life Porto Rico has little. No poisonous serpents are found, but pestiferous insects, such as tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, ticks, fleas, and mosquitos, supply this deficiency in a measure. All sorts of domestic animals are raised, and the excellent pasture-lands support large herds of cattle for export and home consumption, and ponies, whose superiority is recognized throughout the West Indies. "The mineral wealth of the island is undeveloped, but traces of gold, copper, iron, lead, and coal are found. Salt is procured in considerable quantities from the lakes. "Porto Rico carries on an extensive commerce, chiefly with Spain, the United States, Cuba, Germany, Great Britain, and France. In 1895 the volume of its trade was one-half greater than that of the larger British colony--Jamaica. The United States ranks second in amount of trade with the island. During the four years from 1893-96 Spain's trade with the colony averaged $11,402,888 annually, and the United States, $5,028,544. The total value of Porto Rican exports for 1896 was $18,341,430, and of imports, $18,282,690, making a total of $36,624,120, which was an excess over any previous year. The exports consist almost entirely of agricultural products. In 1895 coffee comprised about sixty per cent, and sugar about twenty-eight per cent, of their value; leaf tobacco, molasses, and honey came next. Maize, hides, fruits, nuts, and distilled spirits are also sent out in considerable quantities. Over one-half of the coffee exported goes to Spain and Cuba, as does most of the tobacco, which is said to be used in making the finest Havana cigars; the sugar and molasses are, for the most part, sent to the United States. Among imports, manufactured articles do not greatly exceed agricultural. Rice, fish, meat and lard, flour, and manufactured tobacco are the principal ones. Customs duties furnish about two-thirds of the Porto Rican revenue, which has for several years yielded greater returns to Spain than that of Cuba. "The climate of Porto Rico is considered the healthiest in the Antilles. The heat is considerably less than at Santiago de Cuba, a degree and a half farther north. The thermometer seldom goes above 90 degrees. Pure water is readily obtained in most of the island. Yellow fever seldom occurs, and never away from the coast. The rainy season begins the first of June and ends the last of December, but the heavy downpours do not come on until about August 1st. "In density of population also this island ranks first among the West Indies, having half as many inhabitants as Cuba, more than eleven times as large. Of its 807,000 people, 326,000 are colored and many of the others of mixed blood. They differ little from other Spanish-Americans, being fond of ease, courteous, and hospitable, and, as in other Spanish countries, the common people are illiterate, public education having been grievously neglected. The natives are the agriculturists of the country, and are a majority in the interior, while the Spaniards, who control business and commerce, are found mainly in the towns and cities. "The numerous good harbors have naturally dotted the seaboard with cities and towns of greater or less commercial importance. San Juan, Ponce, Mayaguez, Aguadilla, Arecibo and Fajardo all carry on extensive trade. Intercourse between coast towns is readily had by water, but is to be facilitated by a railroad around the island, of which 137 miles have been built and 170 miles more projected. The public highways of the island are in better condition than one might expect. According to a recent report of United States Consul Stewart, of San Juan, there are about one hundred and fifty miles of good road. The best of this is the military highway connecting Ponce on the southern coast with San Juan on the northern. This is a macadamized road, so excellently built and so well kept up that a recent traveler in the island says a bicycle corps could go over it without dismounting. Whether it is solid enough to stand the transportation of artillery and heavy army trains we shall soon know. Of telegraph lines Porto Rico has four hundred and seventy miles, and two cables connect it with the outside world, one running from Ponce and the other from San Juan." Mr. Alfred Solomon, already quoted as an instructive contributor to the Independent, writes: "The population of Porto Rico, some 800,000, is essentially agricultural. A varied climate, sultry in the lowlands, refreshing and invigorating in the mountain ranges, makes possible the cultivation of almost every variety of known crop--sugar, tobacco, coffee, annatto, maze, cotton and ginger are extensively grown; but there are still thousands of acres of virgin lands awaiting the capitalist. Tropical fruits flourish in abundance, and the sugar-pine is well known in our market, where it brings a higher price than any other pine imported. Hardwood and fancy cabinet wood trees fill the forests, and await the woodman's ax. Among these are some specimens of unexampled beauty, notably a tree, the wood of which, when polished, resembles veined marble, and another, rivaling in beauty the feathers in a peacock's tail. Precious metals abound, although systematic effort has never been directed to the locating of paying veins. Rivers and rivulets are plenty, and water-power is abundant; and the regime should see the installation of power plants and electric lighting all over the island, within a short time after occupation. On the lowlands, large tracts of pasturage under guinea grass and malojilla feed thousands of sleek cattle, but, as an article of food, mutton is almost unknown. The native pony, small, wiry and untirable, has a world-wide reputation, and for long journeys is unequaled, possessing a gait, as they say in the island, like an arm-chair. "Perhaps a third of the population of the island is of African descent; but, strangely enough, the colored people are only to be found on the coast, and are the fishermen, boatmen and laborers of the seaports. The cultivation of the crops is entirely in the hands of the jibaro, or peasant, who is seldom of direct Spanish descent, while the financiering and exportation is conducted almost entirely by peninsulares, or Spanish-born colonists, who monopolize every branch of commerce to the exclusion of the colonian-born subject. "Coffee planting is largely engaged in, returning from ten to fifteen per cent. on capital. Improved transportation facilities, abolition of export dues and the consolidation of small estates would, doubtless, help toward better results. This crop is marketed in Europe--London, Havre and Barcelona--where better prices are obtainable than in New York. With the exception of a few plantations in strong hands, most of this property could be purchased at a fair valuation, and would prove to be a very profitable investment. "Cocoa grows wild on the lowlands, but has not been cultivated to any appreciable extent. Small consignments sent to Europe have been pronounced superior to the Caracas bean. The tree takes a longer period than coffee to come to maturity and bear fruit; but once in bearing the current expenses are less and the yield far greater. The same remarks apply to the cultivation of rubber, which, although a most profitable staple with an ever-increasing market, has received no attention whatever. "Corn is raised in quantities insufficient for home consumption. Of this cereal three crops can be obtained in two years; sometimes two a year. The demand is constant, and the price always remunerative. "In Porto Rico, as in most other West Indian islands, sugar is king. In the treatment of this product the lack of capital has been sadly felt. Planters possess only the most primitive machinery, and in the extraction of the juice from the cane the proportion of saccharine matter has been exceedingly small. Great outlay is necessary for the installation of a complete modern crushing and centrifugal plant." A flattering picture of our new possessions is drawn in McClure's Magazine, by Mr. George B. Waldron. "Here, then, are Cuba and Porto Rico in the Atlantic, and the Hawaiian and Philippine groups in the Pacific, whose destiny has become intertwined with our own. Their combined area is 168,000 square miles, equaling New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Their population is about 10,000,000, or perhaps one-half of that of these nine home States. The Philippines, with three-quarters of the entire population, and Porto Rico, with 800,000 people, alone approach our own Eastern States in density. Cuba, prior to the war, was about as well populated as Virginia, and the Hawaiian group is as well peopled as Kansas. What, then, can these islands do for us? "Americans use more sugar in proportion to population than any other nation of the world. The total consumption last year was not less than 2,500,000 tons. This is enough to make a pyramid that would overtop the tallest pyramid of Egyptian fame. Of this total, 2,200,000 tons came from foreign countries, the Spanish possessions and Hawaii sending about twenty-five per cent. Five years earlier, when our imports were less by half a million tons, these islands supplied double this quantity, or nearly two-thirds of the nation's entire sugar import. But that was before Cuba had been devastated by war and when she was exporting 1,100,000 tons of sugar to other countries. Restore Cuba to her former fertility, and the total sugar crop of these islands will reach 1,500,000 tons, or two-thirds our present foreign demand." There is much more in Mr. Waldron's summary of the vast addition that has been made to our resources, by the occupation and possession of the islands that have recently been gathered under our wings by the force of our arms. It is enough to know that with the tropical islands we have gained, we have in our hands the potentialities, the luxuries, the boundless resources including, as we may, and must, Alaska, of all the zones of the great globe that we inhabit in such ample measure. The following notes were compiled for the information of the army, and embody all reliable information available. The notes were intended to supplement the military map of Porto Rico. The following books and works were consulted and matter from them freely used in the preparation of the notes: Guia Geografico Militar de Espana y Provincias Ultramarinas, 1879; Espana, sus Monumentos y Artes, su Naturaleza e Historia, 1887; Compendio de Geografia Militar de Espana y Portugal, 1882; Anuario de Comercio de Espana, 1896; Anuario Militar de Espana, 1898; Reclus, Nouvelle Geographic Universelle, 1891; Advance Sheets American Consular Reports, 1898; An Account of the Present State of the Island of Porto Rico, 1834; The Statesman's Year Book, 1898. Situation.--Porto Rico is situated in the Torrid Zone, in the easternmost part of the Antilles, between latitude 17 deg. 54 min. and 18 deg. 30 min. 40 sec. N. and longitude 61 deg. 54 min. 26 sec. and 63 deg. 32 min. 32 sec. W. of Madrid. It is bounded on the north by the Atlantic, on the east and south by the sea of the Antilles, and on the west by the Mona Channel. Size.--The island of Porto Rico, the fourth in size of the Antilles, has, according to a recent report of the British consul (1897), an extent of about 3,668 square miles--35 miles broad and 95 miles long. It is of an oblong form., extending from east to west. Population.--Porto Rico is the first among the Antilles in density of population and in prosperity. The Statesman's Year Book, 1898, gives the population (1887) at 813,937, of which over 300,000 are negroes, this being one of the few countries of tropical America where the number of whites exceeds that of other races. The whites and colored, however, are all striving in the same movement of civilization, and are gradually becoming more alike in ideas and manners. Among the white population the number of males exceeds the number of females, which is the contrary of all European countries. This is partly explained by the fact that the immigrants are mostly males. On an average the births exceed the deaths by double. The eastern portion of the island is less populous than the western. Soil.--The ground is very fertile, being suitable for the cultivation of cane, coffee, rice, and other products raised in Cuba, which island Porto Rico resembles in richness and fertility. Climate.--The climate is hot and moist, the medium temperature reaching 104 degs. F. Constant rains and winds from the east cool the heavy atmosphere of the low regions. On the heights of the Central Cordillera the temperature is healthy and agreeable. Iron rusts and becomes consumed, so that nothing can be constructed of this metal. Even bronze artillery has to be covered with a strong varnish to protect it from the damp winds. Although one would suppose that all the large islands in the Tropics enjoyed the same climate, yet from the greater mortality observed in Jamaica, St. Domingo, and Cuba, as compared with Porto Rico, one is inclined to believe that this latter island is much more congenial than any of the former to the health of Europeans. The heat, the rains, and the seasons are, with very trifling variations, the same in all. But the number of mountains and running streams, which are everywhere in view in Porto Rico, and the general cultivation of the land, may powerfully contribute to purify the atmosphere and render it salubrious to man. The only difference of temperature to be observed throughout the island is due to altitude, a change which is common to every country under the influence of the Tropics. In the mountains the inhabitants enjoy the coolness of spring, while the valleys would be uninhabitable were it not for the daily breeze which blows generally from the northeast and east. For example, in Ponce the noonday sun is felt in all its rigor, while at the village of Adjuntas, 4 leagues distant in the interior of the mountains, the traveler feels invigorated by the refreshing breezes of a temperate clime. At one place the thermometers is as high as 90 deg., while in another it is sometimes under 60 deg. Although the seasons are not so distinctly marked in this climate as they are in Europe (the trees being always green), yet there is a distinction to be made between them. The division into wet and dry seasons (winter and summer) does not give a proper idea of the seasons in this island; for on the north coast it sometimes rains almost the whole year, while sometimes for twelve or fourteen months not a drop of rain falls on the south coast. However, in the mountains at the south there are daily showers. Last year, for example, in the months of November, December, and January the north winds blew with violence, accompanied by heavy showers of rain, while this year (1832) in the same months, it has scarcely blown a whole day from that point of the compass, nor has it rained for a whole month. Therefore, the climate of the north and south coasts of this island, although under the same tropical influence, are essentially different. As in all tropical countries, the year is divided into two seasons--the dry and the rainy. In general, the rainy season commences in August and ends the last of December, southerly and westerly winds prevailing during this period. The rainfall is excessive, often inundating fields and forming extensive lagoons. The exhalations from these lagoons give rise to a number of diseases, but, nevertheless, Porto Rico is one of the healthiest islands of the archipelago. In the month of May the rains commence, not with the fury of a deluge, as in the months of August and September, but heavier than any rain experienced in Europe. Peals of thunder reverberating through the mountains give a warning of their approach, and the sun breaking through the clouds promotes the prolific vegetation of the fields with its vivifying heat. The heat at this season is equal to the summer of Europe, and the nights are cool and pleasant; but the dews are heavy and pernicious to health. The following meteorological observations, carefully made by Don Jose Ma. Vertez, a Captain of the Spanish navy, will exhibit the average range of temperature: Ds of heat observed in the capital of Porto Rico, taking a medium of five years. Degrees of Heat Observed in the Capital of Porto Rico, Taking a Medium of Five Years. Hours of the Day. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May. June. July. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Seven in the morning 72 72 1/2 74 78 78 82 85 86 80 1/2 77 75 75 Noon 82 81 82 83 85 86 90 92 88 85 84 80 Five in the evening 78 74 78 80 81 84 87 90 83 82 80 79 The weather, after a fifteen or twenty days' rain, clears up and the sun, whose heat has been hitherto moderated by partial clouds and showers of rain, seems, as it were, set in a cloudless sky. The cattle in the pastures look for the shade of the trees, and a perfect calm pervades the whole face of nature from sunrise till between 10 and 11 o'clock in the morning, when the sea breeze sets in. The leaves of the trees seem as if afraid to move, and the sea, without a wave or ruffle on its vast expanse, appears like an immense mirror. Man partakes in the general languor as well as the vegetable and brute creation. The nights, although warm, are delightfully clear and serene at this season. Objects may be clearly distinguished at the distance of several hundred yards, so that one may even shoot by moonlight. The months of June and July offer very little variation in the weather or temperature. In August a suffocating heat reigns throughout the day, and at night it is useless to seek for coolness; a faint zephyr is succeeded by a calm of several hours. The atmosphere is heavy and oppressive, and the body, weakened by perspiration, becomes languid; the appetite fails, and the mosquitos, buzzing about the ears by day and night, perplex and annoy by their stings, while the fevers of the tropics attack Europeans with sudden and irresistible violence. This is the most sickly season for the European. The thermometer frequently exceeds 90 deg. The clouds exhibit a menacing appearance, portending the approach of the heavy autumnal rains, which pour down like a deluge. About the middle of September it appears as if all the vapors of the ocean had accumulated in one point of the heavens. The rain comes down like an immense quantity of water poured through a sieve; it excludes from the view every surrounding object, and in half an hour the whole surface of the earth becomes an immense sheet of water. The rivers are swollen and overflow their banks, the low lands are completely inundated, and the smallest brooks become deep and rapid torrents. In the month of October the weather becomes sensibly cooler than during the preceding months, and in November the north and northeast winds generally set in, diffusing an agreeable coolness through the surrounding atmosphere. The body becomes braced and active, and the convalescent feels its genial influence. The north wind is accompanied (with few exceptions) by heavy showers of rain on the north coast; and the sea rolls on that coast with tempestuous violence, while the south coast remains perfectly calm. When the fury of the north wind abates, it is succeeded by fine weather and a clear sky. Nothing can exceed the climate of Porto Rico at this season; one can only compare it to the month of May in the delightful Province of Andalusia, where the cold of winter and the burning heat of summer are tempered by the cool freshness of spring. This is considered to be the healthiest season of the year, when a European may visit the tropics without fear. The small islands, destitute of wood and high mountains, which have a powerful effect in attracting the clouds, suffer much from drought. It sometimes happens that in Curacao, St. Bartholomews, and other islands there are whole years without a drop of rain, and after exhausting their cisterns the inhabitants are compelled to import water from the rivers of other islands. "The land breeze" is an advantage which the large islands derive from the inequality of their surface; for as soon as the sea breeze dies away, the hot air of the valleys being rarified, ascends toward the tops of the mountains, and is there condensed by cold, which makes it specifically heavier than it was before; it then descends back to the valleys on both sides of the ridge. Hence a night wind (blowing on all sides from the land toward the shore) is felt in all the mountainous countries under the torrid zone. On the north shore the wind comes from the south, and on the south shore from the north. Storms.--The hurricanes which visit the island, and which obey the general laws of tropical cyclones, are one of the worst scourges of the country. For hours before the appearance of this terrible phenomenon the sea appears calm; the waves come from a long distance very gently until near the shore, when they suddenly rise as if impelled by a superior force, dashing against the land with extraordinary violence and fearful noise. Together with this sign, the air is noticed to be disturbed, the sun red, and the stars obscured by vapor which seems to magnify them. A strong odor is perceived in the sea, which is sulphureous in the waters of rivers, and there are sudden changes in the wind. These omens, together with the signs of uneasiness manifested by various animals, foretell the proximity of a hurricane. This is a sort of whirlwind, accompanied by rain, thunder and lightning, sometimes by earthquake shocks, and always by the most terrible and devastating circumstances that can possibly combine to ruin a country in a few hours. A clear, serene day is followed by the darkest night; the delightful view offered by woods and prairies is diverted into the deary waste of a cruel winter; the tallest and most robust cedar trees are uprooted, broken off bodily, and hurled into a heap; roofs, balconies, and windows of houses are carried through the air like dry leaves, and in all directions are seen houses and estates laid waste and thrown into confusion. The fierce roar of the water and of the trees being destroyed by the winds, the cries and moans of persons, the bellowing of cattle and neighing of horses, which are being carried from place to place by the whirlwinds, the torrents of water inundating the fields, and a deluge of fire being let loose in flashes and streaks of lightning, seem to announce the last convulsions of the universe and the death agonies of nature itself. Sometimes these hurricanes are felt only on the north coast, at others on the south coast, although generally their influence extends throughout the island. In 1825 a hurricane destroyed the towns of Patillas, Maunabo, Yabucoa, Humacao, Gurabo, and Caguas, causing much damage in other towns in the east, north, and center of the island. The island was also visited by a terrible hurricane in 1772. Earthquakes.--Earthquakes are somewhat frequent, but not violent or of great consequence. The natives foretell them by noticing clouds settle near the ground for some time in the open places among the mountains. The water of the springs emits a sulphurous odor or leaves a strange taste in the mouth; birds gather in large flocks and fly about uttering shriller cries than usual; cattle bellow and horses neigh, etc. A few hours beforehand the air becomes calm and dimmed by vapors which arise from the ground, and a few moments before there is a slight breeze, followed at intervals of two or three minutes by a deep rumbling noise, accompanied by a sudden gust of wind, which are the forerunners of the vibration, the latter following immediately. These shocks are sometimes violent and are usually repeated, but owing to the special construction of the houses, they cause no damage. Tides.--For seven hours the tide runs rapidly in a northwest direction, returning in the opposite direction with equal rapidity for five hours. Orography.--The general relief of Porto Rico is much inferior in altitude to that of the rest of the Great Antilles, and even some of the Lesser Antilles have mountain summits which rival it. A great chain of mountains divides the islands into two parts, northern and southern, which are called by the natives Banda del Norte and Banda del Sur. This chain sends out long ramifications toward the coasts, the interstices of which form beautiful and fertile valleys, composed in the high parts of white and red earths, on the spurs of black and weaker earths, and near the coasts of sand. To the northwest and following a direction almost parallel with the northern coast, the Sierra of Lares extends from Aguadilla to the town of Lares, where it divides into two branches, one going north nearly to the coast, near Arecibo harbor, and the other extending to the spurs of the Sierra Grande de Banos; this latter starting from Point Guaniquilla, crosses the island in its entire length, its last third forming the Sierra of Cayey. The whole island may be said to form a continuous network of sierras, hills, and heights. Of these the Sierra del Loquillo is distinguished for its great altitude (the highest peak being Yunque, in the northeast corner of the island and visible from the sea, a distance of 120 kilometers), as is also Laivonito Mountain, near the south coast. The following are the four highest mountains, with their heights above the sea level: Yunque, in Luquillo, 1,290 yards; Guilarte, in Adjuntas, 1,180 yards; La Somanta, in Aybonito, 1,077 yards; Las Teras de Cerro Gordo, in San German, 860 yards. All are easily ascended on foot or horseback, and there are coffee plantations near all of them. Approximate Height of Towns Above the Sea Level.--Aybonito, with its acclimatization station, 970 yards; Adjuntas, an almost exclusively Spanish town, 810 yards; Cayey, with a very agreeable climate, 750 yards; Lares, with a very agreeable climate, 510 yards; Utuado, with a very agreeable climate, 480 yards; Muricao, an exclusively Spanish town, 480 yards. To ascend to all these towns there are very good wagon roads. There are no fortifications of any kind in them, but they are surrounded on all sides by mountains. Hydrography.--Few countries of the extent of Porto Rico are watered by so many streams. Seventeen rivers, taking their rise in the mountains, cross the valleys of the north coast and empty into the sea. Some of these are navigable 2 or 3 leagues from their mouths for schooners and small coasting vessels. Those of Manati, Loisa, Trabajo, and Arecibo are very deep and broad, and it is difficult to imagine how such large bodies of water can be collected in so short a course. Owing to the heavy surf which continually breaks on the north coast, these rivers have bars across their embouchures which do not allow large vessels to enter. The rivers of Bayamo and Rio Piedras flow into the harbor of the capital, and are also navigable for boats. At high water small brigs may enter the river of Arecibo with perfect safety and discharge their cargoes, notwithstanding the bar which crosses its mouth. The rivers of the north coast have a decided advantage over those of the south coast, where the climate is drier and the rains less frequent. Nevertheless, the south, west, and east coasts are well supplied with water; and, although in some seasons it does not rain for ten, and sometimes twelve months on the south coast, the rivers are never entirely dried up. From the Cabeza de San Juan, which is the northeast extremity of the island, to the cape of Mala Pascua, which lies to the southeast, 9 rivers fall into the sea. From Cape Mala Pascua to Point Aguila, which forms the southwest angle of the island, 16 rivers discharge their waters on the south coast. On the west coast 3 rivers, 5 rivulets, and several fresh-water lakes communicate with the sea. In the small extent of 330 leagues of area there are 46 rivers, besides a countless number of rivulets and branches of navigable water. The rivers of the north coast are stocked with delicious fish, some of them large enough to weigh two quintals. From the river of Arecibo to that of Manati, a distance of 5 leagues, a fresh-water lagoon, perfectly navigable for small vessels through the whole of its extent, runs parallel to the sea at about a mile from the shore. In the fertile valley of Anasco, on the western coast, there is a canal formed by nature, deep and navigable. None of the rivers are of real military importance; for, though considering the shortness of their course, they attain quite a volume, still it is not sufficient for good-sized vessels. The rivers emptying on the north coast are Loisa, Aguas Prietas, Arecibo, Bayamon, Camuy, Cedros, Grande, Guajaraca de la Tuna, Lesayas, Loquillo, Manati, Rio Piedras, Sabana, San Martin, Sibuco, Toa, and Vega. Those emptying on the east coast are Candelero, Dagua, Fajardo, Guayanes, Majogua, and Maonabo. On the south coast: Aquamanil, Caballon, Cana, Coamo, Descalabrado, Guanica, Guayama, Guayanilla, Jacagua, Manglar, Penuela, Ponce and Vigia. On the west coast: Aguada, Boqueron, Cajas, Culebrina, Chico, Guanajibo, Mayaguez, and Rincon. The limits of the Loisa river are: On the east, the sierra of Luquillo (situated near the northeast corner of the island); on the south, the sierra of Cayey, and on the west, ramifications of the latter. It rises in the northern slopes of the sierra of Cayey, and, running in a northwest direction for the first half of its course and turning to northeast in the second half, it arrives at Loisa, a port on the northern coast, where it discharges its waters into the Atlantic. During the first part of its course it is known by the name of Cayagua. The Sabana river has, to the east and south, the western and southern limits of the preceding river, and on the west the Sierra Grande, or De Barros, which is situated in the center of the general divide, or watershed. It rises in the sierra of Cayey, and, with the name of Pinones river, it flows northwest, passing through Aibonito, Toa Alta, Toa Baja, and Dorado, where it discharges into the Atlantic to the west of the preceding river. The Manati river is bounded on the cast and south by the Sierra Grande and on the west by the Siales ridge. It rises in the Sierra Grande, and parallel with the preceding river, it flows through Siales and Manati, to the north of which latter town it empties into the Atlantic. The Arecibo river is bounded on the east by the Siales mountain ridge, on the south by the western extremity of the Sierra Grande, and on the west by the Lares ridge. It rises in the general divide, near Adjuntas, and flows north through the town of Arecibo to the Atlantic, shortly before emptying into which it receives the Tanama river from the left, which proceeds from the Lares Mountains. The Culebrina river is bounded on the south and east by the Lares mountain ridge, and on the north by small hills of little interest. From the Lares Mountains it flows from east to west and empties on the west coast north of San Francisco de la Aguada, in the center of the bay formed between Point Penas Blancas and Point San Francisco. The Anasco river is formed by the Lares mountain ridge. It rises in the eastern extremity of the mountains called Tetas de Cerro Gordo, flowing first northwest and then west, through the town of its name and thence to the sea. The Guanajivo river has to its north the ramifications of the Lares ridge, to the east the Tetas de Cerro Gordo Mountains, and on the south Torre Hill. In the interior of its basin is the mountain called Cerro Montuoso, which separates its waters from those of its affluent from the right, the Rosaria river. It rises in the general divide, flowing from east to west to Nuestra Senora de Montserrat, where it receives the affluent mentioned, the two together then emptying south of Port Mayaguez. The Coamo river is bounded on the west and north by the Sierra Grande, and on the west by the Coamo ridge. It rises in the former of these sierras, and flowing from north to south it empties east of Coamo Point, after having watered the town of its name. The Salinas river is bounded on the west by the Coamo ridge, on the north by the general divide, and on the east by the Cayey ridge. It rises in the southern slopes of the Sierra Grande and flowing from north to south through Salinas de Coamo, empties into the sea. Coasts, Harbors, Bays, and Coves.--The northern coast extends in an almost straight line from east to west, and is high and rugged. The only harbors it has are the following: San Juan de Porto Rico, surrounded by mangrove swamps and protected by the Cabras and the Cabritas islands and some very dangerous banks; the anchoring ground of Arecibo, somewhat unprotected; and the coves of Cangrejos and Condado. During the months of November, December, and January, when the wind blows with violence from the east and northeast, the anchorage is dangerous in all the bays and harbors of this coast, except in the port of San Juan. Vessels are often obliged to put to sea on the menacing aspect of the heavens at this season, to avoid being driven on shore by the heavy squalls and the rolling waves of a boisterous sea, which propel them to destruction. During the remaining months the ports on this coast are safe and commodious, unless when visited by a hurricane, against whose fury no port can offer a shelter, nor any vessel be secure. The excellent port of San Juan is perfectly sheltered from the effects of the north wind. The hill, upon which the town of that name and the fortifications which defend it are built, protects the vessels anchored in the harbor. The entrance of this port is narrow, and requires a pilot; for the canal which leads to the anchorage, although deep enough for vessels of any dimensions, is very narrow, which exposes them to run aground. This port is several miles in extent, and has the advantage of having deep canals to the east, among a wood of mangrove trees, where vessels are perfectly secure during the hurricane months. Vessels of 250 tons can at present unload and take in their cargoes at the wharf. Harbor improvements have been recently made here. On the northwest and west are the coves of Aguadilla, the town of this name being some 4 kilometers inland. There are the small coves of Rincon, Anasco, and Mayaguez, the latter being protected and of sufficient depth to anchor vessels of moderate draft; the harbor of Real de Cabo Rojo, nearly round, and entered by a narrow channel; and the cove of Boqueron. The spacious bay of Aguadilla is formed by Cape Borrigua and Cape San Francisco. When the north-northwest and southwest winds prevail it is not a safe anchorage for ships. A heavy surf rolling on the shore obliges vessels to seek safety by putting to sea on the appearance of a north wind. Mayaguez is also an open roadstead formed by two projecting capes. It has good anchorage for vessels of a large size and is well sheltered from the north winds. The port of Cabo Rojo has also good anchorage. It is situated S. one-fourth N. of the point of Guanajico, at a distance of 5 1/2 miles. Its shape is nearly circular, and it extends from east to west 3 to 4 miles. At the entrance it has 3 fathoms of water, and 16 feet in the middle of the harbor. The entrance is a narrow canal. The south coast abounds in bays and harbors, but is covered with mangroves and reefs, the only harbor where vessels of regular draft can enter being Guanica and Ponce. The former of these is the westernmost harbor on the southern coast, being at the same time the best, though the least visited, owing to the swamps and low tracts difficult to cross leading from it to the interior. The nearest towns, San German, Sabana Grande, and Yauco, carry on a small trade through this port. In the port of Guanica, vessels drawing 21 feet of water may enter with perfect safety. Its entrance is about 100 yards wide, and it forms a spacious basin, completely landlocked. The vessels may anchor close to the shore. It has, in the whole extent, from 6 1/2 to 3 fathoms, the latter depth being formed in the exterior of the port. The entrance is commanded by two small hills on either side, which if mounted with a few pieces of artillery would defy a squadron to force it. This port would be of immense advantage in time of war. The national vessels and coasters would thus have a secure retreat from an enemy's cruiser on the south coast. There are no wharves, but vessels could disembark troops by running alongside the land and running out a plank. Coamo Cove and Aguirre and Guayama are also harbors. The port of Jovos, near Guayama, is a haven of considerable importance. It is a large and healthy place, and the most Spanish of any city on the island after San Juan. There are good roads to the capital. Vessels of the largest kind may anchor and ride in safety from the winds, and the whole British navy would find room in its spacious bosom. It has 4 fathoms of water in the shallowest part of the entrance. However, it is difficult to enter this port from June to November, as the sea breaks with violence at the entrance, on account of the southerly winds which reign at that season. It has every convenience of situation and locality for forming docks for the repair of shipping. The large bay of Anasco, on the south coast, affords anchorage to vessels of all sizes. It is also safe from the north winds. Although on the eastern coast there are many places for vessels to anchor, yet none of them are exempt from danger during the north winds except Fajardo, where a safe anchorage is to be found to leeward of two little islands close to the bay, where vessels are completely sheltered. The island of Vieques has also several commodious ports and harbors, where vessels of the largest size may ride at anchor. On the east coast is Cape Cabeza de San Juan, Points Lima, Candeleros, and Naranjo, and Cape Mala Pascua; on the south coast, Point Viento, Tigueras, Corchones, Arenas, Fama or Maria, Cucharas, Guayanilla, Guanica, and Morillos de Cabo Rojo; on the west coast, points San Francisco, Cadena, Guanijito, Guaniquilla, and Palo Seco. Highways.--There are few roads or ways of communication which are worthy of mention, with the exception of the broad pike which starts from the capital and runs along the coast, passing through the following towns: Aguadilla, Bayamon, Cabo Rojo, Ilumacao, Juana Diaz, Mayaguez, Ponce, and San German. It has no bridges; is good in dry weather, but in the rainy season is impassible for wagons and even at times for horsemen. For interior communication there are only a few local roads or paths. They are usually 2 yards in width, made by the various owners, and can not be well traveled in rainy weather. They are more properly horse and mule trails, and oblige people to go in single file. In late years much has been attempted to improve the highways connecting the principal cities, and more has been accomplished than in Spanish colonies. There is a good made road connecting Ponce on the southern coast with San Juan the capital. Other good roads also extend for a short distance along the north coast and along the south coast. The road from Guayama is also said to be a passably good one. There are in the island about 150 miles of excellent road, and this is all that receives any attention, transportation being effected elsewhere on horse back. In the construction of a road level foundation is sought, and on this is put a heavy layer of crushed rock and brick, which, after having been well packed and rounded, is covered with a layer of earth. This is well packed also, and upon the whole is spread a layer of ground limestone, which is pressed and rolled until it forms almost a glossy surface. This makes an excellent road here where the climate is such that it does not affect it, and when there is no heavy traffic, hut these conditions being changed, the road, it is thought, would not stand so well. From Palo Seco, situated about a mile and a half from the capital, on the opposite side of the bay, a carriage road, perfectly level, has been constructed for a distance of 22 leagues to the town of Aguadilla on the west coast, passing through the towns of Vegabaja, Manati, Arecibo, Hatillo, Camuy, and Isabella. This road has been carried for several leagues over swampy lands, which are intersected by deep drains to carry off the water. The road from Aguadilla to Mayaguez is in some parts very good, in other parts only fair. From Aguadilla to Aguada, a distance of a league, the road is excellent and level. From thence to Mayaguez, through the village of Rincon and the town of Anasco, the road is generally good, but on the seashore it is sometimes interrupted by shelving rocks. Across the valley of Anasco the road is carried through a boggy tract, with bridges over several deep creeks of fresh water. From thence to the large commercial town of Mayaguez the road is uneven and requires some improvement. But the roads from Mayaguez and Ponce to their respective ports on the seashore can not be surpassed by any in Europe. They are made in a most substantial manner, and their convex form is well adapted to preserve them from the destruction caused by the heavy rains of the climate. These roads have been made over tracts of swampy ground to the seacoast, but with little and timely repair they will last forever. A road, which may be called a carriage road, has been made from Ponce to the village of Adjuntas, situated 5 leagues in the interior of the mountains. The road along the coast, from Ponce to Guayama, is fairly good; from thence to Patillas there is an excellent carriage road for a distance of 3 leagues; from the latter place to the coast is a high road well constructed. From Patillas to Fajardo, on the eastern coast, passing through the towns of Maimavo, Yubacao, Ilumacao, and Naguabo, the roads are not calculated for wheel vehicles, in consequence of being obliged to ascend and descend several steep hills. That which crosses the mountain of Mala Pascua, dividing the north and east coasts, is a good and solid road, upon which a person on horseback may travel with great ease and safety. The road crossing the valley of Yubacao, which consists of a soft and humid soil, requires more attention than that crossing the mountain of Mala Pascua, which has a fine, sandy soil. From Fajardo to the capital, through the towns of Luquillo, Loisa, and Rio Piedras, the road is tolerably good for persons on horseback as far as Rio Piedras, and from thence to the city of San Juan, a distance of 2 leagues, is an excellent carriage road, made by the order and under the inspection of the Captain-General, part of it through a mangrove swamp. Over the river Loisa is a handsome wooden bridge, and on the road near Rio Piedras is a handsome stone one over a deep rivulet. One of the best roads in the island extends from the town of Papino, situated in the mountains, to the town of Aguadilla on the coast, distant 5 1/2 leagues, through the village of La Moca; in the distance of 3 leagues from the latter place, it is crossed by 10 deep mountain rivulets, formerly impassable, but over which solid bridges have now been built, with side railings. In the mountainous district within the circumference of a few leagues no less than 47 bridges have been built to facilitate the communication between one place and the other. The following are the roads of 6 meters width, 4 1/2 in center of pounded stone. They have iron bridges and are in good shape for travel all the year. (1) San Juan to the Shore near Ponce.--From San Juan to Ponce the central road is exactly 134 kilometers. Distances along the line are: Rio Piedras, 11 Caguas, 25; to Cayei, 21; Aybonito, 20; Coamo, 18; Juana Diaz, 20; to Ponce, 13; and to the shore, 3. Exact. (2) San Juan to Bayamon.--By ferry fifteen minutes to Catano, and from there by road to Bayamon 10 kilometers. This passes alongside the railway. (3) Rio Piedras to Mameyes, 36 kilometers; from Rio Piedras to Carolina, 12; to Rio Grande, 19; to Mameyes, 5. (4) Cayei to Arroyo, 35 kilometers; from Cayei to Guayama, 25; to Arroyo, 8; from San Juan to Arroyo, via Cayei, is 95 kilometers. (5 Ponce to Adjuntas, 32 kilometers. (6) San German to Anasco, 33 kilometers; from San German to Mayaguez, 21 kilometers; Mayaguez to Anasco, 12; Mayaguez to Mormigueros, 11; Mayaguez to Cabo Eojo, 18; Mayaguez to Las Marias, 23; Mayaguez to Maricao, 35; Hor- migueras to San German, 14. Near Mayaguez the roads are best. There are good roads in all directions. (7) Aguadilla to San Sebastian, 18. (8) Arecibo to Utuado, 33. Highways of first class in the island, 335 kilometers. Along these roads are, at a distance of 8 to 10 kilometers, a fort, stone, and brick barracks, or large buildings, where the Spanish troops stop and rest when on the march. Railroads.--In 1878 a report was presented to the minister of the colonies on a study made by the engineer and head of public works of the island in view of constructing a railroad which should start from the capital and, passing through all the chief towns and through the whole island, return to the point of departure. Of this railroad the following parts have been completed: San Juan, along the coast through Rio Piedras, Bayamon, Dorado, Arecibo, and Hatillo, to Camuy; Aguadilla, through Aguado, Rincon, Anasco, and Mayaguez, to Hornigueros. A branch of this railroad from Anasco, through San Sebastian, to Lares. Ponce, through Guayanilla, to Yauco. This latter railroad follows the southern coast line and is followed by a wagon road throughout its course. In one place the railroad and road run within a few hundred yards of the coast line. According to the Statesman's Year Book for 1898 there are in operation 137 miles of railroad, besides over 170 miles under construction. All the railroads are single track, and the gauge is 1 meter 20 centimeters, or 3 feet 11 1/4 inches. The following are the railways of 1-meter gauge: (1) San Juan to Rio Piedras, 11 kilometers. (2) Catano to Bayamon, 10 kilometers. (3) Anasco to San Sebastian and Lares, 35 kilometers. Total of three lines, 56 kilometers. The lines are all in good shape; have plenty of engines and cars; speed, 20 kilometers per hour; use coal for fuel imported from the United States; supply usually large, may be small now; hard coal; fine stations; plenty of water, and everything in shape for business. Telegraphs.--The capital communicates with the principal towns of the coast and interior by means of a well-connected telegraph system. There are in all some 470 miles of telegraph. Telephones.--The British Consular Report says that the telephone system of San Juan, Ponce, and Mayaguez have recently been contracted for by local syndicates. In Ponce a United States company obtained the contract for the material. There are 100 stations already connected, and it is expected that 200 more will be in operation shortly. Administration.--From an administrative standpoint, Porto Rico is not considered as a colony, but as a province of Spain, assimilated to the remaining provinces. The Governor-General, representing the monarchy, is at the same time Captain-General of the armed forces. In each chief town resides a military commander, and each town has its alcalde, or mayor, appointed by the central power. The provincial deputation is elected by popular suffrage under the same conditions as in Spain. The regular peace garrison is composed of about 3,000 men, and the annual budget amounts to some 20,000,000 pesos. Education.--In 1887 only one-seventh of the population could read and write, but of late years progress in public instruction has been rapid. Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce.--In 1878 there arrived in the harbors of the island 1,591 vessels of different nationalities and 1,534 departed. The value of products imported was 14,787,551 pesos, and that of articles exported was 13,070,020 pesos. The following are the relative percentages of values: Flags. Relation. Per Cent. Spanish 49.91 American 13.47 English 21.43 Various Nations 15.19 ======= Total 100.00 Navigation is very active, but the part the inhabitants take in the commercial fleet is small. The Porto Ricans are not seagoing people. The eastern part of the island offers less advantage to commerce than the western, being to the windward and affording less shelter to vessels. Porto Rico has more than seventy towns and cities, of which Ponce is the most important. Ponce has 22,000 inhabitants, with a jurisdiction numbering 47,000. It is situated on the south coast of the island, on a plain, about 2 miles from the seaboard. It is the chief town of the judicial district of its name, and is 70 miles from San Juan. It is regularly built, the central part almost exclusively of brick houses, and the suburbs of wood. It is the residence of the military commander, and the seat of an official chamber of commerce. There is an appellate criminal court, besides other courts; 2 churches, one Protestant, said to be the only one in the Spanish West, Indies; 2 hospitals besides the military hospital, a home of refuge for old and poor, 2 cemeteries, 3 asylums, several casinos, 3 theaters, a market, a municipal public library, 3 first-class hotels, 3 barracks, a park, gas works, a perfectly equipped fire department, a bank, thermal and natural baths, etc. Commercially, Ponce is the second city of importance on the island. A fine road leads to the port (Playa), where all the import and export trade is transacted. Playa has about 5,000 inhabitants, and here are situated the custom house, the office of the captain of the port, and all the consular offices. The port is spacious and will hold vessels of 25 feet draft. The climate, on account of the sea breezes during the day and land breezes at night, is not oppressive, but very hot and dry; and, as water for all purposes, including the fire department, is amply supplied by an aqueduct 4,442 yards long, it is said that the city of Ponce is perhaps the healthiest place in the whole island. There is a stage coach to San Juan, Mayaguez, Guayama, etc. There is a railroad to Yauco, a post office, and a telegraph station. It is believed that Ponce was founded in 1600; it was given the title of villa in 1848, and in 1877 that of city. Of its 34 streets the best are Mayor, Salud, Villa, Vives, Marina, and Comercio. The best squares are Principal and Las Delicias, which are separated by the church of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. The church, as old as the town itself, began to be reconstructed in 1838 and was finished in 1847. It is 86 yards long by 43 broad, and has two steeples, rich altars, and fine ornaments. The theater is called the Pearl, and it deserves this name, for it is the finest on the island. It has a sculptured porch, on the Byzantine order, with very graceful columns. It is mostly built of iron and marble and cost over 70,000 pesos. It is 52 yards deep by 29 wide. The inside is beautiful, the boxes and seats roomy and nicely decorated. It may, by a mechanical arrangement, be converted into a dancing hall. About 1 1/8 miles northeast of the town are the Quintana thermal baths, in a building surrounded by pretty gardens. They are visited by sufferers from rheumatism and various other diseases. San Juan is a perfect specimen of a walled town, with portcullis, moat, gates, and battlements. The wall surrounding this town is defended by several batteries. Facing the harbor are those of San Fernando, Santa Catalina, and Santa Toribio. Looking toward the land side is Fort Abanico, and toward the ocean the batteries of San Antonio, San Jose, and Santa Teresa, and Fort Princesa. The land part has two ditches, or cuts, which are easy to inundate. The fort and bridge of San Antonio that of San Geronimo, and the Escambron battery situated on a tongue of land which enters the sea. Built over two hundred and fifty years ago, the city is still in good condition and repair. The walls are picturesque, and represent a stupendous work and cost in themselves. Inside the walls the city is laid off in regular squares, six parallel streets running in the direction of the length of the island and seven at right angles. The peninsula on which San Juan is situated is connected with the mainland by three bridges. The oldest, that of San Antonio, carries the highway across the shallow San Antonio Channel. It is a stone-arched bridge about 350 yards long including the approaches. By the side of this bridge is one for the railroad and one for the tramway which follows the main military highway to Rio Piedras. Among the buildings the following are notable: The palace of the Captain-General, the palace of the intendencia, the town hall, military hospital, jail, Ballaja barracks, theater, custom house, cathedral, Episcopal palace, and seminary. There is no university or provincial institute of second grade instruction, and only one college, which is under the direction of Jesuit priests. The houses are closely and compactly built of brick, usually of two stories, stuccoed on the outside and painted in a variety of colors. The upper floors are occupied by the more respectable people, while the ground floors, almost without exception, are given up to the negroes and the poorer class, who crowd one upon another in the most appalling manner. The population within the walls is estimated at 20,000 and most of it lives on the ground floor. In one small room, with a flimsy partition, a whole family will reside. The ground floor of the whole town reeks with filth, and conditions are most unsanitary. In a tropical country, where disease readily prevails, the consequences of such herding may be easily inferred. There is no running water in the town. The entire population depend upon rain water, caught upon the flat roofs of the buildings and conducted to the cistern, which occupies the greater part of the inner court-yard that is an essential part of Spanish houses the world over, but that here, on account of the crowded conditions, is very small. There is no sewerage, except for surface water and sinks, while vaults are in every house and occupy whatever remaining space there may be in the patios not taken up by the cisterns. The risk of contaminating the water is very great, and in dry seasons the supply is entirely exhausted. Epidemics are frequent, and the town is alive with vermin, fleas, cockroaches, mosquitoes, and dogs. The streets are wider than in the older part of Havana, and will admit two carriages abreast. The sidewalks are narrow, and in places will accommodate but one person. The pavements are of a composition manufactured in England from slag, pleasant and even, and durable when no heavy strain is brought to bear upon them, but easily broken, and unfit for heavy traffic. The streets are swept once a day by hand, and, strange to say, are kept very clean. From its topographical situation the town should be healthy, but it is not. The soil under the city is clay mixed with lime, so hard as to be almost like rock. It is consequently impervious to water and furnishes a good natural drainage. The trade wind blows strong and fresh, and through the harbor runs a stream of sea water at a speed of not less than three miles an hour. With these conditions no contagious diseases, if properly taken care of, could exist; without them the place would be a veritable plague spot. Besides the town within the walls there are small portions just outside, called the Marina and Puerta de Tierra, containing two or three thousand inhabitants each. There are also two suburbs, one, San Turce, approached by the only road leading out of the city, and the other, Catano, across the bay, reached by ferry. The Marina and the two suburbs are situated on sandy points or spits, and the latter are surrounded by mangrove swamps. The entire population of the city and suburbs, according to the census of 1887, was 27,000. It is now (1896) estimated at 30,000. One-half of the population consists of negroes and mixed races. There is but little manufacturing, and it is of small importance. The Standard Oil Company has a small refinery across the bay, in which crude petroleum brought from the United States is refined. Matches are made, some brooms, a little soap, and a cheap class of trunks. There are also ice, gas, and electric light works. CHAPTER XXVI The Ladrones. The Island of Guam a Coaling Station of the United States--Discovery, Size and Products of the Islands. When the Philippine expedition on its way to Manila incidentally ran up the Stars and Stripes over the Island of Guam, there was perhaps no thought of the island becoming a permanent part of our domain. However, the fortunes of war are such that the island is likely to become ours permanently as a coaling station in the Pacific. Magellan named these islands the Ladrones from the Latin word "latro," meaning a robber, because of the thievish propensities of the natives. According to Magellan's reports, the native people of these islands had reduced stealing to a science of such exactness that the utmost vigilance could not prevail against their operations. The group was named the Mariana Islands by the Jesuits, who settled in them in 1667. The Ladrone group consists of twenty islands, of which five are inhabited. The group extends forty-five miles from north to south, and is located between 13 deg. and 21 deg. north latitude, and between 144 deg. and 146 deg. east longitude. The principal islands are Guam, Rota and Linian. They were discovered by Magellan in 1521, and have belonged to Spain ever since. Their population is 11,000. The soil is fertile and densely wooded. The climate is temperate. Guam, the southernly and principal island, is 100 miles in circumference, and has a population of 8,100, of which 1,400 are Europeans. Its central part is mountainous, and it has a small volcano. The products are guacas, bananas, cocoa, oranges and limes. The natives are noted as builders of the most rapidly sailing canoes in the world. With Guam as a part of the territory of the United States, we have a direct line of possessions across the Pacific, in the order of Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines; while in a northwesterly direction from our Pacific coast we have the islands forming a part of Alaska. By holding all these islands we will be prepared to control practically the commerce of the Pacific, the future great commercial highway of the world. CHAPTER XXVII The Official Title to Our New Possessions in the Indies. Full Text of the Treaty of Peace with Spain Handed the President of the United States as a Christmas Gift for the People, at the White House, 1898--The Gathered Fruit of a Glorious and Wonderful Victory. On an August midnight the good ship Peru, Major-General Otis with his staff and General Hughes, and a thousand regular cavalry and "the historian of the Philippines" aboard, approached within a few miles, an immense mass of darkness. About where the mouth of Manila Bay should be there was, deep in the east and at a considerable elevation, a spark of white, and in a few seconds a red light, keener than stars, and in half a minute there were the sharp flashes again, and we knew that there were friends watching and waiting--that "our flag was still there," that Admiral Dewey and General Merritt of the Navy and Army of the United States had upheld the symbol of the sovereignty of the Great Republic of North America, that the lights glowed down from the massive rock of Corregidor, that through the shadows that fell on these darksome waters the American squadron had entered into immortality less than four months before, and that with the morning light we should look upon the famous scene of triumphant Americanism. We had been fifteen days out of the world, for there were only the southern constellations to tell us, the southern cross so high and the north star so low, and the dazzling scorpion with diamond claws touching the central blue dome, to say how far down into the tropics we were, while the clouds of flame rested on the serenities of the matchless sea; and what had the great deep in its mysterious resplendence been whispering along the enchanting shores of the islands of Asia--the true Indies, Oriental or Occidental as might be--what had the wild waves that beat against the volcanic coasts made known in the boats wafted by the welcoming winds? We knew of the bloody days on the hills of Santiago, and the fate of the fleet of Admiral Cervera, and there must be news of other victories! Our ship turned away from the looming rock that sent forth flashes as if to say all is well, in the universe that we in our vast adventure had almost abandoned. And when the day dawned and the green hills and blue mountains and the silvery waters were revealed we turned to the left, where Dewey led his squadron to the right, and there was the bay hundred and twenty knots in circumference. Yonder were the white walls of Cavite, and further along domes and steeples, masts and heavy lines of buildings, a wide spread city crouching on a plain rising a few feet above the tides. It was Manila. Presently a boat swept near, and what was that, a dozen words repeated here and there--Merritt in possession of the city--of course, that was what he was there for,--but who said "there was a declaration of peace?" The strange statement was made. What--could it be that Spain had surrendered? Surely the President would not stop pushing things until he had gathered the fruits of victory? No, there was a protocol, and that was a treaty in fact! France had been the medium of negotiation. Spain had sued for peace, and terms were granted. Cuba was surrendered. Porto Rico was ceded to us. The Spaniards claimed that they had given up Manila after peace was settled, and they must repossess it. But Merritt was ashore was he not, and going to stay? Dewey had not given up anything, had he? Surely not! But there was to be a conference, a meeting of joint commissioners held at Paris to provide a treaty, that was to say the details--all the important points were fixed irrevocably except the fate of the Philippines! At this point the news of the morning gave out, all except the particulars of the seige, the high claims of the Spaniards, the dissatisfaction of the insurgents. It was some days before the realization of the situation was perfected. The full terms of the protocol were not made known at once. Spain gave up the West Indies and a Ladrone island, and the United States was to hold the city, bay and harbor of Manila pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace which should determine the control, disposition and government of the Philippines. Certainly this was the conclusive surrender of Spain! General Merritt was ordered to Paris, and there represented the army of the United States, and its faith and honor and glory. Our Peace Commissioners were Wm. R. Day, Cushman K. Davis, William P. Frye, George Gray and Whitelaw Reid, who started for Paris September 18. The Spanish Commissioners made a long struggle, and protracted their unhappy task for more than two months, using all arts of procrastination and persuasion, claiming that the United States should pay the Cuban debt, and striving for allowances of indemnity, yielding at last to the inevitable. The text of the treaty is in seventeen articles as follows: Article I.--Spain renounces all right of sovereignty over Cuba. Whereas said isle when evacuated by Spain is to be occupied by the United States, the United States, while the occupation continues, shall take upon themselves and fulfill the obligations which, by the fact of occupation, international law imposes on them for the protection of life and property. Article II.--Spain cedes to the United States the Island of Porto Rico and the other islands now under her sovereignty in the West Indies and the Isle of Guam in the archipelago of the Marianas or Ladrones. Article III.--Spain cedes to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands, which comprise the islands situated between the following lines: A line which runs west to east near the twentieth parallel of north latitude across the center of the navigable canal of Bachi, from the 118th to the 127th degrees of longitude east of Greenwich, from here to the width of the 127th degree of longitude east to parallel 4 degrees 45 minutes of north latitude. From here following the parallel of north latitude 4 degrees 45 minutes to its intersection with the meridian of longitude 119 degrees 35 minutes east from Greenwich. From here following the meridian of 119 degrees 35 minutes east to the parallel of latitude 7 degrees 40 minutes north. From here following the parallel of 7 degrees 40 minutes north to its intersection with 116 degrees longitude east. From here along a straight line to the intersection of the tenth parallel of latitude north with the 118th meridian east, and from here following the 118th meridian to the point whence began this demarcation. The United States shall pay to Spain the sum of $20,000,000 within three months after the interchange of the ratifications of the present treaty. Article IV.--The United States shall, during the term of ten years, counting from the interchange of the ratifications of the treaty, admit to the ports of the Philippine Islands Spanish ships and merchandise under the same conditions as the ships and merchandise of the United States. Article V.--The United States, on the signing of the present treaty, shall transport to Spain at their cost the Spanish soldiers whom the American forces made prisoners of war when Manila was captured. The arms of these soldiers shall be returned to them. Spain, on the interchange of the ratifications of the present treaty, shall proceed to evacuate the Philippine Islands, as also Guam, on conditions similar to those agreed to by the commissions named to concert the evacuation of Porto Rico and the other islands in the Western Antilles according to the protocol of Aug. 12, 1898, which shall continue in force until its terms have been completely complied with. The term within which the evacuation of the Philippine Islands and Guam shall be completed shall be fixed by both Governments. Spain shall retain the flags and stands of colors of the warships not captured, small arms, cannon of all calibers, with their carriages and accessories, powders, munitions, cattle, material and effects of all kinds belonging to the armies of the sea and land of Spain in the Philippines and Guam. The pieces of heavy caliber which are not field artillery mounted in fortifications and on the coasts shall remain in their places for a period of six months from the interchange of the ratifications of the present treaty, and the United States may during that period buy from Spain said material if both Governments arrive at a satisfactory agreement thereon. Article VI.--Spain, on signing the present treaty, shall place at liberty all prisoners of war and all those detained or imprisoned for political offences in consequence of the insurrections in Cuba and the Philippines and of the war with the United States. Reciprocally the United States shall place at liberty all prisoners of war made by the American forces, and shall negotiate for the liberty of all Spanish prisoners in the power of the insurgents in Cuba and the Philippines. The Government of the United States shall transport, at their cost, to Spain, and the Government of Spain shall transport, at its cost, to the United States, Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines, conformably to the situation of their respective dwellings, the prisoners placed or to be placed at liberty in virtue of this article. Article VII.--Spain and the United States mutually renounce by the present treaty all claim to national or private indemnity, of whatever kind, of one Government against the other, or of their subjects or citizens against the other Government, which may have arisen from the beginning of the last insurrection in Cuba, anterior to the interchange of the ratifications of the present treaty, as also to all indemnity as regards costs occasioned by the war. The United States shall judge and settle the claims of its citizens against Spain which she renounces in this article. Article VIII.--In fulfilment of Articles I., II. and III. of this treaty Spain renounces in Cuba and cedes in Porto Rico and the other West Indian isles, in Guam and the Philippine archipelago, all buildings, moles, barracks, fortresses, establishments, public roads and other real property which by custom or right are of the public domain, and as such belong to the crown of Spain. Nevertheless, it is declared that this renouncement or cession, as the case may be, referred to in the previous paragraph, in no way lessens the property or rights which belong by custom or law to the peaceful possessor of goods of all kinds in the provinces and cities, public or private establishments, civil or ecclesiastical corporations or whatever bodies have judicial personality to acquire and possess goods in the above-mentioned, renounced or ceded territories, and those of private individuals, whatever be their nationality. The said renouncement or cession includes all those documents which exclusively refer to said renounced or ceded sovereignty which exist in the archives of the peninsula. When these documents existing in said archives only in part refer to said sovereignty, copies of said part shall be supplied, provided they be requested. Similar rules are to be reciprocally observed in favor of Spain with respect to the documents existing in the archives of the before-mentioned islands. In the above-mentioned renunciation or cession are comprised those rights of the crown of Spain and of its authorities over the archives and official registers, as well administrative as judicial, of said islands which refer to them and to the rights and properties of their inhabitants. Said archives and registers must be carefully preserved, and all individuals, without exception, shall have the right to obtain, conformably to law, authorized copies of contracts, wills and other documents which form part of notarial protocols or which are kept in administrative and judicial archives, whether the same be in Spain or in the islands above mentioned. Article IX.--Spanish subjects, natives of the peninsula, dwelling in the territory whose sovereignty Spain renounces or cedes in the present treaty, may remain in said territory or leave it, maintaining in one or the other case all their rights of property, including the right to sell and dispose of said property or its produces; and, moreover, they shall retain the right to exercise their industry, business or profession, submitting themselves in this respect to the laws which are applicable to other foreigners. In case they remain in the territory they may preserve their Spanish nationality by making in a registry office, within a year after the interchange of the ratifications of this treaty, a declaration of their intention to preserve said nationality. Failing this declaration they will be considered as having renounced said nationality and as having adopted that of the territory in which they may reside. The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by Congress. Article X.--The inhabitants of the territories whose sovereignty Spain renounces or cedes shall have assured to them the free exercise of their religion. Article XI.--Spaniards residing in the territories whose sovereignty Spain cedes or renounces shall be subject in civil and criminal matters to the tribunals of the country in which they reside, conformably with the common laws which regulate their competence, being enabled to appear before them in the same manner and to employ the same proceedings as the citizens of the country to which the tribunal belongs must observe. Article XII.--Judicial proceedings pending on the interchange of the ratifications of this treaty in the territories over which Spain renounces or cedes sovereignty shall be determined conformably with the following rules: First, sentences pronounced in civil cases between individuals or in criminal cases before the above-mentioned date, and against which there is no appeal or annulment conformably with the Spanish law, shall be considered as lasting, and shall be executed in due form by competent authority in the territory within which said sentences should be carried out. Second, civil actions between individuals which on the aforementioned date have not been decided shall continue their course before the tribunal in which the lawsuit is proceeding or before that which shall replace it. Third, criminal actions pending on the aforementioned date before the supreme tribunal of Spain against citizens of territory which, according to this treaty, will cease to be Spanish, shall continue under its jurisdiction until definite sentence is pronounced, but once sentence is decreed its execution shall be intrusted to competent authority of the place where the action arose. Article XIII.--Literary, artistic and industrial rights of property acquired by Spaniards in Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines and other territories ceded on the interchange of ratifications of this treaty shall continue to be respected. Spanish scientific, literary and artistic works which shall not be dangerous to public order in said territories shall continue entering therein with freedom from all customs duties for a period of ten years dating from the interchange of the ratifications of this treaty. Article XIV.--Spain may establish consular agents in the ports and places of the territories whose renunciation or cession are the object of this treaty. Article XV.--The Government of either country shall concede for a term of ten years to the merchant ships of the other the same treatment as regards all port dues, including those of entry and departure, lighthouse and tonnage dues, as it concedes to its own merchant ships not employed in the coasting trade. This article may be repudiated at any time by either Government giving previous notice thereof six months beforehand. Article XVI.--Be it understood that whatever obligation is accepted under this treaty by the United States with respect to Cuba is limited to the period their occupation of the island shall continue, but at the end of said occupation they will advise the Government that may be established in the island that it should accept the same obligations. Article XVII.--The present treaty shall be ratified by the Queen Regent of Spain and the President of the United States, in agreement and with the approval of the Senate, and ratifications shall be exchanged in Washington within a period of six months from this date or earlier if possible. The treaty of peace will he ratified by the Senate. It appears before ratification, as was the case of the protocol, through the favor of the French translations. The treaty fitly crowns the triumphs of the war. The payment of the small indemnity of twenty million dollars only covers at a reasonable estimate the public property of Spain, in territory ceded to us, that was beyond the lines of the areas that formally submitted to our arms. CHAPTER XXVIII Battles with the Filipinos before Manila. The Aguinaldo War Upon the Americans--The Course of Events in the Philippines Since the Fall of Manila--Origin of the Filipino War--Aguinaldo's Insolent and Aggressive Acts, Including Treachery--His Agent's Vanity and Duplicity in Washington--Insurgents Under Aguinaldo Attack American Forces--Battle of Manila, February 4 and 5--Heroism of American Troops in Repelling the Insurgents--Aguinaldo's Proclamations--Agoncillo's Flight to Canada--The Ratification of the Treaty of Peace With Spain by the American Senate Followed the Fighting--The Gallantry and Efficiency of the American Volunteers--Another Glorious Chapter of Our War History. When Manila fell, August 13th, the insurgents made demonstrations of their purpose to insist upon the occupation of the city as part of their business, and were so excited by the prohibition of the indulgence of their passion for looting and revenge, that they fired several volleys in the direction of the Americans. The way they were prevented from executing their purposes is stated in the 10th chapter of this volume,--"The Official History of the Conquest of Manila." The Filipino forces were excluded from the city unless unarmed, and Aguinaldo made various claims to high consideration, asserting that the Spaniards could have escaped from the city if it had not been for his army. He was, in his conversations before the destruction of the Spanish fleet, and while he was on his way to Cavite, a professed friend of the annexation of the Philippines to the United States, and constantly a very voluble creature. The American Consul at Manila, writing from Manila Bay, opposite to the city, May 12th, 1898, said: "These natives are eager to be organized and led by United States officers, and the members of their cabinet visited me and gave assurance that all would swear allegiance to and cheerfully follow our flag. They are brave, submissive, and cheaply provided for. "To show their friendliness for me as our nation's only representative in this part of the world, I last week went on shore at Cavite with British Consul, in his launch, to show the destruction wrought by our fleet. As soon as natives found me out, they crowded around me, hats off, shouting "Viva los Americanos," thronged about me by hundreds to shake either hand, even several at a time, men, women, and children striving to get even a finger to shake. So I moved half a mile, shaking continuously with both hands. The British Consul, a smiling spectator, said he never before saw such an evidence of friendship. Two thousand escorted me to the launch amid hurrahs of good feeling for our nation, hence I must conclude." Nov. 3, 1897, the American Consul at Hong Kong gave this account of Mr. Agoncillo, who is an interesting person because of his celebrity for insistent and vain letters written at Washington, and his flight to Canada when the Filipinos attacked the Americans at Manila: Mr. Wildman to Mr. Day. No. 19.] Hongkong, November 3, 1897. Sir: Since my arrival in Hongkong I have been called upon several times by Mr. F. Agoncillo, foreign agent and high commissioner, etc., of the new republic of the Philippines. Mr. Agoncillo holds a commission, signed by the president, members of cabinet, and general in chief of the republic of Philippines, empowering him absolutely with power to conclude treaties with foreign governments. Mr. Agoncillo offers on behalf of his government alliance offensive and defensive with the United States when the United States declares war on Spain, which, in Mr. Agoncillo's judgment, will be very soon. In the meantime he wishes the United States to send to some port in the Philippines 20,000 stand of arms and 200,000 rounds of ammunition for the use of his government, to be paid for on the recognition of his government by the United States. He pledges as security two provinces and the custom-house at Manila. He is not particular about the price--is willing the United States should make 25 per cent or 30 per cent profit. He is a very earnest and attentive diplomat and a great admirer of the United States. On his last visit he surprised me with the information that he had written his government that he had hopes of inducing the United States to supply the much-needed guns, etc. In case Senor Agoncillo's dispatch should fall into the hands of an unfriendly power and find its way into the newspapers, I have thought it wise to apprise the State Department of the nature of the high commissioner's proposals. Senor Agoncillo informs me by late mail that he will proceed at once to Washington to conclude the proposed treaty, if I advise. I shall not advise said step until so instructed by the State Department. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, _Rounseville Wildman_, Consul. The offensive impertinence of Mr. Agoncillo is quite conspicuous in this consular communication. On the money question he was very peculiar. Mr. Wildman was instructed by Assistant Secretary Cridler to "briefly advise Mr. Agoncillo" that the United States "does not negotiate such treaties," and that he "should not encourage any advances on the part of Mr. Agoncillo." Mr. Wildman busied himself with sending tenders of allegiance to the United States from influential families of Manila. Mr. Williams cabled the following: Manila, September 5, 1898, (Received 10.20 a.m.) To-day delegation from 4,000 Viscayan soldiers, also representing southern business interests, came to me pledging loyalty to annexation. Several insurgent leaders, likewise. Spain can not control; if we evacuate, anarchy rules. _Williams._ Mr. Wildman, writing from Hongkong, July 18th, said: "I believe I know the sentiments of the political leaders and of the moneyed men among the insurgents, and, in spite of all statements to the contrary, I know that they are fighting for annexation to the United States first, and for independence secondly, if the United States decides to decline the sovereignty of the islands. In fact I have had the most prominent leaders call on me and say they would not raise one finger unless I could assure them that the United States intended to give them United States citizenship if they wished it." August 9th, Mr. Wildman gave the following character sketch of Aguinaldo, writing of the position Consul Williams, of Manila, and himself took toward the insurgents, says: "I tried to briefly outline the position Consul Williams and myself have taken toward the insurgents. We believed that they were a necessary evil, and that if Aguinaldo was placed in command, and was acceptable to the insurgents as their leader, that Admiral Dewey or General Merritt would have some one whom they could hold responsible for any excesses. The other alternative was to allow the entire islands to be overrun by small bands bent only on revenge and looting. We considered that Aguinaldo had more qualifications for leadership than any of his rivals. We made him no pledges and extracted from him but two, viz., to obey unquestioning the commander of the United States forces in the Philippine Islands, and to conduct his warfare on civilized lines. He was in and out of the consulate for nearly a month, and I believe I have taken his measure and that I acquired some influence with him. I have striven to retain his influence and have used it in conjunction with and with the full knowledge of both Admiral Dewey and Consul Williams. "Aguinaldo has written me by every opportunity, and I believe that he has been frank with me regarding both his actions and his motives. I do not doubt but that he would like to be President of the Philippine Republic, and there may be a small coterie of his native advisers who entertain a like ambition, but I am perfectly certain that the great majority of his followers, and all the wealthy educated Filipinos have but the one desire--to become citizens of the United States of America. As for the mass of uneducated natives, they would be content under any rule save that of the friars. My correspondence with Aguinaldo has been strictly of a personal nature, and I have missed no opportunity to remind him of his ante-bellum promises. His letters are childish, and he is far more interested in the kind of cane he will carry or the breastplate he will wear than in the figure he will make in history. The demands that he and his junta here have made upon my time is excessive and most tiresome. He is a man of petty moods, and I have repeatedly had letters from Consul Williams requesting me to write to Aguinaldo a friendly letter congratulating him on his success, and reminding him of his obligations. I do not care to quote Admiral Dewey, as his letters are all of a strictly personal nature, but I feel perfectly free to refer you to him as to my attitude and actions." Mr. Pratt, the United States Consul General at Singapore, took in hand Aguinaldo--this was April 28--and got him off to Hong Kong, having had this correspondence by cable with Admiral Dewey: Aguinaldo, insurgent leader, here. Will come Hongkong arrange with Commodore for general co-operation insurgents Manila if desired. Telegraph. _Pratt._ The Commodore's reply reading thus: Tell Aguinaldo come soon as possible. _Dewey_. Mr. Pratt says of this: I received it late that night, and at once communicated to General Aguinaldo, who, with his aid-de-camp and private secretary, all under assumed names, I succeeded in getting off by the British steamer Malacca, which left here on Tuesday, the 26th. And Mr. Pratt made the following report to the Secretary of State of the United States: Consulate-General of the United States, Singapore, April 30, 1898. Sir: Referring to my dispatch No. 212, of the 28th instant, I have the honor to report that in the second and last interview I had with Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo on the eve of his departure for Hongkong, I enjoined upon him the necessity, under Commodore Dewey's direction, of exerting absolute control over his forces in the Philippines, as no excesses on their part would be tolerated by the American Government, the President having declared that the present hostilities with Spain were to be carried on in strict accord with modern principles of civilized warfare. To this General Aguinaldo fully assented, assuring me that he intended and was perfectly able, once on the field, to hold his followers, the insurgents, in check and lead them as our commander should direct. The general further stated that he hoped the United States would assume protection of the Philippines for at least long enough to allow the inhabitants to establish a government of their own, in the organization of which he would desire American advice and assistance. These questions I told him I had no authority to discuss. I have, etc., _E. Spencer Pratt_, United States Consul-General. June 16th Secretary Day cabled Consul Pratt: "Avoid unauthorized negotiations with the Philippine insurgents," and the Secretary wrote the consul on the same day: "The Department observes that you informed General Aguinaldo that you had no authority to speak for the United States; and, in the absence of the fuller report which you promise, it is assumed that you did not attempt to commit this Government to any alliance with the Philippine insurgents. To obtain the unconditional personal assistance of General Aguinaldo in the expedition to Manila was proper, if in so doing he was not induced to form hopes which it might not he practicable to gratify. This Government has known the Philippine insurgents only as discontented and rebellious subjects of Spain, and is not acquainted with their purposes. While their contest with that power has been a matter of public notoriety, they have neither asked nor received from this Government any recognition. The United States, in entering upon the occupation of the islands, as the result of its military operations in that quarter, will do so in the exercise of the rights which the state of war confers, and will expect from the inhabitants, without regard to their former attitude toward the Spanish Government, that obedience which will be lawfully due from them. "If, in the course of your conferences with General Aguinaldo, you acted upon the assumption that this Government would co-operate with him for the furtherance of any plan of his own, or that, in accepting his co-operation, it would consider itself pledged to recognize any political claims which he may put forward, your action was unauthorized and can not be approved. Respectfully yours, _William E. Day_. The following letter is a valuable link in the chain of the story of the Philippines: Hongkong, August 4, 1898. Sir: By request I have the honor to confirm the following telegram sent you on the 2d instant: Cortes family, representing wealthy educated families Manila, implore you through Consul-General Wildman, in name humanity and Christianity, not to desert them, and aid to obtain annexation Philippines to America. Please see the President. I may add in explanation of this telegram that there is a large colony of wealthy Filipinos who have been driven out of Manila, and the bulk of whose fortunes have been confiscated, resident here. They are people of education as well as wealth, and they are intensely loyal to the United States. The Cortes family are particularly so, and they have contributed money liberally to aid Aguinaldo on the understanding that he was fighting for annexation of the Philippines to the United States. Naturally I sympathize with them in their desire to become a part of the United States, and have advised them that you would give their cablegram your kindly consideration. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, _Rounsevelle Wildman_, Consul-General. Hon. Marcus Hanna, United States Senate, Washington. Mr. Andre, the Belgian Consul at Manila, an important man, wrote the American Commission in Paris, that "everybody in the Philippines, even Spanish merchants," begged the Americans for protection, and added: "The Indians do not desire independence. They know that they are not strong enough. They trust the United States, and they know that they will be treated risditly. The present rebellion only represents a half per cent, of the inhabitants, and it would not be right to oblige 6,000,000 inhabitants to submit to 30,000 rebels. Luzon is only partly held by them, and it is not to be expected that a civilized nation will make them present with the rest of the island, which is hostile to the Tagals of Luzon. The Spanish officers refuse to fight for the sake of the priests, and if the Spanish Government should retain the Philippines their soldiers will all fall prisoners in the hands of the Indians in the same way as they did already, and this is because the army is sick of war without result, and only to put the country at the mercy of the rapacious empleados and luxurious monks. "The monks know that they are no more wanted in the Philippines, and they asked me to help them go away as soon as possible, and it is principally for them that I asked for the transports to the United States Government, and to send them to Hongkong. The Indians will be delighted to see them go, and will be grateful to the United States. "If some chiefs of the rebellion will be a little disappointed in their personal pride, they will be convinced that it is better for them to submit in any case, for most of these chiefs prefer American authority." Aguinaldo became swollen with the conceit of greatness, and flattered to believe he had a commanding destiny, he took on airs of extravagant consequence in his correspondence with General Anderson, who commanded the first expedition of the United States troops to the Philippines, and dared to assume to have authority as to the disembarkation of the soldiers of the United States. July 24th Aguinaldo wrote to Anderson: "I came from Hongkong to prevent my countrymen from making common cause with the Spanish against the North Americans, pledging before my word to Admiral Dewey to not give place [to allow] to any internal discord, because, [being] a judge of their desires, I had the strong conviction I could succeed in both objects." After this false and foolish presumption, he proceeded in a pompous way to observe that "without the destruction of the Spanish squadron the Philippine revolution would not have advanced so rapidly." He claimed, in a letter dated August 1st to Consul Williams, that if he did not assert himself as he was doing he would be held by his people to be a traitor. His point at Singapore was that he could wield his people at his pleasure. His observation was: "I have done what they desire, establishing a government in order that nothing important may be done without consulting fully their sovereign will, not only because it was my duty, but also because acting in any other manner they would fail to recognize me as the interpreter of their aspirations and would punish me as a traitor, replacing me by another more careful of his own honor and dignity." On the day after the storming of Manila, Aguinaldo wrote to Anderson: "My troops, who have been for so long besieging Manila, have always been promised that they could appear in it, as you know and can not deny, and for this reason and on account of the many sacrifices made of money and lives, I do not consider it prudent to issue orders to the contrary, as they might be disobeyed against my authority. Besides, I hope that you will allow the troops to enter, because we have given proofs many times of our friendship." On the day of occupancy of Manila Aguinaldo wrote Anderson: "I received a telegram. My interpreter is in Cavite; in consequence of this I have not answered till now. My troops are forced by yours, by means of threats of violence, to retire from positions taken. It is necessary, to avoid conflicts, which I should lament, that you order your troops that they avoid difficulty with mine, as until now they have conducted themselves as brothers to take Manila." General Merritt did not tolerate any folly about "joint occupation," and sharply demanded the insurgents should restore the city the water supply from the mountain stream that is diverted from the Pasig to the city, and Aguinaldo claimed credit on the water question in these terms of prevarication and presumption. "Since I have permitted the use of water before the formal declaration of the treaty, you can easily see that I am disposed to sacrifice to friendship everything not greatly prejudicial to the rights of the Philippine city. "I comprehend, like yourself, the inconvenience of a double occupation of the city of Manila and its environs, considering the conditions of the capitulation with the Spaniards, but you must also understand that without the wide blockade maintained by my forces you would have obtained possession of the ruins of the city, but never the surrender of the Spanish forces, who would have been able to retire to the interior towns. "Now, do not make light of the aid formerly given by us to secure the capitulation mentioned. Greatly though justice may suffer, and risking well-founded fears in regard to my city, I do not insist upon the retention of all the positions conquered by my forces within the environs at the cost of much bloodshed, unspeakable fatigue, and much money." At the same time this Dictator was strutting with the powerful persuasion that the United States must be subordinate to his will, he was ambitious to live in the palace of the Governor General, putting an impertinance to that effect in his correspondence, but General Merritt told him he wanted it for himself and had already occupied and taken it into possession. It has been made clear that Aguinaldo was from the first appearance of Americans writhing with the pangs of wounded vanity, conspiring to initiate the ignorant and inflate the insignificant, exciting a considerable force to share his sentiments. Unquestionably the news communicated by Agoncillo to Aguinaldo of the sailing of the regular troops to reinforce the army in Manila caused the desperate assault upon our lines, and it may be accepted as the measurement of the Filipino ignorance of American character, that the insurgent calculation was that the combat designed and its influence estimated, was expected to cause the defeat of the ratification of the treaty in the Senate. General Merritt assumed the Governor's duties on August 23, at Matacanan palace. Insurgents seemed more pacific, and business was resumed. On August 25, Aguinaldo sent the following cablegram to the American press: Manila, August 24.--I am satisfied with America's occupation. The Filipinos are disbanding. _Aguinaldo_. Head of the Philippine Insurgent Army. The same day Aguinaldo issued orders for his soldiers to return to their homes. The order was obeyed, and the insurgents expressed willingness to surrender if assured that the islands would remain under American or British control. In a clash at Cavite between United States soldiers and insurgents on August 25, George Hudson, a member of the Utah regiment, was killed, and Corporal William Anderson, of the same battery, was mortally wounded. Four troopers of the Fourth Cavalry were slightly wounded. Aguinaldo expressed his regret and promised to punish the offenders. Complaint of the conduct of Aguinaldo was reported by insurgents a few days later, and he said many of his compatriots accused him of endeavoring to sell out their cause. This story was his standing excuse for insolence to Americans, and the commission of savage injustice. He announced his intention to send peace commissioners to Paris. On September 5, Aguinaldo effected an important alliance with the Santiaglesia party in the northern Provinces of Pangasinan Zamballes. This party commanded 5,000 troops which hitherto had resisted Aguinaldo's claims to dictatorship. At a meeting of twenty leaders of the Filipinos on September 5, eighteen of them declared in favor of annexation to the United States. Aguinaldo, on September 10, demanded the right to occupy part of Manila. His demand was refused by General Otis, who ordered him to remove his forces by a given day to avoid trouble. Aguinaldo removed his headquarters to Malolos on the railroad forty miles north of Manila. It was on October 10 that the open arrogance of Aguinaldo asserted itself. He refused to permit a burial party from the British ship Powerful to pass into the city carrying arms. For this he was reproved by the American commanders, and he apologized. October 16 Aguinaldo again took the offensive, refusing to permit the American schooner Mermanos to load. Following that report came the report of a battle between Americans and insurgents, which was exaggerated, but showed the seriousness of the situation. The same day the Czar of Russia suggested a joint note from the powers to the United States on the Philippine question. Later Aguinaldo refused the request of General Otis for the release of Spanish priests held as captives by the Filipinos, and General Otis reported the entire island of Panay, with the exception of the City of Iloilo, in the hands of insurgents. On November 14, the Filipino Junta at Hongkong issued a long statement and petition directed to President McKinley, demanding recognition of the insurgents. On November 18, President McKinley issued orders to General Otis to occupy the Islands of Panay and Negros, and for this purpose troops were later sent from Manila on an unsuccessful mission. January 1 came the serious news from Manila that the American forces before Iloilo, under the command of General Miller, were confronted by 6,000 armed Filipinos, who refused them permission to land. The Spanish had yielded Iloilo to the insurgents for the purpose of troubling the Americans. Agoncillo, on January 6, filed a request with the authorities at Washington for an interview with the President to discuss affairs in the Philippines. The next day the government officials were surprised to learn that messages to General Otis to deal mildly with the rebels and not to force a conflict had become known to Agoncillo, and cabled by him to Aguinaldo. At the same time came Aguinaldo's protest against General Otis signing himself "Military Governor of the Philippines." Agoncillo expressed still more violent sentiments during the second week in January. On the 8th of the month he gave out this statement: "In my opinion the Filipino people, whom I represent, will never consent to become a colony dependency of the United States. The soldiers of the Filipino army have pledged their lives that they will not lay down their arms until General Aguinaldo tells them to do so, and they will keep that pledge, I feel confident." On the day after Aguinaldo issued his second proclamation in Manila, in which he threatened to drive the Americans from the islands, called the Deity to witness that their blood would be on their own heads if it was shed, and detailed at greater length the promises he claimed were made by the Americans as to the part of the insurgents in the campaign. The Filipino committees in London, Paris and Madrid about this time telegraphed to President McKinley as follows: "We protest against the disembarkation of American troops at Iloilo. The treaty of peace still unratified, the American claim to sovereignty is premature. Pray reconsider the resolution regarding Iloilo. Filipinos wish for the friendship of America and abhor militarism and deceit." The threats that Manila must be taken never ceased in the rebel camp, and they hung around with sweltering venom, cultivating grievances, like a horde of wolves and panthers, hungry and rabid. At the beginning of February the situation at Manila was regarded as serious, but the officials saw no reason why they could not command it for a time at least. General Otis reported, in connection with some matters pertaining to the shipment home of sick Spanish soldiers, that he could hold out beyond a doubt until his reinforcements arrived, and added that as the news had reached Manila that there was every prospect that the peace treaty would soon be ratified, the effect on the natives had been satisfactory. Sunday morning, February 5, reports were received by the American press that the Filipino insurgents under Aguinaldo had attacked the American lines before Manila, and that a battle had been fought, in which many on both sides had been killed or wounded. When news of the attack of the Filipinos was received at Washington, Agoncillo, the special representative of Aguinaldo, immediately left the capital, taking the first train for Canada. He reached Montreal February 6. In an interview at the latter place he professed not to know that an attack on the American forces at Manila had been planned by his people. Furthermore, he stated it as his belief that no attack had been made as described in the reports. His manner and somewhat evasive statements indicated that he knew more than he cared to tell. His action in fleeing from Washington indicated complicity. One of the immediate results of the Filipinos' attack on Manila was the hastening of the ratification by the Senate of the peace treaty. At 2:45 o'clock, Monday afternoon, February 6, the Senate met in executive session, and three-fourths of an hour later the vote on the ratification of the treaty was announced. It stood 57 for, and 27 against, the absent and paired being six. The treaty was ratified by a majority of 1. The Senators who voted for the treaty were: Aldrich, Allen, Allison, Baker, Burrows, Butler, Carter, Chandler, Clark, Clay, Cullom, Davis, Deboe, Elkins, Fairbanks, Faulkner, Foraker, Frye, Gallinger, Gear, Gray, Hanna, Hansbrough, Harris, Hawley, Jones (Nev.), Kenney, Kyle, Lindsay, Lodge, McBride, McEnery, McLaurin, McMillan, Mantle, Mason, Morgan, Nelson, Penrose, Perkins, Pettus, Platt (Conn.), Platt (N.Y.), Pritchard, Quay, Ross, Sewell, Shoup, Simon, Spooner, Stewart, Sullivan, Teller, Thurston, Warren, Wellington, Wolcott. The Senators who voted against the treaty were: Bacon, Bate, Berry, Caffery, Chilton, Cockrell, Daniel, Gorman, Hale, Heitfeld, Hoar, Jones (Ark.), Mallory, Martin, Mills, Mitchell, Money, Murphy, Pasco, Pettigrew, Rawlins, Roach, Smith, Tillman, Turley, Turner, Vest. Those who were absent and paired were: Cannon and Wilson for, with White against; Proctor and Wetmore for, with Turpie against. The ratification of the treaty was not a party question. Thirty-nine Republicans, ten Democrats, and eight Silver men voted for the treaty, and two Republicans, twenty-two Democrats and three Silver men voted against it. On February 4, Aguinaldo issued the following proclamation: "I order and command: 1. That peace and friendly relations with the Americans be broken and that the latter be treated as enemies, within the limits prescribed by the laws of war. 2. That the Americans captured be held as prisoners of war. 3. That this proclamation be communicated to the consuls and that congress order and accord a suspension of the constitutional guarantee, resulting from the declaration of war." February 5th, Aguinaldo issued a second proclamation in which he said that the outbreak of hostilities was "unjustly and unexpectedly provoked by the Americans." He also spoke of "the constant outrages and taunts which have been causing misery to the Manilans," and referred to the "useless conferences" and contempt shown for the Filipino government as proving a "premeditated transgression of justice and liberty." He called on his people to "sacrifice all upon the altar of honor and national integrity," and insisted that he tried to avoid as far as possible an armed conflict. He claimed that all his efforts "were useless before the unmeasured pride of the Americans," whom he charged as having treated him as a rebel "because I defended the interests of my country and would not become the instrument of their dastardly intentions." He concluded by saying: "Be not discouraged. Our independence was watered freely by the blood of martyrs, and more will be shed in the future to strengthen it. Remember that efforts are not to be wasted that ends may be gained. It is indispensable to adjust our actions to the rules of law and right and to learn to triumph over our enemies. We have fought our ancient oppressors without arms, and we now trust to God to defend us against the foreign foe." _The Official Battle Bulletins_. The messages following were received in the order given. "Manila, February 5.--Adjutant-General, Washington: Have established our permanent lines well out and have driven off the insurgents. The troops have conducted themselves with great heroism. The country about Manila is peaceful, and the city is perfectly quiet. List of casualties to-morrow. _Otis_." "Manila, February 5.--To the Adjutant-General: Insurgents in large force opened attack on our outer lines at 8:45 p. m. last evening; renewed attack several times during night; at 4 o'clock this morning entire line engaged; all attacks repulsed; at daybreak advanced against insurgents, and have driven them beyond the lines they formerly occupied, capturing several villages and their defense works; insurgent loss in dead and wounded large; our own casualties thus far estimated at 175, few fatal. Troops enthusiastic and acting fearlessly. Navy did splendid execution on flanks of enemy; city held in check, and absolute quiet prevails; insurgents have secured a good many Mauser rifles, a few field pieces and quick-firing guns, with ammunition, during last month. _Otis_." "Manila, February 5.--To Adjutant-General: Situation most satisfactory. No apprehension need be felt. Perfect quiet prevails in city and vicinity. List of casualties being prepared, and will be forwarded as soon as possible. Troops in excellent health and spirits. _Otis_." "Manila, February 7.--Adjutant-General, Washington: The insurgent army concentrated around Manila from Luzon provinces, numbered over 20,000, possessing several quick-firing and Krupp field guns. Good portion of enemy armed with Mausers, latest pattern. Two Krupp and great many rifles captured. Insurgents fired great quantity of ammunition. Quite a number of Spanish soldiers in insurgent service who served artillery. Insurgents constructed strong intrenchments near our lines, mostly in bamboo thickets. These our men charged, killing or capturing many of the enemy. Our casualties probably aggregate 250. Full reports to-day. Casualties of insurgents very heavy. Have buried some 500 of their dead and hold 500 prisoners. Their loss, killed, wounded, and prisoners, probably 4,000. "Took waterworks pumping station yesterday, six miles out. Considerable skirmish with enemy, which made no stand. Pumps damaged; will be working in a week. Have number of condensers set up in city, which furnish good water. Troops in excellent spirits. Quiet prevails. _Otis_." "Manila, February 3.--Adjutant-General, Washington: Situation rapidly improving. Reconnaissance yesterday to south several miles; to east to Laguna Bay; to northeast eight miles, driving straggling insurgent troops in various directions, encountering no decided opposition. "Army disintegrated, and natives returning to village, displaying white flag. "Near Caloocan, six miles north, enemy made stand behind entrenchments. Charged by Kansas troops, led by Colonel Funston; close encounter, resulting in rout of enemy, with very heavy loss. "Loss to Kansas troops, Lieutenant Alford killed, six men wounded. "Night of 4th, Aguinaldo issued flying proclamation, charging Americans with initiative, and declared war. "His influence throughout this section destroyed. Now applies for cessation of hostilities and conference. Have declined to answer. "Insurgents' expectation of rising in city on night of 4th unrealized. Provost Marshal-General, with admirable disposition of troops, defeated every attempt. "City quiet. Business resumed. Natives respectful and cheerful. "The fighting qualities of American troops a revelation to all inhabitants. Signed, _Otis_." Secretary Alger sent the following cablegram to General Otis, at Manila: "Accept my best congratulations upon your magnificent victory of Sunday, all the more creditable because you were not the aggressor." "Manila, February 10.--Adjutant-General: Insurgents collected considerable force between Manila and Caloocan, where Aguinaldo is reported to be, and threatened attack and uprising in city. "This afternoon swung left of McArthur division, which is north of Pasig River, into Caloocan, driving enemy easy. "Our left now at Caloocan. Our loss slight; that of insurgents considerable. Particulars in morning. "Attack preceded by one-half hour's firing from two of Admiral Dewey's vessels. "_Otis_." "Manila, February 13.--Adjutant-General, Washington: Everything quiet this morning; business in city resuming former activity. _Otis_." "Manila, February 13.--General Miller reports from Iloilo that that town was taken on the 11th inst., and is held by troops. Insurgents given until evening of 11th to surrender, but their hostile actions brought on an engagement during the morning. Insurgents fired the native portion of town, but little losses to property of foreign inhabitants. No casualties among United States troops reported. "_Otis_." The legal situation, while the treaty was not ratified, and seemed gravely in doubt, was an embarrassment to the executive of the United States. The Philippine question was by the act of the President a special reservation, and it was submitted to the people as too great in scope and various in detail, to be determined by one man, especially as the Philippine Archipelago was so far away from our Pacific shore as to be, according to the average citizen's information, a new departure; and the novelties in a Republic need much consideration. Really the departure is not new--it is in the direct line of the logic of our history. The President exceedingly desired to preserve the peace with the Filipinos, and gave orders not to attack them. He trusted this anxious care would prevent bloodshed. Hence the annoying attitude of waiting acquiesence at Iloilo, and at Manila under almost intolerable provocation. A personal letter from Manila, dated December 8th, and written by a general officer contains this. "Aguinaldo has sent for a new hatter with inflated blocks, and has his people dragging up field guns in face of our outposts. You can draw your own inferences." There is a flavor of bitter humor in this, but the fact is prominent that the desperadoes were quite wild, and had no understanding of themselves or of us, and could acquire it only by getting themselves whipped by us. We quote again from the letter of which we have taken the passage above: "The able and thinking men in this country tell me in unmistakable language that they are in no way prepared to take up the government of these islands. They insist upon the fact that tribunals will have, through lack of native material, to be mixed bodies. They say that with all the harshness that must accompany occupancy, the people here never had as much liberty as they have now, and that they show a strong inclination to abuse what is given them." This is the true story of the Philippine people wherever there has been a free and intelligent expression. Our army did not go to Manila to harm the Filipinos who have the misfortune to become infatuated with the malicious vanity of those who have surrounded themselves with a cloud of superstition and all the inventions of falsehood. It was necessary that Americans should protect themselves, or yield the country to the destructiveness of barbarism, and they have defended Americanism and civilization. The dragging of field pieces to bear upon our pickets was with the purpose of bringing American soldiers into contempt, at once, and to force fighting ultimately. The poor men who became victims were deluded and carried their defiance to an intolerable pitch. In the same style employed when he demanded that General Anderson should consult him about getting on Philippine soil, Aguinaldo attempted to intimidate General Otis by inviting a conference, and avowing that he would make war if any more troops were sent to Manila. He would have bloodshed, and is responsible for it, so far as he is an accountable being. It is of the horrors of war that the blood of brave men is shed on both sides of a controversy that has been appealed to the arbitrament of arms, though the origin of the affray may be obscure and the issue uncertain. In the bloodshed around Manila the case is clear and the conclusion certain, and there is the compensation that the heroism, enterprise, activity and dash and continuance of the American soldiers under the most trying circumstances, flame forth, and the glory of our soldiers is equal to that of our sailors in the judgment of the men of all nations. There is something more in this second clash of arms at Manila. It is difficult to find ground harder to carry in offensive movements than the sultry thickets in which the Filipinos were hidden, but our soldiers obeyed all orders to advance with alacrity, energy and enthusiasm, and were eager for their work. The men who can do what ours did at Manila can do anything that may rationally be dared. And in this story of Manila is the testimony that after the volunteers have been seasoned, they do keep step with the dread music of war with the regulars of any race or people, and there can be no national retreat from the duty destiny defines in the Philippines, any more than from the States of the valley that is the heart of the country--the valley watered by the Ohio, the noblest river in the world, that flows westward in the course of empire. The dispatches of General Otis are clear and striking in tone, and may at once be classified as model bulletins of history. He is a most energetic, careful, studious and laborious soldier, bearing himself with the dignity of a man modest as brave, and full of kindliness, but determined in discipline, knowing it to be for the common good. He is resolute in demanding that the requisitions shall be according to the forms, and those associated with him must respect the regulations. The objection to him of those who seek one is that he attends too much to details, but that is well when the commander is absolute in duty and has an appetite for hard work before which the small matters disappear as by magic and the greater ones are conquered by force of habit. The scenery of the battle fields around Manila should be carefully regarded and remembered. The bay is a vast sheet nearly thirty miles in length, with a width exceeding twenty miles. The shores of the bay are low--not more than six feet at most, above high tide. They are also sandy and soft, resembling in some respects the banks of Louisiana rivers, but no levees are attempted. The famous Pasig river is only twenty miles long, and drains a large lake, in which there is an immense multiplication of vegetable growth that floats perpetually to the Bay, and is called "lilies," though having the look of small cabbages. The stream is almost as broad as the Ohio, and, in its snaky turns, crooked as the Mississippi. The banks seem to be prevented from washing away by the dense matting of grasses, and the overhanging thickets, imposing in luxuriance. The houses are close to the water, for the tidal river does not rise and fall enough to disturb the inhabitants. There are mountains a few miles away east and south--big lumps of blue. The stream that furnishes pure water to Manila is from the mountains, and tapped near the mouth, where it empties into the Pasig, seven miles from the city. Manila is widespread, and of structures whose height has been moderated by experience of earthquakes. There is a great deal of marshy land, and rice fields, and the jungles, so thick and thorny, and the grasses so tall, fibrous, and rasping, that the marching of columns of soldiers is excessively fatiguing. It was a terrible task that was cut out for our men, by the delay in the Senate, mischievously elongated, the insurgents having fortified themselves in a way that they knew would have been utterly impervious by Spaniards. The military leaders of the Filipinos have the explanation to offer, if they have the enlightenment to comprehend their own predicament, as a discomfited mass of fugitives, that they never, before the American regulars and volunteers charged them, met soldiers who would not have retreated in dismay from the fiery ambuscades. The achievement of the Americans in confronting, rushing and routing the array, formidable in numbers, of natives, gathered with great expectations of a victory that would convert them into the barbaric conquerors of a civilized community--the consecutive and conclusive victories over them that covered our arms, will have honorable distinction, of putting soldiers to the proof and finding them pure steel, for a long time to come. Our boys, weary of the aggressive attitude of the still insurgent crowds, though the power of Spain had been broken, welcomed with cheers the order to charge; and it has been many days since there has been a trial of manliness more severe, or testimony of devotion more true, and of the staunch fighting quality of the troops whose only way out of difficulty was to find the enemy and drive them headlong. It is not to be forgotten, while the flag of the nation flies, that the brave regiments that will bear upon their banners the name Manila, with the dates of February, 1899, are from all sections of the country, from the Alleghenies to the Pacific. They come from western Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Idaho, and California, and as Admiral Dewey said so well of the crews of his ships on his immortal May day, "There was not a man in the fleet who did not do his duty, and no man did more." It is, as Admiral Schley said of the famous naval victory on the Southern Cuban coast, "There is glory enough to go around." Take the list of regiments and batteries and troops in the Eighth Army Corps, under the command of Major-General E.S. Otis, and there is but one record--each officer and enlisted man was in his place, and all are worthy to be glorified, for their dashing rushes through the swamps and the hideous tropic tangles, they penetrated to find the foe, equally with those heroes who mounted with unquailing ardor that only death could quench and that victory crowned the bloody hills of Santiago. The easy capture of Iloilo proves the inadequacy of the followers of Aguinaldo to do any mischief beyond bushwhacking, and it will not be found worth while to pursue the natives who made an occupation of war far into the jungles. The complete possession of the railroad by our troops will be necessary, and the navy will have business for light vessels in preventing the smuggling of Japanese arms, which are, no doubt, furnished at low rates for special purposes. Two proclamations have appeared in the Philippines--one by General Otis, the American General commanding the Eighth Army Corps, and the other by Aguinaldo, that make clear in a few words the policy of those engaged in the war that has followed the downfall of the sovereignty of Spain over the bits of the archipelago they occupied. General Otis said, January 4th, that the "United States forces came to give the blessings of peace and individual freedom to the Philippine people. We are here as friends of the Filipinos to protect them in their homes, their employments, their individual and religious liberty. All persons who, either by active aid or honest endeavor, co-operate with the government of the United States to give effect to these beneficient purposes will receive the reward of its support and protection." The General quoted the instructions of the President, and remarked: "I am fully of the opinion that it is the intention of the United States government, while directing affairs generally, to appoint the representative men now forming the controlling element of the Filipinos to civil positions of trust and responsibility, and it will be my aim to appoint to these such Filipinos as may be acceptable to the supreme authorities at Washington. "It is also my belief that it is the intention of the United States Government to draw from the Filipino people so much of the military force of the islands as possible and consistent with a free and well-constituted government of the country, and it is my desire to inaugurate a policy of that character. "I am also convinced that it is the intention of the United States government to seek the establishment of a most liberal government for the islands, in which the people themselves shall have as full representation as the maintenance of order and law will permit, and which shall be susceptible of development on lines of increased representation and the bestowal of increased powers into a government as free and independent as is enjoyed by the most favored provinces of the world. "It will be my constant endeavor to co-operate with the Filipino people, seeking the good of the country, and I invite their full confidence and aid." Aguinaldo, on this conciliatory definition of American purposes, objects to General Otis calling himself "Military Governor," and cries out, with "all the energy of his soul against such authority," and alludes to the policy of the President referring to the Philippine annexation, adding: "I solemnly protest, in the name of God, the root and fountain of all justice and of all right, and who has given to me power to direct my dear brothers in the difficult work of our regeneration, against this intrusion of the government of the United States in the sovereignty of these islands. "And so, you must understand, my dear brothers, that, united by bonds which it will be impossible to break, such is the idea of our liberty and our absolute independence, which have been our noble aspirations, all must work together to arrive at this happy end, with the force which gives conviction, already so generally felt, among all the people, to never turn back in the road of glory, on which we have already so far advanced." President McKinley, on the evening of February l5th, addressed at the Boston Home Market Club banquet, all civilized nations, setting forth the policy of the United States in the Philippines, saying: "The Philippines, like Cuba and Porto Rico, were intrusted to our hands by the war, and to that great trust, under the providence of God and in the name of human progress and civilization, we are committed. It is a trust from which we will not flinch. "There is universal agreement that the Philippines shall not be turned back to Spain. No true American would consent to that. "The suggestions that they should be tossed into the arena for the strife of nations or be left to the anarchy or chaos of no protectorate at all were too shameful to be considered. The treaty gave them to the United States. Could we have required less and done our duty? "Our concern is not for territory, or trade, or empire, but for the people whose interests and destiny were put in our hands. "It is not a good time for the liberator to submit important questions to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers. "The future of the Philippine Islands is now in the hands of the American people. "I know of no better or safer human tribunal than the people. "Until Congress shall direct otherwise, it will be the duty of the executive to possess and hold the Philippines. "That the inhabitants of the Philippines will be benefited is my unshaken belief. "No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment." There is a directness of purpose and precision of statement about this that bears the stamp of sincerity, is impressive with the power of authority, and shines with the spirit of patriotism. CHAPTER XXIX The Aguinaldo War of Skirmishes. The Filipino Swarms, After Being Repulsed with Slaughter, Continue Their Scattering Efforts to Be Assassins--They Plan a General Massacre and the Burning of Manila--Defeated in Barbarous Schemes, They Tell False Tales and Have Two Objects, One to Deceive the People of the Philippines, the Other to Influence Intervention--The Peril of Fire--Six Thousand Regulars Sent to General Otis--Americans Capture Iloilo and Many Natives Want Peace--The People of the Isla of Negros Ask That They May Go with Us--Dewey Wants Battleships and Gunboats, Gets Them, and Is Made an Admiral--Arrival of Peace Commissioners, with Their School Books, Just Ahead of the Regulars with Magazine Rifles--The Germans at Manila Salute Admiral Dewey at Last. The activity of the Aguinaldo insurgents was persisted in, while their commissioners were on the way to us, and ours to them. While Congress was in a reactionary state owing to political games, and many members tearful on the side of the barbarians, there was a desperate conspiracy to massacre the white people of Manila and destroy the city by fire; and fighting was going on along our extended lines, the Filipinos shooting at Americans from the jungles. On February 15th the California Volunteers abandoned Guadalupe church and retired to San Pedro Macati, and the Filipinos held ambuscades near the Pasig River. It was reported that on the night of the 14th the retirement of General King's advance posts upon San Pedro Macati had evidently been construed by the rebels as a sign of weakness, as they pressed forward along both sides of the river, persistently harassing the occupants of the town. The rebels poured volley after volley into San Pedro Macati from the brush on the adjacent ridge, but without effect. General King's headquarters, in the center of the town, was the target for scores of bullets. The rebels were using smokeless powder and it was extremely difficult to locate individual marksmen. The heat was intense and increasing perceptibly. It was impossible to provide shade for the troops in parts of the line. On the 21st the following remarkable dispatch was received from General Otis: "Manila, Feb. 21.--Adjutant-General, Washington: Following issued by an important officer of insurgent government at Malolos February 15, 1899, for execution during that evening and night in this city: "'You will so dispose that at 8 o'clock at night the individuals of the territorial militia at your order will be found united in all of the streets of San Pedro, armed with their bolos and revolvers or guns and ammunition, if convenient. "'Philippine families only will be respected. They should not be molested, but all other individuals, of whatever race they may be, will be exterminated without any compassion after the extermination of the army of occupation. "'The defenders of the Philippines in your command will attack the guard at Bilibid and liberate the prisoners and "presidiarios," and, having accomplished this, they will be armed, saying to them: "'"Brothers, we must avenge ourselves on the Americans and exterminate them, that we may take our revenge for the infamy and treachery which they have committed upon us; have no compassion upon them; attack with vigor. All Filipinos en masse will second you. Long live Filipino independence." "'The order which will be followed in the attack will be as follows: The sharpshooters of Tondo and Santa Ana will begin the attack from without and these shots will be the signal for the militia of Troso Binondo, Quiata and Sampaloe to go out into the street and do their duty; those of Pake, Ermita and Malate, Santa Cruz and San Miguel will not start out until 12 o'clock unless they see that their companions need assistance. "'The militia of Tondo will start out at 3 o'clock in the morning; if all do their duty our revenge will be complete. Brothers, Europe contemplates us; we know how to die as men, shedding our blood in defense of the liberty of our country. Death to the tyrants. "'War without quarter to the false Americans who have deceived us. "'Either independence or death.'" There is not sufficient reason to assume that this paper setting forth an order to carry out a conspiracy of house burning and assassination is beyond belief. It is characteristic of the Filipino literature that relates to Americans. General Otis is a man whose communications may be relied upon absolutely. He is a believer in the exact truth and has shown exemplary care in stating it. The Filipino faction of warriors are habitually false, and wherever they have an agent, are circulating falsehoods manufactured to order. The Junta of the Aguinaldo pretenders, issued at Hongkong a statement as follows: "Information which has leaked through the Pinkertons, sent by President McKinley to investigate the shipment of arms to the Filipinos, shows that the first shipments to Aguinaldo were made by order of the American government, through Consul Wildman, hence the shipment per the Wing Foi. The American government subsequently telegraphed to cease this, coincident with the change of policy to annexation. "Mr. Wildman and Rear Admiral Dewey promised to pay, but have not yet paid, for a subsequent expedition by the Abbey, authorized by Admiral Dewey, who afterward seized the steamer, and it is still held. Papers respecting this are now in the possession of the Secretary of the Navy. "The protestations of Admiral Dewey and other Americans that they made no promises are ridiculous. In view of these facts let the American people judge how the nation's word of honor was pledged to the Filipinos and confided in by them, and violated by the recent treachery of General Otis." There may be an occasional member of Congress who cannot help believing this, but he does not allow his ignorance to be moderated by any ingredient of information. On the same day the above publication appeared there was given at Hongkong to the American Consul, Wildman, news of the "discovery of 20,000 rifles and 2,000,000 cartridges stored on lighters at Nankin by Filipinos and ready for shipment to the islands. The American Minister promptly induced the Chinese authorities to impound the munitions, thus inflicting a hard blow to Aguinaldo. "The extraordinary thing is that the Japanese government sold the arms to the regular agent of the Filipinos at Yokohama, although, for the sake of appearances, a form of auction was used. The Japanese officials, it develops, offered 100,000 rifles, with machinery for loading and ammunition, to the Filipinos in September. "Traitorous Americans here are aiding the insurgents to smuggle arms. Agoncillo's dispatches are leading the Filipinos to believe President McKinley intends to treat with them." The official correspondence of the American Consuls at Singapore, Manila and Hongkong with the State Department, proves that there was no treaty with Aguinaldo, no deception so far as our Government was concerned, and that he was a professor of Americanism, talking of annexation and a protectorate and his gratitude; and then a sulking and swollen little creature; as Wildman wrote, a spoiled child, requiring flatteries to keep him in a good humor. Admiral Dewey was very careful never to promise Aguinaldo anything--giving him some old guns and encouraging him to keep the Spaniards busy, but never presuming or allowing it to be assumed that he was speaking for our Government. By way of Seattle we have an extract of a letter written by an insurgent officer at Hongkong in these terms: "More than 25,000 families have left Manila since we began our war on the Americans. American soldiers are deserting and presenting themselves to our officers. In order to get the American troops who were ordered to Iloilo on board the transport many of the men had first been made drunk, others were embarked forcibly. They all protested against going, saying that they had come to fight Spaniards, not Filipinos. After the boat got under way the men mutinied. Many jumped overboard and swam ashore. Those who remained began to wreck all parts of the vessel." The intensity of the folly of the Filipinos making war upon the United States is on exhibition in this letter, and it is serviceable as a measure of their intelligence. It is with this equipment of elementary knowledge that Agoncillo is in Europe to solicit the intervention of the great powers for his country and asserts that he lost Dewey's letters in a shipwreck. He should exploit his mission in Madrid. It was on the nights of the 22nd and 23d of February that an effort was made by the Filipinos to burn Manila. The attempt to destroy property closely resembled in the stealthy preliminaries, and desperate strife to burn the city, the cunningly prepared first attack upon the American army, repulsed with a slaughter that has moved deeply the sympathies of our statesmen opposed to the administration of our Government the growth of the country and the public honor. The fact is they are sentimentalists in decay or degenerates running for a decline and fall. There was some fighting in the streets during the night, but the Americans quickly quelled the uprising. A number of the insurgents were killed and several American soldiers severely wounded. A large market place was the first to burn. Between six and seven hundred residences and business houses were destroyed. Fires started at several points simultaneously, and, spreading with great rapidity, resisted efforts to control them. Hundreds of homeless natives were huddled in the streets, making the patrol duty of the Americans difficult. The fire was started in three places. Native sharpshooters were concealed behind corner buildings. They shot at every American in sight. Flames burst forth simultaneously from Santa Cruz, San Nicolas and Tondo. From these points the fire spread. In a short time a great part of the city was burning. Notwithstanding the continual activity of the hidden sharpshooters the American garrison turned out and fought the fire. In many cases they had first to drive away the lurking assassins. No one of our troops was killed, but seven members of the Minnesota regiment ere wounded making a rush into the burning Tondo quarter. Captain C. Robinson of Company C was one of the wounded. The troops were rallied from some of the outlying encampments, quickly spread through all parts of the city and subdued what was evidently planned for a general uprising and massacre. The fire lasted all night. The native rebels in the city have been completely checked by the prompt work of General Otis and the other commanders. It is evident that the incendiaries and assassins believed that the entire town would be destroyed and with it the foreign residents and the American soldiers. General Otis telegraphed Adjutant-General Corbin February 23d: "Determined endeavors to burn city last night. Buildings fired in three different sections of city. Fires controlled by troops, after severe labor. "A considerable number of incendiaries shot and a few soldiers wounded. "Early this morning a large body of insurgents made a demonstration off MacArthur's front, near Caloocan, and were repulsed. Loss of property by fire last night probably $500,000." February 21st, 9:35 P. M.--"The natives of the village of Paco made a bold attempt last night to burn the quarters of the First Washington Volunteers by setting fire to the huts adjoining their quarters in the rear. "Fortunately the wind changed at the moment the fire was discovered, and, fanned by a stiff breeze, the flames spread in the opposite direction, destroying fully twenty shacks and houses opposite the ruins of the church. The incendiaries escaped. "Mysterious signals were frequently made along the enemy's lines during the night." From the high points in the city fires were seen in a dozen places, and a cloud of smoke hovered over the city, conveying the impression to people about the bay and in the outside districts that the whole city was burning. On the 21st of February the Nebraska troops drove a force of 300 insurgents three miles to Pasig. Twenty-one of them were found dead on the field and many more were believed to have been killed. The Americans had three wounded. A most serious problem confronts General Otis in the protection of Manila and the suburban towns from fire, not only because of the treacherous character of the rebel Filipinos, but also because outside of the business establishments the houses are built of the flimsiest bamboo, hung with matting screens. Even the floors are made of strips of bamboo, separated so as to allow the free circulation of air. It is within the power of almost any person to set fire to these houses from without or within in a few seconds, and, as they are closely built, the ravages of a single fire in a quarter so closely constructed might easily reach the $500,000 point mentioned by General Otis. The foreign quarter is of better construction, but still includes many of these light bamboo houses, which the older residents seem to find cooler than those of more solid construction. The walled town, which the insurgents threaten to burn, is said to be of substantial structures, and probably is more easily defended against such an attempt than any other section of the town. February 26th, 6:30 A. M., a dispatch was received from Colombo, Island of Colon, as follows: "The United States transport Grant, which sailed from New York for Manila January 19 with troops under command of Major-General Henry W. Lawton on board, arrived here to-day. General Lawton received a cablegram from Major-General Otis saying: "'Situation critical. Your early arrival necessary.' "He also received from General Corbin, United States Adjutant-General, a cable dispatch urging him to hurry. "General Lawton ordered his officers to buy supplies regardless of expense, and the transport is taking on coal and water hurriedly. She will try to reach Manila without further stop." March 4th a dispatch from General Lawton on the Grant at Singapore was received as follows: "Arrived here to-night. Will stop six hours for coal. Have no serious illness to report. Favorable conditions still continue. "We shall probably reach Manila early on morning of March 10. Have so informed Otis." This shows the strong impression the Manila news made in the War Department, of the attempt to burn the city, which was part of the announced plan of the insurgents. Filipino spies and sympathizers had been watched by the American troops day and night seeking to locate places of weakness. Many were captured. Some of them were disguised in women's clothing. Plots of all kinds were rife. There had been constant fear for weeks in the city that a massacre and conflagration would be attempted. General Otis warned his officers to be ever vigilant. Since the first battle our troops have guarded all quarters within the lines. The conclusion of the very serious phase of the incendiary period was announced by General Otis in this dispatch: "Manila, Feb. 24.--To Secretary of War, Washington: Scandia arrived last night. On nights 21st and 22d and yesterday morning insurgent troops gained access to outskirts of city behind our lines. Many in hiding and about 1,000 intrenched themselves. Completely routed yesterday, with loss of killed and wounded about 500 and 200 prisoners. Our loss was slight. City quiet, confidence restored, business progressing. _Otis_." On the afternoon of February 25th it was stated in a Manila cablegram that the military police had raided several suspected houses in various districts, capturing small bodies of twenty or thirty prisoners in each place. This and the 7 o'clock order effectually dispelled the fears of a threatened outbreak of the natives, who do not dare singly, or collectively, to appear on the streets after dark. The feeling in the city decidedly improved, although the Chinese were timorous. Hundreds of applicants for cedulus besiege the register's office, the natives apparently being under the impression that their possession insures them from interference and the ignominy of being searched for arms on the streets. There was a mystery lasting a day or two about this unusual cable communication: "Manila, Feb. 24.--To Secretary of Navy, Washington: For political reasons the Oregon should be sent here at once. _Dewey_." It was not a secret, however, in Manila Bay in August that Admiral Dewey wanted two battleships, just as he wanted and had needed two monitors, and that he then preferred the Oregon and the Iowa. He has deemed it of the utmost importance that he should have a force at Manila Bay superior to that of any other power. The German fleet had for a considerable part of the time since the destruction of the Spanish squadron been in a menacing attitude. The Germans were ostentatious in discourtesy during Admiral Diedrich's personal presence. The Congress of the United States that was so divided and distracted about the Philippine question was unanimous as to the pre-eminent merits as a naval commander of George Dewey, though he was the embodiment of all the anti-Americans railed at. This is the official paper that proclaims Dewey's promotion: "_President_ of the United States of America. "To All Who Shall See These Presents: Greeting: "Know ye, that, reposing special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor and fidelity and abilities of "_George Dewey_. I have nominated, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, do appoint him Admiral of the Navy from the second day of March, 1899, in the service of the United States. "He is, therefore, carefully and diligently to discharge the duties of Admiral by doing and performing all manner of duties thereto belonging. "And I do strictly charge and require all officers, seamen and marines under his command to be obedient to his orders as Admiral. "And he is to observe and follow such orders and directions from time to time as he shall receive from me or the future President of the United States of America. "Given under my hand at Washington the second day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine, and in the one hundred and twenty-third year of the independence of the United States. "By the President: _William M'Kinley_. "_John D. Long_, Secretary of the Navy." The Admiral personally responded, cabling to the Secretary of the Navy: "Manila, March 4.--Please accept for yourself, the President and Congress and my countrymen my heartfelt thanks for the great honor which has been conferred upon me. _Dewey_." He will draw from the Government $14,700 a year, including allowances, and is entitled to a larger staff. His direct pay is $13,000 per annum, a rise of $7,000. He outranks any officer in the United States army, the fact being that Rear Admirals rank with the Major-Generals, who are the highest officers at present in the army, and Dewey is a full Admiral. This is the result of not being afraid of torpedoes or to risk ships in front of shore batteries. On the 3rd of March the President nominated Brigadier-General Elwell S. Otis, U.S.A., to be Major-General by brevet, to rank from February 4, 1899, for military skill and most distinguished service in the Philippine Islands. The nomination was confirmed by the Senate. Secretary Alger sent the following congratulatory message to General Otis: "You have been nominated and confirmed a Major-General by brevet in the Regular Army. The President wishes this message of congratulations sent you, in which I cordially join." The Spanish way of dealing with unfortunate officers appears in this: "Madrid, Friday.--Admiral Montojo, who was in command of the Spanish squadron destroyed by Admiral Dewey in the battle of Manila Bay, and the commander of the Cavite arsenal were this evening incarcerated in the military prison pending trial for their conduct at Manila. Admiral Cervera has also been imprisoned, along with General Linares, the two men in the Spanish service who gave the Americans trouble. The Colon Gazette on the 23d of February publishes extracts from a private letter dated Iloilo, January 12, that prior to the conclusion of peace Lieutenant Brandeis, formerly of the Twenty-first Baden Dragoons, with 800 Spanish troops, held the town against 20,000 to 30,000 Filipinos, who were monkeying about and assuming to be conducting a siege, just as the Aguinaldo crowd was doing at Manila when General Merritt arrived. When peace was declared the Iloilo Spaniards presently surrendered and the Filipinos rushed in as conquering heroes. The pacific policy of the President prevented the United States troops from taking the place from the swarm of islanders until the outbreak in front of Manila, when our strict defensive was unavailable and General Miller quietly occupied and possessed Iloilo, the important sugar-exporting town of the Philippines. The natives of the Island of Negros sent a delegation to General Miller, after he had captured Iloilo, to offer their allegiance to the United States, and the General holds Jaro and Molo, where there has been skirmishing recently. The insurgents have 2,000 men at Santa Barbara. The governor of Camarines, in the interior of Luzon, has issued a proclamation declaring that the Americans intend to make the Filipinos slaves. March 4th the United States cruiser Baltimore arrived at Manila having on board the civil members of the United States Philippine Commission. On the same day the rebels of the village of San Jose fired on the United States gunboat Bennington and the warship shelled that place and other suburbs of Manila in the afternoon. At daylight General Wheaton's outposts discovered a large body of rebels attempting to cross the river for the purpose of re-enforcing the enemy at Guadalupe. A gunboat advanced under a heavy fire and poured shot into the jungle on both sides of the river and shelled the enemy's position at Guadalupe, effectually but temporarily scattering the rebels. The enemy's loss was heavy. American loss, one killed and two wounded. General Otis cabled: "The transport Senator just arrived; troops in good health. One casualty, accidental drowning. _Otis_." The Senator carried Companies A, B, C, D, H and K of the Twenty-second Infantry and sailed from San Francisco on February 1. The remainder of this regiment arrived at Manila on the transport Ohio, which followed the Senator. The transport Valentia sailed from San Francisco March 4th, carrying in addition to 150 soldiers, stores and supplies, $1,500,000 to pay the soldiers now in the Philippines. March 3d general order No. 30 was issued from the Adjutant-General's office, War Department of the United States: "The following regiments will be put in readiness for service in the Philippine Islands without delay, the movement to take place from time to time under instructions to be communicated hereafter: Sixth Artillery, Sixth Infantry, Ninth Infantry, Thirteenth Infantry, Sixteenth Infantry and Twenty-first Infantry. "The following troops will he put in readiness for early departure for station in Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands: "Twenty-fourth Infantry, one field officer and four companies; one company from Fort Douglas, Utah, and three companies from Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming. "The department commanders are charged with the preparation of their commands for these movements. The Quartermaster-General will make timely arrangements for the transportation of the various commands. The Commissary-General of Subsistence and the Surgeon-General will make necessary provision for proper subsistence and medical supplies and attendance." This means that our army at Manila will he re-enforced by 6,000 regulars. Recent advices show that Aniceto Lanson, President of Negros Island, called on General Otis with his fellow-delegates, Pose De Luzuriago, President of Negros Congress; Gosebio Luzuriago, Secretary of Finance, and Deputy Andries Azcoule. They assured General Otis of the hearty support of the Visayas except those few who have been stirred into revolt by the agents of Aguinaldo on the Island of Panay. The government of Negros, they declared, was in favor of American rule, and there was no adverse sentiment whatever among the natives. The stars and stripes are now floating over all the official buildings on the island. The commission offered to raise an army of 100,000 Visayans to fight the Tagalos on the Island of Luzon. The commissioners represent large sugar-interests in Negros. The Negros Island deputation was greatly pleased with its reception. Admiral Dewey's flag as a full American Admiral was saluted becomingly by all the warships of foreign nations at Manila, even including the Germans, who had not until then showed the Americans any significant courtesy. The English led the function with an Admiral's salute. There was no novelty in this, for they long ago in every friendly way recognized Manila as an American port. The Germans have given signal manifestation of their desire to promote the most cordial relations between Germany and the United States by ordering the withdrawal of all vessels of their navy from Philippine waters and placing the lives and property of their subjects there under the protection of the United States Government. A Hongkong dispatch of February 28 contained this information: "Professors Schurman and Worcester to-day, after a long consultation with Wildman, who is looked upon as one of the best-posted men in the Orient in regard to Philippine affairs, expressed themselves as satisfied with the outlook. "They are especially pleased with the action of President McKinley in restoring to the wealthy Cortes family the great estates illegally confiscated by the Spaniards. "'It is good politics,' said a leading member of the Hongkong colonial cabinet to-day. 'It will seal to America every Filipino who possesses property. It is the hardest blow Aguinaldo has suffered.'" Admiral Dewey is strengthened by gunboats enough to keep out the Filipino supplies of arms picked up in Asia, and Congress may not be making a noise agreeable to our enemies for the rest of this year. There is compensation in the omission. There will be no European or American interference in the process of pacificating the military faction of Filipinos, who are ungrateful and murderous, during the rest of the last year of the century. Hugh Brown, an Englishman, who arrived at Hongkong from Manila February 11, gives in detail evidence of the conspiracy of the insurgent swarms in attacking the American army. He was at a circus where there were no natives when our soldiers were called out. They behaved nobly, disarming natives, but not killing them. There was mysterious shooting going on in the city "when an American shell struck a tree 200 yards away, and four natives dropped to the ground. The trees were found to be full of hiding natives, using smokeless powder." Aguinaldo was fifty miles away and telegraphed Admiral Dewey that he was not to blame, and for God's sake to stop the firing of the fleet. Captain Frazer of London, late of the Imperial British forces, arrived at Vancouver direct from Hongkong March 8th, and gave this account of the declining health of Admiral Dewey: "The war at Manila will have to end soon or the life of the great American Admiral will be worth nothing. "I dined with him at Manila within a month, and am convinced that if he is not relieved of the terrible strain imposed upon him he cannot last a month longer. As he sat at the banquet table, surrounded by his staff, he looked to me like a dying man. His hair is snowy white, his face ashen, and he ate hardly anything. "I had the pleasure of a few minutes' conversation with him when we retired to the smoking-room. Having in mind his enfeebled appearance., I asked him if he thought of returning to America soon. "'I would like to, but my work is by no means finished here. When it is, and only then, will I return.' "I am thoroughly convinced that only the Admiral's indomitable will has kept him up so long. The strain on him is terrible, and the climatic conditions have reduced him to a shadow. "One of his officers said to me just before I left Manila: "'The war will be ended by the Admiral soon or it will end him. No man can stand such a strain as he does in this climate and live long.'" If this is to be literally accepted, and we may hope that it is overstated, there has been a distressingly unfavorable change within five months in the Admiral. His trouble is said to be with his liver. There is no question the strain upon him has been more wearing than the public have realized. Last summer his anxieties afflicted him with insomnia at night, and he has not for a day since he left Hongkong in April been free from burdens of harrassing care. His last words on the deck of the China to the Author of this Book were that the President had invited him to go home and counsel with him, but he had written the substance of what he held to be the way to deal with the Philippines, and would not leave Manila Bay "without peremptory orders to go, until all things here are settled--settled--settled," a characteristic repetition of the important word. He had already stated he wanted "two battleships" and the Oregon and Iowa were accordingly ordered to join him. Instead of anticipating pleasure from the ovations that thousands of letters and all callers assure him he could not avoid in this country he sincerely dreads them, and when told what the inevitable was whenever he put his foot on his native shore he said: "That would be very distasteful to me." He is human, and, of course, not insensible of the boundless compliment of the endless enthusiasm of the public regarding him, but he habitually insists that every man in his fleet did his duty on the day of battle and victory, and it would be "injustice to brave men if one man got all the glory." The Admiral knows the President's invitation to him to come home is a standing one, and no limit on it, but the sense of duty of the Admiral, in whose judgment there is perfect confidence, forbids. The information of his declining health will certainly result in his recall overruling his personal feeling and official purpose, if it is believed that there is danger he is sacrificing himself. NOTES [1] In another chapter of this story of the Philippines will be found Senor Filipe Agoncillo's personal account of this affair. [2] Principally to Singapore. [3] Principally to Japan. [4] Principally to Singapore. [5] Tagalo.--Name of one of the tribes of Indians inhabiting the Philippine Islands.--Trans. Note. [6] Tinapa.--Small white-bait fish, which, mixed with rice, constitutes the daily diet of the lower class of natives in the Philippine Islands.--Trans. Note. [7] Gallego.--Native of Galicia, northwestern Province in Spain. On account of their healthy and robust constitution, the lower class of Gallego are found employed in the hardest work throughout the country, where physical strength is necessary, although they are considered slow and lazy. Their predominant characteristic seems to be an insatiable greed of hoarding money.--Trans. Note. [8] Cataluna.--Province of Spain, which capital is Barcelona.--Trans. Note. [9] This account of Magellan is from Antonio de Marga's rare volume published in Mexico. 
38139	----	Etext transcriber's note: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected; the original orthography, including variation in the spelling of names, has been retained. The Index included at the end of this etext (which includes volumes 1 thru 4) appears at the end of volume four of The History of Cuba. It is provided here for the convenience of the reader. [Illustration: JOSÉ CIPRIANO DE LA LUZ "The Socrates of Cuban youth," as he has often been called, José Cipriano de la Luz y Caballero was born in Havana on July 11, 1799, and was educated at the Convent of San Francisco, the University of Havana, and the San Carlos Seminary where he was a pupil of his uncle, José Agustin Caballero, and of Felix Varela. Later he travelled and studied in the United States and Europe. In Germany he became intimately associated with Baron Humboldt. Returning to Cuba in 1831, he gave himself to the task of improving and promoting the educational interests of his country. In 1843 he revisited Europe, but was recalled the following year to answer an absurdly false charge of being implicated in the Negro Conspiracy. He then founded and until his death conducted his famous school of El Salvador, in which for a generation many of the foremost Cubans were educated, and in which manhood and patriotism were ever the foremost items of the curriculum. He was the author of a number of standard educational works. He died on June 22, 1862.] THE HISTORY OF CUBA BY WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON A.M., L.H.D. Author of "A Century of Expansion," "Four Centuries of the Panama Canal," "America's Foreign Relations" Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign Relations in New York University _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ VOLUME THREE NEW YORK B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, INC. 156 FIFTH AVENUE 1920 Copyright, 1920, BY CENTURY HISTORY CO. _All rights reserved_ ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL London, England. PRINTED IN U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I--1 Conditions at the Beginning of the Era of Revolution--Cuba's Commercial Backwardness--Resources Unappreciated--Statistics of Imports and Exports--The Sugar Trade--Burdensome Taxes and Tariffs--Restrictions on Personal Liberty--Obstacles to Travel--Titles of Nobility--The Intendent and His Powers--Authority and Functions of the Captain-General--District Governments--Municipal Organization--The Courts--Control of the Navy--Censorship of the Press--Adversion to Foreigners, Particularly to Americans. CHAPTER II--23 Narciso Lopez and His Career--His Valor in the Venezuelan Wars--A Soldier of Spain--Some Daring Exploits--With the Spanish Army in Cuba--His Distinguished Career in Spain--A Leader Against the Carlists--General and Senator--Important Office in Cuba--Alienation from Spain--First Plans for Cuban Revolution. CHAPTER III--37 Betrayal of Lopez's First Revolutionary Venture--His Flight to New York--Cuban Juntas in the United States--Lopez's Negotiations with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee--Unofficial American Aid--Strained American Relations with Spain--Official Warnings Against Filibustering--An Elaborate Expedition Prepared by Lopez in the United States for the Freeing of Cuba--His Proclamation to His Followers--The Voyage to Cuba. CHAPTER IV--49 The Landing of Lopez at Cardenas--The Flag of Cuba Libre for the First Time Unfurled on Cuban Soil--Parleying and Fighting at Cardenas--Spanish Treachery--Failure of the Cuban People to Rally to the Support of Lopez--Retreat and Reembarcation of the Expedition--Mutiny of the Crew--Landing at Key West--Spanish Wrath Against the United States--Arrest of Lopez and His Comrades--Their Release. CHAPTER V--62 Administration of Concha and His Recall--Second Expedition of Lopez Recruited in the United States--Men and Money Provided in the South--Betrayal of the Scheme--Proclamation of the Captain-General--Disturbances in Cuba--Third Expedition of Lopez Organized--Aguero's Attempt at Revolution at Puerto Principe--His Proclamation--Initial Victories Over the Spaniards--A Fatal Mistake--Suppression of the Revolution by Overwhelming Numbers--Execution of the Leaders--Suppression of Other Uprisings. CHAPTER VI--91 Another Expedition Organized by Lopez--Its Roster--Departure from New Orleans--Colonel Crittenden--Arrival at Key West--The Landing in Cuba--Lack of Cuban Support--Fatal Division of Forces--Desperate Fighting with Spaniards--Crittenden's Mistake--Capture of the Revolutionists by the Spaniards--Indignities and Tortures--Fifty-Two Put to Death--Heroism of Crittenden--Ill Fortune of Lopez--Betrayal and Capture of Lopez and His Comrades--His Death on the Scaffold. CHAPTER VII--116 Failure and Success of Lopez--Irrepressible Determination of Cuba to Be Free--Crisis in the Affairs of Spain--Animosity Between Creoles and Spaniards--Expressions of Cuban Sentiment and Determination--Profound Impression Produced in the United States--Opposing Views of Pro-Slavery and Anti-Slavery Men--Attitude of Great Britain and France--Anti-Spanish Outbreak in New Orleans--Webster's Diplomacy--England and France Warned Not to Meddle in Cuba--Spain's Appeal to England Against America--Tripartite Pact Refused. CHAPTER VIII--132 American Overtures for the Purchase of Cuba--Some Early Diplomacy--Change of Policy Under President Polk--Spain's Refusal to Consider Sale--Pierre Soule's Extraordinary Negotiations--The Black Warrior Controversy--Soule's Humiliation--The Ostend Manifesto--Marcy's Shrewd Disposition of It--Buchanan's Futile Persistence. CHAPTER IX--145 Revolution in Peninsular Spain--General Prim's Proclamations--General Response Throughout the Kingdom--Serrano's Entry Into Madrid--Flight of the Queen--Republican Government Established--Downfall of Maximilian in Mexico--Change in American Attitude Toward Cuba Because of the Civil War and Abolition of Slavery--Organization of the Spanish "Volunteers" in Cuba--The Moret Anti-Slavery Law--Cuban Interest in the Spanish Revolution. CHAPTER X--155 Cuban Independence Proclaimed at the Outbreak of the Ten Years' War--Provisional Government Organized--Carlos Manuel Cespedes--Proclamation of Emancipation--Representative Government Formed--Cespedes's Address--The First Cuban Constitution--The House of Representatives--Presidential Proclamation--Proclamation of General Quesada--Proclamation of Count Valmaseda--Request for Recognition--The "Juntas of the Laborers"--Cuban Government and Laws--Organization of the Cuban Army. CHAPTER XI--180 Beginning of Hostilities--Comparative Strengths of the Cuban and Spanish Armies--The Spanish Navy--Pacific Measures First Tried by Captain-General Dulce--Their Rejection by the Cubans--The First Engagements--Cuban Victories--Destruction of Bayamo--Revolts in Many Places--Murder of Cespedes's Messenger by Volunteers--Guerilla Warfare--Havana in a State of Siege--Progress of the Insurrection Throughout the Island--Dulce's Change of Policy--Sympathy and Aid for the Revolution from the United States. CHAPTER XII--200 An Appeal to the United States for Recognition--President Grant Overruled by His Secretary of State--Americans Stirred by News of Spanish Cruelties--Cuban Disappointment at Non-Recognition--Progress of the War--Spanish Reenforcements--Liberation of Slaves--Spanish Successes--Controversies with the United States--Destruction of Property--Arrival of General Jordan with Supplies--Dulce Forced Out of Office by the Volunteers--Accession of Rodas and His Decrees--The "Butcher of Cadiz"--American Protests Against Interference with Commerce--Proposals of Mediation--More Aid from the United States. CHAPTER XIII--225 Great Increase of Revolutionary Strength--Spain's Enormous Force--The Case of Napoleon Arango--His Extraordinary Manifesto--An Elaborate Appeal for Betrayal of the Revolution--Designing Decrees of Rodas--Emancipation Decree of the Spanish Government--Its Practical Effects--Atrocities Practised by the Spanish--Downfall of Rodas and Appointment of Valmaseda as Captain-General--Spanish Overtures to the United States--Murder of Zenea by the Volunteers--Address by Cespedes--Treachery in the Ranks. CHAPTER XIV--259 Counter-Revolution in Spain--Amadeus Made King--Increased Malignity of the Volunteers--The Massacre of the Cuban Students--Death of General Quesada--Reorganization of the Cuban Army--Campaign of Maximo Gomez--Progress of the War with Varying Fortunes--Calixto Garcia at Jiguani--Gradual Reduction of Cuban Strength--Valmaseda's Savage Threats. CHAPTER XV--271 Spain's Desperate Efforts to Suppress the Revolution--Stubborn Resistance of the Cubans--Valmaseda Opposed and Overthrown by the Volunteers--Accession of Jovellar--Increasing Interest in Cuban Affairs in the United States--Spain a Republic Again--Retirement of Cespedes--The Seizure of the _Virginius_--Massacre of Many of Her Passengers and Crew--Strenuous Intervention--Settlement of the Affair--"The Book of Blood"--Spanish Confessions of Brutality. CHAPTER XVI--289 Renewed Cuban Successes--The Island in a State of Siege--Concha Again Captain-General--Record of the Cost of the War--The United States Threatens Intervention--Spanish Anger--A Protest to England Against America--American Peace Proposals--Strength of the Spanish Army--A War of Extermination--Martinez Campos Becomes Captain-General--His Conciliatory Decrees--Surrender of Cuban Leaders--The Treaty of Zanjon--End of the War--Campos's Explanation of His Course. CHAPTER XVII--305 Results of the Ten Years' War--Political Parties in Cuba--The Liberals, Who Were Conservative--The Union Constitutionalists--A Third Party Platform--Cubans in the Cortes--Failure to Fulfill the Treaty of Zanjon--The Little War--Calixto Garcia's Campaign--Cuban Fugitives Protected by England--Revolt of 1885--Custom House Frauds at Havana--A Reign of Lawlessness--Tariff Troubles--The Roster of Rulers. CHAPTER XVIII--315 The Intellectual and Spiritual Development of Cuba--Some Famous Cuban Authors--José Maria Heredia--Felix Varela y Morales--José de la Luz y Caballero, "The Father of the Cuban Revolution"--Domingo del Monte and the "Friends of Peace"--José Antonio Saco--Joaquin Lorenzo Luaces--Dona Luisa Perez--Dona Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda--Nicolas Azcarate--Juan Clemente Zenea--Rafael Merchan--The Distinguished Intellectual Status of Cuba Among the Nations. ILLUSTRATIONS FULL PAGE PLATES _José_ Cipriano de la Luz y Caballero _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE The Old Presidential Palace 14 Falls of the Hanebanilla 110 Carlos Manuel de Cespedes 158 Ignacio Agramonte 258 Calixto Garcia 268 A Santiago Sunset 280 José Silverio Jorrin 308 José Maria Heredia 318 Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda 332 TEXT EMBELLISHMENTS PAGE Narciso Lopez 23 Ramon Pinto 62 Manuel Quesada 167 Francisco V. Aguilera 173 Bernabe de Varona 178 Miguel de Aldama 204 Domingo Goicouria 234 Nicolas Azcarate 251 Juan Clemente Zenea 252 Salvador Cisneros Betancourt 276 Felipe Poey 315 Antonio Bachiller 317 Felix Varela 320 José Agustin Caballero 321 Domingo del Monte 323 José Jacinto Milanes 324 José Manuel Mestre 326 Luisa Perez de Zambrana 328 Joaquin Lorenzo Luaces 330 Enrique Piñeyro 334 THE HISTORY OF CUBA CHAPTER I The revolutionary era in Cuban history had its rise amid circumstances of both political and commercial dissatisfaction and protest, and it is by no means impossible nor even improbable that the latter form of discontent was the more potent of the two. The commercial and industrial development of the island, despite its almost incredibly opulent resources, had been very slow, because handicapped by selfish and sordid misgovernment. The typical attitude of the Peninsular government and its agents in Cuba had been to use and to exploit the island for the sole benefit of Spain, and not to permit other nations to enter in competition. Other countries, in fact, so great was the secrecy maintained with regard to Cuba, knew but little of the vast wealth contained in this small space of land. Consequently the island was developed in accordance with the wishes, needs, and potentialities of Spain and with one other point of view. Cuba was never exploited by Spain for all its worth, and indeed there seems to be doubt as to whether Spain ever grasped in full the future possibilities of the island. Certain it is that she never actually realized them. And the loss was in consequence as great to Spain as it was to Cuba. For had Spain allowed herself to lose sight of the richness of present extortions and aided Cuba to develop her resources for the future, the whole story would have been far different. But the people of the United States were beginning to recognize Cuba's possibilities. American merchants began to flock thither. American money and American resourcefulness opened new doors for Cuba's rich products. American trade and enterprise contributed a great deal which made for Cuban expansion and industrial development. In proof of this there is the fact that the island towns on the north side, which is nearest the United States, increased both in population and commercially, in striking contrast to the slow growth of the towns on the south side of the island. In 1850 these latter towns, with Santiago de Cuba as the chief city, did not maintain more than twenty-five per cent. of the trade of the island. In further proof of America's hand in the development of Cuba, we may cite the following tables, in every one of which it is easy to see that Cuba's trade was largely with the United States. Taking the records of Cuban trade in 1828 as typical of the commerce of the early part of the century, we get the following contrasts with the figures of the years immediately preceding 1850: Cuban imports in 1828, $19,534,922; exports, $13,414,362; revenue, $9,086,406. Cuban imports in 1847, $32,389,117; exports, $27,998,770; revenues, $12,808,713. Cuban imports in 1848, $20,346,516; exports, $20,461,934; revenue, $11,635,052. These statistics of the imports and exports of Cuba are divided according to the chief countries concerned: 1847 Imports Exports United States $10,892,335 $8,880,040 Spain 7,088,750 6,780,058 England 6,389,936 7,240,880 France 1,349,683 1,940,535 1848 United States $6,933,538 $8,285,928 Spain 7,088,750 3,927,007 England 4,974,545 1,184,201 Entries and clearings of vessels from Cuba were as follows: 1847 1848 Entries Clearances Entries Clearances United States 2,012 1722 1733 1611 Spain 819 751 875 747 England 563 489 670 348 France 99 81 85 63 Copper was at this time greatly exported from Cuba. Since its discovery in 1530 comparatively little had been done until three centuries later. In 1830 an English company commenced operating the copper mines and from that time to 1870 had extracted this ore to the value of $50,000,000. Sugar had long been the greatest source of Cuban wealth. It was always the sugar planter who had social as well as financial prestige on the island. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century even the poorest and smallest of sugar plantations had yielded a profit of $100,000 a year while the larger and more prosperous ones had cleared even as high as $200,000 annually. And all this had been accomplished with a minimum of effort. Vast areas of Cuba at this period were given over to these plantations. Some estates devoted themselves exclusively to raising the cane, while others ran mills which ground the cane and prepared the product for sale as sugar. Particularly with the soil as it was then, unravished by revolution, with its original fertility unimpaired, it was rarely necessary to replant the sugar cane. The old sprouts came up year after year, yielding at least two crops a year without any necessity for disturbing or enriching the soil. In 1800 Cuba exported 41,000 tons of sugar; and in 1850 no less than 223,000 tons. From 1836 Cuba had no representation in the Cortes. Although Spain had promised Cuba "special laws," these were not enacted, and such laws as were put on the books were inimical to Cuban interests. Without representation, Cubans were also denied free speech. To speak one's mind against Spain meant to be thrown into a dungeon. If two or more persons signed a petition to secure some slight betterment in conditions, it was termed treason, and they were promptly apprehended. Business was under control of the Captain-General. It had to pay him large sums to be allowed to live, and it was compelled to conduct its affairs in accordance with his ideas. The "Junta de Fomento" established by Arango was no longer a factor in the improvement of Cuban affairs, but was packed with creatures of the Captain-General, with favorites of the court, and was used as a means of obtaining information and extorting money from Cubans who were suspected of disloyalty to Spain. The public offices were used to support additional taxation, and to strengthen the despotic rule of the Captain-General. Under the decree of 1825 the Captains-General had taken unto themselves the most autocratic power. Creoles were not allowed to serve in the army, or in the treasury, customs or judicial departments. From these last three they were excluded because such positions were lucrative, and were desired by court favorites. The Captains-General financed and fostered all kinds of nefarious schemes for extracting wealth from the Cubans to pour it into their own pockets. The poor people were obliged to police the rural districts, and to give up their own occupations to work on the roads making repairs. The control of education in Cuba was given--it hardly seems credible--into the hands of the military functionaries to administer. The Spanish military authorities had a well-organized system of blackmailing well to do citizens by threatening to denounce them for sedition unless they paid hush money, which was put at as large a sum as possible. Of course it did not matter whether the victim was guilty or innocent. If the latter he would have no opportunity of clearing himself. The only thing which the robbers took into consideration was how much he could pay. Money was the open sesame for prison doors, and the barrier which prevented their closing on the unfortunate Cuban. Yet one would think he would have little left for bribery when he had paid his taxes, for the subject of taxation was after all the most grievous one, and was a direct cause of the various filibustering expeditions which attempted to gain freedom for Cuba, and finally led to the war of independence. The revenues from all sources, including export and import duties, license fees, and the government lottery, for the year 1851 were $12,248,712.06, which amounted to a tax of $20 for each free citizen. The excess duties had a very deleterious effect on the commerce of Cuba. The duty on goods shipped direct from Spain to Cuba was so much less than the duty on goods shipped from other countries that it became the custom to ship materials from the United States to Spain and from Spain back to Cuba, since this cost less than a direct shipment. The direct shipments of flour from the United States to Cuba decreased from 113,245 barrels in 1826 to 100 barrels in 1852, while the imports of flour from Spain, who could hardly produce enough for her own needs, increased from 31,749 barrels to 257,451 barrels in the same time. Of course, this was the golden opportunity for the smuggler, who could slip across from Florida and run his boat into one of the hundreds of little coves with which the coast of Cuba is lined. Cubans might have more cheerfully rendered their tribute in taxes, but unfortunately the huge sums were not expended for the good of their country. An extravagant government had to be supported. In 1850 the cost of maintaining the army and all expenses in connection with it were over $5,000,000 and the navy cost more than $2,000,000, while the Spanish legation in the United States was maintained from Cuban coffers. Writing of such a state of affairs, José Antonio Saco said in 1835: "Enormous is the load of taxation which weighs upon us--perhaps there is no people in the world which in proportion to its resources and population pays as much as the island of Cuba, nor a country, perhaps, where less care is taken to use on its own soil some part of its great sacrifices." In 1851 the duty on sugar was raised from 50 cents a box to 87-1/2 cents. Flour and hogs were more heavily taxed than any other imports. Hogs carried a duty of six dollars each, while the tax on flour was so enormous as to prevent its use by any but the very wealthiest inhabitants. Foreign flour was discriminated against in favor of Spanish flour; on the former the duty was $10 a barrel while on the latter it was increased from $2.50 to $6 a barrel. The records show there importations of flour to Cuba: 1847 1848 From Spain 175,870 bbls. 212,944 bbls. From America 59,373 bbls. 18,175 bbls. ------- ------- Total 235,243 bbls. 231,119 bbls. Spain was favored in other ways in these taxes. Spanish vessels were taxed only one-seventh of one per cent. on imports, while foreign vessels were taxed 1.1 per cent, on the same goods. Nor were these taxes the only ones which the people had to undergo. One of the most pernicious of all taxes was the 1/10 of all farm produce which was given to the church. The result of this tax was indirectly bad as well as unjust, for it fostered a kind of priest in Cuba who could do little for the moral and spiritual welfare of the people. The following table shows the revenue of the island in 1849-51: Import Export Other Duties Duties Revenues Total 1849 $5,844,783 $ 584,477 $4,782,226 $11,211,526 1850 5,639,225 757,071 3,655,149 10,051,443 1851 6,364,825 1,793,992 4,821,195 12,180,012 The currency of Cuba was gold and silver; and in 1842 she had a total amount in her treasury of $12,000,000 in coin. An official statement compiled in 1844 lists a few of the taxes, and gives some interesting figures as to the amounts collected. The Cubans were taxed six per cent. of the selling price, on all sales of real estate, or slaves, and on sales at auction and in shop. They were also taxed on Papal Bulls, and there were brokers' taxes, cattle taxes, shopkeepers' taxes, tax on mortgages, tax on donations, tax on cockfighting, taxes on grants of crosses, insignia or use of uniforms; taxes on promissory notes or bills of exchange, taxes on municipal taxes, taxes on the death of all non-insolvent persons, taxes on investments in favor of the clergy; the church did not escape, for there were taxes on the property of the Jesuits. There were also taxes on sales of public lands, taxes on the establishments of auctioneers, and taxes on everything sold, water canal taxes, and customhouse duties on imports and exports and the tonnage of vessels. Cubans were not only taxed on the sale of lands, but of course on the land itself, and there were state and municipal taxes, and they were taxed on their cattle and all animals whether they kept them or sold them. Passports were taxed, and as Cuba had a large transient population this tax brought in a goodly sum. Public offices were privately sold to the highest bidder. There were taxes on the sale of archives to notaries for the recording of deeds. Small fines were being constantly imposed by grafting officials, and the Captain-General's tribunal exacted a special fee, which brought in large sums. Fees were demanded for marriages, both by the church and the state. There was an inheritance tax; there were tolls imposed on bridges; and large amounts were extorted for the nomination to office of captains of districts, city ward commissaries, and watchmen; gambling was licensed; and there were the taxes on sugar, on pastures, on coffee and tobacco, and on minerals exported. The tax on all crops, except sugar, when gathered was ten per cent. There was a tax of $1.25 on every hundred weight of salt. Government documents were required to be written on special paper, furnished by the government at a high price. Worse than all this were the restrictions placed on personal liberty. No private individual of a hospitable nature was allowed to give an entertainment to his friends, even a small evening gathering, without obtaining a license, for which he paid. If he neglected to do this he was fined, and sometimes the license was declared invalid on some pretext and he was fined anyway. No Cuban could move from place to place, or go on even a short journey, without obtaining a license. If a man wanted to make an evening call on a friend, he could not do so unless he carried a lantern, and obtained from each watchman whom he passed permission to proceed. If he failed to comply, he was arrested and fined $8. He could not entertain a guest in his house over night, not even a neighbor, without informing the authorities, under penalty of a heavy fine. The household goods of a Cuban could not be moved from one house to another in the same town without the consent of the authorities, and the penalty for failure in this case was a fine. The cost of a passport, which was necessary before a foreigner could enter any port in Cuba, and the proceeds of which went into the treasury, was $2. The traveller was also obliged to give security for good conduct, and his baggage was thoroughly searched. Particular care was taken to see that he did not have any incendiary literature, and if he had a Bible, which must have been considered a dangerous book, and which, at any rate, came under the ban of both the church and the government, it was promptly separated from his other effects and seized. Unless he desired to remain in the seaport where he entered, he was required to pay twenty-five cents more for a passport permitting him to visit the interior. It seems to have been difficult enough to get into Cuba, but like the proverbial church fair, it was even more expensive to get out, for the privilege cost $7.50. Some authorities estimate that the taxes of Cuba averaged in 1850 $38 a head, while in the United States, a republic and the nearest neighbor, they amounted to only about $2. But then the people of the United States were free, and were not paying tribute for the privilege of being governed by royalty. The greater part of these taxes were exacted from the Creoles, for the Spaniards made up only about 35,000 of the population and there were estimated to be 520,000 Creoles at this period. A large number of families came to Cuba from the Spanish colonies of South America and Mexico, which had gained their independence from Spain, and from Florida and Louisiana when they came into the possession of the United States. These families were, of course, all intensely loyal to Spain, and of the arrogant disposition which naturally prevailed among men of such tendencies as led them to prefer the autocracy of Spain to American democracy. In spite of this increase in their number, the native white or Creole population of Cuba outnumbered the Spanish by more than 10 to 1. In 1850 among the Cubans themselves there were 50 marquises and 30 counts. These men were in the main wealthy planters who had bought their titles from Spain for sums varying between twenty and fifty thousand dollars. The fundamental reason for this expenditure on their part was not wholly for social prestige but rather to enjoy the greater personal freedom accorded to nobles. These latter could never be tried by ordinary courts but only by tribunals, and they could not be arrested for debt. Those Cubans who were hoping for better days for Cuba were eager that their children should have opportunities not accorded them. They desired to send them to the United States for education, in the hope perhaps that they might imbibe some of the principles of liberty. But this did not find favor with the Spanish authorities, and it was only by swearing that the children were ill, that the climate did not agree with them, and that they were being sent away for their health, that passports could be obtained to get them out of the country. Many Cubans were persecuted by officials, high and low, falsely accused, condemned without a hearing; shut up in fortresses without adequate food, without the ordinary comforts of life, in solitary confinement, often in dungeons; and frequently their own people were denied knowledge of their whereabouts. They simply dropped out of sight and were gone. No man knew when he opened his eyes in the morning whether that day might be his last as a free human being--free so far as he might be with the thousand and one restrictions imposed upon him. He was not sure that some enemy, unwittingly made, might not inform upon him for some imaginary action of disloyalty, or that he might not be falsely denounced by hired spies. It was then no wonder that those who loved their country, who had self-respect and affection for their families, longed for freedom from Spain, and lived in the hope of emancipation from what was virtual slavery. Under the Spanish rule the chief officer of government in Cuba was the Captain-General, who after the promulgation of the decree of May 25, 1825, had absolute authority. Even prior to that time, because of the long distance between Cuba and the mother country, the time consumed for information and instructions to travel back and forth, and the fact that Spain was more or less concerned with her own none too quiet domestic affairs, the Captain-General was very powerful. There was another office under the crown which was much sought after, that of Intendant. He controlled the financial affairs of the island, and received his orders not from the Captain-General but direct from the crown. In his own realm his power was equal to that of the Captain-General, but he had no authority outside his own particular domain. The title of Intendant was changed to Superintendent, in 1812, at which time the financial business of Cuba had become so important that it was impossible for it to be handled from one place, and subordinate officers were placed in command at Santiago and Puerto Principe, subject of course to the direction of the Superintendent. It is needless to say that the arrogant Spanish Captains-General did not relish having anyone on the island who equalled them in rank, and after much controversy at home and abroad the Captain-General in 1844 was declared to be the superior officer, and later on, in 1853, the two offices were united, under the title of Captain-General. The Superintendent was head or chief of a "Tribunal de Cuentas" which had judicial control over the treasury and its officers, was auditor in chief of all accounts, and voted on all expenditures. Its rulings were reviewed only by the Minister of Finance in Madrid, to whose direction it was subject. The Captain-General was the presiding officer of the City Council which had charge of the civic administration of Havana, but he had only one vote, exactly as had every other member, and officially he had no power except to carry out the resolutions of the juntas. Unofficially, he controlled the city affairs absolutely. If occasion demanded he could act as the presiding officer of any city council. This power was exercised whenever he felt that the councils were growing too liberal in their ideas and actions, and enabled him to exercise a despotic power and coerce public opinion. Cuban leaders had no conception of the democratic form of government which in the United States gave separate powers to the national, state or province and city administrations. The national government was closely linked with the provincial and with the city, and the functions were so intertwined that it was hard to say where one left off and the other began. The Captain-General always encouraged this close amalgamation of governmental functions because it enabled him to keep in close touch with all the branches of the government and to discover and put down any movements which would tend to diminish the power of the supreme officer. The Captain-General's power was civic, provincial, national and indeed international. This enabled him very easily to line his coffers, for he spent a great deal of time in signing papers of no especial significance, except that to obtain his signature it was necessary that he be paid a big fee. It was said that any Captain-General who remained four years in Cuba, and did not take away from the island with him when he departed at least a million dollars, was a poor manager. The Captain-General had all prisons under his control; and the fate of all prisoners, either those imprisoned for petty or state offenses, lay in his hands. This did not mean that he personally supervised the prisons, but that his creatures and officers were subject to his orders, and the offices were within his gift. Thus he was able to extort fees for various functions, as well as to demand largess for leniency extended to state prisoners. Under Tacon's administration this power was exercised to such an extent that it became a public scandal. The postal service also fell under the supervision of the Captain-General, and there were many ways in which he could make this office line his pockets. He acted as a police magistrate in the city of Havana, another fruitful source of revenue, particularly as the office was connected with that of president of the city council. Cuba was divided into three districts, the western, central and eastern. Havana was the capital of the western district, Santiago de Cuba of the eastern and Puerto Principe of the central district. Each district had its governor who was directly under the Captain-General, and under the governor, in charge of the affairs of the larger towns and their out-lying districts, was a lieutenant-governor, who was president of the local council and had control of military affairs for his district. Under the lieutenant-governors were captains, who were located in regions which were not very thickly settled, and who had absolute military power--subject of course to commands emanating higher up--over the affairs, lives and property of the people under their jurisdiction. Each of these officers received his appointment from the Spanish crown, but he was obliged to receive his nomination from the Captain-General, so that these offices too were a source of revenue to that gentleman, and his nominees, when appointed, were subject to his control. The functions of the governors and lieutenant-governors were supposed to be primarily military, and they received the salary which would naturally attach to their rank, but since they also presided in civil and criminal cases in their jurisdictions, as did the Captain-General in Havana, the fees from these proceedings made very fat picking. Now the captains had no salary at all, and the style in which they were able to live depended on the number of fines they were able to impose, and therefore it is not difficult to imagine that they were not easy on any Cubans who came under suspicion of any offense. They received one-third of all fines imposed by them. Each city in Cuba had its Ayuntamiento or council. In Puerto Principe there seem to have been elections for membership to this body, but in most cases seats were bought at enormous prices, and the receipts from such sale went into the Spanish treasury, although the Captain-General received his perquisite for allowing the transfer to be made. He also seems to have had some power of appointment, which was seldom made without pecuniary consideration, and there were some cases where members had hereditary rights to their seats. Not every town had its Ayuntamiento, but in most of the older towns they existed. The Ayuntamiento elected its own mayor from among its members, but they were all subject to the control of the Governor or Lieutenant Governor, who was in line of course subject to the Captain-General. [Illustration: THE OLD PRESIDENTIAL PALACE The official residence of a long line of Spanish Governors and Captains-General is a large and handsome building of stone, tinted white and yellow, facing the Plaza de Armas from the east, and standing on the site of the original parish church of Havana. Within its walls occurred the memorable scene of the final abdication of Spanish sovereignty in Cuba. It has now been replaced by the new Presidential Palace.] Early in the reign of the Spaniards in Cuba, courts called Audiencias with both judicial and administrative functions had been established. They were not at all pleasing to the more arbitrary of the Captains-General for while they were subordinate to him, and their only restriction on his power was in a kind of advisory capacity, yet they often reflected public opinion, and too, if their conclusions differed from that of the Captain-General, they were a moral curb upon his actions which he resented. The most ancient and honorable of these Audiencias was the one at Puerto Principe. It was the oldest in the island, and it strove to uphold its dignity by conducting its proceedings in the most formal and impressive manner, by adhering to the most ancient customs. It was greatly reverenced by the people of the district, and the Captain-General felt that somehow it detracted from his glory, and from the respect which he felt should be accorded the commands of his inferior officers. Various Captains-General strove to abolish this court, and to turn its revenues into their own pockets. The judicial functions in criminal and civil suits were divided among many bodies, and there must have been great confusion, overlapping of authority, and consequent wrangling. Judicial powers were accorded to the Alcaldes Mayors, to the Captains, Lieutenant Governors, Governors, Captains-General, Audiencias, in some cases to juntas, and even to naval officers. Judges could condemn, but they could not themselves be condemned. There was no way of curbing a wrongful exercise of their power, and even when their offenses were heinous they could not be disciplined through any democratic measures. Civil prisoners were often taken from the jurisdiction of the civil courts and tried by military tribunals. In the last resort, the Captain-General could always interfere, when he chose. The courts in Cuba at the middle of the nineteenth century were notoriously corrupt, and while the people feared them, in their gatherings in their homes they did not hesitate to condemn them. Justice was almost a dead letter. When a well known offender against the laws had influence with the Captain-General, or with some subordinate official, the prosecuting attorneys would refuse to try him. The very source of the pay of the captains made it impossible for them to make a living without corruption, and an honest one would have been hard to find, while the governors and lieutenant-governors were of opinion that the only way to keep the people in subjection was to oppress and terrify them, and the only way for governors and lieutenant-governors to return to Spain with the proper amount of spoil was to exact it from the unfortunate Cubans. While the Captain-General was the supreme military authority, he was not the supreme commander of the naval forces, the latter being a separate office. This was due principally at least to the fact that all the naval forces of Spain in America were commanded from Havana, and all naval expeditions for the defense of Spain in South America were commanded and directed from that port. Therefore, it was necessary not only that the naval officer should be a person of importance and ability, but also that he should not be subordinate to the chief officer of any one of the Spanish colonies. When Spain lost her large possessions in America, and only Cuba remained to her, then the office of naval commander was greatly curtailed in scope, and it was a matter of much irritation to the Captain-General that there should be stationed in Cuba, or in Cuban waters, an official of equal rank with himself. Over the army the Captain-General held undisputed sway. There were quartered in Cuba in 1825 three regular army battalions, a brigade of artillery and one cavalry regiment. This army was supposed to be augmented by the local militia. In 1850 there were in the regular army sixteen battalions, two picked companies of veterans, twelve squadrons of cavalry, two brigades of artillery, and two light batteries. Cuba had reason to fear the success of an attack made from the southern coast of Florida, from Hayti or from Yucatan. The island lies in the midst of the gulf waters, long and narrow in outline, and with miles of sea coast all out of proportion to its area. It was almost impossible adequately to patrol the coast and it would have been easy for an enemy to make a landing, provided the leader of an expedition was familiar with the coasts. Means of communication were slow in those days, and particularly slow in Cuba because of her geographical formation. If the attackers once entrenched themselves in the mountains, they were in a position to carry on an interminable guerrilla warfare. For these reasons, Spain would have felt that Cuba should be heavily garrisoned, even were it not also for the fact that the Cubans were growing so restless and crying so vociferously for liberty that Spain had reason to fear dangers both from within and without. People did not lightly express their opinions publicly in Cuba, particularly if those opinions were unfavorable to the government. Expressions unfavorable to the government were never allowed to leak into print, for except for a short period in 1812, and another from 1820 to 1823, the press was securely censored. The Captains-General who reigned during the nineteenth century were particularly careful that this censorship should be rigid and unbending. An American editor, Mr. Thrasher, was more daring than the native Cubans and his paper, _El Faro Industrial_, frequently contained matter which provoked the displeasure of the Captain-General. He had powerful connections and he was therefore unmolested until it was deemed that his comment on the death of General Ena, during the Lopez uprising, was too offensive, and the paper was suppressed. The Spanish interests conducted the largest newspaper in Havana, _El Diario de la Marina_, which had a list of 6,000 subscribers. Although this paper was avowedly Spanish in its sympathies and was conducted with Spanish money, it too was carefully watched by the censor. One day, it unguardedly, or through a misjudgment, accepted for publication an article implying that the interests of Cuba and the interests of Spain were not one and identical, and the entire edition was promptly suppressed by the censor. Not only was the local press carefully muzzled, but a watch was kept lest anything creep in from the United States, or from any other source, which might put notions in the heads of the Cubans that would divert their allegiance from Spain. The work of the censor was not an acceptable one for the United States, and the American residents in Cuba did not take pleasantly to the suppression of the American papers, and friction on this score was constant. A paper called _La Verdad_, published in New York by Cuban sympathizers, came under the especial displeasure of the Captain-General and of the Spanish government in Madrid. Regarding it, the Spanish Secretary of Foreign Affairs wrote as follows to Calderon de la Barca, the Spanish minister at Washington, on January 2, 1848: "Your excellency knows that the paper called _La Verdad_, published in New York, is printed with the specific object of awakening among the inhabitants of Cuba and Porto Rico the sentiment of rebellion, and to propagate the idea of annexation to the United States. The Captain-General of the island, in fulfilment of his duty, prohibited the entrance and circulation of this newspaper in the island, and tried to investigate the ramifications in the island of this conspiracy against the rights of Spain, and against the peace of the country. As a result of the efforts made with this object, it was discovered that although not numerous, there were in Havana some wicked Spaniards charged with the task of collecting money to sustain the subversive publication, and to distribute its copies to those who should care to read them." The Spanish government in Cuba did not look with favor upon foreigners. It thought that other countries, especially those adjacent to Cuba, were too tainted with liberal notions to render their inhabitants safe associates for the already restless Cubans. It therefore preferred that persons wishing to visit Cuba either remain quietly at home, or become Spanish citizens, subject to Spanish rule, if they insisted on remaining on the island. On October 21, 1817, a Royal Order was issued dividing foreigners into three classes. First, transients, composed of those who were merely enjoying the unwilling hospitality of Spain in Cuba. A person could be regarded as a transient for a period of only five years. After that he must either declare his intention of remaining in Cuba permanently or depart. Second, domiciled foreigners, who must declare their intention of remaining permanently in Cuba, must embrace the church by becoming Roman Catholics, must forswear allegiance to their native country in favor of allegiance to Spain, and must agree to be subject to Spanish law exactly as native Cubans and Spaniards were subject to it. Third, citizens by naturalization, who were regarded as Spanish citizens in every sense of the word, and could be sure of the same unjust treatment which Spain accorded all subjects in her possessions. Now this subject of foreigners in Cuba was a complex one, because, beside the tendency among Americans to settle on the island, now that its rich resources were becoming recognized, there were, in the middle of the nineteenth century, many Americans rushing to California to seek their fortunes in the gold fields. The favorite route was via Havana and Panama, and they naturally left their mark on the thought of the people with whom they came in contact. Beside this each year during the sugar harvest skilled mechanics came to work on the plantations. This did not meet with the approval of those in command of the finances of the island, because each of these visitors carried home with him every year from $1,000 to $1,500 on which he had paid no taxes. Such conduct was reprehensible, and it was entirely foreign to the policy or intent of any Captain-General that anyone should get away with any money without being either taxed or fined for it. Besides, these adventurers, as they were contemptuously termed, were regular mouthpieces of treason, and were said to talk of nothing else but freedom from Spain by annexation. Naturally their coming was unpleasant to the high powers in Cuba. Now under the treaty of 1795, between Spain and the United States, provision was made that "in all cases of seizure, detention or arrest, for debts contracted, or offenses committed by any citizen or subject of the one party, within the jurisdiction of the other, the same shall be made and prosecuted by order of the law only, and according to the regular course of proceedings in such cases. The citizens and subjects of both parties shall be allowed to employ such advocates, solicitors, notaries, agents and factors as they may judge proper in all their affairs and in all their trials at law in which they may be concerned before the tribunals of the other party, and such agents shall have free access to be present at the proceedings in such cases and at the taking of all examinations and evidence which may be exhibited in the said trials." Americans charged with offenses against the Spanish government should have had the benefits of the rights given them under this treaty, but the government took refuge behind the fact that the Captain-General had no diplomatic functions, and Americans were frequently thrust into prison and allowed to remain there subject to much discomfort and to financial loss until Washington and Madrid got the facts, and took the time to arrange the matter. The Spanish Secretary for Foreign Affairs wrote to Calderon de la Barca, on this matter, as follows: "Your Excellency knows that the government of Her Majesty has always maintained the position with all foreign powers that its colonies are outside of all the promises and obligations undertaken by Spain in international agreements. With regard to Cuba, the discussions with England to this effect are well known, in which the Spanish Government has declared that the treaties which form the positive law of Spain had been adjusted in times when the Spanish colonies were closed to all foreign trade and commerce, and that when in 1824, these colonies were opened to commerce of all other nations, they were not placed on equal footing with the home country, but were kept in the exceptional position of colonies. Of this exceptional position of that part of the Spanish dominions, no one has more proof than the foreign consuls, since it is evident to them that the Spanish government has only endured their presence on the condition that they should not exercise other functions than those of mere commercial agents. Thus in 1845 the English government accepted formally the agreement that its consul should not demand the fulfillment of treaties, not even of those which refer to the slave trade." The natural inference to be drawn from this was that Spain considered that foreigners who desired to live in Cuba must do so at their own peril, and that the Captain-General was above the trammeling bonds of international agreements in his dealing with interlopers who came to the island. But it must be borne in mind that the government of Cuba was administered not for the development of the island or the best good of its inhabitants, but according to the short sighted and stupid policies which seemed to Spain best calculated to prevent Cuba from slipping from her grasp as had her other colonies. Therefore, the main solicitude of each of the Captains-General was the subduing of the inhabitants by force, if necessary, the defense of the island from an enemy who might come by sea, and the lining of his own pockets while opportunity offered. CHAPTER II Venezuela gave the struggling Spanish American colonies Bolivar, who was their liberator and their savior. In the same country was born, at the end of the eighteenth century, in 1798 or 1799, a child who fifty years later was to lay down his life on the altar of freedom for Cuba. This boy, like Bolivar, was of a wealthy and respected family. His father was the proprietor of a large estate which was stocked with cattle and horses and live stock of every kind. His mother had gentle and even aristocratic blood in her veins and she endeavored to bring up her children with high ideals of truth and honor. Narciso Lopez, who was to fight so valiantly for enslaved Cuba, is reported to have been a boy who was born to command. He roamed the plains with the men from his father's ranch and they recognised him as a leader. He was a fine shot, a fearless rider, brave, energetic, resolute and tireless. [Illustration: NARCISO LOPEZ] When he was a boy of fourteen or fifteen his family moved to Caracas. His father had been stripped of his property by the wars by which Venezuela was torn at that time, and consequently entered into commercial life, and soon established a business with many nourishing branches. Narciso must have been a lad of exceptional perspicuity and judgment, for his father placed him in charge of a branch establishment at Valencia. But a quiet commercial life, as quiet as the times would permit, did not please a boy who had the instincts and tastes of a soldier. Besides it probably would have been difficult for anyone with any spirit to keep out of the turmoil which was threatening to engulf Valencia at that time. For the place was armed and garrisoned against the Spaniards, who under General Boves were advancing to attempt to take it. The natural leader of the Venezuelans was Bolivar, and although he had been routed, and had retired to reorganize his forces, he succeeded in getting word through to Valencia to hold the town at any cost. The Valencians were only too eager to obey these instructions, because they well knew the devastation that inevitably followed in the wake of the Spanish army. They could not view with equanimity the picture of their town destroyed, their women ravished, little children killed, and men massacred or led away into captivity, and so they laid plans for a brave resistance. All of the valuable property was collected from the houses into the public square. The town had no walls, so that the best that could be done was to barricade the approaches to this square and strive to defend it. The house where Lopez lived was situated in one corner of the square, and he soon found himself not only in the centre of the preparations, but, because of his resourcefulness and initiative, a recognized leader in the defensive operations. The elder Lopez was in town at the time, but while he did his part in preparing for the siege, it was the son who took command and who issued the orders to the father. For three weeks the little band of patriots held off the Spanish forces, sending runners through, whenever this could be done, with messages asking Bolivar to hasten to their aid, and each day praying that help might reach them. But Bolivar was unable to do anything for them. Indeed his army was in such straits that it was a relief to him to have the Spanish leader turn his attention to the attack on Valencia and give an opportunity to rally his own forces. At the end of the third week the victorious Spaniards entered the town in triumph. The men were separated from the women, and were marked for a general slaughter that night while the decree went forth that the women were to be allowed to remain alive a little longer so that they might serve the pleasure of their conquerors. Narciso was not taken prisoner, because he was clever enough to hide himself with some negroes, who it was expected would be taken away into captivity by the Spaniards. Narciso was separated from his father, and was much concerned for the latter's safety, for the son readily pictured the horrible fate that might befall him; and finally his fears grew so unbearable that he felt that anything rather than uncertainty would be welcome. He therefore stole forth to reconnoiter and to see what he could discover. With him he took two old colored men who had been family servants. All night he searched, crawling from house to house, under cover of the darkness, taking advantage of every bit of cover, lying close to some friendly shelter to listen to the conversation of passing soldiers in the hope that he might gather some news. He was later to learn that his father had effected his escape, and that his own fruitless search through the dark watches of that interminable night was after all his own salvation. The next morning, when, worn out with exhaustion and half dead with fatigue, he and his companions dragged themselves back to the place where the slaves had been huddled, a ghastly sight met their eyes. The Spaniards for once had been false to their traditions. Perhaps they knew that these slaves had imbibed from their masters too much of the spirit of liberty to make good Spanish servants. At any rate there they lay upon the ground, eighty-seven of them, each with his throat slit from ear to ear. Now we come to a period of Lopez's career which it is difficult to harmonize with the whole story of his after life. The only plausible explanation seems to be that he was only a boy, and that Bolivar's army was suffering such reverses that the only way in which Lopez could save his own life was by joining forces with the Spaniards, which he did. One would have thought that after the valiant part he played in the defense of Valencia, he would cast his lot with the insurgents. No writer of the period gives us any real explanation of his course. But whatever the motive, Lopez became a Spanish soldier, a fact which later was to be of tremendous value to him, because it enabled him to visit Spain, to rise high in the service, to hold exalted positions in the Spanish court, and to obtain an insight into the cruelties and injustices perpetrated by the men who were the oppressors of the country which he was to adopt as his own, and the salvation of which he was to make his life work, which he could have gained in no other way. His action may have been precipitated by the fact that the people of Valencia did not understand the straits in which Bolivar found himself, but felt that he had deliberately deserted them. Through the long struggle which ended in the evacuation of Caracas by Spain in 1823, Lopez fought with the Spaniards. So brilliant was his service that he was at the age of twenty-three given the rank of major. The story is told that early in the war, when he was a mere private, in an attack against a position which was defended by field works, the Spanish forces were divided, in an effort to take two bastions upon the capture of which victory depended. But there was not sufficient ammunition, and that of one of the divisions became exhausted, so that it was necessary to obtain a fresh supply from the other division. This information was signaled, and the leader of that portion of the attackers which must now supply the other, called for volunteers. In order to get the relief through it was necessary to lead three mules, which were tied together Spanish fashion, the head of the second mule to the tail of the first one, and the head of the third to the tail of the second, past a position where they were exposed to the hot fire of the opposing army. Lopez volunteered. When he reached the most dangerous part of his course, the mule in the center was struck by the enemy's fire and fell dead. Lopez did not hesitate, but with the bullets singing about him--the insurgents in that party must have been singularly bad marksmen, or perhaps their guns were not of an efficient pattern--he cut out the dead animal and, tying the two remaining mules together, safely reached his destination and delivered the ammunition to the commander. He was not injured, but his gun had been broken by a chance shot, his clothes were riddled with bullets, one of which had passed through his hat within an inch of his head, and both of his mules were so severely wounded that they had to be shot. His action gave the victory to the Spanish. This exploit won for Lopez the offer of an officer's commission, but he was modest in his estimate of his own ability, and he felt that he was too young for the honor, and so he refused, with the request that he might be taken from the infantry and placed in the cavalry. So, in spite of his disposition to make light of his own achievements, and almost against his own will, he found himself at nineteen the commander of a squadron of horsemen. It was a force of picked men, most of them older than Lopez, and it had the reputation of never having shown its back to the enemy. From the command of this company, Lopez was elevated to the rank of major. Now Lopez had made many friends in the Spanish army. All through his career he had the ability to make men believe in him, love him and be ready to follow wherever he led. The high honors which had fallen to his lot seemed not to have incited jealousy among his companions; indeed on the other hand he was urged by his friends to apply for the cross of San Fernando, to which they believed he was entitled. Again that curious quality in Lopez which did not make him shrink from deeds of bravery, but which did make him draw back from demanding their reward, asserted itself. The cross of San Fernando was a very great honor, and it was not bestowed as a free gift, but when a man performed some action of unusual courage he might publicly demand it, and anyone in the army who cared to do so was free to enter their opposition, by proving, or trying to prove, that the deed for which the cross was demanded was not of such a character as to merit such a reward. In the whole Spanish army in Cuba at that time, only one individual had succeeded in obtaining the cross of San Fernando. While Lopez hesitated, his commander in chief, General Morillo, had the application drawn up and personally insisted that Lopez sign it. After a rigid inquiry into the merits of this petition, which was backed up by the endorsement of his comrades and of Morillo himself, the cross was granted. But it was no more than common justice that Morillo should take this stand, for far better than anyone else had he cause to be grateful for the bravery of this twenty-three year old boy. The larger part of the Spanish army at this time was infantry, while the army of the insurgents was largely cavalry. The natives knew the country, and were able to carry on a successful guerrilla warfare, without allowing the Spaniards to engage them in open battle. This harassed the Spaniards, wore down their morale, and slowly but surely decimated their forces. Morillo, well knowing this, was pursuing the insurgents, in a vain attempt to join them in conflict. Lopez at this time was in charge of his cavalry company, which had been almost exterminated in a conflict that morning. Only a little band of thirty-eight men remained. Morillo was not aware of the catastrophe which had overtaken Lopez's command, and did not know how greatly it had been reduced in numbers. He therefore issued orders that it gallop forward to attack the enemy in the rear, with an idea of forcing them to face about and give battle. The engagement took place on the plains, and the handful of men could be plainly discerned by the enemy as they rode to obey their commanding officer. General Paez, who was in command of the Venezuelans, sent a corps of 300 men to repel the thirty-eight cavalrymen. Neither Lopez nor his men faltered, for they must live up to their traditions. Lopez ordered them to dismount and engage the advancing enemy on foot, using lances and carbines in the attack. Morillo soon discovered what was in progress and sent reinforcements, and Lopez's men held their position until aid reached them. When this war was over and freedom had been won an extraordinary thing happened. The patriot government invited this young man, who had fought against them, to enter their service with the same rank which he had held in the Spanish army. This he declined, and when evacuation took place he retired with the Spanish army to Cuba, in 1823. Lopez married a very charming Cuban, adopted Cuba as his native land, and gave up his position in the army. Perhaps the cruelty of the Spanish government in Cuba may have awakened him to the nature of the organization which he was serving. He was at heart a man who loved freedom, who was impatient of unjust restraint, who loved his fellow men and could not bear to see them suffer injustice. Spain was afraid that her officers might be led away by the spirit of democracy which was creating such havoc in her possessions in America. When absolutism was again restored in Spain, and the constitution of 1812 was for the second time overthrown, she required her officers in Cuba publicly to adjure liberalism, and to take an oath to stand by the Spanish rule in the colony. This Lopez could not bring himself to do, and so he remained in retirement. Affairs in Spain underwent a change, for King Ferdinand died and immediately a contest for the control of the government was on between his widow, Maria Cristina, as regent for her infant daughter, Isabel, and Don Carlos, who was the brother of the deceased king, and who declared that under the Salic law the crown belonged to him. War between the two factions seemed imminent, and the Spanish people were war weary, when the Queen regent conceived a brilliant plan. She felt sure that the will of the people was with her, since she represented the liberal party as against Don Carlos who was at the head of the absolutists and whose accession of power would mean new oppressions. Maria Cristina therefore issued a proclamation calling on the people, if they loved their country and wished to save her from civil war, to join in disarming the absolutists. This movement was well organized and a day was set for the disarmament to take place all over the kingdom. It seems almost incredible, but it was successful, and from one end of Spain to the other there were over six hundred thousand stacks of arms taken from the Carlists by the people of the liberal party. Now while this action was being planned and executed, Lopez happened to be in Spain. He had gone to the court at Madrid with his wife to endeavor to have restitution made to her of large sums of money which the government of Cuba had unjustly taken from her family. Unfortunately there are no records which disclose whether his diplomacy was great enough to persuade Spain to return any money which had once gotten into her coffers. However, Lopez had grown to understand Cuban affairs by this time well enough to know that if the liberals were successful it might mean the reestablishment of the constitution of 1812, and the dawn of better days for Cuba; but on the other hand, should the Carlists triumph, Cuba was bound to be more fiercely ground beneath the heel of tyranny and oppressions. Lopez loved his adopted country, and so he at once took command of a body of liberals who were being hard pressed by a company of the national guard, part of which had sided with Don Carlos. He rallied the little band, filled them with new courage and enthusiasm, and all day he worked with them, sometimes in company with other men and often alone, driving before him companies of Carlists, forcing them to go to the guardhouse of the liberals and surrender their weapons. When news of this conduct reached royal ears, Lopez was made first aide-de-camp to General Valdez, who was commander in chief of the liberal forces, that same Valdez who was destined later to become Captain-General of Cuba. A strong friendship sprang up between the two men, a bond which was never broken, and which Lopez respected so much that he later deferred action against the Spanish government in Cuba until after Valdez had relinquished the office of Captain-General. Indeed, it was through the influence of Lopez at the court of Spain that Valdez became Captain-General. Valdez had many reasons for being grateful to Lopez, for during the war which followed between the forces of the queen and those of Carlos, at one crisis--a surprise attack when the troops were about to flee--Lopez placed himself in command and led them to victory. On another occasion Valdez, who had his headquarters in the little village of Durango, had dispatched the main portion of his army against the forces of the enemy, retaining with him only a few picked men. Suddenly he found himself almost surrounded by the Carlists, who had seized the hills by which the village was enclosed. It was necessary that someone carry news of the situation to the main army and obtain relief. Lopez, who was then a colonel, signified his willingness to undertake the task, and indeed claimed that it was his right as first aide-de-camp to command the rescuing party which he intended to bring back with him. Valdez was loath to let him go, for he felt that success was problematic, and that the expedition meant almost certain death for his friend. But there was no alternative, and so at last he consented. Lopez set forth on horseback with one servant attending him. When they approached the enemy, they signalled that they were deserters, with valuable information to impart. They were allowed to approach without being fired on, and when they came abreast of the opposing forces, they set spurs to their horses, ran the gauntlet of a shower of bullets, and escaped unhurt, bearing the news of Valdez's perilous position to his main army. So great was Lopez's valor and fearlessness, and so high a reputation had he for honor and fair dealing, that he was respected by the Carlists as well as by his own party. At the end of this struggle he was accorded the rank of General in the Spanish army, and was loaded with honors, having the crosses of Isabella Catolica and St. Hermengilda bestowed upon him, and being appointed commander in chief of the National Guard of Spain. He stood high in the regard of the Queen Regent, but he grew to know her as she was, a cold, selfish plotter, and when she was finally expelled from the regency Lopez regarded it as a cause for rejoicing, even though his own career might be expected to suffer. But the regard in which he was held was too great for this to come to pass, and after the insurrection which deposed Maria Cristina he was offered and accepted the post of Governor of Madrid. Lopez also served Spain as a senator from the city of Seville. He was present in the Cortes when the Cuban delegates who were elected during the conflict of wills between General Lorenzo and Captain-General Tacon, and who escaped to Spain and attempted to claim their seats in the Cortes, were rejected. Perhaps more than anything else in his career, Lopez's service as senator opened his eyes to the vile condition of Spanish politics, and the methods which were used in ruling the colonies. He was always on the side of the oppressed, he hated injustice, and so, then and there, the love of liberty which had always been a part of his character took concrete form in a resolve to be the liberator of Cuba. When Valdez set forth to take over the command in Cuba, he had earnestly requested that Lopez be allowed to accompany him, but on the plea that there was important work for him to do in Spain, Lopez was not allowed to depart. It may be that in spite of the fight which he had made to maintain the unity of the Spanish kingdom, the astute and crafty Spanish statesmen suspected his loyalty, for it was reported that during Tacon's administration in Cuba, Lopez had entered into a conspiracy to obtain freedom for the island, and had publicly toasted "free Cuba" at a banquet. This seems more like a story which might have been born of Tacon's mean jealousy and fear for his own power, and nurtured by his vivid imagination when he sought to harm an enemy. It does not seem credible that Lopez, who had not yet openly thrown in his fortunes with the liberals in Cuba, would have been so foolish as to expose himself to the vengeance of a Captain-General who he had good reason to know would let nothing stand in his way when he sought to tear a rival in court favor from a high place. Be this as it may, the story was current in Spain, and while it seems not to have harmed Lopez's popularity with the people or with the court, it did prevent his accompanying Valdez to Cuba at this time. Lopez's ability to make friends, however, a little later stood him in good stead. He had won the liking and indeed the warm affection of Espartero, the leader at this time of the liberal party in Spain, and the influence of Espartero finally made it possible for Lopez to return to Havana, in 1839. The friendship between Valdez and Lopez remained warm, and Valdez appointed Lopez President of the Military Commission, Governor of Trinidad, and Commander-in-chief of the Central Department of the Island. Now rumors that a revolution was imminent began to be generally circulated. No one could tell the source from which they sprang, but they seemed to be in the atmosphere, and were the constant subject of whispered conversations in the cafés and restaurants and in the houses of the liberals. When Valdez relinquished the Captain-Generalship, and O'Donnell began his infamous rule, Lopez felt himself released from all obligations to the government. Every particle of Spanish sympathy had long since been purged from his heart, and his honors from such a source had become irksome. He had refrained from actively plotting against Spain while Valdez was ruling over Cuba, his friendship for Valdez making him unwilling to embarrass him. This curb removed, Lopez gladly relinquished his offices and retired to his own estates. He was not nearly so successful as a business man as he was as a soldier, and the business enterprises which he undertook proved to be failures. But he took over the management of some copper mines and these were used as bases for the organization of the attempt to free Cuba which was now beginning to take form and shape in his mind. He mingled with the people quietly and endeavored, successfully, to win their esteem and liking. The district in which the mines were located was settled mainly by men who were always in the saddle. Now Lopez was a fine horseman. There were no deeds of horsemanship which they might perform which he could not duplicate or improve upon. He thus soon won a popular following, and this curiously enough without attracting the particular attention of the Captain-General or his spies, and became a hero to the men among whom he dwelt. They were all indebted to him for deeds of kindness, for no man in difficulties ever appealed to Lopez's purse in vain. Thus he acquired an influence which made him confident that should he speak the word the countryside would rally with him under the banner of revolt against Spain. Now Lopez was not particularly interested in the emancipation of the slaves. He thought that they were necessary for the successful cultivation of the island, and he could not successfully visualize a free black population. He felt that a Cuba unbound by any ties to any other nation meant free blacks. He therefore favored annexation to the United States. He took the American Consul at Havana, Robert Campbell, into his confidence, and asked his advice. Campbell was in favor of annexation by the United States and expressed his opinion that the majority of the American people, especially those in the southern states, were heartily in favor of the United States taking over Cuba; but he also called Lopez's attention to the numerous treaty obligations binding the United States and Spain together, and assured him that whatever secret support he might hope to gain from that country, he (Campbell) certainly would not officially come out and sanction any movement to free Cuba from Spain. He felt that if Lopez by revolution could perform the operation and sever the bonds which bound Cuba to Spain, the United States might reasonably be expected not to refuse the gift of the island were it offered to her. Lopez at once began actively to outline his plans for a revolution, and secret headquarters were established at Cienfuegos, while the organization was extended to other parts of the island. CHAPTER III Lopez planned to begin the uprising for the freedom of Cuba on June 24, 1848. He had enlisted the sympathy and secret cooperation of many men in the United States, chiefly in the southern part of that country, and looked to them to provide him with the needed arms and ammunition. There was no lack of readiness on their part to respond to his needs in this respect, but there was much difficulty in transporting such supplies from the United States to Cuba. Whatever the personal sentiments of the officers of the American government, they were required publicly to do all in their power to prevent illicit traffic; while of course the Spanish officials in Cuba were vigilant to prevent the landing of any such cargoes. The result was that sufficient supplies did not reach Cuba in time for an uprising on the appointed date. The delay was fatal. It afforded opportunity for betrayal. Among the followers of Lopez in Cuba was one José Sanchez Yznaga, a mere lad of tender years. He could not resist the temptation to boast to his mother of the great enterprise in which he was to take part, and she, drawing from him all the details of the conspiracy, repeated the story to her husband. Forthwith he gave information of it to the authorities; reputedly in order to prevent his son from getting into mischief. Lopez, unconscious of what had happened, was "invited" by the Governor of Cienfuegos to call upon him, on a matter of important business, and was actually on his way to keep the engagement when he learned of the betrayal. Instantly he changed his course, and instead of going to Cienfuegos he took train for Cardenas and thence a coasting vessel for Matanzas. At the latter port he was so fortunate as to find the steamer _Neptune_ just starting for New York. She had room for another passenger and he got aboard without detection by the Spanish officers who were in quest of him. The boy Yznaga also escaped arrest. Apparently the names of the other conspirators were not disclosed, or else there was no convincing evidence against them. At any rate, none of them were imprisoned or punished in any way. But Lopez himself was tried _in absentia_ and was condemned to death, on March 2, 1849; and Yznaga, also absent, was condemned to six years' imprisonment. It was in July, 1848, that Narciso Lopez reached New York, a fugitive from Spanish wrath. There he found that various Cuban Juntas had been formed in the United States, and that a well-organized campaign for the annexation of Cuba was being pushed. This movement was not, of course, approved officially by the United States government; but neither were any extraordinary efforts made to suppress or to discourage it. Several Senators of the United States did not hesitate to make speeches in the Senate in favor of annexation; some of them advocating its forcible achievement if Spain declined to make the cession peacefully. Several of the foremost newspapers also openly espoused the cause. Improving the opportunity presented to him by these circumstances, Lopez sought some prominent American, politician or soldier, who would identify himself with the Cuban revolution and would place himself at its head. Some of his first and strongest efforts were directed toward getting Jefferson Davis, then a Senator and afterward President of the Confederate States, to take command of the expedition which he purposed to fit out; and he offered to place the sum of $100,000 in a New York bank to the credit of Mrs. Davis as an inducement. Davis considered the offer and then declined it; sending Lopez, however, to Major Robert Edward Lee, of the United States army, afterward of the Confederate army, as a more likely candidate. Lee, however, also refused the invitation, for reasons which Jefferson Davis afterward set forth as follows: "He came from Mexico crowned with honors, covered by brevets and recognized, young as he was, as one of the ablest of his country's soldiers, and to prove that he was estimated then as such, I may mention that when he was a Captain of engineers, stationed at Baltimore, the Cuban Junta in New York selected him to be their leader in the revolutionary effort on that island. They were anxious to secure his services, and offered him every temptation that ambition could desire, and pecuniary emoluments far beyond any which he could hope otherwise to acquire. He thought the matter over, and, I remember, came to Washington to consult me as to what he should do. After a brief discussion of the complex character of the military problem which was presented he turned from the consideration of that view of the question by stating that the point on which he wished particularly to consult me, was as to the propriety of entertaining the proposition which had been made to him. He had been educated in the service of the United States, and felt it wrong to accept place in the army of a foreign power while he held a commission." Contributions to the amount of $70,000 were made in the United States to help to finance the expedition, and $30,000 more was sent from Cuba. Lopez had long interviews with many men who stood high in American affairs, and he was assured by them that if the semblance of a real revolution was created, the United States might be expected to intervene and to annex the island. Recruiting was quietly going on in several parts of the United States. There was little concealment about the methods or plans, and Spanish spies who were closely following the leaders in the movement were able to report very accurately to the Captain-General in Cuba and to the Spanish minister at Washington, Señor Calderon de la Barca, exactly what was going on. These two gentlemen organized a small counter movement and expended large sums of money extracted from the Cuban treasury to balk the plans of the revolutionists. Promises of generous pay, however, lured large numbers of adventurers into the ranks of Lopez's party. Those who enlisted were promised $1,000, and five acres of land, if the expedition was triumphant, and pay equal to that of a private in the United States army in any event. Headquarters for the recruits were established at Cat Island, but the little army was dispersed by the United States authorities, and then the gathering place was changed to Round Island, near the city of New Orleans, where Col. G. W. White, a veteran of the Mexican war, was in charge. The number of men who were assembled under Col. White, ready to sail for Cuba, was reported to be from 550 to 800. While all these preparations were going on, there was an incident in Havana which threatened seriously to embroil Spain with the United States. The prison at Havana was holding two men, Villaverde, who was under arrest for sedition against Spain, and Fernandez, who had been condemned to imprisonment for fraudulent acts in connection with a bankruptcy proceeding. One of the jailors was Juan Francisco Garcia Rey, an American citizen, and he aided these prisoners to escape, Villaverde going to Savannah, while Fernandez went with Rey to New Orleans. Rey was soon trailed by Spanish spies and he was either tricked into going on board a Spanish sailing vessel or else he was forced to do so, and hurried off to Cuba with no property but the clothes which he wore. When the vessel reached Cuba, the United States consul went on board, but the men who were guarding Rey forced him to state that he had arrived in Cuba voluntarily. The vessel was held in quarantine for some time, and immediately after it was released, Rey was placed in solitary confinement; from which however he managed to get a letter through to the American consul, which read as follows: "My name is Juan Garcia Rey; I was forced by the Spanish consul to leave New Orleans. I demand the protection of the American flag and I desire to return to the United States. "P.S. I came here by force, the Spanish consul having seized me under a supposed order of the Second Municipality and having had me carried by main force on board a ship at nine in the evening. "P.S.--I did not speak frankly to you because the Captain of the port was present." The request which the American consul promptly made for an interview with Rey was denied, and at this point the United States government interested itself in the case and made an official demand for the return of Rey. Relations between the United States and Spain were growing very much strained and it looked as if the United States were soon to have an excuse to fight Spain and to annex Cuba, when the Spanish government suddenly suffered a change of heart, and Rey was pardoned and released. Meanwhile the plans for the invasion of Cuba were being carried out so openly that the Spanish minister protested, and Zachary Taylor, then President of the United States, being unwilling openly to affront Spain, through his Secretary of State, John M. Clayton, issued on August 11, 1849, a proclamation which ran as follows: "There is reason to believe that an armed expedition is about to be fitted out in the United States with an intention to invade the Island of Cuba, or some of the provinces of Mexico. The best information which the executive has been able to obtain, points to the Island of Cuba as the object of this expedition. It is the duty of this government to observe the faith of treaties, and to prevent any aggression by our citizens upon the territories of friendly nations. I have, therefore, thought it necessary and proper to issue this proclamation, to warn all citizens of the United States who shall connect themselves with an enterprise so grossly in violation of our laws and treaty obligations, that they will thereby subject themselves to the heavy penalties denounced against them by our Acts of Congress, and will forfeit their claim to the protection of their country. No such persons must expect the interference of this government in any form on their behalf, no matter to what extremities they may be reduced in consequence of their conduct. An enterprise to invade the territories of a friendly nation, set on foot and prosecuted within the limits of the United States, is in the highest degree criminal, as tending to endanger the peace and compromise the honor of this nation, and therefore I exhort all good citizens, as they regard our national reputation, as they respect their own laws and the laws of nations, as they value the blessings of peace and the welfare of their country, to discountenance and prevent, by all lawful means, any such enterprise; and I call upon every officer of this government, civil or military, to use all efforts in his power to arrest for trial and punishment every such offender against the laws providing for the performance of our sacred obligations to friendly powers." This proclamation did not find favor in the Southern States, where sentiment was strongly in favor of the annexation of Cuba as a bar against the freeing of the slaves. All the while the United States government was officially discountenancing the expedition, private citizens were aiding it, and again Spain protested and the American government dispatched the steamer _Albany_ with officers to investigate the state of matters at Round Island, to see that no supplies reached the island, and to prevent the expedition from starting. Two ships, the _Sea Gull_ and the _New Orleans_, had been purchased in New York to take the expedition to Cuba, and these were promptly seized, but the fifty men on one of them were not prosecuted, and while warrants were issued for the five leaders they were never apprehended, and the ships were simply returned to their owners. Public opinion was too much in favor of aid for Cuba to make it feasible for the United States government to place itself in the position of being inimical to Cuban interests, while on the other hand that Government felt that it could not afford openly to antagonize Spain. The Cuban organization in New York presently showed signs of discouragement and disintegration, and Lopez in consequence transferred his operations to the south, principally to New Orleans, where sentiment was warmly in favor of his plans. There the next year he renewed his efforts to organize an expedition to Cuba. Even more generous offers of bounty were made than in the previous case. Recruits were promised $4,000, and when they had served a year they were to be rewarded by a grant of land in Cuba; this in addition to their regular pay. Those who should attain the rank of officers were promised up to $10,000, and also high rank in the new government which the revolutionists were to organize in Cuba. Lopez was always conscious of the advantage of having men of prominence connected with his enterprises, and he endeavored to persuade Governor Quitman of Mississippi to take command, but that gentleman expressed himself as believing that only an internal revolution could be effective in Cuba and that any invasion from without must fail, and, accordingly, he declined the invitation. Numerous recruits were obtained in various parts of the United States. While interest in it was strongest in the South, many men in the North and West were ready, for one reason or another, to cast in their lot with Lopez. An important rallying point was Cincinnati, Ohio, and from that city a party of 120 men started southward on April 4, 1850, on the river steamer _Martha Washington_, which had been chartered for the purpose. A stop was made at a point on the Kentucky shore, and more men were there taken aboard. The trip down to New Orleans consumed a week, which time was spent by the men in card-playing, carousing and indeed almost everything save serious reflection upon the momentous undertaking before them. There were a few among them of earnest purpose; and when the expedition was completed at New Orleans it comprised a number of men of high character and standing, members of some of the foremost families of that part of the United States. But the majority of the recruits were adventurers of the type familiar in most such undertakings. To them the enterprise meant not so much the freeing of Cuba from Spanish oppression as it meant getting "easy money," the fun of seeing a new country, good food, and if the worst happened ... it was on the knees of the gods. It was April 11 when the boat reached Freeport, a town a few miles up the river from New Orleans, where the men were hidden; or supposed to be hidden, for little secrecy was attained, Spanish spies and United States citizens being equally aware of their presence. There were two hundred and fifty men in the party, and on April 25 they set sail for Cuba on the Steamer _Georgiana_, with a supply of muskets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition, which however did not come on board until after the mouth of the Mississippi was passed. Lopez himself was not with this company, for his work of organization was not completed, and he remained behind to join them later. A second company of about 160 men was organized in New Orleans, and set sail on May 2, on the _Susan Loud_, and a third company was to follow on the _Creole_. On May 6 the _Susan Loud_ reached the place where she was to meet the _Creole_, and she raised the new flag of Cuba for the first time on the Gulf of Mexico. Here she was joined the next day by the _Creole_ and another day was taken up in transferring the men from one vessel to the other, the _Creole_ being much the faster of the two; the idea being that the slower boat could follow at leisure. On the _Creole_ there were only 130, making 290 men in this portion of the expedition. The newcomers on the _Creole_ were for the first time introduced to their commander, Lopez, and it is recorded that he promptly won all hearts by his pleasing personality. A light-hearted spirit of adventure at first prevailed among the crews and the men, until a storm arose on May 12, and the company began to be less cheerful; many were sick, and the wind and clouds had a depressing effect on the others. To add to the general dismay and discomfort, a gun was accidentally discharged, and one of the company was killed. An unpleasant foreboding began to cast a blight over the gay company. Evil days had also attended the _Georgiana_. She met with foul weather, and had great difficulty in reaching the island of Contoy, about ten miles off the coast of Yucatan. This island was uninhabited and without vegetation, a blank waste of sand, with no water for drinking purposes. The men were discontented and mutiny seemed imminent. An unsuccessful attempt was made to reach Mujeres, and then mutiny in earnest broke out, led by Captain Benson, one of the leaders of the company. He instigated the circulation of a petition for a return to New Orleans, and between fifty and sixty signatures were obtained. Fortunately Lopez had one faithful follower in the company, an eloquent and brave man. This was Colonel Theodore O'Hara, a veteran of the Mexican War and author of the classic poem, "The Bivouac of the Dead." He assembled the men and asked them to agree to wait eight days longer, and spoke so feelingly that finally the promise was given with cheers for Lopez, for Cuba, and for the annexation of the island. Before further trouble could come to pass, the _Creole_ was sighted. When she reached the island it was thought best that she should proceed to Mujeres, obtain water, and return the next day. This was done, and when he returned, Lopez issued the following proclamation to his men: "Soldiers of the liberating expedition of Cuba! Our first act on arriving shall be the establishment of a provisional constitution, founded on American principles, and adopted to the emergencies of the occasion. This constitution you will unite with your brethren of Cuba in swearing to support in its principles as well as on the field of battle. You have been chosen by your officers as men individually worthy of so honorable an undertaking. I rely implicitly on your presenting Cuba to the world, a signal example of all the virtues, as well as the valor of the American citizen soldiers; and I cannot be deceived in my confidence that by our discipline, good order, moderation in victory, and sacred respect for all private rights, you will put to shame every insolent calumny of your enemies. And when the hour arrives for repose on the laurels which await your grasp, you will all, I trust, establish permanent and happy homes in the beautiful soil of the island you go to free, and there long enjoy the gratitude which Cuba will never fail generously to bestow on those to whom she will owe the sacred and immeasurable debt of her liberty." Now the _Creole_ was not a new vessel, and was sadly in need of repairs. When the nearly six hundred men from the three boats were all on board her--for the plan was that only one ship should be actively engaged in the invasion--she took water, and some of the men were afraid. There were desertions at Mujeres and Contoy which reduced the force to five hundred and twenty-one. The men were packed in all parts of the ship, on deck, in the cabin, in the hold, in every available corner. It was impossible to keep discipline, to say nothing of holding drill practice. The _Creole_ was fortunate enough to be driven by adverse winds far north of the course which she had planned, because she thus escaped two Spanish war ships which had been sent out to apprehend and sink her. Thus from near the shore of Yucatan the adventurers sailed over practically the same course which in the days of Cortez had been traversed by the Spanish treasure ships from Mexico to Cuba and to Spain. The plan was to land at Cardenas, and march at once to Matanzas, thirty miles distant, which it was believed could be reached in 24 hours and where the railroad was to be seized. It was here that it was expected that the recruiting would be heaviest, for Lopez believed that the Cubans would recognize them as liberators, welcome them with rejoicing, and at once enlist under the new banner of freedom. One hundred picked men would promptly be despatched to blow up an important bridge, nine miles from Havana, and meanwhile Lopez expected his force of five hundred to be swelled to five thousand. Indeed he dreamed of attacking the city of Havana with an armed force of 30,000. He had plenty of ammunition and guns and he anticipated no difficulty in enlisting an army from among the Cubans who desired freedom from Spain. CHAPTER IV Cardenas was chosen as the place of landing probably for two reasons. First, because the Cubans of this district were supposed to be exceedingly dissatisfied with Spanish rule--more disgruntled than the inhabitants of the other parts of the island, because the people of Cardenas had been given their own particular grievances by the Spanish garrison; and in the second place, the garrison at this point was exceedingly small, and the town was situated on a bay the entrance to which, like the coast for many miles, was undefended by fortifications. Lopez therefore believed that he could penetrate the harbor with little difficulty and no opposition. It was half past two in the morning when the _Creole_ entered the bay of Cardenas, and her progress was not altogether free from difficulties. The captain of the _Creole_ was unfamiliar with the waters of the bay, and found it difficult to steer a safe course. As a matter of fact, the vessel was grounded, and delayed for nearly an hour, during which time her presence was observed by Spanish patrols, and the alarm given. Dawn was breaking in the east when the landing was made. It bade fair to be a beautiful morning. The air was soft and clear, and the first rays of sunshine, brightening the roofs of the houses, sent a note of cheer into the hearts of the little army of those who were seeking to deliver Cuba, and seemed an omen of good fortune. Reports differ as to their reception. One account tells of a large Spanish force drawn up on the shore, through which they had to fight their way, but which they quickly dispersed. It is more in accord with the events which followed to give credence to another story, which has it that the Spanish troops took refuge in the barracks, while a smaller number were quartered in the Governor's palace. The Kentuckians, soldiers of fortune, descendants of pioneers, whose valor had been tested and not found wanting in the warfare which had taken place from time to time in their own state, were the first to land. There were sixty of them, under the command of Lieut. Col. Pickett, and their instructions were to proceed at once to the railroad station. Lopez knew that large bodies of Spanish troops were quartered at Matanzas, which was connected by railroad with Cardenas, and his purpose was to destroy the station, and if possible the line of the railroad for some distance, to prevent the arrival of reinforcements to the Spaniards, should the news of the coming of the filibusters be sent to Matanzas. This action would also necessitate communications by courier, which, of course, would be productive of a delay which would be advantageous to Lopez's plan. The station was captured without any difficulty, indeed without opposition, and the little body of Kentucky soldiers began their work of destruction. That because of lack of numbers, or lack of equipment, they did not accomplish this efficiently enough to prevent the arrival of Spanish troops at Cardenas, we shall see later. But at any rate, they proceeded with zeal and enthusiasm to the work which was allotted to them, and held the station against the few Spanish troops from the Cardenas garrison which later attempted to wrest it from them, and when they relinquished it they did so voluntarily, to join their comrades in retreating to the _Creole_. Indeed they manfully held their positions, long after many of the other regiments had been withdrawn, in order to cover the retreat. The moment Lieutenant Colonel Pickett and his Kentuckians were clear of the vessel, General Lopez and his staff, and Colonel O'Hara, with the remainder of the Kentucky regiment, disembarked, and with great ceremony, for the first time, the flag of Cuba Libre was unfurled on Cuban soil. General Lopez remained with his ship, to oversee the landing of the remainder of his little army, while Colonel O'Hara, under orders, advanced to take the barracks where four hundred Spanish troops were garrisoned. The Kentuckians under Colonel O'Hara numbered one hundred and eighty, and in addition he was reinforced by the Louisiana regiment of one hundred and thirty, and the Mississippi regiment of one hundred and forty-five, so that he had in all, for the business in hand, four hundred and fifty-five men, thus outnumbering the Spanish force which they were to oppose, by about fifty-five men. They advanced rapidly and charged the garrison, which promptly opened fire, and Colonel O'Hara was wounded, not seriously, but sufficiently so that he was obliged to surrender his command to Major Hawkins. The engagement was resumed, but only for a short time, when General Lopez came up and at once directed the firing to cease. He then proceeded to do a thing which plainly showed the spirit of the man, his resourcefulness and his undaunted courage. He marched up to the barracks and demanded its unconditional surrender. The Spanish soldiers evidently were not altogether whole hearted in their defence, but their leaders were crafty. A long parley ensued, during which the Spanish troops were hastily and quietly withdrawn through a side door, with the intention of making their escape to the Governor's palace. When the barracks had been in this manner all but abandoned, the Spanish commander agreed to surrender, and it can be imagined that he enjoyed the chagrin of Lopez when he discovered that his prize was an almost empty building. But the Spanish troops were not destined to escape so easily. Colonel Wheat, with the Louisiana regiment, had been the last to leave the _Creole_. As he approached the barracks he heard the firing, but supposing that Lopez had only to put in an appearance to be greeted with loud acclaim as a deliverer, he decided that the Spanish troops had laid down their arms to join the revolutionists and that the sound of guns marked a salute to Lopez. He went around the barracks, toward the square, and was just in time to intercept the flying Spaniards. Instantly he grasped the situation, and a skirmish ensued. The Spaniards at length made good their retreat to the Governor's palace, but not without leaving some dead and wounded behind them. Lopez and his men at once advanced on the palace, where the Governor had taken refuge with his forces, now reinforced by those who had made good their escape from the barracks. Soon Lopez distinguished a white flag of truce floating from one of the windows, and as he approached nearer received word that the Governor was ready to surrender. Overjoyed, the revolutionists rushed up to the palace only to be greeted in a manner quite in keeping with Spanish treachery, for they were promptly fired upon by the Spaniards, and before they could rally several of the attacking party were wounded, including General Gonzales. Lopez's anger at this violation of the rules of decent fighting was at white heat. While the main division of his troops were returning the fire from the palace, he took a small body of men to reconnoiter, and finding an unguarded portion of the building, he set fire to it; indeed, with his own hand he applied the torch. All this had taken much more time than does its relating, and the forces in the palace were enabled to hold out until between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, when they surrendered, driven out by the flames and smoke, and the Governor and the commander of the garrison were taken prisoners, while such troops as had not found refuge in the palace fled to the outlying country, and couriers hurried to carry the news of the Spanish disaster to Matanzas. Lopez was now in possession of the town. There was the work of caring for the dead and wounded to be done, and besides this he wished to make an appeal to Cuban residents who sympathized with the cause of freedom to aid him. This was not so easy as it seemed. Lopez to his chagrin found that reports which had reached him in the United States of the willingness of the Cubans to join a revolution had been grossly exaggerated. That there were a great many who sympathized with Lopez's purpose there can be no doubt. But they had to deter them the memory of other uprisings, in which the attempt to throw off the Spanish yoke had utterly failed. They had also before them the courage-shaking memories of the horrors which had befallen those who had participated in the rebellions. It is ever a fact that while oppression always creates leaders whose valor and daring will not stop at any obstacles, it also makes the masses of the people timid, afraid of the punishment which is bound to follow defeat. Spain had long held the Cubans in bondage. She had meted out to them the most cruel injustices, and had taken unspeakable revenge not only on those who had opposed her, but even on those who were under suspicion of such opposition. Besides this, on this May morning, things had been happening very fast. Lopez's little victories had been won in whirlwind succession. This should have inspired sympathizers with confidence, but there were in that town some private persons who were in sympathy and in league with the Spanish rulers. They now resorted to propaganda. They spread the report that Lopez's band had no real intention of trying to free Cuba, that their real object was plunder, that when they had subdued the garrison, they intended to put the patriotic Cubans to new sufferings for their own aggrandisement. Long years of injustice had made the Creoles wary of asserting themselves openly against their Spanish tyrants. While those who had been leaders in the town in the organization on Cuban soil of the revolution tried to reassure the frightened people, they were far from successful. A mob spirit of fear is not easily conquered. Aside from this Lopez's force, worn out with their efforts, tired and hungry, and for the time idle, while the leaders were planning the next move, dispersed through the town. It seemed necessary and expedient in any event that they should be quartered on the citizens, and now they sought the homes of the Creoles in search of food. They were met by a frightened hospitality. Food and wine were set before them, with the result that those of them who were merely adventurers lost sight of their purpose and seized the opportunity to court intoxication. This conduct did not increase the confidence of the Creoles, and so hopes of support from the native Cubans proved delusive. To make matters worse, disquieting rumors were circulated that in spite of the efforts of Pickett's men to disable the railroad, a large body of Spanish troops was on its way from Matanzas. There seemed to be no doubt as to the truth of these reports; indeed a message reached Lopez late in the afternoon, containing unmistakable confirmation to the effect that couriers had carried the news to Matanzas and that three thousand Spanish troops were on their way to Cardenas. Lopez was now in a triple quandary. He could advance against this huge force, which would of course be joined by those of the Cardenas garrison who had escaped into the country, and give battle against frightful odds. His own forces had been depleted by losses and had failed to be swelled by the enlistment of sympathizing Creoles. He would leave behind him a frightened and almost hostile city, and a port unguarded against the landing of Spanish troops from ships cruising in nearby waters, in the event of which he would be subject to attack from both front and rear, and would be not only in great danger, but almost in certainty of being surrounded. He might remain where he was and entrench himself against the impending attack, but this offered no better possibilities than the former plan, for he had not enough men to defend both the town and the harbor and he was in constant danger of betrayal by Spanish sympathizers, who were of course cognizant of his every move. He had been told that at Mantua large bodies of Creoles stood ready to revolt and join him. Of course, he had no more accurate confirmation of the truth of this rumor than he had had of the verity of the assurances which, before he had set out on his expedition, he had received of the willingness of the inhabitants of Cardenas to join him; and yet this plan last outlined seemed to hold better possibilities than either of the others. He decided, therefore, to adopt it, and while making a show of resistance, he began quietly to assemble his baggage and equipment on board the _Creole_, and to make ready for the re-embarkation of his men. Although the forces at the station, and indeed other small bodies of his troops who had not been demoralized by the delights of the table, sought to cover his retreat, and the former did render effective service against the Spaniards, yet his movements did not escape observation, and were hailed with delight and with renewed aggressions by the Spanish troops. The retreat was not easy to effect, and when he had assembled his scattered forces, his movements were halted from time to time by the necessity of erecting temporary barricades, from which to cover the safe return to the _Creole_. This was finally effected, and at nine in the evening the vessel once more set out to sea. On board her, besides Lopez and his men, were the Spanish governor and the commander of the garrison, and they were retained as hostages until the ship cleared the harbor. This was not accomplished without mishap, for the captain, again hampered by navigating in what to him were uncharted waters, once more grounded the ship, which caused some delay. At length they were on the high seas, and just before they quit the shores of Cuba, they landed the discomfited governor and the garrison chief. What would have happened, had Lopez been in the governor's predicament, indeed what did happen, when Lopez and his men finally fell into the hands of the Spaniards, is another story. But Lopez was too high a type of gentleman to mete out to the Spanish high commanders the fate to which they would too gladly have consigned him. Lopez has in many quarters been most severely censured for his quick abandonment of his plans and his hasty retreat from Cuba, but in the cold light of reason, we hardly see how he could have pursued any other course. Had his expectation of aid from the Creoles been realized, he might then, as he had planned, have left Cardenas in their hands, and with his little band strengthened by a large body of revolutionary sympathizers he might have advanced against the Spanish army at Matanzas with some hope of success. As it was, he could only make the best of a bad situation, and depart, with the faint hope of better fortune at Mantua, and at least with the nucleus of an organization which later might be more effective in another expedition of greater scope for the freeing of Cuba. Thus, when we review his action, after the passage of many years, he seems to have taken the only sane course that lay open to him. Any other would have meant even greater disaster. Lopez had lost, in this short time, of his Louisiana regiment, twenty killed and wounded, including those basely slaughtered through the Spanish treachery before the Governor's palace; of his Kentucky regiment, forty killed and wounded, including such men of high standing as Captain John A. Logan, Lieutenant James J. Garrett, the Rev. Louis McCann and Sergeant Harry Cruse, besides ten privates; while his Mississippi regiment suffered five or six killed. The Spanish losses were greater than those of the revolutionists and numbered over one hundred. But an even greater misfortune had overtaken Lopez. When the _Creole_ had grounded, near the entrance to the harbor, while he was making his hasty departure from Cardenas, it had been impossible to float her free without lightening her, and to do this not only were provisions thrown overboard, but large quantities of precious arms and ammunitions, and so his men now found themselves insufficiently armed for any stubborn resistance to Spanish troops, particularly should the odds be heavy. Lopez was still bent on his purpose of making a landing at Mantua, but while his gallant officers in the main supported him, he found himself surrounded by a dissatisfied, angry, mutinous crew, who were for abandoning the whole matter, and steaming for the United States with all possible speed. Lopez addressed them, and tried to stir within them a realization of what such action meant, and how fatal it might be to the cause of Cuban liberty to abandon so easily an expedition so propitiously and even gaily undertaken, but they were deaf to his entreaties. At the suggestion of one of his officers the matter was put to vote, and to his dismay Lopez found that only fifteen stood with him on the Mantua project. He would not consent to abandon it, however, even against such odds, and declared that he would himself make the landing, taking with him the loyal few who were willing to stay with him. This, however, he was prevented from doing by the fact that the majority saw to it that the captain did not approach Mantua, but steered a course which had as its object the port of Key West, Florida. Evidence soon was not lacking that theirs had been the part of wisdom if not of valor, and indeed that there were some odds against their reaching any port at all, for news of the expedition had not only been carried to Matanzas, but it had somehow reached the Spanish ship _Pizarro_, and she was soon in hot pursuit of the _Creole_. This soon became a most serious situation; again and again it seemed as if the _Creole_ were about to be overhauled, with the probable result that her men would be taken prisoners and executed, and she would be sunk, or taken to port a prize of war. Fate, however, intervened in favor of Lopez, for the pilot on board the Spanish vessel was in sympathy with the filibusters, and when, on nearing Key West, the _Pizarro_ seemed about to overtake the _Creole_, at the peril of his own life he steered such an eccentric course that the _Creole_ escaped, and made a landing at Key West, while the Spanish ship put out to sea once more. Lopez and his men were welcomed at Key West with shouts of applause. Sympathizers with his expedition refused to consider it a failure. They declared that it had served to open the eyes of the Cubans to the fact that their deliverance was near, and that when Lopez once more set out with a larger force--as they assured him, with the assistance of the people of the south in the United States, he would--victory would be certain to spread her wings over his banner. So great was the popular clamor in favor of Lopez, that the United States authorities did not deem it prudent to arouse the ire of the mob, and therefore no attempts at arrest were then made. Indeed, little chance was given before debarkation, because in hardly more than ten minutes after the vessel had docked, the work of removing the wounded had been completed, and her decks were cleared of all men but seamen. The vessel was, however, seized by the authorities. When news of Lopez's exploits reached Madrid, the government was thrown into a great state of indignation, and promptly urged upon the United States the punishment of the offenders, stating: "If contrary to our expectations the authors of this last expedition should go unpunished, as did those who last year planned the Round Island expedition, the government of Her Majesty will find itself obliged to appeal to the sentiments of morality and good faith of the nations of Europe to oppose the entrance of a system of politics and of doctrines which would put an end to the foundations on which rests the peace of the civilized world. If Europe should sanction by her silence and acquiescence the scandalous state of affairs by which the citizens of the United States (or those of any power whatever) might freely make war from their territory against Spain, when the latter is at perfect peace officially with the Union; if it should be tolerated or looked on with indifference that the solemn stipulations which bind the two states should be with impunity made hollow by mobs and that the laws of nations and public morality should be violated without other motive than the selfishness of the aggressors, and with no other reliance than force, then civilized nations ought to renounce that peace which is based on the laws of nations and the terms of treaties and make ready for a new era in which might will be right, and in which popular passions of the worst kind will be substituted for the reason of states." Even with the government in Washington practically controlled by the pro-slavery interests, and with feeling in that quarter running high in favor of the filibusters, the United States, for the sake of preservation of peaceable relations with Spain, could hardly afford to ignore this protest. Hence, Lopez was arrested at Savannah, whence he had gone immediately upon his arrival on American soil, and a number of the leaders of his expedition were apprehended. Indictments were returned against Lopez, Theodore O'Hara, John F. Pickett, R. Hayden, Chatham R. Wheat, Thomas T. Hawkins, W. H. Bell, N. J. Bunce, Peter Smith, A. J. Gonzales, L. J. Sigur, Donahen Augusten, John Quitman, Cotesworth Pinckney Smith (a Judge of the Supreme Court of Mississippi), John Henderson (a former United States Senator), and J. L. O'Sullivan (a former editor of the _Democratic Review_, which had been loud in its support of the filibustering expeditions). But great difficulty was experienced in obtaining evidence against the prisoners. This might seem extraordinary, in the light of the fact that there could be no denial that the expedition had taken place, and that these men had been prominent in its organization. But at the trial all the witnesses by common agreement refused to answer any but the simplest and least important questions, on the ground that they might thus incriminate themselves. Three men were tried and three juries disagreed. The matter seemed so hopeless of solution that the indictments were allowed to languish without prosecution, and were finally dismissed and the prisoners released. Everywhere the filibusters were received with acclamations, and all the South joined in declaring Lopez a hero. The New Orleans _Bee_ at this time thus described Lopez: "General Lopez has an exceedingly prepossessing appearance. He is apparently about fifty years of age. His figure is compact and well set. His face which is dark olive, and of the Spanish cast, is strikingly handsome, expressive of both intelligence and energy. His full dark eyes, firm, well-formed mouth, and erect head, crowned with iron grey hair, fix the attention and convince you that he is no ordinary man. Unless we are greatly mistaken in the impression we have formed of him, he will again be heard of in some new attempt to revolutionize Cuba. He certainly does not look like a man easily disheartened." The _Bee_ was a true prophet; it was far from being "greatly mistaken" about Lopez. The after events proved that it had judged him justly. No sooner was he released than he began to lay his plans for a new expedition, and since New Orleans had long been the stronghold of his sympathizers, he went to that place to complete his organization. CHAPTER V [Illustration: Ramon Pinto] Spain was now thoroughly alive to the danger which threatened her future retention of Cuba, and in the face of an emergency she vacillated. Her high officials began to wonder if after all their policy of extreme oppression and suppression had not been in a measure the wrong one to pursue with the Cubans. Roncali, who had been so pleasing to the Peninsulars, or Spanish party in Cuba, and so unpopular with the patriots, was recalled and Don José Gutierrez de la Concha was dispatched to take his place as Captain-General. He took over the affairs of the island on November 10, 1850. Concha was as unwelcome to the Peninsulars as his predecessor had been to their liking. He was a man who had at least some regard for justice, and who, if given a free hand, might have governed Cuba with a degree of wisdom and fairness. He was not a believer in liberty for the Cubans, but at least he had some conception of what constituted equity. He publicly stated his ideal of his office, as "a government of justice" and might have worked out something like a solution of Spain's problems in Cuba, unless, as we think it fair to believe, it was now much too late to quell the revolutionary spirit which had grown to such great proportions; with "a government of force," no matter what its purpose, the Cubans were all too familiar, and they had plainly shown how much they hated it and despised its administrators. RAMON PINTO An early martyr to the cause of Cuban freedom, Ramon Pinto, was born in Cataluna, Spain, in 1802, and engaged in the revolution of 1820-23 in that country. Then he fled to Cuba and became a brilliant writer in behalf of philanthropic works. In 1853 he became director of the Havana Lyceum, and later was a close friend and adviser of Captain-General Concha. In 1855 he was charged with being engaged in a revolutionary conspiracy, was convicted on dubious testimony, and died on the scaffold in March of that year. One evil this new Captain-General did earnestly try to overcome. He endeavored to do away with the fee system which had caused so much unjust imprisonment and suffering. He made an effort to obtain fixed salaries for all government officials instead of fees, but at every turn he was balked by the Peninsulars. There is some reason to believe that he was not altogether sincere; that he was a fair spokesman, but an evil performer; that he did not allow his right hand to know the injustice he was planning to do with his left. At any rate, at the very time when he was offering such cheering words of hope to the Cubans, he was putting into operation a regular line of vessels from Cadiz, Spain, to Havana. He offered various excuses--of course, expansion, and many others--for this action, but thinking Cubans well knew that his real purpose was that communications might be more easy and frequent with the Spanish court, and that news of uprisings, and the dispatching of troops to suppress them, might be less delayed. He also--but, of course, this was done under orders of the Spanish government, induced, we are told, by his recommendations--increased and strengthened the fortifications of the island, and asked for and received a greater number of troops to man them. However, there must have been some ground for the belief that Concha in some ways favored the Cubans for in no other manner could he have raised such a storm of dislike among the Peninsulars as constantly whistled about his head, and finally resulted in his recall. While these events were taking place in Cuba, Lopez, in the United States, was far from idle, and he was not lacking in friends who sought to aid him. Singularly enough those in the South who were numbered among his supporters seemed not to be disheartened by the failure of the Cardenas expedition, and, of course, the juntas were active in stirring up popular opinion in favor of filibustering, and in obtaining both moral and financial support for another enterprise. But with it all money was woefully lacking. General Henderson, who had been a member of the first expedition, and had been one of those indicted and tried, at this time wrote to a friend: "I need not tell you how much I desire to see him (Lopez) move again, and it is more useless to tell you how wholly unable I am to assist him to make this move. With my limited means, I am under the extremest burdens from my endeavors on the former occasion. Indeed I find my cash advanced for the first experience were over half the cash advanced to the enterprise, and all my present means and energies are exhausted in bringing up the arrearages. Yet I still believe in the importance, the morality and the probability of the enterprise; and I believe it is one the South should steadfastly cherish and promote. I feel it is more especially incumbent on us who have once failed to retrieve ourselves from so much of the opprobrium and reproach as the defeat has cast upon us. For we know that, could we succeed, we should win all those triumphs which success in such enterprises never fails to command. And would not such triumph be glorious! I believe you yield equal consideration to the importance of this subject as I do; and as a Southern question, I do not think, when properly viewed, its magnitude can be overestimated." When a leader is able to enlist the sympathies, and drain the purse, of a man so intelligent and of such high standing as John Henderson, former Senator of the United States, and when he can bind such a man to him by even stronger ties in defeat than in victory, the personality of that leader must be one of extraordinary strength, courage and probity. It speaks well for Lopez that all through his career he gathered around him men of the finest families in the South, and indeed some of equally high standing from the North which was not particularly in favor of his venture, and those men fought for him and with him, and remained loyal until the greater portion of them paid the penalty of their lives for their devotion. Now recruiting began in earnest. Everywhere in the South agents of Lopez were busy, but the headquarters of this new movement seem to have been at Savannah. Spain, of course, was not unaware of what was taking place and was on the alert. Spanish spies were everywhere watching the plotters against Spanish dominion in Cuba, and reporting their findings to the Spanish legation at Washington. The Spanish minister had in his employ a man who called himself at times Burtnett. (He had many aliases.) He was more clever than the rank and file of the Spanish agents, and by associating himself with the filibusters, he was able to learn their plans. Lopez's followers were not rash; they tried very hard to cover their activities; but in any undertaking in which a number of people are concerned, anything like complete secrecy is absolutely out of the question. Burtnett represented himself as a sympathizer; he joined the filibusters and wormed himself into the confidence of the leaders. He learned that the plan was to assemble on the coast of Florida, and from there to set sail for Cuba. The filibusters would themselves circulate rumors that the attack would be made on the south coast of Cuba, but Burtnett discovered that in reality the forces would be divided, and while the Spanish troops were mustered to repel an attack in the south, several small bands would land, organize the friendly Cubans, and give battle if necessary to what depleted Spanish forces might be located on the north coast. This would preclude the chance of such a disaster as the Cardenas expedition, and the Cubans, uncowed by the presence of large bodies of governmental soldiery, would hasten to the aid of Lopez. Even the Spanish troops, some of whom were supposed to be in sympathy with the revolution, might be hoped to mutiny and join the Cubans. Thus this time there could be no thought of failure. Meanwhile Southern gentlemen of wealth and family were eagerly supplying funds to the enterprise. It is even said that some planters mortgaged their estates to obtain funds to give to the expedition, in the expectation that when rich Cuba was once acquired for the United States, they would receive back a reward far greater than the amount which they were contributing. Bonds of the proposed revolutionary government were printed, and sold; arms and ammunition were purchased and stored in readiness for the expedition. It was planned that the first consignment of arms was to be conveyed to the steamer _Cleopatra_, which had been purchased to carry the filibusters, by means of two small vessels, the sloop _William Roe_, and the steamer _Nahantee_, which were to steal respectively from the ports of New York and South Amboy, New Jersey, and meet the _Cleopatra_ just beyond quarantine. When the details were completed, Burtnett revealed the whole plan to the Spanish minister, who lost no time in laying it before the United States government at Washington. Now no matter what the sympathies of this government might be, it could not be placed under the odium of giving its official sanction to such an enterprise; indeed that would probably have resulted in war with Spain. Its action was slightly delayed, and the expedition might even yet have gotten off without interference had it not been that the _William Roe_ was detained on account of a flaw in her papers, and the _Cleopatra_, on which provisions were already stored, was delayed in putting to sea to wait for the _William Roe_ and the _Nahantee_ because at the last moment some of her crew went on shore and became intoxicated. This slight postponement of her sailing gave an opportunity for her attachment--at whose instigation it is not clear--for a writ for $3,000, to cover repairs made by a former owner, and for which the filibusters could hardly be held responsible. Nevertheless, they raised the money, but before its transfer could be completed and the _Cleopatra_ cleared on April 26, 1851, the leaders were arrested. Things looked black for Lopez and his followers, but they still had the influence of the South behind them, and for this reason or some equally effective one, again the courts failed to convict them, and to add to their good fortune the government did not confiscate the _Cleopatra_ and the provisions with which she was loaded, and she was afterward sold and the proceeds used as a nest-egg toward financing another expedition. Spain was now thoroughly aroused to her danger, and determined to put down the threatened revolution at any cost. Through her mouthpiece, the Captain-General of Cuba, she issued a proclamation to the Governors and Lieutenant Governors on the island: "It has come to the knowledge of the Government that a new incursion of pirates is preparing, similar to the one which took place at Cardenas during the past year. It is proposed, without doubt, as it was then, to sack defenseless towns and to disturb the order which reigns in this beautiful part of the Spanish monarchy. But the loyalty of its inhabitants, the valor and discipline of the troops, and the measures taken by the government, are the surest guaranty that its destruction will follow immediately the news of its disembarkation. You must, then, above all else see to it that the news of this invasion produces no alarm in the district which you command. "To exterminate the pirates, whatever be their number, it is not necessary to have recourse to extraordinary means; the ordinary means on which the government can count are enough and even more than enough. Any act, on the other hand, which is unusual would produce anxiety and uneasiness among the peaceful inhabitants; it might cause, perhaps, an interruption of business, and would thus occasion a real and important loss for public and private interests. It is necessary, therefore, to avoid any measures which may remove from the towns of that district the confidence and sense of security which the government inspires. The actual situation, however, imposes on the authorities the double duty to cause order to reign, and not to appear to obtain it by unaccustomed means which are only expedient when circumstances are really dangerous. And this double object will be achieved if that vigilance, activity and prudence are in evidence on which I should be able to count from you. But you must not forget that in these circumstances, one of the most important duties of the authorities is to quiet minds, and hush suspicions, to take care, finally, that in not a single instance there should be disturbed that harmony which now more than ever ought to reign among the inhabitants of the island. Working to this end, I have the most confidence that this event will end fortunately, making certain the peace which the island needs to continue on the path of prosperity which it has so far followed." The foregoing gives a very adequate idea, cleverly cloaked under soft and reassuring words, of the panic under which the authorities were laboring. Only too well they knew the danger of "any unusual disturbance," and of the exciting of the populace, for in it dwelt the menace that that same excited mob might turn and rend their masters. The Captain-General soon had another circumstance brought to his attention which was a tremendous shock to his sensibilities, seeming as it were a bomb placed at the very bulwarks of his authority. Puerto Principe had been more or less a danger point, and harsh measures had been used to put down the incipient rebellion there. The people had an inkling that it was the intention of the Captain-General to deprive them of their Audiencia. This would eliminate the cost of its maintenance, and also keep the legislative or advisory power more closely concentrated in Havana, where the Captain-General could keep a watchful eye on proceedings. A petition was received by Concha requesting that they be not deprived of their Audiencia, but when he examined it closely he was shocked to observe that it was dated a month previous, and that it had evidently been sent directly to the Spanish government at Madrid, without the official sanction and endorsement of the Captain-General, and this circumstance was aggravated by the fact that the Petition bore the signature of the Commanding General. Things were coming to a pretty pass if the Captain-General, the highest official in the land, was to be ignored by his subjects. Concha made a great to-do about the matter, and obtained the dismissal from office of the offending Commanding General, at the same time securing the appointment of a close friend, Don José Lemery, on whom he could depend to do his bidding. Lemery began his tenure of office by using the most harsh and unwarranted methods of suppressing what he termed an impending uprising, and by ordering the arrest of a large number of the members of old Creole families--persons who were known to have revolutionary sympathies--on suspicion of being about to incite a rebellion. Among these were many members of the city council under the old Commanding General, and one of the number, Don Joaquin de Aguero, was later to figure as the leader of the most successful revolution which Cuba had yet known. Meanwhile Lopez, not disheartened, was once more planning an invasion of Cuba, with belief unshaken, in spite of his discouraging experiences, in the real desire of the Cubans for liberty and in their purpose to join the revolutionary movement, if they could only be brought to emerge from the deadening stupor of acquiescence into which fear of Spanish vengeance seemed to have plunged them. This belief was strengthened by the correspondence, which by an underground method he was carrying on with Cuban patriots--men who he expected would be leaders in future revolutions. They all assured him that if he could only start a real movement for revolt, which promised actual deliverance, the Cubans would no longer hesitate but would rush to his support. The fact that a price had now been set on his head, should he set his foot on Cuban soil, and be so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the Spaniards, had no deterring power on Lopez's purposes. He was above suspicion of a personal axe to grind, and there was never any question of his courage and perseverance. Lopez was emboldened by the support which the Cuban juntas promised him, but he did not find all of the men who had accompanied him on the Cardenas expedition as confident as he was himself. Some of the less daring spirits prepared a statement to their leader, setting forth their viewpoint, in substantially the following language: "The people of Cuba charge us with endeavoring to create a revolution for the sake of pillage; they state that the Cubans do not desire freedom; if they did they would strike for themselves. We will not waste any more time, nor take another step until we see something more on the part of the Creoles besides promises. We took the first step at Cardenas, and gave them an opportunity to show their hands, which they did not. They must take the next, and then we will go to their assistance; otherwise we shall not budge an inch." Naturally enough, upon consideration, this impressed Lopez and his more loyal followers as embodying some pretty sound common sense. It seemed to be logical that the Cubans themselves should make the next move, and back up their assertions by action. This ultimatum was conveyed to them, by the same devious ways in which their promises had gotten by the Spanish spies, and the effect was miraculous. They rose to the situation, and announced that they would bring about a revolution, and that the first steps would be taken sometime between July 1 and 4. That Lopez and his friends were astonished at this show of spirit in those who had so sadly demonstrated their lack of grit at Cardenas a short time before, is not beyond the realm of belief, nor is it necessary to relate how delighted they were that at last the Cubans were about to move in their own behalf. The time was then so near, and Lopez's own preparations had made so little practical progress, that there was not a sufficient period between the date on which he received this information and the day set for the revolutionary movement to enable him to send any aid, except cheering words. On the morning of July 3, 1851, Don Joaquin de Aguero led a small band of patriots to the public square at Puerto Principe, all of them shouting in loud tones: "Liberty! Freedom for Cuba! Death to the Spaniards!" Now Aguero had been promised that at least four hundred patriots would join him on this occasion, at the place appointed, and give battle to the Spanish troops, which they well knew would be called upon to put down the demonstration. But the Cubans had not yet found themselves; it was still difficult for them to shake off the spell which the Spaniards seemed to have cast upon them, and to come out into the open and fight for their freedom. The promised four hundred were represented by a pitiful fifteen, and the little band naturally had small chance against the overwhelming forces which were sent against them immediately the alarm was given. They fought bravely, but there could be only one result, against such odds. They were routed and their leader was captured. Aguero succeeded, however, in escaping from the Spaniards, and went into hiding until the next day, when the patriots again made a demonstration for freedom at Najassa. Here, for the second time, the flag of Cuba Libre was flung to the breeze, and with shouts and cheers, the following Declaration of Independence for Cuba was read to a great multitude which had assembled in the square: "To the inhabitants of the Island of Cuba, Manifesto and Proclamation of their independence by the Liberating Society of Puerto Principe. "Human reason revolts against the idea that the social and political condition of a people can be indefinitely prolonged, in which man, stripped of all rights and guarantees, with no security of person or property, no enjoyment in the present, no hope in the future, lives only by the will, and under the conditions imposed by the pleasure of his tyrants; where a vile calumny, a prisoner's denunciation, a despot's suspicion, a word caught up by surprise in the sanctuary of home, or from the violated privacy of a letter, furnishes ample grounds for tearing a man from his hearth, and casting him forth to die of destitution or despair in a foreign soil, if he escapes being subjected to the insulting forms of a barbarous and arbitrary tribunal, where his persecutors are themselves the judges who condemn him, and where, instead of their proving his offence, he is required to prove his innocence. "A situation so violent as this, Cuba has been for many years enduring; and, far from any promise of remedy appearing, every day adds new proof that the policy of the mother-country and the ferocity of her rulers will grant neither truce nor rest till she is reduced to the condition of an immense prison, where every Cuban will be watched by a guard, and will have to pay that guard for watching him. In vain have this people exhibited a mildness, a prudence, and even a submission and loyalty, which have been proverbial. "When the iniquity of the government has not been able to find any ostensible grounds for persecution, it has had recourse to cowardly arts and snares to tempt its victims into some offence. Thus were various individuals of Matanzas entrapped into an ambuscade of the soldiery, by the pretext of selling them some arms, under circumstances which made them believe those arms were necessary for self-defence, against threatened attacks from the Peninsulars. Thus have sergeants and even officers been seen to mingle among the country people, and pass themselves off as enemies of the government, for the purpose of betraying them into avowals of their sentiments to the ruin of many persons so informed against as well as to the disgrace of military honor on the part of those who have lent themselves to so villainous a service. "If the sons of Cuba, moved by the dread of greater evils, have ever determined to employ legitimate means of imposing some law, or some restraint upon the unbridled excesses of their rulers, these latter have always found the way to distort such acts into attempts at rebellion. "For having dared to give utterances to principles and opinions, which, to other nations, constitute the foundation of their moral progress and glory, the Cubans most distinguished for their virtues and talents have found themselves wanderers and exiles. For the offence of having exhibited their opposition to the unlawful and perilous slave trade, from which the avarice of General O'Donnell promised itself so rich a harvest of lucre, the latter satiated his resentment with the monstrous vengeance of involving them in a charge of conspiracy with the free colored people and the slaves of the estates; endeavoring, as the last outrage that an immoral government could offer to law, to reason, or to nature, to prove the object of that conspiracy, in which they implicated whites of the most eminent virtue, knowledge, and patriotism, to have been no other than the destruction of their own race. "All the laws of society and nature trampled under foot--all races and conditions confounded together--the island of Cuba then presented to the civilized world a spectacle worthy of the rejoicings of hell. The wretched slaves saw their flesh torn from them under the lash, and bespattered with blood the faces of their executioners, who did not cease exacting from their tortures denunciation against accomplices. Others were shot in platoons without form of trial, and without even coming to understand the pretext under which they were massacred. The free colored people, after having been first lacerated by the lash, were then hurried to the scaffold and those only escaped with life who had gold enough to appease the fury of their executioners. And nevertheless, when the government or its followers has come to fear some rising of the Cubans their first threat has been that of arming the colored people against them for their extermination. We abstain for very shame from repeating the senseless pretences to which they have had recourse to terrify the timid wretches! How have they been able to image that the victims of their fury, with whom the whites of Cuba had shared in common the horrors of misery and persecution, will turn against their own friends at the call of the very tyrant who has torn them in pieces? If the free colored people, who know their interests as well as the whites, take any part in the movement of Cuba, it certainly will not be to the injury of the mother who shelters them in her bosom, nor of those other sons of hers who have never made them feel the difference of their race and condition, and who, far from plundering them, have taken pride in being their defenders and in meriting the title of their benefactors. "The world would refuse to believe the history of the horrid crimes which have been perpetrated in Cuba, and would reasonably consider that if there have been monsters to commit, it is inconceivable that there could so long have been men to endure them. But if there are few able to penetrate to the truth of particular facts, through all the means employed by the government to obscure and distort them, no one will resist the evidence of public and official facts. "Publicly and with arms in his hands, did General Tacon despoil Cuba of the constitution of Spain, proclaimed by all the powers of the monarchy, and sent to be sworn to in Cuba, as the fundamental law of the whole kingdom. "Publicly and by legislative act, was Cuba declared to be deprived of all the rights enjoyed by all Spaniards, and conceded by nature and the laws of nations the least advanced in civilization. "Publicly have the sons of Cuba been cut off from all admission to the commands and lucrative employments of the State. "Publicly are unlimited powers of every description granted to the Captains-General of Cuba who can refuse to those whom they condemn even the right of a trial and the privilege of being sentenced by a tribunal. "Public and permanent in the island of Cuba, are those courts martial which the laws permit only in extraordinary cases of war, for offences against the State. "Publicly has the Spanish press hurled against Cuba the threat converting the island into ruin and ashes by liberating the slaves and unchaining against her the hordes of barbarian Africans. "Publicly are impediments and difficulties imposed upon every individual, to restrain him from moving from place to place, and from exercising any branch of industry--no one being safe from arrest and fine, for some deficiency of authority or license, at every step he may take. "Public are the taxes which have wasted away the substance of the island and the project of other new ones, which threaten to abolish all the products of its riches--nothing being left for the opinions and interests of the country. "Outrages so great and so frequent, reasons so many and so strong, suffice not merely to justify, but to sanctify, in the eyes of the whole world, the cause of the independence of Cuba, and any effort of her people, by their own exertions, or with friendly aid from abroad, to put an end to the evils they suffer, and secure the rights with which God and nature have invested man. "Who will in Cuba oppose this indefeasible instinct, this imperative necessity of defending our property, and of seeking in the institutions of a just, free and regulated government conditions on which alone civilized society can exist? "The Peninsulars (natives of Spain) perhaps, who have come to Cuba to marry our daughters, who have here their children, their affections and their property, will they disregard the laws of nature to range themselves on the side of a government which oppresses them as it oppresses us, and which will neither thank them for the service nor be able, with all their help, to prevent the triumph of the independence of Cuba? "Are not they as intimately bound up with happiness and interest of Cuba as those blood-natives of her soil, who will never be able to deny the name of their fathers, and who, in rising up today against the despotism of the government would wish to count upon their co-operation as the best guaranty of their new social organization and the strongest proof of the justice of their cause? "Have they not fought in the Peninsula itself, for their national independence, for the support of the same principles for which we, the sons of Cuba proclaim, and which, being the same for men in all countries, cannot be admitted in one and rejected in another without doing treason to nature and to the light of reason, from which they spring? "No, no--it cannot be that they should carry submissiveness to the point of preferring their own ruin, and the spilling of the blood of their sons and brothers, to be triumph of the holiest cause ever embraced by man--a cause which aims to promote their own happiness and to protect their rights and properties. The Peninsulars who adorn and enrich our soil, and to whom the title of labor gives as high a right as our own to its preservation, know very well that the sons of Cuba regard them with personal affection--have never failed to recognize the interest and reciprocal wants which unite the two--nor have ever held them responsible for the perversenesses of the few, and for the iniquities of a government whose infernal policy alone has labored to separate them, on the tyrant's familiar maxim--to divide and conquer. "We, who proceed in good faith and with the noble ambition of earning the applause of the world for the justice of our acts--we surely cannot aim at the destruction of our brothers, nor at the usurpation of their properties; and far from meriting that vile calumny which the government will endeavor to fasten upon us, we do not hesitate to swear in the sight of God and of man that nothing would better accord with the wishes of our hearts, or with the glory and happiness of our country, than the co-operation of the Peninsulars, in the sacred work of liberation. United with them, we could realize that idea of entire independence which is a pleasing one to our minds; but if they present themselves in our way as enemies, we shall not be able to answer for the security of their persons and properties, nor when adventuring all for the main object of the liberty of Cuba, shall we be able to renounce any means of effecting it. "But if we have all these reasons to expect that the Peninsulars, who are in nowise dependent on the government and who are so bound up with the fate of Cuba, will at least remain neutral, it will not be supposed that we can promise ourselves the same conduct on the part of the army, the individuals composing which, without ties or affections, know no other law nor consideration than the will of their commander. We pity the lot of those unfortunate men, subject to a tyranny as hard as our own, who, torn from their homes in the flower of their youth, have been brought to Cuba to oppress us on condition of themselves renouncing the dignity of men and all the enjoyments and hopes of life. If they shall appreciate the difference between a free and happy citizen and a dependent and hireling soldier, and choose to accept the benefits of liberty and prosperity, which we tender them, we will admit them into our ranks as brethren. But if they shall disregard the dictates of reason and of their own interests and allow themselves to be controlled by the insidious representations of their tyrants, so as to regard it as their duty to oppose themselves to us on the field of battle as enemies, we will then accept the combat, alike without hate and without fear and always willing, whenever they may lay down their arms, to welcome them to our embrace. "To employ the language of moderation and justice--to seek for means of peace and conciliation--to invoke the sentiments of love and brotherhood--befits a cultivated and Christian people, which finds itself forced to appeal to the violent recourse of arms, not for the purpose of attacking the social order and the loves of fellow beings, but to recover the condition and the rights of man, usurped from them by an unjust and tyrannical power. But let not the expression of our progress and wishes encourage in our opponents the idea that we are ignorant of our resources, or distrustful of our strength. All the means united, at the disposal of the Peninsulars in Cuba against us, could only make the struggle more protracted and disastrous; but the issue in our favor could not be any the less sure and decisive. "In the ranks of independence we have to count all the free sons of Cuba, whatever may be the color of their race--the brave nations of South America, who inhabit our soil and who have already made trial of the strength and conduct of our tyrants--the sturdy islanders of the Canaries, who love Cuba as their country, and who have already had an Hernandez and a Monies de Oca, to seal with the proof of martyrdom, the heroic decision of their compatriots for our cause. "The ranks of the government would find themselves constantly thinned by desertion, by the climate, by death, which from all quarters would spring up among them in a thousand forms. Cut short of means to pay and maintain their army, dependent on recruits from Spain to fill up their vacancies without an inch of friendly ground on which to plant their feet, or an individual on whom to rely with security, war in the field would be for them one of extermination; while, if they shut themselves within the defences of their fortresses, hunger and want would soon compel them to abandon them, if they were not carried by force of arms. The example of the whole continent of Spanish America, under circumstances more favorable for them, when they had Cuba as their arsenal, the benefit of her coffers, and native aid in those countries themselves, ought to serve them as a lesson not to undertake an exterminating and fratricidal struggle, which could not fail to be attended with the same or worse results. "We, on the other hand, besides our own resources, have in the neighboring States of the Union, and in all the republics of America, the encampments of our troops, the depots of our supplies, and the arsenals of our arms. All the sons of this vast New World, whose bosom shelters the island of Cuba, and who have had, like us, to shake off by force the yoke of tyranny, will enthusiastically applaud our resolve, will fly by hundreds to place themselves beneath the flag of liberty in our ranks, and there trained to experienced valor will aid us in annihilating, once and for always, the last badge of ignominy that still disgraces the free and independent soil of America. "If we have hitherto hoped, with patience and resignation, that justice and their own interests would change the mind of our tyrants; if we have trusted to external efforts to bring the mother country to a negotiation which should avoid the disasters of war, we are resolved to prove by deeds that inaction and endurance have not been the results of impotence and cowardice. Let the government undeceive itself in regard to the power of its bayonets and the efficiency of all the means it has invented to oppress and watch us. In the face of its very authorities--in the sight of the spies at our side--on the day when we have resolved to demand back our rights, the cry of liberty and independence will rise from the Cape of San Antonio to the Point of Maysi. "We, then, as provisional representatives of the people of Cuba, and in exercise of the rights which God and Nature have bestowed upon every freeman, to secure his welfare and establish himself under the form of government that suits him do solemnly declare, taking God to witness the ends we propose, and invoking the favor of the people of America, who have preceded us with their example, that the Island of Cuba is, and, by the laws of nature ought to be, independent of Spain; and that henceforth the inhabitants of Cuba are free from all obedience or subjection to the Spanish government and the individuals composing it; owing submission only to the authority and direction of those who, while awaiting the action of the general suffrage of the people, are charged, or may provisionally charge themselves with the command and government of each locality, and of the military forces. "By virtue of this declaration, the free sons of Cuba, and the inhabitants of the Island who adhere to her cause, are authorized to take up arms, to unite into corps, to name officers and juntas of government, for their organization and direction, for the purpose of putting themselves in communication with the juntas constituted for the proclamation of the independence of Cuba, and which have given the initiative to this movement. Placed in the imposing attitude of making themselves respected, our compatriots will prefer all the means of persuasion to those of force; they will protect the property of neutrals, whatever may be their origin; they will welcome the Peninsulars into their ranks as brothers and will respect all property. "If, notwithstanding our purposes and fraternal intentions, the Spanish government should find partizan obstruction bent upon sustaining it, and we have to owe our liberty to the force of arms, sons of Cuba, let us prove to the republics of America, which are contemplating us, that we having been the last to follow their example does not make us unworthy of them, nor incapable of receiving our liberty and achieving our independence. JOAQUIN DE AGUERO AGNEW, FRANCISCO AGNERO ESTRADA, WALDO ARETEACA PINA. "July 4, 1851." Immediately upon the reading of this the wildest excitement ensued. The Cubans began to believe that at last deliverance was near. They flung their hats into the air, while tears streamed down their faces, and they shouted "Cuba Libre! Down with the Spaniards!" until hoarseness compelled them to stop. Then an ominous noise, low at first, but growing nearer and nearer, broke in upon their rapturous demonstrations. Well they knew that sound, for they had heard it only too often. The Spanish soldiers were approaching, and turning, those on the outskirts of the crowd beheld column after column of infantry advancing from one direction, while a troop of cavalry was apparently about to charge the crowd from the opposite side of the square. Aguero knew that a crisis had been reached and that on the work done in the next few moments depended victory or defeat. He called upon those closest in his confidence to organize the crowd. Plans for this action had previously been completed, and the assembled people were quickly grouped into divisions each containing one hundred men. By this time the Spanish troops were only about a hundred yards distant, and they at once opened fire on the revolutionists. Aguero's company was armed, and they had brought with them extra equipment, which had been distributed among the people. The revolutionists were by no means poor marksmen; they had long been practicing in private for this very hour. They proved that they were more skilled than the picked troops of Spain, and for a time they showed astonishing efficiency in thinning the ranks of the Spanish infantry. But the cavalry now charged the crowd, and this was more serious than an infantry attack because the revolutionists were not prepared to return it in kind. They stood their ground bravely, firing at the horses, thus seeking to dismount and confuse the enemy, and strange as it may seem they were successful. The cavalry commander ordered a retreat, which was accomplished in great disorder, and under a withering fire from the revolutionists, while the infantry, amazed and alarmed to find themselves no longer able to rely on the support of the cavalry, broke and fled toward Puerto Principe, from which place they had come. The little army at Najassa well knew that no help could be expected from their comrades at Puerto Principe, and therefore it seemed the part of discretion to allow the Spanish army to retreat unmolested, and for the revolutionists to take refuge in the interior of the island, where it would be more difficult to apprehend them, and where they hoped to find sympathy and support. They made their way to Guanamaquilla, where they decided to make a stand, and where, after effecting a better organization, they entrenched themselves. On July 6 at this place they were attacked by six hundred Spaniards under General Lemery, and the Spanish troops were again routed, again retired in disorder, and once more the revolutionists celebrated a victory. Not only did the Spanish troops beat a hasty retreat, but they left behind them, on the field of battle, forty dead and dying. It can be imagined with what elation the patriots celebrated this second victory. They could hardly believe in their good fortune. It was incredible that they should have prevailed against the trained forces of Spain. It was not for them, at such close contact with events, to realize that while they were fighting for their homes, for freedom, for their families, for their very lives,--for capture meant as sure death as any bullet of the enemy could bring,--after all the Spanish troops were only hirelings, fighting for pay and not for a principle, and that it has been the history of the world, since its beginning, that when the home is at stake sooner or later victory comes to its defenders. Now the little bands of one hundred separated, and the mistake was made which proved fatal to the cause for which they had already sacrificed so much, and which seemed about to triumph. They should have waited until news of their triumph penetrated to other patriots, and until their forces had been greatly swelled in volume, before any division was made. Meanwhile, immediately after their first victory, they had sent a courier to bear word to Lopez, through their mysterious channels of communication, of their success, urging him to communicate the good news to the junta in New York, and to hasten to their aid with a new expedition, and promising that meanwhile they would spread the revolution to all parts of the island, so that when he came again he would have no cause to complain of lack of support. The companies of one hundred each went in a separate direction, each bent on conquest and propaganda among timid sympathizers. One party, which was led by Aguero himself, made its way to Las Tunas, and arrived there late in the evening. Aguero divided his little band into two parts and approached the town from opposite directions, sounding the cry of the revolution, "Cuba Libre!" and calling upon all good patriots to join their forces. But Spanish spies, always active, had preceded them and the garrison of five hundred soldiers was already alert. Then a catastrophe happened. The two bands of patriots, in the midst of the great confusion which their arrival occasioned, met in a dark, unpaved street, and not recognizing one another, each believed the other to be the Spaniards, and each opened fire upon the other. Too late the error was rectified. Some of the patriots had been injured by their own comrades, and the organization was in confusion; before order could be educed from this chaos, the Spanish troops were upon them, and this time it was the patriots who were put to rout. Another of the bands of one hundred had proceeded, meanwhile, to the plains of Santa Isabel. Large numbers of patriots rallied to their assistance, but the attacking Spanish force, nearly a thousand strong, and consisting of both cavalry and infantry, cast far too great odds against them. The patriots again suffered defeat, and their losses were twenty killed and forty captured by the enemy, while the Spanish casualties were one hundred and thirty, fifty of whom were killed outright. A third band of one hundred, which had as its commander Don Serapin Recio, made its way to Santa Cruz. They were more fortunate than had been their comrades, for when they were attacked by four companies of Spanish infantry, under Colonel Conti, they not only were victorious, but they took Colonel Conti prisoner. This triumph, however, was short lived, for Spanish reinforcements, consisting of four hundred cavalrymen, were rushed to the scene of battle, and the tide turned against the patriots. Recio was captured, fifty six revolutionists soon lay dead or dying, and as the others sought to escape a large proportion of them were taken captive. Still a fourth band, advancing on Punta de Grandao, met with disaster, as did the fifth division which had gone toward La Siguanea in the hope of taking that place. Only one little division of patriots, one hundred strong, remained unconquered. Aguero, who had made his escape after the defeat at Las Tunas, took command of this company. The city of Nuevitas was entered in triumph, amid shouts of welcome from the people, who in large numbers threw in their fortunes with the revolution. Don Carlos Comus led the Spanish forces against the city, and a desperate battle which raged for over three hours was fought. The ammunition of the patriots was exhausted, and fighting against frightful odds, they were almost exterminated; fewer than the original one hundred remained alive. They fled, and were speedily captured by the pursuing Spaniards. Complete defeat had now overtaken the revolutionists, who so boldly on July 3 had declared their independence of Spain, and thrown a defiant gauntlet before the Spanish power. By the end of July not a single one of the original army remained at large to tell the story; they had all been killed, captured, or frightened into cowed and silent obedience to Spanish rule. Of those who had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, every one was tried by military tribunal, and sentence passed upon them. Two courts sat in judgment on the offenders, one at Puerto Principe and the other at Trinidad, at which latter the Captain-General, José de la Concha, presided. Under his dictation sentence of death was pronounced upon José Isidore Armenteros, Fernando Hernandez and Rafael Arcis, all recognized as prime movers in the revolution. Ignacio Belen Perez, Nestor Cadalso, Juan O'Bourke, Abeja Iznaga Miranda and Jose Maria Rodriguez were sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, which was to be suffered abroad, and they were forever banished from Cuba, while the same terms were imposed on Juan Hevia and Avelind Porada, whose sentences, however, were shortened to eight years each, and Pedro José Pomarcz, Foribio Garcia, Cruz Birba and Fernando Medinilla were also banished, and condemned to two years' imprisonment. All sentences went into effect on August 18. It is interesting to note in passing a fact which seems quite in keeping with the Spanish character as demonstrated by the administration of the island; the men who were condemned to death were led out into a field by the name of Del Negro, near the city of Trinidad, and _shot in the back_. The court which sat in judgment at Puerto Principe tried the leader of the revolutionists, and brave Joaquin Aguero was condemned to die by the garrote. The same sentence was imposed on José Thomas Betancourt, Fernando de Zayas and Miguel Benavides; while Miguel Castellanos and Adolfo Pierre Aguero were sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, which sentences were all decreed to take effect on August 12. It was impossible, even with the strict censorship which the Spanish Captain-General maintained over the island, to keep reports of the stirring events which were taking place from leaking forth into the outer world. Of course, Lopez and the junta at New York learned of them through the channels known only to themselves, and the news, spreading to all parts of the United States, caused tremendous excitement. Great interest was manifested, particularly in the southern states, and in New York City, where the members of the Cuban junta had begun to stir up a considerable amount of interest in and sympathy for the Cubans. The New York papers dispatched correspondents to obtain the true story of the rebellion, but the reporters had difficulty in getting into the country, and encountered still greater obstacles in dispatching what news they could gather to their respective sheets. They were hampered in their efforts by Spanish officials and Spanish spies were always at their heels. While the main uprising had been in the vicinity of Puerto Principe, incipient rebellions and sympathetic insurrections occurred in other parts of the island, which were quickly quelled by overwhelming forces of Spaniards, and the news of which was confined as much as possible to the immediate vicinity of the uprisings. At Trinidad a mob assembled on horseback, crying vengeance on the Spanish oppressors, but they were soon driven from the city and obliged to take to cover on a densely wooded hill, where their movements were so hampered by underbrush that they were perforce compelled to abandon their mounts, and soon surrendered to superior numbers. It was suspected that the inhabitants of Havana, or rather the revolutionary sympathizers in that place, were about to revolt, but the guard was redoubled, the crowd was overawed by numbers of well armed troops, and the movement, if it ever had been contemplated, never materialized. However, many of the wealthy inhabitants, fearing that they might be seized on suspicion of complicity with the revolutionists, hastily fled to their estates in the country. The New York _Herald_, which for a long time had been sympathetically inclined toward the revolutionary party in Cuba, on July 16, 1851, printed the following report, which was based on facts gathered by its correspondent: "I consider that, in a political point of view, this island was never in a more critical state than it is at this present moment. The Creoles of Cuba have at length thrown down the gauntlet of defiance to the authority of Spain." This statement was followed by a long account of the engagements between the revolutionists and the forces of Spain. On July 22 the same paper, under the guise of reporting conditions, issued what was really a call of "The United States to the rescue," which in part read as follows: "The revolution of Cuba has changed from chrysalis to full grown fly. The first blood has been spilled. Cuba, some seem to think, has had her Lexington.... The revolution having begun, it cannot go backward and it is more than probable that the days of Spain's rule are at least to be much embarrassed. The government counts 14,000 troops, and no more, in all the island, and may, perhaps, be able to raise as many more from the Spanish population; but their fleet is a good one, comprising some twenty vessels, of which six are steamers. _Whether the struggle be a long one or a short one, will depend on the 'aid and comfort' the Cubans receive from the United States, in the shape of guns, pistols, powder, ball and men that can teach them to organize and manoeuvre._" CHAPTER VI It will be recalled that the Cubans, in the first flush of victory, had dispatched the good tidings to the Cuban Junta in New York City. These reports were so sanguine of victory that even though later rumors of defeat at the hands of the Spaniards did reach that body, they were regarded as Spanish propaganda and suppressed. These adverse rumors were vague, and unsupported by confirming data, and Spanish spies had been for some time active in dispensing unreliable news favorable to their country, so it is not strange that little credence was given to such advices as came to the Junta from Spanish sources. Lopez himself was overjoyed at the tidings from the patriots and began eagerly to organize another expedition. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed among Cuban sympathizers in the United States. In some places, particularly in the south, public meetings were held, and proclamations of the liberty of Cuba were read to the assembled crowds. Men crowded to enlist and $50,000 was quickly raised to finance the expedition. The new recruits to the ranks were of by far the best character yet enlisted. They seem to have been, for the most part, actuated by the highest motives, and aflame with zeal for the cause of Cuban liberty. Garibaldi, who was then in the United States, is reported to have been approached to be the leader of the new expedition, but because he had his own Italian matters to attend to, he declined with regret. The United States Government, of course, gave no official sanction to the project, but it was deterred by the preponderance of favorable public opinion from putting more than nominal obstacles in its way; avoiding on the one hand the storm of protest which was bound to be raised by Cuban sympathizers at any marked interference with their plans, and on the other the anger of Spain and thus an international complication. Spanish spies were as heretofore dogging the steps of the conspirators and reporting their findings to the Spanish minister at Washington, so that the United States Government found itself in an exceedingly difficult position. However, preparations went on apace. A steamer, the _Pampero_, was purchased by the Junta, and well stocked with provisions. Arms and ammunitions were also procured, but these were, as was usual, to be delivered to the steamer on the high seas. At daybreak, on the morning of April 3, the _Pampero_ slipped from its dock at the foot of Lafayette Street in New Orleans, and made its way down the river. At the mouth of the harbor the difficulties of the filibusters began. The vessel was overloaded, and Captain Lewis in the interests of safety declined to proceed further until some of the party had been sent ashore. A landing was made that night, and one hundred men were detailed to be left behind. They protested vigorously against this action. The plan was that the _Pampero_ was to be only one of many vessels to be sent within the next month to the relief of the Cubans, and that she was to return, immediately her company had been landed in Cuba, for reinforcements which would be assembled and be in waiting to sail. However, none of the company on the _Pampero_ desired to await another sailing, and when she once more put out to sea it was discovered that the number on board her had not been perceptibly lessened, since many of those put on shore had, in the confusion, and under the cover of darkness, stolen back on board and hidden themselves securely until she was once more on her way. The expedition thus auspiciously started was made up of the following men and officers: 6 Companies of Infantry, including officers--219 men 3 " " Artillery, " " --114 men 1 Company " Cuban patriots (domiciled in the United States) -- 49 men 1 " " Hungarian recruits -- 9 men 1 " " German recruits -- 9 men The command of this little army was distributed as follows: General-in-Chief Narciso Lopez Second-in-Command and Chief-of-Staff John Pragay _Officers of Staff_ Captain Emmerich Radwitch. " Ludwig Schlessinger. Lieutenant Joseph Lewohl. " Jigys Rodendorf. " Ludwig. " Miller. Adjutant Colengen. " Blumenthal. Surgeon Hega Lemmgue. Commissary G. A. Cook. _Staff of the Regiment of Infantry_ Colonel R. L. Dorman. Lieutenant Colonel W. Scott Harkness. Adjutant George A. Graham. Commissary Joseph Bell. Adjutant of Regiment George Parr. _Company A._ Captain Robert Ellis. Lieutenant E. McDonald. Sub-Lieutenant J. L. LaHascan. " R. H. Breckinridge. _Company B._ Captain John Johnson. First Lieutenant James Dunn. Second " J. F. Williams. Third " James O'Reilly. _Company C._ Captain J. C. Bridgham. First Lieutenant Richard Vowden. Second " J. A. Gray. Third " J. N. Baker. _Company D._ Captain Philip Golday. First Lieutenant David Rassan. Second " James H. Landingham. Third " James H. Vowden. _Company E._ Captain Henry Jackson. First Lieutenant William Hobbs. Second " J. A. Simpson. Third " James Crangh. _Company F._ Captain William Stewart. First Lieutenant James L. Down. Second " John L. Bass. Third " Thomas Hudwall. _Regiment of Artillery--Officers of Staff._ Chief--William S. Crittenden. Adjutant R. L. Stanford. Second Master of Commissariat Felix Hustin. Surgeon Ludovic Vinks. _Company A._ Captain W. A. Kelly. First Lieutenant N. O. James. Second " James A. Nowens. Third " J. O. Bryce. _Company B._ Captain James Saunders. First Lieutenant Philip VanVechten. Second " Beverly A. Hunter. Third " William H. Craft. _Company C._ Captain Victor Kerr. First Lieutenant James Brandt. Second " William T. Vienne. _Regiment of Cuban Patriots._ _Company A._ Captain Ilde Foussee Overto. First Lieutenant De Jiga Hernandez. Second " Miguel Lopez. Third " José A. Plands. Fourth " Henry Lopez. _Regiment of Hungarians._ Major George Botilla. Captain Ladislaus Polank. Lieutenant Semerby. " Johan Petroce. " Adambert Kerskes. " Conrad Richner. _German Regiment._ Captain Pietra Muller. " Hugo Schlyct. Lieutenant Paul Michael. " Biro Cambeas. " Giovana Placasee. This seems perhaps an elaborate organization for so small a force, but it must be borne in mind that Lopez and his followers firmly believed that this time there was to be no repetition of the former lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Cubans, but that they had only to land to be greeted with rejoicing, and to have flock to their assistance a great number of Cuban patriots. This impression was increased by forged letters--which Lopez, however, accepted as genuine--which were waiting for them at Key West and which are now believed to have been written by a follower of Lopez in Havana, under duress and intimidating threats of Captain-General Concha, for the latter having learned of the expedition resorted to treachery to thwart the plans of the filibusters. These letters intimated that Pinar del Rio and many cities in that vicinity were in open revolt against Spanish rule, and prayed that Lopez come quickly to the aid of the rebels, who were eager to join him. Colonel Crittenden, in command of the artillery regiment, was a man of the highest connections in the United States. He was a seasoned soldier, being a veteran of the Mexican war, and having received his training at West Point. In Lopez's band were also several officers from the United States Custom House at New Orleans, and many men from the best families of the South. On April 7 the smoke of a steamer was seen in the distance, and it soon seemed to indicate that the _Pampero_ was being pursued. Her course was changed, and she either succeeded in outdistancing her pursuer, or the latter decided that a mistake had been made in the identity of the vessel, and abandoned the chase. The expedition neared Key West, and they expected to find there United States vessels of war, and a strong garrison. Therefore an attempt was made to disguise the character of the _Pampero_ and her purpose, and the men were all ordered below. Lopez was delighted to find that his anticipations were wrong, for there were no men of war in the harbor and the barracks were empty. As the _Pampero_ docked, and the men came on deck, they were greeted by a shouting mob of enthusiastic people. They were welcomed as heroes, and the inhabitants came on board bearing food of the most tempting variety and cases of champagne. A feast followed, at which the health of the filibusters and the success of the expedition was drunk with shouts of approval. Now the expectation had been to go up the St. John's River, where a quantity of artillery for Colonel Crittenden's regiment had been hidden, but the false reports in the forged letters made Lopez anxious to be on his way to Cuba, and it was argued that the artillery would be ineffective in the first engagements, for the roads were very bad, and Lopez hoped to take to the mountains and conduct a sort of guerrilla warfare. The St. John's River was some distance away, and there was always fear of interference from the United States Government; and besides, since this was merely a vanguard for a much greater invasion of Cuba, and was intended to pave the way for the coming forces, why not proceed to the rescue of the Cuban insurgents and let those who would follow bring the artillery? Consequently, after consultation with his officers, Lopez decided to sail for Cuba by the shortest route. On nine o'clock of the morning of August 11, the filibusters found themselves about ten miles from the harbor of Havana. Off Bahia Honda they took on a pilot. Meanwhile, two vessels were sighted, and were believed to be Spanish ships lying in wait for the expedition. A contest of wits ensued, in which Lopez was victorious, and the _Pampero_ successfully evaded her pursuers. At eight o'clock that night they neared Morillo, and Lopez decided there to make his landing. At eleven o'clock this was accomplished, and while the provisions, arms and ammunition were being brought ashore, the men were given permission to lie down on their arms and rest for two hours. It can be imagined that they were in the highest state of excitement and in no condition to sleep, even if the attacks of mosquitoes had not made this impossible. Now the information which Captain-General Concha had received concerning the expedition had led him to believe that the landing would be made at Mantua, and he was delighted when information reached him, as it speedily did, that the filibusters had gone ashore at Morillo. He quickly dispatched Colonel Morales by rail to Guanajay, where he collected a Spanish force of about four hundred men, who were instructed to attack from the front; while General Ena from Bahia Honda and Colonel Elezalde from Pinar del Rio were to join forces to cut off retreat, if the filibusters attempted to escape by sea, and thus Concha hoped to surround and destroy the army of invasion. Meanwhile, the _Pampero_ had been cleared, and under orders from Lopez set out on a return trip to Key West to bring reinforcements, and Lopez decided to march his forces to Las Pozas, ten miles away. Contrary to their expectations, the filibusters had found the town of Morillo practically deserted, and there were no enthusiastic patriots to welcome their would-be deliverers. Now difficulty arose as to transportation of the provisions, and the main portions of the military supplies. There was no practical means of conveying them to Las Pozas, and in consequence Lopez made a mistake which afterward proved his undoing. He concluded to divide his forces, leaving Crittenden, with a hundred and twenty men, to guard the supplies, and himself, with the remainder of his army, to push on to Las Pozas. He reached this objective without mishap, but again found conditions very different from what he had been led to expect. This town, too, was almost deserted, and there was the same disheartening lack of support, and failure of the Cubans to join his expedition. Lopez determined that on this occasion there should be no occasion to bring against his army the accusations which the Spaniards had made at Matanzas. He therefore ordered his men to accept nothing in the way of food for which they did not pay, and he stationed guards at places where liquor was sold to prevent any drunkenness on the part of his men. In consequence the best of order prevailed. An attack from the Spaniards was momentarily expected, and Lopez maintained a careful watch for the approach of the enemy. This was delayed until the next morning, when, in spite of his precautions, he was taken virtually by surprise. A portion of his forces were eating their breakfast, while others were bathing in a nearby stream, when word came that the Spanish had overpowered the outposts, were then within two hundred yards of the village, and that the attacking force was estimated to be twelve hundred strong. Lopez hastily issued the call to arms, and his men were arrayed to meet the on-coming Spaniards. A hot battle ensued, in which, in spite of the fact that they were so largely outnumbered, the filibusters were victorious and forced the Spaniards to retire. However, Lopez suffered a very great blow in the death of Colonel Dorman, who was the best disciplinarian and most efficient organizer and drill-master in the army, while Colonel Pragay, Lopez's chief adviser--who, however, had been responsible for persuading Lopez to make the mistake of leaving Crittenden behind--was also killed, as was Captain Overto. The other casualties amounted to fifty killed and wounded. Even the fact that the Spanish losses were far heavier did not compensate for the loss to Lopez of his three brave commanders. Lopez's army had been increased by only a few stray Cubans, whom they had encountered on their march to Las Pozas, and who had joined fortunes with them. He now had fifty-three less men that at first, and besides he was separated from his stores. Unless they were promptly brought forward, or unless he returned to Morillo and Crittenden, he would be in a serious situation, since help from the natives was not materializing. While he was contemplating this situation, a messenger arrived from Crittenden, asking permission to join Lopez, and the messenger was promptly ordered to return with orders to Crittenden to march his forces to Pinar del Rio to join Lopez there, and Lopez headed his men toward the mountains, with the intention of pushing on to Pinar del Rio. Promptly on receipt of the desired permission from Lopez, Crittenden, with his one hundred and twenty men, set out to join him. They had proceeded only three miles when the little band was attacked by a body of five hundred Spaniards. Crittenden's men quickly took to cover, and fought so desperately that in spite of the fact that they were so greatly outnumbered, they killed a large number of the Spanish forces, and put the others to rout. But Crittenden, it would seem, had not learned the proper lesson from the earlier division of Lopez's forces, and his own plight in consequence, for he now decided to make the mistake a second time. The little band had made slow progress, because of the necessity for transporting the supplies in carts, and Crittenden made up his mind to leave Captain Kelly for the time with forty men to defend the supplies, and with the remaining eighty himself to lead an attack against the Spaniards who were now rallying. But the Spanish soldiers were better trained than were Crittenden's men, and the Spanish leader was cleverer in manoeuvres and had a greater knowledge of the country. He had no difficulty in effecting a separation between the two bodies of Crittenden's men, and he forced those under Crittenden to flee for their lives. They took refuge in a wooded ravine, where they remained for two days and nights without food and without water, in constant terror of a Spanish attack. Realizing that if they stayed where they were they faced no better fate than slow starvation, they finally, under cover of the night, emerged from their hiding-place and made their way to the coast, where they took possession of four small boats and set out to sea, in the hope of reaching Key West, or of being picked up by some other expedition, since they had no doubt that several were already on their way from the United States. Two days later, starving, and almost mad for want of fresh water, driven by the tides back to the shore and aground on the rocks, they were captured and taken to Havana. The Spanish General Bustillos, gives the following account of their apprehension: "Your Excellency: I started yesterday from Bahia Honda, in the steamer _Habanera_, with a view to reconnoiter the coast of Playitas and Morillo, in order to remove all the means by which the pirates could possibly escape; or in case of more expeditions to these points, to remove the means of disembarkation. At seven o'clock in the morning, I communicated with the inhabitants of Morillo, and was informed by the inhabitants that, at 10 o'clock on the preceding night, one part of them embarked in four boats. Having calculated the hour of their sailing and distance probably made in 10 hours and supposing they had taken the direction of New Orleans--I proceeded in that direction 18 miles, with full steam, but after having accomplished that distance, I could not discover any of those I pursued. Believing the road they had followed was within the rocks, I directed my steamer to that point, and made the greatest exertions to encounter the fugitive pirates. At 10 o'clock I detected the 4 boats navigating along the coast and I could only seize one. Two others were upon the rocks of the island, the fourth upon the rocks of Cargo Levisa. When I seized the men of the first boat, I armed the boats of the ship in order to pursue the second and third, which were on the rocks, but the officers of the army who were in the boats, as well as the troops and sailors, the commander of the boat, Don Ignacio de Arrellano and the captain of the steamer _Cardenas_, Don Francisco Estolt threw themselves in the water to pursue the pirates of whom two only escaped. Having left their arms we did not pursue them in order to occupy ourselves with the boat in Cargo Levisa, for it was one of the largest and contained more men. These, twenty-four in number, were hidden within a small neck, having the boat drawn up among the rocks; and here the pirates were seized. The number of prisoners was fifty well armed men, headed by a chief and five officers." When the captives reached Havana, they were brought up on deck, stripped except for their undershirts and trousers, and before the people who had assembled at the dock they were made to undergo the greatest indignities. Not only were they grossly insulted by word of mouth; they were spit upon, and railed at, kicked and assaulted; nothing seemed too harsh or vile for their captors to do in venting their spleen. Meanwhile, when the Captain-General was apprised of their arrival, he sent spies to them to take down their statements and farewell messages, promising to transmit these to their families, but in reality his agents were instructed to use every effort to influence each man to inform on the others. In this, however, they were entirely unsuccessful. Concha announced his intention of dealing summarily with the offenders, as a warning to others who might contemplate an invasion of Cuba. Therefore, without even the pretense of a trial, the following decree was issued against them: "It having been decreed by the general order of April 20 last, and subsequently reproduced, what was to be the fate of the pirates who should dare to profane the soil of this island, and in view of the declarations of the fifty individuals who have been taken by his Excellency the Commander-General of this naval station, and placed at my disposal, which declarations establish the identity of their persons, as pertaining to the horde commanded by the traitor Lopez, I have resolved in accordance with the provisions of the Royal Ordinances, General Laws of the Kingdom, and particularly in the Royal Order of the 12th of June of the past year, issued for this particular case, that the said individuals, whose names and designations are set forth in the following statement, suffer this day the pain of death, by being shot, the execution being committed to the Señor Teniente de Rey, Brigadier of the Plaza. "JOSE DE LA CONCHA." Attached to this document was the following list of names. Since it is known that fifty-two men were shot, the list is accordingly incomplete: "Colonel W. S. Crittenden; Captains F. S. Sewer, Victor Kerr, and T. B. Veacey; Lieutenants James Brandt, J. O. Bryce, Thomas C. James, and M. H. Homes; Doctors John Fisher and R. A. Tourniquet; Sergeants J. Whiterous and A. M. Cotchett; Adjutant B. C. Stanford; Privates Samuel Mills, Edward Bulman, George A. Arnold, B. J. Wregy, William Niseman, Anselmo Torres, Hernandez, Robert Cantley, John G. Sanka, James Stanton, Thomas Harnett, Alexander McIllger, Patrick Dillon, Thomas Hearsey, Samuel Reed, H. T. Vinne, M. Philips, James L. Manville, G. M. Green, J. Salmon, Napoleon Collins, N. H. Fisher, William Chilling, G. A. Cook, S. O. Jones, M. H. Ball, James Buxet, Robert Caldwell, C. C. William Smith, A. Ross, P. Brouke, John Christides, William B. Little, John Stibbs, James Ellis, William Hogan, Charles A. Robinson." On August 16, early in the morning, the prisoners were taken from the vessel and brought to the Castle of Atares for execution. An appeal was made to the American Consul at Havana, F. A. Owens, to use his influence with the Captain-General to obtain some clemency for the condemned men, but he not only declined on the ground that they had been declared outlaws by the American Government, but he seemed to be utterly lacking in kindness of heart or compassion, for he refused to see the men, or to make any attempt to transmit their last messages to their friends and families. An eye witness thus describes the execution: "Havana, August 16, 4-1/2 P. M. "I have this day been witness to one of the most brutal acts of wanton inhumanity ever perpetrated in the annals of history. Not content was this government in revenging themselves in the death of those unfortunate and perhaps misguided men, and which, it may even be said, was brought upon themselves; but these Spanish authorities deserve to be most severely chastised for their exceedingly reprehensible conduct in permitting the desecration, as they have done, of the senseless clay of our brave countrymen. This morning forty Americans, four Irish, one Scotch, one Italian, one Philippine Islander, two Habaneros and two Germans or Hungarians, were shot at 11 o'clock; after which the troops were ordered to retire and some hundreds of the violent rabble, hired for the purpose commenced mutilating the dead bodies. Oh! the very remembrance of the sight is frightful. "I never saw men--and could scarcely have supposed it possible--conduct themselves at such an awful moment with the fortitude these men displayed under such trying circumstances. They were shot, six at a time, i.e., twelve men were brought to the place of execution, six made to kneel down and receive the fire of the soldiers, after which the remaining six were made to walk around their dead comrades and kneel opposite to them, when they were also shot. They died bravely, those gallant and unfortunate young gentlemen. When the moment of execution came, many, Colonel Crittenden and Captain Victor Kerr among them, refused to kneel with their backs to the executioners. 'No,' said the chivalrous Crittenden, 'an American kneels only to his God, and always faces his enemy!' They stood up, faced their executioners, were shot down and their brains then knocked out by clubbed muskets. After being stripped and their bodies mutilated, they were shoved, six or seven together, bound as they were, into hearses, which were used last year for cholera cases. No coffins were allowed them. "A finer looking set of young men I never saw; they made not a single complaint, not a murmur, against their sentence, and decency should have been shown their dead bodies in admiration for the heroism they displayed when brought out for execution. Not a muscle was seen to move, and they proved to the miserable rabble congregated to witness the horrible spectacle that it being the fortunes of war that they fell into the power of this government, they were not afraid to die. It would have been a great consolation to these poor fellows, as they repeatedly asked, to see their consul, and through him to have sent their last adieus, and such little remembrances as they had, to their beloved relations in the States. But Mr. Owens, the American Consul, did not even make application to the Captain-General to see these unfortunate countrymen in their distress, and their sacred wishes in their last moments have been unattended to. Lastly, at the very hour of triumph, when the people of the Spanish steamer _Habanero_ knew that the execution of the American prisoners, whom they had taken to Havana, had taken place, two shots were fired across or at the steamer _Falcon_ off Bahia Honda; and notwithstanding that this vessel was well known to them, having as she had the American flag hoisted, etc., she was detained and overhauled by these Spanish officers." Another reliable source, the report of an American naval officer, furnished the information, that after the prisoners had been shot, their bodies were mutilated; they were dragged by the heels, and outraged in a manner which would make the most unenlightened savage shudder; their ears and fingers were cut off, and portions of these, together with pieces of skull, were distributed to the Spanish officers as souvenirs, while some of these grim relics were afterward nailed up in public places as a warning against attempts to revolt against the Spanish Government. Ten of the bodies were placed in coffins, and the rest were merely thrown into a pit. When Captain Kelly and his forty followers had been separated from Crittenden, they managed in some manner--the details of which have not come down to us--to evade the Spaniards and to escape with such supplies as they could carry. They took to the cover of the woods, and being unfamiliar with the country wandered around, until they fell in with a loyal negro who undertook to act as guide for them. He led them to a dense wood, in sight of Las Pozas, and they sent him on ahead to report conditions. He returned, stating that Lopez was in possession of the town, and so they joined him, just as he was about to lead his men into the mountains. Captain Kelly's men had been so engrossed with their own predicament that they had remained in ignorance of the fate of Crittenden's force, and they were therefore unable to give Lopez any definite information concerning them, and he treasured the hope that they too had escaped the Spaniards, and would be able to join him at Pinar del Rio, in accordance with the original plan. Lopez's forces were now reduced to about three hundred men, and they found themselves obliged to leave their wounded behind them. They pushed forward all night, and until about nine in the morning, covering a distance of twelve miles. They shot a cow, and roasting the meat on the points of their bayonets, ate it without bread or salt. They then continued their march until eight in the evening, when, utterly worn out, they lay down and slept on their arms until midnight. The moon was now shining brightly, and Lopez awakened his tired army, and again they were on their way. Shortly after dawn, they reached a plantation, where they were received with kindness by the owner, who was in sympathy with the cause of Cuban freedom. Two cows were killed, and some corn roasted, and once more the little band was refreshed. But now Lopez discovered that in the absence of a guide or a compass they had been traveling almost in a circle, and instead of going southwest toward San Cristobal and Pinar del Rio, they were within only three miles of their original landing place, where there was a large Spanish force. He immediately assembled his footsore companions, who were now almost barefoot because the rough and stony passes had worn the shoes from their feet, and led them on a forced march. Many had already dropped out by fatigue, and the others were almost exhausted, but Lopez realized that safety could only be assured by putting many miles between his men and the Spanish garrison, and reaching, before they were overtaken, some place of strong vantage. The Spaniards seem, however, to have been thoroughly puzzled by Lopez's circuitous course, and they sent word to the Captain-General that since they despaired of capturing him, they felt the best measure to take was an effort to induce his men to desert him. Concha, therefore, issued the following proclamation, which was posted in conspicuous places all over the vicinity where Lopez was supposed to be hiding: "Proclamation! "The Most Excellent Señor, the Captain-General, has seen proper to direct, under this date, to the chiefs of columns in the field and to the Lieutenant-Governors of Bahia Honda, Mariel, San Cristobal and Pinar del Rio, the following circular: "The greater part of the pirates who dared to invade the island have been destroyed by the valiant troops of that army to whom the lot fell of being destined to pursue them, as well as by the not less decided and active cooperation of all the loyal inhabitants of the district they had sought to make their den. Considering, at once, the unanimous confession of all those who have been taken and executed, that they had been brought here into a foreign territory through a complete deception, having been made to believe that the country called them, that the army would make common cause with them, and that triumph would be as easy as it was certain, such being the promise of the traitor who led them; and that the directors of such a foolish and disorderly enterprise could not in any other way have got together the multitude connected herewith, and also that public vengeance has already been satisfied by the severe chastisement inflicted on those individuals hitherto captured, as well as those that have perished by the balls or the bayonets of our gallant troops; and that finally, the time has arrived to make use of clemency, according to the dictates of humanity, I have determined: "I. That quarter shall be given to every individual belonging to the band under command of the traitor Lopez who shall surrender or be taken by the troops of His Majesty within four days from the publication of this resolution in the respective districts; it being well understood that after the expiration of that period the general army order of April 20 last will remain in full force as it has up to now. "II. The individual or individuals belonging to said band who shall surrender said leader, Lopez, shall be free from all punishment, and if he be a foreigner, shall be restored to his own country. "This I communicate to you for your exact observance, ordering that it be immediately published in all the district under your command. God guard your Excellency many years! "JOSE DE LA CONCHA. "Havana, Aug. 24, 1851." Meanwhile stragglers who fell by the wayside, and afterward fell into the hands of the Spaniards, were brutally treated, and murdered in the most revolting manner, their bowels being ripped open by bayonets after they had been practically flogged to death. A native guide who offered his services to Lopez, now led him to a coffee plantation near Las Frias. He represented to Lopez that the owner was a sympathizer, and that the wanderers would be given rest and shelter, and a place to hide until the arrival of reinforcements from the United States. This guide is believed to have been a Spanish spy, for while Lopez and his men were received with the greatest courtesy, and entertained for two days by the planter, their host secretly dispatched a courier to the Spanish leaders, and presently a Spanish army arrived to attack the filibusters. Lopez dispersed his men, who hid themselves behind the trunks of mango trees, and picked off the Spanish soldiers, with the result that the Spaniards were put to flight, and when word presently came that General Eno was advancing to the rescue of his compatriots with a force of two thousand men Lopez retreated to a high hill, with the remainder of his army, now reduced to two hundred and twenty men, many of these disabled by wounds. Lopez was in a position of vantage, and small parties of his men fired on the advancing Spaniards, wounding their commander, and several of their number. [Illustration: FALLS OF THE HANEBANILLA Each of the Provinces of Cuba has its own characteristic charms of scenery; among which it would be rash to attempt to choose. Santa Clara boasts the great falls of the Hanebanilla River, a scene of majestic splendor. This is one of numerous cataracts on the rivers of Cuba, enriching the scenic attractions of the island, and at the same time suggesting immense value as sources of industrial power.] Lopez now endeavored to reach a plain near San Cristobal, but his men were worn out, their clothes torn, their flesh bruised and bleeding, and their feet lacerated so that they could hardly walk. Dissatisfaction and dismay was rife among them, and presently they sent a committee to Lopez, asking him to advise them just what he intended to do, and what he expected to accomplish, and stating that unless he had some good plan, they were unwilling to proceed further. Lopez listened to them attentively, and asked for suggestions. They were all for hiding in the mountains, until relief should be sent to them from the country which they all now sorely regretted leaving. While putting this project into execution, they were again attacked by the Spaniards, three or four of them were killed, and a number taken prisoners, and immediately executed. One hundred and forty men escaped with Lopez through the woods. Many of them had lost their arms; only sixty-nine guns remained, while on most of these the bayonets were broken. They had no food and they killed Lopez's horse and ate it. Open dissension broke out among them. Lopez was, as will be recalled, under sentence of death, having been condemned, after the betrayal of the first plans to free Cuba, to be killed should he ever again be apprehended on the island. A price had been set on his head, and now, with characteristic self-abnegation, he besought his men to deliver him up to the enemy, securing clemency for themselves in return for such action. To do them justice, they were heartily ashamed, and repudiated the suggestion. Finally after a long discussion it was decided to stake all on one attempt against the Spaniards, and consequently they made their way again to the plain near San Cristobal and there attacked a force of five hundred Spanish troops. They were charged by the Spanish cavalry, and all but six were taken prisoners. Lopez and his remaining six followers took refuge upon a plantation. They were received with cordiality and assured of the sympathy of their owner, Señor Castenada, who offered to hide them until their friends, whom they believed to be even then on the ocean, or perhaps making a landing on the island, should rescue them. He gave them good food and drugged wine, and took them to the upper part of the house, to his bedrooms, that they might sleep. They were utterly exhausted, and soon fell into deep slumber, whereupon Castenada notified the Spanish authorities, who at once sent troops to take the little company prisoners. So profound was their sleep that they were securely bound before they realized what had happened. They were at once taken to Havana, where the Captain-General was so delighted at the turn events had taken that he issued a proclamation complimenting his brave officers on their capture "of this dangerous traitor." Concha did not accord Lopez a trial, but at once issued a proclamation ordering his execution. It was dated October 31, 1851, and ran as follows: "By a superior decree of the Most Excellent Señor, the Governor and Captain-General, Don Narciso Lopez, who commanded the band of pirates that disembarked at the place called Playitas, to the leeward of the capital on the morning of the 12th instant, has been condemned to the infamous punishment of the garrote. The execution is to take place at seven o'clock in the morning of September 1st. The troops of all arms composing the garrison of the town, and the forces from elsewhere, will assemble at sufficient time beforehand, at the camp of the Punta, where the scaffold is placed, around which they will form a square. The regiment of Galicia will take its station in front with a banner displayed. The other corps will be present with all their disposable force. The artillery will take the right, with the engineers next them; the other forces without distinction will occupy the places assigned to them. The cavalry will be stationed according to the direction of the Brigadier, the Royal Lieutenant commanding the town, who will command the troops, having under his orders the staff officers of the army, and an equal number of town adjustants. A true copy. "ZURITA." The Spanish archives contain the following names of members of the Lopez expedition who were taken prisoners about this time and who witnessed the execution of their leader. Most of these men after a long imprisonment were finally pardoned, through the intervention of powerful friends, and returned to their homes: Elias Otis, Michael O'Keenan, John Danton, First Lieutenant P. S. VanVechten, M. L. Hefren, Captain Robert Ellis, W. Wilson, W. Miller, P. Lacoste, M. Lieger, P. Coleman, Henry Smith, Thomas Hilton, First Lieutenant E. H. McDonald, D. D. Waif, H. D. Thomason, Charles A. Conunea, Emanuel R. Wier, First Lieutenant J. G. Bush, Conrad Taylor, Thomas Denton, C. A. McMurray, J. Patan, Conrad Arghalir, Jose Chiceri, G. Richardson, John B. Brown, Thomas S. Lee, Captain James Aquelli, Franklin Boyd, Thomas Little, Commissary J. A. Simpson, George Wilson, First Lieutenant D. D. Rousseau, First Lieutenant Robert McGrier, J. D. Hughes, William H. Vaugale, Francis B. Holmes, Malbone H. Scott, First Lieutenant W. H. Craft, J. D. Prenit, Julio Chasagne, John Cline, George Forster, C. Knoll, Nicholas Port, Patrick McGrath, Charles S. Daily, James Fiddes, S. H. Prenell, W. L. Wilkinson, C. Cook, James Chapman, James Brady, Henry B. Hart, Jacob Fonts, Preston Esces, William Cameron, Thomas Mourou, Isaac Fresborn, Cornelius Derby, Peter Falbos, Benjamin Harrer; _From England_: William Caussans, John Nowes; _From Ireland_: Henry B. Metcalfe, George Metcalfe, James Porter, Thomas McDellans; _From Cuba_: Bernardo Allen, Francisco Curbiay Garcia, Ramon J. Arnau, José Dovren, Manuel Martinez, Antonio Hernandez, Martin Milesimo; _From Germany_: Johannes Sucit, Edward Wisse, Wilhelm Losner, Robert Seelust, Ciriac Senelpi; _From Matanzas_: Ramon Ignacio Amaso; _From Hungary_: George Baptista; _From New Granada_: Andres Gonzales; _From Alquizar_: Francisco A. Leve; _From Bayamo_: Manuel Diaz; _From Navarre_: Antonio Romero; _From Spain_: Francisco J. Zamaro; _Nationality not Stated_: Antonio L. Alfonso, Manuel Aragon, Jose Bojanoti y Rubina, Joaquin Casanova, Miguel Guerra, William MacKinney, Dandrig Seay, Leonardo Sugliorti, J. D. Baker and Luis Bander. In accordance with the Captain-General's proclamation, the execution of Lopez took place on the morning of September 1. The scaffold was erected on a platform ten feet high, in a flat space opposite Morro. The garrote consists of a post, and a stool on which sits the prisoner, while a metal collar is passed around his neck and fastens him securely to the post. A screw having long arms is attached to the post, by means of which, at one turn, metal points are thrust into the victim's neck, causing dislocation and death. There were present on this occasion, three thousand infantry, two hundred cavalry and twenty thousand witnesses. Lopez presented a calm and dignified appearance. With his hands tightly bound he walked to the front of the platform and said in a strong, clear voice: "I pray the persons who have compromised me to pardon me, as I pardon them. My death will not change the destinies of Cuba." Then as the executioner bade him be quick, he exclaimed: "Adieu, my comrades! Adieu, my beloved Cuba, adieu!" Thus died a man, as brave in his last hours as he had been during all the strange fortunes and vicissitudes of his adventurous life, who had sacrificed everything for a principle which seemed to him dearer than all the material benefits which the world might have conferred upon him. The Spanish leaders destroyed his body, but they could never destroy that far more precious thing, the spirit of freedom which he had instilled in the minds and the hearts of the Cubans, and which was to live after him and at last lead Cuba to victory. CHAPTER VII Lopez had failed. Such was the obvious judgment of the world. Upon the face of the matter, his expedition had ended in disaster and utter tragedy. The first serious attempt to achieve the separation of Cuba from Spain had come to naught. It had been completely suppressed and its promoters had been destroyed. In a broader, deeper and more significant sense, however, the enterprise and sacrifice of Lopez and his comrades had splendidly succeeded. That valiant pioneer of Cuban liberation had indeed "builded better than he knew." For his enterprise marked an epoch in Cuban history; the most important since Columbus's discovery of the island. The abortive attempts at emancipation, which had been sporadically but feebly active since the days of the emulators of Bolivar, had by Lopez's efforts been marvelously and effectively resuscitated. The movement which had been nurtured by the "Soles de Bolivar," but which its members had been unable, because of smallness of numbers and lack of funds and of leadership, to make much more than a cherished ideal--for the attempts at revolt had been still-born, choked almost on their conception--had under Lopez been imbued with lusty life, and was never again to languish. A force had been set in operation which could not and did not cease its action until, though many weary years afterward, the end which Lopez had foreseen was attained, and Cuba was securely placed among the independent nations of the world. We say that Lopez "builded better than he knew." That was literally true because his plans were merely for the transfer of Cuban sovereignty from oppressive and reactionary Spain to liberal and progressive America; building upon the foundation thus outlined by him, subsequent bolder spirits constructed the triumphant edifice of complete independence of which he had not so much as dreamed. The immediate results of the Lopez expedition were prodigious. It is not easy, at this time and distance, to appreciate fully the tremendous sensation which was caused, not only in Cuba and in Spain, but, to a considerable extent, throughout the world, or at least, throughout that most important portion of the world which had its frontage upon the Atlantic Ocean, and which possessed more or less direct interests in the countries of the Caribbean Sea. For a full appreciation of this, it is necessary to take into consideration certain circumstances which are now almost forgotten. We must remember that down to this time the world at large had been profoundly ignorant of Cuba, save in the most general and external manner. Spain, as we have already indicated in these pages, had long pursued a persistent policy of secrecy and isolation. Cuba was not allowed to know much of the outside world, and the outside world was not allowed to know much of Cuba. A strict censorship was maintained over information both entering and leaving the island. Marked inhospitality was shown to travelers and visitors to discourage them from penetrating the island or acquainting themselves with the real condition of its affairs. Practically Cuba remained, so far as its social, economic and political conditions were concerned, a _terra incognita_. The world knew almost nothing of its natural wealth and its inestimable resources, its potentialities of greatness. Now, in the baleful light of a great tragedy, the island was suddenly thrust forward into the world's most intense publicity. From being a minor colonial possession of a decadent power, it was transformed into one of the foremost international issues. The eyes of two continents were fixed upon it, while the hands of those continents involuntarily reached for sword hilts in preparation for a decisive conflict which might shake the foundations of the civilized world. Let us consider first the interests and sentiments of Spain at this great crisis in her affairs. Hitherto she had regarded Cuba as a helpless province, politically negligible, although economically of immense value as the "milch cow of the Peninsula." The several insurrections which had occurred had indeed been annoying, and, at times, costly, but they had been suppressed with little difficulty, and there had never been a thought of their really menacing Spain's sovereignty over the island. Nor had there been any fear of losing the island through alien aggression or intervention. Spain's title to Cuba had been repeatedly underwritten by the United States of America, at the hands of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and John Forsyth; as we have hitherto seen. For a full generation Spain had confidently depended upon both the purpose and the power of the United States to protect her in her ownership of Cuba. But now came a revolt which in itself was immeasurably more formidable than all the slave insurrections put together, and which was, most ominous of all, operated from the United States, with the obvious sympathy, if not with the actual aid, of the people of that country. This powerful protector of Spain in Cuba was assuming the character of a possible conqueror. The troubles of Cuba were, therefore, no longer merely local, nor even national; they had risen to international proportions. They menaced not only the domestic tranquillity of Spain, but also her international relations with that power from which, of all in the world, she had cause most to fear. No less marked was the effect of these events upon the Cubans. They were made to feel that at last "the die was cast." An irrevocable step had been taken. The dreamer had awakened; plans and conspiracies had been transmuted into militant action. It is true that comparatively few of the Cubans had been directly concerned or, at least, could be proved to have been directly concerned in the undertakings of Lopez, but it was quite certain that thereafter they would all be regarded as having sympathized, and as being potential insurgents, with arms as well as with ideas. Nothing thereafter could ever be as it had been before. The Cuban people were vicariously committed to the policy of forcible separation from Spain. War was begun and it would be war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. In Cuba, the Spanish authorities realized this change in Cuban sentiment, and kept a sharp outlook for any signs of uprising. They also "made examples" of any and everyone who came under suspicion of having been in sympathy with Lopez, or of having any plans for starting a similar movement. Thus some boys, who were outspoken in their expressions of sympathy with the cause of freedom from Spain, were seized and summarily executed without trial. Feeling ran high; native born Cubans refused to associate with those of Spanish birth, and in many cases even to speak of them. A carnival was about to be celebrated in Santiago de Cuba, but it was abandoned, and the city went into mourning. To retaliate some Spaniards sent out invitations for a ball at the Filarmonia, the famous theatre in Santiago where, years afterward, Adelina Patti made her début. This was resented as an insult by the native Cubans of the city. Some hot-blooded young men forced an entrance into the hall where the ball was being held, and rushing forward destroyed a picture of Queen Isabella which hung at one end of the room. Immediately everything was in an uproar, men were shouting and fighting, and women were fainting. In the mêlée the disturbers escaped, and the matter was hushed up, for the Spanish authorities feared that the trouble might be made the occasion of another uprising, and so made no attempt to secure the names of the culprits. But this was just the prelude for worse disaster. A wealthy Cuban woman, with more money than judgment, decided to act as mediator and bring the enraged parties together. She took a strange means for accomplishing her object, issuing invitations for a party to both prominent Spaniards and Cubans of the best families. When the ball took place it is difficult to say who were the more dismayed and astonished, the Cubans when they saw who had been invited to meet them, or the haughty Spanish grandees, who hated the Cubans. An even wilder scene than that at the Filarmonia took place. Women were thrown to the floor, their clothing torn, and their bodies trampled on. The chandeliers were torn from the ceiling, many windows were broken, men fought in hand to hand combat, and when it was all over the injured had been removed, the hall which had been intended for a scene of pleasure was wrecked and rent beyond description. Six people were killed on this occasion, including one Spanish woman of high rank, and over a hundred were more or less seriously injured. Arrests were promptly made, but it was the Cubans who suffered, for no Spaniards were apprehended. Several boys from the best Creole families were thrust without trial into the dungeons of Morro Castle, from whence they were transported to the Spanish penal institution at Ceuta, and never again heard of. Those who were quick enough made their escape to the United States, and the woman who was so foolish as to give the party hastily left the island, without heralding her going. The Cubans were thoroughly aroused against Spain, and more and more there began to grow within them the desire not for annexation to the United States but for complete independence, and a government of their own making. At last the people were finding themselves, and higher aspirations and new longings were stirring in their souls. The Captain General, fearing new uprisings, began to get the island in better shape for defense from aggression from within. He strengthened the fortifications, and established a more central control over the army and navy, so that from headquarters all army posts and the movement of all vessels might be more easily governed. To further this end he built new roads, and improved old ones, and he took into his own hands as Captain-General a closer control and supervision of matters military. Perhaps nothing could be more indicative of the Cuban feeling and of the conditions on the Island at this time than are contained in the following letter written by a prominent Cuban--a man of the highest intelligence and from one of the best known families--to a friend: "The cause of the liberty of nations has always perished in its cradle because its defenders have never sought to deviate from legal paths,--because they have followed the principles sanctioned by the laws of nations, while despots, always the first to exact obedience to them when it suited their convenience, have been the first to infringe them when they came into collision with their interests. "Their alliances to suppress liberty are called _holy_ and the crimes they commit by invading foreign territories and summoning foreign troops to their aid to oppress their own vessels, are sacred duties, compliances with secret compacts; and, if the congresses, parliaments and Cortes of other nations, raise the cry to Heaven, they answer, the government has protested--acts have been performed without their sanction--there is no remedy--they are acts accomplished. "An act accomplished will shortly be the abolition of slavery in Cuba, and the tardy intervention of the United States will only have taken place when its brilliant constellation lights up the vast sepulchre which will cover the bodies of her sons, sacrificed to the black race as a regard for their sympathies with American institutions, and the vast carnage it will cost to punish the African victors. What can be done today, without great sacrifice, to help the Cubans, tomorrow cannot be achieved without the effusion of rivers of blood, and when the few surviving Cubans will curse an intervention which, deaf to their cries, will only be produced by the cold calculations of egotism. Then the struggle will not be with the Spaniards alone. The latter will now accede to all the claims of the cabinet at Washington, by the advice of the ambassadors of France and England, to advance, meanwhile, with surer step to the end--to give time for the solution of the Eastern question, and for France and England to send their squadrons into these waters. Well may they deny the existence of secret treaties; this is very easy for such beings, as it will be when the case of the present treaty comes up, asserting that the treaty was posterior to their negative, or refusing explanations as inconsistent with their dignity. But we witness the realization of our fears, we see the Spanish government imperturbably setting on foot plans which were thought to be the delirium of excited imaginations doing at once what promised to be gradual work; and hear it declared, by distinguished persons who possessed the confidence of General Pezuela, that the existence of the treaty is certain, and that the United States will be told that they should have accepted the offer made to become a party to it, in which case the other two powers could not have adopted the abolition scheme. But supposing this treaty to have no existence, the fact of the abolition of slavery is no less certain. It is only necessary to read the proclamation of the Captain-General, if the last acts of the Government be not sufficiently convincing. The result to the Island of Cuba and the United States is the same, either way. If the latter do not hasten to avert the blow, they will soon find it impossible to remedy the evil. In the Island there is not a reflecting man--foreigner or native, Creole or European--who does not tremble for the future that awaits us, at a period certainly not far remote." Thus did the Cubans look forward with hope to, and at the same time fear, the future. And meanwhile the tragedy of Lopez was having a wide-spread effect on the feeling of the people, and on political conditions in other countries. In the United States a profound impression was produced of a triple character. There was, in the first place, the international point of view. It was realized that the United States was being brought uncomfortably near the possibility of a serious controversy, if not of actual war with Spain. The neutrality laws had been evaded, and there was every prospect that such evasions would thereafter be repeated. The whole question of American relations with Cuba was acutely reopened, and both those who favored and those who opposed the acquisition of that island by the United States were made to realize that a momentous decision might be called for at any moment. There was, in the second place, the point of view of the pro-slavery states of the South, and their leaders, who were generally in control of the national government at Washington. The South strongly favored Cuban annexation, either voluntary or forcible. The island was wanted as Texas and other Mexican territories had been wanted, to provide for the extension of slave territory and for the addition of new slave states to the union to counter-balance the new free states which were about to seek admission at the north. There was also a passionate desire to avoid the calamity of having Cuba made, as the other Spanish-American countries had been made, free soil, thus encircling the slave states with an unbroken ring of anti-slavery territory. Moreover, at this time the spirit of conquest and of expansion was very much abroad in the land. The lust for territory which had prevailed in the Mexican War was by no means satisfied. Men still regarded it as the manifest destiny of the United States to "lick all creation." In the geography of the popular mind, the United States was, or was destined to be, "bounded on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the west by the day of judgment." Under such circumstances, the attitude of the people of the United States south of Mason and Dixon's line was unmistakable. There was also the point of view of the increasingly anti-slavery north. During the Mexican war a strong aversion to territorial expansion by conquest for the sake of slave soil had been manifested, and this feeling was steadily increasing in extent and in influence. It manifested itself by opposition to Cuban annexation. At the same time, the commercial instinct was strong in the great cities of the north, and there was an earnest desire to do nothing which might interfere with the profitable trade which already existed between this country and Cuba, and which it was hoped greatly to expand. The interest of Great Britain in Cuban affairs was scarcely less than that of Spain or the United States. That country had once, for a time, possessed Cuba, and had never forgotten that fact nor ceased to entertain the desire to renew that possession as a permanent state of affairs. That country also had very important colonial holdings in the West Indies, and on the adjacent mainland; being, indeed, an American power second only to the United States itself. It owned the Bahamas, Jamaica and other islands, and colonies on the South and Central American coast, which latter it was at that very time seeking greatly to extend. It was keenly desirous of enlarging its possessions and forming a great colonial empire in tropical America, and it realized that nothing could conduce to that end more than the acquisition of Cuba. In the prosecution of this policy, a certain "jingo" faction actually went so far as to pretend that upon the acquisition of Cuba depended Great Britain's retention of Canada, if not, indeed, of her entire American holdings. It was represented that if Great Britain did not intervene to prevent it, the slave-holding South was certain to annex Cuba, and that this would provoke the abolitionist North into seizing Canada, in order to provide in that direction free soil to counter-balance the slave soil of Cuba. Thus, with Canada gone, and Cuba in the hands of the United States, the remainder of the British holdings in the western hemisphere would be in deadly jeopardy. Such visions seem at this time fantastic, and it may be that they were then thus regarded by serious statesmen; yet they were cherished and were not without their influence. Nor was France less deeply and directly interested in Cuba. She, too, had colonies in the West Indies and on the South American coast. She had never forgotten her former vast empire in North America, nor ceased to regret its loss. She was soon to enter upon a campaign of conquest in Mexico. She had at various times, both during and since the Napoleonic era, entertained designs upon peninsular Spain itself, and she had repeatedly made direct overtures for a protectorate over Cuba. These circumstances caused international relations to be ominously strained in more than one direction, and as soon as news reached the United States of the execution of those companions of Lopez who were members of prominent families in the southern states, there arose a widespread and furious storm of wrath. The center of this was, naturally, at New Orleans, where the majority of Lopez's followers had been recruited and where their families resided, and in that city an infuriated mob stormed and destroyed the Spanish consulate, publicly defaced a portrait of the Spanish queen, and, in some respects worst of all, looted a number of shops owned by Spanish merchants. This was most unfortunate from more than one point of view. It was not only indefensible and inexcusable in itself, but it put the United States so much in the wrong as to deter it from taking any action, or indeed making any protest to Spain on account of the putting to death of the American prisoners. The American Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, made, however, the best of an unfortunate situation. He took a straightforward course by immediately apologizing to the Spanish government for the New Orleans outrages, and recommended to Congress the voting of an adequate indemnity for the damage which had been done. Having done this, he was enabled to secure the release of some American members of Lopez's expedition who had not yet suffered the death penalty. Despite this settlement, the Spanish government continued to cherish much resentment against the United States, partly for the participation of so many of that country's citizens in the expeditions of Lopez, and partly because of the outrages in New Orleans, and its Cuban administration thereafter exhibited an increasing degree of animosity against Americans. Numerous harsh impositions were put upon American citizens, for which no redress could be had; and this caused resentment throughout the United States, in the commercial North as well as in the slaveholding and expansionist South, and relations between the two countries steadily drifted from bad to worse. Candor compels the frank statement that there was much fault on both sides. Spain was tremendously at fault because of her misgovernment of Cuba, and indeed her whole policy in relation to that island, which was quite unworthy of a civilized power in an enlightened age. A generation before Spain had practically sacrificed her right to continued possession of Florida by her maladministration of that territory, which had made it an intolerable nuisance to the neighboring United States. She was now making of Cuba a scarcely less international nuisance and scandal. On the other hand, the United States, or some of its people, undoubtedly gave Spain cause for grievance. The intentions and the conduct of the United States government were beyond reproach. At the same time, they were entirely insufficient for the prevention of serious wrongs to Spain. Webster himself confessed that the United States government had no power to protect Spanish subjects from such outrages as those which had just been committed in New Orleans. There was no doubt that the intentions and conduct of a large portion of the American people were not only hostile to Spain, but were quite lawless in the manifestation of that feeling. Among the offenders, moreover, were some men who stood high in official life and who exerted much political influence. Nor could these things be so well understood in Spain as in the United States. Spain could scarcely be expected to distinguish between the case of a man in his private capacity as a citizen and in his public capacity as a member of Congress or other official of the government. When she saw public officials participating in the organization and operations of the "Order of the Lone Star," the confessed purpose of which was to take Cuba from Spain by force, and without compensation, she very naturally assumed that such things were being done with the permission and sanction of the United States government, if not at its direct instigation. At this point, moreover, a serious complication was injected into the problem of Spanish-American relations by the attempted intervention of Great Britain and France. Both these powers sought to persuade Spain that they were better friends to her, especially in relation to Cuba, than the United States. They impressed upon her the idea that the United States intended to take Cuba away from her, while they were willing to respect her title to it, and to protect her in possession of it. These suggestions were followed by the menace of overt acts which, if committed, would have had very serious results. In 1851, the British and French governments let it be known that instructions had been given to their naval commanders to increase their forces in the waters adjacent to Cuba, and to exercise guardianship over the shores of that island to prevent the landing of any more filibustering expeditions from the United States or elsewhere, such as those of Lopez. It does not appear that this was done at the request of Spain. It was probably an entirely gratuitous performance intended partly to ingratiate the Spanish government, and partly to prevent the possibility of the seizure by the United States of Cuba. But it was certainly a most unwarrantable meddling in affairs which concerned only the United States and Spain. No possible justification for it could be found in international law. In the absence of a state of war, it was intolerable that vessels under the United States flag should be subjected to search upon the high seas, while, when they reached Cuban territorial waters, no other power than Spain had any right to interfere with them. Daniel Webster was at that time ill and unable to perform the duties of his office, but J. J. Crittenden, who was acting as Secretary of State, made a forcible protest against any such action by Great Britain and France, and gave warning in the plainest terms that it would not be tolerated by the United States, and that any interference with American shipping between the United States and Cuba would be resented in the most vigorous manner. The result was that the British and French navies refrained from the contemplated meddling. Following this, however, Spain made a direct appeal to the British government for protection against American aggression. The request was not so much for immediate military intervention as for securing treaty guarantees. The British government was in a receptive mood, and, in consequence, in April, 1852, it proposed to the United States that that country should join it and France in a tripartite convention, guaranteeing to Spain continued and unmolested possession of Cuba, and explicitly renouncing any designs of their own for the acquisition of that island. It may be recalled that a similar proposal had been made by Great Britain and France in 1825, and that its acceptance had been favored by no less an American statesman than Thomas Jefferson, although, under the wiser counsels of John Quincy Adams, it had been rejected. At this renewal of the proposal, in 1852, rejection was prompt and emphatic. Edward Everett was then the Secretary of State, under the Presidency of Millard Fillmore, and he refused positively to enter into any such compact. His ground was that American interests in Cuba and American relations toward that island were radically different, in kind as well as in degree, from those of any other power. That was of course a perfectly logical and sincere application of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, and of the traditional policy of the United States in refusing to permit European intervention in the affairs of the United States or in affairs exclusively concerning the United States and a single European power. It may be assumed that Everett had in mind at the time, also, the exceedingly unsatisfactory results of an attempt to establish just such a tripartite protectorate guarantee over the Hawaiian Islands. There was still another reason for the refusal of the United States to enter into such a compact. That country had already and repeatedly guaranteed the Spanish possession of Cuba as against the aggressions of any other power, but it had not guaranteed and would not guarantee her possession of Cuba against the self-assertion of the Cuban people. It recognized the right of revolution. It knew that the Cubans were dissatisfied, and that with good reason, with Spanish rule, and that sooner or later they would successfully revolt and establish their independence, and it had no thought of making itself the accomplice of Spain in repressing their aspirations for liberty. CHAPTER VIII The United States government, both before and immediately after the expeditions of Lopez, exhibited an increasing desire to acquire possession of Cuba by purchase or otherwise. We have already referred to the historic expression of John Quincy Adams upon this subject. It is also to be recalled that in 1823, in commenting upon the prospective results of the Monroe Doctrine, Thomas Jefferson looked upon Cuba as the most interesting addition that could be made to the United States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give the United States over the Gulf of Mexico, and all the countries bordering thereon, as well as all those whose waters flowed into the Gulf, would well be, he thought, the measure of American well-being. Such an end could be attained, he added, by no other means than that of war, and that was something to which he was reluctant to resort. He was, therefore, willing to accept the next best thing, to wit, the independence of Cuba, and especially its independence of England. James Madison, at the same time, and discussing the same general subject, expressed much curiosity to know what England's attitude toward Cuba would be, and what the rights of the United States toward that island would be, under the Monroe Doctrine. John C. Calhoun was willing to pledge the United States not to take Cuba, although he had already expressed a desire for such acquisition, and Monroe himself would have adopted Calhoun's policy, had it not been for the resolute opposition of John Quincy Adams. That strenuous patriot was for reserving the plenary rights and powers of the United States, and for permitting Europe to have nothing whatever to do in the matter, and his counsel fortunately prevailed. A little later, after the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine and in the course of Congressional discussion of the Panama Congress, it was emphatically stated in the Senate that, because of the great interest in the United States in Cuba, there ought to be no discussion with other powers concerning the destiny of that island, particularly with Colombia and Mexico, which were then contemplating the invasion of Cuba in order to take her forcibly from Spain. The British government, in August, 1825, proposed to the United States government, through its minister in London, that the United States, Great Britain and France should unite in a treaty engagement that none of them would take Cuba for itself or permit of the taking of it by either of the others. This proposal was promptly rejected by the United States. One of the grounds for her rejection of it was that such action guaranteeing Spain her possession of Cuba would encourage her to prolong indefinitely her struggle with her other American colonies. Another was that this country had already declared that it did not mean to seize Cuba for itself, and that it would not permit its seizure by any other power. The United States apparently did not fear that Great Britain would attempt to seize the island, since for her to do so would mean a rupture with the United States, which was at that time the last thing that the British government desired. There was much more cause to fear that France might attempt to take forcible possession of Cuba, and the suspicion that she might do so was strengthened by the fact that while, at first, she indicated a willingness to enter into the arrangement proposed by Great Britain, she suddenly changed her attitude, and refused to do so. As a result of this change of front on the part of France, the United States government, in September, 1825, instructed its minister at Paris to inform the French government that under no contingency, either with or without the consent of Spain, would the United States permit France to occupy Cuba. Scarcely less marked was the opposition of the United States to any scheme for the acquirement of Cuba by any of the American republics. It was notorious that both Colombia and Mexico had designs upon Cuba. These were not so much that either of these countries should acquire the island for itself, but that Cuba and Porto Rico should, nilly willy, be taken away from Spain and made independent, and that thus Spain should be deprived of her last foothold in the Western hemisphere. This purpose was cherished, not only as a matter of sentiment, but as one of prudence. Spain was still trying to reconquer her revolted American provinces, and her possession of Cuba, of course, afforded her an admirable base for such operations. But the United States government took the ground that any such intervention in Cuba would make it much more difficult to secure Spanish recognition of the independence of the Central and South American States. In addition, there was undoubtedly--indeed it was very openly, emphatically and repeatedly expressed--the unwillingness of the slaveholding southern states of the United States to see Cuba made free soil, as the other Spanish colonies had been. It was because of the former consideration, however, that the American Secretary of State, Henry Clay, immediately after the rejection of the British proposal for a tripartite guarantee, addressed a note to the governments of Colombia and Mexico, urging them to refrain from sending the expeditions which they were fitting out against the Spanish power in Cuba. To this request, the Colombian government promptly acceded, and so informed not only the United States, but also the government of Russia, which was, at that time, endeavoring to mediate between Spain and her late American colonies. The Mexican government did not receive the request so favorably, though it did withhold the threatened expedition. With such antecedents set forth, we can more perfectly understand the attitude of the United States toward Cuba at the time of which we are now writing. In 1848 a change of policy occurred, and the United States entered upon a new attitude. At that time James K. Polk was President of the United States, and James Buchanan was his Secretary of State; both men of southern, proslavery and expansionist proclivities. The American minister to Spain was Romulus M. Saunders, of North Carolina, also a proslavery expansionist. He was instructed by Polk and Buchanan to sound the Spanish government as to the terms on which it would sell Cuba to the United States. The response to his overtures was immediate and left no room for doubt as to Spain's position. It was to the effect that Cuba was not for sale. Under no circumstances would the Spanish government so much as consider the sale of the island at any price whatever. No Spanish Minister of State would venture for a moment to entertain such a proposal. Such was the feeling of the Spanish government and of the Spanish nation, that they would rather see Cuba sunk in the depths of the sea, if it were possible, than transferred to the sovereignty of any other power. Cuba was the "Ever-Faithful Isle." She was the last remnant, the priceless memento of Spain's once vast empire in America, and as such she would be forever retained and treasured. Although not openly expressed, there was undoubtedly the additional feeling that Spain had already suffered too much spoliation at the hands of the United States. The United States, under Jefferson, had practically compelled Spain to sacrifice her vast Louisiana territory by nominally selling, but really giving it outright, to France. It had next taken West Florida from her without compensation. Following this, under the Monroe Doctrine, it had compelled her to sell it East Florida for a pitifully inadequate sum, not one dollar of which had ever found its way into the Spanish treasury. It had aided, abetted, and protected the Central and South American provinces in their revolt. Certainly, after such a record, it would be unthinkable to permit the United States to proceed with the acquisition of the last remaining portion of the Spanish American empire. The overtures for the United States purchase of Cuba were, therefore, for the time being, abruptly abandoned, but it was significant that they were promptly followed by the expeditions of Lopez and the widespread and intense manifestations of American interest therein. There next occurred one of the most noteworthy and it must be confessed least creditable episodes in the whole story of the relations between the United States, Cuba and Spain. Franklin Pierce became President of the United States, and the active and aggressive William L. Marcy was his Secretary of State. Because of the strained relations between Spain and the United States, growing out of the Lopez expeditions, there was a well defined expectation that Marcy would pursue a vigorous policy leading to the annexation of Cuba, even at the cost of war with Spain. Marcy was an expansionist, and would doubtless have been glad to have annexed Cuba, but he was something more than an expansionist. He was a statesman. He therefore considered the subject from its various aspects with a prudence and conservatism which were probably not at all pleasing to the impetuous proslavery propagandists of the south, but which were in the highest degree creditable to his good sense and to the honor of the United States. Unfortunately not even Marcy could remain entirely exempt from political and partizan considerations. He was practically compelled to acquiesce in the appointment as his minister to Spain of one of the more egregious misfits that ever disgraced American diplomacy. This man was Pierre Soule. He was of French origin, and had been a political conspirator and prisoner in that country. He had come to the United States as a refugee, but had continued there his political intrigues and revolutionary designs. Settling in New Orleans, he had been in active sympathy with the filibustering enterprises of Lopez and others against the Spanish rule in Cuba; he was suspected of having incited the anti-Spanish mob in that city; and he was known to be an ardent advocate of the annexation of Cuba by any means which might prove effective. The choice of such a man as American minister to Spain was certainly extraordinary. It must be assumed that Marcy agreed to it only with great reluctance and under protest; while it is plausible, and indeed permissible, to suspect that some ulterior influence dictated it for the deliberate purpose of provoking trouble with Spain. In these circumstances, Marcy did his best. He instructed Soule to repress his anti-Spanish zeal, to do nothing which would irritate Spanish susceptibilities, and especially to be particularly cautious in making any suggestions or overtures concerning a change of relations in Cuba. He instructed him, however, to seek reparation for the gross injuries which Americans had undoubtedly suffered in Cuba, and to suggest to the Spanish government that it would greatly facilitate the friendly conduct of affairs for it to invest the Captain-General or other governor of Cuba with a degree of diplomatic authority and functions so that complaint could be addressed to him, and indeed all such matters could be negotiated with him directly, instead of their being referred to the government at Madrid. He did not urge Soule to seek the purchase of Cuba, but he did authorize him to enter into negotiations to that end, if the Spanish government should manifest a favorable inclination. Despite these wise instructions and admonitions, Soule promptly entered upon a career of the wildest indiscretion. He went to Spain by way of France, where he was under political proscription, and this gave offence to the government of that country. On arriving at Madrid, he immediately quarreled with the French party there, and fought a duel with the French ambassador in which the latter was crippled for life. Then word came to him that the Spanish authorities at Havana had seized an American steamer, the _Black Warrior_. That steamer had, for a long time, been plying regularly between the United States and Cuba in a perfectly legitimate way. There was not the slightest proof or suggestion that she had ever engaged in filibustering or in any illegitimate commerce. Indeed she was not accused of it. But she was seized and her cargo was condemned simply for alleged disregard of some insignificant port regulation which, as a matter of fact, had not been enforced or observed by any vessel for many years. The master of the vessel resented and protested against the seizure and when the Spanish authorities arbitrarily persisted in it, he abandoned the vessel altogether, and reported the circumstances to the United States government. The President promptly laid the matter before Congress at Washington, stating that a demand for redress and indemnity was being made. Passions flamed high in Congress, and southern members made speeches demanding war and the conquest of Cuba. Marcy, however, retained his sanity of judgment, and contented himself with instructing Soule at Madrid to demand an indemnity of $300,000 and to express the hope that the Spanish government would disavow and rebuke the act which it was confidently assumed had not been authorized and could not be approved. This gave Soule a fine opportunity to show himself a capable diplomat and to do a good stroke of work, for Spain was manifestly wrong and a proper presentation of the case would doubtless have caused her to accede pretty promptly to Marcy's reasonable demands. Soule began well. He followed Marcy's instructions closely at the outset, and had a friendly and temperate interview with the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs; but when three days thereafter had passed without a complete settlement, he seemed altogether to lose his head. He sent to the minister a peremptory note, demanding payment of the indemnity, and the immediate dismissal from the Spanish service of all persons in any way responsible for the seizure of the _Black Warrior_. If this was not done within forty-eight hours, he added, he would immediately demand his passports and sever diplomatic relations between the two countries. With customary arrogance, he instructed the messenger by whom he transmitted the note to call the attention of the Spanish minister to the exact hour and minute at which the messenger should deliver the note into his hands, and to remind him that an answer would be expected, under penalty, within forty-eight hours after that precise moment of time. Worst of all, perhaps, this occurred during Holy Week, when it was not customary for the Spanish government to transact any business which could possibly be deferred. The Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs was Calderon de la Barca, who had formerly been Spanish minister to the United States, and with whom Soule had personally very violently quarrelled at Washington. With characteristic Spanish courtesy, he very promptly, within twenty-four hours, replied to Soule that the matter would be most carefully considered at the earliest possible moment, but that it manifestly would not be practicable, and indeed would not be just, to dispose of so important a matter so hastily, and upon the hearing of only one side of it. He also added, quite properly, that the Spanish government was not accustomed to being addressed in so harsh and imperious a manner, and that he could not regard such a mode of procedure as calculated to facilitate the amicable settlement which both parties undoubtedly desired. Thus placed, through his own folly, at a hopeless disadvantage, Soule abandoned the case. He sent to Marcy his own absurd and unauthorized ultimatum, together with Calderon's dignified and statesmanlike reply, possibly in the vain hope that Marcy would back him up in the impossible attitude which he had assumed. Of course, Marcy did nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, it was not necessary for Marcy to pay any attention whatever to Soule's report, since, before it reached Washington, the Spanish authorities in Cuba had restored the _Black Warrior_ to her owners, with the amplest possible amends for their improper seizure of her, and the whole incident was thus happily ended. The project of acquiring Cuba for the United States continued to be cherished by the American government. It must be supposed that the Secretary of State appreciated the immense value of Cuba, both in its resources and in its strategic position and so, for that reason, was desirous of acquiring the island. It must also be believed that he was to a degree moved by a desire to get rid of what he plainly saw would be a perennial cause of annoyance and even of danger. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, Cuba had been a cause of anxiety to the United States, and since the beginning of insurrections in that island, and especially insurrections looking to the United States for sympathy and aid, there was a constantly increasing danger of unpleasant and possibly hostile complications with Spain. There is no indication, however, that Marcy ever had any other thought than that of the peaceful acquisition of the island through friendly negotiations. It was most unfortunate that because of the political conditions which prevailed during that administration, he was compelled to act through unfit and indeed unworthy agents. At the beginning of 1854, Mr. Marcy directed the United States ministers to Spain, France and Great Britain to confer among themselves as to the best means, if indeed any were practicable, to persuade Spain to sell Cuba to the United States, and at the same time to avoid or to overcome objections which France and Great Britain might make to such a transaction. That was a perfectly legitimate proposal, and indeed, under the circumstances, was desirable and should have been productive of excellent results. Its fatal defect lay in the personality of the men who were called upon to put it into execution. The minister to Spain was Soule, of whom we have already heard enough to indicate his very conspicuous unfitness for the task assigned to him. The minister to France was James M. Mason, a Virginian, and one of the most aggressive and extreme Southern advocates of the extension of slavery. The minister to Great Britain was James Buchanan, who was afterward President of the United States, a northern man with strong southern sympathies and in complete subservience to the slaveholding interests of the south. The result of a conference among these three was practically a foregone conclusion. They came together at Ostend in the summer of 1854, and a little later concluded their deliberations at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the result of their conference was embodied in that extraordinary document known to history as the Ostend Manifesto. That document, which was drawn up in October, 1854, and was signed by these three ministers and sent by them to Mr. Marcy, was written chiefly by Soule. It set forth the various reasons why, in the opinion of Soule and his colleagues, Cuba ought to belong to the United States. A variety of reasons was set forth, but chief among them was this, that such acquisition of Cuba was necessary for the security and perpetuity of the slave system in the United States. Then Soule went on to tell why Spain ought to be willing to sell the island, and why Britain and France ought to be willing for her to sell it to the United States. The price to be paid for Cuba was not stated. It ought not, however, Soule said, to exceed a certain maximum sum to be prescribed by the United States; and there are reasons for believing that the price which Soule had in mind was $120,000,000. All this was bad enough. It was far removed from what Marcy had intended. But the worst was to come. With astounding effrontery and cynicism, the manifesto proceeded to say that if Spain should be so swayed by the voice of her own interest and actuated by a false sense of honor as to refuse to sell Cuba, then, by every law, human and divine, the United States would be justified in taking Cuba forcibly from her, on the ground that such seizure was necessary for the protection of the domestic peace of the United States. This Manifesto was sent by the three ministers to Marcy, with a memorandum written by Soule, suggesting that that would be a good time to start a war with Spain for the seizure of Cuba, because France and Great Britain were just then engaged in fighting Russia in the Crimea, and therefore would not be able to interfere with Spain's behalf. Marcy never for a moment, of course, thought of acting upon these abominable recommendations. The overwhelming sentiment of this nation would have been against it. Even in the South, the majority of thoughtful men held that Soule and his colleagues had gone too far, while throughout the North, the Manifesto was scathingly denounced as a proposal of international brigandage. Not only in Spain, but almost equally in France and Great Britain, American diplomacy and the honor of the American government were regarded as seriously compromised. In these circumstances Marcy, to whom the Manifesto must have been revolting, very adroitly declined to recognize its real purport, but insisted upon interpreting it in an entirely different way from that which its authors had intended. The result was that the note was practically pigeonholed. Soule was so chagrined and enraged at this disposition of a favorite child of his mind that he resigned his office as Minister to Spain, to the unmistakable relief both of Marcy and of the Spanish government. Buchanan, another of the signers, became President of the United States a couple of years later, and in his second annual message, in December, 1858, sought to revive the Manifesto, referring to the possibility of its sometime being necessary for the United States to seize Cuba under the law of self-preservation. He also requested Congress to appropriate $30,000,000 for the purchase of the island, and a bill to that effect was introduced, but it was never pressed to final passage. Again in 1859 he referred to the subject, being still apparently obsessed with the idea that the conquest of Cuba was necessary for the preservation of the United States, but on this occasion his reference to the subject was entirely ignored by Congress. Then came the Civil War in the United States, which, for a number of years, debarred that country from paying any attention to the affairs of its southern neighbor. CHAPTER IX The years following the close of the Civil War in the United States were marked with momentous occurrences in various other countries, particularly in Cuba, and the two nations with which she had long been intimately connected, Mexico and Spain. The beginning of the year 1866 in Peninsular Spain saw General Prim heading a revolutionary body of troops at Aranjuez and at Ocana. These operations caused great excitement, and feeling ran high throughout the kingdom, for they were generally regarded as indicative and provocative of a radical change of government. Martial law was, however, promptly proclaimed at Madrid, and thus countless sympathizers with the revolution were restrained from taking an active part in it. The army of the government, under General Zabala, hastened to the scene of the insurrection, and pursued the revolutionary troops with such vigor that the latter, including General Prim himself, were compelled to retreat across the Portuguese frontier near Barracas, since they were, in fact, only about six hundred strong and were not prepared to make a resolute stand. In the same month, January, 1866, other revolutionary bodies were dispersed in Catalonia and Valencia. So confident was the royal government of its security, and of the completeness with which the incipient revolution had been quelled, that on March 17 it repealed the decree of martial law at the capital. It was, however, cherishing a fool's paradise. The spirit of revolution was at work, and was bound soon to reassert itself. Its next manifestation occurred in June, when two regiments of soldiers in Madrid itself mutinied and repudiated their officers, who had refused to join them in their action. These troops were well armed, having twenty-six cannon, and were soon reinforced by large numbers of volunteers from the populace, so that it was only by a supreme effort that the government troops were able to defeat and disperse them. At the same time, a corresponding movement took place in the garrison at Gerona, where a considerable body of troops revolted and, when attacked by government forces, conducted a successful retreat across the French frontier. Having crossed the boundary, they laid down their arms, but the larger proportion of them soon found their way back into Spain to join the impending revolution. Other outbreaks occurred at other points, all of which were suppressed with difficulty, but with great severity, many of the leaders being summarily shot as a deterrent example. But this action instead of being deterrent was provocative. The next revolutionary manifestation was the formation of a junta at Madrid, which issued a proclamation setting forth the complaints of the insurgents against the government, in part as follows: "Savage courts have led hundreds of victims to sacrifice, and a woman has contemplated passively and even with complacency, the scaffold which has been erected. "The Cortes have abjectly sold to the government the safety of the individual, the civil rights and the well-being of the commonwealth. The government has overthrown the press and rostrum, and has entrusted the administration of the provinces to rapacious mandarins and sanguinary generals; military tribunals have despoiled the rich and transported the poor to Fernando Po and to the Philippines. "The laws of the Cortes have been replaced by decrees squandering the resources of the country by means of obscure and ruinous laws, trampling under foot right and virtue, violating homes, property and family; and during all this time, Isabella II, at Zuranz, and Madrid, meditating a plot against Italy, our sister, for the benefit of the Roman curia, participating meanwhile in the depredations of violence of the pachas in Cuba, who tolerating the fraudulent introduction of slaves, are outraging public sentiment both in the Old and in the New World, and causing an estrangement between Spain and the great and glorious Republic of the United States." Thereafter, a reasonable degree of quiet prevailed throughout the Kingdom, which was merely a lull before the renewal of the storm. On New Year's day of 1867, the Junta at Madrid issued another proclamation, announcing to the people of Spain that another revolutionary movement was about to begin, and inviting them to join it, and share its success. To this there was not apparently a sufficient response to seem to warrant action, and it was not until the following August that anything more was heard of the revolution. The revolutionists, however, were merely outwardly quiet. Propaganda and organization were being systematically carried on, and the way was being paved for a really effective revolt, which would have widespread and far-reaching results in purging Spain of a tyrannous rule and substituting in its place republican justice. When the time seemed propitious, in August, General Prim issued a third proclamation, calling the people to arms, the chief result of which was an increased degree of vigilance and severity on the part of the government. Many of the revolutionary leaders were apprehended and expelled from Spain on suspicion of sympathy and complicity with the revolution. Among this number were Generals Serrano, Cordova, Duke, Bedoya, and Zebula, and persons of no less high standing than the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier. It is curious that all through history, movements like that which had gained such force and impetus in Spain have been met with the high hand of oppression. Instead of endeavoring to get at the root of the evil, to realize that since there was so persistent a dissatisfaction there must be real causes for grievance the removal of which would work toward a harmonious solution, it has seemed to be impossible for those born in the purple to understand the problems of the common people, and so when the latter have risen in revolt, cruelty and injustice, if not actual outrages, have marked the attempts to extinguish the trouble. The result has ever been the same. The story of the attempts to suppress the revolt in Spain differs not at all from the same story written on the pages of the history of other nations. The increased oppression on the part of the government only served to fan the smouldering fire into flame. The popular wrath and indignation against the queen and her underlings bade fair to burst into a huge conflagration. In consequence, when the next overt act of insurrection occurred, at Cadiz, on September 17, there was a very general response throughout the Kingdom. General Prim was again at the head of the movement, supported by General Serrano and the other officers, to whom the sentence of banishment had not proved effective, since they had found their way back into Spain. Revolutionary Juntas were formed in almost all of the provinces, and in a number of the most important cities, and in the course of a few days the insurgents were in control of a considerable part of the Kingdom. The City of Santander was seized for the revolution on September 21, but they were obliged to relinquish it to superior forces on September 24. However, the revolutionists were far from discouraged by this momentary reverse, and four days later they rallied for their first important victory, which was followed by a general revolt of the troops in and about Madrid, and General Concha, the commander of the royal forces, was compelled to resign. The revolution was now in full swing and gaining impetus and strength every hour. General Serrano at the head of a revolutionary army entered Madrid in triumph, followed four days later by General Prim. Their reception exceeded their wildest expectations. The city was on fire with revolt. The people greeted them with the warmest fervor, with shouts of welcome and rejoicing. They were hailed as the saviors of the nation, as the embodiment of Spain's hope for the future, and hourly their forces were increased by the addition of volunteers from all walks of life. It is evident that Queen Isabella had not found Madrid a comfortable abiding place. There is no doubt that she entertained fears for her personal safety long before it was actually in jeopardy. Some time previous to these happenings she had, on some pretext, removed the court from Madrid to San Sebastian, in the Pyrenees, near the French frontier, and when news of the capture of the Spanish capital reached her, she lost no time in making her escape across the frontier into France, where she was met and welcomed by Emperor Napoleon III, at Hendye. Queen Isabella had good reason to fear the vengeance of the Spanish mob, for she had long been unpopular, an object of widespread hatred. She therefore had no intention of returning to Spain while matters were in such a turbulent condition, and shortly after her arrival in France, she proceeded to Paris, where she decided to make her home. The Juntas which had been established throughout the Kingdom of Spain were amalgamated by the formation of a National Junta, on October 8, at Madrid, and a ministry was organized with General Serrano as Prime Minister, General Prim as Minister of War, Admiral Topete as Minister of Marine, Señor Figueroa as Minister of Finance, Señor Lorensano as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Señor Ortiz as Minister of Justice, Señor Sagasta as Minister of the Interior, Señor Ayala as Minister for the Colonies and Señor Zorilla as Minister of Public Works. The next day, the United States Minister at Madrid, Mr. Hill, notified General Serrano that his government has given official recognition to the new order of affairs in Spain, being the first in the world to take this action. Such was the state of affairs in Spain at the beginning of the great struggle in Cuba known as the Ten Years' War. Conditions in Mexico likewise deserve passing attention. For a number of years that country had been in a greatly troubled state. Years of successive revolutions had been followed by the military intervention of France, and the creation, under the protection of the French army, of a pinchbeck "empire," with the Archduke Maximilian of Austria as Emperor. The Mexican people, under the leadership of one of their greatest statesmen, Benito Juarez, never gave their allegiance to this usurping government, but maintained a more or less open resistance to it, and it was sustained for a few years only by the presence of a considerable French army. The United States of America, at this time, was engaged in its great Civil War, and was therefore unable to do more than to register a formal protest against French aggressions, which were recognized as a great violation of the Monroe Doctrine. But when, in the spring of 1865, the Civil War ended, the triumphant federal armies were moved toward the Mexican frontier, and the United States Government sent to the French Government what was practically an ultimatum, requiring it to withdraw its forces from Mexico. Napoleon III demurred, temporized, and at length offered to withdraw if the United States would recognize Maximilian as the lawful emperor of Mexico. This the United States, with great promptness, refused to do, and the French army was thereupon unconditionally withdrawn, and the capture and military execution of Maximilian soon followed, the final tragedy occurring on June 19, 1867. This left the United States with its prestige immeasurably enhanced and free to pay such attention as might be necessary to the affairs of Cuba, the only part of the western hemisphere in which European despotism was still maintained. The policy of the United States Government, and the sentiment of the people of that country toward Cuba, had been materially modified by the Civil War and its results. There was, of course, no longer any thought of acquiring Cuba for the sake of expanding and fortifying the slave power, but on the contrary, American influence was now exerted, so far as it could properly be, toward prevailing upon the Spanish Government to abolish slavery in Cuba. The Cuban revolutionists were almost without exception in favor of such emancipation of the negroes, and that fact caused them to be regarded with increased favor in the United States, both officially and popularly. American influence was also exerted toward the persuasion of Spain to give Cuba a more liberal and beneficent government and to improve the commercial relations between that island and the United States, for the benefit of both parties. There was some expectation in both Cuba and the United States--a very plausible belief--that the revolutionary movement in Spain, liberal and democratic in character, and aiming at the establishment of a republic in place of the Bourbon monarchy, would be accompanied by the grant of liberal institutions and democratic freedom to Cuba; but such was not the case. During the Civil War, because of the suspension of the sugar industry in the southern part of the United States, there had been a vast and immensely profitable development of the sugar industry in Cuba, and this seemed to be dependent for its success upon the continuance of slave labor. These conditions strengthened the Spanish party in Cuba, which was equally devoted to the maintenance of slavery and to Spanish domination in the Island. The Spanish party in Cuba, at this time, as we have seen, was known as the "Peninsulars," and it comprised a great majority of the office holders and wealthy planters and slave-holders. It was well organized throughout the Island for the assertion of political influence, and for the suppression of insurgent movements. Its central authority was in a wealthy club at Havana, called the "Casino Espagnol," and similar clubs on a more modest scale, existed in other cities and important towns throughout Cuba, and from these, and under their control, there arose a body known as the "Volunteers." This was ostensibly a military organization to whose battalions all white men in the Island were eligible, but as a matter of fact, membership in the Volunteers was substantially confined to conservatives, loyalists and Spanish sympathizers. The Volunteers, except in a few special cases, did not go into the field, but left the actual fighting with insurgents to be done by regular Spanish troops. They gave their own attention chiefly to the overawing of the inhabitants of the cities and towns, and to restraining them from joining the revolutions. They also acted as spies, discovering and reporting to the Spanish Government the doings of Cuban patriots. The leaders of the organization formed a "Council of Colonels," meeting at the Casino Espagnol, and forming a sort of _imperium in imperio_. During the progress of the Ten Years' War, however, the Volunteers were organized and placed under the command of General Lersuno, and thereafter exerted a much more militant power than ever before. They were not under the direct orders of the Captain-General, but enjoyed an independent authority, and yet they were presently entrusted with the garrisoning of forts and cities, so that the regular Spanish troops could go into the field. They exercised far more military, naval and civil authority than the Captain-General and other royal officials. They actually compelled the retirement of General Dulce from the Captain-Generalship because they regarded him as too kindly disposed toward the Cubans. They similarly drove Caballero de Rodas from office, and they gave Valmaseda and Ceballos, who followed, to understand that the success of their administration depended upon their compliance with the demands and policies of the Volunteers. It was due to their opposition that the so-called Moret law, which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in Cuba, remained a dead letter, and was not even published in the Island for several years after the outside world had supposed it to be in force. The Volunteers were also responsible for the numerous cases of violence against the patriot party, the most flagrant of which was the execution of eight Cuban students of the University of Havana. There is no reason to suppose that there was any complicity or cooperation between the revolution in Spain and the outbreak of the Ten Years' War in Cuba. Nevertheless, the former practically gave the signal, for the result of the Spanish revolution was indeed regarded by Cuban patriots with much satisfaction and enthusiasm. Cries of "Hurrah for Prim!" "Hurrah for Serrano!" and "Hurrah for the Spanish Revolution!" were mingled with cries of "Viva Cuba Libre!" and it did not take long for the disappointed realization to dawn upon Cuba that liberalism in Spain did not necessarily imply the granting of freedom to Cuba, but that on the contrary the "Peninsular" revolutionists were scarcely less intent that the Bourbons had been upon retaining Cuba as an appanage, and especially as a source of revenue for Spain. CHAPTER X Cuban independence was proclaimed on October 10, 1868, at the Yara plantation. That was the natal date and that was the natal place of the Republic of Cuba. The event was made known to the world in a Declaration of Independence, which was issued at Manzanillo, and which was as follows: "In arming ourselves against the tyrannical Government of Spain we must, according to precedent in all civilized countries, proclaim before the world the cause that impels us to take this step, which though liable to entail considerable disturbances upon the present, will insure the happiness of the future. "It is well known that Spain governs the Island of Cuba with an iron and blood-stained hand. The former holds the latter deprived of political, civil, and religious liberty. Hence, the unfortunate Cubans being illegally prosecuted and thrown into exile or executed by military commissions in times of peace. Hence, their being kept from public meetings, and forbidden to speak or write on affairs of state; hence, their remonstrances against the evils that afflict them being looked upon as the proceedings of rebels, from the fact that they are bound to keep silence and obey. Hence, the never-ending plague of hungry officials from Spain to devour the product of their industry and labor. Hence, their exclusion from public stations and want of opportunity to skill themselves in the art of government. Hence, the restrictions to which public instructions with them is subjected, in order to keep them so ignorant as not to be able to know and enforce their rights in any shape or form whatever. Hence, the navy and standing army, which are kept upon their country at an enormous expenditure from their own wealth to make them bend their knees and submit their necks to the iron yoke that disgraces them. Hence, the grinding taxation under which they labor, and which would make them all perish in misery but for the marvelous fertility of the soil. "On the other hand, Cuba cannot prosper as she ought to, because white immigration that suits her best is artfully kept from her shores by the Spanish Government, and as Spain has many a time promised us Cubans to respect our rights without having hitherto fulfilled her promise, as she continues to tax us heavily and by so doing is likely to destroy our wealth; as we are in danger of losing our property, our lives, and our honor under further Spanish domination; as we have reached a depth of degradation utterly revolting to manhood; as great nations have sprung from revolt against a similar disgrace, after exhausted pleadings for relief, as we despair of justice from Spain through reasoning and cannot longer live deprived of the rights which other people enjoy, we are constrained to appeal to arms and to assert our rights in the battle-field, cherishing the hope that our grievances will be a sufficient excuse for this last resort to redress them and to secure our future welfare. "To the God of our conscience, and to all civilized nations, we submit the sincerity of our purpose. Vengeance does not mislead us, not is ambition our guide. We only want to be free and to see all men with us equally free, as the Creator intended all mankind to be. Our earnest belief is that all men are brethren. Hence our love of toleration, order and justice in every respect. We desire the gradual abolition of slavery, with indemnification; we admire universal suffrage, as it insures the sovereignty of the people; we demand a religious regard for the inalienable rights of men as the basis of freedom and nation greatness." Following the Declaration of Independence, the provisional government of the Republic of Cuba was organized at Bayamo. The most prominent figure in the organization of the Cuban revolutionists and the first really constructive leader of the Cuban insurrection was Carlos Manuel Cespedes, a native of Bayamo. At this time he was in the prime of life, being forty nine years of age, a man of brilliant intellect and of fine culture, for he had been educated at the University of Havana, and had, in 1842, received his degree and license in law from the University of Barcelona, in Spain. Cespedes's openly expressed zeal for the emancipation of the oppressed Cubans, and the earnest efforts which he had long exerted in their behalf, had won for him such widespread recognition as a patriot that he was, without a dissenting voice, chosen for the head of the provisional government. By nature and training he was admirably suited for the position, for from boyhood he had been not only enthusiastically devoted to the cause of Cuban independence, but he had more than once, under circumstances where his outspoken advocacy of his principles actually placed his life in jeopardy, proved himself a worthy champion of freedom, not only for his fellow citizens, but for Spanish subjects wherever they were being trodden beneath the iron heel of Spanish oppression. His love of liberty was not a mere enthusiasm, something superficial and acquired, but it was inborn, a fundamental part of his character, firmly knit into the very fibre of his life and its activities. While a student in Spain, he had joined the forces of General Prim, during the latter's first attempt to establish a republic in that country, and because of his complicity in that revolt, Cespedes had been banished from Spain. Returning to Cuba, in 1844, he settled at Bayamo, and took up the practice of law, where his skill as an advocate soon won him recognition as one of the foremost lawyers of the Island. But again his hatred of tyranny thrust him forth from the peaceful occupation of amassing a fortune in the pursuit of jurisprudence. He could not tranquilly pursue his daily course when he saw injustice and misrule rampant around him, and so, in 1852, he made a speech, fervidly denouncing Spain, and calling on high Heaven to aid the independence of Cuba, which was considered by the authorities to be so incendiary that he was arrested as a dangerous character, and subsequently suffered a five months' imprisonment in Morro Castle, at Havana. Opportunity soon came to Cespedes to give actual proof that his principles were not abstract but concrete. The acid test was to be applied and he was not to be found wanting, for immediately upon the declaration by the Cuban republic of its principles of freedom and equal rights for all men, he voluntarily exemplified their operation, so far as lay in his individual power, by emancipating all the slaves on his own estate. [Illustration: CARLOS MANUEL DE CESPEDES The supreme chieftain of the Cuban patriots in the Ten Years' War was Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y Borges, who before becoming a soldier was eminent as an advocate, poet, and man of letters. He was born at Bayamo on April 18, 1819, and completed his education at the University of Barcelona, Spain. Then he settled in Madrid, became associated with General Prim, and was implicated in his first attempt at revolution. For that he was banished to France, and later he was imprisoned for his Liberal utterances. Returning to Cuba, he personally started the Ten Years' War, with the story of which as elsewhere related he was inseparably identified as President of the Cuban Republic. On February 27, 1874, he was betrayed to the Spaniards by a servant who thus sought to save his own life, and after desperate resistance was wounded, captured, and put to death.] The first decree of the provisional government was issued by General Cespedes on December 27. It was a proclamation of emancipation, as follows: "The revolution of Cuba, while proclaiming this independence of the country, has proclaimed with it all the liberties, and could not well commit the great inconsistency, to restrict them to only one part of the population of the country. Free Cuba is incompatible with slave Cuba, and the abolition of the Spanish institutions must include, and by necessity and by reason of the greatest justice does include, the abolition of slavery as the most odious of all. Abolition of slavery has, therefore, been maintained among the principles proclaimed in the first manifesto issued by the revolution, and in the opinion of all Cubans, truly liberal, its entire realization must be the first of the acts for which the country employs its conquered rights. But as a general measure it can only be fully effected when the country in the full use of its conquered rights can, by means of universal suffrage, make the most suitable provision for carrying it through to real advantage, both for the old and the new citizens. The subject of the present measure is not, nor can it be, the abrogation of a right which those who are at present directing the operations of the revolution are far from believing themselves entitled to invade; thus participating the solution of so difficult a question. On the other hand, however, the provisional government could not in its turn oppose the use of a right which our slaveholders possess in virtue of our laws, and which many of them wish to exercise, namely, to emancipate their slaves at once. It also sees how desirable it is to employ at once in the service of the country the freedmen, and how necessary to make haste to prevent the evils which they and the country might receive from a failure to employ them immediately. The government, therefore, urges the adoption of provisional dispositions, which are to serve as a rule for the military chiefs in the several districts of this department, in order to solve the questions presented to them. Therefore, availing myself of the faculties with which I am invested, I have now resolved that the following articles be observed. "I. Free are the slaves whom their masters at once present to the military chief for this purpose, the owners reserving, if they choose, a claim to the indemnification which the nation may decree. "II. The freedom shall, for the present, be employed in the service of the country in such a manner as may be agreed upon. "III. To this end a committee shall be appointed to find for them employment, in accordance with regulations to be issued. "IV. In other cases, the slaves of loyal Cubans and of neutral Spaniards and foreigners shall continue to work, in accordance with the principle of respect for property proclaimed by the revolution. "V. The slaves of those who have been convicted of being enemies of the country and openly hostile to the revolution, shall be confiscated with their other property and declared free without a right to indemnity, utilizing them in the service of the country. "VI. The owners who shall place their slaves in the service of the revolution without freeing them for the present, shall preserve their right as long as the slaving question in general is not decided. "VII. The slaves of the Palisades, who may present themselves to the Cuban authorities, shall at once be declared free, with a right either to live among us or to remain among the mountaineers. "VIII. The isolated refugees who may be captured, or who may, without the consent of their masters, present themselves to the authorities or military chiefs, shall not be received without consulting their masters." Now this first government, of which Cespedes was made the chief, was merely, after all, a temporary affair, organized to provide ways and means for creating a more permanent body. Accordingly, on October 30, 1868, less than a month after the Declaration of Independence, Cespedes issued a proclamation declaring that his election to office had been only to provide for the time being an acting head of the provisional government; that he believed that the organization should at once take on the character of permanency; that he had no thought of imposing his will upon Cuba; that he realized that he had not been elected to his place by the suffrage of the Cuban people, and that he had no assurance that, had they been given an opportunity to individually express themselves, he would have been their choice; and that, therefore, since it was practicable for all loyal Cubans to assemble in their respective communities and by their suffrage constitute a permanent government, he would gladly abide by their decision, and, if they desired, relinquish the power with which they had entrusted him. In response to this patriotic utterance, a convention was called, on April 10, 1869, at Guaimaro. The leaders of this first representative body of the Cuban people were the following: Miguel Gutierrez, Eduardo Machado, Antonio Lorda, Tranquilino Valdez and Arcadio Garcia, representing Villa Clara; Honorato Castillo, representing Sancti Spiritus; José Maria Izaguirre, representing Jugari; Antonio Alcada and Jesus Rodriguez, representing Holguin; and Salvador Cisneros, Francisco Sanchez, Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz, Miguel Betancourt Guerra and Antonio Zambrana, representing Camaguey. At this convention, Cespedes resigned his position as provisional head of the government and commander-in-chief of the army, in order that some one might be regularly elected in his place, and in doing so he addressed his colleagues in the following memorable terms: "Now that the House of Representatives, gathered from all parts of the Island, has been happily inaugurated in Guaimaro, it becomes from the moment of its organization the supreme and only authority for all Cubans, because it constitutes the depository of the people's will, sovereign of the present and controller of the future. All temporary power and authority ceases to have a rightful voice in Cuba from the very moment in which the wise democratic system, laying its solid foundations beneath the gigantic shadow of the tree of liberty, has come to endow us--after suffering the most iniquitous rule--with the most beautiful and magnificent of human institutions--a republican government. "Unfeigned gratitude I owe to the destiny which afforded me the glory of being the first in Yara to raise the standard of independence, and the still greater though less merited satisfaction, to see crowded around me my fellow-citizens in demand of liberty, thus sustaining my weak arm and stimulating my poor efforts by their confidence. But another glory was reserved for me, far more grateful by my sentiments and democratic convictions--that of also being the first to render homage to the popular sovereignty. "This duty fulfilled, having given an account to the fatherland of its most genuine representation of the work which with the assistance of its own heroic sons I had the good fortune to have commenced, it still behooves me, fellow-citizens, to fulfill another, not less imperious to my heart, of addressing my gratitude to you--to you, without whom my humble, isolated efforts would not have produced other fruit than that of adding one patriot more to the number of preceding martyrs for independence--to you, who, recognizing in me the principle rather than the man, came to stimulate me by your recognition of myself as chief of the provisional government and the liberating army. "Fellow citizens of the Eastern Department, your efforts as initiators of the struggle against tyranny, your constancy, your sufferings, your heroic sacrifices of all descriptions, your privations, the combat without quarters which you have sustained and continue to sustain against an enemy far superior in armament and discipline, and who displays, for want of the valor which a good cause inspires, all the ferocity which is the attitude of tyranny, have been witnessed by myself, and so will remain eternally present to my heart. You are the vanguard of the soldiers of our liberties. I commend you to the admiration and to the gratitude of the Cubans. Continue your abnegation of self, your discipline, your valor, and your enthusiasm, which will entitle you to that gratitude and that admiration. "Fellow citizens of the Western Department, if it has not been your good fortune to be the first in grasping arms, neither were you among the last in listening to the voice of the fatherland that cried for revolution. Your moral aid and assistance responded from the very outset to the call of your brethren of the Eastern and Central Departments. Many of you hastened to the scene of revolution to share our colors. At this moment, despite the activity displayed by the Spanish Government in your districts, where its resources and the number of its hosts render more difficult the current of the revolution, that same Government trembles before your determined attitude, from the Las Villas to Havana, and from Havana to the western boundary, and your first deeds of arms were the presage to you and the brave and worthy sons of the Eastern and Central Departments of new and decisive triumphs. "Fellow citizens of all the Island: The blood of the patriots who have fallen during the first onset of the struggle has consecrated our aspirations with a glorious baptism. At this moment, when destiny has been pleased to close the mission of him who was your first leader, swear with him by that generous blood, that in order to render fruitful that great sacrifice you will shed your own, to the very last drop, in furtherance of the consummation of our independence, proclaimed in Yara. Swear with me to give up our lives a thousand times over in sustaining the republic proclaimed in Guaimaro. "Fellow citizens, long live our independence. Long live the popular sovereignty! Long live the Cuban Republic! Patria and liberty!" The convention before proceeding to the election of officers of the Republic, drafted and adopted the first Constitution of Free Cuba, as follows: "Article I. The legislative power shall be vested in a House of Representatives. "Article II. To this body shall be delegated an equal representation from each of the four states into which the Island of Cuba shall be divided. "Article III. These states are Oriente, Camaguey, Las Villas and Occidente. "Article IV. No one shall be eligible as representatives of any of these states except a citizen of the Republic, who is upward of 20 years of age. "Article V. No representative of any state shall hold any other official position during his representative term. "Article VI. Whenever a vacancy occurs in the representation of any state, the executive thereof shall have power to fill such vacancy until the ensuing election. "Article VII. The House of Representatives shall elect a President of the Republic, a General-in-Chief of its Armies, a President of the Congress and other executive officers. The General-in-Chief shall be subordinate to the Executive, and shall render him an account of the performance of his duties. "Article VIII. The President of the Republic, the General-in-Chief and the Members of the House of Representatives are amenable to charges which may be made by any citizen to the House of Representatives, which shall proceed to examine into the charges preferred; and if in their judgment it be necessary the case of the accused shall be submitted to the Judiciary. "Article IX. The House of Representatives shall have full power to dismiss from office any functionary whom they have convicted. "Article X. The legislative acts and decisions of the House of Representatives, in order to be valid and binding, must have the sanction of the President of the Republic. "Article XI. If the President fails to approve the acts and decisions of the House, he shall, without delay, return the same with his objections thereto, for the reconsideration of that body. "Article XII. Within 10 days after their reception, the President shall return all bills, resolutions and enactments which may be sent to him by the House for his approval, with his sanction thereof, or with his objections thereto. "Article XIII. Upon the passage of any Act, Bill or Resolution, after a reconsideration thereof, by the House, it shall be sanctioned by the President. "Article XIV. The House of Representatives shall legislate upon Taxation, Public Loans, and Ratification of Treaties; and shall have power to declare and conclude War, to authorize the President to issue letters of marque, to raise troops and provide for their support, to organize and maintain a Navy, and to regulate reprisals as to the public enemy. "Article XV. The House of Representatives shall remain in permanent session from the time of the ratification of this fundamental law by the People until the termination of the war with Spain. "Article XVI. The Executive Power shall be vested in the President of the Republic. "Article XVII. No one shall be eligible to the Presidency, who is not a native of the Republic, and over 30 years of age. "Article XVIII. All treaties made by the President may be ratified by the House of Representatives. "Article XIX. The President shall have power to appoint Ambassadors, Ministers-plenipotentiary, and Consuls of the Republic, to foreign countries. "Article XX. The President shall treat with Ambassadors, and shall see that the laws are faithfully executed. He shall also issue commissions to all the functionaries of the Republic. "Article XXI. The President shall propose the names of the members of his Cabinet to the House of Representatives for its approval. "Article XXII. The Judiciary shall form an independent co-ordinate department of the Government, under the organization of a special law. "Article XXIII. Voters are required to possess the same qualifications as to age and citizenship as the members of House of Representatives. "Article XXIV. All the inhabitants of the Republic of Cuba are absolutely free. "Article XXV. All the citizens are considered as soldiers of the Liberating Army. "Article XXVI. The Republic shall not bestow dignities, titles, nor special privileges. "Article XXVII. The citizens of the Republic shall not accept honors nor titles from foreign countries. "Article XXVIII. The House of Representatives shall not abridge the Freedom of Religion, nor of the Press, nor of Public Meetings, nor of Education, nor of Petition, nor any inalienable Right of the People. "Article XXIX. The Constitution can be amended only by the unanimous concurrence of the House of Representatives." [Illustration: MANUEL QUESADA] The next day the Convention proceeded to the election of officers of the House of Representatives. Salvador Cisneros was elected President; Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz and Antonio Zambrana were elected Secretaries, and Miguel Betancourt and Eduardo Machado, Vice-Secretaries. MANUEL QUESADA Manuel Quesada, for a time military head of the Ten Years' War, was born in Camaguey in 1830. He was banished for political reasons and went to Mexico, where he fought under Benito Juarez. In 1868 he joined the patriot army and became one of its leaders; in 1870 being its commander in chief. Failing to carry the war into Pinar del Rio, he went on a trip to Venezuela, and trying to return was pursued by a Spanish cruiser and took refuge in Santo Domingo. On his final return to Cuba he was deposed from his command for being too ambitious and autocratic, whereupon he went to the United States and thence to Venezuela, where he died in 1886. The seventh article of the Constitution was immediately put into practice, when the convention, constituting itself a House of Representatives, confirmed the confidence of the Cuban peoples in Cespedes, by appointing him President of the Republic of Cuba, while Manuel Quesada was made Commander-in-Chief of the Army. President Cespedes immediately assumed his office and issued this proclamation: "To the People of Cuba: "Compatriots: The establishment of a free government in Cuba, on the basis of democratic principles, was the most fervent wish of my heart. The effective realization of this wish was, therefore, enough to satisfy my aspirations and amply repay the services which, jointly with you, I may have been able to devote to the cause of Cuban independence. But the will of my compatriots has gone far beyond this, by investing me with the most honored of all duties, the supreme magistracy of the Republic. "I am not blind to the great labors required in the exercise of the high functions which you have placed in my charge in these critical moments, notwithstanding the aid that may be derived from other powers of the state. I am not ignorant of the grave responsibility which I assume in accepting the Presidency of our new-born Republic. I know that my weak powers would be far from being equal to the demand if left to themselves alone. But this will not occur and that conviction fills me with faith in the future. "In the act of beginning the struggle with the oppressors, Cuba has assumed the solemn duty to consummate her independence or perish in the attempt, and in giving herself a democratic government she obligates herself to become Republican. This double obligation, contracted in the presence of free America, before the liberal world, and, what is more, before our own conscience, signifies our determination to be heroic and to be virtuous. "Cubans! On your heroism I rely for the consummation of our independence, and on your virtue I count to consolidate the Republic. You may count on my abnegation of self. "CARLOS DE CESPEDES. "Guaimaro, April 11, 1869." This was followed two days later by General Quesada's proclamation: "Citizen Chiefs, Officers and Soldiers of the Liberating Army of Cuba: When I returned to my country to place my sword at your service, fulfilling the most sacred of duties, realizing the most intense aspiration of my life, the vote of the Camagueyans, to my surprise, honored me by conferring on me the command of their army. Notwithstanding my poor merits and capacity, I accepted the post because I expected to find and did find in the Camagueyans civic virtues well established, and this has rendered supportable the charge of the responsibility which I assumed. "Now the legislative power of the Republic has filled me with a greater surprise, promoting me to the Command-in-Chief of the liberating army of Cuba. The want of confidence in my own resources naturally moves me anew upon stronger grounds, although it also strengthens the conviction that the patriotism of my brethren will supply the insufficiency of my capacity. "Camagueyans! You have given me undoubted proofs of your virtues. You are models of subordination and enthusiasm. Preserve and extend your discipline! "Soldiers of the East! Initiators of our sacred revolution! Veterans of Cuba! I salute you with sincere affection, counting on your gallant chiefs, in order that they may aid me in realizing the eminent work which we have undertaken, and I hope that union will strengthen our forces. "Soldiers of the Villas! You have already struggled with the despot. I felicitate you for the efforts made and invite you to continue them. You are patriots. You will be victors. "Soldiers of the West! I know your heroic exploits, and venerate them. I am well aware of the disadvantage of the situation in which you find yourselves, in contrast with our oppressors, and it is our purpose to remedy this. Accept the homage of my admiration and the succor of my arms. "Citizen chiefs, officers, and soldiers of the Cuban Army! Union, discipline, and perseverance! "The rapid increase which the glorious new Cuba has taken frightens our oppressors, who now are suffering the pangs of desperation, and carrying on a war of vengeance, not of principles. The tyrant Valmaseda rages with the incendiary's torch and the homicidal knife over the fields of Cuba. He has never done otherwise, but now he adds to his crime the still greater one of publishing it by a proclamation, which we can only describe by pronouncing it to be a proclamation worthy of the Spanish Government. Thereby our property is menaced by fire and pillage. This is nothing. It threatens us with death; and this is nothing. But even our mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters are menaced with resort to violence. "Ferocity is the valor of cowards. "I implore you, sons of Cuba, to recollect at all hours the proclamation of Valmaseda. That document will shorten the time necessary for the triumph of our cause. That document is an additional proof of the character of our enemies. Those beings appear deprived even of those gifts which Nature has conceded to the irrationals--the instinct of foresight and of warning. We have to struggle with tyrants, always such; the very same ones of the Inquisition, of the Conquest, and of Spanish dominion in America. In birth and in death they live and succeed; the Torquemadas, the Pizarros, the Boves, the Morillos, the Tacons, the Conchas, and the Valmasedas. We have to combat with the assassins of old women and of children, with the mutilators of the dead, with the idolaters of gold! "Cubans! If you would save your honor and that of your families; if you would conquer forever your liberty, be soldiers. War leads you to peace and to happiness. Inertia precipitates you to misfortune and to dishonor. Viva Cuba! Viva the President of the Republic! Viva the Liberating Army! Patria and Liberty! "MANUEL QUESADA." The proclamation of Count Valmaseda, to which General Quesada referred, had been issued at Bayamo on April 4, and was as follows: "Inhabitants of the Country-- "The forces which I expected have arrived. With them I will afford protection to the good and summarily punish all those who still rebel against the government of the metropolis. "Know ye that I have pardoned those who have fought against us, armed; know ye that your wives, mothers and sisters have in me found the protection they admired and which you rejected; know, also, that many of the pardoned have turned against me. After all these excesses, after so much ingratitude and so much villainy, it is impossible for me to be the man I was heretofore. Deceptive neutrality is no longer possible. 'He that is not with me is against me,' and in order that my soldiers may know how to distinguish you, hearken to the orders given them: "Every man from the age of 15 upward, found beyond his farm, will be shot, unless a justification for his absence be proven. "Every hut that is found uninhabited will be burned by the troops. "Every hamlet where a white cloth in the shape of a flag is not hoisted in token that its inhabitants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes. "The women who are not found in their respective dwellings, or in those of their relatives, will return to the towns of Jiguani or Bayamo, where they will be duly provided for. Those who fail to do so will be taken by compulsion. These orders will be in force on and after the 14th inst.! "COUNT VALMASEDA. "Bayamo, April 4, 1869." General Cespedes about this time sent to the Government of the United States, in his name and in that of the Provisional Government of Cuba, a request for recognition, as belligerents. His letter contained these references to the strength of the movement in Cuba: "We now hold much more than fifty leagues of the interior of this Island in the Eastern Department, among which are the people (or communities) of Jiguani, Tunas, Baire, Yara, Barrancas, Datil, Cauto, Embarcadero, Guisa, and Horno, besides the cities of Bayamo and Holguin, in all numbering 107,853 inhabitants, who obey us, and have sworn to shed to the last drop of blood in our cause. "In the mentioned city of Bayamo, we have established a provisional government, and formed our general quarters, where we hold more than three hundred of the enemy prisoners, taken from the Spanish Army, among whom are generals and governors of high rank. All this has been accomplished in ten days, without other resources than those offered by the country we have passed through, without other losses than three or four killed and six or eight wounded." However this impressed the Government at Washington, and notwithstanding the marked sympathy in the United States for the cause of the Republic, the desired recognition was not obtained. The impression of the revolution and its leaders which was given to the people of the United States may be judged from what was written by an authoritative correspondent of the New York _Tribune_: [Illustration: FRANCISCO V. AGUILERA] FRANCISCO V. AGUILERA One of the organizers of the Ten Years' War, Francisco V. Aguilera was born at Bayamo in 1821, of a wealthy and distinguished family, and was finely educated in America and Europe. Although married to the daughter of the Spanish Governor of Santiago, General Kindelan, he was an ardent patriot, liberating his slaves and giving his great fortune to the cause of independence. He served in the Ten Years' War as Secretary of War and as Commander in Chief in Oriente; and succeeded Salvador Cisneros Betancourt as President of the Revolutionary government. He died in New York on February 22, 1877, and though his government had not been officially recognized, full honors as to a Chief of State were paid at his funeral. "General Cespedes, the hero and chief of the revolt--is a man of good appearance, fifty years of age, and has traveled in the United States. His second in command, Arango, the Marquis of Santa Lucia, is a native of Puerto Principe, and at taking part in the insurrection emancipated his slaves. General Aguilera was a man of great wealth, and had once held under the Government the office of mayor over the town of Bayamo just burnt by the rebels. He too released his slaves. General Donato Marmol bears the repute of having genuine military talent, as he is said to have defeated his opponents in most of their encounters with him, and signally at Bairi, in the Eastern District. He is admired for the ready invention of a new weapon of defence in war, which is called the horguetilla, and is a kind of hook to resist bayonet charges. The hook, which can be made without much trouble, of wood, is held with the left hand to catch the bayonet, while with the right the rebel brings his rude machete, a kind of sword, down upon his Spanish foe. General Quesada, the other mentionable Cuban leader, served with credit on the side of Juarez during the intervention in Mexico. The soldiers of the revolt are of the rawest kind. A good part of them have been recruited from the emancipated slaves of Cespedes, Arango, and Aguilera. Many of the weapons are of the poorest kind, but I have heard that a certain number of Enfields have been furnished them, and lately some hand grenades. It is told me that no help, or exceedingly little, has reached them from the North. Among some other things of their own device, they have been employing wooden cannon, good for one shot and no more." The insurrection was eagerly supported by the "Juntas of the Laborers." These societies, formed at the suggestion of Rafael Merchan, issued a proclamation which enumerated the wrongs and insults endured by them under the Spanish rule of Cuba, and stated the principles for which they were willing to fight: "The Laborers, animated by the love for their native land, aspire to the hope of seeing Cuba happy and prosperous by virtue of her own power, and demand the inviolability of individuals, their homes, their families, and the fruits of their labor, which they would have guaranteed by the liberty of conscience, of speech, of the press, and of peaceful meetings. In fact, they demand a government of the country for and by the country, free from an army of parasites and soldiers that only serves to consume it and oppress it. And, as nothing of that kind can be obtained from Spain, they intend to fight that power with all available means, and drive and uproot its domination from the face of Cuba. Respecting above all and before all the dignity of man, the association declares that it will not accept slavery as a forced inheritance of the past. However, instead of abolishing it as an arm by which to sink the Island into barbarity, as threatened by the government of Spain, they view abolition as a means of improving the moral and national condition of the working men, and thereby to place property and wealth in a more just and safe position. "Sons of their times, baptised in the vivid stream of civilization, and, therefore above preoccupation of nationality, the laborers will respect the neutrality of Spaniards, but among Cubans will distinguish only friends and foes, those that are with them or against them. To the former they offer peace, fraternity, and concord; to the latter, brutality and war--war and brutality that will be more implacable to the traitors to Cuba, where they first saw the day, who turn their arms against them, or offer any asylum or refuge to their tyrants. We, the laborers, do not ignore the value of nationality, but at the present moment consider it of secondary moment. Before nationality stands liberty, the indisputable condition of existence. We must be a people before becoming a nation. When the Cubans constitute a free people they will receive the nationality that becomes them. Now they have none." The Captain-General replied to this in January, 1869, with a proclamation, full of promises which, however, were never fulfilled. It said: "I will brave every danger, accept every responsibility, for your welfare. The revolution has swept away the Bourbon dynasty, tearing up by the roots a plant so poisonous that it polluted the air we breathe. To the citizen shall be returned his rights, to man his dignity. You will receive all the reforms which you require. Cubans and Spaniards are all brothers. From this day, Cuba will be considered a province of Spain. Freedom of the press, the right of meeting in public, and representation in the national Cortes, the three fundamental principles of true liberty, are granted you. "Cubans and Spaniards! Speaking in the name of our mother, Spain, I adjure you to forget the past, hope for the future, and establish union and fraternity." Cuba had declared herself to be an independent state, but that was merely the first step in establishing her independence, and a long and bitter struggle lay before her before she could hope to accomplish in fact that for which her loyal citizens had armed themselves and which they were determined to achieve. The first regularly elected House of Representatives took their seats at Guaimaro, whereupon the members of the former convention resigned their seats to their successors. In the new House, Jorge Milanes was elected from the District of Manzanillo, Manuel Gomez Silva from Camaguey, Manuel Gomez Pena from Guantanamo, Tomas Estrada from Cobre, Pio Posada from Santiago de Cuba, Fernando Fornaris from Bayamo, and Pedro Aguero from Las Tunas. Later sessions of the House of Representatives were held at Cascorro and at Sibanico. These towns, held sacred by Cubans as the birthplaces of liberty, were stoutly defended during the revolution, and in spite of repeated efforts the Spaniards were never able to effect their capture, although they used their most highly trained troops, and most efficient officers in their attacks. Beginning with August 6, 1869, the Assembly began to organize the government along the most enlightened lines, and provided for the administration of justice by establishing a Judiciary Department with the following branches: 1. A Supreme Court. 2. Criminal Judges. 3. Civil Judges. 4. Prefects and sub-prefects. 5. Court Martial. The Supreme Court was composed of a presiding officer, two judges and a judge-advocate. Each of the states of the Republic was divided into districts, and a civil and criminal judge as well as an attorney for the Commonwealth were appointed for each district. Each state was to be ruled by a Civil Governor, and each district by a Lieutenant-Governor, while the districts were divided into prefects and sub-prefects, each with its appropriate ruler. The officers in question were in every case to be elected by popular suffrage. A chronological enumeration of the laws enacted by the Congress during 1869 is not only pertinent, but it divulges their evident intention to administer the government of the island, should they obtain the power to do so, along the most humane and enlightened lines. On May 11, 1869, an amnesty was granted to all political prisoners, who had not already been sentenced. On June 4, much needed provisions for civil marriages, and regulations concerning the same, were enacted. On June 7, the commerce of the Republic was declared free to all nations. The enactment of June 15, while a customary proceeding, would have a touch of irony connected with it, if it were not almost pathetic, as revealing the sturdy belief of these officials of the young Republic in the ultimate triumph of their cause. It was an authorization of the issue of $2,000,700 of legal tender paper money, to be redeemed by the Republic in coin, at par, when circumstances enabled them to do so--that is when they had conquered the enemy and established their Republic on a lasting basis. The bills thus issued had already reached the officers of the Republic, having been engraved in New York, and sent to Cuba by the New York Junta. [Illustration: BERNABE DE VARONA] On July 9, the army was definitely organized, and this organization remained in force until the capture and death of General Quesada. It was as follows: Commander-in-Chief General Manuel Quesada Chief-of-Staff General Thomas Jordan Chief of Artillery Major Beauvilliers Brigadier-Major of Orders Major Bernabe Varona Sanitary Department Adolfo Varona _First Division_ _Army of Camaguey_ Major General Ignacio Agramonte Commanding 1st Brigade Colonel Miguel Bosse " 2d Brigade General Francisco Castillo " 3d Brigade Colonel Cornelio Porro " 4th Brigade Colonel Lope Recio " 5th Brigade Colonel Manuel Valdes Urra " 6th Brigade Colonel Manuel Agramonte " 1st Battalion Colonel Pedro Recio " 2d Battalion Colonel Jose Lino Cica " 3d Battalion Colonel Rafael Bobadilla _Second Division_ _Army of Oriente_ Major General Francisco Aguilera Commanding 1st Brigade General Donate Marmol " 2d Brigade General Luis Marcano " 3d Brigade General Julio Peralta _Third Division_ _Army of Las Villas_ Commanding 1st Brigade General C. Acosta " 2d Brigade General Salome Hernandez " 3d Brigade General Adolfo Cabada A law was enacted providing that every citizen of the Republic, between the ages of 18 and 50 years, must under compulsion take up arms for the cause of liberty. BERNABE DE VARONA Bernabe de Varona, a brilliant writer and devoted patriot, was born at Camaguey in 1845, a member of a distinguished family. He entered the Ten Years War with much zeal and displayed exceptional military skill. He went on various patriotic missions to New York, to France and to Mexico, and was instrumental in securing much aid for the patriot cause. His last expedition was on the ill-fated _Virginius_, on which he was captured and shot to death at Santiago de Cuba on November 4, 1873. On August 7, the powers of the various officers of the Government, including the Secretaries of State, were described and fixed. From the foregoing it will be seen that the officers of the new Republic had high aspirations for an orderly government, and for the just administration of wise laws for the benefit of the people. Unfortunately, in a large measure, the Republic of Cuba established at that time was a government only in name, and was not destined to take the reins in administering the affairs of the Island, except in a more or less theoretical way. CHAPTER XI A revolution usually involves fighting as well as the organization of a government. In the case of Cuba, this was especially inevitable. It was realized by the patriots in advance that the redemption of Cuba from the tyranny of Spain could only be accomplished by force of arms, and consequently plans to that effect had been carefully perfected in advance. It was highly creditable to the Cubans that they so promptly organized a dignified and worthy government, and adopted a constitution favorably comparable with that of any other republic in the world. It was no less creditable to their judgment and their earnestness that they had already prepared for extensive military operations, and that they at once entered upon these in a vigorous and systematic manner. Plans for the uprising had indeed been matured before the breaking out of the revolution in Spain, but the latter event undoubtedly hastened the execution of their designs. At the outset, before complete organization was effected, the insurgents at Bayamo were under the leadership of Francisco V. Aguilera, Manuel A. Aguilera and Francisco M. Osorio; at Manzanillo the leader was Carlos Manuel Cespedes; at Holguin, Belisario Alvarez was in command; at Las Tunas, Vincente Garcia; at Jiguani, Donato Marmol; and at Santiago, Manuel Fernandez. When Cespedes issued his proclamation on October 10, the insurgents had only 147 men in their ranks, armed with forty-five fowling pieces, four rifles, and a few pistols and machetes--not enough arms to provide one weapon apiece. But volunteers began to flock to their standards and in two days the army had increased to over twenty-six times its original strength, and numbered upwards of four thousand men, while at the end of the month it had more than doubled, and had grown to nine thousand seven hundred. By November 8, the revolutionary army contained twelve thousand men, and at the end of 1868, it had grown to twenty-six thousand. But even this growth did not give them anything like the strength of the Spanish Army in Cuba. In October, 1868, Spain had in Cuba twelve regiments of infantry, one corps of engineers, one regiment of artillery, two regiments of cavalry, one section of civil guards, one regiment of armed firemen, one regiment of prison guards, and five regiments of infantry and cavalry militia, amounting to the following: Regular troops of all kinds, including officers 14,300 Civil guards 640 Prison guards 120 Armed firemen 1,000 Infantry and cavalry militia 3,400 Soldiers who had served their time but had been kept in service 300 ------ 19,760 These troops were distributed to the proportion of three-fifths of them in the Western Department, and the remainder divided between the Central and Eastern Departments. They were amply armed and munitioned, although it must be admitted that not all of their armament was of the newest pattern. It was, however, in excellent condition and they had six thousand of the latest model Remington rifles. At the end of the year, the Spanish troops had been augmented by large reinforcements from the mother country, so that Spain had in the field a thoroughly organized and abundantly equipped army of about 110,000 men, which, of course, was capable of being greatly increased. She also had in Cuban waters the following men of war, at the beginning of October, 1868: 2 Steam frigates 91 guns 2 2d class steamers 12 guns 5 3d class steamers 10 guns 5 screw steamers, schooner rigged 15 guns -------- 128 guns Of course, she at once added to this navy, and it soon grew to formidable proportions, while the revolutionists had no navy at all, with which to repel Spanish attacks from the sea. Despite the great preponderance of forces in its favor, the Spanish government did not at first depend upon military prowess for the suppression of the insurrection and the retention of Cuba as its colony. This was perhaps, in a measure, because of the revolution in Spain, which was keeping the Government well occupied with its internal affairs, and also because of the desire of some of the liberal leaders in Spain to avoid endless strife and bloodshed. Therefore at first, pacific measures were contemplated. It had been thought that General Dulce, as Captain-General of the Island for his third term, would be able to effect a compromise with the Cubans, because of his kindly disposition, and the good feeling which prevailed between him and the Cubans. His good offices were greatly hampered and off-set by the arrogance of the Volunteers, who did not hold him in high regard, since they thought him much too gentle with the Cubans, and who were not in sympathy with his mediations. Perhaps the flame of revolution had now grown too hot to be quenched by soothing measures. At any rate, the hope of the Spanish Government proved delusive. On the one hand, the patriot leaders were outspoken in their unwillingness to accept Dulce's proposals of an amicable settlement, based on compromise; and on the other, the Volunteers frankly opposed making any concessions to the Islanders, and directed all their influence against every measure which Dulce offered as a solution. In this they had the ulterior motive of driving Dulce from office, so that there might be placed in his position a more arbitrary and ruthless man, one of their own kidney. In reviewing the state of affairs in Cuba at this early stage of the Ten Years' War, and comparing the strength and composition of the contending forces, it should be borne in mind that the Cuban army in the field was a mere fragment of the potential strength of the Cuban people. There were probably 150,000 Cubans, able bodied and of military age, who were both willing and eager to enter the war, but who were restrained from so doing for fear of what would befall their families if they identified themselves openly with the patriot cause. If they left their homes to take the field, their wives and children would be at the mercy of Spanish troops or of the still more to be dreaded and pitiless Volunteers. If we add to this the not unnatural doubt of the possibility of succeeding in the revolt against the formidable power of Peninsular Spain--a doubt fostered and confirmed by the failure of the former attempts--we cannot blame the Cubans for not more generally participating in active operations. Their absentation from so doing is to be charged not, certainly, to cowardice or to lack of patriotism, but to an excess of prudence. In these circumstances, the numerical odds were at the beginning, and remained all through the war, tremendously against the Cubans. Besides this their army in a large measure, particularly at the beginning, consisted of men who had had no experience in warlike manoeuvres, and who lacked military drilling, for while preparations for uprisings had been as constant as had been the uprisings themselves, naturally the revolutionists, when their revolt was in an incipient stage, did not wish to call attention to what they were planning by putting their sympathizers through military tactics. The Cuban Army also lacked a tremendous stabilizer of morale, in not being properly uniformed, but rather presenting a motley appearance on the field. In fact there were many times when they were so hard put that they were not only inadequately clothed, but suffered for lack of food. The fact that they were able so frequently to defeat the highly trained and well equipped Spanish forces, and to hold their ground as successfully, as they did year after year, is the highest possible tribute to their valor, their intelligence in military matters, and their patriotic devotion. The earliest engagements between the opposing forces occurred on October 13, 1868, at three places, not widely separated; Yara, Bairi and Jiguani; in all of which the Cuban patriots were successful. The last of the three named was considered by the patriots to be an extremely important victory, and was accomplished by troops under the command of General Donato Marmol. Heartened by this good fortune, the patriots on October 15 laid siege to Bayamo, and three days later effected its capture; whereupon that place was made the temporary seat of the Cuban Government. These victories were all the more creditable and encouraging because, we must remember, while the Spanish Army numbered many thousands--scattered it is true in various parts of the Island--the Cuban Army was only one-fourth as large and poorly armed and equipped. At all times during the first engagements, the patriots were outnumbered, but they made up in courage what they lacked in numbers, and their enthusiasm and zeal for the cause for which they were fighting carried them safely against tremendous odds. Late in October--on the 26th to be exact--the patriots attacked the Spanish troops at Las Tunas, and also at Villa del Cobre at the foot of Monte Alta Garcia, between Puerto Principe and Nuevitas, and at Moran. In all these engagements the Cubans were greatly hampered by the serious lack of arms and munitions, but if they were not entirely successful they were far from routed, they lost little ground, and maintained very complete control over those portions of the Central and Eastern Departments which were in sympathy with them. By the early part of November, 1868, the Cubans had thoroughly beaten the troops under the command of the Spanish Colonel Demetrio Quiros, and forced him to retreat, and were thus enabled to advance into the very suburbs of Santiago de Cuba, the ancient capital of the Island, and at this time the capital of the Eastern Department. They promptly cut the aqueduct which supplied that city with water, and thereby caused not only great discomfort but something resembling panic among the inhabitants. The patriots were naturally reluctant to resort to such measures, because of the suffering which it caused to their own friends and sympathizers; yet if the Spanish garrison in Santiago was to be brought to terms, any strategic advantage which the Cubans could acquire must be used to the utmost. The third week in November found them in possession of the towns of El Caney and El Cobre; the latter famous as the site of the first copper mines opened in Cuba, and the former as the scene of one of the sharpest engagements of the United States war with Spain in 1898. The patriots kept control of these two places for several weeks, and then deeming it inexpedient to undertake any further operations against Santiago, which was not only garrisoned by the Spanish Army but also protected by the Spanish fleet, they withdrew their forces to the defense of Bayamo, which was now being seriously threatened by the troops of Count Valmaseda, reenforced by those under Colonel Lono, who had come thither from Manati, under Colonel Campillo from Manzanillo, Colonel Mana from Puerto Principe, and Colonel Quiro, who had hastened to Bayamo from Santiago. With all these Spanish troops, well armed and abundantly supplied with ammunition concentering upon the place, President Cespedes realized that it would be impolitic to attempt to resist a siege. After consultation with his associates, the result of which was a unanimous decision, he set fire to the city and withdrew his troops. In consequence, when Valmaseda arrived a little later, he found nothing left of Bayamo but ruins. This loss of their temporary capital did not perceptibly weaken the Cuban position; indeed the patriot cause steadily grew in strength and numbers. The entire jurisdiction of Holguin revolted against Spanish authority, on October 28, and the inhabitants, in large numbers, rushed to take up arms with the patriots. A week later Camaguey followed the example of Holguin. The Spanish government both at home and in Cuba was in the position of a man sitting on a couch under which had been stored a quantity of bombs, all timed to go off at irregular intervals, and from which position there was no escape. They did not know which way to jump. The high officials in both countries lived in an uncertainty as to events in Cuba which must have been nerve racking. Indeed--to mix our metaphors--they never knew where the fever of revolutions was scheduled to break out next. If they succeeded in getting it under control in one place, and began to feel a bit secure against an epidemic, the next morning they found what to them seemed a new eruption, and one which they had not been able to anticipate. They conquered, or apparently subdued, the patriots in one portion of the Island, and immediately those in another burst forth into active opposition to what the Spanish government would have termed law and order, but which the insurgents called by the less pleasant terms of cruelty and unjust oppressions. And occasionally, as we have seen, there glimmered in some Spanish intelligence a faint doubt as to the efficacy of their usual methods, and then for a very short time the authorities would try temporizing. But the patriots had not suffered for generations from Spanish misrule without having learned to mistrust the wiles of their oppressors, and they viewed with more or less cynicism any surface indications of a less tyrannous rule. With the revolts of Camaguey and Holguin, the Spanish authorities came to the conclusion that it was about time to try temporizing, and to endeavor in some way to pacify the patriots. It may be that they would have actually made concessions--we have it from one authority that they were willing at this time to grant almost anything but the one thing which was the single desire of the patriots. At any rate, on January 19, 1869, they made a formal proposal for a meeting between representatives of the belligerents for the discussion of the issues between them, and for a serious attempt to effect a compromise. President Cespedes felt that the time for compromise had passed, long years before. The die had been cast. The revolution had one aim, complete freedom, and that was above all things the one concession which the Spaniards would not make. But he was too clever not to realize that after all something might be gained by compliance, if no more than a chance to feel out the mettle and present designs of the Spaniards. It was possible that if he sent a clever enough envoy he might learn much that would be to his advantage in future negotiations. He was under no obligation to consent to or even to consider seriously any terms which the Spaniards might offer, so that he had nothing to lose by such a proceeding, and it was barely possible that he might gain valuable information. So he assented to the proposal, and sent his representative, Augustin Arango, to Puerto Principe, under safe conduct issued by the Spanish Government at Manzanillo. It is probable that the safe conduct would have been respected by the Spanish authorities and Spanish troops. But unfortunately, not only for the innocent envoy, and for the patriots, but also for any hope that the Spaniards may have entertained--if indeed their offer had been made in good faith, and there is always a measure of doubt, in the face of their usual trickery--of an amicable understanding, Arango fell into the hands of the Volunteers, who, in quite characteristic manner, contemptuously disregarded the credentials of their own government, and cruelly and brutally murdered General Cespedes's messenger, immediately upon his entrance into Puerto Principe. It is not difficult to picture the rage and disgust of the patriots at this new example of Spanish perfidy, which so clearly demonstrated the futility of attempting any negotiations of any kind whatever with an enemy capable of such lack of honor. The death of Arango, therefore, put an end to the farce of Spanish pretended repentance. And this circumstance did not pass without the news being spread all over the island. Patriots who had been timidly balancing themselves in outward neutrality, were so aroused with indignation that they began boldly to plunge into the maelstrom of civil war. On February 9, 1869, the entire district of Las Tunas revolted and cast its lot with the insurgents. Each new act of injustice emanating from the Spaniards was like removing the supports of a dam behind which had been restrained the waters of patriotism. The Spaniards had killed one Cuban patriot in cold blood; the cause of revolutions had gained thousands, each fired with enthusiasm. Thus far General Quesada had been waging an almost exclusively irregular or guerrilla warfare. This was because of the smallness of his army, the lack of arms and equipment, and the unfamiliarity of his men with military tactics. Indeed, such methods of warfare were in a large measure continued throughout the entire Ten Years' War. But by the time of which we now write he was able on some occasions and at some places to array his troops in orderly fashion and to conduct his campaign in much the same manner as the Spaniards themselves. Thus, he was able to carry on regular siege operations against Colonel Mena, and his garrison of three thousand Spaniards, at Puerto Principe. Colonel Prieto with several thousand Cubans busied himself with cutting the railroad lines which the Spanish authorities had constructed for strategic purposes, and destroying communications between Villa Clara and Cienfuegos. A strong Spanish force was sent against him, and a serious engagement occurred at San Cristobal, where the patriots were entirely successful. The Spanish troops retreated to Guanajay, a short distance from Havana, closely pursued by the patriots, and when forced to give battle, the Spaniards were once more put to rout, with heavy losses. Havana was now practically in a state of siege, with a patriot army in possession of Guanajay, and small bands constantly harassing the Spanish troops at different points in the vicinity of the city. The Spanish Captain-General, Dulce, was still nursing the idea that some sort of an agreement might be reached, and at least a truce declared, and he therefore refused to officially declare the besieged condition of the city, and endeavored to placate the patriots by leniency toward the sympathizers in the city, and a conciliatory attitude toward the revolutionists. However, his efforts had little effect on the Cubans. Their forces pressed forward against Santiago de Cuba, and disaster for the Spanish garrison at that city was only averted by the timely arrival of Count Valmaseda with reinforcements. Las Tunas was still in the hands of the revolutionists, who were divided into small parties and were conducting a guerrilla warfare throughout practically the entire Island, attacking whenever it seemed to be to their advantage, and dispersing when the forces sent against them were sufficiently large to give the odds to the Government. Trinidad was practically segregated from the outside world so far as communications by land were concerned. The patriots had stopped the mail service, and had cut the telegraph wires. The city was in a turmoil of fear and apprehension, sending requests for aid whenever they could get word through, which was not frequently, since the patriots took a cynical delight in having so far turned the tables on their oppressors, and in detaining and making prisoners the couriers who tried to reach the Spanish lines with news of Trinidad's predicament. The patriots did not confine their efforts to any part of the Island, although the major part of them were east of Havana, and only that small stretch of territory embracing the province of Pinar del Rio was comparatively free from trouble. The insurgents were insufficiently provisioned, and so they resorted to pillage. This was particularly true of the bands in the vicinity of Nuevitas, where attacks were constantly being made on the plantations, and the farmers lived in a state of alarm, never knowing when a patriot band might descend upon them demanding food for the present and for the future, and proceeding to take it by force, if necessary. Frequently those who were not in favor of the cause of liberty extended a frightened hospitality, rather than to excite the wrath of their hungry visitors, and resorted to treachery to carry the news of the marauders to some nearby Spanish camp, only to have the rescuing forces chagrined to find, when they arrived, that the birds were not "in the hand," but had been fed, and had fled with their booty. Nuevitas was well garrisoned, and therefore the patriots confined their operations to a region sufficiently remote from the outskirts of the town, so that reprisals would be slow and difficult. The Cubans were strongly entrenched at San Miguel, where, on February 7, they were attacked by the Spaniards. When other means failed, the Spanish forces tried to "smoke out" the insurgents by burning the city, but while this dislodged them from the city itself, it failed to drive them from the vicinity, where they took up an advantageous position and held it against assault. Puerto Principe was surrounded; the aqueduct was cut, and food was scarce and growing scarcer. The inhabitants clamored for succor, when starvation seemed imminent. Their cries for aid became too insistent to be disregarded, and therefore a body of troops was dispatched from Santiago de Cuba toward Jiguani, whither the main body of the Spanish troops under Count Valmaseda, had retired. The patriots were apprised of this manoeuvre, and the Spanish troops were constantly harassed by bands of Cubans, and it was only after several severe engagements, and considerable losses, that they succeeded in joining Valmaseda at Jiguani. In the sort of warfare which they were now waging, the advantages were all with the revolutionists. They were thoroughly acquainted with the country, and knew well how to take advantage of its natural defenses, while the Spanish forces, especially those imported from Spain for the purpose of putting down the rebellion, lacked such knowledge, and in strategy were always at a disadvantage. The Cuban leaders were not only exceedingly clever in their manoeuvres, but they seemed to have a sense of humor, and to take a grim delight in fooling the Spanish commanders, and luring them on a fool's errand. The patriots, whenever the tide of battle went against them, retreated to fastnesses in the interior, well known to them, and uncharted by the enemy, from whence they would sally forth, when opportunity presented, harass the Spaniards, and again retire to their lair, whither the enemy feared to follow them, lest they might fall into a trap. The Cubans had a particularly annoying practice of spreading reports that a large revolutionary force had assembled in a certain place, and enticing the Spaniards to that location, when the latter would only discover, to their chagrin, that the report had been "grossly exaggerated," and that in reality there was only a handful of men instead of the large number which they expected; and to this would be added the further annoyance of having the little body of Cubans melt as if by magic in retreat to some position unknown to the Spanish or practically impenetrable by them, with their lack of information as to its potentialities, and their fear that it might prove their undoing. If this were not sufficiently annoying, the Cubans had a habit of sending out anonymous and misleading information, to the effect that an attack on the Cubans at a particular point would have felicitous results for the Spaniards, since it was believed that that position was inadequately defended, and upon acting on this information, the Spaniards would be baffled by discovering that the supposed forces, if indeed there had been any previously present, had long since departed, leaving the place deserted. Again and again the Spaniards were thus decoyed and beguiled, and yet they continued to act on the misleading advices, because failure to do so might lose them a real victory, should one message out of the many really prove reliable. Thus were the patriots learning to match Spanish cunning with a new, peculiar and ironic brand of their own, and were turning the tables on the tormentors who had for so many years mistreated them and laughed at their protests. It will be recalled that Bayamo had been burned by the revolutionists, when it seemed apparent that their capital city was about to fall in to the hands of the Spaniards, or at least, when it seemed the part of prudence to surrender it. In spite of the fact that this meant that the inhabitants would be rendered homeless, so strong was the patriotic feeling in that city, that the destruction was done with the consent of the populace. A thousand of these people now fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and on February 14 were taken to Manzanillo. The next day long expected reinforcements arrived from Spain. They were small in number, it is true, only a thousand strong, but conditions in Spain made it difficult for her to spare large numbers of troops, and this was most fortunate for the cause of freedom, for thus Spain was unable to send to Cuba a sufficient number of drilled soldiers to offset the advantage which the little Cuban army had in its acquaintance with the geography of the Island, and the physical possibilities which it afforded for scattered and sporadic attacks in unexpected quarters. Captain-General Dulce, alarmed at the conditions which existed, and at the failure of the Spanish army to subdue the revolution, and undoubtedly spurred on by the Volunteers, who had no patience with his conciliatory methods, changed his policy, and issued a proclamation, thoroughly muzzling the press, to avoid the spreading of the news of the extent of the revolution and the success of the revolutionists, and thus endeavored to stem the influx of recruits into the Cuban Army. He also established a military court martial, which planned to deal summarily with the leaders of the revolution should any fall into their hands. Next he proclaimed the expiration of the amnesty previously granted, while he--true to type--softened this decree, probably as a bit of insidious strategy, by offering to pardon all insurgents who would surrender themselves, excluding the leaders, and those who had been convicted--unrepresented at the trials, of course--of the crimes of murder, arson and robbery. The underlying thought of this proclamation probably was that the rank and file of the insurgents might surrender and deliver their leaders into his hands for punishment. This was accompanied by a demand upon the citizens of Havana for the sum of $25,000,000 to support the government, and to aid it in carrying on its campaign against the revolutionists. He only too well knew that the sympathy of the people of the United States, if not the secret sympathy of the government at Washington, was with the Cubans, and not only Dulce himself but indeed all the leaders of the Spanish cause lived in constant fear of private aid to the insurgents from the United States, if not of possible governmental intervention in their behalf. They well knew also that the Americans who had made their homes on the Island, and who were deeply interested in its commercial salvation, were all sympathizers in the cause of the revolution, and felt that only through freedom from Spanish rule and a resumption of peace could they hope to retrieve the fortunes which they had invested, and now apparently sunk, in Cuban business ventures. That these Americans, despite the censorship, were in communication with their friends in their own country Dulce did not doubt, and that they would urge the sending of relief to Cuba he felt certain. He therefore applied to the United States Consul at Havana for the names of all American residents of Cuba, that he might keep them under surveillance, check up their movements, and act, if necessary, to prevent them from either personally, or through their influence in the United States, lending any material aid to the revolutionists. In spite of the Captain-General's precautions, his fears were realized. Aid did reach the revolutionists from the United States, in the shape of guns and ammunition, accompanied by American sympathizers, who in some fashion ran the gauntlet of the Spanish navy in Cuban waters. The Cuban Army advanced against La Guanaja, wrested it from the Spaniards, and proceeded to fortify it with American guns, manned by American gunners. The town was believed by both of the belligerents to be impervious to attack from the land, and the Spanish commanders therefore dispatched a naval force to conquer it from the sea. The bombardment which ensued dashed the hopes of the revolutionists, so far as the effectiveness of their fortifications were concerned, as against a naval attack. The Spanish shells wrought great damage, and when they had reduced the defenses, a landing was made and the town was retaken by assault. The Cubans were therefore forced to beat a hurried retreat to the surrounding country, and the Spaniards were left in complete control of the city. Now they had a decided advantage, for from this vantage-point they were able to send aid to Puerto Principe, and, on February 23, two battalions were hurried thither. Meanwhile, General Lesca, who had been stationed at La Guanaja, set out to attack the Cuban Army at Colonia de Santo Domingo and in this expedition he was reinforced by the troops under General Puello. The Spanish army in this encounter greatly outnumbered the patriots but the latter fought with the courage of desperation; a wholesale slaughter ensued in which both sides suffered enormous losses; and when, worn out, the Cubans withdrew, the result might well be termed a draw, for neither side could justly claim victory. During the month of February, the revolutionists harassed the Spaniards in the vicinity of Santa Cruz, but not with their usual success, the odds being largely in favor of the latter. On February 25, a band of revolutionists surprised the town of La Lujas, situated only a short distance from Cienfuegos. Before opposition could be mustered, they took possession of the town, and with it the uniforms of the city guards, and all the arms, ammunition and horses which they could find, and they also burned the police archives, thus destroying any records at that place which might later be used against individual revolutionists, in the event of an ultimate Spanish victory. But, with it all, neither army was making any particular progress toward a decisive victory. The balance of advantage swung first one way and then the other. The Spanish found their well drilled troops unable to match themselves with any degree of effectiveness against the resourcefulness of the revolutionists, and their methods of warfare. The attempts at mediation had failed; indeed had been thwarted by the treacherous action within their own body--by the murder which was staged by the Volunteers' faction. On the other hand, as yet Cuba had been able to secure but little aid from the one country on the sympathy of the citizens of which she might count. The United States had far from come up to expectations in the assistance she had thus far unofficially rendered. Perhaps this was because the authorities in that country had no desire to embroil themselves with Spain, and kept a close watch on the movements of suspected Cuban partisans. The Cubans were able to make life exceedingly uncomfortable for the Spanish forces, and for Spaniard sympathizers throughout the country, but with their present numbers and equipment they had little hope of gaining a decision of the hostilities in their favor. The best they could do was to keep the country in a state of uproar, gaining what little advantage they could, and meanwhile the inhabitants were facing starvation, the destruction of their holdings, the burning of their buildings, and the devastation of a fruitful country. The constant operations of marauders, who took advantage of the Cuban method of warfare, to pillage and steal and lay in ruin various portions of the country, as well as the fear of attack from the guerrillas, were driving the farmers and their families to the protection of the cities, and thus farms were standing idle and uncultivated, and there was bound to be an even greater food shortage. The Government was being aided by the church, and the neutrals, despairing of any change in conditions for the better, were, whenever the opportunity presented itself, emigrating from the Island to regions less tumultuous, where living conditions were not so uncertain and dangerous. The Government was finding conditions intolerable, and decided to make a strenuous effort to dislodge the revolutionists from their inland strongholds and thus to compel them to abandon their badgering methods, and to come forth into the open and give battle, well knowing that, if this could be accomplished, the odds would all be in favor of the Spaniards. Therefore, a special company of Volunteers was assembled, with fresh reinforcements direct from Spain, and they were sent into the fastnesses of the interior, in a strong endeavor to drive out the Cubans. Simultaneously General Letona conducted a vigorous campaign in relief of Cienfuegos, and General Puello organized small parties which were sent out on marauding expeditions. But the principal result of these efforts was to throw the Island into a still greater state of excitement, and to encourage robbers and bandits, who, taking advantage of the consequent uproar, seized the favorable opportunity for pillage. Thus their devastation was added to the troubles of the already much tried farmers in Cuba. The country around Holguin and Gibara was in a state beyond description, and the life of every citizen, no matter what his sympathies, was in constant danger. Then a very serious battle took place between the forces under General Lesca, and an army of four thousand Cubans. The Spaniards were advancing from La Guanaja to the succor of Puerto Principe, when the two forces met. The Cubans were well entrenched on the Sierra de Cubitas. They were principally infantry, and they had the Spanish at a disadvantage. The engagement might have ended in an utter defeat for that portion of the Government Army, had it not been that they were well supplied with artillery, which did effective work against the Cubans, and therefore the Spaniards were able to escape, though with heavy losses. Early in the next month, March, 1869, the Cubans obtained--from what source is not disclosed, but it may be that their American sympathizers were responsible--large accessions of artillery, with a goodly supply of ammunition, which a small body of not over a hundred men, under Cisneros, were able to convey to Mayari, where General Quesada was stationed with seven thousand Cubans. When we consider that heretofore the revolutionists had been much more blessed with enthusiasm and belief in the ultimate triumph of their just cause than they had with the material means for accomplishing that end, it is not difficult to picture with what new hope and confidence this much needed assistance was received. Now more than ever they began to feel the certainty of final success, and to be imbued with a steadfast purpose to fight to the last ditch for the cause of freedom. CHAPTER XII At the time of the beginning of the Cuban insurrection the United States was undergoing one of its quadrennial political campaigns, and March 4, 1869, saw General Ulysses S. Grant inducted to the Presidency--the man who had led the nation to victory in the Civil War and had thus maintained the union of the United States of America; a soldier of the highest character, and one whose sympathies were keenly enlisted in behalf of the Cuban revolution. When this news reached the Cuban leaders they at once addressed to him an appeal for recognition, which ran as follows: * * * * * "To his Excellency, the President of the United States: "Sir: "The people of Cuba, by their Grand Supreme Civil Junta, and through their General-in-Chief, Señor Cespedes, desire to submit to your Excellency, the following among other reasons, why your Excellency, as President of the United States, should accord to them the belligerent rights and a recognition of their independence. "Because from the hearts of nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants of the island go up prayers for the success of the armies of the republic; and from the sole and only want of arms and ammunition these patient people are kept under the tyrannical yoke of Spain. "Because the republic has armies numbering over 70,000 men, actually in the field and doing duty. These men are organized and governed on the principles of civilized warfare. The prisoners whom they take--and so far they have taken three times as many as their enemies have taken from them--are treated in every respect as the prisoners of war are used and treated by the most civilized nations of the earth. In the hope of recognition by the United States, they have never yet in a single instance retaliated death for death, even in cases of the most provoking nature. "Because the Spanish authorities have almost invariably brutally murdered the soldiers of the armies of the republic who have surrendered to them, and have recently issued an official order requiring their military forces hereafter instantly to kill and murder any prisoner of the republic who surrenders. This is due, the order cheerfully tells us, to save trouble and vexation to the Spanish civil authorities. This is an outrage the civilized nations of the earth ought not to allow. "Because the United States is the nearest civilized nation to Cuba, whose political institutions strike a responsive chord in the hearts of all Cubans. The commercial and financial interests of the two peoples being largely identical and reciprocal in their natures, Cuba earnestly appeals for the unquestionable right of recognition. "Because the arms and authority of the Republic of Cuba now extend over two-thirds of the entire geographical area of the island, embracing a very great majority of the population in every part of the island. "Because she has a navy in course of construction which will excel in point of numbers and efficiency that heretofore maintained by the Spanish authorities in these waters. "Because these facts plainly show to the world that this is not a movement of a few discontents, but the grand and sublime uprising of a people thirsty for liberty and determined with this last effort to secure to themselves and their posterity those unquestioned rights--liberty of conscience and freedom of the individual. "Finally, because she is following but in the footsteps of Spain herself in endeavoring to banish tyrannical rulers, and in their stead place rulers of her own choice, the people of Cuba having a tenfold more absolute and potent right than Spain had, because Cuba's rulers are sent without her voice or consent by a foreign country, accompanied by and with swarms of officials to fill the various offices created only for their individual comfort, drawing their maintenance and support from the hard earnings of the natives of the soil. "Allow us to add, with the greatest diffidence and sensitiveness, that the difference between the rebellion in the United States and the present revolution in Cuba is simply that in the former a small minority rebelled against laws which they had a voice in making, and the privilege of repealing; while in the case of Cuba, we are resisting a foreign power in crushing us to the earth, as they have done for centuries, with no appeal but that of arms open to us, and appointing without knowledge, voice, advice or consent, tyrannical citizens of their own country to rule us and eat our substance. "Patria y Libertad! "Approved by the Supreme Junta and ordered approved By SEÑOR GENERAL CESPEDES, Commander in Chief Republican Forces in Cuba. Headquarters in the Field, March 1, 1869." President Grant was strongly inclined to grant this petition, and in this he was upheld by his most trusted friend and advisor, General Rawlins. In consequence, he prepared on August 19, 1869, a proclamation by which he recognized the insurgents as belligerents, the result of which would have been to legalize the shipment of arms to them. Unfortunately for the Cuban cause, though doubtless fortunately for the United States, there was at the head of the State Department of the United States a man of cooler judgment than General Grant, and one whose emotions of pity were not so easily moved. This was the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. Before Grant's proclamation could become effective, it was necessary for the Secretary of State to sign, seal and publish it, and this Mr. Fish refused to do. He felt that to do so would constitute a grave error in diplomacy, and one which might have far-reaching detrimental effects for the United States. It was his judgment that the President had been betrayed by his sympathies, and he felt it incumbent upon himself, as chief of the Department of State, to restrain him from making a bad mistake. There was to be taken into consideration the fact that the United States, in the war so recently fought for the maintenance of the Union, had made vigorous protests against the recognition of the Confederacy by foreign powers, and Secretary Fish felt that the proclamation in favor of the Cuban revolutionary government would stultify the course of the United States government in that matter. Indeed, in sound judgment, it was impossible to deny that the Confederates of the South were more justly entitled to recognition, under all the circumstances of both cases, than were the Cuban revolutionists. Fish felt that the condition in Cuba, at that time, at any rate, did not merit the official recognition of the United States government, and he was not backward in conveying his conviction to General Grant. Then he simply pigeon-holed the proclamation and let it die a natural death in musty obscurity. Upon second thought, General Grant saw the soundness of Fish's conclusions, and not only did not register a protest, but took occasion some months later to thank Fish for his intervention, and the suppression of the proclamation. [Illustration: MIGUEL DE ALDAMA] MIGUEL DE ALDAMA A man of letters and of great wealth and social leadership, Miguel de Aldama was a native of Havana and one of the foremost citizens of that capital when the Ten Years' War began. He at once placed his fortune and himself at the disposal of his country, and was appointed by President Cespedes to be Agent of the Cuban Republic in New York. To that place he was reappointed by President Cisneros Betancourt. He served in that capacity throughout the war, to the great advantage of the patriot cause. Meanwhile, reports of the cruelties of Spanish soldiers began to penetrate the ears of American citizens. It was reported, and pretty well authenticated, that disgusting atrocities were the order of the day, when the Spanish troops found in their path anyone, male or female, who was not in a position to resist them. There were stories of the raping of little children before the eyes of their mothers, and of mothers in the presence of their children, of the crucifixion, and hanging by the thumbs of old men, and even of able bodied persons, who happened to fall defenseless into the hands of the Spaniards. Tales of barbarity to prisoners, even to the extent of roasting them alive, fired the rage of justice-loving American citizens, and again touched the kind heart of their President. To these reports were added others, less revolting, but touching the commercial sense of the nation. American property in Cuba was being destroyed, and American citizens were being molested and restrained from the peaceful pursuit of their business. American commerce was impeded and losses were suffered. It was recalled that Spain had been prompt to recognize the Confederacy as a belligerent power, and it seemed but the irony of justice, and a fair sort of retaliation, that now the United States should give recognition to those who were rebelling against Spain's misrule. But Fish was deaf to all pleas in behalf of the Cubans, and resolutely blocked all attempts to secure recognition for them. He argued and pleaded with the President with such eloquence that presently he seemed to have him convinced that the cause of freedom in Cuba was not yet worthy of the recognition of the United States. In consequence, in his annual message, in December, 1869, President Grant, less than four months after his unpublished proclamation of recognition, declared that "the contest has at no time assumed the conditions which amount to a war in the sense of international war, or which would show the existence of a political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a recognition of belligerency." He added that "the principle is to be maintained, however, that this nation is its own judge when to accord the rights of belligerency either to a people struggling to free themselves from a government they believed to be oppressive, or to independent nations at war with each other." It is needless to say that this position was a great disappointment to the Cubans, and seemed to them utterly at variance with what they might have expected from a nation so lately torn by Civil War, and which had shown such keen individual sympathies with the cause of the freedom of Cuba. However, from that time on, the United States, officially, at least, showed the greatest patience--a patience which seemed almost unbelievably enduring--toward the hardships which the Spanish authorities put upon innocent Americans, and was indefatigably zealous in its efforts to prevent violations of neutrality on the part of sympathetic United States citizens. That there was some bitterness in the hearts of the Cuban leaders, who felt they had a right to expect the support of their sister republic, and a country which had against such odds won her own independence, it is easy to believe, and there were many who felt that this was a righteous indignation. But during the months in which the Secretary of State and the somewhat unwilling President of the United States were shaping this policy, the war in Cuba was continuously waged. On March 7, 1869, a few days after the Cubans addressed their petition to the United States government, the Spanish attacked a strong Cuban position at Macaca, and were successful in ousting the revolutionists. This disheartening occurrence was followed by defeats for the Cubans, first at Mayari, where Spanish forces under General Valcosta were victorious over a small army of which General Cespedes was in command--General Cespedes, however, effecting a withdrawal with safety to his own person and a part of his supporters--and again at Jiguani, where it was the Cubans who made the attack upon a Spanish force under General Valmaseda, only to meet defeat at the hands of the Spaniards, and to be forced to flee in disorder to their mountain fastnesses. Meanwhile reinforcements came from Spain; this time as before, not a large number, being only about twelve hundred men, but enough materially to aid the governmental army, and to strengthen its morale. The Captain-General also endeavored to win the hearts of the timid by issuing a proclamation which declared important concessions in tax regulations. A fifty per cent reduction was made in the direct taxation on plantations, on cattle and on country real estate, as well as in those taxes only recently levied on merchants and tradesmen. As a crowning concession the taxes due for the last quarter of the year 1868-1869 were nullified. But it was apparently impossible for Spain to make concessions without accompanying them with demands of some sort to offset her seeming generosity. Therefore the Captain-General took occasion to levy some new duties: On muscovado sugar, if shipped under the flag of Spain, a tax of 16¢ a hundred weight, while shipment under a foreign flag called for an additional 4¢ duty; on boxed sugar shipped under the Spanish flag, a tax of 75¢ a box, while if under a foreign flag, 12¢ additional; on every hogshead of sugar shipped under the flag of Spain a tax of $1, and if under a foreign flag, 75¢ additional; a tax on molasses of 50¢ a hogshead, and on rum of $1 for an equal quantity. It will be recalled that the Cuban patriots had by their proclamation of December 27, 1868, granted freedom to all slaves on the island. They now began a campaign to enforce this decree by removing, from all plantations of which their armies were able to take possession, the slaves for service in the Cuban army, and to make their liberation doubly sure, burning the buildings, and laying waste to the crops. In the districts around Sagua and Remedios there were nine thousand insurgents engaged in this work. This action it would be hard to excuse, if there were not taken into consideration the fact that the Cubans had endured such grievous wrongs at the hands of the Spaniards that they would have been much less than human if they had not had some desire to retaliate; and, after all, the retaliation which spoke most forcefully to the Spaniard was that which attacked his worldly goods and his pocketbook. But to offset these actions, the Spanish at the same time proved themselves victorious in several engagements. On March 18, at Alvarez, they defeated the Cuban forces; at about the same time, at Guaracabuya, they won another victory, with Cuban losses numbering one hundred and thirty-six killed outright; and two thousand Cubans, under Generals Morales and Villamil, were routed by the Spaniards at Potrerillo. In this last affair the patriots suffered severe losses; three hundred wounded, two hundred and five killed, and twenty-one taken prisoners, together with many horses killed or captured. They were also obliged to retreat in such haste that they had to abandon a considerable quantity of ammunition, which was seized by the enemy. It is only necessary to add that the Spanish lost but one officer, one private and one of their number taken prisoner, to demonstrate the disheartening nature of the encounter. But the Cubans were, as has been stated, drafting large quantities of slaves into their army, and this victory for the Spaniards was a signal proof that the slaves were not good material for soldiers. Besides this, the patriots who took part in this engagement suffered severely a lack of proper equipment. The tide seemed to be turning against the Cubans, and in the days that followed they were to face still further losses. The quality of the recruits which were being added to the patriot army did not increase its valor, skill or morale. They lacked guns, and those which they had were of antiquated pattern; there was a woeful scarcity of larger arms and ammunition, and the troops were weary and poorly fed. Against that portion of the Cuban army stationed in the Villa Clara district the Spanish now began to concentrate a large army, pouring troops into that district until they were ten thousand strong. The Cubans were outnumbered, and lacked the weapons of warfare, they had been outmanoeuvred, and suffered tremendous losses, and yet another crushing defeat lay before them, for on March 20, two thousand Cubans who were, as they fondly believed, strongly entrenched at Placitas, were put to flight by a small body of Spanish troops, highly skilled and well armed it is true, but numbering only three hundred regulars and a small company of the much feared Volunteers. Emboldened by these successes, the Captain-General again shifted his position, and issued an order, to be made the excuse for an outrage against American shipping, which was severely to tax the friendliness of international relations. The Spanish government was ever haunted by the bugbear of American intervention, and doubtless the decree in question was issued as a preventive against such action, for the Spanish well knew that should such intervention once take place their cause would be irrevocably lost, and with it their dominion over Cuba. The decree provided for the confiscation on the high seas of any and all vessels carrying either men, arms or ammunition or all three, or indeed anything which might be construed as intended for material aid to the revolutionists, and further provided that "all persons captured on such vessels without regard to their number will be immediately executed." Viewed in the calm light of history this decree would seem bound, if enforced, to be almost suicidal to the Spanish interests, being in opposition to law and justice, and in express violation of existing treaty obligations between Spain and the United States, and thus bound to bring a storm of protest from the United States government. As if this were not enough, Dulce followed this action by another decree, promulgated on April 1, which prohibited the transfer of property, except by the direct consent of the government, and this prohibition included the sale of produce of all sorts, stocks, shares in mercantile projects, and real estate, together with many minor provisions; while by a third decree, which shortly followed, he ordered the confiscation of the estates of American citizens who were suspected of sympathy or complicity with the revolutionists. Naturally, the United States government made a strong protest against such summary action, rightly declaring it to be in violation of the provisions of the treaty of 1795. The Cuban troops now began a more or less concentrated attack on Trinidad, and to relieve the pressure at this point, the Spanish sent a large force toward Puerto Principe, hoping to weaken the Cuban army at the former place, because of the necessity of withdrawing men to combat the Spanish army at the latter. The Spanish government also sought to offset the damage and destruction done by the insurgents to property of loyalists by issuing a decree proclaiming their intention to confiscate the property of all individuals who were absent from home without a governmental excuse--which would of course include all landowners who were fighting in the Cuban army--and providing for a detail of men to protect against the revolutionists every estate thus taken. On April 17 battle was again joined by the Cubans under Colonel Francisco Rubalcava and a Spanish force under the combined leadership of Generals Letona, Escalante and Lesca. The fighting which ensued taxed the Cuban resources to the utmost. All day long the battle raged, and when both sides were worn out with combat, the result was not decisive for either army, while one hundred and eighty Spanish troops and two hundred Cubans lay dead under the stars. For nearly two weeks thereafter there was a period of quiet and recuperation on the part of the Cubans, with the exception of a number of minor skirmishes, but on May 3 the belligerents again met in battle at Las Minas, when twelve hundred Spaniards, under the command of General Lesca, and a large Cuban force under General Quesada, fought in the most violent of hand to hand conflicts. Frightful butchery ensued, for this time victory again returned to the Cuban standards, and the Spanish were forced to retreat in disorder, leaving behind them one hundred and sixty killed and three hundred wounded, while the Cuban losses were two hundred killed and an equal number wounded. To add to the rejoicing over this victory, small as it was, a few days previous the Cubans had had a practical demonstration of the sympathy of United States citizens for their cause, and of the ability of those citizens to evade the drastic provisions of the government against any display of that feeling. On May 1 there arrived at Mayari a body of three hundred Americans, under the leadership of General Thomas Jordan, a tried veteran of the Civil War, in which he had been an officer in the Confederate Army. He was an experienced soldier, who had had a fine military training and had been graduated from West Point. This in itself might have been quite enough to put new heart into the Cuban leaders, but General Jordan had brought with him not only reinforcements but arms, ammunition, clothing, medical supplies and food. A detailed list of this material included four thousand long range rifles, three hundred new pattern Remington rifles, five hundred revolvers, twelve pieces of artillery of various sizes including twelve, twenty-four and thirty-two pound cannon, and a large supply of ammunition for these arms. And the relief did not stop here, for there were a thousand pairs of shoes, and clothing for one thousand persons, two printing-presses, medical supplies, and quantities of rice, tinned biscuits, salt meat, flour and salt. This meant food and arms for at least six thousand men, and there is no wonder that there seemed to be occasion for the wildest rejoicing on the part of those who were so manfully and against such great odds engaged in upholding the cause of freedom in Cuba. Now the patriots might oppose the Spanish with at least six thousand well equipped men, and they had also acquired in the person of General Jordan an officer whose aid in drilling raw recruits could not be overestimated. The Cubans did not get their booty to headquarters without some opposition from the Spaniards. That was hardly to be hoped, since their every movement was reported to the government by Spanish spies, and it would have been impossible for an expedition like the one in question to land without detection. But they were able to resist all attempts to wrest their supplies from them. Around Trinidad and Cienfuegos fighting was constant. Each day saw its skirmishes, and there were some violent engagements, all of which left matters pretty much as they had been so far as any victory of a decisive character for either side was concerned. The Cubans were, however, able to disperse a body of Spanish troops which were advancing toward Las Tunas in the hope of relieving the citizens of that place, which was also in a state of siege. The Spaniards were bearing a quantity of provisions for the city, and in their flight these were abandoned and fell into the hands of the Cubans. When matters were succeeding in a manner more or less favorable to the Spanish cause, the Volunteers were quiet and inclined to discontinue temporarily their opposition to Dulce, but when things took a turn for the worse he was always made the scapegoat. Hence the Volunteers were renewing their attacks on his policies, although for the time being he had been suffering one of his periodic reversions to severity. This time, the Volunteers were successful in obtaining the recall of Dulce as Captain-General. They simply drove him out by mob force, on June 4, and put into his place one Señor Espinar. This appointment was an arbitrary act, which the Spanish government refused to confirm, and therefore Espinar's political life was cut short almost at its inception, and General Caballero de Rodas became Captain-General of the island. Now Rodas should have been a man entirely to the liking of the Volunteers. He had won for himself a reputation for cruelty toward the republican insurgents in Spain while he was stationed at Cadiz, which had caused him to be called "the butcher of Cadiz." He evidently felt it incumbent to live up to his title, for now the Spanish troops were incited to unspeakable cruelties. Promptly on taking office, Rodas began his career with the decree of July 7, 1869, which he fondly hoped would prevent further aid from reaching the revolutionists from the United States or from any other country. The proclamation was as follows: "The custody and guardianship of the coasts of this island, of the keys adjacent, and the waters appertaining to the territory, being of the greatest importance, in order to suppress the insurgent bands that have hitherto maintained themselves by outside assistance, and determined as I am to give a vigorous impulse to the pursuit of them, and with a view of settling the doubts entertained by our own cruisers as to the proper interpretation of the decree promulgated by this superior political government under dates of November 9, 1868, and February 18 and 26 and March 24 last, I have decided to amplify and unite the aforesaid orders and substitute for them the following, which, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the nation, I decree: "Article I.--All parts situated between Cayo Bahia de Cadiz and Point Maysi on the north side, and from Point Maysi to Cienfuegos on the south, with the exception of Sagua La Grande, Caibarien, Nuevitas, Gibara, Baracoa, Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, Manzanillo, Santa Cruz, Zaza, Trinidad and Cienfuegos, where there are custom houses, will continue closed to the import and export trade, both by foreign and coasting vessels. Those who may attempt the entry of any closed ports, or to open communications with their coasts, will be pursued, and, on being captured, are to be tried as violators of the law. "Article II.--Vessels carrying gunpowder, arms and warlike stores, will likewise be judged in accordance with the law. "Article III.--The transportation of individuals in the service of the insurrection is by far more serious than that of contraband of war, and will be deemed an act of decided hostility, and the vessel and crew regarded as enemies to the state. "Article IV.--Should the individuals referred to in the foregoing article come armed, this will be regarded, _de facto_, as proof of their intentions, and they will be regarded as pirates, as will also be the case with the crew of the vessel. "Article V.--In accordance with the law, vessels captured under an unknown flag, whether armed or unarmed, will also be regarded as pirates. "Article VI.--In free seas adjacent to those of this island, the cruisers will limit themselves to their treatment of denounced vessels, or those who render themselves suspicious, to the rights given in the treaties between Spain and the United States in 1795, Great Britain in 1835, and with other nations subsequently; and if, in the exercise of these rights, they should encounter any vessels recognized as enemies of the integrity of the territory, they will carry them into port for legal investigation and judgment accordingly. "CABALLERO DE RODAS." Of course this action was incited and backed by the Volunteers, and met with their heartiest approval, but if either they or their mouthpiece, Rodas, had any real idea that such a decree would act as a deterrent against aid being sent to the Cubans, they misjudged the temper of the friends of the revolution in America. It simply made them aware of the necessity of increased secrecy and caution, but did not one whit curtail their enterprises. To reinforce his action, Rodas promptly issued another decree against the insurgents in the following contemptuous terms: "The insurrection, in its impotency, being reduced to detached bands, perverted to the watchword of desolation and daily perpetrating crimes that have no precedent in civilized countries, personal security and the rights of justice, the foremost guarantees of person and property, imperiously demand that said insurrection be hastened to its end, and without consideration toward those who have placed themselves beyond the pale of the law. The culprit will not be deprived of the guarantee of just impartiality in the evidence of his crime, but without delay admissible in normal periods, which would procrastinate or paralyze the verdict of the law and its inexorable fulfilment. "As the guardians of the national integrity, the protection of the upright and pacific citizen, fulfilling the duties of my office, and in virtue of the authority conceded to me by the Government of the nation, I hereby decree: "Article I.--The decrees promulgated by this superior political government under date of the 12th and 13th of February last shall be carried out with vigor. "Article II.--The crimes of premeditated incendiarism, assassination and robbery, by armed force and contraband, shall be tried by a council of war. "Article III.--The courts of justice will continue in the exercise of their attributes, without prejudice, however, of having submitted to me such cases as special circumstances may require. "CABALLERO DE RODAS." Thus, in high-sounding phrases and treacherous hypocrisy, did the "butcher of Cadiz" proclaim himself the guardian of persons and property. If his pronouncements had not had too grim a significance, they might have filled the Cuban patriots with the spirit of ironical laughter, such a divergence was there between his character and his past record, and the new rôle which he now announced himself as about to play. Naturally this action did not pass unnoticed by the United States government. On July 16, the Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, informed the Spanish minister at Washington that Rodas's decree of July 7 interfered with the commerce of the United States in a manner which could only be tolerated in times of war; that the United States would maintain her right to carry contraband in times of peace, and would permit no interference with her vessels on the high seas, except in time of war; that if Spain was in a state of war with Cuba it was incumbent on her to proclaim the fact; and further adding that the United States would regard any attempt to enforce Rodas's decree as a recognition by Spain of the existence of a state of war in Cuba, and would govern itself accordingly. Spain was in no position and had no desire to declare Cuba in a state of war. Such action would wrest from her certain advantages which in her present ambiguous position she was prepared to enjoy to the utmost. She at once recognized that Rodas's action was entirely too arbitrary, and might be productive of a most embarrassing situation, and therefore acting under instructions from the Spanish government, he at once receded from his arrogant position and his decree was materially modified. American commerce with Cuba had been exceedingly profitable to those engaged in it, and, under the disturbed condition of affairs in the island, not only did it suffer, but the commercial interests of American residents in Cuba were badly jeopardized. General Grant still nursed his secret good will toward the cause of the revolutionists, although the advice of his Secretary of State had put a temporary restraint on it. It may be that this new indignity which Spain had sought to impose not only on the insurgents but also on American interests spurred him to action. However, that may be, when Daniel E. Sickles was appointed United States Minister to Spain, on June 29th, 1869, he was instructed at once on his arrival in Madrid to offer to the Spanish government the good offices of the United States in an effort to bring about an understanding and adjustment between the revolutionists and the governmental party and to effect a cessation of the hostilities which were rapidly ruining both the Creoles and the Spanish landowners alike. Sickles received the most careful instructions to proceed in a conciliatory fashion, and in no manner to imply any recognition by the United States of the belligerency of Cuba. To guide him in his work, terms were drafted as a basis for the negotiations and they embodied the following points: 1. The acknowledgment by Spain of the independence of Cuba. 2. Cuba to pay Spain an indemnity under conditions to be thereafter agreed upon. In case such sum could not immediately be paid in full, the unpaid portion to be secured by the pledge of export and import duties, in a manner to be agreed upon. 3. The abolition of slavery in the island of Cuba. 4. The declaration of an armistice pending negotiations for a final settlement. And, furthermore, Sickles was empowered, if necessary, to suggest that the United States would guarantee the payment by Cuba of the indemnity. Sickles took up the negotiations with the Spanish government at Madrid in accordance with his instructions, and after much consideration the Spanish government agreed to accept the good offices of the United States government, provided it was not required to treat with the revolutionists on a basis of equality--that would be too galling to the sensitive Spanish dignity--but that it would be allowed to take the position of making concessions to a rebellious people, such concessions of course to be couched in legal terms, and carried out in accordance with constitutional forms and with all due solemnity. Above all, the result of the negotiations was not to be regarded as a treaty between armed powers on an equal footing. In support of her position, Spain made the following demands, as constituting the basis of settlement to which she would agree: 1. The revolutionists to lay down their arms and return to their homes. 2. Whereupon, Spain would grant a full and complete amnesty. 3. The question of the independence of Cuba to be submitted to vote by their own vote whether they desired independence or not. 4. Provided a majority vote was cast for independence Spain would grant it, the Cortes consenting, upon the payment of a satisfactory sum by Cuba, or the partial payment and guarantee by the United States of the remainder. When Sickles submitted the result of his efforts to the government of his own country, that government, well knowing that the Cubans would never consent to the first two stipulations laid down by Spain, promptly rejected them. Sickles again took up the matter with the Spanish government, but they stood firm, and since there seemed no hope of an agreement on any terms which would be acceptable to the revolutionists, the matter was finally dropped. Meanwhile Spain had been sending considerable reinforcements to Cuba, and commenced an active campaign against the force under the command of the American General Jordan. These were probably the best equipped and best trained troops which the Cuban army had at its command, and they were well fitted to administer a rebuff to the Spaniards, which they did. The attacks of the Spaniards were all unsuccessful, and the Cubans were elated by the certainty that in bravery and resources they were more than a match for the Spanish army, and that, when they were properly equipped they seemed to have the advantage. In these different battles--none of them of very large scope--the Spanish lost four hundred killed, wounded and taken prisoners. Meanwhile the Cubans attacked the Spanish forces near Baja, a small town on the bay in the vicinity of Nuevitas, and defeated three hundred marines under General Puello, killing eighty of the enemy. But the rainy season was approaching and soon caused a halt in hostilities, while both armies were strengthening their positions looking forward to the time when weather would permit a resumption of the warfare. If the Spanish were obtaining reinforcements, the Cubans also were, in spite of the Spanish blockade and the decrees of the Captain-General, as well as the activities of the United States officials, constantly receiving aid from the United States. This mainly took the form of small expeditions from the southern states. However, at the close of July there arrived a company of two hundred and seventy-five recruits from the states of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, bringing with them large stores of food, clothing, arms and ammunitions. So it appeared that faith in the righteousness of the Cuban cause was not confined to what were known as the southern states. These men were placed under the direct command of General Quesada, and thus reinforced he decided to make an effort to subdue and capture the besieged Las Tunas. He set out to go thither with twelve hundred men. All night long the fight raged on the outskirts of the town, and just as the morning was breaking the Cubans made a triumphal entry. By two o'clock the next afternoon the town was completely under their control. When news of this victory reached the Spanish headquarters, a large force was immediately dispatched to dislodge the Cubans, and spies reporting to General Quesada that the Spanish troops sent against him not only largely outnumbered his own, but also were bringing large quantities of heavy artillery with them, he decided that to hold the town would not be of sufficient importance--if indeed he could do so against such odds--to risk an engagement. He, therefore, again retired. He had been welcomed as a deliverer by the inhabitants of Las Tunas, for they had suffered gross indignities under Spanish occupation, and now many of them enlisted in the Cuban army, and accompanied General Quesada on his retreat. It may have been that the attempted intervention of the United States government at Madrid led the Spanish government to believe that the time had again arrived to temporize; at any rate, several concessions were made in an attempt to pacify the insurgents, but without any perceptible effect. Not every attempt to bring aid from the United States to Cuba was productive of results, and during the summer there had been a number of efforts which were abortive, or which failed of execution. But just as hope of a successful relief expedition was dying in the hearts of the Cubans, a party of six hundred men with a quantity of rifles and a large amount of ammunition arrived from that stronghold of Cuban sympathizers, New Orleans. Meanwhile General Jordan communicated a request for aid to his compatriots who composed the Cuban Junta in the City of New York. He reported that the Cuban army was composed of twenty six thousand eight hundred men, besides whom there were at least forty thousand freed slaves, who were armed merely with machetes. He requested that seventy five thousand stands of arms be in some manner dispatched to the Cubans, and expressed the opinion that if this could be accomplished, in ninety days the war would be determined in favor of the patriots. Small bodies of Cubans were still carrying on guerrilla warfare wherever it seemed most effective, and the plantations belonging to Spanish sympathizers were suffering in consequence. The idea of this action was not wanton destruction. The Cubans argued that it was from such sources as the rich Spanish planters that Spain, by taxation, obtained revenues which were enabling her to continue the war, and thus their own country was being used to supply funds for her own destruction; and therefore when they destroyed Spanish holdings, they were not only wreaking vengeance on their tormentors, but they were also reducing the resources which made the prosecution of the war possible. To offset these actions, the Spanish commanders were countenancing the most scandalous conditions, and allowing most wholesale torture and butchery of such luckless patriots as fell into their hands, in which they could have had no motive except to terrorize the Cubans, and to enjoy that peculiar pleasure which they seemed to take in cruelty and murder. However, in the month of November alone, the patriots were able to burn the buildings on and destroy the productiveness of over a hundred and fifty sugar plantations, which the Spanish government had confiscated under the order which Dulce had promulgated. These were plantations which belonged to soldiers in the Cuban army, and which had been seized by the Spaniards in the absence of their owners, and the revenues of which had been flowing into the Spanish treasury. This work of destruction had the approval of General Cespedes, for he felt that it was necessary to cut off every possible source of revenue for Spain from the island, and so, in December, he issued a proclamation calling on all loyal patriots to see that it was made impossible for Spain to collect revenue from sugar and tobacco plantations on the island, when by any action of patriots this could be avoided. The revolutionists had been encouraged, not only by their friends in the United States, but also by the sympathetic expressions of former Spanish colonies in South America, who were now enjoying their own freedom. As early as May 15, 1869, the President of the Republic of Peru expressed to General Cespedes his good wishes, in a letter couched in the following terms: "The President of Peru sympathizes deeply with the noble cause of which your Excellency constitutes himself the worthy champion, and he will do his utmost to mark the interest that island, so worthy of taking its place with the civilized nations of the world, inspires him with. The Peruvian Government recognizes as belligerents the party which is fighting for the independence of Cuba, and will strive its utmost to secure their recognition as such by other nations; and likewise that the war should be properly regulated in conformity with international usages and laws." This action on the part of Peru was followed by recognition of the revolutionists on the part of other South American states of Spanish origin. Action was taken on this subject in Colombia, in June, 1870, when a bill was introduced into the House of Representatives proposing that all the Spanish-American republics form a combination for the active promotion of aid to Cuba, material and political, in her struggle for independence. This bill was reported out of Committee, with the following comments: "1. The cause for which Cuban patriots fight is the same for which Colombia fought incessantly from 1810 to 1824. "2. The interests of self-preservation, and our duty as a civilized and Christian nation, justify in the most complete manner Colombian intervention. "3. The aggressions of monarchial Europe against the liberty and independence of America always have had and will have for a base Spanish dominion in Cuba. "4. The policy of the United States cannot serve as a guide to Colombia on this occasion. "5. The resources we may need for this war are not beyond our means. "6. The time has arrived when Colombia should assume in the politics of South America the position to which she is called by her topographical situation, her historical traditions, her population, and her political conquests." In spite of this favorable report, and the fact that the bill passed the House, the Senate rejected it. Thus the struggle went on, the patriots fighting almost with the courage of desperation, gaining a little here, and losing there, but always holding before them the justice of their cause, and resolutely refusing to admit the possibility of failure. CHAPTER XIII With the opening of the year 1870, the revolutionists had in the field forty thousand well disciplined, and for the time being at least well armed troops, who were under the command of efficient officers, and a competent military organization. The movements of the troops were, so far as possible, directed according to a concerted plan, and their distribution through the island was governed in the same manner. Spain had also increased her regular army, and her navy had been greatly augmented, for she now had in Cuban waters, in addition to the men-of-war which had at the beginning of the war been stationed there, the following: 2 iron-clad vessels 48 guns 2 1st class wooden steamers 85 guns 6 2nd class wooden steamers 69 guns 1 3rd class wooden steamer 2 guns 4 steam schooners 11 guns 6 gunboats 6 guns 13 armed merchantmen 41 guns 2 sailing gunboats 2 guns 1 transport 4 guns 1 schoolship 6 guns About the middle of April, 1870, an occurrence happened of which the Spanish made great capital, spreading the tidings throughout the world. Connected with it is one of the illustrious names in Cuban history--a name which has been borne by some of the most famous Cuban patriots. However, it has been said that there is no family which has not its black sheep. Augustin Arango gave his life for his country, when he was murdered by the Spaniards, while on the way to the conference at Puerto Principe, under safe conduct from the Spanish leaders. Two other members of the Arango family were prominent in the support of the revolution. It remained for Napoleon Arango to disgrace his family. He had taken an active part in the revolution upon its inception, but had not been accorded a high place in the revolutionary government, or the rank which his ambition craved in the army, because his loyalty had been suspected. Angry and disgruntled, he made an attempt to betray his friends to the Spanish troops. His action was, however, discovered in time, and he was arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. The high standing of the Arango family, and the fact that his brother had given his life for the cause of liberty, were urged as reasons for commuting his sentence, and he was finally taken from confinement, and driven outside the Cuban lines, with orders never to return under penalty of having the death sentence executed. He quickly made his way to the Spanish army. All this happened in 1869, and for almost a year Arango had been living under Spanish protection. Suddenly, in April, 1870, the Spanish authorities caused the report to be circulated that Arango had surrendered himself to them, bringing with him a large force of Cubans, who had declared their allegiance to Spain, and the Spanish Government in Cuba cited this as an indication of the weakness of the patriots, and as an augury of their approaching dissolution and of the ultimate triumph of Spain. As a matter of fact, Arango had always been a trouble maker and a potential traitor; he had been characterized by one Cuban officer as a "poor, despised, worthless creature," and it is needless to say that the whole story was false from beginning to end. However, Arango issued a grandiloquent statement, in which he explained his supposed action, and urged the Cuban revolutionists to lay down their arms and follow his example. His open letter to Cuban patriots is to be recalled as one of the curiosities of treason. It ran as follows: "Cubans!" "When Carlos Manuel de Cespedes thought of raising the cry of Independence and expected the other cities of the Island to second him, he received as a reply, from the jurisdiction of Holguin and Puerto Principe, _that they would not support him_; and the Cinco Villas and other towns maintained an attitude of expectancy. Notwithstanding this, Cespedes said that he had no need of the _reminder_ and that he _would pronounce_ on the 14th of October as he did in fact but somewhat in advance of that date. Having so many reasons, as I have, to know the country as well as the character and tendencies of its inhabitants; and also what Spain would do and what was to be _expected of the people_ on the Island; knowing moreover the policy of the United States and the effects as well as the consequences that must follow a revolution especially when it was an _extemporaneous outburst_; and being convinced besides that owing to the heterogeneous nature of our population and to the little _enlightenment_ of the masses, _nothing but extermination_ could be expected for Cuba, I took part in framing the reply given to Cespedes by Puerto Principe, stating that _since he took pains to carry out so wicked an idea, he should not be seconded by us_; and _we made him responsible_ before posterity for the evils which he was about to bring on Cuba. "Cespedes and his inexperienced fellow-believers proclaimed Independence at Yara without any supply of arms or munitions of war, without provisions, clothing, etc., etc., with which to support their movement. Ignorant of what revolution is, they bunched forth just like children who heedlessly play with a wild beast, in entire ignorance of its nature. The first movement of enthusiasm on the part of the people, and of surprise on the part of the Government gave them the victory at Bayamo; and they at once thought that the Independence of Cuba was already secured. This was a fatal error, a sad illusion, which blunted the common sense and gave _loose rein to their passions_. It was the fatal error of those men who had not sufficient strength of will to be able to wait. Ah! how fatal it is not to know when to wait! "The Camagueyans were aroused at the enthusiastic shout for liberty, and they wished to help their brethren of Bayamo, driven on by a sentiment of fraternity and by their yet stronger love of liberty;--that noble aspiration which God has imbued in the hearts of all men. I shared not in these desires, although I did really in their sentiments, but I was restrained by experience and by my knowledge of the situation. Anxious to be of service to my country, I offered to go to Bayamo as a representative from Puerto Principe, which I did. "From my first steps into the Eastern Department, I was _convinced of the error_ into which the people had fallen, and the _impossibility_ of keeping up so unequal a contest. Moreover after studying the revolution and sounding the feelings of the people, I discovered that they _did not desire_ the movement but had been dragged into it; without noticing in the beginning, owing to their blind precipitation, that they were not prepared to receive a successful issue. "In some private circles I spoke of the propriety of _changing_ the cry for Independence into an acceptation of the _Cadiz programme_;--an idea which was _well received_ and seemed so to change the course of affairs, that I saw a great risk, being threatened by the few who persisted in their original intention. I spoke to Cespedes and made known to him the untimeliness of the revolution; that if he really desired the welfare of Cuba, this latter consisted in withdrawing from a war that must be ruinous and unsuccessful in the end; that the liberties offered in the Cadiz programme _were perhaps even more than would suit Cuba_, etc., etc. Cespedes, _convinced_ by my reasoning _agreed to my proposals_; and if he then failed to follow my advice it was, to use his own words, because he feared that he would not be obeyed by those who had already proclaimed for Independence. They did not understand the true policy that should be followed in the guidance of returns. They began badly and will end worse. "On my return to Puerto Principe I found the country in insurrection, _dragged on_ by two or three men who were led wrong by their ill-digested ideas of liberty or by their own _private interest_, and whose only wish was _revolution in whatever way it could be brought about_. I grieved at this mistake, but without losing heart, and always firm in advancing the prosperity of Cuba, I called a meeting which was held at Clavellinas. There I made known the result of my observations during my trip to Bayamo; and after some discussions, the force of my arguments _prevailed_. With _one_ exception all agreed that we should _adhere to the Cadiz programme_. I was afterwards appointed General-in-Chief with _especial charge_ (thus it was set forth in the record) _that I should have an interview with General Valmaseda for the purpose noted above_. "In a conversation with that gentleman he manifested the _best of intentions_ in favor of a pacification, but stated that he was not empowered by his government to make any concession. He offered nevertheless to grant _effectual ones_, so soon as he could obtain the power. He called my attention to this; that whatever the liberties which should be granted to Cuba, the rights of the Cubans would have to be regarded as attacked if they did not _send representatives_ to have a hand in everything that might be done in regard to this country. "I knew too well the _reasons_ of General Valmaseda, but fearing that my fellow countrymen might not seize the force of his reasoning, we agreed upon a truce for four days which I requested in order to call another meeting more numerous and one which should decide the matter. This meeting _took place_ at _Las Minas_; and there as well as at Clavellinas, the majority was _not for a continuation of the war_ but for _accepting the Cadiz programme_. Had a vote been taken, it is certain that this choice _would have carried_; but I refrained from calling a vote in order to be consistent with the Caunao district which had made known through its delegate, Don Carlos L. Mola, Junior, that it wished to have no voting; because in case thereof they would be bound to its result; and that district was only in favor of _accepting_ whatever the government _chose to grant them_. "An _immense majority_ was in favor of the _programme_, and, nevertheless, the war was kept up because those bent upon it spared no means nor suggestion to entice away those in favor of the _Cadiz programme_. That is to say that, taking advantage of family ties, of friendships, and of an ill comprehended association, etc., etc., they dragged along with them the _unwary_ and the _inexperienced_, who were _reluctant_ enough and who now know their error, as I never wished to force upon anyone (not even on my own brothers) my own ideas, nor to make use of any other means than persuasion, in accordance with reason. I confined myself to simply resigning the rank that had been conferred on me and withdrew to my plantation. From that time forward, I busied myself merely with enlightening the people, showing them the mistakes into which they were led by those who were interested in the continuance of the war. "I have not sought to impose my notions upon anyone, but I do not any the more accept those of others when my reason and my conscience reject them. And I believe there is no right, nor law, nor reason to support those who willingly, or through force, wish to force upon others their own ideas however good or holy these may be. "Those who are at the head of the Cuban government and guide the revolution believe their triumph possible; they think their ideas are correct and their way a good one. Very well; but not believing as they do, I move aside from that government, whose _pressure and arbitrariness_ are such, that it will not even admit neutrality in others. I will not wage war against you; I will not take up arms against you except in personal defence; but I separate from men who wish to _impose_ their own notions on others _through force_. You are free to think and act as you like, and I reserve to myself the same right and act in accordance therewith. "But there is more. In the position where, unfortunately and much against my will, events have placed me, I occupy a place as a public man, as a politician in Cuban politics; and I should not remain inactive while I behold the destruction of Cuba and look out merely for my personal safety under the protection of the Spanish government. No, Gentlemen, I would then be a bad patriot, and I love my country before liberty or rather I do not understand the former principle as divorced from the latter. Both are intimately bound together; and in order that the first be worthy, honorable and beneficial to humanity it cannot be separated from the second. "I am a Cuban, the same as yourselves, and I have consequently the same right to busy myself with the welfare of my country. Let everyone have his method; you pretend that you obey the popular will; that you are at the head of government, because the will of the people and popular choice; that you act in uniformity with ideas and sentiments of the Cubans; and finally that you are provoking the welfare and prosperity of Cuba. _I shall prove entirely the contrary._ "The favorable reception with which my ideas were met at Bayamo, the meeting at Clavellinas, that at Las Minas, and the desire--almost unanimous--to accept the _concessions_ offered by General Dulce, prove sufficiently that the country wanted peace, nevertheless you maintain war. Hence, popular suffrage in the country is but a chimera. "Let us see how the actual government was formed. On the one side, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes who, _for himself_ and in _his own name set himself up_ as the _dictator_ of Cuba, _appointed_ a certain number of deputies for the cast, at the famous meeting in Guaimaro. That is a fine representation of popular will and an admirable republic, when the deputies are not elected by the people! On the other hand, the assembly at Puerto Principe was _illegally constituted_ and _entirely unauthorized_; and, finally, some deputies from the Cinco Villas--the only ones which perhaps held a legitimate representation--met together and formed the actual government, which they should have called the _Venetian_ rather than a _Cuban Republic_. They formed the government by _sharing with each other the offices_, and they propose thus to shape the destiny of Cuba. A _handful of men_ thus representing over a million souls, who _have had no share_ in their nomination, does not assuredly constitute popular election. "The Cubans want the liberty of assemblage, freedom of speech, respect of property, personal security, the liberty to leave the territory of the Republic,--which is a right secured in all nations of the world to every individual, they want, in fine, to be governed as the majority choose, and not according to the will of a few. But _nothing of all this is done_. Whoever puts forth ideas _contrary_ to those of the government or any of its _functionaries_, is _threatened_ with four shots, _property is a prey to the first comer_, who, with arms in hand can take _possession_ of what suits him; the _lives_ of men are _sported_ with, just as children sport with flies; and in fine whoever attempts to abandon the government, even without intruding to wage war on it, is persecuted to death. Hence the conduct of said government is not in conformity with the ideas and sentiments of the country. "If to all this be added the _arsons_ and the complete _destruction_ of Cuban wealth, the _demolition of towns_ and--what must follow in the end, can there be one sensible man who will maintain that all this constitutes the prosperity and well-being of Cuba? Assuredly not. "You employ _force, deceit, terror_ to _drag the masses_ on and carry out whatever you judge beneficial for the cause of Cuba; I use only reason, truth and the irrepressible logic of facts and of experience, not the material argument of arms. [Illustration: DOMINGO GOICOURIA] "Well, then, knowing as I do that the country _does not want war_, and that it continues therein under the _pressure_ of the Cuban government in the one hand and on the others out of fear of the punishment which the Spanish government might inflict, knowing as I do that nothing is to be expected from the United States as it was attempted to make the people believe; knowing that since the beginning of the Insurrection, 40,000 men have come from Spain, and that many more will come--a fact generally unknown in this country; aware, as I am, that over 100,000 men are under arms; that the coasts are well watched, and that the New York Junta lacks resources to send material aid to the Insurrection; aware moreover that the _Cuba_, the _Lillian_, the expedition of Goicouria and others are lost resources; that the Insurrection is almost stifled in the East and in the Cinco Villas; that in the Vuelta-Abajo far from there being any secessionists, it is the country people themselves who pursue the insurgents, as has taken place in Guines; knowing as I do that the families to be met with in the fields are anxious to return to the towns; and aware of the importance attached to my conduct, both in the Island and abroad, I have made a new sacrifice for my country. I have come forward with my family to prove by my example that I do not believe in the triumph of the Insurrection, nor do I fear the Spanish government; which animated as it is with the best of wishes is ready to draw a veil over the past, provided the country can be pacified and many tears, much blood and loss of property be spared. DOMINGO GOICOURIA General Domingo Goicouria, one of the pioneers of Cuban independence was born in 1804, and was an active participant in the Lopez expeditions and other uprisings. He was one of the leaders in the beginning of the Ten Years' War, but was captured by the Spaniards, at Cayo Guajaba, and was put to death at Havana on May 14, 1870. "It is a sacrifice indeed, Gentlemen, for I expose my name to the evil-tongued and make it the butt of false interpretations. "I believe firmly that the happiness of Cuba and the welfare of humanity consists in the pacification of this beautiful country, and maintain this in the presence of the whole universe with my hand on my conscience and head erect as becomes a man of honor. "There is no man who is infallible, and perhaps my opinions and determination may be wrong; but I can at least affirm that I am acting in good faith, having for sole object in view the welfare of my country and of humanity and making total abstraction of my own personality, as well as of my own interests. "I am not a time server but a man of fixed principles; I am convinced of my opinions and feel the energy of my convictions. I now maintain what I have maintained since the beginning of the revolution, even previous thereto. My actual conduct is not therefore an apostasy but the energetic continuance in my opinions and principles. These I do not mean to impose on any one; merely make them known, inviting all to examine them in every detail, and I am sure that they will follow my example. But if blind to reason and unmindful of the events which for a year and a half have supported my predictions, they persist in a struggle which I believe hopeless, let them keep on, but without _extending the horrors of war to families_. Let the women and children whom _government_ wishes to _foster_ and _daily supports_ with rations of bread, rice, butter, etc., come to the city; and let you keep on, if unfortunately you refuse to listen to the voice of reason and patriotism, in that senseless contest, which you must later repent having ever begun. "Reflect a moment; examine thoroughly, and not merely the appearances of the situation, and you will see that the existing strife is an unqualifiable mistake, and its continuation an unparalleled blindness.... What has become of the intelligence of Cubans? Where are the energy and the influence of men of intelligence and character? " ...Cubans! You have seen that I have always been a protector to the people; that I have tried to enlighten them, that they might have a participation in everything and know what they were doing, so as to follow their own ideas and not be carried off by others; but what has been the result? I was treacherously and illegally arrested, at the request of those who wish to rule the masses; I was sentenced to death, and over twenty times they have tried to put an end to my life.... Natural sense shows clearly that when an attempt is made to annihilate him who speaks the _truth_, who _enlightens_ and never _deceives_; who instead of speculating on his fellow countrymen and growing rich on the revolution makes use of his own means to succor the masses (let all Yaguajey speak); who never makes use of any pressure to enforce his ideas, who allows himself to be ruined from the neglect of his own interests, in order to give himself up solely to the welfare of his country; does it not show clearly, I say, that the attempt is made only because his adversaries have different pretensions and a different line of conduct from his? Now what is this difference? It consists in _violence, deceit_, the use of _force, spoliation_ of the neighbor for _his own benefit_; it is despotism, based on the ignorance in which the people are kept. I have sought to have the country governed as it is its wish to be governed, in accordance with universal suffrage; your government, _on the contrary_, pretend to rule it as they see fit. They state that they want liberty for the people whilst the most _cruel despotism_ weighs upon you.... "The people are told that from the United States will come reinforcement and resources; that there are elements to spare for the continuation of the war; that the Spanish soldier carries a cartridge-box and wears shoes of rawhide and is short of provisions; that there are _no troops_ nor will _any come_ from Spain; that the _taxes are ruining_ the country, etc., etc. Well, I ... tell you all this is _illusion, deceit_, and a fatal chimera. "The government of the United States does not busy itself nor can it with the Cuban Insurrection. Look at Article 16 of the Treaty of 1797 and you will learn that they cannot favor the Cubans in the least efficacious way without failing in national dignity and exposing themselves to a coalition against themselves. That government is too polished and financially shrewd to compromise itself in a war that would entail serious mischief upon its commerce; and moreover there are other motives that would be too lengthy to detail.... "I have just read a manifesto of Manuel Quesada, published in New York under date of the 8th inst., in which he sets astray entirely the opinion that should be formed of the state of insurrection. I shall tear off the bandage. He states that the Cuban army numbers 61,000; that there are here five powder factories; that firearms are manufactured here as well as swords and bayonets; that there are thirteen public schools and thirteen churches; that three thousand shoes are made every week and four thousand hides tanned every month; that the soldier receives for daily ration, beef, sugar, coffee, vegetables and rice at his discretion, tobacco, etc.; that there are many sugar mills grinding for the state; that several warehouses are filled with tobacco, sugar, hides, etc., to the value of many millions of dollars, that the territory which is occupied by the Cubans in insurrection is in a cultivated and producing condition, such as has never before been witnessed, even during years of the greatest abundance; that thousands of percussion caps are daily made; that he (Quesada) left here under commission of importance after having temporarily put Jordan in command under instructions, as well as the other leaders, etc., etc., to an endless length. I address you, fellow countrymen, who are there on the ground of this insurrection, whence I have lately come. You all, as well as myself, know that all these things are _false_, entirely _false_. "Quesada states that he has gone to seek means and bring arms, with which to end the insurrection, but for what _does he need them if he has 61,000 men_? Is it possible that it should not occur to the inhabitants of New York to ask him _what need he has of more means when he has so many thousand men? When he has over 20,000 arms and can make more as well as powder and caps?_ Why has not _that soldier of fourteen years' campaigning_ taken possession with that army of _one single town_ at least wherein to _locate the government_ of the republic? Why has he not _captured one single port_ through which to get aid, export the productions of the country to the value of millions, and thus acquire a right to recognition as belligerents? _Where are schools? Where are those churches?_ Have those at Guaimaro and Sibarncu, which _were burned_ by that renowned general been perchance rebuilt? Why are the soldiers _unshod_ or wearing _strips of raw hide_ if there are three thousand shoes made weekly and four thousand hides tanned per month? _Where is the abundance_ for the soldier? _Where has he got coffee, rice, tobacco, etc.? Where are those sugaring mills_ in regular running order?... Then as to the commission of Manuel Quesada and his separation from command, do you know as well as I do that he was _ignominiously deposed by the Chamber_, and that _during his stay_ in Cuba, from his first arrival his conduct has been _blameworthy under all aspects_? "Well, then, Cubans, this is the plan followed from the beginning of the revolution. They are deceiving you and our brethren in New York as well as the whole world. For these reasons I say that the edifice is raised on insecure and imaginary foundations. For these reasons have I always tried to undeceive the country and let them see clearly, so as to prevent Cuba from sinking into the abyss wherein she is intended to be cast. Withal I have not been understood. There has been no lack of someone who, out of exaltation and under pressure of some sad aberration has qualified my conduct as treasonable. Ah! Whoever stated that knows not even the meaning of his words! When did I ever recognize this government? Never; but rather have I always been in opposition thereto. For as I wish my country's welfare I could not second an _illegal, arbitrary, despotic_ government that is _annihilating_ our land. "They recognize their error, but they have not loyalty enough to confess it, they are aware that they are neither statesmen nor lovers of liberty, nor patriots and their consciences sting them; they know that I have always seen farther than they could, and more clearly, that all my predictions have been fulfilled; that I have been alone in maintaining energetically my principles; bearing up against all kinds of privation and danger; and they do not forgive me for these advantages over them; they know that my past and my present career have been free from all stain; and they do not forgive me for that. "Well, if to have thus behaved, to have made entire abstraction of self and my interests, to look after the welfare of Cuba, to have done harm to no one, but much good; far from having taken life, to have saved the lives of many, without distinction of nationality; to have respected always the property of others, and never have let my hand touch the incendiary torch, to forward pacification, when I know that the country needs it; and that by it alone can tears, blood, and destruction be prevented;--if to have done all this constitute treason, ah! then I am a traitor; yes, Gentlemen, I am one and feel proud of it. "Your government claims to favor liberty for the country; why then does it not consent to _freedom of one's principles_? Why does it not _admit of neutrality_? Why does it force people to take up arms without _distinction of persons_? Why has it always been opposed to _speaking out in public_? Why did it oppose the _country's acceptance_, when so close, of _General Dulce's concessions_? Why does it _persecute to death_ whoever tries to separate himself from said government without having any intention of waging war against it? Why? I will tell you. Because then there would _remain in the camp of the insurrection only a dozen men; the only ones interested in the continuance of this war_ between brethren; this war of desolation and extermination. "I agree that there was reason for the Cuban people to complain and be resentful against the government that ruled them; but all this has changed, not only with regard to the institution but as to the manner of being as well. I am myself an example of what I state. I presented myself to the Captain-General who received me in such a way as to prove by his manner alone, his good wishes; even if these were not confirmed by the conduct which he followed in the Villas and wherever he has been able to make the impress of his own feelings felt. In his proclamation he offers a pardon to all who will present themselves; but as every medal has its reverse, so whoever fails to do so must suffer the cold and inexorable rigor of the law. "Fellow-countrymen, my brethren, let us throw a veil over the past. Let us look to the future of our families and to the prosperity of our nation. "You know well how many persecutions, privations and even vexations I have suffered. I forget it all and forgive from my heart all who have sought my death and wanted my blood. I forgive all who, directly or indirectly have offended me, of whatever nation or condition they may be. I sacrifice all, all, on the altar of my country, and for the welfare of humanity. Why do you not follow my example? "Brethren! let there be no more tears, no more blood, no more ruins! Return to your presides and let a fraternal embrace unite forever both Spaniards and Cubans and let us all together make of this beautiful Island--the Pearl of the Antilles--the Pearl also of the world. Cubans, I await you, and the undeserved consideration shown to me by the first authority of Cuba which fortunately is held by Señor Don Antonio Caballero de Rodas I offer to use in your behalf. For myself I seek only the satisfaction of having always forwarded the welfare of Cuba. "NAPOLEON ARANGO. "March 28th, 1870." The italics are Arango's and his alone also the extraordinary sentiments expressed in this remarkable document. In this same year, the question of slavery came up for attention. While the United States government had abandoned its attempt to mediate between Spain and Cuba it had, of course, by its own action during the Civil War, definitely arrayed itself against slavery wherever it existed, and it now, through its Minister to Spain, Daniel E. Sickles, entered into negotiations with the Spanish government, looking to the actual freeing of the slaves in Cuba. Of course news of these happenings did not fail to penetrate Cuba and to reach the ears of the Captain-General. Indeed he seemed to have a premonition of them, even before the United States government had definitely taken up the matter with Spain. He was nothing if not an opportunist, and he, therefore, on his own account, on February 24, 1870, issued a decree which had the effect of freeing two thousand colored prisoners of war, and which read as follows: "Superior Political Government of the Province of Cuba: "Decree: "By virtue of the faculties with which I am invested, and in keeping with the royal decree of the 27th of October, 1865, I think fit to extend by decree of the 21st of September, ultimo, declaring exemption from dependency on the government the expeditions entitled Puerto Escondido, Cabanas 10, Cabanas 85, Cabanas San Diego de Minez and Trinidad. "In consequence thereof the employers who have in their service emancipated slaves of the referred-to expeditions, will present them in the Secretary's office of this superior government within the period of one month, in order that, after the usual formalities, they may receive their letters of exemption. "At the same time, the governors and lieutenant-governors will publish this direction in the periodicals of their respective jurisdictions, so that it may come to the notice of the holders of these emancipados and they cannot allege ignorance of it. "CABALLERO DE RODAS. "Havana, February 24, 1870." Rodas was crafty, and he now thought of a device which under the guise of mercy would hamper the Cuban army. On May 26th he promulgated a second decree freeing all slaves who had acted or would act as guides to the Spanish army, or render any like valuable service to the government, an effort, of course, to induce the former servants of patriots to betray their masters and the Cuban army into the hands of the Spaniards. To disguise the baldness of this attempt at corruption, he also included a provision, freeing all slaves belonging to the insurgents or who had escaped to foreign countries. This provision was for all practical purposes meaningless and without any value, because the Cubans themselves who were fighting for freedom from Spain had already emancipated their slaves. Meanwhile negotiations between Sickles and the Spanish government resulted in the promulgation of a decree, which was known as the Moret law, acquiring its name from the Spanish Minister of Colonies, whose signature was one of many signed to the document, and who is reported to have had a hand in its composition. It bore date, July 4, 1870, and was promulgated by the Captain-General nearly two months later, as follows: "Superior Political Government of the Province of Cuba: "His Excellency the Regent of the kingdom communicates to me, under date of July 4th ultimo, the following law, which has been promulgated or sanctioned by the Congressional Cortes: "Don Francisco Serrano of Dominguez, Regent of the kingdom, by the will of the sovereign Cortes, to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting: "Know ye that the Congressional Cortes of the Spanish nation does hereby decree and sanction the following: "Article 1. All children of slave mothers, born after the publication of this law, are declared free. "Article 2. All slaves born between the 18th of September, 1868, and the time of the publication of this law, are acquired by the state by the payment to the owners of the sum of twenty five dollars. "Article 3. All slaves who have served under the Spanish flag or who have in any way aided the troops during the present insurrection in Cuba are declared free. All those are equally recognized as free as shall have been so declared by the superior government of Cuba, by virtue of its jurisdiction. The state shall pay their value to their masters, if the latter have remained faithful to the Spanish cause; if belonging to insurgents, they shall receive no indemnity. "Article 4. Slaves, who, at the time of the publication of this law, shall have attained the age of sixty years are declared free, without any indemnification to their owners. The same benefit shall be enjoyed by those who shall hereafter reach this age. "Article 5. All slaves belonging to the state, either as emancipated, or who for any other cause are at present under the control of the state, shall at once enter upon the full exercise of their civil rights. "Article 6. Those persons freed by this law who are mentioned in articles 1 and 2, shall remain under the control of the owners of the mother, after the payment of the indemnity prescribed in Article 2. "Article 7. The control referred to in the foregoing article imposes upon the person exercising it the obligation to maintain his wards, to clothe them, care for them in sickness, giving them primary instruction, and the education necessary to carry on an art or trade. The person exercising the aforesaid control acquired all the rights of a guardian, and may, moreover, enjoy the benefit of the labor of the freedman, without making any compensation, until said freedman has reached the age of eighteen years. "Article 8. When the freedman has reached the age of eighteen years, he shall receive half the wages of a freedman. Of these wages, one half shall be paid to him at once, and the other half shall be reserved in order to form a capital for him, in the manner to be determined by subsequent regulations. "Article 9. On attaining the age of twenty-two years, the freedman shall acquire the full control of his civil rights and his capital shall be paid to him. "Article 10. The control will also be annulled: first, by the marriage of the freedman, when the same is entered into by females over fourteen years and males over eighteen years old; second, by a proved bad treatment on the part of the guardian or his noncompliance with his duty, as stipulated in Article 7; third, should the guardian prostitute or favor the prostitution of the freedwoman. "Article 11. The above mentioned control is transmissible by all means known in law, and is also resignable when just motives exist. Legitimate or illegitimate parents who are free shall be permitted to assume the control of their children by the payment to the guardian of the same of any expense he may have incurred for account of the freedman. Subsequent regulations will settle the basis of this indemnification. "Article 12. The Superior civil government shall form, in the space of one month from the publication of this law, lists of the slaves comprised in articles 3 and 5. "Article 13. The freed persons mentioned in the foregoing article remain under the control of the state. This control is confined to protecting them, defending them and furnishing them the means of gaining a livelihood, without limiting their liberty in the slightest degree. Those who prefer to return to Africa shall be conveyed thither. "Article 14. The slaves referred to in article 4 may remain with their owners, who shall thus acquire control over them. When they shall have preferred to continue with their former masters it shall be optional with the latter to give them compensation or not, but, in all cases, as well as in that of the freed persons being unable to maintain themselves by reason of physical disability, it shall be the duty of the said former masters to feed them, clothe them, and care for them in sickness. This duty shall be a concomitant of the right to employ them in labors suitable to their condition. Should the freedman object to the compliance with his obligation to labor, or should he create disturbances at the house of his guardian, the authorities will decide the questions arising therefrom, after having first heard the freedman. "Article 15. If the freedman of his own free will shall leave the control of his former master, the latter shall no longer be under the obligations mentioned in the foregoing article. "Article 16. The Government shall provide the means necessary for the indemnifications made necessary by the present law, by means of a tax upon those who shall remain in slavery, ranging from eleven to sixty years of age. "Article 17. Any act of cruelty, duly justified as having been indicted by the tribunals of justice, will bring with it as a consequence the freedom of the slave suffering such excess of chastisement. "Article 18. Any concealment impeding the application of the benefits of this law shall be punished according to title 13 of the penal code. "Article 19. All those shall be considered free who do not appear enrolled in the census drawn up in the Island of Porto Rico the 31st of December, 1869, and in that which will have been drawn up in the Island of Cuba on the 31st of December of the present year, 1870. "Article 20. The Government shall make a special regulation for the execution of this law. "Article 21. The Government will report to the Cortes when the Cuban deputies shall have been admitted, a bill for the compensated emancipation of those who remain in slavery after the establishment of this law. Meantime this emancipation is carried into effect; the penalty of the whip, authorized by chapter 13 of the regulations for Porto Rico and Cuba, shall be abolished; neither can there be sold separately from their mothers children younger than fourteen years, nor slaves who are united in matrimony. "By a resolution of the Congressional Cortes the foregoing is reported to the Regent of the Kingdom for its promulgation as a law. "MANUEL RUIZ ZORILLA, President. "MANUEL DE LIANOS Y PERSI, Deputy Secretary. "JULIAN SANCHEZ RUANO, Deputy Secretary. "FRANCISCO XAVIER CARRATALA, Deputy Secretary. "MARIANO RUIZ, Deputy Secretary. "Palace of the Cortes, June 23, 1870. "Therefore I order all tribunals, justices, officers, governors and other authorities of whatsoever class or position, to obey the same and cause it to be obeyed, complied with and executed in all its parts. "FRANCISCO SERRANO, Minister of Ultramar. "SIGISMONDO MORET Y PRENDERGAST. "San Ildefonso, July 4, 1870. "And, having opportunely omitted the publication of the same for the want of the regulation referred to in Article 20, and having received the sense in which said document is to be drawn up, I have ordered the exact compliance of said law, in virtue of which it is inserted in the Official Gazette for future guidance. "CABALLERO DE RODAS." "Havana, Sept. 28, 1870." If these decrees were intended to fill the insurgents with gratitude, and to have the effect of halting the revolution, they fell far short of their mark. In the first place, the Spanish Government had too often tricked her Cuban subjects, and they had little cause to have faith in either her good will or her good intentions, and much more cause to believe that her action was intended as a sop to the Government at Washington, an attempt to "pull the wool over the eyes" of American sympathizers, and even a very cursory glance at the provisions of the Moret law would convince even a layman with no knowledge of jurisprudence that there was small chance of their ever being enforced. It is true that this law provided for the freedom of all slaves born after a certain date, but it left them in the care of their mothers, and under the control of their former masters, condemned to serve without pay and virtually free only in name. It also proclaimed the freedom of slaves who had reached the age of sixty years and who very likely had endured years of such hard treatment that they were infirm and in no condition to support themselves. If they were reluctant to start life alone and either by timidity or by coercion remained with their masters, the latter were at liberty to pay them or not, and when a Spanish planter had the option of obtaining labor free rather than paying for it, there was not much room for doubt as to what course he would pursue. The whipping post was abolished, but the Cubans were too busy with other matters to patrol the country in search of violations of this regulation, and the masters were pretty safe to conduct themselves as they chose. This law, which contained such fair words that it met with the approval of the American minister, was almost ludicrous in its paradoxical terms, and instead of impressing the patriots with the softened hearts of their tyrannical masters, it must have filled the intelligent ones with mirth. Besides this, since upon the declaration of the independence of Cuba the revolutionary government had declared the freedom of all men on the Island, Spain's action so long afterward was like opera bouffe, or rather a grimly amusing anti-climax. As a matter of fact the Moret law remained a dead letter, unenforced, overlooked, violated, almost forgotten, and the subject of slavery again fell into the background, while the war took the front of the stage. Spain was having constantly to reinforce her army, and she was unable to do this in sufficient numbers to make up deficits properly. The climate of Cuba was very hard on the new recruits who had not become accustomed to it, and Spain lost almost as many by disease as she did in battle. She renewed her cruelties against the unprotected Cuban planters, and not only burned and pillaged, but subjected all captives to the most revolting and sickening cruelties, gouging out eyes, cutting out tongues, crucifying and hanging men by their hands. Probably the atrocities practiced by the Spaniards in this war were never equalled, unless we recall the barbarities which they practiced later in 1895, until the Huns of Prussia invaded Belgium and France in the great war of 1914-18, and showed what inefficient novices in deviltry the Spanish had been when compared with the disciples of "Kultur." The year 1871 opened brightly for the patriots. That seasoned warrior General Jordan led a company to victory, at Najassa, against a force of Spaniards under General Puello. The Spanish losses were especially gratifying, if that term may be employed, since they included thirty-six officers. Meanwhile Rodas, in spite of his methods, which must have been most gratifying to them, fell into disfavor with the Volunteers, and they exerted their power against him, finally effecting his resignation and the elevation of Count Valmaseda in his place, in a temporary capacity, until another Captain-General could be sent from Spain. [Illustration: NICOLAS AZCARATE] [Illustration: JUAN CLEMENTE ZENEA] NICOLAS AZCARATE Nicolas Azcarate was the founder of the New Lyceum of Havana which for years was the centre of the intellectual life of that city, and his home was the resort of the literary and artistic world. Papers read at his receptions by eminent men were published in two volumes under the title of "Literary Nights." He was born in 1826 and died in 1894, leaving a literary influence which is still gratefully perceptible. Spain once more made overtures to the United States Government, asking it to use its offices in eliciting from the revolutionary government some statement of terms which would be satisfactory to them as a basis of peace. Since former efforts to bring the belligerents together had been so productive of failure, Washington demurred from officially undertaking the matter; whereupon Don Nicolas Azcarate went to Washington from Spain with authorization to offer to the insurgents an amnesty, and disarmament of the Volunteers, provided the Cubans laid down their arms. They were further to be granted the immediate and unconditional emancipation of slaves, irrespective of age and condition of servitude. All confiscations made by either side were to be annulled, and the property thus seized was to be restored to the original owners. Religious freedom, free speech, and free assembly, were to be granted the Cubans, while Cuba was to have representation in the Spanish Cortes, and to be governed by colonial autonomy, similar to that which Great Britain maintained in her American provinces. Last of all, and by no means least, all officials who were offensive to the Cubans were to be removed from office. Of course, these instructions were confidential, because of the offense which they would have given the powerful Volunteers. The United States, however, did not undertake to transmit the proposed terms to the insurgents, and finally Azcarate undertook to do so on his own initiative. He had little faith in the fate which his proposal might meet, should it be transmitted through Spanish sources in Cuba and its terms be divulged to the Volunteers. He doubted whether it would ever reach President Cespedes. He therefore decided to transmit it by special messenger, for this purpose choosing Juan Clemente Zenea, a man in whose discretion and resourcefulness he had the greatest faith. To make the journey safe for his envoy, he obtained from the Spanish minister at Washington a safe conduct for Zenea, ordering the military and naval authorities of Cuba, as well as the Volunteers, to afford safe passage to Don Juan Clemente Zenea "into and out of any port on the Island of Cuba." Zenea reached President Cespedes without accident and laid the proposition before him, which was promptly refused. The Volunteers, meanwhile, had learned of Zenea's coming, and of the nature of his errand. Even the greatest of secrecy could not have kept the knowledge from them, for their spies were everywhere active, not only in the Island, but in the United States and at the Spanish court as well. When Zenea left the Cuban lines, he was immediately seized by the Volunteers and imprisoned at Havana, under heavy guard. The news of this occurrence reached Spain and immediately the Duke de la Torre, then President of King Amadeus's Council of Ministers, protested to the authorities at Havana, and insisted that Zenea be released and be given safe conduct from the Island. But the will of the Volunteers was more powerful in Cuba than were the wishes of those high in authority in Spain, or than the common tenets of decency, right and justice. Zenea was not released and he was not given safe conduct. After many months' imprisonment under the most revolting conditions, he was condemned to death without trial, and on August 15 was taken out and shot in the back. JUAN CLEMENTE ZENEA Poet, patriot and martyr, Juan Clemente Zenea was born at Bayamo in 1831, and in boyhood settled in Havana. He was a teacher in La Luz's school, El Salvador, and wrote some exquisite poems. But politics and Cuban independence claimed his chief attention. From his seventeenth year he was incessantly engaged in revolutionary conspiracies, in Havana and in New Orleans and New York. In 1868, he went to New York where he was an active member of the Junta. In 1870, he was sent on a mission to President Cespedes, which he accomplished but soon afterward was captured by the Spaniards, imprisoned in Cabanas, and then shot. This action would hardly have been conducive to good feeling between the opposing leaders, even had the Cubans had faith in Spanish promises. In too hard a school had they learned that it was useless to expect the Spanish authorities on the Island to keep their word to the Cubans, either in the small matter of a safe conduct for an innocent messenger, or the larger one of proposed concessions to an oppressed people. The Cuban government was not to be thus easily lured from their attempts to secure the one thing which was to them paramount, the real object for which they had made so many sacrifices, the absolute independence of the Island. Moreover, even were the promise made under the guarantee of the United States Government, the Cubans could not be convinced of the good faith of Spain, or that when once they had abandoned their struggle, laid down their arms, and given Spain the advantage, she would act otherwise than she had during her entire occupation of the Island. They felt sure that if her advances were graciously met, she would, when she again had the balance of power, simply impose upon the Island new indignities, and cover her treachery with fair words and vague promises whenever the United States might enter a protest. Spain expressed indignation at the shortsighted policy of the Cuban leaders, and then gave demonstration of how she intended to punish Cuba. She renewed her persecution of individual Cubans, and her cruelty toward Cuban sympathizers who while nursing their cordial feelings for the revolution had not yet taken up arms against Spain. It was only necessary that such persons should be suspected, and that suspicion might be of the slightest variety. They were immediately seized and thrown into dungeons and tortured to extract their confessions; the right of trial was at this time almost entirely dispensed with, and victims of Spanish wrath were put to death without an opportunity to defend themselves, and executed in ways which are usually associated with the most barbarous savageness. So glaring did these outrages become that General Cespedes undertook to write a letter to the Spanish Government at Madrid concerning them, although why, knowing the character of his opponents as he did, he should have entertained the idea that this mild intervention on his part would have the slightest effect, or should have imagined that Spain was not cognizant of the actions of her legionaries in Cuba, and that such actions were performed without her fullest sanction, is not revealed. Cespedes certainly displayed a childlike faith in the ultimate spark of good in depraved human nature, when he took up his pen for such a communication. But be that as it may, he addressed the following epistle to the "Supreme Government of Spain." "The respect inspired by the laws of nations, which, under the influence of modern civilization has, as far as possible, deprived war of its savage character, imposes on us the obligation of addressing the Spanish Government an energetic remonstrance, in consequence of several offensive acts, which could not be known without causing offense to the civilized world. From the time when the standard of Independence was raised in Cuba, unworthy motives have been attributed to our contest. We shall not explain the justice of the Cuban Revolution, for such an explanation would be unpleasant to that Government, and besides it is not now necessary; but we may say, in general, a colony is justified in severing the knot which binds it to the mother-country, if it possesses sufficient elements to live independently. "Colonial life is restricting, it can never entirely satisfy the aspirations of an intelligent people, and, therefore, it cannot be justly imposed upon them when they are in a position to maintain their political existence. "A vicious rule, which was dissipated in Spain by the popular rising of September, made worse, we might say intolerable, the colonial existence of the Cubans. "The Cubans have decided to conquer with the sword, as they can obtain in no other manner the exercise of their most important rights. Weighty motives prevent their government from being more explicit in so delicate a matter, but it is certain that only taking into consideration the results of the war, no other relations are now possible between Cuba and Spain, than those of a friendly spirit based on the condition of perfect independence. "In addition to what we have already stated, a political party armed from commencement of the struggle, under the denomination of Spanish Volunteers, and known by their intolerance and retrograding tendencies, have converted a question of ideas into a question of petty personal interest; wresting the authority from those delegates of that government, and imposing their caprices like laws; giving an indecorous character to official manifestations relating to the revolution; and in entire forgetfulness of the rights of man, have perpetrated incredible crimes, which cast a blot on the history of Spain in America. "To relate all in detail would be very painful to us, and to the government whom we are addressing. "It is sufficient to say that the troops charged with preserving the Spanish dominion occupy themselves, in preference, in persecuting the families who reside in the territories of the Republic, by depriving them of all they possess, burning their habitations, and have even gone several times so far as to make use of their arms against women, children and old people. At the very moment whilst we are writing this remonstrance, an awful example has occurred. "On the 6th of January of the present year, a Spanish column, commanded by Colonel Acosta y Alvear, while marching from Camaguey to Ciego de Avila, assassinated in its march these citizens of Juana, Mora de Mola and Mercedes Mora de Mola; the children, Adrina Mola, aged twelve, Agnela Mola, aged eight, and Mercedes Mola, aged two years. The horror which is produced by crimes of such enormity, above all in the minds of those who are far from the theatre of the events, is such as to make them appear hardly credible, if we did not take into consideration the demoralization of an army accustomed to pillage and violence, which generally has no limits. "Such excesses doubtless are not with the consent of the Supreme Government of a nation, in which the spirit of modern times has made very eloquent manifestations. "If Spain will not grant to us the happy establishment of their acquired liberties, recognizing the right of the Cubans to the separation, we hope she will at least be disposed to guarantee the observation of human principles in the prosecution of the struggle; and as some chiefs of the liberating forces have on several occasions demanded in vain from the opposing chiefs a proper method of conducting the war, we now ask the Supreme Government of the Spanish nation to enter into arrangements to protect the lives of the prisoners, and secure the inviolability of the individuals who, on account of their sex, age and other personal considerations may be exempt from liabilities protesting that we shall not be responsible, if such Spanish chiefs will not regard what we now offer, for the terrible consequences which will certainly follow this barbarous system of warfare. * * * * * "We give publicity to the present dispatch, that it may come to the knowledge of foreign governments. "Headquarters of the Government. "CARLOS MANUEL DE CESPEDES. President of the Cuban Republic. "January 24, 1871." The foregoing did have the effect of acquainting the world with Spanish atrocities, but its influence in restraining the further perpetration of outrages, or in producing any official action by Spain looking toward that desirable end, was absolutely nil. It possibly did impress the United States Government, confirmed as it was by constant complaints from citizens of the United States, resident in Cuba. At any rate, the United States issued a rebuke to Spain for the indignities inflicted on American citizens in Cuba, and backed up this communication with an order to her navy to stand by and protect the lives and property of Americans in Cuba, and to maintain the dignity of the flag of the United States. The Cuban forces were at this time suffering from grave disorder. Attacks by the enemy were not so menacing to the success of the struggle as internal disruptions and dissention among the leaders of the Republican army. They grew so serious that an actual break occurred, and on January 19, General Cornelio Porro proved disloyal to the cause of freedom, and in company with some other supposed patriots, entered Puerto Principe and surrendered to the Spanish Government, while at the end of the month, Eduardo Machado, the Secretary of the Cuban House of Representatives, wrote to the Captain-General, Count Valmaseda, stating that the Cuban House of Representatives had dissolved and beseeching clemency for the former members of that body. He added that Señor Miguel G. Gutierrez was a fugitive, wandering about with his little son. It naturally was a severe blow to loyal patriots to find such treachery within their own ranks, although they may have comforted themselves with the truism that such has always been the case in rebellions against a powerful ruler. The weak, the fearful, and the selfish have abandoned the cause, when its fate seemed wavering. They may also have justly argued that, if these men were traitors, loyal supporters of the cause of freedom were well rid of them; that the strength of an organization is like that of the proverbial chain, and that it becomes shorter but immeasurably stronger by the removal of the weak links. Whether they were sustained by any such comforting philosophy or not, the defection of Porro and Machado did not for a moment cause the loyal Cuban leaders to falter from their purpose to secure freedom for Cuba. To strengthen the courage of loyal Cubans, President Cespedes and Ignacio Agramonte issued proclamations in which they expressed the greatest faith in the Cuban cause, and its ultimate victory, and urged all loyal hearts to maintain their support of the battle for liberty. IGNACIO AGRAMONTE One of the foremost heroes of the Ten Years' War was Ignacio Agramonte y Loinaz, a member of one of the most distinguished families in Cuban history. He was born in Camaguey in 1841, was educated for the bar, and became an eminent advocate, writer and orator, with intense devotion to the cause of Cuban independence. Immediately upon the outbreak of the revolution at Yara in 1868 he took the field and showed himself a born leader of men. He was made Secretary of the Revolutionary government, signed the Emancipation act and the Cuban Constitution, and then returned to active work in the field. As Major General he participated in many battles, including the capture of a part of Camaguey on July 20, 1869. President Cespedes made him Chief of the Department of Camaguey, and for a time he succeeded Quesada as commander in chief of the Revolutionary Army. He fell in the battle of Jimaguayu on July 1, 1873. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV While these things were occurring in the "Ever Faithful Isle," there were doings of epochal significance in Peninsular Spain. Queen Isabella had, as we have seen, for some time been an exile, and on June 25, 1870, the Serrano republican government forced her to sign a final manifesto of abdication. The government itself, however, was far from strong, and was unable to stand against strong opposition in the Cortes. It was shortly overthrown by a vote of that body, and a monarchical form of government was re-established. The crown was formally offered to and accepted by Amadeus, son of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, on December 4, 1870. When this news reached Cuba, the Spanish troops on the island took formal oath of allegiance to the new king of Spain. The reestablishment of a monarchy was, of course, exceedingly pleasing to the Volunteers, for they had no sympathy with a republic, and the freedom which it was supposed to entail, although in the case of the republic in Spain, few changes or concessions had been extended to its Cuban subjects. The Volunteers promptly took oath to support the monarchy, and denounced the republican constitution. They embraced this as a favorable opportunity to further an end of their own. They had long suspected the Bishop of Havana of being in sympathy with the revolution. He was at this time absent in attendance at the Vatican Council at Rome, and the Volunteers were able so to manipulate matters that, upon his return on April 13, 1871, he was refused permission to land. Believing that the new government would give even more cordial support to their machinations than had the previous one, the Volunteers now began a system of persecutions against Cuban patriots. The Volunteer corps, in 1872, numbered eighty thousand members, and in 1870 and 1871 they could not have fallen far below that number. They were so powerful that the Captain-General must either conform to their wishes or sooner or later give way to a successor whom they selected. Now there was published in Havana a paper, called _La Voz de Cuba_, which was really the "_Voice of the Volunteers_," for its editor, Gonzalo Castanon, was a Colonel of that organization. It busied itself, among other things, with attacks on the patriots, and took occasion to voice some derogatory remarks concerning Cuban women. Naturally the Cuban husbands, sons, fathers and lovers were hot with indignation against such calumny. Castanon paid the just penalty of his scurrilous lack of chivalry, for he was challenged by an outraged Cuban and in the duel which followed he received a mortal wound. He was buried in a tomb in the Espada Cemetery. Some time afterward, a party of young students--hardly more than boys--from the University of Havana, visited the cemetery, and it was reported to the authorities that one of them had been heard, while standing near the tomb of Castanon, to make remarks derogatory to the dead Colonel. This information was given by a Spanish soldier, who claimed to have overheard the conversation, and when it was repeated to a Spanish judge, the accusation was added that the boy's companions had defaced the glass which closed the Castanon tomb. The Volunteers immediately pounced upon the happening, as a delightful opportunity to chastise and punish the members of wealthy families in Havana who were suspected of aiding and abetting the revolution. The power of the Captain-General was invoked, and forty-three students were arrested and brought to trial. They were ably defended by a Spanish officer, Señor Capdevilla, and he made such a good case for their innocence that they were acquitted. The Volunteers, however, were not satisfied. Injustice had in some manner miscarried, how they could not conceive, and justice had triumphed. Such things would not do in dealing with Cubans. They made a vigorous appeal to the Captain-General, and obtained from him an order for assembling a second court martial, and this time they saw to it that their own body was well represented in that body. The boys were again apprehended, and the trial which ensued was a tragic farce, in which they were given not the slightest chance for justice. Eight of them were condemned to death, and the others to imprisonment at hard labor. Consternation reigned among the best families of Cuba. One distracted father offered a ransom of a million dollars for the life of his son, but without avail. On November 27, 1871, the condemned criminals, whose worst offence, if indeed there was any offense at all, was the utterance of an indignant remark about a ruffian who had attacked those dearest to all loyal, chivalrous and patriotic hearts, the women of Cuba, were led out and shot in the presence of fifteen thousand Spanish Volunteers, all under arms. In after years when the wrong was beyond repair, justice was done to the memory of these martyred youths, for not only did the Spanish Cortes, with admirable fairness, investigate the matter and pronounce in favor of the innocence of the students, but also the son of Castanon came to Cuba from Spain with the object of removing thither his father's remains, investigated the condition of the tomb, and made a sworn statement before a notary that it had never been disturbed. The murder of the students of course created intense feeling in Cuba; Havana was in a turmoil, and the sentiment engendered by this and similar outrages committed or incited by the Volunteers swelled the list of those who were in sympathy with a speedy release for Cuba from Spanish rule. The scene of the tragedy has since been marked by the Cuban government with a tablet which bears this inscription: "On the 27th of November, 1871, there were sacrificed in front of this place, by the Spanish Volunteers of Havana, the eight young Cuban students of the First Year of Medicine: Alonzo Alvarez de la Campa, Carlos Augusto de Latorre, Pascual Rodriquiz Perez, Angel Laborde, Jose de Marcos Medina, Eladio Gonzales Toledo, Anacleto Bermudez, Carlos Verdugo. To their eternal memory, this tablet is dedicated, the 27th of November, 1899." While these events were taking place, and in spite of the troubles which had beset them within their own ranks, the Cuban leaders maintained a force of fifty thousand men in the field, and gained an important victory in the vicinity of Mayari. This was more than offset by an occurrence which struck brutally at the very foundation of the Cuban army. In July, 1871, the Spanish defeated at Guantanamo a force of two hundred men, under General Quesada, but this was trivial compared with the catastrophe which it involved. General Quesada was taken prisoner, as was General Figueredo, and in August these two loyal patriots who had so ably supported the revolution, and the former of whom had been the brains of the army, were executed by the Spaniards. The deepest gloom filled the hearts of the Cuban leaders, and their discouragement is the only explanation which can be offered of what followed, when a force of Cubans, who had been operating in the central part of the island, under General Agramonte, deserted, and approaching the Spanish authorities, agreed to lay down their arms, provided their lives would be spared. The Spaniards accepted their offer, and promptly gave out a statement that the Cuban army was disrupted and that all that remained was a few slaves under General Agramonte. They were to learn, however, that the Cubans still had some fighting spirit left in them. Although the defection of so large a body of his command left only thirty-five men under Agramonte, he speedily recruited a new company, and was able to harass the Spanish for two years longer, until he was killed in battle. The death of General Quesada left the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban army vacant, and General Modeste Diaz was elected to that office. An official report made by the Cubans at this time shows the composition of the army to have been: _Army Corps of Oriente._ Commander-in-Chief, General Modeste Diaz Division of Santiago de Cuba; Major-General Commanding, Maximo Gomez _Regiments_ _Commander_ _Localities_ _No. of Men_ 1 and 2 Col. Jesus Perez Cobre 600 3 Lt. Col. Prado Baracoa 450 4 Lt. Col. Guillermo Moncada Baracoa 550 5 Lt. Col. Pacheco Guantanamo 450 6 Brig. Calixto Garcia Jiguani 600 ----- Total 2,650 Division of Holguin--General Commanding, Jose Inclan _Regiments_ _Commander_ _Localities_ _No. of Men_ 1 Co. Fco. Herrero West 300 2 Gen. Inclan East 500 --- Total 800 Division of Bayamo--General Commanding, Luis Figueredo _Regiments_ _Commander_ _Localities_ _No. of Men_ 1 Maj. Gen. N. Garrido Manzanillo 550 2 Gen. Luis Figueredo Bayamo 450 ------ Total 1,000 Grand Total Army Corps of Oriente 4,300 _Army Corps of Camaguey_ Commander-in-Chief, General Vicente Garcia Division of Las Tunas--General Commanding, Vicente Garcia _Regiments_ _Commander_ _Localities_ _No. of Men_ 1 General Vincente Garcia Santa Rita 650 2 Brig. Francisco Vega Arenas 400 ------ Total 1,050 Division of Camaguey--General Commanding, Ignacio Agramonte _Regiments_ _Commander_ _Localities_ _No. of Men_ 1 Lt. Col. La Rosa Guaican Amar 300 2 Col. Agramonte Porro Guaican Amar 400 3 Lt. Col. Espinosa Guaican Amar 250 4 Lt. Col. Manuel Suarez Guaimaro 300 5 Lt. Col. Antonio Rodriguez Cubitas 200 ------ Total 1,450 Grand Total Army Corps of Camaguey 2,600 _Army Corps of Las Villas_ Commander-in-Chief, Major-General Matso Casanova _No. of Men_ Division of Trinidad, General Commanding, Brig. Juan Villegas 700 Division of Sancti Spiritus, General Com'ding, Brig. Jose Villamie 800 Division of Villa Clara, General Commanding, Brig. Carlos Ruloff 600 Division of Cienfuegos, General Commanding, Brig. Juan Villegas 700 Division of Remedios, General Commanding, Brig. Salome Hernandez 600 ------ Grand Army Total of Las Villas 3,400 Grand Total 10,300 In June, 1871, three regiments under General Maximo Gomez--that able soldier and patriot who was to figure so largely in the final struggle against Spain in 1895--were instructed to take up their position and endeavor to hold the line between Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, and they accordingly entrenched themselves in the Loma de la Gallista, but they were almost immediately attacked by the Spanish. The battle was hotly contested for four hours and ended in a victory for the Cubans. The Spanish losses included arms and ammunition which were eagerly appropriated by the conquerors. A few days later, a Spanish force renewed the attack, advancing fifteen hundred strong against the men under Gomez, and again they went down to defeat, their total losses in the two battles amounting to one hundred killed, and a large number wounded. In addition to this, the Cubans took fifteen Spaniards prisoners. What must have been still more gratifying was an encounter which a small band of Cubans had about this time with a company of Volunteers, in which twenty-five of the latter were made prisoners. On July 3, Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Guevara with a company of Cubans was encamped at La Cabana del Estribo, when they were attacked by a force of three hundred Spaniards. He promptly ordered the camp abandoned, covering his retreat by a weak fire on the enemy. The Cubans were unable to make a more vigorous resistance, because they were inadequately supplied with ammunition, even though, with plenty of supplies, their position at La Cabana del Estribo might have been considered an advantageous one. But with the odds so greatly against them, the Cubans killed five Spaniards, and wounded forty others, among whom was Pedro Popa, one of those who had turned traitor to the cause of the revolution. But the Spaniards took vengeance on two practically defenseless persons. On their retreat, with their wounded, they met Major Baldoguin and two companions, who were on their way to see Lieutenant-Colonel Guevara, and captured Major Baldoguin. They took him to Bayamo, and in spite of the fact that he was severely wounded, they executed him at once upon arrival at that city. A few days later, the same force which had attacked Lieutenant-Colonel Guevara at Estribo, were reported to be again advancing against him. He sent a company of infantry to meet them, and an engagement ensued which lasted for over an hour. The Spaniards retreated to Los Toros, leaving behind them fifty-three killed and wounded. On this occasion Guevara's son was wounded, and one private was killed. A few days previous, on the evening of July 4, a small Cuban force attacked the Spanish camp at the village of Veguita, and harassed the enemy during the entire night, and the next day a company from the same division of the Cuban army had an engagement with a hundred and fifty Spanish cavalry, and put them to flight. The Cubans pursued them, and forced them to take a stand, when a fight took place which lasted an hour. The Cubans did not suffer a single casualty, while several of the Spaniards were killed, and they were obliged to retreat. On July 25, Major Dominguez with a small force, attacked the sugar plantation of Las Ovas, and sacked it almost in the presence of the Spaniards, who were encamped only about half a mile distant, on the Esperanza estate. Having accomplished this feat, Major Dominguez's soldiers raided a nearby estate, which was owned by Tomas Ramirez, another of those who had turned traitor. All the buildings on this plantation were set on fire, and razed to the ground, as were also those on the estate of Antonio Lastes. Curiously enough, although the Spaniards in much larger numbers, were near at hand, and must have been cognizant of these happenings, they made no attempt to interfere. A few days later, Major Noguera, with a small band, attacked forty of the enemy on a road leading to Bayamo, and put them to rout, capturing a considerable stock of supplies. This same band of patriots a little later encountered a company of fifty Spaniards, who were driving a herd of cattle toward El Huinilladero. They opened fire, and dispersed the Spaniards, wounding an officer, and taking possession of the cattle, together with a supply of cartridges, horses with their equipment, blankets and provisions. On July 30, several companies from the division of Bayamo and Manzanillo attacked a force of a hundred Spaniards who were strongly entrenched near La Caridad. After a fight which lasted not over half an hour, the Spanish were dislodged from their trenches, and fled into a nearby wood. The Cubans followed, forcing the Spaniards into the open, and, after a brief engagement, put them to rout. One Spaniard was captured, and he gave information that the Spanish forces had lost seventeen men killed, and that in their flight they had thrown away their rifles, which were afterward recovered by the Cubans, who also took possession of a large amount of supplies of all kinds. The estate of La Indiana had been fortified by the Spaniards, and on August 4, General Gomez led an attack against it. The Spanish put up a strong resistance, but the Cubans were able to take the buildings, and capture thirty-five Spaniards. The entire district of Guantanamo was at this time practically controlled by the insurgents. They destroyed fourteen coffee plantations, and did other damage to the property of Spanish sympathizers. On August 8, the Spaniards made an attack at El Macio, but it was unsuccessful. For the next week there was one engagement after another, with victory first with the Spaniards and then with the Cubans, but the results were not of moment to either of the belligerents. The Cubans were not able to marshal a sufficiently large or well equipped force to venture a decisive battle, and so kept up an annoying guerrilla warfare. Late in the month they advanced to the outskirts of Santiago, destroying all plantations which lay along the line of march, and defeated the Volunteers in an unimportant engagement. Perhaps the most serious defeat that they inflicted on the Spanish at this time was the destruction of the fortified camp at Miguel, in the district of Sagua de Tanamo. Earlier in the month they had attacked and taken a fortified camp in the neighborhood of Santa Isabel. All the buildings were burned to the ground, twenty-six Volunteers were killed, and a large quantity of stores was taken. There followed other engagements in which the odds and the victory were with the Spaniards, and the Cuban patriots were put to rout with heavy losses. But for the most part in guerrilla warfare the Cubans had the advantage and made the most of it. Late in August, a force under Major Villanueva and Captain Rios surprised some Spanish soldiers at breakfast near Malangas. The Spaniards largely outnumbered the Cubans, but the attack was so sudden that they fled, leaving their rice and salted beef behind them. In this engagement eight Spaniards were killed. On the first day of September, news reached Major Noguera that the enemy were convoying a stock of supplies in the neighborhood where he was stationed. He divided his men and concealed them at different points along the road over which the Spaniards must pass. Six Volunteers and one regular soldier were killed, and the enemy abandoned to the Cubans a number of carts, filled with food stuffs, carbines, machetes, and other supplies. [Illustration: CALIXTO GARCIA One of the most gallant figures in the patriot ranks in the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence was that of Calixto Garcia e Iñiguez. Born at Bayamo on August 4, 1839, he was in the prime of young manhood when he took the field under General Marmol in 1868. Soon as a brigadier general he was the right-hand man of Maximo Gomez, and was made by him commander in chief in Oriente when Gomez himself marched westward. After six years of almost incessant and victorious fighting, he was surprised and surrounded at San Antonio de Baja, when, rather than be captured, he placed the muzzle of a pistol in his mouth and fired. The bullet pierced the roof of his mouth and came out at the centre of his forehead. The Spaniards then took him to a military hospital and, respecting his valor, nursed him back to health. After the Treaty of Zanjon he was released, whereupon he took the lead in the Little War. He was in Spain in 1895 and could not get into the War of Independence until March, 1896, but thereafter he was one of its chief warriors. After the close of the war he was sent to Washington on a diplomatic mission, and died there on December 11, 1898.] September 18 was to be a memorable day in the year's fighting, for on that date General Calixto Garcia with three regiments advanced against Jiguani, where a large force of Spaniards were garrisoned. The latter defended the town for two hours, but in the end the Cubans were victorious, and gained control of the major portion of the town and its fortifications. Many houses were burned, and two hundred Spaniards lay dead in the streets. General Garcia then retreated, carrying with him a large quantity of captured supplies, since he did not have a large enough force to complete the occupation of Jiguani. He was pursued by the Spaniards who had been reinforced, but the patriots made good their escape with only slight losses. Throughout the entire months of August and September the eastern part of the island was in a constant state of uproar and confusion. Attack and counter-attack followed in succession, and yet neither side was any nearer a significant victory or a decision. On October 23, the Spaniards gained a victory over the Cubans at El Toro, and in November the insurgents turned the tables by defeating the Spanish forces under Captain Ferral y Mongs. So the war continued, the whole country witnessing the destruction of plantations, the burning of buildings, the pillaging of villages, and loss of life as well as of property. In the end it was the land of Cuba that suffered, for from a once prosperous country it bade fair to be transformed into waste lands. Meanwhile the Cuban forces were slowly degenerating. The Spaniards were well fed, well clothed and well equipped, while the Cuban forces were poorly armed, often hungry, and in torn and ragged garments. The resources of Spain reinforced her army, but the patriots had to rely on chance help that came to them from their American sympathizers. Nothing in their existence was certain, and as the war was prolonged without their gaining a victory which seemed to bring the end nearer, the weaker spirits began to despair and there was dissension and an undercurrent of revolt among the common soldiers. In vain the leaders tried to put heart into their forces, and desertions became alarmingly common. The reductions in numbers compelled the Cuban leaders more and more to resort to guerrilla warfare. This involved deplorable destruction of property, valuable holdings of both loyalists and patriots were rendered valueless, and naturally the morale of both armies suffered from a spirit of lawlessness. By the end of 1871, two thirds of the farms and coffee and sugar plantations in the district of Trinidad were destroyed or abandoned, and the entire central portion of the island had suffered grievously. Valmaseda on December 27, 1871, issued a proclamation to the effect that after the first of the year every prisoner would be shot, and every patriot who delivered himself up would suffer life imprisonment. This applied to both negroes and white men; while all white women captured would be banished, and all negro women would be returned to their owners, and condemned to wear chains for a period of four years. However, prior to that date, only if four days distant, the leaders or any of the soldiers would lay down their arms and announce their allegiance to Spain, they would be received with kindness and clemency. This might have had more effect than it did but for the fact that the Cubans were distrustful of promises of clemency, and feared that if they escaped the vengeance of the government, they would later suffer at the hands of the Volunteers. CHAPTER XV At the beginning of 1872 the storm center of the insurrection moved eastward to Puerto Principe, Santiago and Guantanamo. Engagements in the vicinity of these places had been frequent, and now they were almost daily consisting chiefly of little skirmishes between small forces of men. It was estimated that by this time Spain had sent to the island in the neighborhood of sixty thousand trained soldiers, but they had come few at a time, and on no occasion in larger numbers than two or three thousand. Evidently the Spanish Government had at no time properly estimated the strength, if not in numbers, at least in valor and determination of the insurgents, and had never realized that only by investing the island with overwhelming superiority could they hope to put down the rebellion. However, during all this time Spain had been struggling against disturbances at home of no mean dimensions, and early in the year 1872 she was to endure another revolution, and the abdication of Amadeus, followed once more by a republican form of government. Records compiled by both sides prove that the war continued during the year 1872 with the same persistence, unchanged in character, and apparently no nearer a decision. The Spanish government, both at home and abroad, seems to have suffered at this time from great apprehension that the United States government would officially recognize the Cubans as belligerents, in which event their position would be materially strengthened. In February Spain sent more troops to Cuba, at the request of Captain-General Valmaseda, who accompanied his appeal by a statement--for publication, and to impress the United States--that the war would be over by April or May. March found the struggle continuing, and on March 5, General Cespedes himself, with a large body of Cuban troops, succeeded in taking Sagua de Tanamo by storm. In this same month aid came from the United States, for the steamer _Edgar Stewart_ arrived with arms, ammunition and supplies for the Cuban army. Small engagements took place all during April, and in May the Cuban leaders issued a statement to the effect that if Valmaseda was expecting that the war would soon be ended, he was not taking into consideration the strong resistance which the Cubans were still able to offer, and which they intended to continue until Spain granted them independence. Truly the war might end at once, but Spain would end it not by force of arms but by acceding to the frequently expressed desire of Cuba for complete separation from her rule, by withdrawing the offensive government, and by transporting her troops back to their native land. Early in June the Cubans defeated the Spaniards near Las Tunas, and on the 9th of that month, after heavy fighting, took Sama. The Cuban losses in these engagements were heavy in comparison with the number of men involved, but they were able to comfort themselves with the knowledge that the Spanish killed and wounded totaled a much greater number, for while the Cubans had only fifty killed and less than a hundred wounded, the Spanish left dying on the battle field more than four times as many as the Cubans, and their wounded amounted to three hundred and fifty. But the Spanish navy was able to capture an expedition bearing relief to the Cubans, and to defeat a band of patriots at Holguin, so that it would seem that the honors for the month were about equal. In July, General Garcia attacked Spanish troops under the Governor of the Province, Colonel Huertas, and a very hot fight resulted, in which the victory fell to the Cubans; and when Spanish reinforcements arrived, they too were routed and put to flight. But this was offset by the fact that General Inclan, one of the bravest and most loyal of the Cuban commanders, as well as an expert tactician, fell into the hands of the enemy, and was summarily executed at Puerto Principe. Count Valmaseda, Captain-General, now ran foul of the displeasure of the Volunteers, and suffered a downfall in consequence. On July 15 he was recalled, and General Ceballos served in his place until the arrival of his successor, Don Joachim Jovellar. It now seemed time again for the Spaniards to assert themselves against defenseless sympathizers with the revolution. Spies were busily at work in Guira, Jiguani and Holguin, and presently they purported to discover grave disloyalty among the members of some of the well known Cuban families. This was the signal and the excuse for a wholesale slaughter of innocent unoffending people, who, whatever their feelings, had taken no active part in the uprising. As a means of reprisals the Cubans made an attack on Guira, but it was not entirely successful. The people of the United States were now following the insurrection with much interest, particularly in those portions of that country in which there were large numbers of sympathizers, and they were no longer willing to ignore well authenticated reports of Spanish cruelty. A State Convention of the Republican party was held at Jacksonville, Florida, where there were many who were friendly to the Cuban patriots, and adopted a resolution, denouncing the action of the Spanish authorities in Cuba as cruel and inhuman, and calling upon Congress to pass the necessary legislation to make it possible for the United States government to extend such aid to the Cubans as "becomes a great and free republic, whose people so ardently sympathize with the struggles and hopes of the oppressed of all nations." However, the Government at Washington did not look with favor upon this suggestion, and ignored it, and it had little effect in stemming the tide of Spanish oppression in Cuba. The close of the year 1872 registered a splendid victory for the patriots, when on December 20 they stormed and took Holguin, and captured large quantities of supplies of all kinds. Public documents compiled by the Spanish in August, 1872, estimated the losses of the patriots up to that time as "thirteen thousand six hundred insurgents--and a large number taken prisoner" while "sixty-nine thousand six hundred and forty were in submission to the government; our thousand eight hundred and forty-nine firearms, three thousand two hundred and forty-nine swords and bayonets, and nine thousand nine hundred and twenty-one horses were captured." When, in 1873, Spain once more became a republic, the Cuban patriots had high hopes that their independence would be recognized, but these were soon dashed to the ground, when the Spanish government sent an appeal to the Cubans to lay down their arms, and to entrust their fortunes to the doubtful mercies of the new rulers of Spain, with the idea that Spain needed the co-operation of her colonies to bring about the permanence of the new government, which it was represented would result in a fair and equitable Spanish rule in Cuba. These overtures were promptly rejected, and the patriots made preparations to continue their struggle, adhering with tenacity to their one goal, complete independence. The Spanish government then appealed to the Volunteers, but that was such an aristocratic organization that it had no sympathy with democracy, and no desire to ally itself too closely with a republican form of government; wherefore for once it refused to aid in coercing the patriots. New Year's day, 1873, was doubly a gala occasion, because on that date another relief expedition arrived from the United States, which brought much needed supplies. The Cubans continued to harass the Spaniards, and on the occasion of one successful engagement captured a number of horses which were turned over to General Agramonte for his cavalry regiment. This was one of the best organized regiments in the army, and had done good work against the enemy, but it was soon to lose its leader, for in May, 1873, General Agramonte was killed while charging the enemy at Jimaguaya, and his command was taken over by Major-General Maximo Gomez. Meantime another change was made in the head of the Spanish insular government, and Don Candido Pieltain succeeded to the office of Captain-General. But there was serious trouble among the leaders of the Republic of Cuba. No man in as high a position as that which General Cespedes occupied could escape exciting jealousy. The Cubans were actuated by high ideals and motives, but they were only human. Rumors derogatory to the administration of General Cespedes began to be circulated, and on October 27, 1873, the House of Representatives, assembled at Vijagual, preferred charges against him of having in the administration of his duties exceeded the powers which the Republic had conferred upon him. He was tried and found guilty, and removed from office. By this action, a great injustice was done to a man whose sole thought was the good of his country, and who had given his best endeavors in its service. His removal was a hard blow to the cause of the Republic, because it gave the enemy notice of dissension among the patriots, placed the republican government in a bad light in the eyes of the rest of the world, and lost to the Cuban cause a loyal and efficient leader. General Cespedes accepted without complaint the will of the Assembly, and took leave of his office, after delivering a very eloquent and convincing address, protesting his innocence of any thought of wrong. He was now in a delicate position, for he was not in good standing with those with whom he had cast his lot, and a price had been set on his head by the Spaniards. He took refuge with a friend, and remained virtually in hiding, until on February 27, 1874, he was betrayed by a negro who had been captured by the Spaniards and who sought their clemency by delivering Cespedes to them. He was taken prisoner and speedily executed by the garrote. [Illustration: SALVADOR CISNEROS BETANCOURT] SALVADOR CISNEROS BETANCOURT The Marquis of Santa Lucia, patriot and statesman, was born in Camaguey on February 10, 1828, and from boyhood was an ardent advocate of Cuban independence. In early life he joined the Liberator Society of Camaguey, and because of his activities was arrested and confined for a time in Morro Castle. He was one of the leaders of the Ten Years' War from its beginning, participated in the making of the Constitution, and succeeded Cespedes as President of the Revolutionary government. Old as he was, he eagerly joined in the War of Independence and took part in several battles. He was a member of the Constitutional Assembly of 1895, and was elected President of the Republic in Arms, which office he held until October 10, 1898. Then he retired to private life, and died on February 28, 1914. The office of President was filled temporarily by Don Salvador Cisneros, Marquis de Santa Lucia, the Chairman of the House, in the absence of the Vice-President of the Republic, who was temporarily out of the country. Cespedes had been the only one of the Cuban leaders who had really made a study of civil government, and who was thus qualified for the position of President. While Cisneros was a man of fine education, and great intelligence, he was neither a leader of men nor a wise administrator, and the downfall of Cespedes marked the beginning of the end of the long struggle, and foreshadowed the final defeat of the Cubans. But now came an incident which for a time bade fair to bring the United States into the quarrel. There was a small side-wheel steamer called the _Virginius_ which had for a long time been active in running the Spanish blockade of the Cuban coast and in conveying reinforcements and contraband supplies to the insurgents. She was under the command of Captain Fry, an American citizen, and a veteran of the Civil War, in which he had served on the side of the Confederates. The vessel was manned by American and British seamen, and flew the American flag. In October, 1873, at Port au Prince, Captain Fry took on board his vessel five hundred Remington rifles, six hundred sabres, four hundred revolvers, and other arms and ammunition intended for the Cuban army. The steamer was well known to the Spanish navy, which had long been seeking to capture her. The end came on October 31. The _Virginius_ was hastening toward Cuba with her questionable cargo when off the south coast she was sighted by a Spanish cruiser, the _Tornado_, which had by curious coincidence, been built by the same builders as had the _Virginius_. Her captain recognized the _Virginius_ and gave chase. Captain Fry, who had been vainly trying to effect a landing with his supplies and his men, some of whom were going to Cuba to fight with the patriots, gave up the endeavor and endeavored to escape to British waters at Jamaica; but the _Tornado_ soon overhauled the _Virginius_ and took her with her passengers and crew, numbering one hundred and seventy. When capture seemed inevitable, an attempt was made to dump the cargo overboard, but the _Tornado_ captured the _Virginius_ before this could be accomplished. The vessel was taken to Santiago de Cuba, where four of the passengers were at once recognized by the authorities as officers in the revolutionary army, and were speedily sentenced to death. The official Spanish report of the execution was as follows: "Santiago de Cuba, Nov. 4, 1873. "To His Excellency, the Captain-General: "At six o'clock this morning, we shot in this city, for being traitors to their country, and for being insurgent chiefs, the following persons, styling themselves 'patriot generals': Bernabe Varona, alias Barnbeta, General of Division; Pedro Cespedes, Commanding General of Cienfuegos; General Jesus Del Sol; and Brigadier-General Washington Ryan. The executions took place in the presence of the entire corps of Volunteers, the force of regular infantry, and the sailors from the fleet. An immense concourse of people also witnessed the act. The best of order prevailed. The prisoners met their death with composure." There followed a summary court martial of the remainder of the company; conducted according to the ruthless Spanish fashion, and under the domination of the implacable Volunteers. The result was that Captain Fry and forty-eight of the crew and passengers, including a number of Americans and Englishmen, were sentenced to death. The sentence was promptly executed, despite the earnest and urgent official protests of the American and British consuls of Havana and their demands for at least a decent delay of proceedings to enable them to consult their governments and to have interviews with the condemned men. In fact, the American consul was prevented from doing anything more than to protest by being made a virtual prisoner in his own house, under a strong guard of Spanish soldiers; under the pretence that in the excited state of public feeling it would be unsafe for him to go upon the street. The tragedy began on the afternoon of November 7, at 4 o'clock. The scene was the chief public square of Santiago. It was ordered that the victims should be shot in groups of four; all the others being compelled to witness the fate of their fellows. As on the former occasion, a great company of the Volunteers attended the butchery, together with a multitude of the populace. In the first group of four was Captain Fry himself. He refused to have his eyes bandaged, or to turn his back to his slayers, and with his latest breath spoke words of comfort and cheer to his comrades. The other victims of that day's slaughter were James Flood, mate; J. C. Harris, John N. Boza, B. P. Chamberlain, William Rose, Ignacio Dueñas, Antonio Deloyo, Jose Manuel Ferran, Ramon La Wamendi, Eusebio Gariza, Edward Day, Francisco S. Trujillo, Jack Williamson, Porfirio Corbison, Pedro Alfaro, Thomas Gregg, Frank Good, Paul Plumer, Barney Hewals, Samuel Card, John Brown, Alfred Hosell, W. F. Price, George Thomas, Ezekiel Durham, Thomas W. Williams, Simeon Brown, Leopold Larose, A. Arcey, John Stewart, Henry Bond, George Thomson, James Samuel, Henry Frank, and James Read--35 men beside the Captain. More than two-thirds of them were obviously, judging from their names, Americans or Englishmen. It is probable, however, that many of these names, as also those of the passengers, were assumed, in order to conceal the identity of their bearers in just such an emergency as this. The next day, November 8, the massacre was continued, the victims of that day being Arturo Mola, Francisco Mola, Louis Sanchez (who was in fact Herminio Quesada, an active revolutionist), Jose Bortel, Augustin Varona, Salvador Pinedo, Enrique Castellanos, Joseph Otero, Francisco Rivera (otherwise Augustin Santa Rosa, an active patriot), Oscar Varona, Justus Consuegra, and William S. Valls--12 in all; making with the 35 and the Captain of the day before, and the four of November 4, the total of 52. But even this wholesale slaughter did not appease the blood-lust of the Volunteers, or of General Burriel, the Spanish commander at Santiago. Ninety-three more of the passengers of the _Virginius_ were held in prison under sentence of death, which there was every reason to fear would be executed. But a militant Providence intervened. The British government learned of what had been done, and of what was threatened. In consequence, as quickly as engines under forced draught could drive her thither, the British cruiser _Niobe_ sped to Santiago harbor. She entered the inner harbor, rounded broadside to the city, and double-shotted her guns. Then her captain, the intrepid Sir Lambton Lorraine, went ashore and demanded of General Burriel that there should be no more murders. That worthy protested that it was no affair of Sir Lambton's, since there were no British subjects among the men. This latter statement was false, though Sir Lambton did not know it, and may have thought it true. But Sir Lambton knew his business. He curtly replied that the nationality of the prisoners did not enter into his consideration of the affair; he was there to stop the butchery, and the butchery must stop. The Spanish general retorted hotly that he was not yet under British rule, and that until he was he would take his orders from the Captain-General of Cuba. To that Sir Lambton replied that as for him, he took his orders from the Queen of England, at whose command the _Niobe_ lay in the harbor with her guns double-shotted and trained on the city, the biggest of them, indeed, aimed at the governor's palace; and he gave warning that the slaying of another prisoner would be the irrevocable signal for every gun to be put into action. It was enough. There were no more shootings; and presently all the prisoners were released. [Illustration: A SANTIAGO SUNSET Cuba is world-famed for its land-locked harbors, described as bottle-shaped, or purse-shaped, with a narrow but deep entrance leading to a spacious inland lagoon, secure from storms and affording room for vast fleets to ride at anchor. One of the largest and finest of these is at the old capital, Santiago; so large that a scene upon its waters appears like one on the open Caribbean. It was from this harbor that Admiral Cervera's fleet emerged to be destroyed in the great sea fight which broke the power of Spain in Cuba.] Following is a list of the captured passengers on the _Virginius_, who were bound to Cuba for the purpose of serving in the revolution. It does not include those who were bound for the island on legitimate personal business, but does include those already mentioned as having been put to death: Bernabe Varona (alias Benebata) Pedro Cespedes Arturo Mola Jose Diaz Francisco de Porras Juan Merrero Jose Medeo Raimundo Pardo Francisco Gonzales Jose Palaez Leonardo Alvarez Julio Arango Jose Hernandez Nicholas Ramirez Pedro Pajain Manuel Padron Alexandro Cruz Estrada Felix Fernandez Juan Soto Manuel Perez Jose Otero Jose Antonio Ramon Radom Barrios Ignacio Valdes Jose Santesteban Felix Morejon Francisco Pacheco Evaristo Sungunegri Ignacio Quentin Baltran Perfecto Bello Benito Glodes Louis Sanchez Nicholas Reriz Juan Alvarado Jose Boitel Ricardo Calvo Augustin Varona Silverio Salas Domingo Salazar Justus Consuegra Jose Ignacio Lamar Andres Acosta Benjamin Olazara Enrique Castellanos Alejandro Calvo Jesus de Sol Leon Bernal Rafael Cabrera Ignacio W. Tapia Santiago Rivera Andres Echeverria Jose Maren Pedro Saez Severo Mendive Enrique Ayala Domingo Rodrigue Arturo Rivero William S. Valls Manuel Menenses General Ryan William Curtis S. Gray Ramon Gonzalez Antonio Chacon Francisco Rivero Sireno Otero Carlos Pachero Antonio Padilla Enrico Canals Indalecio Trujillo Domingo Diaz Carlos Gonzalez Oscar Varona Alfredo Lopez Andres Villa Francisco Castillo Salvador Penedo Rafael Pacheco Camito Guerra Camilo Sanz Emilio Garcia Amador Rosello Manuel A. Silverio Antonio Gomez Luiz Martinez Pedro Sariol Miguel Saya Patricio Martinez Manuel Saumel Luis Rebollo Carlos Manin Ramon R. D. Armas Joseph A. Smith Philip Abecaler Samuel Hall Sidney Robertson George Winter Evan Pento Ricardo Trujillo Leopoldo Rizo William Marshall George Burke Gil Montero These occurrences, when known, aroused tremendous excitement and wrath in the United States, and there was much talk of war. But the government, under the wise counsel of Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, kept its head and resorted to diplomacy before force. The Spanish government, too, kept its head. It realized that its officers in Cuba had acted outrageously, and that their deeds must be disavowed. So it agreed, on December 8, to surrender the _Virginius_ on December 16, to release all surviving passengers and sailors and deliver them safely to an American warship at Santiago, and to punish all Spanish officials who had acted illegally. There remained the supposed outrage to the American flag, which the _Virginius_ was flying when she was fired upon and seized. The Spanish government agreed to make amends by saluting the American flag at Santiago on Christmas Day, provided it could be proved that the _Virginius_ had a right to carry it. But as a matter of fact the vessel had no such right. The Attorney-General of the United States gave, before the day set for the salute, the opinion that the vessel was the property of General Quesada and other Cubans, and therefore had no right to sail under the American flag. The final settlement of the affair occurred in February, 1875, when the Spanish government paid an indemnity of $80,000 to the United States, and a smaller sum to Great Britain, for their citizens who had been slaughtered. The _Virginius_ was lost at sea while being returned to the United States. Meanwhile the patriots had not ceased fighting, and on November 9 they met the Spaniards in a battle in which a large force was engaged on both sides. They were equally matched, each belligerent having about three thousand men in the field. The Cubans were victorious, and they lost only a hundred men killed and double that number wounded, while the Spanish losses were four times as many killed, and six hundred wounded. Stories of Spanish cruelty to prisoners and to peaceful citizens continued to be heard, and the Cubans were not content to allow these to remain unsubstantiated. In 1873, Cuban sympathizers compiled a statement which they called "The Book of Blood." In some manner they gained access to Spanish records, and used not their own personal knowledge but the official reports of the Spaniards themselves as a basis for their accusations. The acts complained of were not confined to one year, but covered the administrations as Captain-General of Lersundi, Dulce, Rodas, Ceballos, Pieltain and Jovellar. There was almost no comment; simply a plain statement of facts. The book commences with the names of three thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven persons, exclusive of men killed in battle, who had been brutally murdered by the Spaniards. The dates and places of execution are given, so that there can be no mistake as to the accuracy of the data. Following this is a list of four thousand six hundred and seventy-two prisoners, captured by the Spaniards, who had simply dropped out of sight, and whose fate had never been determined. Next there is a record of one hundred and ninety-one men who had been garrotted. There are the names of eighty-four men who had been court-martialled in accordance with the decree of February 12, 1869, and under orders from the Captain-General; then the names of five men condemned for life to hard labor in the chain gang of the penal colony of Ceuta; the names of five others who had been given the same sentence for a period of ten years, twenty sentenced for eight years, and one for six years. After this is a list of men condemned to the chain gang, place unknown, five for ten years, two for eight years, seventeen for six years, three for four years, and one hundred and fifty-eight from two to eight years. Then comes a list of two hundred and fifty men from all walks of life, including superintendents of plantations, attorneys at law, brokers, bankers, one architect, clergymen, carpenters, druggists, engineers, farmers, masons, military officers, notaries, Post Office clerks, railroad clerks, one British Consul, three dentists, several police officers, surveyors, pilots, students, shoemakers, silversmiths, physicians, an artist, seventeen property holders, seven teachers, five tobacco manufacturers, a tailor, fifteen sailors, musicians, boatmen, sugar makers, journeymen, and even one schoolboy, who had been transported on May 21, 1869, to the island of Fernando Po, off the coast of Africa. They were reported to have been badly treated; so badly in fact that forty-seven died on the voyage or immediately on landing. Besides this there is a report of forty-four men transported to the penal colonies of Africa. A defense is made against the charge that the Cubans had during the war been no more merciful than the Spaniards. It was claimed that during the first years of the war, when a number of officers had been captured by the patriots, they were not executed, but were placed under parole not to attempt to escape. They broke their parole, and in return for the merciful conduct of their former captors they became the most violent and brutal of all the Spanish officials in their persecution of the Cubans. On the other hand, when men of Spanish birth approached the patriots expressing sympathy for their cause, and a desire to fight for independence, their services were accepted and in every instance they proved to be spies, who furnished the Spanish leaders with valuable information and delivered their Cuban comrades into the hands of the enemy. It was alleged that up to August, 1869, the Cuban leaders adhered to their policy of fair and decent treatment of their captives, and when they learned of the brutal conduct of the Spaniards, General Quesada addressed a message to General Lesca, and endeavored to effect a mutual agreement on the subject. The reply received declared that the Spaniards saw no reason to depart from their custom in the matter of this and left the Cubans no alternative but to resort to similar measures. General Quesada therefore ordered the execution of sixty-seven persons who had voluntarily taken up arms under the Cuban banner, and who had later been apprehended in a conspiracy to betray the patriots. It is stated that the report of the affairs erroneously added an extra numeral to the figures, which caused the number to be stated as six hundred and seventy. In proof of the truth of the statements contained in the "Book of Blood," an account from the Spanish journal "Diario de la Marina," under date of March 24, 1870, is cited: "All the officers, sergeants and corporals who were in the hands of the enemy have been shot. In connection with many Cubans they had planned a counter-revolution, and had concerted the delivery of all rebel chieftains to General Puello. Two days before the one appointed by this gallant general to commence his march, he sent a messenger to Captain Troyano with the news of his advance. The bearer of the news was arrested, however, and searched, the letter was found, and on the following day, the messenger, our officers, and the Cubans compromised in the counter-revolution, were shot, thus sealing with their lives their devotion to their beloved mother country." This seems to be an ample corroboration of the fact that the men in question were shot as traitors and not as prisoners of war. Another Spanish officer, Don Domingo Graino, a Captain of the Volunteers, under date of September 23, 1869, writes: "More than three hundred spies and conspirators are shot monthly in this jurisdiction. Myself alone with my band have already disposed of nine." We have also this testimony from Jesus Rivacoba, an officer of the Volunteers: "We captured seventeen, thirteen of whom were shot outright; on dying they shouted, 'Hurrah for Free Cuba!' A mulatto said, 'Hurrah for Cespedes!' On the following day we killed a Cuban officer, and another man. Among the thirteen that we shot the first day were found three sons and their father; the father witnessed the execution of his sons without even changing color, and when his turn came he said he died for the independence of his country. On coming back we brought along with us three carts filled with women and children, the families of those we had shot; and they asked us to shoot them, because they would rather die than live among Spaniards." Still another officer of the Volunteers, Pedro Fardon, writes: "Not a single Cuban will remain in this island, because we shoot all those we find in the fields, on the farms, and in every hovel. "We do not leave a creature alive when we pass, be it man or animal. If we find cows we kill them; if horses, ditto; if hogs, ditto; men, women and children, ditto; as to the houses, we burn them; so everyone receives his due--the men in balls, the animals in bayonet-thrusts. The island will remain a desert." At the end of the year, the forces under General Maximo Gomez were victorious over those under the Spanish General Bascones, in the district of Camaguey, while the fortified town of Manzanillo was on November 11 taken by storm and occupied by troops under General Garcia. The Cubans lost forty-nine killed and eighty wounded, while the Spaniards lost two hundred killed and one hundred and thirty wounded. On December 2, the battle of Palo Seco occurred. Seven hundred patriots under General Gomez were arrayed against a thousand Spaniards. A lively fight took place, and the Spaniards were put to flight in such disorder that they abandoned their wounded, their arms and their impediments. They lost several officers and two hundred common soldiers, while the Cubans captured seventeen officers, one of them being a Lieutenant-Colonel. The Cuban casualties were small in comparison, being ninety killed and one hundred and six wounded. Among the stores left behind by the fleeing Spaniards were twelve revolvers, sixteen thousand five hundred cartridges, two hundred and fifty Remington rifles, eighty horses, and thirty mules, their packs containing ammunition, clothing and a small amount of money. CHAPTER XVI At the beginning of the year 1874 a _coup d'etat_ placed Serrano again at the head of the government in Spain, but in Cuba there was no change. The struggle was still continued. The first battle of the year was on a larger scale than the majority of those which had preceded it. At Naranjo, on January 4, two thousand Cubans under General Gomez were victorious over four thousand Spaniards, and the Cuban losses were slight in comparison with those of the enemy. Again, at Corralillo, on January 8, the Cubans scored a triumph, and on the next day a third victory was achieved at Los Melones by the forces of General Garcia. Don Joachim Jovellar, the Captain-General, declared the island to be in a state of siege, and in a bold but hardly successful attempt to swell the Spanish forces proclaimed a conscription of all men from twenty to forty years old, and exacted the payment of a thousand dollars in gold in lieu of compliance with this decree. He antagonized the Volunteers, who considered themselves of much finer quality than the Spanish common soldiers, by demanding that one-tenth of their number be allotted to and placed under the command of the regular army. The Volunteers resisted this order, and made an attempt to secure Jovellar's removal from office, but were unsuccessful, and he continued to take the most extraordinary measures, stating that he would summarily put down the rebellion; and yet the fighting steadily continued. General Portillo was considered one of the most able of the Spanish officers, and it was expected that he would be able to inflict great losses on the insurgents, hence the Spanish leaders were greatly chagrined when he went down in defeat at the hands of General Gomez, who then proceeded to administer a like chastisement to the forces under General Arminan, who had taken up his position at Guasimas, and who was forced to make his escape to Puerto Principe, abandoning his command, all of whom were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. In all the history of the war no such victory had ever before been won. The battle had raged for three days and nights, and at its inception General Arminan had been at the head of an army of three thousand men. When the Spaniards had heard how Arminan was faring, they had sent General Bascones to the rescue, but he never got through to aid Arminan, for he was routed by the Cubans while on his way. Jovellar was a little less confident, after these occurrences, that it would be a simple matter to put down the rebellion. He seems to have lacked the quality of resolute perseverance, and when matters were against him he resigned his office, and again Don José de la Concha returned to take charge of Spanish affairs in Cuba. Now Concha had been _persona non grata_ with the Volunteers and he was not received by them with great enthusiasm. He began at once upon assuming office to take the force out of the decrees promulgated by Jovellar, by greatly modifying their terms, and promising freedom to all blacks who would serve in the army for a period of five years. In April, 1874, Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, made public announcement in Washington that during the five years of the war the Spanish losses had totaled more than eighty thousand men and officers, a large number of these casualties being due to sickness caused by unsanitary conditions, while Spain had spent over one hundred million dollars in her ineffective efforts to put down the revolution. He further stated that it did not appear that she was likely to accomplish this speedily, since the revolutionary government seemed quite as powerful and as active as in the beginning. The history of the year 1875 was one of unimportant engagements, small skirmishes and guerrilla warfare, no important battle being fought until the year had about reached its close, when Gomez suffered a severe defeat at Puerto Principe, which is believed to have been the turning of the tide against the Cubans. Meanwhile the United States began to display a strong interest in Cuban affairs. On November 5, 1875, a letter was sent by the State Department to Caleb Cushing, then United States minister to Madrid, containing the following information, intended, of course, as admonition to the Spanish government: "In the absence of any prospect of a termination of the war, or of any change in the manner in which it has been conducted on either side, the President feels that the time is at hand when it may be the duty of other governments to intervene, solely with a view of bringing to an end a disastrous and destructive conflict, and of restoring peace in the island of Cuba. No government is more deeply interested in the order and peaceful administration of this island than is the United States, and none has suffered as the United States from the condition which has obtained there during the past six or seven years. He will, therefore, feel it his duty at an early day to submit the subject in this light, and accompanied by an expression of the views above presented, for the consideration of Congress." For some strange reason, Mr. Fish seemed to have lost his usual cool wisdom; for he went perilously near to ignoring the Monroe Doctrine, so sacred to all the traditions of American diplomacy, when he directed that a copy of this letter be forwarded to General Robert C. Schenck, the United States Minister at London, directing him to ask for the support of Great Britain in his position. Following this action of his Secretary of State, President Grant, in his message to Congress in December, 1875, said: "The past year has furnished no evidence of an approaching termination of the ruinous conflict which has been raging for seven years in the neighboring island of Cuba. While conscious that the insurrection has shown a strength and endurance which made it at least doubtful whether it be in the power of Spain to subdue it, it seems unquestionable that no such civil organization exists which may be recognized as an independent government capable of performing its international obligations and entitled to be treated as one of the powers of the earth." The Spanish government was very wrathful when these facts became known to it and at once sent a note to Great Britain claiming that the United States had no reason to bewail the Cuban situation, for on account of it her commerce had increased; that Spanish had had under the most jealous and watchful care, as regards the safety of their person and property, all American citizens who were engaged in business ventures on the island, and that most of them were making huge fortunes. A complaint was made that the United States gave refuge to Cuban outlaws, and it was alleged that all past claims of the United States growing out of the Cuban difficulty had been or were about to be settled. However, Great Britain refused to have anything to do with an attempt, in conjunction with the United States, to end the Cuban war, stating that it was doubtful whether Spain would accept any terms that could be offered, and that if she refused, Great Britain did not feel willing to bring pressure to bear. Spain, in a note dated February 3, 1876, intimated that the reason why a settlement of the insurrection in Cuba had not been effected was because the insurgents would not come out into the open and fight, but preferred to wage a guerrilla warfare from mountain fastnesses; that could they be lured into the open, Spain had a sufficient force in the field promptly to defeat them. It was further intimated that the Creoles were tiring of the insurrection and that it was now being supported mainly by negroes, mulattoes, Chinese laborers, adventurers, and deserters from the Spanish army. Finally the assertion was made that when Spain was finally victorious, as it was assumed that she would be, she would at once abolish slavery, and put into effect the most liberal of administrative reforms. In strange contradictions of these pretensions, Spain presently looked to the United States Government to mediate in the affairs of Cuba, and early in the year 1876 asked that it attempt to bring about an understanding with the insurgents. Hamilton Fish, who was still Secretary of State, replied, stating plainly the points which the United States considered essential for the establishment of peace, law and order in distressed Cuba: "1--The mutual and reciprocal observance of treaty obligations, and a full, friendly and liberal understanding and interpretation of all doubtful treaty provisions, wherever doubt or question may exist. "2--Peace, order, and good government in Cuba which involves prompt and effective measures to restore peace, and the establishment of a government suited to the spirit and necessities of the age, liberal in its provisions, wherein justice can be meted out to all alike, according to defined and well-established provisions. "3--Gradual but effectual emancipation of slaves. "4--Improvement of commercial facilities and the removal of the obstructions now existing in the way of trade and commerce." The Spanish government replied on April 16, making a specific answer to each point made by the United States: "1--The government of his majesty is in entire conformity as regards complying for its part with all the stipulations of the existing treaties, and giving to them a perfect, friendly and liberal interpretation in all that which may be the subject of doubt or question. "2--The government of the king likewise proposes, because it believes it necessary, to change in a liberal sense the régime hitherto followed in the island of Cuba, not only in its administration but also in its political part. "3--Not merely gradual and genuine, but rapid emancipation of the slaves, because the government of his majesty recognizes and unreservedly proclaims that slavery neither can nor ought to be maintained in any of its dominions, by reason of its being an anti-Christian institution and opposed to present civilization. "4--The government of the king finds itself in complete accord not only as to increasing but as to extending to the furthest possible limit all commercial facilities, and causing the disappearance of all the obstacles which today exist, and which hinder the rapid and free course of commercial negotiations." The United States made no further attempts at intervention, and for the time being the matter was dropped. During the year which followed, 1877, more and more the Cuban methods of warfare merited the description which Spain had given of them. It became a war of extermination, rather than battle for independence. Cespedes, Quesada, Agramonte, and many other of the original leaders had died in battle, or had been captured and murdered by the enemy. Foreigners, who knew nothing of early ideals, and indeed little of early struggles, had largely replaced the great Cuban patriots, and their idea was not so much separation from Spain and conquest of the enemy as plunder. Property was no longer respected, the once prosperous island was fast becoming desolate, and on every hand deserted and ruined plantations were covered with weeds, where once had been wide cultivated fields. The insurgents were a motley array of men, of many races, and of varied color, yellow Chinese, and all shades of mulattoes, with only a small proportion of Creoles. The bands were now composed principally of marauders, who destroyed everything that they could not steal. Their victory no longer meant a triumph for democracy, and the establishment of a liberal government where there was now an oppressive one, but rather it would be a menace to civilization, hostile to all ideals of law and order. The constitution of Spain's army at this period is reported to have been two hundred and seventy-three superior officers; three thousand and fifty-four subalterns; sixty-eight thousand one hundred and fifteen privates, with an equipment of eight thousand four hundred and seventy-eight horses; four hundred and sixty-two mules; forty-two field guns, and plenty of small arms and ammunition. The men were properly clothed, and well fed. Notwithstanding the confusion of the Carlist uprising, Spain had been able to send over, during the first year of King Alfonso's reign, twenty-four thousand, four hundred and forty-five soldiers, while her naval force included forty-five vessels, equipped with one hundred and thirty-two guns, and manned by two thousand four hundred and twenty-six men. Besides this, over ten thousand men were on the high seas to reinforce the Spanish army. The disorganized, ragged, weary, badly fed Cuban forces, with the lawless element which now unhappily predominated among them had small chance of victory against such overwhelming odds. Nothing but the natural topography of the country, so favorable to guerrilla warfare, and the knowledge which the natives had of its mountain strongholds, had enabled the Cuban army to prolong thus far the war. The only thing which had saved the island from entire economic destruction was the fact that the belligerents had not invaded the western provinces, and their inhabitants had been free to plant and reap and conduct their lives in an orderly fashion. The expenses of the war had made heavy inroads on the Spanish treasury, and in August of this year, the Spanish capitalists had contributed nearly twenty-five thousand pesetas toward the expenses of the army in Cuba. As the season advanced, troop ships arrived at regular intervals. In October, General Martinez Campos--one of the ablest soldiers and statesmen in Spain--was appointed Captain-General of Cuba and commander of the army, and he sailed from Spain to take over his command, accompanied by fourteen thousand men. Determined that the revolution should once for all be terminated, and not content with the sum which Spain's bankers had placed at her disposal, the Spanish Cortes passed a bill providing for a foreign loan, which would be devoted to the suppression of the insurrection. The beginning of the year 1877 thus saw the cause of liberty in a precarious condition. The Cuban army had been so greatly weakened that in the encounters which took place the Spaniards were constantly victorious, and they were soon able to regain the major portion of the territory which had previously been occupied by the revolutionists. The time seemed favorable for a settlement of the difficulties in a manner which, while offering a few concessions to the Cubans, might still be greatly to the advantage of Spain. To the Captain-General this seemed the proper occasion for some nice diplomacy, for coaxing with fair words instead of coercing with violence. He therefore on May 5 issued a proclamation which he felt would be effective in inducing the revolutionists to abandon the struggle and to return to the doubtful protection of allegiance to Spanish rule. His proclamation read as follows: "Article I--From the date of this decree, all orders of banishment decreed gubernatively by this Government for political motives are hereby rescinded, and all proceedings now under way regarding the same are hereby overruled. "Article II--The embargoes imposed gubernatively on insurgents who have presented or may present themselves for pardon before the termination of the war shall also be raised. There will, however, be excepted from the favor of disembargo the property of backsliding insurgents and that of the leaders of the insurrection, in respect to which this General Government will adopt the measure it deems most convenient, according to the special circumstances of each case. "Article III--The property, embargoed gubernatively, of the disloyal ('infidentes') who have since died, shall also be released from embargo, and delivered unto their lawful heirs, if these remain faithful to the Spanish nation. "Article IV--The property referred to in the two preceding articles once returned, its owners or holders shall not sell, assign, transfer or burden it in any manner until two years after the official publication of the complete pacification of the island. "Article V--The proceeds of property before its return shall be considered as applied toward the expenses of the war, unless otherwise provided for, and its owners without any right to make reclamation of any nature whatsoever. "Article VI--None of those whose property has been released from embargo shall either have the right to make reclamation for any loss or injury that may have been suffered by the property or object returned them. "Article VII--To assist as far as possible in the return of said property, this Government will authorize the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors of the island to effect the same in each case, to those comprised in this decree, whose property is situated within their respective jurisdictions, with the due precautions which shall be communicated to them from the office of the Secretary of the General Government. "Article VIII--The judicial proceedings actually under way against _infidentes_ shall be forwarded until overruled, or judged, as may result in law. "Article IX--Concerning the property adjudged to the State, by sentence of competent tribunals, his Majesty's Government will decide in due time whatever it may deem most convenient. "Article X--The requisite orders shall be issued through the office of the Secretary of this General Government, that the foregoing articles shall be duly complied with by whom it may concern." Seven months later, on November 3, he promulgated a second decree providing "that all estates ruined during the war, and in the way of reconstruction, shall be free from contributions for five years, from the date of the decree. Every new state and all new property acquired in cities or villages of the central and oriental departments will have the same privilege. All industries and commerce in said departments newly established will be exempt for three years from contributions. All female cattle, either Spanish or foreign, imported into Cuba with the exclusive object of raising stock, will be duty free for two years." The first decree had the desired effect. A number of the Cuban leaders surrendered in October, 1877. It is true that when some of these men attempted to return to the Cuban lines and persuade the other officers to join them in submission to Spanish authority, they were tried by court-martial and sentenced. But the tide had turned, and was now steadily flowing favorably for the Spaniards. The war was over. Cuban independence had once more been postponed. Negotiations were entered into at Zanjon, in which General Maximo Gomez represented the Cubans, and Captain-General Campos the Spanish government. On February 15, 1878, the so-called Treaty of Zanjon was signed; its terms being in brief as follows: "Article I--The political, organic and administrative laws enjoyed by Porto Rico shall be established in Cuba. "Art. II--Free pardon for all political offenses committed from 1868 to date, and freedom for those who are under indictment or are serving sentences within or without the island. Amnesty to all deserters from the Spanish army, regardless of nationality, this clause being extended to include all those who have taken part directly or indirectly in the revolutionary movement. "Art. III--Freedom for the Asiatic coolies and for the slaves who may be in the insurgent ranks. "Art. IV--No individual who by virtue of this capitulation shall submit to and remain under the authority of the Spanish government shall be compelled to render any military service before peace be established over the whole territory. "Art. V--Every individual who by virtue of this capitulation may wish to depart from the island shall be permitted to do so, and the Spanish government shall provide him with the means therefor, without passing through any town or settlement, if he so desire. "Art. VI--The capitulation of each force shall take place in uninhabited spots, where beforehand the arms and ammunition of war shall be deposited. "Art. VII--In order to further the acceptance, by the insurgents of the other departments of these articles of capitulation, the commander-in-chief of the Spanish army shall furnish them free transportation, by land and sea, over all the lines within his control of the Central Department. "Art. VIII--This pact with the Committee of the Central Department shall be deemed to have been made with all the departments of the island which may accept the conditions." In addition to this, there were reported to have been secret agreements, which provided for "a civil governor with duties distinct from those of a military governor; a provincial parliament in each of the three departments; popular elections for municipal officers; the inclusion of the war debt in the public estimates of the island; the dissolution of the Volunteer Corps of Havana, and the organization of a new militia to be composed alike of Cubans and Spaniards; a representation of the island in the Cortes; a recognition of the military rank of the insurgent chiefs and officers, and those accredited with foreign commissions, their rank 'to be effective only in the list of the Spanish army in Cuba,' and the complete abolition of slavery in five years, with indemnity." Both parties disregarded the terms of the treaty. Doubtless the Cubans would have played with entire fairness, had it not been for the fact that the Spaniards at once demonstrated that they did not intend to keep their promises. General Garcia retained the title of "President of the Republic," and the House of Representatives continued, until 1869, to meet somewhere in the wilderness. General Campos made a bid for popular favor, and went on record as advocating a peace which would be lasting. The Spaniards had good cause not to desire resumption of warfare, and the Cubans were too worn out to start any serious trouble. Campos wrote a report to the Spanish government, couched in florid language and breathing benevolence: "I do not wish to make a momentary peace. I desire that this peace be the beginning of a bond of common interests between Spain and her Cuban provinces, and that this bond be drawn continually closer by the identity of aspirations and the good faith of both. "Let not the Cubans be considered as pariahs or minors, but put on an equality with other Spaniards in everything not inconsistent with their present condition. "It was on the other hand impossible, according to my judgment and conscience, not to grant the first condition; not to do it was to postpone indefinitely the fulfilment of a promise made in our present constitution. It was not possible that this island, richer, more populous, and more advanced morally and materially than her sister, Porto Rico, should remain without the advantages and liberties long ago planted in the latter with good results; and the spirit of the age, and the decision of the country gradually to assimilate the colonies to the Peninsula, made it necessary to grant the promised reforms, which would have been already established, and surely more amply, if the abnormal state of things had not concentrated all the attention of government on the extirpation of the evil which was devouring this rich province. "I did not make the last constitution; I had no part in the discussion of it. It is now the law, and as such I respect it, and as such endeavor to apply it. But there was in it something conditional, which I think a danger, a motive of distrust, and I have wished that it might disappear. Nothing assures me that the present ministry will continue in power, and I do not know whether that which replaces it would believe the fit moment to have arrived for fulfilling the precept of the constitution. "I desire the peace of Spain, and this will not be firm while there is war or disturbance in the richest jewel of her crown. Perhaps the insurgents would have accepted promises less liberal and more vague than those set forth in this condition; but even had this been done it would have been but a brief postponement, because those liberties are destined to come for the reasons already given, with the difference that Spain now shows herself generous and magnanimous, satisfying just aspirations which she might deny, and a little later, probably very soon, would have been obliged to grant them, compelled by the force of ideas and of the age. "Moreover, she has promised over and over again to enter on the path of assimilation, and if the promises were more vague, even though the fulfillment of this promise were begun, these people would have the right to doubt our good faith and to show a distrust unfortunately warranted by the failings of human nature itself. "The not adding another one hundred thousand to the one hundred thousand families that mourn their sons slain in this pitiless war, and the cry of peace that will resound in the hearts of the eighty thousand mothers who have sons in Cuba who are liable to conscription, would be a full equivalent for the payment of a debt of justice." February 21, 1878, saw the Cuban insurrection officially at an end. The Cubans laid down their arms and surrendered to the Spanish forces. On March 1, telegrams announcing this fact were received by the Cortes in Spain with the greatest rejoicing. On the next day a royal decree was published at Havana announcing that Cuba was to be accorded the same treatment which had been granted to Porto Rico; and many concessions were nominally made to the former insurgents. Cuba was to be allowed to have her own municipal government and city councils, and was to be granted representation in the Cortes, while a second decree was promulgated at Puerto Principe declaring the freedom of all slaves who had been born since the enactment of the measure of February 10, 1869, on the condition that within a month they presented themselves to the authorities for the proper legal procedure. Spain had so frequently gone on record, particularly in her efforts to enlist the sympathy of the United States Government, that she would, immediately on a determination of the war in her favor, declare the abolition of slavery, that she could not now very well give the lie to her assurances. The proclamation at Puerto Principe, however, contained the extremely unjust provision that all patriots who had taken part in the revolution would not receive compensation for the financial loss suffered in the freeing of their slaves, but that the loyal Spaniards would be indemnified. It is not difficult to picture how this provision must have impressed those patriots who had sacrificed everything in an effort to free themselves from that very rule which was now imposing such an unfair enactment upon them. Official Spanish reports give the following table of their losses yearly during the Ten Years' War: _Year_ _Force in Field_ _Deaths_ 1869 35,570 5,504 1870 47,242 9,395 1871 55,357 6,574 1872 58,708 7,780 1873 52,500 5,902 1874 62,578 5,923 1875 63,212 6,361 1876 78,099 8,482 1877 90,245 17,677 1878 81,700 7,500 ------ Total 81,098 CHAPTER XVII The Spanish government had granted concessions to the Cubans, or what on their face seemed to be concessions, but in actual administration, the government remained practically the same. The power remained vested in a military government, at the head of which was the Captain-General, whose name was subsequently changed to Governor-General, but whose nature and functions remained in the last analysis very little different from what they had been before the revolution. The struggle had, however, given the Cubans less fear of their tyrant. They had demonstrated that they were able for ten years to keep up an armed resistance against their oppressors, and one which had occasioned Spain a great loss of life, and of property, and had caused her rulers to have many unpleasant hours, struggling with vexing problems. Those who had accomplished this would never again be quite the same. They could never again be ground beneath the heels of Spanish tyrants in the same unresisting if not uncomplaining fashion, which had been the regular order of things before the revolution. Had a Lopez come to Cuba, he would have found a far different people from those who failed to rally to aid him when in 1851 he made his fruitless efforts to free the island. During 1878 two political parties were organized in Cuba, and another was essayed, the proposed constitution of the latter forming the basis for the platform of the Autonomistas, then the most radical of all Cuban political organizations. The Liberal Party belied its name, for its platform was a most conservative one. It followed closely the lines of the agreement with Spain, as laid down in the Treaty of Zanjon, and the negotiations in connection therewith, and it sought mainly to obtain the enforcement of the promises which Spain made at that time, and in which, from long experience, most Cubans had little faith--nor was this lack of faith unwarranted. The party was really an organized movement to enforce the provisions of the treaty. Its platform provided for the right to assemble and to discuss political questions, the right of freedom in religious worship, the removal of the restrictions which had been placed on the press, and the right of petition. It also provided for the protection of the homes and property of loyal Cubans, and for the right of correspondence without censorship or interference from the Spanish authorities. It stood for improvements in the criminal law, which would make it impossible for the crimes which had been so prevalent to be committed further against the persons and property of those who were in sympathy with the liberation of Cuba. It also sought to obtain the admission of Creoles to office on the island on the same basis as Spanish born citizens, and above all a complete separation of the military and civil functions of the government. It will be recalled that one of the promises said to have been made by Spain was that there should be a civil governor. By these means it hoped to abolish the discrimination against the Creoles in the government of their own country. Changes in taxation also had their part in the platform, with an idea of obtaining a decrease of the high export duties. An analysis of the platform of the Union Constitutionalists shows surprisingly little difference from that of the Liberals. It also provided for the right of petition, asked for an improvement in the methods of administration of the laws--that is the abatement of the perversion of those laws by unscrupulous Spanish officials, so that they might be used as a club for protesting Creoles. The platform of the Union Constitutionalists further stood for the enactment of special laws for Cuba, which would be peculiarly suited to her needs, including protection for the various industries and activities, the planters and the tobacco raisers, and the removal of excessive export duties. It also sought a commercial treaty with the United States, and the abolition of slavery in accordance with the Moret law, with modifications which seemed proper in the light of conditions in Cuba. A third platform was formulated, but it was never completely adopted, and the party which drafted it died at birth, without a name. It took the bull by the horns, and flaunted its conviction in the face of Spain. It is a matter of conjecture whether if the leaders of this movement had prolonged the life of the potential party, it would have long survived active Spanish opposition. This platform provided for free trade, free banks, free shipping, free labor, none but municipal taxes, the prompt and complete abolition of slavery, the formation of a provincial militia and universal suffrage. Its terms must have been a severe shock to the Spaniards. No fewer than thirty representatives in the Spanish Cortes were allotted to Cuba; but such representation was a farce, for pains were taken by those who held the balance of power to see that so small a number of Creoles were sent as representatives, and that the Spaniards so greatly outnumbered them, that the Cuban vote counted for nothing, and Spain still held complete power. This was the more regrettable and exasperating, since the Cubans so far as they were permitted to do so sent men of the highest type to the Cortes. Among them, preeminently, was Dr. Rafael Montoro, one of the ablest scholars and statesmen in Cuban history, who was destined subsequently to play a great part in the administration of the free and independent Republic of Cuba. It is self-evident that such conditions and the failure of Spain to live up to her promises would be provocative of much dissatisfaction, and it followed as a matter of course that those who had learned to rebel now took that means of expressing their dissatisfaction. In fact the war had never ceased, for soon after the signing of the treaty, as soon as Spain had shown her hand, Calixto Garcia assembled a small band of rebels, and continued to harass the Spanish in guerrilla warfare, taking up his position in mountain fastnesses which were inaccessible except to those who held the key to their labyrinthine paths, and biding his time in the most annoying fashion possible until he felt matters were ripe for another widespread armed rebellion. In August, 1879, in the districts of Holguin and Santiago there was a serious renewal of hostilities. The rebels, so termed by the Spanish, consisted mainly of freed blacks, and were under the leadership of three mulattoes, Maceo, Brombet and Guilleamon. This movement thoroughly frightened the authorities, and two thousand Spanish troops were promptly sent to repress it. The insurgents were reinforced by large numbers of runaway slaves--those who had demanded their liberty and had had their request denied. The insurgents took advantage of the disturbed condition of the country and sought to turn the general situation to their advantage. They hid in the mountains, in dense woods, and in wild places, and descended wherever and whenever they could pillage and burn without intervention from Spanish troops. So thoroughly did the Spanish authorities dread a renewal of hostilities that the Captain-General declared the province of Santiago to be in a state of siege. Meanwhile the insurgents drew up a constitution for themselves, and continued their activities for over six months, terrorizing the people, destroying property and taking prisoners for ransom. [Illustration: JOSÉ SILVERIO JORRIN José Silverio Jorrin y Bramosio, a distinguished advocate, man of letters and publicist, was born in Havana on June 20, 1816, and was one of the pupils of José de la Luz at his famous school. After travelling in the United States and Europe he became one of the leaders of the Cuban bar and filled several judicial and other public offices. He was at one time a Senator in the Spanish Cortes, from Camaguey. His chief interest was in the advancement of the educational and economic welfare of the island, and on subjects relating thereto he wrote a number of important works. He wrote a Biography of Christopher Columbus and other historical works, and had much repute as an orator. For some years he was a leader of the Autonomist party, but later identified himself actively with the cause of independence. He lived to see independence assured if not actually yet achieved, dying in New York in 1897.] Meantime General Garcia conducted a campaign in the neighborhood of Santiago, which further complicated matters for the government. He had planned a general uprising for December 15, with the expectation that his small band would be largely reinforced by the arrival of filibustering expeditions from the United States, with men and arms and ammunitions. But he was disappointed, and the government retaliated by making wholesale arrests of all persons, particularly blacks, who were under the slightest suspicion of sympathy with the rebellion. Three hundred and fifty blacks were arrested in Santiago alone. The rebels in spite of their small numbers had been able to do so much damage to property in this vicinity, that the government voted a hundred thousand dollars for the relief of Santiago, and half that amount for the same purpose in Puerto Principe. The general feeling of unrest, uncertainty and suspicion among the Creoles was enhanced by the action of the government at Madrid in publishing a manifesto, on April 6, 1880, demanding that the Cuban government be assimilated with that of Spain, and promising in return enactments which would greatly increase the material prosperity of the colony. If Spain did not keep her promises with Cuba in a position to protest, it was a foregone conclusion that the action contemplated by the manifesto would not be productive of leniency in the government of the island, and it is not difficult to imagine with what wrath and consternation the knowledge that such a plan could ever be formulated filled the hearts of those who had struggled so long and so valiantly and at so great personal sacrifice for the freedom of Cuba. The result was a renewal of sporadic rebellions, and a seething turmoil of anger and resentment on the part of the Creoles. In April, 1881, an attempt was made by the Spanish government by concessions to allay the storm which it had raised, and on April 7, the constitution of 1876 was again proclaimed. This granted to the Cubans full rights of citizenship, and the rights of free speech, free press and assembly, and representation. This was promptly modified on the very day of its enactment by the promulgation of the order of January 7, 1879, which had the effect of muzzling the press which had only a few hours before been freed. The other rights granted were of course existent only in name, and thus Spain continued her old program of stupid treachery. In 1882 an event occurred which for a time seemed likely to draw England into the controversy. Three Cuban patriots, Maceo, Rodriguez, and a third whose name is not of record, escaped from custody while they were being transferred from one penal colony in Spain to another. They hastened to gain English territory, and fled to Gibraltar. One of the rights sacred to the English government was the right of asylum. This the Spanish government proceeded to ignore. The Spanish consul notified the English authorities that the fugitives must be returned to Spain, and suggested as a method which would be productive of the least trouble that at a time and place agreed upon they be sent across the border, whereupon the Spanish authorities could apprehend them without difficulty and the controversy would be happily ended. Through some misapprehension on the part of the British officials, this was done. But the end was not yet. The British government, when it learned of the occurrence, promptly demanded the return of the men to British soil, under the right of asylum. The Spanish government exhausted all its arguments in vain. Great Britain stood firm, but when Spain had surrendered two of the fugitives, the matter was finally dropped and the fate of the third one was left to the mercies of Spain. The history of Cuba was from this time on, until rebellion finally flamed into the war in which, with the aid of the United States, she gained her independence, one of petty persecutions, and retaliation by continuous uprisings, small in character but indicative of the smouldering fire. These were frequently aided by filibustering expeditions sent by the Cuban Junta in New York. In 1885 a revolt took place in the provinces of Santa Clara and Santiago, always the hotbed of rebellion. The rebellion was quickly suppressed, but its leaders, and a large number of other Cubans, who were merely under suspicion of complicity, were executed without trial. One of the leaders, General Vidal, was banished from Cuba, but, when he was about to leave for Jamaica, under an arrangement made with the Spanish authorities, he was brutally murdered by hired assassins. Meanwhile the administration of justice in Cuba would have been almost ludicrous if it had not been tragic. The Spaniards openly practiced the most egregious frauds at the polls, and by all the chicanery known to corrupt politics kept the Creoles from the participation in the government which Spain had so glibly promised them. One of the interesting methods to prevent the voting of the poor in Cuba was the prohibition under a law passed on December 12, 1892, of bona fide citizens from exercising the right of suffrage unless they paid the sum of five dollars in taxes. This law applied to black and white alike, and was prohibitive so far as the greater number of the former were concerned. Meanwhile those Cubans who desired better things for their children than the nightmare in which they themselves lived were eager for education for their families, but for the most part education was a privilege which belonged only to the wealthy. It was not until 1883 that there existed schools of learning similar to high schools. It was not Spain's game to educate the masses, for if an autocracy is to survive, too much learning is a dangerous thing to be allowed to spread among the common people. In 1887 the Spanish authorities decided, justly, that the treasury of Spain was being deprived of revenues by the evasion of taxes, and that this was being done by the connivance of the custom house officials. The Governor-General therefore ordered the seizure of the custom house by Spanish troops, and the wharfs and warehouses were placed under heavy guard. After an investigation had been started a number of merchants whose business was importing confessed that they had been doing business in a way which deprived the government of certain revenues and asked permission to change their entries. They were granted three days to do this. The result was an enormous increase in revenue from the custom house. The Governor-General proceeded from that time forth to keep a strict watch on custom house matters, with the result that evasions of the law were the exception. By 1887 the country was in such condition that it was unsafe for any man to proceed unguarded for a mile or two into the country. Neither the person of any well-to-do planter, nor his property was safe. Outlaw bands overran the highways, and took cover in woods and hills, from whence they pounced on travelers, robbed and beat them, and took them captive for ransom. The brigands were so daring and their depredations assumed such proportions that martial law was declared in over a hundred towns and villages. Incendiarism was rife, not only were planters robbed and murdered, but their possessions were pillaged, their fields were laid waste and their buildings were burned. Sanitary conditions on the island were so bad that in the months of December, 1887, and of January and February, 1880, two thousand cases of smallpox were reported. This, of course, covered only a small portion of the cases actually existent, and those who did not fall victim to smallpox were in danger of yellow fever. Even Nature seemed to have entered into a conspiracy against the unhappy island, for in 1887 there was an earthquake, and the following year a violent cyclone, which went the whole length of the island, but did its principal damage in the province of Santa Clara. Not less than a thousand lives were lost. For a time, indeed, there was a measure of relief. That was when under the McKinley tariff of 1890, Cuban products, particularly sugar, gained freer access to American markets. While this system lasted, there was an accession of material prosperity in Cuba. But upon its repeal, due to a change of politics in the United States government, prosperity in Cuba waned, while discontent, dissatisfaction and disaffection waxed apace, and undismayed and resolute patriots began preparing for another general insurrection. During the period between the Ten Years' War and the final War of Independence there was a succession of Governors-General, varying chiefly in the degree of their unacceptability to the Cuban people and of the ineptitude with which they maladministered the affairs of the island and thus contributed to the ultimate and inevitable catastrophe. Martinez Campos served, with the best of intentions, until the late summer of 1883. Then on September 28 he was succeeded by Ignacio Maria del Castillo. His administration endured for three years, and was replaced in 1886 by that of General Emilio Calleja y Isasi, who gave place the next year to Saba Marin. Another change occurred on March 13, 1889, when Manuel de Salamanca y Negrete took office. He served for less than a year, being succeeded on February 7, 1890, by General J. Chinchilla. To the latter must be accorded the distinction of having the shortest term of all, for on June 10 following his place was taken by General Polavieja. He served for two years and was succeeded on May 31, 1892, by General A. R. Arias, who in turn, on August 10, 1894, was replaced by General Emilio Calleja, who thus entered upon his second term, in which he was to suffer the penalty of the misdeeds of a long line of predecessors, and was to begin reaping the whirlwind harvest of the evil wind which for four centuries Spain had been sowing with a perverse and ruthless hand. CHAPTER XVIII "New occasions," sang a great American poet of freedom and of progress, "new occasions teach new duties"; and splendidly was the truth exemplified in Cuba in the era of which we have been writing in this volume. There befell the island at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century a new occasion, the greatest thus far in all its history since the landfall of Columbus. It was perhaps only partially realized at first, and it took many years for the complete realization to dawn upon the universal popular mind. But even before the realization came, the Cuban people, not yet cognizant of the tremendous force which was working within them, began to rise to meet the new occasion, the new opportunity which was opening before them, with a triumphant spiritual puissance which has not often been rivalled in the annals of the nations. [Illustration: FELIPE POEY] FELIPE POEY One of Cuba's greatest natural scientists, Felipe Poey, was born in Havana on May 26, 1799, and was educated at the San Carlos Seminary and in France. He became a lawyer in Madrid, but in 1822 left that city because of political conditions and returned to Cuba to devote himself to ichthyology and entomology. He published a monumental work on "Cuban Ichthyology," and others on "Cuban Lepidopteres," "Cuban Mineralogy," the "Geography of Cuba," and the "Natural History of Cuba." He was for many years professor of zoology at the University of Havana and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences. He died in 1891. Writing of that very period, in his essay on Jean Paul Richter, and referring to the British domination of the sea which Nelson had achieved, to the mastery of the lands of Europe which Napoleon had won, and to the intellectual primacy which Germany--though beaten to the dust in war--was then enjoying, Carlyle observed that "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of--the air!" It was a fine conception, as true then as it would be untrue to-day. In a significant sense the same shrewd observation is apt to the situation of Cuba a hundred years ago. Spain held control of the material interests of the island, on sea and on land, but she could not restrain the Cubans from self-control, which meant immeasurable progress, in the air--that is, in the intellectual life. It was thus intellectually, in the only way as yet within their power, that the people of the island met the new and transcendent occasion. It was, as we have seen, a period of revolution and of counter-revolution, a time of flux, throughout the greater part of the world. The mighty liberal impulse of the French Revolution, following in the wake of the American revolution, was by no means annihilated by the infatuated imperialism of Napoleon or by the reactionary movement which prevailed for a time after his fall. It was felt, and it prevailed, in North and Central and South America, from the Golden Gate to the Strait of Magellan; and in the islands of the Caribbean and the Gulf. In Cuba, as we have seen, there seemed to be at first no response, for reasons which also we have hitherto considered. But all unconsciously the Cuban people received and felt the impulse, and answered it. Periods of revolution are usually periods of intellectual activity, and such was the case in Cuba. While there was in the first quarter of the century little thought of a revolt against Spain, or of independence, the revolutionary spirit which was in the air inspired the minds of Cubans, not only with activity but also, largely, with thoughts and aspirations of freedom. There was indeed in particular a striking likeness between Cuba and the Thirteen Colonies in North America just before the Revolution in that country. It will be recalled that down to a few months, perhaps even weeks, before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, very few American leaders contemplated independence. The war which they had begun at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill was not a war of secession, but a civil war intended merely to secure for British subjects in the colonies the same rights and privileges that British subjects in the British Isles enjoyed. But a little later it was seen that this would not suffice, and that complete separation and independence must be achieved. Precisely so did some of the foremost Cuban minds at the time of which we are writing, and indeed in much later years, incline toward reforms and autonomous freedom under the Spanish crown. [Illustration: ANTONIO BACHILLER] ANTONIO BACHILLER Patriot, economist and man of letters, Antonio Bachiller y Morales was born in Havana on June 7, 1812, and was educated for the bar. He wrote several volumes of poems and plays, but gave his best attention to valuable treatises on Cuban history, industry, agriculture, economics, administration, and law. He was one of the foremost authorities and writers on Cuban and Antillean archaeology. He was professor of philosophy in the University of Havana, held various public offices, and was a patriotic orator of great power. He died on January 10, 1889. These men saw with exultation the enkindling of a spirit of liberty in the Iberian Peninsula. They saw the revolt of Spain against Joseph Bonaparte. They saw the Spanish people dictate to their Bourbon king that Constitution of 1812 which had it been triumphantly enforced would have marked an epoch in the history of the rights of man. They sympathized with and exulted in these things, and hoped for their extension in Cuba. It was only when they sadly realized that these things, even if gained for Spain, were not for Cuba, and that Liberal Spain was as illiberal toward Cuba as ever despotic Spain had been, that they turned from autonomy to independence. Then the intellectual activities which had been directed to the achievements of the Peninsula, were turned to the interests of the island. [Illustration: JOSÉ MARÍA HEREDIA The bearer of one of the greatest names in the literature of Cuba and of Spain, José María Heredia, was born at Santiago de Cuba on December 31, 1803, and died at Toluca, Mexico, on May 7, 1839. Because of his early identification with the cause of Cuban freedom in the "Soles y Rayos de Bolivar" he was compelled to flee to the United States, whence he presently went to Mexico and there spent the remainder of his life, holding places of high rank and importance. He was at once advocate, soldier, traveller, linguist, diplomat, journalist, magistrate, historian, poet. His "Ode to Niagara" has made him illustrious in American literature. His general writings have given him conspicuous rank among the world's great lyric poets of the Nineteenth Century.] The most striking exemplar of the pro-Spanish attitude of which we have been speaking, as well as perhaps the greatest of all Cuban poets, was José Maria Heredia; of whom the world too often thinks as a Spanish rather than as a Cuban genius. He was born in Cuba in 1803, the son of parents who had fled from Santo Domingo to escape the fury of the revolution of Toussaint l'Ouverture. His father had formerly been a Chief Justice of the Venezuelan court at Caracas, under the Spanish government, and was loyal to Spain, though he detested and protested against her tyrannies and corruption and imbued his son with a passionate love of liberty. The younger Heredia established himself in the city of Matanzas, as a successful lawyer. But already he had written many poems, chiefly of freedom. They were in praise of Spain, and of the Spanish aspirations for liberty which were manifested in the Constitution of 1812. Indeed, never did Heredia commit himself against Spain, harshly as he was treated by her. But the poems which he had written in glorification of the Peninsular struggles for liberty against Napoleon and against the Bourbons were recognized by his countrymen to be equally applicable to the Cuban struggle against Spain, which was already impending, and they were consequently taken up throughout the island in that sense and for that purpose. This circumstance, though unintended by him, subjected him to grave suspicion; and he was presently charged with complicity in an insurrectionary movement in 1823, and was banished from Cuba for life. After a brief visit to the United States he went to Mexico, became a government official, married, and spent the rest of his life there, with the exception of a few weeks in 1836, when the Spanish authorities permitted him to revisit Cuba, though their espionage made his visit anything but pleasant. He died in 1839. Heredia, who has been called the Byron of Spanish literature, and who is claimed by Spain as one of the glories of her letters, is known in Cuba largely by his patriotic poems, and his poems on nature. In the United States, where because of his exile from Cuba his poems were first printed, he is chiefly known by three great compositions, two of which were translated into English by William Cullen Bryant. These are his "Ode to Niagara," Which ranks among the greatest poems ever written by any poet on that theme; his "Ode to the Hurricane"; and a sonnet addressed to his wife. It is with his political and patriotic poems, however, that we are now most concerned, and of them it may be said that seldom have the aspirations of a people for freedom been expressed with more passionate eloquence. His first important poem, "The Star of Cuba," written while he was yet in his teens, expressed a readiness to die, if need be, for Cuba, leaving his head upon the scaffold as a token of the brutality of Spain. Years afterward, in exile, he apostrophized Cuba as the "land of light and beauty," and then thus prophesied: My Cuba! Thou shalt one day rise From 'neath the despot's hand, Free as the air beneath thy skies Or waves which kiss thy strand. In vain the traitor's noxious plots, The tyrant's wrath is vain; Since roll the surges of the sea Between thy shores and Spain! [Illustration: FELIX VARELA] FELIX VARELA One of Cuba's greatest philosophers and churchmen, Felix Varela, was born in Havana on November 20, 1788, was educated at San Carlos, and became a priest and teacher. After several years of service at San Carlos as Professor of Philosophy, in 1823 he was compelled to flee to New York as a political exile. In that city he spent the rest of his life, editing several periodicals, translating many works, and writing much on religious and philosophical subjects. He became rector of the Church of the Transfiguration, and in 1845 was chosen Vicar-General of New York. A few years later he went to Florida on account of his health, and died at St. Augustine in 1853. Though Heredia took little active part in the physical revolt of Cuba against Spain, his poems exerted during his lifetime a potent influence in aid of revolution, and that influence steadily increased until, nearly three score years after his death, his prophecy of Cuban freedom was splendidly fulfilled. He was the first great voice of Cuban freedom, the first great pioneer in that extraordinary intellectual development which made Cuban history memorable in the Nineteenth Century. Truly did the Spanish critic Menendez say of him that if his political activity did not equal that of other conspirators against Spain, and though he took no part in armed struggles, his intellectual influence was constant and supremely effective, since he surpassed in talents all his countrymen. [Illustration: JOSÉ AGUSTIN CABALLERO] But men might fall a little short--if indeed they did so--of Heredia's singular genius, and yet be noteworthy figures in the intellectual world. Well comparable with Heredia in influence, though exerted far differently, was the brilliant Professor of Latin, philosophy and science in the University of Havana, Felix Varela y Morales. It used to be said, and not without reason, that it was he who first taught the Cuban people to think as Cubans. He was sent to Spain as a Cuban Deputy to that historic Cortes which met at Cadiz in 1823 and was dispersed by Ferdinand VII because of its Liberalism. Varela was among its most conspicuous members, and was among those whose arrest was ordered by the reactionary Bourbons. He fortunately found asylum under the British flag at Gibraltar, whence he made his way to the United States. There, at Philadelphia, he published during the remainder of his life, a weekly journal, _El Habanero_, which had a large though chiefly surreptitious circulation in Cuba, and which exerted an inestimable influence for the encouragement of patriotic endeavors. He died in Florida in 1853, and his remains rested there for nearly half a century, when, after the achievement of Cuban independence, they were transferred to his native land. JOSÉ AGUSTIN CABALLERO One of the greatest ecclesiastics of Cuba, Father José Agustin Caballero, uncle and preceptor of José de la Luz, was born in Havana in February, 1771, and for many years was Director of the San Carlos Seminary. He was a leading member of the Patriotic Society, wrote much for the press, was the author of a number of educational and historical works, and preached a memorable sermon over the remains of Columbus when they were placed in the Cathedral at Havana. He died in 1835. A name which we are not inclined to rank below any other in intellectual significance and influence in Nineteenth Century Cuba is that of the illustrious José de la Luz y Caballero, who was born in 1800 and died in 1862, too soon to see the beginning of that Ten Years' War to which his teachings had powerfully contributed. "The Father of the Cuban Revolution" the Spaniards called him, and more perhaps than any other man did he deserve that honorable distinction. It was as an educator of youth that this great man's great work was done. In the world-shaking revolution year of 1848, after O'Donnell has drowned the Cuban slave revolts in blood, and when Narciso Lopez was just preparing for his descents upon the island, Luz y Caballero opened in Cuba a high school for boys. It was not a political school; certainly not seditious, unless truth and virtue were seditious. Hundreds of Cuban patriots, including many of the leaders in the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence, have testified that it was his teaching that made them the aggressive, resolute, militant patriots that they were. Yet they have all been equally insistent that "Don Pepe" as they called him was never a political propagandist. He never incited them to revolt, never prejudiced them against Spain. Yet, said his Spanish critics and enemies, he prepared his pupils to conspire and to be garrotted! Both accounts of his teaching were true, and together they formed the severest possible indictment of the Spanish régime. The burden of his teaching was manhood. He and his assistants gave much attention to the ordinary academic studies, in science and the humanities. But constantly he impressed upon them the duty of being manly. That meant that they were to be true, pure, resolute against injustice, respecting themselves and respecting others as themselves, and ready if need should be to sacrifice themselves for the sake of duty. It was the highest and best form of practical ethical teaching. He might, it is true, have added at the end of each of his weekly discourses to his boys the words of Patrick Henry, "If this be treason, make the most of it." The Spaniards did regard it as treason, and it did certainly incite and foment insurrection against Spain. But so much the worse for Spain, if such teaching was incompatible with her rule in Cuba. [Illustration: DOMINGO DEL MONTE] DOMINGO DEL MONTE One of the greatest patrons of Cuban letters, Domingo del Monte, was born in Venezuela on August 4, 1804, was brought to Cuba in 1810, and was educated at the University of Havana. He travelled much in America and Europe, and then settled in Havana, where he was secretary of the Royal Economic Society. He edited a dictionary of Cuban provincialisms, and published a volume of "American Rhymes." He made his house the rendezvous of Cuban men of letters and gave to many of them invaluable encouragement and aid; and was also active in promoting public education throughout the island. He died at Madrid, Spain, in 1853. An important literary influence was exerted in Cuba, beginning in the latter part of the Eighteenth century, and reaching its height in the first third of the Nineteenth, by the society called "Friends of Peace," of which Domingo del Monte was the leading spirit. It was this organization which gave Varela his professorship in the University of Havana. It was it that gave a prize for the best poem on the birth of the princess who was to become Isabella II of Spain; a prize which was won by a lad of sixteen. This was Jose Antonio Echeverria, who afterward edited a literary journal called _El Plantel_, and still later became one of the leaders of the strife for independence. Another protégé of Del Monte's--for he was a wealthy patron of letters, at Havana--was Ramon Velez y Herrera, who was born in 1808 and died in 1886. He devoted his attention chiefly to depicting in poetry the life, manners and customs of the common people of Cuba, and particularly of the peasantry. Still another was José Jacinto Milanes, who was born in 1814 and died in 1863. He was preeminently the poet of "local color" in nature. No other has quite so richly and so perfectly embodied Cuban landscapes in verse. But both these poets also wrote in behalf of Cuban freedom. [Illustration: JOSÉ JACINTO MILANES] Domingo del Monte himself wrote some poetry, but much more in prose, and he had the distinction of being practically the founder of political tract and pamphlet writing, an art which was largely practised with powerful results. He wrote in 1836 a notable criticism of the despotic administration of Tacon, and an analysis of the condition in which Cuba found herself under such government. This opened the way for a veritable flood of political tracts. JOSÉ JACINTO MILANES Born in Matanzas on August 16, 1814, and because of poverty chiefly self-educated, José Jacinto Milanes became a noted linguist and graceful poet. Most of his writings were translated into German, and some into English and French, and he gained international repute as a man of letters. Mental derangement and failing physical health afflicted him in 1843, and he died in 1863. Conspicuous among them were the writings of José Antonio Saco, who was born in 1797 and died in 1879. He was both a rival and a friend of Varela, and was the latter's successor in his professorship when Varela went to Cadiz and then fled to America. After Varela's arrival in the United States, Saco formed a literary and patriotic partnership with him, and together they edited the _Cuban Review_, a literary and critical journal of high rank, which commanded international attention. The American historian and literary critic, George Ticknor, said of it that perusal of it greatly impressed him with the amount of literary talent that existed in Cuba. The _Review_, he declared, far surpassed anything of the kind in any other of the Spanish or former Spanish colonies, and indeed "a review of such spirit, variety and power has never been attempted even in Madrid." Of course, Saco was exiled by Tacon, the immediate cause of offense being a pamphlet exposing and denouncing some of the more flagrant evils of the slave trade. The result was, however, that in exile Saco wrote one of the most elaborate and exhaustive histories of slavery in existence in any language, beside continuing his occasional political tracts. Nor did his influence end with his death and the laying down of his pen, for portions of his writings figured conspicuously and effectively in the literary propaganda which formed the prelude to the War of Independence. Gabriel de la Conception Valdes was another of the protégés of Del Monte. He was born in 1809 and died in 1844. His father was a mulatto barber and his mother was a Spanish dancer, and he himself was permitted to remain illiterate in boyhood. While working as a maker of tortoise shell combs he was taught to read, and soon developed a passion for books. From reading he proceeded to the writing of poetry, adopting the pen name of "Placido" from the name of Placido Puentes, a druggist of Havana who encouraged his literary efforts to the extent of giving him pen and ink and paper, and a desk in his shop at which to sit and write whenever he felt inclined. Valdes was a voluminous writer, above most of his contemporaries, and while much that he wrote was mediocre, many of his poems were of high merit, and some of them deserve to rank among the best in Cuban literature; indeed, they would be noteworthy in the literature of any land. Especially meritorious are his poems about the slave trade and his apostrophes to Liberty. Because of these he was accused of complicity in an attempted negro uprising. He was hurried through a farcical trial, in which no real proof of his guilt was presented. Indeed, there is good reason for believing that he was entirely innocent. But he was found guilty, and was put to death; repeating aloud, as he walked to the place of execution, one of his poems on liberty. [Illustration: JOSÉ MANUEL MESTRE] JOSÉ MANUEL MESTRE Advocate, philosopher, journalist and revolutionist, José Manuel Mestre was born in Havana in 1832. He was a professor of both law and philosophy in the University until he resigned because of governmental injustice to a colleague. For a time he taught on La Luz's school of El Salvador, and as a lawyer he defended Abad Torres who was charged with trying to murder the Archbishop of Santiago. During the Ten Years' War he was in New York, a member of the Cuban Junta, a diplomatic agent at Washington, and one of the editors of "El Nuevo Mundo." After the Treaty of Zanjon he returned to Cuba, and died in Havana in 1886. Three more writers of note and of real merit must be mentioned as members of the company gathered about him by Domingo del Monte. These were Anselmo Suarez y Romero, who lived from 1818 to 1878, and who as a delineator of Cuban life and customs in fiction and essays ranks among the best Cuban writers of prose; Cirillo Villaverde, who lived from 1812 to 1894, and who also depicted in romances the life and manners of his countrymen, dealing much, moreover, with African slavery; and Ramon de Palma y Romay, who dates from 1812 to 1860, who assisted Echeverria in the editing of "El Plantel," and who was an accomplished writer of verse and of dramas, and who is said to have been the first native Cuban dramatist to have a play of his produced upon the stage. The work of his thus honored was "La Prueba o la Vuelta del Cruzado," in 1837. Palma also wrote some strongly patriotic poems, which excited the suspicion and enmity of the Spanish authorities, and in consequence in 1852 he was arrested and imprisoned for a time on charge of complicity in the revolutionary movements of that time. We may reckon him to have been the last of the earlier school of Cuban writers, who had been more or less unconsciously inspired by the revolutionary era of the beginning of the century. Next came a new school, of the writers of the final and triumphant revolution. We may indeed regard José Antonio Saco, to whom we have already referred, as one of the writers and intellectual leaders of the final revolution. In his earlier years he was an advocate of reforms in the Spanish administration of the island which would make continued union acceptable. In 1848 he had written a strong pamphlet against incorporation of Cuba in the United States, largely on the ground that thus Cuban nationality and the individuality of the Cuban people would be extinguished. Three years later he wrote again on "The Cuban Situation and Its Remedy," in which he pointed out the necessity of Spain's granting fully the just demands of the Cuban people, the alternative being separation and independence; and he indicated pretty clearly that he regarded the latter course as all but inevitable. Thereafter for some years there was comparatively little political literature put forth in Cuba, but other departments of letters greatly flourished. A noteworthy volume of poems by four authors was published in 1853 under the title of "Cuatro Laudes." One of the authors was Dr. Ramon Zambrana, a physician and scientist of high attainments, whose poems were chiefly metaphysical, speculative and imaginative. He was married to Dona Luisa Perez, perhaps the foremost of the women poets of Cuba; to whom he was attracted by the reading of her poems. Many critics rate her verses more highly than his, and they were certainly more popular. [Illustration: LUISA PEREZ DE ZAMBRANA] LUISA PEREZ DE ZAMBRANA One of Cuba's greatest poets, Luisa Perez, was born near El Cobre in 1837, and was married in 1858 to Dr. Ramon Zambrana, an eminent man of letters of Havana. She wrote much in youth, and published a volume of poems in 1856. In addition to her poems she wrote "Angelica and Estrella" and other novels, and translated much from the French and Italian. When Gertrudis Avellanda returned to Cuba, Luisa Perez was chosen to place upon her brow a golden laurel wreath. The second of the four authors was José Gonzalo Roldan, whose best work was in poems of tender sentiment. The third, Rafael Maria de Mendive, devoted himself almost exclusively to poems of melancholy or at least pensive sentiment. He was a passionate admirer and to some extent a disciple if not an imitator of Byron and Moore, many of whose poems he translated into Spanish with much success. Beside his poetical work however, he cooperated with Quintiliano Garcia in founding and conducting _The Havana Review_, a meritorious fortnightly literary journal. His career in Cuba was cut short early in the Ten Years' War by banishment for treason. He was at that time the head of a boys' school, in Havana, and was suspected by the authorities of inculcating in his pupils forbidden ideas of freedom and democracy. One night in January, 1869, when there was much popular indignation against the Spanish government on account of a very drastic proclamation which had been issued against the insurgent patriots, a number of Cuban women marched to a theatre in Havana, wearing dresses of red, blue and white adorned with stars, obviously representing the colors of the revolutionary Cuban flag. Some of Mendive's boys were present, and they applauded and cheered the women so vigorously that a riot arose, in which the notorious Volunteers caused some bloodshed. For this Mendive was held responsible, and he was arrested and exiled to Spain for a term of four years. The influence of the American poet Longfellow and other literary men, however, procured his release, on condition that he would not reenter Cuba. He accordingly went to New York and there lived until the general amnesty after the Ten Years' War permitted his return to Cuba. While in New York he wrote much in behalf of the insurrection, and he cheerfully sent his son as a member of the ill-fated _Virginius_ expedition; writing a touching poem on that occasion: "'Tis well that thou hast done, Most noble and most right, To answer honor's call, my son, For Fatherland to fight." The fourth of the four poets of "Cuatro Laudes" was Felipe Lopez de Brinas, who drew his best themes from nature, and who addressed his best poems to his wife. One of the most popular poets in the period just preceding and during the Ten Years' War was José Fornaris, who in his "Cantos de Siboney" related many legends of the Cuban aborigines, some of them actual traditions but most of them invented by himself. A contemporary who essayed similar themes with almost equal success was Juan Cristobal Napoles Fajardo. Another, Miguel Teurbe de Tolon, devoted himself to legends and ballads not of the aborigines but of the Cuban people of European ancestry. Tolon was an intense patriot, and for that cause suffered exile. For some years he lived in New York, where he was efficiently active as the secretary of the Cuban Revolutionary Junta in that city. [Illustration: JOAQUIN LORENZO LUACES] But perhaps above all others the poet--we might say, the Tyrtaeus--of the revolution was Joaquin Lorenzo Luaces, though he did not live to see the beginning of the war which he did so much to provoke. Luaces, who was born in 1826 and died in 1867, was a devoted Greek scholar, and took Greek poetry for his model. For that reason many have thought that his writings were somewhat academic and artificial. There is however in his poems an exquisite finish surpassed by no other Cuban writer, while many of them reach a height of inspiration which few others have equalled. There was in them, moreover, an irresistible call to Cuban patriotism, which had vast effect in rousing the nation for the Ten Years' War. One of his most stirring lyrics was on the Greek War of Independence, entitled "The Fall of Missolonghi": To arms, ye Greeks! Missolonghi falls! And Ibrahim conquers her soldiers brave. But the Moslem finds within those walls Corpses of Greeks, but never one slave! JOAQUIN LORENZO LUACES Lyric, dramatic and patriotic poet, Joaquin Lorenzo Luaces was born in Havana in 1826, and was educated at the University of that city. His themes as a poet were largely those of the great events of the day, or of history, such as the Fall of Missolonghi, the Death of Lincoln, and the Laying of the Atlantic Cable. Many of his poems were patriotic appeals disguised in classic forms. He died in 1867. This passionate call to patriots to do battle to the death against tyrants was addressed to the Greeks, thousands of miles away, and the tyrants against whom it raged were Moslem Turks, hated by all true Spaniards; wherefore the Spanish censor permitted it to be published freely in Cuba. But every Cuban patriot read in it "Cubans" for "Greeks" and "Spaniards" for "Moslems." Luaces was the author of a number of meritorious dramas. We have spoken of Doña Louisa Perez as probably the foremost of Cuba's women poets. Her chief rival for that distinction was Doña Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanda, a woman of real genius. But she, although born in Camaguey, was for practically all her life so identified with Spain that she is commonly regarded as a Spaniard rather than a Cuban. Born in 1814, she went to Spain with her mother in 1836, and there remained until 1860. By that time she had gained world-wide reputation as a poet and dramatist, and also as a writer of prose fiction, and on her return to Cuba she was publicly greeted as though she were a queen or an empress. A few months later she hastened back to Spain and there spent the remainder of her life. Only a few of her writings were on Cuban themes, but they indicated that she retained in her voluntary exile a deep love for and sympathy with her native land. The successor of Domingo Del Monte as a patron of Cuban letters was Nicolas Azcarate, a very wealthy lawyer of Havana, himself a writer and orator of great power, and an ardent patriot, though generally inclined toward reforms and autonomy rather than independence. He was the leader of that "Committee of Information" which went to Spain in 1865 to lay before the Spanish Minister for the Colonies, Canovas del Castillo, the grievances and the demands of Cuba; a mission which was quite fruitless, for it was quickly followed by the outbreak of the Ten Years' War. Azcarate also founded and conducted at his own cost a newspaper at Havana, _La Voz del Siglo_, to advocate reforms and autonomy. But he lost popularity with the Cubans, who were by this time almost unanimous for independence, while he could not command the favor of the Spaniards; and in consequence he lost his influence, his fortune and his place in society, and ended his life in obscurity and poverty. [Illustration: GERTRUDIS GOMEZ DE AVELLANEDA Although most of her life was spent abroad, the name of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda y Arteaga must always be enrolled among the glories of Cuban literature and Cuban womanhood. She was born in Camaguey on March 23, 1814, and almost literally "lisped in numbers," since she wrote an elegy on the death of her father at the age of six, and two years later wrote a fairy tale, "The Hundred-Headed Giant." In 1836 she bade farewell to Cuba in a memorable sonnet, and went to France, and thence to Spain. There she wrote poems and dramas which placed her in the foremost rank of the world's literary artists; her poetical drama of "Baltasar" in 1853 being one of the greatest triumphs of that generation. In 1860 she revisited Cuba and was publicly crowned in the Tacon Theatre before a great assemblage of the foremost men and women of the nation. She returned to Spain a few years later and died at Seville on February 2, 1873.] Prominent among the poets of the Revolution was Juan Clemente Zenea, who was a martyr as well as a poet. He was born at Bayamo in 1832, his mother being the sister of the poet Fornaris already mentioned. He was one of the pupils of José de la Luz y Caballero, and before leaving school began to write patriotic poems and other articles. At the age of twenty he had to flee from Cuba to escape arrest and prosecution for his complicity in some revolutionary publications; whereupon he went to New York and there continued his revolutionary writings. So extreme were some of these that in December, 1853, a court martial at Havana condemned him to death. Under the amnesty of 1855 he returned to Cuba and became a teacher of modern languages and a writer for the press, and a few years later published a volume of charming poems. After ten years he left Cuba for New York and then for Mexico, and upon the outbreak of the Ten Years' War he joined the Cuban Junta in New York and became editor of its organ, _La Revolucion_. In 1870 the Spanish Minister at Washington, wishing to negotiate secretly with Cespedes, the leader of the Cuban revolutionists, gave Zenea a safe conduct to pass through the Spanish lines and convey a message to Cespedes. This errand was undertaken against the advice of his friends. It was accomplished in safety, however, until when, on his return trip, he was just about to pass beyond the limits of Spanish jurisdiction. Then he was seized by order of the Volunteers and imprisoned. The Spanish government at Madrid telegraphed orders to the Captain-General to honor the safe conduct and to release him at once. But that officer, the notorious Count Valmaseda, ignored these orders, kept Zenea in prison until there was a change of Ministry at Madrid, and then, on August 25, 1871, put him to death. The Spanish government disavowed this monstrous crime, and paid Zenea's widow an indemnity of $25,000, though it failed to punish Valmaseda according to his deserts. Another pupil of Luz y Caballero, and a close friend of Zenea, was Enrique Piñeyro, a journalist, historian, essayist and lecturer, who, born in 1839, had the good fortune to survive until 1911 and thus to see the work of Cuban independence triumphantly completed. José Morales Lemus, born in 1808, established in Havana in 1863 the paper _El Siglo_, a powerful advocate of reforms and autonomy. He went with Saco and Azcarate on the Committee of Information to Madrid, and on his return from that bootless errand he went to Washington as the first Cuban Minister. He was the envoy of the Provisional Government of the Cubans in the Ten Years' War, and as such, though the Cuban Republic did not receive official recognition, he participated in formulating the plan of Cuban settlement which General Daniel E. Sickles, as a special American envoy, carried to Madrid to propose to the Spanish government. This plan provided that Spain should grant Cuban independence in return for a large indemnity to be paid by Cuba under the guarantee of the United States. It was not certain that the Cuban people would have approved that plan. Indeed, it is probable that they would not have done so. The Spanish government would not listen to it, however, and it was abandoned. A little later, in June, 1870, Lemus died. [Illustration: ENRIQUE PIÑEYRO] ENRIQUE PIÑEYRO The son of a University professor of literature and history, Enrique Piñeyro was born in Havana in 1839 and was educated at La Luz's school of El Salvador. He became a successful journalist, writer and teacher, and when the Ten Years' War began he went to New York and there edited "La Revolucion" and "El Nuevo Mundo," and wrote several notable histories and biographies. After the war he returned to Cuba for a short time, then went to Paris and remained there until his death in 1910. [Illustration: JOSÉ MORALES LEMUS A veteran of the Lopez insurrection and of the Ten Years' War was José Morales Lemus, who was born at Gibara on May 2, 1808, and became a successful advocate. Convinced of the wrong of slavery, he liberated his own slaves, who however insisted upon voluntarily remaining in his service. He participated in the Lopez invasion in 1851 and in the Pinto conspiracy in 1855, on which account he was exiled to the United States. In 1866 he returned to Cuba and became President of the Junta of Information. At the outbreak of the Ten Years' War he went to New York to become head of the Cuban Junta there, in consequence of which all his property in Cuba was confiscated. At Washington he strove earnestly though in vain to secure the recognition of Cuban belligerence. His efficient patriotic labors were continued in New York to the day of his death, which occurred on June 23, 1870.] One more Cuban writer demands attention, prior to the War of Independence; though there were indeed many others of merit whose names might well be recalled if a bibliography of the island were to be compiled. Rafael Merchan was born in 1844, and was thus a mere youth when the Ten Years' War began to be planned; yet we must reckon him to have been perhaps the foremost patriotic journalist of that struggle. It was he who suggested the name "Laborers" which was at first commonly applied to the Cuban revolutionists. It will be recalled that in Cuba affairs were directed by a "Labor Committee," that in the United States societies of "Cuban Laborers" were formed in many cities, and that periodicals called _El Laborante_ were published. Proscribed and sentenced to death by the Spanish authorities, he found asylum in New York, and there edited the Cuban revolutionary journal, _La Revolucion_. Thence a few years later he went to Bogota, Colombia, to engage in business and also to continue his literary career. It was his good fortune to be able to resume his patriotic writings in 1890, when the War of Independence began to loom upon the horizon, and to write in 1895 and later several pamphlets in support of that struggle, some of which had much influence in both America and Great Britain. He lived to see the Cuban Republic securely established, and to go abroad as its Minister to France and Spain in 1902. His service was brief, however, because of ill health, which soon brought him home to die. It would be pleasant, and not lacking in profit, to dwell at greater length upon these and other intellectual leaders of the Cuban people. What we have said is, however, sufficient to show how greatly and how masterfully the intellectual side of Cuban life was developed during the century of political stress and fitful military strife which served as the stormy prelude to Cuba's achievement of her independent rank among the nations of the world. It was a development admirably comparable with any ever recorded of any other people, and one which splendidly vindicated the claim of the Cuban people to worth as a sovereign nation. Moreover, it was an unmistakable earnest of approaching independence. While for a century Cuba was purely a Spanish colony, her intellectual life was embryotic and inert. During the two centuries while she was more or less an object of international contention, she showed little activity. But in her fourth century, the era of revolution and of aspirations for independence, she showed the stuff that was in her sons and daughters. Her soldiers were valiant in battle. Her statesmen were wise in council. Her scholars and literati commanded distinguished attention in the most brilliant intellectual era of human history, and demonstrated that the Cuba that was about to be would be in the culture of the higher life a worthy member of the community of nations. THE END OF VOLUME THREE * * * * * INDEX to Volumes 1 thru 4 Abarzuza, Sr. proposes reforms for Cuba, IV, 6. Abreu. Marta and Rosalie, patriotism of, IV, 25. Academy of Sciences, Havana, picture of, IV, 364. Adams, John Quincy, enunciates American policy toward Cuba, II, 258; portrait, 259; on Cuban annexation, 327. Aglona, Prince de. Governor, II, 363. Agramonte, Aristide, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Agramonte, Enrique, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12. Agramonte, Eugenio Sanchez, sketch and portrait, IV, 362. Agramonte, Francisco, IV, 41. Agramonte, Ignacio, portrait, facing. III, 258. Agriculture, early attention to, I, 173, 224; progress, 234; II, 213; absentee landlords, 214; statistics, 223; discussed in periodicals, 250; rehabilitation of after War of Independence, IV, 147. Aguayo, Geronimo de, I, 161. Aguero, Joaquin de, organizes revolution, III, 72; final defeat, 87. Aguiar, Luis de, II, 60. Aguiera, Jose, I, 295. Aguila, Negra, II, 346. Aguilera, Francisco V., sketch and portrait, III, 173. Aguirre, Jose Maria, filibuster, IV, 55; death, 85. Albemarle, Earl of, expedition against Havana, II, 46; occupies Havana, 78; controversy with Bishop Morell, 83. Alcala, Marcos, I, 310. Aldama, Miguel de, sketch and portrait, III, 204. Aleman, Manuel, French emissary, II, 305. Algonquins, I, 7. Allen, Robert, on "Importance of Havana," II, 81. Almendares River, tapped for water supply, I, 266; view on, IV, 167. Almendariz, Alfonso Enrique, Bishop, I, 277. Alquiza, Sancho de, Governor, I, 277. Altamarino, Governor, I, 105; post mortem trial of Velasquez, 107; attacked by the Guzmans, 109; removed, 110. Altamirano, Juan C., Bishop, I, 273; seized by brigands, 274. Alvarado, Luis de, I, 147. Alvarado, Pedro de, in Mexico, I, 86. Amadeus, King of Spain, III, 260. America, relation of Cuba to, I, 1; II, 254. See UNITED STATES. American Revolution, effect of upon Spain and her colonies, II, 138. American Treaty, between Great Britain and Spain, I, 303. Andrea, Juan de, II, 9. Angulo, Francisco de, exiled, I, 193. Angulo, Gonzales Perez de, Governor, I, 161; emancipation proclamation, 163; quarrel with Havana Council, 181; flight from Sores, 186; end of administration, 192. Anners, Jean de Laet de, quoted, I, 353. Annexation of Cuba to United States, first suggested, II, 257, 326; campaign for, 380; sought by United States, III, 132, 135; Marcy's policy, 141; Ostend Manifesto, 142; Buchanan's efforts, 143; not considered in War of Independence, IV, 19. Antonelli, Juan Bautista, engineering works in Cuba, I, 261; creates water supply for Havana, 266. Apezteguia. Marquis de, Autonomist leader, IV, 94. Apodaca, Juan Ruiz, Governor, II, 311. Arana, Martin de, warns Prado of British approach, II, 53. Arana, Melchior Sarto de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 237. Arana, Pedro de, royal accountant, I, 238. Aranda, Esquival, I, 279. Arango, Augustin, murder of, III, 188. Arango, Napoleon, treason of, III, 226. Arango y Pareño, Francisco, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. II; organizes Society of Progress, II, 178; leadership in Cuba, 191; attitude toward slavery, 208; his illustrious career, 305 et seq. Aranguren, Nestor, revolutionist, IV, 85; death, 92. Araoz, Juan, II, 181. Arias, A. R., Governor, III, 314. Arias, Gomez, I, 145. Arignon, Villiet, quoted, II, 26, 94. Armona, José de, II, 108. Army, Cuban, organization of, III, 178; reorganized, 263; under Jose Miguel Gomez, IV, 301. Army, Spanish, in Cuba, III, 181, 295. Aroztegui, Martin de, II, 20. Arrate, José Martin Felix, historian, II, 17, 179. Arredondo, Nicolas, Governor at Santiago, II, 165. Asbert, Gen. Ernesto, amnesty case, IV, 326. "Assiento" compact on slavery, II, 2. Assumption, Our Lady of the, I, 61. Astor, John Jacob, aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Asylums for Insane, II, 317. Atares fortress, picture, II, 103. Atkins, John, book on West Indies, II, 36. Atrocities, committed by Spanish, III, 250; Cespedes's protest against, 254; "Book of Blood," 284; Spanish confession of, 286; war of destruction, 295; Weyler's "concentration" policy, IV, 85. Attwood's Cay. See GUANAHANI. Autonomist party, III, 305; IV, 34; attitude toward Campos in War of Independence, 59; Cabinet under Blanco, 94; earnest efforts for peace, 101; record of its government, 102. Avellanda, Gertrudis Gomez de, III, 331; portrait, facing, 332. Avila, Alfonso de, I, 154. Avila, Juan de, Governor, I, 151; marries rich widow, 154; charges against him, 157; convicted and imprisoned, 158. Avila. See DAVILA. Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, See MENENDEZ. Ayala, Francisco P. de, I, 291. Ayilon, Lucas V. de, strives to make peace between Velasquez and Cortez, I, 98. Azcarata, José Luis, Secretary of Justice, sketch and portrait, IV, 341. Azcarate, Nicolas, sketch and portrait, III, 251, 332. Azcarraga, Gen., Spanish Premier, IV, 88. "Barbeque" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bachiller, Antonio, sketch and portrait, III, 317. Bacon, Robert, Assistant Secretary of State of U. S., intervenes in revolution, IV, 272. Bahia Honda, selected as U. S. naval station, IV, 256. Balboa, Vasco Nuñez de, I, 55, 91. Bancroft, George, quoted, I, 269; II, 1, 24, 41, 117, 120, 159. Banderas, Quintin, revolutionist, IV, 34; raid, 57; death, 84. Baracoa, Columbus at, I, 18; Velasquez at, 60; picture, 60; first capital of Cuba, 61, 168. Barreda, Baltazar, I, 201. Barreiro, Juan Bautista, Secretary of Education, IV, 160. Barrieres, Manuel Garcia, II, 165. Barrionuevo, Juan Maldonado, Governor, I, 263. Barsicourt, Juan Procopio. See SANTA CLARA, Conde. Bayamo, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; Cuban Republic organized there, III, 157. Bayoa, Pedro de, I, 300. Bay of Cortez, reached by Columbus, I, 25. Bees, introduced by Bishop Morell, II, 104; increase of industry, 132. "Beggars of the Sea," raid Cuban coasts, I, 208. Bells, church, controversy over, II, 82. Bembrilla, Alonzo, I, 111. Benavides, Juan de, I, 280. Berrea, Esteban S. de, II, 6. Betancourt, Pedro, Civil Governor of Matanzas, IV, 179; loyal to Palma, 271. Betancourt. See CISNEROS. "Bimini," Island of, I, 139. Bishops of Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, I, 122. "Black Eagle," II, 346. _Black Warrior_ affair, III, 138. Blanchet, Emilio, historian, quoted, II, 9, 15, 24; on siege of Havana, 57, 87. Blanco, Ramon, Governor, IV, 88; undertakes reforms, 89; plans Cuban autonomy, 93; on destruction of _Maine_, 99; resigns, 121. Blue, Victor, observations at Santiago, IV, 110. Bobadilla, F. de, I, 54. Boca de la Yana, I, 18. "Bohio" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bolivar, Simon, II, 333; portrait, 334; "Liberator," 334 et seq.; influence on Cuba, 341; "Soles de Bolivar," 341. Bonel, Juan Bautista, II, 133. "Book of Blood," III, 284. Bourne, Edward Gaylord, quoted, on slavery, II, 209; on Spanish in America, 226. Brinas, Felipe, III, 330. British policy toward Spain and Cuba, I, 270; aggressions in West Indies, 293; slave trade, II, 2; war of 1639, 22; designs upon Cuba, 41; expedition against Havana, 1762, 46; conquest of Cuba, 78; relinquishment to Spain, 92. See GREAT BRITAIN. Broa Bay, I, 22. Brooke, Gen. John R., receives Spanish surrender of Cuba, IV, 122; proclamation to Cuban people, 145; retired, 157. Brooks, Henry, revolutionist, IV, 30. Buccaneers, origin of, I, 269. Buccarelli, Antonio Maria, Governor, II, 110; retires, 115. Buchanan, James, on U. S. relations to Cuba, II, 263; III, 135; Minister to Great Britain, 142; as President seeks annexation of Cuba to U. S., 143. Bull-fighting, II, 233. Burgos, Juan de, Bishop, I, 225. Burtnett, Spanish spy against Lopez, III, 65. Bustamente, Antonio Sanchez de, jurist, sketch and portrait, IV, 165. Caballero, José Agustin, sketch and portrait, III, 321. Caballo, Domingo, II, 173. Cabanas, defences constructed, II, 58; Laurel Ditch, view, facing, 58. Caballero, Diego de, I, 111. Cabezas, Bishop, I, 277. Cabrera, Diego de, I, 206. Cabrera, Luis, I, 198. Cabrera, Lorenzo de, Governor, I, 279; removed, 282. Cabrera, Rafael, filibuster, IV, 70. Cabrera, Raimundo, conspirator in New York, IV, 334; warned, 339. Cadreyta, Marquis de, I, 279. Cagigal, Juan Manuel de, Governor, II, 154; defence of Havana, 155; removed and imprisoned, 157. Cagigal, Juan Manuel, Governor, II, 313; successful administration, 315. Cagigal de la Vega, Francisco, defends Santiago, II, 29; Governor, 32; Viceroy of Mexico, 34. Caguax, Cuban chief, I, 63. Calderon, Gabriel, Bishop, I, 315. Calderon, Garcia, quoted, II, 164, 172. Calderon de la Barca, Spanish Minister, on _La Verdad_, III, 19; on colonial status, 21; negotiations with Soulé, 140. Calhoun, John C., on Cuba, III, 132. Calleja y Isisi, Emilio, Governor, III, 313; proclaims martial law, IV, 30; resigns, 35. Camaguey. See PUERTO PRINCIPE, I, 168. Campbell, John, description of Havana, II, 14. Campillo, Jose de, II, 19. Campos, Martinez de, Governor, III, 296; proclamations to Cuba, 297, 299; makes Treaty of Zanjon and ends Ten Years War, 299; in Spanish crisis, IV, 36; Governor again, 37; establishes Trocha, 44; defeated by Maceo, 46; conferences with party leaders, 59, 63; removed, 63. Cancio, Leopoldo, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 161, 320. Canizares, Santiago J., Minister of Interior, IV, 48. Canning, George, policy toward Cuba, II, 257; portrait, 258. Canoe, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Canon, Rodrigo, I, 111. Canovas del Castillo, Spanish Premier, IV, 36; assassinated, 88. Cape Cruz, Columbus at, I, 20. Cape Maysi, I, 4. Cape of Palms, I, 17. Capote, Domingo Menendez. Vice-President, IV, 90; Secretary of State, 146; President of Constitutional Convention. 189. Carajaval, Lucas, defies Dutch, I, 290. Cardenas, Lopez lands at, III, 49. Caribs, I, 8. Carillo, Francisco, filibuster, IV, 55. Carleton, Sir Guy, at Havana, II, 47. Carranza, Domingo Gonzales, book on West Indies, II, 37. Carrascesa, Alfonso, II, 6. Carreño, Francisco, Governor, I, 219; conditions at his accession, 228; dies in office, 229; work in rebuilding Havana, 231. Carroll, James, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Casa de Beneficienca, founded, I, 335; II, 177. Casa de Resorgiamento, founded, II, 31. Casares, Alfonso, codifies municipal ordinances, I, 207. Castellanos, Jovellar, last Spanish Governor of Cuba, IV, 121; surrenders Spanish sovereignty, 123. Castillo, Demetrio, Civil Governor of Oriente, IV, 180. Castillo, Ignacio Maria del, Governor, III, 314. Castillo, Loinaz, revolutionist. IV, 269. Castillo, Pedro del, Bishop, I, 226. Castro, Hernando de, royal treasurer, I, 115. Cathcart Lord, expedition to West Indies, II, 28. Cathedral of Havana, picture, facing I, 36; begun, I, 310. Cat Island. See GUANAHANI. Cayo, San Juan de los Remedios del, removal of, I, 319. Cazones, Gulf of, I, 21. Cemi, Cuban worship of, I, 55. Census, of Cuba, first taken, by Torre, II, 131; by Las Casas, 176; of slaves, 205; of 1775, 276; of 1791, 277; Humboldt on, 277; of 1811, 280; of 1817, 281; of 1827, 283; of 1846, 283; of 1899, IV, 154; of 1907, 287. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, III, 157; portrait, facing 158; in Spain, 158; leads Cuban revolution, 158; President of Republic, 158; proclamation, 168; negotiations with Spain, 187; removed from office, 275. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, filibuster, IV, 55. Cespedes, Enrique, revolutionist, IV, 30. Cervera, Admiral, brings Spanish fleet to Cuba, IV, 110; portrait, 110; surrenders, 114. Chacon, José Bayoma, II, 13. Chacon, Luis, I, 331, 333. Chalons, Sr., Secretary of Public Works, IV, 297. Chamber of Commerce founded, II, 307. Charles I, King, I, 74; denounces oppression of Indians, 128. Chaves, Antonio, Governor, I, 157; prosecutes Avila, 157; ruthless policy toward natives, 159; controversy with King, 160; dismissed from office, 161. Chaves, Juan Baton de, I, 331. Chilton, John, describes Havana, I, 349. Chinchilla, José, Governor, III, 314. Chinese, colonies in America, I, 7; laborers imported into Cuba, II, 295. Chorrera, expected to be Drake's landing place, I, 248. Chorrera River, dam built by Antonelli, I, 262. Christianity, introduced into Cuba by Ojeda, I, 55; urged by King Ferdinand, 73. Church, Roman Catholic, organized and influential in Cuba, I, 122; cathedral removed from Baracoa to Santiago, 123; conflict with civil power, 227; controversy with British during British occupation, II, 84; division of island into two dioceses, 173; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 26; controversy over property, 294. Cienfuegos, José, Governor, II, 311. Cimmarones, "wild Indians," I, 126; revolt against De Soto, 148. Cipango, Cuba identified with, by Columbus, I, 5. Cisneros, Gaspar Betancourt, sketch and portrait, II, 379. Cisneros, Pascal Jiminez de, II, 110, 127. Cisneros, Salvador, III, 167; sketch and portrait, 276; President of Cuban Republic, 277; President of Council of Ministers, IV, 48; in Constitutional Convention, 190. Civil Service, law, IV, 325; respected by President Menocal, 325. Clay, Henry, policy toward Cuba, II, 261. Clayton, John M., U. S. Secretary of State, issues proclamation against filibustering, III, 42. Cleaveland, Samuel, controversy over church bells, II, 83. Cleveland, Grover. President of United States, issues warning against breaches of neutrality, IV, 70; reference to Cuba in message of 1896, 79; its significance, 80. Coat of Arms of Cuba, picture, IV, 251; significance, 251. Cobre, copper mines, I, 173, 259. "Cockfighting and Idleness" campaign, IV, 291. Coffee, cultivation begun, II, 33, 113. Coinage, reformed, II, 142; statistics of, 158. Collazo, Enrique, filibuster, IV, 55. Coloma, Antonio Lopez, revolutionist, IV, 30. Colombia, designs upon Cuba, II, 262; III, 134; attitude toward Cuban revolution, 223. Columbus, Bartholomew, recalled to Spain, I, 57. Columbus, Christopher, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. I; discoverer of America, I; i; first landing in America, 2; monument on Watling's Island, picture, 3; arrival in Cuba, 11; question as to first landing place, 12; first impressions of Cuba and intercourse with natives, 14; exploration of north coast, 16; end of first visit, 18; second visit, 19; exploration of south coast, 21; at Bay of Cortez, 25; turns back from circumnavigation, 26; at Isle of Pines, 26; final departure from Cuba, 27; diary and narrative, 28 et seq.; death and burial, 33; tomb in Havana cathedral, 34; removal to Seville, 36; removal from Santo Domingo to Havana, II, 181; epitaph, 182. Columbus, Diego, plans exploration and colonization of Cuba, I, 57; attempts mediation between Velasquez and Cortez, 97; replaces Velasquez with Zuazo, 100; rebuked by King, 100. Comendador, Cacique, I, 55. Commerce, begun by Velasquez, I, 68; rise of corporations, II, 19; after British occupation, 98; under Torre, 132; reduction of duties, 141; extension of trade, 163; Tribunal of Commerce founded, 177; Real Compania de Havana, 199; restrictive measures, 200; Chamber of Commerce founded, 307; commerce with United States, III, 2; during American occupation, IV, 184; present, 358. Compostela, Diego E. de, Bishop, I, 318; death, 332. Concepcion, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Concessions, forbidden under American occupation, IV, 153. Concha, José Gutierrez de la, Governor, III, 62, 290. Conchillos, royal secretary, I, 59. Congress, Cuban, welcomed by Gen. Wood, IV, 246; turns against Palma, 269; friendly to Gomez, 303; hostile to Menocal, 323; protects the lottery, 324. Constitution: Cuban Republic of 1868, III, 157; of 1895, IV, 47; call for Constitutional Convention, 185; meeting of Convention, 187; draft completed, 192; salient provisions, 193; Elihu Root's comments, 194; Convention discusses relations with United States, 197; Platt Amendment, 199; amendment adopted, 203; text of Constitution, 304 et seq.; The Nation, 205; Cubans, 205; Foreigners, 207; Individual Rights, 208; Suffrage, 211; Suspension of Guarantees, 212; Sovereignty, 213; Legislative Bodies, 214; Senate, 214; House of Representatives, 216; Congress, 218; Legislation, 221; Executive, 222; President, 222; Vice-President, 225; Secretaries of State, 226; Judiciary, 227; Supreme Court, 227; Administration of Justice, 228; Provincial Governments, 229; Provincial Councils, 230; Provincial Governors, 231; Municipal Government, 233; Municipal Councils, 233; Mayors, 235; National Treasury, 235; Amendments, 236; Transient Provisions, 237; Appendix (Platt Amendment), 238. "Constitutional Army," IV, 268. Contreras, Andres Manso de, I, 288. Contreras, Damien, I, 278. Convents, founded, I, 276; Nuns of Santa Clara, 286. Conyedo, Juan de, Bishop, II, 35. Copper, discovered near Santiago, I, 173; wealth of mines, 259; reopened, II, 13; exports, III, 3. Corbalon, Francisco R., I, 286. Cordova de Vega, Diego de, Governor, I, 239. Cordova, Francisco H., expedition to Yucatan, I, 84. Cordova Ponce de Leon, José Fernandez, Governor, I, 316. Coreal, Francois, account of West Indies, quoted, I, 355. Coronado, Manuel, gift for air planes, IV, 352. Cortes, Spanish, Cuban representation in, II, 308; excluded, 351; lack of representation, III, 3; after Ten Years' War, 307. Cortez, Hernando, Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, I, 72; sent to Mexico by King, 74; agent of Velasquez, 86; early career, 90; portrait, 90; quarrel with Velasquez, 91; marriage, 92; commissioned by Velasquez to explore Mexico, 92; sails for Mexico, 94; final breach with Velasquez, 96; denounced as rebel, 97; escapes murder, 99. Cosa, Juan de la, geographer, I, 6, 53. Councillors, appointed for life, I, 111; conflict with Procurators, 113. Creoles, origin of name, II, 204. Crittenden, J. J., protests against European intervention in Cuba, III, 129. Crittenden, William S., with Lopez, III, 96; captured, 101; death, 105. Crombet, Flor, revolutionist, IV, 41, 42. Crooked Island. See ISABELLA. Crowder, Gen. Enoch H., head of Consulting Board, IV, 284. Cuba: Relation to America, I, 1; Columbus's first landing, 3; identified with Mangi or Cathay, 4; with Cipango, 5; earliest maps, 6; physical history, 7, 37 et seq.; Columbus's discovery, 11 et seq.; named Juana, 13; other names, 14; Columbus's account of, 28; geological history, 37-42; topography, 42-51; climate, 51-52; first circumnavigation, 54; colonization, 54; Velasquez at Baracoa, 60; commerce begun, 68; government organized, 69; named Ferdinandina, 73; policy of Spain toward, 175; slow economic progress, 215; land legislation, 232; Spanish discrimination against, 266; divided into two districts, 275; British description in 1665, 306; various accounts, 346; turning point in history, 363; close of first era, 366; British conquest, II, 78; relinquished to Spain, 92; great changes effected, 94; economic condition, 98; reoccupied by Spain, 102; untouched by early revolutions, 165; effect of revolution in Santo Domingo, 190; first suggestion of annexation to United States, 257; "Ever Faithful Isle," 268; rise of independence, 268; censuses, 276 et seq.; representation in Cortes, 308; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; representatives rejected from Cortes, 351; transformation of popular spirit, 383; independence proclaimed, III, 145; Republic organized, 157; War of Independence, IV, 15; Spanish elections held during war, 67; Blanco's plan of autonomy, 93; sovereignty surrendered by Spain, 123; list of Spanish Governors, 123. See REPUBLIC OF CUBA. Cuban Aborigines; I, 8; manners, customs and religion, 8 et seq.; Columbus's first intercourse, 15, 24; priest's address to Columbus, 26; Columbus's observations of them, 29; hostilities begun by Velasquez, 61; subjected to Repartimiento system, 70; practical slavery, 71; Key Indians, 125; Cimmarones, 126; new laws in their favor, 129; Rojas's endeavor to save them, 130; final doom, 133; efforts at reform, 153; oppression by Chaves, 159; Angulo's emancipation proclamation, 163. "Cuba-nacan," I, 5. "Cuba and the Cubans," quoted, II, 313. "Cuba y Su Gobierno," quoted, II, 354. Cuellar, Cristobal de, royal accountant, I, 59. Cushing, Caleb, Minister to Spain, III, 291. Custom House, first at Havana, I, 231. Dady, Michael J., & Co., contract dispute, IV, 169. Davila, Pedrarias, I, 140. Davis, Jefferson, declines to join Lopez, III, 38. Del Casal, Julian, sketch and portrait, IV, 6. Del Cueta, José A., President of Supreme Court, portrait, IV, 359. Delgado, Moru, Liberal leader, IV, 267. Del Monte, Domingo, sketch, portrait, and work, II, 323. Del Monte, Ricardo, sketch and portrait, IV, 2. Demobilization of Cuban army, IV, 135. Desvernine, Pablo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 146. Diaz, Bernal, at Sancti Spiritus, I, 72; in Mexico, 86. Diaz, Manuel, I, 239. Diaz, Manuel Luciano, Secretary of Public Works, IV, 254. Diaz, Modeste, III, 263. Divino, Sr., Secretary of Justice, IV, 297. Dockyard at Havana, established, II, 8. Dolz, Eduardo, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 96. Dominguez, Fermin V., Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 50. Dorst, J. H., mission to Pinar del Rio, IV, 107. "Dragado" deal, IV, 310. Drake, Sir Francis, menaces Havana, I, 243; in Hispaniola, 246; leaves Havana unassailed, 252; departs for Virginia, 255. Duany, Joaquin Castillo, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Assistant Secretary of Treasury, 50; filibuster, 70. Dubois, Carlos, Assistant Secretary of Interior, IV, 50. Duero, Andres de, I, 93, 115. Dulce y Garay, Domingo, Governor, III, 190, 194; decree of confiscation, 209; recalled, 213. Dupuy de Lome, Sr., Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 40; writes offensive letter, 98; recalled, 98. Duque, Sr., Secretary of Sanitation and Charity, IV, 297. Durango, Bishop, I, 225. Dutch hostilities, I, 208, 279; activities in West Indies, 283 et seq. Earthquakes, in 1765, I, 315; II, 114. Echeverria, Esteban B., Superintendent of Schools, IV, 162. Echeverria, José, Bishop, II, 113. Echeverria, José Antonio, III, 324. Echeverria, Juan Maria, Governor, II, 312. Education, backward state of, II, 244; progress under American occupation, IV, 156; A. E. Frye, Superintendent, 156; reorganization of system, 162; Harvard University's entertainment of teachers, 163; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Elections: for municipal officers under American occupation, IV, 180; law for regulation of, 180; result, 181; for Constitutional Convention, 186; for general officers, 240; result, 244; Presidential, 1906, 265; new law, 287; local elections under Second Intervention, 289; Presidential, 290; for Congress in 1908, 303; Presidential, 1912, 309; Presidential, 1916, disputed, 330, result confirmed, 341. Enciso, Martin F. de, first Spanish writer about America, I, 54. Epidemics: putrid fever, 1649, I, 290; vaccination introduced, II, 192; small pox and yellow fever, III, 313; at Santiago, IV, 142; Gen. Wood applies Dr. Finlay's theory of yellow fever, 171; success, 176; malaria, 177. Escudero, Antonio, de, II, 10. Espada, Juan José Diaz, portrait, facing II, 272. Espagnola. See HISPANIOLA. Espeleta, Joaquin de, Governor, II, 362. Espinosa, Alonzo de Campos, Governor, I, 316. Espoleto, José de, Governor, II, 169. Estenoz, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Estevez, Luis, Secretary of Justice, IV, 160; Vice-President, 245. Evangelista. See ISLE OF PINES. Everett, Edward, policy toward Cuba, III, 130. "Ever Faithful Isle," II, 268, 304. Exquemeling, Alexander, author and pirate, I, 302. "Family Pact," of Bourbons, effect upon Cuba, II, 42. Felin, Antonio, Bishop, II, 172. Fels, Cornelius, defeated by Spanish, I, 288. Ferdinand, King, policy toward Cuba, I, 56; esteem for Velasquez, 73. Ferdinandina, Columbus's landing place, I, 3; name for Cuba, 73. Ferrara, Orestes, Liberal leader, IV, 260; revolutionist, 269; deprecates factional strife, 306; revolutionary conspirator in New York, 334; warned by U. S. Government, I, 239. Ferrer, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 239. Figueroa, Vasco Porcallo de, I, 72; De Soto's lieutenant, 142; returns from Florida in disgust, 145. Figuerosa, Rojas de, captures Tortuga, I, 292. Filarmonia, riot at ball, III, 119. Filibustering, proclamation of United States against, III, 42; after Ten Years' War, 311, in War of Independence, IV, 20; expeditions intercepted, 52; many successful expeditions, 69; warnings, 70. Fine Arts, II, 240. Finlay, Carlos G., theory of yellow fever successfully applied under General Wood, IV, 171; portrait, facing, 172. Fish, Hamilton, U. S. Secretary of State, prevents premature recognition of Cuban Republic, III, 203; protests against Rodas's decree, 216; on losses in Ten Years' War, 290; seeks British support, 292; states terms of proposed mediation, 293. Fish market at Havana, founder for pirate, II, 357. Fiske, John, historian, quoted, I, 270. Flag, Cuban, first raised, III, 31; replaces American, IV, 249; picture, 250; history and significance, 250. Flores y Aldama, Rodrigo de, Governor, I, 301. Florida, attempted colonization by Ponce de Leon, I, 139; De Soto's expedition, 145. See MENENDEZ. Fonseca, Juan Rodriguez de, Bishop of Seville, I, 59. Fonts-Sterling, Ernesto, Secretary of Finance, IV, 90; urges resistance to revolution, 270. Fornaris, José, III, 230. Forestry, attention paid by Montalvo, I, 223; efforts to check waste, II, 166. Foyo, Sr., Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, IV, 297. France, first foe of Spanish in Cuba, I, 177; "Family Pact," II, 42; interest in Cuban revolution, III, 126. Franquinay, pirate, at Santiago, I, 310. French refugees, in Cuba, II, 189; expelled, 302. French Revolution, effects of, II, 184. Freyre y Andrade, Fernando, filibuster, IV, 70; negotiations with Pino Guerra, 267. Frye, Alexis, Superintendent of Schools, IV, 156; controversy with General Wood, 162. Fuerza, La: picture, facing I, 146; building begun by De Soto, I, 147; scene of Lady Isabel's tragic vigil, 147, 179; planned and built by Sanchez, 194; work by Menendez, and Ribera, 209; slave labor sought, 211; bad construction, 222; Montalvo's recommendations, 223; Luzan-Arana quarrel, 237; practical completion, 240; decorated by Cagigal, II, 33. Galvano, Antony, historian, quoted, I, 4. Galvez, Bernardo, seeks Cuban aid for Pensacola, II, 146; Governor, 168; death, 170. Galvez, José Maria, head of Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Garaondo, José, I, 317. Garay, Francisco de, Governor of Jamaica, I, 102. Garcia, Calixto, portrait, facing III, 268; President of Cuban Republic, III, 301; joins War of Independence, IV, 69; his notable career, 76 et seq.; joins with Shafter at Santiago, 111; death, 241. Garcia, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 269. Garcia, Esequiel, Secretary of Education, IV, 320. Garcia, Marcos, IV, 44. Garcia, Quintiliano, III, 329. Garvey, José N. P., II, 222. Gastaneta, Antonio, II, 9. Gelder, Francisco, Governor, I, 292. Gener y Rincon, Miguel, Secretary of Justice, IV, 161. Geraldini, Felipe, I, 310. Germany, malicious course of in 1898, IV, 104; Cuba declares war against, 348; property in Cuba seized, 349; aid to Gomez, 350. Gibson. Hugh S., U. S. Chargé d'Affaires, assaulted, IV, 308. Giron. Garcia, Governor, I, 279. Godoy, Captain, arrested at Santiago, and put to death, I, 203. Godoy, Manuel, II, 172. Goicouria, Domingo, sketch and portrait, III, 234. Gold, Columbus's quest for, I, 19; Velasquez's search, 61; the "Spaniards' God," 62; early mining, 81; value of mines, 173. Gomez, José Antonio, II, 18. Gomez, José Miguel, Civil Governor of Santa Clara, IV, 179; aspires to Presidency, 260, 264; turns from Conservative to Liberal party, 265; compact with Zayas, 265; starts revolution, 269; elected President, 290; becomes President, 297; Cabinet, 297; sketch and portrait, 298; acts of his administration, 301; charged with corruption, 304; conflict with Veterans' Association, 304; quarrel with Zayas, 306; suppresses Negro revolt, 307; amnesty bill, 309; National Lottery, 310; "Dragado" deal, 310; railroad deal, 310; estimate of his administration, 311; double treason in 1916, 332; defeated and captured, 337; his orders for devastation, 337; aided by Germany, 350. Gomez, Juan Gualberto, revolutionist, IV, 30; captured and imprisoned, 52; insurgent, 269. Gomez, Maximo, III, 264; succeeds Gen. Agramonte, 275; makes Treaty of Zanjon with Campos, 299; in War of Independence, IV, 15; commander in chief, 16, 43; portrait, facing 44; plans great campaign of war, 53; controversy with Lacret, 84; opposed to American invasion, 109; appeals to Cubans to accept American occupation, 136; impeachment by National Assembly ignored, 137; influence during Government of Intervention, 149; considered by Constitutional Convention, 191; proposed for Presidency, 240; declines, 241. Gonzalez, Aurelia Castillo de, author, sketch and portrait, IV, 192. Gonzales, William E., U. S. Minister to Cuba, IV, 335; watches Gomez's insurrection, 336. Gorgas, William C., work for sanitation, IV, 175. Government of Cuba: organized by Velasquez, I, 69; developed at Santiago, 81; radical changes made, 111; revolution in political status of island, 138; codification of ordinances, 207; Ordinances of 1542, 317; land tenure, II, 12; reforms by Governor Guemez, 17; reorganization after British occupation, 104; great reforms by Torre, 132; budget and tax reforms, 197; authority of Captain-General, III, 11; administrative and judicial functions, 13 et seq.; military and naval command, 16; attempted reforms, 63; concessions after Ten Years' War, 310. Governors of Cuba, Spanish, list of, IV, 123. Govin, Antonio, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95; sketch and portrait, 95. Grammont, buccaneer, I, 311. Gran Caico, I, 4. Grand Turk Island. See GUANAHANI. Grant, U. S., President of United States, III, 200; inclined to recognize Cuban Republic, 202; prevented by his Secretary of State, 203; comments in messages, 205, 292. Great Britain, interest in Cuban revolution, III, 125; protection sought by Spain, 129; declines cooperation with United States, 294; requires return of fugitives, 310. Great Exuma. See FERDINANDINA. Great Inagua, I, 4. Great War, Cuba enters, IV, 348; offers 10,000 troops, 348; German intrigues and propaganda, 349; attitude of Roman Catholic clergy, 349; ships seized, 350; cooperation with Food Commission, 351; military activities, 352; liberal subscriptions to loans, 352; Red Cross work, 352; Señora Menocal's inspiring leadership, 353. Grijalva, Juan de, I, 65; expedition to Mexico, 66; names Mexico New Spain, 97; unjustly recalled and discredited, 88. Guajaba Island, I, 18. Guama, Cimmarron chief, I, 127. Guanabacoa founded, II, 21. Guanahani, Columbus's landing place, I, 2. Guanajes Islands, source of slave trade, I, 83. Guantanamo, Columbus at, I, 19; U. S. Naval Station, IV, 256. Guardia, Cristobal de la, Secretary of Justice, IV, 320. Guazo, Gregorio, de la Vega, Governor, I, 340; stops tobacco war, 341; warnings to Great Britain and France, 342; military activity and efficiency, II, 5. Guemez y Horcasitas, Juan F., Governor, II, 17; reforms, 17; close of administration, 26. Guerra, Amador, revolutionist, IV, 30. Guerra, Benjamin, treasurer of Junta, IV, 3. Guerro, Pino, starts insurrection, IV, 267, 269; commander of Cuban army, 301; attempt to assassinate him, 303. Guevara, Francisco, III, 265. Guiteras, Juan, physician and scientist, sketch and portrait, IV, 321. Guiteras, Pedro J., quoted, I, 269; II, 6; 42; 207. Guzman, Gonzalez de, mission from Velasquez to King Charles I, I, 85; vindicates Velasquez, 108; Governor of Cuba, 110; marries rich sister-in-law, 116; litigation over estate, 117; tremendous indictment by Vadillo, 120; appeals to King and Council for Indies, 120; seeks to oppress natives, 128; second time Governor, 137; makes more trouble, 148; trouble with French privateers, 178. Guzman, Nuñez de, royal treasurer, I, 109; death and fortune, 115. Guzman, Santos, spokesman of Constitutionalists, IV, 59. Hammock, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Hanebanilla, falls of, view, facing III, 110. Harponville, Viscount Gustave, quoted, II, 189. Harvard University, entertains Cuban teachers, IV, 163. Hatuey, Cuban chief, leader against Spaniards, I, 62; death, 63. Havana: founded by Narvaez, I, 69; De Soto's home and capital, 144; rise in importance, 166; Governor's permanent residence, 180; inadequate defences, 183; captured by Sores, 186; protected by Mazariegos, 194; sea wall proposed by Osorio, 202; fortified by Menendez, 209; "Key of the New World," 210; commercial metropolis of West Indies, 216; first hospital founded, 226; San Francisco church, picture, facing 226; building in Carreño's time, 231; custom house, 231; threatened by Drake, 243; preparations for defence, 250; officially called "city," 262; coat of arms, 202; primitive conditions, 264; first theatrical performance, 264; capital of western district, 275; great fire, 277; attacked by Pit Hein, 280; described by John Chilton, 349; first dockyard established, II, 8; attacked by British under Admiral Hosier, 9; University founded, 11; described by John Campbell, 14; British expedition against in 1762, 46; journal of siege, 54; American troops engaged, 66; surrender, 69; terms, 71; British occupation, 78; great changes, 94; description, 94; view from Cabanas, facing, 96; reoccupied by Spanish, 102; hurricane, 115; improvements in streets and buildings, 129; view in Old Havana, facing 130; street cleaning, and market, 169; slaughter house removed, 194; shopping, 242; cafés, 243; Tacon's public works, 365; view of old Presidential Palace, facing III, 14; view of the Prado, facing IV, 16; besieged in War of Independence, 62; view of bay and harbor, facing, 98; old City Wall, picture, 122; view of old and new buildings, facing 134; General Ludlow's administration, 146; Police reorganized, 150; view of University, facing 164; view of the new capitol, facing 204; view of the President's home, facing 268; view of the Academy of Arts and Crafts, facing 288; new railroad terminal, 311. Hay, John, epigram on revolutions, IV, 343 Hayti. See HISPANIOLA. Hein, Pit, Dutch raider, I, 279. Henderson, John, on Lopez's expedition, III, 64. _Herald_, New York, on Cuban revolution, III, 89. Heredia, José Maria. II, 274; exiled, 344; life and works, III, 318; portrait, facing 318. Hernani, Domingo, II, 170. Herrera, historian, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12; on Hatuey, 62; description of West Indies, 345. Herrera, Geronimo Bustamente de, I, 194. Hevea, Aurelio, Secretary of Interior, IV, 320. Hispaniola, Columbus at, I, 19; revolution in, II, 173; 186; effect upon Cuba, 189. Hobson, Richmond P., exploit at Santiago, IV, 110. Holleben, Dr. von, German Ambassador at Washington, intrigues of, IV, 104. Home Rule, proposed by Spain, IV, 6; adopted, 8. Horses introduced into Cuba, I, 63. Hosier, Admiral, attacks Havana, I, 312; II, 9. Hospital, first in Havana, I, 226; Belen founded, 318; San Paula and San Francisco, 195. "House of Fear," Governor's home, I, 156. Humboldt, Alexander von, on slavery, II, 206; on census, 277; 282; on slave trade, 288. Hurricanes, II, 115, 176, 310. Hurtado, Lopez, royal treasurer, I, 116; has Chaves removed, 162. Ibarra, Carlos, defeats Dutch raiders, I, 288. Incas, I, 7. Independence, first conceived, II, 268; 326; first revolts for, 343; sentiment fostered by slave trade, 377; proclaimed by Aguero, III, 72; proclaimed by Cespedes at Yara, 155; proposed by United States to Spain, 217; War of Independence, IV, 1; recognized by Spain, 119. See WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Intellectual life of Cuba, I, 360; lack of productiveness in Sixteenth Century, 362; Cuban backwardness, II, 235; first important progress, 273; great arising and splendid achievements, III, 317. Insurrections. See REVOLUTIONS, and SLAVERY. Intervention, Government of: First, established, IV, 132; organized, 145; Cuban Cabinet, 145; saves island from famine, 146; works of rehabilitation and reform, 148; marriage law, 152; concessions forbidden, 153; census, 154; civil governments of provinces, 179; municipal elections ordered, 180; electoral law 180; final transactions, 246; Second Government of Intervention, 281; C. E. Magoon, Governor, 281; Consulting Board, 284; elections held, 289, 290; commission for revising laws, 294; controversy over church property, 294. Intervention sought by Great Britain and France, III, 128; by United States, IV, 106. Iroquois, I, 7. Irving, Washington, on Columbus's landing place, I, 12. Isabella, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Isabella, Queen, portrait, I, 13. Isidore of Seville, quoted, I, 4. Islas de Arena, I, 11. Isle of Pines, I, 26; recognized as part of Cuba, 224; status under Platt Amendment, IV, 255. Italian settlers in Cuba, I, 169. Ivonnet, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Jamaica, Columbus at, I, 20. Japan. See CIPANGO. Jaruco, founded, II, 131. Jefferson, Thomas, on Cuban annexation, II, 260; III, 132. Jeronimite Order, made guardian of Indians, I, 78; becomes their oppressor, 127. Jesuits, controversy over, II, 86; expulsion of, 111. Jordan, Thomas, joins Cuban revolution, III, 211. Jorrin, José Silverio, portrait, facing III, 308. Jovellar, Joachim, Governor, III, 273; proclaims state of siege, 289; resigns, 290. Juana, Columbus's first name for Cuba, I, 13. Juan Luis Keys, I, 21. Judiciary, reforms in, II, 110; under Navarro, 142; under Unzaga, 165; under Leonard Wood, IV, 177. Junta, Cuban, in United States, III, 91; New York, IV, 2; branches elsewhere, 3; policy in enlisting men, 19. Junta de Fomento, II, 178. Juntas of the Laborers, III, 174. Keppel, Gen. See ALBEMARLE. Key Indians, I, 125; expedition against, 126. "Key of the New World and Bulwark of the Indies," I, 210. Kindelan, Sebastian de, II, 197, 315. Lacoste, Perfecto, Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, IV, 160. Land tenure, II, 12; absentee landlords, 214. Lanuza, Gonzalez, Secretary of Justice, IV, 146; portrait, 146. Lares, Amador de, I, 93. La Salle, in Cuba, I, 73. Las Casas, Bartholomew, Apostle to the Indies, arrival in Cuba, I, 63; portrait, 64; denounces Narvaez, 66; begins campaign against slavery, 75; mission to Spain, 77; before Ximenes, 77. Las Casas, Luis de, Governor, II, 175; portrait, 175; death, 182. Lasso de la Vega, Juan, Bishop, II, 17. Lawton, Gen. Henry W., leads advance against Spanish, IV, 112; Military Governor of Oriente, 139. Lazear, Camp, established, IV, 172. Lazear, Jesse W., hero and martyr in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Ledesma, Francisco Rodriguez, Governor, I, 310. Lee, Fitzhugh, Consul General at Havana, IV, 72; reports on "concentration" policy of Weyler, 86; asks for warship to protect Americans at Havana, 97; _Maine_ sent, 98; commands troops at Havana, 121. Lee, Robert Edward, declines to join Lopez, III, 39. Legrand, Pedro, invades Cuba, I, 302. Leiva, Lopez, Secretary of Government, IV, 297. Lemus, Jose Morales, III, 333. Lendian, Evelio Rodriguez, educator, sketch and portrait, IV, 162. Liberal Party, III, 306; triumphant through revolution, IV, 285; dissensions, 303; conspiracy against election, 329. Liberty Loans, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 352. Lighthouse service, under Mario G. Menocal, IV, 168. Linares, Tomas de, first Rector of University of Havana, II, 11. Lindsay, Forbes, quoted, II, 217. Linschoten, Jan H. van, historian, quoted, I, 351. Liquor, intoxicating, prohibited in 1780, II, 150. Literary periodicals: _El Habanero_, III, 321; _El Plantel_, 324; _Cuban Review_, 325; _Havana Review_, 329. Literature, II, 245; early works, 252; poets, 274; great development of activity, III, 315 et seq. Little Inagua, I, 4. Llorente, Pedro, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188, 190. Lobera, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 182; desperate defence against Sores, 185. Lolonois, pirate, I, 296. Long Island. See FERDINANDINA. Lopez, Narciso, sketch and portrait, III, 23; in Venezuela, 24; joins the Spanish army, 26; marries and settles in Cuba, 30; against the Carlists in Spain, 31; friend of Valdez, 31; offices and honors, 33; plans Cuban revolution, 36; betrayed and fugitive, 37; consults Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, 38; first American expedition, 39; members of the party, 40; activity in Southern States, 43; expedition starts, 45; proclamation to his men, 46; lands at Cardenas, 49; lack of Cuban support, 54; reembarks, 56; lands at Key West, 58; arrested and tried, 60; second expedition organized, 65; betrayed, 67; third expedition, 70; final expedition organized, 91; lands in Cuba, 98; defeated and captured, 112; death, 114; results of his works, 116. Lorenzo, Gen., Governor at Santiago, II, 347. Lorraine, Sir Lambton, III, 280. Los Rios, J. B. A. de, I, 310. Lottery, National, established by José Miguel Gomez, IV, 310. Louisiana, Franco-Spanish contest over, II, 117; Ulloa sent from Cuba to take possession, 118; O'Reilly sent, 123; Uznaga sent, 126. Louverture, Toussaint, II, 186. Luaces, Joaquin Lorenzo, sketch and portrait, III, 330. Ludlow, Gen. William, command and work at Havana, IV, 144. Lugo, Pedro Benitez de, Governor, I, 331. Luna y Sarmiento, Alvaro de, Governor, I, 290. Luz y Caballero, José de la, "Father of the Cuban Revolution," III, 322; great work for patriotic education, 323; Portrait, frontispiece, Vol III. Luzan, Gabriel de, Governor, I, 236; controversy over La Fuerza, 237; feud with Quiñones, 241; unites with Quiñones to resist Drake, 243; energetic action, 246; tenure of office prolonged, 250; end of term, 260. Macaca, province of, I, 20. Maceo, José Antonio, proclaims Provisional Government, IV, 15; leader in War of Independence, 41; commands Division of Oriente, 43; defeats Campos, 46; plans great campaign, 53; invades Pinar del Rio, 61; successful campaign, 73; death, 74; portrait, facing 74. Maceo, José, IV, 41; marches through Cuba, 76. Machado, Eduard, treason of, III, 258. Machete, used in battle, IV, 57. Madison, James, on status of Cuba, III, 132. Madriaga, Juan Ignacio, II, 59. Magoon, Charles E., Provisional Governor, IV, 281; his administration, 283; promotes public works, 286; takes census, 287; election law, 287; retires, 295. Mahy, Nicolas, Governor, II, 315. Mail service established, II, 107; under American occupation, IV, 168. Maine sent to Havana, IV, 98; destruction of, 98; investigation, 100. Maldonado, Diego, I, 146. Mandeville, Sir John, I, 20. Mangon, identified with Mangi, I, 20. Manners and Customs, II, 229 et seq.; balls, 239; shopping, 242; relations of black and white races, 242; cafés, 243; early society, 248. Monosca, Juan Saenz, Bishop, I, 301. Manrique, Diego, Governor, II, 109. Manzaneda y Salines, Severino de, Governor, I, 320. Manzanillo, Declaration of Independence issued, III, 155. Maraveo Ponce de Leon, Gomez de, I, 339. Marco Polo, I, 4, 20. Marcy, William L., policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Mar de la Nuestra Señora, I, 18. Mariguana. See GUANAHANI. Marin, Sabas, succeeds Campos in command, IV, 63. Markham, Sir Clements, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12. Marmol, Donato, III, 173, 184. Marquez, Pedro Menendez, I, 206. Marriage law, reformed under American occupation, IV, 152; controversy over, 153. Marti, José, portrait, frontispiece, Vol IV; leader of War of Independence, IV, 2; his career, 9; in New York, 11; organizes Junta, 11; goes to Cuba, 15; death, 16; his war manifesto, 17; fulfilment of his ideals, 355. Marti, José, secretary of War, portrait, IV, 360. Marti, the pirate, II, 357. Martinez Campos. See Campos. Martinez, Dionisio de la Vega, Governor, II, 8; inscription on La Punta, 14. Martinez, Juan, I, 192. Martyr, Peter, I, 53. Maso, Bartolome, revolutionist, IV, 34; rebukes Spotorno, 35; President of Cuban Republic, 43; Vice President of Council, 48; President of Republic, 90; candidate for Vice President, 242; seeks Presidency, 243. Mason, James M., U. S. Minister to France, III, 141. Masse, E. M., describes slave trade, II, 202; rural life, 216; on Spanish policy toward Cuba, 227; social morals, 230. Matanzas, founded, I, 321; meaning of name, 321. Maura, Sr., proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 5. McCullagh, John B., reorganizes Havana Police, IV, 150. McKinley, William, President of United States, message of 1897 on Cuba, IV, 87; declines European mediation, 103; message for war, 104. Maza, Enrique, assaults Hugh S. Gibson, IV, 308. Mazariegos, Diego de, Governor, I, 191; a scandalous moralist, 193; defences against privateering, 193; takes charge of La Fuerza, 195; controversy with Governor of Florida, 196; replaced by Sandoval, 197. Medina, Fernando de, I, 111. Mendez-Capote, Fernando, Secretary of Sanitation, portrait, IV, 360. Mendieta, Carlos, candidate for Vice President, IV, 328; rebels, 338. Mendive, Rafael Maria de, III, 328. Mendoza, Martin de, I, 204. Menendez, Pedro de Aviles, I, 199; commander of Spanish fleet, 200; clash with Osorio, 201; Governor of Cuba, 205; dealing with increasing enemies, 208; fortifies Havana, 209; recalled to Spain, 213; conflict with Bishop Castillo, 226. Menocal, Aniceto G., portrait, IV, 50. Menocal, Mario G., Assistant Secretary of War, IV, 49; Chief of Police at Havana, 144, 150; in charge of Lighthouse Service, 168; candidate for President, 290; slandered by Liberals, 291; elected President, 312; biography, 312; portrait, facing 312; view of birthplace, 313; Cabinet, 320; opinion of Cuba's needs, 321; first message, 322; conflict with Congress, 323; important reforms, 324; suppresses rebellion, 327; candidate for reelection, 328; vigorous action against Gomez's rebellion, 335; declines American aid, 337; escapes assassination, 339; reelection confirmed, 341; clemency to traitors, 342; message on entering Great War, 346; fulfilment of Marti's ideals, 355; estimate of his administration, 356; achievements for education, 357; health, 357; industry and commerce, 358; finance, 359; "from Velasquez to Menocal," 365. Menocal, Señora, leadership of Cuban womanhood in Red Cross and other work, IV, 354; portrait, facing 352. Mercedes, Maria de las, quoted, II, 174; on slave insurrection, 368. Merchan, Rafael, III, 174; patriotic works, 335. Merlin, Countess de. See MERCEDES. _Merrimac_, sunk at Santiago, IV, 111. Mesa, Hernando de, first Bishop, I, 122. Mestre, José Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 326. Meza, Sr., Secretary of Public Instruction and Arts, IV, 297. Mexico, discovered and explored from Cuba, I, 87; designs upon Cuba, II, 262; Cuban expedition against, 346; warned off by United States, III, 134; fall of Maximilian, 150. Milanes, José Jacinto, sketch, portrait and works, III, 324. Miles, Gen. Nelson A., prepares for invasion of Cuba, IV, 111. Miranda, Francisco, II, 156; with Bolivar, 335. Miscegenation, II, 204. Molina, Francisco, I, 290. Monastic orders, I, 276. Monroe Doctrine, foreshadowed, II, 256; promulgated, 328. Monroe, James, interest in Cuba, II, 257; promulgates Doctrine, 328; portrait, 329. Monserrate Gate, Havana, picture, II, 241. Montalvo, Gabriel, Governor, I, 215; feud with Rojas family, 218; investigated and retired, 219; pleads for naval protection for Cuba, 220. Montalvo, Lorenzo, II, 89. Montalvo, Rafael, Secretary of Public Works, urges resistance to revolutionists, IV, 270. Montanes, Pedro Garcia, I, 292. Montano See VELASQUEZ, J. M. Montes, Garcia, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 254. Montesino, Antonio, I, 78. Montiel, Vasquez de, naval commander, I, 278. Montoro, Rafael, Representative in Cortes, III, 308; spokesman of Autonomists, IV, 59; in Autonomist Cabinet, 95; candidate for Vice President, 290; attacked by Liberals, 291; biography, 317; portrait, facing 320. Morales case, IV, 92. Morales. Pedro de, commands at Santiago, I, 299. Morals, strangely mixed with piety and vice, II, 229. Morell, Pedro Augustino, Bishop, II, 53; controversy with Albemarle, 83; exiled, 87; death, 113. Moreno, Andres, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 90. Moret law, abolishing slavery, III, 243. Morgan, Henry, plans raid on Havana, I, 297; later career, 303. Morro Castle, Havana, picture, facing I, 180; site of battery, 180; tower built by Mazariegos, 196; fortified against Drake, 249; planned by Antonelli, 261; besieged by British, II, 55. Morro Castle, Santiago, built, I, 289; picture, facing 298. Mucaras, I, 11. Muenster, geographer, I, 6. Mugeres Islands, I, 84. Munive, Andres de, I, 317. Murgina y Mena, A. M., I, 317. Music, early concerts at Havana, II, 239. Nabia, Juan Alfonso de, I, 207. Nancy Globe, I. 6. Napoleon's designs upon Cuba, II, 203. Naranjo, probable landing place of Columbus, I, 12. Narvaez, Panfilo de, portrait, I, 63; arrival in Cuba, 63; campaign against natives, 65; explores the island, 67; errand to Spain, 77; sent to Mexico to oppose Cortez, 98; secures appointment of Councillors for life, 111. Naval stations, U. S., in Cuba, IV, 255. Navarrete, quoted, I, 3, 12. Navarro, Diego Jose, Governor, II, 141, 150. Navy, Spanish, in Cuban waters, III, 182, 225. Negroes, imported as slaves, I, 170; treatment of, 171; slaves and free, increasing numbers of, 229. See SLAVERY. New Orleans, anti-Spanish outbreak, III, 126. New Spain. See MEXICO. Newspapers: _Gazeta_, 1780, II, 157; _Papel Periodico_, 179; 246; publications in Paris, Madrid and New York, 354; El Faro Industrial, III, 18; Diario de la Marina, 18; La Verdad, 18; La Vos de Cuba, 260; La Vos del Siglo, 232; La Revolucion, 333; El Siglo, 334; El Laborante, 335. Norsemen, American colonists, I, 7. Nougaret, Jean Baptiste, quoted, II, 26. Nuñez, Emilio, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; in war, 57; Civil Governor of Havana, 179; head of Veterans' Association, 305; Secretary of Agriculture, 320; candidate for Vice President, 328; election confirmed, 341. Nuñez, Enrique, Secretary of Health and Charities, IV, 320. Ocampo, Sebastian de, circumnavigates Cuba, I, 54. O'Donnell, George Leopold, Governor, II, 365; his wife's sordid intrigues, 365. Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia, hostile to Spain, II, 24, 30. O'Hara, Theodore, with Lopez, III, 46. Ojeda, Alonzo de, I, 54; introduces Christianity to Cuba, 55. Olid, Christopher de, sent to Mexico, I, 88. Olney, Richard. U. S. Secretary of State, attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 71. Oquendo, Antonio de, I, 281. Orejon y Gaston, Francisco Davila de, Governor, I, 301, 310. O'Reilly, Alexandre, sent to occupy Louisiana, II, 123; ruthless rule, 125. Orellano, Diego de, I, 86. Ornofay, province of, I, 20. Ortiz, Bartholomew, alcalde mayor, I, 146; retires, 151. Osorio, Garcia de Sandoval, Governor, I, 197; conflict with Menendez, 199, 201; retired, 205; tried, 206. Osorio, Sancho Pardo, I, 207. Ostend Manifesto, III, 142. Ovando, Alfonso de Caceres, I, 214; revises law system, 233. Ovando, Nicolas de, I, 54. Palma, Tomas Estrada, head of Cuban Junta in New York, IV, 3; Provisional President of Cuban Republic, 15; Delegate at Large, 43; rejects anything short of independence, 71; candidate for Presidency, 241; his career, 241; elected President, 245; arrival in Cuba, 247; portrait, facing 248; receives transfer of government from General Wood, 248; Cabinet, 254; first message, 254; prosperous administration, 259; non-partisan at first, 264; forced toward Conservative party, 264; reelected, 266; refuses to believe insurrection impending, 266; refuses to submit to blackmail, 268; betrayed by Congress, 269; acts too late, 270; seeks American aid, 271; interview with W. H. Taft, 276; resigns Presidency, 280; estimate of character and work, 282; death, 284. Palma y Romay, Ramon, III, 327. Parra, Antonio, scientist, II, 252. Parra, Maso, revolutionist, IV, 30. Parties, political, in Cuba, IV, 59; origin and characteristics of Conservative and Liberal, 181, 261. Pasalodos, Damaso, Secretary to President, IV, 297 Pasamonte, Miguel, intrigues against Columbus, I, 58. Paz, Doña de, marries Juan de Avila, I, 154. Paz, Pedro de, I, 109. Penalosa, Diego de, Governor, II, 31. Penalver. See PENALOSA. Penalver, Luis, Bishop of New Orleans, II, 179. "Peninsulars," III, 152. Pensacola, settlement of, I, 328; seized by French, 342; recovered by Spanish, II, 7; defended by Galvez, 146. Pereda, Gaspar Luis, Governor, I, 276. Perez, Diego, repels privateers, I, 179. Perez, Perico, revolutionist, IV, 15, 30, 78. Perez de Zambrana, Luisa, sketch and portrait, III, 328. Personal liberty restricted, III, 8. Peru, good wishes for Cuban revolution, III, 223. Philip II, King, appreciation of Cuba, I, 260. Pieltain, Candido, Governor, III, 275. Pierce, Franklin, President of United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Pina, Severo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 48. Pinar del Rio, city founded, II, 131; Maceo invades province, IV, 61; war in, 73. Pineyro, Enrique, III, 333; sketch and portrait, 334. Pinto, Ramon, sketch and portrait, III, 62. "Pirates of America," I, 296. Pizarro, Francisco de, I, 54, 91. Platt, Orville H., Senator, on relations of United States and Cuba, IV, 198; Amendment to Cuban Constitution, 199; Amendment adopted, 203; text of Amendment, 238. Pococke, Sir George, expedition against Havana, II, 46. Poey, Felipe, sketch and portrait, III, 315. Point Lucrecia, I, 18. Polavieja, Gen., Governor, III, 314. Police, reorganized, II, 312; under American occupation, IV, 150; police courts established, 171. Polk, James K., President of the United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 135. Polo y Bernabe, Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 98. Ponce de Leon, in Cuba, I, 73; death, 139. Ponce de Leon, of New York, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13. Pope, efforts to maintain peace, between United States and Spain, IV, 104. Porro, Cornelio, treason of, III, 257. Port Banes, I, 18. Port Nipe, I, 18. Port Nuevitas, I, 3. Portuguese settlers, I, 168. Portuondo, Rafael, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, IV, 48; filibuster, 70. Prado y Portocasso, Juan, Governor, II, 49; neglect of duty, 52; sentenced to degradation, 108. Praga, Francisco de, I, 282. Presidency, first candidates for, IV, 240; Tomas Estrada Palma elected, 245; José Miguel Gomez aspires to, 260; candidates in 1906, 265; Palma's resignation, 280; Jose Miguel Gomez elected, 290; fourth campaign, 312; Mario G. Menocal elected, 312; fifth campaign, 328; General Menocal reelected, 341. Prim, Gen., Spanish revolutionist, III, 145. Printing, first press in Cuba, II, 245. Privateers, French ravage Cuba, I, 177; Havana and Santiago attacked, 178; Havana looted, 179; Jacques Sores, 183; Havana captured, 186; Santiago looted, 193; French raids, 220, et seq. Proctor, Redfield, Senator, investigates and reports on condition of Cuba in War of Independence, IV, 87. Procurators, appointment of, I, 112. Protectorate, tripartite, refused by United States, II, 261; III, 130, 133. Provincial governments organized, IV, 179, confusion in, 292. Public Works, promoted by General Wood, IV, 166; by Magoon, 286. Puerto Grande. See GUANTANAMO. Puerto Principe, I, 18, 167. Punta, La, first fortification, I, 203; strengthened against Drake, 249; fortress planned by Antonelli, 261; picture, IV, 33. Punta Lucrecia, I, 3. Punta Serafina, I, 22. Queen's Gardens, I, 20. Quero, Geronimo, I, 277. Quesada, Gonzalo de, Secretary of Cuban Junta, IV, 3; Minister to United States, 275. Quesada, Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 167; proclamation, 169; death, 262. Quezo, Juan de, I, 113. Quilez, J. M., Civil Governor of Pinar del Rio, IV, 179. Quiñones, Diego Hernandez de, commander of fortifications at Havana, I, 240; feud with Luzan, 241; unites with Luzan to resist Drake, 243. Quiñones, Doña Leonora de, I, 117. Rabi, Jesus, revolutionist, IV, 34, 42. Railroads, first in Cuba, II, 343. Raja, Vicente, Governor, I, 337. Ramirez, Alejandro, sketch and portrait, II, 311. Ramirez, Miguel, Bishop, partisan of Guzman, I, 120; political activities and greed, 124. Ramos, Gregorio, I, 274. Ranzel, Diego, I, 295. Recio, R. Lopez, Civil Governor of Camaguey, IV, 180. Recio, Serafin, III, 86. Reciprocity, secured by Roosevelt for Cuba, IV, 256. "Reconcentrados," mortality among, IV, 86. Red Cross, Cuban activities, IV, 353. Redroban, Pedro de, I, 201. Reed, Walter, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Reformists, Spanish, support Blanco's Autonomist policy, IV, 97. Reggio, Andreas, II, 32. Reno, George, in War of Independence, IV, 12; running blockade, 21; portrait, 21; services in Great War, 351. Renteria, Pedro de, partner of Las Casas, I, 75; opposes slavery, 76. Repartimiento, I, 70. Republic of Cuba: proclaimed and organized, III, 157; first representative Assembly, 161; Constitution of 1868, 164; first House of Representatives, 176; Judiciary, 177; legislation, 177; army, 178; fails to secure recognition, 203; Government reorganized, 275; after Treaty of Zanjon, 301; reorganized in War of Independence, IV, 15; Maso chosen President, 43; Conventions of Yara and Najasa, 47; Constitution adopted, 47; Government reorganized, Cisneros President, 48; capital at Las Tunas, 56; removes to Cubitas, 72; exercises functions of government, 72; reorganized in 1897, 90; after Spanish evacuation of island, 134; disbanded, 135; Constitutional Convention called, 185; Constitution completed, 192; relations with United States, 195; Platt Amendment, 203; enters Great War, 346. Revolutions: Rise of spirit, II, 268; in South America, 333; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; attempts to revolt, 344; "Black Eagle," 346; plans of Lopez, III, 36; Lopez's first invasion, 49; Aguero's insurrection, 72; comments of New York _Herald_, 89; Lopez's last expedition, 91; results of his work, 116; European interest, 125; beginning of Ten Years' War. 155; end of Ten Years' War, 299; insurrection renewed, 308, 318; War of Independence, IV, 1; Sartorius Brothers, 4; end of War of Independence, 116; revolt against President Palma, 266; ultimatum, 278; government overthrown, 280; Negro insurrection, 307; conspiracy against President Menocal, 327; great treason of José Miguel Gomez, 332; Gomez captured, 337; warnings from United States Government, 338; revolutions denounced by United States, 343. Revolutionary party, Cuban, IV, 1, 11. Rey, Juan F. G., III, 40. Riano y Gamboa, Francisco, Governor, I, 287. Ribera, Diego de, I, 206; work on La Fuerza, 209. Ricafort, Mariano, Governor, II, 347. Ricla, Conde de, Governor, II, 102; retires, 109. Rio de la Luna, I, 16. Rio de Mares, I, 16. Riva-Martiz, I, 279. Rivera, Juan Ruiz, filibuster, IV, 70; succeeds Maceo, 79. Rivera, Ruiz, Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, IV, 160. Roa, feud with Villalobos, I, 323. Rodas, Caballero de, Governor, III, 213; emancipation decree, 242. Rodney, Sir George, expedition to West Indies, II, 153. Rodriguez, Alejandro, suppresses revolt, IV, 266. Rodriguez, Laureano, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Rojas, Alfonso de, I, 181. Rojas, Gomez de, banished, I, 193; Governor of La Fuerza, 217; rebuilds Santiago, 258. Rojas, Hernando de, expedition to Florida, I, 196. Rojas, Juan Bautista de, royal treasurer, I, 218. Rojas, Juan de, aid to Lady Isabel de Soto, I, 145; commander at Havana, 183. Rojas, Manuel de, Governor, I, 105; adopts policy of "Cuba for the Cubans," 106; second Governorship, 121; dealings with Indians, 126; noble endeavors frustrated, 130; resigns, 135; the King's unique tribute to him, 135. Roldan, Francisco Dominguez, Secretary of Public Instruction, sketch and portrait, IV, 357. Roldan, José Gonzalo, III, 328. Roloff, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 45; Secretary of War, 48; filibuster, 70. Romano Key, I, 18. Romay, Tomas, introduces vaccination, II, 192; portrait, facing 192. Roncali, Federico, Governor, II, 366; on Spanish interests in Cuba, 381. Roosevelt, Theodore, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; portrait, 113; President of United States, on relations with Cuba, 245; estimate of General Wood's work in Cuba, 251; fight with Congress for Cuban reciprocity, 256; seeks to aid President Palma against revolutionists, 275; letter to Quesada, 275. Root, Elihu, Secretary of War, on Cuban Constitution, IV, 194; on Cuban relations with United States, 197; explains Platt Amendment, 201. Rowan, A. S., messenger to Oriente, IV. 107. Rubalcava, Manuel Justo, II, 274. Rubens, Horatio, Counsel of Cuban Junta, IV, 3. Rubios, Palacios, I, 78. Ruiz, Joaquin, spy, IV, 91; death, 92. See ARANGUREN. Ruiz, Juan Fernandez, filibuster, IV, 70. Rum Cay. See CONCEPTION. Rural Guards, organized by General Wood, IV, 144; efficiency of, 301. Ruysch, geographer, I, 6. Saavedra, Juan Esquiro, I, 278. Sabinal Key, I, 18. Saco, José Antonio, pioneer of Independence, II, 378; portrait, facing 378; literary and patriotic work, III, 325, 327. Sagasta, Praxedes, Spanish Premier, proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 6; resigns, 36. Saint Augustine, expedition against, I, 332. Saint Mery, M. de, search for tomb of Columbus, I, 34. Salamanca, Juan de, Governor, I, 295; promotes industries, 300. Salamanca y Negrete, Manuel, Governor, III, 314. Salaries, some early, I, 263. Salas, Indalacio, IV, 21. Salazar. See SOMERUELOS. Salcedo, Bishop, controversy with Governor Tejada, I, 262. Sama Point, I, 4. Samana. See GUANAHANI. Sampson, William T., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; at Santiago, 114; portrait, 115. Sanchez, Bartolome, makes plans for La Fuerza, I, 194; begins building, 195; feud with Mazariegos, 197. Sanchez, Bernabe, II, 345. Sancti Spiritus, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168. Sandoval, Garcia Osorio, Governor, I, 197. See OSARIO. Sanitation, undertaken by Guemez, II, 18; vaccination introduced by Dr. Romay. 192; bad conditions, III, 313; General Wood at Santiago, IV, 142; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Sanguilly, Julio, falls in leading revolution, IV, 29, 55. Sanguilly, Manuel, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 190. San Lazaro watchtower, picture, I, 155; fortified against Drake, 248. San Salvador. See GUANAHANI. Santa Clara, Conde de, Governor, II, 194, 300. Santa Crux del Sur, I, 20. Santa Cruz, Francisco, I, 111. Santiago de Cuba, Columbus at, I, 19; founded by Velasquez, 68; second capital of island, 69; seat of gold refining, 80; site of cathedral, 123; condition in Angulo's time, 166; looted by privateers, 193; fortified by Menendez, 203; raided and destroyed by French, 256; rebuilt by Gomez de Rojas, 258; capital of Eastern District, 275; Morro Castle built, 289; captured by British, 299; attacked by Franquinay, 310; attacked by Admiral Vernon, II, 29; literary activities, 169; great improvements made, 180; battles near in War of Independence, IV, 112; naval battle, 114; General Wood's administration, 135; great work for sanitation, 142. Santiago, battle of, IV, 114. Santiago, sunset scene, facing III, 280. Santillan, Diego, Governor, I, 205. Santo Domingo See HISPANIOLA. Sanudo, Luis, Governor, I, 336. Sarmiento. Diego de, Bishop, makes trouble, I, 149, 152. Saunders, Romulus M., sounds Spain on purchase of Cuba, III, 135. Sartorius, Manuel and Ricardo, revolutionists, IV, 4. Savine, Albert, on British designs on Cuba, II, 40. Schley, Winfield S., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; portrait, 110; at Santiago, 114. Schoener's globe, I, 5. Schools, backward condition of, II, 174, 244, 312. See EDUCATION. Shafter, W. R., General, leads American army into Cuba, IV, 111. Shipbuilding at Havana, II, 8, 33, 113, 300. Sickles, Daniel E., Minister to Spain, offers mediation, III, 217. Silva, Manuel, Secretary of Interior, IV, 90. Slave Insurrection, II, 13; III, 367, et seq. Slavery, begun in Repartimiento system, I, 70; not sanctioned by King, 82; slave trading begun, 83; growth and regulation, 170; oppressive policy of Spain, 266; the "Assiento," II, 2; great growth of trade, 22; gross abuses, 202; described by Masse, 202; census of slaves, 204; rise of emancipation movement, 206; rights of slaves defined by King, 210; African trade forbidden, 285; Negro census, 286; early records of trade, 288; Humboldt on, 288; statistics of trade, 289 et seq.; domestic relations of slaves, 292; dangers of system denounced, 320; official complicity in illegal trade, 366; slave insurrection, 367; inhuman suppression by government, 374 et seq.; emancipation by revolution of 1868, 159; United States urges Spain to abolish slavery, 242; Rodas's decrees, 242; Moret law, 243. Smith, Caleb. publishes book on West Indies, II, 37. Smuggling, II, 133. "Sociedad de Amigos," II, 169. "Sociedad Patriotica," II, 166. "Sociedad Patriotica y Economica," II, 178. Society of Progress, II, 78. Solano, José de, naval commander, II, 147. "Soles de Bolivar," II, 341; attempts to suppress, 343. Solorzano, Juan del Hoya, I, 337; II, 10. Someruelos, Marquis of, Governor, II, 196, 301. Sores, Jacques, French raider, II, 183; attacks Havana, 184; captures city, 186. Soto, Antonio de, I, 292. Soto, Diego de, I, 109, 217. Soto, Hernando de, Governor and Adelantado, I, 140; portrait, 140; arrival in Cuba, 141; tour of island, 142; makes Havana his home, 144; chiefly interested in Florida, 144; sails for Florida, 145; his fate in Mississippi, 147; trouble with Indians, 148. Soto, Lady Isabel de, I, 141; her vigil at La Fuerza, 147; death, 149. Soto, Luis de, I, 141. Soulé, Pierre, Minister to Spain, III, 137; Indiscretions, 138; Ostend Manifesto, 142. South Sea Company, II, 21, 201. Spain: Fiscal policy toward Cuba, I, 175; wars with France, 177; discriminations against Cuba, 266, 267; protests against South Sea Company, II, 22; course in American Revolution, 143; war with Great Britain, 151; attitude toward America, 159; peace with Great Britain, 162; restrictive laws, 224; policy under Godoy, 265; decline of power, 273; seeks to pawn Cuba to Great Britain for loan, 330; protests to United States against Lopez's expedition, III, 59; seeks British protection, 129; refuses to sell Cuba, 135; revolution against Bourbon dynasty, 145 et seq.; rejects suggestion of American mediation in Cuba, 219; seeks American mediation, 293; strives to placate Cuba, IV, 5; crisis over Cuban affairs, 35; attitude toward War of Independence, 40; considers Autonomy, 71; Cabinet crisis of 1897, 88; proposes joint investigation of Maine disaster, 100; at war with United States, 106; makes Treaty of Paris, relinquishing Cuba, 118. Spanish-American War: causes of, IV, 105; declared, 106; blockade of Cuban coast, 110; landing of American army in Cuba, 111; fighting near Santiago, 112; fort at El Caney, picture, 112; San Juan Hill, battle, 113; San Juan Hill, picture of monument, 114; naval battle of Santiago, 115; peace negotiations, 116; "Peace Tree," picture, 116; treaty of peace, 118. Spanish literature in XVI century, I, 360. Spotorno, Juan Bautista, seeks peace, rebuked by Maso, IV, 35. Steinhart, Frank, American consul, advises President Palma to ask for American aid, IV, 271; correspondence with State Department, 272. Stock raising, early attention to, I, 173, 224; development of, 220. Stokes, W. E. D., aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Students, murder of by Volunteers, III, 260. Suarez y Romero, Anselmo, III, 326. Sugar, Industry begun under Velasquez, I, 175, 224; growth of industry, 265; primitive methods, II, 222; growth, III, 3; great development under President Menocal, IV, 358. "Suma de Geografia," of Enciso, I, 54. Sumana, Diego de, I, 111. Tacon, Miguel, Governor, II, 347; despotic fury, 348; conflict with Lorenzo, 349; public works, 355; fish market, 357; melodramatic administration of justice, 359. Taft, William H., Secretary of War of United States, intervenes in revolution, IV, 272; arrives at Havana, 275; negotiates with President Palma and the revolutionists, 276; portrait, 276; conveys ultimatum of revolutionists to President Palma, 279; accepts President Palma's resignation, 280; pardons revolutionists, 280; unfortunate policy, 283. Tainan, Antillan stock, I, 8. Tamayo, Diego, Secretary of State, IV, 159; Secretary of Government, 254. Tamayo, Rodrigo de, I, 126. Tariff, after British occupation, II, 106; reduction, 141; oppressive duties. III, 5; under American occupation, IV, 183. Taxation, revolt against, II, 197; "reforms," 342; oppressive burdens, III, 6; increase in Ten Years' War, 207; evasion of, 312; under American intervention, IV, 151. Taylor, Hannis, American Minister at Madrid, IV, 33. Tejada, Juan de, Governor, I, 261; great works for Cuba, 262; resigns, 263. Teneza, Dr. Francisco, Protomedico, I, 336. Ten Years' War, III, 155 et seq.; first battles, 184; aid from United States, 211; offers of American mediation, 217; rejected, 219; campaigns of destruction, 222; losses reported, 290; end in Treaty of Zanjon, 299; losses, 304. Terry, Emilio, Secretary of Agriculture, IV, 254. Theatres, first performance in Cuba, I, 264; first theatre built, II, 130, 236. Thrasher, J. S., on census, II, 283. Tines y Fuertes, Juan Antonio, Governor, II, 31. Tobacco, early use, I, 9; culture promoted, 300; monopoly, 334; "Tobacco War," 338; effects of monopoly, II, 221. Tobar, Nuñez, I, 141, 143. Tolon, Miguel de, III, 330. Toltecs, I, 7. Tomayo, Esteban, revolutionist, IV, 34. Torquemada, Garcia de, I, 239; investigates Luzan, 241. Torre, Marquis de la, Governor, II, 127; work for Havana, 129; death, 133. Torres Ayala, Laureano de, Governor, I, 334; reappointed, 337. Torres, Gaspar de, Governor, I, 234; conflict with Rojas family, 235; absconds, 235. Torres, Rodrigo de, naval commander, II, 34. Torriente, Cosimo de la, Secretary of Government, IV, 320. Toscanelli, I, 4. Treaty of Paris, IV, 118. Tres Palacios, Felipe Jose de, Bishop, II, 174. Tribune, New York, describes revolutionary leaders, III, 173. Trinidad, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; great fire, II, 177. Trocha, begun by Campos, IV, 44; Weyler's, 73. Troncoso, Bernardo, Governor, II, 168. Turnbull, David, British consul, II, 364; complicity in slave insurrection, 372. Ubite, Juan de, Bishop, I, 123. Ulloa, Antonio de, sent to take possession of Louisiana, II, 118; arbitrary conduct, 120. Union Constitutionalists, III, 306. United States, early relations with Cuba, II, 254; first suggestion of annexation, 257; John Quincy Adams's policy, 258; Jefferson's policy, 260; Clay's policy, 261; representations to Colombia and Mexico, 262; Buchanan's policy, 263; Monroe Doctrine, 328; consuls not admitted to Cuba, 330; Van Buren's policy, 331; growth of commerce with Cuba, III, 22; President Taylor's proclamation against filibustering, 41; course toward Lopez, 60; attitude toward Cuban revolutionists, 123; division of sentiment between North and South, 124; policy of Edward Everett, 130; overtures for purchase of Cuba, 135; end of Civil War, 151; new policy toward Cuba, 151; recognition denied to revolution, 172; aid and sympathy given secretly, 195; Cuban appeals for recognition, 200; recognition denied, 203; protests against Rodas's decrees, 216; offers of mediation, 217; rejected by Spain, 219; increasing interest and sympathy with revolutionists, 273; warning to Spanish Government, 291; effect of reciprocity upon Cuba, 313; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 27, 70; Congress favors recognition, 70; tender of good offices, 71; President Cleveland's message of 1896, 79; appropriation for relief of victims of "concentration" policy, 86; President McKinley's message of 1897, 87; sensation at destruction of _Maine_, 99; declaration of war against Spain, 106; Treaty of Paris, 118; establishment of first Government of Intervention, 132; relations with Republic of Cuba, 195; protectorate to be retained, 196; Platt Amendment, 199; mischief-making intrigues, 200; naval stations in Cuba, 255; reciprocity, 256; second Intervention, 281; warning to José Miguel Gomez, 305; asks settlement of claims, 308; Chargé d'Affaires assaulted, 308; supervision of Cuban legislation, 326; warning to revolutionists, 339; attitude toward Gomez revolution, 343. University of Havana, founded, II, 11. Unzaga, Luis de, Governor, II, 157. Urrutia, historian, quoted, I, 300. Urrutia, Sancho de, I, 111. Utrecht, Treaty of, I, 326; begins new era, II, 1. Uznaga, Luis de, sent to rule Louisiana, II, 126; reforms, 165. Vaca, Cabeza de, I, 140. Vadillo, Juan, declines to investigate Guzman, I, 118; temporary Governor, 119; tremendous indictment of Guzman, 120; retires after good work, 121; clash with Bishop Ramirez, 124. Valdes, historian, quoted, II, 175. Valdes, Gabriel de la Conception, III, 325. Valdes, Jeronimo, Bishop, I, 335. Valdes, Pedro de, Governor, I, 202, 272; retires, 276. Valdes, Geronimo, Governor, II, 364. Valdueza, Marquis de, I, 281. Valiente, José Pablo, II, 170, 180. Valiente, Juan Bautista, Governor of Santiago, II, 180. Vallizo, Diego, I, 277. Valmaseda, Count, Governor, proclamation against revolution, III, 171, 270; recalled for barbarities, 273. Van Buren, Martin, on United States and Cuba, II, 331. Vandeval, Nicolas C., I, 331, 333. Varela, Felix, sketch and portrait, III, 320; works, 321. Varnhagen, F. A. de, quoted, I, 2. Varona, Bernabe de, sketch and portrait, III, 178. Varona, José Enrique, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 159; Vice President, 312; biography, 316; portrait, facing 316. Varona, Pepe Jerez, chief of secret service, IV, 268. Vasquez, Juan, I, 330. Vedado, view in, IV, 176. Vega, Pedro Guerra de la, I, 243; asks fugitives to aid in defence against Drake, 248. Velasco, Francisco de Aguero, II, 345. Velasco, Luis Vicente, defender of Morro against British, II, 58; signal valor, 61; death, 67. Velasquez, Antonio, errand to Spain, I, 77 Velasquez, Bernardino, I, 115. Velasquez, Diego, first Governor of Cuba, I, 59; portrait, 59; colonizes Cuba, 60; hostilities with natives, 61, explores the island, 67; marriage and bereavement, 68; founds various towns, 68; begins Cuban commerce, 68; organizes government, 69; favored by King Ferdinand, 73; appointed Adelantado, 74; seeks to rule Yucatan and Mexico, 85; recalls Grijalva, 88; quarrels with Cortez, 91; sends Cortez to explore Mexico, 92, 94; seeks to intercept and recall Cortez, 97; sends Narvaez to Mexico, 98; removed from office by Diego Columbus, 100; restored by King, 102; death and epitaph, 103; posthumous arraignment by Altamarino, 107; convicted and condemned, 108. Velasquez, Juan Montano, Governor, I, 293. Velez Garcia, Secretary of State, IV, 297. Velez y Herrera, Ramon, III, 324. Venegas, Francisco, Governor, I, 278. Vernon, Edward, Admiral, expedition to Darien, II 27; Invasion of Cuba, 29. Viamonte, Bitrian, Governor, I, 286. Viana y Hinojosa, Diego de, Governor, I, 317. Victory loan, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 353. Villa Clara, founded, I, 321. Villafana, attempts to assassinate Cortez, I, 99. Villafana, Angelo de, Governor of Florida, controversy with Mazariegos, I, 196. Villalba y Toledo, Diego de, Governor, I, 290. Villalobos, Governor, feud with Roa, I, 323. Villalon, José Ramon, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13; Secretary of Public Works, 160, 330. Villalon Park, scene in, IV, 247. Villanueva, Count de, II, 342. Villapando, Bernardino de, Bishop, I, 225. Villarin, Pedro Alvarez de, Governor, I, 333. Villaverde, Cirillo, III, 327. Villaverde, Juan de, Governor of Santiago, I, 276. Villegas, Diaz de, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 297; resigns, 302. Villuendas, Enrique, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188; secretary, 189. Virginius, capture of, III, 277; butchery of officers and crew, 278 et seq.; British intervention, 280; list of passengers, 281; diplomatic negotiations over, 283. Vives, Francisco, Governor, II, 317; despotism, 317; expedition against Mexico, 346. Viyuri, Luis, II, 197. Volunteers, organized, III, 152; murder Arango, 188; have Dulce recalled, 213; cause murder of Zenea, 252; increased activities, 260; murder of students, 261. War of Independence, IV, i, 8; circumstances of beginning, 9; finances, 14; Republic of Cuba proclaimed, 15; attitude of Cuban people, 22; actual outbreak, 29; martial law proclaimed, 30; Spanish forces in Cuba, 31; arrival and policy of Martinez Campos, 38; Gomez and Maceo begin great campaign, 53; Spanish defeated, and reenforced, 55; campaign of devastation, 60; entire island involved, 61; fall of Campos, 63; Weyler in command, 66; destruction by both sides, 68; losses, 90; entry of United States, 107; attitude of Cubans toward American intervention, 108; end of war, 116. Watling's Island. See GUANAHANI. Wax, development of Industry, II, 132. Webster, Daniel, negotiations with Spain, III, 126. Weyler y Nicolau, Valeriano, Governor, IV, 65; portrait, 66; harsh decree, 66; conquers Pinar del Rio. 83; "concentration" policy, 85; recalled, 88. Wheeler, Gen. Joseph, at Santiago, IV, 113, 115. White, Col. G. W., with Lopez, III, 40. Whitney, Henry, messenger to Gomez, IV, 107. Williams, Ramon O., United States consul at Havana, IV, 32; acts in behalf of Americans in Cuba, 72; opposes sending _Maine_ to Havana, 100. Wittemeyer, Major, reports on Gomez revolution to Washington government, IV, 336; offers President Menocal aid of United States, 337. Wood, General Leonard, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; Military Governor of Santiago, 135; his previous career, 140; unique responsibility and power, 141; dealing with pestilence, 142; organizes Rural Guards, 144; portrait, facing 158; Military Governor of Cuba, 158; well received by Cubans, 158; estimate of _La Lucha_, 158; his Cabinet, 159; comments on his appointments, 160; reorganization of school system, 161; promotes public works, 166; Dady contract dispute, 171; applies Finlay's yellow fever theory with great success, 171; reform of jurisprudence, 177; organizes Provincial governments, 179; holds municipal elections, 180; promulgates election law, 181; calls Constitutional Convention, 185; calls for general election, 240; his comments on election, 245; announces end of American occupation, 246; surrenders government of Cuba to Cubans, 249; President Roosevelt's estimate of his work, 251; view of one of his mountain roads, facing 358. Woodford, Stewart L., United States Minister to Spain, IV, 103; presents ultimatum and departs, 106. Xagua, Gulf of, I, 21. Ximenes, Cardinal and Regent, gives Las Casas hearing on Cuba, I, 77. Yanez, Adolfo Saenz, Secretary of Agriculture and Public Works, IV, 146. Yellow Fever, first invasion, II, 51; Dr. Finlay's theory applied by General Wood, IV, 171; disease eliminated from island, 176. Yero, Eduardo, Secretary of Public Instruction, IV, 254. Ynestrosa, Juan de, I, 207. Yniguez, Bernardino, I, 111. Yucatan, islands source of slave trade, I, 83; explored by Cordova, 84. Yznaga, Jose Sanchez, III, 37. Zaldo, Carlos, Secretary of State, IV, 254. Zambrana, Ramon, III, 328. Zanjon, Treaty of, III, 299. Zapata, Peninsula of, visited by Columbus, I, 22. Zarraga, Julian, filibuster, IV, 70. Zayas, Alfredo, secretary of Constitutional Convention, IV, 189; compact with José Miguel Gomez, 265; spokesman of revolutionists against President Palma, 277; elected Vice President, 290; becomes Vice President, 297; sketch and portrait, 300; quarrel with Gomez, 306; candidate for President, 328; hints at revolution, 330. Zayas, Francisco, Lieutenant Governor, I, 205; resigns, 206. Zayas, Francisco, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Zayas, Juan B., killed in battle, IV, 78. Zayas, Lincoln de, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Superintendent of Schools, 162. Zenea, Juan Clemente, sketch and portrait, III, 252; murdered, 253; his works, 332. Zequiera y Arango, Manuel, II, 274. Zipangu. See CIPANOO. Zuazo, Alfonso de, appointed second Governor of Cuba, I, 100; dismissed by King, 102. * * * * * The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber: whereupon Castanada=>whereupon Castenada General Caballere de Rodas=>General Caballero de Rodas He had taken an active part in the revolution upon its inception=>He had taken an active part in the resolution upon its inception wtih which to support their movement=>with which to support their movement deserted and, approaching the Spanish=>deserted, and approaching the Spanish their govermnents and to have interviews=>their governments and to have interviews Talon was an intense patriot=>Tolon was an intense patriot quantiy of provisions=>quantity of provisions 
51798	----	Transcriber Note Text emphasis denoted as _Italic_. [Illustration: "A RUSH WAS MADE AND THE OX CART CAME TO A SUDDEN HALT."] WHEN SANTIAGO FELL OR _THE WAR ADVENTURES OF TWO CHUMS_ BY CAPTAIN RALPH BONEHILL AUTHOR OF "A SAILOR BOY WITH DEWEY," "OFF FOR HAWAII," "GUN AND SLED," "LEO, THE CIRCUS BOY," "RIVAL BICYCLISTS," ETC. [Illustration] CHATTERTON-PECK COMPANY NEW YORK, N. Y. BY THE SAME AUTHOR WITH CUSTER IN THE BLACK HILLS; Or, A Young Scout among the Indians. BOYS OF THE FORT; Or, A Young Captain's Pluck. THE YOUNG BANDMASTER; Or, Concert Stage and Battlefield. WHEN SANTIAGO FELL; Or, The War Adventures of Two Chums. A SAILOR BOY WITH DEWEY; Or, Afloat in the Philippines. OFF FOR HAWAII; Or, The Mystery of a Great Volcano. _12mo, finely illustrated and bound in cloth. Price, per volume, 60 cents._ NEW YORK CHATTERTON-PECK COMPANY 1905 Copyright, 1899, by THE MERSHON COMPANY PREFACE. "When Santiago Fell," while a complete story in itself, forms the first volume of a line to be issued under the general title of the "Flag of Freedom Series" for boys. My object in writing this story was to present to American lads a true picture of life in the Cuba of to-day, and to show what a fierce struggle was waged by the Cubans against the iron-handed mastery of Spain previous to the time that our own glorious United States stepped in and gave to Cuba the precious boon of liberty. The time covered is the last year of the Cuban-Spanish War and our own campaign leading up to the fall of Santiago. It may be possible that some readers may think the adventures of the two chums over-drawn, but this is hardly a fact. The past few years have been exceedingly bitter ones to all living upon Cuban soil, and neither life nor property has been safe. Even people who were peaceably inclined were drawn into the struggle against their will, and the innocent, in many cases, suffered with the guilty. This war, so barbarously carried on, has now come to an end; and, under the guiding hand of Uncle Sam, let us trust that Cuba and her people will speedily take their rightful place among the small but well-beloved nations of the world--or, if not this, that she may join the ever-increasing sisterhood of our own States. Once more thanking my numerous young friends for their kind reception of my previous works, I place this volume in their hands, trusting that from it they may derive much pleasure and profit. Captain Ralph Bonehill. _January 1, 1899._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Off for the Interior 1 II. The Escape from the Gunboat 8 III. In the Wilds of the Island 15 IV. In a Novel Prison 22 V. Lost among the Hills 30 VI. From One Difficulty to Another 37 VII. Fooling the Spanish Guerrillas 45 VIII. Andres 52 IX. Across the Canefields 59 X. A Council of the Enemy 66 XI. A Wild Ride on Horseback 74 XII. A Daring Leap 81 XIII. Friends in Need 87 XIV. General Calixto Garcia 95 XV. A Prisoner of War 102 XVI. A Rescue under Difficulties 108 XVII. A Treacherous Stream to Cross 116 XVIII. Alone 123 XIX. The Cave in the Mountain 130 XX. Señor Guerez 137 XXI. The Attack on the Old Convent 145 XXII. The Routing of the Enemy 154 XXIII. On the Trail of My Father 161 XXIV. In the Belt of the Firebrands 168 XXV. Escaping the Flames 176 XXVI. A Disheartening Discovery 184 XXVII. Gilbert Burnham 191 XXVIII. A Battle on Land and Water 198 XXIX. Looking for my Cuban Chum 205 XXX. Once More among the Hills 212 XXXI. The Battle at the Railroad Embankment 220 XXXII. A Leap in the Dark 229 XXXIII. Captain Guerez Makes a Discovery 238 XXXIV. The Dogs of Cuban Warfare 244 XXXV. The Last of the Bloodhounds 252 XXXVI. Cast into a Santiago Dungeon 261 XXXVII. The Fall of the Spanish Stronghold 271 WHEN SANTIAGO FELL. CHAPTER I. OFF FOR THE INTERIOR. "We cannot allow you to leave this city." It was a Spanish military officer of high rank who spoke, and he addressed Alano Guerez and myself. I did not understand his words, but my companion did, and he quickly translated them for my benefit. "Then what are we to do, Alano?" I questioned. "We have no place to stop at in Santiago, and our money is running low." Alano's brow contracted into a perplexing frown. He spoke to the officer, and received a few curt words in reply. Then the Spaniard turned to others standing near, and we felt that we were dismissed. A guard conducted us to the door, and saluted us; and we walked away from the headquarters. The reason for it all was this: Less than a month before we had left the Broxville Military Academy in upper New York State to join Alano's parents and my father in Cuba. Alano's father was a Cuban, and owned a large sugar plantation some distance to the eastward of Guantanamo Bay. He was wealthy, and had sent Alano to America to be educated, as many rich Cubans do. As my father and Señor Guerez were well acquainted and had strong business connections, it was but natural that Alano should be placed at the boarding school which I attended, and that we should become firm friends. For a long time we played together, ate together, studied together, and slept together, until at last as chums we became almost inseparable. Some months back, and while the great struggle for liberty was going on between the Cubans and their rulers in Spain, certain business difficulties had taken my father to Cuba. During his stop in the island he made his home for the greater part with Señor Guerez, and while there was unfortunate enough during a trip on horseback to fall and break his leg. This accident placed him on his back longer than was first expected, for the break was a bad one. In the meantime the war went on, and the territory for many miles around Santiago de Cuba was in a state of wild excitement. Not knowing exactly what was going on, Alano wrote to his parents begging that he be allowed to come to them, and in the same mail I sent a communication to my father, asking if I could not accompany my Cuban chum. To our delight the answer came that if we wished we might come without delay. At the time this word was sent neither Señor Guerez nor my father had any idea that the war would assume such vast proportions around Santiago, involving the loss of many lives and the destruction of millions of dollars of property. Alano and I were not long in making our preparations. We left Broxville two days after permission was received, took the cars to the metropolis, and engaged immediate passage upon the _Esmeralda_ for Santiago de Cuba. We had heard of the war a hundred times on the way, but even on entering the harbor of the city we had no thought of difficulty in connection with our journey on rail and horseback outside of the city. We therefore suffered a rude awakening when the custom-house officials, assisted by the Spanish military officers, made us stand up in a long row with other passengers, while we were thoroughly searched from head to foot. Each of us had provided himself with a pistol; and these, along with the cartridges, were taken from us. Our baggage, also, was examined in detail, and everything in the way of a weapon was confiscated. "War means something, evidently," was the remark I made, but how much it meant I did not learn until later. Our names were taken down, and we were told to remain in the city over night and report at certain headquarters in the morning. We were closely questioned as to where we had come from; and when I injudiciously mentioned the Broxville Military Academy, our questioner, a swarthy Spanish lieutenant, glared ominously at us. "I'm afraid you put your foot into it when you said that," was Alano's comment at the hotel that evening, when we were discussing our strange situation. "They are on the watch for people who want to join the insurgents." "Perhaps your father has become a rebel," I ventured. "It is not unlikely. He has spoken to me of Cuban independence many times." As might be expected, we passed an almost sleepless night, so anxious were we to learn what action the Spanish authorities would take in our case. When the decision came, as noted at the opening of this story, I was almost dumb-founded. "We're in a pickle, Alano," I said, as we walked slowly down the street, lined upon either side with quaint shops and houses. "We can't stay here without money, and we can't get out." "We must get out!" he exclaimed in a low tone, so as not to be overheard. "Do you suppose I am going to remain here, when my father and mother are in the heart of the war district, and, perhaps, in great danger?" "I am with you!" I cried. "For my father is there too. But how can we manage it? I heard at the hotel last night that every road leading out of the city is well guarded." "We'll find a way," he rejoined confidently. "But we'll have to leave the bulk of our baggage behind. The most we can carry will be a small valise each. And we must try to get hold of some kind of weapons, too." We returned to our hotel, and during the day Alano struck up an acquaintanceship with a Cuban-American who knew his father well. Alano, finding he could trust the gentleman, took him into his confidence, and, as a result, we obtained not only a good pistol each,--weapons we immediately secreted in our clothing,--but also received full details of how to leave Santiago de Cuba by crossing the bay in a rowboat and taking to the woods and mountains beyond. "It will be rough traveling," said the gentlemen who gave us the directions, "but you'll find your lives much safer than if you tried one of the regular roads--that is, of course, after you have passed the forts and the gunboats lying in the harbor." Both Alano and I were much taken with this plan, and it was arranged we should leave the city on the first dark night. Two days later it began to rain just at sunset, and we felt our time had come. A small rowboat had already been procured and was secreted under an old warehouse. At ten o'clock it was still raining and the sky was as black as ink, and we set out,--I at the oars, and Alano in the bow,--keeping the sharpest of lookouts. We had agreed that not a word should be spoken unless it was necessary, and we moved on in silence. I had spent many hours on the lake facing Broxville Academy, and these now stood me in good stead. Dropping my oars without a sound, I pulled a long, steady stroke in the direction I had previously studied out. We were about halfway across the bay when suddenly Alano turned to me. "Back!" he whispered, and I reversed my stroke as quickly as possible. "There is a gunboat or something ahead," he went on. "Steer to the left. See the lights?" I looked, and through the mists made out several signals dimly. I brought the boat around, and we went on our way, only to bring up, a few seconds later, against a huge iron chain, attached to one of the war vessels' anchors, for the vessel had dragged a bit on the tide. The shock threw Alano off his feet, and he tumbled against me, sending us both sprawling. I lost hold of one of the oars, and at the same moment an alarm rang out--a sound which filled us both with fear. CHAPTER II. THE ESCAPE FROM THE GUNBOAT. "We are lost!" cried Alano, as he sought to pick himself up. "Oh, Mark, what shall we do?" "The oar--where is that oar?" I returned, throwing him from me and trying to pierce the darkness. "I don't know. I---- Oh!" Alano let out the exclamation as a broad sheet of light swept across the rain and the waters beneath us--light coming from a search-lantern in the turret of the gunboat. Fortunately the rays were not lowered sufficiently to reach us, yet the light was strong enough to enable me to see the missing oar, which floated but a few feet away. I caught it with the end of the other oar, and then began pulling at the top of my speed. But all of this took time, and now the alarm on board of the war vessel had reached its height. A shot rang out, a bell tolled, and several officers came rushing to the anchor chains. They began shouting in Spanish, so volubly I could not understand a word; and now was no time to question Alano, who was doing his best to get out a second pair of oars which we had, fortunately, placed on board at the last moment. He had often rowed with me on the lake at Broxville; and in a few seconds he had caught the stroke, and away we went at a spinning speed. "They are going to fire on us!" he panted, as the shouting behind increased. "Shall we give up?" "Not on my account." "Nor on mine. If we give up, they'll put us in prison, sure. Pull on!" And pull we did, until, in spite of the cold rain, each of us was dripping with perspiration and ready to drop with exhaustion. Boom! a cannon shot rang out, and involuntarily both of us ducked our heads. But the shot flew wide of its mark--so wide, in fact, that we knew not where it went. "They'll get out a boat next!" I said. "Pull, Alano; put every ounce of muscle into the stroke." "I am doing that already," he gasped. "We must be getting near the shore. What about the guard there?" "We'll have to trust to luck," I answered. Another shot came booming over the misty waters, and this time we heard the sizz of the cannon ball as it hit the waves and sank. We were now in the glare of the searchlight, but the mist and rain were in our favor. "There is the shore!" I cried, on looking around a few seconds later. "Now be prepared to run for it as soon as the boat beaches!" With a rush our craft shot in between a lot of sea grass and stuck her bow into the soft mud. Dropping our oars, we sprang to the bow and took long leaps to solid ground. We had hardly righted ourselves when there came a call out of the darkness. "_Quien va?_" And thus challenging us, a Spanish soldier who was on guard along the water's edge rushed up to intercept our progress. His bayonet was within a foot of my breast, when Alano jumped under and hurled him to the ground. "Come!" he cried to me. "Come, ere it is too late!" and away we went, doing the best sprinting we had ever done in our lives. Over a marsh and through a thorny field we dashed, and then struck a narrow path leading directly into a woods. The guard yelled after us and fired his gun, but that was the last we saw or heard of him. [Illustration: "AN ALARM RANG OUT, A SOUND WHICH FILLED US BOTH WITH FEAR."] Fearful, however, of pursuit, we did not slacken our pace until compelled to; and then, coming to a thick clump of grass at the foot of a half-decayed banana tree, we sank down completely out of breath. I had never taken such fearful chances on my life before, and I trusted I would never have to do so again, little dreaming of all the perils which still lay before us. "I believe we are safe for the present," said Alano, when he could get his breath. "I wonder where we are?" "We're in a very dark, dirty, and wet woods," I returned gloomily. "Have we got to remain here all night?" "It's better than being in a Spanish prison," replied my Cuban chum simply. "We can go on after we are a bit rested." The rain was coming down upon the broad leaves of the banana tree at a lively rate, but Alano said he thought it must be a clearing shower, and so it soon proved to be. But scarcely had the drops ceased to fall than a host of mosquitoes and other insects arose, keeping us more than busy. "We must get out of this!" I exclaimed, when I could stand the tiny pests no longer. "I'm being literally chewed up alive. And, see, there is a lizard!" And I shook the thing from my arm. "Oh, you mustn't mind such things in Cuba!" said Alano, laughing shortly. "Why, we have worse things than that--snakes and alligators, and the like. But come on, if you are rested. It may be we'll soon strike some sort of shelter." Luckily, through all the excitement we had retained our valises, which were slung across our backs by straps thrown over the shoulder. From my own I now extracted a large handkerchief, and this served, when placed in my broad-brimmed hat, to protect my neck and ears from the insects. As for Alano, he was acclimated and did not seem to be bothered at all. We pursued our way through the woods, and then ascended a steep bank of clay, at the top of which was a well-made road leading to the northward. We looked up and down, but not a habitation or building of any kind was in sight. "It leads somewhere," said Alano, after a pause. "Let us go on, but with care, for perhaps the Spanish Government has guards even as far out as this." On we went once more, picking our way around the numerous pools and bog-holes in the road. The stars were now coming out, and we could consequently see much better than before. "A light!" I cried, when quarter of a mile had been traversed. "See, Alano." "It must be from a plantation," he answered. "If it is, the chances are that the owner is a Spanish sympathizer--he wouldn't dare to be anything else, so close to the city." "But he might aid us in secret," I suggested. Alano shrugged his shoulders, and we proceeded more slowly. Then he caught my arm. "There is a sugar-house back of that canefield," he said. "We may find shelter there." "Anywhere--so we can catch a few hours' nap." We proceeded around the field with caution, for the plantation house was not far away. Passing a building where the grinding was done, we entered a long, low drying shed. Here we struck a match, and by the flickering light espied a heap of dry husks, upon which we immediately threw ourselves. "We'll have to be up and away before daybreak," said my chum, as he drew off his wet coat, an example which I at once followed, even though it was so warm I did not suffer greatly from the dampness. "We would be sorry fellows to give an explanation if we were stopped in this vicinity." "Yes, and for the matter of that, we had better sleep with one eye open," I rejoined. And then we turned in, and both presently fell asleep through sheer exhaustion. How long I had been sleeping I did not know. I awoke with a start, to find a cold nose pressing against my face. "Hi! get out of here!" I cried, and then the owner of the nose leaped back and uttered the low, savage, and unmistakable growl of a Cuban bloodhound! CHAPTER III. IN THE WILDS OF THE ISLAND. To say that I was alarmed when I found that the intruder in our sleeping quarters was a bloodhound would be to put the fact very mildly. I was truly horrified, and a chill shook my frame as I had a momentary vision of being torn to pieces by the bloodthirsty animal. My cry awoke Alano, who instantly asked what was the matter, and then yelled at the beast in Spanish. As the creature retreated, evidently to prepare for a rush upon us, I sprang to my feet and grasped a short ladder which led to the roof of the shed. "Come!" I roared to my chum, and Alano did so; and both of us scrambled up, with the bloodhound snarling and snatching at our feet. He even caught the heel of my boot, but I kicked him off, and we reached the top of the shed in temporary safety. Baffled, the dog ran out of the shed and began to bay loudly, as though summoning assistance. "We're in for it now!" I groaned. "We can't get away from the dog, and he'll arouse somebody before long." "Well, we can't help ourselves," replied Alano, with a philosophical shrug of his shoulders. "Ha! somebody is coming now!" He pointed through the semi-darkness, for it was close to sunrise. A Cuban negro was approaching, a huge fellow all of six feet tall and dressed in the garb of an overseer. He carried a little triangular lantern, and as he drew closer he yelled at the bloodhound in a Cuban _patois_ which was all Greek to me, but which Alano readily understood. The dog stopped baying, but insisted upon leading his master to the very foot of the shed, where he stood with his nose pointed up at us. There was no help for it, so Alano crawled to the edge of the roof and told the overseer what was the trouble--that the dog had driven us hither and that we were afraid of being killed. A short conversation followed, and then my chum turned to me. "We can go down now," he said. "The overseer says the dog will not touch us so long as he is around." We leaped to the ground, although I must admit I did not do so with a mind perfectly at ease, the bloodhound still looked so ugly. However, beyond a few sniffs at my trousers-leg and a deep rumble of his voice, he offered no further indignities. "He wants to know who we are," said Alano, after more conversation. "What shall I tell him?" "Tell him the truth, and ask him for help to reach your father's plantation, Alano. He won't know we escaped from Santiago de Cuba without permission." Alano did as directed. At the mention of Senor Guerez' name the overseer held up his hands in astonishment. He told Alano that he knew his father well, that he had met the señor only two weeks previously, and that both Alano's father and my own had thrown in their fortunes with the insurgents! "Is it possible!" I ejaculated. "My father, too! Why, he must be still lame!" "He is," said Alano, after further consultation with the newcomer. "My father, it seems, had to join the rebels, or his plantation would have been burned to the ground. There was a quarrel with some Spanish sympathizers, and in the end both your father and mine joined the forces under General Calixto Garcia." "And where are they now?" "The overseer does not know." "What of your mother and sisters?" "He does not know about them either;" and for a moment Alano's handsome and manly face grew very sober. "Oh, if I was only with them!" "And if I was only with my father!" I cried. My father was all the world to me, and to be separated from him at such a time was more than painful. "Do you think he will help us?" I went on, after a moment of silence. The overseer agreed to do what he could for us, although that would not be much. He was an insurgent at heart, but his master and all around him were in sympathy with the Spanish Government. "He says for us to remain here and he will bring us breakfast," said Alano, as the man turned and departed, with the bloodhound at his side. "And after that he will set us on a road leading to Tiarriba and gave us a countersign which will help us into a rebel camp if there is any around." We secreted ourselves again in the cane shed, and it was not long before the overseer returned, bringing with him a kettle of steaming black coffee, without which no Cuban breakfast seems complete, and some fresh bread and half a dozen hard-boiled eggs. He had also a bag of crackers and a chunk of dried beef weighing several pounds. "Put those in your bags," he said to Alano, indicating the beef and crackers. "You may find it to your interest to keep out of sight for a day or two, to avoid the Spanish spies." The breakfast was soon dispatched, the provisions stored in our valises, and then the overseer took us up through the sugar-cane fields to where a brook emptied into a long pond, covered with green weeds, among which frogs as broad as one's hand croaked dismally. We hurried around the pond, and our guide pointed out a narrow, winding path leading upward through a stony woods. Then he whispered a few words to Alano, shook us both by the hand, and disappeared. "He says the countersign is 'Sagua'--after the river and city of that name," explained my chum as we tramped along. "You must wave your hand so if you see a man in the distance," and Alano twirled his arm over his head. Stony though it was in the woods, the vegetation was thick and rank. On every side were the trunks of decaying trees, overgrown with moss--the homes of beetles, lizards, and snakes innumerable. The snakes, most of them small fellows not over a foot long, at first alarmed me, but this only made Alano laugh. "They could not harm you if they tried," he said. "And they are very useful--they eat up so many of the mosquitoes and gnats and lizards." "But some of the snakes are dangerous," I insisted. "Oh, yes; but they are larger." "And what of wild animals?" "We have nothing but wild hogs and a few deer, and wild dogs too. And then there are the alligators to be found in the rivers." The sun had risen clear and hot, as is usual in that region after a shower. Where the trees were scattered, the rays beat down upon our heads mercilessly, and the slippery ground fairly steamed, so rapid was the evaporation. By noon we had reached the top of a hill, and here we rested and partook of several crackers each and a bit of the beef, washing both down with water from a spring, which I first strained through a clean handkerchief, to get clear of the insects and tiny lizards, which abounded everywhere. "I can see a house ahead," announced Alano, who had climbed a palm tree to view the surroundings. "We'll go on and see what sort of a place it is before we make ourselves known." Once again we shouldered our traps and set out. The way down the hill was nearly as toilsome as the upward course on the opposite side had been, for gnarled roots hidden in the rank grasses made a tumble easy. Indeed, both of us went down several times, barking our shins and scratching our hands. Yet we kept on, until the house was but a short distance off. It was set in a small clearing; and as we approached we saw a man come out of the front door and down the broad piazza steps. He was dressed in the uniform of a captain in the Spanish army. "Back!" cried Alano; but it was too late, for by pure accident the military officer had caught sight of us. He called out in Spanish to learn who we were. "He is a Spanish officer!" I whispered to Alano. "Shall we face him and trust to luck to get out of the scrape?" "No, no! Come!" and, catching me by the arm, Alano led the way around the clearing. It was a bad move, for no sooner had we turned than the officer called out to several soldiers stationed at a stable in the rear of the house. These leaped on their horses, pistols and sabers in hand, and, riding hard, soon surrounded us. "_Halte!_" came the command; and in a moment more my Cuban chum and myself found ourselves prisoners. CHAPTER IV. IN A NOVEL PRISON. I looked with much foreboding upon the faces of the soldiers who had surrounded us. All were stern almost to the verge of cruelty, and the face of the captain when he came up was no exception to the rule. Alano and I learned afterward that Captain Crabo had met the day previous with a bitter attack from the insurgents, who had wounded six of his men, and this had put him in anything but a happy frame of mind. "Who are you?" he demanded in Spanish, as he eyed us sharply. Alano looked at me in perplexity, and started to ask me what he had best say, when the Spanish captain clapped the flat side of his sword over my chum's mouth. "Talk so that I can understand you, or I'll place you under arrest," he growled. And then he added, "Are you alone?" "Yes," said Alano. "And where are you going?" "I wish to join my father at Guantanamo. His father is also with mine," and my chum pointed to me. "Your name?" Seeing there was no help for it, Alano told him. Captain Crabo did not act as if he had heard it before, and we breathed easier. But the next moment our hearts sank again. "Well, we will search you, and if you carry no messages and are not armed, you can go on." "We have no messages," said Alano. "You can search us and welcome." He handed over his valise, and I followed suit. Our pistols we had placed in the inner pockets of our coats. By his easy manner my chum tried to throw the Spaniards off their guard, but the trick did not work. After going through our bags, and confiscating several of my silk handkerchiefs, they began to search our clothing, even compelling us to remove our boots, and the weapons were speedily brought to light. "Ha! armed!" cried Captain Crabo. "They are not so innocent as they seem. We will look into their history a little closer ere we let them go. Take them to the smoke-house until I have time to make an investigation to-night. We must be off for Pueblo del Cristo now." Without ceremony we were marched off across the clearing and around the back of the stable, where stood a rude stone building evidently built many years before. Alano told me what the captain had said, and also explained that the stone building was a smoke-house, where at certain seasons of the year beef and other meat were hung up to be dried and smoked, in preference to simple drying in the sun. As might be expected, the smoke-house was far from being a clean place; yet it had been used for housing prisoners before, and these had taken the trouble to brush the smut from the stones inside, so it was not so dirty as it might otherwise have been. We were thrust into this building minus our pistols and our valises. Then the door, a heavy wooden affair swinging upon two rusty iron hinges, was banged shut in our faces, a hasp and spike were put into place, and we were left to ourselves. "Now we are in for it," I began, but Alano stopped me short. "Listen!" he whispered, and we did so, and heard all of our enemies retreat. A few minutes later there was the tramping of horses' feet, several commands in Spanish, and the soldiers rode off. "They have left us to ourselves, at any rate," said my chum, when we were sure they had departed. "And we are made of poor stuff indeed if we cannot pick our way out of this hole." At first we were able to see nothing, but a little light shone in through several cracks in the roof, and soon our eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness. We examined the walls, to find them of solid masonry. The roof was out of our reach, the floor so baked it was like cement. "We are prisoners now, surely, Mark," said Alano bitterly. "What will be our fate when that _capitan_ returns?" "We'll be sent back to Santiago de Cuba most likely, Alano. But we must try to escape. I have an idea. Can you balance me upon your shoulders, do you think?" "I will try it. But what for?" "I wish to examine the roof." Not without much difficulty I succeeded in reaching my chum's broad shoulders and standing upright upon them. I could now touch the ceiling of the smoke-house with ease, and I had Alano move around from spot to spot in a close inspection of every bit of board and bark above us. "Here is a loose board!" I cried in a low voice. "Stand firm, Alano." He braced himself by catching hold of the stone wall, and I shoved upward with all of my strength. There was a groan, a squeak; the board flew upward, and the sun shone down on our heads. I crawled through the opening thus made, and putting down my hand I helped Alano to do likewise. "Drop out of sight of the house!" he whispered. "Somebody may be watching this place." We dropped, and waited in breathless silence for several minutes, but no one showed himself. Then we held a consultation. "They thought we couldn't get out," I said. "More than likely no one is left at the homestead but a servant or two." "If only we could get our bags and pistols," sighed Alano. "We must get them," I rejoined, "for we cannot go on without them. Let us sneak up to the house and investigate. I see no dogs around." With extreme caution we left the vicinity of the smoke-house, and, crawling on hands and knees, made our way along a low hedge to where several broad palms overshadowed a side veranda. The door of the veranda was open, and, motioning to Alano to follow, I ascended the broad steps and dashed into the house. "Now where?" questioned my Cuban chum, as we hesitated in the broad and cool hallway. "Here is a sitting room," and he opened the door to it. A voice broke upon our ear. A negro woman was singing from the direction of the kitchen, as she rattled among her earthenware pots. Evidently she was alone. "If they left her on guard, we have little to fear," I said, and we entered the sitting room. Both of us uttered a faint cry of joy, for there on the table rested our valises and provisions, just as they had been taken from us. Inside of Alano's bag were the two pistols with the cartridges. "Now we can go at once," I said. "How fortunate we have been! Let us not waste time here." "They owe us a meal for detaining us," replied my chum grimly. "Let me explore the pantry in the next room." He went through the whip-end curtains without a sound, and was gone several minutes. When he came back his face wore a broad smile and he carried a large napkin bursting open with eatables of various kinds, a piece of cold roast pork, some rice cakes, buns, and the remains of a chicken pie. "We'll have a supper fit for a king!" he cried. "Come on! I hear that woman coming." And coming she was, in her bare feet, along the polished floor. We had just time left to seize our valises and make our escape when she entered. "_Qué quiere V.?_ [What do you want?]" she shouted, and then called upon us to stop; but, instead, we ran from the dooryard as fast as we could, and did not halt until the plantation was left a good half mile behind. "We are well out of that!" I gasped, throwing myself down under the welcome shade of a cacao tree. "Do you suppose she will send the soldiers in pursuit?" "They would have hard work to find us," replied Alano. "Here, let us sample this eating I brought along, and then be on our way. Remember we have still many miles to go." We partook of some of the chicken pie and some buns, the latter so highly spiced they almost made me sneeze when I ate them, and then went on our way again. Our run had warmed us up, and now the sun beat down upon our heads mercilessly as we stalked through a tangle where the luxurious vegetation was knee-high. We were glad enough when we reached another woods, through which there was a well-defined, although exceedingly poor, wagon trail. Indeed, let me add, nearly all of the wagon roads in Cuba, so I have since been told, are wretched affairs at the best. "We ought to be in the neighborhood of Tiarriba," said Alano about the middle of the afternoon. "We won't dare enter the town," I replied. "Those soldiers were going there, you must remember." "Oh, the chances are we'll find rebels enough--on the quiet," he rejoined. On we went, trudging through sand and shells and not infrequently through mire several inches to a foot deep. It was hard work, and I wished more than once that we were on horseback. There was also a brook to cross, but the bridge was gone and there was nothing left to do but to ford the stream. "It's not to our boot-tops," said Alano, after an examination, "so we won't have to take our boots and socks off. Come; I fancy there is a good road ahead." He started into the water, and I went after him. We had reached the middle of the stream when both of us let out a wild yell, and not without reason, for we had detected a movement from the opposite bank, and now saw a monstrous alligator bearing swiftly down upon us! CHAPTER V. LOST AMONG THE HILLS. Both Alano and I were almost paralyzed by the sight of the huge alligator bearing down upon us, his mouth wide open, showing his cruel teeth, and his long tail shifting angrily from side to side. "Back!" yelled my Cuban chum, and back we went, almost tumbling over each other in our haste to gain the bank from where we had started. The alligator lost no time in coming up behind, uttering what to me sounded like a snort of rage. He had been lying half-hidden in the mud, and the mud still clung to his scaly sides and back. Altogether, he was the most horrible creature I had ever beheld. Reaching the bank of the brook, with the alligator not three yards behind us, we fled up a series of rocks overgrown with moss and vines. We did not pause until we were at the very summit, then both of us drew our pistols and fired at the blinking eyes. The bullets glanced from the "'gator's" head without doing much harm, and with another snort the terrifying beast turned back into the brook and sank into a pool out of sight. "My gracious, Alano, supposing he had caught us!" I gasped, when I could catch my breath. "We would have been devoured," he answered, with a shudder, for of all creatures the alligator is the one most dreaded by Cubans, being the only living beast on the island dangerous to life because of its strength. "He must have been lying in wait for somebody," I remarked, after a moment's pause, during which we kept our eyes on the brook, in a vain attempt to gain another look at our tormentor. "He was--it is the way they do, Mark. If they can, they wait until you are alongside of them. Then a blow from the tail knocks you flat, and that ends the fight--for you," and again Alano shuddered, and so did I. "We can't cross," I said, a few minutes later, as all remained quiet. "I would not attempt it for a thousand dollars." "Nor I--on foot. Perhaps we can do so by means of the trees. Let us climb yonder palm and investigate." We climbed the palm, a sloping tree covered with numerous trailing vines. Our movements disturbed countless beetles, lizards, and a dozen birds, some of the latter flying off with a whir which was startling. The top of the palm reached, we swung ourselves to its neighbor, standing directly upon the bank of the brook. In a few minutes we had reached a willow and then a cacao, and thus we crossed the stream in safety, although not without considerable exertion. The sun was beginning to set when we reached a small village called by the natives San Lerma--a mere collection of thatched cottages belonging to some sheep-raisers. Before entering we made certain there were no soldiers around. Our coming brought half a dozen men, women, and children to our side. They were mainly of negro blood, and the children were but scantily clothed. They commenced to ask innumerable questions, which Alano answered as well as he could. One of the negroes had heard of Señor Guerez' plantation, and immediately volunteered to furnish us with sleeping accommodations for the night. "Many of us have joined the noble General Garcia," he said, in almost a whisper. "I would join too, but Teresa will not hear of it." Teresa was his wife--a fat, grim-looking wench who ruled the household with a rod of iron. She grumbled a good deal at having to provide us with a bed, but became very pleasant when Alano slipped a small silver coin into her greasy palm. Feeling fairly secure in our quarters, we slept soundly, and did not awaken until the sun was shining brightly. The inevitable pot of black coffee was over the fire, and the smoke of bacon and potatoes frying in a saucepan filled the air. Breakfast was soon served, after which we greased our boots, saw to our other traps and our bag of provisions, which we had not opened, and proceeded on our way--the husband of Teresa wishing us well, and the big-eyed children staring after us in silent wonder and curiosity. "That is a terrible existence," I said to Alano. "Think of living in that fashion all your life!" "They know no better," he returned philosophically. "And I fancy they are happy in their way. Their living comes easy to them, and they never worry about styles in clothing or rent day. Sometimes they have dances and other amusements. Didn't you see the home-made guitar on the wall?" On we went, past the village and to a highway which we had understood would take us to Tiarriba, but which took us to nothing of the sort. As we proceeded the sun grew more oppressive than ever, until I was glad enough to take Alano's advice, and place some wet grass in my hat to keep the top of my head cool. "It will rain again soon," said Alano, "and if it comes from the right quarter it will be much cooler for several days after." The ground now became hilly, and we walked up and down several places which were steep enough to cause us to pant for breath. By noon we reckoned we had covered eight or nine miles. We halted for our midday rest and meal under some wild peppers, and we had not yet finished when we heard the low rumble of thunder. "The storm is coming, sure enough!" I exclaimed. "What had we best do--find some shelter?" "That depends, Mark. If the lightning is going to be strong, better seek the open air. We do not want to be struck." We went on, hoping that some village would soon be found, but none appeared. The rain commenced to hit the tree leaves, and soon there was a steady downpour. We buttoned our coats tightly around the neck, and stopped under the spreading branches of an uncultivated banana tree, the half-ripe fruit of which hung within easy reach. The thunder had increased rapidly, and now from out of the ominous-looking clouds the lightning played incessantly. Alano shook his head dubiously. "Do you know what I think?" he said. "Well?" "I think we have missed our way. If we were on the right road we would have come to some dwelling ere this. I believe we have branched off on some forest trail." "Let us go on, Alano. See, the rain is coming through the tree already." It was tough work now, for the road was uphill and the clayey ground was slippery and treacherous. It was not long before I took a tumble, and would have rolled over some sharp rocks had Alano not caught my arm. At one minute the road seemed pitch-dark, at the next a flash of lightning would nearly blind us. Presently we gained the crest of a hill a little higher than its fellows, and gazed around us. On all sides were the waving branches of palms and other trees, dotted here and there with clearings of rocks and coarse grasses. Not a building of any kind was in sight. "It is as I thought," said my Cuban chum dubiously. "We have lost our way in the hills." "And what will we have to do--retrace our steps?" I ventured anxiously. "I don't know. If we push on I suppose we'll strike some place sooner or later." "Yes, but our provisions won't last forever, Alano." "That is true, Mark, but we'll have to---- Oh!" Alano stopped short and staggered back into my arms. We had stepped for the moment under the shelter of a stately palm. Now it was as if a wave of fire had swept close to our face. It was a flash of lightning; and it struck the tree fairly on the top, splitting it from crown to roots, and pinning us down under one of the falling portions! CHAPTER VI. FROM ONE DIFFICULTY TO ANOTHER. How we ever escaped from the falling tree I do not fully know to this day. The lightning stunned me almost as much as my companion, and both of us went down in a heap in the soft mud, for it was now raining in torrents. We rolled over, and a rough bit of bark scraped my face; and then I knew no more. When I came to my senses I was lying in a little gully, part of the way down the hillside. Alano was at my side, a deep cut on his chin, from which the blood was flowing freely. He lay so still that I at first thought him dead, but the sight of the flowing blood reassured me. A strong smell of sulphur filled the air, and this made me remember the lightning stroke. I looked up the hill, to see the palm tree split as I have described. "Thank God for this escape!" I could not help murmuring; and then I took out a handkerchief, allowed it to become wet, and bound up Alano's cut. While I was doing this he came to, gasped, and opened his eyes. "_Què_--_què_----" he stammered. "Wha--what--was it, Mark?" I told him, and soon had him sitting up, his back propped against a rock. The cut on his chin was not deep, and presently the flow of blood stopped and he shook himself. "It was a narrow escape," he said. "I warned you we must get out into the open." "We'll be more careful in the future," I replied. And then I pointed to an opening in the gully. "See, there is a cave. Let us get into that while the storm lasts." "Let us see if it is safe first. There may be snakes within," returned Alano. With caution we approached the entrance to the cave, which appeared to be several yards deep. Trailing vines partly hid the opening; and, thrusting these aside, we took sticks, lit a bit of candle I carried, and examined the interior. Evidently some wild animal had once had its home there, but the cave was now tenantless, and we proceeded to make ourselves at home. "We'll light a fire and dry our clothing," suggested Alano. "And if the rain continues we can stay here all night." "We might as well stay. To tramp through the wet grass and brush would be almost as bad as to have it rain--we would be soaked from our waists down." "Then we'll gather wood and stay," said he. Quarter of an hour later we had coaxed up quite a respectable fire in the shadow of a rock at the entrance to the cave, which was just high enough to allow us to stand upright, and was perhaps twelve feet in diameter. We piled more wood on the blaze, satisfied that in its damp condition we could not set fire to the forest, and then retired to dry our clothing and enjoy a portion of the contents of the provision bag Alano had improvised out of the purloined napkin. As we ate we discussed the situation, wondering how far we could be from some village and if there were any insurgents or Spanish soldiers in the vicinity. "The rebels could outwit the soldiers forever in these hills," remarked Alano--"especially those who are acquainted in the vicinity." "But the rebels might be surrounded," I suggested. "They said at Santiago they had too strong a picket guard for that, Mark." "But we have seen no picket guard. Supposing instead of two boys a body of Spanish soldiers had come this way, what then?" "In that case what would the Spanish soldiers have to shoot at?" he laughed. "We have as yet seen no rebels." "But we may meet them--before we know it," I said, with a shake of my head. Scarcely had I uttered the words than the entrance to our resting-place was darkened by two burly forms, and we found the muzzles of two carbines thrust close to our faces. "Who are you?" came in Spanish. "Put up your hands!" "Don't shoot!" cried Alano in alarm. "Come out of that!" "It's raining too hard, and we have our coats off, as you see. Won't you come in?" At this the two men, bronzed and by no means bad-looking fellows, laughed. "Only boys!" murmured one, and the carbines were lowered and they entered the cave. A long and rapid conversation with Alano, which I could but imperfectly understand, followed. They asked who we were, where we were going, how we had managed to slip out of Santiago, if we were armed, if we carried messages, if we had the countersign, how we had reached the cave, and a dozen other questions. Both roared loudly when Alano said he thought they were rebels. "And so we are," said the one who appeared to be the leader. "And we are proud of it. Have you any objections to make?" "No," we both answered in a breath, that being both English and Spanish, and I understanding enough of the question to be anxious to set myself right with them. "I think our fathers have become rebels," Alano answered. "At least, we were told so." "Good!" said the leader. "Then we have nothing to fear from two such brave lads as you appear to be. And now what do you propose to do--encamp here for the night?" "Unless you can supply us with better accommodations," rejoined my chum. "We can supply you with nothing. We have nothing but what is on us," laughed the second rebel. Both told us later that they were on special picket duty in that neighborhood. They had been duly enlisted under General Garcia, but were not in uniform, each wearing only a wet and muddy linen suit, thick boots, and a plain braided palm hat. Around his waist each had strapped a leather belt, and in this stuck a machete--a long, sharp, and exceedingly cruel-looking knife. Over the shoulder was another strap, fastened to a canvas bag containing ammunition and other articles of their outfit. These specimens of the rebels were hardly what I had expected to see, yet they were so earnest in their manner I could not help but admire them. One of them had brought down a couple of birds, and these were cooked over our fire and divided among all hands, together with the few things we had to offer. After the meal each soldier placed a big bite of tobacco in his mouth, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to make himself comfortable. "The Spaniards will not move in this weather," said one. "They are too afraid of getting wet and taking cold." Darkness had come upon us, and it was still raining as steadily as ever. Our clothing was dry; and, as the cave was warmed, the rebel guards ordered us to put out the fire, that it might not attract attention during the night. We were told that we had made several mistakes on the road and were far away from Tiarriba. If we desire to go there, the rebels said they would put us on the right road. "But if you are in sympathy with us, you had better pass Tiarriba by," said one to Alano. "The city is filled with Spanish soldiers, and you may not be able to get away as easily as you did from Santiago." Alano consulted with me, and then asked the rebel what we had best do. "That depends. Do you want to join the forces under General Garcia?" "We want to join our fathers at or near Guantanamo." "Garcia is pushing on in that direction. You had best join the army and stay with it until Guantanamo is reached." "But we will have to fight?" said my Cuban chum. The guard smiled grimly, exhibiting a row of large white teeth. "As you will. The general will not expect too much from boys." There the talk ended, one of the rebels deeming it advisable to take a tramp over to the next hill and back, and the other crouching down in a corner for a nap. With nothing else to do, we followed the example of the latter, and were soon in dreamland. A single call from the man who had slept beside us brought us to our feet at daybreak. The storm had cleared away, and now it was positively cool--so much so that I was glad enough to button my coat up tightly and be thankful that the fire had dried it so well. The second rebel was asleep, and had been for two hours. We followed one out of the cave without arousing the other. A tramp of half a mile brought us to a high bank, and here our rebel escort left us. "Across the bank you will find a wagon-road leading to the west," he said. "Follow that, and you cannot help but meet some of our party sooner or later. Remember the new password, 'Maysi,' and you will be all right," and then he turned and disappeared from sight in the bush. The climb to the top of the bank was not difficult, and, once over it, the road he had mentioned lay almost at our feet. We ran down to it with lighter hearts than we had had for some time, and struck out boldly, eating a light breakfast as we trudged along. "I hope we strike no more adventures until the vicinity of Guantanamo is reached," I observed. "We can hardly hope for that, Mark," smiled my chum. "Remember we are journeying through a country where war is raging. Let us be thankful if we escape the battles and skirmishes." "And shooting down by some ambitious sharpshooter," I added. "By the way, I wonder if our folks are looking for us?" "It may be they sent word not to come, when they saw how matters were going, Mark. I am sure your father would not want you to run the risk that----Look! look! We must hide!" Alano stopped short, caught me by the arm, and pointed ahead. Around a turn in the road a dozen horsemen had swept, riding directly toward us. A glance showed that they were Spanish guerrillas! CHAPTER VII. FOOLING THE SPANISH GUERRILLAS. "_Halte!_" It was the cry of the nearest of the Spanish horsemen. He had espied us just as Alano let out his cry of alarm, and now he came galloping toward us at a rapid gait. "Let us run!" I ejaculated to my Cuban chum. "It is our only chance." "Yes, yes! but to where?" he gasped, staring around in bewilderment. On one side of the road was a woods of mahogany, on the other some palms and plantains, with here and there a great rock covered with thick vines. "Among the rocks--anywhere!" I returned. "Come!" And, catching his hand, I led the way from the road while the horseman was yet a hundred feet from us. Another cry rang out--one I could not understand, and a shot followed, clipping through the broad leaves over our heads. The horseman left the road, but soon came to a stop, his animal's progress blocked by the trees and rocks. He yelled to his companions, and all of the guerrillas came up at topmost speed. "They will dismount and be after us in a minute!" gasped Alano. "Hark! they are coming already!" "On! on!" I urged. "We'll find some hiding-place soon." Around the rocks and under the low-hanging plantains we sped, until the road was left a hundred yards behind. Then we came to a gully, where the vegetation was heavy. Alano pointed down to it. "We can hide there," he whispered. "But we will be in danger of snakes. Yet it is the best we can do." I hesitated. To make the acquaintanceship of a serpent in that dense grass was not pleasant to contemplate. But what else was there to do? The footsteps of our pursuers sounded nearer. Down went Alano, making leaps from rock to rock, so that no trail would be left. I followed at his heels, and, coming to a rock which was partly hollowed out at one side and thickly overgrown, we crouched under it and pulled the vines and creepers over us. It was a damp, unwholesome spot, but there was no help for it, and when several enormous black beetles dropped down and crawled around my neck I shut my lips hard to keep from crying out. We must escape from the enemy, no matter what the cost, for even if they did not make us prisoners we knew they would take all we possessed and even strip the coats from our backs. Peering from between the vines, we presently caught sight of three of the Spaniards standing at the top of the gully, pistols in hand, on the alert for a sight of us. They were dark, ugly-looking fellows, with heavy black mustaches and faces which had not had a thorough washing in months. They were dressed in the military uniform of Spain, and carried extra bags of canvas slung from their shoulders, evidently meant for booty. That they were tough customers Alano said one could tell by their vile manner of speech. "Do you see them, Carlo?" demanded one of the number. "I thought they went down this hollow?" "I see nothing," was the answer, coupled with a vile exclamation. "They disappeared as if by magic." "They were but boys." "Never mind, they were rebels--that is enough," put in the third guerrilla, as he chewed his mustache viciously. "I wish I could get a shot at them." At this Alano pulled out his pistol and motioned for me to do the same. "We may as well be prepared for the worst," he whispered into my ear. "They are not soldiers, they are robbers--bandits." "They look bad enough for anything," I answered, and produced my weapon, which I had not discharged since the brush with the alligator. "If they are in the hollow it is odd we do not see them on their trail," went on one of the bandits. "Perhaps they went around." His companions shook their heads. "I'll thrash around a bit," said one of them; and, leaving the brink of the gully, he started straight for our hiding-place. My heart leaped into my throat, and I feared immediate discovery. As for Alano, he shoved his pistol under his coat, and I heard a muffled click as the hammer was raised. When within ten feet of us the ugly fellow stopped, and I fairly held my breath, while my heart appeared to beat like a trip-hammer. He looked squarely at the rock which sheltered us, and I could not believe he would miss discovering us. Once he started and raised his pistol, and I imagined our time had come; but then he turned to one side, and I breathed easier. "They did not come this way, _capitan_!" he shouted. "Let us go around the hollow." In another moment all three of the bandits were out of sight. We heard them moving in the undergrowth behind us, and one of them gave a scream as a snake was stirred up and dispatched with a saber. Then all became quiet. "What is best to do now?" I asked, when I thought it safe to speak. "Hush!" whispered Alano. "They may be playing us dark." A quarter of an hour passed,--it seemed ten times that period of time just then,--and we heard them coming back. They were very angry at their want of success; and had we been discovered, our fate would undoubtedly have been a hard one. They stalked back to the road, and a moment later we heard the hoof-strokes of their horses receding in the distance. "Hurrah!" I shouted, but in a very subdued tone. "That's the time we fooled them, Alano." My Cuban chum smiled grimly. "Yes, Mark, but we must be more careful in the future. Had we not been so busy talking we might have heard their horses long before they came into view. However, the scare is over, so let us put our best foot forward once again." "If only we had horses too!" I sighed. "My feet are beginning to get sore from the uneven walking." "Horses would truly be convenient at times. But we haven't them, and must make the best of it. When we stop for our next meal you had best take off your boots and bathe your feet. You will be astonished how much rest that will afford them." I followed this advice, and found Alano was right; and after that I bathed my feet as often as I got the chance. Alano suffered no inconvenience in this particular, having climbed the hills since childhood. We were again on rising ground, and now passed through a heavy wood of cedars, the lower branches sweeping our hats as we passed. This thick shade was very acceptable, for the glare of the sun had nearly blinded me, while more than once I felt as if I would faint from the intense heat. "It's not such a delightful island as I fancied it," I said to my chum. "I much prefer the United States." "That depends," laughed Alano. "The White Mountains or the Adirondacks are perhaps nicer, but what of the forests and everglades in Florida?" "Just as bad as this, I suppose." "Yes, and worse, for the ground is wetter, I believe. But come, don't lag. We must make several more miles before we rest." We proceeded up a hill and across a level space which was somewhat cleared of brush and trees. Beyond we caught sight of a thatched hut. Hardly had it come into view than from its interior we heard a faint cry for help. CHAPTER VIII. ANDRES. "What is that?" ejaculated Alano, stopping short and catching my arm. "A cry of some kind," I answered. "Listen!" We stepped behind some trees, to avoid any enemies who might be about, and remained silent. Again came the cry. "It is a man in distress!" said Alano presently. "He asks us not to desert him." "Then he probably saw us from the window of the hut. What had we best do?" "You remain here, and I will investigate," rejoined my Cuban chum. With caution he approached the thatched hut, a miserable affair, scarcely twelve feet square and six feet high, with the trunks of palm trees as the four corner-posts. There were one tiny window and a narrow door, and Alano after some hesitation entered the latter, pistol in hand. "Come, Mark!" he cried presently, and I ran forward and joined him. A pitiable scene presented itself. Closely bound to a post which ran up beside the window was a Cuban negro of perhaps fifty years of age, gray-haired and wrinkled. He was scantily clothed, and the cruel green-hide cords which bound him had cut deeply into his flesh, in many places to such an extent that the blood was flowing. The negro's tongue was much swollen, and the first thing he begged for upon being released was a drink of water. We obtained the water, and also gave him what we could to eat, for which he thanked us over and over again, and would have kissed our hands had we permitted it. He was a tall man, but so thin he looked almost like a skeleton. "For two days was I tied up," he explained to Alano, in his Spanish _patois_. "I thought I would die of hunger and thirst, when, on raising my eyes, I beheld you and your companion. Heaven be praised for sending you! Andres will never forget you for your goodness, never!" "And how came you in this position?" questioned my chum. "Ah, dare I tell, master?" "You are a rebel?" The negro lowered his eyes and was silent. "If you are, you have nothing to fear from us," continued Alano. "Ah--good! good!" Andres wrung his hand. "Yes, I am a rebel. For two years I fought under our good General Maceo and under Garcia. But I am old, I cannot climb the mountains as of yore, and I got sick and was sent back. The Spanish soldiers followed me, robbed me of what little I possessed, and, instead of shooting me, bound me to the post as a torture. Ah, but they are a cruel set!" And the eyes of the negro glowed wrathfully. "If only I was younger!" "Were the Spaniards on horseback?" asked Alano. "Yes, master--a dozen of them." Alano described the bandits we had met, and Andres felt certain they must be the same crowd. The poor fellow could scarcely stand, and sank down on a bed of cedar boughs and palm branches. We did what we could for him, and in return he invited us to make his poor home our own. There was a rude fireplace behind the hut, and here hung a great iron pot. Rekindling the fire, we set the pot to boiling; and Andres hobbled around to prepare a soup, or rather broth, made of green plantains, rice, and a bit of dried meat the bandits had not discovered, flavoring the whole mess with garlic. The dish was not particularly appetizing to me, but I was tremendously hungry and made way with a fair share of it, while Alano apparently enjoyed his portion. It was dark when the meal was finished, and we decided to remain at the hut all night, satisfied that we would be about as secure there as anywhere. The smoke of the smoldering fire kept the mosquitoes and gnats at a distance, and Andres found for us a couple of grass hammocks, which, when slung from the corner-posts, made very comfortable resting-places. During the evening Alano questioned Andres closely, and learned that General Garcia was pushing on toward Guantanamo, as we had previously been informed. Andres did not know Señor Guerez, but he asserted that many planters throughout the district had joined the rebel forces, deserting their canefields and taking all of their help with them. "The men are poorly armed," he continued. "Some have only their canefield knives--but even with these they are a match for the Spanish soldiers, on account of their bravery"--an assertion which later on proved, for the greater part, to be true. The night passed without an alarm of any kind, and before sunrise we were stirring around, preparing a few small fish Alano had been lucky enough to catch in a near-by mountain stream. These fish Andres baked by rolling them in a casing of clay; and never have I eaten anything which tasted more delicious. Before we left him the Cuban negro gave us minute directions for reaching the rear guard of the rebel army. He said the password was still "Maysi." "You had better join the army," he said, on parting. "You will gain nothing by trying to go around. And you, master Alano--if your father has joined the forces, it may be that will gain you a horse and full directions as to just where your parent is," and as we trudged off Andres wished us Godspeed and good luck over and over again, with a friendly wave of his black bony hand. The cool spell, although it was really only cool by contrast, had utterly passed, and as the sun came up it seemed to fairly strike one a blow upon the head. We were traveling along the edge of a low cliff, and shade was scarce, although we took advantage of every bit which came in our way. The perspiration poured from our faces, necks, and hands; and about ten o'clock I was forced to call a halt and throw myself on my back on the ground. "I knew it would be so," said my chum. "That is why I called for an early start. We might as well rest until two or three in the afternoon. Very few people travel here in the heat of the day." "It is suffocating," I murmured. "Like one great bake-oven and steam-laundry combined." "That is what makes the vegetation flourish," he smiled. "Just see how it grows!" I did not have far to look to notice it. Before us was a forest of grenadillo and rosewood, behind us palms and plantains, with an occasional cacao and mahogany tree. The ground was covered with long grass and low brush, and over all hung the festoons of vines of many colors, some blooming profusely. A smell of "something growing green" filled the hot air, and from every side arose the hum of countless insects and the occasional note of a bird. "I wouldn't remain on the ground too long," remarked Alano presently. "When one is hot and lies down, that is the time to take on a fever. Better rest in yonder tree--it is more healthy; and, besides, if there is any breeze stirring, there is where you will catch it." "We might as well be on a deserted island as to be in Cuba," I said, after both of us had climbed into a mahogany tree. "There is not a building nor a human soul in sight. I half believe we are lost again." Alano smiled. "Let us rather say, as your Indian said, 'We are not lost, we are here. The army and the towns and villages are lost,'" and he laughed at the old joke, which had been the first he had ever read, in English, in a magazine at Broxville Academy. "Well, it's just as bad, Alano. I, for one, am tired of tramping up hill and down. If we could reach the army and get a couple of horses, it would be a great improvement." My chum was about to reply to this, when he paused and gave a start. And I started, too, when I saw what was the trouble. On a limb directly over us, and ready to descend upon our very heads, was a serpent all of six feet in length! CHAPTER IX. ACROSS THE CANEFIELDS. "Look, Mark!" ejaculated Alano. "A snake!" I yelled. "Drop! drop!" I had already dropped to the limb upon which I had been sitting. Now, swinging myself by the hands, I let go and descended to the ground, a distance of twelve or fifteen feet. In less than a second my Cuban chum came tumbling after me. The fall was no mean one, and had the grass under the tree been less deep we might have suffered a sprained ankle or other injury. As it was, we both fell upon our hands and knees. Gazing up at the limb we had left, we saw the serpent glaring down at us, its angry eyes shining like twin diamonds. How evil its intention had been we could but surmise. It was possible it had intended to attack us both. It slid from the upper limb to the lower, and stretched out its long, curling neck, while it emitted a hiss that chilled my blood. "It's coming down! Run!" I began; when bang! went Alano's pistol, and I saw the serpent give a quiver, and coil and uncoil itself around the limb. The bullet had entered its neck, but it was not fatally wounded; and now it came for us, landing in the grass not a dozen feet from where we stood. Luckily, while traveling along the hills, we had provided ourselves with stout sticks to aid us in climbing. These lay near, and, picking one up, I stood on the defensive, certain the reptile would not dare to show much fight. But it did, and darted for me with its dull-colored head raised a few inches out of the grass. With all of the strength at my command I swung the stick around the instant it came within reach. It tried to dodge, but failed; and, struck in the neck, turned over and over as though more than half stunned. By this time Alano had secured the second stick, and now he rushed in and belabored the serpent over the head and body until it was nearly beaten into a jelly. I turned sick at the sight, and was glad enough when it was all over and the reptile was dead beyond all question. "That was a narrow escape!" I panted. "Alano, don't you advise me to rest in a tree again. I would rather run the risk of fever ten times over." "Serpents are just as bad in the grass," he replied simply. "Supposing he had come up when you were flat on your back!" "Let us get away from here--there may be more. And throw away that stick--it may have poison on it." "That serpent was not poisonous, Mark. But I will throw it away,--it is so covered with blood,--and we can easily cut new ones." The excitement had made me forget the heat, and we went on for over a mile. Then, coming to a mountain stream, we sat down to take it easy until the sun had passed the zenith and it was a trifle cooler. About four o'clock in the afternoon, or evening, as they call it in Cuba, we reached the end of the woods and came to the edge of an immense sugar-cane field. The cane waved high over our heads, so that what buildings might be beyond were cut off from view. There was a rough cart-road through the field, and after some hesitation we took to this, it being the only road in sight. We had traveled on a distance of half a mile when we reached a series of storehouses, each silent and deserted. Beyond was a house, probably belonging to the overseer of the plantation, and this was likewise without occupant, the windows and doors shut tightly and bolted. "All off to the war, I suppose," I said. "And I had half an idea we might get a chance to sleep in a bed to-night." "We might take possession," Alano suggested. But to this proposition I shook my head. "We might be caught and shot as intruders. Come on. Perhaps the house of the owner is further on." Stopping for a drink at an old-fashioned well, we went on through the sugar cane until we reached a small stream, beyond which was a boggy spot several acres in extent. "We'll have to go around, Alano," I said. "Which way will be best?" "The ground appears to rise to our left," he answered. "We'll try in that direction." Pushing directly through the cane, I soon discovered, was no mean work. It was often well-nigh impossible to break aside the stout stalks, and the stubble underfoot was more than trying to the feet. We went on a distance of a hundred yards, and then on again to the stream, only to find the same bog beyond. "We'll have to go further yet," said Alano. "Come, Mark, ere the sun gets too low." "Just a few minutes of rest," I pleaded, and pulled down the top of a cane. The sweet juice was exceedingly refreshing, but it soon caused a tremendous thirst, which I gladly slaked at the not over clear stream. Another jog of quarter of an hour, and we managed to cross at a point which looked like solid ground. "How far do you suppose this field extends?" I asked. "I have no idea; perhaps but a short distance, and then again it may be a mile or more. Some of the plantations out here are very large." "Do you think we can get back to the road? I can't go much further through this stubble." "I'll break the way, Mark. You follow me." On we went in the direction we imagined the trail to be, but taking care to avoid the bog. I was almost ready to drop from exhaustion, when Alano halted. "Mark!" "What now, Alano?" "Do you know where we are?" "In a sugar-cane field," I said, trying to keep up my courage. "Exactly, but we are lost in it." I stared at him. "Can one become lost in a sugar-cane field?" I queried. "Yes, and badly lost, for there is nothing one can climb to take a view of the surroundings. Even if you were to get upon my shoulders you could see but little." "I'll try it," I answered, and did so without delay, for the sun was now sinking in the west. But my chum had been right; try my best I could not look across the waving cane-tops. We were hedged in on all sides, with only the setting sun to mark our course. "It's worse than being out on an open prairie," I remarked. "What shall we do?" "There is but one thing--push on," rejoined Alano gravely; "unless you want to spend a night here." Again we went on, but more slowly, for even my chum was now weary. The wet ground passed, we struck another reach of upland, and this gave us hope, for we knew the sugar cane would not grow up the hills. But the rise soon came to an end, and we found ourselves going down into a worse hollow than that we had left. Ere we knew it, the water was forming around our boots. "We must go back!" I cried. "I think it is drier a few yards beyond," said Alano. "Don't go back yet." The sun had set, so far as we were concerned, and it was dark at the foot of the cane-stalks. We plowed on, getting deeper and deeper into the bog or mire. It was a sticky paste, and I could hardly move one foot after another. I called to Alano to halt, and I had scarcely done so when he uttered an ejaculation of disgust. "What is it?" I called. "I can't move--I am stuck!" I looked ahead and saw that he spoke the truth. He had sunk to the tops of his boots, and every effort to extricate himself only made him settle deeper. I endeavored to gain his side and aid him, but it was useless. Ere I was aware I was as deep and deeper than Alano, and there we stood,--and stuck,--unable to help ourselves, with night closing rapidly in upon us. CHAPTER X. A COUNCIL OF THE ENEMY. "Well, this is the worst yet," I said, after a minute of silence. Somehow, I felt like laughing, yet our situation was far from being a laughing matter. "We have put our foot into it, and no mistake," rejoined Alano dubiously. "Say feet, Alano,--and legs,--and you'll be nearer it. What on earth is to be done?" "I don't know. See, I am up to my thighs already. In an hour or so I'll be up to my neck." To this I made no reply. I had drawn my pistol, and with the crook of the handle was endeavoring to hook a thick sugar-cane stalk within my reach. Several times I had the stalk bent over, but it slipped just as I was on the point of grasping it. But I persevered,--there was nothing else to try,--and at last my eager fingers encircled the stalk. I put my pistol away and pulled hard, and was overjoyed to find that I was drawing myself up out of my unpleasant position. "Be careful--or the stalk will break," cautioned my Cuban chum, when crack! it did split, but not before I was able to make a quick leap on top of the clump of roots. Here I sank again, but not nearly as deeply as before. The leap I had taken had brought me closer to Alano, and now I was enabled to break down a number of stalks within his reach. He got a firm hold and pulled with all of his might, and a moment later stood beside me. "Oh, but I'm glad we're out of that!" were his first words. "I thought I was planted for the rest of my life." "We must get out of the field. See, it will be pitch dark in another quarter of an hour." "Let us try to go back--it will be best." We turned around, and took hold of each other's hands, to balance ourselves on the sugar-cane roots, for we did not dare to step in the hollows between. Breaking down the cane was slow and laborious work, and soon it was too dark to see our former trail. We lost it, but this was really to our advantage, for, by going it blindly for another quarter of an hour, we emerged into an opening nearly an acre square and on high and dry ground. Once the patch was reached, we threw ourselves down on the grass panting for breath, the heavy perspiration oozing from every pore. We had had another narrow escape, and silently I thanked Heaven for my deliverance. Toward the higher end of the clearing was a small hut, built of logs plastered with sun-baked clay. We came upon it by accident in the dark, and, finding it deserted, lit our bit of candle before mentioned and made an examination. "It's a cane-cutter's shanty," said Alano. "I don't believe anybody will be here to-night, so we might as well remain and make ourselves comfortable." "We can do nothing else," I returned. "We can't travel in the darkness." Both of us were too exhausted to think of building a fire or preparing a meal. We ate some of our provisions out of our hands, pulled off our water-soaked boots, and were soon asleep on the heaps of stalks the shanty contained. Once during the night I awoke to find several species of vermin crawling around, but even this was not sufficient to make me rouse up against the pests. I lay like a log, and the sun was shining brightly when Alano shook me heartily by the shoulder. "Going to sleep all day?" he queried. "Not much!" I cried, springing up. "Hullo, if you haven't got breakfast ready!" I added, glancing to where he had built a fire. "Yes; I thought I'd let you sleep for a while," he answered. "Fall to, and we'll be on our way. If we have good luck we may strike a part of General Garcia's army to-day." "If we can get out of this beastly canefield." "I've found a way out, Mark. Finish your meal, and I'll show you." Breakfast was speedily dispatched, and, having put on my boots, which were stiff and hard from the wetting received, and taken up my valise, I followed Alano to the extreme southwest end of the clearing. Here there was an ox-cart trail, leading in a serpentine fashion through the canefield to still higher ground. Beyond were the inevitable rocks and woods. "We seem to have missed everything," I said pointedly. "We have been lost several times, and even now we don't know where we are." "We know we're not sinking to the bottom of that sugar-cane field," replied my Cuban chum grimly. "That's something to be thankful for. Ah, look--there is quite a respectable-looking highway. Let us take to that and keep our eyes and ears open. It must lead to somewhere." We had reached the highway at right-angles, and now we pursued a course directly eastward, which we felt must bring us closer and closer to the vicinity of Guantanamo. I asked Alano if he recognized the country at all, but he shook his head. "I was never out in this direction," he explained. "My journeys have always been from Guantanamo to Santiago by water." As we progressed we passed several isolated huts, and then a village containing perhaps a score of dwellings. The separate huts were deserted without exception, but in the village we came across three tall and bony colored women, who eyed us with great suspicion. Alano began to open a friendly conversation in Spanish with them, and offered to pay them well if they would get us up a good dinner. But this they could not do, for there was little to be had outside of some vegetables. They said they had had some meat, but it had all been confiscated by the soldiers who had passed through only the evening before. "She means a body of Spanish soldiers," said Alano, after some more talk with the oldest of the women. "She says there were about a hundred of them on horseback, and they were following up a detachment of General Garcia's volunteers." "If that is so they can't be far off," I rejoined. "We must be more careful than ever." "If only we could catch up to them, get around them, and warn our fellows!" remarked Alano, his black eyes sparkling. "It's easy to see you're a rebel," I said, laughing. "And why not--if my father is one? Come, what do you say?" "I am with you, if it can be done. But we mustn't run into needless danger, Alano." "We will take care, Mark." Luckily, the sun had gone under the clouds, so it was not so warm when we resumed our journey, after the negro women had supplied us with the best meal at their command. They smiled broadly when Alano told them he was a rebel sympathizer, and each declared her husband had joined General Garcia's army several weeks previously. The road now led along the southern edge of a deep ravine, bordered upon either side with wild plantains and cacao trees, with here and there an occasional palm. The highway was stony, and presently Alano called a halt. "Hark!" he said, holding up his hand; and we listened, to discern the tramping of horses' hoofs some distance ahead. "There are a good many horses," I said. "Perhaps it is the Spanish detachment." Alano nodded. "Follow me, and take to the woods if I hiss," he replied. On we went again, but slower than before. The road now wound around to the right, up under a cliff backed up by a small mountain. As the sun was behind the mountain, the path was dark in its more sheltered portions. Suddenly Alano let out a soft hiss, and we leaped back behind a convenient rock. "They are just ahead!" he cried softly. "They have quartered themselves for the middle of the day in a cave-like opening under the cliff, where it is, no doubt, cool and pleasant." "Well, what had we best do?" "Get around them, by some means, Mark. But, hold up! Wouldn't it be fine if we could draw close enough to overhear them--if they are talking over their plans!" "It would be risky," I hesitated. "Yes, but think of the service we might do my countrymen!" "That is true. Well, I'm with you, Alano, but for gracious' sake be careful!" We talked the matter over for a few minutes, and then retraced our steps to where a narrow path led to the top of the cliff. Climbing this, we crawled along the edge of the cliff until we reached a spot directly over the encamped Spaniards. They were a hearty, bold-looking set of men, handsomely uniformed and thoroughly armed, presenting a decided contrast to the dirty guerrillas we had previously encountered. A number of the soldiers were reclining upon the ground smoking, but a half-dozen of them, evidently officers, were gathered in a circle, conversing earnestly. "They are holding a council of war!" cried Alano, after he had strained his ears to catch what was being said. "They are waiting for Captain Crabo to join them with another detachment, and then they are to aid some others in surrounding the left wing of General Garcia's army, which is encamped in the valley on the other side of this mountain." CHAPTER XI. A WILD RIDE ON HORSEBACK. I was of course deeply interested in what Alano had to say, and my heart gave a sudden leap when he mentioned that General Garcia's wing of the rebel army was so close at hand. Instantly I thought of my father. Was he in the ranks? I was about to speak when my Cuban chum motioned me to silence. As cautiously as a cat he drew closer to the edge of the cliff, throwing himself flat on his face as he made the movement. I followed suit, knowing full well that I would scarcely be able to understand the council of war being held below, but anxious to get a better view of the soldiery we now considered our enemies. Evidently the Spanish officers did not imagine any outsiders were near, for they spoke rather loudly, while each gesticulated a good deal in his own particular manner. Ten minutes passed, and then there came a pause. Alano touched me on the arm, and, as silently as we had advanced, we turned and retreated into the brush back of the cliff. "I have their plans well in mind, Mark," he whispered. "Oh, if only we could find General Garcia and tell him all!" "Did you find out just where the general is located?" "Pretty nearly--in that direction"--my Cuban chum waved his hand. "There is a ravine to cross and then a pass through the mountains. I believe the rebels now hold the pass, but the Spaniards mean to gain the high ground and hem them in. If they do that, my people will be slaughtered like cattle in a pen." "And supposing our fathers are with the rebels?" I put in quickly. "Yes, I was thinking of that, Mark. We had best---- Hist!" Alano stopped short. From a distance came the sounds of horses' hoofs. "It must be Captain Crabo," said Alano. "Lay low!" We drew still further into the brush and waited. Nearer and nearer came the horses. Then came a shout and a sudden halting. "They've challenged the newcomers," whispered Alano, as we heard the words "_Quien va?_" Evidently the reply was satisfactory, for in a moment more the new arrivals had joined the force under the cliff. Looking from our shelter, we saw that Captain Crabo was the same individual who had had us locked up in the smoke-house some days previously. "We don't want him to lay hands on us again," I said, and Alano smiled grimly. "Why not get out at once?" I went on. "Wait till I hear what Captain Crabo has to say, Mark. He may bring news, and we want to learn as much as we can. If they----" My Cuban chum was forced to stop speaking, for with a quick movement I had placed a warning hand over his mouth. Some of the soldiers who had been resting were coming up the cliff, evidently to take a look at the surroundings. "Come!" I whispered into Alano's ear, and turned to retreat. He followed me, and a distance of fifty feet was covered through the undergrowth, when we found ourselves at the edge of another cliff and actually hemmed in by the advancing men. What were we to do? It was a serious question, and one to be decided instantly. Already the foremost of the men was less than two rods behind us. We looked around for a place to hide, but none was at hand. Then Alano gave a cry. "They are coming from the other direction too! We are lost!" Scarcely had the words left his lips than we heard a yell from two of the Spanish soldiers. We were discovered, and all thoughts of further concealment in that hemmed-in spot were out of the question. Hardly realizing what I was doing in my agitated frame of mind, I ran down to the very edge of the cliff at a point about a hundred and fifty feet above where the soldiers were encamped. Looking down I discovered a series of crags leading to the highway below. Here a score or more of horses were tethered to a mahogany tree. "Come, it's our only chance!" I ejaculated, and leaped for the nearest crag below me at the imminent peril of tumbling and breaking my neck. Down I went, jumping and rolling from one projection of rocks to another, with Alano but a short distance behind me. I heard a command to stop, and then a shot, but paid no heed. With a final bump I reached the foot of the cliff, less than a dozen feet from where the horses were standing. My sudden appearance startled several of the animals, and they plunged and broke their halters. But they did not run away, and the fact that they were loose gave me another idea. "The horses, Alano! Let us ride away on them!" "Yes! yes!" he replied, and in a twinkle we had secured two of the nearest of the animals. We leaped into the saddle just as a second shot rang out. The bullet struck my horse a glancing blow on the flank, and off he tore up the highway as though dug with a spur. I heard Alano coming behind me, but did not dare look back, for the highway was a poor one and my beast needed all of my attention. Fortunately, riding had been taught to me at Broxville Military Academy, so I felt fairly well at home in the saddle. Gathering up the reins, I sent the animal along at all the speed at his command. The shouting behind continued, but no more shots were fired, for the trees now hid both of us from our pursuers. "That was a clever move," cried Alano, as he presently ranged up beside me. "We have escaped them and provided ourselves with as good horses as one would wish to ride." "They will certainly follow us, Alano. We must see if we can't throw them off the trail." "I see no side road." "Well, come on until we strike something." I answered. Forward we went, making both horses do their best. Half a mile was covered and we forded a small mountain torrent. As the animals paused to stick their noses into the cooling liquid, we listened and heard the Spaniards coming after us on the remainder of the animals. "Quick!" cried Alano. "They have lost no time in following." "There is a side road, leading into the mountains," I returned. "We had better take that." We turned off as I had advised, and it was not long before another half-mile was covered. Having reached an elevation of several hundred feet, the road became broad and tolerably level, and we went on faster than ever. "We ought to be getting close to the rebel camp," said Alano, a while later. "By the looks of the country we should be near that pass the rebels are supposed to be occupying." "I doubt if it is long before we strike some of your people now," I answered. "But supposing we slack up a bit? The horses can't stand this strain in the heat." "Oh, they are used to the heat. But we can take it easier if you say so. There isn't any use of our riding ourselves sore the first day in the saddle." "I suppose they can put us down for horse thieves if they want to." "Not much, Mark. Why, it's more than likely these horses were confiscated from my countrymen in the first place." Thus conversing, we galloped along for half a mile further. Then, as Alano paused to readjust his horse's saddle, I fancied I heard some suspicious sounds behind us, and drew my chum's attention to them. "Horses!" cried Alano. "They must have found our trail, and are coming after us! Come ahead, or we'll be captured after all!" Once more we urged our animals forward. But not for long. Coming to a turn in the road, Alano yelled to me to halt, and pointed ahead. I gave a groan as I looked. A mountain stream, all of twelve feet wide and twice as deep, crossed the roadway. There had been a rude bridge of tree trunks, but this was torn away, and thus our further retreat seemed hopelessly cut off. CHAPTER XII. A DARING LEAP. For the moment neither Alano nor myself spoke as we gazed at the gap before us. Then I gave a groan which seemed to come from my very soul. "We are lost, Alano! They have hemmed us in!" My Cuban chum did not answer. Instead, he gazed to the right and the left. But this was useless. On our right was a stony undergrowth impossible to traverse, on the left a thick jungle leading down into what looked like a bottomless morass. The hoof-strokes of the pursuing horses sounded nearer, and I expected every moment to see the band of Spanish cavalrymen dash into sight with drawn arms, ready to shoot or cut us down. Alano must have been thinking the same, for I saw him grate his teeth hard. "Mark!" he cried suddenly. "Come, it's our only hope." "What?" "To cross the stream." "But how? We can't jump it." "We'll make the horses do it. Be quick, or it will be too late. Watch me. I am certain these horses know how to do the trick." He rode back a distance of two hundred feet. Then on he came, like the wind, his animal well in hand. A cry of command, and the horse rose in the air and went over the chasm like a bird. Could I do as well? There was no time left to speculate on the subject. Our pursuers were but just around the turn. I rode back as Alano had done and started to make the leap. "_Halte!_" It was the cry of Captain Crabo, who was in the lead of the oncoming cavalrymen. I paid no attention. The edge of the mountain stream was reached, and I cried to my horse to move forward. But he was stubborn, and made a balk for which I was hardly prepared. Down went his front feet against a bit of sharp rock, and the shock threw me over his head and directly into the middle of the mountain torrent! I heard Alano give a cry of alarm, and then the waters closed over my head. Down and down I went, for at this point the water was at least fifteen feet deep. The sunlight was shut out as I passed under several overhanging rocks, only to bump up against the roots of a tree, where the water rushed rapidly in several directions. Dazed to such an extent that I hardly knew what I was doing, I caught at the roots, held fast, and drew my head above the surface of the stream. I was out of sight of those who were after me, and prudently concluded to remain where I was. My hiding-place was far from agreeable. The tree roots were slimy, and I imagined they must be the home of water snakes. Just over my head was a mass of soil over which crawled innumerable black beetles, some as big as a man's thumb. Within reach of my hand, a large green-and-white frog blinked at me in amazement. The shouts of the Spaniards reached me in a muffled way, as I heard them dismount and tramp up and down the torrent in search of me. I expected every moment to be discovered, but that moment did not come, and quarter of an hour passed. By this time I could scarcely hold on longer to the tree roots. I listened as well as I could, and, hearing no sound, let go my hold. The rush of water speedily carried me fifteen feet further down the stream, and here I caught hold of some bushes and pulled myself up on the bank and out of sight. I was now on the same side to which Alano had crossed, and I soon discovered that several of the Spaniards had also come over, although on foot. They were in the neighborhood of the highway, and I could make out enough of their talk to know they were deploring their luck in not being able to find me and stop my Cuban chum. Feeling that it would be foolhardy to leave my place of concealment for some time to come, I endeavored to make myself as comfortable as possible under the shelter of a clump of wild orange trees. These were full of the tempting-looking fruit, which, however, I found on sampling was so bitter it fairly puckered my mouth. But in my bag were some biscuits, and, as these were thoroughly water-soaked, I ate several with a relish. Twice did the Spaniards pass within fifty feet of my hiding-place, and each time I felt like giving myself up for lost. They remained in the vicinity until nearly sundown, and then withdrew in the direction from whence they had come, growling volubly among themselves over their ill-luck. With cautious steps I left the clump of wild oranges, and hurried to the highway. As Alano was on horseback, I felt he must have kept to the road. How far he had gone there was no telling, although it must be several miles if not much further. While at the military academy we boys had, like many other school fellows, adopted a peculiar class whistle. This I felt certain Alano would remember well, and, at the risk of being spotted, I emitted the whistle with all the strength of my lungs, not once, but half a dozen times. I listened intently, but no answer came back; and, satisfied that my chum was not within hearing, I went on my way, up the road, keeping an eye open for any enemy who might be in ambush. It was now growing dark, and I felt that in another half-hour night would be upon me. To be alone in that wilderness was not pleasant, but just then there appeared to be no help for it. At the distance of half a mile I stopped again to whistle. While I was listening intently I fancied I heard a rustle among the trees to my right. I instantly dove out of sight behind some brush, but the noise did not continue, and I concluded it must have been made by some bird. Presently the road took another turn and made a descent into a canyon from which the light of day had long since fled. I hesitated and looked forward. Certainly the prospect was not an inviting one. But to turn back I felt would be foolish, so I went on, although more cautiously than ever. At the bottom of the hollow was a bit of muddy ground, over which a mass of cut brush had been thrown, probably to make the passage safer for man and beast. I had just stepped on this brush when something whizzed through the air and encircled my neck. Before I could save myself, I was jerked backward and felt a rawhide lasso cutting into my windpipe. I caught hold of the rawhide and tried to rise, but several forms arose out of the surrounding gloom and fell upon me, bearing me to the earth. CHAPTER XIII. FRIENDS IN NEED. I speedily found that my enemies were five in number; and, as they were all tall and powerful men, to struggle against them would have been foolhardy. "Don't choke me--I give in," I gasped, and then the pressure on my neck was relieved. "_Americano_," I heard one of the fellows mutter. "No talk, you!" he hissed into my ear, and flourished a knife before my eyes to emphasize his words. I shut my mouth, to signify that I agreed, and then I was allowed to rise, and in a twinkle my hands were tied behind my back. Two of the men conducted me away from the spot, while a third followed us. The other two men remained on guard at the highway. I wondered if Alano had been captured, but just then did not give the subject much thought. There was no telling whether the men were Spanish or Cuban sympathizers; but, no matter to what side they belonged, I noted with a shudder that they were a decidedly tough class of citizens. Leaving the highway, we made our way along a rocky course leading to a small clearing at the top of a plateau. Back of the clearing was a rude hut, set in a grove of sapodilla trees. Around the hut half a dozen dirty soldiers were lying, who leaped up at our approach. An earnest conversation in a Spanish _patois_ followed, and then one of the men spoke to me in Spanish. "No speak Spanish, eh?" he growled, in return to my assertion to that effect. "Who you be? Where you go to?" "I am on my way to Guantanamo, to join my father," I said, and made as much of an explanation as I deemed necessary. The soldiers glared suspiciously at me when my words were translated to them. Then, without ceremony, they began to search me, taking all I had of value from me. "You are not going to rob me, I trust," I said, and the man who could speak English laughed coarsely. "We take all we get," he replied. "All right in war, _amigo_." I was not his _amigo_, or friend, but I was forced to submit; and, even as it was, I was thankful my life had been spared, for they were a cruel-looking band, with less of the soldier than the bandit about them. When I saw a chance, I started in to question them concerning Alano, but the nearest fellow, with a flat blow from his dirty hand, stopped me. "No talk!" growled he who could speak English. After this I said no more, but from where I had been placed, at the rear of the hot and ill-ventilated hut, I watched the men narrowly and tried to understand what they were talking about. I heard General Garcia mentioned and also the word "machete," the name of the long, deadly knives most of the Cuban soldiers carried. At last the men around the hut began to grow sleepy, and one after another sought a suitable spot and threw himself down to rest. The youngest of the party, a fellow not over twenty, was left on guard. With his pistol in his lap, this guard sat on a flat rock, rolling cigarette after cigarette and smoking them. From my position in the hut I could just catch his outline, and I watched him eagerly. I pretended to go to sleep, but I was very wide awake. It must have been well past midnight, and I was giving up in despair, when the last of the cigarettes went out and the guard's head fell forward on his breast. In the meantime I had been silently working at the rawhide which bound my hands. In my efforts my wrists were cut not a little, but at last my hands were free. Feeling that the guard and the others were all asleep, I arose as silently as a shadow. Several of my captors lay between me and the entrance of the hut, and it was with extreme caution that I stepped over them. The last man sighed heavily and turned over just as I went by, and with my heart in my throat I leaped out into the open. But he did not awaken, nor did the guard notice my appearance. As I passed the latter I saw something shining on the ground. It was the pistol, which had slipped from the guard's lap. I hesitated only an instant, then picked it up and glided onward to the end of the plateau. "_Halte!_" The command, coming so suddenly, was enough to startle anybody, and I leaped back several feet. A man had appeared before me, one of the fellows left to guard the highway below. Following the command came an alarm in Spanish. On the instant the camp was in commotion. The guard was the first to awaken, and his anger when he found his pistol gone was very great. While he was searching for his weapon, the others poured from the hut and ran toward me, leveling their weapons as they came. I was caught between two fires, for the man before me also had his pistol raised, and I did not know what to do. Then, to avoid being struck, and not wishing to shed blood, I leaped toward some near-by bushes. Bang! crack! A musket and a pistol went off almost simultaneously, and I heard a clipping sound through the trees. Just as my former captors turned to follow me into the thicket, there came another shot from down in the hollow of the highway. "_Cuba libre!_" I heard echo upon several sides, and a rattle of musketry followed. From a dozen spots in the hollow I saw the long flashes of fire, and I at once knew that a portion of the Cuban army was at hand and had surprised the Spanish sympathizers who were attempting to hold the highway. The moment the battle started below the plateau those who had held me captive gave up pursuing me, and rushed back to the hut to obtain their entire belongings--feeling, doubtless, that the region would soon get too hot to hold them. I watched them turn away with keen satisfaction, and remained where I was, the guard's pistol still in my possession. For fully half an hour the firing kept up, and then came a rush along the highway and again I heard the cry of "_Cuba libre!_" raised, showing that the rebels were getting the best of the encounter and had driven the Spanish soldiers from their hiding-places. On went one body of men after the other down the road, until the sounds of their voices and firearms were almost lost in the distance. Certain that the plateau was now absolutely deserted, I ran back to the hut and found my valise, which had been thrown in a corner. My pistol was gone, but as I had another, fully loaded and just as good, I did not mind this. With my satchel over my shoulder, I crawled cautiously down to the highway and hurried in the direction I had before been pursuing. I had just reached the opposite side of the hollow, where all was pitch dark, on account of the shade, when a feeble moan came to my ears. Moving silently in the direction, I found a negro lying on his back, a fearful wound in his shoulder. The man could speak nothing but a Cuban _patois_, yet I understood that he was in pain and desired his shoulder bound up. Wetting my handkerchief in the water at the hollow, I washed the wound as best I could and tied it up with strips of muslin torn from the sleeve of his ragged shirt and my own shirt sleeve. For this, I could note by his manner, that he was extremely grateful. "_Americano?_" he said. "Yes," I replied. Then he asked me several other questions, from which I made out that he wanted to know which side I was on. Feeling certain I was safe, I said "Cuba," and he smiled faintly. "I want to find General Garcia," I continued, emphasizing the name. Then I tapped my breast, said General Garcia again, and pointed off with my finger. He nodded and attempted to sit up. With his bony finger he pointed up the highway, and circled his finger to the northwest to signify I was to turn off in that direction. Then he caught me by the arm and whispered "Maysi" into my ear--the password. Feeling I could do no more for him at present, I went on, and at the distance of an eighth of a mile came to a side road, which was the one he had described to me. It was narrow and rocky, and I had not proceeded over two hundred feet in the direction when a soldier leaped out from behind a banana tree and presented his gun. "_Halte!_" he cried. "Maysi!" I called promptly. The gun was lowered, and, seeing I was but a boy, the guard smiled and murmured "_Americano?_" to which I nodded. "General Garcia," I said, and tapped my breast to signify I wished to see the great Cuban leader. Without a word the guard led me on a distance of a hundred feet and called another soldier. A short talk ensued, and the second man motioned me to follow him through a trail in the brush. We went on for ten minutes, then came to a clearing hemmed in by a cliff and several high rocks. Here were over a hundred soldiers on foot and twice as many on horseback. In the midst of the latter was the Cuban general I had asked to see--the gallant soldier who had fought so hard in the cause of Cuban liberty. CHAPTER XIV. GENERAL CALIXTO GARCIA. My first view of General Calixto Garcia was a disappointing one. For some reason, probably from the reports I had heard concerning his bravery, I had expected to see a man of great proportions and commanding aspect. Instead, I saw an elderly gentleman of fair figure, with mild eyes and almost white mustache and beard, the latter trimmed close. But the eyes, though mild, were searching, and as he turned them upon me I felt he was reading me through and through. He was evidently surprised to see a boy, and an American at that. He spoke but little English, but an interpreter was close at hand, who immediately demanded to know who I was, where I had come from, and what I wanted. "My name is Mark Carter, and I have journeyed all the way from Santiago de Cuba," I replied. "I heard that my father and his friend, Señor Guerez, had joined General Garcia's forces." "You are Señor Carter's son!" exclaimed the Cuban officer, and turned quickly to General Garcia. The two conversed for several minutes, and then the under-officer turned again to me. "General Garcia bids you welcome," he said, and at the same time the great Cuban leader smiled and extended his hand, which I found as hard and horny as that of any tiller of the soil. "He knows your father and Señor Guerez well." "And where are they now?" I asked quickly. "They were with the army two days ago, but both went off to escort the ladies of Señor Guerez' family to a place of safety. The señor was going to take his wife and daughters to an old convent up a river some miles from here." This was rather disheartening news, yet I had to be content. I asked if my father was well. "Very well, although hardly able to walk, on account of a leg he broke some time ago." "And have you seen Alano Guerez? He is about my own age, and was with me up to this morning," I went on, and briefly related my adventures on the road, to which the officer listened with much interest. "We have seen nothing of him," was the reply I received. "But he may be somewhere around here." The officer wished to know about the Spanish detachment we had met, and I told him all I knew, which was not much, as I had not understood the Spanish spoken and Alano had not interpreted it for me. But even the little I had to say seemed to be highly important, and the officer immediately reported the condition of affairs to General Garcia. By this time some of the soldiers who had taken part in the fight at the foot of the plateau came back, bringing with them several wounded men, including the negro whose wound I had bound up. The disabled ones were placed in a temporary hospital, which already sheltered a dozen others, and General Garcia rode off with his horsemen, leaving the foot soldiers to spread out along the southeastern slope of the mountain. Left to myself, I hardly knew what to do. A black, who could speak a few words of "Englis'," told me I could go where I wanted, but must look out for a shot from the enemy; and I wandered over to the hospital and to the side of the fellow I had formerly assisted. The hospital, so called, consisted of nothing more than a square of canvas stretched over the tops of a number of stunted trees. From one tree to another hammocks, made of native grass, were slung, and in these, and on piles of brush on the ground, rested the wounded ones. Only one regular doctor was in attendance, and as his surgical skill and instruments were both limited, the sufferings of the poor fellows were indeed great. "Him brudder me--you help him," said the black who spoke "Englis'," as he pointed to the fellow whose wound I had dressed. "Jorge Nullus no forget you--verra good you." "Is your name Jorge Nullus?" "Yeas, señor--him brudder Christoval." "Where did you learn English?" "Me in Florida once--dree year ago--stay seex months--no like him there--too hard work," and Jorge Nullus shrugged his shoulders. "You verra nice leetle man, señor," and he smiled broadly at his open compliment. "Do you know Señor Guerez?" I questioned quickly. "Me hear of him--dat's all." "Do you know where the old convent on the river is?" I continued. The Cuban nodded. "Yeas--been dare many times--bring 'taters, onions, to Father Anuncio." "Could you take me there--if General Garcia would let you go?" "Yeas, señor. But Spaniards all around--maybe shoot--bang!--dead," and he pointed to his wounded brother. The brother demanded to know what we were talking about, and the two conversed for several minutes. Then Jorge turned again to me. [Illustration: "GENERAL GARCIA, THE GALLANT SOLDIER WHO HAD FOUGHT SO HARD IN THE CAUSE OF CUBAN LIBERTY."] "Christoval say me take you; you verra good leetle man, señor. We go now, you say go." "Will you be allowed to go?" "Yeas--General Garcia no stop me--he know me all right," and the negro grinned and showed his teeth. I was tempted to start at once, but decided to wait until morning, in the hope of finding Alano. In spite of the fact that I knew my chum would be doubly cautious, now we were separated, I felt decidedly anxious about him. The Spanish troops were on every side, and the soldiers would not hesitate to shoot him down should they learn who he was. The night passed in comparative quietness. Toward morning we heard distant firing to the northwest, and at five o'clock a messenger dashed into camp with the order to move on to the next mountain, a distance of two miles. Through Jorge I learned that the Spaniards had been outwitted and driven back to the place from whence they had come. There now seemed nothing for me to do but to push on to the convent on the river, in the hope of there joining my father. We were, so I was told, but a few miles from Guantanamo, but the route to the convent would not take us near the town. Jorge's brother felt much better, so the negro went off with a light heart, especially after I had made it plain to him that my father would reward him for any trouble he took on my account. I told him about Alano, and before leaving camp we walked around among the sentries in the hope of gaining some information concerning him. But it was all useless. "Maybe he went on to Father Anuncio's," said my negro guide, and this gave me a grain of comfort. The soldiers and Jorge and myself left the camp at about the same time, but we did not take the same road, and soon my guide and I found ourselves on a lonely mountain trail overlooking a valley thick with brush and trees. The sun shone brightly, but the air was clear and there was a fine breeze blowing, and this made it much cooler than it would otherwise have been. I missed the horse, and wondered if Alano still had the animal he had captured. It might be possible he had ridden straight on to Guantanamo, and was now bound from there up the river. If that was so, we might meet on the river road. "Werry bad road now," said Jorge, as we came to a halt on the mountain side. "Be careful how you step, Señor Mark." He pointed ahead, to where a narrow trail led around a sharp turn. Here the way was rocky and sloped dangerously toward the valley. He went on ahead, and I followed close at his heels. "No horse come dis way," observed Jorge, as he came to another turn. "Give me your hand--dis way. Now den, jump!" We had reached a spot where a tiny mountain stream had washed away a portion of the trail. I took his hand, and we prepared to take the leap. Just then the near-by crack of a rifle rang out on the morning air. Whether or not the shot was intended for us I cannot say, but the sound startled me greatly and I stumbled and fell. Jorge tried to grab me, but failed, and down I shot head first into the trees and bushes growing twenty feet below the trail! CHAPTER XV. A PRISONER OF WAR. By instinct more than reason, I put out both hands as I fell, and this movement saved me from a severe blow on the head. My hands crashed through the branches of a tree, bumped up against the trunk, and then I bounced off into the midst of a clump of brush and wild peppers. "Hi, yah!" I heard Jorge cry out, but from my present position I could not see him. "Is you killed?" he went on. "No, but I'm pretty well shook up and scratched up," I answered. "Take care--somebody shoot," he went on. I concluded I was pretty well out of sight, and I kept quiet and tried to get back the breath which had been completely knocked out of me. A few minutes later I heard a crashing through the brush, and my guide stood beside me. "Lucky you no killed," he observed. "Bad spot dat." He searched around and soon found a hollow containing some water, with which I bathed the scratches on my face and hands. In the meantime he gazed around anxiously in the direction from which he imagined the shot had come. "Maybe no shoot at us," he said, quarter of an hour later. "Me find out." With his ever-ready machete he cut down a young tree and trimmed the top branches off, leaving the stumps sticking out about six inches on every side. On the top of the tree he stuck his hat, and then, having no coat, asked me for mine, which he buttoned about the tree a short distance under the hat, placing a fluttering handkerchief between the two. With this rude dummy, or scarecrow, he crawled up the side of the gully until almost on a level with the trail. Then he hoisted the figure up cautiously and moved it forward. No shot was fired, and after waiting a bit Jorge grew bolder and climbed up to the trail himself. Here he spent a long time in viewing the surroundings, and finally called to me. "Him no shoot at us. Maybe only hunter. Come up." Not without some misgivings, I followed directions. To gain the trail again was no easy matter, but he helped me by lowering the end of the tree and pulling me up. Once more we proceeded on our way, but with eyes and ears on guard in case anybody in the shape of an enemy should appear. By noon Jorge calculated we had covered eight miles, which was considered a good distance through the mountains, and I was glad enough to sit down in a convenient hollow and rest. He had brought along a good stock of provisions, with which the rebel camp had happened to be liberally provided, and we made a meal of bread, crackers, and cold meat, washed down with black coffee, cooked over a fire of dead and dried grass. "We past the worst of the road now," remarked Jorge, as we again moved on. "Easy walkin' by sundown." He was right, for about four o'clock we struck an opening among the mountains where there was a broad and well-defined road leading past several plantations. The plantations were occupied by a number of Cubans and blacks, who eyed me curiously and called out queries to Jorge, who answered them cheerfully. The plantations left behind, we crossed a brook which my guide said ran into the river, and took to a path running along a belt of oak and ebony trees, with here and there a clump of plantains. We had gone but a short distance when we crossed another trail, and Jorge called a halt and pointed to the soft ground. The hoofprints of half a dozen horses were plainly visible, and as they were still fresh we concluded they had been made that very day, and perhaps that afternoon. "Who do you think the horsemen are, Jorge?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. "Can't say--maybe soon tell--me see," and on he went, with his eyes bent on the ground. For my part, I thought it best to keep a watch to the right and the left. We went on slowly until the evening shadows began to fall. Then Jorge was about to speak, when I motioned him to be silent. "There is something moving in yonder brush," I said, pointing with my hand. "I think I saw a horse." We left the road and proceeded in the direction, moving along slowly and silently. I had been right; there was not one horse, but half a dozen, tethered to several stunted trees. No human beings were present, but from a distance we presently heard the murmur of voices, and a minute later two Spanish soldiers came into view. Jorge drew his pistol, but I restrained him. The soldiers had evidently come up to see if the horses were still safe. Satisfied on this point, one passed to the other a roll of tobacco for a bite, and both began to converse in a low but earnest tone. Jorge listened; and, as the talk ran on, his face grew dark and full of hatred. The backs of the two Spaniards were toward us, and my guide drew his machete and motioned as if to stab them both. I shook my head, horrified at the very thought. This did not suit Jorge, and he drew me back where we might talk without being overheard. "What is the use of attacking them?" I said. "Let us be on our way." "Them men fight General Garcia's men--maybe hurt my brudder," grunted Jorge wrathfully. "They say they have prisoner--kill him soon." "A prisoner?" "Yes." "Where?" "At camp down by river. They kill udder prisoner, now rob dis one an' kill too. Bad men--no good soldiers." I agreed with him on this point. Yet I was not satisfied that he should go back and attack the pair while they were off their guard. "It would not be fair," I said, "and, besides, the noise may bring more soldiers down upon us. I wish we could do something for their prisoner, whoever he is." We talked the matter over, and, seeing the soldiers depart, concluded to follow them. We proceeded as silently as two shadows, and during the walk Jorge overheard one soldier tell the other that the prisoner was to be shot at sunrise. A turn in the path brought us to a broad and roughly flowing stream. Here a temporary camp had been pitched. Half a dozen dirty-looking Spaniards were lolling on the ground, smoking and playing cards. From their talk Jorge said they were waiting for some of their former comrades to join them, when all were to travel back to where the Spanish commander, Captain Campona, had been left. "There ees the prisoner," said Jorge, in a whisper, and pointed along the river shore to where rested a decaying tree, half in and half out of the water. The prisoner was strapped with rawhides to one of the tree branches, and it was--my chum Alano! CHAPTER XVI. A RESCUE UNDER DIFFICULTIES. Mere words cannot express my astonishment and alarm when I saw who the prisoner tied to the tree was. As I gazed at Alano my heart leaped into my throat, and like lightning I remembered what Jorge had told me the Spaniards had said, that the prisoner was to be shot at sunrise. Alano shot! I felt an icy chill creep over me. My own chum! No, no, it must not be! In my excitement I almost cried aloud. Noting how strangely I was affected, my guide placed his hand over my mouth and drew me back into a thicket. "It is Alano Guerez!" I whispered, as soon as I was calm enough to speak--"Señor Guerez' son!" "Ah, yah!" ejaculated Jorge. "I see he is but a boy. _Perros!_ [Dogs!]" "We must save Alano," I went on. "If he was shot, I--I would never forgive myself." Jorge shrugged his shoulders. "How?" he asked laconically. "Too many for us." "Perhaps we can do something when it grows darker." The guide drew down the corners of his mouth. Then, as he gazed at the river, his big black eyes brightened. "Yeas, when it is darker we try. But must be careful." "Perhaps we can get to him by the way of the river." Jorge smiled grimly. Catching me by the arm he led me along the bank, overgrown with grass and rushes. Not far away was something that looked like a half-submerged log covered with mud. Taking a stone he threw it, and the "log" roused up and flopped angrily into the stream. "Alligators!" I cried, with a shiver. "No, we won't be able to get to him by way of the river. But we must do something." "We cross river, and I tell you what we do," replied my guide. Crossing was not an easy matter, as neither of us cared to attempt swimming or fording with alligators in the vicinity. But by passing along the bank we presently discovered a spot where half a dozen rocks afforded a footing, and over we went in the semi-darkness, for the sun was now setting. As we hurried down the course of the stream again, Jorge cut several cedar and pine branches which appeared to be particularly dry. Then he handed me a number of matches, of which, fortunately, he had an entire box. "We will put one pile of branches here," he said, "and another further down, and one further yet. Den I go back to camp. You watch tree over there. When you see light wait few minutes, den light all dree fires." "But how will that help us?" "Soldiers see fires, want to know who is dar--don't watch Alano--me go in and help him. After you make fires you run back to where we cross on stones." Jorge's plan was not particularly clear to me, yet I agreed to it, and off he sped in the gloom. Left to myself, I made my way cautiously to the water's edge, there to await the signal he had mentioned. It was a hot night and the air was filled with myriads of mosquitoes, gnats, flies, and other pests. From the woods behind me came the occasional cry of a night bird, otherwise all was silent. Frogs as big as one's two hands sat on the rocks near by, on the watch for anything in the shape of a meal which might come their way. But bad as the pests around me were, I gave them scant consideration. My whole mind was concentrated upon Alano and what Jorge proposed to do. Silently I prayed to Heaven that the guide might be successful in rescuing my chum. About half an hour went by,--it seemed an extra long wait to me,--when suddenly I saw a flash of fire, in the very top of a tree growing behind the Spaniards' camp. The flash lasted but a second, then died out instantly. Arising from my seat, I ran to the furthest pile of boughs and waited while I mentally counted off a hundred and eighty seconds, three minutes. Then I struck a match, ignited the heaped-up mass, and ran to the second pile. In less than ten minutes the three fires, situated about three hundred feet apart, were burning fiercely, and then I ran at topmost speed for the spot where the river had been crossed. I had just reached the locality when I heard a shout ring out, followed by two musket shots. A painful, anxious two minutes followed. Were Alano and Jorge safe? was the question I asked myself. I strained my eyes to pierce the gloom which hung like a pall over the water. Footsteps on the rocks greeted my ears. Someone was coming, someone with a heavy burden on his back. Once or twice the approaching person slipped on the rocks and I heard a low cry of warning. "Mark!" It was the voice of Alano, and my heart gave a joyful bound. In another second my Cuban chum appeared in view, carrying on his manly back the form of Jorge. "Alano," I ejaculated excitedly, "what is the matter with him?" "He has been shot in the leg," was the reply. "Come on, help me carry him and get to cover. I am afraid they are on my track!" "Run into the woods!" groaned Jorge. "Den we take to trees--dat's best." As Alano was almost exhausted, I insisted that the guide be transferred to my back, and this was speedily done, and on we went, away from the river and directly into the forest. Of course, with such a burden I could not go far, and scarcely a hundred yards were traversed when I came to a halt, at the foot of a giant mahogany tree. Not without a good deal of difficulty Jorge was raised up into the branches of the tree, and we followed. "Still now and listen!" cried Jorge, with a half-suppressed groan. With strained ears we sat in the mahogany tree for fully half an hour without speaking. We heard the Spaniards cross the river and move cautiously in the direction of the three fires, and presently they returned to their own camp. "Thank fortune, we have outwitted them!" murmured Alano, the first to break the silence. "You poor fellow!" he went on to Jorge; "you saved my life." He asked about the wound which had been received, and was surprised, and so was I, to learn that it was but slight, and what had caused the guide's inability to run had been a large thorn which had cut through his shoe into his heel. By the light of a match the thorn was forced out with the end of Jorge's machete, and the foot was bound up in a bit of rag torn from my coat sleeve, for I must admit that rough usage had reduced my clothing to a decidedly dilapidated condition. As we could not sleep very well in the tree without hammocks, we descended to the ground and made our way to a bit of upland, where there was a small clearing. Here we felt safe from discovery and lay down to rest. But before retiring Alano thanked Jorge warmly for what he had done, and thanked me also. "I thought you were a goner," he said to me. "How did you escape when the horse balked and threw you into the stream?" I told him, and then asked him to relate his own adventures, which he did. After leaving me, he said, his horse had taken the bit in his teeth and gone on for fully a mile. When the animal had come to a halt he had found himself on a side trail, with no idea where he was. His first thought was to return to the stream where the mishap had occurred, his second to find General Garcia. But Providence had willed otherwise, for he had become completely tangled up in the woods and had wandered around until nightfall. In the morning he had mounted his horse and struck a mountain path, only to fall into the hands of the Spanish soldiers two hours later. These soldiers were a most villainous lot, and, after robbing him of all he possessed, had decided to take his life, that he might not complain of them to their superior officer. "From what I heard them say," he concluded, "I imagine they have a very strict and good man for their leader--a man who believes in carrying on war in the right kind of a way, and not in such a guerrilla fashion as these chaps adopt." "I don't want any war, guerrilla fashion or otherwise," I said warmly. "I've seen quite enough of it already." "And so have I," said my Cuban chum. Of course he was greatly interested to learn that his father was on the way to place his mother and sisters in the old convent on the river. He said that he had seen the place several years before. "It is a tumbled-down institution, and Father Anuncio lives there--a very old and a very pious man who is both a priest and a doctor. I shouldn't wonder if the old building has been fitted up as a sort of fort. You see, the Spaniards couldn't get any cannon to it very well, to batter it down, and if they didn't have any cannon the Cubans could hold it against them with ease." "Unless they undermined it," I said. "Our people would be too sharp for that," laughed my Cuban chum. "They are in this fight to win." Jorge now advised us to quit talking, that our enemies might not detect us, and we lay down to rest as previously mentioned. I was utterly worn out, and it did not take me long to reach the land of dreams, and my companions quickly followed suit. In the morning our guide's heel was rather sore, yet with true pluck he announced his readiness to go on. A rather slim and hasty breakfast was had, and we set off on a course which Jorge announced must bring us to the river by noon. CHAPTER XVII. A TREACHEROUS STREAM TO CROSS. I must mention that now that we had gained the high ground of the mountains the air was much cooler and clearer than it was in the valleys, and, consequently, traveling was less fatiguing. Jorge went ahead, limping rather painfully at times, but never uttering a word of complaint. Next to him came Alano, while I brought up in the rear. It is needless to state that all of us had our eyes and ears wide open for a sight or sound of friend or enemy. The road was a hard one for the most part, although here and there would be found a hollow in which the mud was from a few inches to several feet deep. Jorge always warned us of these spots, but on several occasions I stepped into the innocent-looking mud only to find that it was all I could do to get clear of the dark, glue-like paste. It was but eleven o'clock when we came in sight of the river, which at this point was from thirty to forty feet wide. Looking up and down the water-course, we saw that it wound its way in and out among the hills in serpentine fashion. The bottom was mostly of rough stones, and the stream was barely three to four feet deep. "How will we get over?--by swimming?" I questioned, as we came to a halt on a bank that was twenty feet above the current. "Find good place by de rocks," said Jorge. "Must be careful. Water werry swift." I could see that he was right by the way the water dashed against the rocks. Our guide led the way along the bank for a distance of several hundred feet and began to climb down by the aid of the brush and roots. "That doesn't look pleasant," remarked Alano, as he hesitated. "Just look at that stream!" Picking up a dry bit of wood he threw it into the water. In a few seconds it was hurried along out of our sight. Nevertheless, we followed Jorge down to the water's edge. Before us was a series of rocks, which, had the stream been a bit lower, would have afforded an excellent fording-place. "De river higher dan I think," said our guide. "You take off boots, hey?" "That we will," I answered, and soon had my boots slung around my neck. Alano followed my example, and with extreme caution we waded down and out to the first rock. "Any alligators?" I cried, coming to a pause. "No 'gators here," answered Jorge. "Water too swift--'gators no like dat." This was comforting news, and on I went again, until I was up to my knees. The water felt very refreshing, and I proposed to Alano that we take advantage of our situation and have a bath. "I feel tremendously dirty, and it will brace us up. We needn't lose more than ten minutes." My Cuban chum was willing, and we decided to take our bath from the opposite shore. Jorge declined to go swimming and said he would try his luck at fishing, declaring that the river held some excellent specimens of the finny tribe. We had now reached the middle of the stream. I was two yards behind Alano, while Jorge was some distance ahead. We were crossing in a diagonal fashion, as the fording rocks ran in that direction. Suddenly Alano muttered an exclamation in Spanish. "It's mighty swift out here!" he cried. "Look out, Mark, or----" He did not finish. I saw him slip and go down, and the next instant his body was rolling over and over as it was being carried along by the rushing current. "Jorge, Alano is gone!" I yelled, and took a hasty step to catch hold of my chum's coat. The movement was a fatal one for me, and down I went precisely as Alano had done. The water entered my eyes and mouth, and for the moment I was blinded and bewildered. I felt my feet touch bottom, but in the deeper water to obtain a footing was out of the question. When my head came up I found myself at Alano's side. I saw he had a slight cut on the forehead and was completely dazed. I caught him by the arm until he opened his eyes and instinctively struck out. "We're lost, Mark!" he spluttered. "Not yet," I returned. "Strike out for the shore." With all the strength at our command we struck out. To make any headway against that boiling current was well-nigh impossible, and on and on we went, until I was almost exhausted. Alano was about to sink when he gave a cry. "The bottom!" he announced, and I put down both feet, to find the stream less than three feet deep. With our feet down, we were now able to turn shoreward; and five minutes later Jorge had us both by the hands and was helping us out. "Well, we wanted a bath and we got it," were Alano's first words. "Have you had enough, Mark?" "More than sufficient," I replied, with a shudder. "Ugh, but that is a treacherous stream, and no mistake!" "You lucky boys," said Jorge. "Horse get in and roll over, he lose his life." We stopped long enough to wring out our clothing and put on our boots, and then followed our guide again. Half an hour later we reached a sheltered spot and here took dinner. By the time the repast was ended our light summer suits were almost dried. Luckily, through it all each of us had retained his hat. "We haven't had the fish Jorge promised us," said Alano, as we were preparing to resume our journey. "A bit of something baked wouldn't go bad." "Fish to-night," said the guide. "Have you a line and hook, Jorge?" I asked. "Yes, always carry him," he answered; and, upon further questioning, I learned that to carry a fishing outfit was as common among the rebels as to carry a pistol or the ever-ready machete. They had to supply themselves with food, and it was often easier and safer to fish in the mountain streams than to shoot game or cattle. We made a camp that night under the shelter of a clump of grenadillo trees; and, as Jorge had promised, he tried his luck at fishing in a little pool under some rocks. He remained at his lines, two in number, for nearly an hour, and in that time caught four fish--three of an eel-like nature and a perch. These were cooked for supper, and tasted delicious. "When will we reach the old convent?" I asked, as we were about to turn in. "Reach him by to-morrow afternoon maybe, if no storm come," said Jorge. "Do you think there will be a storm?" The guide shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe--time for storm now." The fire had been put out as soon as the fish were baked, that it might not attract the attention of any Spaniards who might be in the neighborhood. At eight o'clock we turned in, making our beds on a number of cedar boughs, which were easy to obtain in this mountainous locality. We had no coverings but our coats, but found these sufficient under the shelter of the grenadillos. How long I slept I did not know. I awoke with a start and raised up. All was silent. I gazed around in the gloom, and saw that Alano and our guide slumbered soundly. "I must have been dreaming," I muttered to myself, when a rustle in the brush behind me caused me to leap to my feet. There was another rustle, and then came what I imagined was a half-subdued growl of rage. Fearful that we were on the point of being attacked by some wild animal, I bent over my companions and shook them. "Wake up! Wake up!" I cried. "There are wild beasts about! Quick, and get your pistols ready!" And then I looked toward the bushes again, to see an ugly, hairy head thrust forward and a pair of glaring eyes fastened full upon me! CHAPTER XVIII. ALONE. "What is it?" cried Alano, as he scrambled to his feet. "I don't know!" I yelled. "Look! look!" As I spoke I pulled out my pistol. By this time Jorge was also aroused. "_Que ha dicho V.?_ [What did you say?]" he demanded, leaping up and catching at his machete. "An animal--a bear, or something!" I went on. "There he is!" I raised my pistol, and at the same time our guide looked as I had directed. I was about to pull the trigger of my weapon when he stopped me. "No shoot! _Puerco!_" he cried, and gave a laugh. Leaping forward, he made after the animal, which turned to run away. But Jorge was too quick for him. Presently there was a grunt and a prolonged squeal, and then I understood what my wild beast was--nothing but a wild pig! In a couple of minutes Jorge came back to camp dragging the tough little porker by the hind legs. He had killed the animal in true butcher's style. "We have pork to-morrow," he grinned, for Cuban negroes are as fond of pig meat as their Northern brothers. Taking a short rope from one of his pockets, he attached it to the pig's hind legs and hung the body up on a convenient tree branch. The incident had upset my nerves, and for the balance of the night I slept only by fits and starts, and I was glad when dawn came and the rising sun began to gild the tops of the surrounding hills. The sight was a beautiful one, and I gazed at it for some time, while Jorge prepared some pork chops over a tiny fire he had kindled. "We carry what pork we can," he said. "No use to leave it behind. Father Anuncio very glad to get pig, so sweet!" and once again Jorge grinned. After breakfast the guide cut up the balance of the animal, wrapped the parts in wet palm leaves, and gave us each our share to carry. Our involuntary bath had done me good, and I stepped out feeling brighter and better than I had for several days. I was becoming acclimated, and I was glad of it, for had I been taken down with a fever I do not know what I would have done. Alano was as eager as myself to reach the old convent on the river, and we kept close upon Jorge's heels as our guide strode off down the mountain side toward a forest of sapodillas and plantains. "I trust we find everybody safe and sound," I remarked. "The fact that your father thought it best to conduct your mother and sisters to the convent would seem to indicate he was disturbed about their safety." "I am hoping he did it only to be clear to join the rebel army," replied Alano. "I hope both your father and mine are in the ranks, and that we are allowed to join too." I did not wish to discourage my Cuban chum on this point, yet I had my own ideas on the subject. I was not anxious to join any army, at least not while both sides to the controversy were conducting the contest in this guerrilla-like fashion. I was quite sure, from what I had heard from various sources, that up to that date no regular battle had been fought in the eastern portion of Cuba, although the western branch of the rebel army, under General Gomez, was doing much regular and effective work. The reasons for this were twofold. In the first place, General Gomez' forces were composed mainly of white men, while a large portion of the soldiers under General Garcia were black. Nearly all of the Americans who came to Cuba to fight for Cuban liberty, came by way of Havana or Jibacoa and joined General Gomez, and these fellows brought with them a large stock of arms and ammunition. It was said that there were three armed men in the West to every man who had even a pistol in the East. Many of the negroes were armed only with their machetes, which they tied to their wrists with rawhides, that they might not lose this sole weapon while on the march or in a skirmish. To shoot off a cartridge in a pistol without doing some effective work with it was considered under General Garcia and his brother officers almost a crime. The guerrilla warfare in the mountains I felt could be kept up for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. The Spanish troops had sought to surround General Garcia a dozen times, only to discover, when too late, that he and his men had left the vicinity. The Cuban forces moved almost always at night, and often detachments of soldiers were sent off on swift horses to build false campfires dozens of miles away from the real resting-place of the army. In the valley we crossed through a large coffee plantation. In the center was a low, square house with several outbuildings. The house was closed tightly, and so were the other buildings, yet as we drew close I fancied I heard sounds from within. I notified Jorge, and a halt ensued. Hardly had we stopped than the door of the house flew open and out rushed half a dozen well-dressed Spanish soldiers. "_Halte!_" came the command, but instead of halting we turned and fled--I in one direction, and Alano and our guide in another. Bang! bang! went a couple of guns, and I heard the bullets clipping through the trees. Surprised and alarmed, I kept on, past a field of coffee and into a belt of palms. Several of the soldiers came after me, and I heard them shouting to me to stop and promising all sorts of punishment if I did not heed their command. But I did not intend to stop, and only ran the faster, past the palms and into a mass of brushwood growing to a height of ten or twelve feet. At first the bushes were several feet apart, and I went on with ease; but soon the growth was more dense, and numerous vines barred the way; and at last I sank down in a hollow, unable to go another step, and thoroughly winded. I remained in the hollow at least half an hour, trying to get back my breath and listening intently to the movements of my pursuers. The soldiers passed within fifty feet of me, but that was as close as they got, and presently they went off; and that was the last I heard of them. In the excitement of the chase I had dropped my pig meat, and now I discovered that nearly all of my other traps were gone, including my pistol, which had left my hand during a nasty trip-up over a hidden tree root. The trip-up had given me a big bump on the temple and nearly knocked me unconscious. Crawling around, I found a pool of water, in which I bathed my forehead, and then I set about finding out what had become of Alano and Jorge. I moved with extreme caution, having no desire to be surprised by the enemy, who might be lying in ambush for me. Moving onward in the brush I soon discovered was no light undertaking, and it was fully an hour before I found my way out to where the vines grew less profusely. The spot where I emerged was not the same as that at which I had entered the undergrowth, and on gazing around I was dismayed to find that the whole topography of the country looked different. I was lost! The thought rushed upon me all in an instant, and I half groaned aloud as I realized my situation. I must be all of a mile from the plantation, and where my friends were I had not the remotest idea. The sun beat down hotly in the valley, and it was not long before I was both dry and hungry. I searched around for another pool, but could not find any, and had to content myself with the taste of a wild orange, far from palatable. Noon came and went and found me still tramping around the valley looking for Alano and Jorge. In my passage through the bushes my already ragged clothing was torn still more, until I felt certain that any half-decent scarecrow could discount me greatly in appearance. At four o'clock, utterly worn out, I threw myself on the ground in a little clearing and gave myself up to my bitter reflections. I felt that I was hopelessly lost. Moreover, I was tremendously hungry, with nothing in sight with which to satisfy the cravings of my appetite. Night, too, was approaching. What was to be done? CHAPTER XIX. THE CAVE IN THE MOUNTAIN. I lay in the clearing in the valley for all of half an hour. Then, somewhat rested, I arose, unable to endure the thought that night would find me in the wilds alone and unarmed. I could well remember how the sun had stood when I had separated from my companions, and now, using the sun as a guide, I endeavored once more to trace my steps to the path leading down to the river. Once the stream was gained, I resolved to search up and down its banks until the old convent was sighted. My course led me up the side of a small mountain, which I climbed with great difficulty, on account of the loose stones and dirt, which more than once caused my ankle to give a dangerous twist. A sprained ankle would have capped the climax of my misfortunes. Just as the sun was beginning to set behind the peaks to the westward of me, I reached a little plateau which divided a ridge from the mountain proper. Here I rested for a few minutes and obtained a refreshing drink at a spring under some rocks. Then I went on, in some manner satisfied that I was on the right path at last. But, alas! hardly had I taken a score of steps than I stepped on a bit of ground which appeared solid enough, but which proved to be nothing but a mass of dead brushwood lying over a veritable chasm. The whole mass gave way, and with a lurch I was hurled forward into black space. As I went down I put out my hands to save myself. But, though I caught hold of several roots and bits of rocks, this did not avail; and I did not stop descending until I struck a stone flooring twenty feet below the top of the opening. Fortunately the floor was covered with a large mass of half-decayed brush, otherwise the fall must have been a serious if not a fatal one. As I went down, on hands and knees, a lot of loose branches, dirt, and small stones rolled on top of me, and for the minute I had a vision of being buried alive. But the downfall soon ceased; and, finding no bones broken, I crawled from under the load and surveyed the situation. I felt that I was now worse off than ever. The well-hole--I can call it nothing else--was about ten feet in diameter, and the walls were almost smooth. The top of the opening was far out of my reach, and, as for a means of escape, there seemed to be none. However, I was not to be daunted thus easily, and, striking a match and lighting a cedar branch, I set about looking for some spot where I might climb up. But the spot did not present itself. But something else did, and that was an opening leading directly into the mountain. On pulling at a projecting rock, I felt it quiver, and had just time to leap back, when it fell at my feet. Behind the rock was a pitch-black hole, into which I thrust the lighted branch curiously. There was a cave beyond--how large was yet to be discovered. I had no desire to explore any cave at that moment, my one idea being to get out of the well-hole and proceed on my way. But getting out of the hole was impossible, and I was forced to remain where I was, much to my disgust and alarm. Jorge had been right about the coming storm. At an hour after sunset I heard the distant rumble of thunder, and soon a lively breeze blew through the trees and brush on the mountain side. A few flashes of lightning followed, and then came a heavy downpour of rain. Not wishing to be soaked, I retreated to the cave I had discovered, although with caution, for I had no desire to take another tumble into a deeper hole. But the floor of the cavern appeared to be quite level, and with rising curiosity I took up my lighted cedar branch, whirled it around to make it blaze up, and started on a tour of investigation and discovery. That I should not miss my way back, I lit a pile of small brush at the mouth of the opening. Then I advanced down a stony corridor, irregular in shape, but about fifty feet wide by half as high. The opening appeared to be a split in the mountain, perhaps made ages before by volcanic action. I felt certain there was an opening above, for in several spots the rain came down, forming small pools and streams of water. Suddenly the idea struck me to watch which way the water ran, and I did so and learned that its course was in the very direction I was walking. Moreover the tiny streams merged one into another, until, several hundred feet further on, they formed quite a water course. "If only this stream flows into the main river!" I thought, and on the spur of the moment resolved to follow it as far as I was able, satisfied that if it led to nowhere in particular I could retrace my steps to its source. I now found the cave growing narrower, and presently it grew less than a dozen feet in width, and the stream covered the entire bottom to the depth of several inches. Throwing my boots over my shoulders, I began wading, feeling sure of one step ere I trusted myself to take another. It took me fully ten minutes to proceed a hundred feet in this fashion. The stream was now not over six feet wide and all of a foot deep. Making sure that my torch was in no danger of going out, I continued to advance, but now more slowly than ever, for in the distance I could hear the water as it fell over a number of rocks. There was a bend ahead; and this passed, I fervently hoped to emerge into the open air, on the opposite side of the mountain and close to the bank of the river for which I was seeking. At the bend the water deepened to my knees, and I paused to roll up my trousers, in the meantime resting the torch against the wall, which afforded a convenient slope for that purpose. I had just finished arranging my trouser-legs to my satisfaction, when a rumble of thunder, echoing and re-echoing throughout the cavern, made me jump. My movement caused the cedar branch to roll from the rocks, and it slipped with a hiss into the stream. I made a frantic clutch for it, and, in my eagerness to save it from going out or getting too wet, I fell on it in the very middle of the stream. With a splutter I arose to find myself in utter darkness. Moreover, the cedar branch was thoroughly soaked, and it would take a good many matches to light it again. And what was still worse, every match my pocket contained was soaked as badly as the torch. I must confess that I was utterly downcast over my mishap, and if there had been any dry ground handy I would have thrown myself down upon it in abject despair. But there was only water around, and, disconsolate as I was, I felt I must either go forward or backward. How I became turned about I do not know, but certain it is that, in essaying to return to the spot from whence I had come, I continued on down the stream. I did not notice the mistake I had made until fifty yards had been passed and I brought up against an overhanging rock with my shoulder. Putting up my hands, I was dismayed to discover that the passage-way was just high enough to clear my head. Realizing that I must be walking into a trap, I endeavored to turn about, when I slipped and went down again. Before I could gain my footing I was swept around a bend and into a much broader stream. All was as dark as before, and I soon learned that the bottom of the new water-course was beyond my reach. Putting my hand up, I learned that the rocky ceiling was not over two feet above the surface of the water, and the distance between the two was gradually but surely growing less! CHAPTER XX. SEÑOR GUEREZ. I was horrified over the discovery that I had made. Here I was, in absolute darkness, hemmed in by water and rocky walls, and drifting rapidly I knew not whither. In my terror I cried aloud, but only echo answered me--a peculiar echo which made me shiver from head to foot. On and on, and still on, was I dashed by the underground current, which seemed to grow more powerful as I advanced, until my head grazed repeatedly against the wall over me, and I felt like giving myself up for lost. Oh, how bitterly I regretted the curiosity which had led me to explore the cavern in which chance had so strangely placed me! But now what was this--a light? At first I could scarcely believe the evidence of my senses. There was a bright flash--then total blackness again. What could it mean? Perhaps I was dreaming--or the fearful situation had turned my brain. Then came a second flash and a revelation. It was the lightning from without, shining through some opening into the waters under and around me! I was nearing the outer world. Oh, for a breath of fresh air again! Even as the thought crossed my mind, my head struck the rocky ceiling again, and under I went, to find that I could not come up, the water now rising to the very rocks. But a stronger light could be seen, and I dove along, came up once, twice--and then emerged into the open air with a splutter and a gasp, on the verge of exhaustion. The underground stream emerged at the very base of the mountain, and on both sides were level stretches of swamps, covered with rushes and other tropical growths. Swimming for the nearest bank, I drew myself up and fell on my breast, too worn out to stand. It did not matter to me just then that it was night, that I was alone, and that it was raining in torrents. I was safe from drowning--that was my one thought, and never was a thought sweeter to a boy. For fully fifteen minutes I remained on the bank of the stream. Then, having recovered somewhat from the effects of my awful experience, I arose and took as good a view of my situation as was possible. I waited for a strong flash of lightning, and by this saw that my former wish had been realized and that I was within a few hundred feet of the river upon which the convent was said to be located. While the storm and the night lasted there was nothing to do but to seek shelter wherever it might be found; and, as the lightning now appeared to die away, I walked to the very mountain side, and found shelter under an overhanging rock, flanked by several tall trees. Here I wrung what water I could from my clothing and made myself as comfortable as my miserable condition permitted. Never was a person more glad to see the sun than I. Old Sol came up clear and strong, and my clothing quickly dried upon my body as I walked along. Passing around the swamps, which were full of monstrous toads and numerous lizards, I reached the bank of the larger stream and started to hunt for the convent for which Alano, Jorge, and myself had been bound. As I hurried on, as rapidly as the formation of the ground permitted, I could not help but wonder what had become of my chum and our negro guide. Had they escaped, to roam around looking for me, or had they fallen into the hands of the Spaniards at the coffee plantation? Having had no breakfast, it was not long before I began to feel hungry. To satisfy the cravings of my appetite I picked several almost ripe plantains, which, however, proved rather poor eating. I also spent some time in a hunt for berries, but none were to be found. By noon I calculated I had covered four or five miles, and reached a narrow woods, growing on both sides of the river. Beyond the woods was a village, a decidedly poor-looking settlement composed of a score of rude dwellings built of logs and thatched with palm leaves to keep out the rain. I did not know whether to enter the village or not, and remained in the woods for some time, watching the inhabitants, consisting of a score of men and women and perhaps fifty children of all ages. The children were dirty, and wore hardly any clothing, but they seemed to be as happy as though such a thing as war had never been mentioned. Most of the men were at work curing some wild-hog meat, while the women were engaged in braiding mats and other articles for sale or exchange. At last three of the children, running close to the woods, espied me, and set up a shout of wonder and alarm, at which the men stopped work and came rushing forward with their clubs and machetes. Seeing there was no help for it, I stepped out into the open, and was immediately surrounded. Not a soul in the settlement, which went by the name of Jiawacadoruo, could speak a word of English, and for the time being I was partly at a loss to make them understand that I came as a friend who meant no harm. At the word "_Americano_" they grinned, and one of them queried "_Cuba libre?_ [For Cuban liberty?]" and I nodded. Then I pointed to my mouth and stomach to signify that I was hungry. At once half a dozen of the women rushed off, and soon I was presented with several bowls of broth, made of chicken meat and vegetables, strongly flavored with the inevitable garlic, and a pot of strong black coffee. There was also a dish of boiled arrowroot, made from the native maranta, and this tasted best of all to me. While I was eating I tried, by every means in my power, to make these Cubans understand that I wanted to find the old convent, but failed utterly. Finally an idea struck me, and I essayed to carry it out. Tearing a page from a blank book in my pocket, I drew upon it a rough representation of a river and pointed to the stream, at which the men gathered around nodded that they understood. Next I drew the picture of a boy at one end of the river, and pointed to myself. I am not by any means an artist; but we had had drawing lessons at Broxville Academy, and I managed to represent the boy as walking rapidly, as if in a great hurry to get to where he was going. This caused the men to laugh heartily. The next thing to do was to draw the old convent. Never having heard the structure described, I had to draw entirely upon my imagination, and my knowledge of convent architecture was decidedly limited. Yet I managed to draw a fairly good representation of a ruined stone building, with a cross at the top, and before it put a priest, to whom, by an inspiration, I suddenly pointed and cried "Father Anuncio." A dozen exclamations followed, and the men nodded to show that they now knew what was wanted. A parley followed, and one tall negro stepped forth and motioned that he was ready to be my guide by pointing first to me and then to my picture of the old convent. Luckily I still retained a few silver pieces in my pocket, and before leaving I left two of these behind, to be divided among the crowd of negroes, for let me say in passing that all of the inhabitants of Jiawacadoruo are people of color. With my newly made guide I started up the river, and the settlement was soon lost to sight. I wondered how long it would take to reach the old convent, and tried to put the question to Bumbo, as I made his name out to be, but without success. Instead of answering with his fingers or by pointing to the sun, he merely grinned and walked faster, until it was all I could do to keep up with him. It was almost sundown when we passed a bend in the stream and mounted a bluff overlooking a wide expanse of swamp land. The topmost point of the bluff reached, the guide pointed ahead, and there, almost at our feet, I saw the massive outlines of what long years before had been an imposing Spanish convent, planted in that out-of-the-way spot for certain noble families who had left Spain under a cloud during the wars of the seventeenth century. As we approached the building, which was now little more than a mass of ruins, I saw several men standing just outside of the inclosed courtyard. One was a priest, and two others were in the uniform of officers in the Cuban army. One of the latter I recognized as Señor Guerez, having met the gentleman once while he was on a business visit to the United States. "Señor Guerez!" I called out, as I ran to him; and he turned in amazement. "Mark Carter!" he ejaculated, with a strong Spanish accent. "I am much astonished." "Is my father with you?" I demanded eagerly, as I looked around. "No, my boy; I am sorry to say it." "And where is he?" I went on, my heart rising to my throat, as I saw a look of anxiety cross the gentleman's bronzed features. "Your father was made a prisoner by the Spanish authorities two days ago," replied the señor, and the answer all but prostrated me. CHAPTER XXI. THE ATTACK ON THE OLD CONVENT. "My father a prisoner!" I gasped out, when I could speak. "Yes, Mark." "And how was he captured? and why?" "It is rather a long story. But tell me, where is Alano?" And now it was Señor Guerez' turn to become anxious. In a few words I explained matters, to which the planter listened with close attention. His brow darkened when I mentioned the Spaniards up at the coffee plantation. "I know them," he said. "We are expecting an attack from them every day." "An attack at this place?" "Yes." He turned to his companions, and introduced me to Father Anuncio and to Lieutenant Porlando, both of whom shook hands warmly when they were informed who I was. "You see, many of the planters have brought their families here," Señor Guerez went on, "and the Spanish think to subdue us if they can make our wives and daughters prisoners. But that shall never be while we have strength to fight." "Tell me of my father," I said impatiently. "Come inside, my boy," said Alano's father; and giving Bumbo a bit of silver I sent him off, and followed the others into the courtyard, in the rear of which was the convent building proper, although wings extended out upon both sides. In a shady corner I was introduced to La Señora Guerez and to Alano's two sisters, Inez and Paula, two girls of ten and twelve, now quite as dark as their father and mother, and very beautiful, with their black wavy hair and sparkling eyes full of good humor and merriment. Mother and daughters could speak a little English, and for Alano's sake they fairly made me feel like one of the family. I was impatient to hear about my father; and as soon as the señor had told the others of what I had said concerning Alano, Señor Guerez told me his story. "As soon as we felt that the war was going to be severe and probably of long duration," said he, "your father and I telegraphed to Dr. Walford to keep you at Broxville Academy until you heard from us by letter. Two days later came a return message stating that you had already gone to New York and taken steamer for Cuba. The worthy doctor could not tell by what route you had gone. "This being the case, your father and I concluded to let you come on, and I dispatched Pedro, one of my faithful servants, to meet you at Santiago de Cuba and conduct you in safety to the plantation, where your father was still down with his broken leg, which was, however, mending rapidly. "Several days went by, and matters became very troublesome about my plantation. Some of the men had joined the Cuban forces under Brigadier General José Maceo, a brother to the late Antonio Maceo, and my neighbors begged me to join also and become captain of a company of white Cubans--they not caring to serve under Maceo or Garcia and also not caring to go as far west as where the forces under General Gomez were located. "While I was deliberating, a body of Spanish guerrillas came along and burned down two of my largest storehouses and threatened my wife with violence. This angered me, and I got my gun and shot two of the rascals--one in the leg and the other in the shoulder. A battle royal ensued between my workmen and the guerrillas, and the guerrillas received the worst of the encounter and were forced to retreat, with three men wounded and one man dead. "This settled the matter, and I joined the Cuban forces under Garcia without delay. Your father also took part in the battle and saved my wife from great indignities. When I called my white men together, and my white neighbors, they speedily formed a company of volunteers, and I was chosen the captain, with Lieutenant Porlando for my first officer and your father for second lieutenant. We were all supplied with good horses and first-class weapons, and the very next day after effecting our organization defeated a body of the Spanish troops and drove them ten miles up the road and away from the mountains which General Garcia is using as a stronghold. "As it was perilous in the extreme to leave the women-folks home alone while the men were away, it was decided by me and my neighbors to bring them all here and leave them with Father Anuncio and a strong guard. It was believed that no one would dare molest any woman while sheltered by this old convent. There are within the walls over a dozen ladies and nearly thirty children, besides a company of picked men and six men who were wounded at one time or another." "But my father?" I put in, as the señor paused. "I am coming to that, Mark. It was two days ago that our company was in the vicinity of Guantanamo. I had received valuable information concerning the contemplated movements of the Spanish troops, and this information I wished to place in the hands of General Garcia and his staff. Your father offered to find a certain captain, while another of the company rode off to find the general. "Your father was accompanied by a private named Hawley, an American who settled near me several years ago. The pair were gone about six hours when Hawley came riding back to our camp, severely wounded in the thigh. He said they had met a company of Spanish soldiers, who had discovered them ere they were aware. Your father had been taken a prisoner, while Hawley had had a hard time of it to escape." "And have you heard of him since then?" I asked anxiously. "I heard from him yesterday. Some of our soldiers, while tramping through the woods, came across a Spaniard who was severely wounded. They treated him as well as he could possibly expect, dressed his wounds, and gave him a supply of water and bread and meat; and in return he told them about their prisoner, your father. He said your father was to be sent on to the authorities at Santiago as an American spy." "A spy!" "Yes, my boy, a spy. It is, of course, a foolish charge, but I am afraid it may cause your father a good deal of trouble." "Why, they place spies in dungeons and often shoot them, Señor Guerez!" "Let us hope for the best, Mark," he returned soothingly. "Would they dare shoot an American citizen?" "Unfortunately your father was caught wearing a Cuban uniform and with our flag pinned to his hat--as I have it." I bowed my head, and something like tears started to my eyes. This news was awful. Supposing my father was shot as a spy? I would be left alone in the world. Overcome by my emotions, I felt compelled to turn away, when Señor Guerez placed a kindly hand on my shoulder. "Don't be too downcast, my boy. It may not go so badly with your parent, and I will do all I can for both of you. As soon as I can arrange certain matters with the men who are in charge here, I will follow up those who have your father in charge and see if he cannot be rescued." "Oh, will you do that?" I cried, catching his hand. "You are more than kind, Señor Guerez!" We were about to continue the conversation, when the lieutenant to whom I had been introduced came rushing up all out of breath. He had been walking down by the river, field-glass in hand, and had made an important discovery, which he imparted to the others in Spanish. It was to the effect that a large body of Spanish soldiers were riding through the woods, back of the river, and it looked as if they were bound for the old convent. They were heavily armed, and on the back of a mule could be seen a small cannon. "As I expected," muttered Señor Guerez. "I'll take a look at them." He ran up to the roof of the convent, glass in hand, and, nobody stopping me, I followed him. A long, searching look and he dashed down the glass, hurried below, and issued a dozen rapid orders. Men flew in all directions, some to get their guns and pistols, and others to shut the gates leading to the courtyard and to place square bits of blocks into the deep windows. I tried to get an explanation from somebody, but all were too busy. Señor Guerez was the only one who gave me a hint of what was wrong. "'Tis a body of Spanish soldiers led by a priest who is a rival to Father Anuncio. He wishes to get the good father to give up this old convent, which means that we must vacate too. It is a ruse of the enemy." No more was said. Quarter of an hour later a white flag was waved and a man came up to the old convent gates. A short talk ensued between him, Señor Guerez, Father Anuncio, and several others, and then the man withdrew. Hardly had he gone than all of us heard the cracks of a dozen or more guns, and as many bullets flattened themselves on the convent walls. "They have opened the fight," remarked Señor Guerez grimly, while several of the women and children shrieked. "Now we will show them what we can do." He selected the best of his soldiers, and placed them at convenient loopholes in the upper part of the old building. Weapons were ready for use, and at a word of command the fire of the Spaniards was returned. A yell of surprise and rage went up, and there immediately followed another volley of musketry from without. This was returned, and this sort of thing lasted for quarter of an hour, when the enemy retired behind the bluff I have previously mentioned. But they did not remain quiet long. Presently, looking through his field-glass, Señor Guerez announced that they had succeeded in mounting the cannon they had brought along. The weapon was duly loaded and sighted, and we awaited with thrilling interest the effect of this rather formidable weapon. CHAPTER XXII. THE ROUTING OF THE ENEMY. Boom! The Spanish gunners had fired the cannon perched on the bluff, its muzzle pointed directly for the doors of the old convent. Hardly had we heard the report than there was a crash and the splinters flew in every direction. The shot had struck the frame of the doors and shattered it badly. A cry of rage went up from the Cubans, and, rushing to the loopholes left in the blocked-up windows, they sought to pick off the gunners with their carbines. But the Spaniards prudently kept out of sight, so this movement was useless. "Two more shots like that, and the doors will come down," muttered Señor Guerez, with a grave shake of his head. "I wish we had a cannon to fire in return." A consultation was held, and all of the women and children were told to retire to an inner room of the convent, where the damage done by the cannon might not reach them. This had scarcely been accomplished when the Spaniards fired a second shot. But their aim was poor, and the ball only plowed up the ground fifty feet outside of the courtyard. Señor, or rather Captain, Guerez, as I should now call him, collected his men together, and a short but exciting debate took place, only a few words of which were plain to me. Alano's father favored leaving the convent by a rear passage-way leading to a woods and surprising the enemy by coming up in their rear. Just as a third shot from the cannon struck the roof of the convent and tore off a corner of the stonework, it was agreed upon to carry out this project. Four men were left to exhibit themselves occasionally, so that the Spaniards might think the soldiers still there, and Alano's father asked me to remain with them. "I do not advise you to take part in the fighting," he said. "But if you find it necessary to defend yourself, you'll find guns in plenty in the dining-hall closet, with cartridges in one of the drawers." In less than ten minutes the company of soldiers, fifty-six strong, were on their way, leaving the convent as silently as shadows. The moment the last of them had taken to the passage-way, the entrance was closed and bolted, and I found myself left behind with the women and children and the four guards, none of whom could speak a word of English. After firing the third shot the Spaniards paused, probably to hold a council of war. To divert suspicion from the movements of Captain Guerez and his men, the four guards and myself passed out in plain sight of them several times. Of course we did not remain long, nor did we show ourselves in the same place twice. Our appearance called forth half a dozen shots from as many muskets, but we were too far off for these to have any effect. One bullet did hit near where a guard had shown himself, but its force was spent and it did no damage. Nearly half an hour had passed, when suddenly we heard a yell and a wild shouting, and all of the Spaniards dashed into view, running hither and thither as though panic-stricken. Captain Guerez had surprised them completely, and they thought it was a re-enforcement for the old convent and not the soldiers from that place themselves. A hundred shots rang out, and, using a field-glass, I saw that the Spaniards were completely demoralized. They formed into a hollow square once, but this was speedily broken up, and then off they rode and ran, helter-skelter, down the bluff and across the river, some fording and some swimming, for their very lives. The engagement had lasted less than quarter of an hour when some of the Cubans came riding toward the convent gates, bringing with them several wounded men--some of their own party--and three of the Spaniards who had been captured. Captain Guerez had, in the meantime, followed the Spanish leader across the stream. The pursuit was kept up for nearly half an hour, at the end of which time the Spaniards were driven so far off it was likely they would not dare to return for a long while, if at all. When Alano's father came back it was found he had received a sword thrust through the fleshy part of the leg. The wound was not a dangerous one, but it was painful, and his wife and daughters did all they could to ease his sufferings. "I am sorry for your sake, Mark, that I am wounded," he remarked, as he rested upon a cot. "I will have to keep quiet for a few days, and thus our quest after your father will have to be delayed." "You wouldn't dare to leave here just yet anyway, would you?" I asked, much disappointed, yet feeling that it was no more than I could expect. "Hardly, my boy. I do not expect those Spaniards to return; we have given them far more than they expected. They would not attack us without re-enforcements, and there are no other Spanish troops within a good many miles." Now that the old convent had been once attacked, it was decided to keep a strict watch, day and night, upon the roof and through the grounds. A detail of men was formed, instructions to keep a constant lookout given, and then Captain Guerez passed over his command temporarily to Lieutenant Porlando. The remainder of the day passed quietly enough, I occupying the time in repairing my clothing, which needed many a stitch. In this work the elder of Alano's sisters helped me, Señora Guerez keeping by her husband's side and having the younger sister to assist her. I found Inez Guerez a most companionable girl. Her stock of English was as limited as was my knowledge of Spanish, yet we managed to make each other understand, laughing roundly over the mistakes we made. When I mentioned Alano and told what great friends we were, tears stood in her dark eyes, and she said she trusted he would soon reach the old convent in safety. My father and she had also become great friends, and she said she hoped he would escape from his Spanish captors ere they had a chance to thrust him into a dungeon at Santiago. Having had no sleep the night before, I retired early, and was soon in the land of dreams, despite the many misgivings I had concerning my father's welfare. Fervently I prayed that he might escape from the Spaniards who held him, and that we might speedily be reunited. When I awoke in the morning the sky was darkly overcast and it was raining furiously. The downpour caused the river to rise, and the lower end of the old convent was partly under water. A fair breakfast was had, consisting of coffee, bread, and some fried plantains, which to me tasted particularly fine, and then I went to Captain Guerez, to find him much improved and in good spirits. "We would not go off anyway in such a storm as this," he said, as he sipped a bowl of coffee. "It will be fresh and cool after it is over, and by that time I think I will be able to ride once more, and I think my cousin will come to remain with my wife and girls." The downpour up to noon was terrific, then the sun came out strongly, and the hills and valleys were covered with a heavy mist as the water evaporated. By sundown it became cooler, and the roof of the old convent proved a most delightful lounging place. We were all out there, watching the shadows as the sun set behind the hills in the west, when one of the guards announced that two men were approaching from a trail leading through the woods to the northwest. A field-glass was at once procured, and Lieutenant Porlando took a long look at them. "A black and a boy," he announced in Spanish, and I leaped forward and begged for the use of the glass for a minute. My request was readily granted, and I waited for the two newcomers to reappear among the trees. "They are Alano and Jorge!" I exclaimed a minute later. "Alano!" cried my chum's sisters. "Are you certain?" "Yes, it is Alano, and he carries his arm in a sling." And down we rushed in a body and asked to be let out of the courtyard. Inez was the first to emerge into the open, and off she rushed at full speed, to find herself a minute later in Alano's arms, with Paula close behind. CHAPTER XXIII. ON THE TRAIL OF MY FATHER. "Mark!" ejaculated my Cuban chum, when, on releasing himself from his sisters' embraces, he espied me. "So you have reached here before me. I am very glad to see it." "You are wounded?" I queried, as we shook hands. Had it not been for the girls and Jorge we would have fairly hugged each other. "How did that happen?" "It's quite a story. Are my father and mother safe?" "Yes, although your father, too, is wounded." "Those soldiers at the coffee plantation, then, did not manage to catch you?" "No." "They caught me and Jorge, and we were their prisoners for five or six hours. We would not have gotten away, only Jorge bribed one of the servants at the plantation, another negro. He cut the cords with which we were bound, and we got out of the cellar into which we were put at night." "And that wound?" "I got that when they came after us, ten minutes later. They couldn't see us and fired blindly, and I got a bullet across the forearm. But it's a mere scratch," Alano added, as he saw Inez and Paula look serious. He wanted to know all about my adventures, but there was no time to tell of them just then, for the convent gates were soon reached and here Alano's mother met him and, after a warm embrace, led him to his father's side. It was a happy family gathering, and I thought it best to withdraw for the time being. I walked again to the roof; and an hour later Alano joined me there. His story was soon told. After escaping from the coffee plantation he and Jorge had become lost like myself in the forest. They, however, had not made their way to the mountain side, but had entered a valley between that mountain and the next, and, coming to a branch of the river, had floated down it until overtaken by the storm at night. The storm had driven them to shelter under some shelving rocks, and here a temporary camp was made and Jorge went out on a search for food. Little could be found, but in the morning the guide had brought down several birds with a stick and these they had cooked and eaten with keen relish. The way was then resumed, when, at noon, they had found themselves on the wrong road and many miles out of their way. [Illustration: "THE SPANIARDS WERE COMPLETELY DEMORALIZED."] Jorge was much chagrined at his mistake and wanted Alano to kick him for his thoughtlessness. The stream was left, and they took a cut through the woods, which at last brought them to the old convent, as described. When Alano had finished, I told him my story in all of its details, especially my adventures in the mountain stream and on the underground river. He listened in silent amazement. "It was a wonderful escape!" he cried, when I was through. "A wonderful escape! I would like some day to explore that cave." "It was nothing but a big hole in the ground, and I never want to see it again," I answered, with a shudder. "But now you are here, what do you expect to do?" "If my father will permit me, I'll join you and him in the search for your father," he answered. "But it may be that he will wish me to remain here with my mother and my sisters." "Yes, somebody ought to remain with them, Alano." "My father is expecting Señor Noenti, a relative of mine. If he comes he will look after my mother and sisters. He is a very brave and powerful man." Alano and I slept together that night, just as we had often done at Broxville Academy. It was a good deal to me to have my chum by me again. We had missed each other more than mere words can tell. We had just finished breakfast the next day, and Captain Guerez was trying to walk around a bit on his wounded leg, when several newcomers were announced. Among them was Señor Noenti, who was warmly received by the Guerez family. During the morning it was arranged that he should remain at the old convent during Captain Guerez' absence, and by hard pleading Alano obtained permission to join us in our hunt for my father. Jorge and three other trusty men were to go along also. Alano's father pronounced himself quite able to ride, and each of us was fitted out with a good horse, a brace of pistols, and a quantity of ammunition sufficient to last for several engagements. We also carried with us two days' rations. When they were gone we would have to depend upon what we found for our meals. But armed as we were, and in a country where everything grew in profusion, it was not likely that such a small body would lack for something to eat. Starvation was common in the regular Cuban army, but only when the troops remained in one mountainous region for a long while and ate up everything in sight. Captain Guerez had a well-formed idea concerning the highways and trails the party having my father a prisoner would take; and, after an affectionate farewell to his wife and daughters, he led our little party up past the bluff the Spaniards had occupied and along a path skirting the mountain which had caused me so much trouble. Our horses were fresh, and we made good time until sunset, when we reached a small village called Molino. Here there were a number of blacks and the poorer class of whites. All, however, made us welcome, and here it was decided to remain for the night. The principal man living in the place was a Spaniard named Curilos, a fellow who years before had been a sailor. He was a comical fellow in the extreme and a good singer, accompanying himself in singing on a home-made guitar, a rough-looking instrument, but one very sweet in tone. How a sailor had ever settled there was a mystery to me, but there he was and apparently more than content. Curilos' home was of long tree branches, fastened together with tough vines, which grow everywhere in profusion. The branches were twined and intertwined and lashed to four corner-posts. The roof of this abode was covered with dried palm leaves, and was quite water-proof. In one corner was a rude fireplace of stone, and the smoke curled up through a hole in a corner of the building. I slept in this structure on a hammock stretched from one corner-post to another. It was as good a bed as one would desire had it not been for one thing, as disgusting to me as it was annoying: the house was overrun with vermin--a not uncommon thing, even in the dwellings of the middle classes. It was hardly sunrise when Alano's father called us for breakfast, after which we leaped into the saddle once more and rode off at a stiff gait. The ride of the afternoon had left me a little sore, I not as yet being used to such traveling, but I made up my mind not to complain, as it would do no good and only worry Captain Guerez and my chum. Riding never bothered Alano, as he had been used to the high, stiff Spanish saddle from early boyhood. As we proceeded on our way we of course kept a strict lookout for enemies, and on more than one occasion Alano's father called a halt, while he rode ahead to make certain that the road was clear. "If we're not careful the Spaniards may surprise us and make us all prisoners," he said grimly. "Although I hardly think any troops are near us at present," he added a minute later. Having stopped for dinner in the middle of a dense woods, we rode out in the afternoon on a broad plateau overlooking numerous valleys. Far to the southward could be seen the buildings in Guantanamo. By the aid of the field-glass Captain Guerez pointed out a portion of his immense plantation. As this was the first sight I had had of Alano's home, I gazed at it with interest. While I was looking, I saw a small column of smoke curling upward from a broad stretch of canefields. I watched it for several seconds, and then called Alano's attention to it. "There should be no smoke there," he said gravely, and called his father, who had turned away for the moment to give Jorge some directions. "What is it--smoke?" cried Captain Guerez, snatching the glass. "Let me see if you are not mistaken." He gave a searching look and then a groan. "You are right, boys, the Spaniards have kept their word. They threatened to burn down my fields if I did not declare in their favor, and now they are doing it. In a few hours the whole of my property will be nothing more than a blackened waste!" CHAPTER XXIV. IN THE BELT OF THE FIREBRANDS. "Do you mean to say, father, that they will dare to burn down all of our sugar-cane fields?" demanded Alano. "Dare, Alano? They will dare do anything, now they have heard that I have thrown in my fortunes with the insurgents," replied Captain Guerez bitterly. "What of your house and barns?" I put in soberly. "Most likely they will be ransacked first and then the torch will be applied," answered Alano's father with increased bitterness. "Ah, well, such are the fortunes of war. _Cuba libre!_" he muttered firmly. Alano's parent was first tempted to ride in the direction of his plantation in the hope of saving something, but speedily gave up the idea. There was no direct course hither, and the roundabout trail which must be pursued would not bring him to Guantanamo until the next morning. "And by that time the Spaniards will have done their dastardly work and gone on," he remarked. Several times as we rode along the plateau, Captain Guerez stopped to take a look through the field-glass, but he said nothing more excepting in an undertone to his son. By sundown the plateau came to an end, and we plunged into a valley which was for the most part divided into immense sugar plantations, some of them half a mile or more in length. "This is something like that at home," remarked Alano to me, as we moved on side by side. "That is, like it was," he hastened to add. "The fields will grow again, won't they?" I asked. "Oh, yes; but my father's loss will be very great." "I suppose so. Did he have much sugar on hand?" "The storehouses were full. You see, shipments have been at a standstill for a year or more." "It will take a long while, after the war is over, to get back to prosperity, I am afraid, Alano?" "It will take years, and perhaps prosperity will never come. General Garcia is determined to fight to the bitter end, and so is General Gomez, and so long as both remain among the mountains and forests it will be impossible for the Spaniards to make them surrender. I heard father say we could lead the Spanish troops a dance from one spot to another for years, and in the meantime Spain will get no revenue from Cuba, while the expense of keeping the war up will foot up to millions of piasters--something that even Spain cannot stand." "I wish it was all over, and that we were all safe," I returned shortly. "I've seen all the war I want." "And yet you haven't seen any regular battle," laughed my Cuban chum. "I'm afraid you wouldn't make much of a fighter, Mark, if Uncle Sam got into a muss." "Oh, that would be different!" I burst out. "I would fight for our country every time." Alano laughed more loudly than ever. "That's just it--you would fight for the United States just as we are now willing to fight for our beloved Cuba." I had to smile, for I saw that he was right. Cuba was as much to him as our United States was to me, and let me add that I am a Yankee lad to the backbone, and always hope to be. Having passed the end of a large plantation, we came to several storehouses, which were wide-open and empty, and here we pitched our camp for the night. "How close are we to the spot where my father was taken?" I asked of Alano's father after supper. "We have passed that locality," was the answer, which surprised me not a little. "By to-morrow noon I hope to reach a village called Rodania, where I will be able probably to learn something definite concerning his whereabouts." This was certainly encouraging, and I went to bed with a lighter heart than I had had since leaving the old convent. Hope in a youthful breast is strong, and I could not but believe that so far all had gone well with my parent. Fortunately, the storehouse in which I slept with Alano and Captain Guerez was a clean affair, so we were not troubled as we had been at Molino with vermin. We turned in at nine o'clock, and ten minutes sufficed to render me forgetful of all of my surroundings. I awoke with a cough. I could not breathe very well, and sat up in the darkness to learn what was the matter. The wind had banged shut the storehouse door, and it was strangely hot within. "I'll open the door and let in some fresh air," I said to myself, and arose from the bunch of straw upon which I had made my bed. As I moved across the storehouse floor I heard several of the horses which were tethered outside let out snorts of alarm. Feeling something was surely wrong, I called to Alano and his father. "What's the trouble?" cried Captain Guerez and Alano in a breath. "I don't know, but the horses are alarmed," I answered. By this time all were aroused by a shout from Jorge, who had been left on guard. As we stepped into the open air, he came running up from a path leading into the immense sugar-cane field back of the storehouse. "_Fuego! fuego!_ [Fire! fire!]" he shouted at the top of his powerful lungs. "Where?" demanded Alano's father quickly. "In the fields! A band of Spanish guerrillas just came up and set fire all around." "That cannot be, Jorge. This is the plantation of Señor Corozan, a stanch supporter of Spain. They would not burn his fields." "Then they are rebels like ourselves." This last remark proved true, although we did not learn the fact until some time later. It seemed Señor Corozan had left the plantation immediately after refusing the demands of a Cuban officer for food for his soldiers, and in consequence the rebel had dispatched a detachment to burn up everything in sight. It was a wanton destruction of property, but it could not very well be avoided, through the peculiar conditions under which the war was being carried on. Just now, however, there was no time left to think of these matters. A stiff breeze was blowing, and looking over the sugar-cane fields we could see the fire leaping from place to place. Then, turning about, we made another discovery. The very storehouse in which we had been sleeping was on fire. The smoke from the smoldering straw was what had caused me to cough and wake up. "To horse, everyone!" shouted Captain Guerez. "We had best get out of here, for there is no telling how far this fire extends, or how the wind may shift around!" Everyone understood what he meant--that we were in danger of being caught in the midst of the conflagration; and everyone lost not an iota of time in loosening his animal and saddling him. In less than three minutes we were off, and riding down a narrow trail between the fields with all the speed at our animals' command. As we passed along, the sky above us grew brighter, and we could hear the crackling of the cane in the distance. Then I felt a live ember drop upon my neck, which raised a small blister before I could brush it off. "Jupiter! but this is getting hot!" I gasped, as I urged my horse on beside that of Alano. "I wonder if there is any danger of that fire catching us?" "I don't know, I'm sure," he panted. "The only thing we can do is to ride for the hills, where the fire won't have such a chance." On and on we went, now in a bunch and then again scattered into two or three groups. To gain the hills we had to cross a bit of a valley, and here our poor horses sunk into the mud half up to their knees. Captain Guerez had been riding in the rear, but now he went ahead, to shout a word of guidance to the men in advance. Alano dashed on with his father, expecting me to follow. But my horse had become temporarily stuck, and ere he could extricate himself I had to dismount. Once free again, I was on the point of leaping into the saddle as before, when a turn of the wind brought a shower of burning embers in a whirl over our very heads. I ducked and shook them off, letting go of my steed for that purpose. It was a foolish movement, for the embers also struck the animal, who instantly gave a snort and a bound and ran off. I made a clutch at his tail as he passed, but missed it, and a second later I found myself utterly alone, with the fire of the sugar-cane fields hemming me in on all sides! CHAPTER XXV. ESCAPING THE FLAMES. My situation was truly an appalling one. Here I was, with the fierce fire from the sugar-cane fields swirling about me, my horse and companions gone, left utterly alone, with the horrifying thought that each moment must be my last. As the horse disappeared in a cloud of eddying smoke, I attempted to rush after him, only to slip in the mire and roll over and over. When I scrambled up I was covered with mud from head to foot, and the live embers from the burning fields were coming down more thickly than ever. But life is sweet to all of us, and even in that supreme moment of peril I made a desperate effort to save myself. Seeing a pool of water and mud just ahead of me, I leaped for it and threw myself down. It was a bath far from sweet, yet at that time a most agreeable one. I allowed what there was of the water to cover my head and shoulders and saw to it that all of my clothing was thoroughly saturated. Then I arose again, and, pulling my coat collar up over my ears, leaped on in the direction taken by my companions. The air was like that of a furnace, and soon the smoke became so thick I could scarcely see the trail. The wind was blowing the fire directly toward me, and to have stood that onslaught for long would have been utterly impossible. But just as I felt that I must sink, and while I murmured a wild prayer for deliverance, the wind shifted and a cooling current of air reached me. This was wonderfully reviving, and, breathing deeply, I gathered courage and continued on my way. Almost quarter of a mile was covered, and I had gained the base of the hills, when the wind shifted again, and once more the fire rushed onward and it became so hot I could not breathe except with difficulty. "Mark! Mark! where are you?" It was a most welcome cry, coming from Captain Guerez. In an instant more Alano's father dashed up through the smoke. "Captain Guerez!" I gasped, and ran up to his side. "Save me!" "Where is your horse?" he asked, as he caught me up and assisted me to mount behind him. "He ran away." No more was said. Turning his animal about, Captain Guerez dug his spurs deep into the horse's flesh, and away we went up the hillside at a rate of speed which soon left the roaring and crackling sugar-cane fields far behind. In fifteen minutes we had joined the others of the party, on a plateau covered with stunted grass and well out of reach of the fire. Here it was found that my runaway horse had quietly joined his fellows. I was tempted to give him a whipping for leaving me in the lurch, but desisted upon second thought, as it would have done no good and I knew the animal had only done what I was trying to do--save my life. "That was a narrow escape for you, Mark!" cried Alano, as he came up with an anxious look on his face. "You ought to be more careful about your horse in the future." "You can be sure I will be, Alano," I answered; and then turned to Captain Guerez and thanked him for what he had done for me. It was hardly dawn; yet, as all had had a fair night's rest, it was determined to proceed on our way and take a somewhat longer rest during the hot noon hour. "This fire will necessitate a change in our course," said Captain Guerez to me. "Will that delay us much?" "Not over a few hours. We will reach Rodania by nightfall." The captain was right, for it was not yet six o'clock when, from the side of one mountain, we saw the buildings of Rodania perched upon the side of another. We traveled across the tiny valley separating the two, and just outside of the town Captain Guerez called a halt. "I think I had better send Jorge ahead and see if the coast is clear," he said. "The coming of the negro into town will not be noticed, and he can speedily learn if there are any Spaniards about." This was agreed upon, and, after receiving his instructions, the colored guide hurried away, to be gone less than half an hour. "Spanish soldiers dare yesterday," he announced. "All gone now--on the road to Cubineta." "Did they have any prisoners?" questioned Captain Guerez. "Yes, dree--two Cubans and an _Americano_." "My father!" I cried. "Oh, Captain Guerez, cannot we overtake them before they manage to get him to some fort or prison?" "We'll try our best, Mark," replied Alano's father. "Why can't we travel after them at once?" put in Alano, fairly taking the words out of my mouth. "We will," replied his father. "The long noontime rest has left our horses still fresh. Forward, all of you! We will take a short cut, and not visit Rodania at all." During the halt I had taken the opportunity to brush off my clothing, which was now thoroughly dry. I had taken a bath at noon, so now felt once more like myself, although several blisters on my neck and hands, received from the fire, hurt not a little. I told Jorge of the bums, and he ran into the woods for several species of moss, which he crushed between two rocks, putting the crushed pulp on the blisters. "Take burn out soon," he announced; and he was right. In less than half an hour after the application was made the smarting entirely ceased. We were now in the depths of a valley back of Rodania, and here the trail (they are called roads in Cuba, but they are only trails, and sometimes hardly that) was so choked up with vines and so soft that our progress was greatly impeded, and about eight o'clock we came to a halt in the darkness. "The mud beyond is all of two feet deep, and we can't get through it," declared one of the men, who had been sent in advance. "We'll have to go back." This was discouraging news, and I looked in perplexity at Alano's father, whose brow contracted. "I'll take a look myself," he said, and, dismounting so that his horse might not get stuck, advanced on foot. In my impatience I went with him. The way was very dark, and I suggested that a torch be lighted. "An excellent plan," said Alano's father, and immediately cut a cedar branch. By its blaze we were enabled to see quite well, and succeeded in finding another path around the muddy spot. To save our horses we walked them for half a mile. It was tough traveling, and the clouds of mosquitoes made the journey almost unendurable. I was glad when, at early dawn, we emerged from the valley on a bit of a rise, where the ground was firm and the growth somewhat limited. A broad highway now lay before us, the main road from Rodania to Cubineta. It was one of the best highways I had seen since leaving Santiago de Cuba, and this was explained by Captain Guerez, who said the road had been put into condition just previous to the breaking out of the war. As usual, one of the party was in advance, and this was a lucky thing, for about ten o'clock the soldier came tearing toward us on his horse and motioning us to take to the woods. Captain Guerez was on the lookout, and turned to us quickly. "Dismount!" he cried in Spanish, and we leaped to the ground, and led our animals into a thicket growing to the left of the highway. The vidette followed us, stating that a large body of Spanish cavalry was approaching. We forced our horses into the thicket for fully a hundred feet and tied them fast. Then, with cautious steps, we returned to the vicinity of the road and concealed ourselves behind convenient trees and bushes. By this time a thunder of hoofs could be heard, and soon the cavalry appeared, at least two hundred strong. They were the finest body of men I had seen in the island, and looked as if they had just come over from Spain, their uniforms and weapons were so clean and new. They were riding at a brisk pace, and hardly had we caught a good look at them than they were gone, leaving a cloud of dust behind them. Captain Guerez was the first to speak, when they were well out of hearing. "It's a good thing we did not run into them," he remarked grimly. "Our little detachment would have stood small chances with such a body of well-armed men." "They form a great contrast to the rebels," I could not help but murmur. "They do indeed, Mark. But why not? The rebels, especially in this district, were never soldiers. When the war broke out they were without uniforms or weapons; and what was and is worse, many of them knew nothing about the use of a firearm. You will find the men in the western provinces, where the whites predominate, both better trained and clothed--although, let me add, their hearts are no more sturdy or loyal than you will find here in the East." Thus talking, we went on and on, until Alano, who had gone ahead this time, came back with the information that Cubineta was in sight. "And the village seems to be under guard of the Spanish soldiery," he added, words which caused me, at least, considerable dismay. CHAPTER XXVI. A DISHEARTENING DISCOVERY. "Under Spanish guard!" I cried, and looked questioningly at Alano's father. "That's too bad," he said gravely. "However, there is no help for this unexpected turn of affairs, and we must make the best of it. Alano, my son, you are sure you are not mistaken?" "There are a number of Spanish soldiers on the highway, and with the field-glass I saw that more soldiers were scattered round about." "Then your report must be true. I'll ride ahead and take a view of the situation." I begged to go along, and Captain Guerez agreed. Alano came too, while the others withdrew to a thicket, to avoid being surprised by any of the Spaniards who might be out foraging. A turn in the highway brought us in full view of Cubineta. Of course we were not foolish enough to expose ourselves. Screened behind bushes and vines, we took a survey through the glass of the place, its people, and the soldiers. Cubineta was not a large village, but it was a pretty place and evidently thriving--or had been thriving before the war put a blight upon all Cuban industries. There was one long street of stores and dwellings, a church, a _casa_ or town-house, and at the farthest end what looked to be a hastily constructed fort, built of heavy logs and sods. "The Spaniards are evidently going to use the place as a center or depot for supplies," was Captain Guerez' comment. "Under the present circumstances I hardly know what is best to do." "Perhaps they have my father a prisoner in that fortress," I suggested. "It is not unlikely, Mark--if the men who held him have not yet gone further than Cubineta." "Can't we steal into town under cover of night?" I continued. "We might do that--if it would do any good." "I want to join my father at any hazard." "That might be very foolish, Mark. How can you assist him if you are yourself made a prisoner?" "Would they hold a boy like myself?" "You are not so young as you would like to make them imagine," laughed Alano's father shortly. "Besides, if left free, they would be afraid you would carry messages for your father. I think the best thing we can do just now is to let Jorge go into town, pretending he is half starved and willing to do anything for anybody who will give him food. By taking this course, no one will pay much attention to him, as there are many such worthless blacks floating about, and he can quietly find his way around the fort and learn what prisoners, if any, are being kept there." This was sensible advice, and, impatient as I was to catch sight of my parent, I agreed to wait. We rode back to where the others had made their camp, and Jorge was called up and duly instructed. The black grinned with pleasure, for he considered it a great honor to do spy work for such an influential planter as Captain Guerez. Possibly he had visions of a good situation on the plantation after the war was over; but, if so, he kept his thoughts on that point to himself. Jorge gone, the time hung heavily on the hands of all; but I believe I was the most impatient of the crowd, and with good reason. Alano noticed how uneasily I moved about, and soon joined me. "You must take things easy, Mark," he said. "Stewing won't do any good, and it will only make you sick, combined with this hot weather, which, I know, is about all you can stand." "If only I felt certain that my father was safe, Alano! Remember, he is all I have in the world. My mother has been dead for years, and I never had a brother or a sister." "I think it will all come out right in the end," he answered, doing his best to cheer me up. "They won't dare to--to----" He did not finish. "To shoot him? That's just what I fear they will do, Alano. From what I heard at Santiago de Cuba, the Spaniards are down on most Americans, for they know we sympathize with you and think Cuba ought to be free, or, at least ought to have a large hand in governing itself." When nightfall came most of the others lay down to sleep. But this was out of the question for me, tired though I was physically, and so I was left on guard, with instructions to call one of the men at midnight. Slowly the hours went by, with nothing to break the stillness of the night but the hum of countless insects and the frequent note of a night bird. We had not dared to build a campfire, and in consequence there was no getting where the smoke drifted and out of the way of the mosquitoes. At midnight I took a walk around to see if all was safe. The man I was to call slept so soundly I had not the heart to wake him up, so I continued on guard until one, when a noise down by the road attracted my attention. Pistol in hand I stalked forward, when I heard a low voice and recognized Jorge. The negro had been walking fast, and he was almost out of breath. "Well?" I inquired anxiously. "Is my father there?" "I think he is, señor," replied the guide. "I go to prison-fort--da have six Cubans dare an' one _Americano_." "My father!" "I talk to some men, an' da tell me prisoners come in last night--some from Rodania, udders from udder places. _Americano_ in a prison by himself, near the river. I swim up close to dat prison--maybe we make hole in wall an' git him out." "Could we do that, Jorge, without being discovered?" "Tink so, señor--work at night--now, maybe. Swim under river an' come up by fort, den dig with machetes--make hole under fort." "If only we could do that!" I cried; and then, struck with a sudden idea, I caught Jorge by the arm. "Jorge, if I go, will you come and show me the way and help me?" "Yes, señor." "Then let us go at once, without arousing the others. More than two might spoil the plan. Go back to the road and wait for me." The guide did as directed, and I turned back into camp. Here I awoke the man previously mentioned, and told him I was going off to meet Jorge. He but partly understood, but arose to do guard duty, and I hurried off. I felt that I was not doing just right in not notifying Captain Guerez and Alano, but I was impatient to meet my father and was afraid if I told them what Jorge had said they would want to delay matters. As events turned out it would probably have been much better had I been guided by their advice. A short but brisk walk brought the guide and myself in sight of the town. On the outskirts the campfires of the Spanish soldiers burned brightly. These we carefully avoided, and made a détour, coming up presently to the bank of the stream upon which the fort was located. The river was broad and shallow, and as it ran but sluggishly we might have forded across, but this would have placed us in plain view of the sentries, who marched up and down along the river bank and in front of the prison-house. Disdaining to undress, we dropped down into the stream and swam over, with only our faces out of water, and without a sound, to a spot behind the building opposite. We came up in a tiny hollow, screened by several small bushes, and crawled on our stomachs to the rear of the wing in which the guide said the American prisoner was incarcerated. I had a long and broad dagger which I had picked up the day previous, and Jorge had his machete, and with these we began to dig a tunnel leading under the wooden wall of the fort. Fortunately, the ground was not hard, and soon we broke through the very flooring of the prison. I was in the lead, and in great eagerness I poked up my head and gazed around me. "Hullo, who's there?" cried a startled voice, in English, and my heart sank completely, for the prisoner was not my father at all. CHAPTER XXVII. GILBERT BURNHAM. "Are you alone?" I asked, when I had recovered sufficiently to speak. "An American!" came the low cry. "Yes, I am alone. Who are you, and what do you want?" "I came to save you--that is, I thought my father was a prisoner here," I stammered. "Are you tied up?" "Worse, chained. But I think the chain can easily be broken. If you'll help me get away from here, I'll consider myself in your debt for life." "I'll do what I can for you. But keep quiet, for there are a number of guards about," I whispered. With an effort I squeezed through the hole that had been made, and felt my way to the prisoner's side, for the interior of the cell was dark. He had a chain around one wrist, and the chain was fastened by a large staple driven into a log of the wall of the fort. Jorge had come up behind me, and, learning of the staple, began to cut at the woodwork surrounding it with his machete. The lower end of the blade was fairly keen, and he made such rapid progress that in less than five minutes a sharp jerk cleared the staple from the log, and the prisoner was free. "Good for you," he whispered to the colored guide. "Now which is the way out of this hole?" "Follow me, and keep very quiet," I whispered, and motioned to Jorge to lead the way. Soon the guide had disappeared into the opening we had made. Going from the prison was worse than getting in, and the man we were trying to rescue declared the passage-way too small for him. We commenced to enlarge it, I with my dagger and he with his hands. We had just made it of sufficient size when we heard a cry from outside. Jorge had emerged into the open, only to be discovered by a sentry who chanced to be looking his way. There was a shot, and half a dozen soldiers came running up, at which the guide took to the river with a loud splash. "I'm afraid we are lost!" I cried, and stopped, half in and half out of the hole. Then the prison door was banged open, and the rays of a lantern flared into the cell. The American I had discovered promptly showed fight by leaping on the intruder. But this was madness, as the soldier was backed up by four others, all armed with pistols and guns. In the meantime another light flashed from outside the hole, and I felt myself caught, very much like a rat in a trap. "_De donde viene V.?_ [Where do you come from?]" demanded a cold, stern voice, and I felt myself grabbed by the hair. Realizing that resistance was useless, I gave myself up, and immediately found myself surrounded by a dozen Spanish soldiers. In the meantime Jorge had made good his escape. The soldiers marched me around to the entrance of the fort, where an officer began to question me in Spanish. He could speak no English, and as soon as he found my command of Spanish was very limited he sent off for an interpreter. Then I was taken inside the fort and consigned to one of the prison cells. My feelings can be better imagined than described. Bitterly I regretted having started on my midnight quest without notifying Captain Guerez. My hasty action had brought me to grief and placed me in a position from which escape seemed impossible. What my captors would do with me remained to be seen. That they would treat me in anything like a friendly fashion was out of the question to expect. It was likely that they would hold me as a prisoner of war. Presently the door of the cell was opened, and somebody else was thrown in bodily and with such force that he fell headlong. The door was banged shut and bolted, and the crowd which had been outside went away. The new arrival lay like a log where he had been thrown, and for a few minutes I fancied he must be dead from the way he had been treated. I bent over him, and in the dim light of the early dawn made out that it was the American I had sought to rescue. I placed my hand over his heart and discovered that he still breathed, although but faintly. There was nothing at hand with which I could do anything for him. My own pockets had been turned inside out by my captors, and even my handkerchief, with which I might have bound up an ugly wound on his brow, was gone. I opened his coat and vest and his shirt around the neck, and gave him as much air as I could. "Oh!" he groaned, as he finally came to his senses. "Oh! Don't kick me any more! I give in!" "You're all right--they have put you in a cell with me," I hastened to reassure him, and then he sat up. "Who--what----" he paused. "In a cell, eh? And they caught you, too?" "Yes." "That's too bad." He drew a deep breath. "Did you fight with them?" "No. I saw it would be no use." "I was a fool to do it. I'm too hot-blooded for this sort of work. I ought to have stayed in Boston reporting local affairs." "Are you a reporter?" "Hush! Yes; but I don't want it to become known if I can help it. They think I am nothing more than an inquisitive American." "Then why did they lock you up?" "That was more of my hot-headedness. I was sketching a picture of the town and this fort or prison, when a Spanish officer came up and tried to snatch the drawing from my hand. Instead of demanding an explanation I promptly knocked him down. Then a couple of guards ran for me, and I dusted. But it was no use. They sent a company of soldiers after me, and here I am." "And here we are both likely to remain for some time to come," I added bitterly. "Looks that way, that's a fact. By the way, you said something about your father, didn't you?" "Yes. My father is a prisoner of the Spaniards, and I felt almost certain he was in this fort." "What's your father's name?" "Richard Carter. My name is Mark." "And my name is Gilbert Burnham. I've heard of your father, come to think of it. He joined the Cuban army along with a plantation owner named Guerez and another American named Hawley." "You are right. Did you hear anything at all of him here in Cubineta or the vicinity?" "No. But then, you see, that is not strange, as I talk very little Spanish. I certainly haven't seen any Americans here but you and myself." Gilbert Burnham asked me to tell him my story; and, feeling that I could lose nothing by so doing, I favored him with a recital of my efforts to get to my father. He was quite interested. "By Jove, young man, if I get clear from here I'll do what I can to help you," he said. Then he told me his own history--how he had grown tired of newspaper reporting in Boston and begged the head editor of the paper he represented to send him on an "assignment" to Cuba. He had been in the island four months, and had had a varied list of adventures, although none of a particularly thrilling or perilous nature. "But now it looks as though I was in for it," he concluded moodily. "That officer I knocked down will make matters as hard as he can for me." "And I'm afraid trying to break away from prison won't help matters," I said. "You are right there. But, heigho! we must make the best of it." Yet making the best of it was small satisfaction to me. Tired out in body and mind, I sank down in a corner of the gloomy and damp cell and gave myself up to my bitter reflections. CHAPTER XXVIII. A BATTLE ON LAND AND WATER. It was about eight o'clock in the morning that the door of the prison cell was opened and Gilbert Burnham and I were ordered to march out into a larger apartment. The order was given by a Spanish officer who spoke fairly good English, and the officer was backed up by a guard of eight men, all well armed. "They are going to run no chances on us now," remarked the newspaper correspondent, as he arose from the floor, upon which he had been resting. "We had better be as civil as possible," I answered. "If we anger them they have it in their power to make us mighty uncomfortable." "I'll keep as civil as my hot-headedness will permit," he grumbled. We were led from one end of the fort to the other, where there was a narrow room, provided with a small, square table and half a dozen benches. At the table sat several officers I had seen before. One was a particularly ugly-looking fellow, and Burnham nudged me and said this chap was the fellow he had knocked down. "And he's got it in for me," he added. I was marched to the front of the table, and the officer who could speak English forced me to clasp my hands behind me. This done, one of the officers at the table asked a number of questions in Spanish. "_No habla V. castellano?_ [Do you not speak Spanish?]" he asked me. "No, señor," I replied. He glared at me suspiciously for a moment, then spoke to the other officer. "Who you are?" demanded the latter. "I am Mark Carter, an American boy. I came to Cuba to join my father, who was stopping at a plantation near Guantanamo." This was repeated in Spanish. At the mention of my name several of those present exchanged glances. "You son of Richard Carter?" was the next question. "Yes, señor. I understand he is a prisoner. Is it true?" My question remained unanswered, and it was plain that my captors intended to give me no information. "Why you break in the fort? Did this man pay you to do that?" And the Spanish officer pointed to Gilbert Burnham. "I never saw or heard of this man before, señor. I broke in because I thought my father was a prisoner there. I heard an American was there, and I thought it must be he." "Aha, I see! Well, your father is not here, as you have found out." "Where is he?" This question also remained unanswered. The officers began to consult among themselves, and then I was ordered back to the cell. I tried to protest, and pleaded for liberty, for a chance to find my parent, but it was all in vain. I was hustled off without ceremony and made as close a prisoner as before. It was nearly noon before Gilbert Burnham joined me. In the meantime I had had nothing to eat or drink, and was beginning to wonder if my enemies meant to let me die of hunger and thirst. The face of the newspaper correspondent was much downcast. "I'm to catch it now," he said. "To-morrow morning they are going to start to transport me to some regular fortress, and there I suppose I'll be permitted to languish until this bloody war is over. I wish I had made a dash for liberty when I was out in that courtroom." "They would have shot you dead. They were too well armed for anything of the sort." "Maybe. But this is tough. Is there a pitcher of water anywhere?" "Not a drop." At this he stormed more than ever, and finally shouted to the guard to bring some _agua_. But no one paid any attention to his cries, further than to order him to be silent, under penalty of being gagged, and then he subsided. Slowly the morning wore away. The sun was shining brightly outside, and the cell, with only one narrow window, high up to the ceiling, was like a bake-oven. Once I climbed up to the window sill and looked out, only to have the muzzle of a gun thrust into my face, while a guard outside ordered me to drop. I dropped, and made no further attempt to get a whiff of fresh air. I wondered if Jorge had escaped in safety and if Captain Guerez would do anything to save me. I felt certain he would be very angry over the way I had acted, and, looking back, I felt that I richly deserved to be censured. It was high noon, and I and my companion were walking the floor, impatient for food and drink, when the door opened and a guard came in with a platter and an earthenware pitcher. He set both on the floor and withdrew without a word. "Well, here's something, anyway," remarked Gilbert Burnham. "Bah! a stew of onions and garlic, not fit for a dog to eat. Let me have some of the water." Neither of us could do more than taste the mess which had been served; and as for the water, it looked as if it had been scooped from the river, and was both warm and muddy. I had just finished taking a gingerly drink, when a shot from outside startled both of us. Several more shots followed, and then came a blast on a trumpet from somewhere in the distance. "Hullo! that means a fight!" ejaculated Gilbert Burnham, his face brightening. "I hope it's a body of rebels to the rescue." "So do I, and I further hope they release us," I replied. At the first shot an alarm had been sounded in and about the fort. We could hear the soldiers hurrying in several directions and a number of orders issued in Spanish. The firing now continued to increase, and presently we heard a crash of splintered woodwork. "It's getting interesting, eh, Carter?" said Gilbert Burnham. "If only they don't grow too enthusiastic and fire in here!" Scarcely had he spoken than we heard a little noise up at the window. A bullet had entered and buried itself in the woodwork opposite. "Better lay down," I urged, and set the example, which the newspaper man was not long in following. The firing and shouting kept on steadily, and we heard the occasional splashing of water, telling that the encounter was taking place on the river as well as on land. The battle had been going on with more or less violence for half an hour, when there came a wild rush through the fort, and some shooting just outside of our cell. Then the door went down with a crash, and we found ourselves confronted by a score or more of dusky rebels, all of whom wore the flag of Cuba pinned to their hats and coats. "_Americano!_" shouted one of them, and allowed us to come outside. Then, without waiting to question us, the crowd dashed to the entrance of another cell and succeeded in liberating several of their own countrymen. But now the soldiers of the fort rallied, and the intruders were driven back. Feeling it was our one chance to escape, we went with the insurgents, and soon found ourselves on the outskirts of Cubineta, in a spot backed up by a forest of palms and oaks. As we ran along Gilbert Burnham paused and pointed to the dead body of a Spanish soldier. "He won't need his weapons any more, poor fellow," he said, and stooping down secured two pistols, one of which he gave to me. There was also a belt of cartridges, and this was speedily divided between us. "I think the road to the camp I left is behind us," I remarked, as I took a view of the situation, in the meantime screening myself from our enemies by diving behind a clump of trees. "I think I'll go in that direction. Do you want to come along?" My companion was willing to go anywhere, so long as we kept clear of the Spanish forces, and off we went on an easy run down the highway, keeping our pistols in our hands and our eyes to the right and the left, as well as ahead. Quarter of an hour of this sort of traveling brought us to the spot where I had left Alano and the others. The temporary camp was deserted. CHAPTER XXIX. LOOKING FOR MY CUBAN CHUM. "Gone, eh?" remarked Gilbert Burnham, as he saw the disappointed look upon my face. "Well, you could hardly expect anything different, with the fighting going on. It's more than likely they took part in the attack." "I presume so," I answered. "But where can they be now? The firing has about ceased." "The rebels have withdrawn from the town, that's certain. Let us try to find the main body of the insurgents, and there we'll probably learn of the whereabouts of your friends." I considered this good advice, and, leaving the vicinity of what had been the former camp, we struck out on a trail which took us in a semi-circle around Cubineta. It was one of the hottest days I had yet experienced since landing on the island, and we had not progressed a half-mile before I was fairly panting for breath. As for Gilbert Burnham, he declared that he must halt or collapse. "Talk about balmy groves and summer skies," he growled. "I would rather be at the North Pole any time. Why, I'll bet a dollar you could bake bread on that bit of ground out there!" and he pointed to a stretch of dark soil, dried as hard as stone by the fierce rays of the sun. "The average Cuban never thinks of traveling in the sun between eleven and three o'clock, and I don't blame him," I rejoined. "Let us climb a tree and take it easy." We mounted an oak, I making certain first that there was no snake on it, and took seats near the very top. By parting the branches we could get a fair view of Cubineta, and we saw that the attack was at an end. The rebels had retreated out of sight, but not before setting fire to the fort, which was burning fiercely, with nothing being done to save it from destruction. "To me it looks as if the rebels were bunched in the woods to the north," I said, after a long and careful survey. "I wish we had a field-glass." "I'm glad we took the pistols, Carter. They may come in very handy before we reach safe quarters again." "I'm sure I don't want to shoot anyone, Burnham," I answered. "But you believe in defending yourself?" "Yes. But what do you propose to do, now you have escaped?" "Get back to the coast and take the first vessel I can find for the United States." "Then you've had sufficient of reporting down here?" "Yes, indeed! If any other young man wants to come down here and take my place, he is welcome to do so." And Gilbert Burnham spoke with an emphasis that proved he meant every word he uttered. As soon as we were cooled off and rested, we resumed our way, through a heavy undergrowth which, on account of the entangling vines, often looked as if it would utterly stay our progress. But both of us were persevering, and by four o'clock had reached the section of country I had fancied the rebels were occupying. My surmise was correct. Hardly had we proceeded a dozen yards along a side road than three Cubans leaped from behind some brush and commanded us to halt. We did so and explained that we were Americans, at the same time pointing to the burning fort and then crossing our wrists as though tied. The rebels understood by this that we had been prisoners, and as we did not attempt to draw our pistols, they shouldered their long guns and conducted us to the officer in command. "Look for Captain Guerez?" said the officer, whose name I have forgotten. "He ride off dat way!" and he pointed with his hand to the westward. "He look for you, I tink." This was comforting news, and I asked if Alano's father had taken part in the attack on Cubineta, to which I received the reply that both the captain and all under him had taken part and that one of the insurgents had been killed. "Was it his boy Alano?" "No, man named Ciruso." I waited to hear no more, but, thanking the officer for his trouble, hurried off down a trail leading to the westward, with Burnham at my side. We were descending a short hill, covered with a stunted growth of brush, which tripped us up more than once, when my companion suddenly uttered a howl and tumbled over me in his effort to retreat. "What is it?" I asked. "Spiders, or crabs, as big as your foot," he cried. "Look! look!" He pointed to several holes in the sand, beside a small brook. At the entrance to each hole sat an enormous land crab, gray in color, with round, staring eyes, well calculated to give anyone a good scare. "They are only crabs, and won't hurt you, unless you try to catch hold of them," I laughed. "Alano told me of them, and I've met them before." "More of the beauties of this delightful country," said Burnham sarcastically. I advanced and stamped my foot, and instantly each crab scampered for his hole, in the clumsy fashion all crabs have. I fancied some of them hissed at us, but I might have been mistaken. The brook crossed, we ascended the next hill and entered a plantain grove where the fruit hung in profusion on all sides. We found some that was almost ripe, and made a refreshing meal. "Hullo, Mark!" The welcome voice rang out from a grove of oaks on the other side of the plantains. I started, then rushed ahead, to find myself, a minute later, in Alano's arms, with Captain Guerez looking on, highly pleased. "We thought you were killed!" ejaculated my Cuban chum, when our greeting was over. "Where on earth have you been?" "Haven't you seen Jorge?" "No," put in Alano's father. "It's a long story. Let me introduce another American," and I presented Gilbert Burnham. Sitting down in as cool a spot as we could find, each related all he had to tell. My story is already known. "When you did not show up in camp I was much worried," said the captain, "and I sent men out at once to hunt up both you and Jorge. During this search one of the men, Circuso, met some of the Spanish troops, and fought desperately to escape them, but was shot and killed." "Poor chap!" I could not help but murmur. "Did he leave a family?" "No; he was a bachelor, without kith or kin." "I think he might have escaped," put in Alano, "but he was so fierce against the soldiers from Spain. He said they had no right to come over here and fight us, and he was in for killing every one of them." "While the hunt for you and Jorge was going on," continued Alano's father, "the rebel leader, Captain Conovas, arrived and said he had instructions to attack Cubineta and make an attempt to release the prisoners at the fort. I decided to join him in the attack, at the same time thinking you might be a prisoner with your father. "We operated from the south and from across the river, and soon took possession of the fort, only to be repulsed with a heavy loss. Then our party withdrew to this quarter, and here we are." "And what of my father?" I asked anxiously. "He was not at the fort, nor have I been able to hear anything of him." "The Cuban forces captured several prisoners, and they are being held in a valley just below here. I was on the point of journeying hither to interview them on that point when Alano discovered you coming through the plantain grove," answered Captain Guerez. "Then let us go and question them now," I cried. The captain was willing, and off we hurried on horseback, Burnham and myself being provided with steeds which had belonged to the Spanish prisoners. Riding was much more comfortable than walking, and the road being fairly level the distance to the valley mentioned was soon covered. Here it was found that four of the Spaniards had died of their wounds, but there were six others, and these Captain Guerez proceeded to examine carefully, taking each aside for that purpose. "Your father is _en route_ for Santiago," he said, when the examination was over. "When he arrives there he is to be tried by court-martial for plotting against the life of a certain Spanish leader, General Gonza. If we wish to save him we must start after him without an instant's delay." CHAPTER XXX. ONCE MORE AMONG THE HILLS. Fortunately the road leading to the northern shore of Santiago Bay was well known to Captain Guerez, who at one time had been a commissioner of highways in that district. "I do not know how we will fare on this trip," he remarked, as we rode off only four strong--the captain, Alano, Burnham, and myself. "At one spot we will have to pass the railroad, and I understand that is now under strict Spanish surveillance." "We'll have to take matters as they come," I returned. "We must save my father at any cost--at least, I shall attempt to do so." "I am with you, Mark," said the captain earnestly. "Next to my family, there is no one to whom I am more attached." "And I go in for helping any American," put in Burnham. Alano simply smiled at me. But that smile was enough. I felt that my Cuban chum could be depended upon to stick to me through thick and thin. Nightfall found us in the midst of a long range of hills, covered with a heavy growth of oaks, cedars, and mahogany. The vines which I mentioned before were here as thick as ever, and in the darkness Gilbert Burnham suddenly gave a yell and slid from the back of his horse to the ground. "What's the matter?" we cried in chorus. "Matter!" he growled. "Nothing, only a vine caught me under the chin, and I thought I was about to be hung." We laughed at this, but my humor was soon short, as another vine slipped over my forehead, taking my Panama hat with it. After this we were more careful, fearful that some of us might be seriously injured, and a little later we went into camp in the midst of a tiny clearing. We were just finishing our supper when a most doleful howl arose on the air, coming from the rear and to the right of us. I leaped up and drew my pistol, expecting to be attacked by some wild animal. "Here's excitement!" ejaculated the newspaper correspondent. "What can it be--a bear?" He had hardly finished when a perfect chorus of howls arose, coming closer. I gazed in alarm at Captain Guerez and Alano. My chum laughed outright. "Don't get scared, Mark; they are only wild dogs." "Wild dogs!" put in Burnham. "Well that is the worst yet! And they are not dangerous?" "If you met a large number of them alone they might be," replied Captain Guerez. "But they won't think of attacking such a party as ours. They'll hang around until we leave and then search the camp for stray food." In spite of this explanation, however, Burnham insisted that a guard be kept during the night, and we each took two hours at the task. Before the sun had struck us from over the treetops, we had breakfast and were off. Sure enough, the wild dogs rushed in the moment we had left the opening. They were a lean and ugly-looking set of curs. "It's a terrible thing when these wild dogs and a bloodhound on the trail meet," observed Captain Guerez. "Of course one wild dog cannot do much, but the whole pack will fall on the bloodhound, and in the end the larger dog will be killed and literally torn to shreds." A storm was approaching, but this did not discourage us, although Burnham growled as usual. In fact, we soon found that he was a chronic fault-finder, but then he seldom meant half that he said, and, taken all in all, he was good company. "If the storm grows heavy it will give us a good chance to cross the railroad tracks," remarked the captain. "The sentries will relax their vigilance and more than likely seek shelter under the trees." "Won't we strike some settlement before that?" I asked. "Oh, yes; we are on the outskirts of Los Hanios now." Five minutes later we rode into a small village occupied principally by half a hundred cattlemen, for we were now coming to the meadows and valleys in which immense herds of cows and sheep are pastured. The people of Los Hanios took but little interest in the revolution, and as a consequence had been but little molested either by the Spaniards or Cubans, although a portion of their cattle had been confiscated. From one of the head cattlemen Captain Guerez learned that a body of Spaniards had passed through the village the afternoon before bound for Santiago. They had several prisoners, who were tied hands and feet, and fast to the mules which carried them. At least one of the prisoners had been _un Americano_. At Los Hanios we procured dinner, a splendid meal--the best I had eaten since leaving the steamer, for it consisted of prime roast beef done to a turn, potatoes and beans and coffee. Burnham attended to the cooking, saying he had cooked many a meal for himself during his Bohemian life at the "Hub," and consequently all the dishes were turned out in true American style, garlic and such stuff being for once tabooed. Yet I hurried matters, wishing to catch up with my father as soon as possible. I wondered if he knew I was after him, and how he was faring. I felt certain that to be bound to the back of a mule over these rough trails could be anything but a pleasant sensation. While we were still in sight of Los Hanios it began to rain, and we had not made over a mile when the downpour became very heavy. Burnham wished to take shelter under some trees, but I would not hear of it, and Alano and his father backed me up in my idea. "We can rest a-plenty when Mr. Carter is once more safe," said the captain, and that ended the discussion. On and on we went, until, looking ahead, we espied a turn in the road. Beyond this was a bank six or eight feet in height, and this was where the railroad tracks were located. "We had best dismount and go ahead on foot," said the captain. "A sentry could easily see our animals if he had his eyes about him." "If he wasn't asleep," put in Burnham. "I fancy these Spaniards and Cubans do a lot of sleeping whenever they get the chance." "Not in war-times," said Alano, who did not fancy this slur upon his countrymen. "Of course we are not so nervous and impatient as some of the Americans," he added pointedly, and Burnham took the hint and said no more on the subject. A fierce rattle of thunder stopped all talking soon after. The lightning became almost incessant, and glared and flared along the railroad tracks as far as eye could see. We came together close to a clump of berry bushes. "Wait a moment," whispered Captain Guerez. "I think I saw a sentry not over fifty feet away!" At this announcement all of us crouched down, and each looked to his weapons, feeling that a crisis might be at hand. Alano's father moved like a shadow up to the railroad bank. "I was right," he announced, after a particularly bright flash of lightning; "I saw his gun-barrel plainly." "Can we pass him?" asked Alano. "We can try, but----" "If he sees us why can't we make him a prisoner?" I broke in. "If we did that, we would have a chance to bring our horses up the bank and over the tracks." "I was thinking as much," said the captain. "The horses must be gotten over; that is necessary." He deliberated for a minute, and then motioned us forward, warning us at the same time to keep perfectly silent. On we went, to where something of a trail led up over the railroad embankment. There were a few bushes growing in the vicinity, and we skulked beside these, almost crawling along the ground. Several minutes passed, and the top of the embankment was reached and we stood on the glistening tracks. Down we plunged on the opposite side, and not over a dozen paces from where the Spanish sentry was standing. "_Halte!_" came the unexpected cry, and the man rushed forward, pointing his gun as he ran. But for once fate was in our favor. A trailing vine tripped him up and he went headlong. Before the Spanish soldier could collect his senses, or make a movement to rise, Captain Guerez and myself were on him. The captain sat down astride of the fellow's back, while I secured his gun and clapped my hand over his mouth, to keep him from calling for assistance. A second later Alano and the newspaper man came up, and the Spaniard was our prisoner. "Now bring the horses over, as quickly as possible!" said the captain to his son and Burnham. "Mark and I will guard this fellow." At once Alano and Burnham departed. The prisoner struggled wildly to escape, but we held him fast, and presently Captain Guerez pulled out his sword and pointed it at the fellow's throat. "Not a sound, on your life!" he commanded in Spanish, and the prisoner became mute instantly. The sharpness of the lightning and the deafening thunder had frightened our animals a good deal, and Alano and the newspaper man had all they could do to bring them up the embankment, which in one spot was quite steep. Just as the railroad tracks were reached one of the horses broke away, and with a loud snort ran down the road, his hoofs clattering loudly on the ties and the iron rails. Alano endeavored to catch him, with the result that another broke loose and went up the road in the same fashion. "_Halte!_" came from half a dozen different directions, and as if by magic as many Spanish sentries showed themselves along the embankment. A flash of lightning revealed Alano and Burnham, and crack! crack! crack! went three carbines almost simultaneously. The alarm was taken up on several sides, and soon we found the best part of a company of Spanish soldiery swooping down upon us. CHAPTER XXXI. THE BATTLE AT THE RAILROAD EMBANKMENT. "We are lost!" cried my Cuban chum, as he came stumbling down to where his father and I stood, with our prisoner between us. "We're in for it, that's a fact!" ejaculated Gilbert Burnham, as he came after Alano, bringing the remaining two horses. "Come on, can't we ride two on a horse and escape them?" Captain Guerez shook his head. There was no time left to answer, for some of the soldiers were already less than a score of yards away. The captain waved his hand and ran off, followed by all of us, and leaving our late prisoner standing with mouth wide open in amazement. To try to go back whence we had come, and thus expose ourselves on the top of the railroad embankment, would have been foolhardy. Instead, the captain led the way directly into a grove of sapodilla trees some distance up the track. Our Spanish pursuers called upon us to halt, not once, but many times; and when we did not heed their repeated commands, they opened fire in a manner which made us feel far from comfortable, for a bullet grazed the captain's hand, and another whizzed so closely to my ear that I nearly fell from ducking. There may be those who can stand up coolly under fire; but I must confess I am not one of them, and I am willing to give a flying bullet all the room it wishes in which to spend itself. Hardly had we reached the grove of sapodillas than Captain Guerez swung around and began to use his own pistol in a most effective way, wounding two of the soldiers in advance of the main body of the Spaniards. Seeing this, the rest of us took courage and also opened fire, although I must confess I aimed rather low, having no desire to kill anyone. The cracks from our four pistols brought consternation to our pursuers, and they halted and fell back a dozen paces. "Come on," whispered Captain Guerez. "Our only hope is to lose ourselves in the woods. The enemy outnumbers us five to one." Away he went again, with all of us close upon his heels. Another volley from the Spaniards rang out, but did no damage, as the trees and brush now hid us from view. We had passed along a distance of a hundred feet when we heard a crashing in the brush coming from a direction opposite to that being taken by ourselves. Fearing another company of Spanish infantry was coming up, Captain Guerez called us to his side. "Here is a narrow ravine, leading under the railroad tracks," he said hurriedly. "Let us go down into that and work our way to the other side of the embankment." No opposition was made, and into the ravine we fairly tumbled, just as the soldiers came up once more. Bushes and stones hid us from view, and we went on only when the thunder rolled, that no sounds of our progress might reach our enemies' ears. Ten minutes later found us close to the railroad embankment. But here we came to a halt in dismay. The ravine had been filled up by the recent rains, so that crawling under the tracks was out of the question. "Now what is to be done?" asked Alano in a low voice. "We can't stay here, that's certain." "Some of the soldiers are coming up the ravine after us!" exclaimed Burnham a moment later. "Hark!" We listened, and found that he was right. At least half a dozen of the Spaniards were advancing in a cautious manner, their guns ready for immediate use. "Let us climb this tree," said Captain Guerez, pointing to a tall monarch of the forest, whose spreading branches reached nearly to the opposite side of the embankment. "Be quick, all of you!" He leaped for the tree, and Burnham followed. I gave Alano a boost up, and he gave me a hand; and inside of forty seconds all of us were safe for the time being. As we rested on the upper branches of the tree we heard the far-away whistle of a locomotive. "A train is coming!" said Alano. "If we could only board it!" I put in eagerly. "It would carry us part of the way to Guantanamo, wouldn't it?" "It would--going in that direction," said Captain Guerez, with a wave of his hand. "But the train may be filled with Spanish soldiers, and what then?" The locomotive kept coming closer, and presently we heard the rattle of the cars as they bumped over the rails, which were far from being well ballasted. The captain was peering out from behind the tree branches, and he gave a deep breath as a flash of lightning lit up the scene. "It is a freight train!" he exclaimed softly. "Come down to the branch below, all of you!" We understood him, and one after another we dropped to the branch mentioned. It was directly over the track upon which the freight was pounding along, and we calculated that the distance to the top of the tallest cars would not be over six or eight feet. "We can't jump with that train running at twenty or thirty miles an hour," I said, with a shudder. "We'll slip and be ground to death under the car wheels." "Mark is right--a jump is out of the question," added Gilbert Burnham. "I'd rather risk staying here." "The train may have supplies for the soldiers about here and stop," whispered Captain Guerez. "Watch your chances." On and on came the train, and in a few seconds more we realized that those in charge had no intention of stopping in that vicinity. Yet as the headlight came closer we lowered ourselves in readiness to make a leap. Suddenly there was a shrill whistle, and down went some of the brakes on the long train. I glanced in the opposite direction from whence the freight had come and saw on the tracks one of our runaway horses, which stood staring in alarm at the glaring headlight. Evidently the engineer had been startled by the sudden appearance of the animal, and, not realizing exactly what it was, had, on the impulse of the moment, reversed the locomotive's lever and whistled for brakes. The train could not be stopped in time to save the beast, which was struck and sent rolling over and over down the embankment. Then the train went on still further, the locomotive finally coming to a halt about fifty yards beyond the tree upon which all of us were perched. As it slowed up the top of one of the tall freight cars rolled directly beneath us. Giving the word to follow, Captain Guerez let himself drop on the "running board," as it is termed by train hands--that is, the board running along the center of the top of a freight car from end to end. All of us came after him, the quartette landing in a row less than two yards apart. As soon as each had struck in safety he lay down flat, that those below the embankment, as well as those on the train, might not have such an easy chance to discover us. Scarcely had the train halted than some of the Spanish soldiers came running up to ascertain why it had stopped. But their shouting evidently frightened the train hands, who possibly thought a band of rebels was at hand and that the horse on the track had been a ruse to stop them. The engineer whistled to release brakes, and put on a full head of steam, and on went the train, while the Spaniards yelled in dismay and flourished their weapons. "By Jove! that was a move worth making!" remarked Gilbert Burnham, after the long train had covered at least an eighth of a mile. "We are clear of those chaps now." "Where will this train take us?" asked Alano of his father. "The next village is Comaro, but I do not know if the train will stop," was the reply. "Two miles further on is Los Harmona, but we must not go there, for I understand there is a strong Spanish garrison stationed in the village. Let us get down between the cars and watch our chance to spring off. If we remain here some of the brakemen may come along and give the alarm." The lightning and thunder were decreasing in violence, and the rain had settled into a thin but steady downpour. The captain was nearest to the front end of the freight car, and led the way down the narrow ladder to the platform below. Once on this, and on the platform of the car ahead, we divided into pairs on either side and awaited a favorable opportunity to leave the train. Comaro was reached and passed in the darkness, and the long freight began to pull out for Los Harmona at a steady rate of twenty-five miles or more an hour. No chance had been given us to jump off without great danger, and now it began to look as if we would be carried right into the fortified town, or further. "Some distance below here is, unless I am greatly mistaken, a wide patch of meadow," said Captain Guerez. "I do not believe a leap into the water and mud would hurt any of us very much, and, under the circumstances, I am in favor of taking the risk, in preference to being carried into Los Harmona." "If you go I will follow," I said, and Alano said the same. "Well, I don't intend to be left alone," smiled Burnham grimly. "But what will we do after we strike the meadow?" "The meadow is not very broad," answered the captain, "and beyond is a highway leading almost directly into Guantanamo. We will take to this highway and trust to luck to get on as originally intended. Of course the loss of our horses is a heavy one, but this cannot be helped. If we---- Ha!" Captain Guerez stopped short, and not without good reason. From the interior of the freight car had come the unmistakable sounds of human voices. We heard first two men talking, then a dozen or more. The conversation was in Spanish, and I did not understand it. But Alano and his father did, and my Cuban chum turned to Burnham and me in high excitement. "What do you think!" he whispered. "This car is filled with Spanish soldiers bound for Guantanamo! They heard us talking, and they are going to investigate and find out where we are and who we are!" CHAPTER XXXII. A LEAP IN THE DARK. My readers can readily believe that all of us were much alarmed at the prospect ahead. We had not dreamed that the freight car contained soldiers, although all of us had heard that the Spanish Government was transporting troops by this means wherever the railroads ran. Alano had scarcely explained the situation, when Captain Guerez motioned us to withdraw from the side edges of the platforms, so that the soldiers looking out of the broad side doors of the car could not catch sight of us. "We must jump as soon as the meadow appears," whispered the captain. "Be prepared, all of you." He had scarcely finished when we heard a clatter of feet, and knew that one or more of the Spaniards had crawled from a side door to the top of the car. Then followed cautious footsteps in the direction of the rear platform. Finding no one there, the Spanish soldiers came forward. "Ha!" cried one, as he espied Captain Guerez. "Who are you?" "Friends," was the reply, of course in Spanish. "Friends? And why ride out here, then?" "We have no money, _capitan_. We are dirt-poor." "And where do you intend to go?" "Los Harmona--if the train will ever reach there." "What will you do there?" "We may join the Spanish soldiery, _capitan_--if you will take us." "Ha!" The Spanish officer tugged at his heavy mustache. He was only a sergeant, but it pleased him to be called captain. "Why did you not come into the car instead of sneaking around outside? If you want to become soldiers we will take you along fast enough. But you must not play us false. Come up here." "I am afraid--I may fall off," answered Alano's father, in a trembling voice. All the while the conversation had been carried on he had been peering sharply ahead for the meadow and the water to appear. We now shot out of the woods, and on either side could be seen long stretches of swamp. He turned to us and spoke in English. "All ready to jump?" "Yes," we answered in concert. "Then jump--all together!" And away we went, leaving the rude steps of the freight cars with an impetus that took each several yards from the tracks. I made a straight leap and landed on my feet, but as quickly rolled over on my shoulder in the wet grass. Burnham came close to me, but took a header, which filled his nose and one ear with black mud. Alano and his father were on the opposite side of the track. A pistol shot rang out, followed by half a dozen more, but the bullets did not reach any of us. In a moment the long train had rolled out of sight. We watched its rear light for fully an eighth of a mile, when it disappeared around a bend behind a bit of upland. "Hullo, Mark, how are you?" It was the voice of Alano, who came up on the tracks directly the freight had passed. He was not hurt in the least. Captain Guerez had scratched one arm on a bit of low brush, but outside of this the entire party was uninjured. "Come now, follow me; there is no time to be lost," said the captain. "Those soldiers may take it into their heads to have the train run back in search of us." "Yes, that's true," said Burnham. "Which way now?" "We'll walk back on the tracks until we reach dry ground." The plunge into the wet meadow had completed the work of the rain in soaking us to the skin, but as the night was warm we did not mind this. Keeping our eyes on the alert for more Spanish sentries, we hurried along the railroad embankment for a distance of several hundred yards. Then we left the tracks and took a trail leading southward. Our various adventures for the past few hours had completely exhausted Burnham, while the others of the party were greatly fatigued. The newspaper man was in favor of stopping under a clump of palm trees and resting, but Captain Guerez demurred. "We'll reach a hut or a house ere long," he said. "And there the accommodations will be much better." "Well, we can't reach a resting-place too soon," grumbled Burnham. "I can scarcely drag one foot after the other, and it's so close my clothing is fairly steaming." "You are no worse off than any of us," I made answer, as cheerfully as I could. The highway was a stony one, and the rains had washed away what little dirt there was, making walking difficult. However, we had not very far to go. A turn brought us in sight of a long, low house built of logs and thatched with palm; and Captain Guerez called a halt. "I'll go forward and investigate," he said. "In the meantime be on guard against anybody following us from the railroad." He was gone less than quarter of an hour, and on returning said it was all right. A very old man named Murillo was in sole charge of the house, and he was a strong Cuban sympathizer. The place reached, we lost no time in divesting ourselves of a portion of our clothing and making ourselves comfortable in some grass hammocks spread between the house posts. "We ought to start early in the morning," I said, my thoughts still on my father. "We will start at four o'clock," announced Captain Guerez. "So make the most of your rest." The captain had intended to divide up the night into watches, but Murillo came forward and volunteered to stand guard. "You go to sleep," he said in Spanish. "I sleep when you are gone. I know how to watch." Feeling the old man could be trusted, we all retired. In a few minutes Burnham was snoring, and shortly after the others also dropped asleep. It lacked yet a few minutes of four o'clock in the morning when Murillo came stealing into the house and shook everyone by the shoulder. "Spanish soldiers down by the railroad," he explained hurriedly. "They intend to come up this road." "Then let us be off!" cried Captain Guerez. All of us were already arranging our toilets. In a few seconds we were ready to leave, and Murillo was paid for the trouble he had taken in our behalf. "Have they horses?" asked Captain Guerez; and Murillo nodded. "Then come, all of you!" cried Alano's father. He started out of the door, and we came after him. Hardly, however, had he taken a dozen steps than he pushed each of us behind a clump of bushes. "Soldiers!" he muttered. "They are coming from the opposite direction!" "We are caught in a trap!" exclaimed Alano. "We cannot go back, and we cannot go forward." "Here is a how d'ye do!" put in Burnham. "I'm sure I don't want to take to those beastly swamps." Murillo had followed us to the doorway. His face took on a troubled look, for he wanted us to get away in safety. "More soldiers coming the other way!" he cried. "What will you do? Ah, I have it! Come into the house at once?" "But what will you do?" queried Captain Guerez impatiently. "I'll show you. Come, and you shall be safe." The old man spoke so confidently that we followed him inside at once. Pushing aside a rude table which stood over a rush matting, he caught hold of a portion of the flooring. A strong pull, and up came a trapdoor, revealing a hole of inky darkness beneath. "Into that, all of you!" he cried; and down we went, to find ourselves in a rude cellar about ten feet square and six feet deep. As soon as the last of us was down, Murillo replaced the trapdoor, matting, and table, and we heard him throw off some of his clothing and leap into one of the hammocks. We had been left in total darkness, and now stood perfectly still and listened intently. Not more than three minutes passed, when we heard the tramping of horses' hoofs on the rocky road. The house reached, the animals came to a halt, and several soldiers dismounted. A rough voice yelled out in Spanish: "Hullo, in there! Who lives here?" "I do," replied Murillo, with a start and a yawn, as though he had just awakened from a long sleep. "Have you seen anything of four strangers around here?" "No, _capitan_." There was a pause, and the leader of the soldiers came tramping inside. "You are sure you are telling me the truth?" "Yes, _capitan_." "It is strange." The newcomer was about to go on, when a shout from outside attracted his attention. The soldiers from the opposite direction had come up. A short conference was held, of which, however, we heard nothing distinctly. Then some of the soldiers came inside, and we heard their heavy boots moving directly over our heads. "You say you saw nobody?" was again asked of Murillo. "No, _capitan_, not a soul. But then I have been asleep since evening. I am an old man, and I need a great deal of rest." "You are lazy, no doubt," came with a rough laugh. "Andros, what do you think?" "What should I think? There seems to be no one around. We might make a search." "Yes, we'll do that. It can do no harm. Tell the other men to scour the woods and brush." The order was given; and a moment later those who had first come in began to search the house. CHAPTER XXXIII. CAPTAIN GUEREZ MAKES A DISCOVERY. We listened in much consternation while the soldiers overhead moved from one portion of the dwelling to another. Would they discover us? "Be prepared for anything!" whispered Captain Guerez, and they were the only words spoken. There was no second story to the house, so the search through the rooms took but a few minutes, and the soldiers came to a halt around the table. "I suppose you are a rebel," said the officer abruptly to Murillo. "I am an old man, _capitan_; I wish to end my days in peace." "I know your kind." The officer paused. "Well, comrades, we may as well be on our way." These words caused me to utter a deep sigh of relief. They had not discovered us, and now they were going away. But the next words sent a chill down my backbone. "Can there be a cellar under the house?" questioned one of the others. "There is no cellar," said Murillo simply. "There is a little hole, half full of water. You can look down if you wish." "We will." What could it mean? We held our breath as the old man led the way to the apartment used as a kitchen. We heard him raise another trapdoor, some distance behind us. "Humph! A man would be a fool to get in there!" we heard the officer remark, and then the trap was dropped again into place. "We will go." The soldiers passed through the kitchen and toward the front door. One of them must have taken a last look around, for suddenly he uttered a cry. "Ha! what is this? A collar and a tie! Do you wear these?" "Confound it, my collar and tie," murmured Burnham. "I knew I forgot something." "They belong to my nephew," said Murillo calmly. "Your nephew? Where is he?" "He is now at Baiquiri at work on one of the shipping wharves." "He must dress well?" remarked the officer dryly. "Alfredo earns much money. He was educated at the college." The officer tapped the floor with his heavy boot. "You tell a good story," he said. "Beware lest we find you have been lying. Come!" The last word to his companions. The soldiers went outside, and we heard a call to the men sent out into the woods and brush. A few minutes later there followed the sounds of horses' hoofs receding in the distance. "Now we can get out of this hole, thank goodness!" burst out Burnham. "Wait--Murillo will inform us when the coast is clear," said Captain Guerez. Fully five minutes passed before the old man raised the trap. His face wore a satisfied smile. "We fooled them nicely, did we not, _capitan_?" he said. "You did well, Murillo," said Alano's father. "Here is a gold piece for your trouble." But the old man drew back, and would not accept the coin. "I did it not alone for you," he said. "_Cuba libre!_" We all thanked him heartily, and then Alano's father asked him in what directions the two bodies of soldiers had gone. That from the railroad had taken the highway to Canistero. "We will have to take another road, not quite so short," said Captain Guerez. "It is unfortunate, Mark, but it cannot be helped. Forward!" Much refreshed by our night's rest, we struck out rapidly, and by noon calculated that we had covered eight miles, a goodly distance in that hilly district. A little before noon we came out on a clearing overlooking a long stretch of valley and swamp lands. "Just below here is the village of San Luardo," said the captain. "It is there we ought to find out something concerning your father. It may be possible he is quartered somewhere in the village, that is, if the journey to Santiago has been delayed." "Is the village under guard?" I questioned anxiously, my heart giving a bound when I thought how close to my parent I might be. "Yes, every village in this district is under Spanish rule." "Then how can we get in?" "I have been trying to form a plan," was the slow answer. "Let us get a little closer, and I will see what can be done." We descended from the clearing, and just before noon reached the outskirts of the village. The captain had been right; two companies of freshly imported soldiers were in control of San Luardo. As we surveyed the situation from a bit of woodland, we heard the heavy creaking of an ox-cart on the stony road. Looking down we saw the turnout coming slowly along, loaded with hay and straw, probably for the horses of the Spanish soldiers. "I will go into town in that!" cried Captain Guerez. "Stop that fellow!" and he indicated the driver. A rush was made, and the ox-cart came to a sudden halt. When the dirty fellow who drove it saw us he turned pale, but a few words from Alano's father soon reassured him, and he readily consented to allow the captain to hide himself under the hay and straw and thus pass the guards. The driver was working for the Spaniards, but his heart was with the insurgents. Stripping himself of his coat and everything else which gave him a military appearance, Captain Guerez rubbed a little dirt on his face, neck, and hands, leaped into the ox-cart, and dove beneath the straw. If discovered, he intended to explain that he was out of work and was willing to do anything the Spaniards desired. Once more the cart creaked on its way toward the village, and we were left alone. Withdrawing to a safe and cool shelter, we sat down to rest and to await the captain's return. "I wish I could have gone along," I said to my chum. "Father can do the work better alone," replied Alano, who had great faith in his parent's ability. "Perhaps so. He wouldn't want me anyway--after the mess I made of it when I discovered Mr. Burnham." "Mess!" cried the newspaper man. "Why, it was through you that I escaped, my boy. You're all right. But I fancy Captain Guerez knows just exactly what he wishes to do, and probably one person can do it better than two." "The fact that you are an American would make everyone regard you with suspicion," added Alano. Two hours went by, which to me seemed a day, and then came a peculiar whistle from the road. At once Alano leaped to his feet. "My father is back!" he announced, and we ran forth to meet the captain. At first we hardly knew him, for he had taken some grease and some burnt cork and transformed himself into a negro. He was out of breath, and one of his hands was much scratched. "I had a narrow escape," he panted. "Come with me! There is not a moment to lose!" Although almost out of breath, he ran off, and we went with him through the woods and up the side of a small hill, which course took us around San Luardo. Not until the town was left well behind did the captain stop and throw himself on a patch of deep grass. He was too exhausted to speak, yet he saw my anxiety and smiled. "Don't worry, Mark; so far your father is safe," were his brief words. "That's good!" I cried, with a weight lifted from my heart, for during the wait I had conjured up any number of dreadful thoughts concerning my parent. "Yes, so far he is safe. They have him a prisoner at San Luardo, but they intend to remove him to Santiago before nightfall." "Before nightfall!" My heart seemed to stop beating. "How will they do it? Can't we stop them and rescue him?" "We must rescue him," was the reply. "That is why I hurried back. If they get him to Santiago he will be--that is, Mark, I am afraid you will never see him alive again." I understood Captain Guerez only too well. My father was doomed to die the death of a spy, and he would be shot very shortly after his removal to the seaport town. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE DOGS OF CUBAN WARFARE. In a few minutes Alano's father recovered sufficiently to tell his story. He had entered the village in safety, and soon put himself into communication with several citizens who were Cuban sympathizers. From one of these he had learned that my father was being kept a prisoner in what had formerly been a cattle-house, but which was now doing duty as a Spanish prison. No one was allowed to talk to the prisoners, but by bribing the man who owned the building the captain had succeeded in getting word to my father that he was around and that I was with him, and that both of us intended to do all in our power to effect his release. This word having been passed to my parent, Captain Guerez has set about perfecting a plan whereby my father might be supplied with tools for freeing himself, and also a pistol. But in this work he had been discovered, and a struggle and flight followed. Luckily, the Spaniards had not discovered whom he was working for in particular, there being a dozen prisoners in the same building, so it was not likely my parent would suffer in consequence. "We must watch the road to Santiago," said Captain Guerez, when he had finished, washed himself, and had a refreshing drink of water. "It is our one chance." "If only we had horses!" put in Alano. "We must find animals, my son." The captain spoke decidedly. "Necessity knows no law," and it was easy to see he intended to obtain the horses--if not in one way, then in another. Of course I did not blame him. To me it seemed a matter of life and death. As rapidly as we could, we made our way around the hills to the Santiago road. We had just reached it when Burnham, who was slightly in advance, halted us and announced a camp off to our left. Captain Guerez surveyed the situation and smiled. "Cattle dealers," he said. "They have brought in horses to sell to the Spanish authorities. I'll make a deal with them." He went off, with Alano at his side. Instead of following, Burnham and I concealed ourselves in the bushes, to watch who might pass on the highway to the seaport town. There was no telling when those who had my father in custody would be along. It was a long while before the captain and my chum came back, but when they did each rode a strong horse and led another behind. Burnham and I were soon in the saddle; and then all of us felt safer, for being in the saddle would place us in a position equally as good as that occupied by any of our enemies. "Look well to your pistols," said the captain. "It may be that a sharp and wild dash will be the only way in which Mark's father can be rescued." "I hope the guard having him in charge is not too large," I answered, as I did as he suggested. "We'll all hope that, Mark." With pistols ready for use, we ranged up behind a heavy clump of trees and awaited the coming of the guard from San Luardo. I was on pins and needles, as the saying goes, and started up at the slightest sound. For this Burnham poked fun at me; yet he himself was on the alert, as I could see by the way he compressed his lips and worked at the ends of his mustache. "Hark!" said Captain Guerez presently, and we all sat like statues and listened. From down the road came the tramp of a dozen or more horses and mules. The guard with the prisoners was advancing. The decisive moment was at hand. I swallowed a strange lump in my throat and grasped my pistol tighter. For my father's sake I would fight to the bitter end. From out of a cloud of dust rode a vidette, heavily armed and with his eyes and ears on the alert for anything which might sound or look suspicious. As he came nearer we drew back behind the trees, and Captain Guerez motioned us to absolute silence. The vidette passed, and then the main body of the guard came on. There were three soldiers in front and three behind, and between rode two prisoners on mules, both whites and evidently Americans. I strained my eyes to their utmost, and soon distinguished my father's familiar face and form. My father! The sight thrilled me to the soul, and I had all I could do to restrain myself from riding forth to meet him. An exclamation came to my lips, but the hand of my chum checked it, while a look from him told plainer than words that he realized how I felt. "Attention!" whispered Captain Guerez. "Are you all prepared to fight? I think these guards are raw recruits, and if so a few volleys will cause them to take to their heels." "I am ready," I said grimly. "And I," added Alano. "You can count on me," put in Burnham. "Very well. I will take the first fellow to the left. Alano, you take the second; Mark, you the third; and you, Burnham, take any one in the rear you choose." "I'll take the middle guard," muttered the newspaper man. "I know you can all fire well, so aim for the sword arm," went on the captain. "There is no necessity for killing the fellows, unless it comes to close quarters. Ready? Take aim--fire!" The words "Take aim!" had been spoken aloud, causing several of the guards to draw rein in alarm. At the command to fire, our pistols blazed away simultaneously, and our several aims were so good that four of the guards were hit, three in the arms and one in the side. "Forward, and fire again!" shouted the gallant captain, and out of the clearing we dashed, discharging our weapons a second time. The detachment of Spanish soldiers was taken completely by surprise. The lieutenant in command had been wounded, and when he saw us coming from the woods he imagined we must outnumber his men, for he gave a hasty order to retreat, and led the way. For a third time we fired, and scarcely had the echo died among the hills than every one of the soldiers was going back the way he had come, as rapidly as his horse would carry him, the vidette, who had turned also, going with them. "Mark!" cried my father, when he saw me. "Is it possible!" "Father!" was all I could say. With my knife I cut the rawhide thongs which bound him to the mule's back, and in a second more we were in each other's arms. The other prisoner was also released, and both were speedily provided with weapons. "We must not lose time here--follow me!" shouted Captain Guerez. "You can talk all you please later on," he added to me and my happy parent. All of us followed him back into the woods, and along a trail which he declared must bring us to another seaport town, eight miles to the east of Santiago Bay. We put spurs to our steeds, and long before nightfall half a dozen miles of the uneven way had been covered. As fast as we were able to do so, my father and I rode side by side, and never had I felt happier than then, while he was equally pleased. As we journeyed along I told my story from beginning to end, and then he told his own--how he had been captured and taken for a spy, how cruelly he had been treated, and all. Just before he had received Captain Guerez' message he had given up all hope, and even while on the road he had been fearful that the plan to rescue him would miscarry. "What do you think we had best do?" I asked, after our stories were told. "I wish to get out of the country as soon as possible, Mark. I cannot stand the climate. Half a dozen times I have felt as if I was going to be taken down with the fever. That injured leg took away a good bit of my strength." "Can we take passage from the town to which we are bound?" "We can try," answered my father. Another half-mile was covered, and we were beginning to consider that we had made good our retreat from the spot where the encounter with the Spanish soldiers had occurred, when suddenly a deep baying broke out at our rear, causing Alano and the captain to give a simultaneous cry of alarm. "What is it?" asked Burnham. "What is it!" was the answer from the captain. "Can't you hear? The heartless wretches have set several bloodhounds on our trail!" "Bloodhounds!" we echoed. "Yes, bloodhounds!" ejaculated Alano. "Hark! there must be three, if not four, of the beasts!" "Will they attack us--on horseback?" "Certainly--they'll fly right at a fellow's throat." "But how can they track us--we have not been on foot." "They are tracking the mules Señor Carter and Señor Raymond ride," put in Captain Guerez. "Hark! they are coming nearer! In a few minutes more they will be upon us! Out with your pistols and fight the beasts as best you can. It is our only hope!" CHAPTER XXXV. THE LAST OF THE BLOODHOUNDS. The announcement that the bloodhounds would soon be upon us filled me with dread. I had had one experience with this class of beasts, and I did not wish to have another. I looked around at our party and saw that the others, even to the captain, were as agitated as myself. A Cuban dreads an unknown bloodhound worse than a native African does a lion or an American pioneer does a savage grizzly bear. "Have your pistols ready!" went on the captain, when an idea came into my head like a flash, and I turned to him. "If they are following the mules, why not turn the mules into a side trail?" I said. "My father can ride with me, and Mr. Raymond can double with somebody else." "A good idea!" cried Captain Guerez. "Quick, let us try it." In a twinkle my father had leaped up behind me, and Alano motioned Mr. Raymond to join him. A small side trail was close at hand, and along this we sent the mules at top speed, cutting them deeply with our whips to urge them along. "Now to put distance between them and ourselves!" cried my father, and once more we went on. As we advanced we listened to the bloodhounds. In a few minutes more we heard them turn off in the direction the mules had taken, and their bayings gradually died away in the distance. Then we slackened our speed a bit, and all breathed a long sigh of relief. "That was a brilliant idea, my boy!" said Mr. Raymond warmly. "Mr. Carter, you have a son to be proud of." "I am proud of him," said my father, and he gave my arm a tight squeeze. From that moment on, Mr. Raymond, who was a business man from the West, became my warm friend. It must not be supposed that we pursued our journey recklessly. Far from it. The captain rode in advance continually, and on several occasions called a halt while he went forward to investigate. But nothing offered itself to block our progress, and late that night, saddle-weary and hungry, we came in sight of the seaport town for which we were bound. "I believe the bark _Rosemary_ is in port here," said Mr. Raymond. "And if that is so, we ought to be able to get on board, for I know the captain well." "Then that will save us a good deal of trouble," replied my father. "But of course we can't go aboard openly--the Spanish authorities wouldn't allow that." How to get into the town unobserved was a question. Finally Alano's father said he would ride in as a horse dealer, taking all of our animals with him. To disguise himself he dirtied his face once more, and put on my hat and coat, both rather small for him. Then driving three of the horses before him, he went on. We went into camp under some plantains, and it was not until three o'clock in the morning that Captain Guerez came back. He returned with a smile on his face, for he had sold two of the worst of the steeds at a good price and had in addition found the _Rosemary_ and interviewed her captain. "The captain said he couldn't do anything for you to-night," he explained. "But to-morrow, if it is dark, he will send a rowboat up the shore to a rock he pointed out to me with his glass. You are to be at the rock at one o'clock sharp--if it's dark. If it is not, you are to wait until the next night. He says to try to come on board from the quay will only bring you to grief." "Good for Captain Brownley!" cried Mr. Raymond. "I felt sure he would not go back on me. Once on board, Mr. Carter, and the three of us will be safe." "There is, therefore, nothing to do but to wait," went on Captain Guerez. "I shall see you safe off, and then return to Father Anuncio's convent with Alano and join the rest of my family once more." As soon as it was light we rode and tramped through the woods and the swamps to the seacoast, where it did not take long to locate the rock the captain of the _Rosemary_ had pointed out to Captain Guerez. This accomplished, we retired to a near-by plantain grove, there to eat and rest, and spend a final day together. The thought of parting with my chum was a sad one, yet I felt it my duty to remain with my father. Alano was also affected, and often placed his brown hand affectionately on my shoulder while we conversed. "Let us both hope that this cruel and senseless warfare will soon cease, and that Cuba will be free," I said. "Yes, Mark, and that we will soon be together again," he replied. "I hope your journey proves a safe one; and when you get back you must remember me to all of the other boys." "I'll do it; and you must remember me to your mother and your two sisters," I said. With it all, however, the day passed somewhat slowly, for we were impatient to see what the night would bring forth. The sun set clearly, and soon the heavens were bespangled with countless stars. Mr. Raymond shook his head. "Captain Brownley won't risk coming to-night," he remarked. "They could easily spot a boat from the town shore, it is so clear." But about ten o'clock it began to cloud over, and at eleven it started to rain, a gentle but steady downpour. Not a star remained, and out on the water it was as dark as Erebus. "A kind Providence is with us!" cried my father. "We could not possibly imagine a better night." Slowly the time wore on, until Captain Guerez' watch indicated ten minutes to one. We sat close beside the rock, paying no attention to the rain, although it was gradually soaking us to the skin. "Here they come!" whispered my father, and a few seconds later a rowboat containing four sailors loomed up through the darkness. As silently as a shadow the boat glided up past the rock and into the swamp grass. "On time, I see," said Mr. Raymond, as he advanced. "Is Captain Brownley here?" "No, he's watching at the ship, and will give us the signal when to come aboard," replied one of the sailors, who was in command. "Come aboard, if you are ready, sir." "We are," said my father. There was a short but affectionate good-by on both sides. Captain Guerez wrung my hand tightly, and I gave Alano a warm squeeze. Then Mr. Raymond, Burnham, father, and myself stepped into the rowboat, and the sailors pushed off with their long oars. In another instant the craft swung clear of the shore and was turned in the direction from whence we had come. I was going to cry out a last parting to my chum, when the sailor sitting nearest checked me. "Be silent, my lad; if we're discovered we'll all be shot." "Yes," put in my father, "don't make a sound. Leave everything to these men. They have their instructions and know what they are doing." On and on over the Bay of Guantanamo glided the rowboat. The rain still came down, and if anything the night was blacker than ever. I wondered how the sailors could steer, until I saw one of them consulting a compass which lay in the bottom of the craft, looking it by the rays of a tiny dark-lantern. I reckoned that the best part of half an hour had gone by, when the sailors rested on their oars, while one took up a night-glass. For five minutes he waited, then put the glass down. "It's all right," he whispered. "Let fall. No noise now, on your life!" Forward went our craft again, and now I noticed that each oar was bound with rubber at the spot where it touched the rowlock, to keep it from scraping. Thus we moved onward in absolute silence. From out of the darkness we now saw a number of lights, coming from the town and the shipping. A few minutes later we ran up to the dark hull of a large vessel. A rope ladder was thrown down to us, and a sailor whispered to us to go up. We followed directions as rapidly as we could, and once on the deck we were hurried below, while the rowboat was swung up on the davits. "Ah, Mr. Raymond, glad to see you!" said Captain Brownley, a bluff New Englander, as he extended his hand. "A fine night to come on board." And then he turned to us and we were introduced. The _Rosemary_ was bound for Philadelphia, but would not sail for three days. She was under strict Spanish watch, so it was necessary for us to keep out of sight. We were locked in a stateroom, but made as comfortable as circumstances permitted. From time to time during the three days the captain came to us with various bits of news. One was to the effect that the Spanish detachment which had had my father and Mr. Raymond in charge had reported a conflict with a Cuban force fifty or sixty strong. Another was that the United States had declared war upon Spain and was going to bombard Havana. "I wonder if it is true that we are to fight Spain?" I said to Burnham. "What do you think?" "We ought to fight Spain," answered the newspaper man. "Cuba deserves her freedom, and if she can't help herself against Spanish imposition and brutality we ought to give her a friendly hand." We talked the matter over at some length; but neither of us knew the truth--that war was really declared, and that not Havana, but Santiago, was to be attacked by the time the year was half over. At last came the hour when the ship's anchors were hove apeak and the sails were set. We sailed at high noon, and, having a good wind, soon passed outside of Guantanamo Bay, which, as my readers may know, is situated but a few miles to the eastward of Santiago Bay. "Free at last!" cried my father, as he came on deck to get the fresh air. "I must say I am not sorry to leave Cuba--since the times have grown so troublesome." He had scarcely spoken when a small Spanish revenue cutter hove in sight, steaming down the coast evidently from Santiago Bay. While Captain Brownley was examining the craft, there was a flash of fire, and a dull boom sounded over the water. "Great Scott! What does that mean?" demanded Burnham, leaping up from his seat near the rail. "It's an order to heave to," answered Captain Brownley grimly. "We are not yet out of the woods, it would seem." "Then that means for us to get out of sight again," said my father, and, as the captain nodded, the four of us ran for the companion-way, descended to the cabin, and secreted ourselves in the cabin pantry. Five minutes later the Spanish revenue cutter steamed alongside, and we heard the tramp of half a dozen strange pairs of feet on the deck above. CHAPTER XXXVI. CAST INTO A SANTIAGO DUNGEON. "Those fellows evidently mean business," whispered Mr. Raymond, as an angry discussion drifted down to us. "Is it possible they got wind that we are on board?" "Let us hope not," shuddered my father. "Hist! they are coming down into the cabin!" After this we remained as quiet as mice, hardly daring to breathe. We heard loud talking, partly in Spanish and a few words in very bad English. "I know they are here," growled one Spaniard. "We shall make a large hunt, _capitan_." "If you insist, I cannot help myself," answered Captain Brownley. "But it is a most unusual proceeding." At this the Spaniard muttered something in his own language. He began to hunt in one direction, while his followers hunted in another. Soon two of the men came to the pantry and forced the door. We tried to escape observation, but could not manage it, and were ordered forth at the point of several long pistols. "Ha! as I suspected! All _Americanos_!" muttered the Spanish commander of the revenue cutter. "A fine haul! A fine haul, indeed!" Then turning to his second in command he issued orders that some irons be brought on board. At the same time a dozen Spanish marines from the cutter were formed in line, with loaded carbines, to cover the crew of the _Rosemary_. "I place all of you under arrest," said the Spanish captain. "You"--pointing to my father, Burnham, Mr. Raymond, and myself--"as spies; and you and your men"--this to Captain Brownley--"as enemies of Spain, assisting these spies to escape." In vain Captain Brownley tried to argue the matter. The Spanish commander would not listen to a word. "The Yankee pigs have declared war on us!" he burst out at last. "Now let them take care of themselves." "Then war is really declared?" came from several of us simultaneously. "Yes, war has been declared. More than that, we have already whipped the Yankee pigs who dared to attack our noble ships in the Philippines," said the Spaniard bombastically. But, as all American boys know, the Spaniard was mistaken. The American squadron under Commodore, afterward Admiral, George Dewey, was not defeated. Instead, it gained a most glorious victory, some of the particulars of which will be related in a volume to follow this, of which more later. The news was staggering, and while we talked it over among ourselves, each of us was handcuffed, I being linked to Mr. Raymond, while my father was linked to Burnham. Captain Brownley and his first mate were also handcuffed, and the sailors were told to obey the Spanish captain's orders or run the risk of being shot down. The announcement that a naval battle had been fought in the Philippines seemed to worry Mr. Raymond a good deal. "I wonder if Oliver knows anything of this?" he half muttered. "Oliver, who is he?" I asked. "Oliver is my son," answered the merchant. "He took a trip to China a year ago, and from there went to Manila, the principal city of the Philippines. I haven't heard of him for a number of months now. He is perhaps a year older than you." "I never heard much of the Philippines," I answered. "I know they are a good way off--somewhere between Australia, the Hawaiian Islands, and China. Do they belong to Spain?" "Yes, but she is having as much trouble to hold them as she is having to hold Cuba." We were now ordered to keep silent, and compelled to march from the cabin of the _Rosemary_ to the deck of the Spanish vessel. Here we were made to stand in a line, our weapons having previously been taken from us. The course of the sailing vessel had been eastward toward Cape Maysi, but now both craft were headed westward. "I'll wager we are bound for Santiago," murmured Burnham, who stood beside me, and he was right, for in a little over an hour the narrow entrance to Santiago Bay came into view, with Morro Castle, a famous old fortress, standing high upon the rocks to the right. The bay is several miles long, and Santiago stands well in on the northeast shore. The land-locked harbor was alive with vessels, but not one of them floated the familiar Stars and Stripes of our own country. "There is where we made our way across the bay when first Alano Guerez and I escaped from Santiago," I whispered. "I am afraid I'll not get another such chance now." Soon one of the numerous docks in front of the city was reached, and we were marched ashore. The news of our capture had spread, and a large crowd of curiosity-seekers gathered, to jeer and pass all sorts of unpleasant remarks. The city was now under stricter Spanish rule than ever before, and as we marched from the dock to the city prison not another American was to be seen. At the prison a brief examination was held. When it was learned that my father was present, I was thrust aside and told that he could speak for me. Yet he was allowed to say but little. The authorities were certain that he, Burnham, and Mr. Raymond were spies, and the four of us were sentenced to confinement in another prison several squares away--a low, dingy pile of stone, every opening of which was heavily barred and grated. Within this prison came the hardest parting of all. I was separated from my father, and, when I remonstrated, received a sharp blow on my shoulder from a jailer's sword. Mr. Raymond and I were paired off as before, and conducted through a long stone passage-way and down a dirty flight of steps. Sunshine and fresh air were left behind, and the way was lit up by a smoky kerosene lamp. We were taken to a dungeon cell several feet below the sidewalk and locked in, and then our jailer left us. I was too overcome to speak when we were left alone. Mr. Raymond strained his eyes and peered around at the four bare walls, the bare ceiling overhead, and the stone flooring with its water pitcher and heap of musty straw in one corner. "This is awful!" he murmured. "Mark, how long do you think you can stand living in this place?" "No longer than I have to!" I cried. "I'll get out just as fast as ever I can." "If we ever do get out!" he concluded significantly. The remainder of the day passed slowly. For supper the jailer brought us some stale bread and some more water, no fresher than that already in the pitcher. That night I did not sleep a wink. I expected that another examination would be held the next day, or, at the latest, within a week; but I was doomed to disappointment. No one but the jailer came near us, and he only to bring us our bread and water and occasionally a stew of ill-flavored meat and potatoes, reeking with garlic. Of this both of us tried bits of the potatoes, and sometimes mouthfuls of the meat, but it was all we could do to choke them down. "How long is this to last?" I asked Mr. Raymond one day, as both of us walked up and down the narrow cell like two caged animals. "God alone knows, Mark," he answered. "If there is no change soon I shall go mad!" "It is inhuman!" I went on. "A Christian would not treat a dog like this." "They are very bitter against us Americans, Mark. Now the United States have declared war against them, they must realize that Cuban freedom is assured." Another week went on, and then we were taken up into the prison yard. Here I saw my father,--thin, pale, and sick,--but I was not permitted to converse with him. We were placed in two rows with a hundred other prisoners, and inspected by General Toral, the military governor of Santiago and surrounding territory. After the inspection we went back to our various dungeon cells; and many weary weeks of close confinement followed. One day a curious booming reached our ears, coming from we knew not where. I heard it quite plainly, and called Mr. Raymond's attention to it. "It is the discharging of cannon," he said. "And it is not a salute either," he added, as the booming became more rapid and violent. It was not until long afterward that I learned the truth, that a fleet of Spanish warships commanded by Admiral Cervera had been "bottled up" in Santiago Bay by our own warships under Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley, and that the Yankee gunners were now trying what they could do in the way of bombarding Morro Castle and the ships which lay hidden from them behind the mountains at the harbor's entrance. The booming of cannon kept up for several hours and then died away gradually, but a few days later the bombardment was continued. We now felt certain that a battle of some sort was on, and Mr. Raymond questioned the jailer. "The Yankee pigs will be well whipped," growled the fellow, and that was all we could get out of him. Again the days lengthened into weeks, and nothing of importance happened--to us. But in the outside world great events were taking place. The entrance to Santiago Bay was being blockaded by the vessels under Sampson's command, and an army of invasion was gathering at Tampa, Fla., to land on the southeastern coast of Cuba and attack Santiago from the rear. The army of invasion, under command of General Shafter, was sixteen thousand strong, and left Tampa in between thirty and forty transports. A landing of the army was effected at Baiquiri and other points, and here General Shafter consulted with General Garcia, and it was decided that about three thousand Cuban troops should co-operate with the United States forces. Among the Cuban troops was the company commanded by Alano's father; and my chum, let me add right here, was in the fight from start to finish. The Spanish authorities now saw what the Americans were up to, and without delay Santiago was fortified from end to end. Every road leading from the city was barricaded with logs and earthworks, and barriers of barbed wire were strung in various directions. Thousands of Spanish troops had been gathered in the vicinity, and these were hurried to San Juan Hill, El Caney, and other points of vantage just outside of Santiago proper. As the American forces advanced closer and closer to the city Admiral Cervera became anxious for the safety of his fleet. He knew that if Santiago was captured there would be nothing left for him to do but to try to escape from the bay, and that would mean to go forth and fight the American warships stationed on the blockade beyond Morro Castle. One day the jailer came in evidently much depressed. We had expected the usual stew that day, but got only a chunk of dry bread. "And you are lucky to get even so much," said the Spaniard, as he hurried out. "Something has gone wrong," remarked Mr. Raymond, as he translated the fellow's words to me. "I begin to believe that Santiago is suffering some sort of an attack." He had hardly spoken when the dull booming of cannon broke once more on our ears. It was a strange sound, and I threw myself down on our straw bed to listen. I was half in a doze,--dreaming of my school days at Broxville,--when suddenly came an awful crash that to me sounded like the crack of doom, and the dungeon was filled with pieces of stone, dirt, and cement, and a thick smoke that all but choked us. Mr. Raymond was hurled flat on top of me, and for the space of several seconds neither of us could speak or move. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE FALL OF THE SPANISH STRONGHOLD. "Wha--what does this mean?" I managed to gasp at last. "The dungeon has been struck by a shell!" answered Mr. Raymond, breathing with difficulty. "There is a bombardment going on!" "But we may be killed!" "Let us trust not, Mark. Are you hurt much?" "I have a cut in my cheek, and another in my left arm." "And I have a bad bruise in the right leg," answered my fellow prisoner. "But still----Oh, Mark, look! The sunshine!" Mr. Raymond broke off short and pointed upward. He was right. The shell which had torn up the sidewalk above us had left a hole in the dungeon ceiling nearly a foot in diameter. "Can we get out?" I burst out eagerly. "Perhaps--but the city is in the hands of our enemies." "I don't care," I went on recklessly. "Anything is better than staying here." "That is true." Mr. Raymond arose and measured the distance from the hole to the cell floor. "It's all of ten feet, Mark." "Let me balance myself on your shoulders," I said, and now my athletic training at the military school stood me in good stead. Mr. Raymond raised me up into the air, and I caught the edge of the hole with ease. Yet to pull myself up was no mean task. But I worked desperately, and finally found myself on the pavement. Crowds of people were rushing hither and thither, and no one paid any attention to me. Slipping off my jacket, I let down one sleeve. "Take hold of that, and I'll pull you up!" I cried to Mr. Raymond; and he did as bidden, and soon stood beside me. A guard was now running toward us, and as he came on he discharged his Mauser rifle, but the bullet flew wide of its mark. "_Halte!_" he yelled, but we did nothing of the sort, but took to our heels and ran as if the very Old Nick was after us. Our course soon took us into a crowd of Cubans, and leaving these we made our way into a street which was little better than an alleyway for width. Finding the door of a house wide open, we slipped into the building and hid ourselves in an apartment in the rear. All day long the tumult continued, but we could not learn what it was about, excepting that a force of American soldiers were advancing upon El Caney and San Juan. "If our forces take those hills," said Mr. Raymond, "Santiago is doomed, for the heavy artillery and siege guns can knock down every building here." "Then I hope we get out before the hills are taken," I answered. We remained in the building all day, and during that time I managed to scrape up a loaf of bread and the larger part of a knuckle of ham, besides several cocoanuts. On these we lived for the next twenty-four hours, and we had more than many starving Cubans still staying in the doomed city. As we waited for nightfall I wondered how my father was faring. It was not likely that the prison had been struck more than once. Probably he was still in his dungeon cell. Oh, if only I could get to him and liberate him! But Mr. Raymond shook his head at the idea. "You would only be captured yourself, Mark. Better try to escape with me to the American camp. If Santiago is taken, your father will be sure to be liberated sooner or later." I thought it over, and decided to accept his advice. We left the building at eleven o'clock. The moon was shining, but it had been raining and the clouds were still heavy in the sky. As silently as possible we stole along one street and then another until the outskirts of Santiago were reached. Once we met a detachment of Spanish soldiery, but avoided them by crouching behind an abandoned barricade until they had passed. The hardest part of our task was still before us--that of getting beyond the Spanish picket line. On and on we went, but now much slower, for we felt that we were running not only the risk of capture but the risk of being shot down without warning. At four o'clock in the morning we felt we could go no further for the present and climbed into the limbs of a mahogany tree. We had been sitting here several hours when suddenly a fierce rattle of musketry rang out. It was the attack of General Lawton's infantry upon El Caney. The attack had but fairly opened, when we saw the pickets around us ordered forward and then to the right. The way was now open for us to escape, and, descending to the ground, we hurried on, through the brush and over the rocks, carefully to avoid any well-defined trail which the Spaniards might be covering. An hour of hard traveling brought us to a valley to the north of El Caney, and here we encountered a body of several hundred Cuban soldiers. "Mark!" came the cry, and a moment later I found myself confronted by Alano, while Captain Guerez sat on horseback but a short distance away. Now was no time to compare notes, and soon both Mr. Raymond and myself were supplied with guns taken from several of the enemy that had died on the field of battle. Then, with a good-by to Alano, I set off for the American forces, accompanied by Mr. Raymond. The gallant attacks upon El Caney and San Juan hills are now matters of history. All know how the brave boys of the American army were repulsed several times, only to dash to the very tops of the hills at last, carrying all before them, and causing the Spaniards to fall back to the intrenchments before Santiago. We had fallen in with a body of Regulars sent to Cuba from the West, and I think I can safely say that I never fought harder in my life than on that day, and on the day following, when the Spaniards tried to drive us from the position we had gained on the top of El Caney Hill. I was in the very front in the final attack, and when it was all over discovered that I had received a severe wound in the left arm, one from which I have not fully recovered to the present time. The hills were now ours, and everywhere along the American lines it was felt that Santiago was doomed. This was on the 2d of July. On the 3d, early in the morning, Admiral Cervera attempted to escape with his fleet from Santiago Bay by running the gantlet of United States warships stationed outside. It was Sunday, and in less than fifteen minutes after his first vessel appeared around the rocks of Morro Castle, one of the fiercest naval battles of history was on. The Spanish admiral had four powerful fighting ships and two torpedo-boat destroyers, but they were no match for the warships under gallant Commodore Schley, who was in command during Admiral Sampson's absence. The enemy tried to escape by running along the shore westward, but the fire from our side was too heavy; and in less than three hours the battle was over, and all of the Spanish ships were either sunk or run ashore, and over seven hundred men were taken prisoner. The loss to the Americans was but one man killed and no ship seriously injured! What a cheer went up when the news of the Spanish fleet's destruction reached the soldier boys! The hooraying lasted the best part of the day, and many of the soldiers cut up like a lot of schoolboys just out of school. It was a scene I shall never forget. Admiral Cervera had aided the Spanish army in the attack on our forces, by throwing shells over Santiago into our ranks. Now he was gone, Santiago was even more defenseless than ever, and General Shafter immediately sent word to General Toral that unless he surrendered the American artillery would bombard the city. There were several days of delay, and finally the Spanish general, seeing how useless it would be to continue the fight, agreed to surrender under certain conditions. These conditions were not accepted, and another wait of several days took place--a time that to me seemed an age, so anxious was I to get word concerning my father's welfare. At last, on the 14th of July, General Toral gave up the struggle, and three days later the American troops marched into the city and hoisted the glorious Stars and Stripes over the civic-government building. It was a grand time, never to be forgotten. As our boys came in the soldiers of Spain went out, giving up their arms as they left. Twenty-four hours later, I received an order which permitted me to call upon my father and Burnham. "Mark! alive and well!" burst from my parent's lips on seeing me. "They said you were dead--that a shell had killed you." "That shell did not kill me; it gave me my liberty," I answered, and told my story, to which my father and Burnham listened with keen interest. My father was much broken in health, and as soon as I could I had him removed to a hotel, where care and good food soon restored him to his accustomed vitality. The Cuban troops, as a body, were not permitted to come into Santiago at once, the authorities fearing a riot between them and the Spaniards, but Alano and his father visited us, and a joyous reunion was had all around. "Cuba will be free now," said Captain Guerez. "If Spain knows when she has enough, she will now bring this war to a close." Alano's father was right; the Santiago campaign was the first and last to be fought by the American troops on Cuban soil, and soon after Spain asked that a peace commission be appointed to settle the matter without further appeal to arms. This was done; and the war ceased. Cuba was granted her absolute freedom, with the United States to protect her until all internal difficulties were settled and she was fully able to manage her own affairs. Alano and his father remained in the Cuban army, and were later on stationed but a short distance away from the plantation owned by Captain Guerez. Thus they were near their home and able to visit constantly the other members of the family, who at that time returned to the plantation. Burnham remained in Santiago, reporting constantly for the newspaper he represented. Two months after my father was released from prison we set sail for the United States. Mr. Raymond accompanied us, and we made the trip in the _Rosemary_, under our former friend Captain Brownley, who had succeeded, though not without much difficulty, in having both himself and his vessel released. "How good to be back home again!" I cried, as we stepped ashore. "Foreign countries are all well enough, but as for me--give me our own United States every time!" "You are right, Mark," answered my father. "There is no better place on earth to live than in our own dear native land." * * * * * Here I bring to a close my story of adventures in Cuba during the Cuban-Spanish conflict and the Spanish-American campaign. I had seen many startling happenings, and was, as told above, heartily glad to sail away and leave the Queen of the Antilles to carve out her future without my aid. During my confinement with Mr. Raymond I had become much interested in that gentleman and what he had to say concerning his son Oliver, then supposed to be at Manila, where the first naval battle of our war with the Dons had occurred. As a matter of fact, Oliver Raymond had been with the Asiatic squadron when the fight came off, and the news he sent to his father was truly interesting. But I will let him tell his own tale in another volume, to be entitled "A Sailor Boy with Dewey; or, Afloat in the Philippines," after which I will expect to be with my readers again in still another story to be called "Off for Hawaii; or, the Mystery of a Great Volcano." And now for the present, kind reader, good-by and good luck to you. THE END. * * * * * Transcriber Note Que, Què and Qué all appear once and left as is. Ciruso and Circuso are each used once but may represent the same individual. Due to context, granadilla (Passionfruit) on page 57 was assumed a typo for grenadillo trees (p. 121). The images were repositioned so as to not split paragraphs. The cover image was constructed from images provided by the University of Michigan and The Internet Archive and is placed in the Public Domain. 
11329	----	LANDS OF THE SLAVE AND THE FREE: OR, Cuba, the United States, and Canada. BY CAPTAIN THE HON. HENRY A. MURRAY, R.N. [Illustration: Entrance to a Coffee Planter's Residence.] 1857. "He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over man He made not lord." MILTON. "Gone, gone--sold and gone, To the rice-swamp, dank and lone; There no mother's eye is near them, There no mother's ear can hear them; Never, when the torturing lash Seams their backs with many a gash, Shall a mother's kindness bless them, Or a mother's arms caress them." WHITTIER. "LA CURIOSIDAD NUNCA SE ENFADA DE SABER."[A] ANTONIO PEREZ "Oh, give me liberty! For were even Paradise my prison, Still I would long to leap the crystal walls." DRYDEN. "A happy bit hame this arrld[*] warld wad be, If men, whan they're here, would make shift to agree, And ilk said to his neebor in cottage an' hall, 'Come, gie me your hand, we are brethren all.'" [Transcribers note *: illegible] ROBERT NICOL. TO NIF, NASUS, AND CO., THESE VOLUMES Are Dedicated AS A TOKEN OF THE SINCERE AND AFFECTIONATE REGARD OF THEIR OBEDIENT SERVANT, HENRY A. MURRAY. LONDON, JUNE 1ST, 1855. SECOND AND CHEAP EDITION. * * * * * The encouragement of friends, and the opinions expressed by a large majority of those publications that considered the former edition worthy of notice, have induced me to cut out many passages which might possibly not interest the general reader, in order that I might send it forth to the public in a more cheap and popular form. Writing upon such a subject as the United States, her constitution, and her institutions, there was necessarily some danger of a taint of political partisanship. I trust, however, I may he considered to have redeemed the pledge I made of writing "free from political bias," when I have found favour in the pages of two publications so opposite in their politics as the _Westminster Review_ and the _Press_. One weekly paper with pretensions to literary criticism (the _Athenaeum_, September 15, 1855) did me the honour of making me the object of its unmeasured censure; but, as I was forewarned that my success would interfere with the prospects of one of its contributors, I was prepared for its animadversions, though most certainly I did not anticipate the good fortune of a zeal so totally void of discretion, that the animus which guided the critic's pen should be too transparent to impose upon even a child. Conceive a would-be critic, after various spasmodic efforts at severity, selecting from among many _comprehensive_ measures suggested by me for the future emancipation, and for the present benefit, of the slave, the proposition of "a proper instrument for flogging, to be established by law," and _that_ with the evident intention of throwing ridicule on the idea. If the critic were occasionally subject to the discipline of the various instruments used for the punishment of the negro, his instinct would soon teach him that which appears to be at present beyond the grasp of his intellect, viz., the difference between a cow-hide and a dog-whip; and if he knew anything of his own country, he could scarcely be ignorant that the instruments used for corporal punishment in army, navy, and prisons, are established by law or by a custom, as strong as law. But enough of this Athenian Reviewer, I offer for his reflection the old story, "Let her alone, poor thing; it amuses her, and does me no harm." The next time he tries to sling a stone, I hope he will not again crack his own skull in the clumsy endeavour. "Ill nature blended-with cold blood Will make a critic sound and good. This useful lesson hence we learn, Bad wine to good sound vinegar will turn." OLD PAMPHLET. I now launch my barque upon a wider ocean than before. The public must decide whether her sails shall flap listlessly against the masts, or swell before a stiff and prosperous breeze. H.A.M. CONTENTS. A CHAPTER GRATIS AND EXPLANATORY CHAPTER I. _Make Ready--Fire--Departure_. FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. Preparations LIVERPOOL--Embarkation Scenes Scenes on Board CAPE RACE Pilot NEW YORK CHAPTER II. _Land of Stars and Stripes_. AT NEW YORK. The First View Custom House Ferry Boat First Impressions Hospitality American Hotels Bar and Barbers Bridal Chamber Paddy Waiter Feeding System Streets and Buildings Portrait Hatter Advertisements Loafing in Broadway CHAPTER III. _Sights and Amusements_. AT NEW YORK. Yacht Club and Dinner. Railway Society to LONG ISLAND Race Stand Trotting Match Metallic Coffin American Horse Hack Cabs and Drivers Omnibuses City Railway Cars Travelling Railway Cars Tickets for Luggage Locomotive Suggestions for Railway Companies CHAPTER IV. _A Day on the North River_. FROM NEW YORK TO GENESEO. Embark in Steamer on Hudson Passengers and Anecdotes Scenery of River ALBANY--Disembark A Hint for Travellers Population and Prosperity Railway through Town Professor of Soap CANANDAIGUA--Hospitality. Early Education Opposite System Drive across Country--Snake Fences and Scenery Churches--a Hint for the Highlands Cheap Bait--GENESEO CHAPTER V. _Geneseo_. AT GENESEO Absence of Animal Life--Early Rising View from the Terrace--Work of the Pioneer Farm and System, Wages, &c. A Drive--Family Scene LAKE CANESUS Plank road. Toll gates, &c. Scotch Pikeman CHAPTER VI. _Stirring Scenes and Strange Sights_. FROM GENESEO TO NEW YORK. A Drive to BATAVIA--Railway Warning Buffalo Railway Station and Yankee Cabby Prosperity and Contrast NIAGARA ROCHESTER A Live Bloomer Advantage proved by Contrast Reflections on Old Fashions Pleasant Night CHAPTER VII. _Construction and Destruction_. AT NEW YORK. Cutter Yacht, "Black Maria" Dinner on Board Toddy and Chowder Prosperity--Croton Aqueduct Destruction of Dogs Drive on the Bloomingdale Road A Storm CHAPTER VIII. _South and West_. FROM NEW YORK TO LOUISVILLE. Ticket Station PHILADELPHIA--Convenience Luggage left behind BALTIMORE--MAXWELL POINT Canvas-back Ducks Tolling for Ducks Start by Rail--A Fix HARRISBURGH--The Whittling Colonel Start again. Pleasant Company Inclined Planes--Canal Boat Coaching Comfort PITTSBURG Railing through Forest, and Reflections CLEVELAND--Mud-walk To Sleep or not to Sleep CINCINNATI--Statistics and Education Porkopolis and Pigs A bloody Scene Ships at Marietta OHIO--Levee and Literature Embark on Steamer--Black Stewardess Ibrahim Pacha and Fat CHAPTER IX. _Scenes Ashore and Afloat_. FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS. Fabrication of the Republican Bonbon Wood Machinery A Nine-inside Coach Human Polecat Breakfast and Cigar _versus_ Foetor Ferry Crossing--Travelling Beasts Old Bell's and Old Bell Cross Country Drive--Scenery The Mammoth Cave Old Bell and the Mail Pleasant Companions Rural Lavatory Fat Boy and Circus Intelligence LOUISVILLE and Advice Ohio--A Bet at the Bar A Dinner Scene and a Lady Dessert and Toothpicks Evening Recreation CAIRO--Its Prospects ST. LOUIS--Its Prosperity CHAPTER X. _River Scenes_. FROM ST. LOUIS TO NEW ORLEANS. MISSISSIPPI--Good-natured Weakness Mississippi _v_. Missouri Stale Anecdote revived Marriage Certificate Folly--Description of Steamer Inspection Farce described Corporal Punishment--Illustration Captain of Mizen Top _v_. White Nigger Scenery Mississippi--Good night Screecher & Burster--A Race Captain leaves us Bed--Alarm--Wreck Brutal Heartlessness River Wreckers NEW ORLEANS Wrecks, Causes and Remedies Anecdotes of Blood CHAPTER XI. _New Orleans_. FROM NEW ORLEANS TO HAVANA. Situation and Bustle Cotton, Tobacco and Sugar Steamers, and Wages Streets, Hotels, &c A Friend in Need. Neighbourhood, Shell-road Society and Remarks Rough-and-Tumble--Lola Montez A Presbyterian Church The Gold Man Autocracy of the Police Law--Boys and Processions Duel Penalties--Stafford House Address Clubs Spanish Consul and Passport Parting Cadeau Pilot Dodge Purser Smith Sneezing Dangerous--Selecting a Companion HAVANA CHAPTER XII. _The Queen of the Antilles_. AT CUBA. Volante Lively Funeral A Light to a Cigar Evening Amusement Trip to MATANZAS--El Casero Slave Plantation Sugar Making Luxuriant Vegetation Punic Faith and Cuban Cruelty H.M.S. "Vestal" Bribery Admiralty Wisdom Cigars and Manufactory Population--Chinese Laws of Domicile--Police and Slavery Increase of Slaves and Produce Tobacco, Games, and Lotteries Cuban Jokes Sketch of Governors The Future of Cuba? CHAPTER XIII. _Change of Dynasty_. FROM CUBA TO BALTIMORE. KEY POINT Vulgar Hebrew CHARLESTON, WASHINGTON Night and Morning Congress and Inauguration General Jackson and Changes Cabmen and City Shopman and Drinking Levees and Buildings BALTIMORE and Terrapin The Drama Progress--Fire Companies CHAPTER XIV. _Philadelphia and Richmond_. FROM BALTIMORE TO RICHMOND. PHILADELPHIA and Hospitality. Streets--Mint Gerard College High School A Jail and a Cure for the Turbulent Lunatic Asylum NEW YORK and Embark A Wild Paddy CHARLESTON Arrival Hotel and Hospitality Climate and Buildings Commercial Prosperity Fire Companies Miniature WEST POINT (_Vide_ Note) WILMINGTON Railway Accident PETERBOROUGH and my Hat RICHMOND Scenery and Prosperity Powhattan's Tree, an Episode A Lady Friend Fire and Folly Monkey Boy Gerymander Fire Company, Frolic and Reflections CHAPTER XV. _From a River to a Race-course_. FROM RICHMOND TO NEW YORK. Down the River WILLIAMSBURG. Old Palace A Governor and a Paddy The College Uncle Ben and his Inn Reflections SHIRLEY, Hospitality, &c. BEANDON, Hospitality, &c. Rural Election--A Cruise in a Calm Choral Warblers and Family Altar NORFOLK, Dockyard, &c. Slave Servants, a Hint to the Foreign Office _Via_ BALTIMORE to PHILADELPHIA--A Confession. Race--Mac and Tac NEW YORK CHAPTER XVI. _Home of the Pilgrim Fathers_. FROM NEW YORK TO BOSTON. Off by rail--Foxhunting Fire BOSTON. Buildings and Hospitality Neighbourhood and Names The Drama Spirit-rapping and Gulls CHAPTER XVII. _Teaching of Youth and a Model Jail_. AT BOSTON. Pilgrim Fathers Education--Expenditure--Regulations, &c. Phonetic System A Model Jail--Telegraph and Fire--Dockyard Water Supply, Prosperity, &c. CHAPTER XVIII. _Canada_. FROM BOSTON TO QUEBEC. Railroad and Scenery MONTREAL, and a Welcome Face Gavazzi--Excitement--Mob, &c. QUEBEC and Neighbourhood Mrs. Paul and Miss Paddy Ferry-boat and Friends Rebellion Losses Bill Moral Courage and Administrative Ability evidenced and acknowledged Hint for Militia Canadian Government CHAPTER XIX. _A Trip to the Uttáwa_. FROM QUEBEC TO TORONTO. Mr. Hincks--Mr. Drummond--MONTREAL Up the OTTAWAY to LACHINE, ST. ANNE'S to BYTOWN and AYLMER The CHATS FALLS Canadian Highlanders Conflagration, Rafts, Lumberers, and Teetotallers The Struggle, the Goal, and the Return AYLMER Prosperity BYTOWN. Scenery and Advantages Slides for Lumber--Mr. Mackay Object of Councillor's Visit Drive across Country PRESCOTT and OGDENSBURG KINGSTON LAKE ONTARIO and a Nice Bed TORONTO CHAPTER XX. _Colonial Education and Prosperity_. AT TORONTO. TORONTO. Population, Prosperity and Buildings The Normal School Education generally Canadian Prospects and Prosperity CHAPTER XXI. _A Cataract and a Celebration_. FROM TORONTO TO NEW YORK. Embark in Steamer QUEENSTOWN & LEWISTOWN A Drive, a Bait, and a Lesson NIAGARA and Moonlight BATAVIA, GENESEO, and 4th July Hawking Carriages--ROCHESTER ALBANY--Hands and Sandwiches Dropped outside--NEW YORK CHAPTER XXII. _Education, Civil and Military_. NEW YORK AND WEST POINT. Free Academy WEST POINT. Military Academy Anecdote, &c. NEW YORK * * * * * Here travelling ceases, and the remaining Chapters are devoted to the discussion of subjects which I trust may interest the reader. CHAPTER XXIII. _Watery Highways and Metallic Intercourse_. Area of Lakes, and Tonnage thereon Mississippi--Produce borne and destroyed Mr. Douglas and Custom Houses A Great Party Doctrine Erie Canal--Barn-burners and Hunkers Railways--United States and England Telegraph Systems of Telegraph CHAPTER XXIV. _America's Press and England's Censor_. Issues of the Press Wonderful Statistics Character of the Press Great Britain's Press Low Literature of America Barefaced Robbery--_Northwood_ Specimen _English Items_ Specimen The Author of _English Items_ SUBJECTS EXTRACTED:-- Relations with England Sixpenny Miracles Army Commissions--English Writers American Spitting Holy Places English Friends Original Sin English Manners English Church and Heraldry Devotion to Dinner Conclusion Subsequent Career of Mr. Ward--The Offence--The Scene and the Death Acquittal and Effects CHAPTER XXV. _The Institution of Slavery_. Original Guilt Northern Fanatics Irritation produced Northern Friendship questioned Grounds of Southerners' Objections to the Abolitionists English Abolitionists Mrs. Stowe's Ovation Treatment of Slaves Irresponsible Power and Public Opinion Sources of Opinion as to Treatment of Slaves--Law--Self-interest Christianity Habit Causes of Indignation Recrimination Evidence from Authors--Press and Canada Review of Progress of Slavery Slave Population and Value Question of Freedom CHAPTER XXVI. _Hints for Master and Hopes for Slave_. PROPOSALS. Free Soil Fugitive Law Territory of Refuge TREATMENT DISCUSSED. Corporal Punishment Forfeiture and Testimony System for Ultimate Freedom The Blackest Feature in Slavery VISIONARY DEPUTATION Inveterate Slaveholder Touchy Slaveholder, and Swaggering Bully Clerical Slave Advocate Amiable Planter Recriminator Abolitionist and Intelligent Slaveholder A frightful Question Closing Observations Nebraska--The Christian and the Mussulman CHAPTER XXVII. _Constitution of the United States_. Plan Proposed Government and Qualification for Office Elective Franchise Frequency of Elections Ballot Effects of Elections under the Ballot Remedy proposed John Randolph, Sydney Smith, and Clubs Payment of Members and its Effects Scene in Congress The Judiciary Exclusion of Cabinet from Seats Power of President Election of President Governors of States, and Power of Pardon Conclusion and Testimony of Bishop Hopkins CHAPTER XXVIII. _The Church, the School, and the Law_. Church Statistics American Episcopal Prayer-Book Methodist Episcopacy and Presbyterian Music What exists at Home Ismite Convention Education Statistics and College Expenses Pray read this--Law for Conveyance of Land CHAPTER XXIX. _Inventions and Inveighings_. What is a Bay? Dr. King--Fulton and Steam Telegraph and American Modesty Reaping Machine Opinion of a Borderer American Ingenuity Fire-arms and Militia CHAPTER XXX. _Adverse Influences_. The 4th July Mr. Douglas and Congress Miss Willard and John Mitchell Who are the Antipathists? CHAPTER XXXI. _Olla Podrida_. American Vanity American Sensitiveness American Morals Territory and Population Effect of Early Education Phases of Liberty Strikes Intelligence Energy 'Cuteness and Eggs Enterprise--Lord-hunting Hospitality--Political Parties Know-nothings The Future My Endeavour My Warning Lord Holland, Hope, and Farewell NOTES. EXTENT OF TELEGRAPH IN THE UNITED KINGDOM A SHORT SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF FIRE-ARMS FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: "THE INQUIRING MIND WEARIES NOT IN THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE." ANTONIO PEREZ. (_Translation_)] EXPLANATORY LIST OF PLATES. VIGNETTE OF THE ENTRANCE TO A COFFEE PLANTER'S RESIDENCE RAILWAY CARRIAGE LOCOMOTIVE CUTTER YACHT "MARIA" The following are the dimensions referred to in the text as being on the original engraving:-- Tonnage by displacement 137 tons Length on deck 110 feet Breadth of beam 26-1/2 " Depth of hold 8-1/4 " Length of mast 91 " Length of boom 95 " Length of gaff 50 feet Length of jibboom 70 " Length of bowsprit on board 27 " Diameter of bowsprit 24 in. Diameter of boom 26 in. MAP OF CROTON AQUEDUCT This map is accurately copied from Mr. Schramke's scientific work, but the reader is requested to understand that the lines drawn at right angles over the whole of Manhattan Island represent what the city of New York is intended to be. At present its limits scarcely pass _No. 1. Distributing Reservoir_. STEWARDESS OF THE "LADY FRANKLIN" This print may possibly be a little exaggerated. A MISSISSIPPI STEAMER This print is raised out of all proportion, for the purpose of giving a better idea of the scenes on board, than the limits of the sheet would otherwise have permitted. If the cabin on the deck of the Hudson River steamer were raised upon pillars about 15 or 20 feet high, it would convey a tolerably accurate impression of the proper proportions. THE NEW ST. CHARLES HOTEL, NEW ORLEANS EL CASERO, OR THE PARISH HAWKER IN CUBA THE GERARD COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA NORMAL SCHOOL, TORONTO A great portion of the ground adjoining is now given up to agricultural experimental purposes. HUDSON RIVER STEAMER, 1200 TONS The dimensions are:-- Length 325 feet Breadth 38 " Depth of hold 11 " Width of cylinder. 5 ft. 10 in. Length of stroke. 14 feet Diameter of wheel. 40 " MAP OF THE UNITED STATES A CHAPTER, _Gratis and Explanatory_. What is the use of a preface? Who wants a preface? Nay, more--what is a preface? Who can define it? That which it is most unlike is the mathematical myth called a point, which may be said to have neither length nor breadth, and consequently no existence; whereas a preface generally has extreme length, all the breadth the printer can give it, and an universal existence. But if prefaces cannot be described with mathematical accuracy, they admit of classification with most unmathematical inaccuracy. First, you have a large class which may be called CLAIMERS. Ex.: One claims a certain degree of consideration, upon the ground that it is the author's first effort; a second claims indulgence, upon the ground of haste; a third claims attention, upon the ground of the magnitude and importance of the subject, &c. &c. Another large class may be termed MAKERS. Ex.: One makes an excuse for tediousness; a second makes an apology for delay; a third makes his endeavours plead for favourable reception, &c. Then again you have the INTERROGATOR, wherein a reader is found before the work is printed, convenient questions are put into his mouth, and ready replies are given, to which no rejoinder is permitted. This is very astute practice.--Then again there is the PUFFER AND CONDENSER, wherein, if matter be wanting in the work, a prefacial waggon is put before the chapteral pony, the former acting the part of pemican, or concentrated essence, the latter representing the liquid necessary for cooking it; the whole forming a _potage au lecteur_, known among professional men as "soldier's broth." My own opinion on this important point is, that a book is nothing more nor less than a traveller; he is born in Fact or Fancy; he travels along a goose-quill; then takes a cruise to a printer's. On his return thence his health is discovered to be very bad; strong drastics are applied; he is gradually cooked up; and when convalescent, he puts on his Sunday clothes, and struts before the public. At this critical juncture up comes the typish master of the ceremonies, Mr. Preface, and commences introducing him to them; but knowing that both man and woman are essentially inquisitive, he follows the example of that ancient and shrewd traveller who, by way of saving time and trouble, opened his address to every stranger he accosted, in some such manner as the following:--"Sir, I am Mr. ----, the son of Mr. ----, by ----, his wife and my mother. I left ---- two days ago. I have got ---- in my carpet-bag. I am going to ---- to see Mr. ----, and to try and purchase some ----." Then followed the simple question for which an answer was wanted, "Will you lend me half-a-crown?" "Tell me the road;" "Give me a pinch of snuff;" or "Buy my book," as the case might be. The stranger, gratified with his candour, became immediately prepossessed in his favour. I will endeavour to follow the example of that 'cute traveller, and forestall those questions which I imagine the reader--if there be one--might wish to ask. 1. Why do I select a subject on which so many abler pens have been frequently and lately employed?--Because it involves so many important questions, both socially and politically, in a field where the changes are scarcely less rapid than the ever-varying hues on the dying dolphin; and because the eyes of mankind, whether mental or visual, are as different as their physiognomies; and thus those who are interested in the subject are enabled to survey it from different points of view. 2. Do I belong to any of those homoeopathic communities called political parties?--I belong to none of them; I look upon all of them as so many drugs in a national apothecary's shop. All have their useful qualities, even the most poisonous; but they are frequently combined so injudiciously as to injure John Bull's health materially, especially as all have a strong phlebotomizing tendency, so much so, that I often see poor John in his prostration ready to cry out, "Throw Governments to the dogs--I'll none of them!" If in my writings I appear to show on some points a political bias, it is only an expression of those sentiments which my own common sense[B] and observation have led me to entertain on the subject under discussion, and for which I offer neither defence nor apology. 3. Am I an artist?--No; I am an author and a plagiarist. Every sketch in my book is taken from some other work, except the "Screecher," which is from the artistic pen of Lady G.M.; and the lovely form and features of the coloured sylph, for which I am indebted to my friend Mr. J.F.C.--You must not be too curious.--I consider myself justified in plagiarizing anything from anybody, if I conceive it will help to elucidate my subject or amuse my reader, provided always I have a reasonable ground for believing the source is one with which the general reader is not likely to be acquainted. But when I do steal, I have the honesty to confess it. 4. What is my book about?--It treats of an island, a confederacy and a colony; and contains events of travel, facts and thoughts concerning people, telegraphs, railroads, canals, steam, rivers, commercial prosperity, education, the Press, low literature, slavery, government, &c. &c. 5. What security can I offer for the pretensions advanced being made good?--None whatever. Who takes me, must take me, like a wife, "for better for worse," only he is requested to remember I possess three distinct advantages over that lady.--First, you can look inside me as well as out: Secondly, you can get me more easily and keep me more cheaply: Thirdly, if you quarrel with me, you can get a divorce in the fire-place or at the trunkmaker's, without going to the House of Lords. I trust I have now satisfied all the legitimate demands of curiosity. I will only further remark that in some of my observations upon, the United States, such as travelling and tables-d'hôte, the reader must bear in mind that in a land of so-called equality, whenever that principle is carried out, no comparison can be drawn accurately between similar subjects in the Republic and in England. The society conveyed in one carriage in the States embraces the first, second, and third-class passengers of Great Britain; and the society fed at their tables-d'hôte contains all the varieties found in this country, from the pavilion to the pot-house. If we strike a mean between the extremes as the measure of comfort thus obtained, it is obvious, that in proportion as the traveller is accustomed to superior comforts in this country, so will he write disparagingly of their want in the States, whereas people of the opposite extreme will with equal truth laud their superior comforts. The middle man is never found, for every traveller either praises or censures. However unreasonable it might be to expect the same refinements in a Republic of "Equal rights," as those which exist in some of the countries of the Old World under a system more favourable to their development, it is not the less a traveller's duty to record his impressions faithfully, leaving it to the reader to draw his own conclusions. It was suggested to me to read several works lately published, and treating of the United States; but as I was most anxious to avoid any of that bias which such reading would most probably have produced, I have strictly avoiding so doing, even at the risk of repeating what others may have said before. I have nothing further to add in explanation.--The horses are to.--The coach is at the door.--Chapter one is getting in.--To all who are disposed to accompany me in my journey, I say--Welcome! H.A.M. D 4, ALBANY, LONDON, _1st June, 1855_. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote B: Perhaps "human instinct" might be a more modest expression.] CHAPTER I. _"Make ready ... Fire!" The Departure._ The preparations for the start of a traveller on a long journey are doubtless of every variety in quality and quantity, from the poor Arab, whose wife carries his house as well as all his goods--or perhaps I should rather say, from Sir Charles Napier of Scinde with his one flannel waistcoat and his piece of brown soap--up to the owners of the Dover waggon-looking "_fourgon_" who carry with them for a week's trip enough to last a century. My weakness, reader, is, I believe, a very common one, i.e., a desire to have everything, and yet carry scarce anything. The difficulties of this arrangement are very perplexing to your servant, if you have one, as in my case. First you put out every conceivable article on the bed or floor, and then with an air of self-denial you say, "There, that will be enough;" and when you find an additional portmanteau lugged out, you ask with an air of astonishment (which may well astonish the servant), "What on earth are you going to do with that?" "To put your things into it, sir," is the very natural, reply; so, after a good deal of "Confound it, what a bore," &c., it ends in everything being again unpacked, a fresh lot thrown aside, and a new packing commenced; and believe me, reader, the oftener you repeat this discarding operation, the more pleasantly you will travel. I speak from experience, having, during my wanderings, lost everything by shipwreck, and thus been forced to pass through all the stages of quantity, till I once more burdened myself as unnecessarily as at starting. It was a lovely September morning in 1852, when, having put my traps through the purging process twice, and still having enough for half-a-dozen people, I took my place in the early train from Euston-square for Liverpool, where I was soon housed in the Adelphi. A young American friend, who was going out in the same steamer on the following morning, proposed a little walk before the shades of evening closed in, as he had seen nothing of the city. Off we started, full of intentions never to be realized: I stepped into a cutler's shop to buy a knife; a nice-looking girl in the middle of her teens, placed one or two before me; I felt a nudge behind, and a voice whispered in my ear, "By George, what a pretty hand!" It was perfectly true; and so convinced was my friend of the fact, that he kept repeating it in my ear. When my purchase was completed, and the pretty hand retired, my friend exhibited symptoms of a strong internal struggle: it was too much for him. At last he burst out with, "Have you any scissors?"--Aside to me, "What a pretty little hand!"--Then came a demand for bodkins, then for needles, then for knives, lastly for thimbles, which my friend observed were too large, and begged might be tried on her taper fingers. He had become so enthusiastic, and his asides to me were so rapid, that I believe he would have bought anything which those dear little hands had touched. Paterfamilias, who, while poring over his ledger, had evidently had his ears open, now became alarmed at the reduction that was going on in his stock, and consequently came forward to scrutinize the mysterious purchaser. I heard a voice muttering "Confound that old fellow!" as the dutiful daughter modestly gave place to papa; a Bank of England tenner passed from my friend's smallclothes to the cutler's small till, and a half-crown _vice versa_. When we got to the door it was pitch dark; and thus ended our lionizing of the public buildings of Liverpool. On the way back to the hotel, as my companion was thinking aloud, I heard him alternately muttering in soft tones, "What a pretty hand," and then, in harsh and hasty tones, '"Confound," ... "crusty old fellow;" and reflecting thereon, I came to the conclusion that if the expressions indicated weakness, they indicated that pardonable civilizing weakness, susceptibility to the charms of beauty; and I consequently thought more kindly of my future fellow-traveller. In the evening we were joined by my brother and a young officer of the Household Brigade, who were to be fellow-passengers in our trip across the Atlantic. Early morning witnessed a procession of hackney coaches, laden as though we were bent on permanent emigration. Arrived at the quay, a small, wretched-looking steamer was lying alongside, to receive us and our goods for transport to the leviathan lying in mid-channel, with her steam up ready for a start. The operation of disposing of the passengers' luggage in this wretched little tea-kettle was amusing enough in its way. Everybody wanted everybody else's traps to be put down, below, and their own little this, and little that, kept up: one group, a man, wife, and child, particularly engaged my attention; the age of the child, independent of the dialogue, showed that the honeymoon was passed. WIFE.--"Now, William, my dear, _do_ keep that little box up!" HUSBAND.--"Hi! there; keep that hat-box of mine up!" (_Aside_,) "Never mind your box, my dear, _it_ wont hurt." WIFE.--"Oh, William, there's my little cap-box going down! it will be broken, in pieces." HUSBAND.--"Oh! don't be afraid, my dear, they'll take care of it. Stop, my man, that's my desk; give it me here," &c. &c. The dialogue was brought to a sudden stop by the frantic yell of the juvenile pledge of their affections, whose years had not yet reached two figures; a compact little iron-bound box had fallen on his toe, and the poor little urchin's pilliloo, pilliloo, was pitiful. Mamma began hugging and kissing, while papa offered that handy consolation of, "Never mind, that's a good boy; don't cry." In the meantime, the Jacks had profited by the squall, and, when it ceased, the happy couple had the satisfaction of seeing all their precious boxes buried deep in the hold. The stream of luggage having stopped, and the human cargo being all on board, we speedily cast off our lashings, and started: fortunately, it was fine weather, for, had there been rain, our ricketty tea-kettle would have afforded us no protection whatever. On reaching the leviathan, the passengers rushed up hastily, and, armed with walking-sticks or umbrellas, planted themselves like sentries on the deck. As the Jacks came tumbling up with the luggage, shouts of "Hi! that's mine," rent the air; and if Jack, in the hurry and confusion, did not attend to the cry, out would dart one or other with umbrella or stick, as the case might be, and harpoon him under the fifth rib; for, with a heavy burden on his head and shoulders, necessarily supported by both hands, defence was impossible. I must say, Jack took it all in good humour, and filing a bill "STOMACH _v_. RIBS," left it to Old Neptune to obtain restitution for injuries inflicted on his sons. I believe those who have once settled their accounts with that sea-deity are not more anxious to be brought into his court again, than those who have enjoyed the prolonged luxury of a suit in Chancery. Everything must have an end; so, the mail agent arriving with his postal cargo, on goes the steam, and off goes the "Africa," Captain Harrison. "Some wave the hand, and some begin to cry, Some take a weed, and nodding, say good-bye." I am now fairly off for New York, with a brother and two friends; we have each pinned our card to the red table-cover in the saloon, to indicate our permanent positions at the festive board during the voyage. Unless there is some peculiarity in arrangement or circumstance, all voyages resemble each other so much, that I may well spare you the dullness of repetition. Stewards will occasionally upset a soup-plate, and it will sometimes fall inside the waistcoat of a "swell," who travelling for the first time, thinks it requisite to "get himself up" as if going to the Opera. People under the influence of some internal and irresistible agency, will occasionally spring from the table with an energy that is but too soon painfully exhausted, upsetting a few side dishes as their feet catch the corner of the cloth. Others will rise, and try to look dignified and composed, the hypocrisy whereof is unpleasantly revealed ere they reach the door of the saloon; others eat and drink with an ever-increasing vigour, which proves irresistibly the truth of the saying, "_L'appétit vient en mangeant_." Heads that walked erect, puffing cigars like human chimneys in the Mersey, hang listless and 'baccoless in the Channel (Mem., "Pride goes before a fall"). Ladies, whose rosy cheeks and bright eyes, dimmed with the parting tear, had, as they waved the last adieu, told of buoyant health and spirits, gather mysteriously to the sides of the vessel, ready for any emergency, or lie helpless in their berths, resigning themselves to the ubiquitous stewardess, indifferent even to death itself. Others, again, whose interiors have been casehardened by Old Neptune, patrol the deck, and, if the passengers are numerous, congratulate each other in the most heartless manner by the observation, "There'll be plenty of room in the saloon, if this jolly breeze continues!" All these things are familiar to most travellers, suffice it, therefore, to say, that on the present occasion Old Neptune was in a good humour, "the jolly breeze" did not last long, nor was it ever very jolly. My American friend and the Household Brigade-man tried very hard to make out that they felt sick at first, but I believe I succeeded in convincing them that it was all imagination, for they both came steadily to meals, and between them and my brother, who has the appetite of a Pawnee when at sea, I found that a modest man like myself got but "monkey's allowance" of the champagne which I had prescribed as a medicine, erroneously imagining that those internal qualms usually produced by a sea voyage would have enabled me to enjoy the lion's share. We saw nothing during the voyage but a few strange sail and a couple of icebergs, the latter very beautiful when seen in the distance, with the sea smooth as a mirror, and the sun's rays striking upon them. I felt very thankful the picture was not reversed; the idea of running your nose against an iceberg, in the middle of a dark night, with a heavy gale blowing and sea running, was anything but pleasant. In due time we made Cape Race. I merely mention the fact for the purpose of observing that the captain, and others to whom I have spoken since, unanimously agree in condemning the position of the lighthouse; first, as not being placed on the point a vessel from Europe would make, inasmuch as that point is further north and east; and secondly, because vessels coasting northwards are not clear of danger if they trend away westward after passing the light. There may be some advantages to the immediate neighbourhood, but, for the general purposes of navigation, its position is a mistake, and has, on more than one occasion, been very nearly the cause of the wreck of one of our large steamers[C]. Early on the morning of the tenth day I heard voices outside my cabin saying, "Well, they've got the pilot on board," _ergo_, we must be nearing our haven. In the Channel at home you know a pilot by a foul-weather hat, a pea-coat, broad shoulders, and weather-beaten cheeks; here, the captain had told me that I could always know them by a polished beaver and a satin or silk waistcoat. When I got on deck, sure enough there was the beaver hat and the silk vest, but what struck me most, was the wearer, a slim youth, hardly out of his teens. In the distance, the New York pilot-boat, a build rendered famous by the achievements of the "America," at Cowes, lay on the water like a duck, with her canvas white as snow, and taut as a deal board. The perfect ease and nonchalance of the young pilot amused me immensely, and all went on smoothly enough till the shades of evening closed in upon us; at which time, entering the Narrows, the satin-vested youth felt himself quite nonplused, despite his taking off his beaver, and trying to scratch for knowledge; in short, had it not been for Captain Harrison, who is a first-rate seaman and navigator, as all who ever sail with him are ready to testify, we might have remained out all night: fortunately, his superior skill got us safe in, and no easy task I assure you is it, either to find the channel, or to thread your way through hosts of shipping, in one of these leviathan steamers. I confess I formed a very low estimate of New York pilots, which was not heightened by one of the mates showing me an embossed card, with his address, which our pilot had presented to him, accompanied with an invitation to come to a _soirée_. As the mystery was subsequently solved, I had better give you the solution thereof at once, and not let the corps of New York pilots lie under the ban of condemnation in your minds as long as they did in mine. It turned out that the pert little youth was not an authorized pilot, but merely schooling for it; and that, when the steamer hove in sight, the true pilots were asleep, and he would not allow them to be called, but quietly slipped away in the boat, and came on board of us to try his 'prentice hand; the pilots of New York are, I believe, a most able and efficient body of men. Here I am, reader, at New York, a new country, a new hemisphere, and pitch dark, save the lights reflected in the water from the town on either side. All of a sudden a single toll of a bell, then another, and from the lights in the windows you discover a large wooden house is adrift. On inquiry, you ascertain it is merely one of their mammoth ferry-boats; that is something to think of, so you go to bed at midnight, and dream what it will really look like in the morning. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote C: I believe another lighthouse is to be erected on the proper headland.] CHAPTER II. _The Land of Stars and Stripes._ The sun had aired the opening day before I appeared on deck. What a scene! There was scarce a zephyr to ripple the noble Hudson, or the glorious bay; the latter, land-locked save where lost in the distant ocean; the former skirted by the great Babylon of America on one side, and the lovely wooded banks of Hoboken on the other. The lofty western hills formed a sharp yet graceful bend in the stream, round which a fleet of small craft, with rakish hulls and snowy sails, were stealing quietly and softly, like black swans with white wings; the stillness and repose were only broken by the occasional trumpet blast of some giant high-pressure steamer, as she dashed past them with lightning speed. Suddenly a floating island appeared in the bend of the river; closer examination proved it to be a steamer, with from twenty to twenty-five large boats secured alongside, many of them laden at Buffalo, and coming by the Erie Canal to the ocean. Around me was shipping of every kind and clime; enormous ferry-boats radiating in all directions; forests of masts along the wharves; flags of every colour and nation flying; the dingy old storehouses of the wealthy Wall-street neighbourhood, and the lofty buildings of the newer parts of the town; everything had something novel in its character, but all was stamped with go-aheadism. This glorious panorama, seen through the bright medium of a rosy morn and a cloudless sky, has left an enjoyable impression which time can never efface. But although everything was strange, I could not feel myself abroad, so strong is the power of language. Taking leave of our worthy and able skipper, we landed on the soil of the giant Republic at Jersey city, where the wharves, &c., of the Cunard line are established, they not having been able to procure sufficient space on the New York side. The first thing we ran our heads against was, of course, the Custom-house; but you must not imagine, gentle reader, that a Custom-house officer in America is that mysterious compound of detective police and high-bred ferret which you too often meet with in the Old World. He did not consider it requisite to tumble everything out on the floor, and put you to every possible inconvenience, by way of exhibiting his importance; satisfied on that point himself, he impressed you with it by simple courtesy, thus gaining respect where the pompous inquisitive type of the animal would have excited ill-will and contempt. Thank heaven, the increased inter-communication, consequent upon steam-power, has very much civilized that, until lately, barbarian portion of the European family; nor do I attempt to deny that the contiguity of the nations, and the far greater number of articles paying duty, facilitating and increasing smuggling, render a certain degree of ferretishness a little more requisite on the part of the operator, and a little more patience requisite on the part of the victim. A very few minutes polished our party off, and found us on board of the ferry-boat; none of your little fiddling things, where a donkey-cart and an organ-boy can hardly find standing-room, but a good clear hundred-feet gangway, twelve or fourteen feet broad, on each side of the engine, and a covered cabin outside each gangway, extending half the length of the vessel; a platform accommodating itself to the rise and fall of the water, enables you to drive on board with perfect ease, while the little kind of basin into which you run on either side, being formed of strong piles fastened only at the bottom, yields to the vessel as she strikes, and entirely does away with any concussion. I may here add, that during my whole travels in the States, I found nothing more perfect in construction and arrangement than the ferries and their boats, the charges for which are most moderate, varying according to distances, and ranging from one halfpenny upwards. It is difficult to say what struck me most forcibly on landing at New York; barring the universality of the Saxon tongue, I should have been puzzled to decide in what part of the world I was. The forest of masts, and bustle on the quays, reminded me of the great sea-port of Liverpool: but scarce had I left the quays, when the placards of business on the different stories reminded me of Edinburgh. A few minutes more, and I passed one of their large streets, justly called "Avenues," the rows of trees on each side reminding me of the _Alamedas_ in the Spanish towns; but the confusion of my ideas was completed when the hackney coach was brought to a standstill, to allow a huge railway carriage to cross our bows, the said carriage being drawn by four horses, and capable of containing fifty people. At last, with my brain in a whirl, I alighted at Putnam's hotel, where my kind friend, Mr. W. Duncan, had prepared rooms for our party; nor did his zeal in our behalf stop here, for he claimed the privilege of being the first to offer hospitality, and had already prepared a most excellent spread for us at the far-famed _Café Delmonico_, where we found everything of the best: oysters, varying from the "native" size up to the large American oyster, the size of a small leg of Welsh mutton--mind, I say a small leg--the latter wonderful to look at, and pleasant to the taste, though far inferior to the sweet little "native." Here I saw for the first time a fish called "the sheep's head," which is unknown, I believe, on our side of the Atlantic. It derives its name from having teeth exactly like those of a sheep, and is a most excellent fish wherewith to console themselves for the want of the turbot, which is never seen in the American waters. Reader, I am not going to inflict upon you a bill of fare; I merely mention the giant oyster and the sheep's head, because they are peculiar to the country; and if nearly my first observations on America are gastronomic, it is not because I idolize my little interior, though I confess to having a strong predilection in favour of its being well supplied; but it is because during the whole time I was in the United States,--from my friend D., who thus welcomed me on my arrival, to Mr. R. Phelps, in whose house I lived like a tame cat previous to re-embarking for old England,--wherever I went I found hospitality a prominent feature in the American character. Having enjoyed a very pleasant evening, and employed the night in sleeping off the fumes of sociability, I awoke, for the first time, in one of the splendid American hotels; and here, perhaps, it may be as well to say a few words about them, as their enormous size makes them almost a national peculiarity. The largest hotel in New York, when I arrived, was the Metropolitan, in the centre of which is a theatre; since then, the St. Nicholas has been built, which is about a hundred yards square, five stories high, and will accommodate, when completed, about a thousand people. Generally speaking, a large hotel has a ladies' entrance on one side, which is quite indispensable, as the hall entrance is invariably filled with smokers; all the ground floor front, except this hall and a reading-room, is let out as shops: there are two dining-saloons, one of which is set apart for ladies and their friends, and to this the vagrant bachelor is not admitted, except he be acquainted with some of the ladies, or receive permission from the master of the house. The great entrance is liberally supplied with an abundance of chairs, benches, &c., and decorated with capacious spittoons, and a stove which glows red-hot in the winter. Newspapers, of the thinnest substance and the most microscopic type, and from every part of the Union, are scattered about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied--groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps. Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted legs dangling over the back of one chair, while the owner thereof is supporting his centre of gravity on another. One feature is common to them all--busy-ness; whether they are talking, or reading, or cracking nuts, a peculiar energy shows the mind is working. Further inside is the counter for the clerks who appoint the rooms to the travellers, as they enter their names in a book; on long stools close by is the corps of servants, while in full sight of all stands the "Annunciator," that invaluable specimen of American mechanical ingenuity, by which, if any bell is pulled in any room, one loud stroke is heard, and the number of the room disclosed, in which state it remains until replaced; so that if everybody had left the hall, the first person returning would see at once what bells had been rung during his absence, and the numbers of the rooms they belonged to. Why this admirable contrivance has not been introduced into this country, I cannot conceive. The bar is one of the most--if not the most--important departments in the hotel; comparatively nothing is drunk at dinner, but the moment the meal is over, the bar becomes assailed by applicants; moreover, from morning to midnight, there is a continuous succession of customers; not merely the lodgers and their friends, but any parties passing along the street, who feel disposed, walk into the bar of any hotel, and get "a drink." The money taken at a popular bar in the course of a day is, I believe, perfectly fabulous. Scarcely less important than the bar is the barber's shop. Nothing struck me more forcibly than an American under the razor or brush: in any and every other circumstance of life full of activity and energy, under the razor or brush he is the picture of indolence and helplessness. Indifferent usually to luxury, he here exhausts his ingenuity to obtain it; shrinking usually from the touch of a nigger as from the venomed tooth of a serpent, he here is seen resigning his nose to the digital custody of that sable operator, and placing his throat at his mercy, or revelling in titillary ecstasy from his manipulations with the hog's bristles;--all this he enjoys in a semi-recumbent position, obtained from an easy chair and a high stool, wherein he lies with a steadiness which courts prolongation--life-like, yet immoveable--suggesting the idea of an Egyptian corpse newly embalmed. Never shaving myself more than once a fortnight, and then requiring no soap and water, and having cut my own hair for nearly twenty years, I never thought of going through the experiment, which I have since regretted; for, many a time and oft have I stood, in wonder, gazing at this strange anomaly of character, and searching in vain for a first cause. The barber's shop at the St. Nicholas is the most luxurious in New York, and I believe every room has its own brush, glass, &c., similarly numbered in the shop. The crowning peculiarity of the new hotels is "The Bridal Chamber;" the want of delicacy that suggested the idea is only equalled by the want of taste with which it is carried out. Fancy a modest girl, having said "Yes," and sealed the assertion in the solemn services of the Church, retiring to the bridal chamber of the St. Nicholas! In the first place, retiring to an hotel would appear to her a contradiction in terms; but what would be her feelings when she found the walls of her apartment furnished with fluted white silk and satin, and in the centre of the room a matrimonial couch, hung with white silk curtains, and blazing with a bright jet of gas from each bed-post! The doors of the sleeping-rooms are often fitted with a very ingenious lock, having a separate bolt and keyhole on each side, totally disconnected, and consequently, as they can only be opened from the same side they are fastened, no person, though possessed of a skeleton key, is able to enter. The ominous warning, "Lock your door at night," which is usually hung up, coupled with the promiscuous society frequently met in large hotels, renders it most advisable to use every precaution. Many hotels have a Bible in each bed-room, the gift of some religious community in the city; those that I saw during my travels were most frequently from the Presbyterians. Having given you some details of an American first-class hotel in a large city, you will perhaps be better able to realize the gigantic nature of these establishments when I tell you that in some of them, during the season, they consume, in one way and another, DAILY, from fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds of meats, and from forty-five to fifty pounds of tea, coffee, &c., and ice by the ton, and have a corps of one hundred and fifty servants of all kinds. Washing is done in the hotel with a rapidity little short of marvellous. You can get a shirt well washed, and ready to put on, in nearly the same space of time as an American usually passes under the barber's hands. The living at these hotels is profuse to a degree, but, generally speaking, most disagreeable: first, because the meal is devoured with a rapidity which a pack of fox-hounds, after a week's fast, might in vain attempt to rival; and, secondly, because it is impossible to serve up dinners for hundreds without nine-tenths thereof being cold. The best of the large hotels I dined at in New York, as regards _cuisine_, &c., was decidedly the New York Hotel; but by far the most comfortable was the one I lived in--Putnam's, Union-square--which was much smaller and quite new, besides being removed from the racket of Broadway. The increased intercourse with this country is evidently producing a most improving effect in many of the necessary and unmentionable comforts of this civilized age, which you find to predominate chiefly in those cities that have most direct intercourse with us; but as you go further west, these comforts are most disagreeably deficient. One point in which the hotels fail universally is attendance; it is their misfortune, not their fault; for the moment a little money is realized by a servant, he sets up in some business, or migrates westward. The consequence is, that the field of service is left almost entirely to the Irish and the negro, and between the two--after nearly a year's experience thereof--I am puzzled to say in whose favour the balance is. I remember poor Paddy, one morning, having answered the Household Brigade man's bell, was told to get some warm water. He went away, and forgot all about it. Of course, the bell rang again; and, on Paddy answering it, he was asked-- "Did I not tell you to get me some warm water?" "You did, your honour." "Then, why have you not brought it?" "Can't tell, your honour." "Well, go and get it at once." Paddy left the room, and waited outside the door scratching his head. In about a quarter of an hour a knock was heard:-- "Come in!" Paddy's head appeared, and, with a most inquiring voice, he said-- "Is it warm water to dhrink you want, your honour?" _Ex uno_, &c. Another inconvenience in their hotels is the necessity of either living at the public table, or going to the enormous expense of private rooms; the comfort of a quiet table to yourself in a coffee-room is quite unknown. There is no doubt that sitting down at a table-d'hôte is a ready way to ascertain the manners, tone of conversation, and, partly, the habits of thought, of a nation, especially when, as in the United States, it is the habitual resort of everybody; but truth obliges me to confess that, after a very short experience of it, I found the old adage applicable, "A little of it goes a great way;" and I longed for the cleanliness, noiselessness, and comfort of an English coffee-room, though its table be not loaded with equal variety and profusion. The American system is doubtless the best for the hotelkeeper, as there are manifest advantages in feeding masses at once, over feeding the same number in detail. A mess of twenty officers, on board a man-of-war, will live better on two pounds each a month than one individual could on three times that sum. It is the want of giving this difference due consideration which raises, from time to time, a crusade against the hotels at home, by instituting comparisons with those of the United States. If people want to have hotels as cheap as they are in America, they must use them as much, and submit to fixed hours and a mixture of every variety of cultivation of mind and cleanliness of person--which change is not likely, I trust, to take place in my day. It is a curious fact, that when the proprietor of the Adelphi, at Liverpool--in consequence of a remonstrance made by some American, gentlemen as to his charges--suggested to them that they should name their own hour and dine together, in which case his charges would be greatly diminished, they would not hear of such a thing, and wanted to know why they should be forced to dine either all together, or at one particular hour. An American gentleman, with whom I am acquainted, told me that, when he first came over to England, the feeling of solitude, while breakfasting alone, at his table in Morley's coffee-room, was quite overpowering. "Now," he added, "I look forward to my quiet breakfast and the paper every morning with the greatest pleasure, and only wonder how I can have lived so long, and been so utterly ignorant of such simple enjoyment." I have thought it better to make these observations thus early, although it must be obvious they are the results of my subsequent experience, and I feel I ought to apologize for their lengthiness. There is comparatively little difficulty in finding your way about New York, or, indeed, most American towns, except it be in the old parts thereof, which are as full of twists, creeks, and names as our own. The newer part of the town is divided into avenues running nearly parallel with the Hudson; the streets cross them at right angles, and both are simply numbered; the masses of buildings which these sections form are very nearly uniform in area, and are termed blocks. The great place for lounging, or loafing, as they term it--is Broadway, which may be said to bisect New York longitudinally; the shops are very good, but, generally speaking, painfully alike, wearying the eye with sameness, when the novelty has worn off: the rivalry which exists as to the _luxe_ of fitting up some of these shops is inconceivable. I remember going into an ice-saloon, just before I embarked for England; the room on the ground-floor was one hundred and fifty feet long by forty broad; rows of pillars on each side were loaded to the most outrageous extent with carving and gilding, and the ceiling was to match; below that was another room, a little smaller, and rather less gaudy; both were crowded with the most tag-rag and bob-tail mixture of people. The houses are built of brick, and generally have steps up to them, by which arrangement the area receives much more light; and many people with very fine large houses live almost exclusively in these basements, only using the other apartments for some swell party: the better class of houses, large hotels, and some of the shops, have their fronts faced with stone of a reddish brown, which has a warm and pleasant appearance. The famous "Astor House" is faced with granite, and the basement is of solid granite. The most remarkable among the new buildings is the magnificent store of Mr. Stewart--one of the largest, I believe, in the world: it has upwards of one hundred and fifty feet frontage on Broadway, and runs back nearly the same distance: is five stories high, besides the basement; its front is faced with white marble, and it contains nearly every marketable commodity except eatables. If you want anything, in New York, except a dinner, go to Stewart's, and it is ten to one you find it, and always of the newest kind and pattern; for this huge establishment clears out every year, and refills with everything of the newest and best. Goods are annually sold here to the amount of upwards of a million sterling--a sum which I should imagine was hardly exceeded by any establishment of a similar nature except Morison's in London, which, I believe, averages one and a half million. Some idea of the size of this store may be formed, from the fact that four hundred gas burners are required to light it up. Mr. Stewart, I was informed, was educated for a more intellectual career than the keeper of a store, on however grand a scale; but circumstances induced him to change his pursuits, and as he started with scarce any capital, the success which has attended him in business cannot but make one regret that the world has lost the benefit which might have been anticipated from the same energy and ability, if it had been applied to subjects of a higher class. I will now offer a few observations on the state of the streets. The assertion has been made by some writer--I really know not who--that New York is one of the dirtiest places in the world. To this I must give a most unqualified denial. No person conversant with many of the large provincial towns in England and Scotland, can conscientiously "throw a very large stone" at New York; for though much is doing among us to improve and sweeten--chiefly, thanks to the scourge of epidemics--I fear that in too many places we are still on this point "living in glass houses." Doubtless, New York is infinitely dirtier than London, as London at present is far less clean than Paris has become under the rule of the Third Napoleon. I fully admit that it is not so clean as it should be, considering that the sum nominally spent on cleansing the streets amounts to very nearly sixty thousand pounds a year, a sum equal to one pound for every ten inhabitants; but the solution of this problem must be looked for in the system of election to the corporation offices, on which topic I propose to make a few observations in some future portion of these pages. While on the subject of streets, I cannot help remarking that it always struck me as very curious that so intelligent a people as the Americans never adopted the simple plan of using sweeping carts, which many of their countrymen must have seen working in London. If not thoroughly efficient, their ingenuity might have made them so; and, at all events, they effect a great saving of human labour. But there is a nuisance in the streets of New York, especially in the lower and business part of the town, which must be palpable to every visitor--I mean the obstructions on the pavement; and that, be it observed, in spite of laws passed for the prevention thereof, but rendered nugatory from maladministration. In many places, you will see a man occupying the whole pavement opposite his store with leviathan boxes and bales, for apparently an indefinite period, inasmuch as I have seen the same things occupying the same place day after day, and forcing every passer-by off the pavement. This information may console some of our own communities who are labouring under the gnawing and painful disease of a similar corrupt and inefficient administration. Amid the variety of shops, the stranger cannot fail to be struck with the wonderful number of oyster-saloons stuck down on the basement, and daguerreotypists perched in the sky-line: their name is legion; everybody eats oysters, and everybody seems to take everybody else's portrait. To such an extent is this mania for delineating the 'human face divine' carried, that a hatter in Chatham-street has made no small profit by advertising that, in addition to supplying hats at the same price as his rivals, he will take the portrait of the purchaser, and fix it inside thereof gratis. This was too irresistible; so off I went, and, selecting my two dollar beaver on the ground-floor, walked up to a six foot square garret room, where the sun did its work as quick as light, after which the liberal artist, with that flattering propensity which belongs to the profession, threw in the roseate hues of youth by the aid of a little brick-dust. I handed him my dust in return, and walked away with myself on my head, where myself may still be daily seen, a travelled and travelling advertisement of Chatham-street enterprise. Our American friends deal largely in newspaper puffs, and as some of them are amusing enough, I select the following as specimens of their "Moses and Son" style:-- ANOTHER DREADFUL ACCIDENT.--OH, MA! I MET WITH A DREADFUL ACCIDENT!--The other night, while dancing with cousin Frank, I dropped my Breastpin and Ear-Ring on the floor and broke them all to pieces--Never mind, my dear. Just take them to ---- Jewellery Store. You can get them made as good as new again! GRATIFYING NEWS.--We have just learned, with real pleasure, that the _seedy_ young man who sprained his back whilst trying to "raise the wind" is fast recovering, in consequence of judiciously applying the Mustang Liniment. It is to be hoped he will soon be entirely cured, and that the next time he undertakes it, he will take an _upright_ position, and not adopt the _stooping_ posture. This precaution, we have no doubt, will ensure success. This Liniment can be had of ----. Even, marriage and death are not exempt from the fantastic advertising style. On Friday, June 10, by the Rev. Mr. ----, after a severe and long-protracted courtship, which they bore with Christian fortitude and resignation, solely sustained and comforted, under all misgivings, by their sincere and confiding belief in the promise of a rich, and living inheritance in another state, Mr. ---- to Miss ----, all of this city. On April 4, of congestion of the brain, F---- E----, son of J---- and M---- C. D----, aged fourteen months. His remains were taken to G---- for interment yesterday. List! heard you that angel say, As he waved his little wing, "Come, Freddy, come away, Learn of me a song to sing!" The most gigantic advertiser--if the _New York Daily Sun_ is to be trusted for information--is Professor Holloway, so well known in this country. According to that paper, he advertises in thirteen hundred papers in the United States, and has expended, in different parts of the world, the enormous sum of nearly half a million sterling, solely for that purpose. But, reader, there are more interesting objects to dwell upon than these. If you will only "loaf" up and down Broadway on a fine afternoon, you will see some of the neatest feet, some of the prettiest hands, some of the brightest eyes, and some of the sweetest smiles the wildest beauty-dreamer ever beheld in his most rapturous visions; had they but good figures, they would excite envy on the Alamedas of Andalusia; in short, they are the veriest little ducks in the world, and dress with Parisian perfection. No wonder, then, reader, when I tell you that "loafing" up and down Broadway is a favourite occupation with the young men who have leisure hours to spare. So attractive did my young friend of the Household Brigade find it, that it was with difficulty he was ever induced to forego his daily pilgrimage. Alas! poor fellow, those days are gone--he has since been "caught," and another now claims his undivided adoration. CHAPTER III. _Sights and Amusements_. There is a very pleasant yacht club at New York, the festive assembly whereof is held at Hoboken. Having received a hospitable invite, I gladly availed myself of it, and, crossing the Hudson, a short walk brought me and my chaperon to the club-house--no palatial edifice, but a rustic cottage, with one large room and a kitchen attached, and beautifully situated a few yards from the water's edge, on the woody bank of Hoboken, and on one of the most graceful bends of the river. It commands a splendid view, while perfectly cozy in itself, and is, "par excellence," the place for a pic-nic. The property belongs to Commodore Stevens, who is well known to English yachting gentlemen, not only from his having "taken the shine out of them" at Cowes, but also for his amiability and hospitality. On my arrival, I found a host of bachelors, and wedded men _en garçon_, ready to greet me with a hearty welcome. The room was very comfortable, but as unfurnished as those who like to smoke could desire; in fact, barring the table and its burden, the chairs and their occupiers, the remainder of the furniture consisted of models of all the yachts of the club. The only exception was that of the Commodore's triumphant "Black Maria," of which extraordinary vessel I purpose speaking more fully hereafter. One of the peculiar customs of the club is, that two members, whose capabilities are beyond dispute, are appointed, one to make the soup, called "chowder," the other the punch--or "toddy," as it is here termed,--both of these being excellent in their way, and different in many respects from any similar article at home. The proper recipe for the same shall be forthcoming when I give details of the "Black Maria." Our party was a very jovial one, as I think parties generally are when composed of those who are much _on_ the water. Such people naturally look upon a leak as very lubberly and unprofessional, and therefore scrupulously avoid letting _in_ any water, supplying its place with something more cheery, under the enlivening influence whereof, those who would be puzzled to decide whether a hand-organ was playing "Hail, Columbia!" or "Pop goes the Weasel," lose all false modesty as to their musical powers, and become royally (I beg majesty's pardon) vocal. Choruses receive the additional charm of variety from each vocalist giving his tongue "universal suffrage" as to power, matter, and melody; everybody evinces a happy independence, and if, as the chorus is beginning, an unlucky wight finds his cigar just going out, he takes a few puffs to save the precious fire, and then starts off Derby pace to catch up his vocal colleagues, blending ten notes into one in his frantic chase. To any one who delights in the opera, this description might suggest a slight idea of discord, but to one who has enjoyed a midshipman's berth it recals some of the cheeriest days of his life; as I heard the joyous shouts, I felt my grey lank hairs getting black and curly again (?). Do not imagine this merry scene was the produce of any excess; we were as sober as judges, though we felt their gravity would have been out of place; but when some choice spirit--and there was more than one such--with the soul of melody in him, took the field, we left him to make all the running himself, and smoked our cigars with increased vigour, shrouding him in the curling cloud to prevent any nervous hesitation. Everything, however, must have an end, and as the hour for the last ferry-boat was fast approaching, the voice of melody was hushed in the hall, to echo through the groves of Hoboken and o'er the waters of the Hudson, as we strolled from the club-house to the ferry, and thence to bed. Among other "lions" to be seen, my curiosity was excited by the news of a trotting match, to come off at Long Island: some friend was ever ready, so off we started for Brooklyn Ferry, whence we went by railway. In the olden time these races were as fashionable at New York as Ascot or Epsom are in England; all the _élite_ of both sexes filled the stand, and the whole scene was lively and gay. Various circumstances, which all who know the turf are aware it is liable to, rendered gentlemen so disgusted with it at Long Island, that they discontinued sending horses to run, and gradually gave up going themselves, and it is now left all but entirely to the "rowdies,"--_alias_ mob. The railway carriage into which we got contained about forty of these worthies, all with cigars in their mouths, and exhibiting many strange varieties of features and costume. In the passage up and down the middle of the carriage; ragged juvenile vendors of lollipops and peanuts kept patrolling and crying out their respective goods, for which they found a ready market; suddenly another youth entered, and, dispensing a fly-leaf right and left as he passed along to each passenger, disappeared at the other door. At first, I took him for an itinerant advertiser of some Yankee "Moses and Son," or of some of those medicinal quacks who strive to rob youth by lies calculated to excite their fears. Judge my astonishment, then, when on looking at the paper, I found it was hymns he was distributing. A short ride brought us close to the course, and, as I alighted, there was the active distributor freely dispensing on every side, everybody accepting, many reading, but all hurrying on to the ground. Having paid a good round sum as entrance to the stand, I was rather disappointed at nearly breaking my neck, when endeavouring to take advantage of my privilege, for my foot well-nigh went through a hole in the flooring. Never was anything more wretched-looking in this world. It was difficult to believe, that a few years back, this stand had been filled with magnates of the "upper ten thousand" and stars of beauty: there it was before me, with its broken benches, scarce a whole plank in the floor, and wherever there was one, it was covered with old cigar stumps, shells of peanuts, orange-peel, &c. When, however, I found that seven people constituted the number of spectators in the stand, its dilapidation was more easily explained, especially when I discovered that access, with a little activity, was easily obtainable at the sides _gratis_--a fact soon proved by the inroad of a few "rowdies," and the ubiquitous vendors of lollipops and peanuts, headed by the persevering distributor of hymns. Let us turn now from the dreary stand to the scene below. The race-course is a two-mile distance, perfectly level, on a smooth and stoneless road, and forming a complete circle--light trotting waggons are driving about in the centre, taking it easy at sixteen miles an hour; outside are groups of "rowdies." making their hooks and looking out for greenhorns--an article not so readily found at Long Island as at Epsom. The race is to be "under the saddle," and the long list of competitors which had been announced has dwindled down to the old and far-famed Lady Suffolk and the young and unfamed Tacony. A stir among the "rowdies" is seen, followed by the appearance "on the boards" of Lady Suffolk. I gazed in wonder as I saw her--a small pony-looking animal--moving her legs as though they were in splints, and as if six miles an hour was far beyond her powers; soon after, Tacony came forward, the picture of a good bony post-horse, destitute of any beauty, but looking full of good stuff. The riders have no distinctive dress; a pair of Wellington boots are pulled on outside the trousers, sharp spurs are on the heels--rough and ready looking birds these. The winning-post is opposite the stand, the umpire is there with a deal board in his hand, a whack on the side of the stand "summons to horse," and another summons to "start." The start is from the distance-post, so as to let the horses get into the full swing of their pace by the time they reach the winning-post, when, if they are fairly up together, the cry "Off" is given; if it be not given, they try again. When speaking of the time in which the mile is completed, the fact of its commencing at full speed should always be borne in mind: sometimes false starts are made by one party, on purpose to try and irritate the temper of the adversary's horse; and in the same way, if a man feels he has full command of his own horse, he will yell like a wild Indian, as he nears his adversary, to make him "break up"--or go into a gallop; and, as they are all trained to speed more by voice than by spur, he very often succeeds, and of course the adversary loses much ground by pulling up into a trot again. On the present occasion there was no false start; the echo of the second whack was still in the car as they reached the winning-post neck and neck. "Off" was the word, and away they went. It certainly was marvellous to see how dear old Lady Suffolk and her stiff legs flew round the course; one might have fancied she had been fed on lightning, so quick did she move them, but with wonderfully short steps. Tack, on the contrary, looked as if he had been dieted on India-rubber balls: every time he raised a hind leg it seemed to shoot his own length a-head of himself; if he could have made his steps as quick as the old lady, he might have done a mile in a minute nearly. Presently, Tacony breaks up, and, ere he pulls into a trot, a long gap is left. Shouts of "Lady Suffolk, Lady Suffolk wins!" rend the air; a few seconds more, and the giant strides of Tacony lessen the gap at every step: they reach the distance-post neck and neck; "Tacony wins!" is the cry, and true enough it is--by a length. Young blood beats old blood--India-rubber balls "whip" lightning. Time, five minutes. The usual excitement and disputing follow, the usual time elapses--whack number one is heard, all ready--whack number two, on they come, snaffle bridles, pulling at their horses' mouths as though they would pull the bit right through to the tips of their tails. "Off" is the cry: away they go again; Tacony breaks up--again a gap, which huge strides speedily close up--again Tacony wins. Time, five minutes five seconds. All is over, rush to the cars, &c. Remarks:--first, the pace is at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour; second, the clear old lady, who was only beaten by a length, is long out of her teens; is it not wonderful, and is she not glorious in her defeat? Fancy Dowager Lady L---- taking a pedestrian fit, and running a race along Rotten Row with some "fast young man;" what would you say, if she clutched his coat-tail as he touched the winning-post? Truly, that dear old Lady Suffolk is a marvellous quadruped. Reader, as you do not care to go back again with the Rowdies and Co., we will suppose ourselves returned to New York, and I can only hope you have not been bored with your day's amusement. Among the extraordinary fancies of this extraordinary race--who are ever panting for something new, even if it be a new territory--the most strange is the metallic coffin: the grave is no protection against their mania for novelty. In the windows of a shop in Broadway, this strange, and to my mind revolting, article may be seen, shaped like a mummy, fitting hermetically tight, and with a plate of glass to reveal the features of the inanimate inmate. I have certainly read of the disconsolate lover who, on the death of her who ungratefully refused to reciprocate his affection, disinterred her body by stealth, supplied himself with scanty provision, and embarking in a small boat, launched forth upon the wide waters, to watch her gradual decomposition till starvation found them one common grave. I also knew an officer, who, having stuffed an old and faithful dog, and placed him on the mantel-piece, when his only child died soon after, earnestly entreated a surgeon to stuff the child, that he might place it beside the faithful dog. Nevertheless, I cannot believe that such aberrations of human intellect are sufficiently frequent to make the Patent Metallic Coffin Company a popular or profitable affair. An important feature in a populous town is the means of conveyance, which here, in addition to hack cabs and omnibuses, includes railway carriages. I would observe, once for all, that the horses of America, as a whole, may be classed as enduring, wiry, and active hacks. You do not see anything to compare with some of the beautiful nags that "Rotten Row" or Melton exhibits; but, on the other hand, you rarely see the lumbering, lolloping, heavy brutes so common in this country. Then, again, a horse in this country is groomed and turned out in a style which I never saw in America, and therefore shows to much greater advantage, in spite of the Yankee sometimes ornamenting his head with hairs from his tail; while on the other hand, though an Englishman considers a pair of nags that will go a mile in five minutes a great prize, no man in America who is a horse fancier would look at a pair that could not do the same distance in four; nor would he think them worth speaking about, if they could not do the distance in a very few seconds over three minutes. On one side of the water, pace is almost the only object; on the other side, shape and appearance are weighty matters. The habits of the Americans being essentially gregarious, and business teaching the truism that a cent saved is a cent gained, hackney coaches are comparatively little used by the men; for it must be remembered that idlers in this country are an invisible minority of the community! The natural consequence is, that they are clean and expensive. The drivers are charmingly independent and undeniably free-and-easy birds, but not meaning to be uncivil. One of them showed his independence by asking two dollars one night for a three-mile drive home to the hotel. I inquired of the master, and found the proper charge was a dollar and a half; but, on my sending out the same, Jarvey was too proud to confess he was wrong, and, refusing the money, drove off--nor did I ever hear more of him. Their free-and-easiness can never be better exemplified than in the old anecdote told of so many people, from an ex-prince of France, downward; viz., the prince having ordered a hack cab, was standing at the door of the hotel, smoking his cigar, and waiting for its arrival. When Cabby drove up, judging from the appearance of the prince that he was "the fare," he said, "Are you the chap that sent for a cab?" And, being answered with an affirmative smile, he said, "Well, get in; I guess I'm the gentleman that's to drive you." The next means of conveyance to be spoken of is the omnibus. I was told by a friend who had made inquiries on the subject, that there were upwards of a thousand, and that they pay twenty-two per cent. They are infinitely better than ours, simply because they are broader: the most rotund embodiment of an alderman after a turtle-soup dinner, even if he had--to use the emphatic language of Mr. Weller--been "swellin' wisibly," could pass up the centre without inconvenience to the passengers on either side; and as a good dividend is a thing not to be despised, they do not employ a "cad" behind. The door shuts by a strap running along the roof, with a noose in the end, which Jehu puts on his foot. Any one wishing to alight pulls the strap; Jehu stops; and, poking his nose to a pigeon-hole place in the roof, takes the silver fare; and, slipping the noose, the door is open to the human "fare." Doubtless, this effects a very great saving, and, dispensing with a cad in this country might enable the fares to be lowered; but I question if there be not very many objections to our adopting the plan; and I should miss very much that personification of pertness and civility, with his inquisitive eye, and the eccentric and perpetual gyrations of his fore finger, which ever and anon stiffens in a skyward point, as though under the magic influence of some unseen electro-biologist whose decree had gone forth--"You can't move your finger, sir, you can't; no, you can't." I have only one grudge against the omnibuses in New York--and that is, their monopoly of Broadway, which would really have a very fine and imposing appearance were it not for them: they destroy all the effect, and you gradually begin to think it is the Strand grown wider, despite of the magnificent palaces, hotels, &c., which adorn it on each side. [Illustration: A RAILWAY CARRIAGE.] The last means of conveyance to be mentioned is the railway carriage, which--the city being built on a perfect flat--is admirably adapted for locomotion. The rails are laid down in a broad avenue on each side of Broadway, and the cars are drawn by horses, some two, some four. Those that are used for the simple town business have only two horses, and will hold about twenty-four passengers; the others run from the lower end of the town to a place where the engine is waiting for them outside. The town railway-car may be called a long omnibus, low on the wheels, broad, airy, and clean inside, and, excessively convenient for getting in and out. There is a break at both ends, one under the charge of Jehu, the other under the charge of the guard; so that, though trotting along at a good pace, they are very easily stopped. When they get to the end of the journey, the horses change ends, thus avoiding the necessity of any turning, the space required for which would have made a great difference in the expense. For a busy, bustling city, on a flat, it is unquestionably by far the best conveyance, on account of carrying so many, and being so handy for ingress and egress. There was a strong push made to get one laid down in Broadway, and corporation jobbery had nearly succeeded. For my own part, did I live in Broadway, if they would lay down a single line of rail, with shunters at intervals, to enable the cars to pass one another, and fix regular hours for running, I should infinitely prefer it to the unlimited army of omnibuses that now block up the street; but I fancy the interests of the latter are too deeply involved to be readily resigned. Before leaving the subject of railway carriages, I may as well give you a description of the travelling cars in ordinary use. They are forty-two feet long, nine and a half wide, from six to six and a half feet high, and carry from fifty to sixty passengers. Each seat is three feet four inches long, placed at right angles to the window, and has a reversible back. There is a passage through the centre of the car, between the rows of seats. In winter, a stove is always burning in each carriage; and in one of them there is generally a small room partitioned off, containing a water-closet, &c. A door is placed at each extremity, outside which there is a platform whereon the break is fixed. These carriages are supported at each end by four wheels, of thirty-three inches diameter, fitted together in a frame-work, and moving on a pivot, whereby to enable them to take more easily any sharp bend in the road. Their weight is from ten to twelve tons, and their cost from 400l. to 450l. sterling. The system of coupling adopted is alike rude and uncomfortable; instead of screwing the carriages tightly up against the buffers, as is the practice in England, they are simply hooked together, thus subjecting the passengers to a succession of jerks when starting, and consequently producing an equal number of concussions when the train stops. From the foregoing sketch, it will be seen that the narrowness of the seats is such as to prevent its two occupants--if of ordinary dimensions--from sitting together without rubbing shoulders. It will also be observed, that the passage through the centre of the carriages enables any one to pass with ease throughout the whole length of the train. This is a privilege of which the mercurial blood and inquisitive mind of the American take unlimited advantage, rendering the journey one continued slamming of doors, which, if the homoeopathic principle be correct, would prove an infallible cure for headache, could the sound only be triturated, and passed through the finest sieve, so as to reach the tympanum in infinitesimal doses. But, alas! it is administered wholesale, and with such power, that almost before the ear catches the sound, it is vibrating in the tendon Achilles. It is said by some, that salmon get accustomed to crimping; and I suppose that, in like manner, the American tympanum gets accustomed to this abominable clatter and noise. The luggage-van is generally placed between the carriages and the engine. And here it is essential I should make some observations with reference to the ticket system which is universally adopted in America. Every passenger is furnished with brass tickets, numbered, and a duplicate is attached to each article of luggage. No luggage is delivered without the passenger producing the ticket corresponding to that on the article claimed, the Company being responsible for any loss. This system is peculiarly suited to the habits of the American people, inasmuch as nine-tenths of them, if not more, upon arriving at the end of their journey, invariably go to some hotel; and as each establishment, besides providing an omnibus for the convenience of its customers, has an agent ready to look after luggage, the traveller has merely to give his ticket to that functionary, thus saving himself all further trouble. [Illustration: THE LOCOMOTIVE.] The last, but not the least important, object connected with railways, remains yet to be mentioned--viz., the locomotive. Its driving-wheels are generally six feet and a half in diameter, the cylinder is sixteen inches in diameter, and has a stroke of twenty-two inches. But the point to which I wish to call especial attention, is the very sensible provision made for the comfort of the engineer and stokers, who are thoroughly protected by a weather-proof compartment, the sides whereof, being made of glass, enable them to exercise more effective vigilance than they possibly could do if they were exposed in the heartless manner prevalent in this country. From my subsequent experience in the railway travelling of the United States, I am induced to offer the following suggestions for the consideration of our legislature. First, for the protection of the old, the helpless, or the desirous, an act should be passed, compelling every railway company to supply tickets for luggage to each passenger applying for them, provided that the said application be made within a given period previous to the departure of the train; this ticket to insure the delivery of the luggage at the proper station, and to the proper owner. Secondly, an act compelling railway companies to afford efficient protection from the weather to the engineer and stokers of every train, holding the chairman and board of directors responsible in the heaviest penalties for every accident that may occur where this simple and humane provision is neglected. Thirdly, an act requiring some system of communication between guard, passengers, and engineer. The following rude method strikes me as so obvious, that I wonder it has not been tried, until some better substitute be found. Let the guard's seat project in all trains--as it now does in some--beyond the carriages, thus enabling him to see the whole length of one side of the train; carry the foot-board and the hand-rail half way across the space between the carriages, by which simple means the guard could walk outside from one end of the train to the other, thus supervising everything, and gathering in the tickets _en route_, instead of inconveniencing the public, as at present, by detaining the train many minutes for that purpose.[D] Next, fit every carriage with two strong metal pipes, running just over the doors, and projecting a foot or so beyond the length of the carriage, the end of the pipe to have a raised collar, by which means an elastic gutta percha tube could connect the pipes while the carriages were being attached; a branch tube of gutta percha should then be led from the pipe on one side into each compartment, so that any passenger, by blowing through it, would sound a whistle in the place appropriated to the guard. On the opposite side, the pipes would be solely for communication between the guard and engine-driver. Should the length of any train be found too great for such communication, surely it were better to sacrifice an extra guard's salary, than trifle with human life in the way we have hitherto done. Each engine should have a second whistle, with a trumpet tone, similar to that employed in America, to be used in case of _danger_, the ordinary one being employed, as at present, only to give warning of approach. With these sagacious hints for the consideration of my countrymen, I postpone for the present the subject of railways, and, in excuse for the length of my remarks, have only to plead a desire to make railway travelling in England more safe, and my future wanderings more intelligible. I have much more to say with regard to New York and its neighbourhood; but not wishing to overdose the reader at once, I shall return to the subject in the pages, as I did to the place in my subsequent travels. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote D: This power of supervision, on the part of the guard, might also act as an effective check upon the operations of those swindling gamblers who infest many of our railroads--especially the express trains of the Edinburgh and Glasgow--in which, owing to no stoppage taking place, they exercise their villanous calling with comparative impunity.] CHAPTER IV. _A Day on the North River_. Early one fine morning in October, a four-seated fly might have been seen at the door of Putnam's hotel, on the roof of which was being piled a Babel of luggage, the inside being already full. Into another vehicle, our party--i.e., three of us--entered, and ere long both the carriages were on the banks of the river, where the steamer was puffing away, impatient for a start. The hawsers were soon cast off, and we launched forth on the bosom of the glorious Hudson, whose unruffled surface blazed like liquid fire beneath the rays of the rising sun. I purposely abstain from saying anything of the vessel, as she was an old one, and a very bad specimen. The newer and better class of vessel, I shall have to describe hereafter. On leaving New York, the northern banks of the river are dotted in every direction with neat little villas, the great want being turf, to which the American climate is an inveterate foe. Abreast of one of these villas, all around me is now smiling with peace and gladness; alas! how different was the scene but a few months previous; then, struggling bodies strewed the noble stream, and the hills and groves resounded with the bitterest cries of human agony, as one of the leviathan steamers, wrapped in a fierce and fiery mantle, hurried her living cargo to a burning or a watery grave. We had a motley collection of passengers, but were not overcrowded. Of course, there was a Paddy on board. Where can one go without meeting one of that migratory portion of our race! There he was, with his "shocking bad hat," his freckled face, his bright eye, and his shrewd expression, smoking his old "dudeen," and gazing at the new world around him. But who shall say his thoughts were not in some wretched hovel in the land of his birth, and his heart beating with the noble determination, that when his industry met its reward, those who had shared his sorrows in the crowded land of his fathers, should partake of his success in the thinly-tenanted home of his adoption. Good luck to you, Paddy, with all my heart! I was rather amused by a story I heard, of a newly-arrived Paddy emigrant, who, having got a little money, of course wanted a little whisky. On going to the bar to ask the price, he was told three-halfpence. "For how much?" quoth Paddy. The bottle was handed to him, and he was told to take as much as he liked. Paddy's joy knew no bounds at this liberality, and, unable to contain his ecstasy, he rushed to the door to communicate the good news to his companions, which he did in the following racy sentence: "Mike! Mike, my sowl! com' an' haf a dhrink--only thruppence for both of us, an' the botthel in yer own fisht!" One unfortunate fellow on board had lost a letter of recommendation, and was in great distress in consequence. I hope he succeeded in replacing it better than a servant-girl is said to have done, under similar circumstances, who--as the old story goes--having applied to the captain of the vessel, received the following doubtful recommendation at the hand of that functionary: "This is to certify that Kate Flannagan had a good character when she embarked at New York, but she lost it on board the steamer coming up. Jeremiah Peascod, Captain." The scenery of the Hudson has been so well described, and so justly eulogized, that I need say little on that score. In short, no words can convey an adequate impression of the gorgeousness of the forest tints in North America during the autumn. The foliage is inconceivably beautiful and varied, from the broad and brightly dark purple leaf of the maple, to the delicate and pale sere leaf of the poplar, all blending harmoniously with the deep green of their brethren in whom the vital sap still flows in full vigour. I have heard people compare the Hudson and the Rhine. I cannot conceive two streams more totally dissimilar--the distinctive features of one being wild forest scenery, glowing with ever-changing hues, and suggestive of a new world; and those of the other, the wild and craggy cliff capped with beetling fortresses, and banks fringed with picturesque villages and towns, all telling of feudal times and an old world. I should as soon think of comparing the castle of Heidelberg, on its lofty hill with Buckingham Palace, in its metropolitan hole.--But to return to the Hudson. In various places you will see tramways from the top of the banks down to the water; these are for the purpose of shooting down the ice, from the lakes and ponds above, to supply the New York market. The ice-houses are made on a slope, and fronting as much north as possible. They are built of wood, and doubled, the space between which--about a foot and a half--is filled with bark, tanned. In a bend of the river, I saw the indications of something like the forming of a dock, or basin; and, on inquiry, was told it was the work of a Company who imagined they had discovered where the famous pirate Kidd had buried his treasure. The Company found to their cost, that it was they who were burying their treasure, instead of Captain Kidd who had buried his; so, having realized their mare's-nest, they gave it up. One of the most beautiful "bits" on the Hudson is West Point; but, as I purpose visiting it at my leisure hereafter, I pass it by at present without further comment. There are every now and then, especially on the southern bank, large plots, which, at a distance, look exactly like Turkish cemeteries. On nearing them, you find that the old destroyer, Time, has expended all the soil sufficiently to allow the bare rock to peep through, and the disconsolate forest has retired in consequence, leaving only the funeral cypress to give silent expression to its affliction. Hark! what sound is that? Dinner! A look at the company was not as _appétissant_ as a glass of bitters, but a peep at the _tout-ensemble_ was fatal; so, patience to the journey's end. Accordingly, I consoled myself with a cigar and the surrounding scenery; no hard task either, with two good friends to help you. On we went, passing little villages busy as bees, and some looking as fresh as if they had been built over-night. At last, a little before dusk, Albany hove in sight. As we neared the wharf, it became alive with Paddy cabmen and porters of every age: the former, brandishing their whips, made such a rush on board when we got within jumping distance, that one would have thought they had come to storm the vessel. We took it coolly, allowing the rush of passengers to land first; and then, having engaged two "broths of boys" with hackney coaches, we drove up to the Congress Hall Hotel, where, thanks to our young American cicerone, we were very soon comfortably lodged, with a jolly good dinner before us. I may as well explain why it was thanks to our friend that we were comfortably lodged. 'Throughout the whole length and breadth of the Republic, the people are gregarious, and go everywhere in flocks; consequently, on the arrival of railway train or steamer, 'buses from the various hotels are always in waiting, and speedily filled. No sooner does the 'bus pull up, than a rush is made by each one to the book lying on the counter, that he may inscribe his name as soon as possible, and secure a bedroom. The duty of allotting the apartments generally devolves upon the head clerk, or chief assistant; but as, from the locomotive propensities of the population, he has a very extensive acquaintance, and knows not how soon some of them may be arriving, he billets the unknown in the most out-of-the-way rooms; for the run upon all the decent hotels is so great, that courtesy is scarce needed to insure custom. Not that they are uncivil; but the confusion caused by an arrival is so great, and the mass of travellers are so indifferent to the comfort or the attention which one meets with in a decent hotel in this country, that, acting from habit, they begin by roosting their guests, like crows, at the top of the tree. To obviate this inconvenience, I would suggest, for the benefit of future travellers, the plan I found on many occasions so successful myself, in my subsequent journeys; which is, whenever you are comfortably lodged in any hotel, to take a letter from the proprietor to the next you wish to stop at. They give it you most readily, and on many occasions I found the advantage of it. They all know one another; and in this way you might travel all through the Union. Dinner is over--the events of the day have been discussed 'mid fragrant clouds, and we are asleep in the capital of the State of New York. We were obliged to be astir early in the morning, so as to be in time for the railway; consequently, our lionizing of the city consisted chiefly in smoking a cigar at the front-door. The town is prettily situated on the banks of the Hudson, and at its confluence with the Erie canal. It is one of the few towns in the Republic which enjoys a Royalist name, having been called after the Duke of York and Albany, and is a very thriving place, with a steadily increasing population, already amounting to sixty thousand; and some idea of its prosperity may be formed from the fact of its receiving, by the Erie canal, annually, goods to the value of near six millions sterling. Some years ago it was scourged by an awful fire; but it has risen, like a phoenix, from its ashes, and profited materially by the chastisement. The chief objection I had to the town was the paving of the streets, which was abominable, and full of holes, any of them large enough to bury a hippopotamus, and threatening dislocation of some joint at every step; thus clearly proving that the contract for the paving was in the hands of the surgeons. On similar grounds, it has often occurred to me that the proprietors of the London cabs must be chiefly hatters. Our descent from the hotel to the railway station was as lively as that of a parched pea on a red-hot frying-pan, but it was effected without any injury requiring the assistance of the paving-surgeons, and by the time our luggage was ticketed the train had arrived: some tumbled out, others tumbled in; the kettle hissed, and off we went, the first few hundred yards of our journey being along the street. Not being accustomed to see a train going in full cry through the streets, I expected every minute to hear a dying squeak, as some of the little urchins came out, jumping and playing close to the cars; but they seem to be protected by a kind of instinct; and I believe it would be as easy to drive a train over a cock-sparrow as over a Yankee boy. At last we emerged from the town, and went steaming away merrily over the country. Our companions inside were a motley group of all classes. By good fortune, we found a spare seat on which to put our cloaks, &c., which was a luxury rarely enjoyed in my future travels, being generally obliged to carry them on my knee, as the American cars are usually so full that there is seldom a vacant place on which to lay them. Our route lay partly along the line of the Mohawk, on the banks of which is situated the lovely village of Rockton, or Little Falls, where the gushing stream is compressed between two beautifully wooded cliffs, affording a water-power which has been turned to good account by the establishment of mills. At this point the Erie canal is cut for two miles through the solid rock, and its unruffled waters, contrasting with the boiling river struggling through the narrow gorge, look like streams of Peace and Passion flowing and struggling side by side. As the "iron horse" hurries us onward, the ears are assailed, amid the wild majesty of Nature, with the puny cockneyisms of "Rome," "Syracuse," &c. Such absurdities are ridiculous enough in our suburban villas; but to find them substituted for the glorious old Indian names, is positively painful. Among other passengers in the train, was a man conspicuous among his fellows for clean hide and clean dimity; on inquiry, I was told he was a Professor. He looked rather young for a professorial chair, and further investigation confused me still more, for I found he was a _Professor of Soap_. At last, I ascertained that he had earned his title by going about the country lecturing upon, and exhibiting in his person, the valuable qualities of his detergent treasures, through which peripatetic advertisement he had succeeded in realizing dollars and honours. The oratory of some of these Professors is, I am told, of an order before which the eloquence of a Demosthenes would shrink abashed, if success is admitted as the test; for, only put them at the corner of a street in any town, and I have no fears of binding myself to eat every cake they do not sell before they quit their oratorical platform. The soapy orator quitted the train at Auburn, and soon after, the vandalism of "Rome" and "Syracuse" was atoned for by the more appropriate and euphonical old Indian names of "Cayuga" and "Canandaigua." On reaching the station of the latter, an old and kind friend to my brother, when he first visited America, was waiting to welcome us to his house, which was about a quarter of a mile distant, and a most comfortable establishment it proved, in every way. Our worthy host was a Scotchman by birth, and though he had passed nearly half a century in the United States, he was as thoroughly Scotch in all his ways as if he had just arrived from his native land; and while enjoying his hospitalities, you might have fancied yourself in a Highland laird's old family mansion. In all his kind attentions, he was most ably assisted by his amiable lady. Everything I had seen hitherto was invested with an air of newness, looking as if of yesterday: here, the old furniture and the fashion thereof, even its very arrangement, all told of days long bygone, and seemed to say, "We are heir-looms." When you went upstairs, the old Bible on your bedroom table, with its worn cover, well-thumbed leaves, and its large paper-mark, browned by the hand of Time, again proclaimed, "I am an heir-loom," and challenged your respect; and worthy companions they all were to mine host and his lady, who, while they warmed your heart with their cheerful and unostentatious hospitality, also commanded your respect by the way they dispensed it. The following day our route lay across country, out of the line of stage or rail; so a vehicle had to be got, which my young American cicerone, under the guidance of mine host, very soon arranged; and in due time, a long, slight, open cart, with the seats slung to the sides, drove to the door, with four neat greys, that might have made "Tommy Onslow's" mouth water. While they are putting in the luggage, I may as well give you a sketch of how the young idea is sometimes taught to shoot in this country. Time--early morning. Paterfamilias at the door, smoking a cigar--a lad of ten years of age appears. "I say, father, can I have Two-forty?[E] I want to go down to the farm, to see my cattle fed!" Scarce had leave been obtained, before a cry was heard in another quarter. "Hallo, Jemmy! what's the matter now? Wont Shelty go?" The youth so addressed was about six, and sitting in a little low four-wheeled carriage, whacking away at a Shetland-looking pony, with a coat, every hair of which was long enough for a horse's tail. The difficulty was soon discovered, for it was an old trick of Shelty to lift one leg outside the shaft, and strike for wages, if he wasn't pleased. "Get out, Jemmy, I'll set him right;" and accordingly, Shelty's leg was lifted inside, and Paterfamilias commenced lunging him round and round before the door. After a few circles he said, "Now then, Jemmy, get in again; he's all right now." The infant Jehu mounts, and of course commences pitching into Shelty, alike vigorously and harmlessly; off they go at score." "Where are you going, Jemmy?" "What--say--father?" No words are lost. "Where are you going, Jemmy?" "Going to get some turnips for my pigs;" and Jemmy disappeared in a bend of the road. On inquiry, I found Jemmy used often to go miles from home in this way, and was as well known in the neighbourhood as his father. On another occasion, I remember seeing three lads, the oldest about twelve, starting off in a four-wheeled cart, armed with an old gun. "Where are you going, there?" "To shoot pigeons." "What's that sticking out of your pocket?" "A loaded pistol;" and off they went at full swing. Thinks I to myself, if those lads don't break their necks, or blow their brains out, they will learn to take care of themselves; and I began to reflect whether this was the way they were taught to love independence. Now for a sketch of the other sex. Two horses come to the door side-saddled. Out rush, and on jump, two girls under twelve. Young Ten, upon his Two-forty, is the chaperon. "Take care!" says an anxious parent. "Oh, I'm not afraid, mother;" and away they go, galloping about the park as if they were Persians. My mind turned involuntarily homewards, and I drew a picture from life. A faithful nurse stands at the door; a young lady about twelve is mounting; a groom is on another horse, with a leading-rein strong enough to hold a line-of-battle ship in a gale of wind. The old nurse takes as long packing the young lady as if she were about to make a tour of the globe; sundry whispers are going on all the time, the purport of which is easily guessed. At last all excuses are exhausted, and off they go. The lady's nag jog-trots a little; the nurse's voice is heard--"Walk, walk, that's a dear! walk till you're comfortable in the saddle. William, mind you don't let go the rein; is it strong enough?" William smothers a laugh; the procession moves funereally, the faithful nurse watching it with an expression betokening intense anxiety. "Take care, that's a dear!" and then, as the object of her solicitude disappears among the trees, she draws a long sigh; a mutter is heard--"some accident" are the only words distinguishable; a bang of the door follows, and the affectionate nurse is--what?--probably wiping her eyes in the passage. Here are two systems which may be said to vary a little, and might require my consideration, were it not that I have no daughters, partly owing, doubtless, to the primary deficiency of a wife. At all events, I have at present no time for further reflections; for the waggon is waiting at the door, the traps are all in, and there stand mine host and his lady, as ready to speed the parting as they were to welcome the coming guest. A hearty shake of the hand, and farewell to Hospitality Hall. May no cloud ever shade the happiness of its worthy inmates! As we drive on, I may as well tell you that Canandaigua is a beautiful little village, situated on a slope descending towards a lake of the same name, and therefore commanding a lovely view--for when is a sheet of water not lovely? There are some very pretty little villas in the upper part of the village, which is a long broad street, with trees on either side, and is peopled by a cozy little community of about four thousand. Here we are in the open country. What is the first novelty that strikes the eye?--the snake fences; and a tickler they would prove to any hot-headed Melton gentleman who might try to sky over them. They are from six to seven feet high--sometimes higher--and are formed by laying long split logs one over another diagonally, by which simple process the necessity of nails or uprights is avoided; and as wood is dirt-cheap, the additional length caused by their diagonal construction is of no importance;--but, being all loose, they are as awkward to leap as a swing-bar, which those who have once got a cropper at, are not anxious to try again. It is at all times a cheery thing to go bowling along behind a spicy team, but especially so when traversing a wild and half-cultivated country, where everything around you is strange to the eye, and where the vastness of space conveys a feeling of grandeur; nor is it the less enjoyable when the scenery is decked in the rich attire of autumn, and seen through the medium of a clear and cloudless sky. Then, again, there is something peculiarly pleasing while gazing at the great extent of rich timbered land, in reflecting that it is crying aloud for the stalwart arm of man, and pointing to the girdle of waving fields which surround it, to assure that stalwart arm that industry will meet a sure reward. Poverty may well hide her head in shame amid such scenes as these, for it can only be the fruit of wilful indolence. The farm cottages are all built of wood, painted white, and look as clean and fresh as so many new-built model dairies. The neat little churches, too, appeared as bright as though the painters had left them the evening before. And here I must remark a convenience attached to them, which it might be well to imitate in those of our own churches which are situated in out-of-the-way districts, such as the Highlands of Scotland, where many of the congregation have to come from a considerable distance. The convenience I allude to is simply a long, broad shed, open all one side of its length, and fitted with rings, &c., for tethering the horses of those who, from fancy, distance, age, or sickness, are unwilling or unable to come on foot. The expense would be but small, and the advantage great. Onward speed our dapper greys, fresh as four-year-olds; and the further we go, the better they seem to like it. The only bait they get is five minutes' breathing time, and a great bucket of water, which they seem to relish as much as if it were a magnum of iced champagne. The avenue before us leads into Geneseo, the place of our destination, where my kind friend, Mr. Wadsworth, was waiting to welcome us to his charming little country-place, situated just outside the village. 'And what a beautiful place is this same Geneseo! But, for the present, we must discharge our faithful greys--see our new friends, old and young--enjoy a better bait than our nags did at the half-way house, indulge in the fragrant Havana, and retire to roost. To-morrow we will talk of the scenery. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote E: As a similar expression occurs frequently in this work, the reader is requested to remember that it is a common custom in America to name a horse according to the time in which he can trot a mile. The boy evidently had a visionary idea in his mind that the little hack he was asking permission to ride, had accomplished the feat of trotting a mile in two minutes and forty seconds.] CHAPTER V. _Geneseo_. It is a lovely bright autumn morning, with a pure blue sky, and a pearly atmosphere through which scarce a zephyr is stealing; the boughs of the trees hang motionless; my window is open; but, how strange the perfect stillness! No warbling note comes from the feathered tribe to greet the rising sun, and sing, with untaught voice, their Maker's praise; even the ubiquitous house-sparrow is neither seen nor heard. How strange this comparative absence of animal life in a country which, having been so recently intruded upon by the destroyer--man--one would expect to find superabundantly populated with those animals, against which he does not make war either for his use or amusement. Nevertheless, so it is; and I have often strolled about for hours in the woods, in perfect solitude, with no sound to meet the ear--no life to catch the eye. But I am wandering from the house too soon;--a jolly scream in the nursery reminds me that, at all events, there is animal life within, and that the possessor thereof has no disease of the lungs. Let us now speed to breakfast; for folk are early in the New World, and do not lie a-bed all the forenoon, thinking how to waste the afternoon, and then, when the afternoon comes, try and relieve the tedium thereof by cooking up some project to get over the _ennui_ of the evening. Whatever else you may deny the American, this one virtue you must allow him. He is, emphatically, an early riser; as much so as our own most gracious Sovereign, whose example, if followed by her subjects--especially some in the metropolis--would do more to destroy London hells, and improve London health, than the Legislature, or Sir B. Hall, and all the College of Surgeons, can ever hope to effect among the post-meridian drones. Breakfast was speedily despatched, and Senor Cabaños y Carvajal followed as a matter of course. While reducing him to ashes, and luxuriating in the clouds which proclaim his certain though lingering death, we went out upon the terrace before the house to wish good speed to my two companions who were just starting, and to enjoy a view of the far-famed vale of Genesee. Far as the eye could see, with no bounds save the power of its vision, was one wide expanse of varied beauty. The dark forest hues were relieved by the rich tints of the waving corn; neat little cottages peeped out in every direction. Here and there, a village, with its taper steeples, recalled the bounteous Hand "that giveth us all things richly to enjoy." Below my feet was beautifully undulating park ground, magnificently timbered, through which peeped the river, bright as silver beneath the rays of an unclouded sun, whose beams, streaming at the same time on a field of the rich-coloured pumpkin, burnished each like a ball of molten gold. All around was richness, beauty, and abundance. The descendant of a Wellington or a Washington, while contemplating the glorious deeds of an illustrious ancestor, and recalling the adoration of a grateful country, may justly feel his breast swelling with pride and emulation; but while I was enjoying this scene, there stood one at my side within whom also such emotions might be as fully and justly stirred--for there are great men to be found in less conspicuous, though not less useful spheres of life. A son who knew its history enjoyed with me this goodly scene. His father was the first bold pioneer. The rut made by the wheel of his rude cart, drawn by two oxen, was the first impress made by civilization in the whole of this rich and far-famed valley. A brother shared with him his early toils and privations; their own hands raised the log-hut--their new home in the wilderness. Ere they broke ground, the boundless forest howled around a stray party of Indians, come to hunt, or to pasture their flocks on the few open plots skirting the river: all else was waste and solitude. One brother died comparatively early; but the father of mine host lived long to enjoy the fruit of his labours. He lived to see industry and self-denial metamorphose that forest and its straggling Indian band into a land bursting with the rich fruits of the soil, and buzzing with a busy hive of human energy and intelligence. Yes; and he lived to see temple after temple, raised for the pure worship of the True God, supplant the ignorance and idolatry which reigned undisturbed at his first coming. Say, then, reader, has not the son of such a father just cause for pride--a solemn call to emulation? The patriarchal founder of his family and their fortunes has left an imperishable monument of his greatness in the prosperity of this rich vale; and Providence has blessed his individual energies and forethought with an unusual amount of this world's good things. "Honour and fame--industry and wealth," are inscribed on the banner of his life, and the son is worthily fighting under the paternal standard. The park grounds below the house bear evidence of his appreciation of the beauties of scenery, in the taste with which he has performed that difficult task of selecting the groups of trees requisite for landscape, while cutting down a forest; and the most cursory view of his library can leave no doubt that his was a highly-cultivated mind. I will add no more, lest I be led insensibly to trench upon the privacy of domestic life. I now propose to give a slight sketch of his farm, so as to convey, to those interested, an idea of the general system of agriculture adopted in the Northern States; and if the reader think the subject dull, a turn of the leaf will prove a simple remedy. The extent farmed is 2000 acres, of which 400 are in wood, 400 in meadow, 400 under plough, and 800 in pasture. On the wheat lands, summer fallow, wheat, and clover pasture, form the three years' rotation. In summer fallow, the clover is sometimes ploughed in, and sometimes fed off, according to the wants of the soil and the farm. Alluvial lands are cultivated in Indian corn from five to ten years successively, and then laid down in grass indeterminately from three to forty years. Wheat--sometimes broadcast, sometimes drilled--is put in as near as possible the 1st of September, and cut from the 10th to the 20th of July. Clover-seed is sown during March in wheat, and left till the following year. Wheat stubble is pastured slightly; the clover, if mowed, is cut in the middle of June; if pastured, the cattle are turned in about the 1st of May. Pumpkins are raised with the Indian corn, and hogs fattened on them; during the summer they are turned into clover pasture. Indian corn and pumpkins are planted in May, and harvested in October; the leaf and stalk of the Indian corn are cut up for fodder, and very much liked. Oats and barley are not extensively cultivated. The average crop of Indian corn is from fifty to sixty bushels, and of wheat, from twenty-five to thirty per acre. The pasture land supports one head to one and one-third acre. Grass-fattened cattle go to market from September to November, fetching 2-1/4d. per lb. live weight, or 4-1/2d. per lb. for beef alone. Cattle are kept upon hay and straw from the middle of November to 1st of May, if intended for fattening upon grass; but, if intended for spring market, they are fed on Indian corn-meal in addition. Sheep are kept on hay exclusively, from the middle of November to the 1st of April. A good specimen of Durham ox, three and a half years old, weighs 1500 lbs. live weight. The farm is provided with large scales for weighing hay, cattle, &c., and so arranged, that one hundred head can easily be weighed in two hours. No manure is used, except farm-pen and gypsum; the former is generally applied to Indian corn and meadow land. The gypsum is thrown, a bushel to the acre, on each crop of wheat and clover--cost of gypsum, ten shillings for twenty bushels. A mowing machine, with two or three horses and one man, can cut, in one day, twelve acres of heavy meadow land, if it stand up; but if laid at all, from six to ten. The number of men employed on the farm is, six for six months, twelve for three months, and twenty-five for three months. Ten horses and five yoke of oxen are kept for farm purposes. The common waggon used weighs eight hundredweight, and holds fifty bushels. Sometimes they are ten hundredweight, and hold one hundred and five bushels. The wages of the farm servants are:--For those engaged by the year, 2l. 10s. a month; for six months, 2l. 18s. 6d. a month; for three months, 3l. 11s. a month--besides board and lodging, on the former of which they are not likely to find their bones peeping through their skin. They have meat three times a day--pork five days, and mutton two days in the week--a capital pie at dinner; tea and sugar twice a day; milk _ad libitum_; vegetables twice a day; butter usually three times a day; no spirits nor beer are allowed. The meals are all cooked at the farm, and the overseer eats with the men, and receives from 75l. to 125l. a year, besides board and lodging for his family, who keep the farm-house. When every expense is paid, mine host netts a clear six per cent. on his farm, and I think you will allow that he may go to bed at night with little fear of the nightmare of a starving labourer disturbing his slumbers. Not that he troubles sleep much, for he is the nearest thing to perpetual motion I ever saw, not excepting even the armadillo at the Zoological Gardens, and he has more "irons in the fire" than there were bayonet-points before Sevastopol. The village contains a population of two thousand inhabitants, and consists of a few streets, the principal of which runs along a terrace, which, being a continuation of the one on which we were lately standing, commands the same lovely view. But, small as is the village, it has four churches, an academy, two banks, two newspaper offices, and a telegraph office. What a slow coach you are, John Bull! One day I was taking a drive with an amiable couple, who, having been married sixteen or seventeen years, had got well over the mysterious influences of honeymoonism. The husband was acting Jarvey, and I was inside with madame. The roads being in some places very bad, and neither the lady nor myself being feather-weight, the springs were frequently brought down upon one another with a very disagreeable jerk. The lady remonstrated: "John, I declare these springs are worn out, and the carriage itself is little better." "Now, Susan, what's the good of your talking that way; you know they are perfectly good, my dear." "Oh, John! you know what I say is true, and that the carriage has never been touched since we married." "My dear, if I prove to you one of your assertions is wrong, I suppose you will be ready to grant the others may be equally incorrect." "Well, what then?" said the unsuspecting wife. "Why, my dear, I'll prove to you the springs are in perfectly good order," said the malicious husband, who descried a most abominable bit of road ready for his purpose; and, suiting the action to the word, he put his spicy nags into a hand-canter. Bang went the springs together; and, despite of all the laws of gravitation, madame and I kept bobbing up and down, and into one another's laps. "Oh, John, stop! stop!" "No, no, my dear, I shall go on till you're perfectly satisfied with the goodness of the springs and the soundness of the carriage." Resistance was useless; John was determined, and the horses would not have tired in a week; so the victim had nothing for it but to cry _peccavi_, upon which John moderated his pace gradually, and our elastic bounds ceased correspondingly, until we settled once more firmly on our respective cushions; then John turned round, and, with a mixed expression of malice and generosity, said, "Well, my dear, I do think the carriage wants a new lining, but you must admit they are really good springs." And the curtain fell on this little scene in the drama of "Sixteen Years after Marriage." May the happy couple live to re-enact the same sixty years after marriage! Our drive brought us to the shore of Lake Canesus, and a lovely scene it was; the banks were in many places timbered to the water's edge by the virgin forest, now radiant with the rich autumnal tints; the afternoon sun shone forth in all its glory from a cloudless sky, on a ripp'less lake, which, like a burnished mirror, reflected with all the truthfulness of nature the gorgeous scene above; and as you gazed on the azure abyss below, it kept receding and receding till the wearied sight of the creature was lost in the fathomless depths of the work of his Almighty Creator. Who has not for the moment imagined that he could realise the infinity of space, as, when gazing at some bright star, he strives to measure the distance of the blue curtain spread behind, which, ever receding, so mocks the efforts of the ambitious eye, that its powers become bewildered in the unfathomable depths of immensity; but I am not sure whether such feelings do not come home to one more powerfully when the eye gazes on the same object through the medium of reflection;--for, as with the bounties of the Creator, so with the wonders of His creation--man is too prone to undervalue them in proportion to the frequency with which they are spread before him; and thus the deep azure vault, so often seen in the firmament above, is less likely to attract his attention and engage his meditations, than when the same glorious scene lies mirrored beneath his feet. This charming lake has comparatively little cultivation on its borders; two or three cottages, and a few cattle grazing, are the only signs that man is asserting his dominion over the wilderness. One of these cottages belongs to a member of the Wadsworth family, who owns some extent of land in the neighbourhood, and who has built a nice little boat for sailing about in the summer season. I may as well mention in this place, that the roofing generally used for cottages is a wooden tile called "shingle," which is very cheap--twelve-and-sixpence purchasing enough to cover a thousand feet. While driving about in this neighbourhood, I saw, for the first time, what is termed a "plank-road,"--a system which has been introduced into the United States from Canada. The method of construction is very simple, consisting of two stringers of oak two inches square, across which are laid three-inch planks eight feet long, and generally of hemlock or pine. No spiking of the planks into the stringers is required, and a thin layer of sand or soil being placed over all, the road is made; and, as the material for construction is carried along as the work progresses, the rapidity of execution is astonishing. When completed, it is as smooth as a bowling-green. The only objection I ever heard to these roads is, that the jarring sensation produced by them is very injurious to the horses' legs; but it can hardly be thought that, if the cart were up to the axle and the horse up to the belly-band in a good clay soil, any advantage would be derived from such a primitive state of things. Taking an average, the roads may be said to last from eight to ten years, and cost about £330 a mile. Those in Canada are often made much broader, so as to enable two vehicles to pass abreast, and their cost is a little above £400 a mile. The toll here is about three-farthings a mile per horse. They have had the good sense to avoid the ridiculous wheel-tollage to which we adhere at home with a tenacity only equalled by its folly, as if a two-wheeled cart, with a ton weight of cargo, drawn by a Barclay and Perkinser, did not cut up a road much more than the little four-wheel carriage of the clergyman's wife, drawn by a cob pony, and laden with a tin of soup or a piece of flannel for some suffering parishioner. But as our ancestors adopted this system "in the year dot, before one was invented," I suppose we shall bequeath the precious legacy to our latest posterity, unless some "Rebecca League," similar to Taffy's a few years since, be got up on a grand national scale, in which case tolls may, perhaps, be included in the tariff of free-trade. Until that auspicious event take place,--for I confess to an ever-increasing antipathy to paying any gate,--we might profit in some of our bleak and dreary districts by copying the simple arrangement adopted at many American tolls, which consists of throwing a covered archway over the road; so that if you have to unbutton half-a-dozen coats in a snow-storm to find a sixpence, you are not necessitated to button-in a bucketful of snow, which, though it may cool the body, has a very opposite effect on the temper. It is bad enough in England; but any one who wishes to enjoy it to perfection had better take a drive from Stirling, crossing the Forth, when, if he select his road happily, he may have the satisfaction of paying half-a-dozen tolls in nearly as many minutes, on the plea that this piece of ground, the size of a cocked-hat-box,--and that piece, the size of a cabbage-garden,--and so on, belong to different counties; and his amusement may derive additional zest if he be fortunate enough to find the same tollman there whom I met some years ago. When passing his toll in a driving snow-storm that penetrated even to the very marrow, I pulled up a few yards beyond the gate, upon which he came out very sulkily, took the half-crown I tendered him, and, walking deliberately back, placed the change on the post of the gate, and said,--"If ye want 'ut, ye may take 'ut; it's no my place to walk half a mile o' the road to gie folk their change;" after which courteous address he disappeared, banging his door to with a sound that fell on the ear very like "Put that in your pipe and smoke it." Precious work I had, with a heavy dog-cart, no servant, and a hack whose mouth was case-hardened. I would willingly have given it up; but I knew the brute (the man, not the horse) would very soon have got drunk upon it; so I persevered until I succeeded, and then went on my road full of thoughts which are, I fear, totally unfit to be committed to paper. Reader, I must ask you to forgive my wanderings on the banks of the Forth. I hasten back to Geneseo, and pack up ready for to-morrow's start, for the days I had spent with my kind host and his merry family had slipped by so pleasantly I had quite lost count of them. There was but one cloud to our enjoyment--one sad blank in the family group: my sister-in-law, in whose charming society I had fondly hoped to make my first visit to the scenes of her early youth, had been recently summoned to a better world; and the void her absence made in that family circle, of which she was both the radiating and the centring point of affection, was too deeply felt for aught but time ever to eradicate. CHAPTER VI. _Stirring Scenes and Strange Sights_. My host having kindly lent me his carriage and a pair of wiry nags, I started for Batavia to meet the railway. The distance was about thirty miles, and the road in many places execrable--in one part so bad that we had to go through a quarter of a mile of wood, as it was absolutely impassable;--yet, despite all these hindrances, and without pressing the horses in the least, we completed the distance in the three hours, including from five to ten minutes at a half-way house, where we gave them the usual American bait of a bucket of cold water; and when we arrived they were as fresh as four-year-olds, and quite ready to return if need had been. I saw nothing worth remarking during the drive. There was plenty of cultivated land; and plenty of waste, waiting to reward the labourer. All the little villages had their daguerreotype shops except one, and there the deficiency was supplied by a perambulating artist in a tented cart. When a railway crosses the road, you are expected to see it,--the only warning being a large painted board, inscribed "Look out for the Train." If it be dark, I suppose you are expected to guess it; but it must be remembered that this is the country of all countries where every person is required to look after himself. The train coming up soon after my arrival, I went on to Buffalo, amid a railway mixture of tag-rag-and-bobtail, squalling infancy and expectorating manhood. On arriving at the terminus, I engaged a cab, and, after waiting half an hour, I found that Jarvey was trying to pick up some other "fare," not thinking myself and my servant a sufficient cargo to pay well. I tried to find a railway official; but I might almost as well have looked for a flea in a flower-garden--no badges, no distinctive marks, the station full of all the riff-raff of the town;--it was hopeless. At last, by a lucky accident, I saw a man step into a small office, so I bolted after him, like a terrier after a badger, but I could not draw him; he knew nothing about the cabs--he was busy--nay, in short, he would not be bothered. Having experienced this beautiful specimen of Buffalo railway management, I returned to the open air and lit my cigar. After some time, Cabby, having found that no other "fare" was to be had, condescended to tell me he was ready; so in I got, and drove to the hotel, on entering which I nearly broke my neck over a pyramid of boxes, all looking of one family. They turned out to be the property of Mr. G.V. Brooke, the actor, who had just arrived "to star it" at Buffalo. Supper being ready, as it always is on the arrival of the evening train, I repaired thither, and found the usual wondrous medley which the American tables d'hôte exhibit, the usual deafening clatter, the usual profusion of eatables, the usual rapidity of action, and the usual disagreeable odour which is consequent upon such a mass of humanity and food combined. Being tolerably tired, I very soon retired to roost. What a wondrous place is this Buffalo!--what a type of American activity and enterprise! I had visited it in the year 1826, and then it had only three thousand inhabitants. The theatre, I remember, amused me immensely, the stage and accommodation for spectators barely occupying an area of twenty-five feet square. Mr. G.V. Brooke's boxes, at that time, would have filled the whole house; and here they are in 1852, drawing our metropolitan stars to their boards. Their population has increased twenty-fold, and now exceeds sixty thousand; a splendid harbour, a lighthouse, piers, breakwater, &c., have been constructed, and the place is daily increasing. Churches rear their spiry steeples in every direction. Banks and insurance offices are scattered broadcast. Educational, literary, and benevolent establishments abound, and upwards of a dozen newspapers are published. Land which, during my visit in 1826, you might almost have had for the asking, is now selling at two hundred guineas the foot of frontage for building. Even during the last ten years, the duties collected at the port have increased from £1000 to nearly £14,000. In the year 1852 upwards of four thousand vessels, representing a million and a half of tonnage, cleared at the harbour, and goods to the value of nearly seven millions sterling arrived from the lakes, the greater portion of the cargoes being grain. The value of goods annually delivered by Erie Canal is eight millions. Never was a more energetic hive of humanity than these "Buffalo lads;" and they are going ahead every day, racing pace. Now, John Bull, come with me to the cliff outside the town, and overhanging the Niagara river. Look across the stream, to the Canada shore, and you will see a few houses and a few people. There they have been, for aught I know, since the creation. The town(!) is called Waterloo, and the couple of dozen inhabitants, despite the rich fruits of industry on which they may gaze daily, seem to regard industry as a frightful scourge to be studiously avoided. Their soil is as rich as, if not richer than, that on the opposite shore: the same lake is spread before them, and the same river runs by their doors. It does, indeed, look hopeless, where such an example, constantly under their eyes, fails to stir them up to action. But, perhaps, you will say, you think you see a movement among the "dry bones." True, my dear Bull, there is now a movement; but, if you inquire, you will find it is a Buffalo movement. It is their energy, activity, and enterprise which, is making a railway to run across Canada to Goderich, by which means they will save, for traffic, the whole length of Lake Erie, and half that of Lake Huron, for all produce coming from the North of Michigan, Wisconsin, &c. So thoroughly is it American enterprise, that, although the terminus of the railway is at Waterloo, the name is ignored; and Buffalo enterprise having carried forward the work, it is styled the "Buffalo, Brentford, and Goderich Line." Truly, John Bull, your colony shows very badly by the side of this same Buffalo. Let us hope increasing intercourse may infuse a little vitality into them. The train is starting for Niagara, and I am in it, endeavouring to recal the impressions of 1826, which, being but very dim, my anticipations partake of the charm of novelty. While in the middle of a seventh heaven of picturative fancy, the screeching of the break announces the journey's end. As I emerge from the motley group of fellow-passengers, a sound, as of very distant thunder heard through ears stuffed with cotton, is all that announces the neighbourhood of the giant cataract. A fly is speedily obtained, and off I start for the hotel on the Canadian side. Our drive took us along the eastern bank till we reached the suspension-bridge which spans the cliffs of the river. Across this gossamer causeway, vehicles are required to walk, under a heavy penalty for any breach of this rule. The vibration when walking is not very great; but, going at a quick pace, it would undoubtedly be considerable, and might eventually loosen those fastenings on which the aerial pathway depends. Arrived at the other side, I was quite taken aback on being stopped by an official. I found he was merely a _pro formâ_ custom-house officer. Not having been schooled in the Old World, he showed none of the ferret, and in a few seconds I was again trotting southwards along the western bank to the Clifton House Hotel. The dull work of life is done, the cab is paid, my room is engaged, and there I am, on the balcony, alone, with the roaring of the cataract in my ears and the mighty cataract itself before my eyes. What were my first impressions?--That is a difficult question. Certainly, I did not share that feeling of disappointment which some people take pains to express. Such people, if they had dreamt that an unknown friend had left them 100,000l., would feel disappointed if he awoke and found a legacy of 90,000l. lying on their table; or, perhaps, they give expression to their feelings, by way of inducing the public to suppose that their fertile imaginations conceived something far grander than this most glorious work of Nature. If a man propose to go to Niagara for mere beauty, he had better stay at home and look at a lily through a microscope; if to hear a mighty noise, he had better go where the anchors are forged in Portsmouth dockyard; if to see a mighty struggle of waters, he had better take a cruise, on board a pilot-boat, in the Bay of Biscay, during an equinoctial gale; but, if he be content to see the most glorious cataract his Maker has placed upon our globe; if, in a stupendous work of Nature, he have a soul to recognise the Almighty Workman; and if, while gazing thereon, he can travel from Nature up to Nature's God; then, let him go to Niagara, in full assurance of enjoying one of the grandest and most solemnizing scenes that this earth affords. It wants but one qualification to be perfect and complete; that, it had originally when fresh from the hands of its Divine Maker; and of that man has rifled it--I mean solitude.--Palace hotels are very convenient things; energy and enterprise are very valuable qualities, and natural features of American character which I admire; but, seeing how universally everything is sacrificed to the useful and dollar-making, I dread to contemplate the future: for visions rise before me of the woodman's axe levelling the forest timber on Goat Island, which at present shrouds the town; and fancy pictures a line of villas, shops, and mills, ending in a huge hotel, at the edge of the cataract. I trust my vision may never be realized. But my hopes are small; for I invariably observed that, in clearing ground, scarce any attention had been paid to aught else but the best method of getting the best return for the labour bestowed. Now, reader, I have not told you as yet what my impressions were, as I stood on the balcony gazing at Niagara; and, I pray you take not offence, when I add that I have not the slightest intention of trying to record them. Writing frankly, as I feel, I have said enough for you to glean something of the turn they took, and to see that they were impressions which a pen is too feeble an agent adequately to express. I shall not tax your patience with Table Rock and Goat Island points of view, American and Canadian falls, the respective beauties of the Straight Line and the Horse-shoe; I do not purpose clothing you in Mackintosh, and dragging you with trembling steps along the slimy pathway between the Falls and the rock, to gaze on the sun through the roaring and rolling flood; nor will I draw upon your nerves by a detail of the hair-breadth escapes of Mr. Bumptious and Mrs. Positive, who, when they got half-way along the said path, were seized with panic, and only escaped a header into the boiling caldron by lying flat on their stomachs until the rest of the party had lionized the whole distance, when the guide returned and hauled them out by the heels, like drowned rats out of a sink-hole; nor will I ask you to walk five miles with me, to see the wooden hut, built over a sulphur spring within ten feet of the river, and which is lit by the sulphuretted hydrogen gas thereof, led through a simple tube. All these, and the rapids above, and the whirlpool below, and the four-and-a-half million horse-power of the Falls, have been so often described by abler pens and more fertile imaginations, that the effort would be a failure and the result a bore. I have in my possession a collection from the various albums at Niagara; it opens with the following lines by Lord Morpeth, now Earl of Carlisle-- "There's nothing great or bright, thou glorious Fall! Thou may'st not to the fancy's sense recal; The thunder-riven cloud, the lightning's leap, The stirring of the chambers of the deep, Earth's emerald green, and many-tinted dyes, The fleecy whiteness of the upper skies, The tread of armies thickening as they come, The boom of cannon and the beat of drum, The brow of beauty and the form of grace, The passion and the prowess of our race, The song of Homer in its loftiest hour, The unresisted sweep of human power, Britannia's trident on the azure sea, America's young shout of liberty! Oh! may the waves that madden in thy deep, There spend their rage, nor climb the encircling steep,-- And till the conflict of thy surges cease, The nations on thy banks repose in peace!" There are other effusions equally creditable to their authors; but there is also a mass of rubbish, from which I will only inflict two specimens. One, evidently from the pen of a Cockney; and the other, the poetical inspiration of a free and enlightened. Cockney poet-- "Next to the bliss of seeing Sarah, Is that of seeing Niagara." Free and enlightened-- "Of all the roaring, pouring, Spraying streams that dash, Niagara is Number One, All to immortal smash!" Not desiring to appear to as great disadvantage as either of the two last-quoted writers, I decline the attempt; and, while saving myself, spare the public. I think, reader, that I have a claim upon your gratitude for not expatiating at greater length upon a theme from which it were easy to fill chapter upon chapter; for, if you are generous, you will throw a veil over the selfish reasons that have produced so happy a result. I will only add one piece of advice, which is, if the pleasure of visiting Niagara would be enhanced by a full larder and a ruck of people, go there "during the season;" but if your pleasure would be greater in visiting it when the hotel is empty, even though the larder be nearly in the same state, follow my example, and go later in the year, by which means you will partially obtain that quiet, without which, I freely confess, I never care to look upon "The Falls" again. A formidable rival to this magnificent fall of water has-been discovered by that indefatigable traveller, Dr. Livingston. It is called the Mosiotunya Falls, which are thus described:--"They occur," we read ("Outlines of Dr. Livingston's Missionary Journeys," p. 19), "in the most southerly part of the Zambese. Although previously unvisited by any European, Dr. Livingston had often heard of these smoke-resounding falls, which, with points of striking difference from Niagara, are, if possible, more remarkable and not less sublime than that noble cataract. He was therefore anxious to inspect them, and on the 20th of November, 1855, he reached Kalai, a place eight miles west of the Falls. On arriving at the latter, he found that this natural phenomenon was caused by the sudden contraction, or rather compression, of the river, here about 1000 yards broad, which urges its ponderous mass through a narrow rent in the basaltic rock of not more than twenty-five yards, and down a deep cleft, but a little wider, into a basin or trough about thirty yards in diameter, lying at a depth of thirty-five yards. Into this narrow receptacle the vast river precipitated itself. When Dr. Livingston visited the spot, the Zambese flowed through its narrowest channel, and its waters were at their lowest. The effect, however, of its sudden contraction and fall was in the highest degree sublime, and, from the point at which he surveyed it, appalling. For, not satisfied with a distant view of the opening through its rocky barrier, and of the columns of vapour rushing up for 300 to 400 feet, forming a spreading cloud, and then falling in perpetual rain, he engaged a native, with nerves as strong as his own and expert in the management of the canoe, to paddle him down the river, here heaving, eddying, and fretting, as if reluctant to approach the gorge and hurl itself down the precipice to an islet immediately above the fall, and from one point of which he could look over its edge into the foaming caldron below, mark the mad whirl of its waters, and stand in the very focus of its vapoury columns and its deafening roar. But unique and magnificent as was the cataract when Dr. Livingston beheld it, the reports of others, and the inference drawn by himself, satisfied him that the spectacle was tame compared with what occurs during the rainy season, when the river flows between banks many miles apart, and still forces its augmented waters through the same fissure into the same trough. At these times the columns of spray may be seen, and the sound heard ten or twelve miles distant." My traps are all in the ferry-boat: I have crossed the river, been wound up the opposite bank, paid my fare, and am hissing away for Rochester. What thoughts does Rochester give rise to? If you are a commercial man, you will conjure up visions of activity and enterprise; if you are an inquirer into mysteries and manners, your dreams will be of "spirit-rapping and Bloomers." Coming fresh from Buffalo, I confess I was rather interested in the latter. But here I am at the place itself, and lodged in an hotel wonderfully handy to the station; and before the front door thereof railways are interlaced like the meshes of a fisherman's net. Having no conversable companion, I take to my ever faithful and silent friend, the fragrant cigar, and start for a stroll. There is a bookseller's shop at the corner; I almost invariably feel tempted to stop when passing a depôt for literature, especially in a strange place; but on the present occasion a Brobdignagian notice caught my eye, and gave me a queer sensation inside my waistcoat--"Awful smash among the Banks!" Below, in more Lilliputian characters, followed a list of names. I had just obtained notes of different banks for my travelling expenses, and I knew not how many thereof might belong to the bankrupt list before me; a short examination sufficed, and with a quieted mind, I continued my stroll and my cigar. The progress of Rochester has not been so rapid as that of Buffalo; in 1826 they made a pretty fair start, and at present Rochester has only a little above forty thousand, while, as we said a few pages back, Buffalo has sixty thousand. Rochester has the disadvantage of not being built quite on the lake, as Buffalo may be said to be; moreover, the carrying on Lake Ontario is not so great as on Lake Erie. Both towns enjoy the rich advantages of the Erie canal, and Rochester is benefited by water-power in a way Buffalo is not. Genesee river, in a distance of three miles, falls nearly two hundred and thirty feet, and has three cascades, the greatest of which is upwards of one hundred feet; this power has not been overlooked by the Rochesterians, who have established enormous flour-mills in consequence, using up annually three million bushels of wheat. As one of the Genesee falls was close to the town, I bent my steps thither; the roads were more than ankle deep in mud, and I had some difficulty in getting to the spot; when there, the dreary nakedness of the banks and the matter-of-factism of a huge mill, chased even the very thought of beauty from my mind: whether man stripped the banks, or Nature, I cannot say, but I should rather "guess" it was man. I was puddling back full of disappointment, and had just got upon the wooden pavement, which is a trottoir upon the plank-road system, when I saw a strange sail ahead, with rather a novel rig; could it be?--no! yes!--no! yes!--yes, by George! a real, living Rochester Bloomer was steering straight for me. She was walking arm-in-arm with a man who looked at a distance awfully dirty; upon closer examination, I found the effect was produced by his wearing all his face-hair close clipped, like a hunter's coat in the season: but I had but little time to spare upon _him_--the Bloomer was the star of attraction: on she came with a pretty face, dark hair, eyes to match, and a good figure; she wore a black beaver hat, low crown, and broad brim; round the hat was tied, in a large bow, a bright red ribbon: under a black silk polka, which fitted to perfection, she had a pair of chocolate-coloured pantaloons, hanging loosely and gathered in above the ankles, and a neat pair of little feet were cased in a sensible pair of boots, light, but at the same time substantial. A gap occurring in the trottoir, and the roads being shockingly muddy, I was curious to see how Bloomer faced the difficulty; it never seemed to give her a moment's thought: she went straight at it, and reached the opposite side with just as much ease as her companion. Now, reader, let us change the scene and bring before you one with which you are probably not unfamiliar. Place--A muddy crossing near a parish school. Time--Play hours. _Dramatis personae_--An old lady and twenty school-boys. Scene--The old lady comes sailing along the footways, doing for nothing that for which sweepers are paid; arrived at the crossing, a cold shudder comes over her as she gazes in despair at the sea of mud she must traverse; behold now the frantic efforts she is making to gather up the endless mass of gown, petticoats, and auxiliaries with which custom and fashion have smothered her; her hands can scarcely grasp the puckers and the folds; at last she makes a start, exhibiting a beautifully filled pair of snow-white stockings; on she goes, the journey is half over; suddenly a score of urchin voices are heard in chorus, "Twig her legs, twig her legs." The irate dame turns round to reprove them by words, or wither them with a glance; but alas! in her indignation she raises a threatening hand, forgetful of the important duties it was fulfilling, and down go gown, petticoats, and auxiliaries in the filthy mire; the boys of course roar with delight--it's the jolliest fun they have had for many a day; the old lady gathers up her bundle in haste, and reaches the opposite side with a filthy dress and a furious temper. Let any mind, unwarped by prejudice and untrammelled by custom, decide whether the costume of the Rochester Bloomer or of the old lady be the more sensible. I grant that I have placed before you the two extremes, and I should be as sorry to see my fair friends in "cut o' knee" kilts, as I now am to see them in "sweep-the-ground gowns," &c. "But," cries one, "you will aim a blow at female delicacy!" A blow, indeed! when all that female delicacy has to depend upon is the issue of a struggle between pants and petticoats, it will need no further blow: it is pure matter of fashion and custom. Do not girls wear a Bloomer constantly till they are fourteen or fifteen, then generally commence the longer dress? And what reason can be given but custom, which, in so many articles of dress, is ever changing? How long is it since the dressing of ladies' hair for Court was a work of such absurd labour and nicety, that but few artists were equal to the task, and, consequently, having to attend so many customers, ladies were often obliged to have their hair dressed the day before, and sit up all night that the coiffure might remain perfect? Or how long is it since ladies at Court used to move about like human balloons, with gowns hooped out to such an extent that it was a work of labour and dexterity to get in and out of a carriage; trains, &c., to match? Hundreds of people, now living, can not only remember these things, but can remember also the outcry with which the proposal of change was received. Delicacy, indeed! I should be glad to know what our worthy grandmammas would think of the delicacy of the present generation of ladies, could they but see them going about with nothing but an oyster-shell bonnet stuck at the back of their heads! Take another remnant of barbarism, handed down to us in the shape of powder. Masters have taken care of themselves, and got rid of the abomination; so have upper servants; but so wedded are some people to the habit, that they still continue to pay a poll-tax of 1l. 3s. 6d. for the pleasure of powdering and plastering their footmen's heads, as if they had just escaped from a flour-mill and passed a greasy hand over their hair: will any one deny, that the money spent in the tax would promote "John's" comfort and cleanliness much more, if expended in good baths, brown Windsor, and small-tooth combs. Pardon me, reader, I feel that there is no analogy between a Bloomer and a small-tooth comb; it is from following out the principle of recording the reflections which what I saw gave rise to, that I have thus wandered back to the old country; with your permission, we are again at Rochester, and the Bloomer has gone out of sight round the corner. The shades of evening having closed in upon me, I retired to roost. My head was snugly bedded in my pillow; I was in that charmingly doubtful state in which thoughts and dreams have become imperceptibly blended. Suddenly there was a trumpet-blast, loud as a thunder-clap, followed by bells ringing as rapidly as those of the churches in Malta; as these died away, the hum of human voices and the tread of human feet along the passages followed, and then all was once more hushed in silence. I turned over, gave the clothes an extra jerk, and again sought the land of dreams. Vain and delusive hope!--trains seemed starting or arriving every half-hour, and the whole night was spent 'mid the soothing varieties of mineral trumpets and bells, and animal hoofs and tongues, till from sheer exhaustion, about five A.M., I dropped off into a snooze, which an early start rendered it necessary to cut short soon after seven. Mem.--What a nice thing it is to put up at an hotel quite handy to a railway station. Reader, you are doubtless aware that Rochester is on Lake Ontario, and a considerable distance from New York; but I must nevertheless beg you to transport yourself to the latter place, without going through the humdrum travelling routine of--stopped here, stopped there, ate here, ate there, which constituted the main features of my hasty journey thither, undertaken for the purpose of seeing my brother off, on his return to Europe, which duty bringing me within the yachting waters of New York, I think this a legitimate place for a chapter on the "Black Maria." CHAPTER VII. _Construction and Destruction_. The "Black Maria" is a vessel so unique in every respect, that the most detailed description of her cannot but be most interesting to all yachting men; and, so far from apologizing for the length of my observations, I would rather crave indulgence for the scanty information which this chapter will afford; but as it must prove pre-eminently dull to those who are ignorant of such matters, I would entreat them to pass it over, lest, getting through the first page, their ideas become bewildered, and, voting me a bore, they throw down the book, subjoining a malediction upon my poor innocent head. The following notes were furnished me by Commodore Stevens and his brother, who were the designers and builders of this extraordinary yacht, and I therefore can vouch for their accuracy. In case the term "centre-board" should be unknown to my reader, it may be as well to explain that it means a board passing longitudinally through the keel, above which a strong water-tight case is fixed for its reception; it is raised and lowered by hand or by machinery, according to its weight. The advantages proposed by the centre-board are--the stability it gives to the vessel on a wind when let down; the resistance it removes if, when running before the wind, it be raised; the small draught of water which the vessel requires, thereby enabling her to keep close in-shore out of the influence of strong tides, &c.; and, lastly, the facility for getting afloat again, by merely raising the centre-board, should she take the ground. To proceed with the notes:-- THE CUTTER YACHT "BLACK MARIA." Displacement, 145 tons. Draught of water on straight keel, 5 feet 2 inches. Length of straight keel, 60 feet, then running away in a curving line upwards, till at the bow it draws 10 inches. Length of centre-board, 24 feet. Total depth of ditto, 15 feet; weight, 7 tons. Foremost end of ditto, about 8 feet abaft the foremost end of straight keel. When let down, it descends 10 feet at the further end, and 8 feet at the foremost. It is made of oak, with sufficient lead let in to make it sink. By an ingenious mechanical contrivance one man is enabled to raise and lower it with perfect facility. There is another centre-board abaft, about 10 feet from the stern, which is 8 feet long, with a total depth of 9 feet, and, when down, extending 5 feet below the keel. Length over all, 113 feet. The extreme beam is 26-1/2 feet at 40 feet from the rudder-post running aft to about 19 feet at taffrail; forward, it decreases about 20 inches when abreast of mast, thence runs away sharp to about four feet at the bow. The mainmast is placed about 5 feet abaft the end of straight keel; it is 92 feet long, housing 8 feet: the diameter in the partners is 32 inches, tapering off to 23 inches at the hounds. The mast is made of white pine, the centre of it is bored out, for the lowest twenty feet about 12 inches diameter--the next 20 feet, 10 inches diameter--the next 20 feet, 8 inches, and the remainder 7 inches. This was done to make the mast lighter, and, by the circulation of air, enable it to season itself. The main boom is 95 feet long[F] and made like a cask. The staves are 31 in number, of white pine, 2-1/4 inches thick; the staves are of different lengths, so as to vary the points at which they respectively abut. The extreme length of boom is obtained by two lengths of the staves; small cogs of wood are let in at intervals, half in one stave and half in its neighbour, so as to keep them from drawing, the whole bound together with strong hoops fitted with screws. The extreme diameter of the boom is 26 inches where the sheets are fixed, tapering off at the jaws, and 13 inches at the boom end. To give additional support to the boom, an iron outrigger, extending about 3 feet on each side thereof, is fixed where the boom-sheets are placed, and a strong iron brace extends from the jaws through the outrigger to the boom end. The gaff is of spruce, 61 feet long and 9 inches diameter. The bowsprit is of white pine, 38 feet long, 18 of which is outboard; the remainder comes under the deck, is let in to each beam, and abuts against the bitts: it is 24 inches diameter, and bored out like the mast, from 10 inches diameter at the heel to 7 at the end. The jibboom is made of two pieces of yellow pine, grooved out and hooped together; it is about 70 feet long and about 8 inches in diameter; the foot of the jib is laced to this spar on hooks (when required). The mainsail is made with the seams horizontal, to avoid the resistance perpendicular seams in so large a sail would offer to the wind. It has been calculated that the resistance of perpendicular seams, in a sail of this size, is equal to that of a plank 10 inches broad and 60 feet long, placed on end broadside to the wind; the luff of the sail is 66 feet; the foot, 93; the head, 50; the head and foot of the sail are laced to battens under gaff and on boom; the luff is brought to the mast by a contrivance as original as it is perfect; two battens are fixed on afterpart of the mast, about an inch and a half apart, the inner parts shod with iron, and rather broader than the exterior opening. To each eyelet-hole of the sail a strong brass-plate is fixed, having 4 rollers traversing fore and aft, and 2 transversely; these plates, as the sail goes up, are slipped into the grooves of the battens, the rollers preventing friction, and the battens keeping the luff fixed to the after centre line of the mast--without this ingenious arrangement the huge mast would, if on a wind, becalm at least three feet of the sail--three lazy-jacks are fitted to support the huge mass of canvas when lowering the sail. The jib is 69 feet in the hoist, and 70 in the foot. The bobstays are of solid iron, running 8 feet on each side of the keel, and going through a strong iron cap over the bowsprit end, where, a strong iron washer being put on, they are securely fixed with a nut. It will be seen that there is a slight discrepancy between some of the measurements which I have given, and those which are marked on the print; I place confidence in those I have received direct from the fountain-head; the difference is, however, so trifling, as scarce to need any notice. I regret omitting to obtain the length of the after-leech of the mainsail, and of the head of the jib; but I think the print, which I believe to be very accurate, would justify me in concluding that the former is about 110 feet and the latter about 120 feet. [Illustration: THE BLACK MARIA.] Assuming those calculations to be correct--and they cannot be very far wrong--the mainsail would contain about 5790 square feet, and the jib about 2100 square feet. When it is remembered that the largest sail in the British Navy only contains 5480 square feet, some conception may be formed of their gigantic proportions. The gallant commodore was kind enough to trip his anchor and give me a short cruise. Unfortunately, there was scarcely a breath of wind; but even under the influence of such scanty propelling power, the way she shot through the water, like a dolphin in full cry, was perfectly marvellous; and the ease with which she came round, and the incredible distance she shot ahead in stays, was, if possible, more astonishing still; she steered as easy as a jolly-boat; or if, when running, a puff made her refractory, by dropping the after centre-board she became as docile as a lamb. My only regret was that I could not see her under the high pressure of a good snorter. Of course, any salt-water fish will have long since discovered that this wonderful yacht is a leviathan plaything, and totally unfit to withstand the most moderate gale, especially if any sea were running. What she might do if she were sparred, as other vessels of her tonnage usually are, I cannot pretend to say; but my yachting friends need never expect to see her, with her present rig, re-enacting the "America," hurling friendly defiance at the R.Y.C., and carrying off the crown of victory in their own waters. But if any of my Cowes friends are anxious to test the powers of the "Maria," the gallant commodore will be happy to accommodate them, and--as he expressed it to me--will further rejoice at having an opportunity of returning some of the many hospitalities which made his short stay in England so agreeable to him. The only complaint I heard him make of the rules of the yachting at Cowes, was the want of some restriction as to vessels entering shallow water, by which omission a yacht with a light draught of water is enabled sometimes to draw ahead of her competitors by simply hugging the land out of the full swing of the tide, while others are forced, from their deeper draught of water, to struggle against its full force. As, in my humble opinion, the observation is a perfectly just one, I insert it here for the consideration of those whom it may concern. The accommodation on board is not nearly so good as in an English yacht, partly owing to the little height between decks, consequent upon her very small draught of water, and partly owing to the great space taken up by the case for the centre-board; besides which, it should be remembered that a yacht is not used as a home in America in the same way as in England. The great, and, I might almost say, the only quality, transatlantic yachtsmen care about is speed; and I think my yachting friends at Cowes must admit that they have proved that they know how to attain their end, and that Mr. Steers, the builder of the "America," is second to none in his craft; unless the "Black Maria" some future day assume a practicable rig, and, crossing the Atlantic, earn the victor's laurels, in which case Steers will have to yield the palm to the worthy fraternity, who are at one and the same time the owners, builders, and sailers of the subject of this chapter. I believe it is very generally considered that the wind-up of a day's sport is by no means the least enjoyable portion of the twenty-four hours, when it comes in the shape of good fellowship and good cheer; and upon the present occasion we had both alike undeniable of their kind. The commodore's cellar is as rich a rarity in its way as the Bernal collection, and, from the movement of the corks, I should imagine it was upon an equally large scale. I do not purpose inflicting a bill of fare upon you; but, having, in the foregoing pages, made a promise to furnish the proper recipe for Toddy and Chowder, I consider this the proper place to redeem that promise, under the guidance of my hospitable host, who initiated me fully into the mysteries of mixture, proportion, &c., by making both before me. Whether it is of great importance to adhere exactly to the recipes, I cannot pretend to say; the soup was pronounced on all hands to be most excellent, and some of the knowing ones declared it was unusually good. We afterwards found out a good reason for its superior excellence. It appears that the commodore had given some instructions to the steward, which he evidently had not understood, for, upon asking that functionary towards the end of dinner for a bottle of fine old Madeira which had been kept back as a bonnebouche, he gave a wild stare-of astonishment, and said he had put it all into the chowder. This little addition, I can testify, most certainly did not spoil it. The toddy was not subject to any such unwarrantable addition; and, if I may judge from the quantity taken by my neighbours, they all found it as delicious a drink as I did myself. _Recipes_. TODDY.--4 tumblers of water: 1 ditto, sugar: peel of 5 lemons, and dessert spoon of the juice: add a few pieces of peach and pine-apple, and some strawberries. Quarter of an hour before use, throw in 2 tumblers of old rum and a lump or two of block ice. CHOWDER.--Saucepan ready, frizzle pork and onions till quite brown; put a layer at bottom of the saucepan--saucerful;--on that, a layer of mashed potatoes--soup-plateful;--on that, raw sea-bass,[G] cut in lumps 4 lbs.;--on that, pork and onions as before;--add half a nutmeg, spoonful of mace, spoonful of cloves, and double that quantity of thyme and summer savory; another layer of mashed potatoes, 3 or 4 Crackers,[H] half a bottle of ketchup, half a bottle of claret, a liberal pinch of black, and a small pinch of red pepper. Just cover this with boiling water, and put it on the fire till the fish is cooked. The gallant commodore and his brother are now employed in building an iron bomb-proof floating battery, four hundred feet long, intended as a harbour defence. What guns she is destined to mount is a question which has not been definitively settled. In so large a community as that of New York, the supply of water forms a subject of the highest importance, especially when the rapid increase of the population is taken into account. Some conception of this extraordinary increase may be formed from the statistical fact that the city, which in the year of Independence contained only 35,000 inhabitants, has now 850,000, if the suburbs are included; nearly 4000 vessels enter the port annually, bearing merchandise valued at 25,500,000l., and bringing 300,000 emigrants, of whom one-third are Irish and one-third German. The tonnage of New York is upwards of a million, or equal to one-fourth of that of the whole Union: the business of the city gives employment to upwards of fifty banks. Religion is represented by 250 churches, of which 46 are Presbyterian, and 45 are Episcopalian. The Press sends forth 155 papers, of which 14 are published daily and 58 weekly. This short sketch will suffice to show that the city required a supply of water upon a gigantic scale. The difficulties were increased by the situation of the town, which is built upon the eastern extremity of an island--Manhattan--fourteen miles long and two broad, the highest point of which is but two hundred and thirty-eight feet above the level of the sea. Various plans for supplying water had been attempted without success, and the health of the population was suffering so much in consequence, that at last American energy, which here had been long dormant, rose like a giant refreshed and commenced that imperishable monument, the Croton aqueduct.[I] It is impossible to convey any idea of this stupendous work without figures; but I will endeavour to draw upon your patience as little as possible. My authority is a work published by Mr. Schramke in English, French, and German, and full of explanatory details and plans, &c. Mr. Schramke being one of the corps of engineers employed upon the work, I conclude his statements are peculiarly accurate. Long discussions, patient investigations, and careful surveys, combined to fix the position for commencing operations upon the Croton river, forty and a half miles from New York, and five miles below a small lake of the same name. All the preliminaries had been hitherto carried on under the superintendence of Major Douglas, professor of engineering at the Military Academy at West Point; but, owing to some disagreements, Mr. J.B. Jervis was the engineer eventually selected to carry out the undertaking. It is but just to mention his name, as the skill exhibited entitles him to lasting fame. By the construction of a substantial dam, the water was raised 40 feet, and a collecting reservoir formed, of 500,000,000 gallons, above the level that would allow the aqueduct to discharge 35,000,000 gallons a day. This stupendous work consists of a covered way seven feet broad and eight feet and a half high; in its course it has to pass through sixteen tunnellings, forming an aggregate of nearly 7000 feet; to cross the river Harlem by a bridge 1450 feet long and 114 feet above tide water, and to span various valleys. The receiving reservoir outside the town gives a water surface of 31 acres, and contains 150,000,000 gallons; it is divided into two separate compartments, so that either may be emptied for cleansing or repair. From this point the water is carried on, by three 36-inch pipes, to the distributing reservoir, which is 386 feet square and 42 feet deep, but filled generally to the depth of 38 feet, and then holding 21,000,000 gallons. From this point it radiates throughout the city by means of 134 miles of pipes, varying in size from 4 to 36 inches. There is an average fall of 14 inches in the mile; and the supply, if required, can be increased to 60,000,000 gallons daily. The total cost was 2,500,000l.; the revenue derived from it is 100,000l. a year, moderate-sized houses paying 2l., and others in proportion. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CROTON AQUEDUCT. (_From Schramke's Description of the New York Croton Aqueduct_.)] In conclusion, I would observe that this grand work is entitled to notice from the skill displayed by the engineers, the quantity of the supply, and the quality of the article, which latter is nearly as good as sherry cobbler--not quite. If my reader has been inveigled into reading the foregoing details, and has got bored thereby, a gallon of Croton water is an admirable antidote; but, as that may not be available, I would suggest a cobbler, and another page or two; the latter upon the principle adopted by indiscreet drinkers, of "taking a hair of the dog that bit them." The concluding passage of the last paragraph reminds me of a practice which, I have no doubt, the intense heat of a New York summer renders very advisable, if not absolutely necessary--viz., the canine _auto-da-fé_, which takes place in July. The heart sickens at the thought of the wholesale murder of "man's most faithful companion," and the feeling increases when you read that sometimes more than a thousand dogs fall victims to the law in one season; but that very fact is the strongest point which can be urged in its justifications for the dry hot atmosphere of the summer affords a ready stepping-stone to hydrophobia, and the larger the canine family, the greater the danger of that fearful and incurable disease. Upon a certain day, the mayor of New York offers the usual reward of 2s. for every dog, which, having been found unmuzzled in the streets, is brought to the canine pound. However judicious this municipal regulation may be, it cannot fail to strike the reader as offering one most objectionable feature, in the golden harvest which it enables those astute rogues, the dog-stealers, to reap. Any one conversant with the irresistible nostrums possessed by those rascals, can readily understand what an extensive field is hereby opened up to them; and, if one can form a just opinion by comparing the number of dogs one habitually meets in the streets with the multitude that are reputed to fall victims under the official mandate, they certainly make the most of their opportunity. To any admirer of the race, the inside of the pound must be a most painful and revolting spectacle: there may be seen, lying side by side, "dignity and impudence," the fearless bull and the timid spaniel, the bloated pug and the friendly Newfoundland, the woolly lap-dog and the whining cur; some growling in defiance, some whimpering in misery, some looking imploringly--their intelligent eyes challenging present sympathy on the ground of past fidelity--all, all in vain: the hour that summons the Mussulman to prayer, equally silently tolls their death-knell; yon glorious sun, setting in a flood of fire, lights them to their untimely grave; one ruthless hand holds the unconscious head, another with deadly aim smashes the skull and scatters the brain--man's faithful friend is a corpse. Owners are allowed to reclaim their property before sunset, on payment of the 2s. reward; the best-looking dogs are sometimes kept for two or three days, as purchasers are frequently found. The price, after the first day, is, the killer's fee and the food given, in addition to the original reward; altogether, it rarely exceeds 8s. The owner has to purchase like any other person. The bodies are all taken away to be boiled down for their fat, and the skins go to the tanners. Let us now turn from this disgusting subject to something more agreeable. I have already alluded to the great fancy Americans have for trotters. The best place to see "turns out" is the Bloomingdale road, which runs out of New York, nearly parallel with the Hudson, and separated from it only by the country villas, &c., built on the banks of that noble stream. This drive may be called a purely democratic "Rotten-row," as regards its being the favourite resort; but there the similarity ceases. To the one, people go to lounge, meet friends, and breathe fresh air on horseback; to the other, people go with a fixed determination to pass everybody, and on wheels. To the one, people go before dinner; to the other, after. A friend of mine having offered me a feed, and a seat behind a pair of three-minuters, the offer was too good to be refused. The operation of getting into one of these four-wheel waggons, looks perplexing enough, as the only rest for the feet, which appears, is the cap of the axle; but, upon pulling the horses' heads into the middle of the street, and thus locking the fore-wheels, a stop is discovered, which renders the process easy. It is difficult to say which is the more remarkable, the lightness of the waggon, or the lightness of the harness; either is sufficient to give a nervous feeling of insufficiency to a stranger who trusts himself to them for the first time; but experience proves both their sufficiency and their advantage. In due time, we reached the outer limits of the town; struggling competitors soon appeared, and, in spite of dust as plentiful as a plague of locusts, every challenge was accepted; a fair pass once made, the victor was satisfied, and resumed a more moderate pace. We had already given one or two the go-by, when we heard a clattering of hoofs close behind us, and the well-known cry, "G'lang." My friend let out his three-minuters, but ere they reached their speed, the foe was well on our bow, and there he kept, bidding us defiance. It is, doubtless, very exciting to drive at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and though the horses' hoofs throw more gravel down your throat in five minutes than would suffice a poultry-yard for a week, one does not think of it at the time. On we flew; our foe on two wheels and single harness every now and then letting us get abreast of him, and then shooting ahead like an arrow from a bow. A few trials showed us the struggle was useless: we had to deal with a regular "pacer," and--as I have elsewhere remarked--their speed is greater than that of any fair trotter, although so fatiguing that they are unable to keep it up for any great distance; but as we had already turned the bottom of the car into a gravel-pit, we did not think it worth while to continue the amusement. The reason may be asked why these waggons have such low splashboards as to admit all the gravel? The reason is simple. Go-ahead is the great desideratum, and they are kept low to enable you to watch the horses' hind legs; by doing which, a knowing Jehu can discover when they are about to break into a gallop, and can handle "the ribands" accordingly. A tremendous storm brewing to windward, cut short our intended drive; and, putting the nags to their best pace, we barely succeeded in obtaining shelter ere it burst upon us; and such a pelter as it came down, who ever saw? It seemed as though the countless hosts of heaven had been mustered with barrels, not buckets, of water, and as they upset them on the poor devoted earth, a regular hurricane came to the rescue, and swept them eastward to the ocean. The sky, from time to time, was one blaze of sheet lightning, and during the intervals, forked flashes shot through the darkness like fiery serpents striking their prey. This storm, if short, was at all events magnificently grand, and we subsequently found it had been terribly destructive also; boats on the Hudson had been capsized and driven ashore, houses had been unroofed, and forest trees split like penny canes. The inn where we had taken shelter was fortunately not touched, nor were any of the trees which surrounded it. Beautifully situated on a high bank, sloping down to the Hudson, full of fine old timber; it had belonged to some English noble--I forget his name--in the old colonial times; now, it was a favourite baiting-place for the frequenters of the Bloomingdale road, and dispensed the most undeniably good republican drinks, cobblers, cock-tails, slings, and hail-storms, with other more substantial and excellent things to match. The storm being over, we unhitched the horses, and returned to town at a more sober pace; nor were we much troubled with dust during the drive home. Lest the reader should get wearied with so long a stay at New York, I now propose to shift the scene for his amusement, and hope he will accompany me in my wanderings. If, during the operation, he occasionally finds me tedious in any details uninteresting to him, I trust that a judicious skipping of a few leaves will bring us again into agreeable companionship. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote F: The largest boom in the Navy is 72 feet long, and 16-1/2 inches in diameter; the largest mast is 127 feet 3 inches long, and 42 inches diameter; the largest yard is 111 feet long, and 26-1/2 inches diameter.] [Footnote G: Turbot is a good substitute for sea-bass.] [Footnote H: A small American biscuit made of best flour.] [Footnote I: _Vide_ sketch of Aqueduct.] CHAPTER VIII. _South and West_. Being anxious to visit the southern parts of this Empire State, and having found an agreeable companion, we fixed upon an early day in November for our start; and although I anticipated much pleasure from the scenery and places of interest which my proposed trip would carry me through, I could not blind myself to the sad fact, that the gorgeous mantle of autumn had fallen from the forest, and left in its stead the dreary nakedness of winter. The time I could allot to the journey was unfortunately so short, that, except of one or two of the leading places, I could not hope to have more than literally a flying sight, and should therefore be insensibly compelled to receive many impressions from the travelling society among which the Fates threw me. Eight o'clock in the morning found us both at the Jersey ferry, where our tickets for Baltimore--both for man and luggage--were to be obtained. It was a pelting snow-storm, and the luggage-ticketing had to be performed _al fresco_, which, combined with the total want of order so prevalent in the railway establishments in this country, made it anything but an agreeable operation. Our individual tickets were obtained under shelter, but in an office of such Lilliputian dimensions, that the ordinary press of passengers made it like a theatrical squeeze on a Jenny Lind night; only with this lamentable difference--that the theatrical squeeze was a prelude to all that could charm the senses, whereas the ticket squeeze was, I knew but too well, the precursor of a day of most uncomfortable travelling. Having our tickets, we crossed the ever-glorious Hudson, and, landing at Jersey City, had the pleasure of "puddling it up" through the snow to the railway carriages. There they were, with the red-hot stove and poisonous atmosphere, as usual; so my friend and I, selecting a cushionless "smoking-car," where the windows would at all events be open, seated ourselves on the hard boards of resignation, lit the tapery weed of consolation, and shrouded ourselves in its fragrant clouds. On we went, hissing through the snow-storm, till the waters of the Delaware brought us to a stand-still; then, changing to a steamer, we crossed the broad stream, on which to save time, they served dinner, and almost before it was ended we had reached Philadelphia, where 'busses were in waiting to take us to the railway. I may as well mention here, that one of the various ways in which the glorious liberty of the country shows itself, is the deliberate manner in which 'busses and stages stop in the middle of the muddiest roads, in the worst weather, so that you may get thoroughly well muddied and soaked in effecting your entry. Equality, I suppose, requires that if the coachman is to be wet and uncomfortable, the passengers should be brought as near as possible to the same state. The 'busses being all ready, off we started, and just reached the train in time; for, being a mail-train, it could not wait, though we had paid our fares all through to Baltimore. Soon after our departure, I heard two neighbours conversing between the intervals of the clouds of Virginia which they puffed assiduously. Says one, "I guess all the baggage is left behind." The friend, after a long draw at his weed, threw out a cloud sufficient to cover the rock of Gibraltar, and replied, with the most philosophical composure, "I guess it aint nurthin' else." My friend and I puffed vigorously, and looked inquiringly at each other, as much as to say, "Can our luggage be left behind?" Soon the conductor appeared to _viser_ the tickets: he would solve our doubts.--"I say, conductor, is our luggage which came from New York, left behind?" "Ay, I guess it is, every stick of it; and if you had been ten minutes later, I guess you might have stayed with it; it'll come on to-night, and be at Baltimore to-morrow morning about half-past four; if you'll give me your tickets, and tell me what hotel you are going to, I'll have it sent up." Upon inquiry, we found this was a very common event, nor did anybody seem to think it a subject worth taking pains to have rectified, though the smallest amount of common sense and common arrangement might easily obviate it. And why this indifference? Because, first it would cost a few cents; secondly, it doesn't affect the majority, who travel with a small hand-bag only; thirdly, the railway across New Jersey is a monopoly, and therefore people must take that road or none; and lastly, from the observations I elicited in the course of examining my witnesses, it appeared to me that the jealousy and rivalry existing between New Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia, have some little effect; at all events, it is an ignoble affair that it is suffered to remain. I have, however, no doubt that time will remedy this, as I trust it will many of the other inconveniences and wants of arrangement which the whole railway system in this country is at present subject to.--To return from my digression. On we went, and soon crossed the Campbell-immortalized Susquehana. Whatever beauties there were, the elements effectually concealed; and after a day's journey, which, for aught we saw, might as well have been over the Shrap Falls, half-past six P.M. landed us in Baltimore, where we safely received our luggage the following morning. A letter of introduction to a friend soon surrounded us with kindness in this hospitable city. My object in stopping here was merely to enjoy a little of the far-famed canvas-back duck shooting and eating, as I purposed revisiting these parts early in spring, when I should have more leisure. No sooner were our wishes known than one of our kind friends immediately offered to drive us down to Maxwell Point, which is part of a large property belonging to General Cadwallader, and is situated in one of the endless inlets with which Chesapeake Bay abounds. All being arranged, our friend appeared in a light waggon, with a pair of spicy trotters before it. The road out was dreary and uninteresting enough; but when we left it, and turned into a waggon way through an extensive forest, I could not but feel what a lovely ride or drive it must be in the more genial seasons of the year, when the freshness of spring and summer, or the richness of autumn, clothes the dense wood with its beauties. A short and pleasant drive brought us to a ferry, by which we crossed over to the famous Point, thereby avoiding the long round which we otherwise must have made. The waters were alive with duck in every direction; it reminded me forcibly of the Lake Menzaleh, near Damietta, the only place where I had ever before seen such a duckery. The sporting ground is part of a property belonging to General Cadwallader, and is leased to a club of gentlemen; they have built a very snug little shooting-box, where they leave their guns and _matériel_ for sport, running down occasionally from Baltimore for a day or two, when opportunity offers, and enjoying themselves in true pic-nic style.[J] The real time for good sport is from the middle of October to the middle of November, and what produces the sport is, the ducks shifting their feeding-ground, in performing which operation they cross over this long point. As the season gets later, the birds do not shift their ground so frequently; and, moreover, getting scared by the eternal cannonade which is kept up, they fly very high when they do cross. The best times are daybreak and just before dark; but even then, if the weather is not favourable, they pass but scantily. My friend warned me of this, as the season for good sport was already passed, though only the nineteenth of November, and he did not wish me to be disappointed. We landed on the Point about half-past four P.M., and immediately prepared for mischief, though those who had been there during the day gave us little encouragement. The _modus operandi_ is very simply told. You dress yourself in the most invisible colours, and, armed with a huge duck-gun--double or single, as you like--you proceed to your post, which is termed here a "blind." It is a kind of box, about four feet high, with three sides and no top; a bench is fixed inside, on which to sit and place your loading gear. These blinds are fixed in the centre line of the long point, and about fifty yards apart. One side of the point they call "Bay," and the other "River." The sportsmen look out carefully from side to side, and the moment any ducks are seen in motion, the cry is given "bay" or "river," according to the side from which they are approaching. Each sportsman, the moment he "views the ducks," crouches down in his blind as much out of sight as possible, waiting till they are nearly overhead, then, rising with his murderous weapon, lets drive at them the moment they have passed. As they usually fly very high, their thick downy coating would turn any shots directed against them, on their approach. In this way, during a favourable day in the early part of the season, a mixed "file and platoon" firing of glorious _coups de roi_ is kept up incessantly. We were very unfortunate that evening, as but few ducks were in motion, and those few passed at so great a height, that, although the large A.A. rattled against them from a ponderous Purdey which a friend had lent me, they declined coming down. I had only succeeded in getting one during my two hours' watching, when darkness forced me to beat a retreat. But who shall presume to attempt a description of the luscious birds as they come in by pairs, "hot and hot?" A dozen of the members of the club are assembled; a hearty and hospitable welcome greets the stranger--a welcome so warm that he cannot feel he is a stranger; every face is radiant with health, every lip moist with appetite; an unmistakeable fragrance reaches the nostrils--no further summons to the festive scene is needed. The first and minor act of soup being over, the "smoking pair" come in, and are placed before the president. In goes the fork;--gracious! how the juice spouts out. The dry dish swims; one skilful dash with the knife on each side, the victim is severed in three parts, streaming with richness, and whetting the appetite to absolute greediness. But there is an old adage which says, "All is not gold that glitters." Can this be a deception? The first piece you put in your mouth, as it melts away on the palate, dissipates the thought, and you unhesitatingly pronounce it the most delicious morsel you ever tasted. In they come, hot and hot; and, like Oliver, you ask for more, but with better success. Your host, when he sees you flagging, urges, "one" more cut. You hesitate, thinking a couple of ducks a very fair allowance. He replies,--"'Pon my word, it's such light food; you can eat a dozen!" A jovial son of Aesculapius, on whom Father Time had set his mark, though he has left his conviviality in all the freshness of youth, is appealed to. He declares, positively, that he knows nothing so easy of digestion as a canvas-back duck; and he eats away jollily up to his assertion. How very catching it is!--each fresh arrival from the kitchen brings a fresh appetite to the party. "One down, t'other come on," is the order of the day. Those who read, may say "Gormandizer!" But many such, believe me, if placed behind three, or even four, of these luscious birds, cooked with the artistic accuracy of the Maxwell Point _cuisine_, would leave a cat but sorry pickings, especially when the bottle passes freely, and jovial friends cheer you on. Of course, I do not allude to such people as enjoy that "soaked oakum," called "bouilli." To offer a well-cooked canvas-back duck to them, would, indeed, be casting pearls before--something. Neither would it suit the fastidious taste of those who, not being able to discern the difference between juice and blood, cook all flavour and nourishment out of their meats, and luxuriate on the chippy substance which is left.--But time rolls on; cigars and toddy have followed; and, as we must be at our posts ere dawn, to Bedfordshire we go. Ere the day had dawned, a hasty cup of coffee prepared us for the morning's sport; and, lighting the friendly weed, we groped our way to our respective blinds, full of hope and thirsting for blood. Alas! the Fates were not propitious; but few birds crossed, and those mostly out of range. However, I managed to bag half a dozen before I was summoned to nine o'clock breakfast, a meal at which, it is needless to say, the "glorious bird" was plentifully distributed. After breakfast, I amused myself with a telescope, watching the ducks diving and fighting for the wild celery which covers the bottom of these creeks and bays, and which is generally supposed to give the birds their rich and peculiar flavour. They know the powers of a duck-gun to a T; and, keeping beyond its range, they come as close as possible to feed, the water being, of course, shallower, and the celery more easily obtained. Our time being limited, we were reluctantly constrained to bid adieu to our kind and hospitable entertainers, of whose friendly welcome and good cheer I retain the most lively recollections. Crossing the bay in a small boat, we re-entered the light carriage, and were soon "tooling away" merrily to Baltimore. On the road, our friend amused us with accounts of two different methods adopted in these waters for getting ducks for the pot. One method is, to find a bay where the ducks are plentiful, and tolerably near the shore; and then, concealing yourself as near the water's edge as possible, you take a stick, on the end of which you tie a handkerchief, and keep waving it steadily backwards and forwards. The other method is to employ a dog in lieu of the stick and handkerchief. They have a regular breed for the purpose, about the size of a large Skye terrier, and of a sandy colour. You keep throwing pebbles to the water's edge, which the dog follows; and thus he is ever running to and fro. In either case, the ducks, having something of the woman in their composition, gradually swim in, to ascertain the meaning or cause of these mysterious movements; and, once arrived within range, the sportsman rises suddenly, and, as the scared birds get on the wing, they receive the penalty of their curiosity in a murderous discharge. These two methods they call "tolling;" and most effectual they prove for supplying the market. Different nations exhibit different methods of ingenuity for the capture of game, &c. I remember being struck, when in Egypt, with the artful plan employed for catching ducks and flamingos, on Lake Menzaleh; which is, for the huntsman to put a gourd on his head, pierced sufficiently to see through, and by means of which,--the rest of his body being thoroughly immersed in water,--he approaches his game so easily, that the first notice they have thereof is the unpleasant sensation they experience as his hand closes upon their legs in the depths of the water. Of the town, &c., of Baltimore, I hope to tell you something more on my return. We will therefore proceed at once to the railway station, and take our places for Pittsburg. It is a drizzly, snowy morning, a kind of moisture that laughs at so-called waterproofs, and would penetrate an air-pump. As there was no smoking-car, we were constrained to enter another; and off we started. At first, the atmosphere was bearable; but soon, alas! too soon, every window was closed; the stove glowed red-hot; the tough-hided natives gathered round it, and, deluging it with expectorated showers of real Virginian juice, the hissing and stench became insufferable. I had no resource but to open my window, and let the driving sleet drench one side of me, while the other was baking; thus, one cheek was in an ice-house, and the other in an oven. At noon we came to "a fix;" the railway bridge across to Harrisburg had broken down. There was nothing for it but patience; and, in due time, it was rewarded by the arrival of three omnibuses and a luggage-van. As there were about eighty people in the train, it became a difficult task to know how to pack, for the same wretched weather continued, and nobody courted an outside place, with drenched clothes wherein to continue the journey. At last, however, it was managed, something on the herrings-in-a-barrel principle. I had one lady in my lap, and a darling unwashed pledge of her affection on each foot. We counted twenty-six heads, in all; and we jolted away, as fast as the snow would let us, to catch the Philadelphia train, which was to pick us up here. We managed to arrive about an hour and a half after it had passed; and, therefore, no alternative remained but to adjourn to the little inn, and fortify ourselves for the trial with such good things as mine host of the "Culverley" could produce. It had now settled down to a regular fall of snow, and we began to feel anxious about the chances of proceeding. Harrisburg may be very pretty and interesting in fine weather, but it was a desolately dreary place to anticipate being snowed-up at in winter, although situated on the banks of the lovely Susquehana: accordingly, I asked mine host when the next train would pass. He replied, with grammatical accuracy, "It should pass about four to-morrow morning; but when it will I am puzzled to say.--What's your opinion, Colonel?" he added; and, turning round, I observed the distinguished military authority seated on one chair, and his legs gracefully pendent over the back of another. In his sword-hand, he wielded a small clasp-knife, which did the alternate duty of a toothpick and a whittler,[K] for which latter amusement he kept a small stick in his left hand to operate upon; and the floor bore testimony to his untiring zeal. When the important question was propounded to him, he ceased from his whittling labours, and, burying the blade deep between his ivories, looked out of the window with an authoritative air, apparently endeavouring, first, to ascertain what depth of snow was on the ground, and then, by an upward glance, to calculate how much more was likely to follow. Having duly weighed these points, and having perfected the channel between his ivories, he sucked the friendly blade, and replied, with a stoical indifference--which, considering my anxiety, might almost be styled heartless--"I guess, if it goes on snowing like this, you'll have no cars here to-morrow at all." Then, craning up to the heavens, as if seeking for the confirmation of a more terrible prophecy, he added, "By the looks of it, I think the gem'men may be fixed here for a week." Having delivered himself of the foregoing consolatory observation, and duly discharged a shower of Virginia juice on the floor, the military authority resumed his whittling labours with increased vigour. His occupation involuntarily carried my mind across the water to a country-house, where I had so often seen an old blind friend amusing himself, by tearing up paper into small pieces, to make pillows for the poor. If the gallant Colonel would only substitute this occupation for whittling, what good might he not do in Harrisburg! I am happy to say that my Job's comforter turned out a false prophet; snow soon gave place to sleet, and sleet to rain, and before midnight the muck was complete. Next morning, at three, we got into the 'bus, and soon after four the cars came in, and we found ourselves once more _en route_ for Pittsburg. I think this was about the most disagreeable day's journey I ever had. The mixture of human and metallic heat, the chorus of infantine squallers--who kept responding to one another from all parts of the car, like so many dogs in an eastern city--and the intervals filled up by the hissing on the stove of the Virginia juice, were unpleasant enough; but even the elements combined against us. The rain and the snow were fighting together, and producing that slushiness of atmosphere which obscures all scenery; added to which, the unfortunate foreknowledge that we were doomed to fifteen or sixteen hours of these combinations of misery, made it indeed a wretched day. My only resource was to open a window, which the moment I attempted, a hulking fellow, swaddled up in coats and comforters, and bursting with health, begged it might be closed as "It was so cold:" the thermometer, I am sure, was ranging, within the car, from ninety to a hundred degrees. He then tried to hector and bully, and finding that of no use, he appealed to the guard. I claimed my right, and further pleaded the necessity of fresh air, not merely for comfort, but for very life. As my friend expressed the same sentiments, the cantankerous Hector was left to sulk; and I must own to a malicious satisfaction, when, soon after, two ladies came in, and seating themselves on the bench abreast of mine, opened their window, and placed Hector in a thorough draught, which, while gall and wormwood to him, was balm of Gilead to me. As I freely criticise American habits, &c., during my travels, it is but just I should state, that Hector was the only one of his countrymen I ever met who was wilfully offensive and seemed to wish to insult. The engineering on this road was so contrived, that we had to go through an operation, which to me was quite novel--viz., being dragged by wire ropes up one of the Alleghany hills, and eased down the other side. The extreme height is sixteen hundred feet; and it is accomplished by five different stationary engines, each placed on a separate inclined plane, the highest of which is two thousand six hundred feet above the level of the sea. The want of proper arrangement and sufficient hands made this a most dilatory and tedious operation. Upon asking why so 'cute and go-ahead a people had tolerated such bad engineering originally, and such dilatory arrangements up to the present hour, I was answered, "Oh, sir, that's easily explained; it is a government road and a monopoly, but another road is nearly completed, by which all this will be avoided; and, as it is in the hands of a company, there will be no delay then."--How curious it is, the way governments mess such things when they undertake them! I could not help thinking of the difference between our own government mails from Marseilles to Malta, &c., and the glorious steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, that carry on the same mails from Malta.--But to return from my digression. I was astonished to see a thing like a piece of a canal-boat descending one of these inclined planes on a truck; nor was my astonishment diminished when I found that it really was part of a canal-boat, and that the remaining portions were following in the rear. The boats are made, some in three, some in five compartments; and, being merely forelocked together, are easily carried across the hill, from the canal on one side to the continuation thereof on the other.[L] A few hours after quitting these planes, we came to the end of the railway, and had to coach it over a ten-mile break in the line. It was one of those wretched wet days which is said to make even an old inhabitant of Argyleshire look despondingly,--in which county, it will be remembered that, after six weeks' incessant wet, an English traveller, on asking a shepherd boy whether it always rained there, received the consoling reply of, "No, sir--it sometimes snaws." The ground was from eight to eighteen inches deep in filthy mud; the old nine-inside stages--of which more anon--were waiting ready; and as there were several ladies in the cars, I thought the stages might be induced to draw up close to the scantily-covered platform to take up the passengers; but no such idea entered their heads. I imagine such an indication of civilization would have been at variance with their republican notions of liberty; and the fair ones had no alternative but to pull their garments up to the altitude of those of a ballet-dancer, and to bury their neat feet and well-turned ankles deep, deep, deep in the filthy mire. But what made this conduct irresistibly ludicrous--though painful to any gentleman to witness--was the mockery of make-believe gallantry exhibited, in seating all the ladies before any gentleman was allowed to enter; the upshot of which was, that they gradually created a comparatively beaten path for the gentlemen to get in by. One pull of the rein and one grain of manners would have enabled everybody to enter clean and dry; yet so habituated do the better classes appear to have become to this phase of democracy, that no one remonstrated on behalf of the ladies or himself. The packing completed, a jolting ride brought us again to the railway cars; and in a few hours more--amid the cries of famishing babes and sleepy children, the "hush-hushes" of affectionate mammas, the bustle of gathering packages, and the expiring heat of the poisonous stove--we reached the young Birmingham of America about 10 P.M., and soon found rest in a comfortable bed, at a comfortable hotel. If you wish a good idea of Pittsburg, you should go to Birmingham, and reduce its size, in your imagination, to one-fourth the reality; after which, let the streets of this creation of your fancy be "top-dressed" about a foot deep with equal proportions of clay and coal-dust; then try to realize in your mind the effect which a week's violent struggle between Messrs. Snow and Sleet would produce, and you will thus be enabled to enjoy some idea of the charming scene which Pittsburg presented on the day of my visit. But if this young Birmingham has so much in common with the elder, there is one grand feature it possesses which the other wants. The Ohio and Monongahela rivers form the delta on which it is built, and on the bosom of the former the fruits of its labour are borne down to New Orleans, _viâ_ the Mississippi--a distance of two thousand and twenty-five miles exactly. Coal and iron abound in the neighbourhood; they are as handy, in reality, as the Egyptian geese are in the legend, where they are stated to fly about ready roasted, crying, "Come and eat me!" Perhaps, then, you will ask, why is the town not larger, and the business not more active? The answer is simple. The price of labour is so high, that they cannot compote with the parent rival; and the _ad valorem_ duty on iron, though it may bring in a revenue to the government, is no protection to the home trade. What changes emigration from the Old World may eventually produce, time alone can decide; but it requires no prophetic vision to foresee that the undeveloped mineral riches of this continent must some day be worked with telling effect upon England's trade. I must not deceive you into a belief that the Ohio is always navigable. So far from that being the case, I understand that, for weeks and months even, it is constantly fordable. As late as the 23rd of November, the large passage-boats were unable to make regular passages, owing to their so frequently getting aground; and the consequence was, that we were doomed to prosecute our journey to Cincinnati by railroad, to my infinite--but, as my friend said, not inexpressible--regret. Noon found us at the station, taking the last bite of fresh air before we entered the travelling oven. Fortunately, the weather was rather finer than it had been, and more windows were open. There is something solemn and grand in traversing, with the speed of the wind, miles and miles of the desolate forest. Sometimes you pass a whole hour without any--the slightest--sign of animal life: not a bird, nor a beast, nor a being. The hissing train rattles along; the trumpet-tongued whistle--or rather horn--booms far away in the breeze, and finds no echo; the giant monarchs of the forest line the road on either side, like a guard of Titans, their nodding heads inquiring, as it were curiously, why their ranks were thinned, and what strange meteor is that which, with clatter and roar, rushes past, disturbing their peaceful solitude. Patience my noble friends; patience, I say. A few short years more, and many of you, like your deceased brethren, will bend your proud heads level with the dust, and those giant limbs, which now kiss the summer sun and dare the winter's blast, will feed that insatiate meteor's stomach, or crackle beneath some adventurous pioneer's soup-kettle. But, never mind; like good soldiers in a good cause, you will sacrifice yourselves for the public good; and possibly some of you may be carved into figures of honour, and dance triumphantly on the surge's crest in the advance post of glory on a dashing clipper's bows, girt with a band on which is inscribed, in letters of gold, the imperishable name of Washington or Franklin. Being of a generous disposition, I have thrown out these hints in the hopes some needy American author may make his fortune, and immortalize his country, by writing "The Life and Adventures of the Forest Monarch;" or, as the public like mystery, he might make a good hit by entitling it "The Child of the Woods that danced on the Wave." Swift has immortalized a tub; other authors have endeavoured to immortalize a shilling, and a halfpenny. Let that great country which professes to be able to "whip creation" take a noble subject worthy of such high pretensions. Here we are at Cleveland; and, "by the powers of Mercury"--this expletive originated, I believe, with a proud barometer,--it is raining cats and dogs and a host of inferior animals. Everybody seems very impatient, for all are getting out, and yet we have not reached the station,--no; and they don't mean to get there at present. Possession is nine points of the law, and another train is ensconced there. Wood, of course, is so dear in this country, and railroads give such low interest--varying from six to forty per cent.--that they can't afford to have sufficient shedding. Well, out we get. Touters from the hotels cry out lustily. We hear the name of the house to which we are bound, and prepare to follow. The touter carries a lantern of that ingenious size which helps to make the darkness more visible; two steps, and you are over the ankles in mud. "Show a light, boy." He turns round, and, placing his lantern close to the ground, you see at a glance the horrid truth revealed--you are in a perfect mud swamp; so, tuck up your trowsers, and wade away to the omnibuses, about a quarter of a mile off. Gracious me! there are two ladies, with their dresses hitched up like kilts, sliding and floundering through the slushy road. How miserable they must be, poor things! Not the least; they are both tittering and giggling merrily; they are accustomed to it, and habit is second nature. A man from the Old World of advanced civilization--in these matters of minor comforts, at least--will soon learn to conduct himself upon the principle, that where ignorance is bliss, wisdom becomes folly. Laughing, like love, is catching; so these two jolly ladies put me in a good humour, and I laughed my way to the 'bus half up to my knees in mud. After all, it made it lighter work than growling, and go I must; so thank you, ladies, for the cheering example. Hot tea soon washes away from a thirsty and wearied soul the remembrance of muddy boots, and a good Havana soothes the wounded spirit. After enjoying both, I retired to rest, as I hoped, for we had to make an early start in the morning. Scarce was I in bed, ere the house rang again with laughing and romping just outside my door; black and white, old and young, male and female, all seemed chorusing together--feet clattered, passages echoed--it was a very Babel of noise and confusion. What strange beings we are! Not two hours before, I had said and felt that laughing was catching; now, although the merry chirp of youth mingled with it, I wished the whole party at the residence of an old gentleman whose name I care not to mention. May we not truly say of ourselves what the housemaid says of the missing article--"Really, sir, I don't know nothing at all about it?" A few hours before, I was joining in the laugh as I waded nearly knee-deep in mud, and now I was lying in a comfortable bed grinding my teeth at the same joyous sounds. It took three messages to the proprietor, before order was restored and I was asleep. In the morning, I found that the cause of all the rumpus was a marriage that had taken place in the hotel; and the master and mistress being happy, the servants caught the joyous infection, and got the children to share it with them. I must not be understood to cast any reflections upon the happy pair, when I say that the marriage took place in the morning, and that the children were laughing at night, for remember, I never inquired into the parentage of the little ducks. On learning the truth, I was rejoiced to feel that they had not gone to the residence of the old gentleman before alluded to, and I made resolutions to restrain my temper in future. After a night's rest, with a cup of hot _café au lait_ before you, how easy and pleasant good resolutions are. Having finished a hasty breakfast, we tumbled into an omnibus, packed like herrings in a barrel, for our number was "Legion," and the omnibus was "Zoar." Off we went to the railway; such a mass of mud I never saw. Is it from this peculiarity that the city takes its name? This, however, does not prevent it from being a very thriving place, and destined, I believe, to be a town of considerable importance, as soon as the grain and mineral wealth of Michigan, Wisconsin, &c., get more fully developed, and when the new canal pours the commerce of Lake Superior into Lake Erie. Cleveland is situated on the slope of a hill commanding a beautiful and extensive view; the latter I was told, for as it rained incessantly, I had no opportunity of judging. Here we are at the station, i.e., two hundred yards off it, which we are allowed to walk, so as to damp ourselves pleasantly before we start. Places taken, in we get; we move a few hundred yards, and come to a stand-still, waiting for another train, which allows us the excitement of suspense for nearly an hour and a half, and then we really start for Cincinnati. The cars have the usual attractions formerly enumerated: grin and bear it is the order of the day; scenery is shrouded in mist, night closes in with her sable mantle, and about eleven we reach the hotel, where, by the blessing of a happy contrast, we soon forget the wretched day's work we have gone through. Here we are in the "Queen City of the West," the rapid rise whereof is astounding. By a statistical work, I find that in 1800 it numbered only 750 inhabitants; in 1840, 46,338--1850, 115,438: these calculations merely include its corporate limits. If the suburbs be added, the population will reach 150,000: of which number only about 3000 are coloured. The Americans constitute 54 per cent.; Germans, 28; English, 16; other foreigners, 2 per cent. of the population. They have 102 schools, and 357 teachers, and 20,737 pupils are yearly instructed by these means. Of these schools 19 are free, instructing 12,240 pupils, not in mere writing and reading, but rising in the scale to "algebra, grammar, history, composition, declamation, music, drawing," &c. The annual cost of these schools is between 13,000l. and 14,000l. There is also a "Central School," where the higher branches of literature and science are taught to those who have time and talent; in short, a "Free College." According to the ordinance for the North-Western territory of 1787, "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged." Congress, in pursuance of this laudable object, "has reserved one thirty-sixth part of all public lands for the support of education in the States in which the lands lie; besides which, it has added endowments for numerous universities, &c." We have seen that the public schools in this city cost 13,500l., of which sum they receive from the State fund above alluded to 1500l., the remainder being raised by a direct tax upon the property of the city, and increased from time to time in proportion to the wants of the schools. One of the schools is for coloured children, and contains 360 pupils. There are 91 churches and 4 synagogues, and the population is thus classed--Jews, 3 per cent.; Roman Catholics, 35; Protestant, 62. The Press is represented by 12 daily and 20 weekly papers. From these statistics, dry though they may appear, one must confess that the means of education and religious instruction are provided for in a manner that reflects the highest credit on this "Queen City of the West." It is chiefly owing to the untiring perseverance of Mr. Longworth, that they have partially succeeded in producing wine. As far as I could ascertain, they made about fifty thousand gallons a year. The wine is called "Catawba," from the grape, and is made both still and sparkling. Thanks to the kind hospitality of a friend, I was enabled to taste the best of each. I found the still wine rather thin and tart, but, as the weather was very cold, that need not affect the truth of my friend's assertion, that in summer it was a very pleasant beverage. The sparkling wine was much more palatable, and reminded me of a very superior kind of perry. They cannot afford to sell it on the spot under four shillings a bottle, and of course the hotels double that price immediately. I think there can be no doubt that a decided improvement must be made in it before it can become valuable enough to find its way into the European market; although I must confess that, as it is, I should be most happy to see it supplant the poisonous liquids called champagne which appear at our "suppers," and at many of our hotels. The "Burnet House" is the principal hotel here, and afforded me every comfort I could have expected, not the least being the satisfaction I derived from the sight of the proprietor, who, in the spotless cleanliness of his person and his "dimity," and surrounded by hosts of his travelling inmates--myself among the number--stood forth in bold relief, like a snowball in a coal-hole. But we must now visit the great lion of the place, whence the city obtains the _sobriquet_ of "Porkopolis," i.e., the _auto da fé_ of the unclean animal. We will stroll down and begin at the beginning; but first let me warn you, if your nerves are at all delicate, to pass this description over, for, though perfectly true, it is very horrid. "Poor piggy must die" is a very old saying; whence it came I cannot tell; but were it not for its great antiquity, Cincinnati might claim the honour. Let us however to the deadly work! The post of slaughter is at the outskirts of the town, and as you approach it, the squeaking of endless droves proceeding to their doom fills the air, and in wet weather the muck they make is beyond description, as the roads and streets are carelessly made, and as carelessly left to fate. When we were within a couple of hundred yards of the slaughter-house, they were absolutely knee-deep, and, there being no trottoir, we were compelled to wait till an empty cart came by, when, for a small consideration, Jonathan ferried us through the mud-pond. Behind the house is the large pen in which the pigs are first gathered, and hence they are driven up an inclined plane into a small partition about twelve feet square, capable of containing from ten to fifteen pigs at once. In this inclosure stands the executioner, armed with a hammer,--something in shape like that used to break stones for the roads in England--his shirt-sleeves turned up, so that nothing may impede the free use of his brawny arms. The time arrived, down comes the hammer with deadly accuracy on the forehead of poor piggy, generally killing but sometimes only stunning him, in which case, as he awakes to consciousness in the scalding caldron, his struggles are frightful to look at, but happily very short. A trap-hatch opens at the side of this enclosure, through which the corpses are thrust into the sticking-room, whence the blood flows into tanks beneath, to be sold, together with the hoofs and hair, to the manufacturers of prussiate of potash and Prussian blue. Thence they are pushed down an inclined plane into a trough containing a thousand gallons of boiling water, and broad enough to take in piggy lengthways. By the time they have passed down this caldron, they are ready for scraping, for which purpose a large table is joined on to the lower end of the caldron, and on which they are artistically thrown. Five men stand in a row on each side of the table, armed with scrapers, and, as piggy passes down, he gets scraped cleaner and cleaner, till the last polishes him as smooth as a yearling baby. Having thus reached the lower end of the table, there are a quantity of hooks fitted to strong wooden arms, which revolve round a stout pillar, and which, in describing the circle, plumb the lower end of the table. On these piggy is hooked, and the operation of cutting open and cleansing is performed--at the rate of three a minute--by operators steeped in blood, and standing in an ocean of the same, despite the eternal buckets of water with which a host of boys keep deluging the floor. These operations finished, piggy is hung up on hooks to cool, and, when sufficiently so, he is removed thence to the other end of the building, ready for sending to the preparing-houses, whither he and his defunct brethren are convoyed in carts, open at the side, and containing about thirty pigs each. The whole of this part of the town during porking season is alive with these carts, and we will now follow one, so that we may see how piggy is finally disposed of. The cart ascends the hill till it comes to a line of buildings with the canal running at the back thereof; a huge and solid block lies ready for the corpse, and at each side appear a pair of brawny arms grasping a long cleaver made scimitar-shape; smaller tables are around, and artists with sharp knives attend thereat. Piggy is brought in from the cart, and laid on the solid block; one blow of the scimitar-shaped cleaver severs his head, which is thrown aside and sold in the town, chiefly, I believe, to Germans, though of course a Hebrew might purchase if he had a fancy therefor. The head off, two blows sever him lengthways; the hams, the shoulders, and the rib-pieces fly off at a blow each, and it has been stated that "two hands, in less than thirteen hours, cut up eight hundred and fifty hogs, averaging over two hundred pounds each, two others placing them on the blocks for the purpose. All these hogs were weighed singly on the scales, in the course of eleven hours. Another hand trimmed the hams--seventeen hundred pieces--as fast as they were separated from the carcasses. The hogs were thus cut up and disposed of at the rate of more than one to the minute." Knifemen then come into play, cutting out the inner fat, and trimming the hams neatly, to send across the way for careful curing; the other parts are put in the pickle-barrels, except the fat, which, after carefully removing all the small pieces of meat that the first hasty cutting may have left, is thrown into a boiling caldron to be melted down into lard. Barring the time taken up in the transit from the slaughter-house to these cutting-up stores, and the time he hangs to cool, it may be safely asserted, that from the moment piggy gets his first blow till his carcass is curing and his fat boiling into lard, not more than five minutes elapse. A table of piggy statistics for one year may not be uninteresting to my reader, or, at all events, to an Irish pig-driver:-- 180,000 Barrels of Pork, 196 lbs. each 35,280,000 lbs. Bacon 25,000,000 No. 1 Lard 16,500,000 Star Candles, made by Hydraulic pressure. 2,500,000 Bar Soap 6,200,000 Fancy Soap, &c. 8,800,000 ---------- 94,280,000 Besides Lard Oil, 1,200,000 gallons. Some idea of the activity exhibited may be formed, when I tell you that the season for these labours averages only ten weeks, beginning with the second week in November and closing in January; and that the annual number cured at Cincinnati is about 500,000 head, and the value of these animals when cured, &c., was estimated in 1851 at about 1,155,000l. What touching statistics the foregoing would be for a Hebrew or a Mussulman! The wonder to me is, that the former can locate in such an unclean atmosphere; at all events, I hold it as a sure sign that there is money to be made. They are very proud of their beef here, and it is very good; for they possess all the best English breeds, both here and across the river in Kentucky. They stall-feed very fat, no doubt; but though generally very good, I have never, in any part of the States, tasted beef equal to the best in England. All the fat is on the outside; it is never marbled as the best beef is with us. The price is very moderate, being about fourpence a pound. Monongahela whisky is a most important article of manufacture in the neighbourhood, being produced annually to the value of 560,000l. There are forty-four foundries, one-third of which are employed in the stove-trade; as many as a thousand stoves have been made in one day. The value of foundry products is estimated at 725,000l. annually. If commerce be the true wealth and prosperity of a nation, there never was a nation in the history of the world that possessed by nature the advantages which this country enjoys. Take the map, and look at the position of this city; nay, go two hundred miles higher up, to Marietta. From that port, which is nearly two thousand miles from the ocean, the "Muskingum," a barque of three hundred and fifty tons, went laden with provisions, direct to Liverpool, in 1845, and various other vessels have since that time been built at Cincinnati; one, a vessel of eight hundred and fifty tons, called the "Minnesota:" in short, there is quite an active business going on; shipbuilders from Maine coming here to carry on their trade--wood, labour, and lodging being much cheaper than on the Eastern coast. It is now time to continue our journey, and as the water is high enough, we will embark on the "Ohio," and steam away to Louisville. The place you embark from is called the levee: and as all the large towns on the river have a levee, I may as well explain the term at once. It is nothing more nor less than the sloping off of the banks of a river, and then paving them, by which operation two objects are gained:--first, the banks are secured from the inroads of the stream; secondly, the boats are thereby enabled at all times to land passengers and cargo with perfect facility. These levees extend the whole length of the town, and are lined with steamers of all kinds and classes, but all built on a similar plan; and the number of them gives sure indication of the commercial activity of Cincinnati. When a steamer is about to start, book-pedlers crowd on board with baskets full of their--generally speaking--trashy ware. Sometimes these pedlers are grown-up men, but generally boys about twelve or fourteen years of age. On going up to one of these latter, what was my astonishment to find in his basket, volume after volume of publications such as Holywell-street scarce ever dared to exhibit; these he offered and commended with the most unblushing effrontery. The first lad having such a collection, I thought I would look at the others, to see if their baskets were similarly supplied; I found them all alike without exception, I then became curious to know if these debauched little urchins found any purchasers, and, to ascertain the fact, I ensconced myself among some of the freight, and watched one of them. Presently a passenger came up, and these books were brought to his notice: he looked cautiously round, and, thinking himself unobserved, he began to examine them. The lad, finding the bait had taken, then looked cautiously round on his side, and stealthily drew two more books from his breast, evidently of the same kind, and it is reasonable to suppose infinitely worse. After a careful examination of the various volumes, the passenger pulled out his purse, paid his money, and walked off with eight of these Holywell-street publications, taking them immediately into his cabin. I saw one or two more purchasers, before I left my concealment. And now I may as well observe, that the sale of those works is not confined to one place; wherever I went on board a steamer, I was sure to find boys with baskets of books, and among them many of the kind above alluded to. In talking to an American gentleman on this subject, he told me that it was indeed but too common a practice, although by law nominally prohibited; and he further added, that once asking a vendor why he had such blackguard books which nobody would buy, he took up one of the worst, and said, "Why, sir, this book is so eagerly sought after, that I have the utmost difficulty in keeping up the requisite supply." It is a melancholy reflection, that in a country where education is at every one's door, and poverty at no one's, such unblushing exhibitions of immorality should exist. We embarked in the "Lady Franklin," and were soon "floating down the river of the O-hi-o." The banks are undulating, and prettily interspersed with cottage villas, which peep out from the woods, and are clotted about the more cultivated parts; but, despite this, the dreary mantle of winter threw a cold churlishness over everything. The boat I shall describe hereafter, when I have seen more of them, for their general features are the same; but there was a specimen of the fair sex on board, to whom I must introduce you, as I may never see her like again. The main piece was the counterpart of a large steamer's funnel cut off at about four feet two inches high, a most perfect cylinder, and of a dark greyish hue: a sombre coloured riband supported a ditto coloured apron. If asked where this was fastened, I suppose she would have replied, "Round the waist, to be sure;" yet, if Lord Rosse's telescope had been applied, no such break in the smooth surface of the cylinder could have been descried. The arms hung down on either side like the funnel of a cabin stove, exciting the greatest wonder and the liveliest curiosity to know how the skin of the shoulder obtained the elasticity requisite to exhibit such a phenomenon. On the top of the cylinder was a beautifully polished ebony pedestal, about two inches high on one side, tapering away to nothing at the other, so that whatever might be placed thereon, would lie at an angle of forty-five degrees. This pedestal did duty for a neck; and upon it was placed a thing which, viewed as a whole, resembled a demijohn. The lower part was pillowed on the cylinder, no gleam of light ever penetrating between the two. Upon the upper surface, at a proper distance from the extremity, two lips appeared, very like two pieces of raw beefsteak picked up off a dusty road. While wrapt in admiration of this interesting spot, the owner thereof was seized with a desire to yawn, to obtain which luxury it was requisite to throw back the demijohn into nearly a horizontal line, so as to relieve the lower end from its pressure on the cylinder. The aid of both hands was called in to assist in supporting her intellectual depository. This feat accomplished, a roseate gulf was revealed, which would have made the stout heart of Quintus Curtius quail ere he took the awful plunge. Time or contest had removed the ivory obstructions in the centre, but the shores on each side of the gulf were terrifically iron-bound, and appeared equal to crushing the hardest granite; the shinbone of an ox would have been to her like an oyster to ordinary mortals. She revelled in this luxurious operation so long, that I began to fear she was suffering from the antipodes to a lockjaw, and that she was unable to close the chasm; but at last the demijohn rose slowly and solemnly from the horizontal, the gulf gradually closed until, obtaining the old angle of forty-five degrees, the two dusty pieces of beefsteak once more stood sentry over the abyss. Prosecuting my observations along the upper surface, I next came to the proboscis, which suggested the idea of a Bologna sausage after a passage through a cotton-press. Along the upper part, the limits were invisible, so beautifully did it blend with the sable cheek on each side; but the lower part seemed to have been outside the press during the process, and therefore to have obtained unusual rotundity, thanks to which two nostrils appeared, which would, for size, have excited the envy of the best bred Arab that was ever foaled; and the division between them was nearly equal to that of the horse. I longed to hear her sneeze; it must have been something quite appallingly grand. Continuing my examination, I was forced to the conclusion that the poor delicate creature was bilious; for the dark eyes gleamed from their round yellow beds like pieces of cannel-coal set in a gum-cistus. The forehead was a splendid prairie of flat table-land, beyond which stretched a jungle of curly locks, like horse-hair ready picked for stuffing sofas, and being tied tightly round near the apex, the neck of the bottle was formed, and the demijohn complete. [Illustration: STEWARDESS OF "THE LADY FRANKLIN"] I was very curious to see this twenty-five stone sylph in motion, and especially anxious to have an opportunity of examining the pedestals by which she was supported and set in motion. After a little patience, I was gratified to a certain extent, as the stately mass was summoned to her duties. By careful observation, I discovered the pedestals resembled flounders, out of which grew, from their centre, two cylinders, the ankles deeply imbedded therein, and in no way disturbing the smooth surface. All higher information was of course wrapt in the mystery of conjecture; but from the waddling gait and the shoulders working to and fro at every step, the concealed cylinders doubtless increased in size to such an extent, that the passing one before the other was a task of considerable difficulty; and if the motion was not dignified, it was imposingly slow, and seemed to call all the energies of the various members into action to accomplish its end. Even the demijohn rolled as if it were on a pivot, nodding grandly as the mighty stewardess of the "Franklin" proceeded to obey the summons. I watched her receding form, and felt that I had never before thoroughly realized the meaning of an "armsful of joy," and I could not but wonder who was the happy possessor of this great blessing. Ibrahim Pacha, when in England, was said to have had an intense desire to purchase two ladies, one aristocratic, the other horticultural, the solidity of these ladies being their great point of attraction in his estimation. Had he but seen my lovely stewardess, I am sure he would instantly have given up negotiations for both, could he thereby have hoped to obtain such a massive treasure as the "Sylph of the 'Franklin.'" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote J: Since I was there, General Cadwallader has taken the place into his own hands.] [Footnote K: In case the expression is new to the reader, I beg to inform him that to "whittle" is to cut little chips of wood--if, when the fit comes on, no stick is available, the table is sometimes operated on.] [Footnote L: I believe the plan of making the canal-boats in sections is original; but the idea of dragging them up inclines to avoid expenses of lockage, &c., is of old date, having been practised as far back as 1792, upon a canal in the neighbourhood of Colebrook Dale, where the boats were raised by stationary engines up two inclines, one of 207 feet, and the other of 126 feet. I believe this is the first instance of the adoption of this plan, and the engineers were Messrs. Reynolds and Williams. The American inclines being so much greater, the dividing the boat into sections appears to me an improvement.] CHAPTER IX. _Scenes Ashore and Afloat_. A trip on a muddy river, whose banks are fringed with a leafless forest resembling a huge store of Brobdignagian stable brooms, may be favourable to reflection; but, if description be attempted, there is danger lest the brooms sweep the ideas into the muddy water of dulness. Out of consideration therefore to the reader, we will suppose ourselves disembarked at Louisville, with the intention of travelling inland to visit the leviathan wonder--the would-be rival to Niagara,--yclept "The Mammoth Cave." Its distance from Louisville is ninety-five miles. There is no such thing as a relay of horses to be met with--at all events, it is problematical; therefore, as the roads were execrable, we were informed it would take us two long days, and our informant strongly advised us to go by the mail, which only employs twenty-one hours to make the ninety-five miles' journey. There was no help for it; so, with a sigh of sad expectation, I resigned myself to my fate, of which I had experienced a short foretaste on my way to Pittsburg. I then inquired what lions the town offered to interest a traveller. I found there was little in that way, unless I wished to go through the pig-killing, scalding, and cutting process again; but stomach and imagination rebelled at the bare thought of a second edition of the bloody scene, so I was fain to content myself with the novelty of the tobacco pressing; and, as tobacco is the favourite _bonbon_ of the country, I may as well describe the process which the precious vegetable goes through ere it mingles with the human saliva. A due admixture of whites and blacks assemble together, and, damping the tobacco, extract all the large stems and fibres, which are then carefully laid aside ready for export to Europe, there to be cooked up for the noses of monarchs, old maids, and all others who aspire to the honour and glory of carrying a box--not forgetting those who carry it in the waistcoat-pocket, and funnel it up the nose with a goose-quill. How beautifully simple and unanswerable is the oft-told tale, of the reply of a testy old gentleman who hated snuff as much as a certain elderly person is said to hate holy-water--when offered a pinch by an "extensive" young man with an elaborate gold-box. "Sir," said the indignant patriarch, "I never take the filthy stuff! If the Almighty had intended my nostrils for a dust-pan, he would have turned them the other way."--But I wander from the subject. We will leave the fibre to find its way to Europe and its noses, and follow the leaf to America and its mouths. In another apartment niggers and whites re-pick the fibres out more carefully, and then roll up the pure loaf in a cylindrical shape, according to the measure provided for the purpose. It is then taken to another apartment, and placed in duly prepared compartments under a strong screw-press, by which operation it is transformed from a loose cylinder to a well squashed parallelogram. It is hard work, and the swarthy descendants of Ham look as if they were in a vapour-bath, and doubtless bedew the leaf with superfluous heat. After the first pressing, it goes to a more artistic old negro, who, with two buckets of water--one like pea-soup, the other as dark as if some of his children had been boiled down in it--and armed with a sponge of most uninviting appearance, applies these liquids with most scientific touch, thereby managing to change the colour, and marble it, darken it, or lighten it, so as to suit the various tastes. This operation completed, and perspiring negroes screwing down frantically, it is forced into the box prepared for its reception, which is imbedded in a strong iron-bound outer case during the process, to prevent the more fragile one from bursting under the pressure. All this over, and the top fixed, a master-painter covers it with red and black paint, recording its virtues and its charms. What a pity it could not lie in its snug bed for ever! But, alas! fate and the transatlantic Anglo-Saxon have decreed otherwise. Too short are its slumbers, too soon it bursts again, to suffer fresh pressure under the molars of the free and enlightened, and to fall in filthy showers over the length and breadth of the land, deluging every house and every vehicle to a degree that must be seen to be believed, and filling the stranger with much wonder, but far more disgust. I really think it must be chewing tobacco which makes the Americans so much more restless, so much more like armadillos than any other nation. It often has excited my wonder, how the more intelligent and civilized portion of the community, who do not generally indulge in the loathsome practice, can reconcile themselves to the annoyance of it as kindly as they do. Habit and necessity are powerful masters. Having finished this exhibition--which, by the way, kept me sneezing all the time--I went next to see a steam sawing, planing, and fitting mill. Labour being very expensive, these establishments are invaluable here; such an establishment as I saw could supply, from the raw wood in logs, all the doors and window-frames of "Stafford House" in three days, barring the polish and paint. If Mr. Cubitt is not up to this machinery, this hint may be the means of making his fortune double itself in "quarter-less no time."[M] As we knew that our journey to-morrow must be inexpressibly tedious, we beat an early retreat, requesting a cup of hot tea or coffee might be ready for us half an hour before our departure. Poor simple creatures that we were, to expect such a thing! The free and enlightened get their breakfast after being two hours _en route_, and can do without anything before starting--_ergo_, we must do the same: thus, though there were literally servants enough in the house to form a substantial militia regiment, a cup of tea was impossible to be obtained for love or money. All we had for it was to bury our disappointment in sleep. Soon after three the next morning we were roused from our slumbers, and, finishing our toilet, cheered our insides with an unadulterated draught from the Ohio. All outside the door was dark, cheerless, solitary, and still. Presently the silence was broken by some violent puffs from a penny trumpet. "Dat's de mayle, massa," said a nigger in the hall, accompanying his observation with a mysterious grin, evidently meant to convey the idea, "You'll have enough of her before you've done." Up she came to the door--I believe, by custom if not by grammar, a man-of-war and a mail-coach are shes--a heavy, lumbering machine, with springs, &c., apparently intended for scaling the Rocky Mountains. The inside was about three feet broad and five feet long, and was intended for the convenience (?) of nine people, the three who occupied the centre seat having a moveable leather strap to support their backs. Outside, there was one seat by the coachman; and if the correspondence was not great, three more might sit behind the coachman, in all the full enjoyment of a splendidly cramped position. The sides of the carriage were made of leather, and fitted with buttons, for the purpose of opening in summer. Being a nasty drizzling morning, we got inside, with our two servants, and found we had it all to ourselves. "I am sure this is comfortable enough," observed my companion, who was one of the mildest and most contented of human beings. "Too good to last long," thought I. The penny trumpet sounds, and off we go--not on our journey, but all over the town to the different hotels, to pick up live freight. I heartily hoped they might all oversleep themselves that morning. Alas! no such luck. Jonathan and a weasel are two animals that are very rarely caught napping. Passengers kept coming in until we were six, and "comfortable enough" became a misnomer. A furious blast of the tin tube, with a few spicy impromptu variations, portended something important, and, as we pulled up, we saw it was the post-office; but, murder of murders! we saw four more passengers! One got up outside; another was following; Jarvey stopped him, with--"I guess there aint no room up here for you; the mail's a-coming here." The door opened,--the three damp bodkins in line commenced their assault,--the last came between my companion and myself, I could not see much of him, it was so dark; but--woe is me!--there are other senses besides sight, and my unfortunate nostrils drank in a most foetid polecatty odour, ever increasing as he drew nearer and nearer. Room to sit there was none; but, at the blast of the tube, the rattle over the pitty pavement soon shook the obnoxious animal down between us, squeezing the poisonous exhalation out of him at each successive jolt. As dawn rose, we saw he was a German, and doubtless the poor fellow was very hard-up for money, and had been feeding for some time past on putrid pork. As for his hide and his linen, it would have been an unwarrantable tax upon his memory to have asked him when they had last come in contact with soap and water. My stomach felt like the Bay of Biscay in an equinoctial gale, and I heartily wished I could have dispensed with the two holes at the bottom of my nose. I dreaded asking how far he was going; but another passenger--under the influence of the human nosegay he was constrained to inhale--summed up the courage to pop the question, and received a reply which extinguished in my breast the last flickering ray of Hope's dim taper--"Sair, I vosh go to Nashveele." Only conceive the horror of being squashed into such a neighbour for twenty-one long hours, and over a road that necessarily kept jerking the unwashed and polecatty head into your face ten times in a minute! Who that has bowels of compassion but must commiserate me in such "untoward circumstances?" Although we had left the hotel at four, it was five before we left the town, and about seven before we unpacked for breakfast, nine miles out of town. The stench of my neighbour had effectually banished all idea of eating or drinking from my mind; so I walked up and down outside, smoking my cigar, and thinking "What can I do?" At last, the bright idea struck me--I will get in next time with my cigar; what if we are nine herrings in the barrel?--everybody smokes in this country--they won't object--and I think, by keeping the steam well up, I can neutralize a little of the polecat. So when the time came for starting, I got my big cigar-case, &c., out on my knees--as getting at your pockets, when once packed, was impossible--and entering boldly with my weed at high pressure, down I sat. We all gradually shook into our places. Very soon a passenger looked me steadily in the face; he evidently was going to speak; I quailed inwardly, dreading he was going to object to the smell of smoke. Oh, joyous sight! a cigar appeared between his fingers, and the re-assuring words came forth--"A light, sir, if you please." I never gave one more readily in my life. Gradually, passenger after passenger produced cigars; the aroma filled the coach, and the fragrance of the weed triumphed over the foetor of the polecat. Six insides out of nine hard at it, and four of them with knock-me-down Virginia tobacco, the single human odour could not contend against such powerful odds; as well might a musquito sneeze against thunder. I always loved a cigar; but here I learnt its true value in a desperate emergency. On we went, puffing, pumping, and jolting, till at last we came to a stand on the banks of a river. As there was a reasonable probability of the mail shooting into the stream on its descent, we were told to get out, on doing which we found ourselves pleasantly situated about a foot deep in mud; the mail got down safe into an open ferry-boat with two oars, and space for passengers before the horses or behind the coach. The ferry was but for a few minutes, and we then had to ascend another bank of mud, at the top of which we retook our seats in the mail, bringing with us in the aggregate, about a hundredweight of fine clay soil, with which additional cargo we continued our journey. One o'clock brought us to Elizabeth Town, and dinner; the latter was very primitive, tough, and greasy. Once more we entered our cells, and continued our route, the bad road getting worse and worse, rarely allowing us to go out of a walk. Two of our fellow-passengers managed to make themselves as offensive as possible. They seemed to be travelling bagmen of the lowest class. Conversation they had none, but by way of appearing witty, they kept repeating over and over again some four or five stories, laughing at one another's tales, which were either blasphemous or beastly--so much so, that I would most willingly have compounded for two more human polecats in lieu of them. I must say, that although all classes mix together in public conveyances, this was the first time I had ever found people conduct themselves in so disgusting a manner. We soon came to another river, and getting out, enjoyed a second mud walk, bringing in with us as before a rich cargo of clay soil; and after a continuous and increasing jolting, which threatened momentary and universal dislocation, we arrived, after a drive of twenty-one hours, at our journey's end--i.e., at "Old Bell's," so called from the proprietor of the inn. Here we were to pass the night, or rather the remainder of it, the mail going on to Nashville, and taking our foetid bodkin on with it. But, alas! the two more disagreeable passengers before alluded to remained, as they had suddenly made up their minds to stay and visit the Mammoth Cave. Old Bell is a venerable specimen of seventy odd years of age, and has been here, I believe, half a century nearly. One of his daughters, I am told, is very pretty. She is married to a senator of the United States, and keeps one of the most agreeable houses in Washington. The old gentleman is said to be worth some money, but he evidently is determined to die in harness. As regularly as the mail arrives, about one in the morning, so regularly does he turn out and welcome the passengers with a glass of mixed honey, brandy, and water. The beverage and the donor reminded me forcibly of "Old Crerer," and the "Athole Brose," with which he always welcomed those who visited him in his Highland cottage. Having got beds to ourselves--after repeated requests to roost two in a nest, as the house was small--I soon tumbled into my lair, and in the blessed forgetfulness of sleep the miseries of the day became mingled with the things that were. The next morning, after breakfast, we got a conveyance to take the party over to the Cave, a distance of seven miles. One may really say there is no road. For at least one half of the way there is nothing but a rugged track of rock and roots of trees, ever threatening the springs of the carriage and the limbs of the passenger with frightful fractures. However, by walking over the worst of it, you protect the latter and save the former, thus rendering accidents of rare occurrence. The hotel is a straggling building, chiefly ground floor, and with a verandah all round. The air is deliriously pure, and in summer it must be lovely. It is situated on a plateau, from the extremity of which the bank descends to the Green River. On both sides is the wild forest, and round the giant trunks the enamoured vine twines itself with the affectionate pertinacity of a hungry boa-constrictor, and boars its head in triumph to the topmost branches. But vegetable life is not like a Venus who, "when unadorned, is adorned the most;" and, the forest having cast off its summer attire, presents an uninviting aspect in the cold nudity of winter. When the virgin foliage of spring appears, and ripens into the full verdure of summer, the shade of these banks must be delicious; the broad-leaved and loving vine extending its matrimonial embrace as freely and universally through the forest as Joe Smith and his brethren do theirs among the ladies at the Salt Lake; and when autumn arrives, with those gorgeous glowing tints unknown to the Old World, the scene must be altogether lovely; then the admirer of nature, floating between the banks on the light-green bosom of the stream below, and watching the ever-changing tints, as the sun dropped softly into his couch in the west, would enjoy a feast that memory might in vain try to exhaust itself in recalling. There are guides appointed who provide lanterns and torches for visitors who wish to examine the Mammoth Cave; and its interior is such a labyrinth, that, without their aid, the task would be a dangerous one. Rough clothing is provided at the hotel, the excursion being one of scramble and difficulty. Thus prepared, we started on our exploring expedition, passing at the entry the remnants of old saltpetre works, which were established here during the struggle at New Orleans. The extent of this cave would render a detail tedious, as there are comparatively few objects of interest. The greatest marvel is a breed of small white fish without eyes, several of which are always to be seen. Like all similar places, it varies in size in the most arbitrary manner. At one minute you are struggling for space, and suddenly you emerge upon a Gothic-looking hall, full of gracefully pendent stalactites. Again you proceed along corridors, at one time lofty, at another threatening your head, if pride do not give way to humility. Then you come to rivers, of which there are two. At one time you are rowing under a magnificent vault, and then, anon, you are forced to lie flat down in the boat, or leave your head behind you, as you float through a passage, the roof whereof grazes the gunwale of the boat. My guide informed me that there was a peculiarity in these rivers nobody could satisfactorily account for, viz., that the more it rained, the lower these waters fell. I expect the problem resembled that which is attributed to King Charles, viz., "How it was, that if a dead fish was put into a vessel full of water it immediately overflowed, but that, if a live fish was put in, it did not do so;" and I have some suspicion the solution is the same in both cases. Among other strange places, is one which rejoices in the name of "Fat Man's Misery." At one minute the feet get fixed as in the stocks; at another, the upper portion of the body is called upon to make a right angle with the lower; even then, a projecting point of the rock above will sometimes prod you upon the upturned angle, in endeavouring to save which, by a too rapid act of humility, you knock all the skin off the more vulnerable knee. Emerging from this difficulty, and, perhaps, rising too hastily, a crack on the head closes your eyes, filling them with a vision of forked lightning. Recovering from this agreeable sensation, you find a gap like the edge of a razor, in going through which, you feel the buttons of your waistcoat rubbing against your backbone. It certainly would be no bad half-hour's recreation to watch a rotund Lord Mayor, followed by a court of aldermen to match, forcing their way through this pass after a turtle dinner. The last place I shall mention is the one which, to me, afforded the greatest pleasure: it is a large hall, in which, after being placed in a particular position, the guide retires to a distance, taking with him all the lights; and knowing by experience what portion of them to conceal, bids you, when he is ready, look overhead. In a few seconds it has the appearance of the sky upon a dark night; but, as the eye becomes accustomed to the darkness, small spots are seen like stars; and they keep increasing till the vaulted roof has the appearance of a lovely star-light night. I never saw a more pleasing or perfect illusion. It would be difficult to estimate correctly the size of the Mammoth Cave. The American gazetteers say it extends ten or twelve miles, and has lateral branches, which, altogether, amount to forty miles. It is, I imagine, second in size only to the Cacuhuainilpa, in Mexico, which, if the accounts given are accurate, would take half a dozen such as the Mammoth inside. I fear it is almost superfluous to inform the reader, that the Anglo-Saxon keeps up his unenviable character for disfiguring every place he visits; and you consequently see the names of Smith, Brown, Snooks, &c., smoked on the rocks in all directions--an appropriate sooty record of a barbarous practice.[N] Having enjoyed two days in exploring this "gigantic freak of Nature," we commenced our return about half-past four in the afternoon, so as to get over the break-neck track before dark. Old Bell[O] welcomed us as usual with his honey, brandy, and water. He then prepared us some dinner, as we wished to snatch a few hours' sleep before commencing our return to Louisville, with its twenty-one hours of pleasure. About half-past ten at night, a blast in the breeze, mixed with a confused slushy sound, as sixteen hoofs plashed in the mud, rang the knell in our ears, "Your time has come!" I anxiously looked as the mail pulled up in the middle of the road opposite to the door--they always allow the passengers the privilege of wading through the mud to the door of the inn--to see if by any chance it was empty, having been told that but few people comparatively travelled the back route--no wonder, if they could help it. Alas! the steam on the window announced, with fatal certainty, some humanities inside. The door opened; out they came, one, two, three, four. It was a small coach, with three seats, having only space for two persons on each, thus leaving places inside for my friend and myself. "Any room outside, there?" "Room for one, sir!" There was no help for it, and we were therefore obliged to leave one servant behind, to follow next night. Horses changed, honey-toddy all drank, in we got into the centre seat. "What is this all round?" "Thick drugget, sir; they nail it round in winter to keep the cold out."--Thank Heaven, it is only nailed at the bottom. Suffocation began; down goes my window. Presently a sixteen-stone kind of overgrown Pickwickian "Fat Boy," sitting opposite me, exclaims aloud, with a polar shudder, "Ugh! it's very cold!" and finding I was inattentive, he added, "Don't you find it very cold?" "Me, sir? I'm nearly fainting from heat," I replied; and then, in charity, I lent him a heavy full-sized Inverness plaid, in which he speedily enveloped his fat carcass. What with the plaids, and his five inches deep of fat, his bones must have been in a vapour bath. The other _vis-à-vis_ was a source of uneasiness to me on a different score. He kept up a perpetual expectorating discharge; and, as my open window was the only outlet, and it did not come that way, I naturally felt anxious for my clothes. Daylight gradually dawned upon the scene, and then the ingenuity of my friend was made manifest in a way calculated to move any stomach not hardened by American travelling. Whenever he had expressed the maximum quantity of juice from the tobacco, the drugget lining was moved sufficiently for him to discharge his cargo against the inside of the carriage; after which, the drugget was replaced, and the effect of the discharge concealed thereby. This drugget lining must have been invaluable to him; for upon another occasion, it did duty for a pocket-handkerchief. I must say, that when I saw the otherwise respectable appearance of the culprit, his filthy practices astounded me. Behind us were two gentlemen who were returning to Louisville, and whom we found very agreeable. We stopped for breakfast at a wayside pot-house sort of place; but, before feasting, we wanted to wash ourselves. The conveniences for that purpose were a jug, a basin, and a piece of soap, on a bench in the open court, which, as it was raining pretty smartly, was a very ingenious method of dissuasion, particularly as your pocket-handkerchief, or the sleeve of your shirt, had to supply the place of a towel. The meal was as dissuasive as the washing arrangements, and I was glad when the trumpet summoned us to coach. I made an effort to sleep, for which purpose I closed my eyes, but in vain; however, the expectorating _vis-à-vis,_ who was also a chilly bird, thought he had caught me napping, and said to his fat neighbour,--"I say, the old gentleman's asleep, pull up the window." The fat 'un did so, and I kept perfectly quiet. In a few minutes I began to breathe heavily, and then, awaking as it were with a groan, I complained of suffocation, and, dashing down the window, poked out my head and panted for fresh air: they were very civil all the rest of the journey, and never asked for the window to be shut again. In the course of the day, I found out that the fat boy opposite was connected with a circus company, and from him I gleaned something of their history, which I hope may not be uninteresting to the reader. Each company has a puffer, or advertiser, who is sent on a week before the company, to get bills printed, and see them posted up and distributed to the best advantage, in the places at which the company intend to perform. This was the fat boy's occupation, and for it he received eight pounds a month and his travelling expenses. His company consisted of seventy-five bipeds and one hundred and twenty-five quadrupeds. Of the bipeds, twelve were performers, two being women; the pay varied from sixteen pounds a month to the chief Amazonian lady, down as low as five pounds a month to the least efficient of the corps. They work all the year round, sucking their cents from the North in summer, and from the South in winter. They carry everything with them, except it may be fuel and provisions. Each has his special duty appointed. After acting at night they retire to their tents to sleep, and the proper people take the circus-tent down, and start at once for the next place they are to appear at; the performers and their tent-men rise early in the morning, and start so as to reach the ground about eleven; they then rest and prepare, so as to be ready, after the people of the village have dined, to give their first performance; then they rest and refresh ready for their evening repetition. Some companies used to make their own gas, but experience has proved that wax-lights are sweeter and cheaper in the long run, so gas making is nearly exploded. After this second performance they retire to rest; the circus tent-men strike and pack the tent, then start off for the next place of exhibition, the actors and their tents following as before mentioned: thus they go on throughout the year, bipeds and quadrupeds scarcely ever entering a house. There are numbers of these circus companies in the States, of which the largest is the one to which Van Amburgh is attached, and which, the fat boy told me, is about three times the size of his own--Van Amburgh taking always upwards of a dozen cages of his wild beasts. The work, he says, is very hard, but the money comes in pretty freely, which I can readily believe, as the bump of Inquisitiveness grows here with a luxuriance unknown elsewhere, and is only exceeded by its sister bump of Acquisitiveness, which two organs constitute audience and actors. I give you no account of scenery on the road for two reasons: first, because there are no striking features to relieve the alternations of rude cultivation and ruder forest; and secondly, because in winter, Nature being despoiled of the life-giving lines of herbage and foliage, a sketch of dreariness would be all that truth could permit. I will therefore beg you to consider the twenty-one hours past, and Louisville reached in safety, where hot tea and "trimmings"--as the astute young Samivel hath it--soon restored us from the fatigues of a snail-paced journey, over the most abominable road a man can imagine, although it is the mail route between the flourishing towns of Louisville and Nashville. Should any ambitious spirit feel a burning desire to visit the Mammoth Cave, let me advise him to slake the said flame with the waters of Patience, and take for his motto--"I bide my time." Snoring has been the order of the day in these parts for many years; but the kettle-screaming roads of the North have at last disturbed the Southern slumberers, and, like giants refreshed, they are now working vigorously at their own kettle, which will soon hiss all the way from Louisville to Nashville. Till then, I say, Patience.--One of our companions in the stage very kindly offered to take us to the club, which is newly formed here, and which, if not large, is very comfortable. I mention this as one among the many instances which have occurred to me while travelling in this country, of the desire exhibited by the better classes to show civility and attention to any gentleman who they observe is a stranger among them. The following morning we were obliged to continue our route, for which purpose it was necessary to embark two miles below the town, as the river was not high enough to allow the steamers to pass over a kind of bar called "The Falls." The road was one continuous bog of foot-deep mud, but that difficulty concerned the horses, and they got over it with perfect ease, despite the heavy drag. Once more we were floating down the Ohio, and, curiously enough, in, another "Franklin;" but she could not boast of such a massive cylindrical stewardess as her sister possessed. A host of people, as usual, were gathered round the bar, drinking, smoking, and arguing. Jonathan is "first-chop" at an argument. Two of them were hard at it as I walked up. Says the Colonel--"I tell you, Major, it is more than a hundred miles." Major--"Well, but I tell you, Colonel, it aint not no such thing." Colonel--"But, sir'ree, I know it is." Judge--"Well, Colonel, I tell you what it is; I reckon you're wrong." Colonel--getting evidently excited--"No, sir'ree, I aint, and,"--holding out a brawny hand capable of scrunching a nine-pound shot into infant pap--"darned if I wont lay you, or any other gentleman, six Kentucky niggers to a julep I'm right." After offering these tremendous odds, he travelled his fiery eagle eyes from the major to the judge, and from the judge to the major, to ascertain which of them would have it; and as they were silent, he extended the radius of his glance to the company around, chucking his head, and looking out of the corner of his eye, from time to time, towards major and judge with a triumphant sneer, as much as to say, "I've fixed you, anyhow." The argument was over; whether the major and the judge were right about the distance, or not, I cannot decide; but if the bet, when accepted, had to be ratified in the grasp of the muscular hand which the colonel extended, they were decidedly right in not accepting it, as some painful surgical operation must have followed such a crushing and dislocation as his gripe inevitably portended. I would as soon have put my hand between the rollers of a cane-press. The feeding arrangements for the humanities on board were, if disagreeable, sufficiently amusing once in a way. A table extends nearly the whole length of the gentlemen's saloon; on each side are ranged low wooden straight-back arm-chairs, of a breadth well suited for the ghost _qui n'avait pas de quoi_. But the unfortunate man who happened to be very well supplied therewith, ran considerable risk of finding the chair a permanent appendage. At the sound of the bell, all the seats being arranged opposite the respective places, the men rush forward and place themselves behind the said chairs, and, like true cavaliers, stand there till the ladies are seated. I was standing waiting among the rest, and getting impatient as time flew on. One lady had not yet arrived. At last the steward came with the said article on his arm, and having deposited her in the seat nearly opposite mine, at a knowing wink from him, a second steward sounded another bell, and the men dropped into their seats like magic. Soup having been already served, the spoons rattled away furiously. I was wondering who the lady--all females are ladies here--could be, for whom we had been so long waiting, and who had eventually come in with the steward, or gentleman--all men are gentlemen here--in so friendly a manner. She did not appear burdened with any refined manners, but, judge of my astonishment when, after she had got quit of her soup-plate and was waiting for her next helping, I observed the lady poking the point of her knife into a sweet dish near her, and sucking off the precious morsel she had captured, which interesting operation she kept repeating till her roast turkey arrived. There was an air of such perfect innocence about her, as she was employed in the sucking process, that you could not help feeling she was unconscious any eye fixed upon her could find her occupation offensive or extraordinary. A gentleman seated near me next attracted my attention. They had helped him to a piece of meat the size and shape of a Holborn-hill paving-stone. How insulted he must be at having his plate filled in that way. Look! look! how he seizes vegetable after vegetable, building his plate all round, like a fortification, the junk of beef in the middle forming the citadel. It would have taken Napoleon a whole day to have captured such a fortress; but, remember, poor Napoleon did not belong to the nation that can "whip creation." See how Jonathan batters down bastion after bastion! Now he stops!--his piercing eye scrutinizes around!--a pie is seen! With raised body and lengthened arm, he pounces on it, and drags it under the guns of his fortress. Knives and forks are scarce--his own will do very well. A breach is made--the pastry parapet is thrown at the foot of the half-demolished citadel; spoons are not at hand, the knife plunges into the abyss, the fork follows--'tis a chicken pie--pillage ensues; all the white meat is captured, the dish is raised on high, from the horizontal it is turned to the "slantindicular," and the citadel is deluged in the shower. "Catch who can," is not confined to school-boys, I see. I was curious to witness the end of this attack, and, as he had enough to occupy his ivories for half an hour--if they did not give in before--I turned quietly to my own affairs, and began eating my dinner; but, curiosity is impatient. In a few minutes, I turned back to gaze on the fortress. By Jupiter Tonans! the plate lay before him, clean as if a cat had licked it; and, having succeeded in capturing another plate, he was organizing on this new plateau various battalions of sweets, for which he skirmished around with incomparable skill. The parade-ground being full, I expected to see an instant attack; but he was too knowing to be caught napping in that way. He looked around, and with a masterly eye scanned apples, oranges, and nuts. The two former he selected with great judgment; the latter he brought home in quantities sufficient to secure plenty of good ones. Then pouncing upon a pair of nutcrackers, and extending them like a chevaux-de-frise round his prizes, he began his onslaught upon the battalion of sweets before him. The great general now set seriously to work. Scarce had he commenced, when an innocent young man, who had finished his sweets and was meditating an attack on some nuts, espied the crackers lying idle before the gastronomic general, and said, "Will you lend me the nutcrackers, sir?" The great general raised his head, and gave the youth one of those piercing looks with which Napoleon used to galvanize all askers of impertinent questions. The youth, understanding the refusal conveyed in that terrible glance, had however enough courage to add, "You don't want them, sir!" This was too much to bear in silence; so he replied with awful distinctness, "But I reckon I shall, sir!" Then dropping his head to the original position, he balanced a large piece of pumpkin-pie on the point of his knife, and gallantly charged with it down his throat. Poor youth! a neighbour relieved his distress, and saved his ivories. Nearly a quarter of an hour has elapsed; dinner is all over, the nuts are all cracked and put in the pockets, and away the company go either to the other end of the saloon, where the stove is placed, round which they eat their nuts and smoke their cigars, or to drink at the bar. When the smoking is over, clasp-knives are opened. Don't be alarmed; there is no bloodshed intended, although half a dozen people strolling about with these weapons may appear ominous. Watch their faces; the lower part of their cheeks goes in with high-sucking pressure, then swells again, and the active tongue sweeps with restless energy along and around the ivory barriers within its range. In vain--in vain it strives to dispossess the intruders; rebellious particles of nut burrow deep between the ivories, like rabbits in an old stone dike. The knife comes to the rescue, and, plunging fearlessly into the dark abyss, the victory is won. Then the victors commence chewing _à l'outrance,_ and expectorate on the red-hot stove, till it hisses like a steam-engine, or else they deluge the floor until there is no alternative but thick shoes or damp feet. The fumes of every known alcohol exhale from the bar, and mix with the head-bursting fragrance of the strongest "Warginny." Some seek safety in flight; others luxuriate in the poisonous atmosphere, and scream out, like deeply-injured men, if any door by chance be left open. Behold! the table is laid again for dinner; piles of food keep coming in; the company arrive--some in coats, some in waistcoats only; some in coloured shirts, some in red flannel shirts; one, with sleeves turned up to the elbow. "Who on earth are these?" I ask, in my ignorance. "Oh! those, I guess, are the officers of the ship." Truly, they are "free," but whether "enlightened" also I had no opportunity of ascertaining. A short ten minutes, and they are all scattered, and the piles of food with them. Once more I look, and, behold! the table is again preparing. Who can this be for? Doubts are speedily solved, as a mixture of niggers and whites sit down to the festive hoard; it is the boys--_alias_ waiters--whose turn has come at last. Their meal over, the spare leaves of the table are removed, half a dozen square tables dot the centre line of the saloon, and all is comparatively quiet. This process takes place at every meal--8 A.M., 1 P.M., and 5 P.M.--with the most rigid punctuality. Fancy my distress one evening, when, on opening my cabin-door, I beheld a fellow-creature doubled up at the entry of the door opposite. I thought the poor sufferer had a fit of cholera, and I was expecting each instant to hear his screams; but hearing nothing, I examined the person in question more minutely. It was merely a gentleman, who had dispossessed himself of his jacket, waistcoat, trousers, and boots, not forgetting his stockings; and then deliberately planting his chair in the open entry of the door, and gathering up one foot on the seat thereof, was amusing himself by cutting and picking the horny excrescences of his pedal digits, for the benefit of the passengers in the gentlemen's saloon; and, unfortunately, you could not be sure that his hands would be washed before he sat next to you at breakfast in the morning,--for I can testify that I have, over and over again, sat next to people, on these Western waters, whose hands were scarce fit to take coals out of a scuttle. There is nothing I have here set down but what actually passed under my own eye. You will, of course, find gentlemen on board, and many whose manners there is nothing to complain of, and whose conversation is both instructive and amusing; but you evidently are liable to find others to realize the picture I have given of scenes in the gentlemen's saloon, and, unless you have some acquaintance among the ladies, their saloon is as sacred from a gentleman as the Sultan's harem. And whence comes all this, except from that famous bugbear "equality?" Is there any real gentleman throughout the Empire State who would, in his heart, approve of this ridiculous hustling together of well-bred and ill-bred? But it pleases the masses, and they must submit to this incongruous herding and feeding, like the hungry dogs of a "Dotheboys Hall" kennel. It may be useful information for the traveller, and is only fair to the Mississippi boat proprietors, to observe, that if you succeed in getting a passage in a perfectly new boat, there is always more care, more safety, better living, and better company. In all the boats there is one brush and comb for the use of the passengers. By the aid of steam and stream, we at last reached Cairo, which is on the southern bank of the Ohio and the eastern of the Mississippi; its advantageous position has not passed unnoticed, but much money has been thrown away upon it, owing to the company's not sitting down and counting the cost before they began. There can be no question that, geographically, it is _par excellence_ the site for the largest inland town of America, situated as it is at the confluence of the two giant arteries; and not merely is its position so excellent but mountains of coal are in its neighbourhood. The difficulty which has to be contended against is the inundation of these rivers. Former speculators built up levees; but either from want of pluck or purse, they were inefficiently constructed; the Mississippi overflowed them and overwhelmed the speculators. Latterly, however, another company has taken the task in hand, and having sufficient capital, it embraces the coal mines as well as the site, &c., of the new town, to which the coal will of course be brought by rail, and thus be enabled to supply the steamers on both rivers at the cheapest rate, and considerably less than one-third the price of wood; and if the indefatigable Swede's calorie-engine should ever become practicable, every steamer will easily carry sufficient coal from Cairo to last till her return; in short, I think it requires no prophetic eye to foresee that Cairo in fifty years, if the Union continues, will be one of the greatest, most important, and most flourishing inland towns in America; and curiously enough, this effect will be essentially brought about by the British capital embarked in the enterprise. A few hours' run up the river brought us to St. Louis, whose nose, I prophesy, is to be put out of joint by Cairo some future day. Nevertheless, what a wonderful place is this same St. Louis; its rapid increase is almost as extraordinary as that of Cincinnati, and perhaps more so, when you consider, not only that it is further west by hundreds of miles, but that it has to contend with the overflowing of the Mississippi, which has, on more than one occasion, risen to the first floor of the houses and stores built on the edge of the levee; fortunately, the greater part of the town, being built on higher ground, escapes the ruinous periodical duckings. It is situated seven hundred and fifty miles below the falls of St. Anthony, and twelve hundred miles above New Orleans. Le Clede and his party appreciated the value of its position as early as 1764, and named it in honour of Louis the Fifteenth. Subsequently it was transferred to the Spaniards, in 1768: however, it made but little progress until it passed into the hands of the United States, in 1804. The energy of the American character soon changed the face of affairs, and there are now 3000 steam-boats arriving annually, which I believe to be a greater number than there were inhabitants at the date of its cession to them. But the more active impulse seems to have commenced in 1830, at which time the population was under 7000, since which date it has so rapidly increased, that in 1852 its population was bordering on 100,000. The natives of the United States form about one-half of the community, and those of Germany one-fourth; the remainder are chiefly Irish. There are twenty newspapers, of which four are published in German. There are forty churches, one-fourth of which are Roman Catholic, and a liberal provision is made for education; the material prosperity of this thriving community is evidenced by the fact, that the annual value of the produce of their manufacturing-establishments exceeds 3,000,000l.; flour-mills, sugar refineries, and carpenters, contributing more largely than other occupations; after which come the tailors, thanks probably to the Germans, who appear to have a strong predilection for this trade, at which there are more hands employed than at any other. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote M: Messrs. Wallis and Whitworth, in their Report on the Industry of the United States, remark at Chapter V.--"In no branch of manufacture does the application of labour-saving machinery produce, by simple means, more important results than in the working of wood."] [Footnote N: Since my return to England, I have seen it asserted, by a correspondent in the _Morning Chronicle_, that Colonel Crogan, of Louisville, purchased this cave for 2000l., and that, shortly after, he was offered 20,000l. for his bargain. It is further stated that, in his will, he tied it up in his family for two generations. If this latter be true, it proves that entails are not quite unknown even in the Democratic Republic.] [Footnote O: I have heard, since my return to England, that old Mr. Bell is dead.] CHAPTER X. _River Scenes_. I felt very anxious to make an excursion from St. Louis, and get a little shooting, either to the north-west or down near Cairo, where there are deer; but my companion was dying to get to New Orleans, and strongly urged me not to delay, "fiddling after sport." I always looked upon myself as a model of good-natured easiness, ever ready to sacrifice self for a friend; but I have been told by some intimates, that such is not my character, and some have even said, "You're a obstinate follow." If they were wrong, I suffered enough for my easiness; if they were right, I must have yielded the only time that I ought to have been firm; at all events, I gave up my shooting expedition, which I had intended to occupy the time with till a first-class boat started for New Orleans; and, in an evil hour, I allowed myself to be inveigled on board the "Western World." The steam was up, and we were soon bowling down the leviathan artery of the North American continent. Why the said artery should keep the name of the Mississippi, I cannot explain; for, not only is the Missouri the larger river above the confluence, but the Mississippi is a clear stream, with solid, and, in some instances, granite-bound shores, and perfectly free from "snags;" whereas the Missouri has muddy banks, and revels in snags, which, as many have sadly experienced, is the case with the stream on which they are borne throughout its whole length, thereby fully evincing its true parentage, and painfully exhibiting its just right to be termed Missouri; but the rights of men and women are difficult enough to settle, without entering into the rights of rivers, although from them, as from men and women, flow both good and evil. A truce to rights, then, especially in this "Far West," where every one is obliged to maintain his own for himself. This river is one of the places assigned as the scene of the conversation between the philosopher and the boatman--a tale so old, that it had probably died out before some of my younger readers were born; I therefore insert it for their benefit exclusively.--A philosopher, having arrived at a ferry, entered a boat, rowed by one of those rare articles in this enlightened Republic--a man without any education. PHILOSOPHER _(loquitur)._--Can you write? BOATMAN.--I guess I can't. PHILOSOPHER.--How sad! why, you've lost one-third of your life! Of course you can read? BOATMAN,--Well, I guess I can't that neither. PHILOSOPHER.--Good gracious me! why, you've lost two-thirds of your life. When the conversation had proceeded thus far, the boatman discovered that, in listening to his learned passenger, he had neglected that vigilance which the danger of the river rendered indispensable. The stream was hurrying them into a most frightful snag; escape was hopeless; so the boatman opened the conversation with this startling question: BOATMAN.--Can you swim, sir? PHILOSOPHER.--No, that I can't. BOATMAN.--Then, I guess, you've lost all your life. Ere the sentence was finished, the boat upset; the sturdy rower struggled manfully, and reached the shore in safety. On looking round, nought was to be seen of the philosopher save his hat, floating down to New Orleans. The boatman sat down on the bank, reflecting on the fate of the philosopher; and, as the beaver disappeared in the bend of the river, he rose up and gave vent to his reflections in the following terms: "I guess that gentleman was never taught much of the useful; learning is a good thing in its place, but I guess swimming is the thing on the Mississippi, fix it how you will." As I have alluded to that _rara avis_ in the United States, a totally uneducated man, I may as well give an amusing specimen of the production of another Western, whose studies were evidently in their infancy. It is a certificate of marriage, and runs thus:-- "State of Illenois Peoria County ss "To all the world Greeting. Know ye that John Smith and Peggy Myres is hereby certified to go together and do as old folks does, anywhere inside coperas precinct, and when my commission comes I am to marry em good, and date em back to _kivver accidents_. "O---- M---- R---- [ss] "Justice of the Peace." Let us now return to the "Western World." Having committed the indiscretion of taking my passage on board of her, the next step I took--i.e., paying for it--was worse, and proclaimed me a griffin. The old stagers know these waters too well to think of paying before they are at, or about, the end of their journey. Having, however, both taken and paid for my passage, and committed what old maids and sailors would call the audacious folly of starting upon a Friday, I may as well give you a description of the boat. The river at many places and in many seasons being very low, these steamers are built as light as possible; in short, I believe they are built as light as any company can be found to insure them. Above the natural load-line they flam out like the rim of a washing-basin, so as to give breadth for the superstructure; on the deck is placed the engine and appurtenances, fuel, &c.; whatever is not so occupied is for freight. This deck is open all round, and has pillars placed at convenient distances, about fifteen to twenty feet high, to support the cabin deck. The cabin deck is occupied in the centre by a saloon, extending nearly the whole length of the vessel, with sleeping cabins--two beds in each--opening off it on both sides. The saloon is entered from forward; about one-third of its length at the after-end is shut off by doors, forming the ladies' sanctum, which is provided with sofas, arm-chairs, piano, &c.; about one-fifth of the length at the foremost-end, but not separated in any way, is the smoking-place, with the bar quite handy, and the stove in the centre. The floor of this place may with propriety be termed the great expectorating deposit, owing to the inducements it offers for centralization, though, of course, no creek or cranny of the vessel is free from this American tobacco-tax--if I may presume so to dignify and designate it. Having thus taken off one-third and one-fifth, the remaining portion is the "gentlemen's share"--how many 'eenths it may be, I leave to fractional calculators. Their average size is about sixteen feet broad, and from seven and a half to eight and a half feet high; the centre part is further raised about eighteen inches, having glass along the sides thereof, to give light; they are always well painted and elaborately gilt--in some vessels, such as the "Eclipse," of Louisville, they are quite gorgeous. The cabins are about six feet by seven, the same height as the saloon, and lit by a door on the outside part, the upper portion of which is glass, protected, if required, by folding _jalousies_, intended chiefly for summer use. Outside these cabins a gallery runs round, covered at the top, and about four feet broad, and with entries to the main cabin on each side. The box which covers the paddle-wheel, &c., helps to make a break in this gallery, separating the gentlemen from the ladies. Some boats have a narrow passage connecting the two galleries, but fitted with a _grille_ door, to prevent intrusion into the harem gallery; before, the paddle-box, on one side, is the steward's pantry, and on the other, that indispensable luxury to an American, the barber's shop; where, at all hours of the day, the free and enlightened, mounted on throne-like chairs and lofty footstools, stretch their carcases at full length, to enjoy the tweaking of their noses and the scraping of their chins, by the artistic nigger who officiates. This distinguished official is also the solo dispenser of the luxury of oysters, upon which fish the Anglo-Saxon in this hemisphere is intensely ravenous. It looks funny enough to a stranger, to see a notice hung up (generally near the bar), "Oysters to be had in the barber's saloon." Everything is saloon in America. Above this saloon deck, and its auxiliaries of barber-shop, gallery, &c., is the hurricane-deck, whereon is a small collection of cabins for the captain, pilots, &c.--there are always two of the latter, and their pay each, the captain told me, is forty pounds a month--and towering above these cabins is the wheel-house, lit all round by large windows, whence all orders to the engineers are readily transmitted by the sound of a good bell. The remainder of the deck--which is, in fact, only the roof of the saloon-cabins and gallery--is open to all those who feel disposed to admire distant views under the soothing influence of an eternal shower of wood-cinders and soot. These vessels vary in breadth from thirty-five to fifty feet, and from one hundred and fifty to--the "Eclipse"--three hundred and sixty-five feet in length; the saloons extending the whole length, except about thirty feet at each end. They have obtained the name of "palace-steamers," and at a _coup d'oeil_ they appear to deserve it, for they are grand and imposing, both outside and inside; but many an European who has travelled in them will agree with me in the assertion, that they might, with more propriety, be termed "palace sepulchres;" not merely from the loss of life to which their constant disasters give rise, but also from the contrast between the grandeur outside and the uncleanliness within, of which latter I have already given a sketch in my trip from Louisville. Some idea may be formed of their solidity, when I tell you they are only calculated to last five years; but at the end of three, it is generally admitted that they have paid for themselves, with good interest. I give you this, on the information derived from a captain who was sole owner, and I have also heard many others repeat the same thing; and yet the "Eclipse" cost 120,000 dollars, or about 25,000l. In the saloon you will always see an account of the goodness of the hull and the soundness of the boilers hung up, and duly attested by the proper inspectors of the same. The way these duties of the inspectors are performed makes it a perfect farce, at least on most occasions. The inspector comes on board; the captain and engineer see him, and, of course, they shake hands, for here everybody shakes hands with everybody the moment they meet, if only for the first time; the only variation being in the words addressed: if for the first time, it may run thus:--"Sir, I'm happy to make your acquaintance;" which may be replied to by an additional squeeze, and perhaps a "Sir, I reciprocate." N.B.--Hats off always the first time. If it is a previous acquaintance, then a "Glad to see you, sir," is sufficient.--But to return from this digression. The captain and engineer greet the inspector--"I s'pose you're come to look at our bilers, sir?" "Yes, sir, I am." The parties all instinctively drawing nearer and nearer to the bar. "Well, sir, let's have a drink."--"Well, sir, let's."--"A cigar, sir?"--"Thank'ee, sir!" Parties smoke and drink. Ingeniously enough, the required document and pen and ink are all lying handy: the obdurate heart of the inspector is quite melted by kindness. "Well, sir, I s'pose your bilers are all right?"--"I guess they are that, sir, and nurthin else; you can't go and for to bust them bilers of mine, fix it anyhow you will; you can't that, I do assure you, sir."--What inspector can doubt such clear evidence.--"Take another glass, sir, do."--"Thank'ee, I'll sign this paper first." The inspection is over, all except the "glass" and the "'bacco," which continue to flow and fume. The skippers of these boats are rough enough; but I always found them very civil, plain spoken, and ready to give all the information in their power; and many of them have confessed to me that the inspection was but too often conducted in the manner above described. There is little to interest in the account of a trip down the river. The style of society met with on board these vessels, I have already given you a sketch of; it may sometimes be better, and sometimes worse. One of my "messmates" in this boat, was a young fellow who had been second captain of the mizen-top on board of H.M.S. "Vengeance;" but not liking the style of discipline, especially--as he said--the irritating substitutes for flogging which have been introduced of late years into the Navy, to suit the mawkish sensibility of public opinion in England, as well as the clamours of the all-ruling Press, he took the first opportunity of running away, to seek his fortune in the Far West. He observed to me one day, "Those chaps who kick up such a devil of a row about flogging in the Navy, whatever their intentions may be, are no real friends to the sailor or the service." As a slight illustration of the truth of his remarks, I may here observe that a purser in the American Navy, in which service they have lately abolished flogging, told me, that soon after the paying off of a line-of-battle ship in which he had been serving, he happened to meet fifty of his old shipmates in the port, and asking them what they were going to do, they told him they were about to embark for England, to take service in the English Navy; for said they, "Since corporal punishment has been abolished, the good men have to do all the work, and that wont pay." Only three of the fifty had ever been in the English service. There can be no doubt that many gentlemen of sensitive minds, seeing the names of their brother officers dragged before the public, through the House of Commons or the columns of an anonymous Press, endeavour to keep up discipline by other means, which annoy Jack far more, or else, slackening the bonds of discipline, leave all the work to be done by the willing and the good; anything, rather than be branded as a tyrant in every quarter of the globe by an anonymous assailant, knowing full well that, however explicit a denial may be inserted, ten people will read the charge for every one that reads its contradiction. But I am wandering from my young friend, the captain of the mizen-top. If he did not look very well "got up" in his red shirt, at all events he was clean in his person, thus forming a pleasing contrast to a young chap who came in the evening, and seated himself on the table, where I was playing a game at écarté with my companion. His hands absolutely appeared the hands of a nigger, though his voice was the voice of a white; travelling my eyes up to and beyond his face, I found it was all in keeping; his hair looked like an Indian jungle. If some one could only have caught him by the heels, and swung him round and round on a carding machine, like a handful of hemp, it would have improved him immensely; especially if, after going through that process, he had been passed between two of the pigs through the scalding-trough at Cincinnati. Among others of our fellow-voyagers, we found one or two very agreeable and intelligent American gentlemen, who, though more accustomed to the _désagréments_ of travel, were fully alive to it, and expressed their disgust in the freest manner. Let us now turn from company to scenery.--What is there to be said on this latter subject? Truly it is nought but sameness on a gigantic scale. What there is of grand is all in the imagination, or rather the reflection, that you are on the bosom of the largest artery of commerce in the world. What meets the eye is an average breadth of from half a mile to a mile of muddy water, tenanted by uprooted trees, and bristling with formidable snags. On either side a continuous forest confines the view, thus depriving the scene of that solemn grandeur which the horizonless desert or the boundless main is calculated to inspire. The signs of human life, like angels' visits, are few and far between. No beast is seen in the forest, no bird in the air, except from time to time a flight of water-fowl. At times the eye is gratified by a convocation of wild swans, geese, and ducks, assembled in conclave upon the edge of some bank; or, if perchance at sunrise or sunset you happen to come to some broad bend of the river, the gorgeous rays light up its surface till it appears a lake of liquid fire, rendered brighter by the surrounding darkness of the dense and leafless forest. Occasionally the trumpet-toned pipe of the engine--fit music for the woods--bursts forth; but there are no mountains or valleys to echo its strains far and wide. The grenadier ranks of vegetable life, standing like sentries along the margin of the stream, refuse it either an entry or an answer, and the rude voice of mechanism finds a speedy and certain sepulture in the muddy banks. This savage refusal of Nature to hold converse is occasionally relieved by the sight of a log hut, surrounded with cords of wood[P] prepared for sale to the steamers. At other times a few straggling huts, and piles of goods ready for transport, vary the scene. Sometimes you come to a real village, and there you generally find an old steamer doing duty for wharf-boat and hotel, in case of passengers landing at unseasonable hours of the night. Thanks also to the great commercial activity of the larger towns above, the monotony of the river is occasionally relieved by the sight of steam-boats, barges, coal-boats, salt-boats, &c. Now and then one's heart is cheered and one's spirits fortified by the sight of a vessel or two that has been snagged, and which the indignant stream appears to have left there as a gentle hint for travellers. Thus the day passes on, and, when night closes in, you bid adieu to your friends, not with "Pleasant dreams to you!" but with a kind of mysterious smile, and a "I hope we sha'n't be snagged to-night!" You then retire to your cabin, and ... what you do there depends on yourself; but a man whose mind is not sobered when travelling on these waters is not to be envied. When you leave your cabin in the morning, as you enter the saloon, you fancy a cask of spirits has burst. A little observation will show you your mistake, and the cause of it; which is merely that the free and enlightened are taking their morning drink at the bar. Truly they are a wonderful race; or, as they themselves sometimes express it, "We are a tall nation, sir; a big people." Though they drink on all occasions, whether from sociability or self-indulgence, and at all times, from rosy morn to dewy eve, and long after;--though breath and clothes are "alive" with the odour of alcohol, you will scarcely ever see a passenger drunk. Cards are also going all day long, and there is generally a Fancy-man--or blackleg--ready to oblige a friend. These card-playings are conducted quietly enough at present; but an old traveller told me he remembered, some fifteen years ago, when things were very different, and when every player came armed with a pistol and bowie-knife, by which all little difficulties as to an odd trick or a bet were speedily settled on the spot. In those days the sun never rose and set without witnessing one or more of these exciting little adjustments of difficulties, with which the bystanders were too good judges ever to interfere. In fact, they seem to have been considered as merely pleasing little breaks in the monotony of the trip. As it may interest some of _my_ readers, I will endeavour to retail for their amusement a sketch which was given me of a scene of boat-racing in the olden time. The "Screecher" was a vessel belonging to Louisville, having a cargo of wild Kentuckians and other passengers on board, among whom was an old lady, who, having bought a winter stock of bacon, pork, &c., was returning to her home on the banks of the Mississippi. The "Burster" was a St. Louis boat, having on board a lot of wild back-woodsmen, &c. The two rivals met at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Beat or burst was the alternative. Victory hung in one scale; in the other, defeat and death. The "Screecher" was a little ahead; gradually the "Burster" closes. The silence of a death-struggle prevails. The Screechers put on more wood, and place more weight on the safety-valve; she bounds ahead. Slowly, but surely, the "Burster" draws nearer. The captain of the "Screecher" looks wistfully at the fires, for the boilers are well-nigh worn out. The "Burster" is almost abreast. The enraged Kentuckians gather round the captain, and, in fury, ask--"Why don't you put more weight on?" CAPTAIN--"Boilers are done; can't bear it nohow." KENTUCKIANS--"Can't bear it? You chicken-hearted coward--" Knives are drawn, pistols click, a hundred voices exclaim, "Get on it yourself, or I'll bury this knife below your outer skin." Their eyes gleam--their hands are raised for the deadly blow. Wild boys, these Kentuckians; the captain knows it too well. A choice of deaths is before him; excitement decides--he mounts the breach. The "Screecher" shoots through the waters, quivering from head to stern. The Kentucky boys yell with delight and defiance. Again the "Burster" closes on her rival. Kentuckians brandish their knives, and call to the negroes, who are already half-roasted, "Pile on the wood; pile like agony; I'll ram a nigger into the fire for every foot the 'Burster' gains." Soon a cry of exultation is heard on board the "Burster," as she shoots up close to her rival. The enraged Kentuckians shout out, "Oil, I swear!--oil, by all creation!" "I smell it!" exclaims the old lady with the store of bacon. Her eyes flash fire; a few words to her slaves Pompey and Caesar, and casks of bacon, smashed quick as thought, lay before the furnace. In it all goes; the "Screecher" is wild; the captain bounds up and down like a parched pea on a filing-pan; once more she flies ahead of her rival "like a streak of greased lightning." Suddenly--horror of horrors!--the river throbs beneath; the forest trees quake like aspen leaves; the voice of many thunders rends the air; clouds of splinters and human limbs darken the sky. The "Burster" is blown to atoms! The captain jumps down, and joins the wild Kentucky boys in a yell of victory, through the bass notes of which may be heard the shrill voice of the old lady, crying, "I did it, I did it--it's all my bacon!" The struggle over, and the excitement passed, they return and pick up such portions of the human frame as may be found worth preserving.--To resume. Our captain was overtaken by a telegraphic message, requiring his appearance on a certain day to answer a charge of libel. From what I could glean, it seems that the captain, considering himself cheated by a person with whom he had been transacting business, took the liberty of saying to him, "Well, you're a darned infernal rascal, fix it anyhow you will!" The insulted person sued for 2500 dollars damages, and the captain was obliged to leave us, that he might go and defend his cause. He was a good type of a "hard-a-weather-bird," and I was sorry to see him obliged to quit the ship. I told him so, adding, that if he deserted us, we should be sure to get snagged, or something worse. He replied,--"Oh, no, sir; I guess you'll be safe enough; I shall leave my clerk in charge; he's been a captain of these boats; you'll be right enough, sir." And away he went ashore at Memphis, leaving us to continue our course to New Orleans. Night came on, and we all toddled off to roost. I am habitually a very sound sleeper, dropping off the moment I turn in, and never awaking till daylight. On this occasion, however, I awoke about two o'clock A.M., and, do what I would, I could not coax myself to sleep again. While tossing from side to side, I felt the vessel strike as if gently touching a bank; and wood being a good conductor of sound, I heard the water, as it were, gurgling in. My first idea was, "We are snagged;" then, remembering how slight the concussion had been, I calmed my fears and turned over on my side, determined to bottle off a little more sleep if possible. Scarce had the thought crossed the threshold of my mind, when men with hasty steps rushed into the saloon, banging frantically at the cabin-doors, and the piercing cry was heard--"Turn out! turn out!--we're sinking!" Passengers flew from their beds, and opened their doors to get what scanty light the lamps in the saloon might afford. A mysterious and solemn silence prevailed; all was action; no time for words; dress, catch up what you can, and bolt for your life. As I got to the side of the vessel, I saw a steamer alongside, and felt the boat I was in careening over. A neighbour, in fear and desperation, caught hold of me as a drowning man catches at a straw; no time for compliments this, when it is neck or nothing; so, by a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, I got quit of his clutch, and, throwing my desk over to the other boat, I grasped the wooden fender and slid down. Thank God, I was safe!--my companion was already safe also. It was about half-past four A.M., a drizzly, wet morning, quite dark, except the flame of the torches. A plank was got on board of the sinking boat, along which more passengers and even some luggage were saved. The crew of the sound boat had hard work to keep people from trying to return and save their luggage, thus risking not only their own lives but at the same time impeding the escape of others. From the gallery above I was looking down upon the wreck, lit up by the lurid light of some dozen torches, when, with a crash like thunder, she went clean over and broke into a thousand pieces; eighty head of cattle, fastened by the horns, vainly struggled to escape a watery grave. It was indeed a terrific and awful scene to witness. From the first striking till she went to pieces, not a quarter of an hour had elapsed; but who was saved? Who knew, and--alas! that I must add--who cared? The crew worked hard enough to rescue all, and to them be every credit for their exertions; but the indifference exhibited by those who had been snatched from the jaws of death was absolutely appalling. The moment they escaped, they found their way to the bar and the stove, and there they were smoking, drinking, and passing the ribald jest, even before the wreck had gone to pieces, or the fate of one-half of their companions been ascertained. Yet there was a scene before their eyes sufficient, one would have imagined, to have softened the hardest heart and made the most thoughtless think. There, among them, at the very stove round which they were gathered, stood one with a haggard eye and vacant gaze, and at his feet clung two half-naked infants; a quarter of an hour before he was a hale man, a husband, with five children; now, he was an idiot and a widower, with two. No tear dimmed his eye, no trace of grief was to be read in his countenance; though the two pledges of the love of one now no more hung helplessly round his legs, he heeded them not; they sought a father's smile--they found an idiot's stare. They cried: was it for their mother's embrace, or did they miss their brother and sisters? Not even the piteous cry of motherless infancy could light one spark of emotion in the widowed husband's breast--all was one awful blank of idiocy. A wife and three children, buried beneath piles of freight, had found a wretched grave; his heart and his reason had fled after them--never, apparently, to return. Surely this was a scene pre-eminently calculated to excite in those who wore, by their very escape, living monuments of God's mercy, the deepest feelings of gratitude and commiseration; yet, there stood the poor idiot, as if he had not been; and the jest, the glass, and cigar went on with as much indifference as if the party had just come out of a theatre, instead of having providentially escaped from a struggle between life and death. A more perfect exhibition of heartlessness cannot be conceived, nor do I believe any other part of the world could produce its equal. The immediate cause of the wreck was the steamer "H.R.W. Hill" running into us, owing to misunderstanding the bell signal; most providentially she caught alongside of us after striking; if she had not done so, God alone knows who could have been saved. As far as I could ascertain, all the first-class passengers were saved. Do not stare at the word first-class, for although in this country of so-called equality no difference of classes is acknowledged, poor helpless emigrants are taken as deck-passengers, and, as freight is the great object, no space is set apart for them; they are stowed away among the cargo as best they can be, with no avenue of escape in case of accidents, and with the additional prospect of being buried beneath bales and barrels. I believe fifteen passengers perished in this way: one poor English-woman among the deck-passengers fought her way through the freight, and, after being nearly drowned and trampled to death under the hoofs of the cattle, succeeded in escaping. A slave-merchant with a dozen negroes managed to save all of them, inasmuch as, being valuable, he had them stowed away in a better place. The moment the wreck was completed, we proceeded up the river, wasting no time in trying to save any part of the cargo or luggage. My own position was anything but a pleasant one, though I trust I was truly thankful for my preservation. I found I had managed to throw my desk between the two steamers, and it was therefore irrecoverably lost, with all my papers, letters of credit, journal, &c. I had also lost everything else except what T had on,--rifle, guns, clothes,--all were gone. A few things, such as money, watch, note-book, which I always kept in my pockets, were all my stock in trade. Fortunately, my friend had saved his papers, and thus our identity could be established at New Orleans. In the course of a few hours we saw a fine steamer coming down the river, in which we embarked, and again pursued our journey south. In the afternoon we passed several pieces of the wreck: the shores were covered with the casks of pork and mustang liniment which had formed a great part of our freight. At one place, a large portion of the wreck, was made fast ashore, and being plundered by the settlers on the bank; boxes and trunks were all broken open and cleaned out; little boats were flying across the river full of pork and other prizes: it was an universal scramble in all directions, and appeared to be considered as lawful plunder by them as if they had been Cornish wreckers. It was hopeless to try and recover anything, so we continued our journey, and left our goods to the tender mercies of the landsharks on the banks. Having lost all my papers, I was obliged to forego the pleasure I had anticipated from a visit to Natchez, or rather to the gentlemen and plantations in the neighbourhood. As you approach the lower part of the river, signs of human life become more frequent; the forest recedes, the banks of the river are leveed up, and legions of Uncle Tom's Cabins stud the banks; some, clustered near the more luxurious but still simple building wherein dwells the proprietor, surrounded by orange groves and the rich flowers and foliage of southern climes. These little spots appear like bright oases in the otherwise dreary, uninteresting flats, which extend from the banks on either side; yet it is only as a scene they are uninteresting; as a reality, they have a peculiar interest. On these Hats the negro slave expends his labour and closes his life, and from the bitter of his career the white man draws the sweet luxury of his own. How few reflect upon this, even for as many seconds as it takes to melt the clarified lump in the smoking bohea. But here we are at La Fayette, which is the upper or American end of New Orleans, where steamers always stop if there are any cattle on board, which being our case, we preferred landing and taking an omnibus, to waiting for the discharge of the live-stock. Half an hour brought us to the St. Louis Hotel, and there you may sit down a minute or two while I make some observations on the steaming in Western rivers. The whole system and management is a most grievous reproach to the American nation. I speak not of the architecture, which is good, nor of the absurd inconsistency in uniting such palatial appearance with such absolute discomfort, which perhaps, with their institutions and ideas, it would be very difficult to remedy. My observations refer more to that by which human life is endangered, and the valuable produce of human labour recklessly destroyed. The following extract from a Louisville paper will more than justify any animadversions which I may make:-- DISASTERS ON WESTERN RIVERS.--The Louisville _Courier_ has published a list of disasters on Western waters during the year 1852. It is a formidable one, embracing 78 steam-boats, 4 barges, 73 coal-boats, 3 salt-boats, and 4 others, flat-boats. It appears that 47 boats were lost by being snagged, 16 by explosions, 4 were burnt, and the others lost by collision and other mishaps. The greatest number of lives lost by one disaster was the explosion of the "Saluda," 100. The total loss of life exceeds 400 persons.[Q] Here is a list of one hundred and sixty-two vessels of different kinds, and four hundred human beings, lost in one year; of which vessels it appears forty-six were snagged. You will naturally ask here, what precautions are taken to avoid such frightful casualties? The answer is short--None. They had a few boats employed once to raise the snags, but the thirst for annexation ran them into a war, and the money was wanted for that purpose. The Westerns say they are ridden over by the Easterns, and that Government will do nothing for them.[R] It is not for me to decide the reasons, but the fact is but too clear, that in a country boasting of its wealth, its power, its resources, and not burdened with one farthing of debt, not a cent is being expended in making the slightest endeavours to remove the dangers of this gigantic artery of commerce. And what would be the cost of this national object? The captains of the boats told me that two dozen snag-boats in three years would clear the river; and that half that number could keep it clear; yet, rather than vote the money requisite, they exhibit a national indifference to the safety of life and property such as, I may confidently affirm, cannot be found in any other civilized nation. A very small tax on the steamers would pay the expenses; but the Westerns say, and say with truth, "This is not a local, this is a national question. Government builds lighthouses, harbours, &c., for the eastern board, and we are entitled to the same care for our commerce." A navigation of two thousand miles is most certainly as thoroughly a national question as a seaboard is. It should also be remembered that, if the navigable tributaries be added, the total presents an unbroken highway of internal commerce amounting to 16,700 miles--a distance which, it has been remarked, "is sufficient to encircle Europe and leave a remnant which would span the Atlantic." Next on the list comes the "explosions." I have already given you an account of how the so-called examinations are too often made. Surely these inspections might be signed upon oath before a magistrate; and as surely, I should hope, men might be found who would not perjure themselves. The burnt vessels are few in number, and more than one case has, I believe, been tried on suspicion of being set fire to intentionally. The last on the list is "collisions, &c." By the "&c.," I suppose, is mount vessels which, having run on the river till they wore only fit for firewood, still continued "just one more trip;" and then, of course, the slightest concussion, either on a bank or a floating log, would break them up like a chip basket. The examination on this point is conducted like that of the boilers, and the same remedy might readily be applied. I think, however, that the greater number of losses from collisions, &c., may be chiefly ascribed to the collisions. The cause of these collisions is easily understood, when you are informed that vessels meeting indicate the side they intend to take by sounding a bell. They have no fixed rule, like vessels meeting at sea. The sound of the toll of the second bell may easily be blended with the first, if it be struck hurriedly, which in cases of danger is more than probable; or, the sound of a single toll may find an echo and be mistaken for two tolls. The collision we met with was caused by this very misunderstanding; at least, so the captains mutually explained it. The reason given me for this unsettled system was, that, owing to banks and currents, vessels could not always take the same side. Supposing this to be so, still, a more correct indication of the side intended to be taken might be obtained by lights kept burning for that purpose in a box with a sliding front, removeable at pleasure by a line leading to the wheel-house, in the same way as the lanyard of the bell is at present fitted; and a further palpable advantage would be obtained by obliging vessels meeting in the night to stop the engines and pass at "slow speed." In addition to these precautions, a stout cork fender, extending round the bows some ten feet on each side, and fixed every night at dark, would materially lessen the chances of destruction, even if collision did take place. There is, however, another cause of accident which the Louisville paper does not allude to, and that is overloading. We started about two and a half feet out of the water when leaving St. Louis, and, long before we met with our accident, we had taken in cargo till we were scarce five inches above the river. Not only do they cram the lower or freight deck, but the gallery outside the saloons and cabins is filled till all the use and comfort thereof is destroyed, and scarce a passage along them to be obtained. Seeing the accidents such reckless freighting must necessarily give rise to, what more simple than obliging every vessel to have a float or loading line painted from stem to stern at a certain elevation, making the captain and owners liable to a heavy penalty if the said line be brought below the water by the freight. There is one other point which I may as well notice here, and that is the manner in which these boats are allowed to carry deck-passengers. There is no clear portion of deck for them, and they are driven by necessity among the bales and boxes of freight, with no avenue of escape in case of accident. These are the people who suffer in cases of snagging and collision, &c. These hardy sons of toil, migrating with their families, are all but penniless, and therefore, despite all vaunt of equality, they are friendless. Had every deck-passenger that has perished in the agony of a crushing and drowning death been a Member of Senate or Congress, the Government would have interfered long ere this; but these miserable wretches perish in their agony, and there is no one to re-echo that cry in the halls of Congress. They are chiefly poor emigrants, and plenty more will come to fill their places. If the Government took any such steps as those above recommended, the fear of losing insurance by neglecting them would tend greatly to make them respected. Companies would insure at a lower rate, and all parties would be gainers in the long run; for, if the Government obtained no pecuniary profit, it would gain in national character by the removal of a reproach such as no other commercial country at the present day labours under. There is, moreover, a moral point of view to be taken of this question--viz., "the recklessness of human life engendered by things as they are." The anecdotes which one hears are of themselves sufficient to leave little doubt on this point. Take, for instance, the following:--A vessel having been blown up during the high pressure of a race, among the witnesses called was one who thus replied to the questions put to him:-- EXAMINER.--"Were you on board when the accident took place?" WITNESS.--"I guess I was, and nurthing else." EXAMINER.--"Was the captain sober?" WITNESS.--"Can't tell that, nohow." EXAMINER.--"Did you not see the captain during the day?" WITNESS.--"I guess I did." EXAMINER.--"Then can, you not state your opinion whether he was drunk or not?" WITNESS.--"I guess I had not much time for observation; he was not on board when I saw him." EXAMINER.--"When did you see him, then?" WITNESS.--"As I was coming down, I passed the gentleman going up." The court, of course, was highly amused at his coolness, and called another witness.--But let us turn from this fictitious anecdote to fact. It was only the other day that I read in a Louisville paper of a gentleman going into the Gait-house Hotel, and deliberately shooting at another in the dining-saloon when full of people, missing his aim, and the hall lodging in the back of a stranger's chair who was quietly sitting at his dinner. Again, I read of an occurrence--at Memphis, I think--equally outrageous. A man hard pressed by creditors, who had assembled at his house and were urgent in their demands, called to them to keep back, and upon their still pressing on, he seized a bowie-knife in each hand, and rushed among them, stabbing and ripping right and left, till checked in his mad career of assassination by a creditor, in self-defence, burying a cleaver in his skull. In a Natchez paper I read as follows:--"Levi Tarver, formerly a resident of Atala county, was recently killed in Texas. Tarver interrupted a gentleman on the highway; high words ensued, when Tarver gave the gentleman the lie; whereupon the latter drew a bowie-knife, and completely severed, at one blow, Levi's head from his body." In a St. Louis paper, I read of a German, Hoffman by name, who was supposed by Baker to be too intimate with his wife, and who was consequently desired to discontinue his visits. Hoffman remonstrated in his reply, assuring the husband that his suspicions were groundless. A short time after he received a letter from Mrs. Baker, requesting him to call upon her: he obeyed the summons, and was shown into her bedroom at the hotel. The moment he got there, Mrs. Baker pulled two pistols from under the pillow, and discharged both at his head. Hoffman rushed out of the house; scarce was he in the street, when Mr. Baker and three other ruffians pounced upon him, dragged him back to the hotel, and placed guards at the door to prevent any further ingress from the street. They then stripped him perfectly naked, lashed him with cow-hides till there was scarce a sound piece of flesh in his body, dashing cold water over him at intervals, and then recommencing their barbarities. When tired of this brutality, they emasculated their wretched victim with a common table-knife. And who were these ruffians? Were they uneducated villains, whom poverty and distress had hardened into crime? Far from it. Mr. Baker was the owner of a grocery store; of the others, one was the proprietor of the St. Charles hotel, New Bremen; the second was a young lawyer, the third was a clerk in the "Planter's House." Can the sinks of ignorance and vice in any community present a more bloody scene of brutality than was here deliberately enacted, by educated people in respectable positions, in the middle of the day? What can be thought of the value of human life, when I add that all these miscreants were bailed? These are merely the accounts which have met my eye in the natural course of reading the newspaper, for I can most truthfully declare I have not taken the slightest trouble to hunt them up. The following, which bears upon the same point, was related to me in the course of conversation at dinner, and it occurred in New Orleans. Mr. A. treads on Mr. B.'s too several times; Mr. B. kicks Mr. A. down stairs, and this at a respectable evening party. Now what does Mr. A. do? He goes outside and borrows a bowie-knife from a hack-cabman, then returns to the party, watches and follows Mr. B. to the room where the hats and cloaks were placed, seizes a favourable moment, and rips Mr. B.'s bowels open. He is tried for murder, with evidence sufficient to hang a dozen men; and, to the astonishment of even the Westerns themselves, he is acquitted. These facts occurred not many years since, and they were narrated to me by a gentleman who was at the party. When two members of the Legislature disgraced the halls at Washington, by descending into the political arena with pistols and bowie-knives, and there entering into deadly conflict, were they not two Western members? Now, what do these occurrences prove? Certainly not that all Westerns are bloodthirsty, for many of them are the most kind, quiet, and amiable men I have ever met; but, when taken in connexion with the free use of the bowie-knife, they afford strong evidence that there is a general and extraordinary recklessness of human life; and surely, common sense and experience would both endorse the assertion, that habituating men to bloody disputes or fatal accidents has a tendency to harden both actors and spectators into utter indifference. And what is the whole of the Western river navigation but one daily--I might almost say, continual--scene of accidents and loss of life, tending to nourish those very feelings which it is the duty of every government to use all possible means to allay and humanize? The heartless apathy with which all classes of society, with scarce individual exceptions, speak of these events is quite revolting to a stranger, and a manifest proof of the injurious moral effect of familiarizing people with such horrors. The bowie-knife, the revolver, and the river accidents, mutually act and react upon each other, and no moral improvement can reasonably be expected until some great change be effected. Government can interfere with the accidents;--deadly weapons are, to a certain extent, still necessary for self-protection. Let us hope, then, that something will ore long be done to prevent disasters pregnant with so many evils to the community, and reflecting so strongly on the United States as a nation.[S] Having gone off at a tangent, like a boomerang, I had better, like the same weapon, return whence I started--in military language, "as you was." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote P: On the Mississippi a cord contains one definite quantity, being a pile 1 feet high, 4 feet broad, and 8 feet long, and does not vary in size in the same absurd manner as it does in various parts of England: the price paid is from eight to thirteen shillings, increasing as you descend the river.] [Footnote Q: A committee of the United States calculated that, in 1846, the losses on the Mississippi amounted to 500,000l.; and as commerce has increased enormously, while precautions have remained all but stagnant, I think it may be fairly estimated, that the annual losses at the present day amount to at least 750,000l.] [Footnote R: _Vide_ chapter on "Watery Highways."] [Footnote S: Since writing the above, some more stringent regulations as to inspection have appeared, similar to those advocated in the text; but they contain nothing respecting loading, steering, &c. In fact, they are general laws, having 110 especial bearing on Western waters.] CHAPTER XI. _New Orleans_. New Orleans is a surprising evidence of what men will endure, when cheered by the hopes of an ever-flowing tide of all-mighty dollars and cents. It is situated on a marsh, and bounded by the river on one side, and on the other by a continuation of the marsh on which it is built, beyond which extends a forest swamp. All sewerage and drainage is superficial--more generally covered in, but in very many places dragging its sluggish stream, under the broad light of day, along the edges of the footway. The chief business is, of course, in those streets skirting the river; and at this season--December--when the cotton and sugar mania is at its height, the bustle and activity is marvellous. Streets are piled in every direction with mounds of cotton, which rise as high as the roofs; storehouses are bursting with bales; steam and hydraulic presses hiss in your ear at every tenth step, and beneath their power the downy fibre is compressed into a substance as hard as Aberdeen granite, which semi-nude negroes bind, roll, and wheel in all directions, the exertion keeping them in perpetual self-supplying animal steam-baths. Gigantic mules arrive incessantly, dragging fresh freight for pressure; while others as incessantly depart, bearing freight for embarkation to Europe. If a pair of cotton socks could be made vocal, what a tale of sorrow and labour their history would reveal, from the nigger who picked with a sigh to the maiden who donned with a smile. Some idea may be formed of the extent of this branch of trade, from the statistical fact that last year the export amounted to 1,435,815 bales[T]--or, in round numbers, one and a half millions--which was an increase of half a million upon the exports of the preceding twelve months. Tobacco is also an article of great export, and amounted last year to 94,000 hogsheads, being an increase of two-thirds upon the previous twelve months. The great staple produce of the neighbourhood is sugar and molasses. In good years, fifty gallons of molasses go to a thousand pounds of sugar; but, when the maturity of the cane is impeded by late rains, as was the case last year, seventy gallons go to the thousand pounds of sugar. Thus, in 1853, 10,500,000 gallons of molasses were produced, representing 210,000,000 pounds of sugar; while, in 1854, 18,300,000 gallons of molasses were produced, being nearly double the produce of the preceding year, but representing only 261,500,000 pounds of sugar,--owing, as before explained, to the wet weather. Some general idea of the commercial activity of New Orleans may be formed from the following statistics for 1853:--2266 vessels, representing 911,000 tons, entered New Orleans; and 2202 vessels, representing 930,000 tons, cleared. Now, of course, the greater portion--or I might almost say the whole--of the goods exported reach New Orleans by the Mississippi, and therefore justify the assertion that the safe navigation of that river is, in the fullest sense of the term, a national and not a local interest, bearing as it does on its bosom an essential portion of the industrial produce of eleven different States of the Union. It is quite astounding to see the legions of steamers from the upper country which are congregated here; for miles and miles the levee forms one unbroken line of them, all lying with their noses on shore--no room for broadsides. On arriving, piled up with goods mountain high, scarce does a bow touch the levee, when swarms of Irish and niggers rush down, and the mountainous pile is landed, and then dragged off by sturdy mules to its destination. Scarce is she cleared, when the same hardy sons of toil build another mountainous pile on board; the bell rings, passengers run, and she is facing the current and the dangers of the snaggy Mississippi. The labour of loading and unloading steamers is, as you may suppose, very severe, and is done for the most part by niggers and Irishmen. The average wages are from 7l. to 8l. per month; but, in times of great pressure from sudden demand, &c., they rise as high as from. 12l. to 14l. per month, which was the case just before my arrival. The same wages are paid to those who embark in the steamers to load and unload at the different stations on the river. Every day is a working day; and as, by the law, the slave has his Sunday to himself to earn what he can, the master who hires him out on the river is supposed to give him one-seventh of the wages earned; but I believe they only receive one-seventh of the ordinary wages--i.e., 1l. per month. [Illustration: THE NEW ST. CHARLES HOTEL, NEW ORLEANS.] Let us now turn from the shipping to the town. In the old, or French part, the streets are generally very narrow; but in the American, or the La Fayette quarter, they are very broad, and, whether from indolence or some other reason, badly paved and worse cleansed; nevertheless, if the streets are dirty and muddy, the houses have the advantage of being airy. There are no buildings of any importance except the new Custom-house, and, of course, the hotels. The St. Louis is at present the largest; but the St. Charles, which is being rebuilt, was, and will again be, the hotel pride of New Orleans.[U] They are both enormous establishments, well arranged, and, with the locomotive propensities of the people, sure to be well filled during the winter months, at which period only they are open. When I arrived at the St. Louis, it was so full that the only room I could get was like a large Newfoundland dog's kennel, with but little light and less air. The hotel was originally built for an Exchange, and the rotundo in the centre is one of the finest pieces of architecture in the States. It is a lofty, vaulted hall, eighty feet in diameter, with an aisle running all round, supported by a row of fine pillars fifty feet in height; the dome rises nearly as many-feet more, and has a large skylight in the centre; the sides thereof are ornamented by well-executed works in _chiaroscuro_, representing various successful actions gained during the struggle for independence, and several of the leading men who figured during that eventful period. A great portion of the aisle is occupied by the all-important bar, where drinks flow as freely as the river outside; but there is another feature in the aisles which contrasts strangely with the pictorial ornaments round the dome above--a succession of platforms are to be seen, on which human flesh and blood is exposed to public auction, and the champions of the equal rights of man are thus made to endorse, as it were, the sale of their fellow-creatures. I had only been in the hotel one day when a gentleman to whom I had a letter kindly offered me a room in his house. The offer was too tempting, so I left my kennel without delay, and in my new quarters found every comfort and a hearty welcome, rendered more acceptable from the agreeable society which it included, and the tender nursing I received at the hands of one of the young ladies during the week I was confined to the house by illness. Among all the kind and hospitable friends I met with in my travels, none have a stronger claim on my grateful recollection than Mr. Egerton and his family. When able to get out, I took a drive with mine host: as you may easily imagine, there is not much scenery to be found in a marsh bounded by a forest swamp, but the effect is very curious; all the trees are covered with Spanish moss, a long, dark, fibrous substance which hangs gracefully down from every bough and twig; it is often used for stuffing beds, pillows, &e. This most solemn drapery gave the forest the appearance of a legion of mute mourners attending the funeral of some beloved patriarch, and one felt disposed to admire the patience with which they stood, with their feet in the wet, their heads nodding to and fro as if distracted with grief, and their fibrous weeds quivering, as though convulsed with the intensity of agony. The open space around is a kind of convalescent marsh; that is, canals and deep ditch drains have been opened all through it, and into these the waters of the marsh flow, as a token of gratitude for the delicate little attention; at the same time, the adjacent soil, freed from its liquid encumbrance, courts the attractive charms of the sun, and has already risen from two and a half to three and a half feet above its marshy level. The extremity of this open space furthest from the town has been appropriately fixed upon as the site of various cemeteries. The lugubrious forest is enough to give a man the blue devils, and the ditches and drains into which the sewers, &c., of the town are pumped, dragging their sluggish and all but stagnant course under a broiling summer gun, are sufficient to prepare most mortals for the calm repose towards which the cypress and the cenotaph beckon them with greedy welcome. The open space I have been describing is the "Hyde Park" and "Rotten Row" of New Orleans, and the drive round it is one of the best roads I ever travelled; it is called the "Shell Road," from the top-dressing thereof being entirely composed of small shells, which soon bind together and make it as smooth as a bowling-green. The Two-forty trotters--when there are any--come out here in the afternoon, and show off their paces, and if you fail in finding any of that first flight, at all events you are pretty sure to see some good teams, that can hug the three minutes very closely. Custom is second nature, and necessity is the autocrat of autocrats, which even the free and enlightened must obey; the consequence is, that the inhabitants of New Orleans look forward to the Shell-road ride, or drive, with as much interest and satisfaction as our metropolitan swells do to the Serpentine or the Row. Having had our drive, let us now say a few words about the society. In the first place, you will not see such grand houses as in New York; but at the same time it is to be observed, that the tenants here occupy and enjoy all their houses, while in New York, as I have before observed, the owners of many of the finest residences live almost exclusively in the basements thereof. This more social system at New Orleans, I am inclined to attribute essentially to the French--or Creole--habits with which society is leavened, and into which, it appears to me, the Americans naturally and fortunately drop. On the other hand, the rivalry which too often taints a money-making community has found its way here. If A. gives a party which costs 200l., B. will try and get up one at 300l., and so on. This false pride--foolish enough anywhere--is more striking in New Orleans, from the fact that the houses are not calculated for such displays, and when they are attempted, it involves unfurnishing bed-rooms and upsetting the whole establishment. I should add they are comparatively rare, perhaps as rare as those parties which are sometimes given in London at the expense of six weeks' fasting, in order that the donor's name and the swells who attended the festive scene may go forth to the world in the fashionable column of the _Morning Post_. Whenever they do occur, they are invariably attended with some such observations as the following:-- "What did Mrs. B.'s party cost last night?" "Not less than 300l." "Well, I'm sure they have not the means to afford such extravagant expense; and I suppose the bed-rooms upstairs were all cleared out?" "Oh, yes! three of them." "Well I know that house, and, fix it how you will, if they cleared out three bed-rooms, I'm sure they must have slept on the sofas or the tables. I declare it's worse than foolish--it's wicked to have so much pride," &c. If those who thus indulged their vanity, only heard one-half of the observations made by those who accent their hospitalities, or who strive to get invitations and cannot, they would speedily give up their folly; but money is the great Juggernaut, at the feet of which all the nations of the earth fall down and worship; whether it be the coronets that bowed themselves down in the temple of the Railway King in Hyde Park, who could afford the expense; or the free and enlightened who do homage in Mrs. ----'s temple at New Orleans, though perhaps she could not afford the expense; one thing is clear--where the money is spent, there will the masses be gathered together. General society is, however, more sober and sociable, many families opening their houses one day in the week to all their friends. The difference of caste is going out fast: the Creoles found that their intermarriages were gradually introducing a race as effete as the Bourbons appear to be in France; they are now therefore very sensibly seeking alliances with the go-ahead blood of the Anglo-Saxon, which will gradually absorb them entirely, and I expect that but little Trench will be spoken in New Orleans by the year 1900. Another advantage of the Creole element, is the taste it appears to have given for French wines. As far as I am capable of judging, the claret, champagne, and sauterne which I tasted here were superior in quality and more generally in use than I ever found them in any other city. The hours of dinner vary from half-past three to half-past five, and an unostentatious hospitality usually prevails. Servants here are expensive articles. In the hotels you find Irishmen almost exclusively, and their wages vary from 2l. 8s. to 10l. per month. In private houses, women's wages range from 2l. 8s. to 4l. and men's from 6l. to 8l. the month. The residents who find it inconvenient to go to the north during the summer, cross the lake to their country villas at Passe Christianne, a pretty enough little place, far cooler and more shady than the town, and where they get bathing, &c. A small steamer carries you across in a few hours; but competition is much wanted, for their charges are treble those of the boats in the north, and the accommodation poor in comparison. When crossing over in the steamer, I overheard a conversation which showed how early in life savage ideas are imbibed here. Two lads, the eldest about fifteen, had gone over from New Orleans to shoot ducks. They were both very gentlemanly-looking boys, and evidently attending some school. Their conversation of course turned upon fighting--when did schoolboys meet that it was not so? At last, the younger lad said-- "Well, what do you think of Mike Maloney?", "Oh! Mike is very good with his fists; but I can whip him right off at rough-and-tumble." Now, what is "rough-and-tumble?" It consists of clawing, scratching, kicking, hair-pulling, and every other atrocity, for which, I am happy to think, a boy at an English school would be well flogged by the master, and sent to Coventry by his companions. Yet, here was as nice a looking lad as one could wish to see, evidently the son of well-to-do parents, glorying in this savage, and, as we should call it, cowardly accomplishment. I merely mention this to show how early the mind is tutored to feelings which doubtless help to pave the way for the bowie-knife in more mature years. The theatres at New Orleans are neat and airy. Lola Montez succeeded in creating a great _furore_, at last. I say "at last," because, as there really is nothing in her acting above mediocrity, she received no especial encouragement at first, although she had chosen her own career in Bavaria as the subject in which to make her _débût._ She waited with considerable tact till she was approaching those scenes in which the mob triumph over order; and then, pretending to discover a cabal in the meagre applause she was receiving, she stopped in the middle of her acting, and, her eyes flashing fire, her face beaming brass, and her voice wild with well-assumed indignation, she cried--"I'm anxious to do my best to please the company; but if this cabal continues, I must retire!" The effect was electric. Thunders of applause followed, and "Bravo, Lolly!" resounded through the theatre, from the nigger-girl in the upper gallery to the octogenarian in the pit. When the clamour had subsided, some spicy attacks on kingcraft and the nobles followed most opportunely; the shouts were redoubled; her victory was complete. When the piece was over, she came forward to assure the company that the scenes she had been enacting were all facts in which she had, in reality, played the same part she had been representing that evening. Thunders of "Go it, Lolly! you're a game 'un, and nurthin' else!" rang all through the house as she retired, bowing. She did not appear in the character of "bowie-knifing a policeman at Berlin;" and of course she omitted some scenes said to have taken place during interviews with the king, and in which her conduct might not have been considered, strictly speaking, quite correct. She obtained further notoriety after my departure, by kicking and cuffing a prompter, and calling the proprietor a d--d scoundrel, a d--d liar, and a d--d thief, for which she was committed for trial. I may as well mention here, that the theatre was well attended by ladies. This fact must satisfy every unprejudiced mind how utterly devoid of foundation is the rumour of the ladies of America putting the legs of their pianofortes in petticoats, that their sensitive delicacy may not receive too rude a shock. Besides the theatres here, there is also an opera, the music of which, vocal and instrumental, is very second-rate. Nevertheless, I think it is highly to the credit of New Orleans that they support one at all, and sincerely do I wish them better success. The town is liberally supplied with churches of all denominations. I went one Sunday to a Presbyterian church, and was much struck on my entry at seeing all the congregation reading newspapers. Seating myself in my pew, I found a paper lying alongside of me, and, taking it up, I discovered it was a religious paper, full of anecdotes and experiences, &c., and was supplied _gratis_ to the congregation. There were much shorter prayers than in Scotland, more reading of the Bible, the same amount of singing, but performed by a choir accompanied by an organ, the congregation joining but little. The sermon was about the usual length of one in Scotland, lasting about an hour, and extemporized from notes. The preacher was eloquent, and possessed of a strong voice, which he gave the reins to in a manner which would have captivated the wildest Highlander. The discourse delivered was in aid of foreign missions, and the method he adopted in dealing with it was--first, powerfully to attack monarchical forms of government and priestly influence, by which soft solder he seemed to win his way to their republican hearts; and from this position, he secondly set to work and fed their vanity freely, by glowing encomiums on their national deeds and greatness, and the superior perfections of their glorious constitution; whence he deduced, thirdly, that the Almighty had more especially committed to them the great work of evangelizing mankind. This discourse sounded like the political essay of an able enthusiast, and fell strangely on my ears from the lips of a Christian minister, whose province, I had always been taught to consider, was rather to foster humility than to inflame vanity. It is to be presumed he knew his congregation well, and felt that he was treading the surest road to their dollars and cents. Among other curiosities in this town is a human one, known as the Golden Man, from the quantity of that metal with which he bedizens waistcoat, fingers, &c. During my stay at New Orleans, he appeared decked with such an astounding gem, that it called forth the following notice from the press:-- ANOTHER RING.--The "gold" individual who exhibits himself and any quantity of golden ornaments, of Sunday mornings, in the vicinity of the Verandah and City Hotels, will shortly appear with a new wonder wherewith to astonish the natives. One would think that he had already ornaments enough to satisfy any mortal; but he, it appears, is not of the stuff every-day people are made of, and he could not rest satisfied until his fingers boasted another ring. The new prodigy is, like its predecessors, of pure solid gold. It is worth 500 dollars, and weighs nearly, if not quite, a pound. This small treasure is intended for the owner's "little" finger. It is the work of Mr. Melon, jeweller and goldsmith, on Camp-street, and is adorned with small carved figures, standing out in bold relief, and of very diminutive size, yet distinct and expressive. The right outer surface represents the flight of Joseph, the Virgin, and the infant Jesus into Egypt. Joseph, bearing a palm-branch, leads the way, the Virgin follows, seated on a donkey, and holding the Saviour in her lap. On the left outer edge of the ring is seen the prophet Daniel, standing between two lions. The prophet has not got a blue umbrella under his arm to distinguish him from the lions. The face of the ring exhibits an excellent design of the crucifixion, with the three crosses and the Saviour and the two thieves suspended thereto. This ring is certainly a curiosity. There is a strong body of police here, and some of their powers are autocratically autocratic: thus, a person once committed as a vagrant is liable to be re-imprisoned by them if met in the street unemployed. Now, as it is impossible to expect that people in business will take the trouble to hunt up vagrants, what can be conceived more cruelly arbitrary than preventing them from hunting up places for themselves? Yet such is the law in this democratic city.[V] A gentleman told me of a vagrant once coming to him and asking for employment, and, on his declining to employ him, begging to be allowed to lie concealed in his store during the day, lest the police should re-imprison him before he could get on board one of the steamers to take him up the river to try his fortunes elsewhere. At the same time, a person in good circumstances getting into difficulties can generally manage to buy his way out. The authorities, on the return of Christmas, having come to the conclusion that the letting off of magazines of crackers in the streets by the juvenile population was a practice attended with much inconvenience and danger to those who were riding and driving, gave orders that it should be discontinued. The order was complied with in some places, but in others the youngsters set it at defiance. It will hardly be credited that, in a nation boasting of its intelligence and proud of its education, the press should take part with the youngsters, and censure the magistrates for their sensible orders. Yet such was the case at New Orleans. The press abused the authorities for interfering with the innocent amusements of the children, and expressed their satisfaction at the latter having asserted their independence and successfully defied the law. The same want of intelligence was exhibited by the press in censuring the authorities for discontinuing the processions on the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans--"a ceremony calculated to excite the courage and patriotism of the people." They seem to lose sight of the fact, that it is a reflection on the courage of their countrymen to suppose that they require such processions to animate their patriotism, and that the continuance of such public demonstrations parading the streets betokens rather pride of past deeds than confidence in their power to re-enact them. Although such demonstrations may be readily excused, or even reasonably encouraged, in an infant community struggling for liberty, they are childish and undignified in a powerful nation. What would be more ridiculous than Scotland having grand processions on the anniversary of Bannockburn, or England on that of Waterloo? Moreover, in a political point of view, it should not be lost sight of, that if such demonstrations have any effect at all on the community, it must be that of reviving hostile feelings towards those to whom they are united most closely by the ties of blood, sense, and--though last, not least--cents. I merely mention these trivial things to show the punyizing effects which the democratic element has on the press. Formerly, duels were as innumerable here as bales of cotton; they have considerably decreased latterly, one cause of which has been, the State of Louisiana passing a law by which any person engaging in a duel is at once deprived of his vote, and disabled from holding any state employment. John Bull may profit by this hint. I was much amused, during my stay at New Orleans, by hearing the remarks of the natives upon the anti-slavery meeting at Stafford House, of which the papers were then full. If the poor duchess and her lady allies had been fiends, there could scarcely have been more indignation at her "presumptuous interference" and "mock humility." Her "sisters, indeed! as if she would not be too proud to stretch out her hand to any one of them," &c. Then another would break out with, "I should like to know by what right she presumes to interfere with us and offer advice? If she wants to do good, she has opportunities enough of exercising her charity in London. Let any one read _The Times_, and then visit a plantation here, and say whether the negroes are not happier and better off than one-half of the lower classes in England," &c. If every animadversion which the duchess and her colleagues' kind intentions and inoffensive wording of them called forth in America had been a pebble, and if they had all been gathered together, the monument of old Cheops at Ghizeh would have sunk into insignificance when contrasted with the gigantic mass; in short, no one unacquainted with the sensitiveness of the American character can form a conception of the violent state of indignation which followed the perusal of the proceedings of that small conclave of English lady philanthropists. Mrs. Jones, Smith, Adams, and Brown might have had their meeting on the same subject without producing much excitement; but when the aristocratic element was introduced, it acted as a spark in a barrel of gunpowder. As an illustration of the excitement produced, I subjoin an extract from one of their daily papers, under the heading of "Mrs. Stowe in Great Britain:"-- "The principles of free government developed here, and urging our people on with unexampled rapidity in the career of wealth and greatness, have always been subjects of alarm to monarchs and aristocracies--of pleasure and hope to the people. It has, of course, been the object of the former to blacken us in every conceivable way, and to make us detestable in the eyes of the world. There has been nothing since the revolution so well calculated to advance this end, as the exhibition which Mrs. Stowe is making in England. "It is because they have a deep and abiding hostility to this country, and to republicanism in general, that the aristocracy, not only of England, but of all Europe, have seized with so much avidity upon _Uncle Tom_, and have been at so much pains to procure a triumphal march for its author through all the regions she may choose to visit. They are delighted to see a native of the United States--of that republic which has taught that a people can flourish without an aristocracy or a monarch--of that republic, the example of whose prosperity was gradually undermining thrones and digging a pit for privileged classes--describing her country as the worst, the most abandoned, the most detestable that ever existed. Royalty draws a long breath, and privilege recovers from its fears. Among the people of the continent, especially among the Germans, Italians, and Russians, there are thousands who believe that murder is but a pastime here--that the bowie-knife and pistol are used upon any provocation--that, in fact, we are a nation of assassins, without law, without morality, and without religion. They are taught to believe these things by their newspapers, which, published under the eye of Government, allow no intelligence but of murders, bowie-knife fights, &c., coming from America, to appear in their columns. By these, therefore, only is America known to their readers; and they are very careful to instil the belief, that if America is a land of murderers, it is so because it has had the folly to establish a republican form of government. "These ideas are very general in England, even where the hostility is greater than it is on the Continent. To British avarice we owe slavery in this country. To British hatred we owe the encouragement of anti-slavery agitation now. The vile hypocrisy which has characterised the whole proceeding is not the least objectionable part of it. The English care not one farthing about slavery. If they did, why do they keep it up in such a terrific form in their own country? Where was there ever true charity that did not begin at home? It is because there is a deep-rooted hostility to this country pervading the whole British mind, that these things have taken place." The wounded sensitiveness, however, which the foregoing paragraph exhibits, found some consolation from an article which appeared in _The Times_. They poured over its lines with intense delight, soothing themselves with each animadversion it made upon the meeting, and deducing from the whole--though how, I could never understand--that they had found in the columns of that journal a powerful advocate for slavery. Thus was peace restored within their indignant breasts, and perhaps a war with the ladies of the British aristocracy averted. Of two facts, however, I feel perfectly certain; one is, that the animadversions made in America will not in the least degree impair her Grace's healthy condition; and the other is, that the meeting held at Stafford House will in no way improve the condition of the negro. There are two or three clubs established here, into one of which strangers are admitted as visitors, but the one which is considered the "first chop" does not admit strangers, except by regular ballot; one reason, I believe, for their objecting to strangers, is the immense number of them, and the quality of the article. Their ideas of an English gentleman, if formed from the mass of English they see in this city, must be sufficiently small: there is a preponderating portion of the "cotton bagman," many of whom seek to make themselves important by talking large. Although probably more than nine out of ten never have "thrown their leg" over anything except a bale of cotton, since the innocent days of the rocking-horse, they try to impress Jonathan by pulling up their shirt-collar consequentially, and informing him,--"When I was in England, I was used to 'unt with the Dook's 'ounds; first-rate, sir, first-rate style--no 'ats, all 'unting-caps." Then, passing his left thumb down one side of his cheek, his fingers making a parallel course down the opposite cheek, with an important air and an expression indicative of great intimacy, he would condescendingly add,--"The Dook wasn't a bad chap, after all: he used to give me a capital weed now and then." With this style of John Bull in numerical ascendency, you cannot wonder at the club-doors not being freely opened to "the Dook's friends," or at the character of an English gentleman being imperfectly understood. Time hurries on, a passport must be obtained, and that done, it must be _viséd_ before the Spanish consul, as Cuba is my destination. The Filibusteros seem to have frightened this functionary out of his proprieties. A Spaniard is proverbially proud and courteous--the present specimen was neither; perhaps the reason may have been that I was an Englishman, and that the English consul had done all his work for him _gratis_ when the Filibustero rows obliged him to fly. Kindness is a thing which the Spaniards as a nation find it very difficult to forgive. However, I got his signature, which was far more valuable than his courtesy; most of his countrymen would have given me both, but the one sufficed on the present occasion. Portmanteaus are packed--my time is come. Adieu, New Orleans!--adieu, kind host and amiable family, and a thousand thanks for the happy days I spent under your roof. Adieu, all ye hospitable friends, not forgetting my worthy countryman the British consul. The ocean teapot is hissing, the bell rings, friends cry, kiss, and smoke--handkerchiefs flutter in the breeze, a few parting gifts are thrown on board by friends who arrive just too late; one big-whiskered fellow with bushy moustache picks up the parting _cadeau_--gracious me! he opens it, and discloses a paper bag of lollipops; another unfolds a precious roll of chewing tobacco. Verily, extremes do meet. The "Cherokee" is off, and I'm aboard. Down we go, sugar plantations studding either shore; those past, flat dreary banks succeed; ships of all nations are coming up and going down by the aid of tugboats; two large vessels look unpleasantly "fixed"--they are John Bull and Jonathan, brothers in misfortune and both on a bank. "I guess the pilots will make a good thing out of that job!" says my neighbour.-- "Pilots!" I exclaimed, "how can that be? I should think they stood a fair chance of losing their licence." "Ah! sir, we don't fix things that way here; the pilots are too 'cute, sir." Upon inquiry, I found that, as the banks were continually shifting, it was, as my friend said, very difficult "to fix the pilots,"--a fact which these worthies take every advantage of, for the purpose of driving a most profitable trade in the following manner. Pilot goes to tug and says, "What do you charge for getting a ship off?" The price understood, a division of the spoil is easily agreed upon. Away goes the pilot, runs the ship on shore on the freshest sandbank, curses the Mississippi and everything else in creation; a tug comes up very opportunely, a tidy bargain is concluded; the unfortunate pilot forfeits 100l., his pilotage from the ship, and consoles himself the following evening by pocketing 500l. from the tugman as his share of the spoil, and then starts off again in search of another victim. Such, I was informed by practical people, is a common feature in the pilotage of these waters, and such it appears likely to continue. The "Cherokee" is one of those vessels which belong to Mr. Law, of whom I could get no information, expect that he had sprung up like a mushroom to wealth and Filibustero notoriety. He is also the custodian, I believe, of the three hundred thousand stand of arms ordered by Kossuth for the purpose of "whipping" Russia and Austria, and establishing the Republic of Hungary, unless by accident he found brains enough to become a Hungarian Louis Napoleon; but Mr. Law's other vessel, called the "Crescent City," and the Cuban Black Douglas, yclept "Purser Smith," are perhaps better known. Peradventure, you imagine this latter to be a wild hyena-looking man, with radiant red hair, fiery ferret eyes, and his pockets swelled out with revolutionary documents for the benefit of the discontented Cubans; but I can inform you, on the best authority, such is not the case, for he was purser of the "Cherokee" this voyage. He looks neither wild nor rabid, and is a grey-headed man, about fifty years of age, with a dash of the Israelite in his appearance: he may or he may not have Filibustero predilections--I did not presume to make inquiry on the subject. And here I cannot but remark upon the childish conduct of the parties concerned in the ridiculous "Crescent City and Cuba question," although, having taken the view they did, the Spaniards were of course perfectly right in maintaining it. It was unworthy of the Spanish nation to take notice of the arrival of so uninfluential a person as Purser Smith; and it was imprudent, inasmuch as it made him a person of importance, and gave the party with whom he was supposed to be connected a peg to hang grievances upon, and thus added to their strength. It was equally unworthy of Mr. Law, when objection was made, and a notification sent that Mr. Smith would not be admitted nor the vessel that carried him, to persist in a course of conduct obnoxious to a friendly power; and it was imprudent, when it must have been obvious that he could not carry his point; thereby eventually adding strength to the Spanish authority. When, all the fuss and vapour was made by Mr. Law and his friends, they seemed to have forgotten the old adage, "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones." President Filmore, in his statesmanlike observations, when the subject was brought before him, could not help delicately alluding to Charleston, a city of America. Americans at Charleston claim to exercise the right--what a prostitution of the term right!--of imprisoning any of the free subjects of another nation who may enter their ports, if they are men of colour. Thus, if a captain arrives in a ship with twenty men, of whom ten are black, he is instantly robbed of half his crew during his whole stay in the harbour; and on what plea is this done? Is any previous offence charged against them? None whatever. The only plea is that it is a municipal regulation which their slave population renders indispensable. In other words, it is done lest the sacred truth should spread, that man has no right to bind his fellow-man in the fetters of slavery.[W] Was there ever such a farce as for a nation that tolerates such a municipal regulation as this to take umbrage at any of their citizens being, on strong suspicions of unfriendly feeling, denied entry into any port? Why, if there was a Chartist riot in monarchical England, and the ports thereof were closed against the sailors of republican America, they could have no just cause of offence, so long as the present municipal law of Charleston exists. What lawful boast of freedom can there ever be, where contact with freemen is dreaded, be their skins black or any colour of the rainbow? Why can England offer an asylum to the turbulent and unfortunate of all countries and climes?--Because she is perfectly free! Don't be angry, my dear Anglo-Saxon brother; you know, "if what I say bayn't true, there's no snakes in Warginny." I feel sure you regret it; but then why call forth the observations, by supporting the childish obstinacy in the "Crescent City" affair. However, as the housemaids say, in making up quarrels, "Let bygones be bygones." Spain has maintained her rights; you have satisfied her, and quiet Mr. Smith enters the Havana periodically, without disturbing the Governor's sleep or exciting the hopes of the malcontents. May we never see the Great Empire States in such an undignified position again! Here we are still in the "Cherokee;" she is calculated to hold some hundreds of passengers. Thank God! there are only some sixty on board; but I do not feel equally grateful for their allowing me to pay double price for a cabin to myself when two-thirds of them are empty, not to mention that the single fare is eight guineas. She is a regular old tub of a boat; the cabins are profitably fitted with three beds in each, one above the other; the consequence is, that if you wish to sneeze at night, you must turn on your side, or you'll break your nose against the bed above you in the little jerk that usually accompanies the sternutatory process. The feeding on board is the worst I ever saw--tough, cold, and greasy, the whole unpleasantly accompanied with dirt. Having parted from my travelling companion at New Orleans, one of my first endeavours was, by the aid of physiognomy, to discover some passenger on whom it might suit me to inflict my society. Casting my eyes around, they soon lit upon a fair-haired youth with a countenance to match, the expression thereof bespeaking kindness and intelligence; and when, upon further examination, I saw the most indubitable and agreeable evidence that his person and apparel were on the most successful and intimate terms with soap and water, I pounced upon him without delay, and soon found that he was a German gentleman travelling with his brother-in-law, and they both had assumed an _incognito_, being desirous of avoiding that curious observation which, had their real position in life been known, they would most inevitably have been subject to. Reader, be not you too curious, for I cannot withdraw the veil they chose to travel under; suffice it to know, their society added much to my enjoyment, both on the passage and at the Havana. The sailing of the vessel is so ingeniously managed, that you arrive at the harbour's mouth just after sunset, and are consequently allowed the privilege of waiting outside all night, no vessels except men-of-war being allowed to enter between sunset and daybreak. The hopes of the morrow were our only consolation, until at early dawn we ran through the narrow battery-girt entrance, and dropped anchor in the land-locked harbour of Havana. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote T: This was written in January, 1853.--The bale may be roughly estimated at 450 lbs.] [Footnote U: This hotel has long since been re-opened.] [Footnote V: All large cities in America must of necessity be democratic.] [Footnote W: I have since heard that the Charleston authorities allow the captains of vessels to keep their coloured crew on board, under penalty of a heavy fine in case they land.] CHAPTER XII. _The Queen of the Antilles_. It was a lovely morning, not a cloud in the sky; the harbour was as smooth as a mirror, and bright with the rays of a sun which had reached that height at which--in tropical climates--it gilds and gladdens the scene without scorching the spectator; the quay was lined with ships loading and unloading; small boats were flying about in every direction; all around was gay and fresh, but the filthy steamer was still beneath me. I lost no time in calling a skiff alongside; then, shaking the dust from off my feet, I was soon pulling away for the shore. As a matter of course, the Custom-house is the landing-place, and the great object of search seems to be for Filibustero papers, or books which advocate that cause. Having passed this ordeal, you take your first drive in the national vehicle of the island, which rejoices in the appellation of a "Volante," a name given it, I suppose, in bitter sarcasm; a "Tortugante" would have been far more appropriate, inasmuch as the pace resembles that of a tortoise far more than that of a bird. I may here as well describe one of the best, of which, in spite of its gay appearance, I feel sure the bare sight would have broken the heart of "Humanity Dick of Galway." From the point of the shaft to the axle of the wheel measures fifteen feet, and as the wheel varies in diameter from six to seven feet, it of course extends three feet beyond the axle. The body is something like a swell private cab, the leather at the back being moveable, so as to admit air, and a curtain is fitted in front joining the head of the cab and the splash-board, for the sake of shade, if needed; this body is suspended on strong leather springs, attached to the axle at one end, and to a strengthening-piece across the shafts, seven and a half feet distance from the axle, at the other. The point of the shaft is fitted with rings, by which it hangs on the back-pad of the horse, whose head necessarily extends about four feet beyond; thus you will observe, that from the outer tire of the wheel to the horse's nose occupies at least twenty-two feet, and that the poor little animal has the weight of the carriage lying on him at the end of a lever fifteen feet long. Owing to their great length, it is excessively difficult to turn them; a "Tommy Onslow" would cut in and out with a four-in-hand fifteen miles an hour, where the poor Volante would come to a regular fix--if the horses in Cuba came into power, they would burn every one of them the next minute. It must however be admitted that they are excessively easy to ride in, and peculiarly suited to a country with bad roads, besides being the gayest-looking vehicles imaginable; the boxes of the wheels, the ends of the axle, the springs for the head, the bar to keep the feet off the splash-board, the steps, the points of the fastenings of carriage and harness are all silvered and kept bright. Nor does the use of the precious metal stop here; the niggers who bestride the poor horses are put into high jack-boots fitted with plated buckles and huge spurs, both equally brilliant. These niggers have a most comical appearance; they wear a skull-cap, or a handkerchief under a gold-banded hat; some wear a red short-tailed jacket, the seams and the front of the collar covered with bright yellow, on which are dispersed innumerable emblazonments of heraldry, even to the very tails, which I should hardly have expected to find thus gaily decorated,--it may have been from this practice we have derived the expression of the seat of honour. The jack-boots they wear sometimes fit very tight to the legs, in which case poor Sambo has to roll up his pants till they assume the appearance of small bolsters tied round the knee, presenting a most ludicrous caricature. The poor little horses are all hog-maned, and their tails are neatly plaited down the whole length, the point thereof being then tied up to the crupper, so that they are as badly off as a certain class of British sheep-dog. This is probably an ancient custom, originating from a deputation of flies waiting upon the authorities, and binding themselves by treaty to leave the bipeds in peace if they would allow them the unmolested torture of the quadruped. If the owner wishes to "make a splash," another horse, equally silvered, is harnessed abreast, something like the Russian Furieux; and in the country, where the roads on the plantations are execrable, and quite impassable for any spring carriage, a third horse is often added, the postilion always riding the near, or left-hand horse. The body of the carriage is comfortably cushioned, and lined with bright gay colours, and generally has a stunning piece of carpet for a rug. Such is the Cuban Volante, in which the Hidalgos and the Corazoncitas with glowing lustrous eyes roll about in soft undulating motion from place to place; and, believe me, such a Volante, tenanted by fairy forms lightly and gaily dressed, with a pleasant smile on their lips and an encyclopedia of language beaming from the orbs above, would arrest the attention of the most inveterate old bachelor that ever lived; nay, it might possibly give birth to a deep penitential sigh and a host of good and sensible resolutions. Ordinary Volantes are the same style of thing, only not so gay, and the usual pace is from three to five and a half miles an hour, always allowing five minutes for turning at the corner of every street. If you are curious to know why I am in such a hurry to describe a Volante, as if it were the great feature of Cuba, the reason is, simply, that my first act on landing was to get into one of the said vehicles and drive to the hotel. The horses are generally very neat and compact, and about the size of a very small English hack. For riding there are two kinds--the Spanish, which goes at the "rack" or amble pace, and the American, which goes the regular pace; the broad foreheads, short heads, and open nostrils show plenty of good breeding. The charges both for horses and Volante, if you wish to go out of the town, are, like everything else in Cuba, ridiculously exorbitant. An American here is doing a tolerably good business in letting horses and carriages. For a short evening drive, we had the pleasure of paying him thirty-five shillings. He says his best customers are a gang of healthy young priests, whom he takes out nearly daily to a retired country village famous for the youth and beauty of its fair sex, and who appear to be very dutiful daughters of the Church, as they are said to appreciate and profit by the kind visits of these excellent young men and their zealous labours of love. There is a very good view of the town from the top of the hotel[X]. Most of the houses have both flat and sloping roofs, the latter covered with concave red tiles, cemented together with white, thus giving them a strange freckled appearance; while in many cases the dust and dew have produced a little soil, upon which a spontaneous growth of shrubbery has sprung up; the flat roofs have usually a collection of little urn-shaped turrets round the battlement, between which are stretched clothes-lines. Here the ebony daughters of Eve, with their bullet-heads and polished faces and necks, may be seen at all hours hanging up washed clothes, their capacious mouths ornamented with long cigars, at which they puff away like steam-engines. One of the first sights I witnessed was a funeral, but not the solemn, imposing ceremony which that word conveys to English ears. The sides of the hearse and the upper part of the coffin were made of glass; inside lay a little girl, six or seven years old, dressed as if going to a wedding, and decorated with gay flowers. Volantes followed, bearing the mourners--or the rejoicers; I know not which is the more correct term. One or two were attired in black, but generally the colours were gay; some were quietly smoking cigars, which it is to be hoped they did that the ashes at the end thereof might afford them food for profitable reflection. Custom is said to be second nature, and I suppose, therefore, one could get habituated to this system if brought up under it; but, seen for the first time, it is more calculated to excite feelings of curiosity than solemnity. Doubtless, some fond parent's heart was bleeding deeply, and tears such as a mother only can shed were flowing freely, despite the gay bridal appearance of the whole ceremony. On my return to the hotel, I found the Press--if the slavish tool of a government can justly be designated by such a term--full of remarks upon the new British Ministry[Y], many of which were amusing enough; they showed a certain knowledge of political parties in England, and laughed good-humouredly at the bundling together in one faggot of such differently-seasoned sticks. Even the name of the Secretary of the Admiralty was honoured by them with a notice, in which they scorned to look upon him as a wild democrat. They criticised the great Peel's tail going over in a body to the enemy's camp and placing themselves at the head of the troops; but what puzzled them most was, how _aquellos Grey's tan famosos por el nepotismo_ had not formed part of the ministry. I confess they were not more puzzled than I was to account for the mysterious combination; the only solution whereof which presented itself to my mind, was the supposition that power has the same influence on public men that lollipops have on the juvenile population, and that the one and the other are ready to sacrifice a great deal to obtain possession of the luscious morsel. However, as we live in an age of miracles, we may yet see even a rope of sand, mud, and steel-filings, hold together.--Pardon this digression, and let us back to Cuba. The Cubans usually dine about half-past three; after dinner some go to the _Paseo_ in their Volantes, others lounge on the quay or gather round the military band before the Governor-General's palace. Look at that man with swarthy countenance, dark hair, and bright eyes--he is seated on a stone bench listening to the music; a preserved bladder full of tobacco is open before him, a small piece of thin paper is in his hand; quick as thought a cigarette is made, and the tobacco returned to his pocket. Now he rises, and walks towards a gentleman who is smoking; when close, he raises his right hand, which holds the cigarette, nearly level with his chin, then gracefully throwing his hand forward, accompanies the act with the simple word _Favor_; having taken his light, the same action is repeated, followed by a courteous inclination of the head as a faintly expressed _Gracias_ escapes his lips. In this man you have a type of a very essential portion of the male population. Reader, it is no use your trying to imitate him; the whole scene, is peculiar to the Spaniard, in its every act, movement and expression. Old Hippo at the Zoological might as well try to rival the grace of a Taglioni. The promenade over, many spend their evenings at billiards, dominoes, &c., adjourning from time to time to some _café_ for the purpose of eating ices or sucking goodies, and where any trifling conversation or dispute is carried on with so much vivacity, both of tongue and of fingers, that the uninitiated become alarmed with apprehensions of some serious quarrel. Others again, who are ladies' men, or of domestic habits, either go home or meet at some friend's house, where they all sit in the front room on the ground-floor, with the windows wide open to the street, from which they are separated only by a few perpendicular iron bars. Yankee rocking-chairs and cane chairs are placed abreast of these windows, and facing each other like lines of sentinels; there they chat, smoke cigars, or suck their fingers, according to their sex and fancy. Occasionally a merry laugh is heard, but I cannot say it is very general. Sometimes they dance, which with them is a slow undulating movement, suited to a marble floor and a thermometer at eighty degrees. At a small village in the neighbourhood I saw a nigger hall,--the dance was precisely the same, being a mixture of country-dance and waltz; and I can assure you, Sambo and his ebony partner acquitted themselves admirably: they were all well dressed, looked very jolly and comfortable, and were by no means uproarious. You must not imagine, from my observations on the fair tenant of the Volante, that this is a land of beauty--far from it: one feature of beauty, and one only, is general--good eyes: with that exception, it is rare; but there are some few lovely daughters of Eve that would make the mouth of a marble statue water. Old age here is anything but attractive, either producing a mountainous obesity, or a skeleton on which the loose dried skin hangs in countless wrinkles. But such is generally the case in warm climates, as far as my observation goes. Any one wishing to verify these remarks, has only to go on the Paseo a little before sunset upon a Sunday evening, when he will be sure to meet nine-tenths of the population and the Volantes all in gayest attire. The weather on my arrival was very wet, and I was therefore unable to go into the country for some days; but having cleared up, I got my passport and took a trip into the interior. [Illustration: "EL CASERO," THE PARISH HAWKER IN CUBA.] The railway cars are built on the American models, i.e., long cars, capable of containing about forty or fifty people; but they have had the good sense to establish first, second, and third-class carriages; and, at the end of each first-class carriage, there is a partition, shutting off eight seats, so that any party wishing to be private can easily be so. They travel at a very fair pace, but waste much time at the stopping-places, and whole hours at junctions. By one of these conveyances I went to Matanzas, which is very prettily situated in a lovely bay. There is a ridge, about three miles from the town, which is called the Cumbre, from the summit whereof you obtain a beautiful view of the valley of the Yumuri, so called from a river of that name, and concerning which there is a legend that it is famous for the slaughter of the Indians by the Spaniards; a legend which, too probably, rests on the foundation of truth, if we are to judge by the barbarities which dimmed the brilliancy of all their western conquests. The valley is now fruitful in sugar-canes, and surrounded with hills and woods; and the _coup-d'oeil,_ when seen in the quick changing lights and shadows of the setting sun, is quite, enchanting. Continuing our ride, we crossed the valley as the moon was beginning to throw her dubious and silvery light upon the cane fields. A light breeze springing up, their flowery heads swayed to and fro like waving plumes, while their long leaves, striking one against the other, swept like a mournful sigh across the vale, as though Nature were offering its tribute of compassion to the fettered sons of Adam that had helped to give it birth. There is a very important personage frequently met with in Cuba, who is called _El Casero_--in other words, the parish commissariat pedler. He travels on horseback, seated between two huge panniers, and goes round to all the cottages collecting what they wish to sell, and selling what they wish to buy, and every one who addresses him on business he styles, in reply, _Caserita_. This pedlering system may be very primitive, but it doubtless is a great convenience to the rural population, especially in an island which is so deficient in roads and communication. In short, I consider _El Casero_ the representative of so useful and peculiar a class of the community, that I have honoured him with a wood-cut wherein he is seen bargaining with a negress for fowls, or _vice versâ_,--whichever the reader prefers,--for not being the artist, I cannot undertake to decide which idea he meant to convey. There is nothing in the town of Matanzas worth seeing except the views of it and around it. The population amounts to about twenty-five thousand, and the shipping always helps to give it a gay appearance. My chief object in visiting these parts was to see something of the sugar plantations in the island; but as they resemble each other in essential features, I shall merely describe one of the best, which I visited when retracing my steps to Havana, and which belongs to one of the most wealthy men in the island. On driving up to it, you see a large airy house,--windows and doors all open, a tall chimney rearing its proud head in another building, and a kind of barrack-looking building round about. The hospitable owner appears to delight in having an opportunity of showing kindness to strangers. He speaks English fluently; but alas! the ladies do not; so we must look up our old rusty armoury of Spanish, and take the field with what courage we may. Kindness and good-will smooth all difficulties, and we feel astonished how well we get on; in short, if we stay here too long we shall get vain, and think we really can speak Spanish,--we must dine, we must stay, we must make the house our own, and truly I rejoiced that it was so. The house had every comfort, the society every charm, and the welcome was as warm as it was unostentatious. We--for you must know our party was four in number--most decidedly lit upon our legs, and the cuisine and the cellar lent effectual aid. The proprietor is an elderly man, and the son, who has travelled a good deal in Europe, manages the properties, which consist of several plantations, and employ about twelve hundred slaves. The sound of the lash is rarely heard, and the negroes are all healthy and happy-looking; several of them have means to purchase their liberty, but prefer their present lot. A doctor is kept on the estate for them; their houses are clean and decent; there is an airy hospital for them if sick, and there is a large nursery, with three old women who are appointed to take charge during the day of all children too young to work: at night they go to their respective families. On the whole property there was only one man under punishment, and he was placed to work in chains for having fired one of his master's buildings, which he was supposed to have been led to do, owing to his master refusing to allow him to take his infant home to his new wife till it was weaned; his former wife had died in child-bed, and he wished to rear it on arrowroot, &c. This the master--having found a good wet nurse for it--would not permit. The man had generally borne a very good character, and the master, whose _entourage_ bears strong testimony to his kind rule, seized the opportunity of my visit to let him free at my request, as he had already been working four months in chains similar to those convicts sometimes wear; thus were three parties gratified by this act of grace. It is well known that there are various ways of making sugar; but as the method adopted on this plantation contains all the newest improvements, I may as well give a short detail of the process as I witnessed it. The cane when brought from the field is placed between two heavy rollers, worked by steam, and the juice falls into a conductor below--the squashed cane being carried away to dry for fuel--whence it is raised by what is termed a "_monte jus_" into a tank above the "clarifier," which is a copper boiler, with iron jacket and steam between. A proper proportion of lime is introduced, sufficient to neutralize the acidity. When brought to the boiling-point the steam is shut off, and the liquid subsides. This operation is one of the most important in the whole process; from the clarifier it is run through an animal charcoal filterer, which, by its chemical properties, purifies it; from the filterer it runs into a tank, whence it is pumped up above the condensers, i.e., tubes, about fifteen in number, laid horizontally, one above the other, and containing the steam from the vacuum pans. The cold juice in falling over these hot tubes, condenses the steam-therein, and at the same time evaporates the water, which is always a considerable ingredient in the juice of the cane; the liquor then passes into a vacuum pan, which is fitted with a bull's-eye on one side, and a corresponding bull's-eye with a lamp on the opposite side, by which the process can be watched. Having boiled here sufficiently, it passes through a second filtration of animal charcoal, and then returns to a second vacuum pan, where it is boiled to the point of granulation; it is then run off into heaters below, whence it is ladled into moulds of an irregular conical shape, in which it is left to cool and to drain off any molasses that remain; when cooled it is taken to the purging-house. The house where the operations which we have been describing were going on, was two hundred yards long, forty yards broad, and built of solid cedar and mahogany. In the purging-house, these moulds are all ranged with the point of the cone down, and gutters below. A layer of moist clay, about two inches deep, is then placed upon the sugar at the broad end of the cone, and, by the gradual percolation of its thick liquid, carries off the remaining impurities. When this operation is finished, the cones are brought out, and the sugar contained therein is divided into three parts, the apex of the cone being the least pure, the middle rather better, and the base the most pure and looking very white. This latter portion is then placed upon strong wooden troughs, about six or eight feet square. There, negroes and negresses break it up with long poles armed with hard-wood head, trampling it under their delicate pettitoes to such an extent as to give rise to the question whether sugar-tongs are not a useless invention. When well smashed and trodden, it is packed in boxes, and starts forth on its journeys; a very large proportion goes to Spain. The two least pure portions are sent to Europe, to be there refined. Such is a rough sketch of the sugar-making process, as I saw it. All the machinery was English, and the proprietor had a corps of English engineers, three in number, to superintend the work. In our roadless trips to various parts of the plantation, we found the advantage of the Volante, before described; and though three horses were harnessed, they had in many places enough to do. We stayed a couple of days with our kind and hospitable friends, and then returned to Havana. No pen can convey the least idea of the wonderful luxuriance of vegetation which charms the eye at every step. There is a richness of colour and a fatness of substance in the foliage of every tree and shrub which I never met with before in any of my travels. The stately palm, with its smooth white stem glittering in the sunbeams like a column of burnished silver; the waving bamboo growing in little clumps, and nodding in the gentle breeze with all the graceful appearance of a gigantic ostrich plume; groves of the mango, with its deep and dark foliage defying the sun's rays; the guava, growing at its feet, like an infant of the same family; the mammee--or _abricot de St. Domingue_--with its rich green fruit hanging in clusters, and a foliage rivalling the mango; the dark and feathery tamarind; the light and graceful indigo; the slow-growing arrowroot, with its palmy and feathery leaves spreading like a tender rampart round its precious fruit; boundless fields of the rich sugar-cane; acres of the luscious pine apple; groves of banana and plantain; forests of cedar and mahogany; flowers of every hue and shade; the very jungle netted over with the creeping convolvulus,--these, and a thousand others, of which fortunately for the reader I know not the names, are continually bursting on the scene with equal profusion and variety, bearing lovely testimony to the richness of the soil and the mildness of the climate. Alas! that this fair isle should be at one and the same time the richest gem in the crown of Spain, and the foulest blot on her escutcheon. Her treaties are violated with worse than Punic faith, and here horrors have been enacted which would make the blood of a Nero curdle in his veins. Do you ask, how are treaties violated? When slaves are brought here by our cruisers, Spain is bound by treaty to apprentice them out for three years, so as to teach them how to earn a living, and then to free them. My dear John Bull, you will be sorry to hear, that despite the activity of our squadron for the suppression of slavery, that faithless country which owes a national existence to oceans of British treasure, and the blood of the finest army the great Wellington ever led, has the unparalleled audacity to make us slave carriers to Cuba. Yes, thousands of those who, if honour and truth were to be found in the Government of Spain, would now be free, are here to be seen pining away their lives in the galling and accursed chains of slavery, a living reproach to England, and a black monument of Spanish faith. Yes, John Bull, I repeat the fact; thousands of negroes are bound here in hopeless fetters, that were brought here under the British flag. And, that there may be no doubt of the wilfulness with which the Cuban authorities disregard their solemn obligations, it is a notorious fact, that in a country where passports and police abound in every direction, so that a negro cannot move from his own home, upwards of a hundred were landed in the last year, 1852, from one vessel, at a place only thirty-five miles from the Havana, and marched in three days across the island to--where do you think?--to some Creole's, or to some needy official's estate? no such thing; but, as if to stamp infamy on Spain, at the highest step of the ladder, they were marched to the Queen Mother's estate. If this be not wickedness in high places, what is? The slave trade flourishes luxuriantly here with the connivance of authority; and what makes the matter worse is, that the wealth accumulated by this dishonesty and national perjury is but too generally--and I think too justly--believed to be the mainspring of that corruption at home for which Spain stands pre-eminent among the nations of the earth. I will now give you a sketch of the cruelties which have been enacted here; and, although an old story, I do not think it is very generally known. When General O'Donnell obtained the captain-generalship of Cuba, whether his object was to obtain honours from Spain for quelling an insurrection, or whether he was deceived, I cannot decide; but an imaginary insurrection was got up, and a military court was sent in every direction throughout the island. These courts were to obtain all information as to the insurrection, and, of course, to flog the negroes till they confessed. Unfledged ensigns would come with their guard upon a plantation, and despite the owner's assurance that there was no feeling of insubordination among the negroes, they would set to work flogging right and left, till in agony the poor negro would say something which would be used to criminate some other, who in turn would be flogged till in agony he made some assertion; and so it went on, till the blood-thirsty young officer was satiated. On one plantation a negro lad had been always brought up with one of the sons of the proprietor, and was, in fact, quite a pet in the family. One of these military courts visited the plantation, and insisted upon flogging this pet slave till he confessed what he never knew. In vain his master strove to convince the officer of his perfect innocence; he would not listen, and the poor lad was tied up, and received seven hundred lashes, during which punishment some remarks he made in the writhings of his agony were noted down, and he was shot at Matanzas for the same. The master's son, who was forced to witness this barbarity inflicted upon the constant companion of his early youth, never recovered the shock, and died the following year insane. The streets of Matanzas were in some places running with negro blood. An eye-witness told me that near the village of Guinés he saw a negro flogged with an aloe-leaf till both hip-bones were perfectly bare; and there is little doubt that 1500 slaves died under the lash. You will perhaps be surprised, most excellent John Bull, when I tell you that the cruelties did not stop at the negroes, but extended even to whites who claimed British protection. One of them was chained to a log of wood in the open air for a hundred days and a hundred nights, despite the strongest remonstrances on the part of the British authorities, and was eventually unchained, to die two days after in jail. Several others were imprisoned and cruelly treated; and when this reign of terror, worthy even of Spain in her bloodiest days, was over, and their case was inquired into, they were perfectly exonerated, and a compensation was awarded them. This was in 1844. Some of them have since died from the treatment they then received; and, if I am correctly informed, Spain--by way of keeping up her character--has not paid to those who survive one farthing of the sum awarded. Volumes might be filled with the atrocities of 1844; but the foregoing is enough of the sickening subject. When I call to mind the many amiable and high-minded Spaniards I have met, the national conduct of Spain becomes indeed a mystery. But to return to present times. H.M.S. "Vestal," commanded by that active young officer, Captain C.B. Hamilton, was stationed at Cuba for the suppression of slavery, &c. She had been watching some suspicious vessels in the harbour for a long time; but as they showed no symptoms of moving, she unbent sails and commenced painting, &c. A day or two after, as daylight broke, the suspicious vessels were missing from the harbour. The "Vestal" immediately slipped, and, getting the ferry-boat to tow her outside, commenced a chase, and the next day succeeded in capturing four vessels. Of course they were brought into Havana, to be tried at the Mixed Court there; three, I believe, were condemned, but the fourth, called the "Emilia Arrogante" is the one to which I wish to call your attention, because she, though the most palpably guilty, belonged to wealthy people in the island, and therefore, of course, was comparatively safe. When taken, the slave-deck which she had on board was carefully put into its place, and every plank and beam exactly fitted, as was witnessed and testified to by several of the "Vestal's" officers; yet, will you believe it, when given up to the local authorities, they either burnt or made away with this only but all-sufficient evidence, so that it became impossible for the Court to condemn her. It is curious to hear the open way people speak of the bribery of the officials in the island, and the consequent endless smuggling that goes on. A captain of a merchant-vessel told me that in certain articles, which, for obvious reasons, I omit to mention, it is impossible to trade except by smuggling; so universal is the practice, that he would be undersold fifty per cent. He mentioned an instance, when the proper duties amounted to 1200l., the broker went to the official and obtained a false entry by which he only paid 400l. duty, and this favour cost him an additional 400l. bribe to the official, thus saving 400l. This he assured me, after being several years trading to Cuba, was the necessary practice of the small traders; nobody in Cuba is so high that a bribe does not reach him, from the Captain-General, who is handsomely paid for breaking his country's plighted faith in permitting the landing of negroes, down to the smallest unpaid official. With two-thirds the excuse is, "We are so ill-paid, we must take bribes;" with the other third the excuse is, "It is the custom of the island." Spain could formerly boast pre-eminence in barbarity--she has now attained to pre-eminence in official corruption; but the day must come, though it may yet be distant, when her noble sons of toil will burst the fetters of ignorance in which they are bound, and rescue their fair land from the paltry nothingness of position which it occupies among the nations of Europe, despite many generous and noble hearts which even now, in her degradation, are to be found blushing over present realities and striving to live on past recollections. There were some British men-of-war lying in the harbour; and as my two German friends were anxious to see the great-gun exercise, I went on board with these gentlemen to witness the drill, with which they were much pleased. After it was over, and the ship's company had gone to dinner, they wished to smoke a cigar, the whiffs of Jack's pipe having reached their olfactories. Great was their astonishment, and infinite my disgust, when we were walked forward to the galley to enjoy our weed, to find the crew smoking on the opposite side. It is astonishing to think that, with so much to be improved and attended to in the Navy, the authorities in Whitehall-place should fiddle-faddle away precious time in framing regulations about smoking, for the officers; and, instead of leaving the place to be fixed by the captain of each vessel, and holding him responsible, should name a place which, it is not too much to say, scarce one captain in ten thinks of confining his officers to, for the obvious reason that discipline is better preserved by keeping the officers and men apart during such occupations,--and, moreover, that sending officers to the kitchen to smoke is unnecessarily offensive. These same orders existed thirty years ago; and, as it was well known they were never attended to, except by some anti-smoking captain, who used them as an excuse, the Admiralty very wisely rescinded an order which, by being all but universally disregarded, tended to weaken the weight and authority of all other orders; and after the word "galley," they then added, "or such other place as the captain shall appoint." After some years, however, so little was there of greater importance to engage their attention in naval affairs, that this sensible order was rescinded, and the original one renewed in full force, and, of course, with similar bad effect, as only those captains who detest smoking--an invisible minority--or those who look for promotion from scrupulous obedience to insignificant details--an equally invisible minority--act up to the said instructions. Nevertheless, so important an element in naval warfare is smoking now considered, that in the printed form supplied to admirals for the inspection of vessels under their command, as to "State and Preparation for Battle," one of the first questions is, "Are the orders relative to smoking attended to?" If I am not much misinformed, when Admiral Collier was appointed to the Channel squadron, he repaired to the Admiralty, and told the First Lord that he had smoked in his own cabin for twenty years, and that he could not forego that pleasure. The First Lord is said to have laughed, and made the sensible remark, "Of course you'll do as you like;" thereby showing, in my opinion, his just sense of the ridiculousness of such a childish regulation. So much for folly _redivivus_. While on the subject of smoking, I may as well say a few words upon cigar manufacture. In the first place, all the best tobacco grows at the lower end of the island, and is therefore called "_Vuelta abajo_." An idea has found its way into England, that it is impossible to make cigars at home as well as at the Havana; and the reason given is, the tobacco is made up at Havana during its first damping, and that, having to be re-damped in England, it loses thereby its rich flavour and aroma. Now, this is a most egregious mistake; for in some of the best houses here you will find tobacco two and even four years old, which is not yet worked up into cigars, and which, consequently, has to be re-damped for that purpose. If this be so, perhaps you will ask how is it that British-made cigars are never so good as those from Havana? There are two very good reasons for this--the one certain, the other probable. The probable one is, that the best makers in Havana, whose brand is their fortune--such as Cabaños y Carvajal--will be jealous of sending the best tobacco out of the country, lest, being forced to use inferior tobacco, they might lose their good name; and the other reason is, that cigars improve in flavour considerably by a sea voyage. So fully is this fact recognised here, that many merchants pay the duty of three shillings a thousand to embark their cigars in some of the West India steamers, and then have them carried about for a month or so, thereby involving a further payment for freight; and they all express themselves as amply repaid by the improvement thereby effected in their cigars. Nevertheless, many old Cubans prefer smoking cigars the same week that they are made. At the same time, if any honest tobacconist in England chose to hoist the standard of "small profit and plenty of it," he might make very good Havana tobacco cigars, at 50 per cent. profit, under 16s. per 100. Thus--duty, 3s. 6_d_; tobacco, 5s.; freight and dues, &c., 6d.; making up, 1s. 6d.--absolute cost of cigars, 10s. 6d. per 100; 50 per cent. profit thereon, 5s. 3d.; total, 15s. 9d. For this sum a better article could be supplied than is ordinarily obtained at prices varying from 25s. to 30s. But 50 per cent. profit will not satisfy the British tobacconist when he finds John Bull willing to give him 100 per cent. He therefore makes the cigars at the prices above-mentioned, puts them into old boxes with some pet brand upon them, and sells them as the genuine article. John Bull is indebted for this extortionate charge to the supreme wisdom of the Legislature, which has established a 3s. 6d. duty on the pound of unmanufactured tobacco, and a 9s. duty on manufactured; instead of fixing one duty for manufactured and unmanufactured, and making the difference thereof depend upon the quality--lowering the duty upon the tobacco used by the poor to 2s. 6d., and establishing on all the better kinds a uniform rate, say 6s. or 7s. The revenue, I believe, would gain, and the public have a better protection against the fraud of which they are now all but universal victims. But to return to Havana. The price paid for making cigars varies from 8s. to 80s. a thousand, the average being about 15s. A certain quality of tobacco is made up into cigars, and from time to time they are handed over to the examiner, who divides them into three separate classes, the difference being merely in the make thereof. A second division then takes place, regulated by the colour of the outside wrapper, making the distinction of "light" or "brown." Now, the three classes first noticed, you will observe, are precisely the same tobacco; but knowing how the public are gulled by the appearance, the prices are very different. Thus, taking the brand of Cabaños y Carvajal _Prensados_, his first, or prettiest, are 6l. 8s. per 1000; his second are 5l. 12s.; and his third are 5l.; and yet no real difference of quality exists. The cigars of which I speak are of the very best quality, and the dearest brand in Havana. Now, let us see what they cost put into the tobacconist's shop in London:--32 dollars is 180s.; duty, 90s.; export at Havana, 3s.; freight and extra expenses, say 7s.--making 230s. a thousand, or 23s. a hundred, for the dearest and best Havana cigars, London size. But three-fourths of the cigars which leave the Havana for England do not cost more than 3l. 4s. per thousand, which would bring their cost price to the tobacconist down to 16s. 5d. The public know what they pay, and can make their own reflections. There is another class of cigar known in England as "Plantations," here called "Vegueros." They are of the richest tobacco, and are all made in the country by the sable ladies of the island, who use no tables to work at, if report speaks truth; and as both hands are indispensable in the process of rolling, what they roll upon must be left to the imagination. It will not do to be too fastidious in this world. Cooks finger the dainty cutlets, and keep dipping their fingers into the rich sauces, and sucking them, to ascertain their progress, and yet the feasters relish the savoury dish not one whit the less; so smokers relish the Veguero, though on what rolled modesty forbids me to mention,--nor do they hesitate to press between their lips the rich "Regalia," though its beautifully-finished point has been perfected by an indefinite number of passages of the negro's forefinger from the fragrant weed to his own rosy tongue. Men must not be too nice; but I think in the above description a fair objection is to be found to ladies smoking. With regard to the population of Cuba, the authorities, of course, wish to give currency to the idea that the whites are the most numerous. Having asked one of these officials who had the best means of knowing, he told me there were 550,000 whites and 450,000 negroes; but prosecuting my inquiries in a far more reliable quarter, I found there were 600,000 slaves, 200,000 free, and only 500,000 whites,--thus making the coloured population as eight to five. The military force in the island consists of 20,000, of which 18,000 are infantry, 1000 cavalry, and 1000 artillery[Z]. The demand for labour in the island is so great, that a speculation has been entered into by a mercantile house here to bring 6000 Chinese. The speculator has already disposed of them at 24l. a-head; they are to serve for five years, and receive four shillings a day, and they find their own way back. The cost of bringing them is calculated at 10l. a head,--thus leaving 14l. gain on each, which, multiplied by 6000, gives 84,000l. profit to the speculator,--barring, of course, losses from deaths and casualties on the journey. Chinese have already been tried here, and they prove admirably suited to all the mechanical labour, but far inferior to the negroes in the fields. I find that people in the Havana can he humbugged as well as John Bull. A Chinese botanist came here, and bethought him of trying his skill as a doctor. Everybody became mad to consult him; no street was ever so crowded as the one he lived in, since Berners-street on the day of the hoax. He got a barrel of flour, or some other innocuous powder, packed up in little paper parcels, and thus armed he received his patients. On entering, he felt the pulse with becoming silence and gravity; at last he said, "Great fire." He then put his hand on the ganglionic centre, from which he radiated to the circumjacent parts, and then, frowning deep thought, he observed, "Belly great swell; much wind; pain all round." His examination being thus accomplished, he handed the patient a paper of the innocuous powder, pocketed sixteen shillings, and dismissed him. This scene, without any variety in observation, examination, prescription, or fee, was going on for two months, at the expiration of which time he re-embarked for China with 8000l. As I believe that comparatively little is known in England of the laws existing in Cuba with respect to domicile, police, slavery, &c., I shall devote a few pages to the subject, which, in some of its details, is amusing enough. No person is allowed to land on the island without a passport from the place whence he arrives, and a _fiador_, or surety, in the island, who undertakes to supply the authorities with information of the place of his residence for one year; nor can he remain in the island more than three months without a "domiciliary ticket." People of colour arriving in any vessel are to be sent to a government deposit; if the master prefers to keep them on board he may, but in that case he is liable to a fine of 200l. if any of them land on the island; after a certain hour in the evening all gatherings in the street are put a stop to, and everybody is required to carry a lantern about with him; the hierarchy and "swells"--_personas de distincion_--being alone exempt. All purchases made from slaves or children or doubtful parties are at the risk of the purchaser, who is liable not merely to repay the price given, but is further subject to a heavy fine: no bad law either. Any boy between the ages of ten and sixteen who may be found in the streets as a vagrant may be taken before the president of the _Seccion de Industria de la Real Sociedad Economica_, by whom he is articled out to a master of the trade he wishes to learn. No place of education can be opened without the teacher thereof has been duly licensed. No game of chance is allowed in any shop or tavern, except in billiard-saloons and coffee-houses, where draughts and dominoes, chess and backgammon are tolerated. After a certain fixed hour of the night, no person is allowed to drive about in a Volante with the head up, unless it rains or the sitter be an invalid; the penalty is fifteen shillings. No private individual is allowed to give a ball or a concert without permission of the authorities. Fancy Londonderry House going to the London police-office to get permission for a quadrille or a concert. How pleasant! The specific gravity of milk is accurately calculated, and but a moderate margin allowed for pump mixture; should that margin be exceeded, or any adulteration discovered, the whole is forfeited to some charitable institution. If such a salutary law existed in London, pigs' brains would fall in the market, and I should not see so many milk-pails at the spring during my early morning walks to the Serpentine. Among the regulations for health, the following are to be found. No private hospital or infirmary is to be opened without a government licence. All keepers of hotels, coffee or eating houses, &c., are bound to keep their kitchen "battery" well tinned inside, under a heavy penalty of 3l. 10s. for every utensil which may be found insufficiently tinned, besides any further liabilities to which they may be subject for accidents arising from neglect thereof. Every shop is obliged to keep a vessel with water at the threshold of the outer door, to assist in avoiding hydrophobia. All houses that threaten to tumble down must be rebuilt, and if the owner is unable to bear the expense, he must sell the house to some one who can bear it. Another clause, after pointing out the proper places for bathing, enjoins a pair of bathing breeches, under a penalty of fifteen shillings for each offence; the particular cut is not specified. Let those who object to put convex fig-leaves over the little cherubs, and other similar works of art at the Crystal Palace, take a lesson from the foregoing, and clothe them all in Cuba pants as soon as possible; scenes are generally more interesting when the imagination is partially called into play. Boys, both little and big, are kept in order by a fine of fifteen shillings for every stone they throw, besides paying in full for all damage caused thereby. No one is allowed to carry a stick more than one inch in diameter under a penalty of twelve shillings; but all white people are allowed to carry swords, provided they are carried openly and in their scabbards. The foregoing are sufficient to convey to the reader some idea of the ban of pains and penalties under which a resident is placed; at the same time it may be as well to inform him, that, except those enactments which bear upon espionage, they are about as much attended to as the laws with regard to the introduction of slaves, respecting which latter I will now give you a few of the regulations. Slave owners are bound to give their slaves three meals a-day, and the substance thereof must be eleven ounces of meat or salt-fish, four ounces of bread, and farinaceous vegetables equal to six plantains; besides this, they are bound to give them two suits of clothes--all specified--yearly. Alas! how appropriate is the slang phrase "Don't you wish you may get 'em?" So beautifully motherly is Spain regarding her slaves, that the very substance of infants' clothes under three years of age is prescribed; another substance from three to six; then comes an injunction that from six to fourteen the girls are to be shirted and the boys breeched. I am sure this super-parental solicitude upon the part of the Government must be admitted to be most touching. By another regulation, the working time is limited from nine to ten hours daily, except in the harvest or sugar season, during which time the working hours are eighteen a-day. No slave under sixteen or over sixty can be employed on task-work, or at any age at a work not suited to his or her strength and sex. Old slaves must be kept by their master, and cannot be freed for the purpose of getting rid of the support of them. Upon a plantation, the houses must be built on a dry position, well ventilated, and the sexes kept apart, and a proper hospital provided for them. By another law, marriage is inculcated on moral grounds, and the master of the slave is required to purchase the wife, so that they may both be under one roof; if he declines the honour, then the owner of the wife is to purchase the husband; and if that fails, a third party is to buy both: failing all these efforts, the law appears non-plused, and leaves their fate to Providence. If the wife has any children under three years of age, they must be sold with her. The law can compel an owner to sell any slave upon whom he may be proved to have exercised cruelty; should any party offer him the price he demands, he may close the bargain at once, but if they do not agree, his value is to be appraised by two arbiters, one chosen by each party, and if either decline naming an arbiter, a law officer acts _ex officio_. Any slave producing fifty dollars (ten pounds) as a portion of his ransom-money, the master is obliged to fix a price upon him, at which his ransom may be purchased; he then becomes a _coartado_, and whatever sums he can save his master is bound to receive in part payment, and, should he be sold, the price must not exceed the price originally named, after subtracting therefrom the amount he has advanced for his ransom. Each successive purchaser must buy him subject to these conditions. In all disputes as to original price or completion of the ransom, the Government appoints a law officer on behalf of the slave. The punishments of the slave are imprisonment, stocks, &c.; when the lash is used, the number of stripes is limited to twenty-five. The few regulations I have quoted are sufficient to show how carefully the law has fenced-in the slave from bad treatment. I believe the laws of no other country in regard to slaves are so merciful, excepting always Peru; but, alas! though the law is as fair as the outside of the whited sepulchre, the practice is as foul as the inside thereof; nor can one ever expect that it should be otherwise, when we see that, following the example of the treaty-breaking, slave-importing Queen Mother, every official, from the highest government authority down to the lowest petty custom-house officer, exposes his honesty daily in the dirty market of bribery. A short summary of the increase of slave population may be interesting, as showing that the charges made against the Cubans of only keeping up the numbers of the slaves by importation is not quite correct. In the year 1835 a treaty was made with Spain, renewing the abolition of slave traffic, to which she had assented in 1817 by words which her subsequent deeds belied. At this latter date, the slave population amounted to 290,000, since which period she has proved the value of plighted faith by introducing upwards of 100,000 slaves, which would bring the total up to 390,000. The present slave population, I have before remarked, amounts to 600,000, which would give as the increase by births during nearly twenty years, 210,000. If we take into consideration the ravages of epidemics, and the serious additional labour caused by the long duration of the sugar harvest, we may fairly conclude, as far as increase by birth is admitted as evidence, that the treatment of slaves in Cuba will stand comparison with that of the slave in the United States, especially when it is borne in mind that the addition of slave territory in the latter has made the breeding of slaves a regular business. The increase of the produce of Cuba may very naturally be ascribed to the augmentation of slave labour, and to the improvements in machinery; but there is another cause which is very apt to be overlooked, though I think there can be no doubt it has exercised the most powerful influence in producing that result: I allude to the comparative monopoly of the sugar trade, which the events of late years have thrown into her hands. When England manumitted the 750,000 slaves in the neighbouring islands, the natural law of reaction came into play, and the negro who had been forced to work hard, now chose to take his ease, and his absolute necessities were all that he cared to supply: a little labour sufficed for that, and he consequently became in his turn almost the master. The black population, unprepared in any way for the sudden change, became day by day more idle and vicious, the taxes of the islands increased, and the circulation issued by the banks decreased in an equally fearful ratio. When sugar the produce of slave labour was admitted into England, a short time after the emancipation, upon the same terms as the produce of the free islands, as a natural consequence, the latter, who could only command labour at high wages and for uncertain time, were totally unable to compete with the cheap labour and long hours of work in Cuba; nearly every proprietor in our West India colonies feel into deep distress,--some became totally ruined. One property which had cost 118,000l., so totally lost its value, owing to these changes in the law, that its price fell to 16,000l. In Demerara, the sugar produce sank from 104,000,000 lbs. to 61,000,000 lbs., and coffee from 9,000,000 lbs. to 91,000 lbs., while 1,500,000 lbs. of cotton disappeared entirely. These are no fictions, they are plain facts, borne testimony to in many instances by the governors of the colonies; and I might quote an infinite number of similar statements, all tending to prove the rapid growth of idleness and vice in the emancipated slaves, and the equally rapid ruin of the unfortunate proprietor. The principles upon which we legislated when removing the sugar duties is a mystery to me, unless I accept the solution, so degrading to the nation, "that humanity is a secondary consideration to _£ s.d._, and that justice goes for nothing." If such were not the principles on which we legislated, there never was a more complete failure. Not content with demoralizing the slave and ruining the owner, by our hasty and ill-matured plan of emancipation, we gave the latter a dirty kick when he was falling, by removing the little protection we had all put pledged our national faith that he should retain; and thus it was we threw nearly the whole West India sugar trade into the hands of Cuba, stimulating her energy, increasing her produce, and clinching the fetters of the slave with that hardest holding of all rivets--the doubled value of his labour. Perhaps my reader may say I am taking a party and political view of the question. I repudiate the charge _in toto_: I have nothing to do with politics: I merely state facts, which I consider it requisite should be brought forward, in order that the increase of Cuban produce may not be attributed to erroneous causes. For this purpose it was necessary to show that the ruin we have brought upon the free West Indian colonies is the chief cause of the increased and increasing prosperity of their slave rival; at the same time, it is but just to remark, that the establishment of many American houses in Cuba has doubtless had some effect in adding to the commercial activity of the island. I have, in the preceding pages, shown the retrogression of some parts of the West Indies, since the passing of the Emancipation and Sugar-Duty Acts. Let me now take a cursory view of the progression of Cuba during the same period.--Annual produce-- Previous to Emancipation. 1852. Sugar 300,000,000 lbs. -- 620,000,000 lbs. Molasses 125,000,000 " -- 220,000,000 " Leaf Tobacco 6,000,000 " -- 10,000,000 " Coffee 30,000,000 " -- 19,000,000 " The sugar manufactories during that time had also increased from eight hundred to upwards of sixteen hundred. Can any one calmly compare this marvellous progression of Cuba with the equally astounding retrogression of our Antilles, and fail to come to the irresistible conclusion that the prosperity of the one is intimately connected with the distress of the other. While stating the annual produce of tobacco, I should observe that upwards of 180,000,000 of cigars, and nearly 2,000,000 boxes of cigarettes, were exported in 1852, independent of the tobacco-leaf before mentioned. Professor J.F.W. Johnston, in that curious and able work entitled _Chemistry of Common Life_, styles tobacco "the first subject in the vegetable kingdom in the power of its service to man,"--some of my lady friends, I fear, will not approve of this opinion,--and he further asserts that 4,500,000,000 lbs. thereof are annually dispersed throughout the earth, which, at twopence the pound, would realize the enormous sum of 37,000,000l. If smoking may be called the popular enjoyment of the island, billiards and dominoes may be called the popular games, and the lottery the popular excitement. There are generally fifteen ordinary lotteries, and two extraordinary, every year. The ordinary consist of 32,000l. paid, and 24,000l. thereof as prizes. There are 238 prizes, the highest being 600l., and the lowest 40l. The extraordinary consist of 54,400l. paid, of which 40,800l. are drawn as prizes. There are 206 prizes, the highest of which is 20,000l., and the lowest 40l.; from which it will appear, according to Cocker, that the sums drawn annually as prizes are very nearly 150,000l. less than the sums paid. Pretty pickings for Government! As may naturally be supposed, the excitement produced by this constitutional gambling--which has its nearest counterpart in our own Stock Exchange--is quite intense; and as the time for drawing approaches, people may be seen in all the _cafés_ and public places, hawking and auctioning the billets at premium, like so many Barnums with Jenny Lind tickets. One curious feature in the lotteries here is the interest the niggers take in them. To understand this, I must explain to you that the coloured population are composed of various African tribes, and each tribe keeps comparatively separate from the others; they then form a kind of club among their own tribe, for the purpose of purchasing the freedom of some of their enslaved brethren, who, I believe, receive assistance in proportion as they contribute to the funds, and bear such a character as shall interpose no obstacle to their ransom being permitted. A portion of their funds is frequently employed in the purchase of lottery-tickets, and a deep spirit of gambling is the natural consequence; for though the stake entered is dollars, the prize, if won, is freedom. These lotteries date back to 1812; and if they have always been kept up as before explained, they must have contributed something like ten millions sterling to the Government during their forty years' working. A friend told me of a shameful instance of injustice connected with these lotteries. A poor slave who had saved enough money to buy a ticket, did so; and, drawing a small prize, immediately went off to his master, and presented it to him as a part of his redemption-money. The master having ascertained how he obtained it, explained to him that, as a slave, he could not hold property; he then quietly pocketed it, and sent poor Sambo about his business. What a beautiful commentary this is on the law respecting Coartados, which I inserted a few pages back. I must, however, remark that, from the inquiries I made, and from my own observations of their countenances and amusements, the impression left on my mind is, that the slaves are quite as happy here as in the United States; the only disadvantage that they labour under being, that the sugar harvest and manufacture last much longer in Cuba, and the labour thereof is by far the hardest drain upon the endurance of the slave. The free negroes I consider fully as well off as those in the Southern States, and immeasurably more comfortable than those who are domiciled in the Northern or Free States of the Union. The number of free negroes in Cuba amounts to one-fourth of the whole coloured population, while in the United States it only amounts to one-ninth--proving the great facilities for obtaining freedom which the island offers, or the higher cultivation of the negro, which makes him strive for it more laboriously. I will not attempt to draw any comparison between the scenes of horror with which, doubtless, both parties are chargeable, but which, for obvious reasons, are carefully concealed from the traveller's eye. Among the curious anomalies of some people, is that of a dislike to be called by the national name, if they have a local one. The islanders feel quite affronted if you call them Españoles; and a native of Old Spain would feel even more affronted if you called him a Cubano or an Havanero. The appellations are as mutually offensive as were in the olden times those of Southron and Scot, although Cuba is eternally making a boast of her loyalty. The manner of a Cuban is as stiff and hidalgoish as that of any old Spaniard; in fact, so far as my short acquaintance with the mother country and the colony enables me to judge, I see little or no difference. Some of them, however, have a dash of fun about them, as the two following little squibs will show. It appears that a certain Conde de ----, who had lately been decorated, was a most notorious rogue; in consequence of which, some wag chalked up on his door in large letters, during the night, the following lines, which, of course, were in everybody's mouth soon after the sun had risen:-- En el tiempo de las barbaras naciones A los ladrones se les colgaban en cruces; Pero hoy en el siglo de las luces A los ladrones se les cuelgan cruces. A play upon words is at all times a hopeless task to transfer to another language; nevertheless, for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with Spanish, I will convey the idea as well as I can in English;-- Hang the thief on the cross was the ancient decree; But the cross on the thief now suspended we see. The idea is of very ancient date, and equally well known in Italy and Spain; but I believe the Spanish verses given above are original. The following was written upon a wealthy man who lived like a hermit, and was reported to be very averse to paying for anything. He had, to the astonishment of everybody, given a grand entertainment the night before. On his door appeared-- "El Marquis de C---- Hace lo que debe Y debe por lo que hace." It is useless to try and carry this into Saxon. In drawing it from the Spanish well, the bottom must come out of the translationary bucket. The best version I can offer is-- "He gives a party, which he ought to do, But, doing that, he _does_ his tradesmen too." I am aware my English version is tame and insipid, though, perhaps, not quite as much so as a translation I once met with of the sentence with which it was said Timoleon, Duc de Brissac, used to apostrophize himself before the looking-glass every morning. The original runs thus:-- "Timoleon, Duc de Brissac, Dieu t'a fait gentilhomme, le roi t'a fait duc, fais toi la barbe, pour faire quelque chose." The translation was charmingly ridiculous, and ran thus:--"Timoleon, Duke of Brissac, Providence made you a gentleman; the king gave you a dukedom; shave yourself by way of doing something."--But I wander terribly. Reader, you must excuse me. I one day asked an intelligent friend, long resident in the island, whether any of the governors had ever done any good to the island, or whether they were all satisfied by filling their pockets with handsome bribes. He told me that the first governor-general who had rendered real service to the people was Tacon. On his arrival, the whole place was so infested with rogues and villains that neither property nor even life was secure after dusk. Gambling, drunkenness, and vice of every kind rode rampant. He gave all evil-doers one week's warning, at the expiration of which all who could not give a satisfactory account of themselves were to be severely punished. Long accustomed to idle threats, they treated his warning with utter indifference; but they soon found their mistake, to their cost. Inflexible in purpose, iron-handed in rule, unswerving in justice, he treated nobles, clergy, and commoners alike, and, before the fortnight was concluded, twelve hundred were in banishment or in durance vile. Their accomplices in guilt stood aghast at this new order of things, and, foreseeing their fate, either bolted, reformed, or fell victims to it, and Havana became as quiet and orderly as a church-parade. Shops, stores, and houses sprung up in every direction. A magnificent opera-house was built outside the town, on the Grand Paseo, and named after the governor-general; nothing can exceed the lightness, airiness, and taste of the interior. I never saw its equal in any building of a similar nature, and it is in every respect most perfectly adapted to this lovely climate. The next governor-general who seems to have left any permanent mark of usefulness is Valdes, whom I suppose I may be allowed to call their modern Lycurgus. It was during his rule that the laws were weeded and improved, and eventually produced in a clear and simple form. The patience he must have exhibited in this laborious occupation is evidenced by the minuteness of the details entered into, descending, as we have seen, even to the pants of bathers and the bibs of the infant nigger, but, by some unaccountable omission, giving no instructions as to the tuckers of their mammas. If Tacon was feared and respected, Valdes was beloved; and each appears to have fairly earned the reputation he obtained. Valdes was succeeded by O'Donnell, whose rule was inaugurated in negro blood. Frightful hurricanes soon followed, and were probably sent in mercy to purify the island from the pollutions of suffering and slaughter. During the rule of his successor, Roncali, the rebel Lopez appears on the stage. The American campaign in Mexico had stirred up a military ardour which extended to the rowdies, and a piratical expedition was undertaken, with Lopez at the head. He had acquired a name for courage in the Spanish army, and was much liked by many of them, partly from indulging in the unofficer-like practice of gambling and drinking with officers and men. His first attempt at a landing was ludicrously hopeless, and he was very glad to re-embark with a whole skin; but he was not the man to allow one failure to dishearten him, for, independent of his courage, he had a feeling of revenge to gratify.[AA] Having recruited his forces, he landed the following year, 1851, with a stronger and better-equipped force of American piratical brigands, and succeeded in stirring up a few Cubans to rebellion. He maintained himself for a few days, struggling with a courage worthy of a better cause. The pirates were defeated; Lopez was made prisoner, and died by the garotte, at Havana, on the 1st of September. Others also of the band paid the penalty of the law; and the ruffian crew, who escaped to the United States, now constitute a kind of nucleus for the "Lone Star," "Filibustero," and other such pests of the community to gather round, being ready at any moment to start on a buccaneering expedition, if they can only find another Lopez ass enough to lead them. Concha became governor-general just before Lopez' last expedition, and the order for his execution was a most painful task for poor Concha, who had been for many years an intimate friend of his. Concha appears to have left an excellent name behind him. I always heard him called "the honest governor." He introduced a great many reforms into the civil code, and established a great many schools and scientific and literary societies. During my stay in the island, his successor, Cañedo, was the governor-general. Whenever I made inquiries about him, the most favourable answer I could get was, a chuck-up of the head, a slight "p'tt" with the lips, and an expression of the eyes indicating the sight of a most unpleasant object. The three combined required no dictionary of the Academy to interpret.[AB] The future of this rich and lovely island, who can predict? It is talked of by its powerful neighbours as "the sick man." Filibustero vultures hover above it as though it were already a putrid corpse inviting their descent; young America points to it with the absorbing index of "manifest destiny;" gold is offered for it; Ostend conferences are held about it; the most sober senators cry respecting it--"Patience, when the pear is ripe, it must drop into our lap." Old Spain--torn by faction, and ruined by corruption--supports its tottering treasury from it. Thus, plundered by friends, coveted by neighbours, and assailed by pirates, it lies like a helpless anatomical subject, with the ocean for a dissecting-table, on one side whereof stands a mother sucking its blood, and on the other "Lone Stars" gashing its limbs, while in the background, a young and vigorous republic is seen anxiously waiting for the whole carcass. If I ask, "Where shall vitality be sought?" Echo answers "Where?" If I ask, "Where shall I look for hope?" the very breath of the question extinguishes the flickering taper. Who, then, can shadow forth the fate that is reserved for this tropical gem of the ocean, where all around is so dark and louring?... A low voice, borne on a western breeze, whispers in my ear--"I guess I can." Cuba, farewell! [Note: The subsequent squabbles between the Cuban authorities and the United States have taken place long since my departure, and are too complicated to enter into without more accurate information than I possess.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote X: I put up at "The Havana House," where I found everything very clean, and the proprietor, an American, very civil. It is now kept by his son.] [Footnote Y: This was written in January, 1853.] [Footnote Z: The Filibustero movement in the United States has caused Spain to increase her military force considerably.] [Footnote AA: When first suspected of treason, he had been hunted with dogs like a wild beast, and, with considerable difficulty, escaped to America.] [Footnote AB: Those who desire more detailed information respecting Cuba will find it in a work entitled _La Reine des Antilles_. Par LE VICOMTE GUSTAVE D'HARPONVILLE. 1850.] CHAPTER XIII. _Change of Dynasty_. The month of February was drawing to a close, when I took my passage on board the "Isabel," bound for Charleston. A small coin removed all difficulty about embarking luggage, cigars, &c.; the kettle was boiling, hands shook violently, bells rang rapidly, non-passengers flew down to shore-boats; round go the wheels, waving go the kerchiefs, and down fall the tears. The "Isabel" bounds o'er the ripp'less waters; forts and dungeons, as we gaze astern, fade from the view; an indistinct shade is all by which the eye can recal the lovely isle of Cuba; and, lest memory should fail, the piles of oranges, about four feet square, all round the upper-deck, are ready to refresh it. How different the "Isabel" from the "Cherokee!" Mr. Law might do well to take a cruise in the former; and, if he had any emulation, he would sell all his dirty old tubs for firewood, and invest the proceeds in the "Isabel" style of vessel. Land a-head!--a flourishing little village appears, with watch-towers high as minarets. What can all this mean? This is a thriving, happy community, fixed on the most dreary and unhealthy-looking point imaginable, and deriving all their wealth and happiness from the misfortunes of others. It is Key West, a village of wreckers, who, doubtless, pray earnestly for a continuance and increase of the changing currents, which are eternally drifting some ill-fated barque on the ever-growing banks and coral reefs of these treacherous and dangerous waters; the lofty watch-towers are their Pisgah, and the stranded barques their Land of Promise. The sight of one is doubtless as refreshing to their sight as the clustering grapes of Eschol were to the wandering Israelites of old. So thoroughly does the wrecking spirit pervade this little community, that they remind one of the "Old Joe Miller," which gives an account of a clergyman who, seeing all his congregation rise from their seats at the joyous cry of, "A wreck! a wreck!" called them to order with an irresistible voice of thunder, and deliberately commencing to despoil himself of his surplice, added, "Gentlemen, a fair start, if you please!" We picked up a couple of captains here, whose ships had tasted these bitter waters, and who were on their road to New York to try and make the best of a bad job. We had some very agreeable companions on board; but we had others very much the contrary, conspicuous among whom was an undeniable Hebrew but no Nathanael. He was one of those pompous loud talkers, whose every word and work bespoke vulgarity in its most obnoxious form, and whose obtuseness in matters of manners was so great that nothing short of the point of your shoe could have made him understand how offensive he was. He spoke of courts in Europe, and of the Vice-regal court in Ireland, as though he had the _entrée_ of them all; which it was palpable to the most superficial observer he never could have had, except possibly when, armed with a dingy bag on his shoulder and an "Ol clo'" on his lips, he sought an investment in cast-off garments. He was taking cigars, which, from their quantity, were evidently for sale; and as the American Government is very liberal in allowing passengers to enter cigars, never--I believe--refusing any one the privilege of five hundred, he was beating up for friends who had no cigars to divide his speculations among, so as to avoid the duty; at last his arrangements were completed, and his mind at ease. On entering the port of Charleston he got up the box containing his treasures, and was about to open it, when, to my intense delight and amusement, an officer of the ship stayed his hasty hand. "What's that for?" exclaimed the wrathful Israelite. "I guess that box is in the manifest," was the calm reply, "and you can't touch it till it goes to the custom-house." Jonathan had "done" the Hebrew; and besides the duty, he had the pleasure of paying freight on them also; while, to add to his satisfaction, he enjoyed the sight of all the other passengers taking their five hundred or so unmolested, while compelled to pay duty on every cigar himself. But we must leave the Jew, the "Isabel"--ay, Charleston itself. "Hurry hurry, bubble bubble, toil and trouble!" Washington must be reached before the 4th of March, or we shall not see the Senate and the other House in session. Steamer and rail; on we dash. The boiling horse checks his speed; the inconveniences of the journey are all forgotten: we are at Washington, and the all-absorbing thought is, "Where shall we get a bed?" My companion[AC] and myself drove about from hotel to boarding-house, from boarding-house to hotel, and from hotel to the Capitol, seeking a resting-place in vain. Every chink and cranny was crammed; the reading-rooms of the hotels had from one to two dozen stretcher beds in each of them. 'Twas getting on for midnight; Hope's taper was flickering faintly, when a police-officer came to the rescue, and recommended us to try a small boarding-house at which he was himself lodging. There, as an especial favour, we got two beds put into a room where another lodger was already snoring; but fatigue and sleep soon obliterated that fact from our remembrance. Next morning, while lying in a half doze, I heard something like the upsetting of a jug near my bedside, and then, a sound like mopping up; suspicious of my company, I opened my eyes, and lo! there was the owner of the third bed, deliberately mopping up the contents of the jug he had upset over the carpet, with--what do you think? His handkerchief? oh, no--his coat-tails? oh, no--a spare towel? oh, no; the savage, with the most placid indifference, was mopping it up with my sponge! He expressed so much astonishment when I remonstrated, that I supposed the poor man must have been in the habit of using his own sponge for such purposes, and my ire subsided gradually as he wrung out the sponge by an endless succession of vigorous squeezes, accompanying each with a word of apology. So much for my first night at Washington. We will pass over breakfast, and away to the Capitol. There it stands, on a rising knoll, commanding an extensive panoramic view of the town and surrounding country. The building is on a grand scale, and faced with marble, which, glittering in the sunbeams, gives it a very imposing appearance; but the increasing wants of this increasing Republic have caused two wings to be added, which are now in the course of construction. Entrance to the Senate and House of Representatives was afforded to us with that readiness and courtesy which strangers invariably experience. But, alas! the mighty spirits who had, by their power of eloquence, so often charmed and spell-bound the tenants of the senate chamber--where were they? The grave had but recently closed over the last of those giant spirits; Webster was no more! Like all similar bodies, they put off and put off, till, in the last few days of the session, a quantity of business is hustled through, and thus no scope is left for eloquent speeches; all is matter of fact, and a very business-looking body they appeared, each senator with his desk and papers before him; and when anything was to be said, it was expressed in plain, unadorned language, and free from hesitation. The only opportunity offered for eloquence was, after the inauguration, on the discussion of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. I will not say that the venerable senator for Delaware--Mr. Clayton--was eloquent, but he was very clear both in language and delivery, and his bearing altogether showed the honest conviction of a man who knew he was in the right, and was certain he would be ultimately so judged. His principal antagonist was the senator for Illinois--Mr. Douglas--one of the stars of the Young American party, and an aspirant to the presidential honours of the Republic. He is a stout-built man, rather short, with a massive overhanging forehead. When he rose, he did so with the evident consciousness that the gallery above him was filled with many of his political school, and thrusting both hands well into the bottom of his breeches pockets, he commenced his oration with an air of great self-confidence, occasionally drawing one hand from its concealment to aid his oratory by significant gesture. He made an excellent clap-trap--or, as they term it in America, Buncombe--speech, aiding and emphasizing, by energetic shakings of the forefinger, such passages as he thought would tell in the gallery above; his voice was loud and clear, his language blunt and fluent, and amusingly replete with "dares and daren't;" "England's in the wrong, and she knows it;" if the original treaty, by which America was to have had the canal exclusively, had been concluded, "America would have had a rod to hold over all the nations." Then came "manifest destiny;" then the mare's nest called "Monroe doctrine;" then more Buncombe about England; and then ... he sat down--satisfied, no doubt, that he had very considerably increased his chances for the "tenancy of the White House." I regretted much not being able to hear Mr. Everett speak, for I believe he is admitted on all hands to be the most eloquent and classical orator within the precincts of the senate at the present moment; but I was obliged to leave Washington before he addressed the assembly. The absence of all signs of approbation or disapprobation, while a senator is addressing the House, gives a coldness to the debate, and I should think must have a damping effect upon the enthusiasm of the speaker. The "Hear hears" and "cheers" of friends, and the "Oh ohs" or "laughter" of opponents, certainly give an air of much greater excitement to the scene, and act as an encouragement to the orator. But such exclamations are not allowed either in the Senate or the House of Representatives. The chamber of the latter is of course much larger than that of the Senators, and, as far as I can judge, a bad room to hear in. When the new wings are finished, they will move into one of them, and their present chamber is, I believe, to be a library. I had no opportunity of hearing any of the oratory of this house, as they were merely hustling a few money and minor bills through, previous to the inauguration, which closed their session. They also have each a desk and chair; but with their increasing numbers I fear that any room large enough to afford them such accommodation must be bad for speaking in.--Let us now turn to the great event of the day, i.e., the Inauguration. The senators are all in their places; ministers of foreign Powers and their suites are seated on the row of benches under the gallery; the expectant masses are waiting outside; voices are suddenly hushed, and all eyes turned towards the door of the senate-chamber; the herald walks in, and says, "The President Elect of the United States." The chosen of his country appears with as little form or ceremony as a gentleman walking into an ordinary drawing-room. All rise as he enters. I watched the man of the day as he proceeded to his seat on the floor of the senate. There was neither pride in his eye nor nervousness in his step, but a calm and dignified composure, well fitted to his high position, as though gratified ambition were duly tempered by a deep sense of responsibility. The procession moved out in order to a platform in front of the Capitol, the late able president walking side by side with his untried successor, and apparently as calm in resigning office as his successor appeared to be in entering upon it. Of the inaugural speech I shall say nothing, as all who care to read it have done so long since. But one thing should always be remembered, and that is, that the popular candidates here are all compelled to "do a little Buncombe," and therefore, under the circumstances, I think it must be admitted there was as little as was possible. That speech tolled the knell, for the present at least, of the Whig party, and ushered in the reign of General Pierce and the Democrats. Since these lines were penned, the "chosen of the nation" has passed through his ordeal of four years' administration; and, whatever private virtues may have adorned his character, I imagine the unanimous voice of his countrymen would unhesitatingly declare, that so utterly inefficient a man never filled the presidential chair. He has been succeeded by Mr. Buchanan, who was well known as the accredited Minister to the Court of St. James's, and who also made himself ludicrously conspicuous as one of the famous Ostend manifesto party. However, his talents are undoubted, and his public career renders it probable that, warned by the failure of his predecessor, his presidency will reflect more credit upon the Republic than that of Mr. Pierce. Mr. B.'s inaugural address has been published in this country, and is, in its way, a contradictory curiosity. He urges, in diplomacy, "frankness and clearness;" while, to his fellow-citizens, he offers some very wily diplomatic sentences. Munroe doctrine and manifest destiny are not named; but they are shadowed forth in language worthy of a Talleyrand. First, he glories in his country having never extended its territory by the sword(?); he then proceeds to say--what everybody says in anticipation of conquest, annexation, or absorption--"Our past history forbids that, in future, we should acquire territory, unless this be sanctioned by the laws of justice and honour" (two very elastic laws among nations). "Acting on this principle, no nation will have a right to interfere, or to complain if, in the progress of events, we shall still further extend our possessions." Leaving these frank and clear sentences to the consideration of the reader, we return from the digression. The crowd outside was very orderly, but by no means so numerous as I had expected; I estimated them at 8000; but a friend who was with me, and well versed in such matters, calculated the numbers at nearly 10,000, but certainly, he said, not more. The penny Press, by way of doing honour to their new ruler, boldly fixed the numbers at 40,000--that was their bit of Buncombe. One cause, probably, of the crowd not being greater, was the drizzling snow, which doubtlessly induced many to be satisfied with seeing the procession pass along Pennsylvania Avenue. I cannot help remarking here, how little some of their eminent men know of England. A senator, of great and just reputation, came to me during the ceremony, and said, "There is one thing which must strike you as very remarkable, and that is, that we have no soldiers here to keep order upon an occasion of such political importance." He was evidently unaware that, not only was such the case invariably in England, but that soldiers are confined to barracks, or even removed during the excitement of elections. There is no doubt that the falsehoods and exaggerations with which the Press here teems, in matters referring to England, are sufficiently glaring to be almost self-confuting; but if they can so warp the mind of an enlightened senator, how is it to be wondered at that, among the masses, many suck in all such trash as if it were Gospel truth, and look upon England as little else than a land of despotism; but of that, more anon. The changing of presidents in this country resembles, practically speaking, the changing of a premier in England; but, thank Heaven! the changing of a premier in England does not involve the same changes as does the changing of a president here. I believe it was General Jackson who first introduced the practice of a wholesale sweeping out of opponents from all situations, however small; and this bright idea has been religiously acted upon by all succeeding presidents. The smallest clerkships, twopenny-halfpenny postmasterships in unheard-of villages--all, all that can be dispensed with, must make way for the friends of the incomers to power. Fancy a new premier in England making a clean sweep of nine-tenths of the clerks, &c., at the Treasury, Foreign-office, Post-office, Custom-house, Dockyards, &c., &c. Conceive the jobbing such a system must lead to, not to mention the comparative inefficiency it must produce in the said departments, and the ridiculous labour it throws upon the dispensers of these gifts of place. The following quotation may be taken as a sample:-- OUR CUSTOM-HOUSE--WHAT A HAUL.--The _New Hampshire Patriot_, in an article on proscription, thus refers to the merciless decapitation of the Democrats of our Custom-house, by Mr. Collector Maxwell:-- "Take the New York Custom-house as a sample. There are 626 officers there, exclusive of labourers; and it appears from the records that, since the Whigs came into power, 427 removals have been there made. And to show the greediness of the Whig applicants for the spoils, it need only be stated that, on the very day the collector was sworn into office he made forty-two removals. He made six before he was sworn. In thirty days from the time of his entrance upon his duties he removed 220 persons; and, in the course of a few months, he had made such a clean sweep, that only sixty-two Democrats remained in office, with 564 Whigs! A like sweep was made in other custom-houses; and so clean work did this 'anti-proscription' administration make in the offices, that a Democrat could scarcely be found in an office which a Whig could be found to take." This is ominous, for the 564 Whigs to be turned over to the charity of the new collector. Alas! the Democrats are hungry--hard shells and soft shells--and charity begins at home. In the course of the coming month we may anticipate a large emigration from the custom-house to California and Australia. What a blessing to ejected office-holders that they can fall back upon the gold mines! Such is the beautiful working of our beneficent institutions! What a magnificent country! As a proof of the excitement which these changes produce, I remember perfectly there being ten to one more fuss and telegraphing between Washington and New York, as to who should be collector at the latter port, than would exist between London and Paris if a revolution was in full swing at the latter. To this absurd system may no doubt be partly attributed the frequent irregularities of their inland postage; but it is an evil which, as far as I can judge from observation and conversation, will continue till, with an increasing population and increase of business, necessity re-establishes the old and better order of things. Political partisanship is so strong that nothing but imperative necessity can alter it. The cabmen here, as in every other place I ever visited, make strenuous efforts to do the new comers. They tried it on me; so, to show them how knowing I was, I quoted their legitimate fares. "Ah, sir," says Cabby, "that's very well; but, you see, we charges more at times like these." I replied, "You've no right to raise your charges; by what authority do you do it?" "Oh, sir, we meet together and agree what is the proper thing." "But," says I, "the authorities are the people to settle those things." "The authorities don't know nothing at all about it; we can manage our own matters better than they." And they all stoutly stuck to their own charges, the effect of which was that I scarcely saw a dozen cabs employed during the ten days I was there. Nothing could exceed the crowd in the streets, in the hotels, and everywhere; the whole atmosphere was alive with the smoke of the fragrant weed, and all the hotels were afloat with the juice thereof. The city has repeatedly been called the City of Magnificent Distances; but anything so far behind its fellow cities cannot well be imagined. It sounds incredible--nevertheless, it is a fact--that, except from the Capitol to the "White House," there is not a street-light of any kind, or a watchman. I lost my way one evening, and wandered all over the town for two hours, without seeing light or guardian of any kind. I suppose this is intended as a proof of the honest and orderly conduct of the inhabitants, but I fear it must also be taken as a proof of their poverty or want of energy. Whatever the reason may be, it certainly is a reflection on the liberality of the Government, that the capital of this Great Union should be the worst paved, worst lit, and worst guarded in the whole Republic. The system of sweeping changes on the election of a new president tends materially to stop any increase of householders, the uncertain tenure of office making the _employés_ prefer clustering in hotels and boarding-houses to entering on a short career of housekeeping, which will, of course, militate against any steady increase of the city, and thus diminish the tax-payers. There are several hotels, but they will not stand the least comparison with those in any of the leading towns of the Union. Like the hotels in London, they are crammed during the season--i.e., session--and during the rest of the year are comparatively empty, and consequently do not pay very well; but they are not the only establishments that make hay during the session; if report speaks truly, the bars and gambling-houses reap an immense harvest from the representatives of the people in both houses of congress. I amused myself here, as I often had done in other towns, by taking a cigar in some decent-looking shop, and then having a chat with the owner. On this occasion the subject of conversation was drinking in the States. He said, in reply to a question I put to him, "Sir, a gentleman must live a long time in the country before he can form the slightest idea of the frightful extent to which drinking is carried, even by the decently educated and well-to-do classes. I do not say that nine-tenths of the people die drunk, but I firmly believe that with that proportion death has been very materially hastened from perpetual drinks. It is one of the greatest curses of this country, and I cannot say that I believe it to be on the decrease." One reason, doubtless, why it is so pernicious, is the constant habit of drinking before breakfast. That he was correct in his per-centage, I do not pretend to say; but I certainly have seen enough of the practice to feel sure it must have a most pernicious effect on very many. To what extent it is carried on by the lowest classes I had no opportunity of judging. The following observations, however, made by so high an authority as Mr. Everett, must be admitted as a convincing proof that education has not been able to cope effectually with drunkenness. Speaking of ardent spirits, he says:-- "What has it done in ten years in the States of America? First, it has cost the nation a direct expense of 120,000,000l. Secondly, it has cost the nation an indirect expense of 120,000,000l. Thirdly, it has destroyed 300,000 lives. Fourthly, it has sent 100,000 children to the poor-house. Fifthly, it has consigned at least 150,000 persons to jails and penitentiaries. Sixthly, it has made at least a thousand maniacs. Seventhly, it has instigated to the commission of at least fifteen hundred murders. Eighthly, it has caused 2000 persons to commit suicide. Ninthly, it has burnt or otherwise destroyed property to the amount of 2,000,000l. Tenthly, it has made 200,000 widows, and 1,000,000 of orphan children." When I turn from the contemplation of this sad picture, and think how many fall victims to the same vice in my own country, I cannot help feeling that the "myriad-minded poet" wrote the following lines as an especial warning and legacy to the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt:-- "Oh, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!" I was very sorry time did not admit of my witnessing one of the new president's levees, as I much wished to see the olla podrida of attendants. It must be a quaint scene; the hack-cabman who drives you to the door will get a boy to look after his shay, and go in with you; tag-rag and bob-tail, and all their family, go in precisely as they like; neither soap nor brush is a necessary prelude. By late accounts from America, it appears that at Mr. Pierce's last levee a gentleman charged another with picking his pocket: the latter went next day with a friend to explain the mistake, which the former refusing to accept, he was struck by the accused, and, in return, shot him dead on the spot. A pleasant state of society for the metropolis of a civilized community! How changed since the days of Washington and knee-breeches! It should however be mentioned as highly creditable to the masses, that they rarely take advantage of their rights. The building is the size of a moderately wealthy country gentleman's house in England, and has one or two fine reception-rooms; between it and the water a monument is being raised to Washington. I fear it will be a sad failure; the main shaft or column suggests the idea of a semaphore station, round the base whereof the goodly things of sculpture are to be clustered. As far as I could glean from conversation with Americans, they seem themselves to anticipate anything but success. The finest buildings here are the Capitol, Patent-office, and Post-office. Of these the Patent-office, which is modelled after the Parthenon, is the only one that has any pretensions to architecture. I fear the Anglo-Saxon of these later days, whether in the old country or here, is destined to leave no solid traces of architectural taste--_vide_ National Gallery, London, and Post-office, Washington. Having seen the lions of Washington, and enjoyed the hospitalities of our able and agreeable minister, I again trusted myself to the iron horse, and started for Baltimore. During my residence in Washington, I had revelled latterly in the comfort of a lodging free from the horrors of American inns. Profiting by this experience, I had applied to a friend at Baltimore to engage me rooms in some quiet place there; by this precaution I got into Guy's, in Monument-square. He keeps a restaurant, but has a few beds for friends or old customers. I found myself most comfortably housed, and the living of the cleanest and the best; besides which, my kind friends gave me the _entrée_ of the Club, which was almost next door. The hospitalities of which I had enjoyed a foretaste in November last, now thickened upon me, and though the season of Lent had put a stop to large and general parties, enough was still left to make my stay very agreeable. The town is beautifully situated on undulating ground, commanding a lovely view of the hay; the streets are of a rational breadth, the town is rapidly increasing, the new buildings are all large and airy, and everything indicates prosperity. The cuisine of Baltimore has a very high, and, as far as I can judge, a very just reputation; not merely Maxwell Point canvas-back ducks, but the famous Terrapin also, lend their aid to the enjoyment of the inner man. In fact, so famous is the Terrapin, that a wicked wag detailed to me an account of a highly improper scene which he said took place once in the Episcopal Church here, viz., a gentleman who had a powerful voice and generally led the responses, had his heart and mind so full of the luscious little animal, that by a sad fatality he substituted "Terrapin" for "Seraphin" in the response; and so far was any one from remarking it, that the whole congregation repeated the mistake after him. The curly twinkle in the eye with which my friend told me the story, leaves an impression in my mind that it may be an exaggeration. While here, I observed a play-bill with "The White Slave of England" printed on it, evidently intended as a set-off against the dramatizing of "Uncle Tom" in London, at some of our penny theatres. Of course I went to see it, and never laughed more in all my life. The theatre was about the size of a six-stalled stable, and full of rowdies, &c.--no ladies; our party had a private-box. The tragedy opens by revealing the under-ground of a coal-pit in England, where is seen a fainting girl, &c. &c.: the girl is, of course, well licked by a driver; an explosion takes place; dead and dying bodies are heaped together, the driver says, "D---- 'em, let 'em lie; we'll get plenty more from the poor-house." These mines belong to a Lord Overstone; an American arrives with a negro servant, whom he leaves to seek his own amusement. He then calls on Lord Overstone, and obtains permission to visit the mines; there he finds the girl alluded to above all but dying, and, of course, rescues her. In the meantime, the nigger calls on Lord Overstone as a foreign prince, is immensely _fêted_, the Duchess of Southernblack and her friend Lady Cunning are invited to meet his Royal Highness; the rescued girl is claimed as a slave by Lord Overstone; philanthropic Jonathan, after some difficulty, succeeds in keeping her, having first ordered Lord Overstone's servants to the right-about with all the swagger of a northern negro-driver. It appears that Jonathan was formerly a boy in the mines himself, and had conceived an affection for this girl. Lord Overstone finds out that Jonathan has papers requisite for him to prove his right to his property; he starts with his family for America, to visit him on his plantation. There the niggers exhibit a paradise such as never was; nearly the first person is his Royal Highness the nigger servant. Lady Overstone faints when he comes up to shake hands. Business proceeds; Lord Overstone bullies,--Jonathan is the milk of mildness. At last it turns out the girl is a daughter of Lord Overstone, and that the Yankee is the owner by right of Lord Overstone's property. He delivers a Buncombe speech, resigning his rights, and enlarging on the higher privilege of being in the land of true freedom--a slave plantation. The audience scream frantically, Lord and Lady Overstone go back humbled, and the curtain falls on one of the most absurd farces I ever saw; not the least absurd part being Jonathan refusing to take possession of his inheritance of 17,000l. a-year. Truly, "Diogenes in his tub" is nothing to "Jonathan in his sugar-cask." The population of Maryland has increased in whites and free negroes, and decreased in slaves, between the years 1800 and 1852, in the following manner:-- Whites. Free Negroes. Slaves. 1800 216,000 8,000 103,000 1852 500,000 74,008 90,000. The state has nearly a thousand educational establishments; and there are sixty daily and weekly papers for the instruction of the community. Baltimore has a population of 140,000 whites, 25,000 free blacks, 3000 slaves. Among this population are nearly 30,000 Germans and 20,000 Irish. The value of the industrial establishments of the city is estimated at considerably above 4,000,000l. From the above, I leave the reader to judge of its prosperity. The people in Baltimore who enjoy the widest--if not the most enviable--reputation, are the fire companies. They are all volunteer, and their engines are admirable. They are all jealous as Kilkenny cats of one another, and when they come together, they scarcely ever lose an opportunity of getting up a bloody fight. They are even accused of doing occasionally a little bit of arson, so as to get the chance of a row. The people composing the companies are almost entirely rowdies, and apparently of any age above sixteen: when extinguishing fires, they exhibit a courage and reckless daring that cannot be surpassed, and they are never so happy as when the excitement of danger is at its highest. Their numbers are so great, that they materially affect the elections of all candidates for city offices; the style of persons chosen, may hence be easily guessed. The cup of confusion is fast filling up; and unless some knowing hands can make a hole in the bottom and drain off the dregs, the overflow will be frightful. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AC: I had had the good fortune to pick up an agreeable companion on board the "Isabel"--the brother of one of our most distinguished members of the House of Commons--who, like myself, had been visiting Cuba, and was hastening to Washington, to be present at the inauguration of the President Elect, and with him I spent many very pleasant days.] CHAPTER XIV. _Philadelphia and Richmond_. Having spent a very pleasant time at Baltimore, I took rail for Philadelphia, the city of "loving brotherhood," being provided with letters to several most amiable families in that town. I took up my abode at Parkinson's--a restaurant in Chestnut-street--where I found the people very civil and the house very clean; but I saw little of the inside of the house, except at bed and breakfast time. The hospitality for which this city is proverbial soon made me as much at home as if I had been a resident there all my life. Dinner-party upon dinner-party succeeded each other like waves of the ocean; the tables groaned under precious vintages of Madeira, dating back all but to the Flood. I have never before or since tasted such delicious wine, and in such profusion, and everybody stuck to it with such leech-like tenacity. On one occasion, having sat down to dinner at two o'clock, I found myself getting up from table half an hour after midnight, and quite as fresh as when I had sat down. There was no possibility of leaving the hospitable old General's mahogany.[AD] One kind friend, Mr. C.H. Fisher, insisted that I must make his house my hotel, either he or his wife were always at dinner at four o'clock, and my cover was always laid. The society of his amiable lady and himself made it too tempting an offer to refuse, and I need scarcely say, it added much to the pleasure of my stay in Philadelphia. The same kind friend had also a seat for me always in his box at the opera, where that most charming and lady-like of actresses, the Countess Rossi,[AE] with her sweet voice, was gushing forth soft melody to crammed houses. On every side I met nothing but kindness. Happening one day at dinner to mention incidentally, that I thought the butter unworthy of the reputation of Philadelphia--for it professes to stand pre-eminent in dairy produce--two ladies present exclaimed, "Well!" and accompanied the expression by a look of active benevolence. The next morning, as I was sitting down to breakfast, a plate arrived from each of the rivals in kindness; the dew of the morning was on the green leaf, and underneath, such butter as my mouth waters at the remembrance of, and thus it continued during my whole stay. The club doors, with all its conveniences--and to a solitary stranger they are very great--were thrown open to me: in short, my friends left me nothing to wish, except that my time had permitted me a longer enjoyment of their hospitalities. The streets of Philadelphia, which run north and south from the Schuylkill to the Delaware, are named after the trees, a row whereof grow on each side; but whether from a poetic spirit, or to aid the memory, some of the names are changed, that the following couplet, embracing the eight principal ones, may form a handy guide to the stranger or the resident:-- "Chestnut, walnut, spruce, and pine, Market, arch, race, and vine." Mulberry, and sassafras, and juniper, would have dished the poetry. The cross-streets are all called by numbers; thus any domicile is readily found. The principal traverse street is an exception, being called "Broad;" it looks its name well, and extends beyond the town into the country: strange as it may seem to those who associate stiff white bonnets, stiff coat-collars, and broad-brimmed hats, with Philadelphia, on the extremity of this street every Sunday afternoon, all the famous trotters may be seen dashing along at three-minute pace. The country round about is pretty and undulating, and the better-to-do inhabitants of Philadelphia have very snug little country places, in which they chiefly reside during the summer, and to which, at other seasons, they often adjourn upon the Saturday, to enjoy the quiet of Sunday in the country. One of the first objects of interest I went to visit was the Mint, the labours of which are of course immensely increased since the working of the Californian mines. Men are coming in every day with gold in greater or lesser quantities; it is first assayed, and the per-centage for this work being deducted, the value is paid in coin to the owner. While I was there, I saw a wiry-looking fellow arrive, in bright hat and brighter satin waistcoat, with a beard as bushy as an Indian jungle, and as red as the furnace into which his precious burden was to be thrown. Two small leather bags were carefully taken out of a waist-belt, their contents emptied into a tin can, a number placed in the can, and a corresponding number given him--no words spoken: in two days he would return, and, producing his number, receive value in coin. The dust would all have gone into a good-sized coffee-cup. I asked the officer about the value. "400l., sir." He had left a New England state some eight months previous, and was going home to invest in land. What strikes a stranger most on entering the Mint, is the absence of all extra defence round it; the building appears as open as any London house. The process is, of course, essentially the same as elsewhere; but I was astonished when the director told me that the parties employed in the establishment are never searched on leaving, though the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars is daily passing through their hands in every shape. The water in which the workmen wash their hands runs into a tank below, and from this water, value to the amount of from 60l. to 80l. is extracted annually. The sweepings, &c., after the most careful sifting, are packed in casks and sold--chiefly, I believe, to European Jews--for 4000l. annually. The only peculiarity in the Philadelphian Mint is a frame-work for counting the number of pieces coined, by which ingenious contrivance--rendered necessary by Californian pressure--one man does the work of from twenty to thirty. The operation of weighing the several pieces of coin being of a delicate nature, it is confided to the hands of the fair sex, who occupy a room to themselves, where each daughter of Eve sits with the gravity of a Chancellor opposite a delicate pair of scales. Most parts of the establishment are open to the public from ten till two, and they are only excluded from those portions of the building where intrusion would impede the operations in progress. This city, like most others in America, is liberally supplied with water. Magnificent basins are built in a natural mound at Fairmount, nearly opposite an old family mansion of the Barings, and the water is forced up into these basins from the river by powerful water-wheels, worked by the said river, which is dammed up for the purpose of obtaining sufficient fall, as the stream is sometimes very low. Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the most imposing sight in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, is "The Gerard College." So singular and successful a career as that of the founder deserves a slight record. Stephen Gerard was born of French parents, at Bordeaux, the 21st of May, 1750, and his home--owing to his mother's place having soon been filled by a step-mother--appears to have left no pleasant reminiscences. At fourteen years of age he took to the sea. Subsequently, as master and part owner of a small vessel, he arrived, in the year 1777, at Philadelphia for the first time, and commenced business as a merchant; but it appears that in 1786, he took command of one of his own vessels, leaving the management of his mercantile house to his brother. Returning in 1788, he dissolved partnership with his brother, and bade a final adieu to the sea. In the year 1793, the yellow fever raged with fury at Philadelphia; as the ravage increased, the people fled aghast. A hospital was organized at Bush Hill, in the neighbourhood, but all was confusion, for none could be found to face the dreaded enemy, till Stephen Gerard and Peter Helm boldly volunteered their services at the risk of their lives. Stephen Gerard was married, but his wife was consigned to an asylum in 1790, after various ineffectual efforts for her cure; there she remained till her death, in 1815. His mercantile pursuits prospered in every direction, and he soon became one of the most wealthy and influential men in the community; he was possessed of a vigorous constitution, and was extremely regular and abstemious in his habits. In 1830 he was knocked down by a passing vehicle as he was crossing the street; by this accident he was severely injured in the head, from which he was slowly recovering, when, in 1831, he was seized with violent influenza, and ultimately pneumonia, of which he died, the 26th of December, aged eighty-one. His character appears to have been a curious compound. The assiduity with which he amassed wealth, coupled with his abstemious habits, and his old knee-breeches patched all over--and still to be seen in the college--strongly bespoke the miser; while his contributions to public works, and his liberal transactions in money matters, led to an opposite conclusion; and from his noble conduct during the yellow fever it is reasonable to infer he was a humane man. I do not wish to judge people uncharitably, but, I must say, I can allow but little credit to a man who legacies the bulk of his fortune away from his relations when he can no longer enjoy it himself. Mr. Gerard had very many relatives; let us see how he provided for them. The _résumé_ of his will may be thus stated: he died worth 1,500,000l., and thus disposes of it:-- Erection and endowment of college £400,000 Different institutions of charity 23,200 To his relatives and next of kin 28,000 City of Philadelphia, for improvements 100,000 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for internal improvements 60,000 Sundry friends, &c. 13,000 The residue left to the city of Philadelphia, for improvement and maintenance of his college, the establishment of better police, and to improve the city and diminish taxation. Thus, out of a fortune of one million and a half, he leaves his relatives 28,000l. Charity, in this instance, can scarcely be said to have begun at home. A certain increase of property to the amount of 60,000l. having taken place since the date of his will, a suit was instituted by the heirs-at-law to recover the same; in which, I am happy to say, they were successful. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary clauses in his will is the following, viz.:-- "_I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or Minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty whatever in the said college; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated to the purposes of the said college._" The general design of the college is taken from the Madeleine. Thirty-four columns surround it, each column six feet in diameter and fifty feet high, made of marble, and weighing 103 tons, and costing when placed 2600l. Some idea of the massiveness of the building may be formed from the fact that, measuring 111 feet by 169 feet, and 59 of height, the weight of material employed is estimated at 76,594-1/2 tons. The effect of the whole is grand and graceful; and although as an orphan asylum much money has been needlessly turned from its charitable uses, as a building it does credit to the architect and all employed upon it, and is, beyond all comparison, the best specimen of architecture I have seen in the States. [Illustration: Gerard College, Philadelphia] The number of orphans receiving instruction is three hundred and one; they are cleanly and comfortably lodged, and well-boarded; their ages average from ten to fourteen and a half, and the upper classes of the school are taught conic sections, geometry, chemistry, natural philosophy, navigation, astronomy, mechanics, physical geography, &c. While in the school vein, I visited one appropriated to four hundred free negroes, whom I found of all ages, from five to fifty, males and females being kept separate. The master told me that he found the boys tolerably sharp, but very cunning, and always finding some excuse for irregular attendance. The mistress said she found the girls very docile, and the parents very anxious, but too soon satisfied with the first stages of progress. The patience and pains I saw one of the teachers exhibiting in the process of enlightening the little woolly heads was most creditable. Having finished the negro school, I got a letter to the principal of the High School, Professor Hart, by whom I was kindly shown over that admirable institution, which is also free; but, before proceeding to any observations on the High School, it may be interesting to know something of the entire provision for instruction which exists in the city and county of Philadelphia. The number of schools is 256, teachers 727, scholars 45,383. The teachers are principally females--646; of scholars, the males rather preponderate. The annual expense of these establishments is 66,500l., and the average cost of each pupil is 26s. No pupil can be admitted into the High School without producing satisfactory testimonials from the inferior schools, as well as passing the requisite examination; the consequence of this arrangement is a vast improvement in the inferior schools, as bad conduct there would effectually bar their entry to the High School. The average age of entry is fourteen, and a lad is required to stay five years before he can take his degree as Master of Arts, one indispensable requisite for which is moral character. The school numbers about 500 of all kinds and positions in society, from the hopes of the tinsmith to the heir of the toga'd judge. The instruction is of so high an order that no private establishment can compete with it; in short, it may be said to embrace a very fair college education. Read the following list of professors: the Principal, who is also Professor of Moral, Mental, and Political Science; Professor of Practical Mathematics; of Theoretical Science and Astronomy; of History and Belles-Lettres; of Natural History; of Latin and Greek; of French and Spanish; of Drawing, Writing, and Book-keeping; of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy; and three assistants. The highest salary received by these professors is 270l. a-year, except that of Mr. Hart the Principal, which is 400l.; and in him all the responsibilities centre. This is the only school where I ever knew the old Saxon regularly taught. Instruction is given in various other studies not enumerated in the Professors' list; thus, in the class under the Professor of Natural History, botany, and anatomy, and such medical information as may be useful on any of the emergencies of every-day life are taught. No books are brought to this class; the instruction is entirely by lecture, and the subjects treated are explained by beautifully-executed transparencies, placed before a window by day, and before a bright jet of gas by night, and thus visible easily to all. The readiness with which I heard the pupils in this class answer the questions propounded to them showed the interest they took in the subject, and was a conclusive proof of the efficiency of the system of instruction pursued; they dived into the arcana of human and vegetable life with an ease that bore the most satisfactory testimony to the skill of the instructor and the attention of the pupils. There is a plan adopted at this school which I never saw before, and which Professor Hart told me was most admirable in its results. At the end of every three-quarters of an hour all the doors and windows in the house are opened simultaneously; the bell is then rung twice: at the first sound, all lectures, recitations, and exercises cease, and the students put their books, caps, &c., in readiness to move; at the second sound, all the classes move simultaneously from the room in which they have been studying to the room in which the next course of study is to be followed. The building is so arranged, that in passing from one room to another, they have to pass through the court round the house. This operation takes three minutes, and is repeated about eight times a-day, during which intervals all the doors and windows are open, thus thoroughly ventilating the rooms; but there is a further advantage, which is thus described in the Report,--"These movements are found very useful in giving periodically a fresh impulse both to the bodies and to the minds of the students, and in interrupting almost mechanically the dull monotony which is apt to befall school hours." The Principal told me, that, from careful observation, he looked upon this as one of the most valuable regulations in the establishment, and that it was difficult to rate its advantages too highly, the freshness of mind which it brought infinitely outweighing any loss of time, interruption, &c. I spent three interesting hours in this admirable institution. The next establishment I visited was of a very different description; i.e., the jail of solitary confinement. I much wished to have seen some of the prisoners who had been confined for a length of time, but from some informality in the letter I brought, the guardian did not feel authorized to break through the regulations. The prisoners are sometimes confined here for twelve years; they are kept totally separate, but they are allowed to occupy themselves at different trades, &c., in their cells. My guide told me he had never seen any of them become the least idiotic or light-headed from long confinement. Their cells were clean and airy, and some had a little eight-feet-square garden attached; their food was both plentiful and good, and discipline was preserved by the rod of diet; "but," says the guide, "if they become very troublesome and obstinate we" ... what d'ye think?... "give them a shower-bath;" criminals here seem to hate fresh water as much as the tenants of the poor-houses in England do. The jail seems very well adapted for escaping; but I suppose the rifle-armed sentries at the angles of the wall keep them in sufficient awe, as I was told they very rarely get away. The number confined was two hundred and eighty. The last place I visited was the Lunatic Asylum, which appears admirably placed and admirably conducted. The situation commands a view of two public roads, where the bustle and stir of life are continually passing before their eyes, and with no visible fence intervening, the ground being so undulating and wooded as effectually to conceal the barrier. The grounds are pleasantly laid out in walks, gardens, hothouses, &c.; a comfortable reading-room and ten-pin alley[AF] are provided on each side, one for the males, the other for the females. The rooms and dormitories are large and airy, and carriages and horses are ready for such as the physician recommends should take that exercise. The comfort of the inmates appeared fully equal to that of any similar establishment I have visited, and the position far superior, for there was no visible barrier between them and the open country. But Time says to the traveller what the policeman says to the gathering crowd, "Move on, if you please, sir; move on." Obey is the word. Kind friends are left behind, the kettle hisses, the iron horse snorts, the Hudson is passed, New York is gained, the journey is behind me, bread, butter, and Bohea before me. "Go on," says Time. The Charleston steamer, "James Adger," is bursting to be off. Introduced to the agents, they introduced me to the skipper. The skipper seems to think I am his father; he insists upon my occupying his cabin--a jolly room, big enough to polka in--fifteen feet square. Thanks, most excellent skipper, "may your shadow never be less"--it is substantial enough now. Do you ask why I go to New York from Philadelphia to reach Charleston? The reply is simple:--to avoid the purgatory of an American railway, and to enjoy the life-giving breezes "that sweep o'er the ocean wave." The skipper was a regular trump; the service was clean, and we fed like fighting-cocks. The weather was fine, the ship a clipping good one, passengers few, but with just enough 'bacco-juice flying about the decks to remind me where I was. One of our company was a charming rarity in his way. He was an Irish Yankee, aged eighty-three. A more perfect Paddy never existed; and so, of course, he talked about fighting, and began detailing to me the various frays in which "we whipt the Britishers." By way of chaffing him, I said, "No wonder; they were Anglo-Saxon blood, brought their courage from England, and were not only fighting at home, but with a halter round their necks." The old veteran got furious, cursed England and the Saxon blood, from Harold to the present hour; he then proved to his own satisfaction that all the great men in America, and all the soldiers, were Celts. "It was the Celts, sir, that whipt the Britishers; and, ould as I am, sure I'd like to take 20,000 men over to the ould counthree, and free it from the bloodthirsty villins, the Saxon brutes." If poor O'Brien had had half the fire of this old Yankee Paddy, he never would have been caught snoozing among the old widow's cabbages. I really thought the old gentleman would have burst outright, or collapsed from reaction; but it passed over like a white squall, and left the original octogenarian calm behind. The darkness of the third evening has closed in upon us, the struggling stream is bellowing for release, hawsers are flying about, boys running from them, and men after them; the good "James Adger" is coquetting about with those well-known young ladies, the Misses "Bakkur and Ternahed;" James seems determined to enjoy it for an unusually prolonged period this evening; but, like everything else, it must have an end, and at last good James lies snugly in his berth, alongside the wharf at Charleston. Cabmen and touters offer an infinity of services; passengers radiate--my Yankee Paddy, it is to be hoped, went to an ice-saloon. Your humble servant went to a boarding-house kept by a most worthy old lady, but where flies occupied one half the house, and the filthiest negro-boys the other. Several respectable people, out of regard to the old lady, were performing the penance of residing in her house: a trip on hot ashes from Dan to Beersheba would have been luxury by comparison. I resigned myself and got reconciled, as I saw the sincere desire of the dear old girl to make me as comfortable as she could; and by learning to eat my meals with my eyes shut, I got on tolerably well. But scarce had I set foot in this establishment which I have been describing, ere kind friends sprang up to greet me and offer me the use of their club-room, which was just opposite my boarding-house; and as this was only the prelude to endless other civilities, my lodging saw very little of me; which may be easily imagined, when it is recollected how famous Charleston is, not only for the good living which it affords, but for the liberal hospitality with which it is dispensed. A letter to one gentleman becomes, like magic, an "Open Sesame" to all the cellars and society in the place; and the only point in dispute is, who can show you most kindness. The town is conveniently situated between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, with a population of 25,000 whites and the same number of blacks; it is a mixture of all that is lovely and annoying. The houses have mostly little gardens attached to them, sparkling with tropical flowers, and the streets are shaded with avenues of trees. This is all very lovely to look upon; but when you go out to enjoy a stroll, if the air is still, a beefsteak would frizzle on the crown of your hat; and if there is the slightest breeze, the sandy dust, like an Egyptian _khamseen_, laughs at all precautions, blinding your eyes, stuffing your nose, filling your mouth, and bringing your hide to a state which I can find no other comparison for but that of a box intended to represent a stone pedestal, and which, when the paint has half dried, is sprinkled with sand to perfect the delusion. Thus you can understand the lovely and the annoying of which I have spoken. When the inhabitants wish to take a drive, there is a plank road about six miles long, which enables them to enjoy this luxury. If they are not content with this road, they must seek their pleasure with the carriages up to their axles in sand. There are three old royalist buildings still standing--viz., the Episcopal church, the Court-house, and the Exchange. The first reminds one warmly of the dear old parish church in England, with its heavy oak pulpit and the square family pews, and it sobers the mind as it leads the memory to those days when, if the church was not full of activity, it was not full of strife--when parishioners were not brought to loggerheads as to the colour of the preacher's gown--when there was no triangular duel (_vide_ Marryat) as to candles, no candles, and lit candles--when, in short, if there was but moderate zeal about the substance, there was no quarrelling about the shadows of religion; and if we were not blessed with the zeal of a Bennet, we were not cursed with the strife of a Barnabas. At the time the colonists kicked us out of this place, by way of not going empty-handed, we bagged the church-bells as a trophy--(query, is not robbing a church sacrilege?)--and they eventually found their way into a merchant's store in England, where they remained for years. Not long since, having been ferreted out, they were replaced in their original position, and now summon the Republicans of the nineteenth century to their devotions as lustily as they did the Royalists in the eighteenth. There is nothing remarkable in the two other buildings, except their antiquity, and the associations arising therefrom.[AG] One of the most striking sights here is the turn-out of the Fire Companies on any gala day. They consist of eight companies, of one hundred each; their engines are brilliantly got up, and decorated tastefully with flowers; banners flying; the men, in gay but business-like uniform, dragging their engines about, and bands playing away joyously before them. The peculiarity of the Charleston firemen is that, instead of being composed of all the rowdies of the town, as is often the case in the large eastern cities, they are, generally speaking, the most respectable people in the community. This may partly be accounted for by the militia service being so hard, and the fines for the neglect of the same so heavy, from which all those serving in the Fire Companies are exempt.[AH] The South Carolinians, in anticipation of any insurrection among the negroes, or in case of being driven into secession by success attending the efforts of the Abolitionists, have very prudently established a little miniature West Point institution,[AI] where lads from fifteen to twenty receive a thorough military education, and then retire into private life and follow any pursuits they choose. By this means the nucleus of military officers requisite for an army is obtained, and the frequent drilling of the militia forms a solid groundwork for that latter, should the hour of necessity unfortunately arrive. The gay time of Charleston is during the races, which take place in February, and have a considerable reputation, although, perhaps, not quite so high as they had some few years back. I have never seen any of their racing studs; but, as they import from England some of the finest stallions that come into the market, and as the breed of horse in America is very active and enduring, their racers, it is to be presumed, make a very good show. Having impregnated my system with turtle, terrapin, mint-julep, and Madeira--the latter such as only America can show--I bade adieu to my kind and hospitable friends, and started for Virginia. The first part of the journey--i.e., as far as Wilmington--I performed in a wretched little steamer, anything but seaworthy, with horrid cribs, three one above the other, to sleep in, and a motley mixture of passengers, as usual. No particular incident occurred; and having fine weather, we escaped wrecking or putting back. On ascending the river to Wilmington, you see royal--I beg pardon, republican--sturgeons jumping about in all directions, and of all sizes, from three to five feet in length. We reached the town in time to catch the train, and off we started. When about six miles on our journey, a curious motion of the carriages, added to their "slantingdicular" position and accompanied by a slight scream, proclaimed that we were off the rails. Thank God! no lives were lost or limbs broken. The first person that I saw jump from the train was a Spanish colonel, who shot out with an activity far beyond his years, hugging to his bosom a beloved fiddle, which was the joy of his heart, and about the safety of which he was evidently as anxious as about his own. He sat down by the side of the carriages, a ludicrous picture of alarm and composure combined. He was on his way to England with the intention of presenting some musical compositions to the Queen, and possibly had a floating idea he might do a bit of Paganini before Her Gracious Majesty. Gradually, all the party unkenneled; and it was then discovered that, had we run off the rails a few yards further on, we should have had a nasty cropper down a thirty-feet bank; fortunately, we ran off on the level, and merely stuck in the sand. Upon inquiry as to the cause of the accident, I ascertained that it was in consequence of a point for turning off on to another set of rails being broken. Upon examining the said point, I found it was as worn and rotten as time could make it. I mentioned this to the engineer, who told me he was perfectly aware of it, and had reported it to the superintendent a fortnight before, but that he--the superintendent--had guessed it would do very well for some time yet; consequently, the engineer always went slower when approaching the spot, to avoid, if possible, an accident. By this precaution we had been saved the capsize over the bank, which otherwise would inevitably have been our fate. Thus, for the sake of twenty shillings, they had smashed an engine, doing damage to the amount of twenty pounds at least, besides risking the lives of all the passengers. What was to be done? There was nothing for it but to go back to Wilmington, chew the cud of disgust, and hope the rascally superintendent might break every bone in his body the first favourable opportunity. This done, and a night's rest over, we again tempted fate, and continued our journey, which for a long time ran through large pine-forests, every member of which community was a victim of laceration, inflicted on him for the purpose of drawing off his life's blood, which dribbled into a box at the root, and, when full, was carried off to make turpentine. Arrived at Peterborough, we found the population so far behind the American age, that they would not allow a railroad to pass through their town; we were consequently constrained to shift into omnibuses, and drive some three miles to the station on the other side. As this trip was peculiarly barren of incident, it may gratify the reader to be informed, that in the confusion of shifting from one station to the other I lost my best and only hat. I hope this simple record will be received as conclusive evidence of the monotony and dullness of the journey. I do not mention it to excite sympathy, for I am happy to say that I have since purchased a new and a better one; and in case my old one is found, I hereby will and bequeath the same to the mayor of Peterborough, his heirs and successors, hoping that they may wear no other until a railroad round or through the town connects the termini. Again we mount the iron horse--time flies--light mingles with darkness--and at nine o'clock I alight at the Royal Exchange Hotel, Richmond. Soap and water, tea and bed, follow in quick succession, and then comes the land of dreams and oblivion. Richmond is a lovely spot, situated on the northern bank of James River, one hundred and fifty miles from the sea, and is the capital of Virginia. It contains nearly 30,000 inhabitants of whom 1000 are slaves. Being built upon several hills, it is free from the eternal sameness of level and regularity of lines which tire the eye so much in New York, Philadelphia, &c., and its site resembles more that of Boston or Baltimore. The James River is navigable for small vessels as high as Richmond; but just above the town there is a barrier which arrests alike the navigator's course and the traveller's eye. This barrier is called the Rapids, and is a most beautiful feature in the scenery. The Rapids are about three-quarters of a mile in extent, having a fall of more than one hundred feet in that distance. The stream is broad, and interspersed with endless little wooded islands and rocks, around and above which it dashes the spray and foam in its impetuous descent. The climate is lovely, the atmosphere pearly; and when, from the height above, you look down upon the panorama spread beneath your feet, it recalls to the mind the beautiful view so many of us must have frequently been entranced with, while inhaling the meditative weed and strolling along Richmond-terrace on a summer afternoon, gazing on old Father Thames glowing in the rays of a setting sun, and looking doubly bright from the sombre shade of the venerable timber which fringes the margin of this sluggish stream. Pardon this digression; those only who have wandered so far away can feel the indefinite, indescribable pleasure with which one grasps at anything that recals the home of one's affections, the scenes of early days, and the dear friends who are still enjoying them. The best place for reviewing the Rapids is from the drive leading to the Cemetery, which here, as in most large American towns, is one of the prettiest spots in the neighbourhood; but the Rapids are not only ornamental, they are eminently useful. They afford a water-power to several mills, one of which, the Gallego Flour-Mill, is a splendid establishment, six stories high, nearly one hundred feet square, and capable of sending out daily 1200 barrels of flour. The flour is of very superior quality, the brand fetching a higher price than that of most others in the country. There are also rolling-mills, cotton and tobacco factories; the latter of course in great quantities, as tobacco is one of the chief products of the state, and rapidly increasing. The produce entered in Richmond, which in 1851 was under 16,000 hogsheads, in 1852 amounted to more than 24,000, and is now very probably above 30,000. Virginia has the honour of being the first State that raised cotton, the cultivation whereof was commenced in the year 1662. Let us pass on to the hill at the eastern extremity of the city, commanding a panoramic view of the river below the town, and all the surrounding country. One spot arrests the attention, a spot closed with the deepest and most romantic interest. A solitary tree, to which no sacrilegious hand has yet dared to apply the axe, stands a few miles down the river, on the same side as the town, and marks the site of the lodge of the venerable old chieftain, Powhattan, when as yet the colony was in its infancy, and when the Indian and the white man--the spoiler and the spoiled--were looking at each other with mutual distrust, deep fear on one side and dark foreboding on the other. The Indian is no more; and nought remains as a memorial of this chief who once ruled this fertile land with absolute sway, except this solitary tree;--and what an episode in the history of colonization does that tree recal! Who can forget that, when despair was the Colonists' daily bread, when nought but the energy and genius of Smith--a man of very ordinary name, but of no ordinary character--kept hope flickering in its socket, an attack of Indians made him a prisoner, and left them hopeless. Then, how romantic the tale of his captivity! He betrayed no fear, but retained perfect self-possession; and remembering how easy their superstitious minds could be worked upon, he drew forth, and with great solemnity commenced looking steadily at his pocket-compass, and thence to heaven, alternating between the two, until he impressed them with a feeling of awe, as though he were a superior being communing with the Great Spirit. This feeling gradually wearing off, the captors insisted upon his death, as an expiation for the many injuries they had experienced at the hands of the whites. The tribe meet, the block is prepared, the captive's neck is laid ready, the upraised tomahawk, held by a brawny Indian arm, whose every muscle quivers with revenge, glitters in the sunbeams; swarthy figures around, thirsting for blood, anxiously await the sacrifice of the victim, already too long delayed. Hope has fled from the captive's breast, and he is communing in earnest with the Great Spirit into whose presence he is about to be so sadly and speedily ushered. Suddenly a shriek is heard! At that well-known voice the savage arm falls helpless at its side, as, stretched upon the neck of the despairing captive, lies the lovely daughter of Powhattan, with tearful eye, and all the wild energy of her race, vowing she will not survive the butchery of her kindest friend. Ruthless hands would tear her away, and complete the bloody tragedy. Who dares lay even a finger upon the noble daughter of their adored chief? They stand abashed, revenge and doubt striving in their hearts; the eloquence of love and mercy pleading irresistibly from the eyes of Pocahontas. The tomahawk, upraised by man's revenge for the work of a captive's death, descends, when moved by woman's tears, to cut a captive's bonds. Callous indeed must that man's heart be, who can gaze upon the spot where the noble Pocahontas--reared among savages, 'mid the solemn grandeur of the forest, and beneath, the broad canopy of heaven, with no Gospel light to guide and soften--received the holy impulses of love and mercy fresh from her Maker's hand; and how gratifying to remember, that she who had thus early imbibed these sacred feelings, became soon after a convert to Christianity. Alas! how short her Christian career. Marrying Mr. J. Rolfe, she died in childbirth ere she had reached her twenty-fifth year, and from her many of the oldest families in Virginia at this day have their origin. Virginia, as is well known, has always been considered an aristocratic State; and it is a kind of joke--in allusion to this Indian origin--for other States to speak disparagingly of the F.F.Vs.--_alias_ first families of Virginia. Let those who sneer, seek carefully amid their musty ancestral rolls for a nobler heart than that of Pocahontas, the joy of Powhattan's house and the pride of all his tribe. How strange, that a scene so well known as the foregoing, and a life so adventurous as that of Smith, has never yet engaged the pen of a Cooper or a Bulwer! One of my friends in New York had given me a letter to a gentleman in Richmond, at whose house I called soon after my arrival, as my stay was necessarily short. He was out in the country, at his plantation. This disappointment I endeavoured to rectify by enclosing the letter; but when I had done so, Sambo could not tell me how to address it, as he was in ignorance both of the place and its distance. In this dilemma, and while ransacking my brain-box how to remedy the difficulty, a lady came in, and having passed me, Sambo--grinning through a _chevaux-de-frise_ of snow-white ivories--informed me that was "his Missus." I instantly sent the letter in to her to receive its direction, and in lieu of my letter received an immediate summons to walk in. Nothing could be more lady-like and cordial than the reception she gave me. Shy as I am, she immediately put me quite at my ease; in less than a quarter of an hour I felt I was in the society of an old friend; and during my stay in Richmond, each day found me in the same snug corner of the sofa, near the fire, enjoying the society of one of the most amiable and agreeable ladies it has ever been my good fortune to meet. The husband soon returned from the plantation, and then all the hospitalities of the house were as much at my disposal as if it had been my own, and one or the other of these kind friends, if not both, daily lionized me over Richmond or its neighbourhood. I feel sure, that any of my countrymen who have visited this city when Mr. and Mrs. Stanard were staying in town, will readily hear testimony to their kind hospitality and agreeable society. There are various public buildings here, among the most conspicuous of which is the Capitol, built in the great public square, and from its summit commanding a splendid panoramic view. There are also about thirty churches, one of which, the Monumental Church--which is Episcopalian--stands upon ground of melancholy recollections; for here, in 1811, stood the theatre, which during that year was utterly consumed by a fire, in which the governor and scores of other human beings perished. One great cause of the destruction of life was, having the doors of the building fitted to open inwards--a custom, the folly of which is only equalled by its universality. At the cry of fire, the rush to the doors was so great that it was impossible to open them, owing to the pressure. The only avenues of escape were the windows, in retreating through which, the greater number of those few who succeeded in escaping suffered the most serious injuries. How is this absurd practice of doors opening inwards to be stopped? What think you if Insurance Companies would combine, and make people forfeit their insurance if they entered any public building whose doors were so fitted; or perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer might bring in a bill to levy a very heavy tax on all public buildings the doors of which opened in this dangerous manner, and containing a stringent clause compelling managers and all parties concerned to support the widows and orphans, and pay the doctors' fees, arising from accidents caused therefrom. Alas! I fear until--as Sydney Smith would say--we reduce a few cabinet ministers and a leading member or two of the House of Peers to cinders, we shall go on in our folly, because our ancestors did so before us. Among other places I went to was the public billiard-room, and on entering, my sympathies were immediately aroused by seeing a lad about thirteen or fourteen, with a very extensive flaming choker on, above which was a frightful large swelling. Not being a medical man, I was very much puzzled when I saw the said swelling move about like a penny roll in a monkey's cheek; presently the sympathy fled, and the puzzle was solved, as a shower of 'bacco juice deluged the floor. Poor boy! it must have taken him an hour's hard work to have got the abominable mass in, and it could only have been done by instalments: the size it had reached would have broken any jaw to remove in the lump; but he seemed to have no idea of parting with his treasure, which, to do him justice, he rolled about with as much ease as if he had had a monkey-teacher before him from his cradle; nor did it prevent his betting away in a style that quite astonished a steady old gentleman like myself. The State of Virginia, like all the other States of the Union, is undergoing the increasing pressure of democracy:[AJ] one of its features--which is peculiarly obnoxious to the more sober-minded of the community--is the new arrangement for the division of the electoral districts, and which goes by the name of "Gerymander." In the early days of the Republic, all divisions were made by straight lines, or as near straight as possible; but that fair and natural mode of division is not considered by the autocratic democracy as sufficiently favourable to their views; and the consequence is, that other divisions have been substituted, most irregular in shape, so as if possible to annihilate entirely the already weakened opposition. This operation, my informant told me, acquired a kind of celebrity in Massachusetts some years ago; and, in the discussions upon the subject in their State legislature, one of the speakers is said to have compared some of these arbitrary divisions to a salamander which, in their outline they somewhat resembled. The governor of the State was of the democratic party, and therefore supporting and encouraging these changes, and his name was "Gery;" so a wag interrupted the speaker, exclaiming, "Don't say salamander; call it Gerymander,"--by which name it has been known since that day. I may here as well mention a little occurrence I witnessed, which, however pleasant it may have been to the democratic rowdies enacting it, must have been anything but agreeable to those operated upon. A fire company was out trying its engine and hoses, and followed of course by a squad of the idle and unwashed. Arrived at the market-place, they tried its range; that appeared satisfactory enough; but the idea seems to have struck the man who held the hose-end, that range without good aim was useless: he accordingly looked round for a target, and a glass coach passing by at the time, it struck him as peculiarly suited for his experiment. Two elderly females were inside, and a white Jehu on the box. In the most deliberate manner he pointed his weapon, amidst encouraging shouts from bystanders, and increasing zeal on the part of the pumpers; lucidly the windows were closed, or the ladies would have been drenched; as it was, the gushing stream rattled against the carriage, then fixed itself steadily upon poor Jehu, frightening the horses and nearly knocking him off the box. Naturally enough Jehu was highly incensed, and pulled up; then getting off the box, he walked up to his assailants, who received him with shouts of laughter; the horses, left without a ruler, started off at a gallop, Jehu ran after them, but luckily another person and myself rushed up, and stopped them before any accident occurred. All this took place at noonday, and not a voice was raised against it. If I had presumed to interfere with this liberty of the subject, the chances are I should have been tied to one of the posts of the market-place and made to stand target for an hour. It must be a charming thing when the masses rule supreme. Fancy St. James's-street, upon a drawing-room day, full of a pleasant little water-dispensing community such as this;--what cheers they would raise as a good shot took off some Jarvy's cocked-hat and bob-wig, or sent his eighteen-inch-diameter bouquet flying into the street!--then what fun to play upon the padded calves and silk stockings of Patagonian John, as he stood behind!--and only imagine the immense excitement, if by good luck they could smash some window and deluge a live aristocrat! What a nice thing a pure democracy must be! how the majority must enjoy themselves! how the minority must rejoice at the mild rule of bone over brain! What a glorious idea, equality! only excelled by that gigantic conception of Messrs. Cobden and Co., yclept the Peace Society, upon which such a bloody comment was enacted before Sevastopol. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AD: General Cadwallader, whose hospitality is well known to all strangers visiting Philadelphia.] [Footnote AE: Alas! she has since met a melancholy death, being accidentally poisoned in Mexico, on the 18th of June, 1854; but her fame is as imperishable as her life was stainless.] [Footnote AF: The origin of ten-pins is amusing enough, and is as follows:--The State having passed an act, during a time when religious fervour was at high pressure, prohibiting nine-pin alleys, a tenth pin was added, and the law evaded. In the meantime, high pressure went below the boiling point, and the ten-pin alley remains to this day, an amusement for the people, and a warning to indiscreet legislators.] [Footnote AG: The commercial prosperity of South Carolina appears to be increasing steadily, if not rapidly. The cotton produce was-- In 1847. In 1852. Bales, main land 336,562 472,338 Ditto, sea islands 13,529 20,500 ------- ------- Total 350,091 492,838 ------- ------- Rice in 1847 146,260 tierces. Do. in 1852 137,497 ditto. The average value of the bale (450lbs.) of main land cotton is from 6l. to 8l. sterling; of the sea-island cotton, from 30_l_ to 36l. sterling. The average price of a tierce of rice (600lbs.) is from 3l. 5s. to 4l.] [Footnote AH: Independent of the enormous charge of fifty per cent. on the taxes you pay, there is also a small fine for each parade missed.] [Footnote AI: _Vide_ chapter on "Military Education."] [Footnote AJ: _Vide_ chapter on "The Constitution."] CHAPTER XV. _From a River to a Racecourse_. Having enjoyed as much of the hospitalities of my kind friends as time permitted, I obtained a letter of introduction, and, embarking in a steamer, started for Williamsburg, so called after King William III. On our way down, we picked up as healthy and jolly a set of little ducks in their 'teens as one could wish to see. On inquiring what this aggregate of rosy cheeks and sunny smiles represented, I was informed they were the sum total of a ladies' school at Williamsburg--and a very charming sum total they were. Having a day's holiday, they had come up by the early steamer to pic-nic on the banks, and were now returning to chronology and crotchet-work, or whatever else their studies might be. Landing at King's Mills, a "'bus" took us all up to Williamsburg, a distance of three or four miles, one half of which was over as dreary a road as need be, and the other through a shady forest grove. This old city is composed of a straight street, at one end of which is the establishment occupied by the rosy cheeks of whom we have been speaking, and which is very neat and clean-looking; at the other end--only with half a mile of country intervening--is the college. On each side of the said street is a crescent of detached houses, with a common before them. The population is 1500, and has not varied--as far as I could learn--in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. I naturally felt very much interest in visiting this place, as it was originally the seat of the royal government, and my grandfather had been the last governor of the state. The body of the old palace was burnt down by accident, while occupied by French troops, in 1782. The foundations, which were six feet thick, are still traceable, although most of the bricks have been used for the buildings in the neighbourhood. The outlines of the old garden and its terraces may also be traced, and a very charming spot it must have been. There are two beautiful lime-trees in a thriving state, which, I was told, he had planted himself from seeds he had brought from home. His thoughts were evidently on that far-off home when he planted them; for, as to position relatively to each other and distance from the old palace, they precisely coincide with two beneath which many of my early days were passed, at the old family mansion of Glenfinarl, on Loch Fine, which has since become the property of Mr. Douglas. There is an old ditch in the neighbourhood, which goes by the name of Lord Dunmore's Ditch. The history which my informant gave me thereof is absurd enough, and there is a negro of the name of Isaac still living who remembers all the circumstances. It appears that Lord Dunmore, having found fault with an Irish labourer for not doing sufficient work, Paddy replied, "'Faith, if 'twas yer 'onnur that had the shpade in yer hand, maybe one-half would satisfy yer 'onnur." The Governor, who happened to be a man of iron frame, and not at all averse to a joke, immediately took up Paddy's challenge, and replied, "Paddy, I'll work four hours against you in a ditch for a month's wages." The combatants set to work the following morning, and at the end of four hours Paddy was obliged to confess himself beaten, and the result of my grandfather's labours goes by the name of Lord Dunmore's Ditch to this day. The only parts of the old palace still standing are the two wings, one of which is now the parsonage, and the other a school, which is kept by an Englishman, educated at one of our universities, and living here for his health. This place is both a well-chosen and a favourite locality for schools, being situated upon a high plateau of land, with James River on one side and York River on the other; consequently, the air is peculiarly healthy and pure. The most imposing, if not the most useful, of the scholastic establishments is the college, which was founded by William and Mary in the year 1692. It contains a very fair library of old books, but comparatively few additions appear to have been made in latter years. The building bears every internal mark of neglect and dilapidation, defaced walls, broken plaster, &c. Upon entering the lecture-room, a quantity of eighteen-inch square boxes full of moisture suggest the idea of a rainy day and a roofless chamber. Be not deceived: these are merely receptacles for the discharge of the students' 'bacco juice; and the surrounding floor gives painful demonstration that their free spirits scorn the trammels of eighteen-inch boundaries, however profusely supplied. From what causes I cannot say, but the college has been all but deserted until lately. The present authorities are striving to infuse into it a little vitality of usefulness. With these simple facts before me, it was amusing to read, in an American gazetteer of the day, that the college "is at present in a flourishing condition." In front of the college there is an enclosed green, and in the centre a statue, erected in honour of one of the old royal governors, Berkeley, Lord Bowtetort. Whether from a desire to exhibit their anti-aristocratic sentiments, or from innate Vandalism, or from a childish wish to exhibit independence by doing mischief, the said statue is the pistol-mark for the students, who have exhibited their skill as marksmen by its total mutilation, in spite of all remonstrances from the authorities. The college was formerly surrounded by magnificent elms, but a few years since a blight came which destroyed every one of them, leaving the building in a desert-like nakedness. The inn at Williamsburg is a miserable building, but it is kept by as kind-hearted, jolly old John-Bull-looking landlord as ever was seen, and who rejoices in the name of Uncle Ben. Meat is difficult to get at, as there are no butchers; the cream and butter are, however, both plentiful and excellent. The house is almost entirely overshadowed by one magnificent elm, which has fortunately escaped the blight that annihilated nearly all its fellows. After the hustle of most American cities, there was to me an unspeakable charm in the quiet of this place. Sitting at the inn-door, before you lies the open green, with its daisies and buttercups; horses and cattle are peaceably grazing; in the background are the remaining wings of the old palace; to your left stands the old village church, built with bricks brought from England, and long since mellowed by the hand of time, around which the clinging ivy throws the venerable mantle of its dark and massive foliage. Now, the summoning church-bell tolls its solemn note; school children, with merry laugh and light step, cross the common; the village is astir, and a human tide is setting towards its sacred portals: all, all speaks to the heart and to the imagination of happy days and happy scenes in a far-off land. You close your eyes, the better to realize the dream which fancy is painting. When they open upon the reality again, the illusion is dispelled by the sight of a brawny negro, with a grin on his face which threatens to split his ears, jogging merrily along the street with a huge piece of sturgeon for his Sunday feast. My friends, however, left me little time to indulge in a contemplative mood, for good old Madeira, a hearty welcome, and a stroll about and around the place, filled up the day; while the fragrant weed and the social circle occupied no small portion of the evening. Having spent a few but very pleasant days here, I took leave of my hospitable friends--not forgetting that jovial soul, Uncle Ben; then embarking in a steamer, and armed with a solitary letter of introduction, I started off to visit a plantation on the banks of James River. A planter's home, like the good Highland laird's, seems made of India rubber. Without writing to inquire whether the house is full, or your company agreeable, you consider the former improbable and the latter certain. When you approach your victim, a signal is thrown out; the answer is a boat; in you get, bag and baggage; you land at the foot of his lawn or of some little adjoining pier, and thus apparently force yourself upon his hospitality. Reader, if it is ever your good fortune to be dropped with a letter of introduction at Shirley, one glance from the eye of the amiable host and hostess, accompanied by a real shake of the hand, satisfy you beyond doubt you are truly and heartily welcome. A planter's house on James River reminds one in many ways of the old country. The building is old, the bricks are of the brownest red, and in many places concealed by ivy of colonial birth; a few venerable monarchs of the forest throw their ample shade over the greensward, which slopes gently down to the water. The garden, the stables, the farm-yard, the old gates, the time-honoured hues of everything,--all is so different from the new facing and new painting which prevails throughout the North, that you feel you are among other elements; and if you go inside the house, the thoughts also turn homeward irresistibly as the eye wanders from object to object. The mahogany table and the old dining-room chairs, bright with that dark ebony polish of time which human ingenuity vainly endeavours to imitate; the solid bookcases, with their quaint gothic-windowly-arranged glass-doors, behind which, in calm and dusty repose, lie heavy patriarchal-looking tomes on the lower shelves, forming a sold basis above which to place lighter and less scholastic literature; an arm-chair, that might have held the invading Caesar, and must have been second-hand in the days of the conquering William; a carpet, over whose chequered face the great Raleigh might have strolled in deep contemplation; a rug, on whose surface generations of spinsters might have watched the purrings of their pet Toms or gazed on the glutinous eyes and inhaled the loaded breeze that came from the fat and fragrant Pug: whichever way the eye turned, whatever direction the imagination took, the conviction forced upon the mind was, that you were in an inheritance, and that what the wisdom and energy of one generation had gathered together, succeeding generations had not yet scattered to the winds by the withering blast of infinitesimal division. With the imagination thus forcibly filled with home and its associations, you involuntarily feel disposed to take a stroll on the lawn; but on reaching the door, your ears are assailed by wild shouts of infantine laughter, and, raising your eyes, you behold a dozen little black imps skylarking about in every direction, their fat faces, bright eyes, and sunny smiles beaming forth joyousness and health. Home and its varying visions fly at the sight, giving place to the reality that you are on a slave plantation. Of the slaves I shall say nothing here beyond the general fact that they appeared healthy, well fed, and well clothed on all the plantations I visited. Having enjoyed the hospitalities of Shirley for a few days, it was agreed that I should make a descent upon another property lower down the river. So, bidding adieu to my good friends at Shirley, I embarked once more on the steamer, and was landed at the pier of Brandon, in the most deluging rain imaginable. A walk of a quarter of a mile brought me to the door like a drowned rat, a note from my Shirley friends secured me an immediate and cordial welcome. Brandon is perhaps the plantation which is more thoroughly kept up than any other on the James River, and which consequently has altered less. I am alluding now to the house and grounds about, not to the plantation at large; for I believe the proprietor at Shirley is reckoned A1 as a farmer. I have before alluded to the blight which destroyed so many fine elms on both shores of the James River. The withering insect appeared at Brandon; but the lady of the house soon proved that she knew the use of tobacco as well as the men, by turning a few hogsheads of the said weed into water, making thereby a murderous decoction, with which, by the intervention of a fire-engine, she utterly annihilated the countless hosts of the all-but invisible enemy, and thus saved some of the finest elms I ever saw in my life, under the shade of which the old family mansion had enjoyed shelter from many a summer's sun. Brandon is the only place I visited where the destroyer had not left marks of his ravages. The lawn is beautifully laid out, and in the style of one of our country villas of the olden time, giving every assurance of comfort and every feeling of repose. The tropical richness and brightness of leaf and flower added an inexpressible charm to them, as they stood out in bold relief against the pure and cloudless air around, so different from that indistinct outline which is but too common in our moist atmosphere. Then there was the graceful and weeping willow, the trembling aspen, the wild ivy, its white bloom tinged as with maiden's blush; the broad-leafed catalpa; the magnolia, rich in foliage and in flower; while scattered around were beds of bright and lovely colours. The extremes of this charming view were bounded, either by the venerable mansion over whose roof the patriarchal elms of which we have been speaking threw their cool and welcome shade, or by the broad stream whose bosom was ever and anon enlivened with some trim barque or rapid-gliding steamer, and whose farther shore was wooded to the water's edge. There is one of the finest China rose-trees here I ever beheld; it covers a space of forty feet square, being led over on trellis-work, and it might extend much beyond that distance: it is one mass of flowers every year. Unfortunately, I was a week too late to see it in its glory; but the withered flowers gave ample evidence how splendid it must have been. In one of my drives, I went to see an election which took place in the neighbourhood. The road for some distance lay through a forest full of magnificent timber; but, like most forest timber, that which gives it a marketable value destroys its picturesque effect. A few noble stems--however poor their heads--have a fine effect when surrounded by others which have had elbow-room; but a forest of stems, with Lilliputian heads--great though the girth of the stem may be--conveys rather the idea of Brobdingnagian piles driven in by giants, and exhibiting the last flickerings of vitality in a few puny sprouts at their summit. The underwood was enlivened by shrubs of every shade and hue, the wild flowering ivy predominating. The carriage-springs were tested by an occasional drop of the wheels into a pit-hole, on merging from which you came sometimes to a hundred yards of rut of dimensions similar to those of military approaches to a citadel; nevertheless, I enjoyed my drive excessively. The place of election was a romantic spot near a saw-mill, at the edge of what, in a gentleman's park in England, would be called a pretty little lake, styled in America a small pond. As each party arrived, the horse was hitched to the bough of some tree, and the company divided itself into various knots; a good deal of tobacco was expended in smoke and juice; there was little excitement; all were jolly and friendly; and, in short, the general scene conveyed the idea of a gathering together for field-preaching; but that was speedily replaced by the idea of a pleasant pic-nic of country farmers, as a dashing charge was made by the whole _posse comitatus_ upon a long table which was placed under a fine old elm, and lay groaning beneath the weight of substantial meat and drink. As for drunkenness, they were all as sober as washerwomen. So much for a rural election-scene in Virginia. By way of making time pass agreeably, it was proposed to take a sail in a very nice yacht, called "The Breeze," which belonged to a neighbouring planter. We all embarked, in the cool of the evening, and the merry laugh would soon have told you the fair sex was fairly represented. Unfortunately, the night was so still that not a breath rippled the surface of the river, except as some inquisitive zephyr came curling along the stream, filling us with hope, and then, having satisfied its curiosity, suddenly disappeared, as though in mockery of our distress. The name of the yacht afforded ample field for punning, which was cruelly taken advantage of by all of us; and if our cruise was not a long one, at all events it was very pleasant, and full of fun and frolic. Pale Cinthia was throwing her soft and silvery light over the eastern horizon before we landed. Walking up the lawn, the scene was altogether lovely; the fine trees around were absolutely alive with myriads of fire-flies. These bright and living lights, darting to and fro 'mid the dark foliage, formed the most beautiful illumination imaginable--at one time clustering into a ball of glowing fire, at another streaking away in a line of lightning flame; then, bursting into countless sparks, they would for a moment disappear in the depths of their sombre bower, to come forth again in some more varied and more lovely form. Pleasant indeed were the hours I passed here; lovely was the climate, beautiful was the landscape, hearty was the welcome: every day found some little plan prepared to make their hospitality more pleasant to the stranger; nature herself seemed to delight in aiding their efforts, for though I arrived in a deluge, I scarce ever saw a cloud afterwards. As the morning light stole through my open window in undimmed transparency, the robin, the blue-bird, the mocking-bird, the hosts of choral warblers, held their early oratorio in the patriarchal elms. If unskilled in music's science, they were unfettered by its laws, and hymned forth their wild and varied notes as though calling upon man to admire and adore the greatness and the goodness of his Maker, and to "Shake off dull sloth, and early rise, To pay his morning sacrifice." If such were their appeal, it was not made in vain; for both morning and evening--both here and at Shirley--every member and visitor gathered round the family altar, the services of which were performed with equal cheerfulness and reverence. I felt as if I could have lingered on and on in this charming spot, and amid such warm hospitality, an indefinite period; it was indeed with sincere regret I was obliged to bid adieu to my agreeable hosts, and once more embark on board the steamer. The river James lacks entirely those features that give grandeur to scenery; the river, it is true, by its tortuous windings, every now and then presents a broad sheet of water; the banks are also prettily wooded; but there is a great sameness, and a total absence of that mountain scenery so indispensable to grandeur. The only thing that relieves the eye is a glimpse, from time to time, of some lovely spot like the one I have just been describing; but such charming villas, like angel's visits, are "few and far between." Here we are, at Norfolk. How different is this same Norfolk from the other eastern ports I have visited!--there all is bustle, activity, and increase,--here all is dreariness, desolation, and stagnation. It is, without exception, the most uninteresting town I ever set foot in; the only thing that gives it a semblance of vitality is its proximity to the dockyard, and the consequent appearance of officers in uniform; but in spite of this impression, which a two-days' residence confirmed me in, I was told, on good authority, that it is thriving and improving. By the statistics which our consul, Mr. James, was kind enough to furnish me, it appears that 1847 was the great year of its commercial activity, its imports in that year valuing 94,000l., and its exports 364,000l. In 1852, the imports were under 25,000l. and the exports a little more than 81,000l., which is certainly, by a comparison with the average of the ten years preceding, an evidence of decreasing, rather than increasing, commercial prosperity. Its population is 16,000; and that small number--when it is remembered that it is the port of entry for the great state of Virginia--is a strong argument against its asserted prosperity. Not long before my arrival they had been visited with a perfect deluge of rain, accompanied with a waterspout, which evidently had whirled up some of the ponds in the neighbourhood; for quantities of cat-fish fell during the storm, one of which, measuring ten inches, a friend told me he had himself picked up at a considerable distance from any water. The only real object of interest at Norfolk is the dockyard, which of course I visited. Mr. James was kind enough to accompany me, and it is needless to say we were treated with the utmost courtesy, and every facility afforded us for seeing everything of interest, after which we enjoyed an excellent lunch at the superintendent's. They were building a splendid frigate, intended to carry 58-inch guns; her length was 250 feet, and her breadth of beam 48. Whether the manifest advantages of steam will induce them to change her into a screw frigate, I cannot say. The dockyard was very clean and the buildings airy. Steam, saw-mills, &c., were in full play, and anchors forging under Nasmyth's hammer, I found them making large masts of four pieces--one length and no scarfings--the root part of the tree forming the mast-head, and a very large air-hole running up and down the centre. The object of this air-hole is to allow the mast to season itself; the reader may remember that the mast of the "Black Maria" is made the same way. As far as I know, this is a plan we have not yet tried in our dockyards. I find that they use metallic boats far more than we do. I saw some that had returned after being four years in commission, which were perfectly sound. To say that I saw fine boats and spars here, would be like a traveller remarking he saw a great many coals at Newcastle. All waste wood not used in the yard is given away every Saturday to any old woman who will come and take it; and no searching of people employed in the dockyard is ever thought of. The cattle employed in and for the dockyard have a most splendid airy stable, and are kept as neat and clean as if in a drawing-room. Materials are abundant; but naturally there is little bustle and activity when compared to that which exists in a British yard. Their small navy can hardly find them enough work to keep their "hands in;" but doubtless the first knell of the accursed tocsin of war, while it gave them enough to do, would soon fill their dockyards with able and willing hands to do it. Commodore Ringold's surveying expedition, consisting of a corvette, schooner, steamer, &c., was fitting out for service, and most liberally and admirably were they supplied with all requisites and comforts for their important duties. During my stay I enjoyed the kind hospitalities of our consul, Mr. G.P.E. James, who is so well known to the literary world. He was indulging the good people of Norfolk with lectures, which seem to be all the fashion with the Anglo-Saxon race wherever they are gathered together. The subject which I heard him treat of was "The Novelists," handling some favourites with severity and others with a gentler touch, and winding up with a glowing and just eulogy upon the author of _My Novel_. Altogether I spent a very pleasant hour and a half. I may here mention a regulation of the Foreign-office, which, however necessary it may be considered, every one must admit presses very hardly on British _employés_ in the Slave States. I allude to the regulation by which officials are prevented from employing other people's slaves as their servants. White men soon earn enough money to be enabled to set up in some trade, business, or farm, and, as service is looked down upon, they seize the first opportunity of quitting it, even although their comforts may be diminished by the change. Free negroes won't serve, and the official must not employ a slave; thus, a gentleman sent out to look after the interest of his country, and in his own person to uphold its dignity, must either submit to the dictation and extortion of his white servant--if even then he can keep him--or he may be called upon suddenly, some fine morning, to do all the work of housemaid, John, cook, and knife and button boy, to the neglect of those duties he was appointed by his country to perform, unless he be a married man with a large family, in which case he may perhaps delegate to them the honourable occupations, above named. Surely there is something a little puritanical in the prohibition. To hold a slave is one thing, but to employ the labour of one who is a slave, and over whose hopes of freedom you have no control, is quite another thing; and I hold that, under the actual circumstances, the employment of another's slave could never he so distorted in argument as to bring home a charge of connivance in a system we so thoroughly repudiate. Go to the East, follow in imagination your ambassadors, ministers, and consular authorities. Behold them on the most friendly terms--or striving to be so--with people in high places, who are but too often revelling in crimes, with the very name of which they would scorn even to pollute their lips; and I would ask, did such a monstrous absurdity ever enter into any one's head as to doubt from these amicable relations whether the Government of this country or its agents repudiated such abomination of abominations? If for political purposes you submit to this latter, while for commercial purposes you refuse to tolerate the former, surely you are straining at a black gnat while swallowing a beastly camel. Such, good people of the Foreign-office, is my decided view of the case; and if you profit by the hint, you will do what I believe no public body ever did yet. Perhaps, therefore, the idea of setting the fashion may possibly induce you to reconsider and rectify an absurdity, which, while no inconvenience to you, is often a very great one to those you employ. It is wonderful, the difference in the view taken of affairs by actors on the spot and spectators at a distance. A man who sees a fellow-creature half crushed to death and crippled for life by some horrible accident, is too often satisfied with little more than a passing "Good gracious!" but if, on his returning homeward, some gigantic waggon-wheel scrunch the mere tip of his toes, or annihilate a bare inch of his nose, his ideas of the reality of an accident become immensely enlarged. Let the Foreign Secretary try for a couple of days some such _régime_ as the following:-- 5 A.M. Light fires, fetch water, and put kettle on. 6 " Dust room and make beds. 7 " Clean shoes, polish knives, and sand kitchen. 7:30 " Market for dinner. 8:30 " Breakfast. 9 " To Downing-street, light fires, and dust office. 10 " Sit down comfortably(?) to work. 1:30 P.M. Off to coal-hole for more coals. 4 " Sweep up, and go home. 5 " Off coat, up sleeves, and cook. 6:30 " Eat dinner. 7 " Wash up. 8 " Light your pipe, walk to window, and see your colleague over the way, with a couple of Patagonian footmen flying about amid a dozen guests, while, to give additional zest to your feelings of enjoyment, a couple of buxom lassies are peeping out of the attics, and singing like crickets. 9 " Make your own reflections upon the Government that dooms you to personal servitude, while your colleague is allowed purchaseable service. Sleep over the same, and repeat the foregoing _régime_ on the second day; and, filled with the happy influences so much cause for gratitude must inspire, give reflection her full tether, and sleep over her again. On the third morning, let your heart and brain dictate a despatch upon the subject of your reflections to all public servants in slave-holding communities, and, while repudiating slavery, you will find no difficulty in employing the services of the slave, under peculiar circumstances, and with proper restrictions. I embarked from Norfolk per steamer for Baltimore, and thence by rail through Philadelphia to New York. I took a day's hospitality among my kind friends at Baltimore. At Philadelphia I was in such a hurry to pass on, that I exhibited what I fear many will consider a symptom of inveterate bachelorship; but truth bids me not attempt to cloak my delinquency. Hear my confession:-- My friend Mr. Fisher, whose hospitality I had drawn most largely upon during my previous stay, invited me to come and pay him and his charming lady a visit, at a delightful country house of his a few miles out of town. Oh, no! that was impossible; my time was so limited; I had so much to see in the north and Canada. In vain he urged, with hearty warmth, that I should spend only one night: it was quite impossible--quite. That point being thoroughly settled, he said, "It is a great pity you are so pressed for time, because the trotting champion, 'Mac,' runs against a formidable antagonist, 'Tacony,' to-morrow." In half an hour I was in his waggon, and in an hour and a half I was enjoying the warm greeting of his amiable wife in their country-house, the blush of shame and a guilty conscience tinging my cheeks as each word of welcome passed from her lips or flashed from her speaking eyes. Why did I thus act? Could I say, in truth, "'Twas not that I love thee less, but that I love Tacony more?" Far from it. Was it that I was steeped in ingratitude? I trust not. Ladies, oh, ladies!--lovely creatures that you are--think not so harshly of a penitent bachelor. You have all read of one of your sex through whom Evil--which takes its name from, her--first came upon earth, and you know the motive power of that act was--curiosity. I plead guilty to that motive power on the present occasion; and, while throwing myself unreservedly on your clemency, I freely offer myself as a target for the censure of each one among you who, in the purity of truth can say, "I never felt such an influence in all my life." Reader, remember you cannot be one of these, for the simple fact of casting your eyes over this page affords sufficient presumptive evidence for any court of law to bring you in guilty of a curiosity to know what the writer has to say.--To resume. The race-course at Philadelphia is a road on a perfect level, and a circle of one mile; every stone is carefully removed, and it looks as smooth and clean as a swept floor. The stand commands a perfect view of the course; but its neglected appearance shows clearly that trotting-matches here are not as fashionable as they used to be, though far better attended than at New York. Upon the present occasion the excitement was intense; you could detect it even in the increased vigour with which the smoking and spitting was carried on. An antagonist had been found bold enough to measure speed with "Mac"--the great Mac who, while "Whipping creation," was also said never to have let out his full speed. He was thorough-bred, about fifteen and a half hands, and lighter built than my raw-boned friend Tacony, and he had lately been sold for 1600l. So sure did people apparently feel of Mac's easy victory, that even betting was out of the question. Unlike the Long Island affair, the riders appeared in jockey attire, and the whole thing was far better got up. Ladies, however, had long ceased to grace such scenes. Various false starts were made, all on the part of Mac, who, trusting to the bottom of blood, apparently endeavoured to ruffle Tacony's temper and weary him out a little. How futile were the efforts the sequel plainly showed. At length a start was effected, and away they went, Tacony with his hind legs as far apart as the centre arch of Westminster Bridge, and with strides that would almost clear the Bridgewater Canal. Mac's rider soon found that, in trying to ginger Tacony's temper, he had peppered his own horse's, for he broke-up into a gallop twice. Old Tacony and his rider had evidently got intimate since I had seen them at New York, and they now thoroughly understood each other. On he went, with giant strides; Mac fought bravely for the van, but could not get his nose beyond Tacony's saddle-girth at the winning-post--time, 2m. 25-1/2s. Then, followed the usual race-course accompaniments of cheers, squabbles, growling, laughing, betting, drinking, &c. The public were not convinced. Mac was still the favourite; the champion chaplet was not thus hastily to be plucked from his hitherto victorious brows. Half an hour's rest brought them again to the starting-post, where Mac repeated his old tactics, and with similar bad success. Nothing could ruffle Tacony, or produce one false step: he flew round the course, every stride like the ricochet of a 32lb. shot; his adversary broke-up again and again, losing both his temper and his place, and barely saved his distance, as the gallant Tacony--his rider with a slack rein, and patting him on the neck--reached the winning-post--time, 2m. 25s. The shouts were long and loud; such time had never been made before by fair trotting, and Tacony evidently could have done it in two, if not three seconds less. The fastest pacing ever accomplished before was 2m. 13s., and the fastest trotting 2m. 26s. The triumph was complete; Tacony nobly won the victorious garland; and as long as he and his rider go together, it will take, if not a rum 'un to look at, at all events a d----l to go, ere he be forced to resign his championship. The race over, waggons on two wheels and waggons on four wheels, with trotters in them capable of going the mile in from 2m. 40s. to 3m. 20s., began to shoot about in every direction, and your ears were assailed on all sides with "G'lang, g'lang!" and occasionally a frantic yell, to which some Jehu would give utterance by way of making some horse that was passing him "break-up." Thus ended the famous race between Mac and Tac, which, by the way, gave me an opportunity of having a little fun with some of my American friends, as I condoled with them on their champion being beaten by a British subject; for, strange to say, Tac is a Canadian horse. I therefore of course expressed the charitable wish that an American horse might be found some day equal to the task of wearing the champion trotting crown(!)--I beg pardon, not crown, but, I suppose, cap of liberty. I need scarce say that it is not so much the horse as the perfect teaming that produces the result; and all Tac's training is exclusively American, and received in a place not very far from Philadelphia, from which he gets his name. A friend gave me a lift into Philadelphia, whence the iron horse speedily bore me to the great republican Babylon, New York. CHAPTER XVI. _Home of the Pilgrim Fathers_. Having made the necessary preparations, I again put myself behind the boiling kettle, _en route_ to the republican Athens. The day was intensely hot; even the natives required the windows open, and the dust being very lively, we soon became as powdered as a party going down to the Derby in the ante-railway days. My curiosity was excited on the way, by seeing a body of men looking like a regiment of fox-hunters--all well got up, fine stout fellows--who entered, and filled two of the carriages. On inquiring who kept the hounds, and if they had good runs, a sly smile stole across my friend's cheek as he told me they were merely the firemen of the city going to fraternize with the ditto ditto of Boston. It stupidly never occurred to me to ask him whether any provision was made in case of a quiet little fire developing itself during their absence, for their number was legion, and as active, daring, orderly-looking fellows as ever I set eyes upon. Jolly apopletic aldermen of our capital may forsake the green fat of their soup-making deity, to be feasted by their Parisian fraternity, without inconvenience to anybody, except it be to their fellow-passengers in the steamer upon their return, if they have been over-fed and have not tempest-tried organs of digestion. But a useful body like firemen migrating should, I confess, have suggested to me the propriety of asking what substitutes were left to perform, if need be, their useful duties; not having done so, I am constrained to leave this important point in its present painful obscurity. A thundering whistle and a cloud of steam announce the top is off the kettle, and that we have reached Boston. Wishing to take my own luggage in a hackney, I found that, however valuable for security the ticketing system may be, it was, under circumstances like mine at present, painfully trying to patience. In three-quarters of an hour, however, I managed to get hold of it, and then, by way of improving my temper, I ascertained that one of my boxes was in a state of "pretty considerable all mighty smash." At last I got off with my goods and chattels, and having seen quite enough of the American palace-hotels and their bountifully-spread tables, and of the unrivalled energy with which the meals are despatched; remembering, also, how frequently the drum of my ears had been distracted by the eternal rattling and crackling of plates and dishes for a couple of hundred people, and how my olfactories had suffered from the mixed odours of the kitchen produce, I declined going to the palatial Revere House, which is one of the best hotels in the Union, and put up at a house of less pretensions, where I found both quiet and comfort. To write a description of Boston, when so many others have done so far better than I can pretend to do, and when voluminous gazetteers record almost every particular, would be drawing most unreasonably upon the patience of a reader, and might further be considered as inferring a doubt of his acquaintance with, I might almost say, a hackneyed subject. I shall, therefore, only inflict a few short observations to refresh his memory. The most striking feature in Boston, to my mind, is the common or park, inasmuch as it is the only piece of ground in or attached to any city which I saw deserving the name of a park. It was originally a town cow-pasture, and called the Tower Fields. The size is about fifty acres; it is surrounded with an iron fencing, and, although not large, the lay of the ground is very pretty. It contains some very fine old trees, which every traveller in America must know are a great rarity in the neighbourhood of any populous town. It is overlooked by the State-house, which is built upon Beacon Hill, just outside the highest extremity of the park, and from the top of which a splendid panoramic view of the whole town and neighbourhood is obtained. The State-house is a fine building in itself, and contains one of Chantrey's best works--the statue of Washington. The most interesting building in Boston, to the Americans, is, undoubtedly, Faneuil Hall, called also the "Cradle of Liberty." Within those walls the stern oratory of noble hearts striving to be free, and daring to strike for it, was listened to by thousands, in whose breasts a ready response was found, and who, catching the glowing enthusiasm of the orators, determined rather to be rebels and free than subjects and slaves: the sequel is matter of history. I shall not tax the temper of my reader by going through any further list of the public buildings, which are sufficiently known to those who take an interest in this flourishing community; but I must hasten to apologize for my ingratitude in not sooner acknowledging that most pleasing feature in every traveller's experience in America, which, I need hardly say, is hospitality. Scarce was my half-smashed box landed at the hotel, when my young American friend, who came from England with our party, appeared to welcome me--perhaps to atone for the lion's share of champagne he had enjoyed at our table on board the steamer. Then he introduced me to another, and another introduced me to another another, and another another introduced me to another another another, and so on, till I began to feel I must know the _élite_ of Boston. Club-doors flew open, champagne-corks flew out, cicerones, pedal and vehicular, were ever ready to guide me by day and feed me by night; and though there are no drones in a Yankee hive, so thoroughly did they dedicate themselves to my comfort and amusement, that a person ignorant of the true state of things might have fancied they were as idle and occupationless as the cigar-puffers who adorn some of our metropolitan-club steps, the envy of passing butcher-boys and the liberal distributors of cigar-ends to unwashed youths who hang about ready to pounce upon the delicious and rejected morsels. Among other gentlemen whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making, and whose hospitalities, of course, I enjoyed, I may mention Mr. Prescott and Mr. Ticknor, the former highly appreciated in the old country, and both so widely known and so justly esteemed in the world of literature. As I consider such men public property, I make no apology for using their names, while in so doing I feel I am best conveying to the reader some idea of the society which a traveller meets with in Yankee Athens. The town has one charm to me, which it shares in common with Baltimore. Not only is it built on undulating ground, but there are old parts remaining, whereby the eye is relieved from the tiring monotony of broad and straight streets, while the newer parts form a pleasing variety, and bear gratifying evidence of the increasing wealth of its intelligent and industrious population. Then, again, the neighbourhood of the town has a charm for a wanderer from the old country; the roads are excellent, the fields and gardens are tidied up, creepers are led up the cottage walls, suburban villas abound, everything looks more clean, more _soigné_, more snug, more filled and settled than the neighbourhood of any other city I visited in America, and thus forces back upon the mind associations and reflections of dear old home. Having enjoyed a visit to a friend in one of the suburban villas inland, to which he drove me in his light waggon, another vehicular cicerone insisted that I should drive out to his uncle's, and spend a day at his marine villa, about twelve miles distant. I joyfully assented to so pleasant a proposition, and, "hitching a three-forty before a light waggon"--as the term is in America--we were soon bowling away merrily along a capital road. A pleasant drive of nine miles brought us to a little town called Lynn, after Lynn Regis in England, from which place some of the early settlers came. How often has the traveller to regret the annihilation of the wild old Indian names, and the substitution of appellatives from every creek and corner of the older continents; with Poquanum, Sagamore, Wenepoykin, with Susquehanna, Wyoming, Miami, and a thousand other such of every length and sound, all cut-and-dried to hand, it is more than a pity to see so great a country plagiarizing in such a wholesale manner Pekins, Cantons, Turing, Troys, Carmels, Emmauses, Cairos, and a myriad other such borrowed plumes, plucked from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and hustled higgledy-piggledy side by side, without a single element or association to justify the uncalled-for robbery. Forgive me, reader,--all this digression comes from my wishing Lynn had kept its old Indian name of Saugus; from such little acorns will such great oak-trees spring.--To resume. The said town of Lynn supplies understandings to a very respectable number of human beings, and may be called a gigantic shoemaker's shop, everything being on the gigantic scale in America. It employs 11,000, out of its total population of 14,000, in that trade, and produces annually nearly 5,000,000 of women's and children's boots, shoes, and gaiters, investing in the business a capital amounting to 250,000l. Moses and Son, Hyam and Co., Nicoll and Co., and the whole of the three-halfpence-a-shirt-paying capitalists, can show nothing like my shoemakers' shop, "fix it how you will,"--as they say in the Great Republic. The three-forty trotter soon left boots, shoes, and all behind, and deposited us at the door of the uncle's villa, where a friendly hand welcomed us to its hospitalities. It was very prettily situated upon a cliff overlooking Massachusetts Bay, in which said cliff a zigzag stepway was cut down to the water, for the convenience of bathing. The grounds were nicely laid out and planted, and promised in time to be well wooded, if the ocean breeze driving upon them did not lay an embargo upon their growth, in the same heartless manner as it does upon the west coast of Scotland, where, the moment a tree gets higher than a mop handle, its top becomes curved over by the gales, with the same graceful sweep as that which a successful stable-boy gives a birch broom after a day's soaking. I hope, for my hospitable friend's sake, it may not prove true in his case; but I saw an ostrich-feathery curve upon the tops of some of his trees, which looked ominous. Having spent a very pleasant day, and enjoyed good cheer and good company, Three-forty was again "hitched to;" joined hands announced the parting moment had arrived; wreaths of smoke from fragrant Havanas ascended like incense from the shrine of Adieu; "G'lang"--the note of advance--was sounded; Three-forty sprang to the word of command; friends, shoes, and shoemakers were soon tailed of; and ere long your humble servant was nestling his nose in his pillow at Boston. Hearing that the drama was investing its talent in Abolitionism, I went one evening to the theatre, to see if I could extract as much fun from the metropolis of a free state as I had previously obtained from the capital of slave-holding Maryland; for I knew the Americans, both North and South, were as ticklish as young ladies. I found very much the same style of thing as at Baltimore, except that her abolitionist highness, the Duchess of Southernblack, did not appear on the stage by deputy; but as an atonement for the omission, you had a genuine Yankee abolitionist; poor Uncle Tom and his fraternity were duly licked and bullied by a couple of heartless Southern nigger-drivers; and while their victims were writhing in agony, a genuine abolitionist comes on the stage and whops the two nigger-drivers, amid shouts of applause. The suppliant Southerners, midst sobs and tears, plead for mercy, and in vain, until the happy thought occurs to one of them, to break forth into a wondrous tale of the atrocities inflicted upon the starving and naked slaves of English mines and factories, proving by contrast the superior happiness of the nigger and the greater mercifulness of his treatment. The indignant abolitionist drops the upraised cowhide, the sobs and tears of the Southerners cease, the whole house thunders forth the ecstasy of its delight, the curtain drops, and the enchanted audience adjourn to the oyster saloons, vividly impressed with British brutality, the charms of slavery, and the superiority of Abolitionism. How strange, that in a country like this, boasting of its education, and certainly with every facility for its prosecution--how strange, that in the very Athens of the Republic, the deluded masses should exhibit as complete ignorance as you could find in the gallery of any twopenny-halfpenny metropolitan theatre of the old country! Another of the lions of Boston which I determined to witness, if possible, was "spirit-rapping." A friend undertook the arrangement for me; but so fully were the hours of the exhibitor taken up, that it was five days before we could obtain a spare hour. At length the time arrived, and, fortified with a good dinner and a skinful of "Mumm Cabinet," we proceeded to the witch's den. The witch was a clean and decent-looking girl about twenty, rather thin, and apparently very exhausted; gradually a party of ten assembled, and we gathered round the witch's table. The majority were ladies--those adorers of the marvellous! The names of friends were called for; the ladies took the alphabet, and running over it with the point of a pencil, the spirit rapped as the wished-for letter was reached. John Davis was soon spelt, each letter probably having been indicated by the tremulous touch of affectionate hope. Harriet Mercer was then rapped out by the obliging spirit. The pencil and the alphabet were then handed to me, and the spirit being asked if it would answer my inquiries, and a most satisfactory "Yes" being rapped out, I proceeded to put its powers to the test. I concentrated my thoughts upon a Mr. L---- and his shop in Fleet-street, with both of which being thoroughly familiar I had no difficulty in fixing my attention upon them. The pencil was put in motion, powerful rappings were heard as it touched the D. I kept my gravity, and went on again and again, till the name of the illustrious duke, whose death the civilized world was then deploring with every token of respect, was fully spelt out. The witch was in despair; she tried again and again to summon the rebellious spirit, but it would not come. At last, a gentleman present, and who evidently was an _habitué_ of the witch's den, proposed that the refractory spirit should be asked if any of the company were objectionable to it. This being done, a rattling "Yes" came forth, upon which each person asked in succession, "Am I objectionable to you?" There was a dead silence until it came to my friend and myself, to each of whom it gave a most rappingly emphatic "Yes." Accordingly, we rose and left the field to those whose greater gullibility rendered them more plastic objects for working upon. Never in my life did I witness greater humbug; and yet so intense was the anxiety of the Boston public to witness the miracle, that during all the day and half the night the spirit was being invoked by the witch, into whose pockets were pouring the dollars of thousands of greater gabies than myself, for many went away believers, receiving the first germs of impressions which led them to a Lunatic Asylum, or an early grave, as various statistics in America prove most painfully. To show the extent to which belief in these absurdities goes, I subjoin an extract from a paper, by which it appears that even the solemnities of a funeral cannot sober the minds of their deluded followers. Mr. Calvin R. Brown--better known as the husband of Mrs. Anne L. Fish, a famous "spirit medium" in New York--having died, we read the following notice of the funeral:--"After prayer, the Rev. S. Brittan delivered an address, in which he dwelt with much earnestness upon the superiority of the life of the spirit, as compared with that of the body. At various points in his address there were rappings, sometimes apparently on the bottom of the coffin, and at others upon the floor, as if in response to the sentiments uttered. After concluding his address, Professor Brittan read a communication purporting to have come from the deceased after his entrance into the spirit world. While it was being read, the reporter states that the rappings were distinctly heard. Several friends then sang, "Come, ye disconsolate," after which the Rev. Mr. Denning made a few remarks, during which the rappings were more audible than before. Other ceremonies closed the funeral. The whole party, preachers, physicians, and all, were spiritualists," &c. But I have before me a letter written by Judge Edmonds, which is a more painful exemplification of the insanity superinduced by giving way to these absurdities; in that document you will find him deliberately stating, that he saw heavy tables flying about without touch, like the leaves in autumn; bells walking off shelves and ringing themselves, &c. Also, you will find him classing among his co-believers "Doctors, lawyers, clergymen, a Protestant bishop, a learned and reverend president of a college, judges of higher courts, members of congress, foreign ambassadors (I hope not Mr. Crampton), and ex-members of the United States Senate." The ladies of the old country will, no doubt, be astonished to hear that their sisters of the younger country have medical colleges in various States; but, I believe, mostly in the northern ones. To what extent their studies in the healing art are carried, I cannot precisely inform them; it most probably will not stop at combinations of salts and senna, or spreading plasters--for which previous nursery practice with bread and butter might eminently qualify them. How deeply they will dive into the mysteries of anatomy, unravelling the tangled web of veins and arteries, and mastering the intricacies of the ganglionic centre; or how far they will practise the subjugation of their feelings, whether only enough to whip off some pet finger and darling little toe, or whether sufficiently to perform more important operations, even such as Sydney Smith declared a courageous little prime minister was ready to undertake at a minute's notice; these are questions which I cannot answer: but one thing is clear, the wedge is entered. How far it will be driven in, time must show.[AK] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AK: The Massachusetts Legislature, in a recent session, appropriated funds to the New England Female Medical College, located in Boston, to pay forty students for five years; and I have since observed in a Boston paper that there are twenty lady physicians, who, confining themselves to midwifery and diseases of their own sex, have a fair practice, and enjoy the confidence of the families they visit.] CHAPTER XVII. _Teaching of Youth, and a Model Jail_. I must now turn to a more important and interesting feature of Boston, viz., education. We all remember how the religious persecution in the reign of Elizabeth, fettering men's consciences, drove a devoted band of deep-thinking Christians into caves of concealment, and how, after much peril, they escaped in 1609, in the reign of James the First, to Amsterdam, under the leadership of the noble-hearted J. Robinson, where, after sighing long for a return beneath the flag of the country of their birth, they obtained a charter from the Virginia Company. The first division of them embarked on board "The Mayflower," a small vessel of 180 tons, and sailed from Plymouth, 6th September, 1620, landing in their new and barren home upon the 11th of December. These were the sturdy champions of liberty of conscience, from whom the New Englanders may be said to have sprung, and who have leavened the whole community with their energy and indomitable spirit: such men knew how to appreciate education, as the leveller of oppression and the bulwark of freedom; and it is, therefore, no wonder that the American Republic recognises them as the worthy pioneers of that noble feature in their institutions--free education, supplied to all by the State. Let us, then, see how far their descendants are treading in their footsteps upon this point. I speak of Boston and its 150,000 inhabitants, not of the State. And first, it is important to observe, that the strict provisions of the State requirements would be met by three schools, and three teachers with assistants, whose salaries would amount to 900l. The actual provision made by this energetic community, is,--Schools: 1 Latin, 1 English, 22 grammar, 194 primary,--total for salaries, 37,000l. And that it may not be supposed the salaries are great prizes, it is important to remark, that there are 65 male teachers, and about 300 female teachers. The highest paid are head-masters of Latin and English schools, 490l.; sub-masters of same, and head-masters of grammar, 300l.; ushers, assistants, &c., from 50l. to 160l.; and female teachers, from 45l. to 60l., with 5l. additional for care of the rooms. All the primary schools have female teachers; and the feeling is strongly in favour of females for instructing the very young, their patience and kindness being less likely to foster feelings of dread and dislike. The total amount of taxes raised in the city is, in round numbers, 250,000l.; of which 65,000l., or more than one-fourth, is devoted to schools. The total value of all public school estates of Boston, up to May, 1851, was 260,000l.; and the salary of the head-master is, within a few pounds, equal to that of the governor of the State. Say, then, reader, has some portion of the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers descended to the present generation, or not?--a population of 150,000 devoting 260,000l. to education. Wherever parents are unable to provide books, &c., the children are supplied with the use of them _gratis_. All corporal punishment is strongly discouraged, but not prohibited; and all inflictions thereof are recorded for the information of the Visiting Board. Having omitted to make personal inquiries on the spot, I obtained, through the kindness of Mr. Ticknor, answers to the following questions on the point of religious instruction:-- 1. "Are the pupils at your normal schools obliged to receive religious instruction from some minister, and to attend some place of worship; or may they, if they prefer, receive no such instruction, and attend no church?" "The State has put the normal schools under the charge of the Board of Education, with no special law or instructions. The Board of Education endeavours to act on exactly the same principles as those which the law has laid down with respect to the common schools. The Board requires that the pupils of the normal schools attend some place of worship, the pupil making his own choice. These schools are opened every morning with reading the Scriptures, singing, and prayer. The moral conduct of the pupils is carefully watched over, and instruction is given in respect to the best methods of training the young in religion and morals. The religious teaching is ethical, not doctrinal." 2. "Are the children at your common schools obliged to receive some religious instruction, or if their parents express a wish they should not receive any at school, is the wish complied with?" "The law requires all teachers to instruct their pupils 'in the principles of piety,' and forbids any sectarian books to be introduced into the public schools. The school committees of each town prescribe the class-books to be used, and commonly make the Bible one of those books. The teacher is expected to follow the law in respect to teaching the principles of piety, without any instruction from the school committee, and is almost always allowed to do this in his own way, unless he is guilty of some impropriety, in which case the school committee interferes. He usually has devotional exercises at the opening of the school, and reads the Scriptures, or causes them to be read, as an act of worship, whether they are prescribed by the committee or not. Many teachers take that occasion to remark upon topics of morality, and thereby aim to prevent misconduct. Indeed, the Bible is much relied on as a means of discipline rather for preventing wrong-doing, than for correcting it. "No minister, as such, gives religious instruction in any of our public schools. Ministers are commonly on the school committees, and when visiting the schools, as committees, exhort the children to good behaviour, and to a religious life. "No cases are known of parents wishing their children to be excused from such religious instruction, except with the Catholics, who desire that their children be excused from the devotional exercises, especially from reading the Protestant version of the Bible. Even this is very rare where the teacher himself reads the Scriptures in connexion with other devotional exercises. It occurs most frequently where the children are required to use the Bible themselves, either in devotional exercises or in a reading lesson. But those wishes are not often regarded, because the committee has a legal right to prescribe the Bible as a school-book, and to require all the pupils to comply with all the regulations of the school. In some few instances, committees have thought it expedient to allow the Douay version to be used by Catholic children; but it amounts to nothing, as it is an abstract point started by the priests, for which parents care but little; besides, it is objected that the Douay version with its glosses is 'a sectarian book,' whereas the common English version without note or comment is not." Scholars desirous of entering the higher schools are generally required to pass through the lower, and bring therefrom certificates of capacity and conduct. In the statute of the State, with reference to education, all professors, tutors, instructors, &c., are enjoined to impress upon the minds of those committed to their charge "the principles of piety, justice, a sacred regard to truth, and love of their country." Among the various subjects in connexion with education, in which instruction is given in these schools, it may be as well to mention one, which, I believe, is all but totally neglected in England. By legislative enactment, section 2, "All school-teachers shall hereafter be examined in their knowledge of the elementary principles of physiology and hygiène, and their ability to give instructions in the same." The School Committee consists of two members from each of the twelve wards of the city, chosen annually, and assisted by the Mayor and President of the Common Council. The average expense of each scholar at the primary schools is 25s. per annum, at the higher schools three guineas. Under the foregoing system, 12,000 children are instructed annually at the primary schools, and 10,000 at the higher schools, which aggregate of 22,000 will give an attendance of nearly 70 per cent. upon all children between the ages of five and fifteen, to whom the avenues of knowledge, from the lisping letters of infancy to the highest branches of philosophy, are freely opened. Through the kindness of Mr. B. Seaver, the Mayor of Boston, I was enabled to visit several of these schools, the cleanliness of which, as well as their good ventilation, was most satisfactory. The plan adopted here, of having the stools made of iron and screwed on to the floor, with a wooden seat fixed on the top for each pupil, and a separate desk for every two, struck me as admirably calculated to improve ventilation and check sky-larking and noise. The number of public schools in the whole State is 4056, which are open for seven months and a half in the year, and the average attendance of scholars is 145,000; besides which, there are 749 private schools, with 16,000 scholars. It is a curious fact, and bears strong testimony to the efficiency of the public schools, that while they have increased by 69 during the year, the private schools have decreased by 36. The foregoing sketch is from the official Reports, printed at Boston in 1853. In addition to these schools, there are four colleges, three theological seminaries, and two medical schools. Of these I shall only notice one of the colleges, which I visited, and which enjoys a high reputation--viz., Harvard College, or Cambridge, as it is sometimes called, from the village where it is situated. The history of this college is a wholesome proof how a small institution, if duly fostered by a nation, may eventually repay future generations with liberal interest. Established in 1636, by a vote of 400l., it obtained the name of Harvard, from the bequeathment by a reverend gentleman of that name, A.D. 1638, of the sum of 780l. and 300 volumes. Its property now amounts to upwards of 100,000l., and it is divided into five departments--collegiate, law, medical, theological, and scientific--affording education to 652 students, of whom one half are undergraduates. There are forty-five instructors, all men of unquestionable attainments, and capable of leading the students up to the highest steps of every branch of knowledge; the necessary expenses of a student are about 45l. a year; the fee for a master of arts, including the diploma, is 1l. sterling. Meritorious students, whose circumstances require it, are allowed, at the discretion of the Faculty, to be absent for thirteen weeks, including the winter vacation, for the purpose of teaching schools. Parents who think their sons unable to take care of their own money, may send it to a patron duly appointed by the college, who will then pay all bills and keep the accounts, receiving, as compensation two and a half per cent. I think the expenses of this establishment will astonish those who have had to "pay the piper" for a smart young man at Oxford, as much as the said young man would have been astonished, had his allowance, while there, been paid into the hands of some prudent and trusty patron. Tandems and tin horns would have been rather at a discount--_cum pluribus aliis_. The college has a look of antiquity, which is particularly pleasant in a land where almost everything is spick-and-span new; but the rooms I thought low and stuffy, and the walls and passages had a neglected plaster-broken appearance. There are some very fine old trees in the green, which, throwing their shade over the time-worn building, help to give it a venerable appearance. A new school of science has just been built by the liberality of Mr. Lawrence,[AL] late Minister of the United States in this country; and I may add that the wealth and prosperity of the college are almost entirely due to private liberality. As the phonetic system of education has been made a subject of so much discussion in the United States, I make no apology for inserting the following lengthy observations thereon. A joint committee on education, appointed to inquire into its merits by the Senate, in 1851, reported that there was evidence tending to show--"That it will enable the pupil to learn to read phonetically in one-tenth of the time ordinarily employed. That it will enable the learner to read the common type in one-fourth of the time necessary according to the usual mode of instruction. That its acquisition leads the pupil to the correct pronunciation of every word. That it will present to the missionary a superior alphabet for the representation of hitherto unwritten languages," &c. A similar committee, to whom the question was referred by the House of Representatives in 1852, state that during the past year the system had been tried in twelve public schools, and that, according to the testimony of the teachers, children evinced greater attachment to their books, and learnt to read with comparative ease; and they conclude their report in these words:--"Impressed with the importance of the phonetic system, which, if primarily learnt, according to the testimony presented, would save two years of time to each of the two hundred thousand children in the State, the committee would recommend to school committees and teachers, the introduction of the phonetic system of instruction into all the primary schools of the State, for the purpose of teaching the reading and spelling of the common orthography, with an enunciation which can rarely be secured by the usual method, and with a saving of time and labour to both teachers and pupils, which will enable the latter to advance in physical and moral education alone until they are six years of age, without any permanent loss in the information they will ultimately obtain." One gentleman of the minority of the committee sent in a very strong report condemning the system. He declares "the system is nothing but an absurd attempt to mystify and perplex a subject, which ought to be left plain and clear to the common apprehensions of common men." Further on he states, "No human ingenuity can show a reason for believing that the way to learn the true alphabet, is first to study a false alphabet; that the way to speak words rightly, is to begin by spelling them wrong; that the way to teach the right use of a letter, is to begin by giving a false account of a letter. Yet the phonetic system, so far as it is anything, is precisely this." Then, again, with reference to the eight specimen scholars, taken from a school of fifty, and who were exhibited, he observes, "they were the same as those who were examined a year ago; nothing is said of the other forty-two. It is not necessary to say anything more of the character of such evidence as this;" and he winds up by observing: "Such a mode of instruction would, in his opinion, waste both the time and the labour employed upon it, and complicate and embarrass a study, which in its true shape is perfectly simple and clear." The following old anecdote would rather tend to prove that spelling and reading were not either "simple or clear" to a Lancashire judge, who, having asked the name of a witness, and not catching the word exactly, desired him to spell it, which he proceeded to do thus:--"O double T, I double U, E double L, double U, double O, D." The learned judge laid down his pen in astonishment, and after two or three unsuccessful efforts, at last declared he was unable to record it--so puzzled was he with the "simple" spelling of that clear name--Ottiwell Wood. In the _Massachusetts Teacher_ of January, 1853, there is the report of a committee, in which they state "that children taught solely by the phonetic system, and only twenty minutes each day, outstripped all their compeers." They further add, that "the phonetic system, thus beneficial in its effects, has been introduced into one hundred and nineteen public and five private schools, and that they have reason to believe, that no committee ever appointed to examine its merits have ever reported adverse to it;" and they conclude by strongly "recommending teachers to test the merits of the System by actual trial in their schools." Then again, in the following number of their journal, they strongly condemn the system as both useless and impracticable. Having carefully weighed the arguments on both sides, I am led to the conclusion, that the objections of those who condemn the system are partly owing to the fact, that while reaching their present advanced state of knowledge, they have entirely forgotten their own struggles, and are thus insensibly led to overlook the confusion and difficulty which must ever arise in the infant mind, where similar combinations produce similar sounds. An infant mind is incapable of grasping differences, but understands readily simple facts; if what meets the eye represent a certain fixed sound, the infant readily acquires that sound; but if the eye rest on _o, u, g, h,_ as a combination, and the endeavour is made to teach him the endless varieties of sound produced thereby, his little mind becomes puzzled, his ideas of truth become confused, his memory becomes distrusted, and his powers of reading become retarded by the time occupied in the--to him--most uninteresting task of learning a host of unmeaning sounds. The inevitable consequence is that the poor little victim becomes disheartened, rendering a considerable amount of additional trouble and--which is far more difficult to find--patience necessary upon the part of the teacher. Common sense points out, that the reading of phonetic words must be more easily learnt than the reading of the aphonetic words, of which our language is essentially composed. The real question is simply this,--Does the infant mind advance with such rapidity under phonetic teaching, as to enable it at a certain age to transfer its powers to orthodox orthography, and reach a given point of knowledge therein, with less trouble, and in a shorter space of time, than those infants do who are educated upon the old system? If phonetic teaching has this effect, it is an inestimable boon, and if not, it is a complete humbug.[AM] It should also be borne in mind, that the same arguments which hold good in the case of infants will apply also, in a great degree, to adults who wish to learn to read, and to foreigners commencing the study of our language. Whether any further use of phonetics is either desirable or practicable, would be a discussion out of place in these pages. When any startling novelty is proposed, enthusiasts carry their advocacy of it so far as often to injure the cause they wish to serve: on the other hand, too many of the educated portion of the community are so strenuously opposed to innovation, as to raise difficulties rather than remove them. Has not the common sense of the age been long calling for changes in the law of partnership, divorce, &c., and is not some difficulty always arising? Has not the commercial world been crying aloud for decimal coinage and decimal weights and measures, and are not educated men constantly finding some objections, and will they not continue to do so, until some giant mind springs up able to grasp the herculean task, and force the boon upon the community? Were not steamboats and railways long opposed as being little better than insane visions? Did not Doctor Lardner prove to demonstration that railway carriages could never go more than twenty miles an hour, owing to the laws of resistance, friction, &c., and did not Brunel take the breath out of him, and the pith out of his arguments, by carrying the learned demonstrator with him on a locomotive, and whisking him ten miles out of London in as many minutes? When I see that among so intelligent and practical a people as the New Englanders--a people whose thoughts and energies are so largely devoted to education--one hundred and nineteen schools have adopted the phonetic system, I cannot but look back to the infancy of steam, and conclude, that there must be more advantages in that system than its opponents seem disposed to allow it to possess. The Committee of Council on Education in England, to whom the funds set apart for educational purposes are, intrusted, authorized the printing of phonetic books for schools some years since; but authorizing books without training masters to teach them, is about as useful as putting engines into a ship, without supplying engineers to work them. Besides which, their phonetic system was in itself confusing and objectionable; they have also informed the public, that the system, in various forms, is almost universally adopted in the elementary schools of Holland, Prussia, and Germany.[AN] I should also mention that other systems have been tried both in England and Scotland, and that those teachers who employ them speak highly of their advantages, especially in the latter country. I have now a paper before me, called _The Reading Reformer_, in which I find the following sentence, which tends to show that the system is approved of in France in the highest quarters:--"The phonetic method of primary instruction is used in the 5th regiment of the line, the 12th Light, the Penitentiary of St. Germain, and the House of Correction for young prisoners. The Minister of War has ordered that French should be taught by this method to the young Arabs, in the three schools of Algiers, Oran, and Philipville." One great mistake has been made by the champions of this mode of teaching, which is more fatal to its success, in my opinion, than any difficulty raised by its opponents, and that is the adoption by each champion of his own phonetic alphabet; and for which he claims a superiority over the alphabets of others. The absurdity of this perpetual strife must be palpable. If a Fireworshipper were to be converted, what hopes of success would there be if a Mormonite and a Mussulman were placed on one side of him, and a Free Kirk man and a Jesuit on the other? The public, as regards phonetic teaching, are precisely in that Fireworshipper's position. Reader, you must form your own opinion: I offer none. And now, with your permission, we will quit the region of speculation and return to sober fact. One of the most striking buildings I visited during my stay at Boston was the jail; the airiness and cleanliness were both perfect, and the arrangement was to me totally novel. Independent of the ground outside, which is walled all round, the jail itself is built under a large outer case, affording abundance of light and ventilation. This outer building forms a corridor all round the jail, affording protection to the keepers from all weathers, and thus enables them to keep an efficient watch over the inmates. Supposing any prisoner to escape from his cell, he is still hemmed in by this outer case, which has only one door, so situated that no one can approach it without being seen from a considerable distance; and, even if these difficulties be overcome, the outer wall common to all prisons still remains. As far as I could learn, no prisoner has ever been able to force his way out. At night a blaze of gas in the outer hall lights all the dormitories and the corridor which runs round outside the jail, thus rendering escape as difficult at night as in broad daylight. Water is freely supplied to every room on every storey, and means of bathing are arranged in various parts of the building. School-rooms, private rooms, and a chapel are all contained within this leviathan outer case. In short, to those who take an interest in improving the airiness of jails and the security of prisoners, this building is well worth the most careful examination; and I trust we may some day profit by the improvements which the ingenuity of the New Englanders has here exhibited, for the frequent escapes from our jails prove that some change is requisite. The Bostonians have applied the telegraph to a most important use, which, I believe, we have totally overlooked in England. The town is divided into sections, in each of which are a certain number of stations; all of these latter have a telegraph-office, communicating with one grand central office, by which means they explain where the fire is. The central office immediately indicates to every section the information thus obtained by the ringing of alarm-bells; and, by this method, every fire-station in the city is informed of the locality of the danger within a few minutes after its occurrence. The naval arsenal at Boston is moderate in size, kept very clean; but when I visited it there were little signs of activity or life. They have only three building sheds, in one of which a vessel has been in progress for twenty years; the other two are vacant. The principal feature is the rope-walk, which is 1640 feet long, and worked by steam-power. The United States, being on friendly terms with England, and so far removed from Europe and its politics and its disturbances, pays comparatively little attention to the navy, which is small, when considered in reference to the size and wealth of the country and the extent of its seaboard. The convention for the amendment of the constitution being in session, I was enabled, through the kindness of Mr. Sumner, the senator for the State, to witness their proceedings, which were conducted with becoming dignity. The speakers, if not eloquent, at least adhered to the subject under discussion, in a manner some of the wordy and wandering gentlemen in our House of Commons might imitate with advantage. The supply of water for the town is brought from Lake Cochitnate, a distance of twenty miles; and the length of piping in connexion with it is upwards of 100 miles. The State authorized a city debt of 900,000l. for the necessary expenses of the undertaking and purchase of the ground, &c. The annual receipts amount to 36,000l., which will, of course, increase with the population. Dwelling-houses pay from 1l. as high as 15l. tax, according to their consumption. The average daily expenditure in 1853 was about 7,000,000 gallons, or nearly 50 gallons per head. Before leaving Boston, I may as well give some evidence of the prosperity of the State. In the year 1830, the population was 600,000; at the present date it is 1,000,000. The exports of domestic produce, which in 1844 amounted to 1,275,000l., now amount to upwards of 2,830,000l.; and the imports, which at the former period amounted to 4,000,000l., now amount to nearly 7,000,000l. The population of Boston has increased 600 per cent. during the present century. Lowell, which is the great Manchester of Massachusetts, has increased its population from 6500 in 1830 to nearly 40,000 at the present date; and the capital invested, which in 1823 was only 500,000l., is now nearly 2,700,000l. I do not wish to weary my readers with statistics, and therefore trust I have said enough to convey a tolerable impression of the go-aheadism of these hardy and energetic descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers; and, for the same reasons, I have not made any observations upon their valuable libraries, hospitals, houses of industry, reformation, &c., the former of which are so largely indebted to private munificence. But before taking my leave of Boston, I must notice the great pleasure I derived from hearing in all quarters the favourable impression which Lord Elgin's visit, on the occasion of opening the railway in 1851, had produced. His eloquence and urbanity was a constant theme of conversation with many of my friends, who generally wound up by saying, "A few such visits as that of the Railway Jubilee would do more to cement the good feeling between the two countries than the diplomacy of centuries could effect." I must here add, that upon my visiting Quebec, I found that the same cordial feeling of fellowship had been produced on the Canadian mind, by the brotherly reception they had met with upon that memorable occasion. Farewell to Boston! but not farewell to the pleasing recollection of the many happy hours I spent, nor of the many kind friends whose acquaintance I enjoyed there, and which I hope on same future occasion to renew and improve. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AL: Such gifts during the lifetime of the donor, are in my estimation, better evidences of liberality and zeal in a cause, than the most munificent bequests even of a Stephen Gerard, who only gave what he could no longer enjoy.] [Footnote AM: A _Vide_ observation by Mr. H. Mann, chap. 20.] [Footnote AN: The expense of printing proper books is sometimes mentioned as an objection, on account of requiring new types for the new sounds taught. No expense can outweigh the value of a change by which education can be facilitated; but even this difficulty has been obviated by Major Beniowski's plan. He obtains the new symbols requisite by simply inverting a certain number of letters for that purpose.] CHAPTER XVIII. _Canada_. Early morning found me seated in the cars on my way to Quebec. Not being a good hand at description of scenery, this railway travelling is a great boon to my unfortunate reader--if he have got thus far. A Nubian clothed in castor-oil, and descending from the heavens by a slippery seat upon a rainbow, might as well attempt to describe the beauties of our sphere as the caged traveller at the tail of the boiling kettle attempt to convey much idea of the scenery he passes through. Not merely do the scrunching squeaks of the break, the blasty trumpet whistle, the slamming of doors, and the squalling of children bewilder his brain and bedeafen his ears, but the iron tyrant enchains and confuses his eyes. A beautiful village rivets his attention,--bang he goes into the tunneled bowels of the earth; a magnificent panorama enchants his sight as he emerges from the realms of darkness; he calls to a neighbour to share the enjoyment of the lovely scene with him; the last sounds of the call have not died away, ere he finds himself wedged in between two embankments, with nought else but the sky for the eye to rest on. Is it any wonder, then--nay, rather, is it not an evidence of truthfulness--that I find the record of my journey thus described in my note-book:--"7-1/2 A.M., Fizz, fizz; hiss, hiss--waving fields--undulating ground--sky--varied tints of green--cottages, cattle, humanities--bridges, bays, rivers, dust, and heat--Rouse's Point, 7-1/2 P.M." At this point we got out of the cage and embarked in a steamer. The shroud of night hung heavily around us, and the lights of Montreal and its suburbs, reflected in the unruffled stream, shone all the brighter from the density of the surrounding darkness, and formed a brilliant illumination. In half an hour I was comfortably housed in the hotel, where, to my agreeable surprise, I met one of my countrywomen, whose many charms had made her a theme of much admiration at Washington, where I first had the pleasure of making her acquaintance. Any one who, wandering far from home, finds himself surrounded with utter strangers, will partially understand the pleasure I enjoyed at finding one face I had looked upon before; but to understand it fully, they must know the face I was then gazing upon. Don't be curious, reader, as to whom it belonged, for I have no intention of enlightening you, further than to say it belonged to her and her husband. Twelve hours of railway makes me sleepy; it's my nature, and I can't help it, so I trust I may be excused, when I confess that I very soon exchanged the smile of beauty for the snore of Morpheus. What my dreams were, it concerns nobody to know. The magnificent brow of hill which overhangs Montreal was named in 1535 Mont Royal, by the famous Jacques Cartier, in honour of his royal master; the French settlement which arose a century after, in the neighbourhood of the Indian village of Hochelaga, assumed the name of the hill, and has at last shaken down into its present combination. What Goths, not to preserve the Indian name which savours of the land and of antiquity, instead of substituting a French concoction! With regard to the site of the town, there is no doubt it is on the island now called Montreal; but where that island is situated may be considered an open question; the river Ottawa runs into the St. Lawrence at the western extremity of the island, and the question is, whether the water on the northern shore is the Ottawa or the St. Lawrence; upon which depends whether the island is in the St. Lawrence, or between the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa. Not wishing to deprive either of their finger in the pie, I should give my verdict in favour of the latter opinion; but I leave it an open question to the reader. The population of the town is increasing rapidly, no doubt owing in great measure to emigration. In 1849 it was 48,000, in 1851, 58,000. The great majority are of the Church of Rome, 41,000; of the Church of England there are 4000; the other denominations are in small numbers. At the time I arrived, the town was full of gloom and excitement, for it was but a few days previous that the Roman Catholics endeavoured to murder Gavazzi, while delivering one of his anti-Romanistic lectures, which, whatever their merits or demerits, were most certainly very injudicious, considering the elements of which the population of Montreal is composed; and it cannot be denied, that Signor Gavazzi's lectures upon sacred subjects are delivered in a style partaking so much of the theatrical, that a person ignorant of the language of his address, might readily suppose that he was taking off John Kemble and Liston alternately, and therefore the uneducated Irish emigrants might very well conclude his sole object was to turn their creed into ridicule. I certainly never heard or saw a person, lecturing on sacred subjects, whose tone and manner were so ridiculously yet painfully at variance with the solemnity due to such a theme. The excitement produced, the constant calling out of the military, and the melancholy sequel, are too recent and well known to require recapitulation here. It is but just to the French Romanists to state, that as a body they repudiated and took no part in the villanous attempt upon Gavazzi's life; the assailants were almost exclusively Irish Romanists, who form nearly one-fifth of the population. Would that they could leaven their faith with those Christian virtues of peacefulness and moderation which shine so creditably in their co-religionists of French origin. While touching upon the subject of the military being called out in aid of the civil power, I am reminded of a passage extracted from some journal which a friend showed me, and which I consider so well expressed, that I make no apology for giving it at length. "THE MOB.--The mob is a demon fierce and ungovernable. It will not listen to reason: it will not be influenced by fear, or pity, or self-preservation. It has no sense of justice. Its energy is exerted in frenzied fits; its forbearance is apathy or ignorance. It is a grievous error to suppose that this cruel, this worthless hydra has any political feeling. In its triumph, it breaks windows; in its anger, it breaks heads. Gratify it, and it creates a disturbance; disappoint it, and it grows furious; attempt to appease it, and it becomes outrageous; meet it boldly, and it turns away. It is accessible to no feeling but one of personal suffering; it submits to no argument but that of the strong hand. The point of the bayonet convinces; the edge of the sabre speaks keenly; the noise of musketry is listened to with respect; the roar of artillery is unanswerable. How deep, how grievous, how burdensome is the responsibility that lies on him who would rouse this fury from its den! It is astonishing, it is too little known, how much individual character is lost in the aggregate character of a multitude. Men may be rational, moderate, peaceful, loyal, and sober, as individuals; yet heap them by the thousand, and in the very progress of congregation, loyalty, quietness, moderation, and reason evaporate, and a multitude of rational beings is an unreasonable and intemperate being--a wild, infuriated monster, which may be driven, but not led, except to mischief--which has an appetite for blood, and a savage joy in destruction, for the mere gratification of destroying." The various fires with which the city has been visited, however distressing to the sufferers, have not been without their good effect, of which the eye has most satisfactory evidence in the numerous public and other buildings now built of stone. The only monument in the city is one which was raised to Nelson. Whether the memory of the hero has passed away, or the ravages of the weather call too heavily on the public purse, I cannot say; but it would be more creditable to the town to remove it entirely, than to allow it to remain in its present disgraceful state. It is reported that its restoration is to be effected by private subscription; if so, more shame to the authorities. As nay first object was to reach Quebec, I only stayed one day at Montreal, which I employed in driving about to see what changes had taken place in the town and neighbourhood since my former visit in 1826. I started by steamer in the evening, and arrived early the next morning. Is there any scene more glorious to look upon than that which greets the eye from the citadel at Quebec? The only scene I know more glorious is Rio Janeiro, which I believe to be by far the grandest in the world; but the Rio lacks the associations of Quebec. Who can ever forget that beneath its walls two chieftains, the bravest of the brave, fell on the same battle-field--the one in the arms of victory, the other in defence of his country and her honour? The spot where our hero fell is marked by a pillar thus simply inscribed:-- HERE DIED WOLFE, VICTORIOUS. Nor has the noble foe been forgotten, though for a long time unnoticed. In the year 1827, the Earl of Dalhousie being Governor-General, a monument was raised in Quebec to Wolfe and Montcalm; and the death they both met at the post of honour is commemorated on the same column,--a column on which an Englishman may gaze with pride and a Frenchman without a blush. The following words, forming part of the inscription, I think well worthy of insertion: "Military prowess gave them a common death, History a common fame, Posterity a common monument." It is a curious fact, that when the foundation-stone was laid, an old soldier from Ross-shire, the last living veteran of the gallant band who fought under Wolfe, was present at the ceremony, being then in his ninety-fifth year. Everybody who has seen or read of Quebec must remember the magnificent towering rock overhanging the river, on the summit of which the citadel is placed, forming at once the chief stronghold of its defence, and the grandest feature of its scenery. But perhaps everybody does not know that to this same glorious feature the city owes its name. The puny exclamation of Jacques Cartier's Norman pilot upon beholding it was, "_Que bec_!" and this expression of admiration has buried, in all but total oblivion, the old Algonquin name of Stadacona. What a pity that old pilot was not born dumb. The increase of population here does not seem, to be very rapid. In 1844, it was about 36,000; now, it is little more than 42,000. There can be no doubt that the severity of the climate is one great cause of so small an increase. When it is remembered that the average arrival of the first vessel after the breaking up of the ice is between the last week of April and the first week in May, this need not he much wondered at. The Governor-General's residence, is removed from the town, and a beautiful little country villa, called Spencer Wood, has been assigned him in lieu. It is situated on the banks of the river, about half a mile inland; the only objection to it is, that the size thereof is not sufficient for vice-regal entertainments; but a very slight addition would remedy that defect. In all other respects it is a charming place, as I can gratefully testify. The drives and sights around the city are too well known to need much notice from me. Montmorenci, with its frozen cone in winter, is one of the chief resorts for pic-nickers in their sleighs. The trackless path over the frozen snow during the season is as full of life as Windsor park was in the old Ascot days. Bright eyes beaming from rosy cheeks, and half buried in furs, anxiously watch for the excitement of a capsize, and laugh merrily as the mixed tenants of some sleigh are seen rolling over one another in most ludicrous confusion; the sun shines brightly, the bells ring cheerily, all is jollity and fun, and a misanthrope would be as much out of his element in one of these pic-nics as a bear in a ballet. The falls of Lorette afford another pleasant excursion, not forgetting old Paul and his wife--a venerable Indian chief and his squaw--whom I visited, and the cleanliness of whose cottage I had great pleasure in complimenting him upon, as also upon his various medals, which extended from Château Gai down to the Exhibition of 1851. He appeared as much struck with my venerable appearance as I was with his; for, upon being asked my age, he bestowed a searching glance from head to foot, and then gravely replied, "Seventy-five." I rebelled against his decision, and appealed to his wife, who kindly took my part, and after a steady gaze, said, "Oh, Paul! that gentleman is not more than seventy-two." It was in vain I tried to satisfy them, that thirty summers would have to pass over my head before I reached that honourable time of life. However, it is not only Indians who miscalculate age, for a young lady, fresh from Ireland, having the same question put to her, said "Sixty;" and upon being told she was seventeen years out in her calculation, she replied, with painful coolness, "Which way?" I never felt a confirmed old bachelor till I heard that awful "Which way?" The roads round about in all directions are admirable; not so if you cross the river to the Falls of the Chaudière; but the abomination of abominations is the ferry-boat, and the facilities, or rather obstacles, for entering and exiting. To any one who has seen the New York ferry-boats, and all the conveniences connected with them, the contrast is painfully humiliating. In the one case you drive on board as readily as into a court-yard, and find plenty of room when you get there; in the other, you have half a dozen men holding horses and carriages, screaming in all directions, and more time is wasted in embarking than a Yankee boat would employ to deposit you safely on the other side; and it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer to decide which is the more abominable, the exit or the entry. Nevertheless, the traveller will find himself compensated for all his troubles--especially if the horse and carriage be a friend's--by the lovely drive which takes him to the Chaudière Falls, a trip I had the pleasure of making in company with a jolly party of good fellows belonging to the 72nd Highlanders, then in garrison at Quebec, and whose hospitalities during my stay I gratefully remember. If, however, an Englishman feels humiliated in crossing the Quebec ferry, he feels a compensating satisfaction upon entering the Quebec Legislative Council Chamber, which in its aspect of cleanliness, furniture, &c., has an appearance of refinement far superior to that at Washington. As they were not sitting during my stay in Canada, I had no opportunity of drawing any comparison on their different modes of carrying on public business. I had heard so much during my absence from England of the famous Rebellion Losses Bill, and all the obloquy which had been heaped upon the Governor-General in consequence, that I was very anxious to get some insight into the true state of the case, although perhaps the justification of the Earl of Elgin's conduct by Sir Robert Peel ought to have satisfied me. I soon became convinced that in this, as in most similar cases, the violence of party spirit had clouded truth; and the bitterness of defeat, in minds thus prejudiced, had sought relief in the too-common channels of violence and abuse. However much to be deplored, I fear that the foregoing opinions will be found, on most occasions of political excitement, to be true. The old party, who may be said to have enjoyed the undisguised support of the Queen's representatives from time immemorial, were not likely to feel very well disposed to Lord Elgin, when they found that he was determined to identify himself with no particular party, but that, being sent to govern Canada constitutionally, he was resolved to follow the example of his sovereign, and give his confidence and assistance to whichever party proved, by its majority, to be the legitimate representative of the opinions of the governed, at the same time ever upholding the right and dignity of the Crown. This was, of course, a first step in unpopularity with the party who, long triumphant, now found themselves in a minority; then, again, it must be remembered that a majority which had for so many years been out of power was not likely, in the excitement of victory, to exercise such moderation as would be calculated to soothe the irritated feelings of their opponents, who, they considered, had enjoyed too long the colonial loaves and fishes. With all these elements at work, it is not to be wondered at that a question which admitted of misinterpretation should be greedily laid hold of, and that, thus misinterpreted, the passions of the mob should be successfully roused. I believe there is little question that the Government brought forward the Rebellion Losses Bill in the Senate in a manner, if not arrogant, at all events most offensive, and thus added fuel to the flames; but, viewed dispassionately, what is the truth of this far-famed bill? It was framed upon the precedent of that for the payment of similar losses in Upper Canada on a previous occasion, and I believe the very same commissioners were appointed to carry out its provisions. It received the sanction of the Governor-General in the same way as all other bills, and was never smuggled through, as the irritated opposition and infuriated mobs would have us believe. The Governor-General clearly states that it never was intended in any way "to compensate the losses of persons guilty of the heinous crime of treason," and the names of the commissioners appointed to decide upon the claims of the sufferers might alone have been a sufficient guarantee that such an abominable idea was never entertained. Without mentioning others, take Colonel W.C. Hanson: schooled in the field of honour and patriotism, whose courage has been tried in many a bloody struggle during the Peninsular war, and is attested by the honourable badges that adorn his breast. Is a recreant rebel likely to find sympathy in that breast which for half a century stood unchallenged for loyalty and truth? What do his letters, as one of the commissioners, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt? I have them now before me; and, so far from claims being hastily admitted, I find the gallant old soldier constantly advocating the cause of some claimant whom the commissioners declined to indemnify, but never yet have I seen his name as opposed to any compensation granted; possessing that still more noble quality which is ever the lovely handmaid of true courage, his voice is raised again and again for mercy. I could quote from numerous letters of this veteran, extracts similar to the following:--The claimants were inhabitants of St. Benoit, some portion of which population had been in arms as rebels, but upon the approach of the Queen's troops they had all laid down their arms. As to the facts of the case, Colonel Hanson writes to Lord Seaton, who replies:--"The soldiers were regularly put up in the village by the Quartermaster-General's department, and strict orders were issued to each officer to protect the inhabitants and their property; Lieut.-Col. Townsend to remain in the village of St. Benoit for its protection, the remainder of the troops to return to Montreal. The utmost compassion and consideration should be felt for the families of the sufferers plunged into affliction by the reckless conduct of their relatives; every house injured or destroyed at St. Benoit was a wanton destruction, perpetrated in defiance of guards placed to protect property." Thus writes Lord Seaton. Colonel Hanson, after quoting the above, proceeds to state that the evidence before the commissioners proves that "immediately after Lieut.-Col. Townsend assembled his regiment for the purpose of marching back to Montreal, the volunteers from the northern townships commenced plundering the village, carrying off the whole of the effects belonging to the inhabitants, burning the church, and nearly every house in the village ... wilfully and wantonly destroying houses, and in many instances burning valuable barns and granaries.... Therefore I humbly pretend that every such individual who thus suffered should be indemnified, as his loss was a wanton destruction of the dwellings, buildings, property, and effects of the said inhabitants." Yet such was the jealous way in which the commissioners excluded all doubtful claimants, that Colonel Hanson found himself in a minority upon the consideration of the foregoing claims, and, as a man of honour and anxious for justice, felt it his duty to address a letter to the Governor-General upon the subject, from which letter, bearing date January, 1852, the foregoing extracts have been taken. I have very many of such complaints of justice being withheld from claimants, in the opinion of the gallant colonel, now lying before me, but "_ex uno disce omnes_." I have read a great portion of the Report, and the conclusion is irresistibly forced upon my mind, that everything which could possibly be brought to assume the slightest shade of rebellion was made fatal to an applicant's claim; but if anything were wanting to satisfy my mind that the vilifiers of the "Losses Bill" had not any ground of complaint against the measure, it would be found in the fact, that among its various opponents to whom I spoke, they one and all exclaimed, "Look at the case of Nelson, absolutely a rebel in arms, and his claims listened to!" This was their invariable reply; and, until I made inquiry, it looked very bad. But what was the real state of the case? Simply that Nelson, having been ruined by his rebellion, many loyal and faithful subjects to whom he owed debts suffered for his faults; and the money awarded for the losses sustained by the rebel went to pay the loyal debtors, except a small portion which was granted to his wife, who was well known to be strongly opposed to the course he had pursued, and who had lost considerable property which she held in her own right. I say that the fact of Nelson's case being always brought up as the great enormity carried more conviction to my mind of the utter weakness of the opponents' cause than anything else; and it also proved to me how ignorant many of them were of the truth, for several of them who vilified the Bill, the Government, and the Governor-General, had not the slightest idea, till I informed them, how the Nelson award was applied. There is no doubt that the atrocities of which Montreal was the scene constitute the most discreditable features in modern Canadian history, and which, it is to be hoped, the instigators to and actors in are long since fully ashamed of; nor can the temper and judgment of the Governor-General on this trying occasion be too highly extolled. When it was imperative to dissolve the Parliament, he foresaw that his not doing so in person would be misconstrued by his enemies, and that he would be branded by them with that most galling of all accusations to a noble heart--cowardice. With a high-minded sense of duty, he put all such personal considerations aside. There were two courses open to him: one, to call out the military, and in their safe keeping dissolve the Assembly; the other, to depute the Commander of the Forces to perform that duty. The former must have produced a collision with the populace, and the blood of many whom he believed to be as loyal as he knew they were misguided and excited would have flowed freely; the latter, he foresaw, would be misconstrued into an act of personal cowardice, but he knew it would prevent a flow of blood, the remembrance of which would keep alive the bitterest elements of political animosity for years to come. With true patriotism, he sacrificed himself at the shrine of the country he was sent to govern, preferring to be the subject of the most galling accusations rather than shed unnecessarily one drop of the blood of those committed to his rule. During the whole of Lord Elgin's able and prosperous administration, I can scarcely conceive any one act of his to which he can look back with more satisfaction, than this triumph of his judgment over his feelings, when he offered up just pride and dignity on the altar of mercy, and retired to Quebec. A shallow-pated fellow, who had probably figured personally in the outrages of that period, in talking to me on the subject, thus described it,--"he bolted off in a funk to Quebec;" and doubtless hundreds of others, as shallow-pated as himself, had been made to believe such was the case, and vituperation being the easiest of all ignoble occupations, they had probably done their best to circulate the paltry slander. Lord Elgin, however, needs no goose-quill defender; the unprecedented increasing prosperity of the colony under his administration is the most valuable testimony he could desire. It is not every governor who, on his arrival, finding a colony in confusion and rebellion, has the satisfaction, on his resignation of office, of leaving harmony and loyalty in their place, and the revenue during the same period increased from 400,000l. to 1,500,000l.: and if any doubt ever rested upon his mind as to whether his services were approved of and appreciated at home, it must have been removed in the most gratifying manner, when, upon a public dinner being given him at the London Tavern, 1854, all shades of politicals gathered readily to do him honour; and while the chairman, Lord John Russell, was eulogizing his talents and his administration, five other colonial and ex-colonial ministers were present at the same board to endorse the compliment; the American Minister also bearing his testimony to the happy growth of good feeling between the two countries, which Lord Elgin had so successfully fostered and developed. I cannot recal to my memory any other instance of so great an honour having been paid to a colonial governor. I was astonished to find so little had been done in Canada for the organization of a militia force, especially when their republican neighbours afford them an example of so much activity and efficiency in that department. It may not be desirable as yet for the colony to establish any military school, such as West Point; but it might be agreeable and advantageous to the colonists, if we allowed a given number of young men to be educated at each of our military colleges in England; those only being eligible, who, by a severe examination, had proved their capabilities, and whose conduct at the places of their education had been noted as exemplary. By such simple means, a certain amount of military knowledge would gradually be diffused amongst the colonists, which would render them more efficient to repress internal troubles or repel foreign aggression. As it may be interesting to some of my readers, I shall here give a slight sketch of the Canadian parliaments. The Legislative Assembly, or House of Commons, is composed of eighty-four members, being forty-two for each province. The qualification for membership is 500l., and the franchise 40s. freehold, or 7l. 10s. the householder; it is also granted to wealthy leaseholders and to farmers renting largely; the term is for four years, and members are paid 1l. per day while sitting, and 6d. per mile travelling expenses. The Legislative Council consists of forty members, and is named by the Crown for life. The Cabinet, or Executive Council, are ten in number, and selected from both Houses by the Governor-General. Their Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Prime Minister. The Canadians wish to do away with the qualification for members of the Assembly, retaining the qualification for the franchise, and to increase the number of members to sixty-five for each province. They also desire to supersede the nomination of the Crown, and to make the Legislative Council elective,[AO] with a property qualification of 1000l., thirty members for each province; these latter to be elected for six years. With regard to the proposed change in the Legislative Council, I confess I look upon its supposed advantages--if carried out--with considerable doubt, inasmuch as the electors being the same as those for the other Chamber, it will become merely a lower house, elected for a longer period, and will lose that prestige which might have been obtained by exacting a higher qualification from the electors. Then, again, I think the period for which they are elected decidedly too short, being fully convinced that an increase in duration will usually produce an increase in the respectability of the candidates offering themselves for election; an opinion in which I am fully borne out by many of the wisest heads who assisted in framing the government of the United States, and who deplored excessively the shortness of the period for which the senators were elected.[AP] I cannot believe, either, that the removing the power of nomination entirely from the Crown will prove beneficial to the colony. Had the experiment been commenced with the Crown resigning the nomination of one-half of the members, I think it would have been more prudent, and would have helped to keep alive those feelings of association with, and loyalty to, the Crown which I am fully certain the majority of the Canadians deeply feel; a phalanx of senators, removed from all the sinister influences of the periodical simoons common to all countries would thus have been retained, and the Governor-General would have had the power of calling the highest talent and patriotism to his councils, in those times of political excitement when the passions of electors are too likely to be enlisted in favour of voluble agitators, who have neither cash nor character to lose. However, as these questions are to be decided, as far as this country is concerned, by those who probably care but little for my opinions, and as the question is not one likely to interest the general reader, I shall not dilate further upon it. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AO: Since my return to England the proposed increase in the Legislative Assembly has taken place. The Imperial Government has also empowered the colony to alter the constitution of the Legislative Council, and to render it elective if they thought proper so to do.] [Footnote AP: _Vide_ Chapter on the "Constitution of the United States."] CHAPTER XIX. _A Trip to the Uttawa_. Having spent a fortnight in the enjoyment of lovely scenery and warm hospitality, and taken a last and lingering gaze at the glorious panoramic view from the citadel, I embarked once more on the St. Lawrence. It was evening; and, as the moon rose bright and clear, the wooded banks and silvered stream formed as charming a picture as the eye of man could wish to rest upon. Morning found us at Montreal. Among my fellow-passengers were two members of the Cabinet, or Executive Council, Mr. Hincks and Mr. Drummond, both on their way to the Ottawa, the commercial importance of that river to the prosperity of the colony having induced them to take the trip with a view of ascertaining, by actual observation and examination, what steps were most advisable to improve its navigation. My intention was to start at once for Kingston; but when they kindly asked me to accompany them, I joyfully accepted, and an hour after I landed at Montreal I was on the rail with my friends, hissing away to Lachine, where the chief office of the Hudson's Bay Company is fixed. There we embarked in a steamer on Lake St. Louis, which is a struggling compound of the dark brown Ottawa and the light blue St. Lawrence. The lake was studded with islands, and the scenery rendered peculiarly lovely by the ever-changing lights and shades from the rising sun. We soon left the St. Lawrence compound and reached that part of the Ottawa[AQ] which the poet has immortalized by his beautiful "Canadian Boat Song." St. Anne's is a small village, and the rapids being impassable in low water they have built a lock to enable steamers to ascend; but fortunately, when we passed, there was sufficient water, and we steamed up the song-famed rapids, above which the river spreads out into the Lake of the Two Mountains. It is proposed to build a railway bridge for the main trunk line, just above the rapids. How utterly the whizzing, whistling kettle spoils the poetry of scenery, undeniable though its utility be! There is no doubt that the Lake of the Two Mountains has many great beauties; but, whatever they may be, a merciless storm of rain effectually curtained them from us, and we traversed the whole lake to Point Fortune in a mist worthy of the Western Highlands. There we took coach, as the locks at Carillon are not yet large enough for full-sized steamers to pass. The road was alike good and uninteresting, running by the side of the canal, whose banks were here and there enlivened by groups of wild flowers. A stage of twelve miles brought us to Grenville, where we again took steamer on the Ottawa, and, the weather being finer, we had an opportunity of enjoying the scenery, which is very peculiar. It has none of the wild features of grandeur which one associates with comparatively unknown streams, in a country where all is gigantesque. There is nothing mountainous or craggy, but the banks and hills at the back being luxuriously wooded, and conveying the idea of being well tenanted, the absence of human habitations seems unnatural, and gives the solitude an air of mystery, only broken at long intervals by a bowered cottage or a wreath of smoke. The most remarkable building is the French château of M. Papineau, very prettily situated on the northern bank, commanding an extensive view of the river, and looking in its isolation as though its occupant was a second Robinson Crusoe, and monarch of all he surveyed. Night soon buried all scenery in its sable mantle, and, after sixty miles steaming, we reached Bytown, where we found friends and conveyances ready to take us over to Aylmer, there to sleep preparatory to a further excursion up the river early in the morning. As the distance was only eight miles, we were soon at Mr. Egan's hospitable board, from which we speedily retired to rest, so as to be ready for the morrow's trip. Early dawn found us on hoard and steaming merrily up the glorious stream, which, spreading out very widely, has been lakefied, and is called Lake Chaudière and Du Chêne, thus named, I suppose, because the water is cold and there are few oaks to be seen. Be that as it may, the scenery, though possessing neither striking features nor variety, is very pretty and cheerful. A quantity of lovely little villas stud the banks, some ensconced snugly in cosy nooks, others standing out boldly upon the rich greensward; and, for a background, you have full-bosomed hills, rich in forest monarchs, clad in their dense and dark mantles. Suddenly the scene changes, the Chats Falls burst upon the sight; and well does the magnificent view repay the traveller for any difficulty he may have had in his endeavours to reach this spot. About three miles above the rocky and well-wooded island that creates the falls, the river contracts very considerably, and in its rushing impetuosity seems as though it were determined to sweep the whole island into the lake below; then there appears to have been a compromise between the indignant stream and the obstinate island, and the latter seems to have offered up a great portion of its timber at the shrine of Peace, and to have further granted various rights of way to its excited neighbour. The river seems to have taken advantage of both these concessions very largely, but it appears that in nature, as it often occurs in politics, concessions only breed increased demands, and the ungrateful Ottawa, while sweeping away forest timber and baring the granite rock in a dozen different channels, thunders its foaming waters along with an angry voice, ever crying "More, more." I never saw anything more beautiful than these falls. They are generally from twenty to forty feet broad, and about the same in height; but from the shape of the island you cannot see them all at once; and as you steam along there is a continual succession of them, each revealing some new beauty. It was at this place that I, for the first time, saw a slide for the descent of lumber, to which I shall have to refer hereafter. For many years the porterage of goods across this island to the Ottawa above--which is called Lake Chats--was a work of much difficulty and expense. Mr. E., with that enterprise and energy which mark his character, got two friends of kindred spirit to join him, and made a railway across, about three miles and a half long. It is a single line, constructed upon piles, and the car is rattled over at a jolly pace by two spicy ponies. As the piles are in some places from twenty to thirty feet in the air, it looks nervous work; and if one of the ponies bolted, it might produce a serious accident; but they seem aware of the danger, and trot away as steadily as an engine, if not quite so rapidly. On reaching the north-western end of the island, another steamer was waiting for us, and we again breasted the stream of the Ottawa. After passing the first three miles, which, as before mentioned, are very narrow, and thus produce that additional impetus which ends in the lovely Chats Falls, the river opens out into the Lake. The shores are low and with a gentle rise, and there is comparatively little appearance of agricultural activity, the settler having found the ground at the back of the rise better suited for farming purposes. Some distance up the lake, and close to its margin, is the farm of Mr. McDonnell, thus forming an exception to the general rule. His residence is an excessively pretty cottage, commanding a grand panoramic view. Here we stopped to pay a visit to the energetic old Highlander and his family, and to enjoy his hospitalities. If he is to be taken as a specimen of the salubrity of the climate, I never saw so healthy a place. He came here as a lad to push his fortunes, with nothing but a good axe and a stout heart. He has left fifty summers far behind him; he looks the embodiment of health, and he carries his six feet two inches in a way that might well excite the envy of a model drill-sergeant; and when he took my hand to welcome me, I felt all my little bones scrunching under his iron grasp, as if they were so many bits of pith. I could not help contrasting the heartiness of his welcome with the two stiff fingers which in highly-civilized life are so often proffered either from pride or indifference; and though he did very nearly make me cry "Enough!" I would a thousand times rather suffer and enjoy his hearty grasp than the cold formality of conventional humbug. The hardy old pioneer has realized a very comfortable independence, and he told me his only neighbours were a band of his countrymen at the back of the hill, who speak Gaelic exclusively and scarce know a word of English. They mostly came out with "The Macnab," but from time to time they are refreshed by arrivals from the Old Country. Having a long day's work before us, we were enabled to make but a short stay, so, bidding him and his family a sincere good-bye and good speed, we renewed our journey. We soon came in sight of the black stumpy monuments of one of the most disastrous conflagrations which ever victimized a forest. Some idea may be formed of the ravages of the "devouring element," from the simple fact that it all but totally consumed every stick of timber covering a space of forty-five miles by twenty-five; and the value of what was thus destroyed may be partially estimated, when it is considered that one good raft of timber is worth from three to five thousand pounds. These rafts, which are seen dotted about the lake in every direction, have a very pretty effect, with their little distinguishing flags floating in the breeze, some from the top of a pole, some from the top of the little shanty in which their hardy navigators live; and a dreary, fatiguing, and dangerous career it must be; but Providence, in his mercy, has so constituted man, that habit grows into a new nature; and these hardy sons of creation sing as merrily, smile as cheerfully, smoke as calmly, and unquestionably sleep as soundly, as any veteran in idleness, though pampered with luxuries, and with a balance at his banker's which he is at a loss how to squander. These sons of toil bear practical testimony to the truth of what the late lamented Sir J. Franklin always declared to be his conviction, from long experience, viz., that the use of spirits is enfeebling rather than invigorating to those who have to work in the most severe climates. The Lumberers are nearly all teetotallers, and I am told they declare that they find their health bettered, their endurance strengthened, their muscles hardened, and their spirits enlivened by the change. If this be so, and if we find that the natives of warm climates are, as a mass, also teetotallers, and that when they forsake their temperance colours they deteriorate and eventually disappear, I fear we must come to the conclusion, that however delicious iced champagne or sherry-cobbler may be, or however enjoyable "a long pull at the pewter-pot," they are not in any way necessary to health or cheerfulness, and that, like all actions, they have their reactions, and thus create a desire for their repetition, until by habit they become a second nature, to the great comfort and consolation of worthy wine-merchants and fashionable medical men, whose balance-sheets would suffer about equally by the discontinuance of their use; not to mention the sad effects of their misuse, as daily exhibited in police reports and other features, if possible worse, which the records of "hells" would reveal. So strong does the passion become, that I know of a lady who weighs nearly a ton, and is proud of displaying more of her precious substance than society generally approves of, in whom the taste "for a wee drop" is so strong, that, to enable her to gratify it more freely, she has the pleasure of paying two medical men a guinea each daily, to stave off as long as they can its insidious attacks upon her gigantic frame. You must not, however, suppose that I am a teetotaller. I have tried it, and never found myself better than while practising it; still I never lose a chance if a bottle of iced champagne is circulating, for I confess--I love it dearly. Pardon this digression.--We are again on the Ottawa; as we advance, the river narrows and becomes studded with little islands covered with wild shrubs and forest trees, from whose stiff unyielding boughs the more pliant shoots droop playfully into the foaming stream below, like the children of Gravity coquetting with the family of Passion. Of course these islands form rapids in every direction: we soon, approach the one selected as the channel in which to try our strength. On we dash boldly--down rushes the stream with a roar of defiance; arrived midway, a deadly struggle ensues between boiling water and running water; we tremble in the balance of victory--the rushing waters triumph; we sound a retreat, which is put in practice with the caution of a Xenophon, and down we glide into the stiller waters below. Poke the fires,--pile the coals! Again we dash onwards--again we reach midway--again the moment of struggle--again the ignominy of defeat--again the council of war in the stiller waters below. We now summon all our energies, determined that defeat shall but nerve us to greater exertion. We go lower down, so as to obtain greater initial velocity; the fires are made to glow one spotless mass of living heat. Again the charge is sounded: on we rush, our little boat throbbing from stem to stern; again the angry waters roar defiance--again the deadly struggle--again for a moment we tremble in the balance of victory. Suddenly a universal shout of triumph is heard, and as the joyous cheers die in echoes through the forest, we are breasting the smoother waters of the Ottawa above the rapids. This is all very well on paper, but I assure you it was a time of intense excitement to us; if in the moment of deadly struggle the tiller ropes had broken, or the helmsman had made one false turn of the wheel, we might have got across the boiling rapids, and then good-bye to sublunary friends; our bones might have been floating past Quebec before the news of our destruction had reached it. The Ottawa is by no means the only channel in these parts for conveying the produce of the lumberer's toil: there are tributaries innumerable, affording hundreds of miles of raft navigation; so that an almost indefinite field for their labour is open, and years, if not centuries, must elapse before the population can increase sufficiently to effect any very material inroad on these all but inexhaustible forests. After proceeding a few miles beyond the scene of our late severe struggle, we reached the little village of Portage du Fort, above which the rapids are perfectly impassable. The inhabitants of this little wild forest community are not very numerous, as may be supposed, and the only object of interest is a flour-mill, which supplies the lumberers for many miles, both above and below. Our little steamer being unable to ascend higher, we were compelled to make a Scotchman's cruise of it--"There and bock agin." So, turning our head eastward, we bowled along merrily with the stream, dashing down our late antagonist like a flash of lightning, then across the lake, and through a fleet of bannered rafts, till we landed on the Chats Falls Island, where we found our ponies ready to whisk us along the mid-air railway. Re-embarking on the steamer of the morning, we found a capital dinner ready for us, and ere the shades of evening had closed in, we were once more enjoying the hospitalities of Aylmer. Aylmer has only a population of 1100 inhabitants, but they are not idle. The house of Mr. E. does business with the lumberers to the tune of 200,000l. annually, and supplies them with 15,000 lb. of tea every year. Grog-shops are at a discount in these parts. The increasing prosperity of this neighbourhood is mainly owing to the energy and enterprise of Mr. Egan and his friend M. Aumond. It was by these two gentlemen that the steam-boats were put on the lakes, and the rail made across the island. Everybody feels how much the facility of conveyance has increased the prosperity of this locality; and the value of Mr. E.'s services is honourably recognised, by his unopposed election as the representative of the district. Having had a good night's rest, and taken in a substantial breakfast, we started off on our return to Bytown, which city may he considered as the headquarters of the lumberers. The ground upon which the greater part of Bytown stands was offered some years since to a servant, as payment for a debt of 70l.; he found the bargain so bad, that he tried to get out of it. The value of the same land is now estimated at 200,000l.!!! As late as 1826, there was not one stone put upon another; now the population is 10,000, and steadily increasing. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the panoramic view from the verge of the Barrack Hill, which is a dark, frowning, perpendicular rock several hundred feet high. To the west are the Chaudière Falls, 200 feet broad and 60 feet high, irregular in shape, and broken here and there by rocks, around which the rapids leap in unceasing frenzy, ere they take their last plunge into the maddened gulf below, thence rolling their dark waters beneath your feet. Below the falls the river is spanned by a very light and beautiful suspension-bridge. This part of the scene is enlivened by the continual descent of timber-rafts rushing down the slides, skilfully guided by their hardy and experienced navigators. Around you is a splendid expanse of waving field and sombre forest, far as the eye can stretch, and bounded towards the north by mountains looming and half lost in distance, whence comes the mighty Gatineau--a watery highway for forest treasure, threading its course like a stream of liquid silver as the sun's rays dance upon its bosom,--the whole forming one of the most beautiful panoramas imaginable. No place was ever better calculated for the capital of a great country. Bordering upon Upper and Lower Canada, only twelve hours from Montreal, easily capable of defence, with a trade increasing in value as rapidly as the source thereof is inexhaustible, at the confluence of two rivers whose banks are alike rich in timber and arable land--requiring but nineteen miles of lockage to unite the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the Gatineau with the boundless inland lakes of America--possessing the magnificent Rideau Canal, which affords a ready transport down to Kingston on Lake Ontario--rich with scenery, unsurpassed in beauty and grandeur, and enjoying a climate as healthy as any the world can produce,--Nature seems to have marked out Bytown as the site for a Canadian metropolis. In short, were I a prophet instead of a traveller, I should boldly predict that such it must be some day, if Canada remain united and independent. I must here explain the slides for lumber, before alluded to. In days gone by, all lumber was shot down the rapids, to find its way as best it could, the natural consequence being that large quantities were irrecoverably lost. It occurred to Mr. Wright that this waste of toil and timber might be obviated, and he accordingly, after great labour and expense, succeeded in inventing what is termed a slide--in other words, an inclined wooden frame--upon which a certain number of the huge logs that compose a portion of a raft can be floated down together in perfect security, under the guidance of one or two expert men. The invention answered admirably, as is proved by the fact that, through its instrumentality, timber which formerly took two seasons to reach Quebec, now does so in five months. Like many other inventors, I fear Mr. Wright has not received justice at the hands of the Government, who, by building slides of their own, and granting advantages to those who use them, have thus removed the traffic from Mr. Wright's--an injustice which it is to be hoped it is not too late to repair; at all events, the Imperial Legislature, which felt bound to vote 4000l. to a man that invented a machine for making little holes between penny stamps, on the ground of commercial utility, must agree with me that it is unworthy of a lumbering colony to neglect the claims of a man whose invention has proved to be a benefit to the lumber trade, absolutely beyond calculation. The chief proprietor at Bytown is the Hon. Mr. Mackay, and of his career in Canada he may indeed be justly proud. Arriving in the country as a labourer without a friend, he has, by his integrity and intellectual capability, fought his way up nobly to the highest position in the colony, and is one of the most respected members of the Legislative Council. Nor has he, while battling for senatorial honours, neglected his more material interests, and the energy he has brought to bear upon them has been rewarded to his heart's desire. He has a charming little country place, called Rideau Hall, about three miles out of town, and is the owner of several carding, saw, and flour mills, besides an extensive cloth factory, from the produce of which I am at this moment most comfortably clad. Mr. Mackay's career may fairly be termed a useful colonial monument, to encourage the aspirations of noble ambition, and to scourge the consciences of those drones who always see "a lion in the way." We had the pleasure of enjoying his hospitalities at a grand breakfast which he gave in honour of my two travelling friends, who were, I believe, the first members of the Executive Council that had been here for very many years. One object of their present visit was to ascertain, from personal observation and inquiry, how far it was desirable the Government should grant money for the purpose of making any of the locks requisite to connect the Ottawa, &c., with Montreal and Quebec. I cannot for an instant doubt their being most thoroughly convinced both of its perfect practicability and of its immense importance. It only requires the construction of nineteen miles of canal, to complete an unbroken water communication from Quebec to the Ottawa and all its gigantic tributaries, extending even to Lake Temiscaming; and if a canal were cut from this latter to Lake Nipissing, the communication would then be complete through the heart of Canada across all the inland ocean waters of the American continent, and thence to New York _viâ_ Erie Canal and Hudson, or to New Orleans _viâ_ Illinois Canal, River, and Mississippi. Already 50,000l. have been, voted for this purpose, and this first instalment is mainly due to the energy of Mr. Egan. As a mark of respect for their representative, he was to be honoured with a public dinner, at which my two companions of the Executive Council were to attend. Unfortunately, my time was limited, and I was obliged to decline participating in the compliment which Mr. Egan had so well earned; so, bidding adieu to my friends, and casting one last and lingering glance at that glorious panorama--the remembrance of which time can never efface, I got into an open shay, and began prosecuting my solitary way towards Prescott. I left the hotel as the guests were all arriving, and the fumes of the coming feast proclaiming in the most appetizing way the object of their meeting. I had two hours' daylight still left, and thus was enabled to see a little of that part of the neighbourhood, which alone was concealed when standing on the Barrack-hill. The more I saw of it, the more convinced was I of the peculiar adaptation of Bytown for a great city; the ground is admirably suited for building, and possesses a water-power which is inexhaustible. My road, as may naturally be supposed in a new country, lay through alternations of forest and cultivation; if it was not well macadamized, at least it was far better than I had expected, and there is some pleasure in being agreeably disappointed, and able to jog along without eternally bumping in some deep rut, which shakes the ash off your cigar inside your waistcoat. Here and there, of course, I came across a break-neck tract, but that only made the contrast more enjoyable. At half-past twelve at night the little horses began to feel the effects of six hours' work, so I stopped at a tolerably miserable wayside inn for four hours, which was distributed between washing, feeding, and sleeping. Sharp work, but I was anxious to catch the steamer; so, snatching what rest I could out of that brief period, and hoping the horses had done the same, I was again _en route_ at 5 A.M., and by great exertions reached Prescott in good time to learn that the steamer had started half an hour before my arrival. I consoled myself, as well as I could, with a washing basin, a teapot, and auxiliaries. I then went to look at the town, which consists of about three streets, and 3000 inhabitants; so that operation was accomplished without trouble, interest, or much loss of time. Ascertaining that if I went over to Ogdensburg, I could catch a steamer at 2 P.M., I ferried across instanter, wishing to get a look at Brother Jonathan's town before starting. A comparison between the two was not flattering to my national vanity. Instead of finding a population of 3000, with no indication of progress, I found a population of 8000, with go-aheadism in all quarters; large houses, large streets, and active prosperity stamped on everything. Doubtless this disparity is greatly owing to the railway, by which the latter is connected with the whole State of New York, and also from the want of reciprocity. Nevertheless, there is a stamp of energy at Ogdensburg, which the most careless observer cannot but see is wanting at Prescott. Mr. Parish is the great proprietor at the former of these towns, and is said to be a man of considerable wealth, which he appears to be employing alike usefully and profitably--viz., in reclaiming from the lake a piece of land, about four hundred square yards, adjoining the railway terminus, by which means vessels will be able to unload readily on his new wharf; the reclaimed ground will thereby acquire an enormous value for storehouses. Having finished my observations, and been well baked by a vertical sun, I embarked at 2 P.M. Lovely weather and lovely scenery. The village of Brockville is very prettily situated on the banks of the lake, and is considered one of the prettiest towns in Canada. Continuing our course, numberless neat little villages and lovely villas appear from time to time; but when fairly on the Lake of The Thousand Isles, the scenery is altogether charming, and some new beauty is constantly bursting into view. Upon the present occasion the scene was rendered more striking by the perfect reflection of all the islands upon the burnished bosom of the glassy lake. We reached Cape Vincent towards evening, and, changing into another steamer, landed safely at Kingston about ten at night, where, finding a young artillery friend, I was soon immersed in that most absorbing of all pleasures to one long from home--viz., talking over old friends and old scenes, until you feel as though you were among both of them. Night, however, has its claims upon man, and, being honest, I discharged my obligation by going to bed as the tell-tale clock struck three. Kingston is but a small place, though once of considerable importance. The population is about 12,000. In the year 1841, Lord Sydenham having removed the seat of Government from Toronto to Kingston, the inhabitants expended large sums of money in the expectation that it would so continue; but, in 1844, it was removed back again, and consequently a very heavy loss was incurred by those who had laid out their money. It is this eternal shifting about of the seat of Government--the disadvantage of which must be manifest to every one--that makes me hope Bytown, the position of which is so central, may some day be decided upon as the city to enjoy that honour permanently. However much Kingston may be recovering itself, and I was told it is, I must confess that, despite its cathedral, colleges, university, and other fine buildings, which it undoubtedly possesses, the grass in the streets and lanes, the pigs and the cows feeding about in all directions, made me feel ashamed, especially when I thought of young Ogdensburg, which I had so lately left. Taking into consideration the extent of lake communication which it enjoys, and that by the magnificent Rideau Canal the whole country of the Ottawa is open to it, I must say that I consider the state of Kingston the strongest reflection upon the energy and enterprise of the population. The finest view is from the citadel, which commands a splendid panoramic expanse; the fortifications are in good repair, and garrisoned by Canadian Rifles and a few Royal Artillerymen. One of the objects I should have had most interest in visiting was the Provincial Penitentiary, the arrangements of which, I had heard, were admirable; but, as I had no time to see them, the reader is saved the details. At 3 P.M., I was again steaming away on Lake Ontario, which soon spreads out into an open sea. The boat was tolerably good and clean, and the food to match, but it was served down below; the cabin was therefore very stuffy. I selected a bed with great care, and in due time got into it, quite delighted with my carefully-chosen position, and soon buried my nose in the pillow, full of peaceful hopes. Luckless mortal! scarce had my nose extracted the cold from its contact with the pillow-case, when a sound came rushing forth with a violence which shook not only me and my bed, but the whole cabin. The tale is soon told. I had built my nest at the muzzle of the whistle of the engine, and, as they made a point of screeching forth the moment anything appeared in sight, you may guess that I had a pleasant night of it, and have scrupulously avoided repeating the experiment in any subsequent steam excursions. Having nobody to blame but myself, I lost the little satisfaction I might have had in abusing somebody else, and calling him a stupid ass for making such a choice. However, as a matter of justice, I abused myself, and the point being beyond dispute, no rejoinder was put in. Pleased with the candour of my confession, I caught such snatches of rest as the engineer and his whistle in mercy vouchsafed me--the next morning we were in Toronto. * * * * * NOTE.--The Bytown mentioned in the foregoing chapter is now called Ottawa, and is a candidate, in conjunction with Montreal and Toronto, for the honour of permanent metropolitanism. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AQ: Originally Uttàwa, wherein Moore has shown alike his good taste and respect for antiquity by adhering to the original and more beautiful name.] CHAPTER XX. _Colonial Education and Prosperity_. Toronto is prettily situated, and looks flourishing and prosperous; the way in which property is increasing in value here is wonderful, and the hits some people have made are quite fabulous. A property which had been bought for 30,000l., was, within a month--before even the price was paid in full--resold in lots for 100,000l. The position of the town is admirably adapted for a great commercial city: it possesses a secure harbour; it is situated on a lake about 190 miles long by 50 broad; thence the St. Lawrence carries its produce to the ocean, and the Rideau Canal connects it with the lumberers' home on the Ottawa; the main trunk line of railway, which will extend from the western point of the colony to Halifax, passes through it; a local line, traversing some of the richest land in Canada, is now in progress to Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron; one iron horse already affords it communication with Waterloo--nearly opposite Buffalo--whence produce descends by the Erie Canal and the Hudson to New York: besides all which advantages, it enjoys at present the privilege of being one of the seats of government and the radiating point of education. Surely, then, if any town in Upper Canada ought to flourish, it is Toronto; nor is there, I trust, any reason to doubt that it will become a most wealthy and important place. The influence of the young railways is already beginning to be felt: the population, which in 1851 was only 25,000, amounted in 1853 to upwards of 30,000, and is still rapidly increasing. Having been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Cumberland, the chief engineer of the line of railway to Lake Simcoe, he was kind enough to ask me to accompany him to that lake on a trip of inspection, an offer of which I gladly availed myself. I was delighted to find that the Canadians had sufficient good sense to patronize first and second class carriages; and, also, that they have begun to make their own carriages and locomotives. The rails appeared very solidly laid down, and the road fenced off; but, despite the fences, an inquisitive cow managed to get on the line, and was very near being made beef of in consequence. The progress of cultivation gave the most satisfactory evidence of increasing prosperity, while the virgin forest-land told what a rich harvest was still in store for the industrious emigrant. Ever and anon you saw on the cleared ground that feature so peculiar to American scenery, a patriarchal remnant of the once dense forest, as destitute of branches as the early Adam was of small-clothes, his bark sabled by the flames, the few summit leaves--which alone indicated vitality--scarce more in number than the centuries he could boast, and trembling, as it were, at their perilous weight and doubtful tenure, while around him stood stumps more sabled, on whom the flames had done more deadly work, the whole--when the poetry had passed away--reminding one of a black Paterfamilias standing proudly in the centre of his nigger brood. There is a good iron-foundry established here, which turns out some excellent engines. Some of the public buildings are also fine; but, there being unfortunately no quarries in the neighbourhood, they are built of brick. The Lunatic Asylum is one of the best; but it is surrounded with a high prison-looking wall, which I believe modern experience condemns strongly as exercising a baneful influence upon the unfortunate patients. If it be so, let us hope it may be enclosed by something more light, airy, and open. Several of the churches are very fine. I visited the Episcopal Church, which has been burnt down three times; and on my remarking to the architect the apparent clumsiness of the pews, which destroyed the effect inside, he smiled, and told me that by the contract he was obliged to replace them exactly as before. I told him I thought it was a specimen of conservatism run mad, to which he fully assented. Trinity Episcopal College is one of the finest edifices in the neighbourhood; at present it contains only thirty-five students, but it is to be hoped its sphere of usefulness may be extended as its funds increase. It has the foundation of a very good library, which is rapidly extending; the University of Cambridge sent them out a magnificent addition of 3000 volumes. The last building I shall mention is the Normal School, to visit which was one of my chief objects in stopping at Toronto. [Illustration: THE NORMAL SCHOOL, TORONTO] The ceremony of laying the foundation-stone of this building was inaugurated with all due solemnity, and under the auspices of the able representative of our gracious Queen, on the 2nd of July, 1851. In his eloquent speech on that memorable occasion, when referring to the difficulties on the question of religious instruction, the following beautiful passage occurs:-- "I understand, sir, that while the varying views and opinions of a mixed religious society are scrupulously respected, while every semblance of dictation is carefully avoided, it is desired, it is earnestly recommended, it is confidently expected and hoped, that every child who attends our common schools shall learn there that he is a being who has an interest in eternity as well as in time; that he has a Father towards whom he stands in a closer and more affecting and more endearing relationship than to any earthly father, and that Father is in heaven; that he has a hope far transcending every earthly hope--a hope full of immortality--the hope, namely, that that Father's kingdom may come; that he has a duty which, like the sun in our celestial system, stands in the centre of his moral obligations, shedding upon them a hallowing light which they in their turn reflect and absorb,--the duty of striving to prove by his life and conversation the sincerity of his prayer that that Father's will may be done upon earth as it is in heaven. I understand, sir, that upon the broad and solemn platform which is raised upon that good foundation, we invite the ministers of religion of all denominations--the _de facto_ spiritual guides of the people of the country--to take their stand along with us; that, so far from hampering or impeding them in the exercise of their sacred functions, we ask, and we beg them to take the children--the lambs of the flock which are committed to their care--aside, and lead them to those pastures and streams where they will find, as they believe it, the food of life and the waters of consolation. * * * * * "Permit me in conclusion, to say, both as an humble Christian man and as the head of the civil government of the province, that it gives me unfeigned pleasure to perceive that the youth of this country, of all denominations, who are destined in their maturer years to meet in the discharge of the duties of civil life upon terms of perfect civil and religious equality--I say it gives me pleasure to hear and to know that they are receiving an education which is fitted so well to qualify them for the discharge of these important duties, and that while their hearts are yet tender and their affections yet green and young, they are associated under conditions which are likely to promote among them the growth of those truly Christian graces--mutual respect, forbearance, and charity." The position of the building is well chosen, being surrounded with cultivated ground sufficiently extensive to be usefully employed in illustrating the lectures given on vegetable physiology and agricultural chemistry. The rooms are all very lofty, airy, and scrupulously clean. A notice at the entrance warns you--"The dirty practice of spitting not allowed in this building;" and as far as eye could discern, the notice is rigidly obeyed. I was told that a specific had been found to cure the filthy habit. I mention it for the benefit of hotel-keepers and railway-conductors, in all places where such a relic of barbarism may still find a welcome. On a certain occasion, the lecturer having received undeniable proof that one of the students had violated the above-mentioned regulation, stopped in the middle of one of his sublimest flights, repeated sonorously the notice, called the culprit by name, informed him that his endeavour to dissipate his filth into infinity by the sole of his shoe was useless, and ordered him forthwith to take his handkerchief out and wipe it up clean. Disobedience was expulsion: with crimson cheek he expiated his offence by obedience to the order, and doubtless during the hushed silence in which he completed his labour, he became a confirmed anti-expectorationist. Great attention is very properly paid to cleanliness, inasmuch as if these young men, who are destined to teach others, acquire filthy habits, they naturally encourage the same vice in their pupils, and thus may be almost said to nationalize it. All the tables and stools are fitted like those in the schools of the United States, which is an immense improvement on the one long-desk and long form to match, which predominate all but universally at home. The instruction given is essentially by lecture and questioning; and I was particularly struck with the quiet modulated tones in which the answers were given, and which clearly proved how much pains were taken upon this apparently trifling, but really very important, point.[AR] You heard no harsh declamation grating on your ear; and, on the other hand, you were not lulled to sleep by dreary, dull monotony. There are two small schools attached to the establishment, for these Normal aspirants, male and female, to practise upon, when considered sufficiently qualified. Those thus employed during my visit seemed to succeed admirably, for I never saw more merry, cheerful faces, which I consider one of the best tests of a master's efficiency. The little girls, taking a fancy for music, purchased among themselves a cottage piano, which, being their own instrument, I have no doubt increased their interest in the study amazingly. The boys have a kind of gymnasium under a shed, which, when released from school, they rush to with an avidity only equalled by that which the reader may have experienced in his early days when catching sight of a pastry-cook's shop immediately after receiving his first tip.[AS] I believe that to this establishment, which was founded in 1846, belongs the honour of being the Pioneer Normal School in the Western Hemisphere. But while giving due credit to the Governor-General and the Government for their leading parts in its foundation, it should never be forgotten, how much indebted the establishment is to the unwearying zeal and patient investigations of Dr. Ryerson, the chief superintendent of schools in Canada. This gentleman carefully examined the various systems and internal arrangement of scholastic establishments, not only all over the States, but in every country of the Old World, selecting from each those features which seemed to produce the most comfort, the best instruction, and the greatest harmony. The result of his inquiries I subjoin from his own pen:-- "Our system of public elementary instruction is eclectic, and is, to a considerable extent, derived from four sources. The conclusions at which the present head of the department arrived during his observations and investigations of 1845, were, firstly: That the machinery, or law part of the system, in the State of New York, was the best upon the whole, appearing, however, defective in the intricacy of some of its details, in the absence of an efficient provision for the visitation and inspection of schools, the examination of teachers, religious instruction, and uniform text-books for the schools. Secondly. That the principle of supporting schools in the State of Massachusetts was the best, supporting them all according to property, and opening them to all without distinction; but that the application of this principle should not be made by the requirements of state or provincial statute, but at the discretion and by the action, from year to year, of the inhabitants in each school municipality--thus avoiding the objection which might be made against an uniform coercive law on this point, and the possible indifference which might in some instances be induced by the provisions of such a law--independent of local choice and action. Thirdly: That the series of elementary text-books, prepared by experienced teachers, and revised and published under the sanction of the National Board of Education in Ireland, were, as a whole, the best adapted to schools in Upper Canada--having long been tested, having been translated into several languages of the continent of Europe, and having been introduced more extensively than any other series of text-books into the schools of England and Scotland. Fourthly: That the system of normal-school training of teachers, and the principles and modes of teaching which were found to exist in Germany, and which have been largely introduced into other countries, were incomparably the best--the system which makes school-teaching a profession, which, at every stage, and in every branch of knowledge, teaches things and not merely words, which unfolds and illustrates the principles of rules, rather than assuming and resting upon their verbal authority, which develops all the mental faculties instead of only cultivating and loading the memory--a system which is solid rather than showy, practical rather than ostentatious, which prompts to independent thinking and action rather than to servile imitation. "Such are the sources from which the principal features of the school system in Upper Canada have been derived, though the application of each of them has been modified by the local circumstances of our country. There is another feature, or rather cardinal principle of it, which is rather indigenous than exotic, which is wanting in the educational systems of some countries, and which is made the occasion and instrument of invidious distinctions and unnatural proscriptions in other countries; we mean the principle of not only making Christianity the basis of the system, and the pervading element of all its parts, but of recognising and combining in their official character, all the clergy of the land, with their people, in its practical operations--maintaining absolute parental supremacy in the religious instruction of their children, and upon this principle providing for it according to the circumstances, and under the auspices of the elected trustee-representatives of each school municipality. The clergy of the country have access to each of its schools; and we know of no instance in which the school has been made the place of religious discord; but many instances, especially on occasions of quarterly public examinations, in which the school has witnessed the assemblage and friendly intercourse of clergy of various religious persuasions, and thus become the radiating centre of a spirit of Christian charity and potent co-operation in the primary work of a people's civilization and happiness." With reference to religious instruction at the normal schools, Dr. Ryerson has kindly furnished me with the following statement:--"A part of each Friday afternoon is set apart for this purpose, and a room allowed for the minister of each of the religious persuasions of the students, to give instruction to the members of his church, who are required to attend, as also to attend the service of such church at least once every Sunday. Hitherto we have found no difficulty, reluctance, or neglect, in giving full effect to this system." The only difficulty in these matters that I have heard of, is a long dispute with the Roman Catholic bishop of Toronto; but such an event one must be prepared for when dealing with a church which claims infallibility. I have no doubt the tact and moderation of Dr. Ryerson have ere this thrown oil on the troubled waters, and restored the harmony which existed between the former Roman bishop and the reverend doctor. To those who take an interest in education, the report of the system used in Canada, drawn up by Dr. Ryerson, and printed by order of the Legislative Assembly, will afford much pleasure and information. It is, of course, far too large a subject to enter upon in these pages, containing, as it does, so vast an amount of matter worthy of serious reflection. I will, however, indulge such of my friends as were taught to read in the last century, with a quotation from page 67, which will probably astonish them. Mr. Horace Mann, so long the able Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts, after pointing out the absurdity of worrying a child's life out, in teaching the A B C, &c., and their doubtful and often-varying sounds utterly destitute of meaning, instead of words which have distinct sounds and distinct meaning, thus winds up:--"Learning his letters, therefore, gives him no new sound; it even restricts his attention to a small number of those he already knows. So far, then, the learning of his letters contracts his practice; and were it not for keeping up his former habits of speaking, at home and in the playground, the teacher, during the six months or year in which he confines him to the twenty-six sounds of the alphabet, would pretty near deprive him of the faculty of speech." This extract, from the pen of one who has devoted so much talent and patient investigation to the subject of education, entitles it to the serious consideration of all those who are in any way connected with the same subject in this country, where the old A B C cramming all but universally prevails.--But to return to Upper Canada and its schools. Some estimate of the value of its scholastic establishments may be formed from the fact, that while its sphere of usefulness is rapidly extending, it has already reached the following honourable position: The population of Upper Canada is close upon 1,000,000; the number of children between the ages of 5 and 16 is 263,000; the number of children on the rolls of the common school establishments is 179,587; and the grand total of money available for these glorious purposes, is 170,000l. I feel conscious that I have by no means done full justice to this important subject; but the limits of a work like this render it impossible so to do. Let it suffice to say, that Upper Canada is inferior to none of its neighbouring rivals, as regards the quality of instruction given; and that it is rapidly treading on the heels of the most liberal of them, as regards the amount raised for its support. The normal school, I conceive to be a model as nearly perfect as human agency has yet achieved; and the chemical and agricultural lectures there given, and practically illustrated on the small farm adjoining the building, cannot fail to produce most useful and important results in a young uncultivated country possessing the richest soil imaginable. The Governor-General and the Government deserve every credit for the support and encouragement they have given to education; but, if I may draw a comparison without being invidious, I would repeat, that it is to the unusual zeal and energy of Dr. Ryerson, to his great powers of discriminating and selecting what he found most valuable in the countless methods he examined, and to his combination and adaptation of them, that the colony is mainly indebted for its present admirable system. Well may Upper Canada be proud of her educational achievements, and in her past exertions read a hopeful earnest of a yet more noble future.[AT] But it is not in education alone that Canada has been shadowing forth a noble career. Emancipated from maternal apron-strings by a constitutional self-government, and aided by the superior administrative powers of the Earl of Elgin, she has exhibited an innate vitality which had so long been smothered by Imperial misrule as to cause a doubt of its existence; and if she has not shown it by the birth of populous cities, she has proved it by a more general and diffusive prosperity. A revenue quadrupled in four years needs no Chicagos or Buffalos to endorse the colony's claims to energy and progress. Internal improvements have also been undertaken on a large scale: railways are threading their iron bands through waste and forest, and connecting in one link all the North American colonies; the tubular bridge at Montreal will be the most stupendous work yet undertaken by engineering skill; canals are making a safe way for commerce, where a year or two back the roaring rapid threw its angry barrier. Population, especially in Upper Canada, is marching forward with hasty strides; the value of property is fast increasing; loyalty has supplanted discontent and rebellion; an imperial baby has become a princely colony, with as national an existence as any kingdom of the Old World.[AU] These are facts upon which the colonists may, and do, look with feelings of both pride and satisfaction; and none can more justly contemplate them with such emotions, than those through whose administrative talents these prosperous results have been produced, out of a state of chaos, in eight short years. Dissatisfied men there ever will be among a large community, and therefore questions of independence and annexation will be mooted from time to time; but it seems hardly probable that a colony which enjoys an almost independent nationality would ever be disposed to resign that proud position, and to swamp her individuality among the thirty-three free and slave States of the adjoining Republic. At all events, the colony, by her conduct with reference to the present war, has shown that she is filled with a spirit of loyalty, devotion, and sympathy as true, as fervent, and as deep as those which animate all the other subjects of our beloved Sovereign. Farewell, Canada! May the sun of prosperity, which has been rising upon you steadily for eight years, rise higher and higher, and never know either a cloud or a meridian! Canada, adieu! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AR: My observations at various schools in the United States satisfied me that no attention is paid by the teachers to the tone of voice in which the boys give their answers.] [Footnote AS: The females are regularly taught calisthenics, and the boys gymnastics, by a professor.] [Footnote AT: These remarks were made in 1853. The report for the year 1854 is now lying before me, by which I find that the attendance has increased to 194,376; and the money raised has also increased in a similar ratio, being at that date 199,674l.] [Footnote AU: Population of Canada 1841, 1,156,139 } Increase, Ditto ditto 1851, 1,842,265 } 59.34 percent. Population of Upper Canada 1841, 405,357 } Increase, Ditto ditto 1851, 952,004 } 104.57 percent The increase of the United States from 1840 to 1850 was only 37.77 percent. Wheat crop, Upper Canada 1841, 3,221,991 bushels. Ditto ditto 1851, 12,692,852 ditto, Wheat crop, Lower Canada 1841, 1,021,405 bushels. Ditto ditto 1851, 3,326,190 ditto. This table is taken from an able statement sent by the Governor-General to the Colonial Office, dated Quebec, Dec. 22, 1852.] CHAPTER XXI. _A Cataract and a Celebration_. The convulsive efforts of the truant steam, echoing across the harbour, told me I had little time to lose: so, bidding farewell to friends, I hurried down to the quay, and was soon bowling over a lake as smooth and polished as the bald head of age. The pat of every float in the wheel, as it struck in the water, echoed with individual distinctness, and the hubbub created thereby, in the otherwise unruffled lake, left its trace visible on the mirrory surface for so great a distance as to justify a disputatious man in questioning whether the term "trackless way" was applicable to the course a vessel had passed over. Here we are, steaming away merrily for Niagara. There is nothing interesting in scenery until you come to the entrance of the river, on the opposite sides of which stand Lewistown and Queenstown, and above the latter the ruthlessly mutilated remains of the monument to the gallant Brock. The miscreant who perpetrated the vile act in 1841, has since fallen into the clutches of the law, and has done--and, for aught I know, is now doing--penance in the New York State Prison at Auburn. I believe the Government are at last repairing it;--better late than never. The precipitous banks on either side clearly indicate they are the silent and persevering work of the ever-rolling stream, and leave no doubt upon any reflecting mind that they must lead to some fall or cataract, though no reflection can fully realize the giant cataract of Niagara. There are several country places on the banks, and the whole appearance bespeaks comfort and civilization. Far away in the distance is to be seen the suspension-bridge, high in mid-air, and straight as the arrow's flight. On either bank rival railroads are in progress; that on the Canada side is protected from the yawning abyss by a wall calculated to defy the power of steam. The boat touches at Queenstown, and thence proceeds to Lewistown, where a stage is waiting for Niagara City. No botherations of custom-house--what a blessing! The distance to ride is seven miles, and the time one hour; but in the United States, you are aware, every chap will "do as he best pleases;" consequently, there is a little information to be obtained from the fresh arrival, a cock-tail with a friend or two, a quiet piling on of luggage, &c.; all this takes a long half-hour, and away we go with four tough little nags. A tremendous long hill warms their hides and cools their mettle, though by no means expending it. On we go, merrily; Jehu, a free-and-easy, well-informed companion, guessing at certainties and calculating on facts. At last we reach a spring by the roadside, the steam rising from the flanks of the team like mist from a marsh. What do I see? Number one nag with a pailful of water, swigging away like a Glasgow baillie at a bowl of punch. He drains it dry with a rapidity which says "More, more!" and sure enough they keep on giving pail after pail, till he has taken in enough to burst the tough hide of a rhinoceros. I naturally concluded the horse was an invalid, or a culprit who had got drunk, and that they were mixing the liquor "black list" fashion, to save his intestines and to improve his manners; but no--round goes the pailman to every nag, drenching each to the bursting point. "Ain't you afraid," I said, "of killing the poor beasts by giving them such a lot of water?" "I guess if I was, I shouldn't give it 'em," was the terse reply. Upon making further inquiries into this mysterious treatment, he told me that it was a sulphur spring, and that all tired horses having exhibited an avidity for it far greater than for common water, the instinct of the animal had been given a fair trial, and subsequent experience had so ratified that instinct that it had become a "known fact." An intelligent American, sitting at the feet of a quadruped Gamaliel, humbly learning from his instincts, should teach the bigots of every class and clime to let their prejudices hang more loosely upon them. But half an hour has passed, and Jehu is again on the box, the nags as fresh as daisies, and as full as a corncob. Half an hour more lands us at Niagara. Avoiding the hum of men, I took refuge for the night in a snug little cottage handy to the railway, and, having deposited my traps, started on a moonlight trip. I need scarce say whither. Men of the highest and loftiest minds, men of the humblest and simplest minds, the poet and the philosopher, the shepherd and the Christian, have alike borne testimony to the fact, that the solitude of night tends to solemnize and elevate the thoughts. How greatly must this effect be increased when aided by the contemplation of so grand a work of nature as Niagara! In the broad blaze of a noonday sun, the power of such contemplation is weakened by the forced admixture of the earthly element, interspersed as the scene is with the habitations and works of man. But, in the hushed repose of night, man stands, as it were, more alone with his Maker. The mere admirer of the picturesque or the grand will find much to interest and charm him; but may there not arise in the Christian's mind far deeper and higher thoughts to feed his contemplation? In the cataract's mighty roar may he not hear a voice proclaiming the anger of an unreconciled God? May not the soft beams of the silvery moon above awaken thoughts of the mercies of a pardoning God? And as he views those beams, veiled, as it wore, in tears by the rising spray, may he not think of Him and his tears, through whom alone those mercies flow to man? May not yon mist rising heavenward recal his glorious hopes through an ascended Saviour; and as it falls again perpetually and imperceptibly, may it not typify the dew of the Holy Spirit--ever invisible, ever descending--the blessed fruit of that Holy Ascension? And if the mind be thus insensibly led into such a train of thought, may not the deep and rugged cliff, worn away by centuries unnumbered by man, shadow forth to him ideas of that past Eternity, compared to which they are but as a span; and may not the rolling stream, sweeping onward in rapid and unceasing flight into the abyss beneath his feet, fill his soul with the contemplation of Time's flight, which, alike rapid and continuous, is ever bearing him nearer and nearer to the brink of that future Eternity in which all his highest and brightest hopes will be more than realized in the enjoyment of a happiness such as "eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." Say, then, reader, is not every element of thought which can arise between a Christian and his Creator symbolled forth here in equal beauty and grandeur? One, indeed, is wanting, which, alas! none of Nature's works but man can supply--that sad element, which those who search their own hearts the deepest will feel the most.--I feel I have departed from the legitimate subject of travels; let the majesty of the scene plead my excuse. Adieu, Niagara. Early next morning I put myself into a railway car, and in due time reached Batavia. On my arrival, being rather hungry, I made a modest request for a little brandy and some biscuits; fancy my astonishment when the "help" said, "I guess we only give meals at the fixed hours." As I disapproved very much of such an unreasonable and ridiculous refusal, I sought out the chief, and, preferring my modest request to him, was readily supplied with my simple luncheon. In the meantime a light fly had been prepared, and off I started for Geneseo. The road presented the usual features of rich cultivated land, a dash of wild forest, a bit of bog, and ruts like drains; and each hamlet or village exhibited a permanent or an ambulating daguerreotype shop. Four hours housed me with my kind and hospitable friends at Geneseo. As the chances of travel had brought me to a small country village at the time of the annual celebration of the 4th of July, I was unable to witness the ceremony on the grand scale in which it is conducted in the large cities of the Union; and, as I think it is frequently accompanied with circumstances which are entitled to some consideration, I shall revert, in a subsequent chapter, to those points which appear to me calculated to act upon the national character. On the present occasion I was delighted to find that, although people all "liquored" freely, there was scarcely any drunkenness; at all events, they had their little bit of fun, such as we see at fairs at home. By way of enabling those who have a turn for the facetious to share in their jokes, I insert a couple of specimens:-- "ORDER OF THE DAY. "The vast multitude will be assembled on the Public Square, in rear of the Candy Factory, under the direction of Marshal JOHN A. DITTO, where they will be formed in procession in the following order: "1. Officers of the Day, in their stocking feet. "2. Revolutionary Relics, under the direction of the venerable G.W.S. Mattocks. "3. Soldiers of the last War, looking for Bounty Land Warrants. "4. The Mayor and Common Council, drawn in a Willow Wagon, by the Force of Habit. "5. Officers of the Hoodoos, drawn by 13 Shanghai Chickens, and driven by Joe Garlinghouse's Shanghai Quail. "6. The Bologna Guards, in new dress, counting their money. "7. The Ancient Fire Company expecting their treasurer to chuck 42$ 50 under their windows. "The procession will then march to the grove in rear of Smith Scovell's barn, where the following exercises will take place:-- "1. The reading of the Declaration of Independence--by the Tinker, Dan. "2. Oration--by Bill Garrison. "3. Hymn--There was three Crows sit on a Tree--by the Hoodo Choir. "4. Benediction--by Elder Bibbins. "After which the multitude will repair to Charley Babcock's old stand for Refreshments. "_Bill of Fare.--_1. Mud Turtle Soup. 2. Boiled Eggs, hard. 3. Pea-nuts. 4. Boiled Eggs, soft. 5. More Pea-nuts. "_Dessert._--Scotch Herring, dried. 2. Do. do., dead. 3. Do., done brown. 4. Sardines, by special request. "_Wines and Liquors_.--Hugh Doty's Rattle-Belly Pop. 2. Hide-and-go-Seek (a new brand). "Precisely at 4 o'clock, P.M., the Double Oven Air Calorie Engine, attached to a splendidly decorated Wheel barrow, will make an excursion, on the _Conhocton Valley Switch_, to the old Hemp Factory and back. It is expected that the President and Directors will go over the Road, and they are to have the first chance, strictly under the direction of the '_Rolling Stock_.' "Hail, ye freeborn Sons of Happy America. 'Arouse, Git up, and Git!' _Music_--Loud Fifing during the day. "June, 1853. "By Order of COMMITTEE." * * * * * "CLEAR THE TRACK FOR THE LIGHTNING LINE OF MALE AND FEMALE STAGES!!! "From Perry to Geneseo and back in a Flash. "BAGGAGE, PERSONS, AND EYESIGHT AT RISK OF OWNERS, AND NO QUESTIONS ANSWERED. "--Having bought out the valuable rights of young Master James Howard in this Line, the subscriber will streak it daily between Perry and Geneseo, for the conveyance of Uncle Sam's Mails and Family; leaving Perry before the Crows wake up in the morning, and arriving at the first house on this side Geneseo about the same time; returning, leave Geneseo after the Crows have gone to roost, and reach Perry in time to join them. Passengers will please to keep their mouths shut for fear they should lose their teeth. No Smoking allowed for fear of fretting the Horses; no Talking lest it wake the Driver. Fare to suit passengers. "The public's very much obliged servant, &c. &c." A quiet and simple stage of rough wood was put up at one end of the village, close to the Court-house, from whence the Declaration of Independence was read, after which a flowery orator--summoned for the occasion, and who travels about to different villages in different years with his well-digested oration--addressed the multitude. Of course similes and figures of rhetoric were lugged in by the heels in every sentence, as is the all but universal practice on such occasions in every part of the world. The moral of his speech was in the main decidedly good, and he urged upon his audience strongly, "the undying advantages of cultivating pluck and education" in preference to "dollars and shrewdness." All went off in a very orderly manner, and in the evening there were fireworks and a village ball. It was at once a wild and interesting sight during the fireworks; the mixture of men, women, and children, some walking, some carried, some riding, some driving; empty buggies, some with horses, some without, tied all round; stray dogs looking for masters as hopelessly as old maids seeking for their spectacles when raised above their eyes and forgotten. Fire companies parading ready for any emergency; the son of mine host tugging away at the rope of the engine in his red shirt, like a juvenile Atlas, as proud as Lucifer, as pleased as Punch. All busy, all excited, all happy; no glimpse of poverty to mar the scene; all come with one voice and one heart to celebrate the glorious anniversary of the birth of a nation, whose past gigantic strides, unparalleled though they be, are insufficient to enable any mind to realize what future is in store for her, if she only prove true to herself. Leave-takings do not interest the public, so the reader will be satisfied to know that two days after found me in an open carriage on my way to Rochester. The road lay entirely through cultivated land, and had no peculiar features. The only thing I saw worth noticing, was two men in a light four-wheel one-horse shay, attached to which were at least a dozen others, some on two wheels, some on four. I of course thought they were some country productions going to a city manufacturer. What was my astonishment at finding upon inquiry, that it was merely an American phase of hawking. The driver told me that these people will go away from home for weeks together, trying to sell their novel ware at hamlet, village, farm-house, &c., and that some of the shrewdest of them, the genuine Sam Slick breed, manage to make a good thing of it. The shades of evening closed in upon me as I alighted at a very comfortable hotel at Rochester. The amiable Morpheus soon claimed me as his own, nor was I well pleased when ruthlessly dragged from his soft embrace at 6-1/2 A.M. the following morning; but railways will not wait for Morpheus or any other deity of fancy or fiction; so, making the best use I could of a tub of water and a beefsteak, and calming my temper with a fragrant weed, I was soon ensconced in one of their cars, a passenger to New York. On reaching Albany, we crossed the river and threw ourselves into the cars of the Hudson River Railway, which, running close to the margin nearly all the way, gives you an ever-varying view of the charming scenery of this magnificent stream. Yankee industry was most disagreeably prominent at several of the stations, in the shape of a bevy of unwashed urchins parading the cars with baskets of the eternal pea-nut and various varieties of lollipop, lemonade, &c., all crying out their wares, and finding as ready a sale for them as they would at any school in England. The baiting-place was not very tempting; we all huddled into one room, where everything was hurry and confusion: besides which, the appetite was not strengthened by the sight of hands--whose owners seemed to have "registered a vow in heaven," to forego the use of soap--turning over the sandwiches, one after another, until they had made their selection. However, the majority approve of the system; and as no thought is given to the minority, "if you don't like it, you may lump it." But the more permanent inconvenience of this railroad is one for which the majority cannot be held responsible, i.e., it runs three-fourths of the way over a bed of granite, and often between cuts in the solid granite rock, the noise therefore is perfectly stunning; and when to this you add the echoing nature of their long wooden cars, destitute of anything to check the vibrations of sound, except the human cargo and the cushions they sit upon, and when you add further the eternal slamming of the doors at each end by the superintending conductor and the inquisitive portion of the passengers, you may well conceive that this combination is enough to rouse the slumbers of the dead, and rack the brains of the living. At the same time, I must allow that this line runs the best pace and keeps the best time of any in the Union. On reaching the outskirts of New York, I asked, "Is this the proper place for me to get out at?" And being answered in the affirmative, I alighted, and found myself in a broad open street. Scarce had I set my foot on the ground, when I saw the train going on again, and therefore asked for my luggage. After a few questions and answers, I ascertained it had gone on in the train about three miles further; and the only consolation I got, was being told, "I guess you'd best have gone on too." However, all troubles must have an end; so getting into a hackney, I drove to my hospitable friend Phelps' house, where, under the influence of glorious old Madeira--P. had just finished dinner--and most undeniable claret, the past was soon buried in the present; and by the time I had knocked the first ash off one of his best "_prensados_," the stray luggage returned from the involuntary trip it had made on its own account. What a goodly cheery thing is hospitality, when it flows pure from a warm heart; nor does it lose aught in my estimation when viewed through the medium of a first-rate cellar and the social "Havana." Time progresses--small hours approach--the front door shuts behind some of the guests--six-foot-two of animal life may be seen going up-stairs with a bed-candle; the latter is soon out, and your humble servant is snug in the former.--Reader, good-night! CHAPTER XXII. _Education, Civil and Military_. Having said so much of education in other cities, I will only observe, that in regard to common schools, New York is on a par with most of her rivals in this noble strife for superiority; but I must ask those who are interested in the subject to give me their attention while I enter into a few details connected with their admirable Free Academy. The object of this institution is to combine--under one system and under one roof--high school, academy, polytechnic, and college, and to furnish as good an education as can be obtained by passing through each of those places of instruction separately. All this free of cost! A sum of 10,000l. was authorized for the building, and 4000l. annually for its support. The course of instruction is divided into thirteen departments, with a professor at the head of each, aided by tutors where necessary; the whole under a principal, with a salary of 500l. a year, who is at the same time professor of moral, intellectual, and political philosophy. The salaries of the other professors average 300l. a year, those of the tutors 100l. The course of study embraces all that is taught at the four different places of education before-named. The student is allowed to make his selection between the classical languages and the modern--French, Spanish, and German. The whole course occupies five years. The requisites for admission are, that the applicant be thirteen years old, living in the city of New York, and have attended the common schools for eighteen months; besides which he is required to pass a moderate examination. The number of students at present is about 350, but they will doubtless increase. If to the annual expenses of the institution be added the interest at six per cent, on the outlay, the instruction given will be found to cost the inconceivably small sum of 13l. 5s. per scholar, including books, stationery, and etceteras. Mr. S.B. Ruggles was kind enough to introduce me to Mr. Horace Webster, by whom I was shown over the whole establishment. The cleanliness and good ventilation certainly exceeded that of any other similar establishment which I had visited in the United States. There is a very good library containing 3000 volumes, besides 8000 which are used as text-books, or books of reference. Many publishers supplied the requisite books at reduced prices, which, as long as they retain the ignominious position of the literary pirates of the world, I suppose they can afford to do without inconvenience. There is also a fine studio, full of casts from the best models, and copies of the Elgin marbles presented by Mr. Leap. Instruments of the best quality abound for the explanation of all the sciences taught. In one of the rooms which I entered there was an examination going on. The subject was astronomy, and it was the first class. I was particularly struck with the very clear manner in which the lad under examination replied to the questions put to him, and I began to suspect it was merely something he had learnt by rote; but the professor dodged him about in such a heartless manner with his "whys" and his "wherefores," his "how do you knows" and "how do you proves," that I quite trembled for the victim. Vain fears on my part; nothing could put him out; he seemed as much at home as the professor, and answered all the questions propounded to him in language as clear and simple as that which the great Faraday employs to instruct his eager listeners at the Royal Institution. Not once could the professor make him trip during the long half-hour of his searching examination. Having remarked that the appearance of the student was rather that of a labouring than of a wealthy stock, I asked the principal who he was. "That, sir," replied Mr. Webster, "is one of our best students, and he is the son of a poor journeyman blacksmith." New York may point with just pride to her Free Academy, and say, "In our city the struggling efforts of genius are never cramped by the chill blast of poverty, for within those walls the avenues to the highest branches of literature and science are opened without charge to the humblest and most destitute of our citizens." I spent several hours in this most admirable and interesting institution, so ably presided over by Mr. Horace Webster, through whose kindness I was provided with the full details of all its workings. It would seem that the best class of schools for young ladies are not very numerous, for the papers announced the other day that Mrs. Okill had realized 250,000 dollars by her establishment, which could hardly have been the case in the face of good opposition. A few days afterwards Mr. Ruggles offered to accompany me in a visit I wished to make to the National Military College of West Point. I gladly accepted his proffered kindness, and in due time we were rattling away over the granite-bottomed railroad, along the banks of the Hudson. Close to the station we found a small ferry-boat, ready to take us across to the southern bank. On landing at West Point, "my pipe was immediately put out" by a summary order from a sentry on the wharf. Dropping a tear of sorrow through a parting whiff, and hurling the precious stump into the still waters of the little bay, I followed my cicerone up the hill, and soon found myself in the presence of one of the professors, through whose assistance we were enabled thoroughly to lionize every department. As many of my military friends who have visited West Point have spoken to me in terms of the highest admiration of the institution, I propose entering more into detail than I otherwise might have thought requisite; and I trust that, as military education is engaging a great deal of public interest, the following observations may be found worthy of attention. The candidates for admission are nominated by the members of Congress, one for each congressional district, in addition to which the President of the United States has the nomination of forty from the Republic at large.[AV] The requisites for admission are--the passing a very easy examination, being a bachelor between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, and having no physical defect. The pay of each cadet is about five pounds a month, of which his board takes two pounds, and 8s. 6d. is laid aside monthly, whereby to form a fund to assist him in the expenses of equipment upon leaving. The balance provides for his dress and other expenses, and a treasurer is appointed to superintend and keep the accounts. The routine of duty prescribed is the following:--Rise at 5 A.M. in summer, and 5-1/2 in winter; double up bed and mattress, &c., and study till 7; then fall in and go to breakfast; at 7-1/2, guard-mounting--twenty-four cadets are on guard every day; at 8, study; at 1 o'clock, break up, fall in, and go to dinner, which they rise from at the word of command, and are then free till 2. From 2 P.M. to 4, study; at 4, drill for one hour and a half, after which they are free till sunset; at sunset, parade in front of the barracks, and delinquents' names called over; then follows supper, after which the cadets are free till 8, at which time there is a call to quarters, and every cadet is required to retire to his own room and study till 9-1/2, when the tattoo is beat; at 10, there is a roll of the drum, at sound whereof every light must be out and every student in bed. The cadets are organized into a battalion of four companies; the officers and non-commissioned officers are all appointed by the superintendent, from a list submitted to him by the commandant of cadets, the selection being made from those most advanced in their studies and most exemplary in their conduct; they perform in every particular the same duties as those of the officers and privates of a regiment; they have divisions and sub-divisions, with superintendent cadets attached to each, regular orderlies who sweep and clean out the room, furniture, &c.: guards are regularly mounted, an officer of the day duly appointed, and all the duties of a regular barrack punctually performed, even to the sentinels being supplied with ball-cartridge at night. Their uniform is of grey cloth, and their hair is kept a close crop; neither whiskers nor moustache are tolerated, and liquor and tobacco are strictly prohibited. The punishments consist of privation of recreation, extra duty, reprimand, arrest or confinement to room or tent, confinement to light or dark prison, dismission with privilege of resigning, and public dismission; the former of these are at the will of the superintendent--confinement to prison and dismission are by sentence of a court-martial. The course of studies pursued are classed under twelve heads:--1. Infantry tactics and military police; 2. Mathematics; 3. French; 4. Drawing; 5. Chemistry, mineralogy, and geology; 6. Natural and experimental philosophy; 7. Artillery tactics, science of gunnery, and the duties of the military laboratory; 8. Cavalry tactics; 9. The use of the sword; 10. Practical military engineering; 11. Grammar, geography, ethics, &c.; 12. Military and civil engineering, and the science of war. In the preceding pages we have seen that ten hours are daily devoted to study, besides an hour and a half to drill; and thus, while the brain is severely taxed, but little leisure is left to get into those minor scrapes so prevalent at most public schools. There is a most minute system of merit and demerit established; everything good and everything bad has a specific value in numbers and decimals, which is accurately recorded against the owners thereof in the reports made for each year. The cadet appears to be expected to improve in conduct as well as knowledge; for, according to the rules, after his first year is completed, the number expressing his absolute demerit is increased by one-sixth during the second year, by one-third during the third year, and by one-half during the fourth year. Thus, suppose a certain number of faults to be represented by the sum of 36, if faults which those figures represent are committed during the second year of the cadet's course, one-sixth would be added, and his name appear on the demerit list with 42 against it; if in the third year, one-third would be added to the 36, and 48 would be placed against his name; and if during the fourth year, one-half would be added, and 54 would appear against it. It will thus be seen that, supposing offences of equal value to be committed by the cadet in his first year and by another in his fourth year, the figures of demerit against the latter would be one-half more than those placed against the name of the cadet in his first year. A demerit conduct roll is made out each year, and a copy sent to the War Department. There is also a general merit roll of proficiency and good conduct sent to the same department, an abstract whereof, with demerit added, is sent to the parents or guardians in a printed book containing the names of all the cadets, by which they can at once see the relative position of their son or ward. The following tables will explain the system adopted for ascertaining the merit, demerit, and qualifications of the students:-- DEMERIT. _Degree of Criminality of Offences, arranged in Classes_. 1. Mutinous conduct 10 2. Disobedience of orders of military superior 8 3. Visiting in study hours 5 4. Absence from drill 4 5. Idleness in academy 3 6. Inattention under arms 2 7. Late at roll call 1 _Form of Conduct Roll made up for the yearly examination_. The column marked "Class" indicates number of years student has been in the academy. Name. Class. Demerit. H.L. 1 5 C.P. 3 10 W.K.M. 2 192 _A particular case to exemplify the manner of obtaining the numbers in the column of demerit_:-- Cadet W.K.M. was charged with 48 delinquencies, to wit: of the second class of offences, 2, which being multiplied by 8, the number expressing the degree of criminality of an offence of that class, is 16 Of the 3rd class 3 multiplied by 5 15 4th " 13 " 4 52 5th " 10 " 3 30 6th " 11 " 2 22 7th " 9 " 1 9 ---- 144 The Cadet being a member of the 2nd class, add 1/3 48 ---- Total demerit 192 The following list of Cadets is attached to the Army Register in conformity with a regulation for the Government of the United States Military Academy, requiring the names of the most distinguished Cadets, not exceeding five in each class, to be reported for this purpose at each annual examination:-- _Reported at the Examination in June_, 18--. No. Names. Appointed Science and Art in which each Cadet from particularly excels. 1 First Class. Mass. Civil and Military Engineering, Ethics, G.L.A. Mineralogy and Geology, Infantry Tactics, Artillery, Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Chemistry, Drawing, Mathematics, French and English Studies. 2 J.St.C.M. Pa. Civil and Military Engineering, Ethics, Mineralogy and Geology, Infantry Tactics, Artillery, Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Chemistry, Drawing, Mathematics, and French. _"General Merit Roll," sent also to the War Office._ Names A B C Mathematics 300.0 295.3 276.7 French 98.7 97.5 69.1 English Studies 100.0 89.5 98.9 Philosophy 300.0 295.6 278.2 Chemistry 150.0 147.5 145.1 Drawing 91.3 100.0 94.2 Engineering 300.0 285.3 290.2 Ethics 200.0 193.4 186.9 Mineralogy & Geology 100.0 96.7 98.2 Infantry Tactics 150.0 147.5 137.8 Artillery 158.0 145.1 147.5 Conduct 297.3 293.8 294.5 General Merit 2237.3 2187.2 2117.3 _"Official Register of the Cadets" at West Point, printed yearly._ Order of general merit 1 2 3 Names T.L.C. N.C.A. G.H.M. State At large Tenn. Pa. Date of Admission July 1, 1848 do. do. Age at date of admission Years / Months 17 / 1 18 / 7 16 / 8 Order of merit in their respective Studies Engineering 1 2 3 Ethics 3 4 2 Mineral. & Geol. 1 2 4 Infantry Tactics 1 2 5 Artillery 2 1 3 Demerit of the Year 39 18 73 A board with the marks of demerit is always publicly hung up, so that each cadet may know the exact length of his tether, for if the numbers amount to 200 he is dismissed. I have dwelt very lengthily upon the system adopted of recording and publishing the merit and demerit of the students, because I was informed of the admirable effect produced by it. As far as I can judge, it certainly appears not only an admirable means of enabling the War-office to estimate character, but the great publicity given to it must act as a powerful stimulus to exertion and good conduct. A portion of the cadets are instructed every day in fencing and riding. When well advanced in the latter, they are taught spearing rings or stuffed heads at the gallop, and the same with the sword. The riding-school is perfectly abominable, being dark, full of pillars, and most completely out of harmony with all the rest of the establishment, which is excellent in every detail. On Sundays all the cadets attend church, unless excused on conscientious motives, and with the approval of their parents. The minister is selected by the President, and may be of any denomination. I was told that an Episcopalian had been most frequently chosen. The present minister is, I believe, a Presbyterian. During the months of July and August the cadets all turn out of their barracks, pitch their tents, and live regular camp life--only going to the barracks to eat their meals. During the time they are tented, the education is exclusively military practice; the same hours are kept as in the barracks; the tents are boarded, and two cadets sleep in each. They are all pitched with scrupulous accuracy, and they are obliged to keep their camp as clean as a new pin--performing among themselves every duty of a complete regiment--cleaning their own shoes, fetching their own water, &c. They were all in tents at the time of my visit, and I fear not particularly comfortable, for there had been two days and nights' hard rain, and the wet mattresses were courting the warm rays of the afternoon sun. Whatever jobbery is attempted in the selection of candidates for admission to the Academy, is soon corrected by the Academy itself; for, though the entrance examination is simple to a degree, the subsequent examinations are very severe, and those who cannot come up to the mark get notice to quit; and the unerring tell-tale column of demerit soon obliges the turbulent to "clear out." The result of this system is, that when I saw them under arms, their soldierlike appearance struck me very much; and the effect produced upon them by discipline was very marked. You might almost guess the time they had been there by their gentlemanly bearing, a quality which they do not readily lose; for the officers of the American army who have been educated at West Point, enjoy a universal reputation for intelligence and gentlemanly bearing wherever they are to be met with. The discipline here is no fiction; they do not play at soldiers; they all work their way up from the ranks, performing every duty of each rank, and the most rigid obedience is exacted. In the calculations for demerit, while idleness in the Academy obtains a mark of three, disobedience to a superior officer is marked eight. There is no bullying thought of here; the captain of his company would as soon think of bullying the cadet private as a captain of a regiment of the line would of bullying any private under his command. An officer who had been for many years connected with West Point, told me that among all the duels which unfortunately are so prevalent in the United States, he had never either known or heard of one between any two gentlemen who had received their education at this Academy--tricks, of course, are sometimes played, but nothing oppressive is ever thought of. I did hear a story of a cadet, who, by way of a joke, came and tried to take away the musket of a wiry young Kentuckian, who was planted sentry for the first time; but he found a military ardour he had little anticipated; for the novice sentry gave him a crack on the side of the head that turned him round, and before he could recover himself, he felt a couple of inches of cold steel running into the bank situated at the juncture of the hips and the back-bone; and thus not only did he suffer total defeat and an ignominious wound, but he earned a large figure on the demerit roll. From the way the story was told to me, I imagine it is a solitary instance of such an outrage being attempted; for one of the first things they seek to inculcate is a military spirit, and the young Kentuckian at all events proved that he had caught the spirit; nor can it be denied that the method he took to impress it upon his assailant, as a fundamental principle of action, was equally sharp and striking. Happening to be on the ground at the hour of dinner, I saw them all marched off to their great dining-ball, where the table was well supplied with meat, vegetables, and pudding; it was all substantial and good, but the _tout-ensemble_ was decidedly very rough. If the intention is to complete the soldier life by making them live like well-fed privates of the line, the object is attained; but I should be disposed to think, they might dispense with a good deal of the roughness of the style with great advantage; though doubtless, where the general arrangements are so good, they have their own reasons for keeping it as it is. I paid a visit in the course of the afternoon to the fencing-room; but being the hour of recreation, I found about thirty lusty cadets, votaries to Terpsichore, all waltzing and polking merrily to a fiddle, ably wielded by their instructor: as their capabilities were various, the confusion was great, and the master bewildered; but they all seemed heartily enjoying themselves. The professors and military instructors, &c., have each a small comfortable house with garden attached, and in the immediate vicinity of the Academy. There is a comfortable hotel, which in the summer months is constantly filled with the friends and relatives of the cadets; and occasionally they get permission to give a little _soirée dansante_ in the fencing-room. The hotel is prohibited from selling any spirituous liquors, wines, &c. The Government property at West Point consists of about three thousand acres: the Academy, professors' houses, hotel, &c., are built upon a large plateau, commanding a magnificent view of the Hudson both ways. The day I was there, the scene was quite lovely; the noble stream was as smooth as a mirror; a fleet of rakish schooners lay helpless, their snow-white sails hanging listlessly in the calm; and, as the clear waters reflected everything with unerring truthfulness, another fleet appeared beneath, lying keel to keel with those that floated on the surface. With such beautiful scenery, and so far removed from the bustle and strife of cities, I cannot conceive any situation better adapted for health and study, pleasure and exercise. The great day of the year is that of the annual review of the cadets by a board of gentlemen belonging to the different States of the Union, and appointed by the Secretary of War; it takes place early in June, I believe, and consequently before the cadets take the tented field. The examination goes on in the library hall, which is a very fine room, and hung with portraits of some of their leading men; the library is a very fair one, and the cadets have always easy access to it, to assist them in their studies. I could have spent many more hours here with much pleasure, but the setting sun warned us no time was to be lost if we wished to save the train; so, bidding adieu, to the friends who had so kindly afforded me every assistance in accomplishing the object of my visit, I returned to the great Babylon, after one of the most interesting and gratifying days I had spent in America.[AW] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AV: By the published class-list the numbers at present are 224.] [Footnote AW: An account of a visit to this Academy, from the pen of Sir J. Alexander, is published in Golburn's _United Service Magazine,_ September, 1854.] CHAPTER XXIII. _Watery Highways and Metallic Intercourse._ There is perhaps scarcely any feature in which the United States differ more from the nations of the Old World, than in the unlimited extent of their navigable waters, the value of which has been incalculably increased by the introduction of steam. By massing these waters together, we shall be the better able to appreciate their importance; but in endeavouring to do this, I can only offer an approximation as to the size of the lakes, from the want of any official information, in the absence of which I am forced to take my data from authorities that sometimes differ widely. I trust the following statement will be found sufficiently accurate to convey a tolerably correct idea. The seaboard on each ocean may be estimated at 1500 miles; the Mississippi and its tributaries, at 17,000 miles; Lake Ontario, at 190 miles by 50; Lake Erie, at 260 miles by 60; Lake Huron, at 200 miles by 70; the Georgian Bay, at 160 miles, one half whereof is about 50 broad; Lake Michigan, at 350 miles by 60; and Lake Superior, at 400 miles by 160, containing 32,000 square miles, and almost capable of floating England, if its soil were as buoyant as its credit. All the lakes combined contain about 100,000 square miles. The rate at which the tonnage upon them is increasing, appears quite fabulous. In 1840 it amounted to 75,000 tons, from which it had risen in 1850 to 216,000 tons. Besides the foregoing, there are the eastern rivers, and the deep bays on the ocean board. Leaving, however, these latter out of the question, let us endeavour to realize in one sum the extent of soil benefited by this bountiful provision of Providence; to do which it is necessary to calculate both sides of the rivers and the shores of the lakes, which, of course, must be of greater extent than double the length of the lakes: nevertheless, if we estimate them at only double, we shall find that there are 40,120 miles washed by their navigable waters; and by the constitution of the Union these waters are declared to be "common property, for ever free, without any tax, duty, or impost whatever." The Americans are not free from the infirmities of human nature; and having got a "good thing" among them, in process of time it became a bone of contention, which it still remains: the Whigs contending that the navigable waters having been declared by the constitution "for ever free," are national waters, and as such, entitled to have all necessary improvements made at the expense of the Union; their opponents asserting, that rivers and harbours are not national, but local, and that their improvements should be exclusively committed to the respective States. This latter opinion sounds strange indeed, when it is remembered that the Mississippi and its tributaries bathe the shores of some thirteen States, carrying on their bosoms produce annually valued at 55,000,000l. sterling, of which 500,000l. is utterly destroyed from the want of any sufficient steps to remove the dangers of navigation.[AX] Mr. Ruggles has always been a bold and able advocate of the Whig doctrine of nationality; and, in a lecture delivered by him upon the subject, he states that during the recent struggle to pass the River and Harbour Bill through the Senate, Mr. Douglas, a popular democrat from Illinois, offered as a substitute an amendment giving the consent of Congress "to the levy of local tonnage dues, not only by each of the separate States, but even by the authorities of any city or town." One can hardly conceive any man of the most ordinary intellect deliberately proposing to inflict upon his country the curse of an unlimited legion of custom-houses, arresting commerce in every bend of the river and in every bay of the sea; yet such was the case, though happily the proposition was not carried. How inferior does the narrow mind which made the above proposition in 1848 appear, when placed beside the prescient mind which in 1787 proposed and carried, "That navigable waters should be for ever free from any tax or impost whatever!" One of the most extraordinary instances of routine folly which I ever read or heard of, and which, among so practical and unroutiney a people as the Americans, appears all but incredible, is the following:--Congress having resisted the Harbour Improvement Bill, but acknowledged its duties as to certain lights and beacons, "Ordered, that a beacon should be placed on a rock in the harbour of New Haven. The engineer reported, that the cost of removing the rock would be less than the cost of erecting the beacon; but the President was firm--a great party doctrine was involved, and the rock remains to uphold the beacon--a naked pole, with an empty barrel at its head--a suitable type of the whole class of constitutional obstructions."[AY] The State of New York may fairly claim the credit of having executed one of the most--if not the most--valuable public works in the Union--the Erie Canal. At the time of its first proposal, it received the most stubborn opposition, especially from that portion of the democratic party known by the appellation of "Barn-burners," whose creed is thus described in a pamphlet before me:--"All accumulations of wealth or power, whether in associations, corporate bodies, public works, or in the state itself, are anti-democratic and dangerous.... The construction of public works tends to engender a race of demagogues, who are sure to lead the people into debt and difficulty," &c. The origin of their name I have not ascertained. Another party, possessing the equally euphonical name of "Old Hunkers," are thus described:--"Standing midway between this wing of the Democracy and the Whig party, is that portion who have taken upon themselves the comfortable title of 'Old Hunkers.' The etymological origin of this epithet is already lost in obscurity. They embrace a considerable portion of our citizens who are engaged in banking and other active business, but at the same time decided lovers of political place and power. At heart they believe in progress, and are in favour of a liberal prosecution of works of improvement, but most generally disguise it, in order to win the Barn-burners' votes. They are by no means deficient in intelligence or private worth, but are deeply skilled in political tactics; and their creed, if it is rightly understood, is that public works ought to be 'judiciously' prosecuted, provided they themselves can fill all the offices of profit or honour connected with their administration."[AZ] Such is the description given of these two parties by the pen of a political opponent, who found in them the greatest obstacles to the enlargement of the canal. The name of De Witt Clinton will ever be associated with this great and useful work, by which the whole commerce of the ocean lakes is poured into the Hudson, and thence to the Atlantic. After eight years' hard struggle, and the insane but undivided opposition of the city of New York, the law for the construction of the canal was passed in the year 1817. One opponent to the undertaking, when the difficulty of supplying water was started as an objection, assisted his friend by the observation, "Give yourself no trouble--the tears of our constituents will fill it." Many others opposed the act on the ground that, by bringing the produce of the States on the lake shores so easily to New York, the property of the State would be depreciated; which appears to me, in other words, to be--they opposed it on the ground of its utility. Others again grounded their objections on the doubt that the revenue raised by the tolls would be sufficient to justify the expense. Fortunately, however, the act was carried; and in seven years, the canal, though not quite completed, was receiving tolls to the amount of upwards of 50,000l. In 1836 the canal debt was paid, and produce valued at 13,000,000l.--of which 10,000,000l. belonged to the State of New York--was carried through it; the tolls had risen to 320,000l. per annum, and 80,000l. of that sum was voted to be appropriated to the general purposes of the State, the total cost having been under one and a half million sterling. One might imagine that such triumphant success would have made the State ready to vote any reasonable sum of money to enlarge it if required; but the old opponents took the field in force when the proposition was made. Even after a certain sum had been granted, and a contract entered into, they rescinded the grant and paid a forfeit to the contractor of 15,000l. It was in vain that the injury to commerce, resulting from the small dimensions of the canal,[BA] was represented to them; it was in vain that statistics were laid before them, showing that the 7,000,000 miles traversed by the 4500 canal-boats might, if the proposed enlargement took place, reduce the distance traversed to two millions of miles, and the boats employed to 1500; Barn-burners triumphed, and it was decided that the enlargements should only be made out of the surplus proceeds of the tolls and freight; by which arrangement this vast commercial advantage will be delayed for many years, unless the fruits of the canal increase more rapidly than even their present wonderful strides can lead one to anticipate, although amounting at this present day to upwards of 1,000,000l. yearly.[BB] Such is a short epitome of a canal through which, when the Sault St. Marie Channel between Lakes Superior and Huron is completed, an unbroken watery highway will bear the rich produce of the West from beyond the 90° meridian of longitude to the Atlantic Ocean.[BC] Although the Erie is perhaps the canal which bears the most valuable freight, it is by no means the greatest undertaking of the kind in the Union. The Chesapeake and Ohio canal, uniting Washington and Pittsburg, has nearly 400 locks, and is tunnelled four miles through the Alleghanies; and the Pennsylvania canal, as we have already seen in a former chapter, runs to the foot of the same ridge, and being unable to tunnel, uses boats in compartments, and drags them by stationary engines across the mountains. Nothing daunts American energy. If the people are once set upon having a canal, go ahead it must; "can't" is an unknown expression.[BD] However important the works we have been considering may be to the United States, there can be no doubt that railways are infinitely more so; I therefore trust the following remarks upon them may have some interest. By the statement of the last Census, it appears that there are no less than 13,266 miles of railroad in operation, and 12,681 in progress, giving a total of nearly 26,000 miles; the cost of those which are completed amounts to a little less than 75,000,000l., and the estimate for those in progress is a little above 44,000,000l. We thus see that the United States will possess 26,000 miles of railroad, at the cost of about 120,000,000l. In England we have 8068 miles of railway, and the cost of these amounts to 273,860,000l., or at the rate of 34,020l. per mile. This extraordinary difference between the results produced and the expenses incurred requires some little explanation. By the Census report, I learn that the average expense of the railways varies in different parts of the Union; those in the northern, or New England States, costing 9250l. per mile; those in the middle States, 8000l.; and those in the southern and western States, 4000l. per mile. The railway from Charleston to Augusta, on the Savannah River, only cost 1350l. per mile. From the above we see clearly that the expenses of their railways are materially affected by density of population and the consequent value of land, by the comparative absence of forest to supply material, and by the value of labour. If these three causes produce such material differences in a country comparatively unoccupied like the United States, it is but natural to expect that they should be felt with infinitely more force in England. Moreover, as it has been well observed by Captain D. Galton, R.E.,[BE] "railways originated in England, and therefore the experience which is always required to perfect a new system has been chiefly acquired in this country, and has increased the cost of our own railways for the benefit of our neighbours."--Some conception may be formed of the irregular nature of the expense on the lines in England from the statement subjoined, also taken from the same paper, viz.:-- Name of Railway. Land and Total Cost Compensation. Works. Rails. per Mile. £ £ £ £ London } and } 113,500 98,000 1,000 253,000[BF] Blackwall } Leicester } and } 1,000 5,700 700 8,700[BF] Swannington } From the table on the opposite page, it will be seen that the cost of construction and engineering expenses amounted to 35,526,535l. out of 45,051,217l. Taking the railways quoted as representing a fair average of the whole, we ascertain that more than one-fourth of the expense of our railways is incurred for extras comparatively unknown in the United States. At a general meeting of the London and North Western, in 1854, Mr. Glyn mentioned as a fact, that a chairman of a certain line, in giving evidence, had stated that a competition for the privilege of making 28 miles of railway had cost 250,000l. Such an item of expenditure can hardly enter into the cost of a railway in a country as thinly populated as the Republic. There are also two other important facts which are apt to be overlooked: first, that a great portion of the railways in the United States are single lines; and secondly, that the labour performed is of a far less solid and enduring character. A most competent civil engineer told me that the slovenly and insecure nature of many of the railway works in the United States was perfectly inconceivable, and most unquestionably would not stand the inspection required in England. A friend of mine has travelled upon a railway in America, between Washington and Virginia, of which a great portion was composed of merely a wooden rail with a bar of iron screwed on to the surface.[BG] The carriages are also far less expensive and comfortable; a carriage in the United States, which carries fifty people, weighs twelve tons, and costs 450l.; in England it may be fairly asserted, that for every fifty people in a mixed train there is a carriage weight of eighteen tons, at a cost of 1500l. The following Table, extracted from a Return moved for by Lord Brougham, may help to give a better general idea of the reason why our Railroads have been so costly:-- Name of London & Great Midland, South Eastern Total Railway. North Western, and 12 and 6 Western, and 3 branches branches and 12 branches branches Length/Miles 433 215-3/4 449-1/4 198-1/2 1296-1/2 Cost of Con- struction. £ 13,302,313 6,961,011 9,064,089 5,375,366 34,702,779 Conveyance and Law Charges. £ 143,479 105,269 119,344 138,034 506,128 Cost of Land. £ 3,153,226 1,132,964 1,764,582 1,458,627 7,509,399 Parliamentary Expenses. £ 555,698 245,139 287,853 420,467 1,509,157 Engineering and Sur- veying. £ 289,698 201,909 216,110 116,039 823,756 Total Cost. £ 17,444,414 8,646,292 11,451,978 7,508,533 45,051,217 When all the foregoing facts are taken into consideration, it must appear clear to the reader, that until the efficiency of the work done, the actual number of miles of rail laid down, and the comfort enjoyed are ascertained, any comparison of the relative expenses of the respective railways must be alike useless and erroneous; at the same time, it can scarcely be denied that it is impossible to give the Republic too much credit for the energy, engineering skill, and economy with which they have railway-netted the whole continent. Much remains for them to do in the way of organizing the corps of officials, and in the erection of proper stations, sufficient at all events, to protect travellers from the weather, for which too common neglect the abundance of wood and their admirable machinery leave them without excuse; not that we are without sin ourselves in this last particular. The uncovered station at Warrington is a disgrace to the wealthy London and North Western Company, and the inconveniences for changing trains at Gretna junction is even more disreputable; but these form the rare exceptions, and as a general rule, there cannot be the slightest comparison between the admirably arranged corps of railway servants in England, and the same class of men in the States; nor between the excellent stations in this country, and the wretched counterpart thereof in the Republic. Increased intercourse with Europe will, it is to be hoped, gradually modify these defects; but as long as they continue the absurd system of running only one class of carriage, the incongruous hustling together of humanities must totally prevent the travelling in America being as comfortable as that in the Old World. Let us now turn from that which carries our bodies at the rate of forty miles an hour, to that last giant stride of science by which our words are carried quick as thought itself--the Telegraph. The Americans soon discovered that this invention was calculated to be peculiarly useful to them, owing to their enormous extent of territory; and having come to this conclusion, their energy soon stretched the electric messenger throughout the length and breadth of the land, and by the last Census the telegraphic lines extend 16,735 miles, and the length of wires employed amounts to 23,281. _The Seventh Census_ gives the expense of construction as 30l. per mile.[BH] The systems in use are Morse's, House's, and Bain's; the two former of American invention, the latter imported from this country. Of these three the system most generally employed is Morse's, the others being only worked upon about 2000 miles each. It would be out of place to enter into any scientific explanation of their different methods in these pages; suffice it to say, that all three record their messages on ribands of paper; Morse employing a kind of short-hand symbol which indents the paper; Bain, a set of symbols which by chemical agency discolour the paper instead of indenting it; and House printing Roman letters in full by the discolouring process. Those who wish for details and explanations, will find them in the works of Dr. Lardner and others on the Telegraph. The following anecdote will give some idea of the rapidity with which they work. A house in New York expected a synopsis of commercial news by the steamer from Liverpool. A swift boat was sent down to wait for the steamer at the quarantine ground. Immediately the steamer arrived, the synopsis was thrown into the boat, and away she went as fast as oars and sails could carry her to New York. The news was immediately telegraphed to New Orleans and its receipt acknowledged back in three hours and five minutes, and before the steamer that brought it was lashed alongside her wharf. The distance to New Orleans by telegraph is about 2000 miles. The most extensive purchases are frequently made at a thousand miles distance by the medium of the telegraph. Some brokers in Wall-street average from six to ten messages per day throughout the year. I remember hearing of a young officer, at Niagara Falls, who, finding himself low in the purse, telegraphed to New York for credit, and before he had finished his breakfast the money was brought to him. Cypher is very generally used for two reasons; first, to obtain the secrecy which is frequently essential to commercial affairs; and secondly, that by well-organized cypher a few words are sufficient to convey a long sentence. Among other proposed improvements is one to transmit the signature of individuals, maps and plans, and even the outlines of the human face, so as to aid in the apprehension of rogues, &c. By a table of precedence, Government messages, and messages for the furtherance of justice and detection of criminals, are first attended to; then follow notices of death, or calls to a dying bed; after which, is the Press, if the news be important; if not, it takes its turn with the general, commercial, and other news. The wires in America scorn the railway apron-strings in which they are led about in this country. They thread their independent course through forests, along highways and byways, through streets, over roofs of houses,--everybody welcomes them,--appearance bows down at the shrine of utility, and in the smallest villages these winged messengers are seen dropping their communicative wires into the post-office, or into some grocer's shop where a 'cute lad picks up all the passing information--which is not in cypher--and probably retails it with an amount of compound interest commensurate with the trouble he has taken to obtain it. There is no doubt that many of these village stations are not sure means of communication, partly perhaps from carelessness, and partly from the trunk arteries having more important matter to transmit, and elbowing their weaker neighbours out of the field. Their gradual increase is, however, a sufficient proof that the population find them useful, despite the disadvantages they labour under. In some instances, they have shown a zeal without discretion, for a friend of mine, lately arrived from the Far West, informs me, that in many places the wires may be seen broken, and the poles tumbling down for miles and miles together, the use of the telegraph not being sufficient even to pay for the keeping up. This fact should be borne in mind when we give them the full benefit of the 16,735 miles according to their own statement in _The Seventh Census_. The very low tariff of charge renders the use of the telegraph universal throughout the Union. In Messrs. Whitworth's and Wallis's report, they mention an instance of a manufacturer in New York, who had his office in one part of the town and his works in an opposite direction, and who, to keep up a direct communication between the two, erected a telegraph at his own expense, obtaining leave to carry it along over the tops of the intervening houses without any difficulty. The tariff alluded to above will of course vary according to the extent of the useful pressure of competition. I subjoin two of their charges as an example. From Washington to Baltimore is forty miles, and the charge is 10d. for ten words. From New York to New Orleans is two thousand miles, and the charge for ten words is ten shillings. It must be remembered that these ten words are exclusive of the names and addresses of the parties sending and receiving the message. The extent to which the telegraph is used in the United States, induced those interested in the matter in England to send over for the most competent and practical person that could be obtained, with the view of ascertaining how far any portion of the system employed by them might be beneficially introduced into our country. The American system is that of the complete circuit, and therefore requiring only one wire; and the patent of Bain was the one experimented with, as requiring the slightest intensity of current. After considerable expense incurred in trials, the American system was found decidedly inferior to our own, solely owing to the humidity of our climate, which, after repeated trials, has been found to require a far more perfect insulation than is necessary either in the United States or on the Continent, and therefore requiring a greater outlay of capital in bringing the telegraphic wire into a practical working state; 260 miles is the greatest length that a battery is equal to working in this country in the worst weather. Bain's system was formerly not sufficiently perfected to work satisfactorily in our climate; recent improvements are removing those objections, and the employment of it is now rapidly increasing. The advantages that Bain's possesses over Morse's are twofold: first, the intensity of current required to work it is lighter; and secondly, the discoloration it produces is far more easily read than the indentations of Morse's. The advantage Morse's possesses over Bain's is, that the latter requires damp paper to be always ready for working, which the former does not. The advantage Cook and Wheatstone's[BI] possesses over both the former is, that it does not demand the same skilled hands to wind and adjust the machine and prepare the paper; it is always ready at hand, and only needs attention at long intervals, for which reasons it is more generally employed at all minor and intermediate stations; its disadvantages are, that it does not trace the message, and consequently leaves no telegraphic record for reference, and it requires two wires, while Bain's or Morse's employs but one; the intensity of the current required to work it is the same as Bain's, and rather less than Morse's. All three admit of messages going the whole length of the line being read at all intermediate stations. The proportion of work capable of being done by Bain's, as compared with Cook and Wheatstone's, is: Bain's and one wire = 3; Cook and Wheatstone's and two wires = 5. But if Bain's had a second wire, a second set of clerks would be requisite to attend to it. The errors from the tracing telegraph are less than those from the magnetic needle; but the difference is very trifling. No extra clerk is wanted by Cook and Wheatstone's, as all messages are written out by a manifold writer. Every message sent by telegraph in England has a duplicate copy sent by rail to the "Clearing Office," at Lothbury, to be compared with the original; thanks to which precaution, clerks keep their eyes open, and the public are efficiently protected from errors. How strange it is, that with the manifest utility of the telegraph in case of fire, and the ease with which it could be adapted to that purpose--as it has now been for some years in Boston--the authorities take no steps to obtain its invaluable services. The alarm of fire can be transmitted to every district of London at the small cost of 350l. a-year. The most competent parties are ready to undertake the contract; but it is too large a sum for a poor little village, with only 2,500,000 of inhabitants, and not losing more than 500,000l. annually by fires, to expend. The sums spent at St. Stephen's in giving old gentlemen colds, and in making those of all ages sneeze from underfoot snuff--in other words, the attempt at ventilation, which is totally useless--has cost the country more than would be necessary to supply this vast metropolis with telegraphic wire communication for a century. In conclusion, I must state that in this country several establishments and individuals have their own private telegraphs, in a similar manner to that referred to at New York, and many more would do the same, did not vested interests interfere. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote AX: _Vide_ observations on this subject in Chapter X.] [Footnote AY: Extract from lecture delivered by S.B. Ruggles, at New York, October, 1852.] [Footnote AZ: This extract is from a lecture by S.B. Ruggles to the citizens of Rochester, October, 1849.] [Footnote BA: The neighbouring colony "whips" the Republic in canals. Vessels from 350 to 400 tons can pass the St. Lawrence and Welland Canals. Nothing above 75 tons can use the Erie Canal.] [Footnote BB: The governor of the State, in his annual message, 1854, calls attention to the fact, that the toll on the canals is rapidly decreasing, and will be seriously imperilled if steps are not taken to enlarge it.] [Footnote BC: By the Illinois and Michigan Canal the ocean lakes communicate with the Mississippi; and when the channel is made by Lake Nipissing, there will be an unbroken watercourse between New Orleans, New York, Bytown, and Quebec.] [Footnote BD: There are upwards of 5000 miles of canal in America.] [Footnote BE: _Vide_ an able paper on railways, written by that officer and published in that valuable work, _Aide Mémoire to the Military Sciences_; or for fuller particulars the reader is referred to Report on the Railways of the United States, by Capt. Douglas Galton, R.N., recently issued.] [Footnote BF: This is without the expenses arising from law and parliamentary proceedings.] [Footnote BG: I believe the railway from Charleston to Savannah was entirely laid down on this plan.] [Footnote BH: Mr. Jones, in his _Historical Sketch of the Electric Telegraph_, makes the calculation 40l. a mile, and estimates that, to erect them durably, would cost 100l. a mile.] [Footnote BI: Having alluded in the text to the systems of Morse, Bain, and House, I must apologize for omitting to add, that the system of Cook and Wheatstone consists simply of a deflecting needle--or needles--which being acted upon by the currents, are, according to the manipulations of the operator, made to indicate the required letters by a certain number of ticks to the right or left.] CHAPTER XXIV. _America's Press and England's Censor._ In treating of a free country, the Press must ever be considered as occupying too important an influence to be passed over in silence. I therefore propose dedicating a few pages to the subject. The following Table, arranged from information given in the Census Report of 1850, is the latest account within my reach:-- _Newspapers Published._ Daily Tri-Weekly Semi-Weekly Weekly 254 115 31 1902 Printed Printed Printed Printed Annually Annually Annually Annually 235,119,966 11,811,140 5,565,176 153,120,708 Semi-Monthly Monthly Quarterly 95 100 19 Printed Printed Printed Annually Annually Annually 11,703,480 8,887,803 103,500 _General Classification._ Literary and Neutral and Political Religious Scientific Miscellaneous Independent 568 88 1630 191 53 Printed Printed Printed Printed Printed Annually Annually Annually Annually Annually 77,877,276 88,023,953 221,844,133 33,645,484 4,893,932 Total number of newspapers and periodicals, 2526; and copies printed annually, 426,409,978. The minute accuracy of the number of copies issued annually is a piece of startling information: the Republic is most famous for statistics, but how, without any stamp to test the accuracy of the issues, they have ascertained the units while dealing with hundreds of millions is a statistical prodigy that throws the calculating genius of a Babbage and the miraculous powers of Herr Döbler and Anderson into the shade. I can therefore no more pretend to explain the method they employ for statistics, than I can the system adopted by Herr Döbler to mend plates by firing pistols at them. The exact quantity of reliance that can be placed upon them, I must leave to my reader's judgment. As a general rule, it may be said that the literary, religious, and scientific portions of the Press are printed on good paper, and provided with useful matter, reflecting credit on the projectors and contributors. I wish I could say the same of the political Press; but truth compels me to give a far different account of their publications: they certainly partake more of the "cheap and nasty" style. The paper is generally abominable, the type is so small as to be painful to the eyes, and would almost lead one to suppose it had been adopted at the suggestion of a conclave of 'cute oculists: the style of language in attacking adversaries is very low: the terms employed are painfully coarse, and there is a total absence of dignity; besides which they are profuse caterers to the vanity of the nation. I do not say there are no exceptions; I merely speak generally, and as they came under my own eye, while travelling through the whole length of the States. At the same time, in justice, it must be stated, that they contain a great deal of commercial information for the very small price they cost, some of them being as low as one halfpenny in price. I do not endorse the following extract, nor do I give it as the opinion which editors entertain generally of each other, but rather to show the language in which adverse opinions are expressed. It is taken from the columns of the _The Liberator_:--"We have been in the editorial harness for more than a quarter of a century, and, during that period, have had every facility to ascertain the character of the American Press, in regard to every form that has struggled for the ascendency during that period; and we soberly aver, as our conviction, that a majority of the proprietors and editors of public journals more justly deserve a place in the penitentiaries of the land than the inmates of those places generally. No felons are more lost to shame, no liars are so unscrupulous, no calumniators are so malignant and satanic."--The language of the foregoing is doubtless unmistakeably clear, but I think the style can hardly be thought defensible. On general topics of interest, if nothing occurs to stir the writer's bile, or if the theme be not calculated to excite the vanity of their countrymen, the language usually employed is perhaps a little metaphorical, but is at the same time grammatical and sufficiently clear; and, I believe, that as a general principle they expend liberally for information, and consequently the whole Republic may be said to be kept well informed on all passing events of interest. If we turn for a moment from considering the American Press, to take a slight glimpse at our own, how startling does the difference appear! Great Britain, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, with a population exceeding that of the United States, and with wealth immeasurably greater, produce 624 papers, and of these comparatively few are daily; only 180 issue above 100,000 copies annually, only 32 circulate above 500,000, and only 12 above 1,000,000. It has further been stated, that there are 75 towns returning 115 members, and representing 1,500,000 of the population, without any local paper at all. The information respecting the Press in England is derived from _The Sixth Annual Report of the Association for promoting the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge_, and _The Newspaper Press Directory_. The issues subjoined are taken from the Return ordered by the House of Commons, of newspaper stamps, which is "_A Return of the Number of Newspaper Stamps at one penny, issued to Newspapers in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, for the year_ 1854." _In England._ The Times 15,975,739 The News of the World 5,673,525 Illustrated London News 5,627,866 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper 5,572,897 Weekly Times 3,902,169 Reynold's Weekly 2,496,256 Morning Advertiser 2,392,780 Weekly Dispatch 1,982,933 Daily News 1,485,099 Bell's Life in London 1,161,000 Morning Herald 1,159,000 Manchester Guardian 1,066,575 Liverpool Mercury 912,000 Morning Chronicle 873,500 The Globe 850,000 The Express 841,342 Morning Post 832,500 The Sun 825,000 Evening Mail 800,000 Leeds Mercury 735,500 Stamford Mercury 689,000 Birmingham Journal 650,750 Shipping Gazette 628,000 Weekly Messenger 625,500 _In Scotland._ North British Advertiser 802,000 Glasgow Saturday Post 727,000 North British Mail 565,000 Glasgow Herald 541,000 _In Ireland._ The Telegraph 959,000 Saunders's News Letter 756,000 Daily Express 748,000 General Advertiser 598,000 Various reasons may be given for this great difference between the Press of the two countries. Many are disposed to attribute it, very naturally, to the Government stamp, and the securities which are required; some, to the machinery of Government of this country being necessarily so complicated by ancient rights and privileges, and the difficulties of raising a revenue, whereof the item of interest on the national debt alone amounts to nearly 30,000,000l.; while others, again planting one foot of the Press compass in London, show that a half circle with a radius of five hundred miles brings nearly the whole community within twenty-four hours' post of the metropolis, in which the best information and the most able writers are to be found, thereby rendering it questionable if local papers, in any numbers, would obtain sufficient circulation to enable the editors to retain the services of men of talent, or to procure valuable general information, without wholesale plagiarism from their giant metropolitan rivals. Besides, it must he remembered that in America, each State, being independent, requires a separate press of its own, while the union of all the States renders it necessary that the proceedings in each of the others should be known, in order that the constitutional limits within which they are permitted to exercise their independence, may be constantly and jealously watched; from which cause it will be seen that there is a very simple reason for the Republic requiring comparatively far more papers than this country, though by no means accounting for the very great disproportion existing. While, however, I readily admit that the newspapers of Great Britain are greatly inferior in numbers, I am bound in justice to add, that they are decidedly superior in tone and character. I am not defending the wholesale manner in which, when it suits their purpose, they drag an unfortunate individual before the public, and crucify him on the anonymous editorial WE, which is at one and the same time their deadliest weapon and their surest shield. Such acts all honest men must alike deplore and condemn; but it must be admitted that the language they employ is more in accordance with the courtesies of civilized life, than that used by the Press of the Republic under similar circumstances; and if, in a time of excitement and hope, they do sometimes cater for the vanity of John Bull, they more generally employ their powers to "take him down a peg;" and every newspaper which has sought for popularity in the muddy waters of scurrility, has--to use an Oriental proverb--"eaten its own dirt, and died a putrid death." Let me now turn from the Press to the literature of the United States. Of the higher order of publications, it is needless to say anything in these pages. Irving, Prescott, Ticknor, Stephens, Longfellow, Hawthorne, and writers of that stamp, are an honour to any country, and are as well known in England as they are in America, consequently any encomium from my pen is as unnecessary as it would be presumptuous. The literature on which I propose to comment, is that which I may reasonably presume to be the popular literature of the masses, because it is the staple commodity for sale on all railways and steamboats. I need not refer again to the most objectionable works, inasmuch as the very fact of their being sold by stealth proves that, however numerous their purchasers, they are at all events an outrage on public opinion. I made a point of always purchasing whatever books appeared to me to be selling most freely among my fellow-travellers, and I am sorry to say that the mass of trash I thus became possessed of was perfectly inconceivable, and the most vulgar abuse of this country was decidedly at a premium. But their language was of itself so penny-a-liny, that they might have lain for weeks on the book-shelf at an ordinary railway-station in England--price, _gratis_--and nobody but a trunkmaker or a grocer would have been at the trouble of removing them. Not content, however, with writing trash, they do not scruple to deceive the public in the most barefaced way by deliberate falsehood. I have in my possession two of these specimens of honesty, purchased solely from seeing my brother's name as the author, which of course I knew perfectly well to be false, and which they doubtless put there because the American public had received favourably the volumes he really had written. Of the contents of these works attributed to him I will only say, the rubbish was worthy of the robber. I would not convey the idea that all the books offered for sale are of this calibre; there are also magazines and other works, some of which are both interesting and well-written. If I found no quick sale going on, I generally selected some work treating of either England or the English, so as to ascertain the popular shape in which my countrymen were represented. One work which I got hold of, called _Northwood_, amused me much: I there found the Englishman living under a belief that the Americans were little better than savages and Pagans, and quite overcome at the extraordinary scene of a household meeting together for domestic worship, which of course was never heard of in England. This little scene affords a charming opportunity for "buttering up" New England piety at the cheap expense of a libel upon the old country. He then is taken to hear a sermon, where for his special benefit, I suppose, the preacher expatiates on the glorious field of Bunker's Hill, foretells England's decline, and generously promises our countrymen a home in America when they are quite "used up." The Englishman is quite overcome with the eloquence and sympathy of the Church militant preacher, whose discourse being composed by the authoress, I may fairly conclude is given as a model of New England oratory in her estimation. Justice requires I should add, that the sermons I heard during my stay in those States were on religious topics, and not on revolutionary war. Perhaps it may be said that _Northwood_ was written some years ago, I will therefore pass from it to what at the present day appears to be considered a _chef d'oeuvre_ among the popular style of works of which I have been speaking. I ground my opinion of the high estimation in which it is held from the flattering encomiums passed upon it by the Press throughout the whole Republic from Boston to New Orleans. Boston styles it a "_vigorous volume;"_ Philadelphia, a "_delightful treat;"_ New York, "_interesting and instructive;"_ Albany admires the Author's "_keen discriminating powers;"_ Detroit, "a _lively and racy style;" The Christian Advocate_ styles it "_a skinning operation"_ and then adds, it is a "_retort courteous"_ to Uncle Tommyism; Rochester honours the author with the appellation of "_the most chivalrous American that ever crossed the Atlantic."_ New Orleans winds up a long paragraph with the following magnificent burst of editorial eloquence:--"_The work is essentially American. It is the type, the representative,_ THE AGGREGATE OUTBURST OF THE GREAT AMERICAN HEART, _so well expressed, so admirably revealing the sentiment of our whole people_--_with the exception of some puling lovers he speaks of-_--_that it will find sympathy in the mind of every true son of the soil."_ The work thus heralded over the Republic with such perfect _e pluribus unum_ concord is entitled _English Items;_ and the embodiment of the "_aggregate outburst of the great American heart"_ is a Mr. Matthew F. Ward, whose work is sent forth to the public from one of the most respectable publishers in New York--D. Appleton and Co., Broadway. Before I present the reader specimens of ore from this valuable mine I must make a few observations. The author is the son of one of the wealthiest families in Kentucky, a man of education and travel, and has appeared before the public in a work entitled _The Three Continents:_ I have given extracts from the opinions of the Press at greater length than I otherwise should have done, because I think after the reader has followed me through a short review of _English Items,_ he will see what strong internal testimony they bear to the truth of my previous observations. I would also remark that I am not at all thin-skinned as to travellers giving vent to their true feelings with regard to my own country. All countries have their weaknesses, their follies, and their wickednesses. Public opinion in England, taken as a whole, is decidedly good, and therefore the more the wrong is laid bare the more hope for its correction; but, while admitting this right in its fullest extent, it is under two conditions: one that the author speak the truth, the other that his language be not an outrage on decency or good manners. Now then, come forth, _thou aggregate outburst of the great American heart_![BJ] Speak for thyself--let the public be thy judge. The following extracts are from the chapter on "Our Individual Relations with England," the chaste style whereof must gratify the reader:--"I am sorry to observe that it is becoming more and more the fashion, especially among travelled Americans, to pet the British beast; ... instead of treating him like other refractory brutes, they pusillanimously strive to soothe him by a forbearance he cannot appreciate; ... beasts are ruled through fear, not kindness: they submissively lick the hand that wields the lash." Then follow instructions for his treatment, so terrible as to make future tourists to America tremble:--"Seize him fearlessly by the throat, and once strangle him into involuntary silence, and the British lion will hereafter be as fawning as he has been hitherto spiteful." He then informs his countrymen that the English "cannot appreciate the retiring nature of true gentility ... nor can they realize how a nation can fail to be blustering except from cowardice." Towards the conclusion of the chapter he explains that "hard blows are the only logic the English understand;" and then, lest the important fact should be forgotten, he clothes the sentiment in the following burst of genuine _American_ eloquence:--"To affect their understandings, we must punch their heads." So much for the chapter on "Our Individual Relations with England," which promise to be of so friendly a nature that future travellers had better take with them a supply of bandages, lint, and diachylon plaster, so as to be ready for the new _genuine American_ process of intellectual expansion. Another chapter is dedicated to "Sixpenny Miracles in England," which is chiefly composed of _réchauffées_ from our own press, and with which the reader is probably familiar; but there are some passages sufficiently amusing for quotation:--"English officials are invariably impertinent, from the policeman at the corner to the minister in Downing-street ... a stranger might suppose them paid to insult, rather than to oblige ... from the clerk at the railway depôt to the secretary of the office where a man is compelled to go about passports, the same laconic rudeness is observable." How the _American mind_ must have been galled, when a cabinet minister said, "not at home" to a free and enlightened citizen, who, on a levee day at the White House, can follow his own hackney-coachman into the august presence of the President elect. Conceive him strolling up Charing Cross, then suddenly stopping in the middle of the pavement, wrapt in thought as to whether he should cowhide the insulting minister, or give him a chance at twenty yards with a revolving carbine. Ere the knotty point is settled in his mind, a voice from beneath a hat with an oilskin top sounds in his ear, "Move on, sir, don't stop the pathway!" Imagine the sensations of a sovereign citizen of a sovereign state, being subject to such indignities from stipendiary ministers and paid police. Who can wonder that he conceives it the duty of government so to regulate public offices, &c., "as to protect not only its own subjects, but strangers, from the insults of these impertinent hirelings." The bile of the author rises with his subject, and a few pages further on he throws it off in the following beautiful sentence:--"Better would it be for the honour of the English nation if they had been born in the degradation, as they are endued with the propensities, of the modern Egyptians." At last, among other "sixpenny miracles," he arrives at the Zoological Gardens,--the beauty of arrangement, the grandness of the scale, &c., strike him forcibly; but his keen inquiring mind, and his accurately recording pen, have enabled him to afford his countrymen information which most of my co-members in the said Society were previously unconscious of. He tells them, "It is under control of the English Government, and subject to the same degradation as Westminster, St. Paul's, &c."--Starting from this basis, which only wants truth to make it solid, he complains of "the meanness of reducing the nation to the condition of a common showman;" the trifling mistake of confounding public and private property moves his democratic _chivalry_, and he takes up the cudgels for the masses. I almost fear to give the sentence publicity, lest it should shake the Ministry, and be a rallying-point for Filibustero Chartists. My anticipation of but a moderate circulation for this work must plead my excuse for not withholding it. "The Government basely use, without permission, the authority of the people's name, to make them sharers in a disgrace for which they alone are responsible. A stranger, in paying his shilling for admission into an exhibition, which has been dubbed nation (by whom?) in contradistinction from another in the Surrey Gardens, very naturally suspects that the people are partners in this contemptible transaction.... The English people are compelled to pay for the ignominy with which their despotic rulers have loaded them." Having got his foot into this mare's nest, he finds an egg a little further on, which he thus hatches for the American public: "Englishmen not only regard eating as the most inestimable blessing of life, when they enjoy it themselves, but they are always intensely delighted to see it going on. The Government charge an extra shilling at the Zoological Gardens on the days that the animals are fed in public; but, as much as an Englishman dislikes spending money, the extraordinary attraction never fails to draw," &c. From the Gardens he visits Chelsea Hospital, where his _keen discriminating powers_ having been sharpened by the demand for a shilling--the chief object of which demand is to protect the pensioners from perpetual intrusion--he bursts forth in a sublime magnifico Kentuckyo flight of eloquence: "Sordid barbarians might degrade the wonderful monuments of their more civilized ancestors by charging visitors to see them; but to drag from their lowly retreat these maimed and shattered victims of national ambition, to be stared at, and wondered at, like caged beasts, is an outrage against humanity that even savages would shrink from." And then, a little further on, he makes the following profound reflection, which no doubt appears to the _American mind_ peculiarly appropriate to Chelsea Hospital: "Cringing to the great, obsequious to the high, the dwarfed souls of Englishmen have no wide extending sympathy for the humble, no soothing pity for the lowly," &c. It would probably astonish some of the readers who have been gulled by his book, could they but know that the sum paid by Great Britain for the support and pension of her veterans by sea and land costs annually nearly enough to buy, equip, and pay the whole army and navy of the United States.[BK] The next "sixpenny miracle" he visits is Chatsworth, which calls forth the following _vigorous_ attack on sundry gentlemen, clothed in the author's peculiarly _lively and racy_ language: "The showy magnificence of Chatsworth, Blenheim, and the gloomy grandeur of Warwick and Alnwick Castles, serve to remind us, like the glittering shell of the tortoise, what worthless and insignificant animals often inhabit the most splendid mansions." He follows up this general castigation of the owners of the above properties with the infliction of a special cowhiding upon the Duke of Devonshire, who, he says, "would, no doubt, be very reluctant frankly to confess to the world, that although he had the vanity to affect liberality, he was too penurious to bear the expense of it. Like the ostrich, he sticks his head in the sand, and imagines himself in the profoundest concealment." He then begs the reader to understand, that he does not mean to intimate "that any portion of the large amounts collected at the doors of Chatsworth actually goes into the pocket of His Grace, but they are, nevertheless, remarkably convenient in defraying the expense of a large household of servants.... The idea of a private gentleman of wealth and rank deriving a profit from the exhibition of his grounds must be equally revolting to all classes." These truthful observations are followed by a description of the gardens; and the whole is wound up in the following _chivalrous and genuine American_ reflection: "Does it not appear extraordinary that a man dwelling in a spot of such fairy loveliness should retain and indulge the most grovelling instincts of human nature's lowest grade?" What a _delightful treat_ these passages must be to the rowdy Americans, and how the Duke must writhe under--what _The Christian Advocate_ lauds as--the _skinning operation _of the renowned American champion![BL] The Press-bespattered author then proceeds to make some observations on various subjects, in a similar vein of chaste language, lighting at last upon the system of the sale of army commissions. His vigour is so great upon this point, that had he only been in the House of Commons when the subject was under consideration, his eloquence must have hurled the "hireling ministers" headlong from the government. I can fancy them sitting pale and trembling as the giant orator thus addressed the House: "She speculates in glory as a petty hucksterer does in rancid cheese; but the many who hate, and the few who despise England, cannot exult over her baseness in selling commissions in her own army. There is a degree of degradation which changes scorn into pity, and makes us sincerely sympathize with those whom we most heartily despise." The annexed extract from his observations on English writers on America is an equally elegant specimen of _genuine American feeling:_--"When the ability to calumniate is the only power which has survived the gradual encroachment of bowels upon intellect in Great Britain, it would be a pity to rob the English even of this miserable evidence of mind ... she gloats over us with that sort of appetizing tenderness which might be supposed to have animated a sow that had eaten her nine farrow." The subjoined sentiment, if it rested with the author to verify, would doubtless be true; and I suppose it is the paragraph which earned for his work the laudations of _The Christian Advocate:_--"Mutual enmity is the only feeling which can ever exist between the two nations.... She gave us no assistance in our rise.... She must expect none from us in her decline." How frightful is the contemplation of this omnipotent and _Christian_ threat! It is worthy of the consideration of my countrymen whether they had not better try and bribe the great Matt. Ward to use his influence in obtaining them recognition as American territory. The honour of being admitted as a sovereign state is too great to be hoped for. He has already discovered signs of our decay, and therefore informs the reader that "the weaker rival ever nurses the bitterest hate." This information is followed by extracts from various English writers commenting upon America, at one of whom he gets so indignant, that he suggests as an appropriate _American_ translation of the F.R.S. which is added to the author's name, "First Royal Scavenger." He then gets into a fever about the remarks made by travellers upon what they conceive to be the filthy practice of indiscriminate spitting. He becomes quite furious because he has never found any work in which "an upstart inlander has ever preached a crusade against the Turks because they did not introduce knives and forks at their tables," &c. Even Scripture--and this, be it remembered, by the sanction of _The Christian Advocate_--is blasphemously quoted to extenuate the American practice of expectoration. "What, after all, is there so unbearably revolting about spitting? Our Saviour, in one of his early miracles, 'spat upon the ground and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore and washed, and came seeing.' I have with a crowd of pilgrims gone down to drink from this very pool, for the water had borrowed new virtue from the miracle." He then states his strong inclination to learn to chew tobacco in order to show his contempt for the opinions of travellers. What a beautiful picture to contemplate--a popular author with a quid of Virginia before him; Nausea drawing it back with one hand, and Vengeance bringing it forward with the other! Suddenly a bright idea strikes him: others may do what he dare not; so he makes the following stirring appeal to his countrymen: "Let us spit out courageously before the whole world ... let us spit fearlessly and profusely. Spitting on ordinary occasions may be regarded by a portion of my countrymen as a luxury: it becomes a duty in the presence of an Englishman. Let us spit around him--above him--beneath him--everywhere but on him, that he may become perfectly familiar with the habit in all its phases. I would make it the first law of hospitality to an Englishman, that every tobacco-twist should be called into requisition, and every spittoon be flooded, in order thoroughly to initiate him into the mysteries of chewing. Leave no room for imagination to work. Only spit him once into a state of friendly familiarity with the barbarous custom," &c. What a splendid conception!--the population of a whole continent organized under the expectorating banner of the illustrious Matt. Ward: field-days twice a week; ammunition supplied _gratis;_ liberal prizes to the best marksmen. The imagination is perfectly bewildered in the contemplation of so majestic an _aggregate outburst of the great American_ mouth. I would only suggest that they should gather round the margin of Lake Superior, lest in their hospitable entertainment of the "upstart islanders" they destroyed the vegetation of the whole continent. In another chapter he informs his countrymen that the four hundred and thirty nobles in England speak and act for the nation; his knowledge of history, or his love of truth, ignoring that little community called the House of Commons. Bankers and wealthy men come under the ban of his condemnation, as having no time for "enlightened amusements;" he then, with that truthfulness which makes him so safe a guide to his readers, adds that "they were never known to manifest a friendship, except for the warehouse cat; they have no time to talk, and never write except on business; all hours are office-hours to them, except those they devote to dinner and sleep; they know nothing, they love nothing, and hope for nothing beyond the four walls of their counting-room; nobody knows them, nobody loves them; they are too mean to make friends, and too silent to make acquaintances," &c. What very interesting information this must be for Messrs. Baring and their co-fraternity! In another part of this volume, the author becomes suddenly impressed with deep reverence for the holy localities of the East, and he falls foul of Dr. Clarke for his scepticism on these points, winding up his remarks in the following beautiful Kentucky vein:--"A monster so atrocious could only have been a Goth or an Englishman." How fortunate for his countryman, Dr. Robinson, that he had never heard of his three learned tomes on the same subject! though, perhaps, scepticism in an American, in his discriminating mind, would have been deep erudition correcting the upstart islanders. The great interest which he evinces for holy localities--accompanied as it is by an expression of horror at some English traveller, who, he asserts, thought that David picked up his pebbles in a brook between Jordan and the Dead Sea, whereas he knew it was in an opposite direction--doubtless earned for him the patronage of _The Christian Advocate_; and the pious indignation he expresses at an Englishman telling him he would get a good dinner at Mount Carmel, is a beautiful illustration of his religious feelings. The curious part of this portion of Mr. Ward's book is, that having previously informed his countrymen, in every variety of American phraseology, that the English are composed of every abominable compound which can exist in human nature, he selects them as his companions, and courts their friendship to enjoy the pleasure of betraying it. Of course, if one is to judge by former statements made in the volume, which are so palpably and ridiculously false, one may reasonably conclude that truth is equally disregarded here; but it looks to me rather as if my countrymen had discovered his cloven hoof, as well as his overweening vanity and pretensions, and, when he got pompously classical, in his trip through Greece, they amused themselves at his expense by suggesting that the Acropolis "was a capital place for lunch;" Parnassus, "a regular sell;" Thermopylae, "great for water-cresses." Passing on from his companions--one of whom was a fellow of Oxford, and the other a captain in Her Majesty's service--he becomes grandly Byronic, and consequently quite frantic at the idea of Mr. A. Tennyson supplanting him! "Byron and Tennyson!--what an unholy alliance of names!--what sinful juxtaposition! He who could seriously compare the insipid effusions of Mr. Tennyson with the mighty genius of Byron, might commit the sacrilege of likening the tricks of Professor Anderson to the miracles of Our Saviour." Having delivered himself of this pious burst, he proceeds to a castigation of the English for their observations on the nasal twang of his countrymen, and also for their criticism upon the sense in which sundry adjectives are used; and, to show the superior purity of the American language, he informs the reader that in England "the most elegant and refined talk constantly of "fried 'am" ... they seem very reluctant to _h_acknowledge this peculiarly _h_exceptionable 'abit, and _h_insist that _h_it _h_is confined to the low and _h_ignorant of the country." He then gets indignant that we call "stone" "stun," and measure the gravity of flesh and blood thereby. "To unsophisticated ears, 21 stone 6 pounds sounds infinitely less than three hundred pounds, which weight is a fair average of the avoirdupois density of the Sir Tunbelly Clumsies of the middle and upper classes." From this elegant sentence he passes on to the evils of idleness, in treating of which he supplies _The Christian Advocate_ with the true cause of original sin. "Does any one imagine that the forbidden fruit would ever have been tasted if Adam had been daily occupied in tilling the earth, and Eve, like a good housewife, in darning fig-leaf aprons for herself and her husband? Never!" The observation would lead one to imagine that the Bible was a scarce article in Kentucky. He passes on from Adam to the banker and merchant of the present day, and informs the reader that they command a high respect in society, but it would be deemed a shocking misapplication of terms to speak of any of them as gentlemen. After which truthful statement, he enters into a long definition of a gentleman, as though he thought his countrymen totally ignorant on that point: he gets quite _chivalrous_ in his description: "He ought to touch his hat to his opponent with whom he was about to engage in mortal combat."[BM] After which remark he communicates two pieces of information--the one as true as the other is modest: "Politeness is deemed lessening to the position of a gentleman in England; in America it is thought his proudest boast." Of course he only alludes to manner; his writings prove at every page that _genuine American feeling_ dispenses with it in language. His politeness, I suppose, may be described in the words Junius applied to friendship:--"The insidious smile upon the cheek should warn you of the canker in the heart." By way of encouraging civility, he informs the reader that an Englishman "never appears so disgusting as when he attempts to be especially kind; ...in affecting to oblige, he becomes insulting." He confesses, however, "I have known others in America whom you would never suspect of being Englishmen--they were such good fellows; but they had been early transplanted from England. If the sound oranges be removed from a barrel in which decay has commenced, they may be saved; but if suffered to remain, they are all soon reduced to the same disgusting state." His discriminating powers next penetrate some of the deep mysteries of animal nature: he discovers that the peculiarities of the bullock and the sheep have been gradually absorbed into the national character, as far as conversation is concerned. "They have not become woolly, nor do they wear horns, but the nobility are eternally bellowing forth the astounding deeds of their ancestors, whilst the muttonish middle classes bleat a timorous approval.... Such subjects constitute their fund of amusing small talk," &c. From the foregoing elegant description of conversation, he passes onwards to the subject of gentility, and describes a young honourable, on board a steamer, who refused to shut a window when asked by a sick and suffering lady, telling the husband, "he could not consent to be suffocated though his wife was sick." And having cooked up the story, he gives the following charming reason for his conduct: "He dreaded the possibility of compromising his own position and that of his noble family at home by obliging an ordinary person." He afterwards touches upon English visitors to America, who, he says, "generally come among us in the undisguised nakedness of their vulgarity. Wholly freed from the restraints imposed upon them at home by the different grades in society, they indolently luxuriate in the inherent brutality of their nature. They constantly violate not only all rules of decorum, but the laws of decency itself.... They abuse our hospitality, insult our peculiar institutions, set at defiance all the refinements of life, and return home, lamenting the social anarchy of America, and retailing their own indecent conduct as the ordinary customs of the country.... The pranks which, in a backwoods American, would be stigmatized as shocking obscenity, become, when perpetrated by a rich Englishman, charming evidence of sportive humour," &c. A considerable portion of the volume is dedicated to Church matters; for which subject the meek and lowly style which characterizes his writing pre-eminently qualifies him, and to which, doubtless, he is indebted for the patronage of _The Christian Advocate_. I shall only indulge the reader with the following beautiful description of the Established Church:--"It is a bloated, unsightly mass of formalities, hypocrisy, bigotry, and selfishness, without a single charitable impulse or pious aspiration." After this touching display of _genuine American feeling_, he draws the picture of a clergyman in language so opposite, that one is reminded of a certain mysterious personage, usually represented with cloven feet, and who is said to be very apt at quoting Scripture. Heraldry and ancestry succeed the Church in gaining a notice from his pen; and his researches have gone so deep, that one is led to imagine--despite his declarations of contempt--that he looks forward to becoming some day The Most Noble the Duke of Arkansas and Mississippi, with a second title of Viscount de' Tucky and Ohio;[BN] the "de" suggestive of his descent from _The Three Continents_. One of the most remarkable discoveries he has made, is, that "the soap-makers and the brewers are the compounders of the great staple commodities of consumption in Great Britain, and therefore surpass even Charles himself in the number of their additions to the Peerage." This valuable hint should not be lost upon those employed in these useful occupations, as hope is calculated to stimulate zeal and ambition. The last quotations I propose making from this _vigorous volume_ are taken from the seventh chapter, headed, "English Devotion to Dinner." On this subject the author seems to have had his _keen discriminating powers_ peculiarly sharpened; and the observations made are in most _lively and racy style_, and--according to the Press--perfectly _courteous_. The Englishman "is never free till armed with a knife and fork; indeed, he is never completely himself without them[BO] ... which may he as properly considered integral portions of an Englishman, as claws are of a cat; ... they are not original even in their gluttony; ... they owe to a foreign nation the mean privilege of bestial indulgence; ... they make a run into Scotland for the sake of oatmeal cakes, and sojourn amongst the wild beauties of Switzerland in order to be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... when, upon such auspicious occasions, he does go off into something like gaiety, there is such fearful quivering of vast jelly mounds of flesh, something so supernaturally tremendous in his efforts, that, like the recoil of an overloaded musket, he never fails to astound those who happen to be near him." But his _keen observation_ has discovered a practice before dinner, which, being introduced into the centre of various censures, may also be fairly supposed to be considered by him and his friends of the Press as most objectionable, and as forming one of the aggregate _Items_ which constitute the English beast. "For dinner, he bathes, rubs, and dresses." How filthy! Yet be not too hard upon him, reader, for this observation; I have travelled in his neighbourhood, on the Mississippi steamers, and I can, therefore, well understand how the novelty of the operation must have struck him with astonishment, and how repugnant the practice must have been to his habits. Among other important facts connected with this great question, his _discriminating_ mind has ascertained that an Englishman "makes it a rule to enjoy a dinner at his own expense as little as possible." Armed with this important discovery, he lets drive the following American shell, thus shivering to atoms the whole framework of our society. The nation may tremble as it reads these withering words of Kentucky eloquence:--"When it is remembered that of all the vices, avarice is most apt to corrupt the heart, and gluttony has the greatest tendency to brutalize the mind, it no longer continues surprising that an Englishman has become a proverb of meanness from Paris to Jerusalem. The hatred and contempt of all classes of society as necessarily attend him in his wanderings as his own shadow.... Equally repulsive to every grade of society, he stands isolated and alone, a solitary monument of the degradation of which human nature is capable." Feeling that ordinary language is insufficient to convey his _courteous_ and _chivalrous_ sentiments, he ransacks natural history in search of a sublime metaphor: his triumphant success he records in this beautifully expressed sentence--"The dilating power of the anaconda and the gizzard of the cassowary are the highest objects of his ambition." But neither ordinary language nor metaphor can satisfy his lofty aspirations: it requires something higher, it requires an embodiment of _genuine American feeling, vigorous yet courteous_; his giant intellect rises equal to the task. He warns my countrymen "to use expletives oven with the danger of being diffuse, rather than be so blunt and so vulgar;" and then--by way, I suppose, of showing them how to be sarcastic without being either blunt or vulgar--he delivers himself of the following magnificent bursts:--"If guts could perform the function of brains, Greece's seven wise men would cease to be proverbial, for England would present to the world twenty-seven millions of sages.... To eat, to drink, to look greasy, and to grow fat, appear to constitute, in their opinion, the career of a worthy British subject.... The lover never asks his fair one if she admires Donizetti's compositions, but tenderly inquires if she loves beef-steak pies. This sordid vice of greediness is rapidly brutalizing natures not originally spiritual; every other passion is sinking, oppressed by flabby folds of fat, into helplessness. All the mental energies are crushed beneath the oily mass. Sensibility is smothered in, the feculent steams of roast beef, and delicacy stained by the waste drippings of porter. The brain is slowly softening into blubber, and the liver is gradually encroaching upon the heart. All the nobler impulses of man are yielding to those animal propensities which must soon render Englishmen beasts in all save form alone." I have now finished my _Elegant Extracts_ from the work of Mr. Ward. The reader can judge for himself of Boston's "_vigorous volume_," of Philadelphia's "_delightful treat_," of Rochester's "_chivalrous and genuine Amercan feeling_," of The Christian Advocate's "_retort courteous_," and of New Orleans' "_aggregate outburst of the great American heart_," &c. These compliments from the Press derive additional value from the following passage in the work they eulogize. Pages 96, 97, Mr. Ward writes: "It is the labour of every author so to adapt his style and sentiments to the tastes of his readers, as most probably to secure their approbation.... The consciousness that his success is so wholly dependent on their approval, will make him, without his being aware of it, adapt his ideas to theirs." And the New Orleans Press endorses all the author's sentiments, and insults American gentlemen and American intelligence, by asserting that it "_admirably reveals the sentiments of the whole people, and will find sympathy in the mind of every true son of the soil_." Before taking a final leave of _English Items_, I owe some apology to the reader for the length at which I have quoted from it. My only excuse is, that I desired to show the grounds upon which I spoke disparagingly of a portion of the Press, and of the low popular literature of the country. I might have quoted from various works instead of one; but if I had done so, it might fairly have been said that I selected an isolated passage for a particular purpose; or else, had I quoted largely, I might have been justly charged with being tedious. Besides which, to corroborate my assertions regarding the Press, I should have been bound to give their opinion also upon each book from which I quoted; and, beyond all these reasons, I felt that the generality of the works of low literature which I came across were from the pen of people with far less education than the author I selected, who, as I have before remarked, belongs to one of the wealthiest families in Kentucky, and for whom, consequently, neither the want of education nor the want of opportunities of mixing in respectable society--had he wished to do so--can be offered as the slightest extenuation.[BP] I feel also that I owe some apology to my American friends for dragging such a work before the public; but I trust they will find sufficient excuse for my doing so, in the explanation thus afforded, of the way the mind of Young America gets poisoned, and which will also partly account for the abuse of this country that is continually appearing in their Press. I feel sure there is hardly a gentleman in America, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making, who would read even the first twenty pages of the book; and I am in justice hound to say, that among all the works of a similar class which I saw, _English Items_ enjoys unapproachable pre-eminence in misrepresentation and vulgarity, besides being peculiarly contemptible, from the false being mixed up with many true statements of various evils and iniquities still existing in England, and which, being quoted from our own Press, are calculated to give the currency of truth to the whole work, among that mass of his countrymen who, with all their intelligence, are utterly ignorant of England, either socially or politically. The subsequent career of this censor of English manners and morals is too remarkable to be passed over in silence. I therefore now proceed to give you a short epitome of it, as a specimen of morals and manners in Kentucky, as exhibited by him, and his trial. My information is taken from the details of the trial published at full length, a copy of which I obtained in consequence of the extraordinary accounts of the transaction which I read in the papers. Professor Butler had formerly been tutor in the family of the Wards, and was equally esteemed by them and the public of Louisville generally. At the time of the following occurrence the Professor was Principal of the High School in that city. One of the boys at the school was William--brother of Mr. Matt. F. Ward: it appears that in the opinion of the Professor the boy had been guilty of eating nuts in the school and denying it, for which offence he was called out and whipped, as the master told him, for telling a lie. Whether the charge or the punishment was just is not a point of any moment, though I must say the testimony goes far to justify both. William goes home, complains to his brother Matt. F., not so much of the severity of the punishment, as of being called a liar. The elder brother becomes highly indignant, and determines to go to the Professor and demand an apology. It must be remembered that the father was all this time in Louisville, and of course the natural person to have made any remonstrance with his old friend the Professor. Matt. F.'s family remind him that he is very weakly, and that one of the masters at the school is an enemy of his. They therefore beg of him to be calm, and to take his intermediate brother Robert with him, in case of accidents. He consents. He then goes to the gun-store of Messrs. Dixon and Gilmore, and purchases of the latter, about 9 A.M., two small pocket-pistols, three inches long in the barrel. These he gets Mr. Gilmore to load, but purchases no further ammunition. After this he proceeds with his brother Robert, who is armed with a bowie-knife, to the school. Not wishing to be unjust to Mr. Matt. F. Ward, I give the statement of the subsequent occurrence in the words of his brother Robert's evidence in court.[BQ] "On entering the school-room,[BR] Matt. asked for Butler. He came. Matt. remarked, I wish to have a talk with you. Butler said, Come into my private room. Matt. said, No; here is the place. Mr. Butler nodded. Matt. said, What are your ideas of justice? Which is the worst, the boy who begs chestnuts, and throws the shells on the floor, and lies about it, or my brother who gives them to him? Mr. Butler said he would not he interrogated, putting his pencil in his pocket and buttoning up his coat. Matt, repeated the question. Butler said, There is no such boy here. Matt. said, That settles the matter: you called my brother a liar, and for that I must have an apology. Butler said he had no apology to make. Is your mind made up? said Matt. Butler said it was. Then, said Matt., you must hear my opinion of you. You are a d----d scoundrel and a coward. Butler then struck Matt. twice, and pushed him back against the door. Matt. drew his pistol and fired. Butler held his hand on him for a moment. As the pistol fired, Sturgus[BS] came to the door. I drew my knife, and told him to stand back." Thus was Professor Butler, Principal of the High School of Louisville, shot by the author of _English Items_, with a pistol bought and loaded only an hour and a half previous, in broad daylight, and in the middle of his scholars. The Professor died during the night. The details of the trial are quite unique as to the language employed by jury, counsel, and evidence; but I purposely abstain from making extracts, though I could easily quote passages sufficiently ridiculous and amusing, and others which leave a painful impression of the state of law in Kentucky. My reason for abstaining is, that if I quoted at all, I ought to do so at greater length than the limits of a book of travels would justify: suffice it that I inform you that Mr. Matthew F. Ward was tried and acquitted. When the result of the trial was made known, an indignation meeting was held in Louisville, presided over by General Thomas Strange, at which various resolutions were passed unanimously. The first was in the following terms:--"Resolved--That the verdict of the jury, recently rendered in the Hardin County Court, by which Matt. F. Ward was declared innocent of any crime in the killing of William H.G. Butler, is in opposition to all the evidence in the case, contrary to our ideas of public justice, and subversive of the fundamental principles of personal security guaranteed to us by the constitution of the State. "Secondly: Resolved--That the published evidence given on the trial of Matt. F. Ward shows, beyond all question, that a most estimable citizen, and a most amiable, moral, and peaceable man has been wantonly and cruelly killed while in the performance of his regular and responsible duties as a teacher of youth; and, notwithstanding the verdict of a corrupt and venal jury, the deliberate judgment of the heart and conscience of this community pronounces that killing to be murder." The committee appointed by the meeting also requested Mr. Wolfe, one of the counsel for the prisoner, to resign his seat in the State Senate, and the Honourable Mr. Crittenden, another counsel, to resign his place in the Senate of the United States; effigies of the two brothers Ward were burnt, and a public subscription opened to raise a monument to the murdered Professor. I cannot, of course, decide how far the conclusions of the committee are just, as I do not pretend to know Kentucky law. I have, however, given the trial to members of the Bar in this country accustomed to deal with such cases, and they have without hesitation asserted that not one man in ten who has been hanged in England has been condemned on more conclusive evidence. It is also apparent that in some parts of the Union the same opinion prevails, as the following paragraph from the _New York Daily Times_ will clearly show:--"The trial is removed from the scene of the homicide, so that the prisoners shall Dot be tried by those who knew them best, but is taken to a distant country. The Press is forbidden, against all law and right, to publish a report of the proceedings while the trial is in progress. Every particle of evidence in regard to Butler's character is excluded; while a perfect army of witnesses--clergymen, colonels, members of Congress, editors, cabinet officers, &c., who had enjoyed the social intimacy of the Wards--testified ostentatiously to the prisoner's mildness of temper, declaring him, with anxious and undisguised exaggeration, to be gentle and amiable to a fault. All these preparations, laboriously made and steadily followed up, were for the purpose, not of determining the truth, which is the only proper object of judicial inquiry--not of ascertaining accurately and truly whether Matthew Ward did or did not murder Butler--but to secure impunity for his act. This whole drama was enacted to induce the jury to affirm a falsehood; and it has succeeded. We do not believe John J. Crittenden entertains in his heart the shadow of a doubt that Butler was murdered: we do not believe that a single man on that jury believes that the man they have acquitted is innocent of the crime laid to his charge. We regard the issue of this trial as of the gravest importance: it proves that in one State of this Union, wealth is stronger than justice; that Kentucky's most distinguished sons take to their hearts and shield with all their power a murderer who has money and social position at his command; and that under their auspices, legal tribunals and the most solemn forms of justice have been made to confer impunity on one of the blackest and most wanton murders which the annals of crime record." I add no comment, leaving the reader to make his own, deductions, and I only hope, if the foregoing lines should ever meet the eye of a citizen belonging to the sovereign State of Kentucky, they may stir him up to amend the law or to purify the juries. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote BJ: The reader is requested to remember that all the words printed in italics--while dealing with _English Items_--are so done to show that they are quotations from the eulogies of the American press. They are as thoroughly repudiated by me as they must be by every American gentleman.] [Footnote BK: Did Mr. Ward ever read any account in the gazettes of his own country, of the poor soldiers going to "Washington to procure land warrants, and after being detained there till they were reduced to beggary, receiving no attention? Let me commend the following letter, taken from the press of his own country, dated July 6, 1853, and addressed to the President:-- "DEAR SIR,--_In the humblest tone do I implore your charity for three cents, to enable me to procure something to eat._ Pray be so kind, and receive the grateful thanks of your humble supplicant of Shenandoah County, Va."] [Footnote BL: The reader will be astonished to know that these remarks are from the pen of a Kentucky man; in which State there is a large hole in the ground, made by Providence, and called "The Mammoth Cave;" it is situated on private property, and for the privilege of lionizing it, you pay 10s. So carefully is it watched, that no one is even allowed to make a plan of it, lest some entrance should be found available on the adjoining property.] [Footnote BM: I must beg the reader to remember this last sentence when he comes to the interview between the Kentucky author and his old friend, the schoolmaster.] [Footnote BN: Kentucky is the State of his birth and family, Arkansas the State of his adoption, and "The Three Continents" the fruit of his pen.] [Footnote BO: The reader will find that, in his interview with the schoolmaster, his brother was "completely himself" with a bowie-knife only.] [Footnote BP: One other instance I must give of the coolness with which an American writer can pen the most glaring falsehood; _vide_ "English Traits," by R.W. Emerson. I might quote many fake impressions conveyed, but I shall confine myself to one of his observations upon a religious subject, where at least decency might have made him respect truth. At page 126 I find the following sentence:--"They put up no Socratic prayer, _much less any saintly prayer, for the Queen's mind_; ask neither for light nor right, but say bluntly, 'grant her in health and wealth long to live.'" Now, I will not ask whether the author of this passage ever saw our Book of Common Prayer, because printing the words in inverted commas is proof sufficient; nor will I go out of my way to show the _many_ prayers put up for the bestowal of purely spiritual blessings; but, when I find the previous sentence to the one quoted by him to be as follows, "Endow her plenteously with heavenly gifts," what can I say of such a writer? Either that by heavenly gifts he understands dollars and cents, or that he has wilfully sacrificed religious truth at the shrine of democratic popularity. Having placed him on these two horns of a dilemma, I leave him to arrange his seat.] [Footnote BQ: Of course the evidence of the brother is the _most favourable_ to Mr. M.F.W. that the trial produces.] [Footnote BR: It appears in evidence that the scene described took place about half-past ten A.M.] [Footnote BS: Mr. Sturgus is the master who was supposed to be unfriendly to Mr. Matthew F. Ward.] CHAPTER XXV. _The Institution of Slavery._ There is one subject which no person who pretends to convey to the reader the honest thoughts and impressions which occupied his mind during his travels in this vast Republic, can pass over in silence; and that subject, I need scarcely observe, is Slavery. It is an institution which deserves most serious consideration; for while a general unity of sentiment binds the various States together in a manner that justifies the national motto, "_E pluribus unum_," the question of slavery hangs fearfully over their Union; and the thread by which it is suspended is more uncertain than the fragile hair of the sword of Damocles, for it is dependent upon the angry passions of angry man. So true do I feel this to be, that were I a citizen of one of the Free States of America, I might hesitate before I committed my opinions to the Press. I trust, however, that I may so treat the subject that no cause for ill-blood may be given. Unquestionably, the origin of the evil is wholly with the mother country. We entered into the diabolical traffic of our fellow-creatures, and forced the wretched negro upon a land which had never before received the impress of a slave's foot; and this we did despite all the remonstrances of the outraged and indignant colonists; and with this revolting sin upon our shoulders, it is but natural we should feel deeply interested in the sable ivy-shoot we planted, and which now covers the whole southern front of the stately edifice of the Giant Republic. Time was when a Newcastle collier might have carried the sable shoot back to the soil whence it had been stolen; now, the keels of many nations combined would scarce suffice to move the rapid growth. But, while at England's door lies the original guilt, America has since put the solemn seal of her paternity upon it; every foot of land which, in the rapid career of her aggrandisement, has been sullied with the footsteps of the slave for the first time, mars the beauty of the cap of liberty, and plants a slave-trader's star in the banner of the nation. She is only doing a century later what we wickedly did a century before--viz., planting slavery on a soil hitherto free, and enlarging the market for the sale of flesh and blood. The futile excuse sometimes offered, that they were merely moved from one part to another of the same country, cannot be admitted; or, if it be, upon the same principle all the Free States might return again to slavery. If it be no sin to introduce slavery into a free Sovereign State, then was England not so guilty in the first instance, for she sent slaves from a land of ignorance, cruelty, and idolatry, to an enlightened and Christian colony. It is in vain for either England or the United States to shirk the guilty responsibility of introducing slaves on free soil. England has the additional guilt of having acted against the wishes of the colonists; the United States has the additional guilt of increasing slave territory a century later, and when the philanthropists of every country were busied in endeavours to solve the problem, "How can slavery be abolished?" Without dwelling further upon respective guilt, I will at once proceed to review the crusades which have been made against the institution, and the hopes of the slave under it; after which, I will offer for consideration such proposals as appear to me worthy the attention of all the true friends of the negro, whether owners or not. While thus treating the subject, I beg to observe that I fully recognise each individual State as possessing plenipotentiary powers within the limits of that constitution by which they are all bound together: and I trust that, in any observations I may make, no one expression will be so misconstrued as to give offence; for I know full well the stupendous difficulties with which the whole question is surrounded, and I feel it is one which should be approached only in a true spirit of charity and kindness towards the much-maligned gentlemen of the South. I open the question by asking--what is the meaning of the cry raised by the fanatics of the North--the abolition crusaders? In words, it is freedom to the slave; in fact, it is spoliation of their neighbours. Had the proposition come from wild Arabs who live in houses they carry on their backs, and feed on the milk of flocks that pasture at their side, I might have comprehended the modest proposal; but coming from those whose energy for business is proverbial, and whose acuteness in all matters of dollars and cents is unsurpassed, if equalled, by the shrewdest Hebrew of the Hebrews, I confess it is beyond my puny imagination to fathom. Were it accompanied with any pecuniary offer adequate to the sacrifice proposed, I might be able to comprehend it: but for those, or the descendants of those, who, as they found white labour more profitable, sold their sable brethren to their southern neighbours, and thus easily and profitably removed slavery from their borders,--for those, I say, to turn round and preach a crusade for the emancipation of the negro, in homilies of contumely, with the voice of self-righteousness, exhibits a degree of assurance that cannot be surpassed. Had they known as much of human nature as of the laws of profit and loss, they might have foreseen that in every epithet heaped upon their southern countrymen, they were riveting a fresh bolt in the slave's fetters. On what plea did the American colony rebel? Was it not, as a broad principle, the right of self-government? Does not their constitution allow independent action to each State, subject only to certain obligations, binding alike on all? If those are complied with, on what principle of patriotism or honour do individuals or societies hurl torches of discord among their southern co-citizens? No person who has watched or inquired into the social state of the slaves during the present century, can fail to have observed that much has been done to improve their condition among the respectable holders thereof, both as regards common education and religious instruction; at the same time, they will perceive that the first law of nature--self-preservation--compelled them to make common education penal, as soon as fanatical abolitionists inundated the country with firebrand pamphlets. No American can deny, that when an oppressed people feel their chains galling to them, they have a right to follow the example of the colonists, and strike for freedom. This right doubtless belongs to the negro, and these inflammable publications were calculated to lead them on to make the effort. But what reflecting mind can fail to foresee the horrors consequent upon such a hopeless endeavour? More especially must it have presented itself to the mind of the slave-masters; and could they, with sure visions before their eyes of the fearful sacrifice of human life, the breaking-up of whatever good feeling now exists between master and slave, and the inauguration of a reign of terror and unmitigated severity--could they, I say, with such consequences staring them in the face, have taken a more mild, sensible, and merciful step than checking that education, through the instrumentality of which, the abolitionists were hastening forward so awful a catastrophe? The following extract may suffice to prove the irritation produced by the abolitionists in Virginia, though, of course, I do not pretend to insinuate that the respectable portion of the community in that State would endorse its barbarous ravings:-- "SLAVERY IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.--The (American) _Richmond Examiner_, in connexion with the recent trial of Ward of Kentucky, has the following theory on the extinction of schoolmasters in general:--'The South has for years been overrun with hordes of illiterate, unprincipled graduates of the Yankee free schools (those hot-beds of self-conceit and ignorance), who have, by dint of unblushing impudence, established themselves as schoolmasters in our midst. So odious are some of these "itinerant ignoramuses" to the people of the South; so full of abolitionism and concealed incendiarism are many of this class; so full of guile, fraud, and deceit,--that the deliberate shooting one of them down, in the act of poisoning the minds of our slaves or our children, we think, if regarded as homicide at all, should always be deemed perfectly justifiable; and we imagine the propriety of shooting an abolition schoolmaster, when caught tampering with our slaves, has never been questioned by any intelligent Southern man. This we take to be the unwritten common law of the South, and we deem it advisable to promulgate the law, that it may be copied into all the abolition papers, thundered at by the three thousand New England preachers, and read with peculiar emphasis, and terrible upturning of eyes, by Garrison, at the next meeting of the anti-slavery party at Faneuil Hall. We repeat, that the shooting of itinerant abolition schoolmasters is frequently a creditable and laudable act, entitling a respectable Southern man to, at least, a seat in the Legislature or a place in the Common Council. Let all Yankee schoolmasters who propose invading the South, endowed with a strong nasal twang, a long scriptural name, and Webster's lexicographic book of abominations, seek some more congenial land, where their own lives will be more secure than in the "vile and homicidal Slave States." We shall be glad if the ravings of the abolition press about the Ward acquittal shall have this effect.'" We now see that the abolitionists have rendered the education of the negro, with a view to his ultimate fitness for freedom or self-government, utterly impracticable, however anxious the slave-owner might have otherwise been to instruct him. Thus, by their imprudent violence, they have effectually closed the educational pathway to emancipation. It should not either be forgotten that the Southerners may have seen good reason to doubt the Christian sincerity of those who clamoured so loudly for loosening the fetters of the slaves. The freed slaves in the Northern States must have frequently been seen by them, year after year, as they went for "the season" to the watering-places, and could they observe much in his position there to induce the belief that the Northerners are the friends of the negro? In some cities, he must not drive a coach or a car; in others, he must not enter a public conveyance; in places of amusement, he is separated from his white friend; even in the house of that God with whom "there is no respect of persons," he is partitioned off as if he were an unclean animal; in some States he is not admitted at all. With such evidences of friendship for the negro, might they not question the honesty of Northern champions of emancipation? Could they really place confidence in the philanthropic professions of those who treat the negro as an outcast, and force on him a life of wretchedness instead of striving to raise him in the social scale? If a negro had the intellect of a Newton--if he were clothed in purple and fine linen, and if he came fresh from an Oriental bath, and fragrant as "Araby's spices," a Northerner would prefer sitting down with a pole-cat--he would rather pluck a living coal from the fire than grasp the hand of the worthiest negro that ever stepped. Whoever sees a negro in the North smile at the approach of the white man? Who has not seen a worthy planter or slave-owner returning from a short absence, greeted with smiles in abundance, or perhaps receiving a broad grin of pride and pleasure as the worthy owner gave his hand to some old faithful slave? I think I have shown, in the foregoing remarks, that the Southern has three solid and distinct grounds of objection to the Free States abolitionist. First,--The natural spirit of man, which rebels against wholesale vituperation and calumny. Secondly,--The obstacle they have placed in the way of giving the slave simple education, by introducing most inflammable pamphlets. Thirdly,--The questionable sincerity of their professed sympathy for the slave, as evidenced by the antipathy they exhibit towards the free negro, and by the palpable fact that he is far worse off in a free than in a slave State. The same objection cannot justly be taken against English abolitionists, because they act and think chiefly upon the evidence furnished by American hands; besides which, slavery in the West Indian colonies was felt by the majority of the nation to be so dark a stain upon our national character, that, although burdened with a debt such as the world never before dreamt of, the sum of 20,000,000l. was readily voted for the purposes of emancipation. Whether the method in which the provisions of the act were carried out was very wise or painfully faulty, we need not stop to inquire: the object was a noble one, and the sacrifice was worthy of the object. With all the feelings of that discussion fresh in the public mind, it is no wonder that philanthropists, reading the accounts published by American authors of the horrors of slavery, should band themselves together for the purpose of urging America in a friendly tone to follow Great Britain's noble example, and to profit by any errors she had committed as to the method of carrying emancipation into effect. I am quite aware a slaveholder may reply, "This is all very good; but I must have a word with you, good gentlemen of England, as to sincerity. If you hold slavery so damnable a sin, why do you so greedily covet the fruits of the wages of that sin? The demand of your markets for slave produce enhances the value of the slave, and in so doing clenches another nail in the coffin, of his hopes." I confess I can give no reply, except the humiliating confession which, if the feeling of the nation is to be read in its Parliamentary acts, amounts to this--"We have removed slavery from our own soil, and we don't care a farthing if all the rest of the world are slaves, provided only we can get cheap cotton and sugar, &c. Mammon! Mammon! Mammon! is ever the presiding deity of the Anglo-Saxon race, whether in the Old or the New World. There can be no doubt that the reception of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's work and person in England was very galling to many a Southerner, and naturally so; because it conveyed a tacit endorsement of all her assertions as to the horrors of the slavery system. When I first read _Uncle Tom_, I said, "This will rather tend to rivet than to loosen the fetters of the slave, rousing the indignation of all the South against her and her associates." Everything I have since seen, heard, and read, only tends to confirm my original impression. While I would readily give Mrs. Stowe a chaplet of laurel as a clever authoress, I could never award her a faded leaf as the negro's friend. There can be no doubt that Mrs. Beecher Stowe has had no small share in the abolition excitement which has been raging in the States, and which has made Kansas the battle-field of civil war; but the effect of this agitation has gone farther: owing to husting speeches and other occurrences, the negro's mind has been filled with visionary hopes of liberty; insurrections have been planned, and, worse still, insurrections have been imagined. In fear for life and property, torture worthy of the worst days of the Inquisition has been resorted to, to extort confession from those who had nothing to confess. Some died silent martyrs; others, in their agony, accused falsely the first negro whose name came to their memory; thus, injustice bred injustice, and it is estimated that not less than a thousand wretched victims have closed their lives in agony. One white man, who was found encouraging revolt, and therefore merited punishment of the severest kind, was sentenced, in that land of equality, to 900 lashes, and died under the infliction--a sight that would have gladdened the eyes of Bloody Jeffreys. And why all these horrors? I distinctly say,--thanks to the rabid Abolitionists. Let me now for a moment touch upon the treatment of slaves. The farms of the wealthy planters, and the chapels with negro minister and negro congregation, bear bright evidence to the fact that negroes have their bodily and spiritual wants attended to, not forgetting also the oral teaching they often receive from the wife of the planter. But is that system universal? Those who would answer that question truthfully need not travel to the Southern States for documentary evidence. Is any human being fit to be trusted with absolute power over one of his fellow-creatures, however deeply his public reputation and his balance at the banker's may be benefited by the most moderate kindness to them? If every man were a Howard or a Wilberforce, and every woman a Fry or a Nightingale, the truth would be ever the same, and they would be the first to acknowledge it.--Man is unfit for irresponsible power. Now the only bar before which the proprietor of slaves is likely to be arraigned, is the bar of public opinion; and the influence which that knowledge will have upon his conduct is exactly in the inverse ratio to its need; for the hardened brute, upon whom its influence is most wanted, is the very person who, if he can escape lynching, is indifferent to public opinion. No Southerner can be affronted, if I say that he is not more Christian, kind-hearted, and mild-tempered than his fellow-man in the Northern States, in France, or in England; and yet how constantly do we find citizens of those communities evincing unrestrained passions in the most brutal acts, and that with the knowledge that the law is hanging over their heads, and that their victims can give evidence against them; whereas, in the Slave States, provided the eye of a white man is excluded, there is scarce a limit to the torture which a savage monster may inflict upon the helpless slave, whose word cannot be received in evidence. It is as absurd to judge of the condition of the slave by visiting an amiable planter and his lady, as it would be to judge of the clothing, feeding, and comfort of our labouring population by calling at the town-house of the Duke of Well-to-do and carefully noting the worthy who fills an arm-chair like a sentry-box, and is yclept the porter. Look at him, with his hair powdered and fattened down to the head; behold him as the bell rings, using his arms as levers to force his rotundity out of its case; then observe the pedestals on which he endeavours to walk; one might imagine he had been tapped for the dropsy half-a-dozen times, and that all the water had run into the calves of his legs. Is that a type of the poorer classes? Where, then, are we to look for true data on which to form an opinion of the treatment of the slave?--Simply by studying human nature and weighing human passions, and then inquiring by what laws they are held in check. Now, as to the laws, they amount to nothing, inasmuch as slave evidence is not admissible, and the possibility of any oppression, even to death itself, must frequently be, without any fear of punishment, in the hands of the owner. If law, then, affords the negro no efficient protection from human passions, where are we to look for it in human nature, except it be in the influences of Christianity, self-interest, or public opinion? The last of these, we have seen, is upon a sliding-scale of an inefficiency which increases in proportion to the necessity for its influence, and is therefore all but impotent for good. Let us now consider self-interest. Will any one assert that self-interest is sufficient to restrain anger? How many a hasty word does man utter, or how many a hasty act does man commit, under the influence of passion he cannot or will not restrain--and that among his equals, who may be able to resent it, or in the face of law ready to avenge it! How prone are we all, if things go wrong from some fault of our own, to lose our temper and try to throw the blame on others, rather than admit the failure to be our own fault! Without dwelling upon the serious injury people often do to themselves by unrestrained passion, think for a moment of the treatment frequently inflicted upon the poor animals over whom they rule absolute. Is not kindness to a horse the interest as well as the duty of the owner? and yet how often is he the unfortunate victim of the owner's rage or cruel disposition, while faithfully and willingly expending all his powers in the service of his tyrant master! If these things be so among equals, or comparative equals, and also in man's dealings with the lower orders of the creation, what chance has the poor slave, with the arm of legislative justice paralysed, and an arm nerved with human passion his only hope of mercy?--for self-defence, that first law of nature, is the highest crime he can be guilty of: and, while considering the mercenary view of self-interest, let it not be forgotten that an awful amount of human suffering is quite compatible with unimpaired health, and that a slave may be frequently under the lash and yet fully able to do his day's work. The last influence we have to consider is indeed the brightest and best of all--Christianity: high on the brotherly arch of man's duty to his fellow-man, and forming its enduring keystone, we read, traced by Jehovah in imperishable letters, radiant with love, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you;" "Love thy neighbour as thyself." Surely it needs no words of mine to show, that a faithful history of the most Christian country in the most Christian times the world ever witnessed, would contain, fearful evidence of the cruelty of man setting at nought the above blessed precept. Nay, more--I question if, viewed in its entire fulness, there is any one single command in Scripture more habitually disregarded. Proverbs are generally supposed to be a condensation of facts or experiences. Whence comes "Every one for himself, and God for us all"? or, the more vulgar one, "Go ahead, and the d----l take the hindmost?" What are they but concentrations of the fact that selfishness is man's ruling passion? What are most laws made for, but to restrain men by human penalties from a broach of the law of love? and, if these laws be needful in communities, all the members of which are equal in the eyes of the law, and even then be found inefficient for their purpose, as may be daily witnessed in every country, who will say that the influence of Christianity is sufficient protection to the poor slave? There is only one other influence that I shall mention--that is habit; it acts for and against the slave. Thus, the kind and good, brought up among slaves, very often nursed by them, and grown up in the continual presence of their gentleness and faithfulness, repay them with unmeasured kindness, and a sympathy in all their sickness and their sorrows, to a degree which I feel quite certain the most tender-hearted Christian breathing could never equal, if landed among slaves, for the first time, at years of maturity. The Christian planter's wife or daughter may be seen sitting up at night, cooking, nursing, tending an old sick and helpless slave, with nearly, if not quite, the same affectionate care she would bestow upon a sick relation, the very friendlessness of the negro stimulating the benevolent heart. This is, indeed, the bright side of the influence of habit.--But the other side is not less true; and there the effect is, that a coarse, brutal mind, trained up among those it can bully with impunity, acquires a heartlessness and indifference to the negro's wants and sufferings, that grow with the wretched possessor's growth. This is the dark side of the influence of habit. Let two examples suffice, both of which I have upon the very best authority. A faithful slave, having grown up with his master's rising family, obtained his freedom as a reward for his fidelity, and was entrusted with the management of the property; realizing some money, he became the owner of slaves himself, from among whom he selected his wife, and to all of whom he showed the greatest consideration. Some time after, lying upon his deathbed, he made his will, in which he bequeathed his wife and all his other negroes to his old master, giving as his reason, that, from his own lively recollections of his master's unvarying kindness to himself and the other slaves, he felt certain that in so doing he was taking the best means in his power of securing their future happiness. What stronger evidence of the growth of kindness in the master's heart could possibly be desired? Here, then, is the effect of habit in a benevolent owner.--Now, turn to the opposite picture. A lady of New Orleans was accustomed to strip and flog a slave for the pleasure of witnessing sufferings which she endeavoured to render more acute by rubbing soft soap into the broken skin. Here you have the effect of habit upon a brutal mind. To the credit of New Orleans be it recorded, that the knowledge of this atrocity having come to white ears, her house was broken open, every article it contained pulled out in the street and burnt, and, had she not succeeded in eluding search, the she-devil would have been most assuredly reduced to ashes with her own goods. America became too hot for her, and Providence alone knows the demon's cave of concealment. Having thus passed in review the various influences bearing upon the treatment of the slave, and seen how utterly inadequate they are to protect him from ill-treatment, who can wonder that the tales of real or supposed cruelty inflicted upon slaves by the Southerners are received with indignation by both parties in the States?--the virtuous and kind master, indignant at the thought of being included in the category of monsters, and the real savage, if possible, still more indignant, because his conscience brings home to his seared heart the truthfulness of the picture, even if it be overdrawn almost to caricature. And here it is curious to observe the different action of these two parties: the former, in the consciousness of a kind heart and a real desire for the negro's good, calmly states what has been done and is doing for the negro, and throws a natural veil of doubt over horrors so utterly repulsive to the feelings that their existence is discredited; the latter, with a shallowness which Providence sometimes attaches to guilt, aware that some such accusations come too painfully and truthfully home, pronounce their own condemnation by their line of defence--recrimination. Take, for example, the following extract from an article in a Slave State paper, entitled "A Sequel to Uncle Tom's Cabin," and in which Queen Victoria, under the guidance of a "genius," has the condition of her subjects laid bare before her. After various other paragraphs of a similar nature comes the following:-- "The sky was obscured by the smoke of hundreds of small chimneys and vast edifices, stretching in lines for miles and miles. The latter were crowded with women and children, young in years, but withered in form and feature. The countenances of the men were as colourless as the white fabric in their looms; their eyes sparkled with intelligence, but it was chiefly the intelligence of suffering, of privation, of keen sense of wrong, of inability to be better, of rankling hatred against existing institutions, and a furtive wish that some hideous calamity would bury them all in one common, undistinguishable ruin. "'Are these the people? groaned the Queen, as the cold damp of more than mortal agony moistened her marble forehead. "'Not all of them!" sounded the voice in her ear, so sharply that her Majesty looked up eagerly, and saw written, in letters of fire, on the palace wall:-- "'1. Every twelfth person in your dominions is a pauper, daily receiving parochial relief. "'2. Every twentieth person in your dominions is a destitute wanderer, with no roof but the sky--no home but a prison. They are the Ishmaelites of modern society; every one's hand is against them, and their hands are against every one. "'3. There are in Freeland 10,743,747 females; divide that number by 500,000, and you will find that every twentieth woman in your dominions is--Oh! horror piled on horror!--a harlot!'" Then follows the scene of a disconsolate female throwing herself over a bridge, the whole winding up with this charming piece of information, addressed by the genius to her Majesty:-- "In your own land, liberty, the absence of which in another is deplored, is, in its most god-like development, but a name--unless that may be termed liberty which practically is but vulgar license--license to work from rosy morn to dark midnight for the most scanty pittances--license to store up wealth in the hands and for the benefit of the few--license to bellow lustily for rival politicians--license to send children to ragged schools--license to sot in the ale-house--license to grow lumpish and brutal--license to neglect the offices of religion, to swear, to lie, to blaspheme--license to steal, to pander unchecked to the coarsest appetites, to fawn and slaver over the little great ones of the earth--license to creep like a worm through life, or bound through it like a wild beast; and, last and most precious of all--for it is untaxed--license to starve, to rot, to die, and be buried in a foetid pauper's grave, on which the sweet-smelling flowers, sent to strew the pathway of man and woman with beauty, love, and hope, will refuse to grow, much less bloom." Setting aside all exaggerations, who does not recognise in the foregoing quotations "the galled jade wincing"? Were the writer a kind owner of slaves, he might have replied to _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ by facts of habitual kindness to them, sufficient to prove that the authoress had entered into the region of romance; but in his recrimination he unconsciously displays the cloven hoof, and leaves no doubt on the mind that he writes under the impulse of a bitterly-accusing monitor within. It would be wasting time to point out the difference between a system which binds millions of its people in bondage to their fellow-man, a master's sovereign will their only practical protection, and a system which not only makes all its subjects equal in the eye of the law, and free to seek their fortunes wherever they list, but which is for ever striving to mitigate the distress that is invariably attendant upon an overcrowded population. Even granting that his assertions were not only true, but that they were entirely produced by tyrannical enactments, what justification would England's sins be for America's crimes? Suppose the House of Commons and the Lords Temporal and Spiritual obtained the royal sanction to an act for kidnapping boys and grilling them daily for a table-d'hôte in their respective legislative assemblies, would such an atrocity--or any worse atrocity, if such be possible--in any respect alter the question of right and wrong between master and slave? Let any charge of cruelty or injustice in England be advanced on its own simple grounds, and, wherever it comes from, it will find plenty of people, I am proud and happy to say, ready to inquire into it and to work hard for its removal; but when it comes in the shape of recrimination, who can fail to recognise an accusing conscience striving to throw the cloak of other people's sins over the abominations which that conscience is ever ringing in the writer's ears at home. I must, however, state that, in speaking of the sufferings or injuries to which the slave is liable, I am not proclaiming them merely on the authority of Northern abolitionists, or on the deductions which I have drawn from human nature; many travellers have made similar charges. Miss Bremer writes:--"I beheld the old slave hunted to death because he dared to visit his wife--beheld him mangled, beaten, recaptured, fling himself into the water of the Black River, over which he was retaken into the power of his hard master--and the law was silent. I beheld a young woman struck, for a hasty word, upon the temples, so that she fell down dead!--and the law was silent. I heard the law, through its jury, adjudicate between a white man and a black, and sentence the latter to be flogged when the former was guilty--and they who were honest among the jurymen in vain opposed the verdict. I beheld here on the shores of the Mississippi, only a few months since, a young negro girl fly from the maltreatment of her master, and he was a professor of religion, and fling herself into the river."--_Homes of the New World._ Would Miss Bremer write these things for the press, as occurring under her own eye, if they were not true? Then, again, the Press itself in the South bears witness to what every one must admit to be an inhuman practice. How often must the reader of a Southern States' paper see children of the tenderest age, sometimes even under a year old, advertised for public sale! Did any one every take up the New Orleans paper without seeing more than one such advertisement as the following?-- 150 NEGROES FOE SALE. Just arrived, and for sale, at my old stand, No. 7, Moreau-street, Third Municipality, one hundred and fifty young and likely NEGROES, consisting of field-hands, house servants, and mechanics. They will be sold on reasonable terms for good paper or cash. Persons wishing to purchase will find it to their advantage to give me a call. [Sep. 30--6m.] Wm. F. TALBOTT. What happiness can the slave enjoy among a community where such an advertisement as the following can be tolerated, or, worse still, when, as in the present instance, it is sent forth under the sanction of the law? The advertisement is taken from a paper published at Wilmington, North Carolina. $225 REWARD.--STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, NEW HANOVER COUNTY.--_Whereas_, complaint upon, oath hath this day been made to us, two of the Justices of the Peace for the State and County aforesaid, by BENJAMIN HALLET, of the said county, that two certain male slaves belonging to him, named LOTT, aged about twenty-two years, five feet four or five inches high, and black, formerly belonging to LOTT WILLIAMS, of Onslow county; and BOB, aged about sixteen years, five feet high, and black; have absented themselves from their said master's service, and are supposed to be lurking about this county, committing acts of felony and other misdeeds. These are, therefore, in the name of the State aforesaid, to command the slaves forthwith to return home to their masters; and we do hereby, by virtue of the Act of the General Assembly in such cases made and provided, intimate and declare that _if the said_ LOTT and BOB _do not return home and surrender themselves,_ immediately after the publication of these presents, that ANY PERSON MAY KILL AND DESTROY THE SAID SLAVES, by such means as he or they may think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offence for so doing, and without incurring any penalty or forfeiture thereby. Given under our hands and seals, this 28th day of February, 1853. W.N. PEDEN, J.P., [Seal] W.C. BETTENCOURT, J.P., [Seal.] $225 REWARD.--TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS will be given for negro LOTT, EITHER DEAD OR ALIVE; and TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR BOB'S HEAD, delivered to the subscriber in the town of Wilmington. BENJAMIN HALLET. March 2nd, 1853. There is another evidence of a want of happiness among the slaves, which, though silent and unheard, challenges contradiction: I mean the annual escape of from one to two thousand into Canada, in spite not only of the natural difficulties and privations of the journey, but also of the fearful dread of the consequences of re-capture. Doubtless some of these may be fleeing from the dread of just punishment for offences against the law, but none can doubt that many more are endeavouring to escape from what they feel to be cruelty, injustice, and oppression. I do not wish to pander to a morbid appetite for horrors by gathering together under one view all the various tales of woe and misery which I have heard of, known, or seen. I think I have said enough to prove to any unprejudiced person that such things do and must ever exist under the institution of slavery; and that, although the statements of rabid abolitionists are often the most unwarranted exaggerations, the all but total denial of their occurrence by the slave-owners is also not correct. The conviction forced upon my own mind, after much thought and inquiry on this most interesting topic is, that there are many dark clouds of cruelty in a sky which is bright with much of the truest and kindest sympathy for the poor slave. I now propose to take a short review of the progress and real state of slavery, and I will commence by giving _in extenso_ an enactment which materially affects the negro, and, as I have before observed, has more than once threatened the Republic with disunion:-- Section 2.--Privileges of Citizens.--Clause 3. "No person held to service or labour in one state under the laws thereof, escaping to another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due." Of course the word "slave" would have read strangely among a community who set themselves up as the champions of the "equal rights of man;" but it is clear that, according to this clause in the constitution which binds the Republic together, every free state is compelled to assist in the recapture of a fugitive slave. What was the exact number of slaves at the date of this law being passed I have not the means of ascertaining: at the beginning of this century it was under 900,000; in the Census of 1850 they had increased to 3,200,000.[BT] There were originally 13 States. At present there are 31, besides territory not yet incorporated into States. The Slave States are 15, or nearly half. Thus much for increase of slaves and the slave soil. But, it will naturally be asked, how did it happen that, as the additional soil was incorporated, the sable workmen appeared as if by magic? The answer is very simple. The demand regulated the supply, and slave breeding became a most important feature in the system: thus the wants of the more southern States became regularly lessened by large drafts from Maryland, Kentucky, and Virginia. Anybody desirous of testing the truth of this statement will find statistical data to assist him in an unpretending volume by Marshall Hall, M.D., &c., _On Twofold Slavery,_ which I read with much interest, although I cannot agree with him in everything.[BV] I am aware that residents in these breeding States are to be found who would scorn to utter a wilful falsehood, and who deny this propagation of the human chattel for the flesh market; but there can be little doubt that the unbiased seeker after truth will find that such is the case. And why not? Why should those who make their livelihood by trafficking in the flesh of their fellow-creatures hesitate to increase their profits by paying attention to the breeding of them? These facts do not come under the general traveller's eye, because, armed with letters of introduction, he consorts more with worthy slave-owners, who, occupied with the welfare of those around and dependent upon them, know little of the world beyond; in the same way as in England, a Christian family may be an example of patriarchal simplicity and of apostolic zeal and love, and yet beyond the circle of their action, though not very far from its circumference, the greatest distress and perhaps cruelty may abound. How many of the dark spots on our community has the single zeal of the Earl of Shaftesbury forced upon the public mind, of which we were utterly ignorant, though living in the midst of them. The degraded female drudge in a coal-pit, the agonized infant in a chimney, and the death-wrought child in a factory--each and all bear testimony to how much of suffering may exist while surrounded by those whose lives are spent in Christian charity. And so it is in every community, Slave States included. Christian hearts, pregnant with zeal and love, are diffusing blessings around them; and, occupied with their noble work, they know little of the dark places that hang on their borders. The Southern planter and his lady may be filled with the love of St. John, and radiate the beams thereof on every man, woman, and child under their guardianship, and then, "measuring other people's corn by their own lovely bushel," they may well hesitate to believe in the existence of a profligate breeding Pandemonium within the precincts of their immediate country. Yet, alas! there can be little doubt that it does exist. Let us now fix our attention on the actual facts of the case which all parties admit. First, we have a slave population of 3,200,000. I think, if I estimate their marketable value at 80_l_ a head, I shall be considerably below the truth. That gives us in human flesh, 250,000,000l. Secondly, let us take the product of their labour. The Slave States raise annually-- Rice 215,000,000 lbs. Tobacco 185,000,000 " Sugar 248,000,000 " Cotton 1,000,000,000 " Molasses 12,000,000 gallons. Indian Corn. 368,000,000 bushels. Estimating these at a lower value than they have ever fallen to, you have here represented 80,000,000l. sterling of annual produce from the muscle and sinew of the slave.[BW] Surely the wildest enthusiast, did he but ponder over these facts, could not fail to pause ere he mounted the breach, shouting the rabid war-cry of abolition, which involves a capital of 250,000,000_l_, and an annual produce of 80,000,000l. The misery which an instantaneous deliverance of the slave would cause by the all but certain loss of the greater portion of the products above enumerated, must be apparent to the least reflecting mind. If any such schemer exist, he would do well to study the history of our West India islands from the period of their sudden emancipation, especially since free-trade admitted slave produce on equal terms with the produce of free labour. Complaints of utter ruin are loud and constant from the proprietors in nearly every island; they state, and state with truth, that it is impossible for free labour at a high price, and which can only be got perhaps for six hours a day, to compete with the steady slave work of twelve hours a day; and they show that slaveholding communities have materially increased their products, which can only have been effected by a further taxing of the slave's powers, or a vast increase of fresh human material.[BX] But they further complain that the negro himself is sadly retrograding. "They attend less to the instruction of their religious teachers; they pay less attention to the education of their children; vice and immorality are on the increase," &c.--_Petition to the Imperial Parliament from St. George's, Jamaica,_ July, 1852. I might multiply such statements from nearly every island, and quote the authority of even some of their governors to the same effect; but the above are sufficient for my purpose. They prove three most important facts for consideration, when treating the question of Slavery. First, that you may ruin the planter. Secondly, that you may free--without benefiting--the slave. Thirdly, that each State, as it becomes free, tends to give additional value to the property of those States which choose to hold on to slavery; and all these results may occur despite the wisdom (?) of senators, and an indemnity of 20,000,000l. Surely, then, the Southern planter may well assert that he sees not sufficient inducement to follow our hasty wholesale example. But while such convictions are forced upon him, he will be a degenerate son of energetic sires, if he be so scared at our ill-success as to fear to look for some better path to the same noble object; and there is one most important consideration which should impel him, while avoiding all rash haste, to brook no dangerous delay; that consideration is, that the difficulty of dealing with the question is increasing with fearful rapidity, for the slave population has nearly quadrupled itself since the beginning of the century. The capital involved is, we have seen, gigantic; but the question of numbers is by far the most perplexing to deal with, in a social point of view. The white population of the Slave States is, in rough numbers, 6,000,000; the slave population is more than 3,000,000, and the free blacks 250,000. Does any sane man believe that, if slavery had existed in Great Britain, and that the slaves had constituted one-third of the population, we should have attempted to remove the black bar from our escutcheon, by the same rapid and summary process which we adopted to free the negro in our colonies? An American writer on Slavery has said, and I think most justly, "that two distinct races of people, nearly equal in numbers, and unlike in colour, manners, habits, feelings and state of civilization to such a degree that amalgamation is impossible, cannot dwell together in the same community unless the one be in subjection to the other." So fully am I convinced of the truth of this statement, and so certain am I that every one who has been in a Slave State must be satisfied of the truth of it, that I feel sure, if the South freed every slave to-morrow, not a week would elapse before each State in the Union without exception would pass stringent laws to prevent them settling within their borders; even at this moment such a law exists in some States. With all these difficulties constantly before them, who can wonder that a kind-hearted planter, while gazing on the cheerful and happy faces of his well-fed and well-housed slaves, should look distrustfully at emancipation, and strive to justify to his conscience opposition to any plan, however gradual, which leads thereto. Nevertheless, however satisfied in his mind that the slaves are kindly treated, and that harshness even is never used, he cannot contemplate the institution from a sufficient distance to be beyond its influences, without feeling that emancipation is the goal towards which his thoughts should ever bend, and that in proportion as the steps towards it must be gradual, so should they speedily commence. But how? Washington, while confessing his most earnest desire for abolition, declares his conviction that "it can only be effected by legislative authority." The next chapter will detail such propositions as, in my humble opinion, appear most worthy of the consideration of the Legislature, with a view to the gradual removal of the black star from the striped banner. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote BT: _List of States and Territories forming the Confederation. Those marked_ S. _are Slave-holding States._ STATES. New Hampshire Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut New York New Jersey[BU] Pennsylvania S. Delaware S. Maryland S. Virginia S. North Carolina S. South Carolina S. Georgia NEW STATES. Vermont 1791 S. Kentucky 1792 S. Tennessee 1796 Ohio 1802 S. Louisiana 1812 Indiana 1816 S. Mississippi 1817 Illinois 1818 S. Alabama 1819 Maine 1820 S. Missouri 1821 S. Arkansas 1836 Michigan 1837 S. Florida 1845 S. Texas 1845 Iowa 1846 Wisconsin 1848 California 1850 DISTRICT. S. Columbia 1791 TERRITORIES. Oregon 1848 Minnesota 1849 S. Kansas 1855 S. Utah 1850 New Mexico 1850 Nebraska 1853] [Footnote BU: I believe the last slave has been removed from New Jersey.--H.A.M.] [Footnote BV: Between 1810 and 1850 the slave population in Virginia has only increased from 392,000 to 470,000, while in Tennessee it has increased from 44,000 to 240,000; and in Louisiana, from 35,000 to 240,000.] [Footnote BW: I take no notice of the various other valuable productions of these States: they may fairly represent the produce of the white man's labour.] [Footnote BX: _Vide_ ch. xii., "The Queen of the Antilles."] CHAPTER XXVI. _Hints for Master--Hopes for Slave._ I will now suggest certain proposals,[BY] in the hope that while they can do no harm, they may by chance lead to some good result. The first proposal is a very old one, and only made by me now, because I consider it of primary importance--I mean a "Free-Soil" bill. I advocate it upon two distinct grounds--the one affecting the Republic, the other the slave. The Republic sanctions and carries on the slave-trade by introducing the institution into land hitherto free, and the slave throughout the Union has his fetters tightened by the enhancement of his value; but the great Channing has so fully and ably argued the truth of these evils, when treating of the annexation of Texas, that none but the wilfully blind can fail to be convinced; in short, if Slavery is to be introduced into land hitherto free, it is perhaps questionable if it be not better to send for the ill-used and degraded slave from Africa, and leave the more elevated slave in his comparatively happy home in the Old Slave States; the plea may be used for bettering the condition of the former, but that plea cannot be used for the latter. The next proposal is one which, if it came from the South, would, I suppose, have the support of all the kind masters in those States, and most assuredly would find no opposition in the North,--I mean the expulsion from the Constitution of that law by which fugitive slaves are forced to be given up. If the proposal came from the North, it would naturally excite ill-feeling in the South, after all the angry passions which abolition crusading has set in action; but the South might easily propose it: and when we see the accounts of the affectionate attachment of the slaves to their masters, and of the kindness with which they are treated, in proportion, as such statements are correct, so will it follow as a consequence, that none but those who are driven to it by cruelty will wish to leave their snug homes and families, to seek for peace in the chilly winters of the North. And surely the slaves who are victims of cruelty, every kind-hearted slave-master would rejoice to see escaping; it would only be the compulsory giving up of fugitives, except for criminal offences, which would be expunged; each individual State would be able, if desirous, to enter into any mutual arrangement with any other State, according to their respective necessities. This proposal has two advantages: one, that it removes a bone of bitter contention ever ready to be thrown down between the North and the South; and the other, that it opens a small loophole for the oppressed to escape from the oppressor. The next proposal I have to make, is one which, as every year makes it more difficult, merits immediate attention,--and that is, the providing a territory of refuge. No one for a moment can doubt that the foundation of Liberia was an act of truly philanthropic intent, reflecting credit upon all parties concerned in it; but it must, I fear, be acknowledged that it is totally unequal to the object in view. No further evidence of this need he adduced, than the simple fact, that, for every negro sent to Liberia, nearer twenty than ten are born in the States. Dame Partington's effort to sweep back the incoming tide with a hair-broom promised better hopes of success; a brigade of energetic firemen would drain off Lake Superior in a much shorter space of time than Liberian colonization would remove one-third of the slave population. The scheme is in the right direction, but as insufficient to overcome the difficulty as a popgun is to breach a fortified city; the only method of effectually enabling the system of colonization to be carried out, is--in my humble opinion--by setting apart some portion of the unoccupied territory of the Union as a negro colony. In making the selection, a suitable climate should be considered, in justice to the health of the negro, as it is clear, from the fate of those who fly from persecution to Canada, that they are unable to resist cold; and proximity to the ocean is desirable, as affording a cheap conveyance for those who become manumitted: the expense of a passage to Liberia is one great obstacle to its utility. The quantity of land required for such a purpose would be very small; and stringent regulations as to the negro leaving the territory so granted, would effectually prevent any inconvenience to the neighbouring States. I have before shown that the comparative number of whites and blacks--whites 6,000,000, and blacks 3,000,000--renders it all but, if not quite, impossible for the two races to live together free. I have also shown that the Northern States either refuse to admit them, or pass such laws respecting them, that slavery under a good master is a paradise by comparison. I have further shown that Liberia is, from its distance, so expensive for their removal, as to be of but little assistance, and Canada too often proves an early grave. If, then, these difficulties present themselves with a population of 3,000,000 slaves, and if they are increasing their numbers rapidly--which statistics fully prove to be the case--it is clear that these difficulties must augment in a corresponding ratio, until at last they will become insurmountable. I therefore come to the conclusion, either that territory must be set apart in America itself for the negro's home, or that the black bar of slavery must deface the escutcheon of the Republic for ever. I now propose to make a few remarks on the treatment of slaves. As to the nature of that treatment, I have already given my calm and unbiased opinion. My present observations refer to corporal punishment, and the implements for the infliction thereof. Of the latter I have seen four; of course there may be many others; I speak only of those that have come under my own eye. The four I have seen are first, the common hunting-whip, which is too well known to require description. Secondly, the cowhide--its name expresses its substance--when wet, it is rolled up tightly and allowed to dry, by which process it becomes as hard as the raw hide commonly seen in this country; its shape is that of a racing-whip, and its length from four to five feet. Thirdly, the strap, i.e., a piece off the end of a stiff heavy horse's trace, and about three or three-and-a-half feet in length. Fourthly, the paddle; i.e., a piece of white oak about an inch thick all through, the handle about two inches broad, and rather more than two feet long, the blade about nine inches long by four and a quarter broad. The two latter implements I found, upon inquiry, were of modern date, and the reason of their introduction was, that the marks of the punishment inflicted thereby became more speedily effaced; and as upon the sale of a slave, if, when examined, marks of punishment are clearly developed, his price suffers from the impression of his being obstreperous, the above-named articles of punishment came into favour. The foregoing observations--without entering into the respective merits of the four instruments--are sufficient to prove that no one definite implement for corporal punishment is established by law, and, consequently, that any enactment appointing a limit to the number of stripes which may he given is an absurdity, however well intended. Forty stripes, is, I believe, the authorized number. A certain number of blows, if given with a dog-whip, would inflict no injury beyond the momentary pain, whereas the same number inflicted with a heavy walking-stick might lame a man for life. Again, I know of no law in the States prohibiting the corporal punishment of any slave, of whatever age or sex; at all events, grown-up girls and mothers of families are doomed to have their persons exposed to receive its infliction. Of this latter fact, I am positive, though I cannot say whether the practice is general or of rare occurrence. I have entered rather fully into a description of the implements of punishment, to show the grounds upon which I make the following proposals:--First, that a proper instrument for flogging be authorized by law, and that the employment of any other be severely punished. Secondly, that the number of lashes a master may inflict, or order to be inflicted, be reduced to a minimum, and that while a greater number of lashes are permitted for grave offences, they be only administered on the authority of a jury or a given number of magistrates. Thirdly, that common decency be no longer outraged by any girl above fifteen receiving corporal punishment.[BZ] Fourthly, that by State enactment--as it now sometimes is by municipal regulation--no master in any town be permitted to inflict corporal punishment on a slave above fifteen; those who have passed that age to be sent to the jail, or some authorized place, to receive their punishment, a faithful record whereof, including slave and owner's names, to be kept. My reasons for this proposal are, that a man will frequently punish on the spur of the moment, when a little reflection would subdue his anger, and save the culprit. Also, that it is my firm conviction that a great portion of the cruelty of which slaves are the victims, is caused by half-educated owners of one or two slaves, who are chiefly to be found in towns, and upon whom such a law might operate as a wholesome check. Such a law would doubtless be good in all cases, but the distances of plantations from towns would render it impossible to be carried out; and I am sorry to say, I have no suggestion to make by which the slaves on plantations might be protected, in those cases where the absence of the owners leaves them entirely at the mercy of the driver, which I believe the cause of by far the greatest amount of suffering they endure, though I trust many drivers are just and merciful. Fifthly, that the law by which negroes can hold slaves should immediately be abolished. The white man holding a slave is bad enough, but nothing can justify the toleration of the negro holding his own flesh and blood in fetters, especially when the door of Education is hermetically sealed against him. In addition to the foregoing suggestions for the regulation of punishment, I would propose that any master proved guilty of inflicting or tolerating gross cruelty upon a slave, should forfeit every slave he may possess to the State, and be rendered incapable of again holding them, and that copies of such decisions be sent to each county in the State. In connexion with this subject, there is another point of considerable importance--viz., the testimony of slaves. As matters now stand, or are likely to stand for some time to come, there appear insuperable objections to the testimony of a slave being received on a par with that of a white man, and this constitutes one of the greatest difficulties in enabling the negro to obtain justice for any injury he may have sustained. It appears to me, however, that a considerable portion of this difficulty might he removed by admitting a certain number of slaves--say three--to constitute one witness. Cross-examination would easily detect either combination or falsehood, and a severe punishment attached to such an offence would act as a powerful antidote to its commission. Until some system is arranged for receiving negro evidence in some shape, he must continue the hopeless victim of frequent injustice. The next subject I propose to consider is a legalized system, having for its object the freedom of the slave. To accomplish this, I would suggest that the State should fix a fair scale of prices, at which the slave might purchase his freedom, one price for males and another for females under twenty, and a similar arrangement of price between the ages of twenty and fifty, after which age the slave to be free, and receive some fixed assistance, either from the State or the master, as might be thought most just and expedient. To enable the slave to take advantage of the privilege of purchasing his freedom, it would be requisite that the State should have banks appointed in which he might deposit his savings at fair interest; but to enable him to have something to deposit, it is also requisite that some law should be passed compelling owners to allow a slave certain portions of time to work out for himself, or if preferred, to work for the master, receiving the ordinary wages for the time so employed, and this, of course, in addition to the Sunday. As, however, among so many masters, some will be cruel and do their utmost to negative any merciful laws which the State may enact, I would for the protection of the slave propose that, if he feel discontented with the treatment of his master, he be allowed to claim the right of being publicly sold, upon giving a certain number of days' warning of such desire on his part; or if he can find any slave-owner who will give the price fixed by law--as before suggested--and is willing to take him, his master to be bound to deliver him up. With regard to the sale of slaves, I think humanity will justify me in proposing that no slave under fifteen years of ago be sold or transferred to another owner without the parents also; and secondly, that husband and wife be never sold or transferred separately, except it be by their own consent. However rarely such separations may take place at present, there is no law to prevent the cruel act, and I have every reason to believe it takes place much oftener than many of my kind-hearted plantation friends would he ready to admit. Looking forward to the gradual, but ultimately total abolition of slavery, I would next suggest that, after a certain date--say ten years--every slave, upon reaching thirty years of age, be apprenticed by his master to some trade or occupation for five years, at the expiration of which time he be free; after another fixed period--say ten years--all slaves above twenty years of age be similarly treated; and after a third period, I would propose that the United States should follow the noble example long since set them by _Peru_, and make it an integral part of their constitution that "_no one is born a slave in the Republic."_ The next proposal I have to make is one which I cannot but hope that all Americans will fell the propriety of, inasmuch as the present system is, in my estimation, one of the blackest features of the institution we are considering. I allude to the slavery of Americans themselves. In nearly every civilized nation in the world, blood is considered to run in the father's line, and although illegitimacy forfeits inheritance, it never forfeits citizenship. How is it in the United States? _There the white man's offspring is to be seen in fetters--the blood of the free in the market of the slave._ No one can have travelled in the Southern States without having this sad fact forced upon his observation. Over and over again have I seen features, dark if you will, but which showed unmistakeably the white man's share in their parentage. Nay, more--I have seen slaves that in Europe would pass for German blondes. Can anything be imagined more horrible than a free nation trafficking in the blood of its co-citizens? Is it not a diabolical premium on iniquity, that the fruit of sin can be sold for the benefit of the sinner? Though the bare idea may well nauseate the kind and benevolent among the Southerners, the proof of parentage is stamped by Providence on the features of the victims, and their slavery is incontrovertible evidence that the offspring of Columbia's sons may be sold at human shambles. Even in Mussulman law, the offspring of the slave girl by her master is declared free; and shall it be said that the followers of Christ are, in any point of mercy, behind the followers of the false prophet? My proposition, then, is, that every slave who is not of pure African blood, and who has reached, or shall reach, the age of thirty, be apprenticed to some trade for five years, and then become free; and that all who shall subsequently be so born, be free from their birth, and of course, that the mother who is proved thus to have been the victim of the white man's passion be manumitted as well as her child. I make no proposal about the spiritual instruction of the slave, as I believe that as much is given at present as any legislative enactment would be likely to procure; but I have one more suggestion to make, and it is one without which I fear any number of acts which might be passed for the benefit of the slave would lose the greater portion of their value. That suggestion is, the appointment of a sufficient number of officers, selected from persons known to be friendly to the slave, to whom the duty of seeing the enactments strictly carried out should be delegated. While ruminating on the foregoing pages, a kind of vision passed before my mind. I beheld a deputation of Republicans--among whom was one lady--approaching me. Having stated that they had read my remarks upon Slavery, I immediately became impressed in their favour, and could not refuse the audience they requested. I soon found the deputation consisted of people of totally different views, and consequently each addressed me separately. The first was an old gentleman, and a determined advocate of the institution. He said, "Your remarks are all bosh; the African race were born slaves, and have been so for centuries, and are fit for nothing else."--I replied, "I am quite aware of the effect of breeding; we have a race of dog in England which, from their progenitors of many successive generations having had their tails cut off in puppyhood, now breed their species without tails; nay, more--what are all our sporting dogs, but evidence of the same fact? A pointer puppy stands instinctively at game, and a young hound will run a fox; take the trouble, for many generations, to teach the hound to point and the pointer to run, and their two instincts will become entirely changed. The fact, sir, is that the African having been bred a slave for so many generations is one great cause of his lower order of intellect; breed him free and educate him, and you will find the same result in him as in the dog."--He was about to reply when another of the deputation rose and reminded him they had agreed to make but one observation each, and to receive one answer. I rejoiced at this arrangement, as it saved me trouble and gave me the last word. A very touchy little slaveholder next addressed me, saying, "Pray, sir, why can't you leave us alone, and mind your own business?"--I replied, "As for leaving you alone, I am quite ready to do so when you have left the negro alone; but as for exclusively attending to my own business, that would be far too dull; besides, it is human nature to interfere with other people's affairs, and I can't go against nature."--He retired, biting his lip, and as the door closed, I thought I heard the words "Meddling ass!"--but I wont be sure. Next came a swaggering bully of a slave-driver, evidently bred in the North. He said, "This, sir, is a free country; why mayn't every master wallop his own nigger?"--I thought it best to cut him short; so I said, "Because, if freedom is perfect, such a permission would involve its opposite--viz., that every nigger may wallop his own master; and your antecedents, I guess, might make such a law peculiarly objectionable to you personally."--He retired, eyeing first me and then his cowhide in a very significant manner. The next spokesman was a clerical slaveholder, with a very stiff and very white neckcloth, hair straight and long, and a sanctified, reproof-ful voice. "Sir," said he, "why endeavour to disturb an institution that Scripture sanctions, and which provides so large a field for the ministrations of kindness and sympathy--two of the most tender Christian virtues?" A crocodile tear dropped like a full stop to finish his sentence. Irascibility and astonishment were struggling within me, when I heard his speech; but memory brought St. Paul to my aid, who reminded me he had before written certain words to the Corinthian Church--"Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light; therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed," &e. Thereupon I became calmer, and replied, "Sir, you are perfectly aware that our Saviour's mission was to the heart of man, and not to the institutions of man. Did He not instruct his subjugated countrymen to pay tribute to Caesar? and did He not set the example in his own person? Did He not instruct his disciples in the same breath, 'Fear God! honour the king?'--and is it not elsewhere written, 'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil?' You are also perfectly aware that the American colonies refused to pay tribute to their Caesar, refused to honour their king, and did resist the evil. Now, sir, these things being so, you are compelled to admit one of two alternatives--either the whole of your countrymen are rebels against the Most High, and therefore aliens from God, or else, as I before said, the mission of the Gospel is to the hearts and not to the institutions of man. I see, sir, by the way you winced under the term 'rebel,' that you accept the latter alternative. If, then, it be addressed to the heart of man, it is through that channel--as it becomes enlarged by those virtues of which you spoke, kindness and sympathy--that human institutions are to become modified to suit the growing intelligence and growing wants of the human race, the golden rule for man's guidance being, Do as you would be done by. Be kind enough, sir, to look at Mr. Sambo Caesar working under the lash in a Carolina rice swamp; behold Mrs. Sambo Caesar torn from his bosom, and working under the same coercive banner in Maryland; and little Master Pompey, the only pledge of their affections, on his way to Texas. Is not this a beautiful comment on the Divine command, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself?' Permit me, sir, with all due respect, to urge you not to rest satisfied with preaching Christian resignation to the slave, and Christian kindness to the owner, but to seize every opportunity of fearlessly asserting that slavery is at variance with the spirit of the Gospel, and therefore that it behoves all Christians so to modify and change the laws respecting it, as gradually to lead to its total extinction. Good morning."--The reverend gentleman, who during the latter part of my observations had buried his hands in the bottom of his tail pockets, no sooner saw that I had finished my remarks, than he hastily withdrew his hands, exhibiting in one a Testament, in the other a Concordance; he evidently was rampant for controversy, but the next deputy, who thought I had already devoted an unfair proportion of time to the minister, reminded him of the regulations, and he was obliged to retire, another deputy opening the door for him, as both his hands were full. The deputy who next rose to address me was accompanied by the lady, whom, of course, I begged to be seated. The husband--for such he proved to be--then spoke as follows:--"Sir, my wife and I have been in possession of a plantation for nearly twenty years. During all that period the rod has scarcely ever been used, except occasionally to some turbulent little boy. We have built cottages for our slaves; we allow them to breed poultry, which we purchase from them; old slaves are carefully nurtured and exempt from labour; the sick have the best of medical attendance, and are in many cases ministered to by my wife and daughter; the practical truths of Christianity are regularly taught to them; and every slave, I am sure, looks upon me and my family as his truest friends. This happy state, this patriarchal relationship, your proposals, if carried out, would completely overthrow." He was then silent, and his wife bowed an assent to the observations he had made. My heart was touched with the picture of the little negro paradise which he had given, and I replied, as mildly as possible, "The sketch you have so admirably drawn, and every word of which I fully believe, is indeed one which might dispose me to abandon my proposals for change, did any one which I had made interfere with the continuance of your benevolent rule, as long as slavery exists; but I must call your attention to an important fact which you, I fear, have quite overlooked during your twenty years of kind rule. To be brief--the cheerful homes of your happy negro families can afford no possible consolation to the less fortunate negroes whose wives and children are torn from their bosoms and sold in separate lots to different parts of the Union; nor will the knowledge that on your plantation the rod only falls occasionally on some turbulent child, be any comfort to grown-up negroes and negresses while writhing under thirty or forty stripes from the cowhide or paddle. Continue, most excellent people, your present merciful rule; strive to secure to every negro the same treatment; and if you find that impossible, join the honourable ranks of the temperate and gradual abolitionist and colonizer." They listened patiently to my observations, smiled quietly at the vanity which they thought the last sentence exhibited, and retired. Scarce had the last charming couple disappeared, when a deputy arose, the antipodes of the last speaker; his manner was so arrogant, I instantly suspected his ignorance, and his observations showed such painful sensitiveness, that they were evidently the production of an accusing conscience. His parentage I could not ascertain accurately; but, being a slight judge of horseflesh, I should suspect he was by "Slave-bully" out of "Kantankerousina,"--a breed by no means rare in America, but thought very little of by the knowing ones. On referring to the list, I found he was entered as "Recriminator," and that the rest of the deputation had refused to give him a warranty. He sprang up with angry activity; he placed his left hand on his breast, the right hand he extended with cataleptic rigidity, and with an expression of countenance which I can only compare to that of an injured female of spotless virtue, he began, "You, sir--yes, I say, you, sir--you presume to speak of the slave--you, sir, who come from a nation of slaves, whose rampant aristocrats feed on the blood of their serfs, where title is another word for villany, and treads honesty beneath its iron heel! You, sir, you offer suggestions for the benefit of a country whose prosperity excites your jealousy, and whose institutions arouse mingled feelings of hatred and fear! Go home, sir--go home! no more of your canting hypocrisy about the lusty negro! go home, sir, I say! enrich your own poor, clothe your naked, and feed your own starving--the negro here is better off than most of them! Imitate the example of this free and enlightened nation, where every citizen is an independent sovereign; send your royalty and, aristocracy to all mighty smash, raise the cap of Liberty on the lofty pole of Democracy, and let the sinews of men obtain their just triumphs over the flimsy rubbish of intellect and capital! Tyranny alone makes differences. All men are equal!"--He concluded his harangue just in time to save a fit, for it was given with all the fuss and fury of a penny theatre King Richard; in fact, I felt at one time strongly inclined to call for "a horse," but, having accepted the deputation, I was bound to treat its members with courtesy; so I replied, "Sir, your elegantly expressed opinions of royalty, &c., require nothing but ordinary knowledge to show their absurdity, so I will not detain you by dwelling on that subject; but, sir, you studiously avoid alluding to the condition of the slave, and, by seeking for a fault elsewhere, endeavour to throw a cloak over the subject of this meeting. You tell me the poor in England need much clothing and food--that is very true; but, sir, if every pauper had a fur cloak and a round of beef, I cannot see the advantage the negro would derive therefrom. Again, sir, you say the negro is better off than many of our poor; so he is far better off than many of the drunken rowdies of your own large towns; yet I have never heard it suggested that they should be transformed into slaves, by way of bettering their condition. Take my advice, sir; before you throw stones, he sure that there is not a pane of glass in your Cap of Liberty big enough for 3,000,000 of slaves to look through. And pray, sir, do not forget, 'Tyranny alone makes differences. All men are equal!'" A slam of the door announced the departure and the temper of Recriminator, and it also brought upon his feet another deputy who had kept hitherto quite in the background. He evidently was anxious for a private audience, but that being impossible, he whispered in my ear, "Sir, I am an abolitionist, slick straight off; and all I have got to say is, that you are a soap-suddy, milk-and-water friend to the slave, fix it how you will." Seeing he was impatient to be off, I whispered to him in reply, "Sir, there is an old prayer that has often been uttered with great sincerity, and is probably being so uttered now by more than one intelligent slave: it is this, 'Good Lord, save me from my friends.' The exertions of your party, sir, remind me much of those of a man who went to pull a friend out of the mud, but, by a zeal without discretion, he jumped on his friend's head, and stuck him faster than ever." When he disappeared, I was in hopes it was all over; but a very mild-tempered looking man, with a broad intelligent forehead, got up, and, approaching me in the most friendly manner, said, "Sir, I both admit and deplore the evil of the institution you have been discussing, but its stupendous difficulties require a much longer residence than yours has been to fathom them; and until they are fully fathomed, the remedies proposed must be in many cases very unsuitable, uncalled for, and insufficient. However, sir, I accept your remarks in the same friendly spirit as, I am sure, you have offered them. Permit me, at the same time, as one many years your senior, to say that, in considering your proposals, I shall separate the chaff--of which there is a good deal--from the wheat--of which there is some little; the latter I shall gather into my mind's garner, and I trust it will fall on good soil." I took the old gentleman's hand and shook it warmly, and, as he retired, I made up my mind he was the sensible slave-owner. I was about to leave the scene, quite delighted that the ordeal was over, when, to my horror, I heard a strong Northern voice calling out lustily, "Stranger, I guess I have a word for you." On turning round I beheld a man with a keen Hebrew eye, an Alleghany ridge nose, and a chin like the rounded half of a French roll. I was evidently alone with a 'cute man of dollars and cents. On my fronting him, he said, with Spartan brevity, "Who's to pay?" Conceive, O reader! my consternation at being called upon to explain who was to make compensation for the sweeping away--to a considerable extent, at all events--of what represented, in human flesh, 250,000,000l., and in the produce of its labour 80,000,000l. annually! Answer I must; so, putting on an Exchequery expression, I said, "Sir, if a national stain is to be washed out, the nation are in honour bound to pay for the soap. England has set you a noble example under similar circumstances, and the zeal of the abolitionists will, no doubt, make them tax themselves double; but as for suggesting to you by what tax the money is to be raised, you must excuse me, sir. I am a Britisher, and remembering how skittish you were some years ago about a little stamp and tea affair, I think I may fairly decline answering your question more in detail; a burnt child dreads the fire."--The 'cute man disappeared and took the vision with him; in its place came the reality of 2 A.M. and the candles flickering in their sockets. Reader, I have now done with the question of the gradual improvement and ultimate emancipation of the slave. The public institutions of any country are legitimate subjects of comment for the traveller, and in proportion as his own countrymen feel an interest in them, so is it natural he should comment on them at greater or less length. I have, therefore, dwelt at large upon this subject, from the conviction that it is one in which the deepest interest is felt at home; and I trust that I have so treated it as to give no just cause of offence to any one, whether English or American. I hope I have impressed my own countrymen with some idea of the gigantic obstacles that present themselves, of which I will but recapitulate three;--the enormous pecuniary interests involved; the social difficulty arising from the amount of negro population; and, though last not least, the perplexing problem--if Washington's opinion, that "Slavery can only cease by legislative authority," is received--how Congress can legislate for independent and sovereign States beyond the limits of the Constitution by which they are mutually bound to each other. I feel sure that much of the rabid outcry, the ovation of Mrs. B. Stowe, and other similar exhibitions, have arisen from an all but total ignorance of the true facts of the case. This ignorance it has been my object to dispel; and I unhesitatingly declare that the emancipation of the negroes throughout the Southern States, if it took place to-morrow, would be the greatest curse the white man could inflict upon them. I also trust that I may have shadowed forth some useful idea, to assist my Southern friends in overtaking a gangrene which lies at their heart's core, and which every reflecting mind must see is eating into their vitals with fearful rapidity. My last and not my least sincere hope is, that some one among the many suggestions I have offered for the negro's present benefit, may be found available to mitigate the undoubted sufferings and cruel injustice of which those with bad masters must frequently be the victims. Should I succeed in even one solitary instance, I shall feel more than repaid for the many hours of thought and trouble I have spent over the intricate problem--the best road from Slavery to Emancipation. Since writing the foregoing, 20,000,000 freemen, by the decision of their representatives at Washington, have hung another negro's shackle on their pole of Liberty (?). Kansas is enslaved--freedom is dishonoured. As a proof how easily those who are brought up under the institution of Slavery blind themselves to the most simple facts, Mr. Badger, the senator for North Carolina, after eulogizing the treatment of slaves, and enlarging upon the affection between them and their masters, stated that, if Nebraska was not declared a Slave State[CA] it would preclude him, should he wish to settle there, from taking with him his "old mammy,"--the negro woman who had nursed him in infancy. Mr. Wade, from Ohio, replied, "that the senator was labouring under a mistake; there was nothing to prevent his taking his beloved mammy with him, though Nebraska remained free, except it were that he could not sell her when he got there." Let the Christian learn charity from the despised Mussulman. Read the following proclamation:-- "From the Servant of God, the Mushir Ahmed Basha Bey, Prince of the Tunisian dominions. "To our ally, Sir Thomas Reade, Consul-General of the British Government at Tunis. "The servitude imposed on a part of the human kind whom God has created is a very cruel thing, and our heart shrinks from it. "It never ceased to be the object of our attention for years past, which we employed in adopting such proper means as could bring us to its extirpation, as is well known to you. Now, therefore, we have thought proper to publish that we have abolished men's slavery in all our dominions, inasmuch as we regard all slaves who are on our territory as free, and do not recognise the legality of their being kept as a property. We have sent the necessary orders to all the governors of our Tunisian kingdom, and inform you thereof, in order that you may know that all slaves that shall touch our territory, by sea or by land, shall become free. "May you live under the protection of God! "Written in Moharrem, 1262." (23rd of January, 1846.) What a bitter satire upon the vaunted "Land of Liberty" have her sons enacted since the Mahometan Prince penned the above! Not only has the slave territory been nearly doubled in the present century; but by a recent decision of the Supreme Court, every law which _has been_ passed by Congress restricting slavery, is pronounced contrary to the constitution, and therefore invalid. Congress is declared powerless to prohibit slavery from any portion of the Federal Territory, or to authorize the inhabitants to do so; the African race, whether slave or free, are declared not to be citizens, and consequently to be incompetent to sue in the United States' Courts, and the slave-owner is pronounced authorized to carry his rights into every corner of the Union, despite the decrees of Congress or the will of the inhabitants. In short, in the year 1857, upwards of eighty years after Washington and his noble band declared--and at the point of the sword won--their independence, and after so many States have purified their shields from the negro's blood, the highest tribunal in the Republic has decreed that the rights of the slave-owner extend to every inch of the Federal soil, and that by their Constitution _the United States is a Slave Republic._ What will the end be? A few short years have rolled past since the foregoing remarks were penned, and in that interval the question of Slavery has again made the Union tremble to its uttermost borders. The cloud, not bigger than a man's hand, was sped by President Pierce's administration to the new State of Kansas, and ere long it burst in a deluge of ruffianism and blood; the halls of Congress were dishonoured by the violent assault which Mr. Brookes (a Southern senator) made upon Mr. Sumner of Massachusetts; the Press spread far and wide the ignominious fact, that the ladies of his State presented the assailant with a cane, inscribed "Hit him again!" the State itself endorsed his act by re-electing him unanimously; North and South are ranged in bitter hostility; in each large meetings have advocated a separation, in terms of rancour and enmity; and it is to be feared the Union does not possess a man of sufficient weight and character to spread oil over the troubled waters. How will "Manifest Destiny" unfold itself, and what will the end be?--The cup must fill first. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote BY: Many of my suggestions, the reader will observe, are drawn from the Cuba code.] [Footnote BZ: In Peru, the maximum of stripes the law permits to be inflicted is twelve; and girls above fourteen, married women, fathers of children, and old men, are exempt from the lash.] [Footnote CA: At the time of the discussion, the Nebraska territory included Nebraska and Kansas] CHAPTER XXVII. _Constitution of United States._ The most important subject that claims the attention of the traveller in any country that pretends to education or civilization, is undoubtedly its Constitution. The reader cannot expect--and most probably would not wish--to find, in a work like this, any elaborate account of the government of so vast and varied a republic as that of the United States. Those who wish thoroughly to grasp so very extensive a topic must study the history of each individual State from its foundation; must watch the changes each has undergone, noting the effect produced; and must carefully pore over the writings of the great men who originally planned--if I may so express myself--the Republic, and must dive deep into the learned and valuable tomes of Story, Kent, &c. Those who are content with more moderate information, will find a great deal, very ably condensed, in a volume by Mr. Tremenheere. To the reader, I pretend to offer nothing but a glance at such elements as appear to me most useful and interesting; and in so doing, I shall freely borrow such quotations from Mr. Tremenheere's references to Story and Kent as I conceive may help to elucidate my subject, not having those authors at hand to refer to. The Government of the United States consists of three departments,--the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial; or the President, the House of Representatives and Senate, and the Judicial Courts. The President and Vice-President are chosen by an elective body from all the States, the said body being selected by popular vote in each State. The Vice-President is _ex officio_ Speaker or President of the Senate, and in case of the chief dying, he becomes for the remainder of the term the President of the United States. They are elected for 4 years, but may be re-elected indefinitely. Should the votes be equal, the House of Representatives selects the President from the three on the list who have most votes, and the Senate selects the Vice in the same way. The qualifications for President and Vice are--native born, 35 years of age, and 14 years' residence in the States. The salary of the President is about 5100l. a year, and a residence at Washington, called "The White House." The salary of the Vice-President is 1680l. a year. There are five Secretaries,--State, Interior, Treasury, War, Navy, and a Postmaster-General; the Attorney-General also forms part of the Cabinet. These officials also receive the same salary. The Senate is composed of two members from each State, irrespective of population, so as not to swamp the small States. The election is by the Legislature of each State, and for 6 years; one-third of their number go out every 2 years. The qualification for a senator is that he should be 30 years of age, have been 9 years a citizen, and living in the State for which he is elected. The House of Representatives originally consisted of one member for a certain amount of population, and as the increase in population was very rapid, the number of Representatives increased as a matter of course. In 1843, it was one member for every 70,000 of population, but, to prevent the body from becoming unmanageable owing to numbers, in 1853 the House was limited to 234 Representatives, elected _pro ratâ_ to the several States. Slaves are reckoned in the proportion of three-fifths of their number. The preliminary steps are, that every 10 years a census is taken, after which a bill is passed by Congress, apportioning number of representatives to each State, according to its population. This done, each State passes a law, districting the State according to the number of members assigned it, and each district elects its own representative for Congress. The election is for 2 years, and the qualification is 7 years a citizen, 25 years of age, and living in the State. The salary is the same as that of a senator. The names of members composing a division on any question in either house, are not printed unless they are demanded by one-fifth of the members present. One of the clauses of their Constitution is very original, and runs thus:--"Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behaviour, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member." All impeachments are tried in the Senate, and a majority of two-thirds is requisite for a conviction. If the President be on trial, the Chief Justice, or head of the Supreme Court, presides. While power of trial rests with the Senate, the power of impeachment rests solely with the House of Representatives. In addition to the ordinary functions of an Upper House, the Senate has also what is called "an Executive Session," which is held with closed doors; at this Session all treaties and high appointments are discussed, and the appointments are not held to be valid till ratified by them. Whenever fresh land becomes sufficiently populous, the general Government admit it as territory, and appoint an administration. This was the case with Nebraska and Kansas in 1853; and the "Missouri Compromise" (which confined slavery south of the 36º 3' parallel of latitude) having been repealed, it became optional with them to adopt slavery or not. Kansas fought barbarously for the dishonourable privilege, and with temporary success: Nebraska has declined the honour as yet. The interests of territories are watched over at Washington by delegates in the House of Representatives, who have a seat, but no vote. This sensible arrangement might, in my humble opinion, be adopted in this country with reference to our colonies, whose wants at present have no interpreter intimately acquainted with colonial affairs in either branch of the Legislature. Each State in the Union has its own Governor, House of Representatives, Senate, and Judiciary, and is in every respect a sovereign State--they like the word as much as they pretend to dislike the reality--acting perfectly independently within its limits, except in such cases as were mutually agreed upon by the terms of the Union, and to some of which we shall refer by and by. This sovereignty of individual States renders the elective franchise different in different States. At the date of the first elections after the Declaration of Independence, no State admitted mere citizenship as a qualification for the elective franchise. The great men who appeared upon the stage at that period, profiting by the experience of past ages, threw certain guards around the franchise in every State in the Union, varying in different States, but all bearing unmistakeable testimony to the fact, that a perfect democracy was not the basis on which they ever contemplated building up the Republic. A few short years have rolled by; the 13 States are increased to 33, and according to Mr. Tremenheere, "a grave departure from the theory of the Constitution, as it existed in the eyes and expectations of its careful and prudent founders, has taken place, in the gradual lowering throughout nearly all the States of the Union, and the entire abandonment in two-thirds of them, of those qualifications for the exercise of the franchise which existed when the Constitution was adopted." In one State--Illinois--aliens being residents are entitled to vote. Now, if the great men of 1776 thought safeguards around the franchise wise and prudent in their day, before the great tide of emigration had set in to the westward, and when the population was only 4,000,000, what would they say, could they but rise from their graves and see how their successors have thrown down the prudent barriers they had raised, and laid the franchise bare to citizenship, now that the Union numbers 23,000,000 souls, and that the tide of emigration is daily flooding them with hordes of the discontented and turbulent from every country in the Old World? But perhaps it may be said that I, as an Englishman, am prejudiced against republican institutions in any shape; let me, then, quote you an authority which every educated American will respect. Mr. Justice Kent says, "The progress and impulse of popular opinion, is rapidly destroying every constitutional check, every conservative element, intended by the sages who framed the earliest American Constitutions as safeguards against the abuses of popular suffrage." Let us turn to another equally eminent American authority, Mr. Justice Story. "It might be urged, that it is far from being clear, upon reasoning or experience, that uniformity in the composition of a representative body is either desirable or expedient, founded in sounder policy, or more promotive of the general good, than a mixed system, embracing, representing, and combining distinct interests, classes, and opinions. In England, the House of Commons, as a representative body, is founded upon no uniform principle, either of numbers, or classes, or places; ... and in every system of reform which has found public favour in that country, many of these diversities have been embodied from choice, as important checks upon undue legislation, as facilitating the representation of different interests and different opinions, and as thus securing, by a well-balanced and intelligent representation of all the various classes of society, a permanent protection of the public liberties of the people, and a firm security of the private rights of persons and property." Thus far I have quoted the opinions of the highest American authorities upon the franchise. And, as far as the lowering it in England affords us any light, I would wish some unbiased and competent person to inform the public, whether--whatever other benefit it may have procured to the community--it has increased or decreased bribery and corruption; and how the balance between advantage and disadvantage will stand, in reference to the community at large, by a further lowering of the franchise in this country; and also to what extent--if any--it can be lowered, without throwing all but unlimited power into the hands of the masses, and thus destroying that balance of the different interests of the community which are--thank God--still represented, and which, if once lost, would reduce our beloved Sovereign to the position of a gaudy puppet, and the House of Lords to a mere cypher, and be as certainly followed by all the horrors of a revolution, and all the evils of a corrupt democracy. How easy is it to find politicians ever ready to sniff the incense of popularity at the plausible shrine of a descending franchise!--how difficult to find those who, while granting what is just and prudent, have the wisdom to plan, and the courage to dare, measures to arrest a mobular avalanche! With regard to the frequency of elections, I will only insert the following sentence from Mr. Justice Story, as, I believe, public opinion in this country is all but universal in its condemnation: "Men, to act with vigour and effect, ... must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions of elections has a tendency to create agitation and dissensions in the public mind, to nourish factions and encourage restlessness, to favour rash innovations in domestic legislation and public policy, and to produce violent and sudden changes in the administration of public affairs, founded upon temporary excitements and prejudices: ... it operates also as a great discouragement upon suitable candidates offering themselves for the public service ... the period of service ought, therefore, to bear some proportion to the variety of knowledge and practical skill which the duties of the station demand."--If any annual-parliament maniac still exist, let him profit by these words of wisdom from the pen of a republican, dipped in the ink of Prudence and Patriotism; and in the marked difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate Chamber--the former of whom are elected for two, the latter for six years--let him behold the most incontrovertible living proof's of their truth. John Jay, one of the most able men of America, writing to Washington, expresses his wish that the Upper House, or Senate, should be elected for life. I will now turn to a topic which probably interests the British public more than any other--except the franchise--I mean the Ballot. So much has been said about the coercion of voters by those on whom they are dependent, and so much disgraceful jobbery at elections in this country has been laid bare, that if the Ballot were really a panacea for the evil, every patriot should exert his utmost energies to forward the introduction of so essential a measure. In reading any American document where the word "ballot" is used, it must be remembered that, unless the word "secret" precede it, the meaning is merely voting by an open piece of paper on which the name of the candidate is printed, and which he may enclose in an envelope or not, as he chooses. It is, therefore, only with the secret ballot we have to deal at present; for although the power to vote secretly exists, it is obvious, that unless secret voting is made compulsory, it affords no protection to those who are in a position to be bribed or coerced, inasmuch as those who did bribe or coerce would insist upon the vote so obtained being given openly. It will perhaps astonish an Englishman to be told that "secret" ballot is all but unknown in the United States. Nevertheless, such is the case. An act was passed some four years ago in Massachusetts requiring secrecy; and what was the effect of this act? A large body of the electors met together to denounce with indignation any attempt at enforcing that which they repudiated as unworthy of freemen. So strong was this feeling that in 1853, the act which enforced it was repealed, and in the convention called to discuss the revision of their Constitution--according to Mr. Tremenheere--although the democratic party were in a great majority, the effort to impose secrecy was thrown out by a majority of 5000[CB]. A friend of mine, who took considerable interest in this question, was present at the elections for the State of Massachusetts, and when, at the same time, a popular vote was to be taken on the proposed revision of the Constitution; this latter was by special enactment made compulsorily secret. How far this object was attained, the following statement will show. As the voters came up to the polling-place, tickets were offered them by the agents of the opposite parties, in a large room full of people. The voters selected whichever ticket they preferred, in the presence of the whole room, and then, in compliance with the terms of the enactment, they sealed it up in an envelope before depositing it in the voting-box. So much for compulsory secrecy. Of course on this occasion, as on all electioneering occasions, the voters might have concealed their votes, had they chosen so to do. The only States, that I am aware of, where secrecy is enjoined by law are New York and Indiana; and in the former of these I can most certainly testify, from personal observation, that in many instances, if not in most, it is a dead letter. I never met a soul who, in talking about politics, ever thought of concealing his sentiments. I am therefore forced to the conclusion that secrecy only exists among the very lowest; and here it may be as well to introduce the opinions of the Governor of this important State. Mr. Washington Hunt, in his Message of January 7, 1851, says, "The alarming increase of bribery in our popular elections demands your serious attention. The preservation of our liberties depends on the purity of the elective franchise, and its independent exercise by the citizen, and I trust you will adopt such measures as shall effectually protect the ballot-box from all corrupting influences." If any efforts were made to stay the tide of corruption, the message of the same Governor the following year will enable you to judge of their success. In his address on the 6th of January, 1852, this paragraph occurs: "The increase of corrupt practices in our elections has become a subject of general and just complaint: it is represented that in some localities the suffrages of considerable numbers of voters have been openly purchased with money. We owe it to ourselves and to posterity, and to the free institutions which we have inherited, to crush this hateful evil in its infancy, before it attains sufficient growth to endanger our political system. The honest and independent exercise of the right of suffrage is a vital principle in the theory of representative government. It is the only enduring foundation for a republic. Not only should the law punish every violation of this principle as a crime against the integrity of the State, but any person concerned in giving or receiving any pecuniary consideration for a vote should, upon challenge, be deprived of the privilege of voting. I submit the subject to your consideration, in the hope that additional remedies may be prescribed and enforced."--The two foregoing extracts do equal credit to the head and heart of Governor Hunt; but what a picture do they portray of the effects of secret voting! Let us now turn from Governor Hunt, and see what the Press says on the subject. The _New York Herald_, which if not highly esteemed is at least widely circulated, thus writes in the month of May, 1852:--"Look at the proceedings on Thursday last in the 19th Ward. Voters carried to the ballot-boxes in scores of waggons from, various localities; and, in other wards, hundreds of democrats voting for Scott and for Fillmore, men ignorant and steeped in crime, picked up in all the purlieus of the city and purchased at a dollar a head; and some, it is said, so low as half a dollar, to deposit in the ballot-box a vote they had never seen."--The article then goes on to explain the methods employed at elections--viz., a lazy fellow who wont work, brawls, and drinks, and spouts, and defames every honest man in the ward, till he becomes a semi-deity among the riff-raff, then "his position is found out by those who want to use him. He is for sale to the highest bidder, either to defeat his own party by treachery, or to procure a nomination for any scoundrel who will pay for it. He has no politics of any kind. He has rascality to sell, and there are those who are willing to purchase it, in order that they may traffic in it, and sell it to themselves again at a very high profit.... We have heard of a case in one of the Lower Wards of the city, in which one man got, at the time of the late democratic conventions, the enormous sum of two thousand dollars, out of which it is said he bribed the majority of the electors and kept the balance for himself." A few paragraphs further on he suggests remedies for the evil;--and what do you suppose they are? First, that honest people should not leave politics to the riff-raff. Secondly, "there ought to be a registration established, by which no man could sail under false colours, or deposit a vote at a primary election, unless he belonged to the ward, and belonged to the party to which he professed to belong." Conceive the state to which secret voting has reduced the wealthy and intelligent city of New York; absolutely, a return to open voting is considered insufficient to reach the vitals of the evil which secrecy has brought about. Here we have proposed as a remedy _the compulsory register of political sentiments_; and to prove that things are not mending, in the "Retrospect of the year 1852," which forms a leading article in the same journal at the commencement of 1853, after a lengthy panegyric upon the state of America, &c., during 1852, he winds up with these most serious drawbacks to the previous eulogy: "if we are bound to admit with crimson blush that crime is sadly on the increase, and that our municipal institutions have reached the lowest depths of inefficiency and infamy, these but remind us that the work which 1852 has bravely carried on is not yet achieved."--I would wish carefully to guard against being understood to endorse the violent language employed by the _New York Herald_. I am aware how unsafe a guide the Press ever is in times of political excitement; but after making every reasonable allowance, enough remains to prove the tendency of the secret ballot, corroborated as it is by the authoritative message of the Governor of the State. Let us now turn for a moment to that most witty and amusing writer, Sydney Smith. In speaking of Mr. Grote's proposal for the ballot, the author says, "He tells us that the bold cannot be free, and bids us seek for liberty by clothing ourselves in the mask of falsehood, and trampling on the cross of truth;"--and further on, towards the end of the pamphlet, he quotes an authority that Americans must respect--"Old John Randolph, the American orator, was asked one day, at a dinner-party in London, whether the ballot prevailed in his State of Virginia? 'I scarcely believe,' he said, 'we have such a fool in all Virginia as to mention even the vote by ballot; and I do not hesitate to say that the adoption of the ballot would make any nation a set of scoundrels if it did not find them so.'"--John Randolph was right; he felt that it was not necessary that a people should be false in order to be free. Universal hypocrisy would be the consequence of ballot. We should soon say, on deliberation, what David only asserted in his haste, that "all men are liars."[CC]--How strangely prophetic the opinion of John Randolph appears, when read by the light of the _New York Herald_ of 1852. It has always appeared to me that the argument in favour of ballot which is drawn from its use in clubs, if it prove anything at all, is rather against than for it; its value there arises from the fact of the independence of the members, which enables any member if asked by the rejected candidate how he had voted, to decline giving any answer without fear of consequences. Were he dependent, he must either deny the black-ball he gave, had he so voted, or, confessing the fact, he must suffer for it, and silence would be sure to be construed into a black-ball: therefore, before ballot could be of any value to a constituency, they must be independent; and if independent, there would be no need of the ballot. Of course secrecy could be obtained by falsehood. Moreover, the object of it in a club is to keep out of a select society not only those who are considered absolutely offensive, but many with whom, though you might like to meet them in general society, you do not think it desirable to be on more intimate terms; and even in a club, who will deny that it is often used to gratify private malice, and frequently, when candidates are numerous, are black-balls put in to hasten forward the election of friends? While freely confessing and deeply regretting the disgraceful jobbery and bribery which an inquiry into our own elections too often reveals, we ought to be thankful for the light of experience which a contemplation of the elective system of the United States affords, warning us as it does that an imprudent lowering of the franchise and a recourse to the secret ballot do but aggravate the evils they were intended to cure. Before we proceed to lower our franchise, should we not do wisely to try and devise some means for obtaining the votes of those already entitled to vote? Many an honest and industrious artisan at present entitled to a vote will not come to the poll on account of the violence which--if not of the mobular party--he may be subject to; his family depend on his exertions for their daily bread--a broken limb, or any such accident happening to him, may bring the whole family to deep distress, if not to the workhouse. It appears by the _Edinburgh Review_ of October, 1852, that at a previous general election, 40 per cent, of those possessing the privilege did not poll their votes. A hasty lowering of the franchise would certainly increase that number, and thus while losing more votes of the peaceful and industrious citizens, we should be increasing those of the more turbulent, and of those who are excited by designing demagogues. But to return to the United States. In the former edition I omitted to explain that "a Congress" meant a Parliament for two years--the term for which the representatives are elected. One of the sessions is from the first Monday in December to about the end of August, and is called the long session; the other commences the same day, and sits till the 4th March, and is called the short session; but, besides these regular sittings, there may be extra sessions as often as the President thinks fit to assemble Congress. At the time I was in the States, by a fiction very agreeable to the members, if Congress closed the session on Monday, and the President ordered its reassembling on Tuesday, the members were supposed to be at their respective homes, and received mileage payment accordingly. This snug little bonus was called "constructive mileage." In the year 1856 an act was passed fixing the payment of members at 1260l. each for their services in each Congress of two years, and abolishing the constructive mileage job. The only deduction from the above is that made for non-attendance of members. The payment is thus arranged:--Each member receives 1l. 13s. 6d. for every day he attends in Congress; the whole number of days a session lasts are calculated at the above rate, and the difference between that amount and 630l. (the half of 1260l.) is a bonus given, at the end of the first year's session, and is in lieu of all further payments for any extra sessions which the President may think it advisable to call during the year. It will thus be seen that each member receives the same sum, minus 1l. 13s. 6d. for every day's non-attendance. Mileage is allowed at the rate of 1l. 13s. 6d.. for every twenty miles distance to and fro, but only for one session each; year. The advantage Texas and Californian members obtain from this liberal allowance is obvious, and its injustice is felt by those who live in the neighbouring States to Washington. Now, as travelling, in most parts of the Union, is at the rate of less than 2d. a mile, and living at the rate of two and a half dollars (10s. 6d.) a day, it is obvious that the situation of a representative is advantageous in a pecuniary point of view to those who wish to make a trade of politics. A member coming from a distance, say of 200 miles, and attending 120 days, would have a clear balance of about 150l. left for the rest of the year; and a member from Texas would clear about 500l. How far such a measure is wise, and brings the most desirable men into the public service, let their own countrymen tell. Mr. Venables, of North Carolina, in a speech at Richmond, Virginia (quoted by Mr. Tremenheere) says, "With money enough, any bill can be carried through Congress." No nation--and, least of all, so very sensitive a nation as the United States--would pass an act which could possibly throw a cloud of doubt over the integrity of its representatives were there not some imperative necessity; the act referred to below will be found in page 363 of _Appendix_ to Tremenheere's _Constitution of the United States_, one clause of which runs thus:--"That any senator or representative in Congress who, after the passage of this act ... shall receive any gratuity, or any share of, or interest in, any claim from any claimant against the United States, &c., on conviction shall pay a fine not exceeding 5000 dollars (1000l.), suffer imprisonment in the Penitentiary, not exceeding one year, or both, as the court in its discretion shall adjudge." Another clause follows, against the knowing and wilful destruction of public documents; another, against any individual who shall tempt any member of the Senate or House of Representatives with bribe of any kind to influence his vote, and against members accepting the same. This act bears date Feb. 26, 1853, and certainly proves that Mr. Venables' assertion had some solid foundation in truth. It will be remembered by some that Collins, finding the Cunard line of steamers, when supported by Government, too strong for him to contend against, applied to Congress for a Government grant. In obtaining that grant, I do not pretend to say that he, or any one on his behalf, used bribery or corruption, when he took round one of his magnificent vessels to Washington, and feasted Congress on board in a most champagnely style; but this I know, that many Americans were most indignant at the proceeding, for, coupled with the act above referred to, it could not but excite suspicion; and I feel sure, if Cunard had brought round one of his splendid steamers to the Thames, and there feasted the Legislature while his obtaining a Government grant was under discussion, he could not have taken a more effectual method to mar his object. _La femme de César ne doit pas être suspecte_. Thus, then, as far as we can judge of any advantage to be derived from payment of members, we can see nothing to induce us to adopt such a system; and, if I mistake not, the American himself feels disposed to give it up, believing that the standard of the representative will be raised thereby. We will now make a few remarks upon a body peculiar to America, and known as "the Lobby." But, first, I would observe that, by a rule in both Houses, changeable at pleasure, ex-members of Congress, ministers, secretaries of legation, &c., are allowed the privilege of coming within the bar to hear debates; and of the people so privileged the Lobby is chiefly composed. They have no counterpart in this country, but may perhaps be said to have a faint and distant resemblance to our Parliamentary agents, and they are in no way recognised by Congress. Their work consists in endeavouring to force all members who purpose presenting public or private bills to employ them, which, of course, involves a "consideration;" and, as their name is "Legion," and their motto on this point "unanimity," they are enabled, owing to their influence with the members, to throw the greatest possible obstruction in the way of most bills which are not passed through their "greased palms." The result need not be described. The correspondent of the _Times_, who, if report he correct, has held the highest situations a citizen of the United States can hold, states, in a letter to be found in that journal, on the 27th January 1857, that the Minnesota Land Bill had been said, in the House of Representatives, to be supported by bribery, and that one member openly avowed in his seat that he had been offered 1500 dollars for his vote in favour of the bill. The consequence was an inquiry into the alleged charge, and doubtless it will affect the weight of the Lobby. He adds--"The Lobby has, no doubt, great influence on the Legislature, but it is not yet all-powerful." In estimating the effect of a vote, it must be remembered that there are only 234 members in the House of Representatives, and 62 in the Senate; and, to give some idea of the interests concerned, the correspondent states--"It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Federal Congress at Washington has a disposing power over twice the amount of national property subject to the votes of the Parliament at Westminster." Those who feel an interest in this subject I would strongly urge to read the whole of the very able letter alluded to. I have before spoken of the very great readiness with which any stranger gains admittance to Congress to listen to the debates. As a broad feature, I believe their discussions are carried on in a sober, practical, business-like manner; nevertheless, most outrageous scenes have occurred. I subjoin the following extract, not from any one sentence it contains, but from its continuity, as a proof that the tone of the House is not worthy of the dignity of so great a country. A member of any community may get up and use the most gross and offensive language; but if the offender be immediately called to order, and made to retract the offensive expressions, the community thus vindicates its character. Should, however, the most gross and offensive language be used by two members for any length of time without any interference, reprobation, retraction, or punishment, the community as a body must fairly be considered, by their silence, as endorsing such conduct. The extract is taken from that widely circulating journal, "the _Illustrated London News_:-- "In the House of Representatives at Washington, on the 11th ult., the following amusing but disgraceful scene occurred between two of the members--Messrs. Stanly and Giddings. The former having charged the latter with uttering a falsehood, the following conversation ensued:-- "Mr. Stanly: 'It is usual for one who has no regard for the decencies of life to relieve himself from responsibility by pronouncing statements false, and it is characteristic of the man who sneaked away from this House, and took his pay for work which he did not do. "Mr. Giddings: 'When the gentleman descends to low vulgarity, I cannot follow him, I protest against Dough-faces prompting the gentleman from South Carolina. "Mr. Stanly: 'It is the business of a scavenger to have anything to do with him, and I will have to wash my hands after handling him; but the thing has to be done, as he has thrust himself on us as a kind of censor. It is a small business for me, and I don't know how I can descend any lower than to take hold of the hon. member for Ohio. (Cry of 'Good.') "Mr. Giddings: 'Will you hear me? "Mr. Stanly: 'Nobody wants to hear you, but I will indulge you. "Mr. Giddings: 'The gentleman is barking up the wrong tree. "Mr. Stanly: 'The galled jade winces again. "Mr. Giddings: 'The gentleman sha'n't crack the overseer's lash to put me down. "Mr. Stanly: 'I hope that the gentleman will not gnash his teeth so hard; he might hurt himself. Who is here playing the overseer over white men--who but he, who is throwing his filthy gall and assailing everybody as Northern Whig Dough-faces, and what he calls the vile slave-holders? He is the only man who acts in that way. We don't raise the overseer's lash over our slaves in North Carolina. If that member was in the southern country, nobody would own him as a black man with a white skin--(laughter)--but he would be suffered to run wild as a free negro, and in the course of three weeks he would be brought up to the whipping-post and lashed, for stealing or slandering his neighbours. (Laughter.) If I say that he is a gentleman, I tell a falsehood. "The Speaker (to Mr. Stanly)--'Will the gentleman suspend for a moment? "Mr. Stanly: 'We ought to suspend that fellow (pointing to Mr. Giddings) by the neck. (Laughter.) "Mr. Giddings: 'The gentleman from North Carolina reminds me of the boy who turned round so fast that the hind part of his breeches was on both sides. (Laughter.) The gentleman says that I was at Norristown, too; but where was he and the members of the House? Why, drinking their grog. (Laughter.) "Mr. Stanly: 'I charge the official reporters not to let his (Mr. Giddings') felonious hand touch one word of what I say, for we know how he on a former occasion misrepresented my colleague from the Orange district, and his own colleague from the Chillicothe district, having altered his own speech after he got to his room with his coloured friends. (Laughter.) He talks about my associates: but has anybody ever seen him in private decent company? Free negroes may call to see him. He does not let his right hand know what his left doeth. He alludes to my absence; but I have not set myself up as a standard. I don't say I'm always in the house as I ought to be. He says we were here drinking our grog during Christmas times. Where was he? In Philadelphia, drinking beer and eating oysters with free negroes. (Laughter.) Which was the best off? Judge ye. (Laughter.) He thinks he was better off than we were. [Mr. Stanly paused, and, looking towards Mr. Preston King, who was standing near Sir. Giddings, remarked, raising his voice to a higher pitch, "Help him out; he needs a little more poison." (Voices, "Ha, ha! Good! Ha, ha!")] I quit this subject in disgust. I find that I have been in a dissecting-room, cutting up a dead dog. I will treat him as an insane man, who was never taught the decencies of life, proprieties of conduct--whose associations show that he never mingled with gentlemen. Let him rave on till doomsday.' "The conversation then ceased." Any one who has seen much of American gentlemen, must know that such language as the above contains would be reprobated by them fully as strongly as by any gentleman in this country. To doubt that would be to do them a gross injustice. Does not, therefore, the recurrence of such scenes go far to prove, that the advance of ultra-democratic principles has the effect of lowering the tone of the Representative Chamber, and that men of liberal education and gentlemanly bearing do not constitute the majority in that House? In the days of Washington, would any member have dared to use, or would any other member have for a moment tolerated, such language? It is but justice to say, that the tone of the Senate Chamber is far more dignified; and many who have been members of that body have established a world-wide reputation both as orators and statesmen. Let us now turn for a few minutes to that important subject, the Judiciary of the States, one peculiar feature of which is, its being a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature. The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest tribunal in the country; it consists of a Chief Justice and eight associate Justices, the Attorney-General, a reporter, and a clerk. All questions affecting foreign ambassadors, consuls, &c., are tried before this court; and it is a final court of appeal in cases involving constitutional questions, and various others, too long to enumerate here. It has even the power of annulling the acts of the Federal Congress at Washington, if such acts are contrary to the Constitution. The following article in the Constitution regulates the terms upon which alone any change may be made, and which is of so peculiar and conservative a character that I insert it in full:-- "ARTICLE V.--_Power of Amendment_. "The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article, and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." The foregoing article is a remarkable instance of prudence and forethought, and acts as the strongest safeguard against hasty measures, which in times of great excitement may sometimes obtain a majority that would afterwards be regretted by all parties. If the principle involved in any question is really felt to be of vital importance, the majority can dissolve the Union if they consider the object in view worth the sacrifice. The salary of the Chief Justice is about 1050l. a-year. This court is, I believe, invariably composed of men of the highest talent and integrity; their appointment is from the President, and endorsed by the Senate, and their tenure of office is "during good behaviour."[CD] There has, fortunately, been no change in the manner or term of these appointments; but, in the different States, the democratic mania has removed the old landmarks of prudence bequeathed to them by their fathers. Mr. Tremenheere tells, that in 1833 only 5 States out of the 24 had adopted the principle of electing Judges, and appointing them for a term of years; in 1844, 12 States out of the 29 had adopted the principle; and in 1853, 22 out of the 31 States had come to the same resolution. We surely have in these facts a most important warning of the danger of introducing too much of the democratic element into the constitution of any country. Reflect, if but for a moment, on the danger to the community, where the selection of the Judges of the land may be guided by political rancour or public clamour; the bare knowledge that such may be the case, even if the purity of the masses be so great as not to admit of such sinister influence, the bare possibility, I say, is calculated to lower the respect in which it is most desirable the judiciary should ever be held,[CE] and to deter the most pure and high-minded citizens from offering their services. The salaries of the Judges range from 250l. to 400l. a-year. The next point to which I would call attention, is to be found in Art. I., sect. 6, of the Constitution of the United States, the last clause of which runs thus:--"No person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office." This was probably one of the most extraordinary blunders such an able body of men as the framers of the Constitution ever made; and if their object was to guard against corruption, and the undue influence of the leading men of the country, it has most signally failed, as the Act before referred to, of February, 1853, fully testifies. Only conceive the effect of excluding all the Cabinet and high functionaries from seats in the Lords and Commons; conceive the great statesmen of this country being obliged to hand over the introduction of most important measures, and the defence and explanation of them, to other hands. On this point, Mr. Justice Story remarks: "Thus, that open and public responsibility for measures, which properly belongs to the executive in all governments, especially in a republican government, as its greatest security and strength, is completely done away. The executive is compelled to resort to secret and unseen influence,--to private interviews and private arrangements,--to accomplish its own appropriate purposes, instead of proposing and sustaining its own duties and measures by a bold and manly appeal to the nation in the face of its representatives. One consequence of this state of things is, that there never can be traced home to the executive any responsibility for the measures which are planned and carried at its suggestion. Another consequence will be--if it has not yet been--that measures will be adopted or defeated by private intrigues, political combinations, irresponsible recommendations, by all the blandishments of office, and all the deadening weight of silent patronage; ... ministers may conceal or evade any expression of their opinions." In charity it should be presumed that in all nations which possess anything worthy of the name of free institutions, the ablest men of the political majority constitute the Cabinet; and, by the enactment we are considering, all this talent is excluded from the councils of the nation, whereas all the talent of the Opposition may be there arrayed against their measures. I confess it is beyond my penetration, to see how this can be reconciled to justice or common sense; in no one principle of their Government did they more completely ignore the wisdom and experience of the mother country, and in the object they had in view they appear to have most completely failed. It is but fair to the democrats to say it is no act of theirs; they inherited the misfortune, and are likely to keep it, as it is one of the fundamental principles of their Constitution, and they have a salutary dread--much to their praise--of tinkering up any flaw they find in that document, lest in mending one hole they make two. They have, as a nation, so greatly prospered under its combined enactments, and possess such an unlimited independence in their individual States, that although the exclusion of the Cabinet is now very generally admitted to be an error, I saw no inclination to moot the question; probably, lest other questions affecting the slave and non-slave-holding States might be brought on the boards, and again disturb the bonds of union. Another very remarkable--and in a Republic anomalous--feature in the government, is the power of the President, who, by the Constitution, is enabled during his four years' tenure of office to rule in total opposition to the majority, obstructing all the measures they may bring forward, unless the majority amounts to two-thirds in both Houses of Congress. Article I., section 7, clause 2, runs thus:--"Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approves, he shall sign it, but if not, he shall return it with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to re-consider it. If after such re-consideration two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be re-considered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become a law," &c. This power of the President has been used by Washington, Jackson, Tyler, and Polk; particularly by Tyler, who opposed the wishes of the majority even when those wishes were backed by his own ministry. During the discussions on the Constitution, many of the wisest heads at that eventful period desired to establish the Presidency for life, but eventually the term of four years was agreed upon; and if such powers of obstructing the wishes of a majority were to accompany the office, it certainly was a prudent conclusion they arrived at. In a densely populated community like Great Britain, such powers, whether in the hands of the sovereign or the ministers, would produce a revolution in much less time than four years. It may, however, be questioned, whether these powers are not productive of evil, by rendering necessary such frequent elections for the Presidency. On this point, Mr. Justice Story states: "The inconvenience of such frequently recurring elections of the chief magistrate, by generating factions, combining intrigues, and agitating the public mind, seems not hitherto to have attracted as much attention, as it deserves." And Chancellor Kent remarks, that "the election of a supreme executive magistrate for a whole nation affects so many interests, addresses itself so strongly to popular passions, and holds out such powerful temptations to ambition, that it necessarily becomes a strong trial to public virtue, and even hazardous to public tranquillity." There is another evil which attends these frequent elections of the chief magistrate--namely, the enormous patronage at his disposal, and the mass of jobbery and corruption to which the exercise of it almost invariably leads. Besides the appointment of nearly ever military, naval, civil, judicial, and revenue-collecting official--some of these subject, it is true to the approval of the Senate--Mr. Justice Story remarks, that with regard to inferior offices "his patronage probably includes ninety-nine out of every hundred of the lucrative offices of the government." His great rival in patronage is the Postmaster-General, who has power to appoint and remove all deputy-postmasters, which, as the number of post-offices is 22,688, amounts to something considerable. This power was doubtless intended for the public good, and in order that incompetent or inefficient persons should be removed. To the honour of Washington, it is recorded that during his eight years' Presidency only nine removals took place. To President Jackson they are indebted, as I have before remarked, for the introduction of the present corrupt system. According to Justice Story, on his entering office he removed 233 _employés_; since then, the snowball has been steadily increasing till the present moment; it has now reached an amount which it would require Mr. Babbage's machine to calculate. Who can doubt that such vast patronage, has far more influence in the selection of a President, than any personal qualification for the high and important post? Nothing could prove more clearly that such influences are paramount to all others than the last election. There were eight candidates on the democratic side, of whom General Pierce was not one; all the eight had their special friends, and each party was loth to lose the chance of patronage which their friend's election might reasonably lead them to hope for. Thus they fought so vigorously that there was no chance of any one having the requisite number of votes, i.e., a majority of the whole number polled. The Convention being deputed by the different States to select from the candidates already in the field, how do they get out of the difficulty at the eleventh hour? They take upon themselves to nominate a candidate for the Presidential chair, who was not fettered by any particular followers, and from whom all parties hoped they would receive some share of the loaves and fishes as a reward for their support. The electors endorsed the new selection of the Convention, and General Pierce, lately commanding a brigade in the Mexican war, was elected by a most astounding majority. Scarcely any President was ever elected with such all-but unanimity, and the Press was equally undivided in its praises. Every paper I read, in every place I passed through, was full of the most unbounded eulogy. But mark the change a few months made. Before the end of the year, one-half of that Press, which had bespattered him with such fulsome adulation during the honeymoon of which his inauguration was the centre, were filling their columns with long and loud complaints, if not abuse. And what was the chief burden of their invective? It was the manner in which he distributed his patronage. In short, they were discontented with the share they received of the loaves and fishes, and thus the target of their adulation during the summer of hope, became the butt for their abuse in the winter of disappointment. There is another subject connected with these elections, which speaks with warning voice against the presumable advantage of democracy. I would not be misunderstood as casting the slightest reflection upon the amiable qualities, intellectual powers, or administrative talents of any American citizen who has been raised to the Presidency during later years. Let any candid reader, however, whether English or American, look at the following lists of Presidents since the Constitution, and he cannot fail to observe that while the franchise was restricted in nearly every State, those called to that high post were the marked men of the highest talent in the country--men whose reputation and abilities were patent to the whole community; while, with the increase of democracy, those selected during later years are men who, whatever their virtues and capabilities, were comparatively unknown. In the case of General Franklin Pierce, he was never even named by the community; but, as we have shown, was selected by the Convention at the eleventh hour, as a compromise of political partisanship. Let us not forget, that while some of the later Presidents were elected, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster--whose names are the just pride of the Republic, and household words in every family--were passed over.[CF] Surely these simple facts may afford us subject for profitable reflection. We will now pass on from the Governor of the Republic to the Governors of individual States. Their salaries vary in different States, and range from 300l. to 2000l. a-year. Their election is in some States by the people, in others by the legislature: their term of office varies; in some States the election is annual, and in all for a very limited period; and under them each separate State has its own House of Representatives and its Senate. The chief power, which resides in the Governor alone, is that of pardon; and here we may observe, that it is only reasonable to suppose that so enlightened a community as the United States would not for any considerable number of years have tolerated the most flagrant abuse of such a power as that of pardon; and consequently that if it be found that such abuse do now exist, it must have grown with the ever-growing democratic element. Mr. Tremenheere quotes largely from a work by Dr. Lieber, Professor of Political Philosophy in the State College of South Carolina. Among others of a similar character, the following passage occurs:--"I consider the indiscriminate pardoning so frequent in many parts of the United States, one of the most hostile things, now at work in our country, to a perfect government of law." He elsewhere states "that the New York Committee had ascertained that there are men who make a regular trade of procuring pardons for convicts by which they support themselves." Further on he says, "To this statement we have now to add the still more appalling fact, which we would pass over in silence if our duty permitted it, that but a short time ago the Governor of a large State--a State among the foremost in prison discipline--was openly and widely accused of taking money for his pardons. We have it not in our power to state whether this be true or not, but it is obvious that a state of things which allows suspicions and charges so degrading and so ruinous to a healthy condition, ought not to be borne with." He then subjoins this note:--"While these sheets are going through the press, the papers report that the Governor of a large State has pardoned thirty criminals, among whom were some of the worst characters, at one stroke, on leaving the gubernatorial chair."--Among the conclusions Dr. Lieber draws on this point, is the following astounding one--"That the executive in our country is so situated that, in the ordinary course of things, it cannot be expected of him that he will resist the abuse; at least, that he will not resist it in many cases." The foregoing extracts are certainly entitled to no small weight when it is remembered they come from the pen of a republican professor, writing upon "Civil Liberty and Self-government." I do not pretend to say that such gross cases as those referred to by him came within my cognizance during my travels, but I most certainly did hear charges made against governors, in more than one instance, of granting pardons through corrupt influence. I have now given a cursory review of the leading features in the executive of the United States; and I have endeavoured, while doing so, to point out the effects which the gradual inroads of the democratic element have produced. The subject is one of the deepest interest to us as Englishmen, inasmuch as it is the duty of every government to enlarge, as far as is consistent with the welfare of the nation, the liberty of the subject. The foregoing remarks on the constitution of the United States appear to me conclusive as to one fact--viz., that the democratic element may be introduced so largely as that, despite a high standard of national education and worldly prosperity, its influence will produce the most pernicious effect upon the government of the country. This truth cannot be too strongly brought forward, for undoubtedly change is the mania of the day; and as, in a free country, all constitutional changes must have a liberal tendency, it behoves our legislators to study deeply and patiently the effect produced upon any country whose constitution is more democratic than our own, so as to enable them, while steadily advancing with the age, to know when the well-being of their country requires them, as true patriots, to resist those measures which threaten injury to the social fabric committed to their guidance. No field can afford them more profitable subjects for reflection than the United States. Independent of the fact that her institutions are more democratic than our own, she possesses natural advantages that enable her to carry them out, such as we do not; and, therefore, the British statesman may always study her career with profit when any great liberal movement is being agitated in his own country. Lest any one should be disposed to imagine that the statements I have made, or the deductions I have drawn, are merely the prejudices of a traveller brought up under a constitutional monarchy, I will add a passage showing the conclusions at which one of the ablest men in America has arrived. Bishop Hopkins, in an address delivered before the House of Convocation of Trinity College, Hartford, after eulogizing the wisdom and patriotism, of the founders of his country, as being "the wise master builders of the noblest republic in the world," asks what is its present state after seventy years' brief experience? Behold the reply:--"First, then, we hear on every side the charge of political corruption. Bribery is practised in all our elections. The spoils of office are expected as a matter of course by the victorious party. The President of the United States dares not be impartial; for, if he were, he would lose the confidence of his friends without gaining the confidence of his enemies. The oldest statesmen, and the most prominent, cannot follow the dictates of their own judgment and conscience without being reproached as though they were laying a trap for the presidential chair. The very laws of Congress are set down as the results of personal venality or ambition. The House of Representatives, or even the Senate Chamber, are disgraced every year by fierce passion and violent denunciation. The barbarous and unchristian duel is anticipated as quite inevitable unless it be averted by explanations which may satisfy worldly honour, in utter contempt of all religious principle. And no member of either House can go to the performance of his public duties with any security that he may not be insulted by coarse invective before the day is closed. Yet our rulers are never weary of lauding the character of Washington, as if they were quite convinced that the time had passed by when they might be expected to verify the language of praise by the act of imitation. When we look into the other classes of the community, the same charge of venality and corruption meets us again. Our merchants are accused of all sorts of dishonest management; our brokers, of stock-jobbing; our city aldermen, of bribery; our lawyers, of knavery; our justices, of complicity with the guilty. The same worship of Mammon seems to govern the whole, and the current phrase, 'the almighty dollar,' is a sad but powerful exponent of the universal sin which involves the mass of our population." Being perfectly aware what a "glass house" of corruption we ourselves are living in, I do not quote the foregoing by way of "throwing a stone," but insert it merely as a warning of the direction in which we should not seek for an advance in purification. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote CB: Why is it that, in our yearly debate in Parliament, and in all the journals of the day, from the _Times_ down even to the _Morning Advertiser_, the United States are always quoted as a republic where the ballot succeeds, when there is no excuse for the most commonly educated man being ignorant of the fact, that the ballot, as understood in this country, does not exist among them? To their honour be it said, they hold secret voting in sovereign contempt.] [Footnote CC: _The Ballot_, by the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH. 1839.] [Footnote CD: This expression, both in America and England, is tantamount to--for life.] [Footnote CE: _Vide ante_, opinion of New York Press upon the trial of Matthew F. Ward.] [Footnote CF: G. Washington 1789 J. Adams 1797 T. Jefferson 1801 J. Madison 1809 J. Munroe 1817 J.Q. Adams 1825 A. Jackson 1829 M. Van Buren 1837 W.H. Harrison 1841 J. Tyler 1841 J.K. Polk 1845 Z. Taylor 1849 M. Fillmore 1850 F. Pierce 1853] CHAPTER XXVIII. _The Church, the School, and the Law._ Although the Church has no connexion with the State, it must ever be a most important element in any Christian community. I therefore furnish a table of the various denominations, so as to enable the reader, at a glance, to get the particular information he may desire. Some of the denominations given in this table are, of course, again divided into other sects, such as "Reformed Methodists," "Episcopal Methodists," "Wesleyan Methodists," "Six Principle Baptists," "Seventh-Day Baptists," "Anti-mission Baptists," &c. Denominations. Number of Aggregate Total Value Churches. Accommodation. of Church Property. £ Baptists 8791 3,130,878 2,295,590 Christian 812 296,050 177,621 Congregational 1674 795,177 1,674,532 Dutch Reformed 324 181,986 860,313 Episcopal 1422 625,213 2,365,013 Free 361 108,605 52,973 Friends 714 282,823 359,071 German Reformed 327 156,932 29,024 Jewish 31 16,575 78,036 Lutheran 1203 531,100 602,205 Mennonite 110 29,900 19,791 Methodist 12,467 4,209,333 3,073,700 Moravian 331 112,185 93,002 Presbyterian 4584 2,040,316 3,017,675 Roman Catholic 1112 620,950 1,884,505 Swedenborgian 15 5,070 22,701 Tunker 52 35,075 9,665 Union 619 213,552 144,913 Unitarian 243 137,367 686,305 Universalist 494 205,462 371,073 Minor Sects 325 115,347 155,815 Total 36,011 13,849,896 £17,973,523 If the foregoing table may be taken as indicative of the whole population, it will be seen that one person out of every three is a Methodist, and only one in every twenty-two is a Romanist; but what is more worthy of remark is, the provision which, under the voluntary system, has been made for public worship. We here see accommodation provided for 14,000,000 in a population of 23,000,000--of which 3,000,000 are slaves. At the same time, it must also be observed, that all these churches are not necessarily supplied with ministers. Their support being dependent upon their congregation, it will occasionally happen that a minister gets starved out, and some time may elapse before a successor is appointed; the inconvenience of which contingency occurring is obvious. More than one such case came under my own observation when travelling through the country. With regard to the distribution of the churches, the only peculiarity I observe is, that the Unitarian community appear to be nearly all gathered into one spot, and that spot the Land of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the State that is considered foremost in education. Out of 243 churches, 163 are situated in Massachusetts. I have never heard any reason given for this curious fact; doubtless the great talents of Channing tended to swell their numbers, but could hardly account for the extraordinary proportion established in this State. In proportion to its numbers, it will be seen that the Episcopal is the wealthiest of all Churches; and yet we find complaint made of the insufficiency of the support for their ministers. Bishop Eastburn, of Massachusetts, in a pastoral letter, states that in his diocese "respectable parents will not bring up their children to the clerical profession, because the salaries hardly keep people from starving." How far this is true generally, or whether confined to his own neighbourhood, I cannot say. The Episcopal Church in America is free from the violent factions that have distracted and thrown obloquy upon the sister church in this country. The puerile struggle about surplices, and candles, and steps up to altars, and Brussels lace offerings, appear to have attracted little attention among those in America, whose theological views assimilate with the extreme high party in England: and I never heard, during my residence in the States, any of that violent and uncharitable language with which discussions on religious topics too frequently abound in this country; nor is the Episcopal community by any means so divided as it is here. The Bishop of New Zealand is far nearer their type than the controversial prelate of Exeter. The Book of Common Prayer, as arranged by Convention in 1790, is well worthy of notice, and, in many points, of imitation. These pages are not the proper place for a theological discussion, and my only reason for touching upon the subject at all is, that the public voice is constantly calling for some modification of the great length of our present Sunday services, and I therefore conclude that the following observations may be interesting to some of my readers. The leading points of retrenchment are--removing all repetitions, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Collect for the day; a portion of the close of the Litany is omitted at the discretion of the minister. The Communion Service is not read every Sunday. I suppose the Church authorizes this omission at the discretion of the minister, as I have attended service on more than one occasion when the Communion was not read; when read, Our Lord's commandment, Matthew xxii. 37-40, follows the Commandments of the Old Testament, and a short Collect, followed by the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day, finish that portion of the service. Independent of the regular Psalms, for the day, there are ten separate short collections, any one of which the minister may substitute for the proper Psalms, and the Gloria Patri is only said after the last Psalm. The leading features of difference from our own "Common Prayer" are as follow:--They appoint proper Second Lessons for the Sunday, instead of leaving them, to the chance of the Calendar--they place the Nicene and Apostles' Creed side by side, and leave the minister to select which he prefers, and to use, if he think proper, the word "Hades" instead of Hell. They remove the Athanasian Creed entirely from the Prayer Book, leaving to the minister to explain the mysteries which that creed so summarily disposes of. When it is considered how many Episcopalians are opposed to its damnatory clauses, and how much more nearly the other creeds resemble that model of simplicity, the Lord's Prayer, they appear to have exercised a sound discretion in this excision. Few deep-thinking people, I imagine, can have heard the children of the parish school reading the responses of that creed after the minister, without pain. Lest the passing opinion of a traveller upon the subject be deemed hasty or irreverent, I beg to quote Bishop Tomline's opinion. He says--"Great objections have been made to the clauses which denounce eternal damnation against those who do not believe the faith as here stated; and it certainly is to be lamented that assertions of so peremptory a nature, unexplained and unqualified, should have been used in any human composition.... Though I firmly believe that the doctrines of this creed are all founded on Scripture, I cannot but conceive it to be both unnecessary and presumptuous to say that, "except every one do keep them whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." Mr. Wheatley also, when writing on the Creed, says, that the third and fourth verses constitute the creed, and that what follows "requires our assent no more than a sermon does, which is made to prove or illustrate a text."--To resume. They have proper prayers and thanksgivings for individuals who desire their use, instead of, as with us, introducing a few words into the ordinary service. They have provided a liberal collection of psalms and hymns for singing in church, and no others are allowed to be used. Each psalm and hymn has the Gloria Patri suited to it marked at the beginning. The inconvenience of the total want of such a provision in our Church is most palpable. Not long before I went to America, I was attending a parish church in the country, where a great proportion of the psalms and hymns used were the minister's own composition, and if I recollect right, the book cost half-a-crown. I came up to town, and I found my parish church there had a selection under the sanction of the Bishop of London. Since my return from America, I have gone to the same London church, under the same Bishop, and I have found a totally different book in use.--The foregoing are the principal alterations in the Sunday services. The alterations in the other services are chiefly the following:--In the full Communion Service, the word "condemnation" is substituted for "damnation," in the notice of intimation. The whole of the damnatory clause in the exhortation, from the word "unworthily" to "sundry kinds of death," is expunged. The first prayer in our Church after the reception, is modified by them into an oblation and invocation, and precedes the reception. The remainder of the service is nearly the same as our own. They have removed the objectionable opening of the Marriage Service; but, not content with that, they have also removed the whole of the service which follows the minister's blessing after the marriage is pronounced, and thus reduced it to a five minutes' ceremony. While on this subject, I may as well observe that, from inquiries I made, I believe but few of those marriages take place by which husband and wife are prevented from kneeling at the same altar, by which their highest interests can never be a subject of mutual discussion, and by which children are either brought up without any fixed religious ideas at all, or else a compromise is entered into, and the girls are educated in one church and the boys in another. In short, I believe the Romanists in America marry but rarely out of the pale of their own church. I cannot say what the law of divorce is, but it appears to offer far greater facilities than would be approved of in England. A gentleman mentioned two cases to me, in one of which the divorce was obtained by the wife without the husband being aware of it, although living in the same State; in the other, the wife returned to the State from which her husband had taken her, and there obtained a divorce without his knowledge.--To return from this digression. In the Visitation of the Sick they have removed that individual absolution of the minister, the wording of which is so objectionable that, if I am rightly informed, it is rarely used by ministers in England. In the Burial of the Dead, they have changed the two concluding prayers in those sentences which refer to the deceased. The Commination they have entirely expunged. They have added a full service for Visitation of Prisoners, and a Harvest Thanksgiving; and they have provided a form of morning and evening prayer for families. The foregoing constitute the leading points of difference. Of course there are many minor ones which are merely verbal, such, for instance, as their expunging the scriptural quotation of "King of kings, Lord of lords," from the prayer for the President, probably out of deference to the prejudices of the Republicans, for which omission they have partially atoned by the substitution of the grander expression of "only Ruler of the Universe," in lieu of the more limited term "only Ruler of Princes." To enter into all these verbal changes would be alike tedious and useless. Enough, I trust, has been written to convey a general idea of the most striking and interesting points of difference. Other churches transplanted to this hemisphere seem to differ from the parent stock most essentially. Thus I find in the almanack for 1853, "Methodist Episcopal Church (North) 3984 ministers, and 662,315 communicants," and below them "Methodist Episcopal Church (South)" without any return of statistics. I regret not being able to give the reader any history of this occidental hierarchy. I do not even know the Episcopacizing process they go through, whether it is entirely lay or entirely clerical, or whether it is a fusion of the two. At first I imagined it was a Wesleyan offshoot, but I can find no indication of that fact; and, moreover, the Wesleyan is a very small body, numbering 600 ministers and 20,000 communicants. I only allude to it because it appears to me a totally novel feature in Dissenting bodies--as understood in England. Another curious change produced by this Western climate is, that it turns all my Presbyterian friends instrumentally musical. I do not remember entering any of their churches without finding an organ, and in many instances a very good choir. Although I approve highly of the euphonious improvement, I feel sure that many of my countrymen in the extreme north would rather see a picture representing Satan in Abraham's bosom inside their kirk than any musical instrument. Such is the force of habit and prejudice. The extent to which the churches in America have increased is doubtless most creditable to the community, when it is remembered that all the various denominations are supported voluntarily. Nor is their number the only point worthy of notice: the buildings themselves have all, some ecclesiastical appearance, and many of them are fine specimens of architecture. Besides which, they are always kept clean and in good order; you will never find those unsightly barns, and still less the dilapidation which is often met with in the mother land. I have myself been in a church at home where the flooring was all worn away, and gravel from the outside substituted, and where the seats were so rickety that a fall might be anticipated at any moment. The parishioners were poor Highlanders, it is true, but the owner of the soil was a man of considerable wealth. I have, since my return to England, been into a beautiful old parish church in one of the midland counties; the building was in a most deplorable state of dilapidation, and the communion-rail formed a music-stand, while inside were placed an orchestra of two fiddles and a bass-viol. The minister received, for the first three years he officiated, the exorbitant remuneration of thirty pounds a year; since which time he has taken the duties of parish schoolmaster, the salary of which, increased by a small sum from Queen Anne's Bounty, enables him to keep body and soul together. But of course the school engrossed all his time, except what was necessary to prepare his discourses, and his parishioners were unavoidably and totally neglected, till dissenting ministers came to the rescue. As a natural consequence, they soon followed the ministers who made them the objects of their care, and when I attended this beautiful old parish church, the congregation, independent of the orchestra and the parish school, consisted of eleven souls, three of whom came from the minister's own house. You might seek in vain to parallel such a case throughout the whole Republic. I now propose to make a few observations about disbelief in the United States. On this point I have no statistics to refer to, nor do I believe such exist. I therefore can form no idea of its extent; but the open way in which some parties not only express their doubts of the authenticity of Scripture, but dispute every doctrine which it contains, and openly proclaim it the enemy of man, is worthy of some notice. An Ismite Convention was held for many days at Hartford, in one of the New England States (Connecticut) where, I suppose, education may be considered as universal as in any other State in the Union. The meeting was considered of sufficient importance to occupy daily several columns of one of the New York leading journals, and to employ a special reporter. It is thus headed--"MEETING OF PHILOSOPHERS, THEOLOGIANS, THINKERS, STRONG-MINDED WOMEN, SPIRITUAL RAPPERS, ATHEISTS, AND NEGROES." Details of this Convention would be too tedious; I propose only giving a few of their resolutions. Resolved--"That the Bible, in some parts of the Old and New Testament, sanctions injustice, concubinage, prostitution, oppression, war, plunder, and wholesale murder, and, therefore, that the Bible as a whole, originated,[CG] is false, and injurious to the social and spiritual growth of man." After which the chairman goes on to prove (?) it is purely human, &c. Another resolution reiterates the former, and adds that "the time has come to declare its untruthfulness, and to unmask those who are guilty of its imposture." Then follows a resolution for the especial consideration of slave-owners:--"Resolved--That it is the climax of audacity and impiety for this nation to receive the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and then to make it a penal offence to give it to any of the millions who are held as chattel slaves on its soil, thus conspiring to make them miserable here and hereafter." Then follows a charitable resolution, declaring their belief that all the clergy "would readily burn the Bible to-morrow if public sentiment demanded it." One of the orators brings the Bible to the bar of geology, and there condemns it, and recommends "that the Hindoos should establish a mission to enlighten Christians of this and other countries. He believed that the priesthood and the Bible were opposed to all liberty and progress, and the deadliest enemies of mankind." Another member of this blasphemous band becomes highly indignant because the orthodox clergymen--who probably remembered that "evil communications corrupt good manners"--would not meet them on their infidel platform, and he presents a resolution declaring that "by their absence, they had openly declared their infidelity to their professions of theological faith, and had thus confessed the weakness and folly of their arrogant assumptions, and proved that they loved popular favour more than common good; and they are therefore moral cowards, pharisees of this nineteenth century, seeking to enslave more and more the mind of man," &c. Another orator then proposes a resolution, to the effect that the spirit and genius of Bible religion is not a system of salvation from sin and its effects, but a system of damnation into sin and its effects; that it is the friend of moral and spiritual slavery, and therefore "the foe of human mental and spiritual liberty." Subsequently a strong-minded woman, called Mrs. Rose, appeared on the platform amid considerable uproar, followed by extinguishing the gas and singing songs. After a severe struggle, the lady managed to express her sentiments in these mild and Christian terms:--"The Church is upon your neck. Do you want to be free? Then trample the Church, the priest, and the Bible under your feet."--The last day's proceeding closed by a row in the gallery, owing to a fight, in which a dirk had been drawn; and then the Convention adjourned till the following year. The reader must not imagine that I state this as an indication of the tone of religious feeling in the New England States,--far from it; but it appears to me a fact worth noticing, that a Convention of such a nature and magnitude, and considered of sufficient importance to employ the special reporter of a leading journal of New York, should by any possibility assemble for days and days together, and give vent to such blasphemous sentiments among a people so liberally educated and so amply supplied with means of religious instruction. I only hope that the infidelity of the whole Republic was gathered into that one assembly, and that having met in so uncongenial an atmosphere, they all returned to their homes impregnated with some of the purer atmosphere of the great majority of the people. The subject of Education naturally follows the Church; but, on this point, any attempt at accuracy is hopeless. Whether it be from the variety of school systems in the different States, or from some innate defect in the measures taken to obtain information, I cannot pretend to say; but the discrepancies between the statements made are so great, that I can only pretend to give a moderate approximation to the truth, which is the more to be regretted, as the means provided for education throughout the length and breadth of the Republic constitute one of its noblest features. In rough numbers, they may be thus stated:-- Schools. Number. Instructors. Pupils. Public 81,000 92,000 4,000,000 Colleges 220 1500 20,000 Academies, & others 6,000 12,000 261,000 Of the above colleges, theology claims 44, medicine 37, law 16. Among the expenses of the various colleges, which I can refer to, I find University College, Virginia--the terms of which occupy 44 weeks--is the most expensive. The annual charges for a student are the following:--College expenses, 40l.; board, 22l.; washing, fuel, and lights, 4l.--in all, 70l. It is obvious that no provision is here made for champagne suppers, hunters, tandems, and other "necessaries," of our University students, including a few "auxiliaries," in the shape of I O U's, for red coats, top-boots, Hudson's regalias, and mysterious jewellery bills for articles that men don't wear. Doubtless some papas would prefer the Virginian bill of fare; but then, they must remember that the republican lads go to college to learn something, whereas many papas send their first-born hopes to Oxford and Cambridge to save themselves trouble, and to keep the youths out of mischief during the awkward period of life yclept "hobbledehoyhood." How they succeed is pretty well known to themselves, and probably their bankers have some idea also; yet, with all these drawbacks, who will deny that those seats of learning turn out annually some of the most manly and high-minded, and some of the best educated and most industrious, young men in the country? Having entered into some of the details of education at various places during my travels, I shall not trespass on the reader's patience by dwelling further on the subject, except to call attention to the following important regulation with regard to children in factories; and I most sincerely hope it may reach the eye of Lord Shaftesbury, or some other of his coadjutors in the noble work of the protection and education of helpless youth. The regulation exists in some shape or other in many States. I subjoin the wording of it from that of Massachusetts:-- _"No child under the age of fifteen years shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment, unless such child shall have attended some public or private day-school, where instruction is given by a teacher qualified according to law to teach orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, arithmetic, and good behaviour, at least one term of eleven weeks of the twelve months next preceding the time of such employment, and for the same period during any and every twelve months in which such child shall be so employed."_ Although my salt-fish friends are probably very familiar with sea-lawyers, the general reader may be astonished to see any allusion to law made by a sea-captain. I therefore beg to inform him, that the following observations on a most interesting point are furnished me by a friend who is legitimately at home in that complicated business, and who devoted much attention to the study of the method by which land is conveyed in the United States with so much ease and so little expense:-- "In America all conveyances of land, whether absolute or by way of mortgage only, are, with the exception of some chattel interests, required to be registered within a fixed or a reasonable time after their execution. Registration is constructive notice to all the world; if not registered, a deed is only valid against the parties to it and the heirs and devisees of the grantor. Generally, however, notice obtained by a purchaser previous to his purchase, will, if clearly proved, prevent his taking the advantage, though he may have been beforehand in registering his own title. "By the old laws of Massachusetts, all deeds of conveyance were required to be recorded, 'that neither creditors might be defrauded, nor courts troubled with vexatious suits and endless contentions.' In consequence of the number of registers established in each county--and the excellence of their arrangements, no inconvenience results from the accumulation of deeds, notwithstanding the early period to which they go back. In register for Suffolk county, Massachusetts, are to be seen copies of deeds from 1640 down to the present time. They are bound up in 640 volumes, and do not as yet take up much space. They have lately multiplied in an increasing ratio, the volumes having risen from 250 to their present number in the last 25 years. "The register for Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, contains within a moderate compass deeds from 1683 downwards. They are referred to by indices on the following plan: All deeds made within a certain time, and in which the name of the grantor commences with the same letter of the alphabet, are bound up in one volume; thus, a volume marked "H 1820-1847," contains all deeds executed between those years by grantors whose names begin with H. One index volume contains the names of all grantors between those years in alphabetical order, another that of all grantees, and both refer to volume and page of the books of deeds. A third index gives the names of grantors and grantees, arranged chronologically, according to the year in which the deed they were parties to was executed. "The original deed remain in the possession of the proprietors, but are of secondary importance. They are written in a plain, legible hand on paper, parchment being seldom used. The signatures of the parties are of course requisite; but the seal, which is essential to a deed in England, is in many States dispensed with. The custom of registering obviates the necessity for those long recitals that so swell out an English conveyance, and the shortest possible forms of covenants are preferred. The American conveyance only witnesses that the grantor conveys the property therein described, which, or part of which, was conveyed to him by such a one by a deed of such a date, and a marginal note states the volume and page where the deed thus mentioned is to be seen. "The advantages of registration are,--greater security of title, and brevity and economy in conveyances. The example of the United States shows that there is nothing in the Anglo-Saxon laws of real property to render such a system impracticable. Several of the most eminent lawyers in Boston declared, that their registration was found to work easily and safely; the only change desired was by a few, who expressed a wish that more registers should be established, as, one for every district, instead of for every county. They all expressed their astonishment that a similar plan had not long ago been adopted in England. They admitted that dealings with property were more simple in America, where strict settlements are either not allowed, or not generally in use, but maintained that the real obstacles to a registration in this country lie not so much in the difficulty of carrying it out, as in the prejudices of landowners, the self-interest of lawyers, and the superstitious dread entertained by John Bull generally of anything to which he is unaccustomed."[CH] I am no lawyer, as I observed before, and therefore I do not pretend to pass an opinion on the details of the foregoing remarks; but of the results produced by their system, I certainly can speak, for I have seen property transferred without the slightest trouble, and for a few shillings, which, owing to the amount involved, and the complications connected with it, would, if transferred in this country, have kept the firm of Screw, Skinflint, and Stickem hard at work for mouths, and when finished, would have required a week to make up the bill of costs, &c. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote CG: I suppose originated _from the Deity_ is intended.--H.A.M.] [Footnote CH: Communicated to me by Mr. J.G. Dodson, son of the Right Honourable Sir J. Dodson, Dean of the Arches, &c.] CHAPTER XXIX. _Inventions and Inveighings.--Palquam qui meruit ferat._ Writing about law makes one litigious; so I seize this opportunity for making a few observations on American claims. I am not going to open the question of the Bay of Fundy, &c., fisheries; because British liberality has resigned a right, the retention of which was a source of continual irritation to our republican neighbours. I must, however, quote a few lines from the work of their able Chancellor, Kent, to show how fully justified we were in claiming the sovereignty of the Bay of Fundy. If the Chancellor's work on the Law of Nations is consulted, it will be found that he points out to his countrymen their right to the sovereignty of lines stretching "from Cape Anne to Cape Cod, Nantucket to Montauck Point, thence to the Capes of the Delaware, and _from the South Cape of Florida to the Mississippi."_ With such wholesale claims asserted on their part, it would require something more than modest assurance to dispute England's right to the Bay of Fundy. But my litigation with the Republic is respecting some of their claims to inventions, which they put forward in so barefaced a manner, that the unwary or the uninquiring--which two sections of the human family constitute the great majority--are constantly misled into a belief of their truth; and the citizens of the Republic would do well to remember, that by putting forward unwarrantable pretensions to some discoveries, they afford just grounds for questioning their lawful claims to others. The first I shall mention is with reference to Fulton and steam. Mr. Charles King, the President of Columbia College, in a lecture delivered before the Mechanics' Institute, Broadway, New York, in December, 1851, claims for Fulton "the application of a known force _in a new manner, and to new and before unthought-of purposes_." Now what are the real facts? James Watt, in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, a more perfect method of condensation of steam and a more perfect vacuum. In 1787, Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, a gentleman who had spent a fortune of nearly 30,000l. in ship-building experiments, was urged by Mr. Taylor to try and apply the power of steam to vessels. William Symington was applied to, with the view of knowing if he could apply his engine to one of Mr. Miller's boats, which he accordingly did, and propelled a little pleasure vessel on the lake at Dalswinton, at the rate of five miles an hour, on the 14th November, 1788. In the following year, Mr. Symington made a double engine for a boat to be tried upon the Forth and Clyde Canal; and in the month of December, 1789, this trial-vessel was propelled at the rate of six and a half miles an hour. Lord Dundas, who was a large proprietor in the Forth and Clyde Canal, employed Symington to make experiments in 1801. The result of these trials was the construction of the "Charlotte Dundas," the first practical steam-boat ever built. The engines of this vessel combined the patents before mentioned of Watt, Pickard, and Symington, which combinations--made by the latter patentee--constitute the present system of steam navigation. The "Charlotte Dundas" made her trial trip in March, 1802, and so satisfactory was the trial, that the Duke of Bridgewater ordered eight boats of Symington, for the purpose of running on his canal. The Duke of Bridgewater died immediately after; and the Forth and Clyde proprietors, owing to the injury caused to the banks, discontinued the use of the boat. The foregoing observations prove that if any one individual can claim the merit of inventing the steam-engine, that man is William Symington, who, combining previous inventions with his own patent, constructed the engine as at present in use. At the same time, every credit is due to Mr. Miller, who first afforded Symington the opportunity of putting his ingenuity to the test. [Illustration: HUDSON RIVER STEAMER.] Let us now look at Mr. Fulton's part in the transaction. In 1801 he visited Scotland, and was present at one of the experiments making by Symington on the canal, and from him he obtained permission to make full sketches and notes of both boat and apparatus. The fact is sworn to on oath of the presence of an American gentleman, who called himself Mr. Fulton, during the experiments; and further evidence is found in the fact that the engines he ordered of Messrs. Boulton and Watt for the "Clermont" were precisely of the same dimensions as those in the "Charlotte Dundas," with the exception of two inches more diameter in the piston; and the patent of Fulton dates from 1809--twenty years after Symington had propelled a boat by steam on Lake Dalswinton, and eight years after he had himself taken sketches of Symington's engines in the Forth and Clyde canal-boat. Beyond the foregoing evidence, there is the testimony of Mr. Bell that, at Fulton's request, he sent him information, plans, &c., of Mr. Miller's first experiments. The long and the short of the story is clearly this:--Mr. Fulton was a shrewd and clever engineer. He came to England, copied the steam-engine which Symington had combined--one can hardly say invented--and then returned to his own country, and applied it successfully, for which the Republic ought to be thankful to him, and to honour his name; but, for a president of a college lecturing before a mechanics' society, to call Fulton the inventor "of applying a known force _in a new manner and to new and before unthought-of purposes,"_ exhibits an ignorance or an assurance, for neither of which the slightest excuse can be made.[CJ] With equal accuracy Mr. King informs the mechanics that "Colonel John Stevens had clearly worked out in his own mind, long before any locomotive was constructed in Europe, the theory of such an application of steam, and the actual form in which it could be advantageously made, as well as the cost of constructing and working a railway for the use of locomotives." If this were true, how does it happen that the son of the Colonel, an able and ingenious mechanician, came over to George Stephenson, at Liverpool, to learn what he was doing, and to order engines from him; but Mr. King out-herods Herod, for he claims on behalf of the Colonel, the working of Steam expansively in 1815, for which Watt had taken out a patent thirty-five years before. If presidents of colleges in America cannot in their lectures deal more closely with facts, the instruction given within the walls of the college will come under very unfavourable suspicions. In conclusion, I will only add a few remarks as to ocean steamers, on which subject, as on the invention of the engine, there is considerable difficulty in awarding the honours to any single individual. The Americans were the first to employ steamers along the coast, and the "Savannah," built by them in 1819, was the first vessel that crossed the ocean employing steam in any way as an assistant. But in her the steam was a very small auxiliary power, and upon the sails the vessel mainly depended. She cannot, therefore, fairly be called an ocean steamer. The "Enterprise," a vessel of 500 tons burden, with two 120 horse-power engines, started from London for Calcutta, touching at the Cape of Good Hope, about the year 1826; and may be fairly considered as the first vessel that made an ocean journey essentially dependent on steam. Subsequently the "Royal William," built at Quebec, after running between that port and Halifax from 1831 to 1833, started in the fall of the latter year for Falmouth; and to her belongs the honour of being the first _bonâ fide_ paddle-wheel steamer that crossed the Atlantic. She was afterwards sold to the Portuguese government, and fitted up as a man-of-war steamer, under the name of the "Doña Isabella." If, however, it be asked, where oceanic communication took its rise, unquestionably that honour belongs to Bristol and the "Great Western," a steamer of 210 feet in length, 1240 tons, fitted with two engines of 210 horse-power each. This vessel started on the 8th of March, 1838, under the command of Captain Hosken, reached New York in thirteen days ten hours, and made the return passage in fifteen days. Since that date ocean steamers and steam companies have risen up like mushrooms. England and America have established a kind of weekly Derby, Cunard entering one horse and Collins the other. Unquestionably the Americans have been pioneers in improving the build, and a rivalry has sprung up which is as useful as it is honourable. The English boats adhere to a greater proportion of sail, in case of accidents to the engine; the Americans carry less sail than we do, for the sake of increasing the speed. As to relative comfort on board the two boats, an American gentleman, who had made several voyages, told me the only difference he ever discovered was, the same as exists between the hotels of the respective countries.--To return to litigation. Another claim frequently set up in America is the invention of the telegraph. Even in the Census Report--which I suppose may be considered a Government work--I read the following:--"It is to American ingenuity that we owe the practical application of the telegraph. While the honour is due to Professor Morse for the practical application and successful prosecution of the telegraph, it is mainly owing to the researches and discoveries of Professor Henry, and other scientific Americans, that he was enabled to perfect so valuable an invention." It is difficult to conceive a more unblushing piece of effrontery than the foregoing sentence, which proclaims throughout the Union that the electric telegraph in its practical working is the invention of one American, and in its scientific details the invention of other Americans, neither of which assertions has truth for its basis, and consequently the superstructure is a fiction--the only available excuse for which would be, that the writer had never heard of what was going on in Europe. Had he taken the least trouble to inquire into the subject before he wrote, he never would--it is to be hoped--have so grossly deceived his countrymen. He might have easily ascertained that such men as Oersted, Ampère, Arago, Sturgeon, had mastered in detail the various scientific difficulties that stood in the way of the accomplishment of the long-desired object; and he might also have known that Cooke in England and Stienhiel in Germany had both overcome the practical difficulties before Professor Morse had enlightened the Republic with his system, which--like Bain's--is simply another method of producing the same result--i.e., telegraphic communication. Mr. Cooke took out his patent in conjunction with Professor Wheatstone, whose attention had long been turned to this subject, and whose name has been so much before the public, that not a few persons attribute the telegraph to him exclusively. There was, indeed, some dispute between them as to their respective claims, and the matter was referred to Sir I. Brunel and Professor Daniell for arbitration. The burden of their decision was, that Mr. Cooke was entitled to stand alone as the gentleman to whom Great Britain is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the telegraph as a useful undertaking; Professor Wheatstone's profound and successful researches having already prepared the public to receive it.--So much for the justice of the American claim to the invention, which, like steam, has been the produce of many heads, and was brought into practical use first by Cooke, then by Stienhiel in Germany, and lastly by Morse in America. Another invention of which the public have heard no little discussion lately is the reaping machine. To the American nation doubtless belongs the credit of forcing it into notice and into use; but as for any claim to the invention, it is equally certain they have none. That honour is due solely to the Rev. Patrick Bell, a Scotch minister in the presbytery of Arbroath. He first tried his reaping machine in August, 1828, at his father's farm on Lord Airlie's estate, where it has been in yearly use ever since; and in October he exhibited it at the Highland Society's meeting at Glasgow. The principle upon which his first machine was made differs in nothing from those making at this hour; and, as some of the people employed on his father's farm migrated to America, it is only reasonable to suppose they carried sufficient information with them to explain the machine. American ingenuity soon copied, and American energy soon gave an impulse to, Mr. Bell's machine, for which, though denying them the invention, we ought not to deny them our thanks. But while I thus explain the unwarrantable claims which Americans have set forth, I must not allow John Bull to lay the flattering unction to his soul that none of his claimed discoveries are disputed on the other side of the Atlantic, I have seen a _Book of Facts_ printed in America, which charges us with more than one geographical robbery in the Arctic Seas, in which regions, it is well known, American enterprise and sympathy have been most nobly employed. As I am incapable of balancing the respective claims, I leave that subject to the Hydrographer's office of the two countries. The citizens of the Republic have but little idea of the injurious effects which the putting forward unwarrantable claims has upon their just claims. I have now before me a letter from a seafaring man who has spent a quarter of a century upon the borders of the United States; he is writing on the subject of their claims to the invention of steam, and he winds up in these words:--"They are with this, as they are with every other thing to which either merit or virtue is attached--the sole and only proprietors and originators, and say both the one and the other are unknown out of the universal Yankee nation." I do not endorse the sentiment, but I quote it to show the effect produced on some minds by the unfounded claims they have put forward. They have ingenuity and invention enough legitimately belonging to them for any nation to be justly proud of, without plucking peacock's feathers from others, and sending them throughout the length and breadth of the Republic as the plumage of the American eagle. How many useful inventions have they not made in machinery for working wood? Is not England daily importing some new improvement therein from the American shores? Look again at their perfect and beautiful invention for the manufacture of seamless bags, by Mr. Cyrus Baldwin, and which he has at work at the Stark Mills. There are 126 looms in operation, all self-acting and each one making 47 bags daily; the bags are a little more than three and a half feet long, and chiefly used, I believe, for flour and grain. When they are finished, sewing-machines are at hand, which can hem at the rate of 650 bags each daily. This same gentleman has also adapted his looms to the making hoses for water, of which he can complete 1000 feet a day by the experimental loom now in use, and it is more than probable these hoses will entirely supersede the use of the leather ones, being little more than one-tenth the price, and not requiring any expense to keep in order. Another and very important purpose to which their ingenuity has applied machinery is, the manufacture of fire-arms. It has long been a matter of surprise to me, why so obvious and useful an application of machinery was neglected by the Government at home. The advantages of being able to transfer all screws, springs, nipples, hammers, &c., from one musket to another, are so manifest to the most infantine comprehension, that I suppose they considered it beneath their notice; nor can I make out that they have duly inquired into the various breech-loading systems used in the States, some of which they have been testing in their Navy for years. As, however, we are beginning to copy their application of machinery, I dare say the next generation will take up the question of breech-loading arms. A few observations on the Militia appear to follow naturally after remarks on fire-arms. According to the most reliable information which I have been able to obtain, every able-bodied male between 18 and 40 years of age is liable to militia service. Those who do not serve are subject to a fine, varying in different States, from 3s. upwards; which sum helps to pay those who do duty. The pay of a private while on duty is about 10s. a-day, and that of officers in proportion. Formerly, they only turned out two days in the year; now I believe, they generally turn out ten, and in some of the cities twenty, days annually. The persons excused from militia service, are the clergy, medical men, fire companies, and those who have held a commission for three years. Each regiment settles its own uniform; and it is a strange sight to see companies in French, German, and Highland uniforms, all marching gaily through the streets. The day of firing at a mark is quite a fête; they parade the town, with the target untouched, on their road to the ground: there they commence firing, at 100 yards; if the bull's-eye be not sufficiently riddled, they get closer and closer, until, perforated and in shreds, it scarce hangs together as they return through the town bearing it aloft in triumph, and followed by all the washed, half-washed, and unwashed aspirants to military glory. I believe the good sense of the people is endeavouring to break through the system of nationalizing the companies into French, German, Highland, &c., believing that keeping up such distinctions is more calculated to produce discord than harmony. How long it will be before they succeed in eradicating these separate nationalities, I cannot pretend to say. With respect to their numbers, I cannot give any accurate information. _The American Almanack_--generally a very useful source of information--puts them down at 2,202,113; which is evidently a little bit of Buncombe, as those figures represent very nearly the whole able-bodied men in the Republic between the ages of 18 and 40. As they are liable to be called on, the _Almanack_ puts them down as though regularly enrolled; their real numbers I leave to the fertility of the imagination. In the same authority, I find the officers calculated at 76,920, of which 765 are generals. These numbers, I imagine, must also go through a powerful process of subtraction before the exact truth would be arrived at, although I believe there are twice 765 citizens who enjoy the titular honour. One fact, however, is beyond doubt; they have a large militia, accustomed to, and fond of, using fire-arms; and those who feel disposed to approach their shores with hostile intentions, will find the old Scotch motto applicable to them in its fullest sense,-- "Nemo me impune lacessit." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote CI: The Marquis de Jouffroy is said to have worked a boat by steam on the Seine in 1781; but the Revolution breaking out, he appears to have been unable to complete his invention.] [Footnote CJ: The foregoing details are essentially extracted from a work by Mr. Woodcroft, professor of machinery at University College, London; who, after proving that the previous inventions of his countrymen were combined together, for the first time, in the boat engined by Symington, thus clearly and summarily disposes of the pretensions put forward in favour of Fulton:--"In fact, if these inventions separately, or as a combination, were removed out of Fulton's boat, nothing would be left but the hull; and if the hull could then be divested of that peculiarity of form, admitted to have been derived from Colonel Beaufoy's experiments, _all that would remain would be the hull of a boat of ordinary construction."_] CHAPTER XXX. _Adverse Influences._ I now come to the consideration of the annual celebration of the 4th July, an event which presents itself to my mind under two opposite aspects, the one beneficial, the other injurious. If contemplated as a nation's grateful acknowledgment to Providence for the successful termination of an arduous struggle for independence, it assumes an aspect at once dignified and Christian; but if into its celebration other elements enter which are calculated to nourish hostile feelings towards those who have long ceased to reciprocate such unworthy sentiments, in that case I think its aspect may be fairly termed both injurious and unchristian. Let me then call your attention to the method of celebration. It consists of three parts:--First, the reading of the Declaration of Independence; secondly, an oration on the subject; lastly, procession and jollification. Now what is the Declaration of Independence? It is a document which details their views of the oppression and injustice which justified their rebellion against the mother country. The clauses are too numerous to quote in full, but I subjoin a few, that the reader may form his own opinion. Speaking of the sovereign of Great Britain, they say he has protected "armed troops among us, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow-citizens taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." I pause not to ask if any of these charges are correct or not: grant them accuracy in every statement, nay more, admit that they were eminently calculated to stir up the feelings of the colonists, and to inflame that spirit which was requisite to make their struggle for independence justifiable and successful, and that they were therefore called for by the emergencies of the day;--but nearly eighty years have rolled over since that Declaration was penned; there is no success sought for now which renders such appeals necessary, and surely it is not for the purpose of justifying their rebellion that they are made. Where then is the good to be derived from such declarations? Is there any misgiving in the Republic as to sentiments of patriotism or pluck? Surely none. But who can help seeing the evil to which they lead? These annual recapitulations of old grievances, buried beneath nearly a century, must tend to excite hostile feelings towards England. Conceive for one moment France reading annually a declaration of independence from British arms on the anniversary of their recapture of Calais, and engrossing in that document every injustice or atrocity which the English perpetrated during their rule; not to mention the undignified nature of such a course, who can doubt that it would be pre-eminently calculated to generate those hostile feelings which it is the bounden duty of all civilized States to allay? In short, what does it so much resemble as the system by which, in barbarous days long since past, the Highland clans used to perpetuate their feuds. If a Christian community cannot glory in and commemorate national independence without such adjuncts, such a ceremony would, in my humble opinion, be more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Among other pernicious influences, I should mention that the Irish celebrate the battle of the Boyne annually in order to prevent their national angry passions from subsiding. Not the least curious features in these same Paddies is the fact that, while cursing England for her treatment of Ireland, they all unite as one man in favour of Slavery. Mr. Mitchell, the escaped convict, is said to have expressed his opinion that a plantation on the Alabama river with fifty sleek slaves, was the _beau idéal_ of a terrestrial paradise. If he be a bachelor, and still entertain the same sentiments, I would recommend him to take "The stewardess of the Lady Franklin" as the sharer of his joys. With regard to the orations pronounced, the one I heard at Geneseo had nothing that struck me as in any way lending itself to those feelings I have so freely censured; but it is not always so. I have before me now an epitome of a speech made by the Honourable D.S. Dickenson, at Syracuse, on July 4th, 1853. Being an honourable, it is not unfair to suppose him--mind, I say to suppose him--a man of superior attainment, selected by a well-educated people. The epitome is headed "Vigorous Discussion and Patriotic Sentiments." I only quote one passage, which I could almost fancy Matthew Ward, the hero of the Louisville school-room, had written; it runs thus--"The eloquent orator then went on for nearly half an hour in a strain of withering sarcasm and invective, exposing the shameless and wicked oppressions of England in her collieries, in her factories, in her oppression of Ireland; denouncing her as a nation whose history was written in oppression and blood (_great applause_.)"--It is difficult to believe that the chosen representative of an intelligent community should thus speak of that nation to which his own country is indebted for nearly every valuable institution she possesses; but when such ridiculous vituperation is received with shouts of applause from the gaping rowdies who throng around him, does it not clearly demonstrate the truth of my previous statements as to the effects which the celebration of the 4th of July, as now observed, may naturally lead to? I say, may lead to, because I would fain hope, for the sake of the credit and dignity of the Republic, that such disreputable orations are rare exceptions. But that such feelings of aversion to the mother country are generated among the masses, is proved indirectly in another quarter--viz., Congress. During the debate on the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, a Mr. Douglas, to whom I have before alluded, and who may be considered as the representative of the rabid and rowdy portion of the community, thus expresses himself with regard to England: "It is impossible she can love us,--I do not blame her for not loving us,--sir, we have wounded her vanity and humbled her pride,--she can never forgive us. But for us, she would be the first Power on the face of the earth,--but for us, she would have the prospect of maintaining that proud position which she held for so long a period. We are in her way. She is jealous of us; and jealousy forbids the idea of friendship. England does not love us; she cannot love us, and we cannot love her either. We have some things in the past to remember that are not agreeable. She has more in the present to humiliate her that she cannot forgive."--After which expressions, the poor little man, as though he had not the slightest conception of the meaning of the words he was using, adds the following sentence, deprecating all he had previously uttered: "I do not wish to administer to the feeling of jealousy and rivalry that exists between us and England. I wish to soften and smooth it down as much as possible." On a subsequent occasion, Mr. Butler, senator for South Carolina, who honestly did deprecate such language as the foregoing, referred, by way of contrast, to the many constitutional principles the Republic had derived from England, and also to the valuable literature which she had produced, and by which the Republic had benefited. Upon which, poor Mr. Douglas got furious, and asserted, that "Every English book circulated contains lurking and insidious slanders and libels upon the character of our people and the institutions and policy of our Government."--He then discovered that abolitionism began, in England, and that "she keeps her missionaries perambulating this country, delivering lectures and scattering abroad incendiary publications, designed to excite prejudices, hate, and strife between the different sections of the Union."--He then, with Illinois truthfulness, hints at _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, as though it were English literature, and which, he says, "is designed to stir up treason and insurrection around his--Mr. Butler's--fireside," &c.--He returns to the charge, and asserts, with equal accuracy, "Millions are being expended to distribute _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ throughout the world, with the view of combining the fanaticism, ignorance, and hatred of all the nations of the earth in a common crusade against the peculiar institutions of the State and section of this Union represented by the senator from South Carolina." One might almost imagine that the copy of Webster's Dictionary, which Mr. Douglas has in his library--if he possess such a thing--has omitted an old English word, spelt T R U T H. But the point I wish to call the reader's especial attention to, is, that the little senator's rabid rhapsody was received with shouts of gallery applause, which, as I have before observed, is an exhibition of sentiment not allowed in the Senate to either members of Congress or gallery. Yet, so thoroughly had he expressed the feelings of the said rowdies, that they could not resist the unlawful burst of approval. Mr. Butler of course replied to his absurd arguments; but my object is not discussion. I only allude to the subject at all for the purpose of proving my previous assertion, that within the walls of Congress itself, elements calculated to engender feelings of animosity towards Great Britain are to be found at work. It is this deep-seated consciousness of guilt that makes that portion of the citizens of the Republic so sensitive with regard to the observations which proceed from this country. Americans like Mr. Butler, who maintain the dignity of their country without descending to paltry popularity-hunting calumny, can afford to read any criticisms which may come from across the water with as much calmness as American remarks are read here. Such men have no accusing conscience gnawing at their vitals. If the population of the two countries were fed upon Judge Douglas's venomous diet, ere long, like the Kilkenny cats, nothing but the tails would be left. I have felt it imperative to make these remarks, that my countrymen may understand why they so constantly find the strongest symptoms of hostility to England in a certain class of American writers. Even in the text-books for children, you can detect the same animus working. Miss Willard, in her _History of the United States_, narrates that six Indian chiefs came to Colonel Washington, the grandfather of the founder of the Republic, to treat for peace. The treachery to, and cold-blooded murder of, these poor Indians she disposes of thus:--"He _wrongfully_ put them to death." General Clinton's conduct, in the prosecution of his duties to his country, which never displayed any such revolting act, she describes as reviving in a civilized age "_barbarous atrocities_."--Take another instance of amiable sentiments towards England, as exhibited by the Common Council of New York, who voted 200l. to entertain John Mitchell, the convict who had escaped from custody. The Mayor addresses him in the following terms:--"When, sir, you were silenced by restraint, overpowered by brutal force, and foreign bayonets were employed on your own soil to suppress truth and to bind upon your limbs and mind the shackles of slavery, we sympathized with you in your adversity. We hated the tyrant and loved the victim. And when, sir, after the semblance of a trial, you were condemned and hurried as a felon from your home, your country, and your friends, to a distant land, we were filled with indignation, and pledged a deeper hatred towards the enemies of man."--Mr. Mitchell, in reply, confesses himself from earliest youth a traitor to his country, and honours the British Government with the following epithets: "I say to them that they are not a government at all, but a gang of conspirators, of robbers, of murderers." These sentiments were received by the multitude around with "great applause." Considering how many causes for exciting ill-will exist, the only wonder is that, when so large a portion of the Republicans are utterly ignorant of the truth as regards England, the feeling is not more hostile. It is needless to assert, that the feelings of jealousy and animosity ascribed to England by Mr. Douglas, exist only in the disordered imagination of his own brain and of those of the deluded gulls who follow in his train: for I am proud to say no similar undignified and antagonistic elements are at work here; and, if any attempt were made to introduce them, the good sense of the country would unite with one voice to cry them down. I defy all the educated, ignorant, or rabid population of the Republic to bring forward any instance where, either in the celebration of any ceremony, the orations of any senator, or the meetings of any corporation, such unworthy and contemptible animosity towards the United States has ever been shadowed forth. I must not, however, allow the reader to understand from the foregoing remark that there is an universal national antipathy to England; although, whenever she is brought into juxtaposition with the Republic, it may appear very strongly developed. The most erroneous impressions were at the time this was written, abroad among my countrymen, in respect of American sympathies with Russia. Filibusteros, rabid annexationists, inveterate Slaveholders, and Rowdies of every class, to which might have been added a few ignoble minds who made the grave of conscience a "stump" from which to pour forth Buncombe speeches to catch ephemeral popularity, constituted the body in America who sympathised with Russia. All the intelligence of the North, and a great portion of that of the South, felt the deepest interest in our success, not merely as descendants of the mother country, but also because they recognised the war in which we were engaged as a struggle in the cause of liberty. We could not suffer ourselves to be deceived by the Filibustero Press, nor by the accounts we read of vessels laden with arms carrying them to Russia. Those were no more proofs of the national feeling, than the building of slave-clippers every year at Baltimore is a proof that the nation wishes to encourage the slave-trade. The true feeling of a nation must be sought for far deeper than in the superficial clamour of political demagogues, backed though it be by the applause of gaping crowds whose worst passions are pandered to for the sake of a transient breath of popularity. CHAPTER XXXI. _Olla Podrida._ The preceding observations lead naturally to a few observations upon American character in a national point of view; for in treating of so exceedingly varied a community, combining as it does nearly every nation of the Old World, it would be beyond the limits of a work like this to enter into details on so complicated a subject. As I prefer commencing with the objectionable points, and winding up with the more favourable, I shall first name Vanity as a great national feature. The fulsome adulation with which the Press bespatters its readers, throughout the length and breadth of the Union, wherever any comparisons are drawn with other nations, is so great that the masses have become perfectly deluded; and being so far removed from the nations of the Old World, and knowing, consequently, nothing of them except through the columns of a vanity-feeding Press, they receive the most exaggerated statements as though they were Gospel truths--little aware how supremely ridiculous the vaunting which they read with delight makes them appear in the eyes of other people. I insert the following extract from the Press, as one instance among many of the vain and ridiculous style of some of their editorial leaders. It is taken from the _New York Herald_--one of the most widely-circulated papers in the Union, but one which, I am bound in justice to say, is held in contempt[CK] by the more intelligent portion of the community. Speaking of Mrs. B. Stowe's reception in England, he says:--"She proves herself quite an American in her intercourse with the English aristocracy. Her self-possession, ease, and independence of manner were quite undisturbed in the presence of the proud duchesses and fraughty dames of the titled English nobility. They expected timidity and fear, and reverence for their titles, in an untitled person, and they found themselves disappointed. Mrs. Stowe felt herself their equal in social life, and acted among them as she felt. This, above all other things, has caused a great astonishment in the higher circles in favour of American women, for in fact it is a quality peculiarly distinguishing an American woman, that she can be and is a duchess among duchesses." Even in the simple article of diplomatic dress we see the same feature peeping out. Vanity may be discovered as readily in singularity, however simple, as in the naked savage who struts about as proud as a peacock, with no covering but a gold-laced cocked hat on his head and a brass-mounted sword at his side. When civilized society agrees upon some distinctive uniform for diplomatic service, who can fail to observe the lurking vanity that dictated the abolition of it by the Republic?--not to mention the absurdity of wearing a sword in plain clothes. The only parallel it has among bipeds, that I know of, is a master-at-arms on board a ship, with a cane by his side; but then he carries a weapon which he is supposed to use. The Minister of the Republic carries a weapon for ornament only. In quadruped life, it reminds me of a poodle closely shaved all over, except a little tuft at the end of his tail, the sword and the tuft recalling to mind the fact that the respective possessors have been shorn of something. Firmly convinced, from my earliest schoolboy days, of the intimate connexion which exists between boasting and bullying, I had long blushed to feel how pre-eminent my own country was in the ignoble practice; but a more intimate acquaintance with the United States has thoroughly satisfied me that that pre-eminence justly belongs to the great Republic. But it is not merely in national matters that this feeling exhibits itself; you observe it in ordinary life as well, by the intense love shown for titles; nobody is contented until he obtain some rank. I am aware this is a feature inseparable from democracy. Everybody you meet is Captain, Colonel, General, Honourable, Judge, or something; and if they cannot obtain it legitimately, they obtain it by courtesy, or sometimes facetiously, like a gentleman I have before alluded to, who obtained the rank of judge because he was a connoisseur in wine. In these, and a thousand other ways, the love of vanity stands nationally revealed. I do not think Americans are aware what injustice they do themselves by this love of high-sounding titles.[CL] For instance, in a paper before me, I see a Deputy Sheriff calling on the mob to resist the law; I see Governor Bigler authorizing General King to call out the military, one naturally supposes to keep order; but observe he calls Mr. Walker, of Erie, a traitor and a scoundrel; of the directors and managers of the railroad, he says, "We will whip them, will whip them, will bury them so deep electricity can't reach them--we will whip them--we will whip the g--ts out of them!" &c.--Now, judging of these people by their titles, as recognised by the rest of the civilized world, what a disgrace to the higher classes of Americans is the foregoing! But anybody who really knows the title system of the Republic will at once see that the orator was a mere rowdy. Thus they suffer for their vanity. It pervades every class of the whole community, from the rowdy, who talks of "whipping creation," to the pulpit orator, who often heralds forth past success to feed the insatiable appetite: in short, it has become a national disease; and were it not for the safety-valve formed by the unmeasured terms of mutual vituperation they heap upon each other on occasions of domestic squabbles, their fate would assuredly be that of the frog in the fable. In the medical world, it is said no one has a cold without fever; and I think it may with equal truth be asserted of the national world, no nations are vain without being afflicted with sensitiveness: at all events, it is true as regards the United States. No maiden in her teens is so ticklishly sensitive as the Americans. I do not refer merely to that portion of the community of which I have selected Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, as the type; I allude also to the far higher order of intelligence with which the Republic abounds. There is a touchiness about them all with respect to national and local questions which I never saw equalled: in fact, the few sheets of their Press which reach this country are alone sufficient to convince any one on that point; for in a free country the Press may always be fairly considered, to a certain extent, as the reflex of the public mind. I suppose it is with nations as with individuals, and that each are alike blind to their own failings. In no other way can I account for the Republic overlooking so entirely the sensitiveness of others. Take for instance the appointment of M. Soulé--a Frenchman naturalized in America--as minister to the court of Spain. I do not say that he was a Filibustero, but he was universally supposed to be identified with that party; and if he were not so identified, he showed a puerile ignorance of the requirements of a Minister, quite beyond conception, when he received a serenade of five thousand people at New York, who came in procession, bearing aloft the accompanying transparencies, he being at the time accredited to his new ministry. On the first transparency was the following motto:-- A STAR. PIERCE. SOULÉ. CUBA. On the second banner:-- YOUNG AMERICA AND YOUNG CUBA. Free thought and free speech for the Cubans. 'Tis no flight of fancy, for Cuba must be, and 'tis Written by fate, an isle Great and free. O pray, ye doomed tyrants, Your fate's not far: A dread Order now watches you,-- It is the Lone Star. On the third banner:-- Cuba must and shall be free. The Antilles Flower, The true Key of the Gulf, Must be plucked from the Crown Of the Old Spanish Wolf. Monumental representation--a tomb and a weeping willow. On the tomb were the words-- LOPEZ AND CRITTENDEN, AGUERO AND ARMATERO. They and their companions are not forgotten. M. Soulé accepts the compliment, and makes a speech, in which he informs his audience that he cannot believe "that this mighty nation can be chained now within the narrow limits which fettered the young Republic of America," &c. Change the scene, and let any American judge in the following supposed and parallel case. Imagine expeditions fitted out in England, in spite of Government, to free the slaves in the Southern States; imagine a Lopez termination to the affair, and the rowdy blood of England forming other Filibustero expeditions; then imagine the Hon. Mr. Tenderheart identifying himself with them, and receiving an appointment as minister to Washington; after which, imagine him serenaded at St. James's by thousands of people bearing transparencies, the first representing a naked woman under the slave-driver's lash; the second, containing some such verses as "The Antilles Flower," &c.; for instance:-- "The slaves must be plucked From the chains that now gall 'em, Though American wolves An inferior race call 'em." Let the minister accept the serenade, and address the multitude, declaring "that this mighty nation can no longer be chained down to passive interference," &c. Let me ask any American how the Hon. Mr. Tenderheart would be received at Washington, particularly if a few days after he took a shot at his French colleague because another person insulted him in that gentleman's house?--I ask, what would Americans say if such a line of conduct were to be pursued towards them? I might go further, and suppose that a conclave of English Ministers met at Quebec, and discussed the question as to how far the flourishing town of Buffalo, so close on the frontier, was calculated to endanger the peace and prosperity of Canada, and then imagine them winding up their report with this clause--If it be so--"then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from its present owners." The American who penned that sentence must possess a copy of the Scriptures unknown to the rest of the world. Surely America must imagine she has the monopoly of all the sensitiveness in the world, or she would never have acted by Spain as she has done. How humiliated must she feel while contemplating the contrast between her act in appointing the minister, and Spain's demeanour in her silent and dignified reception of him! This same sensitiveness peeps out in small things as well as great, especially where England is concerned: thus, one writer discovers that the Americans speak French better than the English; probably he infers it from having met a London Cit who had run over to Paris for a quiet Sunday, and who asked him "_Moosyere, savvay voo oo ey lay Toolureeze?"_ Another discovers that American society is much more sought after than English; that Americans are more agreeable, more intelligent, more liberal, &c.; but the comparison is always with England or the English. And why all this? Simply because it feeds the morbid appetite of many Republican citizens, which the pure truth would not. This sensitiveness also shows itself in the way they watch the opinions of their country expressed by _The Times_, or by any largely circulating paper. I remember an American colonel who had been through the whole Mexican war, saying to me one day, "I assure you the Mexican troops are the most contemptible soldiers in the world; I would rather a thousand to one face them than half the number of Camanche Indians."--The object of this remark was to show on what slight and insufficient grounds _The Times_ had spoken of the United States as a great military nation since the Mexican war. An article giving them due credit for a successful campaign was easily magnified beyond its intended proportions, and my gallant friend was modestly disclaiming so high-sounding an appellation; but such evidently was the construction which he felt his countrymen had put upon it. I turn now for a few moments to the question of Morals; and here, again, it is of course only in a wholesale manner I can treat of the subject. As far as my inquiries enable me to judge, I find the same elements producing the same results here as in England. Wherever masses are clustered together most largely, there vice runs as rampant as in England; nay, I have the authority of a lecture delivered at the Maryland Institute, for saying that it is even worse in many places. After describing various instances of lawless conduct, the lecturer continues thus: "Such lawlessness as I have described is not tolerated in any other part of the world, and would not be tolerated here for a moment, but for the criminal apathy of our citizens generally, and the truckling, on the part of our politicians and public officers, for the votes of the very men whom they know to be violating and trampling on the laws."--In illustration, he states, "In every part of Europe in which I have travelled,--in England, Holland, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; under all the different systems of religion and forms of government; in the large cities, and the small towns and villages; in the highways and byways,--I found better public order, more decorum, where bodies of men were assembled together, and less tendency to rowdyism, pugilism, and violence, than there is in most parts of this country. In this general statement of the fact, all unprejudiced travellers will, I suppose concur."--Further on, he draws a comparison favourable to London; and, with regard to the Police in our metropolis, he says, "A more respectable and finer-looking body of men it would be difficult to find in any country. A stranger may apply to one for information, with a certainty of receiving a polite and intelligent answer," &c.--I only quote the last paragraph, in case Mr. Matt. Ward should see these pages, and that he may know how the Police behave towards those who know how to conduct themselves.[CM] The lecturer goes on to complain of the depravity of youth. He then attacks the dispensation of the law, pointing out many instances of their mal-administration. He then proceeds to attack the fire companies; he admits their courage and daring, but points out at the same time their lawlessness. He says--speaking of Philadelphia--"Almost every company has its war-song, breathing the most barbarous and bloodthirsty sentiments towards some rival association, and describing the glory of the fireman to the destruction of his enemy's apparatus, or worse yet, his life."--He gives the following list of the terrific names of the companies: "Hornets, Snappers, Blood-reds, Bed-bugs, Rock-boys, Buffaloes, Skimmers, Scrougers, Revengers, Knockers, Black-hawks, Pirate-boys, Kill-devils." After which he gives the following specimen, of their songs, written by a "Bluffer and Red-devil:"-- "INDEPENDENT HOSE SONG. "We're the saucy Hyena-boys of George's-street, as all knows; We can whip the Penn and Globe, likewise the Carroll Hose; We'll whip the three together, the Bed-bugs and South Penn throw in for ease; We do run our carriage among our foes, and run her where we please. "You'd better hush your blowing, Globe, if you know when you are well; For if we take your engine again, we'll smash her all to hell. Here is luck to the Bluffers, and all honest boys of that name; Here is to the Hyenas and Red-devils, that no one can tame." He subsequently points out the evils of allowing political passions to guide citizens in the selection of officers, and declares, "that persons are elected to, and now fill, important offices in Baltimore, to whom no responsible trust in private life would be confided by the very men who voted for them."[CN] With regard to the actual commission of crime, and the due punishment of the offenders, he draws the following comparison between London and Baltimore: "The population of the former is 13 times greater than that of the latter; but the number of arrests is as 1 to 7,--in other words, the commission of crime, in proportion to numbers, was 46 per cent. greater than in London. Then, to show the inefficiency of the law, he proceeds to state, that the commitments for trial were only 29 per cent. greater, and that, even of those committed, many escaped just punishment. Of course, the large cities in America are the only places in which any comparison can be made with this country; but, while doing so, the tide of emigration, which helps to fill up their numbers, must not be lost sight of, or we should judge them unfairly. With regard to the masses that are spread over the length and breadth of the land, I certainly have never seen nor heard anything that need make England ashamed of the comparison. It would not be equitable to judge by mere numbers,--you must also bring into the balance the comparative state of affluence and independence of the respective parties; for who can doubt that distress is one of the great causes of crime? Even in the wealthy State of New York, I find an account of the following outrage, committed upon a Mr. Lawrence, when serving a summons upon his aggressor, Mr. Deitz: "He found Mr. Deitz near the house, and handed him the papers. Deitz took them and read them, when he threw them on the ground,--seized Lawrence by the throat, calling him a d----d scoundrel, for coming to serve papers on him. He then called to his family to blow a horn, when a man, named Hollenbeck, who was at work for Deitz as a mason, interceded for Lawrence, who managed to get away, and started off on a run. Deitz followed in pursuit, knocked Lawrence down, and held him until four men in disguise made their appearance. They then tied his hands behind him, and took him to a small piece of bush near by,--then tore off his coat, vest, and cravat, and with a jack-knife cut off his hair, occasionally cutting his scalp,--and, remarking that they had a plaster that would heal it up, they tarred his head and body, and poured tar into his boots. After exhausting all their ingenuity this way, each cut a stick, and whipped him until they got tired. They then tied his hands before him, and started him for the house, each of them kicking him at every step. They made him take the papers back, but took them away again;--when, after knocking him down again, they left him, and he succeeded in reaching the residence of George Beckers last evening. His legs, hands, arms, and face are badly bruised."--If we travel West and South, we shall doubtless find that morality is far more lax than in England; but what can you expect where gentlemen, even senators for States, go out to fight bloody duels with rifles at twenty paces, while crowds of spectators are looking on? Where the Americans have the advantage over our population is, first and foremost, in possessing a boundless extent of territory which gives a rich return for comparatively little labour, and where, if labour is wanted, the scarcity of the article insures its commanding a high price. Compare England for one moment with two of the oldest American States, and therefore the most thickly populated:-- Square Miles. Inhabitants. England contains 50,000 17,923,000 New York " 46,000 3,097,000 Pennsylvania " 46,000 2,311,786 We here see, that if we take the most populous States in the Union, the proportion is nearly 6 to 1 in favour of America; but, if we mass the whole, we shall find-- Square Miles. Inhabitants. Great Britain and Ireland contain 120,000 27,400,000 United States 3,500,000 23,192,000 This would bring the proportion of population to extent of territory, in rough numbers:-- Great Britain and Ireland 228 inhabitants to the square mile. United States 7 " " " In other words, Great Britain is 32 times as thickly populated as the Republic. If these facts are borne in mind, I confess that the commission of crime in Great Britain appears to me proportionally far smaller than in the States, notwithstanding all the advantages of the free and liberal education which is within their reach. I cannot but think that the general system of training youth in the Republic has a most prejudicial effect, in many instances, on their after-life. In their noble zeal for the education of the brain, they appear to me to lose sight almost entirely of the necessity of disciplining the mind to that obedience to authority, which lays the foundation of self-control and respect for the laws of the land. Nationally speaking, there is scarcely such a thing as a lad in the whole Union. A boy in the States hardly gets over the novelty of that portion of his dress which marks the difference of sex, ere his motto is: "I don't care; I shall do what I best please:" in short, he is made a man before he ceases to be a boy; he consequently becomes unable to exercise that restraint which better discipline might have taught him, and the acts of his after-life are thus more likely to be influenced by passion and self-will than by reason or reflection. I find in the lecture from which I have already quoted, the following paragraph, which, as I consider it illustrative of my last observation, I insert at length. "But the most alarming feature in the condition of things, not only in the city, but elsewhere throughout the country, is the lawlessness of the youth. The most striking illustration of this which I have seen is taken from a Cincinnati paper of last January. It seems that in the course of a few days one hundred applications had been made by parents in that city to have their own children sent to the House of Refuge. The particulars of one case, which happened a short time before, are given:--a boy, twelve years of age, was brought before the Mayor's Court by his father, who stated that the family were absolutely afraid the youth would take their lives, and that he had purchased a pistol for the purpose of shooting the housekeeper. A double-barrelled pistol was produced in court, which the police-officer had taken from the boy, who avowed that he had bought it for the purpose stated. The mayor sent the boy to the House of Refuge." I now pass on to the question of Liberty in the United States. If by liberty be understood the will of the greater number ruling the State or regulating its laws, certainly they have more liberty than England; but if by liberty be understood that balance of power and adaptation of the laws to the various interests of the whole community, combined with the due execution, of them against offenders of whatever class, then I consider that there is unquestionably more liberty in England, in spite of the restrictions by which the franchise is limited--nay, rather I should say, in consequence of those very restrictions; for I believe they tend to secure the services of more liberal, high-minded, and independent representatives than any country--however highly educated its population may be--would return under a system of universal suffrage. I do not intend to convey in the foregoing observation, any opinion as to how far it is desirable, or otherwise, to modify the restrictions at present existing in England; it is obvious they should keep pace with the growing intelligence of the community, inasmuch as, if they do not, popular agitation is readily excited, and violent changes are forced by ignorant passion, going far beyond those which educated prudence and a sense of justice ought to have brought forward.--Prevention is better than cure. Mr. Everett, in a letter dated July 25, 1853, after observing that it has long been the boast of England that she is the great city of refuge for the rest of Europe, adds, "it is the prouder boast of the United States, that they are, and ever have been, an asylum for the rest of the world, including Great Britain herself:" he then goes on to say, "no citizen has ever been driven into banishment."--This is bravely said by an able son of the "Land of Liberty;" but when he penned it, he appears to have forgotten that there are upwards of three millions of his own fellow-creatures held in the galling shackles of hopeless slavery by the citizens of that land of which he makes so proud a boast; and that from one to two thousand of the wretched victims escape annually to the British colony adjoining, which is their sole city of refuge on the whole North American continent. Doubtless Mr. Everett's countrymen do not sufficiently know this startling point of difference, or they would hesitate in accepting such a boast. So ignorant are some of his countrymen of the real truth as regards the citizens of Great Britain, that a friend of mine was asked by a well-educated and otherwise intelligent son of the Republic, "Is it really true that all the land in England belongs to the Queen?" While on the subject of liberty, it is well to observe one or two curious ways in which it may be said to be controlled in America. If any gentleman wished to set up a marked livery for his servants, he could not do so without being the subject of animadversions in the rowdy Press, styling him a would-be aristocrat. But perhaps the most extraordinary vagary is the Yankee notion that service is degrading; the consequence of which is that you very rarely see a Yankee servant; and if by chance you find one on a farm, he insists on living and eating with the overseer. So jealous are they of the appearance of service, that on many of the railways there was considerable difficulty in getting the guard, or conductor, to wear a riband on his hat designating his office, and none of the people attached to the railway station will put on any livery or uniform by which they can be known. I wonder if it ever occurs to these sons of the Republic, that in thus acting they are striking at the very root of their vaunted equal rights of man, and spreading a broader base of aristocracy than even the Old World can produce. Servants, of course, there must be in every community, and it is ridiculous to suppose that American gentlemen ever did, or ever will, live with their housemaids, cooks, and button-boys; and if this be so, and that Americans consider such service as degrading, is it not perfectly clear that the sons of the soil set themselves up as nobles, and look upon the emigrants--on whom the duties of service chiefly devolve--in the light of serfs? I may, while discussing service, as well touch upon the subject of strikes. The Press in America is very ready to pass strictures on the low rate of wages in this country, such as the three-ha'penny shirt-makers, and a host of other ill-paid and hard-worked poor. Every humane man must regret to see the pressure of competition producing such disgraceful results; but my American friends, if they look carefully into their own country, will see that they act in precisely the same way, as far as they are able; in short, that they get labour as cheap as they can. Fortunately for the poor emigrant, the want of hands is so great, that they can insure a decent remuneration for their work; but the proof that the Anglo-Saxon in America is no better than the rest of the world in this respect, is to be found in the fact that strikes for higher wages also take place among them. I remember once reading in the same paper of the strike of three different interests; one of which was that indispensable body, the hotel-waiters. The negroes even joined with the whites, and they gained their point; they knew the true theory of strikes, and made their move "when the market was rising." The hotels were increasing their charges, and they merely wanted their share of the prosperity. I now propose to consider one of the brightest features in the national character--Intelligence. Irresistible testimony is borne to their appreciation of the value of education, not merely by the multitudes of schools of all kinds, and by the numbers that attend them, but also by that arrangement of which they may be so justly proud, and which opens the door to every branch of study to their poorest citizens free of expense. No praise is too high for such a noble national institution as the school system of the Republic. How far it may be advisable to bring all the various classes of the community together at that early age when habits which affect after-life are so readily acquired, is another question. Though the roughness of the many may derive advantage from contact with the polish of the few, it appears to me more than probable that the polish of the few will be influenced far more considerably by the roughness of the many. I cannot, therefore, but imagine that the universal admixture of all classes of society in early infancy must operate prejudicially to that advancement in the refinements of civilization which tends to give a superior tone to the society of every country. It must not, however, be imagined that the intelligence obtained at these schools is confined to those subjects which are requisite for making dollars and cents. People of this country, judging of the Republicans by the general accounts given of them through the Press, can have little idea of the extent to which the old standard works of the mother-country are read; but there is an intelligent portion of our own nation to be found among the booksellers, who can enlighten them on this point. I have been told by several of them, not only that old editions of our best authors are rapidly being bought up by citizens of the United States, but that in making their purchases they exhibit an intimate acquaintance with them far greater than they find generally among Englishmen, and which proves how thoroughly they are appreciated by them. Then again, with reference to their own country; it is impossible for any one to travel among them without being struck with the universal intelligence they possess as to its constitution, its politics, its laws, and all general subjects connected with its prosperity or its requirements; and if they do not always convey their information in the most classical language, at all events they convey it in clear and unmistakeable terms. The Constitution of their country is regularly taught at their schools; and doubtless it is owing to this early insight into the latent springs by which the machinery of Government is worked, that their future appetite for more minute details becomes whetted. I question very much if every boy, on leaving a high school in the United States, does not know far more of the institutions of his country than nine-tenths of the members of the British House of Commons do of theirs. At the same time it should not be forgotten, that the complications which have grown up with a nationality of centuries render the study far more difficult in this country, than it possibly can, be in the giant Republic of yesterday. And in the same way taxation in England, of which 30,000,000l. is due as interest on debt before the State receives one farthing for its disbursements, is one of the most intricate questions to be understood even by enlarged minds; whereas in the United States, scarcely any taxation exists, and the little that does, creates a surplus revenue which they often appear at a loss to know how to get rid of. Doubtless, the intelligence of the community sometimes exhibits itself in a 'cuteness which I am not prepared to defend. A clear apprehension of their immediate material interests has produced repudiation of legitimate obligations; but those days are, nationally speaking, I hope, gone by, and many of their merchants stand as high in the estimation of the commercial world as it is possible to desire. At the same time, it is equally true that the spirit of commercial gambling has risen to a point in the States far above what it ever has in this country,--except, perhaps, during the Railway epidemic; and the number of failures is lamentably great. With their intelligence they combine an enterprise that knows no national parallel. This quality, aided by their law of limited liability, has doubtless tended to urge forward many works and schemes from which the Union is deriving, and has derived, great wealth and advantage; at the same time it has opened the door for the unscrupulous and the shrewd to come in and play high stakes with small capital--in playing which reckless game, while some become millionaires others become bankrupts. This latter state is a matter of comparative unimportance in a country like the Republic, where the field is so great, and a livelihood easily attainable until some opening occurs, when they are as ready to rush into it again as if they had been foaled at Niagara, and had sucked in the impetuosity of its cataract. There is one shape that their enterprise takes which it would indeed be well for us to imitate, and that is early rising. I quite blush for my country when I think what a "Castle of Indolence" we are in that respect, especially those who have not the slightest excuse for it. On what principle the classes of society in England who are masters of their own time, turn night into day, waste millions yearly in oil and wax, and sleep away the most fresh and healthy hours of the morning, for no other visible purpose but to enable themselves to pass the night in the most stuffy and unhealthy atmosphere, is beyond my comprehension. One thing is certain: it has a tendency to enervate both body and mind, and were it not for the revivifying effects produced by a winter residence in the country, where gentlemen take to field sports, and ladies to razeed dresses, sensible shoes, and constitutional walks, the mortality among our "upper ten thousand" would, I believe, be frightful. In America, the "boys" get up so early, that it is said they frequently "catch the birds by their tails as they are going to roost;" and it is no doubt owing to this that they are so 'cute. Talk about "catching a weasel asleep," let me see any of my metropolitan drone friends who can catch a Yankee boy asleep! It is not, however, merely to early rising that they owe their 'cuteness. A total absence of idleness, and the fact of being constantly thrown on their own resources in cases of minor difficulty, aid materially in sharpening their wits. You may see these latter influences operating in the difference between soldiers and sailors, when placed in situations where they have to shift for themselves. Some of their anecdotes bearing upon 'cuteness are amusing enough. I will give one as an illustration.--Owing to some unknown cause, there was a great dearth of eggs in one of the New England States, and they consequently rose considerably in price. It immediately occurred to a farmer's wife, that, if she could in any way increase the produce of her hens, it would be a source of great gain to her; she accordingly fitted the bottom of each laying hen's bed with a spring, and fixed a basin underneath, capable of holding two eggs. In due time, the hens laid; but as each hen, after laying, missed the warmth of the precious deposit, she got up to look if it was all right. To her astonishment, no egg was to be seen. "Bless my soul!" says the hen, "well, I declare I thought I had laid an egg. I suppose I must be mistaken;" and down she went to fulfil her duties again. Once more she rose to verify her success. No egg was there. "Well, I vow," quoth Mrs. Hen, "they must be playing me some trick: I'll have one more shot, and, if I don't succeed, I shall give it up." Again she returned to her labours, and the two eggs that had passed into the basin below supporting the base of her bed, success crowned her efforts, and she exclaimed, "Well, I have done it this time at all events!" The 'cute wife kept her counsel, and said nothing, either to the hens or to her neighbours, and thus realized a comfortable little bag of dollars.--I give the anecdote as narrated to me, and I must confess I never saw the operation, or heard the remarks of the outwitted hens. I insert it lest in these days of agricultural distress (?) any farmer's wife be disposed to make a trial of a similar experiment.[CO] I proceed to consider the energy of the Republicans, a quality in which they may challenge comparison with the world. No enterprise is too great for them to undertake, and no hardship too severe for them to endure. A Yankee will start off with his household gods, and seek a new home in the wilderness, with less fuss than a Cockney would make about packing up a basket of grub to go and pic-nic in Richmond Park. It is the spirit of adventure that has enabled them to cover a whole continent in the incredible manner which the map of the United States shows. The great drawback to this phase of their energy is the total absence it exhibits of those ties of home to which we so fondly cling in the old country. If we were a nation of Yankees, I feel persuaded that in five years we should not have ten millions of inhabitants. No Yankee can exist without elbow-room, except it be the more degraded and rowdy portion of the community, who find a more congenial atmosphere in those sinks of vice inseparable from large towns. This migratory spirit has caused them to exhibit their energy and enterprise in those countless miles of rail and telegraph, which bring the citizens of the most distant States into easy communication with Washington and the Eastern cities. The difficulty of procuring labour is no doubt one cause of the very inefficient way in which many of these works are performed; and it also disables them for executing gigantic works with the speed and certainty that such operations are completed in England. The miniature Crystal Palace at New York afforded a convincing proof of what I have stated; for although it was little more than a quarter of the size of the one in Hyde Park, they were utterly foiled in their endeavours to prepare it in time. In revenge for that failure, the Press tried to console the natives by enlarging on the superior attraction of hippodromes, ice-saloons, and penny shows, with which it was surrounded, and contrasting them with the "gloomy grandeur" of the palace in London. Gloomy grandeur is, I suppose, the Yankee way of expressing the finest park in any city in the world. Among other remarks on Americans, I have heard many of my countrymen say, "Look how they run after lords!"--It is quite true; a live lord is a comparative novelty, and they run after him in the same way as people in England run after an Indian prince, or any pretentious Oriental: it is an Anglo-Saxon mania. Not very long ago, a friend of mine found a Syrian swaggering about town, _fêted_ everywhere, as though he were the greatest man of the day; and who should the Syrian nabob turn out to be, but a man he had employed as a servant in the East, and whom he had been obliged to get bastinadoed for petty theft. In England we run after we know not whom; in America, if a lord be run after, there is at all events a strong presumption in favour of his being at least a gentleman. We toady our Indian swells, and they toady their English swells; and I trust, for our sake, that in so doing they have a decided advantage over us. I have also heard some of my countrymen observe, as to their hospitality, "Oh! it's very well; but if you went there as often as I do, you would see how soon their hospitality wears off." Who on earth ever heard such an unreasonable remark! Because a man, in the fulness of hospitality, dedicates his time, his money, and his convenience to welcome a stranger, of whose character and of whose sociability he knows nothing whatever, is he therefore bound to be saddled with that acquaintance as often as the traveller chooses to visit the American Continent? Is not the very idea preposterous? No man in the world is more ready to welcome the stranger than the American; but if the stranger revisit the same places, the courtesy and hospitality he receives must, in justice, depend upon the impression which his company has left on those upon whom he inflicted it. No doubt the scanty number of travellers enables Americans to exercise more universal hospitality than they could do if the country were filled with strangers in the same way as Great Britain is. The increased travelling of late years has necessarily made a marked difference on that point among ourselves, and doubtless it may hereafter act upon the United States; but the man who does not admit hospitality to be a most distinctive feature of the Republic, at the present time, must indeed be rotten in the brain or the heart. With regard to the political character of the Union, it is very much in the same state as that of England. The two original parties were Whig and Democrat, the former being synonymous with the Tory party in this country--i.e., an honest body of men, who, in their earnest endeavours to keep the coach straight, put the drag on so often that the horses get restive sometimes, and start off at score when they feel the wheel clogged. The Democrats are more nearly represented by a compound of Whig and Radical--i.e., a body of men who, in their energetic exertions to make the coach go, don't trouble themselves much about the road, and look upon the drag as a piece of antiquated humbug. Sometimes this carelessness also leads to the team-bolting; but in the States there is so much open country that they may run away for miles without an upset; whereas in England, when this difficulty occurs, the ribands are generally handed over to the Jarvey of the opposite party. This old state of affairs is entirely changed in both hemispheres; each party is more or less broken up, and in neither country is there at present any distinct body sufficiently numerous to form a strong government. In consequence of these disruptions, it may be imagined how difficult it would be to give any accurate description of the different pieces of crockery that constitute the political "service." Formerly, the two cries of "Protection to Home Manufacture" and "Free Trade" were the distinct rallying points. At present there are Slaveholders, Slavery Extension, Free-soil, Abolitionist, Annexationist, and Heaven alone knows how many more parties, on the question of Slavery alone, into which the Democratic or dominant party is divided, independent of those other general political divisions which must necessarily exist in so large and varied a community. From the foregoing you will observe that, to say a man is a Democrat conveys no distinct idea of his politics except that he is not a Whig; and the Whigs also have their divisions on the Slave question. But there is a party lately come into the field, and called the Know-nothings, which requires a special notice. Their ostensible principles have been published in the leading journals of this country, and carry a certain degree of reason upon the face of them, the leading features being that they are a secret society banded together for the purpose of opposing the priestly influence of the Humanists in political matters: for prolonging the period requisite to obtain the rights of citizenship; and for the support of the native-born American in opposition to all other candidates for any public situation that may be contested. Such is the substance of their manifesto. Their opponents say that they are sheer humbugs, and brought into life by a few old political hacks for their own selfish ends. Owing to the factions in the old Whig and Democratic parties, their opponents believe they may succeed for a year or two, but they prophesy their speedy and total disruption. Time will show--I am no prophet. There is one point in their charter, however, that I cannot believe will ever succeed--viz., naturalization or citizenship. Congress would be loth to pass any law that might tend to turn the stream of emigration into another channel, such as Australia or Canada; and individual States would be equally loth to pass such a local law for the same reason, inasmuch as if they did, the emigrants would move on to those States where they obtained most speedily the rights of citizens. The crusade against the Romanists is also so opposed to the spirit of a constitution which professes the principle of the equal rights of man, that it is more than probable they may ere long divide upon the unsolvable question of how to draw the line of demarcation between the influence of the priest and the opinion of his flock. As far, therefore, as I am capable of judging, I do not believe they have a sufficiently broad and distinct basis to stand upon, and I think also that the fact of their being a secret society will rather hasten their end than otherwise. The last point I shall allude to is the future prospects of the Republic; a question which doubtless is veiled in much obscurity. The black cloud of the South hangs perpetually over their heads, ever from time to time threatening to burst upon them. In the Free States many feel strongly the degradation of being forced to aid in the capture of the fugitive slave; and the aversion to the repulsive task is increasing rather than decreasing. The citizens have on many occasions risen in masses against those who were executing the law, and the military have been brought into collision with them in defending the authorities. The dread of breaking up the Union alone prevents that clause being struck out from the Constitution, by which they are compelled not merely to restore but to hunt up the fugitive. The "Freesoilers" also feel indignant at seeing their nation turning virgin soil into a land of Slavery; the Nebraska Bill has strengthened that feeling considerably. The Abolitionists are subject to constant fits of rabidity which increase intensity with each successive attack. Thousands and thousands of Northerns, who writhe under the feeling that their star-spangled banner is crossed with the stripes of the slave, turn back to the history of their country, and recalling to mind the glorious deeds that their ancestors have accomplished under that flag, their hearts respond--"The Union for ever!" But perhaps the strongest feeling in the Republic which tends to keep things quiet, is that the intelligence of the community of the North, who are opposed both to slavery and to the fugitive law, foresee that if those objects are only to be obtained at the price of separation from the South, greater evils would probably accrue than those they are anxious to remove. However peaceably a separation might be made in appearance, it could never take place without the most bitter feelings of animosity. Junius describes the intensity of the feeling, by saying, "He hated me as much as if he had once been my friend;" and so it would assuredly prove. Squabbles would breed quarrels, and quarrels would grow into wars; the comparative harmony of a continent would be broken up, and standing armies and fleets become as necessary in the New World as they unfortunately are in the Old. If the South are determined to perpetuate Slavery, the only way it will ever cease to stain the Union is by the force of public opinion, and by the immigration of the white man gradually driving the negro southwards from State to State. As his value decreases, breeding for the market will gradually cease; and he may eventually die out if the millennium does not interfere with the process. Another, possible cause for division in the Union may come from California, in which State a feeble cry has already been heard of--"a Western Republic." The facility of intercourse afforded by railroads seems likely to stop the swelling of that cry; but if California did separate, it would not be attended with those evils which a disruption of the Southern States would inevitably produce. The only other chance of a division in the Republic which I can conceive possible is, in the event of a long war with any great maritime power, for ends which only affected one particular portion of the States; in which case the irresistible influence of the all mighty dollar might come into powerful action. The wealth of America is her commerce; whatever checks that, checks the pulsations of her vitality; and unless her honour was thoroughly compromised in the struggle, neither North nor South would be disposed to prolong a ruinous struggle for the sole benefit of the other. The prospects of such a contingency may, I trust, be deemed visionary. France is not likely to come in contact with the Union; and the only other maritime nation is Great Britain, whose interests are so identified with peace, that it is hardly possible she should encourage any other than the most friendly relations. Neither party could gain anything by a war, and both parties would inevitably suffer immensely; and although I fear there is but too strong evidence, that many ignoble minds in the Republic make blustering speeches, and strive to excite hostile feelings, the real intelligence and wealth of the States repudiate the unworthy sentiment, and deprecate any acts that could possibly lead to a collision between the two countries. Besides all which, there is that strong affinity between _£. s. d._ and dollars and cents, whereby so strong an influence is exercised over that commercial body which constitutes no unimportant portion of the wealth and intelligence of both nations. If the views I have taken be correct, it is indeed impossible to foreshadow the future of the United States; centuries must elapse ere it can become sufficiently peopled to test the adaptation of its present form of government to a thickly populated country; in the meantime, there seems scarcely a limit to her increase in wealth and prosperity. Her present gigantic stride among the nations of the world appears but an invisible atom, if compared with the boundless resources she encircles within her borders, not the least important of which is that mass of energy and intelligence she is, year by year, sowing broadcast throughout the length and breadth of the land, the Church and the School ever following in the train, and reproducing those elements to which she owes her present proud position. My task is now done. I have endeavoured, in the preceding pages, to convey some general idea of the places I visited, and of the objects which appeared to me most worthy of notice. I have touched but lightly on Cuba, and I have not dwelt at any great length on the prosperous and rising colony of Canada. My remarks have been chiefly on the United States, which, differing in so many points from, the country of her birth, and occupying so conspicuous a place among the nations, presented the most extended field for observation and comment. I have on all occasions stated plainly the impressions produced upon my mind. I have freely remarked upon all those topics which, being public, I conceive to be the legitimate field for a traveller's criticism; where I have praised, or where I have condemned, I have equally endeavoured to explain my reasons. I have called attention to facts and opinions connected with my own country, where I thought similar points in the Republic might help to throw light upon them. Lastly, I have endeavoured to explain the various causes by which hostile feelings towards this country are engendered and spread abroad among a certain portion of the community; and I have stated my firm conviction, that the majority of the highest order of intelligence and character entertain a sincere desire to perpetuate our present friendly relations. In conclusion, I would observe, that the opinions and feelings of a nation should not be hastily drawn from the writings of a passing traveller, or from the casual leaders of a Free Press. Man is ever prone to find fault with his neighbour, because the so doing involves a latent claim to superior intelligence in himself; but a man may condemn many things in a nation, while holding the nation itself in high esteem. The world is a large society,--a traveller is but one of the company, who converses through the Press; and as, in the smaller circles, conversation would die or freeze if nothing were stated but what could be mathematically proved, so would volumes of travels come to an untimely end, if they never passed beyond the dull boundary of facts. In both cases, opinions are the life of conversation; because, as no two people agree, they provoke discussion, through the openings of which, as truth oozes out, wise men catch it, leaving the refuse to the unreflecting. The late Lord Holland, who was equally remarkable for his kindness and his intelligence, is said to have observed, "I never met a man so great a fool, but what I could learn something from him." Reader, I am bound to confess his Lordship never met me; but I cannot take my leave without expressing a hope, that you will not be less fortunate than that amiable Peer. And now, farewell, thou Giant Republic! I have long since left thy shores; but I have brought with me, and fondly cherish, the recollection of the many pleasant days I spent within thy borders, and of all those friends whose unceasing hospitality and kindness tracked my path without intermission. I care not for the Filibusteros and Russian sympathizers; I know that the heart of the intelligence of thy people beats with friendly pulsations, to which that of my own countrymen readily responds. All we should, and I trust all we do, mutually desire, is, to encourage an honourable and increasing rivalry in arts, science, commerce, and good-will. He who would disturb our amicable relations, be he Briton or American, is unworthy of the name of a man; for he is a foe to Liberty--Humanity--and Christianity. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote CK: The _New York Herald_ is edited by two renegade British subjects, one of whom was, I am told, formerly a writer in a scurrilous publication in this country.] [Footnote CL: It has been cited as an example of their fondness for grand-sounding titles, that while, by the Census of Great Britain, there were only 2,328 physicians to 15,163 surgeons, in the United States there were 40,564 physicians to only 191 surgeons.] [Footnote CM: _Vide_ chapter entitled "America's Press and England's Censor."] [Footnote CN: One of the few cases in which perhaps there is an advantage in the masses voting, is where a question of public advantage is brought forward, to which many and powerful local interests or monopolies are opposed. Take, for instance, the supply of London with good water, which the most utter dunderhead must admit to be most desirable; yet the influence of vested interests is so strong that its two millions of inhabitants seem destined to be poisoned for centuries, and the lanes and courts will, in all probability, continue as arid as the desert during the same period.--London, look at New York and blush!] [Footnote CO: While on the subject of eggs, I would ask my reader, did you ever, while eating the said article, find your patience sorely tried as each mouthful was being taken from its shell, and dipped carefully into the salt? If you have ever felt the inconvenience of this tedious process, let me suggest to you a simple remedy. After opening the egg, and taking out one spoonful, put in enough salt for the whole, and then on the top thereof pour a few drops of water; the saline liquid will pervade the whole nutritious substance, and thus render unnecessary those annoying transits above named, which make an egg as great a nuisance at the breakfast-table as a bore in society. Who first took out a patent for this dodge I cannot say, but I suppose it must have been a New Englander.] NOTES. NOTE I. _Extent of Telegraph in the United Kingdom._ Miles. Miles of Wire. ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 5,070 Under ground 5,000 Above ground 20,700 MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 1,740 Under ground 6,180 Above ground 4,076 SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 400 Under ground 2,740 Above ground -- BRITISH TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 1,000[CP] Under ground 2,755 Above ground 3,218 IRISH TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 88 Under ground 176 Above ground -- ---- ---- Total 8,298 Total 44,845 Of the foregoing, 534 miles are submarine, employing 1100 miles of wire. The cost of putting up a telegraph was originally 105l. per mile for two wires. Experience now enables it to be done for 50l., and that in a far more durable and efficient manner than is practised in the United States. The cost of laying down a submarine telegraph is stated to be about 230l. per mile for six wires, and 110l. for single wires. One feature in which the telegraphs of Great Britain differ materially from those of America and all other countries, is, the great extent of underground lines. There are nearly 17,000 miles of wire placed underground in England, the cost of which is six times greater than that of overground lines; but it has the inestimable advantage of being never interrupted by changes of weather or by accidents, while the cost of its maintenance is extremely small. This fact must be borne in mind, when we come to consider the relative expense of the transmission of messages in England and the States. In the foregoing lines we have shown, that England possesses, miles of line, 8,298; miles of wire, 44,845; the United States possesses, miles of lines, 16,735; miles of wire, 23,281. We thus see, that the telegraph in the United States extends over more than twice as much ground as the British lines; while on the other hand the system of telegraph in England is so much more fully developed, that nearly double the quantity of wire is in actual use. On the English lines, which are in the hands of three companies only, from 25,000 to 30,000 miles are worked on Cook and Wheatstone's system; 10,000 on the magnetic system--without batteries;--3000 on Bain's chemical principle--which is rapidly extending;--and the remainder on Morse's plan. The price of the transmission of messages is less in America than in England, especially if we regard the distance of transmission. In America a message is limited to ten words; in England to twenty words; and the message is delivered free within a certain distance from the station. In both countries the names and addresses of the sender and receiver are sent free of charge. The average cost of transmission from London to every station in Great Britain is 13/10 of a penny per word per 100 miles. The average cost from Washington to all the principal towns in America is about 6/10 of a penny per word per 100 miles. The ordinary scale of charges for twenty words in England is 1s. for fifty miles and under; 2s. 6d. between fifty miles and 100 miles; all distances beyond that, 5s. with a few exceptions, where there is great competition. Having received the foregoing statement from a most competent authority, its accuracy may be confidently relied upon. In conclusion, I would observe that the competition which is gradually growing up in this country must eventually compel a reduction of the present charges; but even before that desirable opposition arrives, the companies would, in my humble opinion, exercise a wise and profitable discretion by modifying their present system of charges. Originally the addresses of both parties were included in the number of words allowed; that absurdity is now given up, but one scarcely less ridiculous still remains--viz., twenty words being the shortest message upon which their charges are based. A merchant in New York can send a message to New Orleans, a distance of 2000 miles, and transact important business in ten words--say "Buy me a thousand bales of cotton--ship to Liverpool;" but if I want to telegraph from Windsor to London a distance of twenty miles, "Send me my portmanteau," I must pay for twenty words. Surely telegraph companies would show a sound discretion by lowering the scale to ten words, and charging two-thirds of the present price for twenty. Opposition would soon compel such a manifestly useful change; but, independent of all coercion, I believe those companies that strive the most to meet the reasonable demands of the public will always show the best balance-sheet at the end of the year.--Thirteenpence is more than one shilling. NOTE II. _A short Sketch of the Progress of Fire-arms._ The first clear notice which we have of rifles is in the year 1498, nearly 120 years after the invention of gunpowder was known to Europe. The Chinese, I believe, claim the invention 3000 years before the Creation. The first rifle-maker was one Zugler, in Germany, and his original object appears to have been merely to make the balls more ragged, so as to inflict more serious wounds; a result produced before that time by biting and hacking the balls. This appears clearly to have been the intention, inasmuch as the cuts were made perfectly straight in the first instance. The accurate dates of the introduction of the various twists I have not been able to ascertain. I can find no mention of breech-loading arms before the reign of Henry VIII., since which time they have been constantly used in China and other parts of the East. In 1839, they were, I understand, extensively used in Norway. A breech-loading carbine, lately brought across to this country from America as the invention of Mr. Sharpe, was patented by a Mr. Melville, of London, as far back as 1838. I understand Mr. Sharpe's carbine was tried at Woolwich not long ago, and found to clog, owing to the expansion of the metal from consecutive firing. Nor has any breech-loading weapon hitherto introduced been able to make its way into extensive practical use, although the Americans have constantly used them in their navy for some years past. To return to ancient times.--There is a matchlock in the Tower of London with one barrel and a revolving breech cylinder which was made in the fifteenth century, and there is a pistol on a similar plan, and dating from Henry VIII., which may be seen in the Rotunda at Woolwich. The cylinders of both of these weapons were worked by hand. The old matchlock, invented in 1471, gave way to a substitute scarcely less clumsy, and known by the initiated as the wheel-lock, the ignition taking place by the motion of the steel wheel against a fixed flint placed in the midst of the priming. This crude idea originated in 1530, and reigned undisputed until the invention of the common old flint and steel, about the year 1692, when this latter became lord paramount, which it still remains with some infatuated old gentlemen, in spite of the beautiful discovery of the application of fulminating powder, as a means of producing the discharge. Mr. Forsyth patented this invention in 1807, but, whether from prejudice or want of perfection in its application, no general use was made of the copper cap until it was introduced among sportsmen by Mr. Egg, in 1818, and subsequently Mr. J. Manton patented his percussion tubes for a similar purpose. The use of the copper cap in the army dates 1842, or nearly a quarter of a century after its manifest advantages had been apparent to the rest of the community. Previous to this invention it was impossible to make revolving weapons practically available for general use. The public are indebted to Mr. Jones for the ingenious mechanism by which continuous pressure on the trigger causes both the revolution of the barrels and the discharge of the piece; this patent goes back to 1829-1830. Colonel Colt first endeavoured to make a number of barrels revolve by raising the hammer, but the weight of the barrels suggested a return to the old rotatory cylinder, for which he took out a patent in 1835; and in 1836 he took out another patent for obtaining the rotatory motion by drawing back the trigger, and he subsequently introduced the addition of a lever ramrod fixed on to the barrel. Col. Colt came to the conclusion that the hammer-revolving cylinder was the more useful article, inasmuch as it enabled the person using it to take a more steady aim than with the other, which, revolving and firing by the action of the trigger, the moment of explosion could not be depended upon. To Col. Colt belongs the honour of so combining obsolete and modern inventions, and superadding such improvements of his own, as to produce the first practical and really serviceable weapon. Since then Messrs. Dean and Adams, in 1852, revived the old invention of the trigger-revolving cylinder, which has the advantage of only requiring one hand to fire, but which is immeasurably inferior where accuracy of aim is wanted. Mr. Tranter, in 1853, patented a new invention, which, by employing a double trigger, combines the advantages of Colt and avoids the drawbacks of Dean and Adams. By a side-wind he has also adapted that invaluable application of Colt's--a fixed lever ramrod. Many other patents are springing up daily, too numerous to mention, and too similar to admit of easy definition. To return to rifles.--It is well known that the ordinary rifle in use until late years was the seven-grooved, with a spherical ball, and the two-grooved, with a zone bullet; the latter an invention known as the Brunswick rifle; and imported from Berlin about 1836. It was upon this weapon Mr. Lancaster proceeded to make some very ingenious experiments, widening the grooves gradually until at last they met, and an elliptic bore rifle was produced, for which he obtained a patent in July, 1850; but upon investigation it would be proved that Mr. Lancaster's patent was invalid, inasmuch as the elliptical bore rifle is of so ancient a date that it is mentioned in _Scloppetaria_--a work printed in 1808--as even then obsolete; the details, methods, and instruments for their fabrication are fully described therein; and I have seen a rifle of this kind, made by "Dumazin, à Paris," which is at least a century old; it is now in the possession of the Duke of Athole. Mr. Lancaster is entitled to the credit of bringing into practical use what others had thrown on one side as valueless. From rifles I turn to balls, in which the chief feature of improvement is the introduction of the conical shape. The question of a conical ball with a saucer base is fully discussed in _Scloppetaria_, but no practical result seems to have been before the public until Monsieur Delvigue, in 1828, employed a solid conical ball, which, resting on the breech clear of the powder, he expanded by several blows with the ramrod sufficiently to make it take the grooves. Colonel Thouvenin introduced a steel spire into the breech, upon which the ball being forced, it expanded more readily. This spire is called the "tige." Colonel Tamisier cut three rings into the cylindrical surface of the bullet, to facilitate the expansion and improve its flight. These three combinations constitute the _Carabine à Tige_ now in general use in the French army. Captain Minié--in, I believe, 1850--dispensed with the tige, and employed a conical hollow in the ball; into which, introducing an iron cup, the explosion of the powder produced the expansion requisite. As Captain Minié has made no change in the rifle, except removing a tige which was only lately introduced, it is certainly an extraordinary Irishism to call his conical ball a Minié rifle; it was partially adopted in England as early as 1851. Why his invention has not been taken up in France, I cannot say. Miraculous to remark, the British Government for once appear to have appreciated a useful invention, and various experiments with the Minié ball were carried on with an energy so unusual as to be startling. It being discovered that the iron cup had various disadvantages, besides being a compound article, a tornado of inventions rushed in upon the Government with every variety of modification. The successful competitor of this countless host was Mr. Pritchett, who, while dispensing with the cup entirely, produced the most satisfactory results with a simple conical bullet imperceptibly saucered out in the base, and which is now the generally adopted bullet in Her Majesty's service. The reader will recognise in Mr. Pritchett's bullet a small modification of the conical ball alluded to in _Scloppetaria_ nearly fifty years ago. Through the kindness of a friend, I have been able to get some information as to the vexed question of the Minié ball, which militates against some of the claims of the French captain, if invention be one. The character of the friend through whom I have been put in correspondence with the gentleman named below, I feel to be a sufficient guarantee for the truthfulness of the statements which I here subjoin. [Illustration] Mr. Stanton, a proprietor of collieries at Newcastle-on-Tyne, conceived the idea that if a bullet were made to receive the projectile force in the interior of the bullet, but beyond the centre of gravity, it would continue its flight without deviation. Having satisfied himself of the truth of this theory, he sent the mould to the Board of Ordnance on the 20th of January, 1797, and received a reply the following month, stating that upon trial it was found to be less accurate in its flight and less powerful in its penetration than the round bullet then in use. They also informed Mr. Stanton that there were some conical balls in the repository which had been deposited there by the late Lieutenant-General Parker, and which, having more solidity, were superior to those sent by Mr. Stanton, thus proving that the idea of a conical expanding ball is of very ancient date. The mould sent to the Ordnance by Mr. Stanton was taken from a wooden model, of which the accompanying is an exact diagram, and which is in the possession of Mr. Stanton, solicitor, at Newcastle, the son of the originator. Evidence is afforded that Mr. Boyd a banker, and Mr. Stanton, sen., both tried the ball with very different success to that obtained at Woolwich; but this need excite no astonishment, as every sportsman is aware of the wonderful difference in the accuracy with which smooth-bored fire-arms carry balls, and for which no satisfactory reason has ever been advanced. Mr. Kell was subsequently present when his friend Mr. Stanton, jun., had balls made on his father's principle for a pair of Wogden's pistols thirty years ago; the result is reported as satisfactory. In 1829, Mr. Kell conceived the idea of applying the principle to rifles, for which purpose he had a mould made by Mr. Thomas Bulcraig. Mr. Kell altered the original ball in two points; he made the sides stronger, and he formed the front of the ball conoidical instead of hemispherical. I have the ball made from that mould now lying before me, and it is precisely the same as the Minié ball without the iron cup, which we have shown in the preceding pages is totally unnecessary. This ball has been constantly in use by Mr. Kell and others until the present day; it is the first application of a conical expanding ball to rifles that I can find on record, and whatever credit is due to the person who transferred the expanding ball from a smooth bore wherein it was useless, to a rifle wherein it is now proved to be invaluable, belongs, as far as I can trace the application back, to Mr. Kell, A.D. 1829. In 1830, Mr. Kell employed Mr. Greener, then a gunmaker at Newcastle, to make him a mould for a double pea rifle, and he left in Mr. Greener's hands one of the balls made for the Wogden pistol, and one of those made by Mr. Bulcraig, to assist him in so doing. It appears that Mr. Greener must have been satisfied with the success attending Mr. Kell's application of the conical ball to a rifle, for some years after, in August, 1836, he applied to the Ordnance for permission to have a trial of the conical ball made; this was granted, and the experiment was conducted under Major Walcott of the Royal Artillery, on the sands near Tynemouth Castle, the firing party consisting of a company of the 60th Rifles. Mr. Greener having failed to bring a target, to test the superior penetrating power of his balls, the ordinary Artillery target was used. Mr. Greener's ball had a conical plug of lead in the hollow, for the purpose of producing the expansion when driven home by the force of the powder. After firing several rounds at two hundred yards, only one ball of Mr. Greener's, which had struck the target, was found to have the plug driven home, the others had all lost their plugs. The same effect was produced when firing into a sand-bank. A trial was then made at 350 yards; the spherical balls and the conical balls both went home to the target, but only one of the latter penetrated. The objections pointed out to the conical ball were: the frequent loss of the plug, by which its weight was diminished; the inconvenience of having a hall composed of two separate parts; the difficulty of loading if the plug was not placed accurately in the centre; and the danger of the plug losing its place in consequence of being put in loosely, especially when carried about for any length of time in a cartridge.--Mr. Greener loaded the rifles during the trial with the ball and powder separate, not in cartridge.--The advantage admitted was, merely, rapidity of loading if the plug was fairly placed: no superiority of range appears to have been produced over the rifles used by the 60th Regiment. Mr. Greener solicited another trial, but after the report of Major Walcott, the Select Committee considering the ball "useless and chimerical," no further trial was accorded. The conical ball question was thus once more doomed to oblivion. In process of time the fabulous ranges of the "_Carabine à Tige_" were heard of, and when it was ascertained that the French riflemen potted the gunners on the ramparts of Rome with such rapidity that they could not stand to their guns before a rifle nearly a mile distant, the cone shape once more turned up, and Captain Minié came forward as the champion of the old expanding ball. The toscin of war was sounded in the East; the public were crying aloud for British arms to be put upon an equality with those of foreign armies; the veterans who had earned their laurels under poor old "Brown Bess" stuck faithfully to her in her death-struggle, and dropped a tear over the triumph of new-fangled notions. In the middle of last century Lieutenant-General Parker's ball was thrown aside; at the end of the century, Mr. Stanton's shared the same fate; Mr. Greener's followed in 1836 with equal ill success; Captain Minié's had a short reign, and was in turn superseded by the more solid and superior ball now in use, and for which the country is indebted to the experimental perseverance of Mr. Pritchett; and if ever things obtain their right names, the weapon of the British army will be called the Pritchett ball and not the Minié rifle; but as the world persists in calling the Missouri the Mississippi, I suppose the British public will behave equally shabbily by Mr. Pritchett. The reader will judge for himself of the respective credit due to the various persons through whose ingenuity we have at length succeeded in obtaining the present efficient ball, the wounds from which are more frightful than pen can portray. There is, however, one lesson which we should learn from the great opposition there has been to the introduction of the conical ball, and that is, the advantage of remodelling the department to which such inventions are referred. The foregoing remarks appear to me conclusive evidence that the testing of fire-arms should not be left to age and experience alone. Prejudice is all but inseparable from age--young and fresh blood is a powerful auxiliary. What I would suggest is, that there should be a special examination to qualify officers of the engineers and artillery to sit in judgment on so important a subject as arms and missiles; and I would then propose that two officers of the former corps, and five of the latter, be selected from those below the rank of field-officer, to form a separate and junior Board, and that each Board should send in its own report. The method of selection which I would suggest is by ballot or vote of those Officers of the same rank in their respective corps; for I feel sure that those who live most together are the best acquainted with one another's talents. If two Boards are objectionable, form one Board, of which one-half shall be of the junior rank; and if they be equally divided in opinion, let the higher authority appoint an umpire and order a second trial. Remember how long the now all-but-forgotten "Brown Bess" kept the field against the adversary which has since proved her immeasurable superior; and let the future prove that past experience has not been entirely thrown away. Trials may be troublesome, but officers are paid for taking trouble; and the ingenuity of inventors will always be quickened in proportion to the conviction that their inventions will receive a full and unprejudiced trial; and that, if their first shot at the target of Success be an outside ringer, they will not be denied a chance of throwing another in the Bull's-eye. Since the foregoing remarks went to press, it appears that the Pritchett ball has been found wanting, both in England and in the Crimea; its flight is said to be irregular, and the deposit of lead in the barrel so great that after thirty rounds the charge cannot be got down. If this be so, it is only one more proof of the necessity for some improvement in the Board appointed to judge of and superintend warlike missiles. When Mr. Pritchett had perfected his ball, it was tried in the three-groove rifle, for which it was intended, with the most satisfactory results, and was fired an indefinite number of times without the slightest difficulty. It appears, however, that this successful trial was not sufficient to satisfy the new-born zeal of the authorities. Accordingly, a conclave of gunmakers was consulted previous to the order for manufacturing being sent to Enfield; but with a depth of wisdom far beyond human penetration, they never asked the opinion of Mr. Pritchett, who had made the rifle which had carried the ball so satisfactorily. The wise men decided that it would be an improvement if the grooves were deepened--a strange decision, when all the experience of the day tends to prove that the shallower the groove the better. Down went the order; the improved rifles were made as fast as possible, and in the month of March they went to the seat of war. May is hardly passed by, and the sad fact discovered in the Crimea is echoed back on our shores, that after thirty rounds the soldiers may right about face or trust to cold steel. I think my youngest boy--if I had one--would have suggested testing the improvement before indulging the army with the weapon. Perhaps the authorities went on the principle that a rifle is a rifle, and a ball is a ball, and therefore that it must be all right. It might as well be said a chancellor is a chancellor, and a black dose is a black dose; therefore, because an able Aesculapius had prescribed a draught which had proved eminently useful to bilious Benjamin, it must agree equally well with lymphatic William.--Never mind, my dear John Bull, sixpence more in the pound Income-tax will remedy the little oversight. Three years have elapsed since these observations were penned, and behold a giant competitor has entered the field, threatening utter annihilation to the three-groove (or Enfield) rifle and the Pritchett ball. Mr. Whitworth (whose mechanical powers have realized an accuracy almost fabulous), after a long course of experiments made at the Government's expence, has produced a rifle with an hexagonal box and ball, the correctness of which, at 1100 yards, has proved nearly equal to that of the Enfield at 500 yards, and possessing a penetrating power of wonderful superiority; the Enfield rifle ball scarcely penetrated 13 half-inch Elm planks. Whitworth's hexagonal ball penetrated 33, and buried itself in the solid block of wood behind. It remains to be seen whether this formidable weapon can be made at such a price as to render it available for military purposes. The hexagonal bore is not a new invention, some of the Russians having used it in the late Baltic campaign; but it is doubtless Mr. Whitworth's wonderful accuracy of construction that is destined to give it celebrity, by arming it with a power and correctness it wanted before.[CQ] An explosive ball has also been introduced by Colonel Jacob of Eastern celebrity, which from its greater flight will prove, when perfected, a more deadly arm than the old spherical explosive ball invented and forgotten years ago. With the daily improvements in science, we may soon expect to see Colonel Jacob's in general use, unless the same principle applied to Whitworth's hexagonal ball should be found preferable. * * * * * To those who are amateurs of the rifle, I would recommend a pamphlet, written by Chapman, and published in New York; it is chiefly intended for those who delight in the infantine or octogenarian amusement of peppering a target, but it also contains many points of interest. Among other subjects discussed are the following:--The quantity of twist requisite in a rifle barrel--the gaining twist, as opposed to Mr. Greener, and the decreasing twist--the size of ball best suited to different distances--the swedge, by which a ball, being cast rather larger than requisite, is compressed into a more solid mass--the powder to use, decreasing in size of the grain in proportion to the diminishing length of barrel--the loading muzzle, by which the lips of the grooves are preserved as sharp as a razor, &c. The pamphlet can easily be procured through Messrs. Appleton, of New York and London. THE END. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote CP: The miles of distance may not be quite exact, but the miles of wire may be depended upon.] [Footnote CQ: The trial between the Enfield and the Whitworth rifles cannot be yet considered conclusive, as there was a difference in the bore of the rifles, and also Mr. Whitworth used a different kind of ball for penetration to that used for long range.] 
33847	----	Etext transcriber's note: Although several typographical errors have been corrected, the variation in the use of Spanish accents has not been altered (ie. both Senor and Señor [tilde n] appear.) The INDEX included at the end of this etext (which includes volumes 1 thru 4) appears at the end of volume four of _The History of Cuba_. It is provided here for convenience. THE HISTORY OF CUBA BY WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON A.M., L.H.D. Author of "A Century of Expansion," "Four Centuries of the Panama Canal," "America's Foreign Relations" Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign Relations in New York University _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ VOLUME ONE [Illustration] NEW YORK B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, INC. 156 FIFTH AVENUE 1920 Copyright, 1920, BY CENTURY HISTORY CO. _All rights reserved_ ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL LONDON, ENGLAND. PRINTED IN U. S. A. TO THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA CONCEIVED BY JOSE MARTI ESTABLISHED BY THOMAS ESTRADA PALMA VINDICATED BY MARIO G. MENOCAL PREFACE It is my purpose in these volumes to write a History of Cuba. The title may imply either the land and its natural conditions, or the people and the nation which inhabit it. It in fact implies both, and to both I shall address myself, though it will appropriately be with the latter rather than with the former that the narrative will be most concerned. For it is with Cuba as with other countries: In the last supreme analysis the people make the history of the land. Apart from the people, it is true, the Island of Cuba is of unusual interest. There are few countries of similar extent comparable with it in native variety, charm and wealth. There are few which contribute more, actually and potentially, to the world's supplies of greatly used products. One of the most universally used and prized vegetable products became first known to mankind from Cuba, and there to this day is most profusely and most perfectly grown and prepared; while another, one of the most universally used and essential articles of food, is there produced in its greatest abundance. There also may be found an immense number and bewildering variety of the most serviceable articles in both the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, in noteworthy profusion and perfection, together with possibilities and facilities for a comparable development of the animal kingdom. Nor is the geographical situation of the island less favorable or less inviting than its natural resources. Lying just within the Torrid Zone, it has a climate which combines the fecund influences of the tropics with the agreeable moderation of the Temperate Zones. It fronts at once upon the most frequented ocean of the globe and upon two of the greatest and most important semi-inland seas. It lies directly between the two great continents of the Western Hemisphere, with such supremely fortunate orientation that travel and commerce between them naturally skirt and touch its shores rather than follow the longer and more difficult route by land which is the sole alternative. A line drawn from the heart of the United States to the heart of South America passes through the heart of Cuba. A line drawn from the mouth of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Amazon traverses Cuba almost from end to end. Circled about the island and fronting on the narrow seas which divide them from it are the territories of no fewer than fourteen independent national sovereignties. It lies, moreover, directly in the path of the world's commerce between the two great oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, by the way of that gigantic artificial waterway which, created largely because of Cuba, was the fulfilment of the world's four centuries of effort and desire. There is scarcely a more suggestive and romantic theme in the world's history than this: That Columbus made his epochal adventure for the prime purpose of finding a passageway from the Atlantic to the Pacific; or rather from Europe to Asia by way of the Atlantic, since he assumed the Atlantic and the Pacific to be one; that, failing to find that non-existent passageway, he found Cuba instead and imagined that he had found therein the fulfilment of his dreams; that four centuries later that passageway was artificially provided through the enterprise and energy of a power which in his day had not yet come into existence; and that this transcendent deed was accomplished largely because of Cuba and because of the conflict through which that island violently divorced herself from the imperial sovereignty which Columbus had planted upon her shores. Lying thus in a peculiar sense at the commercial centre of the world, between North America and South America, between Europe and Asia, between all the lands of the Atlantic and all the lands of the Pacific and subject to important approach from all directions, we must reckon it not mere chance but the provision of benevolent design that Cuba at almost all parts of her peculiarly ample coastline is endowed with a greater number of first-rate harbors than any other country of the world. In recognition of these facts and of their gradual development and application to the purposes and processes of civilization, is a theme worthy to pique the interest and to absorb the attention of the most ambitious historian, whether for the mere chronicling of conditions and events, or for the philosophical analysis of causes and results. All these things, however, fascinating as they are and copious as is their suggestion of interest, are after all only a minor and the less important part of the real History of Cuba, such as I must endeavor to write. Without the Cuban people, Cuba would have remained a negligible factor in the equations of humanity. Without the people of the island, "what to me were sun or clime?" The genial climate, the fecund soil, the wealth of mines and field and forest, the capacious harbors and the encircling seas, all would be vanity of vanities. Nor is it for nothing that I have suggested differentiation between the Cuban People and the Cuban Nation. Without the development of the former into the latter, all these things could never have hoped to reach their greatest value and utility. The Cuban People have existed for four centuries, the Cuban Nation in its consummate sense for less than a single generation. Yet in the latter brief span more progress has been made toward realization of Cuba's possibilities and destinies than in all those former ages. It is a circumstance of peculiar significance that almost the oldest of all civilized communities in the Western Hemisphere should be the youngest of all the nations. It will be a task of no mean magnitude, but of unsurpassed profit and pleasure, to trace the deliberate development of that early colony into this late nation, and to observe the causes and forces which so long repressed and thwarted the sovereign aspirations of the Cuban People, and also, more gratefully, the causes and forces which inevitably, in the slow fullness of time, achieved their ultimate fulfilment in the secure establishment of the Cuban Nation. The origin of the Cuban People presents a striking historical and ethnological anomaly. The early settlers of the island, and therefore the progenitors of the present Cuban people, were beyond question the flower of the Spanish race at the very time when that race was at the height of its marvellous puissance and efficience. The Sixteenth Century was the Golden Age of Spain, and they were conspicuous representatives of those who made it so who implanted the genius of their time upon the hospitable soil of the great West Indian island. That rule has been, indeed, common to the colonial enterprises of all lands. The best men become the pioneers. Colonization implies adventure, and adventure implies courage, enterprise, endurance, vision, prudence, the very essential elements of both individual and civic greatness. Strong men, not weaklings, are the founders of new settlements. Even in those lands which were largely populated involuntarily, as penal settlements, the same rule holds good; because many of the convict exiles were merely political proscripts, who in fact were men of virtue, light and leading, often superior to those who banished them. There is fruit for almost endless thought and speculation in the circumstance that so many of the early Cuban settlers, as indeed of all the Spanish explorers and conquerors of the Sixteenth Century, came from the two Iberian Provinces of Estremadura and Seville. They were, and are, two of the most widely contrasting provinces of Spain. The one a rude, rugged, half sterile region of swineherds and mountaineers, poverty-stricken and remote; the other plethoric with the wealth of agriculture, industry and commerce, and endowed above most regions of the world with the treasures of learning and art. Yet it was from barren, impoverished and uncultured Estremadura that there came Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, De Soto, and their compeers and followers. We might speculate upon the questions whether great men were thus numerously produced by nature in that region by way of compensation for the paucity and poverty of other products; and whether it was because of their innate genius or because of their desire to seek a better land than their own, that they became the adventurers that they were. The other province which most contributed to the founding of Cuba had from time immemorial been noted for its wealth and culture. In the days of the Cæsars it had been the favorite colonial resort of the plutocracy and aristocracy of Rome, and it had been the birthplace of the Emperors Hadrian, Trajan and Theodosius. Under the Catholic Kings it was the capital and the metropolis of Spain and the chief mart of her world-wide commerce. Indeed it would not be difficult to establish the proposition that it was with the removal of the capital from Seville to Madrid, and the change of national and international policy which was inseparably associated with that removal, that the decline of Spain began. Cuba was thus in her foundation the fortunate recipient of the rugged and masterful spirit of Estremadura, and of the elements of government and of social grace and intellectual power which Seville could so well and so abundantly supply; and these two contrasting yet by no means incompatible elements became characteristic of the Cuban people; complementarily contributing to the development of a national character quite distinct from that of the Mother Country or that of any other of her offshoots. For the Cuban people and their social organism, separated far from Spain, though subject to her rule, retained largely unimpaired their pristine vigor, and avoided sharing in the degeneracy and decline which befell the Peninsula soon after the malign Hapsburg influence became dominant in its affairs of state; a decline which in the Seventeenth Century became one of the most distressing and pathetic tragedies in the drama of the world. It was an interesting and a significant circumstance, too, that while Spain was resplendent and exultant in the Golden Age of the Sixteenth Century, Cuba remained intellectually dormant and inactive, and that when at the end of the Eighteenth Century Spain reached her nadir of degradation, Cuba began to rise to intellectual puissance. While Spain was great, it was to be said of Cuba _stat nominis umbra_; but when Spain declined, Cuba arose to take her place, insistent that the race and its letters, at least, should not universally fall into decay. * * * * * It is one of the anomalies of Cuban history that while the island was denied the enjoyment of even those incipient and inchoate intimations of potential nationality which were granted to other Spanish provinces, such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, it was nevertheless, perhaps more than any other, involved from early times in the international complications and conflicts of Spain. At least equally with the mainland coasts Cuba's shores were ravaged by pirates and freebooters, and were attacked or menaced by the commissioned fleets of hostile powers. Her insular character and her geographical position doubtless accounted for this in great degree, as did also the purblind policy of Spain in failing to give her the care and protection which were lavished upon other no more worthy possessions. So it came to pass that for a time Cuba was actually conquered and seized by an alien power and was forcibly separated from Spanish sovereignty; and that for many years thereafter she was the object of covetous desire and indeed of almost incessant intrigue for acquisition by two of Spain's chief rivals and adversaries. For nearly half a century Great Britain and France were frequently, almost continuously, each planning to annex Cuba as a colonial possession, either by conquest in war or through barter or purchase in time of peace. It was not until a third great power arose and asserted in unmistakable terms its paramount interest in the island, only a little while previous to our own time, that such designs were reluctantly forsaken. It was the interesting fortune of Cuba, therefore, not only to engage the early and earnest diplomatic interest of the United States in her behalf, but also to afford to that country occasion for the conception, formulation and promulgation of perhaps the most important of all the fundamental principles of its state policy in international affairs. We have suggested, in anticipation of the narrative, that Cuba was largely to be credited with the inception of the impulse for the prompt construction of the Isthmian Canal. In a far more valid and direct sense Cuba suggested the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine. It is true that in relation first to Louisiana and then to Florida there had previously been preliminary hints at and approximations to that Doctrine. But those were territories contiguous with our own and already marked by the United States for eventual annexation and incorporation. Cuba, on the contrary, was entirely detached from our domain, and while there were then those who anticipated and desired her ultimate annexation, there was no such confident and determined resolution to that effect that there was in the case of the other regions named. Cuba was therefore the first detached country, not destined for annexation, to which the United States extended and applied the fundamental principle which was later developed into the Monroe Doctrine. We may not doubt that the Monroe Doctrine would have been put forward, even had it not been for Cuba. We may not deny nor dispute that it was because of Cuba and concerning Cuba that the first specific and indubitable intimation of that doctrine was given. The development of American policy toward Cuba is an important and interesting part of the history of the United States as well as of Cuba. The progressively significant utterances of the younger Adams, of Clay and of Forsythe, culminating years afterward in those of Cleveland and McKinley, form one of the most consistent, logical and convincing chapters in American diplomatic history. It is marred, we must confess, by some adventitious excrescences, chiefly contributed by Calhoun and Pierre Soule. Yet even these, deplorable as they ever must be regarded, fail to destroy the symmetry of the whole. It is a chapter, indeed, which more than any other is comprehensive and expository of the whole spirit and trend of American international transactions. Cuba has also been intimately connected with three great issues of American domestic politics, as well as with that supreme principle of her foreign policy. The first of these was that of human slavery. From the end of the second war with Great Britain to the beginning of the Civil War that issue dominated American politics and therefore determined largely the American attitude toward Cuba. The pro-slavery influences, which were generally paramount at Washington, resisted all efforts, which otherwise might have been successful, to draw Cuba into the community of republics freed from Spanish rule in Central and South America, because of unwillingness to have her become, like them, free soil; and subsequently the same influences planned and plotted and fought for Cuban annexation to the United States, either by conquest or by purchase, in order that she might thus be added to the slave-holding domain. On the other hand, the anti-slavery party, because of its abhorrence of these schemes, opposed the manifestation of what would have been a quite legitimate and benevolent interest in Cuban affairs. For forty years Cuba was a pawn in the game between these contending factions. Of course this issue was disposed of by the Civil War and the consequent abolition of slavery in the United States. Another issue was that of expansion. There was from the first a considerable party in the United States that favored the widest possible acquisition of territory, sometimes quite regardless of the means, and it early fixed upon Cuba as what Jefferson and the younger Adams had declared it to be, the most interesting and most natural addition that could be made to the federal system. There was also a party that was resolutely opposed to any further extension of American territorial sovereignty, whether by conquest or purchase. Sometimes the one and sometimes the other of these prevailed in American politics, and not infrequently Cuba was the chief issue between them. Ultimately it was over Cuba that their greatest conflict was waged; resulting in a compromise, under which the United States on the one hand renounced all designs of annexing Cuba, and on the other hand did annex other still more extensive territories. The third of these issues was that of the tariff. Commercial relations between Cuba and the United States were naturally intimate and important to both countries, and afforded scope for almost endless discussions concerning and manipulations of tariff duties. It was in the power of the United States to enhance or to depress the prosperity of Cuba, by the adjustment of tariff rates. To admit Cuban sugar, not to mention tobacco, freely or at a low duty, into the American market meant prosperity for the island. To place a high tariff rate upon it meant hard times if not disaster in Cuba. During the period between the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence in Cuba, such tariff changes very seriously affected the economic and also the political condition of Cuba; and the final withdrawal of the reciprocity arrangement which had opened American markets to Cuba was one of the chief provoking causes of the final revolution in the island. That revolution would doubtless have come, in any case, but it was measurably hastened and exacerbated by the economic distress which was thus precipitated upon the island, and against which it was realized there could be no assurance until Cuba was an independent nation with full power to regulate and control her own commerce and her own economic system. Even then, as we shall see, for a time the island was involved in economic distress because of the unwillingness of certain sordid interests in the United States to perform the most obvious and indisputable moral duty of that country toward its neighbor. There are few passages which the friendly historian must more regret to record in the story of Cuban-American relations than that of the delay of the American Congress to enter into proper commercial reciprocity with Cuba as soon as the independence of that island was established. * * * * * We shall see in these pages why it was necessary, from the very beginning, for Cuba to be entirely freed and divorced from all political connection with Spain, and why all the various proposals of autonomy were essentially and inevitably unacceptable. Such proposals were repeatedly made, by the Spanish government, but they were invariably either consciously or unconsciously delusive. The story of Spain's promises to Cuba is a story of broken promises, and of disappointed hopes. Nor is that to be wondered at by those who take into consideration the circumstances in which the promises were made. When the impossible is promised, the promise is doomed to non-fulfilment. Spain was in an impossible position. In order to pacify Cuba she had to promise her reforms, autonomy, liberty. But in order to maintain herself at home she had to repudiate those promises. Their fulfilment in the West Indies would have been disastrous in the Iberian Peninsula. While Spain was a reactionary monarchy at home, she could not practice liberal and progressive democracy in her colonies. Even when her monarchy became constitutional, and even during the brief periods of her republican government, the full concession of Cuba's demands would have been incompatible with her domestic status. There was an irreconcilable conflict between the European system--even European republicanism--and the American system. Spain was compelled for the sake of her Peninsular integrity and tranquillity to adhere to the former, while Cuba would be and could be contented with nothing short of the latter. Such were the terms of the problem which arose in the early part of the Nineteenth Century. Its only possible solution was in the complete separation of the two countries, and the complete independence of Cuba. We must not wonder, however, at the circumstance that this was not universally recognized at first, but that year after year some of the wisest and best of Cuban patriots strove merely for reforms in government under continued and perpetual union with the Spanish crown, and that they even deprecated and opposed all efforts at independence. We must not wonder, even, that so late as the War of Independence some of the foremost Cuban statesmen, who yielded precedence to none in purity of purpose and in sincere devotion to what they regarded as the best interests of the island, were willing and even proud to be known as Autonomists and to essay the impossible task of trying to make an Autonomist government successful. The Cubans of to-day, with vision cleared of the red glare of war and of the mists of misapprehension, doubtless understand what the conditions were at that time and appreciate the motives, however mistaken they proved to me, of the Autonomists. American readers, with less vision and comprehension of Cuban affairs, should equally understand the matter when they are reminded that the Cuban Autonomists were merely following the example of some of the men whom Americans most delight to honor. For precisely the same conditions prevailed, only to a much wider extent, in the Thirteen Colonies at the beginning of the American Revolution, when Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Jay were American Autonomists, inexorably opposed to independence. Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill were fought not for independence but for autonomy under the British Crown and in perpetual union with the British Empire. When the First Continental Congress met in the spring of 1774 there was no word, at least, of independence. On the contrary, according to some of the very foremost members of that historic body, the idea of independence, at least in the Middle and Southern colonies, was "as unpopular as the Stamp Act itself." Not only did that Congress complete its course without saying a word for independence, but it adopted an address to the people of Great Britain declaring that the reports which had got abroad that the Colonies wanted independence were "mere calumnies," and that nothing was desired but equality of rights with their fellow subjects in the British Isles. The Second Colonial Congress met after Lexington and Concord and just before Bunker Hill. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were members of it. But they spoke no word for independence. Instead, Jefferson drafted a declaration, which Congress adopted, to the effect that the Colonies had "not raised armies with designs of separating from Great Britain and establishing independent states"; and in other addresses which the same Congress adopted after the battle of Bunker Hill it was explicitly stated that the Colonists were loyal to the British Crown, that they wished for lasting union with Great Britain, and that they had taken up arms not to find liberty outside of the British Empire but to vindicate and defend liberty within that Empire. After the adjournment of that Congress in August, 1775, less than a year before the Declaration of Independence, so representative a man and so ardent a patriot as John Jay publicly denounced the imputation that the Congress had "aimed at independence" as "ungenerous and groundless," and as marked with "malice and falsity." Not until the spring of 1776 was there any significant turning toward independence as the inevitable resort. If I have thus dwelt at length upon well-known facts which pertain to the history of the United States rather than to that of Cuba, it is in order to remind American readers, on the strength of a precedent which they, at any rate, must regard with the highest respect, how reasonable it was for Cubans even as late as in 1897 and 1898 to cling to a policy and a hope substantially identical with those which were cherished by the foremost representative American patriots in 1774 and 1775. We can see now, they themselves can see now, that they were in error and that their hopes were vain. But they were no more in error than were the immortal American Autonomists of the beginning of the American Revolution. Similarly it was necessary that Cuba should not only be entirely separated from Spain but also should be made independent, and not be annexed to the United States. On that point, too, many good men were in error. As we shall see, the first important Cuban revolutionist--although not himself a native Cuban--had in view not independence but annexation to the United States, and so did many another sterling patriot after him. Probably the general feeling was that the one thing supremely essential was to be sundered from Spain, and since annexation to the United States seemed to promise the effecting of that most promptly, most easily and most surely, it was to be accepted as the best solution of the problem. Of course, too, the annexation sentiment in Cuba was greatly encouraged and promoted by the advocates of annexation in the United States, who were numerous, and aggressive, and actuated by a variety of motives. For three fundamental reasons, however, annexation would have been a deplorable mistake, for both parties. One was, that the Cuban people at heart wanted independence and would permanently have been satisfied with nothing less. Every other Spanish colony in the Western Hemisphere had attained independent sovereignty, and it would have been a reproach to Cuba to have been satisfied with any less status than theirs. The second reason was that Cuba and the United States were incompatible in temperament, and could not have got on well together. That is to be said without the slightest reflection upon either. The two countries were of different racial stocks, different languages, different traditions, different civic ideals. It was and is possible for them to be the best of friends and neighbors, but that is quite different from being yoke-fellows. The third reason was, that Cuba would not have thought of annexation without Statehood in the Federal Union, to which the United States would not or at any rate should not have admitted her. Nor is that any reflection upon Cuba. The principle was established by governmental utterances, nearly half a century before Cuban independence was achieved, and indeed before any important efforts were made by the United States to purchase Cuba, that outlying territories not contiguous with the continental Union of States, were not to be considered as fitting candidates for statehood. Had Cuba been acquired by the United States at any time it is certain that her admission as a State would have been vigorously opposed on that historic ground. The sequel would have been either that Cuba would have been excluded from the Union, to her entire and intense dissatisfaction, or the United States would have abandoned a highly desirable policy and would have established a precedent under which grave abuses might thereafter have occurred. The redemption of Cuba from Spanish rule was long delayed, for a number of reasons. One was, obviously, the difficulty of achieving it alone. The South and Central American provinces had revolted simultaneously, or in rapid succession, so that each was of assistance to the others. But at that time Cuba remained faithful to Spain; and when years afterward she sought to follow the example of the others, she found that she had to do so single-handed against the undivided might of the Peninsula. Another very potent reason was, the strength of the pro-Spanish sentiment and influence in the island, caused by the flocking thither of many Spanish loyalists from the Central and South American states and from Santo Domingo. Here, too, American readers may interpret Cuban conditions through reference to their own history. At the close of the American Revolution multitudes of British Loyalists left the United States and settled in Upper Canada, with the result that that Province of Ontario became proverbially "more British than Great Britain." We shall see in our narrative how strong the Spanish loyalist party in Cuba was, and to what extremes it went in its opposition to Cuban independence. In that we may perceive simply a repetition of conditions which prevailed at the close of the American War of Independence. It is probable, too, that the insular position of Cuba, with her coastal waters controlled by the Spanish fleet, and her central position, making her an object of intense international interest and intrigue, also contributed to the same end. Of course, too, since Cuba and Porto Rico were her last remaining possessions in the Western World, Spain made extraordinary efforts to retain them and to prevent the success of any revolutionary movement. One other influence must be noted, that of the United States. If at any time the counsels of that country had been harmonious and united, they would have had a powerful, perhaps a preponderating, effect upon Cuban affairs. But as we have intimated, and as we shall more fully see in our narrative, they were strongly, often violently, divided. Some were for intervention, some were for non-intervention; some were for making Cuba a free country, some were for preserving it as a slaveholding land; some were for aiding it to become independent, some were for annexing it to the United States. There was no unity of policy, and therefore there was no assurance as to what the United States would do in any given emergency. Cubans did not know what they could depend upon. If they revolted, America might help them, and she might not. There can be no question that this uncertainty was a potent factor in restraining Cubans from radical action, and that it materially postponed the final crisis. * * * * * We shall see that more and more, however, the United States was forced by the logic of irresistible events into adopting a united and consistent policy toward Cuba, and that in the ultimate crisis that country was inextricably implicated with the Cuban cause. This was indeed a logical development. In each successive Cuban revolution, beginning with that of Lopez, the United States had been increasingly interested. Commercial and social relations between the two countries were strong and intimate. For nearly three quarters of a century the United States had maintained a quasi-protectorate over the island in behalf of Spain for the time being, but--though unconsciously--in behalf of Cuba itself for the greater time to come. The welfare of the United States had become involved in the disposition of the island in only a less degree than that of the Cuban people. There can be no doubt that the United States was of very great service and assistance to the Cuban patriots in the War of Independence. Nobody has testified to that fact more earnestly or more comprehensively than the Cubans themselves. They realized it. They appreciated it. They were and are profoundly grateful for it. Their testimony to it is ample for all time. America is relieved of the need of vaunting herself upon it. It would, however, be of a great error and a great injustice to assume that the intervention of the United States in April, 1898, was indispensable to the achievement of Cuban independence, or indeed that it was the United States that set Cuba free from Spain. That would be as great a perversion of the truth of history as it would be to pretend that the United States went to war with Spain over the sinking of the _Maine_. For the United States to have done the latter would have been one of the monumental crimes of history; and of course it was not done. War was inevitable before the _Maine_ went to Havana Harbor, and would have come just the same if the _Maine_ had not gone thither; perhaps sooner than it did, perhaps not so soon. So Cuban independence would have been won by the Cubans themselves if the United States had not intervened. Possibly it would have come sooner than it did; probably it would not have come so soon. But it would have come. Nobody who has studied the condition of affairs as they then were in Cuba can reasonably doubt it. Nor should recognition of that fact lessen in any degree the propriety--indeed, the necessity--of the American intervention or the grateful appreciation thereof which Cubans feel. To draw once more upon American history for an example which should convincingly appeal to Americans, the case may be likened to the intervention of France in the American Revolution. There is no American who does not remember that performance with sincere gratitude and with deep appreciation of the undoubtedly great aid which France rendered to the Thirteen Colonies. But I should doubt if there is a well informed American willing to concede that the French aid was indispensable, or that without it Washington and Greene would have been vanquished and the Revolution would have failed. American independence would have been achieved without French aid, though perhaps not so promptly and at greater cost. An immense service, also, which the United States rendered Cuba in the War of Independence antedated the actual intervention, and consisted in the aid in men, money and supplies which went from the United States to Cuba. It is true that this aid was given largely by Cubans resident in the United States, though many Americans also gave much in money, and some were permitted by the Cubans to give themselves for service in the army. It is also true that much of it was done in surreptitious violation of the neutrality laws; a species of law-breaking at which many United States officials were inclined to wink, and which by common consent was to be regarded as culpable only when it was found out, and then the finding out was more to be regretted than the act itself was to be condemned! Such is the "unwritten law" of international relations in cases in which the technical requirements of the law run counter to generous and righteous human sympathies. While, therefore, we must believe that even without American intervention in the actual war the Cubans would have won their independence, we may doubt whether such would have been the case if the United States had not all along been dose at hand, a resourceful and hospitable country, in which Cuban political exiles could find secure asylum, in which a Cuban Junta could plan revolution, in which funds to aid the patriot cause could be raised, and which, in brief, could partly in secret and partly in the open be used as a base of supplies and operations. It is to such aid that Cuba owes more than she does to the achievements of the American army and navy in 1898, admirable and useful as they were. Comparably great, as we shall most notably see in the ensuing chapters, were the services of the United States to Cuba after the War of Independence. These were manifold. The first was diplomatic, in serving as an intermediary between Cuba and Spain, in making the treaty of peace, and in securing the Spanish withdrawal from the island. There is no doubt that all those things were done more smoothly, more satisfactorily and more expeditiously than they could have been had they been left to direct settlement between Cuba and Spain. The services of the United States during the last part of 1898 were more indispensable than those of the spring and summer of that year. Indeed, it might perhaps be claimed that the chief advantage in having the United States intervene was that it enabled her to play that important part in the making of peace and the post-bellum readjustment. The second great service rendered by the United States was the rehabilitation of the island. This was a manifold undertaking. It comprised rehabilitation after many years of Spanish misrule and neglect, and rehabilitation after the ravages of three years of peculiarly destructive war. The civic maladies to be cured were thus both chronic and acute. Moreover, the work was political, and sanitary, and educational, and economic. Order was to be restored, law was to be administered, government was to be organized, pestilence was to be abated, schools were to be created, the whole work of civilization was to be performed. Splendid as was the work of Sampson's fleet at Santiago, still more beneficent was that of General Wood within the precincts of that city and throughout the Province of Oriente. Nobly memorable was the work of Shafter's army, but we shall read history to little avail if we do not give higher credit to the work of the Military Governor and his lieutenants. A third service was in acting as guide, philosopher and friend in the great task of organizing and installing the native Cuban government which had been promised by the United States in the act of declaring war against Spain. That self-abnegatory pledge was a noble thing, and noble was the faithful fulfilment of it. I have heard of an eminent and enlightened Cuban who regarded that pledge with incredulity, saying, "It can never be fulfilled!" and who persisted in that incredulity until that memorable noonday when the American flag came down from the Palace and the Morro and the flag of Cuba Libre rose in its place; and then, with tear-suffused eyes, exclaimed, "It can't be; but it is!" Never before in the history of the world had such a thing been done, but it was done and it was well done. There followed a fourth service, which we may hope has now been definitely completed, but which in the very nature of the case is a potentially recurrent service, which may--_absit omen!_--be needed again and again; and which the United States may be trusted to perform, if necessary, as faithfully and generously and efficiently as it has already performed it. For we shall see that after the Cuban government had been established and had vindicated its existence by great good service to the island, sordid and treacherous men unlawfully conspired against it and sought to overthrow it by violence and crime. Their success would have meant ruin for the island. Their partial success--for such they had--meant immeasurable loss. But fortunately the United States intervened as readily against Cuban crime as it had against Spanish oppression, and the republic was saved, though "as through fire." It is this service, following the others which I have named, which differentiates the Cuban Republic from most of the other states which have been formed from the Spanish Empire in America. Of the two states which at one time planned to wrest Cuba from Spain by force and make her a part of their community of nations, Colombia was for half a century in a chronic condition of revolution, and Mexico through the same evil processes has given the word Mexicanize to the political vocabulary. It was the intention of the United States that Cuba should not fall into that category; but it is by no means certain that she would not have done so had it not been for the guardianship of that country. * * * * * Our history will disclose more than all these things. These are the records of achievement. But there are other records, even those of conditions as they exist, and as they have been made to exist by virtue of these achievements. Marvellous indeed shall we find them. The story of Cuba's development from a neglected and oppressed colony to an independent nation is stirring and impressive, adorned with the names and deeds of brave men. The story of her development in civilization, from a backward rank to the foremost, is no less impressive, and it is adorned with the names and the labors of wise men, statesmen and scholars, who gave of their best for the welfare of the insular republic for which so many of their kin gave willingly their very lives. The account which we shall have of the opulent charms and resources of Cuba may be regarded as a volume of contemporary history. It will reveal to us some of the consequences of that narrative of the past which forms the major portion of our story. But it will be more and will do more than that. It must serve as an intimation, a suggestion, almost perhaps a prophecy, of what the future of the Pearl of the Antilles will be. Grateful as is the work of recalling and rehearsing the story of the past, from the days of Columbus and Velasquez to the present, the historian finds it more pleasant and more welcome to dwell upon the present scene. If these volumes, laboriously produced and with a consciousness too often of falling short of the high merits of the theme, shall serve their intended purpose of introducing Cuba, past and present, more fully and most favorably to the knowledge of the world, I shall be more than abundantly repaid. But the supreme and most enduring satisfaction will come from some assurance that I have brought to the appreciative attention of the world not merely the Cuba of four centuries past, with all its legends of adventure and romance, and too often of cruelty and crime, and with its fluctuating though still persistent progress toward the "foremost files of time," but also and still more the Cuba of this present moment and, we may hope, of unmeasured future time. It is a Cuba that is beautiful for situation, opulent in resources, entrancing in charm, illimitable in potentialities; a land of "fair women and brave men," upon which recollection fondly dwells; a land which justifies the latest writer concerning it to repeat once more the estimate of the first who ever wrote of it--"the most beautiful that the eyes of man have ever seen." WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON. New York, U. S. A., June, 1919. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I 1 "In Cuba the Annals of America Begin"--The First Landing Place of Columbus--Theories Concerning Various Islands--His Expectation of Reaching the Coast of Asia--Cuba Supposed to be Cathay--The Physical History of Cuba--Character of the Aboriginal Inhabitants--A Race of Amiable Savages Without Enduring Monuments. CHAPTER II 11 Discovery of Cuba on Sunday, October 28, 1492--The First Landing Place on the Island--Named for the Heir of the Spanish Throne--Appreciation of the Beauty and Charm of the Island--First Contact with its Inhabitants--Exploration of the Northern Coast--Cuba Supposed to be the Country of the Great Khan--Further Explorations of the Coast--Departure for Hispaniola--Second Visit to Cuba--Exploration of the Southern Coast--Discovery of Jamaica--Navigating the Caribbean Sea--Some Inland Excursions--Experiences with the Natives--Reaching the Western End of the Island--Exhortation of a Native Sage--Columbus's Final Departure from Cuba. CHAPTER III 28 First Impressions of Cuba--Columbus's Observations of the People and Resources of the Island--Native Villages and Boats--Negotiations with the Natives--First Use of Tobacco by Europeans--Columbus's Meagre Knowledge of the Island--His Death and Burial in Hispaniola--Removal of His Remains to Havana--Disputes Concerning His Tomb--Final Return of His Remains to Spain. CHAPTER IV 37 Archeology of Cuba--The Oldest Rock Formation--Theory of Cuban Continuity with Florida--The Eocene Age--Submersion in the Oligocene Period--Miocene Uplift--Changes During the Pleistocene Period--Topography of the Island--The Mountain Ranges--The Mountains of Oriente--The Organ Mountains and Magotes--The Valley of the Vinales--Plains and Valleys--Composition of the Soil--The Climate of Cuba--Fortunate Situation of the Island--The Rainfall of a Land of Sunshine. CHAPTER V 53 Neglect of Cuba by Spanish Explorers and Conquerors--Rule of Ovando--Ocampo Discovers Cuba to be an Island--First Attempts at Colonization--Enciso's Story of Ojeda's Adventure--A Test Between Christianity and Paganism--The Lust of Gold--Diego and Bartholomew Columbus--Diego Velasquez Appointed Governor--His First Settlement at Baracoa--The War with Hatuey--Narvaez and His Horsemen--Las Casas the "Apostle to the Indies"--More Trouble with the Natives--Exploration of the Island Throughout its Length. CHAPTER VI 68 Marriage and Bereavement of Velasquez--Other Settlements Founded in Cuba--Santiago Made the First Capital--System of Government--Apportionment of the Natives to the Settlers--Appropriation of the Land--Evils of the Repartimiento System--The Statesmanship of Velasquez--Enslavement of the Natives--Famous Men in Cuba's Early History--Gold Mines and Fertile Plantations--Beginning of the Mission of Las Casas--Death of King Ferdinand and Accession of Charles I--Cardinal Ximenes--The Order of St. Jerome--The Fate of the Natives. CHAPTER VII 81 Gold Mining in Cuba--Political Organization of the Island--Relations with the Spanish Crown--Development of the Slave Trade--Expeditions to Yucatan--Exploration of the Mexican Coast--Failure of Grijalva's Expedition--The Expedition of Christopher de Olid--Unmerited Fate of Grijalva, the Discoverer and First Explorer of Mexico. CHAPTER VIII 90 Hernando Cortez Commissioned by Velasquez to Explore Mexico--Some Romantic Adventures--Why Cortez went to Cuba--His Relations with Velasquez--A Crisis in Spain's American Affairs--Appointment of Velasquez as Adelantado--Departure of Cortez--His Refusal to Return when Summoned by Velasquez--Arrival in Mexico--Appointment of Cortez as Royal Governor of New Spain--Preparations by Velasquez to Subdue Cortez--Disastrous Fate of Narvaez's Expedition--Conspiracy to Assassinate Cortez--Velasquez Removed from the Governorship of Cuba--Zuazo, the Second Governor--Vindication of Velasquez and Repudiation of Zuazo--Character and Work of First Cuban Governor. CHAPTER IX 105 Administration of Manuel de Rojas--The Rise of Cuba's Proper Interests--Development of Resources--Appointment of Altamarino--Post Mortem Investigation of Velasquez--Violent Opposition to Altamarino--Removal of a Discredited Governor--Accession of Guzman--Controversies over Local Government--Injudicious Course of Guzman--Protest Against the Tyranny of the Councils--"Cuba for the Cubans." CHAPTER X 115 Controversies Over the Treasurership--Appointment of Hurtado, the Honest but Cantankerous--Fortunes of the Guzman Family--A Marriage for Money and its Consequences--Services of Vadillo--Investigations and Reforms--Heavy Sentences Against Guzman--An Appeal to the Council for the Indies--Manuel de Rojas again Governor. CHAPTER XI 122 Development of the Church Establishment in Cuba--The First Bishop--Early Conflict Between Church and State--Transfer of the Cathedral from Baracoa to Santiago--A Bishop in Politics--The Governor Excommunicated--Insurrections and Raids of the Natives--Effective Work of Rojas against the Cimarrones--Disposal of the "Tame" Indians--Further Conflicts of Church and State--Intervention of the Crown--Practical Extermination of the Natives--Reforms that Were not Made--Well Meant Efforts of Rojas--Failure of Attempts to Civilize the Natives--A Good Governor Ill Treated--His Resignation and Departure. CHAPTER XII 137 Guzman's Second Administration--A Masterful Politician--Decline of Cuban Welfare--An Interregnum in the Governorship--The Coming of De Soto--His Imposing Arrival at Santiago--Progress Across the Island--Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa Made De Soto's Lieutenant--Cuba a Stepping Stone to Florida--De Soto's Removal from Santiago to Havana--Organization of the Florida Expedition--Report of the First Scouts--Departure of De Soto--Lady De Soto's Faithful Watch--Tragic Fate of the Explorer--Evil Effects upon Cuba--Serious Trouble with the Indians--Intrigues of Guzman and Bishop Sarmiento. CHAPTER XIII 151 Governorship of Juan de Avila--Royal Order against Slavery in the Mines--An Appeal to the Council for the Indies--Popular Revolt Against the Council--De Avila's Marriage to a Rich Widow--Removal to Havana--Appointment of Antonio Chaves--Scandalous Charges Against de Avila--The Matter Carried to Spain for Settlement--Another Bad Administration--Chaves Reprimanded by the King--His Persistence in Slavery--Hurtado's Indictment of Chaves--Gonzalo de Angulo Made Governor--Trial and Punishment of Chaves--Emancipation Proclamation. CHAPTER XIV 165 A Bad Time in Cuban History--Santiago in 1550--Raid of a French Privateer--The Founding and Rise of Havana--The Founding of Puerto Principe--Baracoa, Trinidad and Other Settlements--Italians and Other Aliens in Cuba--Efforts to Populate the Island--Importation of Negro Slaves--Slaves Treated Humanely--Disappearance of the Native Indians--The Early Industries of Cuba--Discovery of the Copper Mines of El Cobre--Beginning of the Sugar Industry--Fiscal Policy of the Spanish Government. CHAPTER XV 177 A Turning Point in Cuban History--International Interest in the Island--Raids of French Privateers--A Famous Fight in Santiago Harbor--The Capture and Looting of Havana--First Building of La Fuerza--Rise of Havana in Importance--The Governor's Residence in Havana--Deposition of Angulo--Guarding Havana Against French Attack--Inadequacy of the Defenses--Seizure of the City by Jacques Sores--Flight of the Governor and Resolute Defense of Lobera--Attempt to Destroy the French Conquerors--Destruction of the City. CHAPTER XVI 191 Administration of Mazariegos--His Disastrous Voyage--Rebuilding of Havana--Manners and Morals of a Soldier of Fortune--Defense of Havana by a Military Governor--Improvement of the Fortifications--Rebuilding La Fuerza--The Founding of Morro Castle--Complications in Florida--Osorio Appointed Governor--His Care for the Defenses of the Island--The Campaigns of Pedro Menendez--Conflict Between Osorio and Menendez--Attempts at Mutiny--Disagreement over Fortifications--Illegitimate Trade at Santiago--Menendez Appointed Governor--A Succession of Lieutenants--Charting the Bahama Channel--Codifying Municipal Ordinances. CHAPTER XVII 208 Approach of the "Sea Beggars"--More Work on La Fuerza--Seeking Financial Aid from Mexico--A Requisition for Slave Labor--Investigating Public Accounts--The Downfall of Menendez--Investigation of His Accounts--Succeeded by Montalvo--Increase of Smuggling--General Progress of the Island--Havana the Commercial Metropolis. CHAPTER XVIII 217 Governorship of Montalvo--Rehabilitation of Santiago--Disorder at Havana--Conflict with the Rojas Family--Charges Made Against the Governor--The Increase of Smuggling--Ravages of the French--Seeking Naval Defenses for Cuba--Haggling Over the Building of La Fuerza--A Badly Built Fort--Montalvo's Development of Insular Resources--Promotion of Sugar Growing and General Agriculture--The Governor's Quarrel with the Bishop. CHAPTER XIX 228 Administration of Francisco Carreño--The First Cuban Governor to Die in Office--A Record of Hard Work and Progress--The Problem of Free Negroes--Features of the Slave System--Some Literally Constructive Statesmanship--The First Custom House--Trying to Deal with the Land Question--The Reforms Proposed by Caceres--Development of Stock Raising--Bad Administration of Torres. CHAPTER XX 236 Administration of Gabriel de Luzan--Controversies Among Officials--The Quarrel Between Luzan and Arana--Questions of Official Residence--Removal of the Royal Accountant--Charges Against the Governor--Further Efforts to Complete La Fuerza--The Work of Quiñones--Unseemly Personal and Political Feuds--Investigation of the Governor's Administration--Renewal of the Quarrel with Quiñones--Governor and Captain-General Brought into Accord Through Peril of an Attack by the British--Desperate Preparations for Defense. CHAPTER XXI 246 War Between Spain and England--Drake's Conquest of Hispaniola--An Attack upon Cuba Anticipated--Raising Forces for Defense--Feuds Forgotten in the Common Emergency--Plans for the Defense of Havana--Increase of the Garrison--Admirable Unity of the People--Drake's Approach to Cuba--His Landing at the Western End of the Island--Appearance of his Fleet off Havana--Departure of Drake's Fleet without an Assault--His Doings at St. Augustine and in the North--Reasons for Not Attacking Havana--Disaster to Santiago--That City Destroyed by the French--Rebuilt by an Energetic Patriot--Interest in Copper Mining. CHAPTER XXII 260 Drake's Menace a Blessing to Cuba--Spanish Interest in Cuba for Its Own Sake--The Governorship of Tejada--The Public Works of Antonelli--Building Roads, Dams and Aqueducts--Havana Made a Real City--Controversy with Bishop Salcedo--Appreciation of Tejada's Services--Accession of Barrionuevo--Progress of Civilization in Cuba--The First Theatrical Performance. CHAPTER XXIII 267 Changes in European Nations--Rise of the Protectionist Policy--Retaliation by Smugglers--Hostilities against Spain--Prevalence of Piracy--Some Strong Governors of Cuba--Good Works of Maldonado and Valdes--Invasions by Pirates--Division of the Island--Interest in Religious Affairs--Successive Governors Working at Cross Purposes--Building a Fleet--Protection of the Port of Havana--An Attack by the Dutch--The Exploits of Oquendo--The Slave Market in Havana--Fall of Cabrera. CHAPTER XXIV 283 The Decline of Spain--Enterprise and Aggressions of the Dutch--The Dutch West India' Company--Governors Who Saved Cuba for Spain--Warring with Dutch Privateers--The Great Fight with Pie de Palo--Fiscal Reforms in Cuba--Gamboa's Improvement of Fortifications--Sarmiento's Organization of Cuban Troops--Ravages of a Great Pestilence--Noble Deeds of the Religious Orders--Public Works Planned--The Walls of Havana--Aggressions of the British--Conquest of Jamaica--Records of Piracy--Exploits of Lolonois--Henry Morgan--British Capture and Plundering of Santiago--Repairing the Fortifications--A Compact against Piracy. CHAPTER XXV 304 British Designs against Spanish Possessions--Covetous Eyes Turned upon Cuba by British Empire-Builders--Isolation of Cuba from Spain--France Playing False--Cuban Reprisals--Further Attacks by Freebooters--Controversy over British Prisoners--Disastrous Earthquakes--Ecclesiastical Troubles--Spain at the Brink of Bankruptcy--Cordova's Administration--Revised Code of Laws for the Indies--Civil and Ecclesiastical Controversies--Some Ruthless Work--Founding of the City of Matanzas--Official Disputes and Scandals. CHAPTER XXVI 325 The War of the Austrian Succession--The Treaty of Utrecht--Reign of Philip V--Renewed Conflicts in the West Indies--Settlement of Pensacola--Aggressions of the French--Cuban Interests Affected by European Affairs--Increased Protection of the Island--Two Local Governors--Attacks upon Charleston--Raids of British Warships--Speculation in Tobacco--More Fortifications in a Time of Peace--Churches and Convents--Sanitary Measures--Official Quarrels--Reorganization of the Tobacco Industry--Seeking Administrative Stability--A Tobacco Insurrection--A Warning to the British--Fortifications of Havana. CHAPTER XXVII 345 Great Impetus Given to Discovery and Exploration Throughout the World--Interesting Observations upon Cuba and the Indies--Some Quaint Records--A Description of the Natives of Cuba--Something About the Natural Resources of the Island from Ancient Authorities--Spanish and Alien Descriptions of Cuba--Early Writings About Cuba in Various Languages--Fra Vincente Fonseca--A Dutch Description of Cuba--Attention Given to the Wealth of Cuban Forests--Reasons Given for the Rise and Subsequent Decline of Spanish Power--Some Superstitions and Legends. CHAPTER XXVIII 360 Cuba Neglected During an Era of Great Achievements--The Golden Age of Spain--Culture at Home and Conquest Abroad--A Noteworthy Group of Spanish Historians--The University of Santo Domingo--The First American Books--Cuba's Lack of Participation in these Activities, and the Reasons for it--A Turning Point in Cuban History at the End of the Sixteenth Century--Cubans Beginning to Become Cubans and Not Spaniards--A Significant Change in the Temper and Character of the People of the Island. ILLUSTRATIONS FULL PAGE PLATES: Columbus (Janez Portrait) _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE The Havana Cathedral 36 La Fuerza 146 Morro Castle, Havana 180 San Francisco Church 226 Morro Castle, Santiago 298 TEXT EMBELLISHMENTS: PAGE Monument on Supposed First Tending Place of Columbus, Watling's Island 3 Queen Isabella 13 Diego Velasquez 59 Baracoa, First Capital of Cuba 60 Panfilo de Narvaez 63 Bartholomew de las Casas 64 Ponce de Leon 72 Hernando Cortez 90 Hernando de Soto 140 San Lazaro Watch Tower, Havana 155 Pedro Menendez de Aviles 199 THE HISTORY OF CUBA CHAPTER I CUBA; America: America; Cuba. The two names are inseparable. The record of each is in a peculiar sense identified with that of the other. Far more than any other land the Queen of the Antilles is associated with that Columbian enterprise from which the modern and practical history of the Western Hemisphere is dated. In Cuba the annals of America begin. This island was not, it is true, the first land discovered by Columbus after leaving Spain. It was at least the fifth visited and named by him, and it was perhaps the tenth or twelfth which he saw and at which he touched in passing. But in at least three major respects it had the unquestionable primacy among all the discoveries of his first, second and third voyages, while in his own estimation it was not surpassed in importance by the main land of the continent which he finally reached in his fourth and last expedition. It was the first land visited or seen by him of the identity of which there has never been the slightest question. It was the first considerable land discovered by him, the first which was worth while sailing across the ocean to discover, and it was by far the most important of all found by him in his first three adventures. It was, also, the first and indeed the only land which caused him to believe that the theory of his undertaking had been vindicated and that the supreme object of his quest had been attained. Let us, in order to appreciate the transcendent significance of his discovery of Cuba, briefly consider these three circumstances. We must remember with respect to the first that the identity of Columbus's first landing place has been much disputed, and indeed has never been determined to universal satisfaction: We know that it was an island of small or moderate size. Columbus himself called it in one place "small" and in another "fairly large." It was level, low-lying, well watered, with a large central lagoon, which may or may not have been a permanent feature, seeing that his visit was in the rainy season, when any depression in the land was likely to be flooded. It was certainly one of the Bahama archipelago. But that extensive group comprises 36 islands, 687 cays, and 2,414 rocks. Which of all these was it upon which the Admiral landed, which was called by the natives Guanahani, and which, with his characteristic religious fervor, Columbus immediately renamed San Salvador, the Island of the Holy Saviour? The distinction has been claimed, by authorities worthy of respectful consideration, for no fewer than five. Down to the middle of the Nineteenth Century the weight of opinion and tradition favored Cat Island, and upon most maps and charts it was designated as "Guanahani, or San Salvador." It is by far the largest and the northernmost of the five islands in question. Next, to the southeast, lies Watling's Island, to which the distinction of having been the scene of Columbus's landfall has now for half a century been most generally given, and upon maps it is generally named San Salvador. It is the only one of the five which stands out in the Atlantic, beyond the generally uniform line of the Bahamas, as a sort of advance post to greet the voyager from the east. Samana, south by east from Watling's, also called Attwood's Cay, was selected as the true Guanahani by some officers of the United States Coast Survey. Mariguana, further in the same direction, was proclaimed "La Verdadera Guanahani" by F. A. de Varnhagen in a scholarly treatise published in 1864 at Santiago de Chili. Finally, Grand Turk Island, at the southeastern extremity of the Bahama chain, and just north of the coast of Hayti, was designated by Navarrete, in 1825, and by various other authorities, chiefly American, at later dates. [Illustration: MONUMENT ON SUPPOSED FIRST LANDING PLACE OF COLUMBUS, WATLING'S ISLAND] The chief interest of these speculations for present consideration in this writing is their bearing upon the subsequent course of Columbus, the identity of the next islands which he visited, and finally the point at which he first touched the coast of Cuba. If the original landfall was on Cat or on Watling's Island, then the second land visited, which Columbus called Santa Maria de la Concepcion, was probably either the tiny island now known as Concepcion or the larger Rum Cay; the third, called by him Ferdinandina or Fernandina, was either Great Exuma or Long Island; the fourth, Isabella, may have been either Long Island or Crooked Island, according to whether Fernandina was Great Exuma or Long Island; and the coast of Cuba was reached at some point between Punta Lucrecia and Port Nuevitas. On the other hand, if Grand Turk Island was first reached, the second land would naturally have been, as Navarrete held, at Gran Caico; the third at Little Inagua; the fourth at Great Inagua; and Cuba would have been reached somewhere between Cape Maysi and Sama Point. To me it seems decidedly the more probable that the former course was pursued, and I have accordingly adopted the theory that Columbus first landed in Cuba in the region between Nuevitas and Punta Lucrecia. The second circumstance which I have mentioned scarcely requires discussion. The first, second and third voyages of Columbus were confined to discoveries and explorations of the West India Islands, and of all of these, even including Hayti and Jamaica, there can be no question of Cuba's primacy, whether in size, in wealth of resources, in political and strategical importance, or in historical interest. It was so recognized by Columbus himself, who indeed in one respect actually esteemed it more highly than it deserved. For after long and careful exploration he became convinced that it was not an island, but was the mainland of the Asian continent--Mangi, or Cathay: that country of the Great Khan of which Marco Polo had written and which Toscanelli had indicated upon his map, and the visiting of which was the supreme object of the Admiral's enterprise. To understand this aright we must remember that Columbus was not seeking a new continent. He had no thought that one existed. He held, with Isidore of Seville, that all the lands of the world were comprehended in Europe, Africa and Asia, and that there was only one great ocean, the Atlantic, which stretched unbroken save by islands from the western shores of Europe and Africa to the eastern coast of Asia and the East Indies. Moreover, he considerably overestimated the extent of Asia and underestimated the circumference of the earth. Years later, long after the circumnavigation of the globe had been effected, Antonio Galvano, learned historian and geographer though he was, computed the equatorial circumference of the earth at only 23,500 miles, or about 1,400 miles too little; while the best maps of the sixteenth century indicated the Asian continent as extending far into the western hemisphere, and the Pacific Ocean as a narrow strip not nearly comparable with the Atlantic in extent. Schoener's globe, of 1520, which is still to be seen at Nuremberg, represents the "Terra de Cuba" as integral with the whole North American continent, with its western coast only five degrees of longitude or 300 miles from the shore of Zipangu or Japan, and only 30 degrees or 1,800 miles from the mainland of Asia. Columbus therefore expected to find the coast of Asia in about the longitude in which he actually found America. When he reached the Bahamas he confidently assumed them to be the group of islands which Toscanelli had indicated as lying off the coast of Cathay; and when he learned from the natives of a much larger island lying to the south, which they called Colba, Cuba, or Cubanacan, he believed it to be none other than Cipango, or Zipangu, which Toscanelli had shown as by far the largest of the East Indian islands. It has been commonly assumed, apparently with little dispute or attempt at investigation, that Cipango was Japan. But the distance--1,500 miles--at which it was said to lie from the coast of China, the southerly latitude assigned to it, and the multitude of small islands which were clustered about and near it, are circumstances which suggest that instead of Japan the island meant may have been Luzon, the northernmost and largest of the Philippines. However that may be, Columbus promptly decided to steer straight for Cipango, with the result that he reached the northern shore of the eastern part of Cuba. The third circumstance which I have mentioned was then developed. It was a great triumph, and a vindication of his enterprise, that he had reached Cipango. But even that was not enough. He was in quest of the mainland of Mangi or Cathay, the land of the Great Khan. He found in Cuba no traces of the opulence and splendor of which Marco Polo had written. Yet the natives frequently referred to "Cuba-nacan" as a great place somewhere in the interior. The phrase merely meant the central part of the island, but the final syllable was identified by Columbus with "Khan," and, with the wish as father of the thought, he presently conceived the notion that it was not the island of Cipango upon which he had landed, but the shore of Cathay itself. Further explorations, including coasting along the northern shore to within a few miles of the western extremity, confirmed him in this belief, which became absolute conviction. To the end of his life, therefore, he believed that Cuba was the eastern extremity of the Asian continent, which indeed Toscanelli had delineated upon his map as terminating in a long, narrow cape; and it was upon the strength of this belief and report of Columbus that Schoener in 1520 and Muenster in 1532 identified Cuba with the whole North American continent, while various other cartographers of that time made it integral with Cathay itself. The maps of La Cosa and Ruysch, in 1508, hinted at this. The Nancy Globe, and a notable map in the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, dated 1530, do, it is true, indicate Cuba to be an island, but they also make India Superior and Tibet contiguous with Mexico at the northwest, with the latter country fronting directly upon the Indian Ocean. We know, of course, that during his second voyage, in 1494, while off the southern coast of Cuba, Columbus required his companions to sign with him a formal declaration that they were off the coast of Asia. Such, then, was the Admiral's estimate of Cuba, in which there is no reason to doubt he persisted to the end of his life. He had achieved the object of his great adventure: He had reached the country of the Great Khan. Despite these delusions and vagaries, however, the facts remain that he did discover and partly explore Cuba, and that it was the first land in the Western Hemisphere of which that can confidently be said. Cuba is therefore the starting point of the history of the Columbian discovery and exploration and the subsequent colonization and civilization of America. With Cuba the history of the New World begins. Similarly, and with equal truth, we may say that the history of Cuba begins with the Columbian discovery of America. That is not true of all parts of the American continents. Some of them had already had important histories. The northeastern coast of North America had been visited and temporarily colonized by the Norsemen, and the northwestern coast by the Chinese; and both of those peoples had left enduring traces of their enterprise. The Iroquois and Algonquins had for centuries enjoyed a degree of social, political and industrial development, the records of which still survive. The Toltecs, the Mayas and the Incas had risen to a height of culture not unworthy to be compared with that of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome, the remains of which to this day command the wonder and admiration of the world. But not so Cuba. Carlyle might well have had this island in mind when he said, "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books." The physical history of Cuba indicates that in some remote period the two mountainous ends of the island were two separate and distinctly different islands, separated by a considerable stretch of sea, and that they were afterward united by a rising of the bottom of the sea, to form the central plain of Cuba. It is observed that the two ends are unlike each other on geological structure and composition, in soil, and in indigenous flora. Indeed, they have ever differed from each other radically in their cultivated crops. At what date the union of them occurred, and by what means it was effected, we can only guess. But it is a reasonable assumption that the raising of the sea-floor to form the central plain of the island was caused by one of the seismic disturbances to which this general region of the earth's surface has from time immemorial been subject. There are, moreover, reasons for suspecting that this occurred at a time subsequent to the creation of man, and indeed after both of the original islands had become inhabited. That is because the two ends of the island appear, in Columbus's day, to have been occupied by different races. Of the inhabitants of the western end we know comparatively little, save that they were more warlike and adventurous than those at the east, and several authorities have likened them either to the Caribs or to the Mayas of Yucatan. That they were Mayas seems, however, doubtful, since they left no traces of the high degree of civilization which formerly prevailed among that distinguished race in Yucatan. The people of the eastern end of Cuba, when the island was discovered by Columbus, were doubtless of Antillan stock, or "Tainan" as some have called them, with possibly a slight admixture of Carib, though not sufficient materially to affect them in any respect. They were physically a handsome, stalwart people, of a light reddish brown color, somewhat lighter than the North American Indians. They wore no clothing, with the exception of the married women, who wore breech clouts, and confined their adornments to slight necklaces and bracelets. They lived in neatly constructed cabins of cane or bamboo and thatch, rectangular or circular in form and generally of two or three rooms each; equipped with furniture of cane or of handsomely carved wood. For beds, however, they used hammocks, of woven cotton or plaited grass; the name, hammock, being of Antillan or Carib origin. These houses were, according to early Spanish testimony, kept scrupulously clean and neat. They were grouped in villages, around a central square which served as a market place and playground. They were agriculturists, tilling the ground with considerable skill and producing yuca, corn, beans, peanuts, squashes, peppers and various other crops, besides fruits and tobacco. They were singularly expert fishermen, and for the purpose of that pursuit they constructed fine canoes, of the hollowed boles of large trees, but unlike the Caribs they do not seem to have resorted to navigation for any other purpose. They also hunted game on the land, solely for food, but their hunting was much restricted, since there were no large animals of any kind on the island. Their manufactures were confined to primitive cotton weaving, wood carving, basketry, pottery--of a pretty good quality of decorated ware--and various stoneware implements. In disposition and manners they were friendly, hospitable, courteous, and confiding. Despite their nudity they had the unconscious modesty of nature, and their morals were superior to those of most primitive peoples. The tradition that venereal diseases prevailed among them and were thus first made known to European peoples through their having been acquired from the natives by Columbus's men, seems to be quite void of foundation; indubitable proof exists of the prevalence of those diseases in both Europe and Asia at an earlier date than Columbus's time. They practised but recognized domestic, social and civic equality of the sexes. They were almost universal tobacco smokers, and it was from them that the use of that plant was first learned. They were pleasure loving, much given to dancing, to games of ball, and to swimming. Their form of government was patriarchal, though there seem to have been chiefs of some sort over whole villages or even districts. The laws were, however, mild and humane. In religion they presented a striking and most grateful contrast to the Toltecs, Aztecs and other peoples of the continent, having none of the human sacrifices and atrocious tortures that disfigured their worship. They believed in a Supreme Being and a future and immortal life. They had a form of worship in which the use of idols as symbols, and the smoking of tobacco, largely figured. They had a regularly constituted priest-hood, the members of which they credited with powers of divination and of healing. There were none of the revolting practises and superstitions, however, which have been common to many primitive peoples. They were not warlike, and had no military organization, but they certainly were not cowards, as some of the early Spanish conquistadors had cause to know. They had, it is obvious, nothing which could survive them as a memorial of their existence. Their architecture, if so it may be called, was most perishable. They had no art, save in pottery, and that was not highly developed. They had no literature. The result was that when they perished through unfavorable contact with a more powerful and aggressive race they left scarcely a trace of themselves behind, save in the records and testimony of their conquerors and destroyers. Some specimens of their pottery have been preserved: the words "hammock" and "canoe" come to us from them; and the use of tobacco is their universal memorial. Such were the aborigines, if not the absolute autochthones, of Cuba. Their only history lives in the brief and scanty records of them made by their destroyers. They left no enduring impress upon the island, save its name. How many they were is unknown, and estimates which are mere guesses differ widely. In a single generation they disappeared, partly through slaughter and partly through such diseases as small pox and measles, which were introduced to the island--of course, not intentionally--by the Spaniards, and which the natives were unable to resist. The only significant history of Cuba begins, therefore, with the landfall of Christopher Columbus upon its shores. CHAPTER II Sunday, October 28, 1492, was the natal day of Cuba; the day of its advent into the ken of the civilized world. At the island which he called Isabella--either Long Island or Crooked Island--Columbus had heard of a very great land which the natives called Cuba, and which, the wish being father to the thought, he instantly identified with Cipango. Toward it, therefore, his course had thereafter been directed. Progress was slow, because of contrary winds and calms, and there were numerous small islands along the way to engage at least passing attention. Particularly was there a group of seven or eight, lying in a row extending north and south, which he called the Islas de Arena, and which we may confidently identify with the Mucaras. Early on the morning of Saturday, October 27, he had left the last of the Sandy Isles behind, and from a point considerably to the eastward of them, probably near what is now known as Rocky Heads, he had set his course a little west of south for the shore of Cuba. Thus he had passed across the southeastern end of the Great Bahama Bank, since most appropriately called the Columbus Bank, until just at nightfall he had seen looming before him on the southern horizon the mountainous form of a vast land. It was too late, however, to continue the voyage that night, so he lay to, and at earliest daybreak of Sunday morning, leaving behind him the islet fittingly called Caya Santo Domingo, completed his course to the land which he fondly but vainly hailed as the much-sought Cipango. The coast at the point at which he reached it seemed specially designed by nature for his favorable and auspicious reception. There lay before him what seemed the estuary of a large and beautiful river, free from rocks or other impediments, and with a very gentle current. It had an ample depth of water for his vessels, and was sufficiently broad, even at a considerable distance inland, for them to beat about in. It was encircled by lofty and picturesque hills, the aspect of which reminded him of the "Pena de los Enamorados" near Granada, in Spain; and upon the summit of one of them was what he described as another little hill, shaped like a graceful mosque. Enchanted with the vision, and gratified beyond expression at what he confidently assumed to be the reaching of his goal and the vindication of his enterprise, he gave to the spot a repetition of the name which he had devoutly bestowed upon his first landfall, calling the port San Salvador. The identity of this spot has been much questioned and disputed; perhaps even more than that of Columbus's first landing in the Bahamas; and it is not to be regarded as entirely certain. Washington Irving pretty confidently placed it at Caravelas Grandes, far to the west of Nuevitas del Principe, while others insist that it was at Nuevitas itself. Navarrete, on the other hand, with his theory that the first landfall was at Grand Turk Island, held that Cuba was reached at Nipe Bay, east of Holguin; while Las Casas and Herrera insisted that the port of San Salvador was at Baracoa, near Cape Maysi, at the extreme eastern end of the island. Midway between the extremes, that most scholarly and judicious of geographers, Sir Clements Markham, selected the natural harbor of Naranjo, a little to the west of Punta Lucrecia and Punta Mulas. Other historians and geographers, after painstaking research, declare that they do not believe the place can be determined. With this, in the ultimate analysis, I would agree. It is probably impossible to establish indisputably the identity of the place. Yet it does seem to me that the arguments in favor of Naranjo, as selected by Markham, are so strong as to be all but entirely convincing, and that it will be judicious, therefore, to assume that it was there that the Admiral first reached the shore of Cuba. A glance at the map shows this to be the region which was nearest and which he was likeliest to reach first, coming from either Long Island or Crooked Island, eastward of the Mucaras, on a south-southwest course, which, we are told, is what he steered. The port of Naranjo answers to his description in depth and breadth more nearly than any other on that part of the coast. It is the estuary of a considerable river, as was Columbus's San Salvador, though how large the river really was he does not appear to have undertaken to ascertain, though he did ascend the stream some little distance on his first day's visit. Finally, it is to be observed that Naranjo is girt about by hills, precisely as was his San Salvador, and on the crest of one of them there is a huge rock, jutting up like "another little hill" and roughly resembling in shape a mosque, because of which the hill is called "Loma del Temple." This, then, and not Nuevitas, Nipe, nor Baracoa, I believe to have been the scene of Columbus's discovery of Cuba. [Illustration: QUEEN ISABELLA] We have seen that Columbus at first unhesitatingly believed it to be Cipango which he had reached. Despite that fact, and also despite the fact that the natives called it Cuba, he insisted upon renaming it. In accordance with his previous practice in nomenclature, it must have a very noble and distinguished name. His first landfall he had named for the Holy Saviour Himself; the second for the Holy Virgin; the third for the King, and the fourth for the Queen of Leon and Castile. The next name in order, in dignity and distinction, was that of the heir to the dual throne, wherefore he named the land Juana. Most writers, including Irving, have made the curious but facile mistake of saying that this name was given "in honor of Prince Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella." It was, in fact, in honor of Princess Juana, the daughter of those sovereigns. She was that unhappy princess who because of her insanity was called "La Loca," and who by her marriage with Philip of Burgundy and of Hapsburg brought a new dynasty to the Spanish throne and greatly involved the monarchy in the politics and wars of Central Europe. Juana was mentally incompetent to succeed to the throne of Castile which she inherited upon the death of her mother, wherefore she was compelled to relinquish it to the regency of her father; and when he united Castile with Aragon, and conquered and annexed Navarre and Granada, and thus became the first King of Spain, Cuba was renamed in his honor and known no longer as Juana but as Ferdinandina, or Fernandina. Still later it was called San Diego, or Santiago; and again Ave Maria Alfa y Omega. But these names were transitory. The natives never accepted one of them, but clung to the old name of Cuba, and there was a fine touch of poetic justice in the fact that that name survived the extinction of the race that had cherished it. Under the ruthless rule of the Conquistadores the aboriginal population of the island almost entirely vanished, and with them practically all traces of their existence save four. These were the name and use of tobacco, the name and use of hammocks, the name and use of canoes, and the name of the island itself. It would not have been surprising, and it would have been quite pardonable, had Columbus seen everything in the New World through glasses of _couleur de rose_. Naturally of a romantic and imaginative temperament, he experienced in the realization of his long-cherished ambition such a degree of spiritual and mental exaltation as seldom has come to mortal man. Yet quite apart from this, the native beauty of Cuba, as seen to our eyes to-day, abundantly justifies the rhapsodies in which he indulged in describing it. On that first memorable Sunday he wrote in his diary, "This is the most beautiful land ever beheld by human eyes." From the quarter-deck of the _Santa Maria_ he gazed with rapture upon the profuse verdure of the shore and of the hills which rose in the back-ground, observing with admiration and surprise that the trees grew down to the very water's edge, as did also the herbage, as he had never seen it elsewhere. The palms and other trees were largely of different kinds from those which he had seen in Spain, in Guinea, and elsewhere, and they bore flowers and fruit in great profusion, while among them were innumerable birds, beautiful to the eye and with songs entrancing to the ear. Two canoes, containing each several natives, put out from a recess in the harbor shore to meet the Spanish ships, but when a boat was lowered from one of the latter, to proceed ahead and take soundings, they incontinently fled. Columbus himself then entered a small boat and went ashore, where he found two houses, which he assumed to belong to the owners of the two canoes. No persons were to be found upon the premises, and the only living things were "a kind of dog that never barks," which we may assume to have been some small animal of the ant bear tribe, now probably extinct or at any rate no longer domesticated. The houses were notably neat and clean, and were evidently the abode of fishermen, since in them were nets and cordage of palm fibre, fish-hooks of horn, and harpoons of bone. All about the houses the herbage was as profuse, at the end of October, as it was in Andalusia in May. Most of the herbs as well as the trees were strange to Columbus, but he found some wild amaranth, and much common purslane. He went some distance up the harbor, or river as he called it, at every step or stroke of the oars seeing something new to excite his admiration. The natives of Guanahani whom he had brought on his ship informed him that Cuba was a very large island, which could not be circumnavigated in twenty days; that it contained ten large rivers and that its whole expanse was well watered. They were also understood by Columbus to say that gold mines and pearls were to be found in the island, and that large ships came thither from the mainland domains of the Grand Khan, ten days' sail away. The bulk of this "information" was of course quite mistaken by Columbus, his vivid imagination and his eager desires easily misleading him into interpreting anything which the natives might say, largely in sign language, as meaning just what he wished to be true. The next day Columbus left San Salvador and sailed westward along the coast. That was the direction in which, according to the natives of Guanahani, the mainland and the capital of the King or the Grand Khan were to be found. That, too, was the direction in which Mangi and Cathay were to be found according to the map of Toscanelli, assuming Cuba to be Cipango: which Columbus at this stage of his enterprise confidently believed. Of the researches of the great voyager along the Cuban coast we have a detailed account in his journal. Unfortunately, there is no certain means of identifying the points at which he landed. They are described as being so many leagues from his starting point, San Salvador; wherefore it is obvious that all depends upon the identity of the latter. Yet it seems to me that his account of his coastwise explorations strongly confirms the theory that his San Salvador was Port Naranjo and not Nuevitas. For we are told that six leagues westward he found a cape or point of land extending toward the northwest; ten leagues further another point, extending toward the east; one league further a small river, which he called the Rio de la Luna; and beyond it another much larger river, which he called the Rio de Mares. This latter river had for its estuary a broad basin resembling a lake, and its entrance was marked by two round mountains on the one side and a lofty promontory on the other. Now, making reasonable allowance for lack of accuracy in measurements and for discrepancies in descriptions, this account may readily be applied to the coast westward from Port Naranjo to Nuevitas, while it is altogether inapplicable to the coast westward from Nuevitas. For a score of leagues westward from Naranjo there are capes and mountains and rivers, and there is more than one river with precisely such a lagoon-like estuary as that which Columbus found at his Rio de Mares. Indeed, Port Padre, with its extensive lagoon into which several rivers flow, or Port Manati, with the Cramal and Yarigua rivers, might either of them be identified, in approximate distance and in topography, with the Rio de Mares. On the other hand, if we were to assume Nuevitas to have been the starting point, what should we find? Either he must have been skirting the outer side of the Sabinal and Romano keys, and Guajaba Island, which do not at all coincide with the description given, or he must have been navigating the great littoral lagoon between those keys and the mainland of Cuba; in which latter case it is to be observed that that part of the Cuban coast does not correspond with his description, and that it is certainly extraordinary that he made no mention of his voyage having been in what is practically an inland sea. That he could have passed in through the Nuevitas Channel, or the Carebelas Channel, or the Guajaba Channel, without observing and remarking upon Sabinal Key, Guajaba Island, or Romano Key, is simply not supposable. Such a feature of "Cipango" could not have escaped notice on his first arrival there, though it might easily have been ignored or passed over as of no special significance in subsequent explorations. On Tuesday of that memorable week, October 30, Columbus left the Rio de Mares and sailed to the northwest for fifteen leagues, and there discovered a point which he named the Cape of Palms. Beyond it was a river, the entrance of which was said to be four days' journey from what the natives called Cubanacan, meaning the heart of the island, the centre of Cuba. With his characteristic habit of interpreting native names and statements in accordance with his own desires, Columbus at once assumed this to mean Kublai Khan, or the City of the Khan, of which he was in quest; and accordingly he bent all his energies and gave all his attention to getting thither, disregarding the things which he passed by on the way. It was probably at this time, therefore, that he sailed through one of the channels among the keys, and entered the great coastal sound which stretches from Nuevitas to Caibarien, if not indeed to Cardenas. He reached the river on Wednesday, but found it too shallow for his ships, and therefore, after some fruitless cruisings, returned to the Rio de Mares. It was on November 12 that he again sailed from the Rio de Mares, and on the next day that he sailed south-westward into a great gulf, which he supposed to divide Cuba from another island called by the natives "Bohio"--the word really meaning not an island at all but "home." Thereafter for some time he was obviously cruising around Guajaba Island and Romano Key, which, with Sabinal Key, he supposed to be the mythical "Bohio." Some port, possibly Boca de la Yana, he called Puerto Principe, and the water, presumably between Thiguano Island and Cocos Key, he called the Mar de la Nuestra Senora. Rounding Guillermo Key, as we may suppose, he swung into the Old Bahama Channel, and by wind and tide was carried backward to Guajaba Island and perhaps to Nuevitas. Thence he made his way westward and southward, rounding Point Sama and Point Lucrecia, and reaching Port Nipe and Port Banes on the morning of November 27. Those two capacious bays he did not attempt to enter. He regarded them indeed not as bays but as straits, or arms of the sea, and the promontory between them he supposed to be an island. At Taco he landed for a few moments, and then pursued his way, and at nightfall dropped anchors at what he called Puerto Santo, which we may probably identify with the modern Baracoa. There he remained until December 4, when he sailed to the southeast, and the following day passed out of sight of Cape Maysi and left Cuba behind him; crossing the Windward Passage to reach "Bohio" or "Babeque," where there were said to be pearls and gold, and reaching Hayti, or Santo Domingo, which he called Espagnola. He did not revisit Cuba during the remainder of his first American voyage. Espagnola, Latinized by us into Hispaniola, became thereafter the chief care of the Admiral. It was there that he planted, on his second voyage, the first European colony in the western hemisphere. But after various operations in Hayti, marked with both trials and triumphs, during his second American expedition he returned to the Cuban coast for further explorations of what he still thought to be Cipango. It was at the end of April, 1494, that he sailed from Mole St. Nicholas, Hayti, across the Windward Passage toward Cape Maysi, which he himself had called Cape Alpha and Omega. Instead, however, of retracing his way to Baracoa and along the north coast, he went to the left of Cape Maysi and began skirting the southern coast of Cuba. This route would, according to Toscanelli's map, take him to the southward of Mangi and Cathay, but it would lead him to the Golden Chersonesus, around the southern shore of Asia, and so home to Europe by circumnavigating the globe. The points visited by him on this excursion are more easily and surely to be identified than those of his first voyage. His first landing was at Guantanamo, which he called Puerto Grande. He found an entrance passage, winding but deep, leading in to a spacious land-locked lagoon, surrounded by hills covered with verdure. Here he established friendly relations with the natives, and remained for two or three days. Thence he sailed westward, as close to the shore as safety would permit, and frequently entered into friendly intercourse with the natives who thronged the strand to gaze in wonderment at his strange ships. At Santiago de Cuba he spent a night, and during his stay he diligently inquired of the natives for the land in which gold was to be found. They indicated it to lie farther to the south and west, doubtless meaning South America. Columbus thereupon set sail in that direction, partly because gold was most desirable to obtain, and partly because he assumed the land of gold to be the land of the Great Khan, which he was still intent upon reaching. The result was his discovery of Jamaica. A fortnight later, however, on May 18, he returned to Cuba, reaching it at Cabo de la Cruz, or Cape Cruz. Here he found a large village, whose chief and indeed all whose inhabitants had heard of him as one descended from heaven. He was hospitably received, and was able to make many inquiries about the country. He was told that Cuba was an island, but of so vast extent that nobody had ever sailed around it. He thereupon set out to circumnavigate it and sailed from Cape Cruz northward into the Gulf of Guacanabo. There he found a multitude of small islands, which he named the Queen's Gardens, and there, remembering that Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville had both reported the coast of Asia to be fringed with a crowded archipelago, he was again confirmed in his belief that he was approaching the shore either of Cathay or of the Golden Chersonesus. Navigation among these islands, however, was difficult, dangerous and slow, particularly when tropical thunderstorms were raging, as they then were almost daily, and it was with much relief that the expedition at last reached the Cuban coast, probably at or near Santa Cruz del Sur. There they were told that they were in the province of Ornofay; the province which they had formerly visited, at Cape Cruz, was Macaca; and to the west there lay the important province of Mangon, where they could secure much fuller information on all subjects. They were again assured that Cuba was an island, but so vast in extent that nobody could hope ever to go around it. The mention of the province of Mangon again stimulated the hopes and fancy of Columbus. He identified it with Mangi, the southernmost and richest province of the Great Khan, and in this he was confirmed by the fantastic statement of the natives, that the people of Mangon had tails and wore long robes to conceal them! Columbus recalled that Sir John Mandeville had related a similar story as current among some tribes in Eastern Asia. He therefore set out with renewed eagerness and expectation for the coast of Mangon. Emerging from the archipelago, he sailed for many miles along the southern coast of Cuba, through an open sea, with the mountain ranges of Santa Clara at his right hand and at his left the open expanse of the Caribbean, its intense blue attesting its depth. After passing the Gulf of Xagua, however, there came a sudden change. The sea became shallow, and thickly dotted with small islands, keys, and banks, while the water was white as milk. The voyagers had crossed the Gulf of Cazones and were among the Juan Luis Keys, where the water is shallow and where at times the agitation of the water by storms causes it to be whitened and rendered opaque with the calcareous deposit with which the sea floor is there thickly covered. This character of the bottom also made it impossible for the vessels to find anchorage. The anchors dragged and the water became more white and turbid. To the members of the crews these phenomena caused great terror, which was by no means ill founded, since there was imminent danger of the vessels being driven ashore and wrecked. To Columbus, in his state of mental exaltation and high expectancy, however, they were full of inspiration and encouragement to proceed, indicating to him that he was entering strange regions where extraordinary discoveries were to be made. For we must remember that, far as he was in advance of his time in geographical vision, he still thought that the earth was not globular but pear-shaped, and he expected to find tribes of men with tails, and with only one eye and with their heads growing beneath their shoulders! Finding anchorage at last upon the shore of a small island, he sent the smallest of his vessels forward to explore the archipelago and also to visit the coast of the mainland. The report which was brought back to him was that the archipelago was as dense and as intricate as the Gardens of the Queen which they had left behind them, and that the coast of the mainland was flat, marshy, and covered with almost impenetrable mangrove forests, far beyond which fertile uplands and mountain ranges were to be seen, while numerous columns of smoke ascending gave token of a considerable population. At this the entire expedition proceeded, to retrace the course which had been pursued by the pilot caravel, and after much difficulty and occasional groundings of the vessels, the coast of Cuba was reached, doubtless near the eastern extremity of the great Zapata Peninsula. The vast marshes gave little encouragement for landing, and the expedition continued eastward until Punta Gorda was reached, to which Columbus gave the name of Punta Serafina. Rounding this point and heading northward, the fine expanse of Broa Bay confronted them, with the coast of the Province of Havana far beyond, and with another archipelago at the west. The mountains which lie between Guines and Matanzas fringed the horizon, and toward them the Admiral steered, presently reaching good anchorage off a most inviting coast. The mangrove swamps of Zapata had been left behind, and here the shore was high and dry, and covered with groves of palm and other trees. Here a landing was made, and copious supplies of fresh water were found for the refilling of their casks, while some of the archers strayed into the forest in quest of game. One of the latter presently returned in haste and fear, crying for help. He reported that he had seen in a forest glade three men of white complexion, clad in long white tunics, leading a company of about thirty more, armed with clubs and spears. They did not attack him, but one of them advanced alone as if to speak with him; whereupon he fled. At this report all his companions joined him in hastening back to the ships for safety. When Columbus heard these things he was much pleased. He saw in them confirmation of what he had been told about the Province of Mangon, with its men who had tails and who wore long robes to hide them. He at once sent a strongly armed party inland to seek these men and parley with them; directing them to go as much as forty miles inland, if necessary, to find them, and to find the populous cities which he confidently believed to exist in that region. These explorers readily enough traversed the open palm forest which bordered the coast. But then they came to extensive open upland plains or savannahs, with few trees but with rank grass and other herbage as high as their heads and so dense as to be almost impenetrable. No roads or paths were to be found, and it was necessary to cut a trail through the herbage. For a mile they struggled on, and then gave up the attempt and returned to the ships. The next day another party was sent in another direction, with no better results. Its members found fine open forests, abounding with grapevines laden with fruit, and they saw flocks of cranes which they described as twice the size of those of Europe. But they also saw on the ground the footprints, as they supposed, of lions and of griffins, which so alarmed them that they beat a hasty retreat. Lions, and indeed all large beasts of prey, were never known to exist in Cuba, and the griffin was of course never anything but imaginary--unless a tradition of some prehistoric monster, ages ago extinct. But huge alligators or caymans abounded in Cuban waters, and the footprints which frightened Columbus's explorers were doubtless made by them. The observation of large cranes suggests, also, an explanation of the panic-stricken archer's story of men clothed in white robes. A flock of those huge birds, standing erect and in line, with their leader advanced before them, as is their custom, in the semi-gloom of a strange forest, might well have given him the impression of a company of white-robed men. Of course, no men of that description were ever found in Cuba, nor were there traces of any. It did not take Columbus long to explore Broa Bay sufficiently to ascertain that it was not an arm of the sea, but a mere coastal indentation; whereupon he resumed his westward cruising. A little further on, probably in the neighborhood of Batabano, he found the shore inhabited, and though neither he nor his interpreters could understand the language of the natives, they contrived to hold some communication with them by means of signs. He gleaned from them in this manner the information that far to westward, among the mountains, there was a great king, ruling in magnificence over many provinces; that he wore long white robes and was considered a semi-divine personage, and that he never spoke but conveyed his decrees in signs, which nobody dared to disobey. To what extent this was really intended by the natives, and to what extent was the mere figment of the Admiral's lively imagination, it is impossible to say. It is entirely conceivable, however, that the Cubans had some knowledge of the Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico, and the Mayas of Yucatan, and were referring to them. Certainly they could not have referred to anybody in Cuba. But Columbus, as ever fondly believing whatever he wished to be true, confidently assumed that they were telling him of the mythical Prester John, and that he was on the shores of that potentate's domain. The mountains of which the natives spoke, he supposed, were those of Pinar del Rio, which were already in sight on the northwestern horizon. Concerning the extent of Cuba, and of the coast along which he was sailing, Columbus could get little information. He was told that the coast extended westward for at least twenty days' journey, but whether it then ended, and how it ended, he could not learn. He therefore took one of the natives with him as a guide, and resumed his voyage. Almost immediately, however, he plunged into another archipelago, almost as dense and troublesome as that through which he had passed a few days before. Making his way through it with great difficulty, he reached the coast of Pinar del Rio, and effected a landing amid swamps and forests, only to find the region uninhabited, though frequent columns of smoke rising inland indicated to him the presence of a considerable population. For some time he made his way along that inhospitable coast, which trended steadily toward the southwest, a direction agreeing with his conceptions of the Asian coast as described by Marco Polo. Surely, he thought, he was on the coast of Indo-China, headed straight for the Golden Chersonesus. If he persisted, he would cross the Indian Ocean and reach the Red Sea, whence he could complete his journey to Europe overland by way of Palestine; or he could steer southward along the African coast and around that continent, and so reach home by circumnavigating the globe. These fancies appear to have been shared by his companions, among whom were several accomplished navigators and geographers. The delusions were of course largely due to the erroneous estimate of the size of the globe, which made its circumference too little by some thousands of miles. But his companions could not be persuaded to approve his scheme of going on to circumnavigate the globe. The glamor of that vision did not blind their eyes to the worn and dilapidated condition of the ships, the lack of supplies, and the weariness of the crews. They were in no condition, they insisted, to proceed further through unknown regions. It was already satisfactorily demonstrated, they held, that they had reached the Asian coast. The part of prudence was to turn back to Isabella, if not to Spain, and refit their vessels for another and longer voyage. These counsels finally prevailed upon Columbus himself, at the time when his flotilla lay at anchor in the Bay of Cortez, near the western extremity of Cuba. He was indeed so near that extremity that a day or two more of sailing would have brought him to Cape San Antonio and would have shown him that Cuba was an island. Or from the top of some tall tree, or even from the mast head, he might have looked across the lakes and lowlands of that region and seen the waters of Guadiana Bay, on the north side of the island. But this was not to be. Instead, he required every member of his company, from sailing master to cabin boy, to swear to and sign a formal declaration to the effect that the land which they had discovered and explored was a part of the Indies and of the Asian continent. Then, on June 13, he turned his course toward the southeast, only to enter another archipelago, the San Felipe and Indian keys. Beyond lay a large land, with mountains, to which he gave the name of Evangelista. It was, of course, the Isle of Pines, which he reached a little south of Point Barcos. Taking in a supply of water and wood, he skirted the coast southward, with the result that he ran into the land-locked recesses of the Bay of Sunianea. Finding no thoroughfare in that direction, he sailed back almost to the Bay of Cortez, and then made his way along the Cuban coast, through the archipelagoes, milky seas and what not which had given him so much trouble on his westward trip. It was on July 7 that the next landing in Cuba was made, at a point on the southeastern coast of Camaguey, and at the mouth of a fine river which Columbus called the Rio de la Missa but the identity of which is now uncertain. It may have been the San Juan de Najasa or the Sevilla, or one of the several streams between those two. There, in a most genial and fruitful region, they spent some days and established friendly relations with the chief of a considerable community. In the presence of this chief and his retainers an altar was erected beneath a great tree, and mass was celebrated. An aged native, apparently a priest, watched this proceeding with much interest, and at its close approached Columbus and addressed him, saying: "This which thou hast done is, I perceive, thy method of worshipping thy God; which is well. I am told that thou hast come hither with a strong force, and hast subdued many lands, filling the people with great fear. Be not, however, vainglorious. The souls of men after these bodies are dead have, according to our belief, one of two journeys to pursue. One is to a place that is dismal, foul and dark, which is prepared for those who have been cruel and unjust to their fellow men. The other is to a place of light and joy, prepared for those who have practised peace and justice. Therefore if thou art mortal, and must some time die, and dost expect that all men are to be rewarded according to the deeds done in their bodies, see that thou work justice and do no harm to those who have done no harm to thee." In this address was revealed the most that we know of the religion of the Cuban aborigines. Columbus listened to it with surprise and gratification, not having supposed that any such faith or such knowledge of the future life existed among the natives of Cuba. He responded through his interpreter sympathetically, assuring the old man that he had been sent forth by his sovereigns to teach the true faith and to do good and no evil, and that all innocent and peaceable men might confidently look to him for friendship and protection. He also had his interpreter tell the people of the greatness, riches and splendor of Spain; to which they listened in credulous bewilderment. Then, on July 16, he sailed away from Cuba again, amid expressions of regret by the chief and his comrades; taking with him one of the young men whom he afterward sent to the Spanish court. But a storm struck his feeble vessels and nearly wrecked them. On July 18 they anchored near Cape Cruz for repairs, and were most hospitably received by the natives. At last, on July 22, they departed for Jamaica, whence they returned to Isabella. Never again did Columbus visit Cuba, though he approached its southern shore on his fourth voyage, on his way to the coast of Central America. To the end of his life, presumably, he believed Cuba to be a part of the Asian continent, continuous with Honduras and Veragua. CHAPTER III We have already quoted the enthusiastic encomium of Columbus upon Cuba at his first sight of and landing upon its shore. His diary and his narrative to the sovereigns of Leon and Castile on his return to Spain abound with similar expressions, as well as with informing bits of description of Cuba as they then found it. In the very first days of his first visit he found villages of houses "made like booths, very large, and looking like tents in a camp without regular streets but one here and another there. Within they were clean and well swept, with furniture well made. All were of palm branches, beautifully constructed. They found many images in the shape of women, and many heads like masks, very well carved. It was not known whether these were used as ornaments, or were to be worshipped." The waters abounded in fish, and the people of the coast regions were apparently nearly all fishermen. The only domestic animals were the "dogs which never barked," and birds in cages. There were seen, however, skulls like those of cows, on which account Columbus assumed that inland there were herds of cattle. All night the air was vocal with the songs of birds and the chirping of crickets and other insects, which lulled the voyagers to rest. Along the shore and in the mouths of rivers were found large shells, unlike any that he had known in Spain, but no pearls were in them. The air was soft and salubrious, and the nights were neither hot nor cold. On the other islands which he had visited the heat was oppressive, a circumstance which he attributed to the flat and low-lying land; while Cuba was mountainous and therefore was blessed with cooling breezes. At some point on the northeastern coast, probably in the neighborhood of Point Sama, a month after his first landing, he imagined that he had discovered deposits of gold. It was in the bed of a river, near its mouth, that he saw stones shining, as if with gold, and he had them gathered, to take home to Spain and to present to the sovereigns. At the same point some of the sailors called his attention to the pine trees on a neighboring hill. They were "so wonderfully large that he could not exaggerate their height and straightness, and he perceived that in them was material for great stores of planks and masts for the largest ships of Spain." Further on, probably in the neighborhood of Baracoa, "they came to the largest inhabited place that they had yet seen, and a vast concourse of people came down to the beach with loud shouts, all naked, with darts in their hands." Columbus desired to have speech with them, and accordingly anchored his ships and sent boats ashore, bearing gifts for the natives. The people at first seemed inclined to resist any landing, but when the Spaniards in the boats pressed on and began to land, without manifesting any fear, they abandoned their hostile attitude and began to withdraw. The Spaniards who landed called to them and strove to lure them back, but without success. They all ran away. In consequence of this and similar incidents, Columbus wrote: "I have not been able to see much of the natives, because they take to flight. But now, if Our Lord pleases, I will see as much as possible, and will proceed little by little, learning and comprehending; and I will make some of my followers learn the language--for I have perceived that there is only one language up to this point. After they understand the advantages I shall labor to make all these people Christians. They will readily become such, because they have no religion nor idolatry; and Your Highnesses"--he was addressing the sovereigns, in his journal--"will send orders to build a city and fortress, and to convert these people. "It does not appear to me," he continued, "that there can be a more fertile country or a better climate under the sun, with more abundant supplies of water. This is not like the rivers of Guinea, which are all pestilential. I thank Our Lord that up to this time there has not been a person of my company who has had so much as a head-ache, except one old man who has suffered from stone all his life, and he was well again in two days. I speak of all three vessels. If it should please God that Your Highness should send learned men out here, they will see the truth of all I have said." While in the neighborhood of Baracoa, at the end of November and beginning of December, 1492, he saw a canoe made of the hole of a single tree, 95 palms long and capable of carrying 150 persons. "Leaving the river, they came to a cove in which there were five large canoes, so well constructed that it was a pleasure to look at them. They were under spreading trees, and a path led to them from a very well built boathouse, so thatched that neither sun nor rain could do any harm. Within it there was another canoe made out of a single tree like the others, like a galley with 17 benches. It was a pleasant sight to look upon such goodly work. "The Admiral ascended a mountain, and afterward found the country level and cultivated with many things. In the middle there was a large village, and they came upon the people suddenly, but as soon as they were seen the men and women took to flight. The Admiral made the Indian from on board, who was with him, give them bells, copper ornaments, and glass beads, green and yellow, with which they were well content. He saw that they had no gold nor any other precious thing, and that it would suffice to leave them in peace. The whole district was well peopled.... No arms are carried by them except wands, on the point of which a short piece of wood is fixed, hardened by fire, and these they are very ready to exchange. "Returning to where he had left the boats, he sent back some men up the hill, because he fancied he had seen a large apiary. Before those he had sent could return, they were joined by many Indians, and they went to the boats, where the Admiral was waiting with all his people. One of the natives advanced into the river near the stern of the boat and made a long speech, which the Admiral did not understand. At intervals the other Indians raised their hands to heaven and shouted. The Admiral thought that the orator was assuring him that he was pleased at his arrival. But he saw the Indian who came from the ship change the color of his face and turn as yellow as wax, trembling much and indicating to the Admiral by signs that he should leave the river, as they were going to kill him. The Admiral then pointed to a cross-bow which one of his followers had, and showed it to the Indians, making them understand that they would all be slain, because that weapon killed people at a great distance. He also drew a sword from its sheath and showed it to them, telling them that it, too, would slay them. Thereupon they all took to flight; while the Indian from the ship still trembled from cowardice, though he was a tall, strong man." Columbus then determined to seek further acquaintance with the natives, and accordingly had his boat rowed to a point on the shore of the river where they were assembled in great numbers. They were naked, and painted; some wearing tufts of feathers on their heads, and all carrying bundles of darts. "I came to them," said Columbus, "and gave them bread, asking for the darts, in exchange for which I gave copper ornaments, bells and glass beads. This made them peaceable, so that they came to the boats again and gave us what they had. The sailors had killed a turtle, and the shell was on the boat, cut into pieces, some of which the sailors gave them in exchange for a bundle of darts. They were like the other people we had seen, with the same belief that we had come from heaven." They were ready, he added, to give anything that they had in exchange for any trifle, which they would accept without saying that it was little, and Columbus believed that they would thus give away gold and spices, if they had had any. In one of the houses which he entered "shells and other things were fastened to the ceiling." He thought that it was a temple, and he inquired, by signs, if such was the case and if prayers were there offered. The natives replied in the negative, and one of them climbed up to take down the ceiling ornaments and give them to Columbus, who accepted a few of them. It was early in November, 1492, that one of the most noteworthy discoveries in relation to Cuba was made. At that time Columbus sent inland from the port at the mouth of the Rio de Mares two men, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, to explore the inland country and to find if possible the high road to the capital and palace of the Great Khan. These men did not find what they had been sent for, but something else, which proved in after years to be of incalculable value to Cuba and to the world. To quote Las Casas: "They met on the road many men and women, passing to their villages, the men always with half-burned brands in their hands and certain herbs for smoking. These herbs are dry and are placed in a dry leaf made in the shape of the paper tubes which the boys make at Easter. Lighted at one end, at the other the smoke is sucked or drawn in with the breath. The effect of it is to make them sleepy and as it were intoxicated, and they say that using it relieves the feeling of fatigue. These rolls they call 'tabacos.'" Some of Columbus's men, when it was reported to them, tried smoking the "tabacos," and the habit soon became prevalent among the Spanish colonists in Hispaniola. These few items, then, compose practically the sum and substance of the knowledge which Columbus acquired of that land which was, second to only the continent, by far the most important of all his discoveries. They are few and meagre. It is indeed doubtful if history records an even approximately comparable instance of the disappearance of a numerous and capable people from a country of vast interest and importance, leaving behind them so few traces of themselves and so little information concerning them. For these things are not merely all that Columbus learned about Cuba. They are all that his successors learned and that the world has ever learned about Cuba as it existed prior to and at the time of the great discovery. Tobacco, hammocks, canoes, and the name of the island and the names of various places on it which have persisted in spite of the repeated attempts to substitute a new nomenclature; these are the world's memorials of pre-Columbian Cuba. The brief visits and superficial inspection which we have recorded were not, however, destined to be the full compass of the Discoverer's personal relationship to Cuba. While he did not again visit the island in life, nor give to it any of the attention which ampler knowledge would have shown him it deserved, his mortal remains were conveyed thither, and there remained for a considerable period; though by a strange fatality this fact, well authenticated as it is, has been persistently and elaborately disputed, until the tomb of Columbus has in the minds of many become almost as much a matter of speculation and uncertainty as the place of his birth. It was on Ascension Day, May 20, 1506, that Columbus died at Valladolid, in Spain, and there his body was laid to rest in the parish church of Santa Maria de la Antigua, a church of the Franciscan Fathers. The date of the first removal is unknown, and is much disputed. Some have placed it as late as the year 1513, while others, as the result of later and more assured research, declare it to have been within a year or two, or at most within three years, of his death. Of the new place of sepulture, however, there is no question. It was in a chapel of the Carthusian monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, at Seville; where also, years afterward, were laid the remains of his son, Diego, who died at Montalban on February 23, 1526. But as in life, so in death Columbus must needs be a wanderer. In 1542 the city of Santo Domingo, the capital of that island colony of Hispaniola to which Columbus's chief attention had been given, demanded to be made the repository of the body of its founder. Accordingly, Charles I decreed the removal, and the bodies of Christopher Columbus and his son Diego were both transferred from Seville to a double tomb in the cathedral of Santo Domingo, hard by the fortress in which the Discoverer had once been confined by Bobadilla as a prisoner. Thus far the record was and is clear; and for two and a half centuries the tomb remained inviolate. Indeed, it was so little meddled with that its precise location became a matter of doubt, save that it was somewhere "in the main sanctuary" of the cathedral. The first attempt to determine it was made about 1783 by the French politician and writer, Moreau de Saint-Mery, a kinsman of the Empress Josephine and a member of the Colonial Council of Santo Domingo. Diligent inquiry, without actual exhumation, resulted in the information that the remains of Christopher Columbus, enclosed first in a leaden casket and then in a massive coffin of stone, lay underneath the Gospel side of the sanctuary, and that those of his brother, Bartholomew Columbus, similarly enclosed, lay underneath the Epistle side. This was contrary, in one respect, to the understanding of years before, which was that it was the body of Columbus's grandson Luis which lay under the Epistle side of the sanctuary. The problem was complicated by the fact that the cathedral had been so remodelled that the tomb of Columbus was underneath its wall, where actual examination was difficult; and in fact no exhumation was then attempted. In 1795, however, the island was transferred to French sovereignty, and the Spanish governor, on relinquishing his rule, requested permission to remove the remains of Columbus to Havana, Cuba, in order that they might continue to rest beneath the Spanish flag. This was granted to him, and accordingly, in January, 1796, the tomb beneath the wall on the Gospel side of the sanctuary of the cathedral of Santo Domingo was opened, and the coffin found within was reverently removed and borne to Havana, where it was deposited in a new tomb in the cathedral--formerly the Church of the Jesuits--where its presence was indicated by a medallion and inscription on the wall of the chancel. For many years that was indubitably regarded as the tomb of the Discoverer. It was not until 1877 that doubt of this fact arose. In that year repairs were made to the cathedral of Santo Domingo, in the course of which the rector, the Rev. Francis Navier Billini, insisted upon reopening the tomb underneath the Epistle side of the sanctuary, which had of old been reputed to contain the coffin of Luis Columbus, but which Saint-Mery had been informed contained the remains of Bartholomew Columbus. There was discovered a leaden casket, which, like that which had been taken to Havana, bore no inscription. But upon or close by it there lay a sheet of lead bearing the words, "The Admiral Don Luis Colon, Duke of Veragua and Marquis of...." The remainder was undecipherable. The casket was therefore accepted as that of Columbus's grandson; confirming the common belief before the time of Saint-Mery. Not content with this discovery, the enterprising rector continued his excavations, and presently the finding of another leaden casket was announced, which was reported to bear an inscription, much abbreviated, which, amplified, ran thus: "Discoverer of America; First Admiral." This created a great sensation, and stimulated Dominican pride. The rector at once sent for the President of Santo Domingo and other dignitaries of state and church, including various foreign diplomats and consuls, and in their presence continued the examination of the treasure trove. Upon opening the casket, the inner side of the lid was found also to bear an inscription, greatly abbreviated, which was interpreted as reading: "Illustrious and Noble Man, Don Cristoval Colon." This the Dominicans joyfully proclaimed to be proof positive that the remains of the Discoverer were still in their possession, and that the casket which had been taken to Havana contained the bones of some other member of the Columbus family. From that event arose a controversy which probably will never be settled to universal satisfaction. The Dominicans marshalled to the support of their claims various historical and antiquarian authorities, and the Cubans and the Spanish government secured at least an equal array in support of their claim that the remains of Columbus had been transferred to Havana. A strongly convincing report to the latter effect was made to the Spanish government by Señor Colmeiro, of the Spanish Royal Academy of History, and his judgment was generally accepted throughout Cuba and Spain. It was pointed out that the inscriptions contained various anachronisms indicating that they must have been written at a much later date than that of the death and interment of Columbus. Havana therefore continued confidently to pride itself upon being the repository of the dust of the Great Admiral, and his tomb in the ancient cathedral was thus recognized and revered by countless visitors. But at last, in 1899, after the independence of Cuba from Spain had been accomplished, a request was made by the Spanish Government for the transfer of the casket and its precious contents back to Spain, where historically they belonged. It was indeed pointed out that the transfer to Havana in 1796 had been intended to be only temporary, pending a fitting opportunity for a further removal to Spain. This request was granted, and the dust of the Discoverer was finally reinterred in the cathedral of Seville. [Illustration: THE HAVANA CATHEDRAL Originally the church of the Jesuits, this imposing edifice was built in 1656, though not completed until 1724, and took the place of the first cathedral in 1762. Within a tomb within its walls the remains of Columbus rested from 1796, when they were taken thither from Santo Domingo, to 1899, when they were conveyed to Spain.] CHAPTER IV Between these first merely tentative and inconclusive visits of Columbus to Cuba, in which so much was imagined and so little learned or done, and the actual occupation and settlement of the island, which were reserved for a few years later, it will be profitable to pause for a brief space, to review what science has revealed to us of not merely the pre-Columbian but indeed what we may term the archaic history of this chief member of the Antillean group. It is a history written in the rocks and soils, in the mountains and plains and rivers; in brief, the natural history of the island. This was something at which Columbus could merely have guessed, if indeed he had taken the trouble to think of it at all. He knew only that it was a fair land to look upon and promised to be a pleasant land in which to dwell; and his successors in the quest hoped to find its river beds and its mountain rocks rich with the gold which they coveted. That was all. It remained for the ampler knowledge and the more patient and painstaking research of later years to analyze the structure of the island, to discern the causes and the processes through which it had been developed into its present beautiful and opulent condition, and to learn that on the surface and just below the surface of its almost infinitely variegated face there lay the potency and the promise of wealth beyond the utmost limits of the dreams of those conquistadors of ancient Spain who were oestrus-driven by the _auri sacra fames_. Let us consider, then, the geological history of Cuba, so far as it has been ascertained; and the topography of the land as it has been revealed through a far more comprehensive survey than that of the Great Admiral's enraptured vision. It is, of course, impossible to know the geological history of a country until its paleontology has been thoroughly studied and investigated. Where formations of different geological ages are lithologically so similar as to be often indistinguishable, the only method of differentiating them is by their fossils. Some paleontological work has been done in Cuba, but the specimens collected were not accompanied by the necessary data. In the present imperfect state of our knowledge of the stratigraphy and areal geology of the island, it would be hazardous to attempt to indicate the times at which the various levels were developed, or to designate the periods during which they remained above the level of the sea. To do this would require a detailed knowledge of nearly all the various phases of its geology. The oldest rocks in Cuba, with the possible exception of the schistose limestones of Trinidad, are composed of granites and serpentines. The relative age of these rocks, to the central mass of limestones in the province of Pinar del Rio, has not been determined, but we do know that the oldest igneous rocks were themselves folded, faulted and subjected to other processes of metamorphism, and that subsequent to the changes to which they were subjected, the entire region was uplifted and deeply eroded before the cretaceous sedimentation began. No data are available for determining the geologic period at which the pre-cretaceous erosion began, but the region has doubtless been standing above the waters of the ocean for a very long interval, since the amount of rock carried away has been manifestly great. The surface upon which the cretaceous sediments were deposited, appears to have been reduced by erosion to a very low relief, so that the land was a featureless plain when the cretaceous subsidence began. The time interval required for the accomplishment of this erosion must have been very long, since when it began the region was undoubtedly mountainous. The complex character and disturbed altitude of the pre-cretaceous rocks, the granites, diorites and other granular rocks which appear on the surface because of this erosion, were originally formed deep within the crust of the earth, and therefore furnish a reason for believing that this period of erosion was exceedingly long. It has been suggested that during the Jurassic times, the southeastern coast of the United States was connected by a long isthmus, following the line of the Antilles, to the northeastern coast of South America. The data presented would seem to indicate that at least the eastern half of Cuba stood high above the level during this period of the earth's history, and although data concerning the western half are less definite, it too was probably composed of high land masses. The elevation, and long period of erosion just described, were followed by subsidence, and on the surface of these old rocks the cretaceous formations were deposited. The lowest cretaceous rocks yet found are composed of an arkose, derived in large part from the original igneous mass. The main body of the strata is composed of limestones, and such fossils as they contain belong to the genera similar to those of the cretaceous rocks of Jamaica--Radiolites, Barrettra, Requienia, etc. During this time the whole of the Island of Cuba was probably submerged below the level of the sea. The cretaceous rocks in Santa Clara province occur in the bottoms of synclines, and the projected dips appear sufficiently to carry the beds over the tops of the dividing anti-clinal axis. It is believed, however, that the depth of the cretaceous sea over the island was probably never very great. Owing to a lack of paleontological data, the history of the island during the Eocene time is vague, but it is probable that a large part of it was submerged. This is certainly true of the province of Oriente, where Eocene fossils have been collected. During, and possibly previous to that period, volcanic agencies were active in Oriente, since volcanic rocks are found interbedded with sediments of the Eocene age. The same forces were probably active in other sections of the island, and the intrusion of Diorite porphyries in Santa Clara and other provinces probably took place during that period. A portion of the island, at least in the vicinity of Baracoa, was deeply submerged during the lower Oligocene times, as is proved by the occurrence of radiolarian earth beneath the upper oligocene limestones near the above town. Radiolarian oozes are at present being formed on the sea bottom at depths of between 2,000 and 4,000 fathoms. This, of course, does not prove that the deposits of Baracoa were laid down at so great a depth as present day dredging would indicate, but we can at least feel confident that they were formed in very deep water. This does not imply however that the whole island was sunken to the abysmal depths. During the upper Oligocene time very nearly the whole island was undoubtedly submerged. Previous to this volcanic agencies had been very active throughout the larger portion of the island. Mountain building in Oriente had begun before the deposition of upper Oligocene strata, and the Sierra Maestra had already been elevated to a considerable height above the sea. It is probable that the sea at this time covered the whole of the island, with the exception of portions of Oriente province along its north and south coast, and occasional high peaks along the axis of the provinces further west. The Miocene period was one of general uplift. The whole of the island as we at present know it, was above the level of the ocean's waters. There were foldings and uplifts during this period, and volcanic elevation along the axial line being greater than at the sides. It is probable that the folding of the Oligocene strata noted in the vicinity of Havana and Matanzas took place during this time. It may be inferred that the central portion of the province of Oriente was more highly elevated than the coastal portions, since upper Oligocene limestones occur in this section at considerably higher elevations than along either the north or south coast. It is furthermore very probable that the terracing of the Oligocene coral reefs, such as may be seen in the vicinity of the city of Santiago, was taking place during that time. All the evidence goes to show that these are wave-cut terraces. It may be added here that all of the elevated Pleistocene coral reefs recorded are plastered on the surface of the upper Oligocene formations, or in some instances older geologic rocks. This applies to every later coral terrace that has been described, beginning with Cabanas and extending entirely around the island to the City of Santiago. The existence of marine Pliocene in Cuba has not been proved. There may be pliocene rocks in the vicinity of Havana some 60 feet above the sea level. If these are true Pliocene, it would indicate a subsidence during that time of from ISO to 180 feet. The character of the fauna found in the quarry on Calle Infanta does not indicate a greater depth than from SO to 70 feet for the water in which the limestone was deposited. Subsequent to this deposition, there was an elevation which caused the land to stand some forty or fifty feet higher than it does to-day. This probably took place in early Pleistocene times, at which time the Isle of Pines and Cuba were connected. One reason for the belief in this elevation is the existence of an old, deep and comparatively narrow cut in the bed of the present channel leading out of Havana harbor. There is further evidence of a general elevation found in borings for water, three miles southeast of the city of Santiago. At a depth of some 70 feet below the sea level, in the Rio San Juan Valley, stream-carried pebbles were found. This would indicate that the bottom of this valley once stood at least 70 feet or more above sea level. Subsequent to this elevation, there was a subsidence varying from 40 to 70 feet. There were doubtless other slight oscillations during the Pleistocene period, and these may be going on at the present time, although we have no evidence from records of actually measured monuments established since the Spanish occupation of the island. Paleontologic, biologic and physiographic research seems to indicate that there has been no land connection between Cuba and North America at any time since the beginning of the Tertiary, unless perhaps during the Oligocene period, and it seems probable there was no connection whatever during cretaceous times. Cuba furnishes a very interesting field, not only for geologic research, but for a far more extended study and survey of its many important mineral zones both for scientific and for economic reasons. Topographically the surface of Cuba may be divided into five rather distinct zones, three of which are essentially mountainous. The first includes the entire eastern third of the province of Oriente, together with the greater part of its coast line, where the highest mountains of the island are found. The second includes the greater part of the province of Camaguey, made up of gently rolling plains broken by occasional hills or low mountains, that along the northern coast, and again in the southeast center of the province, rise to a height of approximately 1,500 feet above the general level. The next is a mountainous district including the greater part of eastern Santa Clara. The fourth comprises the western portion of this province together with all of Matanzas and Havana. The surface of this middle section is largely made up of rolling plains, broken here and there by hills that rise a few hundred feet above the sea level. The fifth includes the province of Pinar del Rio, the northern half of which is traversed from one end to the other by several more or less parallel ranges of sierras, with mean altitudes ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 feet, leaving the southern half of the province a flat plain, into which, along its northern edge, project spurs and foot hills of the main range. The highest mountains of Cuba are located in the province of Oriente, where their general elevation is somewhat higher than that of the Allegheny or eastern ranges of the United States. The mountainous area of this province is greater than that of the combined mountain areas of all other parts of the island. The mountains occur in groups, composed of different kinds of rock, and have diverse structures, more or less connected with one another. The principal range is the Sierra Maestra, extending from Cabo Cruz to the Bay of Guantanamo, forty miles east of Santiago. This chain is continuous and of fairly uniform altitude, with the exception of a break in the vicinity of Santiago where the wide basin of Santiago Bay cuts across the main trend of the range. The highest peak of the island is known as Turquino, located near the middle of the Sierra Maestra, and reaching an altitude of 8,642 feet. The hills back of Santiago Bay, separating it from the Valley of the Cauto, are similar in structure to the northern foothills of the main sierra. In the western part of the range, the mountains rise abruptly from the depths of the Caribbean Sea, but near the City of Santiago, and to the eastward, they are separated from the ocean by a narrow coastal plain, very much dissected. The streams which traverse it occupy valleys several hundred feet in depth, while the remnants of the plateau appear in the tops of the hills. East of Guantanamo Bay there are mountains which are structurally distinct from the Sierra Maestra, and these continue to Cape Maysi, the eastern terminus of Cuba. To the west they rise abruptly from the ocean bed, but further east they are bordered by terraced foothills. Towards the north they continue straight across the island as features of bold relief, connecting with the rugged Cuchillas of Baracoa, and with "El Yunque" lying to the southwest. Extending west from this eastern mass are high plateaus and mesas that form the northern side of the great amphitheatre which drains into Guantanamo Bay. Much of this section, when raised from the sea, was probably a great elevated plain, cut up and eroded through the ages since the seismic uplift that caused its birth. The most prominent feature of the northern mountains of Oriente Province, west of "El Yunque," is the range comprising the Sierras Cristal and Nipe. These extend east and west, but are separated into several distinct masses by the Rio Sagua, and the Rio Mayari, which break through and empty into harbors on the north coast. The high country south of these ranges has the character of a deeply dissected plateau, the upper stratum of which is limestone. The character of the surface would indicate that nearly all the mountains of the eastern part of Oriente have been carved through erosion of centuries from a high plateau, the summits of which are found in "El Yunque" near Baracoa, and other flat topped mountains within the drainage basins of the Mayari and the Sagua rivers. The flat summits of the Sierra Nipe are probably remnants of the same great uplift. Below this level are other benches or broad plateaus, the two most prominent occurring respectively at 1,500 and 2,000 feet above sea level. The highest summits rise to an altitude of 2,800 or 3,000 feet. The 2,000 foot plateau of the Sierra Nipe alone includes an area estimated at not less than 40 square miles. It would seem that these elevated plateaus with their rich soils might be utilized for the production of wheat, and some of the northern fruits that require a cooler temperature than that found in other parts of Cuba. In the province of Oriente, the various mountain groups form two marginal ranges, which merge in the east, and diverge toward the west. The southern range is far more continuous, while the northern is composed of irregular groups separated by numerous river valleys. Between these divergent ranges lies the broad undulating plain of the famous Cauto Valley, which increases in width as it extends westward. The northern half of this valley merges into the plains of Camaguey, whose surface has been disturbed by volcanic uplifts only by a small group known as the Najassa Hills, in the southeast center of the province, and by the Sierra Cubitas Range, which parallels the coast from the basin of Nuevitas Bay until it terminates in the isolated hill known as Loma Cunagua. The central mountainous region of the island is located in the province of Santa Clara, where a belt of mountains and hills following approximately northeast and southwest lines, passes through the cities of Sancti Spiritus and Santa Clara. Four groups are found here, one of which lies southwest of Sancti Spiritus and east of the Rio Agabama. A second group is included between the valleys of the Agabama and the Rio Arimao. The highest peak of Santa Clara is known as Potrerillo, located seven miles north of Trinidad, with an altitude of 2,900 feet. A third group lies southeast of the city of Santa Clara, and includes the Sierra del Escambray and the Alta de Agabama. The rounded hills of this region have an altitude of about 1,000 feet although a few of the summits are somewhat higher. The fourth group consists of a line of hills, beginning 25 miles east of Sagua la Grande, and extending into the province of Camaguey. The trend of this range is transverse with the general geological structure of the region. East of the city of Santa Clara the hills of this last group merge with those of the central portion of the province. The summits in the northern line reach an altitude of only a thousand feet. The principal members are known as the Sierra Morena, west of Sagua la Grande, Lomas de Santa Fe, near Camaguini, the Sierra de Bamburanao, near Yaguajay, and the Lomas of the Savanas, south of the last mentioned town. In the province of Pinar del Rio, we find another system, or chain of mountains, dominated by the Sierra de los Organos or Organ mountains. These begin a little west of Guardiana Bay, with a chain of "magotes" known as the "Pena Blanca," composed of tertiary limestone. These are the result of a seismic upheaval running from north to south, almost at right angles with the main axis of the chains that form the mountainous vertebrae of the island. Between the city of Pinar del Rio and the north coast of La Esperanza, the Organos are broken up into four or five parallel ridges, two of which are composed of limestone, while the others are of slate, sandstones and schists. The term "magote," in Cuba, is applied to one of the most interesting and strikingly beautiful mountain formations in the world. They are evidently remnants of high ranges running usually from east to west, and have resulted from the upheaval of tertiary strata that dates back probably to the Jurassic period. The soft white material of this limestone, through countless eons of time, has been hammered by tropical rains that gradually washed away the surface and carved their once ragged peaks into peculiar, round, dome-shaped elevations that often rise perpendicularly to a height of 1,000 feet or more above the level grass plains that form their base. Meanwhile the continual seepage of water formed great caverns within, that sooner or later caved in and fell, hastening thus the gradual leveling to which all mountains are doomed as long as the world is supplied with air and water. The softening and continual crumbling away of the rock have formed a rich soil on which grows a wonderful wealth of tropical vegetation, unlike anything known to other sections of Cuba, or perhaps to the world. The valley of the Vinales, lying between the city of Pinar del Rio and the north coast, might well be called the garden of the "magotes," since not only is it surrounded by their precipitous walls, but several of them, detached from the main chain, rise abruptly from the floor of the valley, converting it into one of the most strangely beautiful spots in the world. John D. Henderson, the naturalist, in speaking of this region, says: "The valley of the Vinales must not be compared with the Yosemite or Grand Cañon, or some famed Alpine passage, for it cannot display the astounding contrast of these, or of many well-known valleys among the higher mountains of the world. We were all of us traveled men who viewed this panorama, but all agreed that never before had we gazed on so charming a sight. There are recesses among the Rocky Mountains of Canada into which one gazes with awe and bated breath, where the very silence oppresses, and the beholder instinctively reaches out for support to guard against slipping into the awful chasm below. But the Valley of Vinales, on the contrary, seems to soothe and lull the senses. Like great birds suspended in the sky, we long to soar above it, and then alighting within some palm grove, far below, to rejoice in its atmosphere of perfect peace." A mountain maze of high, round-topped lomas, dominates almost the entire northern half of Pinar del Rio. It is the picturesque remnant of an elevated plain that at some time in the geological life of the island was raised above the surface 1,500, perhaps 2,000, feet. This, through the erosion of thousands of centuries, has been carved into great land surges, without any particular alignment or system. Straight up through the center of this mountainous area are projected a series of more or less parallel limestone ridges. These, as a rule, have an east and west axis, and attain a greater elevation than the lomas. They are known as the Sierras de los Organos, although having many local names at different points. Water and atmospheric agencies have carved them into most fantastic shapes, so that they do, in places, present an organ pipe appearance. They are almost always steep, often with vertical walls or "paradones" that rise 1,000 feet from the floor or base on which they rest. The northernmost range, running parallel to the Gulf Coast, is known as the "Costanero." The highest peak of Pinar del Rio is called Guajaibon, which rises to an altitude of 3,000 feet, with its base but very little above the level of the sea. It is probably of Jurassic limestone and forms the eastern outpost of the Costaneros. The southern range of the Organos begins with an interesting peak known as the Pan de Azucar, located only a few miles east of the Pena Blanca. From this western sentinel with many breaks extends the great southern chain of the Organos with its various groups of "magotes," reaching eastward throughout the entire province. At its extreme eastern terminus we find a lower and detached ridge known as the Pan de Guanajay, which passes for a few miles beyond the boundary line, and into the province of Havana. Surrounding the Organos from La Esperanza west, and bordering it also on the south for a short distance east of the city of Pinar del Rio, are ranges of round topped lomas, composed largely of sandstone, slate and shale. The surface of these is covered with the small pines, scrubby palms and undergrowth found only on poor soil. From the Mulato River east, along the north coast, the character of the lomas changes abruptly. Here we have deep rich soil covered with splendid forests of hard woods, that reach up into the Organos some ten miles back from the coast. Along the southern edge of the Organos, from Herredura east, lies a charming narrow belt of rolling country covered with a rich sandy loam that extends almost to the city of Artemisa. Extensions, or occasional outcroppings, of the Pinar del Rio mountain system, appear in the Province of Havana, and continue on into Matanzas, where another short coastal range appears, just west of the valley of the Yumuri. This, as before stated, has its continuation in detached ranges that extend along the entire north coast, with but few interruptions, until merged into the mountain maze of eastern Oriente. Outside of the mountainous district thus described, the general surface of Cuba is a gently undulating plain, with altitudes varying from only a few feet above the sea level to 500 or 600 feet, near El Cristo in Oriente. In Pinar del Rio it forms a piedmont plain that entirely surrounds the mountain range. On the south this plain has a maximum width of about 25 miles and ascends gradually from the shores of the Caribbean at the rate of seven or eight feet to the mile until it reaches the edge of the foothills along the line of the automobile drive connecting Havana with the capital of Pinar del Rio. North of the mountain range, the lowland belt is very much narrower and in some places reaches a height of 200 feet as a rule deeply dissected, so that in places only the level of the hill tops mark the position of the original plain. The two piedmont plains of Pinar del Rio unite at the eastern extremity of the Organos Mountains and extend over the greater part of the provinces of Havana and Matanzas and the western half of Santa Clara. The divide as a whole is near the center of this plain, although the land has a gradual slope from near the northern margin towards the south. In the neighborhood of Havana, the elevation varies between 300 and 400 feet, continuing eastward to Cardenas. The streams flowing north have lowered their channels as the land rose, and the surface drained by them has become deeply dissected, while the streams flowing toward the south have been but little affected by the elevation and remain generally in very narrow channels. East of Cardenas the general elevation of the plain is low, sloping gradually both north and south from the axis of the island. Considerable areas of this plain are found among the various mountain groups in the eastern half of Santa Clara province, beyond which it extends over the greater part of Camaguey and into Oriente. Here it reaches the northern coast between isolated mountain groups, extending as far east as Nipe Bay, and toward the south, merges into the great Cauto Valley. From Cabo Cruz the plain extends along the northern base of the Sierra Maestra to the head of the Cauto Valley. Its elevation near Manzanillo is about 200 feet, whence it increases to 640 feet at El Cristo. In the central section of Oriente, the Cauto River and its tributaries have cut channels into this plain from 50 to 200 feet in depth. In the lower part of the valley these channels are sometimes several miles across and are occupied by alluvial flats or river bottoms. They decrease in width toward the east and in the upper part of the valley become narrow gorges. A large part of this plain of Cuba, especially in the central provinces, is underlaid by porous limestone, through which the surface waters have found underground passages. This accounts for the fact that large areas are occasionally devoid of flowing surface streams. The rain water sinks into the ground as soon as it falls, and after flowing long distances under ground, emerges into bold springs, such as those of the Almendares that burst out of the river bank some eight miles south of the City of Havana. Engineers of the rope and cordage plant, just north of the City of Matanzas, while boring for water, found unexpectedly a swift, running river, only ten feet below the surface, that has given them an inexhaustible supply of excellent water. Most of the plains of Cuba above indicated have been formed by the erosion of its surface, and are covered with residual soil derived from the underlying limestones. Where they consist of red or black clays they are, as a rule, exceedingly fertile. Certain portions of the plains, especially those bordering on the southern side of the mountains of Pinar del Rio, are covered with a layer of sand and gravel, washed down from the adjoining highlands, and are, as a rule, inferior in fertility to soils derived from the erosion of limestone. Similar superficial deposits are met in the vicinity of Cienfuegos, and in other sections of the island, where the plain forms a piedmont adjacent to highlands composed of silicious rocks. The most striking and perhaps the most important fact in regard to the climate of Cuba is its freedom from those extremes of temperature which are considered prejudicial to health in any country. The difference between the mean annual temperature of winter and that of summer is only twelve degrees, or from 76 degrees to 88 degrees. Even between the coldest days of winter, when the mercury once went as low as 58 degrees, and the extreme limit of summer, registered as 92 degrees, we have a difference of only 34 degrees; and the extremes of summer are seldom noticed, since the fresh northeast trade winds coming from the Atlantic sweep across the island, carrying away with them the heated atmosphere of the interior. The fact that the main axis of the island, with its seven hundred mile stretch of territory, extends from southeast to northwest, almost at right angles to the general direction of the wind, plays a very important part in the equability of Cuba's climate. Then again, the island is completely surrounded by oceans, the temperature of which remains constant, and this plays an important part in preventing extremes of heat or cold. Ice, of course, cannot form, and frost is found only on the tops of the tallest mountain ranges. The few cold days during winter, when the thermometer may drop to 60 after sundown, are the advance waves of "Northers" that sweep down from the Dakotas, across Oklahoma and the great plains of Texas, eventually reaching Cuba, but only after the sting of the cold has been tempered in its passage of six hundred miles across the Gulf of Mexico. A temperature of 60 degrees in Cuba is not agreeable to the natives, or even to those residents who once lived in northern climes. This may be due to the fact that life in the tropics has a tendency to thin the blood, and to render it less resistant to low temperature; and also because Cuban residences are largely of stone, brick or reinforced concrete, with either tile or marble floors, and have no provision whatever against cold. And, although the walls are heavy, the windows, doors and openings are many times larger than those of residences in the United States, hence the cold cannot readily be excluded as in other countries. There is said to be but one fireplace on the Island of Cuba, and that was built in the beautiful home of an American, near Guayabal, just to remind him, he said, of the country whence he came. Again, in the matter of rainfall and its bearing on the climate of a country, Cuba is very fortunate. The rains all come in the form of showers during the summer months, from the middle of May until the end of October, and serve to purify and temper the heat of summer. On the other hand, the cooler months of winter are quite dry, and absolutely free from the chilling rains, sleets, snows, mists and dampness, that endanger the health, if not the life, of those less fortunate people who dwell in latitudes close to 40 degrees. Cloudy, gloomy days are almost unknown in Cuba, and the sun can be depended upon to shine for at least thirty days every month, and according to the testimony of physicians nothing is better than sunshine to eliminate the germs of contagious diseases. Hence we can truthfully say that in the matter of climate and health, Cuba asks no favor of any country on earth. CHAPTER V For a considerable time after the last visit of Columbus, Cuba was strangely neglected by the enterprising explorers and conquistadors of Spain. Hispaniola, since known as Hayti or Santo Domingo, became the chief colony and centre of Spanish authority in the Antilles, and it for many years far outranked Cuba in interest and importance. It does not appear that for more than a dozen years after the last visit of Columbus any attempt whatever was made to colonize or to explore the great island, if indeed it was so much as voluntarily visited. Navigators doubtless frequently passed near its shores, on their way to and from Darien and the Venezuelan coast, and occasionally stress of weather on the "stormy Caribbean" or actual shipwreck compelled some to land upon it. Such involuntary landings were presumably made either in the neighborhood of the Zapata Peninsula or, still more probably, not exactly upon Cuba at all but upon the southern shore of the tributary Isle of Pines. In consequence, the voyagers carried back to Hispaniola or to Spain the not unnatural report that Cuba consisted of nothing but swamps; a report which of course did not inspire others with zeal to visit so unfavorable a place. For a similar space of time, too, the delusion that Cuba was a part of the continent generally prevailed. It is true that on a map of Juan de la Cosa's, to which the date of 1500 is attributed, Cuba is indicated to be an island. But the date is not certain, by any means; and it is notorious that more than one early cartographer drew upon imagination as well as upon ascertained geographical facts. Somewhat more significant is the fact that Peter Martyr spoke of Cuba as an island, and said that some sailors pretended to have circumnavigated it. There is no proof, however, that this was more than rumor. What seems certain is that as late as 1508 the best authorities were ignorant whether Cuba was island or mainland, and that not until that time was the question settled. Columbus had been succeeded in authority in Hispaniola by Francisco de Bobadilla, and the latter in turn had in 1501 given way to Nicholas de Ovando. It does not appear that Ovando sought to colonize Cuba. But he did wish to determine its extent, and whether it was insular or continental, and in a memorial to the King of Spain he broached a proposal for at least its littoral exploration. Ferdinand gave him, however, no encouragement. On the contrary, he forbade him to spend any public money on so needless and useless an enterprise. Ovando then decided to undertake the exploit at his own charge, and, according to Las Casas, commissioned Sebastian de Ocampo to explore the coasts of the country and, if he found it to be an island, to circumnavigate it. This Ocampo did, returning to Hispaniola in the fall of 1508 with the report that he had sailed completely round Cuba. On the way, he said, he had made occasional landings, and had found the whole island to be inhabited by a kindly and intelligent people, well disposed toward Spain. Immediately following this expedition, various efforts were made to colonize Cuba, and to enter into relations with the natives. Conspicuous among these efforts was one which had for its object the introduction of Christianity into Cuba, and of which an interesting account is given by Martin Ferdinand de Enciso in his "Suma de Geografia," the first book ever published about America. Enciso, it will be remembered, was a partner of Alonzo de Ojeda, that brilliant and gallant cavalier of Spain who in 1508 was Governor of Nueva Andalusia, a region which we now know as the Caribbean coast of Colombia. It was Enciso who in 1509 went to Uraba to the relief of Francisco Pizarro, who had been in command there but who had become discouraged, had suffered heavy losses from attacks by the natives, and who was about to abandon the place. It was on one of Enciso's ships, too, that his friend Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, concealed in a cask to avoid his creditors, escaped from Hispaniola and was conveyed to Darien, thus getting his opportunity to cross the isthmus and to discover the Pacific Ocean. Enciso relates that a Spanish vessel, cruising off the southern coast of Cuba, somewhere near Cape de la Cruz, put ashore a young mariner who had fallen ill, so that he might have a better chance to recover from his illness than he would on shipboard. The identity of this young man is not assured, though it has been strongly suggested that he was no other than Ojeda himself. However that may be, he found himself in his convalescence the guest of a native chieftain or Cacique who professed Christianity. The chief had presumably been visited by Ocampo's expedition. He had been much impressed by the prowess and culture of the Spaniards, and had desired to become affiliated with the religion which they professed and to which he attributed their superiority to the natives of Cuba. Hearing from them that they had been sent thither by the Comendador Ovando--the Governor of Hispaniola was a Comendador of the Order of Knights of Alcantara--he chose that title for his own baptismal name, and was thenceforth known as the Cacique Comendador. Pleased to find a Christian chief, and grateful for his own restoration to health, Ojeda--if it was indeed he--erected in Comendador's house an altar and placed thereon an image of the Holy Virgin, and instructed the people to bow before it every evening and to repeat the "Ave, Maria!" and "Salve, Regina!" This was pleasing to Comendador, but offensive to the neighboring Caciques, who worshipped an idol which they called Cemi. In consequence a primitive religious war arose among the natives, in which, according to Enciso, Comendador and his followers were pretty uniformly successful. His victories were attributed to the intervention and aid of "a beautiful woman, clad in white, and carrying a wand." Finally a test was agreed upon which reminds us of Elijah's Battle of the Gods on the scathed crest of Mount Carmel. A representative warrior of each party was to be bound securely, hand and foot, and be placed in an open field for the night, and if one of them was set free from his bonds, that would be proof of the superiority of his God. "The God who looses his servant's bonds, let him be the Lord!" This was done, and guards of both parties were placed about the field, to make sure that nobody should meddle with the experiment. At midnight, says Enciso, Cemi came to unbind his follower. But before he could reach him or touch his bonds, the Holy Virgin appeared, clad in white and bearing a wand. At her approach, Cemi incontinently fled. At a touch of her wand the bonds fell from the limbs of the Christian champion, and were added to those already on the limbs of the other man. Despite the presence of the guards, the Caciques insisted that there had been trickery, and demanded another trial, to which Comendador, confident in his faith, agreed. The result was the same as before. Still they were unconvinced, and demanded a third trial, at which they themselves would be present as watchers and guards. This also was granted, and once more the same miracle was wrought. At that the Caciques all confessed their defeat and the defeat of Cemi, and declared that the Virgin was worthy to be worshipped. This auspicious implanting of Christianity and of good relations between the natives and the Spaniards did not, unfortunately, endure. It was interfered with by the too common cause of trouble in those days, the _auri sacra fames_, the accursed lust for gold. We have seen that King Ferdinand was unwilling, in his niggardliness, for money to be spent from his treasury for the exploration of Cuba. But after that work had been done at Ovando's personal cost, Ferdinand desired to reap the gains, if any there were. The suggestion was revived that Cuba might be rich in gold. The King suspected that Ovando and others were deceiving him concerning the island, and were secretly planning to secure its riches for themselves. These suspicions were materially increased by the course of Diego Columbus which, while probably quite honest, was lacking in tact and worldly wisdom. For when Diego succeeded Ovando as Governor-General or Viceroy of the Indies, at Hispaniola, one of his first acts was to commission his uncle, Bartholomew Columbus, to lead an expedition for the exploration and settlement of Cuba. That was a legitimate and indeed praiseworthy enterprise. But unfortunately Diego did not secure in advance the King's authority for it, nor did he acquaint the King with his intentions. His enemies, however, of whom he had many, were quick to report the matter to the King, putting it in the light most unfavorable to both Diego and Bartholomew; and the result was that Ferdinand at once recalled Bartholomew Columbus to Spain, and compelled Diego to select another head for the expedition. In 1510, then, the King directed Diego Columbus to send forth his proposed expedition to Cuba, to make a careful examination of the island, to ascertain the character of its resources, and above all to determine whether it contained gold. He took pains, moreover, to impress upon Diego and through him the actual members of the expedition, the eminent desirability of cultivating the most friendly and confidential relations with the natives, both as a matter of policy and for the sake of humanity and religion. The result was the sending, early in 1511, from Hispaniola, of an expedition in which were interested if not actually implicated a number of the most conspicuous men in the Indies, and which marked the actual and permanent opening of Cuba to Spanish settlement and civilization. Diego Columbus was the son and heir of the Great Discoverer, who under the terms of the royal compact of 1492 was to inherit all his father's powers and dignities as Admiral and Viceroy of the Western Hemisphere. For a time Ferdinand on various pretexts refused to fulfil that compact and to recognize his rights, but appointed Ovando to rule in Hispaniola in his stead. But after Diego's marriage to Doña Maria de Toledo, the daughter of the Grand Commander of Leon and the niece of the King's favorite councillor and friend, the Duke of Alba, a combination of personal, social and political influence prevailed for the vindication of his claims, and he was invested with supreme authority in place of Ovando, who was provided for elsewhere. Diego seems to have been a man of integrity and engaging character, though perhaps more idealistic than practical, and not always a match in policy for the scheming politicians by whom he was surrounded. Bartholomew Columbus was the brother of Christopher, was intimately associated with him in his great enterprises, and was named by him Adelantado, or Lieutenant Governor, of the Indies. He too was a man of character and fine parts, bold and enterprising, and possessed of more practical worldly wisdom than either his brother or his nephew. These two stood alone, against a numerous company of personal and political enemies, both in Hispaniola and in Spain. Indeed, as Bartholomew was recalled to Spain and was kept there for some time, Diego was left solitary to contend with or to yield to his foes. It was therefore probably through necessity that he organized the Cuban expedition largely with men hostile to him. Miguel Pasamonte was his chief foe. He had been the secretary of Queen Isabella, and had filled important Ambassadorships, but was now the royal treasurer in Hispaniola. He had been one of the bitterest enemies of Christopher Columbus, and had transferred a full measure of hostility to Diego; and it was he who reported to the King in its most unfavorable light Diego's plans for sending Bartholomew Columbus to Cuba. In his hostility to both Christopher and Diego Columbus he was greatly aided and abetted by Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Seville; who had violently quarrelled with Christopher Columbus over the fitting out of his second voyage and who also had transferred his hatred to the Admiral's son. [Illustration: DIEGO VELASQUEZ] Diego Velasquez was another of the faction hostile to the Columbuses, though at first he had been a friend and companion of the Admiral. It is probable that he had no personal enmity toward Diego Columbus, but joined himself to the other faction through motives not unconnected with personal pecuniary profit. He had gone from Spain to Hispaniola with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage, and had ever since been one of the most efficient administrators in that island and indeed in all the Indies. For a time he was a military leader in campaigns against hostile natives, and afterward he became Lieutenant Governor of the island. He was a man of high ability, of singularly handsome person, of engaging manners, of much popularity, and of abundant force of character for successful leadership and command of men. He was, however, not always scrupulous in his dealings, and it was not to his moral credit that he became the richest man in all the Indies. He was a close friend and partisan of Pasamonte, and associated with him in the same alliance were the royal secretary in Hispaniola, Conchillos, and also the royal accountant, Christopher de Cuellar, who was both the cousin and father-in-law of Velasquez. Diego Columbus, then, either through policy or through compulsion, appointed Velasquez to be his lieutenant in Cuba, and commissioned him to organize and personally to lead the intended expedition to that island. He also promised that the King would refund whatever private expenditures Velasquez and his companions should make on account of it; a promise which was authorized by the King, but not fulfilled save in the indirect way of empowering the members of the expedition to recoup themselves at the expense of the people of the island; an arrangement decidedly at variance with Ferdinand's former solicitude for good treatment for the natives. Further than that, Diego had little or nothing to do with Cuba, and in a short time Velasquez was known not as Lieutenant but as Governor, as though he were entirely independent of the Viceroy in Hispaniola. [Illustration: BARACOA First Capital of Cuba] Early in 1511 Velasquez assembled a flotilla of three or four vessels on the northwest coast of Hispaniola, at or near the place where Columbus had landed when he discovered that island and first visited it from Cuba. In the adjacent region he recruited a company of about three hundred men, and with that force set out for the conquest and colonization of Cuba. The precise date of his expedition is not to be ascertained, but it was probably in February or at latest March of that year. The place of his landing in Cuba, however, is known. It was at Baracoa, where also Columbus had landed before him. Following the practice of Columbus and the other explorers he promptly gave the place a new name of his own selection, calling it the City of Our Lady of the Assumption. There he established his seat of government and base of further operations, giving to the place in both civil and ecclesiastical affairs the technical rank and dignity of a city. But, as also frequently happened, the new name was unable to supplant the old one in popular usage; and when, in 1514, the insular capital was transferred to Santiago de Cuba, and in 1522 the cathedral of the diocese was similarly transferred, the new name was permitted to lapse, and the place became again universally known as Baracoa. Despite its vicissitudes of fortune, therefore, and its loss of its former high estate, Baracoa is entitled to the triple distinction of having been the site of the first permanent European settlement in Cuba, of the first civilized government, and of the first cathedral church. At Baracoa, immediately upon his arrival, Velasquez built a fort, the exact site of which is now matter of conjecture, and various other edifices. These were all constructed of wood, probably of bamboo and thatch, and no trace of them remains to-day. Search was also promptly made for gold, and some seems to have been found in the beds of streams, though in no large quantities, and the attempt to operate mines was soon abandoned. Attention was then turned to further explorations and conquests, and to the quest for gold in other parts of the island. Still more unfortunate than the failure to find much gold, and largely because of that fruitless quest, was the rise of bitter hostilities between the Spaniards and the natives. This was also a sequel to and in part a consequence of the Spanish administration in Hispaniola and particularly of the part which Velasquez had played therein. Shortly before coming to Cuba, Velasquez had waged several strenuous and probably somewhat ruthless campaigns against the natives of Hispaniola, chiefly in that part of the island which lay nearest to Cuba and in which he recruited his Cuban expedition. His chief opponent there was a native chief named Hatuey, who, finding himself unable to cope with the Spaniards, fled to Cuba with many of his followers and settled in the country near Baracoa. These refugees were of course quick to report to the natives of Cuba the cause of their migration, and to portray the conduct and character of the Spaniards, and of Velasquez personally, in the most unfavorable light. The natural result was to predispose the Cuban natives to regard the Spaniards with distrust and aversion. And when Velasquez himself presently appeared among the very people who had been thus prejudiced against him, trouble inevitably arose. The leader in the trouble was Hatuey, who had a large following both of his own tribe from Hispaniola and also of Cubans. He had maintained a system of spying and communication through which he kept himself perfectly informed of the doings of Velasquez, whom he considered his chief foe, not only politically but personally, and when he learned that he was coming to Cuba he busied himself with preparations to resist him. He was foremost in spreading among the Cuban natives all manner of evil reports concerning the Spaniards, all of which, whether true or false, found ready credence. Thus on one occasion, as related by Herrera, he gathered many of the natives together with a promise to reveal to them the God of the Spaniards, whom they worshipped and to whom they made human sacrifices of Indians' lives. When they were assembled and their anticipation was whetted, he placed before them a small basket filled with gold. "That," said he, "is the God which the Spaniards worship, and in quest of which they are following us hither. Let us, therefore, ourselves pay this God reverence and implore him to bid his Spanish worshippers not to harm us when they come hither!" The natives performed a religious dance and other rites about the gold, until they were exhausted, and then Hatuey further counselled them to cast the gold into the river, where the Spaniards could not find it; since if they found it they would continue their search for more, even to cutting out the hearts of the people in quest of it. Whether true or fabricated, the story indicates the attitude of Hatuey toward the Spaniards and explains the intensity of the bitterness which prevailed between him and Velasquez. Of course, when the Spaniards arrived and immediately began to hunt for gold, Hatuey's words about their God seemed to be confirmed. War began, which soon resulted in the defeat and capture of Hatuey, who was put to death. Tradition has it that he was burned at the stake, as was the common custom in those times, and that just before the fire was lighted he was invited to accept Christianity and be baptized, but refused on the ground that he did not want to meet any Spaniards in the other world. He was succeeded in command of the hostile natives by Caguax, who had been his comrade in Hispaniola and who had come to Cuba with him; and the hostilities were continued with the usual result of conflicts between a higher and a lower civilization. In a short time the province of Maysi was conquered and partly pacified, and that of Bayamo was invaded. [Illustration: PANFILO DE NARVAEZ] At this time and in these operations there appeared in Cuba two more men of commanding importance in the early history of the island, who were sent thither from Hispaniola to assist Velasquez soon after the defeat and death of Hatuey. One of these was Panfilo de Narvaez, a soldier and the leader of a company of thirty expert crossbow-men who had been serving in Jamaica but were no longer needed by the governor of that island, Esquivel. Narvaez was a native of Valladolid, Spain, near which city Velasquez also had been born. It is possible, indeed, that the two men were related, since there was a marked physical resemblance between them; both being tall, handsome, and of a pronounced blond complexion. At any rate, they had long been friends, and Velasquez was glad to make Narvaez his chief lieutenant and right-hand man. Narvaez appears to have been a man of high intelligence, honorable character, and much personal charm. He was, however, too much inclined toward fighting, was sometimes reckless in his leadership, and was no more scrupulous in his conduct toward the natives than were many other conquerors of various lands in those days of adventure and violence. At the head of a force of more than a hundred and fifty men, including a score of horsemen, he led the way in the conquest, first of Bayamo and finally of all the rest of the island. In his campaign he enjoyed immense advantage from the awe and terror which were caused among the natives by the appearance of the horses, which were the first ever seen in Cuba. [Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW DE LAS CASAS] The other and more famous of these two men was Bartholomew de Las Casas, known to the world as the "Protector of the Indians" and as the "Apostle to the Indies." As a youth he had accompanied his father on Columbus's third voyage to America, and he had come to the Antilles a second time and permanently with Ovando, the Governor of Hispaniola, in 1502. In 1510 he was ordained to be a priest, and it was in that clerical capacity that he was sent over to Cuba to assist Velasquez in the conquest, pacification and settlement of the island. He appears at first to have had no important religious scruples against oppression of the natives, but joined with Velasquez and Narvaez in their sometimes ruthless policy. When the island was divided among the conquerors under the system of repartimientos, or allotments of natives as practical slaves of the Spaniards, he received and accepted without demur his encomienda or commandery, and held it for some time in partnership with his friend Pedro de Renteria. But a little later, realizing the injustice and cruelties which the natives suffered under this system, he became, as he himself described it, "converted," and thereafter was an earnest, zealous and almost fanatical champion of their rights. He visited Spain several times, to secure commissions of inquiry and other measures for their relief. Also, thinking thus to redeem them from enforced servitude, he secured royal sanction for the introduction of Negro slavery and the importation of Negro slaves into Cuba; a policy which he afterward deeply regretted. After a brief campaign in Bayamo, which was not particularly successful, beyond the killing of Caguax and the final dispersion of the force which Hatuey had organized, Narvaez formed an expedition of perhaps five hundred men for more extended enterprises, in which he had as his principal companions Las Casas and a young nephew of Velasquez, Juan de Grijalva. The precise route of this expedition cannot now be stated. It certainly, however, traversed the Bayamo region, and went as far west as Camaguey. It also visited the neighborhood of Cape Cruz and there passed through the town of Cueyba, as Las Casas called it, where, as hitherto related, a Spanish mariner, presumably Ojeda, had landed and had established a Christian shrine with a statue of the Holy Virgin. Here and at other places amicable relations were maintained between the Spaniards and the natives. Unhappily that was not always the rule. At the large town of Caonao, probably near Manzanillo, a number of Spanish soldiers, as if suddenly stricken with madness, began a massacre of the natives, killed a great number, and drove the rest into flight. Narvaez does not seem to have ordered nor to have taken part in the slaughter, but neither did he exert himself to prevent it or to stop it. Whereupon Las Casas, righteously wrathful, bade him to go to the Devil, and thereafter devoted himself to ministering to the sufferers and to reassuring the survivors. From Caonao the expedition moved westward, through the southern part of the Province of Camaguey, where the natives were so frightened that they fled to the little islands off the coast which Columbus had named the Queen's Gardens. Thence it went across the island to the north coast, and probably in the region of Sagua la Grande, in Santa Clara Province, found some small deposits of gold. After stopping there for some time, it continued its progress into Havana Province, where more gold was found and where, unhappily, serious trouble with the natives was renewed. On the way across the island Narvaez had heard of three Spaniards, a man and two women, who had been shipwrecked on the coast and were living with the Indians somewhere in the west. He sent word of this report back to Velasquez, who returned him orders to search for the castaways even in preference to gold, and who also dispatched a ship along the north coast to meet Narvaez and his party in the region to which they were going. In Santa Clara the two women were found, unharmed and well, and they presently married members of the expedition. Finally, in Havana the man also was found. He too was unharmed and well, though he had become in speech and habits more like an Indian than a Spaniard. According to his story, he and the two women were the sole survivors of a company of twenty-six. They had fled from Ojeda's ill-starred settlement at Uraba, on the Gulf of Darien, and were trying to make their way back to Hispaniola, but had been driven out of their course around the north coast of Cuba. Not far from Cape San Antonio they had been shipwrecked and thence had made their way by land, along the north coast. Most of them had been killed by natives while trying to cross an arm of the sea, which has been assumed to have been the Bay of Matanzas, which was so named on that account. On the Havana coast the expedition met the vessel which Velasquez had sent. But leaving it in port there the expedition went across the island again to Xagua, or Cienfuegos, there to meet Velasquez himself and another expedition which he was leading, and there to spend with him the Christmas season of 1513. At the beginning of 1514 Narvaez and a hundred men returned to Havana and thence marched westward into Pinar del Rio, the vessel keeping in touch with them along the coast. How far they went in that province is not now certainly known. Some accounts have it that they stopped at Bahia Honda and there took ship back for Baracoa, while others insist that they got as far as Nombre de Dios. All that is certain is that Narvaez and his comrades visited on this expedition all parts of the island, and thus completed the nominal exploration and occupation of Cuba in the early part of 1514. CHAPTER VI Velasquez was for a number of years the dominant figure in Cuban history, and he much more than any other man is to be credited with the settlement of the island and its social, political and economical organization. He was married at Baracoa in the early part of 1513 to Donna Maria de Cuellar, daughter of Christopher de Cuellar, the royal treasurer in the island, but within a week was left a widower. To find solace for his grief in action, he threw himself with extraordinary energy into the work of exploring, pacifying and colonizing the island. After founding the town of San Salvador de Bayamo he went westward, as already stated, to meet Narvaez and to spend Christmas at Xagua or Cienfuegos. Less than a month later he founded La Villa de Trinidad, and later in the year La Villa de Sancti Spiritus and, finally, Santiago de Cuba. At all of these places excepting the last named gold was found, though not in any large quantities. He was thus encouraged to continue his search for that precious metal, while at the same time he was admonished not to look too much to it for the prosperity of the Island, but to pay attention to the development of its other resources, and particularly its obvious agricultural potentialities. Accordingly in the spring of 1514 he sent a vessel to Hispaniola for horses and cattle with which to stock Cuba, and for supplies of grain and other seeds, and agricultural implements. In the cargo which it brought back to him lay the germ of the subsequent agricultural greatness of Cuba. At about the same time, also, he founded Cuban commerce by the establishment of regular communication between the island and Jamaica, Darien and other Spanish settlements at the south. In this latter enterprise the King was especially interested, and his directions to Velasquez were that he should develop it to the largest possible extent. He did not expect Cuba ever to rival Darien and other regions in mineral wealth, but that island could, he thought, surpass them in agriculture, and thus could serve as a source of supply to them, and as a base of operations. It was, indeed, in pursuance of this policy of commerce with the countries at the south and west of the Caribbean that Santiago de Cuba was founded as the seventh of the seven cities among which the island was partitioned, and that it was made the insular capital. The site was, as already stated, the only one at which gold was not found. It was selected partly because of the secure and commodious harbor, one of the finest anywhere on the shores of the Caribbean, and partly because its situation on the south coast made it particularly accessible to and from Jamaica, Darien and the other regions in which the Spanish crown was interested. As soon as it was founded, the seat of civil, military and ecclesiastical authority was transferred thither from Baracoa, and Santiago de Cuba became the second capital of the island. Meantime Narvaez, at the north, had founded Havana, which was destined to be the third and final capital. Each city or town was made, however, a capital unto itself. The principle of local autonomy or home rule had long been cherished by the Spanish people in the Iberian Kingdom, and it was transplanted by them in an increased degree to their Antillean colonies. In accord with that principle, these first seven cities were planned and arranged with a view to civic self-sufficiency. The plan was uniform. Each place had its central park or plaza, upon which fronted the town hall, the parish church and the residence of the governor or the alcalde. The plan of government was also uniform. In each place Velasquez appointed an Alcalde, who was not a mayor but a judge of first instance; a Deputy Alcalde, and three regidores or councillors; the Alcalde and the regidores sitting together forming the Town Council. There were also a procurador, or public prosecutor; an alguacil, or sheriff; and one or more escribanos, or notaries public. There was also at this time established throughout the island a social and economic system borrowed from Hispaniola, where it had not been in operation long enough for its evil effects to be demonstrated. Its intention was unquestionably benevolent, and, given a sufficiently altruistic quality of human nature, its results might have been good. With human nature what it was, it became almost unrelievedly evil. This was known as the system of Repartimiento, or Encomienda. First of all, the whole territory of the island was partitioned among the seven cities. Then in each there were appointed persons whom we might describe as land-holders and slave-holders. The former, known as vecinos, were the representatives of the king in ownership of the land, all of which was regarded as the property of the crown, to be apportioned for working to suitable loyal subjects. The latter were called encomenderos, and to them were apportioned the native population, in tutelage and servitude. Now the fundamental evil of the system lay in the appropriation of the land. It was all taken for the crown, and the natives who had been occupying it were _ipso facto_ transformed into squatters, or trespassers. But as the king claimed the whole area of the island, there was no other land for them to occupy; wherefore they must remain on the king's land. But if they did that, they must become his serfs. They were therefore apportioned among the land-holders; to remain in their homes and to be educated, fed and clothed and generally cared for by the latter; and in return to do a certain amount of useful work. Thus they would become civilized and Christianized, and perhaps themselves fitted to become land-holders. It was an excellent plan, in theory; and it seemed the more likely to succeed because the Spanish colonists manifested no such caste prejudice against the natives as those of some other lands did. Thus it was an unusual thing for a French settler in North America, and a still more unusual thing for a British settler, to marry an Indian woman, and such unions, when they did occur, were generally regarded as debasing. But there was no such feeling among the Spanish, and intermarriages between the races, of an entirely legal and honorable character, were not uncommon and were not regarded with disfavor. Nevertheless, the repartimiento system soon lapsed into utter evil, as such a relationship between a superior and an inferior race seems certain to do. In brief, it became slavery, pure and simple. The benevolent and statesmanlike spirit of Velasquez was shown, in contrast to that of most other conquistadors of that time, in the circumstance that he ordered the natives to be thus impressed into work for a period of only a single month, to be paid for their labor at a prescribed rate, and to be engaged as largely as possible in agricultural pursuits. He did not prohibit the employment of them at gold mining, but he strove earnestly to extend agricultural enterprise. This was partly, no doubt, in pursuance of the king's order, that he should make Cuba a source of food supplies for the supposedly less favored regions at Darien and elsewhere, but was partly, too, because Velasquez recognized the agricultural possibilities of Cuba and was determined to make it self-supporting. He exercised this authority, not merely as Governor General of the island, but also as Repartidor, or Partitioner of the Natives, to which office he was expressly appointed by the king, with responsibility to nobody but the king himself. He apportioned the natives in lots of from not fewer than forty to not more than three hundred, according to the land held by the vecino, and ordered that they be well treated, and of course be not sold nor transferred from one master to another. There was, unfortunately, another class of native servitors, to wit, those taken as captives in battle in the occasional hostilities between the two races. These were by royal decree made outright and life-long slaves, subject to be bought and sold and even branded with their owners' names, like cattle. The number of these being few after the collapse of Hatuey's short-lived resistance, the practice arose of adding to their number natives from Mexico, Darien and elsewhere, who were seized and brought to Cuba as slaves. All this was declared to be illegal and was ordered abolished by a royal decree which was promulgated in Cuba in November, 1531. But long before that time the evil system had become widespread, and had involved in absolute slavery encomendado natives as well as the captives. The bad results of the system were reflected upon the masters if possible more than upon the slaves, and were felt for many years after the native population had so nearly vanished as to be no longer a factor in Cuban affairs worthy of consideration. [Illustration: PONCE DE LEON] Following the establishment of these political and industrial systems, Cuban colonization made extraordinarily rapid progress. The island which for years had been neglected and all but ignored became the chief centre of Antillean interest. It drew from Hispaniola, Darien and other lands, both insular and continental, many of their best colonists, including some who afterward became famous for their achievements elsewhere. Thus, Hernando Cortez was alcalde of Santiago de Cuba. Bernal Diaz, whose honest soul revolted against the infamies of Pedrarias Davila at Darien, settled for a time at Sancti Spiritus before following Cortez to Mexico. Vasco de Figueroa was a great plantation owner at Camaguey. Las Casas was at Trinidad until he returned to Spain to begin his propaganda for the welfare of the Indians. Ponce de Leon also spent some time in Cuba, and so did La Salle. Velasquez himself was of course settled at Santiago de Cuba, with Christopher de Cuellar, the royal treasurer, and Hurtado de Isunsolo and Amador de Lares, fiscal agents of the King. At Santiago was established the royal assay office and refining works for the output of the gold mines of the island. In brief, the island prospered greatly in all respects. The mines were rich, the plantations fertile and productive, and live stock greatly thrived. The island, according to Oviedo, became "much populated with both Christians and Indians." It appears to have been at the instance of Velasquez that its name was changed in 1515 from Juana to Fernandina, in honor of the king; an incident which added to the high regard which that monarch cherished for Velasquez, of whom he said that "no man could more wisely administer the affairs of the island." This tribute was probably deserved. But it cannot be said that Velasquez served his King for naught, or that he promoted the interests of the island to the neglect of his own, since he himself so greatly prospered that he became the richest man in all Cuba and probably in all the Antilles, and was so secure in his place that he could feel quite independent of even the Admiral himself, Diego Columbus, at Hispaniola. A noteworthy tribute to Velasquez was paid, also, in a series of cedulas issued by the King. The first, dated December 12, 1512, thanked him for his pacification of Cuba and his tactful and humane treatment of the natives. Another, on April 8, 1513, was much to the same effect, adding the exhortation: "Because I much desire that all diligence possible be used to convert the natives of the island, I direct that you undertake this with all means possible. In nothing can you do me greater service." Five days later a third cedula formally appointed Velasquez Governor of the town and fortress of Baracoa, with a salary of 20,000 maravedis a year. After the complete organization of the insular government and industrial system, as already described, the King in a cedula of February 28, 1515, commended all that had been done, adding: "The chief recommendation I would make to you is that you have all possible care for the conversion and good treatment of the Indians of the island, and that you endeavor in every way to have them taught and indoctrinated in our Holy Catholic Faith and to have them remain in it; so that we may be without burden on our conscience regarding them and so that you may free yourself of all the obligation which you have assumed for their welfare." It was impossible that Velasquez should, however, escape the attacks of envy and malice. Suggestions were made to the King that he was growing too rich, and that he was manipulating the affairs of the island in his own interest rather than in the interest of the royal treasury. But these were without effect, save to confirm Velasquez in royal confidence and favor. To the suggestion that a residencia or investigation be made of the administration of Velasquez and his lieutenants, the King returned an emphatic negative. In a cedula of July 7, 1515, he expressly ordered that no residencia be taken, since he was entirely satisfied with the administration of the island. This was of material advantage to Velasquez, and was also a most unusual honor; the more unusual and noteworthy when we remember that Ferdinand had developed a particularly selfish and suspicious disposition and was little inclined to give full confidence to any man. Nor was the royal favor short lived or confined to the reign of Ferdinand. In November, 1518, another royal decree from Ferdinand's successor, Charles I, appointed Velasquez Adelantado of all lands which he personally or through his agents might discover, and endowed him with one-fifteenth part of all the revenues which might be obtained from them. At this time Velasquez was already busy with enterprises of exploration, and his efforts were redoubled under this incentive. But in so doing he suffered the same fate that he himself had inflicted upon Diego Columbus. For he sent Hernando Cortez, who had been alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, upon the expedition which resulted in the conquest of Mexico; upon achieving which transcendent exploit, Cortez repudiated him and his authority, much as Velasquez had repudiated the authority of Columbus in Hispaniola. The year 1515 marked a turning-point in the early history of Cuba. In that year Las Casas began his great crusade in behalf of the natives. At first, as we have seen, he accepted and approved the repartimiento system, and himself with his partner and close friend Pedro de Renteria took several hundred Indians as his wards and servants on the land which had been allotted to him at Trinidad. But when he became "converted," as he himself described it, he was convinced that the system, which had degenerated into little else than slavery, was wholly evil and could be nothing else, putting all who practised it in imminent danger of hell fire. To this conviction he was brought through consideration of what he had heard Dominican friars preach in Hispaniola. At this time his partner, Renteria, was absent, in Jamaica, and Las Casas was ignorant of his views on the subject. Moreover, he realized that the natives whom he had in his possession belonged to Renteria as much as to him, and he could not properly do anything which would be injurious to the interests of his partner. Accordingly he went to Velasquez and told him that his conscience would no longer permit him to hold slaves, and he must therefore release them; but he wished the matter held in abeyance and confidence until the return of Renteria, in order that the latter might protect his own interests as he saw fit. In addition, he passionately adjured Velasquez, for the sake of his own soul, to free all the natives and to abolish the repartimiento system. Velasquez did not follow this advice, but he continued to hold Las Casas in the highest esteem and to show him all possible favors. Las Casas then at once began publicly preaching against the sin of slavery, and proclaiming the right of the natives to equal freedom with the Spaniards; a course which gave great offense to many in the island but in which Velasquez protected him. Then he determined to hasten at once to Spain and to lay the matter before the King, who in his various cedulas and messages to Velasquez had expressed so much concern for the welfare of the Indians. He accordingly wrote to Renteria, in Jamaica, that he was called to Spain on imperatively urgent business, and that unless he, Renteria, could return to Cuba at once, he would have to go without seeing him first, which he would regret to do. Upon receiving this letter, Renteria immediately hastened back to Cuba; and then was disclosed one of the most extraordinary coincidences in history. The meeting of the two friends was in the presence of Velasquez and others, and nothing was said by Las Casas concerning his plans, nor did Renteria say anything about his own affairs. But as soon as they were alone together, Renteria announced that he was planning himself to go to Spain, and that he would therefore accompany Las Casas. He then explained that while in Jamaica he had gone for a time into "retreat" at a Franciscan monastery, and while thus engaged in pious meditation had become convinced that the Indians of Cuba were being very badly treated, and had resolved to go to Spain and there to plead their cause before the King, especially asking for the foundation of schools and colleges in which the Indian youth could be educated. The astonishment and delight of Las Casas at hearing this was equalled only by the similar feelings of Renteria when in turn Las Casas told him the purpose of his proposed mission to Spain. Hundreds of miles apart, and entirely unknown to each other, the two friends at precisely the same time had been cherishing the same noble purposes. It was quickly agreed between them that Las Casas alone should undertake the mission, that their native wards should be surrendered at once to Velasquez, and that their land and other property should be sold, if necessary, to provide Las Casas with the money needed for his journey. In his departure from Cuba and his journey to Spain, Las Casas was also greatly assisted by Pedro de Cordova, the head of the Dominican Order in Hispaniola. Simultaneously with the departure of Las Casas another and very different mission was dispatched to the same goal. This was one consisting of Narvaez and Antonio Velasquez--not the Governor, Diego Velasquez--bearing a petition to the King to the effect that the repartimiento system should be transformed into one of absolute and perpetual slavery; so that the land-owners might hold their Indians permanently, and bequeath them to their heirs like any other property. That this was sent simultaneously with Las Casas's going is not to be regarded as a coincidence, however. It is altogether probable that the action was inspired by knowledge of the purpose of Las Casas and by a determination to forestall him or to defeat him. How Ferdinand would have decided between the two, whether the impassioned eloquence of Las Casas or the gold which Narvaez and Antonio Velasquez bore with their petition, would have been the more potent, must ever remain matter of uncertainty; for he was never called upon to make the decision. Before the issue could be put to him, on January 23, 1516, he died. In the interregnum, before the arrival of the new King, Charles I, from Flanders, Cardinal Ximenes was Regent, and it was to him that Las Casas addressed himself; after he had first been scornfully received and his mission ridiculed by Bishop Fonseca, of Burgos. The great Cardinal had long been an advocate of humane treatment of the Indians, and was quite ready to listen to Las Casas, calling into council for the purpose several other prelates and statesmen. Early in the hearings, in order to make sure of his ground, Ximenes bade the clerk to read the full text of the laws relating to the Indians, and that functionary, being a partisan of the advocates of slavery, purposely misread one important clause. Las Casas cried out, "That is not the law!" Ximenes bade the clerk to read it again. He did so, with the same perversion; and again Las Casas exclaimed, "The law says no such thing!" Annoyed, Ximenes rebuked Las Casas and threatened him with a penalty if he interrupted again. "Your Lordship is welcome to send my head to the block," retorted the undaunted Las Casas, "if what the clerk has read is in the law!" Other members of the Council thereupon snatched the laws from the clerk's hand, and found that Las Casas was right, whereupon the clerk wished that he had never been born, while Las Casas, as he himself modestly records, "lost nothing of the regard which the Cardinal had for him or of the credit which he gave to him." The result of the conferences was that Ximenes authorized Las Casas, Palacios Rubios and Antonio Montesino to prepare the draft of a plan for emancipating the Indians and providing for their just government and education. When the plan was completed and adopted there was some question as to whom it should be entrusted for execution. Ximenes invited Las Casas to nominate a commission, but the latter declined because his long absence from Spain had left him unfamiliar with men there and their qualifications. The Cardinal therefore decided to select a commission from among the monks of the Order of St. Jerome. That Order was selected because, while the Dominicans and Franciscans were already settled in Hispaniola and Jamaica and had committed themselves to a certain policy toward the Indian question, the Jeronimites had not yet gone thither and were quite without bias or predisposition. This was on July 8, 1516. The following Sunday the Cardinal and other members of the council, and also Las Casas, went to the Jeronimite monastery, near Madrid, to attend mass and to make a selection of three Commissioners or judges from among the twelve who had been nominated by the head of the Order. There Las Casas was received with much distinction by the monks and by the Cardinal, to the chagrin of his enemy the Bishop of Burgos, who was present in the congregation. After some consideration, Ximenes then announced that Las Casas should be provided with money and letters of credit to the General of the Order at Seville, and should himself go thither and select the three Commissioners. This was immediately done, and the result was the selection of Luis de Figueroa, Prior of La Mejorada; Alonzo de Santo Domingo, Prior of Ortega; and Bernardino Manzanedo. These three were thereupon commissioned by Ximenes to proceed to Hispaniola, to take away all the Indians held by members of the Council, judges and other officers, and hold a court of impeachment upon all colonial officers, who were charged as having "lived, like Moors, without a king." They were then to consult with both the colonists and the chief men among the Indians as to the condition of the Indians and the ways and means of bettering it; so that the Indians, who had become Christians, should be set free and enabled to govern themselves. They were to assure the Indians it was the will of the Cardinal that they should be treated as free men and Christians. That Ximenes was sincere in giving these orders there can be no question. On more than one occasion he vehemently declared that the Indians were as a matter of right and should and must be as a matter of fact free men. But all this was too late to save the Indians. Immediately upon Las Casas's departure from Cuba, treatment of the Indians there and elsewhere in the Indies became more harsh and oppressive, actually tending toward extinction of the race. Moreover, when the bearers of the petition of Narvaez and Antonio Velasquez finally got a hearing before Ximenes, they were referred to the three Commissioners, who were about to leave Spain for Hispaniola. They therefore went to see them, and succeeded, apparently, to some degree in alienating them from Las Casas and his colleagues and in prejudicing them against the Indians; to such an extent that before their departure for Hispaniola Las Casas had begun to doubt whether much real good would come from their mission. He and the three Commissioners travelled to Hispaniola on separate ships, and on their arrival in that island the three were more ready to confer with others, even with his opponents, than with him. It is true that Cardinal Ximenes gave detailed and generally admirable directions to the Jeronimite Fathers as to the course which they were to pursue; not only toward the natives of Cuba but also toward those of the other islands and the continent. These provided that the natives were to be well treated. They were to be formed into autonomous communities of their own, under their own chiefs and owning their own land and cattle. They were to be provided with churches, schools and hospitals, and were to be converted to Christianity and educated. They were, however, to be required to work for a part of the time in the gold mines of the Spaniards, for which service they would be paid a percentage of the gold obtained. In compensation for thus being deprived of what was fast becoming the slave labor of the native islanders, the Spanish settlers of Cuba were permitted each to hold as outright slaves four or five Caribs from other islands, Negroes from Africa, or, in time, Red Indians from the North American continent. The net result was that for a time the Cuban natives were fairly well treated, though their fate was simply postponed for a few years. At the same time there was generally established in Cuba, as in most other lands of the world at that time, the hateful institution of human slavery. CHAPTER VII Gold mining in Cuba appears for some time to have been profitable. There was not the vast opulence of the precious metal which a little later was discovered in Peru and elsewhere on the South American continent, but there was enough greatly to encourage an influx of colonists from Spain and also from the other Antilles. Hispaniola itself was for a time almost depopulated. Nor did this multitude of settlers consist exclusively of gold-seekers. There were also many agriculturists, artificers and tradesmen, who perceived that their activities would be needed to complement the gold-mining industry. From the same cause arose at this time an important development of the political organization of the island. Nominally, all the provincial capitals were of equal dignity. But the smelting works and assay office were at Santiago, and thither, therefore, all gold miners had to repair at intervals, to have their nuggets, dust and ore refined and its value determined. They came in the spring, just before the beginning of the rainy season. Naturally their coming thither attracted at the same time tradesmen from all parts of the island, and Santiago thus became the business and social metropolis. Moreover, each of the other provincial capitals deemed it profitable to send to Santiago at that time an official representative of its local government. These procuradors, as they were called, came together at Santiago to exchange experiences and advice and to confer for the general welfare of their respective communities. Thus early in Cuban history were the rudiments of a representative insular legislature established; through the influence of which the various provinces were drawn together in sympathy and made uniform in administration, and the foundations of Cuban nationality were laid. Soon, indeed, a regular organization was voluntarily formed, with the Alcalde of Santiago as presiding officer and with rules of order and a programme of procedure. As a result of each annual session of this primitive insular council an address was prepared for transmission to the King of Spain. This consisted of a report upon the condition, progress and prospects of the island, and a request for the supplying of its legislative, administrative or other needs. In the presentation of this address the insular council performed a function practically identical with that of the Spanish Cortes of that time; a body which had no legislative or other authority, but merely the privilege of protest and petition to the King. Usually a procurador representing the council was despatched to Spain, to present the address in person to the King; who was received with something of the attention and honor which were paid to important foreign ambassadors. The first such mission from Cuba to the King was that which has already been mentioned as consisting of Panfilo de Narvaez and Antonio Velasquez. It went to Spain in July, 1515, and it bore not alone the address of the council but also the king's share of the gold that had down to that time been mined in the island. The amount of that share was more than 12,000 "pieces of eight," which we must believe was most welcome to the money-loving King. As that was supposed to be twenty per cent of the whole output of gold, but was certainly not more than that proportion, it follows that in about three years more than 60,000 pesos of gold had been taken. It is not to be wondered at that Ferdinand welcomed them cordially, and promptly granted many of their requests; those which required expenditure of cash being paid for out of the insular tribute which the envoys had brought; and that he expressed profound satisfaction, as already mentioned, with the existing government of the island. One of the requests which these envoys bore was not, however, granted. That was, their request that the natives of Cuba be given to them in perpetuity as slaves. In consequence of the refusal to grant this, the Cuban gold-miners and planters suffered more and more from scarcity of labor, and more and more engaged in slave-hunting elsewhere to supply their needs. This pernicious traffic was resolutely opposed by Las Casas, but not with entire success. But it brought with it in a measure its own penalty. As a direct result of it there soon occurred an event mischievous to Cuba, but of transcendent interest to Spain and to all the world. The slave-hunters naturally sought new islands, which had not yet been depopulated, and where the Jeronimite Fathers had not yet established themselves to interfere with the trade in human flesh. Accordingly in 1516 a squadron of vessels from Cuba visited the Guanajes Islands, as they had been called by Columbus when he discovered them, off the coast of Yucatan. There they took many captives, loading all the vessels with them. Leaving twenty-five men to guard their landing place on the island, the squadron returned to Cuba with the slaves. Havana was the port to which they were taken; a port which from that time forward increased rapidly in importance. Before they could all be landed, the slaves on one vessel mutinied, overpowered the crew, took possession of the vessel, and sailed back to the Yucatan islands. There the vessel was run ashore and wrecked, but the slaves escaped from it and, going ashore, exterminated the Spanish garrison which had been left there. A relief expedition was hastily sent from Havana, but it arrived too late. It found only the wreck of the ship, and no trace of the Spanish garrison. However, it looted the islands and was thus enabled to carry back to Cuba some 20,000 pesos in gold. This had a revolutionary effect. Cubans who were becoming dissatisfied with the scarcity of slave labor and with the waning production of gold in the island, were roused by the promise of greater riches in the lands to the westward, and began to plan further adventures in that direction. In this movement the first important leader was Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, a wealthy land-holder, planter and miner of Sancti Spiritus. He with more than a hundred others equipped a squadron of three vessels, to sail westward, not, however, for slaves but for gold. One of these vessels appears to have belonged to Velasquez, the Governor, and in return for the use of it he asked that the expedition should bring him back a cargo of slaves. This Cordova indignantly refused, declaring that the slave-trade was offensive to God and man. So, at least, says Bernal Diaz del Castillo; though there are others who say that slave trading was the real object of the expedition. However that may be, the expedition set out from either Havana or Jaruco, near by, on February 8, 1517, piloted by Antonio Alaminos who, as a boy, had sailed with Columbus on his fourth voyage on which he skirted the coast of Central America. Columbus had believed that coast to be the Golden Chersonesus, a land of fabulous riches, and it was with eagerness that Alaminos guided the Cuban expedition thither. The Mugeres Islands were the first land reached after leaving Cape San Antonio, and two days later, on March 4, 1517, they landed at Punta Catoche--a name said to have been given to it by them because of the words "con escotoch" which the natives uttered on greeting them upon their landing, words meaning "welcome to our home." All thoughts of seizing slaves were quickly abandoned when they found the natives a well clad, armed and civilized people, living in large cities, with houses and temples built of fine masonry, comparable with those of the cities of Spain. Hostilities, however, speedily arose. It does not appear whether the Spanish or the natives of Yucatan were the aggressors, but the upshot of it was that the Spanish were ambuscaded and several of them were badly wounded. The explorers persisted in their enterprise, however, and made their way along the northern coast and thence southward along the shore of the Gulf of Campeche, as far as Champoton. Hostilities with the natives increased, and nearly a third of the party perished from wounds or thirst and fever before they got back to Havana. Moreover, one ship was lost, and the other two were in so bad condition that they with difficulty were beached for repairs at Havana, while the survivors marched afoot across the island to Santiago, there to report to Velasquez the results of their expedition. It is believed that on their way back they were driven by a "norther" far out of their course, and touched the southern extremity of Florida, or at least some of its islands. Cordova himself had been so badly wounded that he was unable to go to Santiago, but made his way to his home at Sancti Spiritus, where he soon afterward died. Immense interest was aroused in Cuba by the tales of Cordova's men, and by the appearance of the two captive Mayas of Yucatan whom they brought with them. The reports of large cities, built of stone dressed and carved and laid in mortar,--reports which were, of course, entirely true,--piqued curiosity as to the identity of the people who had built them, and the belief became widespread that they were some of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, or at least descendants of the Jews who were driven into exile after Vespasian's conquest of Jerusalem. Velasquez himself was foremost in interesting himself in the matter, perhaps partly with a desire to recoup the loss of his ship; and he accordingly sent his nephew Gonzalez de Guzman, of Santiago, as a messenger to the King in Spain, to tell him of these discoveries and to ask that he, Velasquez, be commissioned Adelantado of Yucatan and all other lands which he might discover. Now we have seen how high an opinion King Ferdinand had of Velasquez; regarding him as the best possible Governor of Cuba, whose administration should not be subject even to the balancing and auditing of accounts which he elsewhere required. But Ferdinand was now dead, and the new king, Charles, knew not Velasquez, or at least not so well. Guzman pleaded the cause as strongly as he could, and so, we may assume, did Narvaez, who was still in Spain, though Antonio Velasquez had returned to Cuba. The king was not, however, to be so easily persuaded. He was not unfavorable to the ambition of Velasquez, but neither was he unhesitatingly favorable to it. Accordingly he temporized. Instead of giving Velasquez the appointment, he sent two agents, procuradors, to Hispaniola, to look into the whole matter with plenary authority. These agents, the name of one of whom marks an epoch in Cuban and in American history, were Diego de Orellano and Hernando Cortez. Velasquez was disappointed but not deterred from prosecuting the great enterprise which he had in mind. He would not wait for the report of the procuradors and the action which the king might take upon it, but hastened his preparations for another expedition to Yucatan, which he regarded as by far the most important land of all that had thus far been discovered by the Spanish in the Western Hemisphere. The leader of the new venture was to be his nephew, Juan de Grijalva, who appears not to have been well fitted for the task. Grijalva was commissioned in January, 1518, and in the same month set out from Santiago de Cuba with a flotilla of four vessels. Sailing eastward he rounded Cape Maysi and thence proceeded north and west along the Cuban coast to what is now Matanzas, where a stop was made for repairs and supplies. Thence he went to Havana for further supplies and men, and tarried for some time, so that it was not until some time in April--some say April 5, others a much later date--that he finally set out from Cuba. He had four vessels, carrying two hundred and fifty men, among whom were several of whom the world was later to hear much; such as Bernal Diaz, and Pedro de Alvarado, who was captain of one of the vessels. The chief pilot was Antonio Alaminos, whose plan was to follow the same course that Cordova's expedition had pursued. Upon passing Cape San Antonio, however, the little squadron fell into the grip of a "norther" which carried it somewhat out of its course, and on May 3 it first sighted land at Cozumel Island, of which Grijalva was thus the discoverer. Doubling back, the expedition followed the course of its predecessor around Punta Catoche and along the Yucatan coast to Champoton. Thence it continued westward, discovering the Tabasco and other rivers, and the great bay near Vera Cruz which still bears the name of Alvarado. How far up the Mexican coast it sailed is not altogether clear, but it certainly passed Cabo Rojo, and probably reached Tampico and the mouth of the Panuco River. Thus to two Cuban expeditions must be credited the discovery of the vast empire thereafter known as New Spain. De Solis and Pinzon had skirted a part of the coast of Yucatan in 1506 but had made no landing. Indeed, Columbus himself on his last voyage had visited some of the coastal islands, but had apparently ignored the proximity of the mainland. Cordova was the first to reach the actual coast of Yucatan and to explore a portion of that country. Grijalva in turn was the first to discover and to land in Mexico; of which country he formally claimed possession, in the name of Velasquez, for the King of Spain, it was he, too, or some member of his expedition, who gave to Mexico the name of New Spain. In his commission Grijalva had been directed to discover and explore new lands, and to take possession of them for the King of Spain, but he was forbidden to undertake colonization of them or to make any permanent settlements. To that prohibition must be ascribed the practical failure of his expedition. He appears to have realized the desirability of making permanent settlements, but felt himself restrained by his orders. His men murmured and almost mutinied because they were not permitted to build forts, take land, and establish colonies; but Grijalva, though firm to resist them, dared not violate the orders of his uncle. However, at midsummer he sent Alvarado back with two ships, carrying the sick and wounded, and also much treasure in gold which had been obtained from the natives in barter. He likewise wrote to Velasquez, asking and indeed urging that his commission be so amended as to permit him to make permanent settlements in the lands which he had discovered. It does not appear that Velasquez made a favorable response to this request, if indeed he made any at all. He had previously manifested his impatience to learn what Grijalva was doing and what he had found, by sending Christopher de Olid with one vessel to offer him reenforcements and supplies, if needed, and to get a report of his achievements. Off the Mexican coast, however, that expedition ran into a succession of violent storms which so discouraged and dismayed Olid that he abandoned his errand and scuttled incontinently back to Cuba without so much as communicating with Grijalva. The latter, accordingly, after spending the summer and early fall in Mexico, and despairing of receiving the increased authority which he deemed essential to the further success of his expedition, reembarked and returned to Cuba, arriving at Matanzas early in October. There he found Olid, who had reached that port only a few days before, and who had not yet communicated with Velasquez the news of the failure of his errand. Olid's report to Velasquez, which was then promptly dispatched, contained therefore the news of Grijalva's return as well as his own. As soon as he received this, Velasquez sent word to Grijalva to come at once to Santiago and report to him in person, but to let his men remain at Matanzas, or at Havana, since he wanted them to serve in another Mexican expedition which he was already fitting out. Most of the men were willing to do this, and were accordingly maintained there at the cost of Velasquez, or of the Spanish Crown, until he was ready to use them; though a certain number expressed themselves as having had their fill of exploring and accordingly returned to their homes in various parts of Cuba. Grijalva repaired, as summoned, to Santiago, and there met what we must regard as an unjust and unmerited fate. Velasquez expressed entire dissatisfaction with his conduct, particularly in not having planted permanent settlements in Mexico; the very thing which Grijalva had wanted to do but was forbidden by Velasquez himself to do. This extraordinary inconsistency on the part of Velasquez can probably be explained on the ground that he himself had been forbidden by the Jeronimite Fathers to plant such colonies, and did not venture to disobey them, but had hoped that Grijalva would disobey them. He further let his unhappy nephew know that, because of his failure to disobey orders, he would have no further use for him. He was sending out another expedition to Mexico, to plant permanent colonies there, but it would be under other leadership, and Grijalva would have no part in it whatever. As Grijalva had already alienated most of his men by refusing to break his orders, he was thus left friendless, and he played no further part in the history either of the Cuba which he had loyally served or of the Mexico of which he was the discoverer and first explorer. CHAPTER VIII [Illustration: HERNANDO CORTEZ] The new Mexican expedition was entrusted by Velasquez to the leadership of the greatest of all the Spanish conquistadors, Hernando Cortez, then Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba. This famous man was then, in 1518, only thirty-three years of age. He had been born in Estremadura, had survived a particularly weak and sickly childhood, and had studied law at the University of Salamanca. Leaving the University, he enlisted in the company of Nicolas de Ovando, also of Estremadura, for an expedition to America. But on the very eve of sailing he went to bid a tender farewell to his inamorata; while scaling the garden wall to reach her window he fell and had part of the wall topple upon him, and in consequence was laid abed for some time, while Ovando's expedition sailed without him. Recovering from this mishap, he passed a year or two in obscurity and poverty, and then secured passage, in 1504, for Hispaniola. His courage and prowess during a storm which threatened to swamp the vessel made him a conspicuous member of the company, and on landing at Hispaniola he was quickly taken into the good graces and the employ of both Velasquez and Ovando. Having overcome his early delicacy of constitution, he was now a stalwart, handsome youth, of engaging manners, fine education and much spirit and capacity in martial adventure; in brief, admirably fitted for the great career which he was already unconsciously confronting. We have seen that a mishap in a love affair determined the time and circumstances of his leaving Spain for the New World. A sequel to that incident again determined his course. He had enlisted in the expedition of Diego de Nicuesa bound for Darien when from the old injury from his garden wall disaster there developed an abscess in his right knee, which again disabled him for a time and restrained him from going on that voyage. Had he gone on it, perhaps he might have become the conqueror of Peru, instead of his fellow Estremaduran, Pizarro, who was a member of Nicuesa's company, and the discoverer of the Pacific, instead of that other Estremaduran, Balboa, who went to Darien at a little later date. Instead, Cortez was detailed by Diego Columbus to go to Cuba as a secretary to Velasquez. In that capacity he acquitted himself so well that he received an extensive grant of land, together with a large number of natives as slaves, and for a time he settled down as a Cuban planter. His adventurous spirit would not permit him permanently to engage in so placid an occupation, however, and he presently became involved in some strenuous transactions which came near to making an end of him. Precisely what happened is uncertain. Historic accounts differ. According to Benito Martinez, he made himself the leader of a faction opposed to Velasquez, and undertook to go from Cuba to Hispaniola in an open boat to carry to certain royal Judges there complaints and accusations against the Governor. As he was setting out on this venture, however, he was betrayed and arrested, was charged with fomenting a revolt against Velasquez, and was condemned to be hanged. Upon the intercession of friends, however, Velasquez commuted the sentence into exile from Cuba, and put Cortez aboard a vessel bound for Hispaniola. Soon after the vessel sailed Cortez contrived to slip overboard unperceived, caught hold of a floating log, and swam back to Cuba. There he found refuge in a church, until once more his passion for the fair sex came near to being his undoing. For one day as he was slipping out of the church to keep a love-tryst, he was seized by an alguazil named Juan Escudero, and returned to prison. Velasquez then again ordered him hanged, but again yielded to intercession, and gave Cortez his freedom. Incidentally, Cortez afterward hanged Escudero, in Mexico. So runs one version of the story, told by Herrera and others. Gomara, Barcia and others tell quite another. It is to the effect that Cortez went to Cuba as an accountant for Miguel de Pasamonte, the royal treasurer, though he also did much business for Velasquez and was in charge of the assay office and the hospital at Santiago; and that the feud between him and Velasquez arose over a love affair. Cortez had engaged himself to marry Doña Catalina Suarez, one of the ladies in waiting upon Maria de Toledo, the consort of the Admiral and Viceroy, Diego Columbus, but either delayed to fulfil the engagement or was suspected of an intention to break it by Velasquez, who was much interested in the lady's sister. In the course of this feud, Cortez was arrested and was found to have on his person papers unfriendly to Velasquez. He escaped, and took refuge in a church. But in time he emerged from sanctuary, married Doña Catalina, and "lived happily with her ever after." He also became reconciled to Velasquez, so much that the latter stood as god-father to the first-born child of Cortez. This latter story seems the more probable of the two, and more in accord with what we know of the characters and dispositions of both Velasquez and Cortez. Certain it is that after their disagreements and conflicts Velasquez took Cortez back into full favor, made him Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, and selected him in preference to his own nephew, Grijalva, to be the leader of what he himself considered to be the most important of all his enterprises. In making this choice, which was of epochal importance both to himself and to Cuba and the Spanish colonial empire, Velasquez was doubtless largely influenced by the arguments and persuasions of his own secretary, Andres de Ducro, and by the royal contador in Cuba, Amador de Lares. These two appear to have worked together, with a mutual understanding, and also with an understanding with Cortez; so that we might almost consider the three to have formed a conspiracy to prevail upon the Governor. Perhaps their chief argument, or temptation, was to promise Velasquez the royal appointment as Adelantado, not alone over Cuba but also over all other lands which he might discover, and it was shrewdly pointed out to him that if haste was made, he might secure that appointment in time to claim the enormously rich land of Mexico as part of his domain. All that would be necessary would be for him to get the appointment before the return of Grijalva with the official report of his discoveries. As this appointment was the dearest wish and ambition of Velasquez's life, it is easy to understand how potent this offer was in persuading him to make Cortez the leader of the expedition. There was on the other hand much opposition to the choice. All of the relatives and many of the friends and counsellors of Velasquez warned him not to trust Cortez. Las Casas joined his advice with theirs, warning Velasquez, however, not so much against Cortez as against the royal contador, De Lares, and anyone whom he might favor. De Lares, he said, had lived long in Italy, a country then considered to be a very hotbed of trickery and treachery, and was doubtless deeply imbued with the spirit of conspiracy and intrigue, which he was quite likely to exercise against Velasquez himself. Cortez was of course well aware of these conflicting influences, and for some time felt much uncertainty as to which side would prove the more powerful. He especially dreaded the return of Grijalva, fearing that either he would regain the favor of his uncle, or would give so glowing a report of the wealth of Mexico as to excite the cupidity of Velasquez to a degree that would move him to go thither in person. When he learned that Grijalva had arrived at Havana and was about to come across the island to Santiago, he pushed preparations for his departure with feverish haste, apparently determined to set out whether Velasquez approved his going or not. He borrowed large sums of money, wherever he could, for fitting out the expedition at his own expense if necessary, and in fact he did thus provide a large share of its cost. He also recruited a number of men upon whom he could depend to stand by him in any emergency; even if he should have to defy the authority of Velasquez and sail without his permission. The middle of November, 1518, was the crucial and indeed epochal time; in which the fate of Velasquez, the fortunes of Cortez, and in a large measure the future of the Spanish empire in America, were all decided. Within a week, three major incidents occurred. First, on November 13, Velasquez received his commission from the King, as Adelantado of Cuba and all new lands which he might cause to be discovered. In getting that for him, De Ducro and De Lares fulfilled their promise; whereupon Velasquez in turn fulfilled his agreement, by confirming the appointment of Cortez. Two days later, on November 15, Grijalva arrived at Santiago, and as already stated was unfavorably received. Nevertheless, the apprehensions of Cortez were partially fulfilled. Velasquez did not, indeed, restore his nephew to favor, but he was so impressed by the reports and visible and tangible tokens of the wealth of Mexico, that he hesitated to let Cortez go. The thought occurred to him that it would be better to go himself, or to send somebody upon whom he could more implicitly depend. His hesitation became known to Cortez, and of course greatly disquieted and alarmed him. But with the intrepidity and resolution which were characteristic of him, he hastened his preparations for departure and added to them preparations for breaking away by force if that should be necessary. It has been said by some that he finally sailed secretly, by night. Las Casas tells that story, and the American historian of Cortez, Prescott, credits and repeats it. Others have pictured Cortez as sailing away openly, with Velasquez falling upon his knees on the shore, imploring him not to go. We may prudently relegate both these versions to the realm of imagination. The far more likely story is that given by honest Bernal Diaz. He tells us that Andres de Ducro--probably knowing that there was danger that Velasquez would change his mind and revoke the appointment of Cortez--urged Cortez to sail without delay; that Cortez accordingly, the second day after Grijalva's arrival at Santiago ordered all his men to go aboard ship and remain there; that he then went with De Ducro and De Lares to bid Velasquez adieu; and that the next day, November 18, after attending an early mass at the cathedral, he went aboard and at once set sail for Mexico. That was five days after the appointment of Velasquez as Adelantado, and three days after the arrival of the real discoverer of Mexico, Grijalva, at Santiago. With those three incidents, as we have said, a new era began. We need not here concern ourselves with the further doings of Cortez, excepting in that he took from Cuba several hundred of its most venturesome and competent men, including many of those who had been with Grijalva; and that he promptly renounced the authority of Velasquez over the new lands which were to be discovered. The breach between the two occurred when Cortez, having sailed from Santiago, put into the Cuban port of Trinidad for men and supplies. There he was intercepted by a messenger from Velasquez, with orders to return at once to Santiago. If he would not obey this summons, the Alcalde, Verduzo, was authorized forcibly to deprive him of his commission and to give it instead to Vasco Portallo. The latter was a friend of Velasquez, who had formerly been considered by him for the leadership of the expedition, before the choice fell on Cortez. Another candidate had been Baltazar Bermudez, whom indeed Velasquez actually selected for the place, only to have him decline it. Cortez, as might have been expected, refused to return. Instead, he prevailed upon the Governor's own messenger to join his expedition. To the demand of the Alcalde, that he surrender his commission, he replied with a haughty refusal, and so strong was the force which he had with him that Verduzo prudently refrained from any attempt to coerce him. He then wrote a friendly letter to Velasquez, assuring him that he was giving himself needless concern, took on additional supplies, and resumed his voyage. He had previously helped himself freely from a royal storehouse at Macaca, saying that he was going on the King's business and was therefore entitled to the King's goods. Also he is said to have stopped a merchant ship bound for Hispaniola, and to have taken such goods from its cargo as he desired. Thus provided, he next put in at the harbor at or near Batabano which had in 1514 been called San Cristobal de la Havana, but which by this time was falling into some disuse and was surrendering its name to the far more important port on the northern coast. Here another messenger from Velasquez intercepted him, with a similar command, to which Cortez gave a similar reply. Last of all, he touched at Guane, on what is now appropriately known as Cortez Bay, near the western extremity of the island; and thence, at the middle of February, 1519, left Cuba for the island of Cozumel, thence to proceed to Vera Cruz, Mexico. The story of his burning his ships after he had landed, in order that his men might have no thought or hope of returning, is historic, and is true. But in effect he did the same, at least for himself, before that time. He departed from Cuba in circumstances which made his return to that island impossible; at least as long as Velasquez was its governor. Then, to seal the matter and make the breach with his former friend and patron more absolutely irremediable, immediately upon landing at Vera Cruz he organized a government by appointing some of his own men to be a municipal council. Then to that Council of his own creation he surrendered the commission which Velasquez had bestowed upon him; and finally, also from his own creatures, he accepted appointment as Royal Governor of New Spain! It was of course out of the question that Velasquez would meekly acquiesce in this flouting of his authority, and particularly in this open attempt to deprive him of his newly-won authority as Adelantado of Mexico. He immediately reported to the King what Cortez had done, and protested against it as a defiance of the King's authority as well as his own. But Cortez answered his protests and appeals to the Crown with still more potent arguments in justification of his course. These arguments took the form of bars and ingots of gold, which he secured in Mexico and sent to Spain; in some cases "ballasting his ships" with the precious metal. One of the first of these treasure ships was a brigantine, dispatched in the midsummer of 1519 under the pilot-captain Alaminos. As it passed Havana it was espied by Juan de Rojas, a cousin of Velasquez, who sent word of it to Velasquez. The latter sent out Gonzalo de Guzman to intercept and seize it, but he failed in the errand. Finding his appeals and protests ineffective against the gold of Cortez, Velasquez determined to use force. He was Adelantado, by royal commission. Therefore Cortez was a rebel. He rallied his friends, in both Cuba and Hispaniola. He used his own immense wealth freely for the purchase and equipment of ships. He enlisted an army twice as great as the force which had accompanied Cortez. With this expedition he purposed to follow Cortez to Mexico, and compel his submission. Whether he would have succeeded in this undertaking, had it not been interfered with, must remain subject matter of speculation; for there was prompt and effective interference. Diego Columbus, in Hispaniola, became much concerned. He was still Admiral, and nominally, at least, superior in authority to Velasquez as well as to Cortez, and he did not wish to have his subordinates fighting among themselves. So he sent one of the most eminent Spanish colonial judges, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, to Cuba to make peace. This envoy reached Santiago in January, 1520, just in time to find that Velasquez and his expedition had already sailed for Mexico. With the swiftest vessel he could find he set out in pursuit, and was lucky enough to overtake them where they had stopped for supplies, in Corrientes Bay, near the extreme western point of the island. Ayllon seems to have been vested with no actual authority over Velasquez. He merely tried to dissuade him from executing his purpose. He urged him to content himself with sending one or two vessels on to Mexico, with a summons to Cortez, to return or at least to abandon his pretensions of independence and to acknowledge the authority of Velasquez; under penalty of being reported to the King as a contumacious rebel. The rest of the expedition, he suggested, might be used in explorations elsewhere. Above all, he pleaded with Velasquez not to go to Mexico himself, but to return to Santiago, where his presence was sorely needed. Velasquez yielded to these entreaties so far as to abandon personal leadership of the expedition. He made Panfilo de Narvaez leader in his stead, and then returned to Santiago. Ayllon went along with Narvaez, to keep the peace. The result was that soon after landing in Mexico, Narvaez was wounded and made captive by Cortez, and practically all his men, with their stores, munitions, arms and ships, who had been sent out to subdue Cortez, became loyal followers of that resourceful conquistador. In fact, we may judiciously reckon that Cortez owed his success in the conquest of Mexico to the reenforcements which he thus received from the expedition which had been sent against him. Later, it is true, some members of Narvaez's party became a source of serious peril to Cortez. This was at the beginning of the year 1521, after the death of Montezuma and the _noche triste_, and at the time when Cortez was planning to return to the city of Mexico as its conqueror. A number of Narvaez's men entered into a conspiracy to assassinate Cortez, and at their head was one Villafana, who had been a very close friend and earnest partisan of Velasquez. Because of that relationship, it was suspected by Cortez that the man had been incited to undertake the crime by Velasquez himself. Of this there was, however, no proof, and no attempt was made to fasten responsibility or odium upon Velasquez; which we may be sure would have been done had any real ground for it been discovered. By interesting coincidence, the conspiracy was made, detected and punished at the very time when, as we shall see, Velasquez was being removed from the Governorship of Cuba. Villafana modelled his plans upon those of the slayers of Julius Cæsar. All the conspirators were to approach Cortez in public, and one of them was to approach him with what should purport to be a letter from his father, Martin Cortez, just arrived on a vessel from Spain. The moment he took the letter and began to read it, all were to rush upon him and stab him with their knives. Cortez detected the plot just in time. He personally went with guards to Villafana's apartments and arrested him, while others took the other conspirators into custody. Villafana was put to death, and the others were imprisoned. Then Cortez, with characteristic resourcefulness, turned the incident to account for his own profit, by making it the pretext for continually thereafter surrounding himself with an armed body guard of his most trusted soldiers. Velasquez returned to Santiago to find affairs in a sad plight. Small pox, measles and other epidemics were raging, and disastrous tropical hurricanes had swept the island, destroying crops and buildings. A large proportion of the most efficient men of the island had followed Cortez--and Narvaez--to Mexico. Moreover, Diego Columbus, at Hispaniola, was threatening trouble. It must be remembered that Velasquez had practically flouted Columbus's authority, almost as much as his own had been flouted by Cortez. At any rate, the Admiral had a serious grievance against him, and deemed this a fitting time for calling him to account. Apparently he was further aggrieved because Velasquez would not more fully accept the counsel of Ayllon. At any rate, in the middle of January, 1521, he sent over to Cuba an envoy, to take the place of Velasquez as Governor of Cuba and to investigate the manner in which Velasquez had administered his affairs. This envoy was Alfonso de Zuazo, who thus became the second Governor of Cuba. In this action Velasquez acquiesced; probably because he durst not do otherwise. It would have been a dangerous thing in any circumstances to defy the Admiral; and it would have been superlatively so at a time when Cuba had just been stripped of its ships and its best fighting men. Nevertheless, he pointed out that he himself was still commandant of the fort at Baracoa, and was Repartidor of the natives throughout the island. This latter was in some important respects a more influential office than that of Governor, and it Velasquez held, not by the Admiral's appointment but by virtue of a commission granted directly by the King himself. He could not, therefore, be superseded or interfered with in any way by the Admiral or any of his underlings, nor by anybody short of the King himself. In this he was quite right, and when Zuazo, relying upon Diego Columbus's authority, did infringe upon some of Velasquez's functions and powers, the latter complained to the King, and the King disavowed Zuazo, and severely reprimanded Columbus. Velasquez was not, however, yet at the end of his difficulties. The royal vindication of his claims was gratifying, and he doubtless felt some secret satisfaction in the humiliation of Diego Columbus. But the son of the great Admiral was not a man to be flouted with impunity, not even by the King of Spain. True, he acquiesced, perforce, in the royal decree. But his resourceful mind quickly devised another line of attack upon Velasquez. At the beginning of 1522, accompanied by two judges of the supreme court of Hispaniola, he proceeded to Santiago de Cuba, and there instituted a judicial investigation into the conduct of Velasquez's administration. To this Velasquez demurred, on the grounds already mentioned that as Repartidor he was accountable to the King alone. Diego Columbus responded by pointing out in the commission of Velasquez as Repartidor a provision that the judges of Hispaniola might and indeed should give him specific advice as to the conduct of his office; and such advice they thereupon proceeded to give, in terms indistinguishable from commands. To this Velasquez could not demur; the text of his commission did indeed provide for that very thing. But his retort was prompt and effective. The commission provided for the giving of advice, but it did not require Velasquez to accept it! As a matter of fact, it was not accepted but ignored, and Diego Columbus and his judges returned to Hispaniola in defeat. One more effort was made by Velasquez to vindicate his authority over Cortez in Mexico. He went so far as to equip a third expedition of which he personally took command, intending to invade Mexico and compel Cortez to submit to his authority. This expedition sailed from Cuba in the fall of 1522, but never reached the coast of Mexico. It was intercepted by a message from the King, announcing that he had appointed Cortez to be Governor of Mexico in entire independence of Cuba, and expressly forbidding Velasquez to interfere with him in any way. This was conclusive, and Velasquez returned home, abandoning all further thoughts of Mexico. Despite his losses and the great expense to which he had gone in fruitless Mexican ventures, he was still one of the richest men in Cuba; especially since the death of his father-in-law, Cristobal de Cuellar, who had left him the major part of his large fortune. As Repartidor, also, he continued his activities in public affairs. In the summer of 1523 he personally directed a campaign against a revolt and depredations of an Indian tribe inhabiting some of the small islands off the Cuban coast. He suffered humiliation, it is true, in having at about that same time public proclamation made in Cuba of the royal decree inhibiting him from further designs against Cortez. But before the end of the year atonement was made for this in another royal decree completely restoring Velasquez to his place as Governor of Cuba. The causes which led to this extraordinary action are obscure, but it seems probable that the King recognized the really great services and merits of Velasquez, and it is quite possible that he had reason for dissatisfaction with Zuazo. At any rate, at about Christmas time, 1523, Velasquez was restored and Zuazo was summarily dismissed. No charges were at that time preferred against Zuazo, nor was he prosecuted or subjected to any penalties. But his commission as Governor was declared to have been illegal and all his acts to have been therefore null and void. Everything was therefore put back in as nearly as possible the condition it was in when Velasquez was formerly Governor. Zuazo seems to have taken his dismissal philosophically, without demur or resentment; wherefore we may suspect that as a lawyer he realized that there had indeed been a fatal flaw in his commission. He remained at Santiago for a few weeks, and then went to Mexico as the attorney and envoy of Francisco de Garay, the Governor of Jamaica, who had a controversy with Cortez as to which of them was the rightful Governor of Panuco. In this errand he was frustrated by shipwreck and other vicissitudes, and it does not appear that he ever had an opportunity of serving Garay as had been intended. In time, however, he reached Mexico, and was regarded with much favor by Cortez, who appointed him to a lucrative and influential office. A little later he was extradited by the Cuban government, and was brought back to that island as a prisoner, to undergo trial for alleged misdemeanors committed when he was Governor. This strenuous action was taken in 1525. Zuazo complained bitterly of such harsh treatment, which probably was unwarranted. At any rate, he was acquitted; whereupon he went to Hispaniola and spent the remainder of his life there in prosperity. We have seen that the restoration of Velasquez to the Governorship of Cuba came as a sort of solatium for his loss and humiliation with respect to Mexico. But it did not altogether reconcile him to the destruction of his hopes and ambitions. On the contrary, he conceived the scheme of remonstrating with the King and pleading his cause in person. Setting his affairs in order, therefore, he prepared to set sail for Spain, and was just on the point of doing so when death supervened. He died on June 12, 1524, and was interred, according to his wish, in the cathedral of Santiago de Cuba. The King, who had so recently both humiliated him and honored him, was profoundly affected by the loss of one who had added much lustre to the crown of Spain, and wrote for his tomb an epitaph in Latin, eloquently setting forth his merits and his services. This was not, however, inscribed above his remains, and soon was forgotten. Instead, there was popularly circulated and remembered an epigram upon him coined by some adversary whose identity is unknown. This declared Velasquez to have been "Covetous of honor, but more covetous of gain." This we must regard as unjust. Velasquez had his faults, and some of them were grave. He was at times arbitrary and ruthless, as most empire-builders of all lands have been. He was not always grateful to those who served him faithfully, nor was he impartial in his dealings with men. These faults were, however, common in those times, and they were no more marked in Velasquez than in his contemporaries. On the other hand he unquestionably had great virtues. He had courage, vision, enterprise, and statesmanlike views for the development of his domain. His work in Cuba was over-shadowed by that of Cortez in Mexico and of Pizarro in Peru, but it was in essence not less meritorious than theirs, for which indeed it prepared and opened the way. It is one of the tragedies of history that his very tomb should have been forgotten and lost, and his name remembered as a name and nothing more. For in the early history of Cuba there is no other name which stands for so much in conquest and colonization, and in the foundation, organization and development of the State, as that of the first Cuban Governor, Diego de Velasquez. CHAPTER IX Velasquez had been Governor--technically Lieutenant-Governor under the Admiral, Diego Columbus, at Hispaniola--for more than thirteen years; save for the abortive and illegal administration of Zuazo. But after him gubernatorial terms were destined to be of much shorter duration, and marked with many vicissitudes. His nominal successor was appointed some time before his death. Whether in anticipation of his decease, or with the design of ousting him, is not clear. At any rate, at the middle of May, probably on May 20, 1524, Juan Altamarino was named by the King to be the next governor, for a term of two years and no more. He appears not to have been in any way identified with the island, though probably he had been associated with Diego Columbus in Hispaniola; and at the time of his appointment he was in peninsular Spain. He made no haste to go to Cuba and assume his office, wherefore it was necessary, upon the death of Velasquez a few weeks later, that some stop-gap governor should be named. Diego Columbus, who as Admiral might have made such temporary appointment, was also in Spain. In consequence, the Audiencia or supreme court of Hispaniola acted in his stead, and appointed Manuel de Rojas. This forceful and patriotic man was a cousin of Velasquez, who had been sent by the latter to Spain in July, 1521, as his advocate before the King in the controversy with Cortez over Mexico. He had served for some time as Alcalde of Baracoa; he was a loyal friend of Velasquez, and a man of approved ability and integrity. He was also the first Cuban governor of Cuba. By that I mean that he was the first to regard Cuba as a separate entity, apart from Hispaniola and Mexico and even from Spain itself. Velasquez, vast as were his services, was never able to dissociate the interests of Cuba from those of Spain, or even from those of Mexico and other Spanish lands in this hemisphere, insular and continental; and had actually compromised the welfare of Cuba in grasping at the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Zuazo, if he is to be reckoned in the line of governors at all, was quite alien to Cuba. But Rojas was an insular patriot. He was of course entirely loyal to Spain. But that fact did not restrain him from developing an intense local patriotism. He regarded Cuba as a great enough country to command his entire attention and devotion. His policy was, Cuba for the Cubans; and he was the first of a line of Governors, not always unbroken, committed to that enlightened policy. The island at this time, indeed, well merited such regard. It had been extensively settled, and its resources were beginning to be developed. Gold mining was profitably practised. Agriculture and cattle-raising had made great progress. Juan Mosquera, as the envoy or representative of the Cuban municipalities in Spain, had in February, 1523, secured from the King the first recognition of and encouragement for the sugar industry, which had already been established in Hispaniola, and which far-sighted men perceived to be capable of great things in Cuba. He had also, a year earlier, secured from the King grants of free trade between Cuba and all other Spanish colonies around the Caribbean, insular or continental; together with some reforms of the royalty system in gold mining and a comprehensive and orderly scheme of taxation for the building of roads and bridges and other necessary public works. In fact, Cuba was beginning to "find herself" and to show herself worthy of the affection and patriotism of her people. The administration of Rojas was for the time, however, cut short. It had been ordered legally enough, but with the understanding that it was only temporary, pending the coming of Altamarino. Unfortunately the Hispaniola audiencia went too far. It also appointed Rojas to succeed Velasquez as repartidor of the natives, which it had no right to do, the power to make that appointment being reserved exclusively for the King himself. It does not appear that he misused his power, or even indeed that he exercised it at all as repartidor; though it is likely that his illegal appointment to that office caused some quite unmerited prejudice against him at Madrid. His administration of the governorship, which was legal, was brief. Altamarino entered Santiago de Cuba on March 14, 1525, and at once assumed office, and Rojas retired without demur and without reproach. Altamarino had been commissioned as juez de residencia, to investigate the administration and conduct of Velasquez. That commission came of course from the King, but there is reason for suspecting that Diego Columbus had something to do with it. If he did not instigate it, he certainly heartily approved it. Now Velasquez had, at the time of Altamarino's appointment, been living and in office. But at the time when Altamarino actually assumed the powers and duties of the governorship and those of the juez de residencia, Velasquez had been dead and buried in the cathedral of Santiago for nine months. No such trifling circumstance as that was, however, to be permitted to cause any deviation of the course of Spanish official procedure; particularly when the latter was urged on by personal animus. Diego Columbus had desired and the King had commanded Velasquez to be investigated, and investigated he must be, alive or dead. His remains were not, it is true, to be disinterred and placed at the bar. But his name and reputation were made the target for all manner of attack. A proclamation was issued, inviting everybody who had anything against the former governor to make it known, publicly, fully and fearlessly, being assured of immunity for anything they might say. In response there was a mighty flood of insinuations, complaints, accusations, calumnies. Nor did Altamarino content himself with this. He ransacked the archives of Cuba for all complaints, protests and what not that had ever been made, and if the makers of them could be found, as most of them could, he summoned them before his tribunal and required them to testify everything they could to the discredit of Velasquez. A similar inquisition was conducted into the affairs of all the chief office-holders and administrators under Velasquez. The result was what might have been expected, seeing that there was no opportunity for Velasquez to reply to the charges or to cross-examine the witnesses against him, or to produce other testimony in rebuttal. The founder of the Cuban State was charged with the acceptance of gifts, including a horse and a mule; with having levied and collected taxes without special authority from the King, though these were admittedly for road-building and other useful public purposes; with having participated in gambling games, though Rojas pointed out that his fellow gamblers were among the foremost members of the community; with having failed to check and punish blasphemous utterances; with having neglected to pay for some of the supplies which were taken for his Mexican expeditions; and with having administered justice without due regard to the letter of the statute law, which was not strange, seeing that he was not a lawyer. In his mortuary absence, he was found guilty, by default, and was condemned to pay heavy fines; which were collected from his heirs. The dead lion was not, however, without his vengeance upon the jackals that would defile his sepulchre. The inquisition went too far, and too dearly disclosed its animus. A vigorous resentment and reaction soon arose, widespread and formidable; among the municipal councils and among the people. The kinsmen and friends of Velasquez were numerous, loyal to his memory, and powerful in influence. Gonzalo de Guzman, who had been the advocate of Velasquez at court at Madrid, not only against Cortez but also against Diego Columbus himself, and Nuñez de Guzman, the royal treasurer at Santiago de Cuba, were brothers-in-law of Velasquez; and Andres Duero, Pedro de Paz, and Diego de Soto were his steadfast friends. These were all men of wealth and influence. Like Rojas, they were Cuban colonists, and resented meddling in Cuban affairs by one whom they considered an outsider. They were, moreover, life members of the Municipal Council of Santiago, by appointment of the King, and were therefore independent of the Governor so far as their tenure of office was concerned, and removable only by the King. They therefore arrayed themselves solidly against Altamarino, and rallied to the opposition the councils of the other municipalities and many of the principal men throughout the island. Altamarino replied by trumping up charges against several of the life councillors, of having expended public funds without authorization, and suspended them from their functions, or attempted to do so. He certainly could not remove them outright, and there was much question of his right to suspend them, unless during actual trial in court. The Guzmans and their allies retorted by obtaining from the court at Hispaniola an injunction restraining Altamarino from attending meetings of the Council, so that he would not know whether the suspended members continued their functions or not. Against this the Governor furiously protested, declaring that his predecessors had habitually attended all Council meetings, and he issued an order forbidding the Council of Santiago to transact any business whatever or indeed to meet officially, in his absence. Of course this brought matters to an impasse, which could be solved only through appeal to the King. This was made, and resulted in a royal decision in favor of the Councils, confirming the injunction of the Hispaniola tribunal against the Governor's intrusion into council meetings. This, in the early autumn of 1525, was obviously the beginning of the end for Altamarino. A little later, in October of that year, the various municipal councils of the island united in sending Rodrigo Duran to Hispaniola, to prefer to the court there charges against Altamarino of a most serious character. They were indeed tantamount to his impeachment and a demand for his removal from the Governorship. The court hesitated to take action so radical, but considered the charges sufficiently important to warrant reference to the King. The result was that the King promptly decided against the Governor. Less than nine months after his actual assumption of office, and little more than a year and a half after his appointment to it, Altamarino was summarily removed from the place to which he had been appointed for two years. Immediately after this, at the beginning of December, 1525, Altamarino's chief antagonist, Gonzalo de Guzman, a life Councillor of Santiago, was appointed to succeed him as Governor, and also as Repartidor of the natives, with all the plenary authority that Velasquez had exercised. Nor was that all. Guzman was commissioned juez de residencia, to investigate the affairs of the deposed Altamarino as the latter had investigated those of the deceased Velasquez. Guzman appears not actually to have taken office until April 25, 1526, and not to have begun his inquest into his predecessor's affairs until midsummer of that year. But he then made up for the delay with the searching and ruthless character of his investigation. We can scarcely doubt that he was moved by a large degree of personal vindictiveness. Certainly he seemed to try to be as irritating and as humiliating to Altamarino as possible; the more so, perhaps, because he realized that there was nothing serious to be proved, and that the chief penalty the ex-Governor would suffer would be the heckling and denunciation which he received during the investigation. There were charges enough against him, but not one warranted any severe punishment. As a matter of fact, all the penalties imposed upon him were light, and they were all promptly remitted by the King; the royal advisers at Madrid reporting to His Majesty that the whole business had been nothing but a tempest in a teapot. Nevertheless, the episode ended the career of Altamarino in Cuba. He at once departed to Mexico, and was seen in the island no more. We may now fittingly observe a certain highly significant political development which at this time was manifested in the island. Reference has already been made to the rise of a feeling of local pride and municipal independence in the various provinces into which the island was divided, and also to the marked assertion of insular patriotism under Rojas and his colleagues. The former movement dated from as early as 1518, when Panfilo de Narvaez secured from the King a decree giving to some of the members of municipal councils life terms of office. In that year, accordingly, Gonzalo de Guzman and Diego de Sumana were appointed by the King to be life Councillors, or Regidors, in Santiago; Alonzo Bembrilla and Bernardino Yniguez in Trinidad; and Francisco Santa Cruz and, as we might suppose, Panfilo de Narvaez himself in Bayamo. A little later Diego de Caballero and Fernando de Medina were appointed in Sancti Spiritus, and Rodrigo Canon and Sancho de Urrutia in Puerto del Principe. In addition to these there were, of course, other Councillors appointed by the Governor for limited terms. But the life Councillors gave tone and direction to the municipal administrations and developed a certain degree of local independence of the general government of the island. In brief, there began to be promulgated at this early date the salutary principle that the various municipalities or provinces were to enjoy home rule in all purely local matters, while of course remaining subject to the Governor in everything relating to the general welfare of the island; and also that the island was to enjoy home rule in all matters pertaining exclusively to it, while subject and loyal to the Crown in everything affecting the general welfare and integrity of the Spanish kingdom and its colonial empire. The motives and purpose of Narvaez in seeking this permanent tenure for municipal Councillors have been much debated. He has been charged by some, and not unnaturally, with a selfish purpose to entrench himself and his friends irremovably in office. On the other hand there have been those who have credited him with a high-minded and statesmanlike design of promoting the welfare of Cuba by securing stability of local government under the best men. Knowing what we do of his character, it seems reasonable to suppose that the latter motive was potent, even if the other also had some influence. What is quite certain is, however, that the system quickly became a formidable power in Cuban politics, sometimes beneficent and sometimes mischievous. These permanent Councillors were powerful in bringing to naught the brief administration of Zuazo, and they formed, as already stated, the head and front of the successful opposition to Altamarino. At the same time, through their control of the election of alcaldes and other local officers they gave to the local administrations a stability which they might not otherwise have enjoyed. With the accession of Gonzalo de Guzman to the Governorship, however, a strong and widespread reaction against the Councillors arose. This was doubtless largely provoked by the injudicious action of Guzman himself. As a life Councillor of Santiago he had been foremost in securing the exclusion of Altamarino from sessions of the councils. But when he himself became Governor, he retained his life Councillorship and therefore insisted upon his right to continue attending the meetings. Remonstrance against this was made, to the King; he having appointed Guzman to both offices; but he declined to interfere. He did, however, appoint additional life Councillors, enough largely to outnumber the partisans of Guzman. He also took the very important step of authorizing each municipality to elect from among its Councillors a Procurator, or public advocate, corresponding in some respects to a Tribune of the ancient Roman Republic. These procurators soon found their chief occupation in resisting and protesting against those acts of the Councils which they deemed inimical to the public welfare. The procurators of all the municipalities met together, to compare notes and to take counsel together for the common good, and there was an increasing inclination among them to oppose what they regarded as the growing tyranny of the Councils. At such a meeting of all the procurators, in March, 1528, Manuel de Rojas, procurator for Bayamo, took the sensational action of presenting a formal popular protest against what was described as the arrogance and oligarchical tendencies of the Councils. This provoked an impassioned reply from Juan de Quexo, the procurator for Havana, who denied the statements and insinuations of the document and opposed its reception by the meeting. But after an acrimonious controversy, Rojas won the day. The protest was received, adopted by the convention, and forwarded to the King of Spain. Together with it the procurators forwarded to the King some radical recommendations for the improvement of the insular government. These were, that the Governor should always be selected from among the bona fide residents of the island and should be appointed for a term of three years; that the life tenure of Councillors should be abolished; and that all councillors, alcaldes and procurators should be elected yearly by the people. These suggestions were not in their entirety received favorably by the King. He refused outright to adopt those relating to the selection and appointment of governors, and to the abolition of life councillorships. He did, however, order that the procurators should be elected yearly by the people, and he greatly enlarged the functions and powers of that office. A new system of choosing alcaldes was also decreed. Instead of their being elected yearly by the Councils, it was ordered that the Council presided over by the alcalde should nominate two candidates, that the Council members without the alcalde should nominate two more, and that the Governor should name one; and that from among these five a first and second alcalde should be chosen by lot. Thus in the administration of Gonzalo de Guzman the principle of "Cuba for the Cubans," afterward long neglected, was pretty efficiently established. The Governor, at that time, and all other royal officers of the island, were Cuban colonists; and the people were invested with power to select their own procurators or advocates, who were irremovable, and who were competent to represent the people not only in the Cuban courts and in those of Hispaniola, but also before the Royal Council for the Indies at Madrid, and who were empowered to proceed against the municipal councils, the royal officials, or even the Governor himself. CHAPTER X The early part of the administration of Gonzalo de Guzman was chiefly occupied with the investigation of his predecessors' stewardships, and with controversies with the municipal councils. There was also a controversy with the Crown over the payment to him of a salary for his services, which he requested of the King, and which the King ordered to be paid to him, but which he did not receive. Then came complications over the royal treasurership in the island. Christopher de Cuellar had been succeeded in that office by Pedro Nuñez de Guzman. The latter died, leaving a considerable fortune, and the colonial government at Hispaniola immediately designated Andres Duero to succeed him temporarily, until the King should make a permanent appointment; the expectation apparently being that Duero would be confirmed in the office. Unfortunately for the success of this design, however, the temporary appointment had been made without consulting the royal officials; who were not unnaturally piqued and offended. The result was that a protest was made to the King, not only against the method of his appointment but also against Duero himself. To this the King listened sympathetically, and he presently overruled the appointment of Duero, and in place of him named Hernando de Castro as temporary treasurer, until such time as he could have conditions investigated and could select some fitting man as a permanent incumbent. Oddly enough, Castro had once before supplanted Duero, as the royal factor in Cuba. This office had first been held by Bernardino Velasquez, upon whose death Andres Duero had been appointed to hold it temporarily, only to be speedily replaced by Castro. The latter appears to have been one of the most enterprising men of affairs of that time, and to have done more than most of his contemporaries for the industrial and economic development of the island. He became engaged in commerce between Spain and the West Indies at an early date, and paid much attention to agriculture, which he believed would be the chief permanent industry of Cuba. It was he who introduced the cultivation of wheat and other staples, with a view to making the island self-supporting, and for such activities he received the formal thanks of the King. Unfortunately, he too somewhat compromised himself by attempting to appropriate as his own the native Cubans who had been the serfs of Bernardino Velasquez and whom Duero, the factor pro tempore, had seized. Soon after the replacing of Duero with Castro as treasurer pro tempore the former died, and then the latter was in turn replaced by the permanent appointment of Lopez Hurtado, who held the place for many years, and who was distinguished at once for his honesty and his irrepressible cantankerousness. He seemed to have a mania for faultfinding; though doubtless there was much legitimate occasion for the exercise of that faculty. To his mind, almost every other man in Cuba was a knave, and he never wearied of reporting to the King, in interminable written messages, his complaints and accusations. Not only in spite of but also because of this he was a most useful public servant. Pedro Nuñez de Guzman, who died in 1527, left, as we have seen, a considerable fortune. Practically all of it was left to his widow, and her the thrifty Gonzalo de Guzman presently married, and thus got himself into one of the most serious controversies of his whole career. A part of the fortune of Pedro consisted of about two hundred Cuban serfs. These Gonzalo de Guzman, as Repartidor, transferred to the widow, and then, of course, when he married her, they became his property. This roused the animosity of the honest but cantankerous Hurtado, who thought that the Cubans should have been given to himself, as their former owner's official successor; according to the example set by Hernando de Castro, as already related. Hurtado accordingly wrote to the King a long letter on the subject, which, though it did not cause intervention in that special matter, attracted the King's attention to the complications which the Guzman marriage was producing. The mother of the late Pedro Nuñez de Guzman next appeared as a party to the controversy. This lady, Doña Leonora de Quiñones, who had remained in Spain, complained that a great injustice had been done to her and to her other children by the transfer of Pedro's entire fortune to his widow and thence to the latter's second husband, and she applied to the Spanish courts for relief. The result was a series of lawsuits, which scandalized the Spanish courts for a term of years. In these suits many prominent Cubans were involved, and nearly the whole population of the island took sides for one or the other of the parties. Street brawls occurred over it, and the violence culminated in a physical scuffle in the aisle of the cathedral, between Gonzalo de Guzman and the Alcalde of Santiago, in which the latter had most of his clothes torn from his back, and for which Guzman was required to do penance. The King had given his assent to the Guzman marriage, and was unwilling to withdraw it, or to censure Guzman for taking and striving to retain all of Pedro's estate. Nevertheless he remonstrated with the litigants for the fury of their controversy, which he truly told them was not only a disgrace to the island but was also a grave practical injury to it. The conflict continued, however, until all the resources of the law courts were exhausted. By that time many of the lawyers were considerably enriched, but a still large part of the estate was confirmed in the possession of Gonzalo de Guzman and his wife. All this militated against the confidence with which Guzman had been regarded, and hastened steps for the subjection of him to the fate of his predecessors. We have seen that Guzman had been commissioned to investigate the administration of his predecessor, Altamarino, and that he had performed that congenial task with energy and zeal. Now came his own turn to undergo the same treatment. It was only a little more than two years after his accession to the governorship that the King or the Crown officials in Spain concluded that it would be well to have his affairs looked into. For the performance of this work Juan Vadillo was selected, in the autumn of 1528. He was a notably efficient man. He had been employed for some time by the crown as a debt-collector in Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Porto Rico, and had been highly successful in that work; wherefore it was thought that he would subject Guzman's administration to a particularly thorough examination. He declined, however, to accept the commission; for a variety of reasons. One was, that he had thitherto taken his orders and received his commissions directly from the King, and he considered it beneath his dignity now to be an underling of a mere Admiral of the Indies--or of the widow of the Admiral, since the commission for this job was to be given by the widow of Diego Columbus. Another reason was found in the terms on which the commission was to be granted. He was to be governor of Cuba for thirty days. During that time he was to conduct his investigation of Guzman's administration. Then, with the assumption that thirty days would afford him ample time to complete the work, he was to restore the governorship to Guzman, apparently quite irrespective of the result of his inquest. Still another reason was, that his instructions were not sufficiently explicit. It was not, for example, made clear whether he was to replace Guzman as repartidor as well as in the governorship. A final reason, perhaps not least of all, was that the salary offered was not sufficient. While thus declining to accept the commission, Vadillo manifested his fitness for it and his serviceable interest in Cuban affairs by pointing out to the sovereign various grave defects in the administration of Cuban affairs, particularly in that of the repartidor's functions. One important object of the repartimiento system was to assure a suitable distribution of native labor throughout the island. It was in fact operating to just the contrary effect. Some parts of the island were overcrowded, while others were almost entirely destitute of labor. These representations had their effect at court; not, it is true, in the ordering of correction of the evils, but in confirming the desire to have Vadillo investigate insular affairs. After more than two years' delay, then, on February 27, 1531, another summons was sent to Vadillo. This time it was not a request but a peremptory order to go at once to Cuba and undertake the work. The conditions were, however, materially changed. He was to have his commission from the King. He was to be governor for sixty days instead of thirty. He was to be repartidor, also, in conjunction with the Bishop of Cuba. He was to have an adequate salary. And at the end of his investigation of Guzman's administration he was to hand the governorship over, not necessarily to Guzman again, but to anyone whom he might choose, until the widow of Diego Columbus should make a permanent appointment. On these conditions Vadillo accepted the commission and entered upon his work with the efficiency and zeal that had marked his former undertaking. He quickly found that there was much need for investigation, and of thorough reforms. The whole administration had become demoralized by the personal jealousies and local feuds which for years had been raging. Bribery, slander, false arrest, even murder, had been resorted to by political partisans for the accomplishment of their ends, until something like chaos had been precipitated upon the unhappy island. It was in November, 1531, that Vadillo arrived at Santiago de Cuba on his formidable errand. He purposed to spend a few weeks in preliminary surveys of the ground, announcing that his sixty days' incumbency of the governorship would begin on January 1. On the latter date the actual house-cleaning began. The tremendous indictment which Guzman had made against Altamarino was a petty trifle in comparison with that which Vadillo launched against Guzman. There was scarcely any conceivable form of maladministration which was not charged against the governor. He had, said Vadillo, interfered with freedom of suffrage at elections. He had levied and collected taxes for which there was no warrant in law. He had appointed and commissioned notaries, although he had no legal power to do so. He had failed to compel married men either to return to their wives in Spain or to send for their wives to come to Cuba. He had permitted illicit trade in slaves. He had been biassed and partial in his administration of justice. All these and other accusations were made with much circumstance and with a formidable array of corroborative testimony, against Guzman as governor. Against him as repartidor it was charged that he had been guilty of gross and injurious misrepresentations to the Crown and to the people; that he had assigned natives as serfs to his relatives and friends in defiance of law; and that he had made the distribution of native labor inequitable. All these charges were indignantly denied by Guzman, who defended himself with much vigor and shrewdness. But Vadillo found him to be guilty of almost every one of them, and sentenced him to pay a heavy fine and to be removed from office, both as governor and as repartidor. Against this judgment Guzman made appeal to the Council for the Indies, in Spain. In order to bring all possible influence to bear upon that body, he himself went to Spain, in August, 1532, carrying a vast mass of documents, and accompanied by Bishop Ramirez, who was returning to Spain to be consecrated. This ecclesiastic had been Guzman's most staunch and zealous partisan during the investigation. He had gone so far as to threaten with excommunication anyone who should testify against the governor, and had actually excommunicated Vadillo. Against this act Vadillo had protested to the King, and the King had reprimanded the Bishop and had compelled him to withdraw the writ of excommunication. Guzman therefore took the Bishop along with him, partly so that the latter might be formally consecrated and have his conduct if possible vindicated, and partly to aid himself in his appeal to the Council for the Indies. Vadillo did not trouble himself to go to Spain to counteract Guzman's appeal. A month before the departure of Guzman and the Bishop he left Cuba for Hispaniola, conscious of having done his duty. He had been a fearless and thorough investigator and a just judge; and he had rendered to Cuba and to the Spanish crown services far greater than he ever received compensation or credit for. Indeed, he did not enjoy so much as the gratitude of the people of Cuba, most of whom were partisans of Guzman or of some other political leader, and had become so accustomed to the corrupt ways which had been followed for years that they were inclined to resent any attempt at reform. Upon the expiration of his sixty days' incumbency, Vadillo designated Manuel de Rojas to be governor in his stead, until an appointment of permanent character could be made by the Admiral at Hispaniola. Rojas was reluctant to accept the place, knowing that he would find it more arduous and even perilous than before, but he was finally prevailed upon to do so, apparently more through a sense of public duty than for any expectation of personal advantage. CHAPTER XI The first governorship of Gonzalo de Guzman was marked with two features of very great importance to the young nation--for such we may properly regard Cuba as having been at that time. One of these was the development of the ecclesiastical establishment into a strong and sometimes dominant force in the body politic and social; and the other was the crisis of the protracted problem of dealing with or disposing of the native Indians. These two matters were, as they had been from the beginning, closely related to each other. It is a commonplace of history that there was a certain thread of religious motive running all through the exploits of Columbus. He emphasized the significance of his name, Christopher, Christ-Bearer, sometimes signing himself X. Ferens. The same idea was expressed, as we have already seen, in the names which he gave to the various lands which he discovered. Nor were his successors in exploration and conquest neglectful of the same spirit. Accordingly the first Spanish settlers in Cuba took pains to plant there immediately the church of their faith, and to seek to convert the natives to Christianity. Among the very earliest to land upon the shores of the island were priests of the Roman Catholic church, and the first church was built at the first point of settlement, Baracoa. Some obscurity invests the records of the early ecclesiastical organization, but it seems altogether probable that the first Bishop was Hernando de Mesa, a member of the Order of St. Dominic. There is no available record of his appointment and consecration, but he appears to have begun his episcopal work at Baracoa in 1513 and 1514. He built the first Cuban cathedral at Baracoa, and secured from the Spanish government in 1515 a system of tithes for the support and propagation of the church. These tithes were to be paid not in coin but in merchandise, and they were to be collected not by the priests or other agents of the church, but by officers of the secular government. The latter was, moreover, to retain one-third of them for the erection of new church buildings, a task which it took upon itself as a measure of public works. It was not infrequently remarked that these royal tithe-gatherers were much more diligent, prompt and efficient in collecting the tithes from the people than in turning the proceeds over to the church. Bishop De Mesa reigned over the diocese for about three years, and then was succeeded by Juan de Ubite, concerning whom the records are much more detailed and explicit. He seems to have been an aggressive and fearless man, who did not hesitate to engage in controversy and even in litigation with the royal government over the matter of the tithes. He protested against the government's retaining and administering the one-third of the tithes which was devoted to church-building, insisting that it also should be turned over to the ecclesiastical authorities, who were best fitted to know the needs and to direct the work of church building. In this contention he was not successful, but he did manage to secure the levying of tithes upon the crown estates the same as upon all other property. One of the most important achievements of Bishop Ubite was the transfer of the cathedral from Baracoa to Santiago. For this change he gave two reasons. One was, that Baracoa was an unhealthful spot; in which he was surely in error. The other was, that Santiago was a larger and more important place, indeed, the chief city of the island; in which he was quite correct. The transfer was authorized by the civil government in October, 1522, and plots of land were granted to the Bishop for the sites of the new cathedral and of the houses of the Bishop and other clergy. These latter were the same plots which are still occupied by ecclesiastical buildings, in the heart of the city of Santiago de Cuba. This change of the site of the cathedral was doubtless to the advantage of the church. It was probably profitable, also, to the good Bishop personally. Following it he became the proprietor of extensive lands, of great herds of cattle, and of a number of Negro and Indian slaves. He interested himself to good effect in seeing to it that the civil government provided from its third of the tithes abundant funds for church building, and thus secured the erection of two churches at Trinidad, one at Sancti Spiritus, and one at Havana, a place even at that early date rising rapidly in importance. Bishop Ubite reigned over the diocese until April, 1525, and then, in circumstances which are obscure and for reasons not clearly apparent, took the extraordinary step of resigning his see. The office remained vacant until early in 1527, when Miguel Ramirez was appointed to it. This third Bishop was, like each of his predecessors, a Dominican. He was officially styled not only Bishop but also Protector of the Indians, with the purpose of making him a sort of check upon the Repartidor. He did not arrive at Santiago until the fall of 1528, when he promptly made up for the delay by plunging into both industrial and political activities. Like Bishop Ubite, he was an extensive land owner, cattle-raiser and slaveholder. Bishop Ramirez appears to have been a great meddler into politics, particularly as a hot partisan of Gonzalo de Guzman. He came into conflict more than once with the royal treasurer, Hurtado, and was denounced by that austere censor as a scandalous disturber of the peace. This characterization was provoked by the Bishop's attitude and conduct toward Vadillo's investigation of Guzman's administration; and it is probably not unjust to assume that the Bishop's attitude and conduct were due to the fact that Vadillo had seized a lot of gold which had been mined by the husband of the Bishop's niece. Vadillo made this seizure on two grounds: That the nephew-in-law was a mere figure-head for the Bishop himself, who had no legal right to engage in gold-mining; and that the gold in question properly belonged to the royal treasury and therefore should be turned over to Hurtado. At any rate the Bishop was furious, and strove to restrain, with threats of excommunication, witnesses from testifying against Guzman in the inquests which Vadillo was conducting. Vadillo was not at all alarmed or abashed by the episcopal wrath, but proceeded to look into the affairs of the church as well as the civil government, and among other reforms ordered the Bishop and clergy to stop charging for funeral masses higher fees than those which were charged in Hispaniola. At this the Bishop seems quite to have lost his head. He began a denunciatory tirade against Vadillo in the cathedral, at which the latter contemptuously turned his back upon the speaker and walked out of the building. Then the Bishop excommunicated him. Vadillo made appeal to the King, and the King, after careful consideration and investigation, compelled the Bishop to withdraw the excommunication, and in addition gave his royal approval to all that Vadillo had done with respect to the church. In the first clash between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, therefore, the former were victorious. Nevertheless, the church exerted much and steadily increasing influence, particularly in matters relating to the Indian natives. And these matters were of much importance. Although the repartimiento system, adopted early in the administration of Velasquez, was designed and supposed to put all the natives under government control, it failed to do so. Among those apportioned to the colonists as serfs--practically slaves--dissatisfaction and resentment widely prevailed, and insurrections sometimes occurred. But by no means all the natives were thus apportioned. Some fled to mountain fastnesses, and others, perhaps the majority, to the small islands or Keys off the Cuban coast, whence they became known as Key Indians. They used these islands, moreover, not alone as places of refuge but also as bases from which to make depredatory raids upon the mainland of Cuba, to the great detriment and disturbance of the Spanish settlers. So numerous, extensive and disastrous did these raids become that Velasquez in 1523 commissioned Rodrigo de Tamayo to organize a military and naval expedition against the Key Indians, and to kill or capture them all. This programme was not fully carried out, but it was sufficiently executed to abate the troubles and to secure peace on the coasts for several years. Tamayo's commission was renewed by Altamarino, as a matter of form, there being then no need of action; and when in the administration of Gonzalo de Guzman there was some recrudescence of hostilities, the royal government specially authorized the waging of a campaign which should bring the last of the Key Indians into subjection. The new outbreaks did not, however, prove sufficiently serious to call for or to warrant strenuous action. The scene of trouble was, however, shifted from the coast to the interior of the island. Several numerous companies of Indians, securely lodged among the mountains, began hostilities, raiding the very suburbs of Santiago itself. They were known as Cimarrons, or Wild Indians, to distinguish them from the serfs and slaves. Their pernicious activities began in 1529, and in the following year their operations were so extensive and persistent as to simulate civil war. Manuel de Rojas organized a force and led it against them with much success, and would probably have soon made an end of the troubles had he not been restrained by Guzman. The governor was probably jealous of the ability, popularity and rising influence of Rojas, and was not willing that he should gain the prestige which complete victory would confer upon him. So he called him back in circumstances which would, he thought, discredit Rojas and make his campaign seem a failure. Vadillo during his brief administration sought to end the troubles by pacific and conciliatory overtures, but failed. It was thus left for Rojas, on becoming governor in succession to Guzman, to take up again the work from which he had been recalled by his predecessor. This he did to much effect at the end of 1532. He sent a strong force against the mountain fastness of Guama, the foremost chieftain of the Cimarrons, and completely defeated him, putting him to flight and almost extirpating his band. Shortly after this victory of Rojas's, Guama was killed by one of his own few remaining followers. Rojas then sent his troops to disperse Cimarron bands near Bayamo, and Baracoa, which they did with much success, so that peace and security were pretty well restored throughout the island. This left unsettled, however, the other and in some respects more important and more trying phase of the Indian question, namely, the treatment and disposal of the "tame" Indians, who for years had been in a state of practical slavery under the repartimiento system. It will be recalled that at the beginning they were placed under the protection of the Jeronimite Order of monks; a protection which did not effectively protect. In fact, within a dozen years of the foundation of the system the Jeronimites were more oppressors than protectors, and were chiefly engaged in making what pecuniary profit they could out of their hapless wards. On this account their nominal protectorate was formally abolished by the crown, in 1526, and Gonzalo de Guzman was made repartidor with powers equal to those which Velasquez had exercised. Indeed, his powers were even more absolute than those of Velasquez, since the supreme court of Hispaniola was deprived of jurisdiction over him in his administration of Indian affairs. Later the Bishop, Ramirez, was made co-repartidor with him. There then arose a protracted and bitter rivalry between the governor and Bishop on the one side and the municipal alcaldes on the other, for the exercise of powers of inspection of and supervision over the labor of the natives. Both sides appointed inspectors, whose functions clashed. Appeal was made to the crown, with the result that the dispute was decided in favor of the alcaldes, who were authorized to appoint inspectors, which the governor and Bishop were forbidden to do. As is usual in such cases, the objects of the contention were the chief sufferers. Indeed, so wretched became their plight that some inkling of the truth reached the ears of the King, who thereupon commissioned a Provincial of the Franciscan Order to go from Hispaniola to Cuba, to investigate charges of cruelty, and to punish severely all who were found guilty. The King also directed that he should arrange for the liberation of the natives to the fullest extent for which they seemed to be fitted. Learning of this before the arrival of this commissioner, Guzman and his friends set energetically to work to defeat his mission in advance. A vast mass of "evidence" was cooked up, pretending to demonstrate the unfitness of the Indians for any greater measure of liberty than they were already enjoying, which was practically none at all. It was declared that the Indians were at that very time largely armed and threatening the Spaniards with massacre and extermination, and that any further privileges granted to them would certainly provoke a tragic catastrophe. The Indians would exterminate the Spanish colonists and of course revert to heathen idolatry, and it would be necessary to conquer and to convert the island over again. This perjured stuff, responsibility for which must be regarded as the worst stain upon Gonzalo de Guzman's fame, was presented to the King in the name of the government and people of Cuba. But King Charles was no fool. Thousands of miles away though he was, and absorbed in important problems of other parts of his vast empire, he took pains to find out the truth about Cuba. Learning it, he threw the stuff which Guzman had sent him into the waste basket, gave his Franciscan commissioner stronger orders, declared that he wanted the Indians to be treated as free men and not as slaves, and promulgated a set of new laws concerning them. In connection with these laws, as a statement of the need of them, the King delivered himself of a scathing indictment of the Cuban government and people for ill-treatment of the natives and for causing depopulation of the island. (The original population of the island at the time of the first Spanish settlements is unknown, but has reasonably been estimated at several hundred thousand. By the end of Guzman's administration the number of surviving Indians was reckoned at not more than five thousand!) These new laws, issued in the latter part of 1526, forbade further compulsion of the Indians as laborers in the mines. But in the course of a few weeks some modifications of them--to the disadvantage of the Indians--were obtained through false representations at court, with the result that conditions became almost as bad as before. The King next directed Sebastian Ramirez, who was Bishop of Hispaniola and president of the supreme court, to report to him on the desirability of retaining or abolishing the repartimiento system; and that functionary reported in favor of retaining it. Then Miguel Ramirez was made Bishop of Cuba and Protector of the Indians; and he, as we have seen, fell completely under the influence of Guzman. The result was that no reforms were effected, and the state of the Indians went from bad to worse. The King learned of this, and was profoundly dissatisfied. In the latter part of 1529 he demanded to know why reforms had not been effected, and especially why there had not been made the experiment of granting the natives entire freedom. Equivocal replies were made, and it was not until the spring of 1531 that Guzman undertook the experiment. At that time one of the colonists, who had held some 120 slaves, died, and Guzman directed that they be set at liberty and be given a chance to show what they could do as farmers. Every conceivable condition was imposed upon them which would tend to make the experiment the failure which Guzman intended that it should be. In the midst of the experiment, which was to last a year, Guzman was removed from office. Vadillo, who succeeded him for sixty days, had no authority to do anything in the premises, and so the completion of the ill-begun business was left for Manuel de Rojas. Then began one of the most deplorable passages in all the early history of Cuba, in which good intentions were frustrated, benevolent purposes defeated, and the remnants of a race undeservedly doomed to destruction. Manuel de Rojas should be credited with having been of all men of this time one of the most honest and able, and most sincere in his desire to do justice to the native Indians. He saw through the web of trickery and malign conditions in which they had been enmeshed by those who were predetermined that the experiment of emancipation should fail, and he unsparingly denounced it all. The Indians who had been "selected" for the experiment had in fact not been selected at all, but had been taken at haphazard, without regard to their fitness; if indeed they had not been taken largely because of their unfitness. They had, moreover, been subjected to the instruction and direction of those who seemed more interested in extorting profit from them than in assisting them to independence. Rojas demanded that these abuses should be corrected, and that the natives should have at least a fair, unhampered chance to show themselves fit for freedom and Cuban citizenship. As a result of his own painstaking investigation, he reported to the King that the tales of Indian insurrections, actual or threatened, which his predecessor had circulated, were chiefly false; obviously invented for the purpose of discrediting the Indians. It was the old story: "Give a dog a bad name, and hang him." The Indians were to be slandered, and represented as incorrigible criminals, and then doomed to slavery. Moreover, in the few cases in which revolts or attempted revolts had occurred, the blame should rest upon the Spaniards more than upon the Indians, for the former had goaded the latter to desperation by inhuman cruelties, in resisting which the Indians were manifesting not savagery but manhood. In support of this view of the situation, Rojas was able to cite many specific and perfectly well authenticated instances of cruelty and injustice. To correct these evils he recommended that whenever it was proved that a mine-owner, farmer or other employer of native labor, had deliberately treated his Indians cruelly or unjustly, the men should be taken away from him and either set at liberty or be assigned to a more humane employer. The danger of thus being deprived of their workmen would, he plausibly believed, restrain employers from brutality. He also insisted that the professional "slave catchers," who made a profitable business of running down and returning to their employers fugitive Indians, and who notoriously treated such captives with gross cruelty, should be forbidden longer to ply their nefarious trade. This wise and humane policy was approved by the crown, and Rojas sincerely and perseveringly strove to make it effective throughout the island; devoting to it for a couple of years the greater part of his time and attention. But unfortunately he found the people, the civil officials, and to a large extent the clergy, arrayed against him. The _auri sacra fames_ possessed the people. Slave labor was profitable; therefore they resented and opposed anything which would deprive them of it. Especially did they oppose the provision that men should be deprived of their workmen because they had treated them cruelly. Fines or other penalties for excessive brutality might be well enough, but to take a man's slaves away from him was, in their opinion, going too far. He was not thus deprived of his horses and cattle. Why should he be deprived of his Indians? Yet in the face of such opposition Rojas bravely persevered. He seems to have been animated by two motives, both creditable and honorable. One was that of humanity and justice. It revolted him to see his fellow human beings treated as badly as beasts. The other was that of patriotic policy. He believed that it was bad for Cuba, that it corrupted the present and compromised the future, to maintain this abominable system of human slavery. So he flung himself into the work of emancipation and reform with all the resolution and energy of which he was capable. He travelled over the island, personally inspecting the conditions of labor at all points, and personally listening to all complaints, petitions, suggestions and what not that were offered. Particularly was he interested in the "experimental village" near Bayamo, where natives were trying to work out their own salvation on farms of their own. He corrected as far as possible the unfavorable conditions which had been imposed upon them, and encouraged them to their best efforts. Unfortunately the royal government had been misled into sanctioning the imposition upon these people of burdens "almost too heavy to be borne." Regardless of the fact that as inexpert beginners in agriculture they were not likely in the first year or two to make large profits from their labor, they were weighed down with far heavier taxation than that to which Spanish colonists were subjected. They were required to pay a large tribute in cash as "vassals." They were also required to pay large salaries to various functionaries who were saddled upon them without their desire or need. One was an ecclesiastic, who was charged with protecting their spiritual welfare. Another was a layman, who was supposed to be their political guide, philosopher and friend. These overseers probably did them much more harm than good, though Rojas seems to have selected for those places the best men he could find. But the result of these impositions was that many of the Indians became discouraged and indicated a preference for returning to serfdom or slavery. As free men in the experimental village they had to support themselves and in addition to pay practically all their earnings to the tax-gatherer. It would be better to give all their labor to an employer who in return would at least provide them with the necessaries of existence. On this ground many of the villagers indicated a desire to abandon the experiment and return to the old system. It is probable that some of them were really convinced that this would be best. They were driven to despair by being thrown upon their own resources and then being oppressed with unjust taxes. But there is also reason to suspect that other influences were brought to bear upon many of them. They were threatened with all manner of punishment and persecution if they did not renounce the experiment and ask to be returned to slavery. Similar tactics were certainly employed against those outside of the villages. Wherever Rojas went on his tours of inspection and investigation, he heard of natives who had complaints to make, or petitions to offer, or who wished to be released from serfdom and to enter the free village. But when he reached the spot and sought for these Indians, they had disappeared, or had changed their minds. He had little doubt of foul play, that they were smuggled out of sight, or were coerced into action and speech contrary to their real desires; but he was seldom able to prove it, so general was the conspiracy against emancipation. The result was inevitable. Rojas lost heart. It is possible that he still clung to his beliefs, but realized that the obstacles to his policy were too great for him to overcome. It may be, on the other hand, that he became convinced that he had erred, that the Indians were not as fit for freedom as he had supposed, and that their general emancipation was impracticable. In any case, he gave up the struggle. "Before God and his conscience," he said, he was convinced that little if any good had come of the experiment of freedom, and that it would be best to abandon it and to return the Indians to the control of well-disposed Spaniards; with a proviso that any who wished for freedom and showed fitness for it should be emancipated. A tone of sadness but of sincerity pervaded the report in which he made this recommendation. The King accepted it and approved it, doubtless with the same reluctance and regret which Rojas must have had in making it; and that chapter of Cuban history was ended. Not one of all the early governors of Cuba deserves more grateful memory than Rojas. Not one of them surpassed him in ability, in statesmanship, in executive efficiency, in breadth and penetration of vision in discerning the needs and the possibilities of the island. Not one, certainly, surpassed if indeed any rivalled him in integrity, benevolence, and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. Velasquez, indeed, occupied the governorship for a longer period, and was associated with more striking events; naturally, being the first and the founder of the line. But not even he had as true a public spirit or as just a conception of the ways and means by which a substantial and prosperous commonwealth was to be developed, as had Manuel de Rojas. Yet no other governor in those times was more shabbily and ungratefully treated than he, both during and after his administration. A wise, just judge, an indefatigable administrator, above all an honest man, he devoted himself to the task of promoting the interests of the island, of its people, with a sincerity and a whole-heartedness unfortunately uncommon in those days or in any days. It is true that he failed to solve the problem of saving the Indian natives, and some others which confronted him. But that was not for lack of noble effort or high purpose. It was because he was either honestly misled by those upon whom it was necessary for him to rely, or because he found himself confronted with difficulties too great for a man to overcome alone, and at the same time abandoned if not actually betrayed and antagonized by those who should have aided him and with whose aid he might have been triumphant. He labored at the cost of great self-sacrifice. The salary which was paid to him by the Crown was insufficient, and his personal fortune was not large. He was, moreover, too busy with public affairs to engage in gainful occupations of any kind while governor, and he was too honest to enrich himself in any devious ways. He spent his own private means freely for public purposes, not only in official tours of the island, but in paying the expenses of suppressing Indian outbreaks and apprehending criminals. The result was that he found himself becoming impoverished. Nor did he have so much as the consolation of appreciation. Doubtless the King did appreciate, theoretically, his loyalty, efficiency and integrity; but he altogether neglected to manifest his appreciation in a practical manner by giving Rojas the encouragement and support which he deserved and which he greatly needed. So far as the people of Cuba were concerned, they showed still less regard for him, while the majority of their political and social leaders were openly hostile to him. Guzman and his relatives and friends, who were numerous and powerful, in particular neglected no opportunity to thwart, annoy or discredit him. In these circumstances it was not to be wondered at that Rojas grew weary of his discouraging and ungrateful task, in which he had not even the satisfaction of feeling that he was accomplishing something, and consequently begged to be relieved of it. He had too high a sense of duty to abandon his place without the permission of the King, and that for some time was withheld. But at last his increasingly importunate appeals had their effect. In October, 1535, the King accepted his resignation, and, it is pleasant to record, paid him a tribute which was unique and which must have been peculiarly gratifying to Rojas. That was, that the examination of his accounts should be of an altogether perfunctory and formal character. There was to be no such inquest as all other governors had been compelled to endure. There was really no need of any, but in order to maintain the custom one must be held. But there were no charges, no investigations, no trials. This was the more noteworthy because of the hostility of so many of the people, and above all of Rojas's successor. But this exemption from inquest was his sole reward. He had asked to be relieved not merely of the governorship of Cuba but also of all public duties, in order that he might give his undivided attention to his own personal and private interests. But this was denied him. The King accepted his resignation of the governorship, but refused to grant him permission to join his brother in Peru, where he had hoped to recoup his fortunes. Instead, he sent him to Jamaica, as a royal auditor of accounts, an arduous and somewhat invidious duty, which Rojas accepted doubtless with much reluctance. Still more distasteful was the task which followed it, which was to return to Cuba to conduct a judicial investigation into the conduct of the royal officials there, including the governor himself, and to try those who seemed deserving of prosecution. To some this would have been a welcome undertaking, since it involved the prosecution for serious misdemeanors of those politicians who had been most hostile to him and had given him the greatest annoyance; and even bringing his arch-enemy, the governor, Guzman, under scrutiny. But it was a repugnant task to Rojas, who had no vindictiveness in his nature, and who wished above all to get away and remain away from the scenes of his unsuccessful labors and agonizing ordeals. He bore himself, however, with the same firmness, integrity and high spirit that had marked his former services, and at the end departed, with the royal permission, from Cuba, not to visit it again. CHAPTER XII The successor of Rojas was Gonzalo de Guzman, who thus returned for a second term of the governorship. That adroit, masterful and often unscrupulous politician had spent his time in Spain to good advantage. In various ways and through various methods, not altogether dissociated from the golden treasure which he carried thither from the mines of Cuba, he ingratiated himself with a number of influential courtiers, and through them with the royal court itself. Before long he was able to secure a revision of the sentence which Vadillo had passed upon him, and a reversal of its most harsh decrees and a mitigation of others. Thus he was largely vindicated, and was enabled to plume himself upon having received the royal favor. At the same time he conducted, through his faithful retainers, a campaign of intrigue in Hispaniola, with the result that the Admiral, or Vicereine, the widow of Diego Columbus, appointed him back to his old place as governor of Cuba. The appointment was not to be effective, however, until ratified by the King, and such ratification the King for some time delayed to grant. Guzman was confident, however, of receiving the royal ratification, and so, without waiting for it, he proceeded to Cuba as governor-elect, and began elaborate preparations for resuming office. That was in the midsummer of 1534, more than a year before Rojas was permitted to retire. Indeed, we may well believe that it was the presence and conduct of Guzman that made the island intolerable to Rojas. For Guzman established himself in a fine house, with a retinue of servants, and attracted to himself most of the practical politicians of Cuba, especially those who were inclined to "welcome the coming, speed the parting, guest." They all knew that Rojas was to retire, and that Guzman was to succeed him; wherefore they paid all possible deference to the former and treated the latter with neglect if not with contempt. The actual change came, as we have already seen, in October, 1535. Rojas relinquished the governorship, and Guzman resumed it; and a most grievous decline of Cuba began. Guzman promptly set about serving his own personal interests, rewarding his friends, and punishing all of his opponents who were still within reach. Few of them were within reach, however; all who could do so having fled the island, for Jamaica or elsewhere. Cuba was thus deprived of some of its most useful citizens, while its important public offices were filled with self-seeking politicians. Happily, this unworthy and detrimental administration was short lived; and it was ended through what was nothing less than a peaceful revolution in the political status of Cuba. For some time there had been controversy and litigation between the heirs of Columbus and the Spanish crown, concerning the rights, powers and privileges of the former in the West Indies. The suits came to an end in the spring of 1537, when a settlement was effected, one of the bases of which was the complete renunciation, by the heirs of Columbus, of all right, title or jurisdiction of any kind whatever over the island of Cuba. That of course completely separated Cuba from the jurisdiction of Hispaniola, and made it directly responsible to and dependent upon Spain. It was no longer an adjunct to Hispaniola, but a colony of Spain. Now thitherto the governor and most of the other officials in Cuba had received their commissions from the Admiral or Vicereine in Hispaniola, or from the Supreme Court there. Such was the case with Guzman, though his Hispaniolan commission had received the ratification of the King. It was therefore logically held that all commissions thus given in Cuba by the Hispaniola government became null and void with the emancipation of Cuba from dependence upon the other and smaller island. In consequence, Guzman's second term in the governorship came to an end in March, 1537. An interregnum ensued. The King was contemplating further reorganization of his American domains, and consequently forebore for some time to appoint a successor to Guzman, or indeed to any of the important officials whose terms of office had been involuntarily ended. There had just been, as we have seen, widespread investigations and trials of royal functionaries for frauds, and the King was solicitous to find someone who was indubitably trustworthy, before making further appointments. The result was that the affairs of the island, which had been gravely disturbed and damaged by Guzman, went rapidly from bad to worse, and threatened to plunge into utter chaos. Nor was the solution of this crisis for the advantage of the island. On the contrary, it was to its still further detriment. Once before, in the time of Velasquez, Cuba had been made to suffer greatly because of the development of Mexico and the exodus of many enterprising Cubans to that country. That experience was now to be repeated even more disastrously, in the attempted development of Florida. That country had long been known. It was placed upon the maps as early as 1502, and it was in 1513, at the time when Velasquez was making his first settlements in Cuba, that Juan Ponce de Leon obtained a royal charter to discover and to settle the Island of Bimini, as it was called, on which there was reputed to be a fountain of extraordinary curative powers, capable of restoring to the aged all the vigor of youth. Actual colonization of Florida was not undertaken, however, until 1521, in which enterprise Ponce de Leon himself was wounded in a fight with Indians, and came to Cuba to die. Again in 1527 Panfilo de Narvaez led a large expedition from Cuba to Florida, in which he and all but four of his six hundred men were lost in Indian fighting and in a great Gulf storm. [Illustration: HERNANDO DE SOTO] There next came upon the scene a far more formidable personage than any of these, or indeed than any who had visited Cuba since Columbus with the exception of Cortez. This was none other than Hernando de Soto. Like many another famous Spanish conquistador, he was an impoverished nobleman of Estremadura, who had been in youth a protégé of the infamous Pedrarias d'Avila, the constructive murderer of Balboa and the scourge of Darien. Through the bounty of d'Avila he had passed through a university; he had gone to Darien with his patron in 1519; and in 1532 he had gone with reenforcements to Pizarro in Peru. There he played a great part, personally seizing the Inca monarch, Atahualpa, and discovering the mountain pass which led to the treasure city of Cuzco. Incidentally he seized for himself a vast fortune, with which he returned to Spain, where he married the daughter of d'Avila and for a time settled down in splendid state. When, however, Cabeza de Vaca, one of the four survivors of the last expedition of Narvaez, reached Spain with stories of the marvellous wealth of Florida, de Soto's adventurous spirit, or his cupidity, was again aroused. He disposed of part of his estates, purchased and armed four ships, recruited a force of 620 foot soldiers and 120 horsemen, and sought from the King a commission to explore, conquer and colonize Florida. In him the King apparently saw, as he imagined, the solution of the problem, what to do about Cuba. He accordingly joined Florida and Cuba together, politically, making de Soto Adelantado of the former and governor of the latter. With this commission de Soto sailed from Spain in April, 1538, bound first for Cuba and thence for Florida. The expedition called for a time at the Canary Islands, where its members were richly entertained by the Governor of Gomera. There De Soto's wife, the Lady Isabel, engaged the beautiful daughter of the Governor to accompany her as her chief lady-in-waiting, a choice which led to some interesting personal complications, actually affecting the progress of the expedition. It was on June 7, 1538, that De Soto arrived at Santiago with probably the most imposing fleet that had ever yet visited that port or the waters of Cuba. It comprised more than a score of vessels, carrying more than a thousand soldiers. This armada comprised the galleons _San Cristobal_, _Buena Fortuna_, _Magdalena_, _Conception_, _San Juan_, _San Antonio_, and _Santa Barbara_; one caravel (a three-masted vessel), two light brigs (two masted), and about a dozen smaller craft. Juan de Anasco was chief pilot of the expedition, and the captains were Nuñez Tobar, Luis Morosco de Alvarado, Andres de Vasconcelas, Arias Tinoco, Alfonso Robo de Cardenosa, Diego Garcia, and Pedro Calderon. Among the commanders of the troops were Carlos Enriques, Micer de Espinola, Dionisio de Paris, Rodrigo Gallego, Francisco del Poso, and Diego Banuelos. Nor was the propagation of the True Faith neglected. It was entrusted to a mission comprising four priests and a number of Dominican friars, under the leadership of the friar Luis de Soto, a cousin of the generalissimo of the expedition. Santiago was naturally selected for the entry to Cuba seeing that it was still the official capital and that De Soto was already commissioned Governor. There was a narrow escape from shipwreck in entering the narrow and somewhat tortuous mouth of the great harbor, after which the Governor was received by the municipal functionaries with all the pomp and dignity of which the capital was capable. Tidings of the coming of the new Governor had spread throughout the Island and people of consequence from all parts had flocked to Santiago to welcome him, to seek to ingratiate themselves with him and to celebrate what they fondly hoped would prove to be the beginning of a new and splendid era in the history of Cuba. It is recorded that the gentlemen of the town sent down to the boat landing a fine roan horse for De Soto to ride and a richly caparisoned mule for Doña Isabel. He and all his company were lodged in the most luxurious quarters the town could afford and were hospitably entertained without cost to themselves. Santiago had at this time about eighty houses which were described as spacious and well appointed. About half of them were of masonry and tile and the remainder of boards and thatch. There were also many attractive country estates surrounding the city. The day following his landing De Soto formally assumed his authority as Governor, and Bartolome de Ortiz became Alcalde mayor of Santiago. Scarcely had he done this, however, when news came that a French corsair had attacked Havana, ransacked the church, and burned a number of houses; after which he had sailed away. De Soto at once sent Mateo Aceituna to the scene, with a company of soldiers and artisans, with instructions to rebuild the houses and then to begin the construction of a fort which would serve as an adequate defence for the town. Having done this, he sent Lady Isabel, escorted by his nephew Don Carlos, to Havana by sea, with a strong squadron, while he himself with the remainder of his company set out on horseback for a tour of the islands. He first went to Bayamo, and thence to Trinidad, and Puerto Principe. From the latter place he went in a canoe to the great country estate of Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa at Camaguey, there to get news of Lady Isabel's arrival at Havana. Thence he proceeded to Sancti Spiritus, which at that time was a place of only about thirty houses. Half of his company landed there, and half went on to Trinidad, which was a still smaller place of not more than twenty houses, though it contained a hospital for the poor, the only such institution on the whole Island. Thence he proceeded to Havana without finding another town or settlement of any kind on the entire road. During his stay in Havana De Soto deprived Nuñez Tobar of his rank as Captain-General and gave it instead to Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, because Tobar had made love to Doña Isabel's lady-in-waiting, the daughter of the Governor of Gomera, and indeed had seduced her. In spite, or perhaps because of this punishment Tobar thereupon married the girl and afterward joined De Soto's expedition to Florida in a subordinate capacity. There can be no question that Hernando de Soto came to Cuba with a prestige far surpassing that of any of his predecessors. He was in the prime of manhood and at the height of his fame. He had been the hero of great adventures and of marvellous achievements, and was possessed of great wealth. He was not only governor of Cuba but also Adelantado of Florida, which meant all the lands at the north of the Gulf, from the Atlantic to Mexico, and thus, it was confidently assumed, Cuba would become the chief province and Santiago the capital city, of an empire exceeding in extent and wealth both Mexico and Peru. These brilliant anticipations were, however, doomed to speedy and most crushing disappointment. It soon became clear that de Soto regarded Cuba as a mere stepping stone to Florida, and that he was not merely willing to sacrifice the island's interests to the gratification of his continental ambitions, but had from the first been intent upon so doing. He paid little attention to the representations which were made to him in behalf of Cuba, or indeed to the duties of his office as governor. Instead, all his thought seemed to be given and all his efforts directed, to preparations for proceeding on his way to the alluring regions beyond the Gulf. Moreover, he tempted into joining him in that enterprise many of the richest and most forceful men of Cuba. Among these was Vasco de Figueroa, who had been a comrade of Velasquez. He had settled in Camaguey as early as 1514, and had grown very rich. We may say, indeed, that he was the richest and most influential man in all that part of Cuba. He eagerly accepted an invitation to join the expedition, as de Soto's first lieutenant, and he drew along with him many other substantial men from Camaguey and other parts of the island. Nor was the island thus to suffer for the sake of Florida, merely as a whole. The capital, Santiago, was specially to suffer. Its traditions and its long-established interests were nothing to De Soto, who looked for nothing but to promote his Florida venture. Manifestly, Santiago was no place to serve as a base of operations to the northward, so he presently transferred his headquarters to Havana. That city had been founded in 1514 on the south coast, near what is now Batabano, but a few years later had been transferred by migration of populace and name to its present commanding site at the north. In 1537 it had been raided and partly destroyed by fire, by buccaneers, but at the time of de Soto's coming was rapidly being rebuilt and restored to greater importance than before. So a few weeks after his arrival at Santiago, in the early part of August, 1538, de Soto ruthlessly closed his mansion at Santiago and removed his whole household to Havana. His household and his foot soldiers were sent thither in his vessels, of which he now had five. He himself with his horsemen travelled overland, Vasco de Figueroa acting as guide. The beauty and riches of the island seem not greatly to have impressed the great adventurer; certainly not enough to withhold him for one moment from his quest. Mountain and plain were alike to him merely the road toward Florida. It was late in December before all members of the expedition were assembled at Havana. There it was necessary to remain a while, to refit the vessels, gather provisions, and prepare for an adventure into an unknown and potentially hostile wilderness. Additional ships were sought, and more men; and recruits came flocking thither eagerly from all parts of the island. Meanwhile, a scouting party of fifty, with one vessel, was sent to the Florida coast, to discover a desirable spot for the landing of the whole expedition. It returned in February, 1539, with the report that no suitable place could be found, and with a recommendation against undertaking the venture. This incensed de Soto, and he made the men hasten back to Florida and not return until they had found that which was the object of their quest. Their second expedition lasted three months. At the end of that time they reappeared at Havana, disembarked, fell upon their knees, and on their knees made their way from the wharf to the church, where they offered thanks for their deliverance. This was their fulfilment of a vow which they had made when they were in imminent danger of death; and they would not so much as speak to the governor or to anyone until the pious act was completed. They then reported to de Soto that amid great perils they had found a place which would be suitable for his purpose. They had named it the Bay of Espiritu Santo, as it is to this day called, on the West Coast of Florida. To this place accordingly de Soto hastened, at the end of May, 1539, with nine vessels, more than 500 men beside sailors, and half as many horses; leaving his wife at Havana as acting governor in his absence, with Juan de Rojas as her chief assistant. Vasco de Figueroa soon returned, disgusted with Florida, which he described as a land of interminable swamps, but he left his son with de Soto to serve as lieutenant in his stead. Then Gomez Arias, brother of Lady Isabel de Soto, also returned, with glowing reports of the beauty and wealth of Florida, and it was proclaimed throughout all Cuba that the expedition was succeeding beyond all expectation, and that Florida was the garden of the world. The effect was to excite the Spaniards of Cuba with eagerness to leave their homes in quest of fortunes in this new land. Accordingly, when in February, 1540, Diego Maldonado came from Florida to Havana, to obtain recruits, arms and provisions, there was no lack of response to his call. It seemed as though almost every able-bodied man in Cuba had caught the Florida fever, and went flocking to Maldonado's standard. Eight great ship-loads of men, horses and provisions were quickly obtained, and sailed away for Florida, leaving behind them three classes of people in Cuba. There were those who lamented that there had not been room enough on the ships to take them, too. There were those who lamented that Cuba was thus being stripped and impoverished to enrich another country, if not in a vain and profitless quest. There were also those, the surviving Indian natives, who rejoiced, because the Spaniards were all leaving Cuba, so that the natives could come to their own again. But all three classes were mistaken in their views of the situation. Maldonado and Gomez Arias sailed away with their eight ships, to meet de Soto at an appointed place on the Florida coast. Months later they returned without having met him or having been able to ascertain any information of his whereabouts. That was in 1541. In 1542 they sailed again to meet him at the same place; with like result. In 1543 they made a third such venture, and explored the entire coast from the southern extremity of Florida to Mexico. They posted messages upon trees, rocks and headlands. They sent Indian runners inland to inquire for the adventurers. They resorted to every effort they could devise to find their missing chief, but all in vain. Meantime at Havana the Lady Isabel awaited his return, with unfaltering loyalty and unshaken hope. Bartholomew Ortiz, alcalde mayor, by her lord's appointment, relieved her of the technical duties of gubernatorial rule; which was well, for there was much trouble abroad in the island. It was thus left for her to watch and wait for the coming of the ship which never came. At morning and at evening, day after day, she paced the little pathway on the crest of a fort which her husband had begun to build, the beginning of La Fuerza--of which we shall hear much more. Hour by hour she gazed from that parapet northward, not on guard for hostile sail, but to espy the first glimpse of one returning from the Land of Flowers. There is no more touching picture in all the early history of Cuba than that of this devoted woman, scanning the northern horizon in vain for the appearance of one whose restless and adventurous body was sleeping the last sleep in the bed of the Father of Waters. [Illustration: LA FUERZA Havana's oldest and most famous fortress and the oldest inhabited building in the Western Hemisphere. The construction of it was prolonged through the administrations of many Governors and was for years the chief issue of political contention in the island. It was long the Governor's residence as well as a fortress; from it Hernando de Soto set out for the exploration of Florida and the discovery of the Mississippi River, and from its ramparts his wife, Doña Isabel, long but vainly maintained her daily vigil for his return.] News came at last, to end in grief her agonizing vigil. It was near the end of 1543 that some three hundred weary and worn survivors of de Soto's expedition reached Panuco, on the Mexican coast, with tidings of their leader's death and the destruction of all the rest of the party. They had wandered through what is now the State of Georgia northward as far as the Tennessee Mountains, thence back to Mobile Bay, in Alabama, thence northwest to the Mississippi, and to the Ouachita, or Washita, in Arkansas. While thence descending the Mississippi, in June, 1542, de Soto had died, and his body had been sunk in the great river. The remainder of his company, led by Luis de Alvarado, had continued down the Mississippi River to the Gulf, and thence sailed along the coast to Panuco. Thus ended the career of one of the most famous of all the Spanish explorers; and thus ended another brief but disastrous chapter in Cuban history. The island had been drained of men, horses, supplies of all kinds; for its population was still so small that the loss of a few hundred of its best men and horses was a serious deprivation. Its own domestic interests had been neglected. Its government had become inefficient. The Indians, taking advantage of the weakness of the Spaniards, had begun to cherish hopes of regaining their old freedom, and in some places had risen forcibly to seek that end, with the effect of enraging the Spaniards against them even to the extreme of resolving upon either their complete enslavement or their extermination. Indeed, serious trouble arose with the Indians during de Soto's brief stay in the island. Shortly before his arrival there had been an outbreak of the natives at Baracoa, which resulted in the partial destruction of that town by burning. Towns built entirely of sun-dried thatch were easily burned. Hearing of this, de Soto in almost his first official utterance in Cuba authorized the sending of strong expeditions against the natives, to hunt them down and destroy them ruthlessly. The offending Indians were all Cimarrons, or "wild" Indians who had never been under the repartimiento system, and who expected and solicited the "tame" Indians to rise and join them. The latter not only refused to do this, however, but offered to go out and fight and subdue the Cimarrons, provided they were permitted to do so without being accompanied by Spanish troops; to which the authorities unfortunately would not agree. De Soto sent all available men out against the Indians, and suppressed them, for the time. But as soon as he left Santiago for Havana, taking with him all the fighting men in the eastern end of the island, the Cimarrons sprang to arms again behind him and became more menacing than ever. They again threatened Baracoa, and were active even in the suburbs of Santiago itself. The departure of Vasco de Figueroa from Camaguey was disastrous. He had been vigorous and unsparing in his suppression of even the slightest uprising, and in his absence the Indians were freed from the greatest restraining influence in that part of the island. The general confusion of affairs was further aggravated by the intrigues of two marplots. One of these was Gonzalo de Guzman, who had remained in the island after his removal from office, and who was never weary in mischief-making. He kept himself in frequent communication with the government in Spain, and made all sorts of complaints against de Soto and against the Florida enterprise. Doubtless he was right in saying that the taking of so many fighting men out of Cuba for Florida endangered the peace and safety of the island; though we must think that he exaggerated the condition of Cuba when he wrote to the Spanish government that two-thirds of the island had become depopulated, and all of the towns in the central part of it had been or were in imminent danger of being burned. The other trouble-maker was the new Bishop, Diego Sarmiento, who had succeeded Bishop Ramirez, deceased. He maintained a large establishment of slaves, and continued the political policy of his predecessor. He had arrived in Cuba almost simultaneously with de Soto, and inclined toward the policy of the latter in respect to Florida. A strong governor might have saved even this unfortunate and unpromising situation. But there was none. Lady Isabel died of grief a few months after learning of her husband's fate, and for a time thereafter there was no actual governor at all. De Soto had been empowered to appoint an alcalde mayor to serve as his substitute while he was out of the island, if he so desired. He did thus appoint Bartholomew Ortiz; a good enough man but aged and infirm, and quite unable to cope with the problems which confronted him. He found himself involved in a vigorous rivalry between Santiago and Havana in the matter of fortifications. De Soto had begun the construction of an earthwork fort at the entrance to Santiago. Then when he went across to Havana he ordered the building of a strong fort there of stone masonry. This of course aroused the jealousy of Santiago, whose indignant citizens pointed out that their city was and always would be the capital of the island, and was therefore at least as well entitled to a stone fort as Havana. The sacking and burning of Havana, and of Carthagena and other places on the continent, alarmed them, lest Santiago should suffer a like fate. Their insistence was finally rewarded in the building of a stone fort near the mouth of the harbor. CHAPTER XIII Bartholomew Ortiz was at last, on his earnest entreaty, relieved of his duties as alcalde mayor in the fall of 1542, and for some time the insular government was again without a head. But in August, 1543, since nothing had been heard from or of de Soto for three years, the crown assumed that he was dead and that his office was vacant. It therefore appointed Juan de Avila to be not alcalde mayor but governor; permitting the title of Adelantado of Florida to fall into desuetude. The new governor was a young lawyer, whose chief recommendation was that he was a member of the de Avila family, a relative of Lady Isabel de Soto and of her father, the formidable Pedrarias d'Avila. He seems to have been doubtful of his own ability to administer the office successfully, and therefore reluctant to assume its duties. However, he finally came to Cuba, arriving at Santiago at the beginning of February, 1544, nearly six months after his appointment. He was, of course, regularly appointed and commissioned by the crown, with the full powers of governor, and for those reasons he was received at Santiago with grateful rejoicings. The people of that city and indeed of all Cuba had become tired of having an absentee governor and an alcalde mayor in his place. Juan de Avila's first official act of importance was to make the usual examination of his predecessor's affairs. This was a slight task, because of the short time in which de Soto had actually administered the governorship, and nothing wrong appears to have been found. The affairs of all other officials were likewise in good order. He then turned his attention to the question of the Indians; after which, the deluge. The royal government had for the time acquiesced in the ruthless policy of de Soto. At least it had not vetoed nor opposed it. But now it had reconsidered the matter, and had resumed its former and better policy, of treating the natives justly and kindly, and giving them their freedom. Perhaps it was moved to do this partly through horror at what Pedrarias d'Avila had done at Darien, in all but exterminating an entire race, and was minded to make atonement by requiring the young kinsman of that "Timour of the Indies" to do the opposite in Cuba. At any rate orders were sent to Cuba that there should be no more enslavement of the natives in gold mining. In fact, they were not to be employed in mining at all. Now as mining was practically the only work in which the Indians were engaged, the effect of that order, if enforced, would have been very marked. It would have stopped gold mining, and would have left the natives in idleness. In fact, it was not enforced. The governor received it, and transmitted it to the various local officials for promulgation and enforcement; and they ignored it. Presently the governor wanted to know why the order had not been obeyed, and was curtly told that it would have been disastrous to the industries and interests of the island. This he reported to the crown, asking for further directions. The reply was a reminder that the new Bishop, Sarmiento, was Protector of the Indians, and that the governor and he should cooperate for their welfare and for the enforcement of the decrees in their behalf. But the people were no readier to listen to the bishop than to the governor; particularly since that ecclesiastic was himself a slave-holder. Indeed, the municipal council of Santiago formally protested against his appointment as Protector of the Indians and refused to recognize his authority. There were some actual conflicts with force and arms between the two factions, in which the followers of the local government appear to have triumphed over the fewer adherents of the Bishop, and from which no profit nor advantage of any kind accrued to the unhappy objects of the strife. When these things were reported to the King and his advisers, there was much indignation, and new and peremptory orders were sent to the governor, that involuntary service by the Indians was immediately to be abolished, and that the natives were to be free to work for whom they pleased, or not to work at all. Moreover, they were to be treated in all respects as well as the Spaniards themselves. This radical decree seems to have impressed the governor and bishop as going a little too far, and an appeal was made by common consent to the Council for the Indies, in Spain. That body was divided in opinion, but the majority of it inclined to a modification of the order, to which the King agreed. The governor and the bishop were directed to act together for the welfare of the natives, with a view to granting them ultimately entire liberty and equal rights. There was to be no more slavery. All the Indian slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other islands or from the mainland were to be released and returned to their homes. To hold such slaves, or to engage in the slave trade, was made a grave penal offense. The native Cubans who were held under the repartimiento system were not immediately to be released, but they were not to be transferred from one master to another, and upon the death of their master they were not to be bequeathed as chattels to his heirs, but were to be released. Moreover, if any of the proprietors were proved to be cruel to their native workmen, or neglectful of their interests, the natives were to be released from their authority and set at liberty. In all cases, the natives were to receive fair wages for their labor, and were not to be compelled to do any kind of work for which they were not suited or to which they objected. Finally, it was forbidden for the governor, the bishop, or any other functionary of state or church to hold native Cuban Indians in bondage, though negro slavery was apparently still permitted. These regulations, put forward by the King and the Council for the Indies, were actually more far-reaching than the order of the crown which had been disputed, though they would not take effect so abruptly. The governor received them, and himself had them publicly proclaimed throughout the island; with prodigious effect. The whole island rose against them. Municipal councils and others officials, as well as planters and gold miners, protested against them, and pleaded for at least postponement of their enforcement until they could have an opportunity to appeal to the crown and to the Council for the Indies against them. To this plea for delay, De Avila acceded; to his own subsequent undoing, as we shall presently see. His own brother, Alfonso de Avila, turned against him, and went to Spain as the chief spokesman of the opponents of the new rules. While the question of the Indians was thus held in suspension, De Avila turned his attention to other matters, largely matrimonial and domestic. On coming to Cuba, a young bachelor, he made his home in the house of the wealthy widow of Pedro de Paz. This lady, who had otherwise been much married, and who was by birth a member of the formidable Guzman family, whose name she now bore, was past fifty years old, or about twice the age of the young governor. Indeed, she had sons and daughters of about De Avila's age. It was therefore assumed to be quite permissible for the governor to live in her house. The arrangement proved in the end, however, to be disastrous. It was probably the lady's intention from the beginning to take the young man for her husband--her fourth or fifth. At any rate, his domestic association with her, while it could not compromise her reputation, did so compromise his that he could get none of the eligible young women of Cuba to marry him, although he sought the hands of several of them. So after a time, despairing of any other bride, and doubtless much impressed by the wealth of his mature hostess, he married her; and thereafter was her slave. [Illustration: SAN LAZARO WATCH TOWER, HAVANA Built 1536] For the remainder of the ill-starred administration the lady was the real governor. A large part of her fortune was in Indian slaves, or in enterprises dependent upon their labor. Therefore it was she who was foremost in opposing the enforcement of the decrees for their emancipation. It was owing to her influence that De Avila acquiesced in their suspension. Then, when the matter was being appealed, it was she who constrained De Avila to leave Santiago for a tour of the island, ostensibly for inspection, but in reality to get away from Santiago, where the social atmosphere was not agreeable, and to settle in some more advantageous place. That new place was found at Havana. Since the burning of it by French buccaneers that city had been rebuilt in a much more attractive style than Santiago, and society there was more hospitable to the governor's wife. A plausible excuse for settling there was, moreover, readily found. It was necessary, for the protection of the place against another French attack, that the valiant governor should remain there in person. For the furtherance of this purpose, he procured the free granting to him of a choice tract of land, and also the free gift of materials for building him a fine mansion. Whether the citizens of Havana gave the materials willingly, for the sake of having the governor of the island living among them, or under some sort of compulsion, may not certainly be declared. Two traditions have been extant. One was, that they gave the materials under compulsion, and that for that reason the governor's mansion was called the "House of Fear." The other was, that they gave them willingly, even eagerly, because of actual dread of another French descent; thinking that if the governor himself lived there, he would take all possible measures for the defence of the place; and that it was for that reason that it was called the "House of Fear." After completing the house and living there for some time, however, De Avila deemed it politic to return to Santiago. His absence from the latter place had given rise to great dissatisfaction there and throughout all the eastern part of the island, where of course the majority of the population, of wealth and of political and other influence were still to be found. Indeed, protests had been lodged with the crown against what was described as the governor's abandonment of the lawful seat of government of the island. Suspicions of his unworthiness had already strongly arisen at court, and orders were sent for the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, which still had jurisdiction in Cuba, to investigate his conduct. The report was unfavorable, and in consequence the crown summarily appointed Antonio Chaves to succeed him as governor; directing Chaves to conduct a searching inquest into De Avila's administration without regard to the report already made by the agent of the supreme court of Hispaniola. The sequel was the greatest public scandal that had thus far marred the history of Cuba. It was at the beginning of October, 1545, that Antonio Chaves was commissioned to be governor of Cuba, and it was at the beginning of June in the following year that he arrived at Santiago and entered upon the duties of his office. The first task was to investigate his predecessor, and this he performed with a thoroughness which seemed ferocious and which certainly suggests either some personal hatred of De Avila or a natural desire to be cruel and ruthless. He charged De Avila with having committed malfeasance of office for the furtherance of his wife's interests; with having engaged in commercial and industrial enterprises himself, to the detriment of public interests; with having established monopolies for enriching himself or his wife; with having both given and accepted bribes; with having intimidated local officials and the people; and with having, largely at the instance of his wife, neglected to enforce the order of the King for the emancipation of the natives. It is quite probable that De Avila was guilty of most of these charges, particularly of those in which his wife was concerned. Certain it is that Antonio Chaves set about trying to prove them with a strenuous zeal which had never before been displayed. One of his first acts was to seize and search the governor's house; not merely in its public or semi-public offices but in its most private parts. The wardrobe of the governor's wife was ransacked, the furniture examined, the walls and floors sounded and even broken in quest of concealed treasure. To some of these proceedings the governor, or ex-governor, and his wife, too, attempted to offer physical resistance, but they were overpowered and bound while the search went on. Their servants, or slaves, were questioned and even, it is said, threatened with torture if they did not tell all they knew. Under such compulsion they told of bars of gold hidden underneath the floor of a country house; which were found. Chaves went so far as to order De Avila to be chained fast to a post in the market place, where fugitive slaves had formerly been chained, and the former governor was actually subjected to this indignity, though he had not yet been convicted and sentenced by a court of justice. But this was carrying prosecution too far. It was regarded as not prosecution but persecution. There was a reaction of popular sentiment in favor of De Avila, and he was assisted to escape from his bonds and to find sanctuary in the Franciscan monastery. After a time he undertook to get away, to Spain, but was quickly detected and recaptured by Chaves. After some further controversy, Chaves discreetly agreed that De Avila might go to Spain, to defend himself if he could before the Council for the Indies; doubtless expecting that such defence would be in vain because of De Avila's offences against that Council's decrees. So De Avila departed for Spain, with his advocates and his accusers on the same ship. Most fortunately for him, his wife also went, carrying with her an ample store of gold and gems which had escaped the search and confiscation of Chaves. Her conduct in this emergency indicates that she had a sincere devotion to her young husband, in addition, of course, to a desire to protect her own material fortune. Certain it is that she constituted herself his chief and most effective champion, freely expending in his behalf the gold which she had taken to Spain. She testified that all the property which he was accused of having unlawfully acquired was in fact hers and not his, possessed by her before she was married to him, and that if he had in any sense acquired it, it was solely through having married her; and there was no law against a governor's marrying a rich wife. Her argument prevailed. The litigation in Spain lasted for several years, during part of which time De Avila was in prison. But in the end he was released; the heavy fines which had been levied against him were remitted; and the sentence of perpetual banishment from Cuba was revoked. Thereupon the devoted couple returned in triumph to Cuba, with a great retinue of servants, and reestablished themselves at Santiago. They held aloof from political affairs, and gave their attention to an exceedingly profitable commerce between Cuba and other West India Islands and Spain; which happy state of affairs lasted until De Avila's death, a dozen years later. He left behind him the reputation of being one of the worst of Cuban governors, not so much because of any inherent viciousness as because of his weakness of character and his complete subservience to the often sordid and sometimes unscrupulous doings of his wife. That there was any gain for Cuba in the substitution of Antonio Chaves for Juan de Avila is scarcely, however, to be maintained. On the contrary, there was probably some loss. It was a substitution of King Stork for King Log. De Avila had been weak and passive. Chaves was strong and aggressive; as his campaign against his predecessor demonstrated. In point of morals there was probably little to choose between them. So far as enforcement of the laws concerning the natives was concerned, Chaves was worse than De Avila. For De Avila personally wished to enforce them, but was dissuaded from so doing by the influence of his wife and the almost unanimous demands of the officials and people. Chaves, on the other hand, appears to have been personally opposed to all emancipation laws, and inclined to subject the natives to ruthless slavery. Although he had savagely attacked De Avila for acquiescing in the suspension or postponement of the royal decrees, Chaves himself went even further in the same direction. He declined to enforce the laws, protested against them, and petitioned for their repeal on the ground that they would be ruinous to the material welfare of the island. The rule against employment of natives in the mines was especially obnoxious to him, and he advised the crown that unless it were repealed, together with all other such measures, the island would soon be "possessed of the devil." Seeing that Chaves was now doing the very thing that he had condemned his predecessor for doing, the King was disgusted with him, and sent him the sharpest kind of a reprimand, reminding him of his gross inconsistency and bidding him to enforce the law without further ado. Chaves pretended to obey. In fact, he promptly replied that he was obeying. But he obeyed only in pretence. He did not scruple to declare--in Cuba--that he was opposed to giving the natives their freedom. He did not consider them fit for it. Why? Because they were not Christians, and if set free they would not become Christians, and therefore would infallibly be damned eternally. Therefore to save their souls from hell fire, their bodies must be enslaved, so that they could find salvation through being physically compelled to conform with the external practices of Christianity. Particularly necessary was it, he argued, for this system of spiritual salvation through corporeal bondage to prevail in the provinces of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus and Puerto del Principe, because they had no agricultural interests but were dependent upon mining, and if they could not compel the Indians to work in the mines, they would be ruined. This logic, more ingenious than ingenuous, did not favorably impress the King, nor was he better pleased with Chaves's proposal that the Indians should be made free in name only, and that while traffic in them as chattels should be forbidden, they should in fact remain in involuntary domestic servitude. Another sharp reprimand was accordingly sent to Chaves, with an intimation that something worse might follow; to which warning the governor was blind and deaf. Accordingly, the blow soon fell. We have hitherto heard much of Lopez Hurtado, the crabbed, surly and cantankerous old royal treasurer, with his impregnable honesty. It was quite impossible that he should countenance even passively such conduct as that of Chaves. So at the end of 1548 he sent to the King an appalling indictment of the governor, charging him with all manner of public crimes and private vices. He declared that Chaves was enriching himself at the expense of the people, and that he was neglecting public business for private enterprises, that he was permitting his subordinates to practice extortion and oppression, that he was ill-treating and persecuting honest men, and that he was corrupting the women of the island; all of which was probably true. The King acted promptly. Chaves had been appointed governor in October, 1545, for a term of four years, at a salary of a thousand ducats a year. He had now, at the end of 1548, been in office three years and more; though he claimed that his term ran for four years from June, 1546, when he actually took office. However, there was no tenure of office law to keep him in his place beyond the royal pleasure; certainly not to protect him from removal for cause. So the supreme court of Hispaniola was directed to investigate him, and Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor in his stead. The court of Hispaniola sent Geronimo de Aguayo to Cuba to make a private investigation of the governor's doings; Hurtado agreeing to pay the expenses out of his own pocket. Aguayo came to Santiago in April, 1549, while Chaves was absent at Havana, planning to remove the seat of government to that city. Three months were spent in the investigation, and then Aguayo reported to the court a docket of about three hundred charges against Chaves, some of which were serious enough but many of which were altogether trifling. The court decided to take no action upon them, but to hold them for the new governor, Angulo, to use as the basis of the investigation which he, according to law and precedent, would at once make into his predecessor's administration. Gonzalo de Angulo had been appointed at the beginning of September, 1548, but did not at once come to the West Indies. He reached Hispaniola in the summer of 1549, shortly after Aguayo had made his report, and he remained there for some time, considering the report and conferring with the members of the supreme court. Finally, at the beginning of November, he proceeded to Santiago and assumed the governorship. He entered upon the investigation, using Aguayo's three hundred charges as the basis of it, despite the protest of Chaves that Aguayo had been a prejudiced investigator, moved by political and even pecuniary considerations and intent not upon discovering the truth but merely upon defaming him (Chaves) to the fullest possible extent. The result of the new governor's inquest was that at the beginning of July, 1550, Chaves was arrested and sent as a prisoner to Spain, for trial there upon a multitude of accusations. These were partly grave and partly--mostly--frivolous. In the former category was the charge that Chaves had refused or at least failed to enforce royal decrees for the enfranchisement of the natives. That was a very serious matter, apparently, and there was no question that it was true. Indeed, Chaves admitted it. But, he said, some of these decrees had been suspended, there had been pleas for the suspension of others, officials had failed to proclaim some, and the Hispaniola court had interfered with others; so that the whole business was in a hopeless tangle and he really could not determine what he ought to do. This argument impressed the Spanish authorities, and they consequently dismissed that and other like charges against him. But when it came to other charges, they could not be got rid of so easily. Thus, he had refused to pay an apothecary for a dose of medicine. He had called Hurtado's nephew a Jew! He had called certain citizens "conspirators" because they were forming some sort of a secret organization. He had arrested a priest for acting disrespectfully toward him. These were indeed serious matters; particularly when the irate Hurtado produced voluminous affidavits, from parents, physicians, clergy, and whom not, to prove that his nephew like himself was a good Christian. So for these things Chaves was thrown into prison, and even, it is said, bound with heavy fetters, until he should pay the fines which were imposed upon him. It must be recorded in Chaves's favor that he was unable to pay these fines. Indeed, he seems not to have had means sufficient to employ a lawyer to defend him, wherefore he was compelled to conduct his own case; which he was quite competent to do, being a licentiate of the bar. There was, then, of course no thought of his being able to influence the course of justice by the use of money, as De Avila was supposed to have done. Whether he was actually so poor, or whether his fortune had been so invested in Cuba that he was unable at once to realize upon it, does not appear. In charity we may accept the former theory, as the more creditable to him. At any rate, after two years of litigation and imprisonment, he secured a final reduction of the fines levied against him to a little more than 100,000 maravedi, which he was required to pay within a year. This trifling amount he contrived to raise and so regained his freedom; going thereafter back to Cuba to settle up his personal affairs there, and thence to Peru, to engage no more in Cuban politics. Apart from his prosecution of Chaves, the first act of Gonzalo de Angulo on assuming the governorship was to attempt a radical solution of the Indian problem. This he did by proclaiming the full and universal emancipation of all natives, however and by whomsoever held. Seeing how strenuously and vociferously similar action had been resisted only a few years before, as sure to be ruinous to the island, it is worthy of remark that this provoked no remonstrances and caused no economic disturbance. The explanation is simple. The former proposals for emancipation included slaves who had been brought to Cuba from other lands, while this one applied only to natives. Now the latter, through disease, fighting, and other causes, had been steadily decreasing in numbers, until they were now practically a negligible quantity. They probably numbered not more than twenty-five hundred in the entire island. It really mattered little, from an industrial point of view, whether they were enslaved or free. They were in fact set free, in good faith, and then practically disappeared. They did not relapse into primitive barbarism, but they lived in squalor, most of them, and gradually died out. Not all of them, however, suffered such a fate. Some settled on lands near if not actually among the Spanish colonists, adopted the ways of civilization, and prospered. They acquired freehold of land and houses, kept herds of cattle, built ships and engaged in commerce. Some of them intermarried with Spanish families, and the offspring of such unions often rose to honorable rank in society and the state. The question of slavery was not by any means disposed of by this emancipation of the native Indians. There was a much larger number of slaves in the island who had been brought thither from other countries, including both insular and continental Indians and African negroes. Governor Angulo was directed to order their emancipation and repatriation at the same time with the others. But he withheld the decree. These foreign slaves were far more numerous than the natives and were consequently more important to industry and commerce. They had not been simply "assigned" to owners, like the Cuban Indians, but had been purchased outright for cash, like any other merchandise, and were legally as much the property of their owners as land, houses or cattle. In view of this circumstance, Angulo declined to proclaim their emancipation. CHAPTER XIV The administration of Gonzalo Perez de Angulo marked the lowest point in the early history of Cuba. That was not because of the character of his administration, which was indeed better than some of its predecessors, but because various processes militating against the progress and prosperity of the island then reached their culmination. Foremost among these was the migration to Florida, Mexico, Peru and other lands, which were richer, or were reputed to be richer, than the Pearl of the Antilles. Cuba contained no such cities and treasures as those of Mexico and Peru; no such traditions as that of Florida's Fountain of Youth pertained to her. The island had been explored from end to end, and its resources were known; though by no means appreciated. The adventurers of those days were not inclined to engage in agriculture, even in so fertile a land as Cuba, when the gold and gems of the Incas were within reach. With the decline and practical disappearance of the Indians, and the increasing difficulties of the African or other slave trade, the scarcity of labor disinclined the Spanish settlers even to raise cattle. The middle of the sixteenth century saw, therefore, a menacing emigration from Cuba to other lands which threatened to leave the island uninhabited. Statistics of those days are scanty and not altogether trustworthy. It was the custom to report merely the number of householders or land-owners or heads of families in a place, leaving it to be estimated how many members each family contained. An exact census of the island in Angulo's time would astonish the reader of to-day with the meagreness of the settlements which had been effected in the course of forty years. Of the seven cities which Velasquez had founded--they were called cities, and we must through courtesy retain the name--Santiago was still the largest, and was the capital. It probably contained at the period of which we are writing fewer than five hundred Spaniards and other Europeans. De Avila saw only two hundred assembled to welcome him on his arrival as Governor. The number of houses and other buildings was less than a hundred. The first town hall and church which were built there were structures of logs and thatch, which were burned by a fire which destroyed most of the place in 1528. Four years later the Franciscan monastery and other buildings shared a like fate. The Spanish government then urged the erection of buildings of stone with tiled roofs, and a few such were erected. At the end of Guzman's second administration there were perhaps a dozen such, of which Guzman himself owned two. The harbor boasted a single wharf or pier, of logs and earth, near which for protection two small cannon were placed behind an earthwork. Such was the Cuban capital in 1550. Three years later, in 1553, a French privateer entered the harbor, silenced the two cannon, and landed a company of four hundred men, who outnumbered the entire population of the place. These freebooters took possession of Santiago and lived there at their ease, at the expense of the people, during the whole month of July. Then, having exacted from the inhabitants a ransom of what would be about $80,000 in modern currency, they departed, leaving the place uninjured save for the depletion of its people's purses. Following this visitation there was a numerous exodus of the inhabitants, to Bayamo and other places; some leaving the island altogether. Havana was at this time the second city of the island, and was steadily rising toward first place. It had been the last of the seven cities to be founded by Velasquez, and was now occupying its third and final site. It was first planted in July, 1515, near the mouth of the Guines or Mayabeque River, on the south shore of Cuba; that shore then being the favorite part of the island for the sake of trade with Jamaica and the South American continent. But the location was unhealthful, the swarms of mosquitoes particularly being intolerable, and two years later the city was transferred almost directly across the island to the north shore. This second site was near the mouth of the Almendares River, near the present town of Vedado, and was found to be vastly preferable to the former one. It was impossible, however, that the superb harbor on which the city now fronts should be neglected. It had been discovered in 1508 by Sebastian de Ocampo, while circumnavigating the island, and had been called Carenas. Accordingly in 1519 the young city of Havana, bearing the Indian name of that province of the island, was transported thither. Credible tradition has it that the first meeting of the Municipal Council was held under a huge ceiba tree, and that Mass was first celebrated at the same sylvan spot, the site of the tree now being marked by the building known as the Templete, in the heart of the great city. Two fine historical paintings by the artist Escobar, representing the two gatherings named, hang upon the walls of that building. In De Soto's time Havana became marked as the coming capital and metropolis of the island, partly because of its unsurpassed situation, and partly for a reason similar to that which caused it first to be founded on the south coast, namely, for the sake of trade with Mexico and Florida. De Soto during his brief sojourn there began the erection of the fortification known as La Fuerza, which has long been noted as the oldest inhabited building in the western hemisphere which was built by Europeans. By the time of Governor Angulo, Havana had grown into--or been reduced to--a community of about two hundred Europeans, and perhaps three hundred Indians and negro slaves. Santa Maria del Puerto Principe was originally founded in 1515 on the north coast, but a dozen years later was removed inland for security against the rovers of the sea, and became known by its present name of Camaguey. For many years Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa was its chief man; a man of wealth and great force of character, who lived like a prince upon a vast estate with a great retinue of servants and slaves. All the rest of Camaguey was tributary to him; with a total population of fewer than five hundred souls. Baracoa, originally Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, was the first permanent settlement in Cuba. Shut off from the rest of the island by a mountain wall, and visited by several disastrous epidemics, it was all but obliterated, and in the time of De Soto and Angulo contained fewer than a dozen European families. As for Trinidad, on the south coast, it fared even worse, for every Spanish or other European settler deserted it, chiefly for Sancti Spiritus, leaving there only a score of Indians. But that did not mean any great accession to Sancti Spiritus, which place had only about two hundred Europeans, and perhaps as many more Indians and negro slaves. Bayamo was another city which was moved inland from its original site. It had in Angulo's time fewer than a hundred Spaniards and perhaps twice as many Indians and negroes. Thus after forty years of settlement and colonization, all Cuba had not more than 1,200 inhabitants of European origin, and perhaps twice that number of Indians and negroes. The great majority of the former were, of course, Spaniards. Even at this early date, however, there was a sprinkling of other nationalities. Some Portuguese came hither in the second quarter of the century, and engaged in vine growing and agriculture. Indeed, by the middle of the century most of the profitable and commercial agriculture of the island was in their hands. The value of such colonists was appreciated by the Spanish, who were glad to have others engage in the agriculture for which they themselves had little taste or aptitude. Accordingly Portuguese settlers were encouraged to come to Cuba, and legislation was enacted in their favor. Their naturalization as Spanish subjects was facilitated, and free homesteads were given to them, of choice agricultural lands. Some Italians also came to Cuba in those early years, partly as soldiers of fortune, to enlist in the forces of the island or to seek further adventures of exploration and conquest, and partly to become horticulturists and agriculturists, after the manner of the Portuguese. Even a few Arabs and Moors visited the island, and some German artisans. French and English there were none, because of the generally prevailing hostilities between them and Spain. The Spanish government was chiefly intent upon encouraging conquests in the great treasure-yielding lands of Mexico and Central and South America. Yet it was not blind to the potential value of Cuba, nor altogether neglectful of that island's interests. Various attempts were made to stimulate immigration and permanent settlement, and even to prevent settlers, once there, from leaving the island. Some of these measures were, indeed, so stringent as probably to react against their own purpose. Thus it was required that merchants and ship-masters sailing from Cuba for trade with other lands should give bonds for their return, while the death penalty, with confiscation of estate, was actually prescribed for many years for all persons leaving the island without permission from the authorities. The effect of this extraordinary measure was what might have been expected. Knowing that once in Cuba it would be difficult and perhaps impossible for them to get away again, prudent people were reluctant to go thither. Efforts were also made to stimulate increase of population. Married men in Spain were forbidden to go to Cuba without taking their wives with them. Bachelors and widowers in Cuba were not permitted to employ Indians or to hold slaves, while illicit unions with native women were discouraged under penalty. Regular marriages with native women were, however, legitimized, and there were many such which resulted satisfactorily. In spite of these precautions there were, of course, some illegitimate children, and these the government took steps to legitimize, in order that they might, in default of other heirs, inherit their fathers' property and become substantial members of the community. The population of Cuba was materially increased in another and by no means commendable way. This was by the importation of negro slaves from Africa. The traffic in human beings began in the West Indies at about the time that Velasquez began the conquest and settlement of Cuba; perhaps a little before that time. Naturally, with the settlement of Cuba slave traders visited that island to offer their wares. It must be recorded to the credit of Velasquez that he at first prohibited the entrance of negro slaves into the island, and to the end of his life opposed it though he was forced after a while to permit it. This was partly on the ground of morals, and partly on that of prudence. He did not scruple to enslave to some extent the native Cubans. But that was in order to civilize and Christianize them, and also to afford the colonists protection from them in their wild native state. Such, at least, was the argument with which he justified his policy. Moreover, the Indians were already there, in the island, and had to be dealt with in some fashion. But it was manifestly a very different thing to import savages from some distant land for the express purpose of making slaves of them. The other reason was his fear that if many negroes were imported they and the Indians would so outnumber the whites as to be a grave menace. Nevertheless the slave trade was established and soon attained considerable proportions. It became so flourishing that presently the Spanish government forbade private parties to conduct it save under special charter from the crown and on payment of a considerable royalty on each negro imported. Ostensibly, this was because it was feared that too many negroes might be imported, so as to endanger the security of the colonists, as Velasquez had suggested; but in fact it was largely for the sake of the revenue which thus accrued to the royal treasury. The popular sentiment in Cuba was generally in favor of slavery. It was held that thus only could sufficient labor be secured for the development of the resources of the island. The number of negroes never was as great as some colonists urged that it should be, to wit, three male and three female slaves for every white householder, but it is probable that before the middle of the century the negro population of the island outnumbered the European. Treatment of the slaves was on the whole humane. The negroes were forbidden to carry weapons, or to go about in companies of more than four. They were at times subjected to physical punishment by their masters for misdemeanors, though generally such discipline was required to be administered by the authorities. Miscegenation between Europeans and negroes was prohibited under penalty, and as an additional safeguard against it slaves were required to be imported in equal numbers of the sexes, and all were required to be married. It may be doubted if a similar regard for their sexual morals was ever exhibited elsewhere. There was a provision under which it was possible for industrious and faithful slaves to purchase their freedom, and a considerable number of them did so; after which they became members of the community with almost the same legal rights and privileges as the Europeans. There was, it is pleasant to record, never the prejudice against the negro in Cuba that prevailed in the states of North America. He was a slave, but he was a man. He was a social and political inferior, because of his enslavement; but he was mentally and spiritually the peer of his master. The text "Cursed be Canaan" was never thundered from Cuban pulpits, nor was it ever held that the negro must not be educated nor instructed in religion. On the contrary, it was required by law that the slaves should have the advantages of all the services of the church equally with their masters; and the Spanish aristocrat and his African slaves thus knelt side by side at the same altar. This attitude of the races toward each other had two natural results. One was, that the slaves were generally contented and peaceful, and attempts at insurrection among them, while not unknown, were rare. The other was, that amalgamation of the races became frequent and was recognized as quite legitimate. We have said that miscegenation in illegitimate fashion, between negro slaves and Europeans, was forbidden. But there was no ban against marriage between whites and emancipated negroes, and such unions not infrequently occurred, with satisfactory results. The importation of negroes naturally increased with the gradual extermination of the native Indians, and it was favored by the very men who most strongly inveighed against the enslavement of the Indians. Even La Casas himself, with all his fervor in behalf of the natives, acquiesced in negro slavery; favored it, indeed, as a means of saving the Indians from such a fate. During the second administration of Guzman, the restrictions which had been placed upon the slave trade were removed, and free importations, without payment of a royalty, were thereafter permitted. Indeed, a further step than this was contemplated. It was urged that if the King wished the Indians to be emancipated, he should supply their places with negroes. This extraordinary argument prevailed, and for at least one year all the King's revenues from Cuba were ordered to be invested in negroes, who were then to be distributed among the colonists of the island in place of the Indians who were set free. These were not, however, to be free gifts, but were to be paid for by the colonists in the course of a term of years. The revenues for that year amounted to about 7,000 pesos, and it was reckoned that at the prices then prevailing in the slave market at least 700 slaves could be purchased. But at the last moment the King, or else the Council for the Indies, reconsidered the matter, and the slaves were never purchased. At the same time the enfranchisement of the Indians was postponed. The early industries of Cuba were, in the order of their importance, gold mining, stock raising, and agriculture. The last named was practised by the Spanish settlers only to an extent sufficient to supply their own needs for food. Stock raising, both horses and cattle, was engaged in much more extensively, not only to supply local needs but also to supply the needs of Spanish explorers and gold-seekers in Mexico and Central and South America, who had no time nor opportunity in their strenuous quest there to attend to such matters. But the first thought of the first settlers in Cuba was for gold, and for many years the mining of that metal was the most profitable occupation. Within the first twenty years of Spanish settlement more than 500,000 pesos in gold were secured. Indeed in a single year, 1531, the mines at Cuyeba produced 50,000 pesos. There were paying mines at Savanna, at Savanna de Guaimaro, at Puerto Principe, at Portillo, and elsewhere throughout the central districts of the island; some of them being ore veins in the mountains and some placers in the river beds. But in the course of twenty-five years the mines began to fail and new ones were not discovered, so that by De Soto's time the output of gold had become insignificant. This was doubtless one of the strong contributing causes of the migration of so many settlers from the island, the eagerness of men to seek new fields in Florida, and the general decline which Cuba then suffered. There was some compensation for the decline of gold mining in the discovery of rich copper mines, though the full value of them was not at first realized. It was during the first administration of Guzman that copper was discovered at Cobre, near Santiago. (This was the place where, as formerly related, Alonzo de Ojeda, in gratitude for his restoration to health, presented a statue of the Holy Virgin to the native chief, Comendador, who had been his host and nurse and who had embraced Christianity. The statue was long famous as Our Lady of Cobre.) There is reason for believing that the Cuban natives had formerly worked those mines to a considerable extent, for traffic with other lands, though they themselves apparently did not make use of the metal in their own arts. The governor, Guzman, learning of the discovery, urged the development of the mines as the property of the discoverers, while the royal treasurer claimed that they should belong to the crown. A controversy was maintained for some time, with the result that the crown, lightly esteeming the value of the find, permitted private exploitation of the mines on a basis of ten per cent royalty. An assayer was sent from Spain to superintend the refining of the copper from the ore, and suitable works were erected. But little or nothing was done for several years. Then, after the administration of De Soto, and while the alcalde mayor, Ortiz, was acting governor, a great demand for copper arose, for the casting of cannon, in Spain, and interest in the mines was revived. A German engineer made an agreement with the local authorities to extract the copper and did so with great success. The ore was found to be very rich in copper and also to contain so much gold and silver that it would be worth working for those metals entirely apart from the copper. Under this expert management the mines became highly profitable. In the administration of Angulo the German engineer had two mines assigned to him as his own, in return for which he instructed all comers--chiefly slaves who were sent to him for the purpose by the settlers--in the art of smelting and refining copper. Large quantities of the copper were at that time sent to Spain, and the first cannon mounted on La Fuerza, in Havana, were made of it, being cast at the royal foundry at Seville. It is related that one of these cannon, a small falconet, burst in the casting, and so badly injured the superintendent of the works that he had to be taken to a hospital, where he expressed a bad opinion of Cuban copper. This was the origin of the really unfounded belief which long prevailed, and which was recorded in technological works, that Cuban copper had some peculiar quality which rendered it difficult and even dangerous to work. The first essays toward the growing of sugar, which has become one of the greatest industries of the island and in which Cuba surpasses any other equal area of the earth's surface, were made as already related in the closing years of Velasquez's administration. They did not at that time prove important, and nothing more was done until the first administration of Guzman. That enterprising governor, always ready to do anything to enrich himself, asked permission to import negro slaves free of royalty, in order to establish the sugar industry, promising under penalty to begin the construction of a sugar mill within two years and to complete it within four years. The crown considered that too long a time, and refused to waive the royalty on slaves for his benefit, whereupon he abandoned the scheme. Then Hernando de Castro made a similar proposal, reducing the time of completion of the mill to three years. The crown was more favorably impressed by his offer, and agreed to it, only to have him withdraw it. Juan de Avila and his brother Alfonso reported strongly in favor of establishing the industry in Cuba, and asked for a loan of capital from the royal treasury to finance the undertaking; but nothing was done. Chaves and Angulo also successively reported that Cuba was admirably adapted to the industry, and it was known that at that very time sugar growing was enormously successful in Hispaniola, Porto Rico and other islands. Yet by some strange fatality nothing practical was done, and the actual establishment of the great industry was postponed until near the end of the century. The fiscal policy of the Spanish government was in early years not unfavorable to Cuba. Apart from a royalty of from five to ten per cent on precious metals mined, and on copper, and the royalty already described on the importation of negro slaves, and a customs duty of seven and a half per cent ad valorem on all imports, the island was free from taxation. The royalties in question were certainly not oppressive, and the fact that the Seville government imposed the same customs duty on all goods imported into Spain from Cuba made the tariff seem entirely just. Indeed, Cuba was favored above all other islands In the West Indies for many years. Thus after the middle of the sixteenth century one-third of what had been the import duty on goods received in Spain from the West Indies was required to be paid in the Indies as an export tax; but Cuba alone of all the islands was exempted from this arrangement. It was not, indeed, until the decline of Spain herself set in, with increasing expenses for maintaining an inefficient and often corrupt bureaucracy, and with sorely diminishing resources and revenues, that Cuba began to be detrimentally exploited for the sake of the Mother Country. CHAPTER XV We have said that the administration of Angulo marked the nadir of early Cuban history. It also marked the turning point, and the entrance of the island into international affairs. Not yet had the great duel between Spain and England begun; which in the next century was to have so momentous results. France was the enemy. Francis I became King of that country in 1515, when Velasquez was beginning the settlement of Cuba, and Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) became King of Spain in the following year; and in 1521, while Velasquez was still governor of Cuba, those two monarchs began the first of their series of six wars. Adopting the policy which was afterward pursued by England against Spain and against France, and by France against England, France struck at Spain in her American colonies. During the first, second and third wars, French attention was chiefly given to conquests in North America, with occasional raids against Spanish commerce in the Caribbean and along the coast of Mexico. Cuba appears to have remained unscathed. With the outbreak of the fourth war in 1536, however, trouble for Cuba began. French privateers, little better than pirates in their practices, sometimes, swarmed the Caribbean and the Gulf, preying upon Spanish commerce and raiding Spanish seacoast towns. The first such blow was struck at Cuba in 1537. A fleet of five Spanish ships, richly laden, was about to set forth from Havana for Spain, by way of the Bahama Channel. Just as they spread their sails and weighed their anchors, a venturesome French privateer entered the harbor's mouth. The intruder hesitated at sight of so many vessels, whereupon three of the Spaniards, being well armed as well as laden, as most ships had to be in those troublous days, gave chase. The Frenchman retired, fighting stubbornly, as far as the harbor of Mariel, where he turned at bay and for three days kept up the unequal conflict. Then, just as he seemed preparing to give up the fight and flee, an unfavorable wind struck the Spanish ships, placing them at such disadvantage that their captains ordered them to be abandoned and burned. This was done, but the French boarded one before the flames had made headway, extinguished the fire, and sailed away with the prize. The daring Frenchman then returned to Havana, entered the harbor with the two ships, and proclaimed to the alcaldes and citizens that he would do the place no harm if none was done to him, but that if any attack was made upon his ships, he would sack the town. After a while he went out and sailed away to the west. At that same time all commerce out of and into Santiago was practically blocked by the presence of French privateers hovering off that port. In April, 1538, an attack was made upon Santiago, and the place was defended in a most extraordinary fashion. A Spanish vessel tried to leave port, met a French vessel returning from a raid on Hispaniola, and tried to scuttle back, but was overtaken and captured at the entrance to the harbor. Next day, having despoiled the prize, the Frenchman sailed into the deep harbor, which never before had been thus invaded, and menaced the town. The town had no defences whatever, and the citizens were unarmed. Guzman, then just at the end of his administration, was furious at his helplessness. He railed against the citizens because they would not rush down to the wharf and repel the invader with clubs and stones. But railing was in vain, and so there was nothing to do but to take to flight inland, which most of the officials and citizens did, carrying all portable treasure with them. The Frenchman then threatened to burn the town, which Guzman wished he would do, in order to bring the King's government to its senses and arouse it to the necessity of defending Cuba. But there chanced to be in the port a certain merchant of Seville, by name Diego Perez, who was at least as daring as the Frenchman himself. He had a little merchant sloop, not more than half the size of the Frenchman, but well armed, with guns that would carry at least as far as the Frenchman's. He ran his little craft into water too shallow for the bigger Frenchman, where he would be secure against ramming or boarding, and there began peppering the enemy with his long range guns, Perez himself aiming the best of them. The fight lasted all day, and Perez was ready to resume it next morning. But in the darkness of the night the Frenchman stole away and was seen no more in Santiago harbor. Perez had three men killed, and his vessel was badly damaged; but the Frenchman probably suffered heavier losses, since two of his men who were killed fell overboard and were picked up and buried by the Spaniards, and there were almost certainly others killed. For his valor on thus saving the capital of Cuba from destruction, Perez received from the King a coat of arms with a device emblematic of his achievement. That same Frenchman a little later, having repaired his vessel, wreaked his revenge upon Havana. When he entered the harbor there the people fled and left the town for him to loot at his leisure. It is recorded that he took even the church bells. Moreover, being a truculent Huguenot, he took an image of Saint Peter from the church and let his men use it as a target to pelt with oranges! This incident caused De Soto, who arrived at Havana a little later, to hasten work on the defences of the place. For some time there had been talk of building a fort, but no agreement had been reached as to where it should be; whether at the Cabana, or the Morro, or on the hill in what is now Central Park. But the Frenchman's raid brought the controversy to an end, and De Soto was authorized to build wherever he thought best. The result was the building of La Fuerza. It was hastily built, and therefore badly, so that ten years later part of it had to be torn down and the whole remodelled into its present form. By this time it was considered certain that Havana would one day become the capital and chief city of Cuba, wherefore it was decided to fortify it rather than Santiago or any other port. Beside, it was the most convenient port of call for treasure ships and others plying between Mexico and Spain. A battery of cannon was therefore placed upon the Morro headland, long before the building of the castle, and La Fuerza was strongly armed. It became the custom for treasure ships to put into Havana harbor, and if pursued to unload their treasure there, for safe keeping on shore until the danger was past. But no further attack was made upon Havana or any other Cuban port, and in 1544 the war was ended. The prospect of Havana's becoming the capital seemed temporarily to be realized in 1550, when Angulo established his permanent residence there--the first governor so to do, though some of his predecessors had spent some time there, and De Avila had actually established a residence there. Angulo began building a large stone church at Havana, in place of the wooden thatched hut which had served the purpose before him; he built an addition to the hospital, two store houses and a slaughter house, and rebuilt the jail. He also regulated the prices of food, so as to put a stop to the artificial raising of prices whenever ships came in for supplies. Yet when, in obedience to the orders of the crown, in November, 1552, he issued an emancipation proclamation in favor of the Indians, a storm of abuse broke upon him, in Havana as well as elsewhere. Santiago, piqued because he had spent so much time away from that place, took the initiative in demanding a judicial investigation of his conduct, charging him with venality and peculations. But the city council of Havana quickly followed suit, made more than fifty specific charges against him, and provided a ship to fetch a judge from Hispaniola to try him. [Illustration: MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA A grim guardian, seated on the headland at one side of the entrance to Havana's peerless harbor; founded to protect the city from the sixteenth-century corsairs; captured in the seventeenth century by the British and the American Colonists after the most stubborn resistance; and in later years the prison in which many Cuban patriots were immured.] Curiously enough, while Santiago was hostile to him because he would not live there, Havana was hostile because he would live there. It was specifically complained that he persisted in living at Havana against the will of the people of that place. They did not want him there, they said, because they were convinced that he was there for his own profit. So they besought the court to compel him to return to Santiago. Other complaints were that he had imposed various new-fangled devices upon the city, that he was a gambler, that he engaged in trade for his own profit, that he permitted his wife to decide suits at law, and that he had instructed one of his officers to strike with a club anyone who did not rise to his feet when the governor entered the church. Angulo denied all the charges, and declared that they had been trumped up against him because he had obeyed the King in emancipating the Indians. He went to Hispaniola in person to argue his cause before the Supreme Court, the chief counsel against him being Alfonso de Rojas. The court decided in his favor so far as to suspend all action and let him return to Havana, until the King could pass upon the case. No judge would be appointed to investigate him, the court added, unless one were sent from Spain. So the governor returned to Cuba in triumph. Landing at Santiago, he proclaimed the freedom of all Indians there. Thence he proceeded to Baracoa, to Bayamo, to Trinidad, and to Puerto Principe, repeating the emancipation proclamation at each place. At the midsummer of 1553 he reached Havana, to find that the town council had "deposed" him, on the ground that he had been absent from his jurisdiction without leave for more than ninety days; a decree which he ignored. Meanwhile the crown had appointed a judge to investigate him, but the judge did not come and the inquest was not held. Soon after his arrival at Havana, finding that he would not give up the governorship at its word, the town council begged the Hispaniola court to have him investigated, and the court commissioned a judge for that purpose, who declined or at least failed to act. This was in August, 1554. Now trouble was renewed with France, the sixth war between Henry II, who had succeeded Francis, and Charles beginning in 1552 and continuing until 1559, Charles meanwhile abdicating in favor of Philip II in 1556. The French navy was more potent than ever, and French privateers swarmed the Spanish Main. Every Cuban port was warned to be on its guard against attack, Havana most of all, since it was now the richest and was in the most exposed situation. It was not until the fall of 1553 that the official news of the renewal of hostilities reached Cuba, and great was the consternation which it caused. Juan de Lobera was at that time the commander of the fortifications of Havana, to wit, La Fuerza. He appears to have been a man of strangely mingled temperament, at times fearful and timorous, at others resolute and valiant. At the beginning the former characteristics prevailed. He realized, only too truly, that the fortifications and petty garrison would be entirely insufficient for the protection of the place against any considerable force, such as even a single French ship might bring against it, and he fell into something like a panic. Happily, however, he did not desert his post, but made passionate demands upon the governor and the town council for additional guards. Happily, too, in the presence of menace the animosities of faction were stilled, and the council cooperated heartily with the governor whom it had just been trying to depose and whom only a little later it denounced to the court as worthy of investigation and indictment. New guards were supplied. Day and night the beach was patrolled. Watchmen were stationed on the Morro headland to espy approaching vessels and to signal the tidings to the fort and city. At the mouth of the Almendares River, where it was supposed that invaders were likely to land, horsemen were stationed, to hasten back to the city with news of any such landing or of the appearance of a hostile vessel. Twelve men, expert in arms, were held in readiness day and night to man the fort the moment a strange vessel was reported; La Fuerza being otherwise without a garrison--which amply justified the commander's lack of faith in its defensive efficiency. In case of an attack, all able-bodied citizens were to present themselves in a massed levy under command of the governor. Every man was to be armed, at least with a sword, day and night, and none was to absent himself from the city without the permission of the governor. Every vessel of any kind that approached the harbor was signalled to stop outside until it could be visited and its identity be established; though if any refused thus to halt there was no adequate power to compel it to do so. However, refusal to stop would of course be regarded as proof of hostile character. With all these preparations the defensive ability of Havana was pitifully if not ludicrously slight. Three small cannon manned by twelve volunteers constituted the armament of a fort which might be attacked by a ship of twenty guns and two hundred men. The "army" of the place comprised sixteen horsemen and less than seventy footmen, scarcely any two of them armed alike. The chief commander under the governor was Juan de Rojas, who was the governor's bitterest political enemy, though he had once been his close friend and deputy. He was a brother of the former governor, Manuel de Rojas. In these circumstances the commander of the fort awaited with unspeakable trepidation the anticipated approach of the enemy. His fears were presently realized in the coming of perhaps the most formidable of all the Frenchmen then scouring the seas; the famous Jacques Sores. This daring captain was not only a Frenchman and therefore hostile to Spaniards on racial and political grounds, but he was also a Huguenot, like many other French seamen of that day, and therefore hostile to them on religious grounds. He was supposed to be under the patronage of the great Condé, and also at one time to have received material aid from Queen Elizabeth of England. Indeed, he was at this time regarded as the foremost champion of the Protestant cause at sea. Although a privateer, he commanded not a single vessel but a squadron of three, which he handled with the skill of a master mariner. Sores did not, however, deem it needful to bring his whole array against Havana. A single vessel, a brigantine, would be sufficient. So it came to pass that in the early morning of July 10, 1554, a signal came from the watchers on the Morro headland, that a strange sail, probably French, was approaching. A shot was fired from La Fuerza, to summon the men of Havana to arms. Lobera led his garrison of twelve men to their places within the fort. Angulo took command outside. For an hour or two there was uncertainty as to the identity of the vessel, and horsemen were dispatched to the beach to watch its movements. They presently hastened back with the news that the brigantine had cast anchor off what is now San Lazaro and had sent ashore two boatloads of armed men, who were now approaching the city through the jungle. This indicated treachery, for the jungle was impenetrable save by a certain secret path which no strangers could know, and indeed it was presently disclosed that the invaders were guided by two men who had formerly lived in Havana, one of whom had been a harbor pilot. The governor unhesitatingly considered discretion to be the better part of valor, and betook himself to instant flight, conveying his family and such of his property as he could carry to the native village of Guanabacoa, at the other side of the bay, where he was joined during the day by a majority of the residents of Havana. Lobera, on the other hand, now that he was face to face with a great crisis, forgot his fears and acquitted himself as a man of valor. With his little garrison, half of whom were negro slaves, and with a score of refugees, old men, women and children, he shut himself within the fort, with its walls of stone and gates of timber, and prepared to fight to the death. He had found three more cannon and had taken them into the fort, thus totalling six, with a good supply of ammunition and provisions. He dispatched a message to Angulo, reproaching him for his cowardly flight and imploring him to send all able bodied men to the aid of the garrison, for the honor of Spain. This the governor promised to do at or before nightfall; a promise which was not kept. The invaders were commanded by Captain Sores in person. They took possession of the town without resistance, and then summoned the fort to surrender; expecting to find in it much treasure from Spanish vessels which had recently been wrecked on the Florida coast, though in fact no such treasure was there. Lobera unhesitatingly refused to surrender, and the fight began. The first assault upon the fort, from the landward side, was repulsed. Then the brigantine was seen to be approaching at the other side, accompanied by another and larger vessel of Sores's squadron, which had just arrived; wherefore Lobera had to transfer two of his cannon to that side of the fort to prevent a landing of more troops. A second assault was repulsed, during which a Spanish gunner shot down the French flag from the staff on which Sores had raised it at the stone house of Juan de Rojas, which the French had occupied as headquarters. A third assault, near nightfall, was also repulsed, but the two wooden gates of La Fuerza were burned with nearly all the contents of the tower. The little garrison and the refugees spent the night on an open terrace, with only a little powder and shot and not a day's food left. Hoping for help from the governor and citizens, Lobera fired his largest gun at intervals during the night, beat the drums and sounded bugle calls; but all in vain. "The darkness gave no token." The French demanded his surrender, promising good treatment, but threatening a ruthless assault which would mean death if he persisted in trying to hold his indefensible position. Lobera refused, until the break of day. Then he saw that no help was approaching from Angulo, that an overwhelming force of French soldiers surrounded him on all sides, and that successful defence was impossible. His ammunition was all but gone. The cords of the crossbows with which his men were armed were frayed and broken. Some of his men were slain, while some of the survivors, especially one German gunner, mutinously held converse with the enemy. The refugees fell on their knees before him bidding him die fighting if he would, but to let their lives be spared. In this desperate plight Lobera yielded, offering to surrender on honorable terms, if the lives of his men were spared and the women were protected from dishonor. To this Sores gave his word, and the fort capitulated. The flag of France was raised over La Fuerza, and twenty-odd Spanish subjects were prisoners. The women and children were quickly released, but all the men were locked up in the house of Juan de Rojas, which was the strongest stone building in the city. About a score more were added to their number, of Spaniards and Portuguese whom Sores had captured elsewhere. A few hours after the surrender, word was received from Angulo. He had at last organized a force of about fifty men, chiefly Indians, and had started to the relief of the fort when he heard of its capitulation. At this he realized that all was lost, and retired to Guanabacoa, there to seek negotiations with the French for the ransom of Havana. A truce was declared, and the prisoners were released from Rojas's house on parole, pledged not to fight, or to leave town, and to return to their prison at nightfall. Angulo offered a ransom of three thousand ducats, declaring that no more could be raised. The Frenchmen scorned the offer, and demanded thirty thousand pesos--eighty thousand had been collected at Santiago the year before--and a hundred loads of bread. Angulo protested his inability to raise such an amount, but begged for time in which to see what he could do. A week passed, the French occupying Havana at their ease and Angulo scouring the surrounding country, ostensibly for ransom money but in fact for men and arms. By the end of the week he had surreptitiously collected a force of 335 men, of whom about thirty-five were Spaniards and the rest negroes and Indians. They were armed chiefly with clubs and stones. Himself and eight others were mounted on horseback. With this motley force he hoped to surprise the French by night, and to capture Rojas's house, where he would take Sores himself prisoner and release the Spanish captives. The desperate plan would probably have succeeded had not some of the Indians indiscreetly uttered their war cry as they rushed upon the house, arousing the Frenchmen and giving them time to close and bar the massive doors. The few Frenchmen who were sleeping outside of the house were quickly overcome and slain, and Angulo laid siege to the house itself, summoning Sores to surrender. The French commander was furious at what he not unreasonably regarded as a breach of the truce. Moreover, his brother was among those who had been killed outside the house. In a fury he ordered that all the Spanish prisoners in the house be put to death. This was quickly done, with the exception of Lobera, who was confined in an upper room. Sores reserved the killing of him for himself, and entered the room where Lobera was for that purpose. Lobera defended himself, meanwhile protesting that he had had no part in the treachery; and his evidently honest pleas moved a French officer to intervene in his behalf and to disarm Sores. Then, at the direction of Sores, Lobera showed himself at a window and addressed Angulo, reproaching him for the breach of truce, and imploring him to withdraw. Angulo refused, declaring that he had already recaptured the town, and that at daylight he would complete the work by capturing the Rojas house and its inmates. With the coming of daylight, however, the folly of this course became apparent. Angulo had, indeed, a larger force than the Frenchmen still remaining in Havana; though as the latter were far the better armed a conflict between them would probably have been disastrous to the Spaniards. But the two ships in the harbor were now aroused and began firing upon the Spaniards with their artillery, while reenforcements of men for Sores put off for shore in boats. Sores and his companions made a fierce sally from the house. The few Spaniards made a stand, but the negroes and most of the Indians would not oppose clubs and stones to swords and arquebuses. They fled incontinently to the jungle, followed by Angulo himself. His victory thus completed, Sores returned to the house where he had left Lobera locked in a room with the dead and dying. He absolved the commander from all responsibility for Angulo's treacherous conduct, and complimented him upon the valor with which he had defended La Fuerza as well as upon his good faith. He would not, however, release him without a ransom, according to the custom of the times. In default of the ransom, he would take him to France as a prisoner, though treated with all consideration. Lobera was without means, but his friends with whom he was permitted to communicate soon raised the required sum of two thousand two hundred pesos, and he was set at liberty. He thereafter went to Spain, carrying with him the news of what had happened to Havana. The negotiations for the ransom of the town were less successful. Angulo had fled far inland, and could not be reached, and the Spaniards who remained could not offer more than a thousand pesos, a sum which Sores scorned. In default of ransom, therefore, the place was looted and burned. Three buildings alone remained standing: La Fuerza, the church, and the hospital. Indeed, the interior of the church was almost entirely destroyed. Sores and his men were fierce Huguenots, and they tore down the images of saints and took the robes and altar vestments to make cloaks for themselves. All the boats found in the harbor were burned. The neighboring estates for miles around were destroyed, and some of the negroes who offered resistance were hanged. The harbor was carefully surveyed and sounded, to facilitate future entries. Finally, his work being thus thoroughly done, Sores sailed away at midnight of August 5, less than a month after his arrival. At the end of September a little French vessel, containing only a dozen men, entered the harbor, inspected the ruins of the city, and seized a Spanish caravel which lay there, taking it away with them to the harbor of Mariel, where there were several French ships. Ten days later the entire French force entered the harbor of Havana and landed many men. They did not, however, molest the Spanish residents nor destroy the new buildings which they were beginning to erect, but seemed to regard them with good humored tolerance, as too insignificant to merit attention. Indeed, there were only a few dozen of the Spanish, all told, and they were helpless and disheartened. The Frenchmen contented themselves with going to several of the outlying farms and taking all the hides they could find to add to the cargo which they were already carrying. They remained there, on amicable terms with the Spanish, for more than a fortnight, and then sailed away. These things occurred at the time when Philip of Spain was marrying Queen Mary of England and was taking possession of the Netherlands, and when Spain vaunted herself as the foremost military power of the world. It must not be wondered at that the people of Cuba, and particularly of Havana, regarded themselves as grievously neglected by those who should have been their protectors, and bitterly reproached not alone the governor but even the King himself for not having afforded them more ample protection. The explanation was, doubtless, that Spain regarded Mexico, South America, and of course her European possessions, as of far greater importance than the island whose gold mines were about exhausted, which had failed to provide iron for Spanish artillery, and which had served chiefly as a stepping stone to more valuable lands. It was a strange irony of fate that the island which was thus slighted was destined to be the most faithful and the longest held of all the colonial possessions of Spain. CHAPTER XVI The disastrous events which have been related in the preceding chapter suggested to the Spaniards in Cuba and also to the government at Seville the desirability, if not the necessity, of establishing a more militant administration of affairs if the island was not to be the prey of all comers and perhaps ultimately be lost to the Spanish crown. Thitherto, with the exception of Velasquez and the possible exception of De Soto, every governor of the island had been a civilian and a lawyer. It seemed an experiment worth making, then, to appoint a military man to the office, in the hope that he would be better fitted to provide for the protection of the island against the privateers and corsairs who roved the seas in increasing numbers and with increasing boldness. True, immediately after the abdication of Charles I and the accession of Philip II, in 1556, a truce was concluded between France and Spain, which was to last five years. But few expected that it would last so long, as indeed it did not, being broken in two years; and even while it did last privateering was by no means abolished. In any case, be it peace or be it war, Spain had tried to hold her western empire by virtue of Divine Right and ecclesiastical decrees, and had failed. Now she would try holding what was left of it with military and naval force; and to that end would have a soldier for governor of Cuba. The man chosen was indeed an expert and competent soldier, by no means devoid of statesmanship. Diego de Mazariegos had been one of the most efficient lieutenants of Cortez in Mexico, and distinguished himself as a brave and skilful fighter against the Indians. He had also given much attention to international relations, and to the privateering which had become such a scourge of the seas. Indeed, it was through some of his writings on this latter subject that the court of Seville was led to consider him as a candidate for the Cuban governorship. Dr. Angulo had been appointed in 1550, and five years was long enough, it was thought, for a man to serve, unless he served better than Angulo had done in the latter part of his term. So Mazariegos was selected to succeed him, in March, 1555. Juan Martinez, a lawyer, was selected to go with him as lieutenant governor. These were the last appointments made in Cuba by King Charles before his retirement from the throne. Some time was required for preparations for the voyage and for residence in a new land, so that Mazariegos and Martinez did not sail from Spain until late in the summer. On the way they suffered shipwreck and Martinez and all his family were drowned. Mazariegos escaped, but lost everything he had with him save the clothes which he was wearing. This disaster made it necessary still further to postpone his assumption of the governorship, so that he did not reach Cuba until March 7, 1556. It is noteworthy that instead of landing at Santiago, as every other governor had done, he went straight to Havana, where Angulo awaited him, and the very next day, March 8, he was installed as governor. In accordance with custom he conducted an investigation of Angulo's accounts and general administration, which was permitted to pass as a merely formal and perfunctory performance. The passionate demands for Angulo's indictment and punishment were by this time forgotten. Havana had been partially rebuilt since the raid of Captain Sores, and had been completely transformed in character. It had a very much larger population than before, and that population was restless and turbulent to a degree. It contained adventurers from every country and of every type; fortune hunters, fugitive criminals, gamblers, bankrupts, the shady output of Mexico, Darien and Peru, who sought in Cuba a No Man's Land in which they would not be troubled with law and order. In this expectation they reckoned without their host. Or perhaps they counted upon the rough and ready soldier as likely to countenance a large degree of laxity. If so, they were mistaken. Mazariegos had indeed the personal morals of a soldier of fortune. Soon after the death of Angulo he took the latter's widow for his mistress and lived with her openly, to the great scandal of the church, until after the death of the lady's mother, when he married her, as he said he had all along intended to do; the delay being due to his unwillingness to have a mother-in-law. But this was regarded by the governor as a trifling peccadillo. Upon graver offenses, murder, robbery, brawling and what not, he frowned with the wrath of a Precisian. Nor was he any respecter of persons. When Francisco de Angulo, the son of the lady whom he had taken as his mistress and was soon to make his wife, scandalized law and order with his drunkenness and brawling, he exiled him to Mexico. For like offenses he also banished Gomez de Rojas, the youngest brother of Juan de Rojas, one of the foremost citizens of Havana; expressing as he did so a fervent wish that the young man might quickly meet with an evil death. As for his own nephew, Francisco de Mazariegos, when he became notorious for gambling, lechery and fighting, he inflicted upon him with his own hands a physical chastisement which was a more than nine days' example to all the other youth of the town. Santiago still being the nominal capital of the island, the new governor thought it incumbent upon him at least to visit it. In fact, he spent nearly the whole year 1557 there, endeavoring to provide it with means of defence against French privateers. He stationed a captain of the army there, with four small cannon, some muskets and pikes, and a supply of gunpowder, urging the citizens to learn to fight so as to defend themselves. Then, in January, 1558, he hastened back to Havana to defend it against raiders who were said to be on their way thither. Five months later a French privateer visited Santiago, took the place without so much as a blow from the captain, considered it too small and poor to be worth looting or burning, and sailed away again after collecting only 400 pesos ransom; probably the smallest ransom on record for a capital city! On his return to Havana, Mazariegos showed the value of a military governor for the protection of a city. For six weeks that summer a French squadron of four vessels lay off Havana, without venturing to attack the place, knowing that Mazariegos had mobilized and trained for fighting every able-bodied man in the place, and even some robust and athletic negro women. But the governor was not satisfied with defence alone. He contrived to get word to some Spanish captains at Nombre de Dios, who were going to convoy treasure ships to Spain, with the result that they presently came up unannounced and captured the whole French squadron. Again and again thereafter Havana was menaced, even attacked, but invariably Mazariegos repulsed the enemy, generally with heavy loss to the latter. He felt, however, the need of better equipment, particularly of more cannon, and asked the crown to provide it. The crown declined or at any rate failed to do so, whereupon he set about doing it himself, and succeeded in getting, sometimes by rather strenuous means, a number of cannon and a good supply of powder. But a better fort than the ruins of La Fuerza was also needed, and to that enterprise he turned his attention with zeal. At the beginning of his administration Geronimo Bustamente de Herrera was commissioned by the crown to build a new fort, but after making plans and engaging workmen he fell ill and had to abandon the job. At the beginning of 1558, just as Mazariegos returned thither from Santiago, Herrera was replaced by Bartolome Sanchez, a competent engineer; who prepared new plans for the rebuilding of La Fuerza as it stands to this day. The Viceroy of Mexico, who was much interested in the safety of Mexican treasure ships which might put in at Havana, contributed 12,000 pesos in gold for the beginning of the work. There was much trouble in getting laborers for the work, in Spain. Sanchez wanted at least a hundred negro slaves. The government thought the number excessive, and gave him authorization for only thirty; whereupon he declared that the enterprise might as well be given up. In fact he secured in Spain only fifteen workmen, and with them he sailed for Cuba, hoping to secure the rest there, or elsewhere in the West Indies. The work began early in December, 1558. A stone quarry was opened near Guanabacoa, and a kiln for making lime was built. But labor was still lacking. Sanchez wanted two hundred, negro slaves or others, and appealed to the people of the town to help him get them. In response they procured for him thirty slaves--their own, whom they were willing to turn over to him "for a consideration." Then the governor took a hand in the game. There were forty slaves at Santiago, who had been brought thither without the proper shipping papers, and were being held for that reason. Mazariegos sent to Santiago, confiscated them all, and brought them up to Havana, to work on the new fort. Some French prisoners who had been taken in a fight off Matanzas were also set at work on it. All tramps and vagabonds who were arrested were sent to La Fuerza or to the quarry, and for a time, until the crown stopped it, one third of the Indian village of Guanabacoa were kept at work on the fort. Although Sanchez was in charge of the work and was responsible for it, Mazariegos spent much of his time there, watching it, directing it, and chastising with tongue and sometimes even with rod all who seemed laggards at the job. In time he succeeded Sanchez in authority. For Sanchez incurred much enmity on the part of some influential citizens, whose houses he took in order to make an open place about the fort. They accused him of corruption, of making gross errors in the plans for the fort, of fomenting discord, and of wasting money. He was too busy with building the fort to pay much attention to these things, even when they took the form of letters to the King. The outcome of it was that in the summer of 1560 Sanchez was removed from his place, and Mazariegos was put in charge of the completion of La Fuerza. A few months later Sanchez reached Seville, and pleaded his case to so good effect that the crown was convinced that injustice had been done him, and that he should not have been discharged. However, it was not practicable to reinstate him, though he was sent back a few years later to make an official inspection of the completed fort. In addition to La Fuerza, Mazariegos built the first forerunner of the Morro Castle. In 1563 he built on the Morro headland a tower of masonry more than thirty feet high. It was intended primarily as a landmark, and was therefore painted white in order to make it visible at the greatest possible distance. But a watchman was generally kept in it, to espy approaching vessels and to signal to the city news of their approach. The tower is said to have cost only 200 pesos, and was paid for by the city of Havana. Mazariegos presently became involved in affairs outside of Cuba. Many men deserted at Havana from the vessels of Angelo de Villafane, governor of Florida. Villafane complained and wanted Mazariegos to capture and return them. Mazariegos replied that he could not do it; to which we may doubtless add that he would not have done so if he could. He was desirous of increasing the population of Cuba, even in that way. When Villafane attempted to plant a Spanish colony at what is now Port Royal, South Carolina, and failed, Mazariegos had some correspondence with the King, and probably acquiesced in the royal opinion, that it would be impracticable to establish a colony at that point. In 1563, however, the King learned that the French had been quite successful in planting a colony on that very spot where the Spaniards under Villafane had failed, and he informed Mazariegos of the fact. The governor, acting upon his own initiative, but shrewdly guessing what would be acceptable to the King, sent Hernando de Rojas thither with a frigate and twenty-five soldiers, to see how much of a settlement the French had made, and to destroy it if he was able to do so with that force. In the summer of 1564 Rojas returned, reporting that the settlement had been abandoned by the French. He brought back with him one young Frenchman as a prisoner, and also a memorial stone which the French had set up to commemorate the founding of the place, bearing the date, 1561. Mazariegos commended Rojas for his work, sent the memorial stone to Seville, and then began planning to go in person or to send an expedition to search the Carolina and other coasts in quest of new French colonies. His theory was that the more French settlements there were, the more French vessels there would be, and therefore the more subject Cuba would be to alien annoyance. This, however, was not to be. The end of Mazariegos's administration was already drawing near. He fell into some violent disputes with the citizens of Havana, over the appointment of alcaldes, a duty which they charged him with neglecting. He was also charged with packing the town council with his own creatures, with tampering with the mails so as to prevent people from writing to Spain any complaints of his maladministration, and of other misdemeanors. Bartolome Sanchez, who had returned from Spain and who had a bitter personal grudge against the governor for supplanting him as builder of the fort, petitioned the King to have a judge sent from Hispaniola to investigate him, but the King refused. Mazariegos, learning this, and feeling unwarrantably secure in royal favor, adopted a more arrogant attitude toward his opponents and critics, which did him no good. In the spring of 1565, Garcia Osorio de Sandoval was appointed to succeed him as governor. Mazariegos thereupon wrote to the King, asking that there be no unnecessary law suits brought against him, as he was old, and ill, and poor. (He was not yet fifty years of age!) The King granted his request, and in consequence instructed Osorio to make his investigation as little annoying as possible. Osorio obeyed, and although the report of the inquest filled three big volumes, Mazariegos was not brought to trial on any charges and had no fines assessed against him. He remained living at Havana for some time, and then completed his career in the King's service as governor of Caracas, Venezuela. His administration had been a stormy one, but on the whole advantageous to Cuba, and had confirmed the Seville government in its policy of appointing others than mere lawyers to the insular governorship. Garcia Osorio de Sandoval became governor of Cuba on September 12, 1565. As he was not a lawyer, the precedent which had been set in Mazariegos's case was followed in his, of appointing a lieutenant governor who was a lawyer to serve with him. His lieutenant was Luis Cabrera, who did not reach Cuba until later in the year, having suffered shipwreck and been obliged to put back to Spain and await the sailing of another vessel. Osorio appears to have been a soldier, though probably retired from active service at the time of his appointment to the governorship. At any rate he made it his first care to improve the defences of the island. It is related that he bore with him from Spain to Havana a cargo of arms and munitions, including four brass cannon. These he placed upon the fortification, thus making a battery of eight pieces, and built a substantial platform of timber for them to stand upon. La Fuerza was not yet completed, but he took measures to expedite the work and hoped to have it finished in a year. In order to protect the place from possible raids by land, he closed and blocked all roads and trails leading into it from the west excepting the one along the beach. He organized a force of seventy men armed with arquebuses, to be quickly summoned in an emergency, and required them and all citizens to assemble for service whenever a strange sail was sighted. In addition, as a permanent contribution to defence, a spacious arsenal was built near the water front, to contain the stores of ammunition and to shelter the guards and citizens. There was thus much promise that Osorio would prove to be an energetic and useful governor. Unfortunately, at the very beginning of his administration he came into conflict with another and much stronger functionary of the Spanish crown; indeed, one of the most formidable figures of the time. This was none other than Pedro Menendez de Aviles, whose record fills so large a place in the early annals of Florida and the West Indies. He took to the sea in boyhood, and became one of the most expert navigators of Spain. At the age of thirty he was captain of his own ship, and it was one of the most active and efficient vessels among all that guarded and convoyed the treasure ships and fleets of the Spanish Main. At that time he warned the government of Hispaniola and also that of Mexico of the grave danger of letting the French get any foothold upon those shores, or even of navigating those waters. The Bahama Channel, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea should all, he insisted, be declared and kept closed seas, into which no vessels but those of Spain should enter save by special license. [Illustration: PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES.] Menendez was, moreover, an ardent and indeed fanatical Catholic, who deemed it a duty to extirpate "Lutheran dogs," as he termed the French Huguenots and other Protestants; and as most of the French seamen and foreign adventurers at that time were of the Huguenot faith, he cherished a special animosity against them. Now, his recommendations to the governments of Hispaniola and Mexico were transmitted to Seville and were laid before the King. Charles was at that time weary of royal cares and was about to resign them, and he paid little or no attention to the letters of the young captain. But when Philip II came to the throne, attention was given to them. That painstaking monarch read them and was much struck by them, both in their warning of military danger from the French and in their zealous animosity against heretics. Their writer was evidently, he thought, a man after his own heart. So he sent for Menendez, talked with him, and commissioned him to be the guardian of the highway to the Indies, with the title of captain-general. It was his function to guard Spanish treasure ships all the way across the Atlantic, from Mexico to Spain, as he had formerly guarded them in the narrow seas about the Indies. It was thus that he was serving during a part of Mazariegos's administration in Cuba, and in that capacity he spent much time at Havana. On one or two occasions he took charge of the few little vessels which formed Mazariegos's navy, and did good service with them. At this time, also, he wrote to the King about the increasing ravages and peril of French privateers in those waters, very much as he had written to the local governments years before. The result was that the King in March, 1565, appointed him to be Adelantado of Florida, and captain-general of the Spanish fleet in that part of the world specially commissioned to guard the coasts and ports of the Indies. That was six months before Osorio became governor of Cuba. The commission of Menendez bade him to "guard the coasts and ports of the Indies." Very well. Cuba was certainly one of the Indies. Therefore he was commissioned to guard the ports and coasts of Cuba. Being familiar with Cuba, and recognizing its very great importance, he naturally deemed the guarding of that island as one of the very first of his duties. Mazariegos did not demur, since he was himself soon to retire from the governorship. But when Osorio came to Havana six months later, and found Menendez in command of all that pertained to harbor and coast defence, there was trouble. Osorio asserted his rights and authority as governor of Cuba. Menendez replied with an assertion of his as captain-general "to guard the coasts and ports." The first clash came because Menendez interpreted his jurisdiction as extending to fortifications on land as well as to shipping; which we must regard as extreme if not overstrained. He assumed direction of the garrison of Havana, and had two hundred men sent thither from a large detachment which was sent to Florida. As La Fuerza was not yet finished sufficiently to accommodate them, houses were hired to receive them. Osorio was not notified in advance that they were coming, or that they had arrived; and after they were there they refused to regard his authority but took orders solely from Baltazar Barreda, a captain whom Menendez had assigned to their command. Presently Barreda took charge of La Fuerza and began moving thither the artillery, including the four pieces which Osorio had brought with him from Spain. Osorio remonstrated, saying that the fort was not yet sufficiently completed for use. Barreda defied his authority, and was sustained by Menendez, who happened to be in Havana at the time. The governor yielded, for the time. But as soon as Menendez was out of the city he clapped Barreda into jail, after a violent physical struggle, and appointed Pedro de Redroban to the command of the fort in his stead. News of this reached Menendez and he hastened back and released Barreda. As for Redroban, he and half a dozen of his men fled to the woods, in well-founded fear of Menendez. Now, Redroban was one of Menendez's soldiers, just as much as Barreda, and was probably as loyal to him as Barreda. But he had deemed it incumbent upon himself to obey the commands of the governor of the island. Nevertheless, Menendez charged Osorio with having incited mutiny in the garrison, and he denounced Redroban as a deserter and traitor, who should be captured and put to death, and his head exhibited in the market-place with an inscription proclaiming him a traitor to the King and disobedient to his commander. Redroban and some of his comrades were captured, tried, and condemned to death; but on appeal to the crown their sentences were commuted. Menendez then ordered Barreda to set the garrison at work digging a moat about the fort, and demanded picks and shovels from the governor for the purpose. These Osorio refused to supply, and Barreda thereupon secured them from the people of the town. Still another cause of friction was found in the coming to Cuba of many men, both civilians and runaway soldiers, from Florida. These Osorio received and sent to the interior of Cuba to engage in agriculture. Menendez complained that Osorio was inciting and assisting desertions from Florida; and Osorio bitterly replied that affairs were so bad in Florida under Menendez's rule that people had to flee from the place to save their lives from starvation and pestilence. Whatever were the general merits of the controversy between the two men, it was certain from the beginning that Menendez would win. He had the higher official rank, and he enjoyed the special favor of the King. More and more he made Havana his headquarters, preferring it to any port on the Florida coast; to which it was, of course, naturally much superior. More and more, too, he assumed authority in Havana, not alone in military but even in civil affairs. More and more Osorio was ignored. And as Menendez had the stronger force of men, and was backed by the approval and favor of the King, it was in vain that Osorio resented the slights which were heaped upon him. Matters reached their climax in the matter of further fortifications. Osorio wanted to build a sea wall in front of the city, such as the engineer Sanchez had planned years before, at the beginning of Mazariegos's administration. Menendez curtly dismissed that scheme, and commissioned his son-in-law, Pedro de Valdes, with some other officers from Florida, to survey the waterfront of the city and recommend additional fortifications. They reported that it would be folly to build a sea wall, and that all that was needed was a round tower, about thirty-seven feet high, on the headland opposite the Morro, on which latter an observation tower had already been erected. Valdes suggested that the tower might be built by the garrison of La Fuerza, at no cost, if the governor would provide the materials. This Osorio refused to do. He had no money for such a purpose, and no authority to spend any for it. Moreover, he condemned the plan of thus dividing the garrison, holding that it would be far better to finish La Fuerza and concentrate all the forces there. The outcome of it was, therefore, that the proposed Punta Castle had to be for the time abandoned; Menendez perforce contenting himself with some earth-works on Punta, in which he placed a couple of cannons. At the same time other friction arose at Santiago, a place which could not yet be altogether neglected. Menendez's attention was called to that place by having one of his own ships chased into Santiago harbor by a French privateer. The captain of that ship reported to him that Santiago had a fine harbor but practically no defences. A fort had indeed been begun on the headland at one side of the harbor entrance, but had not been finished, and the sea wall for which the people had petitioned had not been started. Menendez thereupon sent thither a company of fifty men with four cannon, under command of Captain Godoy; without, of course, consulting Osorio as governor of the island. This force remained there about three months, in the summer of 1567. It saw nothing of French privateers, or of any menace of an attack upon the town. But it did see a good deal of merchant ships of various nations, French, Scottish and Portuguese, which came thither with slaves and merchandise, but which seldom ventured in for fear of Godoy and his men. For such trade with foreigners, and particularly with those who were or were suspected to be heretics was strictly forbidden. Godoy and his men were therefore most unwelcome visitors, to the merchants and people of Santiago, and to the lieutenant of the governor, Martin de Mendoza. It was suspected, not without reason, that Osorio had sent word to Mendoza to antagonize Godoy as much as possible. At any rate, one day a particularly big French merchant vessel came into the harbor; Godoy rallied his men to the battery near the wharf, to prevent it from landing its cargo; and Mendoza arrested Godoy and sent him to jail, where he kept him until the cargo had been discharged and another taken on in its place, amid the jubilations of the people. Then Godoy was released, with profound apologies for the error which had been committed in arresting him! Godoy remained for some time thereafter at Santiago, though much against his will. His superior officer commanded him to remain. But he sent an appeal for relief to the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, with the result that Mendoza was removed from office, in the winter of 1557-58. This was a relief to both Mendoza and Godoy, though it did not make their feelings less bitter. On Palm Sunday the two met at church, Mendoza accompanied by his wife and Godoy by a friend named Cordoba. The latter two grossly insulted both Mendoza and his wife, then ran into the church for security from chastisement, forcibly resisted arrest, and committed acts of sacrilege. They were finally overpowered, and on being brought to trial before the local court were condemned, Godoy to be hanged and his body quartered, and Cordoba to be flogged and sent to the galleys. The sentence was executed, Godoy being hanged on a gallows at the door of the church the sanctity of which he had violated. When Menendez heard of this he was furious. He instituted proceedings against Mendoza and the local alcaldes at Santiago, charging them with conspiracy to destroy Godoy so that their illegal traffic with Frenchmen and other foreigners would not be molested. Mendoza thought it prudent to remove to Carthagena, in New Granada, for fear of personal violence; whence he proceeded to Spain, where he was acquitted of all the charges which Menendez had made against him. Meantime, the governorship of Osorio had ended. Early in 1567, at the time when the controversy arose over the sea wall and the Punta fortifications, he had realized that his usefulness as governor was ended, and had asked the King to accept his resignation; declaring that his presence there was no longer of value to his majesty. In August, 1567, the King appointed Diego de Santillan to be governor in his stead, and commissioned him to investigate Osorio's stewardship, and particularly to bring him to trial on certain charges of false arrest and cruelty to a prisoner. But just as Santillan was about to embark for Cuba, in October, 1567, his commission was revoked and Menendez was appointed governor of Cuba in his stead. It has been said that this appointment was made by the fanatical King to show his approval and appreciation of Menendez's act on September 20, 1565, when he massacred the French garrison of Fort Caroline, Florida, "not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans." Menendez was not able, however, as Adelantado of Florida, to reside permanently in Cuba, or indeed to spend much time there; wherefore it was arranged that a lieutenant governor should be the actual administrator in his stead. The man chosen was Francisco Zayas, a lawyer, who had been selected by the King to be lieutenant governor with Santillan. He reached Havana in July, 1568, and at once assumed the office which Osorio was glad to relinquish. It cannot be said that he was greatly welcomed by the people of Havana or of any part of Cuba, since it was assumed that he would be a mere puppet acting for Menendez, and it was feared that Menendez would use Cuba as a mere stepping stone or adjunct to Florida, draining it of men and resources for the benefit of the larger province on the continent. This apprehension, happily, was not realized. Osorio personally had cause for fear. Zayas was commissioned to conduct the investigation into his affairs, and there was every reason to suppose that Menendez would compel him to make the inquest as drastic as possible and to impose the heaviest possible penalties for any misdemeanors which might be proved against him. But Zayas was after all a just and reasonable man, who was not afraid to assert his independence of Menendez, particularly since, as he pointed out, his commission as lieutenant governor antedated that of Menendez as governor by two months. Moreover the people of Havana, through dislike of Menendez and fear of his policy, gave their strongest support to Osorio, testifying in his behalf, and at the end sending a great memorial to the King, signed by almost every man of consequence in Havana, petitioning for the utmost possible favor for the governor. The result was that the lightest of sentences was passed upon Osorio, two years after his actual retirement from office. In dealing thus with Osorio, however, Zayas sealed his own fate. Nothing that he could do thereafter pleased Menendez, while he was called upon by the latter to do or to sanction things which offended his sense of right. By the beginning of May, 1569, relations between them reached the breaking point. Menendez caused the city council to protest that Zayas had never filed the bond which was required of a lieutenant governor, and to characterize this as a grave offence, indicating criminal intent. Zayas thereupon resigned his office. Suits were instituted against him and his wife in Spain, by Menendez, and he returned to the country to meet them. He appears to have been successful in his defence, since the King subsequently appointed him to be a judge in the Canary Islands. Menendez appointed in place of Zayas as lieutenant governor Diego de Cabrera, who had filled that place under Osorio. His term of service was short, however, and no fewer than five others succeeded him, one after another, during the administration of Menendez. They were Diego de Ribera; Pedro Menendez Marquez, a nephew of Menendez; Juan de Ynestrosa; Juan Alfonso de Nabia; and Sancho Pardo Osorio. Diego de Ribera, who served for a brief space under Menendez as lieutenant-governor, was captain of the galleons, and was presently commissioned for an expedition to Florida. He was succeeded by Pedro Menendez Marquez, a nephew of Menendez. He was an accomplished navigator and on that account was directed by his uncle to sound and chart the Old Bahama Channel, a much-frequented route of commerce and approach to Cuba from the north and east. To this undertaking he devoted only a few weeks, but his observations were so exact, thorough and comprehensive that the Council for the Indies, on receiving his charts, immediately approved them and ordered them to be regarded as the authority for navigation of those waters. The administration of Sancho Pardo Osorio was marked with much energy in advancing the defences of Havana and in caring for the commerce which frequented or touched at Cuban ports. The former work proceeded slowly, because of the necessity of depending almost exclusively upon the local community for aid. At this time also was effected the immensely important reform of codifying the municipal ordinances. This work was done under a commission of the Supreme Court by Dr. Alfonso Casares, of Havana, who on January 14, 1577, presented the results of his labors to a council consisting of Sancho Pardo, the Alcaldes Geronimo de Rojas Avellaneda, and Alfonso Velasquez de Cuellar, and the Regidores Diego Lopez Duran, Juan Bautista de Rojas, Baltasar de Barreda, Antonio Recio, and Rodrigo Carreño. The code was unanimously approved by them, and it remained in force and active practice until the War of Independence in 1898. CHAPTER XVII Menendez was governor of Cuba for a little more than six years, from October 24, 1567, to December 13, 1573. Those were important years for the world at large. They saw the Duke of Alva, as governor of the Netherlands, establish there the Bloody Tribunal, and in return the "Beggars of the Sea" engage in their indomitable campaigns against the oppressor, extending even to the coasts of Cuba. Spain engaged in a great war with the Ottoman Turks. France had the second and third civil wars, culminating in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. Elizabeth of England fully committed herself to the Protestant cause and was excommunicated by the Pope. Mary of Scotland fled from her throne and was succeeded by young James VI. Menendez, more a statesman of world-wide vision than any of his predecessors, was not unmindful of these transactions, or of the far greater events which they portended, and he strove after his fashion to prepare Cuba for her part in great affairs. He realized that in the wars of the European powers their American possessions were increasingly likely to become implicated. Despite his utmost efforts, various other nations sent vessels to West Indian waters, to harry the fleets of Spain. The numbers of such intruders were increasing. His utmost efforts had not been sufficient to drive the French away and to keep them away. Now others than the French began to appear. The "Sea Beggars" of the Netherlands were daring navigators and formidable fighters, and they began to prowl around the coasts of Cuba. English captains had found their way to the Spanish Main, and Hawkins made his way to Vera Cruz, and Drake plundered Nombre de Dios. Finding himself unable to protect the Spanish treasure ships and to keep all enemies away from West Indian waters, Menendez sought at least to make Cuba secure against invasion, or its capital--for such Havana was about to become in name as well as in fact--secure against capture and looting by buccaneers. To this work he gave his chief attention, and, above all else, to the completion of La Fuerza. The rebuilding of that fortification dragged scandalously. Sometimes it was for lack of money, sometimes for lack of workmen. Menendez told the Council for the Indies that in its unfinished state it was an actual menace to the town, because a hostile force could easily land and capture it, and having done this, they could quickly complete it and make it almost impregnable against any attempt to drive them out. He did not explain why he could not complete it as quickly as an invading force could, but he asked for a force of three hundred negro slaves to work on it. With them, he said, it would be possible to finish the fort in two years. The Council was not favorably impressed. It could not understand how a few score buccaneers, landing and seizing the fort, could finish it in a few days, while it would take Menendez with three hundred slaves two years to do the work. Diego de Ribera, as Acting Governor, also took up the matter. The fort was already sufficiently advanced to permit him to mount eight pieces of artillery, but he wanted twenty more. Also, he wanted a large permanent garrison of professional soldiers. It was unsatisfactory to have to depend upon a rallying of the citizens, because it interfered with the occupations of the citizens, because they were not expert in arms, and because when they were summoned not more than half their number responded, so that the commander never knew how many he could depend upon. There should, he urged, be a permanent garrison of two hundred men, under the command of the governor. Of course such a garrison could not be furnished by the town itself, because there were not in all Havana more than two hundred fighting men, all told. This gives, by the way, a hint concerning the rapid growth of the place at the time of Mazariegos. A town containing two hundred men capable of bearing arms must have had a total population approximating two thousand. Ribera's arguments and appeals appear to have been more effective than those of Menendez. The Council for the Indies, and the King, too, ordered practical steps to be taken for finishing and equipping the building which had so long been neglected. As Cuba, or perhaps especially the port of Havana, was of no great importance to the Spanish colonies on the mainland, for the safeguarding of their shipping, and also as Cuba had been so drained of men and supplies in former years for the exploitation of colonies on the main land, it was but justice as it was a matter of practical convenience and expediency for the government to call upon Mexico and Castilla del Oro to contribute largely to the payment of the cost of fortifying Havana. That place was a little later called, by royal decree, "Llave del Nuevo Mundo y Antemural de las Indias Occidentales," or Key of the New World and Bulwark of the West Indies. Certainly it was fitting that the New World should pay for its key and that the Indies should pay for their bulwark. So Mexico was required to contribute four thousand ducats, and Florida to provide fifty good men to form the garrison of La Fuerza. The cost of maintaining the garrison was charged against Venezuela and Darien. The providing of labor was a more difficult matter. It seemed to be settled that negro slave labor must be employed. In order to secure it at little cost it was proposed to give slave-traders the privilege of taking as many slaves as they pleased to Cuba, provided that they would lend them to the government to work on La Fuerza until its completion; after which they might be sold or otherwise disposed of at the traders' will. The objection to this from the traders' point of view was the length of time that it was expected to take to finish the fort. The government estimated it at three years. Now the traders would have been willing thus to lend their slaves for a shorter time, for six months, or for a year. But they considered three years entirely too long. After working for so long a time, under a rigorous taskmaster, the average slave would be so nearly worn out that his value would be much impaired. So that scheme failed. The next plan for getting labor for the fort was disastrous. A contract was made with a trader to provide three hundred negro slaves, by the end of 1572. He did deliver 191 of them in the summer of that year, and later sent the rest but they never got further than Hispaniola. The 191 whom he did deliver were, however, infected with small pox. A number of them died of that plague after their arrival at Havana, and the contagion got abroad in the city with the result that many other slaves and a number of the Spaniards also perished from it. Still, enough of the slaves in that plague-stricken cargo survived to cause the authorities of Havana much embarrassment in feeding and clothing them. Agriculture was not yet receiving the attention which it deserved, and even a hundred or a hundred and fifty more mouths to feed overtaxed the local resources. Requisition was therefore made upon the government of Yucatan to send a sufficient supply of corn and meat to feed the slaves, while the king himself undertook to clothe them. He was led to do this in a way which strikingly indicates the limitations of Philip's mind. To all appeals for clothing for their comfort or for decent appearance's sake, he was deaf. But when it represented to him that they must have clothes in order to be able to attend mass, he at once ordered them to be clad from his royal bounty! More money was needed, and was raised in various ways. An examiner went about the island, looking into the accounts of public officials. Generally he found that there was something due to the state from them. Of the money thus collected, nearly all, to the amount of nearly four thousand pesos, was devoted to the costs of the fort. Other funds were taken for the purpose, and when there was still a deficit it was actually proposed to sell some of the slaves to pay for the maintenance of the rest. This counsel of despair was not, however, acted upon. Instead, Sancho Pardo Osorio when acting governor, near the end of Menendez's administration, advanced much money from his own purse, trusting to the government to reimburse him. Another draft of four thousand ducats was finally obtained from Mexico, and smaller sums came from Venezuela and Darien. Thus the enterprise dragged on, until the summer of 1573 found the fort still far from finished, the builders of it heavily in debt for labor, materials and maintenance, and the garrison, workmen, and citizens of Havana all profoundly dissatisfied. Naturally, and inevitably, this state of affairs reflected upon Menendez, and compassed his downfall. He was not merely governor of Cuba. He was Adelantado of Florida, and he gave to Florida his first thought and chief attention. He spent most of his time there, leaving Cuban affairs to be administered by acting governors of his own selection. This was altogether unsatisfactory to the people of Cuba, and especially of Havana. They wanted their governor to live among them, where he would be accessible, and pay much more attention to them and their interests. So they began agitating against him, and demanded a governor who should not be Adelantado of Florida, nor subject to that functionary. They did more than complain. They refused supplies. They would not send to Florida the supplies which Menendez urgently needed for his enterprises there. When the King reprimanded them and bade them do their duty, they replied with surprising defiance that they wanted payment, first, for supplies long ago furnished to the Havana garrison. They also wanted to be relieved of the burden of being compelled to guard or to watch the coast themselves, at their own cost for arms and ammunition. They wanted these things done for them before they would trouble themselves for the furtherance of the Adelantado's enterprises in Florida. Meantime, the Council for the Indies, at Seville, was also unfriendly to Menendez. Tired of the delay in building La Fuerza, it recommended to the king his removal in favor of someone who would more vigorously expedite that essential work. It was the bitter irony of fate that he should thus be condemned for failing to do the very thing upon which he had most set his heart to do. The Council also condemned him for faults of administration which were due, it held, to his personal neglect through absence from the island, and it therefore urged that a governor be appointed in his place who would spend his time chiefly in Cuba and would give to that island and its interests his first and best thoughts. These representations were made to the King as early as the spring of 1571, and they had much weight with him. The sequel was that in 1572 Menendez was recalled to Spain, and was commissioned for a work similar to that in which he had first won distinction, to wit, the protection of Spanish commerce against hostile privateers; only it was not now the commerce between Spain and Mexico which he was to safeguard in the West Indian seas, but that between Spain and the Netherlands, along the coast of France and in the British Channel. In that capacity he was commander of a considerable fleet, and the work was doubtless in itself congenial to him, and one which he was well fitted to perform with success. But his heart was set on Florida, with which he aspired to be identified as Cortez had been with Mexico and Pizarro with Peru; and he bitterly lamented his being so far separated from that country. So far as his governorship of Cuba was concerned, which is all in which we need here be interested, he had at this time reached the beginning of the end. The king decided to remove him from that office, though probably not so much to get rid of him there as to be able to keep his valuable talents continually employed nearer home. He had decided that Menendez was of more value to him as a captain of his fleet than as a civil administrator. Accordingly at the beginning of 1573 Alfonso de Caceres Ovando, a temporarily retired judge of the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, was commissioned to make the customary investigation of Menendez's administration. He was not, however, appointed to succeed Menendez as governor, but the latter was left for the time in office. This was a mark of the high favor in which Menendez was held by the king; and another token to the same effect was the provision that Menendez need not personally appear to answer any charges which might be made against him, but might, if he preferred, send an attorney in his stead. A third and perhaps still more notable indication of royal favor was in the fact that when Menendez elected not to appear in person, and not to send an attorney, but to ignore the whole investigation, he was not called to task, but was permitted to go without so much as a reprimand. The investigation did not take place until November, 1573. Though brief it was thorough and searching. But it disclosed little that was to the discredit of Menendez, and nothing that was really serious. He seems to have been a somewhat gloomy and cruel fanatic, but a man of integrity and singular loyalty to his sovereign and his faith. He was zealous and energetic, but better fitted to command a ship or a fleet, or indeed an army, than to govern a state. Yet in both respects he failed. His chief concern in Cuba, as we have seen, was to promote her military defences; but he left La Fuerza incomplete, while the inestimable economic potentialities of the island were altogether neglected. So in Florida, he aimed at conquest with the sword and little else; and while he succeeded in holding the land against French assaults and intrigues, he did not develop there a colony comparable with those which were being developed elsewhere in the New World; and he had the mortification of seeing, in the closing years of his life, French, Dutch and British privateers swarming in defiance of him the seas which Spain claimed for her exclusive own. It was just a month after the beginning of the investigation into his affairs that Menendez was superseded in office by the appointment as governor of Cuba of Don Gabriel Montalvo. This gentleman was a nobleman of great distinction in Spain. He was a Knight of the Order of Saint James, and he was also high sheriff of the Court of the Holy Inquisition in the city of Granada. The latter office indicates him to have been a man after the King's own heart. It remains to be added that Menendez returned to Spain after being superseded, and died there a few months later, at Santander; men said, of a broken heart at the enforced abandonment of his ambitions in Florida. Little either attractive or grateful is to be found in the record of the condition of Cuba during the administration of Menendez, or as he left it to his successor. Rich as the island was in agricultural possibilities--it might well have been said of Cuba as Douglas Jerrold said of Australia, "Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest"--and few as were its inhabitants, it yet produced not enough to feed those few. It produced nothing with which to clothe them. After the decline of gold mining, the raising of cattle became the chief industry; chiefly for their hides, which were an important article of export. Bayamo was the centre of this industry, and was also the centre of a thriving but illegitimate commerce. In fact the whole southeastern part of the Cuban coast was the resort of contraband traders, who brought thither silks and linens, wines, and sometimes cargoes of slaves, to exchange without paying tariff duties for hides and the valuable woods with which Cuba abounded. No attempt was made, at least with any efficiency, by the governor or the royal officials at Havana to stop this lawless trade. Now and then, however, the Supreme Court at Hispaniola interfered, arrested citizens of Bayamo, Manzanillo, and Santiago itself, and fined them heavily. Then the government at Havana, which had done nothing to enforce the law, remonstrated and protested against so much money being taken from Cuba to Hispaniola. The island was, nevertheless, making some progress; appropriately enough through a reversal of the conditions which had formerly involved it in disaster. The Mexican adventure of Cortez had drawn away from Cuba men and resources almost to the exhaustion of the island. But now that country began sending men and means back to Cuba. Cortez had long been dead, but under his successors the wealth of Mexico was being wondrously developed, as was indeed that of Peru and other South American countries. Some of the commerce between South America and Spain went by other routes, though a considerable portion of it passed by the shores of Cuba and utilized that island as a stopping place, to its material benefit. But all the Mexican traffic followed the Cuban route, the most of it passing along the north coast and making Havana a port of call or of refuge. Florida, too, which had likewise drawn much from Cuba, was now sending men and supplies back to the island. By 1575 Havana was the commercial metropolis of the West Indies, and it had for some years been the practical capital of the island, though Santiago continued nominally to enjoy that distinction until 1589. Vessels from Vera Cruz, bearing the treasures of New Spain, and from Nombre de Dios, laden with the wealth of Castilla del Oro and of Peru, thronged the harbor, and contributed to the trade of the city. To meet the requirements of the thousands of transient visitors, houses in the city were multiplied in number, and plantations in the suburbs extended their borders. The people began to realize how profitable a business was to be conducted in providing supplies of food for the ships' companies. And while the southeastern part of the island was, as we have seen, in a backward condition, the northwestern part entered upon an era of progress and prosperity. CHAPTER XVIII Don Gabriel Montalvo was appointed to be Governor of Cuba early in December, 1573. As was the custom in those days, however, he delayed for some time actual assumption of office, so that it was not until October 29, 1574, that he entered upon his duties. He was also charged with some important duties in Florida, but they were subordinate to those in Cuba. He made his home in the island and spent most of his time there. Indeed, he seems to have planned to make his home at Santiago, and to restore that place to its former prestige. On coming to Cuba he landed at Manzanillo instead of coming to Havana, and sent Diego de Soto to be his representative, practically deputy governor, at the latter place. From Manzanillo he went straight to Santiago, refurbished the governor's house and the public buildings, and began planning an elaborate system of harbor defences worthy of the capital of the island. He was naturally received with great joy by the people of Santiago and of the eastern end of the island generally, who saw in him, as they thought, a promise of restoration of that region to its former importance. From Santiago the governor set out on a tour of the eastern cities and towns, and had got as far as Bayamo when there came a hurried and urgent appeal for him to come to Havana. There was trouble in the city. Diego de Soto, the deputy governor there, had made Gomez de Rojas commander of La Fuerza--that reckless and truculent younger brother of Juan de Rojas whom Governor Mazariegos had once exiled from the island for disorderly if not criminal conduct. Now Gomez de Rojas was a land owner, and therefore, under the law, ineligible thus to serve. But confiding in the powerful influence of his family he ignored the law and held his place in defiance of all protests and demands for his retirement. The town council demanded his retirement, and the populace of Havana raged against him, but he shut himself up in the unfinished fort, trained his guns against the town, and prepared to resist with force any attempt which might be made by force to compel his resignation. Such was the emergency which sent a message post haste to the new governor asking him to hasten to Havana. He came, and at his coming Gomez de Rojas capitulated without a blow. Montalvo rebuked him severely and imposed upon him a heavy fine, which was paid. But in this the governor incurred the hostility of the Rojas family. The feud was taken up by Juan Bautista de Rojas, who had succeeded his cousin Juan de Ynestrosa, deceased, as royal treasurer. This official charged the governor with conniving with smugglers and receivers of smuggled goods, and also with those who exported goods to countries with which traffic was prohibited, and on that account demanded for himself the right to inspect vessels and their cargoes; a function which had been exercised by the governor. This demand was curtly rejected by Montalvo, who appears to have been a stickler for dignity and technical rights. Thereupon De Rojas made appeal to the King, coupling the appeal with a detailed and bitter arraignment of the governor and an impeachment of his integrity. This seems to have impressed the king deeply, for he presently decided the controversy in favor of his own treasurer. He sent word to the governor that thereafter he should not inspect or even visit ships, but should leave that whole business in the hands of the royal treasurer. The advantage thus gained was mercilessly pressed by the Rojas family, with the purpose of compelling the retirement of Montalvo. They accused him of employing for his own private work slaves belonging to the crown and intended for employment on La Fuerza and other public works. They charged him specifically with having made Bartolome Morales a notary for a consideration of five hundred ducats; a transaction the evil of which consisted not in selling the appointment for cash, but in selling it for so little to a favored friend when it might have been sold to someone else for twice as much. Finally he was accused of corruption and maladministration in connection with La Fuerza, in that he had appointed friends to places at exorbitant salaries, and that he had ignored the suggestions of the royal officials in completing the plans of the fort. These charges were serious, and there is reason to think that some of them, at least, were true. The Rojas family made them and repeated them to the king, again and again, until that monarch was constrained to remark that the time seemed to be near at hand when an investigation would have to be ordered, and Montalvo's administration be brought to a close. Nevertheless the king's favorable disposition toward Montalvo was potent, and prevailed. The governor had been appointed, as was the custom, for the specific term of four years, reckoned from the date of his appointment and not of his actual assumption of office, and the king delayed calling for an investigation until the four years were so nearly expired that they would be entirely filled out by the time the investigation was completed and a new governor was ready to take the place. The order for the investigation was given in February, 1577, and at the same time, on February 13, Captain Francisco Carreño was named to succeed Montalvo as governor. The investigation was vigorously prosecuted, and some of the charges against Montalvo were proved. Yet so great was the king's personal regard for him that he was permitted to go with a nominal fine, and was retained in the royal service in important capacities for some years thereafter. He remained governor of Cuba until the accession of his successor, which did not occur until June 2, 1578. The administration of Montalvo was unfavorably marked by three things. One was, the continuance of the contraband trade already referred to, in both imports and exports; in which, as already related, the governor himself was charged with participating. Montalvo at any rate gave the appearance of striving to suppress it. He sent agents to investigate the business, some of whom found their own relatives engaged in it and therefore refrained from reporting upon it, and some were prevented by the people from executing that for which they had been sent. Not merely the people, but the local officials all along the southeastern coast did all in their power to hamper and prevent investigation or any interference with the contraband trade. Indeed, alcaldes and other officials were foremost among those engaged in the unlawful commerce. The second feature of the administration was the persistent ravages of the French. Despite the fact that they were engaged in contraband trade with the people of Cuba, the French were at this time the most frequent raiders of Cuban coast towns; sometimes directing their attacks against the very towns in which they had been peacefully trading, while the people were quite ready at any time to trade with those who just before had visited them with fire and sword and demands for ransom. It was a curious circumstance that by far the most efficient guardian of Cuba against such raids was that same Gomez de Rojas who had been exiled by Mazariegos and who had illegally assumed command of La Fuerza and had bitterly quarreled with Montalvo. After being compelled to leave La Fuerza he had taken to seafaring, and as commander of a Spanish vessel he drove more than one French privateer away from the neighborhood of Havana. Montalvo was the first to urge that Cuba be protected not alone with land fortifications and batteries but also by naval vessels. Particularly he wished for a powerful war-galley, which the king did not provide him. In 1576 French raiders attacked Santiago, and were with difficulty repulsed; upon which Montalvo sarcastically reported that if another such attack occurred he would himself be relieved of the necessity of fortifying the harbor and city of Santiago, for the place would cease to exist. A little later a daring French raid was made upon Spanish shipping just outside the harbor of Havana. This greatly incensed Montalvo, and caused him to renew his pleadings for a galley. He urged that the whole Cuban coast should be patrolled by light, swift vessels, preferably frigates, and that strong galleys should be stationed at the chief ports. He would have had the frigates, at any rate, built in Cuba and at least partly paid for by that island; but the Havana municipal council protested against this, demanding that Cuba be entirely exempted from the costs of defending her from enemies. The result was that in the lack of means of defence Cuba suffered more and more from the ravages of privateers and freebooters, which became more frequent as the island increased in population and wealth and thus became better worth raiding. The third unfavorable feature of the time was the haggling over La Fuerza. Begun by De Soto, and later almost entirely rebuilt, that famous fortress seemed to be under some malign spell which made it a source of injury rather than of benefit to Havana. Year after year passed, appropriation after appropriation was made and expended, and still it remained unfinished. Man after man undertook the task of completing it, only to fail and lose his personal reputation either for efficiency or for honesty. Moreover, as the work proceeded grave faults were developed, both in plan and in construction. The fort, which at first had been denounced as needlessly large, was seen to be entirely too small to shelter a garrison sufficient for the defence of Havana. The original design had been to make it a shelter to which all the people of the town could flee in case of attack, and it might have served this purpose at a time when the people of Havana were numbered by scores, or at most by a hundred or two. But with the figures extending into thousands it became evident that La Fuerza was entirely inadequate to any such purpose. Indeed, it was realized that that design was ill-conceived, for if the place was to grow into a considerable city it would be impracticable and undesirable to make any fortification large enough to hold all the population. The construction was also faulty. The fort was built of stone, but there had thoughtlessly been chosen for the purpose a stone which had the advantages of being plentiful and so soft as to be easily worked. Unhappily it had also the very serious disadvantages of being so soft that it would probably soon be battered to fragments by cannon balls, and of being so porous that water soaked into and through it as through a sponge. During the rainy season the place was flooded, water standing in pools on the floor, and the magazine being so wet that gunpowder could not be kept there without spoiling; wherefore another building, of wood, had to be provided for that purpose. The same kind of stone was used, moreover, for the reservoir which was to provide fort and city with water, with the result that its contents quickly leaked out. There arose a proverbial saying in the city that the powder magazine was always wet and the water reservoir was always dry; and it was sarcastically proposed that the functions of the two be exchanged. The powder would be kept dry in the reservoir, and there would always be plenty of water in the magazine! Nor was this the only error in construction. The whole structure was said to be dangerously weak, so that if all its guns should be fired simultaneously, the shock might tumble the walls into ruin. The guns were available for use in only a narrow zone; they were of too short range to carry to the other extremity of the harbor, and they were so placed that they could not be depressed so as to hit vessels which had come close in toward the water front of the city. Therefore a hostile ship with long range guns could lie out of reach of La Fuerza and bombard the fort and city at will. Or one could sail swiftly in, running the gantlet of the narrow zone of fire, and gain a place under the walls of the fort where it would be quite safe for the guns of the latter while it could use its own at short range with deadly effect. It was also complained that the parapet was too low to afford shelter to the men serving the guns, and that the four big wooden gates were a source of fatal weakness. It was presently perceived, too, that fortifications elsewhere than in the heart of the city were needed for adequate defence of the place. Especially were such works needed at the headlands commanding the entrance to the harbor. Without them, a daring enemy might seize one of those spots, bring up some long range guns from his ships, and have not only Havana but La Fuerza itself at his mercy. Montalvo appears to have recognized this need, and to have urged the construction of such forts, especially on the Cabañas hill, but to no avail. Instead, the royal government proposed the construction of a strong wall around the entire city, including the water front. It actually ordered that work to be undertaken, the first step being to destroy a large part of the city, including the church, to make room for the wall. Against this suicidal policy Montalvo effectively protested, declaring that if the city were thus demolished it would never be rebuilt, and also pointing out that the day of walled cities was past. In the face of his representations the wall scheme was abandoned; but his wise suggestions of forts commanding the harbor were not acted upon until years afterward. It is to be recorded to his credit that Montalvo gave more attention than his immediate predecessors had done to development of some of the natural resources of the island. He interested himself in forestry, and soon had an immense trade in timber and lumber between Cuba and Spain. The exquisite cabinet work of the Escurial, in Spain, was made of wood from the forests of Cuba--mahogany, ebony, ironwood, cedar, and what not. Wood was supplied for other purposes, too, notably for ship-building. It was at this time that interest arose in the great island just off the southern coast, which at that time was so richly clad with pine forests as to receive from Montalvo on that account its present name of "Isle of Pines." During the administration of Menendez the whole island was granted to Alfonso de Rojas for a cattle range, a purpose for which it was admirably adapted, and there are legends to the effect that the water between the Isle of Pines and Cuba was at times so shallow as to make it possible to drive herds of cattle across from the one land to the other. It is to be observed, in passing, that thus early in history was the Isle of Pines recognized as an integral part of Cuba. Montalvo also did much to promote agriculture, and the raising of swine. He endeavored to revive interest in both gold and copper mining, and seems to have been persuaded that there were enormously rich deposits of the former metal hidden somewhere on the island, in places known only to the natives. He strove diligently and persistently to get from the few surviving Indians information concerning these mines, but in vain. If the Indians knew, they would not tell; but it seems altogether probable that they did not know, and that no such mineral wealth existed on the island. It was in Montalvo's time, too, that what was destined to become Cuba's greatest industry had its permanent establishment. At various times and places thitherto men had experimented with sugar growing and manufacture, with varying degrees of success. But every such undertaking had after a while been abandoned, either for lack of profit or because of the superior attractions of something else. It was not until 1576 that plantations were established which were never to be abandoned but were to continue in cultivation down to this present time, and that sugar mills of similar permanence were put into operation. The scene of this epochal enterprise was the region around Havana, particularly between Havana and Matanzas. There in the year named at least three mills were established, a fact indicating that a considerable area was planted in cane. These mills were of the most primitive description, each consisting of three wooden rollers, formed of logs of trees denuded of the bark, mounted in a rude frame of timber, and caused to revolve by a long pole of which one end was fastened to the end of one of the upright rollers while to the other was hitched a mule or an ox, which walked in a circle around the "mill." The expressed juice was caught in trays or jars of earthenware, and then was boiled in open pans. The sugar thus produced was not refined beyond the stage of what would now be considered a very coarse brown sugar, but it served the uses of the island. It does not appear that any considerable quantity was exported until a number of years later. These primitive establishments in 1576 were, however, the beginning of Cuba's gigantic sugar industry. One other incident of Montalvo's administration must be recalled, to wit, his quarrel with the church, or at least with the Bishop. Diego Sarmiento, who became Bishop in De Soto's time, had been gathered to his fathers, and had been succeeded by Bishop Durango. The latter had in turn died, and in 1560 had been succeeded by Bernardino de Villapando, who spent only three years in the island and then departed for Mexico under unpleasant charges of embezzlement of funds. The charges against him do not appear to have been pressed, nor did they affect his standing in the church, for he was presently transferred to the then much more important see of Guatemala. Moreover, despite the charges made against him, he was recognized as a most energetic and successful prelate. He established many mission stations throughout the island, and expedited the completion of the cathedral at Santiago. Upon his promotion to Guatemala after three years' service Bishop Villapando was succeeded by Juan de Burgos, who continued with much success the work of his predecessor. He secured the erection of a large church school on the site now occupied by the Hospital of San Juan de Dios, at Havana, and there the famous missionary preachers and teachers, Juan Roger and Francisco Villaroel, gave instruction to Indian youths in the Christian religion and in the Spanish tongue. In connection with this school there was built the church of San Juan de Dios, and from the establishment thus founded by Bishop Burgos grew the first hospital in Havana. It took originally the form of a military hospital, for the soldiers of the Havana garrison and for soldiers in transit to or from Florida, Mexico and other places. It is recorded that for his work Bishop Burgos depended entirely upon the offerings of the people; demonstrating what could be accomplished by an honest and businesslike administrator. The next Bishop of Cuba was Pedro del Castillo, who came to the island from the University of Salamanca. He was a most aggressive and strenuous prelate, with policies of his own and with the courage to enforce them. Arriving in Cuba in 1570, he glanced at Santiago when he landed there, crossed the island to Havana, where he spent a little time, and then proceeded to Bayamo, where he established his home, preferring that to any other city of Cuba. He then laid claim to the island of Jamaica as a part of his bishopric, and succeeded in carrying that point despite the opposition of the Archbishop at Hispaniola. Then he complained that the royal officials were not properly collecting the tithes, or at any rate were not paying him his proper revenue; wherefore he himself began collecting the tithes. This brought him into conflict with the crown, a circumstance which did not alarm him nor swerve him from his course. He made a number of appointments of the clergy under him which he deemed to be for the good of their parishes but which made him unpopular with them. Also he incurred much unpopularity among the people by his insistence upon certain reforms in their morals. This strenuous policy presently led Castillo into conflict with Montalvo. The Governor thought that the Bishop ought to reside at Santiago, where were his official residence and also the Cathedral. Castillo refused to do so, on the nominal ground that he considered Santiago an unhealthful spot. There is reason to suspect, however, that he preferred Bayamo because of certain very rich legacies which had been left years before for the erection of a masonry church and parochial school at that place. The provisions of these wills had not been carried out, and the strenuous Bishop set himself to the task of finding out why the church and school had not been built, and of getting possession of the legacies and administering them himself. In the litigation which ensued he quarrelled with Montalvo so bitterly that he excommunicated him; an act which the governor did not take greatly to heart. The strife between the two accentuated, however, the antagonism between church and state which was even at that early time beginning to prevail. [Illustration: SAN FRANCISCO CHURCH One of the most ancient of the many ecclesiastical edifices in Havana, built in 1575 and rebuilt in 1731, and presenting a singularly perfect and characteristic example of ancient Spanish architecture. In late years it was used by the Government for a custom house, and post office. The illustration presents it in its earlier aspect with its former surroundings restored.] CHAPTER XIX It would be easy for the reflective historian to engage in many interesting and pertinent observations concerning the time in which Captain Francisco Carreño became governor of Cuba. It was the year 1577. That was the year in which the sixth religious war in France began, a struggle which made inevitable the still greater religious wars which followed, in which not merely two factions in France but the two great powers of Spain and England were the chief belligerents. That was the year, too, in which Sir Francis Drake began his voyage around the world, which was perhaps the most momentous since that of Columbus in 1492, since it led directly to the strife between Spain and England in America, the English conquest of Cuba, the foundation of the English colonies in North America, and the subsequent development of the United States; all having the most direct and important bearing upon the fortunes of Cuba. Albeit he was a native of that city of Cadiz in the harbor of which Drake performed one of his most daring and most famous feats, Carreño probably entered upon his governorship with no premonitions of what was in store. While Drake was furrowing the strange expanses of the South Sea, it was French privateers that chiefly troubled the Spanish Main and menaced the ports of Cuba. Their favorite cruising ground was in the waters between Cuba and Jamaica, and between Cuba and Hispaniola, and their menace to Cuba was chiefly to the ports between Cape Maysi and Cape Cruz, and in the Gulf of Guacanabo. The chief sufferers, as also the chief gainers from contraband trade, were Santiago, Manzanillo, and the settlements at the mouth of the Guantanamo River. The people of those places were never sure whether an approaching French vessel was bent on contraband trade or war and plunder; and indeed the Frenchman himself sometimes left that question to be answered after he had landed and viewed the place. He then decided which would be the more profitable, to trade with the people or to plunder them. At times, too, it must be confessed, the Spaniards were in similar uncertainty whether to receive the French as traders or to slay them--if they could--as enemies. Carreño was the first governor of Cuba to die in office, his death occurring on April 27, 1579. His administration thus lasted only two years; but they were years filled with hard work on his part and with much progress for the island. The sugar industry which had been founded in the preceding administration prospered and expanded, and caused a considerable increase in slave-holding. Negro slaves were the favorite workmen on the plantations and at the mills, and a large number of them was needed at each establishment. The increase in the number of slaves caused, however, some anxiety lest there should be servile insurrections, such as had occurred on the Isthmus of Panama, in Mexico and elsewhere; so that in 1579 the government refused to permit any more to be imported, even though they were wanted by the governor himself. It is recorded that his personal request for a thousand negroes to work at copper mining was refused by the King, or by the Council for the Indies. Anxiety was caused, also, by the increasing number of free negroes, and of slaves who were practically free. Most of the entirely free negroes had been slaves but had bought their freedom from their masters for cash. This was not particularly difficult, since the market value of the best negro slaves at that time was only from fifty to sixty pesos. Those practically free were slaves who were permitted by their owners to live where they pleased and work as they pleased, on condition of paying their masters certain royalties every week or month. In Carreño's time there were hundreds of negroes of these classes in and about Havana, and probably still more of them in the eastern end of the island. The anxiety concerning them arose from two causes. One was, the fear that they might incite the slaves to insurrection, placing themselves at the head of the movement; a fear which was not at that time realized. The other was, the fear that they would build up objectionable communities. Thus in Havana they occupied a quarter of the town by themselves, in which their wooden cabins were huddled closely together; the sanitary conditions were bad; and the danger of fire which might imperil the whole town was obviously imminent. There was in Carreño's time a movement to procure their deportation to Florida or elsewhere, and to forbid the residence of free negroes in Cuba; but it did not become effective. It is agreeable to remember that in spite of the obviously objectionable nature of the institution of slavery, and in spite of the fears and anxieties which have been mentioned, negro slavery in Cuba in those early days was not marked with the distressing features which it has elsewhere borne. It was probably more humane than it was two and a half centuries later in the United States. The slaves were seldom sold by one master to another, and never in circumstances which separated husband and wife, or parents and young children. Severe physical punishments were prohibited. Their masters were compelled to feed them well, and to provide them with decent and comfortable clothes. There was no personal or social prejudice against them, but they were permitted to attend church and to frequent all public places on equal terms with the Spaniards. Ordinarily they were not permitted to carry weapons; but those who occupation seemed to make it desirable for them to be armed, such as cattle-rangers, and messengers travelling from one part of the island to another, were permitted to bear arms just as white men would have done. Moreover, the free negroes were called upon equally with the whites to serve as sentinels on the water fronts of cities, and were of course provided with arms. There are no authentic records of intermarriage between Spaniards and negroes, yet neither is there any proof that it did not occasionally occur. We have already seen that amalgamation with the Indians was not unknown, and in other Spanish colonies of those and later days there were some fusions with African blood. What is chiefly to be remembered, however, is that negroes, although enslaved, were regarded in Cuba as human beings, with immortal souls, no less than their masters, and that they were invariably so treated. There was no pretence that they were of an intrinsically inferior race, or that they were suffering from the primaeval curse of Canaan or of Ham. And when they gained their freedom and became educated, they were treated socially and politically according to their merits, without regard for the color of their skin. In the most literal sense, the administration of Carreño was marked with constructive statesmanship. As a statesman this Governor set about enlarging and improving Havana and other cities, and providing them with public and private buildings commensurate with the needs of an increasing population. He laid out enough of the streets of Havana to establish for all time the plan of that city. He encouraged the building of houses, or at any rate discouraged the holding of town sites unimproved, by making distributions of lots to all who wished them, on condition that the owners would promptly build. If they did not build within six months, their titles were forfeited. Another important reform effected by him was the substitution of adobe or other masonry for wood as building material. By the end of his administration fully half of the houses in Havana had walls of masonry, and a considerable number had also tiled roofs. It was Carreño, too, who began the building of the first custom house in Cuba, at Havana. The king had ordered Montalvo to undertake this enterprise, but he appears to have taken no steps whatever in that direction, not even selecting a site. Carreño essayed the task with characteristic energy. He selected an appropriate site, at the water front and close to the principal wharf, where an excellent rock foundation was to be found, and there he planned to erect a building of solid masonry, seventy feet long and two stories high. The royal government approved the plans, and the work was promptly entered upon. Finally, it was impossible that the new governor should not be seriously concerned with La Fuerza. Carreño found that long-delayed edifice practically finished, according to the old plans; its though condition was, as hitherto suggested, decidedly unsatisfactory. He began by insisting upon clearing away all buildings of any kind close to the fort. This had been ordered nearly a score of years before but had never been done. The purpose was, of course, to strengthen the fort by leaving no shelter near its walls which might harbor or facilitate the approach of a hostile force. Then he insisted upon building an additional story on La Fuerza. This he declared was necessary, for barracks for the garrison, and for a storage place for gunpowder, the fort proper being flooded more than half the time. Doubtless these needs were real, and Carreño intended to meet them with the new story. Yet it seems also to have been his plan thus to secure for himself living quarters more pleasant than the house which had been assigned to him for that purpose. There was much opposition to his plans for enlarging La Fuerza, but he persisted in them, and they were nearly completed at the time of his death. During the administration of Governor Carreño the question of the distribution, proprietorship and use of land became of much social and economic importance in Cuba. The population of the Island was still small, and yet because of the immense size of the tracts which many settlers had appropriated for cattle ranges nearly all the accessible and available area had been taken up. In the eastern part of the Island there was practically no unclaimed land left excepting that in the mountains and some almost impenetrable swamps, and already many controversies and not a few forcible conflicts had arisen over rival claims. Thus far no private ownership of land was authorized outside of building sites in the towns and cities. Cattle ranges and farms were held under indefinite leases from the Crown, subject to forfeit if the land were permitted to remain unoccupied and unused for the space of three years. These grants were made by the municipal government in the name of the Crown. At first the tracts thus taken were of unlimited extent and indeed their boundaries were defined in only the vaguest possible manner. The result naturally was that innumerable and interminable conflicts arose over overlapping claims. To correct such evils and to provide for a more equitable distribution of land in future, Alfonso Caceres, who had been sent to investigate the administration of Governor Menendez, was charged with a complete revision of the land system of the Island and with the prescribing of new rules and regulations for subsequent grants and titles. In entering upon that work he found some settlers holding enormous tracts which they had never attempted to utilize. Of these he summarily voided the titles and assigned the land to others. Such areas were quickly taken up by new comers, in smaller and definitely bounded tracts, so that by the time of Governor Carreño practically the only unoccupied lands of considerable extent and practical value were to be found in the extreme west end of the Island. Around Havana and some other large municipalities there were reserved unassigned zones of from fifteen to twenty miles in width which were kept practically as public game preserves. No grants of cattle ranges were made in them. But they were infested by many stray cattle and hogs which had escaped from the ranges beyond and were there running at large in practically a wild state, and these were regarded as fair game for hunters from the cities. It was, however, insisted that anyone killing such stray animals must bring their hides to market with the ears attached, so as to prove that they were indeed wild strays, since then their ears would be unbranded while all the animals on the ranges had their ears branded with their owner's marks. The Government wisely desired to encourage agriculture, even at the expense of stock raising, the latter occupation having been expanded disproportionately to the former. It was accordingly provided that grants of land for farming purposes might be made within this hunting zone, and also that such grants might be made of land already apportioned for cattle ranges, the owners of the ranges thus invaded being indemnified by other grants of land elsewhere. By this means a varied agricultural industry was gradually developed to the great advantage of the Island, though for many years cattle raising remained the chief industry. During Carreño's administration more than 20,000 hides were exported yearly, and in the great demand for leather at that time this trade was exceedingly profitable. Of course a large amount of meat was also produced, but the difficulty of preserving it in the warm climate of Cuba caused much of it to go to waste, so that yearly thousands of heads of cattle were slaughtered for their hides alone, their carcasses being left to the dogs and buzzards. The sudden death of Carreño caused some curious complications in the Government of the Island. As he had been appointed for a definite term of four years, and as that term was scarcely half expired, no successor had yet been chosen for him. In this emergency the Supreme Court of Hispaniola appointed a temporary governor to discharge the functions of the office until the Crown should make a permanent appointment. The choice of the court fell upon a lawyer, Gaspar de Torres. Even he was not appointed until several months after the death of Carreño, and in fact not until after the King had selected a permanent Governor to succeed Carreño. However, as the permanent Governor would not take office until the expiration of the term for which Carreño had been appointed it was necessary for the temporary Governor to fill the vacancy. Torres was appointed in October, 1579, but did not actually assume office until the first of January, 1580. Little is known of his antecedents, but he appears to have been an unworthy member of the legal profession. He was possessed of an itching palm. As a result his brief administration was filled with scandals and with controversies and conflicts, practically all arising from his pecuniary greed and from the unscrupulous means which he employed for satisfying it. He came into conflict with the powerful and numerous Rojas family, and particularly with the most conspicuous member, Juan Bautista Rojas, the Royal Treasurer. This latter official declared that Torres was the worst Governor Cuba had ever had, and that he misappropriated more funds than all his predecessors put together. Apparently as Torres had been appointed merely to fill out Carreño's unexpired term, he determined to make hay while the sun shone. He took office in January, 1580. Eight months later a judicial investigation into his administration was ordered, as a result of which he was very quickly convicted of misappropriation of funds and was ordered to refund several thousand ducats which had been improperly collected and retained by him. Instead of refunding, however, he absconded, leaving his bondsman to make good his liabilities. CHAPTER XX The regularly appointed successor of Governor Carreño was another soldier, to wit, Captain Gabriel de Luzan. He was an army veteran who had performed distinguished service in the Netherlands and elsewhere and was personally known to and greatly favored by the King. He was selected for the governorship and was informed of the appointment in the early fall of 1579, a few weeks before the malodorous Torres was appointed by the Court of Hispaniola. It was intended, however, that he should not actually take office until the expiration of the full term for which Carreño had been appointed, and he accordingly had much time to attend to his affairs in Spain and elsewhere before removing to Havana. His duties were not to begin until 1581. But he removed to Cuba in the fall of 1580 while Torres was being investigated. There came to Cuba with him Juan Ceballos, who had been selected for Lieutenant-Governor. Both of these officials were to receive the same salaries that their predecessors had received, although Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, vigorously protested that their salaries should be reduced by one-half. Governor Luzan was very soon involved in numerous controversies, largely over questions of dignity and precedents among insular officials. Something of the spirit of the formal Spanish Court appears to have permeated Cuba at this time, and the insular and municipal officials became as great sticklers for forms and ceremonies and for recognition of their comparative ranks as any of the Grandees at Seville or Madrid. Thus Jorge de Balza, Adjutant General of the Royal Forces in the Island, insisted upon the privilege of wearing his sword at meetings of the municipal council of Havana, of which he was ex officio a member, although it was a penal offense for anyone else, even the Governor himself, to wear a sword or dagger in that assembly. Another controversy arose, as might confidently be assumed, over La Fuerza. The office of captain or commander of that fortress paid a salary of 300 ducats, on which account several former governors had appointed themselves to the place and had drawn that salary for themselves. Governor Carreño regarded this practice as reprehensible. It was not right, he said, for the Governor to hold another office and to draw a second salary. Therefore, he appointed his own son, a lad just in his teens, to be Captain of La Fuerza and to draw the salary. Whether the boy had the spending of the money himself or dutifully handed it over to his father is not a matter of record. Governor Luzan stopped this nonsense and put a real soldier at the head of the Fort and then quarreled with him. This commander was Captain Melchior Sarto de Arana, an expert soldier who had been Luzan's comrade in arms in the wars of Spain, in the Netherlands and in Italy. He and his family moved into that upper story of La Fuerza which Carreño had insisted upon building, regarding it as the most desirable place of residence in Havana. The unhappy garrison in the lower part of the building was subject to the dampness which there prevailed, to the great detriment of health. Indeed conditions were so bad that their weapons became almost ruined with rust and it was almost impossible to keep gunpowder in condition for use. The Governor appears to have envied Captain Arana his quarters in the Fort, but he was not able to displace him, and so he turned his own attention to completing the Custom House for his own use. Governor Torres had stopped all work upon this latter building because of some uncertainty concerning the site, and had appropriated to his own use some of the funds which had been provided for completing it. But Luzan secured the necessary funds, hurried the work of construction and soon moved in to the fine new quarters which that building provided. This gave great umbrage to the royal accountant of the Island, one Pedro de Arana, who does not appear to have been related, unless very remotely, to the Commander of the Fort. He declared that the Governor had no right to live in the Custom House, that the King's money had not been appropriated for any such purpose. It was true, he admitted, that a part of the Custom House building had been designed for an official residence. But it was not for the Governor, but for one of the royal officials. Now as Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, had a fine house of his own, the meaning of this suggestion was obvious. The royal accountant wanted the place for himself. He indeed went so far as to order the Governor, in the King's name, to vacate the building. But he did not venture to move in and take possession himself, and so the Governor presently returned and remained. In retaliation Luzan personally charged Pedro de Arana with various illegal acts, particularly in violating the law which forbade royal officials to encourage any trade. He declared that Arana was the owner, or half owner, of a vessel trading between Cuba and Yucatan, a vessel which was built to be chiefly used for smuggling. He also said that Arana was organizing an expedition to seek and raise sunken treasure ships along the coast and was planning to establish cattle ranches in Bermuda. On the strength of these charges, which were probably true, he began a searching investigation into Arana's affairs, raided his house and ordered him to be arrested by his namesake and confined in a cell in La Fuerza. To this, however, Captain Melchior de Arana demurred. It was not that he did not regard the accountant as worthy of arrest. But he held that it was beneath his dignity to arrest a mere civilian and beneath the dignity of the Fort to serve as a prison for him. The arrest, he said, should be made by the sheriff, and the prisoner should be confined in the civil jail. At this the Governor was furious and he retaliated by sending the sheriff to arrest Captain Melchior de Arana and to confine him not in the military fortress but in the civil jail. A little later, however, he had the Captain transferred to a cell in La Fuerza. Then he made his brother-in-law, Juan de Ferrer, Captain of the Fort in Melchior's place. In his strenuous dealings with the royal accountant the Governor appears merely to have anticipated the King himself. At any rate, a very little while after he had begun his investigation of Pedro de Arana the instructions came to him from Madrid that he should pursue precisely that course. This naturally encouraged him to renewed zeal in the prosecution. And the result was that in March, 1582, he removed Arana from the office of royal accountant and appointed Manuel Diaz temporarily to fill his place. At this Arana made his way to Hispaniola, there to appeal to the Supreme Court against the Governor. He did more than appeal. He made grave charges against Luzon and got the court to order an investigation. The court appointed as chief inquisitor into Luzan's affairs Garcia de Torquemada, who went to Cuba in April, 1583, taking Arana along with him. Diaz made no attempt to maintain his title to the office, but, regarding discretion as the better part of valor, left Havana and repaired to his plantation in the Far West. But the Governor and also Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, who sided with him against Arana, stood their ground. In the meantime, early in 1582, the King became dissatisfied with the fast and loose game which was being played at Havana, and chiefly at La Fuerza, and determined to take matters into his own hand. He did so by appointing a Captain-General to be Commander of the Fortress, who should be independent of the Governor of Cuba. This involved some awkward complications. The Governor, Luzan, had been regularly commissioned as Captain-General as well as Governor. And the King naturally hesitated for a time over the question of appointing another man to the same place. He would have preferred that the Governor and Captain-General should have continued to be one and the same man. But that seemed no longer practicable, unless indeed he should dismiss Luzan altogether, which he was not yet prepared to do. He therefore consulted with the Council for the Indies, and in conjunction with that body finally decided to make a new appointment. Luzan was to continue to bear the nominal title of Captain-General, so as to give him rank comparable with that of the military and naval commanders who might visit Havana with the fleets of Spain. But the same title with real authority over the fortifications and defenses of Havana, and indeed a measure of authority over the fortifications and defenses of the entire Island, was to be given to another man. The man selected for the new Captain-Generalship was a practical soldier of experience named Diego Hernandez de Quiñones. He took office in July, 1582, and found La Fuerza substantially complete, save for the construction of a moat, and containing a garrison of 120 men, the majority of whom were always more or less sick because of the dampness and unsanitary conditions of the place. The fortress had been completed, however, in some respects in a highly unsatisfactory way. Thus there was no stairway inside the building connecting the lower and upper stories. There was a stairway on the outside of the building, constructed of wood and it was obvious that in case of attack that stairway might easily be destroyed by cannon shot and thus communications between the two stories of the fortress be cut off. The moat had not yet been constructed, and numerous wooden and even some masonry houses had been constructed close to the fort, which might give sheltered approach to an attacking party. The King and the Council obviously apprehended some friction between the Governor and the newly appointed Captain-General, and they therefore prepared an elaborate code of rules and regulations intended to avert such trouble and to conduce to harmonious co-operation between the two officials. Thus it was provided that in all matters of law relating exclusively to the soldiers, the Captain-General should have entire jurisdiction. In all matters relating entirely to civilians, the Governor should have jurisdiction. In cases in which both soldiers and civilians were concerned the two officials should act together with concurrent jurisdiction, and in case they could not agree the senior royal official at Havana should act as umpire between them. This plan seemed fair enough and was expected to work well. But Luzan immediately protested against the whole scheme with much vigor and even violence of speech. In this he was heartily supported by the town council of Havana. When his protests were ignored by the Crown, or at least were not favorably heeded, he asked to be relieved from office as Governor and to be assigned to duty elsewhere. This request the King refused to grant, at the same time bidding Luzan to avoid any quarrel or disagreement with Quiñones. In spite of this admonition within a few weeks a bitter quarrel arose over the case of a soldier and a civilian who had had some strife over an alleged insult offered by the soldier to a young woman. From this there developed a bitter feud between the Governor and the Captain-General which soon became apparently irreconcilable. Each reviled the other, not only in his public capacity but in relation to his private life and morals. The partisans of each took up the strife and the entire city was soon involved in it. Such was the deplorable state of affairs, when, as already related, Torquemada began his investigations. He found affairs in what seemed to him as bad a state as possible. The City of Havana, and indeed the entire Island of Cuba, were rent by faction. The Governor and the Captain-General each had a band of armed retainers in Havana, and these were at the point of open conflict which would amount practically to civil war. Regarding the emergency as critical, Torquemada acted promptly and strenuously. He ordered both the Governor and the Captain-General under arrest, commanding Luzan to remain within his own dwelling and Quiñones to remain within La Fuerza. Then he literally read the riot act to them both. He reproved them scathingly for their lack of loyalty to the King in letting personal animosities and jealousies have sway over their sense of duty. He secured from each a full statement of his complaints and grievances against the other. Then he compelled them to submit their cases to a tribunal consisting of himself, the Captain of a Mexican fleet who happened to be visiting Havana, and two judges of the Supreme Court of Hispaniola. As a result of the deliberations of this tribunal the two men were compelled to shake hands and pledge friendship and co-operation. They were then released from arrest and told to attend to their respective duties without any more nonsense. This did not halt Torquemada, however, in his investigation of the general conduct of Luzan's administration in other respects than the quarrel with Quiñones. The charges which were made against the Governor were of a very serious character. It was said that he had interfered with the administration of justice by preventing people who had grievances from communicating with the courts or with the royal government in Spain. He had defied the authority of the Supreme Court in Hispaniola and treated it with contempt. He had enriched himself by taking bribes. He had encouraged desertions of soldiers from the garrison of La Fuerza. He had interfered with the functions of the Royal Treasurer and other officials. In view of these accusations Torquemada ordered Luzan to relinquish the exercise of all official functions until the truth or falsity of the charges could be determined. Then he removed from Havana to Bayamo and summoned Luzan to follow him thither in order that the case might be tried in a place free from the local influence of Havana. Luzan obeyed the order but at the same time sent his sister to Spain to intercede with the King and the Council for the Indies, and also sent her husband to Hispaniola to plead his cause before the Supreme Court. The result was that in mid August of 1584 the Supreme Court reversed Torquemada's order and authorized Luzan to resume the full exercise of his powers and functions as Governor. Luzan at once did so and immediately the old quarrel with Quiñones was resumed. So furious did their strife become that within three months the Supreme Court reversed its own orders and restored that of Torquemada. At this Quiñones cast off all restraint and summarily ordered Luzan to leave Havana and to go to Santiago to protect that place against the hostile raiders who were hourly expected to descend upon the Cuban coast. Luzan demurred, whereupon Quiñones threatened him with arrest. Thereupon Luzan left Havana, but instead of going to Santiago went to Guanabacoa and thence by slow degrees to Bayamo, where he opportunely arrived, as we shall see, at the beginning of January, 1586. In the interim the civil affairs of Havana were conducted by the Town Council until the end of 1585, when one of Menendez's soldiers, Pedro Guerra de la Vega, was sent by the Supreme Court of Hispaniola to serve as Mayor. He got on well enough with Quiñones, but not with Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, who frankly declared him unfit for office and charged him with possessing a too itching palm. His administration of affairs seems to have been confined to purely local matters and, as we shall see, in a very short time, before the spring of 1586, Luzan was again exercising his full civil authority as Governor, though still most of the time absent from Havana. Quiñones was also in full authority as Captain-General, and these two former enemies were acting together in complete accord. This radical change in the aspect of affairs was due to an impending crisis, the most serious thus far in the history of the Island. A new enemy had arisen, far more formidable than any the Island had yet known. For years Cuba had been harried by French privateers often little better than pirates, but now the English rovers of the sea began to infest the Spanish Main. In 1577 Sir Francis Drake entered upon his memorable voyage around the world, defiantly navigating that South Sea which Spain has regarded as exclusively her own, and ravaging the Peruvian treasure ships even more ruthlessly than the French had preyed upon those of Mexico. Early in Luzan's administration warnings were given that this bold adventurer was planning a descent upon the West Indies and probably, therefore, upon Cuba. This menace naturally caused great alarm at Havana and throughout the Island, and urgent appeals were made to the royal government and also to the Viceroy in Mexico for aid. It was represented that galleys were needed to patrol and to defend the coast. Artillery was needed for La Fuerza and for other fortifications at Havana and elsewhere. A larger garrison was also needed for La Fuerza. To these and other like appeals the King made no satisfactory reply. He apparently had no galleys nor men to spare for the defense of the Island. The best he would do was to direct Luzan to utilize his own resources to the full. A military census of the Island was to be taken, the first in its history, and all available men including Indians and negroes, were to be mustered into service. The result of this enrolment, which was made in the spring of 1582, was unsatisfactory. In Havana itself only 226 men fit for service could be found, and no other town on the Island could furnish more than a quarter as many. They were, moreover, chiefly men unused to arms and therefore of little prospective value against the formidable fighting men whom Drake was reported to have in his train. As for La Fuerza, sickness and desertion had so depleted its garrison that not a score of able-bodied men were left. Quiñones gathered in reinforcements of 60 or 70, chiefly young and inexperienced men and thus raised the apparently effective strength to something less than 100, when more than 200 were considered necessary. Two small brass cannon and a supply of powder and small arms came from Spain, and Luzan either purchased or requisitioned from a visiting ship four more small cannon. The Governor also destroyed, by burning, all the houses which had been built close to La Fuerza so as to leave an open zone of considerable strength around that fortress. Despite the conflict between Luzan and Quiñones already recorded, some substantial progress was made, especially by the latter, in strengthening the defenses of Havana to meet the coming storm. La Fuerza was improved in various respects, though it was impossible to get rid of the dampness which pervaded the place. On the Punta at the entrance to the harbor trenches were dug and a gun platform was built. The efficiency of these was unsparingly ridiculed by the Royal Treasurer, Rojas, and indeed Quiñones himself soon realized their unsatisfactory character. He therefore undertook the construction of the real fort, and by the end of 1583 had it sufficiently completed to permit the mounting of eight pieces of artillery. He then declared that if he were properly supplied with powder and shot he could defend Havana against all comers. He did not wish more soldiers, and indeed he strongly protested against the levies from Mexico for which Luzan had sent. During the spring of 1583 about 100 men did arrive from Mexico under a Captain who looked to Luzan and not to Quiñones for orders; a circumstance which naturally added to the confusion and conflict of authority. But after a few months Luzan himself agreed with Quiñones in regarding the men as practically worthless, and assented to their shipment back to Mexico. CHAPTER XXI Such, then, was the state of affairs when in 1585 war began between Spain and England. English adventurers infested Spanish territory on the main land in the northern part of the vast region which the Spanish still called Florida. They planned an English colony at the Bay of Santa Maria and renamed that place "Roanoke" and they also renamed that part of Florida after the Queen of England; calling it "Virginia." The news of this invasion appears to have been known in Cuba, by the way of Southern Florida, before it was known in Spain, and a fleet vessel was accordingly sent from Havana to bear the tidings to the King and to ask for further protection from Cuba. There was a period of hesitancy and uncertainty, and then the storm broke. On January 10th, 1586, Sir Francis Drake landed in Hispaniola and occupied the City of Santo Domingo, the nominal capital of all the Spanish West Indies. Some of the judges of the Supreme Court at that place escaped and fled to Cuba, where they arrived a week later with the startling news. Luzan, as already related, was then at Bayamo, and it was there that he received the news. He was startled and alarmed, but appears not to have been panic stricken. Indeed he acted with coolness and judgment and in a manner which must be regarded as going far toward redeeming his reputation from the reproaches which he had formerly incurred. Discreetly assuming that Drake's attack upon Cuba, whenever it was made, would be not at Bayamo but at the Capital and metropolis itself, his first thought was for Havana. Immediately upon receiving the news from Santo Domingo he dispatched horsemen across country from Bayamo to Havana to bear the tidings to Quiñones, bidding them also to spread the news through all the country as they went and to command all towns to marshal all available men and send them on to Havana for the reinforcement of that place. As soon as possible he also sent two vessels from Bayamo to Havana laden with men and supplies. Ignoring their former quarrels in the face of the common danger he wrote to Quiñones outlining his plans for a defense of the Island and urging that an appeal should be sent to Mexico for aid, from which country it could be procured much more quickly than from Spain. Then he hastened to Santiago and from that port sent two vessels to Spain to tell the King what had happened at Santo Domingo and what was being done to avert, if possible, a like calamity at Havana. The Governor's appeals to the various municipalities were not without effect. The people of Cuba seemed to be aroused by the imminence of danger to a better degree of public spirit than they had ever before manifested. Bayamo, Sancti Spiritus, Puerto Principe, and even poor little Trinidad, the smallest and weakest town of the Island, contributed men and arms to their full ability, and when at the beginning of May these levies were mustered in Havana they numbered more than 225 efficient men, tolerably well armed. Luzan himself remained at Bayamo, in the absence of orders or even permission to return to Havana, professing readiness and eagerness to serve the King there or elsewhere, wherever he could be of most use. At Havana Quiñones was in command, loyally supported by the Town Council, the royal officials and the entire community. Even the austere and censorious Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, who had been the bitter critic and opponent of Quiñones, forgot his animosity and hastened to offer his services in any capacity in which they might be utilized. It is related that Rojas, despite his years, his wealth and his social dignity, worked as a common laborer with pick-axe and shovel in digging trenches and throwing up breastworks for the fortification of the town, thus setting an example which left no other citizen any excuse for shirking duty and indeed went far toward inspiring the whole community with patriotic fervor. A proclamation was also issued by the Mayor, Pedro de la Vega, addressed to all citizens who, because of debts, quarrels, crimes, or other causes, had sought sanctuary in the church or gone into hiding in the jungle, asking them to come forward and aid in the defense of Havana, and promising them immunity from arrest or prosecution and a period of a fortnight's grace in which to return to their asylums or their hiding places after the need of their services was ended. This extraordinary call was responded to by scores of fugitives. There was no neglect, either, in preparation for the defense of the suburbs of Havana. Chorrera was generally regarded not only as a possible but as a very probable landing point for the invaders, from which a march could be made by land against Havana. It was not practicable to fortify the place strongly enough to prevent the landing of any considerable force, but a small camp was established there, occupied by a company of horsemen, who were to keep watch day and night for the approach of the enemy, and upon his first appearance were to ride post-haste to Havana with the news. The first horseman was to set out the moment the enemy was sighted in the distance. A second was to follow as soon as the fleet was near enough for the number of vessels and their approximate strength and men and guns to be determined. A third would set out the moment the enemy's intention, either of landing there or of proceeding on to Havana, was ascertained. A fourth would wait until the enemy was actually landing and his numbers could be determined, and would then hasten after the others with the news. Nearer the city there were several other possible landing places at inlets of the coast and some of these were fortified with earth-works and artillery. Chief among these was the inlet of San Lazaro, where in addition to earth works an enclosed fort of timber, stone and earth was constructed with several cannons mounted on a platform. At the entrance to the harbor of Havana itself the strongest preparations were made. At Punta a dozen guns were in readiness to make that the chief point of defense outside of La Fuerza itself. Much attention was given to all roads leading into the city for several miles around; particularly toward the west from which direction the attack was chiefly expected. Some of the roads were blocked altogether, others were mined and provided with pitfalls. Still others were screened and hidden with trees and brushwood so as to serve as secret means of passage for the Spaniards in advancing against or retreating from the enemy, and these were so mined that after having served their purpose to the Spaniards they could be readily destroyed. Elsewhere trees, underbrush and jungle were cleared away so that there would be no cover nor concealment for the invading force. Trenches and earth-works were constructed between La Fuerza and Punta, and the former fortress was provisioned and prepared for a siege. Special parapets of timber, stone and earth were constructed upon the top of the fort, and numerous houses and other buildings near it were destroyed in order that there might be no shelter for an attacking force. Nor was the possibility of an attack from the eastward overlooked. On the Morro headland at the important entrance a battery of three guns was placed, well protected by breast-works of timber, stone and earth, and the coast from Morro to Matanzas was continually patrolled by horsemen on the lookout for the coming of strange vessels, and under orders similar to those which had been given to the watchmen at Chorrera. As for the harbor itself, a great chain was stretched across its entrance buoyed with logs and fastened with a huge padlock at the foot of the Morro headland. Finally the few swift sailing vessels which could be mustered into the service were kept cruising off the shore to espy the approaching squadron. They were not sufficiently strong to give battle, but they could give warning to the city. Also they could bear to Spain or to Mexico tidings of what occurred. Thus one vessel lay in the estuary of the Puercos River, ready to flee to Mexico, while another cruised around Ycacos Point, to hasten to Spain to tell if Havana should fall into the hands of the foe. Meanwhile in Havana itself all possible forces were mustered for defense. The volunteers from the other towns were drilled into an efficient state of discipline. Such was their zeal that they gladly served without pay while a considerable number of them in addition provided their own rations at their own cost. For the necessary expenses of their maintenance Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, used what royal funds were in hand regardless of the purpose for which they had been designed, and when these were insufficient he collected taxes without authority, on the principle that the safety of the city and Island was the supreme law. At the beginning of April some welcome aid arrived from Mexico, which even Quiñones was now glad to have. The Viceroy sent four vessels, bearing about 300 fighting men, with six months' supplies of food and with pay for eight months in advance. These increased the force under Quiñones to more than 900 well-trained soldiers. During the month of April Luzan arrived from Bayamo with nearly 100 more men, thus increasing the garrison of Havana to about 1,000. This was a force which the Captain-General confidently believed would be able to resist and to repulse any force which Drake might be able to land. Luzan had meantime, in February, received from Spain orders to resume the governorship of the Island with full power, to return to Havana, and to consider his term of office indefinitely prolonged. He had been appointed in 1579 for a term of four years and had assumed office in 1580, so that his original term was by this time long since expired. Reckoning the four years from his actual assumption of office in the summer of 1580 his term had ended in 1584. If his return to Havana was not altogether agreeable to Quiñones, and it is quite probable that it was not, at least a semblance of harmony was preserved between them, and there was certainly efficient if not cordial co-operation. To this auspicious state of affairs the Royal Treasurer contributed in no small degree. In fact, in the face of the great peril which confronted it, all Cuba arose to the occasion with a unity of public spirit never before known in its history, and wholly admirable. All the officials, civil and military, insular and royal, were in accord, and all classes of the population, Spaniards, Indians and negro slaves were loyal and devoted in their support. In these circumstances it is of fascinating interest to speculate upon what might have happened had Drake made the expected descent upon Havana. It is well within the limit not only of possibility but of probability that he would have been decisively defeated. It is even possible that in the conflict with more than a thousand well-armed, well trained and resolute Spaniards, than whom there were then no braver or better fighting men in all the world, he would himself have been captured or slain. And such a disposition of Francis Drake in the summer of 1586, only two years before the descent of the Invincible Armada upon the shores of England, might well have changed the history of the world. But this was not to be. Some say that Drake did not intend to attack Havana at that time, preferring to raid Carthagena, as he did. Some say that by means of spies he ascertained the strength of Havana's defenses and deemed it, therefore, prudent not to meddle with that place. Some say that there was an interposition of Providence to dissuade him from what might have been a disastrous fiasco. We have also, as we shall presently see, the testimony of some Spanish fugitives, which is entirely plausible, though not certainly correct. Conjecture is inconclusive. Only the fact remains that Drake passed by and left Cuba unassailed. From the latter part of February until the beginning of May no word of his doings came to Havana; anxiety meanwhile prevailing and preparations for his anticipated arrival being unabated. At last word came, most ominous. A vessel from Spain, a heavily armed frigate, had been searching for Drake. It had tracked him from Santo Domingo to Carthagena, and had found him in full possession of the latter place. There apparently, after two months' occupancy, he was preparing for some fresh adventure. This information convinced the Cuban authorities that the great struggle was at hand, and that the approach of the enemy would be from the westward by way of Cape San Antonio. After despoiling Carthagena Drake's logical course would be to raid Havana, and preparations for defense were therefore redoubled. Nor were these anticipations soon to be dispelled. A few weeks later, on May 27th, a courier arrived from Cape San Antonio, the western extremity of the Island, with the news that five days before a powerful British armada, doubtless Drake's, had touched at that point for fresh water and other supplies. It was no mere raiding flotilla of privateers, such as those with which the French had long been troubling the Cuban coasts, but it was a fleet of thirty-sail, probably with two or three thousand soldiers aboard, and with artillery far superior both in number and range to all the defenses of Havana. The courier could not tell what the intentions of the fleet were or what was its destination. Possibly it was simply seeking to anticipate and capture the treasure ships of Spain coming from Mexico or from Darien with the silver, gold and gems of Peru and Golden Castile. More probably it was planning the conquest of Havana, as Santo Domingo and Carthagena had been conquered. This latter supposition seemed to be confirmed two days later, when another messenger arrived from the west, telling that it was indeed Drake's fleet and that it had sailed from Cape San Antonio eastward toward Havana. In a minor measure Havana and all Cuba now anticipated the feelings which England had two years later upon the approach of the Invincible Armada. Every man was summoned to his appointed place in the scheme of defense and insistent vigilance was maintained night and day. For this there was full need. Within an hour of the arrival of this second messenger from the west a Spanish ship from Mexico came flying into the port of Havana with half a dozen English ships in hot pursuit. She passed Punta and gained safety before they came up, the big chain being slackened to let her pass within and then tightened again to shut out her pursuers. They did not, however, attempt to enter the harbor. One came so near as to draw a few shots from the guns of the Morro Fort and then withdrew without returning fire. But an hour later eight more English sails appeared, making fourteen in all. Evidently the crisis was at hand. Every available man in Havana was in his place. Every available cannon was double-shotted and trained upon the spot at which the English vessels would first come within range. There was, however, no panic, no confusion. All men were resolute, confident and in high spirits. All night long sentinels watched the English fleet expecting to see it send boat loads of men ashore; ready to signal the news with beacon fires and torches. But all night long the English fleet lay dark and silent in the offing. The morning of May 30 dawned. It was clear and bright, the sea was smooth, the wind just sufficient to fill the sails. There could be no fitter day for a landing or for an approach to the harbor to bombard the forts and city. The sentinels on Morro counted all thirty of Drake's vessels, drawn up in line. Now and then one swept out in pursuit of some incautious or uninformed coasting vessel, but did not go far. The whole fleet maintained order as if in preparation for some great concerted operation. Hours passed and nothing was done. At mid-afternoon some boats were sent toward the shore near Chorrera, and the watchers on Morro signaled to La Fuerza that a landing was being made; only a little later to recall the tidings as those of a false alarm. Night came on, and again under cover of darkness it was imagined that Drake's men were seen approaching Chorrera. Every man in Havana remained awake with arms in hand, but the night waned and daylight showed the fleet still motionless and the shore at Chorrera still untouched. Thus for three days and nights the tension was maintained. The thirty English vessels lay off Havana, firing not a shot, sending not a man ashore, and making no sign of their commander's purpose. Then the suspense was ended, to the relief of many but to the disappointment of some. On June 4th the English fleet spread all its canvas and sailed away, heading north and east, and vanished forever from the sight of the watchers at Havana. Not the Cuban capital but the chief city of Florida was to be its prey, and presently word came back that Drake had attacked and captured the town and fortress of St. Augustine, which Menendez had built and in the building of which he had drawn so sorely upon the scanty resources of Cuba. Quiñones regretted that Havana had not been attacked, confident that the result would have been disastrous to the assailants. He took, however, all possible precautions against a surprise by a possible return of the English fleet. The coast patrols to Matanzas and beyond were maintained and vessels were sent out as scouts to follow in Drake's track and watch for his turning. But no more was seen of Drake or heard of him until the end of June. Then word came of his destruction of St. Augustine and of his departure thence to the northward, on some unknown errand. It was supposed that he had gone straight home. In fact, he went first to Virginia to visit the English colony at Roanoke and to take back to England its few discouraged survivors. Thus relieved from fear of invasion Havana rejoiced and gave a most practical turn to its thanksgiving by sending a vessel or two richly laden with supplies to the relief of the hapless people of St. Augustine, many of whom had been former residents of Cuba. Meantime some explanation, as we have already seen, came to Havana of the reason for Drake's failure to take that place. Several Spaniards whom Drake had captured at Carthagena, had contrived to make their escape from him when he touched at Cape San Antonio, and after much wandering found their way to Havana. They reported that on the way from Carthagena to Cuba the English fleet had been sorely afflicted with disease including scurvy and possibly also yellow fever, so that many persons died and many more were incapacitated. Moreover his vessels were crowded with captives and with plunder. In these circumstances he was obviously in no condition to attack so strong a place as Havana, and in a conference with his captains he practically decided to pass by that place and to seek cooler northern latitudes where his sick men might more speedily recover. Havana's deliverance was Santiago's disaster. The preparations for the defense of the former city had drawn thither the fighting strength of the entire Island. Men, munitions, even artillery, had been stripped from all other places for Havana's sake. Even after the departure of Drake, and after it was known that he had at least for the time abandoned his designs against Havana, the forces were still retained at the capital. This, of course, was known to the foes of Cuba and of Spain, as well as to Havana itself, and there were those who were not slow to take advantage of it. French privateers were still hostile and were raiding Spanish ports wherever opportunity afforded, and the stripping of Santiago for Havana's defense gave such opportunity. So at the very time when Havana learned that Drake had taken Carthagena and was on his way to the Cuban capital, two French vessels appeared off Santiago with hostile intent. A demand was made for food, which the town authorities refused. Probably the demand was a mere pretext. At any rate the refusal of it was the signal for immediate attack. From noon to night of May 2nd the battle raged, the Spaniards, only a handful of men, displaying invincible valor in circumstances of desperate difficulty. The leader of the defense was a parish priest who was badly wounded by one of his own men. One other Spaniard was killed by the explosion of a wretched little cannon which had been pressed into service, all good guns having been taken to Havana. But these were the only Spanish losses. On the other hand, one of the French ships, going aground, was almost destroyed by the Spanish fire before her consort could pull her off. And the two riddled with shot were at last glad to make their escape in flight, throwing overboard as they sailed away more than a score of bodies of men killed by the Spanish musketeers. It was too much to hope, however, that this repulse of the French would prove final. It would almost certainly be followed with a stronger attack for vengeance, and Santiago made what scanty preparations it could to meet the coming storm. Gomez de Rojas, a member of the illustrious family whose members played so great a part in early Cuban history, was at that time the deputy of the Governor in that part of the Island, making his headquarters at Bayamo. A few days before this attack on Santiago he and his men had killed seven Frenchmen and captured ten more under the lead of a notorious freebooter. The heads of the seven he displayed on pikes at Bayamo, and on the very day when the two French vessels reached Santiago he hanged eight of the ten prisoners. It is recorded that the trial of these men was not yet concluded. But Rojas grimly observed that the trial could be finished after the hanging just as well as before, as there could be no doubt as to what the verdict and the sentence would be. For this ruthless proceeding the Bishop, Salcedo, reprimanded and indeed excommunicated Rojas, and there was danger that thus disastrous dissension would arise among the Spaniards. But Rojas, who seems to have been a diplomat as well as a soldier and administrator, contrived to make peace with the Bishop, and all was well. Of such unity there was sore need. For a few days later a squadron of seven French ships, carrying 800 soldiers, appeared off Santiago. To meet them Santiago, with all possible aid from Bayamo and the country around could number less than 100 men, some say not more than 70, indifferently armed and with only a few pounds of gunpowder. For several days the French vessels lay off Santiago, frequently firing upon the town at a range at which their own cannon were effective but at which the Spaniards, with far inferior guns and little ammunition, were quite helpless. However, the French made no attempt at landing, a circumstance which for a time puzzled the Spaniards. Then came the explanation. While their fleet lay directly before Santiago the French had put 150 men ashore at Zuragua, and these were advancing upon Santiago over land. As soon as this was known a little force of 20 Spaniards and 10 Indians was sent out to meet them, with only two or three rounds of ammunition to each man. They met in unequal battle and the Spaniards lost five men. But they killed twenty Frenchmen before they were completely exhausted and were compelled to surrender. Another detachment of thirty Spaniards kept up a good fight at the landing place in Santiago until their ammunition was exhausted and then they retreated to the hills. The French fire from the ships destroyed more than half the town, and the troops who were then landed demolished most of the remaining buildings. Then a hasty retreat was made, presumably through fear of the rumored approach of the powerful Spanish fleet, which unfortunately did not materialize. Gomez de Rojas had been at Bayamo when this attack began. As soon as he heard of it he hastened on horseback to Santiago, but arrived in time only to see the last French sail vanish in the distance. Had he been there it is not certain that he could have saved the town. Indeed it is probable that he could not have done so. But it is certain that he saved it after the event. So completely had Santiago been demolished by the French that many of the people were determined not to attempt to rebuild but to abandon the place and go elsewhere. A council of war was held on May 25, at a country house a league inland from the ruined city, at which all the officials and most of the citizens of Santiago were present. Rojas was, fortunately, the presiding officer. The military commander, Captain Camacho, told of what had happened and what the condition of the place was. It had no military strength. There was not a pound of powder or shot left. The few pieces of artillery which had not been captured or destroyed were concealed in the woods, but were of course useless without ammunition. Fewer than a score of houses were standing. The cathedral and the monastery had been destroyed, though the hospital and a church had received little damage. There was, he believed, nothing left to serve as the nucleus of a rebuilt town. Much discussion followed his report. Some were resolute for rebuilding the place, which they regarded rightly as the birthplace of the Spanish settlement of Cuba. Others were equally bent on abandoning it altogether and migrating to Havana or elsewhere. Opinions were so evenly divided that it was finally agreed to suspend decision until one other leading citizen, who was absent from the meeting, could be heard from, with the understanding that his vote should be decisive. Then it was that Gomez de Rojas rose to the height of the occasion. He ascertained secretly that this missing citizen was in favor of abandoning Santiago and would so declare himself. Determined to forestall and to prevent such a decision and thus to save the town, Rojas immediately ordered the clergy to celebrate mass next morning. He ordered the town authorities to put all the remaining buildings in order for occupancy and to repair those which had been damaged. He ordered every man in town to appear at the church that morning, ready for any action which might be needed. He ordered the Town Council to meet as usual the next day. He ordered the market to be opened at once, and artisans to get to work and the Indians to burn the bodies of the Frenchmen who had been killed in battle, and in brief he ordered everybody in Santiago to get to work to rehabilitate the town. The sheer energy of this one strong man carried the day, and Santiago arose from its ruins larger and more important than ever before, though it was never again to be the capital of all Cuba. Havana had already for several years been practically, though without full authority, the capital of the Island. The formal and authoritative change was made a few years later, in 1589. During the administration of Governor Luzan there was some renewed interest in copper mining in Cuba, although the wealth of the island in that metal was not yet appreciated. In 1580 what was supposed to be an immensely rich mine was discovered, but it proved to be a mere "pocket" of limited extent. That disappointment, together with the cost of transportation from the neighborhood of Santiago to Havana for shipment, discouraged further efforts for a time. But in May, 1587, after inspection of the Cobre mine, near Santiago, the Governor reported to the Spanish government: "There is so much metal, and the mines are so numerous, that they could supply the world with copper." Comparatively little was done, however, until 1599, when effective work was begun at El Cobre. The ore was conveyed to Havana for smelting and casting, and on the site of the present Maestranza Building there was established a foundry where copper was cast into both cannon and kettles. CHAPTER XXII It is an interesting circumstance that what threatened to be a great disaster to Cuba proved in fact to be one of the greatest blessings that the Island had enjoyed since the Spanish settlement. We have already seen how great an alarm was caused at Havana and throughout Cuba by the threatened attack of the British under Sir Francis Drake and how fine a degree of public spirit and unity among all classes was thereby inspired. The threatened attack did not occur, and it was many years before an actual British conquest or even invasion of the Island was effected. But the lessons learned in that period of agitation and after were not speedily forgotten, either in Cuba or in Spain. Therefore, a much larger degree of public spirit and of unity prevailed in the Island, among the Government officers and among the people, while the Spanish crown was awakened to a fuller realization than ever before of the value of Cuba and the imperative necessity of defending the Island if the integrity of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere was to be maintained. It was then that Philip II began to appreciate Cuba as the bulwark of the West Indies and of the City of Havana, its capital, as the key to the New World. Hitherto Cuba had been nothing but a stepping stone between Spain on the one hand and Mexico, Darien and Florida on the other; and Havana was merely a convenient base of operations and a port of call. But now the immense strategical importance of Havana was realized, while the value of the Island, in its products of copper, wood, sugar, hides and other commodities, was appreciated. Governor Luzan administered the affairs of Cuba until the end of March, 1589. On that day he was succeeded by Juan de Tejada, a Field Marshal of the Spanish Army. He was selected by the King chiefly because of his military experience and knowledge, and he was the first of the line of governors of Cuba to be known as Captain-General. In him were merged both the civil and the military authority of the Island, so that there would no longer be any such friction as had prevailed between Luzan and Quiñones. Tejada was speedily commissioned by the King to make plans for the fortification of Cuba and also of the other important islands of the Spanish West Indies. He was accordingly accompanied on his coming to Cuba by one of the most distinguished Italian engineers of that age, Juan Bautista Antonelli. Together they surveyed the port of Havana, the port of San Juan in Porto Rico, and that of Carthagena in Colombia and planned powerful defenses for them all. There fortifications were in fact constructed under the direction of Antonelli and to this day bear impressive testimony to his skill. His first attention was paid, most properly, to Havana. Already there had been constructed temporary fortifications at La Punta and El Morro, and also a camp more of observation than of defense at San Lazaro Cove, probably where the Queen's battery stood in later years. Both Captain-General Tejada and Antonelli were quick to see the importance of the Punta and Morro fortifications and to approve those headlands as the sites of the most powerful fortifications of Havana. Plans were accordingly made for extensive masonry forts at both those places, and these were approved and very prompt execution ordered by the King. Funds for the work were obtained from Mexico, from which source also appropriations were received for the maintenance of La Fuerza with its garrison of 300 men. The work of Antonelli in Cuba was by no means confined, however, to military engineering. He laid out and constructed a number of roads, including some which are to this day principal streets of Havana and its suburbs. He also constructed a dam across the Chorrera River and an aqueduct by means of which an ample water supply was conveyed to Havana and distributed through the city. For by this time it must be understood Havana was rapidly growing into a populous and prosperous community and was already the assured metropolis of the Island and indeed one of the three or four chief centres of Spanish civilization and authority in the western world. It was during the administration of Tejada that the technical legal title of "City" was conferred upon Havana, and the place received the grant of a coat-of-arms. Its escutcheon bore the emblems of a crown, underneath it in a blue field three silver fortresses, emblematic of La Fuerza, La Punta and El Morro, and finally a golden key symbolic of Havana's importance as the key of the western world. The administration of Tejada lasted a little more than five years and was marked with almost unbroken peace, prosperity and progress. The new fortifications of Havana were not all completed in that time, but they were carried far toward completion and the work upon them was marked with no such difficulties and complications as had been the bane of La Fuerza. The one exception to the rule of peace and harmony which prevailed during the administration of Captain-General Tejada was a controversy with Bishop Salcedo, who was then in charge of the diocese. Because of some differences of policy concerning the finances of the colony and the church, Salcedo bitterly criticised Tejada and even cast unfavorable reflections upon his integrity, which we must regard as unwarranted. To these attacks, however, Tejada gave little or no attention, and the peace of Cuba was therefore not materially disturbed by the incident. It seems probable that the Bishop desired larger revenues than the straitened condition of Cuban affairs made possible. Tejada indeed almost exhausted the pecuniary resources of the island in the prosecution of the much-needed works of fortification, road building, and what not, and also drew heavily upon his own private funds. He was saved from more serious embarrassment by the arrival of a treasure fleet from Vera Cruz, which enabled him to discharge all obligations and to place a fund of 120,000 ducats in the insular treasury for future needs. At this period, it is interesting to recall, the salary of the Governor, or Captain-General, was only 2,000 pesos a year, that of the Alcalde of El Morro was 6,600 reales, that of the Alcalde of La Punta was 4,400 reales, and that of the Sergeant-Mayor was 2,700 reales. The total yearly budget of the island was about 100,000 pesos. It is gratifying to know that Tejada's fine services were appreciated by the royal government. His insistent resignation was accepted in April, 1595, with sincere regret, and he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. James and was placed in charge of the castle and district of La Barlete, at Naples. Tejada's successor, the second Captain-General of Cuba, was Juan Maldonado Barrionuevo, who took office in July, 1594. This distinguished servant of the crown had been an equerry to the Queen of Spain and Treasurer of the Invincible Armada which had come to grief a few years before in the Narrow Seas. He was also a Knight of the Military Order of St. James. Having had, while with the Armada, a taste of Drake's quality, and learning that that formidable commander was meditating another descent upon Cuba he gave his first and best attention to hastening the completion of the fortifications of Havana. Drake was indeed at that very time in Spanish-American waters planning disaster to every seaport within reach, but disagreement between himself and other officers of the fleet made the entire expedition a failure and led, probably, to the death of Drake himself in 1595. Learning of Drake's death Maldonado sent out an expedition to attack the British fleet as it was returning from Darien and succeeded in capturing one of its vessels and putting the others to flight near the Isle of Pines. This triumph over the much feared British fleet caused great rejoicing throughout Cuba and immensely encouraged the Government and the people in their hope of making a successful stand against British aggressions. Despite the growth and importance of Havana it must be remembered that at this time that city was still in a very primitive condition. The great majority of the houses were still built of cedar or pine boards with thatched roofs. They were so scattered, even in the heart of the city, that it was possible to have gardens and orchards around them. There were some houses of substantial masonry two or three stories in height. And the rich cedar, mahogany and other woods native to Cuba made it possible to finish and furnish them in very rich style. The houses of the rich were lighted with lamps of bronze or other metal, generally fed with olive oil, and those of the poor with candles made of suet. The streets were unlighted save by an occasional lantern at the entrance to some house. And they were so infested not only with stray dogs but with vagabonds and ruffians that it was unsafe for citizens to go abroad after dark without an armed guard. Social and domestic customs, which had at first been kept after those of Spain itself, by this time began to have an individuality suited to the circumstances and conditions of life on the Island. It was the custom to have the chief meal of the day at noon and a lighter supper quite late in the evening, probably between eight and ten o'clock. It is interesting to record that during the administration of Maldonado occurred the first theatrical performance in the history of Cuba. This was on the night of St. John, in the year 1599, and the performance took place in honor of the Captain-General in the great hall of the military barracks. It is recorded that on assembling the audience was so noisy that it was impossible to begin the performance until threats had been made of serious physical punishment. Despite this vexatious incident the people were so delighted with the performance that when it came to an end they unanimously clamored for its repetition although by this time it was one o'clock in the morning. The sugar industry was now rising to great importance, especially in the vicinity of Havana and thence toward Matanzas. The largest of all the sugar mills in the Island was that founded by Anton Recia at Guaicanama, now known as Regla. In 1588 a royal decree was issued bestowing upon the sugar mills of Cuba the same favor that was formerly granted to those of Hispaniola, namely, the exemption of the buildings, machinery, negro slaves and in fact all other property from seizure or attachment for debt. The sugar plantations were somewhat hampered at this time by lack of labor, and on that account the importation of negro slaves was encouraged and hundreds were brought in every year. In fact, negro slavery was by this time fully established as the principal reliance of the industries of the island. It was recognized that Cuba was a land of inestimable wealth, particularly in agriculture. Stock raising was the chief industry, but sugar growing was rising in importance, while the production of honey and wax was also a widespread and highly lucrative occupation. Of all industries sugar growing was the most laborious and called, therefore, for the greatest number of slaves. Each mill required from eighty to a hundred workmen. Strangely enough, while the royal government strove in some ways to encourage and stimulate the sugar industry, it persisted in hampering it, at any rate in Cuba, in the matter of slave labor. As far back as 1556 a decree fixed the maximum price at which slaves might be sold in the island at one hundred ducats, or about seventy pesos. Yet at the same time the price fixed for slaves in Venezuela was one hundred and ten ducats, and in Mexico one hundred and twenty ducats. The result was inevitable. Slaves were sent to Venezuela and Mexico rather than to Cuba; or the best were sent thither and the poorest to the island. This was only one of a number of eccentricities of government, which suggested a persistent and inexplicable tendency to discriminate against Cuba in favor of the other colonies. Against such purblind policies the ablest administrators and the most enterprising planters and merchants struggled to little avail. It was a splendid achievement for the engineer Antonelli in 1586 to tap the Almendares River, west of Havana, with a system of canals and aqueducts, and thus bring an abundant supply of fresh water into Havana. In so doing he not merely provided the capital with one of the prime necessities of life, but he also made Havana the centre of the sugar industry. For it was along these artificial watercourses that the first sugar mills were erected and operated. But this availed little while there was persistent discrimination against Cuba to a degree that kept the island without a tithe of the labor which was needed for the development of its resources. We cannot, of course, approve the slave trade, or argue that it should have been followed to a greater extent than it was. But if it was to exist at all, and Spain was willing and indeed determined that it should, justice and economic reason required that it should exist as freely in Cuba as in the neighboring colonies. CHAPTER XXIII The character of the European nations whose navigators and explorers had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and had opened to the bewildered gaze of the Old World a vista of unlimited possibilities in the New, underwent a great change during the seventeenth century. Acclaimed as national achievements, adding new lustre to national glory, these discoveries at first only stimulated patriotism and became an incentive to national effort. But as Spain and Portugal which had given to the world those men with the large vision and the undaunted courage, awakened to the importance of their exploits and began to see them from the angles of political and economic advantages, the desire to restrict those advantages to their own use became so powerful, that consideration for the interests of other nations was ignored. The spirit of imperialistic expansion was roused and demanded no less than a monopoly of the traffic and trade of the world. With this end in view the two countries adopted a protectionist policy and imposed restrictions upon mariners and merchants of other nations that in time became intolerable. The government of Spain forbade its colonists in Spanish America to receive European merchandise from any but Spanish ports, which in turn enabled Spanish exporters to demand unreasonable prices. This was resented by many colonists, and they were willing to deal with smugglers who sold this merchandise at a lower price or exchanged it for the produce of the colonies, especially for hides and sugar. The governors of Santo Domingo were among the first in the colonies to take steps against this trade. They fitted out small vessels, which they called Guardacostas, coastguards, and had them patrol all along the coast. If they succeeded in capturing the smugglers, they proceeded against them with little ceremony. They were either thrown overboard or hanged. This summary process having stirred in the smugglers the spirit of vindictiveness, they organized for concerted action, determined to resist what they considered unwarranted severity and cruelty. They began to group into fleets, and openly invaded the coasts, burning, plundering, marauding and killing. They looked about for suitable places where to establish settlements of their own that could be used as bases of operation in the neighborhood. Hispaniola or Hayti, where the natives had been almost exterminated and which by misgovernment was nearly deserted, invited them. Herds of cattle and swine were running wild about the island and offered not only valuable provisions for themselves, but promised to become marketable commodities. Some French smugglers settled there, killed the cattle and swine, smoked the beef and salted the pork, and opened a remunerative trade with visiting sailors in these commodities as also in tallow and hides. The Indians of the island called smoked beef "boucan"; hence these traders were called boucaniers which was anglicized into buccaneers. In a similar way the English freebooter was by the French corrupted into flibustier and later came back to us as filibuster. At first the term boucanier was limited to the smugglers and traders in smoked beef living on land, while the flibustier was applied to the smuggler and trader living on board of a ship. But later these nice distinctions were ignored and the names applied indiscriminately to smugglers, freebooters and pirates. Whatever term one chose to apply to them, these Brethren of the Coast and outlaws of the oceans became almost a recognized institution of the century when rival European powers were fighting for supremacy in the New World and were unanimously arrayed against Spain. There were among them recruits from almost all nations, classes and professions. There were bankrupt shopkeepers, discharged soldiers, runaway convicts, thieves and murderers, vagabonds and adventurers and many a black sheep of good family under an assumed name. A large proportion was attracted by the possibility of getting hold of some of the unlimited treasures of gold and silver which the New World was said to hold. For the reports that had been spread by the participants in the early expeditions, not always limited to natives of Spain and Portugal, were so fairy-like that the classic tale of the Argonauts paled into insignificance beside them. It is reported that a noted French freebooter who had joined the pirates as a runaway debtor, hoped in this way to secure enough to pay off his debts. An equally large number consisted of men who in that period of adventure were seized with an insatiable desire for roving about the world, free from all fetters of conventional life. The attitude of England, France and Holland against Spain was so hostile, that whenever one of these powers was at war with Spain, these outlaws were granted the rights of belligerents. Mariner-warriors, prepared to defend themselves and to attack by force, they became a mercenary navy at the service of any power that happened to be at war with Spain. At bottom of this united effort, which at the end resulted in ruining the overseas commerce of Spain, was the opposition against its restrictions of the navigation and commerce of other countries. Bancroft who is referred to by Pedro J. Guiteras in his "Historia de la isla de Cuba" says in the first volume of his "History of the United States" (p. 163) "The moral sense of mariners revolted at the extravagance; since forfeiture, imprisonment, and the threat of eternal woe were to follow the attempt at the fair exchanges of trade; since the freebooter and the pirate could not suffer more than menaced against the merchant who should disregard the maritime monopoly, the seas became infested by reckless buccaneers, the natural offspring of colonial restrictions. Rich Spanish settlements in America were pillaged; fleets attacked and captured; predatory invasions were even made on land to intercept the loads of gold, as they came from the mines, by men who might have acquired honor and wealth in commerce, if commerce had been permitted." John Fiske, too, in the second volume of his "Historical Essays," dwells upon the causes of the enormous development of piracy in the seventeenth century. Speaking of the struggle of the Netherlands and England against the greatest military power of the world, he said that the former had to rely largely and the latter almost exclusively, upon naval operations, and continued: "Dutch ships on the Indian Ocean and English ships off the American coasts effectually cut the Spaniard's sinews of war. Now in that age ocean navigation was still in its infancy, and the work of creating great and permanent navies was only beginning. Government was glad to have individuals join in the work of building and equipping ships of war, and it was accordingly natural that individuals should expect to reimburse themselves for the heavy risk and expense by taking a share in the spoils of victory. In this way privateering came into existence and it played a much more extensive part in maritime warfare than it now does. The navy was but incompletely nationalized. Into expeditions that were strictly military in purpose there entered some of the elements of a commercial speculation, and as we read them with our modern ideas we detect the smack of buccaneering." England in dealing leniently with these buccaneers sailing under her flag, argued that since the gold and silver carried from America to Spain in Spanish ships was used to defray the expenses of a war which threatened her, English mariners were justified in capturing these vessels and seizing such treasures. But there is little doubt that by this interpretation the doors were opened wide to all sorts of trickery and outrage, carried on regardless whether the countries under whose flags both captors and captured sailed were at the time at war or at peace. Thus the naval and commercial restrictions, which Spain imposed upon other countries, proved at the end a boomerang, which did irreparable loss to Spain itself. For the long war with England had greatly weakened Spanish power and when the peace of 1604 was concluded, the once so powerful country was visibly entering upon its downward path. Philip II, called the Great, had left a son, Philip III, who had neither the personality nor the ability to continue his famous father's policy of imperialism. Before long it was found that the naval power had sunk from the proud Armada which had challenged England in the time of Queen Elizabeth to no more than thirteen galleys. Ship-building practically ceased. To bring the tobacco crop from Havana to Spain, French and British vessels had to be hired. Nothing was done to keep up the military strength of the kingdom which had once ranked as Europe's greatest military power and had as such been feared by other nations. The army was composed either of inexperienced youths or of nerveless old men. The magazines and arsenals stood empty. With no ships patrolling the seas and protecting the coasts, the predatory outlaws of the ocean, sailing under various flags, soon recognized in the Spanish overseas possessions a territory which upon slight effort promised to yield rich booty. Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica and other West Indian Islands were repeatedly ravaged by them. They established settlements on St. Christopher's Island, called St. Kitts, and on one of the Bahamas, and from these bases carried on their destructive operations. Notwithstanding the great progress which navigation had made during the previous century, news between the Eastern and the Western continent traveled slowly. This proved a serious drawback to an efficient management of the colonies which European powers had established in America. It was responsible for a great deal of confusion and for the dilatory policy which characterized the government of the Spanish West Indies. Communication between the mother country and Cuba was so irregular and unreliable that Philip III, the new king, was not proclaimed in Cuba until the spring of the year 1599. Yet at no time was the fate of the island more closely linked with that of Spain, whose decline profoundly affected Cuba's political and economic conditions during the seventeenth century. In that most critical period for Spain, when the fate of the Kingdom passed from the hands of Philip the Great into those of his incapable successor, Cuba had the good fortune of being under the administration of strong and able governors. D. Juan Maldonado Barrienuevo, who entered upon his office in the year 1596, did a great deal towards the improvement of the capital, starting the erection of a government house and a public prison. He recognized the great value of sugar as one of the staple products of the island and by every measure possible encouraged the cultivation of sugar cane. He obtained from the King special exemptions and privileges for the builders and owners of sugar mills. He was the first to construct that of Vicente Santa Maria in Fuente de Chaves. Sugar was at that time sold at fabulous prices. A cargo of sugar of inferior quality brought in Seville as much as twelve pesos per arroba (twenty-five pounds). The importation of and traffic in African negroes who were set to work on the sugar plantations was inseparable from this industry which henceforth became the chief source of Cuba's wealth. But Maldonado, too, had troubles with the pirates. As the two galleys in the port were known to be absolutely useless, the pirates approached almost within cannon-shot of the place. The administration of D. Pedro de Valdes, Ensign (alfevez major) of the Order of Santiago and nephew of the famous admiral of that name, began most auspiciously. He was appointed successor of Maldonado in 1602. A worthy heir of his uncle's glory, he started for his post from San Lucas with a galleon and a galizabra (vessel used in the Levantine trade) on the seventeenth of April. On his voyage he captured an enemy vessel, sailed bravely through a Dutch squadron and sank three of their ships in the port of Santo Domingo. After putting to flight a horde of smugglers that swarmed about the coasts of Cuba, he cast anchor in Havana on the nineteenth of July, 1602. Valdes immediately set out to improve the artillery of the fortifications, and even to superintend the casting of the cannon. Within the short space of two years he succeeded in providing the port of Havana with eighty pieces of good quality and various calibre, most of which had been cast in the capital itself. Frequent changes of administration had not only hampered the initiative of minor functionaries and opened the door to official malpractice of miscellaneous nature, but had also perceptibly weakened authority. Valdes was determined to re-enforce it and by his energy and rectitude brought upon himself the hatred of those elements who had encouraged disorder. At the end his only loyal supporter was Friar Juan Cabezas de Altamirano, who had succeeded Salcedo in the bishopric of Santiago. But Valdes did not mind the hostility, which was more or less openly manifested towards his government, and continued his untiring efforts in defense of Spanish interests and policies. The steadily increasing wealth of these colonies excited the covetousness of the pirates and buccaneers. Realizing the necessity of taking defensive action against them, Valdes armed a few vessels, which under the command of his son, D. Fernando, cruised about and succeeded in capturing several ships. In one of these encounters Valdes was wounded, but he pursued his policy undauntedly. He was also successful in his campaign against smuggling which had extensively developed, especially in Bayamo, whither he sent as his deputy the licentiate Melchior Suarez to inquire into the state of things. The depredations committed by the pirates at this time were so serious that the safety of the inhabitants was imperilled. The population of Santiago seems to have been especially singled out to be harassed by the outlaws. They set fire to the cathedral and other churches of the town, robbed them of the precious vessels and vestments and committed other outrages. Terror-stricken, the inhabitants fled to neighboring towns or hid in the country. The city faced gradual depopulation. Even the Bishop D. Friu Juan de las Cabezas and some of the government officials withdrew to Bayamo, which, for a time at least, offered safety. But in the year 1604 even the roads in the vicinity of Bayamo were no longer safe for travelers. When the bishop was on a tour of visitation in the neighborhood, in company with the canons Francisco Pueblo and Diego Sanchez, a horde of pirates under the leadership of the notorious Giron surprised him at the stock farm of Yara. They tied him and took him barefoot to Mazanillo, where one of their bilanders (sloops) was anchored. They kept him on board their vessel for the period of eighty days, expecting the authorities of the town to present themselves and offer an enormous sum as ransom. The name of Gregorio Ramos is inscribed in the annals of the island as the bishop's deliverer. It was an undertaking calling for unusual cleverness and courage and Ramos acquitted himself most brilliantly. He bravely faced the redoubtable Giron and rescued the bishop by paying a ransom of two hundred ducats, one thousand skins and one hundred arrobas (twenty-five pounds of sixteen ounces each) of jerked beef. After having brought the prelate into security, he returned with a force of valiant men and attacked the pirates. He succeeded in destroying the whole horde and even in killing their leader Giron, whose head was triumphantly carried on the point of a lance to Bayamo, where it was exhibited in the market-place. The growth of the island which then numbered from eighteen to twenty thousand inhabitants was greatly hampered by such invasions. Santiago offering so little safety, the bishop ventured to suggest the removal of the cathedral to Havana; but the plan was found impracticable and never carried out. In time, however, the prelates began to ignore the disapproval of the government and to install themselves in Havana. Other members of the ecclesiastical cabildo (chapter) followed their example and also left Santiago. Governor Valdes, in accord with the ayuntamento, demonstrated to the king the pitiful state of the island and urged as an indispensable necessity the stationing of a permanent fleet in Cuban waters. Only in this way did it seem possible to check the increasing pirate menace which was paralyzing commerce and arresting the progress of the island. But the royal government at Madrid, weak and helpless in the hands of an incapable sovereign, lacked stability and strength to cope with the unrest and confusion that gradually set in. The inadequate fortifications and insufficient garrison had left the coast of Cuba almost without defense. Knowledge of these conditions had spread among the corsairs prowling about and awaiting an opportunity to descend upon the unprotected population and made them more and more audacious. Philip III, a weak though humane ruler, had transferred the reigns of government to his favorite, the Duke of Lerma. But procrastination seems to have been one of the permanent features in the Spanish kingdom's management of her American possessions, and little was done to insure her safety. At last the king heeded the clamorous appeals of the authorities representing his loyal but unfortunate subjects in Cuba and ordered some timely steps to be taken. Royal letters patent of October eighth, 1607, arrived from Madrid. In order to safeguard the interests of the inhabitants they decreed that the island be divided into two districts, an eastern and a western, with separate jurisdiction, and Havana and Santiago as their respective capitals. The governor of Havana retained the title of Captain-General of the island, but his general jurisdiction was reduced to the territory between Cape San Antonio and eighty leagues east of the capital. The governor of Santiago was named Capitan de Guerra (chief military authority) with a salary of one thousand eight hundred pesos and jurisdiction over the rest of the island including Puerto Principe. The governor and military commander were to remain in Havana, this being the most important district. As governor of Santiago was appointed Juan de Villaverde, a Castilian from the Morro. He was charged with the defense of the place against pirates and other enemies disturbing the peace of the island and impeding its economic and social development. This division caused innumerable difficulties and conflicts of authority and Valdes had reasons to object to it. He had established order in the Treasury and other branches of the administration, and he feared that the new order might bring new confusion. In the meantime his energy and rectitude caused the plots and intrigues spun by his enemies to multiply to such an extent that they succeeded in reaching the ear of the Spanish Audiencia. Valdes and his deputy Suarez were indicted, but on proving their innocence triumphed over their slanderers by being reinstated in authority. Then the Audiencia reversed the trial by order of the Court, and the calumniators were convicted and sentenced to various penalties. But Valdes once more manifested his noble character by joining the Bishop in an appeal to the King to pardon the convicted men. Soon after he retired from his office. The court of Spain, represented by the Duke of Lerma, who towards the end of his career succeeded in adding to this title that of a cardinal, seemed at this period to be deeply concerned with the religious life of Cuba. This is apparent during the governorship of Don Gaspar Luis Pereda, Knight of the military order of Santiago, who was inaugurated on the sixteenth of June, 1608. Don Juan de Villaverde y Oceta was appointed to the governorship of Santiago. Monastic orders had acquired much land on the island and established their homes. There were at that time six convents in Cuba; three in Havana, of the order of San Franciscus, San Domingo and San Augustin, one of mercenarios, of the order of la Merced in Trinidad, and two others of the Franciscan order in Santiago and Bayamo. The government of Cuba was instructed by royal decree to inquire into and superintend the establishment of the convent of St. Augustine, then in process of erection in Havana. The excellent bishop Cabezas, who had so signally distinguished himself during the preceding administration, was in the year 1610 promoted to the bishopric of Guatemala. He was replaced by the Carmelite padre Don Alfonso Enriquez de Almendariz, who immediately made efforts to have the king remove his episcopal seat to Havana. This caused serious disputes between the bishop and Governor Pereda, who sent the king a report disapproving of this removal. The conflict between the two culminated in the excommunication of Pereda by the bishop. The administration of his successor, Don Sancho de Alquiza, former governor of Venezuela and Guyana, was brief. He was inaugurated on the seventh of September, 1616, and died on the sixth of June, 1619. He was much interested in the economic development of Cuba, promoted the development of sugar industry, encouraged the employment of negroes on the plantations. His efforts to exploit the mineral wealth of the island were also commendable. He placed the supervision of the copper mines under the direction of the military government and the work proceeded most promisingly. The copper extracted was of superior quality and two thousand quintals of the metal were annually exported to Spain. The sudden death of Alquiza led to much agitation due to the violent spirit of rivalry between the auditor Don Diego Vallizo and the Castellan of the Morro, Geronimo del Quero, who aspired to the governorship. A great calamity occurred in Havana during this interim administration. On the twenty-second of April, 1620, a fire broke out and assumed such disastrous proportions, that two hundred homes were destroyed and the growth of the city was for a time seriously crippled. The dangers that beset the development of Cuba were rapidly multiplying instead of diminishing. Frequent change of administration was not calculated to insure efficiency and stability in the management of the island's affairs. Enterprises begun under one governor were interrupted under the next. Sometimes the original plan was essentially changed and entirely abandoned. A striking example of this sad state of affairs was furnished during the third decade of the seventeenth century. Don Francisco Venegas was inaugurated as governor on the fourteenth of August, 1620. He had been charged with the organization of a war fleet for the protection of the coast from invasions by pirates and freebooters. For that purpose he had brought with him some vessels. They came at an opportune moment for British and Dutch hookers had been roving in West Indian waters. The vessels of the Cuban armadilla under Vazquez de Montiel defeated these intruders at the Island of Tortuga, captured three of them and put their crews to the sword. But joy over this victory was offset by the epidemic of malignant fever which broke out and raged among the population. Another great loss to Spain was occasioned by the hurricane which in the following year sank on the reefs of Los Martires several vessels of the fleet that had been sent by Marquis de Cadreyta, D. Lope Diaz Armendiarez, and were returning to Spain with great riches. Governor Venegas had in obedience to instructions from his government armed an esquadron, for the maintenance of which he had imposed upon the people a special tax. But on his death, on the eighteenth of April, 1624, it was found that the work on the fleet was far from complete, and in spite of the constant menace of invasion by pirates, nothing was heard of a resumption of the task during the governorship of his successors. The political governor who temporarily assumed the reigns of the administration was D. Damian Velasquez de Contreras, assisted by Juan Esquiro Saavedra as military governor. During their interimistic rule a prison was built and a new monastery established. The successor nominated in the place of Venegas in the year 1624 was the Governor of Cartagena, Don Garcia Giron, who, however, resigned on the twentieth of July of the same year. During the interim occasioned by his resignation the names of Esquival Aranda and de Riva-Martiz are mentioned in connection with the management of the island's affairs. There finally arrived from Spain D. Lorenzo de Cabrera, a native of Ubeda, corregido of Cadiz, field-marshal and Knight of the Order of Santiago. He was duly installed in his office on the sixteenth of September, 1626. In the command of the Morro Esquival was replaced by Captain Cristobal de Arranda and in the government of Santiago Rodrigo de Velasco was succeeded by Captain D. Pedro de Fonseca. During the administration of Cabrera, Cuba was agitated by many exciting occurrences. Cabrera and the Marquis de Cadreyta, who commanded the fleet that had brought him to Havana, made a thorough inspection of the fortifications in order to report on their condition and propose improvements. Among the most urgent Cabrera considered the manufacture of a copper chain to shut off the entrance to the two forts; he also had an intrenchment constructed capable of sheltering two companies. The plan to block the entrance of the port with trunks of trees in order to prevent pirates from making an entry, seems, however, to have been somewhat quixotic. As Spain was then at war with the United Provinces, Cabrera provided for possible contingencies by furnishing the forts with large stores of provisions and took other measures to prepare for eventual attacks by the enemy. These preparations proved to be only too justified. For the Dutch had fitted out an expedition against the Spanish possessions in America. In June of that year there appeared a fleet of more than thirty vessels with three thousand men, commanded by Pit Hein, one of the most famous mariners of his time. The Dutch had several encounters with the Spanish fleet and were compelled to retire from Havana, which they had tried to enter. They gained some advantages over the armada commanded by Don Juan de Benavides, but in the following year the Spaniards inflicted great losses upon the Dutch fleet commanded by Cornelius Fels, driving him back from Havana and capturing one of his frigates. A little pamphlet published or printed by Heinrich Mellort Jano in Amsterdam in 1628 gives the Dutch version of the expedition of Pit Hein. It is entitled "Ausführlicher Bericht wie es der Silber Flotille herganger wann (durch wen wie und wie viel) solcherin diesem 1628. Jahr Erobert fort und eingebracht." Therein is related with much detail how the West India Company, recognizing the rich booty which the capture of Spanish ships promised, had furnished and fitted out a fleet and manned it with a crew of brave and hearty sailors and soldiers, with the avowed purpose of intercepting a silver-laden fleet returning from the colonies to Spain. The Dutch set out on the twentieth of May, 1628, under the command of General Petri Peters Heyn and Admiral Heinrich Corneli Lang. The Dutch reached San Antonio on the west end of Cuba on the fourth of August. Their arrival became known to the Spaniards and on the twenty-third of that month Governor Cabrera dispatched some vessels to warn the silver fleet. General Peters Heyn sailed close up to the fortifications of Havana and then turned three or four miles out to sea to meet the treasure-laden ships, which his informers had reported to be sailing in that neighborhood, but south winds drove him northeast. Finally on the eighth of September the famous fleet hove in sight, and the Dutch captured nine vessels, and seeing eight more, sailed briskly out to cut them off from the port of Havana. The Spaniards arrived at Matanzas Bay, hotly pursued by the Dutch, and immediately organized a defensive. But they were outnumbered in the combat which ensued and laid down their arms. The Dutch General and his staff offered thanks to the Almighty for this great victory. The next day the ships were all secured fast by chains, and the third day the booty was unloaded from the Spanish and transferred to the Dutch ships. There were bars of silver, crosses, chalices, other vessels and art objects fashioned out of silver, in all weighing eighteen thousand four hundred pounds. The Dutch started on their home voyage on the seventeenth of September and took with them four Spanish galleons, two laden with skins and two with iron and other ore. On the twenty-sixth they reached Bermuda and sent two couriers to Holland to report to the directors of the West India Company. The first reached Rotterdam on the fifteenth of November and received from the Prince of Orange as reward for the good news a jewelled gold chain. To the story of the expedition is added a detailed account of the goods carried by the individual ships, which shows that they also brought dye-stuffs, oil, wine, silks, furniture and other merchandise which with the silver, other ore and skins brought the total value up to thirty millions, presumably of Dutch gulden. In the meantime there sailed from Cadiz an imposing squadron under the command of the Marquis de Valdueza and carrying as second in command the celebrated mariner D. Antonio de Oquendo. The object of the expedition was to clear the coasts of the islands of all the pirates which had begun to infest the Antilles. Off Nelson's Island, or Nevis, so called by Columbus in 1493 because the cloud-veiled summit of its highest peak reminded him of snow, they captured four Dutch corsairs in a violent combat from which the island suffered seriously. In September the Spanish fleet sailed for the island of San Cristobal, and obtained possession of the fortifications of Charles and Richelieu, compelling the French filibusters who were garrisoned there to surrender. These brilliant exploits had within the brief space of eight weeks placed the Spaniards in possession of two thousand three hundred prisoners, one hundred and seventy-three pieces of artillery, seven vessels and a great quantity of arms, powder and tobacco. Besides losing the islands the pirates suffered a loss of property to the amount of fifty million pesos. For a time the Antilles and surrounding sea enjoyed freedom from the menace that had hung over them and disturbed their tranquillity for so many years. But in spite of these successes Cabrera was unpopular. By permitting a cargo of negroes to be sold in Havana he had called forth heated discussion in official circles and among the people. Not a few voices were heard to question his honesty. Other charges, some of a grave nature, were raised against him and an investigation was demanded. In response to the island's urgent request the Court of Madrid sent Don Francisco de Praga, prosecutor of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, to Cuba, with instructions to inquire into the state of things. The charges being proved, Cabrera was removed from office on the seventh of October, 1630, and taken to Spain for trial. He died in Seville in a dungeon. De Praga acted as provisional political governor, and the Alcalde of the Morro, Cristobal de Arranda, as military governor until the successor of Cabrera arrived from Spain. CHAPTER XXIV Spain was at this time gradually working her defection, political and economic. Philip III. had died in 1621 and, as he had thrown the responsibilities of the government upon the shoulders of the Duke of Lerma, so his successor, Philip IV., left them to his favorite Olivares. Olivares immediately renewed the war with the United Provinces, which were still a thorn in the flesh of Spain, for, on being freed from the Spanish yoke, they had plunged into feverish activity which portended their development into a maritime and mercantile power bound in due time to rival and surpass Spain. The Dutch were by the nature of their country obliged to seek their means of subsistence upon the sea and in far-off regions. Their famous son, Hugo Grotius, had been the first to proclaim the freedom of the seas as an indispensable condition to the growth and progress of the world's civilization. Since Lisbon had closed her ports to the Netherlands and Spain was imposing a series of unreasonable restrictions upon the navigators of other countries, the Dutch had for some time past been determined to discover a passage by which their ships could penetrate the seas of Asia. Dutch mariners who had been in the employ of the Spaniards and Portuguese and had shared in their voyages of discovery, had brought home tales of the strange lands and stranger peoples, which stirred the imagination of the ambitious and capable nation. The unknown continents and islands stimulated the scholars' desire for investigation and research. Exaggerated reports about the mineral wealth and other treasures of the New World had roused the merchants' spirit of enterprise and acquisition. As visions of the riches that awaited development in those foreign climes, and of territories they might once call their own, rose before the minds of these merchant princes and lords of the sea, the thirst of conquest quickened in this sturdy seafaring people. Step by step the Dutch followed the discoveries and explorations of the Spaniards, and recorded and described them minutely. From the middle of the sixteenth century on the publishing houses of Amsterdam, Leyden and other centers of the printing trade of the country sent out books dealing with the new continent conquered by their enemy, and especially the West Indies. Stirred by this reading, the spirit of the people rose and demanded a share in the lands and the wealth which their mariners had helped to discover. There was an abundance of unemployed labor and capital in the country. Hence the government, knowing only too well that the future of the Dutch people lay on the seas, encouraged this spirit and deliberated upon numerous plans of exploration and colonization. The first step towards a realization of these plans was taken when a charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company, which gave that organization the exclusive right to commerce beyond the Cape of Good Hope on the one side and the Straits of Magellan on the other side. As it recalled similarly privileged institutions in feudal times, when the rights of the classes engaged in trade and industry had to be protected against violation by noble lords, more properly called robber barons, the ideal this company represented appealed to the people. Statesmen of other countries realized its advantages and the Dutch East India Company became the model for the great trade corporations which eventually sprang up in France and England. But the East alone could not engage all the forces of the active little country. The tales of the sailors and the books about the Western Hemisphere made the people look more and more longingly towards the continent and the islands across the Atlantic. There unlimited opportunities beckoned; there was an outlet for their energies. But unfortunately the Spaniards had long before this established their claims in that continent and the men at the helm of the Dutch government were determined to keep peace with Spain. Although Holland's great pioneer of the "freedom of the seas," Hugo Grotius, refers in his writings to the great plans upon which the Dutch were deliberating at the time when Captain John Smith sailed for Virginia, no step was taken in that direction until two years after the founding of Jamestown. The voyage of Henry Hudson up the river that bears his name, and the eventual establishment of the colony called Nieuw Amsterdam, did not conflict with any Spanish interests and opened the eyes of the enterprising people to other possibilities in the vast new continent. Before long the ships of the little confederacy were found in many harbors all along the Atlantic coast. They discovered some little islands in the West Indies, which the Spaniards had not found worth while to colonize, because their rocky structure was prohibitive to cultivation. So they did not hesitate to anchor their ships in the inlets of these islands and finally made them a center of contraband traffic with the continent. The States-General of Holland still hesitated to grant a charter to the long-projected West India Company. But they found means to open to private enterprise almost unrestricted facilities for operation. On the twenty-seventh of March, 1614, they enacted a measure giving private individuals an exclusive privilege for four successive voyages to any passage, harbor or country they should hereafter find. This gave a powerful impetus to the enterprise of Dutch mariners and merchants, and also to adventurers of divers nationality. Finally on the third of June, 1621, the Dutch West India Company received a charter for twenty-four years with privilege of renewal, which gave it the right to traffic and plant colonies on the coast of America from the Straits of Magellan to the extreme north. The ships of the company immediately adopted the policy of reprisals on Spanish commerce. In the expedition of Pit Hein in 1628, which has been narrated in the previous chapter, the privateers of the company secured booty eighty times more in value than all their own exports for the preceding four years had amounted to. Dutch buccaneers became as much of a menace to Cuban ports and to the ships plying between Cuba and other countries as the French and British had been. The sixty years of Philip IV.'s reign proved a long series of failures for Spain. They would have resulted in serious disadvantage to the American possessions, and especially to Cuba, had not the immediate successors of Cabrera in the governorship of Cuba been able men who managed the affairs of the island with sagacity and foresight. D. Juan Bitrian de Viamonte, Caballero de Calatrave, a native of Navarre, was appointed head of the administration and entered upon his duties on the seventh of October, 1630. As auditor of the interior was appointed the Licentiate Pedro so who a few months later was succeeded by D. Francisco Rege Corbalan. One of the most famous religious institutions in the West Indies was founded about this time. A pious woman, known as Sister Magdalen de Jesus, opened a retreat for women devoting themselves to a religious life; it was at first called Beaterio, but subsequently became known far and wide as the convent of the nuns of Santa Clara. Governor Bitrian de Viamonte was neither strong of physique nor of personality; yet he discharged the functions of his office most successfully. During his administration was projected the construction of two towers, one in Chorrera, the other in Cojimar. The garrison of the place was increased and Castellane was made a respectable stronghold. He also organized the militia, creating six companies in Havana, two in Santiago and two in Bayamo. He had, however, serious disagreements with the Marquis de Cadreyta, and being something of an invalid and considered unfit to defend the island against the attacks of some powerful enemy, he was removed to the comparatively easier post of Captain-General of Santo Domingo. His successor was the Field-marshal D. Francisco Riano y Gamboa, a native of Burgos. He suffered shipwreck on the coast of Mariel while on his voyage from Spain and lost everything but his patents, but was duly inaugurated on the twenty-third of October, 1634. The precautions taken by his successor to insure an effective defense of the island were by no means superfluous. For as the power of Spain was steadily declining, that of the Netherlands and of England was rising. The establishment of the Dutch along the Hudson, their founding of Nieuw Amsterdam and their settlements on some of the minor West Indies, had brought the danger of Dutch invasion nearer than ever before. The colonies founded by the British at Jamestown and Plymouth had brought within reach the eventuality of having to guard the Spanish possessions against the British as well. Dutch and British navigation on the Atlantic was vastly increasing and the future foreshadowed conflicts of the interests of Spain and Holland on the one, and Spain and England on the other side. The Cuban authorities, wrought up and kept in a perpetual state of tension by their experiences with the buccaneers, had become morbidly susceptible to danger of any kind. The appearance of a foreign ship in the neighborhood of Cuban waters sufficed to fill them with the gravest apprehension, lest the stranger might harbor hostile designs. These apprehensions were justified, for the Dutch soon resumed their operations against Cuba. It was reported that Maurice of Nassau himself had set out with a powerful squadron, though no historian has any record of it. But in July, 1638, Cornelius Fels, who was by the Spaniards called Pie de Palo, appeared in the Bahama Channel, and from that point sailed for Havana at the head of a fleet of some twenty Dutch vessels enforced by some filibusters. Pie de Palo took his post at a convenient place to intercept any message sent by Governor Riano to Mexico or Peru. Near the coast of Cabanas the fleet of the Spaniards, commanded by D. Carlos Ibarra and composed of seven badly armed galleons and hookers, came across the Dutch. Ibarra formed a battle line extending his vessels so as to flank the enemy. Pie de Palo with six of his galleons bravely attacked the Spanish ships _Capitana_ and _Almirante_, being under the impression that they carried a great quantity of coined money and bars of gold and silver. Relying on the experience and the valor of Ibarra and Pedro de Ursua, who commanded the two vessels so proudly attacked by Pie de Palo, the captains Sancho Urdambra, Jacinto Molendez, the Marquis de Cordenosa, Pablo Contreras and Juan de Campos endeavored in the mean time to check the other galleons of the enemy. The unequal combat between Ibarra and Ursua and the Dutch vessels lasted eight hours and the brave Spanish sailors issued from it as victors. Pie de Palo was seriously wounded, more than four hundred Dutchmen were killed and three of their vessels were destroyed. The enemy fled, pursued by Ibarra, who returned to Vera Cruz after saving the honor of the Spanish flag and the riches the fleet had carried. They sang a Te Deum in Mexico as thanksgiving for the victory and King Philip IV. rewarded Ibarra and his men by rich gifts. The success of this expedition awakened in Havana the old spirit of adventure and military prowess. Cuba had so far been the victim of piracy and privateering; now it decided to defend her rights by fitting out her own privateers and sending them against the enemy. The first encounter was with corsairs that had been lying in wait for a vessel coming from Vera Cruz; the Cuban who distinguished himself in the command of the expedition which frustrated the enemy's designs, was Andres Manso de Contreras. The demand for ships suitable for undertakings of this kind was so great that the ship-builders Carera and Perez of Oporto were kept busy building vessels for that purpose. The administration of D. Francisco Riano y Gamboa was short, but some important measures were enacted in that period. The Exchequer Tribunal de Corientes was established with a single auditor for the royal chests of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Florida and other Spanish possessions. When it was subsequently found that the duties were too numerous for one man, a second official was appointed. It was then arranged that while one of the auditors was to remain in Cuba, the other was alternately to visit the other cajas (chests). In this way the government tried to avoid delays and complications which had caused considerable trouble. At this period, too, a commission of the Inquisition of Carthagena, elsewhere generally abolished, established its residence in Havana. Ecclesiastical life assumed greater proportions and a wider sphere of influence. Bishops who had previously looked upon Havana as an undesirable place of residence, no longer hesitated to accept a call to that city. Work on the fortifications of the island was actively pursued during the administration of Gamboa. It was ordered that el Morro should have a garrison of two hundred, and that as soon as feasible, la Punta and la Fuerza were to be garrisoned by one hundred men each. The construction of the fort at the entrance to the port of Santiago de Cuba was an important improvement. It was called San Pedro de la Rocca, in honor of the governor of that city, D. Pedro de la Rocca, although it is generally known as the Morro. A garrison was installed, consisting of one hundred and fifty men sent from the Peninsula, and the ammunition destined for the defense came from New Spain. The power of the armadilla, which had theretofore been arbitrary, was also regulated at this time. Governor Gamboa, however, retired from office on the fifteenth of September, 1639, when he had barely inaugurated these improvements, and sailed for Spain. Gamboa's successor was D. Alvaro de Luna y Sarmiento, a knight of the Order of Alcantara. During his administration, which began on the fifteenth of September, 1639, and ended on the twenty-ninth of September, 1647, the work of constructing defenses was eagerly pushed. Two leagues leeward of Chorrera a fort was erected. At the mouths of the rivers Casiguagas and Cojimar were built the two towers that had been planned by Governor Viamonte; they were intended to protect those advanced points of the capital. The able engineer Bautista Antonelli superintended the construction of these works of fortification. As the cost of these structures was defrayed by the inhabitants of the city, the governor saw fit to entrust their defense to three companies of men recruited from the native population. It was the first regiment of the kind organized on the island. By January of the next year the fortifications of the Castillo del Morro were also completed. With the insurrection of Portugal which occurred at this period the pirates became bolder and renewed their outrages. The Dutch, too, threatened Havana once more. A squadron commanded by Admiral Fels had approached close to the coast, but had been driven back by a violent hurricane. Four of the vessels had been left between Havana and Mariel. Governor Luna sent Major Lucas de Caravajal against them; three hundred Dutch were taken prisoners, and seventeen bronze cannon, forty-eight iron cannons, two pedreros (swivel guns) and a great stock of arms and ammunition were captured. The captured pieces served to reenforce the artillery of the forts of La Punta and Morro. D. Diego de Villalba y Toledo, Knight of the Order of Alcantara, became the successor of Governor Luna on the twenty-eighth of September, 1647. His assistant deputy was the Licentiate Francisco de Molina. A great calamity befell the island in the second year of his administration. A terrible epidemic broke out in the spring of 1649; the documents and chronicles of the period give hardly any details about the origin and the character of the disease, but it was most likely a putrid fever imported from the Indian population of Mexico and Cartagena by barges that had come from those places. The people who were attacked by it succumbed within three days, and it was estimated that in the course of five months one third of the population died. Among those who died as victims of the scourge were the deputy auditor Molino and the three licentiates who succeeded him, Pedroso, Torar and Olivares, an Alcalde and many other functionaries, one third of the garrison and a great number of the passengers and crew of the fleet which its general, D. Juan Pujedas, had held ready to station in Havana. Governor Villalba himself was seriously ill and only saved by utmost care. The ravages of the epidemic seriously disturbed not only the ordinary activities of the population, but also the regular routine of the administration. During this period of suffering and sorrow the conduct of the religious orders of both sexes was so admirable as to deserve special mention and warm recognition. The monks and nuns received the sick in their monasteries and convents, tenderly cared for them and when they did not succeed to nurse them back to health, escorted the victims to their graves. Among those who individually distinguished themselves by this true Christian spirit was Padre Antonio de Jesus. After the epidemic had spent itself and Governor Villalba had recovered, he organized a company of militia lancers under the command of Martin Calvido la Puerta, one of the wealthiest men of Havana. Like many other governors of Cuba, Villalba became at the end the victim of calumny and cabal. The government of Spain relieved him from his office and the Oidor of Santo Domingo, D. Francisco Pantoja de Ayala, was charged with an investigation of the complaints and accusations brought against him. The victories of the Dutch fleets in India, Brazil and Peru and their conquest of some of the West Indian Islands, as also England's expansion of her dominions and the growth of her naval power were cause for grave anxiety. Measures of defense and protection became the subject of interminable discussions in the official circles of Madrid and Havana. The governors sent over by the court were urged to multiply their effort to fortify Cuba and insure safety from attacks by covetous enemies. D. Francisco Gelder, Field-marshal and Knight of Calatravas, succeeded Villalba and was inaugurated on the twenty-eighth of March, 1653. One of his first official acts was to sever communication with Santiago and Bayamo, for these two towns were at that time ravaged by the same epidemic from which Havana had suffered. His preventative measure set an example which was soon after followed by the authorities of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus, Puerto Principe, Baracoa and Remedios, and the spreading of the epidemic being checked, the island soon returned to normal conditions. Like other governors before him, Gelder showed a deplorable leniency towards those elements of the population that carried on contraband traffic with negroes. But he displayed great energy in the persecution of pirates. During his administration Captain Rojas de Figuerosa captured the island of Tortuga, which had been a formidable base of corsair operations. The news of this exploit caused great rejoicing in Havana and was celebrated by a Te Deum under the direction of Bishop Torre. Gelder also devised a plan to protect Havana from invasion by land. He proposed to open a canal from the extreme interior bay running north and extending to the sea, which would have surrounded the town by water and make it practically safe. But the suggestion did not seem to meet with approval. Before any other plans could be drafted, he died of apoplexy, on the twenty-third of June, 1654, and in the interval between his death and the arrival of his successor from Spain, the government was administered by the Regidor D. Ambrosio de Soto and D. Pedro Garcia Montanes, commandant of Morro. The newly appointed governor, Field-marshal D. Juan Montano Velasquez, was inaugurated in June, 1655, but dying within a year, did not vitally influence the course of affairs in the island. His plan of fortifying Havana consisted in enclosing the city with walls from the landside, running a rampart with ten bastions and two half-bastions. For the execution of this plan the neighborhood of Havana offered to contribute nine thousand peons (day-laborers) and the town corporation imposed a tax on every pint of wine sold to assist in defraying the expenses of the construction. The king approved heartily of these offers and ordered that the treasury of Mexico should aid by an additional contribution of twenty-thousand pesos. But the historian Arrato reports that the whole scheme was soon after abandoned on account of the war in which Spain was about to be involved. The British, their appetite for colonial possessions once being awakened, saw in the growing weakness of Spain an opportunity to get hold of some of her dominions. It was well known that Cromwell, although England was then at peace with Spain, tried hard to increase and strengthen its political and commercial power in America. The British had already conquered the islands Barbadoes and San Cristobal, and in the year 1655 a squadron of fifty-six vessels and a great number of transports sailed from England, determined to wrest from Spain more of her West Indian possessions. A force of nine thousand men was on these vessels, many of them filibusters who had joined the British. The British command had primarily in view the conquest of Santo Domingo; but, being repelled, it concentrated its efforts upon Jamaica. The governor and his people stubbornly resisted the inroads of the enemy. In the desperate struggle with a superior and well-trained force two brave land-holders distinguished themselves by their heroism: D. Francisco Proenza and D. Cristobal de Isasi. But their small and poorly equipped forces were outnumbered by the numerous and well prepared enemy; they were finally obliged to retire within the fortified camp and to surrender the place to the British invaders. Panic-stricken and unwilling to live under the rule of the enemy, thousands of Jamaicans left for Cuba. The population of this island having been recently decimated by the great epidemic, the refugees were warmly welcomed. They numbered about ten thousand and the population of Cuba increased, until it was estimated at forty thousand. This, however, did not compensate Cuba for the loss of Jamaica, which in time became as valuable to the British as it became ruinous to Spanish commerce. The comparatively easy victory of the British was a heavy blow to Spanish pride and ranks high among the great disasters that marked the reign of Philip IV. Realizing that Cuba might at any time suffer the same fate as Jamaica, one hundred thousand soldiers were sent over from the Peninsula and some ammunition from Spain. The establishment of the British in colonies so near to Cuba was a constant menace to its security, and during his brief administration Governor Montano devoted himself with commendable perseverance to the improvement of the defenses of Havana, beginning with the most important and urgent work upon its walls. But before the realization of his plans Montano was taken ill and died during Easter week of the year 1656. The conquest of Jamaica by the British had furnished the world such incontestable proof of Spain's military decline, that the lawless elements roving the sea under the black flag of the pirates once more set out upon their criminal expeditions. They extended their depredations to the whole coast of Spanish America and menaced the life and property of the inhabitants wherever the lack of forts or adequate garrisons facilitated their manoeuvres. As the pirates were supposed to be either British or French, the government of Spain was suddenly roused to action and entered complaints at the courts of France and England. But they received little satisfaction beyond an exchange of polite diplomatic notes, which contained nothing reassuring whatsoever. Both governments replied that the miscreants were private individuals and criminals for whose actions their government, however seriously it discountenanced them, was by no means responsible. Moreover, interference was out of the question, since the offenses were committed outside of the jurisdiction of the respective countries. Spain was thus left to her own resources in proceeding against those disturbers of the peace and safety of her American colonies. But these colonies were thousands of miles away and Spain, under the weak rule of a weak sovereign, was too much absorbed by the futile effort to stay the decline of her European power. Roussillon and Artois had been ceded to France, the war with Portugal was dragging along hopelessly. Although the revenues of the crown had been materially increased under the king's favorite, Olivares, the profligate extravagance of the court was forever draining the coffers. The colonies had to get along as best they could and they had a troublesome time to fight the ever growing menace of pirate invasion with little or no aid from the mother country. The death of Governor Montano made necessary another provisional government; it consisted of D. Diego Ranzel, as political and the Alcalde Jose Aguirera as military governor. When the duly appointed new governor, Captain General D. Juan de Salamanca, entered upon his office on the fifth of March, 1658, he soon found his hands full. Some years before, a number of Frenchmen, regardless of the Spanish claim of priority, had settled on the island of Tortuga. They were hunters, planters and laborers, with a fair sprinkling of adventurers. The settlement had grown into a real colony, before the Spaniards became aware of the fact that it constituted a grave danger. Several expeditions were sent against them, but failed to dislodge them. Encouraged by this triumph over the Spaniards, these intruders set about to extend their operations to the coast contiguous to Hayti. Sometimes these men were working by authority of the French Company of the West Indies, and of the governor appointed to rule over them; at other times they undertook excursions quite independently. They fairly succeeded in making themselves masters of Cape France. Before long they seem to have reached some agreement with the British authorities of Jamaica, to combine for concerted action against Spain, and they began to terrorize the population of the Spanish possessions by sending out piratical expeditions that kept the people on the coasts in constant fear for their life and property. The work entitled "Pirates of America" contains a wealth of facts concerning the corsairs sent out by these French and British settlements and the many other buccaneers and filibusters that harassed the people of the Spanish colonies. Among them is the story of the famous pirate Lolonois, also known as Francisco Nau and el Olones, whose descent upon Cuba during the administration of Governor Salamanca has all the elements of a thrilling though gruesome melodrama. Lolonois had been in Campeche and was supposed to have perished in one of his forays. But in reality he had made his escape and reached Tortuga, where he was able to arm himself anew. He reached the northern part of Cuba at a small trading town, los Cayo, which he intended to rob of its stores of tobacco, sugar and skins. Some fisherman recognized him and hurried to Havana with the news that Lolonois had arrived with two boats and was planning a raid. The governor doubted, having been assured of his death at Campeche, but urged by the entreaties of the men, he sent against him a vessel with ten pieces of artillery and ninety armed men. Their order was not to return until the pirate horde was annihilated; every one of them was to be hung, except Lolonois who was to be brought to Havana alive. The pirates somehow were fully informed of the expedition against them and awaited the arrival of the vessel in the Riviera estera where it was to anchor. They terrorized some poor fisherfolk into showing them the entrance to the port, hoping there to find better boats than their own canoes. They reached the war-ship at two o'clock in the morning and were asked by the sentinel whence they came and whether they had seen any pirates. They made a prisoner answer for them, that they had not seen any, and the sentinel saw no cause for alarm. At day-break the Cubans found out their mistake; for the pirates began to attack them from all sides with such violence that their artillery was soon of no avail. Sword in hand the outlaws forced the Spaniards to hide in the lower parts of the ship. Then Lolonois ordered them to be brought on deck, one by one, and had their heads cut off. Thus the whole force perished with the exception of one, who was sent as courier to the governor with the insolent message: "I shall never give quarter to a Spaniard, I cherish the firm hope to execute on your own person what I did with those you sent with your vessel and what you intended to do with me and my companions." Lolonois finally met with a tragical death in Nicaragua. But although the lack of preparedness on the part of the Cubans and the inefficiency of the commander and his crew make this story almost incredible, the exploit of the British pirate Juan or Henry Morgan in Puerto del Principe, is equally remarkable and vouched for not only in the book mentioned above, but also by the historian Urrutia. Morgan planned an attack upon Havana with twelve vessels, but yielding to the persuasion of his officers who feared its forts, he contented himself with descending upon the neighboring coast town. As the fleet approached, a Spanish prisoner dashed into the water, swam ashore and warned the people of the danger. They put into safety their most precious household goods and when they gathered about the alcalde numbered about eight hundred men. A detachment of cavalry was displayed in hope of intimidating the approaching pirates and attacking them from the rear. But the enemy advanced in good order, and when the Alcalde and many of the leaders were killed, the people fled to the mountains. Morgan's forces entered the city, where they met with some resistance, but when the pirates threatened to set fire to the town, the people gave up to them. As soon as they saw themselves masters of the place, the pirates locked the inhabitants into the churches, plundered as much as they could find and so ill-treated their victims that many died. Then they demanded ransom, threatening to take them to Jamaica, if it were not paid in two weeks. Before the term expired some of the pirates captured a negro coming towards the town with a message from the governor of Cuba, promising the people quick help. Morgan then demanded five hundred bulls or cows with sufficient salt to salt them to be driven to the coast, took with him six hostages and fifty thousand pesos cash and jewels, and left his companions attending to the shipping of the cattle. To fortify her coasts and strengthen the garrison of her forts became an urgent need for Cuba and brooked no delay. For while the government of Spain deliberated at leisure upon means to furnish the much-needed aid, the enemy was alive to the opportunity which inadequate defense offered. The invasion of Santiago de Cuba, which is the most important event of Salamanca's governorship, was a flagrant example of what could at any time happen at any point along the Spanish American coast. One October day in the year 1663, a British squadron, according to some authorities consisting of fifteen, according to others of eighteen ships of various sizes appeared at the entrance to the port, with unmistakably hostile intention. The commandant of the Morro immediately informed the governor, D. Pedro Morales, of this unwelcome arrival, but the governor did nothing except summon the troops to their respective quarters. Morro was garrisoned by only eighty men, under an inexperienced captain; some historians give the number as only twenty-five. It seems to have been an unpardonable carelessness on the part of the governor not to have at once dispatched an enforcement to the garrison. The inhabitants volunteered to make a sortie to attack the enemy. But the governor did not seem to realize the seriousness of the situation and forbade them to take any action against them. [Illustration: MORRO CASTLE, SANTIAGO The oldest of the fortifications of the former capital of Cuba, erected in the sixteenth century to protect the place from French and English raiders. It occupies a commanding position on a headland overlooking the splendid harbor and the waters which were the scene of the destruction of the last Spanish fleet in Cuban waters.] The enemy's forces landed at a point called Aguadores, three quarters of a league from the city. They numbered eight hundred men and encountered no opposition whatever. But as it was then night, they decided to encamp on the little plain of Lagunas and wait until daybreak. The officials of the garrison, relying on their familiarity with the ground, urged the governor to let them make a sortie with three hundred picked men and take them by surprise. But Governor Morales still doubted that they would have the courage to attack the city and refused the proposal of the brave troops as he had the offer of the people. When the morning came, his amazing credulity must have received a stunning blow. For the enemy, fully armed, began to move towards the city. Disconcerted and confused, Morales hastily ordered the troops out and placed himself at their head. Without any order or strategic plan they moved towards the heights of Santa Anna, where as sole defense he had planted a cannon and had some trenches dug. It was an easy task to get the better of a commander of such little foresight. Realizing the confusion of the Cuban forces the enemy separated into two columns and proceeded to surround Morales and his men. In the panic which broke out, the voice of Morales was heard to order a retreat. He himself escaped into the city. The British dispatched two hundred men to take Morro, which they found abandoned, the garrison having fled instead of making an attempt to save the fort and their honor. When the British commander entered Morro he was reported to have made the remark, that he alone with his dog and his sword could have defended the place. Morro and Santiago were captured and the enemy unhindered indulged in plunder. The bells of the churches were taken, the artillery of the fort, three vessels lying in the harbor, and a number of negro slaves. Unable to get the furniture and jewels which had been hidden by the residents, the enemy vented their wrath on the Morro, which they blew up; they destroyed the cathedral and killed a few people. For almost a month they lingered about the place and still the governor did nothing to force them to leave. When the governor of Cuba heard of the plight of Santiago, he immediately summoned an expeditionary corps of five hundred men and hurried to the relief of the sorely tried town; but when he arrived on the fifteenth of November, he learned that the British had on that very day evacuated the town. The historian Urrutia reports that the Audiencia of Santo Domingo entrusted the licentiate D. Nicolas Munez with the investigation of this disgraceful defeat and brought about the removal of Morales. By order of the king he was replaced by the Field Marshal D. Pedro de Bayoa, who was also given two hundred soldiers and war provisions for future eventualities of this kind. The island had at that time a population of over three hundred thousand inhabitants. The number of negroes had increased and furnished the labor so much needed to work on the plantations. The cultivation of the land was carried on with greater efficiency and began to yield rich results. Governor Salamanca, in spite of his glorious military antecedents, devoted himself preferably to works of peace. He succeeded in promoting tobacco culture and was the author of the decree issued on the fifteenth of October, 1659, which authorized the extension of the fields into the uncultivated plains that were not used for any other purposes. He was profoundly concerned about the morals of Cuban society and attempted to combat the laxity and dissipation that characterized its life. But it seems that his moralizing had no great effect upon the people that were bent upon taking life easy and plunged into pleasure with greater zest than they pursued their work. But while the population of the island enjoyed comparative security and prosperity, that of the coast towns was steadily worried by danger of invasion. When Governor Salamanca retired from office, the menace was still far from removed. After a provisional government of ten months, Don Rodrigo de Flores y Aldama, Field Marshal and Caballero de Alcantara, entered upon his administration on the fifteenth of June, 1663. With him arrived also a new bishop, Don Juan Saenz de Manosca, a Mexican of immaculate purity and uncompromising severity. He took charge of the diocese on the sixth of August and continued with greater success than Governor Salamanca in the moralization of the community. Realizing the increasing danger of invasion Governor Aldama at once set about to push the work on the walls of Havana. The garrison was increased by two hundred men. But Aldama was only a year later appointed Captain-General of Yucatan, and a new governor succeeded him, the Field Marshal Don Francisco Davila Crejon y Gaston, who had previously been governor of Gibraltar and Venezuela. He entered upon his office on the thirtieth of July, 1664, and immediately set to work with great energy and perseverance to hasten the construction of more fortifications. His predecessors had stored up an immense amount of building material and there was no reason why the work should not be carried on without delay. But Davila encountered serious difficulties and obstacles because his plans were opposed by the engineer Marcos Lucio and the viceroy la Espanola Marques de Muncere. The resources of the exchequer were at that time so scanty that Orejon ordered the provisory use of fagots in the construction of the fortifications of Havana. However, El Morro of Santiago de Cuba which had been blown up by filibusters a few years before, was rebuilt under his orders. The batteries of La Punta, la Estrella and Santa Clara were established. The governor of Santiago and D. Pedro Bayone finished these works and also walled up the convent of San Francisco making it equivalent to a fort. In the year 1665 the French pirate Pedro Legrand penetrated into Santo Espiritu with a force of filibusters. He set fire to thirty-three houses and demanded a ransom from every inhabitant. During that and the following year, the pirates plundered more than two hundred haciendas (farms) carrying off cattle and furniture. They committed unspeakable outrages, violating even the wives and daughters of the men whose homes they destroyed or robbed. One of the most curious historical documents of this period is "De Americansche Zee Rovers," a narrative of piratical exploits on the coasts of Cuba and other Spanish possessions by a member of the redoubtable fraternity, Alexander Exquemeling, a Dutch pirate, whose talent for piracy was coupled with the gift of literary style and a pious disposition. The book was translated into many languages and was very popular at the time; it gives a vivid account of the life and habits of the buccaneers and of conditions in the colonies they visited. Exquemeling had come to Tortuga in one of the vessels of the Dutch West India Company and, as was frequently done then, was sold into servitude for three years. Being ill-treated by his masters, he made his escape and joined the Brothers of the Coast. He was with Morgan at the capture of Puerto del Principe in Cuba, at an attack upon Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Darien and at the dastardly sack of Panama, and indulges in no little moralizing about the monster Morgan and his associates. In the year 1670 steps were finally taken by the British and the Spanish government to crush this outlaw power of the seas. As if in defiance of this act the expedition against Panama was made which Exquemeling describes with evident horror. He also reports that the new governor of Jamaica, who had been particularly instructed to enforce the treaty against piracy, which in the diplomatic documents goes under the name "American treaty," ordered three hundred French corsairs who had been shipwrecked on the coast of Porto Rico to be slaughtered. But he does not forget to add that the same governor only a few years later secretly abetted the operations of the pirates and even shared in their booty. One ship alone carried such rich freight, that every member of the pirate crew received four hundred pounds and the governor himself a handsome sum of hush-money. But the grim tragicomedy of Morgan's career reached its climax when the scoundrel, who had brought untold misery to homes in Cuba and other Spanish colonies, suddenly turned about, became respectable, married the daughter of one of the most prominent citizens of Jamaica, and was appointed Judge of the admiralty court. Nor was this all: Charles II knighted him and in 1682 the whilom buccaneer, as Sir Henry Morgan, became Deputy Governor of Jamaica. He held the office three years, during which he mercilessly sacrificed some of his former comrades. Then King James II came upon the throne, and Spain having gathered sufficient evidence to accuse "Sir Henry" of secret complicity with the pirates, he was discharged, sent to England and spent some years in prison. The "American Treaty," however, dealt a blow to piracy in the Western hemisphere; and in due time relieved the inhabitants of Cuba as of other Spanish possessions in America for the nightmare that had threatened them for over a century. CHAPTER XXV In spite of the "American Treaty" which had for the moment bound Great Britain and Spain together for mutual protection against the pirates, the designs of land-hungry British courtiers and adventurers were by no means abandoned. Spain was not blind to the fact that she had all powers against her, that were playing an important part in the development of the New World. French, Dutch and British were stung with the desire to appropriate to themselves some of its wealth. For many years the British government had jealously watched the progress of Dutch navigation and commerce. Its settlements in North America had whetted the appetite for colonial expansion, which, once awakened, was bound to be satisfied by whatever means diplomacy or strategy offered. Though England and Spain were then nominally at peace, Cromwell was haunted by dreams of British world power and as soon as the Revolution gave him authority to act as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, pursued his visions of conquest. The act of navigation which was issued in the year 1651 does not with a word mention British monopoly of the colonies; it only established the principle of exclusive maritime commerce by British vessels, equipped for the most part with British citizens, and prohibited foreigners from importing into the Commonwealth other products than those of her own soil or those the sale of which was established in the importing country. Cromwell's idea was without doubt to attack Dutch commerce and build upon its ruins a national British commerce. Holland opposed in vain the act intended to break the friendly relations between the two nations. Parliament was concerned only about British interests and refused to revoke her laws to please her neighbor and ally. The war between England and Holland became inevitable. Cromwell's squadron triumphed and Dutch commerce had to give way to British. This lesson was not lost upon France which was also haunted by visions of colonial empire and was therefore interested in defending the principle of monopoly. As early as the reign of Queen Isabella, French ambition and desire for colonial possessions had become manifest. As British vessels began to prey upon Spanish colonies, France followed their operations with keen interest and at opportune moments managed to acquire a slice of territory in the New World. In the year when the British had taken possession of Barbadoes, France took half of San Cristobal; when the British settled on the other half of that island, the French took possession of Martinique, Guadeloupe and other small islands. They founded a colony in Cayenne and assisted by corsairs got a hold on the western part of Santo Domingo. But the greed for territory once awakened, was not easily appeased, and the courtiers of the Restoration, in need of new avenues of wealth to carry on their wonted extravagance, were among the most rapacious claimants of land in America. In the Spring of 1663, the province of Carolina was established, extending from the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude to the river San Matheo and some dissatisfied planters from Barbadoes founded a settlement in the fall of the same year. Having been included by the Spaniards within the limits of Florida, this arbitrary act was bound not to pass unchallenged by Spain. In defiance of the Spanish authorities at St. Augustine the Earl of Clarendon obtained from the King in June, 1665, a charter granting him and his partners all territory lying between the twenty-ninth and the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Not satisfied with these acquisitions, the British turned covetous eyes upon Cuba. A letter written by a Major Smith in the year 1665 and published in the Universal Museum of London in the year 1762, gives an account of the island which requires no comment. It reads: "Cuba is a very good island and in it is generally, for so large a country, the best land I have seen in America, although I have traveled the main continent in several places and crossed from the north to the south seas as also the north side of Hispaniola, and most parts of Jamaica. This great island is easily to be conquered, and would make the best plantation, besides the prejudice it would be to the Spaniards and the great advantage to our nation. For instance had we the port and city of Havana, which might in all probability be reduced with two regiments of good soldiers from Jamaica, carrying with them two or three sloops or shallops for sending men, provided with good arms and other necessities for an assault. The descent is to be undertaken presently after their armada hath passed out of the Indies which is once in two years, towards the end of the summer. There is a good landing on the west side of the city where it lies open and you need fear no ambuscades, but not on the east side of the harbor, for there you will be galled by the Morro until the city be secured; but when once that is taken, you may easily reduce the castle also and there being no danger of retaking it until the next armada arrives, which will be almost two years, in which time you will have planters enough from other of your islands to manure the land and assist the soldiers in the defense of the island. This conquest being once effected, would utterly ruin the Spaniards and for these reasons; our ships lying both here and at Jamaica, would be at all times ready to gather up their straggling fleet which it is difficult to keep embodied without the help of that port of Havana, it being windward from the bay of Mexico or Puerto Bello, without separation and on the other hand, to pass the Gulf of Florida is impossible should they lose the Havana where they rendezvous victual water and provide all things necessary for their return to Spain. When this is done, they wait for a convenient season of weather (being much observed from the changes of the moon) in order to pass the dangerous strait; for to say truly, the Spaniards are neither very fit for sea nor for land service, excepting some officers and soldiers bred in Flanders, for the latter and a few Biscaniers for sea affairs. They are so sensible of their weakness, and jealous of their riches in those parts that it is very difficult for any ingenious man, once taken by them, to get his liberty, fearing he might give such intelligence as would be the cause of their ruin, witness their blindfolding of all strangers, when they pass their cities and castles, for they much dread an old prophecy among them, _that within a short time the English will as freely walk the streets of Havana as the Spaniards now do_, which indeed had been easily performed with a third of the army sent to Jamaica and a far greater advantage to the nation; for I esteem that port and harbor of the Havana in the West Indies to be as great a check upon the Spaniards as Tangier in the straits of Gibraltar; and if we were once masters of both they would without doubt be so straightened as absolutely to admit us a free trade into their ports of America, where they import our commodities and sell them for ten times more than they first cost in Spain, by reason of the great plenty of silver, which trade would not only be of great advantage to us, but also prevent their future enslaving our nation in chains, as they now do; for being employed in their fortifications, they are worse used, all things considered, than if they were taken by the Turks. I have seen other parts of the West Indies, where the Spaniards might be fleeced of considerable quantity of riches; as at Panama, where there are silver bars piled up in heaps in the open street day and night, without guard, four, five or six months together, waiting the arrival of the armada, which when arriving in Puerto Bello, they transport it thither with so slender a guard for so great a treasure, that it would be easy prey for a thousand resolute men the expense of whose expedition would be small in comparison to the prize. But there is no resting or long tarrying about the business, the Spaniards being numerous here as in all other places of the main land; a catch and away. This island of Cuba hath adjacent to it great conveniences of salt and fishing and in it is very great plenty of horses, meat, sheep and hogs, both wild and tame, of a far larger and better breed than in other parts of America. Which hath also many rich mines of copper already open and it is the only place which supplies all the West Indies with metal for the infinite number of ordnance they have in all their ports and castles, both in the north and south seas; but whether it hath any mines of silver or gold, I know not; but if there were any such they would venture their opening a discovery fearing the invasion of that island which is of so easy access by sea and of such great importance to their whole interest in America; for which reason also they refuse to work any mines in Florida that are near the north sea (although they have there very many) but would rather employ themselves about others farther in the country although with great labor and cost for conveyance of the produce by land to Mexico; lastly, this island (to complete its praise) hath very good ports and harbors of great advantage to ships for safe passing the gulf; and should the Spaniards keep two or three frigates always plying off there between the western end of Cuba and the Havana, it were impossible for any ships of ours that came from Jamaica to escape them. The scales turned would be their case to all America. Neither wants it great sugar-works, which have both water-mill and horse mills and very many large cocoa walks; the most and best tobacco; in short, it produces all other commodities that any of our American islands have knowledge of." This letter shows plainly how preoccupied was the British mind with the acquisition of Cuba, and foreshadows the coming events, for which Cuba in spite of all warning symptoms was little prepared. Clouds had gathered about the horizon of Spain and darkened its own outlook. King Philip IV. had died on the seventeenth of September, 1665, and so inadequate was at that time the means of communication between Spain and her American dominions that it took seven months before news of the event reached the people of Cuba. The heir to the Spanish throne was the three-year-old Charles II. the queen, assisted by the junta, being named regent. If the reign of Philip IV. had been called the most disastrous in the history of the kingdom, that of Charles II. was hardly less so. It was the period when Louis XIV. of France had begun to cherish a dream of universal empire and although a brother-in-law of the Spanish infant-king, did not hesitate to do his share in weakening the power of Spain. In spite of the critical position of the mother-country, the proclamation of the new king was celebrated in Havana with great pomp on the ninth day of May in the following year. At the review held in San Francisco square of that city appeared two companies of mounted militia, four companies of veteran infantry and four others of free Pardos (a mixed race of blacks and whites) and Morenos, sent by the Major Jeronimo Luque Salazar. The perfidy of the French king contributed seriously to the insecurity of Cuba at this period. There is little doubt that he aided and abetted the operations of French pirates in the West Indies. The island of Tortuga was once more in their hands. Barbadoes and Jamaica were the haunts of great numbers of these outlaws, who kept the Spanish ships sailing on these seas as well as Campeche, Tabasco, Honduras, Nicaragua, New Granada, Costa Rica, Santa Catalina, la Guayra and others of the rich Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere in a continual state of suspense. Governor Davila succeeded in several punitive expeditions against the pirates. The notorious Lolonois or El Olones, was executed in Nicaragua and in Cuba itself more than three hundred were hanged in the different places where they had been caught. During Davila's administration some wealthy citizens made bequests for the public good. The most important was that of Martin Calvo, who left an income of five thousand pesos to be annually distributed as gifts among five poor orphan girls. Governor Davila Orejon y Gaston was in the military literature of his time known as the author of a work called "Escelencias del arte militare y variones illustres." He demonstrated in that work the importance of the port of Havana for the conservation of Spanish dominion in Mexico and Peru. He retired from the governorship on the sixth of May, 1670, and died in Venezuela. The immediate successor of Davila was Field Marshal D. Francisco Rodriguez de Ledesma, Chevalier of the Order of Santiago. Determined to curb the brazen bullying in which the buccaneers were still indulging, he issued privateering patents to a number of valiant mariners and merchants, who were willing to face the foreign pirates in open fight and prevent further encroachments upon the coasts of Spanish America. The two men who especially distinguished themselves in these expeditions were Felipe Geraldini and Major Marcos de Alcala. Ledesma also carried on the work of fortification. During his administration was built a portion of the cathedral under the supervision of D. Juan Bernardo Alonso de Los Rios; but the imposing edifice was not finished until many years later. Governor Ledesma was not to be spared an experience with the freebooters. In the year 1678 the governor of Guarico sent a certain Franquinay to Santiago with the evident intention of conquering the place. Franquinay, who was a French corsair well-known among the Brotherhood of the Coast landed with eight hundred men at Jaragua Grande in the eastern part of the island. There he engaged a half-witted native by the name of Juan Perdomo to act as guide and started with his forces to march toward the city. It was a moonlit night and on arriving at a point where the road branched into two, the pirate divided his forces, each taking one of the roads. On meeting again at the place where the two branches continued as the highroad, the idiot Perdomo began to shout "Santiago, Spain!" The moon had set in the mean time and in the darkness enveloping them, the pirates did not recognize their own forces and thought this call a signal to the enemy lying in wait for them. They began to fire upon their own forces, in the belief that they were betrayed and surprised by the Spaniards, and killed a great number of their own people, before they became aware of their mistake. In this way was Franquinay's plan to take and ransack the city of Cuba frustrated by a mentally deficient native, one who in the language of the Latin people is called an "innocent." The corsair turned back to the shore with the intention of re-embarking and left Perdomo behind. The half-wit, although manacled, managed to reach Santiago and related his experience to the great delight of the governor and the residents. This was the last attempt of pirate forces upon the capital, the inhabitants of which had been kept in a state of constant alarm for a century and a half. But the smaller towns of the vicinity were for some time harassed by Franquinay who, unable to accomplish his ambitious purpose, vented his wrath upon their population by committing the most cruel outrages. The expedition of buccaneers under the command of M. de Grammont in February, 1679, was another event that justified the fears of the Cubans and their steps to insure the safeguard of their ports. M. de Grammont landed with a force of six hundred men at Guanaja and succeeded in capturing Puerto del Principe. But the inhabitants valiantly organized and armed themselves to fight the invader. With a scanty reenforcement of soldiers from the garrison they managed to defeat the enemy's horde and pursued them as far as the port of Guanaja. There M. de Grammont, who was wounded in the course of the combat, retired into a trench which was sufficiently fortified to offer some resistance. On the twenty-fifth of the month an engagement took place, which forced the pirates to take to their ships and hurriedly to leave for the open sea. They had not only accomplished nothing, but suffered the loss of seventy dead and many wounded. Notwithstanding the two countries being at peace, the feeling between Great Britain and Spain was gradually becoming more and more hostile. During the pirate raids and other expeditions of British vessels off the Spanish-American coasts, British soldiers and sailors had been taken prisoners and were held in what was equivalent to bondage. The British government had repeatedly remonstrated against this procedure, but the Cuban authorities had not forgotten Jamaica and other operations of the British in Spanish America and were not inclined to parley. Ships had been sent to Havana to demand the release of the men, but even then the emissaries of the British government failed to obtain any satisfaction. Their demands were flatly refused. Finally the Earl of Clarence, who was then governor of Jamaica, dispatched the British ship _Hunter_ under command of Captain John Tosier to Havana. A full account of this expedition is given in "A Letter from Captain John Tosier, Commander of His Majesty's ship the _Hunter_ at Jamaica. With a narrative of his embassy to the governor of Havana to demand His Majesty's of Great Britain's Subjects kept prisoners there." The letter is dated Port Royal, Jamaica, March 28th, 1679, and was published in London in the same year. Captain Tosier tells of previous efforts made to obtain the deliverance of these British prisoners, saying that even messengers backed by frigates of fifty guns had so far failed in their purpose. He sailed from Port Royal on the twenty-fifth of January and on the eleventh of February arrived off the coast of Havana. There he waited for two days for more settled weather before he approached within two miles of Morro castle, "top-sails a-Trip, Jack, Ancient and Pendant flying." He sent a boat with Mr. Richard Bere, Governor Carlisle's "Gentleman of the Horse" as messenger and interpreter, and bearer of the list of British subjects kept prisoners in Havana. The guard of Morro castle ordered the boat ashore, put a sergeant and soldiers on board and escorted the messenger to Governor Ledesma. Another guard remained on the boat. Governor Ledesma read the letter and the sailing orders and replied that the British prisoners were pirates. According to Captain Tosier's narrative he refused the British emissaries the customary salute and more or less politely ordered them out of the house. They were escorted back to the boat and "were forced to sea at seven o'clock at night." Early the next morning the answer was received by Captain Tosier. Within three hours he sent the boat ashore once more, telling the governor of Havana "His Majesty's Ship under my command is well Man'd, where he might be safe and welcome if he would vouchsafe to give her his company; and His Majesty of England never spared his powder to answer Civilities, nor received such indignities as waiters or guards on board of any of His Majesty's Ships of War, which will be a strange report, when His Majesty shall come to hear of it." Captain Tosier then demanded in the name of the King of England and "in obedience to the Catholic King" that forthwith all subjects of his "most Excellent Majesty" detained as prisoners in Havana be set at liberty and delivered to him to be transported to the Territories of the King of England. If pirates they were, they should have been sent to Old Spain to be tried. Great was the excitement at the government house in Havana, when this message reached there. But the Cuban authorities saw no other way out of the difficulty but to give up the captives. Captain Tosier reports that the governor ordered the prisoners to be called over in a back court near his house and examined some of them, one after another, and before he had done said: "Though I have no order to deliver them to you and though I may be blamed, yet take them all with you, and if there be any more, let them come forth immediately and they shall be discharged." Captain Tosier had cause to be proud of his success, as the Spanish authorities had never before been known to deliver any British prisoners. The announcement that they were free was received with wild cheers by the forty-six Englishmen who had spent from one to six years in Cuban captivity. The following day the _Hunter_ sailed and at some distance out of Havana, Captain Tosier came across a long boat, containing one hundred and forty-four men with their commander, Captain John Graves who had sailed a month before for London and eight days before meeting the _Hunter_ had been cast away thirty leagues east of Havana and expected to be utterly lost or to be made prisoners by the Cubans. Though Governor Ledesma had in this instance yielded to the pressure exercised by the British, he was by no means convinced of the honesty and sincerity of the Governor of Jamaica. He had reasons to believe that in spite of peace between the two countries the governor of Jamaica was secretly in league with the pirates that had molested Cuba, and that while pretending to persecute the outlaws, he had really encouraged them in their raids upon the Spanish colonies. Governor Ledesma collected evidence to that effect and presented it at the court of Spain. But his appeal arrived at a time when Spain's European losses had alarmingly decreased her prestige and when even her national wealth showed a perceptible shrinkage. So the court at Madrid did nothing but deliberate at length upon the ever present problem of insuring the safety of the colonies and limited its practical assistance to the sending over of a few ships with instructions to organize an armada which was to patrol the coasts and force the outlaws to respect Spanish possessions. The island itself armed a few vessels and the garrisons were slightly increased. The great earthquake of the year 1675 added to the sufferings of the people of Cuba and caused loss of life and property. Three years later a violent hurricane swept over the island and worked great havoc. It not only robbed great numbers of the inhabitants of their homes, and did serious damage to commerce and traffic, but it also destroyed the recently finished cathedral. Though such catastrophes were of no rare occurrence in that climate, they invariably left the people's spirits depressed and indirectly affected their initiative and enterprise. Thus the copper mines were abandoned about this time, because their production seemed out of proportion to the labor and expense of working them. But the real reason was probably the ignorance and inefficiency of the forces in charge of the work and the lack of energy and courage which frequently manifested itself in the wake of great disasters. A change in the ecclesiastical affairs of Cuba caused considerable commotion during the administration of Governor Ledesma. Bishop Saenz de Manosca was promoted to the bishopric of Guatemala. The Trinitarian (in Mexico a member of a society hired to carry the corpse in the funeral procession) who had temporarily succeeded him was shortly after appointed Bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo. Thus the diocese came under the wise spiritual guidance of the Canon of Avila, D. Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon, who was not only a learned theologian of great reputation, but a priest of uncompromising moral austerity. He devoted himself with great ardor to reforming the church in the West Indies. On a single visit to Florida he was reported to have made as many as four thousand converts. On his return to Cuba he inaugurated a reign of unwonted severity. He had been deeply shocked by the levity and frivolity of his diocesans; he had learned that even ordained priests and personages in high official positions were in the habit of attending public balls and masquerades, the latter especially offering opportunity to indulge in polite intrigues and adventures of a dubious nature. He justly opined that men in clerical garb and those in responsible government offices lowered their dignity and abused the trust reposed in them by participating in such entertainments. He prohibited his diocesans under threat of excommunication to attend such amusements and by this rigorous restriction of the gayeties in which the people had been accustomed to indulge, made not a few enemies. When he died on the sixteenth of March, 1676, public rumor attributed his death to poison administered by some person in revenge for his interference with the social life of his diocese. Spain was at this period at the lowest ebb of her power. Financially she was on the brink of bankruptcy. Her commerce was paralyzed by stupid laws. The scandalous conduct of her officials had sadly lowered her prestige. Nature herself seemed to conspire against the once so powerful empire. Storms and inundations had swept over the country and ravaged the land, until its very soil had become unproductive. Tempests along her shores had destroyed even the ships lying in port. The mentally and physically feeble monarch, Charles II., was a helpless puppet in the hands of his favorites. A believer in witchcraft, astrology and the black arts and devoted to superstitious practices, he left the affairs of state to his prime ministers who conducted them with varying ability. When Ledesma's governorship terminated on the thirty-first of August, 1680, there was appointed in his place D. Alonso de Campos Espinosa. But as Valdes and other authorities on Cuban history have nothing to record about his official career, it must have been only provisional, and was certainly very brief. For in September of that year the Field Marshal D. Jose Fernandez de Cordova Ponce de Leon took charge of the office. Governor Cordova proved to be a very conscientious and energetic functionary and distinguished himself first by the vigor and perseverance with which he pushed work on the fortifications of Havana. He also showed his ability in fighting the pirate scourge. The filibusters had begun to organize bases of operation on the islands of Signale and Lucayas, similar to those of Tortuga. He sent against them an expedition headed by the captains Acosta and Urubarru, who succeeded in destroying the outlaw colonies in the name of the king and took a great number of prisoners. The chief event of Governor Cordova's administration was an encounter which the coast guard Galliot of the port Virgen del Rosario y Santa Jose had with a host of French invaders. The governor and organized forces of patriotic citizens so ably seconded the guard in the defense of the place that the enemy was defeated. Governor Cordova made many enemies by his vigorous persecution of the smugglers who had greatly increased in number and by their clandestine operations were interfering with and discrediting the legitimate trade of the island. They had become such a power that they had the audacity to bring denunciations and accusations against the governor before the court, which, however, set these charges aside and approved all of Cordova's measures directed against them. He also had grave difficulties with the commissary of the Santo Officio, D. Jose Garaondo. They were not yet settled, when Governor Cordova suddenly died on the second of June, 1685. There were rumors afloat that he, too, like Bishop Calderon, had been poisoned by his enemies. During the interim between his death and the arrival from Spain of his successor, the affairs of the island were administered by D. Antonio Manuel de Murgina y Meña and Captain D. Andres de Munive, who shared between them the political and military authority. The newly appointed governor of Cuba was the general of artillery, D. Diego de Viana y Hinojosa. When he arrived in Havana in November, 1687, he brought with him the first copies of the "Codigo e Recopilacion de India," as the statutes or laws of the West Indies were called. They were in force by royal decree, although they were in reality only a confirmation of the famous Ordinances of 1542. They were distinguished by a spirit of rectitude and impartiality and were particularly commendable for their justice towards the native Indians, who were exempted from all servitude and were accorded equal rights with the Spaniards. Unfortunately these laws suffered from one serious defect: they were framed so as to apply to all dominions of Spanish America and did not take into account the indisputable fact that laws applicable to and beneficent in Peru, might be prejudicial in Mexico and Cuba. This did not, however, diminish in the least the ethical significance and humanitarian value of this codex of some four hundred laws, decrees and mandates; they gave proof of the admirable sentiment of the mother country towards her colonies. Among the functionaries who arrived from Spain at the same time as Governor Viana, were a new Auditor, D. Manuel de Roa, and a new bishop, D. Diego Evelino de Compostela. This noted ecclesiastic was famous in Spain not only for his sterling character as a man, but also for his extraordinary gifts as an orator. On his succession to the episcopate a spirit of altruism seemed to awaken in the population and find fruition in various works of charity. Bishop Compostela was conspicuous in these organizations and in every possible way encouraged his diocesans in contributing to and actively participating in such works. He founded many parishes and in Havana organized the seminary of San Ambrosio, the academy for young ladies called San Francisco de Sala, and the hospital for convalescents of Bolen. During the fifteen years of his episcopate Bishop Compostela accomplished what none of his predecessors had succeeded in doing. He really raised the moral standard of the diocese, and he attained that end more by his own noble example, than by his eloquent sermons on moral issues. He was a gentleman of distinguished manners, who treated all that came in contact with him with the utmost courtesy. He lived very modestly and was known always to travel on foot. He devoted his income to alms freely dispensed to all the needy, and by his numerous works of beneficence built for himself an imperishable monument in the memory of the grateful population. Governor Viana's administration was filled with what at first appeared a petty local squabble, but later developed into a serious conflict. Harassed by pirates, the town of San Juan de los Remedios del Cayo had in the year 1684 obtained permission to remove to another place, sufficiently distant from the coast to insure the safety of the inhabitants. The permission arrived at a time when conditions seemed to have improved and the majority of the population was satisfied to remain where they were. The parish priest, however, had favored and decided upon removal to a place called Cupey, and Governor Viana approved of this choice. When the residents began to discuss the problem of the new location, it was found that the greater number was of the opinion that the cattle farms known as Santa Clara offered a more convenient site, and the governor and bishop were won over to this view and agreed. As head of the town was appointed the Alcalde Manuel Rodriguez de Arziniega and as its spiritual adviser was chosen the Cura Gonzales. It so happened that neither of the two favored the place that had been selected. The Alcalde and his adherents wanted to settle at Sabana Largo, near the hacienda of Santa Clara. The priest preferred the place called El Guanal, in the body of that farm. To adjust the difference the governor and the bishop chose two men, D. Christobal de Fromesta, Cura and Vicar of Sancti Spiritu, and the Contador D. Diego de Penalver, who were both residents of that town. It is characteristic of the manner in which municipal and other public business of importance was then conducted, that the two men deliberated without result until the year 1689, when the administration of Governor Viana came to an end. Of Governor Viana's share in furthering the building of fortifications an inscription in the ravelin of the gate of Tierra bears proof. It reads: Reynando La Magestad Catolica De Carlos II. Rey de Las Espanas Y Siendo Gobernador Y Capitan General De Esta Ciudad E Isla de Cuba D. Diego Antonio De Viana Hinojosa, Caballero del Orden De Santiago, Veinte Y Cuatro Perpetuo De La Ciudad de Granada, Y General De La Artilleria Del Reinado de Sevilla, Se Acabo Esta Puerta Con Su Puente Levandizo, y Su Media Luna, etc. Ano de 1688. (In the reign of His Catholic Majesty Charles II. King of Spain, the resident governor and captain-general of this city and island of Cuba was D. Diego Antonio de Viana Hinojosa, Cavalier of the Order of Santiago, the twenty-fourth Perpetuo of the city of Granada, and the General of Artillery of the ruler of Sevilla, this gate with its drawbridge and its ravelins was finished. In the year 1688.) The affair of El Cayo continued to absorb the attention of the government during the administration of D. Severino de Manzañeda y Salines. This new governor entered upon the functions of his office on the thirtieth of October, 1689, and remained until the second of October, 1695. According to the decision which the court rendered after endless discussion the inhabitants of El Cayo were to move to Santa Clara. From the oldest Alcaldes and Magistrates of both towns two men were chosen with orders to superintend the removal: the Cabilde Captain Luis Perez de Morales and Ensign Gaspar Rodriguez. They proceeded to el Cayo and issued a proclamation which ordered the residents to move within a fortnight. When the term expired, and the order had not been complied with, they went to the church, accompanied by forty men armed with machetes, lances, battle-axes and guns, and began to harangue the people. When this had no immediate visible effect, they started to destroy house upon house, applying either the torch or the sword. They spared only the church and the residence of the prefect of the new town. After committing these unwarranted ruthless outrages they forbade any one under severe penalty to attempt to rebuilt his house; nor was any one allowed to admit a homeless neighbor to his hacienda or offer him a roof. Exposed to the inclemency of the weather, left without shelter or provisions, the temper of the inhabitants was roused, but they were too bewildered by the cruel injustice to see their way to demand redress of their wrongs. A man from the pueblo San Jacinto de Royas, deeply resenting the heinous crime, resolved not to remain passive. He made his way to the bishop and the governor, gave them a vivid account of what had occurred, and lodged a complaint in the name of the poor victims. Both Bishop Compostela and Governor Manzañedas readily yielded to his arguments, but it does not appear from the records of the time that the men who had so flagrantly abused their power were punished. The governor, probably from fear of stirring up dissatisfaction with his administration and ultimately losing his position, contented himself by adjusting the differences between the two parties. He ordered the people of both towns to live together until the king had handed down his decision. When His Majesty finally approved of the action taken, the feelings of both parties were pacified and the new town thus founded became known as Villa Clara. During the administration of Governor Manzañedas the city of Matanzas was founded. According to some authorities the name is derived from the Spanish _matanza_, which means slaughter or killing and it was supposed to refer to the extermination of the Indians who had been the native owners of that territory. Others derive the term from a corruption of the word _martizaban_, which the Indians had adopted from the Castilian when they wailed during the suffering inflicted upon them. Still others try to establish a certain connection between that name and the following story of Indian perfidy. It seems that some Spaniards had engaged a number of Indians to carry them in their canoes from one end of the bay to another. When they reached the middle of the bay, the Indians left the boats, and hitting the Spaniards on the head with the oars, tried to drown them, while they took to the mountains. Seven of the victims succeeded in escaping from death by swimming to the shore; but there they were caught by other natives, taken to the nearest pueblo and hanged. One of them however, managed to get away and reach another pueblo, whose cacique gave him shelter until the arrival of a Spanish rescuing force under Narvaez. The cacique, preceded by three hundred men carrying gifts, went to receive the party from Havana, leading the prisoner by the hand. In addressing Narvaez and P. Casas, who were the leaders, he told them that he had treated the man as if he had been his own son, that he had guarded and protected him for three years and had refused the strenuous demand of the other caciques to deliver him to them, knowing that they would have killed him. Whatever the origin of its name may be, Matanzas eventually lived down its sinister significance. The bay of Matanzas with the canal opening into it, had long been considered a point of great importance. For it was patent that, if the British set out to capture it and succeeded in establishing themselves there, the danger to Spanish commerce and especially to that of Havana would be very grave. A village had existed there from the time of the Spanish conquest; it had grown in population and the surrounding land was well cultivated. Governor Manzañedas decided at once to begin to fortify the bay. He re-organized the administration of the place and raised it to the rank of a city, which the authorities named after San Carlos Alcazar de Matanzas. The solemn ceremonies of its foundation took place on the tenth of October, 1693, in the presence of Governor Manzañedas and many other prominent citizens and high officials of the island. After an examination of the previously drafted plan a Plaza des Armas, or military parade-ground was the first to be decided upon; then the principal streets of the city were traced. Two days later an altar and a cross were raised on the square destined for the church, and Bishop D. Diego Evelino de Compostela blessed the spot, said mass over it and with the aid of Governor Manzañedas laid the first stone of the temple which was to have for its patron saint San Carlos Borromeo. On the following day the governor went to Punta Gorda on the north side of the bay and selected a place for the fort which was to be built. When the structure was completed it was in his honor given the name San Severino. The industry of the residents, the fertility of the soil and the unusually favorable location of the port made the small town grow within a few years into one of the most important cities of the island. Subsequently Matanzas developed to such size and prominence that it is to-day ranking next to Havana both in population and in commerce. The administration of Manzañedas was toward the end disturbed by the scandalous dispute between the governor Villalobas and the Licentiate Roa, Lieutenant Auditor of the Royal Audiencia (a court of appeals in the West Indies). The affair created a great deal of sensation at the time, because it threatened to divide the population into hostile factions. Villalobas was charged with having allowed his adherents to call themselves Villalobistas, in opposition to those of Lieutenant Roa, who promptly assumed the name Roistas. Controversies and quarrels arose and grew to such alarming proportions that civil war seemed imminent. The two rivals fought each other mercilessly, until Roa fled to Madrid, where he died in exile. Villalobas justly feared that the report of these disturbances would damage his reputation at the court of Madrid and was taken dangerously sick. The Audiencia of Santo Domingo which had instituted an inquiry into the matter discharged Villalobas from his office. An Oidor (hearer or judge) of the Audiencia, D. Diego Antonio Oviedo y Banos was appointed to hear the arguments of the case. But Villalobas, a broken old man, was so grieved by the disgrace that he survived the ordeal only a few days. The administration of Governor Manzañedas came to an end in the year 1695 when he was appointed to the presidency of Santo Domingo. CHAPTER XXVI With the death of King Charles II. in the year 1700 the Austrian dynasty upon the throne of Spain became extinct. One daughter of his predecessor, Philip IV., had married a Bavarian prince, another had become the wife of Louis XIV. of France. The offspring of these marriages and other candidates presented themselves for the succession and caused endless diplomatic parleys and plunged Spain into a most harassing state of uncertainty, even before the King expired. He had signed a will in favor of the Bourbon claimant, Philip of Anjou, who succeeded him as Philip V., but the Austrian archduke Charles contested this succession, until the death of his brother. Joseph called him to the throne of Austria and forced him to relinquish his claim to that of Spain. The interval, however, was spent in what is known as the War of the Austrian Succession which was far more than a war of succession to the Spanish throne, but one which involved a European problem. The hostility between England and France was known to be acute; the designs of Austria upon Spain were also known to be the source of incipient conflicts. In order to curb the insatiable ambition of Louis XIV., England had entered into an alliance with Austria and Holland. The unexpected ascension of the archduke Charles to the throne of Austria suddenly changed the political aspect of the time for England. Louis XIV. and Philip V. had agreed that in order to secure the balance of European power the crowns of France and Spain should never be united. Spain, however, was bound in the future to follow the trend of French politics. It renounced her rights to the Netherlands, which were the only barrier against invasions of France on the continent, and left England in possession of Gibraltar. As this was its most important fortress, Gibraltar was ever to be a thorn in the flesh of Spain. The treaty of Utrecht, which was signed in the year 1713, seemed by its reapportionment of the countries and the readjustment of the map of Europe to have temporarily assured peace. But the price paid for this peace by Spain was hardly to be estimated in currency. As Guiteras justly remarks, Philip V. found Spain prostrate from the impudent efforts of the Austrian dynasty to preserve her predominance among the European nations. The wars waged during the reigns of his predecessors had drained the coffers of Spain and alarmingly decreased her population. The powerful kingdom which a century before had dared to threaten the independence of England and had enjoyed prosperity and opulence, had become almost tributary to France and England. The treaty of Utrecht reduced Spain to her peninsular provinces and her overseas colonies. Though united with them by the ties of racial origin, religion and tradition, it was not an easy task to defend them against the inimical designs of powers that planned to dominate the seas and usurp the place which Spain had won for herself. Philip V. realized that the condition in which Spain had been left at the end of the wars that preceded his reign made it incumbent upon him to maintain peace and to further the country's recovery from a century and a half of constant warfare. He was inspired by the example of France under Colbert and Richelieu and his aim was by applying to Spain the lessons France had learned during the leadership of those men, to bring about a revival of Spain's previous greatness. He aspired to make Spain internally stronger than she had ever been, to enable her to humble England and to wrest from that great rival her ever increasing power in America. His task was extremely difficult, for it really meant a thorough reconstruction of the entire government. He found Spain in such a state of stagnation that it required extraordinary efforts to rouse in the country only a spark of the old spirit. He was the first sovereign since Philip II. who had a strong will and a strong personality and made his absolute power felt in every branch of the government. He had to create a new navy; he had to organize and train a new army; he had to reform the legislation, the finances, even the police of the country. So poor was Spain at that time in men of strong character and executive power, that he was obliged to employ foreigners in some of the most important places in the army and navy as well as in the council chamber. Although during the latter half of his reign of forty six years his initiative and energy were paralyzed and he lapsed into the passive indifference which had characterized the attitude of some of his predecessors, his innovations and reforms were the means of stimulating inquiry into some of the evils, political and social, that Spain had suffered from. He ushered in a new life, which slowly penetrated to every corner of the kingdom and brought it into closer contact with the outside world for which it had hitherto had a curious contempt. However slow was the work of regeneration which he had inaugurated, it was sure to benefit the next generation which could never return to the old order of things. The influence of this new life in the mother country was, of course, still slower in manifesting itself in her colonies. Cuba had still to rely upon her own resources, both in inaugurating internal improvements and in combatting external dangers. As both Great Britain and France were eagerly pursuing their plans to extend their colonial power in America, conflicts between these powers and the Spanish possessions in America were inevitable. Towards the end of the seventeenth century attempts to establish direct maritime intercourse between France and the Mississippi, and to colonize the southwest of the continent; which was under the patronage of Louis XIV. created no little anxiety in the old Spanish settlements of Florida and eventually had to lead to armed conflicts in which the West Indies, and especially Havana, as the metropolis of the Spanish island colonies, became involved. As early as the year 1693 D. Andres de Pes had settled in Pensacola and three years later three hundred Spaniards from Vera Cruz and other parts had under the leadership of D. Andres d'Arriola taken formal possession of the harbor. Henceforth no foreign ship could enter without being challenged. This the valiant commander of the French expedition, d'Iberville, the pioneer founder of Louisiana, was to experience. He had sailed in October, 1698, with a company of Marines and some two hundred colonists, among them women and children. At Santo Domingo he took on board a seasoned veteran of the golden age of piracy, a man who in 1683 had made a fortune of eight million pesos by the capture of Vera Cruz, had been an associate of M. de Grammont, Lolonois, Morgan and other notables of the Brotherhood of the Coast, and as such was familiar with every spot along the Gulf of Mexico and the coasts of New Spain; it was Captain Laurent Grave or Graff, linguist, sailor and intrepid fighter. They arrived at the island St. Rose in January, 1699, cast anchor and applied for permission to enter the harbor of Pensacola. This being refused they sailed westward and settled in the country west of the Perdido River, which was later recognized by King Philip V., who was bent upon a conciliatory policy, as the boundary between Louisiana and Florida. From that time, however, Pensacola was to know no peace, for the French cast ever a covetous eye upon that Spanish settlement. Nor did the authorities of Pensacola hesitate to harass the settlers to the west, resenting the appearance of any rival neighbor. Governor Ravolli made an expedition in 1700 against the French who had settled on Ship Island, but he himself was soon to experience that he was being surrounded by neighbors determined to show their hostility towards Spain by open or secret operations against the Spanish settlement in Florida. Governor James Moore of South Carolina, which bordered on Spanish Florida, undertook in the year 1702 an expedition against the old Spanish town of St. Augustine, in the defense of which a Cuban force was eventually to take part. The British succeeded in making their entry into the town and ravaging it; but they could not reduce the fort, which the garrison defended with desperate determination. The British sent to Jamaica for some heavy artillery. But in the meantime the Spanish viceroy had been informed of the attack and sent two war ships for the relief of the town. The governor of Cuba, too, dispatched five vessels with troops of infantry and militia, which sailed from the port of Havana under the command of Captain D. Esteban de Beroa, a Havanese of great enterprise and valor. When the Spanish fleet arrived near the harbor, Moore with his South Carolinians made a hasty retreat by land, leaving behind his vessels and stores of ammunition. The help which D. Esteban had lent the garrison of St. Augustine in this critical moment was highly appreciated by the King of Spain, who took notice of this valuable service in a cedula addressed to the Captain General of the island in 1703, in which he especially lauded the exploits of D. Esteban. The administration of D. Diego de Cordova Lazo de Vega, Knight of the military order of Santiago and General of the Galleons, was profoundly affected by the political unrest of Europe, due to the controversies about the succession and by the conflicts with the French and the British in the newly settled continent, which began to darken the future of the Spanish possessions. Cordova had entered upon his office on the third of October, 1695, and was reported to have bought the governorship for fourteen thousand dollars. Some very important internal improvements were made during his time of office. The territory from the gateway of la Punta to la Tanaza and the hospital of San Francisco de Paula was organized into districts. He was like some of his predecessors much concerned with the religious life of the island and encouraged the building of churches and convents. One of the most important convents founded at this time was the third convent of the barefoot Carmelites, dedicated to Saint Teresa. Realizing the need of greater garrisons for the protection of the people of Cuba from invasions, whether by foreign powers or by corsairs, the Spanish government sent over twelve companies of militia. So impressed was the governor with their general condition and their discipline, that he sent the king a special message referring to them. But he was too prudent to rest satisfied with this help from the government overseas; he raised and organized four more companies of infantry and cavalry, recruited from the population of Cuba itself, and this placed the island in a better state of defense than it had ever been before. He also granted a number of merchant mariners privateering privileges, which enabled them to cruise about and hunt down foreign pirates and smugglers. These men, among whom the Regidor of Trinidad, Juan Vasquez, distinguished himself by his valor, made numerous excursions in the neighborhood, retaliating upon the French colonies for the outrages of French corsairs, by invading them and capturing some of their vessels, not excepting the crew, and by carrying off their cattle. Cordova was also instrumental in promoting the tobacco culture of the island, by encouraging the employment of new mechanical contrivances. When on the thirtieth of November, 1700, King Charles II. expired in Madrid, and was followed by Philip V., the first Spanish sovereign of the house of Bourbon, the Spanish Colonies in America paid no heed to the war of the succession which was carried on between King Philip and the Archduke of Austria. Without hesitation they recognized the former as their ruler and thanks to the wholesome influence exerted upon the population by Governor Cordova and the estimable Bishop Compostela, King Philip was formally and peacefully proclaimed in Cuba. Cordova's governorship was so highly appreciated by the royal government in Spain that he received for his services the title of Marquis de Valdo and was soon after promoted to the presidency of Panama. But he later returned to Spain and died in Madrid as Counsellor of State in the year 1720. After the departure of Cordova in September, 1702, the government of the island was for a number of years once more of a rather interimistic nature, which greatly hampered the efforts of the government to insure the safety of the coasts against invaders. The British, being since the accession of Philip V. to the Spanish throne no longer the allies of Spain as they had been during the validity of the "American Treaty," were now her enemies, and once more began to harass the Spanish colonies by encouraging the pirates to interfere with their traffic. The squadron of three vessels which France sent over to patrol the ocean in the vicinity of the Antilles, did not seem to intimidate the lawless elements working more or less directly under orders of and agreements with the British. The administration of Cordova's successor, D. Pedro Benitez de Lugo, Maestro de Campo and former Counsellor to the Elector of Bavaria, began on the twentieth of September, 1702, and ended with his death only three months later, on the fourth of December. But in that brief period occurred the invasion of the island of Trinidad by the British pirate Grant, who had under him a force of three hundred men and succeeded in thoroughly terrorizing the people. After the death of D. Benitez, the provisional government was entrusted to two Habaneros, D. Luis Chacon, Castellan of the Morro, and D. Nicolas Chirmo Vandeval. They seem to have governed with commendable prudence. Determined to defend the island against the corsairs which renewed their activity, the Cuban authorities retaliated by sending out corsairs of their own. Thus D. Juan Baton de Chavez, governor of Santiago de Cuba, started from that city in 1704 with a force of two hundred and fifty men and invaded the islands of New Providence and Siguatey. He destroyed their fortifications, sacked the houses, took one hundred prisoners and returned with twenty-two cannon and a large quantity of ammunition and arms. The town of Santiago having generously contributed to the success of this enterprise both with volunteers and with material resources, the king rewarded the city with the title "muy noble y muy leal" (very noble and very loyal). In the same year there died in Havana the venerable and much beloved Bishop, D. Diego Evelino de Compostela. In fifteen years of faithful service he had succeeded in stimulating the religious life of the diocese by the building of churches, especially those in the plains, where tobacco was raised and thousands of laborers lived with their families, and in raising the moral standard of Cuban society. The spirit of animosity between France and England on the one hand, and Spain and England on the other, gave birth to two schemes to attack Charleston in the year 1706. The valiant Canadian pioneer d'Iberville was on the way with a respectable force. He reached Santo Domingo, where he was reenforced by Spanish troops, and set sail for the coast of South Carolina. He was stricken with yellow fever and the undertaking had to be abandoned. At the same time the Spanish authorities in the West Indies, having decided upon an aggressive policy towards the British in America, planned retaliation for some of the wrongs suffered in recent years. The unwarranted attack of Governor James Morgan of South Carolina upon the old Spanish town of St. Augustine, only four years before, was not forgotten and offered a welcome pretext to launch an offensive movement. Accordingly an expedition was fitted out in Havana, mostly of French privateers, but also some Cuban forces and on the way was joined by more from St. Augustine. The squadron arrived at Sullivan's Island off Charleston on Saturday afternoon in August of that year. The militia of the city was rapidly mobilized but open combat did not begin until the following Wednesday, when the French commander demanded the surrender of the city in the name of Louis XIV. The South Carolinians replied by a violent attack, which drove a large number of the French that had landed into the water. The fight was renewed when more ships of the expedition came up, and though the attack was repulsed and there was considerable loss of life, the Cuban force that had participated, returned with considerable booty. The new governor who entered upon his office May 13, 1706, was Field Marshal D. Pedro Alvarez de Villarin, a native of Asturia, gentilhombre (a nobleman-attendant of the young princes of Spain and counsellor of the Elector of Bavaria). But his reign was one of the shortest in Cuban history. He died on the eighth of July, and the former provisional governors, D. Luis Chacon and D. Nicolas Chirmo Vandeval, once more administered their duties, political and military. British warships were haunting the coasts of the island and kept the authorities and the residents in a perpetual state of suspense. But the French were now the allies of the Spaniards and their able admiral Chavagnac came to the rescue of Cuba. The unrest due to the disputed Spanish succession encouraged the defiant attitude of the British. In the year 1707 a British armada appeared on the coast for the purpose of engaging in propaganda against Philip V. and winning over the population to the support of the Austrian Archduke's claims. They flooded the island with grandiloquent proclamations and tried to bribe the people by making the most alluring promises. But D. Luis Chacon was not the man to betray the king to whom the island had sworn allegiance at his accession in 1700. He so effectively replied with cannons that the conspirators withdrew. The next duly appointed governor of Cuba and the thirty-second in order was Colonel D. Laureano de Torres Ayala, a native of Havana, Knight of the Order of Santiago and former Governor of Florida. He entered upon his office on the eighteenth of January, 1708. His attention was at once directed to an economic problem of great importance. The landowner Orri, an official in the service of Spain, had conceived the project to sell the tobacco on the island for the government. This measure was opposed by the speculators in tobacco, who sold it without custom duties to the Peninsula and other parts of America. But Governor Torres was so impressed with the advantage which would accrue from the new arrangement to the government of Spain, that he did not rest until the measure was carried and enforced. The Exchequer of Spain was henceforth enabled to purchase almost the entire tobacco crop and to make enormous profits thereby, which the coffers of the kingdom, depleted by the many wars of the past century, sorely needed. For the successful negotiation of this matter, which created the government's tobacco monopoly, the governor was rewarded with the title Marquis de Casa-Torres. Governor Torres like his predecessors was much concerned with the safety of the island, and accordingly resumed work on the Havana forts. He added to the fortifications by having the bulwark halfway between la Punta and la Fuerza built; it was considered of great importance at that time, but was later demolished, when Governor Don Dionisos Martinez proceeded with the wall of la Punta in the same direction. The Marquis de Casa-Torres had grave disputes with the Lieutenant-Auditor Don Jose Fernandez de Cordova, which caused endless discussion, not only among the officials of the island, but also in the population. The Court was finally compelled to submit the controversy to the Oidor D. Pablo Cavera, who came over from Spain to begin an investigation. Governor Torres was temporarily suspended. But the Oidor Cavera died while the inquiry into the differences between the two men was in progress. Hence Torres and the lieutenant-auditor were obliged to sail for Spain and explain their grievances. The administration of Governor Torres was a period of comparative peace. The enemies of Spain that were ever waiting for an opportunity to do something that might weaken her power in America and deprive her of some of her American possessions had not molested Cuba and the governor was able to devote his energies to internal improvements and even to aid the new bishop in his many works for the welfare of the diocese. This worthy successor of the unforgettable Bishop Compostela was D. Jeronimo Valdes, formerly Bishop of Porto Rico, provincial of the order of St. Basil and professor of Alcala. He had entered upon his duties on the thirteenth of May, 1706, and at once proved that he, too, was imbued with that noble disinterestedness which characterized his predecessor. He insisted upon strict observance of the doctrines and customs of the church and founded many new parishes. He enlarged the Belen convent by adding to the building a wing which was to be used as hospital for convalescents. He also founded the Casa de Beneficiencia, a Foundlings' Home, investing in it eleven thousand pesos of his private fortune. Another charitable institution which he called into being was a home for the poor that were reduced to beggary. He also succeeded in having a building finished, which was destined to be a hospital for lepers. In all these enterprises for the public welfare he was seconded by the Marquis de Casa-Torres. The island increased in population during this time and among the towns founded was Bejucal. The year 1709 is also memorable for an important measure which was to safeguard the public health of the island. As early as the year 1634 a so-called Protomedicato had been created by a certain Nuñez, a graduate of the university of Seville. It was an institution intended to check the unlawful practice of medicine by ignorant and inexperienced persons or by downright quacks. For some years Dr. Don Francisco Teneza, assisted by a duly appointed clerk, who performed the functions of a notary, embodied in his person the authority of a Protomedico, examining surgeons, druggists and barbers, who at that time were performing dental and minor surgical operations. But not until the beginning of the eighteenth century was the Protomedicato completely organized for efficient work. It was a college or tribunal composed of physicians duly licensed by royal patent, who were charged with examining and issuing licenses to students of medicine. In this way the government hoped to combat the evil of unlawful medical practice by unknown and incapable individuals, which had long been a grave menace to the public health. The king endowed the Protomedicato of Cuba with the same prerogatives and the same jurisdiction as were enjoyed by the corresponding institutions of Lima and Mexico. Upon the departure of the Marquis de Casa-Torres the affairs of the island were once more in the hands of a provisional government. The ayuntamento (municipal government) entrusted D. Luis Chacon with the military governorship and in default of an auditor the political was given to two alcaldes, D. Augustin de Arriola and D. Pedro Hobruitinier. But by royal order of the year 1712 D. Luis Chacon resumed the superior authority, both civil and military. At the end of the year, when the re-election of the alcaldes took place, violent disputes arose, which necessitated the intervention of Chacon and the Bishop Valdes. The court was called to inquire into the matter and settled the quarrel which had threatened to disturb the peace of the community. In the year 1712 the official circles of Cuba were greatly agitated by a sensational occurrence. It was the affair between the acting governor of Cuba, Don Luis Sanudo, and the royal Ensign, who was also Alcalde of Bayamo. The governor had ordered the Ensign to imprison two Indian chiefs who were accused of theft, but the Ensign, interpreting differently a certain royal decree and the municipal ordinances, made no move to obey the command. Governor Sanudo accordingly betook himself to Bayamo, and as the Ensign failed to present himself, went to his house. There he upbraided him, and as was reported by some at the time, slapped his face. Boiling with wrath at this insult and outrage, the Ensign killed him on the spot. The court before which he was tried condemned him to death and ordered his home to be razed. The office was for the time abolished, but later re-established. The Casa-Torres affair had been in the meantime thoroughly aired before the Court of Spain and the king had found the charges against the Marquis unfounded. So he restored him to office on the fifth of July, 1712, and in February of the following year he re-entered upon his duties as Captain-General of Cuba. During the three years of this his second term, Governor Torres actively promoted the armament of corsairs which were sent out to counteract the manoeuvres of the enemy pirates cruising along the Spanish-American coasts. Among the men entrusted with this venturesome task one especially distinguished himself by his prowess: Don Juan del Hoye Solorzano. He was later appointed governor of Santiago de Cuba. About the same time Spain suffered the loss of a rich fleet, which, sailing from Vera Cruz under command of General Ubilla, with port at Habana, was on its way to the mother country. It was wrecked at el Palmar de Aiz, the place where the New Canal of Bahama was located. To the energetic efforts of the Marquis de Casa-Torres, who at once ordered divers to go to work, was due the recovery of more than four million pesos and some valuable merchandise. The thirty-third governor duly appointed by decree of the Spanish court, dated December 15, 1715, was the Field-marshal Don Vicente Raja. He was inaugurated May 26, 1716, and although in office little more than a year succeeded in completely reorganizing the tobacco industry of the island. He was accompanied on his arrival from Spain by a commission of financial and industrial experts; the director of the bank of Spain, D. Salvador Olivares, the Visitador, a judge charged with conducting inquiries, D. Diego Daza, and the licentiate D. Pedro Morales, the chief of the revenue department. The historian Alcazar gives a clear account of the proceeding of this commission and the disturbances they created. He relates that the success of the first tobacco sales in the Peninsula had suggested the establishment of a factory in Seville. But Orri, the great landowner and planter, knew that the three million pounds of tobacco produced by Cuba would not suffice for consumption, and not wanting to have recourse to the inferior leaf produced in Brazil and Venezuela, decided to monopolize the tobacco industry of Spain. To realize this plan he proposed to increase the production of tobacco in Cuba by extending its cultivation over the whole island and guaranteeing the laborers full value of their harvest, but insisting that the product be submitted for examination to the committee presided over by Olivares. This proposition, however just it seemed, produced serious disturbances. The commission favoring the government monopoly had ordered by decree on April 17, 1717, that there should be established in Havana a general agency for the purchase of tobacco with branch offices in Trinidad, Santiago and Bayamo. This decree in reality was of great advantage to the laborers who were thus certain of selling their crops and with advance payments could extend and improve their sembrados (tobacco fields). On the other hand it was opposed by the speculators, who had up to this time lived on the fat commissions which their operations had brought them. These men spread all sorts of rumors detrimental to the newly appointed commission and its work among the producers of tobacco. Deluded by this insidious propaganda, the men rebelled. Five hundred vegueros or stewards of the tobacco fields armed themselves and captured Jesus del Monte. Even in the capital there were public demonstrations against the commission and the municipal authorities so weakly supported the governor in his defense of the employees of the estance (monopoly) established by the royal government, that he resigned his office in favor of the royal tenente Maraveo (according to the historian Valdes he was expelled) and sailed for Spain in company of D. Olivares. The earnest exhortations of Bishop Valdes and the archbishop of Santo Domingo induced the rebels to cease their hostile activities and to withdraw to their homes and temporarily quiet was restored. So much confusion had been created by frequent changes of governorship and the interim rule of provisional authorities, that the royal government at Madrid took steps to establish greater stability and insure an uninterrupted function of the administrative machine of Cuba. After the affair of Casa-Torres it became imperative to provide for the cases of absence or suspension from office. A royal decree dated December, 1715, ordered that in future, whenever the office of the Governor and Captain-General should become vacant, by default, absence or sickness, the political and military power should be held by the Tenente-Rey (or Royal Lieutenant), or in his default by the Castellan (warden or governor) of el Morro. Upon the return of Vicente de Raja to Spain, Lieutenant-Colonel D. Gomez de Maraveo Ponce de Leon temporarily exercised the functions of governorship. Cuba was at that time in a peculiar state of political and social unrest. There were still some demonstrations of the tobacco-planters going on in different parts of the island. Maraveo, instead of being upheld in his authority, soon discovered that he was at the mercy of the magistrates and some of the wealthy citizens who seemed to back the rebellious elements. In the eastern part of the island the miners had joined the tobacco-planters in disturbances, intended to convey to the government their disapproval of its measures. It required all the persuasive power of Bishop Valdes and other spiritual leaders of the colony to pacify the turbulent agitation fermenting among the people. The court of Spain realized the seriousness of the situation and was particularly circumspect in the choice of the new governor. A man was needed, firm of will, yet possessed of a sense of justice and of tact in the handling of the two hostile factions. After long and serious deliberation D. Gregorio Guazo Calderon Fernandez de la Vega, a native of Ossuna, Brigadier-General and Knight of the Order of Santiago was selected. D. Guazo had in his previous official activities proved his energy and bravery and soon after entering upon his office relieved the Spanish authorities of their worries concerning the state of affairs in Cuba. He took charge of his duties on the twenty-third of June, 1718, and immediately called a meeting of the Ayuntamento, the bishop and leading prelates. The men who by their participation in the recent disturbances compromised their reputation were filled with anxious apprehension. But the king wished to avoid internal unrest and discontent and had recommended a policy of reconciliation. It was an auspicious beginning of D. Guazo's administration when he announced at this meeting that the King in his clemency would forget the past occurrences, if the mischief-makers would in future show loyal obedience to his orders. A proclamation which Governor Guazo issued the next day informed the people of the whole island that royal pardon had been granted to the chiefs of the recent mutiny, and quiet and order were soon restored. The tumultuous manifestations which a few greedy speculators had deliberately stirred up among the people associated with tobacco culture, ceased for the time being. He reorganized the tobacco-factory and reinstalled the former employees. The factory advanced funds to the vegueros, who, having no other creditors, could now fix the price and sell the crop themselves. But in the year 1721 the vegueros once more revolted; they resented the dictatorial manner in which the Visitador D. Manuel Leon exercised his functions as inspector and supervisor. The Bishop and D. Jose Bayona Chacon who filled the office of provisor (a sort of ecclesiastical judiciary), managed by earnest exhortations and promise of watching over their welfare to pacify the insurgents and prevent blood-shed, a service for which Bayona was later rewarded by the rank and title of a count. But the arguments of the two prelates had no effect upon the Visitador who continued his unwarranted severity. The result was a revolt in 1723 of the vegueros of San Miguel, Guanabacoa and Jesus del Monte, who numbered five hundred men with arms and horses. They proceeded to destroy the tobacco fields of the cultivators of Santiago and Bejucal who had agreed to sell their tobacco at the price proposed by the Visitador. Governor Guazo was obliged to send a company of mounted soldiers under the command of D. Ignacio Barrutia to parley with the rebels. But at the suggestion of submission they replied with musket-shot and Barrutia was forced to fire upon them. Several were killed and wounded, and twelve were taken prisoners. These unfortunates were hanged at Jesus del Monte on that same day. As soon as this matter was disposed of, Governor Guazo directed his attention to the military affairs of the island. Florida had at this time been annexed to the government of Cuba and Guazo reorganized the army of both colonies, and called into being a number of new militia companies in different parts of the island. He replaced the old pike or lance and the antiquated musket or blunderbus by the bayonet and rifle. The garrison of the capital was raised to eight hundred and sixty-five men, all properly armed and equipped. At the same time the salaries in the army were increased. The soldiers received eleven pesos a month, the salaries of the Teniente de Rey--the King's Lieutenant--and of the governors of el Morro and la Punta were raised and the Captain-General was paid ten thousand pesos a year. An important measure for the promotion of West Indian commerce was inaugurated by Patino, the Minister of the Treasury, who, in order to increase the imports of goods from Spain, conceded to the merchants the same rights as those given to the merchants of Seville and Cadiz. Guazo had warned British privateers to desist from raids upon the Spanish possessions and in the year 1719 had to address the same warning to the French. For the rupture of diplomatic relations between France and Spain had once more increased the insecurity of the Spanish-American coasts. The privateers fitted out by the Cuban government and authorized to retaliate upon the French and British vessels they would meet, were under the command of men of tried valor, like Gonzalez, Mendreta, Cornego and others. They succeeded in capturing a number of bilanders (small one-mast vessels), which carried cargoes of over one hundred thousand pesos in value. On one of these expeditions the soldiers and sailors attempted to revolt against the customary discipline, but Count Bayona suppressed the incipient mutiny before it had the time to develop. As soon as war had been declared between France and Spain the promoters of the French colonization schemes that had modestly begun to materialize along southern coast of the American continent, embraced this opportunity to attack the Spanish settlements in Florida. On the fourteenth of May, 1718, Bienville, the brother and successor of the famous d'Iberville, arrived at Pensacola and in the name of the French king demanded the capitulation of the town. Unprepared for such an eventuality and unable to resist superior forces, D. Juan Pedro Metamores, the governor of Pensacola, surrendered and the garrison left with all honors of war. They were transported in French vessels to Havana. But already on this involuntary voyage Metamores was considering measures of retaliation. When the French vessels _Toulouse_ and _Mareschal de Villars_ reached Cuba and landed the prisoners, they were seized by the Governor of Havana, who on learning of the disaster at Pensacola decided upon its recapture. A fleet consisting of one Spanish warship, nine brigantines and the two French vessels was quickly made ready and Metamores with his captured troops embarked for Pensacola. On the sixth of August he entered the harbor with the French vessels flying the French colors as decoys. The French commander refused to surrender and a cannonade began. Then the French demanded an armistice which was followed by the exchange of more shots and finally the garrison of one hundred men marched out, also with honors of war, under the command of Chateaugue. They were sent to Havana and were to be transported to Spain, but in the meantime were imprisoned in Morro castle. Metamores resumed his governorship of Pensacola. But in September Bienville, the brother of Chateaugue, assisted by a French fleet under Champmeslin, with a large force of Canadians and Indians, attacked Pensacola once more. Metamores was defeated and with some of his Spanish troops sent to Havana to be exchanged for the French prisoners held there since August. The remaining Spaniards were sent to France as prisoners of war. It seems from the records of the historian Blanchet that Governor Guazo in the following year made an attempt to reconquer Pensacola. He sent an expedition of fourteen ships and nine hundred men under the command of D. Esteban de Berroa, who succeeded in taking the place. But in the further course of the engagement between the two forces, the French regained possession and defeated the Cubans, many of whom were made prisoners and sent to Spain. Of Governor Guazo's efforts to improve the fortifications of Havana, an inscription on the inner side of the gate of Tierra bears witness. It reads: Reynando La Majesdad Catolica del Senor Felipe V. Rey de las Espanas y Siendo Gobernador de Esta Ciudad, E Isla de Cuba El Brigadier de los Reales Exercitos D. Gregorio Guazo Calderon Fernandez de la Vega, Caballero del Orden de Santiago. Ano De 1721. In the reign of His Catholic Majesty Philip V. King of the Spains, and when the Governor of this town and island of Cuba was the Brigadier of the royal armies D. Gregorio Guazo Calderon Fernandez de la Vega, Knight of the Order of Saint James. In the year 1721. CHAPTER XXVII The wonderful impetus which the discoverers and explorers of Spain gave to the spirit of adventure by opening to the world the gates of a new and strange world, promptly began to bear fruit among those nations who had always been daring navigators. Young men with no ties, either of family or profession, to hold them, were suddenly fired with the desire to see the new continent which the genius of Columbus and his associates had brought within their reach, and set out in quest of what promised to be a precious new experience. Most of these men were fairly well educated and sensed the importance of all these enterprises. They set out as eager observers and they did not fail to record their observations and impressions in the frank and unadorned manner of unsophisticated onlookers. Some kept a daily record of their experiences, others jotted down what seemed to them the most striking incidents; still others embodied their reflections on what they had seen and heard in letters that were sent home whenever an occasion presented itself. Out of this great mass of personal records of travel in the New World a number stand out as deserving of more than passing notice, and though a careful perusal of these books shows a tendency on the part of some authors to repeat what they had heard or read in the reports of their predecessors, there is something worth noting in every individual volume. Among the writers who were evidently the source from which many authors drew to corroborate and complete their personal observations is Tordesillas Herrera, his Spanish Majesty's Chief Chronicler, traces of whose "Description of the West Indies," which was translated into Dutch, English, French and other languages are found in many books. The writings of that worthy prelate and Champion of the Indians, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, have also been drawn upon by many writers. Almost amusing in the light of later day events, is a copiously illustrated little book in which a pious German translator dwells with unctuous self-righteousness on the cruelties practised by the Spaniards upon the natives of the islands. Herrera thus relates the story of the first settlement of Cuba in the second volume of "A Description of the West Indies," which was translated into Dutch, English, French and other languages and appeared in English in the year 1625: "This same year 1511, the Admiral Don James Columbus, resolved to make settlements in Cuba, knowing it to be an island, the soil good, populous and abounding in provisions. To this purpose he made use of James Velasquez, being the wealthiest and best belov'd of all the first Spanish inhabitants in Hispaniola. Besides he was a Man of Experience, of a mild and affable Temper, tho' he knew how to maintain his authority; of Body well-shap'd, of Complexion fair, and very discreet. As soon as it was known in Hispaniola that James Velasquez was going to make settlements in Cuba, Abundance of People resolv'd to bear him Company, some because, as has been said, he was belov'd and others because they were ruin'd and in Debt. All these, being about three hundred Men, rendezvous'd in the Town of Salvatiena de la Zavana to embark aboard four ships, this Place being at the Extremity of Hispaniola. Before we proceed any further, it is fit to observe that the Province of Guahaba lying next to Cuba, the Distance between the two Points being but eighteen Leagues, many Indians went over to Cuba in their Canoes and among them pass'd over, with as many of his Men as could, a Cazique of the said Province of Guahaba, call'd Hatuey, a brave and discreet Man. He settled on the nearest Country known by the name of Mazci, and possessing himself of that Part kept the People as Subjects, but not as Slaves; for it was never found in the Indies that any Difference was made between a free people or even their own Children and Slaves, unless it were in New Spain, and the other Provinces, where they us'd to sacrifice Prisoners to their Idols which was not practis'd in these Islands. This Cazique Hatuey, fearing that the Spaniards would at some Time pass over into Cuba, always kept Spies to know what was doing in Hispaniola and being inform'd of the Admiral's design, he assembled his People who it is likely were of the most martial, and putting them in Mind of their many sufferings under the Spaniards told them: 'They did all that for a great Lord they were very fond of, which he would show them' and then taking some Gold out of a little Palm Tree Basket, added 'This is the Lord whom they serve, him they follow, and as you have already heard, they are about passing over hither, only to seek this Lord, therefore let us make a Festival, and dance to him, to the End that when they come, he may order them not to do us harm.' Accordingly they all began to sing and dance till they were quite tir'd, for it was their Custom to dance as long as they could stand, from nightfall till break of Day, and these Dances were as in Hispaniola, to the Musick of their Songs, and tho' fifty thousand Men and Women were assembled, no one differ'd in the least from the rest in the Motions of their Hands, Feet and Bodies; but those of Cuba far exceeded the natives of Hispaniola, their Songs being more agreeable. When they were Spent with Singing and Dancing before the little Basket of Gold, Hatuey bid them not to Keep the Lord of the Christians in any Place whatsoever, for if he were in their Bowels, they would fetch him out, and therefore they should cast him in the River under Water, where they would not find him, and so they did." Following is a description of the natives of Cuba, quoted from the same work: "The first inhabitants of this Island were the same as those of the Lucayos, a good sort of People and well temper'd. They had Caziques and Towns of two or three hundred houses with several Families in each of them as was usual in Hispaniola. They had no Religion as having no Temples or Idols or Sacrifices; but they had the physicians or conjuring Priests as in Hispaniola, who it was thought had Communication with the Devil and their questions answered by him. They fasted three or four months to obtain this Favour, eating nothing but the juice of Herbs, and when reduced to extreme weakness they were worthy of that hellish Apparition, and to be inform'd whether the Season of the Year would be favorable or otherwise, what Children would be born, whether those born would live, and such like questions. These were their Oracles, and these Conjurers they call'd Behiques, who led the People in so many Superstitions and Fopperies, during the Sick by blowing on them, and such other exterior actions, mumbling some Word between their Teeth. These People of Cuba knew that Heaven, the Earth and other Things had been created, and said that they had much Information concerning the Flood, and the world had been destroy'd by water from three Persons that came three several ways. Men of above seventy years of age said that an old Man knowing the Deluge was to come, built a great Ship and went into it with his Family and Abundance of Animals, then he sent out a Crow which did not return, staying to feed on the dead Bodies, and afterward return'd with a green Branch; in the other Particulars, as far as Noah's Sons covering him when drunk, and then they scoffing at it; adding that the Indians descended from the latter, and therefore had no Coats nor Cloaks; but that the Spaniards, descending from the other that cover'd him, were therefore cloath'd and had Horses. What has been here said, was told by an Indian of above seventy years of age to Gabriel de Cabrera who one Day quarreling with him called him Dog, whereupon he call'd, Why he abus'd and call'd him Dog, since they were Brethren, as descending from the Sons of him that made the great Ship, with all the rest that has been said before." Herrera's description of the island may have inspired many writers coming after him; it had, however, the advantage of giving one of the earliest and therefore most spontaneous impressions on record. Here is a sample of his descriptive power: "This Island is very much wooded, for Man may travel along it almost two hundred and thirty leagues, always under Trees of several Sorts, and particularly sweet scented and red Cedars, as thick as an Ox, of which they made such large Canoes that they would contain fifty or sixty Persons, and of this Sort there were once great numbers in Cuba. There are Storax Trees, and if a Man in the Morning gets upon a high Place the Vapors that rise from the Earth perfectly smell of Storax coming from the fire the Indians make at night, and drawn up when the Sun rises. Another Sort of Trees produce a Fruit call'd Xaguas, as big as veal kidneys, which being beaten and laid by four or five days, tho' not gather'd ripe, are full of Liquor like Honey, and better tasted than the sweetest Pears. There are abundance of wild Vines that run up high, bearing grapes, and Wine has been made of them, but somewhat aigre, and there being an infinite Quantity of them throughout all the Island, the Spaniards were wont to say they had seen a Vineyard that extended two hundred and thirty Leagues. Some of the Trunks of these Vines are as thick as a Man's Body, which proceeded from extraordinary Moisture and Fertility of the Soil. All the Island is very pleasant and more temperate than Hispaniola, very healthy, has safer Harbors for many Ships than if they had been made by Art, as is that of Santiago on the Southern Coast being in the shape of a Cross, that of Xagua is scarce to be matched in the World, the Ships pass into it through a narrow Mouth, not above a Cross bow Shot over and then turned into the open Part of it, which is about ten Leagues in Compass with three little islands so posited, that they may make fast their Ships to Stakes on them, and they will never budge, all the Compass being shelter'd by Mountains, as if they were in a House, and there the Indians had Pens to shut up the Fish. On the north Side there are good Harbours, the best being that which was call'd de Carenas, and now the Havana, so large that few can compare to it; and twenty Leagues to the Eastward of it is that of Matanzas, which is not very safe. About the middle of the Island is another good Port, call'd del Principe, and almost at the End that of Baracoa, where much good Ebony is cut; between which there are other good anchoring places, tho' not large." In a volume entitled "Voyages and Travels" and edited by Raymond Beazley, there is a record of travels in Mexico 1568-1585 by one John Chilton, which says on the title-page: "A Notable Discourse of Master John Chilton, touching the people, manners, mines, metals, riches, forces and other memorable things of the West Indies seen and noted by himself in the time of his travels continued in those parts the space of seventeen or eighteen years." He writes of Havana: "Merchants after travelling from Nicaragua, Honduras, Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, Jamaica and all other places in the Indies arrive there, on their return to Spain; for that in this port they take in victuals and water and the most part of their landing. Here they meet from all the foresaid places, always in the beginning of May by the King's commandment. At the entrance of this port, it is so narrow that there can scarce come in two ships together, although it be above six fathoms deep in the narrowest place of it. "In the north side of the coming in, there standeth a tower in which there watcheth every day a man to descry the call of ships which he can see on the sea; and as many as he discovereth so many banners he setteth upon the tower, that the people of the town (which standeth within the port about a mile from the tower) may understand thereof. "Under this tower there lieth a sandy shore, where men may easily go aland; and by the tower there runneth a hill along by the water's side, which easily with small store of ordnance, subdueth the town and port. The port within is so large that there may easily ride a thousand sail of ships, without anchor or cable; for no wind is able to hurt them. "There inhabit within the town of Havana about three hundred Spaniards and about sixty soldiers; which the King maintaineth there, for the keeping of a certain castle which he hath of late erected, which hath planted in it about twelve pieces of small ordnance. It is compassed round with a small ditch, where through at their pleasure, they may let in the sea. "About two leagues from Havana there lieth another town called Guanabacoa, in which there are dwelling about one hundred Indians; and from this place sixty Leagues there lieth another town named Bahama, situated on the north side of the island. The chiefest city of the island of Cuba which is above two hundred miles in length, is also called Cuba (Santiago de Cuba); where dwelleth a Bishop and about 200 Spaniards; which town standeth on the south side of the island about a hundred leagues from Havana. "All the trade of this island is cattle; which they kill only for the hides that are brought thence into Spain. For which end the Spaniards maintain there many negroes to kill the cattle, and foster a great number of hogs, which being killed are cut into small pieces that dry in the sun; and so make provisions for the ships which come for Spain." Many books of West Indian travel are by French writers, among them an anonymous "Relation des voyages et des decouvertes que las Espagnols on fait," Jean de Laët's "Histoire du Nouveau Monde," Jean Baptiste Labat's "Nouveau Voyage aux îles de l'Amérique," François Coréal's "Relation des Voyages aux Indes Occidentales" and that interesting work entitled "Relation de ce qui s'est passé dans les îles et Terra Firma de l'Amérique," which does not give the name of the author, but bears on its title-page the name of the printer, "Gervais Clouzier au Palais, à la seconde Boutique sur les degrés en montant pour aller à la Ste. Chapelle au Voyageur MDCLXXI" and is dedicated to the Duc de Luynes, a peer of France. There is also the work of a Dutchman, Linschoten: "Histoire de la Navigation de Jean Hugues de Linschoten," which has been translated into English, French and other languages. Jan Huygens van Linschoten was a born traveler. His favorite reading had always been books of travel and as the news of the exploits of foreign mariners in the New World came pouring into Holland, this young Dutchman was seized with an irresistible longing to see those far-off worlds. He frankly speaks in his book of travel of the difficulties he encountered in trying to persuade his family to approve of his venture, and whether they did or not, he set out for Lisbon as the place where he would be most likely to obtain passage. He arrived there just after the death of Alba. He found the Peninsula in great commotion which even interrupted the regular routine of overseas traffic. But a man of daring puts his trust in chance, and chance favored the venturesome youth by an extraordinary opportunity. There was at that time a noble Dominican monk in Lisbon, Fra Vincente Fonseca, scion of a distinguished family. He had been a preacher to King Sebastian of Portugal, had done missionary work in Africa and been later attached to the court of Madrid as confessor of Philip II. The archbishopric of the West Indies having become vacant, Fonseca was appointed, but he was unwilling to accept this position, dreading the long voyage and a repetition of some unpleasant experiences which he had had in Africa. The king, however, insisted, promised to recall him in four or five years and held out to him the lure of rich revenues. So Fra Fonseca finally accepted, and Jan Huygens van Linschoten succeeded in obtaining a position in the retinue of the prelate. Linschoten's brother, who was secretary to the king, being tired of court life, had also asked to be sent overseas and was about to sail as scribe on board a vessel going to the Levant. But on learning of his brother's luck, he decided also to go to the West Indies and joined the fleet waiting to embark in some professional capacity. There were five vessels; the Admiral ship called _San Felipe_, the Vice-Admiral _San Diego_, the third was _San Laurente_, the fourth _San Francisco_ and the fifth _San Salvador_. The two brothers boarded the latter, and set sail on Good Friday, the eighth of April, 1583. Jan Huygens van Linschoten has this to say of Cuba: "Cuba is a very large island belonging to the Antille group, first discovered by Christopher Colomb in 1492, and called by him Jeanne et Ferdinande and also Alpha and Omega. It has also by others been called Island of Santiago, after the name of the principal town, so considered on account of the great harbor and big trade. To the east it has the island of San Domingo, to the west Yucatan, to the north the extremity of Florida and the Lucaya islands, to the South the island of Jamaica. The island of Cuba is greater in length than in width; it measures from one end to the other three hundred leagues, from North to South seventy and in width it is only fifteen and in some places nineteen leagues. The center of the island is at 91 degrees longitude and twenty latitude. The island has long been considered part of the continent on account of its size, of which one ought not to be surprised, for the inhabitants themselves seem not to know its limits and since the arrival of the Spaniards they know no better, being a people, naked and simple and contented with their government and bothering about no other. The ground is rough and hilly. The sea makes inlets in various places; there are small rivers, the good waters of which carry gold and copper. The air is moderately warm, sometimes a little cold. You find there dye-stuffs for linen and furs. The island is full of shady woods, ponds and beautiful fresh water rivers; you also find plenty of ponds the waters of which are naturally salt. The forests contain wild boars. The rivers frequently yield gold. "In this island are six cities, inhabited by Spaniards, the first and principal of which is San Jago, which is the seat of the archbishop; but Havana is the principal mercantile center of the island and there they build ships. Two notable things were remarked on this island by Gonsalo Onetano. One is a valley between two mountains, of the length of two or three Spanish leagues, where you find boulders by nature so round that they could not be rounded better, and in such quantity that they could serve as ballast for several ships, that use cannon balls instead of lead or iron. The other is a mountain, not far from the coast, from which there is a constant flow of pitch to the coast and wherever the wind may divert it. The residents and Spaniards use this pitch to tar their vessels. "The inhabitants of this island are like those of the island of Spain (Hispaniola) though a little different in language. Both men and women go about naked. In their marriage a strange custom prevails; the husband is not the first to approach his wife. If he is a gentleman, he invites all gentlemen to precede him; if he is a merchant, he invites the merchants, if he is a peasant, he asks the gentlemen and the priests. The men can for the slightest cause abandon the women; but the wives cannot desert their husband for any reason whatsoever. The men are very inconstant and lead a bad life. The soil produces big worms and serpents or snakes that are not poisonous so the people eat them without danger. And these snakes feed on certain little animals called Guabiniquinazes, of which sometimes seven or eight are found in their stomach, although they are as big as hares, resembling a fox, the head of a weasel, the tail of a fox, the hair long like a deer's, color somewhat reddish, and the flesh tender and wholesome. This island should be well populated; but it is not so at present, unless it be by some Spaniards, who have exterminated the greater number of natives, of which many died of starvation." The Sieur Jean de Laët d'Anners, whose History of the New World bears the imprint of Bonaventure and Elzevir, Printers of the University of Leyden, also gives a description of Cuba as it was in the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. He says: "There are few towns in proportion to the size of the island; Santiago ranks first, both for its age and name; it was built by Diego Velasco. At the south coast of the island about 20 degrees North Latitude, opposite Hispaniola, almost two miles from the sea, in the depth of a harbor which one may well pronounce the first among the large and safe harbors of the New World. For the ocean enters through a narrow inlet and is received by a large bay, like a gulf, with several little islands; it is so safe a port that one does not need to cast anchor. This city was once well populated, but now the population is reduced to a very small number. It has a cathedral church and a bishop Suffragans of the archbishopric of San Domingo and a monastery of the Minorite brothers. It is owned by the Lieutenant-Governor of the island. The chief articles of trade are ox-skins and sugar. Three miles from the town are rich mines of copper, which is now extracted from high mountains, called for that reason by the Spaniards Sierras de Cobre. "Near this town to the East about thirty miles is the town of Baracoa, built by the same Velasco on the North Coast The forests near this town yield very good ebony and according to other reports Brazilian redwood. "The third city is San Salvador or Bayamo from the name of the province, built by the same Velasco, thirty miles from Santiago, which surpasses all other towns of the island by good air, fertile soil and beautiful plains; it is in the center of the island, but merchandise is brought from the sea by the river Caute, which is opposite. Among the treasures of this island are certain stones of divers size, but all perfectly round, so they could serve as cannon balls; they are said to be so numerous on the shores of the river bearing the name of the town, that they seem to have rained from the sky. Oniedo says they are found in a marshy valley almost midway between this city and Santiago. "Puerto de Principe ranks fourth; town and harbor, much esteemed by mariners, are to the north of the island, forty leagues from Santiago northwest. Not far are springs of bitumen, which Monardes mentions (and which the Indians use as remedy for chills). I believe they are the naptha of the ancients. "Santi Spiritus of forty to fifty houses is more a village than a town and its harbor is good only for barges and sloops. But vessels stop there on their way from Santiago, Bayamo and Puerto Principe to Havana. "Trinite-Trinidad--once populated by Indians, now almost deserted, has an inconvenient harbor and was the scene of some shipwrecks. "Havana receives the sea by a narrow but deep inlet, enlarging into a wide bay, with coasts at first diverging and then meeting, capable of holding a thousand vessels as if in a safe bosom. All the Spanish fleets coming from the meridional continent, New Spain and the islands, loaded with a variety of merchandise and an abundance of gold and silver, stop there to take on water and necessary victuals, and when a sufficient number has collected, in September or later, they go out together or in two fleets through the straits of Bahama towards Spain: The city has besides the garrison (the number of which is uncertain, although the king sends the pay for a thousand soldiers and more) three hundred Spanish families, some Portuguese and a large number of slaves. The governor of the island and the other royal officers reside there. It surpasses not only the other cities of the island, but almost all of America by the size and safety of her port, her wealth and her commerce. The neighboring forests furnish a great abundance of excellent woods, which they use to build their ships, which is a very great convenience. They have also tried to work some copper mines not far from the town; but without success, either because the veins failed, or the laborers were too ignorant or the expense was greater than the profit." Many of the writers of these books of travel dwell at length upon the wealth of precious woods found on the island. One of them makes a list which contains the following: l'acana, called vegetable iron, cedar, majagna (mahogany) frijolillo, a wood with shaded veins, granadillo, a wood light purple in color, ebony, yew and many others. Wood was so plentiful that it was even used instead of metal in machinery. Foreigners visiting the first sugar refinery in Cuba, which was in 1532 founded by Brigadier Gonzales de Velosa, associated with the veedor Cristobal de Tapia and his brother, found the machines made of hard wood. The variety of fruits is also commented upon by the travelers that visited Cuba in the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. They mention among the fruit trees abundant in Cuba the cocoa trees of Los Remedios, the ubiquitous banana, the orange, the West India chestnut, the fruit-bearing palms, guesima, garoubier, yaya and others. François Coréal's "Relation des Voyages aux Indes Occidentales" also contains some interesting data and goes into the causes of the decline of Spanish power in the West Indies. Coréal, who seems to be of Spanish origin or at least citizenship, says among other things: "There grows in Porto Rico a guiac tree, the wood of which was considered a sovereign remedy against small-pox. Indians sometimes told me, were it but for that wood, one should be glad that America was discovered. These Indians often asked me whether there are any drugs against small pox growing in Europe; and when I told them that many excellent antivenereal remedies came from the West Indies, they remarked with some common sense and not without a touch of irony, that God had much kindness for the Castellanos, having given them their gold, their wives and even their guiac." In another part of the very readable work he says: "It is certain the Spaniards owe the rapidity of their conquest of America to the sudden (and almost miraculous) fear with which the Indians were seized at the approach of the new enemy. It seems that without it we would have had much more trouble; but artillery was unknown to these Americans, so was military discipline, which we understood better than they, so they with extraordinary rapidity cleared for us the roads to the South Sea and on to Chili and the Straits of Magellan. This facility of our conquest made for carelessness, which from that time through the luxury and idleness of our people increased, until it became almost inconceivable. As our people rather scorned the Indians and considered them almost a sort of intermediary creature between man and beast, it was believed that lands so easily conquered could not be as easily lost; and there was some reason for this belief, for at that time Spain had no rival on the sea, there was nothing to fear from the Indians themselves, who could not hold out against us conquerors. Later we had even less fear, for the Spanish monarchy became a formidable power to all Europe and when it ceased to be so, interests and politics had so changed that one was obliged to leave us in peaceful ownership of a possession which could have been taken from us as easily as we had conquered it. "This is according to my opinion the main cause of the decline of Spanish power in America. There are others which are no less real. As soon as one has set foot in the New World, you are confronted with an endless lot of plunderers and marauders, who call themselves soldiers, ravage the beautiful country, pillage the treasures of the Indians, torture the inhabitants and rob them of their property and freedom, under a thousand pretences unworthy of Christianity and of Spanish generosity. So that several of these nations which at the beginning favored the Spaniards, became in time their most mortal enemies. These plunderers, I cannot call them anything else, ruined at the outset the authority of the King and by their wickedness hindered all the good that one could have expected from the friendship of native residents. Royal authority being poorly upheld by these bad subjects of the King, and the facile abundance which they had found, having plunged them into all sorts of vice, their pride made them look upon the Indians as their slaves and even as property acquired by the sword, which succeeded in spoiling our position with the natives. It is quite certain that these people would not wish for more than to throw off the yoke of servitude under which they sigh to-day as did their ancestors before them." The author of the book printed by Gervais Glouzier, "Relation de ce qui s'est passé dans les îles et la Terra Firma de l'Amérique pendant la dernière guerre avec l'Angleterre, etc." also dwells upon the policy pursued by certain Spanish adventurers and officials towards the natives of the islands: "The Spaniards pretended to have recognized the natives of these islands as being anthropophagous, and asked the king of Castile permission to capture them, i.e., to take and make them slaves (which they did elsewhere without permission), so they did not approach the Antilles except armed, and in the character of enemies; and the Indians who inhabited them prepared to make upon them the most cruel war, as soon as they saw vessels off their coasts, be it openly or from ambush in the woods, or by surprise attacks, when the strangers wanted to take water or leave the vessels, which irritated these people and many a Spaniard regretted having obliged them to go to such extremities. "Things of this kind happened in the Antilles during the fifteenth century when the Spaniards were busy making other discoveries, wherever gold or silver attracted them and for the conservation of which and the exploitation of mines they could not furnish a sufficient number of men. They had no idea of settling down to cultivate the soil of these lands, and waiting only to procure the convenience of taking on water or leaving their invalids to recuperate on St. Christopher island, they made peace with the Indians who inhabited this island, and continued to treat as enemies all those of other islands. "When at the end of this century and the beginning of the sixteenth, the English and French sailed on the seas of America, the first with more considerable forces like those conducted by Drake, Walter Raleigh, Kenits and others, and the French with less armaments, the voyages of the ones and the others in those little frequented climates made some other compatriots conceive the idea of establishing themselves on American soil and found colonies, which would furnish subsistence to a considerable number of their nation and serve as retreat to those vessels where they could renew their supplies. In this way in 1625 two adventurers, the one French, named d'Enemène 'de la maison de Duil en Normandie,' the other also a gentleman, an Englishman named V. Varnard, moved by the same desire landed on the same day on St. Christopher's, which they had chosen for their purpose and from there all the French and British settlements in the Antilles radiated." These records of visits to the West Indies by Dutch, English, French and other travellers following in the wake of the great discoverers and explorers, rise almost to the importance of documentary evidence, when they attempt to deal with such questions as the attitude of the Spaniards towards the natives of the New World. But mainly they are narratives, setting down simply and unpretentiously the impressions made upon European visitors by the bigness of dimensions and proportions and the abundance of natural products of all sorts. There is a spirit of wonderment at the riches so profusely bestowed upon this Western world; but there is not yet a trace of the jealousy so apparent in later writings, when commercial rivalry had divided the nations of Europe into hostile camps and finally arrayed all of them against Spain. Though not always written by men who had set out in pursuit of adventure, they convey to the reader a breath of the oldtime romance of travel in countries the plants and animals and native residents of which are so many objects of curious interest. But viewed as a whole, these books are full of information, at times strangely quickened by an individual human touch, and read at leisure in a certain order, reconstruct the panorama of West Indian life in a period which had no parallel in the history of the world. CHAPTER XXVIII It was the inscrutable irony of fate that Cuba should remain so negligible a quantity during one of the most momentous and progressive periods of human history. No other era since man began his career had been on the whole so marked with greatness. Discovery and exploration had doubled the known area of the globe, and the intellectual achievements of the race had even more than kept pace with the material. The era of which we have been writing in this volume saw the completion of Columbus's work in his fourth voyage, the exploits of Magellan, Balboa and Cabot, the enterprises of Cortez and Pizarro, of Cartier and Raleigh. It saw the rise of religious liberty, and of modern philosophy and science. It saw the art of printing, invented in the preceding century, developed into world-wide significance. This was the era of genius. Its annals were adorned with the names of Shakespeare and Cervantes, of Rafael and Titian and Michael Angelo, of Holbein and Durer, of Luther and Erasmus, of Ariosto and Rabelais, of Tyndale and Knox, of Calvin, Loyola and Xavier, of Copernicus and Vesalius, of Montaigne and Camoens, of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, of Tasso and Spenser, of Bacon and Jonson, of Sidney and Lope de Vega. It was a wondrous company that passed along the world's highway while Cuba was struggling in obscurity to lay the foundations of a future state. Nor did Spain herself lag behind her neighbor nations. The sixteenth century saw her swift rise to the greatest estate she has ever known, and her development of many of the greatest names in her history. She began the century a newly-formed kingdom uncertain of herself and timorously essaying an ambitious career; and she reached its close one of the most extensive and most powerful empires in the world. We commonly think of her chiefly as a conquering power. But in fact that century of her marvellous conquests of empire was also her golden age in intellect. We may imagine that the swiftness of her rise to primacy among the nations, and the dazzling splendor of her conquests, stimulated and inspired the minds of her people to comparable achievements in the intellectual world. The sixteenth century was indeed to Spain what the Augustan Age was to Rome, and what the Elizabethan and Victorian ages were to England, and for some of the same reasons. It was then that three great universities were founded: Salamanca, Alcala for science, Valladolid for law; and a noteworthy school of navigation at Seville. There flourished the philosopher Luis Vives, the tutor of Mary Stuart. In jurisprudence there were Victoria and Vazquez, from whom Grotius received his inspiration; and Solorzano, with his monumental work of the Government of the Indies. The drama was adorned by Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Gabriel Tellez, and Juan del Enzina. The greatest name of all in literature was that of Miguel Cervantes y Saavedra. There were the poets Garcilaso de Vega, and Luis de Argote y Gongora. There were the painters Ribera, and Domenico Theotocopuli, who inspired Velazquez. Above all, there was one of the most remarkable groups of historians of any land or age. Paez de Castro was more than any other man the founder of history as a philosophical study as distinguished from mere polite letters; the forerunner of Voltaire and Hume. There were Florian de Ocampo, Jeronimo Zurita, Ambrosio de Morales, and the famous Jesuit Mariana. Then there was a remarkable company of historians inspired by the American conquests of Spain, who gave their attention to writing of the lands thus added to her empire: Oviedo, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Lopez de Velasco, Las Casas, and many more. Cortez, Pizarro, Velasquez and others might conquer lands for Spain. These others would see to it that their deeds were fittingly chronicled. There was something more, still more significant. There arose distinguished writers, producing notable works, in the countries of Spanish America; some born there, some travelling thither from the peninsula. It was in 1558 that the University of Santo Domingo was founded, which for a time served all the Spanish Indies and was a great centre of learning. How many poets and dramatists, not to mention historians and other writers, there were in America in that century, we are reminded in Cervantes's "Viaje de Parnaso" and Lope de Vega's "Laurel de Apolo." These writers were chiefly in Mexico and Peru, for obvious reasons. Those were Spain's chief colonies, and they were those which had themselves the most noteworthy past, a past marked with a high degree of civilization. The first book ever printed in the Western Hemisphere was the "Breve y Compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana," published by Juan de Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, in Mexico in 1539. It was about the middle of the century that there appeared the first American book of real literary merit. This was "La Araucana," a Chilean epic poem, by Alonso de Ercilla y Zuñiga. Another epic, with Hernando Cortez for its hero, was "Cortez Valeroso," by Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, in 1588. The next year saw Juan de Castellanos's prodigious historical and biographical poem of 150,000 lines, "Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias." Another epic of Cortez was Antonio de Saavedra Guzman's "Peregrino Indiano," in 1599. In all these things Cuba had no part. In later centuries that island could boast of poets and other writers worthy to rank with their best contemporaries of other lands. But in that marvellous sixteenth century she seems to have produced not a single name worthy of remembrance. In the rich productivity of Spanish intellect Cuba remained unrepresented. In Oriente, in Camaguey and in Havana there may be found legends and ballads of unknown but ancient origin, which are assumed to have been composed perhaps in the days of Velasquez, and to have been passed down orally from generation to generation. _Quien sabe?_ It is quite probable that such was their origin; but it is quite certain that their authors are unknown. For this lack of intellectual productivity in the first century of Cuba's history, and indeed the lack of any noteworthy achievements, the reason is not difficult to perceive. As we observed at the beginning of this volume, Cuba, at the advent of Europeans, was a country without a civilization and without a past. Mexico, Yucatan and Peru had enjoyed civilizations not unworthy of comparison with those of Europe and Asia, the remains of which attracted thither the intellects of Spain, and inspired them. But Cuba had nothing of the sort. Again, the vast wealth of Mexico and Peru attracted to those countries many more explorers, conquerors and colonists than Cuba could draw to herself. And there was also the partiality which was shown to them by royal favor and in royal interest. We shall have reviewed the annals of the first Cuban century to little purpose if we do not perceive that during the greater part of that time the "Queen of the Antilles," the "Pearl of the West Indies," as she was even then occasionally and afterward habitually called, was the Cinderella of the Spanish Empire; a Cinderella destined, however, one day to meet her Fairy Prince and thus to be wakened into splendor not surpassed by the finest of her sisters. The close of the sixteenth century marked, then, approximately a great turning point in Cuban history. Thitherto she had been exclusively identified with Spain. She had developed no individuality and had exercised no influence upon other lands and their relationships, or indeed upon the empire of which she was a part. It was left for later years to make her an important factor in international affairs and to develop in her an individuality worthy of an independent sovereign among the nations of the world. Yet in these very circumstances which we have recounted, and which upon the face of them appeared to be and indeed were for the time so unfavorable, there were developed the influences which unerringly led to the subsequent greatness of the island. The earliest settlers were not only of Spanish origin but also of Spanish sympathies. They could not be expected to have any affection for or any pride in the land to which they had come as to a mere "Tom Tiddler's ground," on which to pick up silver and gold. They valued Cuba for only what they could get out of her; many of them glad, after thus gaining wealth, to return to Spain, or to go to Mexico, Venezuela or Peru, there the better to enjoy it and to mingle in social pleasures which the primitive life of Cuba did not yet afford. There were, however, some even in the first generation who were exceptions to this rule, who loved Cuba for her own sake, who wished to identify themselves permanently with her, and who wished to see her developed to the greatness and the splendor for which her natural endowments seemed to them to have designed her. In the second generation the number of such was of course greatly multiplied, and in succeeding generations their increase proceeded at a constantly increasing ratio. Thus by the end of the first century of Cuban history the great majority of residents of the island regarded themselves as Cubans rather than as Spaniards. They were Spaniards in race and tongue, and they were ready to stand with the peninsular kingdom and the rest of its world-circling empire against any of other tongues and races. But while thus to the outside world they were Spaniards, to Spain itself and to the people of the peninsula they were Cubans; differentiated from Spain much more than the Catalonian was from the Castilian, or the Andalusian from the Navarrais. This sentiment of differentiation, and of insular individuality, was naturally strengthened by the treatment which the peninsular government accorded to the island. The Cubans were made to feel that Spain regarded them as apart from her, just as much as they themselves so regarded her. They felt, too, that she was treating them with injustice and with neglect; that instead of nourishing her young plantation and giving it the support of her wealth and strength she was drawing upon it for her own nourishment and support. They would have been either far more or far less than human if they had not thus been incited to a certain degree of resentment and to an assertion of independence. In brief, it was with the Cubans even at that early day as it was with the British colonists in North America a century and a half later; though indeed the Cubans determined upon separation from the mother country at a comparatively earlier date than the people of the Thirteen Colonies, or certainly much longer before their achievement of that independence. We know that the British colonists were dissatisfied and protesting for nearly a score of years before their Declaration of Independence, but that down to within a few months of the latter transcendent event scarcely any of them thought of separation from England. Lexington and Concord, and even Bunker Hill, were fought not for independence but for the securing of the same rights for the colonists that their fellow subjects in the British Isles enjoyed. But the Cubans resolved upon separation from Spain not only years but at least two full generations before they were able to achieve it. This spirit belongs to a much later date in Cuban history than that of which we are now writing, and to refer to it here is an act of anticipation. But it is desirable to some extent to scan the end from the beginning; to see from the outset to what end we shall come as well as to see at the end from what beginning we have come. Moreover, it cannot be too well remembered that even as soon as the latter part of the sixteenth century the people of Cuba regarded themselves as Cubans, and so called themselves, and had begun the cultivation of a social order and a sentiment of patriotism quite distinct from though not yet necessarily antagonistic to that of Spain. The transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century was marked, then, with a significant change in the temper and character of Cuba, especially by a great accession of the spirit of insular integrity and independence. While Spain was great and apparently growing greater, there was a gratifying pride in identification with her. But when her decline began, and showed signs of being as rapid as her rise had been, that pride waned, and there began to arise in its place a pride in Cuba, or perhaps we might say at that early date a determination to develop in Cuba cause for pride. From that time forward Cuba was destined to be more American than European; and though for nearly three centuries she might continue to be a European possession, yet her lot was decided. Unconsciously, perhaps, but not the less surely she was drawn into the irresistible current which was drawing all the American settlements away from the European planters of them. It was one of the interesting eccentricities of history that the first important land acquired by Spain in the western hemisphere should be the last to leave her sway; and that the first European colonists in America to have cause for complaint against their overlords should be the longest to suffer and the last to secure abatement of their wrongs. Such is the reflection caused by consideration of this first era in the history of the Queen of the Antilles. THE END OF VOLUME ONE * * * * * INDEX Abarzuza, Sr. proposes reforms for Cuba, IV, 6. Abreu. Marta and Rosalie, patriotism of, IV, 25. Academy of Sciences, Havana, picture of, IV, 364. Adams, John Quincy, enunciates American policy toward Cuba, II, 258; portrait, 259; on Cuban annexation, 327. Aglona, Prince de. Governor, II, 363. Agramonte, Aristide, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Agramonte, Enrique, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12. Agramonte, Eugenio Sanchez, sketch and portrait, IV, 362. Agramonte, Francisco, IV, 41. Agramonte, Ignacio, portrait, facing. III, 258. Agriculture, early attention to, I, 173, 224; progress, 234; II, 213; absentee landlords, 214; statistics, 223; discussed in periodicals, 250; rehabilitation of after War of Independence, IV, 147. Aguayo, Geronimo de, I, 161. Aguero, Joaquin de, organizes revolution, III, 72; final defeat, 87. Aguiar, Luis de, II, 60. Aguiera, Jose, I, 295. Aguila, Negra, II, 346. Aguilera, Francisco V., sketch and portrait, III, 173. Aguirre, Jose Maria, filibuster, IV, 55; death, 85. Albemarle, Earl of, expedition against Havana, II, 46; occupies Havana, 78; controversy with Bishop Morell, 83. Alcala, Marcos, I, 310. Aldama, Miguel de, sketch and portrait, III, 204. Aleman, Manuel, French emissary, II, 305. Algonquins, I, 7. Allen, Robert, on "Importance of Havana," II, 81. Almendares River, tapped for water supply, I, 266; view on, IV, 167. Almendariz, Alfonso Enrique, Bishop, I, 277. Alquiza, Sancho de, Governor, I, 277. Altamarino, Governor, I, 105; post mortem trial of Velasquez, 107; attacked by the Guzmans, 109; removed, 110. Altamirano, Juan C., Bishop, I, 273; seized by brigands, 274. Alvarado, Luis de, I, 147. Alvarado, Pedro de, in Mexico, I, 86. Amadeus, King of Spain, III, 260. America, relation of Cuba to, I, 1; II, 254. See <sc>United States</sc>. American Revolution, effect of upon Spain and her colonies, II, 138. American Treaty, between Great Britain and Spain, I, 303. Andrea, Juan de, II, 9. Angulo, Francisco de, exiled, I, 193. Angulo, Gonzales Perez de, Governor, I, 161; emancipation proclamation, 163; quarrel with Havana Council, 181; flight from Sores, 186; end of administration, 192. Anners, Jean de Laet de, quoted, I, 353. Annexation of Cuba to United States, first suggested, II, 257, 326; campaign for, 380; sought by United States, III, 132, 135; Marcy's policy, 141; Ostend Manifesto, 142; Buchanan's efforts, 143; not considered in War of Independence, IV, 19. Antonelli, Juan Bautista, engineering works in Cuba, I, 261; creates water supply for Havana, 266. Apezteguia. Marquis de, Autonomist leader, IV, 94. Apodaca, Juan Ruiz, Governor, II, 311. Arana, Martin de, warns Prado of British approach, II, 53. Arana, Melchior Sarto de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 237. Arana, Pedro de, royal accountant, I, 238. Aranda, Esquival, I, 279. Arango, Augustin, murder of, III, 188. Arango, Napoleon, treason of, III, 226. Arango y Pareño, Francisco, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. II; organizes Society of Progress, II, 178; leadership in Cuba, 191; attitude toward slavery, 208; his illustrious career, 305 et seq. Aranguren, Nestor, revolutionist, IV, 85; death, 92. Araoz, Juan, II, 181. Arias, A. R., Governor, III, 314. Arias, Gomez, I, 145. Arignon, Villiet, quoted, II, 26, 94. Armona, José de, II, 108. Army, Cuban, organization of, III, 178; reorganized, 263; under Jose Miguel Gomez, IV, 301. Army, Spanish, in Cuba, III, 181, 295. Aroztegui, Martin de, II, 20. Arrate, José Martin Felix, historian, II, 17, 179. Arredondo, Nicolas, Governor at Santiago, II, 165. Asbert, Gen. Ernesto, amnesty case, IV, 326. "Assiento" compact on slavery, II, 2. Assumption, Our Lady of the, I, 61. Astor, John Jacob, aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Asylums for Insane, II, 317. Atares fortress, picture, II, 103. Atkins, John, book on West Indies, II, 36. Atrocities, committed by Spanish, III, 250; Cespedes's protest against, 254; "Book of Blood," 284; Spanish confession of, 286; war of destruction, 295; Weyler's "concentration" policy, IV, 85. Attwood's Cay. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Autonomist party, III, 305; IV, 34; attitude toward Campos in War of Independence, 59; Cabinet under Blanco, 94; earnest efforts for peace, 101; record of its government, 102. Avellanda, Gertrudis Gomez de, III, 331; portrait, facing, 332. Avila, Alfonso de, I, 154. Avila, Juan de, Governor, I, 151; marries rich widow, 154; charges against him, 157; convicted and imprisoned, 158. Avila. See <sc>Davila</sc>. Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, See <sc>Menendez</sc>. Ayala, Francisco P. de, I, 291. Ayilon, Lucas V. de, strives to make peace between Velasquez and Cortez, I, 98. Azcarata, José Luis, Secretary of Justice, sketch and portrait, IV, 341. Azcarate, Nicolas, sketch and portrait, III, 251, 332. Azcarraga, Gen., Spanish Premier, IV, 88. "Barbeque" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bachiller, Antonio, sketch and portrait, III, 317. Bacon, Robert, Assistant Secretary of State of U. S., intervenes in revolution, IV, 272. Bahia Honda, selected as U. S. naval station, IV, 256. Balboa, Vasco Nuñez de, I, 55, 91. Bancroft, George, quoted, I, 269; II, 1, 24, 41, 117, 120, 159. Banderas, Quintin, revolutionist, IV, 34; raid, 57; death, 84. Baracoa, Columbus at, I, 18; Velasquez at, 60; picture, 60; first capital of Cuba, 61, 168. Barreda, Baltazar, I, 201. Barreiro, Juan Bautista, Secretary of Education, IV, 160. Barrieres, Manuel Garcia, II, 165. Barrionuevo, Juan Maldonado, Governor, I, 263. Barsicourt, Juan Procopio. See <sc>Santa Clara</sc>, Conde. Bayamo, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; Cuban Republic organized there, III, 157. Bayoa, Pedro de, I, 300. Bay of Cortez, reached by Columbus, I, 25. Bees, introduced by Bishop Morell, II, 104; increase of industry, 132. "Beggars of the Sea," raid Cuban coasts, I, 208. Bells, church, controversy over, II, 82. Bembrilla, Alonzo, I, 111. Benavides, Juan de, I, 280. Berrea, Esteban S. de, II, 6. Betancourt, Pedro, Civil Governor of Matanzas, IV, 179; loyal to Palma, 271. Betancourt. See <sc>Cisneros</sc>. "Bimini," Island of, I, 139. Bishops of Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, I, 122. "Black Eagle," II, 346. <i>Black Warrior</i> affair, III, 138. Blanchet, Emilio, historian, quoted, II, 9, 15, 24; on siege of Havana, 57, 87. Blanco, Ramon, Governor, IV, 88; undertakes reforms, 89; plans Cuban autonomy, 93; on destruction of <i>Maine</i>, 99; resigns, 121. Blue, Victor, observations at Santiago, IV, 110. Bobadilla, F. de, I, 54. Boca de la Yana, I, 18. "Bohio" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bolivar, Simon, II, 333; portrait, 334; "Liberator," 334 et seq.; influence on Cuba, 341; "Soles de Bolivar," 341. Bonel, Juan Bautista, II, 133. "Book of Blood," III, 284. Bourne, Edward Gaylord, quoted, on slavery, II, 209; on Spanish in America, 226. Brinas, Felipe, III, 330. British policy toward Spain and Cuba, I, 270; aggressions in West Indies, 293; slave trade, II, 2; war of 1639, 22; designs upon Cuba, 41; expedition against Havana, 1762, 46; conquest of Cuba, 78; relinquishment to Spain, 92. See <sc>Great Britain</sc>. Broa Bay, I, 22. Brooke, Gen. John R., receives Spanish surrender of Cuba, IV, 122; proclamation to Cuban people, 145; retired, 157. Brooks, Henry, revolutionist, IV, 30. Buccaneers, origin of, I, 269. Buccarelli, Antonio Maria, Governor, II, 110; retires, 115. Buchanan, James, on U. S. relations to Cuba, II, 263; III, 135; Minister to Great Britain, 142; as President seeks annexation of Cuba to U. S., 143. Bull-fighting, II, 233. Burgos, Juan de, Bishop, I, 225. Burtnett, Spanish spy against Lopez, III, 65. Bustamente, Antonio Sanchez de, jurist, sketch and portrait, IV, 165. Caballero, José Agustin, sketch and portrait, III, 321. Caballo, Domingo, II, 173. Cabanas, defences constructed, II, 58; Laurel Ditch, view, facing, 58. Caballero, Diego de, I, 111. Cabezas, Bishop, I, 277. Cabrera, Diego de, I, 206. Cabrera, Luis, I, 198. Cabrera, Lorenzo de, Governor, I, 279; removed, 282. Cabrera, Rafael, filibuster, IV, 70. Cabrera, Raimundo, conspirator in New York, IV, 334; warned, 339. Cadreyta, Marquis de, I, 279. Cagigal, Juan Manuel de, Governor, II, 154; defence of Havana, 155; removed and imprisoned, 157. Cagigal, Juan Manuel, Governor, II, 313; successful administration, 315. Cagigal de la Vega, Francisco, defends Santiago, II, 29; Governor, 32; Viceroy of Mexico, 34. Caguax, Cuban chief, I, 63. Calderon, Gabriel, Bishop, I, 315. Calderon, Garcia, quoted, II, 164, 172. Calderon de la Barca, Spanish Minister, on <i>La Verdad</i>, III, 19; on colonial status, 21; negotiations with Soulé, 140. Calhoun, John C., on Cuba, III, 132. Calleja y Isisi, Emilio, Governor, III, 313; proclaims martial law, IV, 30; resigns, 35. Camaguey. See <sc>Puerto Principe</sc>, I, 168. Campbell, John, description of Havana, II, 14. Campillo, Jose de, II, 19. Campos, Martinez de, Governor, III, 296; proclamations to Cuba, 297, 299; makes Treaty of Zanjon and ends Ten Years War, 299; in Spanish crisis, IV, 36; Governor again, 37; establishes Trocha, 44; defeated by Maceo, 46; conferences with party leaders, 59, 63; removed, 63. Cancio, Leopoldo, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 161, 320. Canizares, Santiago J., Minister of Interior, IV, 48. Canning, George, policy toward Cuba, II, 257; portrait, 258. Canoe, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Canon, Rodrigo, I, 111. Canovas del Castillo, Spanish Premier, IV, 36; assassinated, 88. Cape Cruz, Columbus at, I, 20. Cape Maysi, I, 4. Cape of Palms, I, 17. Capote, Domingo Menendez. Vice-President, IV, 90; Secretary of State, 146; President of Constitutional Convention. 189. Carajaval, Lucas, defies Dutch, I, 290. Cardenas, Lopez lands at, III, 49. Caribs, I, 8. Carillo, Francisco, filibuster, IV, 55. Carleton, Sir Guy, at Havana, II, 47. Carranza, Domingo Gonzales, book on West Indies, II, 37. Carrascesa, Alfonso, II, 6. Carreño, Francisco, Governor, I, 219; conditions at his accession, 228; dies in office, 229; work in rebuilding Havana, 231. Carroll, James, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Casa de Beneficienca, founded, I, 335; II, 177. Casa de Resorgiamento, founded, II, 31. Casares, Alfonso, codifies municipal ordinances, I, 207. Castellanos, Jovellar, last Spanish Governor of Cuba, IV, 121; surrenders Spanish sovereignty, 123. Castillo, Demetrio, Civil Governor of Oriente, IV, 180. Castillo, Ignacio Maria del, Governor, III, 314. Castillo, Loinaz, revolutionist. IV, 269. Castillo, Pedro del, Bishop, I, 226. Castro, Hernando de, royal treasurer, I, 115. Cathcart Lord, expedition to West Indies, II, 28. Cathedral of Havana, picture, facing I, 36; begun, I, 310. Cat Island. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Cayo, San Juan de los Remedios del, removal of, I, 319. Cazones, Gulf of, I, 21. Cemi, Cuban worship of, I, 55. Census, of Cuba, first taken, by Torre, II, 131; by Las Casas, 176; of slaves, 205; of 1775, 276; of 1791, 277; Humboldt on, 277; of 1811, 280; of 1817, 281; of 1827, 283; of 1846, 283; of 1899, IV, 154; of 1907, 287. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, III, 157; portrait, facing 158; in Spain, 158; leads Cuban revolution, 158; President of Republic, 158; proclamation, 168; negotiations with Spain, 187; removed from office, 275. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, filibuster, IV, 55. Cespedes, Enrique, revolutionist, IV, 30. Cervera, Admiral, brings Spanish fleet to Cuba, IV, 110; portrait, 110; surrenders, 114. Chacon, José Bayoma, II, 13. Chacon, Luis, I, 331, 333. Chalons, Sr., Secretary of Public Works, IV, 297. Chamber of Commerce founded, II, 307. Charles I, King, I, 74; denounces oppression of Indians, 128. Chaves, Antonio, Governor, I, 157; prosecutes Avila, 157; ruthless policy toward natives, 159; controversy with King, 160; dismissed from office, 161. Chaves, Juan Baton de, I, 331. Chilton, John, describes Havana, I, 349. Chinchilla, José, Governor, III, 314. Chinese, colonies in America, I, 7; laborers imported into Cuba, II, 295. Chorrera, expected to be Drake's landing place, I, 248. Chorrera River, dam built by Antonelli, I, 262. Christianity, introduced into Cuba by Ojeda, I, 55; urged by King Ferdinand, 73. Church, Roman Catholic, organized and influential in Cuba, I, 122; cathedral removed from Baracoa to Santiago, 123; conflict with civil power, 227; controversy with British during British occupation, II, 84; division of island into two dioceses, 173; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 26; controversy over property, 294. Cienfuegos, José, Governor, II, 311. Cimmarones, "wild Indians," I, 126; revolt against De Soto, 148. Cipango, Cuba identified with, by Columbus, I, 5. Cisneros, Gaspar Betancourt, sketch and portrait, II, 379. Cisneros, Pascal Jiminez de, II, 110, 127. Cisneros, Salvador, III, 167; sketch and portrait, 276; President of Cuban Republic, 277; President of Council of Ministers, IV, 48; in Constitutional Convention, 190. Civil Service, law, IV, 325; respected by President Menocal, 325. Clay, Henry, policy toward Cuba, II, 261. Clayton, John M., U. S. Secretary of State, issues proclamation against filibustering, III, 42. Cleaveland, Samuel, controversy over church bells, II, 83. Cleveland, Grover. President of United States, issues warning against breaches of neutrality, IV, 70; reference to Cuba in message of 1896, 79; its significance, 80. Coat of Arms of Cuba, picture, IV, 251; significance, 251. Cobre, copper mines, I, 173, 259. "Cockfighting and Idleness" campaign, IV, 291. Coffee, cultivation begun, II, 33, 113. Coinage, reformed, II, 142; statistics of, 158. Collazo, Enrique, filibuster, IV, 55. Coloma, Antonio Lopez, revolutionist, IV, 30. Colombia, designs upon Cuba, II, 262; III, 134; attitude toward Cuban revolution, 223. Columbus, Bartholomew, recalled to Spain, I, 57. Columbus, Christopher, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. I; discoverer of America, I; i; first landing in America, 2; monument on Watling's Island, picture, 3; arrival in Cuba, 11; question as to first landing place, 12; first impressions of Cuba and intercourse with natives, 14; exploration of north coast, 16; end of first visit, 18; second visit, 19; exploration of south coast, 21; at Bay of Cortez, 25; turns back from circumnavigation, 26; at Isle of Pines, 26; final departure from Cuba, 27; diary and narrative, 28 et seq.; death and burial, 33; tomb in Havana cathedral, 34; removal to Seville, 36; removal from Santo Domingo to Havana, II, 181; epitaph, 182. Columbus, Diego, plans exploration and colonization of Cuba, I, 57; attempts mediation between Velasquez and Cortez, 97; replaces Velasquez with Zuazo, 100; rebuked by King, 100. Comendador, Cacique, I, 55. Commerce, begun by Velasquez, I, 68; rise of corporations, II, 19; after British occupation, 98; under Torre, 132; reduction of duties, 141; extension of trade, 163; Tribunal of Commerce founded, 177; Real Compania de Havana, 199; restrictive measures, 200; Chamber of Commerce founded, 307; commerce with United States, III, 2; during American occupation, IV, 184; present, 358. Compostela, Diego E. de, Bishop, I, 318; death, 332. Concepcion, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Concessions, forbidden under American occupation, IV, 153. Concha, José Gutierrez de la, Governor, III, 62, 290. Conchillos, royal secretary, I, 59. Congress, Cuban, welcomed by Gen. Wood, IV, 246; turns against Palma, 269; friendly to Gomez, 303; hostile to Menocal, 323; protects the lottery, 324. Constitution: Cuban Republic of 1868, III, 157; of 1895, IV, 47; call for Constitutional Convention, 185; meeting of Convention, 187; draft completed, 192; salient provisions, 193; Elihu Root's comments, 194; Convention discusses relations with United States, 197; Platt Amendment, 199; amendment adopted, 203; text of Constitution, 304 et seq.; The Nation, 205; Cubans, 205; Foreigners, 207; Individual Rights, 208; Suffrage, 211; Suspension of Guarantees, 212; Sovereignty, 213; Legislative Bodies, 214; Senate, 214; House of Representatives, 216; Congress, 218; Legislation, 221; Executive, 222; President, 222; Vice-President, 225; Secretaries of State, 226; Judiciary, 227; Supreme Court, 227; Administration of Justice, 228; Provincial Governments, 229; Provincial Councils, 230; Provincial Governors, 231; Municipal Government, 233; Municipal Councils, 233; Mayors, 235; National Treasury, 235; Amendments, 236; Transient Provisions, 237; Appendix (Platt Amendment), 238. "Constitutional Army," IV, 268. Contreras, Andres Manso de, I, 288. Contreras, Damien, I, 278. Convents, founded, I, 276; Nuns of Santa Clara, 286. Conyedo, Juan de, Bishop, II, 35. Copper, discovered near Santiago, I, 173; wealth of mines, 259; reopened, II, 13; exports, III, 3. Corbalon, Francisco R., I, 286. Cordova de Vega, Diego de, Governor, I, 239. Cordova, Francisco H., expedition to Yucatan, I, 84. Cordova Ponce de Leon, José Fernandez, Governor, I, 316. Coreal, Francois, account of West Indies, quoted, I, 355. Coronado, Manuel, gift for air planes, IV, 352. Cortes, Spanish, Cuban representation in, II, 308; excluded, 351; lack of representation, III, 3; after Ten Years' War, 307. Cortez, Hernando, Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, I, 72; sent to Mexico by King, 74; agent of Velasquez, 86; early career, 90; portrait, 90; quarrel with Velasquez, 91; marriage, 92; commissioned by Velasquez to explore Mexico, 92; sails for Mexico, 94; final breach with Velasquez, 96; denounced as rebel, 97; escapes murder, 99. Cosa, Juan de la, geographer, I, 6, 53. Councillors, appointed for life, I, 111; conflict with Procurators, 113. Creoles, origin of name, II, 204. Crittenden, J. J., protests against European intervention in Cuba, III, 129. Crittenden, William S., with Lopez, III, 96; captured, 101; death, 105. Crombet, Flor, revolutionist, IV, 41, 42. Crooked Island. See <sc>Isabella</sc>. Crowder, Gen. Enoch H., head of Consulting Board, IV, 284. Cuba: Relation to America, I, 1; Columbus's first landing, 3; identified with Mangi or Cathay, 4; with Cipango, 5; earliest maps, 6; physical history, 7, 37 et seq.; Columbus's discovery, 11 et seq.; named Juana, 13; other names, 14; Columbus's account of, 28; geological history, 37-42; topography, 42-51; climate, 51-52; first circumnavigation, 54; colonization, 54; Velasquez at Baracoa, 60; commerce begun, 68; government organized, 69; named Ferdinandina, 73; policy of Spain toward, 175; slow economic progress, 215; land legislation, 232; Spanish discrimination against, 266; divided into two districts, 275; British description in 1665, 306; various accounts, 346; turning point in history, 363; close of first era, 366; British conquest, II, 78; relinquished to Spain, 92; great changes effected, 94; economic condition, 98; reoccupied by Spain, 102; untouched by early revolutions, 165; effect of revolution in Santo Domingo, 190; first suggestion of annexation to United States, 257; "Ever Faithful Isle," 268; rise of independence, 268; censuses, 276 et seq.; representation in Cortes, 308; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; representatives rejected from Cortes, 351; transformation of popular spirit, 383; independence proclaimed, III, 145; Republic organized, 157; War of Independence, IV, 15; Spanish elections held during war, 67; Blanco's plan of autonomy, 93; sovereignty surrendered by Spain, 123; list of Spanish Governors, 123. See <sc>Republic of Cuba</sc>. Cuban Aborigines; I, 8; manners, customs and religion, 8 et seq.; Columbus's first intercourse, 15, 24; priest's address to Columbus, 26; Columbus's observations of them, 29; hostilities begun by Velasquez, 61; subjected to Repartimiento system, 70; practical slavery, 71; Key Indians, 125; Cimmarones, 126; new laws in their favor, 129; Rojas's endeavor to save them, 130; final doom, 133; efforts at reform, 153; oppression by Chaves, 159; Angulo's emancipation proclamation, 163. "Cuba-nacan," I, 5. "Cuba and the Cubans," quoted, II, 313. "Cuba y Su Gobierno," quoted, II, 354. Cuellar, Cristobal de, royal accountant, I, 59. Cushing, Caleb, Minister to Spain, III, 291. Custom House, first at Havana, I, 231. Dady, Michael J., & Co., contract dispute, IV, 169. Davila, Pedrarias, I, 140. Davis, Jefferson, declines to join Lopez, III, 38. Del Casal, Julian, sketch and portrait, IV, 6. Del Cueta, José A., President of Supreme Court, portrait, IV, 359. Delgado, Moru, Liberal leader, IV, 267. Del Monte, Domingo, sketch, portrait, and work, II, 323. Del Monte, Ricardo, sketch and portrait, IV, 2. Demobilization of Cuban army, IV, 135. Desvernine, Pablo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 146. Diaz, Bernal, at Sancti Spiritus, I, 72; in Mexico, 86. Diaz, Manuel, I, 239. Diaz, Manuel Luciano, Secretary of Public Works, IV, 254. Diaz, Modeste, III, 263. Divino, Sr., Secretary of Justice, IV, 297. Dockyard at Havana, established, II, 8. Dolz, Eduardo, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 96. Dominguez, Fermin V., Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 50. Dorst, J. H., mission to Pinar del Rio, IV, 107. "Dragado" deal, IV, 310. Drake, Sir Francis, menaces Havana, I, 243; in Hispaniola, 246; leaves Havana unassailed, 252; departs for Virginia, 255. Duany, Joaquin Castillo, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Assistant Secretary of Treasury, 50; filibuster, 70. Dubois, Carlos, Assistant Secretary of Interior, IV, 50. Duero, Andres de, I, 93, 115. Dulce y Garay, Domingo, Governor, III, 190, 194; decree of confiscation, 209; recalled, 213. Dupuy de Lome, Sr., Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 40; writes offensive letter, 98; recalled, 98. Duque, Sr., Secretary of Sanitation and Charity, IV, 297. Durango, Bishop, I, 225. Dutch hostilities, I, 208, 279; activities in West Indies, 283 et seq. Earthquakes, in 1765, I, 315; II, 114. Echeverria, Esteban B., Superintendent of Schools, IV, 162. Echeverria, José, Bishop, II, 113. Echeverria, José Antonio, III, 324. Echeverria, Juan Maria, Governor, II, 312. Education, backward state of, II, 244; progress under American occupation, IV, 156; A. E. Frye, Superintendent, 156; reorganization of system, 162; Harvard University's entertainment of teachers, 163; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Elections: for municipal officers under American occupation, IV, 180; law for regulation of, 180; result, 181; for Constitutional Convention, 186; for general officers, 240; result, 244; Presidential, 1906, 265; new law, 287; local elections under Second Intervention, 289; Presidential, 290; for Congress in 1908, 303; Presidential, 1912, 309; Presidential, 1916, disputed, 330, result confirmed, 341. Enciso, Martin F. de, first Spanish writer about America, I, 54. Epidemics: putrid fever, 1649, I, 290; vaccination introduced, II, 192; small pox and yellow fever, III, 313; at Santiago, IV, 142; Gen. Wood applies Dr. Finlay's theory of yellow fever, 171; success, 176; malaria, 177. Escudero, Antonio, de, II, 10. Espada, Juan José Diaz, portrait, facing II, 272. Espagnola. See <sc>Hispaniola</sc>. Espeleta, Joaquin de, Governor, II, 362. Espinosa, Alonzo de Campos, Governor, I, 316. Espoleto, José de, Governor, II, 169. Estenoz, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Estevez, Luis, Secretary of Justice, IV, 160; Vice-President, 245. Evangelista. See <sc>Isle of Pines</sc>. Everett, Edward, policy toward Cuba, III, 130. "Ever Faithful Isle," II, 268, 304. Exquemeling, Alexander, author and pirate, I, 302. "Family Pact," of Bourbons, effect upon Cuba, II, 42. Felin, Antonio, Bishop, II, 172. Fels, Cornelius, defeated by Spanish, I, 288. Ferdinand, King, policy toward Cuba, I, 56; esteem for Velasquez, 73. Ferdinandina, Columbus's landing place, I, 3; name for Cuba, 73. Ferrara, Orestes, Liberal leader, IV, 260; revolutionist, 269; deprecates factional strife, 306; revolutionary conspirator in New York, 334; warned by U. S. Government, I, 239. Ferrer, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 239. Figueroa, Vasco Porcallo de, I, 72; De Soto's lieutenant, 142; returns from Florida in disgust, 145. Figuerosa, Rojas de, captures Tortuga, I, 292. Filarmonia, riot at ball, III, 119. Filibustering, proclamation of United States against, III, 42; after Ten Years' War, 311, in War of Independence, IV, 20; expeditions intercepted, 52; many successful expeditions, 69; warnings, 70. Fine Arts, II, 240. Finlay, Carlos G., theory of yellow fever successfully applied under General Wood, IV, 171; portrait, facing, 172. Fish, Hamilton, U. S. Secretary of State, prevents premature recognition of Cuban Republic, III, 203; protests against Rodas's decree, 216; on losses in Ten Years' War, 290; seeks British support, 292; states terms of proposed mediation, 293. Fish market at Havana, founder for pirate, II, 357. Fiske, John, historian, quoted, I, 270. Flag, Cuban, first raised, III, 31; replaces American, IV, 249; picture, 250; history and significance, 250. Flores y Aldama, Rodrigo de, Governor, I, 301. Florida, attempted colonization by Ponce de Leon, I, 139; De Soto's expedition, 145. See <sc>Menendez</sc>. Fonseca, Juan Rodriguez de, Bishop of Seville, I, 59. Fonts-Sterling, Ernesto, Secretary of Finance, IV, 90; urges resistance to revolution, 270. Fornaris, José, III, 230. Forestry, attention paid by Montalvo, I, 223; efforts to check waste, II, 166. Foyo, Sr., Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, IV, 297. France, first foe of Spanish in Cuba, I, 177; "Family Pact," II, 42; interest in Cuban revolution, III, 126. Franquinay, pirate, at Santiago, I, 310. French refugees, in Cuba, II, 189; expelled, 302. French Revolution, effects of, II, 184. Freyre y Andrade, Fernando, filibuster, IV, 70; negotiations with Pino Guerra, 267. Frye, Alexis, Superintendent of Schools, IV, 156; controversy with General Wood, 162. Fuerza, La: picture, facing I, 146; building begun by De Soto, I, 147; scene of Lady Isabel's tragic vigil, 147, 179; planned and built by Sanchez, 194; work by Menendez, and Ribera, 209; slave labor sought, 211; bad construction, 222; Montalvo's recommendations, 223; Luzan-Arana quarrel, 237; practical completion, 240; decorated by Cagigal, II, 33. Galvano, Antony, historian, quoted, I, 4. Galvez, Bernardo, seeks Cuban aid for Pensacola, II, 146; Governor, 168; death, 170. Galvez, José Maria, head of Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Garaondo, José, I, 317. Garay, Francisco de, Governor of Jamaica, I, 102. Garcia, Calixto, portrait, facing III, 268; President of Cuban Republic, III, 301; joins War of Independence, IV, 69; his notable career, 76 et seq.; joins with Shafter at Santiago, 111; death, 241. Garcia, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 269. Garcia, Esequiel, Secretary of Education, IV, 320. Garcia, Marcos, IV, 44. Garcia, Quintiliano, III, 329. Garvey, José N. P., II, 222. Gastaneta, Antonio, II, 9. Gelder, Francisco, Governor, I, 292. Gener y Rincon, Miguel, Secretary of Justice, IV, 161. Geraldini, Felipe, I, 310. Germany, malicious course of in 1898, IV, 104; Cuba declares war against, 348; property in Cuba seized, 349; aid to Gomez, 350. Gibson. Hugh S., U. S. Chargé d'Affaires, assaulted, IV, 308. Giron. Garcia, Governor, I, 279. Godoy, Captain, arrested at Santiago, and put to death, I, 203. Godoy, Manuel, II, 172. Goicouria, Domingo, sketch and portrait, III, 234. Gold, Columbus's quest for, I, 19; Velasquez's search, 61; the "Spaniards' God," 62; early mining, 81; value of mines, 173. Gomez, José Antonio, II, 18. Gomez, José Miguel, Civil Governor of Santa Clara, IV, 179; aspires to Presidency, 260, 264; turns from Conservative to Liberal party, 265; compact with Zayas, 265; starts revolution, 269; elected President, 290; becomes President, 297; Cabinet, 297; sketch and portrait, 298; acts of his administration, 301; charged with corruption, 304; conflict with Veterans' Association, 304; quarrel with Zayas, 306; suppresses Negro revolt, 307; amnesty bill, 309; National Lottery, 310; "Dragado" deal, 310; railroad deal, 310; estimate of his administration, 311; double treason in 1916, 332; defeated and captured, 337; his orders for devastation, 337; aided by Germany, 350. Gomez, Juan Gualberto, revolutionist, IV, 30; captured and imprisoned, 52; insurgent, 269. Gomez, Maximo, III, 264; succeeds Gen. Agramonte, 275; makes Treaty of Zanjon with Campos, 299; in War of Independence, IV, 15; commander in chief, 16, 43; portrait, facing 44; plans great campaign of war, 53; controversy with Lacret, 84; opposed to American invasion, 109; appeals to Cubans to accept American occupation, 136; impeachment by National Assembly ignored, 137; influence during Government of Intervention, 149; considered by Constitutional Convention, 191; proposed for Presidency, 240; declines, 241. Gonzalez, Aurelia Castillo de, author, sketch and portrait, IV, 192. Gonzales, William E., U. S. Minister to Cuba, IV, 335; watches Gomez's insurrection, 336. Gorgas, William C., work for sanitation, IV, 175. Government of Cuba: organized by Velasquez, I, 69; developed at Santiago, 81; radical changes made, 111; revolution in political status of island, 138; codification of ordinances, 207; Ordinances of 1542, 317; land tenure, II, 12; reforms by Governor Guemez, 17; reorganization after British occupation, 104; great reforms by Torre, 132; budget and tax reforms, 197; authority of Captain-General, III, 11; administrative and judicial functions, 13 et seq.; military and naval command, 16; attempted reforms, 63; concessions after Ten Years' War, 310. Governors of Cuba, Spanish, list of, IV, 123. Govin, Antonio, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95; sketch and portrait, 95. Grammont, buccaneer, I, 311. Gran Caico, I, 4. Grand Turk Island. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Grant, U. S., President of United States, III, 200; inclined to recognize Cuban Republic, 202; prevented by his Secretary of State, 203; comments in messages, 205, 292. Great Britain, interest in Cuban revolution, III, 125; protection sought by Spain, 129; declines cooperation with United States, 294; requires return of fugitives, 310. Great Exuma. See <sc>Ferdinandina</sc>. Great Inagua, I, 4. Great War, Cuba enters, IV, 348; offers 10,000 troops, 348; German intrigues and propaganda, 349; attitude of Roman Catholic clergy, 349; ships seized, 350; cooperation with Food Commission, 351; military activities, 352; liberal subscriptions to loans, 352; Red Cross work, 352; Señora Menocal's inspiring leadership, 353. Grijalva, Juan de, I, 65; expedition to Mexico, 66; names Mexico New Spain, 97; unjustly recalled and discredited, 88. Guajaba Island, I, 18. Guama, Cimmarron chief, I, 127. Guanabacoa founded, II, 21. Guanahani, Columbus's landing place, I, 2. Guanajes Islands, source of slave trade, I, 83. Guantanamo, Columbus at, I, 19; U. S. Naval Station, IV, 256. Guardia, Cristobal de la, Secretary of Justice, IV, 320. Guazo, Gregorio, de la Vega, Governor, I, 340; stops tobacco war, 341; warnings to Great Britain and France, 342; military activity and efficiency, II, 5. Guemez y Horcasitas, Juan F., Governor, II, 17; reforms, 17; close of administration, 26. Guerra, Amador, revolutionist, IV, 30. Guerra, Benjamin, treasurer of Junta, IV, 3. Guerro, Pino, starts insurrection, IV, 267, 269; commander of Cuban army, 301; attempt to assassinate him, 303. Guevara, Francisco, III, 265. Guiteras, Juan, physician and scientist, sketch and portrait, IV, 321. Guiteras, Pedro J., quoted, I, 269; II, 6; 42; 207. Guzman, Gonzalez de, mission from Velasquez to King Charles I, I, 85; vindicates Velasquez, 108; Governor of Cuba, 110; marries rich sister-in-law, 116; litigation over estate, 117; tremendous indictment by Vadillo, 120; appeals to King and Council for Indies, 120; seeks to oppress natives, 128; second time Governor, 137; makes more trouble, 148; trouble with French privateers, 178. Guzman, Nuñez de, royal treasurer, I, 109; death and fortune, 115. Guzman, Santos, spokesman of Constitutionalists, IV, 59. Hammock, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Hanebanilla, falls of, view, facing III, 110. Harponville, Viscount Gustave, quoted, II, 189. Harvard University, entertains Cuban teachers, IV, 163. Hatuey, Cuban chief, leader against Spaniards, I, 62; death, 63. Havana: founded by Narvaez, I, 69; De Soto's home and capital, 144; rise in importance, 166; Governor's permanent residence, 180; inadequate defences, 183; captured by Sores, 186; protected by Mazariegos, 194; sea wall proposed by Osorio, 202; fortified by Menendez, 209; "Key of the New World," 210; commercial metropolis of West Indies, 216; first hospital founded, 226; San Francisco church, picture, facing 226; building in Carreño's time, 231; custom house, 231; threatened by Drake, 243; preparations for defence, 250; officially called "city," 262; coat of arms, 202; primitive conditions, 264; first theatrical performance, 264; capital of western district, 275; great fire, 277; attacked by Pit Hein, 280; described by John Chilton, 349; first dockyard established, II, 8; attacked by British under Admiral Hosier, 9; University founded, 11; described by John Campbell, 14; British expedition against in 1762, 46; journal of siege, 54; American troops engaged, 66; surrender, 69; terms, 71; British occupation, 78; great changes, 94; description, 94; view from Cabanas, facing, 96; reoccupied by Spanish, 102; hurricane, 115; improvements in streets and buildings, 129; view in Old Havana, facing 130; street cleaning, and market, 169; slaughter house removed, 194; shopping, 242; cafés, 243; Tacon's public works, 365; view of old Presidential Palace, facing III, 14; view of the Prado, facing IV, 16; besieged in War of Independence, 62; view of bay and harbor, facing, 98; old City Wall, picture, 122; view of old and new buildings, facing 134; General Ludlow's administration, 146; Police reorganized, 150; view of University, facing 164; view of the new capitol, facing 204; view of the President's home, facing 268; view of the Academy of Arts and Crafts, facing 288; new railroad terminal, 311. Hay, John, epigram on revolutions, IV, 343 Hayti. See <sc>Hispaniola</sc>. Hein, Pit, Dutch raider, I, 279. Henderson, John, on Lopez's expedition, III, 64. <i>Herald</i>, New York, on Cuban revolution, III, 89. Heredia, José Maria. II, 274; exiled, 344; life and works, III, 318; portrait, facing 318. Hernani, Domingo, II, 170. Herrera, historian, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12; on Hatuey, 62; description of West Indies, 345. Herrera, Geronimo Bustamente de, I, 194. Hevea, Aurelio, Secretary of Interior, IV, 320. Hispaniola, Columbus at, I, 19; revolution in, II, 173; 186; effect upon Cuba, 189. Hobson, Richmond P., exploit at Santiago, IV, 110. Holleben, Dr. von, German Ambassador at Washington, intrigues of, IV, 104. Home Rule, proposed by Spain, IV, 6; adopted, 8. Horses introduced into Cuba, I, 63. Hosier, Admiral, attacks Havana, I, 312; II, 9. Hospital, first in Havana, I, 226; Belen founded, 318; San Paula and San Francisco, 195. "House of Fear," Governor's home, I, 156. Humboldt, Alexander von, on slavery, II, 206; on census, 277; 282; on slave trade, 288. Hurricanes, II, 115, 176, 310. Hurtado, Lopez, royal treasurer, I, 116; has Chaves removed, 162. Ibarra, Carlos, defeats Dutch raiders, I, 288. Incas, I, 7. Independence, first conceived, II, 268; 326; first revolts for, 343; sentiment fostered by slave trade, 377; proclaimed by Aguero, III, 72; proclaimed by Cespedes at Yara, 155; proposed by United States to Spain, 217; War of Independence, IV, 1; recognized by Spain, 119. See <sc>War of Independence</sc>. Intellectual life of Cuba, I, 360; lack of productiveness in Sixteenth Century, 362; Cuban backwardness, II, 235; first important progress, 273; great arising and splendid achievements, III, 317. Insurrections. See <sc>Revolutions</sc>, and <sc>Slavery</sc>. Intervention, Government of: First, established, IV, 132; organized, 145; Cuban Cabinet, 145; saves island from famine, 146; works of rehabilitation and reform, 148; marriage law, 152; concessions forbidden, 153; census, 154; civil governments of provinces, 179; municipal elections ordered, 180; electoral law 180; final transactions, 246; Second Government of Intervention, 281; C. E. Magoon, Governor, 281; Consulting Board, 284; elections held, 289, 290; commission for revising laws, 294; controversy over church property, 294. Intervention sought by Great Britain and France, III, 128; by United States, IV, 106. Iroquois, I, 7. Irving, Washington, on Columbus's landing place, I, 12. Isabella, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Isabella, Queen, portrait, I, 13. Isidore of Seville, quoted, I, 4. Islas de Arena, I, 11. Isle of Pines, I, 26; recognized as part of Cuba, 224; status under Platt Amendment, IV, 255. Italian settlers in Cuba, I, 169. Ivonnet, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Jamaica, Columbus at, I, 20. Japan. See <sc>Cipango</sc>. Jaruco, founded, II, 131. Jefferson, Thomas, on Cuban annexation, II, 260; III, 132. Jeronimite Order, made guardian of Indians, I, 78; becomes their oppressor, 127. Jesuits, controversy over, II, 86; expulsion of, 111. Jordan, Thomas, joins Cuban revolution, III, 211. Jorrin, José Silverio, portrait, facing III, 308. Jovellar, Joachim, Governor, III, 273; proclaims state of siege, 289; resigns, 290. Juana, Columbus's first name for Cuba, I, 13. Juan Luis Keys, I, 21. Judiciary, reforms in, II, 110; under Navarro, 142; under Unzaga, 165; under Leonard Wood, IV, 177. Junta, Cuban, in United States, III, 91; New York, IV, 2; branches elsewhere, 3; policy in enlisting men, 19. Junta de Fomento, II, 178. Juntas of the Laborers, III, 174. Keppel, Gen. See <sc>Albemarle</sc>. Key Indians, I, 125; expedition against, 126. "Key of the New World and Bulwark of the Indies," I, 210. Kindelan, Sebastian de, II, 197, 315. Lacoste, Perfecto, Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, IV, 160. Land tenure, II, 12; absentee landlords, 214. Lanuza, Gonzalez, Secretary of Justice, IV, 146; portrait, 146. Lares, Amador de, I, 93. La Salle, in Cuba, I, 73. Las Casas, Bartholomew, Apostle to the Indies, arrival in Cuba, I, 63; portrait, 64; denounces Narvaez, 66; begins campaign against slavery, 75; mission to Spain, 77; before Ximenes, 77. Las Casas, Luis de, Governor, II, 175; portrait, 175; death, 182. Lasso de la Vega, Juan, Bishop, II, 17. Lawton, Gen. Henry W., leads advance against Spanish, IV, 112; Military Governor of Oriente, 139. Lazear, Camp, established, IV, 172. Lazear, Jesse W., hero and martyr in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Ledesma, Francisco Rodriguez, Governor, I, 310. Lee, Fitzhugh, Consul General at Havana, IV, 72; reports on "concentration" policy of Weyler, 86; asks for warship to protect Americans at Havana, 97; <i>Maine</i> sent, 98; commands troops at Havana, 121. Lee, Robert Edward, declines to join Lopez, III, 39. Legrand, Pedro, invades Cuba, I, 302. Leiva, Lopez, Secretary of Government, IV, 297. Lemus, Jose Morales, III, 333. Lendian, Evelio Rodriguez, educator, sketch and portrait, IV, 162. Liberal Party, III, 306; triumphant through revolution, IV, 285; dissensions, 303; conspiracy against election, 329. Liberty Loans, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 352. Lighthouse service, under Mario G. Menocal, IV, 168. Linares, Tomas de, first Rector of University of Havana, II, 11. Lindsay, Forbes, quoted, II, 217. Linschoten, Jan H. van, historian, quoted, I, 351. Liquor, intoxicating, prohibited in 1780, II, 150. Literary periodicals: <i>El Habanero</i>, III, 321; <i>El Plantel</i>, 324; <i>Cuban Review</i>, 325; <i>Havana Review</i>, 329. Literature, II, 245; early works, 252; poets, 274; great development of activity, III, 315 et seq. Little Inagua, I, 4. Llorente, Pedro, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188, 190. Lobera, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 182; desperate defence against Sores, 185. Lolonois, pirate, I, 296. Long Island. See <sc>Ferdinandina</sc>. Lopez, Narciso, sketch and portrait, III, 23; in Venezuela, 24; joins the Spanish army, 26; marries and settles in Cuba, 30; against the Carlists in Spain, 31; friend of Valdez, 31; offices and honors, 33; plans Cuban revolution, 36; betrayed and fugitive, 37; consults Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, 38; first American expedition, 39; members of the party, 40; activity in Southern States, 43; expedition starts, 45; proclamation to his men, 46; lands at Cardenas, 49; lack of Cuban support, 54; reembarks, 56; lands at Key West, 58; arrested and tried, 60; second expedition organized, 65; betrayed, 67; third expedition, 70; final expedition organized, 91; lands in Cuba, 98; defeated and captured, 112; death, 114; results of his works, 116. Lorenzo, Gen., Governor at Santiago, II, 347. Lorraine, Sir Lambton, III, 280. Los Rios, J. B. A. de, I, 310. Lottery, National, established by José Miguel Gomez, IV, 310. Louisiana, Franco-Spanish contest over, II, 117; Ulloa sent from Cuba to take possession, 118; O'Reilly sent, 123; Uznaga sent, 126. Louverture, Toussaint, II, 186. Luaces, Joaquin Lorenzo, sketch and portrait, III, 330. Ludlow, Gen. William, command and work at Havana, IV, 144. Lugo, Pedro Benitez de, Governor, I, 331. Luna y Sarmiento, Alvaro de, Governor, I, 290. Luz y Caballero, José de la, "Father of the Cuban Revolution," III, 322; great work for patriotic education, 323; Portrait, frontispiece, Vol III. Luzan, Gabriel de, Governor, I, 236; controversy over La Fuerza, 237; feud with Quiñones, 241; unites with Quiñones to resist Drake, 243; energetic action, 246; tenure of office prolonged, 250; end of term, 260. Macaca, province of, I, 20. Maceo, José Antonio, proclaims Provisional Government, IV, 15; leader in War of Independence, 41; commands Division of Oriente, 43; defeats Campos, 46; plans great campaign, 53; invades Pinar del Rio, 61; successful campaign, 73; death, 74; portrait, facing 74. Maceo, José, IV, 41; marches through Cuba, 76. Machado, Eduard, treason of, III, 258. Machete, used in battle, IV, 57. Madison, James, on status of Cuba, III, 132. Madriaga, Juan Ignacio, II, 59. Magoon, Charles E., Provisional Governor, IV, 281; his administration, 283; promotes public works, 286; takes census, 287; election law, 287; retires, 295. Mahy, Nicolas, Governor, II, 315. Mail service established, II, 107; under American occupation, IV, 168. Maine sent to Havana, IV, 98; destruction of, 98; investigation, 100. Maldonado, Diego, I, 146. Mandeville, Sir John, I, 20. Mangon, identified with Mangi, I, 20. Manners and Customs, II, 229 et seq.; balls, 239; shopping, 242; relations of black and white races, 242; cafés, 243; early society, 248. Monosca, Juan Saenz, Bishop, I, 301. Manrique, Diego, Governor, II, 109. Manzaneda y Salines, Severino de, Governor, I, 320. Manzanillo, Declaration of Independence issued, III, 155. Maraveo Ponce de Leon, Gomez de, I, 339. Marco Polo, I, 4, 20. Marcy, William L., policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Mar de la Nuestra Señora, I, 18. Mariguana. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Marin, Sabas, succeeds Campos in command, IV, 63. Markham, Sir Clements, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12. Marmol, Donato, III, 173, 184. Marquez, Pedro Menendez, I, 206. Marriage law, reformed under American occupation, IV, 152; controversy over, 153. Marti, José, portrait, frontispiece, Vol IV; leader of War of Independence, IV, 2; his career, 9; in New York, 11; organizes Junta, 11; goes to Cuba, 15; death, 16; his war manifesto, 17; fulfilment of his ideals, 355. Marti, José, secretary of War, portrait, IV, 360. Marti, the pirate, II, 357. Martinez Campos. See Campos. Martinez, Dionisio de la Vega, Governor, II, 8; inscription on La Punta, 14. Martinez, Juan, I, 192. Martyr, Peter, I, 53. Maso, Bartolome, revolutionist, IV, 34; rebukes Spotorno, 35; President of Cuban Republic, 43; Vice President of Council, 48; President of Republic, 90; candidate for Vice President, 242; seeks Presidency, 243. Mason, James M., U. S. Minister to France, III, 141. Masse, E. M., describes slave trade, II, 202; rural life, 216; on Spanish policy toward Cuba, 227; social morals, 230. Matanzas, founded, I, 321; meaning of name, 321. Maura, Sr., proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 5. McCullagh, John B., reorganizes Havana Police, IV, 150. McKinley, William, President of United States, message of 1897 on Cuba, IV, 87; declines European mediation, 103; message for war, 104. Maza, Enrique, assaults Hugh S. Gibson, IV, 308. Mazariegos, Diego de, Governor, I, 191; a scandalous moralist, 193; defences against privateering, 193; takes charge of La Fuerza, 195; controversy with Governor of Florida, 196; replaced by Sandoval, 197. Medina, Fernando de, I, 111. Mendez-Capote, Fernando, Secretary of Sanitation, portrait, IV, 360. Mendieta, Carlos, candidate for Vice President, IV, 328; rebels, 338. Mendive, Rafael Maria de, III, 328. Mendoza, Martin de, I, 204. Menendez, Pedro de Aviles, I, 199; commander of Spanish fleet, 200; clash with Osorio, 201; Governor of Cuba, 205; dealing with increasing enemies, 208; fortifies Havana, 209; recalled to Spain, 213; conflict with Bishop Castillo, 226. Menocal, Aniceto G., portrait, IV, 50. Menocal, Mario G., Assistant Secretary of War, IV, 49; Chief of Police at Havana, 144, 150; in charge of Lighthouse Service, 168; candidate for President, 290; slandered by Liberals, 291; elected President, 312; biography, 312; portrait, facing 312; view of birthplace, 313; Cabinet, 320; opinion of Cuba's needs, 321; first message, 322; conflict with Congress, 323; important reforms, 324; suppresses rebellion, 327; candidate for reelection, 328; vigorous action against Gomez's rebellion, 335; declines American aid, 337; escapes assassination, 339; reelection confirmed, 341; clemency to traitors, 342; message on entering Great War, 346; fulfilment of Marti's ideals, 355; estimate of his administration, 356; achievements for education, 357; health, 357; industry and commerce, 358; finance, 359; "from Velasquez to Menocal," 365. Menocal, Señora, leadership of Cuban womanhood in Red Cross and other work, IV, 354; portrait, facing 352. Mercedes, Maria de las, quoted, II, 174; on slave insurrection, 368. Merchan, Rafael, III, 174; patriotic works, 335. Merlin, Countess de. See <sc>Mercedes</sc>. <i>Merrimac</i>, sunk at Santiago, IV, 111. Mesa, Hernando de, first Bishop, I, 122. Mestre, José Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 326. Meza, Sr., Secretary of Public Instruction and Arts, IV, 297. Mexico, discovered and explored from Cuba, I, 87; designs upon Cuba, II, 262; Cuban expedition against, 346; warned off by United States, III, 134; fall of Maximilian, 150. Milanes, José Jacinto, sketch, portrait and works, III, 324. Miles, Gen. Nelson A., prepares for invasion of Cuba, IV, 111. Miranda, Francisco, II, 156; with Bolivar, 335. Miscegenation, II, 204. Molina, Francisco, I, 290. Monastic orders, I, 276. Monroe Doctrine, foreshadowed, II, 256; promulgated, 328. Monroe, James, interest in Cuba, II, 257; promulgates Doctrine, 328; portrait, 329. Monserrate Gate, Havana, picture, II, 241. Montalvo, Gabriel, Governor, I, 215; feud with Rojas family, 218; investigated and retired, 219; pleads for naval protection for Cuba, 220. Montalvo, Lorenzo, II, 89. Montalvo, Rafael, Secretary of Public Works, urges resistance to revolutionists, IV, 270. Montanes, Pedro Garcia, I, 292. Montano See <sc>Velasquez</sc>, J. M. Montes, Garcia, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 254. Montesino, Antonio, I, 78. Montiel, Vasquez de, naval commander, I, 278. Montoro, Rafael, Representative in Cortes, III, 308; spokesman of Autonomists, IV, 59; in Autonomist Cabinet, 95; candidate for Vice President, 290; attacked by Liberals, 291; biography, 317; portrait, facing 320. Morales case, IV, 92. Morales. Pedro de, commands at Santiago, I, 299. Morals, strangely mixed with piety and vice, II, 229. Morell, Pedro Augustino, Bishop, II, 53; controversy with Albemarle, 83; exiled, 87; death, 113. Moreno, Andres, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 90. Moret law, abolishing slavery, III, 243. Morgan, Henry, plans raid on Havana, I, 297; later career, 303. Morro Castle, Havana, picture, facing I, 180; site of battery, 180; tower built by Mazariegos, 196; fortified against Drake, 249; planned by Antonelli, 261; besieged by British, II, 55. Morro Castle, Santiago, built, I, 289; picture, facing 298. Mucaras, I, 11. Muenster, geographer, I, 6. Mugeres Islands, I, 84. Munive, Andres de, I, 317. Murgina y Mena, A. M., I, 317. Music, early concerts at Havana, II, 239. Nabia, Juan Alfonso de, I, 207. Nancy Globe, I. 6. Napoleon's designs upon Cuba, II, 203. Naranjo, probable landing place of Columbus, I, 12. Narvaez, Panfilo de, portrait, I, 63; arrival in Cuba, 63; campaign against natives, 65; explores the island, 67; errand to Spain, 77; sent to Mexico to oppose Cortez, 98; secures appointment of Councillors for life, 111. Naval stations, U. S., in Cuba, IV, 255. Navarrete, quoted, I, 3, 12. Navarro, Diego Jose, Governor, II, 141, 150. Navy, Spanish, in Cuban waters, III, 182, 225. Negroes, imported as slaves, I, 170; treatment of, 171; slaves and free, increasing numbers of, 229. See <sc>Slavery</sc>. New Orleans, anti-Spanish outbreak, III, 126. New Spain. See <sc>Mexico</sc>. Newspapers: <i>Gazeta</i>, 1780, II, 157; <i>Papel Periodico</i>, 179; 246; publications in Paris, Madrid and New York, 354; El Faro Industrial, III, 18; Diario de la Marina, 18; La Verdad, 18; La Vos de Cuba, 260; La Vos del Siglo, 232; La Revolucion, 333; El Siglo, 334; El Laborante, 335. Norsemen, American colonists, I, 7. Nougaret, Jean Baptiste, quoted, II, 26. Nuñez, Emilio, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; in war, 57; Civil Governor of Havana, 179; head of Veterans' Association, 305; Secretary of Agriculture, 320; candidate for Vice President, 328; election confirmed, 341. Nuñez, Enrique, Secretary of Health and Charities, IV, 320. Ocampo, Sebastian de, circumnavigates Cuba, I, 54. O'Donnell, George Leopold, Governor, II, 365; his wife's sordid intrigues, 365. Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia, hostile to Spain, II, 24, 30. O'Hara, Theodore, with Lopez, III, 46. Ojeda, Alonzo de, I, 54; introduces Christianity to Cuba, 55. Olid, Christopher de, sent to Mexico, I, 88. Olney, Richard. U. S. Secretary of State, attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 71. Oquendo, Antonio de, I, 281. Orejon y Gaston, Francisco Davila de, Governor, I, 301, 310. O'Reilly, Alexandre, sent to occupy Louisiana, II, 123; ruthless rule, 125. Orellano, Diego de, I, 86. Ornofay, province of, I, 20. Ortiz, Bartholomew, alcalde mayor, I, 146; retires, 151. Osorio, Garcia de Sandoval, Governor, I, 197; conflict with Menendez, 199, 201; retired, 205; tried, 206. Osorio, Sancho Pardo, I, 207. Ostend Manifesto, III, 142. Ovando, Alfonso de Caceres, I, 214; revises law system, 233. Ovando, Nicolas de, I, 54. Palma, Tomas Estrada, head of Cuban Junta in New York, IV, 3; Provisional President of Cuban Republic, 15; Delegate at Large, 43; rejects anything short of independence, 71; candidate for Presidency, 241; his career, 241; elected President, 245; arrival in Cuba, 247; portrait, facing 248; receives transfer of government from General Wood, 248; Cabinet, 254; first message, 254; prosperous administration, 259; non-partisan at first, 264; forced toward Conservative party, 264; reelected, 266; refuses to believe insurrection impending, 266; refuses to submit to blackmail, 268; betrayed by Congress, 269; acts too late, 270; seeks American aid, 271; interview with W. H. Taft, 276; resigns Presidency, 280; estimate of character and work, 282; death, 284. Palma y Romay, Ramon, III, 327. Parra, Antonio, scientist, II, 252. Parra, Maso, revolutionist, IV, 30. Parties, political, in Cuba, IV, 59; origin and characteristics of Conservative and Liberal, 181, 261. Pasalodos, Damaso, Secretary to President, IV, 297 Pasamonte, Miguel, intrigues against Columbus, I, 58. Paz, Doña de, marries Juan de Avila, I, 154. Paz, Pedro de, I, 109. Penalosa, Diego de, Governor, II, 31. Penalver. See <sc>Penalosa</sc>. Penalver, Luis, Bishop of New Orleans, II, 179. "Peninsulars," III, 152. Pensacola, settlement of, I, 328; seized by French, 342; recovered by Spanish, II, 7; defended by Galvez, 146. Pereda, Gaspar Luis, Governor, I, 276. Perez, Diego, repels privateers, I, 179. Perez, Perico, revolutionist, IV, 15, 30, 78. Perez de Zambrana, Luisa, sketch and portrait, III, 328. Personal liberty restricted, III, 8. Peru, good wishes for Cuban revolution, III, 223. Philip II, King, appreciation of Cuba, I, 260. Pieltain, Candido, Governor, III, 275. Pierce, Franklin, President of United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Pina, Severo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 48. Pinar del Rio, city founded, II, 131; Maceo invades province, IV, 61; war in, 73. Pineyro, Enrique, III, 333; sketch and portrait, 334. Pinto, Ramon, sketch and portrait, III, 62. "Pirates of America," I, 296. Pizarro, Francisco de, I, 54, 91. Platt, Orville H., Senator, on relations of United States and Cuba, IV, 198; Amendment to Cuban Constitution, 199; Amendment adopted, 203; text of Amendment, 238. Pococke, Sir George, expedition against Havana, II, 46. Poey, Felipe, sketch and portrait, III, 315. Point Lucrecia, I, 18. Polavieja, Gen., Governor, III, 314. Police, reorganized, II, 312; under American occupation, IV, 150; police courts established, 171. Polk, James K., President of the United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 135. Polo y Bernabe, Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 98. Ponce de Leon, in Cuba, I, 73; death, 139. Ponce de Leon, of New York, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13. Pope, efforts to maintain peace, between United States and Spain, IV, 104. Porro, Cornelio, treason of, III, 257. Port Banes, I, 18. Port Nipe, I, 18. Port Nuevitas, I, 3. Portuguese settlers, I, 168. Portuondo, Rafael, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, IV, 48; filibuster, 70. Prado y Portocasso, Juan, Governor, II, 49; neglect of duty, 52; sentenced to degradation, 108. Praga, Francisco de, I, 282. Presidency, first candidates for, IV, 240; Tomas Estrada Palma elected, 245; José Miguel Gomez aspires to, 260; candidates in 1906, 265; Palma's resignation, 280; Jose Miguel Gomez elected, 290; fourth campaign, 312; Mario G. Menocal elected, 312; fifth campaign, 328; General Menocal reelected, 341. Prim, Gen., Spanish revolutionist, III, 145. Printing, first press in Cuba, II, 245. Privateers, French ravage Cuba, I, 177; Havana and Santiago attacked, 178; Havana looted, 179; Jacques Sores, 183; Havana captured, 186; Santiago looted, 193; French raids, 220, et seq. Proctor, Redfield, Senator, investigates and reports on condition of Cuba in War of Independence, IV, 87. Procurators, appointment of, I, 112. Protectorate, tripartite, refused by United States, II, 261; III, 130, 133. Provincial governments organized, IV, 179, confusion in, 292. Public Works, promoted by General Wood, IV, 166; by Magoon, 286. Puerto Grande. See <sc>Guantanamo</sc>. Puerto Principe, I, 18, 167. Punta, La, first fortification, I, 203; strengthened against Drake, 249; fortress planned by Antonelli, 261; picture, IV, 33. Punta Lucrecia, I, 3. Punta Serafina, I, 22. Queen's Gardens, I, 20. Quero, Geronimo, I, 277. Quesada, Gonzalo de, Secretary of Cuban Junta, IV, 3; Minister to United States, 275. Quesada, Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 167; proclamation, 169; death, 262. Quezo, Juan de, I, 113. Quilez, J. M., Civil Governor of Pinar del Rio, IV, 179. Quiñones, Diego Hernandez de, commander of fortifications at Havana, I, 240; feud with Luzan, 241; unites with Luzan to resist Drake, 243. Quiñones, Doña Leonora de, I, 117. Rabi, Jesus, revolutionist, IV, 34, 42. Railroads, first in Cuba, II, 343. Raja, Vicente, Governor, I, 337. Ramirez, Alejandro, sketch and portrait, II, 311. Ramirez, Miguel, Bishop, partisan of Guzman, I, 120; political activities and greed, 124. Ramos, Gregorio, I, 274. Ranzel, Diego, I, 295. Recio, R. Lopez, Civil Governor of Camaguey, IV, 180. Recio, Serafin, III, 86. Reciprocity, secured by Roosevelt for Cuba, IV, 256. "Reconcentrados," mortality among, IV, 86. Red Cross, Cuban activities, IV, 353. Redroban, Pedro de, I, 201. Reed, Walter, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Reformists, Spanish, support Blanco's Autonomist policy, IV, 97. Reggio, Andreas, II, 32. Reno, George, in War of Independence, IV, 12; running blockade, 21; portrait, 21; services in Great War, 351. Renteria, Pedro de, partner of Las Casas, I, 75; opposes slavery, 76. Repartimiento, I, 70. Republic of Cuba: proclaimed and organized, III, 157; first representative Assembly, 161; Constitution of 1868, 164; first House of Representatives, 176; Judiciary, 177; legislation, 177; army, 178; fails to secure recognition, 203; Government reorganized, 275; after Treaty of Zanjon, 301; reorganized in War of Independence, IV, 15; Maso chosen President, 43; Conventions of Yara and Najasa, 47; Constitution adopted, 47; Government reorganized, Cisneros President, 48; capital at Las Tunas, 56; removes to Cubitas, 72; exercises functions of government, 72; reorganized in 1897, 90; after Spanish evacuation of island, 134; disbanded, 135; Constitutional Convention called, 185; Constitution completed, 192; relations with United States, 195; Platt Amendment, 203; enters Great War, 346. Revolutions: Rise of spirit, II, 268; in South America, 333; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; attempts to revolt, 344; "Black Eagle," 346; plans of Lopez, III, 36; Lopez's first invasion, 49; Aguero's insurrection, 72; comments of New York <i>Herald</i>, 89; Lopez's last expedition, 91; results of his work, 116; European interest, 125; beginning of Ten Years' War. 155; end of Ten Years' War, 299; insurrection renewed, 308, 318; War of Independence, IV, 1; Sartorius Brothers, 4; end of War of Independence, 116; revolt against President Palma, 266; ultimatum, 278; government overthrown, 280; Negro insurrection, 307; conspiracy against President Menocal, 327; great treason of José Miguel Gomez, 332; Gomez captured, 337; warnings from United States Government, 338; revolutions denounced by United States, 343. Revolutionary party, Cuban, IV, 1, 11. Rey, Juan F. G., III, 40. Riano y Gamboa, Francisco, Governor, I, 287. Ribera, Diego de, I, 206; work on La Fuerza, 209. Ricafort, Mariano, Governor, II, 347. Ricla, Conde de, Governor, II, 102; retires, 109. Rio de la Luna, I, 16. Rio de Mares, I, 16. Riva-Martiz, I, 279. Rivera, Juan Ruiz, filibuster, IV, 70; succeeds Maceo, 79. Rivera, Ruiz, Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, IV, 160. Roa, feud with Villalobos, I, 323. Rodas, Caballero de, Governor, III, 213; emancipation decree, 242. Rodney, Sir George, expedition to West Indies, II, 153. Rodriguez, Alejandro, suppresses revolt, IV, 266. Rodriguez, Laureano, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Rojas, Alfonso de, I, 181. Rojas, Gomez de, banished, I, 193; Governor of La Fuerza, 217; rebuilds Santiago, 258. Rojas, Hernando de, expedition to Florida, I, 196. Rojas, Juan Bautista de, royal treasurer, I, 218. Rojas, Juan de, aid to Lady Isabel de Soto, I, 145; commander at Havana, 183. Rojas, Manuel de, Governor, I, 105; adopts policy of "Cuba for the Cubans," 106; second Governorship, 121; dealings with Indians, 126; noble endeavors frustrated, 130; resigns, 135; the King's unique tribute to him, 135. Roldan, Francisco Dominguez, Secretary of Public Instruction, sketch and portrait, IV, 357. Roldan, José Gonzalo, III, 328. Roloff, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 45; Secretary of War, 48; filibuster, 70. Romano Key, I, 18. Romay, Tomas, introduces vaccination, II, 192; portrait, facing 192. Roncali, Federico, Governor, II, 366; on Spanish interests in Cuba, 381. Roosevelt, Theodore, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; portrait, 113; President of United States, on relations with Cuba, 245; estimate of General Wood's work in Cuba, 251; fight with Congress for Cuban reciprocity, 256; seeks to aid President Palma against revolutionists, 275; letter to Quesada, 275. Root, Elihu, Secretary of War, on Cuban Constitution, IV, 194; on Cuban relations with United States, 197; explains Platt Amendment, 201. Rowan, A. S., messenger to Oriente, IV. 107. Rubalcava, Manuel Justo, II, 274. Rubens, Horatio, Counsel of Cuban Junta, IV, 3. Rubios, Palacios, I, 78. Ruiz, Joaquin, spy, IV, 91; death, 92. See <sc>Aranguren</sc>. Ruiz, Juan Fernandez, filibuster, IV, 70. Rum Cay. See <sc>Conception</sc>. Rural Guards, organized by General Wood, IV, 144; efficiency of, 301. Ruysch, geographer, I, 6. Saavedra, Juan Esquiro, I, 278. Sabinal Key, I, 18. Saco, José Antonio, pioneer of Independence, II, 378; portrait, facing 378; literary and patriotic work, III, 325, 327. Sagasta, Praxedes, Spanish Premier, proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 6; resigns, 36. Saint Augustine, expedition against, I, 332. Saint Mery, M. de, search for tomb of Columbus, I, 34. Salamanca, Juan de, Governor, I, 295; promotes industries, 300. Salamanca y Negrete, Manuel, Governor, III, 314. Salaries, some early, I, 263. Salas, Indalacio, IV, 21. Salazar. See <sc>Someruelos</sc>. Salcedo, Bishop, controversy with Governor Tejada, I, 262. Sama Point, I, 4. Samana. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Sampson, William T., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; at Santiago, 114; portrait, 115. Sanchez, Bartolome, makes plans for La Fuerza, I, 194; begins building, 195; feud with Mazariegos, 197. Sanchez, Bernabe, II, 345. Sancti Spiritus, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168. Sandoval, Garcia Osorio, Governor, I, 197. See <sc>Osario</sc>. Sanitation, undertaken by Guemez, II, 18; vaccination introduced by Dr. Romay. 192; bad conditions, III, 313; General Wood at Santiago, IV, 142; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Sanguilly, Julio, falls in leading revolution, IV, 29, 55. Sanguilly, Manuel, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 190. San Lazaro watchtower, picture, I, 155; fortified against Drake, 248. San Salvador. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Santa Clara, Conde de, Governor, II, 194, 300. Santa Crux del Sur, I, 20. Santa Cruz, Francisco, I, 111. Santiago de Cuba, Columbus at, I, 19; founded by Velasquez, 68; second capital of island, 69; seat of gold refining, 80; site of cathedral, 123; condition in Angulo's time, 166; looted by privateers, 193; fortified by Menendez, 203; raided and destroyed by French, 256; rebuilt by Gomez de Rojas, 258; capital of Eastern District, 275; Morro Castle built, 289; captured by British, 299; attacked by Franquinay, 310; attacked by Admiral Vernon, II, 29; literary activities, 169; great improvements made, 180; battles near in War of Independence, IV, 112; naval battle, 114; General Wood's administration, 135; great work for sanitation, 142. Santiago, battle of, IV, 114. Santiago, sunset scene, facing III, 280. Santillan, Diego, Governor, I, 205. Santo Domingo See <sc>Hispaniola</sc>. Sanudo, Luis, Governor, I, 336. Sarmiento. Diego de, Bishop, makes trouble, I, 149, 152. Saunders, Romulus M., sounds Spain on purchase of Cuba, III, 135. Sartorius, Manuel and Ricardo, revolutionists, IV, 4. Savine, Albert, on British designs on Cuba, II, 40. Schley, Winfield S., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; portrait, 110; at Santiago, 114. Schoener's globe, I, 5. Schools, backward condition of, II, 174, 244, 312. See <sc>Education</sc>. Shafter, W. R., General, leads American army into Cuba, IV, 111. Shipbuilding at Havana, II, 8, 33, 113, 300. Sickles, Daniel E., Minister to Spain, offers mediation, III, 217. Silva, Manuel, Secretary of Interior, IV, 90. Slave Insurrection, II, 13; III, 367, et seq. Slavery, begun in Repartimiento system, I, 70; not sanctioned by King, 82; slave trading begun, 83; growth and regulation, 170; oppressive policy of Spain, 266; the "Assiento," II, 2; great growth of trade, 22; gross abuses, 202; described by Masse, 202; census of slaves, 204; rise of emancipation movement, 206; rights of slaves defined by King, 210; African trade forbidden, 285; Negro census, 286; early records of trade, 288; Humboldt on, 288; statistics of trade, 289 et seq.; domestic relations of slaves, 292; dangers of system denounced, 320; official complicity in illegal trade, 366; slave insurrection, 367; inhuman suppression by government, 374 et seq.; emancipation by revolution of 1868, 159; United States urges Spain to abolish slavery, 242; Rodas's decrees, 242; Moret law, 243. Smith, Caleb. publishes book on West Indies, II, 37. Smuggling, II, 133. "Sociedad de Amigos," II, 169. "Sociedad Patriotica," II, 166. "Sociedad Patriotica y Economica," II, 178. Society of Progress, II, 78. Solano, José de, naval commander, II, 147. "Soles de Bolivar," II, 341; attempts to suppress, 343. Solorzano, Juan del Hoya, I, 337; II, 10. Someruelos, Marquis of, Governor, II, 196, 301. Sores, Jacques, French raider, II, 183; attacks Havana, 184; captures city, 186. Soto, Antonio de, I, 292. Soto, Diego de, I, 109, 217. Soto, Hernando de, Governor and Adelantado, I, 140; portrait, 140; arrival in Cuba, 141; tour of island, 142; makes Havana his home, 144; chiefly interested in Florida, 144; sails for Florida, 145; his fate in Mississippi, 147; trouble with Indians, 148. Soto, Lady Isabel de, I, 141; her vigil at La Fuerza, 147; death, 149. Soto, Luis de, I, 141. Soulé, Pierre, Minister to Spain, III, 137; Indiscretions, 138; Ostend Manifesto, 142. South Sea Company, II, 21, 201. Spain: Fiscal policy toward Cuba, I, 175; wars with France, 177; discriminations against Cuba, 266, 267; protests against South Sea Company, II, 22; course in American Revolution, 143; war with Great Britain, 151; attitude toward America, 159; peace with Great Britain, 162; restrictive laws, 224; policy under Godoy, 265; decline of power, 273; seeks to pawn Cuba to Great Britain for loan, 330; protests to United States against Lopez's expedition, III, 59; seeks British protection, 129; refuses to sell Cuba, 135; revolution against Bourbon dynasty, 145 et seq.; rejects suggestion of American mediation in Cuba, 219; seeks American mediation, 293; strives to placate Cuba, IV, 5; crisis over Cuban affairs, 35; attitude toward War of Independence, 40; considers Autonomy, 71; Cabinet crisis of 1897, 88; proposes joint investigation of Maine disaster, 100; at war with United States, 106; makes Treaty of Paris, relinquishing Cuba, 118. Spanish-American War: causes of, IV, 105; declared, 106; blockade of Cuban coast, 110; landing of American army in Cuba, 111; fighting near Santiago, 112; fort at El Caney, picture, 112; San Juan Hill, battle, 113; San Juan Hill, picture of monument, 114; naval battle of Santiago, 115; peace negotiations, 116; "Peace Tree," picture, 116; treaty of peace, 118. Spanish literature in XVI century, I, 360. Spotorno, Juan Bautista, seeks peace, rebuked by Maso, IV, 35. Steinhart, Frank, American consul, advises President Palma to ask for American aid, IV, 271; correspondence with State Department, 272. Stock raising, early attention to, I, 173, 224; development of, 220. Stokes, W. E. D., aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Students, murder of by Volunteers, III, 260. Suarez y Romero, Anselmo, III, 326. Sugar, Industry begun under Velasquez, I, 175, 224; growth of industry, 265; primitive methods, II, 222; growth, III, 3; great development under President Menocal, IV, 358. "Suma de Geografia," of Enciso, I, 54. Sumana, Diego de, I, 111. Tacon, Miguel, Governor, II, 347; despotic fury, 348; conflict with Lorenzo, 349; public works, 355; fish market, 357; melodramatic administration of justice, 359. Taft, William H., Secretary of War of United States, intervenes in revolution, IV, 272; arrives at Havana, 275; negotiates with President Palma and the revolutionists, 276; portrait, 276; conveys ultimatum of revolutionists to President Palma, 279; accepts President Palma's resignation, 280; pardons revolutionists, 280; unfortunate policy, 283. Tainan, Antillan stock, I, 8. Tamayo, Diego, Secretary of State, IV, 159; Secretary of Government, 254. Tamayo, Rodrigo de, I, 126. Tariff, after British occupation, II, 106; reduction, 141; oppressive duties. III, 5; under American occupation, IV, 183. Taxation, revolt against, II, 197; "reforms," 342; oppressive burdens, III, 6; increase in Ten Years' War, 207; evasion of, 312; under American intervention, IV, 151. Taylor, Hannis, American Minister at Madrid, IV, 33. Tejada, Juan de, Governor, I, 261; great works for Cuba, 262; resigns, 263. Teneza, Dr. Francisco, Protomedico, I, 336. Ten Years' War, III, 155 et seq.; first battles, 184; aid from United States, 211; offers of American mediation, 217; rejected, 219; campaigns of destruction, 222; losses reported, 290; end in Treaty of Zanjon, 299; losses, 304. Terry, Emilio, Secretary of Agriculture, IV, 254. Theatres, first performance in Cuba, I, 264; first theatre built, II, 130, 236. Thrasher, J. S., on census, II, 283. Tines y Fuertes, Juan Antonio, Governor, II, 31. Tobacco, early use, I, 9; culture promoted, 300; monopoly, 334; "Tobacco War," 338; effects of monopoly, II, 221. Tobar, Nuñez, I, 141, 143. Tolon, Miguel de, III, 330. Toltecs, I, 7. Tomayo, Esteban, revolutionist, IV, 34. Torquemada, Garcia de, I, 239; investigates Luzan, 241. Torre, Marquis de la, Governor, II, 127; work for Havana, 129; death, 133. Torres Ayala, Laureano de, Governor, I, 334; reappointed, 337. Torres, Gaspar de, Governor, I, 234; conflict with Rojas family, 235; absconds, 235. Torres, Rodrigo de, naval commander, II, 34. Torriente, Cosimo de la, Secretary of Government, IV, 320. Toscanelli, I, 4. Treaty of Paris, IV, 118. Tres Palacios, Felipe Jose de, Bishop, II, 174. Tribune, New York, describes revolutionary leaders, III, 173. Trinidad, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; great fire, II, 177. Trocha, begun by Campos, IV, 44; Weyler's, 73. Troncoso, Bernardo, Governor, II, 168. Turnbull, David, British consul, II, 364; complicity in slave insurrection, 372. Ubite, Juan de, Bishop, I, 123. Ulloa, Antonio de, sent to take possession of Louisiana, II, 118; arbitrary conduct, 120. Union Constitutionalists, III, 306. United States, early relations with Cuba, II, 254; first suggestion of annexation, 257; John Quincy Adams's policy, 258; Jefferson's policy, 260; Clay's policy, 261; representations to Colombia and Mexico, 262; Buchanan's policy, 263; Monroe Doctrine, 328; consuls not admitted to Cuba, 330; Van Buren's policy, 331; growth of commerce with Cuba, III, 22; President Taylor's proclamation against filibustering, 41; course toward Lopez, 60; attitude toward Cuban revolutionists, 123; division of sentiment between North and South, 124; policy of Edward Everett, 130; overtures for purchase of Cuba, 135; end of Civil War, 151; new policy toward Cuba, 151; recognition denied to revolution, 172; aid and sympathy given secretly, 195; Cuban appeals for recognition, 200; recognition denied, 203; protests against Rodas's decrees, 216; offers of mediation, 217; rejected by Spain, 219; increasing interest and sympathy with revolutionists, 273; warning to Spanish Government, 291; effect of reciprocity upon Cuba, 313; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 27, 70; Congress favors recognition, 70; tender of good offices, 71; President Cleveland's message of 1896, 79; appropriation for relief of victims of "concentration" policy, 86; President McKinley's message of 1897, 87; sensation at destruction of <i>Maine</i>, 99; declaration of war against Spain, 106; Treaty of Paris, 118; establishment of first Government of Intervention, 132; relations with Republic of Cuba, 195; protectorate to be retained, 196; Platt Amendment, 199; mischief-making intrigues, 200; naval stations in Cuba, 255; reciprocity, 256; second Intervention, 281; warning to José Miguel Gomez, 305; asks settlement of claims, 308; Chargé d'Affaires assaulted, 308; supervision of Cuban legislation, 326; warning to revolutionists, 339; attitude toward Gomez revolution, 343. University of Havana, founded, II, 11. Unzaga, Luis de, Governor, II, 157. Urrutia, historian, quoted, I, 300. Urrutia, Sancho de, I, 111. Utrecht, Treaty of, I, 326; begins new era, II, 1. Uznaga, Luis de, sent to rule Louisiana, II, 126; reforms, 165. Vaca, Cabeza de, I, 140. Vadillo, Juan, declines to investigate Guzman, I, 118; temporary Governor, 119; tremendous indictment of Guzman, 120; retires after good work, 121; clash with Bishop Ramirez, 124. Valdes, historian, quoted, II, 175. Valdes, Gabriel de la Conception, III, 325. Valdes, Jeronimo, Bishop, I, 335. Valdes, Pedro de, Governor, I, 202, 272; retires, 276. Valdes, Geronimo, Governor, II, 364. Valdueza, Marquis de, I, 281. Valiente, José Pablo, II, 170, 180. Valiente, Juan Bautista, Governor of Santiago, II, 180. Vallizo, Diego, I, 277. Valmaseda, Count, Governor, proclamation against revolution, III, 171, 270; recalled for barbarities, 273. Van Buren, Martin, on United States and Cuba, II, 331. Vandeval, Nicolas C., I, 331, 333. Varela, Felix, sketch and portrait, III, 320; works, 321. Varnhagen, F. A. de, quoted, I, 2. Varona, Bernabe de, sketch and portrait, III, 178. Varona, José Enrique, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 159; Vice President, 312; biography, 316; portrait, facing 316. Varona, Pepe Jerez, chief of secret service, IV, 268. Vasquez, Juan, I, 330. Vedado, view in, IV, 176. Vega, Pedro Guerra de la, I, 243; asks fugitives to aid in defence against Drake, 248. Velasco, Francisco de Aguero, II, 345. Velasco, Luis Vicente, defender of Morro against British, II, 58; signal valor, 61; death, 67. Velasquez, Antonio, errand to Spain, I, 77 Velasquez, Bernardino, I, 115. Velasquez, Diego, first Governor of Cuba, I, 59; portrait, 59; colonizes Cuba, 60; hostilities with natives, 61, explores the island, 67; marriage and bereavement, 68; founds various towns, 68; begins Cuban commerce, 68; organizes government, 69; favored by King Ferdinand, 73; appointed Adelantado, 74; seeks to rule Yucatan and Mexico, 85; recalls Grijalva, 88; quarrels with Cortez, 91; sends Cortez to explore Mexico, 92, 94; seeks to intercept and recall Cortez, 97; sends Narvaez to Mexico, 98; removed from office by Diego Columbus, 100; restored by King, 102; death and epitaph, 103; posthumous arraignment by Altamarino, 107; convicted and condemned, 108. Velasquez, Juan Montano, Governor, I, 293. Velez Garcia, Secretary of State, IV, 297. Velez y Herrera, Ramon, III, 324. Venegas, Francisco, Governor, I, 278. Vernon, Edward, Admiral, expedition to Darien, II 27; Invasion of Cuba, 29. Viamonte, Bitrian, Governor, I, 286. Viana y Hinojosa, Diego de, Governor, I, 317. Victory loan, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 353. Villa Clara, founded, I, 321. Villafana, attempts to assassinate Cortez, I, 99. Villafana, Angelo de, Governor of Florida, controversy with Mazariegos, I, 196. Villalba y Toledo, Diego de, Governor, I, 290. Villalobos, Governor, feud with Roa, I, 323. Villalon, José Ramon, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13; Secretary of Public Works, 160, 330. Villalon Park, scene in, IV, 247. Villanueva, Count de, II, 342. Villapando, Bernardino de, Bishop, I, 225. Villarin, Pedro Alvarez de, Governor, I, 333. Villaverde, Cirillo, III, 327. Villaverde, Juan de, Governor of Santiago, I, 276. Villegas, Diaz de, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 297; resigns, 302. Villuendas, Enrique, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188; secretary, 189. Virginius, capture of, III, 277; butchery of officers and crew, 278 et seq.; British intervention, 280; list of passengers, 281; diplomatic negotiations over, 283. Vives, Francisco, Governor, II, 317; despotism, 317; expedition against Mexico, 346. Viyuri, Luis, II, 197. Volunteers, organized, III, 152; murder Arango, 188; have Dulce recalled, 213; cause murder of Zenea, 252; increased activities, 260; murder of students, 261. War of Independence, IV, i, 8; circumstances of beginning, 9; finances, 14; Republic of Cuba proclaimed, 15; attitude of Cuban people, 22; actual outbreak, 29; martial law proclaimed, 30; Spanish forces in Cuba, 31; arrival and policy of Martinez Campos, 38; Gomez and Maceo begin great campaign, 53; Spanish defeated, and reenforced, 55; campaign of devastation, 60; entire island involved, 61; fall of Campos, 63; Weyler in command, 66; destruction by both sides, 68; losses, 90; entry of United States, 107; attitude of Cubans toward American intervention, 108; end of war, 116. Watling's Island. See <sc>Guanahani</sc>. Wax, development of Industry, II, 132. Webster, Daniel, negotiations with Spain, III, 126. Weyler y Nicolau, Valeriano, Governor, IV, 65; portrait, 66; harsh decree, 66; conquers Pinar del Rio. 83; "concentration" policy, 85; recalled, 88. Wheeler, Gen. Joseph, at Santiago, IV, 113, 115. White, Col. G. W., with Lopez, III, 40. Whitney, Henry, messenger to Gomez, IV, 107. Williams, Ramon O., United States consul at Havana, IV, 32; acts in behalf of Americans in Cuba, 72; opposes sending <i>Maine</i> to Havana, 100. Wittemeyer, Major, reports on Gomez revolution to Washington government, IV, 336; offers President Menocal aid of United States, 337. Wood, General Leonard, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; Military Governor of Santiago, 135; his previous career, 140; unique responsibility and power, 141; dealing with pestilence, 142; organizes Rural Guards, 144; portrait, facing 158; Military Governor of Cuba, 158; well received by Cubans, 158; estimate of <i>La Lucha</i>, 158; his Cabinet, 159; comments on his appointments, 160; reorganization of school system, 161; promotes public works, 166; Dady contract dispute, 171; applies Finlay's yellow fever theory with great success, 171; reform of jurisprudence, 177; organizes Provincial governments, 179; holds municipal elections, 180; promulgates election law, 181; calls Constitutional Convention, 185; calls for general election, 240; his comments on election, 245; announces end of American occupation, 246; surrenders government of Cuba to Cubans, 249; President Roosevelt's estimate of his work, 251; view of one of his mountain roads, facing 358. Woodford, Stewart L., United States Minister to Spain, IV, 103; presents ultimatum and departs, 106. Xagua, Gulf of, I, 21. Ximenes, Cardinal and Regent, gives Las Casas hearing on Cuba, I, 77. Yanez, Adolfo Saenz, Secretary of Agriculture and Public Works, IV, 146. Yellow Fever, first invasion, II, 51; Dr. Finlay's theory applied by General Wood, IV, 171; disease eliminated from island, 176. Yero, Eduardo, Secretary of Public Instruction, IV, 254. Ynestrosa, Juan de, I, 207. Yniguez, Bernardino, I, 111. Yucatan, islands source of slave trade, I, 83; explored by Cordova, 84. Yznaga, Jose Sanchez, III, 37. Zaldo, Carlos, Secretary of State, IV, 254. Zambrana, Ramon, III, 328. Zanjon, Treaty of, III, 299. Zapata, Peninsula of, visited by Columbus, I, 22. Zarraga, Julian, filibuster, IV, 70. Zayas, Alfredo, secretary of Constitutional Convention, IV, 189; compact with José Miguel Gomez, 265; spokesman of revolutionists against President Palma, 277; elected Vice President, 290; becomes Vice President, 297; sketch and portrait, 300; quarrel with Gomez, 306; candidate for President, 328; hints at revolution, 330. Zayas, Francisco, Lieutenant Governor, I, 205; resigns, 206. Zayas, Francisco, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Zayas, Juan B., killed in battle, IV, 78. Zayas, Lincoln de, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Superintendent of Schools, 162. Zenea, Juan Clemente, sketch and portrait, III, 252; murdered, 253; his works, 332. Zequiera y Arango, Manuel, II, 274. Zipangu. See <sc>Cipanoo</sc>. Zuazo, Alfonso de, appointed second Governor of Cuba, I, 100; dismissed by King, 102. 
57319	----	+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ SAN ISIDRO BY Mrs. Schuyler Crowninshield [Illustration: Logo] HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY CHICAGO & NEW YORK MDCCCC COPYRIGHT 1899 BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO. TO C. S. C. A MEMORY OF "LA MADRUGADA" SAN ISIDRO[1] I People wondered why Don Beltran remained in the casa down by the river. He had been warned by his prudent neighbors, who lived anywhere from two to six miles away, that some time a flood, greater than any that the valley had yet known, would arise and sweep house and inmates away to the sea. Don Beltran laughed at this. He was happy as he was, and content. There had always been floods, and they had sometimes caused the river to overflow so as to wash across his potreros, but the cacao and bananas were planted on gentle elevations where the water as yet had never reached. Then, too, there was always the Hill Rancho, though neither so large nor so comfortable as the casa. Why borrow trouble? At the first sign of danger the cattle and horses had always betaken themselves to the grove on the hill, there to browse and feed, until the shallow lake which stretched across the plains below them had subsided. Once Don Beltran, Adan, his faithful serving-man, and Adan's niece, Agueda, had been belated. Adan had quickly untied the bridle of the little brown horse from the tethering staple at the corner of the casa, and mounting it, had swum away for safety. "That is right," said Don Beltran; "he will swim Mexico"--Don Beltran said Mayheco--"to the rising ground, and save the young rascal. As for us, Agueda, the horse had stampeded before I noticed the cloud-burst. It seems that you and I must stay." Agueda made no answer, but she thought it no hardship to remain. "There is no danger for us, child; we can go up to the thatch and wait." "The peons have gone," said Agueda, shyly. "They were within their rights," answered Don Beltran. "All must go who are afraid. I have always told them that. For me, I have known many floods. They were always interesting, never dangerous. Had I my choice, I should have stayed." "And I," said Agueda. She did not look at Don Beltran as she spoke. The lids were drooped over her grey eyes. Agueda turned away and entered the comidor, leaving Don Beltran looking up the valley: not anxiously--merely as one surveys a spectacle of interest. Once in the comidor, Agueda busied herself opening cupboards and closets. She took therefrom certain articles of food which she placed within a basket. She did not move nervously, but quickly, as if to say, "It may come at any moment; we have not much time, perhaps." She recalled, as she lightly hurried about, the last time that the flood had overtaken them at the casa. Nada, her mother, had prepared the basket then. Nada, Adan's sister, who had kept Don Beltran's house, after she had been left alone on the hillside--Nada, sweet Nada, who had died six months ago of no malady that the little Spanish doctor could discover. Don Beltran prized his Capitas, Adan, above all the serving-men whom he had ever employed, and nothing was too good for Adan's sister Nada--so young, so fair-looking, so patient, her mouth set ever in that heartrending smile, which is more bitter to look upon than a fierce compression of the lips, whose gentle tones wring the heart more cruelly than do the wild denunciations of the revengeful and vindictive. The little Spanish doctor, who, like the Chinese, had never forgotten anything, as he had never learned anything, had ordered a young calf slain and its heart brought to where Nada lay wasting away. Warm and almost beating, it had been opened and laid upon the spot where she felt the gnawing pain; but as there is no prophylactic against the breaking of a heart, so for that crushed and quivering organ there is no remedy. And Nada, tortured in every feeling, physical and mental, had suffered all that devotion and ignorance could suggest, and died. Agueda knew little of her mother's history, and remembered only her invariable patience and gentleness. She remembered their leaving Los Alamos to come to the hacienda down by the river. She remembered that one day she had suddenly awakened to the fact that Don Jorge was at the casa no longer, that her mother smiled no more, that she paid slight attention to her little daughter's questionings, that Nada was always robed in black now, that there had been no funeral, no corpse, no grave! Don Jorge was not dead, that she knew, because the old Capitas, Rafael, was always ordering the peons about, saying, "The Señor wills it," or "The Señor will have it so." Then there had come a day when the bull-cart was brought to the door--the side door which opened from their apartment. In it were placed her little trunk, which Nada had brought her from Haldez, when she went to the midwinter fair, and her mother's American chair, which Don Jorge had brought once when he returned from the States; she remembered how kindly he had smiled at her pleasure. In fact, all that in any way seemed to be part and parcel of the two was placed in the cart, not unkindly, by Juan Filipe, and then the vehicle awaited Nada's pleasure. She remembered how Nada had taken her by the hand and led her through the rooms of the large, spreading, uneven casa. They had passed through halls and corridors, and had finally come to a pretty interior, which Agueda remembered well, but in which she had not been now for a long time. The walls were pink, and on the floor was a pink and white rug, faded it is true, but dainty still. Here Nada had looked about with streaming eyes. She had gone round behind the bed, and Agueda had looked up to see her standing, her lips pressed to the wall, and whispering through her kisses, "Good by, good by!" Then she had taken Agueda by the hand. "Look at this room well, 'Gueda," she had said. "Why, mother?" But Nada did not speak. Her lips trembled. She could not form her words. She stood for a moment, her eyes devouring that room which she should never see again. Her tears had stopped; her eyes were burning. She stooped down by her daughter. "Agueda," she said, "repeat these words after me." "Yes, mother." "Say, 'All happiness be upon this house.'" "No, no! mother, I will not. This casa has made you cry. I will not say it." "Agueda!" Nada's tone was almost stern. "Do as I tell you, child, repeat my words--'All happiness come to this house.'" But Agueda had pressed her lips tightly together and shaken her head. She had closed the grey eyes so that the curled lashes swept her round brown cheek. Nada had lifted the child in her arms and carried her through the corridors and out to the side veranda. She had set her in the cart and got in beside her. "Where to, Señora?" Juan Filipe had asked gently. "To San Isidro," Nada had answered from stiff lips. "_Aaaaaiiieee!_" Juan Filipe had shouted, at the same time flourishing the long lash of his whip round the animals' heads. They, knowing that they must soon move, had tossed their noses stubbornly. Another warning, the wheels had creaked, turned round, and they had passed down the hill. Agueda never forgot that ride to San Isidro. Had it not been for her mother's tears, she would have been more than happy. She had always wished to ride in the new bull-cart; Juan Filipe had promised her many a time. Now he was at last keeping his promise. This argued well. If she could take one ride, how many more might she not have? All the time during that little trip to San Isidro, Agueda was asking herself mental questions. There was no use in speaking to her mother. She only looked far away toward Los Alamos, and answered "Yes" and "No" at random. Agueda remembered with what delight she had seen the patient bulls turn the creaking cart into the camino which led to San Isidro. "Oh," she said, clapping her hands, "we are going to Uncle Adan's!" For was not this Uncle Adan's casa, and did not Don Beltran live with Uncle Adan? She was not sure. But when she had been there with her mother, she had seen that splendid tall Don Beltran about the house with the dogs, or with his bulls in the field, or in his shooting coat with his gun slung across his shoulder, or going with his fishing-tackle to the river. Yes, she was sure that Don Beltran lived at Uncle Adan's house. Agueda's thoughts sped with the rapidity that reminiscence brings, and as she placed some rounds of cassava bread in the basket she saw her mother doing the same, as if it were but yesterday, and saying between halting breaths: "Never trust a gentleman--Agueda--marry some--plain, honest--man--a man of--our people, Agueda--but do not--trust--" "Who are our people, mother?" the girl had interrupted. Aye, who were their people? Nada had not answered. She had lain her thin arms round Agueda's unformed shoulders, turned the girl's head backward with the other hand laid upon her brow, and gazed steadily into the good grey eyes. "My little Agueda," she had said--stopped short, and sighed. It was hopeless. There was no escape from the burden of inheritance. Agueda had not understood the cause of her mother's sigh and her halting words. She had been ill to death--that she knew. Then came long years of patience, as Agueda grew to girlhood. Could it be only six months ago that she had lost her? "My sweet Nada," she whispered, as she laid a napkin over the contents of the basket, "I do not know what you meant, but I do not forget you, Nada." "Hasten, Agueda! There is no danger, but there is no need of getting a wetting." Agueda turned to see Don Beltran standing in the doorway of the comidor. He was smiling. His face looked brown and healthful against the worn blue of the old painted door. His white trousers were tucked within the tops of his high boots, and he wore a belt of tanned leather, with the usual accompaniment of a pistol-holder, which was empty, the belt forming a strap for a machete, and holding safely that useful weapon of domesticity or menace. His fine striped shirt hung in loose folds partly over the belt; the collar, broad, and turned down from the brown throat, being held carelessly in place by a flowing coloured tie. He had an old Panama hat in his brown hand. His wavy hair swept back from his forehead, crisp and changeable in its dark gold lights. His brown eyes looked kindly at the girl, but more particularly at the basket which she filled. "Have you some glasses?" he asked, "and some--" "Water, Señor? Yes, I have not forgotten that." Don Beltran laughed merrily. "I fancy that we shall have water enough, 'Gueda, child. Get my flask and fill it with rum. The pink rum of the vega. Here, let me get the demijohn. Run for the flask, child. Perhaps I should have listened to the warning of old Emperatriz." There were other warnings which Beltran had not taken into account. The sultry day that had passed, the total absence of breeze, the low-flying birds, the stridulous cry of the early home-flying parrots, the dun-colored sky to the south and east, the whinneying and neighing of the horses. The old grey, who knew the signs of the times, had torn his bridle loose and raced across the pasture-land to the hill where stood the rancho. He was the pioneer; the others had followed him, and the little roan had galloped away last of all, with Adan to guide and reassure him. The bulls, leaping and plunging with heads to earth and hind hoofs raised in air, with shaking fringe of tail and bellowed pleading, had asked, as plainly as could creatures to whom God gave a soul, to be allowed to flee to the mountain. Adan, in passing, had unclasped and thrown wide the gate, and they had raced with him for certain life from the death which might be imminent. Emperatriz had whined and had pounded her tail restlessly against the planks of the floor. Then she had arisen, and stood with her great forepaws resting upon Beltran's shoulder, gazing with anxiety that was almost human into his face. "Caramba Hombre!" Beltran had said, as he threw the great beast away from him. Then he had laughed. "I am like the peons, who address even the women so. It does mean a storm, Emperatriz, old girl, but I do not care to go." He had opened the outer door. The great hound had darted through, leaped from the veranda to the ground, and fled toward the south, barking as she ran at the encroaching enemy. She had circled round the casa, nose in air, her whimpering cries ascending to the sky, which shone, as yet, blue overhead. Then back she had torn to the steps, and bounding up and in at the door, had crouched at her master's feet, her nose upon the leather of his shoe, her flanks curved high. Then she had leaped upon him again. She had taken his sleeve gently between her teeth as if to compel him to safety, then crouched again, flapping her great tail upon the floor, her eyes raised to his, her whine pleading like the tones of a human voice. Beltran had shaken the dog away. "I am not going, Emperatriz," he had said, impatiently. "Be off with you!" A few more circlings round the casa, a few more appealing cries, a backward glance and a backward bark, and Emperatriz had started for the rancho, and none too soon. The potrero had become a shallow lake, through which she splashed before she had placed her forefeet upon the rise. "Hasten, Agueda! Come! Come!" called Beltran. Agueda ran to the ladder, which was ever ready for just such surprises. It was the expected which usually did not happen at San Isidro, but the ladder was always there, fastened secure and firm, rivetted to the floor and roof alike. It could move but with the house. Agueda stepped lightly upon the rungs, one after the other. She raised the basket up to Don Beltran's down-reaching grasp. He took it, placed it upon the gently sloping roof, and held out a kindly hand to the girl, but Agueda did not take it at once. She descended the ladder a round or two, and from a nail in a near-by beam seized a coat which Don Beltran wore sometimes when the nights were cool, and the trade winds blew up too freshly from the sea. When she climbed again to the opening in the thatch, Don Beltran was leaning against the old stone chimney, which raised its moss-grown head between the casa and cocina. He had forgotten the girl. His horizontal palm shaded his eyes from the ray of the level sun. There was no sign of fear visible upon his face; he appeared rather like an interested observer, which indeed he was, for he felt secure and safe, for himself, his people, and his cattle. "See the commotion among the forests up there, near Palmacristi, Agueda! It may be only a slight storm and quickly over, but if we do have a flood like the last one, I have no wish that Garcia and Manuel Medina shall float in at my front door in their dugouts and carry off all things movable. It is so easy to lay everything to the flood!" "The men have been moving the furniture for an hour past, Señor. I think there is little that can be carried away." Don Beltran gave a sudden start. "Where is the cross, Agueda? Did you remember that?" "I have it here, Señor." Agueda laid her hand upon the bosom of her gown. "And the Señor's little cart, that is locked within the inner cupboard. It cannot go unless the casa goes also." "And in that case I should want it no more in this world, Agueda. You are thoughtful, child. The two souvenirs of my mother! Ah, see!" As he spoke there was a stir among the treetops far over to the westward. There, where yellow-brown clouds hung massed and solid as a wall over the rift below, a strange agitation was visible. "It is a dance, 'Gueda. Do you see them, those fairies? Watch that one advancing there, to the southward. She approaches the lady from the east. See them skip and whirl and pass as if in a quadrille. It is a pretty sight. You will see that once in a lifetime--not oftener. They call it the _trompa marina_ at sea." Agueda raised her eyes and looked smiling towards the spot to which he nodded. There white and twisting spirals danced and swayed against that lurid background, and above the deep bay, which was hidden by the hills. They advanced, they retreated, they dipped like sprites from palm tuft to palm tuft. Sometimes they skipped gaily in couples, again one was left to follow three or four that had their heads close together, like schoolchildren telling secrets. It was all so human and everyday-like, that Agueda laughed gaily and gazed fascinated at the antics of these children of the storm. The long, ragged-edged split in the angry clouds disclosed a blood-red glow behind, which sent its glare down through the valley and across the woods, where it flecked the tree trunks. From Beltran's vantage point the palm shafts stood black as night against the glare. When he turned and looked behind him, unwilling to lose a single bit of this latest painting from the brush of nature, he found that she had dashed every tree trunk with one gorgeous splash of ruddy gold. Agueda lifted her basket and carried it to the chimenea unaided. Beltran was so absorbed in the grand sight that he had forgotten to be kind. There was usually no thought of gallantry in what he did for the girl, but even the natural kindliness of his manner was in abeyance. Agueda set the basket behind the great stone wall. She remembered what he had said the last time they had sought shelter from the water. "It is ridiculous, that great chimney," he had said: "but even the absurd things of life have their uses." She remembered how she had crouched in her mother's arms the whole long day, but beyond a few drops there had been no cloud-burst, no flood that came higher than the top step of the veranda. They had descended at night dry and unharmed. "It may be like the last one," she ventured to say. But her sentence was drowned. There came a rustling and swaying sound from afar, growing louder as it approached. Beltran noted the ruthless path which it indicated, and then, "there came a rushing, mighty wind from Heaven." It fell upon the tall lilies as if they were grass, bent them to the earth, and laid them prostrate. Some of them, denizens of the soil more tenacious of their hold than others, clung to Mother Earth with the grip of the inheritor of primogeniture. But the struggle was brief. "I was certain that those I planted upside down would stand," said Beltran to Agueda. "I allowed twelve-inch holes, too." But there comes a time when precaution is proven of no avail. The massive stalks were torn from their holdings like so much straw, and laid low with their weaker brothers. As they began to fall in the near field, "It is upon us!" shouted Beltran. He seized Agueda's wrist and drew her behind the chimney. And there they cowered as the wind raved past them on either side, carrying heavy missiles on its strong wings. At this Beltran's face showed for the first time some uneasiness. He was peering out from behind his stone bulwark. "There goes Aranguez's casa," he said, regretfully. "I had no thought of that. I wish I had sent you to the rancho, child." They crouched low behind the chimney. He clung to one of the staples mortared in the interstices of the stone-work, against just such a day as this, and braced his foot beneath the eaves. Again he peered cautiously out. A whistling, rustling sound had made him curious as to its source. The river, which had been flowing tranquilly but a few minutes before, now threw upward white and pointed arms of foam, They reached to the branches, which threshed through open space, and swayed over to meet their supplication, then straightened a moment to bend again to north, to east, to west. The floods had fallen fiercely upon the defenceless bosom of the gentle Rio Frio, had beaten and lashed it and overcome it, so that it mingled perforce with its conqueror, while raising appealing arms for mercy. It grieved, it tossed, it wept, it wailed, but its invader shrieked gleefully as he hurried his helpless prize down through the savannas to that welcoming tyrant, the sea. The water crept rapidly up toward the foundation of the casa. It washed underneath the high flooring. It lapped against the pilotijos. It carried underneath the house branches and twigs which it had brought down in its mad rush toward the lowlands. As it rose higher and higher, it wove the banana stalks and wisps of straw which it bore upon its bosom in and out between the trunks and stems of trees. With the skill of an old-time weaver, it interlaced them through the upright growth which edged the bank. One saw the vegetable fabric there for years after, unless the sun and rain had rotted it away, and another flood had replaced within the warp a fresher woof. Beltran arose and took a few cautious steps upon the roof, but the wind, if warm, was fierce, and thrust him back with violence. He barely escaped being dashed to the new-made lake below. He caught at the chimenea, and edging slowly round, seated himself again by Agueda. She had been calling to him, and had stretched out her hand. Her eyes showed her fear, and also the relief which his presence gave her. When she felt that he was safe beside her she made no further sign. Beltran had laid his hand on Agueda's shoulder as he would have done upon the chimney itself. By it he steadied himself in taking his seat. She raised her eyes and shyly offered him his coat. He shook his head with a smile. His lips moved, but she could hear no word for the noise of the wind and water. Don Beltran put his hand to his mouth and placed his lips to Agueda's ear. "Do not be afraid," he shouted. "There is really no danger." She shook her head and glanced up at him again, dropping almost at once the childish eyes to the hands in her lap. She moved a little nearer to their dividing line, and called in answer: "I am not afraid." He saw her lips move, and guessed at the words, though her look of confidence would have answered him. Why had he never noticed those eyes before? Was it because she had always kept them cast down? What slim hands the girl had! What shapely shoulders! He looked at them as they rested against the weather-beaten stones of the chimney. Agueda turned her head backward and clutched quickly at the light handkerchief which confined the waves of her short hair. She laughed and looked upward at Don Beltran from under her sweeping lashes. Her soul went forth to meet his gaze, unconscious as a little child that she had a secret to tell; unconscious that the next moment she had told it. How can one tell anything except by word of mouth? Beltran drew sharply back, as far as the contracted space would allow. He leaned over the edge of the roof, and saw that the water was now sweeping through the casa, flowing more slowly as it spread over a greater space. It glided in at the doors and out at the windows, which he had left open purposely, not dreaming, it is true, that this flood would be greater than others of its kind, but that in case it should be, the resistance might be less. Glancing down stream, he saw a chair and some tin pans bobbing and courtesying to each other as they drifted across the potrero where the cattle usually browsed. The sun declined, the dusk came creeping down, and with the approach of night the wind subsided. Fortunately there was no rain. The clouds had been carried in from the sea at right angles with the stream, and had broken in the mountains and poured out their torrents there. Still the rushing of the river drowned all other sounds. It grew quite dark. Beltran leaned back against the chimenea. The slight creature at his side rested, also, in silence. The darkness became intense. The chimenea was needed no longer as a protection from the wind, but the utter absence of all light made the slightest motion dangerous. A chill mist crept up from the sea. The night began to grow cold, as do the tropic nights of midwinter. Beltran shivered. Something was pushed against his hand. He reached down and felt another hand, a hand slim and cold. He took it within his own, but it was at once withdrawn, and a rough and heavy article thrown across his knees. He felt some buttons, a pocket which held papers, a collar. Ah! It must be his woollen coat, which she had had the forethought to bring. Feeling for the sleeve, he threw the coat round his shoulders, and with a resolve born in a moment, reached out toward Agueda. His groping fingers fell upon her sweet throat and the tendrils of her boyish hair, the great dark rings, which, now that he could not see them, he suddenly remembered. Throwing his arm around her, he drew the damp and shivering figure close. Then he grasped the sleeve of his coat, and drew it towards him, forcing her head down upon his breast. He sought the other hand, and later found the tremulous lips. He held his willing prisoner close, and so they sat the whole night through. Many and strange thoughts rushed through Agueda's brain during those blissful hours. Life began for her then, and she found it well worth living. She awoke. Her child's heart sprang into full being, to lie dormant never again. Nada's words came back to her. She did not wish to recall them, but they forced themselves upon her: "Never trust a gentleman, Agueda; he will only betray you." "I should think much of your warning, Nada," thought Agueda, "if I saw other gentlemen. I never do see them. If I do, he will protect me." The danger had not arrived. It could never come now. She had found her bulwark and her defence. FOOTNOTE: [1] Pronounced E-see-dro. II "When the flood has subsided," Agueda had said to herself, "all will be as before. But stay! Would anything ever be as before? Well, what matter? Who would go back? Shall we not trust those whom we love? Life is the better for it. This was life. Life was all happiness, all joy. The future? There was to be no future but this. This life of hers and his should be the same until death claimed the one or the other. God grant that they might go together, rather than that one should be left behind. Let them go in a greater flood, perhaps, than the one which they had outspent upon the thatched roof in the shelter of the old chimenea." Agueda knew not the meaning of those words of calculation--"the world." She had never known the world, she had never seen the world. She found herself living as many did about her. Only that they had heart-burnings, jealousies, disappointments, and sorrows. She was secure, and she pitied them that their lots had not been cast within so safe a fold as hers. Her nature, if ignorant, was undefiled and undepraved; and noble, in that she found no sacrifice too great for this splendid young god who claimed her. What else was her mission in life but to make his life as near Heaven as earthly existence could become? She stretched out her young arms to the sky with a glow of happiness that asked nothing further of God. There were the mountains, the fields, the forests, the plantations, the river, and the rambling, thatched casa. These made for her the world. Sometimes she thought of and pitied Aneta at El Cuco. Poor Aneta, who had thought that a life-long happiness was hers, when suddenly one day Don Mateo had returned from the city with a bride. "Poor Aneta!" Agueda used often to say, with a pitying smile through which her own contentment broke in ripples of joy. How could she trust a man like Don Mateo? As Agueda sat and thought, she mended with anxious but unskilled fingers the pile of linen which old Juana had brought in from the ironing room. Juana had clumped along the back veranda and set the basket down with a heavy thump. There were table linen and bed linen, there were the Señor's striped shirts of fine material from the North, and his dainty underwear, and Agueda's neat waists and collars keeping company with them in truly domestic manner. Agueda had never done menial work; Uncle Adan's position as manager of the plantation had secured something better for his niece. If Uncle Adan knew the truth, he made no sign. The lax state of morals in the country had always been the same. In reality he saw no harm in it. Besides which, had he wished to, what change could he make--he, a simple manager and farming man, against the owner of the hacienda, a rich and powerful Señor from Adan's point of view. Suddenly Agueda remembered that she had not seen Aneta for a long time. She would go now, this very minute, and pay the visit so long overdue. She arose at once. With characteristic carelessness she dropped the sheet upon which she had been engaged on the floor, took from its peg the old straw hat, and clapped it over her boyish curls. The hat was yellow, it had a peaked crown, and twisted round the crown was a handkerchief of pale blue. Agueda made no toilet; she hardly looked at her smiling image in the glass. From the corner of the room she took a time-worn umbrella, which had once been white, and started towards the door. A backward glance showed her the confusion of the room. For herself she did not care, but the Señor might come in perhaps before her return. He had gone to the mail-station across the bay; the post-office and the bank were both there. He was bringing home some bags of pesos with which to pay his men. Possibly he would bring a letter or two from the fruit agents, or the merchant to whom he sold the little coffee that he raised; but the pesos were more of a certainty than the letters. If he returned home before her, the sitting-room would have a disorderly appearance, and he disliked disorder. His mother, the Doña Maria, had been a very neat old lady. There are some persons to whom order and neatness are inborn. With a touch of a deft finger here or there, an apartment becomes at once a place where the most critical may enter. To others it is a labor to make a room appear well cared for. It may be immaculate in all that pertains to dust or the thorough cleanliness of linen or woodwork, but the power to so impress the beholder is lacking. Agueda was one of these. She sighed as she gazed at the unkempt appearance of the room. There was not much the matter, and yet she did not know how to remedy it. She re-entered the room and picked up the sheet from the floor, together with a pillow-slip whose starched glossiness had caused it to slide down to keep the sheet company. Folding these, not any too precisely, she laid them upon the chair where she had lately sat. Then she glanced around the room again. Its careless air still offended her, but time was flying, and she had a long walk before her. Suddenly she put her hand to her ear and took from behind it the rose that had been there since early morning. It was the first that she had struggled to raise, and it had repaid her efforts, in that hot section of the country, by dwining and dwindling like a puny child. Still, it was a rose. She laid it on the badly folded sheet; it gave an air of habitation to the room. She smiled down at this, her messenger. She gave the linen a final pat and went out, closing the door softly. It was as if a young mother had left her sleeping child to be awakened by its father, should he be the first to return. "It is something of me," thought Agueda. "It will be the first to greet him." Agueda stepped out on the broad veranda. The loose old boards creaked even under her slight weight. "Juana!" she called, "I'm going to see Aneta at El Cuco." She made no other explanation. He would ask as soon as he returned, and they would tell him. "Youah neva fin youah roaad in dis yer fawg," squeaked Juana. "The fog may lift," laughed Agueda. The river, forgetful of its past turbulence, smiled and glanced and beckoned as it slipped tranquilly onward, but Agueda did not answer the summons. She turned abruptly to the right and crossed the well-known potrero path. This led her for a quarter of a mile through the mellow pasture-land, where horses were browsing. The grey was not there--sure sign of his master's absence, but the little chestnut was in evidence, and farther along, beyond the wire fence, were the great bulls, which had not been driven afield with the suckers. There stood Cæsar, the big brown bull with the great, irregular white spots. Agueda went close to the fence, and picked a handful of sweet herbs, such as Cæsar loved. "Cæsar," she called, "Cæsar, it is I that have the sweet things for you." Cæsar threw up his head quickly, tossing long strings of saliva into the air. He stood for a moment with hesitant look, then perceiving that it was Agueda, trotted, tail held stiff, to where she waited, her hand held out to him. He extended his thick neck, holding his wet, pink nostrils just over the barrier, wound his dripping tongue round the dainty, and then withdrew his head that he might eat with ease. "Too bad, poor Cæsar, that the horses get all the sweets, and you none." With awkward arm held high, that she might not catch her sleeve upon the topmost wire, she patted the animal's nose; then thrust one more bunch of grass into the ready cavity, and turning, ran along toward the rise. When Agueda had closed the rickety potrero gate, she started up the elevation which confronted her. Here the young bananas were just showing above the ground. She had deplored the fact that this pretty hill-forest had been sacrificed to banana culture, and had hated to see the great giants which she had known from childhood cut and slashed. At the fall of each one of them she had felt as if she had lost a friend. "I shall never sit under the gri-gri again," she had thought, "and eat my guavas as I look down on the river"; or, "I shall never again play house beneath the old mahogany that stood up there at the edge of the meadow." The face of nature was changed for her in this particular. It was the only thing that she had to make her unhappy. Who among us would think the world a sadder place because of the felling of a tree! The stumps stood even with Agueda's shoulder, for Natalio, that African giant, was the axe-man of the hacienda. His ringing strokes struck hip high. It was less work to cut through the trunk some distance above its spreading roots. There was no clearing up nor carrying away of branches or limbs. With all their massive foliage, the branches were hacked from the parent stem, and left to dry in the tropic sun. They were then placed in great piles about the mother tree, lighted, and left to burn. Sometimes these fallen denizens of the wood, whose life had seen generations of puny men fade and wither, and other generations spring up and die while they stood splendid and vigourous, refused to be annihilated. The fallen trunk remained for years, proof of the vandalism of man. More often, a long line of ashes marked the spot where the giant had blazed, then smouldered sullenly, to become wind-blown, intangible. This great woodland crematory having been made ready by death for the life that was to spring up through its vanquishment, the peons came with their machetes and dug the graves in which the bulbs, teeming with quiescent life, were to be planted, each sucker twelve feet from any one of its neighbors, there to be warmed and nurtured in the bosom of Mother Earth. Because exposed upon a windy hillside, the bulbs had been placed in their graves head and sprouting end downward, and at the depth of ten inches. This was a provision against hurricanes, which, with all their power, find it difficult to uproot so securely planted a stalk. And now the field which she had helped to "avita"--for one gives in when the tide of circumstances flows too strong--the waste whose seed-graves she had seen dug, whose bulbs she had seen buried from sight, had suddenly become a field of life once more. Pale green spears were springing up in every direction--a light, wonderful green with a tinge of yellow. The spatulated leaves were handsomest, Agueda thought, when spotted or marked with brown, or a rich chocolate shade. In their tender infancy they were the loveliest things on earth, she thought, as she ran about the damp, hot hillside, comparing one with another; and as she again returned to the path, she nearly stumbled against the ebony giant, who, standing just at the edge of the field, was watching her. "It is wonderful, Natalio," she said, "how quickly they have sprouted." She smiled upward. "Si, Señorit'," said Natalio, smiling down. "It is the early rains that bring the life. Perhaps the good God may be thanked a little, too, but it is the good soil, and the rains most of all." He stooped his great height, and took some of the earth in his fingers. "It is the caliche so the Señor says." He rubbed the disintegrated gravelly mass between his fingers. Some of it powdered away. The fine bits of stone that it contained dropped in a faint patter upon his feet. "I never heard the Señor say that," said Agueda, with the air of one who would know what were the Señor's favourite convictions, "but of course he knows, the Señor." "Bieng," said Natalio. "It is certain that the Señor knows." Agueda moved on up the hill. She felt, crunching beneath her feet, the shells of the circular grub which had lost life and home in this terrific holocaust. "It seems hard," mused Agueda, "that some things must die that other things may be created." She smiled as she said this. She need not die that other things might live. It had no personal application for her. At least it would not have for sixty or eighty years, and that was a whole lifetime. She might not be glad to die even then! Agueda had reached the summit of the hill. She turned to look back at Natalio. He was standing gazing after her. When he saw her turn he expanded his handsome lips into a smile, showing his white teeth. Then he uncovered his head, and swept the ground with his ragged Panama hat. He called; Agueda could not hear at first what he said. "Que es eso?" she called back in answer. Natalio approached a few feet with his great strides. "I asked if the Señorit' would not ride the bull?" "Pablo is away," said Agueda. "I cannot go alone. The Señor will not have me to ride the bull alone." "El Caballo Castaño, Señorit'," said Natalio, suggestively, approaching nearer. "Would you saddle him, Natalio?" asked Agueda, thinking this an excellent change of programme. "It would give me pleasure, Señorit'," said Natalio. Agueda turned and began to walk rapidly down the hill. "The small man's saddle, Natalio," she called. "I will be ready in a moment." Agueda ran down the hill, keeping ahead of the giant, and sped across the potrero. She flew to her room. There lay the rose as she had left it upon the chair, but she had no time for sentiment. The horse would be at the door in a moment, and indeed, before she had changed her skirt for the cotton riding garment that she usually wore, and which our ladies have imported of late under the name of a divided skirt, Natalio was at the steps. Agueda buckled on her spur, and was out on the veranda in the twinkling of an eye. Uncle Adan was coming up from the river. He saw her stand upon the second step and throw her leg boy-fashion over the saddle, seize the whip from Natalio, and canter away again toward the hill. To his shout of "Where are you going?" she flung back the words, "To Aneta's," and was off. Her easy seat astride the animal gave her a sense of freedom and independence. The top of the hill reached, she struck off toward Troja, on the other side of which lived Aneta, at El Cuco. Agueda galloped along the damp roads, and then clattered through the streets of the quiet little West Indian town. Arrived upon its further outskirts, she allowed the chestnut to walk, for he was warm and tired. She was passing at the back of Escobeda's casa, through a narrow lane shaded with coffee trees. The wall of the casa descended abruptly to this lane, the garden being in front, facing the broad camino. Agueda heard her name softly called. She halted and looked towards the casa. A shutter just at the side of the balcony moved almost imperceptibly, then was pushed open a trifle, and she saw a face, the face of Raquel, the niece of Escobeda. Raquel had her finger upon her lips. Agueda guided her horse near, in as cautious a manner as could be. When she was well under the opening, Raquel spoke again. "It is Agueda, is it not? Agueda from San Isidro?" Raquel whispered her words. Agueda, seeing that there was need for secrecy, also let her voice fall lower than was usual. "Yes," she smiled, "I am certainly Agueda from San Isidro." "Ah! you happy girl," said Raquel, in a cautious tone, "to be riding about alone." Agueda's head was almost on a level with Raquel's. "I am a prisoner, Agueda," said Raquel. "My uncle has shut me up here. He means to take me away in a short time. It's a dreadful thing which is to happen. Can you carry a note for me, Agueda?" "I will carry a note for you," said Agueda. "Is it ready, Señorita?" "I will write it in a moment. Agueda, good girl, you know the plantation of the Silencios, do you not? Palmacristi?" "I can find it," said Agueda. "It is down by the sea. It is not much out of my way." "If it were miles and miles out of your way, Agueda, dear, you must take my letter." "Give it to me, then," said Agueda. There was a noise inside the room, at the door of the chamber. "Ride on to the clump of coffee bushes where the roads meet," whispered Raquel. "The fog will help hide you, too. I will drop the note." As she tried to guide the chestnut softly over the turf, Agueda heard a loud call from within. It was a man's coarse voice. She heard Raquel answer drowsily, "In a moment, uncle; I was just asleep. Wait until I--" Agueda halted for some minutes behind the concealment of the coffee bushes. She grudged this delay, for she had still some distance to travel, and must make a detour because of Raquel's request. "But," she argued, "had I walked, I should have been much longer on the way." She watched the window at the back of Escobeda's house, then, presently, from the front, saw a man mount and ride away in the opposite direction. Then, as she still awaited the fluttering of the note, the shutter was flung wide, and an arm encased in a yellow sleeve beckoned desperately. Agueda struck her spur into the chestnut, and was soon under the window again. "He has gone," said Raquel, "and I am locked in the house alone. All the servants have gone to the fair." "You can climb down," said Agueda. "It is not high." "Where should I go then, Agueda?" asked Raquel. "No, he would only bring me back. Now I will write my note, and I will ask you to take it to Don Gil." As Raquel said this name her voice trembled. She coloured all over her face. "You are lovely that way," said Agueda. "What does he do to you, Señorita?--the Señor Escobeda. Does he starve you? Does he ill treat--I could tell the Señor Don Beltran--" "You do not blush when you speak of him," said Raquel, who had heard some rumours. "I have no cause to blush," said Agueda, with dignity. "But come, Señorita, the note!" Raquel withdrew into the room. She scribbled a few words on a piece of blue paper, folded it, and encased it in a long thin envelope. This she sealed with a little pink wafer, on which were two turtle doves with their bills quite close together. She leaned out and handed the missive down to Agueda. "Thank you, dear," she said. "I should like to kiss you." "I should like much to have you," said Agueda. "Perhaps I can stand up." Agueda spurred her horse closer under the window. She raised herself as high as she could. The chestnut started. "He will throw you," said Raquel. "I will lean out." Raquel stretched her young form as far out of the window as possible. She could just reach Agueda's forehead. She kissed her gently. "I thank you, Señorita," said Agueda. She felt the kiss upon her forehead all the way to the plantation; it seemed like a benediction. She did not reason out the cause of her feeling, but it was true that no one of Raquel's class had ever kissed her before. Agueda rode along her way with quick gait. The plantation of Palmacristi was some miles farther on, and she wished still to see Aneta. On her way toward Palmacristi, and as she mounted the slope leading to the casa, she met no one. Arrived at that splendid estate by the sea, she spurred her horse over the hill and round to the counting-house. This was the place, she had heard, where the Señor was usually to be found. She had seen the Señor at a distance. She thought that she would know him. At that same hour the Señor Don Gil Silencio-y-Estrada sat within his counting-house. The counting-house was constructed of the boards of the palm, the inner side plain, the outer side curved, as the tree had curved. The bark had not been removed. The roof of the building was also made of palm boards; it was thickly thatched with yagua. Since the days of the old Don Gil the finca had enlarged and improved. The counting-house stood within its small enclosure, its back against the side of the casa, and though it communicated with the interior of the imposing mahogany mansion, it remained the same palm-board counting-house--that is, to the outside world--that the estate of Palmacristi had ever known. Two tall palms stood like sentinels upon either side of the low step before the doorway. The palm trees were dead. They had been topped by no green plume of leaves since before the death of the old Don Gil. Now, as then, the carpenter birds made their homes in the decaying shaft. The round beak-made holes, from root to treetop, disclosed numberless heads, if so much as a tap were given the resounding stem of the palm. No one wondered why Don Gil still used the ancient structure as a counting-house. No one ever wondered at anything at Palmacristi; everything was accepted with quiescence. "The good God wills it," a shrug of the shoulders accompanying the remark, made alike, if a tornado unroofed a house or a peon died of the wounds received at the last garito.[2] The changes which had taken place at Palmacristi had nothing to say to the condition of the counting-house, or it to them, except that it acceded, somewhat slowly in some cases, to the payment of bills. Since his father's day Don Gil had added much to the estate. Upon the right he had bought more than twenty caballerias from Don Luis Salas--land which marched with his own to the seashore. This included a tall headland, with a sand spit at its base, which pushed itself a half mile out into the sea. This sand spit curved in a hook to the left, and formed a pleasant and safe harbour for boating. To the north of his inheritance Don Gil had taken in the old estates of La Flor and Provedencia, and at the back of the casa, which already stood high up on the slope, he had extended his possessions over the crest of the hill. Had the original owner of Palmacristi returned on a visit to earth, he would have found his old plantation the center of a magnificent estate, with, however, the same shiftless, careless ways of master and servant that had obtained in his time. This would probably grow worse as his descendants succeeded each other in ownership. The casa was built upon a level, where the hill ceased to be a hill just long enough to allow of a broad foundation for Don Gil's improvements. At the edge of the veranda the hill sloped gently again for the distance of a hundred yards, and then dropped in a short but steep declivity to the sand beach. The old habitation had been built entirely of palm boards, but in its place, at the bidding of Don Gil, had arisen a new and more modern erection, whose only material was mahogany. Pilotijos, escaleras, ligazones, verandas, techos, all were hewn and formed of the fine red mahogany. The boards were unpolished, it is true, but dark and rich in tone. They made a cool interior, where, coming from the white glare outside, body and eye alike were at once at rest. The covering of the techos was the glazed tile of Italy. Perhaps one should speak of the roofs as _tejados_, as they were covered with tiles. This tiling proved a beacon by day, as it glittered in the blazing light of the sun of the tropics. Agueda guided her horse up the path between the two dead palm trees, and rapped with the stock of her whip upon the counting-house door, which stood partly open. "Entra," was the reply. She rapped again. "It is I who cannot enter, Señor," she called in her clear, young voice. "I have not the time to dismount." An inner door was opened and closed. A fine-looking young fellow stepped across the intervening space and appeared upon the threshold of the outer door. He raised his brows; he did not know Agueda. Don Beltran made various pretexts for her absence when he had visitors. Agueda held out the note. It was crumpled and dusty from being held in her hand. "I am sorry," she said; "the day is hot, and my Castaño is not quiet." Don Gil gazed with interest at the boyish-looking figure riding astride the little chestnut. "What a handsome lad she would make!" he thought. "And you are from--" "It makes no difference for me. I bring a message." Silencio took the note which she reached out to him. "You will dismount and let me send for some fruit, some coffee?" "I thank you, Señor, I must hasten; I am going to El Cuco." "That is not so far," said Don Gil, smiling. "No, but I then have to ride a long way back to--" "To--?" "To San Isidro." "The Señorita takes roundabout ways. Is she then carrying messages all about the country?" "Oh, no, Señor," said Agueda, smiling frankly. "When I go back to San Isidro I go to my home. I live there." "Ah!" What was there imperceptible in Don Gil's tone? "You live there? Is the Señorita perhaps the niece of the manager, Señor Adan?" "Si, Señor," answered Agueda, flushing hotly, she knew not why. She wheeled Castaño and paced down between the palm trees. "And you will not take pity on my loneliness?" Don Gil was still smiling, but there was something new, something of familiarity, it seemed to Agueda, in his tone. "I cannot stop, Señor. A Dios!" she said, gravely. As Agueda rode out of the enclosure the day seemed changed. Why was it? She had been so happy before she had delivered the note! Now she felt sad, depressed. The sun was still shining, though there were occasional showers of rain, and the birds were still singing. Nothing in nature had changed. Ah, stay! There was a cloud over there, hanging low down above the sea. It was coming to the westward, she thought. She hoped that it would come, and quickly. She hoped that it would burst in rain upon her, and make her ride for it, and struggle with it. Anything to drive away that unhappy impression. Had Silencio been asked what he had said or done to cause this young girl to change suddenly from a thoughtless, happy creature to one who felt that she had reason for uneasiness, he could not have told. He had heard vague rumours of the girl, Adan's niece, who lived over at San Isidro. But that he had allowed any such impression to escape him in intonation or gesture he was quite unaware. At all events, he was entirely oblivious of Agueda the moment that she had ridden away, for he opened the little blue note that she had brought, and was lost in its contents. FOOTNOTE: [2] Cock-fight. III When Agueda left the Casa de Caboa she turned down the trocha towards the sea. Although the sea was not far from San Isidro as the crow flies, the dwellers at the hacienda rarely went there. In the first place, there was the river to cross, and then the wood beyond the river was filled with a thick, short growth of prickly pear. This sort of underbrush was unpleasant to pull through. Don Beltran had tried to buy it from Escobeda up at Troja, but Escobeda seemed to have been born to annoy the human race in general, and Don Beltran and Silencio in particular. He would not sell, and he would not cultivate, so that the sea meadow, as they called it at San Isidro, was an eyesore and a cause of heart-burning to Don Beltran. Agueda chirruped to her horse, and was soon skirting the plantation of Palmacristi. The chestnut was a pacer, and Agueda liked his single foot, and kept him down to it at all hazards. She felt as if she were in Nada's American chair, the motion was so easy and pleasant. The beach was rather a new experience to the chestnut, but after a little moment of hesitancy he started on with a nod of the head. "Ah!" said Agueda, with a laugh, "it is you, Castaño, who know that I never lead you wrong." She shook the bridle, and the horse put forth his best powers. They took the wet sand just where the water had retreated but a little while before. It was as hard and firm as the country road, but moist and cool. "How I should like to plunge into that sea," said Agueda to Castaño. Castaño again nodded an acquiescent head. A salt-water bath was a novelty to these comrades. After a few moments of pacing, Agueda came to the sand spit which ran out from the plantation into the sea. Here was the boat-house which Don Gil had built, and Agueda noticed that it was placed upon a high point, with ways leading down on either side into the water. She looked wistfully at the boat-house. "How I should love to sail upon that sea," thought Agueda. "No water, however high, could frighten me." Then she recalled with a flash the flood which had brought her happiness. She smiled faintly, for with the thought the unpleasant feeling which Don Gil's words had called up returned, she knew not why. Agueda was pacing towards the south. Upon her right stood up tall and high the asta of Palmacristi, the staff from which hung the lantern that, she had heard, sent forth its white ray each night to warn the seafarers on that lonely coast. "What harm for a ship to run on the sand," thought Agueda. "I have heard that rocks are cruel. But the sand is soft. It need hurt no one." She struck spurs to Castaño, and covered several miles before she again drew rein. And now the bank grew high, and Agueda awoke to the fact that she was alone upon the beach, screened from the eyes of every one. Again the thought came to her of a bath in the sea, and she was about to rein the chestnut in when she heard a shout from the plateau above her head. She stopped, and tipping back her straw hat, she looked upward. All that she could discover was a mass of flowers in motion. "They are the air-plants, certainly," said Agueda to herself, "but I never saw them to grow like that." She looked to right and to left, but there was no human being in sight along the yellow bank outlined by sand and overhanging weeds. "Who calls me?" she cried aloud, holding her hair from her ears, where the wind persisted in blowing it. "Caramba, muchacho! Can you not see who it is? It is I, Gremo." There was a violent agitation of the mass of blooms, and Agueda now perceived that a head was shaking out its words from the centre of this woodland extravaganza. "I can hardly see you, Gremo," said Agueda. "What do you want with me, Gremo?" "And must I make brains for every muchacho[3] between here and the Port of Entry? Do you not know there are the quicksands just beyond?" "Quicksands, Gremo! Yes, I had heard of quicksands, but I did not think them here. Can I get up the bank, Gremo?" "No," answered Gremo, from his flower screen. "You must ride back a long way." He wheeled suddenly toward the south--at least, the mass of flowers wheeled, and a hand was stretched forth from the centre. A finger pointed along the sand. Agueda turned in the saddle and shaded her eyes again. "What is it, Gremo?" she asked. "I see nothing." "Then you do not see that small thing over which the vultures hover?" "I see the vultures, certainly," said Agueda. "Some bit of fish, perhaps." "No bit of fish or fowl, but foul flesh, if you will, hombre. It is the hand of a Señor, muchacho." "The hand of a Señor? And what is the hand of a Señor doing, lying along there on the shore?" "It lies there because it cannot get loose. Caramba, muchacho! Do I not know?" "Cannot get loose from what?" asked Agueda, still puzzled. "From the Señor himself, muchachito. He lies below there, and his good horse with him. Do you not see a hoof just over beyond where the big bird lights?" Agueda turned pale. She had never been near such death before. Nada had passed peacefully away with the sacred wafer upon her lips, and in her ears the good padre's words of forgiveness for all her sins, of which Agueda was sure she had committed none. Hers was a sweet, calm, sad death. One thought of it with relief and hope, but this was tragedy. There, along the beach, beneath the smiling sand, whose grains glistened in a million, million sparkles, lay the bodies of horse and rider, overtaken by this placid sea. "I suppose he was a stranger," said Agueda. "There was no one to warn him." Suddenly she felt faint. A strong whiff of air reached her from the direction of the birds. She turned the chestnut rapidly, and struck the spur to his side. "Wait, Gremo, wait!" she cried, "I am coming! Do not leave me here alone." The chestnut paced as never horse paced before, and after a few minutes Agueda found a little cleft in the bank where a stream trickled down. Into this opening she guided Castaño, and with spur and whip aided him in his scramble up the bank. She galloped southward again, and neared the place where Gremo stood. She was guided by the mass of bloom. As she advanced she saw the blossoms shaking, but as yet perceived nothing human. Tales of the forest suddenly came back to her. Could it be that this was a woodland spirit, who had lured her here to this high headland, to throw her over the cliff again to keep company with the dead man yonder and the birds of prey? She had half turned her horse, when Gremo, seeing her plan, thrust himself further from his gorgeous environment. "Ah! It is the little Agueda! Do not be afraid, Agueda, little Señorita. It is I, Gremo." Agueda's cheek had not as yet regained its colour. "It is Gremo, muchachito." "What terrible thing is that down there, Gremo? And to see you looking like this frightened me!" It was a curious sight which met Agueda's eyes. Gremo, the little yellow keeper of Los Santos light, was standing not far from his signal pole. He held a staff in each hand. The staves were crooked and uneven. They were covered with bark, and scraggy bits of moss hung from them here and there. The strange thing about them was that each blossomed like the prophet's rod. At the top of the right-hand staff there shot out a splendid orange-coloured flower, with velvety oval-shaped leaves. Near the top of the left-hand staff was a pale pink blossom, large also, not wilted, as plucked flowers are apt to be, but firm and fresh. But these were not all the prophet's rods which Gremo carried. Across his back was slung an old canvas stool, opened to its fullest extent, and laid lengthwise across this were many more ragged staves, and on each and all of them a flower of some shade or colour bloomed. Then there were branches held under his arms, whose protruding ends blossomed in Agueda's very face, and quite enclosed the yellow countenance of Gremo. The glossy green of the leaves surrounding each bloom so concealed Gremo that he was lost in his vari-coloured burden of loveliness. "So it is really you, Gremo! Do they smell sweet, those air-plants?" Gremo shifted from one leg to the other. One of Gremo's legs was shorter than the other. He generally settled down on the short one to argue. When he was indignant he raised himself upon his long leg and hurled defiance from the elevation. The mass of bloom seemed to exhale a delicate aroma. So evanescent was it that Gremo often said to himself, "Have they any scent after all?" And then, in a moment, a breeze blew from left to right, across the open calix of each delicate flower, and Gremo said, "How sweet they are!" "I sometimes think they are the sweetest things on God's earth," said Gremo. "That is, when the Señorita is not by," he added, remembering that his grandfather had brought some veneer from old Spain; "and then again I ask myself, is there any perfume at all?" "Oh, now I smell it, Gremo!" said Agueda, sniffing up her straight little nose. "Now I smell it! It is delicious!" "It is better than the perfume down below there," said Gremo, with a grimace. Agueda turned pale again. "And what do you do with them, Gremo?" asked she. "I take them to the Port of Entry, Señorita. I get good payment there. Sometimes a half-dollar, Mex. They stick them in the earth. They last a long, long time." "Were you going there when you called me from--from--down there?" "Si, Señorita. I was walking along the bank. I had just come from my casa"--Gremo gestured backward with a dignified wave of the hand--"when I heard El Castaño's hoofs on the hard sand there below." He turned and looked along the beach to where the noisome birds hovered. "I was too late to warn the Señor. Had I been here, I should even have laid down my plants and have run to the edge of the cliff"--Gremo jerked his head towards the humped-up pit of sand--"and called, 'Olá! Porque hace Usted eso? It is Gremo who has the kind heart, muchacho.'" "I am not a boy, Gremo," said Agueda, glancing down at her riding costume. "It is the same to me, Señorita," said Gremo, who in common with his fellows had but one gender of speech. Agueda was looking at the hand which thrust itself out from the sand of the shore. It seemed as if the fingers beckoned. She shuddered. "They should put up a sign," she said, quickly. "I shall tell the Señor Don Beltran. He will put up a notice--a warning." "Caramba, hombre! And why must you interfere? No people in this part will go that way. They all know the danger as well as the birds. I live here in this part. Why not leave it to me?" "But will you, Gremo?" "What? Put up the sign? I most certainly shall, Señorita. Some day when I have not the air-plants to gather, or the lanterna to clean, or when I am not down with the calentura, or there is no fair at Haldez, or no cock-fight at Saltona. The Señorita does not know how long I have thought of this--I, Gremo! Why, as long ago as when the Señor Don Gil bought the sand spit I had the board prepared. That is now going on four years, if I count aright. I told the Señor Don Gil that I would get a board, and I have." "He thinks it there now, I am sure," said Agueda. "Well, well! He may, he may, our Don Gil! I am not disputing it, Señorita. I am only waiting for the padre to come and put the letters on it." "Have you told him, Gremo?" said Agueda, bending forward anxiously. "Caramba, Señorita!" said Gremo, raising up on his long leg, "where do you suppose I am to find the time to tell the padre? If I should take a half-day from my work when I am at San Isidro, and walk over to the bodega, the padre might be away at the cock-fight at Saltona, or the christening at Haldez. The Don Beltran is a gentle hombre, but he would not pay me for half a day when I did not earn it. If I could know when the padre was at home, I would go, most certainly." "You must have seen him many times in the last three years," said Agueda. "I will not deny that I have seen the padre," answered Gremo, rising angrily on the tips of his knotted brown toes. "But would you have me disturb a man like our padre when he was watching the shoemaker's black cock from Troja, to see if his spurs were as long as the spurs of the cock of Corndeau?--that vagamundo!" Agueda reined Castaño round, so that his head pointed in the general direction of the bodega, as well as homeward. "I can tell the padre, Gremo," she said, and then added with determination, "It must not be left another day." Gremo settled down upon his short leg. "Now, Señorita," he said argumentatively, "do not interfere. It is I that have this matter well within my grasp. There is no one coming this way to-day--along the beach, I mean." "How do you know, Gremo?" questioned Agueda. Gremo shrugged his shoulders. "It is not likely, muchacho. Our own people never come that way, and there are so few strangers--not three in as many years. We cannot now help the Señor who lies there, can we, Señorita?" "No," said Agueda, sadly; "but we can prevent--" "Leave it to me, Señorita. I promise that I will attend to it to-morrow. I--" "And why not to-day?" "Because, you see, muchacho, I must take the air-plants to the Port of Entry. I am on my way there now. I but stopped to warn the Señorita, and I pay well for my kindness. Now I shall not be able to return to-night. As the Señorita has detained me all this long while, will she be so good as to stop at my casa and tell Marianna Romando to come over and light the lantern on the signal-staff at an early hour? This, you know, is _my_ lighthouse, little 'Gueda. This is Los Santos." "Have I come as far as Los Santos head?" asked the girl. Agueda looked upwards at the place where the red lantern hung against the staff. "How can a woman climb up there?" she said. "She will bring the ladder, the Marianna Romando," said Gremo, moving a step onwards. "I do not think I know Marianna Romando. Is she your wife, Gremo?" "Well, so, so," answered Gremo. "But she will do very well to light the lantern all the same." Agueda sat her horse, lost in thought. When she raised her eyes nothing was to be seen of Gremo. An ambulating mass of bloom, some distance along on the top of the sea bank, told her that he was well on his way toward the Port of Entry. This was the best way, Gremo considered, to put an end to discussion. Agueda did not know just where the casa of the light-keeper lay. Seeing that a well-worn path entered the bushes just there, she turned her horse's head and pushed into the tall undergrowth. After a few moments she came out upon a well-defined footway. Her path led her through acres of mompoja trees, whose great spreading spatules shaded her from the scorching sun. She had descended a little below the hill, and once out of the fresh trade breeze, began to feel the heat. She took off her hat as she rode, and fanned herself. Five or six minutes of Castaño's walking brought her to a hut; this hut was placed at a point where three paths met. It stood in a sort of hollow, where the moisture from the late rains had settled upon the clay soil. The hut was thatched with yagua. It was so small that, Agueda argued, there could be but one room. There was a stone before the doorway sunk deep in the mud. Before the opening, where the door should be, hung a curtain of bull's hide. A long ladder stood against the house. Its topmost rung was at least an entire story in height above the roof, and Agueda wondered why it was needed there. The only signs of life about the place were three or four withered hens, which ran screaming, with wobbling bodies and thin necks stretched forward, at the approach of the stranger. Their screams brought a yellow woman to the door. If Gremo looked like a withered apple, this was his feminine counterpart. Her one garment appeared to be quite out of place. It seemed as if there could be nothing improper in such a creature going about as she was created. The slits in the faded cotton gown were more suggestive than utter nakedness would have been. This person nodded at the chickens where they were disappearing in the bush. "They are as good as any watch-dog," said she. "There is no use of thieves coming here." Agueda rode close. "I am not a thief," said Agueda. "Can you tell me where is the casa of Gremo, the light-keeper?" "And where but here in this very spot?" said the piece of parchment, smiling a toothless smile and showing a fine array of gums. "But had you said the casa of Marianna Romando, you would have come nearer the truth." Agueda had not expected the casa of which Gremo spoke with such pride to look like this, or to belong to some one else. "Well, then, I have come with a message from your hus--from Gremo." "The Señorita will get off her horse and come in? What will the Señorita have? Some bread, an egg--a little _ching-ching_?" The woman smiled pleasantly all the time that she was speaking. Agueda had difficulty in understanding her, for the entire absence of teeth caused her lips to cling together, so that she articulated with difficulty. Still she smiled. Agueda shook her head at the hospitable words. "I have no time, gracias, Señora. You will see that I have been wet with the showers," she said; "and I have been delayed twice already. Gremo asked me to tell you that he would come to the Port of Entry too late to return and light the lantern. He asks that you will do it for him." For answer the woman hurriedly pulled aside the bull's-hide curtain and entered the hut. She reappeared in a moment with an old straw hat on her head. She was lifting up her skirt as she came, and tying round her waist a petticoat of some faded grey stuff. Her face had changed. She smiled no longer. "It is that fat wife of the inn-keeper at the sign of the 'Navío Mercante.'[4] She it is who takes my Gremo from me." She entered the hut again, and this time reappeared with a coarse pair of native shoes. She seated herself in the doorway, her feet on the damp stone, and busily began to put on the shoes, her tongue keeping her fingers in countenance. "As if I did not know why my Gremo goes to the Port of Entry! He will sit in the doorway all the day! She will give him of the pink rum! He will spend all the pesos he has made! His plants will wither! Oh, yes, it is that fat Posadera who has got hold of my Gremo." Agueda turned her horse's head. "How do I go on from here?" she asked. "Where is the Señorita going?" "To San Isidro, but first to El--" "_Aaaaiiiieee!_" said the woman, standing in the now laced shoes, arms akimbo. "So this is Don Beltran's little lady?" Agueda flushed. "I live with my uncle, the Señor Adan, at San Isidro." She pushed into the undergrowth. "The Señora is going wrong," said the woman. "Señorita," said Agueda, sharply, correcting the word. "Which way, then?" Getting no answer, she turned again. She now saw that the woman had gone to the side of the house and was taking the long ladder from its position against the wall. She bent her back and settled it upon her shoulders. Agueda looked on in astonishment while this frail creature fitted her back to so awkward a burden. Marianna Romando looked up sidewise from under the rungs. "I go to light the señale now," she said. "It may burn all day, for me. What cares Marianna Romando? Government must pay. Then, when it is lighted I shall hide the ladder among the mompoja trees. He did not dare to tell me that he would remain away. He knows that I do not like that fat wife of the inn-keeper. I shall lead him home by the ear at about four o'clock of the morning. There are ghosts in the mompoja patch, but they will not appear to two." All through this discourse Marianna Romando had not raised her voice. She smiled as if she considered the weaknesses of Gremo amiable ones. She started after him as a mother would go in search of a straying child; like a guardian who would protect a weak brother from himself. "I have only this to say to you, Señorita," she called after Agueda, turning so that the ladder swished through the low bushes, cutting off some of the tops of the tall weeds, both before and behind her. "Keep the Señor well in hand. When they go away like that, no one knows whom they may be going after." Agueda closed her ears. She did not wish to hear that which her senses had perforce caught. She pushed along the path that Marianna Romando had indicated, and in twenty minutes saw the white palings of Don Mateo's little plantation, El Cuco. FOOTNOTES: [3] Lad. [4] Merchant ship. IV When Raquel had given Agueda the note and the kiss, and had seen her ride rapidly away, she closed the shutter. She made the room as dark as possible. She could not bear to have the sun shine on a girl who had written to a man to come to her succour. It could mean nothing less than marriage, and it was as if she had offered it. But what else remained for her but to appeal to Don Gil? If the few words that he had spoken meant anything, they meant love. If the beating of her heart, when she caught ever so distant a glimpse of him, meant anything, it meant love. She had received a note from him only a week back. She would read it again. Her uncle had searched her room only yesterday for letters, and she was thankful that she had had the forethought to conceal Silencio's missive where he would not discover it. He had ordered old Ana to search the girl's dresses, and Ana, with moist eyes and tender words, had carried out Escobeda's instructions. She had found nothing, and so had told the Señor Escobeda. "And when does the child get a chance to receive notes from the Señores?" asked Ana, indignant that her charge should be suspected. It was the reflection upon herself, also, that galled her. "I guarded her mother; I can guard her, Señor," said the old woman, with dignity. "Do you not know that the young of our nation are fire and tow?" snarled Escobeda. "I shall put it out of her power to deceive me longer." With that he had flung out of the casa and ridden away. It was then that Raquel had beckoned to Agueda, where she loitered under the shelter of the coffee bushes. After Agueda had gone, Raquel seated herself upon a little stool which had been hers from childhood. She raised one foot to her knee, took the heel in her hand, and drew off the slipper. Some small pegs had pressed through and had made little indentations in the tender foot. But between the pegs and the stocking was a thick piece of paper, whose folds protected the skin. She had just removed it when the door opened, and Ana entered. Raquel started and seemed confused for a moment. "You frightened me, Ana," said Raquel. "I thought that you had gone to the fair. So I told--" "You told? And whom did you have to tell, Señorita?" "I told my uncle. He was here but now. Oh! dear Ana, I am so tired of this hot house. I long for the woods. When do you think that he will let me go to the forest again?" Ana drew the girl toward her. Her lips trembled. "I am as sorry as you can be, muchachita; but what can I do? What is that paper that you hold in your hand, Raquel?" Raquel blushed crimson. Fortunately Ana's eyes were fixed upon the paper. "I had it folded in my shoe," said Raquel. She threw the paper in the scrap basket as she spoke. "See, Ana." She held up the slipper. "Look at those pegs! They have pushed through, and my heel is really lame. I can hardly walk." Raquel limped round the room to show Ana what suffering was hers, keeping her back always to the scrap-basket. "If he would allow me to go to the town and buy some shoes!" said Raquel--Ana's espionage having created the deceit whose prophylactic she would be. "You had better put on your slipper," said the prudent Ana. "You will wear out your stockings else." "But how can I put on my slipper with those pegs in the heel?" asked Raquel. "You had the paper." "It was punched full of holes." "Let me see it," said Ana. "I threw it away," said Raquel. "Get me another piece of paper, for the love of God, dear Ana. My uncle does not allow me even a journal. I am indeed in prison." Ana arose. "I will take the scrap-basket with me," she said. "Not until you have brought the paper, Ana. I shall tear up some other pieces." When Ana had closed the door Raquel pounced upon the waste-basket. She took the folded paper from the top of the few scraps lying there. This she opened, pulling it apart with difficulty, for the pegs had punched the layers together, as if they had been sewn with a needle. She spread the paper upon her knee, but first ran to the door and called, "Ana, bring a piece of the cotton wool, also, I beg of you." "That will keep her longer," said Raquel, smiling. She spoke aloud as lonely creatures often do. "She must hunt for that, I know." She heard Ana pulling out bureau drawers, and sat down again to read her letter. "Dearest Señorita," it ran. "I hear that you are unhappy. What can I do? I hear that you are going away. Do not go, for the love of God, without letting me know. Your faithful servant, G." "I have let you know, Gil," she said. "I am not going away, but I am unhappy. I am a prisoner. I wonder if you will save me?" Ana's heavy tread was heard along the corridor. Raquel hastily thrust the note within the bosom of her dress. When the cotton had been adjusted and the slipper replaced, Ana took up the scrap-basket. "Dear Ana, stay a little while. I am so lonely. Don't you think he would let me sit on the veranda?" "He would let you go anywhere if you would promise not to speak to the Señor Silencio," said Ana. "I will never promise that, Ana," said Raquel, with a compression of the lips. She laid her head down on Ana's shoulder. "I am so lonely," she said. The tears welled over from the childish eyes. The lips quivered. "I wonder how it feels, Ana, to have a mother." Ana's eyes were moist, too, but she repressed any show of feeling. Had not the Señor Escobeda ordered her to do so, and was not his will her daily rule? Suddenly Raquel started--her hearing made sensitive by fear. "I hear him coming, Ana," she said. "You could not hear him, sweet; he has gone over to see the Señor Anecito Rojas." "That dreadful man!" Raquel shuddered. "Why does he wish to see the Señor Anecito Rojas?" "I do not know, Señorita." Ana shook her head pitifully. It seemed as if she might tell something if she would. Suddenly she strained her arms round the girl. "Raquel! Raquel!" she said, "promise me that you will sometimes think of me. That you will love me if we are separated. That if you can, if you have the power, you will send for me--" "Ana! Ana!" Raquel had risen to her feet and was crying. Her face was white, her lips bloodless. "Tell me what you mean. How can I send for you? Where am I going that I can send for you? Am I going away, Ana? Ana, what do you know? Tell me, Ana, dear--dear Ana, tell me!" But Ana had no time or reason to answer. There was a sound of horse's hoofs before the door, a man's heavy foot alighting upon the veranda, the throwing wide of the outer door, and Escobeda's voice within the passage. "Ana!" it shouted, "Ana!" Ana arose trembling. "I am here, Señor," she said. "Where is that girl, Raquel?" "The Señorita is also here, Señor," answered Ana. The door was flung open. "Pack her duds," said Escobeda. "She leaves this by evening." "_I--leave--here?_" Raquel had arisen, and was standing supporting herself by Ana's shoulder. "I suppose you understand your mother tongue. It is as I said; you leave here this evening." "Oh, uncle! Where--where am I to go?" "That you will find out later. Pack her duds, Ana." Ana trembled in every limb. She arose to obey. Raquel threw herself on the bare floor at Escobeda's feet. "Oh, uncle!" she said. "What have I done to be sent away? Will you not tell me where I am going?" The girl cried in terror. She wept as a little child weeps, without restraint. "I am so young, uncle. I have no home but this. Do not send me away!" Escobeda looked down at the childish figure on the ground before him, but not a ray of pity entered his soul, for between Raquel's face and his he saw that of Silencio, whose father had been his father's enemy as well as his own. He felt sure that soon or late Silencio would have the girl. He spoke his thoughts aloud. "I suppose he would even marry you to spite me," he said. "Who, uncle? Of whom do you speak?" "You know well enough; but I shall spoil his game. Get her ready, Ana; we start this afternoon." "There is a knocking at the outer door," said Ana. "I will go--" "You will pack her duds," said Escobeda, who was not quite sure of Ana. "I will answer the summons myself." As he was passing through the doorway, Raquel said, despairingly: "Uncle, wait a moment. You went to the Señor Anecito Rojas. How did you get back so soon--" "And who told you that I was going to him? Yes, I did start for the house of Rojas, but I met him on the way, so I was saved the trouble." "Are you going to send me to him, uncle?" asked Raquel. The girl's face had again become white, her eyes were staring. There was some unknown horror in store. What could it be? "Send you to him? Oh, no! Why should I send you to him? I have a better market for you than that of Rojas. He is only coming to aid me with those trusty men of his, in case your friend Silencio should attempt to take you from me. He had better not attempt it. A stray shot will dispose of him very quickly." "Am I to remain on the island, uncle?" "Yes and no," answered Escobeda. "We take the boat to-night for the government town. When we arrive, it will be as the governor says--he must see you first." Raquel understood nothing of his allusions. Ana cried silently as she took Raquel's clothes from the drawers and folded them. "I cannot see what the governor has to do with me?" said Raquel. "You will know soon enough," said Escobeda. His laugh was cruel and sneering. Raquel turned from Escobeda with an increased feeling of that revulsion which she had never been able entirely to control. She had felt as if it were wrong not to care for her uncle, but even had he been uniformly kind, his appearance was decidedly not in his favour. She glanced at his low, squat figure, bowed legs, and thick hands. She had time to wonder why he always wore earrings--something which now struck her as more grotesque than formerly. Then she thrust her hand within the bosom of her gown, raised it quickly, and slipped something within her mouth. Escobeda caught the motion of Raquel's arm as he raised his eyes. She backed toward the wall. He advanced toward her threateningly. He seized her small shoulder with one hand, and with a quick, rough motion he thrust the thick forefinger of the other between her lips, and ran it round inside her mouth, as a mother does in seeking a button or some foreign substance by which a child might be endangered. Raquel endeavoured to swallow the paper. At first she held her teeth close together, but the strength of Escobeda's finger was equal to the whole force of her little body, and after a moment's struggle Silencio's note was brought to light. He tried to open it. "It is pulp! Nothing but pulp!" he said, shaking the empty hand at her. Raquel stood outraged and pale. What was the matter with this man? He had suddenly shown himself in a new light. "How dare you treat me so?" she gasped. "You have hurt her, Señor," said Ana, reproachfully. "Does it pain you, sweet?" Ana had run to the girl, and was wiping her lips with a soft handkerchief. A tiny speck of blood showed how less than tender had been this rough man's touch. "If it pains me? Yes, all over my whole body. How dare he! Anita, how dare he!" Escobeda laughed. He seated his thick form in the wicker chair, which was Raquel's own. It trembled with his weight. He laid the paper carefully upon his knee, and tried to smooth it. "I thought you said she received no notes from gentlemen," he roared. Ana stood red-eyed and pale. "She never does, Señor," she answered, stifling her sobs. "And what is that?" asked Escobeda, in a grating voice. He slapped the paper with the back of his hand into the very face of Ana. "Do you think that I cannot read my enemy's hand--aye, and his meaning? Even were it written in invisible ink. '_Gil!_' Do you see it? '_Gil!_'" He slapped the paper again, still thrusting it under Ana's nose. "There may be more than one Gil in the world, Señor," sniffed the shaking Ana. "Do not try to prevaricate, Ana. You know there is not more than one Gil in the world," said Raquel, scornfully. Ana, in danger from the second horn of her dilemma, stood convicted of both, and gasped. "There is only one Gil in the world for me. That is Don Gil Silencio-y-Estrada. That is his note which you hold, uncle. It is a love letter. I have answered it this very day." Raquel, now that the flood of her speech had started to flow, said all that she could imagine or devise. She said that which had no foundation in fact. She made statements which, had Silencio heard them, would have lifted him to the seventh heaven of bliss. "He wants me to go away with him. He knows that I am imprisoned. He implores me to come to him. Be sure," said Raquel, her eyes flashing, "that the opportunity is all that I need." Ana stood aghast. She had never seen Escobeda defied before. All the countryside feared to anger him. What would become of the two helpless women who had been so unfortunate? Escobeda was livid. His eyes rolled with rage; they seemed to turn red. He arose from the chair, leaving it creaking in every straw. He clenched his fist, and shook it at the woman and girl alternately. His ear-rings danced and trembled. He seemed to be seized with a stuttering fit. The words would not pass the barrier of his brown teeth. He jerked and stammered. "We--we--shall see. We shall s--s--see. This--this--eve--evening." Raquel, her short spurt of courage fled, now stood with drooped head. Escobeda's anger seemed to have left him as suddenly as it had appeared. He threw Silencio's note on the floor. "Ah! bah!" he said, contemptuously. "It sounds very fine. It is like hare soup: first catch your hare. Silencio shall not catch you, my little hare. His horses are not fleet enough, nor his arm long enough." "All the same, I think that he will catch me," said Raquel, again defiant, with a fresh burst of courage. Escobeda turned on his heel. "Go to the door, Ana," he said, "and see who keeps up that thumping." When Ana had shuffled along the passage, Raquel turned to Escobeda. "It may be a messenger from the Señor Silencio," she said. "I sent him a letter some hours ago." "And by whom, pray?" "That I will not tell you. I do not betray those who are kind to me. You told me early this morning that I was to be taken away. You will see now that I, too, have a friend." Ana's steps interrupted this conversation. "Well?" asked Escobeda. "The messenger is--will you speak?" "It is the man Rotiro from Palmacristi," said Ana, in a low voice. Raquel gave a quick little draw of her breath inward. The sound made a joyous note in that cruel atmosphere. "It will do you no good," said Escobeda. "Go and tell him that I will see him presently. I will lock you up, my pretty Señorita, that you send no more notes to that truhan.[5] You have now but a few hours to make ready. Put in all your finery; though, after all, your new master can give you what he will, if you please him." FOOTNOTE: [5] Mountebank. V It was an unthrifty-looking place, El Cuco--very small, as its name implied. How Don Mateo had asked any woman to marry him with no more to give her than the small plantation of El Cuco, one could not imagine. The place was little more than a conuco, and Don Mateo, through careless ways and losses at gambling, selling a little strip of field here and some forest land there, was gradually reducing the property to the size of a native holding. The lady who had inveigled Don Mateo into marrying her sat upon the veranda, fat and hearty. Her eyes were beginning to open to the fact that Don Mateo had not been quite candid with her. He had said, "My house is not very fine, Señorita, but I have land; and if you will come there as my wife, we will begin to build a new casa as soon as the crops are in and paid for." The crops had never come in, as far as the Señora had discovered; and how could crops be paid for before they were gathered? There had grown up within the household a very fine crop of complaints, but these Don Mateo smoothed over with his ready excuses and kindliness of manner. Agueda leaned down to the small footpath gate to unfasten the latch. She found that the gate was standing a little way open and sunk in the mud, but that there was no room to pass through. "Go round to the other side," called a voice from the veranda. A half-dozen little children, of all shades, came trooping down the path. Then, as she turned to ride round the dilapidated palings, they scampered across the yard, a space covered by some sort of wild growth. They met her in a troop at the large gate, which was also sunk in the ground through the sagging of its hinges. Fortunately, it had stood so widely open now for some years that entrance was quite feasible. Agueda struck spur to Castaño's side, and he trotted round to the veranda. They stopped at the front steps, and throwing her foot over the saddle, Agueda prepared to dismount. "What do you want here?" asked a fat voice from the end of the veranda. "I should like to see Aneta, Señora," said Agueda. "May one of the peons take my horse?" "You can go round to the back, where Aneta is, then," answered the Señora, without rising. "She is washing her dishes, and it is not you who shall disturb her." Agueda looked up with astonishment. The last time that she had come to El Cuco, Aneta had sat on the veranda in the very place where the stranger was sitting now. That chair, Don Mateo had brought over from Saltona once as a present for Aneta. It was an American chair, and Aneta used to sit and rock in it by the hour and sing some happy song. Agueda remembered how Aneta had twisted some red and yellow ribbons through the wicker work. Those ribbons were replaced now by blue and pink ones. Without a word Agueda rode round the house. Arrived at the tumble-down veranda which jutted out from the servants' quarters, she heard sounds which, taken in conjunction with the Señora's words, suggested Aneta's presence. When Aneta heard the sound of horse's hoofs she came to the open shutter. Agueda saw that her eyes were red and swollen. A faint smile of welcome overspread Aneta's features, which was succeeded at once by a shamefaced look that Agueda should see her in this menial position. "Dear Agueda!" said she; "how glad I am to see you! But this is no place for you." "I wish that you could come down to the river," said Agueda. "I have so much to ask you. Who is the Señora on the veranda, Aneta?" "Do you not know then that he is married?" asked Aneta, the tears beginning to flow again. "Married!" exclaimed Agueda, aghast. "To the Señora on the veranda?" Aneta nodded her head, while the salt tears dropped down on the towel with which she was slowly wiping a large platter. Agueda was guilty of a slight bit of deceit in this. She had heard that Don Mateo was married, but it had never occurred to her that things would be so sadly changed for Aneta. Somehow she had expected to find her as she had always found her, seated on the veranda in the wicker chair, the red and yellow ribbons fluttering in the breeze, and in her lap the embroidery with which she had ever struggled. "Can you come down by the river?" asked Agueda. "I suppose that I must finish these dishes," said Aneta, through her tears. "Oh, Agueda, you have had nothing to eat, I am sure. You have come so far. Let me get you something." "Yes, I have come far, Aneta. I should like a little something." It did not occur to Agueda to decline because of the Señora's rudeness. She had never heard of any one's being refused food at any hut, rancho, or casa in the island. The stranger was always welcome to what the host possessed, poor though it might be. "I will not dismount," said Agueda. "Perhaps you can hand me a cup of coffee through the window." Agueda rode close to the opening. Aneta laid her dish down on the table, and went to the stove, from which she took the pot of the still hot coffee. She poured out a cupful, and handed it to Agueda. "Some sugar, please," said Agueda, holding the cup back again. Aneta dipped a spoon in the sugar bowl which was standing on the table in its pan of water. It was a large pan, for "there are even some ants who can swim very well," so Aneta declared. Agueda took the cup gratefully, and drained it as only a girl can who has ridden many miles with no midday meal. "I hoped that I should be asked to breakfast, Aneta," said Agueda, wistfully. She remembered the time when she had sat at the table with Aneta, and partaken of a pleasant meal. "I can hand you some cassava bread through the window, Agueda," said Aneta, with no further explanation. She took from the cupboard a large round of the cassava and handed it to Agueda. Agueda broke it eagerly and ate hungrily. "That is good, Aneta. Some more coffee, please." Aneta took up the pot to pour out a second cup. "And who told you that you might give my food away?" The voice was the fat voice of the Señora. She had exerted herself sufficiently to come to the kitchen door. "Pardon, Señora!" said Agueda. Her face expressed the astonishment that she felt. She unconsciously continued to eat the round of cassava bread. "You are still eating?" Agueda looked at the woman in astonishment. "Does the Señora mean that I shall not eat the bread?" asked she. "We do not keep a house of refreshment," said the Señora. Agueda handed the remainder of the cassava bread to Aneta. "I see you do not, Señora. Come, Aneta, come down to the river." Aneta looked hesitatingly at the Señora. "You need not mind the Señora, Aneta. She does not own you." At this Aneta looked frightened, and the Señora as angry as her double chin would allow. "If the girl leaves, she need not return," said the Señora. "My work is nearly done," said Aneta, with a fresh flood of tears. "Crying, Aneta! I am ashamed of you. Come, I will help you finish your dishes." Agueda rode around to the veranda pilotijo and dismounted. She tied Castaño there, as is the custom, taking care that she chose the pilotijo furthest removed from the main post, where several machetes were buried with a deep blade stroke. The Señora was too heavy and lazy to object to Agueda's generosity. She seated herself in the doorway and watched the process of dish-washing. When the girls had finished, the worn towels wrung dry and hung on the line, Aneta took from the veranda nail her old straw hat. "On further thought, you cannot go," said the Señora. "I need some work done in my room." Agueda put her arm round Aneta. "I bought her off," she said. "Come, Aneta, I have so little time." At these words the Señora had the spirit to rise and flap the cushion of a shuffling sole on the floor in imitation of a stamp of the foot. "You cannot go," she said. For answer the two girls strolled down toward the river, Castaño's bridle over Agueda's arm, Aneta trembling at her new-found courage. Aneta was a very pretty, pale girl, with bronze-coloured hair, although her complexion was thick and muddy, showing the faint strain of blood which made her, and would always hold her, inferior to the pure Spanish or American type. Her eyes were of a greenish cast, and though small, were sweet and modest. She was perhaps twenty-three at this time. It is sad to have lived one's life at the age of twenty-three. "I have so many years before me, Agueda," said Aneta. "Why do you stay here?" asked Agueda. "Where have I to go?" asked Aneta. "That is true," assented Agueda. "My father will not have me back. He says that I should have been smart and married Don Mateo; but I never thought of being smart, 'Gueda; I never thought of anything but how I loved him." A pang of pity pierced the heart of Agueda, all the stronger because she herself was so secure. The two girls walked down toward the shining river. Castaño followed along behind, nibbling and browsing until a jerk of the bridle caused him to raise his head and continue his march. The river was glancing along below the bank. Low and shallow, it had settled here and there into great pools, or spread out thinly over the banks of gravel which rose between. "Can we bathe, Aneta?" asked Agueda. "I suppose so," said Aneta, mournfully. "Smile, Aneta, do smile. It makes me wretched to see you so sad." Aneta shook her head. "What have I left, Agueda?" Agueda hung Castaño's bridle on a limb, and seeking a sheltered spot, the two girls undressed and plunged into the water, a pool near the shore providing a basin. One may bathe there with perfect seclusion. The ford is far below, and no one has reason to come to this lonely spot. The water was cool and delicious to Agueda's tired frame. "Agueda," said Aneta, as they were drying themselves in the sun, "will Castaño carry double?" "Why, Aneta, I suppose he will. I never tried him." "I promised El Rey to come to see him one day soon. That was weeks ago. You know that Roseta has gone. The little creature is alone. If I should go there by myself the Señora would say bad things about me. She would say that I had gone for some wrong purpose. God knows I have no wrong purpose in my heart." "Yes, I will go with you," said Agueda. "But, we must hasten. I have been away so long already. What time should you think it is, Aneta?" Aneta turned to the west and looked up to the sky with that critical eye which rural dwellers who possess no timepiece acquire. "Perhaps three o'clock, Agueda, perhaps four. Not so very late." "So that I am home by six it will do," said Agueda. She reproached herself that she should think of the happiness that awaited her at home while Aneta was so sad. When they were again dressed, Agueda mounted Castaño, and riding close to an old mahogany stump, gave her hand to Aneta, aiding her to spring up to the horse's flank. Castaño was not over-pleased at this addition to his burden, but he made no serious demonstration, and started off toward the ford. The ford crossed, Agueda guided Castaño along the bank of the stream. "Is this the Brandon place?" asked Agueda. "No," said Aneta. "It is part of the Silencio estate." Again Agueda felt the flush arise which had made her uncomfortable in the morning. "I have never been this way," said Agueda, who was following Aneta's directions. "I was there this morning, but I rode down the gran' camino." "You went there?" "Yes; to carry a note." "To the Señor?" "Am I going right, Aneta?" "Yes," said the easily diverted Aneta. "Follow the little path. They live on the river bank below the hill." In a few moments a thatched roof began to show through the trees. "There it is," said Aneta; "there is Andres' rancho." When they arrived at the rancho they found that the door was closed. Agueda rapped with her whip. "They are all away, I think," said she. "Oh! then, they are not all away," piped a little voice from the inside. "Take the key from the window, and I will let you open my door." Agueda laughed. Aneta slid off the horse, and Agueda rode to the high window, from whose ledge she took a key. "My Roseta, is that you?" called the child's voice. Aneta looked up at Agueda and shook her head with a pitying motion. The child's sorrow had effaced her own for the time. "No, El Rey," she called; "it is Aneta, and I bring Agueda, from San Isidro." "You are welcome, Señoritas," piped the little voice again. By this time Aneta had inserted the key in the lock and opened the door. A small, thin child was sitting on the edge of a low bed. He arose to greet them with a show of politeness which struggled against weariness. "Andres and Roseta are away," he said. "Andres said that he would bring her if he could find her." Agueda had heard of El Rey, but she had never seen the child before. "I should think he would surely bring her," said she in a comforting tone. She was seeing much misery to-day. She felt reproached for being so happy herself, but she looked forward to her home-coming as recompense for it all. "Would you like to come to San Isidro some time, El Rey?" she asked. "Does Roseta ever come there?" asked the child. "She has never been yet, but she may come some day," answered Agueda, with that merciful deceit which keeps hope ever springing in the breast. Aneta stooped down towards the floor. "Have you anything to play with, El Rey?" she asked. "El Rey has buttons. El Rey has a book that the Señor at Palmacristi gave him, but he is tired of those. When will Roseta come?" Agueda turned away. "I cannot bear it," she said. El Rey looked at her curiously. "Would you like to ride the pretty little horse, El Rey?" The child walked slowly to the door and peered wistfully out. "El Rey would like to ride; but Roseta might come." "We will not go far," said Agueda. "Come, let me lift you up." El Rey suffered himself to be lifted to the horse's back, but his eyes were ever searching the dim vista of the woodland for the form that did not appear. "I cannot enjoy it, Señora," said he, politely. "El Rey would enjoy the Señora's kindness if Roseta could see him ride." "I must go, Aneta," said Agueda, her eyes moist. She lifted the child down from Castaño's back. He at once entered the casa. He turned in the doorway, his thin little figure occupying small space against the dark background. "Adios, Señoritas," said the child. "Oh! will the Señoritas please put the key on the window ledge?" "We cannot lock you in, El Rey," said Agueda. "Do you mean that we are to lock you in, El Rey?" asked Aneta at the same time. "Will the Señoritas please not talk," said the child. "I cannot hear. I sit and listen all day. If the Señoritas talk I cannot hear if any one comes." "But must we lock the door?" asked Agueda. "Is that what Andres wishes?" asked Aneta. "If you please, Señorita; put the key on the window ledge." "I shall not lock him in," said Aneta. "I cannot do it. I will stay a while, El Rey," she said. Aneta sat down in the doorway, her head upon her hand. She belongs not to the detail of this story. She is only one of that majority of suffering ignorant beings with whom the world is filled, who make the dark background against which happier souls shine out. Agueda rode back to the ford. She galloped Castaño now. At the entrance of the forest she turned and threw a kiss to Aneta. The girl was still in the doorway, but El Rey was not to be seen. Agueda fancied him sitting on the low bed, his ear strained to catch the fall of a faraway footstep. VI The shadows were growing long when Agueda cantered down the path that ran alongside of the banana walk. She crossed the potrero at a slow pace, for Castaño was tired and warm. As she slowly rounded the corner of the veranda, a figure caught her eye. It was Don Beltran, cool and immaculate in his white linen suit. He was smoking, and seemed to be enjoying the sunset hour. "Ah! are you here at last, child! I was just about to send your uncle to look for you. Have you had dinner?" "Not a mouthful," laughed Agueda, at the remembrance of the Señora at El Cuco. It was cruel to laugh while Aneta wept, but it was so hard not to be happy. "Tell Juana to bring you some dinner. There was a san coche, very good, and a pilauf of chicken. Did you see Don Mateo?" "No, Señor," said Agueda, looking down. "Why will you persist in calling me Señor, Agueda? I am Beltran. Say it at once--Beltran!" "Beltran," said Agueda, with a happy smile. Poor Aneta! Poor everybody in the world who did not have a Beltran to love her! As Agueda told Beltran the history of her long day, he listened with interest. When she spoke of Aneta's changed life, "The brute!" said Beltran, "the damned brute!" While Agueda was changing her dress for the dark blue skirt and white waist, Beltran sat and thought upon the veranda. When she came out again, he spoke. "Agueda," said he, "it is time that you and I were married." Agueda blushed. "I see no cause for haste," said Agueda. "It is right," said Beltran, "and why should we wait? What is there to wait for? I want you for my wife. I have never seen any one who could take me from you, and there is no such person in all the world. All the same, you must be my wife." "I think the padre is away," said Agueda, looking down. "He will be back before long, and then, if the river is still low, we will go to Haldez some fine morning and be married. Your uncle can give you away. He will be very glad, doubtless!" Don Beltran laughed as he spoke. He was not unconscious of Uncle Adan's plans, but as they happened to fall in with his own, he took them good-naturedly. "Do you know, Agueda," he said presently, looking steadily at her, "that you are better born than I?" "What does the Señor mean?" laughed Agueda. "The Señor?" "Well, then, Señor--Beltran. What do you mean by that?" "I mean what I say, Agueda. Your grandfather, Don Estevan, is a count in his own country--in old Spain. That is where you get your pretty slim figure, child, your height, and your arched instep. You are descended from a long line of noble ladies, Agueda. I have seen many a Spanish gran' Señora darker than you, my Agueda. When shall our wedding-day be, child?" Agueda shook her head and looked down at the little garment which she was stitching. She had no wish to bind him. That was not the way to treat a noble nature like his. Agueda had no calculation in her composition. Beltran could never love her better were they fifty times married. She was happy as the day. What could make her more so? "Did the Señor enjoy his sail across the bay?" asked Agueda. "It was well enough, child. I got the draft cashed, and, strange to say, I found a letter at the post-office at Saltona." "From the coffee merchant, I suppose, Señor?" "No, not from the coffee merchant, Señora," Beltran laughed, teasingly. "Guess from whom, Agueda; but how should you be able to guess? It is from my uncle, Agueda. My mother's brother. You know that he married in the States." "I have heard the Señor say that the Señor his uncle married in the es-States," said Agueda, threading her fine needle with care, and making a tiny knot. Beltran drew his chair close. He twitched the small garment from her hands. She uttered a slight exclamation. The needle had pricked her finger. Beltran bent towards her with remorseful words, took the slender finger between his own, and put it to his lips. His other hand lay upon her shoulder. She smiled up at him with a glance of inquiry mixed with shyness. Agueda had never got over her shy little manner. The pressure of his fingers upon her shoulder thrilled her. She felt as ever that dear sense of intimacy which usage had not dulled. Beltran again consulted the letter which he held. "Uncle Nóe will arrive in a week's time," he said. "He is a very particular gentleman, is my Uncle Nóe. Quite young to be my uncle. Look at my two grey hairs, Agueda." She released her hand from his, and tried to twist her short hair into a knot. It looked much more womanly so. She must try to make it grow if a new grand Señor was coming to San Isidro. Don Beltran was still consulting the letter. "He brings his child--his little daughter. Now, Agueda, how can we amuse the little thing?" Agueda, with work dropped, finger still pressed between her small white teeth, answered, wonderingly: "A little child? Let me think, Señor." "Ah!" "Well, then, again I say Beltran, if you will. We have not much." How dear and natural the plural of the personal pronoun! "We have not much, I fear. There is the little cart that the Señora gave the Señor when he was muchachito. That is a good little plaything. I have cleaned it well since the last flood. The water washed even into the cupboard. Then there is--there is--ah, yes, the diamond cross. She will laugh, the little thing, when it flashes in the sunshine. Children love brilliant things. I remember well that the little Cristina, from the conuco, up there, used to love to see the sparkle of the jewels. But the little one will like the toy best." "That is not much, dear heart." "And then--and then--there may be rides on the bulls, and punting on the river in the flatboat, and the little chestnut--she can ride Castaño, the little thing!" "Not the chestnut; I trained him for you, Agueda, child." "And why should not the little one ride him, also? We can take her into the deep woods to gather the mamey apples, and to the bushes down in the river pasture to gather the aguacate. Only the little thing must be taught to keep away from the prickly branches, and--sometimes, Don--Beltran, we might take the child as far as Haldez, if some acrobats or circus men should arrive. We have not been there since Dondy-Jeem walked the rope that bright Sunday. Oh, yes! we shall find something to amuse her, certainly. A little child! We are to have a child in the house!" It was always a happy "we" with Agueda. "How old is the little thing?" "I have not heard from my uncle for many years. I do not know when he married; but he is a young man still, Uncle Nóe. Full of affectation, speaking French in preference to Spanish and English, which are equally his mother tongues--I might say his mother and father tongue--but with all his affectations, delightful." "A little child in the house! A little child in the house," murmured Agueda over and over to herself. Now it was all bustle at the casa. San Isidro took on a holiday air. There was no more talk of marriage. Not because Don Beltran did not think of it and wish it, but because there was no time. A room down the veranda must be beautified for the little child. She was to be placed next her father, that if she should want anything at night, he could attend her. "Where shall we put the nurse?" said Don Beltran. "I am afraid the nurse will have to sleep in the rancho, Beltran. These two rooms take all that we have." Agueda looked up wistfully. "I wonder how soon she will come," she said. "The little thing! the little thing!" VII So soon as Agueda had disappeared down the trocha which leads to the sea, Silencio called for Andres. Old Guillermina came with a halt and a shuffle. This was caused by her losing ever and anon that bit of shoe in which she thought it respectful to seek her master, or to obey his summons. She agreed with some modern authorities, although she had never heard of them or their theories, that contact with Mother Earth is more agreeable and more convenient (she did not know of the claim that it is more healthful) than encasing the foot in a piece of bull's hide or calf's skin. "Where is Andres?" asked Don Gil, impatiently. "Has the Señor forgotten that the Andres has gone to the Port of Entry?" "He has not gone there," said Silencio; "that I know, for I sent Troncha in his place. See where he is, and let me know. I need a messenger at once." As Guillermina turned her back, Don Gil bit his lip. "Then I am helpless," he said aloud, "if Andres is not here." He arose and started after Guillermina, calling impatiently: "Do not wait for Andres; get some one, any one. I must send a message at once." While Guillermina shuffled away, Silencio sat himself down at his desk and wrote. He wrote hurriedly, the pen tearing across the sheet as if for a wager. As its spluttering ceased, there was a knock at the counting-house door. "Entra!" called Silencio, rising. It was a moist day in May. The June rains were heralded by occasional showers, an earnest of the future. The dampness was all-pervading, the stillness death-like. No sound was heard but the occasional calling of the peons to the oxen far afield. The leaves of the ceiba tree hung limp and motionless; the rompe hache[6] had not stirred a leaf for two days past. No tender airs played caressingly against the nether side of the palm tufts and swayed them in fan-like motion. The gri-gri stood tall and grand, full of foliage at the top. Its numberless little leaves were precisely outlined, each one, against the sky. One might almost fear that he were looking at a painting done by one of the artists of the early Hudson River school, so distinctly was the edge of each leaf and twig drawn against its background of blue. Rotiro stood and waited. Then he knocked again. A step was heard approaching from an inner room. "Entra!" called a voice from within, but louder than before. Rotiro obeyed the permission. He entered the outer room to find Don Gil just issuing from the inner one--that holy of holies, where no profane foot of peon, shod or unshod, had ever penetrated. Rotiro touched his forelock by way of salutation, drew his machete from its yellow leathern belt, swung it over his shoulder, and brought it round and down with a horizontal cut, slashing fiercely into the post of the doorway. It sank deep, and he left it there, quivering. Silencio was moistening the flap of an envelope with his lip as Rotiro entered. After a look at Rotiro, Don Gil thought it best to light a taper, take a bit of wax from the tray and seal the note. He pressed it with the intaglio of his ring. The seal bore the crest of the Silencios. When he had finished he held the note for a moment in his hand, to dry thoroughly. As he stood, he surveyed the machete of Rotiro, which still trembled in the doorpost. The post was full of such gashes, indicating it as a common receptacle for bladed weapons. It served the purpose of an umbrella-stand at the north. Don Billy Blake had said: "We don't carry umbrellas into parlours at the No'th, and I bedam if any man, black or shaded, shall bring his machett into my shanty." Don Billy was looked upon as an arbiter of fashion. This fashion, however, antedated Don Billy's advent in the island. Rotiro unslung his shotgun from his shoulder and stepped inside the doorway. He leaned the gun against the inner wall. "Buen' dia', Seño'," he nodded. "Set that gun outside, Rotiro." "My e'copeta very good e'copeta, Seño' Don Gil. It a excellent e'copeta. It is, however, as you know, not much to be trusted; it go off sometimes with little persuasion on my part, often again without much reason." "Following the example of your tongue. Listen! Rotiro. I wish to do the talking. Attend to what I say. Here is a note. I wish you to take it up back of Troja, to the Señor Escobeda." "But, Seño', I thought--" "You thought! So peons think! On this subject you have no need to think. Take this note up to Troja, and be quick about it. I want an answer within an hour. Waste no time on thoughts or words, and above all, waste no time in going or returning. See the Señor Escobeda. Hand him the note, see what he has to say, and bring me word as soon as possible. Notice how he looks, how he speaks, what--" "But the Seño' may not--" "Still talking? Go at once! Do you remember old Amadeo, who was struck by lightning? I always believed that it was to quiet his tongue. It certainly had that effect. But for the one servant I have had who has been struck by lightning, I have had twenty who ought to have been. There was a prince in a foreign land who was driven crazy by his servants. He said, 'Words! words! words!' I wonder very much what he would have said could he have passed a week on the plantation of Palmacristi." As the Devil twists Scripture to suit his purpose, so Silencio was not behind him in his interpretation of Shakespeare, and Rotiro prepared for his journey, with a full determination to utter no unnecessary word during the rest of his life. In dead silence he withdrew his machete from its gash in the doorpost, tied the letter round his neck by its cord of red silk, swung his apology for a hat upon his head, and was off. Meanwhile Don Gil sat and waited. The hour ended as all hours, good or bad, must end. Don Gil kept his eyes fixed upon the clock. Ah! it was five minutes past the hour now. "If I find that he has delayed one minute beyond the necessary--possibly Escobeda has held him there, taken him prisoner--prisoner! In the nineteenth century! But an Escobeda is ready for anything; perhaps he has--" There was a step at the doorway. "Entra!" shouted Don Gil, before one had the time to knock, and Rotiro entered. He had no time to say a word. He had not swung his arm round his head, nor settled the machete safely in the post of the door, before Don Gil said, impatiently: "Well! well! What is it? Will the man never speak? Did you see the Señor Escobeda? Open that stupid head of yours, man! Say something--" Rotiro was breathless. He set his gun in the corner with great deliberation. At first his words would not come; then he drew a quick breath and said: "I saw the Seño' E'cobeda, Don Gil. He is a fine man, the Seño' E'cobeda. Oh! yes, he is a very fine man, the Seño'!" "Ah!" said Don Gil, dryly, "did he send me a message, this very fine man?" Rotiro thrust his hand into the perpendicular slit that did duty for a legitimate opening in his shirt. He was dripping with moisture. Great beads stood out upon his dark skin. He pulled the faded pink cotton from his wet body and brought to light a folded paper. This he handed to Don Gil. The paper was far from dry. Don Gil took the parcel. He broke the thread which secured it--the thread seemed much shorter than when he had knotted it earlier in the day--and discovered the letter which he sought. The letter was addressed to himself. Don Gil opened this missive with little difficulty. The sticky property of the flap had been impaired by its contact with the damp surroundings. Don Gil read the note with a frown. "Caramba hombre! Did you go up back of Troja for this?" Rotiro raised his shoulders and turned his palms outward. "As the Seño' see." If Rotiro had gone "up back of Troja" for nothing, it was obviously the initial occasion in the history of the island. The natives, as well as the foreigners, seemed to go "up back of Troja" for every article that they needed. They bought their palm boards back of Troja. They bought their horses back of Troja. They bought their cattle back of Troja. Back of Troja was made the best rum that was to be had in all the island. Back of Troja, for some undiscovered reason, were found the best guns, the best pistols, the sharpest "colinos," smuggled ashore at the cave, doubtless, and taken in the night through dark florestas, impenetrable to officers of the law. Many a wife, light of skin and slim of ankle, had come from back of Troja to wed with the people nearer the sea. The region back of Troja was a veritable mine, but for once the mine had refused to yield up what the would-be prospector desired. "He'll get no wife from back of Troja," thought Rotiro, whose own life partner, out of the bonds of wedlock, had enjoyed that distinction. "Whom did you see back of Troja?" "The Seño' E'cobeda, Seño'. The Seño' E'cobeda is a ver--" "Yes, yes, I know! How you natives will always persist in slipping your 's,' except when it is superfluous! How did Escobeda look?" "Much as usual, Seño'. He is a very fi--" "Was he pleasant, or did he frown?" "In truth, Seño' Don Gil, I cannot say for one, how he look. I saw but the back of the Seño' E'cobeda. He look--" "As much of a cut-throat as ever, I suppose?" "Si, Seño'. The Seño' was seated in his oficina. He had his back to me. I saw nothing but his ear-rings and the very fine white shirt that he wore." "Well, well! He read the note, and--" "He read the note, Seño', and--and--he read the note, and--he read the n--" "Well, well, well!" "And shall I tell the Seño' all, then?" "Will you continue? or shall I--" Don Gil's tone was threatening. "If the Seño' will. He laugh, Seño' Don Gil. He laugh very long and very loud, and then I hear a es-snarl. It es-sound like a dog. Once he reach toward the wall for his 'colino.' I at once put myself outside of the casa, and behind the pilotijo. When he did not advance, I put an eye to the crack, all the es-same." "And it was then that he wrote the note?" "Si, Seño'; it was then that he wrote the answer and present it to me." "And said--?" "He said, oh! I assure the Seño' it was nothing worthy to hear; the Seño' would not--" "He said--?" There was a dangerous light in Don Gil's eye. "And I must tell the Seño'? He said, 'Here! give this to that--that--'" "That--?" "'That _truhan!_' I pray the Don Gil forgive me; the Don Gil make me--" Silencio's face had flushed darkly. "Continue." Rotiro, embarrassed beyond measure, forgot what he had learned by fair means and what by foul, and blundered on. "He did not say whether the Señorit' had go to the Port of Entry; he--" "And who told you to enquire whether the Señorita had gone to the Port of Entry or not?" Rotiro perceived at once that he had made a gigantic slip. When Don Gil next spoke, Rotiro was busy watching the parjara bobo which loped along within the enclosure. The bird, stupid by name and nature alike, came so close that Rotiro could almost have touched it with his hand. "Do you hear my question?" Rotiro started at the tones of thunder. "No one inform me, Seño'. I had heard talk of it." "Two fools in one enclosure! The bird is as clever as you. Do not try to think, Rotiro. Have you never heard that peons should never try to think? Leave the vacuum which nature abhors in its natural state." Rotiro looked blankly at Don Gil, who often amused himself at the expense of the stupid. Just now he was angry, and ready to say something harsh which even a wiser peon than Rotiro could not understand. Rotiro's vacuum was working, however, as even vacuums will. "Decidedly, I have made a very grand mistake of some kind; but when a letter will not stick, it is so easy--the thing, however, is not to let him--" "Rotiro!" The peon started. Don Gil stood facing him. His eyes were blazing. Rotiro's arm twitched with the desire to reach for his machete. "If I ever find you--" Don Gil spoke slowly and impressively, his forefinger moving up and down in time with his words--"if ever I find you opening a letter of mine, either a letter that I send or one that I receive, I will send you to Saltona, and I shall ask the alcalde to put you in the army." Rotiro's knees developed a sudden weakness. He would much rather be led to the wall outside the town, turned with his face towards its cold grey stone, and have his back riddled with bullets. At least, so he thought at the moment. "The Seño' will never find me opening a letter, either now or at any other time." (_Nor will he. Does he think that I should be so stupid as to open them before his face? Or within two and a half miles of the Casa de Caoba?_) "Very well, then. Be off with you. Take your gun out of my counting-house and your colino out of my doorpost, and yourself out of my sight." "The Seño' Don Gil allow that I accommodate myself with a little ching-ching?" "Always ching-ching, Rotiro. Bieng, bieng! Tell Alfredo to give you a half-glass, not of the pink rum--that is not for such as you. You remember, perhaps, what happened the last time that I gave you a ching-ching. I should have said No." "I assure the Seño' that Garcito Romando was a worthless man. O, yes, Seño', an utterly worthless man--an entirely useless man. He could not plant the suckers, he could not plant the cacao, he could not drive four bulls at a time; there was no place for Garcito Romando either in heaven or in hell. Marianna Romando was weary of him. Purgatory was closed to him, and the blessed island was too good for him. He stole three dollars Mex. of me once. My e'copeta did, perhaps, go off a little early, but the Seño' should thank me. He has on his finca one bobo the less, and the good God knows--" Rotiro was not only fluent, he was confluent. He ran his words together in the most rapid manner. Don Gil raised his hand as if to ward off the storm of words. "He was certainly a fool to tamper with a man whose gun shoots round the corner. Come! Be off with you! Three fingers, and no more." FOOTNOTE: [6] Literally, _hatchet breaker_. VIII There are days which are crowded with events; days so bursting with happenings that a single twenty-four hours will not suffice to tell the tale. There are other days so blank and uneventful that one sighs for very weariness when one thinks of them. It is not well to wish time away, but such days are worse than useless. It is, however, of one of the former that this chapter relates. To a little community like that surrounding San Isidro and Palmacristi, to say nothing of Troja, the day on which Agueda carried the note for Raquel was full of events. When Escobeda went from Raquel's room, slamming the door after him, the terrified girl dropped on her knees before Ana. All her courage seemed to have flown. She bent her head and laid it in Ana's lap, and then tears rained down and drenched Ana's new silk apron. "Ana," she whispered, "Ana, who is there to help me?" Ana sighed and sniffed, and one or two great drops rolled off her brown nose and splashed down on the back of Raquel's dark head. "There is no one but you and God, Ana." "Holy Mother! child, do not be so irreverent." "Can you steal out into the corridor and down the two little steps, and into the rum room, Ana, and hear what is being said?" "I am too heavy; that you know, Señorita. The boards creak at the very sound of my name. I am tall, my bones are large. Such persons cannot trip lightly; they tip the scales at a goodly number of pounds. Holy Mother! If he should catch me at it!" and Ana shivered, her tears drying at once from fright. "You could very well do it if you chose. Listen, Ana. If he takes me away, I shall die. Now I tell you truly, Ana, I will never go to that government house alive; that you may as well know. Get me my mother's dagger, Ana." Ana arose and went to a bureau drawer. The drawer squeaked as she pulled at the knobs. A far door was heard opening. "What is that?" roared Escobeda. "I am packing the child's trunks, Señor. How can I pack them unless I may open the drawer?" There was a sound of retreating footsteps and the closing of the door. Raquel looked at Ana, who was kneeling upon the floor, searching in the drawer. "Ah! here it is," said Ana. "But you will not use it, sweet?" "Not unless I must," said Raquel. She sighed. "Not unless I must. I do not want to die, Ana. I love my life, but there is a great horror over there." She nodded her head in the direction of the Port of Entry. "When that horror comes very near me, then I--" Raquel made as if she would thrust the dagger within her breast. Ana shuddered. "I shall not see it," she said. "But I advise it, all the same, if you must." She drew the girl up to her, and cried helplessly upon her neck. "Can't you think a little for me, Ana? It is hard always to think for one's self." "No," said Ana, shaking her head, "I never have any fresh thoughts. I always follow." "Then, dear Ana, just tiptoe down and listen. It is the last thing that I shall ever ask of you, Ana." Ana, her eyes streaming with tears, took her slippers--those tell-tale flappers--from her feet, and went to the door. She turned the knob gently and pushed the door outward without noise. As she opened it she heard Escobeda's voice, raised in angry tones. "Go now! now! while he is scolding," whispered Raquel. "He will not hear you. I must know what he is saying to that man. Do you think it is the Señor Silencio's messenger?" Ana nodded and put her finger to her lip. She crept noiselessly along the passage. Raquel, listen as she would, heard nothing of Ana's footsteps, for Escobeda was still swearing so loudly as to drown every other sound. Raquel went to the bureau, and took from the drawer a piece of kid. She seated herself and began to polish her weapon of defence. "Of death," said Raquel to herself. "If I am forced--" She peeped out, but Ana had turned the corner, and was hidden from sight. Ah! she must be in the rum room now, where she could both peer through the cracks and hear all that was said on either side. Suddenly a far door was violently wrenched open, and Raquel heard Escobeda's steps coming along the corridor. Where was Ana, then? Raquel's heart stood still. Escobeda came on until he reached the door of Raquel's chamber. The girl did not alter her position, and but for her flushed cheeks there was no sign of agitation. She bent her head, and rubbed the shining steel with much force. "Where is that lazy Ana?" Raquel raised her innocent eyes to his. "Did you call, uncle? Well, then, she must have gone to the kitchen." "You lie," said Escobeda. Raquel's cheeks reddened still more. "Perhaps I do, uncle. At all events, she is not here." "What have you there?" Escobeda had stooped towards the girl with hand outstretched, but she had sprung to her feet in a moment, and stood at bay, the dagger held, not in a threatening attitude, but so that it could be turned towards the man at any moment. "It is my mother's dagger, uncle." "What are you doing with it?" "Polishing it for my journey, uncle." "Give it to me." "Why should I give it to you, uncle?" "Because I tell you to." Raquel's hair had fallen down; she was scantily clothed. Her cheeks were ablaze. She looked like a tigress brought to bay. "Do you remember my mother, uncle?" "I remember your mother; what of her?" "Do you know what she said to me at the last--at the last, uncle?" "I neither know nor care," said Escobeda. "Hand me the knife." "My mother told me," said Raquel, still polishing the blade and changing its direction so that the point was held towards Escobeda--"my mother told me to keep this little thing always at hand. It has always been with me. You do not know how many times I have had the thought to turn it upon you"--Escobeda started and paled--"when your cruelties have been worse than usual. Sometimes at night I have thought of creeping, creeping along the hall there, and going to the side of your bed--" "You murderess!" shouted Escobeda. "So you would do that, would you? It is time that you came under the restraint that you will find over there in the government town. Do you hear? Give me the knife. It was like that she-dev--" "I can hear quite well with it in my hand," said Raquel. "You may say whatever comes into your head, only about my mother. That I will not bear. Speak of her gently, I warn you--I warn you--" "Do you know who the man was who came to me just now?" "The Señor Silencio?" said Raquel, breathless, her eyes flashing with a thousand lights. "No, it was not the Señor Silencio." Raquel's eyelids drooped. "But it was the next thing to it. It was that villain, Rotiro. I could have bought him, as well as Silencio. A little rum and a few pesos, and he is mine body and soul. But I do not want him. I have followers in plenty--" "Those who follow you for love?" said Raquel, with sly malice in her tone. Escobeda flashed a dark and hateful look upon her. "It makes no difference why they follow me. They are all mine, body and soul, just as you are mine, body and soul." "Are you going to tell me why Rotiro came here to-day?" asked Raquel. "Yes, that is what I came to tell you. I came purposely to tell you that. The Señor Silencio sent me a letter by the villain Rotiro." "For me?" asked Raquel, breathless. "Oh, uncle! Let me see it, let me--" "No, it was to me. But I will tell you its contents. I will tell you gladly. He offers you his hand in marriage." "Oh, uncle!" The girl's eyes were dancing. She blushed and paled alternately; then drew a long sigh, and waited for Escobeda to speak further. "From your appearance, I should judge that you wish me to accept him for you." "Oh, uncle!" Again the girl drew short, quick breaths. She gazed eagerly into Escobeda's face. "Can you think anything else? Now I need not go away. Now I need not be longer a burden upon you. Now I shall have a home! Now--I--shall--be--" The girl hesitated and dropped her voice, and then it died away in a whisper. But one meaning could be drawn from Escobeda's cunning screwed-up eyes, his look of triumph, his smile of wickedness. They stood gazing at each other thus for the space of a few seconds, those seconds so fraught with dread on the one side, with malice and triumphant delight on the other. "Your mother hated me, Raquel. Perhaps she never had the kindness to tell you that. I found her when she was dying. You remember, perhaps, when she asked you, her little girl, to withdraw for a while, that she might speak with me alone?" "I remember, uncle," said Raquel, panting. "It was not to be wondered at that she preferred your father to me. She had loved me first. She was my father's ward. But when he came, with his handsome face and girlish ways, she threw me aside like a battered doll. She said that I was cruel, but she never discovered that until she fell in love with your father. She ran away with him one night when I was at the city on business for my father. The doting old man could not keep a watch upon them, but I followed their fortunes. She never knew that it was I who had him followed to the mines, where he thought he had discovered a fortune, and killed him in the cold and dark--" "Are you a devil?" asked Raquel. "His bones, you can see them now, Raquel; they were never buried--they lie up there on the floor of the old--" The dagger slipped from Raquel's fingers, and she slid to the floor. "No, I did not tell her that I should take out my vengeance upon her child. I knew my time would come. Silencio's offer is of as much value as if written in the sand down there by the river, the--" Ana came in at the doorway. Escobeda stooped and picked up the dagger. "She will hardly need this," he said, as he stuck it in his belt. When Raquel opened her eyes Ana was bending over her, as usual in floods of tears, drenching the girl alternately with warm water from her tender eyes and cold water from the perron. Raquel sat up and looked about her as one dazed. She clutched at the folds of her dress. The piece of kid lay in her hand. "Oh, Ana!" she sobbed, "he has taken it away. All that I had. My only protection." Ana arose and quietly closed the door. "Sweet," she said, "I have good news for you." "What is it?" asked Raquel, sitting up, all interest, her dull eyes brightening. "I crept along the hall," said Ana, "and when I reached the rum room I slipped in and closed the door softly, and listened through the cracks. When he came here, I slipped out to the kitchen, and there I have been ever since." "But the good news," asked Raquel. "Quick! Ana, tell me." "He was sitting at his desk, the Señor Escobeda, his back to the door, so unlike any other gentleman. If they must rage, they stand up and do it. But there he sat, swearing by all the gods at something. I saw that that man Rotiro from Palmacristi had run out of the counting-house, and was peeping in at the door; and I listened, hoping to find out something, and I have, sweet, I have." "Well! well! Ana, dear Ana, hasten! hasten!--" "I have found out that the Señor Don Gil asks your hand in marriage." Raquel sank down again in a heap on the floor. "Is that all, Ana?" she said. "All! And what more can the Señorita want than to have a gentleman, rich, handsome, devoted, offer her his hand in honourable marriage?" "I only want one thing more, Ana dear," said Raquel, sadly, "the power to accept it." "The power to accept it?" said Ana, questioningly. "Is the child mad?" "He twits me with it. He says that I shall not accept him, the Señor Don Gil. He says that I shall go in any case to the government town. He has taken away my dagger. I cannot even kill myself, Ana. Oh! what am I to do? Gil! Gil! Come and save me." At this heavy steps were heard coming along the corridor. The door was burst open with a blow of Escobeda's fist. "You need not scream or call upon your lover, or on anybody else. You have no one to aid you." "No one but God, and my dear Ana here," said Raquel. "One is about as much use as the other," said Escobeda, laughing. "Call as loud as you will, one is quite deaf and the other helpless." Raquel rose to her feet. "Will you leave my room?" she said with dignity. "I will leave your room, because I have done all that I came to do." "You have broken the child's heart, Señor," said Ana, with unwonted courage, "if that is what you came to do." "If I can break her spirit, that is all I care for," said Escobeda. "You will never break my spirit," said Raquel. She stood there so defiant, the color coming and going in her face, her splendid hair making a veil about her, that Escobeda looked upon her with the discriminating eye of fresh discovery. "By Heaven," he said, "you are more beautiful than ever your mother was! If I had not promised the Governor--" "Spare her your insults," said Ana, her indignation aroused. She pushed the door against his thick figure, and shot the bolt. They heard Escobeda's laugh as he flung it back at them. "What shall we do now?" asked Raquel. "Shall I drop from the window and run away? There must be some one who will aid me." Ana approached the closely drawn jalousies. She put her long nose to a crack and peered down. The slight movement of the screen was seen from the outside. "It is you that need not look out, Anita Maria," came up to her in Joyal's rasping voice. "This is not the front door." "He has been quick about it," said Ana. "No matter, sweet, we must pack. Some one must help us. When the Señor Silencio gets that devilish message he must do something." "What was the devilish message, Ana?" asked Raquel. "Do not ask me, child; just hateful words, that is all." Raquel put her young arms round Ana's old thin shoulders. "Promise me one thing, Ana," she said. "Promise! Who am _I_ to make promises, sweet? All that I can, I will. That you must know." "When I am gone, Ana"--Raquel looked searchingly at Ana and repeated the words solemnly--"when I am gone, promise that you will go to the Señor Silencio. Say to him--" "But how am I to get there, sweet? I should have to wear my waist that I keep for the saints' days. I--" "Get there? Do you suppose if you asked me I would not find a way? My uncle Escobeda will be gone. Remember he will be gone, Ana! There will be no one to watch you, and you talk of clothes! You will not wear them out in one afternoon, and when I am Señora"--Raquel halted in her voluble speech and blushed crimson--"he, my uncle, would be glad to have you go and say that he has taken me away. Nothing would please him better. Now, promise me that when I am gone you will go to the Señor Silencio, and tell him where he has taken me. Tell him that I accept his offer. Tell him that if he loves me, he will find a way to save me. Tell him that I sent him a note by that pretty Agueda from San Isidro--" "You should not speak to such as she--" "She seemed sweet and good. She carried my note, Ana. I must always be her friend. Tell him--" A loud thud upon the door. Escobeda had stolen up softly, and was chuckling to himself outside in the passage. "Ana has my permission to go and tell him all about how you love him, Muchacha. That will make it even more pleasant for me. I thank you for helping me carry out my plans, but for the present, Ana had better pack your things, and quickly. The sun is getting over to the west, and you must start within two hours' time." Raquel threw her arms round Ana and strained her to her childish breast. "You will go, dear Ana, you promise me, do you not? You will go?" "I will," said the weeping Ana, "even if I must go in my Sunday shoes." IX When the voluble Rotiro had vanished round the end of the counting-house, Silencio retired to his inner sanctum and closed and locked the door. The contrast between this room and the bare front office was marked. Here cretonne draped the walls, its delicate white and green relieving the plain white of the woodwork. Coming from the outer glare, the cool coloring was more than grateful to the senses. The large wicker chairs with which the room was furnished were painted white, their cushions being of the same pale green whose color pervaded the interior. The white tables, with their green silken cloths, the white desk, the mirrors with white enameled frames, the white porcelain lamps with green shades, all of the same exquisite tint, made the sanctum a symphony of delicate color, a bower of grateful shade. Pull one of the hangings aside, ever so little, and a fortress stared you in the face--a fortress known of, at the most, to but two persons in the island. It is true that the more curious of the peons had wondered somewhat why Don Gil had brought down from the es-States those large sheets of iron with clamps and screws; but the native is not inquisitive as a rule, and certainly not for long. All señors do strange things, things not to be accounted for by any known rule of life, and the Señor Don Gil was rich enough to do as he liked. What, then, was it to a hard-working peon, what a grand señor like the Don Gil took into his mahogany house? The man who had come down in the steamer with the sheets of iron had remained at Palmacristi for a month or more. He had brought two workmen, and when he sailed for Nueva Yorka no one but the owner of the Casa de Caoba and the old Guillermina knew that the inner counting-house had been completely sheathed with an iron lining, whose advent the peons had forgotten. "This is my bank," said Don Gil to Don Juan Smit'. "It may become a fort some day, who knows?" answered the Don Juan Smit', "if those rascally Spaniards come over here and create another rumpus." Strange to say, Don Gil did not resent this remark about the nation which had produced his ancestors. But, then, Don Gil was a revolutionist, and had fought side by side with the bravest generals of the ten years' Cuban war. "It is a very secure place to detain a willing captive," smiled Don Gil. "Well, I guess!" assented the Señor Don Juan Smit', with a very knowing wink of the eye, which proved that he had not understood his employer's meaning in the very slightest. Old Guillermina, who had reared Don Gil's mother, was the only person allowed within the counting-house. "A very fine place for the black spiders to hide," remarked Guillermina, as she twitched aside the green and white hangings, and exposed the iron sheathing. "There is no place they would prefer to this." When Don Gil had locked the door, he seated himself and took Escobeda's note from his pocket. He examined the flap of the envelope; it was badly soiled and creased. He was morally certain that Rotiro had possessed himself of the contents of the letter. He had told Rotiro that peons should not think, but they would think, semi-occasionally, and more than that, they would talk. When a peon was found clever enough to carry a message, he also possessed the undesirable quality of wishing to excite curiosity in others, and to make them feel what a great man he was to be trusted with the secrets of the Señor. By evening the insolence of Escobeda would be the common property of every man, woman, and child on the estate, and, what Silencio could bear least of all, the insulting news as to the ultimate destination of Raquel would be gossiped over in every palm hut and rancho far and near. All his working people would know before to-morrow the message which had been brought to him by Rotiro, and it was his own rum that would loosen Rotiro's tongue and aid materially in his undoing. His face grew red and dark. His brow knotted as he perused the vile letter for the fourth time. Escobeda's handwriting was strong, his grammar weak, his spelling not always up to par. The letter was written in Spanish, into which some native words had crept. The translation ran: "TO THE SEÑOR DON GIL SILENCIO-Y-ESTRADA. "_Señor_:--You are forbidden to set foot in my house. You are forbidden to try to see or speak to the Señorita Raquel. I do not continue the farce of saying my niece; she is not more than a distant relative of mine. But in this case, might makes right. I control her and she is forever lost to you. You refused me the trocha farm for a fair price. See now, if it would not have been better to yield. The Señorita Raquel starts for the Port of Entry this afternoon. She sails to-night for the government town. The Governor desires her services. Knowing the Governor by repute, you may imagine what those services are." Silencio struck the senseless sheet with his clenched fist. His ring tore a jagged hole in the paper, so that he had difficulty in smoothing it for re-perusal. "It pays me better to sell her to him than to give her to you." Wild thoughts flew through the brain of Silencio. He started up, and had almost ordered his horse. He was rich. He would offer all, everything that he possessed, to save Raquel from such a fate, but he sadly resumed his seat after a moment of reflection. Escobeda hated him, there had been a feud between the families since the old Don Gil had caused the arrest of the elder Escobeda, a lawless character; and the son had made it the aim of his life to annoy and insult the family of Silencio. Here was a screw that he could turn round and round in the very heart of his enemy, and already the screwing process had begun. Don Gil took up the mutilated letter and read to the end: "We start for the coast this afternoon. Do not try to rescue her. I have a force of brave men who will protect me from any number that you may bring. We have colinos and escopetes in plenty. Your case is hopeless. You dare not attack me on land; you cannot attack me on the water." Don Gil dashed the paper on the floor and ground savagely beneath his heel the signature "Rafael Escobeda." "It is true," he said, shaking his head. "It is true; I am helpless!" With a perplexed face and knitted brow he went into the outer room, closed the entrance door and took a flat bar of iron from its resting-place against the wall. This he fitted into the hasps at each side of the door, which were ready to receive it. Then he returned to the inner room, and secured the iron-sheathed door with two similar bars. After this was done, he looked somewhat ruefully at his handiwork. "The cage is secure," he said, "if I but had the bird." Silencio opened the door which connected the office with the main part of the house. He closed and locked it behind him, and proceeded along a passage so dark that no light crept in except through the narrow slits beneath the eaves. When he had traversed this passage, he opened a further door and emerged at once into the main part of the house. Here everything was open, attractive, and alluring. Here spacious apartments gave upon broad verandas, whose flower boxes held blooms rare even in this garden spot of the world. Here were beauty and colour and splendour and glowing life. Don Gil threw himself down in a hammock which stretched across a shady corner. Through the opening between the pilotijos, he could see the wooded heights in the distance, those heights beyond which Troja lay, Troja, which held his heart and soul. What to do? To-night she would set sail for the government town in the toils of Escobeda, her self-confessed betrayer and barterer--set sail for that hateful place where her worse than slavery would begin. The person to whom she was to be sold--none the less sold because the price paid did not appear on paper--was possessed of power and that might of which Escobeda had spoken in his letter--that might which makes right. He could give countenance to speculators and incorporators, he could grant concessions for an equivalent; into such keeping Escobeda, with his devil's calculation, was planning to deliver her--his Raquel, his little sweetheart. That she loved him he knew. A word and a glance are enough, and he had received many such. A note and a rose at the last _festin_, where she had been allowed to look on for a while under the eye of her old duenna! A pressure of her hand in the crowd, a trembling word of love under her breath in answer to his fierce and fiery ones! The cause for love, its object does not know nor question. The fact is all that concerns him, and so far Silencio was secure. And here was this last appeal from the helpless girl! They had started by this time perhaps. Don Gil looked at the ancient timepiece which had descended from old Don Oviedo. Yes, they had started. It was now twenty minutes past six; they needed but two hours to ride to the Port of Entry. The steamer would not sail until between nine and ten o'clock. Very shortly Escobeda's party would cross the trocha, which at that point was a public highway. It ran through the Palmacristi estate, and neared the casa on the south. Could he not rescue her when they were so near? There were not three men within the home enclosure. The others had gone direct to their huts and ranchos from their work in the fields. He could not collect them now, and if he could, of what use a skirmish in the road? Escobeda was sure to ride with a large force, and a stray shot might do injury to Raquel herself. No, no! Some other way must be thought of. Silencio arose, passed quickly through the casa and entered the patio. He ran up the stairs which ascended from the veranda to the flat roof above. He stood upon the roof, shading his eyes with his hand, and straining his vision to catch the first sight of Escobeda and his party of cut-throats. He was none too early. A cloud of dust on the near side of the cacao grove told him this, and then he heard the jingling of spurs and the sound of voices. A group of some thirty horsemen swept round the curve and came riding into full view. In their center rode a woman. She was so surrounded that by no effort of hers could she break through the determined-looking throng. One glance at those cruel faces, and Silencio's heart sank like lead. The woman was gazing with appealing eyes at the Casa de Caoba. Silencio was not near enough to distinguish her features, but her attitude was hopeless and appealing, and he knew that it was Raquel the moment that he discovered her. Suddenly she drew a handkerchief from her bosom and waved it above her head. There was something despairing and pitiable in her action. Silencio whirled his handkerchief wildly in the air. He was beside himself! Escobeda turned and struck the girl, who dropped her signal hand and drooped her head upon her breast. Silencio put his hands to his mouth and shouted: "Do not fear; I will save you!" He shook his clenched hand at Escobeda. "You shall pay for that! By God in Heaven! you shall pay for that!" Yes, pay for it, but how? How? Oh, God! how? He was so helpless. No one to aid him, no one to succour. At this defiance of Silencio's there came an order to halt. The men faced the Casa de Caoba, Escobeda placed his rifle to his shoulder, but as he fired, Raquel quickly reached out her hand and dashed the muzzle downward. A crash of glass below stairs told Silencio where the shot had found entrance. "And for that shot, also, you shall pay. Aye, for twenty thousand good glass windows." Glass windows are a luxury in the island. A burst of derisive laughter and a scattering flight of bullets were thrown back at him by the motley crew. They reined their horses to the right, turned a corner, and were lost in their own dust. Silencio descended the stairs, how he never knew. He ran through the patio and the main rooms, and out on to the veranda, from which the path led toward the gate of the enclosure. He was beside himself. He seized his gun from the rack; he cocked it as he ran. "He said that I could not reach him upon the water; I can reach him upon the land. Piombo, my horse! Do not wait to saddle him, bring him at once. No, I cannot reach him upon the water--" A sound of footsteps. A head bound in a ragged cloth appeared above the flower boxes which edged the veranda, and pushed its way between the leaves. A body followed, and then a man ascended slowly to a level with Don Gil Silencio. Over his shoulder was slung a shotgun; in his leathern belt, an old one of his master's, was thrust a machete; from his hand swung a lantern with white glass slides. This man was stupid but kindly. He pattered across the veranda with bare and callous feet, and came to a halt within a few paces of Don Gil. There he stopped and leaned against the jamb of the open door. At night Andres hung a lantern upon the _asta_ at the headland yonder, more as a star of cheer than as a warning. The red lantern on Los Santos, some miles further down the coast, was the beacon for and the warning to mariners. The ray from its one red sector illumined the channel until the morning sun came again to light the way. When the white pane changed the ray of red to one of white, the pilot shouted, "Hard over." With a wide and foaming curve, the vessel swept round and out to sea, thus avoiding the sand spit of Palmacristi. Silencio's eyes fell upon the lantern in the hand of Andres, and in that moment the puzzle of the hour was solved. So suddenly does the bread of necessity demand the rising of the yeast of invention. The expression of Don Gil's face had changed in a moment from abject gloom to radiant exultation. "_Bien venido_, Andres! _Bien venido!_" No dearest friend could have been greeted with a more joyous note of welcome. Andres raised his eyes in astonishment to the face of the young Señor. He had expected to meet with Guillermina's reproaches because he had forgotten to lower the lantern from the asta that morning, and had left it burning all the long day, so that now it must be refilled. Here was a very different reception. He had been thinking over his excuses. He had intended to say at once how ill El Rey had been all night, and how he had forgotten everything but the child; and here, instead of the scolding of the servant, he was greeted with the smiles of the master. Truly, this was a strange world; one never knew what to expect. "I come for oil for the lantern, Don Gil. It is a very good _farol de señales_, but it is a glutton! It is never satisfied! It eats, and eats!" "Like the rest of you." Don Gil laughed aloud. Andres gazed at him with astonishment. "That blessed glutton! Let us feed it, Andres! Give it plenty to eat to-night, of all nights. I will hoist it upon the headland myself to-night." At Andres's still greater look of astonishment, "Yes, yes, leave it to me. I will hoist the blessed lantern myself to-night upon my headland." "The Señor must not trouble himself. It is a dull, dark night! The Señor will find the _sendica_ rough and hard to climb." "What! that little path? Have not I played there as a child? Raced over it as a boy? I could go there blindfold. How is the little king, Andres?" Andres's face fell. "He is not so well, Señor. That is why I forgot the lantern. He was awake in the night talking to her. I have left him for barely an hour to fill the lantern and return it again to the asta. He talks to her at night. Sometimes I think she has returned. He begged me to leave the door unlocked; he thinks she may come when I am gone." Andres turned away his heavy face, and brushed his sleeve across his eyes. "You shall go home early to-night, Andres; as I said, I will hoist the lantern." The dull face of Andres lighted up with a tender smile, a smile which glorified its homely lineaments--that smile which had always been ready to appear at the bidding of El Rey. Poor little El Rey, who had never ceased to call, in all his waking hours for Roseta, Roseta who had found the charms of Dondy Jeem, with his tight-rope and his red trunk-hose and his spangles and his delightful wandering life, much more to be desired than the palm-board hut down on the edge of the river, with El Rey to care for all day, and Andres to attend when he returned at night from the sucker planting or banana cutting. "How is the sea, Andres?" "It is quiet, Señor, not a ripple." "And we shall have no moon?" "As the Señor says, not for some weeks past have we had a moon." Don Gil laughed. He could laugh now, loud and long. His heart was almost light. What better tool and confidant could he procure than a peon who knew so little of times and seasons as Andres? "And it is low tide at ten o'clock to-night?" "As the Señor says." Had Don Gil asked, "Is the sea ink?" Andres would have replied, "As the Señor says." "At about what time is the red lantern lighted on Los Santos?" "At about six o'clock, Señor. I heard old Gremo say that he lights it each evening at six o'clock." "He does not live near it now?" "As the Señor says. The old casa fell quite to pieces in the last hurricane, and now Gremo lives at the Romando cannuca." "He must start early from the conuco?" "As the Señor says. At half after five. It is a long way to carry a ladder--there and back. Gremo is afraid of the ghosts who infest the mompoja patch. If one but thrusts his head at you, you are lost. Marianna Romando says that Gremo is not much of a man, but far superior to Garcito Romando. The few pesos that he gets for lighting the lantern keep the game cock in food." "And no one can tamper with the light, I suppose?" "As the Señor says. The good God forbid! The cords by which it is lowered hang so high that no one can reach them--not even Natalio, who, as all know, is a giant." "And you could not get that ladder, Andres?" "As the Señor says, when Gremo carries it a mile away, and puts it inside the enclosure. He is a good shot, though so old. There is only one better in all the district. Besides, there are ghosts between the asta and the cannuca." Don Gil stood for a moment lost in thought. "I suppose El Rey needs you at home, Andres. I should not keep--" "That is quite true; I do, very much, Señor." The thin little voice came from behind the giant ceiba round which the circular end of the veranda had been built. "You here, El Rey?" A slight, childish figure emerged slowly from behind the giant trunk and leaned against its corrugated bark. "El Rey becomes weary staying down there in the palm hut, Señor. There is nothing to do but watch the pajara bobo, and the parrots, and listen to river, going, going, going! Always going! Has Roseta been here, Señor?" Don Gil shook his head. He gazed sadly at the child. "When do you think she will come, Señor?" "I know not, little one; perhaps to-morrow." The boy raised his hand and smoothed down his thin hair. The hand trembled like that of an old man. His cheek was sunken, his lips colourless. He lifted his large eyes to Don Gil's face. "They always tell me that. Mañana, mañana; always mañana!" He sighed patiently, looking at the Señor, as if the great gentleman could help him in his trouble. Andres turned away his head. He gazed across the valley toward the hills beyond which lay Troja. That was where they had gone to see Dondy Jeem, he and his pretty Roseta--Roseta, who had tossed her head and shaken the gold hoops in her ears when Dondy Jeem had kissed his hand to the spectators. He had turned always to the seats where Roseta and Andres, stupid Andres--he knew that now--sat. Then Roseta had given El Rey to the ever-willing arms of Andres, and fixed her eyes on Dondy Jeem and watched his graceful poise, the white satin shoes descending so easily and securely upon the swaying rope, the long pole held so lightly in the strong hands. It had been before those days that Roseta used to call the child her king. Poor El Rey! He looked a sorry enough little king to-day, a dethroned little king, with his pinched face and trembling fingers and wistful eyes, searching the world in vain for the kingdom which had been wrested from him. "How did you get out of the rancho, El Rey?" "That Señorita from El Cuco, she let me out." "You should be in bed, muchachito." "But it is lonely, Señor, in that bed. That is Roseta's bed. I turn that way and this way. It is hot. I look for Roseta. She is not there. A man look in at the door once; he frighten me. To-day a hairy beast came. He push back the shutter. When he was gone, I ran. I stumble, I fell over bajucos. I caught my foot in a root. That would not matter if I could find Roseta. I would rather be here with the Señor than at the river." El Rey pushed a confiding little hand into Don Gil's palm. Don Gil sat down and took the child between his knees. "Andres, do you shoot as well as of old?" "I shoot fairly well, Señor." The Señor laughed. He had seen Andres at only the last fair, less than a year ago, shoot, at eighty yards, a Mexican dollar from between the fingers of Dondy Jeem. The scene recurred to Andres. "Had it been but his heart!" he muttered, dully. And then, with a look at Don Gil, "There are few who cannot do one thing well, Señor." "You are far too modest, Andres." Don Gil glanced again at the lantern which Andres had set down upon the veranda rail. When he had first caught sight of that lantern in Andres's hand his difficulty had vanished like the morning mist. With a flash of thought, rather of many thoughts in one train, he had seen the proceedings of the evening to come mapped out like a plan of campaign. "Will you do something for me, Andres?" "The good God knows; anything that I can, Señor. But what I should prefer would be a night when the moon shines. He could not then see me behind the old ironwood, and I could distinguish him better when there is a little light. Is it the Señor E'cobeda, Señor?" Don Gil laughed again. He put El Rey gently from him, and arose. He walked to the corner of the veranda and back again. Andres took El Rey tenderly up in his arms, the child laid his hot head on Andres's shoulder. "When will Roseta come?" he whispered. With the unreason and trustful selfishness of childhood, he did not see that if his heart was breaking, the heart of Andres had already broken. "No, Andres; it is not Escobeda. I do not hire assassins, even for such a villain as he. But I need a servant as faithful and as dumb as if that were my custom. I want something done at once, Andres, and I truly believe that you are the only one upon all the coloñia whom I can trust. Come in here with me. No! Set the child down; he will listen and repeat." "El Rey will not listen at nothing, Señor," said the child. He clung tightly to Andres's neck. "Come in, then, both of you." Andres, with El Rey in his arms, followed Don Gil across the large living-room. Don Gil turned as he unlocked the door at the end of the passage. "I have something to say to you," he said, "which must not be overheard." Andres, the pioneer of his race, followed the Señor into the spring-like privacy of the sanctum. "Now don't worry your brain, Andres. Listen to what I shall ask of you, and go and do it. You know it has always been my theory that a peon should not try to think, and why? Simply because he has no brain, Andres." "As the Señor says," assented Andres. X When Andres issued from the counting-house of Palmacristi he was examining critically the trigger of a gun. That fine Winchester it was which had been the wonder and delight of the natives since the Señor Don Juan Smit' had brought it down from the es-States. When the Señor Silencio had asked the Señor Don Juan Smit' if the gun would shoot straight, the Señor Don Juan Smit' had laughed softly, and had answered, "Well, I guess!" and the Señor Don Juan Smit' had not exaggerated. "And El Rey?" "El Rey will go with Andres, Señor," answered the thin voice. "The muchachito will do as he chooses, Señor." The child was following close upon his father's steps. "It is too far for him, Andres. Stay with me, El Rey." The child looked wistfully up at Andres. "Andres will carry El Rey. Perhaps we shall find Roseta at the place where Andres goes to shoot." "I will carry him, Señor. His weight is nothing. Dear God! nothing!" Andres swung the child up to his hip, where he sat astride, securely held by Andres's strong arm, and descended the veranda steps. "Come and tell me when it is done," Silencio called after them. "Si, Señor. Buen' noch', Señor." "Buen' noch', Señor," echoed El Rey's piping voice. "Here, Andres." From his height on the veranda floor Don Gil tossed a key to Andres. "Open the boat-house, and run the boat out upon the southern ways. The southern ways, do you hear? Those nearest the Port of Entry." Andres looked up wonderingly. "Ah! you are trying to think. Do not try. It is useless. Obey! that is all." Blindly faithful, Andres, having caught the key, turned away with an "As the Señor says," and disappeared down the camino which led toward the ocean cliff. When he reached the headland of Palmacristi he suddenly diverged from the cliff path and ran hurriedly down the bank. The boat-house stood upon a safe eminence in the middle of the sand spit, with ways running down to the water on either side. Andres set El Rey down in the warm sand, and unlocked the boat-house door. He then pushed the boat to the end of the ways. The tide was still falling; it was nearly low water. He laid the oars ready; then he arose and looked southward along the coast. Ah! There shone the signal upon Los Santos headland. Old Gremo was at his post, then. Andres raised his shoulders to his ears, turned the palms of his hands outward, and said: "Thy labour is of no use to-night, Gremo." He then took El Rey up from his nest in the warm sand, swung the child again to his hip, and remounting the bank, proceeded on his way. So soon as Andres had departed Don Gil entered the comidor, and going to the table, struck a bell hanging above it. Jorge Toleto lounged to the doorway, against the side of which he propped himself. "Tell Piomba to go over to the bodega at once, and ask the padre to dine with me this evening. Piomba has little time. Tell him to be off at once." Jorge Toleto shuffled away, with the remnant of what in his youth had been a respectful bow. When he was gone Don Gil crossed the living-room, passed through two long passages, and entered a door at the end of the second. Here was a sort of general storeroom. When he emerged he carried in one hand a lantern, in the other he held a flat parcel. "A new lantern will burn more brightly," he said to himself. It was growing dusk now. Don Gil descended the veranda stair and followed in the footsteps of Andres. As he crossed the rough grass beyond the veranda, old Guillermina espied him from a further window. She was engaged in opening the Señor's bed for the night, searching among the snowy linen to make sure, before tucking the rose-coloured netting beneath the mattress, that no black spider had hidden itself away, to prove later an unwelcome bedfellow to her adored Don Gil. For your tarantula will ensconce itself in unexpected corners at times, and is at the best not quite a desirable sleepmate. "And for the love of the saints, where is our Don Gil departing to at this hour of the night? The dinner nearly ready, old Otivo watching the san coch' to see that it does not burn! The table laid, everything fine enough for a meal for the holy apostles! Aie! aie! for our Don Gil is one who will have it as fine for himself as for the alcade, when--pouff! off he goes, and we breaking our hearts while we wait. Ay de mi! ay de mi!" The Señor, unconscious that he had been observed, passed hurriedly along the camino, and shortly struck into the little path or sendica which Andres had traversed but a short time before. As Don Gil glanced over the cliff, he saw that the sea was still; almost calm. Even the usual ocean swell seemed but a wavelet, as it reached weakly up the beach, expending itself in a tiny whirl of pebbles and foam whose force was _nil_, and lapsed in a retreat more exhausted than its oncoming. A walk of ten minutes brought Silencio to the headland which bounded his property on the south. It was growing so dark that he could hardly distinguish the staff upon which it had been Andres's custom to hang each night his _lanterna de señales_, to send forth its white beam of cheer across the sea. When, after passing the red light of Los Santos Head, the pilot steered for the open ocean, the remark to the captain was always the same stereotyped phrase: "Ah! There is the Palmacristi lantern bidding us Godspeed." It is a sad thing when the habit of years must be changed. When a custom, fixed as the laws of the Medes, must be broken, chaos is often the result. Thus thought Silencio, as he reached the foot of the _asta_. It is, however, not necessary to say that his hand was not retarded by the thought. He groped for the cords which dangled from the top, and found them. He lighted a fusee and searched for and found the red slide, which he had laid on the ground. This was all that he wanted. By feeling, almost entirely, he removed the white pane from the lantern and replaced it by the red one, which he took from its wrapping. He then lighted the lantern, passed the cords through the metal hasps, and drew the signal to the top of the staff. The cords were so arranged as to permit of no swaying of the lantern. The light was fixed, and now from the top of the staff a red beam shone southward. When Don Gil mounted the steps of his veranda at Palmacristi a tall, thin figure arose to greet him. "Ah, padre, I am glad that Piomba succeeded in finding you. My dinners are lonely ones." The padre laughed in the cracked voice of an old man. "Better is the stalled ox where love is, than a dinner of herbs and poverty therewith." "Just enough learning to misquote," quoted Don Gil, laughing also, but in a preoccupied manner. "Perhaps it would be better to say 'just enough appetite.' My dinners are bad enough, since Plumero left me." "Better to have him leave you, even if under a guard of soldiers, padre, than to let him put you where you can eat no more dinners. What was that, padre? Did you hear anything?" "Nothing, my boy, but Jorge Toleto calling us to dinner. The willing ear, you know." Don Gil ushered the old man into the comidor. His tall figure was bent and thin. The shabby black coat, whose seams shone with a generation's wear, flapped its tails about the legs of his scant white trousers. The good priest's figure was one in which absurdity and dignity were inextricably combined. The padre showed his years. He had never quite recovered from the attack made upon him by his trusted servant Plumero, the Good--Plumero, who now languished in the cep' over at Saltona. The savory meal was ended. The night was warm and close. "Let us sit upon the veranda and enjoy our cigarillos, padre." Silencio seemed unlike himself. He was nervous, ill at ease. He had no sooner seated himself than he arose and paced the long veranda, the spark of his cigarette, only, showing his whereabouts. He looked often out to sea, and often in the direction of the _lanterna de señales_, whose ray was hidden from sight by the near hill. "Do you hear anything, padre? Anything like a cry or a--" "No, nothing! my boy. And as I was saying, there was my poor fighting cock lying in the corner, worse maltreated than he had ever been in any garito, and when I awoke--" "That was certainly a gun. You are not rising to leave, padre; why, your cigarillo is not even half finished. I expect you to stay the night. No, no! I will take no denial. Guillermina, prepare the western room for the Padre Martinez." "You know my weaknesses, muchacho mio. Very well, then, I will." But Silencio was down the steps and some feet away in the darkness, straining his ear for the sound which he knew must come. He took out his watch, and by the light of the veranda lantern noted the time. "Early yet," he muttered under his breath. "Pardon, my son, you spoke to--" "I was but saying that the moon is very late to--hark!" "You are restless, Gil." "It is this muggy weather. There! you certainly heard something?" "Nothing, Gil; nothing but the nightingale yonder." A cuculla flew into the padre's face. He brushed it gently away. It returned to wander over the long wisps of grey hair which straggled over the collar of the hot, dignified coat. The padre took the cuculla in his fingers, and placed it gently upon the leaves of the bougainvillia vine. "I certainly think that the sweetest songsters I ever heard are the nightingales in this enclosure." A footstep sounded on the graveled pathway which ran close to the veranda. "Buen' noch', Señor." Silencio started nervously. "Ah! It is you, Andres? Buenas noches." Silencio raised his hand with a warning gesture. Andres's stolid face expressed as stolid acquiescence. "Buen' noch', Señor. We did not find her at the _asta de lanterna_, Señor." "Andres, take the child home; he is weary." The tone was curt, unlike the kindly Don Gil. It was as if he had laid his hands on Andres's shoulders and were pushing him along. "I should like to remain here, Señor. Perhaps she may come to-night. Who knows? Perhaps the good God will send her. He knows that I--cannot--bear--it, I can _not_ bear--" The child's voice broke in a sob. Silencio's kindly nature was touched. "Take him round to Guillermina, Andres, and get dinner; both of you." The two disappeared in the darkness. Then Piombo brought a flaring Eastern lamp, at which Don Gil relighted his often extinguished cigarette. "How still the night! How far a sound would carry on a night like this." The padre had but just uttered these words when a long, booming sound struck upon the listening as well as the unexpectant ear. Silencio bounded from his chair. He caught up a cloak which was lying conveniently ready. "A steamer ashore!" he shouted. The old padre struggled to his feet. "Do not come. Go round to the quarters. Send the men to help. It must be at the sand spit. Follow me to the headland," and he was gone in the darkness. The padre wondered somewhat at Silencio's suspecting at once the locality of the stranded steamer, if that were the cause of the gun of distress. As he wondered, it spoke again, and gathering his wits together, he hastened round to the quarters. Silencio bounded along the camino and up the cliff pathway. His feet seemed winged. The familiar local knowledge of childhood stood him in good stead at this crucial moment. He reached the staff. It was short work to release the cord and lower the lantern, extinguish the light, replace the red slide with a white one, and hoist the darkened signal in place again. Then he turned and ran quickly down the sandy bank. "Now the light has simply gone out," he said to himself as he ran. His boat was where Andres had left it, the rising water making it just awash. A glance seaward showed to Silencio a steamer's lights. There came to him across the water bewildered shouts, the sounds of running feet, and evidences of confusion. He pushed his boat into the water, and bent to the oars. The steamer was, at the most, not more than a quarter of a mile distant. He pulled with desperation. He heard the sound of the foam as the propeller turned over, and he feared that with every revolution the vessel would back off into deep water. When he rowed alongside he was not noticed in the dark and confusion of the moment. He held his long painter in his hand, and as he climbed up over some convenient projections of the little vessel, fastened it securely. He drew himself up hurriedly to the taffrail, and slid down to deck, mixing with the crew. He looked about now for the bewitching cause of the disaster. Some dark forms were standing by the companion door, and going close he discovered her whom he sought. He laid his hand on her arm to draw her away. At first she started fearfully, but even in darkness love is not blind, and she hurriedly withdrew with him to the side of the vessel. "Stand here for a moment, Raquel," he whispered. "I am afraid that I cannot get you over the side without aid." She stood where he placed her, and he ran forward with much bustle and noise, seeking the captain, calling him by name. "Ah! the saints preserve us! Is that you, Señor Silencio? Where are we, Señor? There is no light anywhere to be seen. Where are we, for the love of God?" "I am afraid that you have run aground on my sand spit, Señor Capitan." "On your sand spit, Señor! Where, then, is Los Santos Head?" "Some miles further down the coast, Señor Capitan." "Ay de mi! I knew that pilot was no good. This is the first light that we have seen, and now that has gone out. This was a red light, Señor." "Red light? You are dreaming, Señor Capitan." The captain took this rejoinder in its literal meaning. "It is true that I was dreaming, Señor. I beg of you not to mention it at the port. I have suffered with a fearful toothache all day. The pilot said that he was competent; we have never had any trouble." Silencio cut him short. "I am here to offer my services, Señor Capitan. Can I be of any use? You may have a storm from the southward. To-day has been a weather-breeder. I think you have women on board. I could take them--" "Gracias! gracias! my kind Señor Silencio. That will help me above all things." "And if the wind does not rise, Señor Capitan, the tide will. Keep your engines backing, and there will be no harm done. I will take whom I can, and send for the others." Which proves that love, if not blind, may, however, be untruthful upon occasion. How Silencio got Raquel over the side he never knew. Some one aided him at the captain's order, but he realized at last the blessed fact that she was there beside him, and that they were gliding from the vessel's hull as fast as he could impel the boat. "Some miscreant has done this," roared the captain above the noise, as he leant over the side and strained his eyes after Silencio. "I beg you, Señor, to look for him, and when you have caught him, hand him over to me." "I shall remember your words, Señor Capitan." "I will have him shot in the market-place of the Port of Entry, and send for all the natives to see." "I will remember your words, Señor Capitan, you may be sure of that, when I catch him--" But the last words of Don Gil were lost in the renewed efforts of the engineer to back the steamer from the sand spit. No words passed at first between Raquel and her rescuer. If love is not always blind and sometimes not truthful, he is apt to be silent. Raquel needed no explanation. As the boat glided through the darkness, Silencio dropped the oars. He took her hands in his. His lips were pressed to hers. What question should she ask? What more did she crave to know? Here were life and liberty and love, in exchange for slavery, pollution, and worse than death. When he lifted her slight form from the boat, he did not release her at once, but held her in his arms for a moment. He could hardly believe that his daring act had met with the one result for which he had hoped. "Your uncle, where is he?" "Escobeda? In the cabin, ill. There is a slight swell. He is always ill. I had not noticed it, the swell, on board the steamer. But he is not my uncle, Señor." "I have proof of it in his own written words, dear heart. But uncle or not, he shall never separate us now." "When can they get the steamer off the sand spit, Señor? I heard you say that the water is rising." "They will float off by twelve o'clock to-night, Sweetheart. I hope they will forget you. But whether they do or not, they shall not have you ever again, beloved. No, never again! You are mine now." "He has none of those men with him," said Raquel. "They went back to Troja. But, Señor, he will come back from the capital, and then--Señor--then--" "We will reckon with that question when it arises, dear one. At present, let us not think of Escobeda and his crew." Half-way up the sandy slope they met the tall form of the padre descending. Silencio said shortly what he chose. Explanations were not in order, for, whatever had happened, and whatever might happen, this young girl could not remain unmarried in the house of her lover. "You must marry us this evening, padre; and we will go to the little church at Haldez to-morrow," said Don Gil, "if that will salve your conscience." "My conscience needs no salving, my son. Yours rather. Perhaps, if you have anything to confess, I had better receive your confession before--" "Ah, padre, what a tempter you are! So holy a man, too! No, let them do their worst. I have nothing to confess. I have won my stake; now let them come on." But he regarded the beautiful girl at his side with some uneasiness as he spoke. "You must let me give you a chime of bells, Padre," said Raquel. The moon was struggling forth, and Silencio noticed her shy look as she raised her eyes to his. "That is, if--if the Señor will allow. "Bribery, bribery!" said the padre in his thin old voice. Silencio put his arm round Raquel, and they stepped to the edge of the cliff. With her head pressed close to his shoulder, together they watched the dancing lights upon the steamer, and listened to the hoarse orders and shouts which, mingled with the foaming spray under the vessel's stern, came to them across the water. They had forgotten the padre, for love adds another to her many bad qualities, that of ingratitude. The padre had just promised to perform for them the greatest service that it was his to give, and they had become oblivious of him, and of everything in the world but each other. They stood so, and watched the steamer for a little space, and then Silencio gathered the girl to his breast. "Come home! dear Heart, come home!" he whispered, and she followed him down the path, her hand in his. As they neared the Casa de Caoba they saw that a man was sitting upon the veranda steps. He had a child in his arms. The man was sleeping heavily, the slumber of the labouring peon. As Raquel came up the steps of her new home, the child raised his large eyes wistfully to hers. "When El Rey saw it was a Señora, El Rey thought it might be Roseta. When will Roseta come, Señor? When? When?" Raquel stooped and lifted the boy tenderly from Andres's nerveless arms. She asked no question. With the instinct of the motherhood lying dormant within her, she knew that here was a motherless child, and that it suffered. At that moment she loved all the world. She pressed the boy close to her heart. "Stay with me, little one; I will be Roseta to you." El Rey raised his eyes to the sweet, dark face above him. "Roseta was not gran', Señora," he said--he scanned her face critically--"but she was more pretty than the Señora. The Señora will pardon me if I say that Roseta's gown was much more handsome than the one the Señora wear." At the word "señora" the young girl stooped and laid her lips upon the child's head. "It was a gown of red. It had green spots--oh, such little green spots, small, small spots. El Rey used to count them. There were some little half-spots up there on the shoulder. Roseta said it was where the sewing came. Roseta did not have shiny drops in her ears. The Señora's drops are like the bits of glass that Andres shot from the top of the _asta_ to-night. He had a gun, the gun of the Señor." Raquel looked inquiringly at Silencio. "It is true," he admitted. "At Los Santos?" "At Los Santos." "They came down in showers, Señor, like little red stars." "You are a poet, El Rey." "Rather," said Silencio, smiling down at the child, where he stood leaning against Raquel, "El Rey is a little story-teller. He promised not to say a word--" "It is a Señora who may know everything, all things. She has the good eyes." "You are right, El Rey." "The rings in Roseta's ears were round. They were big and round. She used to shake them when we went to the circus, so!" The tired head shook slowly. Andres stirred uneasily. He opened his dull, sad eyes and looked at El Rey. He had felt the touch on the wound even in his sleep. "I often put my finger round them, so! Often and often I did." Raquel took the little fingers between her own. She put them between her lips and bit them playfully. Her white teeth made tiny indentations in the tender skin. El Rey smiled faintly, a promise, Raquel hoped, of a brighter day of forgetfulness to come. Silencio stood looking on. He loved to see her so, the child leaning against her knee. Across the water came the sounds of shouts and hurried orders which disturbed no one. Raquel stroked the thin, straight hair over and over. She ran her soft fingers down the angular little face and neck. Tiny tremors of affection ran gently through the child's veins. El Rey laid his head upon the knee to which she drew him. His wasted hand shook as he laid it upon hers. "You are good," said the child. "You are beautiful, you are kind, kind to El Rey." His tone was patient and old and full of monotony. "But oh! the Señora will pardon me? You are not Roseta." There was one other person at the wedding of Don Gil and Raquel, besides the padre, who united them, and old Guillermina and Andres. "Who will give you away?" asked Silencio. "I myself," said she. Silencio laughed. "That cannot be," he said. As he spoke there was a humble knocking at the door of the salon. Raquel looked up and bounded from her seat. "Oh, you dear old thing!" she said. She was fondling and kissing the bony creature, who stood aghast before her, who in turn was crying and begging the saints to have mercy upon her. "And for the good God's sake, tell me how you got here, Señorita, and will the Señor allow me to sit down? My Sunday shoes have killed me, nearly. Is there anything that I could wear instead--" Ana stopped abashed at the sight of so fine a man as Silencio. "How did the Señor rescue you, my Sweet? Is the Señor Escobeda dead, then?" Ana looked about her as if she expected to see the bodies of Escobeda and his followers over there on the edge of the trocha. "I have been shipwrecked, Ana," said Raquel, smiling down upon the old woman. "Ship--the holy saints pres--and you are not even wet--and where, then, is the Señor Escobe--" "You seem very much worried about the Señor Escobeda, Ana," said Don Gil, who at once made Raquel's friend his own. "Do you not hear him off there now, cursing as usual?" Ana listened. She heard distant cries, and the sound of the water as it churned underneath the propeller blades. Ana shrank to the size of an ant as she answered, her face blanching: "Indeed! yes, I do hear the Señor, Señor. I have heard the Señor like that, Señor, many a time. And does the Señor think that the Señor can come here to the casa of Palmacristi?" "Not for some time, I think, Ana," said Don Gil, smiling, though a faint wrinkle was discernible on his brow. "It always seems to me as if the Señor Escobeda could get anywhere, Señor," said Ana, simply. "He has only to wish, the Señor, and the thing is done." "That would be bad for us," said Silencio. "Ana, will you give this lady to me?" "I? And what does the Señor think that I have to do with it?" "Is the Señor Escobeda a nearer relative than you are, Ana?" "Indeed, no! Señor," said Ana. "I was her mother's own cousin once removed, while the Señor Es--" "Very well!" said Silencio, "that is all that I want. Come! padre, let us prepare for the wedding." XI It was two or three days after this that Uncle Adan came in toward sunset with a fine piece of news. "The Señor knows the hacienda of Palmacristi?" began Uncle Adan, more as a preface than as a question. Don Beltran laughed. He had known the hacienda of Palmacristi as long as he had known anything; he had known the old Don Gil well, who, indeed, had been a distant relative of his own, and he had seen the young Don Gil grow up to manhood. Beltran was ten years older than Silencio. He had often envied the young fellow his independence and freedom in the way of money. He thought him hot-headed and likely to get into trouble some day, and now, from Uncle Adan's account, that day had arrived. He did not think it necessary to say this; Adan knew it as well as he. "What has he been doing now?" asked Don Beltran. "Only getting married, Señor," answered the old capitas. "I did not dream that he would do anything so sensible," said Don Beltran, with a glance at Agueda. Agueda bent her eyes low and blushed. How dear it was of him to think of her first of all, and always in that connection. But what was the haste? He loved her, of that she was sure. He would always love her. When he was ready, she would be, but it was not a pressing matter. "The Señor E'cobeda does not think it so sensible, Señor Don Beltran." "Aaaah! it was the little Señorita Raquel, then. Wise man, wise man!"--Agueda looked up suddenly--"to marry the girl of his choice. But how did he get her, Adan? It was only three weeks ago that he wrote me a line, begging that I would aid him in an effort to carry her off." "And the Señor answered--?" "I told him that I would come whenever he called upon me. I have no liking for Escobeda. He will not sell me the lowlands between the river and the sea. He is an unpleasant neighbour, he--" "He is a devil," said Adan. "I think that it must be I who made that marriage hasten as it did," said Agueda, smilingly. "The Señor remembers the day last week when I came home and found the Señor with the letter from the Señor Don Noé saying that he would make a visit at Palmacristi with the little child? It was on that day that I carried the note from the Señorita to Don Gil." "And that was the very day of the marriage," broke in Adan, willing enough to interrupt his niece, though not his master. "It was the very day. There was a shipwreck, and somehow the young Señor got the Señorita from the vessel. Como no, hombre! When one wants a thing he must have it if he is gran' Señor. The padre was there, and he married them, and now they have to reckon with the Señor E'cobeda." "Where was the precious rascal all this time?" asked Don Beltran. "Some say that he was on board the ship, Señor, and that he was carried on to the government town. They say he knew nothing of the grounding of the vessel; he was always sick with the sea, that Señor E'cobeda. Caramba! _I_ should like to see him sick with the sea, or with the bite of a black spider, or with anything else that would kill him--that Señor E'cobeda!" "I cannot see what he can do, Adan," said Don Beltran. "If she is married, he cannot change that." Adan nodded, and scratched his ankle with his machete. "Married fast enough, Señor Don Beltran. First by the padre at the hacienda, and then at the little church at Haldez. I cannot see what rights he has over the young Señora now. "None at all," said Don Beltran. "Does the lad want me over there--the Señor Silencio?" "I have heard nothing from him, Señor Don Beltran. Juan Rotiro told me many things, but the Señor knows what Juan Rotiro is when the pink rum gets into his judgment. He says that the Señor E'cobeda will soon return, and that there will be fighting, but it seems to me that the Señor Don Gil can hold his own. Como no! when he has the law on his side." "Law," Beltran laughed. "Do you suppose rascals like Escobeda care for law? Besides, he has the Governor on his side. He pays large sums for so-called concessions; that I know, and the Governor winks both eyes very fast at anything that Escobeda chooses to do. Did you hear anything about his getting that band from Troja together?" "Caramba! yes, Señor Don Beltran! It was spoken under the breath, and just from one peon to the other. They did not know much." Don Beltran arose. "I think I will ride over to Palmacristi, Agueda; get me my spur. Would you like to come, child?" Agueda shook her head, and ran into the sitting-room to hide her confusion. Her face was a dull crimson as she took the spur down from the nail. "The espuela is dusty; shall brighten it, Señor?" "Call old Juana. I will not have you soil your pretty hands, child, on my spur. The grey, Pablo," he shouted toward the rambling structure that was dignified by the name of stable. "And why not come with me, Agueda?" Agueda bent over her stitching. "I am much too busy to-day, Señor," she said. "Far too busy," she thought, "to go over there, not sure of my welcome." Things had changed at Palmacristi, and remembering the slight inflection in Silencio's tone when last she saw him, she knew that henceforth Raquel was quite out of her reach. "I was good enough to take her note for her when she was Señorita," thought Agueda, "but I am not good enough to visit her now that she is Señora." Agueda's sensitive and delicate nature had evolved this feeling out of an almost imperceptible glance, a faint, evanescent colouring of tone in the inflection of Silencio's voice, but it told her, as memory called it up, that the front door of Palmacristi would henceforth be closed to her. She would not hamper Beltran. He was thoughtless, and might suffer more from a slight to her than from one to himself; or else he might become angry and break his pleasant friendship with Silencio, a friendship which had existed between the families for generations. No, she had better remain at home. Again, when Beltran asked her, she shook her head and smiled, though a drop of water lay near the surface of her eye, but Beltran did not see, and rode away gaily, waving his hand. Arrived upon the height where stood the Casa de Caoba, he rode the grey down to the bank, because on the calm sea he had discovered Silencio and Raquel, in the little skiff in which Raquel had been rescued. He heard Silencio say, "There is Beltran; let us go in and see him." "I do not know that Don Beltran," said Raquel. "Does not the girl Agueda live there, at San Isidro?" "Yes; do you know Agueda?" As Silencio spoke he waved his hand to the horseman on the bank. "Bien venido," he shouted. And then to Raquel, "Where did you see the girl Agueda?" "I have often seen her," said Raquel. "She is very handsome. She looks like a young boy. She is really no darker than I am. Have you forgotten that she brought my note to you that day?" "No," said Silencio; "I have not forgotten it. She has perhaps more good Spanish blood in her veins than either of us," continued he, as he bent to the oars. "Such things are very sad," said Raquel. "She is so above her station. I should like to have her come here and live with us." "That would not do at all, Raquel," returned Silencio, gravely. "Is there anything wrong with her?" asked Raquel, wonderingly. "N--no, not that I know of, but she is not of your station." "And yet you say that she has better ancestry than either you or I," argued Raquel, as the boat grounded. "I am sure her uncle is a great deal more respectable than mine." Silencio waved his hand to Beltran. "We were looking to see if there was any sign of the yacht," he called. "I sent her round to Lambrozo to be repaired. We may need her now any day. Oh! I quite forgot you do not know my wife, Beltran. I must introduce you." Raquel bowed and walked onward to order refreshments for the visitor. "Let me congratulate you," said Beltran, when Silencio had thrown the painter to Andres, who was standing near and had scrambled up the bank. "I was surprised by your very charming news." "Hardly more than I was myself." "How did you manage, Gil?" "The gods were with me," answered Silencio, laughing, though Beltran noticed that his brow clouded over almost immediately. His laughter sounded false. "It is true that I have what I wished, Beltran," he continued--"the dearest blessing that any man, were he prince or noble, could ask." ("She is not half so beautiful as my Agueda," thought Beltran, while nodding acquiescence.) "I have her, she is mine; but--there is Escobeda still to be reckoned with." "Where is he?" asked Beltran. "I wish he were in hell," said Silencio, fiercely. "You are not singular in that, but the result is not always the offspring of the desire. It would indeed be a blessing to send him there, but unfortunately, my boy, there is law for him in this land, though very little of it when it comes to the wrongs that you and I suffer. The question is, where is he, and when do you expect him here?" "He went on to the government town with the steamer." Beltran threw his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground, walking beside his young friend. He heard all that there was to tell. "He was very ill when the steamer ran on the sand spit that night." Silencio looked narrowly at his friend. He wished to see if his share in the decoying of the steamer had been noised abroad. Beltran listened without a flicker of the eyelash. "The doctor had given him something strong--a new thing down here, called, I believe, chloral." "Como no!" burst forth Beltran, "if they only gave him enough." "They gave him enough for my purpose," said Silencio. "He was utterly stupid. Was I going to awake him and ask permission to run away with his niece? Caramba, Beltran! I should think not! He was stupid, I imagine, all the way to the government town. When he called for the bird whose wings he thought he had clipped, behold, the little thing had flown, and with me, the dreaded enemy." Don Beltran laughed long and heartily. "You are a clever boy, Gil; but how about the future? As you say, you have that still to reckon with." The darkening of Silencio's face recalled to Beltran that antiquated simile of the sweeping of a cloud across the brightness of the sun. But not all old things have lost their uses. "I know that," said Silencio; "that is the worst of it. I have taken her from him to protect her, and now--and now--if--I--should fail--" "I rode over to-day for that very thing, Gil, to ask if I could help. I will come over with all my people if you say so, whenever you send for me. My uncle, Don Noé Legaspi, comes within a day or so, to stay with me at San Isidro. He brings his little child, a motherless little thing, with him, but I can come all the same. I think that it was never said of my house that we deserted a friend or a kinsman in trouble." "I see what you are afraid of," said Silencio. "You think he will attack me." "I do," answered Beltran; "but we can stand him off, as the Yankees say. You have the right to shoot if he attacks you, but I hope that it will be my bullet that takes him off, the double-dyed scoundrel!" "You will take some refreshment, Beltran?" "No, it is late; my breakfast is waiting. A' Dios, Gil, a' Dios." As they were about to part, Silencio called after his friend: "I will send you word as soon as I receive the news myself. You will come at once, eh, Beltran?" Don Beltran paused in mounting the grey, and turned his head to look at his friend. Silencio's fingers were nervously opening and closing around one of the fence palings. "For myself I should not care; that you know, Beltran; but for her, it would kill me to have her fall into his hands again. It would be death to me to lose her. She will die if she thinks that she can be taken from me, and by that villain. Do you know what they meant to do with her, Beltran? They meant--they meant--" Silencio's voice sank to a whisper. His face had become white, his lips bloodless. His eyes seemed to sink back in his head and emit sparks of fire. In the compression of the mouth Beltran saw the determination of certain death for Escobeda should he come within range of Silencio's weapon. Beltran was in the saddle now. He turned and surveyed his friend with some anxiety. "Be careful, Gil," he said; "don't come within reach of the villain. Discretion is much the better part in this matter. Keep yourself under cover. They will pick you off, those rascals. Send for me the night before you know that he is coming, and I will ride over with ten of my men. We can garrison at your house?" "I shall make ready for you," said Silencio. "My only fear is that I shall not have warning enough." XII Beltran rode down to the coast to meet his young uncle and the child. He started early in the morning, riding the black. The groom led the roan for Uncle Noé's use, Pablo rode the spotted bull, and those peons who could be spared from the cacao planting walked over the two miles to the boat landing, to be ready to carry the luggage that the strange Señor and the little girl would bring. As Dulgado's fin-keel neared the shore, Beltran could not distinguish the occupants, for the sail hid them from view; but when the boat rounded to alongside the company's landing, and a sprightly old gentleman got out and turned to assist a young girl to climb up to the flooring of the wharf, Beltran discovered that Time had not broken his rule by standing still. On the contrary, he had broken his record by outstripping in the race all nature's winners, for the young uncle had become a thin little old man, and the child a charming girl in a very pronounced stage of young ladyhood. "I should have known that my cousin could not be a little child," thought Beltran, as he removed his old panama, wishing that he had worn the new one. His dress was careless, if picturesque, and he regretted that he had paid so little attention to it. Notwithstanding his somewhat rough appearance, Beltran raised the perfumed mass of ruffles and lace in his strong arms. He seated the girl in the chair, fastened firmly to the straw aparejo on the back of the great bull. At Agueda's suggestion, he had provided a safe and comfortable seat for the little one, to whose coming Agueda was looking forward with such unalloyed pleasure. The girl filled it no more completely than Beltran's vision of her younger self would have done, though her billowy laces overlapped the high arms of her chair. Her feet, scarce larger than those of a child, rested upon the broad, safe footboard which Beltran had swung at the side of the straw saddle. Her delicate face was framed in masses of fair hair--pale hair, with glints here and there like spun glass. Beltran could hardly see her eyes, so shaded was her face by the broad hat, weighted down by its wealth of vari-colored roses. To many a Northern man, to whom style in a woman is a desideratum, Felisa would have looked like a garden-escape. She had a redundant sort of prettiness, but Beltran was not critical. What if her eyes were small, her nose the veriest tilted tip, her nostrils and mouth large? The fluffy hair overhung the dark eyebrows, the red lips parted to show white little squirrel teeth, the delicate shell-like bloom on cheek and chin was adorable. It brought to Beltran's memory the old farm in Vermont where he had passed some summers as a lad, and the peach trees in the orchard. His environment had not provided him with a strictly critical taste. How fair she was! What a contrast to all the women to whom he had been accustomed! There was nothing like her in that swarthy land of dingy beauties. Her light and airy apparel was a revelation. Unconsciously Beltran compared it with the plain, straight skirts and blouse waists which he saw daily, and to its sudden and undeniable advantage. He was expecting to greet a little child, and all at once there appeared upon his near horizon a goddess full-blown. He had seen nothing in his experience by which he could gauge her. She passed as the purest of coin in this land of debased currency. Her father, Uncle Noé, bestrode the roan which Eduardo Juan had brought over for him. When Don Noé was seated, Eduardo Juan gave him the bridle, and took his own place among the carriers of the luggage, which was greater in quantity than Don Beltran had expected. Eduardo Juan disappeared with a sulky scowl in answer to Pablo's contented grin, which said, "I have only to walk home, guide the bull, and see that the Señorita does not slip, while you--" Pablo waited with patient servility, rope in hand, until the Señorita was safely seated in her chair. There was a good deal of sprightly conversation among the Señores. There was more tightening of girths and questions as to the comfort of his guests by Don Beltran. Then the cavalcade started, Pablo leading the bull, which followed him docilely, with long strides. The animal, ignorant as are the creatures of the four-footed race, with regard to his power over its enemy, man, was obedient to the slightest twitch of the rope, to which his better judgment made him amenable. The long rope was fastened to the ring in his pink and dripping nostrils. He stretched his thick legs in long and steady strides, avoiding knowingly the deeper pools which he had heretofore aided his kind to fashion in the plastic clay of the forest path. Beltran rode as near his cousin as the path would allow. It was seldom, however, that they could ride abreast. It was the southern spring, and flowers were beginning to bloom, but Felisa looked in vain for the tropical varieties which one ever associates with that region. The bull almost brushed his great sides against the tree trunks which outlined the sendica. When she was close enough Felisa stretched out her hand and plucked the blackened remains of a flower from the center of a tall plant. It had been scorched and dried by the sun of the summer that was passed. She thrust the withered stems into the bull's coarse hair, turned to Beltran, and laughed. "If I remain long enough, there will be flowers of all colors, will there not, cousin? Flowers of blue and red and orange." "You will remain, I hope, long after they have bloomed and died again," answered Beltran, gallantly. They had not been riding long before Felisa sent forth from her lips an apprehensive scream. Beltran spurred his horse nearer. "What is it, cousin? Is the _silla_ slipping?" Felisa looked up from under her cloud of spun silk, and answered: "No, I am wondering how I am to get round that great tree." Beltran, to whom the path was as well known as his own veranda at San Isidro, had no cause to turn his eyes from the charming face at his side. "Oh! the trunk of the old mahogany? That has lain across the path for years. Do not be afraid, little cousin. Roncador has surmounted that difficulty more times than I can remember." They were now close upon the fallen trunk. Felisa closed her eyes and clutched at the bull's shaggy neck. She screamed faintly. Pablo turned to the right and pulled at the leading rope, but the bull, with no apparent effort, stubborn only when he knew that he was in the right, turned to the left, and Pablo perforce followed. It was a case of the leader led. When Roncador had reached the point for which he had started, a bare place entirely denuded of branches, he lifted one thick foreleg over, then the other. The hind legs followed as easily, a slight humping of the great flanks, and the tree was left behind. Suddenly Felisa found that they were in the path again. "Ze bull haave ze raight," commented Pablo. "Ah endeavo' taike de Señorit' roun' de tre'. Bull ain' come. He know de bes' nor me." Don Beltran leaped his horse over the tree trunk, and Don Noé was taken over pale and trembling, whether or no, the roan following Don Beltran's lead. Beltran smiled openly at Pablo's discomfiture, and somewhat secretly at Uncle Noé's fear. "A good little animal, that roan, Uncle Noé. How does he suit you?" Uncle Noé looked up and endeavoured to appear at ease, releasing his too tight clutch on the bridle. "Il est rigolo, bien rigolo!" said Don Noé, gaily, between jerks occasioned by the liveliness of the roan. He glanced sidewise at his nephew to see if the Paris argot which he had just imported had had any effect upon him. He owed Beltran something for his superior horsemanship. Beltran never having heard the new word, was, however, not willing to give Don Noé a modicum even of triumph. He was bending over, securing a buckle on his bridle. Without raising his figure, he answered, "C'est vrai, mon oncle, c'est tout à fait vrai, il est très, très rigolo." "Très ha ha!" added Don Noé. "Bien ha ha!" nodded Don Beltran, not to be left behind. "What wretched French Beltran speaks!" said Don Noé to his daughter, later. Uncle Noé belonged to that vast majority, the great army of the unemployed. He loved the gaieties of the world, the enjoyments that cities bring in their train. But sometimes nature calls a halt. Nature had whispered her warning in Don Noé's ear, and he at once had thought of the plantation of San Isidro as the place to rest from a too lavish expenditure of various sorts. He had come to this remote place for a purpose, but he yawned as they rode along. Beltran, proud of the beauties of San Isidro, pointed out its chief features as they proceeded. He turned, and said, still in French, to please Uncle Noé, and perhaps to show him that even at San Isidro all were not savages: "There is much to be proud of, Uncle Noé. It is not a small place, when one knows it all." "C'est vrai," again acquiesced Uncle Noé. "A la campagne il y a toujours beaucoup d'espace, beaucoup de tranquillité, beaucoup de verdure, et--" The rest of the sentence was lost on Beltran, but was whispered in the pink ear of Felisa, who laughed merrily. "At what is my cousin laughing?" asked Beltran, turning, with a pleased smile. Uncle Noé did not answer. The words with which he had finished his sentence were, "_et beaucoup d'ennui_." "You wanted to come," said Felisa, still laughing. "Did you ever see such a God-forsaken place?" returned her father. "I had really forgotten how bad it was. Look at those ragged grooms. Imagine them in the Champs Elysées!" "There can be no question of the Champs Elysées. How stupid you are, papa." "And down in this valley! Just think of putting a house--I say, Beltran, who ever thought of putting your house down here in the valley?" "It was my mother's wish," said Beltran. "I suppose that it was a mistake, but the river was further away in those days. It has changed its course somewhat, and encroached upon the casa, but we have never had any serious trouble from it. I shall build a house on the hill next year. The foundations are already laid." Don Beltran had said this for some years past. "Not that I think that I shall ever need it. When we have floods, the water makes but a shallow lake. It is soon gone." As they entered the broad camino, Felisa saw a man coming toward them. He was mounted upon a fine stallion; the glossy coat of the animal shone in the sun. The rider wore an apology for a hunting costume, which was old and frayed with use. The gun, slung carelessly across his shoulder, had the appearance of a friend who could be depended upon at short notice, and who had spent a long life in the service of his owner. The stock was indented and scratched, but polished as we polish with loving hands the mahogany table which belonged to our great-grandmother. The barrel shone with the faithfulness of excellent steel whose good qualities have been appreciated and cared for. The man was short and dark. As he passed he removed his old panama with a sweep. Beltran gave him a surly half-nod of recognition, so curt as to awaken surprise in the mind of Felisa. The contrast between the greetings of the two men was so great that her slits of eyes noticed and compared them. "Who is that man, cousin?" "Don Matéo Geredo." "Why do you not speak to him?" "I nodded," said Beltran. "You did not return his salute. I am sure it was a very gracious one, cousin. Why did you not return his--" "Because he is a brute," said Beltran, shortly. Felisa had not been oblivious of the glance of admiration observable in the man's eyes as he passed her by. "Jealous so soon," she thought, with that vanity which is ever the food of small minds. Aloud she said, "He seems to have a pleasant face, cousin." "So others have thought," said Beltran, with an air which said that the subject was quite worn out, threadbare. Then, changing his tone, "See, there is the casa! Welcome to the plantation, my little cousin." And thus chatting, they drew up at the steps of San Isidro. Agueda came joyfully out to meet them. Ah! what was this? Where was the little child of whom she and Beltran had talked so much? Agueda had carefully dusted the little red cart. She had fastened a yellow ribbon in the place from which the tongue had long ago been wrenched by Beltran himself. The cart stood ready in the corner of the veranda, but Agueda did not bring it forward. She caught sight of a glitter of bracelets and rings against a snow-white skin, as Felisa was lifted down from the aparejo in her cousin's arms. Her lips moved unconsciously. "The diamonds, not the playthings," was her verdict. As Agueda came forward, the surprise that she felt was shown in her eyes. She bowed gravely to the Señorita, who condescended to her graciously. "Shall I show the Señorita to her room?" asked Agueda of Beltran. With that wonderful adaptability which is the inalienable inheritance of the American woman, Agueda had accepted in a moment the change from the expected child to the present Señorita. It is true that Agueda's mother, Nada, had been but a pretty, delicate octoroon, but Agueda's father had been a white gentleman (God save the mark!) from a northern state, and Nada's father a titled gentleman of old Spain. From these proud progenitors and the delicate women of their families had Agueda inherited the natural reserve, the refinement and delicacy which were so obvious to all with whom she came in contact. She inherited them just as certainly as if Nada had been a white woman of the purest descent, just as certainly as if the gentle Nada had been united in wedlock to the despoiler of her love and youth and life, George Waldon, for there ran in Agueda's veins a heritage of good old blood, which had made the daughters of the house of Waldon famous as pure and beautiful types of womanhood. As Agueda asked her hospitable question, Beltran's square shoulders were turned toward her. He was busying himself with the strap of the aparejo. Agueda, who knew him as her own soul, perceived an embarrassed air, even in the turn of his head. "If you please," said Beltran, without looking toward her. The Señorita loitered. She asked Don Beltran for her bag. He lifted the small silver-mounted thing from the pommel of his saddle and handed it to Felisa with a smile. He seemed to look down at her indulgently, as if humouring a child. Agueda noticed the glittering monogram as it flashed In the sun. Beltran's hand touched Felisa's. A gentle pink suffused her features. Agueda caught the sudden glance which shot from Beltran's eyes to those of his cousin. A sickening throb pulsed upward in her throat. She shivered as if a cold wind--something that she had seldom felt in that tropic land--had blown across her shoulders. Suddenly Aneta came into her thoughts, Aneta of El Cuco. Her lips grew white and thin. It is moments like these, with their premonitions, which streak the hair with grey. Agueda did not look at Beltran again. She drew her breath sharply, and said: "If the Señorita permit, I will show her the way." "In a moment, my good girl," said Felisa, carelessly, and lingered behind, bending above the flower boxes which lined the veranda's edge, flowers which Agueda had planted and tended. "What a pretty servant you have, cousin," said Felisa. Beltran started. "Servant? Oh, you mean Agueda. She--she--is scarcely a servant, Agueda; she keeps my house for me." Felisa turned and gazed after Agueda. The girl had walked the length of the broad veranda and stood waiting opposite a door, lithe and upright. She looked back, her face grave and serious. She was taller by several inches than Felisa. Her figure, slender as Felisa's own, was clothed in a pale blue cotton gown, fresh and clean, though faded with frequent washings, a spotless collar and cuffs setting off the statuesque throat and the shapely hands. Felisa tick-tacked down the long veranda, her ruffles and billowy laces bouncing with her important little body. She uttered a subdued scream of surprise as she reached the open doorway and caught sight of the fresh, cool-looking room, with its white furniture and bare floors, its general air of luxurious simplicity. The wooden shutter in the wall opposite the door was flung wide, and one was conscious of a tender tone of yellow green, caused by the rays of sunlight shining through and over the broad banana leaves. Great lilac and yellow pods hung from the shafts of greenery; some of the large oval leaves had fallen upon the veranda. Felisa noted them when she crossed the room to inquire further into her surroundings. A ragged black was sitting on the veranda edge, swinging his legs over the six feet of space. "Hand me that leaf," said Felisa. The boy arose at once, and picking up the lilac leaf of the banana flower, held it out to her with a bow and the words in Spanish, "As the Señorita wishes." Felisa took the leaf, but threw it down at once. She had expected to find a soft thing which would crumple in her hand. The leaf was hard and tough as leather. She could no more crush or break it with her small fingers than if it had been made of india-rubber, which, but for its color, it strongly resembled. She turned and looked at Agueda. "And do you have no curtains at the windows?" "We have no curtains, and windows we do not have, either," answered Agueda. "The Señorita can see that there are wooden shutters at the windows. No one has windows on this side of the island." The tone was perhaps slightly defiant. It was as if Agueda had said, "What! Finding fault so soon?" "Eet haave glaass obe' at dé ceety; Ah see eet w'en Ah obe' deyah." Felisa started. The voice came from the corner of the room, which was concealed by the open door. She peered into the shadow, and faced the shriveled bit of brown flesh known as Juana. Felisa laughed, as much at the words as at the speaker. "Señ'it' t'ink Ah don' haave--yaas-been aat de ceety. Ah been aat ceety. Eet haave, yaas, peepul." The tone implied millions. Felisa was standing in front of the dressing-table, taking the second long silver pin out of her hat. "What does she say?" she asked through the hatpin which she held horizontally between her teeth. She removed the open straw, and ran the pins, one after the other, through the crown. "She says that they have the glass--that is, the windows--at the city." Still staring at Juana, Felisa seated herself upon the small white bed. Agueda pushed back the rose-coloured netting which hung balloon-like from the ceiling. A freshly knotted ribbon gathered its folds and held them together, thus keeping the interior free from the intrusion of annoying or dangerous insects. Felisa reached down with one plump hand, and drew the ruffled skirt upward, disclosing a short little foot, which she held out toward Agueda. Agueda did not move. She looked at Felisa with a slight arch of the eyebrows, and moved toward the door. Juana hobbled up. "De li'l laidy wan' shoe off? Ole Juana taake. Dat ain' 'Gueda business. Don Be'tra' don' laike haave 'Gueda do de waak." "And why not, I should like to know?" Juana chuckled down in the confines of her black and wrinkled throat. Agueda went out to the veranda. She stood looking over toward the river, her arm round the pilotijo, her head leant against it. Her thoughts were apprehensive ones. She paid no heed to Juana's words. "She Don Be'tra' li'l laidy, 'Gueda is. She ain' no suvvan,[7] ain' 'Gueda. She 'ousekeep', 'Gueda." By this time Juana, with stiff and knotted fingers, had unlaced the low shoes. She took the small feet in her hand, and twisted them round, and Felisa with them, to a lying posture upon the low couch. FOOTNOTE: [7] Servant. XIII The casa at San Isidro had verandas running on either side of its long row of rooms. This row began with the kitchen, store and sleeping rooms, and ended with the comidor and sitting-room. The verandas ran the entire ninety feet in a straight line until they reached the comidor. There they turned at right angles, making thus an outer and an inner corner. These angles enclosed the dining and living rooms. The inner veranda was a sheltered nook when the rain swept up from the savannas down by the sea, the outer one a haven of delightful coolness when the sun glowed in the west and threw its scorching beams, hot and melting, into the inner corner. Here were the steps leading down the very slight incline into the yard and flower garden. Here, to this inner corner, were the bulls and horses driven or led, for mounting or dismounting; here the trunks and boxes of visitors were carried up and into the house; and this was what was happening now. Agueda looked on listlessly as Felisa's large trunk and basket trunk and Don Noé's various boxes and portmanteaus were deposited with reproachful thumps upon the floor. The peons who had carried them, shining with moisture, dripping streams of water, wiped their brows with hardened forefingers, and snapped the drops from nature's laboratory off on to the ground. They had carried the luggage slung upon poles across country. For this duty six or eight of them were required, for there was no cart road the way that they must come, as the broad camino ran neither to the boat landing, nor extended to the plantation of San Isidro. The men stood awkwardly about. One could see that they were expectant of a few centavos in payment for this unusual labour. Don Noé kept himself religiously secluded upon the corner of the outer veranda. He well knew that the luggage had arrived. The struggle up the steps, the shuffle of men's feet, the scraping sort of hobble from callous soles, reached his ear. The heavy setting down of boxes shook the uncarpeted bare house, but Don Noé was consciously oblivious of all this. He had come to pay a long visit, and thus redeem a depleted bank account. Should he begin at the first hour to throw away money among these shiftless peons? Beltran had doubtless plenty of them. Such menial work came within the rule of the general demand. To be sure, he had brought many small boxes and portmanteaus. Don Noé thought it a sure sign of a gentleman to travel with all the small pieces that he and a porter or two could carry between them. A good-sized trunk would easily have held Don Noé's wardrobe, but there was a certain amount of style in staggering out of a car or off a steamer, loaded down with a parcel of canes, fishing-rods, and a gun-case, while the weary servant, who did not care a fig for glory, stumbled along behind with portmanteaus, bags, and hat boxes. It is quite true, as Felisa sometimes reminded Don Noé, that he had never caught a fish or shot a bird. Style, however, is a _sine qua non_, and reputation, however falsely obtained, if the methods are not exposed, stands by a man his whole life long. Self-valuation had Uncle Noé. From his own account, he was a very remarkable man. And as he usually talked to those who knew nothing of his past, they accepted his statements, perforce, as the truth. The dripping peons hung about the steps. Their shirts clung to their shoulders, but those the sun would dry. Don Noé sat quiet as a mouse upon the angle of the outer veranda. Agueda came toward the lingerers. "It is you that need not wait, Eduardo Juan, nor you, Garcia Garcito. The Don Beltran will see that you get some reward." "A ching-ching?" suggested the foremost, slyly. "I suppose so," said Agueda, wearily. She retraced her steps along the veranda, the men trooping after. Past all the long length of the sleeping-rooms went Agueda, until she reached the storeroom. The door of this she opened with a key which hung with the bunch at her waist. She entered, and beckoned to Garcia Garcito to follow. "Lift down the demijohn, you, Garcia Garcito, and you, Trompa, go to Juana for a glass." Garcia Garcito entered, and raising his brawny arms to the shelf overhead, grasped the demijohn and set it upon the table. Trompa returned with the glass. Agueda measured out a drink of the rum for each as the glass was emptied by his predecessor. The men took it gratefully. Each as his turn came, approached the filter standing in the comer, watered his dram, and drank it off, some with a "Bieng," others--those of the better class--with a bow to Agueda, and a "Gracia." Eduardo Juan, more careless than the rest, snapped the drops from his drained glass upon the spotless floor, instead of from the edge of the veranda to the grass, as the others had done. "Eduardo Juan, you know very well that that rudeness is not allowed here. Go and ask Juana for a cloth that is damp, that you may wipe those spots." Eduardo Juan smiled sheepishly, and loped off to the wash-house. He returned with the damp cloth, got down upon his knees, and rubbed the floor vigorously. "De Señora 'Gueda maake de Eduardo Juan pay well for his impertinences," laughed the peons. "Bastante! Bastante!" said Agueda. Eduardo Juan obeyed as if Agueda were the house mistress. Such had been Don Beltran's wish, and the peons were aware of it. Then Eduardo Juan jumped to the ground, and followed the other peons where they had disappeared in the direction of the stables. When he no longer heard the scuffle of feet, Don Noé tiptoed down the veranda, and entered the room which had been assigned to him. He aroused Felisa from a waking doze on that borderland where she hovered between dreams and actuality. She was again seated upon the aparejo. The bull was plunging through the forest, or with long strides crossing some prone giant of the woods. Beltran was near; his kind eyes gazed into hers. His arm was outstretched to steady her shaking chair. His voice was saying in protecting tones, "Do not be afraid, little cousin; you are quite safe." A pleasurable languor stole through Felisa's frame, a supreme happiness pervaded her being. She felt that she had reached a safe haven, one of security and rest. Her father had never troubled himself very much about her wishes. She had been routed out of this town, that city, according to his whims and the shortness or length of his purse. A dreamy thought floated through her brain that he could not easily leave this place, so difficult of access, more difficult of egress; so hospitable, so free! The sound of Don Noé's short feet stamping about in the adjoining room aroused Felisa from her lethargy. The absence of a carpet made itself obvious, even when an intruder tried to conceal the knowledge of his presence. Felisa now heard, in addition to the noise of tramping feet, the voice of Don Noé, fiercely swearing, and scarcely under his breath. "Ten thousand damns," was what he said, and then emphasized it with the sentence, "Ten thousand double damns." This being repeated several times, the number mounted rapidly into the billions. Ah! This was delightful! Don Noé discomfited! She would, like a dutiful daughter, discover the reason. Felisa sprang from her bed, a plump little figure, and ran quickly to the partition which separated her father's room from her own. This partition did not run up all the way to the roof. It stopped short at the eaves, so that through the open angle between the tops of the partition boards and the peak of the roof one heard every sound made in an adjoining room. She placed her eye to a crack, of which there were many. The boards had sprung apart in some places, and numerous peep-holes were thus accorded to the investigating. A scene of confusion met Felisa's gaze. All of Don Noé's portmanteaus were open and gaping wide. They were strewn about the floor, alternately with his three hat boxes, the covers of which had been unstrapped and thrown back. From each one shaking masses of bright and vari-colored flowers revealed themselves. "That dam' girl!" said Don Noé, under his breath. Felisa chuckled. Her only wonder was that by replacing her father's belongings with her own, and transporting her numerous gay shade hats thus sumptuously, her methods had not been discovered before. At each change of consequence, from boat to train, from horseback to carriage, Don Noé had suggested unpacking a change of headgear for himself. Felisa had, with much prudent forethought, flattened an old panama and laid within it a travelling cap. These, with filial care, she had placed in the top of her own small steamer trunk. With one excuse or another, she had beguiled Don Noé into using them during the entire trip. At Tampa it had been a secret joy to her to see the poor man struggling out of the train laden with the hat boxes in which her own gorgeous plumage reposed uninjured. In crossing to the island, in taking the train to the little town where the small steamer was waiting to carry them to their goal, and again, during their debarkation and stowing away in the little schooner which carried them across the bay to the spot where Don Beltran was to meet them, she had seen with supreme satisfaction the care with which her millinery was looked after, while Don Noé's assortment of hats was crowded into a small space in her own Saratoga. "I knew it, I knew it," whispered the chuckling Felisa. And then, aloud, "What's the matter, Dad?" Don Noé answered not. He was impatiently and without discrimination hauling and jerking the clothes from an open portmanteau. Each shirt, pair of trousers, necktie, or waistcoat was raised in air, and slapped fiercely down on the floor with an oath. Don Noé was not a nice old man, and his daughter relished his discomfiture. "Oh, damn!" he said, for the twentieth time, as he failed of jerking a garment from the confines of a tray, and sat down with precision in an open hat box. Some pretty pink roses thrust their heads reproachfully upward between his knees. There was discernible, from the front, a wicked look of triumph in Don Noé's small eyes. He revelled in the feeling that he was sinking, sinking down upon a bed of soft and yielding straw. "So I say," concurred Felisa, as the last exclamation left Don Noé's lips. She sprang away from the partition and flew out of the doorway, along the veranda, and into her father's room. "Get up at once!" she said. "Dad, do you hear? Get up at once. That is my very best, my fascinator! Get up! Do you hear me?" She stamped her stockinged foot upon the bare floor. The pain of it made her the more angry. Don Noé sank still further, smiling and helpless. "Get up at once!" Two of the peons had returned along the outer veranda. They still hoped to receive a reward for their work of the morning. They lounged in at the shutter opening, and looked on with a pleased grin. The disordered room spoke loudly of Don Noé's rage; the crushed flowers and the stamp of the foot, of the Señorita's fury. Felisa raised her eyes to the ebony faces framed between the lintels. She could not help but note their picturesque background, the yellow green of the great banana spatules, through which the tropic sunshine filtered. "Come in here, you wretches, both of you! How dare you laugh!" Eduardo Juan thrust a bony hand inside and unbuttoned the lower half door. He pushed through, and Paladrez followed him. They entered with a shuffle, and stood gazing at Don Noé. He, in turn, grinned at them. He was paying Felisa double--aye, treble-fold--for packing his hats in some close quarter, where, as yet, he knew not. Perhaps she had left them behind. A crack of the hat box! He was sinking lower. "If you don't care for my best hat, Dad, I should think you would not wish to ruin your own hat box." Then, turning to Eduardo Juan, "Pull him out at once!" Don Noé, certain that he had done all the damage possible, stretched out appealing hands. The men seized upon those aristocratic members with their grimy paws, and pulled and tugged his arms nearly out of their sockets. They got him partly to his feet, the box and flowers rising with him. Felisa saw that there was no chance of resurrection for the hat, the ludicrous side of the situation overcame her, and she laughed unrestrainedly. "Knock it off, confound you!" screamed Don Noé, in a sudden access of rage. Felisa's return of good temper made him furious. She danced round him, taunting and jibing. "The biter bit," she sang, "the biter bit." "Take something, anything, knock it off!" shouted Don Noé again. Palandrez, with a wrench, tore off the cover of the hat box and released the prisoner. "You've ruined my hat!" "You've ruined my hat box!" screamed father and daughter in unison. He shook his fist in her face. "Get out of my room, every man jack of you!" The gentle peons fled, a shower of garments, boots, and brushes following them. The room looked like the wreck of all propriety and reserve. "Don't you think you've made spectacle enough of yourself?" asked Felisa, and with this parting fling she flew from her father's presence, and fell almost into the arms of Don Beltran, chance having thus favoured him. He held her close for a moment before he released her. She was pink and panting from these two contrasting experiences. "He is often like that." She spoke fast to cover her embarrassment. "Did you ever know him before, cousin? If you did, I wonder that you asked us here." Beltran smiled. He did not say that the visit had been self-proposed on Don Noé's part. His smile contracted somewhat as a heavy walking-shoe flew out through the open doorway and knocked the panama from his head. As Beltran stooped and recovered the hat, Felisa glanced at him shamefacedly. She noticed the wet rings of hair, streaked faintly with early grey, which the panama had pressed close to his forehead. "I remember hearing that Uncle Noé was a young man with a temper," he said. "The family called it moods." He recalled this word from the vanishing point of the dim vista which memory flashed back to him at the moment. As Beltran spoke he glanced apprehensively at the open square in the palm-board exterior of the casa. "Let us run away," he said, smiling down at the girl. "Until he is sane again," agreed Felisa. She plunged into her room and caught up the discarded shoes; then springing from veranda to the short turf below, she ran with Beltran gaily toward the river. A bottle of ink shot out through the opening, and broke upon the place where they had stood. "He is a lunatic at times," said Felisa, with a heightened colour. There was a drop upon her eyelash which Beltran suddenly wished that he dared have the courage to kiss away. "I shall hurt my feet," she said, stopping suddenly. She dropped the shoes upon the ground, thrust her feet into them, and started again to run, her hand in Beltran's. The sun was scorching. He took his broad panama from his head and placed it upon hers. It fell to her pretty pink ears. She laughed, his laughter chimed with hers, and thus, like two happy children, they disappeared within the grove which fringed the river bank. Agueda saw them as they crossed the hot, white trocha. She saw them as they entered the grove. "And that is the little child," she said aloud, "the little child." Then, with a sudden painful tightening at the heart, "I wonder if he knew." So quickly does the appearance of deceit excite distrust which has no foundation to build upon. Beltran had known no more certainly than Agueda herself the age of this unknown cousin. He was guiltless of all premeditation, but to say that he was not conscious of an unmistakable joy when he found this charming young girl at the landing, and knew that she would live under the same roof with him for an indefinite period, would be to say that which is not true. Beltran was a victim of circumstances. He had not desired a change. He had not asked for it, yet when it came he accepted it, welcomed it perhaps. Had the choice between the known and the imagined been given him, he would have sought nothing better than his, until now, happy environment. "It is fate," thought Beltran. When the cousins reached the river, Beltran parted the branches for Felisa, and she slipped out of the white heat into a soft-toned viridescence of shade. A path ran downward to the river shore. It was cut parallel with the water's flow. The path was overshadowed by thick branches. Mangoes, mamey trees, and mahoganies were there. The tall palm crowned all in its stately way. The young palms spread and pushed fan-like across the path, in intimate relation now with human kind. The time would come when no one would be able to lay a finger tip upon their stiff and glossy sprays, when their lofty tufts would look down from a vantage point of eighty or a hundred feet upon the heads of succeeding generations. Felisa ran down the sloping path and seated herself, all fluff and laces, upon the slope of the bank. She sank into a bed of dry leaves, through which the fresh green of new-born plants was springing. "Not there, not there!" cried Beltran, sharply. "You never know what is underneath those foot-deep leaves. Come down here, little cousin. I have a bench at the washing-stone." They descended still lower. Her hand was still in the one by which he had raised her from the bank. "You have closed the bench quite off from the river, cousin, with those hateful wires. I cannot get at the water or even at the broad stone there." Felisa spoke petulantly. Beltran gazed down into the pretty face. The eyes, though not large, held the dancing light of youth. The upturned little nose and the broad mouth would not serve to make a handsome older woman, but the red lips pouted over white and even teeth, a rose flush tinted the ear and cheek, colourless curly tendrils escaped from under the large hat. Felisa's clothes, that most important factor in a man's first attraction toward a woman, were new and strange, and of a fashion that Beltran knew must be a symptom of modernity. He was utterly unconscious that a certain fascination lay in those wonderful great figures of colour sprawling over a gauzy ground of white. He would have denied that the ribbon knot at the waist, and its counterpart upon the left shoulder, had any particular charm for him, or that the delicate aroma of the lavender of an old-fashioned bureau, which emanated from those filmy ruffles with every motion of the restless little body, had anything to do with his being so drawn toward her. Felisa seated herself and stretched out her feet, encased in a black silk mystery of open work and embroidery. He knelt and tied the silken laces. When he had finished this absorbing task he bent suddenly lower and pressed his lips to the instep above. Felisa withdrew it quickly, blushing. She knew nothing of such vigourous love-making as this. The northern birds were more wary. "My hat," she said, "please get me one." Beltran turned and ran up the path. "I did not dream that I should like him so much," said Felisa softly, as she gazed after him. Beltran ran swiftly to the casa and bounded up on to the veranda. Felisa's door reached, he hesitated. Agueda stood within the room, holding a hand-glass before her face. She was gazing at her reflection. At the well-known step she started. What hopes arose within her breast! He was coming back, the first moment that he was free, to tell her that she must not mind his attentions to his cousin, that they were necessary. She would meet him with a smile, she would convince him that that hateful jealousy, which had been tearing at her vitals for the past hour or two, had no part within her being. Ah! after all her suspicion of him, she was still his first thought! She started and dropped the glass. She turned toward him, a smile of welcome parting her lips. Beltran hardly looked at Agueda. "A hat! a bonnet, anything!" he said. "Give me something quickly!" She took from the table the gay hat in which Felisa had arrived, and placed it in his outstretched hand, but she did not look at him again. He almost snatched it from her. Was not Felisa waiting bareheaded down there by the river? He sprang to the ground and hastened across the trocha. After he had entered the grove, he buried his face among the flowers, which exhaled that faint, evanescent fragrance which already spoke to him of her. Agueda sighed and placed the silver-backed mirror upon the table. Had one asked her what she had been searching for in its honest depths, she could hardly have told. Perhaps she had been wondering whether with such aids to beauty as Felisa had, she would not be as attractive. Perhaps looking to see if she had grown less sweet, less lovable in these few short hours. "Juana," she called. "Juana!" The old crone hobbled forth quickly from the kitchen at Agueda's sharp tone. It was new to her. "Make this room tidy," ordered Agueda. Juana wondered at the harsh note in Agueda's voice. The girl herself was unconscious that she had spoken differently than she had been wont to do, but she was filled with a defiant feeling, a fear that now the others would not treat her with the respect which Don Beltran had always demanded of them. That new pain was accountable. At the sharp note in her voice, Juana had looked inquiringly, but Agueda raised a haughty head and passed along the veranda to her own room. Felisa heard Beltran returning. Her quick ear noted every movement, from the hurried run across the potrero and the trocha to his pushing back with impatient hand the low-sweeping branches and his hasty footfall down the path. She wondered if this new blossoming in her heart were love? She had never felt so since those first early days of adolescence, when as a young girl her trust had been deceived, ensnared, entrapped, and left fluttering with wounded wings. Should she love him? Was it worth her while? Her first word was a complaint. Experience had taught her that complaisance is a girl's worst enemy. "Why did you place those wires there, cousin?" For answer Beltran came close and looked down upon her shining head. Suddenly he took her in his arms and kissed her. She struggled, for she was really somewhat indignant. "And may not cousins kiss?" asked Beltran. "Those wires were placed there to prevent the little child whom we--I--expected from falling into the river. You are scarce larger than the little child--whom we--I--pictured, but oh! how infinitely more sweet!" He twisted one long brown finger in the ring of hair which strayed downward nearly to her eyes. Felisa withdrew her head with a quick motion. She was experiencing a mixture of feelings. She had come here to San Isidro with a purpose, and now, within two short hours of her arrival, she found that her purpose marched with her desires. Don Noé had said, "Felisa, do you remember your Cousin Beltran, your mother's nephew?" "No, papa, how could I remember him? I never saw him. I have seldom heard of him." "Ah, yes, I know," returned Don Noé, with the sudden awakening of the semi-centenarian to the fact that he is communing with a second generation. "Well, that wretched old grandfather of yours, old Balatrez, cut your mother off because she married _me_!" "Had he seen the hat boxes?" asked Felisa, who had a humour of her own. "Don't be impertinent. All that fine property has gone to Beltran, just because your mother married _me_! She was sister to Beltran's mother, your aunt, as you know. Now, Felisa, I intend to have that fortune back." "How, papa? Do you intend to call upon my cousin to stand and deliver?" "I intend you to do that, Felisa." "I am tired of being poor, too, papa." Felisa considered a shrinkage from eighteen to eight new gowns a summer a distinct sign of poverty. When Don Noé drew in his horns as to expenditures, the young foreign attaché who had all but proposed to him for the hand of Felisa relaxed his attentions. Felisa had hoped to be a countess, but a title is no guarantee of perennial or even annual bread and butter, and those indispensable articles some one must provide. At the close of Don Noé's remarks, which were too extended to be repeated, Felisa had said, "I am quite ready for your cousin-hunt, papa." A feeling akin to shame swept through her as she sat there and recalled this conversation, and realized what this new intimacy with Beltran meant to her--what it might mean in the days to come, for that he loved her at once and irrevocably her vanity gave her no chance to doubt, and she knew now that she was beginning to find this impetuous lover more than attractive. One who knew Felisa thoroughly would have said that she was beginning to care for him as much as it was in her nature to care for any one but herself. XIV Agueda saw all the plans which they had made together for the coming of the little child carried out by Beltran alone. She could not accompany Don Beltran and his cousin upon their different expeditions; she could not go as an equal, she would not go as an inferior. Besides which, there was never any question as to her joining them. The bull rides, the search for mamey apples, the gathering of the aguacate pears, all of which she had suggested, were taken part in by two only; so was the lingering upon the river, until Agueda shuddered to think of the miasmata which arise after nightfall and envelop the unwary in their unseen though no less deadly clutches. The walks in the moonlight, ending in a lingering beneath the old mahogany tree for a few last confidences before the return to the home-light of the casa, left no place for a third member, because of the close intimacy which naturally was part and parcel of the whole. All had come about as Agueda had planned, with the exception that she herself was missing from plain, hill, and river. She had heard Beltran say: "Yes, I will take you down to the potrero, little girl, to gather the aguacates, but you must not approach the bushes, for the thorns would sting your tender hands." Agueda recalled the day when she had suggested this as one of the cautious pleasures open to the little thing for whom they two were looking; but she, Agueda, who was to have been the central figure, she, the one to whose forethought had been entrusted the planning and carrying out of these small amusements, was excluded. As the days passed by, Beltran and Agueda seldom met, except in the presence of others. She addressed him now in the third person, as "If the Don Beltran allow," or "If the Don Beltran wishes." When by chance the two stumbled upon one another, neither could get out of the way quickly enough. It was on a day when she was forced to speak to him as to the disposition of some furniture, that her utter dejection and spiritless tone appealed to him. As he glanced at her, he noticed for the first time how large her eyes were, what hollows showed beneath them, how shrunken and thin was her cheek. "What is it, Agueda? You treat me as a culprit." "No, oh, no!" She shook her head sadly; then threw off the feeling apparently with a quick turn of the head. "The Señor is within his rights." Beltran's heart was touched. He drew near to her, and laid his arm about her shoulder, as he had not done now for a long time. She stooped her fine height, and drew her shoulder out from under his arm. She had no right now to feel that answering thrill; he was hers no longer. A sob, which she had tried to smother in her throat, struck him remorsefully. "They will soon be gone, Agueda; then all will be as before." "Nothing can ever be as before, Señor. I see it now, either for you or for me." The wall within which she had encased herself, that dignity which silence under wrong gives to the oppressed, once broken, the flood of her words poured forth. The terrible sense of injustice overwhelmed and broke down her well-maintained reserve. She looked up at Beltran with reproach in her eyes, interrogation shining from their depths. "Why could you not have told me, warned me, cautioned me? Ah, Nada! Nada knew." Her helplessness overcame her. Beltran had been her salvation, her teacher, her reliance. She felt wrecked, lost; she was drifting rudderless upon an ocean whose shores she could not discern. Where could she turn? Her only prop and stay withdrawn, what was there to count upon? "I do not know the world, Beltran. My people never know the world. I have never known any world but this--but this." She stretched out her despairing arms to the grey square which she had called home. "Ah! Nada, dear Nada, you knew, you knew! I never dreamt that she meant you, Beltran, you!" Hark! It was Felisa's voice calling to him. Soon she would be here. She would see them; she would suspect. Beltran shrugged his shoulders, he pursed out his lips. The Agueda whom he had known was ever smiling, ever ready to be bent to his will. This girl was complaining, reproachful; besides which, her looks were going. How could he ever have thought her even pretty? He contrasted her in a flash with the little white thing, all soft filmy lawn and laces, and turned away to rejoin that other sweeter creature who had never given him a discontented look. It had come to this then! Her misery could wring from him nothing more than a careless shrug of the shoulders! She stood gazing afar off at the hillside, where the bulls were toiling upward with their loads of suckers for the planting. Some fields were yet being cleared, and the thin lines of smoke arose and poured straight upward in the still atmosphere. A faint odor of burning bark filled the air. Near by the banana leaves drooped motionless. There were no sounds except the occasional stamp of a hoof in the stable. The silence was phenomenal. Suddenly a shrill voice broke the stillness. "Cousin, are you coming?" A welcome summons! He would go to the hills with Felisa, as he had promised. She should see the fields "avita"-ed. He would forget Agueda's reproaches in the light of Felisa's smiles. He shook his tall frame, as if to throw off something which had settled like a cloud upon him; he hurried along the veranda with a quick stride. The excursion to-day was to be to the palm grove upon the hill. Uncle Noé was to be one of the party. The peons were to burn the great comahen nest, for in this remote quarter of the world such simple duties made amusement for the chance guest at the coloñia. Agueda had prepared a dainty basket over-night. The old indented spoons, the forks with twisted and bent tines, but bearing the glory and pride of the Balatrez family in the crest upon the handle, were laid in the bottom of the basket. Nothing was forgotten, from the old Señora's silver coffee pot, carefully wrapped in a soft cloth, to the worn napkins on the top with the crest in the corner, which was wearing thin and pulling away from the foundation linen. The coffee, planted, raised, picked, dried, roasted, and ground upon the plantation of San Isidro, was ready for the making; the cassava bread was toasted ready for heating at the woodland fire; the thick cream into which it was to be dipped was poured into the well-scoured can; the fresh-laid eggs were safely packed in a small basket; the mamey apples and the guavas would be picked by the peons upon the ground, and the san-coche was still bubbling in the oven. Juana, like one of Shakespeare's witches, bent over the fragrant stew, and ever, when no one was looking, she put the pewter spoon to her withered and critical lips. Where is the cook who does not taste in secret? Palandrez would start an hour hence, taking the fast little roan, to get to the hill in time to serve the san-coche hot and savory. Castaño, the horse which it had been Don Beltran's pleasure to break for Agueda, stood at the foot of the veranda steps. Agueda's saddle was upon its back; no other would fit Castaño. Indeed, there was no other. But there was no sentiment to Agueda about the lady's saddle. She had always ridden like the boy that she looked. Agueda walked with dragging step to her solitary chamber; she would not remain to witness Felisa's hateful affectations. She could bear it no longer; she could be neither generous nor charitable. She had seen and heard so much of Felisa's clinging to Beltran's arm, her little cries of fear, Beltran's soothing responses, that her heart was sick. She closed her door to shut out the sounds, and threw herself into her low sewing chair by the window. They would be gone presently, and then she would wander forth in an opposite direction, down by the river perhaps, or over to--where? Where could she go? A large pile of linen lay in the basket. She had not touched it of late. Ah, no! There was no one now to make the duty a pastime, no one to come in with ringing step, and lay upon the welcoming shoulder a kindly hand--no one to twitch the tiresome sewing impatiently from her grasp, and bid her come away, to the river or to the potrero; no one to stoop and kiss the roughened finger. It was as if she had emerged into a strange and horrible land, a land of dreams whose name is nightmare, and had left behind her in that other dim world all that had been most dear. She could not awake, no matter how hard she tried. She sat looking dully out to where the flecks of sunshine touched here and there the tropic shadows. She saw nothing. Nature was no longer a book whose every leaf held some new beauty, each page printed with ink from the great mother's alembic, telling a tale of joy that never palls. Suddenly Agueda turned from the scene and clasped her hands over her eyes, for into her landscape had passed two figures. She had thought that they would go by the river path, but they were passing along the winding way which ran through the banana walk, one seated delicate and graceful upon the accustomed chestnut, shrinking somewhat and swaying a little as if in fear, the other bent close to her and gazing into her eyes as if he could never look his fill. The old story, her story, the part of heroine played by a fresher, newer actress, the leading personality unchanged. They made a picture as they rode, one which an artist would love to paint; the flanks of the brave grey side by side with the little chestnut, the handsome lover leaning toward the pretty bundle of summer draperies, the red parasol held in his hand and shading her form from the sun making the one bit of brilliant colour in the picture. It was worthy of Vibert, but Agueda had never heard of Vibert, and the picturesqueness of the scene did not appeal to her. "This way?" questioned the high voice. "It is the longest way, cousin, so you said this morning." "Yes," was Beltran's answer. How plainly she heard it as the breeze blew toward the casa. "The longest way to others, but--" He bent his head and spoke lower. One had to imagine the rest. Agueda closed the shutter and threw herself upon the bed, as if she could as easily forget the picture as she could shut out the shrill voice of Felisa. The day passed, as such days do, like an eternity. At noon-time a stranger rode down the hill toward the casa. He brought a letter for Don Beltran. "The Señor is up in the woods," said Agueda. "I will give it to him when he returns." "It is from the Señor Silencio. He hopes that the Señor will read it at once. The message admits of no delay." "Do you know the palm grove up on the far hill, on the other side of the grand camino?" "I think that I might find it," said Andres, for it was he, "but I have matters of importance at home. My little boy--El Rey--" Andres turned away his head. Stupid Andres! Only one thing could make him turn away his head. "Are you, then, the father of that little El Rey?" Andres nodded. "Give me the letter," said Agueda. "I will send it to the palm grove." Not waiting to see Andres depart, Agueda hurried to the home potrero. There Uncle Adan was keeping tally at the sucker pile. "Uncle Adan," she said, "is there a man who can take a message to the Señor?" "I cannot spare another peon, Agueda--that the good God knows. What with Garcia Garcito and the Palandrez off all the morning at the palm grove, and Eduardo Juan hurrying away but a half-hour ago with the san-coche, I am very short of hands. What is it that you want? Do not load the little white bull so heavily, Anito; it is these heavy weights that take the life out of them. What is it that you want, Agueda, child?" "It is a message for the Señor, Uncle Adan. It comes from the Señor Silencio. It may be of importance." "Very well, then; it is I who cannot go. The Señor should be at home sometimes, like other Señors. Since these visitors came I cannot get a word with him." "The Señor is not always away, Uncle Adan," protested Agueda, faintly. "It is true that he is not always away," said Uncle Adan, tossing a sprouted sucker into a waste pile, "but his head is, and that is as bad. He seems to take no interest in the coloñia nowadays, and I am doing much for which I have no warrant." Agueda recalled the many times when she had seen her uncle approach Beltran with some request to make, or project to unfold, and his shrug of the shoulders, and the answer, "Don't bother me now, Adan, there's a good fellow; some other time--some other time." Agueda stood with her eyes downcast. She knew it all but too well. Every word of Uncle Adan's struck at her heart like a knife. "But the Señor must have the letter, Uncle Adan," she persisted. "Very well, then, child, carry it yourself. There is no one else to go." "Is there anything that I can ride, Uncle Adan?" "Caramba! muchacha! Castaño, certainly. Can you saddle him your--or, no! I forgot. No, Agueda; there is nothing." "The brown bull? The letter may be important." "The brown bull has gone to the Port of Entry for tobacco for the Señor Don Noé. No, there is nothing, child; you must walk if you will go. For me, I would leave the letter on the table in the Señor's room. That would be best." Agueda went quickly back to the house. She took the old straw from its peg in her closet, put it upon her head without one glance at the little mirror on the wall, and ran quickly down the veranda steps. The way seemed long to her. She was not feeling strong; an unaccustomed weight dragged upon her health and spirits. All at once she saw, as if a picture had been held up to her view, that future which must be hers, toward which she was so quickly hastening. A few months--ah, God! Was it, then, to be with her as with all those others whom she had held in partial contempt--a pitying contempt, it is true, but none the less contempt. The distance seemed long to her. Time had been when she would have thought a run over to the palm grove a mere nothing, but now every step was a penance to both body and mind. When Agueda reached the hill, she walked slowly. The day was hot, as tropical days in the valley are apt to be. She moved languidly up the hill. Arrived at the top, there was nothing to reward her gaze but the form of Don Noé, asleep under a tree; Palandrez sitting by, waving a large palm branch to keep the insects away. At a little distance the dying embers of the picnic fire paled in the sun. The place was otherwise bare of people or servants. Under the shade of some coffee bushes stood the grey and the chestnut, but of their riders nothing was to be seen. When Palandrez saw Agueda coming he put his finger on his lip. She approached him and held out the letter. He made a half motion to rise, but did not spring to his feet, as he formerly would have done at the approach of the house mistress. "I have a letter for the Señor, Palandrez," said Agueda. "I wish that you take it to him at once." "It is I that would oblige the Señorita," answered Palandrez, sinking back hastily into his lounging attitude, when he saw that action was required of him, "but I was ordered by the Señor Don Beltran to stay here, and not leave the Don Noé, unless, indeed, an earthquake should come." "But it is a letter of importance," urged Agueda. "You must take it for me, Palandrez." "And am I to obey the Señor or the Señorita?" asked Palandrez, in a half-defiant, half-impudent tone. For answer Agueda turned away. She had thought of offering to keep the buzzing insects from Don Noé's bald head, but her spirit revolted at the thought of this menial service, and perhaps a slight curiosity as to where the main actors in the drama had gone, and how they were employing themselves, caused her to resolve to find Beltran herself. "Where is the Don Beltran?" she asked of Palandrez. "I have not seen them this half-hour, Señorita. When the feast was over the old Don laid himself down to sleep, and the Don Beltran and the new Señorita disappeared very suddenly. They went down there, in the direction of the little brook." Palandrez waved his hand toward the further slope of the hill, and again returned to the duty of keeping Don Noé asleep, so long as he himself could remain awake. As Agueda began to descend the slope she heard a complaining voice. She turned. Palandrez had stolen away to the edge of the hill. He had left Don Noé sleeping with the branch stuck upright beside him in the soft earth of the hilltop. The breeze waved the branch. "So," had thought Palandrez, "it will do as well as if I was there fanning El Viejo." But all in a moment the branch had fallen across Don Noé's face, and he had awakened with a start. He belaboured Palandrez well with his sharp old tongue. "I will tell your master, the Señor. Yes, I will tell him the very moment that I see him." Palandrez bowed his tattered form and scraped his horny sole upon the ground, and exclaimed, with volubility: "It was but muchachado,[8] Señor. I have the honour to assure the Señor that it was but muchachado, no more, no less." Palandrez, in fear of what his own particular Señor would say of his treatment of the Señorita Felisa's father, returned hurriedly to his fanning, and Don Noé, pretending to sleep, and weary with resting, kept one eye open, so to speak, to catch him again at his muchachado. Agueda descended the hill. When she came to the brook, she saw an old log across which some one must have lately travelled, for it was splashed with wet, and there were footmarks in the clay on the shore. She crossed, and walked quickly along the further plain, and soon heard the distant sound of voices, Felisa's high treble mingled with Don Beltran's deeper, pleasant tones. The beauty of his voice had never been so marked as now, when the thin soprano of Felisa set it off by contrast. Following the sound of the voices, Agueda again ascended a slight rise, and before long saw in the distance the light frills of Felisa's gown showing through the trees. She knew the pastime well enough, the pastime which caused Felisa to sit upon a level with Agueda's head, and to wave up and down as if in a swing or high-poised American chair. She knew well, before she came near them, that Beltran had given Felisa the pleasure that had often been hers; that he had bent an elastic young tree over to the ground; that among its branches he had made a safe seat for Felisa, and that he was letting it spring upward, and again pressing it back to earth with regular motion, so that Felisa might ride the tree in semblance of Castaño's back; only Beltran was closer to her than he could be were they on horseback, and Felisa's nervous little screams and cries gave him reason to hold her securely and to reassure her in that ever kind and musical voice. When Felisa saw Agueda coming along the path bordered with young palms, she said, "Here comes that girl of yours, cousin, that Agueda! What can she want?" Beltran turned with some surprise. Agueda had never dogged his footsteps before. She had left him to work his own will, independent of her claims--claims which had no foundation, in fact. All at once he remembered those claims imagined, and he wondered if at last she had come to denounce him before Felisa. As Agueda came onward, hurrying toward them, Beltran ceased his motion of the tree, and leaned against its trunk, touching Felisa familiarly as he did so. It was as if he arrayed himself with her against Agueda. The two seemed one in spirit. Beltran's voice, as he questioned Agueda, showed some irritation, but its musical note, a physical thing, which he could not control if he would, was still there. "Why have you come here? What do you want with me?" He did not use her name. Agueda stopped and leaned against a tree. She put her hand within the bosom of her dress, brought forth the letter in its double paper, tied round with a little green cord, and held it out to Beltran. She did not speak. "Very well, bring it to me," he said. He could not let go his hold on the tree, for fear of harm coming to Felisa, and he saw no reason why Agueda, having come thus far, should not cover the few steps that remained between himself and her. She pushed herself away from the tree with her hand, as if she needed such impetus, and walking unevenly, she came near to Beltran and laid the letter in his hand. "The messenger said that it was important. It was Andres who brought it," said Agueda. "Ah! from Silencio," said Beltran, awkwardly breaking the seal, because of the necessity of holding the tree in place. He perused the short note in silence. When he raised his eyes from the page, Agueda had turned and was walking away through the vista of young palms. Her weary and dispirited air struck him somewhat with remorse. "Agueda," he called, "stop at the hill yonder and get some coffee and rest yourself." His words did not stay her. She turned her head, shook it gravely, and then walked onward. FOOTNOTE: [8] A boyish trick. XV Don Gil Silencio and the Señora sat within the shady corner of the veranda. In front of the Señora stood a small wicker table. Upon the table was an old silver teapot, battered in the side, whose lid had difficulty in shutting. This relic of the past had been brought from England by the old Señora when she returned from the refuge she had obtained there, in one of her periodical escapes from old Don Oviedo. The old Señora had brought back with her the fashion of afternoon tea; also some of the leaves from which that decoction is made. The teapot, as well as the traditionary fashion of tea at five o'clock, had been left as legacies to her grandson, but of the good English tea there remained not the smallest grain of dust. The old Señora had been prodigal of her tea. She had on great occasions used more than a saltspoonful of the precious leaves at a drawing, and every one knows that at that rate even two pounds of tea will not last forever. They had been married now for two weeks, the Señor Don Gil and the Señora, and for the first time in her young life the Señora was happy. Sad to have reached the age of seventeen and not to have passed one happy day, hardly a happy hour! Now the girl was like a bird let loose, but the Señor, for a bridegroom, seemed somewhat distrait and dejected. As he sipped his weak decoction he often raised his eyes to the wooded heights beyond which Troja lay. "What is the matter, Gil? Is not the tea good?" "As good as the hay from the old potrera, dear Heart. And cold? One would imagine that we possessed our own ice-machine." The Señora looked at Don Gil questioningly. His face was serious. She smiled. These were virtues, then! The Señora did not know much about the English decoction. "Be careful, Raquel. That aged lizard will fall into the teapot else; he might get a chill. Chills are fatal to lizards." Don Gil was smiling now. Raquel closed the lid with a loud bang. The lizard scampered up the allemanda vine, where it hid behind one of the yellow velvet flowers. "But you seem so absent in mind, Gil. What is it all about? You look so often up the broad camino. Do you expect any--any one--Gil?" Don Gil dropped over his eyes those long and purling lashes which, since his adolescence, had been the pride and despair of every belle within the radius of twenty miles. "You do expect some one, Gil; no welcome guest. That I can see. Oh! Gil. It is my un--it is Escobeda whom you expect." Don Gil did not look up. "I think it is quite likely that he will come," he said. "I may as well tell you, Raquel; the steamer arrived this morning. He must have waited there over a steamer." Had Silencio voiced his conviction, he would have added, "Escobeda's vengeance may be slow, but it is sure as well." The Señora's face was colourless, her frightened eyes were raised anxiously to his. Her lips hardly formed the word that told him of her fear. "When?" she asked. "Any day now. But do not look so worried, dear Heart. I think that we need not fear Escobeda." "But he will kill us, Gil. He will burn the casa." "No. He might try to crush some poor and defenceless peon, but hardly the owner of Palmacristi. Still, all things are possible, all cruelties and barbarities, with a man like Escobeda. His followers are a lawless set of rascals." "And he will dare to attack us here, in our home?" The Señora's hands trembled as she moved the cups here and there upon the table. "An Englishman says, 'My house is my castle.' If I cannot say that; I can say, 'My house is my fort.' I will try to show you that it is, when the time comes, but look up! Raquel. Smile! dear one. I know that my wife is not a coward." With an assumption of carelessness, the Señora took a lump of sugar from the bowl and held it out to the penitent lizard. It came haltingly down the stem of the vine, stretching out its pointed nose to see what new and unaccustomed dainties were to be offered it. "He has sent you a message, Gil?" "Who, Escobeda? Yes, child. He sent me a letter under a flag of truce, as it were. The letter was written at the government town." "And he sent it--" "Back by the last steamer, Raquel. His people are not allowed to enter our home enclosure, as you know. I allowed one of the peons to take the letter. He brought it to the trocha. Any one can come there. It is public land." Raquel dropped the sugar; it rolled away. "Gil, Gil!" she said, "you terrify me. What shall we do?" She arose and went close to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders. "Escobeda! with his cruel ways, and more cruel followers--" "He is Spanish." "So are we, Gil, we are Spanish, too." "Yes, child, with the leaven of the west intermingled in our veins, its customs, and its manners." "Gil, dearest, I can never tell you what I suffered in that house. What fear! What overpowering dread! Whenever one of those lawless men so much as looked at me I trembled for the moment to come. And no one knows, Gil, what would have hap--happened unless he--had been reserving--me for--for a fate--worse than--" Her face was dyed with shame; she broke off, and threw herself upon her husband's breast. Her words became incoherent in a flood of tears. Silencio held his young wife close to his heart, he pressed his lips upon her wet eyelids, upon her disordered hair. He soothed her as a brave man must, forgetting his own anxiety in her terror. "My peons are armed, Raquel. They are well instructed. They are, I think, faithful, as much so, at least, as good treatment can make them. Even must they be bribed, they shall be. I have more money than Escobeda, Raquel. Even were you his daughter, you are still my wife. He could not touch you. As it is, he has no claim upon you. I am not afraid of him. He may do his worst, I am secure." "And I?" "Child! Are not you the first with me? But for you I should go out single-handed and try to shoot the coward down. But should I fail--and he is as good a shot as the island boasts--Raquel, who would care for you? I have thought it all out, child. My bullets are as good as Escobeda's; they shoot as straight, but I hope I have a better way; I have been preparing for your coming a long time, dear Heart, and my grandfather before me." Raquel looked up from her hiding-place on his breast. "Your grandfather, Gil, for me?" Silencio smiled down upon the upraised eyes. "Yes, for you, Raquel, had he but known it. Come! child, come! Dry your tears! Rest easy! You are safe." As Silencio spoke he shivered. "Your tea has gone to my nerves." He took the pretty pink teacup from the veranda rail, where he had placed it, and set it upon the table. He looked critically at the remains of the pale yellow decoction. "Really, Raquel, if you continue to give me such strong drinks, I shall have to eschew tea altogether." "I am so sorry. I put in very little, Gil." Silencio had brought a smile to her face. There is bravery in success of this kind, bringing a smile to the face of a beloved and helpless creature when a man's heart is failing him for fear. "Let us walk round to the counting-house," he said. He laid his arm about her shoulder, and together they strolled slowly to the side veranda, traversed its lengths, and descended the steps. They walked along the narrow path which led to the counting-house, and turned in at the enclosure. At the door they halted. Silencio took a heavy key from his pocket. Contrary to custom, he had kept the outer door locked for the past fortnight. "Our Don Gil is getting very grand with his lockings up, and his lockings up," grumbled Anicito Juan. "There were no lockings up, the good God knows, in the days of the old Señor." "And the good God also knows there were no lazy peons in the days of the old Señor to pry and to talk and to forget what they owe the family. When did the peon see meat in the days of the old Señor? When, I ask? When did you see fowl in a pot, except for the Señores? And now the best of sugar, and bull for the san-coche twice a week. And peons of the most useless can complain of such a master! Oh! Ta-la!" A storm of words from the family champion, Guillermina, fell as heavily upon the complainant as a volley of blows from a man. Anicito Juan ducked his head as if a hurricane were upon him, and rushed away to cover. Silencio tapped with his key upon the trunk of the dead palm tree which arose grand and straight opposite its mate at the side of the doorway. "Now watch, Raquel," he said. The tall trunk had sent back an answering echo from its hollow tube. Then there was a strange stir within the tree. Raquel looked upward. Numberless black beaks and heads protruded from the holes which penetrated the sides of the tall stem from the bottom to the top, as if to say, "Here is an inquisitive stranger. Let us look out, and see if we wish to be at home." Raquel laughed gleefully. She took the key from her husband's fingers, crossed the path, and tapped violently upon the barkless trunk of the second palm tree. As many more heads were thrust outward as in the first instance. Some of the birds left their nests in the dead tree, flew a little way off, and alighted upon living branches, to watch for further developments about the shell where they had made their homes. Others cried and chattered as they flew round and round the palm, fearing they knew not what. Raquel watched them until they were quiet, then tapped the tree again. As often as she knocked upon the trunk the birds repeated their manoeuvres. She laughed with delight at the result of each recurring invasion of the domestic quiet of the carpenter birds. So engaged was Raquel that she did not perceive the entrance of a man into the small enclosure of the counting-house, nor did she see Silencio walk to the gate with the stranger. The two stood there talking hurriedly, the sound of their voices quite drowned by the cries of the birds. As Raquel wearied of teasing the birds, she dropped her eyes to earth to seek some other amusement. A man was just disappearing round the corner of the paling. Silencio had turned and was coming back to her along the path which led from the gate to the door of the counting-house. She met him with smiles, her lips parted, her face flushed. "Who was that, Gil--that man? I did not see him come." "You have seen him go, dear Heart. Is not that enough?" Silencio spoke with an effort. His face was paler than it had been; Raquel's face grew serious. His anxiety was reflected in her face, as the sign of a storm in the sky is mirrored in the calm surface of a pool. "Tell me the truth, Gil. You have had a message from Escobeda?" "Not exactly a message, Raquel. That was one of my men. A spy, we should call him in warfare." "And he brings you news?" "Yes, he brings me news." "What news, Gil? What news? I am horribly afraid. If he should take me, Gil! Oh! my God! Gil, dear Gil! do not let him take me!" She threw herself against his breast, white and trembling. This was a horror too deep for tears. Silencio smiled, though the arm which surrounded her trembled. "He shall never take you from me, never! I am not afraid of that. But your fears unman me! Try to believe what I say, child. He shall never take you from me. Come! let us go in." He took the key from her hand, and unlocked and opened the outer door of the counting-house. He pushed her gently into the room, and followed her, closing and locking the door behind him. Then he opened the door of the second room, and ushered her into this safe retreat. While he was fastening the door of this room, Raquel was gazing about her with astonishment. Her colour had returned; Silencio's positive words had entirely reassured her. "I never knew of this pretty room, Gil. Why did you never tell me of it?" "I have hardly become accustomed to your being here, Raquel. There is much yet to learn about Palmacristi. Wait until I show you--" Silencio broke off with a gay laugh. "What! What will you show me, Gil? Ah! that delicate shade of green against this fresh, pure white! A little boudoir for me! How good you are to me! You have kept it as a surprise?" Silencio laughed again as she ran hither and thither examining this cool retreat. He wondered if she would discover the real nature of those walls. But the delicacy of Raquel prevented her from touching the hangings, or examining the articles in the room except with her eyes. "I spoke to you of my fortress, dear Heart." "Oh! Are you going to show me your fortress? Come! come! Let us go!" She took him by the arm and urged him to the further door. "We need not go to seek it, child; it is here." Silencio drew back the innocent-looking hangings and disclosed the steel plates which the Señor Don Juan Smit' had brought down from the es-States and had set in place. Silencio tapped the wall with his finger. "It is bullet-proof," he said. At the sight of this formidable-looking wall Raquel's colour vanished, as if it were a menace and not a protection, but not for long. Her cheek flushed again. She laughed aloud, her eyes sparkled. She was like a little child with a new toy, as she ran about and examined into the secrets of this innocent-looking fortress. "Gil! Gil!" she cried, "what a charming prison! How delightful it will be to hear Escobeda's bullets rattling on the outside while we sit calmly here drinking our tea." "Perhaps we can find something even more attractive in the way of refreshment." Silencio had not forgotten the cup which had neither inebriated nor cheered. "I see now that you have no windows. At first I wondered. How long should we be safe here? Could he break in the door?" Silencio bit his lip. "Not the outer door. And the door leading into the house--well, even Escobeda would hardly--I may as well tell you the truth, Raquel. Sit down there, child, and listen." The young wife perched herself upon the tall stool that stood before the white desk, her lips parted in a delicious smile. The rose behind her ear fell forward. She took it in her fingers, kissed it, and leaping lightly from her seat, ran to Silencio and thrust it through the buttonhole of his coat. Then she ran back and perched herself again upon her stool. "Go on," she said, "I am ready." And then, womanlike, not waiting for him to speak, she asked the question, "Is he coming to-night, Gil?" "I only wish that he would, for the darkness is our best friend. Escobeda expects an ambush, and my men are ready for it, but he will be here bright and early to-morrow. But be tranquil, I have sent for Beltran, Raquel. He will surely come. He never deserted a friend yet." "How many men can he muster, Gil?" anxiously asked Raquel. "Ten or twelve, perhaps. The fact that we are the attacked party, the men to hold the fortress, is in our favour. I still hope that the Coco will arrive in time. I hardly think that Escobeda will dare to use absolute violence--certainly not when he sees the force that I can gather at Palmacristi, and recognises the moral force of Beltran's being on my side." "Oh, Gil! Why did you not send for the yacht before this?" Raquel descended from her perch and crossed the floor to where Silencio stood. "Child! I had sent her away to Lambroso to prepare for just such a moment as this. It was the very day that your note came. She should be repaired by now. I cannot think what keeps her. I am sure that the repairs were not so very formidable." "Do you think that Escobeda could have stopped the Coco, delayed her--?" "No, hardly, though he may have seen the yacht over there. But after all, Raquel, we may as well go to the root of the matter now as later. It may be as well that the yacht is not here. If we should run away, we might have the fight to make all over again. However, we must act for the best when the time comes. Have no fear, Raquel, have no fear." But as Don Gil looked down at the little creature at his side, a horrible fear surged up within his own heart, and rose to his throat and nearly choked him. She still raised her eyes anxiously to his. "And your friend, your relative, that Don Beltran. You are sure that we may trust him, Gil?" "Beltran?" Silencio laughed. "I wish that I were as sure of Heaven as of Beltran's faithfulness. He will be here, never fear. He never deserted a friend yet. If you awake in the night at the sound of horses' hoofs, that will be Beltran coming over the hill; do not think of Escobeda. Go to sleep, and rest in perfect security. If you must think at all, let your thoughts be of my perfect faith in my friend, who will arrive before it is light. I wish that I were as sure of Heaven." XVI When Felisa had seen Agueda disappear below the hillside she turned to Beltran. "What is it, cousin?" asked Felisa, leaning heavily upon his shoulder. He put his arm round her. "You must get down, little lady. I have a summons from a friend; I must go home at once." "But if I choose not to go home?" said Felisa, pouting. "All the same, we must go," said Beltran. "But if I will not go?" "Then I shall have to carry you. You must go, Felisa, and I must, at once." For answer Felisa leant over and looked into the eyes that were so near her own. She laid her arm round Beltran's shoulders, the faint fragrance that had no name, but was rather a memory of carefully cared for _lingerie_, was wafted across his nostrils for the hundredth time. One could not imagine Felisa without that evanescent thing that was part of her and yet had no place in her contrivance, hardly any place in her consciousness. Beltran took her in his arms and lifted her to the ground. The tree, released, sprang in air. "Ah! there goes my stirrup. You must get it for me, Beltran." The gay scarf, having been utilized as a stirrup, had been left to shake and shiver high above them, with the tremors of the tree, which was endeavouring to straighten its bent bark and wood to their normal upright position. "I can send for that; we must not wait," said Beltran. "Send for it, indeed! Do you know that I got the scarf in Naples, cousin?--that a Princess Pallavicini gave it to me? Send for it, indeed! Do you think that I would have one of your grimy peons lay his black finger upon that scarf? You pulled the tree down before, bend it down again." For answer, Beltran leaped in air, trying to seize the scarf. He failed to reach it. Then he climbed the tree, and soon his weight had bent the slight young sapling to earth again. Felisa sat underneath a ceiba, watching Beltran's efforts. At each failure she laughed aloud. She was obviously regretful when finally he released the scarf and handed it to her. Beltran urged haste with Felisa, but by one pretext or another she delayed him. "Sit down under this tree, and tell me what is in that letter, cousin." Beltran stood before her. "It is from my old friend, Silencio; he needs me--" "I cannot hear, cousin; that mocking-bird sings so loud. Sit down here and tell me--" "It is from my friend, Silen--" "I cannot hear, cousin. You must sit here by me, and tell me all about it." Beltran threw himself upon the ground with a sigh. She forced his head to her knee, and played with the rings of his hair. "Now tell me, cousin, and then I shall decide the question for you." Beltran lay in bliss. Delilah had him within her grasp; still there was firmness in the tone which said: "I have already decided the question, Sweet. I promised him that I would go to him when he should need me. The time has come, and I must go to-night." "And leave me?" said Felisa, her delicate face clouding under this news. "And what shall I do if we are attacked while you are away?" "There is no question of your being attacked, little cousin. Silencio has an enemy, Escobeda, who, he thinks, will attack him to-morrow at daylight. In fact, Felisa, you may as well hear the entire story. Then you will understand why I must go. Silencio is a sort of cousin of mine. He has married the niece of as great a villain as ever went unhung, and he, the uncle, Escobeda, will attack Silencio to recover his niece. He is clearly without the law, for Silencio is married as fast as the padre can make him. But there may be sharp work; there is no time to get government aid, and I doubt if under the circumstances it would be forthcoming. So I must go to Silencio's help." Beltran made a motion as if to rise. Felisa now clasped her fingers round his throat. It was the first time that she had voluntarily made such a demonstration, and Beltran's pulses quickened under her touch. He relaxed his efforts, turned his face over in her lap, and kissed the folds of her dress. "Vida mia, vida mia! you will not keep me," he murmured through a mass of lace and muslin. "Indeed, that will I! Do you suppose that I am going to remain at that lonely casa of yours, quaking in every limb, dreading the sound of each footstep, while you are away protecting some one else? No, indeed! You had no right to ask us here, if you meant to go away and leave us to your cut-throat peons. I will not stay without you." "But my peons are not cut-throats, Felisa. They will guard you as their own lives, if I tell them that I must be gone." "Do you mean to go alone?" "No, I mean to take half a dozen good men with me, and leave the rest at San Isidro. There is no cause to protect you, Felisa, little cousin; but should you need protection, you shall have it." "I shall not need it, for I will not let you leave me, Beltran. Suppose that dreadful man, Escobeda, as you call him, becomes angry at seeing you on the side of your friend, and starts without your knowledge, and comes to San Isidro. He might take me away in the place of that niece of his, to force you to get the Señor Silencio to give his niece back to him." "What nonsense are you conjuring up, Felisa, child! That is too absurd! Escobeda's quarrel is with Silencio, not with me. Do not fear, little one." "And did I not hear you say that this Señor Escobeda hated your father, and also hated you?" "Yes, I did say that," admitted Beltran, reluctantly, as he struggled to rise without hurting her; "but he will be very careful how he quarrels openly with me. My friends in the government are as powerful as his own." "Well, you cannot go," said Felisa, decisively, "and let that end the matter." They went homeward slowly, much as they had come, Felisa delaying Beltran by some new pretext at every step. She kept a watchful eye upon him, to see that he did not drop her bridle rein and canter away at the cross roads. When they reached the picnic ground they found that Uncle Noé had departed, and Beltran must, perforce, see his cousin safely within the precincts of San Isidro. She did not leave the veranda after dismounting, but seated herself upon the top step, which was now shaded from the sun, and watched every movement of master and servants. Beltran had disappeared within doors, but he could not leave the place on foot. After a while he emerged from his room; behind him hobbled old Juana, carrying a small portmanteau. As he came toward the steps, Felisa arose and stood in his way. "Why do you go to-night?" she said. "Because he needs me at daybreak." "I need you more." Felisa looked out from under the fringe of pale sunshine. "You will not leave me, Beltran--cousin?" "It is only for a few hours, dear child." "Is this Silencio more to you than I am, then, Beltran?" "Good God! No, child, but I shall return before you have had your dip in the river." "I do not like to be left here alone, cousin. I want you--" "I _must_ go, and at once, Felisa. Silencio depends upon me. Good by, good by! You will see me at breakfast." Felisa arose. The time for pleading was past. "You shall _not_ go," said she, holding his sleeve with her small fingers. "I must!" He pulled the sleeve gently away. She clasped it again persistently. Then she said, resolutely and with emphasis, "So sure as you do, I take the first steamer for home." "You would not do that?" "That is my firm intention." "But Silencio needs me." "I need you more." Felisa withdrew her small hands from his sleeve and started down the veranda, toward her room. Her little shoes tick-tacked as she walked. He called after her, "Where are you going?" "To pack my trunks," said Felisa, "if you can spare that girl of yours--that Agueda--to help me." A throb of joy flew upward in the heart of Agueda, whose nervous ear was awake now to all sounds. "Do you really mean it, Felisa?" "I certainly do mean it," answered Felisa. "If you go away from me now, I will take the first steamer home. To-morrow, if one sails." "And suppose that I refuse you the horses, the conveyance, the servants--" Felisa turned and looked scornfully at Beltran. "I suppose that you are a gentleman first of all," she said. "You could not refuse." "No, I could not." "And you will remain?" Beltran dropped his head on his breast. "I will remain," he said. Beltran drew his breath sharply inward. "It is the first time," he added. "The first time?" She looked at him questioningly. "Did I speak aloud? Yes, the first time, Felisa, that I was ever false to a friend. He counts on me; I promised--" "Men friends, I suppose. What about women? I count on you, you have promised _me_--" Agueda threw herself face downward on her bed and stopped her ears with deep buried fingers. XVII Silencio passed the night in wakeful watching and planning. Raquel slept the innocent sleep of a careless child. Gil had promised that all would come out well. She trusted him. Very early in the morning the scouts whom Silencio had placed along the boundaries of his estate were called in, and collected within the patio of the casa. The outer shutters of the windows were closed and bolted; the two or three glass windows, which spoke of the innovation which civilization brings in its train, were protected by their heavy squares of plank. The doors were locked, and the casa at Palmacristi was made ready for a siege. Silencio awakened Raquel as the first streak of dawn crept up from the horizon. Over there to the eastward trembled and paled that opalescent harbinger which told her that day was breaking. She looked up with a child's questioning eyes. "It is time, sweetheart. Now listen, Raquel. Pack a little bag, and be ready for a journey." Raquel pouted. "Cannot Guillermina pack my bag?" "No, not even Guillermina may pack your bag. When it is ready, set it just inside your door. If you do not need it, so much the better. You may open your windows toward the sea, but not those that look toward Troja." Silencio flung wide the heavy shutter as he spoke. Raquel glanced out to sea. "Oh, Gil! where is the Coco?" "I wish I knew. She should be here." "Are we to go on board, Gil?" "Unfortunately, even should she arrive now, she is a half-hour too late. Now hasten, I will give you fifteen minutes, no more." "We might have gone out in the boat, Gil. Oh! why did you not call me?" Silencio pointed along the path to the right. Some of Escobeda's men, armed with machetes and shotguns, stood just at the edge of the forest, where at any moment they could seek protection behind the trees. They looked like ghosts in the early dawn. "And where is your friend, Beltran?" Silencio shook his head. "He cannot have received my message," he said. "And are the men of Palmacristi too great cowards to fight those wretches?" Silencio started as if he had been struck. He did not answer for a moment; then he said slowly: "Raquel, do you know what we should be doing were you not here?--I and my men?" He spoke coldly. Raquel had never heard these tones before. "We should be out there hunting those rascals to the death, no matter how they outnumber us; but I dare not trust you between this and the shore. My scouts tell me that they have kept up picket duty all night. Escobeda expected the Coco back this morning; at all events, he was ready for our escape in that way. The orders of those men are to take you at any cost. Should I be killed, your protection would be gone. I am a coward, but for you only, Raquel, for you only." The young wife looked down. The colour mounted to her eyes. She drew closer to her husband, but for once he did not respond readily to her advances. He was hurt to the core. "Get yourself ready at once," he said. "I will give you fifteen minutes, no more. We have wasted much time already." Raquel hardly waited for Silencio to close the door. She began to dress at once, her trembling fingers refusing to tie strings or push the buttons through the proper holes. As she hurriedly put on her everyday costume, she glanced out of the window to see if in the offing she could discover the Coco. The little yacht was at that very moment hastening with all speed toward her master, but a point of land on the north hid her completely from Raquel's view. "Although he will not own it, he evidently intends to carry me away in the yacht." Raquel smiled. "So much the better; it will be another honeymoon." When Silencio left Raquel, he ran out to the patio. On the way thither he met old Guillermina with a tray on which was her mistress's coffee. Upon the table in the patio veranda--that used by the servants--a hasty meal was laid. Silencio broke a piece of cassava bread and drank the cup of coffee which was poured out for him, and as he drank he glanced upward. Andres was standing on the low roof, on the inner side of the chimney of stone which carried off the kitchen smoke. He turned and looked down at Don Gil. "The Señor Escobeda approaches along the gran' camino, Señor." Silencio set down his cup and ran up the escalera. He walked out to the edge of the roof, and shaded his eyes with his hand. "Yes, Andres; it is true. And I see that he has some gentlemen with him." He turned and called down to the patio. "Ask Guillermina if her mistress has had her coffee." As he faced about a shot rang out. The bullet whistled near his head. "Go down, Señor, for the love of God!" said Andres. The company of horsemen were riding at a quick pace, and were now within hearing. Silencio waved his arm defiantly. "Ah! then it is you, Señor Escobeda! I see whom you have with you. Is that you, Pedro Geredo? Is that you, Marcoz Absalon? You two will have something to answer for when I report this outrage at the government town." Escobeda had ridden near to the enclosure. His head was shaking with rage. His earrings glittered in the morning sun, his bloodshot eyes flashed fire. He raised his rifle and aimed it at Silencio. "You know what I have come for, Señor. Send my niece out to me, and we shall retire at once." "How dare you take that name upon your lips?" Silencio was livid with rage. Another shot was fired. This time it ploughed its way through Silencio's sleeve. "Shall I kill him, Señor?" Andres brought his escopeta to his shoulder; he aimed directly at Escobeda. "I can kill him without trouble, Señor, and avoid further argument. It is as the Señor says!" Silencio looked anxiously seaward. No sign of the Coco! "Not until I give the word, Andres." And then to Escobeda, "I defy you! I defy you!" Shots began to fall upon the casa from the guns of Escobeda's impudent followers. Escobeda leaped his horse into the enclosure; his men followed suit. Silencio saw them ride in lawless insolence along the side of the building, and then heard the hollow ring of the horses' hoofs upon the veranda. He ran down the escalera. The mob were battering at the front door with the butt ends of their muskets. Raquel appeared in the patio, pale and terrified. "Gil! Gil!" she cried, "they are coming in! They will take me!" "Coward! Come out and fight," was the cry from the outside. "I am a coward for you, dear." He seized her wrists. "To the counting-house!" he whispered, "to the counting-house!" As they ran she asked, "Is there any sign of the Coco?" "None," answered Silencio; "but we could not reach her now." Together they flew through the hallways, across the chambers, where the blows were sounding loud upon the wooden wall of the house, upon the shutters, and the doors. They ran down the far passage and reached the counting-house door. Silencio stumbled over something near the sill. "Ah! your bag," he said. "I told Guillermina to set it there." He opened the door with the key held ready, and together they entered. Silencio tore the rug from the middle of the room, and disclosed to Raquel's amazed eyes a door sunken in the floor. He raised it by its heavy ring. A cold blast of air flowed upward into the warm interior. Raquel had thought the room cool before; now she shivered as if with a chill. Silencio pushed her gently toward the opening. "Go down," he said. Raquel gazed downward at the black depths. "I cannot go alone, Gil." She shuddered. "Turn round, dear Heart; put your feet on the rungs of the ladder, so! Ah! what was that?" Silencio glanced anxiously toward the open doorway. A heavy cracking of the stout house-door showed to what lengths Escobeda and his followers were prepared to venture. "Go, go! At the bottom is a lantern; light it if you can, while I close the trap-door." Raquel shrank at the mouth of this black opening, which seemed to yawn for them. The damp smell of mould, the cold, the gloom, were sudden and dreadful reminders of the tomb which this might become. She imagined it a charnel house. She dreaded to descend for fear that she should place her feet upon a corpse, or lay her fingers on the fleshless bones of a skeleton. "Courage, my Heart! Courage! Go down! Do not delay." At the kindness of his tone, Raquel, taking courage, began to descend. Terrible thoughts filled her mind. What if Escobeda and his men should discover their retreat, and cut off escape at their destination? What that destination was she knew not. Her eyes tried vainly to pierce the mysterious gloom. It was as if she looked into the blackness of a cavern. She turned and gazed for a moment back into the homelike interior which she was leaving, perhaps for all time. The loud blows upon the house-door were the accompaniment of her terrified thoughts. Raquel descended nervously, her trembling limbs almost refusing to support her. She reached the bottom of the ladder, and by the aid of the dim light from above, she found the lantern and the matches, which Silencio's thoughtful premonition had placed there, ready for her coming. As she lighted the lantern she heard a terrific crash. Silencio, with a last glance at the open door of the counting-house, which he had forgotten to close, now lowered the trap-door, and joined Raquel in the dark passage. He stood and listened for a moment. He heard a footstep on the floor above, and taking Raquel's hand in his, together they sped along the path which he hoped would lead her to safety. "Oh, child!" he said, in sharp, panting words, as they breathlessly pursued the obscure way, "for the first time I have given you proof of my love." Raquel turned to look at him. She saw his dark face revealed fitfully by the flashes of the lantern swinging from his hand. "Here am I flying from that villain, when I ache to seize him by the throat and choke the very breath of life out of him. Here am I running away, _running away!_--do you hear me, Raquel?--while they, behind there, are calling me coward. But should he take you--" Raquel stumbled and almost fell at these dreadful words. "Gil, Gil, dearest! do not speak of it; perhaps he is coming even now behind us." At the dreadful suspicion she fell against the wall, dragging him with her. She clung to him in terror, impeding his progress. "This is not the time to give way, Raquel." Silencio spoke sternly. "Call all your will to your aid now. Run ahead of me, while I stand a moment here." Raquel gathered all her resolution, and without further question fled again upon her way. Silencio waited a moment, facing the steps which they had just descended, and listened intently. But all that he heard was the sound of Raquel's flying feet. When he was convinced that no one was following them, he turned again and ran quickly after Raquel. He easily gained upon her. "I hear nothing, Raquel. Do not be so frightened." At these words the changeable child again regained confidence. "You have heard of a man building better than he knew," he said. He waved the lantern toward the sides of the tunnel. "There were wild tales of smuggling in the old days--" The colour had returned to Raquel's cheek. She laughed a little as she asked: "Did your grandfather smuggle, Gil?" "He was no better and no worse than other men; who knows what--we will talk later of that. Come!" He took her hand in his, and again together they fled along the passage. As no sound of pursuing feet came to their ears, confidence began to return. They were like two children running a race. Silencio laughed aloud, and as they got further from the entrance to the passage he whistled, he sang, he shouted! The sound of his laughter chilled the heart of Raquel with fear. "Gil," she pleaded, "they will hear you. They will know where we have gone." She laid her fingers on his lips as they ran, and he playfully bit them, as he had seen her close her teeth upon El Rey's. The passage was a long one. Raquel thought that it would never end. "Have we come more than two miles, Gil?" she asked. Raquel was not used to breathless flights in the dark. Silencio laughed. "Poor little girl! Does it seem so long, then? When we have reached the further end we shall have come just three hundred feet." At last, at last! the further door was reached. Silencio unlocked it and pushed it open. This was rendered somewhat difficult by the sand which had been blown about the entrance since last he had brushed it away. A little patient work, and the two squeezed themselves through the narrow opening. "Hark! I hear footsteps," whispered Raquel, her face pale with renewed terror. Silencio stood still and listened. "You are right," he said; "they are behind us. Take the lantern and hold it for me close to the keyhole." He began pushing the door into place. She took the light from him and held it as he directed. "Hold it steady, child. Steady!--Do not tremble so! I must see! I _must!_ steady!" Raquel's hand shook as if with a palsy. The footsteps came nearer. To her they sounded from out the darkness like the approach of death. "Hasten!" she whispered, "hasten!" She held the lantern against the frame of the solid door and pressed her shoulder against it, that her nervousness should not agitate the flame, whispering "Hasten!" the while to Silencio, whose trembling fingers almost refused to do this most necessary work. At last, with a bang and a sharp twist of the key, the heavy door was closed and locked. "Do you see an iron bar anywhere, Raquel, in the bushes there on the left?" She ran to the side of the tunnel, which still arched above them here. Silencio was close to her, and at once laid his hand upon the strong piece of metal. He sprang back to the door, and slipped the bar into the rust-worn but still faithful hasps. Then he turned, seized her hand again, and led her hurriedly along between the high banks. It was still dark where they stood, so overgrown was the deep cut, but Silencio knew the way. He took the lantern from Raquel's hand, extinguished it, and set it upon the ground. "We shall need this no more," he said. The trees and vines growing from the embankment, which nearly closed overhead, were interwoven like a green basket-work, and almost shut out the daylight. Silencio took Raquel's hand in his and led her along the narrow path. The light became stronger with every step. Suddenly Raquel stopped short. "What was that, Gil?" "What, dearest?" "That! Do you not hear it? It sounds like a knocking behind us." Silencio stood still for a moment, listening to the sounds. "Yes," he said at last, "I do hear it. It is some of those villains pursuing us. Hasten, Raquel. When they find the door is closed, they will return to the casa to cut off our retreat." Raquel found time to say: "And the poor servants left behind, will they--" "They are safe, child. You are the quarry they seek. Escobeda does not exchange shots to no purpose." A few more steps, and Silencio parted the thicket ahead. Raquel passed through in obedience to his commanding nod, and emerged into the blinding glare of a tropical morning. Beneath her feet was the hot, fine sand of the seashore. A few yards away a small boat was resting, her stern just washed by the ripples. Raquel turned and looked backward. The mass of trees and vines hid the bank from view, the bank in its turn concealed the casa. As she stood thus she heard again a slow knocking, but much fainter than before. It was like the distant sound of heavy blows. "Thank God! they are knocking still," said Silencio. "Run to the boat, child, quickly." Raquel shrank with fear. "They will see me from the house," she said. "You cannot see the beach from the casa; have you forgotten? Run, run! For the boat! the boat!" Obeying him, she sped across the sand to the little skiff. "The middle seat!" he cried. He followed her as swiftly, and with all his strength pushed the light weight out from the shore, springing in as the bow parted with the beach. The thrust outward brought them within sight of the house. For a moment they were not discovered, and he had shipped the oars and was rowing rapidly toward the open sea before they were seen. It required a moment for the miscreants to appreciate the fact that the two whom they had thought hidden in the house had escaped in some unknown way. Then a cry of rage went up from many throats, and one man raised his rifle to his shoulder, but the peon next him threw up the muzzle, and the shot flew harmless in the air. It is one thing to fire at the bidding of a master, on whose shoulders will rest all the blame, and quite another to aim deliberately at a person who is quite within his rights--you peon, he gran' Señor. Escobeda was nowhere to be seen. There was no one to give an order, to take responsibility. The force was demoralized. The men formed in a small group, and watched the little skiff as it shot out to sea, impelled by the powerful arm and will of Silencio. As he rowed Silencio strained his eyes northward, and perceived what was not as yet visible from the shore. He saw the Coco just rounding the further point--distant, it is true, but safety for Raquel lay in her black and shining hull. When old Guillermina saw Don Gil and the Señora retreat from the patio and cross the large chamber, she knew at once their errand. Had she not lived here since the days of the old Don Oviedo? What tales could she not have told of the secret passage to the sea! But her lips were sealed. Pride of family, the family of her master, was the padlock which kept them silent. How many lips have been glued loyally together for that same reason! As Guillermina crossed the large chamber she heard the blows raining upon the outer shutters and the large door. She heard Escobeda's voice calling, "Open! open!" as he pounded the stout planking with the butt end of his rifle. The firing had ceased. Even had it not, Guillermina knew well that the shots were not aimed at her. She had withstood a siege in the old Don Oviedo's time, and again in the time of the old Don Gil, and from the moment that Silencio had brought his young wife home she had expected a third raid upon the casa. Guillermina walked in a leisurely manner. She passed through the intervening passages, and found the counting-house door open. This she had hardly expected. She joyously entered the room and closed the door. Then her native lassitude gave way to a haste to which her unaccustomed members almost refused their service. She quickly drew the rug over the sunken trap-door, smoothed the edges, and rearranged the room, so that it appeared as if it had not lately been entered. It was her step overhead which Don Gil and Raquel had heard at first, and which had caused them so much uneasiness. As Guillermina turned to leave the room, she heard a crash. Escobeda, having failed to break in the great entrance door, had, with the aid of some of his men, pried off a shutter. The band came pouring into the house and ran through all the rooms, seeking for the flown birds. As Guillermina opened the door of the counting-house to come out, key in hand, she met Escobeda upon the threshold. His face was livid. He held his machete over his head as if to strike. "So this is their hiding-place," he screamed in her ear. He rushed past her, and entered the counting-house. Its quiet seclusion and peaceful appearance filled him with astonishment, and caused him to stop short. But he was not deceived for long. He tore away the green hangings, hoping to find a door. Instead a wall of iron stared him in the face. He ran all round the room, feeling of the panels or plates, but nowhere could he discover the opening which he sought. Each plate was firmly screwed and riveted to its neighbour. He turned and shook his fist in Guillermina's face. "You shall tell me where they have gone," he howled, in fury, and then poured forth a volley of oaths and obscenities, such as no one but a Spaniard could have combined in so few sentences. Guillermina faced him, her hands on her fat hips. "The Señor should not excite himself. It is bad to excite oneself. There was the woodcutter over at La Floresta--" "To hell with the woodcutter! Where is that Truhan?" Then Escobeda began to curse Guillermina. He cursed her until he foamed at the mouth, his gold earrings shaking in his ears, his eyes bloodshot, his lips sending flecks of foam upon her gown. He cursed her father and her mother, her grandfather and her grandmother, her great-grandfather and great-grandmother, which was quite a superfluity in the way of cursing, as Guillermina had no proof positive that she had ever possessed more than one parent. He cursed her brothers and sisters, her aunts, her uncles, her cousins, her nephews and nieces. "The Señor wastes some very good breath," remarked Guillermina in a perfectly imperturbable manner. "I have none of those people." Escobeda turned on her in renewed frenzy. The vile words rolled out of his mouth like a stream over high rocks. He took a fresh breath and cursed anew. As he had begun with her ancestors, so he continued with her descendants, the children whom she had borne, and those whom she was likely to bear. "The good God save us!" ejaculated old Guillermina. And still Escobeda cursed on, his fury now falling upon her relationships in all their ramifications, and in all their branches. "Ay de mi! The gracious Señor wastes his time. If the gracious Señor should rest a little, he could start with a fresh breath." As Guillermina spoke, she rearranged the curtain folds, smoothed and shook the silken pillows, and laid them straight and in place. She kept her station as near the middle of the sunken door as possible. Again he thundered at her the question as to where the fugitives had found refuge. Guillermina, brave outwardly, was trembling inwardly for the safety of her beloved Don Gil. The young Señora was all very well, she might grow to care for her in time, but her little Gil, whom she had taken from the doctor's arms, whom she had nursed on her knee with her own little Antonio, who lay under the trees on the hillside yonder--she must gain time. "Does not the Señor know that the Señor Don Gil Silencio-y-Estrada and the little Señora have gone to heaven?" Escobeda stopped short in his vituperation. "Dead? He was afraid, then! He killed her." Escobeda laughed cruelly. "If I have lost her, so has he." "Ay, ay, they have flown away, flown to heaven, the Señores. The good God cares for his own. I wonder now who cares for the Señor Escobeda!" With the scream of a wild beast he flew at her, and she, fearing positive injury, sprang aside. Escobeda's spur caught in the rug and tore it from its place on the floor. He stumbled and fell, pulling the green and white carpet after him. Concealment was no longer possible; the trap-door was laid bare. With a fiendish cry of delight he flew at the ring in the sunken door. "To hell! to hell!" he shouted. "That is where they have gone; not to heaven, but to hell." Escobeda had heard rumours all his life of the secret passage to the sea--the passage which had never been located by the curious. At last the mystery was solved. He raised the door, and without a word to Guillermina, plunged into the black depths. The absence of a light was lost sight of by him in his unreasoning rage. Almost before his fingers had disappeared from view, Guillermina had lowered the trap-door into its place in the most gentle manner. If one is performing a good action, it is best to make as little noise about it as possible. As she fitted the great iron bar across the opening, there came a knocking upon the under side of the iron square. "Give me a light! A light! you she-devil! A light, I say." Guillermina went softly to the door of the counting-house and closed it to prevent intrusion. She could hear Escobeda's followers running riotously all over the casa. Her time would be short, that she knew. She knelt down on the floor and put her lips close to the crack in the trap-door. "And he would curse my mother, would the Señor! And my little Antonio, who lies buried on the hill yonder." "A light!" he shouted, "a light! she-devil, a light, I say!" "May the Señor see no light till he sees the flames of hell," answered Guillermina. "The Señor must pardon me, but that is my respectful wish." She smoothed the innocent-looking carpet in place, replaced the chairs, and went out, locking the door after her. "Let us hope," said she quietly, "that my muchacho has barred the door at the further end of the passage." Looking for a wide crack, she found it, and dropped the key through it. This is why the disused passage is always called Escobeda's Walk. Sometimes, when Don Gil and the little Señora sit and sip the straw-coloured tea at five o'clock of an afternoon, the teapot, grown more battered and dingy, the lid fitting less securely than of yore, the Señora sets down her cup, and taking little Raquel upon her knee, holds her close to her heart, and says: "Do you hear that knocking, Gil? There is certainly a rapping on the counting-house floor." "I hear nothing," answers Silencio, as he gives a large lump of sugar to the grandson of the brown lizard. And for that matter, there is an ancient proverb which says that "None are so deaf as those who will not hear." XVIII Uncle Adan had been taken ill. He was suffering from the exhalations of the swamp land through which he must travel to clear the river field. He had that and the cacao patch both on his mind. There was a general air of carelessness about the plantation of San Isidro which had never obtained before since Agueda's memory of the place. The peons and workmen lounged about the outhouses and stables, lazily doing the work that was absolutely needed, but there was no one to give orders, and there was no one who seemed to long for them. It appeared to be a general holiday. Uncle Adan lay and groaned in his bed at the further end of the veranda, and wondered if the cacao seed had spoiled, or if it would hold good for another day. When Agueda begged him to get some sleep, or to take his quinine in preparation for the chill that must come, he only turned his face to the wall and groaned that the place was going to rack and ruin since those northerners had come down to the island. "I have seen the Señor plant the cacao," said Agueda. "He had the Palandrez and the Troncha and the Garcia-Garcito with him. He ordered, and they worked. I went with them sometimes." Agueda sighed as she remembered those happy days. Uncle Adan turned his aching bones over, so that he could raise his weary eyes to Agueda's. "That is all true," he said. "The Señor can plant, no Colono better. But one cannot plant the cacao and play the guitar at one and the same time." Agueda hung her head as if the blame of right belonged to her. "You act as if I blamed you, and I do," said Uncle Adan, shivering in the preliminary throes of his hourly chill. "You who have influence over the Señor! You should exert it at once. The place is going to rack and ruin, I tell you!" Agueda turned and went out of the door. She was tired of the subject. There was no use in arguing with Uncle Adan, either with regard to the quinine or the visitors. She went to her own room, and took her hat from the peg. When again she came out upon the veranda, she had a long stick in one hand and a pail in the other. Then she visited the kitchen. "Juana," she said, "fill this pail with water and tell Pablo and Eduardo Juan that I need them at once." She waited while this message was sent to the recalcitrant peons, who lounged lazily toward the House at her summons. "De Señorit' send fo' me?" asked Pablo. "I sent for both of you," said Agueda. "Why have you done no cacao planting to-day?" "Ain' got no messages," replied Pablo, who seemed to have taken upon himself the rôle of general responder. "You know very well that it is the messages that make no difference. Bring your machetes, both of you," ordered Agueda, "and come with me to the hill patch." For answer the peons drew their machetes lazily from their sheaths. "I knew that you had them, of course. Come, then! I am going to the field. Where is the cacao, Pablo?" "Wheah Ah leff 'em," answered Pablo. "And where is that?" "In de hill patch, Seño'it'." "And did some one, perhaps, mix the wood ashes with them?" Pablo turned to Eduardo Juan, open-mouthed, as if to say, "Did you?" Agueda also turned to Eduardo Juan. "Well! well!" she exclaimed impatiently, "were the wood ashes mixed, then, with the cacao seeds?" Eduardo Juan shifted from one foot to the other, looked away at the river, and said, "Ah did not ogsarve." "You did not observe. Oh, dear! oh, dear! Why can you never do as the Señor tells you? What will become of the plantation if you do not obey what the Señor tells you?" "Seño' ain' say nuttin'," said Eduardo Juan, with a sly smile. Agueda looked away. "I am not speaking of the Señor. I mean the Señor Adan," said she. "You know that he has charge of all; that he had charge long before--come, then! let us go." As Agueda descended the steps of the veranda, she heard Beltran's voice calling to her. She turned and looked back. Don Beltran was standing in the open door of the salon. His pleasant smile seemed to say that he had just been indulging in agreeable words, agreeable thoughts. "Agueda," said Beltran, "bring my mother's cross here, will you? I want to show it to my cousin." Agueda turned and came slowly up the steps again. She went at once to her own room and opened the drawer where the diamonds lay in their ancient case of velvet and leather. The key which opened this drawer hung with the household bunch at her waist. The drawer had not been opened for some time, and the key grated rustily in the lock. Agueda opened the drawer, took the familiar thing in her hand, and returning along the veranda, handed it to Beltran. Then she ran quickly down the steps to join the waiting peons. But Felisa's appreciative scream as the case was opened reached her, as well as the words which followed. "And you let that girl take charge of such a magnificent thing as that! Why, cousin, it must mean a fortune." "Who? Agueda?" said Beltran. "I would trust Agueda with all that I possess. Agueda knew my mother. She was here in my mother's time." The motherly instinct, which is in the ascendant with most women, arose within the heart of Agueda. "Come, Palandrez, come, Eduardo Juan," said she. They could hardly keep pace with her. If there was no one else to work for him while he dallied with his pretty cousin, she would see that his interests did not suffer. "Why, then, do you not go up there in the cool of the evening, Palandrez? You could get an hour's work done easily after the sun goes behind the little rancho hill." "It is scairt up deyah," said Palandrez. "De ghos' ob de ole Señora waak an' he waak. Ain' no one offer deyah suvvices up on de hill when it git 'long 'bout daak." Agueda went swiftly toward the hill patch, the peons sulkily following her. They did not wish to obey, but they did not dare to rebel. Arrived at her destination, she turned to Pablo, who was in advance of Eduardo Juan. "Where, then, is the pail of seed, Pablo?" Pablo, without answer, began to send his eyes roaming over and across the field. Eduardo Juan, preferring to think that it was no business of his, leaned against a tree-trunk and let his eyes rest on the ground at his feet. As these two broken reeds seemed of no practical use, Agueda began to skirt the field, and soon she came upon the pail, hidden behind a stump. "Here it is, Eduardo Juan," she called. "Begin to dig your holes, you and Pablo, and I will--_oh!_" This despairing exclamation closed the sentence, and ended all hope of work for the day. Agueda saw, as she spoke, that the pail swarmed with ants. She pushed her stick down among the shiny brown seed, and discovered no preventive in the form of the necessary wood ashes. The seed was spoiled. "It is no use, Pablo," she said. "Come and see these ants, you that take no interest in the good of the Señor." She turned and walked dejectedly down the hill. Pablo turned to Eduardo Juan. He laughed under his breath. "De Seño' taike no intrus' in hees own good." "Seed come from Palmacristi; mighty hard git seed dis time o' yeah," answered Eduardo Juan, with a hopeful chuckle. If no more seed were to be had, then no more planting could be done. Later in the evening, as Agueda went toward the kitchen, she passed by Felisa's doorway. A glimpse was forced upon her of the interior of the pretty room and its occupant. Felisa was seated before the mirror. She had donned a gown the like of which Agueda had never seen. The waist did not come all the way up to the throat, but was cut out in a sort of hollow, before and behind, for Agueda saw the shoulders which were toward her, quite bare of covering, and in the mirror she caught the reflection of maidenly charms which in her small world were not a part of daily exhibit. Agueda stopped suddenly. "Oh, Señorita!" she exclaimed under her breath. "Does the Señorita know that her door is open? Let me close it, and the shutter on the other side. I will run round there in a minute. Some one might see the Señorita; people may be passing along the veranda at any moment." Felisa gave a shrill and merry laugh. "People might see! Why, my good girl, don't you know that is just why we wear such gowns, that people may see? Come and fasten this thing. Isn't it lovely against my neck?" Agueda could not but admit to her secret soul that it was lovely against Felisa's neck. But she coloured as she entered and closed the door carefully behind her. She had seen nothing like this, except in those abandoned picture papers that came sometimes from the States, or from France, to Don Beltran, and then, as often as not, she hid them that she might not see him looking at them. She could not bear to have him look at them. She felt-- "Open the door, that's a good girl! There! Are you sure that the catch is secure? These beauties were my aunt's. See how they become me. I would not lose them for the world. Oh! had I only had them before." "Are--are--they--has the Señor given them perhaps--to--to--" "Well, not exactly, Agueda, good girl; but some day, who knows--there!" Felisa made a pirouette and sank in a low curtsey on the bare floor, showing just the point of a pink satin toe. "See how they glitter, even in the light of these candles. Imagine them in a ball-room--Agueda, and me in them! Now I must go and show my cousin. Open the door. Do you not hear--open the--" "The Señorita is never going to show herself to the Señor in such a gown as that! What will the Señor say? The Señorita will never--" But Felisa had pushed past Agueda, and was half-way down the veranda. The thoughts that flashed through Agueda's mind were natural ones. She had honestly done her best to keep the Señorita from disgracing herself in the Señor's eyes, but she would have her way. She had gone to her own destruction. There was a quickening of Agueda's pulses. Ah! Now he would turn to her again. He could not bear any sign of immodesty in a woman. He had often said to Agueda that that was her chief charm, her modesty. He had called her "Little Prude," and laughed when she blushed. Was it to be wondered at that Agueda rejoiced at Felisa's coming defeat, at her imminent discomfiture, the moment that Beltran should see her? She stood in the doorway of Felisa's room, watching the fairy-like figure as it lightly danced like a will-o'-the-wisp down the dark veranda's length, flashing out like a firefly as it passed an opening where there was a light within, going out in the darkness between the doors, still keeping up its resemblance to the _ignis fatuus_. Before Felisa reached the salon Beltran came out to discover why his charmer had absented herself for so long a time. Agueda caught the look in his eyes, as he stood, almost aghast at the meretricious loveliness of the little creature before him. He gazed and gazed at her. Was it in disgust? Alas! no. Poor Agueda! Rapture shone from his eyes. He opened his arms. But Felisa eluded him and danced round the corner of the veranda. "You pretty thing! You pretty, you lovely, you adorable thing!" she heard Beltran exclaim, as utterly fascinated, he followed the small siren in her tantalizing flight. XIX That succession of events designated as Time passed rapidly or slowly, as was the fate of the beneficiary or the sufferer from its flight or its delay. In some cases the milestones seemed leagues apart, in others but a short foot of space separated them. To Beltran the hours of the night dragged slowly by, when, as was often the case, he lay half awake in a delirious dream of joy, longing for dawn to break the gloom that he might come again within the magic of that presence which had changed the entire world for him. To Agueda the hours of the night flew on wings. As she heard the crowing of the near and distant cocks answering each other from coloñia or river patch, or conuco, she sighed to herself. "It is nearly four o'clock, soon it will be five, then six, and the next stroke, oh, God! seven!" For then would the cheery voice which could no longer wait call from the veranda, "How are you this morning, little cousin?" and the answer from that dainty interior would be, "Quite well, Cousin Beltran, if the cocks could be persuaded not to roost directly under the floor of my room, and keep me awake half the night." Then Agueda must attend to the early breakfast. Trays must be sent to the rooms of the visitors, and for two hours would the Señor impatiently pace the veranda or the home enclosure, awaiting the reappearance of his goddess. There was no sign of the wearing effect of sleeplessness on the shell-like face when that important little lady appeared upon the veranda, clothed in some wonderful arrangement of diaphanous material, which was to Beltran's vision as the stage manager's dream of the unattainable in costume. With the joyous greeting there was offered a jasmine or allemanda flower or bougainvellia bracht for the girdle bouquet, which often Beltran assisted in arranging, as was a cousin's right; and in return, if Felisa was very good-natured, there followed the placing of a corresponding bud or blossom in Beltran's buttonhole by those small, plump fingers, loaded down with their wealth of shining rings. It was at this time that Agueda received a shock which, as a preliminary to her final fate, more than all conveyed to her mind how things were going. It was early morning. Juana had brought to Agueda's room the fresh linen piled high in the old yellow basket. Together they laid the articles on chairs and table, selecting from the pile those that needed a few stitches. Agueda sat herself down by the window to mend. She took up her needle and threaded it, then let her hands fall in her lap, as had become her custom of late. Her head was turned to the grove outside, and her gaze rested among the leaves and penetrated their vistas without perceiving anything in grove or trocha. She had heard Beltran moving about in his room, but he had thrown the door wide and gone whistling down the veranda toward that latest goal of his hopes. She heard the gay greeting, and the distant faint response, then a laugh at some sally of fun. Agueda looked wearily at the pile of starched cleanliness, and took up her work again. How hateful the drudgery seemed! Before this--in other days--time was--when-- It was a homely bit of sewing, a shirt of the Señor's, which needed buttons. This recalled to Agueda that the last week's linen had been neglected by her. It had been put away as it came from Juana's hands. With sudden decision she determined now to face the inevitable, to accept the world as it had become to her, all in a moment, as it were. Agueda arose and dropped the linen from her lap to the floor. She had never been taught careful ways. All that she knew of such things had come to her by intuition, and her action showed the dominant strain of her blood--not the exactness of a trained servant, but the carelessness of a petted child of fortune. She stepped over the white mass at her feet and went to the door that led from her room to Beltran's. She walked as one who has come to a sudden determination. Of late she had not been there, except to perform some such service as the present moment demanded. She seized the knob in her hand, and turned it round, pressing the weight of her young body against the door. Instead of bursting hurriedly into the room, as was her wont, she found the door unyielding. Again she tried it, twisting the knob this way and that. She was about to call upon one of the men to come to her aid, as the door had stuck fast, when suddenly she stopped, standing where the exertion had left her. Her colour fled, her lips grew bloodless, she leaned dizzy and sick against the door. On the floor, at her feet, she had caught sight of a small shaving that had pushed itself through the crack underneath. She put her hand to her side as if a physical pain had seized her. She ran to the door of her room which opened upon the outer and more secluded veranda. Passing through this, she walked with trembling steps to the doorway of Beltran's room. She could hear his gay badinage down at the end of the house, where she knew that Felisa was sipping her chocolate inside her room, while he called impatiently to know when she would be ready for the excursion of the day. Agueda entered Beltran's room and walked swiftly to the communicating door. Ah! it was as she had feared. Some shavings upon the floor, and a new bolt, put there she knew not when, perhaps when she was up in the field on the previous day, attested to the verity of her suspicion. What did Beltran fear? That, remembering the old-time love and confidence, she should take advantage of it and of her near proximity, and when all the coloñia slept, go to him and endeavour to recall those past days, try to rekindle the love so nearly dead? Nearly dead! It must be quite so, when he could remind her thus cruelly, if silently, that a new order of things now reigned at San Isidro. Agueda appreciated, now perhaps for the first time fully, that her life had changed, that she had become now as the Nadas and the Anetas of this world. She closed her lips firmly as this thought came to her. Well, if it were so, she must bear it. Like Aneta, she had not been "smart," but unlike the Anetas of this life, she would learn something from her misfortune, and be henceforth self-respecting, so far as this great and overwhelming blow would allow. Never again should Beltran feel that he had the right to bestow upon her a touch or a caress, however delicate, however gentle. They were separated now for good and all. She saw it as she had never seen it before. All along she had been hoping against hope. She had constantly remembered Beltran's words that first week of Felisa's stay: "They will be going home soon, and then all will be as before." She saw now that Beltran had deceived himself, even while he was deceiving her. He could not turn them out, as he had once said to her, but he had now no wish to turn them out, nor did they wish to go. He was lost to her, but even so, with the memory of what had been, Beltran should respect her. He should find that, as she was not his chattel, she would not be his plaything while he made love to that other respectable girl, who would tolerate no advances which were not preceded by a ceremony and the blessing of the church. Foolish, foolish Agueda! Had she been "smart," she might have welcomed Felisa as her cousin, instead of appearing as the slighted thing she now felt herself to be. And then, again, her soul rebelled at such a view of the case. His wife! What humiliation were hers to be Beltran's wife, and see what she saw now every day, the proof of his love for this fair-haired cousin of his, while she, his wife, looked on helpless. Then, indeed, would she have been in his power. Now she was free--free from him, free to respect herself, even in her shame. As Felisa has been likened to a garden escape in point of looks, so might one liken Agueda to a garden escape in point of what people designate as morals. Agueda had never heard of morals as such. She had had no teaching, only the one warning which Nada had given her, and that, she considered, she had followed to the letter. Agueda had stood intrenched within a garden whose soil was virtue. She did not gaze with curiosity, nor did she care to look, over the palings into the lane which ran just outside. She stood tall and splendid as a young hollyhock, welcoming the sun and the dew that Heaven sent down upon her proud young head. But though fate had surrounded her with this environment, whose security she had never questioned, her inheritance had placed her near the palings. Those other great white flowers that stood in the middle of the garden could never come to disaster. But Agueda, unwittingly, had been thrust to the wall. Love's hand had pushed itself between the palings of the fence that surrounded her garden and had bent the proud stalk and drawn it through into the outer lane. While Beltran showed his love for her, she did not feel that she had escaped from her secure stand inside. Her roots were strong and embedded in the soil of virtue, and wanton love would never find a place within her thoughts or feelings. She did not realise the loss of dignity. "All for love," had been her text and creed. The remedy, if remedy were needed, had been close at hand. It had been offered her. She had only to stretch out her hand and take it, and draw back within her garden, showing no bruise or wound, but happy in that she could still rear herself straight and proud among the company of uninjured stalks. But though the remedy had been at hand, Agueda had not grasped it with due haste. Unmindful of self, she had allowed the opportunity to escape her, and now she could not spring back among those other blooms whose freshness had never been tarnished. Alas! She found herself still in the muddy lane. She had been plucked and worn and tossed down into the rut along the roadside, where she must forever lie, limp and faded. What boots it to dwell upon the sufferings of a breaking heart? Hearts must ache and break, just as souls must be born and die, for thus fate plans, and the world goes on the same. Things went on the same at the plantation of San Isidro. Don Noé made no motion to leave it, and Felisa was happier than she had ever been, and so for once was in accord with her father. Beltran dreaded from day to day the signal for their departure, but it did not come. Uncle Adan moved among all these happenings with a soul not above cacao seed and banana suckers. He kept tally at the wagon-train or in the field, and if he thought of Agueda at all it was with a shrug of the shoulders and the passing reflection: "She is as the women of her race have been. It is their fate." For she was surely of that race, though only tradition and not appearance was witness to the fact. As for Agueda, no one about her could say what she felt or thought. She remained by herself. What she must see, that she saw. That which she could keep from knowing, she dulled her mind to receive, and refused to understand or to accept. She endeavoured to become callous to all impressions. One would have said that she did not care, that her passing fancy for Beltran, as well as his for her, had died a natural death. And yet, so contradictory is woman's nature, when placed in such straits as those which now overwhelmed her, that sometimes a fierce curiosity awoke within her, and then she would pass, to all appearance on some household errand bent, within the near neighbourhood of Beltran and his cousin. They, grown careless, as custom encourages, always gave her something to weep over. Then for a time she avoided them, only to return again to her foolish habit of inquiry. Agueda grew deathly in pallor, and thin and weary looking. Her face had lost its brightness. Gaze where she would, she saw nothing upon her horizon but dark and lowering clouds. Sometimes she opened her drawer to look for a moment at the sewing, discarded now these many weeks, but she did no more than glance at it. "It will not be needed," she said to herself, with prophetic determination. She might have said with Mildred: "I was so young. I loved him so. I had no mother. God forgot me, and I fell." As for pardon, Agueda did not think of that. Consciously she had committed no sin. Not that she ever argued the matter out with herself. She would never have thought of continuing Mildred's plaint, and saying, "There may be pardon yet," although she felt, if she did not give expression to the feeling in words, "All's doubt beyond. Surely, the bitterness of death is past." There could be no "blot on the escutcheon" of Agueda. She had no escutcheon, as had Browning's heroine, though perhaps some drops of blood as proud coursed through her veins. She was not introspective. She did not reason nor argue with herself about Beltran's treatment of her. It was only that suddenly the light had become darkness, the sun had grown black and cold. There was no more joy in life, everything had finished for her. Truly, the bitterness of death was past. XX There came an evening when there were mutterings up among the hills. The lightning pranked gayly about the low-hanging clouds. Occasionally a report among the far-distant peaks broke the phenomenal stillness. Felisa lounged within the hammock which swung across the veranda corner. It was very dark, the only lights being those gratuitous ones displayed by the cucullas as they flew or walked about by twos or threes. At each succeeding flash of lightning Felisa showed increased nervousness. Her hand sought Beltran's, and he took it in his and held it close. "See, Felisa! I will get the guitar, and we will sing. We have not sung of late." Felisa clasped her hands across her eyes and burst into tears. Beltran was kneeling at her feet in an instant. "What is it, my Heart? What is it? Do not sob so." "I am afraid, afraid!" sobbed Felisa. "All is so mysterious. There are queer noises in the ground! Hear those hissing, rushing sounds! Cousin! cousin! What is it?" "You are nervous, little one. We often have such storms in the mountains. It may not come this way at all. See, here is the guitar." He patted the small fingers lying within his own, then stretched out his hand for the guitar, hanging near. He swept his fingers across the strings. "What shall we sing?" he asked, with a smile in his voice. Volatile as a child, believing that which she wished to believe, Felisa sat upright at the first strain of music. She laughed, though the drops still stood upon her cheeks, and hummed the first line of "La Verbena de la Paloma." "I will be Susana," she said, "and you shall be Julian. Come now, begin! 'Y á los toros de carabanchel,'" she hummed. The faint light from the lantern hanging in the comidor showed to Felisa the look in Beltran's eyes as he bent toward her. "I do not like you, my little Susana," he said, bending close to her shoulder, "because you flout me, and flirt with me, and break my poor heart all to little bits. Still, we will sing together once more." "Once more? Why do you say once more, cousin?" asked Felisa, apprehensively. A shadow had settled again over her face. "Did I? I do not know. Come now, begin." His voice was lowered almost to a whisper, as he sang the first lines of the seductive, monotonous little Spanish air. The accompaniment thrilled softly from the well-tuned strings. "Donde vas con mantón manila, Donde vas con vestido chiné," he sang. Her high soprano answered him: "A lucirme y á ver la verbena, Y á meterme en la cama después." Beltran resumed: "Porqué no has venido conmigo Cuando tanto te lo supliqué." "'Lo sup--li--que,'" he repeated, with slow emphasis. Felisa laughed, shook her head coquettishly, and answered as the song goes. Then, "'Quien es ese chico tan guapo,'" sang Julian. "Who is he, little Felisa? Is there any whom I need fear?" He dropped his hand from the strings, and seized the small one so near his own. "I know a great many young men, cousin, but I will not own that there is a guapo among them. And this I tell you now, that I shall go to la Verbena with whom I will, if ever I return to Sunny Spain." "Y a los toros de carabanchel," she sang again defiantly, her thin head-notes rising high and clear. Was there no memory in Beltran's mind for the contralto voice which had sung the song so often on that very spot--a voice so incomparably sweeter that he who had heard the one must wonder how Beltran could tolerate the other. Agueda was seated half-way down the veranda alone. She could not sit with them, nor did she wish to, nor was she accustomed to companionship with the serving class. She endeavoured to deafen her ears to the sound of their voices. She would have gone to her own room and closed the door, but it was nearer their seclusion than where she sat at present, and then--the air of the room was stifling on this sultry night. She glanced down toward the river, where the dark water rolled on through savannas to the great bay--a sea in itself. She could distinguish nothing; all was black in that blackest of nights. She dared not go forth, for she felt that the storm must soon burst. She sat, her head drooped dejectedly, her hands lying idly in her lap. Uncle Adan joined her, the lantern in his hand showing her dimly his short, dark form. The manager looked sourly at his niece, and cast an angry glance in the direction of the two at the corner of the casa. He had suddenly awakened to the fact that Agueda's kingdom was slipping from her grasp, and if from hers, then from his also. Should this northern Señorita come to be mistress here at San Isidro, what hold had he, or even Agueda herself, over its master? He spoke almost roughly to Agueda. "Go you and join them," he said. "Go where by right you belong." Agueda did not look at him. She shook her head, and drooped it on her breast. A sudden flash of lightning made the place as bright as day. Uncle Adan caught a glimpse of that at the further corner which made him rage inwardly. "Did you see that?" he whispered. "No," said Agueda. "I see nothing." "I have no patience with you," said Uncle Adan. He could have shaken her, he was so angry. "Had you remained with them, as is your right, some things would not have happened." He left her and went hurriedly toward the stables. Presently he returned. Agueda was aware of his presence only when he touched her. "The storm will be here before long," he said. "Can you get him away without her? Anything to be rid of those northern interlopers." "What do you mean?" "Call him away, draw him off. Tell him to come to the rancho--that I wish to see him about preparations as to their safety. Get him away on any pretext. Leave the others here with no one to--" "It is not necessarily a flood," said the girl, with a strange, new, wicked hope springing up within her heart. "It will be a flood," said Uncle Adan. "It is breaking even now at Point Galizza." For answer Agueda arose. "Good girl! You are going, then, to tell him--" "Yes, to tell him--" "Call him away! I will saddle the horses. I will have the grey at the back steps in five minutes. Tell him that Don Silencio has need of him." "If the Don Silencio's own letter would not--" "The grey can carry double. You can ride with him. I will go ahead. The flood is coming. It is near. I know the signs." Agueda drew away from the hand which Uncle Adan laid upon her wrist. "Let me go, uncle," she said. Uncle Adan released her. "The flood will last but a day or two," he whispered in her ear, "but it will be a deep one. All the signs point to that. We have never had such a one; but after--Agueda, after--there will be no one to interfere with you--with me, if--" Agueda allowed him to push her on toward the end of the veranda, where the two were still singing in a desultory way. "I shall warn them," she said. "Him!" said Uncle Adan, in a tone of dictation. "I shall warn them," again said Agueda, as if she had not spoken before. "Fool!" shouted Uncle Adan, as he dashed down the veranda steps and ran toward the stables. "And the forest answered 'fool!'" Agueda heard hurrying footsteps from the inner side of the veranda. Men were running toward the stables. She drew near to Beltran. The faint light of the lantern in the comidor told her where the two forms still sat, though it showed her little else. She laid her hand upon his shoulder, but she laid it also upon a smaller, softer one than her own. The hand was suddenly withdrawn, as Felisa gave an apprehensive little scream. "What do you want?" asked Beltran impatiently, who felt the warring of two souls through those antagonistic fingers. "You must come at once," said Agueda, with decision. "The storm will soon burst." "Nonsense! We have had many sultry nights like this. Where do you get your information?" "My uncle Adan says that the storm will soon burst. He has gone to saddle the horses." Felisa gave a cry of fear. Beltran turned with rage upon Agueda. A flash of lightning showed her the anger blazing in his eyes. It also disclosed to her gaze Felisa cowering close to him. "How dare you come here frightening the child? Your uncle has his reasons, doubtless, for what he says. As for me, I am perfectly convinced that there will be no storm--that is, no flood." "I beg of you, come!" urged Agueda. "Oh, cousin! What will become of us? Why does that girl fear the storm so?" "There will be no storm, vida mia, and if there is, has not the casa stood these many years? Agueda knows that as well as I." Agueda withdrew a little, she stood irresolute. She heard the sound of horses' feet, she heard Uncle Adan calling to her. She heard Don Noé calling to Eduardo Juan to bring a light, and not be so damned long about it. Old Juana called, "'Gueda, 'Gueda, honey! come! Deyse deat' in de air! 'Gueda!" There was a sudden rush of hoofs across the potrero, and then the despairing wail from Palandrez, "Dey has stampeded!" She heard without hearing. She remembered afterward, during that last night that she was to inhabit the casa, that all these sounds had passed across almost unheeding ears. She ran again to Don Beltran. "Come! Come, Beltran, dear Beltran," she said. "The river is upon us!" She wrung her hands helplessly. It seemed to her as if Beltran had lost his power of reasoning. "How dare she call you Beltran?" said Felisa. There came a crash which almost drowned the sound of her voice, then a scream from Felisa, intense and shrill. Agueda heard Beltran's voice, first in anger, then soothing the terrified girl again, shouting for horses, and above it all, she heard the water topple over the embankment, and the swash of the waves against the foundations of the casa. She ran hurriedly and brought the lantern which hung within the comidor. When Felisa opened her eyes, and looked around her at the waste of waters, she shrieked again. "How dare you bring that light? Put it out!" ordered Beltran. "We must see to get to the roof," answered Agueda, with determination. "The roof! The water is not deep. See, Felisa, it is only a foot deep. The grey can carry you and me with safety." "Does not the Señor know that the horses have stampeded?" said Agueda. "Our only hope of safety now lies upon the roof. We must get to the roof. See how the water is already getting deeper." And now, Agueda, her listlessness gone, ran into the casa and seized upon what she knew was necessary for a night in the open air. Beltran followed her into the hall. He laid his hand upon her shoulder, and shook her angrily. His judgment seemed to have deserted him. "Why did you not warn us?" he said. "Was it a part of your plan to--to--" "My plan!" said Agueda. "Have I not begged you? I could have gone--Uncle Adan told me--" Beltran seized the lantern and ran out and along the veranda to where Felisa stood clinging to the pilotijo. She was crying wildly. As Beltran approached, the light of his lantern revealed to Felisa more fully the horror of her surroundings. A fierce wind had arisen in a moment, and was beating and threshing the trees, flail-like, downward upon the encroaching river. Felisa turned upon Beltran in fury. She pointed with tragic earnestness to the waters which now surrounded the casa, and which had assumed the proportions of a lake. A thin stream was reaching, reaching over from the edge of the veranda; its searching point wetted her shoe. "You should have told me that such things happen in this barbarous place! You pretend to love me, and to keep me with you, you keep me ignorant of my danger, and now I must die. I must be drowned far away from my home in a savage land, all because you pretend that you love me! Oh, God! I am so young to die! So young to die!" Beltran enfolded the girl in his arms. "You shall not die. There is no danger of dying. We will go up on the roof. See! here are the steps. You will behold a wonderful sight to-night. You will laugh at your fears to-morrow." Beltran urged her toward the ladder as he spoke. "Agueda and I have spent more than one night up there, have we not, Agueda? She will tell you that there is nothing to fear. Agueda, tell my cousin that there is nothing to fear." "I did not know what there was to fear," said Agueda in a low voice. Felisa was crying bitterly, as Beltran aided her up the lower steps of the ladder. Agueda followed Beltran and Felisa. She carried some heavy wraps, and struggled up the steep incline unaided. Arrived upon the roof, she found the cousins standing together, Beltran's arm cast protectingly round the trembling girl, her eyes hid against his breast. "My cousin is nervous," said he, in a half apologetic tone; for though his intimacy with Felisa had passed the highest water-mark, where cousinship ends and love begins, he had not obtruded his actions or words upon Agueda's notice. But now as he felt the shaking of Felisa's young form against his own, suddenly he seemed to throw off all reserve. "Vida mia!" he said. "Vida mia! look up, speak to me. Do look. See that faint light in the east! The moon will soon rise. It is a beautiful sight. The Water will go down in a few hours. You will laugh at your fears to-morrow, child. These floods do not last long, do they, Agueda? When was the last one? Do you remember, Agueda?" "Yes, I remember," answered Agueda. "Come, then, and tell her. You can comfort her if you tell her how little there is to fear." "I do not think that I shall comfort her," said Agueda. She glanced at the refuge behind the chimney, and then back at Beltran. "It was one long year ago," she said. He turned away. "Come, Felisa," he said. "There is shelter from this wind behind the old chiminea." He guided her along the slight slope of the roof. The wind was rising higher with every moment. It howled down from the hills; it bent and slashed at the treetops; it caught Felisa's filmy gauzes and whirled them upward and about her head. Beltran half turned to Agueda. "Give me the cloak," he said. He took it from her and enveloped Felisa in it, then led her to the safe shelter of the broad old chimney. Behind it was a figure upon his knees. It was Don Noé. He was praying with the fervour of the death-bed repenter. Felisa, with a return of her flippant manner, laughed shrilly. "The truly pious are also unselfish, papa. Give us a little shelter from this searching wind." "Oh, do not! Do not! If I move, I shall fall! You will push me off!" and Don Noé continued petitioning Heaven in his own behalf. Agueda was left standing in the centre of the roof. Palandrez and Eduardo Juan, who had followed the Señores to this their only refuge, were lying flat upon their faces. They held a lantern between them--a doubtful blessing, in that it illumined with faint ray the gloom and horror below, but it told so little that the possibility seemed more dreadful than the reality was at the moment. "Lay down, Seño'it' 'Gueda," called Eduardo Juan. "Lay yo' body down." A sudden gust of wind forced Agueda to run. She guided herself to the chimney, and was held against it. Her garments fluttered round its corners, striking Beltran in the face with sharp slaps and cracks. She could not intrude upon that shelter. Her place was now upon the hither side. She threw herself flat upon her face, as Palandrez had suggested, her head above the ridge pole, her feet extended down the slight incline, and clutched at a staple in the roof, placed securely there for just such a night as this. There were no stars; there was no moon. Yet it must rise soon. Suddenly the lantern was overturned and its light extinguished, making more ominous the sound of water rising, rising, rising! It lapped and played about the pilotijos. It must be half-way up the veranda posts by now. It eddied round the corners of the casa. It forced its way through the weak places. One could hear it tearing and ripping at unstable portions of the house, as it flowed through the interior. Grinding noises were heard, as great roots and trunks of trees were borne and swayed by the flood against the walls. They piled themselves up at the southern end, remaining thus for a short, unsteady moment, and then, overpowered by the rush and force of water, they parted company, some to hasten along on one side of the casa, and some on the other. XXI Suddenly Agueda was conscious of something creeping against her foot. It was cold! Good God! It was wet! The sole of her shoe was soaked; the river had reached even there. She heard the licking of those hungry lips which were ready to drink in the helpless souls stranded at their mercy. This was indeed a sudden rising! Then there was no hope. She wondered how long it would be before Beltran would learn the fact, and what he would do when the truth came to him. She drew herself up by the iron staple and curled her body half way round the chimney. Her ear touched the ruffles of Felisa's gown. She heard a tender voice speaking much as it had to her a year ago. "Come closer," it said. "Do not fear. I am here." "Beltran!" she called. "Beltran!" "Who calls me?" came his voice from out the blackness. "You, Agueda?" "Yes, it is I, Agueda. The river is rising very high. It has come up quickly. I felt it against my foot. Can you not try to catch some tree or branch?" "Oh, God! Oh, God! Save me!" It was Felisa's voice. "Why did I ever come to this accursed island? Why, oh, why? How dared you tell me that I was safe! Safe with you? Oh, my God! Safe with you! Are you greater than God? If He cannot save me, can you?" As Felisa shrieked these words, which were almost drowned by the sound of the swiftly rushing waters, she raised her small fist and struck at Beltran. The jewels on her fingers cut his lip. His musical voice, patient and still tender, answered as if to a naughty child. "Careful! you will throw yourself off! Agueda, why must you come here frightening my cousin? When the moon rises she will see the falseness of your story." As if to convict him out of his own mouth, the moon suddenly shone through a rift in the black clouds which edged the horizon. It discovered to Agueda Felisa clasped to a resting-place that was her own by right. It showed her Beltran holding the little form in his arms, as once he had held her own. It showed her Beltran covering the blonde head with passionate kisses, as once he had covered her darker one. Agueda clutched the chimney for support. Death was no worse than this. Felisa opened her trembling lids and gazed abroad on the expanse of waters. Wail after wail issued from her white lips and mingled with the wind that blew wantonly the tendrils of her hair. She struck Beltran in the face again, she pushed him from her with the fury of a maniac. Great trees and branches were pounding against the roof. The peons had climbed to the highest point, and now, as a trunk came tearing down toward them, with a pitying glance at those they left behind, and a chuckle at their own presence of mind, they caught at it, and were whirled away to death or to succour. Don Noé, ever on the watch, with face thin and fierce, with nostrils extended and eyes wild and staring, peered round the chimney where he hung in prayerful terror. His resolution was made in one of those sudden moments of decision that come to the weakest. Watching his chance, he sprang and clutched at the giant as it came bobbing and wobbling by, and in company with Palandrez and Eduardo Juan, he floated away from his late companions. Agueda, left alone upon her side of the roof, crouched, looking ever toward the south, searching for a cask, a boat, a tree, a plank, a piece of household furniture, anything by which she might hold and save her life and Beltran's. Not Felisa's; that she could not do, even though Beltran loved her. Until now Agueda had thought that she longed for death; but the instinct of self-preservation is strong, and she could hardly comprehend her newly awakened desire to seize upon some sort of floating thing which might mean safety for herself. She stood gazing over the broad expanse of water. It had become a sea. The face of nature was changed. The position of the river bank was discernible only from the waving line of branches which testified where their trunks stood. There were one or two oases whose tops showed still above the surface of the stretching, reaching flood. Agueda thought that she could discern some one in a treetop near the hill rancho. She wondered if it could be Uncle Adan. She thought that she heard a shout. She tried to answer, but the weak sound of her voice was forced back into her throat. It would not carry against the force of the wind. No other land nearer than the heights of Palmacristi was to be seen. The horses and cattle must have perished. It had indeed become, as Uncle Adan had warned her, a greater flood than the country had ever known. To add to the unspeakable gloom of the scene, the clouds parted wider and allowed the moon to sparkle more fully upon the boiling water below and the trees and branches as they rolled and hastened onward. As Agueda stood and gazed up the stream, suddenly, from out the perspective of the moon-flecked tide, a little craft came sailing down--a tiny thing that seemed to have been set upon the waste of waters by some pitying hand. She watched it with eager eyes, as it floated onward. Her body swayed unconsciously with each change in its course or pointing of its bow to right, to left, as if she feared that it would escape her anxious hand. Fate drifted it exactly across the thatch at the south end of the roof. On it came, and was driven to her very feet. Here was succour! Here was help! She could save herself, unwatched, unknown, of those others behind the shelter there, and float away to the chance of rescue. Agueda stepped ankle-deep in the water, and stooping, held in frenzied clutch this gift of the gods. "The little duck boat of Felipe," she exclaimed, as she drew it toward her. "The little duck boat of Felipe!" Beltran had arisen as he heard the boat grate against the roof. He stepped cautiously out from behind the chimney, Felisa leaning upon him. Agueda raised her eyes to them. She shook as if with a chill. She was drawing the boat nearer, and battling with the flood to keep her treasure in hand. "Agueda," called Beltran. "Take her with you. Her weight is slight." Felisa raised her head from his shoulder, and cast a terrified look about her. Beltran looked at Agueda, and then down at Felisa. "She will save you," he said. "I will not go without you, Beltran," sobbed Felisa. "I dare not go without you. Oh! come with me! That girl of yours, that Agueda, I dare not go with her! She hates me! She will kill me!" When Beltran had said, "She will save you," Agueda had begun to draw the skiff nearer to him. She moved with great care, that the flood might not wrench from her this treasure trove. "It is true that I hate you," said Agueda, in a hard, cold voice, as she brought the boat to Felisa's feet, "but I will not kill you." She pushed the tiny craft nearer to Felisa. "Take your place," said she. "I will hold it steady." "I will not go without you," again shrieked Felisa, turning to Beltran. "I dare not go without you. Oh, Agueda! dear Agueda! You do not care to live. What have you to live for? While I--" "True," said Agueda. "Will the Señorita take her place?" Felisa still held to Beltran's hand. "I will not go alone," she said. "Come with me, dear love! Come with me; I cannot live without you." "There is not room for all," said Beltran, glancing, as he spoke, at Agueda. "At least, Felisa, we can die together." Ever changeable, and suddenly angered at this, Felisa again struck at Beltran, and tried with her small strength to thrust him aside, so that his footing was imperilled. Agueda turned pale as she saw his danger. Beltran laughed nervously, and seized with firmer grasp the staple buried in the mortar. "And do you think that will compensate me?" screamed Felisa. "Do you think that I shall welcome death because I may die in your company? I tell you, I will not die. I love all the pleasant things of life--I love myself, my pretty self. I am meant for life and love and warmth, not cold and death. There is not a human being who could reconcile me to death. Oh, my God! and such a death!" Felisa screamed hysterically. She sobbed and choked, and amid her shrieks were heard the disjointed words, "I--will--_not_--die!" In her frenzy the fastening at her throat gave way, and Agueda caught sight of the diamond pendant at her neck. Agueda, with her eyes on Beltran, nodded her head toward the boat, as if to say, "Do as she asks." When she spoke, she said: "I will hold it steady, as steady as I can." Felisa cast another horrified look around her upon the moonlit, shoreless sea. "Oh, God!" she sobbed, as holding frantically to Beltran's hand, she stepped into the boat. She drew him toward her, so that he could with difficulty resist the impelling of her hand. Beltran tried to release his fingers from the grasp of Felisa. He turned to Agueda, and motioned toward the one hope of succour. She shook her head. "I cannot hold it long," she said. "Beltran! Beltran!" sobbed Felisa. The boat pulled and jerked like a race horse. Even Felisa's slight weight made a marked difference in its buoyancy. Agueda's position was made the more unstable by her skirt, which fluttered in the wind. "I can hold it but a second more," she said. She was still stooping, holding the boat in as firm a grasp as her footing would allow. Beltran stood irresolute, wavering. "I cannot leave you here, Agueda, to die perhaps--for--her--for me." "I died long weeks ago," she muttered, more to herself than to him, and motioned again with her head toward the boat. The water was rushing past them. It was ankle-deep now. Agueda steadied herself more firmly against the chimney. Felisa, shivering with fright, stretched out her arms appealingly to Beltran, her cheeks streaming with tears. Beltran glanced at Agueda, with a look that was half beseeching, half apologetic, as if to forestall the contempt which he knew that she must feel for him, and--stepped into the boat. His weight tore it from Agueda's grasp. It began to float away, but before it had passed a span from where Agueda stood alone, he turned and shouted, "Come! Agueda, come! Throw yourself in, I can save you!" Ah! that was all that she cared to hear. It was the old voice. It sank into her heart and gave her peace. For in that flash of sudden and overwhelming remorse which is stronger than death, Beltran had seen that which he had not noticed before, the sad change in her girlish figure. Felisa clung to him, threatening to upset the skiff. He thrust her from him. "Come!" again he shouted, "Come!" He stretched out his arms to Agueda, but as the words left his lips he was whirled from her presence. In that supreme moment Beltran caught the motion of her lips. "My love!" they seemed to say, and still holding to the staple with one hand, she raised the other toward him, in good-by perhaps--perhaps in blessing. Agueda kept her gaze fixed upon the little speck, shrinking involuntarily when she saw some great trunk endanger its buoyancy. The boat was drifting swiftly along in the waters now, and in that mad rush to the sea Beltran strained his eyes ever backward to catch the faint motion of that fluttering garment in its wave of farewell. PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS COMPANY AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 
37676	----	Etext transcriber's note: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected; the original orthography, including variation in the spelling of names, has been retained. The Index included at the end of this etext (which includes volumes 1 thru 4) appears at the end of volume four of The History of Cuba. It is provided here for the convenience of the reader. [Illustration: FRANCISCO DE ARANGO One of the noblest names in Cuban history of a century and more ago is that of Francisco de Arango y Parreño, advocate, economist and statesman. He came of a family of noble lineage, and was born in Havana on May 22, 1765. Among the great men of his day in Cuba, who were many, he was one of the foremost, as the detailed story of his labors and achievements in the chapters of this History abundantly attests. He worked for the reform of the economic system of the island, for the development of agriculture on an enlightened basis, for the extension of popular education, and for the promotion of commerce. He urged upon King Charles III plans for averting the evil influences of the French Revolution, while securing the good results; and he set an example in educational matters by himself founding an important school. Recognized and honored the world over for his character, talents and achievements, he died on March 21, 1837.] THE HISTORY OF CUBA BY WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON A.M., L.H.D. Author of "A Century of Expansion," "Four Centuries of the Panama Canal," "America's Foreign Relations" Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign Relations in New York University _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ VOLUME TWO [Illustration] NEW YORK B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, INC. 156 FIFTH AVENUE 1920 Copyright, 1920, BY CENTURY HISTORY CO. _All rights reserved_ ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL LONDON, ENGLAND. PRINTED IN U. S. A. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I 1 Entering a New Era--The Freedom of the Seas--Progress of the Slave Trade--Clandestine Commercial Operations and Political Intrigues--The Genius of Governor Guazo--Attacking the British and French--Close of a Notable Administration--Shipyards at Havana--Havana Threatened by the British--Rivalries in Cuban Politics--Foundation of the University of Cuba--Change in Land Tenure--Copper Mining--Insurrections of the Slaves--Glimpses of Social Life in Cuba. CHAPTER II 18 The Administration of Guemez--Introduction of Reforms--Sanitation--Economic and Fiscal Reforms--Monopolies in Trade--Further Fortifications--Controversies Over the Slave Trade--Disputes with Great Britain--Declaration of War--Conflicts in Florida--Two British Expeditions--Admiral Vernon in the West Indies--Attack upon Santiago--The War in Florida--Governorship of Cagigal--Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle--Accession of Charles III--British Plans for the Conquest of Spanish America--Some Interesting Literature. CHAPTER III 41 Some European Alliances--A Period of Peace for Spain--Reasons for the British Attacks upon Cuba--The Family Pact Between France and Spain--Spain's Break with Great Britain--Declaration of War by George III--Havana Chosen as the Point of Attack--The Albemarle-Pococke Expedition--Preparations at Martinique--The Advance upon Havana. CHAPTER IV 53 First Appearance of Yellow Fever in Cuba--Preparations to Resist the British Attack--Divided Counsels--Arrival of the British Fleet--Consternation of the Inhabitants--Velasco Chosen as Commander of the Defense of Havana--Beginning of the Attack--Heroism of the Spanish Commander--British Accounts of the Fighting--Raids and Counter-Raids--British Reinforcements from the American Colonies--British Tributes to Spanish Valor--Surrender of the City--The Articles of Capitulation. CHAPTER V 80 British Occupation of Havana--Attitude of the Cubans Toward the British Conquerors--Departure of the Spanish Forces--British Views of the Conquest of Cuba--A Controversy Over Church Bells--Difficulties with the Spanish Clergy--Character of Lord Albemarle's Administration--Troubles Over Taxation--Plots Against British Rule--Corruption in Colonial Government--Political Disturbances in England--The Making of Peace--Restoration of Cuba to Spain. CHAPTER VI 96 Far-Reaching Effects of British Rule in Cuba--A French Picture of Life in Havana--A British Tribute to the City--Character of the People--Economic Changes in the Island--The Commerce of Havana--Defenses of the City--Not an Impregnable Fortress. CHAPTER VII 104 Departure of the British and Re-entry of the Spanish--The New Spanish Governor--Antagonisms Between British and Spanish--A Period of Reconstruction--Reclassification of Revenues--Military Reorganization of Havana--New Provincial Administration--Establishment of a Mail Service--End of a Noteworthy Administration--Reform in Police Regulations--Expulsion of Religious Orders--Suppressing Contraband Trading--Destruction by Earthquakes--A Disastrous Hurricane--An Administration Void of Complaints. CHAPTER VIII 119 An Era of Peace in Cuba--Tribulations in Spanish Louisiana--Spain Still Lagging Behind Other Colonial Powers--Fear of a Republic--O'Reilly's Expedition from Cuba to Louisiana--His Success--Effects of His Severity--The Tragic Prelude to Spanish Rule--Louisiana an Appanage of Cuba. CHAPTER IX 129 Administration of the Marquis de la Torre--One of Cuba's Best Governors--Cleansing and Paving the Streets of Havana--New Public Buildings--Harbor Improvements--The First Theatre--Trinidad, Santiago and Puerto Principe also Renovated--Founding of Pinar del Rio and Other Towns--Reforms in Government--Havana a Beautiful and Prosperous City--Turgot's Warning to Spain Unheeded--Interest in the North American Revolution--Tariff Reform--The Currency--Jurisprudence. CHAPTER X 145 Rise of the United States--Spanish Interests Involved--Negotiations Over Florida--Alliance Between France and Spain--Cuba's Intense Interest in the War Against Great Britain--Disaster to an Expedition from Havana--Operations at Mobile--Cuban Reconquest of Pensacola and Florida--An Early Prohibition Decree. CHAPTER XI 153 An Ill-Managed Armada--Neutrality Violated in Warfare upon Commerce--An Orgy of Privateering--Rodney's Exploits--Cagigal's Expedition to the Bahamas--Rodney's Menace to Havana--The First Newspaper in Havana--Negotiating for General Peace--Spanish Chagrin at American Independence--More Liberal Trade Laws for Cuba--Insurrection in Peru--Peace and Prosperity in Cuba--Wasteful Forestry--Visit of an English Prince--Improvements and Reforms in Havana--Foundation of the Sociedad de Amigos--Reign of Charles IV--Godoy, "Prince of the Peace"--Ecclesiastical Changes in Cuba--Economic Ills--Administration of Las Casas--A New Census--Disastrous Hurricane--The Society of Progress--Advance in Commerce, Agriculture, Literature and Education--Work of Francisco de Arango--The Tomb of Columbus. CHAPTER XII 186 Influence of the French Revolution in Spain--Toussaint Louverture--Cession of Santo Domingo to France--The Peace of Basle--Panic and Chaos in Spain--Advantages Gained by Cuba--A Civic Awakening in the Island--Dr. Romay's Introduction of Vaccination--Defense Against the Slave Revolt of Santo Domingo--The Work of Santa Clara--British Capture of Trinidad--Fears for the Safety of Cuba--Administration of Someruelos--Founding of the Intendencia--Expansion of Commerce--The Slave Trade--Extent and Conditions of Slavery--Rise of the Emancipation Movement--Importance of Negro Labor to Cuba. CHAPTER XIII 215 The Land Problem in Cuba--Lands Withheld from the Real Workers--Indolence Induced by Lack of Opportunity--Manners and Customs of the Cuban People at the End of the Eighteenth Century--Lawyers and Land Titles--Prices of Land--Live Stock, Sugar and Tobacco--Primitive Sugar Factories--Progress of Agriculture--Obstacles to Economic Progress--Restrictions upon Commerce and Travel. CHAPTER XIV 231 Conditions Accompanying the Rise of Wealth--Strange Mixture of Immorality and Religion--Seclusion of Cuban Women--Amusements and Entertainments--The Bull Ring--The Cock Pit--The Beginning of Literary Activity and Intellectual Life--The Drama in Cuba--Musical Culture--Dancing--Architecture--Home Life--Backward State of Education--Printing and Publishing--Suggestive Articles in the Press--The Beginning of Cuban Literature. CHAPTER XV 256 Rise of Relations Between Cuba and the United States--Early Interest of the United States in Cuba--Action of Congress in 1811--"The Ever Faithful Isle"--First Overtures for Annexation--George Canning and British Policy Toward Cuba--Policy of John Quincy Adams--Utterances of Jefferson and Clay--American Attitude Toward British and French Designs--Mexico and Colombia Restrained from Conquest. CHAPTER XVI 267 Spain in Her Decline--The Napoleonic Wars--The Constitution of 1812--Revolt of Spain's South and Central American Colonies--Cuba the "Ever Faithful Isle"--Reasons for Her Loyalty to Spain--Origin of the Cuban Spirit of Independence--An Age of Intellectual Activity--The Rise of Cuban Literature and Scholarship--Refugees in Cuba. CHAPTER XVII 278 The First Cuban Census--The Second Census and Humboldt's Comments Thereon--Distribution of the Population by Races--Effects of the Slave Trade on Population--The Census of 1817--Subsequent Enumerations--Discrepancies in Statistics--Character of the Negroes of Cuba--The Birth Rate. CHAPTER XVIII 290 Early Records of the Slave Trade--Participation by the Portuguese, French and British--Statistics of Slave Importations--Illegality No Bar--Relations Between Masters and Slaves--Efforts to Ameliorate the Conditions of Slaves--Introduction of Chinese Labor--Free Negroes--Religious Training of Slaves--Punishments of Slaves--Fear of Servile Insurrections. CHAPTER XIX 302 The Administration of Santa Clara--Someruelos--Great Fire in Havana--Architectural Progress--Fear of Invasion--A French Fiasco--Hostility to Napoleon--Loyalty to an Unworthy King--Napoleon's Designs upon Cuba--The Aleman Episode--Arango and the Chamber of Commerce--Conflict with Godoy--Arango in the Cortes--Arbitrary Administration of Cienfuegos--Opposition to Street Lighting--Political Changes--Cagigal's Diplomatic Administration--Mahy the Reactionary. CHAPTER XX 319 Good and Bad Deeds of Vives--A Royal Decree that Proved a Boomerang--Dangers of the Slave Trade Perceived--Apprehension of Intervention by Other Powers--A Subtle Appeal for Patriotic Organization--Progress of the Spirit of Independence. CHAPTER XXI 328 British Designs upon Cuba--Cuban Negotiations with the United States--The Mission of Morales--Annexation Sentiment--Attitude of the United States Government--Issuance of the Monroe Doctrine--Its Effect in Europe and America--United States Consuls to Cuba Rejected--Cuba Offered to England in Pawn--American Objections to the Scheme--Increase of American Interest in Cuba. CHAPTER XXII 335 An Era of Revolution--Career of Simon Bolivar--His Observation of the French Revolution--Liberation of Venezuela--Miranda and His Work--Bolivar in Exile--Final Success of the Liberator--Influence of His Career upon Cuba. CHAPTER XXIII 343 The "Soles de Bolivar" in Cuba--Administration of Villanueva--Oppression of the People--Vain Attempts to Suppress Patriotic Societies--Conspiracies for Freedom--Early Martyrs to Patriotism--The Black Eagle--Trouble with Mexico--The Tyranny of Tacon--His Conflict with Lorenzo--Victims of Spanish Despotism--Cuban Deputies Excluded from the Cortes--Manipulation of the Police--Propaganda of Freedom by Cubans in Exile--Tacon's Public Works--Dealing with Pirates and Smugglers--Origin of the Havana Fish Market--Tacon as the Champion of Virtue in Distress--End of a Bad Reign. CHAPTER XXIV 366 Beginning of Slave Insurrections--David Turnbull's Pernicious Activities--O'Donnell the Despot--Roncali the Ridiculous--Causes of Slave Unrest--Story of One Uprising--Vacillating Course of the Government--Systematic Propaganda Among the Slaves--Some Serious Outbreaks--Savage Methods of Repression--A Reign of Torture and Slaughter--White Victims as Well as Black--An Appalling Record--Saco's Advocacy of Independence--Some Advocates of Annexation to the United States--Spain's Determination to Hold Cuba Fast. Chapter XXV 385 Review of an Era in Cuban History--Progress in Inverse Order from International to National Interests--Alienation from Spain--Contrasts Between Cuba and Other Colonies, Spanish and English--Unconscious Preparation for Independent Statehood--Cuban Interest in the World and the World's Interest in Cuba--On the Verge of a New Era--The Promise of Cuban Nationality. ILLUSTRATIONS FULL PAGE PLATES: Francisco de Arango _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Laurel Ditch, Cabanas Fortress 58 Havana, from Cabanas 96 In Old Havana 130 Tomas Romay 192 Juan José Diaz Espada 272 José Antonio Saco 378 TEXT EMBELLISHMENTS: PAGE Old Espada Cemetery, Havana 52 Atares Fortress, 1763 103 Don Luis de las Casas 175 A Volante, Old-Time Pleasure Carriage 238 Monserrate Gate, Havana 244 George Canning 258 John Quincy Adams 259 Alejandro Ramirez 311 James Monroe 329 Simon Bolivar 334 Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros 380 THE HISTORY OF CUBA CHAPTER I When the Treaty of Utrecht was signed on the eleventh of April, 1713, the Spanish colonies in America felt as if they were entering upon a new era, an era of peace and unhindered growth and prosperity. They did not realize until the first elation over the establishment of peace had spent itself, that this treaty contained the seeds of future wars which were bound to be quickened by the powerful spirit of commercial rivalry, which had been awakened in the European nations and was alarmingly dimming the justice and righteousness of their policies. By losing the European possessions, the population of Spain had been so seriously diminished that it was entirely out of proportion to the area of her over-seas dominion. While the Bourbon king had nothing more to fear from France, even her pirates having palpably decreased their operations against the Spanish colonies in America, he had in England a rival and enemy whose power he had reason to dread. For all the maritime and commercial agreements of the treaty favored England. George Bancroft justly characterizes the spirit of the period in the second volume of his "History of the United States" when he says (Chapter XXXV, p. 388): "The world had entered on the period of mercantile privilege. Instead of establishing equal justice, England sought commercial advantages; and, as the mercantile system was identified with the colonial system of the great maritime powers of Europe, the political interest, which could alone kindle universal war, was to be sought in the colonies. Hitherto, the colonies were subordinate to European politics; henceforth, the question of trade on our borders, of territory on our frontier, involved an interest which could excite the world to arms. For about two centuries, the wars of religion had prevailed; the wars for commercial advantages were now prepared. The interests of commerce, under the narrow point of view of privilege and of profit, regulated diplomacy, swayed legislation, and marshalled revolutions." Concerning the mooted problem of the freedom of the seas, discussed as ardently and widely then as at the present time, Bancroft had this to say in the same chapter (p. 389): "To the Tory ministry of Queen Anne belongs the honor of having inserted in the treaties of peace a principle which, but for England, would in that generation have wanted a vindicator. But truth, once elicited, never dies. As it descends through time, it may be transmitted from state to state, from monarch to commonwealth; but its light is never extinguished, and never permitted to fall to the ground. A great truth, if no existing nation would assume its guardianship, has power--such is God's providence--to call a nation into being, and live by the life it imparts." The great principle first formulated by the illustrious Dutch historian and statesman Hugo Grotius was touched upon in the treaty of Utrecht in the passage saying,--"Free ships shall also give a freedom to goods." The meaning of contraband was strictly defined; the right of a nation to blockade another's ports was rigorously restricted. As to the rights of sailors, they were protected by the flag under which they sailed. But whatever credit belongs to England for her upholding of this principle was obscured by her exploitation of a monopoly, created by a special agreement of the same treaty. The "assiento," which established that most ignominious traffic in negro slaves, was to have disastrous effects, political, economic and racial, upon the American colonies, whether British, French or Spanish. The agreement had been specially demanded by the British representatives and had been approved by Louis XIV, who saw in its acceptance not only an advantage for England, but justly hoped his own colonies on the Gulf of Mexico to profit by it. It was worded simply as follows: "Her Britannic Majesty did offer and undertake by persons whom she shall appoint, to bring into the West Indies of America belonging to his Catholic Majesty, in the space of thirty years, one hundred and forty-four thousand negroes, at the rate of four thousand eight hundred in each of the said thirty years." The duty on four thousand of these negroes was to be thirty-three and a third pesos. But the assientists were entitled to introduce besides that number as many more as they needed at the minor rate of sixteen and two third pesos a head. However, no Frenchman or Spaniard or any individual of another nation could import a negro slave into Spanish America. This trade in human flesh was duly organized and carried on by a stock company which promised enormous profits. King Philip V., sorely in need of money with which to execute all his plans for the reconstruction of his kingdom, anticipated great gains from such an investment and bought one quarter of the stock. Queen Anne was the owner of another quarter and the remainder was sold among her loyal subjects. Thus the sovereigns of these two kingdoms became the leading slave-merchants in the world and by the provisions of the agreement "her Britannic Majesty" enjoyed the somewhat dubious distinction of being for the Spanish colonies in the Gulf of Mexico, on the Atlantic and along the Pacific coasts, the exclusive slave-trader. No trade required as little outlay in capital as the slave-trade. Trifles, trinkets and refuse stock of every possible kind of merchandise including discarded weapons, were exchanged for the human cargoes on the African coast; who, crowded into vessels, crossed the seas, and upon their arrival in the New World were sold to the colonists who wanted cheap labor and a cheaper service. A fever of speculation which had in it no little touch of adventure, seemed to sweep over England and to delude the people with visions of wealth to be acquired by a conquest of the Spanish possessions from Florida south, including Mexico and Peru. Wild schemes of colonization promised to open Golcondas on the fields of sugar-cane and tobacco, and in the mines holding inestimable treasures of gold and silver. For the realization of those plans negro labor was needed. Even in the West Indies it was welcomed especially by those settlements engaged in the raising of sugar cane. That the Assiento opened the door to all sorts of clandestine commercial operations, as also to insidious political intrigue was soon to become evident. Agents of the Assiento had the right to enter any Spanish port in America and from there send other agents to inland settlements; they had the right to establish warehouses for their supplies, safe against search unless proof of fraudulent operations, that is importations, was incontestable. They could send every year a ship of five hundred tons with a cargo of merchandise to the West Indies and without paying any duty sell these goods at the annual fair. On the return trip this ship was allowed to carry products of the country, including gold and silver, directly to Europe. The assientists urged the American colonies to furnish them supplies in small vessels. Now it was known that such vessels were particularly favored by the smuggling trade. Hence British trade in negro slaves was indirectly used to encourage smuggling and thus undermine Spanish commerce. To estimate the extent of the smuggling trade directly traceable to the loop-holes which the Assiento offered, was impossible. Jamaica, the stronghold of British power in the West Indies, and ever a hotbed of political and commercial intrigue against the Spanish neighbors, became a beehive of smuggling activities. In places formerly used as bases of buccaneer operations a lively business was carried on with contraband goods. The danger to legitimate commerce in and with the West Indies became so great that the Cuban authorities were forced towards the end of Governor Guazo's administration to adopt strenuous methods in dealing with such offenders. D. Benito Manzano, Andrez Gonzales and other mariners and soldiers of experience and known valor were sent out against them and made important seizures in this service. The governor was authorized to organize cuadrillos (patrols) of custom officers and equip custom house cutters that watched for and descended upon all vessels found without proper clearance papers or that had failed to register their cargoes in conformity to the laws of the island. The smugglers were tried and condemned to suffer various penalties, ranging from loss of property, hard labor and imprisonment, to death. Governor Guazo's reorganization of the military forces gave proof of his extraordinary foresight and his executive power. He formed a battalion of infantry composed of seven companies of one hundred men and besides two other companies, one of artillery, the other of light cavalry, which was later changed to mounted dragoons. Two more companies of seventy men each were added some years later by order of the king. For the lodgment of these troops Governor Guazo ordered built the rastrille (gateway of a palisade), which became later part of the fortress and the quarters that run along the southern part. Governor Guazo was a man of action and enterprise, besides being endowed with no little military genius. Never once during his administration did he lapse into that passive attitude which was in a large degree responsible for the slow pace at which the Spanish colonies progressed. One of his first aims was to inflict an exemplary punishment upon the outlaws of the seas that rendered insecure the coasts of the Spanish island colonies, and interfered seriously with commerce in the Gulf of Mexico. The militia of Havana had on previous occasions, when called into service on the sea, proved its mettle and displayed so much bravery and perseverance in the pursuit of its tasks that he had unlimited confidence in its ability to do the work he planned. He conferred with the governor of Florida, and they agreed upon concerted action against the English colony of St. George in the Carolinas. He made it known that he intended to dislodge the pirates on the island of the Bahamas called New Providence and for some time settled by the British. For that purpose he fitted out fourteen light vessels, ten bilanders (small one-mast ships, one of them of fourteen pieces), two brigantines (two-masted vessels with square sails) and other smaller ships with munitions and sufficient stores. Then he gathered a force of one thousand volunteers, one hundred veteran soldiers and a few of the prominent residents of the city to whom he entrusted the command of some of the ships. As head of the expedition he named D. Alfonso Carrascesa, a dependable official, and as his assistant D. Esteban Severino de Berrea, a native of Havana and the oldest captain of the white militia. The story of this enterprise as related by Guiteras gives a somewhat different version of the struggles between the French and the Spaniards for the possession of Pensacola as that contained in the preceding chapter. According to Guiteras the armada organized in Havana and placed under command of Carrascesa sailed on the fourth of July, 1719. But it had barely left the harbor, when it sighted two French warships. They were coming from Pensacola, which the French had just captured, and had on board as prisoners the governor and the whole garrison. Carrascesa did not for a moment lose his calm assurance at this unexpected intermezzo. He stopped the French when they turned to flee, and they were in turn captured. With the rescued Spaniards from Pensacola he returned to Havana, considering this easy victory of happy augury for the expedition upon which he had set out. But Governor Guazo persuaded him that the reconquest of Pensacola was of paramount importance. Carrascesa yielded to Guazo's arguments and the entreaties of the governor of Florida's stronghold and started upon his new task. He succeeded in recovering Pensacola and reinstalling the Spanish governor with his garrison. Of the ultimate defeat of the expedition Guiteras has nothing to say. Carrascesa, too, was a man of untiring activity and did not rest upon the laurels of his victory over the French. He made several expeditions to the ports of Masacra, Mobile and other places, laying waste rice fields and sugar plantations. He captured a number of transports carrying army provisions, and also took many negroes that had been brought over by the company carrying on slave trade, prisoners. So encouraged was he by his successes, that he planned another attack upon Masacra, which was defended by four batteries mounted on the coast and had a garrison of about two thousand Frenchmen and Canadians. But he realized that his forces were numerically far inferior and he desisted from carrying out this enterprise. He contented himself with turning his attention to the improvement of the fortifications of Pensacola and built a fort at the point of Siguenza for the defense of the canal. While engaged upon this work he was surprised by the arrival of a French squadron under the command of the Count de Champmeslin. There were six vessels in all well equipped with artillery far superior in quality to that of the Spaniards. A fierce and stubborn combat ensued, in which the volunteers from Havana distinguished themselves by their valor, but the French admiral succeeded in forcing the passage of Siguenza and compelled Carrascesa to surrender. Pensacola fell for the second time into the hands of the French, who, however, gave credit to the Cubans for unusual bravery and declared that, had it not been for their inferior numbers, and the inferior equipment of their ships and their troops, they never would have been defeated. This is the story of the fights for Pensacola as related by the Spanish historian Guiteras. Governor Guazo's administration covered one of the most important periods in the history of Cuba. One of his last acts was the proclamation in Havana in March, 1724, of the ascension of King Luis I. to the throne of Spain, his father, King Philip V., having abdicated. But King Luis died on the thirty-first of August and King Philip V. resumed the scepter. In the following month Governor Guazo retired from office and on the twenty-ninth of September was succeeded by the Brigadier D. Dionisio Martinez de la Vega. One of the first acts of Governor Martinez was to raise the garrison to the number of two hundred and fifty men. By decree of the court he also superintended the construction of the arsenal which was to contribute much to the improvement of the rather poorly equipped fleet. In order effectively to pursue his predecessor's policy of prosecuting the smuggler bands, the number of which was alarmingly multiplying on and about the island, Governor Martinez suggested to the Minister of the Treasury the erection of a shipbuilding plant to turn out vessels especially designed for that purpose. He obtained the consent of the Minister and within a short time the plan was realized. This dockyard for the construction of ships primarily intended for revenue service, was at first erected between the fort of la Fuerza and la Contaduria (office of the accountant or auditor of the exchequer), because that location offered great facilities to lower the vessels directly from the rocks to the sea. But as soon as the superiority of the ships built in Havana over those produced in Spain became manifest, owing to the excellent quality of the timber used, it was at once decided to extend the dockyard and it was moved to the extreme southern part of the city where it occupied a space of one-fourth of a league, near the walls with the batements and buttresses, which added much to its solidity and beauty. There within a few years were built all kinds of ships, from revenue cutters to warships intended to strengthen the Armada. In time the plant turned out large numbers of vessels. According to Valdes there were built between the years 1724 and 1796 forty-nine ships, twenty-two frigates, seven paquebots, nine brigantines, fourteen schooners, four ganguiles (barges used in the coasting-trade, lighters) and four pontones (pontoons or mud-scows, flat bottomed boats, furnished with pulleys and implements to clean harbors); in all one hundred and nine vessels. This shipyard and the fortifications which were being steadily improved were found of invaluable service in the year 1726, when a break between Spain and England occurred and a British fleet appeared in the Antilles. So alarmed was King Philip V. by the news of the danger of British invasion which threatened Cuba, that he immediately ordered D. Gregorio Guazo, who had in the meantime been entrusted with the superior military government of the Antilles and Central America, to adopt measures of safety. Guazo accordingly sent the squadron of D. Antonio Gastaneta with a force of one thousand men to assist in the defense of Cuba. The historians Alcazar and Blanchet report that D. Guazo himself accompanied the squadron, fell sick upon his arrival in Havana and died the same month. But Valdes records that he died on the thirteenth of August of that year in his native town of Ossuna. However, D. Juan de Andrea Marshall of Villahemosa seems to have been appointed his successor. The precautions taken were to be well rewarded. On the twenty-seventh of April, 1727, the English squadron under the command of Admiral Hossier came in sight and approached the entrance to the harbor of Havana. But the population had so effectively prepared the defense of the city, that the attack of the British failed. Besides seeing himself defeated by the enemy, the Admiral saw with dismay that his crews were decimated by fever. Gastaneta was at that time in Vera Cruz and Martinez alone carried off the victory over the British forces which after a blockade of a month had to retire. Admiral Hossier was so overcome with his failure and the loss of his men that he himself died of grief shortly after. The following two years of the governorship of D. Martinez were turbulent with the discord of rivals and their factions. The immediate cause of these regrettable disturbances was Hoyo Solorzana, the governor of Santiago de Cuba. He had some time before taken a prominent part in the removal of the treasures lost in el Palmer de Aiz. The charge was raised against him that he had appropriated a certain portion of these treasures and he was suspended and proceedings were begun against him. The case was pending when the accused, who enjoyed great popularity with the people, suddenly without the knowledge of the Captain-General or the Dominican Audiencia, took possession of the government office in which he had formerly exercised his official functions. The authorities were indignant and sent a complaint to his Majesty in Madrid. When the reply arrived a few months later, it ordered his immediate removal from office, annulled his earlier appointment and demanded that he be sent to Madrid. The commander-in-chief took steps for his removal, but the municipal government claimed that the cause could not be pursued as long as an appeal was pending. Governor Martinez, too, waited with the execution of the royal decree in order to learn what decision the Ayuntamento of Havana would take. But the latter was kindly disposed to Hoyo Solorzano, remembering the undeniable services he had rendered the city. Both sides held stubbornly to their opinions and the lawyers also could not be swayed by any arguments. Suddenly there appeared in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba a few galleons under command of the chief of the squadron, Barlavente, and acting under orders of Fra D. Antonio de Escudero. They were to apprehend the governor and his supporters, and take them as prisoners to Vera Cruz on the Admiral's ship. True to his character and antecedents, Solorzano bravely defended himself and with the help of his adherents managed to elude his pursuers and to escape to the country. After visiting places where many of his friends lived, he ventured into Puerto Principe, whose inhabitants were such loyal partisans of his that they decided upon protecting him arms in hand. A detachment of troops had been sent from Havana and surrounded the house in which Solorzano was staying. They succeeded in crushing the riotous demonstrations in his favor and seized him. Manacled and chained he was taken to el Morro and imprisoned. Although he was evidently the victim of misaimed ambition, the court that tried his case condemned him to death. While these unpleasant events were agitating the official circles of the island, the people saw in the year 1728 one of the most ardent desires of the ambitious youth of Cuba attain fulfillment. This was the foundation of the University. Hitherto, it was necessary for young men desiring a superior and especially a scientific education to attend the universities of Mexico, Santo Domingo or Seville. With the opening of this institution of learning in the metropolis of the island, Havana, the intellectual life received a strong impulse. The credit for having secured the permission to open this university is due to the Dominican order which was mainly instrumental in promoting the cause of education in Latin America and especially the West Indies. The University was opened in the convent of Havana by virtue of a bull issued by Pope Innocent XIII. and in accord with the royal order of March fourteenth, 1732. The event was celebrated by brilliant decoration and illumination of the principal thoroughfares and buildings of the city and by festive gatherings and banquets, as also by dignified and solemn ceremonies in the building itself. The first rector of the University was Fra Tomas de Linares. According to the custom of the period and the country the rector, vice-rector and assistants were all selected from the clergy. The curriculum comprised courses in grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, philosophy, theology, canons of economic laws, jurisprudence and medicine. But it seems strange that for a number of years no professor could be found to occupy the chair of mathematics. The peripatetic system prevailed. After two years of existence the university won such hearty approbation from the king that it was granted by royal decree of the twenty-seventh of June, 1734, the same concessions and prerogatives as were accorded to the University of Alcala. In the year 1733 Cuba lost her most revered and beloved spiritual leader, Bishop Valdes, who expired on the twenty-ninth of March. He lived in the memory of many generations that followed not only by the many parishes which he had founded in the smaller towns and rural districts, and by the seminary of San Baulie el Magne, which he had called into being, but also by his many personal virtues that had endeared him to his people. An important innovation was made at this period concerning land tenure. The Ayuntamentos or municipal corporations started to rent lands, that is to give them in usufructu for the pasturing of cattle, to swine herds, for labor or as ground plots. The person receiving such a grant paid to the propios (estates or lands belonging to the city or civic corporation) six ducats annually for the first, four for the second, and two for the others. The land-surveyor, D. Luis de la Pena, resolved to give a plot of land in the radius of two leagues to the haciendas that raised black cattle, called hatos, and to the raisers of hogs, cordos or corroles (enclosures within which cattle is held). But there was such a lack of precision in determining the boundaries of the lands covered by these concessions, that one overlapped the others and caused innumerable heated lawsuits. The abuses committed by the corporation concerned in these land deals, finally caused the king to strip these bodies of the power of renting the lands. This important royal decree was according to the historian Pezuela dated 1727, according to La Torre 1729. The copper-mines of Cuba which had during the second half of the seventeenth century been totally abandoned, but had been reopened in the year 1705 under the direction of D. Sabastian de Arancibia and D. Francisco Delgado, once more disappointed those interested in that investment and yielding little profit were closed. The result was very disastrous for the men that had been employed in the mines. For when they found themselves without work, they began to lead a sort of unrestrained life, which caused unrest and disturbances. In the year 1731, the governor of Santiago de Cuba, D. Pedro Jiminez, decided to put an end to this idleness and without warning imposed upon them hard labor. This the men resented and rebelled. After considerable difficulty, the gentle exhortations of the Canonicus Morrell of Santa Cruz prevailed and succeeded in appeasing the men, who took up other work. In other parts of the island there occurred about this time uprisings of the slaves, which required the use of force and led to no little bloodshed before they could be suppressed. One of these revolts on the plantation Quiebra Hache and some on other neighboring haciendas led to the foundation of Santa Maria del Rosario. It was D. Jose Bayona Chacon, Conde de Casa-Bayona, who conceived the idea that the existence of a white population in the heart of the mutinous district might help to keep the negroes submissive. He asked the king's permission to establish a town on the land of said plantation and of the Jiaraco corral, which were all his property, and asked for manorial grants, civil and criminal jurisdiction, that is the right to appoint alcaldes (ordinary judges), eight aldermen and as many other officials of the court as were needed. King Philip, remembering the services D. Bayona Chacon had rendered the island, granted this request in the year 1732, and D. Bayona or Conde (count) Casa-Bayona settled thirty families on the place, which was henceforth called Santa Maria del Rosario. The last years of the governorship of D. Martinez were undisturbed by strife either from within or without, and Cuba prospered during that brief spell of peace and quiet. But he did not delude himself by imagining Cuba safe from further disturbances, either of her internal conditions or her relations to her enemies. Like his predecessors he continued to add to the fortifications, as is proved by an inscription on the gate of la Punta, which reads: Reinando en Espana Don Felipe V. El Animoso y Siendo Gobernador y Captan General de Esta Plaza E Isla de Cuba El Brigadier Don Dionisio Martinez de la Vega, se Hiciron Estas Bovedas, Almacenes, Terraplenes, Y Muralla Hasta San Telmo; Se Acabo La Murella Y Baluartes Desde El Angel Hasta El Colateral De La Puerta de Tierra Y Desde El Anguilo De la Tonaza Hasta El Otro Colatoral; Se Puso En Estado y con Respeto La Artilleria; Se Hizo La Caldaza, Y En El Real Artillero Navios De Guerra Y Tres Paquebotos, Con Otras Obras Menores; Y Lo Gueda Continua do Por Marzo de 1731 Con 220 Esclavos De S. M. Que Con Su Arbotrio Ha Puesto En Las Reales Fabrica. (While King Philip V. the Brave reigned in Spain and the Brigadier Don Dioniosio Martinez de la Vega was Governor of this place and the island of Cuba, there were built three vaults, stores, terraces and a wall as far as Telma, were finished the wall and bastions from El Angel unto the Colateral of the Gate of Tierra, and from the corner of the tenaillo unto the other collateral; was set up in good condition the artillery; was constructed the high road and were built in the royal dockyard war vessels and three packet-boats and minor ships; and this was continued in March, 1730, with 200 slaves of his Majesty, who deigned to have them placed in the royal shops.) Accounts of foreigners that traveled in the West Indies and visited Cuba during this period give glimpses of the cities and the life therein which are interesting reading. John Campbell, the author of "The Spanish Empire in America" and "A Concise History of Spanish America," published in London in the year 1747, says in the latter book, in the description of Havana: "The Buildings are fair, but not high, built of Stone and make a very good appearance, though it is said they are but meanly furnished. There are eleven Churches and Monasteries and two handsome hospitals. The Churches are rich and magnificent; that dedicated to St. Clara having seven Altars, all adorned with Plate to a great Value; And the Monastery adjoining contains a hundred Nuns with their Servants, all habited in Blue. It is not, as some have reported, a Bishop's see, though the Bishop generally resides there. But the Cathedral is at St. Jago, and the Revenue of this Prelate not less than fifty thousand Pieces of Eight per Annum. Authors differ exceedingly as to the Number of Inhabitants in this City. A Spanish Writer, who was there in 1700 and who had Reason to be well acquainted with the Place, computed them at twenty-six thousand, and we may well suppose that they are increased since. They are a more polite and sociable People than the Inhabitants of any of the Ports on the Continent, and of late imitate the French both in their Dress and their Manner." The Spanish historian, Emilio Blanchet, also limns a picture of life in Havana about this time. Always inclined to express their feelings of joy or of sorrow in a rather demonstrative manner, every national event of some importance gave occasion for festivities that lasted sometimes several days, and in one instance almost a whole month. This extraordinary example of Cuban delight in great public celebrations occurred in the year 1735 in Villaclara. The recent victories of Spain in Italy and the ascension of Carlos to the Neapolitan crown were celebrated in that town from the first to the twenty-second of February. Of course, the national sport of bull-fights figured largely in the program of this month of festivities; but there were also equestrian contests, military games, processions and cavalcades, and for the first time in Cuban history, dramatic performances. Besides such unusual occasions as the celebration of a victory, the numerous church festivals also encouraged the people's love of more or less ceremonial display and solemn public functions. The eyes of the people loved to feast upon the processions on foot or on horseback which took place on various saints' days, especially on the days of St. John, St. Peter, St. James and St. Anna. The British writer quoted above was right in saying that the Cubans emulated the example and followed the models of the French in the dress of the period. For Blanchet gives a description of the dress of the Cuban women of that time, which evokes before the reader visions of the elaborate costumes inseparable from the period of Louis XIV. The Spanish historian dwells at some detail upon the gorgeous dresses of the wealthy women of Cuba. There were gowns with long, sweeping trains, the material of which was mostly a heavy brocade silk, interwoven with threads of gold or silver, trimmed with taffeta in sky blue or crimson. Other material was trimmed with gold or silver braids. The belt generally of rose taffeta joined the waist to the skirt. The hair was adorned with a large silver or gold pin which held the folds of a richly trimmed mantilla, also either of brocade or some lighter tissue, gracefully falling back over the shoulders. The undergarments were of silk taffeta, all of these materials being flowered or checkered and interwoven with threads of gold. Velvet was also used in the fashioning of vestees and jackets. Cloaks, capes and redingotes were either of camelot or barocan, or of some other fine cloth. Pink was the favorite color. Laces and embroideries were used on the dress of both men and women. No cavalier was without a frill. The use of powder for the face and hair was quite common, and the powdered queue was as indispensable to the costume of a cavalier as the buckled shoe. CHAPTER II When Governor Martinez de la Vega was promoted to the post of President and Captain-General of Panama, there was appointed in his place, as the thirty-sixth governor of Cuba, Fieldmarshal D. Juan Francisco Guemez y Horcasitas, a native of Oviedo and son of Baron de Guemez. Valdes remarks that during his administration was born his son D. Juan, who seems to have been also actively engaged in public life. Guemez was governor of Cuba long enough to occupy a prominent place in the chronicles of the island. He was inaugurated on the eighteenth of March, 1734, and continued in office until the twenty-eighth of April, 1746. Guemez entered upon the political and military administration simultaneously with the Franciscan padre D. Juan Lasso de la Vega, who assumed the spiritual leadership of the people as successor to Bishop Valdez. During his governorship, the Municipio of Havana was organized, and Santiago de Cuba being for the first time subordinated to his authority, Havana became virtually the capital of the island, and one of the most important of Spanish America. In that civic corporation, a very prominent member was the Habanero D. Jose Martin Felix de Arrate, who wrote a valuable history of Havana under the title "Llave del Nuevo Mundo, Antemural de las Indias Occidentales, la Habana descriptiva: Noticias de su fundacion, aumentos y Estado." Governor Guemez introduced some measures of reform which tended to appease the discontent occasioned by previous abuses of municipal power. One of these was the rigid enforcement of the royal decree which forbade the ayuntamentos to trade in land. He also improved the functioning of the primary courts called Justicias ordinarias; for a great deal of disorder was caused by the fact that their decisions were rarely promptly obeyed. He associated with them the tenentes a guerra, military lieutenants, whose authority was more likely to be respected. One of these, the Captain of militia D. Jose Antonio Gomez, was sent to the salt works of Punta Hicacos and Cayo Sal, where much confusion had reigned, to regulate the salt production, and insure an efficient functioning of the organization concerned in it. He became later known as a famous guerillero, a civilian serving in guerilla warfare, and was familiarly called by the people Pepe Antonio. During this administration some very important work was done towards sanitation. Guemez succeeded in having the harbor thoroughly dredged; by urgent appeals to the residents he secured the removal from the streets of all encumbrances of traffic and insisted upon having them regularly cleaned. It can be justly said that, if the standard of public health in Cuba was raised at this period, it was undoubtedly due to his efforts. Nor was he indifferent to the extortion practiced upon the poorer inhabitants by unscrupulous landlords and shopkeepers, one of his ordinances to that effect regulating the prices at which provisions were to be sold by the grocers and thus insuring a proper and sufficient supply of these necessities to the population which otherwise would have been underfed. He was also the first governor of Cuba who paid attention to the island's forests and curbed the operations of the thieves that ravaged them. Of course such measures were bound to be resented by those elements who had previously profited from the freedom with which they could carry on their trade regardless of human equity and public welfare; and although the administration of Guemez was one of great material prosperity for the people, he did not escape the fate that befell so many of his predecessors, that of being made the target of slanderous accusations. But the government had profited from previous experiences of this character, that of the Marquis de Casa-Torres being still remembered; it was no longer inclined to lend so ready an ear to charges raised against the governors, and paid no attention to the attempts made by his enemies to discredit Guemez in Madrid. The colonial government was then in charge of D. Jose del Campillo, an official of great knowledge and sagacity and of wide experience in economic and financial affairs. Many of the improvements that had been introduced in Spain by Minister Ori were through D. Campillo's efforts now applied to the colonies in America. Among these valuable innovations were the regulation of the revenues, the reduction of import and export duties, and the distribution of the realenzes or royal patrimonies. But equally important was the creation of royal commissions to inquire into the state, the resources and needs of the provinces, and to organize industry and commerce upon a sound and equitable basis. On the other hand it cannot be denied that powerful influences were at work to secure privileges for private corporations, which in a measure threatened to undo what those commissions attained. The organization which came into being in Havana in the year 1740 under the name Real Compania de Comercio under the patronage of the Virgin del Rosario, was such a corporation and it seems doubtful whether the privileges it enjoyed and the profits that accrued from them did not outweigh the advantages which were promised to the colony. The company was given a general monopoly, including the exclusive right of exportation of tobacco and sugar; it had the right of importation of articles of consumption in the island without paying custom on goods imported into the interior. Of course, it pledged itself on its part to render the community certain services which should not be underestimated. It was to build in its dockyards vessels of war and of trade; to supply the warships anchored in the harbor with provisions for their crews; to furnish ten armed vessels for the persecution of contraband; and for the transportation of the country's products to the port of Cadiz; to bring from Spain the ammunition needed in Cuba; to provision the garrison of Florida; and to furnish articles of equipment to the weather-side fleet. The Captain-General himself was given the office of Juez conservador (judge conservator). The first president of the company was D. Martin de Aroztegui. The organizers had at first counted upon a capital of one million pesos, but it barely exceeded nine hundred thousand. Each share was valued at five hundred duros (dollars) and eight shares were required to entitle the holder to a vote in the general conventions. There were at first five directors in all, but they were gradually reduced to two only. Some historians had warm praise for the work of the company, among them Arrate, who with many others was preoccupied by the economic interests and the commercial progress of the community. But there is no doubt that at the end it did not bring about the results that had been expected. During twenty years of its existence Cuba derived no tangible benefit. The importation of goods from Spain did not amount to more than three vessels annually. The exports amounted to less than twenty-one thousand arrobas of sugar (a weight of twenty-five pounds of sixteen ounces each). Governor Guemez was not oblivious to the dangers forever menacing the security and the peace of the island. He made great improvements on the batteries of el Morro; he had parts of the city walls, which ran from la Tenaze to Paula, demolished, and rebuilt of better material; he had the walls on the inland side re-enforced so as to offer greater resistance in case of attack by enemies. To all these improvements the citizens of Havana contributed generously; they furnished ten thousand peons (day-laborers) and as many beasts of burden to do the work. Guemez also built factories in the parish of El Jaguey on the other side of the bay and established the first powder magazine on the coast. During the latter part of his administration, in the year 1743, the town of Guanabacoa received its charter. The following year, 1744, is memorable in the history of Cuba as the year when the first postal service was organized. Thus the governorship of D. Guemez proved for the island a period of great civic and material progress and prosperity. The peace it enjoyed during the earlier years was, however, to be seriously disturbed later on. For even towards the end of the administration of D. Martinez de la Vega clouds had arisen upon the political horizon of Europe which had begun to cast their shadows over the colonies. The slave-trade sanctioned by the famous Assiento agreement gave rise to more and more serious tension between the governments of England and of Spain. In order to execute that part of the Treaty of Utrecht which related to the importation of negro slaves into Spanish America, the British government had encouraged the formation of a company, the Compania de la Mar del Sud, or South Sea Company, which was to act as agent of the assientists. It consisted of men holding the large national debt of Great Britain and had received a grant for the exclusive trade of the South Seas. But since Spain was in possession of a great proportion of the coast in that part of the world and had so far enjoyed a monopoly of its trade, the South Sea Company derived no benefit from that grant, unless the commercial activity of Spanish America could be paralyzed. The slave-trade with its clandestine opportunities for contraband, offered the South Sea Company possibilities to undermine Spanish trade. The slavers, as the slave-carrying vessels were called, being protected by passports issued by their contractors, were not slow in getting into communication with those elements in the Spanish colonies that placed their personal profit above their duty to the country under the protection of which they lived, and had no difficulty in delivering cargoes of divers merchandise while they unloaded their human freight. Moreover they never returned to Europe in ballast, but carried a correspondingly large cargo of West Indian goods of which they disposed in European ports. Spain had repeatedly entered complaints against these scandalously dishonest operations upon the coasts of Spanish America, but Great Britain was then not in the mood to concern herself with problems of international ethics. The enormous profits that the trade in negro slaves had brought to investors in that enterprise had dimmed their sense of honor. Queen Anne herself had in a speech to the parliament boasted of having secured to the British a new market for slaves in Spanish America. A considerable part of the population of Jamaica lived exclusively on the profits of this traffic between the Spanish-American harbors. The vessel which the British according to the Assiento were allowed to send annually to Portobello was soon followed at a certain distance by a fleet of smaller ships that approached the harbor at night and replaced the cargo that had been unloaded by day. Frequently the slavers would appeal to the human feelings of the officials in Spanish-American ports and with stories of shipwreck and damages sustained in hurricanes induce them to desist from the customary inspection of every foreign vessel. The effect of these manoeuvers was the complete extinction of Spanish commerce. While the tonnage of the fleet of Cadiz had formerly reached sixteen thousand, it was reduced at the beginning of the eighteenth century to two thousand. But the reclamations of Spain were not heeded. Great Britain, then in a mad fever for the acquisition of wealth, was intoxicated with the rich profits it was deriving from the operations in the West Indies and other parts of Spanish America. It not only wished to continue these, but it also tried to bring about war between the two countries. As Guiteras says, and Bancroft expresses the same ideas in his second volume of his "History of the United States," the war which was on the point of breaking out was not about the right to cut the timber of Campeche in the Bay of Honduras, nor because of the difference between the King of Spain and the South Sea Company, nor about the disputed frontiers of Florida. All these questions could have been easily settled. The sole aim and end was to compel Spain to renounce her right of inspecting or examining suspected merchant vessels that cruised in the Antilles, in order that Great Britain might extend her insidious operations. After much deliberation on both sides, an instrument was drawn up and signed, in which the mutual claims for damages sustained in the overseas commerce were balanced and settled. The king of Spain demanded from the South Sea Company sixty-eight thousand pounds as his share of their profits, in the slave-trade; on the other hand he paid to the British merchants as indemnity for losses caused by unwarranted seizures the sum of ninety-five pounds. The question with regard to the boundaries of Florida was also disposed of; it was agreed that both nations were to retain the land then in their possession, until a duly appointed commission should determine the exact boundaries, which meant that Great Britain would hold jurisdiction over the country to the mouth of St. Mary's River. The discussion about this agreement in the British parliament did not add to the glory of the United Kingdom. Walpole spoke in favor of its acceptance, saying "It requires no great abilities in a minister to pursue such measures as make a war unavoidable. But how many ministers have known the art of avoiding war by making a safe and honorable peace?" The Duke of Newcastle, not credited with too much intelligence, opposed the measure. William Pitt, Pulteny and others sided with him. The opposition finally triumphed. Bancroft says of this disgraceful termination of a conference intended to seek equitable solution of a most harassing international problem: "In an ill hour for herself, in a happy one for America, England, on the twenty-third of October, 1639, declared war against Spain. If the rightfulness of the European colonial system be conceded, the declaration was a wanton invasion of it for immediate selfish purposes; but, in endeavoring to open the ports of Spanish America to the mercantile enterprise of her own people, she was beginning a war on colonial monopoly, which could not end till American colonies of her own, as well as of Spain, should obtain independence." Even before this official break between the two countries, the British had become guilty of movements that violated Spanish territory. There is not much said by Spanish historians about the difficulties between Florida and the newly planned British colony of Georgia. But the dispute about the boundary of Florida ripened into an armed conflict, in which Cuban forces assisted those of St. Augustine. Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, had in the year 1736 endeavored to vindicate British rights to territory previously claimed by the Spaniards and the opposition of the latter when the British approached more and more closely was easily understood. Oglethorpe dispatched messengers to St. Augustine and, claiming the St. John's River as the southern boundary of the British colony, built Ft. George for defense of the British frontier. The messengers were for a time held in St. Augustine as prisoners, but eventually released. The dispute was temporarily settled by negotiation. But though the British abandoned Ft. George, they kept St. Andrew's at the mouth of St. Mary's, which was bound to be a perpetual source of irritation to the Spaniards. Two years later, according to Blanchet, hostile movements of British ships were observed in Cuban waters. He speaks of the _Commodore Brown_ as having, by the effective defense which Guemez had prepared, been prevented from landing in Bacuranao, Bahia-Honda and other places. With the beginning of the war, Guemez was called upon to secure the aprovionamento, the provisioning of the island and to insure its security. He received efficient assistance from some of his privateers, among them D. Jose Cordero and D. Pedro Garaicochea, who valorously fought some British vessels and obtained advantages over the British fleets commanded by the admirals Bermon and Oglethorpe. D. Jose Hurriaza, too, won some victories over the British with his three ships, of the kind called at that time guipuzcoanos. He sank one British vessel, captured another and anchored safely with his booty in the harbor of San Juan of Puerto Rico. The British war party made capital out of the news of these encounters. Exaggerated reports about the cruelty practiced upon British prisoners were sent to London. The authorities did not hesitate to call as witnesses of victims of such outrages, characters whose words would not have received credence at other times. Bancroft quotes the case of a notorious smuggler by the name of Jenkins, who accused the enemy of having cut off one of his ears, and Pulteny, in order to precipitate the issue, exclaimed in parliament: "We have no need of allies to enable us to command justice; the story of Jenkins will raise volunteers." Not only politicians and the ever ready pamphleteers lent their voice to the "cause," but even the poets joined the ignoble chorus. Alexander Pope wrote in his customary mordant manner: "And own the Spaniard did the waggish thing Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king"; and even Samuel Johnson burst out into the cry: "Has Heaven reserved, in pity to the poor, No pathless waste or undiscovered shore, No secret island in the boundless main, No peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain?" Thus was the mood of the moment prepared in the multitude and mass psychology did the rest, as it always does in such crises. About this time occurred an incident, in which Guemez showed his mettle as a man, regardless of his official capacity. It is the historian Blanchet who has recorded this remarkable example of noble generosity. It seems that the British frigate _Elizabeth_, under the command of a Captain Edwards, had been caught in a terrible tempest off the coast of Cuba and threatened with inevitable shipwreck, sought the protection of the harbor. According to the laws of warfare, the Captain surrendered as prisoner of war. But Guemez, as acting Captain General, refused to take advantage of his misfortune, and not only permitted the vessel to careen and take on much-needed supplies, but gave Captain Edwards letters of safe-conduct allowing him to continue on his way as far as Bermuda. The rivals and enemies of Guemez, who had previously attempted to lodge complaints against him with the Consejo de Indias, renewed their intrigues and cabals, aimed at robbing him of the good name he enjoyed in Cuba as in Madrid, and accused him of all sorts of misdemeanors and abuses. But they failed in ruining his career. He was made lieutenant-general and on his retirement from the governorship was given the rank and title of Conde (count) de Revillagigedo and appointed Viceroy of New Spain. He died in Madrid as commander-in-chief of the army at the ripe old age of eighty-six years. However great were the services rendered by D. Guemez y Horcasitas to Cuba, the conflicting rumors attacking his character must have had some foundation. Perhaps the impression the governor made upon a French traveler, who visited Havana at this time and was on board the vessel which took him to Mexico, may add some traits to his portrait. M. Villiet d'Arignon is quoted in Pierre Jean Baptiste Nougaret's "Voyages interessans" as saying: "D. Juan Orcazita had been appointed to this important post on account of the sums he had lavishly spent at the court of Madrid. One could say that he bought it. The immense fortune he made during his governorship soon enabled him to turn his eyes to a higher goal. Everything depended upon contributions. So he in a short time amassed considerable sums, which from a simple civilian raised him to the highest rank ambition could aspire to. We shall see that he continued the same tactics in Mexico and profited even more, the country being wealthier. Orcazita was a man of some height, rather handsome, but of a mediocre intelligence, and had no ambition except for spoils. This was the viceroy given to Mexico, whither his reputation had preceded him. For the inhabitants soon made fun of his, and circulated this uncomplimentary nickname which sounds better in Spanish than in French: 'Non es Conde, ni Marquis, Juan es,' which means that he was neither count, nor Marquis, but simply 'Juan.' In fact he was not a man of birth, and he owed all he had to his money." In the meantime Great Britain's preparations for the war resulted in the sending over to Spanish America of two fleets. The one under Edward Vernon was commanded to make an attack upon Chagres, east of the Isthmus of Darien; the other one, considerably smaller, under the command of Commodore Anson, was to begin operations in the Pacific. But a series of unfortunate accidents made it impossible for him to cooperate with Vernon, as he was expected to do. He encountered terrible gales, which disabled and scattered his ships, one by one, and after many romantic adventures which were set forth by a member of the expedition in a very readable book, he returned to England with a single vessel, but one richly laden with spoils acquired in pirate fashion. Edward Vernon, whose experiences have also been recorded in a volume, giving interesting details of his expedition, arrived at Portobello in November, 1739. He had under his command six war ships and a well-equipped force of trained men, and on the twenty-second of the month launched an attack. The garrison was so small and poorly prepared that he forced it to capitulate on the very next day. The British lost only seven men in the engagement and found themselves in the possession of the place. Vernon dismantled the fortifications and returned to Jamaica with a booty of ten thousand pesos. Expecting to be joined by Anson, he went to Chagres early in January, succeeded in forcing that port, too, to surrender, and after having demolished it, returned to Jamaica, and rested from his easily won victory, which the party opposing Walpole celebrated in London as a most heroic exploit. The greatest armed force that had yet been seen in West Indian waters had in the mean time sailed from England to join the expedition of Vernon. It consisted not only of British troops, but had been reenforced by recruits from the colonies north of Carolina. Its commander was Lord Cathcart, who, when they stopped to take on fresh water in Dominica, was taken violently ill with a malignant fever and succumbed. His death was a disastrous blow to the British, for it destroyed the unity of command which is indispensable for the success of military operations. Cathcart's successor was Wentworth, who not only lacked experience and firmness, but was a political opponent of the impulsive, irritable Vernon. Thus the enterprise seemed to be at the outset doomed to failure owing to the rivalry and the discord of the leaders. The fleet under their command consisted of twenty-nine line ships, eighty smaller vessels with a crew of fifteen thousand sailors and a land force of twelve thousand men. The expedition set sail from Jamaica without having agreed upon any definite plan of attack. Havana was the nearest point at which operations should be directed and besides her conquest would have given Great Britain supremacy over the Gulf. But Admiral Vernon saw everything only in the light of his own advantages and decided to go in search of the French and Spanish squadrons, without taking trouble to inform himself whether they had not already left. Finally a war council was held and it was decided to make an assault upon the tower of Cartagena. The squadron appeared before the city on the fourth of March and after a siege of twenty-two days succeeded in capturing the fort of Bocachica at the entrance of the harbor. Admiral Wentworth then made preparations to take the fort of San Lazare, which dominated the city. He planned to attack it with a force of two thousand men, but half of them, misunderstanding his directions, remained in camp. The squadron, too, failed to come to his assistance in time, and after a complete defeat he was forced to retire. Before the British had a chance to recover from the effects of this disaster, caused mainly by the lack of harmonious cooperation between their commanders, the rainy season set in. With it came the usual epidemic of tropical fever and alarmingly decimated the forces of the British. The blockade was for the time being abandoned and the survivors of the expedition returned to Jamaica. Admiral Vernon resumed the plan in July, 1741, and arrived in the bay of Guantanamo on the coast of Cuba with a force of three thousand men and about one thousand negroes. He landed and then moved to Santiago with the purpose of taking that city. There the governor Colonel Francisco Cagigal prepared for him an unexpectedly hot reception. He divided his people into small detachment of trained troops, militia and armed inhabitants, and placed himself at their head. His example and the care with which he had calculated the defense inspired the people with the will to win and they plunged with zest into the fight with the invaders. Never for a moment stopping in their furious assaults upon the British, the forces of Admiral Vernon were decimated in the endless series of attacks and counter attacks. The climate, too, was against the British, and they were forced to retire. Vernon left the island with the remainder of his men and abandoned large stores of provisions and ammunition, which Governor Cagigal appropriated amid the enthusiastic acclamation of the brave citizens. Thus ended according to the reports of Guiteras and other Spanish historians the British expedition which had started out with the intention of conquering not only the Spanish West Indies, but Mexico and Peru as well. British arrogance and greed had for the moment received a well-earned lesson. The fleet retired to Jamaica towards the end of November. When a survey of the state of both the naval and military forces was made, it was found that the British had lost some twenty thousand men. During all the time that these fights took place, commerce with the Spanish colonies had of necessity been suspended. The importation of negroes had ceased. Smuggling had considerably decreased. Spanish privateers lay in wait and intercepted the British merchant vessels, whose cargoes were triumphantly brought to Spanish ports. Great Britain, on the contrary, had not conquered a single Spanish possession and the damage caused to her commerce was far greater than that which Spanish America had suffered. In the meantime, the undaunted Oglethorpe had once more decided to challenge the Spanish neighbor in Florida, and encouraged by the British authorities marched upon St. Augustine. He had six hundred regular troops, four hundred militia from Carolina and two hundred Indians, and set out on his expedition in January, 1740. But the garrison of the old town, under the command of the able Monteaco, was prepared and had also secured reenforcements. Five weeks lasted the siege; the troops of Oglethorpe lost patience and courage, failure staring them in the face. When they threatened to abandon him, he retired without even being pursued by the enemy. After this provocation the Spanish authorities felt forced to retaliate and decided upon an invasion of Georgia. A large fleet with troops from Cuba joined the forces of the Florida settlement. They arrived at the mouth of St. Mary's, where Oglethorpe had built Ft. William, in the first days of July. But Oglethorpe succeeded in retaining his hold upon that place, though his forces had to retire. The Spanish took possession of their abandoned camps, but on the seventh of July, when they were attempting to advance towards the town on a road which skirted a swamp on one side and a dense wood of brush-oak on the other, they were surprised by Oglethorpe and the fight which ensued was so fierce, and caused such a great loss of life, that the spot has ever since been known as Bloody Marsh. Another attack was made upon Fort William, but being again repulsed, the Spanish forces retired, abandoning a quantity of ammunition. When Guemez of Cuba was promoted to the vice-regency of New Spain, he had been succeeded by Field Marshal D. Juan Antonio Tines y Fuertes, who was inaugurated on the twenty-second of April, 1746, but died on the twenty-first of July of the same year. In spite of his very brief term of service, he is remembered according to Valdes for having been the first governor to whom it occurred to do something for the confinement and possible reform of dissolute women. He is said to have founded for that purpose the Casa de Resorgimento, which seems to have been both a home and a reform school. He was temporarily replaced by Colonel D. Diego de Penalosa. About the name and exact date of his interim administration there seems to exist some confusion, some historians placing him immediately after Martinez de la Vega. Valdes says he was Tenente-Rey in 1738, assumed the functions of provisional governorship at the death of Fuentes, and upon the arrival of the newly appointed governor, was sent to Vera Cruz as Brigadier General. Blanchet, too, calls him Penalosa; but Alcazar gives his name as Penalver. However, Penalosa or Penalver enjoyed during his brief administration the privilege of proclaiming the ascension of Fernando VI. to the throne of Spain. King Philip V., who had so reluctantly been dragged into the war with England, did not live long after the victory of Santiago had temporarily checked the designs of Great Britain. He had died on the ninth of July, 1746, and his crown descended to his son Fernando, an amiable and virtuous prince. King Fernando VI. was also inclined to follow a peaceful policy. He promptly settled the foreign questions that called for attention at this time, and tried his best to enter into and maintain friendly relations with all foreign powers. He aimed at the preservation of Spanish neutrality in the European wars of the period, being most deeply concerned with developing the national wealth. The brilliant festivities with which Cuba celebrated Fernando's coronation gave proof of the love his subjects even in Spanish America had conceived for him before he ascended the throne. After the brief administrations of Fuentes and Penalosa, a new governor was appointed in Madrid and the choice fell upon D. Francisco Cagigal de la Vega, Knight of the order of Santiago. The brave defender of his town against the attack of Admiral Vernon had since that experience ingratiated himself with his people by other equally commendable exploits. With the cooperation of his valiant seamen Regio Espinela and D. Vicenzo Lopez, he had repulsed many an aggressive manoeuver of the British fleet in Cuban waters, until the signing of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Cagigal was a personality of quite different calibre from Guemez. While the latter had been singularly open and sincere for a man in an official position, Cagigal was endowed with a suavity of manner which concealed his keen shrewdness. He had after the defeat of Admiral Vernon been created Field Marshal and was certainly the right man for his place. His inauguration occurred on the ninth of June, 1747, and from that day Cagigal entered upon his duties with the energy and perseverance that had characterized his previous career. Seriously concerned with the defenses of Havana, he had the battery of la Pastora finished, which had been begun long before him, and upon his urgent request the king ordered a citadel to be built on the mountain-side of la Cabana. He also had the Barlovento (weather-side) fleet removed from the port of Vera Cruz to that of Havana. The activity of the ship-building plant of Havana was remarkable during his administration. In the thirteen years of his governorship it turned out seven line ships, one frigate, one brig and one packet-boat and kept in steady work a great number of laborers. Cagigal improved the fort of la Fuerza by having a reception hall built on the seaward side, which was surrounded by a row of balconies. The interior was sumptuously decorated with medallions and escutcheons in bas-relief. He was much interested in the work of the Commercial Company which had been organized during the administration of Guemez; its capital at this time was nine hundred thousand pesos, with shares of one hundred pesos each, and there was declared in 1760 a dividend of thirty per cent. on each share. Before the signing of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle became known in America there was a serious engagement between the British fleet and the Spanish on the twelfth of October, 1747, a league off Havana. There were six vessels on each side, the Spanish under the command of General Andreas Reggio, the British under that of Admiral Knowles. The Spanish opened fire at three o'clock in the afternoon and a furious battle took place which lasted for full six hours. The forces of both sustained heavy losses, computed approximately at one thousand men on each side, and when the firing ceased, neither could claim a decisive victory. The British fleet retired and the Spanish returned to Havana. The efficient management of the island's affairs during the administrations of Guemez and Cagigal greatly stimulated the initiative and enterprise of the Cubans. The first coffee-trees were set out on a plantation in the province of Waja by D. Jose Gelabert. Brandy and other spirits were distilled. The armory of Vera Cruz having been removed to Havana, there was great activity in military circles, and D. Rodrigo de Torres was appointed as the first commander of the navy of Cuba. King Fernando VI. succeeded during the thirteen years of his reign in keeping out of the general European war of 1756, in which England and Prussia had ranged themselves against Austria, France, Russia, Sweden and Poland. He was intent upon building up the resources of the kingdom which had been drained by the wars waged by his predecessors and devoted his attention to promoting the agriculture, industry and commerce of Spain. He was fortunate in the choice of an intelligent wife and of two ministers whose wise counsel he could ever depend upon. The Marquis de Ensenada, who had risen from a peasant to a banker, financier and finally minister of marine, war and finance, enjoyed at first the unlimited confidence of the sovereign and the people, but later fell into disgrace, because it was discovered that he had sent out secret orders to the West Indies to attack the British logwood colony on the Mosquito Coast. The other adviser of Fernando VI., D. Jose de Carvajal, was a man of quite different stamp, endowed with common sense, sound judgment, pure of morals and as just as he was incorruptible. But Fernando died without direct heir to the throne in the year 1759, and his brother, D. Carlos III., succeeded him. The solemn proclamation of King Carlos III. in the cities of Cuba was one of the last acts of the administration of Governor Cagigal. In the year 1760, he was promoted to the post of viceroy of Mexico and left the affairs of the government in charge of the Tenente-Rey, the King's Lieutenant, D. Pedro Alonso. During this provisional government there was erected a new sentry-house at the gate of Tierra, as is commemorated in the following inscription: Reynando La Magesdad de Carlos III Y Siendo Gobernador Y Capitan General de Esta Ciudad E Isla El Coronel D. Pedro Alonso Se Construyo Esta Garita. Ano de 1760. In the reign of his Majesty Charles III. and when Colonel D. Pedro Alonzo was Governor and Commander-in-Chief of this town and island was built this sentry-box. In the year 1760. During this administration died the venerable Cuban prelate D. Juan de Conyedo, who as spiritual adviser to individuals and as counselor to prominent officials had won the love and esteem of the population as did the Bishop Compostela and later the popular Bishop Valdes. Conyedo's services to Cuba in the interest of religion, charity and education were invaluable. He was especially identified with the growth of Villa Clara, where in the year 1712 he had founded a free school for children of both sexes and had himself taken charge of the classes. Before he opened this school, the people knew absolutely nothing besides the Christian doctrine, and the rudiments of reading and writing. The propaganda of the British war party favoring the conquest of Spanish America was in the meantime going on without interruption. When the greed of acquisition of territory is once roused in a nation, it is difficult to appease it. It enlists in the cause all ranks and professions, it employs all means, whether they answer the test of international justice and human equity, or not. Art, literature, science are harnessed in its service. It is needless to remind of a recent example of national mentality and morality gone astray through misapplied ambition. The utterances of Pope and Johnson were tame in comparison to the hymns of hate following the declaration of the World's war, still fresh in our memory. But, there was another side to this literary activity. It did not always appeal to the emotions and stir up feelings. It was also of an instructive kind. Just as the Dutch at the time when their attention was fixed upon the Spanish possessions of America wrote book upon book describing the coveted islands and the coasts of the continent supposed to hold inexhaustible riches, so did the British during the eighteenth century suddenly conceive an interest in Spanish America which led to magazine articles, pamphlets and books dealing with those lands. That this literature with its endless descriptions of ports and products was intended for the use of mariners venturing forth on legitimate or illegitimate business, was evident. All these writers did not fail to remark that Havana was the richest town in America, that it had magnificent churches and public buildings and that the streets were narrow, but clean. But their main concern was to describe the exact location of every bay and every harbor: Matanzas, Nipe, Puerto del Principe, Santiago, Baracoa, Guantanamo, etc., and their next concern was to dwell upon the several products of the country, as tobacco, sugar, and others. One of the most curious books of this kind was "A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil and the West Indies," published in London in the year 1735. Its author was John Atkins, surgeon of the Royal Navy, and though it contained an account of a trip made by him, it very plainly revealed an interest in the commerce of the countries visited and in the possibilities they offered, which, while natural in a business man, was quite surprising in a member of the medical fraternity. After devoting considerable space to the products of these southern lands, hurricanes, etc., he also discourses at length upon the slave-trade and gives interesting glimpses of the manner in which it was conducted. "To give dispatch," says he, "cajole the traders with Brandy," and continues: "Giving way to the ridiculous Humours and Gestures of the trading Negroes is no small artifice for success. If you look strange and are niggardly of your Drams, you frighten him. Sambo is gone, he never cares to treat with dry lips, and as the Expenses is in English Spirits of two Shillings a Gallon, brought partly for this purpose, the good Humour it brings them into, is found discounted in the sale of goods." Speaking of Cuba, he calls it a very pleasant and flourishing island, the Spanish building and improving for posterity without dreaming, as the English planters do, of any other homes. But he does not fail to add, "They make the best Sugars in the world." Another publication aiming more directly at the mariners and merchants of Great Britain is by one Caleb Smith, called on the title page, the inventor of the "New Sea Quadrant." It was printed in 1740 and was a translation of Domingo Gonzales Carranza's description of the coasts, harbors and sea-ports of the Spanish West Indies. In the curious preface he says: "The original was brought to England by a Sympathetic prisoner who had been in Havana where he procured it in manuscript and presented it to the Editor as a Testimony of his friendship and respect," and the dedication is addressed "to the Merchants of Great Britain, the Commanders of Ships, and others who were pleased to subscribe for this Treatise." Thus was the mind of the people perpetually stimulated to look beyond the Atlantic for lands and seas which waited to be conquered by British prowess; and the defeat of Vernon in Santiago was hardly heeded. In the meantime negotiations had been going on between the European powers and a convention of their representatives had met at Aix-la-Chapelle to settle certain disputes and sign a treaty of peace. England and Spain on the one and England and France on the other hand had gained nothing by eight years of mutual fighting, but an immense national debt. As at other conferences for the establishment of the world's peace much was said and after all little was done. For when the document known since as the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed in 1748, it left some of the most harassing problems unsolved. Among them was the frontier of Florida and the right of Spanish ships to search British vessels suspected of smuggling. The assiente agreement, which had been found so profitable, was continued for four more years. In the light of later events the treaty was found to be only a makeshift for the moment, and did not prevent the outbreak of new hostilities between Great Britain and Spain when the ink with which the treaty was signed had barely dried on that document. CHAPTER III The alliances among the powers of Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century and the unsatisfactory settlements of some of the most harassing questions in dispute produced a state of unrest and tension throughout the world which the clever pourparlers and the fascinating fencing bouts of European diplomacy failed to relieve, and of which Cuba was destined to feel the effects. In spite of her insular isolation Great Britain was closely concerned with the intrigues that were being spun at the courts of the continent and were bound sooner or later to involve Europe in a new bloody conflict. She had on the one hand allied herself with Austria, bribing even some of the South German principalities to insure the election of Joseph II. to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, and on the other hand with Russia, which was then a newcomer not yet vitally interested in the issues at stake. Both allies failed to keep their pledge; Austria turned away to enter into a confederacy with France, while Russia passed from one camp to the other. The growing ascendancy of Prussia under Frederick II. had long been watched with distrust by the immediate neighbors, but by this time even those whose territories seemed safe from his acquisitive aggressiveness were roused to the realization of the danger it foreboded. When Saxony and some other German states, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Russia and France combined to check the Prussian's ambitious designs, Great Britain, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick became the allies of Frederick. Spain with remarkable firmness decided to keep out of the general war which broke out in 1756 and, lasting until 1763, was to be known in history as The Seven Years' War. Even when Pitt, who was the ally of Frederick of Prussia, offered the conditional return of Gibraltar and the abandonment of the British settlements on the Mosquito Coast and in the Bay of Honduras, Fernando VI. resolutely refused to participate. By this wise policy of non-interference this king secured for Spain a period of peace which brought with it a prosperity it had long lacked. The country recovered from the losses occasioned by previous wars, and when Carlos III. succeeded his father, he found fifteen millions of dollars in the treasury. He, too, was determined to keep peace, but the stubborn resistance of Great Britain to any equitable settlement of the question in dispute between the two countries, and the continual violation of international justice by her mariners were hard to bear and sorely tried the patience of the people. Bancroft says in his history of the United States (Vol. III, p. 264): "The restitution of the merchant ships, which the English had seized before the war, was justly demanded. They were afloat on the ocean, under every guarantee of safety; they were the property of private citizens, who knew nothing, and could know nothing, of the diplomatic disputes of the two countries. The capture was unjustifiable by every reason of equity and public law. 'The cannon,' said Pitt, 'has settled the question in our favor; and, in the absence of a tribunal, this decision is a sentence.'" It is meet in this place to call attention to the literature called forth by Britain's colonial ambitions. Albert Savine, a French writer, during the Spanish-American war, wrote an interesting article in the _Revue Brittanique_ of Paris (1898, Vol. III, pp. 167 etc.), entitled: "Les Anglais dans l'ile de Cuba au dix-huitieme siecle," in which he refers to a History of Jamaica by Hans Sloane, published in 1740 and translated into French in 1751. This writer brought out the importance of Cuba very clearly, saying that no vessel could go to the continent without passing that island, that Havana was the general rendezvous of the fleet and that for the British to be really lords of the seas surrounding them, nothing was needed but Havana. Savine in discussing Britain's designs upon Havana, continued: "The reason for their attack upon Cuba was, as is seen, the commercial and military importance of the island, which was at that epoch considered a necessary stopping place, a rallying point for the vessels going from Spain to America and from America to Spain. To be master of Cuba, thought they, was to be master of the road which the Spanish galleons followed. This rôle of port of supply and repairs for the damages sustained on the sea had made of Havana since the middle of the sixteenth century an important arsenal and dockyard, where there were continually in process of construction enormous ships destined for travel to Spain or South America. From 1747 to 1760 they fitted out seven ships of line, a frigate, a brigantine, and a packet-boat. The vessels which at the side of our fleet at Trafalgar fought those of Nelson had almost all come from the yards of Havana, which used the excellent timber of the island, commerce in which has somewhat diminished in our century." The notes and dispatches exchanged between France and Spain on the one, and Britain on the other side, prove how the two were slowly forced into an alliance against the latter. On the fifteenth of May, France presented a memorial asking that England give no help to the king of Prussia and simultaneously a paper was presented from Spain, demanding indemnity for seizure of ships, the right to fish at Newfoundland and the abandonment of the settlements in the Bay of Honduras. On the twenty-ninth, England demanded Canada, the fisheries, granting to the French a limited concession, unlikely to be of any use, the reduction of Dunkirk, half of the neutral islands; Senegal and Goree, which was equivalent to a monopoly of the slave trade; Minorca; freedom to give help to the king of Prussia; and British supremacy in East India. On the fifteenth of August, the French minister Choiseul concluded with Spain what was called a family compact, rallying all the Bourbons to check the arrogance of Britain. On the same day a special agreement was reached between France and Spain, empowering the latter, unless peace were concluded between France and England before the first of May, 1762, to declare war against England. Guiteras in his "Historia de la Isla de Cuba" has set forth the position of Spain at this time and her relation to France, which led to the famous alliance known as the Family Pact. He says justly, that the general interests of the nation demanded from Carlos III. the continuation of the strict neutrality which his brother had pursued in this war; for by that neutrality the commerce and general welfare of Spain had derived great benefits. But personal motives of resentment against England and of esteem and gratitude for Louis XV. predominated in his mind against the serious reasons of state and the advantages to his subjects, and the voluminous correspondence carried on between him and the king of France made him deeply share the humiliation of the principal branch of his family under the triumph of British arms. These sentiments and other motives finally gave birth to the treaty which was concluded between the two sovereigns on the fifteenth of August, 1761, and which was a defensive and offensive alliance of the two countries with the object of creating between them firm and lasting bonds for the mutual protection of their interests, and thus to secure on a solid basis the internal prosperity of the two kingdoms and the predominance of the house of Bourbon among the princes of Europe. It was agreed to consider henceforth as a common enemy any government that would declare war against either of the two kingdoms and reciprocally to guarantee the dominions they possessed at the conclusion of the war, in which France saw herself involved; to lend each other aid at sea and on land, and not to listen to or enter into any settlement with the enemies of both crowns unless so done with common accord. For as much in peace as in war they had to consider the identified interests of the two nations, compensate their losses and divide their respective acquisitions and operate as though the two peoples were one, by granting to the subjects of both kingdoms in their European dominions the enjoyment of the same privileges as those of their native subjects; and, finally, to admit to participation in this treaty only such countries as were ruled by sovereigns of the House of Bourbon. As Spain was by this treaty compelled to break with Great Britain, they awaited only the arrival of the galleons from South America in order to provide for the security of their commerce and territory, and that of their distant possessions. Then would be the moment to make known the consummation of this alliance and to begin hostilities against the common enemy. But somehow Britain anticipated the designs of Spain, for the French with their characteristic impatience had divulged the secret in their communications to foreign courts, and a lively correspondence ensued between the countries, soon to be arrayed against each other in the war Carlos III. had so zealously wished to avoid. But there was no doubt in the minds of the Spanish king and his cabinet, that the British policy was one solely of conquest, that Britain recognized no other law than the aggrandizement of her power on land and her universal despotism on the ocean. Nor could it be doubted by any impartial onlooker that Britain had long cast covetous eyes upon the Spanish possessions in America, and had for a long time given Spain sufficient cause for grievance. The audacity of her privateers and pirates in their attacks upon the West Indies had not been forgotten; the colonies especially had reason to remember the numerous and criminal outrages to which they had been subjected at the hands of men openly or covertly breaking treaties that had been made and accepted by the two nations for the mutual protection of their merchantmen at sea. The leniency of Britain in dealing with the most notorious pirate of all, the scoundrel Morgan, whom she allowed to settle under the protection of her flag in Jamaica, to rise to social prominence, to be appointed to public offices of importance, and whom her king had finally distinguished by conferring upon him knighthood, had always been felt as acts of defiance. In the rapid exchange of notes during the period when the rupture between the two powers was daily coming nearer the suavity of diplomatic language was sometimes discarded for rather plain speech. When Britain proposed some regulations of the privileges of the British to cut logwood in Campeche, the king of Spain, through his minister, Wall, replied in a dispatch: "The evacuation of the logwood establishment is offered, if his Catholic majesty will assure to the English the logwood! He who avows that he has entered another man's house to seize his jewels says, 'I will go out of your house, if you will first give me what I am come to seize!'" This drastic comparison enraged Pitt and he decided upon even more stringent measures to humiliate Spain and crush her power in America. But in the meantime the party in parliament that had steadily opposed him succeeded in its propaganda against him, and he was forced to retire. However, the feelings had run too high, the hostility on both sides had assumed such proportions that war was inevitable. The British were more than ever bent upon pursuing their acquisitions in America, regardless of France and Spain; and the Spanish were unanimous in their hatred of the aggressor. The year 1762 opened for the powers concerned in this conflict with the declaration of war upon Spain by King George III. on the fourth of January. This was promptly followed on the sixteenth of the same month by a declaration of war upon Britain by King Carlos III. Thus was the die cast, and both governments at once set about to make extensive preparations for military and naval action. Fortune seemed to favor the British; for George Rodney, the gifted naval officer, who was to distinguish himself during the war between Britain and her colonies by his daring and successful operations against the French and Spanish fleets in the West Indian waters, was at that time in the neighborhood of what was to be the scene of action. He had with a fleet of sixteen ships of line and thirteen frigates, carrying an army of twelve thousand men under Monckton, arrived at Martinique and laid siege to the colony which France cherished most among her island possessions in America. After five weeks, it was forced to surrender. A number of other islands followed, until all the outer Caribbeans from St. Domingo towards the continent of South America were in the possession of the British. Naturally the attention of the British government was immediately fixed upon Havana. This being the most important military post of New Spain, its conquest promised to close the passage of the ocean to the Spanish ships carrying away from America its inexhaustible treasures for the sole enrichment of the crown of Spain. It meant also opening that and other ports of the Spanish West Indies to British navigation, and lastly it was to be only the beginning of operations which ultimately were to include the conquest of other possessions of Spain in that part of the world. The honor of conceiving the project has been conceded to Admiral Knowles, who had submitted his plan to the Duke of Cumberland; but although the latter recommended it to the ministry, the plan of the invasion, which had been simultaneously submitted by Lord Anson, chief of the board of Admiralty, and which was almost identical with that of Knowles, was the one finally adopted. In order to divert the attention of the enemy from the true object of the expedition, a rumor was circulated that the forces were destined for Santo Domingo, which seemed quite plausible, this island being nearer to Martinique than to Cuba, and one half of it belonging to France, the other to Spain. _The London Gazette_ of January ninth corroborated this statement by the announcement that the English army was bound for the Antilles. George III. entrusted the Duke of Cumberland with the task of selecting the chiefs who were to be placed at the head of the enterprise, and his choice fell upon the following: Lieutenant-General Keppel, Earl of Albemarle, for general-in-chief of the land forces, and Admiral Sir George Pococke for the command of the squadron. The latter and a division of four thousand men gathered in Portsmouth and orders were given to General Monckton to hold the forces which had gone to the conquest of Martinique and Guadeloupe ready for the arrival of Admiral Pococke. The authorities in Jamaica and the British colonies of North America were ordered to prepare two divisions, the first of two thousand men, the latter of four thousand. The British command staked everything upon a surprise attack. Fear that information of the rupture between the two countries might have reached Cuba, caused no little anxiety to Lord Albemarle and Admiral Pococke. The expedition narrowly escaped an encounter with the squadron of M. de Blenac, who had left Brest in aid of Martinique with seven vessels and four frigates and a sufficient force to have saved that colony, had he come in time. Unfortunately he arrived in sight of Martinique only after the surrender of Fort Royal, and on hearing that the island was in possession of the British, he altered his course and turned towards Cape France, leaving the passage free for Admiral Pococke and his fleet. Upon his arrival in Martinique, Lord Albemarle took command of all the forces assembled on the island and found that his army consisted of twelve thousand men. He divided them into five brigades and formed besides them two bodies, one of four companies of light infantry brought from England, and one battalion of grenadiers under the command of Colonel Guy Carleton, and placed two other battalions of grenadiers under the command of William Howe. He also ordered the purchase of four thousand negroes in Martinique and other islands, who were incorporated into a company with six thousand negroes of Jamaica. When all these preparations had been made, the forces that were to take part in the siege of Havana were under orders of the following commanders: Lord Albemarle, Commander-in-chief. Lieutenant-General George August Eliot, second chief. Field Marshals: John Lafanfille and the Hon. William Keppel. Brigadiers: William Haviland, Francis Grant, John Reid, Andrew Lord Rollo and Hunt Walsh. Adjutant-General: Hon. Col. William Howe; second;--Lieutenant-Colonel Dudley Ackland. Quartermaster General: Col. Guy Carleton; sub-delegate:--Major Nevinson Poole. Secretary of the general-in-chief: Lieutenant-Colonel John Hale. Engineer-chief: Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick MacKellar. Chief of the Military Health Board and of the medical corps: Sir Clifton Wintringham; sub-delegate: Richard Hunck and a staff of three physicians, four surgeons, four druggists and forty-four attendants. A month passed in concluding the details of this well-elaborated plan. Finally on the sixth of May Admiral Pococke started from Martinique in the direction of the Paso de la Mano, where he was joined on the eighth by the division of Captain Hervey, who was blocking the squadron of Admiral de Blenac at Cape France; on the seventeenth they arrived at Cape Nicolas and on the twenty-third they met the Jamaica fleet under command of Sir James Douglas. The British naval forces, including these two divisions and the one that later arrived from North America, consisted of fifty-three warships of various kinds with a crew of ten thousand eight hundred men, and a great number of transports, among them two hundred vessels carrying provisions, hospital supplies, ammunition, etc. When the manner of conducting the expedition was at last decided upon, the fleet ordered to take part in the siege of Havana was composed of the following vessels: The Admiral ship _Namur_ of fifty cannons; _Cambridge_ of eighty; _Valiant_; _Culloden_; _Temerare_; _Dragon_; _Centaur_; and _Dublin_ of seventy-four; _Marlborough_ and _Temple_ of seventy; _Oxford_ and _Devonshire_ of sixty-six; _Belleisle_; _Edgar_; _Alcide_; _Hampton Court_; and _Sterling Castle_ of sixty-four; _Pembroke_; _Rippon_; _Nottingham_; _Defense_; and _Intrepid_ of sixty; _Centurion_; _Depford_; _Sutherland_; and _Hampshire_ of fifty; the frigates _Penzance_, _Dover_ and _Enterprise_ of forty; _Richmond_ and _Alarm_ of thirty-two; _Echo_, _Lizard_, _Trent_, _Cerberus_ and _Boreas_ of twenty-eight; _Mercury_ of twenty-four; _Rose_, _Portmahon_, _Forvey_ and _Glasgow_ of twenty; _Bonetta_, _Cygnet_ and _Merle_ of sixteen; the schooner _Porcupine_ of sixteen, _Barbadoes_, _Viper_, _Port Royal_, _Lurcher_ and _Ferret_ of fourteen, and the bomb-vessels _Thunder_, _Grenade_ and _Basilisk_, each of eight cannons. Of such formidable dimensions were, according to Guiteras, the preparations made by Britain for the attack upon Havana. Little is heard of corresponding steps taken by her opponents. France was too exhausted to indulge in great expenditures of money or men. Spain was curiously unconcerned. The possibility of an attack upon Havana was discussed in Madrid, but the Spanish minister Grimaldi could not be made to believe that it might be successful. Cuba, too, little suspected what was in store for her. The new governor appointed to take the place of Cagigal, when the latter was promoted to the vice-regency of Mexico, was the Field Marshal D. Juan Prado y Portocasso. Before the consummation of the Family Pact, in March, 1670, King Carlos III. had told Prado of the menacing attitude of Britain and had warned him of the possibility of a rupture. He counted upon him to reorganize the island from a military point of view. Nevertheless Prado did not immediately after his appointment sail for Cuba, but lingered six more months in Spain, and, when he arrived on the island, wasted another month in a visit to his friend Madriaga, the governor of Santiago. He did not arrive in Havana until January, 1761. Valdes gives July as the month of his inauguration which seems improbable. CHAPTER IV When Prado took charge of the governorship, he immediately proceeded to build quarters for the reenforcement of dragoons which were to be sent over from Spain, and for that purpose engaged sixty galley-slaves from Vera Cruz. He also began work on the fortifications of Cabanas under the direction of the excellent engineer Francois Ribaut de Tirgale. But a second consignment of galley-slaves in June brought to Havana the "vomito negro," the yellow fever, of which Siam had made a gift to Mexico in 1713 and which so far had been unknown in Cuba. Physicians being unfamiliar with the terrible scourge, all remedies proved of no avail. Within three months eighteen hundred men of the garrison and the fleet succumbed to the disease. The hospitals were filled with the sick, and work on the important public constructions was suspended. Engineer Tirgale was one of the first stricken. He was succeeded by his brother Balthazar, but he himself was sick and had such insufficient and inadequate help that he was much handicapped in his work. New difficulties having arisen with the vigueros, or tobacco-planters, Prado convoked the Junta which agreed to fix the process, the quantity and the brands of tobacco which the General Factory was to receive from the planters. [Illustration: THE OLD ESPADA CEMETERY, HAVANA, 1750] Thus was the whole year 1761 wasted, while the signs of the impending outbreak multiplied and the danger of the dreaded invasion came nearer and nearer. On the sixteenth of January, war was declared and only on the twenty-sixth of February did the news reach Prado, for the vessel carrying the dispatches of the Spanish government had been captured by the tender of the _Dublin_. He called at once a meeting of the council and asked for one thousand veterans to replace the losses which the troops had sustained through the epidemic. He also demanded that he be furnished four thousand rounds of powder. The army that he could muster in the eventuality of an invasion did not number at that time more than four thousand six hundred men. Yet Prado could not be roused from a curious apathy that possessed him and that made him again lapse into the indolence of Creole life. It seemed impossible for him to realize that anybody would dare to attempt what neither Hossier, nor Vernon, nor Knowles had dared. M. de Blenac, who commanded a French fleet charged with the protection of Santo Domingo, and Prado's friend Madriaga were equally unsuspecting. Had the former come to an understanding with the commander of the Royal Spanish transports, they might have surprised the British in the straits of Bahama and averted the disaster. On the twenty first of May, a business man from Santiago, Martin de Arana, who had been on an errand to Kingston and in his patriotic anxiety perceived the armaments and supplies that were being collected there, came to Havana to inform the government. Reluctantly Governor Prado consented to an interview with this man who had braved the sea voyage and suffered privations to save his country from the menacing attack. The attitude of the people as soon as the news spread was commendable. The sugar-planters promised their negroes freedom if they joined the troops of defense and the clergy went about rousing the spirit of the people to action. Bishop Pedro Agustino Morell of Santa Cruz did admirable work. He had during the expedition of Edward Vernon traversed the country on horseback, and stirred the people to resist the invaders. Beloved by his parishioners, whom he inspired with his zeal, he had for twenty years preached the holy war against the enemies of his native soil. His generosity and his self-denial knew no bounds. The word of such a man at such a moment had weight and the people were ready to go to any length of sacrifice; but the man at the head of the government seemed oblivious to the gravity of the situation and did nothing efficiently to prepare the defense of the city. Prado presided at the meetings of the War Junta which failed to suit the action of the word and wasted time in heated discussions. This War Council consisted of the "Marquès" of the Royal Transports, the honorary marine quartermaster, D. Juan Montalvo, Col. del Rio D. Alejandro Arroyo, the engineer D. Balthasar Ricaut, and the captains of the vessels anchored in the bay. Later it was joined by the Lieutenant-General D. Jose Manso de Velasco, the former viceroy of Peru, the Field Marshal D. Diego Tabares, ex-governor of Cartagena, and the Lieutenant-General Conde de Superanda, then visiting Havana. The council did not heed the warning of D. Martin de Arana, the Santiago trader, any more than did Governor Prado. In the meantime the British fleet was approaching through the straits of Bahama, clear of purpose, strong of will, and bent upon conquest. An interesting document of that event is "An Authentic Journal of the Siege of the Havana By an Officer. Printed in London MDCCLXII. Reprinted in Dublin, by Boulton Grierson, Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty." That record of the expedition had evidently for its author a man of sound judgment and is imbued throughout with a rare sense of justice towards British and Spanish alike. Spanish authorities, among them Blanchet, give the number of line ships in the fleet as twenty-six, fifteen frigates and an infinite number of smaller vessels, and about twenty thousand combatants. The author of the journal reports nineteen ships of the line, about eighteen frigates, sloops, and other vessels and one hundred and fifty transports with ten thousand troops. The commander of the fleet was Sir George Pococke, Knight of the Bath, Admiral of the Blue, etc., and the commander of the troops, Lieutenant-General Earl of Albemarle. The witness writes that they left Cape Nicolas, northwest of Hispaniola, on the twenty-seventh of May and sailed in seven divisions through the old straits of Bahama--"an undertaking far superior to anything we know in our times, or read of in the past, as few ships care to go through this passage at any time, much less such a fleet, destitute of pilots that professed any knowledge of it and almost of any information of the passage that could be relied on." He goes on to say that "frigates, smaller vessels and even the great ships' boats were sent ahead and so distributed on both shores, with such proper and well adapted signals for day and night, that not only reconciled every one to the dangers and risk of so hazardous an undertaking, but almost ensured our success. We were often in sight of the keys or shoals on each side." In the first days of June some of the British ships engaged in a fight with and took a Spanish frigate of twenty-four guns and a smaller vessel of eighteen guns, a brig and a schooner, all of which had sailed ten days before from Havana for timber. Through the crews of these vessels, the British learned that at the time of their sailing the people of Havana had not yet been informed of the declaration of war. On the fifth of June the fleet cleared the straits and the next day was off Puerto de Terrara, about thirty-six miles windward of Havana. Colonel Carleton and Colonel Howe went to reconnoitre the coast for landing. The siege of Morro Castle was left to Commodore Keppel. "The Admiral went himself with the rest of the fleet off the harbor, to block up the enemy's ships and in order to more effectually draw the attention of the enemy that way, took with him all the victualling ships, store ships and transports, whose troops had over night been put in those men-of-war appointed for securing the landing." By daylight the troops were in the flat and other boats, and Captain Hervey gave the signal for descent on the sandy beach between Boconao and Cojimar. The enemy had thrown up small breastworks near the old tower commanding the mouth of Boconao and attempted a defense, but was soon dispersed by fire from two ships anchored close to shore. At three o'clock in the afternoon the army was on shore and began to advance toward the Morro, five miles away, along a road which had a thick wood to the left and the sea to the right. The ten guns of the old stone fort of Cojimar were soon silenced by the _Dragon_, anchored close by. Two and a half miles from the Morro the British lay down for the night upon their arms in a heavy rain. While the British were continuing their advance upon Havana, the authorities of the Cuban metropolis were deliberating in the sessions of the War Junta, and the Governor was still unconvinced of the serious intention of the British, this time determined not to rest until Havana was in their possession. Valdes reports that this state of affairs lasted until on the sixth of June there appeared on the weather-side about two hundred and fifty vessels. Everybody but Governor Prado was convinced that they had come ready to fight. He supposed them to be a flotilla come from Jamaica to discharge their cargo. Nevertheless he went that morning to the Morro to observe the movements of the armada. He found the garrison under arms by order of the royal lieutenant D. Dionisio Soler. Much vexed by what he considered exaggerated fear and suspicion, he rescinded the order and commanded the soldiers to return to their quarters. That afternoon, however, the report came from the Morro, that the fleet had arrived and was preparing to land troops. [Illustration: LAUREL DITCH, CABANAS FORTRESS The Cabanas fortress stands near the Morro Castle, at the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor of Havana, and ranks with the Morro and La Punta, on the western headland, as one of the historic fortifications of the capital. Like the Morro Castle, it was used by the Spaniards as a prison, and the Laurel Ditch, under its landward walls, was the scene of many a martyrdom of Cuban patriots. Here men and boys innumerable, during the years of Cuba's struggles to be free, were lined up to be shot, until the massive wall was thickly pitted with the marks of bullets fired not at the foes but at the friends of Cuba.] The consternation of the inhabitants can be imagined when suddenly the bells began to ring and the cannons to thunder. The people rushed out of their houses. Some were armed; but the greater part had no weapons and hurried to the Sala Real, where fifteen hundred guns were stored away with some old carabines, swords, bayonets, and other weapons, mostly out of order and too old to be of any use. They were quickly distributed among the people. The war council assembled. The governor, the Royal Lieutenant, the General of the Navy, the Marques of the Royal Transports, the Commissary D. Lorenzo Montalvo and the distinguished visitors, the Commander-in-Chief Conde de Superanda and Field Marshal D. Diego Tabares were present. It was decided to charge Colonel D. Carlos Caro with the task of opposing and preventing the enemy's debarkation at Cojimar and Boconao, and to collect the cavalry of that place, a few companies of infantry, militia and lancers, in all about three thousand men, at this point. La Cabanas was rapidly supplied with artillery. But in the meantime the enemy, according to the testimony of a British officer's journal, had already landed troops and overcome the resistance of the very places to the support of which these forces were sent! The military defense of Havana, as described by Blanchet, presented a sorry spectacle. It consisted of eight hundred and ten cavalry, three thousand five hundred infantry, three hundred artillery, nine thousand marines and fourteen thousand militia. The armament of these troops was insufficient in quantity and inferior in quality. Twelve vessels were anchored in the port. The entrance was protected by the Morro with fourteen cannons, the battery of the Doce Apostoles with twelve guns, that of the Divina Pastora with fourteen guns and the fort of la Punta. In the city there were the twenty two guns of la Fuerza, the residence of the Captain-General, and the depository of the royal estates. The condition of the walls was unsatisfactory. The town was dominated by fortified heights, which, however, were very accessible. It is not difficult to imagine the state of the people when the news reached the town that Cojimar and Boconao had fallen. When on the following day General Eliot defeated D. Luis Rasave and took Guanabacoa, Colonel Caro, who had been little more than a spectator, retired to Havana. The population was in a panic. The war council then entrusted the defense of the Morro to D. Luis Vicente Velasco, a native of Villa de Noja in Santander and commander of the vessel _La Reina_. Defenses were hurriedly put up at Chorrera and Cabanas. All residents unable to bear arms were advised to leave the city. Soon a procession of women and children and members of the religious orders of both sexes, with here and there the calash of some wealthy family, were seen to proceed along the roads radiating from the city towards the suburbs and the more remote haciendas, under the protection of a detachment of troops. It was a heartrending picture to see these crowds, trudging along on foot in the cruel heat of the tropical sun, on roads almost impassable from recent rains. Many succumbed to the hardships of this exodus. Others were dumb with terror as they realized that they might never again see their fathers, brothers and husbands. Again others gave vent to their high-strung emotions by loud wails. About the time this evacuation took place, fire was set to the suburbs outside of the city walls and unspeakable was the distress of innumerable unfortunate families, who in the face of foreign invasion saw their homes reduced to ashes. A part of the British fleet was seen sailing at this time towards the leeward part of the island with the manifest intention of making another landing. The population was dazed. Some men rushed out to defend their homes and their women, but the greater number was so overcome by the calamity confronting them, that their wills seemed paralyzed and they dumbly awaited the blow that was coming. The next day the work of fortifying la Cabanas began in such an exposed place on the border of the city that rifle bullets could reach the Plaza de los Armas. The construction of a trench was also begun. It was intended to hold one hundred cannon, but after nine or ten had been mounted, the war council changed its plan, ordered the destruction of the trench and had the artillery brought down. This was done in the night of the ninth of June and fire was set to some houses on the hill. The people were startled by this surprising procedure and began not only to grumble, but to talk of treason. As the British fleet was then menacing the port, the three vessels, _Neptune_, _Europa_ and _Asia_, were concentrated in the canal of the entrance. With the huge iron beams that closed it and the artillery of the harbor, they acted like forts securing its safety. It seemed as if these land batteries could prevent the landing of any enemy vessel. But the war council wanted to improve upon this measure and decided to sink _Neptune_ and _Europa_, during the hurried execution of which order two sailors were drowned. Still bent upon what seemed an improvement, two days later the _Asia_, too, was sunk. The British, supposing the port to be closed, anchored along the coast, landed five thousand men and after defeating the land forces, the fleet entered the canal without encountering serious obstacles. But the Spanish authorities continued to commit more blunders. Appointing as commanders of the land-forces officers of the fleet, the army of course resented this as an insult. The task of mobilizing the troops was entrusted to D. Juan Ignacio de Madriaga; the defense of el Morro had been given to D. Luis Vicente de Velasco, whose second was D. Bartolome Montes, and that of la Punta to D. Manuel Briseno, who was soon relieved by D. Fernando de Lortia. Almost all the army posts were occupied by officers of the fleet. The reasons for these measures which seemed absolutely senseless in view of the critical situation, were hotly discussed and some malicious tongues asserted that the object of this curious disposition was to prevent the fleet from making its escape. On the tenth of June a British division moved from the leeward part of the fort of Chorrera, a short distance from the port, with the object of landing troops. They met with greater resistance than they had reason to expect; for the defense was here aided by the loyal executor D. Luis de Aguiar, who had been appointed Colonel of the militia. All day his men fought bravely; they consisted of whites and negroes. They expected a supply of powder and ammunition from an official of Guadeloupe, but he by mistake had delivered them at la Caleta. Finally their stock gave out, and, obeying the order of a superior officer, Aguiar withdrew his troops with little loss. The British then advanced about three thousand men strong, until they reached the hill of San Lazaro, where they dug trenches and prepared a new encampment. They also occupied and fortified the height of the caves, called Taganana, where they mounted three cannon and two large mortars. With two vessels, armed with bombs, in the small bay, the fire they kept up helped the camp on the weather-side, at which the chief force was concentrated. They then proceeded to erect batteries on the height of la Cabanas and were at first much molested during their work by Aguiar, Chacon and the guerilla Pepe Antonio, who had collected a force at that point. A detachment of militia under the command of Captain D. Pedro de Morales was sent to reenforce them, but on the next day he was surprised by the British, who thus came into possession of this important place. In the meantime, the British expedition was beginning to suffer much from incessant rains, alternating with excessive heat. Their work was retarded as much by the weather as by the physical condition of their forces, which began to suffer from the climate and fatigue. The resistance of the Cubans was increasing in proportion as the enemy drew near. During the last days of June, Colonel D. Alejandro de Arroyo landed a body of six hundred men at Pastora battery. Simultaneously the naval lieutenant D. Francisco de Corral placed three hundred men at Norno de Barba. The plan was to spike up the enemy's artillery. But laudable as was the ambition of the commanders, their ability of achievement was not in proportion. Their forces, too, were sadly inferior in number to those of the British. The Captain of the infantry of the fleet, D. Manuel de Frias, was made prisoner, three hundred of his troops were killed and forty men wounded. The force of Col. Arroyo also sustained heavy losses, especially the grenadiers of Arrajon. A council held at el Morro resulted in the election by the commanders of D. Luis Vicente de Velasco as their head and chief. No man was more able or worthy to fill this responsible position. Untiring in his efforts to defend the fortress, Velasco resolutely and capably endeavored to foil the enemy's designs. But he was out-numbered and the danger grew daily nearer. Though at a great loss to their forces, the British forged ahead and surrounded Velasco with a continuous fire. With the port closed to the Cuban squadron they were free to place their cannon as they went along. The rain of bullets, bombs and grenades was incessant and the breakdown of the bastions inevitable. The garrison seemed to be doomed. The commander declared that it would not be possible to maintain his position without some aid from the camp, but while the walls were being gradually destroyed by the enemy, he did not venture a well organized sortie. On the first of July el Morro was attacked by the batteries which the British had planted on el Cabanas and the fire from three vessels, among them the _Cambridge_ and the _Dragon_. The valor of Velasco inspired his troops, pathetically small in comparison with those of the British. After seven hours of the hottest fire, the _Cambridge_ and the _Dragon_ were so badly battered that they were forced to the rear. The British lost three hundred men, among them Captain Goostree of the _Cambridge_. So fierce had been the resistance offered by Velasco and the few cannon at his disposal, that the British camp, which had been pouring a rain of bombs on el Morro, finally ceased firing. So the honor of this day belonged to the Spanish commander. It is interesting at this point to revert to the journal of the British officer, who took part in this memorable siege of Havana. After reporting under date of July third that their great battery had caught fire, he continues on the following day: "The Morro was now found to be tougher work and the Spaniards more resolute than was at first imagined. Our people grew fatigued by the heat and hard labour and the want of water near them was a sensible distress, and the disappointment of the Morro's not being reduced so speedily as at first they were made to hope, helped to depress the spirits of the weak and low minds; but we found every want relieved and amply made up for by the Admiral's attention, not only to supply every article that could be asked, but by his own sagacity, foreseeing and his precaution providing everything we could want." During the following days the British seem to have suffered much from the climate. The writer of the journal records that the men in general "fall down with fevers and fluxes, but few are carried off by them." Admiral Keppel was much weakened by illness and fatigue, but this discouraging entry is followed immediately by a cheerier note, dated July 8th and 9th: "Every one was exerting himself in his different station and with such zeal as gave fresh hopes to our undertaking, notwithstanding the melancholy scene of the infinite number of sick and the apprehension of the approaching hurricane season." The British had begun to realize the failure of the naval attempt to reduce el Morro. They tried to fortify themselves in the harbor and established the lee-shore camp on the slope of Aroztegui, the same on which El Principe was situated. From this point they undertook many movements, but were always driven back. In spite of these temporary and local successes the Cuban authorities now fully realized that their situation was almost hopeless and devised various measures to stay the progress of the enemy. The magistrates D. Luis de Aguiar and D. Laureane Chacon were made colonels of the militia. They decided to stop the forays and attacks from that encampment, and D. Aguiar established himself in the Horon and tried to dislodge the enemy from various points to which they had penetrated. His undertaking was successful, as was proved by the number of prisoners taken. The hostile forces at Taganana, however, did much mischief and he resolved to attack them on the night of the eighteenth of July. His troops consisted of peasants and negro slaves and fought so effectively, that he was able to send to the fortress eighteen prisoners, including an officer and many trophies. The governor was so elated by this success that he gave one hundred and four negro slaves, that had taken part, their liberty. The British officer in his journal alludes in the entries of these days to the heavy losses sustained by the British, but dwells more upon the ravages caused by disease. The sick list increasing, the guards had to be reduced. The necessity of having a supply of fresh meat for the invalids and convalescents worried them much. They had counted upon getting it from Santiago and Bejucal, where the rich plantations and pastures were, and a monastery that promised rich loot. But D. Laureane Chacon anticipated their movements in that direction. He concentrated some troops four leagues leeward from Wajay, and thus not only checked their progress, but by his persistent opposition weakened their forces. Many of the smaller actions that were undertaken against the British by the Cubans were by volunteer forces recruited by veteran fighters, who had not been associated with the army proper, and their manner of waging war was of the kind called guerrilla warfare. Nevertheless they did active and efficient work and had they not been hindered and restrained by orders from the regulars, they might have accomplished much more. The Lieutenant Diego Ruiz lost his life in such an enterprise. Another famous guerrilla, the valiant fighter known as Pepe Antonio, had won the esteem of the whole army by his courage. He had collected a force of three hundred men and was planning an ambitious assault upon the enemy, when he was called to report to Colonel Caro, who commanded the encampment at Jesus del Monte and San Juan. Colonel Caro, who had not during the siege distinguished himself by any extraordinary achievements, not only censured Pepe Antonio severely, but discharged him. The valiant patriot hero of many daring exploits was so grieved by this injustice that he died within five days. Among these side plays of the great siege an expedition led by Colonel Gutierrez had some successful encounters with the British. D. Luis de Aguiar and D. Laureane Chacon, too, who had gathered under their command the brave youths of the country side, were untiring in their efforts to weaken the British. They prevented them from establishing a cordon and cutting communication with the fort and were themselves enabled uninterruptedly to secure provisions and supplies with which to carry on their operations. Less fortunate was the attack upon Cabanas by D. Juan Benito Lujan with a thousand militia men from the interior of the island. At daybreak, on the twenty-second of July, according to the British officer, the Spanish at el Morro, having been enforced by twelve hundred men from the town, furiously attacked the British. But Brigadier Carleton directed so fierce a fire against them that their forces were driven into the water. He describes them as having consisted mainly of militia, some seamen, mulattoes and negroes. They lost four hundred dead, many wounded and seventy prisoners. A violent cannonade followed, during which Carleton was wounded. While the British troops were encamped from La Cabanas to Cojimar they made many looting raids in the neighborhood, extending their incursions as far as San Miguel and Santa Maria del Rosario. They not only ransacked the churches for their treasures, but also private estates, and took away whatever they could carry. They had approached el Morro by the bulwark of Pina and a body of forty to fifty men in the shelter of some rocks maintained an incessant gunfire. The garrison of the fort, which was being steadily reduced by the rain of bombs and grenades, wanted to make a sortie into the open country, hoping there to be reenforced. Remaining in el Morro was becoming more and more perilous, because the enemy had undermined the fortress. D. Luis de Velasco, broken down by the strain and overwork received a blow on the shoulder, which temporarily disabled him. His aide, Mentes, was likewise wounded, and the two were replaced by D. Francisco Medina and D. Manuel de Cordova. During their absence nothing was done, for the peasantry, fond as they were of Velasco, were reluctant to fight and perhaps die under the command of another. Mentes returned on the third day, appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, and, joined by D. Juan Benito Lujan, who commanded one thousand men of Tierradentro and some colored troops from the fort, attempted a sally. But the British on the heights threw themselves upon the Cubans and overpowered them. The loss on both sides was so great, however, that the enemy had to ask for a truce to bury their dead. As the British said, the Spanish were valiant, but they had no head. If there had been at their head a man of foresight, and if unity of command had been insured at the beginning, the disaster might have been avoided. The British forces were at this time beginning to suffer painfully for want of water and lack of fresh provisions. Five thousand men, and a great proportion of officers among them, were unfit for duty. But the arrival of North American troops under convoy of the _Intrepid_ of sixty-four guns, revived the spirit of the expedition. The North Americans had lost a ship of forty guns and six transports in the old straits of Bahama, but the people were saved and encamped upon the shores, and the British Admiral sent frigates for them. One thousand and four hundred men under Brigadier Burton reenforced Col. Howe on the west side. The Cuban defense was also encouraged in these days, for Velasco, who had been wounded on the sixteenth of July, with second, Mentes, forced to seek medical care in the city, returned to his post at el Morro on the twenty-fourth. During the siege the Spanish vessels, with the exception of the frigate _Perla_, which was sunk by the foe, were singularly inactive. The critical and decisive moment of the siege came on the thirteenth of July, when at two o'clock in the afternoon the British sprung their mines. Through the breach they rapidly entered and captured the battery of San Nicolas. Although the garrison was so terrified that not a few soldiers had fled, the remaining offered a brave opposition to the invaders. D. Fernando Parrayo and thirteen men, supported by two cannon, fought heroically, while the British forces poured into the port. The British officer gives due credit to the Cuban commanders who desperately tried to save the honor of their country. He writes: "The Marquis de Gonzales, commander of a man of war, etc., second in command of the fort, fell bravely endeavoring to animate and rally his people. Don Luis de Velasco, also Captain of the _Reina_ man-of-war, soon after shared the same fate endeavoring to defend the colours of the fort, round which he had made a breastwork and had collected about 100 men, who soon fled and left him to that stroke he seemed to invite and wait for; for being shot through the breast he fell, offering his sword to the conquerors. Confusion and fright ensued, and as much slaughter; for near 400 of the enemy fell by the sword; as many more taken prisoners to whom the soldiers had generously given quarters, though no ways obliged by the rules of war. English colours were soon flying on the fort, that were welcomed by the loud huzzas of all the rejoiced army and navy. A parley ensued, and D. Luis de Velasco (not yet dead) was at his own request sent to breathe out his last at the Havana, where he expired a day after, leaving a name behind and a character that justly merited admiration and esteem from his opposites as respect and love from his confederates." The historian Blanchet also reports that the British showed due reverence to the dead leader and that hostilities were for that reason suspended during the following day. They received a reenforcement of troops from New York on the second of August; but they had fallen in with three French men-of-war and some frigates on their passage, who took five or six transports with about five hundred men. Their forces were being decimated by the climate and the hardships. The British witness writes that finishing the batteries on Cabanas cost the lives of many poor seamen who were obliged to be day and night filling vessels with water for the men at work. Some men-of-war were sent down with transports to Mariel, for want of men made it unsafe for them to remain any longer on this most open and frightful coast, where the Spaniards as well as West Indians expressed their surprise and dread at seeing such a fleet ride so long in such a season. When the British entered el Morro, they found only one hundred and two bronze cannon of various calibres, two hundred iron cannon, nine bronze mortars, two iron mortars, four thousand one hundred and fifty-seven rifles, five hundred hand grenades, four hundred and seventy empty grenades of various quality, seventeen thousand four hundred and four cannon balls, thirty quintals of rifle balls, one hundred and twenty-five thousand cartridges and five hundred quintals of powder. The sorrow at being forced to give up el Morro was great. Supported by the vessel _Aquilon_ the quick fire from la Punta and the bulwarks of the place promptly demolished the fort. The Cuban vessels retired to the interior of the bay, fearing the bombs from la Cabanas. The commanders for the same reason sought shelter in the hospiteum of St. Isidore, which was situated at the point farthest away from the fire. Yet the determination to continue to resist the invaders prevailed and a battery was formed on the elevation of Soto, where the fort of Attares was located, and fortifications were continued to be strengthened wherever it was possible. The batteries of the British were completed on August tenth, and Lord Albemarle summoned the city to surrender. But Governor Prado relied upon reenforcements promised him by the governor of Santiago de Cuba and hoped also for the possible arrival of a French squadron, so he refused. The people, too, were opposed to surrender, for they had within the last six days received reenforcements from several sides; two hundred and twelve rifles and ammunition from the town of Cuba, five hundred more from Jagua and fifteen hundred on the very last day. However, the fierce fire which the British opened against Havana at daybreak on the eleventh of August, induced the commander of the Cuban forces to give up the last hope. About noon the Spanish ceased firing and at three o'clock in the afternoon flags of truce appeared everywhere. The governor sent word that Havana was ready to capitulate. According to the British officer's journal the victors took possession of the town and port of Havana on the next day; they also became the owners of nine ships of the line, of seventy four and sixty four guns, two very large ones on the stocks, nearly completed, about twenty-five loaded merchant ships; nearly three million dollars belonging to the King and the Royal Company; about six hundred pieces of cannon, and great magazines of stores and merchandise of all kinds. He continues: "But the most grateful at the time was, that it furnished us with fresh provisions, rest and shelter for the many thousands poor sick wretches we had in our camp and hospital ships, all mouldering away for want of nourishment when their disorders had left them. Our battalion is so weak that we have not above one hundred and fifty men fit for duty. I am told the navy is badly off. Our loss of killed and wounded is very trifling in comparison to that of the enemy. Theirs amounts to upwards of six thousand killed and dead of their wounds since, and of sickness." The following day the governor ordered all weapons to be surrendered by military bodies as private individuals and Mayor D. Antonio Ramirez de Estenez was authorized to accord the articles of capitulation. ARTICLES OF CAPITULATION ARTICLE I The garrison will leave by the puerta de Tierra on the twenty-eighth of the present month, if there should not arrive before sufficient help to raise the siege, with all military honors, the soldiers with arms, hoisted flags, six field cannon, and the regiments will also remove the military cases with their contents, and besides six carriages of the Governor. ARTICLE II Said garrison will be permitted to remove from the town all luggage and money, and transport them to another place of the island. ARTICLE III That the ship crews of the port that had served on land shall in their departure enjoy the same honors as the garrison and be brought back to their vessels. They may sail to any other place of Spanish domination, on the condition that on their voyage until their arrival at their destination they shall not attack any vessel of H. British Majesty, of his allies, or any vessel of his subjects. ARTICLE IV That of all the artillery, arms, ammunition and provisions belonging to his Catholic Majesty, excepting those that particularly correspond with said fleet, an exact inventory shall be taken, with the assistance of four subjects of the king of Spain, who will be appointed by the governor, and four subjects of H. British Majesty, chosen by H. Ex Count Albemarle, who will take possession of all until both sovereigns agree otherwise. ARTICLE V That in this capitulation shall be comprised H. Ex Conde de Superanda, Lieutenant-General of the armies of H. Catholic Majesty, and former Viceroy of Peru, as well as Don Diego Tabares, Fieldmarshal of the same royal arms, and former Governor of Cartagena, who happens to be in that town on their way to Spain, together with their families. They shall be left in the possession of their baggage and their sailing to Spain shall be facilitated. ARTICLE VI That the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion shall be maintained, and conserved, as before exercised under H. Catholic Majesty, and that not the least impediment shall be placed in the public acts in regard to the rites exercised and with the churches, and the observation of religious feasts, and all priests, convents, monasteries, hospitals, societies, universities, colleges shall remain in the free enjoyment of their privileges and rights, as to their property and income, and furnitures, as they had enjoyed before. ARTICLE VII That the Bishop of Cuba shall likewise conserve his rights, privileges and prerogatives, which are required for the direction and spiritual nourishment of the faithful of the Catholic religion, or nomination of priests and ecclesiastical ministers necessary, and exercise his accustomed jurisdiction. (Note: Conceded with the reserve that the nomination of priests and other employes be subject to the approval of the Governor of H. British Majesty sent to the place.) ARTICLE VIII That in the cloisters and nunneries the internal government hitherto prevailing shall be followed with subordination to their legitimate superiors, according to the statutes of the particular institutions. ("Conceded.") ARTICLE IX That the funds in the town belonging to H. Catholic Majesty shall be embarked on the vessels of the fleet that happen to be in port to be shipped to Spain, likewise all the tobacco belonging to H. Catholic Majesty; that even in war time the same Sovereign shall be permitted to buy tobacco from the island, in the district subject to the King of Great Britain at current prices, and to transport it to Spain in their own foreign vessels. ("Refused.") ARTICLE X That in consideration of the fact that this port is so conveniently situated for those navigating in these parts of America, be they Spanish or English, it shall be available to the subjects of H. Catholic Majesty as a neutral port and they shall be permitted to enter and leave freely, taken the food they require and repair their vessels, paying for everything at current prices, and that they cannot be insulted or disturbed in their navigation by the ships of H. British Majesty, nor the ships of his subjects and allies, from the promontory of Celoche on the coast of Campêche and St. Antonio in the West, and from the sound of la Tortuga to this port, and thence to the latitude 33° North, until their two Majesties agree otherwise. ("Refused.") ARTICLE XI That all permanent inhabitants of the city and neighborhood remain in the free use and possession of their political offices and employments, and in that of their funds and other property, i.e. household stuff of whatever origin, quality, or in whatever condition they be, without being obliged to contribute in other terms than those made by H. Catholic Majesty. (Conceded, and they will be permitted to continue in the enjoyment of their property so long as their conduct does not give cause for denying them.) ARTICLE XII That these same should retain and have guaranteed the rights and privileges which they hitherto enjoyed, and that they will be governed in the name of H. British Majesty under the same conditions as they have been under Spanish domination, naming their judges and agents of justice according to usages and customs. (Answered in the preceding.) ARTICLE XIII That whoever of said inhabitants is unwilling to stay in this city, be permitted freely to remove his property and wealth in the manner most convenient to him, to sell them or leave them to be administrated, and to go away with them to the dominions of H. Catholic Majesty, he may choose, granting them a space of four years and giving them bought or chartered vessels for conveyance, with the passports and necessary protection of safety, and the power to arm them in the cruise against the Moors and Turks, with the express condition not to use them against subjects of H. British Majesty or his allies, nor to be ill-treated or molested by them. (Reply: The inhabitants will be permitted to sell and remove their effects to any place of Spanish dominions, in vessels at its coast, for which purpose they will be given passports; and it is to be understood that officials who have property in the island will enjoy the same benefits as conceded to the other inhabitants.) ARTICLE XIV That these will not be in the least molested for having in their loyalty taken up arms, and enlisted their militia for the war; nor shall the English troops be permitted to plunder or any other abuse, and that, to the contrary, they shall completely enjoy the other rights, exemptions and prerogatives as the other subjects of H. British Majesty, the families that had left the town on account of the present invasion to return without any obstacle or difficulty from the country to the city with all their provisions and funds, and it is to be understood that neither the one nor the others will be inconvenienced by the stationing of troops in their houses, unless it be in quarters as were used during Spanish dominion. (Reply: Conceded, excepting that in case it becomes necessary to quarter the troops, it must be left to the direction of the Governor. All the slaves of the King will be delivered to the persons that will be named to receive them.) ARTICLE XV That holders of stocks found in this town and belonging to merchants of Cadiz and in which all nations of Europe are interested, be facilitated to depart freely with them, to remit them with the protocols without being insulted in their voyage. ARTICLE XVI That the ministers in charge of the administration and distribution of the Exchequer or any other business of H. Catholic Majesty be left in the free use of all those documents that are in their guard, with the power to remit or bring them to Spain for safety, and the same to hold also good with regard to the Royal Company established in this town, and its clerks. All public papers will be delivered for revision to the secretaries of the Admiral, and will be restored to the ministers of H. Catholic Majesty, unless they be found necessary for the Government of the island. ARTICLE XVII That the public archives remain in the power of the Ministers in whose charge they are, without being permitted the least irregularity in regard to these papers and the instruments they contain, because of the grave mischief that would result from it to the rights of the community and to private individuals. (Replied in the preceding articles.) ARTICLE XVIII That the officials and soldiers who are in the hospitals be treated in the same way as the garrison, and after having recovered, they should be helped in obtaining beasts of burden or vessels for their transportation to where the rest of the garrison happens to be, as well as everything necessary for their safety and subsistence during the voyage, and among others they should be given the provisions and medicines asked for by the directors and surgeons of said hospitals. (Conceded: The governor having competent commissaries to assist them with provisions, surgeons and the necessary medicines at the cost of H. Catholic Majesty.) ARTICLE XIX That the prisoners of either party taken by the other since the sixth of June when the English fleet appeared before this port, be reciprocally restituted without any ransom whatever in the course of two months. (This article cannot be concluded before the British prisoners are returned.) ARTICLE XX Upon the granting of the articles of this capitulation, and the giving of hostages by either party, the gate of Tierra will be delivered to the troops of H. British Majesty, for placing there a guard, together with another provided by the garrison of the place until the evacuation is carried out, and His Ex Conde de Albemarle will send a few soldiers for the protection of the churches, convents, the houses of the generals and other officials. (Conceded.) ARTICLE XXI That the governor and commander of the fleet be permitted to dispatch to H. Catholic Majesty and to other parties information by the vessels, to which passports for their voyage shall be given. (Since the troops are to be sent to Spain, the information is useless.) ARTICLE XXII That in consideration of the vigorous defense made by the Fort of la Punta, it shall be included in this capitulation and its garrison shall enjoy the same honors as that of the fortress, and it shall leave through one of the most suitable breaches made in the ramparts. (Conceded.) ARTICLE XXIII This capitulation to be observed punctually and literally. (Conceded.) Headquarters in Habana, August 12, 1762. (Signed) G. Pococke, Albemarle, Marques of the Royal Fleet, Juan de Prado. What is contained in these articles in regard to the squadron, its officials, crew and garrisons, has been done with my intervention, and I propose them as their Comendante General, and in consequence of what has been accorded in the Junta of yesterday. Habana, August 12, 1762--El Marques of the Royal Transports. We agree with these articles, which are a true copy of the originals, according to the translation made from the English into Spanish by D. Miguel Brito, public interpreter of this town for H. Catholic Majesty. Habana, August 12, 1762--El Marques of the Royal Transports--Juan de Prado. CHAPTER V With the solemn signing of the foregoing articles of capitulation on the twelfth of August, 1762, began the occupation of Havana by the British, who thus seemed to have attained the goal of their covetous aspirations. It was a great day for them; it was a day of mourning for the Cubans. While these articles of capitulation were in themselves not unjust, differing in no essentials from those usually exacted by the victors from the vanquished, the people of Havana found it difficult to obey all these injunctions coming to them from a foreign authority. History furnishes abundant proofs that it is comparatively easy to conquer a country by numerical superiority or clever strategy, but that it is infinitely more difficult to conquer the hearts of its people. The Spanish historian Alcazar records an incident belonging to the history of the capture of Havana which illustrates this point. As soon as the British were masters of the city Lord Albemarle called an extraordinary meeting in which he declared to the Municipio that, being masters of the city by force of arms of King George III. of England, they had to insist upon obedience and allegiance to him as sovereign. The Alcalde D. Pedro Santa Cruz at once rose to say that subjects of Don Carlos III. of Spain could not without committing perjury swear allegiance to any other monarch. He added: "The capitulation compels us to passive obedience. Count on this, but never on our dishonor." It seems that these noble words found an echo in the heart of the British commander who henceforth let the people choose whether to take the oath or not. This story is symptomatic of the attitude of the population of Cuba towards the conquerors. When the morning of the thirteenth of August, 1762, dawned, the British were in possession of the town and port of Havana with one hundred and eighty miles to the east and all that tract of land to the west which terminates the island on that side. They took without resistance Managuas, Bejucal, Santiago, Mariel and Matanzas. The commander of the fort of San Severine in Matanzas, D. Felipe Garcia Solis, had stored up a large amount of provisions and supplies of all kinds in view of an eventual attack. But when he heard of the capitulation of Havana, he blew up the fort and retired with part of the garrison to Santiago. The governor of that city, D. Lorenzo Madriaga, was recognized as the authority to be obeyed by the people in that part of the island not taken by the British. Perhaps the British had gauged the sentiment of the population; perhaps they felt that their forces were too much weakened by the hardships of the siege. They made no attempts at further extending their conquest. According to the agreement between Admiral George Pococke and Lord Albemarle on the one side and the Marques of the Royal Transports and D. Juan de Prado on the other side, the Spanish garrison was to retire with military honors; artillery arms and munitions were to be delivered to the British; the Spanish troops were to be sent back on British transports; but the British were to respect the Catholic religion, its ministers, and churches, hospitals, and colleges; and the population was not to be disturbed in the exercise of wonted occupations and employments; and the laws of Spain were to remain in force. On the thirteenth of August, the gates of Tierra were opened to the British and on the following day they entered with two pieces of artillery and planted their flags on the forts. The following day the Spanish vessels were delivered to them: _Tigre_, _Reina_, _Soberano_, _Infante_, _Aquilon_, _America_, _Conquistader_, _San Antonio_ and _San Genero_. Many merchant vessels in the bay were also taken. The value of their booty was estimated at fourteen million pesos. But according to Valdes their losses during the first twenty four days of the siege had been seven thousand men, some killed in combat, some deserters, but the greater part victims of the Cuban climate. Hence in spite of reenforcements from Jamaica and North America, they had only three thousand men of infantry when Havana was taken. The departure of the Spanish troops was scheduled for the twenty-fourth of August. The British held ready for them three transports which on the thirtieth sailed through the gate of la Punta. One of them carried the Governor and his family. On his arrival in Madrid he was tried by a war council, which for his lack of foresight and energy in preparing the defense of Havana, condemned him to exile. But the king commuted the sentence to imprisonment for life. The British commanders, no longer needed in Havana, worn out with fatigue and weakened by the climate, also hurried to leave. Brigadier Burton returned to North America, Admiral Keppel to Jamaica, Pococke to England. He met with terrible tempests, lost one ship of line, and twelve transports. But the greeting he received on his arrival in England was most enthusiastic. Though the parliament was divided on the question of extending British conquests in Spanish America, there was still the party representing commercial interests to be reckoned with. With a promptness quite unusual at that time a book was published shortly after the capture of Havana, which outlined the course to be pursued in order to reap the benefits of the South Sea trade, which so far had been in the hands of the French and Spanish. It was entitled "The Great Importance of the Havana" set forth in an "Essay on the Nature and Methods of Carrying on a Trade to the South Sea and the West Indies, by Robert Allen, Esq., who resided some years in the Kingdom of Peru, London, printed for J. Hinxman in Paternoster Row and D. Wilson in the Strand, in 1762. Dedicated to the most Hon. Thomas Harley, Esq., M. P. and Merchant of London." The author begins with reference to an old tradition that a Prince of Wales had made an expedition to the coast of Mexico in 1190 and died there. Upon this tradition and the assertion that the Mexican language abounds in Welsh words, he seems to base the right of British priority to Spanish America. Mr. Allen was evidently much concerned with the activity of the French in West Indian waters. He says: "As to the slave-trade, it is too well known that the French are now under contract with the Spanish Assiento to supply them with four or five thousand negroes yearly and the greater profits and advantages which they reap from this trade has encouraged them to send many strong ships yearly to the coast of Africa which have not only taken many of our own ships on that coast, but also destroyed several of our many forts and settlements and likewise made several new settlements of their own, all which has been frequently represented both in the governing and legislative bodies of Britain, and no effectual reconciling remedy taken yet." He continues, that the channel of Spanish trade is quite altered from Jamaica "and the French, a nation whom we least suspected in trade, have of late years engrossed much of the greatest part thereof to themselves." He tries to rouse the British to the need of regaining the Spanish market in America, which was slowly slipping away from them, by a strenuous appeal to his Majesty to encourage such commerce by underselling the French. After giving a list of commodities and manufactures proper for this trade, he adds the postscript: "If Queen Anne, at the treaty of Utrecht, obtained so valuable a branch of trade as the Assiento contract by the success of the Duke of Marlboro alone, which according to stipulation was for two millions in shares annually, but doubly augmented under that contract in other goods (tho' given up by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle with our right of logwood) how much more ought we to insist on valuable terms since the reduction of Cuba, the key to the South Sea trade?" While the British people, like all people under a mass suggestion, were giving themselves up to jubilating and celebrating, the politicians in Parliament and elsewhere to controversies on technical questions, the business world of London and the great industrial and manufacturing centers of the country were considering investments in West Indian trade and calculating the profits to be made thereby. After all human nature is very much alike the world over. That the British as victors were also not different from other conquerors by force of arms and exacted requisitions and even without any formalities and ceremonies appropriated the treasures that seemed worth taking possession of, is evident from many data in the chronicles of those days. Not only were the royal chests taken, but also the property of private corporations, and individuals. Some documents relating to the "right of bells" have been presented and are interesting reading. Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Cleaveland, Artillery Commander of the island, addressed the following communication to Bishop Senor D. Pedro Agustino Morell of Santa Cruz, and to other priests: "According to the rules and customs of war observed by all official commanders of artillery in all European countries when a besieged town surrenders by capitulation: "I command that the city of Havana and the neighboring towns, where the army was situated, give account of all the bells found in all the churches, convents and monasteries, as well as in the sugar-plantations, and of other metals similar to bells, in order that said point shall be put into effect. "Havana, 19 August, 1762. "SAMUEL CLEAVELAND, "Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery." The bishop addressed a letter of inquiry concerning this "Derecho de companes" to Lord Albemarle and received the reply, that the war custom was well known, that the chiefs of artillery receive a gratification from any besieged and captured town or city, and that the Lieutenant-Colonel insisted upon compliance with his demand, adding, however, that it would not be disproportionate. Cleaveland was offered one thousand pesos in place of the coveted bells, but the British considered this amount too small, and the bishop received another letter from Lord Albemarle, which reads: "Illustrious Sir: "The compensation offered to the Commandant of Artillery of His British Majesty for the bells of the city is so low as to compel me to express my indignation. In order to have the matter settled, I say, that your Reverence can give the said official for all the churches ten thousand pesos and I am in the hope that this letter will deserve your immediate attention. "Your obedient servant, "ALBEMARLE. "Havana, 27 August, 1762." The Bishop tried to obtain the sum demanded by alms and collections among his parishioners. But at a meeting on the thirty-first of August it was seen that the collection amounted only to one hundred pesos and four reales, which together with the previous one thousand pesos did not nearly approach the sum required. This was communicated to the British General with the remark that it would be impossible to raise more. This communication received no reply and the Commander of Artillery came to ask for the delivery of the bells, although this was not to take place until September fourth. He did not receive the bells, for the ten thousand pesos were got together by a loan, and the money was paid to Cleaveland on the sixth of that month. Difficulties between the British authorities and the Spanish clergy increased as time went on. On the twentieth of August the Junta of priests and prelates had a meeting at which was discussed the demand of the British Lieutenant-General, the local governor of the place, for a church in which the Anglican worship was to be instituted. The Bishop decided at once to send the communication to said governor, explaining to him that this demand was not contained in the articles of capitulation and if his Excellency had some other basis to justify his claim, he should communicate it. In reply the Bishop received on the thirtieth of August the following letter: "Havana, Aug. 30, 1762. "Rev. Sir: "I wish and ask that your Reverence provide for the British troops a church for their divine worship, or that an alternative be arranged with the Catholics for such hours in the morning or evening, in which they don't use their church. "I request at the same time that an account be given me of all churches, convents, monasteries of every denomination, that are comprised in the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cuba, as well as of Superiors and public officers associated with them. "Very respectfully, etc., "ALBEMARLE." In a long letter dated September second, 1762, the Bishop replied, that he had to consult with the government of his Spanish Majesty and briefly avoided complying with the demand. Thereupon he received a caustic communication from Albemarle saying: "Sir: "I received your very large letter, but which is no answer to mine. I do not know having read a particular Capitulation made with the Church, but I am sure that there is none that can exclude the Subjects of H. British Majesty of their public worship in churches; and for that reason, if you do not assign me a church I shall take one that suits me best, and please remember that all Ecclesiastical employes or dignitaries have to receive my approbation, and also that you better comply with my demand, and cease writing such long Epistles. "ALBEMARLE. "Havana, September 4, 1762." After a consultation with the other prelates the bishop informed Albemarle that since he was so decided, he should choose any church that he liked best. Albemarle selected the Church of San Francisco. But he insisted upon his other claims, as can be seen from the following letter dated September 25: "Some time ago I asked for a list of all Ecclesiastical Benefices (to which is associated a curacy) of the Donation of Your Honor; and once more I repeat my wish to be complied with without loss of time. "I learn that the Jesuit college received in their order an English official dismissed from the Royal Service on account of his bad proceedings; I can hardly believe that such a thing has been done without my license. That order has even in Spain a bad reputation, and in Portugal and France they have been expelled. If they are not entirely under your jurisdiction, send to me their Rector, etc. "ALBEMARLE." The Bishop replied that the story about the admission of the discredited Englishman into the Jesuit seminary was altogether untrue, since the authorities of that college could not admit anybody, this being a special privilege of the Provincial residing in Mexico. A somewhat amusing incident of these disputes between the British authorities and the Spanish clergy of Havana is recorded in the following letter of the Bishop dated October twenty-second. It reads: "Your Excellency: "Yesterday between 4 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon, there called on me on your part a person whose name and nationality I do not know. All I know is that he speaks Spanish, though with a foreign accent and wears golden earrings as is customary with women. He addressed me with 'Usted.' I informed him in the conversation that in speaking to me he had to use a more dignified title. He replied that he would always use 'Usted.' It then occurred to me that this obstinacy might be justified by his higher rank. I asked him and he said that he had no other rank but that of a bomb-thrower in his Majesty's name. He continued in his way of speaking to me with a loud voice, and since in all his conduct he was wanting of the respect due to my dignity, I deem it fair that it should be corrected and that your excellency give me satisfaction." Lord Albemarle seems to have paid no attention to this letter. But on the same day the Bishop received another urgent order in which Lord Albemarle, as Governor and Captain-General of the island, insisted in his demand to receive a list of all ecclesiastical orders and benefices, in order to know and be the "competent judge" of the persons appointed by the Bishop and be able to consent to their appointment. The Bishop in his reply referred to his previous letter, stating that the Governor could neither before nor after the appointment be a competent judge of the appointees, since ecclesiastics, according to all rights, were exempt of protests by the laity, and their privileges were inviolate. According to the historian Blanchet, Bishop Morrell was at the end exiled to Florida for having refused to obey certain orders given by the British authorities. Although Albemarle cannot be said to have governed with the tyranny that characterized the German governors of occupied territories in the recent war, he failed to win the people. Those residents of Havana who were able to leave the place, moved into the country or to towns like Villa-Clara. The peasants of the neighborhood, who had carried on a profitable trade with the city in garden and dairy products, fowl, venison, etc., preferred to renounce these profits rather than go to the market and have the British buy what their soil had raised and their hands had tended. The spirit of the people was unanimous in the hatred of the enemy conquerors. Their intemperance, their customs, and even their language irritated them. Altercations that terminated in bloodshed became more and more numerous as time went on. Any act of violence against the British was severely punished, and not a few Cuban "rebels" were executed; the atmosphere of Havana was soon charged with invisible mines that a spark could set off. Complying with the orders of the British government, Albemarle had to exact the payment of certain sums from the population, including the clergy and the religious organizations, and found great difficulty in enforcing these orders. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the feelings of the population were being deliberately hurt, especially by the disregard of the British authorities for the institutions maintained by the clergy. Thus a wave of indignation swept over the city, when the beggars and the sick were ejected from the convent of San Juan de Dios, which was turned into a hospital for the British. Without remuneration they occupied almost one-third of the buildings subject to an ecclesiastical tax, they transformed private residences into jails; they seized merchandise and funds that were owned by the Real Compania de Comercio and when these were claimed as private property, they were returned only after payment of one hundred and seventy-five pesos. As the tension grew crimes committed from vindictiveness increased among the population. M. Savine, the French writer referred to previously, reports that the Guajiros of the mountains poisoned the milk furnished to the garrison. A Cuban "rebel" who had escaped from the jail went about in the part of the island not occupied by the British and preached a "holy war" against the invaders of the island. Conditions were such that Havana might have become at any moment the scene of a new Sicilian Vespers. It was at this time that the Commissary D. Lorenzo de Montalvo wrote to the Minister of War at Madrid under date of October eighteenth, 1762: "The extraordinary mortality of the British troops has reduced them to the state which Your Excellency will see from the included papers. If at this moment eight or ten vessels arrived with two or three thousand men to debark, it would not be forty eight hours before they would capitulate." There was indeed a movement on foot in the unoccupied part of Cuba to collect a force, march against Havana and deliver it from the British conquerors. A force of guerilleros was ready for action under command of the intrepid Aguiar. He was only waiting for enforcement promised him by Governor Madriaga of Santiago, who had three hundred and fifty men with two thousand and five hundred guns, collected at Yaguas and Villa-Clara. But he lingered at Yaguas and it was supposed that he was afraid of losing his position if the British should decide upon moving against Santiago. Madriaga was however associated with Aguiar, D. Lorenzo Montalvo, D. Nicolas Rapua, D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, D. Augustin de Cardenas and other prominent citizens and patriots of Cuba in a pact to reconquer Havana at an opportune moment, and action may have been delayed only because rumors were afloat that peace was about to be signed. In Spain itself feeling ran high. The provinces of Murcia, Granada, Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia sent an address to King Charles III. asking to defend the colonies. It said among other things: "Sir: "Now is the moment to hold high the glory of the nation; let us humiliate under your auspices ambitious England which in her folly proposes nothing less than the ruin of all Europe. As her only aim is commerce, that is sordid gain, she wages a regrettable war upon a warlike nation that does not know meanness and has no other sentiments than the love of her king and her country. Money may be needed in London, as once in Carthage; but virtue, constancy and heroism we shall never lack, as they never failed the ancient Romans." But there is no record that this address elicited anything more than an appreciative reply from the government at Madrid. For the diplomatic and political world of Spain as of Great Britain was indeed occupied in considering a settlement of the Spanish-British problem. Nevertheless there were Spaniards, who even at that trying time must have viewed the state of things dispassionately, for the historian Pezuela gives the British much credit for the moderation and conciliatory tendency of their policy during the occupation. He records that they did not materially alter the general regime of the city, nor even make any radical changes in the municipal government. On taking possession of the town, Albemarle named for civil lieutenant-governor the Alderman D. Sebastian Penalver, a prominent lawyer; for the latter's Suplente or alternate, the alferez real or chief ensign D. Gonzale Oquendo, and for common civil judge D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, a high-constable and property holder highly esteemed by his fellow citizens. These three officials by their wisdom, unselfishness and impartiality lightened the burden of the foreign yoke. Both Albemarle and Keppel had soon recognized some of the greatest evils of the colonial administration, among them the corruption of the lower courts and the amazing amount of bribery going on even in the higher departments of the government. They tried to check the malpractice of lawyers, and in a decree dated the fourth of November, 1762, prohibited the making of gifts or presents of any kind to the principal governor and to the inferior authorities, considering such practice as means to promote dishonesty. However, the attitude of the great majority was and remained hostile to the British and it needed all the prudence and tact of men like Oquendo, Penalver and Puerta to avoid conflicts between the citizens and the foreign authorities. Nor should the Intendant Montalvo be forgotten, whose services were highly appreciated by Albemarle. In the British parliament there existed at that time a state of turmoil. The Earl of Bute, friend and adviser of George III., did not care for further extension of Britain's colonial possessions in America, saying that it was much greater importance "to bring the old colonies in order than to plant new ones." Others favored the return of Havana to Spain in exchange for Porto Rico and Florida. On the twenty-sixth of October, 1762, the British King expressed his approval of the latter proposal and urged the diplomats engaged in deliberating upon the subject speedily to draft a treaty. He wrote to Bedford, as quoted by Bancroft in his "History of the United States," Vol. III., p. 298: "The best despatch I can receive from you will be those preliminaries signed. May Providence, in compassion to human misery, give you the means of executing this great and noble work." The terms proposed to the French according to the same authority were severe and even humiliating, and Choiseul is reported as having said: "But what can we do? The English are furiously imperious; they are drunk with success; and, unfortunately, we are not in a condition to abase their pride." The preliminaries of a peace which was to bring a certain stability to the colonies in America and permanently settle the claims of the three nations that had for three centuries been striving for supremacy in the New World, were signed on the third of November, 1762. They contained the following stipulations: England was to receive the Floridas and some islands in the West Indies, but abandon Havana; it was to have Louisiana to the Mississippi, but without the island of New Orleans; it was likewise to have all Canada, Acadia, Cape Breton and its independent islands, Newfoundland, except a share of France in the fisheries, with the two islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon as shelter for their fishermen. In Africa England was to have Senegal, which insured for it the monopoly of the slave-trade. In the East Indies, too, France recovered only what she possessed on the first of January, 1749, the rest going to England and assuring its sway over that territory. France, on the other hand, to indemnify Spain for the loss of Florida, ceded to Spain New Orleans and all Louisiana west of the Mississippi. There is no doubt that France came off worst in this settlement; but, as her minister Choiseul said, it was at the time helpless. In England, which by this settlement laid the foundations of her great power, there was a great display of flamboyant oratory. The king was reported to have said: "England never signed such a peace before, nor, I believe, any other power in Europe." Granville, then, on his deathbed, exclaimed: "The country never saw so glorious a war or so honorable a peace," and Bute, roused to defend it against some opponents in Parliament, uttered these words significant of the high esteem in which he held himself and whatever services he rendered England as favorite of the king: "I wish no better inscription on my tomb than that I was its author." It is needless to say that the effect of this document upon Spain was of quite a different nature. For it practically checked for all time her ambitions for maintaining supremacy in the world her discoverers and explorers had once claimed under her colors. Cuba, of course, rejoiced at the prospect of the restitution of Havana. Lord Albemarle, suffering from the strain of the siege and the climate, as no less from the realization that he would never be able to reconcile the Cubans to a recognition of his authority, had left early in the year 1762 and Sir William Keppel occupied his post. The peace was ratified at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763, and the people began to look forward with impatience to the arrival of a new governor from Madrid and to the debarkation of the British. In spite of the harassing situation which they had endured during the rule of the enemy they had not been idle, but planned many improvements and reforms which they promised themselves to execute as soon as the British domination would end. They had learned, too, to appreciate the advantages of free trade; for during the British occupation no less than nine hundred merchant vessels entered the harbor and not a few cargoes of negroes were landed. CHAPTER VI The changes which the island underwent during this time were far-reaching. The British occupation had established a direct contact with the world outside of Spain, which was bound to broaden the narrowly provincial viewpoint of the residents of the colony. For the nobles to whom large tracts of land had been granted in the earlier days of the colony had never permanently resided there but only came over for a short time to occupy their winter residence in Havana and for another brief season to show themselves in all their old-world aristocratic splendor on their haciendas. The great majority of the people, descendants of the adventurers and the poor immigrants of the pioneer period, had acquired the habits of country people so engrossed in their fields, their live stock and the daily labors required to make these possessions profitable, that they had lost any desire to seek the stimulating influence of city life. The cities themselves, Havana not excepted, had a provincial aspect and offered little attraction to the foreign traveler who did not come there exclusively on business. Nevertheless they left a pleasant memory with many a casual visitor. A Frenchman, who spent some time in Havana about the year 1745, set down his impressions, which with other letters and memoirs of travel were edited by Pierre Jean Baptiste Nougaret and published in Paris in 1783 under the title: "Voyages interessans dans differentes Colonies francaises, espagnoles, anglaises, etc." In these reminiscences of Havana some twenty years before the British occupation, he draws a picture of the city, which it is interesting to compare with what other writers have to say of the Havana of 1762. He writes: [Illustration: HAVANA, FROM CABANAS "Beautiful for situation" indeed is the Cuban capital, whether it be used as a point from which to view the sea and land, or be itself looked upon from some neighboring or distant height. This view, from the grounds of the great Cabanas fortress, shows the central portion of the city, with the notable public buildings clearly discernible, and nearer at hand the waters of the inner harbor, where occurred in 1898 the memorable and mysterious tragedy of the _Maine_.] "It is a very spacious city, well enough built and among the best fortified in America. In size it compares about with la Rochelle, but it is far more populated. It is graced with a large number of public buildings, churches, convents and you see there usually more negro slaves than in any other city of Spanish domination. Its harbor especially is one of the largest and most beautiful in America, and they build there warships for the construction of which the king of Spain employs a prodigious number of laborers, an arsenal and an immense workshop. It is the Catholic king's custom to pay one thousand piastres a cannon; so a vessel of eight cannon costs him eight thousand piastres. There are always on the docks five or six vessels at once; it is a company called the Company of Biscay which attends to the business. Havana is rather regular in plan; the streets are surveyed by the line, although some of them are not absolutely straight; all houses are of two or three floors, built of masonry and have balconies mostly of wood; the lower part of most houses is terrace-like as in European Spain and altogether they make a respectable impression. "The city is protected by a numerous garrison of about four thousand regular troops, extremely well kept, who make Havana impregnable in a country where one cannot attack, except with considerable forces. The city which is one of the best located seems an oval; the entrance to her port is advantageously protected by different forts, of which one, the first, is called Morro or port of entrance; the second is opposite; a third has been erected toward the side of the city; it is so large that it seems rather a citadel than a fort. There is besides before the principal section of the city before the palace of the governor which is magnificent, a battery of big guns and of considerable calibre; so one can say that Havana is the best defended of all places in America, the vessels that want to enter being obliged to pass so close to the forts that it would be easy to sink them. "The customs of the Spanish are here about the same as in Spain, differing from other colonies of the nation, where frankness, righteousness and probity seem to have been exiled. The Havanese are quite frank, extremely gay, more so than suits the ordinary Spanish gravity which is probably due to the great number of strangers which come there from all parts. The climate is rather good; the sex very handsome and enjoying much more liberty than in the rest of Spanish America. "Armed cruisers are entertained to keep away strangers from the coast, which does not prevent all the fraudulent operations in which the commandant often shares. Nevertheless life is agreeable for the rich, everything being abundant in Havana; and the residents are far more neatly habited than elsewhere. One does not drink but cistern water, much superior to that of the only fountain which is in the center of a large square; and which serves only as watering trough for animals. You see in Havana many rolling chairs, most of which are rented, which gives the city an air resembling European towns." Appreciative as this description sounds, which had for its author a M. Sr. Villiet d'Arignon, the Havana of the time of the British calls forth even more appreciative language from the Spanish historians of Cuba. They dwell much on the beauty of its location and of the city itself say: The streets were not large or well leveled, especially those running from north to south, which caused the town to be so great in length; over three thousand houses occupied an expanse of nine hundred fathoms in length and five hundred in width; they were of hewn stone, of graceful form and as a whole afforded a very beautiful appearance. To the beauty of the city contributed eleven churches and convents and two large hospitals; the churches were rich and magnificent, especially those of Recoletos, Santa Clara, San Agustino and San Juan de Dios. Their interior was adorned with altars, lamps and candelabra of gold and silver of an exquisite taste. There were three principal squares: The Plaza des Armas, which still retains its name, encompassed by houses of uniform frontage with the metropolitan church. A magnificent aspect was added to this square by the castille de la Fuerza, where resided the Captain-Generals, and the pyramid encompassed by three luxuriant five-leaved silk cotton trees planted there in memory of the tradition, that the first mass and town meeting were held in the shadow of a robust tree of that kind; that of San Francisco adorned with two fountains was considered the best place in the city and on it were the houses of the Ayuntamento and the public jail, whose two-story façade with arched entrance contrasted with the severe architecture of the convent after which the square is named; and there was still another, the new square, because it had been opened after the former, with a fountain in the center and all encompassed with porticos for the convenience of the public, serving also as market-place, where the inhabitants, according to Arrate, provided themselves "copiously" with all they wanted. Native writers also dwell upon the good manners of the Havanese, calling them the most polite and social people of Spanish America, much given to imitating the French customs and manners, which were then in vogue at the Spanish court of Madrid, both in their dress and their conversation, as also in the furnishings of their houses and the good table they set their guests. These descriptions of Cuba and Cuban life tally well with those of the foreigners quoted by the author, and indicate the progress made by the island, and especially by Havana, in the sixth and seventh decades of the century. The economic conditions of the island underwent a great change during the sixth decade of the century. Up to this time, the majority of the people had been engaged in agriculture and led a more or less simple, rustic life. The products of her soil were consumed on the spot. Her mines were neglected because the gold and silver which had been discovered in the earlier part of Cuba's history and which had roused the jealousy of other countries were not sufficient in quantity to justify the labor needed for working them. With the increasing number of negro slaves, the possibilities of exploiting all the rich natural resources of the island were multiplied. Among the products that came into prominence was sugar. Not ordinarily consumed, it brought forty three cents a pound. John Atkins, the British surgeon and author of that interesting book of travel in Spanish America referred to in a previous chapter, had declared the sugar of Cuba the best in the world; and it was indeed so considered in the market. It became soon one of the most important articles of Cuba's commerce. The cheapened labor encouraged enterprises which the Spanish would have been physically unable to carry through. The commerce of Havana had in this epoch increased considerably and the greatest part of it came from the ports of the island itself. Besides supplying with goods the towns of the interior and the littoral, Havana exported great amounts of hides, much esteemed for their excellent quality, and also sugar, tobacco and other articles. The trade was carried on by vessels registered from Cadiz and the Canaries besides those of Spanish merchants who were allowed to trade with the Spanish-American continent. Especially favored were those that returned to Spain from Cartagena, Porto Bello and Vera Cruz and entered Havana to renew their supply of provisions and water, and enjoy the advantage of going out with the convoy which in the month of September returned to the Peninsula with galleons loaded with the riches of Peru and Chile, and the fleet freighted with the treasures of New Spain. This periodical assembly of a great number of merchant and war vessels in Havana had introduced the custom of holding fairs, during which great animation prevailed in the city. For while they facilitated commercial transactions, they also furnished diversion and entertainment to the sailors and others who were waiting for the sailing of the convoy. At that time an order was published prohibiting on penalty of death any person belonging to the squadron to remain on land over night, and all had to retire on board at the report of a gun. Provisions were then, as also M. d'Arignon reported at his time, very dear. The monopoly which was exercised by the company had unreasonably raised the cost of living. The flour brought from foreign smugglers at five or six piasters a barrel, was sold at his time at thirty-five and more! Besides the ordinary wages of men hired by the day every male slave day-laborer was paid in excess four pesos a day and every female two pesos. The description of the defenses of the city during the British invasion suggest that the surrender to the enemy may after all not have been entirely the fault of the procrastination and unconcern of the Cuban governor, as some zealous patriots alleged at the time. The entrance of the port was in the eastern part, defended by the strong fort of el Morro, situated upon an elevated rock of irregular, somewhat triangular form, in the walls and bulwarks of which were forty mounted cannon. It was protected also by the battery of Doce Apostoles, so called for having a dozen mounted cannon, situated toward the interior of the port in the lower parts of the Morro bulwark, which looked to the southeast and were almost at sea-level. There was also the Divina Pastora with fourteen cannon, on a level with the sea at a point a little higher than the former facing the gate of la Punta. Toward the west in the same entrance of the port and about two hundred yards from it with four bulwarks well-mounted with artillery, was la Fuerza with twenty-two cannon. Although not of as solid construction as the others, it served as storehouse for the treasures of the King and was also the residence of the governor. Between these fortresses there were erected along the bay a number of other bulwarks well supplied with artillery. The walls from la Punta to the arsenal were protected by bulwarks with parapets and a ditch. From the first to the second gate there was considerable territory converted at that time into gardens, and pasture land, and covered with palmettos. In front of the Punta de Tierra was a ravelin. Nevertheless those fortifications had serious defects of position, because the city as well as the forts were dominated by many hills easy of access. East of the port was Cabanas, where there was a citadel built later, dominating a great part of el Morro and the northeastern part of the city. West of the town was a suburb, called Guadeloupe, the church of which was situated on an eminence half a mile from the gate of Tierra, and on the same level with it, the highest of all fortifications in that direction. From the northern side of this elevation the gate of Punta could be flanked and from the southeast the shipyard was dominated. The zanja real, or royal trench, in the northern part, descended not far from the Punta de Tierra and then ran into the shipyard where its water was employed in running a mill. Half a mile from said church was the Chavez bridge, built over a rivulet flowing into the bay, which served to unite the central road of the island with that of Baracoa; and from the bridge to the Lazareto was a stretch of two miles with an intermediate hill. A trench between these two points could easily cut the communication of Havana with the rest of the island. From this close description it can be seen that in spite of the imposing impression its fortifications made upon foreigners, Havana was by no means an impregnable fortress at the time of the British invasion, which was brought out at the trial of Governor Prado. But whatever may have been the cause of its capitulation to the British, the period of their occupation at the end benefited Cuba, for it opened the eyes of the government to the needs of the island, and prepared a new era, political, social and economic. CHAPTER VII By the terms of the treaty signed at Versailles on the tenth of February, 1763, Britain was to give back to Spain the city and territory of Havana in the condition in which the British had found it and Spain was to grant the British a term of eighteen months, so that those who had established themselves upon the island could insure their interests by transferring their property. To administrate the political and military affairs of Cuba and carry out these stipulations, a new governor was appointed in the person of the Lieutenant-General Conde de Ricla, a relative of the famous Minister Aranda. Ricla arrived in Havana on the thirteenth of June and prepared to enter upon his duties, while the British authorities made preparations to wind up their affairs and to embark. Spanish love of festive demonstrations of joy must have culminated in a frenzy of exultation on the day when Admiral Keppel solemnly and formally gave up Havana to the Tenente Rey, the King's Lieutenant, who took possession of all military posts. It was the sixth of July, 1763, ever since remembered as the glorious day when Cuba was delivered from the British yoke. The new governor entered through one of the iron gates of the city, driven in an open coach, and acclaimed by the enthusiastic vivas of the population. On the same day the British authorities set sail, and the city entered upon a celebration of the event which lasted nine days. The Spanish colors fluttered from every roof, the houses were draped in them, the doors were garlanded in green, and when the evening came, lights shone in every window and sky rockets were set off on every street corner, turning the tropical night into day. [Illustration: ATARES FORTRESS--(ERECTED 1763)] The new governor was a man of rare character and was endowed by the royal government with more power than any of his predecessors had enjoyed. He received a salary of eighteen thousand pesos annually. The task before him was one of reorganization and reconstruction. He was charged and expected to inaugurate a new era in the administration of the colony, to employ the most judicious means to prevent errors committed by his predecessors and to insure a prompt and efficient enforcement of the principles of colonial policy which the time demanded. He was also to repair all the fortifications and defenses of the island, rebuild whatever had been destroyed and add to them whatever was needed as rapidly as possible, so they would be proof against any possible coup-de-main on the part of any enemy. The reconstruction of the Morro and of the arsenal destroyed by the British, and the erection of the forts of Cabanas and Atares was entrusted to the able engineers D. Silvestro Abarca and D. Agostino Crame, who later drew the plan for that of Puerto Principe, intended to protect that place and prevent any landing by la Chorrera. The records of the period show that six million pesos were spent on those fortifications. New hospitals and other public buildings were also erected. The work was greatly facilitated by the number of negroes that had been added to the population since the British domination of the city. The great activity of the building trades stimulated the circulation of gold and gave a new impetus to all business life. That the antagonism between the Spanish and British was not confined to Havana, which had suffered British occupation, is proved by the influx of immigrants from Florida, when this province was ceded to England. Unwilling to live under British dominion, many French and Spanish families of that colony left their old homes for new ones in Cuba. A great number of them settled in Matanzas and its environs, on land which belonged to the famous Marquis Justiz de Santa Anna. The generosity of this man in gratuitously ceding that land endeared him to these immigrants. Their love for the place they came from induced them to give to the towns into which their settlements were formed, names that suggested the old home, as San Augustin de la Nueva Florida proves. As soon as the enemy had left, the residents of Havana who had retired to the interior of the island returned to the city and resumed their occupations. Bishop Morell, who had been exiled to Florida by the British, also returned. He brought with him the white-wax bee, which in time became a new source of wealth for the island. It was a period of reconstruction and readjustment during which not only were old business relations renewed and reaffirmed, but many new steps taken to insure the welfare of the community. Those elements of the population which were particularly concerned with the honest and efficient management of its affairs, had during the British occupation become aware of some malpractices that had escaped their attention or to which they had become so accustomed that they did not make any effort to check them. There were always on the island rumors of corruption in this or that department. Occasionally a fraudulent functionary was tried and convicted, but the great majority of these dishonest officials escaped without ever being brought to trial. The frequent change of governors with the inevitable periods of interim administration gave unscrupulous men ample opportunity to fill their pockets at the expense of the government. Nor can it be doubted, that the governors sent over by the Spanish court were invested with a farther reaching authority than was advantageous for the colony. For they enjoyed not only a political power almost absolute, but directed the economic affairs of the colony. The governors of Cuba had in former times authority to handle the revenues and in accord with the municipal councils were wont to elect delegates to discharge these duties. In 1551 they had begun to exercise these functions as ministers de capa y espada, which means literally of cloak and sword. There were two of them for the island; they enjoyed seat and vote in the town corporations and were considered royal officials. They supervised the work of the Auditor and Treasurer and together with the Governor were judges in cases of contraband. Later there were appointed tenientes (lieutenants), one for each of the following communities, Bayamo, Puerto Principe, Trinidad, Matanzas, San Juan de los Remedios, Sancti Spiritus, and Guanabacoa, and two for Santiago de Cuba. The new ministers of the Tribunal de Cuentes (Exchequer) were provisionally endowed and the whole department hitherto in charge of the royal officers was reorganized and managed under a new system by the newly appointed Intendant. To him was probably due the new classification of the revenue rates, which was as follows: (1) Duties on imports and exports, (2) of the fleet, (3) of the armadilla, (4) of the royal Fifths (i.e. a duty of 20% on prizes, etc., paid to the Spanish government), (5) the duty on anchoring, (6) the duty on frucanga, i.e. beverages made of water and molasses, which at a later time, when the use of wine, beer, etc., became more general, went into oblivion. These duties were from twenty-one to two and one half per cent. according to the articles, the time and the place they came from. There were also two per cent. duties on importations, on fruits of the country brought to Havana in smaller vessels; on the gold and copper of the mines of Jaguas, Holguin, etc., and there was also what was called the extraordinario del Morro, which consisted in collecting four pesos for each vessel sent to Spain and the American continent. The enforcement of these custom regulations was entrusted to the Intendant referred to above, who in October of the year 1764 was given the right to use a special building for the offices of this department. For the military reorganization of Havana had been appointed Marshal Senor Conde D. Alexandre O'Reilly, who as Inspector-General devoted himself to the organization of line troops and militia and was materially assisted in his work by Aguiar. O'Reilly succeeded in getting the veteran troops and militia of the island into good condition. By studying the city, dividing it into districts, naming the streets--simple requirements which according to Valdes had at that late date not yet been established in Havana--O'Reilly learned that the city alone could raise a battalion of disciplined militia of white men. After organizing two such battalions in Havana and Guanabacoa, he realized that this force was insufficient for the protection of the capital and he raised two more battalions, composed of colored men. When on examining the polls or registers of tax-payers he found that owing to the poverty and also the ignorance of the majority of the people he could not proceed with the draft system without including the married and other classes, he decided to resort to conscription. In 1764 there was created by royal decree a military and provincial administration for Cuba in the manner of the peninsulas. D. Miguel de Altavilla took charge of it in February, 1765. He established in Havana an accountant's (auditor's) office, a treasury and custom-houses at various points, subject to the department. This organization required many employees, and increased the expenses of the administration. The salaries of the officials amounted to one million two hundred thousand pesos, while until the year 1761 they had been only four hundred and fifty thousand pesos annually. As the Mexican assistant of the director never arrived in time to help with the accounts, the Royal Hacienda, as it was called, was not a sinecure. The revenues rose within a short time to one million two hundred and fifty thousand pesos, but whether this was due to the high duties or to the wise administration of the Intendencia does not appear. The tentative effort at establishing a mail service during a previous administration was taken up in 1765, when the tax administrator D. José de Armona established the internal and external mail service of the island. It was found that every fortnight there was sent from Havana to Santiago de Cuba the mail, touching at Villa-Clara, Sancti Spiritus, Puerto Principe and Bayamo. According to royal decree of 1718 there should have been sent annually to Spain eight avisos or ships of one hundred tons, carrying letters from the Philippines and America, four of them stopping for provisions and supplies at Havana. These avisos (advice-boats, light vessels for carrying dispatches) sailed at the beginning of January, the end of March, the middle of June, and the first days of November. Most of the letters at that time were carried by smugglers. Armona succeeded in establishing a weekly postal communication between the towns mentioned above and also engaged postillions to carry mail sacks of San Juan de los Remedies, Trinidad and other towns not included in the other line. Every month except September, _la Coruna_, a vessel with the mail of Cuba and Spanish America, sailed from Havana for Spain. The work of Armona was extraordinary in face of the great difficulties which he had to overcome, both in regard to the lack of sufficient funds and to the lack of efficient and reliable officials. When he retired from the department the mail service of Cuba was neglected and even the line established between Havana and other towns of the island reduced its operation to one mail a month. In the meantime the tragedy of the siege of Havana was being discussed in Spain before the tribunal charged with the investigation of the conduct of the men then at the head of the government in Havana and supposed to be responsible for its defeat by the British. After many months of tedious conferences, the Military Council, according to Alcazar, condemned Ex-Governor Prado to degradation of rank and banishment, Conde de Superanda and Tavares likewise, and the colonel of engineers Ricaut to ten years' suspension from office. The Teniente-Rey Soler, the colonels Caro and Arroyo and the artillery-commander Crel de la Hoz escaped with severe admonitions. Thus was the curtain rung down upon the epilogue to the tragedy of that siege. After two years, during which he administered the affairs of the government with great sagacity and introduced many valuable reforms, Conde de Ricla asked permission to retire from his office and return to Spain. The Court accepted his resignation and appointed as his successor the Field Marshal D. Diego Manrique, who took charge of the government on the thirtieth of June, 1765. But he was almost immediately taken sick of yellow fever and died on the thirteenth of July, a few days after his inauguration. The Municipio of Havana urgently requested Ricla to resume the duties of governor, but he firmly refused and embarked for Spain. There may have been reasons for his determination not to continue in office, that are not mentioned by Valdes and Alcazar. For Blanchet remarks that the Conde de Ricla, though a man of action and efficiency, seems in the awarding of privileges and assignment of punishments not to have conducted himself quite properly. Ricla is described as having been a man of small stature, and grave but not unpleasant manner. He died in 1780 as minister of war in Spain. There is a memorial to his services in carrying through the extensive work on the fortifications of Havana in the chapel of Cabana, where on a block is found this inscription: "During the reign in Spain of His Catholic Majesty Senor D. Carlos III. and the government in this island of the Count de Ricla, Grandee of Spain and Lieutenant-General of the Royal Armies, was begun, in the year 1763, this fort of San Carlos, that of Atares in the Loma de Sota and the rebuilding and enlargement of el Morro. The works of this fort were continued and those of el Morro and Atares were finished during the government of the Lieutenant-General of the Royal Army Senor Baylio D. Antonio Maria Buccarelli, etc." The provisional governorship of the Teniente de Rey, the King's Lieutenant, D. Pascal Jiminez de Cisneros, lasted from the thirteenth of July, 1765, to the nineteenth of March, 1766. He conscientiously endeavored to continue to rule in the spirit of his predecessor and to carry out the instructions given him by Ricla before he left for Spain. Some disturbances took place during that time, caused by the tobacco-planters and by the soldiers. The former began to object to selling their entire harvest to the factory. The latter had become dissatisfied on account of the irregularity with which they were paid. The new governor appointed by the court of Madrid for Cuba was the Field Marshal Senor Baylio D. Antonio Maria Buccarelli, a native of Sevilla. He entered upon his office on the nineteenth of March, 1766, and was evidently determined to continue and if possible improve upon the many reforms and improvements that had been introduced by Ricla. Among them were certain police regulations which tended to insure the safety of the residents, as well as order and cleanliness on the streets. He also resolved to abolish the abuses of the bar, by putting a stop to the extortions practised by unscrupulous lawyers on ignorant clients. This decidedly new departure from any precedent was outlined in a proclamation of good government, which he published according to Valdes on the seventh, according to Alcazar on the twelfth of April, 1766. In this memorable address to the people, he announced that he would devote two hours daily to giving hearing to complainants; at this hearing were to be present attorneys and clerks to take down the depositions and render advice, and the judgments there delivered were to be signed without delay, except on holidays. By these verbal audiences he succeeded in clearing up many cases before they went to the regular courts, thus protecting the people against exploitation by the numerous officials attached to the lower courts and avoiding expensive lawsuits. This new reform in the judicial department of the island especially benefited the slaves, whose rights he endeavored to protect and insure. The extraordinary discretion with which he performed this function of his office, preserving his dignity and affability in the most trying situations, endeared him to the people. The most difficult task before him, and one calling for unusual prudence and tact, was the execution of the royal decree concerning the expulsion of certain religious orders against whom drastic measures had been taken in Europe. The movement began in Portugal in 1759, when the Jesuits were expelled from that country. Two years later the society was dissolved and its members banished from France. Then the opposition to them made itself felt in Spain. King Carlos III. had always been their zealous protector, but he suddenly turned against them after the curious Sombrero-and-Manta revolution in Madrid in 1766. His favorite, the Marquis Squilaci, a Neapolitan, had tried to inaugurate various reforms in the city, among them the cleaning of the streets, which were in an unspeakable state of filth, the regulation of the prices of food and the installment of a lighting system. Simple and reasonable as were these innovations, they met with furious opposition on the part of certain classes of the people. This opposition was fanned into open revolt by another ordinance which he issued. It was directed against the enormous sombreros and voluminous mantas (cape cloaks) worn with preference by individuals who could thus easily disguise themselves, hide their identity and carry dangerous weapons which played a dismal part in the numerous assassinations that had shocked the authorities. An organized revolt against these measures took place in Madrid and led to considerable bloodshed. The king was made to believe that the Jesuits were the prime agents in that insurrection, and at midnight of the seventeenth of February, 1767, Carlos III. signed a decree ordering their immediate expulsion from Spain. In this decree, the execution of which was entrusted to Count Aranda, the king gave as reason for this step, the necessity to maintain among his subjects order, obedience, quiet and justice. At the same time he ordered the temporal property of the society of Jesuits in the dominions of Spain to be adjudged to the treasury. The order was executed with a promptness and a quiet deserving especial comment. On the same day were sent to all judges, governors, regents and viceroys a secret message, accompanied by a circular letter saying that the message containing royal instructions to be obeyed by every one should not be opened before April 1. Those officials were moreover warned not to communicate the contents of the message to any one, and should the public by some chance obtain such knowledge, those responsible were to be treated as though they had violated the secret and were guilty of opposition to the Sovereign's orders. This measure was so effectively executed that the padres of the order were taken by surprise, and were speedily sent on their way out of the country without the slightest disorder. On the day of this expulsion the king had affixed a "pragmatica" on the doors of the palace and public buildings in the principal streets, in which it was said among other things, that the individual priests would be given seventy-two pesos annually for their means of subsistence, and the lay brothers sixty-five, that their pensions would be paid out of the property of the Society, and that it was prohibited in the whole monarchy to receive any individual of the Society in particular, or to admit them into any community, or any court or tribunal, or to appeal in their behalf. It was also prohibited to write or influence the minds of the people for or against this pragmatica or to enter into any correspondence with the members of the expelled order. This royal decree was carried into effect in all the colonies of Spanish America, and in Cuba it was Buccarelli to whom credit was due for the tact displayed in performing this extremely difficult duty. The proceeds of the property of the Society, which reverted to the state, were devoted by Buccarelli to the endowment of three professorships at the university, two for law and one for mathematics. The decision of the King met with no open opposition among the residents, although the Jesuit College, since then called the Seminario de San Carlos, and their church, actually the Cathedral, had been a center of interest to the society of Havana, and the much esteemed and beloved Senor D. Pedro Agostine Morell was reported to have been responsible for the coming of the order to Havana. Senor Morell died on the twenty-ninth of December, 1769, and was succeeded in his diocese by D. José Echeverria. Governor Buccarelli made strenuous efforts to abolish contraband trading in the island. He tried also to promote coffee culture in Cuba, which had so far yielded so little as to be not even sufficient for home consumption. His Majesty granted an extension of customs for five years at that time. A new step for the improvement of the maritime department was taken in the year 1766, when the Apostadero was created a military and naval station. To the administration of this office was appointed D. Juan Antonio de la Colina, who during the siege of Havana in 1762 had ordered the sinking of the three vessels for the purpose of closing to the British the entry of the port. Colina was invested with the same powers possessed in Spain by the Captain-General of the naval department. In the shipyard of Havana there were built at this time vessels of various sizes and purposes, among them the _Santissima Trinidad_, a vessel of one hundred and twelve guns, and three smaller but excellent ships. The _Santissima Trinidad_ was destined some years later to be destroyed in the battle of Trafalgar. Two great calamities caused much distress and loss of lives and property during Buccarelli's administration. In July and August, 1766, earthquakes destroyed a great portion of Santiago de Cuba. It was estimated that more than one hundred persons perished. Among them was the governor, Marquis de Casa-Cagigal, who was removed from the ruins of his residence. The disaster called for such great funds for the alleviation of the suffering and the hardships occasioned by this catastrophe, that the Royal Treasury had to retard the payment of the salaries to the officials of the island. The civilian population contributed generously to the relief funds collected in the principal towns of the island. Governor Buccarelli himself sent contributions to two hundred presidarios and to two engineers that had been stricken in the performance of their duties. The losses and the sorrow caused by this calamity had barely been repaired and mitigated, when another disaster called for sympathy and active assistance on the part of those that were spared. This was the tremendous hurricane which swept over Havana on the fifteenth of October, 1768, and left the city a scene of desolation. The vessels in the harbor were torn from their anchorage, and drifted into the sea lashed into fury by the tempest; the trees in the orchards were uprooted, the fields appeared as if they had been churned. Buildings were carried away from their foundations and deposited in remote places. It was difficult to estimate the damage done in the city and its neighborhood. Again a call for relief was sounded and responded to readily. To assist the sufferers a great sum came from the proceeds of the Jesuit properties recently seized, which according to the valuation of experts amounted to several million pesos. Buccarelli was appointed Viceroy of Mexico, and retired on the fourth of August, 1771. He had proved a worthy successor of the much esteemed Count Ricla and left behind him an excellent reputation. It was said of him that he had never once lacked that political prudence which should ever guide the actions of an official in such a responsible position as was the governorship of Cuba. He was praised for his cautious inquiries into legal abuses and his judicious settlement of cases, some of which had for forty years occupied the time of the courts and filled the pockets of greedy attorneys. He was reported under the most exasperating circumstances to have always conserved his affable disposition and to have never lost his temper, however great may have been the provocation. Upon the whole, he was looked upon as a man of rare nobility of character and Cuba was loath to part with him. He was one of the few governors that had never given cause for any complaint. This was attested by the Minister of the Indies, then Baylio Knight Julian de Arriaga, who wrote to him by order of His Majesty that not the slightest complaint of his government had come to the court. CHAPTER VIII While Cuba was enjoying the peace and prosperity which had followed its return to Spain, Louisiana, which by the Treaty of Paris had been ceded to Spain by Louis XV. of France, to indemnify her for the Floridas and the government of which was annexed to that of Cuba, was going through a most harassing period of anxiety. For this agreement, which transferred the French inhabitants of Louisiana to Spain, was a violation of that human right which at this very time was beginning to dawn in the awakening political consciousness of mankind, and was to be a source of serious conflicts between the French of Louisiana and the authorities that came to establish upon her soil the rule of the king of Spain. Bancroft gives an interesting account of the events that occurred. He writes in his "History of the United States" (Vol. IV, p. 122): "The Treaty of Paris left two European powers sole sovereigns of the continent of North America. Spain, accepting Louisiana without hesitation, lost France as her bulwark, and assumed new expenses and dangers, to keep the territory from England. Its inhabitants loved the land of their ancestry; by every law of nature and human freedom, they had the right to protest against the transfer of their allegiance." The spirit which found ultimate expression in the formula: "no government without the consent of the governed" had been awakened in the people of the North American continent. As soon as the news reached Louisiana, that the territory was to be transferred under the rule of the Spanish king, the call for an assembly was issued and every parish in the colony sent representatives to voice their protest and deliberate upon measures preventing the execution of that transfer. Under the leadership of Lafreniere the people unanimously decided to address a petition to the king of France, entreating him not to abandon them to foreign rule. The loyalty with which the colony had so far adhered to the kings of the mother country seemed to call for redress of the wrong which was about to be inflicted upon them. The wealthiest merchant of New Orleans, Jean Milhet, went to Paris as the spokesman of the colony. He met Bienville, the pioneer founder of the city which enjoyed at that time the reputation of being an American Paris, and the octogenarian lent his aid in an attempt to appeal to the French minister, Choiseul. But Choiseul gave them no encouragement. His answer was, briefly: "It cannot be; France cannot bear the charge of supporting the colony's precarious existence." On the tenth of July, 1765, the Brigadier D. Antonio de Ulloa, who was appointed by Governor Buccarelli of Cuba to take possession of the territory ceded to Spain, sent a letter from Havana to the superior council of the colony at New Orleans announcing that he had orders to take possession of that city for the Catholic king. But the French authorities did not remove the flag of France and Acadian exiles continued to pour into the colony from the north. Ulloa finally sailed from Havana and on the fifth of March, 1766, he arrived in the bay. The very elements of nature seem to have conspired to lend gloom to his arrival. A terrible thunderstorm and violent downpour of rain was a feature of the landing. He was accompanied by some civil officers, three Capuchin monks and eighty soldiers. The people, resentful of being forced to submit to foreign rule, received him coldly and sullenly. He had brought with him orders to redeem the seven million livres of French paper money which had been a heavy burden upon a population of not more than six thousand souls. He saw at once that the population was unwilling to give up its nationality and to change its allegiance from France to Spain. He learned that the French garrison peremptorily refused to serve under Spanish commanders. So he was forced to leave the government, which he was supposed to administer with the aid of the Spanish officials that he had brought with him, in the hands of the former French functionaries. When in September of that year an ordinance was introduced by Ulloa forcing French vessels having special permits to accept the paper currency in payment for their cargoes at an unreasonable tariff, the merchants of the colony protested vigorously. They declared stoutly: "The extension and freedom of trade, far from injuring states and colonies, are their strength and support." Reports circulating about the disorders caused by this conflict between the French population and the Spanish authorities frightened the owners of merchant vessels that had been in the habit of trading at the colony and its commerce with them was for the time being almost suspended. The ordinance was rescinded, and Ulloa retired from New Orleans to the Balise. He had to be contented to establish Spanish rule at that spot and opposite Natchez at the river Iberville. Perhaps a man of different disposition would have been able to reconcile the colonists to the foreign régime. But Ulloa did not possess the amiable qualities that characterized the Governor of Cuba, Buccarelli. He had to learn, as did Lord Albemarle during his brief administration of Havana, that it was not an easy task to conquer the hearts of a people and win them over to the rule of foreign authorities. According to Bancroft this irritating state of things continued for more than two years. He writes (p. 123): "But the arbitrary and passionate conduct of Ulloa, the depreciation of the currency with the prospect of its becoming an almost total loss, the disputes respecting the expenses incurred since the cession of 1762, the interruption of commerce, a captious ordinance which made a private monopoly of the traffic with the Indians, uncertainty of jurisdiction and allegiance, agitated the colony from one end to the other. It was proposed to make of New Orleans a republic, like Amsterdam or Venice, with a legislative body of forty men, and a single executive. The people of the country parishes crowded in a mass into the city; joined those of New Orleans; and formed a numerous assembly, in which Lafreniere, John Milhet, Joseph Milhet, and the lawyer Doucet were conspicuous. 'Why,' said they, 'should the two sovereigns form agreements which can have no result but our misery, without advantage to either?' On the twenty-fifth of October, they adopted an address to the superior council, written by Lafreniere and Caresse, rehearsing their griefs; and in their petition of rights, they claimed freedom of commerce with the ports of France and America, and the expulsion of Ulloa from the colony." This address was signed by upwards of five hundred persons and at the meeting of the council on the very next day it was, contrary to the warnings of Aubry, accepted. The excitement of the people, when they heard this good news, was indescribable. The French colors appeared in the public square and veteran pioneers of the colony, women and children crowded around to kiss the cherished flag of the much beloved mother country. Nine hundred men pressed around the flag pole when it was about to be raised, eager to lend a hand in what was to them a sacred function, and men, women and children began to cry: "Vive le roi de France! Nul autre que lui pour nous!" This clamorous demonstration manifested to Ulloa the will of the people; and when they proceeded to elect their town officials, he abandoned the attempt of establishing Spanish rule in Louisiana. He set sail for Havana, and through his representatives sent the news of these events to Spain. That incident was so significant of the spirit of the times that Du Chatelet wrote to Choiseul: "The success of the people of New Orleans in driving away the Spaniards is a good example for the English colonies; may they set about following it." For at this very time the British colonies of America were entering upon their struggle for deliverance from restrictions upon trade as symbolized in the stamp act and the atmosphere upon the continent was rife with revolution. While the statesmen of France and even some of England were inclined to grant greater freedom of commerce, Spain still lagged behind. She had been the champion of the protective system for centuries, and though it had not added to her wealth, on the contrary, had helped to impoverish her, she was unwilling to depart from the time-honored policy. Grimaldi, the Spanish minister, thus set forth the stand which Spain was to take in this question: "Besides, the position and strength of the countries occupied by the Americans excite a just alarm for the rich Spanish possessions on their borders. Their interlopers have already introduced their grain and rice into our colonies. If this should be legalized and extended to other objects, it would increase the prosperity of a neighbor already too formidable. Moreover, this neighbor, if it should separate from the metropolis, would assume the republican form of government; and a republic is a government dangerous from the wisdom, the consistency, and the solidity of the measures which it would adopt for executing such projects of conquests as it would naturally form." This fear of a republic in Louisiana haunted the king of Spain and his cabinet and after discussing the question of returning it to France, it was almost unanimously agreed that Louisiana was needed "as a granary for Havana and Puerto Rico, a precaution against French contraband trade and a barrier to keep off the English encroachments." The Duke of Alva said, in a spirit true to his namesake of two centuries before: "The world, and especially America, must see that the king can and will crush even an intention of disrespect." Masones de Lima expressed himself briefly: "If France should recover Louisiana, she would annex it to the English colonies or would establish its independence." Minister de Aranda began cautiously: "A republic in Louisiana would be independent of the European powers, who would all cultivate her friendship and support her existence. She would increase her population, enlarge her limits, and grow into a rich, flourishing and free state, contrasting with our exhausted provinces." He continued in this vein, dwelling at length upon the consequences such an example might bring in its wake, and advised to keep New Orleans in such insignificance as to tempt no attack. The deliberations in the French cabinet were of quite a different nature. Du Chatelet, as quoted by Bancroft (p. 151), declared: "Spain can never derive benefit from Louisiana. She neither will nor can take effective measures for its colonization and culture. She has not inhabitants enough to furnish emigrants; and the religious and political principles of her government will always keep away foreigners, and even Frenchmen. Under Spanish dominion, the vast extent of territory ceded by France to Spain on the banks of the Mississippi will soon become a desert. "The expense of colonies is required only by commerce; and the commerce of Louisiana, under the rigor of the Spanish prohibitive laws, will every day become more and more a nullity. Spain then will make an excellent bargain, if she accords liberty to the inhabitants of Louisiana, and permits them to form themselves into a republic. Nothing can so surely keep them from falling under English rule as making them cherish the protection of Spain and the sweetness of independence." But the king of Spain had no thought save that of upholding the Spanish traditions, and, accepting the advice of the Duke de Alva, decided to crush the rebellion of Louisiana. He chose as his instrument the Conde Alexandre O'Reilly, who had gone to Cuba with de Ricla and had reorganized the army and militia of the island. Buccarelli was informed of the royal decision and assisted O'Reilly in fitting out an expedition which was to enable him to enforce Spanish rule and eradicate all traces of republican leanings in the French colony. The people of New Orleans had in the meantime once more sent a petition to France in the attempt to enlist the sympathy and aid of the mother country in their endeavor to remain French citizens. They also sent an appeal to the British at Pensacola but the governor was not inclined to offend any powers with which his king was at peace. So great was the dread of the Louisianans of being forced to bow to Spanish rule, that they spoke seriously of burning New Orleans rather than giving it up to the hated foreign authorities. O'Reilly set sail from Havana with a squadron of twenty-four vessels, with three thousand well-trained troops on board. He arrived at the Balise at the end of July. For a time panic reigned in the city. Aubry tried to quiet the people, and advised them to submit and trust in the clemency of the king of Spain. A committee of three, Lafreniere, as representative of the council, Marquis of the colonists, and Milhet of the merchants, presented themselves at the Balise to pay their respects to the Spanish general and to appeal to his mercy. O'Reilly entertained them at dinner and they left assured of perfect amnesty. On the eighth of August the Spanish squadron anchored before the city itself, and the authorities took possession in the name of his Majesty, Carlos III. of Spain. The Spanish colors replaced those of France and it seemed as if with this ceremony and the installment of Spanish officials in the different departments of the colony's government the mission of O'Reilly was ended. But there was still the punishment to be meted out to the rebels who had dared to defy the authority of the Spanish king and had sworn unchanging allegiance to the sovereign of France. After having received from Aubry, who seemed to play traitor to his compatriots, a list of those who had taken part in the recent insurrection and had prepared the foundation of a republic with a protector and an elective council of forty, O'Reilly on the twenty-first of August invited to his home the most prominent citizens and asked the representatives of the people's council to pass, one by one, into his private apartment. In their unsuspecting innocence, they accepted this invitation as a mark of distinction, but they were sadly disillusioned, when O'Reilly entered with Aubry and three Spanish officers, and arrested them in the name of his Majesty the King of Spain. According to Bancroft two months were spent in collecting evidence against the men. The defense asserted that they could not be tried and condemned by Spanish officials for acts done before the proper establishment of Spanish rule in the colony. The citizens begged for time to send a petition to the Spanish sovereign. But all attempts to divert O'Reilly from his purpose summarily to punish the men who had dared to defy Ulloa, as the representative of Spain, were futile. Twelve of the richest men of the colony had to see their estates confiscated; from the proceeds were paid the officers employed in the trial. Six others were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, from six years to life. The five who had been most conspicuous in the revolt, Lafreniere, Marquis, Milhet, Caresse and Noyau, were sentenced to death. According to Bancroft they were shot in presence of the troops and the people on the twenty-fifth of October, 1769. According to Spanish historians they were hanged. Whatever the fate of these French champions of the newly awakened desire for liberty may have been, the effects of O'Reilly's cruelty were felt far beyond the still ill defined boundaries of the colony. Though the king of Spain was reported to have expressed his approval of O'Reilly's summary procedure, even in Spain voices rose to condemn it. A pall spread over Louisiana. Business life was for a time paralyzed. Commerce came to an absolute standstill. In the country parishes of the colony, the Spanish authority was accepted with sullen silence. Many of the wealthy families, long identified with the history of the colony, abandoned their homes and emigrated to other parts of the continent. The government of the colony was reorganized on the pattern of all Spanish colonies. The restrictions which were placed upon commerce robbed the people of whatever initiative and enterprise they had possessed. A period of stagnation set in, contrasting sharply with the activity and the animation that had previously reigned in the city which claimed and was reported by travelers of that time to have been fairly well started on the road of becoming the Paris of America. It was an inauspicious beginning for the Spanish régime in Louisiana. But the successor of O'Reilly, D. Luis de Uznaga, made up for his predecessor's mistake by showing so much discretion and exercising his authority with such mildness, that he gradually succeeded in reconciling a part of the population to the Spanish rule. Only the families of the victims that had paid for their loyalty to France with their lives remained the implacable enemies of Spain, as long as the colony remained under her rule. Aubry, who immediately after the tragedy of the twenty-fifth of October had set sail for France, suffered shipwreck on his voyage and perished. The six men who had been committed to the dungeons of Havana were, according to Bancroft, later set free by the aid of France. This tragic prelude to the Spanish rule in Louisiana, little as it has to do with Cuba, with which colony it was but loosely connected in an administrative way, was the herald of a new epoch dawning upon the horizon of the New World. The establishment of the little republic at the mouth of the Mississippi had been frustrated. But the establishment of the greater republic on the continent, under the protection of which Cuba was to come some centuries later, was even at this time approaching consummation. CHAPTER IX While the new Spanish possession annexed to Cuba by virtue of the Treaty of Paris, Louisiana, was passing through that painful state of transition which always follows the transfer of a nation belonging to a certain race speaking a certain language and cherishing customs deeply rooted in the national consciousness, to the rule of another nation, of a different race, speaking a different language and practising widely different customs, Cuba was enjoying a period of peace, prosperity and progress. When Buccarelli was appointed Viceroy of Mexico, D. Pascal Jiminez de Cisneros once more exercised superior authority as provisional governor of the island. But in November, 1771, the newly appointed governor arrived from Spain, the Captain-General D. Felipe Fons de Viela, Marquis de la Torre. He was a valiant soldier who in the wars of Spain with Italy and Portugal had distinguished himself by his conduct and his ability, and had risen to his high rank at the cost of his blood. He was a native of Zaragoza, a Knight of the military order of Santiago and Alderman in perpetuity, or prefect-governor of his native city. He came to Cuba with the reputation of an exceptionally worthy official and in the five years of his administration not only justified but far surpassed the hopes that his arrival awakened in the population of the colony. He entered upon his duties on the eighteenth of November, 1771. Marquis de la Torre was without doubt one of the most efficient and successful governors that Cuba ever had. Havana was at that time growing in population and extent, and entering upon a new era in her economic development, due largely to the foresight of King Carlos III., who had granted her an exemption from certain taxes. The city had, however, suffered so much in previous times, first from the perpetual unrest arising from the fear of invasion by pirates, then from the siege, and lastly from the hurricane of 1768, that it needed a man, clear of purpose and strong of will, to inaugurate the many innovations which he introduced, in order to make the place worthy of being the metropolis of Spain's richest island-possession in America. While Ricla and Buccarelli, entering upon their governorships immediately after the occupation of Havana by the British, had of necessity devoted most of their energy towards insuring the safety of the place from a repetition of the events of 1762, and had therefore been primarily concerned with the fortifications and the military reorganization of the place, la Torre was able to direct his attention to improvements, which made for a higher standard of public health, and paved the way for a culture, which in spite of the wealth of the population, was still only in its beginnings. Coming as he did from the Spain of Carlos III., who during his long peaceful reign did so much for the cultural progress of his country by introducing measures of sanitation and other improvements unknown to his predecessors, it was the ambition of la Torre to make Havana worthy of comparison with the large cities of the mother country. [Illustration: IN OLD HAVANA Havana is at once one of the oldest and of the newest of the great cities of the western world, and the architecture of its streets exhibits samples of the work of five centuries. This scene, showing the side wall of the great Cathedral, is typical of the older portions of the city, with comparatively narrow streets and characteristic Spanish houses.] It seems almost unbelievable that Havana had up to this time lacked proper pavements; that it had no public promenade, such as every European city far inferior in size and population possessed, that the streets were disfigured by unsightly and unsanitary out-houses and that even the government buildings had been put up with little regard for appearance, not to mention beauty. Moreover it is almost incredible that a city, the population of which belonged to the race that had produced some of the greatest dramatists of the world, Calderon and Lope de la Vega, had after an existence of some centuries not yet erected a playhouse, providing wholesome entertainment for her residents there to enjoy the works of their master poets and be for the time of the performance lifted above the purely material pursuits of their daily life. This was the state in which la Torre found Havana and he immediately set to work to study the city's most urgent needs and to raise it as rapidly as possible to the high standard he intended to apply. The first task that claimed his attention was the improvement of the streets. When the plan to have them paved was about to be realized it was found that there was not a sufficient quantity of cobblestones available for that purpose. So the contractors had to employ timber soaked in tar, which had proved to be extremely durable, little affected by atmospheric conditions, and offered only the one disadvantage of making a very slippery surface in the rainy season. The next step towards raising Havana out of its village state to urban cleanliness and dignity was the abolition of the ugly and unsanitary out-houses, a measure which seemed so radical and revolutionary to the conservative elements of the population that it met with no little opposition. Then la Torre deliberated upon plans for public promenades, and those of Paula and Almadea Nueva were laid out, followed by the Mall in the interior of the city and the Nueva Prado outside of the city walls. Great was the delight of the residents, who slowly began to wake up to the benefits and the pleasures to be derived by these attempts at improvement and embellishment of their town. Among the ordinances insuring the health, the beauty and the safety of the city, was one prohibiting the roofing of houses with guano, which had long been the source of dangerous conflagrations, aside from its unsanitary features and its being an eyesore. Modest as these demands may seem to twentieth century readers, la Torre had no little difficulty in carrying them through. But thanks to his energy, perseverance and executive power the streets of Havana with their neat pavements, and the public promenades with their gravel walks not only improved the appearance of the city, but stimulated the dormant esthetic sense of the inhabitants to an appreciation of civic beauty. The next step undertaken by la Torre for the improvement of Havana was the erection of more suitable public buildings, especially one for the governor himself and for the Ayuntamento, which, strange enough, was to be under the same roof as the public jail. Under his order were rebuilt seven of the old barracks for the soldiers and a new one was erected for the veterans. A great number of bridges was built, that of the Santa Fe passage over the Cojimar river, that of las Vegas on the road of Santa Maria del Rosario; the bridge of Arroyo Hondo, under the leeside of that town; the Enriquez and the Carrillo, and others. All these bridges had shields of arms and inscriptions on their pillars and with their many arches presented a beautiful sight. The harbor was thoroughly dredged with the aid of twelve pontoons and barges manned by a crew of presidarios (criminals condemned to hard labor) and slaves. The wharves of Carpineti, Cabana and Marimilena were constructed. Finally there was erected the first theatre, which was in its way as important an addition to the cultural life of the city as had been the foundation of the university some time before. For the wealthy and intellectually ambitious part of the population had keenly felt the lack of dignified entertainment and not a few individuals had made an annual pilgrimage to Madrid to enjoy a season in drama and music and keep in touch with the progress of the arts. The value of all the public edifices and reconstruction was appraised by D. Simon de Ayala as amounting to two hundred and fourteen thousand eight hundred seventy-three and one half reals; in the light of more recent days a very small amount in proportion to the number and the importance of the buildings constructed. Nor were the efforts of la Torre by any means limited to the improvement of the capital. Trinidad, Santiago and Puerto Principe benefited largely from the earnest desire for improvement that actuated Governor la Torre to undertake these many works. He was instrumental in the founding of the towns of Jaruco and of Nueva Filipina, which was later called Pinar del Rio. He inspired new life into all the towns that he visited during his administration and turned the colony into one of the richest and most beautiful, by applying to its improvement the most advanced ideas in civic management that were known in his time. From the census which la Torre ordered to be taken it appears that there were on the island three hundred and thirty-nine corrales or well defined farms, seven thousand eight hundred and fourteen farms for horse-breeding, estancias for cattle pasture and vegas for tobacco culture and four hundred and seventy-eight sugar plantations. There were twenty-nine thousand five hundred and eighty casas (buildings, private or public), ninety churches and fifty-two parochial chapels. The population of the island numbered one hundred and seventy-two thousand inhabitants; of which ninety-six thousand four hundred and thirty were whites, forty-five thousand six hundred and thirty-three slaves; that of Havana seventy-five thousand; Santiago nineteen thousand; Bayamo twelve thousand; Santa Clara eight thousand two hundred; Sancti Spiritus eight thousand, Guanabacoa seven thousand nine hundred; Trinidad five thousand six hundred, Matanzas three thousand two hundred and San Juan de los Remedios three thousand. The reforms which la Torre inaugurated in the government itself were also remarkable. In the proclamation published on the fourth of April, 1772, he repeated the ordinances issued by his predecessors to insure order and quiet in the communities; but he added some important innovations. He delivered the people from the exploitation they had suffered at the hands of annually appointed visitadores de partido (party judges), whose legal malpractices had been a source of great grievance to the citizens, and he compelled the members of the inferior courts of justice to reside in their respective districts. Commerce had after its transient extension during the British dominion once more begun to suffer from the restrictions imposed by the government of Spain. But about the year 1771, it was revived, for the export duties on sugar, honey, cane brandy, hides and wax were lowered and cotton could be exported free of duty. In order to stimulate the wax industry, the growth of which was remarkably rapid and added largely to the wealth of the island, la Torre published in form of a decree measures for its protection and promotion. Among them he prohibited the cutting of trees on which there were hives. In the year 1770 there were exported to Vera Cruz more than five arrobas of wax. At the end of the same year Cuba exported to Spain and various points in America twelve thousand five hundred and forty-six and in the following year twenty-one thousand one hundred and eighty-seven arrobas. The Captain-General was authorized in certain cases to import provisions from abroad. But contraband prevailed and flourished as ever. Governor Torre engaged in an active campaign against the smugglers and was the cause of their suffering heavy losses; but he was unable to exterminate the evil. This was mainly due to the arrogance and arbitrary attitude of Governor D. Antonio Ayanz de Ureta, who favored the smugglers that carried on a lively trade in the eastern part of the island with Jamaica and the foreign Antilles. Much as General la Torre ingratiated himself with the citizens by his gentle disposition as well as his sound judgment and impeccable honesty, he was not to be spared disagreeable experiences with other officials. One of these was with the commandant of the Apostadero or naval station, D. Juan Bautista Bonel, to whom credit is due for having enriched the shipyard by some magnificent structures. The dispute between them concerned some civilians who were implicated in a case against individuals belonging to the navy, and whom la Torre asked to be given over to his jurisdiction. Another unpleasantness was caused by conflicting orders given by la Torre and the commandant-general of the army. The latter had opened the new gateway that ran as far as the suburb of Jesus Maria in the neighborhood of the arsenal, and it was said the governor ordered that of la Tenaza to be closed, because the commandant opposed its running to that suburb and thus running through the arsenal. But upon the complaints that were entered at Madrid by Ureta as well as the other gentlemen, that caused these dissensions, his Majesty always upheld the side of la Torre and dismissed the accusations. Governor la Torre retired on the twelfth of June, 1776, and died in Madrid as Lieutenant-General on the sixth of July, 1784. His term of administration was the first during which the revenues exceeded a million of pesos, which augured an era of prosperity for Cuba. That Governor Torre left Havana a healthier and more beautiful city to live in, than it had been before, is an achievement which gives his administration a place of its own among those that were especially concerned with the welfare of the population. Visitors to Cuba that had marked the difference between the Havana of 1745 and that of 1762, would have been even more impressed with the appearance of the city after Torre had left upon it the seal of his improvements. The residents began to take a pride in the capital of the island; a civic spirit arose and began to weld the inhabitants more closely by the bond of interests, which at last began to surpass those associated with their purely material welfare. Visitors coming from the old centers of European culture had formerly commented upon the absence in the colonies of places where men and women could gather for social intercourse and intelligent entertainment. The French visitor quoted in a previous chapter, after his visit to Cuba and Santo Domingo, wrote rather dejectedly: "Life offers no attraction here for anybody who is not in commerce. Dependent on one's self, there is no relaxation for anyone who has lived in France and there played a certain rôle. One must not expect theaters, nor cafés, nor public promenades, and still less societies. One does not know how to spend the time and this is a real annoyance to a man of leisure. The carnival, especially where there are French, offers the only opportunity to banish in a degree the dryness of the entertainments in these countries--and what entertainments! One would never dream of seeking them, if one were not so far from Europe. The residents in comfortable circumstances come to town, you play a game of cards in some house, in others you drink abundantly, and in most you are bored. The country has hardly more attraction for any one having no residence; but besides the restraint which is banished there, you can at least enjoy a morning and an evening walk; and if you are so lucky as to come across some wealthy resident of the better class, you may in rare instances find yourself in agreeable company. But there are parts of the country where neighbors hardly visit one another once a year." This is a true glimpse of life in the colonies before the British occupation. Had the distinguished foreigner who made these observations come to Cuba after the administration of la Torre, he would have found the theatre and the promenades, and perhaps even the cafés he had previously missed. For the prosperity which set in for the island after King Carlos III. began to relax the unreasonable restrictions upon her trade and navigation, brought with it to the wealthier classes that leisure which calls for higher forms of social life and leads to the appreciation of such entertainment as the arts of music and drama offer. The theatre of Havana became the meeting place of Cuba's intellectuals and the center from which began to radiate the modest beginnings of a Cuban culture, which a century later was to produce poets that took their place beside those of the mother country. With closer commercial relations and increasing facilities of travel even the inhabitants of the country living on their haciendas a beautiful domestic life, but one making for a certain clannishness, gradually came out of their isolation, and benefiting by the progress of their urban neighbors, were stimulated to participate in enterprises which a few decades before they would have spurned. The constantly growing intercourse with the Old World, bringing them into touch with contemporary thought, was another leaven that began to work in the minds of the Cubans, and to encourage activities and interests held as being entirely without the range of a people whose chief pursuits for some centuries had been agriculture. Thus Cuba entered upon her first period of progress. This was due in no little measure to the peace and prosperity of Spain during the long reign of King Carlos III. For the overseas colonies of the European powers were so closely associated with and dependent upon the mother countries, that their healthy progress as a rule indicated healthy political and economic conditions of the latter. If there was at this time any unrest and anxiety at the courts and in the diplomatic circles of Europe this was due to events that were happening in North America and were beginning to shake the foundations of the old order. On the nineteenth of April, 1775, there had been fired the first shot in the struggle upon which the thirteen British colonies had entered in order to secure their freedom from the unbearable restrictions which Britain had imposed upon them. That shot sounded an alarm which was heard all over the world and sent a thrill through millions of hearts. The spirit that had dictated the works of the French encyclopedists and had worked like a leaven of liberty in millions of minds, had become incarnate in the British colonists and was clamoring for consummation of its ultimate aims. Monarchs and ministers convened in solemn conferences and deliberated seriously upon the possible effects of the action taken by the rebels against British overrule. Spain and France, sharing with Britain colonial possessions in America, were profoundly disturbed. They had been allies in the recent war against Britain, and they still depended upon each other for mutual counsel and consolation. The king of France, Louis XVI., an autocrat if ever there was, had an excellent minister of finance in Turgot, a man of extraordinary foresight, of liberal judgment and of rare administrative ability. After Vergennes, the minister of foreign affairs, who favored the emancipation of America, had forwarded to the king a cautiously worded report upon the situation, Turgot was asked to give his opinion, and did so in a memorial which very succinctly stated the position of both France and Spain, and contained the following significant passages: "The yearly cost of colonies in peace, the enormous expenditures for their defence in war, lead to the conclusion that it is more advantageous for us to grant them entire independence, without waiting for the moment when events will compel us to give them up. This view would, not long since, have been scorned as a paradox, and rejected with indignation. At present we may be the less revolted at it, and perhaps it may not be without utility to prepare consolation for inevitable events. Wise and happy will be that nation which shall first know how to bend to the new circumstances, and consent to see in its colonies, allies and not subjects. When the total separation of America shall have healed the European nations of jealousy of commerce, there will exist among men one great cause of war the less, and it is very difficult not to desire an event which is to accomplish this good for the human race. In our colonies we shall save many millions, and, if we acquire the liberty of commerce and navigation with all the northern continent, we shall be amply compensated. "The position of Spain with regard to its American possessions will be more embarassing. Unhappily she has less facility than any other power to quit the route she has followed for two centuries, and conform to a new order of things. Thus far she has directed her policy to maintaining the multiplied prohibitions with which she has embarrassed her commerce. She has made no preparations to substitute for empire over her American provinces a fraternal connection founded on identity of origin, language, and manners, without the opposition of interests; to offer them liberty as a gift, instead of yielding it to force. Nothing is more worthy of the wisdom of the king of Spain and his council, than from this present time to fix their attention on the possibility of this forced separation, and on the measures to be taken to prepare for it." Alas! the warning of Turgot was not heeded by the government of Spain and a whole century had to elapse and many lives had to be sacrificed before the Spanish colonies in America were to gain their independence! Both the French and the Spanish king were opposed to taking sides in the war which Britain was waging with her colonies; but they were quite ready secretly to help those colonies, knowing that their success meant the weakening of British power! Bancroft reports in his "History of the United States" (Vol. V., p. 321): "After a year's hesitation and resistance, the king of France, early in May, informed the king of Spain that he had resolved, under the name of a commercial house, to advance a million of French livres, about two hundred thousand dollars, towards the supply of the wants of the Americans." His example was followed by the king of Spain, who, a few weeks later, without the knowledge of any of his advisers except Grimaldi, sent a draft for a million livres more, as his contribution! Such had been the effect of the first shot fired in the struggle for American independence. When the news of the official declaration of this independence on July fourth, 1776, reached Paris and Madrid, the worst fears of the upholders of the old régime and the most exalted dreams of the champions of the new political ideal were realized. But neither France nor Spain dared openly to take sides against Britain, both having ample reason to avoid being involved in new wars. As Turgot intimated in his message, Spain was far more directly interested in the step taken by the British colonies and the possible effects it might have upon her own possessions. Hence France decided to do nothing without the agreement of Spain. Again it is Bancroft who gives the clearest statement of the economic position of Spain and her reasons for avoiding a break with Britain. He writes in his "History of the United States" (Vol. V., p. 535): "Equal to Great Britain in the number of her inhabitants, greatly surpassing that island in the extent of her home territory and her colonies, she did not love to confess or to perceive her inferiority in wealth and power. Her colonies brought her no opulence, for their commerce, which was soon to be extended to seven ports, then to twelve, and then to nearly all, was still confined to Cadiz; the annual exports to Spanish America had thus far fallen short of four millions of dollars in value, and the imports were less than the exports. Campomanes was urging through the press the abolition of restriction on trade; but for the time the delusion of mercantile monopoly held the ministers fast bound. The serious strife with Portugal had for its purpose the occupation of both banks of the river La Plata, that so the mighty stream might be sealed up against all the world but Cadiz. As a necessary consequence, Spanish shipping received no development; and, though the king constructed ships of the line and frigates, he could have no efficient navy, for want of proper nurseries of seamen. The war department was in the hands of an indolent chief, so that its business devolved on O'Reilly, whose character is known to us from his career in Louisiana, and whose arrogance and harshness were revolting to the Spanish nation. The revenue of the kingdom fell short of twenty-one millions of dollars, and there was a notorious want of probity in the management of the finances. In such a state of its navy, army, and treasury, how could it make war on England?" Nobody realized these facts better than King Carlos III. His new ministers, D. Jose Monino, Count de Florida Blanca, who had succeeded Grimaldi, and Galvez, the minister for the Indies, agreed with the sovereign; and when Arthur Lee, emissary of the new republic, appeared in Europe and sought an audience with the authorities in Madrid, he was detained at Burgos to confer with Grimaldi, who was then on his way to his native Italy. Lee found little encouragement and satisfaction in this interview; he was told that the Americans would find at New Orleans three thousand barrels of powder and some store of clothing, and that Spain would perhaps send them a cargo of goods from Bilbao, but he was urged to hurry back to Paris. Florida Blanca, too, very decidedly expressed his aversion to the new republic and was reported to have said "that the independence of America would be the worst example to other colonies, and would make the Americans in every respect the worst neighbors that the Spanish colonies could have." Thus the constant fear that the close proximity of an independent state might rouse the spirit of independence in her own colonies, determined the policy of Spain toward the War of American Independence. Yet her colonies in America gave Spain little trouble at that time, being contented with their lot and working out the problem of their existence as well as their loyalty to Spanish institutions would permit. Cuba, especially, was at that time absorbed in living up to the high standards set her by the three excellent governors that had followed the British domination: Ricla, Buccarelli and la Torre. Their successor was the Field Marshal D. Diego José Navarro, a native of Badajoz. He entered upon the duties of his administration on the twelfth of July, 1777, at a time when the war being waged between Britain and her American colonies had created an atmosphere of apprehension and once more brought near the possibility of a conflict with the old enemy. The repeated protests of her economic experts against her trade restrictions had induced the government of Spain to issue the royal "Ordenanza para el libre comercio con las colonias," a decree due to the constant efforts of the Minister of the Indies, D. José de Galvez, whose experience in the colonies had given his voice sufficient weight to convince his Majesty of the urgent necessity of this reform. During two and a half centuries Spain had traded with America only, through the ports of Cadiz and Sevilla; this ordinance opened all the ports of the peninsula to traffic with all those of Spanish America. At the same time was ordered a reduction in the duties and the permission of importing foreign goods, though they always had to be carried in Spanish boats. These duties were henceforth three per cent. on Spanish products, and seven per cent. on foreign products. When the value of the goods was greater than their bulk, a duty was levied, called estranjeria (foreign custom). As a result of this reform, the revenues of Cuba which in 1764 had amounted to not more than three hundred and sixteen thousand pesos, rose in the year 1777 to one million twenty seven thousand two hundred and thirteen pesos. Contraband which had been one of the worst evils that the Cuban authorities had to contend with for two centuries, visibly declined and was soon limited to articles of luxury. At the same time there was also ordered by royal decree the unification of the coinage, and the macuquino, a coin with the milled edges cut off, was replaced by one of silver with a corded edge. All these reforms were received by the people with unbounded enthusiasm. In all parts of the island the inhabitants spontaneously gave vent to their joy in brilliant festivals and in a display of oratory, which acclaimed the beginning of the new era for Cuba. Like Buccarelli, Governor Navarro was much concerned with the legal malpractice that had long existed in the courts. The bar was composed of many men who with insidious cunning stirred up and prolonged innumerable lawsuits. Their machinations not only violated the sense of justice, but directly disgraced their profession and the judicial administration of the island. So many families had been ruined by such legal procedures, that Governor Navarro was determined to check the operations of these sharks. He ordered that no one but a duly appointed notary should be permitted to draft legal documents and perform judicial acts and he reduced the number of these men to thirty-four for the whole island. He also appointed an appraiser to adjust the costs of legal proceedings and ordered that lawyers who had been convicted of malpractice should be deprived of the right to plead. The Audiencia of Santo Domingo protested against some of these decisions of Navarro, but he succeeded in convincing the court of the justice of his acts. CHAPTER X In the mean time events in North America continued to agitate the diplomatic world of Europe and to stir up trouble. As Great Britain had begun to interfere with the commerce and navigation of France, the relations between the two countries grew daily more strained. France had come to an understanding with Spain, that by the beginning of the year 1778, the two powers would have to combine to make war on Britain, but Carlos III., getting old and more and more conservative, did not want to depart from his policy of neutrality and wanted to end his days in peace. When on the thirteenth of March, the British secretary of state received from the French ambassador a note, saying that France and the United States of North America had signed a treaty of friendship and commerce without any definite advantage to France, but that the king was determined to protect the lawful commerce of his subjects, a state of war was established between the two kingdoms. Efforts to change the decision of Spain were repeated; the return of Florida to Spain was offered with the consent of the United States. But Florida had by this time lost all charm for the conservative court of Spain, so awed by the fact that a republic was to be the neighbor of her American possessions that it was bound not to do anything that might help the insurgents, and sooner or later kindle the desire for independence in their own colonies. Only the prospect of recovering Gibraltar might at that moment have swayed the decision of Spain. But that seemed beyond reasonable possibility. The king was in an embarrassing position. The compact entered into by the two countries when the Bourbons ascended the Spanish throne, a certain respect for the senior branch of the family and the grudge which he bore Britain, tempted him many a time to revise his decision. His ministers, too, were by no means unanimous in approving Spain's neutrality. While some held that to assist rebels in their fight upon their mother country was morally wrong and politically imprudent, others, impatient of the passive inactivity to which they were reduced, modestly expressed their disapproval. One of them, Florida Blanca, more ambitious for himself than for his country, eager at any moment to embrace an opportunity of making a name for himself, continued to negotiate with the statesmen of France and secretly hoped that somehow he would have a hand in the return of Gibraltar to Spain. In this vague hope he quietly worked to enlarge and improve both the army and the fleet of his country; he collected a large number of battering cannon at Seville, and the port of Cadiz soon held a greater number of well-built vessels than it had seen since the golden age of Spanish maritime power. Cunningly holding out the prospect of a final alliance against the common enemy to France, while at the same time offering Britain to become a mediator in the bloody conflict, he succeeded in delaying any decisive action on the part of France. The French became irritable. Finally the diplomats of the two powers came to an agreement and on the twelfth of April, 1779, a treaty of alliance was signed. The terms of this treaty were as follows: France was to invade Great Britain or Ireland; if she succeeded in wresting from the British Newfoundland, she pledged herself to share the fisheries exclusively with Spain; she also pledged herself to secure for Spain the return of Minorca, Pensacola and Mobile, the Bay of Honduras and the coast of Campeche. Moreover, the two powers pledged themselves to continue the war on Britain, until that country agreed to return Gibraltar to Spain. From the United States Spain expected as reward of her services the basin of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, the unrestricted navigation of the Mississippi and all the territory lying between that river and the Alleghany mountains. The United States were by this treaty to be free to make peace with Britain, as soon as their independence was recognized, but were not in any way expected to continue war until Gibraltar was returned to Spain. The Spanish colonies in America proved at this time that the distance which separated them from the mother country, and the greater sense of space and elbowroom which they enjoyed and in which several generations of their people had been born, was beginning to differentiate the Spanish Americans from their kinsmen in old Spain. Unable in the varying aspects of rough pioneer life to preserve the old traditions and conventions, the character of the people themselves had changed. They were not to be bound by the numerous considerations that entered into every step European nations took. They were not slow in taking action, when there was cause and opportunity for such. The news of the alliance between France and Spain against Britain was received in Cuba and Louisiana with intense interest. Within a few days both colonies were swayed by the desire to avenge wrongs formerly suffered at the hands of the British, and with a remarkable promptness framed measures to this effect. Governor Navarro immediately issued privateering patents to Spanish ships and they as promptly set out on their quest and captured a number of British vessels. The coasts of Cuba were closely watched for the possible arrival of a hostile fleet, and the garrison of el Morro was keenly on the alert. In Louisiana the feeling against the British ripened into the plan of reconquering Pensacola. D. Bernardo de Galvez, who had settled in that colony in 1776, had in 1779 been elected Governor and invested with full rights, proprietary and otherwise. The official council of the colony was of the opinion that Louisiana should assume a passive defensive, until advices and perhaps reenforcements were received from Havana. But Galvez, enterprising and energetic in all his undertakings, and a fighter whose valor had been tried before, was determined to attack the British without delay. He collected a force of only seven hundred men, according to Valdes, fourteen hundred according to Blanchet, among them many veterans and militia men, and marched towards Fort Manchac. It was a perilous and trying expedition through a country then little more than a wilderness. But he arrived at his goal and surprised the garrison, taking the British prisoners. Encouraged by this success, he left the captured fort under guard of a part of his force and turned towards Baton Rouge. There he found the enemy much stronger; the British under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Dickson opposed his attacks so strenuously, that his forces had to entrench themselves in anticipation of a prolonged siege. But after nine days, on the twenty first of September, Dickson surrendered and his garrison, too, were made prisoners. Point Thompson and Point Smith, British establishments on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, followed, and leaving General de Camp in charge of the conquered territory, Galvez hurried to Cuba to secure reenforcements for his attack on Mobile and Pensacola. In Havana he found everything in readiness to engage in or furnish an expedition against the British possessions. He had in the meantime been raised to the rank of Field Marshal and everything seemed to favor his plan. During the preparations there arrived in the port the squadron of D. José Solano, consisting of eight thousand men under the command of the Lieutenant-General D. Victorio Navia. Receiving a valuable addition to his troops from Solano, Galvez prepared to embark with five regiments, a small squadron of dragoons, two companies of artillery and forty pieces of ordnance. The expedition was abundantly supplied with ammunition and provisions. On the sixteenth of October, 1780, they set sail with fifty transports, escorted by Solano, seven ships, five frigates and three brigantines. But on the following day a terrible hurricane surprised them out at sea, seriously damaging some of the ships and dispersing the others. Galvez was obliged to return to the sailing port without even knowing the fate of some of his vessels. A number of them on escaping from the storm drifted towards Campeche, others to the mouth of the Mississippi, still others to unknown ports and one was known to have been wrecked. News coming to Havana, that the forces at Mobile, which had in the meantime been taken by General de Campo, were in need of food and threatened with an attack by the British, a council of generals was held and ordered two ships, capable of transporting five hundred men and carry a sufficient amount of provisions, to be immediately prepared and sent on their way. The convoy sailed on the sixth of December under the command of the Captain of the frigate, D. José de Rada. On arriving at the mouth of the Mobile, he did not dare to enter, having found some variation in the channel, and sailed directly for the Balize of the Mississippi. He left his cargo at the entrance and returned to Havana. Two days later two British frigates penetrated the very Bay of Mobile and the detachment of the village was reported to be attacked. D. Bernardo de Galvez urged that, although the state of things did not permit a repetition of the expedition that had sailed from Havana in October, some troops be given him with which to reenforce the garrisons of Louisiana and Mobile. There, as soon as a favorable opportunity presented itself, he would pledge the inhabitants to a further effort and attack Pensacola. The plan was approved by the council, thirteen hundred and fifteen men were organized, including five companies of grenadiers, five vessels were equipped as transports and the war-ship _San Ramon_, under command of D. José Calvo, the frigate _Santa Clara_, commanded by Captain D. Miguel Alderato, the _Santa Cecilia_, commanded by Captain D. Miguel de Goicochoa, the tender _Caiman_, commanded by Captain D. José Serrato, and the packet _San Gil_ under Captain D. José Maria Chacon, were designated as escorts. The whole fleet was placed under the command of D. Bernardo de Galvez, who now bore the title of General. A communication sent by the General of the Marine to D. José Calvo shows in what esteem Galvez was held and how eager were the Spanish authorities to help him with his attack on Pensacola: "To the question contained in your paper of yesterday, that I manifest to you the terms under which you must subordinate to and obey the orders of the Field Marshal of the Royal armies, D. Bernardo de Galvez, I beg to advise that your honor shall put in practice with all your well-known and notorious diligence those that the expressed Don Bernardo shall give your Honor relative to the conquest of Pensacola, without separating yourself in other things from what the Royal Ordinances of the Armada provide, endeavoring that the strictest discipline be observed in all the ships under your orders as provided therein. May our Lord keep you many years. "JUAN BAUTISTA BONET, "Sr. D. José Calvo. "Havana, 6th of February, 1781." Galvez embarked on the thirteenth of February, the troops followed on the fourteenth and the convoy sailed on the twenty-eighth. The General had previously sent Captain D. Emiliano Maxent in a schooner to New Orleans with orders to the Commandant of Arms, so that the troops which D. José Rada had left and those that had arrived there on account of the October hurricane should set out to meet the convoy. He had ordered them to be ready to sail at the first signal. On the first of March the General sent D. Miguel de Herrera of the Regiment of Spain to Mobile by schooner with letters for D. José Espeleta, directing him to proceed to the east of Santa Rose island, fronting the port of Pensacola. He advised him to march by land to form a union with the troops of his command. Such were the extensive and well calculated preparations made by the Spaniards for the recapture of Pensacola. After Galvez had effected the junction of his troops with those of Mobile and New Orleans, he proceeded towards the place which was well fortified and garrisoned. The progress of the blockade was at first very slow. Colonel Campbell, who commanded the British, offered a stubborn resistance to the attacks of the Spanish troops. But Galvez was equally persistent and undaunted continued in his operations. Very much smaller in number than the Spanish forces, the British seemed from the first to be doomed to defeat. But the decisions of the siege hung a long time in the balance. After a brave struggle against odds, the British began to relax in their firing, while the Spaniards seemed ever to bring into the firing line new batteries. Finally the powder magazine was blown up and demolished some of the advance works, and on the ninth of May, 1781, the British garrison surrendered with honors. The conquest of Pensacola decided the fate of Florida, which returned to Spanish dominion. As a reward for his valor the king promoted D. Galvez to the rank of Lieutenant-General and gave him the title Conde de Galvez. The British garrison had to pledge themselves not to serve during the war against Spain or her allies, but were left free to do so against the United States. During the administration of Governor Navarro, which was soon to come to an end, there was one measure enacted, which anticipated our modern prohibition. It was promulgated by means of a proclamation of the year 1780, which prohibited, except for medicinal uses, the sale of liquor. So disastrous and wide-spread were the ravages caused by an immoderate consumption of distilled spirits, brandy, wine, etc., in the population of the island, and especially among the soldiers, that heavy fines were imposed upon the offenders; the first offence was punished by a fine of fifty pesos, the second by one of one hundred pesos and the third by banishment and a fine. The fear that the British would invade Havana or Puerto Rico caused a revival of all military activities and the building of additions and improvements of the fortifications. In the year 1781 Governor Navarro, being old and sickly, resigned his office and retired to Spain, where the king rewarded his services with the Captain-Generalship of Estramadura. CHAPTER XI Washington's warning of entangling alliances comes to one's mind on reading the curious results of the concerted action against Britain decided upon by France and Spain in Europe, while the United States were fighting the British in North America, and the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Louisiana were attempting to wrest from them the Gulf coast. The lure of Gibraltar had led to a state of blockade; but this was far from satisfying to the insatiable ambition of the Spanish prime minister, Florida Blanca, still bent upon making the world ring with the sonority of his name. Ignoring all arguments to the contrary presented by the French statesman Vergennes, and even by some of the Spanish authorities familiar with the situation, he began to insist upon an immediate attack on Britain and gradually persuaded the French allies. An expedition was fitted out and in June, 1779, the fleet consisting of thirty-one French ships of line and twenty Spanish warships sailed for the Channel. It was the largest and best equipped force that had been seen on the Atlantic in many years; for the Spanish shipbuilders had been busy during the past years of unrest and threatening war clouds and had turned out vessels far superior in construction to those of Britain. The French were not over hopeful; even light-hearted Marie Antoinette was conscious of the importance of the enterprise and the great risk it involved; for she wrote in a private letter: "Everything depends on the present moment. Our fleets being united, we have a great superiority. They are in the Channel; and I cannot think without a shudder that, from one moment to the next, our destiny will be decided." The French staked their hope upon the reputation of the Spanish as fighters on sea. Montmorin said: "I hope the Spanish marine will fight well; but I should like it better if the British, frightened at their number, would retreat to their own harbors without fighting." King Carlos alone was optimistic; he imagined a rapid invasion, a prompt victory and the humiliation of Britain, which he had so long wished for. The unexpected was to happen for both French and Spaniards. The fleet appeared at Plymouth on the sixteenth of August, but, without even an attempt at attacking the town, for some unexplained reason was idle for two whole days. Then a storm came up and drove it westward. When the weather became more favorable, the vessels returned and the British retired before them. There was no action to speak of; there was nothing lost and nothing gained, and realizing the futility of the undertaking, the chiefs decided to abandon it. The French returned to Brest, and the Spanish to Cadiz. To the onlooking world the actions of the expedition appeared nothing less than quixotic. The reasons for this incomprehensible performance gradually became known; the expedition had sailed under many chiefs, but it lacked the one chief, whose will and word was to prevail and insure unity of purpose. Unable to agree upon any one plan of action, they decided upon no action whatever. The Spanish admiral, who had been fired with the spirit of Florida Blanca and been eager to display the famous military prowess of his nation in a big fight with the enemy, was so furious, that he vowed on his honor after this experience rather to serve against France than Britain. Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother: "The doing of nothing at all will have cost us a great deal of money." But while a legitimate engagement between the French and Spanish vessels on the one and the British on the other side was for the time being avoided, the three countries did not disdain to stoop to smaller means to inflict damage upon the commerce and the navigation of one another. Nor did they hesitate to attack the vessels of neutral countries, if they suspected them of lending aid to the belligerent they were opposing; and as this spirit began to spread, it led to a state of anarchy upon the seas, which recalled the golden age of piracy. British privateers and other vessels cruised about the ocean in quest of booty and attacked and robbed indiscriminately whatever ships they suspected; and very frequently this suspicion was only a pretext. Dutch commerce and navigation especially suffered from these depredations, and as French and Spanish vessels began to vie with the British in these violations of neutrality, the council chambers of the European powers, from Lisbon to Petrograd and from Naples to Christiania began to ring with vociferous protests against these disgraceful conditions. When Spain issued an order that all ships found by her vessels to be carrying provisions and to be bound for Mediterranean ports, should be brought into the harbor of Cadiz and their cargoes sold to the highest bidder, even Britain was alarmed and indignant. That was the moment which brought into prominence Sir George Rodney, the British commander, whose naval exploits soon were to worry the Spanish colonies, as did once those of British freebooters. Rodney sailed with his squadron on the twenty-ninth of December, 1779, and by the eighth of January had captured seven warships and fifteen merchantmen. At Cape St. Vincent, where he arrived on the sixteenth, he destroyed a part of the Spanish squadron under command of D. Languara. In the spring of the same year he had several encounters with the French fleet, under command of Admiral Guichen, with results so favorable for him that Britain soon resounded with his praise. His progress had so far been almost unobstructed, but in the summer it was temporarily checked, when the Spanish squadron, commanded by D. Solano, joined that of the French. However, the curious disparity of French and Spanish temperament once more manifested itself in a manner which disastrously affected their work. Unable to agree on important questions of action, their cooperation threatened to come to naught. In the mean time an epidemic of fever broke out in both fleets and D. Solano returned with his ships to Havana, while Admiral Guichen sailed for France. The new governor, who had succeeded Navarro in the administration of Cuba, was Lieutenant-General D. Juan Manuel de Cagigal. Alcazar calls his governorship a provisional one; Blanchet asserts that he received his appointment in reward for the valuable services he had rendered during the recent conquest of Pensacola, he having been the first to enter through the breach which the Spanish had made in the fortifications. Cagigal was a native of Cuba; he entered upon his office on the twenty-ninth of May, 1781, and remained until December of the same year. He contributed largely to the efficiency of the expedition which was fitted out under the command of D. Solano, the General of the Spanish fleet, consisting of twelve vessels with one thousand men on board, and was to join the French fleet at Guarico. The object of the expedition was to capture the island of Providence and eventually take other island possessions of the British in the contiguous seas. According to Alcazar, Providence was taken, but the defeat of the French squadron by Rodney made the position of Cagigal critical and attention had to be concentrated upon the defense of Havana. According to Blanchet this joint expedition of the French and Spanish forces, which had for its ultimate object the capture of Jamaica, had elected for its chief D. José de Galvez, giving him for the duration of the campaign authority over the Captain-General of Cuba and the president of Santo Domingo. By order of Galvez, Cagigal had set out from Havana in April, 1782, with forty-eight transports and two thousand men to possess himself of the British island of Bahama, and in particular of Providence. During his absence D. José Dahan exercised the authority of the governor. Cagigal was not aware that a week before his sailing Admiral Rodney had defeated the French squadron of Count de Grasse, which he was to join in the attack on Jamaica. However, Providence was taken and a sufficient garrison left there to make the conquest secure. Blanchet indulges in some criticism of Cagigal that he had left Havana, and taken all the troops with him at such a critical time. For when he reached Matanzas after a heavy gale which had dispersed his ships, he found the authorities no little alarmed since a British fleet had been sighted. Cagigal immediately hurried to the capital, fortified the approaches, employing one thousand negroes in the work, and formed an intrenched camp. He armed the militia, which was reenforced by many civilians, eager to fight the enemy, and when on the fifth of August el Morro gave notice of the presence of the British, everybody was prepared for the defence. Sir George Rodney, now Admiral, had calculated upon taking Havana by surprise. He brought with him a squadron composed of twenty-six ships of the line, and carrying a large number of troops. When he arrived and began to reconnoiter, he perceived the formidable preparations that had been made for the defence of the place, and deciding that it was imprudent to attack Havana by land, planned to approach it from Jarico. In the meantime Cagigal had received reenforcements which seemed to assure the safety of the capital. Daring as was the gallant Britisher, he was not inclined to waste his material in an enterprise so doubtful of success, and to the great relief of the Cubans he sailed away. In his administration Cagigal did not prove as efficient as in his military operations. He was a born soldier. He had followed the military profession in Portugal, Oran and at Gibraltar; he had participated in the unfortunate expedition against Argel, had fought in Florida and had been with D. Pedro Caballero at Buenos Aires. He disliked the atmosphere of official bureaus and the complicated machinery of government. This lack of interest in the indispensable functions of his office brought him into serious trouble. He had counselors or asesores attend to matters which did not immediately require his intervention, and as such had employed the Venezuelan D. Francisco Miranda, who eventually became prominent in the history of his own country. When Miranda returned from a commission in Jamaica, he disembarked some contraband in Batabano. The Intendente Urriza, who was informed of the matter, at once sent a complaint to Cagigal, who, either from indifference or indolence, never even stopped to examine the case, but simply resolved to suppress it. He had, however, not taken into account the presence of the functionaries of the royal Hacienda or Treasury, who communicated the incident to the proper authorities in Spain. An urgent order for Cagigal's removal from office was the result; and the Captain-General of Caracas, D. Luis de Unzaga, was sent to take his place as governor of Cuba. Miranda fled. Cagigal was sent to Guarico and later dispatched by D. José de Galvez to Cadiz, where he was for four years a prisoner in Fort Santa Catalina. During the proceedings against him it was found that he was in no way implicated in the smuggling operation of Miranda. He was rehabilitated during the reign of King Carlos IV. and in the war with the French Republic had once more an opportunity to prove his military abilities. He died as Captain General of Valencia. The strong impulse towards progress which had been given to Cuba in that period of peace when the administrations of Buccarelli and la Torre devoted their main energies to internal improvements and to modest attempts at laying the foundations of Cuban culture, had of course subsided during the recent unrest and the predominance of military interests. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the spark kindled a few years before was not quite dead. A long-felt want had been the absence of any periodical publication that would give the people of Cuba information upon the current political events and also be a medium for advertising purposes. According to some historians the first periodical of this kind, the _Gazeta_, published under the direction of D. Diego de la Barrera, made its appearance in the year 1780; others give as the date of its foundation the year 1782. Whatever the date of its publication may have been, the _Gazeta de la Habana_ became a medium through which the people were kept informed of the doings of the various administrative departments. The issue dated April eleventh, 1783, contains some statistics concerning the silver coins with milled edges cut away, which had been recently withdrawn from circulation, which is of interest as it suggests the relative financial rank of the different localities mentioned. In the Treasury of the General Silver Reales Administration: with milled edges Weight cut away in ounces Havana 311,625 23,340 10 Guanabacoa 2,808 151 Santa Maria del Rosario 21,870 1,117 12 Arroyo Arenas 7,049 380 14 Santa Clara 237,665 12,558 San Juan de Los Remedios 68,153 3,848 Trinidad 40,137 2,145 Sancti Spiritus 197,905 11,670 14 Puerto Principe 73,792 3,207 Bayamo 94,499 4,615 7 Holguin 31,013 1,701 Baracoa 6,396 1,465 -------- ------ 1,092,940 66,231 5 The _Gazeta_ added to this report: "There have been collected from the public over two million pesos (cut away), and in their exchange they yielded a little over eighty thousand pesos fuertes (efficacious), and although the loss is excessive as a whole it must be stated, that in particular it was not very grave, the money being distributed in small amounts among the public." This was a critical period in the conflict which had gradually involved the principal countries and was watched with apprehension by all the sovereigns of Europe. Up to this date Florida Blanca, who, from a simple lawyer in the provinces had risen to be prime minister of Spain, had not attained the goal of his ambition and secured for Spain victories, the glory of which should cast a halo about his name. On the contrary, circumstances began so to complicate the task which he had imagined to be comparatively easy, that he was puzzled and began to lose some of his extraordinary self-assurance. Bancroft gives in his "History of the United States" (Vol. VI. p. 441) a very interesting review of the situation and of the relation of Spain to the Revolutionary War, which was drawing towards its close. He says: "The hatred of America as a self-existent state became every day more intense in Spain from the desperate weakness of her authority in her trans-atlantic possessions. Her rule was dreaded in them all; and, as even her allies confessed, with good reason. The seeds of rebellion were already sown in the vice-royalties of Buenes Ayres and Peru; and a union of Creoles and Indians might prove at any moment fatal to metropolitan dominion. French statesmen were of the opinion that England, by emancipating South America, might indemnify itself for all loss from the independence of a part of its own colonial empire; and they foresaw in such a revolution the greatest benefit to the commerce of their own country. Immense naval preparations had been made by the Bourbons for the conquest of Jamaica; but now, from the fear of spreading the love of change Florida Blanca suppressed every wish to acquire that nest of hated contraband trade. When the French ambassador reported to him the proposal of Vergennes to constitute its inhabitants an independent republic, he seemed to hear the tocsin of insurrection sounding from the La Plata to San Francisco, and from that time had nothing to propose for the employment of the allied fleets in the West Indies. He was perplexed beyond the power of extrication. One hope only remained. Minorca having been wrested from the English, he concentrated all the force of Spain in Europe on the one great object of recovering Gibraltar, and held France to her promise not to make peace until that fortress should be given up." From that time began a series of secret manoeuvres in favor of a general peace, and rumors of the signing of treaties that had then not even been drafted, began to float across the ocean and agitate the colonies of Spanish America. But naval operations in the waters of the West Indies continued almost without cessation. The French fleet under de Grasse had before its return to France restored to the Dutch St. Eustatius. It had captured St. Christopher, Nevis and Montserrat. When in February, 1782, Admiral Rodney appeared at Barbados with twelve new ships of line in addition to his fleet, and was towards the end of the month joined by the squadron under command of Hood at Antigua, it became necessary for the French to look for a junction with the Spanish fleet. For this purpose de Grasse left Port Royal to Martinique on the eighth of April and hurriedly sailed for Hispaniola. After a small engagement at Dominica, Admiral Rodney by a skillful ruse brought on a battle with the French between Guadeloupe, Saintes and Marie Galante. The British had on their side superiority in number and quality, having thirty six vessels, all in good repair and manned by well-trained and disciplined sailors. The French ships were better constructed, but inferior in number, and their mariners were known to be less efficient and experienced. The combat raged for eleven hours. Four of de Grasse's ships were captured, one sunk. The British lost about one thousand men in killed and wounded, the French about three times as many. This defeat of their ally tended to depress the spirits of the Spanish people, both in the mother country and the colonies, for they saw Britain once more exercising almost undisputed authority over the seas. By this time the belligerents were all becoming tired of the war and were seriously hoping for peace. The situation in France had after this new defeat become specially precarious. Her coffers had been depleted by participating in a war in which she had nothing to gain. Hence her statesmen were particularly anxious to end a conflict the ideal aim of which had been attained by the recognition of the independence of the United States from Britain. But she was bound by the alliance with Spain; and Spain was inflexible in refusing to acknowledge that independence and in insisting upon her demands, among them above all others, in Europe, the return of Gibraltar, in America the territory east of the Mississippi, including the right of navigation on that river. Conferences between John Jay and Benjamin Franklin, the special American emissaries, and the French minister Vergennes and his able assistant Rayneval were constantly taking place. Couriers were speeding back and forth between Paris and London. Rayneval attempted to bring the subject of Gibraltar to the attention of the Earl of Shelburne, saying: "Gibraltar is as dear to the king of Spain as his life," but he was told that it was out of the question even to propose to the government to cede it to Spain. He pleaded for Spain's claim of the Mississippi and its eastern valley, and received an ambiguous reply, implying that Britain might be induced to cede Jamaica. But the indirect offer was ignored, just as had been that of Porto Rico some time before. The more the negotiations progressed, the more did Spain, persisting in her traditional conservatism, prove a stumbling block to peace. For as late as September, 1782, in a meeting between Lafayette, Jay and Aranda, did the latter, as representative of King Carlos III., refuse to acknowledge the independence of the new republic. In the mean time Spain was clamoring for action against Gibraltar, and the French and Spanish fleets united in an attempt to reduce the fort under the command of the Duke of Crillon. But three years of blockade, with intervals of famine and privation, had not broken the spirit of the British garrison. While the first question of the king of Spain on awakening every morning was: "Is Gibraltar taken?" the British continued to defend it with a stubbornness which threatened to prolong the struggle interminably. Receiving constant supplies from the British fleet under Lord Howe, General Eliot was able to hold his own and the futility of this expedition soon became apparent. When the Spanish batteries were blown up and General Eliot made his audacious sortie, the hope of this victory had to be abandoned. Spain at last realized the necessity of yielding to the inevitable. Her debt had been increased by twenty millions sterling, her navy had been almost annihilated and she had gained nothing but an island or two. King Carlos III., who had so long withheld his recognition of the United States and blocked the negotiations for peace, because the American envoys justly demanded that recognition before they could deal with the representatives of Spain, finally yielded to the pressure of the moment and the preliminaries of peace were signed on the thirtieth of November, 1782. By the separate articles of this treaty, the claim of the United States to all the country from the St. Croix to the southwestern Mississippi, from the Lake of the Woods to the St. Mary's, was verified. By a separate article the line of north boundary between West Florida and the United States was defined, in case Great Britain at the conclusion of the war should recover that province. Thus was the republic, the consummation of which King Carlos III. had in his loyalty to the old tradition of sovereignty so zealously tried to prevent, established upon the very continent, which Columbus had discovered, and to the greater part of which Spain had laid claim. If the Spanish king and his cabinet were at all conscious of the analogy presented by comparison of the commercial and other restrictions placed upon both colonies by the kingdoms from which they had sprung, they had reason to be filled with vague apprehensions at the rise of this new and free power among the countries of the world. They could not help seeing in the republic which by a long and tenacious fight had won her independence from the mother country, a neighbor whose example offered a dangerous precedent. Perhaps it was with the intention of forestalling the development of such events in Cuba, as had led to the Declaration of Independence by the colonies to the north, that the Spanish King had some years before begun to remove the restrictions which had for two centuries and more hampered the growth of Cuban commerce and retarded her general development. It was a proof of his own growth towards a more liberal conception of the relations between a country and her colonies, that the removal of these restrictions was effected within so short a time. He opened the trade of Cuba and the other islands of his possessions in America in 1765, and that of Louisiana in 1768 to eight Spanish ports besides Cadiz; he gradually permitted direct trade from the Spanish ports to his dependencies in South and Central America; and in 1782 even allowed New Orleans and Pensacola to trade with French ports that had Spanish consuls. The breath of freedom which seemed to sweep across the world during these last decades of the eighteenth century, might well have filled the sovereigns of Europe with fear for their possessions and prerogatives. Although Carlos III. was the most liberal monarch that Spain had had in a long time, he still clung to a rigorous paternal regime in the relations of the court to the colonies, the population of which began to resent the rule of officials sent to them from Madrid, and rarely concerned with their welfare. He had had more cause than other European sovereigns to dread the consequences which the American Revolution might bring in its wake. For an insurrection, headed by Tupac-Amaru, who called himself an Inca, had broken out in Peru, and was directed against the exactions of the corregidores; and though it was suppressed by the year 1782, incipient revolt seemed everywhere to be ready to break out. As Garcia Calderon says of that period in his book on Latin America: "The revolution was not merely an economic pretext; it nourished concrete social ambitions. An equalizing movement, it aimed at destruction of privileges, of the arbitrary Spanish hierarchy, and finally, when its levelling instinct was aroused and irritated, the destruction of authority to the profit of anarchy. The Creoles, deprived of all political function, revolted; in matters of economics they condemned excessive taxation and monopoly; in matters of politics they attacked slavery, the Inquisition, and moral tutelage. Charles III. had recognized, in 1783, in spite of the counsels of his minister Aranda, the independence of the United States, which were to serve his own colonies as precedent, and he expelled the Jesuits from America, the defense of the Indians against the oppression of Spanish governors. The corruption of the courts, the sale of offices, and the tyranny of the viceroys, all added to the causes of discontent, disturbance and poverty." The insurrection in Peru was but the tocsin sounding the alarm. It was to be followed by a number of revolts that shook the very foundations of Spain's colonial empire in America. Cuba for some time to come remained untouched by the high tide of insurrection. It enjoyed a period of peace, which promoted the welfare of the people and insured their content. D. Luis de Unzaga, who entered upon his office as governor of the island in December, 1783, distinguished himself by his strenuous prosecution of officials, whose honesty he had reason to doubt. One of these was the administrator of the Factoria or tobacco factory, D. Manuel Garcia Barrieres, whose disposal and trial he ordered. This factory, which monopolized the tobacco crop of the island for the benefit of the royal government, received a subvention from Spain which at this time was increased to fifty thousand pesos annually. Unzaga also took steps to limit the number of inexperienced and unscrupulous lawyers, against whom some of his predecessors had already inaugurated a campaign, by refusing to issue new diplomas to barristers, there being at that time two hundred practicing in the island. A royal decree of the year 1784 was directed towards the same evil, but lawyers still remained too numerous in proportion to the population for in 1792 the island had one hundred and six, and Havana seventy two. Governor Unzaga had also some trouble with the governor of Santiago de Cuba, D. Nicolas Arredondo. D. Arredondo, who is remembered in history of the island as the founder of the first "Sociedad Patriotica," in which he had such fellow-members as D. Francisco Lozo de la Torre, D. Pedro Valiente, and D. Francisco Grinan, was accused of participating in contraband trade and was temporarily deposed. Ultimately it was discovered that the real offenders were two aldermen, the brothers Creaght. After a protracted trial the innocence of Arredondo was established and he was reinstated in office. The greater the natural wealth of a country, the more are its inhabitants inclined to indulge in thoughtless or deliberate waste of resources which would be carefully husbanded in country less favored by nature. Cuba was wasteful of her forest wealth. The governors of the island had so far paid little or no heed to the wanton destruction of the forests by people who exploited them for their timber. In a proclamation issued soon after he was inaugurated, Governor Unzaga made a serious attempt at checking this criminal waste of the island's wealth. He prohibited the use of cedar for building purposes; he designated the land where the people could procure their supply of that valuable wood, and ordered that for each log cut the arsenal should receive two "knees." The state had for years looked with indifference upon the devastation of the forests, and, conceding to private individuals the absolute dominion over those that shaded favored territory, wanted to monopolize them for the use of the Navy. Not only the sugar refineries were using unreasonable quantities of that wood, but especially the shipyard. This enterprise, which received an annual subvention from the Spanish government of seven hundred thousand pesos, and was more active than those of the mother country, because negro labor was cheaper than white, used enormous quantities of cedar. Thus the order of Governor Unzaga, while ultimately benefiting the island, caused for the moment no little heated discussion and unpleasant tension. Among the foreigners of high rank that visited Cuba immediately after peace had been signed was the son of George III., William of Lancaster, who had served as midshipman in Rodney's squadron. According to Alcazar, he was most graciously received, being sumptuously lodged by Governor Unzaga, who in honor of his presence arranged many brilliant festivities, in which the aristocracy of the island had opportunity to show itself resplendent in all its wealth. So pleased seemed the prince with his stay that he might have prolonged it, had not the admiral reprimanded him, and insisting upon his immediate return on board, threatened to leave without him. Knowing Rodney's severity, the prince obeyed, although it must have been difficult for him to tear away from that gay life. The visit cost the Cubans great sums of money, officials and civilians having vied with one another in offering entertainment. The mess at which the General of the Marine, D. Solano, had treated him, is reported by Valdes to have cost four thousand pesos. A gold peso being about the value of three dollars, it was a handsome sum to spend on the son of the king who had been Spain's enemy in the war just concluded. One of the most serious mistakes which Spain had always made in the administration of her American colonies was the appointment of men who were mostly natives of the mother country and not as familiar with the conditions and the needs of the territory they governed as those who had been born in the colonies. The short period of some administrations also greatly hindered a well-ordered systematic management of the different departments of the government. Earlier periods of the history of Cuba had such frequent changes of governorship; and the latter part of the eighteenth century was to undergo the same experience. When Unzaga retired on the eighth of February, 1785, he was succeeded by a man whose previous career had given him a reputation which recommended him to the Cubans; D. Bernardo Galvez, who had distinguished himself in the last expedition against Pensacola, and as former governor of Louisiana was thoroughly in touch with colonial life in Spanish America. Galvez was a native of Malaga, Knight Commander of the order of Calatrava and endowed with the title of Conde de Galvez. But the hopes of the island were much disappointed when only two months later he was transferred to the vice-regency of Mexico and was on the fifth of April temporarily replaced by the King's Lieutenant-teniente de Rey, and Field Marshal D. Bernardo Troncoso. He had been governor of Guatemala, and when he had barely become acquainted with Cuban conditions, was appointed governor of Vera Cruz. But during his brief administration he showed no little initiative and firmness of purpose and among other things succeeded in repressing the bakers' guild which had become very troublesome. At this time the Spanish colonies of the continent, Louisiana and Florida, became aware of the hostility with which they were regarded by certain elements of the United States, that tried to foment disturbances along their northern boundaries. In June of that year Troncoso received news from Louisiana that a corps of two thousand three hundred Americans were organizing in the state of Georgia for the purpose of taking the fortifications of Natchez, which they alleged were on ground of their demarcation. Troncoso accordingly dispatched from Havana a few pickets of infantry and a company of dragoons, with the aid of which the governor of Louisiana could mobilize a column of twelve hundred regular troops to check the project. With the inauguration of Brigadier D. José de Espoleto on the first of December, 1785, a little more stability came into the government of the island. One of the first official acts was the formation of the Regiment of Cuba, in which he was ably assisted by the Inspector D. Domingo Cabello. Espoleto entered upon the functions of his office in the spirit of the Marques de la Torre, to whose wise administration Havana was indebted for all the improvements and reforms that made her worthy of being the metropolis of the Spanish West Indies. Espoleto continued the work on the piers, hastened the completion of the buildings for the government and the Intendencia, inaugurated a system of water supply and street cleaning and established a public market for the convenience of the producers in the outlying districts and the city dwellers relying upon them for their supplies in dairy and garden products. He also introduced some reforms in the police department of Havana. But what was most important for that commonwealth was his settling upon it of a sum which was to be devoted to the permanent lighting of the city. In his administration Santiago de Cuba took a significant step towards the more effective concentration of the literary activities of the island. This was the foundation of the first Sociedad de Amigos, which was approved of by the king and on the thirteenth of September, 1787, received a royal grant. In his colonial administration Espoleto tried to follow the example of Ricla and Buccarelli, ordering the publication of the decrees which they had enacted and which in the course of time had been forgotten, and did his best to enforce them. In this by no means easy task he was backed by D. José Pablo Valiente, an oidor of the Audiencia or judge of the Supreme Court, who had come to Havana in 1787 to start an inquiry into the disbursement of certain funds. By order of the king he had to investigate how the enormous sums, which the expeditions of the gallant Galvez had cost, had been invested; had to examine the state of the royal revenues and suggest needed reforms, watch the administration of justice and propose measures to raise the standard of the bar. One of the high officials who had given a previous administration trouble and was probably guilty of irregularities, Urriza, was so resentful of this investigation of his office, which D. Valiente was ordered to undertake, that he speedily resigned. He was succeeded by D. Domingo Hernani. Death reaped a rich harvest between 1786 and 1788, in removing men so closely identified with the fate of the colonies and the mother country that they were not soon to be adequately replaced. On the thirtieth of November, 1786, D. Bernardo de Galvez died in Mexico, where he had reigned as viceroy since he left Havana eleven months before. By his rare executive talent and his extensive knowledge he had become one of the most efficient colonial governors that Spanish America had known, and to him was in a great measure due their progress and prosperity. A few days later died in Madrid his uncle D. José de Galvez, the noted minister of the Indies, whose name is also identified with colonial reforms. But the greatest loss to the colonies and to Spain was the death on the twenty-eighth of December, 1788, of King Carlos III. The kind and prudent sovereign had in a reign of almost thirty years, handicapped as he was by the Spanish tradition of absolutism, tried his best to further the growth and the welfare of his country and its dependencies, and inaugurated policies more liberal than any his predecessors had followed. He had endeared himself to his people and was sincerely mourned. The accession of Carlos IV. to the throne of Spain was not calculated to advance Spain and her colonies beyond the degree of development they had attained during the long reign of his father. He was forty years of age and by stature and physiognomy was singularly fitted to represent so important a kingdom as Spain. But he was as unintelligent as ignorant, and allowed himself to be guided by his wife, Maria Louise, princess of Parma, who was as clever and scheming as he was dull and indolent. She was an autocrat, who suffered nobody to share the reins with her, and imperceptibly they slipped into her hands, until she was absolute sovereign of the kingdom. Two years after the death of Carlos III. Florida Blanca was forced to resign. Count Cabarrus, an ardent champion of reform, and a man of considerable executive power, was arrested. D. Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos, one of the most profound thinkers and noblest patriots that Spain could claim in the eighteenth century, was removed from the important position he held in Madrid and exiled. Campomanes, too, fell into "disgrace" in 1791. All these men, distinguished for their character and their ability, were replaced by some feeble creatures with no idea or will of their own, puppets in the hands of the queen, who transformed the court of Madrid into a den of corruption. The policies pursued by Spain during this time culminated in so much confusion that Florida Blanca was recalled in 1792 and set about to make an attempt at restoring order in a thoroughly disorganized government. But he was deposed the same year, having been unable to obtain the favor of the queen. Aranda, who during the previous reign had been the representative of progress, peace and the liberal ideas that came to Spain from France, followed him with no better luck. For he too was dismissed within a year and his place was taken by the queen's favorite, Manuel Godoy, who some years later was to turn up in Cuba. Godoy was a handsome young officer; she made him a grandee of the first class with the title of Duke of Alcudia, and entrusted him with the ministry of foreign affairs. The proud old aristocracy of Spain grumbled at the rise of the upstart; but it succumbed to the spirit of servility which pervaded the atmosphere of the court, and sought the favorite's favor. Such was the condition of the country which was exercising a paternal authority over Spanish America. It was not calculated to tighten the bonds existing between the mother country and the colonies. As transportation increased and news began to spread more rapidly and to circulate more freely, the eyes of the colonists were opened to the iniquities they suffered, and they began to question institutions and laws which they had formerly unconditionally accepted. The glamor of the period of conquistadores had long faded; the excitement of the age of piracy was slowly being forgotten. Cuba, like all Latin America, had entered upon that period, which President Poincaré in his preface to Garcia Calderon's book on "Latin America" calls "the colonial phase with its disappointments, its illusions, its abuses and errors; the domination of an oppressive theocracy, of crushing monopolies; the insolence of privileged castes, and the indignities of Peninsular agents." It needed strong and noble men to guide her through the period of unrest which even at that moment was culminating in the French Revolution. The immediate echoes of this Revolution were heard in 1791 in Hispaniola, where at the very first risings of the people in France, the slaves had revolted, killing their masters and burning their property. It was only the prelude to the greater insurrection, which broke out later and in which Cuba became involved. In the mean time, this island had come under another interim governorship, and was drifting along on the tide of progress in some directions, while in others it had come to a standstill, if it had not retrograded. The provisional government of D. Domingo Caballo which began on the twentieth of April, 1789, and ended on the eighth of July, 1790, was not noteworthy for any important measures, unless it be another attempt at restricting the number and the activities of lawyers. The royal decree of the nineteenth of November, 1789, which prohibited the admission of any more professors of jurisprudence, native or foreign, to the bar of the island, was modified to read thus: "To the profession of lawyer, only those shall be admitted who studied in the greater universities of their countries and had practiced in some of their capitals, where there existed a superior tribunal certifying that they had practiced six years at the superior courts of Spain." During Caballo's interim rule there occurred the ecclesiastical division of the island. The archbishopric of Santo Domingo was divided into two suffragan dioceses, both the bishopric of Santiago de Cuba which had existed since 1518 and the new bishopric of Havana being subject to the metropolitan mitre of Santo Domingo. To the bishopric of Santiago was appointed D. Antonio Feliu, a man of great piety and gentle disposition, who rapidly won the esteem of the community and the love of his flock. That of Havana, which also comprised Louisiana and Florida, was entrusted to D. Felipe José de Tres Palacios. In spite of the apparent prosperity, the island was still suffering from centuries of restriction which had paralyzed the initiative of its population. Maria de las Mercedes (Jaruco), Countess de Merlin, says of that period in her work, "La Havana" (Paris, 1844): "Owing to the long tyranny which had weighed upon the island, Cuba needed hands to cultivate her fields. The products were devoured by a monopoly; territorial property did not exist; for the proprietor could not even cut a tree in his woods without the permission of the royal marine; the population was reduced to 170,370 souls; the sugar production had become so inferior in quality, that no more than 50,000 barrels of sugar annually left the port of Havana; finally, the island was involved in debts and Mexico was obliged to aid it in the necessary expenses of the administration and agriculture." The author, a niece of the Conde de Casa Montalvo, who was identified with the great revival of civic spirit during the administration of Governor Las Casas, also limns a rather discouraging picture of the state of education in the island, saying that in the year 1792, Havana had only one grammar school, of which the mulatto Melendez was the teacher, and that up to the year 1793 girls were forbidden to learn to read. So thoroughly familiar was the author with the political and economic conditions of Cuba, and closely associated with the men, whose energy, integrity and patriotic ambition ushered in that wonderful era of progress, that the three volumes of her work, consisting of letters to Chateaubriand, George Sand, Baron Rothschild, and others are full of valuable information presented in a most fascinating manner. [Illustration: DON LUIS DE LAS CASAS] The historian Valdes is not far from right, when he calls the history of Cuba, as compared with that of other countries, _nuestra pequena historia_--our little history. But that little history contains more than one great epoch and its biography more than one figure that stands out with something like sovereign impressiveness from the many names which it records. The administration of D. Luis de Las Casas is such an epoch, and he is such a man. Born in the village of Sapuerta in Viscaya, his was a picturesque career. He had embraced the military profession and been on the battlefields of Villaflor and Almeida; in Portugal he attracted the attention of Count O'Reilly, who took him on the expedition to Louisiana, where he was sergeant-mayor of New Orleans. On his return to Spain, he solicited permission to go to Russia and served under the flag of Marshal Romanzow, distinguishing himself in the campaign waged by the empress. Then he studied the science of government in Paris; but as soon as Spain was once more engaged in war, he joined the expedition of O'Reilly against Argel. His conduct at the capture of Minorca earned for him the title of Field Marshal and Commandant-General of Oran. He also took a gallant part in the unfortunate attempt to recover Gibraltar. On being appointed to the governorship of Cuba, he arrived in Havana the eighth of July, 1796, and on the following day took charge of his office. One of his first official measures was to have a new census taken, for when the results of the one taken by la Torre were published, many questioned the correctness of the figures. It was said, not without some justice, that, if the population of the island in the year of the British invasion, 1762, was one hundred and forty thousand, it should have been more in 1775 than one hundred and seventy-one thousand six hundred and twenty, since the number of negroes that had been added to the population was in itself enormous, and there were also the immigrants from Florida that had settled on the island. Profiting by the criticism of his predecessor's work, Las Casas took great pains so to systematize the work of the census takers, that their investigations would be unexceptionally thorough and conclusive. When the result became known two years later, the population of the island was found to be two hundred and seventy-two thousand five hundred and one inhabitants. In the second year of his administration, Governor Las Casas had an opportunity to show his generosity and his executive ability when Cuba was visited by another typical West Indian hurricane. It broke upon the island on the twenty-first of June and lasted fully twenty-four hours. The terrible windstorm was accompanied by a deluge of rain, which caused the overflow of the Almendares and its tributaries, uprooted the trees in orchards and nurseries, inundated plantations and damaged houses to such an extent, that great numbers of residents in the districts of Wajay, San Antonio, Managua and others were rendered homeless and reduced to poverty. The governor not only effectively organized the work of relief, but spent freely of his private funds to alleviate the suffering of the people. He showed the same spirit a year later, when Trinidad was visited by a conflagration which consumed property valued at six hundred thousand pesos. The establishment of the Real Casa de Beneficiencia was another work that proved his sincere concern for the welfare of the people, and especially those unfortunates who were dependent upon public charity. The founding of this asylum for destitute orphans of both sexes, including a school, in which they were to be taught a trade to make them self-supporting on reaching maturity, was first proposed by him in a meeting of citizens on the twenty-second of March, 1792. So warm and rousing was his appeal, that large subscriptions to defray its expenses were immediately signed. A royal patent of the fifteenth of December conferred upon the plan official approval. There was connected with the asylum a hospital, and both were temporarily organized and began their work in a provisional building, until on the eighth of December they were transferred to the structure erected for them. Cuba's commerce, though still laboring under difficulties due to unreasonable trade laws of Spain, was gradually becoming so extensive that it needed some central organization to protect and promote its interests. The citizens had so far let things take their course as they might; lack of initiative was perhaps natural with a people under the strict paternal supervision which Spain exercised over colonies. Governor Las Casas roused their latent energies and induced them to organize for mutual profit and for the general progress of the island's commerce. For this purpose was established the Tribunal of Commerce or Consulado, which was also to act as a court of justice for mercantile litigants and bankrupts. The Consulado was founded on the sixth of June, 1795, and within a short time settled more than three hundred and twenty such cases. But the most important step towards the internal reform and improvement of the island was taken by Las Casas when on the second of January, 1793, he presided at the foundation of the "Real Sociedad Patriotica o Economica," which later changed its name to Junta de Fomento, or Society of Progress. Among his associates in this most significant enterprise were the marquises de Casa Calvo, Casa Penalver and San Felipe, the counts de Casa Bayona, Lagunillas, Buenavista, O'Farrel and Jaurequi, distinguished citizens like Romany, Sequeira and Caballero, and that greatest patriot among them all, Sr. D. Francisco Arango y Pareno, to whom credit is due for the inception of this organization. The different sections, into which this society was divided, devoted themselves to the development of agriculture, stockbreeding, industry, commerce, science and art, and were of inestimable service to the people. Reports of the meeting held on the twenty-first of December, 1796, showed a clearness and seriousness of purpose which commanded respect and augured well for the future of the undertaking. In those first four years of its existence it was the medium through which were established some much needed improvements for the facilitation of traffic. Within a few months after its foundation it invested some of its funds in the highway of Horcon which cost about thirty thousand seven hundred pesos. Then it built the Guadalupe road and finished the principal pier of that place. To introduce indigo culture on the island, it lent to the administration three thousand five hundred pesos without interest. When the royal professor of botany, D. Martin Sese, suggested to take with him a young native of Havana to study that science in its application to agriculture, the society again defrayed the expenses. There was hardly a work of public utility that was not materially assisted by this corporation. Its efforts at promoting the cultural progress of the population were no less remarkable. A number of its members united in editing the _Papel Periodico_, which was published every Thursday and Sunday at a cost of fourteen reales per month and was of the size of a half sheet of Spanish paper. As the work of the society expanded, it gave to the press its "Memorias," a collection of original writing and translations by the members, covering a variety of subjects, among them contributions to Cuban history which contain valuable data. Some forty years after its foundation, it published at its expense the history of D. José Martin Felix de Arrate, which is one of the earliest works on the history of Cuba. But even more important were the constant and vigorous efforts of the Society to reform and improve public education. It founded many establishments of free instruction and offered special inducements to teachers, who could show a certain number of children with a more solid knowledge of grammar and the four fundamental principles of arithmetic than the schools had so far produced. The university, too, was encouraged in its work; the textbooks were improved and the curriculum was enlarged so as to include courses in geography, physics, history and Spanish literature. The first director of the Society was Sr. D. Luis Penalver, bishop of New Orleans, and later archbishop of Guatemala, a man who was closely identified with the work of the Casa de la Benficiencia and other institutions. But, although all members were men distinguished for their gifts and their achievements, the soul and moving spirit was D. Francisco Arango, of whom we shall hear much more in our later narrative. A worthy fellow-worker of Arango was D. José Pablo Valiente, who as Intendente organized the Royal Exchequer, and with no little risk to himself, permitted and encouraged commerce with neutral and friendly nations, regardless of still existing restrictions. He assisted in the establishment of the Consulado and the Sociedad Economica, made a gift of seven thousand pesos to the Casa de Beneficencia, encouraged the progress of public instruction and in many lawsuits brought before the Consulado played the role of a noble conciliator. With such men as these to assist him, the administration of Las Casas was soon regarded as the most glorious in the history of the island. For though Havana was the principal scene of the activities of these men, Las Casas did not fail to extend the blessing of his reforms and improvements to other communities. The towns of Santa Maria del Rosario, Santiago de las Vegas and others soon showed considerable growth; in the districts of Guanajey, Alquiza, Quivican, Managua and others, the territory under cultivation was steadily expanding; the village of Casa Blanca and the town of Manzanillo were founded, and the port of Nuevitas essentially improved. An excellent cooperator of Governor Las Casas was D. Juan Bautista Valiente, governor of Santiago de Cuba, who protected agriculture, founded primary and Latin schools, introduced a system of lighting in his city, started to pave its streets, and invested his savings in an edifice, which served to house the Ayuntamiento, the governor's and other offices and also contained the jail. The first revolution in Santo Domingo in 1791 had warned Las Casas and brought home to the administration of Cuba the necessity of looking once more after the defences of the island. He was aided in this task by the chief of the navy yard, D. Juan Araoz, who hastened the work of naval constructions, and in a short time turned out six war vessels, four frigates and a number of boats of lesser tonnage. They proved of great usefulness in the operations against Santo Domingo and Guarico during the second uprising when in order to protect Spanish interests and inhabitants there were sent from Havana the regiment bearing the name of the city and from Cuba a piquet of artillery. That revolt is so closely associated with the problem of slavery, which had become the cause of grave apprehension to the government that it will be referred to in the following chapter. The massacre of French and other colonists in that unfortunate island brought a multitude of refugees to Cuba and materially increased its population. An event in the last year of the administration of Las Casas gave rise to festivities of a memorable character. When the war between Spain and the French Republic broke out, General D. Gabriel Aristizabal, who operated in Hayti, did not want the ashes of Columbus to be lost during the ensuing disturbances. It seemed more appropriate, too, that they should not remain in the place where he had been slandered and persecuted and where the villain Bobadilla had put him in fetters, but in the island that had always smiled upon him. On the fifteenth of January, 1796, there entered into the port of Havana the warship _San Lorenzo_, carrying the casket. It was received by Governor Las Casas and General Araoz, the bishops Penalver and Tres Palacios, and between two lines of soldiers was carried to the cathedral, where it was deposited in a humble niche. Though the first city of the island did not then raise a monument to Columbus it was done by a much smaller town, Cardenas, which for this act alone deserves to be mentioned. The inscription upon the stone, under which the remains of Columbus found rest, reads: D. O. M. Clares Heros. Ligustin. CHRISTOPHORUS COLUMBUS A Se, Rei Nautic. Scient. Insign. Niv. Orb. Detect. Araque Castell. Et Legin. Regib. Subject. Vallice. Occub. XIII Kal. Jun. A.M. DVI Cartusianor. Hispal. Cadav. Custod. Tradit. Transfer. Nam. Ipse Praescrips. IN HISPANIOLAE METROP. ECC. Hinc Pace Sancit. Galliae Reipub. Cess In Hanc V. Mar. Concept. Imm. Cath. Ossa Trans. Maxim. Om. Frequent. Sepult. Mand. XIV. Kal. Feb. A. Md. C. C. X. C. V. I. HAVAN. CIVIT Tant. Vir. Meritor. In Se Non Immen. Pretros. Exux. In Optat Diem Tuitur. Hocce Monum. Erex. Praesul. Ill. D. D. Philippo Iph Trespalacios Civic AC Militar. Rei. Gen. Praef. Exme D.D. LUDOVICO DE LAS CASAS When the administration of Las Casas came to an end, the municipality of Havana called a testimonial meeting for the sixteenth of December, 1796, which gave proof of the high esteem in which the extraordinary man was held by the people. Four years after his retirement, on the nineteenth of November, 1800, he died of poison. He had not escaped criticism by those who saw in his enforcement of forgotten laws and in many of his new ordinances the manifestation of an arbitrary spirit; but it was universally conceded that during his government Cuba reached a high-water mark in her development. Though the corruption and degradation of the court at Madrid had a baneful influence upon the Spanish colonies, the island which had enjoyed the blessings of his rule and caught a breath of the spirit of such men as Arango and Montalvo could never again be contented unquestioningly to accept the dictates of that court. The flood of new liberal ideas which, coming from France, swept over the whole world, could not be turned back at el Morro. They found their way into the hearts and the minds of the people and slowly but surely taught them to see where their ultimate salvation lay. CHAPTER XII The French Revolution set the pace for the world's movements in the last decade of the eighteenth century and spread the seeds of many more in the century to come. Pamphlets, books and proclamations coming to Spain from France opened the eyes of the people to evils, which in their loyalty to the throne and to the traditions of the country they had never dared to perceive. The corruption of her court, the ruin of her finances, the incompetency of her statesmen and her generals were revealed to the population and stirred sullen resentment. Demoralization seemed to have set in and threatened to dismember the once all-powerful kingdom. To the profligate Godoy was in a great measure attributed the degradation of the country and an atmosphere of conspiracy pervaded even the royal palace, from which patriotic plotters, resentful of Spain's humiliation, hoped soon to chase the favorite of the queen, who with supreme unconcern continued to fill his pockets from the royal treasury and to live in his wonted extravagance and dissipation. The forces of the French Republic had occupied the frontier forts and seemed to find little or no resistance. The fate of the royal Bourbons of France struck terror in the souls of the royal Bourbons of Spain, and the flight of the king and his family from Madrid was daily expected. Even to the overseas possessions of France and Spain had the influence of the liberating movement extended and awakened the indolent and indifferent creoles to the realization of wrongs they had suffered at the hands of their mother countries. Moreover, the gospel of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity had reached the ears of those who had for centuries silently borne oppression and had been made to believe that serfdom was to be their fate forever. Already in 1791 the news of the outbreak of the Revolution had been acclaimed by the slaves in Santo Domingo and followed by revolt and violence against the life and the property of their masters. When in 1794 the Convention declared the abolition of slavery in the colonies of the Republic, the floodgates of insurrection were opened. For Old Hispaniola, divided between two foreign powers, populated by races antagonistic to one another, was a fertile soil for any revolutionary propaganda. As early as 1762 there were three negroes to one Frenchman in the northern part of the island; and these negroes whom a Jesuit priest of the time declared to be fit only for slavery, hated all other races and castes: the whites, the free negroes and the mulattoes. But even among this ignorant and superstitious race there were individuals that rose far above the average in intelligence and had by association with the more advanced and privileged castes and races acquired certain achievements. They were men who had done some thinking of their own and perhaps by their relation of servant to master learned to know the faults and weaknesses of the latter far better than they knew their own. When these men caught the ring of the magic three words, a world of possibilities opened before them, and they embraced the message they conveyed with the eagerness of people desperate from and resentful of iniquities, real and imaginary. Their brains were afire with hatred and revenge and it needed only a great leader to organize this powerful army of malcontents into a horde of fiends. That leader came to them in the person of the ex-coachman, Toussaint L'Ouverture, a man of exceptional gifts and abilities, who with the one-track mind of the idealist-fanatic had but one aim and pursued but one goal: the liberation of his race. The war between the French republic and Spain had naturally called forth hostilities between the two parts of the island inhabited on one side by French, on the other by Spaniards. The negro insurgents saw their opportunity and did not let it go by without exploiting it for their purposes. The unfortunate jealousies between the President and Captain-General of Santo Domingo and the General of the Navy, Aristizabel, who had captured Bayaja, had weakened the Spanish forces, and when they attempted to take Guarico, they had to retire at Yazique before a force of five hundred undisciplined negroes. This encouraged the negro commanders and in quick succession they captured San Rafael and Las Caobas, and had the satisfaction to see San Miguel, Bonica and Incha evacuated before they even reached these places. Bayaja was strongly fortified and garrisoned; but the climate of that place being very unhealthy, the Spanish troops were decimated by sickness, until they numbered only about four hundred men. The negro general Juan Francisco on the other hand could increase his troops at will. In order to enforce the Spanish it was proposed to send them a regiment of white Frenchmen. Seven legions of these men arrived at Bayaja on the morning of the seventh of July, 1794. But Juan Francisco surprised the place half an hour before, and placing artillery in the principal streets and squares, informed the commandant that all white Frenchmen were to leave Bayaja before three o'clock that afternoon. When the commandant remonstrated saying that the time was too short to provide barges for their transportation, the negro leader left the government house and gave the signal for the massacre of all Frenchmen in the place. The terrible slaughter lasted until far into the afternoon, when the governor and the venerable priest of the place so urgently implored the negro troops to have mercy, that they moderated their savage rage. While this wholesale murder, which cost the lives of seven hundred and forty-two Frenchmen, not counting those who were drowned in flight, was going on in the streets, military conferences were held at which, after some irresolute wrangling, it was decided to withdraw to Fuerte Dolfin, about five hundred varas (rods) distant from Bayaja, in order to save the garrison from being at the mercy of a negro mob, intoxicated with the victory won over their adversaries. They succeeded in holding Fuerte Dolfin, until Bayaja itself was evacuated by Juan Francisco on the thirteenth of July. The loss of the Spanish troops, including deserters and those that died from privations, was about three thousand men. The national treasury suffered during the revolt a defalcation of some fifty thousand pesos. The negroes were at first charged with the embezzlement of that sum, but there were rumors to the contrary, which in view of the only too well-known turpitude of many colonial officials, were quite plausible. The peace concluded between Spain and the French republic at Basilea (Basle) on the twenty-second of July, 1795, and published in Madrid on the sixth of November, terminated Spanish rule on the island, Spain ceding her part of Santo Domingo to the French Republic. The people of Spain welcomed this peace, as they would have hailed any other. To the part played in the negotiations by Manuel Godoy was due his title "Prince of Peace." In the elation of the moment the court even remembered Aranda, Florida Blanca, Cabarrus and Jovellanos, the able statesmen and faithful patriots who had been imprisoned or exiled, and granted them full amnesty. Yet this treaty of Basilea was the official admission of the decline of Spain's power. It heralded the gradual disintegration of her colonial possessions, where, as some authorities assert, British intrigue sowed the seeds of discord and discontent. When two years later, in February, 1797, the Spanish fleet, although superior in vessels and artillery, was defeated by the British in the battle of Cape St. Vincent off the south point of Portugal, the ruin of the kingdom was complete. The total income between 1793 and 1796 was twenty-four hundred and forty-five millions of reals; the total expenses, thirty-seven hundred and fourteen millions; the debt amounted to more than twelve hundred millions. The annual deficit was eight hundred millions. The paper money in circulation amounted to nineteen hundred and eighty millions. Such was the financial status of the royal bankrupt. If the peace of Basilea had temporarily brought satisfaction and lightened the burden of anxiety, the defeat at Cape St. Vincent sufficed once more to cloud the horizon. The capture of Rome by the French in 1798 and the proclamation of a republic in place of the papal sovereignty, plunged Spain into a state of panic. Cabinet ministers succeeded one another with bewildering rapidity. Even Jovellanos, who had been recalled to restore order in the disorganized department of justice, was unable to cope with the chaotic situation. Enormous sums were being continually wasted. Of eighteen hundred and thirty-three millions spent in 1799, the royal court alone had used one hundred and five, the department of war nine hundred and thirty-five, finance four hundred and twenty-eight, foreign affairs forty-six, and the department of justice only seven! Every branch of the administration was filled with the minions of Godoy, who was now related to the royal house, having espoused the daughter of the Infante Don Luis. His annual revenues amounted to one million reals. The elements themselves seemed to be in conspiracy against what had once been the greatest power in Europe. The failure of crops, famine, epidemics and earthquakes filled the minds of the superstitious with vague terrors. Cuba was at that time too much engrossed in the attempt to continue on the path of progress to be seriously affected by the fate of Spain. The insurrection of Santo Domingo had brought the eventuality of internal trouble so close to her door, that she did not dare to look across the ocean for more sources of apprehension. Yet the revolt of the neighboring island had also its advantages for Cuba. At the first outbreak of hostilities against the French, many French refugees had fled to Cuba. They were followed by others and after the massacre of Bayaja even by Spaniards and by colored women. This French element which settled in Santiago and Havana became a valuable factor in the population of the island. A French traveler and writer, Vicomte Gustave d'Hespel d'Harponville, says about it in his book "La Reine des Antilles": "They brought to Cuba the remnants of their wealth, some slaves, but especially their knowledge, their experience and their activity. From that moment the two great Antilles changed rôles: San Domingo lapsed into barbarism, Cuba placed her foot in the chariot of fortune." The French settlers were industrious laborers and skilled artisans and as such were highly valued by economists who had been anxious to increase Cuba's insufficient labor supply by the introduction of white labor. Even the women among them were workers, in strange contrast to the Cuban women, who were given to tropical indolence. Many of these French "Dominicans" established themselves as nurses, laundresses and seamstresses. In education, too, these newcomers were far above the average Havanese; a difference which foreign travelers were quick to detect and to comment upon. The French settlements southeast of Havana, in the environs of Matanzas, Santiago and Baracoa, became such centers of activity, industrial and otherwise, that the Spanish, who had persisted in their habitual indolence and indifference, became jealous, which in time resulted in some friction and unpleasant disturbances. The definite loss of Santo Domingo to Spain caused also a great change in ecclesiastical affairs. The archbishopric was removed to Santiago de Cuba. Havana and Puerto Rico remained "suffragans," i.e. subject to the other. About that time there was established a territorial tribunal in Puerto Principe. [Illustration: TOMAS ROMAY One of the foremost figures in the great Cuban awakening at the close of the eighteenth century was Dr. Tomas Romay, physician and scientist, who was born in Havana on December 21, 1764, and died on March 30, 1849. He greatly aided the two good Governors, Las Casas and Someruelos, in their labors for the betterment of Cuba; with the help of Bishop Espada he introduced vaccination into the island; he was prominent in the Society of Friends of Peace, and did much for education, agriculture, and other interests of the Cuban people. Among his writings was a monograph on yellow fever which attracted world-wide attention. His earnest patriotism involved him in violent controversies in the troublous times of 1820-1823, from which he emerged in triumph and in universal honor.] Everything seemed to combine at that period to promote the growth and assure the future welfare of Cuba. The government of Las Casas, with its wonderful awakening among the citizens of a sense of civic responsibility and opportunity, was one of those epochs which seem to form a pivot around which past and future revolve. It was impossible to consider it in its full value and significance without comparing it with the past out of which it had developed, and taking note of the progress it signalized. Nor was it possible to forecast the future, without projecting into it the lines of evolution along which the work of Las Casas and his associates seemed to have prepared the progress of the island. Compared with the passive inertia which had all through the history of the Spanish West Indies retarded individual and communal advancement, it was like a sudden birth of aspirations and endeavors all directed towards a lofty goal, perhaps still vague to the multitude, but clearly and strongly defined in the minds of the men who with a singular unity of purpose, forgetting for once all the petty jealousies that had clouded so many big issues in previous periods, combined for concerted action for the common good. They were men who had at heart the interests of the island, who had inquired into the causes for its backwardness and who had thought deeply about the measures that might provide a means to rouse the whole population to the realization of the gigantic task before them. They were men of extraordinary intelligence, of thorough knowledge, of unblemished character and of wide experience. Never before had Cuba been able at any one period to point to such a galaxy of names as Las Casas, Arango, Romay, Montalvo, Pedro Espinola, Caballero, and others. Never before had it at any one time a like number of men combining all the qualifications that seemed to destine them to be the leaders in a great movement of revival and reconstruction. For the task they accomplished was not only that of rousing the inhabitants, who had lingered for several generations in apathy and indolence, but to reconstruct the whole decadent edifice of provincial management, in order to start anew on a solid foundation. Individually considered almost every one of those men stood for some achievement, some work the benefits of which the future was to reap. Towering above them all, Arango seemed to combine all these efforts, seemed to be the center from which radiated all the plans that had for their ultimate aim the happiness of all. As one looks back upon that brilliant epoch, this man of noble birth, of rare gifts and of considerable means, seemed to dominate them all. Surely no other could have accomplished what he did; for his youth, his affability, his distinguished manners, these invaluable social qualities impressed and attracted those in the highest positions at the Spanish court and won for him a hearing, which would have been refused to many others. Once this was gained, his general learning, and his special knowledge of the economic and financial problems of his native island, backed by an array of conclusive statistics and conveyed to his listeners with forcible logic and convincing oratory, compelled the attention even of the most recalcitrant conservatives that had steadily opposed reforms in the colonies. By this rare combination of qualities Arango had succeeded in obtaining from the royal government greater concessions for Cuba than it had ever made to any of her colonial possessions. The effect of Arango's work, though at intervals clouded by periodical relapses of the government into the old evil ways, was felt during more than a generation, and his name remained identified in the memory of the people with the great strides that the island was henceforth to make in agriculture, industry and commerce, as no less in matters of education. Among his associates, the name of Dr. D. Thomas Romay was to be remembered by future generations for the great blessing which his medical skill and foresight secured for the island. He had been identified with many measures promoting public health, when Dr. Maria Bustamente of la Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, brought to Havana the first consignment of vaccine. Following the example of Dr. Bustamente, who had vaccinated his little son and two mulatto servants, Dr. Romay at once introduced vaccination in Havana and gradually checked the ravages which small-pox epidemics had caused. The Count de Montalvo was forever to be remembered for his wise and humane adjustment of judicial conflicts in connection with the tribunal of commerce. Pedro Espinola's memory was to be cherished by all those concerned with the cause of education. Nicolas Calvo's efforts at introducing timely innovations in the sugar industry could never be forgotten in the island. Lastly there was Governor Las Casas himself, who, had he been a man of smaller calibre, could have clogged the wheels of progress by administrative red tape and obfuscated the larger issues of his time by petty official considerations. But, unlike some of his predecessors, who did not suffer any citizens in the community to rise to such eminence as to rival them, he had appreciated the spirit of those men and to further their aims had brought to bear all the weight of his official position. Rarely in the history of any country did so many fortuitous circumstances combine at one and the same period to call out what was best in the latent forces of the population, as in Cuba during the administration of Governor Las Casas. The future never seemed to smile so brightly upon that island, so richly endowed by nature and so long indifferently treated by men. Setbacks and even relapses into previous errors might occur, but it seemed unthinkable that the work accomplished by Las Casas and his associates, individually and collectively, could ever be undone. Such periods of extraordinary growth are infallibly followed by a standstill during which individuals as communities seem to gather strength for new efforts. Nor is it likely that a country will successively produce men of such marked individuality and forceful character. The governor that followed Las Casas could not reasonably be expected to come up to the high standard of his predecessor. The Lieutenant-Governor Conde de Santa Clara, who was inaugurated on the sixteenth of December, 1796, was a man of generous character and agreeable manners towards all classes of society, but he was not a man of that broad culture which distinguished Las Casas and his associates in the famous Sociedad. D. Juan Procopio Barsicourt de Santa Clara was a native of Barcelona, and had come to Havana at a critical moment. The colonies of the West Indies and the Gulf coast were deeply worried about the slave revolt of Santo Domingo. The Cuban forces that had taken part in the attempt to quell the uprising, and the French and Spanish immigrants that had fled to Cuba from the terrors of the insurrection had brought with them tales of the doings of the insurgents which filled with vague apprehensions all territories that contained a numerous slave population. Moreover, the favorite of the queen of Spain, Manuel Godoy, had by his blunders involved Spain in a new war with Great Britain, and Spanish America was once more threatened by her old enemy. This menace forced the new Governor to turn his attention first towards the defenses of the island. He constructed between San Lazaro and la Chorrera the battery known as Santa Clara, and took other measures for the protection of Havana as well as Santiago. Among the municipal improvements which he effected the most important for Havana was his removal of the principal matadero (slaughterhouse), from the city to a place outside of its walls. The existence of this establishment had long been considered a public nuisance; for the foul smells which it spread in the neighborhood and which the wind sometimes carried over the whole town were a menace to the health of the inhabitants, and the frequent commotion caused by bulls that escaped from the enclosures was also a feature that made a most unfavorable impression. Both the suburb of Jesus Maria and el Horcon being without any direct water supply, Santa Clara had a fountain constructed in each place. Santa Clara was a man of generous instincts. The Casa del Beneficencia, the fortunes of which had been declining, owed him many a rich supply of provisions and some large donations. Both he and his wife, who was said to be a perfect model of womanly virtues, were interested in the hospital of San Paula. They also gave material aid to the hospital of San Francisco, which had progressed very slowly since its foundation. Within one year after Santa Clara's arrival, the number of beds was raised from thirty-two to seventy-eight. The governor's lady also succeeded in enlisting the cooperation of the clergy and many other wealthy and influential people in the San Antonio Hospital, which was increased to a capacity of one hundred and nine beds. Though the more ambitious cultural work which had been begun under the previous administration was not promoted by him, Santa Clara proved himself possessed of no little executive power and tact. This last quality was especially needed at the time when Havana was honored by the visit of three French notables, the Dukes of Orleans and Montpensier, and Count de Beaujolais. Santa Clara received them most courteously and an opulent lady of Havana, Doña Leonor Herrera de Contreras, gave up to them her home, placed at their disposal her servants and defrayed all their expenses. Refugees from their country, which was suffering from the terrors of the Revolution, they remained in Havana and enjoyed this sumptuous hospitality for almost four months, when even the famous "Prince of Peace," Godoy, in order to avoid further disagreements with the French Republic, indicated to them the propriety of removing to other dominions. In the meantime the British had declared war and made an auspicious beginning by the capture of Trinidad. They had demanded the surrender of the vessels commanded by D. Sebastian Ruiz de Apodoca, a high-spirited mariner, but he preferred reducing them to ashes before giving them up to the enemy. This first loss was, however, amply retrieved at San Juan of Porto Rico. The city had been attacked by over ten thousand trained soldiers under the command of Gen. Abercrombie, but the attack was repulsed and the British lost over one thousand men and two thousand prisoners, besides a stock of provisions and equipment. At Santa Cruz de Teneriffe the Spaniards defeated even the celebrated Nelson and seized a number of vessels that tried to take other points. But there was more trouble in sight for the Spanish colonies. For the South American revolutionist Miranda who had emigrated to London by clever intrigues induced the British government to stir up insurrections in the Spanish-American possessions. These intrigues resulted in revolts that broke out in Puerto Cabello, Caracas, Panama and Maracaibo. Their prompt suppression was due to the firmness and energy of the Captain-General of Caracas, D. Manuel de Guevara y Basconcelos. These disquieting occurrences made the Spanish government fear for the safety of Cuba and decided the court to give the island a governor more capable of coping with the eventuality of invasion. The Field Marshal D. Salvador de Muro y Salazar, Marques de Someruelos was appointed on the second of March, 1799, and ordered secretly and immediately to repair to the place of his destination. Accordingly there appeared in Havana on the thirteenth of May a distinguished stranger who delivered to the governor important messages from the court and proved to be no less than the new governor. Santa Clara immediately retired in favor of his successor and Someruelos entered upon the functions of his office. The Intendente Valiente was promoted to the position of Counselor of the Indies and his place was taken by D. Luis Viyuri. Colonel D. Sebastian de Kindelan was appointed to the governorship of Santiago. The administration of Someruelos beginning on the threshold of a new century, it seems meet to cast a backward look upon the condition of the island and the great changes which had taken place during the hundred years just closing. The great need for reform was urged upon the government immediately after the British occupation of Havana, which had opened the eyes of the authorities to mistakes made not only in the political and military, but especially in the economic management of the colony. Revenues had to be created in order to meet the increased expenses of the administration and defray the cost of much needed improvements. Hence upon the proposal of Count Ricla the king had ordered a thorough reorganization of the administration and especially of the treasury department. In the attempt of solving the problem of taxation, Spain had followed a suggestion of M. Choiseul, minister of foreign affairs in France, which was conceived with little knowledge of colonial conditions and legislation and hastily accepted by the supreme government. This change in the tax system then in force in the Indies produced great commotion in the island of Cuba and other Spanish possessions in America. Guiteras reports that many real estate owners of Puerto Principe and the southern territory designated in the island by the name of la Vuelta de Abajo were especially bitter in complaining against the innovation, but neither the intendant nor the Brigadier Cisneros could modify dispositions decreed by the supreme government. Discontent increased and some men were so exasperated that they preferred to destroy their own products rather than pay the tax which was to go to the public treasury. By the influence of D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, D. Penalver and other land-owners, some of the people were pacified, before disorder ensued. But others rose in open revolt and had to be dispersed by the militia hastily mobilized for their repression. Although hardly any blood was shed, the opposition which the authorities had met gave them cause for anxiety, and upon their urgent appeal the supreme government renounced the enforcement of the new taxes. After the establishment of the Intendencia and the creation of a weekly Junta, D. Juan de Alda drew up a budget of expenditure for the year 1768, which amounted to 1,681,452 pesos. Of this sum the army consumed only 665,655 pesos. Approved by the supreme government and taken as a basis for figuring the annual expenditure, 1,200,000 pesos were consigned to the treasury of Mexico with the assumption that the public revenues would cover the eventual difference. According to Ramon de la Sagra, the general revenues of the island from 1764 to 1794 amounted to 20,286,173 pesos, and the sums which besides came to the treasury under the name of situados (duties assigned upon certain goods or effects) and other classifications amounted from 1766 to 1788 to 101,735,350 pesos. The revenues of the island for the same period were, according to Alcazar, 50,000,000 pesos, but he adds that the decree of the seventeenth of August, 1790, by which farmers and merchants were allowed to pay with promissory notes, resulted in some loss to the import duties. On the other hand, the system of tax collection was open to dishonest practices, which were checked during the administration of Someruelos. The objections which had been raised against the new taxation having chiefly come from people engaged in agriculture, the government found on investigation that the existing commercial laws were at fault. Inclined as was the court of Spain during the rule of Carlos III. to yield in favor of the people, the new measures only mitigated but did not remove the evils complained of, which were founded on institutions and ordinances so thoroughly antiquated as no longer to be of any benefit to the population. The commerce of Cuba had since the year 1740 been carried on by the Real Compania of Havana. Although its institution was based upon the old and faulty principle of monopoly and privilege, and discriminated against foreign goods that came to Cuba via Spanish ports, the exportations of the island which at the beginning of the eighteenth century were confined to timber, hides and a small amount of cattle, soon began to include other products, such as sugar, honey, brandy and wax. After the founding of the Intendencia there was opened by way of experiment a small commerce with the principal ports of Spain; but the regulations required the collection in the Peninsula of two custom duties on manufactures embarked at Cuba and destined for Spain, one being called entry, the other exit duty, to which was later added a consumer's duty. These extraordinary charges destroyed the profits hoped for by the extension of commerce, and were the source of more discontent, until in the year 1767 the king authorized the abolition of the Compania of Havana "in case of urgent necessity for Cuba" and at the same time inaugurated some franchises which tended to relieve the much restricted commerce of the island. As has been recorded at the time, it was not until the twelfth of October, 1778, that the king issued an order calling for free commerce and abolishing the monopolies of the larger ports. The effects of this measure made themselves felt in a sudden revival of commercial activities which led to such an expansion of Cuba's commerce, that the island was forced to ask concessions and obtained from the court more favors than any other of Spain's American possessions. When the War of Independence paralyzed the commerce of the British colonies with the island, the king granted still greater franchises and a new decree opened the entry of the Port of Havana to the flags of all nations, provided their ships introduced provisions only. But while these new decrees favored the commerce of the colony, they reacted unfavorably upon the commerce of Spain, the merchant navy of which had been annihilated during the many wars, until there were not enough vessels to transport the goods the colonies needed. The imports of foreign products which the monopoly permitted Spain to make were in value superior to the exports from America. Direct commerce with friendly nations was more convenient inasmuch as the foreigners could in turn export all the fruits of the country. The only remedy for the evils confronting Spanish commerce would have been the reestablishment of the merchant fleet; but in their short-sightedness Spanish merchants turned back to the old monopoly and at the foot of the throne begged for return to the old system. Under such pressure were exacted from the king the decrees of the twentieth of January and the fifteenth of April, 1784, which once more closed the ports of Spanish America to the friendly nations, carrying the prohibition to the extreme of denying merchant vessels entry, even if they were foundering! Owing to this confusing and irritating condition of commercial legislation the growth and progress of the colonies received another setback, and probably caused the decrease in population which the Countess de Merlin mentions. It also seriously affected the agriculture of the island. For Spain had not enough inhabitants on her own soil to colonize her vast overseas territories; and even if her legislation in respect to commerce had been more liberal, her constant opposition to the admittance of foreigners to her provinces discouraged white immigration. Even during the reign of Carlos III., which seemed to inaugurate a new and more enlightened era, the distrust of the government towards foreigners is manifested in the new and abridged version of the law of the Indies, published in the year 1778, which decrees that in no port nor part of the West Indies, either the islands or the continent to the north and south, shall any kind of traffic with foreigners be admitted, even by way of barter or any other mode of commerce, those violating this order being liable to forfeit life and property. The slave trade was therefore the means Cuba was forced to adopt to supply the lack of white laborers and artisans. It was subject to the same restrictions as all maritime commerce, with the important difference that it could not be carried on without a special permission from the king, which usually fixed the number of years in which a certain number of slaves should be granted certain individuals, companies or corporations. These permissions were called licenses, later assientos, and finally contracts and privileges, until in the year 1789 they entirely ceased to exist. A British concern, called the South Sea Company, had been the first to receive such a privilege, when in 1713 it was allowed to introduce into the colonies of Latin America, with absolute exclusion of Spaniards and foreigners, four thousand eight hundred negroes in the course of thirty years. Next came the permiso obtained by the Compania Mercantil of Havana in the year 1740, of which use was made until 1766. Then came the contract concluded with the Marquis de Casa Enrile, which lasted from 1773 to 1779; and finally the permission granted in the year 1780 on account of the war with England, that most Spaniards in America could have recourse to the French colonies for their supply of slaves. The manner in which this trade in human flesh was carried on reflects sadly upon those engaged in this traffic. Loaded into vessels that were hardly considered fit for carrying freight, thousands were known to have perished in shipwrecks. Crowded into the dark, unventilated holds of these rotten hulks, more thousands succumbed to disease and were thrown overboard. Of the trades associated with cruel exploitation and inhuman abuses, that of the slavetrader ranked first, for the sufferings to which the poor victims were subjected in the transit from their native home to the foreign land defied description. There were captains of slave ships who loathed their task. One is quoted in a book by the Jesuit Sandeval as confessing his misgivings about the business; he had just suffered a shipwreck in which only thirty out of nine hundred on board escaped! On their arrival in Cuba the poor wretches who survived the ordeal began to fare better. E. M. Masse, a French traveler and writer, in his work "L'Isle de Cuba et la Havane" describes the quarters in which they were lodged. They were the _baracones_, the famous barracks originally destined for the troops which were to take Pensacola, and that had cost four million pesos, though they could have been put up for a few thousand. At the time of his visit to Havana, some of the contractors who had made this handsome profit on the buildings were still in jail. He goes on to say that immediately on landing the negroes were taken to these barracks, waiting to be sold. They contained one immense room, covered with straw and divided into three compartments. The first was for the employees or jailers; the second for the women slaves, the third for the men. There was a spacious court or yard with a kitchen in one corner. In this yard they spent their days, shielded from the sun and the rain by tents. They were permitted to bathe in the sea. The writer looked at the spectacle with an artist's eye. For he remarks that he had always considered the pose of the Venus of Milo unnatural, until by observing these women slaves at their bath in the surf, he found that the identical pose was frequently assumed by them, and hence must have been natural. The only garment obligatory as long as a slave was not sold, was a kerchief; if somebody made them a gift of another kerchief, they made of it a turban or wore it like a sash. The freedom which they enjoyed in this brief interval between landing in Havana and being sold, may in the lives of the majority have been the only freedom they were to know. Being merchandise, it was of course in the interest of the slave traders to have them appear well when put on the market. Hence the food they received was wholesome. They were also encouraged to indulge in their wonted amusements and could be seen marching or dancing around in the yard, as they raised their voices in song. The African who had just arrived and spoke only his native tongue, was called _bosale_; the slave who was born in Africa, but spoke Spanish and knew the trade he was destined for, was called _ladino_. Children of African or European origin born in Spanish America, were called _criolles_, from which the French derived the term in use today: creole. Miscegenation was not favored in Cuba. When the immigration from Santo Domingo brought into the island a great number of mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons, the color line was severely drawn. A woman of colored origin with a perfectly white and very beautiful daughter was known to have denied her child in order to make it possible for her to marry a Havanese. Many of these women were far better educated than the native Cubans; M. Masse says that the art of conversation, unknown in Havana society, flourished only in their homes. But they were rigidly barred from the drawing-rooms of the wealthy Havanese. According to the data available, the number of slaves introduced into the island from the beginning of its colonization until the year 1789 was probably not below 100,000. It is estimated that in the two hundred years between 1550 and 1750 the annual importations of the assientists into Spanish America averaged at least three thousand a year. In the census taken by Governor la Torre about 1772 Cuba was found to have 45,633 slaves. In 1775 their number had risen to forty-six thousand and that of free colored people to about thirty thousand. The relaxation of the commercial restrictions gave a strong impulse to all sorts of enterprises, mercantile and otherwise, and especially to building, and the laboring forces employed on all the new constructions were mostly slaves. By the year 1775 their proportion to the free colored population was four and sixth tenths to three. As the value of slave labor began to be recognized in that period of internal improvements and general progress, the number of slave importations steadily increased. According to Blanchet, Cuba acquired in the years 1783 and 1784 one thousand and five hundred negroes through contracts between the government and various French and Spanish firms, as also the British house of Baker and Dawson and the private shipowners D. Vicente Espon and Col. D. Gonzalo O'Farrel. Armas y Cespedes gives the number of slaves for the year 1774 as 44,333; for the year 1792 as 84,590. In the enormous number of negroes imported between 1791 and 1816 there were counted 132,000 imported legitimately, 168,000 by contraband means. A more systematized and conclusive estimate of the number of negroes gradually introduced in Cuba was made by D. Francisco de Arango, the high-minded patriot of the period of Governor Las Casas. It covers the time from the beginning of the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century. D. José Antonio Saco, author of "Collecion de papeles cientifices, historicos, politicos y de etros ramos sobre la isle de Cuba, ya publicados ya ineditos," and "Historia de la Esclavitud," did the same for the eastern part of the island from 1764 to 1789. These estimates furnish the following figures: Imported on the whole island from 1523 to 1763 60,000 By the Compania de la Habana in 1764, 1765, 1766 4,957 By the Marquis de Casa Enrile from 1773 to 1779 14,132 By the permiso of 1780 authorizing the supply of negroes from French colonies during the war ending 1783 6,593 By the house of Baker & Dawson from 1786 to 1789 8,318 From the eastern part of the island, 1764 to 1789 6,000 ------- Total 100,000 Humboldt remarks in his "Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial regions of America during the years 1799-1809, "that the British West Indies then contained seven hundred thousand negroes and mulattoes, free and slave, while the custom-house registers proved that from 1680 to 1786 two million one hundred and thirty thousand negroes had been imported from Africa, which suggests a rather high mortality. In Cuba the annual death rate of the recently imported negroes was seven per cent. Hence the current assumption that the African negro was particularly adapted for and could stand the climate of Cuba, does not seem to be well founded. About this time the social conscience of mankind seemed to be suddenly awakened and philanthropic ideas began to modify the general conception of slavery. Nations whose political organization made the government dependent upon public opinion, had already begun to yield to the demand of abolishing slave trade. The United States had auspiciously inaugurated that movement. The state of Virginia had closed her ports to the traffic in 1778; Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts followed in 1780, 1787 and 1788. The Third Congress of the American Republic proclaimed negro traffic as contrary to the civilization of Christian peoples and condemned it before the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time the Convention of the French Republic declared its abolition in the colonies of France, and the events in Santo Domingo, like a seismic disturbance made all slave-owning nations tremble. Stimulated by the example of America and stirred by the noble words of her own great humanitarians, Howard and Wilberforce, England, too, began from 1787 on to discuss that problem. In the course of the serious debates that took place in the British parliament in May, 1788, it was said that a decree abolishing the traffic would in a short time paralyze the commerce carried on by British merchants with Africa. In her isolation from the current tides of thought in Europe and other countries, Cuba had so far been untouched by the humanitarian aspect of the question and looked upon it merely from her utilitarian viewpoint. Fearing that the house of Baker & Dawson, which had been her main source of supply for negro labor, would no longer be able to furnish her the hands she needed in her deserted fields, she hastened through her representative in the Ayuntamiento to solicit from the king permission to continue the traffic. Hence on the twenty-eighth of February, 1788, a royal decree permitted the Spaniards, and foreigners in general for the term of two years, to introduce negroes, exempt from duties, in Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico and in the province of Caracas. Guiteras, in his "Historia de la Isla de Cuba" speaks of the slavery problem with a remarkable display of native fervor. He says: "The slavery question met with political difficulties of an even graver character in the rapid progress made by the ideas of the abolitionists, which inflamed and inspired those foreign nations who had filled their own colonies with slaves. Imprudent exaltation of the republican ideals of France finally led the children of Hayti to rise in a horrible revolution. A race of men that had come to the coasts of America not in royal vessels and clad in steel to plant standards with the sign of Redemption, but locked up in the stench of a closed hold, the body naked and in chains, to irrigate with their sweat and blood the land of slavery, rose in defence of the natural laws, demolished the banner at the sight of which the most powerful nations of Europe had trembled, and conquered the outraged rights of humanity. One should think that the beam of light which radiated through all the sea of the Antilles would have dissuaded the Cubans and the government from promoting African colonization on the island of Cuba; nevertheless a lamentable error, though based upon the best intentions, caused Cuba to invite that evil and Spain filled the island with African slaves." It may seem incongruous that a man of D. Francisco de Arango's liberal ideas should have been instrumental in securing for Cuba from the court at Madrid a privilege which the enlightened humane viewpoint of his time began to consider a disgrace. But as pointed out in a previous chapter, this measure was resorted to by Arango only as a temporary expediency. As soon as the immediate shortage of hands was relieved, he himself recommended the substitution of free white labor for negro slavery. For the enormous influx of negroes as compared with the very minimum increase of white inhabitants began even then to fill with vague apprehensions for the future of Cuba's population those most earnestly concerned with the welfare of the island. To the Spaniards of Florida the great percentage of negroes was repulsive. More than five hundred Floridians, who in 1763 had come to Cuba to escape British rule, returned to their old home in 1784. When after the reign of terror in Santo Domingo French refugees settled in Cuba, they, too, were opponents of the slave traffic and their influence contributed no little towards changing the attitude of the Spaniards towards negro slavery. One of the disturbing features in this large negro population was the small proportion of women. Planters refused to invest in the latter, because they considered them unfit for the hard labor required. The result was such a surplus of male slaves that in some communities there were five hundred men to one negro woman. At first the negro slaves were employed mostly in the mines, where the native Indians had proved inefficient. Later they entered also domestic service. But with the development of agriculture, they began to be largely employed in the fields and on the plantations. Edward Gaylord Bourne says in his work on "Spain in America," the third volume in the historical series "The American Nation," in the chapter on Negro Slaves (p. 272): "The development of the sugar industry and the growth of slavery were dependent upon each other, especially after the mines of the Antilles gave out. Each trapiche, or sugar-mill, run by horses or mules, required thirty or forty negroes, and each water-mill eight at the least. Had the commerce of the islands been reasonably free, plantation slavery on a large scale would have rapidly developed, and the history of Hayti and the English islands would have been anticipated a century by the Spaniards." While Howard, Wilberforce, Judge Sewall and the Quakers are usually considered the pioneers of the abolition of slavery, the first voice raised against this institution came from Peru and was that of a Jesuit, Alfonso Sandoval, a native of Seville, but a resident of Peru, where his father held an important position in the royal administration. Sandoval wrote a work on negro slavery entitled "De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute," which was published in Madrid in 1647 and contains valuable data concerning the traffic, frequently quoted by historians. Nor can it be denied that the Spaniards knew better how to treat the negroes than either the French or the British. Evidences to the contrary suggest that whatever may have been the wrongs under which the negro slaves of the Spanish colonies suffered, they were not as much due to the cruelty of the masters, as to their ignorance and carelessness. The humane attitude of the Spaniard towards the negro slave made the Royal Cedula issued by King Carlos III. in 1789 a unique document. For in this royal decree are set forth the rights of the slaves with a precision which in an eventual dispute with the masters could admit of no doubt. By that decree the Spanish king earned for himself a niche in the gallery of human benefactors. For the individual paragraphs as compared with the civic code of Spain show little or no discrimination between the black and the white elements of the colonial population. These laws agreed perfectly with the spirit of the period which had produced Howard, Wilberforce, Sewall and others. They were conceived in a remarkable spirit of equity, whatever violations and abuses may have occurred in individual practice. According to this cedula, a slave, if ill-treated, had the right to choose another master, provided he could induce this new master to buy him. He could buy his liberty at the lowest market-price. He could buy wife and children and marry the wife of his choice. If he suffered cruel treatment, he could appeal to the courts and in some instances might be set free. If negroes were in doubt about the lawfulness of their enslavement, they also had the right to bring their case to the notice of the courts. By that same cedula negro slaves were granted the right to hold property which opened for them opportunities for eventual emancipation. Moreover that law declared that fugitive slaves who by righteous means had gained their freedom were not to be returned to their masters. In accordance with these humane slave laws, the colored population of Cuba enjoyed greater latitude than in many other colonies. Although converted to Catholicism, they were known to revert to their heathen practices at certain times and to have chanted invocations to the saints in the African dialect of their forefathers. Numerous clans existed among them, which were supposed to have for their aim the perpetuation of their ancestral customs. Among them was the _manigo_, which was frequently the source of grave apprehension on the part of the authorities and, surviving in the _cabildos_, societies, which are both religious and social, had in a later period to be suppressed. The rites of these organizations were a grotesquely uncanny mixture of Roman Catholicism and African paganism. One day in the year the negroes of the island had almost unlimited liberty to celebrate in their barbaric fashion. It was the sixth of January or All Kings' Day, and was the occasion for a spectacle as weirdly fascinating as any carnival. That day belonged to the negroes. Dressed in the gaudiest costumes, carrying huge poles with mysterious transparencies, they paraded through the streets to the beat of drums, shouting and gesticulating, or singing as they went along. At the squares they stopped and indulged in a dance. Melodious as were their songs, the rhythms betrayed the African origin. The dances, too, even after several generations, retained their African characteristics. As the day progressed, hilarity became more and more boisterous, and the holiday frequently ended in riotous demonstrations and street brawls. The white population of Havana and other towns, in which this day was celebrated by the blacks, remained indoors, and even suspended business for fear of disturbances. There is no doubt that the important service which negro labor performed for the agriculture of the country induced the Cubans to allow the negroes this great amount of freedom. For without them, as D. Francisco de Arango and others knew only too well, the fields and the plantations of the island could never have yielded that abundance of products upon which depended the wealth of Cuba. CHAPTER XIII The prosperity of a new country and the happiness of the people depend largely upon a just apportionment of the land of that country and the opportunity to exploit the resources of the soil and sell the products thereof at the greatest possible profit to the producer. Had this simple truth been recognized as the cornerstone of Cuban colonization the island would have been spared centuries of hard up-hill struggle for healthy economic conditions. From the standpoint of the agrarian reformer, the land problem was at the bottom of all the evils that retarded the development of the colony, so richly endowed by nature that it should have been a paradise for those who came there to settle. The noble Spanish adventurers of Castilian blood, who had accompanied the early explorers and in a spirit of romance followed in their wake, were the first to obtain grants of land. They returned to Spain, brought with them their families and servants and settled upon the land, which became their new home. But they were hardly of a type willing to rough it after the first glamor of romance and novelty had faded, or able by hard labor to transform the wilderness into richly yielding fields and gardens. Stockbreeding was very much easier and according to their ideas required no particular exertion on their part. They let nature take care of the increase of their herds and flocks. A few of them retained the land, made their haciendas the home of generations to come, and attained to some rank and standing by virtue of these great holdings. Essentially domestic by nature, they lived there sometimes two or three generations under one roof, frugally and contentedly all the year round. Among the earliest Cuban landholders were nobles, Castilian, Andalusian and others, who received great grants of land in recognition of some services to the crown. These people, who had not known the spell of adventure in strange tropical climes, did not settle permanently on the island, but became absentee landlords. They owned perhaps a residence in Havana, which they visited briefly during the winter. They had a hacienda, which saw them even less frequently and more briefly. The traditions and conventions of their caste did not allow them to work, even if they had been able and willing; so they left the management of their land to an agent, whose paramount concern was to hold his position long enough to fill his pockets and who beyond that was no more interested in the colony than was his master. Whatever profits the latter made on the products of his Cuban estate, did not accrue to the benefit of the island; they were spent in the old country. Madrid was the place where these absentee landlords of Cuba wasted their wealth in extravagance and dissipation, instead of investing it in improvements of their estates and works of civic importance and advantage to the island. These property-holders looked out only for the revenues they could get out of their Cuban estates; but they were not concerned with the problem of revenues for the island. They have their counterpart today and not only in Cuba, but in other countries where vast tracts were acquired by foreigners, some for the hunting they afforded, some for speculative purposes, while native citizens had to go without the little plot of land that could insure them a home and sometimes even a living. Thus were the best tracts of land apportioned among or pre-empted by people having no vital interest in the development of the island's resources. When the real workers came, peasants from the Basque provinces, from Catalonia and other parts of the Peninsula, they again had no capital to invest in the necessary improvements, and being obliged to content themselves with a small plot of land and to work it with their own hands, soon drifted into a deadly indifference towards anything beyond the satisfaction of their most urgent daily needs. Even if their land had produced more than they needed for their own consumption, they would have been at a loss how to dispose of their products, since there were no transportation facilities and since every movement of the producer was subject to local customs and other restrictions, limiting the possibilities of creating a market and from the profits realized to set aside a fund to spend on current improvements or to insure their future. There is little doubt that much of the indolence attributed to the climate was gradually developed in the people by the lack of opportunities to market their products and to get into touch with the outside world. The Cuban settler of that class had in course of time to acquire a habitual indifference toward the morrow, which developed into shiftlessness. His initiative being paralyzed at the beginning, he never could rouse himself to conceive of another life. His children growing up about him under these same circumstances, true to the clannishness of Spanish family life, remained with the parents and followed in their footsteps. This may explain the lack of backbone with which the Cuban has been reproached. Official repression, even if founded upon a sort of paternal solicitude, is bound to stunt the growth of individuals as of nations; and of this repression the people of Cuba were for centuries the victims. The French traveler and writer quoted before, E. M. Masse, describes the life of Cuban rustics at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. He calls them _monteros_, which means huntsmen, and they were probably the more shiftless descendants of this first class of settlers. For he speaks of their simple, frugal and indolent ways; tells how satisfied they are just to own a little plot of ground, with a bananery beside the hut, or a rice or corn-field, and perhaps a few cows. They were happiest when they could afford a slave, who would go fishing and hunting for them; for that would allow the master to lie in the hammock and smoke cigarettes. It seems natural that the home of such a montero was usually a wretched little "cabane," a shack of one room in which he dwelt with his family, which was sometimes numerous, and in close companionship with a pig, and other domestic animals. Yet this same man, preferring to lie in the hammock rather than to exert himself in some much needed work, was very fond of lively sports, as horseback-riding. Even the women of the monteros were splendid horse-women. The dress of these people was extremely simple. The men wore trousers of oiled linen extending to the ankles; shoes of raw leather, a short shirt of the same material as the trousers, a kerchief wound tightly about the head and a big straw hat with a black ribbon or one of felt with gold braid. An indispensable article of accoutrement was the machete, cutlass, in his belt. The women wore a calico skirt, a white shirt with a bracelet at the elbow to hold the sleeves and a fichu on the head. When they went to mass, they dressed their hair, wore a mantilla on their head and put on shoes with big silver buckles. At dances they donned a round hat woven out of the tissue of plantain leaves, trimmed with gay ribbons, or a black hat with gold braid. Modest as was the montero in his demands upon life, there was one entertainment he could not forego: the _feria de gallo_, cock-fight. Many a one saved up his money for months to spend it on that day. This description by M. Masse, of the montero of Cuba at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, tallies well with the description of the guajiro of today by Forbes Lindsay in "Cuba and Her People Today." Lindsay sees in that Cuban rustic a descendant of Catalonian and Andalusian settlers: "Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no man's land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry. Much more often he lives in a ramshackle _bohio_, the one apartment of which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the name of furniture in the house and the clothing of the family is of the scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the gaucho of the Argentine pampas." That montero of a hundred and more years ago and the guajiro of today have so much in common that it seems safe to consider the latter a descendant of the former. The lack of proper facilities for the exchange of commodities between city and country caused the fact that Havana up to the beginning of the nineteenth century raised almost all her necessities on her own soil. The economical cassava was still generally used. The ground in the environs of the capital, though not the best soil on the island, within a short time attained considerable value. The administration of the navy yard opposed the cultivation of ground rich in trees that it could use for shipbuilding. By this monopoly alone many people were barred from owning and cultivating land. The preference of the earlier Spanish settlers for stockbreeding also limited the agricultural area. Besides, real estate conventions and regulations were as rigid as other customs of the country, and were never changed, be the need for a change ever so pressing. From the first days of the colony the circular form of plot had been adopted, the extent of a _hatos_ being fixed at two miles and that of the _corrales_ at one mile in circumference. This curious system of measurement gave rise not only to difficulties in computing the area of contiguous properties, but to misunderstandings and disputes which caused much litigation. It was difficult to buy a plot of ground that was not in some way subject to legal controversy. The great number of lawyers on the island had probably a certain reason for existence owing to the innumerable boundary and other land disputes. It is evident, too, that complicated boundaries and questionable titles were a rich source of dubious activity for unscrupulous members of the profession. Land cases were wont to drag on from one generation to the other, and while the lawyers representing the interests of the clients waxed rich, the clients themselves had often to sacrifice the land itself in order to settle their claims. The changes brought on by gradual cultivation of unimproved lands on the other hand enriched the owners of such lands quite out of proportion to their original value. When pastures were converted into farm plots, the price was augmented. A hato contained more than sixteen hundred caballerias at thirty-three acres per caballeria. The corral contained more than four hundred. The caballeria pasture land cost from ten to twenty-five pesos; as soon as it was cultivated, its lowest price was three hundred pesos. Thus a hato, worth at most forty thousand pesos, was in its new state worth more than four hundred and eighty-four thousand. Likewise a corral, originally valued at most at ten thousand pesos, rose in price to one hundred and twenty thousand. The same was true of building lots. A caballeria in the suburbs, divided into _solares_, house plots, could sometimes bring eighty-five thousand pesos. A caballeria to the southwest of Havana was worth three thousand pesos, one in the neighborhood of Matanzas only five hundred. The extraordinary wealth of certain convents, frequently commented upon by economists and historians, was due to the gradual and enormous increase in the price of the land which had originally been given to them. From these early grants and concessions were derived the privileges which some private properties and some convents enjoyed; they had for instance the right to forbid the building in their neighborhood of houses beyond a certain height, a precious privilege in a city where the circulation of air had not been overencouraged. M. Masse comments at length upon these conditions in his book on Havana. He says: "The immense fortunes of certain Havana families are thus explained. The sobriety of the Spaniards, the very limited taste and luxury found in their residences and their furnishings, a commercial management which favored agricultural products, would have ended in concentrating in a few hands fortunes rivalling those of kings, had not libertinism, the rage of lawsuits and the passion for gambling produced that instability, which some moralists would have liked to secure by other means, though these were not easily found." The prospect of becoming hopelessly entangled in interminable lawsuits, and of having large tracts of land on one's hands without the certainty that the products of this land would find a market and bring a price commensurate with the amount of money and labor spent upon it, prevented many residents of the island from becoming landholders. Only when the conflict between the landholders and the monopoly that robbed them of their profits became acute, did certain patriots concerned with the welfare of Cuba unite to secure a radical reform in the legislation of the Indies. The demand for an extension of maritime commerce was the first to be urged upon the authorities, and the first to be granted. As has been related in a previous chapter, the British occupation of Havana opened the eyes of the Spaniards to the benefits of free commerce with and among the colonies, and led to a gradual relaxation of the law which gave to one or two Spanish ports the monopoly of transatlantic trade. When greater freedom of maritime commerce had been secured, and agriculture began to be carried on on a larger scale, not only for home consumption, but for export, the questions of repartition of land, of introducing different standards of measurement, of diminution of taxes on the fruits of the country and of duties on articles of importation, and lastly of securing the labor needed for these larger enterprises, began to occupy the minds of the leaders. The chief branches of Cuban agriculture were the raising of live stock and the cultivation of tobacco and sugar. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the breeding of cattle was the principal occupation of the Cuban farmer. It suited the taste of the Castilian and Andalusian immigrant, for it required comparatively little work and lent itself to the acquirement of habits of idleness which the climate of the country tended to confirm. Guiteras is right, when he says: "Had our ganaderos (ranch owners) cultivated the plains for the alimentation of the animals and established a regular order in the care of breeds and in the management of their haciendas, this branch would have made greater progress and served as a powerful stimulus and been of great benefit for our agriculture. It would have supplied fertilizer for the fields, furnished the markets with meat for consumption by employers and laborers, and moreover, would have supplied oxen for our ploughs." But it seems that the Cuban farmer, as are many in other countries, was too short-sighted to perceive the advantages of a well-organized system of production, and indulged in a laissez-faire policy which did not much advance his interests or those of the community. The product next in importance was tobacco. The sections of the island best adapted for the cultivation of tobacco are the sandy fields west of Havana in the district of la Vuelta Baja, a country bathed by the waters of the San Sebastian, Richondo and the Consolacion of the south, and the Cuyaguateje or Mantua; also those in the palm belt running between Sierra Madre and the southern coast which forms a rectangle of twenty-eight leagues in length and seven in breadth. Other tobacco belts of great value are las Virtudes, between San Cristobal and Guanajas in the same Vuelta Baja, and in the east that nearest to Holguin and Cuba. The tobacco harvest of the year 1720 was six hundred thousand arrobas. But, as the historians say, "a severe system of monopoly, odious examinations and vexatious regulations and restrictions limited the profits, and the excessive cost of indispensable tools and the distance of the tobacco fields from the capital, discouraged the production of tobacco and visibly diminished the cultivation of this most important product of the island." The frequent disputes between the vegueros and the factoria, as the royal agency which owned the tobacco monopoly was called, abundantly prove the existence of conditions which were not likely to benefit the colony. The most valuable product of the island was sugar; and the cultivation of sugar cane was in such a backward state that it reflected upon the intelligence and enterprise of the native farmers. It revealed their ignorance, habitual indifference and lack of resources most lamentably. One of the oldest sugar planters of the island, Captain D. José Nicolas Perez Garvey, presented a series of memorials to the Sociedad Economica of Santiago de Cuba, which give a fair idea of the processes employed in the elaboration of this precious product. Sr. Garvey was a pioneer in demonstrating the imperfections of the existing methods and in advising the introduction of innovations. But his recommendation of modern inventions horrified the majority of the farmers and was violently objected to by the laborers. At first in order to press the juice out of the cane the same means were employed as for the grinding of wheat. They were cylinders set in motion by mules or oxen, a process in which half of the juice was wasted. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a more efficacious process was employed in imitation of that which was in use in Hayti. Not until the government itself took the initiative and encouraged the use of implements and machines that had proved of advantage in other sugar-raising colonies, was a change gradually effected. The great planter and landowner of Havana, D. Nicolas Calvo de la Puerta, was the man through whose influence and insistence upon certain innovations the sugar production was slowly improved. Finally there was the problem of converting the guarapo or fermented cane juice into sugar, which was at first also very primitive and slowly yielded to more productive and profitable methods. Lastly the sugar production of the island developed another product, which was not only popular on the island, but became an article of exportation. From 1760 to 1767 Havana, which was the only port qualified to export sweetmeats, sent out annually thirteen thousand cases of sixteen arrobas each. In the period of five years from 1791 to 1795 inclusive, the export was 7,572,600 arrobas. White sugar was then worth thirty-two reals per arroba, brown sugar twenty-eight. The French immigrants from Santo Domingo were an element that contributed to the improvement and promotion of the sugar industry. Though they furnished a far smaller proportion of the island's wealth, hides, cane, brandy, refined honey and wax also began to figure in the economic records of Cuba. Wax became a valuable product about the year 1764 when Bishop Morell brought a few swarms of bees from his Florida exile. It was exported to the ports of the Gulf of Mexico where it was highly esteemed for its superior quality. The indigo plant which was introduced during the administration of Governor Las Casas proved in time a new source of Cuban wealth. Coffee plantations and cocoa groves had also multiplied in number, and were slowly furnishing new products for home consumption as for exportation. The following figures will give a limited but reliable survey of the growth of agriculture towards the end of the century. Before the year 1761 there were only between sixty and seventy sugar refineries on the island. By the end of the century there were four hundred and eighty. Before the year 1796 there were only eight or ten coffee plantations, so that the island barely produced enough coffee for its own consumption. By the end of the century there were three hundred and twenty-six "cafeyeres." At the same time the island had two thousand four hundred and thirty-nine vegas, or tobacco fields, and one thousand two hundred and twenty-three _colmenares_ or apiaries. The revenues of the island from 1793, when they amounted to over one million pesos, rose steadily until at the beginning of the century they were about three million pesos annually. The sugar plantations yielded great profits, but they also required big investments of money and labor. One of the most prominent sugar planters on the island, D. José Ignacio Echegoyen, calculated that to produce ten thousand arrobas of sugar, an expenditure of twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven pesos was needed, besides a capital of sixty thousand. He was one of the foremost citizens that protested against the tax of one tenth on sugar. Work on the sugar plantations was the hardest imaginable; even the negro slaves could not stand it longer than ten years. Then their working capacity was completely exhausted and they were given their liberty. Though the importation of negro slaves essentially helped the development of agriculture and the industries connected with it, there still existed restrictions and regulations which acted as a continual check upon the growth of the population, and had a paralyzing effect upon the intellectual development of the colonists. A favorable solution of these important questions offered great obstacles. Although the principles on which Spain founded her restrictive system had been relaxed, there existed a great number of interests that had been created through this system and were unwilling to give up their privileges. Derogation of these restrictions would have meant loss and injury to some peninsular subjects that had grown rich and powerful through them. The historian Guiteras elucidates this point when he says that higher state reasons, supported by the right that, according to the notions of the epoch gave them the international law and the famous bull of Alexander VI. and was sustained by a great and expensive war against the nations that attempted to colonize America, had influenced the conduct of the government for nearly three centuries. The government only agreed by force of invincible circumstances to have the British and the French establish themselves in and continue in possession of a part of North America and a few islands of the Antilles; but it always insisted on maintaining the vast possessions that recognized its authority closed to the commerce of the allies according to the agreement. With the existence of a new and independent nation near these states, whose political organization, religious principles and national character were diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish government, these possessions and dominions of the crown seemed to be in danger. The imprudent demonstration in the state of Georgia had already shown the spirit of hostility which when the republic of the United States was barely established began to manifest itself against the neighboring possessions of a country which in her diplomatic relations had from the beginning of the Revolution always showed herself friendly. Such considerations very likely increased the aversion of the monarch as of his court towards Britain and the British race, in whose favor they had yielded more than to any other power concessions demanded by the interests of their subjects in America. These were some of the great impediments which the champions of progress encountered in their valiant endeavors to free the economic development of Cuba and to help its much hampered industries. But one of the most serious obstacles was the restriction of Spanish and especially foreign immigration. It seems that these restrictions which dated from the accession of Philip II. had two definite objects; the first was to preserve the purity of the Spanish stock in the West Indies and other possessions of Spanish America; the second was to prevent foreigners from learning the extent and the resources of Spain's American colonies. Edward Gaylord Bourne says in "Spain in America": "In regard to Spaniards, the policy adopted was one of restriction and rigid supervision. No one, either native or foreigner, was allowed to go to the Indies without a permit from the crown (or in some cases from the Casa de Contracion) under penalty of forfeiting his property. Officers of the fleets or vessels were held strictly responsible for infractions of this rule. In the code the details of these restrictions are amplified in seventy-three laws. The reasons for such strict regulations covering emigration was to protect the Indies from being overrun with idle and turbulent adventurers anxious only 'to get rich quickly and not content with food and clothing, which every moderately industrious man was assured of.'" Another reason for this strict supervision is given in a law enacted in the year 1602, which directs the deportation of foreigners from the ports of the Indies, because "the ports are not safe in the things of our holy Catholic faith, and great care should be taken that no error creep in among the Indians." An exception to the rule was made twenty years later, when expert mechanics were allowed, but traders in the cities remained excluded. So rigidly was this policy upheld that Humboldt during five years of travel in Spanish America met only one German resident. It is more difficult to understand the object of this policy than to realize its effect upon the country's growth and progress. M. Masse says in his book "L'Isle de Cuba et la Havane": "No Spaniard was allowed to sail for America without permission of the king, a permission granted only for well-defined business reasons, and for a period limited to two years. The agreement to settle there was even more difficult to obtain. A special permission was needed even to pass from the province first chosen to another. Priests and nuns were subject to the same rule." These restrictions were enforced even at the beginning of the nineteenth century. M. Masse continues to say that travelers were detained on board several days before they were allowed to land in Havana. They had to present a passport, a certificate of birth and baptism and a certificate of respectable life and good conduct, all signed by a consul of Spain. In individual cases these severe requirements may have been evaded--M. Masse mentions the fact that minor functionaries were ready to do the foreigners any favor--for a consideration. But upon the whole it must be admitted that their observance tended to keep up a certain moral standard in the colonies, which may not have been without some good influence in moulding the character of the people. While other powers of Europe allowed--and even encouraged--their colonies to become dumping-grounds for human refuse, to populate them with their derelicts and those of other nations, until America was spoken of by the Germans as the big reformatory, Spain made an attempt at what some centuries later, in our scientific age, might have been called "race culture." CHAPTER XIV The conditions which we have described did not, however, prevent the colony, when prosperity came to her, from succumbing to the evils which invariably follow in the wake of new wealth. The historian Blanchet reports that there existed in Cuba towards the end of the century a strange mixture of immorality and piety. Religious enthusiasm rose to an unusual degree of fervor in Villa Clara in the year 1790. Two Capuchin missionaries had been there a month, and the church was crowded from early morning until late at night with men and women spellbound by their words. After the orisons there was a sermon, and at times, immediately after the sermon, the women left, the building was closed and darkened and the men remained inside. Prayers alternated with flagellations, until some individuals were exhausted with pain and the loss of blood. In the penitential procession, which took place on some evenings, the two missionaries and the priests of the town were followed by a multitude in which both sexes were represented. The members of the Ayuntamiento took part, bare-legged and bare-foot; some marched with the head and face concealed by a white cowl, the body uncovered to the waist, and from the waist down wrapped in sack-cloth. Some staggered under the weight of a heavy cross; others walked straight and attempted to inflict wounds upon themselves with the point of a sword. It seems, however, that this religious exaltation was at times carried too far, for flagellation assumed such proportions at burials that it had to be forbidden. In contrast to this religious revival was the wave of frivolity and immorality that seemed simultaneously to sweep over the island. The streets of the towns resounded with ribald speech and lascivious songs. The Bishop was scandalized to see Cuban women discard their veils when they went on the street. When they wore décolleté gowns, they did not even close the blinds, but openly showed themselves at the windows. There is little doubt that increase of overseas traffic in the ports of the island contributed to the growing laxity of morals. M. Masse considered the navy yard a special source of the corruption which wealth had brought. "For the money needed by that enterprise circulated in the city at the same time as the vices and the passions of its employees and sailors." With a remarkable psychological insight he gives a most plausible explanation how the change in the life of the island affected the women of Cuba, and especially of Havana. For these women had so far been brought up in strict conformity to the conventions of their female ancestors in Spain. They had been sent to a girls' school, always escorted, and had never until they were married even talked alone with a man. In the narrow confines of their home, either before or after marriage, their beauty was taken for granted and passed uncommented. For the Cuban women were always unusually handsome, having the same regular features and rich coloring as the Spanish, the same large black eyes and bluish black hair, perhaps even accentuated by their placid immobility of expression. A strange type, bound to attract attention anywhere, they struck the strangers landing in this tropical city like rare exotic flowers, and they suddenly found themselves the objects of an admiration which manifested itself in ways that were new and irresistible. The Cuban husband was known not to be as loyal as his wife was expected to be; why should they not accept the homage offered them? To this host of admirers, ever changing, ever ready to shower them with favors, M. Masse, the keen psychologist, attributes the change in the attitude of the women and the gradual change in the tone of Cuban, especially Havanese, society. As more and more of these industrious foreigners, who might have been as good Spaniards as their own ancestors, settled on the island, the difference between them and the native Cubans manifested itself, not always to the latter's advantage. Women began to prefer them as husbands, and there was one more cause for antagonism between these scions of a common stock, whom different environment and conditions of existence had caused to drift apart, and become irreconcilably estranged. Of Havana that subtle student of life has this to say: "The need of forgetting the many privations of a prolonged sea voyage, with gold always in abundance for those who do not know how to manage their affairs and to whom each voyage seems a new adventure, the influence of a climate which makes for voluptuousness, all this combines to make Havana a new Cythera placed at the port of long journeys even as the ancient cradle of pleasure was at that end of the long voyage of that time." Thus Havana, like other capitals of the world, became gradually not only the cradle of Cuban culture, but also of that corruption of the simpler and purer instincts of human nature which seems to be inseparable from a certain degree of material comfort. The man of Havana had in centuries of repression and restriction lost the power of initiative; the end of the century which gave the colonists of North America their independence made them free to think and act, and work for themselves, and above everything else, to govern themselves, found him still under a rigorous paternal supervision by representatives of a king whom he perhaps never saw. Centuries of such guardianship had robbed him of all incentive and made him drift along the line of least resistance. Physically and morally a product of the country which was politically and economically a victim of that type of government, the Cuban of that period had no interests save the quest of comfort and such pleasurable excitement as certain entertainments offered. The women divided their attention between their church and their home, indulged in deadly idleness and senseless extravagance, dressed luxuriantly, but with bad taste, and sought distraction in gossip or gambling. The men, who had caught faint echoes of Voltaire and ideas of the Revolution and were estranged from the church, divided their interests between their business and their friends of both sexes, and also sought distraction in gambling. There was gambling in the home circle, in the houses of friends, in the clubs, even in the convents. It was estimated that ten thousand games of cards were annually imported into Havana. Of places of amusement there was no lack at that time. M. Villiet d'Arignon, who visited Havana fifty years before and was bored by the provincial monotony of Cuban life, could not have complained of lack of entertainment, had he seen Havana at the threshold of the nineteenth century, though his fastidious Gallic taste would perhaps not have been satisfied with the quality of the attractions the Cuban metropolis offered her guests. The native Cuban, and the Spaniard who had settled there, did not wish for anything more fascinating and more exciting than the national fiesta of the bull-fight, the corrida de toros. No true Cuban could resist the trumpet call summoning the population to that most sumptuous spectacle. "These costumes of the age of chivalry, those richly harnessed palfreys, those banderillos (small darts with a bandorol) or stilets trimmed with the colors, with which the neck of the poor beast is seen magnificently larded; this martial music, these cheers of the mousquetaires rendering homage unto the victors, this most eminent magistrate presiding at the feast, this vast arena, this wealth of beautiful women, who have the opportunity of hearing the most drastic, disgusting and obscene exclamations, into which the vulgarity of spectators and toreadors lapses in the heat of the combat. And yet I would not advise the Spanish government to attempt to abolish at least in Havana this sort of spectacle. A revolt might cause the authorities to repent of their temerity." Thus does the French author quoted before paint the picture of the greatest entertainment the Cuban of that time knew. But there were others, for instance the caroussel, the circus, the magicians, and there was always the cock-pit, offering almost as much excitement as the bull-ring. Here, too, the gambling craze of the people asserted itself. For not only the prosperous man about town spent his money in betting at the cock-fight, as he did at the bull-fight. Every little town had its cock-pit and every montero or guajiro sacrificed his wages to taste the excitement of that spectacle. Surely Cuba at that century's end had already learned what the hosts of strangers needed, when after a long and tedious voyage they landed on the island. One cannot help being reminded of the impressions M. Villiet d'Arignon carried with him from his visit to Cuba as recorded in Jean Baptiste Nougaret's "Voyages interessans," when after a month's sojourn he sailed for Vera Cruz on the same vessel that took D. Juan Guemez y Horcasitas from the governorship of Cuba to the vice-regency of Mexico. Then already was gambling the favorite, and, as the island lacked such places of amusement as were established later, probably the only pastime. The Frenchman noticed also the total absence of any interest in literature, art and music, and the impossibility of finding a circle of people where he could enjoy an animated conversation on subjects outside of the commonplace and of current local gossip, made him reflect rather unfavorably upon West Indian society of that time. Such reflections must, however, be accepted with some reservation. For if the West Indian and especially the Cuban of the eighteenth century lacked interest in those things that make for culture, it must be remembered that the country in which he was living was still young, and that the people's paramount interest had of necessity to be for the things material. There has perhaps never been a colony of settlers in a foreign and primitive land that has not been so thoroughly absorbed in the task of founding a home and making a living, that all other things, for the time being, did not seem to matter. All pioneer settlers are bound for at least one or two generations to be so engrossed in rude manual labor or in plans to establish a trade, that they lose touch with the current intellectual life of their mother country and fall behind. When those most urgent duties are performed and allow them brief spells of leisure, in which they look about and try to pick up the threads they had dropped, they find that the mother country has in the meantime advanced so far beyond them that they are unable to catch up with it. Spanish America was no exception to this rule. While the sons of Spain that had settled in the New World were engaged in cultivating the soil, making roads in the rough country and laying the foundations of commerce and trade in the cities founded by their fathers or grandfathers, Spain had entered upon the heritage of many centuries of European culture, which on her soil had a rich admixture of Arabian elements. The literature of Spain had given to the world an immortal epic, the story of Cervantes, "Don Quixote," the deep significance of which was not perhaps grasped at that time, but the human essence and the humor of which were not lost upon his generation. It had given to the world a drama, which was far in advance of anything the continent had so far produced, and was comparable only to the works of that unparalleled British genius, Shakespeare. The plays of Lopé de Vega were performed all over Europe and found their way even into the seraglio of Constantinople; and those of Calderon de la Barca have survived the changes of time and taste and are even today occasionally performed. Of all this the Spaniard of Cuba was hardly aware. Even if he had not been so engrossed in his rude task, he could barely have known anything about it, because the limited communication with the mother country and the restrictions upon travel kept Spanish America in a state of isolation, that made for stagnation rather than progress. When the period of material prosperity came to Cuba with the relaxation of Spain's commercial restrictions, the Cuban awoke to the realization that he had lost contact with Spain's intellectual life, and had been left at least two centuries behind. Out of this knowledge, depressing and discouraging as it must have been, grew the attempt to centralize and organize a gradual revival of literary and scientific activity on the island. Whether the Sociedad Economica Patriotica which was later called Junta di Fomento is identical with the Sociedad de Amigos del Real Pais, is not made clear by the historians. The Spaniards' fondness for long and sonorous names and titles may have added the second name. However, both this organization and a society founded about the same time in Santiago for the purpose of organizing the literary activities of that place, and similar societies in Sancti Spiritus and Puerto Principe were an expression of the earnest desire of at least a part of the people to turn their attention towards other things than those material. To Governor La Torre, Havana owed the foundation of its first theatre. That this establishment was encouraged and effectively patronized by Governor Las Casas and other men closely identified with the cultural work of the Sociedad, goes without saying. But it is perfectly natural in view of the long period of indifference towards anything like the drama that the classical Spanish dramas, the masterpieces of Lopé de Vega and of the inimitable Calderon, did not immediately find their way upon the stage of Havana. The audiences had gradually to grow up to their standard and the directors of the enterprise wisely refrained from forcing them upon a people that had so long been ignorant of the strides Spain had made in the interval since their ancestors settled in the New World. Hence the repertoire of the theatre of Havana towards the end of the century catered to the Spaniard's love of music and favored the best comic operas then produced in the theatres of Europe. The ballet was very popular, as it was everywhere at that period. But that subtle observer, M. Masse, was not favorably impressed with it. "The ballet is of that kind which carries far the art of varying the most voluptuous attitudes and the expression of the least equivocal sentiment." He suspected the fandango, supposed to be typically Havanese, of being originally a negro dance, saying "The difference is in the embroidery, which civilization, or if one wishes, corruption, has introduced." Very popular were at the time little comedies of domestic life, called Saynetes, and offering pretty truthful pictures of social customs and habits on the island, and especially glimpses of the society of Havana. A Cuban writer of the period, D. José Rodriguez, is credited with the authorship of a comedy, "El Principe Jardinero," The Prince Gardener, which by its complicated plot held the attention of the audience and was performed with great success in 1791. A comedian of considerable ability and fame, then very popular with the Havanese, D. Francisco Covarrubas, was the author of farces, which were very warmly received and drew large audiences. The theatre of New Orleans, much older and better equipped than that of Havana, sometimes sent its company of actors for a short season of more serious drama. Among other plays which this company produced was the tragedy "Les Templiers." Although undoubtedly still in its beginnings, the theatre of Havana was upon the whole doing good work. Anglo-Americans who visited Havana about the century's end are said to have admitted that it was superior in building, stage setting, acting and music to the American theatres of that period. The regular company which played in Havana at the time of Governor Las Casas was under the direction of Sr. Luis Saez. The performances were given twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, and mostly offered a program in which drama and music alternated. If a play of several acts was given, these musical numbers came between the acts. The program would usually begin with a dramatic composition; in the first intermission a short play was acted, in the second a tonadilla (musical composition) was played or a few Seguidillas (merry Spanish song or dance tunes). At times the pieces between the acts were suppressed and the performance ended with a tonadilla or a farce. In the bill of January twenty-ninth, 1792, it is announced that "this performance will conclude with a new duly censored piece entitled 'Elijir con discrecion i amante privilegiado' (The privileged lover chosen with discretion), by an inhabitant of this city, D. Miguel Gonzales." [Illustration: A VOLANTE: AN OLD TIME PLEASURE CARRIAGE] They did not know then, in Havana, the lyric theatre, although the Havanese were fond of music and the members of Havana society in their gatherings usually provided some musical entertainment by having an instrumentalist perform on the piano, guitar or harp. However, there seems to have existed an Academy of Music, where concerts were given. There is an article in an issue of the Havana paper of that time, the _Papel Periodico_, which refers to a concert given by Senora Maria Josefa Castellanos, whose performance on the harpsichord called forth not only a tribute in verse, but a glowing description of her "rare skill and mastery of which she has given proof in the Academy, with the sweetest harmonies of the best composers." This eulogy is contained in the Sunday issue of January twenty-second, 1792. Besides Senora Castellanos and other skilled amateurs, there was a Senora Doña Maria O'Farrell, who distinguished herself by her musical accomplishments, for another issue of the _Papel Periodico_ contains a sapphic ode dedicated to her by an admirer, who signed the pseudonym Filesimolpos. It appears that balls as an amusement were not approved of, which seems a contradiction in a society which was by no means puritanical. Although social evenings in private houses frequently ended in a dance, there were few indications that large affairs consisting mainly of dancing took place in the public assembly halls. The _Papel Periodico_ of December sixteenth, 1792, contains an announcement which for its brevity gives room to manifold interpretation. "The gentlemen are informed that there will be a dance today" is so laconic, that one is almost induced to believe that these dances were given at places known only to the initiated. In this particular instance it was subsequently learned that this dance of the sixteenth of December, 1792, took place at the house of a man who was considered "a dangerous reformer of the customs of Havana." Did this dangerous reformer perhaps admit to his dance the ravishingly beautiful and cultured women that had come from Santo Domingo, where they freely moved in society, but were barred in Havana, because they had a white father or grandfather and a colored mother or grandmother? Foreign visitors to Havana at that period were so warm in their praise of these refined unfortunate victims of miscegenation, that they may have converted some of the gilded youth of the smart set or the Bohemia of Havana to their point of view. The fine arts were not at first considered in the planning and building of the city of Havana. Though much money was spent upon public buildings, no artistic effect whatever was aimed at and the impression of a crude utilitarianism prevailed. The churches, too, did not possess the noble dignity of the great cathedrals of France, Italy and Spain. The most ambitious ecclesiastical edifice in Havana, the church of San Francisco, was architecturally mediocre in style and barbarously overornamented. In all the churches the sculpture and the wood-carving on the altars were over-elaborate and bewildered by their decorative details. Besides all these buildings were too low and narrow, and by their endless decoration diminished the sense of space and produced one of oppression. On special saints' days the decorations were pathetically crude and primitive. Angels of paper tissue, artificial flowers, birds, lambs, etc., were displayed with a profusion which was distracting, instead of adding to the fervor of religious sentiment. [Illustration: MONTSERRAT GATE IN CITY WALL OF HAVANA, BUILT 1780] The Church de la Concepcion, built about 1795, was the only church edifice which by a certain classic simplicity approached the solemn beauty of a Greek temple. The Carmelite Church was interesting for the tomb of Bishop Compostele with the epitaph, which expressed his wish to be laid to rest "between the lilies of Carmel and the choirs of the virgins." None of these churches had pews or chairs, the seating capacity being limited to two rows of stalls or benches along the nave. This made for an admirable democracy in a society which otherwise rigorously segregated the castes for it happened not infrequently that men of rank and ladies of position found themselves beside a poor negro. Occasionally, however, one could see a lady going to mass with her family of children, accompanied by a negro, carrying a rug and a small chair; and when such a handsome senora seated herself in the center of the rug with her offspring grouped about her, the effect was so picturesque as to call for the brush of a Velasquez. But this privilege was limited to white ladies of rank only. The music in the churches, on the other hand, was exclusively furnished by the musically gifted negroes. Though it sometimes occurred in Cuba, as in other colonies of America, that owing to the lack of printed church music sacred words were adopted to secular tunes, and frequently to those of popular comic opera, the master works of the old church composers were sometimes heard at special occasions. Among the streets of Havana the most metropolitan was the Calle de la Muralla, so called from the muralla or rampart built by Governor Ricla. This was the Rue de la Paix for the women of Havana. It was lined with "tiendas de ropas," shops displaying all the latest importations of dress goods and wearing apparel. At that time, as at the present, the fashionable ladies of the Cuban capital insisted upon keeping pace with the styles of dress and adornment which prevailed in the great cities of Europe, as their pecuniary means, their taste and their natural gifts abundantly enabled them to do. Every morning the street was crowded with the carriages of ladies engaged in shopping. For no white woman, unless she belonged to what in the southern states of North America would have been called "poor white trash" was allowed to go on foot during the day, unless she was going to mass. Up to the twenties of the new century and beyond, this convention was rigidly observed. Those who had to go on foot were not seen on the Calle de la Muralla until the evening hours. Then it was crowded with as gay and handsome a multitude of women, white, black and of all the intervening shades, as ever trod the pavement of a southern capital. At such times the relation between the white and the colored women of the city could be observed in little incidents that were an unending source of amusement to the student of life. The lithe and willowy form of the young girl of Spain, which Montaigne has called "un corps bien espagnole," was frequently to be found among the Cuban women. The almost regal dignity and grace of carriage, for which the Spanish women were noted, had also been transmitted to their descendants in the colonies. Now it was nothing unusual for any one to follow with his eyes the perfect form and the graceful movements of some woman in the crowd of such nights, and on coming up and catching a glimpse of the face to find a negress. For the imitative faculty of the colored race is extraordinary, and the negro maids of the white ladies of Havana copied faithfully every detail of the gait and gestures of their mistresses. The dress worn by the Havanese on the streets was the national basquina, a black skirt, with a waist according to the prevailing fashion, and under that basquina was often worn a white petticoat trimmed with lace, which most unconcernedly was being dragged through the dust. But the most important article of a Cuban woman's dress was the mantilla, also often trimmed with the rarest lace, that indispensable covering for head and shoulders, which made an effective frame for a face in which shone a pair of luminous black eyes. That mantilla, like the fan, was a medium of expression and spoke an eloquent language to those that understood. The cafés, which were sadly missed by M. Villiet d'Arignon in the middle of the century, had begun to appear in the streets of Havana, but never became as popular as in European capitals. The Cuban did not particularly care for coffee as a beverage; he preferred chocolate, which he took at home. He did not care to go out, unless it was for a game of cards, a feria di gallo, or cock-fight, or the bull-ring. He was essentially a domestic creature, though Havana had a smart set the masculine members of which furnished ample material for gossip of a more or less scandalous nature. He spent his time at home smoking; in fact, everybody in Cuba smoked, men, women, children, priests, masters and slaves. It was not an infrequent sight to see a negro maid about her work with a cigar in her mouth or behind her ear. Small favors and services were paid in cigars. Outside of the cultural endeavors of the Sociedad little was done in Cuba for the cause of education. As the Countess de Merlin reported in her book on Havana, there was only one school in that city in the year 1791, that taught grammar and orthography, the instructor being the mulatto Melendez. The children of the monteros and guajiros in the country grew up in almost complete illiteracy. As was mentioned in a previous chapter Governor Las Casas devoted from eleven to twelve thousand pesos of his private fortune for primary instruction, but it is not clear whether this was to be extended throughout the island or limited to Havana. At any rate there were at the beginning of his administration thirty-nine schools in the city, seven of which were for males only, the others for children of both sexes. In many of these schools, which were in charge of mulattos or free negroes, only reading was taught; in the better schools arithmetic as far as fractions; thus prepared young men were expected to enter upon a university course. The smallest fee for primary instruction was four reales a month; for higher instruction two pesos. To two hundred white and colored children the P. P. de Belen (Fathers of Bethlehem) gave lessons free of cost; it is reported that their class surpassed in writing. Towards the end of the administration of Las Casas there were seventy schools, with about two thousand pupils. But they seemed to have a hard fight for their existence and the number is reported to have been later reduced to seven hundred and thirty-one pupils. The low intellectual standard of the average Havanese woman of that period is easily understood by a glance at these data. The education of girls even in the cities was considered of such minor importance, that as late as 1793 it was not deemed necessary for them to learn to read. The daughters of the Havanese patricians were taught accomplishments regarded as inseparable from an ideal of refined womanhood, such as embroidery and a little music. But as work of any kind was not on the program of their lives, serious occupation, even with household duties, was unheard of. The matronly senoras, who were frequently held up as models of womanhood and especially of motherhood, were woefully ignorant of the simplest cooking and other branches of what is today called home economics. The orphans and poor children admitted to the Casa de Beneficiencia were better prepared for life. They were all taught the alphabet, the girls sewing, embroidery and the making of artificial flowers, and the boys learned the cigar-makers' trade. From these premises it can be easily inferred that the standard of literary activity in Cuba could not have been very high. That great democratic medium for the diffusion of information, the printing press, was an institution which in Cuba was also limited by royal decrees. According to Sr. La Torre the first printing press was established in Havana in 1747; there were printed the decrees and reports and other official documents of the government, and sometimes matters of general interest were published on loose sheets. Some authorities claim for Santiago de Cuba the honor of priority, stating that it had a printing press before the year 1700. But Sr. Hernandez in his Ensayos literarios declares that he could find no foundation for this statement. Nor do Valdes, Arrate or Pezuela contain any definite data on that subject. It is safe to presume that the work of the press established in 1747 produced some good results in spreading information otherwise withheld from the public; for in the year 1776 a royal decree forbade the establishment of any other printing press besides that devoted to governmental work. It is possible, too, that some speculator had attempted to found another printing establishment. For Sr. Saco tells us that in the year 1766 there was in Havana a printing concern under the name of Computo Ecclesiastico and in 1773 another under the direction of D. Blas de los Olivos. But there are no data to show that these concerns existed at the time of the royal decree of 1776. The establishment of a periodical has usually been deferred to the administration of Governor Las Casas. But there is reason to believe that the note contained in the fourth book of the history of Cuba by Valles rests upon fact; it speaks of a "Gaceta de la Habana" as being in existence in the year 1782. An issue of that _Gaceta_, dated May 16, 1783, was said to contain a report of the festivals with which the Duke of Lancaster was honored in Havana. In that issue the publisher said: "Since in the preceding _Gaceta_ the arrival in this town of the Infante William Duke of Lancaster, third son of King George of England, could hardly be indicated, we suppressed for one week the circulation of other news, in order to offer to our readers the details of his entry into Havana." Besides those printing concerns no other is known to have existed in Havana until the opening of that of Bolona, in the year 1792, which is referred to in an advertisement in the _Papel Periodico_ of Sunday, August 26th of that year. This advertisement read: "Another negress about 20 or 21 years old, good cook and laundress, healthy and without defects, for three hundred pesos. He who wants her will apply to the printing office of D. Estaven Joseph Bolona, where her master will be found." That this press was not identical with the government printing establishment is inferred from the fact that in this number of the _Papel Periodico_ as well as other issues are contained many advertisements referring to the printing office, where information will be given. The _Gaceta de la Habana_ was a weekly, which probably contained the government announcements and news of the most important events of the time. The space of the _Gaceta_ was too limited to admit of the publication of communications from readers on matters concerning the community, hence such effusions, as also the lyrics coming from the pens of poetically inclined dilettanti, were published on separate sheets to be circulated among their admiring friends. But at the time of Governor Las Casas the desire of improving this publication of the government made itself felt; the space was enlarged and the old time _Gaceta_ seems to have been merged in the _Papel Periodico_, which began to circulate from the twenty-fourth of October, 1790. It appeared once a week and was edited by D. Diego de la Barrera. This publication was the only medium through which those desirous of knowing something of the current life of the island at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century could obtain a fair picture of the customs and occupations of that time, described by the individual contributors with the warmth and the florid exuberance then in style and occasionally, when coming from a more critical mind, with a touch of satire. The following extract from the periodical will give an idea of its contents and character. In an issue of the year 1792, the writer speaks of the lamentable ignorance reigning in the country districts of Cuba and hampering the development of agriculture. He attacks the current opinion that the climate is the source of the Cuban's indifference and indolence, saying that this assumption would give ground to deny even the possibility of progress. He says: "Many opine that the laziness of the inhabitants of this country is the effect of the climate. They take it for granted that the lassitude of the muscles and tendons is due to the heat and makes the bodies lose their tenseness and hence their capacity for exertion. They also give as cause the excessive evaporation of elements needed for the growth and the strength of the organism, asserting that this loss owing to weak constitution of the stomach cannot be repaired by fatty and abundant food. "These reasons founded upon the organic mechanism of our bodies seem quite conclusive. There is no doubt that the intense heat which we suffer during the greatest part of the year in the countries near the equator promotes evaporation too much. But I dare to assert that the excess is being insensibly recovered by the bodies through the particles produced by perspiration. This does not seem chimerical, when we reflect that by our constant respiration the air in which we are living enters and is being constantly renewed in our liquids, and that this air is impregnated with innumerable corpuscles extracted from the solids. The same is true of a fountain, the surplus flows off to fertilize the near forest, while at the same time is restored to its bosom through different means an equal quantity, which incessant infiltration also supplies from other water sources." After comparing the physical and intellectual aptitude of the children of the tropics with those of Greenland and the progress made by the French of Hayti in science, agriculture and art, which is in diametrical contrast to that of the Spanish West Indians, he continues: "Therefore, as indolence or laziness do not proceed from external causes, we must admit that they proceed from ourselves. I find no other source. It is a voluntary habit, or speaking more plainly, a vice propagated like the pestilence and causing incalculable harm to the social structure. But as I propose to combat this enemy, I shall show the most visible injuries it produces in those who yield to its insidious charm. "Every living body without movement goes into corruption. This is a well established principle and in the hot countries which are usually humid, the effect is quickly seen. We have a sad experience in this city, where the inhabitants are frequently afflicted with dropsy, internal and external tumors, hypochondria, nervous diseases and many other ailments, the origin of which is inaction or want of movement and circulation. While in this respect indolence conspires against our very existence, the injury is no less when it manifests itself in the vices to which professional idlers are subject. Incessant gambling, excessive sensuality, late hours, unreasonable food and drink and other correlative features are the means by which health is ruined, life is shortened; and he who succeeds in prolonging it, does so at the cost of a variety of aches and pains. "Prisons and other dismal places are the final abode of idleness. Those liable to get there for theft, debt and other offences curse their unhappy lot; but they will not admit that their laziness is the chief source of their misfortunes. Celibacy, depopulation, the languishing of commerce, the backwardness of science, art, agriculture, etc., are all the results of idleness. "When I see on this island a city of so large a population, the greater part of which is living in ill-concealed poverty, while her fertile and beautiful fields around are uncultivated and deserted, painful reflections suggest themselves to me. If this oldest and most wholesome occupation, agriculture, is an inexhaustible source of wealth even in countries less favored for it, how much wealth might not be produced in this country. It is evident that the difference in its favor would be as great as the superiority of our fields which in fertility are unrivalled by those of any other country. "I therefore conclude by saying that even those living in opulence have no excuse for giving themselves up to shameful inaction. When their riches exempt them from ordinary occupations, they should devote themselves to the cultivation of the mind." This somewhat predicatory article, published in Nos. 11, 13 and 14 of the _Papel Periodico_, proves how seriously the men at the head of the great intellectual revival of the century's end took their task of rousing the people from their torpor. Nevertheless there is little documentary proof that much was produced by the pens of that generation. The question of promoting agriculture seems to have preoccupied the minds of the readers at that time. In another article the author says: "I must state that no country can progress unless it produces in abundance fruits for exportation; if it confines itself to the amount used for home consumption, it will never come out of her poverty. The beautiful climate, the fertile soil, and the location of our island offer much richer resources than any other country; but unfortunately we are hampered by various conditions, mainly in the attitude of the people themselves. There are those whose notions do not permit them to take a great part in the community of laborers; these, again, living in poverty, are afraid to change their work, thinking that what they are doing is the best for them. What is needed is to remove some of the prejudices that prevent people from seeing the advantages that would result from their devoting themselves to the cultivation of fruits for exportation. "There is no doubt that there are in this island physical and moral causes that hamper the progress of agriculture. The physical are: the distribution of the grounds in large portions to individual owners, the condition of the roads, almost impassable during the rainy season; the lack of bridges, the lack of labor, and lastly the lack of concerted action among the inhabitants. The moral reasons are: insufficient instruction and education of the laboring people, the contempt for farming peculiar to the young, and especially the unmarried landholder; the great number of idlers and the small population." The measures adopted by the supreme government in 1784 had checked the progress of Cuba and even diminished the population. In that epoch the allowances from Mexico decreased and the authorities of the island found themselves without means to perform the every day business of the island. The evils produced by these new decrees were set forth in a petition to the king and were amply discussed in the paper. The excitement of the authorities and the population is reflected in various articles of the _Papel Periodico_ which have not only the merit of showing the state of the public mind, but also of proving that the authorities in Cuba itself favored reforms. They certainly would not have been published had they not been approved of by Governor Las Casas. There are interesting communications in the paper from foreigners then visiting in Havana. One of them signing himself "El Europeo imparcial" gives a very appreciative account of the character and customs of the Havanese. He praises their religion, their piety, their zeal for divine worship and devotion to the saints; their courteous and affable conduct, the refinement of their leaders, the magnificence of their festivities and assemblies, both sacred and secular, their streets and promenades, where multitudes of brilliant carriages are to be seen, and other features of public life which in all countries are the first to strike the foreign visitor. A most ambitious and for the time extraordinary work appeared in the year 1787. It was a book by D. Antonio Parra on the fish and crustacea of the island, illustrated by the Cuban Baez. It was the first scientific work written and published in Cuba, and seems for some time to have remained the only one. For until the end of the century the literature produced had a distinctly dilettante character. The fable, epigram and satire occasionally relieved the flood of lyric verse. Most of this appeared anonymously; or the writers used pseudonyms or signed their names in anagrams. P. José Rodriguez, the author of "The Prince Gardener," the comedy popular in Havana at that time, wrote under the pen-name "Capucho" a number of gay decimas, poems in the Spanish form of ten lines of eight syllables each. But none of these works were of a quality to call for serious criticism and had no merits that insured for them a permanent place in what was ultimately to be known as Cuban literature; for this literature dates only from the nineteenth century. CHAPTER XV "Cuba; America: America; Cuba. The two names are inseparable." So we said at the beginning of our history of the "Pearl of the Antilles." So we must say at the beginning of a new era, the third, in these annals. At the beginning the connection was between Cuba and America as a whole--the continents of the western hemisphere. In this second case it is between Cuba and America in the more restricted meaning of the United States. There was a significant and to some degree influential forecast of this relationship in the preceding era, in which Cuba was in contact with England and with the rising British power in the New World. For what was afterward to become the United States was then a group of British colonies, and it was inevitable that relations begun in Colonial times should be inherited by the independent nation which succeeded. Moreover, Cuba was in those days brought to the attention of the future United States in a peculiarly forcible manner by the very important participation of Colonial troops, particularly from Connecticut and New Jersey, in that British conquest of Havana which we have recorded in preceding chapters. It was nearly half a century, however, after the establishment of American independence that any practical interest began to be taken in Cuba by the great continental republic at the north. The purchase of the Louisiana territory and the opening to unrestrained American commerce of that Mississippi River which a former Governor of Cuba had discovered and partially explored, had greatly increased American interest in the Gulf of Mexico and had created some commercial interest in the great Island which forms its southern boundary. Later the acquisition of Florida called attention acutely to the passing away of Spain's American Empire and to the concern which the United States might well feel in the disposition of its remaining fragments. Already, in the case of Florida in 1811 the United States Government had enunciated the principle that it could not permit the transfer of an adjacent colony from one European power to another. It will be pertinent to this narrative to recall that action in fuller detail. The time was in the later Napoleonic wars, when Spain was almost at the mercy of any despoiler. There was imminent danger that Spain would transfer Florida to some other power, as she had done a few years before with the Louisiana territory, or that it would be taken from her. In these circumstances the Congress of the United States on January 15, 1811, adopted a joint resolution in these terms: "Taking into view the peculiar situation of Spain, and of her American provinces; and considering the influence which the destiny of the territory adjoining the southern border of the United States may have upon their security, tranquility and commerce, "Be it Resolved: That the United States, under the peculiar circumstances of the existing crisis, cannot without serious inquietude see any part of the said territory pass into the hands of any foreign power; and that a due regard for their own safety compels them to provide under certain contingencies for the temporary occupation of the said territory; they at the same time declaring that the said territory shall, in their hands, remain subject to future negotiations." Then the same Congress enacted a law authorizing the President to take possession of Florida or of any part of it, in case of any attempt of a European power other than Spain herself to occupy it, and to use to that end the Army and Navy of the United States. Nothing of the sort needed to be done at that time, though a little later, during the War of 1812, Florida was invaded by a British force and immediately thereafter was occupied by an American army. The enunciation of this principle by Congress marked an epoch in American foreign policy, leading directly to the Monroe Doctrine a dozen years later. It also marked an epoch in the history of Cuba, especially so far as the relations of the Island with the United States were concerned. For while this declaration by Congress applied only to Florida, because Florida abutted directly upon the United States, the logic of events presently compelled it to be extended to Cuba. This was done a little more than a dozen years after the declaration concerning Florida. By this time Florida had been annexed to the United States and Mexico, Central America and South America had revolted against Spain and declared their independence. Only the "Ever Faithful Isle," as Cuba then began to be called, and Porto Rico remained to Spain of an empire which once nominally comprised the entire western hemisphere. Cuba was not like Florida geographically, abutting upon the United States. But it lay almost within sight from the coast of Florida and commanded the southern side of the Florida channel through which all American commerce from the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean must pass, and thus it was invested with peculiar importance to the United States. Nor was it lacking in importance to Great Britain and France. Those powers possessed extensive and valuable holdings in the West Indies and they were rivals for the reversionary title to these remaining Spanish Islands, Cuba and Porto Rico. Each of them realized that whichever of them should secure those two great Islands would, by virtue of that circumstance, become the dominant power in the West Indies. Moreover they both felt sure that Spain would soon have to relinquish her hold upon them. This latter belief prevailed widely also in the United States, and was by no means absent from Cuba itself. Indeed a party was organized in Cuba in the spring of 1822, for the express purpose of seeking annexation to the United States, and in September of that year did make direct overtures to that end to the American Government. The President of the United States, James Monroe, received these overtures in a cautious and non-committal manner. He sent a confidential agent to Cuba to examine into conditions there and to report upon them, but gave no direct encouragement to the annexation movement. At about this time the direction of the foreign affairs of Great Britain came into the hands of George Canning, a statesman of exceptional vision and aggressive patriotism, and one specially concerned with the welfare of British interests in the New World. He was well aware of the condition and trend of affairs in Cuba, and felt that the transfer of that Island from Spain to any other power would be unfortunate for British interests in the West Indies. When he learned of the Cuban overtures for annexation to the United States, therefore, in December, 1822, he brought the matter to the careful consideration of the British Cabinet and suggested to his colleagues that such annexation of Cuba by the United States would be a very serious detriment to the British Empire in the western hemisphere. He made no diplomatic representation upon the subject either to Spain or to the United States, but he did send a considerable naval force to the coastal waters of Cuba and Porto Rico, apparently with the purpose of preventing, if necessary, any such change in the sovereignty and occupancy of those Islands. [Illustration: GEORGE CANNING] In this Canning was probably over-anxious, since there is no indication whatever that the American Government contemplated any such step or that it would have attempted to take possession of Cuba if the Island had been left unguarded. On the other hand, this action of Canning's very naturally aroused American concern and provoked the suspicion that England was planning the seizure or purchase of the Island. The result was the formal application to Cuba of the principle which had already been enunciated by Congress in respect to Florida. It was the legislative branch of the United States Government that took that action toward Florida. It was the executive and diplomatic branch which took the action toward Cuba. This was done in a memorable state document which formed a land-mark in the history of American foreign policy. The American Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, on April 28, 1823, wrote an official letter to Hugh Nelson, who at the beginning of that year had become American minister to Spain. This letter contained official instructions to Nelson concerning his conduct in the war which was impending between Spain and France, because of the latter power's intervention in Spanish affairs in behalf of King Ferdinand VII. It then turned to the subject of Cuba and continued as follows: [Illustration: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS] "Whatever may be the issue of this war, it may be taken for granted that the dominion of Spain upon the American continents, north and south, is irrevocably gone. But the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico still remain nominally, and so far really, dependent upon her, that she yet possesses the power of transferring her own dominion over them, together with the possession of them, to others. These islands are natural appendages to the North American continent, and one of them almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union. Its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indian seas, its situation midway between our southern coast and the island of San Domingo, its safe and capacious harbor of the Havana, fronting a long line of our shores destitute of the same advantages, the nature of its production and of its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profitable and mutually beneficial give it an importance in the sum of our national interests with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared, and little inferior to that which binds the different members of this Union together. Such indeed are, between the interests of that island and of this country, the geographical, commercial, moral and political relations formed by nature, gathering in the process of time, and even now verging to maturity, that in looking forward to the probable course of events for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our Federal Republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself.... There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation. And if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but to fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only toward the North American Union, which, by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from her bosom. The transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of this Union.... The question both of our right and of our power to prevent it, if necessary, by force, already obtrudes itself upon our councils, and the Administration is called upon, in the performance of its duties to the nation, at least, to use all the means within its competency to guard against and forefend it." That was the beginning of the policy of the United States toward Cuba. In making that declaration Adams had general support and little or no opposition. A few weeks afterward the ex-President, Thomas Jefferson, writing to Monroe, expressed in part the same view, though he coupled it with the suggestion of an alliance with Great Britain. He wrote: "Cuba alone seems at present to hold up a speck of war to us. Its possession by Great Britain would indeed be a great calamity to us. Could we induce her to join us in guaranteeing its independence against all the world, except Spain, it would be nearly as valuable as if it were our own. But should she take it, I would not immediately go to war for it; because the first war on other accounts will give it to us, or the island will give herself to us when able to do so." Two years later, in 1825, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President John Quincy Adams, instructed the American ministers at the chief European capitals to make it known that the United States for itself desired no change in the political condition of Cuba; that it was satisfied to have it remain open to American commerce; but that it "could not with indifference see it passing from Spain to any other European power." A little later he added, referring to Cuba and Porto Rico, that "we could not consent to the occupation of those islands by any other European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever." This attitude of the American Government was sufficient to accomplish the purpose desired. Although the power of Spain continued to decline, no attempt was made by either France or England to acquire possession of Cuba by either conquest or purchase. But in August, 1825, the British Government laid before the American minister in London a proposal that the United States should unite with Great Britain and France in a tripartite agreement for the protection of Spain in her possession of Cuba to the effect that none of the three would take Cuba for itself or would acquiesce in the taking of it by either of the others. The American minister reported this to the President, who promptly and emphatically declined it. It was then that Henry Clay made the pronouncement already quoted, that the United States could not consent to the occupation of Cuba by any other European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever. A little later in the same year American interest in Cuba was again appealed to from another source. Several of the former Spanish colonies which had declared their independence, particularly Mexico and Colombia, expressed much dissatisfaction that Cuba and Porto Rico should remain in the possession of Spain. They desired to see the Spanish power entirely expelled from the western hemisphere. They therefore began intriguing for revolutions in those islands, and failing that prepared themselves to take forcible possession of them. These plans encountered the serious disapproval of the United States government, and on December 20, 1825, Henry Clay wrote to the representatives of the Mexican and Colombian governments urgently requesting them to refrain from sending the military expeditions to Cuba which were being prepared; a request with which they complied, Colombia readily but Mexico more reluctantly. Those two countries had been specially moved to their proposed action by the declaration of the famous Panama Congress, then in session, in favor of "the freeing of the islands of Porto Rico and Cuba from the Spanish yoke." It is interesting to recall, too, that in his instructions to the United States delegates to that Congress, who unfortunately did not arrive in time to participate in its deliberations, Clay declared that "even Spain has not such a deep interest in the future fate of Cuba as the United States." Justice requires us, unfortunately, in concluding our consideration of this early phase of Cuban-American relations, to confess that the motives of the United States were not at that time altogether of the highest character. To put it very plainly, there was much opposition to the extension of Mexican or Colombian influence to Cuba because that would have meant the abolition of human slavery in the island, and that would have been offensive to the slave states of the southern United States. Also some of the earliest movements in the United States toward the annexation of Cuba were inspired by the wish to maintain the institution of slavery in that island and to add it to the slave holding area of the United States. It was on such ground that Senator Hayne and others declared in the American Congress that the United States "would not permit Mexico or Colombia to take or to revolutionize Cuba." James Buchanan declared that under the control of one of those countries Cuba would become a dangerous explosive magazine for the southern slave States because Mexico and Colombia were free countries and "always conquered by proclaiming liberty to the slave." We have recalled these facts and circumstances in this place somewhat in advance of their strict chronological order, by way of introduction to the history of Cuba in the Nineteenth Century, because they really dominate in spirit the whole story. It will be necessary to recur to them again, briefly, in their proper place. But it is essential to bear them in mind from the beginning, even through this anticipatory review of them. Every page and line and letter of Cuban history in the Nineteenth Century is colored by the Declaration of Independence of 1776, by the fact that the United States of America had arisen as the foremost power in the Western Hemisphere. Through the inspiration which it gave to the French Revolution, the United States was chiefly responsible, as an alien force, for the complete collapse of Spain as a great European power. Through its example and potential influence as a protector it was responsible for the revolt and independence of the Spanish colonies in Central and South America. Then through its assertion of special interests in Cuba, because of propinquity, and through the tangible influence of commercial and social intercourse, together with a constantly increasing and formidable, though generally concealed, political sway, it determined the future destinies of the Queen of the Antilles. CHAPTER XVI We must consider, in order rightly to understand the situation of Cuba at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the momentous train of incidents in her history which then began, the salient features of the history of Spain at that time. The reign of Charles III. had temporarily restored Spain to a place in the front rank of European powers, with particularly close relations, through the Bourbon crowns of the two countries, with France. But that rank was of brief duration. In 1788 Charles IV. came to the throne, one of the weakest, most vacillating and most ignoble of princes, who was content to let his kingdom be governed for him by his wife's notorious lover. A few years later the Bourbon crown of France was sent to the guillotine, and then came the deluge, in which Spain was overwhelmed and entirely wrecked. The first Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1796 made Spain little better than the vassal of France in the latter's war against Great Britain. That was the work of Godoy, the "Prince of the Peace" and the paramour of the queen. Against him Spain revolted in 1798 and he was forced to retire from office, only to be restored to it by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800. Then came the second secret and scandalous Treaty of San Ildefonso, in which Spain was the merest tool and dupe of France, or of Napoleon; and in 1803 there followed another international compact under which Spain agreed to pay France a considerable yearly subsidy. A few years later occurred the French invasion, the abdication of Charles IV., the accession, then merely nominal, of Ferdinand VII., the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte, and the Peninsular War. The effect of these events was two-fold, the two parts strongly contrasting. On the one hand, the Spanish national spirit was aroused as it had not been for many years. Napoleon's aggressions went too far. His ambition overleaped itself. In their resistance and resentment the Spanish people "found themselves" and rose to heights of patriotism which they had not scaled before. Concurrently they began the development of a liberal and progressive spirit of inestimable significance. They demanded a constitution and the abolition of old abuses which for generations had been stifling the life of the Peninsula. On the other hand, the prestige of Spain in her trans-Atlantic colonies was hopelessly impaired, and her physical power to maintain her authority in them was destroyed. With French and British armies making the Peninsula their fighting ground, Spain had no armies to spare for the suppression of Central and South American rebellions. Thus while there was an auspicious renascence of national vigor at home, there was an ominous decline of imperial authority abroad. The work of Miranda, San Martin and Bolivar was thus facilitated and assured of success. In domestic affairs, Spain showed some progress, even under her worst rulers. Godoy, vile as he was, abolished the savagery of bull-fighting and promoted the policing of cities and the paving and cleaning of streets, some advance was made in popular education, and the intellectual life of the nation began to emerge from the eclipse which it had been suffering. Possibly the most significant achievement of all was the development of an approximation to popular government, with an attempt to unify Spain and the colonies; which latter came too late. The Junta Central in January, 1809, declared that the American colonies were an integral part of the Spanish Kingdom, and were not mere appanages of the crown. This was revolutionary, but it was insisted upon by the Junta, and practical steps were taken to make the principle effective. The Junta was driven from Seville by Napoleon, whereupon it fled to Cadiz, and there, in superb defiance of the invader and oppressor, arranged for the assembling of a Cortes, or National Parliament, in which the colonies should be fully represented. This body, a single chamber, met in September, 1810, with elected representatives from the American colonies, including Cuba. Owing to the difficulty of getting deputies from America in time, however, men were selected in Spain to represent the colonies at the opening of the session. A tangled skein of history followed. The Cortes, though far from radical in tone, was progressive and was sincerely devoted to the principle of popular government, and it insisted upon the adoption of the Constitution of 1812, under which the people were made supreme, with the crown and the church in subordinate places. All Spaniards, in America as well as in Europe, were citizens of the kingdom, and were entitled to vote for members of the Cortes and were protected by a bill of rights. In many respects it was one of the most liberal and enlightened constitutions then existing in the world. The first act of the wretched Ferdinand VII., however, when Napoleon permitted him to return to Spain, was to decree the abrogation of this constitution and the establishment of a most repressive and reactionary régime which liberals were cruelly persecuted. The result of this was to promote the revolution which had already begun in America, and to provoke a revolution in the Peninsula itself; in the face of which latter Ferdinand pretended to yield and to consent to the summoning of another Cortes and the reestablishment of the Constitution of 1812. These things were effected in 1820. But the false and fickle Ferdinand made his appeal to the reactionary sovereigns of the Holy Alliance, with the result that in 1823 the French invaded Spain to suppress Liberalism, and those preparations were made for the resubjugation of Spain's American colonies which were frustrated by the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in the United States. Meantime all the Spanish colonies on the American continents had not only declared but had actually achieved their independence. There were left to Spain in all the Western Hemisphere, therefore, only the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico; and they remained intensely loyal. When the legitimate King of Spain was deposed in favor of Joseph Bonaparte, Cuba made it plain and emphatic that she would not recognize the French usurper, but would remain true to Ferdinand VII. Again, when the colonies of Central and South America seceded and declared their independence, Cuba remained loyal to the kingdom. It was because of these two acts that Cuba became known at the Spanish Court as "Our Ever Faithful Isle." For this contrast between Cuba and the rest of Spanish America there were three major reasons. One was, the insular position of Cuba, which separated her from the other Spanish provinces and their direct influence and cooperation, and which thus placed her at an enormous disadvantage for any revolutionary undertakings. The second was the character of the people. The Spanish settlers of Cuba had come chiefly from Andalusia and Estremadura, and were the very flower of the Iberian race, and from them had descended those who after three centuries were entitled to be regarded as the Cuban people. They retained unimpaired the finest qualities of the great race that in the sixteenth century had made Spain all but the mistress of the world, and they still cherished a chivalric loyalty to the spirit and the traditions of that wondrous age. In other colonies the settlement was more varied. Men had flocked in from Galicia and Catalonia, with a spirit radically different from that of Andalusians and Estremadurans. To this day the contrast between Cubans and the people of any other Latin-American state is obvious and unmistakable. The third reason was this, that in the years, perhaps a full generation, preceding the South and Central American revolt, Spain had manifested toward Cuba a disposition and actual practices well calculated to confirm that country in its loyalty and in its expectation of enjoying liberty and prosperity under the Spanish crown in an age of Spanish renascence. With the brief English occupation, indeed, the modern history of Cuba began in circumstances of the most auspicious character. The English opened Havana to the trade of the world and caused it to realize what its possibilities were of future expansion and greatness. Then the Spanish government, reestablished throughout the island, for a time showed Cuba marked favor. The old-time trade monopoly, which had been destroyed by the English, was abandoned in favor of a liberal and enlightened policy. Commerce, industry and agriculture were encouraged, even with bounties. Cuba was made to feel that there were very practical advantages in being a colony of Spain. Moreover, the island enjoyed a succession of capable and liberal governors, or captains-general; notably Luis de las Casas at the end of the eighteenth century, and the Marquis de Someruelos in the first dozen years of the nineteenth century. Under benevolent administrators and beneficent laws, and with Spain herself adopting the liberal constitution of 1812, Cuba had good cause to remain loyal to the Spanish connection. But these very same conditions and circumstances ultimately made Cuba supremely resolute in her efforts for independence. The men of Andalusian and Estremaduran ancestry had been loyal to Spain, but they were just as resolute in their loyalty to Cuba when they were once convinced that there must be a breach of relations. The same characteristics that made their ancestors the leaders of the Spanish race in adventure and in conquest made them now equally ready to be leaders in the great adventure of conquering the independence of Cuba from Spain. And if the liberal laws and policy of Spain, and the Constitution of 1812, had greatly commended Spanish government to them, the restored Spanish king's flat repudiation of all those things equally condemned that government. We must therefore reckon the rise of the spirit of Cuban independence from the date on which Ferdinand VII. repudiated the constitution which he had sworn to defend. From 1812 to 1820 that spirit passed through the period of gestation, and in the years following the latter date it was born and began to make its vitality manifest. The king's pretended repentance and readoption of the Constitution of 1812 in 1820 came too late, and when it was followed by several years of alternating weakness and violence, and by the French intervention in 1823, the Cuban resolution for independence was formed. To that resolution, once formed, Cuba clung with a persistence which for the third time entitled her to the name of "Ever Faithful Isle." But now it was to herself that she was faithful. [Illustration: JUAN JOSÉ DIAZ ESPADA Born at Arroyave, Spain, on April 20, 1756, and educated at Salamanca, Juan José Diaz Espada y Landa entered the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, and on January 1, 1800, was Bishop of Cuba. Much more than a mere churchman, he applied himself with singular ability and energy to the promotion of the mental and physical welfare of the people as well as to their religious culture. He strongly assisted Dr. Tomas Romay in introducing vaccination into the island and in the prosecution of other sanitary measures, and was one of the foremost patrons of education. He also gave much attention to the correction of abuses which had grown up in the ecclesiastical administration. He died on August 13, 1832, leaving a record for good works second to that of no other ecclesiastic in the history of Cuba.] Seldom, indeed, has there been an era in the history of the world more strongly suited to cause the rise of a revolutionary spirit in such a people as the Cubans, than was the early part of the nineteenth century. We have already referred to the United States of America and its attitude toward Cuba and Cuban affairs. That country had achieved its independence in circumstances scarcely more favorable than would be those of a Cuban revolt; and it presently waged another war which made it formidable among the nations. On the other hand, all Europe was in war-ridden chaos, with the rights of peoples to self-determination made a sport of autocrats. There was nothing more evident than that republicanism was the policy of order, stability and progress. The United States had just forced Spain to sell Louisiana to France, and then had forced France to sell it to itself. That was an object lesson which was not lost upon thoughtful Cubans any more than upon the peoples of Central and South America. It demonstrated that the power of Spain was waning, and that the dominant power in the western world was that of Republicanism. And Cubans, as well as others, were not blind to the practical advantages of being on the winning side. Indeed, before that Cuba had had another great object lesson. At the middle of the eighteenth century the English had seized Havana. That in itself indicated clearly the decline of Spain and her inability to protect or even to hold her own colonies. But the English force which achieved that stroke was by no means purely English. It was largely composed of Americans, soldiers from the British Colonies in North America who were, of course, British subjects but who were more and more calling themselves Americans; and who in course of time altogether rejected British rule and established an independent republic. First, then, Spain was beaten by England; and next England was beaten by the United States. Obviously the latter was the power to whom to look for guidance and support. There were still other circumstances making toward the same end. We have remarked upon the puissant opulence of Spanish intellectuality in the first century of her possession of Cuba, and upon, also, the paucity of native Cuban achievements in letters. But in the seventeenth century a decline of Spanish letters and art began, with ominous progression, until at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the very nadir of intellectual life had been reached. This was the more noteworthy and the more significant because of the contrast which the Peninsula thus presented to other lands. Elsewhere throughout Europe and in America that was an era of great and splendid intellectual activity. In almost every department of letters, science and art fine deeds, original and creative, were being done. The colossal military operations that convulsed the world from the beginning of the American Revolution to the fall of Napoleon sometimes blind our eyes and deaden our ears to what was then done in the higher walks of life; but the fact is that probably in no other equal space of time in the world's history was the mind of man more fecund, in both theory and practice. In science that era was adorned with the names of Priestly, Jenner, Herschel, Montgolfier, Fulton, Whitney, Volta, Pestalozzi, Piazzi, Davy, Cuvier, Oersted, Stevenson, Humboldt, Lavoisier, Buffon, Linnaeus. In music, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. In literature the annals of those days read like a recapitulation of universal genius: Goethe, Kant, Herder, Lessing, Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, De Stael, Chateaubriand, Beranger, Lamartine, Burns, Scott, Goldsmith, Johnson, Adam Smith, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Colderidge, Lamb, Alfieri, Richter, Niebuhr, Derzhavin. The steamboat and the railroad came into existence. The Institute of France, the University of France, and the University of Berlin were founded. As on more than one other occasion political and military activity, in the direction of liberal revolution, stimulated intellectuality and made invention and letters vie with arms. Amid all this, Spain alone stood singular in her decline. Not one name of the first rank adorned her annals. In the two departments of letters which perhaps most of all reflect the national mind and spirit, lyrical poetry and the drama, she was almost entirely lacking. Most of such writers as she had seemed content to copy weakly French examples. And even when the Spanish people rose with splendid patriotic energy against the tyranny of Napoleon, fought their war of independence, and strove to establish their liberal Constitution of 1812 upon the wreck of broken Bourbonism, there was scarcely a glimmer of intellectual inspiration such as those deeds might have been expected to produce. It was reserved for later years, even for our own time, for Spanish letters to regain a place of mastery amid the foremost of the world. Meantime the intellectual life of Cuba was beginning to dawn. As early as 1790 a purely literary journal of fine rank, _El Papel Periodico_, was founded in Havana, and during many years contained contributions of sterling merit. As these were all unsigned, their authorship remains chiefly unknown. We know, however, that among them were two poets of real note, Manuel Justo de Rubalcava and Manuel de Zequiera y Arango. These were not, it is true, native Cubans. They were Spaniards from New Granada. But with many others from the South and Central American provinces they became fully identified with Cuban life and Cuban aspirations. In the third year of the nineteenth century, too, there was born of Spanish refugee parents from Santo Domingo, Cuba's greatest poet and indeed the greatest poet in Spanish literature in that century, José Maria Heredia. True, he called himself a Spaniard, in the spirit of the "Ever Faithful Isle," and referred to Spain as his "Alma Mater." He was in his youth a passionate partisan of the liberal movement in the Peninsula, especially of the revolution led by Riego, and his earliest poems were written in support of that ill-fated struggle and in scathing denunciation of the French oppressor of Spain and of those unworthy Spaniards who consented to the suppression in blood of the rising cause of liberty. A little later these very poems were equally applicable to the situation in Cuba, when the people of that island began to rise against their Spanish oppressors, and when a certain element among them consented to oppression. Thereafter his writings were largely the literary inspiration of Cuban patriotism; and he himself was doomed by Spain to perpetual banishment from the island of his birth. One other factor in the situation must be recalled. During the period which we are now considering Cuba was the asylum for a strangely mingled company of both loyalists and revolutionists; with the former probably predominating. When Spain lost Santo Domingo to France, many of the Spanish inhabitants of that island removed to Cuba; and when the island under Toussaint rose against Spain, there was a flight of both Spanish and French in the same direction. Also, when one after another of the Spanish provinces on the continent began to revolt, Cuba was sought as an asylum. Spanish loyalists came hither to escape the revolution which they did not approve; and it is quite possible that they were in sufficient numbers materially to affect the course and determination of the island, first in standing by Ferdinand against Napoleon and later in declining to join the revolutionists of the American continents. Yet not a few of these became in a short time imbued with Cuban patriotism and cast in their lot with the natives of the island. There were also many revolutionary refugees, who sought asylum in Cuba when their cause seemed not to be prospering in other lands. As we shall see, the first important Cuban revolutionist, Narciso Lopez, came from Venezuela; and there were others from that country, and from Guatemala and Mexico; sufficient to exert much influence in insular affairs. It was in these strangely diverse and complex circumstances that Cuba entered the third great era of her existence. She was still a Spanish colony, and she was still a potential pawn in the international games of diplomacy and war. But she had at last gravitated politically toward the American rather than the European system, and she had begun to develop a spirit of individual nationality which was destined after many years and many labors to assure her a place among the sovereign states of the Western Hemisphere. CHAPTER XVII For a correct understanding of the internal dissensions and uprisings which played so large a part in the history of Cuba during the greater part of the nineteenth century, it is necessary to have clearly in mind an idea of the number, nature and distribution of her population during this period. The first record of anything like a satisfactory enumeration of the people of the island is that of the census of 1775. It was known as that of the Abbe Raynal, and was taken under the direction and by order of the Marquis de la Torre. It was so far from being accurate and complete that it can hardly be regarded as much more than a fair estimate. Indeed, most authorities are of the opinion that its figures are far below the actual facts. It showed a population of 170,370, for the entire island, with 75,604 of this number residing in the district of Havana. The population of Cuba at that time was made up almost entirely of two races, the whites and the blacks, the native Indians having long ago practically disappeared. The following table gives a brief resumé of the result of the census of 1775: _Men_ _Women_ Whites 54,555 40,864 Free colored 15,980 14,635 Slaves 28,774 15,562 -------- ------- 99,309 71,061 Total 170,370 The spirit in which this census was taken was admirable. It sought not only to present statistics as to the age, race, sex and social condition of the population, but also, so far as possible, to indicate something of its distribution. It is not difficult to imagine, however, what a momentous undertaking such a work must have been with the meagre facilities then in the hands of the authorities, and it is not astonishing that the results left much to be desired. The failure was not one of intent but of the means by which the information might be acquired. In 1791 a second attempt to enumerate and classify the population of Cuba was made by order of Don Luis de las Casas. This showed a population of 272,141. This apparently great increase, however, is to be attributed to a more accurate compilation, rather than to any unusual immigration to Cuba during this period. Indeed careful statisticians, notably Baron Humboldt, have reached the conclusion that even these figures fell far below the truth, and that in reality the population of the island at this period numbered at least 362,700 adult persons. Humboldt's conclusions merit quotation. He says: "In 1804 I discussed the census of Don Luis de las Casas with persons who possessed great knowledge of the locality. Examining the proportions of the numbers omitted in the partial comparisons, it seemed to us that the population of the island, in 1791, could not have been less than 362,700 souls. This has been augmented, during the years between 1791 and 1804, by the number of African negroes imported, which, according to the custom-house returns for that period, amounted to 60,393; by the immigration from Europe and St. Domingo (5,000); and by the excess of births over deaths, which, in truth, is indeed small in a country where one-fourth or one-fifth of the entire population is condemned to live in celibacy. The result of these three causes of increase was reckoned to be 60,000, estimating an annual loss of seven per cent, on the newly imported negroes; this gives approximately, for the year 1804, a minimum of 432,080 inhabitants. I estimated this number for the year 1804, to comprise, whites, 234,000, free-colored, 90,000, slaves, 180,000. I estimated the slave population, graduating the production of sugar at 80 to 100 arrobas for each negro on the sugar plantations, and 82 slaves as the mean population of each plantation. There were then, 250 of these. In the seven parishes, Guanajay, Managua, Batabano, Guines, Cano, Bejucal, and Guanabacoa, there were found, by an exact census, 15,130 slaves on 183 sugar plantations." After expatiating on the difficulty of ascertaining with absolute accuracy the ratio of the production of sugar to the number of negroes employed on the different estates, Humboldt continues: "The number of whites can be estimated by the rolls of the militia, of which, in 1804, there were 2,680 disciplined, and 27,000 rural, notwithstanding the great facilities for avoiding the service, and innumerable exemptions granted to lawyers, physicians, apothecaries, notaries, clergy and church servants, schoolmasters, overseers, traders and all who are styled noble." Accepting, however, for the moment the figures of the census of 1791, merely for the sake of future comparison, let us see how the population of the island was distributed at this period. Of the 272,141 inhabitants shown by the census over half, or 137,800, were in the district of Havana, and almost one third of the latter number in the city itself. These were divided as follows: Whites, both sexes 73,000 Free colored, both sexes 27,600 Slaves, both sexes 37,200 ------- 137,800 One of the best reasons for believing that this 1791 census does not tell the whole story is that the proportion of white persons to the black slaves is practically two to one, while as a matter of fact the most eminent authorities are agreed that during the first half of the nineteenth century, and for some years previous, it was about 100 to 83, a matter which, as we shall see, was of grave concern to the Spanish colonists. It should be noted in passing that the greediness with which the Spanish conquerors regarded their possessions in the New World had marked effect on the difficulties of numbering the people. For too well the plantation owners had learned that a record of an increase in their possessions, an added number of slaves or signs of growing prosperity, meant that the long arm of the crown would stretch out to despoil by further taxation, added to the already heavy toll. It is no wonder, therefore, that the efforts of the census takers were impeded rather than furthered. In 1811, when the slave trade and the consequent increase of the black population was giving great concern to the more intelligent and far-seeing of the Cuban patriots, pressure was brought to bear on the Spanish government and on March 26 of that year, Señors Alcocer and Arguelles made a motion in the Spanish Cortes against the African slave-trade and the continuation of slavery in the Spanish colonies. A little later in the same year Don Francisco de Arango, an exceedingly erudite statesman, also made a remonstrance to the Cortes upon the same subject. This was in the name of the Ayuntamiento, the Consulado and the Patriotic Society of Havana. The text of this representation or remonstrance may be found in the "_Documents relative to the slave-trade, 1814_." Unfortunately in compiling the tables which were published in 1811 no new census was taken, and the increases in population from 1791 to 1811 were merely estimated. These estimates show a population of 600,000--a greater number, it is interesting to note, by many thousands than was shown by the census of 1817, with which we shall deal later. This population was distributed as follows: _Western Part of the_ _Free_ _Island_. _Whites_ _Colored_ _Slaves_ _Total_ Surrounding Country 118,000 15,000 119,000 252,000 Havana and Suburbs 43,000 27,000 28,000 98,000 ------- ------ ------- ------- 161,000 42,000 147,000 350,000 _Eastern Part of the Island_. Santiago de Cuba 40,000 38,000 32,000 110,000 Puerto Principe 38,000 14,000 18,000 70,000 Cinco Villas 35,000 20,000 15,000 70,000 ------- ------ ------ ------- 113,000 72,000 65,000 250,000 ------- ------- ------- ------- Totals 274,000 114,000 212,000 600,000 From the above we can see that at this time there were only 62,000 more white people in Cuba than there were slaves, and if we take into consideration the free blacks, then the negroes exceeded the white population by 52,000. This was perhaps inevitable when we consider that there must be labor to develop the plantations and that that labor was almost entirely provided by the slave trade. Nevertheless, the white population of Cuba lived in somewhat the same state of subconscious terror of the possibilities of a black uprising which tormented the planters in portions of the United States. But "that is another story" of which we shall hear more later. In 1813 the Spanish Cortes passed certain measures, which, together with the necessity for as accurate as possible an enumeration of the population of the island for the purpose of an equitable establishment of electoral juntas of provinces, partidas and parishes, made a new census obligatory. This was taken in 1817. The results of this new census were as follows: _Districts_ _White_ _Free colored_ _Slaves_ _Western Department:_ Havana 135,177 40,419 112,122 Matanzas 10,617 1,675 9,594 Trinidad (with Sancti Spiritus, Remedios, and Villa Clara) 51,864 16,411 14,497 _Eastern Department:_ Santiago (with Bayamo, Holguin, and Baracoa) 33,733 50,230 46,500 Puerto Principe 25,989 6,955 16,579 ------- ------- ------- 257,380 115,691 199,292 Total 572,363 The census of 1817 was without doubt the most perfect which had up to that time been taken; but, for the reasons before given, it was far from being an accurate enumeration. To these figures, before transmitting them to Spain, the Provincial Deputation added 32,641 transients of various kinds, and 25,967 negroes imported during the year in which the census was taken. These additions made the report read as follows: Whites 290,021 Free Colored 115,691 Slaves 225,259 ------- Total 630,971 It would seem that these various censuses and the estimate of 1811 show great discrepancies, but on this point we have the sage observations of no less an authority than Baron Humboldt to guide us. He says: "We shall not be surprised at the partial contradiction found in the tables of population when we taken into consideration all the difficulties that have been encountered in the centres of European civilization, England and France, whenever the great operation of a general census is attempted. No one is ignorant, for example, of the fact that the population of Paris, in 1820, was 714,000, and from the number of deaths, and supposed proportion of births to the total population, it is believed to have been 520,000, at the beginning of the eighteenth century; yet during the administration of M. Necker, the ascertained population was one-sixth less than this number." The process of census taking even in this twentieth century is an enormous undertaking and not free from error. How much more difficult must it have been in a country where it was to the interest of the intelligent to suppress the facts, where a large proportion of the population was still in slavery, and where means of communication from place to place were far from adequate! Baron Humboldt after very careful calculation estimated the population at the close of 1825 to be as follows: Whites 325,000 Free colored 130,000 Slaves 260,000 ------- Total 715,000 This was nearly equal to that of the British Antilles, and about twice that of Jamaica. During the first half of the nineteenth century three additional censuses were taken: _Census of 1827_ _Whites_ _Free Colored_ _Slaves_ _Total_ _Department_ _Male_ _Female_ _Male_ _Female_ _Male_ _Female_ Western 89,526 75,532 21,235 24,829 125,388 72,027 408,537 Central 53,447 44,776 13,296 10,950 28,398 13,630 164,497 Eastern 25,680 22,090 17,431 18,753 29,504 17,995 131,353 ------- ------- ------ ------ ------- ------- ------- Total 168,653 142,398 51,962 54,532 183,290 103,652 704,487 _Census of 1841_ _Whites_ _Free Colored_ _Slaves_ _Total_ _Department_ _Male_ _Female_ _Male_ _Female_ _Male_ _Female_ Western 135,079 108,944 32,726 33,737 207,954 113,320 631,760 Central 60,035 53,838 15,525 16,054 34,939 15,217 195,608 Eastern 32,030 28,365 27,452 27,344 38,357 25,708 180,256 ------- ------- ------ ------ ------- ------- --------- Total 227,144 191,147 75,703 77,135 281,250 155,245 1,007,624 _Census for 1846_ _Whites_ _Free Colored_ _Slaves_ _Total_ _Department_ _Male_ _Female_ _Male_ _Female_ _Male_ _Female_ Western 133,968 110,141 28,964 32,730 140,131 87,682 533,617 Central 62,262 52,692 17,041 17,074 32,425 14,560 196,954 Eastern 34,753 31,951 26,646 26,771 28,455 20,506 169,082 ------- ------- ------ ------ ------- ------- ------- Total 230,983 194,784 72,651 76,575 201,011 122,748 898,752 J. S. Thrasher, translator of Baron Humboldt's admirable work on Cuba, and himself an authority of note, offers the following interesting and suggestive discussion of the census of 1846: "The slightest examination leads to the belief that there is some error in the figures of the census of 1846; and we are inclined to doubt its results, for the following reasons: "1st--During the period between 1841 and 1846, no great cause, as epidemic, or emigration on a large scale, existed to check the hitherto steady increase of the slave population, and cause a decrease of 112,736 in its numbers, being nearly twenty six per cent. of the returns of 1841; which apparent decrease and the annihilation of former rate of increase (3.7 per cent. yearly), amount together to a loss of 47 per cent., in six years. "2d.--During this period the material prosperity of the country experienced no decrease, except the loss of part of one crop, consequent upon the hurricane of 1845. "3d.--During the period from 1842 to 1846, the church returns of christenings and interments were as follows: _White_ _Colored_ _Total_ Christenings 87,049 74,302 161,349 Interments 51,456 57,762 109,218 ------ ------ ------- Increase 35,591 16,540 52,131 "4th.--And because ... a capitation tax upon house servants was imposed in 1844, and a very general fear existed that it would be extended to other classes." Incorrect as we have seen these various censuses to be, they do furnish us with very interesting means of analysis. We can see by the foregoing tables that the free population (black and white) was nearly two thirds of the entire population of the island; and also that, according to the last census given above, the blacks on the island exceeded the white people by many thousands. The balance of power then lay with the free blacks. But this was not as dangerous as it may seem--as it often appeared to the Cubans. At this stage of his history the negro was not even one generation removed from his native jungle. He was imitating the white man not so much in his quiet virtues as in his glaring and showy vices. The negro is naturally sociable and happy-go-lucky. The island of Cuba has not a climate which is conducive to arduous labors. The natural tendency of the colored freed man was to gravitate away from the plantations, into the cities and villages. This made it necessary constantly to be importing new slaves to take the place of the freed man. Frequently, however, the latter improved in his new surroundings. His freedom, his increased obligations, his new sense of self-respect, made him desire to throw his fortunes, not with his enslaved black brothers but with the free born white man. This was the more easy of accomplishment because there is no place in the world where people are more democratic in matters of race than in Cuba. A free black man who improved his opportunities was sure of being received as the equal of the white man in the same station of life. This even extended to intermarriage with white women. Miscegenation was very common, but curiously enough, more common in plantation life, on the same basis that the American planter in the southern part of the United States conducted his relations with his women slaves. The tendency of the free colored man, in spite of his new opportunities, was to marry one of his own race. In 1820 the slave-trade with Africa was legally abolished, and undoubtedly if this law had been enforced the negro population would have diminished rapidly, because the mortality of the negro race in slavery is very high. Even in Cuba, a land where the climate is more similar to that of his own country than that of any part of the United States, the negro is all too frequently a victim of tuberculosis. Indeed, although in the Custom House between 1811 and 1817, 67,000 negroes were registered as imported, and the real number must have been far greater, in 1817 there were only 13,300 more slaves than in 1811. Another reason, too, would have contributed very quickly to the diminishing of the negro population. Spain, always greedy for the main chance, never far-seeing in her relations with her American possessions, had urged the importation of male slaves in preference to females. Of course this meant a preponderance of laborers, but it also militated against the increase of the race in Cuba by natural means. There was far from being a sufficient number of young women of child-bearing age. On the plantations the proportion of women to men was one to four; in the cities the rate was better, 1 to 1.4; in Havana 1 to 1.2; and in the island considered as a whole 1 to 1.7. For a normal and proper birth rate there must be a preponderance of women over men. But, although the laws forbade the slave traffic, by illicit means it continued to be carried on. Between 1811 and 1825 no fewer than 185,000 African negroes were imported into Cuba; 60,000 of these subsequent to the passage of the measure of 1820. The ratio of population to the square league is a very interesting and illuminating study. On this point J. S. Thrasher gives us some excellent deductions: "Supposing the population to be 715,000 (which I believe to be within the minimum number) the ratio of population in Cuba, in 1825, was 197 individuals to the square league, and, consequently, nearly twice less than that of San Domingo, and four times smaller than that of Jamaica. If Cuba were as well cultivated as the latter island, or, more properly speaking, if the density of population were the same, it would contain 3,515 x 974, or 3,159,000 inhabitants." In 1811, at the time the population was estimated, we find the negroes to have been distributed as follows; the figures indicating percentages: _Western Department_ _Free_ _Slave_ _Total_ In towns 11 11-1/2 22-1/2 In rural districts 1-1/2 34 35-1/2 _Eastern Department_ In towns 11 9-1/2 20-1/2 In rural districts 11 10-1/2 21-1/2 -------- -------- -------- 34-1/2 65-1/2 100 The foregoing indicates that sixty per cent. of the black population at this period lived in the district of Havana, and that there were about equal numbers of freedmen and slaves, that the total black population in that portion of the island was distributed between towns and country in the ratio of two to three, while in the eastern part of the island the distribution between towns and country was about equal. We shall find the foregoing compilations of inestimable value in consideration of the problem which was such a source of concern to the white population and which played so large a part in this period of the history of Cuba; namely, slavery. CHAPTER XVIII The first records of the slave trade in Cuba--so far as the eastern part of the island is concerned--were in 1521. Curiously enough it was begun by Portuguese rather than Spanish settlers. It was a well recognized institution, licensed by the government. The first license was held by one Gasper Peralta, and covered the trade with the entire Spanish America. Later French traders visited Havana and took tobacco in trade for their slaves. The English, during their possession of the island, far from frowning on the traffic, encouraged it; yet in the latter part of the eighteenth century the number of slaves in Cuba was estimated not to exceed 32,000. This was previous to 1790. Of these 32,000, 25,000 were in the district of Havana. Baron Humboldt is authority for some interesting figures on the traffic. "The number of Africans imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000, whose descendants exist" (he writes in 1856) "among the free mulattoes, the greater part of which inhabit the eastern part of the island. From 1763 to 1790 when the trade in negroes was thrown open, Havana received 24,875 (by the Tobacco Company, 4,957 from 1763 to 1766; by the contract with the Marquis de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract with Baker and Dawson, 5,786 from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the importation of slaves in the eastern part of the island during these twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6,000, we have a total importation of 80,875 from the time of the discovery of Cuba, or more properly speaking, from 1521 to 1790." It was in the period of which we are writing, particularly in the very early years of the nineteenth century, that the slave trade most flourished in Cuba. It is estimated that more slaves were bought and sold from 1790 to 1820 than in all the preceding history of the Spanish possession of the island. England, possibly seeing what an enormous power for developing the natural wealth of the island an influx of free labor would give to Spain, entered into an arrangement with Ferdinand VII.--whose sole animating motive in dealing with his foreign possessions seems to have been to grab the reward in hand and let the future take care of itself--whereby, upon the payment by England to the king of four hundred thousand pounds sterling, to compensate for the estimated loss which the cessation of the slave trade would mean to the colonies, Ferdinand agreed that the slave trade north of the equator should be restricted from November 22, 1817, and totally abolished on May 30, 1820. Ferdinand accepted the money, but as we have seen he did not fulfil his contract and winked at the continuation of the importation of labor from Africa. The following table shows an importation into the district of Havana alone, for a period of 31 years, of 225,574 Africans: 1790 2,534 1806 4,395 1791 8,498 1807 2,565 1792 8,528 1808 1,607 1793 3,777 1809 1,152 1794 4,164 1810 6,672 1795 5,832 1811 6,349 1796 5,711 1812 6,081 1797 4,552 1813 4,770 1798 2,001 1814 4,321 1799 4,919 1815 9,111 1800 4,145 1816 17,737 1801 1,659 1817 25,841 1802 13,832 1818 19,902 1803 9,671 1819 17,194 1804 8,923 1820 4,122 1805 4,999 ------- Total 225,574 But Havana was not the only port through which slaves entered Cuba, and the recognized channels were not the only ones through which they came. Therefore, to provide for the illicit importations and those made at Trinidad and Santiago these figures should be increased by at least one fourth to cover the importations for the whole island. This gives us the following results: From 1521 to 1763 60,000 1764 33,409 Havana From 1791 to 1805 91,211 1806 to 1820 131,829 Secret trade and trade in other parts of the island 56,000 ------- 372,499 As we have seen, the trade did not stop when it was made illegal. We have the authority of one of the British commissioners at Havana that in 1821 twenty-six vessels engaged in the slave trade landed 6,415 slaves; and this gentleman also states that only about fifty per cent. of such arrivals ever reached the attention of the commissioners, so that to this number an equal amount should be added to provide for the slaves imported by "underground" methods. The yearly reports of these British commissioners furnish some food for thought on this subject. They report the following data: 1822, 10 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--3,000 slaves 1823, 4 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--1,200 " 1824, 17 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--5,100 " 1825, 14 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--4,200 " 1826, 11 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--3,000 " 1827, 10 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--3,500 " 1828, 28 vessels arrived, bringing--estimated--7,000 " -------- 27,000 " Adding the estimated one half for the number not reported 13,500 " ------- 40,500 " In 1838, the British consul at Havana reported to the foreign office in London, regarding slave importations into Cuba for the previous nine years: 1829 8,600 1830 9,800 1831 10,400 1832 8,200 1833 9,000 1834 11,400 1835 14,800 1836 14,200 1837 15,200 ------- Total 101,600 Add 1/5 20,320 ------- 121,920 It will be observed that the consulate adds only one fifth to cover the secret importations during this period. From 1838 to 1853 the importations, according to records laid before the British House of Commons, were as follows: 1838 10,495 1846 419 1839 10,995 1847 1,450 1840 10,104 1848 1,500 1841 8,893 1849 8,700 1842 3,630 1850 3,500 1843 8,000 1851 5,000 1844 10,000 1852 7,924 1845 1,300 1st half 1853 7,329 ------ 99,239 During the early years of the slave trade, the Spanish masters treated their slaves not so well as they treated their work animals. But gradually they began to realize that after all it was cheaper to keep the slaves that they had in good physical condition than to be continually buying new ones, especially when the trade had fallen off because of legal restrictions. A greater number of colored women were imported; the moral condition of the negroes, especially as to marriage, became a subject of greater interest to the plantation owners; the negroes were encouraged to marry, and wives were recruited from among the mulattoes as well as those of pure black blood. Some efforts were made for better sanitary conditions toward the middle of the century, and persons were employed on the estates whose business it was to look after the sick slaves and nurse them. In the last analysis, however, the conditions under which the slaves lived on each plantation rested entirely--as it did in the United States--on the kind of overseers under whom they were employed. There are many touching stories of the devotion of the slaves to their master. This was quite as great as among the old southern families in the United States. The Cuban was naturally a kind master--we wish the Spanish-born planter might always be as well spoken of--and he inspired in his slaves a feeling of real affection. This often developed into a single hearted devotion so great that the slave grew to count his master's enemies as his own. This is not extraordinary when we consider that the African, torn from his own home and family ties and transported to a strange country, among a strange people, took the name of his master and became a part of the big household, identified not only with the working life but also with the social life of the little community represented by the plantation. Fierce as he may have been in his native surroundings, he was naturally affectionate and clung eagerly to the one who, holding the slave's whole destiny in his hand, yet was kind to him. The women slaves, especially those of mixed blood, were bound to their masters often by ties of consanguinity. They attended the master's wife when her children were born, nursed the babies at their own breasts, and served and waited upon the second generation as foster mothers. They were like grown up children. The places where they lived, the food that they ate and the clothing that they wore were all under the control of the one whom they served. When he fell ill, they were devoted nurses, and when he died, they buried him, and manifested their grief in their own primitive fashion. The slave owner who treated his slaves well, until other factors began to enter the situation, had little to fear from them. But masters were not always kindly. There were as many different varieties of human disposition in those days as in these. The negro can hate as fiercely as he can love, and gradually, as he acquired more knowledge and understanding, on the estates where kindness was not the law, there grew up mutterings of discontent and hatred, and hints of possible uprisings. It was the excessive mortality among the black population which first, perhaps, influenced their owners to favor better laws and more natural and healthful conditions for them. Curiously enough, up to the opening of the nineteenth century there were "religious scruples" against the introduction of female slaves on the plantations, although the colored women were much less expensive to purchase than the men. The colored men were condemned to celibacy, as Baron Humboldt told us, "under the pretext that vicious habits were thus avoided." They were worked in the day time, and locked in at night to avoid their having any chance for female companionship. And yet, in spite of the fact that these "scruples" were "religious," we find the paradoxical situation that the Jesuit and Bethlehemite friars were the only planters who encouraged the importation of women slaves. Don Francisco de Arango, being a clear sighted man, endeavored to bring about the imposition of a tax upon such plantations as did not have at least one third as many women as men among their slaves. He also tried to have a duty of $6 levied upon every male negro imported from Africa. In both of these efforts he was defeated, but they had the excellent effect of stirring public opinion. While the juntas were opposed, as always, to enacting any such drastic measures, yet there began to be a disposition to encourage the mating of the slaves, to increase the number of marriages, to give each negro a little cabin of his own that he might call home, and, when children came, to see that they were properly cared for. Then, too, efforts were made to insure lighter work for the women during pregnancy, with a total relief as the time for the birth of the coming child grew nearer. How much of this came about because the slave owners were forced to see that a continuation of the early conditions would compass their own ruin, and how much because they were naturally inclined to be humane when their duty was brought home to them, it is difficult to determine; but judging from the Cuban's naturally kindly disposition, we are inclined to believe that in many instances the master was glad to treat his slaves as well as he could, when he began to realize that after all they were not merely property--cheap labor--but human beings with emotions and longings very much like his own. Under these bettered conditions the rate of negro mortality fell as low as from eight to six per cent. on the best plantations. Another element, however, which was not conducive to the betterment of the conditions of the negroes was the introduction of thousands of Chinese laborers. They contracted to work for a number of years at prices far below those usually estimated as fair, on the island. They were the very lowest type of Chinese, and brought with them many vicious influences and practices. No Chinese women were imported, and the Chinese men mingled freely with the negro women. The very worst kind of miscegenation was thus promoted, and the effect on the morals of the negroes on the estates where these Chinese were employed was very bad indeed. In no other of the foreign colonies in America did the free negro so predominate as in Cuba. It was not at all a difficult matter for a black to gain freedom, since almost no real obstacles were placed in his way. Every slave who did not like his "condition of servitude" had a right to seek a new master, or to purchase his liberty, on payment only of the price paid for him. Then, too, the religious education of the slaves came to be recognized as a matter of great importance. Religion played an important part in the life of the Spanish colonies in general. It was therefore only natural that they should employ every available means to convert the African slave from his "false heathen superstitions" to their own "true faith." Besides, it had long been the theory of tyrants that if men were imbued with religious fervor and taught self-immolation, they were thus rendered more docile under oppression. The slave code accordingly required every master to instruct his slaves in religion. One of the first and most marked results of this encouragement of religious feeling was quite different from what had been expected or intended. That was, to arouse a strong and increasing repugnance to the legal continuance of the institution of slavery. This prevailed among the better class of owners as well as among the slaves themselves. More and more frequent became the custom of providing by will for the emancipation of slaves at the death of their masters. The natural affection, also, to which we have referred, which arose between slaves who acted as domestic or body servants and the owners who enjoyed such faithful service, conduced to the same end. The natural inclination of the humane master was to grant such servitors their freedom. Despite these palliating circumstances, slavery was odious, and persistent negro insurrections began to cause serious concern to the white population. In hope of checking them by kindness, new laws were enacted. Legal restrictions were placed upon the hours of labor. It was decreed that except under certain stated conditions a master should not work his slaves more than nine or ten hours a day. When the exigencies of the season required greater efforts, sixteen hours were prescribed as the extreme limit, and the master was required to give extra pay for the extra time. But these regulations were difficult if not impossible to enforce. Indeed, we must assume that they were not meant to be enforced. They were for show and nothing more; and they remained practically a dead letter. Religious scruples could not and of course did not prevent the performance of much labor on Sundays, and the needs of agriculture often made work necessary on holidays. There were routine duties to be performed every day. For these, two hours were regarded as sufficient, and to such time the code restricted the labor of Sundays and holidays. There was also a general provision under which slaves were granted the right to labor on their own account, paying a certain part of their wages to the masters and retaining the remainder from which they might, if they desired, create a fund looking toward their own eventual freedom. One cannot escape the conclusion that during the periods of slavery, either in the United States or the Spanish colonies, the African negro was never really regarded--no matter how close and friendly his relations with his master--in the last analysis, as anything more than a sort of higher animal or at best a child. Men do not thrash their employes for disobedience, when there is any pretence of equality between master and servant. Animals are whipped to teach them obedience, and a child is chastised when he is naughty. The last was ever the corrective which the white master wielded against his disobedient or lazy slaves. It is true that nominally the laws of Cuba did not permit its brutal misuse. The slave code limited the amount of punishment for any offense to twenty-five lashes. Any more severe measures, if known, were the subject of careful judicial investigation, and the penalty for them on conviction was a fine of from $20 to $200. Unfortunately, however, these laws were not effective. It is obvious that a strong man can do much damage to a human being with 25 lashes. Infractions of the law were seldom reported. The frightened African, subject to his master, feared the results of reporting a violation of the law. He would have to stand trial before a jury, not of his peers but of white men, one of whose number was the aggressor. The other slaves--his witnesses--were far too afraid of what might befall them if they upheld the testimony of the complainant. Even the sluggish brain of the slave could picture, with dreadful anticipation, the anger of the master, and the subsequent retribution, much more severe than the original beating, should by any extraordinary chance the slave be triumphant and his master be compelled to pay a fine. And so, in spite of the fact that in none of the colonies was the condition of the black freedman better than in Cuba,--far better than in Martinique, where free negroes were prohibited from receiving gifts from white people, and where they might be apprehended and returned to servitude if they could be convicted of the very natural act of aiding any of their less fortunate brothers to escape--and in spite of the laws which might, if not dead letters, have safeguarded the interests of the slaves, a feeling of dissatisfaction and unrest among the blacks was seething beneath the surface. The more knowledge they gained, and, curiously enough, the more concessions there were granted them, the stronger it grew, breeding trouble and bad blood between the white owners and the blacks, both enslaved and free, destroying mutual confidence and engendering a spirit of fear and distrust which was presently to break forth into open revolt. The negroes hated the Spanish authorities, too, because they recognized them to be cowards and hypocrites, pretending one thing and doing another; oppressing the weak for their own gain, and siding with the powerful because it served their interests to do so. In such circumstances the drift toward slave insurrections was inevitable. CHAPTER XIX Perhaps it is a wise Providence that decrees that even government shall be subject to that rhythm by which the tides of human affairs rise and fall. Who shall say? In 1796, Las Casas, who had tried to do so much for Cuba, was succeeded, as Captain-General, by the Conde de Santa Clara. The latter was of a different type from Las Casas. In spite of his aristocratic birth, he was a man of little education, and indifferent to it. The result was, since he had no taste for letters, and social elegance did not appeal to him, that the impetus was withdrawn from the development of the finer arts in Cuba. His influence was all the more deleterious since he was a man of generous, hearty, open-handed nature and personally was immensely popular. Naturally, but unhappily, culture in Cuba quickly fell from the high standards maintained by his predecessor. Santa Clara's interests were military and he did a great deal to improve the forts of Cuba--a much needed work. Almost all of the new fortifications on the island, which aided in its defense during the latter part of the nineteenth century, were originated by him, and the Bateria de Santa Clara, outside of Havana, was named in recognition of his services. Previous to 1796 there had been a great navy yard on the Bay of Havana, and more than a hundred war vessels or convoys for Spanish treasure ships had there been built. The same year that Santa Clara became Captain-General, the Spanish ship-builders, realizing that they were losing the large profits from this work, demanded that the navy yard at Havana be closed, and that the work be done in Spain. Influence was finally brought to bear on the crown, and an order was issued closing the Cuban navy yards. The rule of Santa Clara was, however, a short one; which was well for the island. In 1799, the Marquis de Someruelos succeeded him. By Spanish law the term of Captain-General was limited to five years. The Conde de Santa Clara failed to complete his term, but the Marquis de Someruelos served for a much longer period. He remained in Cuba until 1812, and he sought by every means in his power to efface the bad effects of the rule of Santa Clara and to reestablish the régime of progress which had flourished under Las Casas. In 1802 Havana was visited by a devastating conflagration. As frequently happens in such disasters, it was the poorer people who suffered the most severely. Over 11,000 of the poorer inhabitants of the suburb of Jesus Maria were rendered destitute. The Marquis de Someruelos lent his personal efforts to their succor, to excellent effect, and his kindness of heart quickly endeared him to rich and poor alike. He tried hard to rule impartially, to dispense justice to all classes without distinction, and attained a gratifying measure of success. The improvement of the island from an architectural point of view also interested him, and he left behind him two public memorials. The first was intended to give an impetus to art. It was a great public theatre; perhaps not great for these days, it is true, but an undertaking of note for that time. The second showed his interest in sanitary measures. It was a public cemetery, a huge burying-ground, 22,000 square yards in size, where the dead might be gathered, rather than to permit their being buried in small plots on estates or in yards. The walls, gateway and chapel were good examples of the Cuban architecture of the period, and the mortuary chapel contained a beautiful fresco depicting the Resurrection. Early in the nineteenth century, in 1807, the people of the island began to manifest a fear, which indeed was well founded, of hostile invasion. Both England and France had long cast appraising and jealous eyes on the Spanish possessions in America. The Spanish trade was valuable, and England was eager to seize as much as possible of it. In view of this peril the defenses of Havana were materially strengthened. Troops were carefully drilled, and the army was increased by the addition of recruits. Several coast towns were attacked and sacked by the English, but no large invasion took place and the damage was small. But the Cubans soon learned that the enemy whom they had real cause to fear was not England but France. Spain and France were at war, and the French colonists in America stood ready to take up the quarrel. To avert this peril "Juntas" or Committees were organized for national defense. War was unofficially declared on the unnaturalized Frenchmen on the Island, many of whom were killed and their plantations wrecked, while 6,000 were expelled from the island. Even these drastic measures did not prevent a French invasion, although it was rather an opera bouffe performance. A motley company of soldiers of fortune, adventurers, and refugees from Santo Domingo tried to take Santiago and failed; they did, however, effect a landing at Batabano. The Cuban army hastened to defend the country, but found that the invaders were not particularly enthusiastic about fighting. They wanted to colonize. They endeavored to "build homes and make their residences in uninhabited portions of Cuba, just as they had done in Santo Domingo. The Cubans, however, realized that this apparently peaceful effort might well be a menace in disguise. If the French were allowed to settle portions of the island, soon France, who also appreciated the value of the Spanish possessions, might endeavor to claim the island, or at least a portion of it, as her territory. The Captain-General was equal to the occasion. He did not resort to arms. He plainly but firmly impressed upon the invaders the fact that it was unthinkable that they should be allowed to take as their own any portion of Cuba. He told them that if they were dissatisfied with Santo Domingo, he would see that transportation was furnished them to France. On the other hand, if they wanted to return to Santo Domingo, he would insure their being taken thither. But on no account could they remain as inhabitants of Cuba. His persuasions were partially successful and numbers of them peacefully left the country. For a long time, Spain had paid but meagre attention to her American possessions, save to mulct them for revenue. They had no representation, and their messages to and requests of the mother country received but scanty attention. Spain herself was passing through stormy times. The country was in turmoil. Revolution was impending. Napoleon, whose greedy glance embraced almost the whole of Europe, had turned his attention to the Peninsula. In 1808 the royal family of Spain was abducted, and held virtually prisoners by Napoleon, while a new government was set up. When the news of Napoleon's action reached Cuba, the Cabildo was in session. At once, each and every member took a solemn oath to make every effort to retain the island "for their lawful sovereign." Don Juan de Aguilar arrived in Cuba on the American ship _Dispatch_, and the government at once declared war against Napoleon and reaffirmed the loyalty of Cuba to Spain. On July 20, 1808, they proclaimed King Ferdinand VII as their lawful sovereign. This conduct, so little appreciated and so cruelly repaid by the mother country, won for Cuba the title of the "Ever-Faithful Isle." The internal troubles in Spain naturally had a most disastrous effect upon the Cuban trade and prosperity. The exports to Spain fell off to an alarming degree. The products of the country had, for a time, lost their natural market. Only statesmen of vision were able to understand the causes of the trouble. The common people looked upon the results only, and a strong feeling of unrest was engendered. The colony was practically independent of the mother country at this time, so far as any guidance or aid was concerned. The King was exiled and Joseph Bonaparte held sway in the Spanish capital. But now a new difficulty showed its head. Not all the French had returned to Santo Domingo or France. There were numbers of French settlers in the rural districts. The people were discontented, and soon a movement arose--on March 21, 1809, it came to a crisis--to endeavor to persuade the French colonists, who had been so easily disposed of by Someruelos, to return. This movement took on almost the aspect of a revolution. It seemed as if France, not content with obtaining control of Spain, was again stretching out a clutching hand to grab Cuba as well. The heads of the Cuban government were thoroughly aroused. Summary measures were taken, and the uprising, which had bid fair to be so serious, was subdued in two days. It was due, probably, to the firmness, decision and resourcefulness of those at the helm of Cuba at that time, that Cuba did not then and there become the victim of a movement which might have resulted in her becoming subject to France instead of Spain. The attitude of the United States toward French aggression also lent Cuba moral support, as we shall see. The encounters which took place in putting down this trouble were practically bloodless. Almost no lives were lost, but much property was destroyed. A more serious result was that dissatisfied colonists, some of them of the most desirable type, to the number of many thousands, were driven to seek their fortunes and find new homes away from Cuba. Napoleon was not satisfied to leave Spain in possession of Cuba, but soon instigated another effort to get possession of the island for France. In 1810, a young man arrived in Cuba from the United States. He was Don Manuel Aleman. His mission was apparently private business of his own, but the Cuban government had confidential information to the effect that he was an emissary of Napoleon. He was not allowed to land unapprehended, but was arrested on the ship on which he had come, and he was thrust into a none too pleasant Cuban prison. A council of war was assembled, but this was merely a form. Aleman's fate was predetermined. On the following morning, July 13, 1810, he was taken to the Campo de la Punta and there publicly hanged as a traitor to Spain. No account of events in Cuba at this time would be complete without some record of one whom Las Casas called "a jewel of priceless value to the glory of the nation, a protector for Cuba, an accomplished statesman for the monarchy," Don Francisco de Arango, the bearer of the "most illustrious name in Cuban annals." Arango, to whom we have previously made reference, was born on May 22, 1765, at Havana. In early boy-hood he was left an orphan, but he managed the large estate which had been left him with all the skill and judgment of a mature mind. He studied law, and was admitted to practice in Spain, and he there acted, for a number of years, as agent for the municipality of Cuba. He was thoroughly familiar with the wrongs and needs of his country, and it is probable that no one of his time was more suited by nature, training and sympathies to act for Cuba. He succeeded in fact in obtaining from the crown some very valuable concessions for the island. In Cuba itself he worked hard to bring about an increase of staples. He exerted his influence among the planters to the end that the fertile soil should be worked to its utmost productiveness. It was necessary that not only should Cuba be self-supporting, and be able to pay her enormous taxes, but that there should be a large surplus to feed the royal exchequer. No one realized this more than Arango, whose years at the Spanish court had made him familiar with the greed of the Spanish government. His work was fruitful, and Cuban production at this period came almost up to the wild expectations of the Spanish government, which regarded Cuba as a land of inexhaustible riches. Arango was moreover a humanitarian at heart. The wrongs of the slaves and the evils of the slave trade appealed to his sense of justice. On the other hand, he saw very clearly the difficulty of obtaining the proper amount of labor for the Cuban plantations if the slave trade was abolished, and so his efforts on behalf of the slaves took the form of attempts toward their protection by wise laws. The attitude of Spain toward her colonies was at this time, as indeed always, grossly illogical. She wanted to take everything and give nothing. She could not foresee that a present of constant depletion meant a future of want; that in order to produce in quality the proper facilities must be provided. Arango, who was a diplomat as well as a statesman, by persuasion and by constant but gentle pressure at last won some of those in authority at the court to his point of view. If Cuba was to be a source of wealth to Spain, she must be endowed with the most efficient equipment to produce that wealth. Through Arango's efforts machinery was allowed to be imported into the island, free of duty. This, of course, furnished the means for industrial expansion. He also obtained the removal of the duty on coffee, liquors and cotton, for a period of ten years. But Arango saw as clearly as Las Casas had seen that Cuba to show progress must have facilities for uplift, and for the improvement of the mental and moral status of the inhabitants. He accordingly started a movement which resulted in the formation of the "Junta de Fomento," or Society for Improvement, which was long a power for good in the island, until later the Spanish Captains-General saw in it a means to further their own designs, and it became an instrument for oppression. Its object was avowedly to protect and to promote the progress of agriculture and commerce. The formation of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce was another benefit which Arango conferred upon Cuba. For a long time he was the Syndic of the Chamber of Commerce. There were certain perquisites of this office which Arango steadily refused to accept, and he also declined the salary which the office carried with it. In all his long and useful life he never accepted remuneration in any office which he held under the Cuban government. Now the real power at the court of Spain at this time was the infamous Godoy, the personal favorite of the king and the queen's lover; who seemed to be so firmly entrenched that no one would dare to oppose him. This creature turned greedy eyes toward Cuba. It was quite the fashion of those times for Spanish courtiers to consider Cuba as a source of revenue to bolster up their own fortunes. So Godoy claimed to be protector of the Chamber of Commerce, and demanded that the receipts of the custom house at Havana be turned over to him. He immediately met with the opposition of Arango, who bitterly opposed his every move and stood firmly against his plans for mulcting Cuba; in which conflict it is a pleasure to relate that for once virtue was triumphant. Godoy was unable to carry out his designs, and Arango was not only victor but he gained a still further point for Cuba, the relinquishment of the royal monopoly of tobacco. There is another curious and interesting phase of this matter, which speaks highly for the remarkably forceful personality of Arango. Although he at all times stood firmly as the inflexible opponent of any schemes which the court at Madrid might father for the oppression of Cuba, he was always an object of respect and esteem in high political circles in Spain, and he was offered a title of nobility. Possibly he looked upon this as a bribe. At any rate he declined it. However, when the Cross of the Order of Charles III. was offered him he accepted the decoration. In 1813 Cuba, by the adoption of the constitution of 1812, became entitled to representation in the Spanish Cortes, and Arango was unanimously chosen for this office. There was no person in Cuban politics more fitted for the honor. He proved himself worthy, for, as deputy to the Cortes, he achieved the greatest victory of his long fight for the good of Cuba, the opening of Cuban ports to foreign trade. New honors awaited him, for he was awarded the Grand Cross of Isabella, and when in 1817 he returned to Cuba, he was accorded the rank of Counsellor of State, and Financial Intendente of Cuba. Arango died in 1837, having lived seventy-two years, and having faithfully served his country for the greater portion of them. He bequeathed a large portion of his considerable fortune for public purposes and charitable objects, all for the betterment of the land that he loved. In the darkest hours of tyranny, while suffering wrongs that would have inflamed other peoples to rebellion, Cuba remained "The Ever-Faithful Isle" for many years, until forced to rebellion. Against the background of injustice, as contrasted with the Spanish Captains-General who were to follow, and whose sole interest in Cuba was to extract as much as they could from her, acting on the principle of "after us the deluge," and caring nothing for her ultimate fate, the figure of Arango, the native Cuban, fighting at home and abroad for Cuba, stands out in bold and happy relief. It is not a matter for surprise that his name has been written on the annals of Cuba, with all the love and respect with which the other South American countries revere Bolivar. Here was a man who could not be tempted by honors, who refused remuneration for his services, and who against the greatest odds stood staunchly for everything which would help his travailing country. Among Spain's other possessions in America unrest was now beginning to manifest itself. They were sick of Spanish rule, and the period when Spain was occupied with troubles at home seemed to be a good opportunity to thrown off the yoke. Revolution was in the air in those days. Independence had arisen like a new star on the horizon, and had become the object of popular worship. It was therefore greatly to the credit of Someruelos that in such troublous times he maintained a relatively peaceful government. The better class of Cubans recognized his ability. They realized that he of all men was best fitted to keep Cuba free from disturbances which would hinder her advancement. Consequently when his term of office was ended, a petition was sent to the Spanish government, requesting that he be retained for a longer period. We have, however, only to study the dealings, not only of Spain but of all the European nations with the colonies in the New World, to understand that not the good of the subject country, but the supposed interests of the mother country, were what determined the destiny of the colonies. The very fact that Someruelos was so popular in Cuba apparently seemed to those in power in Spain an excellent excuse for his removal. They reasoned that if he had the interests of Cuba at heart, he might not be loyal to the government in Spain. And so, when multitudes of the best citizens of Cuba petitioned that he be retained longer in office, not only was the petition denied, but the petitioners were severely reprimanded by a mandate of the Spanish government. Hurricanes are not unusual in the southern seas, but now and then one of exceptional severity leaves so devastating a trail that it is worthy of chronicle even in a country where the elements are always more or less to be reckoned with. Such a hurricane visited the western coast of Cuba in 1810. Valuable shipping in the harbor of Havana was sunk. Sixty merchant vessels and many ships of war were torn from their anchors and swallowed up by the sea. Property all along the coast was destroyed, and a large number of lives were lost. That same year an uprising occurred among the negro population of the island. It bade fair to be far reaching in effect and occasioned much alarm among the white population. The most drastic and even cruel methods were taken to check it, and finally it was subdued. [Illustration: ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ] On April 14, 1812, Don Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, afterwards the Conde de Benadito, assumed the post of Captain-General, in place of the Marquis de Someruelos. His assumption of power was marked by the gift of additional authority to the office of Captain-General. For the first time, the Captain-General was also the commander of the naval forces. His initial act was to proclaim the Constitution of Cadiz. This was far from popular in Cuba, but the citizens realized the futility of resistance. His action created a sensation and caused much talk, but it met with no open opposition. De Apodaca's tenure of office was short. He retained the office of Captain-General for only two years, when he was sent to Mexico by the Spanish government. Next, Lieutenant-General Don José Cienfuegos was installed at Havana as Captain-General, on July 18, 1816. It was under his direction, in 1817, that the third census of the island was taken. Cienfuegos was most unpopular with the Cubans. He instituted many reforms which did not find favor in the eyes of those he governed. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ An economist and statesman of three countries, Alejandro Ramirez was born in Spain in 1777. He began his career in Guatemala as an agricultural reformer and promoter; thence in 1813 went to Puerto Rico as Intendente and saved that island from bankruptcy. In 1816 he became Intendente of Cuba, where he effected great reforms in land-holding and in education. Despite his excellent services he was bitterly attacked, and largely because of grief over the ungrateful injustice thus shown him he sickened and died on May 20, 1821. The entire policing forces of Havana were revolutionized and put under new rules. We are told that his most unpopular move was to have the streets of that city lighted at night, and that this was "thoroughly resented." Just why such a move should be resented is not told us, but it certainly might be the subject of fruitful and romantic conjecture. His action is said to have caused "consternation." A second measure was even more distasteful to the Cubans, and they regarded it as an infringement of personal liberty. Cienfuegos ordered that, as soon as the public services in the churches in the evenings were over, all public thoroughfares be closed. Now this was the time of day when all Cuba was most bent on amusement and enjoyment, and this decree of the Captain-General made it impossible for any man to stray far from his own door with hope of returning the same night. The populace was up in arms with indignation. Cienfuegos had intended the command to have a quieting effect, but its result was exactly the reverse. It gave rise to the very disturbances which the Captain-General was endeavoring to restrain. It would be hard to conjecture what might have been the result of a continuance of Cienfuegos's arbitrary methods. They certainly boded no good for the peace of Cuba. Fortunately before he could resort to any more of what the Cubans termed "these outrages against liberty," he fell ill, and thereupon the administration of the government fell into the hands of Don Juan Maria Echeverria, as a temporary substitute. This officer had no time to formulate new rules for the government of the Cubans, being kept very busy laboring against the troubles caused by his predecessor's doings. Then, too, his stay was short, for on August 29, 1819, the Spanish ship of war _Sabrina_ brought Cuba a new Captain-General, Don Juan Manuel Cagigal. In "Cuba and the Cubans," published in 1850, we are told that "The political changes adopted in Spain in 1812 and 1820 were productive of similar changes in the island: and when in both instances the constitution was proclaimed, the perpetual members of the municipalities were at once deprived of office, and their successors elected by the people. The provincial assembly was called, and held its sessions. The militia was organized; the press made entirely free, the verdict of a jury deciding actions for its abuses; and the same courts of justice were in no instance to decide a case a second time. But if the institution of the consulate was very beneficial during Ferdinand's absolute sway, the ultra-popular grants of the constitutional system, which could hardly be exercised with quiet in Spain, were ill-adapted to Cuba, though more advanced in civilization, stained with all those vices that are the legitimate curse of a country long under despotic sway. That system was so democratic that the king was deprived of all political authority. No intermediate house of nobility or senators tempered the enactments of a single elective assembly. This sudden change from an absolute government, with its usual concomitant, a corrupt and debased public sentiment, to the full enjoyment of republican privileges, served only to loosen the ties of decency and decorum throughout the Spanish community. Infidelity resulted from it; and that veil of respect for the religion of their fathers, which had covered the deformity of such a state of society, was imprudently thrown aside. As the natural consequence of placing the instruments of freedom in the hands of an ignorant multitude, their minds were filled with visions of that chimerical equality which the world is never to realize. The rich found themselves deprived of their accustomed influence, and felt that there was little chance of obtaining justice from the common people (in no place so formidable as in Cuba, from the heterogeneous nature of the population), and who were now, in a manner, arrayed against them throughout the land. They, of course, eagerly wished the return of the old system of absolute rule. But the proprietors only asked for the liberal policy which they had enjoyed at the hands of the Spanish monarch; not, most surely, that oppressive and nondescript government, which, by separating the interest of the country from that of her nearest rulers, and destroying all means of redress or complaint, thrust the last offspring of Spain into an abyss of bloodshed and ruin, during the recent disgusting exercise of military rule, in publishing by the most arbitrary and cruel measures, persons suspected of engaging in an apprehended servile insurrection." This not altogether coherent statement gives an idea of how the rule of the Spanish Captains-General of this period, and how the so-called reforms which were instituted during the early part of the nineteenth century, were regarded thirty-five or forty years afterward. Senor Cagigal was accompanied by troops, ostensibly to supply the local garrison, and it would be strange if they were not also imported to fill the native hearts with respect for the government and to help in quelling any threatened uprisings. History furnishes strange paradoxes, and so in 1820 we have the spectacle of Cagigal's own troops rising in revolt against him and compelling him to proclaim the constitution of 1812. It is true that he soon quelled this rebellion, set aside his proclamation, and restored the old order, but that does not detract from the grim humor of the situation in which he for a time found himself. But Cagigal was a diplomat of a high order, and he did make efforts to accomplish well the difficult task of governing Cuba. His decisions and decrees were generally impartial. He had a charming social manner, and a delightfully conciliatory way; always suave, affable and approachable. He placated trouble makers, and dispensed justice in an endeavor to give universal satisfaction. He was accordingly held in the highest esteem by the majority of the Cubans. And Cuba apparently found favor in his eyes. He grew to love the beautiful island, and perhaps his heart was touched by her patience under the galling Spanish yoke. At any rate, he applied to the crown for special permission to spend the rest of his life in Cuba. This request was granted and he made for himself a home at Guanabacoa, where he lived until his death, some years later. Cagigal was succeeded in 1821 by Nicholas Mahy, an old man, of a distrustful and arbitrary disposition, who was entirely out of sympathy with the liberal movement in Cuba. He could see no way of retaining her for Spain except by keeping her people in subjection under an absolute despotism. He proceeded to carry out his ideas with a high hand, and it is a matter of speculation to what lengths he might have gone, had not death speedily cut short his career. He ruled for only a single year, after which no new Captain-General was sent out from Spain but Sebastian Kindelan, Mahy's subordinate, took command. He was a sterner disciplinarian than even his former master. His sole object seemed to be to reunite the military and civil power in the hands of the Captain-General. He was willing to stoop to any means to accomplish his purpose, and he was backed up by a large body of troops imported from Spain. Feeling ran high between these--as the Cubans termed them--"interlopers and troublemakers" and the local militia, and serious trouble was with difficulty avoided. Then in 1823 Ferdinand VII. was again in power in Spain; weak, crafty, scheming, malicious, and grasping; and it is needless to say that Cuba was visited with new oppression. CHAPTER XX It was on May 2, 1823, that Don Francisco Vives, afterward Conde de Cuba, arrived in Cuba to take over the office of Captain-General. Let us first contemplate the good which he accomplished for Cuba, before scanning the darker pages of his high-handed rule. Vives reorganized the rural militia, and he caused the construction of a number of important fortresses and the completion of others already begun. He divided the island into three military departments. Under his instructions two asylums for the insane, el Departmento de Dementes, and the Casa de Beneficencia, were constructed. He made an effort to mark the historic spots of the island, and under his auspices a temple was built on the spot in the city of Havana where was reputed to have been celebrated the first mass. So much for the good done by Vives. Now we come to a different story. This Captain-General was a despot of the most pronounced type, the kind dear to the hearts of the rulers in the mother country. He obtained from his royal master, in 1825, an order placing Cuba under martial law, and giving the Captain-General complete control of her destiny. It reads as follows: "The King, our master, in whose royal mind great confidence has been inspired by your excellency's proved fidelity, indefatigable zeal in his majesty's service, judicious and well-concerted steps taken since Y. E. had charge of the government, in order to keep in quietude his faithful inhabitants, confine within the proper limits such as would deviate from the path of honor, and punish such as forgetting their duty would dare commit excesses in opposition to our wise laws; well convinced as H. M. feels, that at no time and under no circumstances whatever will the principles of rectitude and love toward H. M. royal person be weakened which now distinguish Y. E.; and being at the same time desirous of preventing the embarrassments which under ordinary circumstances might arise a division in the command, and from the complicated authority and powers of the different officers of government, for the important end of maintaining in that island his sovereign authority and the public quiet, it has pleased H. M., in conformity with the advice of his council of ministers, to authorize your excellency, _fully investing you with the whole extent of power which by the royal ordinances is granted to the governors of besieged towns_. In consequence thereof H. M. most amply and unrestrictedly authorizes Y. E. _not only to remove from that island such persons, holding offices from government or not_, whatever their occupation, rank, class or situation in life may be, whose residence there you may believe prejudicial, or whose public or private conduct may appear suspicious to you, _employing in their stead faithful servants of H. M. who shall fully deserve your excellency's confidence; but also to suspend the execution of whatever royal orders or general decrees in all the different branches of the administration, or in any part of them, as Y, E. may think conducive to the royal service_; it being in any case required that these measures be temporary, and that Y. E. make report of them for his majesty's sovereign approval. "In granting Y. E. this marked proof of his royal esteem, and of the high trust your proven loyalty deserves, H. M. expects that in due correspondence to the same, Y. E. will use the most wakeful prudence and reserve, joined to an indefatigable activity and unyielding firmness, in the exercise of your excellency's authority, and trusts that as your excellency shall by this very pleasure and graciousness of H. M. be held to a more strict responsibility, Y. E. will redouble his vigilance that the laws be observed, that justice be administered, that H. M. faithful vassals be protected and rewarded, and punishment without partiality or indulgence inflicted on those who, forgetful of their duty and their obligations to the best and most benevolent of monarchs, shall oppose those laws, decidedly abetting sinister plots, with infraction of them and disregard of the decrees from them issuing. And I therefore, by royal order, inform Y. E. of the same for Y. E.'s intelligence, satisfaction, and exact observance thereof. God preserve your excellency's life. Madrid, 28 May, 1825." As a marvel of unconscious irony this is a unique document. Evidently both the King and his minister lacked a sense of humor. Here is a document purporting to be issued "to keep in quietude" "faithful inhabitants." Why the "Ever-Faithful" needed a curb or why if such measures were necessary the insurgents were referred to as "Faithful," only a stupid king through the mouth of an equally pig-headed minister could determine. This royal order, we may relate with satisfaction, proved a boomerang. It gave the Captain-General--just why it is hard to decide--absolute power, not only to govern by military force, but to depose from office those who offended him, whether they were the king's minions or not. It also made inoperative all royal decrees unless the Captain-General chose to sanction them. Now Cuba, at this time, was saddled with hosts of fortune seekers, court favorites who were temporarily and voluntarily exiles from the sunshine of the monarch's smiles, that they might line their pockets and return to startle the Spanish grandees with their new splendor. Naturally they were seeking office and emoluments from the Spanish government. But then came their royal master and placed them, their positions, their fortunes, in the hands of a man who, should they offend him, could summarily degrade them, and force them to return home no richer than when they came. Truly the ways of kings are no less inscrutable than those of Providence. Naturally this royal order found little favor in Cuba. In vain, however, were efforts made to have it suspended, and to prove that it had never been intended to be anything but a temporary measure. The trouble which was brewing for Spain, in Cuba, at this period was well forecast and described in an article, primarily on the dangers of the slave trade, which was published in a periodical in Havana, in 1832. After detailing some facts as to slave importations, it said: "Thus far we have only considered the power which has its origin in the numbers of the colored population that surrounds us. What a picture we might draw, if we were to portray this immense body acting under the influence of political and moral causes, and presenting a spectacle unknown in history! We surely shall not do it. But we should be guilty of moral treason to our country, if we were to forget the efforts now making to effect a change in the conditions of the African race. Philanthropic laws, enacted by some of the European nations, associations of distinguished Englishmen, periodicals solely devoted to this subject, eloquent parlimentary debates whose echoes are constantly repeated on this side of the Atlantic, bold exhortations from the pulpits of religious sects, political principles which with lightning rapidity are spreading in both hemispheres, and _very recent commotions in several parts of the West Indies, everything is calculated to awaken us from our profound slumber and remind us that we must save our country_. And should this our beloved mother ask us what measures we have adopted to extricate her from her danger, what would those who boast themselves her dutiful sons, answer? The horrid traffic in human blood is carried on in defiance of the laws, and men who assume the name of patriots, being no other than parricides, cover the land with shackled victims. And as if this were not sufficiently fearful with criminal apathy, Africans freed and brought to this country by English policy, are permitted to reside in our midst. How different the conduct of our neighbors the Americans! Notwithstanding the rapid increase of their country; notwithstanding the white has constantly been four fifths more numerous than the colored population, and have ten and a half millions to offset two millions; notwithstanding the importation of the latter is prohibited from one end of the republic to the other, while European immigration is immense; notwithstanding the countries lying upon their boundaries have no slaves to inspire dread, they organize associations, raise funds, purchase lands in Africa, establish colonies, favor the emigration of the colored population to them, increasing their exertions as the exigency may require, not faltering in their course, and leaving no expedient untried which shall prove them friends of humanity and their country. Not satisfied with these general measures, some states have adopted very thorough and efficient measures. In December, 1831, Louisiana passed a law prohibiting importation of slaves even from other states of the Union. "Behold the movement of a great people, who would secure their safety! Behold the model you should imitate! But we are told 'Your efforts are in vain. You cannot justly reproach us. Our plantations need hands and if we cannot obtain negroes, what shall we do?' We are far from wishing to offend a class equally deserving respect and esteem, including many we are happy to call friends. We are habitually indulgent and in no sense more so than in that before us. The notions and examples to which they have been accustomed justify in a great measure the part they act, and an immediate benefit and remote danger authorize in others a course of conduct which we wish may never be generally and permanently adopted. We would not rudely censure the motives of the planters. Our mission requires us only to remark, that it is necessary to adopt some plan, since the change in politics is inconsistent with and hostile to the much longer continuance of the illicit traffic in slaves. We all know that England has, both with selfish and humane motives, made and is still making great efforts against it by means of treaties. She is no longer the only power thus engaged, since France is also taking her share in the enterprise. The United States will soon appear in the field to vindicate down-trodden humanity. They will adopt strong measures, and perseveringly pursue the pirate negro-dealer. Will he then escape the vigilance of enemies so active and powerful? And even should some be able to do so, how enormously expensive must their piracy be! It is demonstrable that the number of imported negroes being then small, and their introduction subject to uncommon risks, their cost would be so enhanced as to destroy the motive for preferring slave labor. A proper regard to our true interests will lead us to consider henceforth other means of supplying our wants, since our present mode will ultimately paralyze our resources and be attended with baneful consequences. The equal distribution of the two sexes in the country, and an improved treatment of them, would alone be sufficient, not merely to prevent a diminution of their number, but greatly to increase it. But the existing disproportion of the sexes forbids our indulging in so pleasing a hope. We shall, however, do much to effect our purposes by discontinuing certain practices, and adopting a system more consonant to the good principles that should be our guide. "Would it not be advisable to try some experiments that we may be able to compare the results of cultivating cane by slaves, with such other methods as we may find expedient to adopt? "If the planters could realize the importance of these propositions to their welfare, we should see them striving to promote the introduction of white and the exclusion of colored hands. By forming associations, raising funds, and in various ways exerting themselves vigorously in a cause so eminently patriotic, they would at once overcome the obstacles to the introduction of white foreigners, and induce their immigration by the guarantees of good laws and thus assure the tranquillity of the country. "We may be told that these are imaginary plans, and never to be realized. We answer that they are essays, not difficult or expensive, if undertaken, as we suggest, by a whole community. If we are not disposed to make the voluntary trial now, the day is at hand when we shall be obliged to attempt it, or abandon the cultivation of sugar! The prudent mariner on a boisterous ocean prepares betimes for the tempest, and defies it. He who recklessly abandons himself to the fury of the elements is likely to perish in the rage of the storm. "'How imprudent,' some may exclaim, 'how imprudent to propose a subject which should be forever buried in "lasting oblivion."' Behold the general accusation raised against him who dares boldly avow new opinions respecting these matters. Unfortunately there is among us an opinion which insists that 'silence' is the true policy. All feel the evils which surround us, are acquainted with the dangers, and wish to avoid them. Let a remedy be suggested and a thousand confused voices be simultaneously raised; and a significant and imploring 'Hush!--hush!' is heard on every side. Such infatuation resembles his who conceals the disease which is hurrying him speedily to death, rather than hear its unpleasant history and mode of cure, from his only hope, the physician's saving science. Which betrays censurable apathy, he who obstinately rushes headlong to the brink of a mighty precipice, or he who gives the timely warning to beware? Who would not thus save a whole community perhaps from frightful destruction? If we knew most positively that the disease were beyond all hopes of cure, the knowledge of the fact would not stay the march of death, while it might serve but as a terrifying enunciation of his approach. If, however, the sick man is endowed with a strong constitution, that with timely prescription promises a probable return of health, it would be unpardonable to act the part of a passive spectator. We heed not that the selfish condemn, that the self-admiring wise censure, or the parricidal accuse us. Reflections of a higher nature guide us, and in the spirit of our responsible calling as a public writer, we will never cease to cry aloud, '_Let us save our country--let us save our country!_'" A subtle document that. Hidden carefully in the denunciation of slavery is a call to organization to form societies. We shall see later how important and potent those societies were and that their objects were something far different from the destruction of slavery. The paper closed with a clear cry for freedom for Cuba. It cannot be disguised that those who had the real good of the island of Cuba at heart, patriots, Cubans who loved their country, men who longed to stand upright, to put off the yoke of Spain, and to look the inhabitants of free countries in the face as equals, were withdrawing their heartfelt allegiance from Spain, and were longing for independence. That this desire had been created by Spanish oppression, and nurtured by Spanish injustice, is a self-evident fact. The causes which led to the insurrections by which Cuba was torn from this time on until she obtained her independence, we must leave for another chapter. There are two matters most pertinent to this investigation, which we must first discuss: The attitude of the United States toward Cuba at this period, and the revolt of the other Spanish colonies, led by Simon Bolivar, "The Liberator." CHAPTER XXI Cuba, so rich and fertile, was an object of desire, not alone to America, but at least equally to the countries of Europe. Thus England cast covetous eyes at Cuba, and some of the English papers intimated that the United States was anxious to acquire the island, and that if England wished to save her West Indian trade, she had best look to her interests and, if possible, wrest Cuba from Spain. Probably the strongest feeling in the United States in the early part of the nineteenth century was that Cuba must not pass from the hands of Spain into those of any other power, and that if Cuba was to be separated from Spain it must be either as an independent country or by annexation to the United States. The desire for annexation, _per se_, did not appear to be so strong as the feeling that the United States must not allow either France or England to acquire Cuba, and there were, of course, strong political and geographical reasons for this decision. In a former chapter we have recalled some of the circumstances of that time, and have cited some of the authoritative utterances of American statesmen concerning Cuba in the first half of the nineteenth century. Let us now recur to that part of Cuban history in its chronological order. Early in 1823, those Cubans who were more or less secretly in favor of independence sent an agent named Morales to Washington to try to discover what course the United States would pursue in case Cuba should declare her independence. It was intimated that in case Spain continued her oppressions, and did not grant Cuba a more liberal government, Cuba would ask for the protection of the United States, possibly for admission to the Union; and in case this was refused, she would appeal to England. While no definite promises were made to Cubans, it seemed to be the sentiment in Washington that, should Cuba thus offer herself, it would be tempting fate not to accept the gift. Indeed, a considerable portion of the United States was at this time eager for the annexation of Cuba. There seems moreover to have been in the American cabinet a strong feeling toward urging Cuba to declare her independence, and this might have resolved itself into promises if not into decided action, had it not been for the counter current of opinion that, should she do so, she could not maintain such a status. John Quincy Adams was sure of this, and although he felt that the time was not ripe in the United States for the adoption of a policy of annexation, yet if Cuba should fall to the United States by the mere gravitation of politics, he believed it would be folly to refuse to accept the gift, particularly since the occupation of Cuba by England would give her a base from which to proceed against the United States; and matters between England and her former possession were by no means yet settled on a basis of enduring friendship. Indeed, Adams believed that the future might make the annexation of Cuba almost indispensable to the destiny of the Union; as on April 28, 1823, he said in his instructions to the American minister at Madrid which we have already quoted. It was practically certain at this time that France would intervene in the affairs of Spain, and would try to overthrow the liberal government of that country, and it seemed probable that England would take advantage of the opportunity in an endeavor to secure Cuba for herself. The island was seething with an undercurrent of revolt, and Washington was uneasy as to what England might do. Reports had it that orders had been sent to British troops to take possession of Cuba, by force if necessary, and that Spain, in return for certain secret concessions from England, had consented to this course. Adams wisely saw that if the Holy Alliance overthrew the Spanish constitution, Spain could not hope to retain Cuba, and since the island was believed to be incapable of self-government, the natural inference was that it would become a dependent of either England or the United States. We may be sure that Washington did not intend that this dependence should be upon England. About this time, Mr. Miralla, a man of affairs who had been for some ten years a resident of Cuba, told Jefferson in a conference in Washington that public sentiment in Cuba was against the country becoming an English territory, and that the Cubans would rise to resist it. He stated that Cuba would prefer to remain as she was rather than to change masters--jump from Scylla to Charybdis, as it were--and that if any change must come she desired independence; that she realized that unaided she could not maintain herself a separate nation, but that she hoped for the support of the United States or of Mexico, or both, to help her to maintain her freedom. Cuba had a secret fear that should she seek independence, the turbulent blacks would try to seize the government, and of course that would mean ruin. On December 2, 1823, President Monroe delivered his epochal Doctrine: "In the wars of European powers in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparations for defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the Allied Powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America.... We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies and dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." [Illustration: JAMES MONROE] This message had the desired effect. The Holy Alliance wisely kept its hands off from affairs in the southern Americas, including Cuba. But the United States naturally sought to cultivate closer relations with its neighbor. There were indeed practical reasons why it should do so; even for its own peace and comfort. For pirates preyed on United States shipping. A blockade was proposed to catch the offenders, but it did not find favor with the powers at the United States capital. Landing in Cuba, and reprisals on persons and property, were suggested, but it was considered unwise for the United States thus to take steps which would be opposed if any other power should assume a like attitude. The United States government feared a secret transfer of Cuba by Spain and that such action would be taken before Washington could become cognizant of it. It therefore sought to be allowed to station consuls at Havana, and in Porto Rico, who were, of course, practically to be the eyes of the United States government, to detect any incipient plot to rid Spain of Cuba. This idea did not find favor at the Spanish court and a polite letter of demurrer was sent, stating that such a proposition was untenable at the time, owing to the turbulent condition of affairs on the island, but that later, when Cuba became more peaceful, it would be considered. The real reason for Spain's refusal doubtless was that she was still smarting from the United States's recognition of the independence of other South American countries, and she did not feel justified in allowing anyone who she felt would be a spy to have an official position on the island, particularly when that person came from a country which, having attained its own liberty, naturally had sympathy with those who had theirs yet to gain. The state of affairs at this time was epigrammatically described by _The London Courier_, when it said: "Cuba is the Turkey of trans-Atlantic politics, tottering to its fall, and kept from falling only by the struggles of those who contend for the right of catching her in her descent." Spain, always badly in need of money, made in 1838 a proposal to England to offer Cuba as security for a loan, which undoubtedly would have meant that England would eventually have to take Cuba in payment for the debt. The United States Minister at Madrid, hearing of the project, made it so clear that such a course would not be tolerated by his country, that the idea was abandoned. A few years later President Van Buren again expressed the American pro-slavery policy toward Cuban independence: "The Government has always looked with the deepest interest upon the fate of these islands, but particularly of Cuba. Its geographical position, which places it almost in sight of our southern shores, and, as it were, gives it the command of the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indian seas, its safe and capacious harbors, its rich productions, the exchange of which for our surplus agricultural products and manufactures constitutes one of the most extensive and valuable branches of our foreign trade, render it of the utmost importance to the United States that no change should take place in its condition which might injuriously affect our political and commercial standing in that quarter. Other considerations connected with a certain class of our population made it to the interest of the southern section of the Union that no attempt should be made in that island to throw off the yoke of Spanish dependence, the first effect of which would be the sudden emancipation of a numerous slave population, which result could not but be very sensibly felt upon the adjacent shores of the United States." The United States had a selfish interest in keeping Cuba in a state of peace and prosperity. In 1842 it was found that Spain could not pay the interest upon her debt to the United States. It was suggested that she make it a charge upon the revenues of Cuba, and the next year it was arranged that the entire claim be settled by a sum paid to the United States annually by the Captain-General of Cuba. Naturally if there were constant revolutions and uprisings in Cuba, these revenues would not be forthcoming. On the other hand, taxation for the purpose of settling Spain's debt to America was not looked on with favor among Cuban patriots. From the foregoing it will be seen that while the United States did not urge annexation,--since it was against her avowed policy to do so--she would not have been unwilling to accept Cuba, had that country knocked at her door and offered herself as a free gift. It will be equally clear that the United States had no intention that Cuba should be transferred by Spain to any other country than herself, and that she stood ready to combat such a project by force of arms if necessary. It will also be seen that some of her statesmen would have smiled upon the idea of Cuba as an independent nation, if they had for a moment believed that Cuba could maintain her independence, and that surreptitiously the United States might have lent her aid to this end, if it could have been done without embroiling herself with Spain. However, there was a division of opinion in Washington as to the effects on the Southern States of any change of condition in Cuba. It might also be observed that France and England--particularly the latter--would have been glad to add Cuba to their possessions, but they feared war with the United States if they made the attempt. And as for Cuba herself, her first choice was freedom, but if it were necessary, in order to escape Spanish tyranny, she would have accepted annexation to the United States, or at any rate a protectorate from that government. CHAPTER XXII The half century from 1776 to 1826 was afire with the spirit of revolution and freedom. During this period the United States won her independence from England; Belgium sought separation from Holland; France was in the throes of revolution; and Greece won her freedom from Turkey. This spirit of liberty penetrated to Central and South America and set the Spanish colonies there aflame. A successful revolution must have a competent and daring leader. The South American revolt in Venezuela and surrounding countries was led by a romantic figure, a man of such tremendous personality, such high ideals, and such ability to carry them out, that, although he never set foot in Cuba, and never personally figured in her politics, his influence reached out from the other colonies and more than any other at this period swayed the destiny of the "Pearl of the Antilles." His desire for liberty was like a bright light which illumined the whole Latin-American atmosphere. It has been said that "only an aristocrat can be truly democratic," for only an aristocrat has everything to lose and nothing to gain by espousing the cause of democracy and liberty. It is true that, like Washington, Simon Bolivar came of wealthy and aristocratic ancestry. His people were among the foremost of the Creoles. His parents died when he was still a child, and his passionate, wilful nature was allowed to go uncurbed. He developed a violent and hasty temper, but he was also openhearted, generous, and quick to sue for pardon. He had a charming personality, and the ability to make friends and hold them for life. In his later years his followers would have died for him. He was absolutely fearless, and it is said of him that at one time at a banquet, in the presence of the Governor of Venezuela--Bolivar's native country--he arose and proposed a toast to the "Independence of the Americas." [Illustration: SIMON BOLIVAR] At an early age he went abroad. When in Spain he became friendly with Prince Ferdinand, afterwards King Ferdinand VII. of Spain--then a boy. They were both tennis enthusiasts, and it is told that Bolivar constantly beat the young prince on the courts at the royal palace at Madrid, just as later his armies prevailed against those of Ferdinand VII. He travelled in Italy and contrasted the progressive spirit of that country as compared with the turbidity and tendency to disintegration which dominated Spain. A sojourn in France made him an eye witness of some of the most frightful scenes of the French revolution. On his return home, he visited the United States and there beheld the actual, peaceful workings of a republic. All this time there was stirring within him the eager desire for freedom for his own country, which at last impelled him to cast aside the luxury and ease which his position and family gave him, and to accept the danger of exile and death, so that he might free South America. The process of revolutionary organization in Venezuela and her sister states was much the same as that later adopted in Cuba. Secret societies were formed, the members of which were pledged to the cause of liberty. They grew, and waxed strong and powerful, and at length the fire of revolt was kindled. Bolivar's first active step toward the rescue of his country from the Spanish rule was an insurrection at Caracas in April, 1810. The governor was deposed and the freedom of Caracas was established without violence. The commerce of Venezuela was opened to the world, taxes to the crown were declared abolished, and a republic was formed. In recognition of Bolivar's services, he was given a commission as Colonel and with Louis Lopez Mendez went to England to try to get her aid. Great Britain, however, declined to be drawn into the controversy and declared her absolute neutrality. On July 5, 1811, the flag of the new republic was unfurled to the world. But Spain was not inclined to relinquish what she considered her rights without a struggle, and Spanish troops were quickly dispatched to Venezuela. In a famous speech Bolivar, now returned to his native country, voiced the sentiments of the republic. He said: "Why should we take into account Spain's intentions? What shall we care if she chooses to keep us as her slave or sell us to Bonaparte, since we have decided to be free? That great projects should be patiently weighed, I hear; but are not three hundred years of waiting long enough? Let us set without fear the foundation of South American independence. To tergiversate is to fail." With Bolivar to Venezuela came General Francisco Miranda, who had fought under Washington for the independence of the United States and under Dumouriez for the freedom of the French people. He was an experienced and tried soldier and one who loved liberty as he loved his life, but he was unfamiliar with conditions in Venezuela, and he was a better fighter than an organizer. He was made general-in-chief of the Venezuelan army; but his campaigns against the Spaniards were unsuccessful and he was captured and flung into a dungeon, where he remained for the rest of his life. Bolivar escaped and went to Curacao, where he published a declaration to the effect that in order to make possible the liberty of the continent Venezuela must be again established as a republic; and to accomplish this end he called for men. Two hundred responded and with this small force he engaged an army ten times the size of his own, and fought twenty successive battles in fifteen days. His way led across mountains and through passes where death, not only from the foe but as the result of a single misstep, was ever imminent, but neither Bolivar nor his men were daunted. He was victorious over the Spaniards, took the city of Cucuta, and added a million dollars to the treasury. His army was constantly increased by volunteers. Over 750 miles were traversed, and fifty times the Spaniards were engaged. On August 6, 1813, Bolivar entered Caracas in triumph. The most beautiful women of the city crowned him with laurels; cries of "Long live our Liberator! Long live New Granada! Long live the Savior of Venezuela!" filled the air; the people wept for joy, and Bolivar himself, much moved, dismounted from his horse and knelt to give thanks to God for the victory which had attended his efforts. But while the patriots were showering honors upon their "Liberator" the Spanish were remarshalling their forces. On the plains lived the Llaneros, cattle breeders, men of the wildest nature, almost outlaws. They were reckless fighters and rode fearlessly. They were won over to the Spanish cause by the promise of booty, and soon, under the leadership of a Spaniard named Boves, were arrayed against Bolivar's little army. The days that followed were dark for the patriots, with a long record of heart-breaking defeats. But no matter how the tide of battle went against them, their souls were unconquered. Rumors against the honor and integrity of Bolivar began to be circulated and he lost caste among those who had been his staunch supporters. Finally he was denounced as a traitor and driven into exile. In this, the darkest hour of his life, he made a farewell address to his people: "I swear to you," he said, "that this title (Liberator) which your gratitude bestowed upon me when I broke your chains shall not be in vain. I swear to you that Liberator or dead, I shall ever merit the honor you have done me; no human power can turn me from my course." Bolivar went to New Granada, where Camille Torres, the president of that Republic, was his staunch friend. He is said to have cried: "So long as Bolivar lives, Venezuela is not lost." There Bolivar never ceased to work for his country, even though he was unjustly exiled. The cause of liberty suffered severe reverses during these days. Ferdinand VII., who was once more securely seated on the throne of Spain, sent a great army to America, under the command of General Morillo, who had instructions to subdue the insurgent colonies even "if no patriot was left alive on the continent." New Granada was conquered and all the revolutionists on whom the Spanish could lay hands were massacred. Peru, Chili and Buenos Aires were also made to bow to the power of Spain, who outdid herself in cruel injustice to show the revolutionists that revolt was useless. Of the Spanish action in Venezuela, an official report says: "Provinces have ceased to exist. Towns inhabited by thousands now number scarcely a hundred. Others have been entirely wiped out. Roads are covered with dying, dead and unburied skeletons. Heaps of ashes mark the sites of villages. The trace of cultivated areas is obliterated." Bolivar next banded his little following together on the island of Santo Domingo, and at the close of 1816 landed just off the coast of Venezuela, on the island of Margarita. He convened a congress, instituted a government, and issued a proclamation abolishing slavery in Venezuela; almost fifty years before the famous Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln. Then he entered upon a two years' campaign, of fierce and fearless fighting against the huge forces of General Morillo. On July 17, 1817, his capture of Angostura marked the turning tide of his fortunes. In 1818 his followers were increased by a large number of soldiers of fortune who were seeking new employment in the pastime of fighting, now that the end of the Napoleonic wars had taken away their occupation. These men were an acquisition because they were skilled in warfare and used to its hardships. A congress was convened at Angostura, in February, 1819, and Bolivar, as the unanimous choice for President, was given supreme power. He made an address which is famous in the annals of history. Among other things he said: "A republican form of government has been, is and ought to be that of Venezuela; its basis ought to be the sovereignty of the people, the division of power, civil liberty, the prohibition of slavery and the abolition of monarchy and privilege---- I have been obliged to beg you to adopt centralization and the union of all the states in a republic, one and indivisible." On August 7, 1819, the decisive battle of Boyaca was fought, and Bolivar entered the capital of New Granada again crowned with laurels. Bolivar believed that the colonies, to make a strong resistance to Spain, must be united. His dream was a confederacy of South American States. This was partially realized when he formed a union of Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador, in 1819, as one republic, of which he was made president. He was also made commander in chief of the army, with full powers of organization of any new conquests which he might add to the union. Now Spain cried for mercy, and when, in 1820, King Ferdinand was again deposed, she asked for a six months truce, which was granted, because Bolivar saw in this lull in hostilities a chance further to entrench himself and prepare for new conquests. His wisdom was demonstrated by the fact that in June, 1821, his army was triumphant at Carabobo, and he soon entered Caracas to cries of "El Libertador," his honor vindicated and his vow fulfilled. In victory he was generous, for in reviewing his army he greeted them with the words, "Salvadores de mi patria." In the period from 1821 to 1824, Bolivar fought for the freedom of Ecuador and Peru, and accomplished it. He was hailed as the South American Liberator, and a separate nation, formed from the territory of Upper Peru, became known as Bolivia, in honor of the great South American patriot. In 1826 Bolivar was at the height of his power, with his best dreams realized. He bore the titles, Perpetual Protector of Bolivia, President of Colombia and Dictator of Peru. The territory under his control was almost two-thirds the size of all Europe. History is too often a record of ingratitude. One would think that in South America Bolivar would have remained first in the hearts of all the people. But jealous seekers after self-aggrandizement plotted against his rule and even attempted his life. Venezuela, which owed so much to him, was the first to withdraw, Ecuador became a separate republic and Bolivar was banished. At this his heart and his spirit were broken and he died at the age of only 47, on December 17, 1830. His last words were: "For my enemies I have only forgiveness. If my death shall contribute to the cessation of factions and the consolidation of the Union, I can go tranquilly to my grave." No other single individual has left such a mark on the pages of South American history; and though he never even visited the island he greatly influenced Cuba as well as the countries in which he lived and struggled for freedom. For the breath of revolt which was scorching the Spanish possessions on the main land, was no longer leaving Cuba untouched. It has ever been the history of tyranny that sooner or later the oppressed have found a leader and have risen against their tormentors, and also--we have only to contemplate French history, or to study the story of Russia under the Czars, to find confirmation--that such opposition was born first in secret gatherings, and gained strength under cover of concealment and darkness, until it grew strong enough to stand in the daylight. CHAPTER XXIII Tales of Bolivar's triumphs in South America were not slow to penetrate to the knowledge of the Cubans. Liberty, which had seemed only a dream, now began to take on the aspect of a possible reality. Men expressed their opinions and desires furtively in their own homes, to tried and trusted friends. They began to assemble and exchange views. No one dared to come out openly at first, and so propaganda was carried on through veiled articles, by word of mouth, by the secret clasp or sign of union. Under pretext of meeting for amusement and social pleasure clubs whose members were all friends of liberty began to be formed, about 1820. The Free Masons, whose principles were far from inimical to what now began to become the aim of all Cubans who loved their country, organized societies, which immediately became hot-beds of revolt, of the fiercest kind of protest against Spanish rule, and the rendezvous of those who planned to overthrow it. Other clubs, all of them masking their real purpose under some pretext, sprang into existence like magic. The best known of them all was called the "Soles de Bolivar" in which the influence of Bolivar had bridged the waters which separate Cuba from South America, and was leading the Cubans, in the inception of their fight for liberty. What the members of these societies most longed for was that the renowned "Liberator" would come at the head of an army and overthrow the Spanish rule in Cuba; though this was not to be. Now if the Spanish rule was politically weak and tottering at this time, the evidence of this fact was strongly repressed, and financially the country was flourishing. At the head of the financial department was the Count de Villanueva. He made many reformations in the methods of collecting taxes--to enable Spain more readily to lay her hands on her spoils. He changed the methods of keeping accounts, and of checking up the books of the public treasury. His influence at the Spanish court was greater than that of the Captain-General, and so he was able to have him deposed as President of the Consulado and himself appointed in his stead. He exercised a despotic control over the functions of that body, and made them subservient to the improvement and development of Cuba for the enrichment of Spain. He saw to it that everything that could be taxed paid its share into the public treasury. As agriculture increased, its products were more heavily taxed. The plight of the Cuban who desired to own property and get on, was similar to that of a pieceworker who, when he speeded up productions, found the piece work price cut to take care of any surplus. The more the Cuban produced, the more he was taxed, and his last state was about the same as his first; the only ones who profited were the officials in Spain. Now for the first time taxes were imposed without even consulting those taxed, to say nothing of obtaining their consent. Villanueva was the friend of the Captain-General and his co-conspirator against Cuba's happiness, in spite of the fact that he wrested from him certain honors. He was naturally most popular with the Spanish court, and was cordially hated by all loyal Cubans. Yet Villanueva did do some things for the improvement of Havana. He had many roads in and near the city paved, and devices erected to clear the anchorage of the harbor of the infiltrations of mud, and to preserve the wharves. He had the waters of the Husille brought into the city by an excellent method. He established a regular mail packet system between Spain and Cuba, and it was under his administration that the Guines railroad was built. This road ran from Havana to Guines, a distance of forty-five miles, and was built under the direction of an American engineer, Mr. Cruger. It was the nucleus of a system which in 1848 comprised 285 miles of rails in operation, and 85 more in process of construction. These lines connected Havana with Guines, Batabano, Cardenas and Matanzas; Cardenas with Juacaro, Matanzas with Sabanilla and Colisco, Nuevitas with Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba with the copper mines. They represented an investment of between five and six million dollars. Villanueva, however, oppressed and robbed the people in order that he might make frequent and munificent remittances to the treasury in Spain. The more they gave, the more they were urged to give. Spain cared nothing for the manner in which the money which she demanded was accumulated, only that by fair means or foul it might be forthcoming. Villanueva established the Bank of St. Ferdinand, but for all the good it did Cuba at this time, it might have remained unestablished. Its capital was seized by the crown as fast as it accumulated, and it proved to be just a new method for the extortioners. Spain had no more unscrupulous agent than her chief of the finance department. The victims were not quiescent, except in appearance. The rack keys were being too tightly turned. In the "Soles de Bolivar" and in other assemblies patriots were crying out for vengeance. In vain Vives tried to suppress the societies. Known members were arrested and thrown into prison, and meetings were forbidden; but the movement was like a conflagration which has gained start in many parts of a city. When stamped out in one place--when one society was destroyed--it only made its appearance in another. The principal headquarters were at Matanzas. Very carefully and in secret the leaders laid their plans for a widespread revolt, the date of which was set for August 16, 1823. But Vives had secret agents in the societies, and there were traitors as there frequently are in such movements. When the day of the revolt dawned the leaders were seized and imprisoned. There were many eminent Cubans among the patriots, the best known being the greatest of Cuban poets, José Maria Heredia. Perhaps some appreciation not so much of this man's courage as of his genius influenced the Captain-General. At any rate, instead of being condemned to death, he was sent into perpetual exile. A few of the members of the society learned of the betrayal before they could be taken and made their escape from the island. Those who were conspiring for the liberation of Cuba were not cowed, however, but simply temporarily overcome. One of the first acts of Vives under the royal decree of May 25, 1825, was to use every means possible to suppress and to annihilate the secret societies, but he simply made them more wary. The desire for liberty which had sprung up in the breasts of so many Cuban patriots was destined never again to be extinguished, and the history of the island from this time down to the War of Independence, in the closing decade of the century, is that of one long struggle for separation from Spain--sometimes open, more frequently secret but always continuous. When the uprising of 1823 failed so signally, a number of the refugees who escaped prosecution fled to Mexico and Colombia. There was a settlement of these people in Caracas. They turned to "The Liberator" for support, and soon the invasion of Cuba, by a force composed of Mexicans and Colombians, either under the personal leadership, or under the direction of Bolivar, was planned. The leaders of this movement also sought aid in the United States. Now the slaveholders of the South were at this time opposed to the separation of Cuba from Spain, because under the lead of Bolivar it would mean the doom of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery, and such an achievement in Cuba would be inimical to their own interests. So the attempt to procure assistance in the United States was really the cause of the failure of the proposed expedition. Spanish spies were quickly informed of the proposed plan, and such strenuous efforts were openly made to make such an attempt ineffective, that it was never made. Bolivar had all he could attend to in South America, and he was too intelligent a leader to attempt the impossible, and at the same time leave his plans for the liberation of South America to meet certain defeat in his absence. But Spain did not easily overlook the conspiracy, and she seized the leaders in Cuba who were conspiring with those in Colombia and Mexico. Two young men of fine families, Don Francisco de Aguero Velasco and Don Bernabe Sanchez, were apprehended by the aides of the Captain-General, imprisoned and most cruelly treated, and when their spirit was not broken by torture and they refused to divulge the secrets of their leaders, they were condemned to die for treason, and paid the penalty of their patriotism with their lives. Still the love of freedom grew and waxed stronger in Cuba. In 1828, a secret society known as El Aguila Negra (The Black Eagle) was inaugurated in Colombia and Mexico, by those patriots who were escaping the vengeance of Spain by remaining in exile. This movement was splendidly organized. It had branches, not only in Colombia and Mexico, but also in the United States, where recruiting offices were openly established, and in Cuba where its operations were secret. But the organizers of The Black Eagle could not make a move which Spanish spies did not report to their master, the Captain-General of Cuba. Every plan was known to him as soon as it was formulated. He made no secret of his determination to deal summarily with those who were plotting against the power of Spain, but he waited in hope that he might be able to seize the real brains of the expedition. Besides this, the declaration of Bolivar for the freedom of the slaves as one of the principles for which he was fighting, and the fact that he was so closely connected with these revolutionary movements in Cuba, excited at this time the fears and animosity not only of the slave owners in the United States, but also of the most selfish, greedy and powerful of this class--particularly those of Spanish birth and sympathies--in Cuba. Before the expedition could be actually started, the leaders were apprehended and a farce of a trial followed. The Captain-General was beginning to fear the new spirit which was abroad in the land. Perhaps he had discovered that cruelty and fierce opposition only fanned the flame. At any rate he commuted the sentence of death, and imprisoned the conspirators. Since Mexico had conspired against the Spanish occupation of Cuba, General Vives retaliated by a military expedition against Mexico, in 1828. A force of three thousand and five hundred men was sent against Mexico--not a large army, but General Vives expected that large numbers of Mexicans would join his soldiers, once they set foot on Mexican soil. A landing was made at Tampico, in August, 1828. Instead of being received with acclamations by the people of Mexico, the movement met with the most strenuous opposition. The expedition was surrounded by the Mexican army, and its members were glad to surrender and to make terms with the Mexicans by which they were allowed to return to Havana. In March, 1829, the would-be conquerors of Mexico arrived in Havana with none of the honors with which it had been planned to crown the victors. Vives, while a stern governor, did not actually play the part of a despot. He held his office until May 15, 1832, when he was succeeded by Don Mariana Ricafort, a tyrant of the most pronounced type. His rule left one continuous record of oppression and misgovernment. No better person to encourage in the hearts of thinking Cubans an eagerness to be rid of Spain could have been chosen, for he was thoroughly hated and despised. His rule continued two years, and then, in 1834, the reins of government were taken into the hands of General Don Miguel Tacon. The eastern department of the island was commanded at this time by General Lorenzo. Tacon, one of the most famous of the nineteenth century Captains-General, was a man of small mind and great stubbornness, shortsighted, narrow and jealous. He was exceedingly vain, grasping for power, and a tyrant of the most pronounced type. He took many privileges from the wealthy inhabitants of the island, and he seized for himself the power, which had theretofore been a municipal function, of naming the under-commissaries of police in Havana. Like all people of extremely arbitrary nature, Tacon was an arrant coward at heart. He was perpetually in terror of being assassinated, and upon the slightest pretext had anyone whom he considered dangerous to his rule thrown into prison. The life of no Cuban who happened to offend the Captain-General was safe at this time. In 1836 there occurred in Spain the revolution of La Granja, when the progressive triumphed over the moderate party, and the Queen Regent was obliged to proclaim the old Constitution of 1812, granting Cuba representation in the Spanish Cortes, and to summon deputies from Cuba. The news of this triumph reached Santiago de Cuba before it did Havana, whereupon General Lorenzo, in command there, immediately proclaimed the Code of Cadiz, and ordered an election for deputies to the Cortes. He reestablished the constitutional ayuntamiento, declared the press free, reorganized the national militia and put his department on the same footing that it had been in 1823. Tacon was furious when knowledge of this action reached him. He had no power to compel General Lorenzo to retract, but he summarily cut off all communications with his department and laid his plans to invade that territory, and by military force to restore his own absolute government and do away with representation for Cuba in the Spanish Cortes. Perhaps nothing that he could have done could have added more to his unpopularity. He was hissed in the streets, and plots were made against his life. For himself, Tacon paid no attention to the royal mandate which announced the reestablishment of the Constitution of 1812 and foreshadowed orders for election of deputies to the Cortes. Under the royal decree of 1825, which was still in force, Tacon had power to set aside any instructions which came from Spain, if it seemed to him to the best interests of Cuba. He did not hesitate to take advantage of this authority, which gave him the same rights as a Spanish governor over a city in a state of siege, allowed him to suspend any public functionary no matter what his rank, and to banish any resident of the island who opposed him, without trial, and even without the formal preferring of accusations, as well as to suspend any law or regulation emanating from Spain, should he see fit. Under Tacon's orders, a column of soldiers, picked from the Spanish army of occupation, and chosen--much against their will and inclination--from the rural and provincial militia and cavalry, was placed under the command of General Gascue, in the town of Guines. Meanwhile, Tacon's secret agents were carrying on an active propaganda among the citizens of Santiago de Cuba, and endeavoring to seduce public sentiment from Lorenzo's to Tacon's side. They did not hesitate to tell the most unblushing falsehoods, and to make the most dishonest promises to win the people over, and by such means attained some degree of success. If Tacon had had a different sort of opponent the story would have been written along very different lines. A strong commander of the large forces at Santiago de Cuba could easily have compelled him to withdraw from his position, and could have assured for Cuba greater freedom, and this course might in the long run at least have postponed her further efforts for separation from Spain. But General Lorenzo though well-meaning was fatally weak. Instead of resisting Tacon's tyranny he left Cuba for Spain, in an effort to make sure of the support of the Spanish crown, leaving Tacon to follow his own will, and to wreak his vengeance on those who had opposed him. Tacon was of course delighted with the success of his strategy. He sent some of the officers of his companies to Santiago and established a military commission to try all the people of prominence who under General Lorenzo had opposed him. Moya, the commandant, was the presiding judge, and Miret, a lawyer and a tool of Tacon's, acted as advocate. No greater travesty of justice has ever been staged than the proceedings of this precious body. Now all the Creoles of wealth, education and family had welcomed the royal decree, and hastened to obey the commands of General Lorenzo and to take oath to uphold a constitution which was so beneficial to their interest. Their names were known to Tacon, and he seized not only such people, but anyone of whom he had the slightest suspicion. Men of the highest rank, or the best reputation for loyalty and honesty, of the finest education and standing, were among the number who were summoned before Tacon's tribunal. Even the church was not exempt, and several clergymen, with liberal leanings, and of known revolutionary sentiments, were arrested and imprisoned. This was an excellent time for Tacon to find a pretext to separate the sheep from the goats, and to put those who seemed likely to oppose him where he thought they belonged. Many of these people were confined in dungeons which were as barbarous as those of the middle ages, and were left there until they died of disease or of starvation. They were cut off from communications with their families and friends, and in darkness and filth suffered until death relieved them. A few considered themselves fortunate to get off with sentences of banishment, and those who had warning were glad to escape to another country. Families were separated and homes were broken up. Tacon was very thorough in his methods of putting down what he considered a menace to his government. Even the soldiers under General Lorenzo's command were made his victims. They had been guilty of no offence save that of obeying their superior officer, but this made no difference to Tacon. He decided to make an example of them. Over five hundred of them, with ball and chain dragging, were condemned to work on the streets of Havana like convicts. The deputies to the Cortes whom Lorenzo had chosen, or who had been chosen under his rule, were among those who escaped from the island. They made their way to Spain, and, hoping that the Spanish crown would recognize the regularity of their election, and the irregularity of Tacon's action, presented their credentials to the Cortes. They were referred to a special committee composed of Spaniards whose only interest in Cuba was in what might be extracted from her, and who had no sympathy with her struggles or concern for her welfare or the good of her people. What few ideas they had of the best way to govern Cuba and make her pay the highest returns to Spain were derived from such intellects as those possessed by men of Tacon's ilk, and they were stoutly ranged on Tacon's side of the controversy. The deputies were refused seats in the Cortes, and it was decided that the Constitution of 1812 did not apply to Cuba. Cuba was thus placed under the despotic rule of the Captains-General, who were given absolute power, even precedence, over the will of the Spanish Cortes. The decree of the Cortes on this matter was framed in the following language: "The Cortes, using the power which is conceded to them by the Constitution, have decreed: Not being in a position to apply the Constitution which has been adopted for the peninsula and adjacent to the ultramarine provinces of America and Asia, these shall be ruled and administered by special laws appropriate to their respective situations and circumstances, and proper to cause their happiness. Consequently, the Deputies for the designated provinces are not to take their seats in the present Cortes." Tacon was exultant over this strengthening of his hand, and he began a regime even more cruel than his previous record. His agents were constantly busy stirring up strife and jealousy between the Spanish residents of the island and the native Cubans. He dominated the civil courts with his military officers, and justice became a mere chimera of fancy. In order to keep the police in line, he insisted that a certain number of arrests must be made within a given period. When there were not enough real offenders to make up the quota, the police naturally wreaked any little personal animosities which they might have against private citizens; and it has even been said that frequently they were paid by certain revengeful citizens who held grudges to prefer charges against men who were absolutely innocent of any offence. Of course societies, whether political or social, came under the governmental ban. Citizens were not encouraged to assemble in groups for any purpose, and they feared to do so openly, lest the entire group might be apprehended and tried on some trumped up charge. All associations for education or personal betterment were discouraged, because if people came to know too much, they were harder to handle and more apt to revolt. Besides this, any society or institution which did not depend on the favor of the Captain-General might find means of denouncing his rule, and one could never tell how royal favor might be swayed. Tacon well knew it to be a very uncertain quantity, and meant to keep the wind blowing in his quarter, if possible. In connection with his management of the police force, the whole attitude of justice was changed. No person was presumed innocent until his guilt was proved, but on the contrary his guilt was presumed unless he could beyond the shadow of a doubt prove his innocence; and if he had been unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of one of the legion of sycophants from the court of Spain who hung around the palace of the Captain-General, seeking their own aggrandizement, his chances of having an opportunity to prove himself innocent were very small. Tacon encouraged rather than discouraged his subordinates in acts of injustice, and did not care to what lengths they went if they kept the people quiet. He roared at his officers, and demanded that they be vigilant against his enemies, and they were thoroughly cowed by him. To satisfy him, they invented accusations and thrust just men into prison, or had them condemned to death. A curious result of this regime, and one which shows how some good will often work out of the basest evils, was that thieves and banditti were much less active than under any other Captain-General. The long arm of Tacon reached out to subdue them, to fall upon the guilty as well as the innocent. Tacon is said to have stated his own position in these words: "I am here, not to promote the interests of the people of Cuba, but to serve my master, the king." The press was muzzled, and the local ayuntamientos were deprived of their rights, and became merely the means for the collection and distribution of the funds of the municipalities. The prisons were overcrowded with Tacon's victims, and it became necessary to lodge some of the political prisoners in the dungeons of castles. Nearly 600 people, against whom there was no formal accusation, and about whom no treason could be proved, were lodged in cells and dungeons. No private citizen was safe, and no one had any personal liberty. In spite of the lack of a free press, pamphlets denouncing the rule of Tacon were constantly being written, printed and circulated. One, entitled "_Cuba y su Gobierno,_" contained the following assertions: "With the political passions of Spaniards and Cubans excited; the island reduced from an integral part of the monarchy to the conditions of a colony, and with no other political code than the royal order, conferring unlimited power upon the chief authority; the country bowed down under the weighty tyranny of military commissions established in the capitals of the eastern and western departments; with the prisons filled with distinguished patriots; deprived of representation in the Cortes; the ayuntamientos prohibited the right of petition; the press forbidden to enunciate the state of public opinions; closed the administration of General Don Miguel Tacon in the island of Cuba, the most calamitous, beyond a question, that this country has suffered since its discovery by the Spaniards." The party in Cuba which was struggling against her oppression decided that since they dared not give expression of their views in the local press, they would establish organs outside their distressed country. Two papers were accordingly issued, one at Paris, called _El Correo de Ultramar_, and one at Madrid called _El Observador_. These were both edited by able Cubans who were in exile. Later, in 1848, _La Verdad_, a paper devoted to Cuban interests, was started in New York and the copies given free distribution. Tacon, like other despots, sought to cover his misdeeds by public works, with which he tried to placate those possible insurgents whom he had not imprisoned, and to deceive the Spanish government; for cruel and arbitrary as had been the Spanish attitude toward her colonies, it is doubtful whether the Spanish Cortes, had all the facts been known, would have countenanced some of the brutalities of which Tacon was guilty. There is a curious irony, a sort of paradox, about one of the improvements which Tacon made on the island. As we have seen, the prisons had never before been so full, and there had never before been such a demand for places to incarcerate political offenders. Tacon consequently caused a prison to be built, which has ever since been pointed to as a palliation of some of his misdeeds. It is situated near the gate of La Punta, and not far distant from the sea coast. It is well ventilated and airy, and open to the sea breezes. One point urged in its favor was that "its unfortunate inmates were protected from those pestilential fevers rising from crowded and ill-ventilated rooms." In other words, they were torn from squalor to well ventilated imprisonment. This would have been all very nice, were it not for the fact that numbers of the prisoners were from the best homes on the island, and had no need of a comfortable boarding house by the sea, watched over by an inhuman jailor. The prison had a capacity of five thousand prisoners, and very shortly after its erection it sheltered one thousand. It was built by the labor of convicts, and poor, unhappy political prisoners, and partly with funds which Tacon extracted from some of the officers who served under his predecessors, claiming that such funds had been by them unlawfully appropriated to their own use. To give opportunities for "graft" to his followers, and work to their hangers-on, Tacon constructed a wall, high, level and massive, and for what purpose only he knew, right through the widest avenue of Havana. The Cubans were taxed to pay for the work, and subsequently were retaxed to pay for its removal. Tacon also established a public meat and fish market, for which he won popular approbation--outside of Cuba. It was in fact much to the detriment of the public and the public revenue, and greatly to his own gain and that of his friends. Even the contract for this market was not honestly let, but was given to the highest bidder for Tacon's enrichment, while honest bidders were ignored. The grant was obtained, whereupon the contractors came into their own, and commenced extorting large and valuable fees to which they were not entitled. Finally the matter became such a public scandal that even Tacon could not avert its being investigated, but when this investigation was completed, the record was taken possession of by Tacon, and mysteriously never again was discovered. The scandal of Tacon's administration at last became too great even for the Spanish court, which was supposed to be inclined to stand for anything, and the voice of Don Juan Montalvo y Castillo was raised in the Spanish Cortes in expostulation. But Tacon wrote artful reports, dodged the real issues, and cheerfully lied, and his utterances--perhaps better fitting the temper of the Cortes--found credence and his rule was continued. Tacon caused the Governor's palace to be rebuilt, at great profit to himself and his favorites in the way of perquisites and bribes; he caused a military road to be constructed; and he had a spacious theatre erected, cynically saying, that "it would keep the people amused, and keep their minds off of matters which did not concern them." He also caused a large parade ground to be opened just outside the city. But in none of his improvements was he free from suspicion of having enriched his own purse, and having in some manner pulled the wool over the sadly strained eyes of the Cuban patriots. A story which reads like a romance is told of Tacon's institution of the fish market. In those days pirates infested the waters around Cuba, and indeed were a menace to American and French vessels, as we have seen. The most daring pirate and smuggler of them all was said to be a man named Marti, of whom many exciting tales are related. He was a bold leader of desperadoes, and since the Isle of Pines was where his band most frequently had their headquarters, he was known as the "King of the Isle of Pines." Now Tacon was eager to suppress smuggling and piracy, probably because they interfered with his own plans. The Spanish ships of war lay in the harbors of Cuba at anchor, while the officers indulged in dancing on board with Cuban ladies, or took long period of leave on shore. This did not please Tacon, and he accordingly issued commands that they suppress the smugglers at all costs. But the smugglers carried on their operations from small coves and inlets, in little crafts which did not draw much water, and the clumsy and half-hearted efforts of the Spanish sailors to apprehend them filled their leaders with mirth. There are many tales of the impudent daring with which these outlaws operated under the very noses of those who were sent out to capture them. At last Tacon, who had an abounding belief that every man had his price, and perhaps had heard enough of the character of the men he was hunting to gauge it correctly, offered a reward for anyone who would desert and inform the government of the pirates. A much larger and more tempting sum was offered for the delivery of Marti, dead or alive. These offers were posted throughout the country. For some time nothing happened, and then one dark night, when it was raining copiously, a man evaded the sentinels before the main entrance to the governor's palace in Havana. He stole through the entrance, and hid himself among the pillars in the inner court. Next this man silently crept up the staircase to the governor's apartments. Here he met a guard, but he saluted, and passed on with such nonchalance that he was not challenged, and entering the reception room of the governor, found himself in the semi-royal presence. Tacon was alone, busily writing. He promptly inquired who his visitor might be, and was informed that he was one who had valuable information for the Captain-General. "I am the Captain-General," said Tacon. "Your excellency is desirous of apprehending the pirates who infest the coasts of the island?" "You must have been reading the proclamations," jocosely suggested Tacon. "And you wish to take Marti, dead or alive?" Tacon signified that such was his purpose. His strange visitor then exacted the Captain-General's promise that he would be granted a free pardon in return for the valuable information which he was about to divulge. When this promise was given he said: "I will lead you to the strongholds of the smugglers." "You?" cried Tacon. "Who are you?" "I am Marti!" was the reply. Marti, who so calmly and unscrupulously betrayed his followers, was of course a welcome visitor to the Captain-General, and one worthy of his warmest co-operation and friendship. He was placed under surveillance, and was obliged to remain in the palace for the night, but the Captain-General refrained from telling anyone his identity. On the next day he acted as pilot for one of the Captain-General's boats, and after the course of several weeks he had exposed every hiding place of his men. The amount of money and property thus secured and appropriated by the Captain-General cannot be estimated, but it was very great. A great deal of it never found its way into the treasury. Marti was a scoundrel so much to his liking that the Captain-General decided not only to give him a free pardon, but an order on the treasury for a large sum of money. However, Marti had his own ideas of what he desired. In place of the money he chose the absolute right to fish the waters surrounding Havana, to the exclusion of all fishermen who were not in his employ. He had in his wild career marked for his own all the best fishing grounds in the harbor. This concession granted, there must naturally be found a market for his fish, and thus the fish market project was born. Then fishing made Marti so wealthy that he now had time for more elegant occupations, and turned his mind to theatricals. He is said to have obtained some sort of monopoly from the government over theatrical performances in the island, and then the public theatre idea was formed. Tacon had as many press agents as an opera singer, albeit they had no methods of getting their material into public print and disseminated it by word of mouth. His agents told many stories of him to illustrate his love of justice, his wonderful generosity, and his many other admirable traits, for which he was in reality only negatively to be celebrated. The one which follows is merely illustrative of the others. In the first year of his rule there was a young Creole girl, of surpassing beauty and modesty, of the name of Miralda Estalez. She was an orphan of seventeen, and kept a cigar store, which her beauty and grace made very popular with the young men of Havana. Miralda, like all proper heroines of fiction or fairy stories, was good as well as beautiful, and although many of the young bloods sighed for her, her glance fell with favor only on a handsome but, of course, poor and deserving young man, of the name of Pedro Mantenez. Pedro was a boatman, which is a most romantic and fitting occupation for an impoverished but righteous hero. He was more than this. By his wit and sagacity--which as we have seen failed to line his coffers, but if they had done so he would have been out of drawing in this affecting picture, since he would no longer have been poor but deserving--he was a leader among the other boatmen and beloved by all. The records of his noble and self-sacrificing deeds would have filled a volume as large as an unabridged dictionary. Miralda loved Pedro, and Pedro loved Miralda, and all was going as merry as a marriage bell, when entered the villain, a famous roué of the name of Count Almonte, who liked Miralda's cigars and cast melting glances at Miralda herself, but all in vain, because, as we have said, Miralda was good as well as beautiful. Finding that he would have to do something more substantial than make eyes, the worthy count offered Miralda a costly present which so affected her that she fainted, not with joy, but with horror. Then she ordered the count from her shop, but he refused to go and continued to hang around and buy her wares. Next the fine count offered her money and lands and rich clothes and what not, but the pure-minded young girl righteously spurned his offer. Acting quite in character the count then decided to kidnap her. His plans were ingenious, but in order to gain popularity for Tacon it was necessary that not far from this point he should get into the story. One afternoon, just at twilight, that fine hour for abduction, a lieutenant--probably in Tacon's pay--stepped into the store and demanded that Miralda go with him, by order of the Captain-General; which does look like the cloven hoof in the velvet glove, or something of the sort. But instead of taking Miralda to the Captain-General she was conveyed to the count's country estates, where she was kept a prisoner, although of course not harmed--in fiction the villain never harms the heroine before the hero arrives even if he is a bit late at the appointment. Pedro, by that wit and sagacity which had made him a master boatman, discovered the count's treachery. He disguised himself as a friar and went to the count's gate every day and slipped notes through the cracks to Miralda, thus cheering her exceedingly. Then entered the most high excellency, the Captain-General, that defender of those who loved liberty in Cuba, that builder of prisons and master genius in filling them, that despoiler of rich and poor alike, and thus the man most likely to help defenseless virtue. Pedro's excess of wit and sagacity led him straight to the spotless Captain-General. After trying three times to get an audience, for governing the island and putting down rebellions kept Tacon reasonably busy, Pedro succeeded in getting into the presence of the lord of Cuba. When he had told his story, and sworn to his honorable intentions toward his fiancee, Tacon sent his soldiers to the count's estate to bring him and Miralda into the sacred presence. When the Captain-General had demanded to know, and the count had assured him, that Miralda was "as pure as when she came beneath my roof," Tacon immediately produced a priest and married Miralda to the count, much to the astonishment and chagrin of the faithful Pedro. But Tacon the Just was not through. He was ever on the side of the oppressed, when his own interests leaned that way. The count was ordered to return to his own plantation, without his bride. While on the way he was shot in the back, after Tacon's most pleasant manner and by his orders. In one record it is hinted that his estates were pleasant picking for Tacon, but the story which is most current leaves out that interesting detail. Tacon's version is that he gave the count's estate to the widow; and at any rate Pedro and Miralda were married and lived happily ever afterward, and Tacon gave them his blessing with the high-sounding pronouncement: "No man nor woman on this island is so humble but that they may claim the justice of Tacon." Tacon's rule, one of the worst that the long-suffering Cubans had to endure, finally came to an end, on April 16, 1838, when he was succeeded by Don Joaquin de Espeleta. The latter had been born in Cuba, and it is a mystery why he was ever appointed, for Spain was not wont to accord honors to Cubans, or to confer the high rank of Captain-General on one who might naturally be expected to have Cuban sympathies. He had been for some time connected with the government in a subordinate capacity, being inspector-general of the troops, and second cabo-subalterno. From all accounts Espeleta was an excellent governor, and must have afforded the harassed Cubans a much needed breathing spell after the misrule of Tacon. But he was not long allowed to rule Cuba. Spain began to suspect that the Cubans were being treated too well, and that trouble might follow. Indeed, Espeleta was reported to be conciliating the people, and holding out hopes of great reforms. This in itself seemed to justify his removal, and so, in 1840, he was succeeded by the Prince de Aglona. During this administration the Royal Pretorial Audience, a high court of appeal to which all civil cases might be taken, was established. If this had been kept free from deleterious influences, it would have been a most beneficial thing for the oppressed Cubans, but the royal favorites dominated it, as they did pretty much everything else. CHAPTER XXIV General Geronimo Valdez, who succeeded the Prince de Aglona as Captain-General in 1840, probably endeavored to rule wisely, since he was by nature a rather gentle and just man; but he had absolutely no chance with the power of Spain against him. It was during his incumbency that the first of the alarming slave uprisings occurred, and the Spanish officials were so frightened that they counseled the most violent methods of subduing the offenders, to which as we shall see General Valdez at least shut his eyes. For he was weak and indecisive, and had not the power to rule insurgents or to keep his Spanish colleagues within bounds. The British consul, David Turnbull, of whom we shall hear more later, was unpopular with the planters, who accused him of inciting their slaves to rebellion. Certainly he was an ardent advocate of emancipation, and a book which he wrote about this period was filled with denunciations of slavery. Valdez tried to placate both him and the planters, and between the two promptly fell down and won the enmity of both. His numerous grants of freedom to negroes were another cause for complaint. The planters combined and caused his downfall, and he yielded his office to one better suited to Spanish standards. Some years later they secured the recall of Turnbull. It is said of Valdez that he departed from Cuba no richer than when he had come, and if this is true,--it sounds almost impossible,--then he stands unique in an assembly of "grafters." In 1843 George Leopold O'Donnell took office as Captain-General. No despot who had preceded him surpassed him in cruelty. He turned every possible happening to his personal advantage, and lined his pockets with Cuban money. It was during his tenure of office that the most wide-spread and most dangerous of the insurrections among the slaves happened. Of the methods used in subduing this we shall write in another chapter, but they were the most disgraceful that have blotted the pages of the history of any nation. General O'Donnell himself, his wife and daughter were said to have profited by the slave trade. The wife of the Captain-General, by the way, seems to have had a painfully itching palm. It is told of her that she had a number of loaves of bread left after a reception, and that she sent for the baker at three o'clock in the morning, to require him to take back the surplus. When he demurred, that he could only sell it for stale bread, and would thus lose money on it, she said: "Oh, I sent for you early because now you can mix it with the other bread, and sell it to the masses, and no one will know the difference." She is accused of having been engaged in all kinds of schemes by which she profited in an illegitimate way. She dabbled in the letting of contracts for the cleansing of sewers and for the removal of dirt and manure from the city streets, demanding her bonus from the one who secured the contract, and these municipal operations stained her hands with illgotten gains. It is said that O'Donnell, who had a large interest in marble quarries in the Isle of Pines, had his agents select able bodied laborers, and trump up charges of treason against them. They were then sentenced to deportation to work in the Captain-General's stone quarries, and thus solved the problem of low priced labor. O'Donnell was fertile also in inventing new taxes and new methods of extorting money, which of course brought him into high favor at court. So pleasing was his rule to his masters and to his aides that he was allowed to stay in office longer than usual, and was not succeeded until 1848. One of the most ridiculous figures in Cuban history came next, in the person of General Frederico Roncali. Some 400 Americans had taken up their abode on an island far distant from Cuba. Rumors reached General Roncali that they intended to free Cuba from Spanish rule. He promptly marched 4,000 picked soldiers to garrisons in Cuba, and promised them double pay if they would fight bravely when the enemy landed. Of course, the enemy never came, and General Roncali presented a foolish figure. But after all there was a portent in this of the fear which the Spaniards were beginning to entertain, that the end of their rule in Cuba was at hand. While the slave trade had been made illegal in 1820, it flourished with more or less vigor until the end of the Ten Years' War in the latter part of the century. Spain officially frowned upon it, but unofficially the Spanish crown is said to have been financially interested in the slave trading companies, and to have shared largely in their profits. To add to this incentive for the continuance of the trade, the Captain-General had his own reasons for not suppressing it. He was paid a fixed bonus for every slave imported. Indeed, the post of Captain-General of Cuba was one not to be despised by any soldier of fortune. The perquisites of the office are said to have been--of course, not from the slave trade alone--close to $500,000 a year. The Captain-General is said to have received "half an ounce of gold" for every "sack of charcoal," as they facetiously dubbed the negro, allowed to pass into the country. Although no excuse of expediency can be urged for the enslavement of human beings, no matter what their color or race, it remains a fact that the sugar plantations of Cuba required laborers in great numbers for their development, and the easiest and most profitable way to obtain that labor was through the employment of black slaves. It would probably have been impossible to obtain a sufficient number of white men at that time to do the work required, especially since when an attempt was made to import white men for work on the plantations, the owners who were of Spanish birth brought every influence possible to bear on the government to make such laws and regulations for that kind of labor that, if it could be procured, its retention was well nigh impossible. The blacks were naturally not satisfied with slavery. In their association with their masters they acquired just enough information and knowledge to make them dangerous. And at this time the blacks, free and slave, were a large majority of the population. The negro race in captivity was always difficult to manage. They were affectionate and responsive to good treatment but when their rage was aroused by hard and unjust treatment they reverted to habits of the jungle. The Spanish planters believed that the way to keep the negroes quiet was to keep them under with a strong hand and consequently overseers were frequently brutal. There began to be a strong undercurrent of unrest among the negro population, and an equally strong fear of them among the whites. Sporadic uprisings occurred, which were like the overflowing of a boiling caldron, not organized, and not well prepared, and therefore easily put down by the authorities. A description of a typical uprising of this character is contained in a work called "The Slaves in the Spanish Colonies" by the Countess Merlin, published about 1840. It relates the experiences of one Don Rafael with a mutiny of his slaves. "The slaves lately imported from Africa were mostly of the Luccommee tribe, and therefore excellent workmen, but of a violent and unwieldly temper, and always ready to hang themselves at the slightest opposition to their way. "It was just after the bell had struck five, and the dawn of morning was scarcely visible. Don Rafael had gone over to another of his estates, within half an hour before, leaving behind him, and still in tranquil slumbers, his four children and his wife, who was in a state of pregnancy. Of a sudden the latter awaked, terrified by hideous cries and the sound of hurried steps. She jumped affrighted from her bed, and observed that all the negroes of the estate were making their way to the house. She was instantly surrounded by her children, weeping and crying at her side. Being attended solely by slaves, she thought herself inevitably lost; but scarcely had she time to canvass these ideas in her distracted mind, when one of her negro girls came in, saying, 'Child, your bounty need have no fears; we have fastened all the doors, and Michael is gone for the master.' Her companions placed themselves on all sides of their female owners, while the rebels advanced, tossing from hand to hand among themselves a bloody corpse, with cries as awful as the hissing of a serpent. The negro girls exclaimed, 'That's the overseer's body!' The rebels were already at the door, when Pepilla (this is the name of the lady) saw the carriage of her husband coming at full speed. That sweet soul, who, until that moment, had valiantly awaited death, was now overpowered at the sight of her husband coming unarmed toward the infuriated mob, and she fainted. In the mean time, Rafael descended from the vehicle, placed himself in front of them, and with only one severe look, and a single sign of the hand, designated the purging house for them to go to. The slaves suddenly became silent, abandoned the dead body of their overseer, and, with downcast faces, still holding their field-swords in their hands, they turned round and entered where they had been ordered. Well might it be said, that they beheld in the man who stood before them the exterminating angel. "Although the movement had for a moment subsided, Rafael, who was not aware of its cause, and feared the results, selected the opportunity to hurry his family away from the danger. The _quitrin_ or vehicle of the country could not hold more than two persons, and it would have been imprudent to wait till more conveyances were in readiness. Pepilla and the children were placed in it in the best possible manner; and they were on the point of starting, when a man, covered with wounds, with a haggard, deathlike look, approached the wheels of the _quitrin_, as if he meant to climb in by them. In his pale face the marks of despair and the symptoms of death could be traced, and fear and bitter anguish were the feelings which agitated his soul in the last moments of his life. He was the white accountant, who had been nearly murdered by the blacks, and having escaped from their ferocious hold, was making the last efforts to save a mere breath of life. His cries, his prayers, were calculated to make the heart faint. Rafael found himself in the cruel alternative of being deaf to the request of a dying man, or throwing his bloody and expiring corpse over his children: his pity conquered; the accountant was placed in the carriage as well as might be, and it moved away from the spot. "While this was passing on the estate of Rafael, the Marquis of Cardenas, Pepilla's brother, whose plantations were two leagues off, who had been apprised through a slave of the danger with which his sister was threatened, hastened to her aid. On reaching the spot, he noticed a number of rebels who, impelled by a remnant of rage, or fear of punishment, were directing their course to the Savannas--large open plains, the last abodes resorted to by runaway slaves. The Marquis of Cardenas, whose sense of the danger of his sister had induced him to fly to her, had brought with him, in the hurry of the moment, no one to guard his person except a single slave. Scarcely had the fugitive band perceived a white man, when they went towards him. The marquis stopped his course and prepared to meet them; it was useless temerity in him against such odds. Turning his master's horse by the bridle, his own slave addressed him thus: 'My master, let your bounty get away from here; let me come to an understanding with them.' And he then whipped his master's horse, which went off at a gallop. "The valiant José, for his name is worthy of being remembered as that of a hero, went on toward the savage mob, so as to gain time for his master to fly, and fell a victim to his devotedness, after receiving thirty-six sword-blows. This rising, which had not been premediated, had no other consequences. It had originated in a severe chastisement inflicted by the overseer, which had prompted the rebels to march toward the owner's dwelling to expound their complaint. They begged Rafael's pardon, which was granted, with the exception of two or three, who were delivered over to the tribunals." This specimen of the fine writing of the period has hidden within it two truths which stand out in the history of the difficulties between the blacks and the whites on the island of Cuba. First, although we must discount a bit the Countess's account of Rafael's valor, and the ease with which he subdued the uprising, by taking into account the fact that he was her cousin, and that therefore she naturally looked at him with over-favorable eyes, nevertheless the fact remains that the blacks were usually amenable to the commands of their owners, unless aroused to an unusual pitch of ferocity, and were, through fear or respect, not difficult to reduce to control. In the second place, it has been the history of the relations between the blacks and whites in every country that with anything like fair treatment those who worked about the house, or acted as body servants, became personally attached to their masters--to whom it is true there was often a tie of consanguinity--and showed the same spirit of loyalty which was displayed by Pepilla's women slaves. Shortly after this insurrection, reported by the Countess Merlin, there was another near Aguacate, which was more formidable and more difficult to subdue. Meanwhile, the government was handling the matter of slave insurrections in a vacillating manner. Laws were made which granted the slaves a right to assemble and to establish societies, even to form military bodies for the public defense; actually giving them greater rights than white laborers; and this went hand in hand with such cruel injustice as public whipping posts. The white population, on the other hand, even in localities where there was a great preponderance of blacks, could not form a militia. Turnbull, the English consul, fancied that he saw in these slave insurrections a chance to advance the interests of his country. It is claimed that he also had visions of a republic in which the blacks ruled with himself as president. He was _persona non grata_ with the aristocracy of the island, and is supposed to have been actuated in part by a desire to avenge social slights. He was charged with planning to effect a huge black uprising, to seize and execute enough of the white population to cow the rest and then to set up his black republic. But it is impossible to determine the truth or falsity of these accusations. Turnbull had many enemies who were only too glad to charge him with any crime. In 1842 there was an insurrection in Martiaro, and it was with difficulty suppressed. Then evidence began to be seen everywhere of a systematic propaganda among the slaves on plantations scattered in widely separated parts of the island. A negro mason accidentally dropped an incendiary proclamation from his pocket, and it finally reached the hands of the captain of the district. The negro was tortured, but would not divulge the source of the paper. An itinerant monk went through the country ostensibly begging alms for the church, but in reality prophesying to the blacks that in July, 1842, they would, on St. John's Day, rise and obtain their freedom. The wholesale insurrection did not occur, but there were uprisings in July in various parts of the island, and the slaves of an estate near Bemba murdered their master and a neighbor, and were only subdued when the militia had been called. In January, 1843, an official of the government was murdered by the blacks. A colored man secretly gave evidence against the slayers and in some manner fell under their suspicion, and soon after was assassinated by one of his own people, who afterward was tried for the crime, but committed suicide in jail, before he could pay the death penalty. In March, 1843, near Bemba five hundred negroes rose against their white masters, and it was only after considerable bloodshed that they were subdued. No sooner was this trouble quieted than there was another uprising on a plantation in the neighborhood, and still a third one the same year, the exact details of which are lacking. Then followed, at the close of 1843, the most serious trouble of all, when, in November, the negroes near Matanzas revolted and went on an orgy of murder and rape, ravishing and killing women, and murdering white men. Turnbull was accused of being the brains behind these troubles, but it was impossible to fix the guilt on him. If he was guilty he was not a good organizer, for none of the revolts had any national effect. They were all local in character, and all unsuccessful in attaining any lasting results. After the insurrection of November, 1843, a meeting of planters was called in Matanzas, and the government was asked to take steps to make further revolts impossible. But in 1844, near Matanzas, occurred another serious insurrection, and it was reported that the negroes on all the plantations in the neighborhood were organized and were planning a wholesale revolt, which would bring about the realizations of Turnbull's dreams. It was then that the government decided to act ruthlessly, and methods which would have done credit to the old Spanish Inquisition were promptly introduced. In March, 1844, the Captain-General, O'Donnell, addressed a letter to General Salas, who was the head of the military tribunal, in which he counseled drastic and violent measures against any insurgent blacks. He suggested that all blacks, slave or free, who were suspected of treason to their masters, should be apprehended, and if they refused to give information as to the extent of the organization and their associations, the knowledge must be wrung from them by torture. The slaves were to be tried in the district where they were taken. The officer in charge of each district was promptly given full power to apprehend and punish the plotters as he saw fit. The Spanish officers were often cruel and brutal men, who exercised their authority in the most revolting manner. The hue and cry went from hut to cabin and no black man was safe at his own hearth. Opportunity was taken in some cases to work out a personal grudge and gain freedom from an enemy. No one, not even a white man, dared publicly to raise his voice to expostulate, for he was promptly dubbed an abolitionist and thrown into prison. If a negro had a little money saved to buy his freedom, or, if he was a freedman, to obtain a little business, he stood a better chance of his life. He might buy his tormentors off, but all too frequently when he had paid, he was murdered lest he might tell of the man whom he had bribed. One tender hearted Spanish judge, Don Ramon Gonzales, is reported to have condemned his victims to be taken to a room, the walls of which were already dripping with the blood and shredded flesh of previous victims. There they were tied head down to a ladder, and flogged by two Africans until they were dead. To make their torture the more excruciating, the thongs with which they were scourged had on the ends small buttons made of fine wire, which bit into the flesh. When several freedmen had been executed in this pleasant fashion, and when public opinion dared feebly to protest at such atrocities, death certificates were made out by unscrupulous physicians, reporting death from some simple disease, and under this authority the murdered negroes were quickly buried. A second kind judge seized on some pretext a freeborn negro, an old man, who was gentle and inoffensive, but who had incurred the judicial displeasure, and had him tied to the ladder and flogged on three separate occasions, without even going to the trouble to bring an indictment against him or divulge the nature of his offense. Another free negro was taken by this same official, hung by his hands from the ceiling of the torture chamber, and left there all night, while he was at intervals whipped. At length this poor victim succumbed to the treatment and gave information of a comrade, who was promptly taken out and shot without a trial. Another officer, Don Juan Costa, had a record of ninety-six negroes killed by the lash, of whom fifty-four were slaves and forty-two freedmen. The record shows the following entries, which gives an inkling of the colored man's powers of endurance and of what each must have suffered: "Lorenzo Sanchez, imprisoned on the first of April, died on the fourth. Joseph Cavallero, imprisoned on the fourth, died on the sixth. John Austin Molino, imprisoned on the ninth, died on the twelfth." There were similar laconic entries for the whole ninety-six. Don José del Piso, a fiscal officer, was responsible for the flogging to death of a negro a hundred and ten years of age, too old and infirm to be an active conspirator. This was within the walls of the Matanzas jail. The poor victim was so lacerated that he was hardly recognizable as a human being. This del Piso had a pleasant form of afternoon sport which he conducted to the great edification of his brother inquisitioners. He would have his victims tied to the high limb of a tree, and then cut the rope and watch them writhe when they fell. Don Ferdinand Percher fell slightly below the record of his colleague, Don Juan Costa, for he could boast of only seventy-two deaths to his credit. Then there occurred to these just men and true a new and exceedingly fine way of adding to their revenue. Don Miguel Ballo de la Rore extorted from the negroes on a certain estate, in the absence of their owners, affidavits accusing their master of treason; and the latter was notified through his overseer that unless he paid two hundred ounces of gold forthwith he was a condemned man. However, the correspondence fell into the hands of General Salas who had the grace to put an end to the matter. But not only the blacks were victims. A white man who had incurred the displeasure of the minions of the government was never safe. One Spanish officer had a grudge against a young Englishman and accused him of inciting the negroes on an estate to poison their master; and the Englishman paid the forfeit of his life for a crime of which he was entirely guiltless. The fiscal officers ranged the island, looking for chances to murder, obtaining false testimony, seizing property, cattle, furniture, horses, the property of freed blacks, which they sold, converting the proceeds to their own use. This record seems incredible, but it is vouched for beyond question. Furthermore, at this time no comely colored woman was safe. If she happened to attract the lustful eyes of a Spanish general, her husband or father or brothers were seized, and she herself was delivered up to be ravished and then slain. One of the episodes of this campaign was a largely attended ball, at which no white woman was present, and at which all the colored women were obliged to appear in the garb of Eve before the Fall. [Illustration: JOSÉ ANTONIO SACO One of the greatest of Cuban publicists, José Antonio Saco was born at Bayamo on May 7, 1797; studied philosophy and politics, and succeeded Varela as Professor of Philosophy at the San Carlos Seminary, Havana. In 1828 he founded in New York the "Mensajero Quincenal," and four years later in Havana became editor of the _Revista Bimestre Cubana_. Because of his defense of the Academy of Literature, Captain-General Tacon banished him to the island of Trinidad. In 1836 he represented Cuba in the Spanish Cortes, and afterward travelled in Europe. In Paris he published a treatise of Cuban annexation to the United States, and after the Lopex expedition he wrote again on the political situation in Cuba. He was a member of the Junta of Information in 1866, and a Deputy to the Cortes from Santiago de Cuba. He died at Barcelona, Spain, on September 26, 1879, and his body was returned to Cuba for burial. His greatest literary work was a monumental "History of Slavery," but he wrote many others on political, economical, social and literary subjects.] The fiscal officers were able to carry out these infamies because they were at once prosecuting attorney, judge and jury. They obtained testimony, apprehended, imprisoned, condemned and executed. The testimony which they extorted was taken without witnesses. They themselves wrote down the declarations, distorting them to suit their own purposes. The blacks seldom knew how to read or write, and they were obliged to set their mark to anything which the fiscal officer chose to record. Not even the notary who swore the witness was allowed to check up the declaration with his knowledge of the statements. The Spanish government had for a long time played the most corrupt and petty of politics in apportioning the smaller offices on the island. Political hangers-on, with little education, no moral sense and no honor, were paid for their loyalty to Spain with these positions. The records show that during this reign of terror one thousand three hundred and forty-six people were victims of the inquisition. But Spain in her campaigns of cruelty was only laying up trouble for herself. She was raising a storm which would never again be completely quelled until Cuba was free. The abolitionists and the liberals, or those who longed for freedom from Spanish rule, began joining forces. The cause of freedom for the slaves, and of separation from Spain, were curiously interlaced. The country was worn out with turmoil and eager for peace, but there could be no peace, it was believed, while Spain and the Spaniards on Cuban soil ruled with such cruel measures. The problem of how separation might be obtained was capable of either of two solutions, by annexation to some other country, or by independence. The cause of independence had at this time for its leader a Cuban of the highest type, José Antonio Saco, who had traveled all over the world, and was a man of fine education and great culture. The larger proportion of those Cubans who were intelligent, and who were thinking out for themselves the problem of the fate of Cuba, accepted him as their leader. Of course, it is understood that all organization, all plans and almost all conversation, except in whispers behind closed doors, or in corners of cafes which seemed safe from surveillance, had to be secret. To come out openly for the salvation of Cuba from Spanish rule meant banishment or death. Saco's ideas were well known to the Spanish governor, for in 1834 he had been exiled because of them. But he was prudent, and was not disposed to do anything that would hurl Cuba into the throes of revolution. He felt that a revolution at this time, with the blacks subdued but not conquered, might mean a race war which would be the most disastrous thing that could happen to the island. He also opposed annexation to any other country, particularly to the United States, because he felt that Cuba, being in such close proximity to the latter country, would lose her individuality, be absorbed and become Anglo-Saxon. In 1845 he wrote on this subject, as follows: "If the slave trade continues, there will be in Cuba neither peace nor security. Their risings have occurred at all times; but they have always been partial, confined to one or two forms, without plan or political result. Very different is the character of the risings which at brief intervals have occurred in 1842-43; and the conspiracy last discovered is the most frightful which has even been planned in Cuba, at once on account of its vast ramifications among slaves and free negroes, and on account of its origin and purpose. It is not necessary that the negroes should rise all at once all over the island; it is not necessary that its fields should blaze in conflagration from one end to the other in a single day; partial movements repeated here and there are enough to destroy faith and confidence. Then emigration will begin, capital will flee, agriculture and commerce will rapidly diminish, public revenues will lessen, the poverty of these and the fresh demands imposed by a continual state of alarm, will cause taxes to rise; and, with expenses on the one hand increased, but with receipts diminished, the situation of the island will grow more involved until there comes the most terrible catastrophe." [Illustration: GASPAR BETANCOURT CISNEROS] Again we find in a letter to a friend, Caspar Betancourt Cisneros, written a little later than the former communication: GASPAR BETANCOURT CISNEROS Scion of a distinguished stock, Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros was born in Camaguey in 1803 and was educated in the United States. In 1823 he went with other Cubans to Colombia to confer with Bolivar on the theme of Cuban independence, and remained there for many years. In 1837 he began a notable series of papers in the Cuban press, on familiar economic and educational topics, signing them El Lugareno; under which pen name he became famous. He established schools and agricultural colonies, and built the second railroad in Cuba. In 1846 while he was in Europe he was suspected of revolutionary conspiracy, and his property was confiscated. He then became a teacher in the United States, but returned to Cuba in 1861 and became a journalist. He was too ill to accept election to the Junta of Information, and died in 1866. "Let there be neither war nor conspiracies of any kind in Cuba. In our critical situation either one means the desolation of the country. Let us bear the yoke of Spain. But let us bear it so as to leave to our children, if not a country of liberty, at least one peaceful and hopeful. Let us try with all our energies to put down the infamous traffic in slaves; let us diminish without violence or injustice the number of these; let us do what we can to increase the white population; let us do all which you have always done, giving a good example to our own fellow countrymen, and Cuba, our beloved Cuba, shall some day be Cuba indeed!" On the other hand the Annexationists were waging a vigorous though quiet campaign. On April 20, 1848, a proclamation urging the Cubans to make every effort to add their island to the United States appeared. It was signed simply "Unos Cubanos," and urged opposition to Saco and his sympathizers and a concerted effort to gain the political and civil rights which were enjoyed by Americans. "Amalgamation of the races," ran the proclamation, "would not extinguish Cuban nationality, for every child born in Cuba would be at once a Cuban and an American. Cuba united to this strong and respected nation, whose southern interests would be identified with hers, would be assured quiet and future success; her wealth would increase, doubling the value of her farms and slaves, trebling that of her whole territory; liberty would be given to individual action, and the system of hateful and harmful restrictions which paralyze commerce and agriculture could be destroyed." But no matter what the Cubans themselves might dream of or hope for, Spain had not the slightest intention of surrendering Cuba without a struggle. No country, not even one more altruistic in its policies, and more highly civilized than Spain had shown herself to be at this time, would be eager to relinquish a colony which brought her in a revenue of three and a half millions clear, and which in the twenty years from 1830 to 1850 had poured over $50,000,000 into her coffers. Spain therefore cast around for any expedient which would enable her to retain her last possession in the new world. Roncali during his term as Captain-General very clearly expressed his views as to where the Spanish interests in Cuba lay: "Among the considerable elements of power with which Spain counts in this island, ought to be mentioned slavery. Permit me, your excellency, to explain my belief in this regard. The interest in preserving their fortunes and in developing the rich crops from which they spring causes all the wealthy inhabitants of the country to fear the first whisper of conflict which may relax the discipline of the slaves, or threaten emancipation. From this fact I infer that slavery is the rein which, through fear and interest, will keep in submission the great majority of the white population. But if the event should arrive of foreign war and of inner commotions such as to threaten the dependence of the island, what should be the conduct of the Captain-General toward slavery? I, my noble lord, state my solemn belief that this terrible weapon which the government holds in its hand might in the last extremity prevent the loss of the island, and that if the inhabitants are persuaded that it will be used they will trouble and renounce every fond illusion rather than draw down such an anathema. The chance is remote without doubt, but that very fact makes me express myself clearly: the liberty of all the slaves in a day of gravest peril, proclaimed by Her Majesty's representative in these territories, would re-establish superiority and even strengthen our power in a very real way, based as it would then be on that very class which it seems best today to keep submerged. But if that last resort should prove insufficient, or if it did not suit Spain afterward to retain her hold, it may always be brought about that the conquerors shall acquire Hayti instead of the rich and prosperous Cuba and that the bastard sons who have brought down that calamity by their rebellion shall meet in their complete ruin, punishment and disillusionment. A principle of retributive justice or of harmony with the maxims of modern civilization, to which it is so customary now to appeal, would also call for general emancipation, at the moment when, for whatever reason, Spain should decide to renounce the island.... So far this trans-Atlantic province is still strongly attached to the mother land, and thanks to the wisdom and material solicitude of Her Majesty, I believe that the bonds of union will be still more strengthened; but if the fate of nations brings to this land a day pregnant with such circumstances as to threaten its loss, their national honor and interest alike would demand that every recourse and means be exhausted, without saving anything. If, even then, fortune should abandon us, we should at least leave it written in history that our departure from America corresponded to the heroic story of its acquisition." CHAPTER XXV The era of Cuban history which embraced part of the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and part of the nineteenth centuries, and which we have endeavored to review in this volume, presents a striking and almost unique contrast to the customary course of human affairs. The normal order of civic development begins with the rise and confirmation of nationality, and thence proceeds to international relationships and cosmopolitan interests and activities. Such was the record of other American states which grew up contemporaneously with Cuba. Such was notably the course of the United States of North America. In their colonial period they were intensely local, parochial, in sentiment and spirit. In their revolutionary era they began to manifest a national entity. It was not until long after their establishment of national independence that they fully realized their international status. In Cuba the order was reversed. At first, as a colony of triumphant and masterful Spain, the island had neither national sentiment nor international interests. In the second stage, however, it became a pawn in the great international game which was being played between declining Spain and her increasingly powerful neighbors, actually for a time passing from Spanish to British possession, and often being regarded as likely to pass permanently into the hands of some other power than Spain. These circumstances had a marked effect upon the whole genius of the Cuban people. It gave them international vision before they had learned to discern themselves even as a potential nation. It gave them a degree of cosmopolitanism such as few comparable colonies have ever known. It divorced them in sentiment from the Mother Country to an exceptional degree. They were made to feel that Spain meant little or nothing to them. She had planted them, it is true. But she had given them little cultivation, little protection. She had looked to them for more help for herself than she had herself given to them. She was unable to save them from the danger of being passed from hand to hand, from owner to owner. At the north, England had not governed her Thirteen Colonies well. But she had at least protected them. There had never been on their part any fear that she would abandon them to some other conqueror, or that they would be taken from her by force, or sold or traded away. The British colonists knew that in the last emergency the whole power of the United Kingdom would be exerted for their protection. Yet even so they revolted against misgovernment, and declared their independence. How much more, almost infinitely more, cause had Cubans for alienation from Spain! She had given them no such protection. Her policy suggested always the possibility of their transfer in some way to some other sovereignty. And her misgovernment had been immeasurably worse than that of England. If Cuba was more patient than the Thirteen Colonies at the north, that was another of the paradoxes of history--that the impulsive, hot-blooded Latin of the south should be more deliberate and conservative than the cool and phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon of the north. This very quality of patience was, indeed, the saving virtue of the Cuban character. Quijano Otero wrote of Colombia, at the very time of her revolt against Spain and the establishment of her independence, that she "had lived so fast in her years of glory and great deeds that, though still a child, she was already entering a premature decrepitude." Not so Cuba. It is true that, as we have seen, she had imbibed enough of the spirit of Spain and of other lands to be measurably saturated with their customs, even their luxurious vices and follies. Yet she did not live fast. She did not grow prematurely old. In so far as she adopted the customs of Europe, she adapted them to herself, not herself to them. The result was that after three centuries, she still had the ingenuousness and spontaneity of youth. She might almost have said, in paraphrase of a great captain's epigram, "I have not yet begun to live!" Half unconsciously, however, she had made an exceptionally complete preparation for the life that was to come as a nation. She had already become international in the scope of her vision, in the range of her sympathies, and in her intellectual and social culture. Many of her sons had studied abroad, acquiring the learning of the best European schools. If the world at large knew little about Cuba, Cuba knew much about the world at large. Though indeed the world did know something about Cuba, and took a lively and intelligent interest in her. This we have endeavored to indicate in these pages by our numerous citations of authorities, observers and writers of various lands, who found in the Queen of the Antilles a theme worthy of their most interested attention. More and more, as the unimproved estates of the world were partitioned among the powers, the transcendent value of this island was recognized, and more and more covetous gaze was fixed upon it by the nations which were extending their empires instead of losing them. So at the close of the eighteenth century it was apparent that another epoch in Cuban history was at hand. North America had been swept by revolution. South America was at the brink of revolution. Europe was convulsed with revolution. Amid all these, Cuba was like the calm spot at the centre of a whirlpool. Changes had occurred on every side, but she had been left unchanged. Yet every one of those changes had, deeply and irrevocably, though perhaps imperceptibly, wrought its effect upon her. The potency and the promise of national life were within her. Thus far everything that she had accomplished had been accredited to Spain. But the time was at hand when she would claim her own. During three centuries Cuba had produced the flower of the Spanish race; as indeed from time immemorial colonies had been wont to produce stronger men, in their comparatively primitive and healthful conditions, than the more sophisticated and often decadent Mother Countries. But they had all been reckoned Spaniards. Now the time was coming, and was at hand, when Cubans would be reckoned Cubans, by all the world as well as by themselves. The errors of Spain were not of Cuba's choosing. The disasters of Spain were not of Cuba's inviting. The decadence of Spain was not of Cuba's working. If in the downfall of Spanish power Cuba saw the opportunity for her own uprising, it was not that she herself had compassed that downfall, but only that she chose not needlessly to let herself be involved therein. As Spain weakened, Cuba girded and strengthened herself, and made herself ready to stand alone. THE END OF VOLUME TWO INDEX to Volumes 1 thru 4 Abarzuza, Sr. proposes reforms for Cuba, IV, 6. Abreu. Marta and Rosalie, patriotism of, IV, 25. Academy of Sciences, Havana, picture of, IV, 364. Adams, John Quincy, enunciates American policy toward Cuba, II, 258; portrait, 259; on Cuban annexation, 327. Aglona, Prince de. Governor, II, 363. Agramonte, Aristide, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Agramonte, Enrique, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12. Agramonte, Eugenio Sanchez, sketch and portrait, IV, 362. Agramonte, Francisco, IV, 41. Agramonte, Ignacio, portrait, facing. III, 258. Agriculture, early attention to, I, 173, 224; progress, 234; II, 213; absentee landlords, 214; statistics, 223; discussed in periodicals, 250; rehabilitation of after War of Independence, IV, 147. Aguayo, Geronimo de, I, 161. Aguero, Joaquin de, organizes revolution, III, 72; final defeat, 87. Aguiar, Luis de, II, 60. Aguiera, Jose, I, 295. Aguila, Negra, II, 346. Aguilera, Francisco V., sketch and portrait, III, 173. Aguirre, Jose Maria, filibuster, IV, 55; death, 85. Albemarle, Earl of, expedition against Havana, II, 46; occupies Havana, 78; controversy with Bishop Morell, 83. Alcala, Marcos, I, 310. Aldama, Miguel de, sketch and portrait, III, 204. Aleman, Manuel, French emissary, II, 305. Algonquins, I, 7. Allen, Robert, on "Importance of Havana," II, 81. Almendares River, tapped for water supply, I, 266; view on, IV, 167. Almendariz, Alfonso Enrique, Bishop, I, 277. Alquiza, Sancho de, Governor, I, 277. Altamarino, Governor, I, 105; post mortem trial of Velasquez, 107; attacked by the Guzmans, 109; removed, 110. Altamirano, Juan C., Bishop, I, 273; seized by brigands, 274. Alvarado, Luis de, I, 147. Alvarado, Pedro de, in Mexico, I, 86. Amadeus, King of Spain, III, 260. America, relation of Cuba to, I, 1; II, 254. See UNITED STATES. American Revolution, effect of upon Spain and her colonies, II, 138. American Treaty, between Great Britain and Spain, I, 303. Andrea, Juan de, II, 9. Angulo, Francisco de, exiled, I, 193. Angulo, Gonzales Perez de, Governor, I, 161; emancipation proclamation, 163; quarrel with Havana Council, 181; flight from Sores, 186; end of administration, 192. Anners, Jean de Laet de, quoted, I, 353. Annexation of Cuba to United States, first suggested, II, 257, 326; campaign for, 380; sought by United States, III, 132, 135; Marcy's policy, 141; Ostend Manifesto, 142; Buchanan's efforts, 143; not considered in War of Independence, IV, 19. Antonelli, Juan Bautista, engineering works in Cuba, I, 261; creates water supply for Havana, 266. Apezteguia. Marquis de, Autonomist leader, IV, 94. Apodaca, Juan Ruiz, Governor, II, 311. Arana, Martin de, warns Prado of British approach, II, 53. Arana, Melchior Sarto de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 237. Arana, Pedro de, royal accountant, I, 238. Aranda, Esquival, I, 279. Arango, Augustin, murder of, III, 188. Arango, Napoleon, treason of, III, 226. Arango y Pareño, Francisco, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. II; organizes Society of Progress, II, 178; leadership in Cuba, 191; attitude toward slavery, 208; his illustrious career, 305 et seq. Aranguren, Nestor, revolutionist, IV, 85; death, 92. Araoz, Juan, II, 181. Arias, A. R., Governor, III, 314. Arias, Gomez, I, 145. Arignon, Villiet, quoted, II, 26, 94. Armona, José de, II, 108. Army, Cuban, organization of, III, 178; reorganized, 263; under Jose Miguel Gomez, IV, 301. Army, Spanish, in Cuba, III, 181, 295. Aroztegui, Martin de, II, 20. Arrate, José Martin Felix, historian, II, 17, 179. Arredondo, Nicolas, Governor at Santiago, II, 165. Asbert, Gen. Ernesto, amnesty case, IV, 326. "Assiento" compact on slavery, II, 2. Assumption, Our Lady of the, I, 61. Astor, John Jacob, aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Asylums for Insane, II, 317. Atares fortress, picture, II, 103. Atkins, John, book on West Indies, II, 36. Atrocities, committed by Spanish, III, 250; Cespedes's protest against, 254; "Book of Blood," 284; Spanish confession of, 286; war of destruction, 295; Weyler's "concentration" policy, IV, 85. Attwood's Cay. See GUANAHANI. Autonomist party, III, 305; IV, 34; attitude toward Campos in War of Independence, 59; Cabinet under Blanco, 94; earnest efforts for peace, 101; record of its government, 102. Avellanda, Gertrudis Gomez de, III, 331; portrait, facing, 332. Avila, Alfonso de, I, 154. Avila, Juan de, Governor, I, 151; marries rich widow, 154; charges against him, 157; convicted and imprisoned, 158. Avila. See DAVILA. Aviles, Pedro Menendez de, See MENENDEZ. Ayala, Francisco P. de, I, 291. Ayilon, Lucas V. de, strives to make peace between Velasquez and Cortez, I, 98. Azcarata, José Luis, Secretary of Justice, sketch and portrait, IV, 341. Azcarate, Nicolas, sketch and portrait, III, 251, 332. Azcarraga, Gen., Spanish Premier, IV, 88. "Barbeque" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bachiller, Antonio, sketch and portrait, III, 317. Bacon, Robert, Assistant Secretary of State of U. S., intervenes in revolution, IV, 272. Bahia Honda, selected as U. S. naval station, IV, 256. Balboa, Vasco Nuñez de, I, 55, 91. Bancroft, George, quoted, I, 269; II, 1, 24, 41, 117, 120, 159. Banderas, Quintin, revolutionist, IV, 34; raid, 57; death, 84. Baracoa, Columbus at, I, 18; Velasquez at, 60; picture, 60; first capital of Cuba, 61, 168. Barreda, Baltazar, I, 201. Barreiro, Juan Bautista, Secretary of Education, IV, 160. Barrieres, Manuel Garcia, II, 165. Barrionuevo, Juan Maldonado, Governor, I, 263. Barsicourt, Juan Procopio. See SANTA CLARA, Conde. Bayamo, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; Cuban Republic organized there, III, 157. Bayoa, Pedro de, I, 300. Bay of Cortez, reached by Columbus, I, 25. Bees, introduced by Bishop Morell, II, 104; increase of industry, 132. "Beggars of the Sea," raid Cuban coasts, I, 208. Bells, church, controversy over, II, 82. Bembrilla, Alonzo, I, 111. Benavides, Juan de, I, 280. Berrea, Esteban S. de, II, 6. Betancourt, Pedro, Civil Governor of Matanzas, IV, 179; loyal to Palma, 271. Betancourt. See CISNEROS. "Bimini," Island of, I, 139. Bishops of Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, I, 122. "Black Eagle," II, 346. _Black Warrior_ affair, III, 138. Blanchet, Emilio, historian, quoted, II, 9, 15, 24; on siege of Havana, 57, 87. Blanco, Ramon, Governor, IV, 88; undertakes reforms, 89; plans Cuban autonomy, 93; on destruction of _Maine_, 99; resigns, 121. Blue, Victor, observations at Santiago, IV, 110. Bobadilla, F. de, I, 54. Boca de la Yana, I, 18. "Bohio" sought by Columbus, I, 18. Bolivar, Simon, II, 333; portrait, 334; "Liberator," 334 et seq.; influence on Cuba, 341; "Soles de Bolivar," 341. Bonel, Juan Bautista, II, 133. "Book of Blood," III, 284. Bourne, Edward Gaylord, quoted, on slavery, II, 209; on Spanish in America, 226. Brinas, Felipe, III, 330. British policy toward Spain and Cuba, I, 270; aggressions in West Indies, 293; slave trade, II, 2; war of 1639, 22; designs upon Cuba, 41; expedition against Havana, 1762, 46; conquest of Cuba, 78; relinquishment to Spain, 92. See GREAT BRITAIN. Broa Bay, I, 22. Brooke, Gen. John R., receives Spanish surrender of Cuba, IV, 122; proclamation to Cuban people, 145; retired, 157. Brooks, Henry, revolutionist, IV, 30. Buccaneers, origin of, I, 269. Buccarelli, Antonio Maria, Governor, II, 110; retires, 115. Buchanan, James, on U. S. relations to Cuba, II, 263; III, 135; Minister to Great Britain, 142; as President seeks annexation of Cuba to U. S., 143. Bull-fighting, II, 233. Burgos, Juan de, Bishop, I, 225. Burtnett, Spanish spy against Lopez, III, 65. Bustamente, Antonio Sanchez de, jurist, sketch and portrait, IV, 165. Caballero, José Agustin, sketch and portrait, III, 321. Caballo, Domingo, II, 173. Cabanas, defences constructed, II, 58; Laurel Ditch, view, facing, 58. Caballero, Diego de, I, 111. Cabezas, Bishop, I, 277. Cabrera, Diego de, I, 206. Cabrera, Luis, I, 198. Cabrera, Lorenzo de, Governor, I, 279; removed, 282. Cabrera, Rafael, filibuster, IV, 70. Cabrera, Raimundo, conspirator in New York, IV, 334; warned, 339. Cadreyta, Marquis de, I, 279. Cagigal, Juan Manuel de, Governor, II, 154; defence of Havana, 155; removed and imprisoned, 157. Cagigal, Juan Manuel, Governor, II, 313; successful administration, 315. Cagigal de la Vega, Francisco, defends Santiago, II, 29; Governor, 32; Viceroy of Mexico, 34. Caguax, Cuban chief, I, 63. Calderon, Gabriel, Bishop, I, 315. Calderon, Garcia, quoted, II, 164, 172. Calderon de la Barca, Spanish Minister, on _La Verdad_, III, 19; on colonial status, 21; negotiations with Soulé, 140. Calhoun, John C., on Cuba, III, 132. Calleja y Isisi, Emilio, Governor, III, 313; proclaims martial law, IV, 30; resigns, 35. Camaguey. See PUERTO PRINCIPE, I, 168. Campbell, John, description of Havana, II, 14. Campillo, Jose de, II, 19. Campos, Martinez de, Governor, III, 296; proclamations to Cuba, 297, 299; makes Treaty of Zanjon and ends Ten Years War, 299; in Spanish crisis, IV, 36; Governor again, 37; establishes Trocha, 44; defeated by Maceo, 46; conferences with party leaders, 59, 63; removed, 63. Cancio, Leopoldo, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 161, 320. Canizares, Santiago J., Minister of Interior, IV, 48. Canning, George, policy toward Cuba, II, 257; portrait, 258. Canoe, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Canon, Rodrigo, I, 111. Canovas del Castillo, Spanish Premier, IV, 36; assassinated, 88. Cape Cruz, Columbus at, I, 20. Cape Maysi, I, 4. Cape of Palms, I, 17. Capote, Domingo Menendez. Vice-President, IV, 90; Secretary of State, 146; President of Constitutional Convention. 189. Carajaval, Lucas, defies Dutch, I, 290. Cardenas, Lopez lands at, III, 49. Caribs, I, 8. Carillo, Francisco, filibuster, IV, 55. Carleton, Sir Guy, at Havana, II, 47. Carranza, Domingo Gonzales, book on West Indies, II, 37. Carrascesa, Alfonso, II, 6. Carreño, Francisco, Governor, I, 219; conditions at his accession, 228; dies in office, 229; work in rebuilding Havana, 231. Carroll, James, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Casa de Beneficienca, founded, I, 335; II, 177. Casa de Resorgiamento, founded, II, 31. Casares, Alfonso, codifies municipal ordinances, I, 207. Castellanos, Jovellar, last Spanish Governor of Cuba, IV, 121; surrenders Spanish sovereignty, 123. Castillo, Demetrio, Civil Governor of Oriente, IV, 180. Castillo, Ignacio Maria del, Governor, III, 314. Castillo, Loinaz, revolutionist. IV, 269. Castillo, Pedro del, Bishop, I, 226. Castro, Hernando de, royal treasurer, I, 115. Cathcart Lord, expedition to West Indies, II, 28. Cathedral of Havana, picture, facing I, 36; begun, I, 310. Cat Island. See GUANAHANI. Cayo, San Juan de los Remedios del, removal of, I, 319. Cazones, Gulf of, I, 21. Cemi, Cuban worship of, I, 55. Census, of Cuba, first taken, by Torre, II, 131; by Las Casas, 176; of slaves, 205; of 1775, 276; of 1791, 277; Humboldt on, 277; of 1811, 280; of 1817, 281; of 1827, 283; of 1846, 283; of 1899, IV, 154; of 1907, 287. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, III, 157; portrait, facing 158; in Spain, 158; leads Cuban revolution, 158; President of Republic, 158; proclamation, 168; negotiations with Spain, 187; removed from office, 275. Cespedes, Carlos Manuel, filibuster, IV, 55. Cespedes, Enrique, revolutionist, IV, 30. Cervera, Admiral, brings Spanish fleet to Cuba, IV, 110; portrait, 110; surrenders, 114. Chacon, José Bayoma, II, 13. Chacon, Luis, I, 331, 333. Chalons, Sr., Secretary of Public Works, IV, 297. Chamber of Commerce founded, II, 307. Charles I, King, I, 74; denounces oppression of Indians, 128. Chaves, Antonio, Governor, I, 157; prosecutes Avila, 157; ruthless policy toward natives, 159; controversy with King, 160; dismissed from office, 161. Chaves, Juan Baton de, I, 331. Chilton, John, describes Havana, I, 349. Chinchilla, José, Governor, III, 314. Chinese, colonies in America, I, 7; laborers imported into Cuba, II, 295. Chorrera, expected to be Drake's landing place, I, 248. Chorrera River, dam built by Antonelli, I, 262. Christianity, introduced into Cuba by Ojeda, I, 55; urged by King Ferdinand, 73. Church, Roman Catholic, organized and influential in Cuba, I, 122; cathedral removed from Baracoa to Santiago, 123; conflict with civil power, 227; controversy with British during British occupation, II, 84; division of island into two dioceses, 173; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 26; controversy over property, 294. Cienfuegos, José, Governor, II, 311. Cimmarones, "wild Indians," I, 126; revolt against De Soto, 148. Cipango, Cuba identified with, by Columbus, I, 5. Cisneros, Gaspar Betancourt, sketch and portrait, II, 379. Cisneros, Pascal Jiminez de, II, 110, 127. Cisneros, Salvador, III, 167; sketch and portrait, 276; President of Cuban Republic, 277; President of Council of Ministers, IV, 48; in Constitutional Convention, 190. Civil Service, law, IV, 325; respected by President Menocal, 325. Clay, Henry, policy toward Cuba, II, 261. Clayton, John M., U. S. Secretary of State, issues proclamation against filibustering, III, 42. Cleaveland, Samuel, controversy over church bells, II, 83. Cleveland, Grover. President of United States, issues warning against breaches of neutrality, IV, 70; reference to Cuba in message of 1896, 79; its significance, 80. Coat of Arms of Cuba, picture, IV, 251; significance, 251. Cobre, copper mines, I, 173, 259. "Cockfighting and Idleness" campaign, IV, 291. Coffee, cultivation begun, II, 33, 113. Coinage, reformed, II, 142; statistics of, 158. Collazo, Enrique, filibuster, IV, 55. Coloma, Antonio Lopez, revolutionist, IV, 30. Colombia, designs upon Cuba, II, 262; III, 134; attitude toward Cuban revolution, 223. Columbus, Bartholomew, recalled to Spain, I, 57. Columbus, Christopher, portrait, frontispiece, Vol. I; discoverer of America, I; i; first landing in America, 2; monument on Watling's Island, picture, 3; arrival in Cuba, 11; question as to first landing place, 12; first impressions of Cuba and intercourse with natives, 14; exploration of north coast, 16; end of first visit, 18; second visit, 19; exploration of south coast, 21; at Bay of Cortez, 25; turns back from circumnavigation, 26; at Isle of Pines, 26; final departure from Cuba, 27; diary and narrative, 28 et seq.; death and burial, 33; tomb in Havana cathedral, 34; removal to Seville, 36; removal from Santo Domingo to Havana, II, 181; epitaph, 182. Columbus, Diego, plans exploration and colonization of Cuba, I, 57; attempts mediation between Velasquez and Cortez, 97; replaces Velasquez with Zuazo, 100; rebuked by King, 100. Comendador, Cacique, I, 55. Commerce, begun by Velasquez, I, 68; rise of corporations, II, 19; after British occupation, 98; under Torre, 132; reduction of duties, 141; extension of trade, 163; Tribunal of Commerce founded, 177; Real Compania de Havana, 199; restrictive measures, 200; Chamber of Commerce founded, 307; commerce with United States, III, 2; during American occupation, IV, 184; present, 358. Compostela, Diego E. de, Bishop, I, 318; death, 332. Concepcion, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Concessions, forbidden under American occupation, IV, 153. Concha, José Gutierrez de la, Governor, III, 62, 290. Conchillos, royal secretary, I, 59. Congress, Cuban, welcomed by Gen. Wood, IV, 246; turns against Palma, 269; friendly to Gomez, 303; hostile to Menocal, 323; protects the lottery, 324. Constitution: Cuban Republic of 1868, III, 157; of 1895, IV, 47; call for Constitutional Convention, 185; meeting of Convention, 187; draft completed, 192; salient provisions, 193; Elihu Root's comments, 194; Convention discusses relations with United States, 197; Platt Amendment, 199; amendment adopted, 203; text of Constitution, 304 et seq.; The Nation, 205; Cubans, 205; Foreigners, 207; Individual Rights, 208; Suffrage, 211; Suspension of Guarantees, 212; Sovereignty, 213; Legislative Bodies, 214; Senate, 214; House of Representatives, 216; Congress, 218; Legislation, 221; Executive, 222; President, 222; Vice-President, 225; Secretaries of State, 226; Judiciary, 227; Supreme Court, 227; Administration of Justice, 228; Provincial Governments, 229; Provincial Councils, 230; Provincial Governors, 231; Municipal Government, 233; Municipal Councils, 233; Mayors, 235; National Treasury, 235; Amendments, 236; Transient Provisions, 237; Appendix (Platt Amendment), 238. "Constitutional Army," IV, 268. Contreras, Andres Manso de, I, 288. Contreras, Damien, I, 278. Convents, founded, I, 276; Nuns of Santa Clara, 286. Conyedo, Juan de, Bishop, II, 35. Copper, discovered near Santiago, I, 173; wealth of mines, 259; reopened, II, 13; exports, III, 3. Corbalon, Francisco R., I, 286. Cordova de Vega, Diego de, Governor, I, 239. Cordova, Francisco H., expedition to Yucatan, I, 84. Cordova Ponce de Leon, José Fernandez, Governor, I, 316. Coreal, Francois, account of West Indies, quoted, I, 355. Coronado, Manuel, gift for air planes, IV, 352. Cortes, Spanish, Cuban representation in, II, 308; excluded, 351; lack of representation, III, 3; after Ten Years' War, 307. Cortez, Hernando, Alcalde of Santiago de Cuba, I, 72; sent to Mexico by King, 74; agent of Velasquez, 86; early career, 90; portrait, 90; quarrel with Velasquez, 91; marriage, 92; commissioned by Velasquez to explore Mexico, 92; sails for Mexico, 94; final breach with Velasquez, 96; denounced as rebel, 97; escapes murder, 99. Cosa, Juan de la, geographer, I, 6, 53. Councillors, appointed for life, I, 111; conflict with Procurators, 113. Creoles, origin of name, II, 204. Crittenden, J. J., protests against European intervention in Cuba, III, 129. Crittenden, William S., with Lopez, III, 96; captured, 101; death, 105. Crombet, Flor, revolutionist, IV, 41, 42. Crooked Island. See ISABELLA. Crowder, Gen. Enoch H., head of Consulting Board, IV, 284. Cuba: Relation to America, I, 1; Columbus's first landing, 3; identified with Mangi or Cathay, 4; with Cipango, 5; earliest maps, 6; physical history, 7, 37 et seq.; Columbus's discovery, 11 et seq.; named Juana, 13; other names, 14; Columbus's account of, 28; geological history, 37-42; topography, 42-51; climate, 51-52; first circumnavigation, 54; colonization, 54; Velasquez at Baracoa, 60; commerce begun, 68; government organized, 69; named Ferdinandina, 73; policy of Spain toward, 175; slow economic progress, 215; land legislation, 232; Spanish discrimination against, 266; divided into two districts, 275; British description in 1665, 306; various accounts, 346; turning point in history, 363; close of first era, 366; British conquest, II, 78; relinquished to Spain, 92; great changes effected, 94; economic condition, 98; reoccupied by Spain, 102; untouched by early revolutions, 165; effect of revolution in Santo Domingo, 190; first suggestion of annexation to United States, 257; "Ever Faithful Isle," 268; rise of independence, 268; censuses, 276 et seq.; representation in Cortes, 308; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; representatives rejected from Cortes, 351; transformation of popular spirit, 383; independence proclaimed, III, 145; Republic organized, 157; War of Independence, IV, 15; Spanish elections held during war, 67; Blanco's plan of autonomy, 93; sovereignty surrendered by Spain, 123; list of Spanish Governors, 123. See REPUBLIC OF CUBA. Cuban Aborigines; I, 8; manners, customs and religion, 8 et seq.; Columbus's first intercourse, 15, 24; priest's address to Columbus, 26; Columbus's observations of them, 29; hostilities begun by Velasquez, 61; subjected to Repartimiento system, 70; practical slavery, 71; Key Indians, 125; Cimmarones, 126; new laws in their favor, 129; Rojas's endeavor to save them, 130; final doom, 133; efforts at reform, 153; oppression by Chaves, 159; Angulo's emancipation proclamation, 163. "Cuba-nacan," I, 5. "Cuba and the Cubans," quoted, II, 313. "Cuba y Su Gobierno," quoted, II, 354. Cuellar, Cristobal de, royal accountant, I, 59. Cushing, Caleb, Minister to Spain, III, 291. Custom House, first at Havana, I, 231. Dady, Michael J., & Co., contract dispute, IV, 169. Davila, Pedrarias, I, 140. Davis, Jefferson, declines to join Lopez, III, 38. Del Casal, Julian, sketch and portrait, IV, 6. Del Cueta, José A., President of Supreme Court, portrait, IV, 359. Delgado, Moru, Liberal leader, IV, 267. Del Monte, Domingo, sketch, portrait, and work, II, 323. Del Monte, Ricardo, sketch and portrait, IV, 2. Demobilization of Cuban army, IV, 135. Desvernine, Pablo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 146. Diaz, Bernal, at Sancti Spiritus, I, 72; in Mexico, 86. Diaz, Manuel, I, 239. Diaz, Manuel Luciano, Secretary of Public Works, IV, 254. Diaz, Modeste, III, 263. Divino, Sr., Secretary of Justice, IV, 297. Dockyard at Havana, established, II, 8. Dolz, Eduardo, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 96. Dominguez, Fermin V., Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 50. Dorst, J. H., mission to Pinar del Rio, IV, 107. "Dragado" deal, IV, 310. Drake, Sir Francis, menaces Havana, I, 243; in Hispaniola, 246; leaves Havana unassailed, 252; departs for Virginia, 255. Duany, Joaquin Castillo, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Assistant Secretary of Treasury, 50; filibuster, 70. Dubois, Carlos, Assistant Secretary of Interior, IV, 50. Duero, Andres de, I, 93, 115. Dulce y Garay, Domingo, Governor, III, 190, 194; decree of confiscation, 209; recalled, 213. Dupuy de Lome, Sr., Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 40; writes offensive letter, 98; recalled, 98. Duque, Sr., Secretary of Sanitation and Charity, IV, 297. Durango, Bishop, I, 225. Dutch hostilities, I, 208, 279; activities in West Indies, 283 et seq. Earthquakes, in 1765, I, 315; II, 114. Echeverria, Esteban B., Superintendent of Schools, IV, 162. Echeverria, José, Bishop, II, 113. Echeverria, José Antonio, III, 324. Echeverria, Juan Maria, Governor, II, 312. Education, backward state of, II, 244; progress under American occupation, IV, 156; A. E. Frye, Superintendent, 156; reorganization of system, 162; Harvard University's entertainment of teachers, 163; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Elections: for municipal officers under American occupation, IV, 180; law for regulation of, 180; result, 181; for Constitutional Convention, 186; for general officers, 240; result, 244; Presidential, 1906, 265; new law, 287; local elections under Second Intervention, 289; Presidential, 290; for Congress in 1908, 303; Presidential, 1912, 309; Presidential, 1916, disputed, 330, result confirmed, 341. Enciso, Martin F. de, first Spanish writer about America, I, 54. Epidemics: putrid fever, 1649, I, 290; vaccination introduced, II, 192; small pox and yellow fever, III, 313; at Santiago, IV, 142; Gen. Wood applies Dr. Finlay's theory of yellow fever, 171; success, 176; malaria, 177. Escudero, Antonio, de, II, 10. Espada, Juan José Diaz, portrait, facing II, 272. Espagnola. See HISPANIOLA. Espeleta, Joaquin de, Governor, II, 362. Espinosa, Alonzo de Campos, Governor, I, 316. Espoleto, José de, Governor, II, 169. Estenoz, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Estevez, Luis, Secretary of Justice, IV, 160; Vice-President, 245. Evangelista. See ISLE OF PINES. Everett, Edward, policy toward Cuba, III, 130. "Ever Faithful Isle," II, 268, 304. Exquemeling, Alexander, author and pirate, I, 302. "Family Pact," of Bourbons, effect upon Cuba, II, 42. Felin, Antonio, Bishop, II, 172. Fels, Cornelius, defeated by Spanish, I, 288. Ferdinand, King, policy toward Cuba, I, 56; esteem for Velasquez, 73. Ferdinandina, Columbus's landing place, I, 3; name for Cuba, 73. Ferrara, Orestes, Liberal leader, IV, 260; revolutionist, 269; deprecates factional strife, 306; revolutionary conspirator in New York, 334; warned by U. S. Government, I, 239. Ferrer, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 239. Figueroa, Vasco Porcallo de, I, 72; De Soto's lieutenant, 142; returns from Florida in disgust, 145. Figuerosa, Rojas de, captures Tortuga, I, 292. Filarmonia, riot at ball, III, 119. Filibustering, proclamation of United States against, III, 42; after Ten Years' War, 311, in War of Independence, IV, 20; expeditions intercepted, 52; many successful expeditions, 69; warnings, 70. Fine Arts, II, 240. Finlay, Carlos G., theory of yellow fever successfully applied under General Wood, IV, 171; portrait, facing, 172. Fish, Hamilton, U. S. Secretary of State, prevents premature recognition of Cuban Republic, III, 203; protests against Rodas's decree, 216; on losses in Ten Years' War, 290; seeks British support, 292; states terms of proposed mediation, 293. Fish market at Havana, founder for pirate, II, 357. Fiske, John, historian, quoted, I, 270. Flag, Cuban, first raised, III, 31; replaces American, IV, 249; picture, 250; history and significance, 250. Flores y Aldama, Rodrigo de, Governor, I, 301. Florida, attempted colonization by Ponce de Leon, I, 139; De Soto's expedition, 145. See MENENDEZ. Fonseca, Juan Rodriguez de, Bishop of Seville, I, 59. Fonts-Sterling, Ernesto, Secretary of Finance, IV, 90; urges resistance to revolution, 270. Fornaris, José, III, 230. Forestry, attention paid by Montalvo, I, 223; efforts to check waste, II, 166. Foyo, Sr., Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, IV, 297. France, first foe of Spanish in Cuba, I, 177; "Family Pact," II, 42; interest in Cuban revolution, III, 126. Franquinay, pirate, at Santiago, I, 310. French refugees, in Cuba, II, 189; expelled, 302. French Revolution, effects of, II, 184. Freyre y Andrade, Fernando, filibuster, IV, 70; negotiations with Pino Guerra, 267. Frye, Alexis, Superintendent of Schools, IV, 156; controversy with General Wood, 162. Fuerza, La: picture, facing I, 146; building begun by De Soto, I, 147; scene of Lady Isabel's tragic vigil, 147, 179; planned and built by Sanchez, 194; work by Menendez, and Ribera, 209; slave labor sought, 211; bad construction, 222; Montalvo's recommendations, 223; Luzan-Arana quarrel, 237; practical completion, 240; decorated by Cagigal, II, 33. Galvano, Antony, historian, quoted, I, 4. Galvez, Bernardo, seeks Cuban aid for Pensacola, II, 146; Governor, 168; death, 170. Galvez, José Maria, head of Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Garaondo, José, I, 317. Garay, Francisco de, Governor of Jamaica, I, 102. Garcia, Calixto, portrait, facing III, 268; President of Cuban Republic, III, 301; joins War of Independence, IV, 69; his notable career, 76 et seq.; joins with Shafter at Santiago, 111; death, 241. Garcia, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 269. Garcia, Esequiel, Secretary of Education, IV, 320. Garcia, Marcos, IV, 44. Garcia, Quintiliano, III, 329. Garvey, José N. P., II, 222. Gastaneta, Antonio, II, 9. Gelder, Francisco, Governor, I, 292. Gener y Rincon, Miguel, Secretary of Justice, IV, 161. Geraldini, Felipe, I, 310. Germany, malicious course of in 1898, IV, 104; Cuba declares war against, 348; property in Cuba seized, 349; aid to Gomez, 350. Gibson. Hugh S., U. S. Chargé d'Affaires, assaulted, IV, 308. Giron. Garcia, Governor, I, 279. Godoy, Captain, arrested at Santiago, and put to death, I, 203. Godoy, Manuel, II, 172. Goicouria, Domingo, sketch and portrait, III, 234. Gold, Columbus's quest for, I, 19; Velasquez's search, 61; the "Spaniards' God," 62; early mining, 81; value of mines, 173. Gomez, José Antonio, II, 18. Gomez, José Miguel, Civil Governor of Santa Clara, IV, 179; aspires to Presidency, 260, 264; turns from Conservative to Liberal party, 265; compact with Zayas, 265; starts revolution, 269; elected President, 290; becomes President, 297; Cabinet, 297; sketch and portrait, 298; acts of his administration, 301; charged with corruption, 304; conflict with Veterans' Association, 304; quarrel with Zayas, 306; suppresses Negro revolt, 307; amnesty bill, 309; National Lottery, 310; "Dragado" deal, 310; railroad deal, 310; estimate of his administration, 311; double treason in 1916, 332; defeated and captured, 337; his orders for devastation, 337; aided by Germany, 350. Gomez, Juan Gualberto, revolutionist, IV, 30; captured and imprisoned, 52; insurgent, 269. Gomez, Maximo, III, 264; succeeds Gen. Agramonte, 275; makes Treaty of Zanjon with Campos, 299; in War of Independence, IV, 15; commander in chief, 16, 43; portrait, facing 44; plans great campaign of war, 53; controversy with Lacret, 84; opposed to American invasion, 109; appeals to Cubans to accept American occupation, 136; impeachment by National Assembly ignored, 137; influence during Government of Intervention, 149; considered by Constitutional Convention, 191; proposed for Presidency, 240; declines, 241. Gonzalez, Aurelia Castillo de, author, sketch and portrait, IV, 192. Gonzales, William E., U. S. Minister to Cuba, IV, 335; watches Gomez's insurrection, 336. Gorgas, William C., work for sanitation, IV, 175. Government of Cuba: organized by Velasquez, I, 69; developed at Santiago, 81; radical changes made, 111; revolution in political status of island, 138; codification of ordinances, 207; Ordinances of 1542, 317; land tenure, II, 12; reforms by Governor Guemez, 17; reorganization after British occupation, 104; great reforms by Torre, 132; budget and tax reforms, 197; authority of Captain-General, III, 11; administrative and judicial functions, 13 et seq.; military and naval command, 16; attempted reforms, 63; concessions after Ten Years' War, 310. Governors of Cuba, Spanish, list of, IV, 123. Govin, Antonio, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95; sketch and portrait, 95. Grammont, buccaneer, I, 311. Gran Caico, I, 4. Grand Turk Island. See GUANAHANI. Grant, U. S., President of United States, III, 200; inclined to recognize Cuban Republic, 202; prevented by his Secretary of State, 203; comments in messages, 205, 292. Great Britain, interest in Cuban revolution, III, 125; protection sought by Spain, 129; declines cooperation with United States, 294; requires return of fugitives, 310. Great Exuma. See FERDINANDINA. Great Inagua, I, 4. Great War, Cuba enters, IV, 348; offers 10,000 troops, 348; German intrigues and propaganda, 349; attitude of Roman Catholic clergy, 349; ships seized, 350; cooperation with Food Commission, 351; military activities, 352; liberal subscriptions to loans, 352; Red Cross work, 352; Señora Menocal's inspiring leadership, 353. Grijalva, Juan de, I, 65; expedition to Mexico, 66; names Mexico New Spain, 97; unjustly recalled and discredited, 88. Guajaba Island, I, 18. Guama, Cimmarron chief, I, 127. Guanabacoa founded, II, 21. Guanahani, Columbus's landing place, I, 2. Guanajes Islands, source of slave trade, I, 83. Guantanamo, Columbus at, I, 19; U. S. Naval Station, IV, 256. Guardia, Cristobal de la, Secretary of Justice, IV, 320. Guazo, Gregorio, de la Vega, Governor, I, 340; stops tobacco war, 341; warnings to Great Britain and France, 342; military activity and efficiency, II, 5. Guemez y Horcasitas, Juan F., Governor, II, 17; reforms, 17; close of administration, 26. Guerra, Amador, revolutionist, IV, 30. Guerra, Benjamin, treasurer of Junta, IV, 3. Guerro, Pino, starts insurrection, IV, 267, 269; commander of Cuban army, 301; attempt to assassinate him, 303. Guevara, Francisco, III, 265. Guiteras, Juan, physician and scientist, sketch and portrait, IV, 321. Guiteras, Pedro J., quoted, I, 269; II, 6; 42; 207. Guzman, Gonzalez de, mission from Velasquez to King Charles I, I, 85; vindicates Velasquez, 108; Governor of Cuba, 110; marries rich sister-in-law, 116; litigation over estate, 117; tremendous indictment by Vadillo, 120; appeals to King and Council for Indies, 120; seeks to oppress natives, 128; second time Governor, 137; makes more trouble, 148; trouble with French privateers, 178. Guzman, Nuñez de, royal treasurer, I, 109; death and fortune, 115. Guzman, Santos, spokesman of Constitutionalists, IV, 59. Hammock, of Cuban origin, I, 10. Hanebanilla, falls of, view, facing III, 110. Harponville, Viscount Gustave, quoted, II, 189. Harvard University, entertains Cuban teachers, IV, 163. Hatuey, Cuban chief, leader against Spaniards, I, 62; death, 63. Havana: founded by Narvaez, I, 69; De Soto's home and capital, 144; rise in importance, 166; Governor's permanent residence, 180; inadequate defences, 183; captured by Sores, 186; protected by Mazariegos, 194; sea wall proposed by Osorio, 202; fortified by Menendez, 209; "Key of the New World," 210; commercial metropolis of West Indies, 216; first hospital founded, 226; San Francisco church, picture, facing 226; building in Carreño's time, 231; custom house, 231; threatened by Drake, 243; preparations for defence, 250; officially called "city," 262; coat of arms, 202; primitive conditions, 264; first theatrical performance, 264; capital of western district, 275; great fire, 277; attacked by Pit Hein, 280; described by John Chilton, 349; first dockyard established, II, 8; attacked by British under Admiral Hosier, 9; University founded, 11; described by John Campbell, 14; British expedition against in 1762, 46; journal of siege, 54; American troops engaged, 66; surrender, 69; terms, 71; British occupation, 78; great changes, 94; description, 94; view from Cabanas, facing, 96; reoccupied by Spanish, 102; hurricane, 115; improvements in streets and buildings, 129; view in Old Havana, facing 130; street cleaning, and market, 169; slaughter house removed, 194; shopping, 242; cafés, 243; Tacon's public works, 365; view of old Presidential Palace, facing III, 14; view of the Prado, facing IV, 16; besieged in War of Independence, 62; view of bay and harbor, facing, 98; old City Wall, picture, 122; view of old and new buildings, facing 134; General Ludlow's administration, 146; Police reorganized, 150; view of University, facing 164; view of the new capitol, facing 204; view of the President's home, facing 268; view of the Academy of Arts and Crafts, facing 288; new railroad terminal, 311. Hay, John, epigram on revolutions, IV, 343 Hayti. See HISPANIOLA. Hein, Pit, Dutch raider, I, 279. Henderson, John, on Lopez's expedition, III, 64. _Herald_, New York, on Cuban revolution, III, 89. Heredia, José Maria. II, 274; exiled, 344; life and works, III, 318; portrait, facing 318. Hernani, Domingo, II, 170. Herrera, historian, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12; on Hatuey, 62; description of West Indies, 345. Herrera, Geronimo Bustamente de, I, 194. Hevea, Aurelio, Secretary of Interior, IV, 320. Hispaniola, Columbus at, I, 19; revolution in, II, 173; 186; effect upon Cuba, 189. Hobson, Richmond P., exploit at Santiago, IV, 110. Holleben, Dr. von, German Ambassador at Washington, intrigues of, IV, 104. Home Rule, proposed by Spain, IV, 6; adopted, 8. Horses introduced into Cuba, I, 63. Hosier, Admiral, attacks Havana, I, 312; II, 9. Hospital, first in Havana, I, 226; Belen founded, 318; San Paula and San Francisco, 195. "House of Fear," Governor's home, I, 156. Humboldt, Alexander von, on slavery, II, 206; on census, 277; 282; on slave trade, 288. Hurricanes, II, 115, 176, 310. Hurtado, Lopez, royal treasurer, I, 116; has Chaves removed, 162. Ibarra, Carlos, defeats Dutch raiders, I, 288. Incas, I, 7. Independence, first conceived, II, 268; 326; first revolts for, 343; sentiment fostered by slave trade, 377; proclaimed by Aguero, III, 72; proclaimed by Cespedes at Yara, 155; proposed by United States to Spain, 217; War of Independence, IV, 1; recognized by Spain, 119. See WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Intellectual life of Cuba, I, 360; lack of productiveness in Sixteenth Century, 362; Cuban backwardness, II, 235; first important progress, 273; great arising and splendid achievements, III, 317. Insurrections. See REVOLUTIONS, and SLAVERY. Intervention, Government of: First, established, IV, 132; organized, 145; Cuban Cabinet, 145; saves island from famine, 146; works of rehabilitation and reform, 148; marriage law, 152; concessions forbidden, 153; census, 154; civil governments of provinces, 179; municipal elections ordered, 180; electoral law 180; final transactions, 246; Second Government of Intervention, 281; C. E. Magoon, Governor, 281; Consulting Board, 284; elections held, 289, 290; commission for revising laws, 294; controversy over church property, 294. Intervention sought by Great Britain and France, III, 128; by United States, IV, 106. Iroquois, I, 7. Irving, Washington, on Columbus's landing place, I, 12. Isabella, Columbus's landing place, I, 3. Isabella, Queen, portrait, I, 13. Isidore of Seville, quoted, I, 4. Islas de Arena, I, 11. Isle of Pines, I, 26; recognized as part of Cuba, 224; status under Platt Amendment, IV, 255. Italian settlers in Cuba, I, 169. Ivonnet, Negro insurgent, IV, 307. Jamaica, Columbus at, I, 20. Japan. See CIPANGO. Jaruco, founded, II, 131. Jefferson, Thomas, on Cuban annexation, II, 260; III, 132. Jeronimite Order, made guardian of Indians, I, 78; becomes their oppressor, 127. Jesuits, controversy over, II, 86; expulsion of, 111. Jordan, Thomas, joins Cuban revolution, III, 211. Jorrin, José Silverio, portrait, facing III, 308. Jovellar, Joachim, Governor, III, 273; proclaims state of siege, 289; resigns, 290. Juana, Columbus's first name for Cuba, I, 13. Juan Luis Keys, I, 21. Judiciary, reforms in, II, 110; under Navarro, 142; under Unzaga, 165; under Leonard Wood, IV, 177. Junta, Cuban, in United States, III, 91; New York, IV, 2; branches elsewhere, 3; policy in enlisting men, 19. Junta de Fomento, II, 178. Juntas of the Laborers, III, 174. Keppel, Gen. See ALBEMARLE. Key Indians, I, 125; expedition against, 126. "Key of the New World and Bulwark of the Indies," I, 210. Kindelan, Sebastian de, II, 197, 315. Lacoste, Perfecto, Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, IV, 160. Land tenure, II, 12; absentee landlords, 214. Lanuza, Gonzalez, Secretary of Justice, IV, 146; portrait, 146. Lares, Amador de, I, 93. La Salle, in Cuba, I, 73. Las Casas, Bartholomew, Apostle to the Indies, arrival in Cuba, I, 63; portrait, 64; denounces Narvaez, 66; begins campaign against slavery, 75; mission to Spain, 77; before Ximenes, 77. Las Casas, Luis de, Governor, II, 175; portrait, 175; death, 182. Lasso de la Vega, Juan, Bishop, II, 17. Lawton, Gen. Henry W., leads advance against Spanish, IV, 112; Military Governor of Oriente, 139. Lazear, Camp, established, IV, 172. Lazear, Jesse W., hero and martyr in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Ledesma, Francisco Rodriguez, Governor, I, 310. Lee, Fitzhugh, Consul General at Havana, IV, 72; reports on "concentration" policy of Weyler, 86; asks for warship to protect Americans at Havana, 97; _Maine_ sent, 98; commands troops at Havana, 121. Lee, Robert Edward, declines to join Lopez, III, 39. Legrand, Pedro, invades Cuba, I, 302. Leiva, Lopez, Secretary of Government, IV, 297. Lemus, Jose Morales, III, 333. Lendian, Evelio Rodriguez, educator, sketch and portrait, IV, 162. Liberal Party, III, 306; triumphant through revolution, IV, 285; dissensions, 303; conspiracy against election, 329. Liberty Loans, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 352. Lighthouse service, under Mario G. Menocal, IV, 168. Linares, Tomas de, first Rector of University of Havana, II, 11. Lindsay, Forbes, quoted, II, 217. Linschoten, Jan H. van, historian, quoted, I, 351. Liquor, intoxicating, prohibited in 1780, II, 150. Literary periodicals: _El Habanero_, III, 321; _El Plantel_, 324; _Cuban Review_, 325; _Havana Review_, 329. Literature, II, 245; early works, 252; poets, 274; great development of activity, III, 315 et seq. Little Inagua, I, 4. Llorente, Pedro, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188, 190. Lobera, Juan de, commander of La Fuerza, I, 182; desperate defence against Sores, 185. Lolonois, pirate, I, 296. Long Island. See FERDINANDINA. Lopez, Narciso, sketch and portrait, III, 23; in Venezuela, 24; joins the Spanish army, 26; marries and settles in Cuba, 30; against the Carlists in Spain, 31; friend of Valdez, 31; offices and honors, 33; plans Cuban revolution, 36; betrayed and fugitive, 37; consults Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, 38; first American expedition, 39; members of the party, 40; activity in Southern States, 43; expedition starts, 45; proclamation to his men, 46; lands at Cardenas, 49; lack of Cuban support, 54; reembarks, 56; lands at Key West, 58; arrested and tried, 60; second expedition organized, 65; betrayed, 67; third expedition, 70; final expedition organized, 91; lands in Cuba, 98; defeated and captured, 112; death, 114; results of his works, 116. Lorenzo, Gen., Governor at Santiago, II, 347. Lorraine, Sir Lambton, III, 280. Los Rios, J. B. A. de, I, 310. Lottery, National, established by José Miguel Gomez, IV, 310. Louisiana, Franco-Spanish contest over, II, 117; Ulloa sent from Cuba to take possession, 118; O'Reilly sent, 123; Uznaga sent, 126. Louverture, Toussaint, II, 186. Luaces, Joaquin Lorenzo, sketch and portrait, III, 330. Ludlow, Gen. William, command and work at Havana, IV, 144. Lugo, Pedro Benitez de, Governor, I, 331. Luna y Sarmiento, Alvaro de, Governor, I, 290. Luz y Caballero, José de la, "Father of the Cuban Revolution," III, 322; great work for patriotic education, 323; Portrait, frontispiece, Vol III. Luzan, Gabriel de, Governor, I, 236; controversy over La Fuerza, 237; feud with Quiñones, 241; unites with Quiñones to resist Drake, 243; energetic action, 246; tenure of office prolonged, 250; end of term, 260. Macaca, province of, I, 20. Maceo, José Antonio, proclaims Provisional Government, IV, 15; leader in War of Independence, 41; commands Division of Oriente, 43; defeats Campos, 46; plans great campaign, 53; invades Pinar del Rio, 61; successful campaign, 73; death, 74; portrait, facing 74. Maceo, José, IV, 41; marches through Cuba, 76. Machado, Eduard, treason of, III, 258. Machete, used in battle, IV, 57. Madison, James, on status of Cuba, III, 132. Madriaga, Juan Ignacio, II, 59. Magoon, Charles E., Provisional Governor, IV, 281; his administration, 283; promotes public works, 286; takes census, 287; election law, 287; retires, 295. Mahy, Nicolas, Governor, II, 315. Mail service established, II, 107; under American occupation, IV, 168. Maine sent to Havana, IV, 98; destruction of, 98; investigation, 100. Maldonado, Diego, I, 146. Mandeville, Sir John, I, 20. Mangon, identified with Mangi, I, 20. Manners and Customs, II, 229 et seq.; balls, 239; shopping, 242; relations of black and white races, 242; cafés, 243; early society, 248. Monosca, Juan Saenz, Bishop, I, 301. Manrique, Diego, Governor, II, 109. Manzaneda y Salines, Severino de, Governor, I, 320. Manzanillo, Declaration of Independence issued, III, 155. Maraveo Ponce de Leon, Gomez de, I, 339. Marco Polo, I, 4, 20. Marcy, William L., policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Mar de la Nuestra Señora, I, 18. Mariguana. See GUANAHANI. Marin, Sabas, succeeds Campos in command, IV, 63. Markham, Sir Clements, on Columbus's first landing, I, 12. Marmol, Donato, III, 173, 184. Marquez, Pedro Menendez, I, 206. Marriage law, reformed under American occupation, IV, 152; controversy over, 153. Marti, José, portrait, frontispiece, Vol IV; leader of War of Independence, IV, 2; his career, 9; in New York, 11; organizes Junta, 11; goes to Cuba, 15; death, 16; his war manifesto, 17; fulfilment of his ideals, 355. Marti, José, secretary of War, portrait, IV, 360. Marti, the pirate, II, 357. Martinez Campos. See Campos. Martinez, Dionisio de la Vega, Governor, II, 8; inscription on La Punta, 14. Martinez, Juan, I, 192. Martyr, Peter, I, 53. Maso, Bartolome, revolutionist, IV, 34; rebukes Spotorno, 35; President of Cuban Republic, 43; Vice President of Council, 48; President of Republic, 90; candidate for Vice President, 242; seeks Presidency, 243. Mason, James M., U. S. Minister to France, III, 141. Masse, E. M., describes slave trade, II, 202; rural life, 216; on Spanish policy toward Cuba, 227; social morals, 230. Matanzas, founded, I, 321; meaning of name, 321. Maura, Sr., proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 5. McCullagh, John B., reorganizes Havana Police, IV, 150. McKinley, William, President of United States, message of 1897 on Cuba, IV, 87; declines European mediation, 103; message for war, 104. Maza, Enrique, assaults Hugh S. Gibson, IV, 308. Mazariegos, Diego de, Governor, I, 191; a scandalous moralist, 193; defences against privateering, 193; takes charge of La Fuerza, 195; controversy with Governor of Florida, 196; replaced by Sandoval, 197. Medina, Fernando de, I, 111. Mendez-Capote, Fernando, Secretary of Sanitation, portrait, IV, 360. Mendieta, Carlos, candidate for Vice President, IV, 328; rebels, 338. Mendive, Rafael Maria de, III, 328. Mendoza, Martin de, I, 204. Menendez, Pedro de Aviles, I, 199; commander of Spanish fleet, 200; clash with Osorio, 201; Governor of Cuba, 205; dealing with increasing enemies, 208; fortifies Havana, 209; recalled to Spain, 213; conflict with Bishop Castillo, 226. Menocal, Aniceto G., portrait, IV, 50. Menocal, Mario G., Assistant Secretary of War, IV, 49; Chief of Police at Havana, 144, 150; in charge of Lighthouse Service, 168; candidate for President, 290; slandered by Liberals, 291; elected President, 312; biography, 312; portrait, facing 312; view of birthplace, 313; Cabinet, 320; opinion of Cuba's needs, 321; first message, 322; conflict with Congress, 323; important reforms, 324; suppresses rebellion, 327; candidate for reelection, 328; vigorous action against Gomez's rebellion, 335; declines American aid, 337; escapes assassination, 339; reelection confirmed, 341; clemency to traitors, 342; message on entering Great War, 346; fulfilment of Marti's ideals, 355; estimate of his administration, 356; achievements for education, 357; health, 357; industry and commerce, 358; finance, 359; "from Velasquez to Menocal," 365. Menocal, Señora, leadership of Cuban womanhood in Red Cross and other work, IV, 354; portrait, facing 352. Mercedes, Maria de las, quoted, II, 174; on slave insurrection, 368. Merchan, Rafael, III, 174; patriotic works, 335. Merlin, Countess de. See MERCEDES. _Merrimac_, sunk at Santiago, IV, 111. Mesa, Hernando de, first Bishop, I, 122. Mestre, José Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 326. Meza, Sr., Secretary of Public Instruction and Arts, IV, 297. Mexico, discovered and explored from Cuba, I, 87; designs upon Cuba, II, 262; Cuban expedition against, 346; warned off by United States, III, 134; fall of Maximilian, 150. Milanes, José Jacinto, sketch, portrait and works, III, 324. Miles, Gen. Nelson A., prepares for invasion of Cuba, IV, 111. Miranda, Francisco, II, 156; with Bolivar, 335. Miscegenation, II, 204. Molina, Francisco, I, 290. Monastic orders, I, 276. Monroe Doctrine, foreshadowed, II, 256; promulgated, 328. Monroe, James, interest in Cuba, II, 257; promulgates Doctrine, 328; portrait, 329. Monserrate Gate, Havana, picture, II, 241. Montalvo, Gabriel, Governor, I, 215; feud with Rojas family, 218; investigated and retired, 219; pleads for naval protection for Cuba, 220. Montalvo, Lorenzo, II, 89. Montalvo, Rafael, Secretary of Public Works, urges resistance to revolutionists, IV, 270. Montanes, Pedro Garcia, I, 292. Montano See VELASQUEZ, J. M. Montes, Garcia, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 254. Montesino, Antonio, I, 78. Montiel, Vasquez de, naval commander, I, 278. Montoro, Rafael, Representative in Cortes, III, 308; spokesman of Autonomists, IV, 59; in Autonomist Cabinet, 95; candidate for Vice President, 290; attacked by Liberals, 291; biography, 317; portrait, facing 320. Morales case, IV, 92. Morales. Pedro de, commands at Santiago, I, 299. Morals, strangely mixed with piety and vice, II, 229. Morell, Pedro Augustino, Bishop, II, 53; controversy with Albemarle, 83; exiled, 87; death, 113. Moreno, Andres, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, IV, 90. Moret law, abolishing slavery, III, 243. Morgan, Henry, plans raid on Havana, I, 297; later career, 303. Morro Castle, Havana, picture, facing I, 180; site of battery, 180; tower built by Mazariegos, 196; fortified against Drake, 249; planned by Antonelli, 261; besieged by British, II, 55. Morro Castle, Santiago, built, I, 289; picture, facing 298. Mucaras, I, 11. Muenster, geographer, I, 6. Mugeres Islands, I, 84. Munive, Andres de, I, 317. Murgina y Mena, A. M., I, 317. Music, early concerts at Havana, II, 239. Nabia, Juan Alfonso de, I, 207. Nancy Globe, I. 6. Napoleon's designs upon Cuba, II, 203. Naranjo, probable landing place of Columbus, I, 12. Narvaez, Panfilo de, portrait, I, 63; arrival in Cuba, 63; campaign against natives, 65; explores the island, 67; errand to Spain, 77; sent to Mexico to oppose Cortez, 98; secures appointment of Councillors for life, 111. Naval stations, U. S., in Cuba, IV, 255. Navarrete, quoted, I, 3, 12. Navarro, Diego Jose, Governor, II, 141, 150. Navy, Spanish, in Cuban waters, III, 182, 225. Negroes, imported as slaves, I, 170; treatment of, 171; slaves and free, increasing numbers of, 229. See SLAVERY. New Orleans, anti-Spanish outbreak, III, 126. New Spain. See MEXICO. Newspapers: _Gazeta_, 1780, II, 157; _Papel Periodico_, 179; 246; publications in Paris, Madrid and New York, 354; El Faro Industrial, III, 18; Diario de la Marina, 18; La Verdad, 18; La Vos de Cuba, 260; La Vos del Siglo, 232; La Revolucion, 333; El Siglo, 334; El Laborante, 335. Norsemen, American colonists, I, 7. Nougaret, Jean Baptiste, quoted, II, 26. Nuñez, Emilio, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; in war, 57; Civil Governor of Havana, 179; head of Veterans' Association, 305; Secretary of Agriculture, 320; candidate for Vice President, 328; election confirmed, 341. Nuñez, Enrique, Secretary of Health and Charities, IV, 320. Ocampo, Sebastian de, circumnavigates Cuba, I, 54. O'Donnell, George Leopold, Governor, II, 365; his wife's sordid intrigues, 365. Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia, hostile to Spain, II, 24, 30. O'Hara, Theodore, with Lopez, III, 46. Ojeda, Alonzo de, I, 54; introduces Christianity to Cuba, 55. Olid, Christopher de, sent to Mexico, I, 88. Olney, Richard. U. S. Secretary of State, attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 71. Oquendo, Antonio de, I, 281. Orejon y Gaston, Francisco Davila de, Governor, I, 301, 310. O'Reilly, Alexandre, sent to occupy Louisiana, II, 123; ruthless rule, 125. Orellano, Diego de, I, 86. Ornofay, province of, I, 20. Ortiz, Bartholomew, alcalde mayor, I, 146; retires, 151. Osorio, Garcia de Sandoval, Governor, I, 197; conflict with Menendez, 199, 201; retired, 205; tried, 206. Osorio, Sancho Pardo, I, 207. Ostend Manifesto, III, 142. Ovando, Alfonso de Caceres, I, 214; revises law system, 233. Ovando, Nicolas de, I, 54. Palma, Tomas Estrada, head of Cuban Junta in New York, IV, 3; Provisional President of Cuban Republic, 15; Delegate at Large, 43; rejects anything short of independence, 71; candidate for Presidency, 241; his career, 241; elected President, 245; arrival in Cuba, 247; portrait, facing 248; receives transfer of government from General Wood, 248; Cabinet, 254; first message, 254; prosperous administration, 259; non-partisan at first, 264; forced toward Conservative party, 264; reelected, 266; refuses to believe insurrection impending, 266; refuses to submit to blackmail, 268; betrayed by Congress, 269; acts too late, 270; seeks American aid, 271; interview with W. H. Taft, 276; resigns Presidency, 280; estimate of character and work, 282; death, 284. Palma y Romay, Ramon, III, 327. Parra, Antonio, scientist, II, 252. Parra, Maso, revolutionist, IV, 30. Parties, political, in Cuba, IV, 59; origin and characteristics of Conservative and Liberal, 181, 261. Pasalodos, Damaso, Secretary to President, IV, 297 Pasamonte, Miguel, intrigues against Columbus, I, 58. Paz, Doña de, marries Juan de Avila, I, 154. Paz, Pedro de, I, 109. Penalosa, Diego de, Governor, II, 31. Penalver. See PENALOSA. Penalver, Luis, Bishop of New Orleans, II, 179. "Peninsulars," III, 152. Pensacola, settlement of, I, 328; seized by French, 342; recovered by Spanish, II, 7; defended by Galvez, 146. Pereda, Gaspar Luis, Governor, I, 276. Perez, Diego, repels privateers, I, 179. Perez, Perico, revolutionist, IV, 15, 30, 78. Perez de Zambrana, Luisa, sketch and portrait, III, 328. Personal liberty restricted, III, 8. Peru, good wishes for Cuban revolution, III, 223. Philip II, King, appreciation of Cuba, I, 260. Pieltain, Candido, Governor, III, 275. Pierce, Franklin, President of United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 136. Pina, Severo, Secretary of Finance, IV, 48. Pinar del Rio, city founded, II, 131; Maceo invades province, IV, 61; war in, 73. Pineyro, Enrique, III, 333; sketch and portrait, 334. Pinto, Ramon, sketch and portrait, III, 62. "Pirates of America," I, 296. Pizarro, Francisco de, I, 54, 91. Platt, Orville H., Senator, on relations of United States and Cuba, IV, 198; Amendment to Cuban Constitution, 199; Amendment adopted, 203; text of Amendment, 238. Pococke, Sir George, expedition against Havana, II, 46. Poey, Felipe, sketch and portrait, III, 315. Point Lucrecia, I, 18. Polavieja, Gen., Governor, III, 314. Police, reorganized, II, 312; under American occupation, IV, 150; police courts established, 171. Polk, James K., President of the United States, policy toward Cuba, III, 135. Polo y Bernabe, Spanish Minister at Washington, IV, 98. Ponce de Leon, in Cuba, I, 73; death, 139. Ponce de Leon, of New York, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13. Pope, efforts to maintain peace, between United States and Spain, IV, 104. Porro, Cornelio, treason of, III, 257. Port Banes, I, 18. Port Nipe, I, 18. Port Nuevitas, I, 3. Portuguese settlers, I, 168. Portuondo, Rafael, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, IV, 48; filibuster, 70. Prado y Portocasso, Juan, Governor, II, 49; neglect of duty, 52; sentenced to degradation, 108. Praga, Francisco de, I, 282. Presidency, first candidates for, IV, 240; Tomas Estrada Palma elected, 245; José Miguel Gomez aspires to, 260; candidates in 1906, 265; Palma's resignation, 280; Jose Miguel Gomez elected, 290; fourth campaign, 312; Mario G. Menocal elected, 312; fifth campaign, 328; General Menocal reelected, 341. Prim, Gen., Spanish revolutionist, III, 145. Printing, first press in Cuba, II, 245. Privateers, French ravage Cuba, I, 177; Havana and Santiago attacked, 178; Havana looted, 179; Jacques Sores, 183; Havana captured, 186; Santiago looted, 193; French raids, 220, et seq. Proctor, Redfield, Senator, investigates and reports on condition of Cuba in War of Independence, IV, 87. Procurators, appointment of, I, 112. Protectorate, tripartite, refused by United States, II, 261; III, 130, 133. Provincial governments organized, IV, 179, confusion in, 292. Public Works, promoted by General Wood, IV, 166; by Magoon, 286. Puerto Grande. See GUANTANAMO. Puerto Principe, I, 18, 167. Punta, La, first fortification, I, 203; strengthened against Drake, 249; fortress planned by Antonelli, 261; picture, IV, 33. Punta Lucrecia, I, 3. Punta Serafina, I, 22. Queen's Gardens, I, 20. Quero, Geronimo, I, 277. Quesada, Gonzalo de, Secretary of Cuban Junta, IV, 3; Minister to United States, 275. Quesada, Manuel, sketch and portrait, III, 167; proclamation, 169; death, 262. Quezo, Juan de, I, 113. Quilez, J. M., Civil Governor of Pinar del Rio, IV, 179. Quiñones, Diego Hernandez de, commander of fortifications at Havana, I, 240; feud with Luzan, 241; unites with Luzan to resist Drake, 243. Quiñones, Doña Leonora de, I, 117. Rabi, Jesus, revolutionist, IV, 34, 42. Railroads, first in Cuba, II, 343. Raja, Vicente, Governor, I, 337. Ramirez, Alejandro, sketch and portrait, II, 311. Ramirez, Miguel, Bishop, partisan of Guzman, I, 120; political activities and greed, 124. Ramos, Gregorio, I, 274. Ranzel, Diego, I, 295. Recio, R. Lopez, Civil Governor of Camaguey, IV, 180. Recio, Serafin, III, 86. Reciprocity, secured by Roosevelt for Cuba, IV, 256. "Reconcentrados," mortality among, IV, 86. Red Cross, Cuban activities, IV, 353. Redroban, Pedro de, I, 201. Reed, Walter, in yellow fever campaign, IV, 172. Reformists, Spanish, support Blanco's Autonomist policy, IV, 97. Reggio, Andreas, II, 32. Reno, George, in War of Independence, IV, 12; running blockade, 21; portrait, 21; services in Great War, 351. Renteria, Pedro de, partner of Las Casas, I, 75; opposes slavery, 76. Repartimiento, I, 70. Republic of Cuba: proclaimed and organized, III, 157; first representative Assembly, 161; Constitution of 1868, 164; first House of Representatives, 176; Judiciary, 177; legislation, 177; army, 178; fails to secure recognition, 203; Government reorganized, 275; after Treaty of Zanjon, 301; reorganized in War of Independence, IV, 15; Maso chosen President, 43; Conventions of Yara and Najasa, 47; Constitution adopted, 47; Government reorganized, Cisneros President, 48; capital at Las Tunas, 56; removes to Cubitas, 72; exercises functions of government, 72; reorganized in 1897, 90; after Spanish evacuation of island, 134; disbanded, 135; Constitutional Convention called, 185; Constitution completed, 192; relations with United States, 195; Platt Amendment, 203; enters Great War, 346. Revolutions: Rise of spirit, II, 268; in South America, 333; "Soles de Bolivar," 341; attempts to revolt, 344; "Black Eagle," 346; plans of Lopez, III, 36; Lopez's first invasion, 49; Aguero's insurrection, 72; comments of New York _Herald_, 89; Lopez's last expedition, 91; results of his work, 116; European interest, 125; beginning of Ten Years' War. 155; end of Ten Years' War, 299; insurrection renewed, 308, 318; War of Independence, IV, 1; Sartorius Brothers, 4; end of War of Independence, 116; revolt against President Palma, 266; ultimatum, 278; government overthrown, 280; Negro insurrection, 307; conspiracy against President Menocal, 327; great treason of José Miguel Gomez, 332; Gomez captured, 337; warnings from United States Government, 338; revolutions denounced by United States, 343. Revolutionary party, Cuban, IV, 1, 11. Rey, Juan F. G., III, 40. Riano y Gamboa, Francisco, Governor, I, 287. Ribera, Diego de, I, 206; work on La Fuerza, 209. Ricafort, Mariano, Governor, II, 347. Ricla, Conde de, Governor, II, 102; retires, 109. Rio de la Luna, I, 16. Rio de Mares, I, 16. Riva-Martiz, I, 279. Rivera, Juan Ruiz, filibuster, IV, 70; succeeds Maceo, 79. Rivera, Ruiz, Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, IV, 160. Roa, feud with Villalobos, I, 323. Rodas, Caballero de, Governor, III, 213; emancipation decree, 242. Rodney, Sir George, expedition to West Indies, II, 153. Rodriguez, Alejandro, suppresses revolt, IV, 266. Rodriguez, Laureano, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Rojas, Alfonso de, I, 181. Rojas, Gomez de, banished, I, 193; Governor of La Fuerza, 217; rebuilds Santiago, 258. Rojas, Hernando de, expedition to Florida, I, 196. Rojas, Juan Bautista de, royal treasurer, I, 218. Rojas, Juan de, aid to Lady Isabel de Soto, I, 145; commander at Havana, 183. Rojas, Manuel de, Governor, I, 105; adopts policy of "Cuba for the Cubans," 106; second Governorship, 121; dealings with Indians, 126; noble endeavors frustrated, 130; resigns, 135; the King's unique tribute to him, 135. Roldan, Francisco Dominguez, Secretary of Public Instruction, sketch and portrait, IV, 357. Roldan, José Gonzalo, III, 328. Roloff, Carlos, revolutionist, IV, 45; Secretary of War, 48; filibuster, 70. Romano Key, I, 18. Romay, Tomas, introduces vaccination, II, 192; portrait, facing 192. Roncali, Federico, Governor, II, 366; on Spanish interests in Cuba, 381. Roosevelt, Theodore, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; portrait, 113; President of United States, on relations with Cuba, 245; estimate of General Wood's work in Cuba, 251; fight with Congress for Cuban reciprocity, 256; seeks to aid President Palma against revolutionists, 275; letter to Quesada, 275. Root, Elihu, Secretary of War, on Cuban Constitution, IV, 194; on Cuban relations with United States, 197; explains Platt Amendment, 201. Rowan, A. S., messenger to Oriente, IV. 107. Rubalcava, Manuel Justo, II, 274. Rubens, Horatio, Counsel of Cuban Junta, IV, 3. Rubios, Palacios, I, 78. Ruiz, Joaquin, spy, IV, 91; death, 92. See ARANGUREN. Ruiz, Juan Fernandez, filibuster, IV, 70. Rum Cay. See CONCEPTION. Rural Guards, organized by General Wood, IV, 144; efficiency of, 301. Ruysch, geographer, I, 6. Saavedra, Juan Esquiro, I, 278. Sabinal Key, I, 18. Saco, José Antonio, pioneer of Independence, II, 378; portrait, facing 378; literary and patriotic work, III, 325, 327. Sagasta, Praxedes, Spanish Premier, proposes Cuban reforms, IV, 6; resigns, 36. Saint Augustine, expedition against, I, 332. Saint Mery, M. de, search for tomb of Columbus, I, 34. Salamanca, Juan de, Governor, I, 295; promotes industries, 300. Salamanca y Negrete, Manuel, Governor, III, 314. Salaries, some early, I, 263. Salas, Indalacio, IV, 21. Salazar. See SOMERUELOS. Salcedo, Bishop, controversy with Governor Tejada, I, 262. Sama Point, I, 4. Samana. See GUANAHANI. Sampson, William T., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; at Santiago, 114; portrait, 115. Sanchez, Bartolome, makes plans for La Fuerza, I, 194; begins building, 195; feud with Mazariegos, 197. Sanchez, Bernabe, II, 345. Sancti Spiritus, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168. Sandoval, Garcia Osorio, Governor, I, 197. See OSARIO. Sanitation, undertaken by Guemez, II, 18; vaccination introduced by Dr. Romay. 192; bad conditions, III, 313; General Wood at Santiago, IV, 142; achievements under President Menocal, 357. Sanguilly, Julio, falls in leading revolution, IV, 29, 55. Sanguilly, Manuel, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 190. San Lazaro watchtower, picture, I, 155; fortified against Drake, 248. San Salvador. See GUANAHANI. Santa Clara, Conde de, Governor, II, 194, 300. Santa Crux del Sur, I, 20. Santa Cruz, Francisco, I, 111. Santiago de Cuba, Columbus at, I, 19; founded by Velasquez, 68; second capital of island, 69; seat of gold refining, 80; site of cathedral, 123; condition in Angulo's time, 166; looted by privateers, 193; fortified by Menendez, 203; raided and destroyed by French, 256; rebuilt by Gomez de Rojas, 258; capital of Eastern District, 275; Morro Castle built, 289; captured by British, 299; attacked by Franquinay, 310; attacked by Admiral Vernon, II, 29; literary activities, 169; great improvements made, 180; battles near in War of Independence, IV, 112; naval battle, 114; General Wood's administration, 135; great work for sanitation, 142. Santiago, battle of, IV, 114. Santiago, sunset scene, facing III, 280. Santillan, Diego, Governor, I, 205. Santo Domingo See HISPANIOLA. Sanudo, Luis, Governor, I, 336. Sarmiento. Diego de, Bishop, makes trouble, I, 149, 152. Saunders, Romulus M., sounds Spain on purchase of Cuba, III, 135. Sartorius, Manuel and Ricardo, revolutionists, IV, 4. Savine, Albert, on British designs on Cuba, II, 40. Schley, Winfield S., Admiral, in Spanish-American War, IV, 110; portrait, 110; at Santiago, 114. Schoener's globe, I, 5. Schools, backward condition of, II, 174, 244, 312. See EDUCATION. Shafter, W. R., General, leads American army into Cuba, IV, 111. Shipbuilding at Havana, II, 8, 33, 113, 300. Sickles, Daniel E., Minister to Spain, offers mediation, III, 217. Silva, Manuel, Secretary of Interior, IV, 90. Slave Insurrection, II, 13; III, 367, et seq. Slavery, begun in Repartimiento system, I, 70; not sanctioned by King, 82; slave trading begun, 83; growth and regulation, 170; oppressive policy of Spain, 266; the "Assiento," II, 2; great growth of trade, 22; gross abuses, 202; described by Masse, 202; census of slaves, 204; rise of emancipation movement, 206; rights of slaves defined by King, 210; African trade forbidden, 285; Negro census, 286; early records of trade, 288; Humboldt on, 288; statistics of trade, 289 et seq.; domestic relations of slaves, 292; dangers of system denounced, 320; official complicity in illegal trade, 366; slave insurrection, 367; inhuman suppression by government, 374 et seq.; emancipation by revolution of 1868, 159; United States urges Spain to abolish slavery, 242; Rodas's decrees, 242; Moret law, 243. Smith, Caleb. publishes book on West Indies, II, 37. Smuggling, II, 133. "Sociedad de Amigos," II, 169. "Sociedad Patriotica," II, 166. "Sociedad Patriotica y Economica," II, 178. Society of Progress, II, 78. Solano, José de, naval commander, II, 147. "Soles de Bolivar," II, 341; attempts to suppress, 343. Solorzano, Juan del Hoya, I, 337; II, 10. Someruelos, Marquis of, Governor, II, 196, 301. Sores, Jacques, French raider, II, 183; attacks Havana, 184; captures city, 186. Soto, Antonio de, I, 292. Soto, Diego de, I, 109, 217. Soto, Hernando de, Governor and Adelantado, I, 140; portrait, 140; arrival in Cuba, 141; tour of island, 142; makes Havana his home, 144; chiefly interested in Florida, 144; sails for Florida, 145; his fate in Mississippi, 147; trouble with Indians, 148. Soto, Lady Isabel de, I, 141; her vigil at La Fuerza, 147; death, 149. Soto, Luis de, I, 141. Soulé, Pierre, Minister to Spain, III, 137; Indiscretions, 138; Ostend Manifesto, 142. South Sea Company, II, 21, 201. Spain: Fiscal policy toward Cuba, I, 175; wars with France, 177; discriminations against Cuba, 266, 267; protests against South Sea Company, II, 22; course in American Revolution, 143; war with Great Britain, 151; attitude toward America, 159; peace with Great Britain, 162; restrictive laws, 224; policy under Godoy, 265; decline of power, 273; seeks to pawn Cuba to Great Britain for loan, 330; protests to United States against Lopez's expedition, III, 59; seeks British protection, 129; refuses to sell Cuba, 135; revolution against Bourbon dynasty, 145 et seq.; rejects suggestion of American mediation in Cuba, 219; seeks American mediation, 293; strives to placate Cuba, IV, 5; crisis over Cuban affairs, 35; attitude toward War of Independence, 40; considers Autonomy, 71; Cabinet crisis of 1897, 88; proposes joint investigation of Maine disaster, 100; at war with United States, 106; makes Treaty of Paris, relinquishing Cuba, 118. Spanish-American War: causes of, IV, 105; declared, 106; blockade of Cuban coast, 110; landing of American army in Cuba, 111; fighting near Santiago, 112; fort at El Caney, picture, 112; San Juan Hill, battle, 113; San Juan Hill, picture of monument, 114; naval battle of Santiago, 115; peace negotiations, 116; "Peace Tree," picture, 116; treaty of peace, 118. Spanish literature in XVI century, I, 360. Spotorno, Juan Bautista, seeks peace, rebuked by Maso, IV, 35. Steinhart, Frank, American consul, advises President Palma to ask for American aid, IV, 271; correspondence with State Department, 272. Stock raising, early attention to, I, 173, 224; development of, 220. Stokes, W. E. D., aids War of Independence, IV, 14. Students, murder of by Volunteers, III, 260. Suarez y Romero, Anselmo, III, 326. Sugar, Industry begun under Velasquez, I, 175, 224; growth of industry, 265; primitive methods, II, 222; growth, III, 3; great development under President Menocal, IV, 358. "Suma de Geografia," of Enciso, I, 54. Sumana, Diego de, I, 111. Tacon, Miguel, Governor, II, 347; despotic fury, 348; conflict with Lorenzo, 349; public works, 355; fish market, 357; melodramatic administration of justice, 359. Taft, William H., Secretary of War of United States, intervenes in revolution, IV, 272; arrives at Havana, 275; negotiates with President Palma and the revolutionists, 276; portrait, 276; conveys ultimatum of revolutionists to President Palma, 279; accepts President Palma's resignation, 280; pardons revolutionists, 280; unfortunate policy, 283. Tainan, Antillan stock, I, 8. Tamayo, Diego, Secretary of State, IV, 159; Secretary of Government, 254. Tamayo, Rodrigo de, I, 126. Tariff, after British occupation, II, 106; reduction, 141; oppressive duties. III, 5; under American occupation, IV, 183. Taxation, revolt against, II, 197; "reforms," 342; oppressive burdens, III, 6; increase in Ten Years' War, 207; evasion of, 312; under American intervention, IV, 151. Taylor, Hannis, American Minister at Madrid, IV, 33. Tejada, Juan de, Governor, I, 261; great works for Cuba, 262; resigns, 263. Teneza, Dr. Francisco, Protomedico, I, 336. Ten Years' War, III, 155 et seq.; first battles, 184; aid from United States, 211; offers of American mediation, 217; rejected, 219; campaigns of destruction, 222; losses reported, 290; end in Treaty of Zanjon, 299; losses, 304. Terry, Emilio, Secretary of Agriculture, IV, 254. Theatres, first performance in Cuba, I, 264; first theatre built, II, 130, 236. Thrasher, J. S., on census, II, 283. Tines y Fuertes, Juan Antonio, Governor, II, 31. Tobacco, early use, I, 9; culture promoted, 300; monopoly, 334; "Tobacco War," 338; effects of monopoly, II, 221. Tobar, Nuñez, I, 141, 143. Tolon, Miguel de, III, 330. Toltecs, I, 7. Tomayo, Esteban, revolutionist, IV, 34. Torquemada, Garcia de, I, 239; investigates Luzan, 241. Torre, Marquis de la, Governor, II, 127; work for Havana, 129; death, 133. Torres Ayala, Laureano de, Governor, I, 334; reappointed, 337. Torres, Gaspar de, Governor, I, 234; conflict with Rojas family, 235; absconds, 235. Torres, Rodrigo de, naval commander, II, 34. Torriente, Cosimo de la, Secretary of Government, IV, 320. Toscanelli, I, 4. Treaty of Paris, IV, 118. Tres Palacios, Felipe Jose de, Bishop, II, 174. Tribune, New York, describes revolutionary leaders, III, 173. Trinidad, founded by Velasquez, I, 68, 168; great fire, II, 177. Trocha, begun by Campos, IV, 44; Weyler's, 73. Troncoso, Bernardo, Governor, II, 168. Turnbull, David, British consul, II, 364; complicity in slave insurrection, 372. Ubite, Juan de, Bishop, I, 123. Ulloa, Antonio de, sent to take possession of Louisiana, II, 118; arbitrary conduct, 120. Union Constitutionalists, III, 306. United States, early relations with Cuba, II, 254; first suggestion of annexation, 257; John Quincy Adams's policy, 258; Jefferson's policy, 260; Clay's policy, 261; representations to Colombia and Mexico, 262; Buchanan's policy, 263; Monroe Doctrine, 328; consuls not admitted to Cuba, 330; Van Buren's policy, 331; growth of commerce with Cuba, III, 22; President Taylor's proclamation against filibustering, 41; course toward Lopez, 60; attitude toward Cuban revolutionists, 123; division of sentiment between North and South, 124; policy of Edward Everett, 130; overtures for purchase of Cuba, 135; end of Civil War, 151; new policy toward Cuba, 151; recognition denied to revolution, 172; aid and sympathy given secretly, 195; Cuban appeals for recognition, 200; recognition denied, 203; protests against Rodas's decrees, 216; offers of mediation, 217; rejected by Spain, 219; increasing interest and sympathy with revolutionists, 273; warning to Spanish Government, 291; effect of reciprocity upon Cuba, 313; attitude toward War of Independence, IV, 27, 70; Congress favors recognition, 70; tender of good offices, 71; President Cleveland's message of 1896, 79; appropriation for relief of victims of "concentration" policy, 86; President McKinley's message of 1897, 87; sensation at destruction of _Maine_, 99; declaration of war against Spain, 106; Treaty of Paris, 118; establishment of first Government of Intervention, 132; relations with Republic of Cuba, 195; protectorate to be retained, 196; Platt Amendment, 199; mischief-making intrigues, 200; naval stations in Cuba, 255; reciprocity, 256; second Intervention, 281; warning to José Miguel Gomez, 305; asks settlement of claims, 308; Chargé d'Affaires assaulted, 308; supervision of Cuban legislation, 326; warning to revolutionists, 339; attitude toward Gomez revolution, 343. University of Havana, founded, II, 11. Unzaga, Luis de, Governor, II, 157. Urrutia, historian, quoted, I, 300. Urrutia, Sancho de, I, 111. Utrecht, Treaty of, I, 326; begins new era, II, 1. Uznaga, Luis de, sent to rule Louisiana, II, 126; reforms, 165. Vaca, Cabeza de, I, 140. Vadillo, Juan, declines to investigate Guzman, I, 118; temporary Governor, 119; tremendous indictment of Guzman, 120; retires after good work, 121; clash with Bishop Ramirez, 124. Valdes, historian, quoted, II, 175. Valdes, Gabriel de la Conception, III, 325. Valdes, Jeronimo, Bishop, I, 335. Valdes, Pedro de, Governor, I, 202, 272; retires, 276. Valdes, Geronimo, Governor, II, 364. Valdueza, Marquis de, I, 281. Valiente, José Pablo, II, 170, 180. Valiente, Juan Bautista, Governor of Santiago, II, 180. Vallizo, Diego, I, 277. Valmaseda, Count, Governor, proclamation against revolution, III, 171, 270; recalled for barbarities, 273. Van Buren, Martin, on United States and Cuba, II, 331. Vandeval, Nicolas C., I, 331, 333. Varela, Felix, sketch and portrait, III, 320; works, 321. Varnhagen, F. A. de, quoted, I, 2. Varona, Bernabe de, sketch and portrait, III, 178. Varona, José Enrique, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 159; Vice President, 312; biography, 316; portrait, facing 316. Varona, Pepe Jerez, chief of secret service, IV, 268. Vasquez, Juan, I, 330. Vedado, view in, IV, 176. Vega, Pedro Guerra de la, I, 243; asks fugitives to aid in defence against Drake, 248. Velasco, Francisco de Aguero, II, 345. Velasco, Luis Vicente, defender of Morro against British, II, 58; signal valor, 61; death, 67. Velasquez, Antonio, errand to Spain, I, 77 Velasquez, Bernardino, I, 115. Velasquez, Diego, first Governor of Cuba, I, 59; portrait, 59; colonizes Cuba, 60; hostilities with natives, 61, explores the island, 67; marriage and bereavement, 68; founds various towns, 68; begins Cuban commerce, 68; organizes government, 69; favored by King Ferdinand, 73; appointed Adelantado, 74; seeks to rule Yucatan and Mexico, 85; recalls Grijalva, 88; quarrels with Cortez, 91; sends Cortez to explore Mexico, 92, 94; seeks to intercept and recall Cortez, 97; sends Narvaez to Mexico, 98; removed from office by Diego Columbus, 100; restored by King, 102; death and epitaph, 103; posthumous arraignment by Altamarino, 107; convicted and condemned, 108. Velasquez, Juan Montano, Governor, I, 293. Velez Garcia, Secretary of State, IV, 297. Velez y Herrera, Ramon, III, 324. Venegas, Francisco, Governor, I, 278. Vernon, Edward, Admiral, expedition to Darien, II 27; Invasion of Cuba, 29. Viamonte, Bitrian, Governor, I, 286. Viana y Hinojosa, Diego de, Governor, I, 317. Victory loan, Cuban subscriptions to, IV, 353. Villa Clara, founded, I, 321. Villafana, attempts to assassinate Cortez, I, 99. Villafana, Angelo de, Governor of Florida, controversy with Mazariegos, I, 196. Villalba y Toledo, Diego de, Governor, I, 290. Villalobos, Governor, feud with Roa, I, 323. Villalon, José Ramon, in Cuban Junta, IV, 13; Secretary of Public Works, 160, 330. Villalon Park, scene in, IV, 247. Villanueva, Count de, II, 342. Villapando, Bernardino de, Bishop, I, 225. Villarin, Pedro Alvarez de, Governor, I, 333. Villaverde, Cirillo, III, 327. Villaverde, Juan de, Governor of Santiago, I, 276. Villegas, Diaz de, Secretary of Treasury, IV, 297; resigns, 302. Villuendas, Enrique, in Constitutional Convention, IV, 188; secretary, 189. Virginius, capture of, III, 277; butchery of officers and crew, 278 et seq.; British intervention, 280; list of passengers, 281; diplomatic negotiations over, 283. Vives, Francisco, Governor, II, 317; despotism, 317; expedition against Mexico, 346. Viyuri, Luis, II, 197. Volunteers, organized, III, 152; murder Arango, 188; have Dulce recalled, 213; cause murder of Zenea, 252; increased activities, 260; murder of students, 261. War of Independence, IV, i, 8; circumstances of beginning, 9; finances, 14; Republic of Cuba proclaimed, 15; attitude of Cuban people, 22; actual outbreak, 29; martial law proclaimed, 30; Spanish forces in Cuba, 31; arrival and policy of Martinez Campos, 38; Gomez and Maceo begin great campaign, 53; Spanish defeated, and reenforced, 55; campaign of devastation, 60; entire island involved, 61; fall of Campos, 63; Weyler in command, 66; destruction by both sides, 68; losses, 90; entry of United States, 107; attitude of Cubans toward American intervention, 108; end of war, 116. Watling's Island. See GUANAHANI. Wax, development of Industry, II, 132. Webster, Daniel, negotiations with Spain, III, 126. Weyler y Nicolau, Valeriano, Governor, IV, 65; portrait, 66; harsh decree, 66; conquers Pinar del Rio. 83; "concentration" policy, 85; recalled, 88. Wheeler, Gen. Joseph, at Santiago, IV, 113, 115. White, Col. G. W., with Lopez, III, 40. Whitney, Henry, messenger to Gomez, IV, 107. Williams, Ramon O., United States consul at Havana, IV, 32; acts in behalf of Americans in Cuba, 72; opposes sending _Maine_ to Havana, 100. Wittemeyer, Major, reports on Gomez revolution to Washington government, IV, 336; offers President Menocal aid of United States, 337. Wood, General Leonard, at San Juan Hill, IV, 113; Military Governor of Santiago, 135; his previous career, 140; unique responsibility and power, 141; dealing with pestilence, 142; organizes Rural Guards, 144; portrait, facing 158; Military Governor of Cuba, 158; well received by Cubans, 158; estimate of _La Lucha_, 158; his Cabinet, 159; comments on his appointments, 160; reorganization of school system, 161; promotes public works, 166; Dady contract dispute, 171; applies Finlay's yellow fever theory with great success, 171; reform of jurisprudence, 177; organizes Provincial governments, 179; holds municipal elections, 180; promulgates election law, 181; calls Constitutional Convention, 185; calls for general election, 240; his comments on election, 245; announces end of American occupation, 246; surrenders government of Cuba to Cubans, 249; President Roosevelt's estimate of his work, 251; view of one of his mountain roads, facing 358. Woodford, Stewart L., United States Minister to Spain, IV, 103; presents ultimatum and departs, 106. Xagua, Gulf of, I, 21. Ximenes, Cardinal and Regent, gives Las Casas hearing on Cuba, I, 77. Yanez, Adolfo Saenz, Secretary of Agriculture and Public Works, IV, 146. Yellow Fever, first invasion, II, 51; Dr. Finlay's theory applied by General Wood, IV, 171; disease eliminated from island, 176. Yero, Eduardo, Secretary of Public Instruction, IV, 254. Ynestrosa, Juan de, I, 207. Yniguez, Bernardino, I, 111. Yucatan, islands source of slave trade, I, 83; explored by Cordova, 84. Yznaga, Jose Sanchez, III, 37. Zaldo, Carlos, Secretary of State, IV, 254. Zambrana, Ramon, III, 328. Zanjon, Treaty of, III, 299. Zapata, Peninsula of, visited by Columbus, I, 22. Zarraga, Julian, filibuster, IV, 70. Zayas, Alfredo, secretary of Constitutional Convention, IV, 189; compact with José Miguel Gomez, 265; spokesman of revolutionists against President Palma, 277; elected Vice President, 290; becomes Vice President, 297; sketch and portrait, 300; quarrel with Gomez, 306; candidate for President, 328; hints at revolution, 330. Zayas, Francisco, Lieutenant Governor, I, 205; resigns, 206. Zayas, Francisco, in Autonomist Cabinet, IV, 95. Zayas, Juan B., killed in battle, IV, 78. Zayas, Lincoln de, in Cuban Junta, IV, 12; Superintendent of Schools, 162. Zenea, Juan Clemente, sketch and portrait, III, 252; murdered, 253; his works, 332. Zequiera y Arango, Manuel, II, 274. Zipangu. See CIPANOO. Zuazo, Alfonso de, appointed second Governor of Cuba, I, 100; dismissed by King, 102. 
5086	----	RAINBOW'S END By REX BEACH Author of "THE AUCTION BLOCK" "THE SPOILERS" "THE IRON TRAIL" Etc. Illustrated CONTENTS I. THE VALLEY OF DELIGHT II. SPANISH GOLD III. "THE O'REILLY" IV. RETRIBUTION V. A CRY FROM THE WILDERNESS VI. THE QUEST BEGINS VII. THE MAN WHO WOULD KNOW LIFE VIII. THE SPANISH DOUBLOON IX. MARAUDERS X. O'REILLY TALKS HOG LATIN XI. THE HAND OF THE CAPTAIN-GENERAL XII. WHEN THE WORLD RAN BACKWARD XIII. CAPITULATION XIV. A WOMAN WITH A MISSION XV. FILIBUSTERS XVI. THE CITY AMONG THE LEAVES XVII. THE CITY OF BEGGARS XVIII. SPEAKING OF FOOD XIX. THAT SICK MAN FROM SAN ANTONIO XX. EL DEMONIO'S CHILD XXI. TREASURE XXII. THE TROCHA XXIII. INTO THE CITY OF DEATH XXIV. ROSA XXV. THE HAUNTED GARDEN XXVI. HOW COBO STOOD ON HIS HEAD XXVII. MORIN, THE FISHERMAN XXVIII. THREE TRAVELERS COME HOME XXIX. WHAT HAPPENED AT SUNDOWN XXX. THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT I THE VALLEY OF DELIGHT In all probability your first view of the valley of the Yumuri will be from the Hermitage of Montserrate, for it is there that the cocheros drive you. Up the winding road they take you, with the bay at your back and the gorge at your right, to the crest of a narrow ridge where the chapel stands. Once there, you overlook the fairest sight in all Christendom--"the loveliest valley in the world," as Humboldt called it--for the Yumuri nestles right at your feet, a vale of pure delight, a glimpse of Paradise that bewilders the eye and fills the soul with ecstasy. It is larger than it seems at first sight; through it meanders the river, coiling and uncoiling, hidden here and there by jungle growths, and seeking final outlet through a cleft in the wall not unlike a crack in the side of a painted bowl. The place seems to have been fashioned as a dwelling for dryads and hamadryads, for nixies and pixies, and all the fabled spirits of forest and stream. Fairy hands tinted its steep slopes and carpeted its level floor with the richest of green brocades. Nowhere is there a clash of color; nowhere does a naked hillside or monstrous jut of rock obtrude to mar its placid beauty; nowhere can you see a crude, disfiguring mark of man's handiwork--there are only fields, and bowers, with an occasional thatched roof faded gray by the sun. Royal palms, most perfect of trees, are scattered everywhere. They stand alone or in stately groves, their lush fronds drooping like gigantic ostrich plumes, their slim trunks as smooth and regular and white as if turned in a giant lathe and then rubbed with pipe-clay. In all Cuba, island of bewitching vistas, there is no other Yumuri, and in all the wide world, perhaps, there is no valley of moods and aspects so varying. You should see it at evening, all warm and slumberous, all gold and green and purple; or at early dawn, when the mists are fading like pale memories of dreams and the tints are delicate; or again, during a tempest, when it is a caldron of whirling vapors and when the palm-trees bend like coryphees, tossing their arms to the galloping hurricane. But whatever the time of day or the season of the year at which you visit it, the Yumuri will render you wordless with delight, and you will vow that it is the happiest valley men's eyes have ever looked upon. Standing there beside the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrate, you will see beyond the cleft through which the river emerges another hill, La Cumbre, from which the view is almost as wonderful, and your driver may tell you about the splendid homes that used to grace its slopes in the golden days when Cuba had an aristocracy. They were classic Roman villas, such as once lined the Via Appia--little palaces, with mosaics and marbles and precious woods imported from Europe, and furnished with the rarest treasures--for in those days the Cuban planters were rich and spent their money lavishly. Melancholy reminders of this splendor exist even now in the shape of a crumbled ruin here and there, a lichened pillar, an occasional porcelain urn in its place atop a vine-grown bit of wall. Your cochero may point out a certain grove of orange-trees, now little more than a rank tangle, and tell you about the quinta of Don Esteban Varona, and its hidden treasure; about little Esteban and Rosa, the twins; and about Sebastian, the giant slave, who died in fury, taking with him the secret of the well. The Spanish Main is rich in tales of treasure-trove, for when the Antilles were most affluent they were least secure, and men were put to strange shifts to protect their fortunes. Certain hoards, like jewels of tragic history, in time assumed a sort of evil personality, not infrequently exercising a dire influence over the lives of those who chanced to fall under their spells. It was as if the money were accursed, for certainly the seekers often came to evil. Of such a character was the Varona treasure. Don Esteban himself was neither better nor worse than other men of his time, and although part of the money he hid was wrung from the toil of slaves and the traffic in their bodies, much of it was clean enough, and in time the earth purified it all. Since his acts made so deep an impress, and since the treasure he left played so big a part in the destinies of those who came after him, it is well that some account of these matters should be given. The story, please remember, is an old one; it has been often told, and in the telling and retelling it is but natural that a certain glamour, a certain tropical extravagance, should attach to it, therefore you should make allowance for some exaggeration, some accretions due to the lapse of time. In the main, however, it is well authenticated and runs parallel to fact. Dona Rosa Varona lived barely long enough to learn that she had given birth to twins. Don Esteban, whom people knew as a grim man, took the blow of his sudden bereavement as became one of his strong fiber. Leaving the priest upon his knees and the doctor busied with the babies, he strode through the house and out into the sunset, followed by the wails of the slave women. From the negro quarters came the sound of other and even louder lamentations, for Dona Rosa had been well loved and the news of her passing had spread quickly. Don Esteban was at heart a selfish man, and now, therefore, he felt a sullen, fierce resentment mingled with his grief. What trick was this? he asked himself. What had he done to merit such misfortune? Had he not made rich gifts to the Church? Had he not gone on foot to the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrate with a splendid votive offering--a pair of eardrops, a necklace, and a crucifix, all of diamonds that quivered in the sunlight like drops of purest water? Had he not knelt and prayed for his wife's safe delivery and then hung his gifts upon the sacred image, as Loyola had hung up his weapons before that other counterpart of Our Lady? Don Esteban scowled at the memory, for those gems were of the finest, and certainly of a value sufficient to recompense the Virgin for any ordinary miracle. They were worth five thousand pesos at least, he told himself; they represented the price of five slaves--five of his finest girls, schooled in housekeeping and of an age suitable for breeding. An extravagance, truly! Don Esteban knew the value of money as well as anybody, and he swore now that he would give no more to the Church. He looked up from his unhappy musings to find a gigantic, barefooted negro standing before him. The slave was middle-aged; his kinky hair was growing gray; but he was of superb proportions, and the muscles which showed through the rents in his cotton garments were as smooth and supple as those of a stripling. His black face was puckered with grief, as he began: "Master, is it true that Dona Rosa--" The fellow choked. "Yes," Esteban nodded, wearily, "she is dead, Sebastian." Tears came to Sebastian's eyes and overflowed his cheeks; he stood motionless, striving to voice his sympathy. At length he said: "She was too good for this world. God was jealous and took her to Paradise." The widowed man cried out, angrily: "Paradise! What is this but paradise?" He stared with resentful eyes at the beauty round about him. "See! The Yumuri!" Don Esteban flung a long arm outward. "Do you think there is a sight like that in heaven? And yonder--" He turned to the harbor far below, with its fleet of sailing-ships resting like a flock of gulls upon a sea of quicksilver. Beyond the bay, twenty miles distant, a range of hazy mountains hid the horizon. Facing to the south, Esteban looked up the full length of the valley of the San Juan, clear to the majestic Pan de Matanzas, a wonderful sight indeed; then his eyes returned, as they always did, to the Yumuri, Valley of Delight. "Paradise indeed!" he muttered. "I gave her everything. She gained nothing by dying." With a grave thoughtfulness which proved him superior to the ordinary slave, Sebastian replied: "True! She had all that any woman's heart could desire, but in return for your goodness she gave you children. You have lost her, but you have gained an heir, and a beautiful girl baby who will grow to be another Dona Rosa. I grieved as you grieve, once upon a time, for my woman died in childbirth, too. You remember? But my daughter lives, and she has brought sunshine into my old age. That is the purpose of children." He paused and shifted his weight uncertainly, digging his stiff black toes into the dirt. After a time he said, slowly: "Excellency! Now, about the--well--?" "Yes. What about it?" Esteban lifted smoldering eyes. "Did the Dona Rosa confide her share of the secret to any one? Those priests and those doctors, you know--?" "She died without speaking." "Then it rests between you and me?" "It does, unless you have babbled." "Master!" Sebastian drew himself up and there was real dignity in his black face. "Understand, my whole fortune is there--everything, even to the deeds of patent for the plantations. If I thought there was danger of your betraying me I would have your tongue pulled out and your eyes torn from their sockets." The black man spoke with a simplicity that carried conviction. "You have seen me tested. You know I am faithful. But, master, this secret is a great burden for my old shoulders, and I have been thinking--Times are unsettled, Don Esteban, and death comes without warning. You are known to be the richest man in this province and these government officials are robbers. Suppose--I should be left alone? What then?" The planter considered for a moment. "They are my countrymen, but a curse on them," he said, finally. "Well, when my children are old enough to hold their tongues they will have to be told. If I'm gone, you shall be the one to tell them. Now leave me; this is no time to speak of such things." Sebastian went as noiselessly as he had come. On his way back to his quarters he took the path to the well--the place where most of his time was ordinarily spent. Sebastian had dug this well, and with his own hands he had beautified its surroundings until they were the loveliest on the Varona grounds. The rock for the building of the quinta had been quarried here, and in the center of the resulting depression, grass-grown and flowering now, was the well itself. Its waters seeped from subterranean caverns and filtered, pure and cool, through the porous country rock. Plantain, palm, orange, and tamarind trees bordered the hollow; over the rocky walls ran a riot of vines and ferns and ornamental plants. It was Sebastian's task to keep this place green, and thither he took his way, from force of habit. Through the twilight came Pancho Cueto, the manager, a youngish man, with a narrow face and bold, close-set eyes. Spying Sebastian, he began: "So Don Esteban has an heir at last?" The slave rubbed his eyes with the heel of his huge yellow palm and answered, respectfully: "Yes, Don Pancho. Two little angels, a boy and a girl." His gray brows drew together in a painful frown. "Dona Rosa was a saint. No doubt there is great rejoicing in heaven at her coming. Eh? What do you think?" "Um-m! Possibly. Don Esteban will miss her for a time and then, I dare say, he will remarry." At the negro's exclamation Cueto cried: "So! And why not? Everybody knows how rich he is. From Oriente to Pinar del Rio the women have heard about his treasure." "What treasure?" asked Sebastian, after an instant's pause. Cueto's dark eyes gleamed resentfully at this show of ignorance, but he laughed. "Ho! There's a careful fellow for you! No wonder he trusts you. But do you think I have neither eyes nor ears? My good Sebastian, you know all about that treasure; in fact, you know far more about many things than Don Esteban would care to have you tell. Come now, don't you?" Sebastian's face was like a mask carved from ebony. "Of what does this treasure consist?" he inquired. "I have never heard about it." "Of gold, of jewels, of silver bars and precious ornaments." Cueto's head was thrust forward, his nostrils were dilated, his teeth gleamed. "Oh, it is somewhere about, as you very well know! Bah! Don't deny it. I'm no fool. What becomes of the money from the slave girls, eh? And the sugar crops, too? Does it go to buy arms and ammunition for the rebels? No. Don Esteban hides it, and you help him. Come," he cried, disregarding Sebastian's murmurs of protest, "did you ever think how fabulous that fortune must be by this time? Did you ever think that one little gem, one bag of gold, would buy your freedom?" "Don Esteban has promised to buy my freedom and the freedom of my girl." "So?" The manager was plainly surprised. "I didn't know that." After a moment he began to laugh. "And yet you pretend to know nothing about that treasure? Ha! You're a good boy, Sebastian, and so I am. I admire you. We're both loyal to our master, eh? But now about Evangelina." Cueto's face took on a craftier expression. "She is a likely girl, and when she grows up she will be worth more than you, her father. Don't forget that Don Esteban is before all else a business man. Be careful that some one doesn't make him so good an offer for your girl that he will forget his promise and--sell her." Sebastian uttered a hoarse, animal cry and the whites of his eyes showed through the gloom. "He would never sell Evangelina!" Cueto laughed aloud once more. "Of course! He would not dare, eh? I am only teasing you. But see! You have given yourself away. Everything you tell me proves that you know all about that treasure." "I know but one thing," the slave declared, stiffening himself slowly, "and that is to be faithful to Don Esteban." He turned and departed, leaving Pancho Cueto staring after him meditatively. In the days following the birth of his children and the death of his wife, Don Esteban Varona, as had been his custom, steered a middle course in politics, in that way managing to avoid a clash with the Spanish officials who ruled the island, or an open break with his Cuban neighbors, who rebelled beneath their wrongs. This was no easy thing to do, for the agents of the crown were uniformly corrupt and quite ruthless, while most of the native-born were either openly or secretly in sympathy with the revolution in the Orient. But Esteban dealt diplomatically with both factions and went on raising slaves and sugar to his own great profit. Owing to the impossibility of importing negroes, the market steadily improved, and Esteban reaped a handsome profit from those he had on hand, especially when his crop of young girls matured. His sugar-plantations prospered, too, and Pancho Cueto, who managed them, continued to wonder where the money went. The twins, Esteban and Rosa, developed into healthy children and became the pride of Sebastian and his daughter, into whose care they had been given. As for Evangelina, the young negress, she grew tall and strong and handsome, until she was the finest slave girl in the neighborhood. Whenever Sebastian looked at her he thanked God for his happy circumstances. Then, one day, Don Esteban Varona remarried, and the Dona Isabel, who had been a famous Habana beauty, came to live at the quinta. The daughter of impoverished parents, she had heard and thought much about the mysterious treasure of La Cumbre. There followed a period of feasting and entertainment, of music and merrymaking. Spanish officials, prominent civilians of Matanzas and the countryside, drove up the hill to welcome Don Esteban's bride. But before the first fervor of his honeymoon cooled the groom began to fear that he had made a serious mistake. Dona Isabel, he discovered, was both vain and selfish. Not only did she crave luxury and display, but with singular persistence she demanded to know all about her husband's financial affairs. Now Don Esteban was no longer young; age had soured him with suspicion, and when once he saw himself as the victim of a mercenary marriage he turned bitterly against his wife. Her curiosity he sullenly resented, and he unblushingly denied his possession of any considerable wealth. In fact, he tried with malicious ingenuity to make her believe him a poor man. But Isabel was not of the sort to be readily deceived. Finding her arts and coquetries of no avail, she flew into a rage, and a furious quarrel ensued--the first of many. For the lady could not rest without knowing all there was to know about the treasure. Avaricious to her finger-tips, she itched to weigh those bags of precious metal and yearned to see those jewels burning upon her bosom. Her mercenary mind magnified their value many times, and her anger at Don Esteban's obstinacy deepened to a smoldering hatred. She searched the quinta, of course, whenever she had a chance, but she discovered nothing--with the result that the mystery began to engross her whole thought. She pried into the obscurest corners, she questioned the slaves, she lay awake at night listening to Esteban's breathing, in the hope of surprising his secret from his dreams. Naturally such a life was trying to the husband, but as his wife's obsession grew his determination to foil her only strengthened. Outwardly, of course, the pair maintained a show of harmony, for they were proud and they occupied a position of some consequence in the community. But their private relations went from bad to worse. At length a time came when they lived in frank enmity; when Isabel never spoke to Esteban except in reproach or anger, and when Esteban unlocked his lips only to taunt his wife with the fact that she had been thwarted despite her cunning. In most quarters, as time went on, the story of the Varona treasure was forgotten, or at least put down as legendary. Only Isabel, who, in spite of her husband's secretiveness, learned much, and Pancho Cueto, who kept his own account of the annual income from the business, held the matter in serious remembrance. The overseer was a patient man; he watched with interest the growing discord at the quinta and planned to profit by it, should occasion offer. It was only natural under such conditions that Dona Isabel should learn to dislike her stepchildren--Esteban had told her frankly that they would inherit whatever fortune he possessed. The thought that, after all, she might never share in the treasure for which she had sacrificed her youth and beauty was like to drive the woman mad, and, as may be imagined, she found ways to vent her spite upon the twins. She widened her hatred so as to include old Sebastian and his daughter, and even went so far as to persecute Evangelina's sweetheart, a slave named Asensio. It had not taken Dona Isabel long to guess the reason of Sebastian's many privileges, and one of her first efforts had been to win the old man's confidence. It was in vain, however, that she flattered and cajoled, or stormed and threatened; Sebastian withstood her as a towering ceiba withstands the summer heat and the winter hurricane. His firmness made her vindictive, and so in time she laid a scheme to estrange him from his master. Dona Isabel was crafty. She began to complain about Evangelina, but it was only after many months that she ventured to suggest to her husband that he sell the girl. Esteban, of course, refused point-blank; he was too fond of Sebastian's daughter, he declared, to think of such a thing. "So, that is it," sneered Dona Isabel. "Well, she is young and shapely and handsome, as wenches go. I rather suspected you were fond of her--" With difficulty Esteban restrained an oath. "You mistake my meaning," he said, stiffly. "Sebastian has served me faithfully, and Evangelina plays with my children. She is good to them; she is more of a mother to them than you have ever been." "Is that why you dress her like a lady? Bah! A likely story!" Isabel tossed her fine, dark head. "I'm not blind; I see what goes on about me. This will make a pretty scandal among your friends--she as black as the pit, and you--" "WOMAN!" shouted the planter, "you have a sting like a scorpion." "I won't have that wench in my house," Isabel flared out at him. Goaded to fury by his wife's senseless accusation, Esteban cried: "YOUR house? By what license do you call it yours?" "Am I not married to you?" "Damnation! Yes--as a leech is married to its victim. You suck my blood." "Your blood!" The woman laughed shrilly. "You have no blood; your veins run vinegar. You are a miser." "Miser! Miser! I grow sick of the word. It is all you find to taunt me with. Confess that you married me for my money," he roared. "Of course I did! Do you think a woman of my beauty would marry you for anything else? But a fine bargain I made!" "Vampire!" "Wife or vampire, I intend to rule this house, and I refuse to be shamed by a thick-lipped African. Her airs tell her story. She is insolent to me, but--I sha'n't endure it. She laughs at me. Well, your friends shall laugh at you." "Silence!" commanded Esteban. "Sell her." "No." "Sell her, or--" Without waiting to hear her threat Esteban tossed his arms above his head and fled from the room. Flinging himself into the saddle, he spurred down the hill and through the town to the Casino de Espanol, where he spent the night at cards with the Spanish officials. But he did not sell Evangelina. In the days that followed many similar scenes occurred, and as Esteban's home life grew more unhappy his dissipations increased. He drank and gambled heavily; he brought his friends to the quinta with him, and strove to forget domestic unpleasantness in boisterous revelry. His wife, however, found opportunities enough to weary and exasperate him with reproaches regarding the slave girl. II SPANISH GOLD The twins were seven years old when Dona Isabel's schemes bore their first bitter fruit, and the occasion was a particularly uproarious night when Don Esteban entertained a crowd of his Castilian friends. Little Rosa was awakened at a late hour by the laughter and shouts of her father's guests. She was afraid, for there was something strange about the voices, some quality to them which was foreign to the child's experience. Creeping into her brother's room, she awoke him, and together they listened. Don Mario de Castano was singing a song, the words of which were lost, but which brought a yell of approval from his companions. The twins distinguished the voice of Don Pablo Peza, too--Don Pablo, whose magnificent black beard had so often excited their admiration. Yes, and there was Col. Mendoza y Linares, doubtless in his splendid uniform. These gentlemen were well and favorably known to the boy and girl, yet Rosa began to whimper, and when Esteban tried to reassure her his own voice was thin and reedy from fright. In the midst of their agitation they heard some one weeping; there came a rush of feet down the hallway, and the next instant Evangelina flung herself into the room. A summer moon flooded the chamber with radiance and enabled her to see the two small white figures sitting up in the middle of the bed. Evangelina fell upon her knees before them. "Little master! Little mistress!" she sobbed. "You will save me, won't you? We love each other, eh? See then, what a crime this is! Say that you will save me!" She was beside herself, and her voice was hoarse and cracked from grief. She wrung her hands, she rocked herself from side to side, she kissed the twins' nightgowns, tugging at them convulsively. The children were frightened, but they managed to quaver: "What has happened? Who has harmed you?" "Don Pablo Peza," wept the negress. "Your father has sold me to him--lost me at cards. Oh, I shall die! Sebastian won't believe it. He is praying. And Asensio--O God! But what can they do to help me? You alone can save me. You won't let Don Pablo take me away? It would kill me." "Wait!" Esteban scrambled out of bed and stood beside his dusky nurse and playmate. "Don't cry any more. I'll tell papa that you don't like Don Pablo." Rosa followed. "Yes, come along, brother," she cried, shrilly. "We'll tell Don Pablo to go home and leave our Evangelina." "My blessed doves! But will they listen to you?" moaned the slave. "Papa does whatever we ask," they assured her, gravely. "If he should growl we'll come back and hide you in the big wardrobe where nobody will ever find you." Then hand in hand, with their long nightgowns lifted to their knees, they pattered out into the hall and down toward the living-room, whence came the shouting and the laughter. Don Mario de Castano, who was facing the door, stopped in the midst of a ribald song to cry: "God be praised! What's this I see?" The others looked and then burst into merriment, for across the litter of cards and dice and empty glasses they saw a dimpled girl and boy, as like as two peas. They were just out of bed; they were peering through the smoke, and blinking like two little owls. Their evident embarrassment amused the guests hugely. "So! You awaken the household with your songs," some one chided Don Mario. "Two cherubs from heaven," another exclaimed. And a third cried, "A toast to Esteban's beautiful children." But the father lurched forward, a frown upon his face. "What is this, my dears?" he inquired, thickly. "Run back to your beds. This is no place for you." "We love Evangelina," piped the twins. "You must not let Don Pablo have her--if you please." "Evangelina?" They nodded. "We love her. ... She plays with us every day. ... We want her to stay here. ... She belongs to us." Accustomed as they were to prompt compliance with their demands, they spoke imperiously; but they had never seen a frown like this upon their father's face, and at his refusal their voices grew squeaky with excitement and uncertainty. "Go to your rooms, my sweethearts," Don Esteban directed, finally. "We want Evangelina. She belongs to us," they chorused, stubbornly. Don Pablo shook with laughter. "So! She belongs to you, eh? And I'm to be robbed of my winnings. Very well, then, come and give me a kiss, both of you, and I'll see what can be done." But the children saw that Don Pablo's face was strangely flushed, that his eyes were wild and his magnificent beard was wet with wine; therefore they hung back. "You won your bet fairly," Esteban growled at him. "Pay no heed to these babies." "Evangelina is ours," the little ones bravely repeated. Then their father exploded: "The devil! Am I dreaming? Where have you learned to oppose me? Back to your beds, both of you." Seeing them hesitate, he shouted for his wife. "Ho, there! Isabel, my love! Come put these imps to rest. Or must I teach them manners with my palm? A fine thing, truly! Are they to be allowed to roam the house at will and get a fever?" Mere mention of their stepmother's name was enough for Rosa and Esteban; they scuttled away as fast as they could go, and when Dona Isabel came to their rooms, a few moments later, she found them in their beds, with their eyes deceitfully squeezed shut. Evangelina was cowering in a corner. Isabel had overheard the wager, and her soul was evilly alight; she jerked the slave girl to her feet and with a blow of her palm sent her to her quarters. Then she turned her attention to the twins. When she left them they were weeping silently, both for themselves and for Evangelina, whom they dearly loved. Meanwhile Don Mario had resumed his singing. Day was breaking when Esteban Varona bade his guests good-by at the door of his house. As he stood there Sebastian came to him out of the mists of the dawn. The old man had been waiting for hours. He was half crazed from apprehension, and now cast himself prone before his master, begging for Evangelina. Don Pablo, in whom the liquor was dying, cursed impatiently: "Caramba! Have I won the treasure of your whole establishment?" he inquired. "Perhaps you value this wench at more than a thousand pesos; if so, you will say that I cheated you." "No! She's only an ordinary girl. My wife doesn't like her, and so I determined to get rid of her. She is yours, fairly enough," Varona told him. "Then send her to my house. I'll breed her to Salvador, my cochero. He's the strongest man I have." Sebastian uttered a strangled cry and rose to his feet. "Master! You must not--" "Silence!" ordered Esteban. Wine never agreed with him, and this morning its effects, combined with his losses at gambling, had put him in a nasty temper. "Go about your business. What do you mean by this, anyhow?" he shouted. But Sebastian, dazed of mind and sick of soul, went on, unheeding. "She is my girl. You promised me her freedom. I warn you--" "Eh?" The planter swayed forward and with blazing eyes surveyed his slave. Esteban knew that he had done a foul thing in risking the girl upon the turn of a card, and an inner voice warned him that he would repent his action when he became sober, but in his present mood this very knowledge enraged him the more. "You warn me? Of what?" he growled. At this moment neither master nor man knew exactly what he said or did. Sebastian raised his hand on high. In reality the gesture was meant to call Heaven as a witness to his years of faithful service, but, misconstruing his intent, Pablo Peza brought his riding-whip down across the old man's back, crying: "Ho! None of that." A shudder ran through Sebastian's frame. Whirling, he seized Don Pablo's wrist and tore the whip from his fingers. Although the Spaniard was a strong man, he uttered a cry of pain. At this indignity to a guest Esteban flew into a fury. "Pancho!" he cried. "Ho! Pancho!" When the manager came running, Esteban explained: "This fool is dangerous. He raised his hand to me and to Don Pablo." Sebastian's protests were drowned by the angry voices of the others. "Tie him to yonder grating," directed Esteban, who was still in the grip of a senseless rage. "Flog him well and make haste about it." Sebastian, who had no time in which to recover himself, made but a weak resistance when Pancho Cueto locked his wrists into a pair of clumsy, old-fashioned manacles, first passing the chain around one of the bars of the iron window-grating which Esteban had indicated. Sebastian felt that his whole world was tumbling about his ears. He thought he must be dreaming. Cueto swung a heavy lash; the sound of his blows echoed through the quinta, and they summoned, among others, Dona Isabel, who watched the scene from behind her shutter with much satisfaction. The guests looked on approvingly. Sebastian made no outcry. The face he turned to his master, however, was puckered with reproach and bewilderment. The whip bit deep; it drew blood and raised welts the thickness of one's thumb; nevertheless, for the first few moments the victim suffered less in body than in spirit. His brain was so benumbed, so shocked with other excitations, that he was well-nigh insensible to physical pain. That Evangelina, flesh of his flesh, had been sold, that his lifelong faithfulness had brought such reward as this, that Esteban, light of his soul, had turned against him--all this was simply astounding. More his simple mind could not compass for the moment. Gradually, however, he began to resent the shrieking injustice of it all, and unsuspected forces gathered inside of him. They grew until his frame was shaken by primitive savage impulses. After a time Don Esteban cried: "That will do, Cueto! Leave him now for the flies to punish. They will remind him of his insolence." Then the guests departed, and Esteban staggered into the house and went to bed. All that morning Sebastian stood with his hands chained high over his head. The sun grew hotter and ever hotter upon his lacerated back: the blood dried and clotted there; a cloud of flies gathered, swarming over the raw gashes left by Cueto's whip. Before leaving for Don Pablo's quinta Evangelina came to bid her father an agonized farewell, and for a long time after she had gone the old man stood motionless, senseless, scarcely breathing. Nor did the other slaves venture to approach him to offer sympathy or succor. They passed with heads averted and with fear in their hearts. Since Don Esteban's nerves, or perhaps it was his conscience, did not permit him to sleep, he arose about noon-time and dressed himself. He was still drunk, and the mad rage of the early morning still possessed him; therefore, when he mounted his horse he pretended not to see the figure chained to the window-grating. Sebastian's affection for his master was doglike and he had taken his punishment as a dog takes his, more in surprise than in anger, but at this proof of callous indifference a fire kindled in the old fellow's breast, hotter by far than the fever from his fly-blown scores. He was thirsty, too, but that was the least of his sufferings. Sometime during the afternoon the negro heard himself addressed through the window against the bars of which he leaned. The speaker was Dona Isabel. She had waited patiently until she knew he must be faint from exhaustion and then she had let herself into the room behind the grating, whence she could talk to him without fear of observation. "Do you suffer, Sebastian?" she began in a tone of gentleness and pity. "Yes, mistress." The speaker's tongue was thick and swollen. "La! La! What a crime! And you the most faithful slave in all Cuba!" "Yes, mistress." "Can I help you?" The negro raised his head; he shook his body to rid himself of the insects which were devouring him. "Give me a drink of water," he said, hoarsely. "Surely, a great gourdful, all cool and dripping from the well. But first I want you to tell me something. Come now, let us have an understanding with each other." "A drink, for the love of Christ," panted the old man, and Dona Isabel saw how cracked and dry were his thick lips, how near the torture had come to prostrating him. "I'll do more," she promised, and her voice was like honey. "I'll tell Pancho Cueto to unlock you, even if I risk Esteban's anger by so doing. You have suffered too much, my good fellow. Indeed you have. Well, I can help you now and in the future, or--I can make your life just such a misery as it has been to-day. Will you be my friend? Will you tell me something?" She was close to the window; her black eyes were gleaming; her face was ablaze with greed. "What can I tell you?" "Oh, you know very well! I've asked it often enough, but you have lied, just as my husband has lied to me. He is a miser; he has no heart; he cares for nobody, as you can see. You must hate him now, even as I hate him." There was a silence during which Dona Isabel tried to read the expression on that tortured face in the sunlight. "Do you?" "Perhaps." "Then tell me--is there really a treasure, or--?" The woman gasped; she choked; she could scarcely force the question for fear of disappointment. "Tell me there is, Sebastian." She clutched the bars and shook them. "I've heard so many lies that I begin to doubt." The old man nodded. "Oh yes, there is a treasure," said he. "God! You have seen it?" Isabel was trembling as if with an ague. "What is it like? How much is there? Good Sebastian, I'll give you water; I'll have you set free if you tell me." "How much? I don't know. But there is much--pieces of Spanish gold, silver coins in casks and in little boxes--the boxes are bound with iron and have hasps and staples; bars of precious metal and little paper packages of gems, all tied up and hidden in leather bags." Sebastian could hear his listener panting; her bloodless fingers were wrapped tightly around the bars above his head.-- "Yes! Go on." "There are ornaments, too. God knows they must have come from heaven, they are so beautiful; and pearls from the Caribbean as large as plums." "Are you speaking the truth?" "Every peso, every bar, every knickknack I have handled with my own hands. Did I not make the hiding-place all alone? Senora, everything is there just as I tell you--and more. The grants of title from the crown for this quinta and the sugar-plantations, they are there, too. Don Esteban used to fear the government officials, so he hid his papers securely. Without them the lands belong to no one. You understand?" "Of course! Yes, yes! But the jewels--God! where are they hidden?" "You would never guess!" Sebastian's voice gathered strength. "Ten thousand men in ten thousand years would never find the place, and nobody knows the secret but Don Esteban and me." "I believe you. I knew all the time it was here. Well? Where is it?" Sebastian hesitated and said, piteously, "I am dying--" Isabel could scarcely contain herself. "I'll give you water, but first tell me where--where! God in heaven! Can't you see that I, too, am perishing?" "I must have a drink." "Tell me first." Sebastian lifted his head and, meeting the speaker's eyes, laughed hoarsely. At the sound of his unnatural merriment Isabel recoiled as if stung. She stared at the slave's face in amazement and then in fury. She stammered, incoherently, "You--you have been--lying!" "Oh no! The treasure is there, the greatest treasure in all Cuba, but you shall never know where it is. I'll see to that. It was you who sold my girl; it was you who brought me to this; it was your hand that whipped me. Well, I'll tell Don Esteban how you tried to bribe his secret from me! What do you think he'll do then? Eh? You'll feel the lash on your white back--" "You FOOL!" Dona Isabel looked murder. "I'll punish you for this; I'll make you speak if I have to rub your wounds with salt." But Sebastian closed his eyes wearily. "You can't make me suffer more than I have suffered," he said. "And now--I curse you. May that treasure be the death of you. May you live in torture like mine the rest of your days; may your beauty turn to ugliness such that men will spit at you; may you never know peace again until you die in poverty and want--" But Dona Isabel, being superstitious, fled with her fingers in her ears; nor did she undertake to make good her barbarous threat, realizing opportunely that it would only serve to betray her desperate intentions and put her husband further on his guard. Instead she shut herself into her room, where she paced the floor, racking her brain to guess where the hiding-place could be or to devise some means of silencing Sebastian's tongue. To feel that she had been overmatched, to know that there was indeed a treasure, to think that the two who knew where it was had been laughing at her all this time, filled the woman with an agony approaching that which Sebastian suffered from his flies. As the sun was sinking beyond the farther rim of the Yumuri and the valley was beginning to fill with shadows. Esteban Varona rode up the hill. His temper was more evil than ever, if that were possible, for he had drunk again in an effort to drown the memory of his earlier actions. With him rode half a dozen or more of his friends, coming to dine and put in another night at his expense. There were Pablo Peza, and Mario de Castano, once more; Col. Mendoza y Linares, old Pedro Miron, the advocate, and others of less consequence, whom Esteban had gathered from the Spanish Club. The host dismounted and lurched across the courtyard to Sebastian. "So, my fine fellow," he began. "Have you had enough of rebellion by this time?" "Why did you have him flogged?" the advocate inquired. Esteban explained, briefly, "He dared to raise his hand in anger against one of my guests." Sebastian's face was working as he turned upon his master to say: "I would be lying if I told you that I am sorry for what I did. It is you have done wrong. Your soul is black with this crime. Where is my girl?" "The devil! To hear you talk one would think you were a free man." The planter's eyes were bleared and he brandished his riding-whip threateningly. "I do as I please with my slaves. I tolerate no insolence. Your girl? Well, she's in the house of Salvador, Don Pablo's cochero, where she belongs. I've warned him that he will have to tame her unruly spirit, as I have tamed yours." Sebastian had hung sick and limp against the grating, but at these words he suddenly roused. It was as if a current of electricity had galvanized him. He strained at his manacles and the bars groaned under his weight. His eyes began to roll, his lips drew back over his blue gums. Noting his expression of ferocity, Esteban cut at his naked back with the riding-whip, crying: "Ho! Not subdued yet, eh? You need another flogging." "Curse you and all that is yours," roared the maddened slave. "May you know the misery you have put upon me. May you rot for a million years in hell." The whip was rising and falling now, for Esteban had lost what little self-control the liquor had left to him. "May your children's bodies grow filthy with disease; may they starve; may they--" Sebastian was yelling, though his voice was hoarse with pain. The lash drew blood with every blow. Meanwhile, he wrenched and tugged at his bonds with the fury of a maniac. "Pablo! Your machete, quick!" panted the slave-owner. "God's blood! I'll make an end of this black fiend, once for all." Esteban Varona's guests had looked on at the scene with the same mild interest they would display at the whipping of a balky horse: and, now that the animal threatened to become dangerous, it was in their view quite the proper thing to put it out of the way. Don Pablo Peza stepped toward his mare to draw the machete from its scabbard. But he did not hand it to his friend. He heard a shout, and turned in time to see a wonderful and a terrible thing. Sebastian had braced his naked feet against the wall; he had bowed his back and bent his massive shoulders--a back and a pair of shoulders that looked as bony and muscular as those of an ox--and he was heaving with every ounce of strength in his enormous body. As Pablo stared he saw the heavy grating come away from its anchorage in the solid masonry, as a shrub is uprooted from soft ground. The rods bent and twisted; there was a clank and rattle and clash of metal upon the flags; and then--Sebastian turned upon his tormentor, a free man, save only for the wide iron bracelets and their connecting chain. He was quite insane. His face was frightful to behold; it was apelike in its animal rage, and he towered above his master like some fabled creature out of the African jungle of his forefathers. Sebastian's fists alone would have been formidable weapons, but they were armored and weighted with the old-fashioned, hand-wrought irons which Pancho Cueto had locked upon them. Wrapping the chain in his fingers, the slave leaped at Esteban and struck, once. The sound of the blow was sickening, for the whole bony structure of Esteban Varona's head gave way. There was a horrified cry from the other white men. Don Pablo Peza ran forward, shouting. He swung his machete, but Sebastian met him before the blow could descend, and they went down together upon the hard stones. Again Sebastian smote, with his massive hands wrapped in the chain and his wrists encased in steel, and this time it was as if Don Pablo's head had been caught between a hammer and an anvil. The negro's strength, exceptional at all times, was multiplied tenfold; he had run amuck. When he arose the machete was in his grasp and Don Pablo's brains were on his knuckles. It all happened in far less time than it takes to tell. The onlookers had not yet recovered from their first consternation; in fact they were still fumbling and tugging at whatever weapons they carried when Sebastian came toward them, brandishing the blade on high. Pedro Miron, the advocate, was the third to fall. He tried to scramble out of the negro's path, but, being an old man, his limbs were too stiff to serve him and he went down shrieking. By now the horses had caught the scent of hot blood and were plunging furiously, the clatter of their hoofs mingling with the blasphemies of the riders, while Sebastian's bestial roaring made the commotion even more hideous. Esteban's guests fought as much for their lives as for vengeance upon the slayer, for Sebastian was like a gorilla; he seemed intent upon killing them all. He vented his fury upon whatever came within his reach; he struck at men and animals alike, and the shrieks of wounded horses added to the din. It was a frightful combat. It seemed incredible that one man could work such dreadful havoc in so short a time. Varona and two of his friends were dead; two more were badly wounded, and a Peruvian stallion lay kicking on the flagging when Col. Mendoza y Linares finally managed to get a bullet home in the black man's brain. Those who came running to learn the cause of the hubbub turned away sick and pallid, for the paved yard was a shambles. Pancho Cueto called upon the slaves to help him, but they slunk back to their quarters, dumb with terror and dismay. All that night people from the town below came and went and the quinta resounded to sobs and lamentations, but of all the relatives of the dead and wounded, Dona Isabel took her bereavement hardest. Strange to say, she could not be comforted. She wept, she screamed, she tore her hair, tasting the full nauseousness of the cup her own avarice had prepared. Now, when it was too late, she realized that she had overreached herself, having caused the death of the only two who knew the secret of the treasure. She remembered, also, Sebastian's statement that even the deeds of patent for the land were hidden with the rest, where ten thousand men in ten thousand years could never find them. Impressed by her manifestations of grief, Esteban's friends reasoned that the widow must have loved her husband dearly. They told one another they had wronged her. III "THE O'REILLY" Age and easy living had caused Don Mario de Castano, the sugar merchant, to take on weight. He had, in truth, become so fat that he waddled like a penguin when he walked; and when he rode, the springs of his French victoria gave up in despair. They glued themselves together, face to face, and Don Mario felt every rut and every rock in the road. Nor was the merchant any less heavy in mind than in body, for he was both very rich and very serious, and nothing is more ponderous than a rich, fat man who takes his riches and his fatness seriously. In disposition Don Mario was practical and unromantic; he boasted that he had never had an illusion, never an interest outside of his business. And yet, on the day this story opens, this prosaic personage, in spite of his bulging waistband and his taut neckband, in spite of his short breath and his prickly heat, was in a very whirl of pleasurable excitement. Don Mario, in fact, suffered the greatest of all illusions: he was in love, and he believed himself beloved. The object of his adoration was little Rosa Varona, the daughter of his one-time friend Esteban. At thought of her the planter glowed with ardor--at any rate he took it to be ardor, although it might have been the fever from that summer rash which so afflicted him--and his heart fluttered in a way dangerous to one of his apoplectic tendencies. To be sure, he had met Rosa only twice since her return from her Yankee school, but twice had been enough; with prompt decision he had resolved to do her the honor of making her his wife. Now, with a person of Don Mario's importance, to decide for himself is to decide for others, and inasmuch as he knew that Dona Isabel, Rosa's stepmother, was notoriously mercenary and had not done at all well since her husband's death, it did not occur to him to doubt that his suit would prosper. It was, in fact, to make terms with her that he rode forth in the heat of this particular afternoon. Notwithstanding the rivulets of perspiration that were coursing down every fold of his flesh, and regardless of the fact that the body of his victoria was tipped at a drunken angle, as if struggling to escape the burdens of his great weight, Don Mario felt a jauntiness of body and of spirit almost like that of youth. He saw himself as a splendid prince riding toward the humble home of some obscure maiden whom he had graciously chosen to be his mate. His arrival threw Dona Isabel into a flutter; the woman could scarcely contain her curiosity when she came to meet him, for he was not the sort of man to inconvenience himself by mere social visits. Their first formal greetings over, Don Mario surveyed the bare living-room and remarked, lugubriously: "I see many changes here." "No doubt," the widow agreed. "Times have been hard since poor Esteban's death." "What a terrible calamity that was! I shudder when I think of it," said he. "I was his guest on the night previous, you remember? In fact, I witnessed his wager of the negro girl, Evangelina--the root of the whole tragedy. Well, well! Who would have believed that old slave, her father, would have run mad at losing her? A shocking affair, truly! and one I shall never get out of my mind." "Shocking, yes. But what do you think of a rich man, like Esteban, who would leave his family destitute? Who would die without revealing the place where he had stored his treasure?" Dona Isabel, it was plain, felt her wrongs keenly; she spoke with as much spirit as if her husband had permitted himself to be killed purely out of spite toward her. De Castano shook his round bullet head, saying with some impatience: "You still believe in that treasure, eh? My dear senora, the only treasure Varona left was his adorable children--and your admirable self." Immediately the speaker regretted his words, for he remembered, too late, that Dona Isabel was reputed to be a trifle unbalanced on this subject of the Varona treasure. "I do not believe; I KNOW!" the widow answered, with more than necessary vehemence. "What became of all Esteban's money if he did not bury it? He never gave any to me, for he was a miser. You know, as well as I, that he carried on a stupendous business in slaves and sugar, and it was common knowledge that he hid every peso for fear of his enemies. But where? WHERE? That is the question." "You, if any one, should know, after all the years you have spent in hunting for it," the merchant observed. "Dios mio! Almost before Esteban was buried you began the search. People said you were going to tear this house down." "Well, I never found a trace. I had holes dug in the gardens, too." "You see? No, senora, it is possible to hide anything except money. No man can conceal that where another will not find it." Isabel's face had grown hard and avaricious, even during this brief talk; her eyes were glowing; plainly she was as far as ever from giving up her long-cherished conviction. "I don't ask anybody to believe the story," she said, resentfully. "All the same, it is true. There are pieces of Spanish gold and silver coins, in boxes bound with iron and fitted with hasps and staples; packages of gems; pearls from the Caribbean as large as plums. Oh? Sebastian told me all about it." "Of course, of course! I shall not argue the matter."' Don Mario dismissed the subject with a wave of his plump hand. "Now, Dona Isabel--" "As if it were not enough to lose that treasure," the widow continued, stormily, "the Government must free all our slaves. Tse! Tse! And now that there is no longer a profit in sugar, my plantations--" "No profit in sugar? What are you saying?" queried the caller. "Oh, you have a way of prospering! What touches your fingers turns to gold. But you are not at the mercy of an administrador." "Precisely! I am my own manager. If your crops do not pay, then Pancho Cueto is cheating you. He is capable of it. Get rid of him. But I didn't come here to talk about Esteban's hidden treasure, nor his plantations, nor Pancho Cueto. I came here to talk about your step-daughter, Rosa." "So?" Dona Isabel looked up quickly. "She interests me. She is more beautiful than the stars." Don Mario rolled his eyes toward the high ceiling, which, like the sky, was tinted a vivid cerulean blue. "She personifies every virtue; she is--delectable." He pursed his wet lips, daintily picked a kiss from between them with his thumb and finger, and snapped it into the air. Inasmuch as Isabel had always hated the girl venomously, she did not trust herself to comment upon her caller's enthusiasm. "She is now eighteen," the fat suitor went on, ecstatically, "and so altogether charming--But why waste time in pretty speeches? I have decided to marry her." De Castano plucked a heavily scented silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a beading of moisture from his brow and upper lip. He had a habit of perspiring when roused from his usual lethargy. "Rosa has a will of her own," guardedly ventured the stepmother. Don Mario broke out, testily: "Naturally; so have we all. Now let us speak plainly. You know me. I am a person of importance. I am rich enough to afford what I want, and I pay well. You understand? Well, then, you are Rosa's guardian and you can bend her to your desires." "If that were only so!" exclaimed the woman. "She and Esteban--what children! What tempers!--Just like their father's! They have never liked me; they disobey me at every opportunity; they exercise the most diabolical ingenuity in making my life miserable. They were to be their father's heirs, you know, and they blame me for his death, for our poverty, and for all the other misfortunes that have overtaken us. We live like cats and dogs." Don Mario had been drumming his fat fingers impatiently upon the arm of his chair. Now he exclaimed: "Your pardon, senora, but I am just now very little interested in your domestic relations; they do not thrill me--as my own prospective happiness does. What you say about Rosa only makes me more eager, for I loathe a sleepy woman. Now tell me, is she--Has she any-affairs of the heart?" "N-no, unless perhaps a flirtation with that young American, Juan O'Reilly." Dona Isabel gave the name its Spanish pronunciation of "O'Rail-ye." "Juan O'Reilly? O'Reilly? Oh yes! But what has he to offer a woman? He is little more than a clerk." "That is what I tell her. Oh, it hasn't gone far as yet." "Good!" Don Mario rose to leave, for the exertion of his ride had made him thirsty. "You may name your own reward for helping me and I will pay it the day Rosa marries me. Now kindly advise her of my intentions and tell her I shall come to see her soon." It was quite true that Johnnie O'Reilly--or "The O'Reilly," as his friends called him--had little in the way of worldly advantage to offer any girl, and it was precisely because of this fact that he had accepted a position here in Cuba, where, from the very nature of things, promotion was likely to be more rapid than in the New York office of his firm. He had come to this out-of-the-way place prepared to live the lonely life of an exile, if an O'Reilly could be lonely anywhere, and for a brief time he had been glum enough. But the O'Reillys, from time immemorial, had been born and bred to exile; it was their breath, their meat and drink, and this particular member of the clan thrived upon it quite as well as had the other Johnnies and Michaels and Andys who had journeyed to far shores. The O'Reillys were audacious men, a bit too heedless of their own good, perhaps; a bit too light-hearted readily to impress a grave world with their varied abilities, but sterling men, for all that, ambitious men, men with lime in their bones and possessed of a high and ready chivalry that made friends for them wherever their wandering feet strayed. Spain, France, and the two Americas had welcomed O'Reillys of one sort or another; even Cuba had the family name written large upon her scroll. So Johnnie, of New York and Matanzas, although at first he felt himself a stranger in a strange land, was not so considered by the Cubans. A dancing eye speaks every language; a singing heart gathers its own audience. Before the young Irish-American had more than a bowing acquaintance with the commonest Spanish verbs he had a calling acquaintance with some of the most exclusive people of Matanzas. He puzzled them, to be sure, for they could not fathom the reason for his ever-bubbling gladness, but they strove to catch its secret, and, striving, they made friends with him. O'Reilly did not puzzle their daughters nearly so much: more than one aristocratic senorita felt sure that she quite understood the tall, blond stranger with the laughing eyes, or could understand him if he gave her half a chance, and so, as had been the case with other O'Reillys in other lands, Johnnie's exile became no exile at all. He had adjusted himself serenely to his surroundings when Rosa Varona returned from school, but with her coming, away went all his complacency. His contentment vanished; he experienced a total change in his opinions, his hopes, and his ambitions. He discovered, for example, that Matanzas was by no means the out-of-the-way place he had considered it; on the contrary, after meeting Rosa once by accident, twice by design, and three times by mutual arrangement, it had dawned upon him that this was the chief city of Cuba, if not, perhaps, the hub around which the whole world revolved; certainly it was the most agreeable of all cities, since it contained everything that was necessary for man's happiness. Yet, despite the thrill of his awakening, O'Reilly was not at all pleased with himself, for, as it happened, there was another girl back home, and during his first year of loneliness he had written to her more freely and more frequently than any man on such a salary as his had a right to do. O'Reilly laid no claims to literary gifts; nevertheless, it seemed to him, as he looked back upon it, that his pen must have been dipped in magic and in moonlight, for the girl had expressed an eager willingness to share his interesting economic problems, and in fact was waiting for him to give her the legal right. Inasmuch as her father was O'Reilly's "Company" it may be seen that Rosa Varona's home-coming seriously complicated matters, not only from a sentimental, but from a business standpoint. It was in a thoughtful mood that he rode up La Cumbre, toward the Quinta de Esteban, late on the afternoon of Don Mario's visit. Instead of going directly to the house as the merchant had done, O'Reilly turned off from the road and, after tethering his horse in a cluster of guava bushes, proceeded on foot. He did not like Dona Isabel, nor did Dona Isabel like him. Moreover, he had a particular reason for avoiding her to-day. Just inside the Varona premises he paused an instant to admire the outlook. The quinta commanded an excellent view of the Yumuri, on the one hand, and of the town and harbor on the other; no one ever climbed the hill from the city to gaze over into that hidden valley without feeling a pleasurable surprise at finding it still there. We are accustomed to think of perfect beauty as unsubstantial, evanescent; but the Yumuri never changed, and in that lay its supremest wonder. Through what had once been well-tended grounds, O'Reilly made his way to a sort of sunken garden which, in spite of neglect, still remained the most charming nook upon the place; and there he sat down to wait for Rosa. The hollow was effectually screened from view by a growth of plantain, palm, orange, and tamarind trees; over the rocky walls ran a profusion of flowering plants and vines; in the center of the open space was an old well, its masonry curb all but crumbled away. When Rosa at last appeared, O'Reilly felt called upon to tell her, somewhat dizzily, that she was beyond doubt the sweetest flower on all the Quinta de Esteban, and since this somewhat hackneyed remark was the boldest speech he had ever made to her, she blushed prettily, flashing him a dimpled smile of mingled pleasure and surprise. "Oh, but I assure you I'm in no sweet temper," said she. "Just now I'm tremendously angry." "Why?" "It's that stepmother--Isabel." "So! You've been quarreling again, eh? Well, she's the easiest woman in all Matanzas to quarrel with--perhaps the only one who doesn't see something good in me. I'm afraid to talk to her for fear she'd convince me I'm wholly abominable." Rosa laughed, showing her fine, regular teeth--O'Reilly thought he had never seen teeth so even and white. "Yes, she is a difficult person. If she dreamed that I see you as often as I do--Well--" Rosa lifted her eloquent hands and eyes heavenward. "I suppose that's why I enjoy doing it--I so dearly love to spite her." "I see!" O'Reilly puckered his brows and nodded. "But why, in that case, haven't you seen me oftener? We might just as well have made the good lady's life totally unbearable." "Silly! She knows nothing about it." With a flirtatious sigh Rosa added: "That's what robs the affair of its chief pleasure. Since it does not bother her in the least, I think I will not allow you to come any more." After judicious consideration, O'Reilly pretended to agree. "There's no fun in wreaking a horrible revenge, when your enemy isn't wise to it," he acknowledged. "Since it's your idea to irritate your stepmother, perhaps it would annoy her more if I made love directly to her." Rosa tittered, and then inquired, naively, "Can you make love, senor?" "Can I? It's the one ability an O'Reilly inherits. Listen to this now." Reaching forth, he took Rosa's fingers in his. "Wait!" he cried as she resisted. "Pretend that you're Mrs. Varona, your own stepmother, and that this is her dimpled hand I'm holding." "Oh-h!" The girl allowed his grasp to remain. "But Isabel's hand isn't dimpled: it's thin and bony. I've felt it on my ears often enough." "Don't interrupt," he told her. "Isabel, my little darling--" "'Little'! La! La! She's as tall and ugly as a chimney." "Hush! I've held my tongue as long as I can, but now it's running away of its own accord, and I must tell you how mad I am about you. The first time I saw you--it was at the ball in the Spanish Club--" Again Rosa drew away sharply, at which O'Reilly laid his other hand over the one in his palm, saying, quickly: "You and your stepdaughter, Rosa. Do you remember that first waltz of ours? Sure, I thought I was in heaven, with you in my arms and your eyes shining into mine, and I told you so." "So you make the same pretty speeches to all women, eh?" the girl reproached him. "Isabel, sweetheart, I lose my breath when I think of you; my lips pucker up for kisses--" "'ISABEL'!" exclaimed a voice, and the lovers started guiltily apart. They turned to find Esteban, Rosa's twin brother, staring at them oddly. "Isabel?" he repeated. "What's this?" "You interrupted our theatricals. I was rehearsing an impassioned proposal to your beloved stepmother," O'Reilly explained, with a pretense of annoyance. "Yes, Senor O'Reilly believes he can infuriate Isabel by laying siege to her. He's a--foolish person--" Rosa's cheeks were faintly flushed and her color deepened at the amusement in Esteban's eyes. "He makes love wretchedly." "What little I overheard wasn't bad," Esteban declared; then he took O'Reilly's hand. Esteban was a handsome boy, straight, slim, and manly, and his resemblance to Rosa was startling. With a look engaging in its frank directness, he said: "Rosa told me about your meetings here and I came to apologize for our stepmother's discourtesy. I'm sorry we can't invite you into our house, but--you understand? Rosa and I are not like her; we are quite liberal in our views; we are almost Americans, as you see. I dare say that's what makes Isabel hate Americans so bitterly." "Wouldn't it please her to know that I'm becoming Cubanized as fast as ever I can?" ventured the caller. "Oh, she hates Cubans, too!" laughed the brother. "She's Spanish, you know. Well, it's fortunate you didn't see her to-day. Br-r! What a temper! We had our theatricals, too. I asked her for money, as usual, and, as usual, she refused. It was like a scene from a play. She'll walk in her sleep to-night, if ever." Rosa nodded soberly, and O'Reilly, suppressing some light reply that had sprung to his lips, inquired, curiously, "What do you mean by that?" Brother and sister joined in explaining that Dona Isabel was given to peculiar actions, especially after periods of excitement or anger, and that one of her eccentricities had taken the form of somnambulistic wanderings. "Oh, she's crazy enough," Esteban concluded. "I believe it's her evil conscience." Rosa explained further: "She used to steal about at night, hoping to surprise papa or Sebastian going or coming from the treasure. They were both killed, as you know, and the secret of the hiding-place was lost. Now Isabel declares that they come to her in her sleep and that she has to help them hunt for it, whether she wishes or not. It is retribution." The speaker drew up her shoulders and shivered, but Esteban smiled. "Bah!" he exclaimed. "I'll believe in ghosts when I see one." Then, with a shake of his head: "Isabel has never given up the hope of finding that treasure. She would like to see Rosa married, and me fighting with the Insurrectos, so that she might have a free hand in her search." O'Reilly scanned the speaker silently for a moment; then he said, with a gravity unusual in him, "I wonder if you know that you're suspected of--working for the Insurrecto cause." "Indeed? I didn't know." "Well, it's a fact." O'Reilly heard Rosa gasp faintly. "Is it true?" he asked. "I am a Cuban." Esteban's smile was a trifle grim. "Cuban? Your people were Spanish." "True. But no Spaniard ever raised a Spanish child in Cuba. We are Cubans, Rosa and I." At this statement the sister cried: "Hush! It is dangerous to speak in that way, with this new war growing every day." "But O'Reilly is our good friend," Esteban protested. "Of course I am," the American agreed, "and for that reason I spoke. I hope you're not too deeply involved with the rebels." "There, Esteban! Do you hear?" Turning to O'Reilly, Rosa said, imploringly: "Please reason with him. He's young and headstrong and he won't listen to me." Esteban frowned. "Young, eh? Well, sometimes the young are called upon to do work that older men wouldn't care to undertake." "What work?" O'Reilly's eyes were still upon him. "You can tell ME." "I think I can," the other agreed. "Well, then, I know everybody in Matanzas; I go everywhere, and the Spanish officers talk plainly before me. Somebody must be the eyes and the ears for Colonel Lopez." "Colonel Lopez!" exclaimed O'Reilly. Esteban nodded. Rosa's face, as she looked at the two men, was white and worried. For a time the three of them sat silent; then the American said, slowly, "You'll be shot if you're caught." Rosa whispered: "Yes! Think of it!" "Some one must run chances," Esteban averred. "We're fighting tyranny; all Cuba is ablaze. I must do my part." "But sooner or later you'll be discovered--then what?" persisted O'Reilly. Esteban shrugged. "Who knows? There'll be time enough when--" "What of Rosa?" At this question the brother stirred uneasily and dropped his eyes. O'Reilly laid a hand upon his arm. "You have no right to jeopardize her safety. Without you, to whom could she turn?" The girl flashed her admirer a grateful glance. "Senor, you for one would see that she--" "But--I'm going away." O'Reilly felt rather than saw Rosa start, for his face was averted. Purposely he kept his gaze upon Esteban, for he didn't wish to see the slow pallor that rose in the girl's cheeks, the look of pain that crept into her eyes. "I came here to tell you both good-by. I may be gone for some time. I--I don't know when I can get back." "I'm sorry," Esteban told him, with genuine regret. "We have grown very fond of you. You will leave many friends here in Matanzas, I'm sure. But you will come back before long, eh?" "Yes, as soon as I can. That is, if--" He did not finish the sentence. "Good. You're one of us. In the mean time I'll remember what you say, and at least I'll be careful." By no means wanting in tact, Esteban rose briskly and, after shaking hands with O'Reilly, left the two lovers to say farewell as best suited them. But for once O'Reilly's ready tongue was silent. The laughter was gone from his blue eyes when he turned to the girl at his side. "You say you are going away?" Rosa inquired, breathlessly. "But why?" "I'm going partly because of this war, and partly because of--something else. I tried to tell you yesterday, but I couldn't. When the revolution started everybody thought it was merely a local uprising, and I wrote my company to that effect; but, bless you, it has spread like fire, and now the whole eastern end of the island is ablaze." "Esteban says it will be more terrible than the Ten Years' War." "God forbid! And yet all the old fighters are back again. Nobody believed that Maximo Gomez had returned, but it's true. And the Maceos are here, too, from Costa Rica. Antonio has already gained control of most of Santiago Province, and he's sweeping westward. Of course the Spaniards minimize the reports of his success, and we, here, don't understand what's really going on. Anyhow, business has stopped, and my employers have ordered me home to find out what's happened to their profits. They seem to hold me personally responsible for this insurrection." "I see. And when you have told them the truth you will come back. Is that it?" "I--Perhaps." "You said there was something else--" O'Reilly's hesitation became an embarrassed silence. He tried to laugh it off. "There is, otherwise I'd stay right here and tell my penurious friends to whistle for their profits. It seems I'm cursed with a fatal beauty. You may have noticed it? No? Well, perhaps it's a magnificent business ability that I have. Anyhow, the president of my company has a notion that I'd make him a good son-in-law." "I--Oh!" cried Rosa. And at her tone O'Reilly hurried on: "These rich men have the most absurd ideas. I suppose I'll have to--" "Then you are in love, senor?" The young man nodded vigorously. "Indeed I am--with the sweetest girl in Cuba. That's the whole trouble. That's why I'm hurrying home to resign before I'm fired." Not daring to look too long or too deeply into Rosa Varona's eyes until she had taken in the whole truth, he waited, staring at his feet. "I'm sort of glad it has come to a show-down and I can speak out. I'm hoping she'll miss me." After a moment he ventured, "Will she--er--will you, Rosa?" "I? Miss you?" Rosa lifted her brows in pretended amazement. Then she tipped her head daintily to one side, as if weighing his question earnestly. "You are amusing, of course, but--I won't have much time to think about you, for I am so soon to be married." "Married? WHAT?" O'Reilly started violently, and the girl exclaimed, with well-feigned concern: "Oh, senor! You have wounded yourself again on that thorn-bush. This place is growing up to brambles." "It wasn't my finger! Something pierced me through the heart. MARRIED? Nonsense!" "Indeed! Do you think I'm so ugly nobody would have me?" "Good Lord! You--" O'Reilly swallowed hard. "I won't tell you the truth when you know it so well." "The richest man in Matanzas asked for my hand this very afternoon." "Who? Mario de Castano?" "Yes." O'Reilly laughed with relief, and though Rosa tried to look offended, she was forced to smile. "He's fat, I know," she admitted, "and he makes funny noises when he breathes; but he is richer than Croesus, and I adore rich men." "I hate 'em!" announced O'Reilly. Then for a second time he took Rosa's dimpled hand, saying, earnestly: "I'm sure you know now why I make love so badly, dear. It's my Irish conscience. And you'll wait until I come back, won't you?" "Will you be gone--very long?" she asked. O'Reilly looked deeply now into the dark eyes turned to his, and found that at last there was no coquetry in them anywhere--nothing but a lonesome, hungry yearning--and with a glad, incoherent exclamation he held out his arms. Rosa Varona crept into them; then with a sigh she upturned her lips to his. "I'll wait forever," she said. IV RETRIBUTION Although for a long time Dona Isabel had been sure in her own mind that Pancho Cueto, her administrador, was robbing her, she had never mustered courage to call him to a reckoning. And there was a reason for her cowardice. Nevertheless, De Castano's blunt accusation, coupled with her own urgent needs, served to fix her resolution, and on the day after the merchant's visit she sent for the overseer, who at the time was living on one of the plantations. Once the message was on its way, Isabel fell into a condition bordering upon panic, and was half minded to countermand her order. She spent an evening of suspense, and a miserable night. This last, however, was nothing unusual with her; she was accustomed to unpleasant dreams, and she was not surprised when old familiar shapes came to harass her. Nor, in view of her somnambulistic vagaries, was she greatly concerned to find, when she woke in the morning, that her slippers were stained and that her skirt was bedraggled with dew and filled with burs. Scarcely a month passed that she did not walk in her sleep. Cueto was plainly curious to learn why he had been sent for, but since he asked no questions, his employer was forced to open the subject herself. Several times he led up to it unsuccessfully; then she took the plunge. Through dry, white lips she began: "My dear Pancho, times are hard. The plantations are failing, and so--" Pancho Cueto's eyes were set close to his nose, his face was long and thin and harsh; he regarded the speaker with such a sinister, unblinking stare that she could scarcely finish: "--and so I--can no longer afford to retain you as administrador." "Times will improve," he said. "Impossible! This war threatens to bring utter ruin; and now that Esteban and Rosa are home they spend money like water. I groan with poverty." "Yes, they are extravagant. It is the more reason for me to remain in your service." "No, no! I tell you I'm bankrupt." "So? Then the remedy is simple--sell a part of your land." Although this suggestion came naturally enough, Dona Isabel turned cold, and felt her smile stiffen into a grimace. She wondered if Cueto could be feeling her out deliberately. "Sell the Varona lands?" she queried, after a momentary struggle with herself. "Esteban would rise from his grave. No. It was his wish that the plantations go to his children intact." "And his wish is sacred to you, eh?" Cueto nodded his approval, although his smile was disconcerting. "An admirable sentiment! It does you honor! But speaking on this subject, I am reminded of that dispute with Jose Oroz over the boundary to La Joya. He is a rascal, that Oroz; he would steal the sap out of your standing cane if he could. I have promised to show him the original deed to La Joya and to furnish him with the proofs about the boundary line. That would be better than a lawsuit, wouldn't it?" "Decidedly! But--I will settle with him myself." Cueto lifted an admonitory hand, his face alight with the faintest glimmer of ironic mirth. "I couldn't trust you to the mercies of that rascal," he said, piously. "No, I shall go on as I am, even at a sacrifice to myself. I love Don Esteban's children as my very own; and you, senora--" Isabel knew that she must win a complete victory at once or accept irretrievable defeat. "Never!" she interrupted, with a tone of finality. "I can't accept your sacrifice. I am not worthy. Kindly arrange to turn over your books of account at once. I shall make you as handsome a present as my circumstances will permit in recognition of your long and faithful service." Then Pancho Cueto did an unexpected thing: he laughed shortly and shook his head. Dona Isabel was ready to faint and her voice quavered as she went on: "Understand me, we part the best of friends despite all I have heard against you. I do not believe these stories people tell, for you probably have enemies. Even if all they say were true I should force myself to be lenient because of your affection for my husband." The man rose, still smiling. "It is I who have been lenient," said he. "Eh? Speak plainly." "Gladly. I have long suspected that Don Esteban hid the deeds of his property with the rest of his valuables, and now that you admit--" Dona Isabel recoiled sharply. "Admit! Are you mad? Deeds! What are you talking about?" Her eyes met his bravely enough, but she could feel her lips trembling loosely. Casting aside all pretense, the overseer exclaimed: "Por el amor de Dios! An end to this! I know why you sent for me. You think I have been robbing you. Well, to be honest, so I have. Why should I toil as I do while you and those twins live here in luxury and idleness, squandering money to which you have no right?" "Have I lost my reason?" gasped the widow. "No right?" "At least no better right than I. Don't you understand? You have no title to those plantations! They are mine, for I have paid the taxes out of my own pockets now these many years." "Taxes! What do you mean?" "I paid them. The receipts are in my name." "God! Such perfidy! And you who knew him!" "The deeds have been lost for so long that the property would have reverted to the crown had it not been for me. You doubt that, eh? Well, appeal to the court and you will find that it is true. For that matter, the officials make new laws to fit each case, and should they learn that Esteban Varona died intestate they would arrange somehow to seize all his property and leave you without a roof over your head. Fortunately I can prevent that, for I have a title that will stand, in want of a better one." There was a momentary silence while the unhappy woman struggled with herself. Then: "You took advantage of my ignorance of business to rob me," she declared. "Well, I know something about the Government officials: if they would make a law to fit my case they will make one to fit yours. When I tell them what you have done perhaps you will not fare so well with them as you expect." She was fighting now with the desperation of one cornered. "Perhaps." Cueto shrugged. "That is what I want to talk to you about, if only you will be sensible. Now then, let us be frank. Inasmuch as we're both in much the same fix, hadn't we better continue our present arrangements?" He stared unblinkingly at his listener. "Oh, I mean it! Is it not better for you to be content with what my generosity prompts me to give, rather than to risk ruin for both of us by grasping for too much?" "Merciful God! The outrage! I warrant you have grown rich through your stealing." Isabel's voice had gone flat with consternation. "Rich? Well, not exactly, but comfortably well off." Cueto actually smiled again. "No doubt my frankness is a shock to you. You are angry at my proposition, eh? Never mind. You will think better of it in time, if you are a sensible woman." "What a fiend! Have you no sentiment?" "Oh, senora! I am all sentiment. Don Esteban was my benefactor. I revere his memory, and I feel it my duty to see that his family does not want. That is why I have provided for you, and will continue to provide--in proper measure. But now, since at last we enjoy such confidential relations, let us have no more of these miserable suspicions of each other. Let us entirely forget this unpleasant misunderstanding and be the same good friends as before." Having said this, Pancho Cueto stood silent a moment in polite expectancy; then receiving no intelligible reply, he bowed low and left the room. To the avaricious Dona Isabel Cueto's frank acknowledgment of theft was maddening, and the realization that she was helpless, nay, dependent upon his charity for her living, fairly crucified her proud spirit. All day she brooded, and by the time evening came she had worked herself into such a state of nerves that she could eat no dinner. Locking herself into her room, she paced the floor, now wringing her hands, now twisting in agony upon her bed, now biting her wrists in an endeavor to clear her head and to devise some means of outwitting this treacherous overseer. But mere thought of the law frightened her; the longer she pondered her situation the more she realized her own impotence. There was no doubt that the courts were corrupt: they were notoriously venal at best, and this war had made them worse. Graft was rampant everywhere. To confess publicly that Esteban Varona had left no deeds, no title to his property, would indeed be the sheerest folly. No, Cueto had her at his mercy. Sometime during the course of the evening a wild idea came to Isabel. Knowing that the manager would spend the night beneath her roof, she planned to kill him. At first it seemed a simple thing to do--merely a matter of a dagger or a pistol, while he slept--but further thought revealed appalling risks and difficulties, and she decided to wait. Poison was far safer. That night she lay awake a long time putting her scheme into final shape, and then for an interval that seemed longer she hung poised in those penumbral regions midway between wakefulness and slumber. Through her mind meanwhile there passed a whirling phantasmagoria, an interminable procession of figures, of memories, real yet unreal, convincing yet unconvincing. When she did at last lose all awareness of reality the effect was merely to enhance the vividness of those phantoms, to lend substance to her vaporous visions. Constant brooding over the treasure had long since affected Dona Isabel's brain, and as a consequence she often dreamed about it. She dreamed about it again to-night, and, strangely enough, her dreams were pleasant. Sebastian appeared, but for once he neither cursed nor threatened her; and Esteban, when he came, was again the lover who had courted her in Habana. It was all very wonderful, very exciting, very real. Dona Isabel found herself robed for him in her wedding-gown of white, and realized that she was beautiful. It seemed also as if her powers of attraction were magically enhanced, for she exercised a potent influence over him. Her senses were quickened a thousandfold, too. For instance, she could see great distances--a novel and agreeable sensation; she enjoyed strange, unsuspected perfumes; she heard the music of distant waterfalls and understood the whispered language of the breeze. It was amazing, delightful. Esteban and she were walking through the grounds of the quinta and he was telling her about his casks of Spanish sovereigns, about those boxes bound with iron, about the gold and silver ornaments of heavenly, beauty and the pearls as large as plums. As he talked, Isabel felt herself grow hot and cold with anticipation; she experienced spasms of delight. She felt that she must dance, must run, must cast her arms aloft in ecstasy. Never had she experienced so keen an intoxication of joy as now, while Esteban was leading her toward the treasure and wooing her with youthful ardor. Then of a sudden Isabel's whole dream-world dissolved. She awoke, or thought she did, at hearing her name shouted. But although she underwent the mental and the physical shock of being startled from slumber, although she felt the first swift fright of a person aroused to strange surroundings, she knew on the instant that she must still be asleep; for everything about her was dim and dark, the air was cold and damp, wet grass rose to her knees. It flashed through her mind that she had simply been whirled from a pleasant dream into one of terror. As she fought with herself to throw off the illusion of this nightmare its reality became overwhelming. Warring, incongruous sensations, far too swift for her mind to compass, were crowded into the minutest fraction of time. Before she could half realize her own condition she felt herself plunged into space. Now the sensation of falling was not strange to Isabel--it is common to all sufferers from nightmare--nevertheless, she experienced the dawn of a horror such as she had never guessed. She heard herself scream hoarsely, fearfully, and knew, too late, that she was indeed awake. Then--whirling chaos--A sudden, blinding crash of lights and sounds--Nothing more! Esteban Varona sat until a late hour that night over a letter which required the utmost care in its composition. It was written upon the thinnest of paper, and when it was finished the writer inclosed it in an envelope of the same material. Esteban put the letter in his pocket without addressing it. Then he extinguished his light, tip-toed to the door connecting his and Rosa's rooms, and listened. No sound whatever came to his ears, for his sister slept like a kitten. Reassured, he stole out into the hall. Here he paused a moment with his ear first to Pancho Cueto's door, and then to the door of his step-mother's room. He could hear the overseer's heavy breathing and Isabel's senseless babbling--the latter was moaning and muttering ceaselessly, but, being accustomed to her restlessness, Esteban paid no heed. Letting himself out into the night, he took the path that led to the old sunken garden. Nocturnal birds were chirruping; his way was barred with spider-webs, heavy with dew and gleaming in the moonlight like tiny ropes of jewels; the odor of gardenias was overpowering. He passed close by the well, and its gaping black mouth, only half protected by the broken coping, reminded him that he had promised Rosa to cover it with planks. In its present condition it was a menace to animals, if not to human beings who were unaware of its presence. He told himself he would attend to it on the morrow. Seating himself on one of the old stone benches, the young man lit a cigarette and composed himself to wait. He sat there for a long time, grumbling inwardly, for the night was damp and he was sleepy; but at last a figure stole out of the gloom and joined him. The new-comer was a ragged negro, dressed in the fashion of the poorer country people. "Well, Asensio, I thought you'd never come. I'll get a fever from this!" Esteban said, irritably. "It is a long way, Don Esteban, and Evangelina made me wait until dark. I tell you we have to be careful these days." "What is the news? What did you hear?" Asensio sighed gratefully as he seated himself. "One hears a great deal, but one never knows what to believe, There is fighting in Santa Clara, and Maceo sweeps westward." Taking the unaddressed letter from his pocket, Esteban said, "I have another message for Colonel Lopez." "That Lopez! He's here to-day and there to-morrow; one can never find him." "Well, you must find him, and immediately, Asensio. This letter contains important news--so important, in fact"--Esteban laughed lightly--"that if you find yourself in danger from the Spaniards I'd advise you to chew it up and swallow it as quickly as you can." "I'll remember that," said the negro, "for there's danger enough. Still, I fear these Spaniards less than the guerrilleros: they are everywhere. They call themselves patriots, but they are nothing more than robbers. They--" Asensio paused abruptly. He seized his companion by the arm and, leaning forward, stared across the level garden into the shadows opposite. Something was moving there, under the trees; the men could see that it was white and formless, and that it pursued an erratic course. "What's that?" gasped the negro. He began to tremble violently and his breath became audible. Esteban was compelled to hold him down by main force. "Jesus Cristo! It's old Don Esteban, your father. They say he walks at midnight, carrying his head in his two hands." Young Varona managed to whisper, with some show of courage: "Hush! Wait! I don't believe in ghosts." Nevertheless, he was on the point of setting Asensio an example of undignified flight when the mysterious object emerged from the shadows into the open moonlight; then he sighed with relief: "Ah-h! Now I see! It is my stepmother. She is asleep." "Asleep?" Asensio was incredulous. He was still so unnerved by his first fright that Esteban dared not release him. "Yes; her eyes are open, but she sees nothing." "I don't like such things," the negro confessed in a shaky voice. "How can she walk if she is asleep? If her eyes are open, how can she help seeing us? You know she hates Evangelina and me." "I tell you she sees nothing, knows nothing--" For a moment or two they watched the progress of the white-robed figure; then Esteban stirred and rose from his seat. "She's too close to that well. There is--" He started forward a pace or two. "They say people who walk at night go mad if they're awakened too suddenly, and yet--" Dona Isabel was talking in a low, throaty, unnatural tone. Her words were meaningless, but the effect, at that hour and in those surroundings, was bizarre and fearsome. Esteban felt his scalp prickling uncomfortably. This was very creepy. When the somnambulist's deliberate progress toward the mouth of the well continued he called her name softly. "Dona Isabel!" Then he repeated it louder. "Dona Isabel! Wake up." The woman seemed to hear and yet not to hear. She turned her head to listen, but continued to walk. "Don't be alarmed," he said, reassuringly. "It is only Esteban--DONA ISABEL! STOP!" Esteban sprang forward, shouting at the top of his voice, for at the sound of his name Isabel had abruptly swerved to her right, a movement which brought her dangerously close to the lip of the well. "STOP! GO BACK!" screamed the young man. Above his warning there came a shriek, shrill and agonized--a wail of such abysmal terror as to shock the night birds and the insects into stillness. Dona Isabel slipped, or stumbled, to her knees, she balanced briefly, clutching at random while the earth and crumbling cement gave way beneath her; then she slid forward and disappeared, almost out from between Esteban's hands. There was a noisy rattle of rock and pebble and a great splash far below; a chuckle of little stones striking the water, then a faint bubbling. Nothing more. The stepson stood in his tracks, sick, blind with horror; he was swaying over the opening when Asensio dragged him back. Pancho Cueto, being a heavy sleeper, was the last to be roused by Esteban's outcries. When he had hurriedly slipped into his clothes in response to the pounding on his door, the few servants that the establishment supported had been thoroughly awakened. Esteban was shouting at them, explaining that Dona Isabel had met with an accident. He was calling for a lantern, too, and a stout rope. Cueto thought they must all be out of their minds until he learned what had befallen the mistress of the house. Then, being a man of action, he, too, issued swift orders, with the result that by the time he and Esteban had run to the well both rope and lantern were ready for their use. Before Esteban could form and fit a loop for his shoulders there was sufficient help on hand to lower him into the treacherous abyss. It was a commentary upon Dona Isabel's character that during the long, slow moments of uncertainty while Esteban was being lowered the negroes exhibited more curiosity than concern over her fate. In half-pleased excitement they whispered and giggled and muttered together, while Pancho lay prone at the edge of the orifice, directing them how to manipulate the rope. That was a gruesome task which fell to Esteban, for the well had been long unused, its sides were oozing slime, its waters were stale and black. He was on the point of fainting when he finally climbed out, leaving the negroes to hoist the dripping, inert weight which he had found at the bottom. Old Sebastian's curse had come true; Dona Isabel had met the fate he had called down upon her that day when he hung exhausted in his chains and when the flies tormented him. The treasure for which the woman had intrigued so tirelessly had been her death. Like an ignis fatuus, it had lured her to destruction. Furthermore, as if in orirnmest irony, she had been permitted at the very last to find it. Living, she had searched to no purpose whatsoever; dying, she had almost grasped it in her arms. Once the first excitement had abated and a messenger had been sent to town, Cueto drew Esteban aside and questioned him. "A shocking tragedy and most peculiar," said the overseer. "Nothing could amaze me more." "Exactly! And all because of her sleep-walking. I'm all in a tremble." "She was asleep? You are sure?" "Have I not told you so?" Esteban was impatient. "But it is said that people given to that peculiarity never come to grief. They say some sixth sense guides them--gives them warning of pitfalls and dangers. I--I can't understand--" "That well was a menace to a waking person. I didn't realize how near to it she was; and when I cried out to her it seemed only to hasten her steps." The young man shuddered, for the horror of the thing was still in his mind. "Tell me, how did you come to be there at such an hour, eh?" Esteban saw the malevolent curiosity in Cueto's face and started. "I--That is my affair. Surely you don't think--" "Come, come! You can trust me." The overseer winked and smiled. "I had business that took me there," stiffly declared the younger man. "Exactly! And a profitable business it proved!" Cueto laughed openly now. "Well, I don't mind telling you, Dona Isabel's death is no disappointment to any one. Anybody could see--" "Stop!" Esteban was turning alternately red and white. "You seem to imply something outrageous." "Now let us be sensible. I understand you perfectly, my boy. But an officer of the Guardia Civil may arrive at any moment and he will want to know how you came to be with your stepmother when she plunged into that trap. So prepare yourself. If only you had not given the alarm. If only you had waited until morning. But--in the dead of night! Alone! He will think it queer. Suppose, too, he learns that you and Dona Isabel quarreled the other day over money matters?" Young Varona recovered himself quickly. He was watching his inquisitor now with a faintly speculative frown. When Cueto had finished, Esteban said: "Dona Isabel and I frequently quarreled over money matters, so there is nothing strange in that. You would like me to confess to some black iniquity that would make us better friends, eh? Well, it so happens that I was not alone to-night, but that another person saw the poor woman's death and can bear me out in everything I say. No, Pancho, you overreach yourself. Now then"--Esteban was quick-tempered, and for years he had struggled against an instinctive distrust and dislike of the plantation manager--"remember that I have become the head of this house, and your employer. You will do better to think of your own affairs than of mine. Do you understand me? I have long suspected that certain matters of yours need attention, and at the first opportunity I intend to have a careful reckoning with you. I think you know I have a good head for figures." Turning his back upon the elder man, he walked away. Now it did not occur to Cueto really to doubt the boy's innocence, though the circumstances of Dona Isabel's death were suspicious enough to raise a question in any mind; but in view of Esteban's threat he thought it wise to protect himself by setting a back-fire. It was with some such vague idea in his head that he turned to the sunken garden as the first gray light of dawn appeared. He hoped to gain some inspiration by examining the place again, and, as it proved, he succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. As he sat on an old stone bench, moodily repicturing the catastrophe as Esteban had described it, his attention fell upon an envelope at his feet. It was sealed; it was unaddressed. Cueto idly broke it open and began to read. Before he had gone far he started; then he cast a furtive glance about. But the place was secluded; he was unobserved. When he finished reading he rose, smiling. He no longer feared Esteban. On the contrary, he rather pitied the young fool; for here between his fingers was that which not only promised to remove the boy from his path forever, but to place in his hands the entire Varona estates. Fate was kind. After years of patient scheming Cueto had obtained his reward. One afternoon, perhaps a week later, Don Mario de Castano came puffing and blowing up to the quinta, demanding to see Rosa without a moment's delay. The girl appeared before her caller had managed to dry up the streams of perspiration resulting from his exertions. With a directness unusual even in him Don Mario began: "Rosa, my dear, you and Esteban have been discovered! I was at lunch with the comandante when I learned the truth. Through friendship I prevailed upon him to give you an hour's grace." "What do you mean, Don Mario?" inquired the girl. "Come, come!" the planter cried, impatiently. "Don't you see you can trust me? God! The recklessness, the folly of young people! Could you not leave this insurrection to your elders? Or perhaps you thought it a matter of no great importance, an amusing thing--" "Don Mario!" Rosa interrupted. "I don't know what you are talking about." "You don't, eh?" The caller's wet cheeks grew redder; he blew like a porpoise. "Then call Esteban quickly! There is not a moment to lose." When the brother appeared De Castano blurted out at him accusingly: "Well, sir! A fine fix you've put yourself in. I came here to warn you, but Rosa pretends ignorance. Perhaps you will be interested to learn that Colonel Fernandez has issued orders to arrest you and your sister as agents of the Insurrectos." "What?" Esteban drew back. Rosa turned white as a lily and laid a fluttering hand upon her throat. "You two will sleep to-night in San Severino," grimly announced the rotund visitor. "You know what that means. Cubans who enter the Castillo seldom come out. Have you noticed the big sharks that swim about under the walls of it? Do you know what bait keeps them there? Well, I'll tell you! It's the bodies of rebel sympathizers--foolish people like you who call themselves patriots." Rosa uttered a smothered cry. "Colonel Fernandez," Don Mario proceeded, impressively, "did me this favor, knowing me to be a suitor for Rosa's hand. In spite of his duty and the evidence he--" "Evidence? What evidence?" Esteban asked, sharply. "For one thing, your own letter to Lopez, the rebel, warning him to beware of the trap prepared for him in Santa Clara, and advising him of the Government force at Sabanilla. Oh, don't try to deny it! I read it with my own eyes, and it means--death." In the ensuing silence the fat man's asthmatic breathing sounded loudly; it was like the respirations of an excited eavesdropper. At last Rosa said, faintly: "Esteban! I warned you." Esteban was taken aback, but it was plain that he was not in the least frightened. "They haven't caught me yet," he laughed. "You say they intend to arrest me also?" Rosa eyed the caller anxiously. "Exactly!" "But why?" "Yes! Who accuses her, and of what?" Esteban indignantly demanded. "That also I have discovered through the courtesy of Colonel Fernandez. Your accuser is none other than Pancho Cueto." "Cueto!" "Yes, he has denounced both of you as rebels, and the letter is only part of his proof, I believe. I don't know what other evidence he has, but, take my word for it, the Government does not require much proof these days. Suspicion is enough. Now, then, you can guess why I am here. I am not without influence; I can save Rosa, but for you, Esteban, I fear I can do nothing. You must look out for yourself. Well? What do you say? We're wasting precious time standing here with our mouths open." When Esteban saw how pale his sister had grown, he took her in his arms, saying, gently: "I'm sorry, dear. It's all my fault." Then to the merchant, "It was very good of you to warn us." "Ha!" Don Mario fanned himself. "I'm glad you appreciate my efforts. It's a good thing to have the right kind of a friend. I'll marry Rosa within an hour, and I fancy my name will be a sufficient shield--" Rosa turned to her elderly suitor and made a deep courtesy. "I am unworthy of the honor," said she. "You see, I--I do not love you, Don Mario." "Love!" exploded the visitor. "God bless you! What has love to do with the matter? Esteban will have to ride for his life in ten minutes and your property will be seized. So you had better make yourself ready to go with me." But Rosa shook her head. "Eh? What ails you? What do you expect to do?" "I shall go with Esteban," said the girl. This calm announcement seemed to stupefy De Castano. He sat down heavily in the nearest chair, and with his wet handkerchief poised in one pudgy hand he stared fixedly at the speaker. His eyes were round and bulging, the sweat streamed unheeded from his temples. He resembled some queer bloated marine monster just emerged from the sea and momentarily dazzled by the light. "You--You're mad," he finally gasped. "Esteban, tell her what it means." But this Esteban could not do, for he himself had not the faintest notion of what was in store for him. War seemed to him a glorious thing; he had been told that the hills were peopled with patriots. He was very young, his heart was ablaze with hatred for the Spaniards and for Pancho Cueto. He longed to risk his life for a free Cuba. Therefore he said: "Rosa shall do as she pleases. If we must be exiles we shall share each other's hardships. It will not be for long." "Idiot!" stormed the fat man. "Better that you gave her to the sharks below San Severino. There is no law, no safety for women outside of the cities. The island is in anarchy. These patriots you talk about are the blacks, the mulattoes, the--lowest, laziest savages in Cuba." "Please! Don Mario!" the girl pleaded. "I cannot marry you, for--I love another." "Eh?" "I love another. I'm betrothed to O'Reilly, the American--and he's coming back to marry me." De Castano twisted himself laboriously out of his chair and waddled toward the door. He was purple with rage and mortification. On the threshold he paused to wheeze: "Very well, then. Go! I'm done with both of you. I would have lent you a hand with this rascal Cueto, but now he will fall heir to your entire property. Well, it is a time for bandits! I--I--" Unable to think of a parting speech sufficiently bitter to match his disappointment, Don Mario plunged out into the sunlight, muttering and stammering to himself. Within an hour the twins were on their way up the Yumuri, toward the home of Asensio and Evangelina; for it was thither that they naturally turned. It was well that they had made haste, for as they rode down into the valley, up the other side of the hill from Matanzas came a squad of the Guardia Civil, and at its head rode Pancho Cueto. V A CRY FROM THE WILDERNESS New York seemed almost like a foreign city to Johnnie O'Reilly when he stepped out into it on the morning after his arrival. For one thing it was bleak and cold: the north wind, hailing direct from Baffin's Bay, had teeth, and it bit so cruelly that he was glad when he found shelter in the building which housed the offices of the Carter Importing Company. The tropics had thinned O'Reilly's blood, for the Cuban winds bear a kiss instead of a sting; therefore he paused in the lower hallway, jostled by the morning crowds, and tried to warm himself. The truth is O'Reilly was not only cold, but frightened. He was far from weak-hearted. In fact, few O'Reillys were that, and Johnnie had an ingrained self-assurance which might have been mistaken for impudence, but for the winning smile that went with it. Yet all the way from Havana he had seen in his mind's eye old Sam Carter intrenched behind his flat-topped desk, and that picture had more than once caused him to forget the carefully rehearsed speech in which he intended to resign his position as an employee and his prospects as a son-in-law. That desk of Mr. Carter's was always bare and orderly, cleared for action, like the deck of a battle-ship, and over it many engagements had been fought, for the man behind it never shirked a conflict. His was a vigorous and irascible temperament, compounded of old-fashioned, slow-burning black powder and nitroglycerine--a combination of incalculable destructive power. It was a perilously unstable mixture, tool, at times nothing less than a flame served to ignite it; on other occasions the office force pussy-footed past Carter's door on felt soles, and even then the slightest jar often caused the untoward thing to let go. In either event there was a deafening roar, much smoke, and a deal of damage. O'Reilly felt sure that whatever the condition of Mr. Carter's digestion or the serenity of his mind at the beginning of their interview, the news he had to impart would serve as an effective detonator, after which it would be every man for himself. It was not the effect of his report concerning the firm's unprofitable Cuban connections which O'Reilly feared would cause the decks to heave and the ship to rock--Samuel Carter could take calmly the most disturbing financial reverse--it was the blow to his pride at learning that anybody could prefer another girl to his daughter. Johnnie shook his shoulders and stamped his feet, but the chill in his bones refused to go. He did gain courage, however, by thinking of Rosa Varona as he had last seen her, with arms outstretched, with eyes tear-filled, with yearning lips aquiver at his going. The picture warmed him magically, and it was with a restored determination to make a clean breast of the matter and face the worst that he took the elevator. The office force of the Carter Importing Company looked up when the firm's Cuban representative entered the door, but its personnel having changed as the result of one of those periodical disruptions that occurred in the inner office, he was not recognized until he presented himself to Mr. Slack, Samuel Carter's private and intimidated secretary. Mr. Slack smiled wanly, and extended a clammy, nerveless hand as cold and limber as a dead fish. "You're expected," said he. "Mr. Carter is waiting to see you before leaving for California." "Seeing me won't make his trip any pleasanter," O'Reilly said, somberly. "We were afraid you wouldn't get out of Cuba; thought we might have to get the American consul at work." "Really? I didn't know I was so important." "Oh, you're the office pet, and well you know it." Mr. Slack's pleasantry was tinged with envy, for he had never been able to appreciate O'Reilly. "Conditions are bad, eh?" "Yes. Anybody can leave," the other told him. "It's getting back that's difficult. The Spaniards don't like us, and I dare say they have good reason, with all this talk of intervention and the secret help we're lending the Insurrectos. They held me up in Havana; tried to prove I was a spy. They were positively peeved when they failed. Snippy people, those Spaniards." "Well, I'll tell Mr. Carter you're here." The secretary glided unobtrusively toward the private office, disappeared, glided softly into view again, and waggled a boneless forefinger invitingly. O'Reilly went to meet his employer as a man marches to execution. His heart sank further at the welcome he received, for the importer gave him a veritable embrace; he patted him on the back and inquired three times as to his health. O'Reilly was anything but cold now; he was perspiring profusely, and he felt his collar growing limp. To shatter this old man's eager hopes would be like kicking a child in the face. Carter had never been so enthusiastic, so demonstrative; there was something almost theatrical in his greeting. It dismayed O'Reilly immensely to realize what a hold he must have upon his employer's affections. Although the latter had a reputation for self-control, he appeared to be in a perfect flutter now. He assumed a boisterousness which seemed strained and wholly out of keeping with the circumstances. His actions vaguely reminded the younger man of an ambling draft-horse trying to gallop; and when, for the fourth time, Mr. Carter inquired solicitously concerning his visitor's well-being, Johnnie's dismay turned to amazement. With a heavy playfulness Mr. Carter at length remarked: "Well, my boy, you made a fizzle of it, didn't you?" The tone was almost complimentary. "Yes, sir, I'm a bright and shining failure," O'Reilly acknowledged, hopefully. "Now, don't 'yes, sir' me. We're friends, aren't we? Good! Understand, I don't blame you in the least--it's that idiotic revolution that spoiled our business. I can't understand those people. Lord! You did splendidly, under the circumstances." "They have reason enough to revolt--oppression, tyranny, corruption." O'Reilly mumbled the familiar words in a numb paralysis at Mr. Carter's jovial familiarity. "All Latin countries are corrupt," announced the importer--"always have been and always will be. They thrive under oppression. Politics is purely a business proposition with those people. However, I dare say this uprising won't last long." O'Reilly welcomed this trend of the conversation; anything was better than fulsome praise, and the discussion would delay the coming crash. It seemed strange, however, that Samuel Carter should take time to discourse about generalities. Johnnie wondered why the old man didn't get down to cases. "It's more than an uprising, sir," he said. "The rebels have overrun the eastern end of the island, and when I left Maceo and Gomez were sweeping west." "Bah! It takes money to run a war." "They have money," desperately argued O'Reilly. "Marti raised more than a million dollars, and every Cuban cigar-maker in the United States gives a part of his wages every week to the cause. The best blood of Cuba is in the fight. The rebels are poorly armed, but if our Government recognizes their belligerency they'll soon fix that. Spain is about busted; she can't stand the strain." "I predict they'll quit fighting as soon as they get hungry. The Government is starving them out. However, they've wound up our affairs for the time being, and--" Mr. Carter carefully shifted the position of an ink-well, a calendar, and a paper-knife--"that brings us to a consideration of your and my affairs, doesn't it? Ahem! You remember our bargain? I was to give you a chance and you were to make good before you--er--planned any--er--matrimonial foolishness with my daughter." "Yes, sir." O'Reilly felt that the moment had come for his carefully rehearsed speech, but, unhappily, he could not remember how the swan-song started. He racked his brain for the opening words. Mr. Carter, too, was unaccountably silent. He opened his lips, then closed them. Both men, after an awkward pause, cleared their throats in unison and eyed each other expectantly. Another moment dragged past, then they chorused: "I have an unpleasant--" Each broke off at the echo of his own words. "What's that?" inquired the importer. "N-nothing. You were saying--" "I was thinking how lucky it is that you and Elsa waited. Hm-m! Very fortunate." Again Mr. Carter rearranged his desk fittings. "She has deep feelings--got a conscience, too. Conscience is a fine thing in a woman--so few of 'em have it. We sometimes differ, Elsa and I, but when she sets her heart on a thing I see that she gets it, even if I think she oughtn't to have it. What's the use of having children if you can't spoil 'em, eh?" He looked up with a sort of resentful challenge, and when his listener appeared to agree with him he sighed with satisfaction. "Early marriages are silly--but she seems to think otherwise. Maybe she's right. Anyhow, she's licked me. I'm done. She wants to be married right away, before we go West. That's why I waited to see you at once. You're a sensible fellow, Johnnie--no foolishness about you. You won't object, will you? We men have to take our medicine." "It's quite out of the question," stammered the unhappy O'Reilly. "Come, come! It's tough on you, I know, but--" The fuse had begun to sputter. Johnnie had a horrified vision of himself being dragged unwillingly to the altar. "Elsa is going to have what she wants, if I have to break something. If you'll be sensible I'll stand behind you like a father and teach you the business. I'm getting old, and Ethelbert could never learn it. Otherwise--" The old man's jaw set; his eyes began to gleam angrily. "Who is--Ethelbert?" faintly inquired O'Reilly. "Why, dammit! He's the fellow I've been telling you about. He's not so bad as he sounds; he's really a nice boy--" "Elsa is in love with another man? Is that what you mean?" "Good Lord, yes! Don't you understand English? I didn't think you'd take it so hard--I was going to make a place for you here in the office, but of course if--Say! What the deuce ails you?" Samuel Carter stared with amazement, for the injured victim of his daughter's fickleness had leaped to his feet and was shaking his hand vigorously, meanwhile uttering unintelligible sounds that seemed to signify relief, pleasure, delight--anything except what the old man expected. "Are you crazy, or am I?" he queried. "Yes, sir; delirious. It's this way, sir; I've changed my mind, too." "Oh--! You have?" "I've met the dearest, sweetest"--O'Reilly choked, then began again--"the dearest, loveliest--" "Never mind the bird-calls--don't coo! I get enough of that at home. Don't tell me she's dearer and sweeter than Elsa. Another girl! Well, I'll be damned! Young man, you're a fool." "Yes, sir." Slightly mollified by this ready acknowledgment, Mr. Carter grunted with relief. "Humph! It turned out better than I thought. Why, I--I was positively terrified when you walked in. And to think you didn't need any sympathy!" "I do need that job, though. It will enable me to get married." "Nonsense! Better wait. I don't believe in early engagements." "Oh yes, you do." "Well, that depends. But, say--you're a pretty nervy youth to turn down my daughter and then hold me up for a job, all in the same breath. Here! Don't dance on my rug. I ought to be offended, and I am, but--Get out while I telephone Elsa, so she can dance, too." O'Reilly spent that evening in writing a long letter to Rosa Varona. During the next few days his high spirits proved a trial and an affront to Mr. Slack, who, now that his employer had departed for the West, had assumed a subdued and gloomy dignity to match the somber responsibilities of his position. Other letters went forward by succeeding posts, and there was no doubt now, that O'Reilly's pen was tipped with magic! He tingled when he reread what he had written. He bade Rosa prepare for his return and their immediate marriage. The fun and the excitement of planning their future caused him to fill page after page with thrilling details of the flat-hunting, home-fitting excursions they would take upon their return to New York. He wrote her ecstatic descriptions of a suite of Grand Rapids furniture he had priced; he wasted a thousand emotional words over a set of china he had picked out, and the results of a preliminary trip into the apartment-house district required a convulsive three-part letter to relate. It is remarkable with what poetic fervor, what strength of feeling, a lover can describe a five-room flat; with what glories he can furnish it out of a modest salary and still leave enough for a life of luxury. But O'Reilly's letters did not always touch upon practical things; there was a wide streak of romance in him, and much of what he wrote was the sort of thing which romantic lovers always write--tender, foolish, worshipful thoughts which half abashed him when he read them over. But that Rosa would thrill to them he had no doubt, nor had he any fear that she would hesitate to leave her native land for him. O'Reilly's love was unlimited; his trust in the girl was absolute. He knew, moreover, that she loved and trusted him. This, to be sure, was a miracle--a unique phenomenon which never ceased to amaze him. He did not dream that every man had felt the same vague wonder. And so the time passed rapidly. But, strange to say, there came no answer to those letters. O'Reilly chafed: he cursed the revolution which had made communication so uncertain; at length he cabled, but still the days dragged on with no result. Gradually his impatience gave way to apprehension. Unreasonable conjectures besieged his mind and destroyed his peace. Great was his relief, therefore, when one day a worn, stained envelope addressed in Rosa's hand was laid upon his desk. The American stamp, the Key West postmark, looked strange, but--Her first letter! O'Reilly wondered if his first letter to her could possibly have moved her as this moved him. He kissed the envelope where her lips had caressed it in the sealing. Then with eager fingers he broke it open. It was a generous epistle, long and closely written, but as he read his keen delight turned to dismay, and when he had turned the last thin page his brain was in wildest turmoil. He thought he must be dreaming. He turned sick, aching eyes upon his surroundings to prove this thing a nightmare, but the prosaic clink of a typewriter and the drone of a voice dictating quotations on Brazilian coffee were conclusive evidence to the contrary. Those pages between his thumb and finger were real. Yes, and that was Rosa's writing. Could it be that he had misunderstood anything? He turned to the beginning and attempted to read, but his hands shook so that he was obliged to lay the letter flat upon his desk. Rosa's Spanish training had been severely tried. The stiff, quaint formality of her opening paragraphs only served to emphasize her final frightened cry for help. MY DEARLY BELOVED,--It is with diffidence and hesitation that I take my pen in hand, for I fear you may consider me unduly forward in writing to you without solicitation. Believe me, I appreciate the reserve which a young lady of refinement should practise even in her correspondence with the gentleman who has honored her with his promise of marriage, but my circumstances are such as to banish consideration of the social niceties. Alas! What events have followed your departure from Matanzas! What misfortunes have overtaken Esteban and me. That happiness could be so swiftly succeeded by misery, that want could follow plenty, that peril could tread so closely upon the heels of safety! Where to begin, how to tell you, I scarcely know; my hand shakes, my eyes are blinded--nor dare I trust myself to believe that this letter will ever reach you, for we are refugees, Esteban and I--fugitives, outcasts, living in the manigua with Asensio and Evangelina, former slaves of our father. Such poverty, such indescribable circumstances! But they were our only friends and they took us in when we were homeless, so we love them. I see you stare at these words. I hear you say, "That Rosa has gone mad, like her wicked stepmother!" Indeed, sometimes I think I have. But, no. I write facts. It is a relief to put them down, even though you never read them. Good Asensio will take this letter on his horse to the Insurrecto camp, many miles away, and there give it to Colonel Lopez, our only friend, who promises that in some mysterious way it will escape the eyes of our enemies and reach your country. Yes, we have enemies! We, who have harmed no one. Wait until I tell you. But if this letter reaches you--and I send it with a prayer--what then? I dare not think too long of that, for the hearts of men are not like the hearts of women. What will you say when you learn that the Rosa Varona whom you favored with your admiration is not the Rosa of to-day? I hear you murmur, "The girl forgets herself!" But, oh, the standards of yesterday are gone and my reserve is gone, too! I am a hunted creature. O'Reilly felt a great pain in his breast at the thought that Rosa had for an instant doubted him. But she did not really doubt; those misgivings were but momentary; the abandon of her appeal showed that in her heart of hearts she knew his love to be unshakable. She had compelled herself to start with the death of Dona Isabel and to give him a succinct account of all that had followed. O'Reilly read the story, fascinated. Here, amid these surroundings, with the rattle of typewriters and the tinkle of telephone-bells in his ears, it all seemed wholly improbable, fancifully unreal--like the workings of some turgid melodrama. That is how we came to live with Asensio and his wife [the letter went on]. Imagine it! A bohio, hidden away far up the Yumuri, and so insignificant as to escape attention. We are no longer people of consequence or authority; our safety depends upon our inconspicuousness. We hide as do the timid animals, though nature has not given us their skill in avoiding danger. I do not like the wilderness; it frightens me. At night I hear things rustling through the thatch above my head; in the morning my feet touch a bare earthen floor. We live on fruits and vegetables from Evangelina's garden, with now and then a fowl or a bite of meat when Asensio is fortunate. Esteban does not seem to mind, but I cannot accommodate myself to these barbarous surroundings. Sometimes I bite my tongue to keep from complaining, for that, I know, would grieve him. The whole country is in chaos. There is no work--nothing but suspicion, hatred, and violence. Oh, what desolation this war has wrought! Esteban has already become a guerrillero. He has stolen a cow, and so we have milk for our coffee; but there is only a handful of coffee left, and little hope of more. Marauding bands of Spaniards are everywhere, and the country people tell atrocious tales about them. How will it end? How long before they will discover us and the worst will happen? Soon after our arrival Esteban went to the camp of Colonel Lopez to arrange for us to join his army, but returned heart-broken. It was impossible, it seems, on my account. Conditions with the patriots are worse than with us here, and the colonel acknowledged frankly that he could not be burdened with a woman in his command. So Esteban has given up for the present his dream of fighting, and devotes himself to protecting me. You see there is no sanctuary, no help but his right arm. The towns are in Spanish hands, the manigua is infested with lawless men, and there is no place in which to hide me. So I feel myself a burden. Esteban has plans to arm a band of his own. I am numb with dread of what it may lead to, for his hatred is centered upon Cueto, that false servant whose wickedness reduced us to this extremity. Esteban is so young and reckless. If only you were here to counsel him. If only you were here--Oh, my dearest Juan! If only you were here--to take me in your arms and banish this ever constant terror at my heart. If only you were here to tell me that you love me still in spite of my misfortune. See! The tears are falling as I write. My eyes are dim, my fingers trace uncertain letters on the sheet, and I can only steady them when I remember that you promised to return. You WILL return, will you not? I could not write like this if I were sure that you would read these lines. My nightly prayer--But I will not tell you of my prayers, for fate may guide this letter to you, after all, and the hearts of men do change. In those dark hours when my doubts arise I try to tell myself that you will surely come and search me out. Sometimes I play a game with Evangelina--our only game. We gather wild flowers. We assort the few belongings that I managed to bring with me and I array myself for you. And then I smile and laugh for a little while, and she tells me I am beautiful enough to please you. But the flowers fade, and I know that beauty, too, will fade in such surroundings. What then? I ask myself. When you return to Cuba--see, my faith is strong again--avoid Matanzas, for your own sake and mine. Don Mario wanted to marry me to save me this exile. But I refused; I told him I was pledged to you, and he was furious. He is powerful; he would balk you, and there is always room for one more in San Severino. Pancho Cueto, too, living in luxury upon the fruits of his crime, would certainly consider you a menace to his security. You see how cunning my love for you has made me? If I could come to you, I would, but I am marked. So if you still desire me you must search me out. You will? I pin my faith to that as to the Cross. To doubt would be to perish. If we should have to find another hiding-place, and that is always likely, you can learn of our whereabouts from Colonel Lopez. Alas! If you had asked me to go with you that day! I would have followed you, for my heart beat then as it beats to-day, for you alone. The candle is burning low and it will soon be daylight, and then this letter must begin its long, uncertain journey. I must creep into my bed now, to pray and then to dream. It is cold, before the dawn, and the thatch above me rustles. I am very poor and sad and lonely, O'Reilly, but my cheeks are full and red; my lips could learn to smile again, and you would not be ashamed of me. Asensio is rising. He goes to find his horse and I must close. God grant this reaches you, some time, somehow. I trust the many blots upon the paper will not give you a wrong impression of my writing, for I am neat, and I write nicely; only now the ink is poor and there is very little of it. There is little of anything, here at Asensio's house, except tears. Of those I fear there are too many to please you, my Juan, for men do not like tears. Therefore I try to smile as I sign myself, Your loving and your faithful ROSA. O God! Come quickly, if you love me. VI THE QUEST BEGINS When O'Reilly had finished his second reading of the letter there were fresh blots upon the pitifully untidy pages. "I write nicely, only the ink is poor--" "There is little of anything here at Asensio's house--" "It is cold before the dawn--" ... Poor little Rosa! He had always thought of her as so proud, so high-spirited, so playful, but another Rosa had written this letter. Her appeal stirred every chord of tenderness, every impulse of chivalry in his impressionable Irish nature. She doubted him; she feared he would not come' to her. Well, he would set her doubts at rest. "O God! Come quickly, if you love me." He leaped to his feet; he dashed the tears from his eyes. Mr. Slack looked up astonished at the apparition which burst in upon him. He was accustomed to O'Reilly's high head of steam and disapproved of it, but he had never seen the fellow so surcharged as now. He was positively jumpy; his voice was sharp; his hands were unsteady; his eyes were bright and blue and hard. "I want my salary, quick," Johnnie began. Mr. Slack resented emotion, he abominated haste; he had cultivated what he considered to be a thorough commercial deliberation. "My dear man," he said, "I'd advise you--" "I don't want advice; I want money," snapped the other. "I've quit, resigned, skipped, fled." "Indeed? When does your resignation take effect?" "Immediately, and if you don't move like lightning it will take effect upon your person." "Mr. Carter would never--" "Bother Mr. Carter! Now stiffen your spine long enough to write my check. If you don't--" O'Reilly compressed his lips and breathed ominously through his nostrils. He laid a heavy and persuasive hand upon the secretary's shoulder. "Hump yourself, old jellyfish!" There was a queer, wild light in O'Reilly's eye and for once Mr. Slack took orders from an underling. He humped himself. Johnnie's other preparations were conducted with equal vigor and promptitude; within two hours his belongings were packed. But for all his haste his mind was working clearly. Rosa's warning not to come to Matanzas was no doubt warranted, and his own unpleasant experiences with the customs men at Havana were still fresh enough to be vivid. The Spaniards were intensely suspicious of all Americans, especially incoming ones, as he had reason to know, and since he was nearly as well acquainted in the one place as in the other it seemed to be the part of wisdom to slip into the country through a side door. The seat of war was in the east. The rebels held that part of the island. Once there and in touch with them it would surely be no difficult task to evade the local authorities and join Colonel Lopez. O'Reilly pondered these thoughts briefly, then seized his hat and hastened down-town to the office of the Cuban Junta. At this time the newspapers of the United States were devoting much space to the insular uprising; the first stories of Spanish atrocities later, alas! destined to become all too familiar, were gaining public attention, and there were few readers who did not know something about the activities of that body of patriots who made their headquarters at 56 New Street. It was from this place that the revolution was largely financed, so the papers said. It was there that the filibustering expeditions supplying arms and ammunition originated. To 56 New Street O'Reilly went. There was nothing martial about the atmosphere of the Junta's offices; there were no war maps on the walls, no stands of arms nor recruiting officers in evidence--not even a hint of intrigue or conspiracy. The place was rather meanly furnished, and it was disappointingly commonplace. A business-like young man inquired O'Reilly's errand. Johnnie made known a part of it, and then asked to see some one in authority. In consequence, perhaps, of his Irish smile or of that persuasiveness which he could render almost irresistible when he willed, it was not long before he gained admittance to the presence of Mr. Enriquez, a distinguished, scholarly Cuban of middle age. "You say you have important business with me?" the latter inquired, speaking with an accent of refinement. O'Reilly plunged boldly into the heart of the matter which had brought him thither. When he had finished his tale Mr. Enriquez inquired: "But how do you expect me to help you?" "I want your advice more than your help, although you might tell me where I can find Colonel Lopez." Enriquez eyed his caller keenly. "That information would be very well worth having," said he. "But, you understand, we know little about what is going on in Cuba--far less than the Spaniards themselves. I'm afraid I can't help you." "You don't take me for a spy, do you?" Johnnie asked, with his friendly grin. "Ah! You don't look like one, but we never know whom to trust. This young lady in whom you are interested, who is she?" "Her name is Varona; Miss Rosa Varona." "So?" Enriquez raised his brows. "Not by any chance the heiress to that famous Varona treasure?" "Exactly!--if there is such a thing." There ensued a pause while the Cuban drummed softly upon his desk with his finger-tips. "Her brother Esteban told me that he was working for your cause. I warned him to be careful, but--" O'Reilly's voice grew suddenly husky. "Here! Read this. I want you to believe me." Reverently he laid Rosa's letter before her countryman. "I'm not in the habit of showing my letters to strangers, but--I guess that'll convince you I'm not a spy." He sat silently while the letter was being read; nor was he disappointed in the result. Mr. Enriquez raised dark, compassionate eyes to his, saying: "This is a touching letter, sir. I thank you for allowing me to see it. No, I don't doubt you now. Poor Cuba! Her sons must be brave, her daughters patient." "Well! You understand why I must go quickly, and why I can't chance delay by going either to Matanzas or to Havana. I want to land somewhere farther east, and I want you to help me to find Colonel Lopez." Mr. Enriquez frowned thoughtfully. "What I just told you is literally true," he said at last. "We work in the dark up here, and we don't know the whereabouts of our troops. We are suspicious of strangers, too, as we have reason to be. But--I have a thought." He excused himself and left the room. When he returned he explained: "I don't have to tell you that we are watched all the time, and that for us to assist you openly would be liable to defeat your purpose. But I have just telephoned to a man I can trust, and I have told him your story. He has relatives in Cuba and he agrees to help you if he can. His name is Alvarado." Writing an address upon a card, he handed it to O'Reilly. "Go to him, tell him what you have told me, and do as he directs. Another thing, don't return here unless it is necessary; otherwise when you land in Cuba you may have cause to regret it." Mr. Enriquez extended his hand, and when O'Reilly tried to thank him he shook his head. "It is nothing. I wish you success, but--I fear you have tackled a big proposition." Dr. Alvarado, a high type of the Cuban professional man, was expecting O'Reilly. He listened patiently to his caller's somewhat breathless recital. "You do well to avoid the cities where you are known," he agreed. "It would be madness, under the circumstances, even to be seen in Matanzas: those enemies of--your friends--would have you deported. But just how to reach the Insurrectos--" "If you'd merely give me a letter saying I'm a friend--" The doctor promptly negatived this suggestion. "Surely you don't think it can be done as easily as that?" he inquired. "In the first place, wherever you land, you will be watched and probably searched. Such a letter, if discovered, would not only end your chances, but it would bring certain disaster upon those to whom it was written. I have no right to jeopardize the lives of those I hold dear. These are perilous times for all good Cubans, Mr. O'Reilly. Enriquez told me about that poor girl. She bears a famous name and--I want to help her." He removed his glasses and wiped them, absent-mindedly. "There are three Alvarados living," he resumed. "My two brothers, Tomas and Ignacio, reside in Cuba, and we all work for the cause of independence in our own ways. I am fortunately situated, but they are surrounded by dangers, and I must ask you to be extremely careful in communicating with them, for I am placing their lives in your hands and--I love them dearly." "I shall do exactly as you say." "Very well, then! Go to Neuvitas, where Tomas lives--there is a steamer leaving in three of four days, and you can arrange passage on her. He is a dentist. Meet him, somehow, and make yourself known by repeating this sentence: 'I come from Felipe. He told me how you whipped him to keep him from going to the Ten Years' War!' That will be enough; he will ask you who you are and what you want." "I see. It's a sort of password." "No. I've never had reason to communicate with him in this way." Noting the bewilderment in O'Reilly's face, Alvarado smiled. "You won't need to say anything more. No living soul, except Tomas and I, knows that he thrashed me, but it is true. I was young, I wanted to go to the war, but he took it out of me with a bamboo. Later we bound ourselves never to mention it. He will understand from the message that I trust you, and he will help you to reach the rebels, if such a thing is possible. But tell me, when you have found Miss Varona, what then?" "Why, I'll bring her out." "How? Do you think you can walk into any seaport and take ship? You will be tagged and numbered by the authorities. Once you disappear into the manigua, you will be a marked man." "Well, then, I'll marry her right there. I'm an American citizen--" "Don't build too much on that fact, either," the doctor warned. "Spanish jails are strong, and your country has never compelled that respect for its nationals which other countries insist upon." "Perhaps! But the first thing is to find Miss Varona and learn that she's safe. I don't much care what happens after that." Alvarado nodded and smiled. "Good! What would this world be without sentiment? It loves a lover. I like your spirit and I hope soon to have the pleasure of again seeing you and meeting your--wife." O'Reilly flushed and stammered, whereupon the good Cuban patted him on the shoulder. "Come and see me when you get back, and bring me news of Tomas. Now, adios, compadre." "Adios, senor! I am deeply grateful!" O'Reilly had no difficulty in securing passage direct to Neuvitas on the English steamer Dunham Castle, and a few days later he saw the Atlantic Highlands dissolve into the mists of a winter afternoon as the ship headed outward into a nasty running sea. It proved to be a wretched trip. Off Hatteras the Dunham Castle labored heavily for twelve hours, and bad weather followed her clear into the old Bahama Channel. Not until she had thrust her nose into the narrow entrance of Neuvitas harbor did she wholly cease her seasick plunging, but then the weather changed with bewildering suddenness. Cuba, when it came fairly into sight, lay bathed in golden sunshine, all warmth and welcome, like a bride upon an azure couch. The moist breath from her fragrant shores swept over the steamer's decks and Johnnie O'Reilly sniffed it joyfully. He had brought little luggage with him, only an extra suit of khaki, a few toilet articles, and a Colt's revolver, the companion of his earlier Cuban days. He was holding the weapon in his hand, debating how and where to conceal it, when the first officer paused in the state-room door and, spying it, exclaimed: "Hello! Smuggling arms to the Insurrectos, eh?" O'Reilly laughed. "It's an old friend. I don't know just what to do with it." "I'll tell you," the mate volunteered. "Lead your old friend out here to the rail, shake hands with him, and drop him overboard before he gets you into trouble." "Really?" "I mean it. They won't let you land with that hardware. Take my tip." But Johnnie hesitated. Though his intentions were far from warlike, he could not bring himself, in view of his secret plans, to part with his only weapon. He examined his extra pair of khaki trousers, and discovering a considerable surplus of cloth at each inside seam, he took needle and thread and managed to sew the gun in so that it hung close against the inside of his right leg when he donned the garment. It felt queer and uncomfortable, but it did not appear to be noticeable so long as he stood upright. With some pride in his stratagem, he laid off his winter suit and changed into lighter clothing. Neuvitas was scorching under a midday sun when he came on deck. Its low, square houses were glaring white; here and there a splotch of vivid Cuban blue stood out; the rickety, worm-eaten piling of its water-front resembled rows of rotten, snaggly teeth smiling out of a chalky face mottled with unhealthy, artificial spots of color. Gusts of wind from the shore brought feverish odors, as if the city were sick and exhaled a tainted breath. But beyond, the hills were clean and green, the fields were rich and ripe. That was the Cuba which O'Reilly knew. A Spanish transport, close by, was languidly discharging uniformed troops; lighters of military supplies were being unloaded; the sound of a bugle floated from the shore. Moored to the docks or anchored in the harbor were several shallow-draught "tin-clad" coast-patrol craft from the staffs of which streamed the red and yellow bars of Spain. Although there were but a few passengers on the Dunham Castle, they were subjected to a long delay during which suspicious customs men searched their baggage and questioned them. Finally, however, O'Reilly found himself free to go ashore. He had passed the ordeal handily, and now he was eager to reach some lodging-place where he could remove that revolver which knocked against his leg so awkwardly at every step. Once on the dock, he gave his bag to a negro and led the way toward the street. At the last moment, however, just as he was about to plant his feet upon solid earth, he was halted by two men who rose from a bench where they had been idling. They carried the tasseled canes of the Secret Service, and O'Reilly felt his heart jump. With a murmured apology one of them relieved the negro of the valise while the other began to search O'Reilly's person for concealed weapons. He began at Johnnie's shoulders and patted one pocket after another, "fanning" him in the fashion approved of policemen. Now, too late, the American regretted his refusal to heed the mate's warning. It seemed certain that he was in for trouble, but he drew his heels together and stood with the revolver pressed between his legs, praying that those exploratory palms would not encounter it. When the officer had slapped every pocket, ending at the hips, he nodded; his companion snapped shut the valise, and handed it back to the porter. O'Reilly paused a moment or two later to wipe the abundant perspiration from his face; even yet his pulse was pounding erratically. He hoped the future held no more surprises of this sort, for he feared that his nerve might fail him. El Gran Hotel Europea, Neuvitas's leading hostelry, belied its name. It was far from large, and certainly it was anything but European, except, perhaps, in its proprietor's extravagant and un-American desire to please, at any cost. The building was old and dirty, the open cafe, fronting upon the sidewalk of the main street, was full of flies, and dust from the unclean roadway lay thick upon its stone-topped tables; moreover, a recognizable odor of decay issued from the patio--or perhaps from the kitchen behind it. After O'Reilly's first meal he was sure it came from the latter place; even suspected that the odor flattered actual conditions. But it was the best hotel the place afforded, and Senor Carbajal was the most attentive of hosts. He was a globular, unctuous little man, this Carbajal; he reminded O'Reilly of a drop of oil. He evinced an unusual interest in the affairs of his American guest, and soon developed a habit of popping into the latter's room at unexpected moments, ostensibly to see that all was as it should be. Now there was very little in the room to need attention--only a bed with a cheese-cloth mosquito-net, a wash-stand, and a towering, smelly clothes-press of Spanish architecture, which looked as if it might have a dark and sinister history. When, for the third time, he appeared without knocking, O'Reilly suspected something. "You have everything, eh?" Mr. Carbajal teetered upon the balls of his feet while his small black eyes roved inquisitively. "Everything in abundance." "There is water, eh?" The proprietor peered dutifully into the pitcher, incidentally taking stock of O'Reilly's toilet articles. "A veritable ocean of it." "One never knows. These servants are so lazy. But--your other baggage, your trunk?" "I have no trunk." "So? I took you to be a great traveler." "I am." "Selling goods, eh?" "No." "Indeed? Then you are a pleasure traveler? You see the sights, is that it? Well, Cuba is beautiful." "Most beautiful, judging from what I have seen." Mr. Carbajal wagged a pudgy forefinger at his guest. "Tut! Tut! You know Cuba. You speak the language better than a native. You can't fool me, sly one!" He wrinkled his face and winked both eyes. It was an invitation to further confidence, and he was disappointed when it passed unnoticed. "Well, you Americans are a brave people," he continued, with an obvious effort to keep the conversation going. "You like to be where the fighting is." "Not I. I'm a timid man." "Ho! Ha! Ha!" the proprietor cackled. Then he became pensive. "There is nothing here at Neuvitas to interest a tourist--except the war." "I'm not a tourist." "Indeed? Now that is interesting." Mr. Carbajal seated himself on the edge of the bed, where he could look into O'Reilly's traveling-bag. "Not a tourist, not a traveling-man. Now what could possibly bring you to Cuba?" O'Reilly eyed his inquisitor gravely; a subtle melancholy darkened his agreeable countenance. "I travel for my health," said he. "You--Health--!" Carbajal's frame began to heave; his bulging abdomen oscillated as if shaken by some hidden hand. "Good! Ha! There's another joke for you." "I'm a sick man," O'Reilly insisted, hollowly. "From what malady do you suffer?" inquired the hotel-keeper. "Rheumatism." "Rheumatism? That is no more than a pain in the joints, a stiffness--" "There! I knew it!" O'Reilly exclaimed in triumph. Rising, he seized his host's moist hands and shook them violently. "You give me courage! You make a new man of me. These doctors enjoy a fellow's agony; they'd like to bury him. They'd never recommend this climate. No! 'Pain in the joints,' you say, 'stiffness.' That proves the abominable affliction is practically unknown here. I thank you, sir." "You don't look sick," mumbled Carbajal. "Not like the other American." "What other American?" "A peculiar fellow. He went on to Puerto Principe. What a cough! And he was as thin as a wire. He bled at the mouth, too, all the time, when he was not reviling my hotel. You'll see him if you go there, provided he hasn't come apart with his coughing. I believe he writes for newspapers. Well, it is my pleasure to serve you. Command me at any hour." Mr. Carbajal rose reluctantly and went wheezing down-stairs to his grimy tables and the flies. O'Reilly was not in the least deceived; it was plain to him that the hotel man was in close touch with the Spanish authorities, and he began to feel the need of some better excuse, some valid business reason, for being here, such as would allay suspicion once for all. But he could think of nothing better than his rheumatism, and to that he determined to cling. VII THE MAN WHO WOULD KNOW LIFE Later that day O'Reilly set out to reconnoiter the city of Neuvitas. He was followed, of course--he had expected as much, and the circumstances amused rather than alarmed him. But when he returned to his hotel and found that his room had been visited during his absence he felt a hint of uneasiness. Evidently, as Doctor Alvarado had forecast, the authorities were interested in him; and he had further evidence of the fact when he learned that the room next him was occupied by the very man who had shadowed him on the street. Inasmuch as the intervening wall was no more than a thin partition, through which his very breathing could be heard, while his every movement could doubtless be spied upon, O'Reilly saw the need of caution, and he began to cast about for a place to hide that Colt's revolver, the presence of which was assuming the proportions of a menace. Now that his belongings had been examined three times that day, the next step would probably be another search of his person. Unless in the mean time he could definitely establish his innocence of purpose, which was unlikely, it behooved him to rid himself of the weapon without delay. This, however, was a problem. He could not bring himself to throw the thing away, and his bare bedroom offered no place of concealment. Late that evening he called Mr. Carbajal and asked him if it were possible to take a bath. Mr. Carbajal assured him that it was. El Gran Hotel Europea was first class in every respect; no expense had been spared in its equipment. Senor O'Rail-ye had indeed done well in patronizing it, for it boasted the best cuarto de bano in the whole city--a room, moreover, which was devoted exclusively to the purposes of bathing. And it was a large room--large enough to accommodate a dozen guests at once. To be sure, it would require, say, half an hour to make it ready, for it was stored with hay for the horses which drew the 'bus to and from the depot, but if the senor would have patience it could soon be restored to its original purpose. Mr. Carbajal himself would see that there was a river of hot water. O'Reilly thanked him. An hour later he paraded, bare-foot, down the hall, wrapped in a blanket. He had purposely left his clothes behind him, and the door of his room unlocked, but under his naked left arm he carried the revolver. He was a long time in his bath. When he returned to his chamber he found his garments very nearly as he had left them. He smiled as he crept into bed and tucked the netting under his thin mattress. They could search him now, whenever they pleased, for the revolver and its box of precious cartridges reposed on a duty beam over the bathroom, where no one would ever think of looking. During breakfast, and afterward throughout an aimless morning stroll, O'Reilly felt watchful eyes upon him. When he returned to his hotel he found Mr. Carbajal in the cafe concocting refrescos for some military officers, who scanned the American with bold, hostile glances. O'Reilly complained to the proprietor of a toothache. At once Mr. Carbajal was sympathetic; he was also admonitory, blaming the affliction upon that bath of the previous evening. Excessive bathing, he declared, was injurious, particularly in the winter season; it opened one's pores, and it dried one's skin and rendered one liable to the attacks of every disease. Heat? Perspiration? Was it wise to resort to unnatural and artificial means in order to rid oneself of a trifling annoyance? If perspiration were injurious, nature would not have provided it. In fact, it was nature's method of keeping the body clean, and if people were unreasonably fastidious about such things a little cologne would render them even more agreeable to the senses than any number of baths. That was the purpose of cologne. This habit of bathing at fixed intervals of a week or two, regardless of conditions, might be, and probably was, responsible for all of O'Reilly's rheumatism. Mr. Carbajal, for one, knew better than to overdo the thing. He had never suffered an ache or a pain in his life and his teeth were perfectly sound, as he demonstrated by beating vigorously upon them with his mixing-spoon. O'Reilly was impressed by this argument, he acknowledged, but unfortunately it did not remedy the pain which was killing him. During the hottest part of the day, when he knew the town would be asleep, he reappeared in the cafe, his cheek in his hand. He declared that something had to be done, at once, and inquired the name and address of the best local dentist. Mr. Carbajal named several, among them Dr. Tomas Alvarado, whereupon his guest hurried away, followed at a respectful distance by the secret agent. Finding Doctor Alvarado's office was closed, as he had anticipated, O'Reilly proceeded to the doctor's residence. There was some delay when he rang the bell, but eventually the dentist himself appeared. O'Reilly recognized him from his resemblance to his brother. He addressed him in English. "I come from Felipe," he began. "He well remembers the day you whipped him to keep him from going to the Ten Years' War." The languor of Doctor Alvarado's siesta vanished. He started, his eyes widened. "Who are you?" he muttered. "My name is O'Reilly. I am an American, a friend, so don't be alarmed. The man you see approaching is following me, but he thinks I have come to you with a toothache." "What do you want?" "I want your help in joining the Insurrectos." By this time the detective had come within earshot. Making an effort at self-possession, the dentist said: "Very well. I will meet you at my office in a half-hour and see what can be done." Then he bowed. O'Reilly raised his hat and turned away. Doctor Alvarado's dentist's chair faced a full-length window, one of several which, after the Cuban fashion, opened directly upon the sidewalk, rendering both the waiting-room and the office almost as public as the street itself. Every one of these windows was wide open when Johnnie arrived; but it seemed that the dentist knew what he was about, for when his patient had taken his seat and he had begun an examination of the troublesome tooth, he said, under his breath: "I, too, am watched. Talk to me in English. When I press, thus, upon your gum, you will know that some one is passing. Now then, what is the meaning of your amazing message from Felipe?" While Doctor Alvarado pretended to treat a perfectly sound molar, Johnnie managed, despite frequent interruptions, to make known the reason and circumstances of his presence. "But there are no rebels around here," Alvarado told him. "You could escape to the country, perhaps, but what then? Where would you go? How would they know who you are?" "That's what I want to find out." The Cuban pondered. "You'll have to go to Puerto Principe," he said, at length. "Our men are operating in that neighborhood, and my brother Ignacio will know how to reach them. I'll give you a message to him, similar to the one you brought me from Felipe." Then he smiled. "I've just thought of the very thing. Years ago I lent him a book which I particularly prized, and one of his children damaged it. I was furious. I declared I would never lend him another, and I never have. Now then, I'll give you that very volume; hand it to him and say that I asked you to return it to him. I'd like to see his face when he receives it." O'Reilly thanked him, promising to use every precaution in delivering the message. The very care necessary in communicating between brother and brother made him realize more clearly than hitherto that he was among enemies. The next morning he paid Carbajal's score and took the train to the interior. In his bag was Tomas Alvarado's precious volume, and in the same coach with him rode the Secret Service man. In its general features Puerto Principe differed little from the other Cuban cities O'Reilly knew. It was compactly built, it was very old and it looked its centuries. Its streets were particularly narrow and crooked, having been purposely laid out in labyrinthian mazes, so the story goes, in order to fool the pirates. In some ways it was quaint and unusual. For instance, here and there were queer tinajones, vast venerable earthen jars for holding rain-water, each inscribed with the date when it left the potter's wheel; then, too, there was a remarkable number of churches--massive structures, grayed by time--and in the northern distance, blue against the sky, O'Reilly had a glimpse of the Cubitas range, where he knew the insurrectos were in camp. That was his goal: it seemed almost within his grasp. He was tempted to abandon caution and make a dash for it, until he discovered that the city was well guarded. One needed a pass to enter or to leave Puerto Principe, and, moreover, the city had no suburbs, no scattered residences outside its boundaries: when one came to the end of a street one found oneself in an open field faced by a barbed-wire barrier, and on every road leading from the town stood a fortina, a little fort of brick or logs, in which were stationed Spanish soldiers. The streets were alive with uniformed men, patrols were everywhere, and martial law prevailed. For the first time O'Reilly began to perceive the strength of that mailed hand which held the island so tightly. Judging from the preparations here, one must conclude that Spain had no intention of relinquishing her last New World possession. After a stroll through the city, during which he carefully used his eyes, Johnnie asked himself how the ill-drilled, ill-equipped, loosely organized Insurrectos could hope to overthrow so solid a power as this, backed as it seemed to be by unlimited means and unlimited armies of trained troops. It looked like a hopeless undertaking. No seaport, no city, scarcely a hamlet, in fact, so far as O'Reilly knew, was held by the rebels; they lurked in the woods or rode the savannas in ragged bands, here to-day, there to-morrow. To aid or comfort them was treason. They appeared out of the jungles at unexpected moments; they faded like the mists of the dawn. Theirs was an apparitional warfare, and even their biggest victories were signals for retreat. How could they think to win? It seemed impossible that such resistance as they offered could wear down and conquer the resources of Spain, yet the very numbers and alertness of the Spanish troops argued a somewhat formidable opposition. Did it not also argue an all-pervading restlessness which might some day escape control? O'Reilly, of course, had no part in this quarrel: but it struck him as a wicked waste to destroy, to ravage, and to slay when settlement was so easy. The motive behind this prodigal extravagance of blood and gold was nothing but foolish resistance of a principle. A little yielding, a little diminution of harshness, a little compassion on the part of the mother country, and these men who were killing one another would embrace and proclaim their blood brotherhood. Pondering such thoughts as these, O'Reilly returned to his hotel. As he sat in the cafe, sipping an orangeade, he heard some one speaking in atrocious Spanish, and looked up to see that another American had entered. The stranger was a tall, funereal young man, with pallid cheeks and hollow, burning eyes: he was asking for ice-water, but what he said resembled anything except the language of the country. "Hey, George!" he cried. "Try gimme a vasso of agwa con yellow." He pronounced the words with elaborate pains. "Make it a long one." A waiter eyed him tolerantly, but with no faintest sign of understanding. "Agwa con yellow--agwa with ice. Ice! ICE!" the man repeated loudly. Still failing of a response, he shouted, "Don't you know what 'ice' is?" He wrapped his long, lean arms about himself and shivered. "Cold! Icie! Freezum! Br-r-r! Savvy?" Inspiration came to the waiter; a smile irradiated his countenance, and with a murmured apology for his stupidity he hurried away. O'Reilly stepped over to the stranger's table and introduced himself. "The hotel-keeper in Neuvitas told me I'd find you here," he said. "Your name is--" "Branch; Leslie Branch. So Carbajal said you'd find me here, eh? Oh, the greasy little liar. He didn't believe it. He thought his cooking would have killed me, long ago, and it nearly did." This time Mr. Branch's bony frame underwent a genuine shudder and his face was convulsed with loathing. "Did you try his butter? 'Made in Denmark' during the early Victorian period. I hate antiques--can't eat anything oily. Carbajal's in the Secret Service. Nice fat little spy." "So I suspected." Mr. Branch's beverage appeared at this moment. With a flourish the waiter placed a small glass and a bottle of dark liquid before him. Branch stared at it, then rolled a fiercely smoldering eye upward. "What's that?" he inquired. O'Reilly read the label. "It's bitters," said he. "BITTERS! And I asked for 'yellow'--a glass of agwa with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and raised two talon-like hands. The waiter was puzzled, but not alarmed. He embraced himself as his customer had done, and shuddered; then pointing at the bitters, he nodded encouragingly. O'Reilly forestalled an outburst by translating his countryman's wants. "Un vaso de agua con hielo," said he, and the attendant was all apologies. "So, you speak the lingo?" marveled Mr. Branch. "Well, I can't get the hang of it. Don't like it. Don't like anything Spanish. Hell of a country, isn't it? where the ice is 'YELLOW' and the butter is 'MEANT TO KILL YOU,' and does." O'Reilly laughed. "You've been studying a guide-book, 'with complete glossary of Spanish phrases.' By the way, Carbajal said you are a writer." Mr. Branch nodded listlessly. "I'm supposed to report this insurrection, but the Spaniards won't let me. They edit my stuff to suit themselves. I'm getting tired of the farce." "Going home?" "Don't dare." The speaker tapped his concave chest. "Bum lungs. I came down here to shuffle off, and I'm waiting for it to happen. What brings you to Cuba?" "I'm here for my health, too." The real invalid stared. "I have rheumatism." "Going to sweat it out, eh? Well, there's nothing to do but sweat"--Branch was racked by a coughing spasm that shook his reedy frame--"sweat and cough. Bullets! No mistake about that hospital bark, is there?" When he had regained his breath he said: "See here! I'm going to take a chance with you, for I like your looks. My newspaper work is a bluff: I don't send enough stuff to keep me alive. I come here to cure my lungs, and--I want you to help me do it." O'Reilly stared at the man in surprise. "How can I help you?" he asked. "By taking me with you." "With me? Where?" "To the Insurrectos, of course." The men eyed each other fixedly. "What makes you think--" O'Reilly began. "Oh, don't say it! I've got a hunch! I don't know what your game is--probably dynamite: there's a story that the rebels have sent for some American experts to teach them how to use the stuff, and God knows they need instruction! Anyhow, I can't swallow that rheumatism talk. I thought you might give me a lift. Take me along, will you?" "And how would that benefit your cough?" Johnnie inquired, curiously. Mr. Branch hesitated. "Well, I'll tell you," he said, after a moment. "I'm afraid to die this way, by inches, and hours. I'm scared to death." It seemed impossible that the sick man's cheeks could further blanch, but they became fairly livid, while a beading of moisture appeared upon his upper lip. "God! You've no idea how it gets on a fellow's nerves to see himself slipping--slipping. I'd like to end it suddenly, like that!" He voiced the last sentence abruptly and snapped his fingers. "I've tried to bump off, but--no courage! Funny, isn't it? Well, the doctors told me another New York winter would put me in a rosewood show-case. I've tried Colorado and it's no good. See? So I decided to join the Cubans and--let a bullet do the trick. I never did like the Spaniards--their cooking is too greasy. Then, too, I'd like to have a thrill before I cash in--taste 'the salt of life,' as somebody expressed it. That's war. It's the biggest game in the world. What do you think of the idea?" "Not much," O'Reilly said, honestly. "Difference in temperament. I suppose it IS a sick fancy, but I've got it. Unfortunately, now that I'm here, these Romeos won't let me get out of town. If you're what I think you are, give me a hand. I'm a rotten coward, but I'll fight if the Cubans will take me." "Where are the Cubans?" "Oh, they're out yonder in the hills. I know all about 'em. Come over to my quarters, and I'll show you a map, if you're interested." "I am," said O'Reilly, and, rising, he followed his new acquaintance. VIII THE SPANISH DOUBLOON On the whole, Pancho Cueto's plans had worked smoothly. After denouncing the Varona twins as traitors he had managed to have himself appointed trustee for the crown, for all their properties, consummation for which he had worked from the moment he read that letter of Esteban's on the morning after Dona Isabel's death. To be sure, the overseer had acquired title, of a sort, to the plantation by paying the taxes over a period of years, but it was the quinta itself which he desired, the Quinta de Esteban with its hidden gold. That there was a treasure Cueto had never doubted, and, once the place was his to do with as he chose, he began his search. Cueto was a tireless, thorough-going man, therefore he did not set about his explorations in the haphazard manner of Dona Isabel. Commencing at the lower edge of the grounds, he ripped them up with a series of deep trenches and cross-cuts. It was a task that required the labor of many men for several weeks, and when it was finished there was scarcely a growing thing left upon the place. Only a few of the larger trees remained. Cueto was disappointed at finding nothing, but he was not discouraged. Next he tore down the old slave barracoons and the outbuildings, after which he completely wrecked the residence itself. He pulled it apart bit by bit, brick by brick. He even dug up its foundations, but without the reward of so much as a single peseta. Finally, when the villa was but a heap of rubbish and the grounds a scar upon the slope of La Cumbre, he desisted, baffled, incredulous, while all Matanzas laughed at him. Having sacrificed his choicest residence, he retired in chagrin to the plantation of La Joya. But Cueto was now a man with a grievance. He burned with rage, and his contempt for the boy and girl he had wronged soured into hatred. Such time as he did not spend in racking his brain to explain the disappearance of the dead Esteban's riches, he devoted to cursing the living Esteban and his sister, who, it seemed to him, were somehow to blame for his wrecked hopes. In time he began to realize also that so long as they lived they would jeopardize his tenure of their property. Public feeling, at present, was high; there was intense bitterness against all rebels; but the war would end some day. What then? Cueto asked himself. Sympathy was ever on the side of the weak and oppressed. There would come a day of reckoning. As if to swell his discomfiture and strengthen his fears, out from the hills at the head of the Yumuri issued rumors of a little band of guerrilleros, under the leadership of a beardless boy--a band of blacks who were making the upper valley unsafe for Spanish scouting parties. Cursing the name of Varona, Pancho Cueto armed himself. He did not venture far alone, and, like Dona Isabel before him, he began to have bad dreams at night. One day a field of Cueto's cane was burned, and his laborers reported seeing Esteban and some negroes riding into the wood. The overseer took horse within the hour and rode pell-mell to Matanzas. In the city at this time was a certain Colonel Cobo, in command of Spanish Volunteers, those execrable convict troops from the Isle of Pines whose atrocities had already marked them as wolves rather than men, and to him Pancho went with his story. "Ah yes! That Varona boy. I've heard of him," Cobo remarked, when his caller had finished his account. "He has reason to hate you, I dare say, for you robbed him." The Colonel smiled disagreeably. He was a disagreeable fellow, so dark of skin as to lend credence to the gossip regarding his parentage; a loud, strutting, domineering person, whose record in Santa Clara Province was such that only the men discussed it. Cueto murmured something to the effect that the law had placed him in his position as trustee for the crown, and should therefore protect him; but Colonel Cobo's respect for the law, it seemed, was slight. In his view there was but one law in the land, the law of force. "Why do you come to me?" he asked. "That fellow is a desperado," Pancho declared. "He should be destroyed." "Bah! The country is overrun with desperadoes of his kind, and worse. Burning crops is nothing new. I'd make an end of him soon enough, but nearly all of my men are in Cardenas. We have work enough to do." "I'd make it worth while, if you could put an end to him," Pancho said, hesitatingly. Then, recalling some of those stories about Colonel Cobo, he added, "There are two of them, you know, a boy and a girl." "Ah yes! I remember." "I can direct you to the house of Asensio, where they live." "Um-m!" Cobo was thoughtful. "A girl. How old is she?" "Eighteen." "Ugly as an alligator, I'll warrant." "Ha! The most ravishing creature in all Matanzas. All the men were mad over her." Cueto's eyes gleamed craftily, for he believed he had measured Cobo's caliber. "She should have married old Castano and all his money, but she was heart and soul in the revolution. She and the boy were spying on us, you know, and sending the information to that rebel, Lopez." "Lopez! Spies, were they?" "The worst kind. You'd scarcely believe it of a beautiful girl, with her culture and refinement. I tell you it broke more than one heart. De Castano, for instance, has never recovered. He sits all day in the Casino and grieves for her. Such hair and eyes, such skin--as white as milk--and flesh as pure as the petals of a flower. Well, you wouldn't believe such charms existed." Colonel Cobo, the guerrilla, licked his full, red lips and ran a strong, square hand over his curly, short-cropped hair. "You say you know where she--where they are living?" "Ah, perfectly! It's less than a night's ride. There's no one except the boy to reckon with." "How much is he worth to you?" bluntly inquired the soldier, and Cueto sat down to make the best terms possible. "Do you think he received my letter?" Rosa asked of her brother one evening as they sat on the board bench by Asensio's door. It was a familiar question to Esteban; he had answered it many times. "Oh yes!" he declared. "Lopez's messenger got through to Key West." "Then why doesn't he come?" "But, my dear, you must be patient. Think of his difficulties." The girl sighed. "I do. I think of nothing else. Sometimes I feel that he is here--I seem to feel his presence--then again the most terrible doubts assail me. You know there was another woman. Perhaps." "What an idea!" Esteban exclaimed. "As if he could think of any one after knowing you. Did he not assure you that he was going to New York for the sole purpose of breaking off that affair? Well, then!" This subject always distressed young Varona; therefore he changed it. "Come! You haven't heard of my good fortune. I captured another fine snake to-day, a big, sleepy fellow. Believe me, he'll wake up when I set fire to his tail. He'll go like the wind, and with every foot he goes away will go more of Pancho Cueto's profits." "You intend to burn more of his fields?" absently inquired the girl. "Every one of them. You should have seen those rats when we soaked them with oil and set them afire. They scampered fast; but their hair is short; they don't run far. These snakes will be better." "It seems terrible to destroy our own property." Esteban broke out excitedly; he could not discuss Pancho Cueto without losing control of himself. "Would you permit that traitor to fatten upon the profits of our plantations? He thinks he is safe; he is preparing for a rich crop at high prices, but he shall never reap a dollar from Varona land as long as I live. I shall ruin him, as he ruined us." Rosa shook her dark head sadly. "And we are indeed ruined. Think of our beautiful house; all our beautiful things, too! We used to consider ourselves poor, but--how little we knew of real poverty. There are so many things I want. Have we nothing left?" "I thought it best to buy those rifles," the brother murmured, dropping his eyes. "It was one chance in a million." "No doubt it was. It seems those Spaniards will sell their souls." "Exactly. We can dig food from the earth and pluck it from the trees, but good Mausers don't grow on every bush. Besides, of what use would money be to us when we have no place to spend it?" "True!" After a moment Rosa mused aloud: "I wonder if Cueto found the treasure? If only we had that--" "He didn't find it," Esteban declared, positively. "I"--he hesitated--"I think I know why he didn't." "Yes?" "I think I know where it is." "Esteban!" Rosa stared, round-eyed, at her brother. "Oh, I mean it. I've been thinking so ever since--" "Where is it?" breathlessly inquired the girl. After a furtive look over his shoulder Esteban whispered, "In the well." "You're joking!" "No, no! Think for yourself. It was old Sebastian who dug that well--" "Yes." "And he alone shared father's confidence. That sunken garden was all Sebastian's work; he spent all his time there, although he was a big, strong man and capable of any task. No one else was allowed to tend it. Why? I'll tell you. They feared to let any one else draw the water. Isabel searched for years: if that treasure had been above ground her sharp nose would have smelled it out, and now Cueto has moved the very earth." Rosa sat back, disappointed. "So that's your theory?" "It's more than a theory," the boy insisted. "Look at this!" From the pocket of his cotton trousers he produced an odd-looking coin which he placed in Rosa's hand. "Why, it's gold! It's a Spanish doubloon," she said. "It's the first one I ever saw. Where did you find it?" "You'll think I'm crazy when I tell you--sometimes I think so myself. I found it in Isabel's hand when I took her from the well!" Rosa was stricken speechless. "She clutched it tightly," Esteban hurried on, "but as I made the rope fast her hand relaxed and I saw it in the lantern-light. It was as if--well, as if she gave it to me. I was too badly frightened to think much about it, as you may imagine. It was a horrible place, all slime and foul water; the rocks were slippery. But that coin was in her fingers." Rosa managed to say: "Impossible! Then she must have had it when she fell." "No, no! I saw her hands upstretched, her fingers open, in the moonlight." "It's uncanny. Perhaps--" "Yes. Perhaps some unseen hand led her to the place so that we should at last come into our own. Who knows? I didn't bother my head about the matter at first, what with our flight and all, but now I reason that there must be other coins where this one came from. There's no doubt that father hid his money. He turned his slaves into gold, he bought jewels, precious metal, anything he could hide. Well, perhaps there were old coins in the lot. The water in the well is shallow; Isabel must have groped this piece from the bottom. Some day I shall explore the hole and--we shall see." Rosa flung her arms rapturously about her brother's neck and kissed him. "Wouldn't it be glorious?" she cried. "Wouldn't it be wonderful, to be rich, and to want for nothing; to have fine clothes and good things to eat once more? Good things to eat!" Her lip quivered. "Oh--I'm so hungry." "Poor little girl!" "Wait till O'Reilly hears about this." Rosa was all excitement once more. "He'll be glad he came and got me, if he does come." Esteban caressed her. "He'll come, never fear. You remember he warned me to be careful? Well I--I blame myself for bringing you to this. For myself, of course I don't mind, but for you this life must be terrible. I know it. Every time I leave you my heart is in my throat for fear of what may happen in my absence--and yet I can't always be at your side." "There! You acknowledge that I handicap you. Except for me you would be making a glorious name for yourself." "Nothing of the sort. More probably I'd be getting myself killed. No! It's better this way. We must be brave and patient and--think of what is waiting for us at the bottom of that well." It was indeed a great piece of luck which had enabled Esteban Varona to buy a half-dozen Mausers from a Spanish soldier. Through Asensio's acquaintance he had profited by the dishonesty of an enemy, and, although it had taken all his money to effect the purchase, Esteban considered the sacrifice well worth while. The fire of patriotism burned fiercely in him, as did his hatred of Pancho Cueto, and the four trusty young negroes to whom he had given rifles made, with Asensio and himself, an armed party large enough to be reckoned with. These blacks were excitable fellows, and wretched marksmen, but, on the other hand, each and every one had been raised with a machete at his hip and knew how to use it. After a few preliminary forays under Esteban's leadership they had absorbed a bit of discipline and were beginning to feel a military ardor. In the Cuban field forces there were many negroes, and many of their fellow-patriots fought better, or endured the hardships of guerrilla warfare more cheerfully, than they. Gen. Antonio Maceo was of mixed blood, and yet his leadership was characterized not only by rare judgment and ability, but also by an exalted abandon of personal bravery. His several brothers rendered Cuba services scarcely less distinguished, and they were but of a few of many dark-skinned heroes. This struggle for independence was no patrician's war; the best stock of the island fought side by side with field-hands. At dawn of the morning following his talk with Rosa, when the members of his command assembled, Esteban was up and ready. He had made his preparations to destroy Pancho Cueto's fields, and since the road over the hills to La Joya was long he had summoned them early. "Be careful!" Rosa implored him. "I shall die of suspense." "It is for you to be careful," he laughed. "Keep a good watch, and conceal yourself at the first alarm. However, I think we have taught these bandits a lesson. As for Cueto, he would run to the jungle if he saw us. He has the heart of a mouse." He kissed his sister affectionately and then rode off at the head of his tattered band. Rosa waved him a last farewell as he disappeared into the woods, then, to occupy herself, she helped Evangelina with what little housework there was to do, later going with her to the garden patch where the viandas grew. Evangelina's early devotion to her mistress had not diminished with time; if anything, it had deepened. When emancipation came she would have returned to the service of her beloved twins had it not been for Dona Isabel's refusal to accept her. As it was, she and Asensio had married, and by means of Rosa's surreptitious help they had managed to buy this little piece of land. Rosa had practised self-denial to make the purchase possible, and her self-sacrifice had borne fruit: that act of childish beneficence had created a refuge for Esteban and herself and had ripened the negro woman's affection into idolatry. Evangelina's joy at having the girl to herself, where she could daily see her, touch her, serve her, was tempered only by the knowledge of Rosa's unhappiness. She scolded and tyrannized, she mothered and adored the girl to her heart's content; she watched over her like a hawk; she deemed no labor in her service too exacting. It would have gone ill with any one who offered harm to Rosa, for Evangelina was strong and capable; she had the arms and the hands of a man, and she possessed the smoldering black temper of Sebastian, her father. Even in peaceful times few people came to this clearing, in the woods, far off from the main-traveled roads of the Yumuri, and the day, as usual, passed uneventfully. Evangelina worked, with one eye upon her Rosa, the other watchfully alert for danger. When evening came she prepared their scanty meal, upbraiding Rosa, meanwhile, for her attempts to assist her. Then they sat for an hour or two on the bench outside the door, talking about Juan O'Rail-ye and the probable hour of his coming. There were no candles in Asensio's house now, and had there been, neither woman would have dared light one. To hunted creatures darkness is a friend; danger stalks under the sun. When Rosa fretted about her brother, the negress reassured her. "Don't be frightened, little dove; he has the makings of a great soldier. It's a good thing for the Spaniards that he isn't general. Cuba would be free in no time." "He's so reckless." "Oh, he knows what he's doing. Besides, Asensio wouldn't let him be hurt. I took pains to tell him that if ever he permitted Esteban to suffer so much as a scratch I would disembowel him with his own machete. He knows me. Now, then, it is growing cool and the night air carries fevers. Creep into your bed and dream about that handsome lover of yours." "No, I'll keep watch with you." Evangelina was indignant. "Go!" she stormed. "What will happen to those red cheeks if you don't sleep? Do you think the American will want to marry an old woman with wrinkles? He may be here to-morrow--yes, I have a certain feeling about it." Rosa obeyed, although reluctantly. "I'll sleep for a while," she compromised, "then I'll come out and take my turn." This exactly suited the elder woman, who knew something about the slumbers of youth. Nevertheless, dawn was still a long way off when, true to her promise, Rosa emerged from the hut with an apology for having slept so long. Evangelina protested, though her eyes were heavy and she had been yawning prodigiously for hours. But for once the girl was firm. "I can't sleep," she declared. "Why force me to lie staring into the dark while you suffer?" Having finally prevailed in her determination, she seated herself in the warm place Evangelina had vacated, and, curling her small feet under her, she settled herself, chin in hand, to think of O'Reilly. It was a good time to think, for the jungle was very still and the night like a velvet curtain. "We had better leave the horses here." Pancho Cueto hesitatingly addressed the dim blur which he knew to be Colonel Cobo. The Colonel of Volunteers was in a vile temper, what with the long night ride and an error of Cueto's which had considerably lengthened the journey. "Where is the house?" growled the officer. "Not far. But the path is rocky and the horses' feet--" "God, yes!" There was a creak of saddle leathers and a groan as the colonel dismounted. "Now, my good Cueto," he threatened, "another of your mistakes and I'll give you something to remember me by. Damnation! What a night! As black as hell." "It will be daylight before we know it," the other said, nervously. "Excellent! Then I can see to deal with you if you've fooled me." A curt order brought his men out of their saddles. One of their number was detailed to guard the animals, while the rest fell in behind Cueto and followed him up the trail by the starglow. IX MARAUDERS The surprise was easily effected, for Colonel Cobo's men were accomplished in this sort of work. Rosa, crouching upon her bench, heard nothing, saw nothing, until out of the shadows beside her human forms materialized. Her white dress, like a dim phosphorescent glow in dark waters, betrayed her presence, and as she sprang to her feet rough hands seized her. She screamed once, twice; then a palm closed over her mouth and she began to struggle like a cat. Evangelina, who had waked at the first outcry, met the marauders as they rushed through the door. The hush of the sleeping Jungle was shattered now; there were shouts and curses, loudly bellowed orders, a great scuffling and pounding of feet upon the dirt floor of the hut, the rickety, bark-covered walls bulged and creaked. Over all sounded the shrieks of the negress battling in the pitch-black interior like an animal in its lair. Then some one set fire to the thatch; the flames licked up the dead palm-leaves to the ridge-pole, and the surroundings leaped into view. Rosa saw a swarthy, thick-set man in the uniform of a Colonel of Volunteers, and behind him Pancho Cueto. Tearing the hand from her lips for a moment, she cried Cueto's name, but he gave no heed. He was straining his gaze upon the door of the bohio in the immediate expectation of seeing Esteban emerge. He clutched a revolver in his hand, but it was plain from the nerveless way in which he held the weapon that he had little stomach for the adventure. He was, in fact, more inclined to run than to stand his ground. Rosa shrieked his name again; then she heard the officer say: "Where is the young fellow? I hear nothing but the squeals of that common wench." Evangelina's cries of rage and defiance suddenly ceased, and with them the sounds of combat. From the blazing bohio ran two armed men, brushing sparks from their clothing. A third followed, dragging Evangelina by one naked arm. The black woman was inert; her scanty garments were well-nigh ripped from her body: she lay huddled where the soldier flung her. Rosa felt herself swooning, and she knew nothing of what immediately followed. After a time she felt herself shaken, and heard the colonel addressing her. "Come, come!" he was saying. "Why don't you answer me?" He dragged her farther from what was now a roaring furnace. "Where is your precious brother and that black fellow?" Rosa could only stare dully. "It seems we missed them," said Cueto. "More of your bungling," Cobo broke out at him, wrathfully. "God! I've a mind to toss you into that fire." He turned his attention once more to Rosa, and with a jerk that shook her into fuller consciousness repeated: "Where are they? Speak to me." "Gone!" she gasped. "Gone!" She struggled weakly toward Cueto, imploring him, "Pancho, don't you know me?" "Well, we've taught him a lesson," said Cueto, grinning apprehensively at Cobo. "We've accomplished something, anyhow, eh?" He nodded at Rosa. "She's all that I told you. Look at her!" Colonel Cobo took time to scrutinize his prisoner. He turned her about in the light from the burning dwelling; then he agreed. "Yes! She's a pretty little spy--quite a prize, truly. Now then!" His thick lips spread; he spoke to her more gently. "I want you to tell me about that brother of yours, eh? Cueto said I would find him here. Ha! Still frightened, I see. Well, I have a way with women; I dare say you'll be glad to tell me everything by and by." Then, seeing that his men risked a scorching in their search of the hut and were already quarreling over the scanty plunder which it afforded, he turned from Rosa to call them away. Profiting by his inattention, Rosa wriggled out of his grasp and ran to Evangelina, who lay face down in the dirt, her limbs sprawled loosely. She flung herself upon the prostrate body and cried the black woman's name, but she could awaken no response. The first pink of dawn was now deepening in the east, and as soon as it had grown light enough to see to travel Colonel Cobo prepared to return to his horses. The roof and walls of the bohio had fallen away to ashes, its skeleton of poles and its few pieces of crude furniture alone were smoldering when he called his men together and gave the word to go. "Come, my sweetheart." He addressed himself to the girl. "Leave that carrion for the buzzards." Rosa looked up to find him leering at her. She brushed the tears from her eyes, crying: "Go away! In God's name haven't you done harm enough?" "Oh, but you're going with me." The girl rose; her face was colorless; she was aquiver with indignation. "Leave me!" she stormed. "What have I done to you? Don't--" "Caramba! A temper. And you have strength, too, as I discovered. Must I bind those pretty hands or--" Colonel Cobo reached forth, laughing, and encircled her in his powerful arms. Rosa fought him as she had fought at the first moment of desperation, but he lifted her easily and went striding across the field behind his men. Esteban's party made good time over the hills and into the San Juan, for Asensio knew the country well. Mid-afternoon found them in sight of La Joya. Cueto's cane was thick and high; it was ready for the knife or for the torch. Making a detour, the incendiaries approached it from the east in order to have the trade-winds at their backs. They dismounted in the shelter of a wood and removed the bags which they had carried on their saddles. Inside these bags were several snakes, the largest perhaps eight feet in length. To the tail of each the negroes fastened a leather thong, and then to each thong a length of telegraph-wire, the end of which had been bent into a loop to hold a bundle of oil-soaked waste. These preliminaries accomplished, they bore the reptiles into the cane-fields at widely separated places and lighted the waste. Esteban, from his saddle, saw the first wisps of smoke arise and grow and unwind into long ribbons, reaching deep into the standing crop. Soon tongues of flame appeared and the green tops of the cane began to shrivel and to wave as the steady east wind took effect. From the nearest conflagration a great snapping and crackling of juicy stalks arose. The thin, dry strippings with which the earth was carpeted formed a vast tinder bed, and once the fire was started there was no checking it. Smoke billowed upward and was hurried westward before the breeze; in a dozen places the fields burst into flame. From somewhere came a faint shouting, then a shot or two, and finally the ringing of a bell. Esteban waited only until he saw that his work of devastation was well under way, then he led his followers back toward the hills. At sunset he reined in upon the crest of a ridge and looked behind him into the valley. The whole sky was black with smoke, as if a city were in flames. Removing his wide jipi-japa hat, the young man swept a mocking salutation to the east. "So now, good Pancho Cueto," he cried, "I leave you the compliments of those twins you love so well." In the shelter of a ravine the party took time to eat supper, their first meal since leaving home, and it was after dark when they finished. The negroes, who were thoroughly tired, were for spending the night here, but Esteban, more cautious than they, would not have it so. Accordingly, the men remounted their weary horses, though not without some grumbling, and set out. It was slow traveling, for the woods were dark and the trails were blind; the men were fairly obliged to feel their way. At length they crossed the summit and worked down toward the Yumuri, but it seemed as if daylight would never come. "A weary ride," Esteban yawned. "I shall sleep for a week." Asensio agreed. "That Cueto will be furious," said he. "Some day, perhaps, he and I will meet face to face. Then I shall kill him." Esteban reined in his horse. "Look!" said he. "Yonder is a light." The other horsemen crowded close, staring through the darkness. It was very still in the woods; dawn was less than half an hour away. "What is Evangelina thinking about?" Asensio muttered. "But, see! It grows brighter." There followed a moment or two during which there was no sound except the breathing of the horses and the creak of saddle leathers as the riders craned their necks to see over the low tree-tops below them. Then Esteban cried: "Come! I'm--afraid it's our house." Fear gripped him, but he managed to say, calmly, "Perhaps there has been an--accident." Asensio, muttering excitedly, was trying to crowd past him; for a few yards the two horses brushed along side by side. The distant point of light had become a glare now; it winked balefully through the openings as the party hurried toward it. But it was still a long way off, and the eastern sky had grown rosy before the dense woods of the hillside gave way to the sparser growth of the low ground. Esteban turned a sick, white face over his shoulder and jerked out his orders; then he kicked his tired mount into a swifter gallop. It was he who first broke out into the clearing. One glance, and the story was told. The hut was but a crumbling skeleton of charred poles. Strung out across the little field of malangas, yuccas, and sweet-potatoes were several hilarious Volunteers, their arms filled with loot from the cabin. Behind them strode an officer bearing Rosa struggling against his breast. Esteban did not pause; he drove his horse headlong through the soft red earth of the garden. His sudden appearance seemed briefly to paralyze the marauders. It was a moment before they could drop their spoils, unsling their rifles, and begin to fire at him, and by that time he had covered half the distance to his sister. Those rifle-shots came faintly to Esteban's ears; he scarcely heard them; he merely lowered his head and rode straight at that black-visaged colonel, sobbing and whimpering in his fury. But in spite of his speed he made no difficult target. A bullet brought his horse down and the boy went flying over its neck. Nothing but the loose loam saved him from injury. As he rose to his feet, breathless and covered with the red dirt, there came a swift thudding of hoofs and Asensio swept past him like a rocket. Esteban caught one glimpse of the negro's face, a fleeting vision of white teeth bared to the gums, of distended yellow eyes, of flat, distorted features; then Asensio was fairly upon Colonel Cobo. The colonel, who had dropped his burden, now tried to dodge. Asensio slashed once at him with his long, murderous machete, but the next instant he was engaged with a trooper who had fired almost into his face. The other negroes also were in the open by this time, yelling and firing as fast as they could work the bolts of their rifles, and although they aimed at nothing in particular, the effect of their fusillade was all that could be wished. Cobo's men, led by the terrified Pancho Cueto, turned and fled for cover, believing themselves in danger of annihilation. Nor was the colonel himself in any condition to rally them, for Asensio's blade had cloven one full dark cheek to the bone, and the shock and pain had unnerved him; he was frightened at sight of the blood that streamed down over the breast of his white tunic, and so, when he saw his men turn tail, he followed suit, lunging through the lush garden growth, holding his wound in his hand and shrieking profane commands which went unheeded. The field was small, the jungle was close at hand. A moment and the interlopers had vanished into it, all but one, who lay kicking among the broad malanga-leaves, and over whom Asensio kept spurring his terrified horse, hacking downward with insane fury. This was the first hand-to-hand encounter Esteban's men had had, and their swift victory rendered them ferocious. Flinging their guns aside, they went crashing into the brush on the trail of their enemies. Rosa found herself in her brother's arms, sobbing out the story of the outrage and quivering at every sound of the chase. He was caressing her, and telling her to have no further fears; both of them were fairly hysterical. Even before Esteban had heard all, Lorenzo, the mulatto, reappeared, leading three cavalry horses and shouting extravagant praises of his own bravery. Esteban complimented him and the fellow galloped away again, voicing the most blood-curdling threats. Evangelina, thanks to her thick skull, was not dead. In the course of time under Rosa's and Esteban's ministrations she regained her senses, and when the other men returned they found her lying sick and dazed, but otherwise quite whole. Then, there beside the ruins of the hut, was a strange scene of rejoicing. Asensio, recovered now from his burst of savagery, was tearful, compassionate; his comrades laughed and chattered and bragged about their prodigious deeds of valor. Over and over they recounted their versions of the encounter, each more fanciful than the other, until it seemed that they must have left the forest filled with corpses. Esteban alone was grave. He had heard of Colonel Cobo, and, remembering that denim-clad figure out yonder in the trampled garden, he knew that serious consequences would follow. The Volunteers were revengeful; their colonel was not the sort of man to forgive a deep humiliation. Doubtless he would put a price upon the heads of all of them, and certainly he would never allow them another encounter upon anything like even terms. Then, too, the narrowness of Rosa's escape caused the boy's heart to dissolve with terror. After a conference with Asensio he decided that they must prepare for flight, and late that afternoon they all set out to seek a safer refuge, Evangelina in tears at leaving her precious garden plot. Their led horse, one of those Lorenzo had captured, carried a pitifully light burden--only some tools, some pans and kettles, and a roll of charred bedclothes. Johnnie O'Reilly had no difficulty in locating the Residence of Ignacio Alvarado, but to communicate with him was quite another matter, inasmuch as his every step was dogged by that persistent shadow from Neuvitas. Leslie Branch had told him enough about conditions here in Puerto Principe to make him extremely cautious, and after their first talk he had once more concealed his revolver in a safe hiding-place, taking good care thereafter that nothing in his conduct should awaken suspicion. Unfortunately his room was on the second floor of the hotel, and hence his goings and comings were always open to observation. But he noted that a window at one end of the upper hall overlooked a sloping, tile-roofed shed, and that the garden wall behind the hotel premises was not provided with those barbarous spikes or broken bottles which decorate so many Cuban walls. It promised him a means of egress when the time should come to use it. In this hall, moreover, directly opposite his door there was an oil bracket-lamp which gave light to the passageway, and which was forever going out, a fact which the young man noted with satisfaction. One evening, several days after his arrival, a sudden rain-storm drove O'Reilly indoors, and as he ascended to his room he saw that the lamp in the hallway flared and smoked at every gust of wind. It was very dark outside; he reasoned that the streets would be deserted. Hastily securing that book which Alvarado, the dentist, had given him, he took a position close inside his door. When he heard the spy pass and enter the next chamber he stole out into the hall and breathed into the lamp-chimney. A moment later he was safely through the window and was working his way down the shed roof, praying that his movements had not been seen and that the tiles were firm. The rain was driving in sheets and he was wet to the skin when he dropped into the patio; nevertheless he was laughing to himself. He nimbly scaled the wall, crossed an inclosure, climbed a second wall, and descended into a dark side street. Taking advantage of the densest shadows and the numerous overhanging balconies, he set out at a brisk trot. A light showed through the barred windows of the Alvarado home, indicating that the family was in. After some fumbling O'Reilly laid hold of the latch; then, without knocking, he opened the front door and stepped in. He found himself, as he had expected, in the parlor, a high-ceilinged, sparsely furnished room with a glazed floor of Spanish mosaics. His sudden appearance threw the occupants into alarm: a woman cried out sharply; a man whom O'Reilly identified as Ignacio Alvarado himself leaped to his feet and faced him, exclaiming: "Who are you?" "I'm a friend. Don't be alarmed." Johnnie summoned his most agreeable smile, then he extended the sodden package he had carried beneath his arm. "I come from your brother Tomas. He asked me to hand you this book and to say that he is returning it with his thanks." "What are you saying?" Plainly the speaker did not comprehend; there was nothing but apprehension in his voice. O'Reilly tore the wet paper from the volume and laid it in Alvarado's hand. "Look at it, please, and you'll understand. I didn't take time to knock, for fear I might be followed." Alvarado stared first at the book, then at his caller. After a moment he made a sign to his wife, who left the room. Wetting his lips, he inquired, with an effort, "What do you want?" O'Reilly told him in a few words. Alvarado showed relief; he even smiled. "I see, but--Caramba! You gave me a start. And this book! Ha! Tomas will have his jokes. It is well you took precautions, for I am under surveillance. I'll help you, yes! But you must not come here again. Return to your hotel and--Let me think." Senor Alvarado frowned in deepest thought; then he said: "I have it! Every morning at half past nine a man wearing a Panama hat and a gray silk necktie with a large gold pin will pass along the sidewalk across the street from the Isla de Cuba. You will know him. One day, I cannot promise how soon, he will lift his hat thus, and wipe his face. You understand? Good. Follow him. He will give you final directions. Meanwhile I will make known your presence to certain of our friends who can be trusted. You know Manin, the druggist? Well, you can talk to him, and he will keep you posted as to our progress. Now go before some one comes." O'Reilly wrung the Cuban's hand. Then he stepped out into the night, leaving a pool of water on the clean blue tiles where he had stood. X O'REILLY TALKS HOG LATIN In the days that followed his call on Ignacio Alvarado, O'Reilly behaved so openly that the Secret Service agent detailed to watch him relaxed his vigilance. Certainly there was nothing suspicious in the conduct of a fellow who sat all the morning tipped back in a hotel chair, languidly scanning the passers-by, whose afternoons were spent on the streets or at the soda-fountain in Martin's drug-store, and whose evenings were devoted to aimless gossip with his countryman, the newspaper writer. Manifestly this O'Reilly was a harmless person. But the spy did not guess how frantic Johnnie was becoming at this delay, how he inwardly chafed and fretted when two weeks had rolled by and still no signal had come. Manin told him to be patient; he assured him that word had been sent into the Cubitas hills, and that friends were busy in his behalf; but Johnnie was eager to be up and doing. This inaction paralyzed him; it made him almost ill to think how much time had slipped away. Then, too, his money was running low. At last, however, the day arrived when the man with the gray necktie raised his hat and wiped his brow as he passed the Isla de Cuba. Johnnie could scarcely hold himself in his chair. By and by he rose, stretching himself, and sauntered after the fellow. For several blocks he kept him in sight, but without receiving any further sign. The man paused to greet friends, he stopped at several shops, and his aimless wanderings continued for the best part of an hour, during which he led the way to the outskirts of the city. Fortunately O'Reilly's shadow was nowhere in sight. Without a glance over his shoulder the man turned into a large, walled inclosure. When Johnnie followed he found himself in one of the old cemeteries. Ahead of him, up a shady avenue bordered with trees, the stranger hurried; then he swerved to his left, and when O'Reilly came to the point where he had disappeared there was nobody in sight. Apprehending that he had made some mistake in the signal, O'Reilly hastened down the walk. Then at last, to his great relief, he heard a sibilant: "Psst! Psst!" It came from behind a screen of shrubbery, and there he found the Cuban waiting. The latter began rapidly: "Our plans are complete. Listen closely. One week from to-day, at ten o'clock in the morning, you must be in Manin's drug-store. Directly across the street you will see two negroes with three horses. At fifteen minutes past ten walk out San Rafael Street to the edge of the city, where the hospital stands. The negroes will follow you. There is a fort near by--" "I know." "It commands the road. You will be challenged if you pass it, so turn in at the hospital. But do not enter the gates, for the negroes will overtake you at that point. They will stop to adjust the saron of the lead horse. That will be your signal; mount him and ride fast. The Spaniards will fire at you, but if you are hit one of the blacks will take you on his horse. If one of them is hit or his horse falls you must stop and take him up. Ride out half a mile and you will find a band of Insurrectos in the woods at the right. They know you are coming. Now, adois and good luck." With a smile and a quick grip of the hand the messenger walked swiftly away. O'Reilly returned to his hotel. At last! One week, and this numbing, heartbreaking delay would end; he would be free to take up his quest. O'Reilly choked at the thought; the blood drummed in his ears. Rosa would think he was never coming; she would surely believe that his heart had changed. As if it could! "O God! Come quickly, if you love me." Well, a week was only seven days. He longed to risk those Spanish bullets this very hour. But those seven days were more than a week, they were seven eternities. The hours were like lead; O'Reilly could compose his mind to nothing; he was in a fever of impatience. Meanwhile, he was compelled to see a good deal of Leslie Branch. The reporter was anything but cheerful company, for, believing firmly in the steady progress of his malady, he was weighed down by the deepest melancholy. The fellow was a veritable cave of despair; he voiced never-ceasing complaints; nothing suited him; and but for something likable in the man--an effect due in part to the fact that his chronic irritation took amusing forms--he would have been an intolerable bore. To cheer him up was quite impossible, and although it seemed to Johnnie that the Cuban climate agreed with him and that he lacked only strength of will to cheat the grave, the mere suggestion of such a thought was offensive to the invalid. He construed every optimistic word, every effort at encouragement, either as a reflection upon his sincerity or as the indication of a heartless indifference to his sufferings. He continued to talk wistfully about joining the Insurrectos, and O'Reilly would have been glad to put him in the way of realizing his fantastic ambition to "taste the salt of life" had it been in his power; but, since he himself depended upon friends unknown to him, he did not dare to risk complicating matters. In fact, he did not even tell Branch of his coming adventure. The day of days dawned at last, and Johnnie was early at Manin's soda-fountain, drinking insipid beverages and anxiously watching the street. In due time the negroes appeared, their straw sarons laden with produce which they innocently disposed of. O'Reilly began to consult his watch with such frequency that the druggist joked him. Manin's banter was interrupted by a bugle-call. Down the street came perhaps two hundred mounted troops. They wheeled into San Rafael Street at a gallop and disappeared in the direction of the suburbs. "Now what does that mean?" murmured the druggist. "Wait here while I go to the roof where I can see something." O'Reilly tried to compose himself, meanwhile becoming aware of a growing excitement in the street. Pedestrians had halted, shopkeepers had come to their doors, questions were flying from mouth to mouth. Then from the direction of the fort at the end of San Rafael Street sounded a faint rattling fusillade, more bugle-calls, and finally the thin, distant shouting of men. "Rebels!" some one cried. "Dios mio, they are attacking the city!" "They have audacity, eh?" The roofs were black with people now. Manin came hurrying down into the store. "Something has gone wrong," he whispered. "They're fighting out yonder in the woods. There has been some treachery." "It is ten-fifteen," said O'Reilly. "I must be going." Manin stared at him. "You don't understand--" "Those black fellows are getting their horses ready. I'm going." The druggist tried to force Johnnie into a chair. "Madman!" he panted. "I tell you our friends have been betrayed; they are retreating. Go back to your hotel quickly." For the first time during their acquaintance Manin heard the good-natured American curse; O'Reilly's blue eyes were blazing; he had let go of himself completely. "I'm going!" he cried, hoarsely. "All the damned Spaniards in Cuba won't stop me. God! I've waited too long--I should have made a break--" "Idiot!" stormed the druggist. "You wish to die, eh?" O'Reilly ripped out another oath and fought off the other's restraining hands. "Very well, then," cried Manin, "but have some thought of us who have risked our lives for you. Suppose you should escape? How would our troops receive you now? Would they not think you had cunningly arranged this trap?" A light of reason slowly reappeared in the younger man's eyes. "No!" Manin pressed his advantage. "You must wait until--" He broke off abruptly and stepped behind his counter, for a man in the uniform of a Spanish lieutenant had entered the store. The new-comer walked directly to O'Reilly; he was a clean-cut, alert young fellow. After a searching glance around the place he spoke in a voice audible to both men: "Senor, you are in danger. To-night, at midnight, you will be arrested. I beg of you to see that there is nothing incriminating in your possession." O'Reilly's face betrayed his amazement. "Arrested? What for? On what charge--" The stranger shrugged. "I don't know. That newspaper man will be arrested at the same moment, so you had better warn him. But be careful where and how you do so, for all his movements are watched, all his words are overheard." "Why do you tell me this--you? Is it some scheme to--to incriminate me?" O'Reilly inquired. Manin was leaning over the counter, his face drawn with anxiety, his lips framing the same question. "No!" The lieutenant shook his head. "I am a friend--a Cuban, in spite of this uniform. If you repeat my words I shall be shot within the hour. I implore you"--his voice became more urgent--"to heed my warning. I don't know what you had to do with this skirmish out San Rafael Street, but a short time ago a message came from the fortina that Insurrectos were in the woods close by. I hope it will not prove to be a bloody encounter. And now remember--midnight!" He bowed, turned to the door, and was gone. Manin heaved a sigh of relief. "Caramba! He gave me a fright: I thought my time had come. But what did I tell you, eh?" "That fellow is a Cuban spy!" "No doubt. We have many friends. Well! You see what would have happened if you had tried to go. Now then, you must prepare yourself for the worst." Perhaps a half-hour later O'Reilly saw the cavalry squadron returning to its barracks. The men were laughing; they were shouting brief boastful accounts of their encounter to the people on the sidewalks. Two of them were sick and white; they lurched in their saddles, and were supported by their comrades, but it was not upon them that the eyes of the onlookers centered. Through the filth of the street behind the cavalcade trailed a limp bundle of rags which had once been a man. It was tied to a rope and it dragged heavily; its limbs were loose; its face, blackened by mud, stared blindly skyward. O'Reilly gazed at the object with horrified fascination; then with a sudden sick feeling of dizziness he retired to his room, asking himself if he were responsible for that poor fellow's death. Meanwhile the citizens of Puerto Principe looked on with stony eyes. There was no cheering among them, only a hush in their chatter, above which sounded the rattle of accoutrements, the clump-clump of hoofs, and the exultant voices of the Spanish troopers. For some reason or other Leslie Branch was nowhere to be found; his room was locked and no one had seen him; hence there was no possibility of warning him, until that evening, when he appeared while O'Reilly was making a pretense of eating dinner. "Where the devil have you been?" the latter inquired, anxiously. "Been getting out my weekly joke about the revolution. Had to write up this morning's 'battle.' Couldn't work in my room, so I--" "Sit down; and don't jump when I tell you what has happened. We're going to be pinched at midnight." "Why midnight?" "I don't know, unless that's the fashionable hour for military calls." "What's it all about?" "I guess they don't like us. Have you got anything incriminating about you?" "N-no! Nothing, except my citizen's papers and--a letter of introduction to General Maximo Gomez." O'Reilly suddenly lost what appetite remained to him. "Nothing EXCEPT a letter to General Gomez!" he cried. "Good Lord, Branch! Were you ever shot at sunrise?" The reporter coughed dismally. "N-no! It's too damp. I suppose you mean to hint I'd better destroy that letter, eh?" "Just as quickly as possible. Where is it?" "In my room." "Hm-m! Then I'm not sure you'll have a chance to destroy it." O'Reilly was thinking rapidly. "From what I was told I suspect you are being watched even there." "Bullets! I thought as much." "Would you mind using some other oath?" O'Reilly broke out, irritably. "I've always considered 'bullets' weak and ineffective, but--it has a significance." "There's a new lodger in the room next to me. I've heard him moving around. I'll bet he's got a peephole in the wall." Branch was visibly excited. "Quite likely. I have the same kind of a neighbor; that is he watching us now." Leslie cast a hostile eye at the man his friend indicated. "Looks like a miserable spy, doesn't he? But, say, how am I going to make away with that letter?" "I'm trying to think," said Johnnie. After a time he rose from the table and the two strolled out. Johnnie was still thinking. When the two arrived at Branch's quarters O'Reilly scrutinized the room as closely as he dared, and then sat for some time idly gossiping. Both men were under a considerable strain, for they thought it more than likely that hostile eyes were upon them. It gave them an uncomfortable thrill; and while it seemed a simple thing to burn that letter of introduction, they realized that if their suspicions were correct such a procedure would only serve to deepen their difficulties. Nothing they could later say would explain to the satisfaction of the authorities so questionable an act. The mere destruction of a mysterious document, particularly at this late hour, would look altogether too queer; it might easily cause their complete undoing. Inasmuch as his enemies were waiting only for an excuse to be rid of him, O'Reilly knew that deportation was the least he could expect, and at the thought his fingers itched to hold that letter over the lamp-chimney. Imprisonment, almost any punishment, was better than deportation. That would mean beginning all over again. While he was talking he used his eyes, and finally a plan suggested itself. To make doubly sure that his words would not be understood he inquired, casually: "Do you speak any foreign languages?" "Sure! Spanish and--hog Latin." In spite of himself O'Reilly grinned; then making use of that incoherent derangement of syllables upon the use of which every American boy prides himself, he directed Branch's attention to the tiles of the roof overhead. The reporter's wits were sharp; his eyes brightened; he nodded his instant understanding. The house had but one story, its roof was constructed of the common, half-round Cuban tiling, each piece about two feet long. These tiles were laid in parallel rows from ridge-pole to eave, and these rows were locked together by other tiling laid bottom side up over them. Where the convex faces of the lower layer overlapped, after the fashion of shingles, were numerous interstices due to imperfections in manufacture; more than one of these was large enough to form a hiding-place for a letter. Continuing to disguise his language, O'Reilly directed his companion to open the table drawer in which the unwelcome document reposed and to see that it was where he could instantly lay hands upon it in the dark. Branch did as he was told. For some time longer they talked; then they rose as if to leave the room. O'Reilly took his stand near the door and directly beneath the most promising crevice in the roof, which at this point was perhaps nine feet from the floor. Branch stooped over the table and breathed into the lamp-chimney; the room was plunged into darkness. There followed a faint rustling of paper; the next instant he was at O'Reilly's side. Stooping, Johnnie seized him about the knees and lifted him. There was the briefest pause; then feeling a pinch upon his shoulder, O'Reilly lowered his burden noiselessly, and the two men left the room. When they were safely out in the street Branch rubbed his head and complained: "Bullets, you're strong! You nearly broke a rafter with my head. But I guess I got 'em out of sight." "THEM?" "Yes. I hid my American 'papers,' too. These Dons are sore on Yankees, you know. I'm going to be an Englishman, and you'd better follow suit. I'm the--the youngest son of the Earl of Pawtucket, and you'd better tell 'em your uncle was the Duke of Ireland, or something." XI THE HAND OF THE CAPTAIN-GENERAL On the stroke of midnight O'Reilly was arrested. After a thorough search of his person and his premises he was escorted to Government headquarters, where he found Leslie Branch. The invalid looked taller, thinner, more bloodless than ever, and his air of settled gloom admirably became the situation. "Hello, Earl. What luck?" Johnnie flashed at him. "Good!" An officer sharply commanded them to be silent. There ensued a long delay, introduced, perhaps, for its effect upon the prisoners; then they were led into a large room where, it seemed, the entire staff of the Spanish garrison was waiting. It was an imposing collection of uniforms, a row of grim faces and hostile eyes, which the two Americans beheld. Spread out upon a table in front of the officers were the personal belongings of both men. The prisoners were ordered to stand side by side, facing their accusers. Then each in turn was subjected to a rigorous examination. Owing to his acquaintance with Spanish, O'Reilly was able to defend himself without the aid of an interpreter. He began by asserting that he had come to Cuba for his health, and declared that he had endeavored at all times since his arrival to conduct himself in strict conformity with local regulations. If in any way he had offended, he had not done so intentionally, He denied having the remotest connection with the rebels, and demanded an explanation of his arrest. But his plausible words did not in the least affect his hearers. General Antuna, the comandante, a square-faced man with the airs of a courtier, but with the bold, hard eyes of a fighter, leaned forward, saying: "So you suffer from ill health, senor?" "I do, severely. Rheumatism." The general nodded. "Three days ago you were overtaken by a rain-storm while walking through the city." "Yes, sir." "When the rain had passed, you returned to your hotel. At the junction of San Rafael and Estrella streets a pool of water had gathered and you leaped it. Am I right?" "No doubt." General Antuna consulted a report before him. "That pool measured six feet four inches in width. Do you ask me to believe that a person suffering from rheumatism could do that?" Leslie Branch shifted his weight and wet his lips, but O'Reilly only shrugged impatiently. "My dear General," said he, "did you never experience a neuralgia? Well then, was the pain continuous? In this climate my affliction troubles me very little. That is why I remain here." From among the articles in front of him the general selected a solitary 44-caliber revolver cartridge and, holding it up, said: "What do you say to this?" "I don't know what to say. Where did it come from?" "It was found in the cloth pocket of your valise." O'Reilly frowned; then a light of understanding irradiated his frank countenance. "It must have lain there ever since I left Matanzas, three months ago." "Ha! Matanzas!" fiercely ejaculated a colonel. "What were you doing in Matanzas?" It was unnecessary to prevaricate now. Johnnie told of his earlier connection with the Carter Importing Company, gave names, dates, and facts to bear out his statements, and challenged his accusers to verify them. Undoubtedly some of his hearers were impressed, but they were by no means convinced of the innocence of his present purpose, and, in fact, the ferocious colonel seemed to regard past residence in Cuba as proof conclusive of a present connection with the rebels. Johnnie gathered that he was suspected of being one of those American engineers who were reported to have been engaged to instruct the enemy in the use of explosives: his inquisitors did their best to wring such an admission from him or to entrap him into the use of some technical phrase, some slip of the tongue which would verify their suspicions. They even examined his hands with minutest care, as if to find some telltale callous or chemical discoloration which would convict him. Then finally, to give him the lie absolute, the aggressive colonel seized a nickel-plated atomizer from the table and brandished it triumphantly before the young men's eyes. "Enough of this pretense!" he cried. "What is this instrument, eh?" "It is evidently an atomizer, a nasal syringe. I never saw it before." "It's mine," said Leslie Branch; but the colonel did not heed the interruption. "Ha! And pray explain its use." Johnnie undertook to do so, but it was plain that his words carried no conviction, for his mocking inquisitor gave a loud snort and gestured eloquently to his commander. "There you have it!" he declared, proudly. "This impostor betrays himself." The other officers were eying the unfamiliar article curiously; one of them ventured gingerly to handle it; they exchanged whispers. "What do you call it?" the general inquired, leaning forward. This was the colonel's moment. "I will tell you!" he said, with a sneer at O'Reilly. "I am something of a genius at mechanical inventions, and therefore I am not for a moment deceived by this fellow's common lies. This"--he paused dramatically and held his brother officers with a burning glance--"this instrument, in my opinion, was devised for the purpose of injecting fulminate of mercury into dynamite." There was a breathless hush. The Spaniards stared at the little syringe with amazement. "And how does it operate?" queried one. "It is one of those ingenious Yankee contrivances. I have never seen one quite like it, but my intelligence makes its principle plain. Evidently one inserts the tube into the dynamite, so, and presses the bulb---" There came a loud cry from General Antuna, who had bent closer; he clapped his hands to his face and staggered from his chair, for in suiting his action to his words the colonel had squeezed the bulb, with the result that a spray of salt water had squirted fairly into his superior officer's interested and attentive countenance. "My eyes! Dios mio! I am blinded for life!" shouted the unhappy general, and his subordinates looked on, frozen with consternation. The author of this calamity blanched; he was stricken dumb with horror. Some one cried: "A doctor, quickly. Jesus Cristo! Such carelessness!" "This is terrible!" another stammered. "It will explode next." There was a concerted scramble away from the table. Leslie Branch laughed--it was the first time that O'Reilly had ever heard him give audible evidence of amusement. His reedy frame was shaken as by a painful spasm; his colorless face was distorted, and from his lips issued queer, hysterical barks and chortles. "Tell 'em it's nothing but brine," he said, chokingly. When this welcome intelligence had been translated, and when the general had proved it to be true, there was a great sigh of relief, followed by a subdued titter at the colonel's expense. The latter was chagrined. Having made himself and the comandante ridiculous, he took refuge behind an assumption of somber and offended dignity. But it was plain that he still considered these Americans dangerous people, and that his suspicions were as keen as ever. The interruption served to end O'Reilly's ordeal, for the moment at least, and attention was now turned to his companion. It was evident from the first that Branch's case was hopeless. He readily acknowledged himself to be a newspaper writer, and admitted having sent articles for publication through the mails. This was quite enough; from the attitude of the military men it promised to go hard with him. But he sprung a surprise by boldly proclaiming himself an English citizen and warning his captors not to treat him with the contempt or with the severity they reserved for Americans. Curiously his words had an effect. Judgment for the moment was suspended, and the two prisoners were led away, after which another delay ensued. At last O'Reilly was recalled; but when he re-entered the big room he found General Antuna awaiting him, alone. "Permit me to apologize for the inconvenience we have put you to," the comandante began. "Then am I free?" "You are." "I thank you." The general's hard eyes gleamed. "Personally I at no time put faith in the idea that you are a powder expert," said he. "No. I had my own suspicions and I regret to say this inquiry has not in the least served to lessen them." "Indeed? May I ask of what you suspect me?" Johnnie was genuinely interested. The general spoke with force and gravity: "Mr. O'Reilly, I believe you to be a far greater menace to the interests of my country than--well, than a score of dynamite experts. I believe you are a writer." The American smiled. "Are writers such dangerous people?" "That altogether depends upon circumstances. The United States is inclined to recognize the belligerency of these Cuban rebels, and her relations with Spain are becoming daily more strained; ill-feeling grows, and all because of the exaggerations, the mendacities, that have gone forth from here to your newspapers. We are determined to put down this uprising in our own way; we will tolerate no foreign interference. War is never a pleasant thing, but you journalists have magnified its horrors and misrepresented the cause of Spain until you, threaten to bring on another and a more horrible combat. Now then, you understand what I mean when I say that you are more dangerous than a powder expert; that your pen can do more injury, can cause the death of more Spanish troops than could a regiment of Americans with dynamite. Your English friend makes no secret of his business, so we shall escort him to Neuvitas and see him safely out of the country, once for all." "And yet you permit me to remain?" Johnnie was surprised. "For the present, yes! That is my official message to you. Privately, however"--the speaker eyed O'Reilly with a disconcerting expression--"I would like to warn you. You are a bright fellow, and you have a way with you--there's no denying it. Under other conditions it would be a pleasure to know you better. It grieves me, therefore, to warn you that your further stay in Cuba will not be--pleasant. I almost regret that there is no conclusive evidence against you; it would so simplify matters. Come now, hadn't you better acknowledge that I have guessed your secret?" O'Reilly's perplexity was, changing to dismay, for it seemed to him he was being played with; nevertheless, he shook his head. "I would only be deceiving you, sir," he said. General Antuna sighed. "Then I see embarrassments ahead for both of us." "More arrests?" "Not necessarily. Understand me, I speak as one gentleman to another, but--you must have noticed that Americans are unpopular with our troops. Eh? They are impulsive, these troopers; accidents cannot be prevented. Suppose something should happen to you? There is the trouble. You came to Cuba to enjoy its climate; you cannot be expected to remain indoors. Of course not. Well! Among our soldiers are many new recruits, patriotic, enthusiastic young fellows, but--careless. They are wretchedly unproficient marksmen, and they haven't learned the dangers of promiscuous rifle fire. They are forever shooting at things, merely to score a hit. Would you believe it? Oh, I have to discipline them frequently. To think of you going abroad through the streets, therefore, worries me intensely." "Your solicitude is touching." O'Reilly bowed mockingly; but disregarding his tone, General Antuna proceeded in the same false key: "Suppose you should be found dead some day. Imagine my feelings." The speaker's tone and expression were eloquent of concern. "How could I fix the responsibility?" "By having me followed, as usual, I dare say," O'Reilly said, bitterly. "Oh, you will of course be shadowed day and night; in fact, to be quite sure of your--er--safety I shall ask you to permit one of my men to accompany you everywhere and even to share your room. We shall try never to lose sight of you, depend upon it. But these detectives are careless fellows at best; I don't trust them. Of course such precautions would exonerate me from all blame and relieve my Government from any responsibility for injury to you, but, nevertheless, it would tend to complicate relations already strained. You see I am quite honest with you." The general allowed time for his words to sink in; then he sighed once more. "I wish you could find another climate equally beneficial to your rheumatism. It would lift a great load from my mind. I could offer you the hospitality of an escort to Neuvitas, and your friend Mr. Branch is such good company he would so shorten your trip to New York!" The speaker paused hopefully; that same sardonic flicker was on his lips. Johnme could not summon an answering smile, for his heart was like lead. He realized now the utter futility of resistance; he knew that to remain in Puerto Principe after this thinly veiled warning would be to court destruction--and destruction of a shocking character against which it would be impossible to guard. Even an espionage stricter than that to which he had been subjected would utterly defeat his plans. After a moment of thought he said, gravely: "I appreciate the delicacy of your consideration, sir, and--I shall go." General Antuna leaped to his feet, his grim face alight; striding to O'Reilly, he pressed his hands--he seemed upon the point of embracing him. "I thank you!" he cried. "You render me a supreme service. See, I breathe easy. Permit me to offer you refreshment--one of our famous Spanish wines. No? Then the best cigar in all Cuba!" His expressions of gratitude were fulsome; he swore that O'Reilly had done him the greatest favor of his life, but his words were like poison to his hearer. "You embarrass me," O'Reilly told him, endeavoring to carry off his defeat with some show of grace. In his bitterness he could not refrain from adding, "If my accursed affliction returns, perhaps we shall meet again before long, either here or elsewhere." "Oh, I have little hope for such a pleasure," the general quickly replied. "But if we do meet, remember we Spaniards have a cure for rheumatism. It is unpleasant, but efficacious. A little, nickel-plated pill, that is all." General Antuna's teeth shone for an instant. "There is another remedy, not quite so immediate in its effect, but a good one. I have tried it and found it excellent. Drink plenty of cocoanut-water! That is the Cuban remedy; the other I call the Spanish cure. Cocoanuts are splendid. I shall see that a crate of the choicest fruit is placed aboard your steamer. Accept them with my compliments, and when you partake of them think of me." O'Reilly did think of General Antuna, not only when he was escorted to the railway station at daylight, but when he and Branch took their seats and their guards filed in behind them. He assured himself moodily that he would not cease to think of that sardonic old joker for a long time to come. He cursed savagely; the memory of these wasted weeks, the narrow margin of his failure, filled him with a sick feeling of dismay and impotence. His mind quailed at the consequence of this new delay. Where was Rosa now? How and when would he return? With difficulty he resisted the impulse to fling himself from the moving train; but he composed himself by the thought that Cuba was not fenced about with bayonets. He would come back. Leslie Branch broke in upon his gloomy preoccupation by asking, "How much money have you?" "Less than ten dollars." "You're rich. My landlady cleaned me. Is it the practice of beneficent monarchies to provide transportation for their departing guests?" "Undoubtedly." Branch coughed dismally. "It 'll be all right if they just buy me a ticket to the first fog. One more hemorrhage and I'll wing my way aloft. God! I'd hate to be buried at sea." "Cheer up!" O'Reilly reassured him, irritably. "There may be ice aboard." "ICE!" Leslie gasped. "Oh, bullets!" In marked contrast to the difficulties of entering Cuba was the ease of leaving it. A ship was sailing from Neuvitas on the very afternoon when the two Americans arrived, and they were hurried aboard. Not until the anchor was up did their military escort depart from them. With angry, brooding eyes O'Reilly watched the white houses along the water-front dwindle away, the mangrove swamps slip past, and the hills rise out of their purple haze. When the salt breath of the trades came to his nostrils he turned into his state-room, and, taking the crate of cocoanuts with which General Antuna had thoughtfully provided him, he bore it to the rail and dropped it overboard. "Rheumatism was a fool disease, anyhow," he muttered. "Great news!" Esteban Varona announced one day as he dismounted after a foraging trip into the Yumuri, "We met some of Lacret's men and they told us that Spain has recalled Captain-General Campos. He acknowledges himself powerless to stem the flood of Cuban revolution. What do you say to that?" "Does that mean the end of the war?" Rosa eagerly inquired. "Oh no. They have sent a new man--he's in Havana now--a dark little, old fellow who never smiles. He has a long nose and a big chin; he dresses all in black--a very 'jew-bird' in appearance, from what I hear. His name is Weyler--Valeriano Weyler, Marquis of Teneriffe." Esteban laughed tolerantly, for as yet the name of Weyler meant nothing to him. "No wonder we knew nothing about it," said the girl. "We hide like animals and we see no one for weeks at a time. I sometimes wonder how O'Reilly will manage to find us." "Oh, he'll manage it somehow," Esteban declared, cheerfully. Then he ran an approving eye over the new bohio and the new garden plot which Evangelina had courageously begun. "We're not so badly fixed, are we? At least Colonel Cobo won't find us so readily this time." "Cobo!" shuddered the girl. "I dream about him." Esteban scowled. "I've seen him at a distance several times, but he takes pains to guard himself well when he comes into the Yumuri. They say he's trying to destroy the whole valley." "He will never forget." Esteban covertly appraised his sister's charms, but respecting her terror of Cobo he did not speak his thoughts. He was certain, however, that Rosa knew, as well as he, what motive lay behind the fellow's tireless persecutions of the valley dwellers; for in spite of their isolation stories of Cobo had reached the refugees--stories that had rendered both the boy and the girl sick with apprehension. The colonel, it seemed, had nearly died of his machete wound, and on recovering he had sworn to exterminate the wasps that had stung him. He had sworn other oaths, too, oaths that robbed Esteban of his sleep. Esteban idolized his sister; her loyalty to him was the most precious thing of his life, Therefore, the thought of that swarthy ruffian hunting her down as a hound hangs to the trail of a doe awoke in him a terrible anger. Second only to his hatred for the guerrilla chief was his bitterness against the traitor, Pancho Cueto, who had capped his villainy by setting this new peril upon them; and since Rosa's safety and his own honor called for the death of both men, he had sworn that somehow he would effect it. It was, of course, a difficult matter to get at the Colonel of Volunteers, but Cueto still lived in the midst of his blackened fields, and it was against him that the boy was now planning to launch his first blow. The mention of Cobo's name had momentarily distracted Esteban's thoughts. Now he collected them and said: "Wait! I am forgetting something. See what Lacret's men handed me; they are posted from one end of the island to the other." He displayed a printed bando, or proclamation, signed by the new captain-general, and read as follows: "All inhabitants of the country districts, or those who reside outside the lines of fortifications of the towns, shall, within a period of eight days, enter the towns which are occupied by the troops. Any individual found outside the lines in the country at the expiration of this period shall be considered a rebel and shall be dealt with as such." It was that inhuman order of concentration, the result of which proved to be without parallel in military history--an order which gave its savage author the name of being the arch-fiend of a nation reputed peculiarly cruel. Neither Esteban nor Rosa, however, grasped the full significance of the proclamation; no one could have done so. No eye could have foreseen the merciless butchery of non-combatants, the starvation and death by disease of hordes of helpless men, women, and children herded into the cities. Four hundred thousand Cubans driven from their homes into shelterless prison camps; more than two hundred thousand dead from hunger and disease; a fruitful land laid bare of all that could serve as food, and changed to an ash-gray desolation; gaunt famine from Oriente to Pinar del Rio--that was the sequel to those printed words of "Weyler the Butcher" which Esteban read. "Eight days! When is the time up?" Rosa inquired. "Bless you, this is already two weeks old!" her brother told her. "Why, then, it means that we'll be shot if we're caught." "Exactly! But we sha'n't be caught, eh? Let the timid ones take fright at the squeaks of this old black-bird. Let them go into the cities: we shall have the more to eat!" Esteban crumpled the paper in his hand and dropped it. "Meanwhile I shall proceed toward my settlement with Pancho Cueto." His very careless confidence gave Rosa courage. XII WHEN THE WORLD RAN BACKWARD Esteban went about his plan of destroying Pancho Cueto with youthful energy and zest. First he secured, at some pains, a half-stick of dynamite, a cap and fuse, and a gallon or more of kerosene; then he assembled his followers and led them once again into the San Juan. This time the ride to La Joya was longer than before, and since every member of the little band was proscribed, Esteban insisted upon the greatest caution. But there was little need of especial care, for the country was already depopulated, as a result of Weyler's proclamation. Fields were empty, houses silent; no living creatures stirred, except in the tree-tops, and the very birds seemed frightened, subdued. It struck young Varona queerly. It was as if the whole land was in mourning; he saw nothing but blackbirds, somber-hued vultures, dismal Judea-birds with their ebony plumage and yellow beaks. Far up the valley a funeral pall of smoke hung in the sky itself; that was where the Spaniards were burning the houses of those too slow in obeying the order of concentration. La Joya, however, was still tenanted when early in the evening its rightful owner arrived; the house and some of its outbuildings showed lights. Esteban concealed his men. While the horses cropped and the negroes rested he fitted fuse and cap to his precious piece of dynamite. It was likely, he thought, that Cueto had provided himself with a body-guard, and knowing the plantation house as he did, he had no intention of battering weakly at its stout ironwood door while his quarry took fright and slipped away. Now while Esteban was thus busied, Pancho Cueto was entertaining an unwelcome guest. In the late afternoon he had been surprised by the visit of a dozen or more Volunteers, and inasmuch as his relations with their colonel had been none of the friendliest since that ill-starred expedition into the Yumuri, he had felt a chill of apprehension on seeing the redoubtable Cobo himself at their head. The colonel had explained that he was returning from a trip up the San Juan, taken for the purpose of rounding up those inhabitants who had been dilatory in obeying the new orders from Havana. That smoke to the southward was from fires of his kindling: he had burned a good many crops and houses and punished a good many people, and since this was exactly the sort of task he liked he was in no unpleasant mood. He had demanded of Cueto lodging for himself and his troop, announcing that a part of his command was somewhere behind and would rejoin him later in the night. Cueto had welcomed his visitor in all humility; he put up the soldiers in the bate of the sugar-mill, and then installed Cobo in his best room, after which he ransacked the house for food and drink and tobacco. Later he and the colonel sat long over their supper, for the latter's exultant humor continued. Cobo, it transpired, was delighted with the new captain-general, a man of blood and iron, a man after his own heart. This Weyler, he predicted, would put an end to the insurrection; there would be no more of Campos's weak, merciful methods, which were, in reality, nothing less than encouragement to revolt. Cueto, of course, agreed. "We're sweeping the country as with a broom, and already Matanzas is bulging with refugees," the officer told him. "They call themselves pacificos, but they carry information and aid our enemies. We'll have no more of that." "Will it not be a great expense to feed so many people?" Cueto ventured. "Let them feed themselves. Is it our fault that they make such measures necessary? By no means. Once we have them safe, we shall exterminate all whom we encounter in the country." The speaker drank deeply of Cueto's good wine and smacked his lips. "It's the kind of work I like. Extermination! They have had their warning. From now on we shall spare neither man, woman, nor child. The men are traitors, the women breed, and the children grow up." Cueto nodded his complete approval of this program. "Oh, decidedly," said he. "This spirit of violence must be stamped out or none of us will be safe. Let me tell you I myself live in constant dread of that young villain, Varona. I--hope you haven't forgotten him." "Forgotten him?" Colonel Cobo fingered a lately healed scar which further disfigured his ugly face, then he cursed frightfully. "It's by God's mercy alone that I'm alive to-night. And I haven't forgotten the girl, either. She'll have to come in, along with the others. The boy may stay out, but she can't." He licked his lips. "Wait until I have finished with this valley. I'll drive the Yumuri next, as a hunter drives a thicket for his game, and nothing will slip through." His thoughts once turned upon Rosa, the colonel could talk of little else, and Cueto realized that the girl had indeed made a deep impression upon him. The overseer was well pleased, and when Cobo finally took himself off to bed he followed in better spirits than he had enjoyed for some time. For one thing, it was agreeable to look forward to a night of undisturbed repose. Pancho's apprehensions had fattened upon themselves, and he had been living of late in a nightmare of terror. But it seemed to him that he had barely closed his eyes when he was awakened by a tremendous vibration and found himself in the center of the floor, undecided whether he had been hurled from his bed or whether he had leaped thither. Still in a daze, he heard a shout from the direction of Cobo's room, then a din of other voices, followed by a rush of feet; the next instant his door was flung back and he saw, by the light of high-held torches, Esteban Varona and a ragged rabble of black men. Cueto knew that he faced death. He uttered a shrill scream of terror, and, seizing the revolver which was always close at his hand, he fired blindly. Then his foes were upon him. What happened thereafter took but an instant. He dodged a blow from Esteban's clubbed rifle only to behold the flash of a machete. Crying out again, he tried to guard himself from the descending blade, but too late; the sound of his hoarse terror died in his throat, half born. "Quick! Soak the bed with oil and fire it," Esteban directed; then he ran out into the hall to investigate that other shouting. He found the chamber whence it issued and tried to smash the door; but at the second blow he heard a gun-shot from within and the wood splintered outward almost into his face. Simultaneously, from somewhere outside the house, arose the notes of a Spanish bugle-call. Young Varona waited to hear no more. Nor did his men; realizing the peril into which they had been led, they bolted from the house as fast as they could go. There was no need for questions; from the direction of the sugar-mill came bellowed orders and the sound of men shouting to their horses. Evidently those were troops--and trained troops, too, for they took no time to saddle; they were up and mounted almost before the marauders had gained the backs of their own animals. There was no opportunity to choose a retreat across the fields; Esteban spurred down the driveway toward the main calzada, yelling to his men to follow him. The approach to La Joya was by way of a notable avenue, perhaps a half-mile in length, and bordered by tall, even rows of royal palms. These stately trees shaded the avenue by day and lent it a cavern-like gloom by night. Near the public causeway the road was cut through a bit of rising ground, and was walled by steep banks overgrown with vines. Into the black tunnel formed by the palms the fugitives plunged, with the clatter of hoofs close behind them. Those of the Volunteers who pressed them hardest began to shoot wildly, for this typically Cuban refusal to stand ground enraged them beyond measure. Esteban's party would doubtless have made good their escape had it not been for that other guerrillero returning from its raid; but, as it happened, the two forces met in the sunken road. Nothing but the darkness and the head-long approach of the fleeing men saved them from immediate destruction, for the collision occurred between banks too steep for a horse to climb, and with that yelling pack too close behind to permit of retreat. Instantly there began a blind battle in these desperately cramped quarters. After the first moment or two friend and foe were indistinguishable and the men of both parties began firing or thrusting at whatever loomed nearest out of the gloom. The narrow ravine quickly became a place of utter confusion, a volcano of blasphemies, a press of jostling, plunging, struggling bodies. Horses reared and bit at one another. Riders fought stirrup to stirrup with clubbed rifles and machetes; saddles were emptied and the terrified horses bolted. Some of them lunged up the banks, only to tumble down again, their threshing limbs and sharp-shod hoofs working more havoc than blows from old-time battle-hammers. Meanwhile those of Cobo's men who had ridden out from the sugar-mill naturally attributed this new uproar to a stand of their enemies, and began to rake the road with rifle fire; then, in obedience to the commands of their half-clad colonel, they charged. A moment and they were fighting hand to hand with their returning comrades. Spaniard clashed with Spaniard, and somewhere in the melee the six marauders battled for their lives. Of course, after the first moment of conflict, Esteban had not been able to exert the least control over his men; in fact, he could not make himself heard. Nor could he spare the breath to shout; he was too desperately engaged. When the full truth of the situation dawned upon him he gave up hope for his life and at first merely strove to wreak such havoc as he could. Yet while some of his faculties were completely numbed in the stress of that white-hot moment, others remained singularly clear. The shock of his surprise, the imminence of his peril, rendered him dead to any emotion save dismay, and yet, strangely enough, he remembered Rosa's pressing need for him and, more for her sake than for his own, fought to extricate himself from the confusion. His rifle was empty, he had its hot barrel in his hands; he dimly distinguished Asensio wielding his machete. Then he found himself down and half stunned. He was running here and there to avoid lunging horses; he was tripping and falling, but meanwhile, as opportunity offered, he continued to use his clubbed weapon. Something smote him heavily, at last--whether a hoof or a gun-stock he could not tell--and next he was on all-fours, trying to drag himself out of this rat-pit. But his limbs were queerly rebellious, and he was sick; he had never experienced anything quite like this and he thought he must be wounded. It greatly surprised him to find that he could struggle upward through the brambles, even though it was hard work. Men were fighting all around and below him, meanwhile, and he wondered vaguely what made them kill one another when he and his negroes were all dead or dying. It seemed very strange--of a piece with the general unreality of things--and it troubled him not a little. At last he gained the top of the bank and managed to assume an upright position, clinging to the bole of a palm-tree. One of his arms was useless, he discovered, and he realized with a curious shock that it was broken. He was bleeding, too, from more than one wound, but he could walk, after a fashion. He was inclined to stay and finish the fight, but he recollected that Rosa would be waiting for him and that he must go to her, and so he set out across the fields, staggering through the charred cane stubble. The night was not so black as it had been, and this puzzled him until he saw that the plantation house was ablaze. Flames were belching from its windows, casting abroad a lurid radiance; and remembering Pancho Cueto, Esteban laughed. By and by, after he was well away, his numbness passed and he began to suffer excruciating pain. The pain had been there all the time, so it seemed; he was simply gaining the capacity to feel it. He was ready to die now, he was so ill; moreover, his left arm dangled and got in his way. Only that subconscious realization of the necessity to keep going for Rosa's sake sustained him. After a while he found himself on a forest trail; then he came to other fields and labored across them. Fortune finally led his feet down into a creek-bed, and he drank greedily, sitting upon a stone and scooping the water up in his one useful hand. He was a long time in quenching his thirst, and a longer time in getting up, but he finally managed this, and he succeeded thereafter in keeping on his feet. Daylight came at last to show him his way. More than once he paused, alarmed, at voices in the woods, only to find that the sounds issued from his own throat. It had grown very hot now, so hot that heat-waves obscured his vision and caused the most absurd forms to take shape. He began to hunt aimlessly for water, but there was none. Evidently this heat had parched the land, dried up the streams, and set the stones afire. It was incredible, but true. Esteban reasoned that he must be near home by this time, for he had been traveling for days--for years. The country, indeed, was altogether unfamiliar; he could not recall ever having seen the path he trod, but for that matter everything was strange. In the first place he knew that he was going west, and yet the morning sun persisted in beating hotly into his face! That alone convinced him that things had gone awry with the world. He could remember a great convulsion of some sort, but just what it was he had no clear idea! Evidently, though, it had been sufficient to change the rotation of the earth. Yes, that was it; the earth was running backward upon its axis; he could actually feel it whirling under his feet. No wonder his journey seemed so long. He was laboring over a gigantic treadmill, balancing like an equilibrist upon a revolving sphere. Well, it was a simple matter to stop walking, sit down, and allow himself to be spun backward around to the place where Rosa was waiting. He pondered this idea for some time, until its absurdity became apparent. Undoubtedly he must be going out of his head; he saw that it was necessary to keep walking until the back-spin of that treadmill brought Rosa to him. But the time came when he could walk no farther. He tried repeatedly and failed, and meanwhile the earth spun even more rapidly, threatening to whirl him off into space. It was a terrible sensation; he lay down and hugged the ground, clinging to roots and sobbing weakly. Rosa, he knew, was just around the next bend in the trail; he called to her, but she did not answer, and he dared not attempt to creep forward because his grip was failing. He could feel his fingers slipping--slipping. It was agony. He summoned his last atom of determination, but to no avail. He gave up finally, and felt himself propelled dizzily outward into immeasurable voids. His last thought, as he went whirling end over end through space, was of his sister. She would never know how hard he had tried to reach her. XIII CAPITULATION Late on the second day after the battle Asensio returned to his bohio. Rosa and Evangelina, already frantic at the delay, heard him crying to them while he was still hidden in the woods, and knew that the worst had happened. There was little need for him to tell his story, for he was weaponless, stained, and bloody. He had crossed the hills on foot after a miraculous escape from that ravine of death. Of his companions he knew nothing whatever; the mention of Esteban's name caused him to beat his breast and cry aloud. He was weak and feverish, and his incoherent story of the midnight encounter was so highly colored that Rosa nearly swooned with horror. The girl stood swaying while he told how the night had betrayed them, how he had wrought incredible feats of valor before the shifting tide of battle had spewed him out the end of the sunken road and left him half dead in the grass. Asensio had lain there until, finding himself growing stronger, he had burrowed into a tangle of vines at the foot of a wall, where he had remained until the fighting ceased. When the Spaniards had finally discovered their mistake and had ceased riding one another down, when lights came and he heard Colonel Cobo cursing them like one insane, he had wriggled away, crossed the calzada, and hidden in the woods until dawn. He had been walking ever since; he had come home to die. Rosa heard only parts of the story, for her mind was numbed, her heart frozen. Her emotion was too deep for tears, it paralyzed her for the time being; she merely stood staring, her dark eyes glazed, her ashen lips apart. Finally something snapped, and she knew nothing more until hours afterward, when she found herself upon her comfortless bed with Evangelina bending over her. All night she had lain inert, in a merciful stupor; it was not until the next morning that she gradually came out of her coma. Then it was that the negress was really alarmed, fearing that if the girl did rally her mind would be affected. But Rosa was young and, despite her fragility of form, she was strong--too strong, it seemed to her, and possessed of too deep a capacity for suffering. How she ever survived those next few days, days when she prayed hourly to die, was a mystery. And when she found that she could at last shed tears, what agony! The bond between her and Esteban had been stronger than usually exists between sister and brother; he had been her other self; in him she had centered her love, her pride, her ambition. The two had never quarreled; no angry word had ever passed between them: their mutual understanding, moreover, had been almost more than human, and where the one was concerned the other had been utterly unselfish. To lose Esteban, therefore, split the girl's soul and heart asunder; she felt that she could not stand without him. Born into the world at the same hour, welded into unity by their mother's supreme pain, the boy and girl were of the same flesh and spirit; they were animated by the same life-current. Never had the one been ill but that the other had suffered corresponding symptoms; never had the one been sad or gay but that the other had felt a like reaction. Personalities so closely knit together are not uncommon, and to sever them is often dangerous. Into Rosa's life, however, there had come one interest which she could not share with her twin--that was her love for O'Reilly. Spanish-reared women, as a rule, do not play with love; when it comes they welcome it, even though it be that first infatuation so often scorned by older, colder people. So it was with Rosa Varona. Whatever might have been the true nature of her first feeling for the Irish-American, suffering and meditation had deepened and strengthened it into a mature and genuine passion. As the wise men of old found wisdom in cave or desert, so Rosa in her solitude had learned the truth about herself. Now, in the hour of her extremity, thoughts of O'Reilly acted as a potent medicine. Her hungry yearning for him and her faith in his coming stimulated her desire to live, and so aided her recovery. The day arrived when her brain was normal and when she could creep about the hut. But she was only the ghost of the girl she had been; she seldom spoke, and she never smiled. She sat for hours staring out into the sunshine, and when she found tears upon her cheeks she was surprised, for it seemed to her that she must long ago have shed the very last. Asensio, likewise recovered, but he, too, was sadly changed. There was no longer any martial spirit in him; he feared the Spaniards, and tales of their atrocities cowed him. Then Cobo came into the Yumuri. The valley, already well-nigh deserted, was filled to the brim with smoke from burning fields and houses, and through it the sun showed like a copper shield. Refugees passed the bohio, bound farther into the hills, and Asensio told the two women that he and they must also go. So the three gathered up what few things they could carry on their backs and fled. They did not stop until they had gained the fastnesses of the Pan de Matanzas. Here they built a shelter and again took up the problem of living, which was now more difficult than ever. Asensio would not have been greatly inconvenienced by the change had he been alone, for certain fruits grew wild in the forests, and the earth, where the Spaniards had not trod, was full of roots upon which a creature of his primitive habits could have managed to live. But hampered as he was by two women, one of whom was as delicate as a flower, Asensio found his task extremely difficult. And it grew daily more difficult; for there were other people here in the woods, and, moreover, the country round about was being steadily scoured by the enemy, who had orders to destroy every living, growing thing that was capable of sustaining human life. Stock was butchered and left to rot, trees were cut down, root-fields burned. Weyler's policy of frightfulness was in full sway, and starvation was driving its reluctant victims into his net. Meanwhile roving bands of guerrillas searched out and killed the stronger and the more tenacious families. The Pan de Matanzas, so called because of its resemblance to a mighty loaf of bread, became a mockery to the hungry people cowering in its shelter. Bread! Rosa Varona could not remember when she had last tasted such a luxury. Raw cane, cocoanuts, the tasteless fruita bomba, roots, the pith from palm tops, these were her articles of diet, and she did not thrive upon them. She was always more or less hungry. She was ragged, too, and she shivered miserably through the long, chill nights. Rosa could measure the change in her appearance only by studying her reflection from the surface of the spring where she drew water, but she could see that she had become very thin, and she judged that the color had entirely gone from her cheeks. It saddened her, for O'Reilly's sake. Time came when Asensio spoke of giving up the struggle and going in. They were gradually starving, he said, and Rosa was ill; the risk of discovery was ever present. It was better to go while they had the strength than slowly but surely to perish here. He had heard that there were twenty thousand reconcentrados in Matanzas; in such a crowd they could easily manage to hide themselves; they would at least be fed along with the others. No one had told Asensio that the Government was leaving its prisoners to shift for themselves, supplying them with not a pound of food nor a square inch of shelter. Evangelina at first demurred to this idea, declaring that Rosa would never be allowed to reach the city, since the roads were patrolled by lawless bands of troops. Nevertheless her husband continued to argue. Rosa herself took no part in the discussion, for it did not greatly matter to her whether she stayed or went. Misery bred desperation at last; Evangelina's courage failed her, and she allowed herself to be won over. She began her preparations by disguising Rosa. Gathering herbs and berries, she made a stain with which she colored the girl's face and body, then she sewed a bundle of leaves into the back of Rosa's waist so that when the latter stooped her shoulders and walked with a stick her appearance of deformity was complete. On the night before their departure Rosa Varona prayed long and earnestly, asking little for herself, but much for the two black people who had suffered so much for her. She prayed also that O'Reilly would come before it was too late. XIV A WOMAN WITH A MISSION Within a few hours after O'Reilly's return to New York he telephoned to Felipe Alvarado, explaining briefly the disastrous failure of his Cuban trip. "I feared as much," the doctor told him. "You were lucky to escape with your life." "Well, I'm going back." "Of course; but have you made any plans?" "Not yet. I dare say I'll have to join some filibustering outfit. Won't you intercede for me with the Junta? They're constantly sending parties." "Um-m! not quite so often as that." Alvarado was silent for a moment; then he said: "Dine with me to-night and we'll talk it over. I'm eager for news of my brothers and--there is some one I wish you to meet. She is interested in our cause." "'She'? A woman?" "Yes, and an unusual woman. She has contributed liberally to our cause. I would like you to meet her." "Very well; but I've only one suit of clothes, and it looks as if I'd slept in it." "Oh, bother the clothes!" laughed the physician. "I've given most of mine to my destitute countrymen. Don't expect too much to eat, either; every extra dollar, you know, goes the same way as my extra trousers. It will be a sort of patriotic 'poverty party.' Come at seven, please." "Dining out, eh? Lucky devil!" said Leslie Branch when he had learned of his companion's invitation. "And to meet a philanthropic old lady! Gee! Maybe she'll offer to adopt you. Who knows?" "I wish you'd offer to lend me a clean shirt." "I'll do it," readily agreed the other. "I'll stake you to my last one. But keep it clean! Have a care for the cuffs--a little inadvertency with the soup may ruin my prospects for a job. You understand, don't you, that our next meal after this one may depend upon this shirt's prosperous appearance?" Branch dove into his bag and emerged with a stiffly laundered shirt done up in a Cuban newspaper. He unwrapped the garment and gazed fondly upon it, murmuring, "'Tis a pretty thing, is it not?" His exertions had brought on a violent coughing-spell, which left him weak and gasping; but when he had regained his breath he went on in the same key: "Again I solemnly warn you that this spotless bosom is our bulwark against poverty. One stain may cut down my space rates; editors are an infernally fastidious lot. Fortunately they want facts about the war in Cuba, and I'm full of 'em: I've fought in the trenches and heard the song of grape and canister--" "Grape-fruit and canned goods, you mean," O'Reilly grinned. "Well, I shall write with both in mind. The hope of one will stir memories of the other. And who is there to dispute me? At least I know what a battle should be like, and I shall thrill my readers with imaginary combats." O'Reilly eyed the speaker with appreciation. On the way north he had learned to know Leslie Branch and to like him, for he had discovered that the man possessed a rare and pleasing peculiarity of disposition. Ordinarily Branch was bitter, irritable, pessimistic; but when his luck was worst and his fortunes lowest he brightened up. It seemed that he reacted naturally, automatically, against misfortune. Certainly his and O'Reilly's plight upon leaving Cuba had been sufficiently unpleasant, for they were almost penniless, and the invalid, moreover, knew that he was facing a probably fatal climate; nevertheless, once they were at sea, he had ceased his grumbling, and had surprised his traveling-companion by assuming a genuinely cheerful mien. Even yet O'Reilly was not over his amazement; he could not make up his mind whether the man was animated by desperate courage or merely by hopeless resignation. But whatever the truth, the effect of this typical perversity had been most agreeable. And when Leslie cheerfully volunteered to share the proceeds of his newspaper work during their stay in New York, thus enabling his friend to seize the first chance of returning to Cuba, Johnnie's affection for him was cemented. But Branch's very cheerfulness worried him; it seemed to betoken that the fellow was sicker than he would confess. That evening O'Reilly anticipated his dinner engagement by a few moments in order to have a word alone with Alvarado. "I've seen Enriquez," he told the doctor, "but he won't promise to send me through. He says the Junta is besieged by fellows who want to fight for Cuba--and of course I don't. When I appealed in Rosa's name he told me, truthfully enough, I dare say, that there are thousands of Cuban women as badly in need of succor as she. He says this is no time for private considerations." "Quite so!" the doctor agreed. "We hear frightful stories about this new concentration policy. I--can't believe them." "Oh, I guess they are true; it is the more reason why I must get back at once," O'Reilly said, earnestly. "This lady who is coming here to-night has influence with Enriquez. You remember I told you that she has contributed liberally. She might help you." "I'll implore her to put in a word for me. Who is she?" "Well, she's my pet nurse--" "A nurse!" O'Reilly's eyes opened wide. "A nurse, with MONEY! I didn't know there was such a thing." "Neither did I. They're rarer even than rich doctors," Alvarado acknowledged. "But, you see, nursing is merely Miss Evans's avocation. She's one of the few wealthy women I know who have real ideals, and live up to them." "Oh, she has a 'mission'!" Johnnie's interest in Doctor Alvarado's other guest suddenly fell away, and his tone indicated as much. As the doctor was about to reply the ringing of the door-bell summoned him away. O'Reilly had met women with ideals, with purposes, with avocations, and his opinion of them was low. Women who had "missions" were always tiresome, he had discovered. This one, it appeared, was unusual only in that she had adopted a particularly exacting form of charitable work. Nursing, even as a rich woman's diversion, must be anything but agreeable. O'Reilly pictured this Evans person in his mind--a large, plain, elderly creature, obsessed with impractical ideas of uplifting the masses! She would undoubtedly bore him stiff with stories of her work: she would reproach him with neglect of his duties to the suffering. Johnnie was too poor to be charitable and too deeply engrossed at the moment with his own troubles to care anything whatever about the "masses." And she was a "miss." That meant that she wore thick glasses and probably kept cats. A ringing laugh from the cramped hallway interrupted these reflections; then a moment later Doctor Alvarado was introducing O'Reilly to a young woman so completely out of the picture, so utterly the opposite of his preconceived notions, that he was momentarily at a loss. Johnnie found himself looking into a pair of frank gray eyes, and felt his hand seized by a firm, almost masculine grasp. Miss Evans, according to his first dazzling impression, was about the most fetching creature he had ever seen and about the last person by whom any young man could be bored. If she kept cats they must be pedigreed Persian cats, and well worth keeping, Johnnie decided. The girl--and she was a girl--had brought into the room an electric vitality, a breeziness hard to describe. Her eyes were humorous and intelligent; her teeth, which she seemed always ready to show in a friendly, generous smile, were strong and white and sparkling. Altogether she was such a vision of healthy, unaffected, and smartly gotten-up young womanhood that O'Reilly could only stammer his acknowledgment of the introduction, inwardly berating himself for his awkwardness. He was aware of Alvarado's amusement, and this added to his embarrassment. "The doctor has told me all about you." Miss Evans addressed Johnnie over her shoulder as she laid off her furs and a stylish little turban hat. "I'm dying to hear what happened on your trip." "So am I," confessed Alvarado. "You know, Mr. O'Reilly has seen my brothers." "You men must go right ahead and talk as if I weren't here. I won't interrupt, except with a few vivas or carambas or--What are some other lady-like Spanish exclamations?" "There aren't very many," Johnnie acknowledged. "I always try to swear in English." Alvarado placed an affectionate hand upon Miss Evans's shoulder. "O'Reilly, this girl has done more for Cuba than any of us. She has spent a small fortune for medical supplies," said he. "Those poor men must live on quinine," the girl exclaimed. "Any one who can bear to take the stuff ought to have all he wants. I've a perfect passion for giving pills." "Oh, you may joke about it. All the same, if others would make the same sacrifice--" Miss Evans interrupted breezily: "It wasn't any sacrifice at all. That's the worst of it. The salve I bought was really for my conscience, if you must know. I squander altogether too much on myself." Then, turning to O'Reilly, "I love extravagance, don't you?" "Dearly! It's my one unconquerable vice," he told her. He thought grimly of the four dollars in his pocket which represented his and Leslie Branch's total wealth, but it seemed to him that he was called upon to agree with anything Miss Evans might choose to say. O'Reilly liked this girl. He had liked her the instant she favored him with her friendly smile, and so, trusting fatuously to his masculine powers of observation, he tried to analyze her. He could not guess her age, for an expensive ladies' tailor can baffle the most discriminating eye. Certainly, however, she was not too old--he had an idea that she would tell him her exact age if he asked her. While he could not call her beautiful, she was something immensely better--she was alive, human, interesting, and interested. The fact that she did not take her "mission" over-seriously proved that she was also sensible beyond most women. Yes, that was it, Norine Evans was a perfectly sensible, unspoiled young person, who showed the admirable effects of clean living and clean thinking coupled with a normal, sturdy constitution. O'Reilly told himself that here was a girl who could pour tea, nurse a sick man, or throw a baseball. And she was as good as her promise. She did not interrupt when, during dinner, Alvarado led Johnnie to talk about his latest experience in Cuba, but, on the contrary, her unflagging interest induced O'Reilly to address his talk more often to her than to the doctor. He soon discovered that she understood the Cuban situation as well as or better than he, and that her sympathies were keen. When she did speak it was to ask intelligent questions, some of which, by the way, it taxed O'Reilly's wits to answer satisfactorily. Heretofore, Johnnie had looked upon the war primarily as an unfortunate condition of affairs which had played the mischief with his own personal fortunes; he had not allowed himself to be very deeply affected by the rights or the wrongs of either party. But Norine Evans took a much deeper and broader view of the matter. She was genuinely moved by the gallant struggle of the Cuban people, and when the dinner was over she exploded a surprise which left both men speechless. "This settles it with me," she announced. "I'm going down there." Alvarado stared at her for a moment. "My dear--" he began. But she warned him: "Don't argue with me. You know I detest arguments. I've been thinking about it for some time, and--" "It is quite impossible," the doctor declared, firmly; and O'Reilly agreed. "Of course you could go to Havana," said the latter, "but you wouldn't be allowed to see anything." "I'm going right to the Insurrectos with you." "WITH ME!" O'Reilly could not conceal his lack of enthusiasm. "I don't know that the Junta will take me." "They will if I ask them." Alvarado inquired, "What ever put such a ridiculous idea into your head?" The girl laughed. "It's the only kind of ideas I have. But there are ten thousand reasons why I want to go. In the first place, I fairly itch to give pills. You say the rebels have no hospitals, no nurses--" "We do the best we can, with our equipment." "Well, I'll supply better equipment, and I'll handle it myself. I'm in earnest. You sha'n't stop me." O'Reilly was uncomfortably aware of the speaker's determination; protests had no effect upon her; her clear cheeks had flushed, her eyes were dancing. Evidently here was a girl who did very much as she chose. "You don't realize what you are saying," he told her, gravely. "You'd have to go as a filibuster, on some decrepit, unseaworthy freighter loaded to the guards and crowded with men of all sorts. It's dangerous business, running the Spanish blockade. If captured you would be treated just like the rest of us." "Lovely! We'd land in small boats some dark night. Maybe we'd have a fight!" "And if you got through, what then? Life in a bark hut, with nothing to eat. Bugs! Snakes! Hardships!" "That decides me. I eat too much--Doctor Alvarado tells me I do. I adore huts, and I don't seriously object to insects." The physician stirred uneasily. "It's utterly absurd," he expostulated. "Some women might do it, but you're not the sort. You are--pardon me--a most attractive young person. You'd be thrown among rough men." "Mr. O'Reilly will look out for me. But for that matter I can take care of myself. Oh, it's of no use trying to discourage me. I always have my own way; I'm completely spoiled." "Your family will never consent," O'Reilly ventured; whereupon Miss Evans laughed. "I haven't such a thing. I'm alone and unencumbered. No girl was ever so fortunate. But wait--I'll settle this whole thing in a minute." She quitted the table, ran to Alvarado's telephone, and called a number. "She's after Enriquez," groaned the physician. "He's weak; he can't refuse her anything." "I don't want a woman on my hands," O'Reilly whispered, fiercely. "Suppose she got sick? Good Lord! I'd have to NURSE her." He wiped a sudden moisture from his brow. "Oh, she won't get sick. She'll probably nurse you--and--and all the other men. You'll like it, too, and you will all fall in love with her--everybody does--and start fighting among yourselves. There! She has Enriquez. Listen." Johnnie shivered apprehensively at the directness with which Miss Evans put her request. "You understand, I want to go and see for myself," she was saying. "If you need medicines I'll give them--bushels of the nastiest stuff I can buy. I'll organize a field hospital. ... Oh, very well, call it a bribe, if you like. Anyhow, I've fully determined to go, and Mr. O'Reilly has volunteered to take care of me. He's charmed with the idea." Miss Evans giggled. "That means you'll have to take him along, too." There followed a pause during which the two men exchanged dismayed glances. "She doesn't seem to care what she says," O'Reilly murmured. "But--I'll put a flea in Enriquez's ear." "Put it in writing, please." There was another wait. "Now read it to me. ... Good!" Miss Evans fairly purred over the telephone. "Send it to me by messenger right away; that's a dear. I'm at Doctor Alvarado's house, and he's beside himself with joy. Thanks, awfully. You're so nice." A moment, and she was back in the dining-room facing her two friends--a picture of triumph. "You have nothing more to say about it," she gloated. "'The Provisional Government of Cuba, through its New York representatives, extends to Miss Norine Evans an invitation to visit its temporary headquarters in the Sierra de--something-or-other, and deems it an honor to have her as its guest so long as she wishes to remain there. It requests that all military and civil officers afford her every safety and convenience within their power.' That's practically what Mr. Enriquez read to me. In fifteen minutes it will be here in black and white. Now then, let's celebrate." She executed a dance step, pirouetted around the room, then plumped herself down into her chair. She rattled her cup and saucer noisily, crying, "Fill them up, Doctor Gloom. Let's drink to Cuba Libre." Johnnie managed to smile as he raised his demi-tasse. "Here's to my success as a chaperon," said he. "I'm disliked by the Spaniards, and now the Cubans will hate me. I can see happy days ahead." XV FILIBUSTERS Leslie Branch was asleep when O'Reilly returned to their room, but he awoke sufficiently to listen to the latter's breathless account of the dinner-party. "I'm rattled," Johnnie confessed. "Why, that girl just bounced right into the middle of everything, and--and I can't bounce her out again." "You say she's young, and PRETTY, and--RICH?" Leslie was incredulous. "Y-yes! All of that." "Um-m! Doctor Alvarado must mix a good cocktail." "Why?" "Because you're drunk and delirious. They don't come that way, my boy. When they're rich they're old and ugly." "I tell you this girl is young and--stunning." "Of course she is," Branch agreed, soothingly. "Now go to sleep and don't think any more about her, there's a good boy! Everything will be all right in the morning. Perhaps it never happened; perhaps you didn't meet any woman at all." The speaker yawned and turned over. "Don't be an ass," Johnnie cried, impatiently. "What are we going to do with a woman on our hands?" "WE? Don't divide her with me. What are YOU going to do? The truth is plain, this Miss Evans is in love with you and you don't know it. She sees in you her soul mate. Well, if you don't want her, I want her. I'll eat her medicine. I'll even--marry the poor old soul, if she's rich." O'Reilly arose early the next morning and hurried down to the office of the Junta, hoping that he could convince Mr. Enriquez of the folly of allowing Norine Evans to have her way. By the light of day Miss Evans's project seemed more hare-brained than ever, and he suspected that Enriquez had acquiesced in it only because of a natural inability to refuse anything to a pretty woman--that was typically Cuban. But his respect for Miss Evans's energy and initiative deepened when, on arriving at 56 New Street, he discovered that she had forestalled him and was even then closeted with the man he had come to see. Johnnie waited uneasily; he was dismayed when the girl finally appeared, with Enriquez in tow, for the man's face was radiant. "It's all settled," she announced, at sight of O'Reilly. "I've speeded them up." "You're an early riser," the latter remarked. "I hardly expected--" Enriquez broke in. "Such enthusiasm! Such ardor! She whirls a person off his feet." "It seems that the Junta lacks money for another expedition, so I've made up the deficit. We'll be off in a week." "Really? Then you're actually--going?" "Of course." "It was like a gift from Heaven," Enriquez cried. "Our last embarrassment is removed, and--" But Johnnie interrupted him. "You're crazy, both of you," he declared, irritably. "Cuba is no place for an American girl. I'm not thinking so much about the danger of capture on the way down as the hardship after she gets there and the fact that she will be thrown among all sorts of men." The elder man lifted his head. "Every Cuban will know who Miss Evans is, and what she has done for our cause. You do not seem to have a high regard for our chivalry, sir." "There!" Norine was triumphant. "There is bound to be some danger, of course," Enriquez continued, "for the coast is well patrolled; but once the expedition is landed, Miss Evans will be among friends. She will be as safe in our camps as if she were in her own home." "Don't be hateful, and argumentative, or I'll begin to think you're a born chaperon," Miss Evans exclaimed. "Come! Make up your mind to endure me. And now you're going to help me buy my tropical outfit." With a smile and a nod at Enriquez she took O'Reilly's arm and bore him away. In spite of his panic-struck protestations that he knew less than nothing about woman's requirements, she led him up-town. And she kept him at her side all that morning while she made her purchases; then when she had loaded him down with parcels she invited him to take her to lunch. The girl was so keenly alive and so delighted with the prospect of adventure that Johnnie could not long remain displeased with her. She had an irresistible way about her, and he soon found himself sharing her good spirits. She had a healthy appetite, too; when O'Reilly set out for his lodgings after escorting her home he walked in order to save car fare. Clams, consomme, chicken salad, French pastry, and other extravagances had reduced his capital to zero. The days of idle waiting that followed were trying, even to one of O'Reilly's philosophic habit of mind. He could learn nothing about the Junta's plans, and, owing to his complete uncertainty, he was unable to get work. Leslie Branch, too, failed to find steady employment, though he managed, by the sale of an occasional column, to keep them both from actual suffering. His cough, meanwhile, grew worse day by day, for the spring was late and raw. As a result his spirits rose, and he became the best of all possible good companions. Johnnie, who was becoming constantly more fond of him, felt his anxiety increase in proportion to this improvement in mood; it seemed to him that Branch was on the very verge of a collapse. At last there came a message which brought them great joy. Enriquez directed them to be in readiness to leave Jersey City at seven o'clock the following morning. Neither man slept much that night. As they waited in the huge, barn-like station Enriquez appeared with Norine Evans upon his arm. The girl's color was high; she was tremulous with excitement. Leslie Branch, who saw her for the first time, emitted a low whistle of surprise. "Glory be! That goddess!" he cried. "And I called her a 'poor old soul'!" When Norine took his bony, bloodless hand in her warm grasp and flashed him her frank, friendly smile, he capitulated instantly. In hyperbolical terms he strove to voice his pleasure at the meeting; but he lost the thread of his thought and floundered so hopelessly among his words that Norine said, laughingly: "Now, Mr. Branch, bold buccaneers don't make pretty speeches. Hitch up your belt and say, 'Hello, Norine!' I'll call you Leslie." "Don't call me 'Leslie,'" he begged. "Call me often." Then he beamed upon the others, as if this medieval pun were both startling and original. It was plain that he wholly and inanely approved of Norine Evans. Enriquez was introducing a new-comer now, one Major Ramos, a square-jawed, forceful Cuban, who, it seemed, was to be in command of the expedition. "My duties end here," Enriquez explained. "Major Ramos will take charge of you, and you must do exactly as he directs. Ask no questions, for he won't answer them. Do you think you can follow instructions?" "Certainly not. I sha'n't even try," Norine told him. "I'm fairly bursting with curiosity at this moment." "Remember, Ramos, not a word." "I promise," smiled the major. "Good-by and good luck." Enriquez shook hands all around; then he bowed and kissed Miss Evans's fingers. "I shall pray that you escape all danger, senorita, and I shall see that Cuba remembers her debt to you." When he had gone the three Americans followed their new guide through the iron gates. Major Ramos proved that he knew how to obey orders even though the other members of his party did not. He remained utterly deaf to Miss Evans's entreaties that he let her know something about the plans of the expedition; he would not even tell her where he was taking her, where the other filibusters had assembled, or from what port their ship would sail. He did go so far, however, as to explain that an inkling of the Junta's plans had leaked out, and that determined efforts to upset them were being made, efforts which necessitated the greatest care on his part. This, of course, whetted the girl's curiosity; but to her most artful queries he opposed a baffling silence. When Philadelphia, Washington, then Baltimore, and finally Richmond were left behind, Miss Evans was, in truth, ready to explode, and her two companions were in a similar frame of mind. Major Ramos was not naturally a silent man; he had all the loquacity of the Latin, and all the Latin's appreciation of a pretty woman; he made no secret of the fact that his orders irked him. Despite his official reserve he proved himself a pleasant traveling-companion, and he talked freely on all but one subject. He played a good game of cards, too, and he devoted himself with admirable courtesy to Norine's comfort. It was not until the train was approaching Charleston that he finally announced: "Now then, my first command. This is the end of our journey; the other members of the expedition are here. But I must ask you not to talk with them or with any strangers, for our friends are being watched by detectives in the employ of the Spanish minister at Washington and by United States deputy-marshals. One little indiscretion might ruin everything." "Spies! Oh, goody!" cried Miss Evans. "The local authorities intend to seize any vessel we try to sail on. We must be careful." The hotel to which Major Ramos led his guests appeared to be well filled; there were many Cubans in the lobby, and the air was heavy with the aroma of their strong, black cigarettes. As the major entered they turned interested and expectant faces toward him and they eyed his companions with frank curiosity. Miss Evans became the target for more than one warmly admiring glance. As for O'Reilly, the familiar odor of those Cuban cigarettes, the snatches of Spanish conversation which he overheard, awoke in him a great excitement; he realized with an odd thrill that these eager, dark-visaged men were now his friends and comrades, and that those Americans loitering watchfully among them were his enemies--the spies of whom Ramos had spoken. There were at least a score of the latter, and all were plainly stamped with the distinctive marks of their calling. That they, too, were interested in the latest arrivals was soon made evident by their efforts to get acquainted. To Norine Evans it was all immensely exciting. The attention she evoked delighted her vastly, and she was almost offended when O'Reilly threatened one particularly forward sleuth with a thrashing, thereby ending her fun. It was a strangely restless gathering. The Cubans sat in groups or in pairs with their heads together, smoking furiously and whispering, pausing now and then to glare balefully at some detective who drew within ear-shot. Every hour increased the strain. On the street it became known that a party of filibusters was in the city and curious townspeople came to investigate, while others journeyed to the water-front to stare at the big ocean-going tug which had slipped into the harbor on the evening previous. When they learned that she was none other than the Dauntless, that most famous of Cuban blockade-runners, and that "Dynamite Johnny" O'Brien himself was in command, interest grew. The exploits of that redoubtable mariner were familiar to the citizens of Charleston, and their sympathies were quite naturally with the cause he served; therefore they were disappointed to behold a revenue cutter at anchor close alongside the Dauntless. Her steam was up; she was ready for instant action; it seemed impossible for "Dynamite Johnny" to get his cargo and his passengers aboard under her very nose. Some imaginative person claimed to have a tip that the Dauntless intended to ram the revenue cutter, and a warning to that effect appeared in the evening paper, together with the rumor that a Spanish cruiser was waiting just outside the three-mile limit. Charleston awoke with a start, and the Cuban patriots who found themselves the object of this sudden interest buzzed like flies. They muttered and whispered more mysteriously than ever, and consumed even greater quantities of tobacco. The detectives became painfully alert. To O'Reilly and his two companions it seemed that the expedition had already failed. Through some blunder its plans had evidently become known, and all was ruined. That was the worst of these Cubans; they couldn't keep a secret. Branch stalked the hotel lobby like a restless wraith. O'Reilly was furious. Of the entire party Ramos alone maintained an unruffled pleasantry; he spent the evening in Miss Evans's company, quite oblivious to the general feeling of dismay. On the next afternoon word was quietly passed to get ready, and the filibusters, carrying their scant hand-baggage, began to leave the hotel in groups, followed, of course, by the watchful spies. As the three Americans prepared for departure Norine whispered: "Listen! Everything is all right. We're not going aboard the Dauntless at all; she's here as a blind." "Are you sure?" O'Reilly shot her a quick glance. "Major Ramos himself gave that story to the news-papers; it's all a part of his plan. I promised not to tell, but--I just can't help myself. Gee! I'm having a good time." Leslie Branch shook his head mournfully. "You may enjoy it, but I don't," he grumbled. "We'll end by being pinched, and that will finish me. One week in a damp cell, with my lungs--" O'Reilly, whose spirits had risen magically, clapped him heartily on the back, crying: "Congratulations! You're feeling better." "I never felt worse!" the other complained. "Nonsense! That's the first kick you've made since we hit cold weather. By the time we reach Cuba you'll be nice and melancholy and your cough will be all gone." Ramos led his three charges to the railroad station and into the rear coach of a south-bound train, where the other members of the expedition had already found seats. As they climbed aboard, a Secret Service agent essayed to follow them, but he was stopped by a brakeman, who said: "You can't ride in here; this is a special car. Some sort of a picnic party. They're 'wops' or Greeks or something." Other detectives who attempted to invade the privacy of that rear coach after the train had gotten under way were also denied. Meanwhile, the filibusters cast restraint aside, and for the first time intermingled freely. Evening came, then night, and still the party was jerked along at the tail of the train without a hint as to its destination. About midnight those who were not dozing noted that they had stopped at an obscure pine-woods junction, and that when the train got under way once more their own car did not move. The ruse was now apparent; owing to the lateness of the hour, it was doubtful if any one in the forward coaches was aware that the train was lighter by one car. There was a brief delay; then a locomotive crept out from a siding, coupled up to the standing car, and drew it off upon another track. Soon the "excursion party" was being rushed swiftly toward the coast, some twenty miles away. Major Ramos came down the aisle, laughing, and spoke to his American protege's. "Well, what do you think of that, eh? Imagine the feelings of those good deputy-marshals when they wake up. I bet they'll rub their eyes." Miss Evans bounced excitedly in her seat; she clapped her hands, "You must have friends in high places," O'Reilly grinned, and the Cuban agreed. "Yes, I purposely drew attention to us in Charleston, while our ship was loading. She's ready and waiting for us now; and by daylight we ought to be safely out to sea. Meanwhile the Dauntless has weighed anchor and is steaming north, followed, I hope, by all the revenue cutters hereabouts." It was the darkest time of the night when the special train came to a stop at a bridge spanning one of the deep Southern rivers. In the stream below, dimly outlined in the gloom, lay the Fair Play, a small tramp steamer; her crew were up and awake. The new arrivals were hurried aboard, and within a half-hour she was feeling her way seaward. With daylight, caution gave way to haste, and the rusty little tramp began to drive forward for all she was worth. She cleared the three-mile limit safely and then turned south. Not a craft was in sight; not a smudge of smoke discolored the sky-line. It had been a trying night for the filibusters, and when the low coast-line was dropped astern they began to think of sleep. Breakfast of a sort was served on deck, after which those favored ones who had berths sought them, while their less fortunate companions stretched out wherever they could find a place. Johnnie O'Reilly was not one of those who slept; he was too much elated. Already he could see the hills of Cuba dozing behind their purple veils; in fancy he felt the fierce white heat from close-walled streets, and scented the odors of "mangly" swamps. He heard the ceaseless sighing of royal palms. How he had hungered for it all; how he had raged at his delays! Cuba's spell was upon him; he knew now that he loved the island, and that he would never feel at rest on other soil. It had seemed so small a matter to return; it had seemed so easy to seek out Rosa and to save her! Yet the days had grown into weeks; the weeks had aged into months. Well, he had done his best; he had never rested from the moment of Rosa's first appeal. Her enemies had foiled him once, but there would be no turning back this time--rather a firing-squad or a dungeon in Cabanas than that. O'Reilly had taken his bitter medicine as becomes a man--he had maintained a calm, if not a cheerful, front; but now that every throb of the propeller bore him closer to his heart's desire he felt a growing jubilation, a mounting restlessness that was hard to master. His pulse was pounding; his breath swelled in his lungs. Sleep? That was for those who merely risked their lives for Cuba. Hunger? No food could satisfy a starving soul. Rest? He would never rest until he held Rosa Varona in his arms. This rusty, sluggish tub was standing still! Into the midst of his preoccupation Norine Evans forced herself, announcing, breathlessly: "Oh, but I'm excited! They're hoisting a cannon out of the hold and putting it together, so that we can fight if we have to." "Now don't you wish you'd stayed at home?" O'Reilly smiled at her. "Good heavens, no! I'm having the time of my life. I nearly died of curiosity at first--until I found Major Ramos's tongue." "Hm-m! You found it, all right. He appears to be completely conquered." "I-I'm afraid so," the girl acknowledged, with a little grimace. "You'd think he'd never seen a woman before. He's very--intense. Very!" "You don't expect me, as your chaperon, to approve of your behavior? Why, you've been flirting outrageously." "I had to flirt a little: I simply had to know what was going on. But--I fixed him." "Indeed?" "I couldn't let him spoil my fun, could I? Of course not. Well, I put a damper on him. I told him about you--about us." O'Reilly was puzzled. "What do you mean?" he inquired. "You won't be angry, will you? When he waxed romantic I told him he had come into my life too late. I confessed that I was in love with another man--with you." As her hearer drew back in dismay Miss Evans added, quickly, "Oh, don't be frightened; that isn't half--" "Of course you're joking," Johnnie stammered. "Indeed I'm not. I thought it would discourage him, but--it didn't. So I told him a whopper. I said we were engaged." The speaker tittered. She was delighted with herself. "Engaged? To be MARRIED?" "Certainly! People aren't engaged to--to go fishing, are they? I had to tell him something; he was getting positively feverish. If he'd kept it up I'd have told him we were secretly married." "This may be funny," the young man said, stiffly, "but I don't see it." "Oh, don't look so glum! I'm not going to hold you to it, you know. Why"--Miss Evans's bantering manner ceased, and she said, earnestly: "Doctor Alvarado told me your story, and I think it is splendid. I'm going to help you find that little Rosa, if you'll let me. You were thinking about her when I came up, weren't you?" Johnnie nodded. "You--might talk to me about her, if you care to." O'Reilly's voice was husky and low as he said: "I daren't trust myself. I'm afraid. She's so young, so sweet, so beautiful--and these are war-times. I'm almost afraid to think--" Norine saw her companion's cheeks blanch slowly, saw his laughing eyes grow grave, saw the muscular brown hand upon the rail tighten until the knuckles were white; impulsively she laid her palm over his. "Don't let yourself worry," she said. "If money would buy her safety you could have all that I have. Just be brave and true and patient, and you'll find her. I'm sure you will. And in the mean time don't mind my frivolity; it's just my way. You see this is my first taste of life, and it has gone to my head." XVI THE CITY AMONG THE LEAVES The night was moonless and warm. An impalpable haze dimmed the star-glow, only the diffused illumination of the open sea enabled the passengers of the Fair Play to identify that blacker darkness on the horizon ahead of them as land. The ship herself was no more than a formless blot stealing through the gloom, and save for the phosphorescence at bow and stern no light betrayed her presence, not even so much as the flare of a match or the coal from a cigar or cigarette. Orders of the strictest had been issued and the expedicionarios, gathered along the rails, were not inclined to disregard them, for only two nights before the Fair Play, in spite of every precaution, had shoved her nose fairly into a hornets' nest and had managed to escape only by virtue of the darkness and the speed of her engines. She had approached within a mile or two of the pre-arranged landing-place when over the mangroves had flared the blinding white light of a Spanish patrol-boat; like a thief surprised at his work the tramp had turned tail and fled, never pausing until she lay safe among the Bahama Banks. Now she was feeling her way back, some distance to the westward. Major Ramos was on the bridge with the captain. Two men were taking soundings in a blind search for that steep wall which forms the side of the old Bahama Channel. When the lead finally gave them warning, the Fair Play lost her headway and came to a stop, rolling lazily; in the silence that ensued Leslie Branch's recurrent cough barked loudly. "They're afraid to go closer, on account of the reef," O'Reilly explained to his companions. "That must be it that I hear," Norine ventured. "Or maybe it's just the roaring in my ears." "Probably the latter," said Branch. "I'm scared stiff. I don't like reefs. Are there any sharks in these waters?" "Plenty." "Well, I'm glad I'm thin," the sick man murmured. Major Ramos spoke in a low tone from the darkness above, calling for a volunteer boat's crew to reconnoiter and to look for an opening through the reef. Before the words were out of his mouth O'Reilly had offered himself. Ten minutes later he found himself at the steering-oar of one of the ship's life-boats, heading shoreward. A hundred yards, and the Fair Play was lost to view; but, keeping his face set toward that inky horizon, O'Reilly guided his boat perhaps a half-mile nearer before ordering his crew to cease rowing. Now through the stillness came a low, slow, pulsating whisper, the voice of the barrier reef. The trade-winds had died with the sun, and only the gentlest ground-swell was running; nevertheless, when the boat drew farther in the sound increased alarmingly, and soon a white breaker streak showed dimly where the coral teeth of the reef bit through. There was a long night's work ahead; time pressed, and so O'Reilly altered his course and cruised along outside the white water, urging his crew to lustier strokes. It was haphazard work, this search for an opening, and every hour of delay increased the danger of discovery. A mile--two miles--it seemed like ten to the taut oars-men, and then a black hiatus of still water showed in the phosphorescent foam. O'Reilly explored it briefly; then he turned back toward the ship. When he had gone as far as he dared, he lit a lantern and, shielding its rays from the shore with, his coat, flashed it seaward. After a short interval a dim red eye winked once out of the blackness. O'Reilly steered for it. Soon he and his crew were aboard and the ship was groping her way toward the break in the reef. Meanwhile, her deck became a scene of feverish activity; out from her hold came cases of ammunition and medical supplies; the field-piece on the bow was hurriedly dismounted; the small boats, of which there were an extra number, were swung out, with the result that when the Fair Play had manoeuvered as close as she dared everything was in readiness. Many of these expedicionarios were professional men, clerks, cigar-makers, and the like; few of them had ever done hard manual labor; yet they fell to their tasks willingly enough. While they worked a close watch with night glasses was maintained from the bridge. O'Reilly took the first load through the reef, and discharged it upon a sandy beach. No one seemed to know positively whether this was the mainland or some key; and there was no time for exploration; in either event, there was no choice of action. Every man tumbled overboard and waded ashore with a packing-case; he dropped this in the sand above high-tide mark, and then ran back for another. It was swift, hot work. From the darkness on each side came the sounds of other boat crews similarly engaged. Johnnie was back alongside the ship and ready for a second cargo before the last tender had set out upon its first trip, and then for several hours this slavish activity continued. Some crews lost themselves in the gloom, fetched up on the reef, and were forced to dump their freight into the foam, trusting to salvage it when daylight came. Every one was wet to the skin; bodies steamed in the heat; men who had pulled at oars until their hands were raw and bleeding cursed and groaned at their own fatigue. But there was little shirking; those whose strength completely failed them dropped in the sand and rested until they could resume their labors. Daylight was coming when the last boat cast off and the Fair Play, with a hoarse triumphant blast of her whistle, faded into the north, her part in the expedition at an end. O'Reilly bore Norine Evans ashore in his arms, and when he placed her feet upon Cuban soil she hugged him, crying: "We fooled them, Johnnie! But if it hadn't been for you we'd have turned back. The captain was afraid of the reef." "I don't mind telling you I was afraid, too," he sighed, wearily. "Now then, about all we have to fear are Spanish coast-guards." Dawn showed the voyagers that they were indeed fortunate, for they were upon the mainland of Cuba, and as far as they could see, both east and west, the reef was unbroken. There was still some uncertainty as to their precise position, for the jungle at their backs shut off their view of the interior; but that gave them little concern. Men were lolling about, exhausted, but Major Ramos allowed them no time for rest; he roused them, and kept them on the go until the priceless supplies had been collected within the shelter of the brush. Then he broke open certain packages, and distributed arms among his followers. Even while this was going on there came an alarm; over the low promontory that cut off the eastern coastline a streamer of smoke was seen. There was a scurry for cover; the little band lay low and watched while a Spanish cruiser stole past not more than a mile outside the line of froth. The three Americans, who were munching a tasteless breakfast of pilot-bread, were joined by Major Ramos. He was no longer the immaculate personage he had been: he was barefooted; his clothes were torn; his trousers were rolled up to the knee and whitened by sea-water, while the revolver at his hip and the bandolier of cartridges over his shoulder lent him an incongruously ferocious appearance. Ever since Norine had so rudely shattered his romantic fancies the major had treated both her and O'Reilly with a stiff and distant formality. He began now by saying: "I am despatching a message to General Gomez's headquarters, asking him to send a pack-train and an escort for these supplies. There is danger here; perhaps you would like to go on with the couriers." O'Reilly accepted eagerly; then thinking of the girl, he said, doubtfully: "I'm afraid Miss Evans isn't equal to the trip." "Nonsense! I'm equal to anything," Norine declared. And indeed she looked capable enough as she stood there in her short walking-suit and stout boots. Branch alone declined the invitation, vowing that he was too weak to budge. If there was the faintest prospect of riding to the interior he infinitely preferred to await the opportunity, he said, even at the risk of an attack by Spanish soldiers in the mean time. It took O'Reilly but a short time to collect the few articles necessary for the trip; indeed, his bundle was so small that Norine was dismayed. "Can't I take any clothes?" she inquired in a panic. "I can't live without a change." "It is something you'll have to learn," he told her. "An Insurrecto with two shirts is wealthy. Some of them haven't any." "Isn't it likely to rain on us?" "It's almost sure to." Miss Evans pondered this prospect; then she laughed. "It must feel funny," she said. There were three other members of the traveling-party, men who knew something of the country round about; they were good fighters, doubtless, but in spite of their shiny new weapons they resembled soldiers even less than did their major. All were dressed as they had been when they left New York; one even wore a derby hat and pointed patent-leather shoes. Nevertheless, Norine Evans thought the little cavalcade presented quite a martial appearance as it filed away into the jungle. The first few miles were trying, for the coast was swampy and thickly grown up to underbrush; but in time the jungle gave place to higher timber and to open savannas deep in guinea-grass. Soon after noon the travelers came to a farm, the owner of which was known to one of the guides, and here a stop was made in order to secure horses and food. It was a charming little rancho. The palm-thatched house was set in a grove of mamey and mango trees, all heavily burdened with fruit; there was a vianda-patch, and, wonder of wonders, there were a half-dozen cows dozing in the shade. Spying these animals, Norine promptly demanded a glass of milk, and O'Reilly translated her request to the farmer. The man was obliging until he learned that the American lady purposed drinking the milk fresh and warm; then he refused positively. Fresh milk was full of fever, he explained: it was alive with germs. He would bring her, instead, some which had been boiled and salted in the usual Cuban manner. This he did, but after one bitter mouthful Norine insisted upon her original request. With a dubious shake of his head and a further warning the farmer directed his son to oblige the pretty lady by milking one of the cows; he made it plain, however, that he disclaimed all responsibility for the result. Johnnie, who was badly fagged from the previous night's work, found a shady spot and stretched himself out for a nap. He inquired idly if there were any Spaniards in the vicinity, and learned that there were, but that they seldom came this way. "We'd never see them here, if it were not for these sin verguenzas--may a bad lightning split them!--who take money to show them the bridle-paths," the country-man explained. "I'd like to guide them once. I'd lead them into a swamp and leave them to sink in the mud, then I'd go back and cut off their heads. Ha! That would be a satisfaction, now, wouldn't it?" O'Reilly agreed sleepily that it would doubtless be a very great satisfaction indeed. "I'm as good a patriot as God ever made," the fellow ran on. "You can see that, eh? But what do you think? I have a brother, a very blood brother, who would sell himself for a peseta. He passed here the other day at the head of a whole Spanish guerrillero." The speaker bared his teeth and spat viciously. "Christ! How I would like to cut his throat!" The shade was grateful. O'Reilly dozed. He was awakened by being roughly shaken, and he found the man with the derby hat bending over him. The fellow was excited; his eyes were ringed with white; his expression bespoke the liveliest alarm. Loud voices came from the rear of the bohio. "What's the matter? Spaniards?" Johnnie was on his feet in an instant. "No, no! Your senorita!" the man gasped, "For the love of God come quickly." He set off at a run, and Johnnie followed, a prey to sudden sick misgivings. Around the house they dashed, and into a group the center of which was Norine herself, a gourdful of milk in one hand, a partially devoured mango in the other. At first glance there seemed to be nothing amiss; but the owner of the farm was dancing; he was trying to seize first the mango, then the drinking-vessel. His wife was wringing her hands and crying, shrilly: "God have mercy! So young--so beautiful! What a pity!" The two filibusters and the farmer's eldest son, all visibly perturbed, likewise joined in the commotion, while the smaller children looked on from the background and whimpered. "What's happened?" O'Reilly demanded, breathlessly. Norine turned a puzzled face to him, meanwhile warding off the farmer's attack. "I can't quite make out," she said. "They all talk at once. Please ask them what I've done." Mechanically she raised the ripe mango to her lips, whereupon the ranchero, with a yell, leaped upon her and violently wrenched it out of her fingers. Facing O'Reilly, the man panted: "There! You saw her! She wouldn't listen to my wife--" "Oh, I warned her!" wailed the woman. "But it was too late." "You must tell her what she has done," said the fellow, in the stiff hat. "Well, what has she done?" Johnnie managed to inquire, whereupon every one began a separate explanation: "She will never become your wife. ... Look! That's not her first mango. ... Enough to destroy an army. ... You can see for yourself. ... Wait! Ask her how many she ate. Ask her, senor, I implore you!" There was a silence while Johnnie translated the question and repeated the answer: "She says she doesn't remember, they are so nice and ripe--" "'So nice and ripe'!" shouted the owner of the farm, tearing his hair. "'So nice and ripe'!" echoed his wife. '"So nice and ripe'!" groaned the man who had awakened O'Reilly. "Major Ramos told me to guard her with my life because she is the guest of Cuba. Well, I shall kill myself." The country woman laid a trembling hand upon Norine's arm, inquiring, gently: "How are you feeling, my beautiful dove? Sick, eh?" "What on earth ails these people?" inquired the object of all this solicitude. "I haven't made away with a baby. Maybe they're afraid I won't pay for my food?" Light came to O'Reilly. "I remember now," said he. "Mangoes and milk are supposed to be poisonous. The woman wants to know how you feel." "Poisonous! Nonsense! They taste splendid. Tell her I'm still half starved." It proved now that one of the three members of the landing-party possessed an unsuspected knowledge of English, which modesty alone had prevented him from revealing. Under the stress of his emotion he broke out: "Oh, missy! Those fruit is skill you." "I don't believe it," Miss Evans declared. "It skill you, all right. Maybe you got a headache here, eh?" The speaker laid a hand upon his abdomen and leaned forward expectantly. "Nothing but an aching void." This confession, or a garbled translation of it, was enough for the others; it confirmed their worst fears. The farmer volunteered to ride for the nearest priest, but hesitated, declaring it a waste of time, inasmuch as the lady would be dead in half an hour. His wife ran to the house for her crucifix and rosary, which latter she insisted upon hanging around Norine's neck. After that she directed the men to carry the sufferer indoors, her intention being to make her guest's last moments as comfortable as possible. When Norine refused to be carried she was warned that the least exertion would but hasten the end, which was, alas! all too near. O'Reilly was impressed, in spite of himself, by this weight of conviction, especially when the Cubans ridiculed his suggestion that the combination of milk and mango might not prove altogether fatal to an American. Nothing, they assured him, could possibly be deadlier than this abominable mixture. The victim herself, however, remained skeptical; she alone treated the matter lightly, and although she did finally consent to lie down, it was merely to please the others and because she was tired. "They have set their minds on seeing me expire, and they're such nice people I'm almost ashamed to disappoint them," she confided to O'Reilly. "But really I'm too hungry to die. Now don't forget to call me when dinner is ready." "Honestly, do you feel all right?" he asked of her. "Never better." The meal was slow in coming, for not only were the cooking arrangements primitive, but the apprehensive housewife could not long remain away from the sick-room. She made frequent visits thereto, and after each she reported in a whisper the condition of the patient. The lady looked very white. ... Her breathing was becoming slower. ... She was unconscious. ... All would soon be over. ... It was better to let her pass painlessly to paradise than to torture her with useless remedies. Realizing that the poison had at last begun to work, the men tip-toed to the door and peered in compassionately, whereupon the sufferer roused herself sufficiently to call them "a lot of rubber-necks" and bid them begone. "Her mind wanders," explained the man of the house; and then to cheer O'Reilly he added, "She is young and strong; she may linger until evening." The meal was set at last, however; the men were stealthily attacking it. Suddenly the sick woman swept out from her retreat and sat down among them. "Senorita! This is suicide!" they implored. Then, as she ignored them and helped herself liberally to the food, their own appetites vanished and they pushed themselves away from the table. With a twinkle in his eye O'Reilly said, gravely, "Dying people have strange fancies. Pray don't thwart her." Indifference so callous on the part of a lover shocked the Cubans. They rebuked O'Reilly silently; it was plain that they considered Americans a barbarously cold-blooded race. Meanwhile they apprehensively watched Norine's every mouthful. When, after a time, no ill effects having appeared, she suggested departing, they whispered together. They agreed at last that it was perhaps the course of wisdom to humor her. She was the guest of their Government; it would not do to displease her. Inasmuch as her end was inevitable, it could matter little whether she died here or elsewhere. Accordingly they saddled their borrowed horses and set out. All that afternoon Norine was an object of the tenderest solicitude on the part of her three Cuban guides. They momentarily expected to see her stricken. Then when she gave no sign of distress they marveled, and expressed great admiration at her fortitude in enduring pain. That night was spent at another farm-house. When on the next morning Norine not only was seen to be alive and well, but insisted upon making her breakfast of mangoes and milk, the fellow in the derby hat flung his hands on high and told O'Reilly: "It is no less than a miracle, but now she courts the wrath of God, senor! As for me, I shall never again associate with eccentric persons who delight to fly in the face of Providence. It is my opinion that all Americans are crazy." The party had penetrated to the foot-hills of the Sierra de Cubitas now, and as they ascended, the scenery changed. Rarely is the Cuban landscape anything but pleasing. For the most part green pastures sown with stately palm-trees and laid out as if for a picnic alternate with low rolling hills, and in but few places are the altitudes at all impressive. It is a smiling island. It has been said, too, that everything in it is friendly to man: the people are amiable, warm-hearted; the very animals and insects are harmless. Cuban cattle are shy, but trusting; Cuban horses are patient and affectionate; the serpents have no poison, and although the spiders and the scorpions grow large and forbidding, their sting is ineffective. But here in the Cubitas range all was different. The land was stern and forbidding: canons deep and damp raised dripping walls to the sky; bridle-paths skirted ledges that were bold and fearsome, or lost themselves in gloomy jungles as noisome as Spanish dungeons. Hidden away in these fastnesses, the rebel Government had established its capital. Here, safe from surprise, the soldiers of Gomez and Maceo and Garcia rested between attacks, nursing their wounded and recruiting their strength for further sallies. It was a strange seat of government--no nation ever had a stranger--for the state buildings were huts of bark and leaves, the army was uniformed in rags. Cook-fires smoldered in the open glades; cavalry horses grazed in the grassy streets, and wood-smoke drifted over them. The second evening brought O'Reilly and Miss Evans safely through, and at news of the expedition's success a pack-train was made ready to go to its assistance. Norine's letter from the New York Junta was read, and the young woman was warmly welcomed. One of the better huts was vacated for her use, and the officers of the provisional Government called to pay their respects. XVII THE CITY OF BEGGARS There were other Americans in Cubitas, as O'Reilly soon discovered. During his first inspection of the village he heard himself hailed in his own language, and a young man in dirty white trousers and jacket strode toward him. "Welcome to our city!" the stranger cried. "I'm Judson, Captain of Artillery, Departmento del Oriente; and you're the fellow who came with that quinine lady, aren't you?" O'Reilly acknowledged his identity, and Judson grinned: "The whole camp is talking about her and those mangoes. Jove! It's a wonder she didn't die of fright. Something tells me you're Irish. Anyhow, you look as if you'd enjoy a scrap. Know anything about artillery?" "Nothing whatever." "I'm sorry. We need gunners. Still, you know as much as the rest of us did when we came." "I'm not a fighter," Johnnie told him. "I'm here on--other business." Captain Judson was plainly disappointed. Nevertheless, he volunteered to assist his countryman in any way possible. "Have you met the old man," he inquired--"General Gomez?" "No, I'd like to meet him." "Come along, then; I'll introduce you. This is about the right time of day for it; he'll probably be in good humor. He has dyspepsia, you know, and he's not always pleasant." It was nearly sundown; the eastern slopes were in shadow, and supper was cooking. As the two men passed down the wide street between its rows of bohios the fragrance of burning fagots was heavy in the air--that odor which is sweet in the nostrils of every man who knows and loves the out-of-doors. To O'Reilly it was like the scents of Araby, for his hopes were high, his feet were light, and he believed his goal was in sight. Gen. Maximo Gomez, father of patriots, bulwark of the Cuban cause, was seated in a hammock, reading some letters; O'Reilly recognized him instantly from the many pictures he had seen. Gomez was a keen, wiry old man; the color of his swarthy, sun-bitten cheeks was thrown into deeper relief by his snow-white mustache and goatee. He looked up at Judson's salute and then turned a pail of brilliant eyes, as hard as glass, upon O'Reilly. His was an irascible, brooding face; it had in it something of the sternness, the exalted detachment, of the eagle, and O'Reilly gained a hint of the personality behind it. Maximo Gomez was counted one of the world's ablest guerrilla leaders; and indeed it had required the quenchless enthusiasm of a real military genius to fuse into a homogeneous fighting force the ill-assorted rabble of nondescripts whom Gomez led, to school them to privation and to render them sufficiently mobile to defy successfully ten times their number of trained troops. This, however, was precisely what the old Porto-Rican had done, and in doing it he had won the admiration of military students. He it was, more than any other, who bore the burden of Cuba's unequal struggle; it was Gomez's cunning and Gomez's indomitable will which had already subjugated half the island of Cuba; it was Gomez's stubborn, unflagging resistance which was destined to shatter for all time the hopes of Spain in the New World. With a bluntness not unkind he asked O'Reilly what had brought him to Cuba, Then before the young man could answer he gestured with a letter in his hand, saying: "Major Ramos gives you splendid credit for helping him to land his expedition, but he says you didn't come to fight with us. What does he mean?" When O'Reilly explained the reason for his presence the old fighter nodded. "So? You wish to go west, eh?" "Yes, sir. I want to find Colonel Lopez." "Lopez? Miguel Lopez?" the general inquired, quickly. "I believe that's his name--at any rate the Colonel Lopez who has been operating in Matanzas Province, You see, he knows the whereabouts of my--friends." "Well, you won't have to look far for him." General Gomez's leathery countenance lightened into a smile. "He happens to be right here in Cubitas." Calling Judson to him, he said: "Amigo, take Mr. O'Reilly to Colonel Lopez; you will find him somewhere about. I am sorry we are not to have this young fellow for a soldier; he looks like a real man and--quite equal to five quintos, eh?" It was the habit of the Cubans to refer to their enemies as quintos--the fifth part of a man! With a wave of his hand Gomez returned to his reading. As Judson led his companion away he said: "When you have finished with Lopez come to my shack and we'll have supper and I'll introduce you to the rest of our gang. You won't get much to eat, for we're short of grub; but it's worse where Lopez comes from." Col. Miguel Lopez, a handsome, animated fellow, took O'Reilly's hand in a hearty clasp when they were introduced; but a moment later his smile gave way to a frown and his brow darkened. "So! You are that O'Reilly from Matanzas," said he. "I know you now, but--I never expected we would meet." "Esteban Varona told you about me, did he not?" The colonel inclined his head. "I'm here at last, after the devil's own time. I've been trying every way to get through. The Spaniards stopped me at Puerto Principe--they sent me back home, you know. I've been half crazy. I--You--" O'Reilly swallowed hard. "You know where Esteban is? Tell me-" "Have you heard nothing?" "Nothing whatever. That is, nothing since Rosa, his sister--You understand, she and I are--engaged-" "Yes, yes; Esteban told me all about you." Something in the Cuban's gravity of manner gave O'Reilly warning. A sudden fear assailed him. His voice shook as he asked: "What is it? My God! Not bad news?" There was no need for the officer to answer. In his averted gaze O'Reilly read confirmation of his sickest apprehensions. The men faced each other for a long moment, while the color slowly drove out of the American's cheeks, leaving him pallid, stricken. He wet his lips to speak, but his voice was no more than a dry, throaty rustle. "Tell me! Which one?" he whispered. "Both!" O'Reilly recoiled; a spasm distorted his chalky face. He began to shake weakly, and his fingers plucked aimlessly at each other. Lopez took him by the arm. "Try to control yourself," said he. "Sit here while I try to tell you what little I know. Or, would it not be better to wait awhile, until you are calmer?" As the young man made no answer, except to stare at him in a white agony of suspense, he sighed: "Very well, then, as you wish. But you must be a man, like the rest of us. I, too, have suffered. My father"--Lopez's mustached lip drew back, and his teeth showed through--"died in the Laurel Ditch at Cabanas. On the very day after my first victory they shot him--an old man, Christ! It is because of such things that we Cubans fight while we starve--that we shall continue to fight until no Spaniard is left upon this island. We have all faced something like that which you are facing now--our parents murdered, our sisters and our sweethearts wronged. ..." O'Reilly, huddled where he had sunk upon the bench, uttered a gasping, inarticulate cry, and covered his face as if from a lash. "I will tell you all I know--which isn't much. Esteban Varona came to me soon after he and his sister had fled from their home; he wanted to join my forces, but we were harassed on every side, and I didn't dare take the girl--no woman could have endured the hardships we suffered. So I convinced him that his first duty was to her, rather than to his country, and he agreed. He was a fine boy! He had spirit. He bought some stolen rifles and armed a band of his own--which wasn't a bad idea. I used to hear about him. Nobody cared to molest him, I can tell you, until finally he killed some of the regular troops. Then of course they went after him. Meanwhile, he managed to destroy his own plantations, which Cueto had robbed him of. You knew Cueto?" "Yes." "Well, Esteban put an end to him after a while; rode right up to La Joya one night, broke in the door, and macheted the scoundrel in his bed. But there was a mistake of some sort. It seems that a body of Cobo's Volunteers were somewhere close by, and the two parties met. I have never learned all the details of the affair, and the stories of that fight which came to me are too preposterous for belief. Still, Esteban and his men must have fought like demons, for they killed some incredible number. But they were human--they could not defeat a regiment. It seems that only one or two of them escaped." "Esteban? Did he--" Colonel Lopez nodded; then he said, gravely: "Cobo takes no prisoners. I was in the Rubi hills at the time, fighting hard, and it was six weeks before I got back into Matanzas. Naturally, when I heard what had happened, I tried to find the girl, but Weyler was concentrating the pacificos by that time, and there was nobody left in the Yumuri; it was a desert." "Then you don't know positively that she ... that she--" "Wait. There is no doubt that the boy was killed, but of Rosa's fate I can only form my own opinion. However, one of Esteban's men joined my troops later, and I not only learned something about the girl, but also why Esteban had been so relentlessly pursued. It was all Cobo's doings. You have heard of the fellow? No? Well, you will." The speaker's tone was eloquent of hatred. "He is worse than the worst of them--a monster! He had seen Miss Varona. She was a beautiful girl. ..." "Go on!" whispered the lover. "I discovered that she didn't at first obey Weyler's edict. She and the two negroes--they were former slaves of her father, I believe--took refuge in the Pan de Matanzas. Later on, Cobo's men made a raid and--killed a great many. Some few escaped into the high ravines, but Miss Varona was not one of them. Out of regard for Esteban I made careful search, but I could find no trace of her." "And yet, you don't know what happened?" O'Reilly ventured. "You're not sure?" "No, but I tell you again Cobo's men take no prisoners. When I heard about that raid I gave up looking for her." "This--Cobo"--the American's voice shook in spite of his effort to hold it steady--"I shall hope to meet him some time." The sudden fury that filled Colonel Lopez's face was almost hidden by the gloom. "Yes. Oh yes!" he cried, quickly, "and you are but one of a hundred; I am another. In my command there is a standing order to spare neither Cobo nor any of his assassins; they neither expect nor receive quarter from us. Now, companero"--the Cuban dropped a hand on O'Reilly's bowed head--"I am sorry that I had to bring you such evil tidings, but, we are men--and this is war." "No, no! It isn't war--it's merciless savagery! To murder children and to outrage women--why, that violates all the ethics of warfare." "Ethics!" the colonel cried, harshly. "Ethics? Hell is without ethics. Why look for ethics in war? Violence--injustice--insanity--chaos--THAT is war. It is man's agony--woman's despair. It is a defiance of God. War is without mercy, without law; it is--well, it is the absence of all law, all good." There was a considerable silence. Then Lopez went on in another key. "We Cubans carry heavy hearts, but our wrongs have made us mighty, and our sufferings have made us brave. Here in the orient we do well enough; but, believe me, you cannot imagine the desolation and the suffering farther west--whole provinces made barren and their inhabitants either dead or dying. The world has never seen anything like Weyler's slaughter of the innocents. If there is indeed a God--and sometimes I doubt it--he will not permit this horror to continue; from every pool of Cuban blood another patriot will spring up, until we drive that archfiend and his armies into the sea. Go back to your own country now, and if your grief has made you one of us in sympathy, tell the world what that black butcher in Havana is doing, and beg your Government to recognize our belligerency, so that we may have arms. ARMS!" It was some time before O'Reilly spoke; then he said, quietly: "I am not going back. I am going to stay here and look for Rosa." "So!" exclaimed the colonel. "Well, why not? So long as we do not know precisely what has happened to her, we can at least hope. But, if I were you, I would rather think of her as dead than as a prisoner in some concentration camp. You don't know what those camps are like, my friend, but I do. Now I shall leave you. One needs to be alone at such an hour--eh?" With a pressure of his hand, Colonel Lopez walked away into the darkness. Judson and his adventurous countryman did not see O'Reilly that night, nor, in fact, did any one. But the next morning he appeared before General Gomez. He was haggard, sick, listless. The old Porto-Rican had heard from Lopez in the mean time; he was sympathetic. "I am sorry you came all the way to hear such bad news," he said. "War is a sad, hopeless business." "But I haven't given up hope," O'Reilly said. "I want to stay here and--and fight." "I inferred as much from what Lopez told me." The general nodded his white head. "Well, you'll make a good soldier, and we shall be glad to have you." He extended his hand, and O'Reilly took it gratefully. The city of Matanzas was "pacified." So ran the boastful bando of the captain-general. And this was no exaggeration, as any one could see from the number of beggars there. Of all his military operations, this "pacification" of the western towns and provinces was the most conspicuously successful and the one which gave Valeriano Weyler the keenest satisfaction; for nowhere did rebellion lift its head--except, perhaps, among the ranks of those disaffected men who hid in the hills, with nothing above them but the open sky. As for the population at large, it was cured of treason; it no longer resisted, even weakly, the law of Spain. The reason was that it lay dying. Weyler's cure was simple, efficacious--it consisted of extermination, swift and pitiless. Poverty had been common in Matanzas, even before the war, but now there were so many beggars in the city that nobody undertook to count them. When the refugees began to pour in by the thousands, and when it became apparent that the Government intended to let them starve, the better citizens undertook an effort at relief; but times were hard, food was scarce, and prices high. Moreover, it soon transpired that the military frowned upon everything like organized charity, and in consequence the new-comers were, perforce, abandoned to their own devices. These country people were dumb and terrified at the misfortunes which had overtaken them; they wandered the streets in aimless bewilderment, fearful of what blow might next befall. They were not used to begging, and therefore they did not often implore alms; but all day long they asked for work, for bread, that their little ones might live. Work, however, was even scarcer than food, and the time soon came when they crouched upon curbs and door-steps, hopeless, beaten, silently reproachful of those more fortunate than they. Their eyes grew big and hollow; their outstretched hands grew gaunt and skinny. The sound of weeping women and fretting babies became a common thing to hear. In the suburbs, just within the ring of guardian forts, an "area of cultivation" was set aside, and here the prisoners put up huts of yagua--comfortless bark shelters, which were well enough, perhaps, in fair weather, but sadly ineffective against wind and rain. Here, housed with hunger and crowded together in indescribable squalor, they dwelt, seeking comfort in their common wretchedness. Since they had no farm implements, no seeds, no means whatever of cultivating this ground apportioned to their use, it remained untilled while they grew hungrier day by day. Outside the lines there were yams, potatoes, edible roots and such, for the Spaniards' work of desolation had not been quite complete, and no hand can rob the Cuban soil of all its riches; but the pacificos were not allowed to leave the city. Fish were plentiful in the harbor, too, but to catch them was forbidden. Sentries were on guard with ready rifles and bared machetes; every morning through the filthy reconcentrado quarter guerrillas drove pack-mules bearing the mutilated bodies of those who had dared during the night to seek food surreptitiously. Sometimes they dragged these ghastly reminders at the ends of ropes; this, indeed, was a favorite way with them. Dogs and cats became choice articles of diet, until they disappeared. The Government did supply one quality of food, however; at intervals, it distributed yucca roots. But these were starchy and almost indigestible. From eating them the children grew pinched in limb and face, while their abdomens bloated hugely. Matanzas became peopled with a race of grotesquely misshapen little folks, gnomes with young bodies, but with faces old and sick. Of course disease became epidemic, for in the leaky hovels, dirt-floored and destitute of any convenience, there could be no effort at sanitation. Conditions became unspeakable. The children died first, then the aged and infirm. Deaths in the street were not uncommon; nearly every morning bodies were found beneath the portales. Starving creatures crept to the market in the hope of begging a stray bit of food, and some of them died there, between the empty stalls. The death-wagons, heavy with their daily freight, rumbled ceaselessly through the streets, adding to the giant piles of unburied corpses outside the city. Typhoid, smallpox, yellow fever, raged unchecked. The hospitals were crowded, and even in them the commonest necessities were lacking. It is believed that men have returned from the grave, but no one, either Spaniard or Cuban, had ever been known to return from one of these pest-houses, and, in consequence, those who were stricken preferred to remain and to die among their dear ones. Yes, Matanzas was pacified. Weyler's boast was true. Nowhere in the entire province was a field in cultivation; nowhere, outside the garrisoned towns, was a house left standing. Nor was the city of Matanzas the only concentration camp; there were others dotted through Santa Clara, Habana, and Pinar del Rio. In them half a million people cried for food. Truly no rebellious land was ever more completely pacified than this, no people's spirits ever more completely crushed. Voices no longer preached resistance; they prayed to "Our Lady of Pity" for a merciful conclusion of this misery. Hands were upraised, but only to implore. In leaky huts from Jucaro to Cape San Antonio the dead lay huddled thickly. Into Matanzas, city of beggary and death, came Rosa Varona and her two negro companions, looking for relief. They made the journey without mishap, for they were too destitute to warrant plundering, and Rosa's disguise concealed what charms remained to her. But once they had entered the city, what an awakening! What suffering, what poverty, what rags they saw! The three of them grew weak with dismay at the horror of it all; but there was no retreat. Asensio built a makeshift shelter close under La Cumbre--from it the ruins of the Quinta de Esteban were visible--and there they settled down to live. They had hoped to lose themselves among the other prisoners, and in this they were successful, for none of their miserable neighbors were in any condition to notice them, and there was nothing sufficiently conspicuous about two tattered blacks and their hunchbacked daughter to draw attention from the soldiers. Asensio foraged zealously, and at first he managed somehow to secure enough food for his little family. He developed a real talent for discovering vegetables and fruits. He stole, he begged, and he found food where there was none. One day the soldiers seized him and put him to work on the fortifications along with a gang of other men who appeared strong enough to stand hard labor. Asensio was not paid for this, but he was allowed one meal a day, and he succeeded in bringing home each night a share of his allotment. It is surprising how little nourishment will sustain life. Rosa and her two friends had long felt the pinch of hunger, but now they plumbed new depths of privation, for there were days when Asensio and his fellow-conscripts received nothing at all. After a time Evangelina began making baskets and weaving palm-leaf hats, which she sold at six cents each. She taught Rosa the craft, and they worked from dawn until dark, striving with nimble, tireless fingers to supplement Asensio's rations and postpone starvation. But it was a hopeless task. Other nimble fingers worked as tirelessly as theirs, and the demand for hats was limited. Their hut overlooked the road to San Severino, that via dolorosa on which condemned prisoners were marched out to execution, and in time the women learned to recognize the peculiar blaring notes of a certain cornet, which signified that another "Cuban cock was about to crow." When in the damp of dewy mornings they heard that bugle they ceased their weaving long enough to cross themselves and whisper a prayer for the souls of those who were on their way to die. But this was the only respite they allowed themselves. Rosa meditated much upon the contrast between her present and her former condition. Matanzas was the city of her birth, and time was when she had trod its streets in arrogance and pride, when she had possessed friends by the score among its residents. But of all these there was not one to whom she dared appeal in this, her hour of need. These were harsh times; Spanish hatred of the revolutionists was bitter, and of the Cuban sympathizers none were left. Moreover, Esteban's denouncement as a traitor had estranged all who remained loyal to the crown, and so far as Rosa herself was concerned, she knew that it would not matter to them that she had cleaved to him merely from sisterly devotion: by that act she had made herself a common enemy and they would scarcely sympathize with her plight. The girl had learned only too well what spirit was abroad. But even had she felt assured of meeting sympathy, her pride was pure Castilian, and it would never down. She, a Varona, whose name was one to conjure with, whose lineage was of the highest! She to beg? The thing was quite impossible. One crumb, so taken, would have choked her. Rosa preferred to suffer proudly and await the hour when hunger or disease would at last blot out her memories of happy days and end this nightmare misery. Then, too, she dreaded any risk of discovery by old Mario de Castano, who was a hard, vindictive man. His parting words had shown her that he would never forgive the slight she had put upon him; and she did not wish to put his threats to the test. Once Rosa saw him, on her way to buy a few centavos' worth of sweet-potatoes; he was huddled in his victoria, a huge bladder of flesh, and he rode the streets deaf to the plaints of starving children, blind to the misery of beseeching mothers. Rosa shrank into a doorway and drew her tattered shawl closer over her face for fear Don Mario might recognize in this misshapen body and in these pinched, discolored features the beauteous blossom he had craved. Nor did she forget Colonel Cobo. The man's memory haunted her, asleep and awake; of him she was most desperately afraid. When for the first time she saw him riding at the head of his cutthroats she was like to swoon in her tracks, and for a whole day thereafter she cowered in the hut, trembling at every sound. In these dark hours she recalled the stories of the old Varona treasure and Esteban's interesting theory of its whereabouts, but she could not bring herself to put much faith in either. At the time of her brother's recital she had been swayed by his conviction, but now on cooler thought a dozen explanations of Dona Isabel's possession of that doubloon offered themselves, no one of which seemed less probable than Esteban's. Of course it was barely possible that there was indeed a treasure, and even that Esteban's surmise had been correct. But it was little more than a remote possibility. Distance lends a rosy color of reality to our most absurd imaginings, but, like the haze that tints a far-off landscape, it dissolves upon approach. Now that Rosa was here, in sight of the ruined quinta itself, her hopes and half-beliefs faded. She wanted, oh, so desperately, to believe in it, but the grinding misery of her situation made it hard to do so. Wonders like that came true only in fairy stories, she told herself; and certainly she had no cause to consider herself a favorite of fortune. More than once she was tempted to confide in Evangelina and Asensio, but she thought better of it. Although she put implicit faith in Evangelina's discretion, she knew that Asensio was not the sort of fellow to be trusted with a secret of great magnitude--he was boastful, talkative, excitable; he was just the sort, to bring destruction upon all of them. Rosa had sufficient intelligence to realize that even if she found her father's riches they would only constitute another and a greater menace to the lives of all of them. Nevertheless, she wished to set her mind at rest once and for all. Taking Evangelina with her, she climbed La Cumbre one day in search of roots and vegetables. It turned out to be a sad experience for both women. The negress wept noisily at the destruction wrought by Pancho Cueto, and Rosa was overcome by painful memories. Little that was familiar remained; evidence of Cueto's all-devouring greed spoke from the sprouting furrows his men had dug, from the naked trees they had felled and piled in orderly heaps, from the stones and mortar of the house itself. Tears blinded Rosa. After a time she left the black woman mourning among the ruins and stole away to the sunken garden. Here the marks of vandalism were less noticeable. Nevertheless, few signs of beauty remained. Neglected vines drooped spiritlessly from the ledges: such fruit-trees as had been spared were sickly and untended; time and the elements had all but completed the disheartening work. The well remained, although it had been planked over, but it was partially filled up with rubbish, as Rosa discovered when she peered into it. Only a tiny pool of scum was in the bottom. After a long scrutiny the girl arose, convinced at last of her brother's delusion, and vaguely ashamed of her own credulity. This was about the last repository that such a man as Don Esteban, her father, would have been likely to select; for, after all, the most valuable part of his fortune had consisted of the deeds of title to the plantations. No, if ever there had been a treasure, it was hidden elsewhere; all of value that this well contained for Rosa was her memory of a happiness departed. Of such memories, the well, the whole place, was brimful. Here, as a child, she had romped with Esteban. Here, as a girl, she had dreamed her first dreams, and here O'Reilly, her smiling knight, had found her. Yonder was the very spot where he had held her in his arms and begged her to await the day of his return. Well, she had waited. But was that Rosa Varona who had promised so freely and so confidently this pitiful Rosa whose bones protruded through her rags? It could not be. Happiness, contentment, hope--these were fictions; only misery, despair, and pain were real. But it had been a glorious dream, at any rate--a dream which Rosa vowed to cherish always. Evangelina found the girl sitting in the sun, her thin face radiant, her great eyes wet but smiling. "Come, little dove," said the negress, "there is nothing here to eat; we must get back to our weaving." XVIII SPEAKING OF FOOD It was part of the strategy practised by the Cuban leaders to divide their forces into separate columns for the purpose of raiding the smaller Spanish garrisons and harassing the troops sent to their relief, reassembling these bands only when and where some telling blow was to be struck. Not only had the military value of this practice been amply demonstrated, but it had been proved a necessity, owing to the fact that the Insurrectos were compelled to live off the country. When O'Reilly and Branch enlisted in the Army of the Orient they were assigned to the command of Colonel Miguel Lopez, and it was under his leadership that they made their first acquaintance with the peculiar methods of Cuban warfare. Active service for the two Americans began at once; scarcely a week had passed before Leslie Branch gained his opportunity of tasting the "salt of life" in its full flavor, for the young Matanzas colonel was one of the few Cuban commanders who really enjoyed a fight. There had been, at first, some doubt of Branch's fitness to take the field at all--he had suffered a severe hemorrhage shortly after his arrival at Cubitas--and it was only after a hysterical demonstration on his part that he had been accepted as a soldier. He simply would not be left behind. At first the Cubans regarded him with mingled contempt and pity, for certainly no less promising volunteer had ever taken service with them. Nevertheless, he would doubtless have made many friends among them had he not begun his service by refusing to abide by discipline of any sort and by scorning all instruction in the use of arms, declaring this to be, in his case, a silly waste of effort. Such an attitude very naturally aroused resentment among the other men; it was not long before they began to grumble at the liberty allowed this headstrong weakling. But upon the occasion of the very first fight this ill-will disappeared as if by magic, for, although Branch deliberately disobeyed orders, he nevertheless displayed such amazing audacity in the face of the enemy, such a theatrical contempt for bullets, as to stupefy every one. Moreover, he lived up to his reputation; he continued to be insanely daring, varying his exploits to correspond with his moods, with the result that he attained a popularity which was unique, nay, sensational. His conduct in the face of this general admiration was no less unexpected than his behavior under fire: Branch gruffly refused to accept any tribute whatever; he snarled, he fairly barked at those of his comrades who tried to express their appreciation of his conduct--a demeanor which of course awakened even greater admiration among the Cubans. He was uniformly surly and sour; he sneered, he scoffed, he found fault. He had the tongue of a common scold, and he used it with malevolent abandon. It was fortunate indeed that he knew no Spanish and that most of his companions were equally ignorant of English, for mere admiration, even of the fervent Latin quality, would scarcely have been proof against his spleen. As it was, his camp-mates endured his vituperations blandly, putting him down as a pleasing eccentric in whom there blazed a curious but inspiring spirit of patriotism. O'Reilly alone understood the reason for the fellow's morbid irritability, his suicidal recklessness; but when he privately remonstrated he was gruffly told to mind his own business. Branch flatly refused to modify his conduct; he seemed really bent upon cheating the disease that made his life a misery. But, as usual, Fate was perverse; she refused to humor the sick man's hope. When, after blindly inviting death, Leslie had emerged from several engagements unscathed, his surprise--and perhaps a natural relief at finding himself whole--became tinged with a certain apprehension lest he survive those deliberately courted dangers, only to succumb to the ills and privations of camp life. Cuban equipment was of the scantiest. Cuban dews are heavy; Cuban nights are cool--these were perils indeed for a weak-lunged invalid. Branch began to fret. Rain filled him with more terror than fixed bayonets, a chill caused him keener consternation than did a thousand Spaniards; he began to have agonizing visions of himself lying in some leaky hovel of a hospital. It was typical of his peculiar irritability that he held O'Reilly in some way responsible, and vented upon him his bitterness of spirit. The fellow's tongue grew ever sharper; his society became intolerable, his gloom oppressive and irresistibly contagious. When, after several weeks of campaigning, the column went into camp for a short rest, O'Reilly decided that he would try to throw off the burden of Leslie's overwhelming dejection, and, if possible, shift a portion of it upon the shoulders of Captain Judson. On the day after their arrival O'Reilly and the big artilleryman took advantage of a pleasant stream to bathe and wash their clothes; then, while they lay in their hammocks, enjoying the luxury of a tattered oil-cloth shelter and waiting for the sun to dry their garments, O'Reilly spoke what was in his mind. "I'm getting about fed up on Leslie," he declared. "He's the world's champion crepe-hanger, and he's painted the whole world such a deep, despondent blue that I'm completely dismal. You've got to take him off my hands." Judson grunted. "What ails him?" "Well, he wears a wreath of immortelles day and night. Haven't you guessed why he runs such desperate chances? He's sick--thinks he's going to die, anyhow, and wants to finish the job quick. I'm the one who has to endure him." "Suicide?" "It amounts to that." "The devil!" Judson pondered for a moment. "Can't you cheer him up?" "I?" O'Reilly lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "When I try he gets sore at my heartless indifference; when I sympathize he declares I'm nudging him closer to his grave--says I'm kicking the crutches out from under him. He's just plain vitriol. I--I'd rather live with an adder!" O'Reilly's youthful asistente, who at the moment was painstakingly manufacturing a huge, black cigar for himself out of some purloined tobacco, pricked up his ears at the mention of Branch's name and now edged closer, exclaiming: "Carumba! There's a hero for you. Meester Branch is the bravest man I ever seen. Our people call him 'El Demonio'!" O'Reilly jerked his head toward the Cuban. "You see? He's made the hit of his life, and yet he resents it. The Cubans are beginning to think he carries a rabbit's foot." "No rabbit's foot about it," the captain asserted. "He's just so blamed thin the Spaniards can't hit him; it's like shooting at the edge of a playing-card. Annie Oakley is the only one who can do that." "Well, my nerves are frayed out. I've argued myself hoarse, but he misconstrues everything I say. I wish you'd convince him that he has a chance to get well; it might alter his disposition. If SOMETHING doesn't alter it I'll be court-martialed for shooting a man in his sleep--and I'll hit him, right in the middle, no matter how slim he is." O'Reilly compressed his lips firmly. The asistente, who had finished rolling his cigar, now lighted it and repeated: "Yes, sir, Meester Branch is the bravest man I ever seen. You remember that first battle, eh? Those Spaniards seen him comin' and threw down their guns and beat it. Jesus Cristo! I laugh to skill myself that day." "Jacket" was at once the youngest and the most profane member of Colonel Lopez's entire command. The most shocking oaths fell from his beardless lips whenever he opened them to speak English, and O'Reilly's efforts to break the boy of the habit proved quite unavailing. "Colonel Miguel," continued Jacket, "he say if he's got a hunnerd sick men like El Demonio he'll march to Habana. By God! What you think of that?" Judson rolled in his hammock until his eyes rested upon the youth. Then he said, "You're quite a man of arms yourself, for a half-portion." "Eh?" The object of this remark was not quite sure that he understood. "I mean you're a pretty good fighter, for a little fellow." "Hell, yes!" agreed the youth. "I can fight." "Better look out that some big Spaniard doesn't carry you off in his pocket and eat you," O'Reilly warned; at which the boy grinned and shook his head. He was just becoming accustomed to the American habit of banter, and was beginning to like it. "Jacket would make a bitter mouthful," Judson ventured. The lad smiled gently and drew on his huge cigar. "You betcher life. That----Spaniard would spit me out quick enough." This Camagueyan boy was a character. He was perhaps sixteen, and small for his age--a mere child, in fact. Nevertheless, he was a seasoned veteran, and his American camp-mates had grown exceedingly fond of him. He was a pretty, graceful youngster; his eyes were large and soft and dark; his face was as sensitive and mobile as that of a girl; and yet, despite his youth, he had won a reputation for daring and ferocity quite as notable in its way as was the renown of Leslie Branch. There were many of these immature soldiers among the Insurrectos, and most of them were in some way distinguished for valor. War, it seems, fattens upon the tenderest of foods, and every army has its boys--its wondrous, well-beloved infants, whom their older comrades tease, torment, and idolize. Impetuous, drunk with youth, and keeping no company with care, they form the very aristocracy of fighting forces. They gaily undertake the maddest of adventures; and by their examples they fire the courage of their maturer comrades. All history is spiced with their exploits. Jacket was one of these, and he was perhaps the truest patriot of any soldier in Miguel Lopez's band; for liberty, to him, was not a mere abstraction or a principle, but something real, tangible, alive--something worthy of the highest sacrifice. In his person all the wrongs of Cuba burned perpetually. It mattered not that he himself had never suffered--his spirit was the spirit of his country, pure, exalted, undefiled. He stood for what the others fought for. In order to expand his knowledge of English--of which, by the way, he was inordinately proud--Jacket had volunteered to serve as O'Reilly's striker, and the result had been a fast friendship. It was O'Reilly who had given the boy his nickname--a name prompted by a marked eccentricity, for although Jacket possessed the two garments which constituted the ordinary Insurrecto uniform, he made a practice of wearing only one. On chilly nights, or on formal occasions, he wore both waistcoat and trousers, but at other times he dispensed entirely with the latter, and his legs went naked. They were naked now, as, with the modesty of complete unconsciousness, he squatted in the shade, puffing thoughtfully at his giant cheroot. Once Jacket's mind was fastened upon any subject, it remained there, and after a time he continued: "Yes, I bet I don't taste good to no Spaniard. Did I told you about that battle of Pino Bravo? Eh?" He turned his big brown eyes upward to O'Reilly. "Cristo! I skill more'n a dozen men that day!" "Oh, Jacket!" the Americans cried. "You monstrous little liar!" commented O'Reilly. "Si, senors," the boy went on, complacently. "That day I skill more'n six men. It was this way; we came on them from behind and they don't see us. Phui! We skill plenty, all right!" "It was a hot scrimmage," Judson attested. "Some of Luque's niggers, those tall, lean, hungry fellows from Santiago, managed to hack their way through a wire fence and get behind a detachment of the enemy who had made a stand under a hill. They charged, and for a wonder they got close enough to use their machetes. It was bloody work--the kind you read about--no quarter. Somehow Jacket managed to be right in the middle of the butchery. He's a bravo kid, all right. Muy malo!" There was a moment's silence, then Judson continued: "Funny thing happened afterward, though. Jacket had to do his turn at picket duty that night, and he got scared of the dark. We heard him squalling and screaming--" Jacket started to his feet. "That's a dam' lie." he exclaimed, resentfully. "I'm not scared of no dark." "Didn't you holler till you woke the whole camp?" "I ain't scared of no dark," the boy repeated; but his pride, his complacency, had suddenly vanished. He dug his toes into the dirt; in his eyes were tears of mortification. His cigar had evidently become tasteless, for he removed it from his lips and gazed at it indifferently. "Did you cry?" O'Reilly smiled; and the lad nodded reluctantly. "Did he cry?" Judson echoed. "Why, we thought we were attacked. He put the whole camp in an uproar." "What was the trouble, Jacket?" "I--I was--" The boy's smooth brown cheeks paled, and his moist eyes dilated at the memory. "I ain't scared of any-------Spaniard when he's ALIVE, but--it's different when he's dead. I could see dead ones everywhere!" He shuddered involuntarily. "They fetched me to General Gomez and--Caramba! he's mad. But after I tell him what I seen in the dark he say I don't have to go back there no more. He let me go to sleep 'longside of his hammock, and bimeby I quit cryin'. I ain't never stood no picket duty since that night. I won't do it." It was plain that discussion of this unhappy subject was deeply distasteful to the youthful hero of Pino Bravo, for he edged away, and a moment later disappeared. "Queer little youngster," Captain Judson said, meditatively. "He idolizes you." O'Reilly nodded. "Yes, poor little kid. I wonder what will become of him after the war? After the war!" he mused. "I wonder if it will ever end." "Humph! If we had more generals like Gomez and Garcia and Maceo--" "We've got three better generals than they." "You mean---" "Generals June, July, and August." "Oh yes!" The artilleryman nodded his understanding. "There's no end of yellow-jack among the Spaniards. Speaking of that, what do you think of Miss Evans's work in the field hospitals?" Judson shifted his weight so that his eyes could rest upon a white tent which showed through the greenery at a distance; it was the one tent in all the encampment, and it had been erected that very morning to shelter Norine Evans, but just arrived from headquarters in the Cubitas hills. The captain's lids were half closed; his heavy, homely face was softened by a peculiar rapt expression. He did not seem to expect an answer to his question. "I don't think much of it," O'Reilly confessed. "You don't!" Judson brought himself back to earth with a start. "Humph! Well, I think it's perfectly wonderful. I think she's the most wonderful woman, and--" His voice died out; he turned once more in the direction of the tent. O'Reilly smiled, understanding now the reason for his companion's reckless, almost frenzied use of soap and water that morning, and his cheerful stoicism in the hands of a volunteer barber more accustomed to the uses of a machete than a razor. Evidently Judson had fallen, too--along with Major Ramos, and Colonel Lopez, and Leslie Branch, and all the rest. Well, it was to be expected. Before he had been a week in Cuba O'Reilly had noticed that Miss Evans was a mystery and a delight to nearly every man she met. "So YOU'VE got it, eh?" he inquired. "Got what?" Judson did not turn his eyes. "It." "It? If you can't talk English, talk Spanish." O'Reilly was not perturbed by this gruffness. "I think her presence here is the silliest, the most scandalous thing I ever heard of," said he. "The idea of a girl of her accomplishments, her means, alone in Cuba! Why, it's criminal!" Judson's gunny-sacking hammock bulged beneath him. It threatened to give way as he sat up with a jerk and swung his bare legs over the side. His face was dark; he was scowling; his chin was pugnaciously outthrust and his voice rumbled as he exclaimed: "The deuce it is! Say! I don't like the way you talk about that girl." "You don't, eh?" O'Reilly eyed him quizzically. "Would you care to have your sister do what she's doing?" "That's not the point. You can't compare her with ordinary women." "Well, this isn't an ordinary environment for a woman, no matter who she is. These Cubans are bound to talk about her." "Are they?" Judson glared at the speaker. "I'd like to hear 'em. I'd like to see somebody get fresh. Why, SAY!"--he clenched his powerful hands--"I'd fill their hospitals until they bulged." After a moment he continued: "I s'pose it's natural for you to worry, since you're responsible for her being here, in a way, but--" His tone changed, he relaxed and lay back in his hammock. "Oh, well, you're about the only man I can't hate." "Jealous, are you? I didn't know you were in so deep." The other shook his head. "Oh, I'm daffy. D'you think she'd have me?" "Not a chance." "Hey? Why not? I'm a good big husky--I'll get a Government job when the war is over and---" "That's just the trouble. She'll fall for some poor, sickly unfortunate, with one leg. She's the sort that always does. She's the sort that has to have something to 'mother.' Lord, I'd give a good deal to see her safely back in New York!" Judson, it seemed, had a better understanding of artillery than of women; he pondered O'Reilly's statement seriously, and his face clouded. "Some sickly fellow. Some fellow like Branch, eh?" After a moment he continued, more hopefully: "Well, it won't be HIM; he'll soon be dead. There's some consolation in that. I could almost--" O'Reilly motioned for silence, for at that moment Branch himself approached, his long face set in lines of discontent, even deeper than usual. He had been wandering about the camp in one of his restless fits, and now he began: "Say, what do you think I've been doing?" "I dun'no'," Captain Judson answered, morosely. "Cheering the sick and wounded; shedding smiles and sunshine as usual, I suppose?" "Hunh! You're a funny guy, aren't you?--about as comical as a chloroform cone. You make me laugh, you do--just like a broken leg. Well, I've been looking up some grub for Miss Evans, and I can't find any." "Can't find any?" "Nothing fit for her to eat. You don't expect her to live on this infernal, eternal, and internal beef stew." Branch shuddered and gagged slightly. "I've eaten parts of animals that were never intended to be eaten. This rebel grub is killing ME. What'll it do to her?" "Didn't Major Ramos bring anything along?" O'Reilly asked. "He says there's a famine at Cubitas." "We'd better look into this," Judson exclaimed, and, finding that his clothes were dry, he hurriedly began to dress himself. Together, the three men made an investigation of the camp's resources, only to discover that Branch was right. There was, indeed, but little food of any kind, and that little was of the coarsest. Ordinarily, such a condition of affairs would have occasioned them no surprise, for the men were becoming accustomed to a more or less chronic scarcity of provisions; but the presence of Norine Evans put quite a different complexion upon the matter. They were still discussing the situation when Miss Evans, having finished her afternoon nap, threw open the flaps of her tent and stepped out. When she had listened to the account apologetically submitted by her three friends, she drew her brows together, saying, plaintively: "Oh dear! We've been going short for a week, and Major Ramos told me we'd fare better when we got here. I had my mouth all set for a banquet. Couldn't you even find the poor dog a bone?" Norine was thinner and browner than when she had come to Cuba, but she in no way showed the effect of any serious or continued lack of nourishment. In fact, a simple diet and an outdoor life had agreed with her amazingly. "I'm afraid the cupboard is bare," O'Reilly acknowledged. "They're getting ready to slaughter another guttapercha ox," Branch said, gloomily. "He's a veteran of the Ten Years' War. That means STEW again! STEW! One puncture-proof, rubber ox and a bushel of sweet-potatoes for four hundred men!" "Do you know what I want for dinner?" Norine inquired. "Lamb chops with green peas, some nice white bread, a salad, and coffee." The three men looked at her anxiously. Judson stirred uneasily. "That's what I want. I don't expect to get it." With a sigh of relief the captain exclaimed, "I thought you were giving your order." "Goodness, no!" With a laugh the girl seated herself upon her one camp-chair, inviting her callers to dispose themselves on the ground about her. "If you can stand the food, I dare say I can. Now then, tell me what you've been doing since you left Cubitas. I've been frightened to death that some of you would be hurt. That's one reason why I've been working night and day helping to get the hospitals in shape. I can't bear to think of our boys being wounded." "Not much chance of OUR getting shot," O'Reilly told her. "But Leslie--he needs a good talking to. He has gone into the hero business." Branch uttered a disdainful grunt. "Nothing of the sort. I'm a sick man; if I'd rather get shot than suffer a slow death from neglect, it's my own business, isn't it? Imagine feeding an invalid on boiled bicycle tires! Gee! I'd like to have a meal of nice nourishing ptomaines for a change. Hero? Humph!" Norine eyed the complainant critically, then said: "The diet agrees with you. You look better than you did." Branch turned a somber glance upon her and gave vent to a bitter, sneering laugh. It was plain that he believed she, too, was attempting to pull the wool over his eyes. "I wish I could find some poisonous toadstools. I'd eat 'em raw." "Listen," Norine went on. "Let's play a game. We'll imagine this is Delmonico's and we'll all take turns ordering the best things to eat that we can think of. The one who orders best, wins. We'll call the game--" She frowned thoughtfully. "Call it 'Vittles,'" O'Reilly suggested. "'Vittles' it is. Maybe it will give us an appetite for supper. Leslie, you begin. Come now, hand your hat to the hat-boy, then follow the head waiter. This way, sir. Table for one? Very good, sir. Here's a cool one, in front of the electric fan. We have an exceptional selection of cold dishes to-day, sir. Perhaps you would like a nice halibut salad--" "No halibut salad," Branch answered, striving valiantly to enter into the spirit of Norine's pretending. "I had it for breakfast. And say, turn off that fan; I'm just back from Cuba. Now then, you may bring me some oysters--" "Oysters are out of season," O'Reilly murmured, politely, "but our clams are very fine." "Some oysters," Branch insisted, stubbornly. "After that, a cup of chicken broth, a grilled sweetbread, and toast Melba." Joe Judson put an abrupt end to the invalid's meal by hurling a clod at him, crying: "You're in Delmonico's, not in Battle Creek. Let somebody order who knows how. We'll have steak and onions all around." "I want strawberries!" Norine cried. "They're ripe now. Strawberries and cream--Oh-h! Think of it!" There was a tense silence, which O'Reilly broke by saying, "I guess 'Vittles' isn't a very good game, after all." "It doesn't seem to fill MY wants," the girl acknowledged. "Let's talk about something else." Miss Evans did seem truly concerned for the welfare of her "boys," as she termed the little group of Americans whom she had met, and she showed, by asking numerous questions, that her interest was keen. The men were glad to talk and she soon gained an insight into the peculiar, aimless, unsatisfactory, and yet effective method of warfare practised by the Insurrecto armies; they told her of the endless marches and counter-marches, the occasional skirmishes, the feints, the inconclusive engagements which were all a part of the general strategy--operations which served to keep the enemy constantly on guard, like a blind swordsman, and would, it was hoped, eventually wear down his patience and endurance. In her turn, Norine related something of what she was doing and how her labor of mercy progressed. "I'm nearly discouraged," she confessed, finally. "Everything is so different to what I thought it would be, and I'm so weak and ineffective. The medical supplies I brought are nearly all gone, and I've learned what hard work it is fitting up hospitals when there's nothing to fit them up with. I can't teach these people to take care of themselves--they seem to consider precautions against disease as a confession of cowardice. Summer, the yellow-fever season, is here and--well, I'm getting disheartened. Disheartened and hungry! They're new sensations to me." She sighed. "I imagined I was going to work wonders--I thought I was going to be a Florence Nightingale, and the men were going to idolize me." "Don't they?" Judson demanded. "No. That is--not in exactly the way I expected." "They all want to marry her," O'Reilly explained. "Insolent bunch!" growled the captain. Then he swallowed hard and said, "But for that matter, so do I." "Why, Joe!" Norine cast a startled glance at the big fellow. "It's a fact," he asserted, doggedly. "I might as well declare myself here and now. There's always a gang of eavesdroppers hanging around you." "He means you, Leslie," O'Reilly said. "Hadn't you better take a walk?" Branch rolled a hostile eye at the artilleryman, and his lip curled. "I'll not move. When he gets through, I'll propose." "How silly you boys can be!" Norine laughed. "I dare say the others are joking too, but--" "Joking?" O'Reilly grinned. "Not at all. I'm the only single man in camp who isn't in love with you. When you arrived this morning there was a general stampede for the river. I'll bet the fish in this stream will taste of soap for years to come." As if to point O'Reilly's words at the moment appeared Colonel Lopez, shaved blood-raw and clad in a recently laundered uniform which was still damp. The three Americans rose to salute him, but discipline was lax and he waved them back to their seats. Other eyes than his, too, had noted Miss Evans's reappearance after her siesta, for Major Ramos, Norine's escort from headquarters, soon joined the group, and he was followed by two Camagueyan lieutenants. These latter were youths of some family standing. Before the war they had been dandies, and they still had an excellent opinion of their physical charms, but, unfortunately, they spoke no English and hence their attentions to Norine had been somewhat vague and pointless. They possessed eloquent eyes, however, and now they languished melting glances upon her, the meaning of which she had no difficulty in translating. "We've been talking about food," Leslie Branch advised his commanding officer. "Miss Evans isn't a burning patriot like the rest of us, and so of course she can't share our ravenous appetite for beef cooked and eaten on the hoof." "So?" Lopez's handsome face clouded. "You are hungry, then?" Norine confessed that she was. "I'm starving!" said she. "I haven't had a decent meal for a week." "God be praised! I know where there is a goat, not two leagues away!" said the colonel. "But I don't want a goat," Norine complained. "I want--well, pickles, and jam, and sardines, and--candy, and--tooth-powder! Real boarding-school luxuries. I'd just like to rob a general store." Lopez furrowed his brows and lost himself in thought. Later, while the others were talking, he drew Ramos aside and for a while they kept their heads together; then they invited Judson to join their council. It was not until perhaps an hour later that O'Reilly had a chance for a confidential talk with Norine, for in the mean time other officers came to pay their respects. But when the last one had reluctantly departed he said: "I've been talking to Joe about you, and I don't think it's right for you to be running around alone this way." "You know how mad that sort of talk makes me," she warned him. "Yes. Just the same, I'll never feel easy until you're safe home again. And I'll never stop bothering you until--" "In the first place, I'm not alone. I take a woman with me everywhere, a Mrs. Ruiz." "Bah! She's no more of a chaperon than I am." Norine uttered an impatient exclamation. "Is this a time to consider such things?" "Oh, I dare say the nature of your work is unconventional and excuses a good deal, but you don't understand the Latin mind as I do. These Cubans have different standards than ours. They're very apt to think--" "I don't care what they think," the girl declared, "so long as _I_ think I'm doing right. That's final." There was a brief pause. Then O'Reilly admitted: "I'm not seriously concerned over that part of it, either, for you are the best judge of what is right and proper. What does concern me, however, is the effect all this may have upon you, yourself. You're impractical, romantic"--Norine laughed shortly, but he went on, stubbornly--"and just the sort of girl to be carried away by some extravagant impulse." "What makes you think I'm impractical and romantic?" "You wouldn't be here, otherwise." "Very well. What are you trying to get at? What do you mean by 'some extravagant impulse'?" "I'm afraid"--O'Reilly hesitated, then voiced a fear which had troubled him more than he cared to acknowledge--"I'm afraid of some silly entanglement, some love affair--" Norine's laughter rang out, spontaneous, unaffected. It served to relieve the momentary tension which had sprung up between them. "All these men are attracted to you, as it is quite natural they should be," O'Reilly hurried on. "I'm worried to death for fear you'll forget that you're too blamed good for any of them." "What a conscientious duenna you are!" she told him, "but rest easy; I'm thoroughly homesick, and ready to flunk it all at the first good excuse. I'll make you a promise, Johnnie. If I decide to fall in love with any of these ragged heroes I'll choose you. Most of them think there is something between us, anyhow." "I don't quite understand how I manage to resist you," O'Reilly told her, "for I think you're perfectly splendid. Probably that's why I'd hate to see you married to some one-legged veteran of this amateur war." "Women don't marry legs," she told him, lightly. Then, more seriously, she asked, "What are you doing about Rosa?" "I'm waiting to hear from Matanzas Province. When I joined the army I had to go where I was sent, of course, but General Gomez has started inquiries, and as soon as I learn something definite I shall follow it up. I shall go where the trail leads." "You still have hope?" He nodded. "I refuse to let myself doubt." When O'Reilly joined Judson for supper the latter met him with a broad grin on his face. "Well," said he, "it seems you started something with your game of 'Vittles.' You can get ready to saddle up when the moon rises." "What do you mean?" "The colonel took Miss Evans at her word. We're going to raid San Antonio de los Banos--two hundred of us--to get her some pickles, and jam, and candy, and tooth-powder." XIX THAT SICK MAN FROM SAN ANTONIO Certain histories of the Cuban War for Independence speak of "The Battle of San Antonio de los Banos." They relate how one thousand patriots captured the village after a gallant and sanguinary resistance by its Spanish garrison; how they released the prisoners in the local jail, replenished their own supplies, and then retired in the face of enemy reinforcements. It is quite a stirring story to read and it has but one fault, a fault, by the way, not uncommon in histories--it is mainly untrue. In the first place, the engagement was in no sense a battle, but merely a raid. The number of troops engaged was, perhaps, one-fifth of the generous total ascribed by the historians, and as a military manoeuver it served no purpose whatsoever. That the Cubans delivered a spirited attack there is no denying. As a matter of fact, the engagement was characterized by an abandon, by a lack of caution, truly sensational, the reason being that the Insurrectos were half starved and stormed the town much as hungry hoboes attack a lunch-counter. Nevertheless, since the affair had a direct bearing upon the fortunes of several people connected with this story, it is, perhaps, worth relating. The Baths of St. Anthony consisted of a sulphur spring which for many years had been held in high regard by gouty and rheumatic Camagueyans; around this spring a village had arisen which boasted rather better shops than the ordinary country town. It was this fact which had induced the gallant and obliging Colonel Lopez to attack it, for, as he explained to his American friends, if any place outside of Habana was likely to contain pickles, jam, sardines, candy, tooth-powder, and such other delicacies as appeared necessary to the contentment of a visiting American lady, San Antonio de los Banos was the one. Colonel Lopez did not believe in half measures: once he had determined to prove his devotion to Norine Evans, he would have sacrificed himself and the flower of his command; he would have wasted his last precious three-pound shell in breaching the walls of San Antonio de los Banos rather than fail. But as a matter of fact the village had no walls and it was defended only by a couple of blockhouses. Therefore the colonel left his artillery behind. Perhaps its name was the most impressive thing about San Antonio de los Banos. Its streets were narrow and steep and stony, and its flinty little plaza was flanked by stores of the customary sort, the fronts of which were open so that mounted customers from the country might ride in to make their purchases. Crowning two commanding eminences just outside the village limits were the loopholed fortinas, where for months past the Spanish garrison had been dozing. Lopez and his troop approached the town in the early morning. As they deployed for the attack the colonel issued private instructions to certain members of his command. "O'Reilly, you and Senor Branch will enter one grocery-store after another. You will purchase that jam, those sardines, and whatever else you think Miss Evans would like. Captain Judson, you and Major Ramos will go to the apothecary-shop--I understand there is a very good one--and look for tooth-powder and candy and the like, I shall see that the streets are cleared, then I shall endeavor to discover some pickles; but as God is my judge, I doubt if there is such a thing this side of Habana." Leslie Branch, whose temper had not improved with the long night ride, inquired, caustically: "Do you expect us to buy the groceries? Well, I'm broke, and so is O'Reilly." "Have you no money?" asked the colonel, vastly surprised. "I haven't tipped my hat to a dollar since I quit newspaper work. What's more, I want to do a little shopping for myself." O'Reilly agreed: "If you don't give us some change, Colonel, we'll have to open a charge account in your name." "Carmaba!" muttered Lopez. "I intended to borrow from you gentlemen. Well, never mind--we'll commandeer what we wish in the name of the Republic." Lopez's attack proved a complete surprise, both to the citizens and to the garrison of the town. The rebel bugle gave the first warning of what was afoot, and before the Castilian troops who were loitering off duty could regain their quarters, before the citizens could take cover or the shopkeepers close and bar their heavy wooden shutters, two hundred ragged horsemen were yelling down the streets. There followed a typical Cuban engagement--ten shouts to one shot. There was a mad charge on the heels of the scurrying populace, a scattering pop-pop of rifles, cheers, cries, shrieks of defiance and far-flung insults directed at the fortinas. Bugles blew on the hilltops; the defenders armed themselves and began to fire into the village. But since the Insurrectos were now well sheltered by the houses and only a portion of certain streets could be raked from the forts, the Spanish bullets did no harm. Obedient to orders, a number of Lopez's men dismounted and took positions whence they could guard against a sally, thus leaving the rest of the command free to raid the stores. In the outskirts of the town Mausers spoke, the dust leaped, and leaden messengers whined through the air. As locusts settle upon a standing crop, so did the army of liberators descend upon the shops of San Antonio de los Banos. It was great fun, great excitement, while it lasted, for the town was distracted and its citizens had neither time nor inclination to resist. Some of the shop-keepers, indeed, to prove their loyalty, openly welcomed the invaders. Others, however, lacking time to close up, fled incontinently, leaving their goods unguarded. O'Reilly, with Branch and Jacket close at his heels, whirled his horse into the first bodega he came to. The store was stocked with general merchandise, but its owner, evidently a Spaniard, did not tarry to set a price upon any of it. As the three horsemen came clattering in at the front he went flying out at the rear, and, although O'Reilly called reassuringly after him, his only answer was the slamming of a back door, followed by swiftly diminishing cries of fright. Plainly, that rush of ragged men, those shots, those ferocious shouts from the plaza, were too much for the peaceful shopkeeper and his family, and they had taken refuge in some neighbor's garden. There was no time to waste. Johnnie dismounted and, walking to the shelves where some imported canned goods were displayed, he began to select those delicacies for which he had been sent. The devoted Jacket was at his side. The little Cuban exercised no restraint; he seized whatever was most handy, meanwhile cursing ferociously, as befitted a bloodthirsty bandit. Boys are natural robbers, and at this opportunity for loot Jacket's soul flamed savagely and he swept the shelves bare as he went. "Hey, Leslie! Get something to carry this stuff in," O'Reilly directed over his shoulder. Receiving only a muttered reply, he turned to find that his fellow-countryman had cut down a string of perhaps two dozen large straw sombreros and was attempting to select one that fitted his head. "Oh, look!" Branch murmured. "Forty dollars' worth of lids, but--all too small. They must have been made on the head of a cane." "Take the whole string, but get us something to wrap up this grub in. Hurry!" Spurred by O'Reilly's tone and by a lively rattle of rifle-shots outside, Leslie disappeared into the living-quarters at the back of the store. A moment later he emerged with a huge armful of bedclothes, evidently snatched at random. Trailing behind him, like a bridal veil, was a mosquito-net, which in his haste he had torn from its fastenings. "I guess this is poor!" he exulted. "Bedding! Pillows! Mosquito-net! I'll sleep comfortable after this." From somewhere came the faint smothered wailing of a baby--eloquent testimony of the precipitate haste with which the terrified storekeeper and his wife had fled. Dumping his burden of sheets, blankets, and brilliantly colored cotton quilts upon the floor, Branch selected two of the stoutest and began to knot the corners together. He had scarcely finished when Judson reined in at the door and called to O'Reilly: "We've cleaned out the drugstore. Better get a move on you, for we may have to run any minute. I've just heard about some Cuban prisoners in the calaboose. Gimme a hand and we'll let 'em out." "Sure!" O'Reilly quickly remounted, meanwhile directing Jacket to load the canned goods upon his horse and ride for the open country. He looked back a few moments later, to see his asistente emerge from the bodega perched between two queer-looking improvised saddlebags bulging with plunder. The pony was overloaded, but in obedience to the frantic urgings of its barelegged rider it managed to break into a shambling trot. Branch reappeared, too, looping the eight-foot string of straw hats to his saddle-horn, and balancing before him the remainder of the bedding, done up in a gaudy quilt. Sharing in the general consternation at the attack, the jail guards had disappeared, leaving Lopez's men free to break into the prison. When O'Reilly joined them the work was well under way. The municipal building of San Antonio was a thick-walled structure with iron-barred windows and stout doors; but the latter soon gave way, and the attackers poured in. Seizing whatever implements they could find, Judson and O'Reilly went from cell to cell, battering, prying, smashing, leaving their comrades to rescue the inmates. This jail was a poor affair. It could scarcely be dignified by the name of a prison; nevertheless, true prison conditions prevailed in it and it was evidently conducted in typically Spanish fashion. The corridors were dark and odorous, the cells unspeakably foul; O'Reilly and Judson saw, heard, smelled enough to convince them that no matter how guilty the prisoners might be they had been amply punished for their crimes. This, too, was swift work. The building echoed to rushing, yelling men, while outside a fitful accompaniment of gun-shots urged the rescuers to greater haste. While the Americans smashed lock after lock, their comrades dragged the astonished inmates from their kennels, hustled them into the street, and took them up behind their saddles. The raid was over, "retreat" was sounding, when Judson and O'Reilly ran out of the prison, remounted, and joined their comrades, who were streaming back toward the plaza. "Whew!" Judson wiped the sweat out of his eyes. "No chance to ask these fellows what they were in for." "No need to ask them," said Johnnie. "A month in there would be too much for a murderer." "The druggist said most of 'em are just patriots, and every holiday the Spaniards shoot one or two. There's no cock-fighting, so it's the only Sunday amusement they have. Did you notice that sick guy?" "Yes." "He looked to me like he was plain starved. Our fellows had to carry him." Colonel Lopez galloped up to inquire, anxiously, "Did you find those eatables, eh?" "Yes, sir, and a lot more." "Good! But I failed. Pickles? Caramba! Nobody here ever heard of one!" "Did we lose any men?" Judson asked. "Not one. But Ramos was badly cut." "So? Then he got to close quarters with some Spaniard?" "Oh no!" The colonel grinned. "He was in too great a hurry and broke open a show-case with his fist." The retreating Cubans still maintained their uproar, discharging their rifles into the air, shrieking defiance at their invisible foes, and voicing insulting invitations to combat. This ferocity, however, served only to terrify further the civil population and to close the shutters of San Antonio the tighter. Meanwhile, the loyal troops remained safely in their blockhouses, pouring a steady fire into the town. And despite this admirable display of courage the visitors showed a deep respect for their enemies' markmanship, taking advantage of whatever shelter there was. Leslie Branch, of course, proved the solitary exception; as usual, he exposed himself recklessly and rode the middle of the streets, regardless of those sudden explosions of dust beneath his horse's feet or those unexpected showers of plaster from above. He had spent his time assiduously ransacking the deserted shops, and in addition to his huge bundle of bedding and his long string of straw hats he now possessed a miscellaneous assortment of plunder, in which were a bolt of calico, a pair of shoes, a collection of cooking-utensils, an umbrella, and--strangest of all--a large gilt-framed mirror. The safety of these articles seemed to concern him far more than his own. Spying O'Reilly, he shouted: "Say! What's the Spanish word for 'clothing-store'? I need a new suit." "Don't be an idiot!" Johnnie yelled at him. "Keep under cover." But Branch only shook his head. "They couldn't hit anything," he cried. The next instant, as if to punctuate his remark, a spent bullet smashed the mirror and sprinkled the speaker with particles of glass. It was only by a miracle that he escaped injury. Branch reined in his horse, examined the wreck, then with a petulant exclamation cast the useless frame away. "Come on, Johnnie," Judson growled. "The damn fool wants to get shot." The sick man's bravado roused in O'Reilly a feeling of mingled resentment and apprehension, but further warning would obviously be a waste of breath. Nevertheless, being a little too tender-hearted to follow Judson's nonchalant example and ride on, O'Reilly held in his horse, meanwhile keeping an anxious eye upon his friend. The latter was in no hurry; he jogged along leisurely, evidently on the lookout for an opportunity to replenish his wardrobe. Truth to say, this needed replenishing--Leslie resembled a scarecrow clad in a suit of soiled pajamas. But by this time most of the shops had their shutters up. When the last one had been left behind O'Reilly spurred his horse into a gallop, relieved to know that the worst was over. The raiders had approached San Antonio de los Banos across the fields at the rear, but Colonel Lopez led their retreat by way of the camino real which followed the riverbank. This road for a short distance was exposed to the fire from one fort; then it was sheltered by a bit of rising ground. O'Reilly, among the last to cross the zone of fire, was just congratulating himself upon the fortunate outcome of the skirmish when he saw Colonel Lopez ride to the crest of a knoll, rise in his stirrups and, lifting his cupped hands to his lips, direct a loud shout back toward the town. Lopez was followed by several of his men, who likewise began to yell and to wave their arms excitedly. Johnnie turned to discover that Leslie Branch had lagged far behind, and now, as if to cap his fantastic performances, had dismounted and was descending the river-bank to a place where a large washing had been spread upon the stones to dry. He was quite exposed, and a spiteful crackle from the nearest blockhouse showed that the Spaniards were determined to bring him down. Mauser bullets ricocheted among the rocks--even from this distance their sharp explosions were audible--others broke the surface of the stream into little geysers, as if a school of fish were leaping. While Johnnie looked on in breathless apprehension Branch appropriated several suits that promised to fit him; then he climbed up the bank, remounted his horse, and ambled slowly out of range. Now this was precisely the sort of harebrained exploit which delights a Cuban audience. When Leslie rejoined his comrades, therefore, he was greeted with shouts and cheers. "Caramba! He would risk his life for a clean shirt. ... There's a fellow for you! He enjoys the hum of these Spanish bees! ... Bravo! Tell us what the bullets said to you," they cried, crowding around him in an admiring circle. O'Reilly, unable to contain himself, burst forth in a rage: "You infernal fool! Do you want to be shot robbing a clothes-line?" "Rats!" ejaculated Leslie, sourly. "I TOLD you I had to have some clothes." "Lopez ought to court-martial you. What are you going to do with that junk, now that you have it? You can't take it with you on the march." "You wait and see," said the other. "I'm going to be comfortable, if--" He paused, with a peculiar, startled expression on his face. "Did you hear anything?" he queried after a moment. "No. What?" "Oh, nothing." The two men rode on in silence for a time, then Leslie said: "Queer thing happened back there while those Romeos were popping at me. I heard a baby crying." "A baby?" "Sure. I suppose it was the washerwoman's kid. When we flushed her she probably vamped out and left it in the grass. Anyhow, it let up an awful holler." Jacket and the other loot-laden soldiers had been sent on ahead, together with those troopers who were sharing mounts with the rescued prisoners; they were now waiting perhaps two miles from town for their companions to overtake them. As the column came up and halted, O'Reilly addressed a remark to Leslie Branch, but in the middle of it the faint, unmistakable complaint of a child came to his ears. "Listen!" he exclaimed. "What on earth--" "I've been hearing it right along," Branch said. "I--I thought I had the willies." The nearest riders abruptly ceased their chatter; they questioned one another mutely, doubting their own ears. Again came that thin, muffled wail, whereupon O'Reilly cried in astonishment: "Leslie! Why, it--it's in YOUR BUNDLE!" He pointed to the formless roll of bedding which hung from his friend's saddle-horn. "G'wan! You're crazy!" Branch slipped to the ground, seized the bundle in his arms, and bore it to the roadside. With shaking hands he tugged at the knotted corners of the comforter. "Pure imagination!" he muttered, testily. "There's nothing in here but bedclothes. I just grabbed an armful--" The last word ended in a yell. Leslie sprang into the air as if his exploring fingers had encountered a coiled serpent. "Oh, my God!" He poised as if upon the point of flight. "Johnnie! Look! It's ALIVE!" "What's alive? What is it?" With a sudden desperate courage Branch bent forward and spread out the bedding. There, exposed to the bulging eyes of the onlookers, was a very tiny, very brown baby. It was a young baby; it was quite naked. Its eyes, exposed to the sudden glare of the morning sun, closed tightly; one small hand all but lost itself in the wide, toothless cavity that served as a mouth. Its ten ridiculous toes curled and uncurled in a most amazing fashion. "Oh, my God!" Branch repeated, aghast. "It's just b-born! Its eyes aren't open." The Cubans, who had momentarily been stricken dumb with amazement, suddenly broke into voluble speech. The clamor served to attract Colonel Lopez, who was riding past. "What's the matter here?" he demanded, forcing his horse through the ring which had formed about El Demonio and his bundle. One startled look and the colonel flung himself out of his saddle. "Whose baby is that?" he demanded. "I--I--Why, it's mine. I mean, I--" Branch's eyes were glued upon the child in horrified fascination. He choked and stammered and waved his hands impotently. "Come, come! Speak up! What does this mean?" Lopez's voice grew stern. "She must have be-been asleep. I just grabbed--You know. I--" Branch's face became suddenly stricken. "Look out!" he shouted, hoarsely. "She's going to cry, or something." He was right; the baby showed every sign of a firm determination to voice her indignation at the outrage she had suffered. Her hand stole out of her mouth, her fists closed, her face puckered ominously. Lopez stooped, wrapped her in a sheet, then took her awkwardly in his arms. He bent a blazing glance upon the kidnapper, but he had no chance to speak before the storm of wailings broke. News of Leslie's exploit was spreading. Men were shouting and gesticulating to their comrades to come and see El Demonio's spoils. There was a great chattering and crowding and no little smothered laughter. Meanwhile, Colonel Lopez was using every desperate device to soothe the infant, but without success. At last he strode up to Leslie and extended his burden. "Here," he said, harshly, "she's yours. I surrender her." Leslie drew back. "No, you don't! I wouldn't touch her for a thousand dollars!" he cried. But Lopez was firm. He spoke in a tone of command: "Do as I tell you. Take her. A fine outrage, to steal a baby! What are we going to do with her? We can't send her back--the town is crazy. I've no doubt I shall hear from this." In spite of Leslie's choking protests, in spite of his feeble resistance, Lopez pressed the noisy stranger into his arms, then turned to his men and directed them to be off. Branch remained motionless. He was stupefied; he held the baby gingerly, not daring to put it down, dreading to keep it; his eyes were rolling, he began to perspire freely. Stretching a timid, detaining hand toward Lopez, he inquired, huskily, "What shall I do with her?" "God knows. I don't," snapped the officer. "I shall have to think, but meanwhile I hold you responsible for her. Come now, we must be going." Leslie swallowed hard; his face became overspread with a sicklier pallor. "What'll I do--when she gets HUNGRY?" Lopez could not restrain a smile. "You should have thought about that, compadre. Well, I know where there is a milk cow not three leagues from here. I'll send a man to borrow it from the owner and drive it to our camp. Or perhaps"--his handsome face hardened again--"perhaps you would prefer to take this child back where you found it?" "No--I--Oh, they'd tear me limb from limb!" "Exactly." Branch turned his head from side to side in desperation. He wet his lips. "It's the youngest one I ever had anything to do with. Maybe it isn't used to cow's milk," he ventured. "Unfortunately that is the only kind I can offer it. Take care of it until I find some way of notifying its people." O'Reilly had looked on at his friend's embarrassment with malicious enjoyment, but, realizing that Branch would undoubtedly try to foist upon him the responsibility of caring for the baby, he slipped away and rode over to where Captain Judson was engaged in making a litter upon which to carry the sick prisoner they had rescued from the jail. When he had apprised the artilleryman of what Branch had found in his roll of purloined bedding the latter smiled broadly. "Serves him right," Judson chuckled. "We'll make him sit up nights with it. Maybe it'll improve his disposition." More seriously he explained: "This chap here is all in. I'm afraid we aren't going to get him through." Following Judson's glance, O'Reilly beheld an emaciated figure lying in the shade of a near-by guava-bush. The man was clad in filthy rags, his face was dirty and overgrown with a month's beard; a pair of restless eyes stared unblinkingly at the brazen sky. His lips were moving; from them issued a steady patter of words, but otherwise he showed no sign of life. "You said he was starving." Johnnie dismounted and lent Judson a hand with his task. "That's what I thought at first, but he's sick. I suppose it's that damned dungeon fever." "Then we'd better look after him ourselves. These Cubans are mighty careless, you know. We can swing him between our horses, and--" Judson looked up to discover that Johnnie was poised rigidly, his mouth open, his hands halted in midair. The sick man's voice had risen, and O'Reilly, with a peculiar expression of amazement upon his face, was straining his ears to hear what he said. "Eh? What's the matter?" Judson inquired. For a moment O'Reilly remained frozen in his attitude, then without a word he strode to the sufferer. He bent forward, staring into the vacant, upturned face. A cry burst from his throat, a cry that was like a sob, and, kneeling, he gathered the frail, filthy figure into his arms. "ESTEBAN!" he cried. "ESTEBAN! This is O'Reilly. O'Rail-ye! Don't you know me? O'Reilly, your friend, your brother! For God's sake, tell me what they've done to you! Look at me, Esteban! Look at me! LOOK AT ME! Oh, ESTEBAN!" Such eagerness, such thankfulness, such passionate pity were in his friend's hoarse voice that Judson drew closer. He noticed that the faintest flame of reason flickered for an instant in the sick man's hollow eyes; then they began to rove again, and the same rustling whisper recommenced. Judson had heard something of O'Reilly's story; he had heard mention of Esteban and Rosa Varona; he stood, therefore, in silent wonderment, listening to the incoherent words that poured from his friend's lips. O'Reilly held the boy tenderly in his arms; tears rolled down his cheeks as he implored Esteban to hear and to heed him. "TRY to hear me! TRY!" There was fierce agony in the cry. "Where is Rosa? ... Rosa? ... You're safe now; you can tell me. ... You're safe with O'Reilly. ... I came back ... I came back for you and Rosa. ... Where is she? ... Is she--dead?" Other men were assembling now. The column was ready to move, but Judson signaled to Colonel Lopez and made known the identity of the sick stranger. The colonel came forward swiftly and laid a hand upon O'Reilly's shoulder, saying: "So! You were right, after all. Esteban Varona didn't die. God must have sent us to San Antonio to deliver him." "He's sick, SICK!" O'Reilly said, huskily. "Those Spaniards! Look what they've done to him." His voice changed. He cried, fiercely: "Well, I'm late again. I'm always just a little bit too late. He'll die before he can tell me--" "Wait! Take hold of yourself. We'll do all that can be done to save him. Now come, we must be going, or all San Antonio will be upon us." O'Reilly roused. "Put him in my arms," he ordered. "I'll carry him to camp myself." But Lopez shook his head, saying, gently: "It's a long march, and the litter would be better for him. Thank Heaven we have an angel of mercy awaiting us, and she will know how to make him well." When the troop resumed its retreat Esteban Varona lay suspended upon a swinging bed between O'Reilly's and Judson's horses. Although they carried him as carefully as they could throughout that long hot journey, he never ceased his babbling and never awoke to his surroundings. XX EL DEMONIO'S CHILD During the next few days O'Reilly had reason to bless the happy chance which had brought Norine Evans to Cuba. During the return journey from San Antonio de los Banos he had discovered how really ill Esteban Varona was, how weak his hold upon life. The young man showed the marks of wasting illness and of cruel abuse; starvation, neglect, and disease had all but done for him. After listening to his ravings, O'Reilly began to fear that the poor fellow's mind was permanently affected. It was an appalling possibility, one to which he could not reconcile himself. To think that somewhere in that fevered brain was perhaps locked the truth about Rosa's fate, if not the secret of her whereabouts, and yet to be unable to wring an intelligent answer to a single question, was intolerable. The hours of that ride were among the longest O'Reilly had ever passed. But Norine Evans gave him new heart. She took complete charge of the sick man upon his arrival in camp; then in her brisk, matter-of-fact way she directed O'Reilly to go and get some much-needed rest. Esteban was ill, very ill, she admitted; there was no competent doctor near, and her own facilities for nursing were primitive indeed; nevertheless, she expressed confidence that she could cure him, and reminded O'Reilly that nature has a blessed way of building up a resistance to environment. As a result of her good cheer O'Reilly managed to enjoy a night's sleep. Leslie Branch was later than the others in arriving, for the baby proved to be a trial and a handicap. His comrades had refused him any assistance on the homeward journey. They expressed a deep, hoarse condemnation of his conduct, and pretended to consider that he had sacrificed all claims to their friendship and regard. Branch took this seriously, and he was in a state bordering upon desperation when he reached camp. In the hope of unloading his unwelcome burden upon Norine Evans he hurried directly to her tent. But Norine had heard the story; Lopez had warned her; therefore she waved him away. "Don't ask me to mother your stolen child," she said. "Oh, but you've GOT to," he declared in a panic. "You've just GOT to." "Well, I won't. In the first place, I have a sick man in my tent." "But look! Listen! This baby dislikes me. I've nearly dropped it a dozen times. I--I'm going to leave it, anyhow." But Norine remained firm in her refusal. "You sha'n't leave your foundling at MY door. If you intend to steal babies you should make up your mind to take care of them." She was itching to seize the hungry little mite, but she restrained the impulse. "Go ahead and keep it amused until the cow arrives," she told him. "Keep it AMUSED! Amuse a starving brat!" tragically cried the man. "In Heaven's name, how?" "Why, play with it, cuddle it, give it your watch--anything! But don't allow it to cry--it may injure itself." Branch glared resentfully; then he changed his tactics and began to plead. "Oh, Norine!" he implored. "I--just can't do it. I'm all fagged out now, and, besides, I've got the only watch in camp that keeps time. I didn't sleep any last night, and it'll keep me awake all to-night. It's a nice baby, really. It needs a woman---" Norine parted the flaps of her tent and pointed inside, where Esteban Varona lay upon her cot. His eyes were staring; his lips were moving. "Mrs. Ruiz and I will have our hands full with that poor chap. For all we know, he may have some contagious disease." Branch was utterly shameless, utterly selfish and uncompassionate. "I'm sick, too--sicker than he is. Have a heart! Remember, I risked my life to get you something nice to eat---" "Yes! The most ridiculous procedure I ever heard of. What ever made you do such a crazy thing?" Norine was honestly indignant now. "I did it for you. It seems to me that the least you can do in return---" "The least, and the most, I can do is to try and save this poor man's life," she firmly reasserted. "Now run along. I'd take the baby if I could, but I simply can't." "It'll die on me," Branch protested. "Nonsense! It's the healthiest little thing I ever saw. Wait until it has its supper. You'll see." She disappeared into her tent and Branch reluctantly turned away. Next he bore the infant to Judson and O'Reilly in turn; but both gruffly refused to assume the least responsibility for it. In the matter of advice concerning its welfare, however, they were more obliging. They were willing to discuss the theory of child-rearing with him as long as he would listen, but their advice merely caused him to glare balefully and to curse them. Nor did he regard it as a mark of friendship on their part when they collected an audience that evening to watch him milk the cow--a procedure, by the way, not devoid of excitement and hazard, inasmuch as Branch's knowledge of cows was even more theoretical than his knowledge of babies. Leslie had begun by this time to realize that there existed a general conspiracy against him; he met it with sullen resentment. He deeply regretted his ignorance of the Spanish language, however, for a thousand epithets and insults clamored for translation. Now there are cows which an amateur can milk, and there are other kinds. This particular cow was shy, apprehensive, peevish; Branch's unpractised fumbling irritated her. Being herself a nomad of the savannas, she was accustomed to firm, masterful men, therefore when Leslie attempted courteously, apologetically, to separate her from her milk she turned and hooked him. El Demonio's audience, who had been looking on with rapt attention, applauded this show of spirit. Branch was unwontedly meek. He acknowledged his total inexperience, and begged his friends, almost politely, to call for a substitute. Judson explained, gravely, "These Cubans don't know any more about cows than you do." O'Reilly agreed, "They're good bull-fighters, but they can't milk." Leslie eyed the speakers, white with rage; he was trembling. "You think you're damned funny, don't you? You're having a jubilee with me. Well, I'm game. I'll go through with it. If you'll hold her, I'll milk her. I'll milk her till she hollers." Obligingly, O'Reilly took the animal by the horns and Judson laid hold of her tail. "Stretch her tight," Leslie commanded. "Don't give her an inch of slack, or I'll quit." When his friends had braced themselves he moved toward the cow once more, but this time from the opposite quarter. Noting the direction of his approach, the onlookers gave vent to a low murmur of expectancy. They drew closer. Strangely enough, the animal stood quiet for a time--lost in amazement, perhaps--and Leslie managed to cover the bottom of his big tin cup with milk. But at last the outrage proved too much for her; she slowly lifted one hind foot and poised it jerkily. She seemed to consider the next move for a moment; then she kicked forward and sent Branch flying. "Can you beat that?" O'Reilly exclaimed in apparent wonderment. "Why, she walloped you with the back of her hand." Judson, too, affected great amazement. "Most cows are left-handed," he declared. "Try her on the other side." Branch dried the milk from his face, then in a shaking voice cried: "Have a good time with me. It's your last chance." It seemed for a while that the enterprise was doomed to failure; but at last a pint or more of milk was secured, and this Leslie proceeded to dilute with warm water from a near-by camp-fire. Even then, however, his difficulties were not over. He had supposed that any baby knew enough to drink. It took him half an hour to discover his mistake. Having long since given up the hope of any active assistance from his audience, he doggedly set to work to fashion a nursing-bottle. He succeeded in due time, after making use of a flask, the stem of an unused cigarette-holder, and a handkerchief. When he finally took seat and began awkwardly coaxing the fretful child to drink, the Cubans voiced their appreciation of the picture. They were courteous, they did not laugh; nevertheless, the sight of their eccentric, irascible, rebellious El Demonio tamely nursing a child in the fire-light filled them with luxurious, soul-satisfying enjoyment. O'Reilly was up at daylight to offer his services in caring for Esteban Varona, but Norine declined them. "His fever is down a little and he has taken some nourishment," she reported. "That food you boys risked your silly lives for may come in handy, after all." "I dare say he won't be able to talk to me to-day?" O'Reilly ventured. "Not to-day, nor for many days, I'm afraid." "If you don't mind, then, I'll hang around and listen to what he says," he told her, wistfully. "He might drop a word about Rosa." "To be sure. So far he's scarcely mentioned her. I can't understand much that he says, of course, but Mrs. Ruiz tells me it's all jumbled and quite unintelligible. How is Leslie's baby this morning?" "Oh, it passed a good night. It was awake and had ordered breakfast when I got up. Leslie was making a fire to scald out its bottle. He says he didn't close his eyes all night." "Poor fellow! I'm going to help him," Norine declared. "Please don't. Lopez wants to teach him a lesson, and this is the best thing that could possibly have happened. We have told him that there's no chance of returning the baby, and he thinks he's elected to keep it indefinitely. As a matter of fact, Jacket is going to take a letter to the comandante at San Antonio this morning, advising him that the child is safe, and asking him to send for it at once." "Isn't that risky?" Norine inquired. "Won't the comandante attack us if he learns where we are?" "Lopez doesn't think so. Those Spaniards are usually pretty scrupulous on points of honor. There was some difficulty in getting a messenger, but Jacket volunteered. He volunteers for anything, that boy. They wouldn't be likely to hurt a kid like him. If they should, why, we have the baby, you see." Although Norine had pretended to wash her hands of all responsibility for Branch's little charge, she was by no means so inhuman as she appeared. During the day she kept a jealous eye upon it, and especially upon its diet. Fortunately for all concerned, it was a good-natured child; so long as its stomach was full it was contented. It slept a good deal, and what time it was awake it sucked its fist and suffered itself to be variously entertained by the men. There were, of course, a number of fellows who could see no humor at all in El Demonio's plight, nor any reason for adding to his embarrassments. These came to his aid in numerous ways. It was an idle day; there was nothing to do except play with the baby; before night came the child had established itself as a general favorite. Even Branch himself had become interested in it. "Say, I've learned a lot about kids from this one," he confided to O'Reilly at dinner-time. "I always thought young babies were just damp, sour-smelling little animals, but this one has character. She knows me already, and I'm getting so I can pick her up without feeling that I'm going to puncture her. She's full of dimples, too. Got 'em everywhere. What do you think we'd better name her?" "She probably has a name. Do you expect to keep her permanently?" Branch considered. "I wouldn't have thought of such a thing yesterday, but how are we going to get rid of her? That's the question. We can't just leave her with the first family we come to. These country people have more kids than they know what to do with." "Thinking about taking her on the march with us?" O'Reilly looked up, much amused. "I don't see why it couldn't be done. The men wouldn't mind and she'd make a dandy mascot." O'Reilly shook his head. "This isn't a baseball team. What about the baby's mother?" "Bullets! Fine mother SHE was, to desert her child. I'll bet she's glad to get rid of it. People like that don't have any more affection than--cattle. They don't deserve to have children. What's more, they don't know how to care for them. I'd like to raise this kid according to my own ideas." Branch's face lightened suddenly. "Say! I've just thought of a name for her!" "What?" "Bullets!" "Are you swearing or naming her?" "Wouldn't that be a good name? It's new, and it means something. Raid, battle, rain of bullets! See? Bullets Branch--that doesn't sound bad." With deliberate malice O'Reilly said, gravely: "Of course, if you adopt her, you can name her what you choose--but she's a mighty brown baby! I have my suspicions that--she's a mulatto." Branch was shocked, indignant. "That child's as white as you are," he sputtered. Then noting the twinkle in O'Reilly's eyes he turned away, muttering angrily. Strangely enough, Leslie's fantastic suggestion found echo in more than one quarter, and many of his camp-mates began to argue that El Demonio's baby would certainly bring the troop good luck, if it could keep her. Adoption of some sort was gravely discussed that evening around more than one camp-fire. After breakfast on the following morning the baby was bathed. This was an event, and it had been advertised as such. An interested and admiring group of swarthy cigarette-smokers looked on while Branch officiated, Norine's offer to perform the service less publicly having been refused. Leslie was just drying off the chubby form when he was unexpectedly interrupted. Jacket had made his round trip in safety, but instead of bringing a squad of the enemy's soldiers with him he had brought the child's parents, which was a much more sensible thing to do. The storekeeper and his wife arrived unheralded; they gave no warning of their coming, and they exchanged no amenities with the ravagers of their home. Hearing the shrill, petulant voice of their beloved, they made directly for it, as eagles swoop from the sky at threat to their nest. Branch looked up at the sound of some swift approach. He beheld an entirely strange woman bearing down upon him. Her face was white, frantic, terrible; her arms were outstretched; she gave utterance to a peculiar, distressing cry. Snatching the baby from his lap without so much as "by your leave," she clutched it to a billowing brown bosom. Leslie rose, protesting, just in time to receive the full onslaught of the child's distracted father. He went down in a swirl of arms and legs; he felt himself kicked, pounded, trampled, beaten, scratched, until his friends came to the rescue and dragged him to his feet. He rose to behold a small, fat, disheveled Spaniard who had turned from assaulting him and now appeared to be engaged in biting mouthfuls from such portions of the baby's anatomy as were not hidden in its mother's embrace. A clamor of voices breaking the Sabbath calm of the morning brought Norine Evans running from her tent. One look, and its cause was plain. Fifty men were talking loudly; fifty pairs of arms were waving. In consequence of the torrent of words that beat upon their ears it was some time before the merchant and his wife could be made to fully understand the peculiar circumstances of the kidnapping, and that no harm had been intended to their darling. Slowly, bit by bit, they learned the truth, but even then the mother could not look upon Leslie Branch without a menacing dilation of the eyes and a peculiar expression of restrained ferocity. The father was more reasonable, however; once he was assured of his daughter's safety, his thankfulness sought outlet. He began by embracing every one within his reach. He kissed Norine, he kissed O'Reilly, he kissed Judson, he made a rush at Leslie himself; but the latter, suspicious of his intent, fled. Unmindful of the fact that these were the men who had relieved him of a considerable stock of goods and profaned his holy of holies, he recklessly distributed among them what money he had upon his person and then gave away the remaining contents of his pockets. He swore his undying love for them all. Smiting his breast excitedly, he urged them as a personal favor and a mark of his overflowing gratitude to return to San Antonio de los Banos, make themselves masters of all his worldly possessions, and then burn his store. While this was going on, Jacket was proudly advertising his share of the enterprise, not failing to give himself full credit. "By----! I made a big hit with that comandante," he told his American friends. "Those people in San Antonio say I'm the bravest boy they ever seen, and they give me more'n a thousand cigars. When I rode away I saluted the comandante; then I yelled, 'Vive Cuba Libre!' and everybody laughed like hell. I guess those people never seen nobody like me before." That afternoon, when it came time for the merchant and his little family to set out for home, a crowd of regretful Insurrectos assembled to bid them farewell and to look for the last time upon the baby. By now the mother's apprehensions had given way to pride and she could bring herself to smile at the compliments showered upon her offspring and to answer in kind those which were aimed at herself. She even permitted El Demonio to kiss the child good-by. Her husband, since his arrival in camp, had heard much about the eccentric American, and now, after apologizing abjectly for his unwarranted attack, he invited Branch to visit his store when this hideous war was over and Cuba was free. Finally, in spite of Leslie's frantic struggles, he embraced him and planted a moist kiss upon either cheek. Amid loud and repeated good wishes and a cheer for the baby the visitors rode away. Lopez linked his arm within O'Reilly's as they turned back into the palm-grove. With a smile he said: "Well, I hope this has taught your friend to steal no more babies." "I'm afraid he'll steal the very next one he sees. He fell in love with that one and wanted to keep it." "Oh, he wasn't alone in that. It's queer how sentimental soldiers become. I've often noticed it. When I was in the Rubi Hills some of my fellows adopted a goat. We had to eat it finally, but those men wouldn't touch a piece of the flesh--and they were starving. By the way, how is Varona doing?" "About the same." Lopez frowned. "I shall have to send him to Cubitas to-morrow, for we must be under way." "If he has to be moved, let me do it. I'd like to be with him when he comes out of his fever, and learn what he knows about his sister." O'Reilly's appeal was earnest. The colonel readily yielded. "Go, by all means. Report to General Gomez, and he no doubt will let you stay until the boy can talk. He may have news from Matanzas by that time." O'Reilly pressed his colonel's hand gratefully. "You're mighty good," said he. "There's one thing more. Will you look out for Branch while I'm gone, and--hold him down?" Lopez laughed lightly. "Oh, he'll soon get over his recklessness. This life agrees with him. Why, he's a different man already! When he gets well and has something to live for he will want to live. You'll see." XXI TREASURE It was a balmy, languid morning about two weeks after O'Reilly's return to the City among the Leaves. The Cubitas Mountains were green and sparkling from a recent shower; wood fires smoldered in front of the bark huts, sending up their wavering streamers of blue; a pack-train from the lower country was unloading fresh vegetables in the main street, and a group of ragged men were disputing over them. Some children were playing baseball near by. In a hammock swung between two trees Esteban Varona lay, listening to the admonitions of his nurse. Johnnie O'Reilly had just bade them both a hearty good morning and now Norine was saying: "One hour, no more. You had a temperature again last night, and it came from talking too much." "Oh, I'm better this morning," Esteban declared. "I'm getting so that I want to talk. I was too tired at first, but now--" "NOW, you will do exactly as you are told. Remember, it takes me just one hour to make my rounds, and if you are not through with your tales of blood and battle when I get back you'll have to finish them to-morrow." With a nod and a smile she left. As Esteban looked after her his white teeth gleamed and his hollow face lit up. "She brings me new life," he told O'Reilly. "She is so strong, so healthy, so full of life herself. She is wonderful! When I first saw her bending over me I thought I was dreaming. Sometimes, even yet, I think she cannot be real. But she is, eh?" "She is quite substantial," O'Reilly smiled. "I can tell when she is anywhere near, for my illness leaves me. It's a fact! And her hands--Well, she lays them on my head, and it no longer hurts; the fever disappears. There is some cool, delicious magic in her touch; it makes a fellow want to live. You have perhaps noticed it?" "N-no! You see, she never lays her hands on my head. However, I dare say you're right. All the sick fellows talk as you do." Esteban looked up quickly; his face darkened. "She--er--nurses OTHERS, eh? I'm not the only one?" "Well, hardly." There was a brief pause; then Esteban shifted his position and his tone changed. "Tell me, have you heard any news?" "Not yet, but we will hear some before long I'm sure." "Your faith does as much for me as this lady's care. But when you go away, when I'm alone, when I begin to think--" "Don't think too much; don't permit yourself to doubt," O'Reilly said, quickly. "Take my word for it, Rosa is alive and we'll find her somewhere, somehow. You heard that she had fallen into Cobo's hands when he sacked the Yumuri, but now we know that she and the negroes were living in the Pan de Matanzas long after that. In the same way Lopez assured me positively that you were dead. Well, look at you! It shows how little faith we can put in any story. No, Rosa is safe, and General Gomez will soon have word of her. That's what I've been waiting for--that and what you might have to tell me." "You know all that I know now and everything that has happened to me." "I don't know how you came to be in a cell in San Antonio de los Banos, two hundred miles from the place you were killed. That is still a mystery." "It is very simple, amigo. Let me see: I had finished telling you about the fight at La Joya. I was telling you how I fainted." "Exactly. Norine bound and gagged you at that point in the story." "Some good people found me a few hours after I lost consciousness. They supposed I had been attacked by guerrillas and left for dead. Finding that I still had life in me, they took me home with them. They were old friends from Matanzas by the name of Valdes--cultured people who had fled the city and were hiding in the manigua like the rest of us." "Not Valdes, the notary?" "The very same. Alberto Valdes and his four daughters. Heaven guided them to me. Alberto was an old man; he had hard work to provide food for his girls. Nevertheless, he refused to abandon me. The girls had become brown and ragged and as shy as deer. They nursed me for weeks, for my wounds became infected. God! It seems to me that I lay there sick and helpless for years. When my brain would clear I would think of Rosa, and then the fever would rise again and I would go out of my head. Oh, they were faithful, patient people! You see, I had walked east instead of west, and now I was miles away from home, and the country between was swarming with Spaniards who were burning, destroying, killing. You wouldn't know Matanzas, O'Reilly. It is a desert. "I finally became able to drag myself around the hut. But I had no means of sending word to Rosa, and the uncertainty nearly made me crazy. My clothes had rotted from me; my bones were just under the skin. I must have been a shocking sight. Then one day there came a fellow traveling east with messages for Gomez. He was one of Lopez's men, and he told me that Lopez had gone to the Rubi Hills with Maceo, and that there were none of our men left in the province. He told me other things, too. It was from him that I learned--" Estban Varona's thin hands clutched the edges of his hammock and he rolled his head weakly from side to side. "It was he who told me about Rosa. He said that Cobo had ravaged the Yumuri and that my sister--was gone. Christ!" "There, there! We know better now," O'Reilly said, soothingly. "It was a hideous story, a story of rape, murder. I wonder that I didn't go mad. It never occurred to me to doubt, and as a matter of fact the fellow was honest enough; he really believed what he told me. Well, I was sorry I hadn't died that night in the sunken road. All the hope, all the desire to live, went out of me. You see, I had been more than half expecting something of the kind. Every time I had left Rosa it had been with the sickening fear that I might never see here again. After the man had finished I felt the desire to get away from all I had known and loved, to leave Matanzas for new fields and give what was left of me to the cause. "I presume Alberto and the girls were relieved to get rid of me, for it meant more food for them. Anyhow, between us we prevailed upon the messenger to take me along. I was free to enlist, since I couldn't reach Lopez, and I came to join our forces in the Orient. "That is how you found me in this province. Lopez's man never delivered those despatches, for we were taken crossing the trocha--at least _I_ was taken, for Pablo was killed. They'd have made an end of me, too, I dare say, only I was so weak. It seems a century since that night. My memory doesn't serve me very well from that point, for they jailed me, and I grew worse. I was out of my head a good deal. I seem to remember a stockade somewhere and other prisoners, some of whom nursed me. You say you found me in a cell in San Antonio de los Banos. Well, I don't know how I got there, and I never heard of the place." "It will probably all come back to you in time," said O'Reilly. "No doubt." The two men fell silent for a while. Esteban lay with closed eyes, exhausted. O'Reilly gave himself up to frowning thought. His thoughts were not pleasant; he could not, for the life of him, believe in Rosa's safety so implicitly as he had led Esteban to suppose; his efforts to cheer the other had sapped his own supply of hope, leaving him a prey to black misgivings. He was glad when Norine Evans's return put an end to his speculations. Esteban was right; the girl did have an unusual ability to banish shadows, a splendid power to rout devils both of the spirit and of the flesh; she was a sort of antibody, destroying every noxious or unhealthy thing mental or physical with which she came in contact. This blessed capability was quite distinct from her skill with medicines--it was a gift, and as much a part of her as the healing magic which dwells in the sunshine. Certainly her knack of lending health and strength from her own abundant store had never been better shown than in Esteban's case, for with almost no medical assistance she had brought him back from the very voids. It was quite natural, therefore, that she should take a pride in her work and regard him with a certain jealous proprietary interest; it was equally natural that he should claim the greater share of her attention. "Have you harrowed this poor man's feelings sufficiently for once?" she inquired of O'Reilly. "I have. I'll agree to talk about nothing unpleasant hereafter." Esteban turned to his nurse, inquiring, abruptly, "Do you think Rosa is alive?" "Why, of course I do! Aren't you alive and--almost well?" Now, as an argument, there was no particular force in this suggestion; nevertheless, both men felt reassured. Esteban heaved a grateful sigh. After a moment he said, "There is something I want to tell you both." "Wait until to-morrow," Norine advised. But he persisted: "No! I must tell it now. First, however, did either of you discover an old coin in any of my pockets--an old Spanish doubloon?" "That doubloon again!" Norine lifted her hands protestingly, and cast a meaning look at O'Reilly. "You talked about nothing else for a whole week. Let me feel your pulse." Esteban surrendered his hand with suspicious readiness. "You were flat broke when we got you," O'Reilly declared. "Probably. I seem to remember that somebody stole it." "Doubloons! Pieces of eight! Golden guineas!" exclaimed Norine. "Why those are pirate coins! They remind me of Treasure Island; of Long John Silver and his wooden leg; of Ben Gunn and all the rest." With a voice made hoarse, doubtless to imitate the old nut-brown seaman with the saber-scar and the tarry pig-tail, who sat sipping his rum and water in the Admiral Benbow Inn, she began to chant: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the Devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" Esteban smiled uncomprehendingly. "Yes? Well, this has to do with treasure. That doubloon was a part of the lost treasure of the Varonas." "Lost treasure!" Norine's gray eyes widened. "What are you talking about?" "There is a mysterious fortune in our family. My father buried it. He was very rich, you know, and he was afraid of the Spaniards. O'Reilly knows the story." Johnnie assented with a grunt. "Sure! I know all about it." Esteban raised himself to his elbow. "You think it's a myth, a joke. Well, it's not. I know where it is. I found it!" Norine gasped; Johnnie spoke soothingly: "Don't get excited, old man; you've talked too much to-day." "Ha!" Esteban fell back upon his pillow. "I haven't any fever. I'm as sane as ever I was. That treasure exists, and that doubloon gave me the clue to its whereabouts. Pancho Cueto knew my father, and HE believed the story. He believed in it so strongly that--well--that's why he denounced my sister and me as traitors. He dug up our entire premises, but he didn't find it." Esteban chuckled. "Don Esteban, my father, was cunning: he could hide things better than a magpie. It remained for me to discover his trick." Norine Evans spoke breathlessly. "Oh, glory! Treasure! REAL treasure! How perfectly exciting! Tell me how you found it, quick! Johnnie, you remember he raved about a doubloon--" "He is raving now," O'Reilly declared, with a sharp stare at his friend. The girl turned loyally to her patient. "I'll believe you, Mr. Varona. I always believe everything about buried treasure. The bigger the treasure the more implicitly I believe in it. I simply adore pirates and such things; if I were a man I'd be one. Do you know, I've always been tempted to bury my money and then go look for it." "You're making fun of me. What?" Esteban eyed the pair doubtfully. "No, no!" Norine was indignant. "Johnnie doesn't believe in pirates or treasure, or--anything. He doesn't even believe in fairies, and he's Irish, too. But I do. I revel in such things. If you don't go on, I'll blow up." "There is no doubt that my father had a great deal of money at one time," Esteban began; "he was the richest man in the richest city of Cuba and ..." O'Reilly shook his head dubiously and braced his back against a tree-trunk; there was a look of mild disapprobation on his face as he listened to the familiar story of Don Esteban and the slave, Sebastian. Young Esteban told the tale well. His own faith in it lent a certain convincingness to his words and Norine Evans hung upon them entranced. She was horrified at the account of Don Esteban's death; her eyes grew dark as Esteban told of his and Rosa's childhood with their avaricious stepmother. That part of the narrative which had to do with the death of Dona Isabel and the finding of the gold coin was new to O'Reilly and he found himself considerably impressed by it. When Esteban had finished, Norine drew a deep breath. "Oh! That lays over any story I ever heard. To think that the deeds and the jewels and everything are in the well AT THIS MINUTE! How COULD you go away and leave them?" "I didn't think it out at the time. I didn't evolve my theory until after I had fled. Naturally, I wasn't able to get back." "But suppose somebody finds it?" Norine was aghast at the thought. "Not much chance of that. The treasure has lain there for a generation, and the story itself is almost forgotten." Esteban turned triumphantly to O'Reilly, saying, "Now then, do you think I'm so crazy?" O'Reilly didn't have it in his heart to say exactly what he really thought. The circumstances of the discovery of the coin were odd enough, certainly, but it seemed to him that they were capable of several explanations. If, indeed, there had ever been a doubloon and if Esteban had found it in the dead hand of his stepmother, that, in O'Reilly's opinion, by no means proved the existence of the mythical Varona hoard, nor did it solve the secret of its whereabouts. What he more than half suspected was that some favored fancy had formed lodgment in Esteban's brain. "It's an interesting theory," he admitted. "Anyhow, there is no danger of the treasure being uncovered very soon. Cueto had a good look and made himself ridiculous. You'll have ample chance to do likewise when the war is over." "You must help me find it," said Esteban. "We shall all share the fortune equally, you two, Rosa and I." "WE? Why should WE share in it?" Norine asked. "I owe it to you. Didn't O'Reilly rescue me from a dungeon? Haven't you nursed me back to health? Don't I owe my life to you both?" "Nonsense! I, for one, sha'n't take a dollar of it," the girl declared. "All I want to do is help dig. If you'll just promise to let me do that--" "I promise. And you shall have one-fourth of everything." "No! No!" "Oh, but you MUST. I insist. Nursing is a poorly paid profession. Wouldn't you like to be rich?" "Profession! Poorly paid?" Norine sputtered, angrily. "As if I'd take pay!" "As if I would accept a great service and forget it, like some miserable beggar!" Esteban replied, stiffly. O'Reilly laughed out. "Don't let's quarrel over the spoil until we get it," said he. "That's the way with all treasure-hunters. They invariably fall out and go to fighting. To avoid bloodshed, I'll agree to sell my interest cheap, for cash. Come! What will you bid? Start it low. Do I hear a dollar bid? A dollar! A dollar! A dollar! My share of the famous Varona fortune going for a dollar!" "There! He doesn't believe a word of it," Esteban said. Norine gave an impatient shrug. "Some people wouldn't believe they were alive unless they saw their breath on a looking-glass. Goodness! How I hate a sneering skeptic, a wet blanket." O'Reilly rose with one arm shielding his face. "In the interest of friendship, I withdraw. A curse on these buried treasures, anyhow. We shall yet come to blows." As he walked away he heard Norine say: "Don't pay any attention to him. We'll go and dig it up ourselves, and we won't wait until the war is over." An hour later Esteban and his nurse still had their heads together. They were still talking of golden ingots and pearls from the Caribbean the size of plums when they looked up to see O'Reilly running toward them. He was visibly excited; he waved and shouted at them. He was panting when he arrived. "News! From Matanzas!" he cried. "Gomez's man has arrived." Esteban struggled to rise, but Norine restrained him. "Rosa? What does he say? Quick!" "Good news! She left the Pan de Matanzas with the two negroes. She went into the city before Cobo's raid." Esteban collapsed limply. He closed his eyes, his face was very white. He crossed himself weakly. "The letter is definite. It seems they were starving. They obeyed Weyler's bando. They're in Matanzas now." "Do you hear, Esteban?" Norine shook her patient by the shoulder. "She's alive. Oh, can't you see that it always pays to believe the best?" "Alive! Safe!" Esteban whispered. His eyes, when he opened them, were swimming; he clutched Norine's hand tightly; his other hand he extended to O'Reilly. The latter was choking; his cheeks, too, were wet. "A reconcentrado! In Matanzas! Well, that's good. We have friends there--they'll not let her starve. This makes a new man of me. See! I'm strong again. I'll go to her." "YOU'LL go?" quickly cried Miss Evans. "YOU'LL go! You're not strong enough. It would be suicide. You, with a price upon your head! Everybody knows you there. Matanzas is virtually a walled city. There's sickness, too--yellow fever, typhus--" "Exactly. And hunger, also. Suppose no one has taken Rosa in? Those concentration camps aren't nice places for a girl." "But wait! I have friends in Washington. They're influential. They will cable the American consul to look after her. Anyhow, you mustn't think of returning to Matanzas," Norine faltered; her voice caught unexpectedly and she turned her face away. O'Reilly nodded shortly. "You're a sick man," he agreed. "There's no need for both of us to go." Esteban looked up. "Then you--" "I leave at once. The Old Man has given me a commission to General Betancourt, and I'll be on my way in an hour. The moon is young; I must cross the trocha before--" "That trocha!" Esteban was up on his elbow again. "Be careful there, O'Reilly. They keep a sharp lookout, and it's guarded with barbed wire. Be sure you cut every strand. Yes, and muffle your horse's hoofs, too, in crossing the railroad track. That's how we were detected. Pablo's horse struck a rail, and they fired at the sound. He fell at the first volley, riddled. Oh, I know that trocha!" "Damn the trocha!" O'Reilly exclaimed. "At last I've got a chance to DO something. GOD! How long I've waited." Esteban drew O'Reilly's tense form down and embraced his friend, after the fashion of his people. "She has been waiting, too," he said, huskily. "We Varonas are good waiters, O'Reilly. Rosa will never cease waiting until you come. Tell her, for me--" Norine withdrew softly out of earshot. There were a lump in her throat and a pain in her breast. She had acquired a peculiar and affectionate interest in this unhappy girl whom she had never seen, and she had learned to respect O'Reilly's love. The yearning that had pulsed in his voice a moment before had stirred her deeply; it awoke a throb in her own bosom, for O'Reilly was dear to her. She wanted him to go, yet she knew the hazards that lay in his way. If, indeed, the girl were in Matanzas, how, Norine asked herself, was it possible for him to reach her? That O'Reilly had some mad design was evident; that he would utterly disregard his own safety she felt sure. But that he would meet with failure, perhaps worse, seemed equally certain. Matanzas was a beleagured city, and strangers could not enter or leave it at will. If Rosa had not put herself behind prison walls, if she were still in hiding somewhere on the island, it would be a simple matter to seek her out. But Matanzas, of all places! Then, too, the pacificos, according to all reports, were dying like flies in the prison camps. Norine wondered if there might not be a terrible heartache at the end of O'Reilly's quest? Her face was grave and worried when, hearing him speak to her, she turned to take his outstretched hand. "You will be careful, won't you?" she implored. "And you'll be stout of heart, no matter what occurs?" He nodded. "It's a long way back here to Cubitas. You may not see or hear from me again." "I understand." She choked miserably. "You mean you may not come back. Oh, Johnnie!" "Tut, tut! We O'Reillys have more lives than a litter of cats. I mean I may not see you until the war is over and we meet in New York. Well, we've been good pals, and--I'm glad you came to Cuba." His grasp upon her two hands was painful. "You must go, I know, and I wouldn't try to keep you, but--" Norine faltered, then impulsively she drew him down and kissed him full upon the lips. "For Rosa!" she whispered. Her eyes were shining as she watched him pass swiftly out of sight. XXII THE TROCHA Of all the military measures employed by the Spaniards in their wars against Cuban independence, perhaps the most unique was the trocha--trench or traverse. Martinez Campos during the Ten Years' War built the first trocha just west of the Cubitas Mountains where the waist of the island is narrowest. It was Campos's hope, by means of this artificial barrier, to confine the operations of the insurgents to the eastern end of Cuba, but in that he failed, as likewise he failed in the results gained by his efforts to concentrate the rural population in the cities. Not until Weyler's time were these two methods of pacification, the trocha and the concentration camp, developed to their fullest extent. Under the rule of the Butcher several trochas were constructed at selected points, and he carried to its logical conclusion the policy of concentration, with results sufficiently frightful to shock the world and to satisfy even Weyler's monstrous appetite for cruelty. Although his trochas hindered the free movement of Cuban troops and his prison camps decimated the peaceful population of several provinces, the Spanish cause gained little. Both trenches and prison camps became Spanish graveyards. Weyler's intrenchments cost millions and were elaborately constructed, belted with barbed wire, bristling with blockhouses and forts. In both the digging and the manning, however, they cost uncounted lives. Spanish spades turned up fevers with the soil, and, so long as raw Spanish troops were compelled to toil in the steaming morasses or to lie inactive under the sun and the rain, those traitor generals--June, July, and August--continued to pile up the bodies in rotting heaps and to timber the trenches with their bones. So long as the cities were overcrowded with pacificos and their streets were putrid with disease, so long did the Spanish garrisons sicken and die, as flies perish upon poisoned carrion. Out on the cool, clean hills and the windy savannas where the Insurrectos dwelt there was health. Poorly armed, ragged, gaunt, these Insurrectos were kept moving by hunger, always moving like cattle on a barren range. But they were healthy, for disease, which is soft-footed and tender-bellied, could not keep up. At the time Johnnie O'Reilly set out for Matanzas the war--a war without battle, without victory, without defeat--had settled into a grim contest of endurance. In the east, where the Insurrectos were practically supreme, there was food of a sort, but beyond the Jucaro-Moron trocha--the old one of Campos's building--the country was sick. Immediately west of it, in that district which the Cubans called Las Villas, the land lay dying, while the entire provinces of Matanzas, Habana, and Pinar del Rio were practically dead. These three were skeletons, picked bare of flesh by Weyler's beak. The Jucaro-Moron trocha had been greatly strengthened since Campos's day. It followed the line of the transinsular railway. Dotted at every quarter of a mile along the grade were little forts connected by telephone and telegraph lines. Between these fortinas were sentry stations of logs or railroad ties. The jungle on either side of the right-of-way had been cleared, and from the remaining stumps and posts and fallen tree-trunks hung a maze of barbed wire through which a man could scarcely crawl, even in daylight. Eyes were keen, rifles were ready, challenges were sharp, and countersigns were quickly given on the Jucaro-Moron trocha. In O'Reilly's party there were three men besides himself--the ever-faithful Jacket, a wrinkled old Camagueyan who knew the bridle trails of his province as a fox knows the tracks to its lair, and a silent guajiro from farther west, detailed to accompany the expedition because of his wide acquaintance with the devastated districts. Both guides, having crossed the trocha more than once, affected to scorn its terrors, and their easy confidence reassured O'Reilly in spite of Esteban's parting admonition. The American had not dreamed of taking Jacket along, but when he came to announce his departure the boy had flatly refused to be left behind. Jacket, in fact, had taken the matter entirely into his own hands and had appealed directly to General Gomez. To his general the boy had explained tearfully that patriotism was a rare and an admirable quality, but that his love of country was not half so strong or so sacred as his affection for Johnnie O'Reilly. Having attached himself to the American for better or for worse, no human power could serve to detach him, so he asserted. He threatened, moreover, that if he were compelled to suffer his benefactor to go alone into the west he would lay down his arms and permit General Gomez to free Cuba as best he could. Cuba could go to Hades, so far as Jacket was concerned--he would not lift a finger to save it. Strangely enough, Jacket's threat of defection had not appalled General Gomez. In fact, with a dyspeptic gruffness characteristic of him Gomez had ordered the boy off, under penalty of a sound spanking. But Jacket had a will of his own, likewise a temper. He greeted this unfeeling refusal with a noisy outburst of mingled rage, grief, and defiance. Stamping his bare feet, sobbing, and screaming, the boy finally flung himself upon the ground and smote it with his fists, while tears streamed from his eyes. Nor could he be silenced. He maintained such a hideous and surprising uproar, answering Gomez's stern commands to be silent with such maniacal howls, that the old soldier was finally glad to yield his consent, incidentally consigning the rebellious youth to that perdition with which he had threatened Cuba. Having won his point, Jacket regained his composure with suspicious suddenness and raced away to triumph over his beloved O'Reilly. Fifty miles of hard riding brought the party to the trocha; they neared it on the second morning after leaving Cubitas, and sought a secluded camping-spot. Later in the day Hilario, the old Camagueyan, slipped away to reconnoiter. He returned at twilight, but volunteered no report of what he had discovered. After an insistent cross-examination O'Reilly wrung from him the reluctant admission that everything seemed favorable for a crossing some time that night, and that he had selected a promising point. Beyond that the old man would say nothing. Johnnie asked himself uneasily if this reticence was not really due to apprehension rather than to sullenness. Whatever the cause, it was not particularly reassuring, and as evening came on Johnnie found himself growing decidedly nervous. Supper, a simple meal, was quickly disposed of. Then followed a long, dispiriting wait, for a gibbous moon rode high in the sky and the guides refused to stir so long as it remained there. It was a still night; in the jungle no air was stirring, and darkness brought forth a torment of mosquitoes. As day died, the woods awoke to sounds of bird and insect life; strange, raucous calls pealed forth, some familiar, others strange and unaccustomed. There were thin whistlings, hoarse grunts and harsh cacklings, high-pitched elfin laughter. Moving bodies disturbed the leaves overhead; from all sides came the rustle and stir of unseen creatures; sudden disputations were followed by startled silences. Sitting there in the dark, bedeviled by a pest of insects, mocked at by these mysterious voices, and looking forward to a hazardous enterprise, O'Reilly began to curse his vivid imagination and to envy the impassiveness of his companions. Even Jacket, he noted, endured the strain better; the boy was cheerful, philosophical, quite unimpressed by his surroundings. When the mosquitoes became unbearable he put on his trousers, with some reluctance and much ceremony. It seemed to O'Reilly that the moon floated motionless in the sky, and more than once he was upon the point of ordering a start, but he reflected that its radiance out in the open must be far greater than it seemed here under the dense tropical foliage. After a time he began to wonder if his guides were as loyal as they should be, if Hilario's strange reticence was caused by sullenness, by apprehension, or by something altogether different. Both of the men were strangers to him; of their fidelity he had no guarantee. Now that his mind had become engaged with thoughts of treachery, a determined effort was necessary to keep himself in hand and O'Reilly fell back finally upon his elemental trust in the Cuban character--scant consolation under the circumstances. Midnight brought a moist, warm breeze and a few formless clouds which served at times to dimly obscure the moon. Watching the clouds, O'Reilly hoped that they might prove to be the heralds of a storm. None came. When the moon had finally crept down into the tree-tops old Hilario stepped upon his cigarette, then began silently to saddle up. The others followed with alacrity, and fell in behind him as he led the way into the forest. They no longer ventured to speak aloud; nothing but the occasional sound of a hoof striking upon root or stone, the creak of leather, or the rustle of branches against passing bodies gave evidence that mounted men were en route. When they had covered a couple of miles Hilario reined in and the others crowded close. Ahead, dimly discernible against the night sky, there appeared to be a thinning of the woods. After listening for a moment or two, Hilario dismounted and slipped away; the three riders sat their saddles with ears strained. Once more the myriad voices of the night became audible--the chirping of crickets, the strident call of tree-toads, the whining undertone of the mosquitoes. Hilario returned with word that all was well, and each man dismounted to muffle the feet of his horse with rags and strips of gunny-sack provided for the purpose. Then, one by one, they moved forward to the edge of the clearing. The trocha lay before them. After the cavernous obscurity of the jungle the night seemed suddenly to lighten and O'Reilly found himself looking out over a level waste of stumps and tree-trunks perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, extending right and left as far as he could see. Against the luminous western horizon opposite the inky forest stood like a wall. Midway of the clearing there was a railroad grade with a telephone-pole or two limned against the sky. The clearing was silent and to all appearances deserted; nothing stirred, no sign of life appeared anywhere. And yet, as the American studied the place, he had a queer, uncomfortable sensation that it was thickly peopled and that eyes were peering out at him from the gloom. Blurred forms took shape, phantom figures moved along the embankment, stumps stirred. O'Reilly felt a pair of reins thrust into his hand and found Hilario examining a large pair of tinner's shears. "Do you wish me to go with you?" he inquired of the guide. The latter shook his head. "Antonio will go; he will keep watch while I clear a path. If you hear or see anything--" Jacket interrupted with a sibilant: "Psst! Look! Yonder!" A lantern-like illumination had leaped out of the blackness and now approached swiftly down the railroad grade. O'Reilly laid a heavy hand upon the old Camagueyan and inquired in sharp suspicion, "What does that mean--an alarm?" There was a breathless moment during which the four men followed the erratic course of the spark. Then Antonio chuckled. "Alabaos! A light-bug," said he. "Don't you know a cucullo when you see one?" He cautiously tested the ejector of his carbine and tightened the cord that served as his belt. O'Reilly drew a deep breath of relief. He had never become wholly accustomed to the giant light-beetles of the tropics, although he had carried one often on sentry duty to see the face of his watch, and not infrequently had seen Cuban women wearing them in their hair as ornaments. "Jove!" he muttered. "It gave me a fright." Hilario resumed his instructions: "If anything goes wrong, wait here. Don't ride away until we have time--" "Never fear. I won't desert you," the American reassured him. The two white-clad figures slipped away, became indistinct, and then disappeared. The night was hot, the mosquitoes hummed dismally and settled in clouds upon the waiting pair, maddening them with their poison. After a time a horse snorted and Jacket cursed nervously. "I'd like to see where we are," the boy muttered. "Do you know these men?" O'Reilly asked him. "No. God deliver me from such unpleasant fellows." "I hope they're honest." "Humph! I trust nobody." There was a pause. "Never mind," Jacket assured his companion. "I will make short work of them if they prove to be traitors." A half-hour passed, then the two ghostly figures materialized once more. "Dios!" grumbled Hilario. "There are many strings to this Spanish guitar. What a row when they discover that I have played a Cuban danzon upon it." The old man seemed less surly than before, and O'Reilly felt ashamed of his recent suspicions. "Is the way clear?" he inquired. "As far as the railroad, yes. We heard voices there, and came back. We will have to cut our way forward after we cross the track. Now then, follow me without a sound." Leading his horse by the bit ring, Hilario moved out into the clearing, followed once more by his three companions. Concealment was out of the question now, for their only covering was the darkness. O'Reilly had the uncomfortable feeling that the cavalcade bulked monstrous big and must be visible at a great distance; he experienced much the sensations of a man crossing a sheet of thin ice with nerves painfully strained, awaiting the first menacing crack. In spite of all precautions the animals made a tremendous racket, or so it seemed, and, despite Hilario's twistings and turnings, it was impossible to avoid an occasional loop of barbed wire, therefore flesh and clothing suffered grievously. But at length the party brought up under the railroad embankment and paused. Out of the voids to their right came a faint murmur of voices. As carefully as might be the four men ascended the slope, crossed the rails, and descended into the ditch on the other side. Another moment and they encountered a taut strand of barbed wire. The metallic snip of Hilario's shears sounded like a pistol-shot to O'Reilly. Into the maze of strands they penetrated, yard by yard, clipping and carefully laying back the wire as they went. Progress was slow; they had to feel their way; the sharp barbs brought blood and muttered profanity at every step. None of the four ever knew what gave the alarm. Their first intimation of discovery came with a startling "Quien vive?" hurled at them from somewhere at their backs. An instant and the challenge was followed by a Mauser shot. Other reports rang out as the sentry emptied his rifle in their direction. "So! They are shooting-bats," Hilario grunted. Antonio swung about and cocked his Remington, but the other spoke sharply. "Fool! If you shoot they will see the fire and riddle us. A curse on the spider that spun this web!" It was a test of courage to crouch among the charred stumps, enmeshed in that cruel tangle of wire, while the night was stabbed by daggers of fire and while the trocha awoke to the wild alarm. From somewhere in the distance came a shouted command and the sound of running feet, suddenly putting an end to further inaction. Antonio began to hack viciously with his machete, in an effort to aid Hilario's labors. The sound of his sturdy blows betrayed the party's whereabouts so clearly that finally the older man could restrain himself no longer. "Give it to them, compadres; it is a game that we can play." O'Reilly had been gripping his rifle tensely, his heart in his throat, his pulses pounding. As near a panic as he had ever been, he found, oddly enough, that the mere act of throwing his weapon to his shoulder and firing it calmed him. The kick of the gun subdued his excitement and cleared his brain. He surprised himself by directing Jacket in a cool, authoritative voice, to shoot low. When he had emptied the magazine he led two of the horses forward. Then, grasping his own machete, he joined in clearing a pathway. It seemed an interminable time ere they extricated themselves from the trap, but finally they succeeded and gained the welcome shelter of the woods, pausing inside its shelter to cut the muffles from their horses' feet. By this time the defenders of the trocha were pouring volley after volley at random into the night. Hilario sucked the cuts in his horny palms and spat forth the blood. "If Gomez had the ammunition these fools are wasting he would free Cuba in no time." Now that the skirmish was over, Jacket began to boast of his part in it. "Ha! Perhaps they'll know better than to show themselves the next time I come this way," said he. "You saw me, didn't you? Well, I made a few Spanish widows to-night." "Not many, I'm afraid," O'Reilly laughed. "Oh, believe me, I'm an old hand at this sort of thing. I shoot just as well at night as I do in the daytime." This was literally true, and when no one disputed his assertion Jacket proceeded further in praise of himself, only to break off with a wordless cry of dismay. "What's the matter?" Johnnie inquired. "Look! Behold me!" wailed the hero. "I have left the half of my beautiful trousers on that barbed wire!" Antonio swung a leg over his saddle, saying: "Come along, amigos; we have fifty leagues ahead of us. The war will be over while we stand here gossiping." XXIII INTO THE CITY OF DEATH O'Reilly's adventures on his swift ride through Las Villas have no part in this story. It is only necessary to say that they were numerous and varied, that O'Reilly experienced excitement aplenty, and that upon more than one occasion he was forced to think and to act quickly in order to avoid a clash with some roving guerrilla band. He had found it imperative at all times to avoid the larger towns, for they, and in fact most of the hamlets, were unsafe; hence the little party was forced to follow back roads and obscure bridle trails. But the two guides were never at a loss; they were resourceful, courageous, and at no time did the American have reason to doubt their faithfulness. Evidences of the war increased as the journey lengthened. The potreros were lush with grass, but no herds grazed upon them; villages were deserted and guano huts were falling into decay, charred fields growing up to weeds and the ruins of vast centrales showing where the Insurrectos had been at work. This was the sugar country, the heart of Cuba, whence Spain had long drawn her life blood, and from the first it had been the policy of the rebel leaders to destroy the large estates, leaving undamaged only the holdings of those little farmers whose loyalty to the cause of freedom was unquestioned. Food became a problem immediately after the travelers had crossed the trocha. Such apprehensive families as still lurked in the woods were liberal enough--Antonio, by the way, knew all of them--but they had little to give and, in consequence, O'Reilly's party learned the taste of wild fruits, berries, and palmetto hearts. Once they managed to kill a small pig, the sole survivor of some obscure country tragedy, but the rest of the time their meat, when there was any, consisted of iguanas--those big, repulsive lizards--and jutias, the Cuban field-rats. Neither the lizards nor the rats were quite as bad as they looked or sounded; the meat of the former was tender and white, while the latter, although strong, was not unpalatable. To hungry men both were muy sabrosa, as Jacket put it. This was not the boy's first experience with such a diet; having campaigned before in the west, he was accustomed to the taste of juita, and he told O'Reilly how his troop had once lived so long upon these rats that it became impossible to surprise a Spanish enemy, except by approaching up the wind, as a hunter stalks his game. Jacket gravely assured his friend that the Spaniards could smell him and his brother patriots from a distance of five kilometers--a statement, by the way, which the American by this time was ready to believe. Fortunately there was no shortage of food for the horses, and so, despite the necessity of numerous detours, the party made good time. They crossed into Matanzas, pushed on over rolling hills, through sweeping savannas, past empty clearings and deserted villages, to their journey's end. A fortunate encounter with a rebel partida from General Betancourt's army enabled them to reach headquarters without loss of time, and one afternoon, worn, ragged and hungry, they dismounted in front of that gallant officer's hut. General Betancourt read the letter which O'Reilly handed him, then looked up with a smile. "So! You are one of Gomez's Americans, eh? Well, I would never have known it, to look at you; the sun and the wind have made you into a very good Cuban. And your clothes--One might almost mistake you for a Cuban cabinet officer." O'Reilly joined in the laughter evoked by this remark. He was quite as tattered as the poorest of Betancourt's common soldiers; his shoes were broken and disreputable; his cotton trousers, snagged by barbed wire and brambles, and soiled by days in the saddle and nights in the grass, were in desperate need of attention. His beard had grown, too, and his skin, where it was exposed, was burnt to a mahogany brown. Certainly there was nothing about his appearance to bespeak his nationality. The general continued: "I am directed in this letter to help you in some enterprise. Command me, sir." As briefly as possible Johnnie made known the object of his journey. The officer nodded his comprehension, but as he did so a puzzled expression crossed his face. "Yes, I reported that Miss Varona had gone into the city--I took some pains to find out. Do you have reason to doubt--" "Not the least, sir." "Then--why have you come all this way?" "I came to find her and to fetch her to her brother." "But--you don't understand. She is actually inside the lines, in Matanzas--a prisoner." "Exactly. I intend to go into Matanzas and bring her out." General Betancourt drew back, astonished. "My dear man!" he exclaimed. "Are you mad?" O'Reilly smiled faintly. "Quite probably. All lovers are mildly mad, I believe." "Ah! Lovers! I begin to see. But--how do you mean to go about this--this--impossible undertaking?" "You told me just now that I could pass for a Cuban. Well, I am going to put it to the test. If I once get into the city I shall manage somehow to get out again, and bring her with me." "Um-m!" The general appraised O'Reilly speculatively. "No doubt you can get in--it is not so difficult to enter, I believe, and especially to one who speaks the language like a native. But the return--I fear you will find that another matter. Matanzas is a place of pestilence, hunger, despair. No one goes there from choice any more, and no one ever comes out." "So I should imagine." The speaker's careless tone added to General Betancourt's astonishment. "Bless me!" he exclaimed. "What an extraordinary young man! Is it possible that you do not comprehend the terrible conditions?" A sudden thought struck him and he inquired, quickly: "Tell me, you are not by any chance that hero they call El Demonio? I have heard that he is indeed a demon. No? Very well! You say you wish to visit Matanzas, and I am instructed to help you. How can I do so?" O'Reilly hesitated an instant. "For one thing, I need money. I--I haven't a single peseta." "You are welcome to the few dollars I possess." Johnnie expressed his gratitude for this ready assistance. "One thing more," said he. "Will you give my boy, Jacket, a new pair of trousers and send him back to the Orient at the first opportunity?" "Of course. It is done." The general laid a friendly hand upon O'Reilly's shoulder, saying, gravely: "It would relieve me intensely to send you back with him, for I have fears for the success of your venture. Matanzas is a hell; it has swallowed up thousands of our good countrymen; thousands have died there. I'm afraid you do not realize what risks you are taking." O'Reilly did not allow this well-meant warning to influence him, nor did he listen to the admonitions of those other Cubans who tried to argue him out of his purpose, once it became generally known. On the contrary, he proceeded with his preparations and spent that afternoon in satisfying himself that Rosa had indeed left the Pan de Matanzas before Cobo's raid. Among Betancourt's troops was a man who had been living in the hills at the time Asensio and his family had abandoned their struggle for existence, and to him O'Reilly went. This fellow, it seemed, had remained with his family in the mountains some time after Asensio's departure. It was from him that O'Reilly heard his first authentic report of the atrocities perpetrated by Cobo's Volunteers. This man had lost his wife, his little son, and all the scanty belongings he possessed. With shaking hands upstretched to heaven, the fellow cursed the author of his misfortunes. "I live for one thing!" he cried, shrilly. "To meet that monster, and to butcher him, as he butchers women and children." O'Reilly purposely left his most unpleasant task to the last. When his arrangements had been completed and he had acquainted himself as far as possible with the hazards he was likely to encounter, he took Jacket aside and broke the news to him that on the following morning they must part. As he had expected, the boy refused to listen to him. O'Reilly remained firm and Jacket adopted those tactics which had proved so potent with General Gomez. He began to weep copiously. He worked himself up to a hysterical crescendo which threatened to arouse the entire encampment. But O'Reilly was unmoved. "Be quiet," he told the boy. "I won't let you go with me, and that ends it." "You dassent leave me," sobbed the youngster. "I got no friend but you." "It will be hard enough for one man to slip through; two would be sure to fail." "Those Spaniards will skill you!" Jacket wailed. "So much the more reason for you to stay here." At this the boy uttered a louder cry. He stamped his bare feet in a frenzy of disappointment. "You dassent leave me--you dassent!" "Listen, people are starving in Matanzas; they are sick; they are dying in the streets." "I don't eat much." When Johnnie shook his head stubbornly Jacket launched himself into a torrent of profanity the violence of which dried his tears. His vocabulary was surprising. He reviled the Spaniards, O'Reilly, himself, everybody and everything; he leveled anathemas at that woman who had come between him and his beloved benefactor. The latter listened good-naturedly. "You're a tough kid," he laughed, when Jacket's first rage had worn itself out. "I like you, and I'd take you if I could. But this isn't an enterprise for a boy, and it won't get you anything to keep up this racket." Jacket next tried the power of argument. He attempted to prove that in a hazardous undertaking of this sort his assistance would be invaluable. He was, so he declared, the one person in all Cuba in every respect qualified to share O'Reilly's perils. To begin with, he was not afraid of Spaniards, or anything else, for that matter--he dismissed the subject of personal courage with a contemptuous shrug. As for cunning, sagacity, prudence, resource, all-around worth, he was, without doubt, unequaled in any country. He was a veritable Spartan, too, when it came to hardship--privation and suffering were almost to his liking. He was discreet--discretion was something he had inherited; he was a diplomat--diplomacy being one of his most unique accomplishments. As for this talk about hunger, O'Reilly need not concern himself in the least on that score, for Jacket was a small eater and could grow fat on a diet of dead leaves. Disease? Bah! It made him laugh. His experience with sickness was wider than most fisicos, and he was a better nurse than Miss Evans would ever be. Jacket did not wish to appear in the least boastful. On the contrary, he was actually too modest, as his friends could attest, but truth compelled him to admit that he was just the man for O'Reilly. He found it impossible to recommend himself too highly; to save his soul, he could think of no qualification in which he was lacking and could see no reason why his benefactor would not greatly profit by the free use of his amazing talents. The enterprise was difficult; it would certainly fail without him. Johnnie remained carefully attentive during this adjuration. He felt no desire even to smile, for the boy's earnestness was touching and it caused the elder man's throat to tighten uncomfortably. Johnnie had not realized before how fond he had become of this quaint youngster. And so, when the little fellow paused hopefully, O'Reilly put an arm around him. "I'm sure you are everything you say you are, Jacket, and more, too, but you can't go!" With that Jacket flung off the embrace and, stalking away, seated himself. He took a half-smoked cigar from the pocket of his shirt and lit it, scowling the while at his friend. More than once during the evening O'Reilly detected his sullen, angry eyes upon him. General Betancourt and several members of his staff were up early the following morning to bid their visitor good-by. In spite of their efforts to make the parting cheerful it was plain that they had little hope of ever again seeing this foolhardy American. Johnnie's spirits were not in the least affected by this ill-concealed pessimism, for, as he told himself, he had money in his pockets and Matanzas was not many miles away. But when he came to part from Jacket he experienced a genuine disappointment. The boy, strangely enough, was almost indifferent to his leaving; he merely extended a limp and dirty hand, and replied to O'Reilly's parting words with a careless "Adios!" In hurt surprise the former inquired, "Don't we part good friends?" "Sure!" Jacket shrugged, then turned away. Jacket was a likable youngster; his devotion was thoroughly unselfish; it had not been easy to wound him. With keener regrets than he cared to acknowledge O'Reilly set out upon his journey, following the guide whom General Betancourt had provided. It was a lovely morning, sufficiently warm to promise a hot midday; the air was moist and fresh from a recent shower. This being the rainy season, the trails were soft, and where the rich red Cuban soil was exposed the travelers sank into it as into wet putty. Crossing a rocky ridge, O'Reilly and his guide at last emerged upon an open slope, knee-high in grass and grown up to bottle-palms, those queer, distorted trees whose trunks are swollen into the likeness of earthen water-jars. Scattered here and there over the meadows were the dead or fallen trunks of another variety, the cabbage-palm, the green heart of which had long formed a staple article of diet for the Insurrectos. Spanish axes had been at work here and not a single tree remained alive. The green floor of the valley farther down was dotted with the other, the royal kind, that monarch of tropic vegetation which lends to the Cuban landscape its peculiar and distinctive beauty. "Yonder is the camino," said the countryman, pointing into the valley; "it will lead you to the main road; and there"--he turned to the northward--"is Matanzas. Go with God, and don't drink the well water, which is polluted from the rains." With a smile and a wave of the hand the man turned back and plunged into the jungle. As O'Reilly descended the slope he realized keenly that he was alone and in hostile territory. The hills and the woods from Pinar del Rio to Oriente were Cuban, or, at most, they were disputed ground. But here in the plains and valleys near the cities Spain was supreme. From this moment on O'Reilly knew he must rely entirely upon himself. The success of his enterprise--his very life--hinged upon his caution, his powers of dissimulation, his ability to pass as a harmless, helpless pacifico. It gave him an unaccustomed thrill, by no means pleasant. The road, when he came to it, proved to be a deep gutter winding between red-clay banks cut by the high wheels of clumsy cane-carts. Inasmuch as no crops whatever had been moved over the road during the past season, it was now little more than an oozy, sticky rut. Not a roof, not a chimney, was in sight; the valley was deserted. Here was a fertile farming country--and yet no living thing, no sound of bells, no voices, no crowing cocks, no lowing cattle. It was depressing to O'Reilly, and more, for there was something menacing and threatening about it all. Toward noon the breeze lessened and it became insufferably hot. A bank of clouds in the east promised a cooling shower, so Johnnie sought the nearest shade to wait for it, and took advantage of the delay to eat his slender lunch. He was meditatively munching a sweet-potato when a sound at his back caused him to leap to his feet in alarm. He whirled, then uttered an exclamation of amazement. Seated not fifty feet away was a bare-legged boy, similarly engaged in eating a sweet-potato. It was Jacket. His brown cheeks were distended, his bright, inquisitive eyes were fixed upon O'Reilly from beneath a defiant scowl. "Jacket!" cried the man. "What the devil are you doing here?" "You goin' to let me come along?" challenged the intruder. "So! You followed me, after I said I didn't want you?" O'Reilly spoke reproachfully; but reproaches had no effect upon the lad. With a mild expletive, Jacket signified his contempt for such a weak form of persuasion. "See here now." O'Reilly stepped closer. "Let's be sensible about this." But Jacket scrambled to his feet and retreated warily, stuffing the uneaten portion of the sweet-potato into his mouth. It was plain that he had no confidence in O'Reilly's intentions. Muttering something in a muffled voice, he armed himself with a stout stick. "Come here," commanded the American. Jacket shook his head. He made a painful attempt to swallow, and when his utterance became more distinct he consigned his idol to a warmer place than Cuba. "I'm a tough kid," he declared. "Don't get gay on me." The two parleyed briefly; then, when satisfied that no violence was intended him, the boy sat down to listen. But, as before, neither argument nor appeal had the slightest effect upon him. He denied that he had followed his benefactor; he declared that he was a free agent and at liberty to go where he willed. If it so chanced that his fancy took him to the city of Matanzas at the same time O'Reilly happened to be traveling thither, the circumstance might be put down to the long arm of coincidence. If his company were distasteful to the elder man, O'Reilly was free to wait and follow later; it was a matter of complete indifference to Jacket. He had business in Matanzas and he proposed to attend to it. The boy lied gravely, unblushingly. Nevertheless, he kept a watchful eye upon his hearer. "Very well," O'Reilly told him, finally. "I give in." Jacket's face instantly lit up. He radiated good humor; he hitched his body closer. "By----! I get my own way, don't I?" he laughed. "Indeed you do." O'Reilly laid a hand fondly upon his loyal follower. "And I don't mind telling you that I'm more than half glad of it. I--I was getting lonesome. I didn't know how much I could miss you. But now we must make some plans, we must have an understanding and decide who we are. Let me see--your real name is Narciso--" "Narciso Villar." "Well, then, I shall be Juan Villar, your brother. Henceforth we shall speak nothing but Spanish. Tell me now, what was our father's name, where was our home, and what are we doing together?" During the breathless interval before the shower the two sat with their heads together, talking earnestly. As the wind came and the cooling rain began to rattle on the leaves overhead they took up their bundles and set out. The big drops drenched them quickly. Their thin garments clung to them and water streamed down their bodies; overhead the sky was black and rent by vivid streaks of fire, but they plodded onward cheerfully. Jacket was himself again; he bent his weight against the tempest and lengthened his short strides to O'Reilly's. He tried to whistle, but his teeth chattered and the wind interfered, so he hummed a song, to drive the chill out of his bones and to hearten his benefactor. Now that he was at last accepted as a full partner in this enterprise, it became his duty not only to share its perils, but to lessen its hardships and to yield diversion. The rain was cold, the briers beside the overgrown path were sharp, and they scratched the boy's bare legs cruelly; his stomach clamored for a companion to that solitary sweet-potato, too, but in his breast glowed ardor and pride. Jacket considered himself a fortunate person--a very fortunate person, indeed. Had he not found a brother, and did not that brother love him? There was no doubt about the latter, for O'Reilly's eyes, when he looked down, were kind and smiling, his voice was friendly and intimate. Here was a man to die for. The downpour lasted but a short time, then the sun came out and dried the men's clothes; on the whole, it had been refreshing. When evening came the Villar brothers sought refuge in an old sugar-mill, or rather in a part of it still standing. They were on the main calzada, now, the paved road which links the two main cities of the island, and by the following noon their destination was in sight. O'Reilly felt a sudden excitement when Matanzas came into view. From this distance the city looked quite as it did when he had left it, except that the blue harbor was almost empty of shipping, while the familiar range of hills that hid the Yumuri--that valley of delight so closely linked in his thoughts with Rosa Varona--seemed to smile at him like an old friend. For the thousandth time he asked himself if he had come in time to find her, or if fate's maddening delays had proved his own and the girl's undoing. O'Reilly knew that although Matanzas was a prison and a pesthole, a girl like Rosa would suffer therein perils infinitely worse than imprisonment or disease. It was a thought he could not bear to dwell upon. Signs of life began to appear now, the travelers passed small garden-patches and occasional cultivated fields; they encountered loaded carts bound into the city, and once they hid themselves while a column of mounted troops went by. O'Reilly stopped to pass the time of day with a wrinkled cartman whose dejected oxen were resting. "Going into the city, are you?" the fellow inquired. "Starved out, I suppose. Well, it's as pleasant to starve in one place as another." Jacket helped himself to a stalk of cane from the load and began to strip it with his teeth. "Will the soldiers allow us to enter?" Johnnie inquired. "Of course. Why not?" The old man laughed mirthlessly; then his voice changed. "Go back," he said, "go back and die in the fields. Matanzas stinks of rotting corpses. Go back where the air is clean." He swung his long lash over the oxen, they leaned against the load, and the cart creaked dismally on its way. It is never difficult to enter a trap, and Matanzas was precisely that. There were soldiers everywhere, but beyond an indifferent challenge at the outer blockhouse, a perfunctory question or two, Narciso and Juan Villar experienced no trouble whatever in passing the lines. Discipline, never strict at best, was extremely lax at the brick fortinas along the roads, and, since these two refugees were too poor to warrant search, they were waved onward by the sentries. They obeyed silently; in aimless bewilderment they shuffled along toward the heart of the city. Almost before they realized it they had run the gauntlet and had joined that army of misery, fifteen thousand strong. The hand of Spain had closed over them. XXIV ROSA "Look!" Jacket clutched at O'Reilly and pointed a shaking finger. "More beggars! Cristo! And those little children!" The boy tried to laugh, but his voice cracked nervously. "Are they children, or gourds with legs under them?" O'Reilly looked, then turned his eyes away. He and Jacket had reached the heart of Matanzas and were facing the public square, the Plaza de la Libertad it was called. O'Reilly knew the place well; every building that flanked it was familiar to him, from the vast, rambling Governor's Palace to the ornate Casino Espanol and the Grand Hotel, and time was when he had been a welcome visitor at all of them. But things were different now. Gone were the customary crowds of well-dressed, well-fed citizens; gone the rows of carriages which at this hour of the day were wont to circle the Plaza laden with the aristocracy of the city; gone was that air of cheerfulness and substance which had lent distinction to the place. Matanzas appeared poor and squalid, depressingly wretched; its streets were foul and the Plaza de la Libertad--grim mockery of a name--was crowded with a throng such as it had never held in O'Reilly's time, a throng of people who were, without exception, gaunt, listless, ragged. There was no afternoon parade of finery, no laughter, no noise; the benches were full, but their occupants were silent, too sick or too weak to move. Nor were there any romping children. There were, to be sure, vast numbers of undersized figures in the square, but one needed to look twice to realize that they were not pygmies or wizened little old folks. It was not strange that Jacket had compared them to gourds with legs, for all were naked, and most of them had bodies swollen into the likeness of pods or calabashes. They looked peculiarly grotesque with their spidery legs and thin faces. O'Reilly passed a damp hand across his eyes. "God!" he breathed. "She--she's one of these!" He had not penetrated even thus far into the city without receiving a hint of what conditions must be, for in the outlying streets he had seen sights and smelled odors that had sickened him; but now that he was face to face with the worst, now that he breathed the very breath of misery, he could scarcely credit what he saw. A stench, indescribably nauseating, assailed him and Jacket as they mingled with the crowd, for as yet their nostrils were unused to poverty and filth. It was the rancid odor that arises from unwashed, unhealthy bodies, and it testified eloquently to the living-conditions of the prisoners. Hollow eyes and hopeless faces followed the two new-comers as they picked their way slowly along. The reconcentrados overran Matanzas in an unclean swarm; streets and plazas were congested with them, for no attempt was made to confine them to their quarters. Morning brought them streaming down from the suburban slopes where they lived, evening sent them winding back; their days were spent in an aimless search for food. They snatched at crumbs and combed the gutters for crusts. How they managed to exist, whence came the food that kept life in their miserable bodies, was a mystery, even to the citizens of the city; no organized effort had been made to care for them and there was insufficient surplus food for half their number. Yet somehow they lived and lingered on. Of course the city was not entirely peopled by the starving--as a matter of fact they formed scarcely one-fifth of the normal civil population--and the life of the city was going on a good deal as usual. Stores were open, at least there was a daily train from Habana, and the barracks were full of Spanish troops. It was from off the wastage of this normal population that these fifteen thousand prisoners were forced to live. Even this wastage was woefully inadequate, merely serving to prolong suffering by making starvation slower. At the time of O'Reilly's arrival the sight presented by these innocent victims of war was appalling; it roused in him a dull red rage at the power which had wrought this crime and at the men who permitted it to continue. Spain was a Christian nation, he reflected; she had set up more crosses than any other, and yet beneath them she had butchered more people than all the nations of the earth combined. This monstrous, coldly calculating effort to destroy the entire Cuban people seemed to him the blackest infamy of all, and he wondered if it would be allowed to succeed. Fortunately for the two friends, General Betancourt's generosity served to relieve them from any immediate danger of starvation. After making a few purchases and eating with the utmost frugality, they began their search. Later, they stretched themselves out to sleep on the stones beneath the portales of the railroad station. They spent a horrid, harrowing night, for now the general distress was brought home to them more poignantly than ever. At dawn they learned that these people were actually dying of neglect. The faint light betrayed the presence of new corpses lying upon the station flagstones. From those still living, groans, sighs, sick mutterings rose until O'Reilly finally dragged his youthful companion out of the place. "I can't stand that," he confessed. "I can't sleep when people are starving to death alongside of me. This money burns my pocket. I--I--" Jacket read his purpose and laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "It will save OUR lives, too," he said, simply. "Bah! We are men. There are women and children yonder--" But Jacket's sensibilities were calloused, it seemed. "Of what use would your few pesetas be among so many?" he inquired. "God has willed this, and He knows what He is doing. Besides, your 'pretty one' is probably as hungry as are these people. No doubt we shall find that she, too, is starving." O'Reilly slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket. "Yes! It's Rosa's money. But--come; I can't endure this." He led the way back to the Plaza of Liberty and there on an iron bench they waited for the full day. They were very tired, but further sleep was impossible, for the death-wagons rumbled by on their way to collect the bodies of those who had died during the night. Neither the man nor the boy ever wholly lost the nightmare memory of the next few days, for their search took them into every part of the reconcentrado districts. What they beheld aged them. Day after day, from dawn till dark, they wandered, peering into huts, staring into faces, asking questions until they were faint from fatigue and sick with disappointment. As time passed and they failed to find Rosa Varona a terrible apprehension began to weigh O'Reilly down; his face grew old and drawn, his shoulders sagged, his limbs began to drag. It was all that Jacket could do to keep him going. The boy, now that there was actual need of him, proved a perfect jewel; his optimism never failed, his faith never faltered, and O'Reilly began to feel a dumb gratitude at having the youngster by his side. Jacket, too, became thin and gray about the lips. But he complained not at all and he laughed a great deal. To him the morrow was always another day of brilliant promise toward which he looked with never-failing eagerness; and not for a single moment did he question the ultimate success of their endeavor. Such an example did much for the older man. Together they practised the strictest, harshest economy, living on a few cents a day, while they methodically searched the city from limit to limit. At first O'Reilly concerned himself more than a little with the problem of escape, but as time wore on he thought less and less about that. Nor did he have occasion to waste further concern regarding his disguise. That it was perfect he proved when several of his former acquaintances passed him by and when, upon one occasion, he came face to face with old Don Mario de Castano. Don Mario had changed; he was older, his flesh had softened, and it hung loosely upon his form. He appeared worried, harassed, and O'Reilly recalled rumors that the war had ruined him. The man's air of dejection seemed to bear out the story. They had been enemies, nevertheless O'Reilly felt a sudden impulse to make himself known to the Spaniard and to appeal directly for news of Rosa's fate. But Don Mario, he remembered in time, had a reputation for vindictiveness, so he smothered the desire. One other encounter O'Reilly had reason to remember. It so chanced that one day he and Jacket found themselves in the miserable rabble which assembled at the railroad station to implore alms from the incoming passengers of the Habana train. Few people were traveling these days, and they were, for the most part, Spanish officers to whom the sight of starving country people was no novelty. Now and then, however, there did arrive visitors from whom the spectacle of so much wretchedness wrung a contribution, hence there was always an expectant throng at the depot. On this occasion O'Reilly was surprised to hear the piteous whines for charity in the name of God turn suddenly into a subdued but vicious mutter of rage. Hisses were intermingled with vituperations, then the crowd fell strangely silent, parting to allow the passage of a great, thick-set man in the uniform of a Colonel of Volunteers. The fellow was unusually swarthy and he wore a black scowl upon his face, while a long puckering scar the full length of one cheek lifted his mouth into a crooked sneer and left exposed a glimpse of wolfish teeth. O'Reilly was at a loss to fathom this sudden alteration of attitude, the whistle of indrawn breaths and the whispered curses, until he heard some one mutter the name, "Cobo." Then indeed he started and stiffened in his tracks. He fixed a fascinated stare upon the fellow. Colonel Cobo seemed no little pleased by the reception he created. With his chest arched and his black eyes gleaming malevolently he swaggered through the press, clicking his heels noisily upon the stone flags. When he had gone Jacket voiced a vicious oath. "So that is the butcher of babies!" exclaimed the boy. "Well, now, I should enjoy cutting his heart out." O'Reilly's emotions were not entirely unlike those of his small companion. His lips became dry and white as he tried to speak. "What a brute! That face--Ugh!" He found himself shaking weakly, and discovered that a new and wholly unaccountable feeling of discouragement had settled upon him. He tried manfully to shake it off, but somehow failed, for the sight of Rosa's arch-enemy and the man's overbearing personality had affected him queerly. Cobo's air of confidence and authority seemed to emphasize O'Reilly's impotence and bring it forcibly home to him. To think of his lustful persecution of Rosa Varona, moreover, terrified him. The next day he resumed his hut-to-hut search, but with a listlessness that came from a firm conviction that once again he was too late. That afternoon found the two friends among the miserable hovels which encircled the foot of La Cumbre, about the only quarter they had not explored. Below lay San Severino, the execution-place; above was the site of the old Verona home. More than once on his way about the city O'Reilly had lifted his eyes in the direction of the latter, feeling a great hunger to revisit the scene of his last farewell to Rosa, but through fear of the melancholy effect it would have upon him he had thus far resisted the impulse. To-day, however, he could no longer fight the morbid desire and so, in spite of Jacket's protest at the useless expenditure of effort, he set out to climb the hill. Of course the boy would not let him go alone. Little was said during the ascent. The La Cumbre road seemed very long and very steep. How different the last time O'Reilly had swung up it! The climb had never before tired him as it did now, and he reasoned that hunger must have weakened him even more than he realized. Jacket felt the exertion, too; he was short of breath and he rested frequently. O'Reilly saw that the boy's bare, brown legs had grown bony since he had last noticed them, and he felt a sudden pang at having brought the little fellow into such a plight as this. "Well, hombre," he said when they paused to rest, "I'm afraid we came too late. I'm afraid we're licked." Jacket nodded listlessly; his optimism, too, was gone. "They must all be dead or we would have found them before this," said he. When O'Reilly made no answer he continued, "It is time we thought of getting away from here, eh?" Johnnie was sitting with his face in his hands. Without lifting his head he inquired: "How are we going to get away? It is easy enough to get into Matanzas, but--" He shrugged hopelessly. From where the two sat they could see on the opposite hillside a section of the ditch and the high barbed-wire fence which girdled the city and made of it a huge corral. Spaced at regular intervals along the intrenchments were slow-moving, diminutive figures, sentries on their well-worn paths. Jacket brightened at the thought of escape. "Ho! I'll bet we can find a hole somewhere," said he. "We're not like these others. They haven't the spirit to try." There was a moment of silence, and then: "Caramba! You remember those jutias we ate? They were strong, but I would enjoy the smell of one now. Eh? Another week of this and we shall be living on garbage like the rest of these poor people." Leaving Jacket to take his time, Johnnie completed the climb alone, meditating upon the boy's words. "The spirit to try!" Where had his spirit gone, he wondered. Perhaps it had been crushed beneath the weight of misery he had beheld; surely he had seen enough. Hourly contact with sickness and misfortune on such a gigantic scale was enough to chill any one's hopes, and although his sensibilities had been dulled, his apprehensions had been quickened hour by hour. Now that he looked the matter squarely in the face, it seemed absurd to believe that a tender girl like Rosa Varona could long have withstood the hardships of this hideous place; stronger people than she had succumbed, by the hundreds. Even now the hospitals were full, the sick lay untended in their hovels. No one, so far as O'Reilly knew, had undertaken to estimate how fast they were dying or the number of dead which had already ridden out of Matanzas in those rumbling wagons, but there were many. What chance was there that Rosa had not been among the latter? Better by far had she remained among the empty fields and the barren slopes of the Pan de Matanzas, for there at least the soil held roots and the trees bore fruits or berries, while here was nothing but gaunt famine and grinning disease. As he breasted the summit of La Cumbre, O'Reilly beheld at some distance a bent figure of want. It was a negro woman, grubbing in the earth with a sharpened stick. After a suspicious scrutiny of him she resumed her digging. Nothing but a heap of stones and plaster remained of the Varona home. The grounds, once beautiful even when neglected as in Dona Isabel's time, were now a scene of total desolation. A few orange-trees, to be sure, remained standing, and although they were cool and green to look at, they carried no fruit and the odor of their blooms was a trial and a mockery to the hungry visitor. The evidences of Cueto's vandalism affected O'Reilly deeply; they brought him memories more painful than he had anticipated. Although the place was well-nigh unrecognizable, nevertheless it cried aloud of Rosa, and the unhappy lover could barely control the emotions it awakened. It was indeed a morbid impulse which had brought him thither, but now that he was here he could not leave. Unconsciously his feet turned toward the ancient quarry which had formed the sunken garden--his and Rosa's trysting-place. O'Reilly desired above all things to be alone at this moment, and so he was annoyed to discover that another person was before him--a woman, evidently some miserable pacifico like himself. She, too, appeared to be looking for roots, and he almost stumbled over her as he brushed through the guava-bushes fringing the depression. His sudden appearance alarmed the creature and she struggled, panic-stricken, out of his path. Her rags could not conceal the fact that she was deformed, that her back was crooked, so he muttered a reassuring word to her. This place was more as he had left it--there was the stone bench where he had said good-by to Rosa; yonder was the well-- "Senor!" Johnnie heard himself addressed by the hunch-backed woman. Her voice was thin, tremulous, eager, but his thoughts were busy and he paid no heed. "Senor! Do you look for something--some one--" "N-no. Yes--" he answered, abstractedly. "Yes, I am looking for something--some one." "Something you have lost?" "Something I have lost!" The question came to him faintly, but it was so in tune with his unhappy mood that it affected him strangely. He found that his eyes were blurring and that an aching lump had risen into his throat. This was the breaking-point. O'Reilly's hearing, too, was going wrong, for he imagined that some one whispered his name. God! This place was not dead--it was alive--terribly alive with memories, voices, a presence unseen yet real. He laid hold of the nearest bush to steady himself, he closed his eyes, only to hear his name spoken louder: "O'Rail-ye!" Johnnie brushed the tears from his lashes. He turned, he listened, but there was no one to be seen, no one, that is, except the dusky cripple who had straightened herself and was facing him, poised uncertainly. He looked at her a second time, then the world began to spin dizzily and he groped his way toward her. He peered again, closer, for everything before his eyes was swimming. The woman was thin--little more than a skeleton--and so frail that the wind appeared to sway her, but her face, uplifted to the sun, was glorified. O'Reilly stood rooted, staring at her until she opened her eyes, then he voiced a great cry: "ROSA!" What more he said he never knew ... He took the misshapen figure into his arms, he rained kisses upon the pinched, discolored face. But Rosa did not respond; her puny strength had flown and she lay inert in his embrace, scarcely breathing. Tears stole down her cheeks and very faintly her fingers fluttered over his bearded cheeks. Dazed, doubting, astounded, it was some time before Johnnie could convince himself of the reality of this moment, and even then words did not come to him, for his mind was in turmoil. Joy, thanksgiving, compassion--a thousand emotions--mingled in a sort of delirium, too wild for coherent thought or speech. Fear finally brought him to his senses, for he became aware that Rosa had collapsed and that his endearments left her unthrilled. Quickly he bore her to the bench and laid her upon it. After a time she smiled up into his eyes and her words were scarcely more than a murmur: "God heard my prayers and sent you to me." "Rosa! You are ill, you are weak--" Her eyelids fluttered. "I am dying, O'Rail-ye. I only waited to see you." "No, no!" In agony he gathered her once more into his arms. "Oh yes!" Her bloodless fingers touched his face again, then his thin, worn rags. "You, too, have suffered. How came you to be so poor and hungry, O'Rail-ye?" "I'm not poor, I'm rich. See!" He jingled the coins in his pocket. "That's money; money for you, sweet-heart. It will buy you food and medicine, it will make you well and strong again. Rosa, dear, I have looked for you so long, so long--" His voice broke wretchedly and he bowed his head. "I--I was afraid--" "I waited as long as I had strength to wait," she told him. "It is too bad you came so late." Once again she lapsed into the lethargy of utter weakness, whereupon he fell to stroking her hands, calling upon her to come back to him. He was beside himself now; a terrible feeling of impotence and despair overcame him. Hearing some one speak, he raised his eyes and discovered at his side that figure of want which he had seen digging on the slope below. It was Evangelina. The negress was little more than skin and bones, her eyes were bleared and yellow and sunken, her face had grown ape-like, but he recognized her and she him. "You are the American," she declared. "You are Rosa's man." "Yes. But what is wrong with her? Look! She is ill--" "She is often like that. It is the hunger. We have nothing to eat, senor. I, too, am ill--dying; and Asensio--Oh, you don't know how they have made us suffer." "We must get Rosa home. Where do you live?" Evangelina turned her death's head toward the city. "Down yonder. But what's the use? There is no food in our house and Rosa is afraid of those wagons. You know--the ones with the corpses. She made me bring her here to die." The girl was not wholly unconscious, it seemed, for she stirred and murmured, faintly: "Those wagons! Don't let them put me in there with the other dead. They pile the bodies high--" A weak shudder convulsed her. O'Reilly bent lower, and in a strong, determined voice cried: "You are not going to die. I have money for food. Rouse yourself, Rosa, rouse yourself." "She prayed for you every night," the negress volunteered. "Such faith! Such trust! She never doubted that you would come and find her. Sometimes she cried, but that was because of her brother. Esteban, you know, is dead. Yes, dead, like all the rest." "Esteban is NOT dead," O'Reilly asserted. "He is alive. Rosa, do you hear that? Esteban is alive and well. I left him with Gomez in the Orient. I have come to take you to him." "Esteban alive? Ha! You are fooling us." Evangelina wagged her head wisely. "We know better than that." "I tell you he IS alive," O'Reilly insisted. He heard. Jacket calling to him at that moment, so he hallooed to the boy; then when the latter had arrived he explained briefly, without allowing Jacket time in which to express his amazement: "Our search is over; we have found them. But they won't believe that Esteban is alive. Tell them the truth." "Yes, he is alive. We found him rotting in a prison and we rescued him," Jacket corroborated. He stared curiously at the recumbent figure on the bench, then at O'Reilly. He puckered his lips and gave vent to a low whistle of amazement. "So. This is your pretty one, eh? I--She--Well, I don't think much of her. But then, you are not so handsome yourself, are you?" Evangelina seemed to be stupid, a trifle touched, perhaps, from suffering, for she laid a skinny claw upon O'Reilly's shoulder and warned him earnestly: "Look out for Cobo. You have heard about him, eh? Well, he is the cause of all our misery. He hunted us from place to place, and it was for him that I put that hump on her back. Understand me, she is straight--straight and pretty enough for any American. Her skin is like milk, too, and her hair--she used to put flowers in it for you, and then we would play games. But you never came. You will make allowances for her looks, will you not?" "Poor Rosa! You two poor creatures!" O'Reilly choked; he hid his face upon his sweetheart's breast. Rosa responded; her fingers caressed him and she sighed contentedly. O'Reilly's ascent of the hill had been slow, but his descent was infinitely slower, for Rosa was so feeble that she could help herself but little and he lacked the strength to carry her far at a time. Finally, however, they reached the wretched hovel where Asensio lay, then leaving her there, Johnnie sped on alone into the city. He returned soon with several small bundles concealed about his person, and with Evangelina's help he set about preparing food. Neither Rosa nor the two negroes had any appetite--their hunger had long since passed the point at which they were conscious of it--and O'Reilly was compelled to force them to eat. When he had given them all that he dared he offered what food was left to Jacket. The boy moistened his lips and his fingers twitched, but he shook his head. "Oh, I'm not so hungry," he declared, indifferently. "I have a friend in the market-place; I will go down there and steal a fish from him." O'Reilly patted him on the shoulder, saying: "You are a good kid, and you understand, don't you? These sick people will need more food than we can buy for them, so we will have to draw our belts tight." "Of course. Eating is a habit, anyhow, and we men know how to get along without it. I will manage to find something for you and me, for I'm a prodigious thief. I can steal the hair from a man's head when I try." With a nod he set off to find his benefactor's supper. Jacket whistled heroically until he was out of O'Reilly's hearing, then his bearing changed. His mouth drew down, and moisture came into his eyes. He rubbed a grimy hand over his stomach, murmuring, faintly: "Cristo! It is hard to be a man when you smell things cooking!" XXV THE HAUNTED GARDEN Rosa Varona did not die. On the contrary, under her lover's care she made so amazingly swift a recovery that improvement was visible from hour to hour; she rallied like a wilted flower under a refreshing rain. It was O'Reilly's presence as much as the nourishing diet provided by his money which effected this marvel, although the certainty that Esteban was alive and safe put added force into her determination to live. Rosa found hope springing up in her breast, and one day she caught herself laughing. The marvel of it was unbelievable. O'Reilly was sitting beside her bed of leaves at the time; impulsively she pressed his hand to her lips, repeating a question she had asked him many times: "Do you love me?" For answer he bent and kissed her. What he said was of no consequence. Rosa held his hand against her cheek, at a loss for words with which to voice her gladness. "Such happiness as mine belongs in heaven," she managed to tell him. "Sometimes it frightens me. With you by my side this prison is a paradise and I want for nothing. War, suffering, distress--I can't imagine they longer exist." "Nevertheless, they do, and Matanzas is anything but a paradise," said he. "It is--hell, and we must set about quickly to get out of it." "Escape, do you mean? But that is impossible. Asensio can tell you all about that. The Spaniards used to issue passes for the men to go outside the lines in search of food. It was just a trick. They never came back--all of them were killed. Every one knows better than to try, now." "Nevertheless, we can't stay here much longer." In answer to the girl's puzzled inquiry he explained: "My money is gone--all but a few cents. This is the last of our food and there is no chance of getting more. Jacket has some mysterious source of supply and he manages to bring in something every now and then, but there are five of us to feed, and he can't furnish more than enough for himself. No, we must make a move at once, while we have the strength." Rosa had not asked the source whence came the blessed food which was bringing the life blood back into her body, and although that food was not much--a little meal, a plantain, an occasional scrap of meat or fish--it had never occurred to her that the supply might be limited. She met the problem bravely, however. "I have been close to death so long that it means little to me," she confessed. "I have you, and--well, with you at my side I can face the worst." "Oh, we won't give up until we have to," he assured her. "If I had money it would be a simple proposition to bribe some guard to pass us through the lines, but I have spent all that General Betancourt gave me." He smoothed back Rosa's dark hair and smiled reassuringly at her. "Well, I'll manage somehow; so don't worry your pretty head. I'll find the price, if I have to waylay old Don Mario and rob him. Don't you think I look like a bandit? The very sight of me would terrify that fat rascal." "To me you are beautiful," breathed the girl. Then she lowered her eyes. "La, la! How I spoil you! I have quite forgotten how to be ladylike. Isabel was right when she called me a bold and forward hussy. Now, then, please turn your face aside, for I wish to think, and so long as you look at me I cannot--I make love to you brazenly. See! Now, then, that is much better. I shall hold your hand, so. When I kiss it you may look at me again, for a moment." Drawing herself closer to O'Reilly, Rosa began thoughtfully: "Before you came I more than once was on the point of appealing to some of my former friends, but they are all Spaniards and we are no longer--simpatico, you understand?" Rosa paused for his answer. "Perfectly; I'm in the same fix. Of all the people I used to know there isn't one but would denounce me if I made myself known. Now that I've been fighting with the Insurrectos, I daren't even go to the American consul for help--if there is an American consul." Rosa nodded, then continued, hesitatingly: "I had a vivid dream last night. Perhaps it was a portent. Who knows? It was about that stepmother of mine. You remember how she met her death? I wrote you--" "Yes, and Esteban also told me." "It was he who recovered her body from the well. One day, while we were in hiding, away up yonder in the Yumuri, he showed me an old coin--" "I know," O'Reilly said, quickly. "He told me the whole story. He thinks that doubloon is a clue to your father's fortune, but--I can't put much faith in it. In fact, I didn't believe until this moment that there was a doubloon at all." "Oh, indeed there was! I saw it." "Then it wasn't merely a sick fancy of your brother's?" "Indeed no, it--" Rosa broke off to exclaim, "O'Reilly, you are looking at me!" "But you gave me the signal to look," he protested. "Nothing of the sort; you placed your fingers upon my lips." There was a moment of silence during which the lovers were oblivious to all but each other, then Rosa murmured: "How strange! Sometimes your eyes are blue and sometimes gray. Does that mean that your love, too, can change?" "Certainly not. But come, what about Esteban and that doubloon?" With an effort the girl brought herself back to earth. "Well, it occurred to me, in the light of that dream last night, that Esteban may have been right. Of course nobody outside of our family credits the old story, and yet my father was considered a very rich man at one time. Pancho Cueto believed in the existence of the treasure, and he was in a position to know." "True! Perhaps, after all--" O'Reilly frowned meditatively. Rosa lifted herself upon her elbow, her eyes sparkling. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were true? Just think, O'Reilly, cases of Spanish gold, silver coins in casks, packages of gems. Oh, I've heard Isabel talk about it often enough!" "Don't forget those pearls from the Caribbean, as large as plums," Johnny smiled. "I could never quite swallow that. A pearl the size of a currant would buy our freedom right now." After a moment he went on, more seriously: "I've a notion to look into that old well this very afternoon. I--I dare say I'm foolish, but--somehow the story doesn't sound so improbable as it did. Perhaps it is worth investigating--" He made up his mind swiftly. "I--I'm off this very instant." When O'Reilly emerged from the hut he found Jacket industriously at work over a fragment of grindstone which he had somewhere unearthed. The boy looked up at his friend's approach and held out for inspection a long, thin file, which he was slowly shaping into a knife-blade. "What do you think of that?" he queried, proudly. "It may come in handy when we are ready to clear out of this pesthole." "Where did you get it?" "Oh, I stole it. I steal everything I can lay my hands on nowadays. One can never tell when he may have a throat to cut, and a file has good steel in it." "Since you are such an accomplished thief, do you think you could steal something for me?" O'Reilly inquired. "A piece of rope?" "Rope?" Jacket was puzzled. "Rope is only good for hanging Spaniards. My friend in the fish-market has a volandra, and--perhaps I can rob him of a halyard." Laying aside his task, Jacket arose and made off in the direction of the water-front. He was back within an hour, and under his shirt he carried a coil of worn, but serviceable, rope. Without waiting to explain his need for this unusual article, O'Reilly linked arms with the boy and set out to climb La Cumbre. When at last they stood in the unused quarry and Johnnie made known his intention to explore the old well Jacket regarded him with undisguised amazement. "What do you expect to find down there?" the latter inquired. "To tell you the truth, I don't really expect to find anything," the man confessed. "Now that I'm here, I'm beginning to feel silly; nevertheless, I'm going to have a look for the hidden treasure of the Varonas." "Hidden treasure!" From Jacket's expression it was plain that he feared his friend was mildly mad. Even after O'Reilly had told him something about old Don Esteban's missing riches, he scouted the story. He peeped inquisitively into the dark opening of the well, then he shook his head. "Caramba! What an idea! Was this old man crazy, to throw his money away?" "He--he had more than he knew what to do with, and he wished to save it from the Spaniards," O'Reilly explained, lamely. "Humph! Nobody ever had more money than he wanted." The boy's disgust at such credulity was plain. "This well looks just like any other, only deeper; you'd better look out that you don't break your neck like that foolish old woman, that Dona What's-Her-Name." O'Reilly did indeed feel that he was making himself ridiculous, nevertheless he made the rope fast and swung himself down out of the sunlight, leaving Jacket to stand guard over him. Perhaps fifteen minutes later he reappeared, panting from his exertions. He was wet, slimy; his clothes were streaked and stained with mud. Jacket began to laugh shrilly at his appearance. "Ha! What a big lizard is this? Your beautiful garments are spoiled. And the treasure? Where is it?" The lad was delighted. He bent double with mirth; he slapped his bare legs and stamped his feet in glee. O'Reilly grinned good-naturedly, and replaced the planks which had covered the orifice, then hid the rope in some near-by bushes. On their way back he endured his young friend's banter absent-mindedly, but as they neared Asensio's house he startled Jacket by saying, "Can you manage to find a pick-ax or a crowbar?" Jacket's eyes opened; he stopped in the middle of the dusty road. "What did you see down there, compadre? Tell me." "Nothing much. Just enough to make me want to see more. Do you think you can steal some sort of a tool for me?" "I can try." "Please do. And remember, say nothing before Asensio or his wife." Rosa met O'Reilly just inside the door, and at sight of her he uttered an exclamation of surprise, for during his absence she had removed the stain from her face and discarded that disfigurement which Evangelina had fitted to her back prior to their departure from the Pan de Matanzas. She stood before him now, straight and slim and graceful--the Rosa of his dreams, only very thin, very fragile. Her poor tatters only enhanced her prettiness, so he thought. "Rosa dear! Do you think this is quite safe?" he ventured, doubtfully. Evangelina, who was bending over her husband, straightened herself and came forward with a smile upon her black face. "She is beautiful, eh? Too beautiful to look at? What did I tell you?" Rosa was in delightful confusion at O'Reilly's evident surprise and admiration. "Then I'm not so altogether changed?" she asked. "Why, you haven't changed at all, except to grow more beautiful. Evangelina is right; you are too beautiful to look at. But wait!" He drew her aside and whispered, "I've been down in the well." Some tremor in his voice, some glint in his eyes, caused the girl to seize him eagerly, fiercely. "I may be wrong," he said, hurriedly; "there may be nothing in it--and yet I saw something." "What?" "Wooden beams, timbers of some sort, behind the stone curbing." It was plain Rosa did not comprehend, so he hurried on. "At first I noticed nothing unusual, except that the bottom of the well is nearly dry--filled up, you know, with debris and stuff that has fallen in from the curbing above, then I saw that although the well is dug through rock, nevertheless it is entirely curbed up with stones laid in mortar. That struck me as queer." "Yes?" "I noticed, too, in one place that there was wood behind--as if timbers had been placed there to cover the entrance to a cave. You know this Cuban rock is full of caverns." Rosa clasped her hands, she began to tremble. "You have found it, O'Reilly. You HAVE!" she whispered. "No, no, I've found nothing yet. But I've sent Jacket for a pick or a bar and to-night I'm going to pull down those stones and see what is behind them." "To-night? You must let me go, too. I want to help." "Very well. But meanwhile you mustn't let your hopes rise too high, for there is every chance that you will be disappointed. And don't mention it to Evangelina. Now then, I've a few pennies left and I'm going to buy some candles." Rosa embraced her lover impulsively. "Something tells me it is true! Something tells me you are going to save us all." Evangelina in the far corner of the hut muttered to her husband: "Such love-birds! They are like parrakeets, forever kissing and cooing!" Jacket returned at dusk and with him he brought a rusty three-foot iron bar, evidently part of a window grating. The boy was tired, disgusted, and in a vile temper. "A pick-ax! A crowbar!" He cursed eloquently. "One might as well try to steal a cannon out of San Severino. I'm ready to do anything within reason, but--" "Why, this will do nicely; it is just what I want," O'Reilly told him. "Humph! I'm glad to hear it, for that rod was nearly the death of me. I broke my back wrenching at it and the villain who owned the house--may a bad lightning split him!--he ran after me until I nearly expired. If my new knife had been sharp I would have turned and sent him home with it between his ribs. To-morrow I shall put an edge on it. Believe me, I ran until my lungs burst." Little food remained in the hut, barely enough for Asensio and the women, and inasmuch as O'Reilly had spent his last centavo for candles he and Jacket were forced to go hungry again. Late that evening, after the wretched prison quarters had grown quiet, the three treasure-hunters stole out of their hovel and wound up the hill. In spite of their excitement they went slowly, for none of them had the strength to hurry. Fortunately, there were few prowlers within the lines, hunger having robbed the reconcentrados of the spirit to venture forth, and in consequence Spanish vigilance had relaxed; it was now confined to the far-flung girdle of intrenchments which encircled the city. The trio encountered no one. Leaving Jacket on guard at the crest of the hill, O'Reilly stationed Rosa at the mouth of the well, then lowered himself once more into it. Lighting his candle, he made a careful examination of the place, with the result that Esteban's theory of the missing riches seemed even less improbable than it had earlier in the day. The masonry-work, he discovered, had been done with a painstaking thoroughness which spoke of the abundance of slave labor, and time had barely begun to affect it. Here and there a piece of the mortar had loosened and come away, but for the most part it stood as solid as the stones between which it was laid. Shoulder-high to O'Reilly there appeared to be a section of the curbing less smoothly fitted than the rest, and through an interstice in this he detected what seemed to be a damp wooden beam. At this point he brought his iron bar into play. It was not long before he discovered that his work was cut out for him. The cement was like flint and his blunt makeshift implement was almost useless against it. Ankle-deep in the muddy water, he patiently pecked and pounded and chipped, endeavoring to enlarge the crevice so as to use his bar as a lever. The sweat streamed from him and he became dismayed at his own weakness. He was forced to rest frequently. Rosa hung over the orifice above, encouraging him, inquiring eagerly as to his progress. During his frequent breathing-spells he could discern her white face dimly illumined by the candle-light from below. After he had worked for an hour or two, he made a report: "It begins to look as if there really was a bulkhead or a door in there." The girl clapped her hands and laughed with delight. "Do hurry, dear; I'm dying of suspense." O'Reilly groaned: "That fellow, Sebastian, knew his business. This cement is like steel, and I'm afraid of breaking my crowbar." Rosa found a leaf, folded a kiss into it, and dropped it to him. "That will give you strength," she declared. O'Reilly lost all count of time after a while and he was incredulous when Jacket came to warn him that daylight was less than an hour away. "Why, I haven't started!" he protested. He discovered, much to his surprise, that he was ready to drop from fatigue and that his hands were torn and blistered; when he had climbed the rope to the upper air he fell exhausted in the deep grass. "I--I'm not myself at all," he apologized; "nothing to eat, you know. But the work will go faster now, for I've made a beginning." "Do you still think--" Rosa hesitated to voice the question which trembled on her lips. "I'll know for sure to-night." He directed Jacket to replace the planks over the well; then the three of them stole away. O'Reilly spent most of that day in a profound stupor of exhaustion, while Rosa watched anxiously over him. Jacket, it seemed, had peacefully slumbered on picket duty, so he occupied himself by grinding away at his knife. The last scraps of food disappeared that evening. When night fell and it came time to return to the top of La Cumbre, O'Reilly asked himself if his strength would prove sufficient for the task in hand. He was spiritless, sore, weak; he ached in every bone and muscle, and it required all his determination to propel himself up the hill. He wondered if he were wise thus to sacrifice his waning energies on a hope so forlorn as this, but by now he had begun to more than half believe in the existence of the Varona treasure and he felt an almost irresistible curiosity to learn what secret, if any, was concealed behind those water-soaked timbers at the bottom of the well. He realized, of course, that every hour he remained here, now that food and money were gone, lessened the chances of escape; but, on the other hand, he reasoned, with equal force, that if he had indeed stumbled upon the missing hoard salvation for all of them was assured. The stake, it seemed to him, was worth the hazard. Given tempered tools to work with, it would have been no great undertaking to tear down that cemented wall of stones, but, armed with nothing except his bare hands and that soft iron bar, O'Reilly spent nearly the whole night at his task. Long before the last rock had yielded, however, he beheld that which caused him to turn a strained face upward to Rosa. "There's a little door, as sure as you live," he told her. The girl was beside herself with excitement. "Yes? What else? What more do you see?" "Nothing. It appears to be made of solid timbers, and has two huge hand-wrought locks." "Locks! Then we HAVE found it." Rosa closed her eyes; she swayed momentarily. "Esteban was right. Locks, indeed! That means something to hide. Oh, if I could only help you." "God! If I only had something--ANYTHING to work with!" muttered the American as he fell to with redoubled energy. He no longer tried to conserve his strength, for the treasure-seeker's lust beset him. Rosa looked on, wringing her hands and urging him to greater haste. But the low, thick door was built of some hard, native wood: it was wet and tough and slippery. O'Reilly's blows made no impression upon it, nor upon the heavy hasps and staples with which it was secured in place. The latter were deeply rusted, to be sure, but they withstood his efforts, and he was finally forced to rest, baffled, enraged, half hysterical from weakness and fatigue. Daylight was at hand once more, but he refused to give up, and worked on stubbornly, furiously, until Rosa, in an agony, besought him to desist. Johnnie again collapsed on the grass and lay panting while the other two replaced the planks. "Another hour and I'd have been into it," he declared, huskily. "You will skill yourself," Jacket told him. Rosa bent over him with shining eyes and parted lips. "Yes," said she. "Be patient. We will come back, O'Reilly, and to-night we shall be rich." Colonel Cobo lit a black cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and exhaled two fierce jets of smoke through his nostrils. For a full moment he scowled forbiddingly at the sergeant who had asked to see him. "What's this you are telling me?" he inquired, finally. The sergeant, a mean-faced, low-browed man, stirred uneasily. "It is God's truth. There are spirits on La Cumbre, and I wish to see the priest about it." "Spirits? What kind of spirits?" The fellow shrugged. "Evil spirits--spirits from hell. The men are buying charms." "Bah! I took you to be a sensible person." "You don't believe me? Well, I didn't believe them, when they told me about it. But I saw with my own eyes." Cobo leaned forward, mildly astonished. Of all his villainous troop, this man was the last one he had credited with imagination of this sort. "What did you see?" "A ghost, my Colonel, nothing else. La Cumbre is no place for an honest Christian." The colonel burst into a mocking laugh. "An honest Christian! YOU! Of all my vile ruffians, you are the vilest. Why, you're a thief, a liar, and an assassin! You are lying to me now. Come--the truth for once, before I give you the componte." "As God is my judge, I'm telling you the truth," protested the soldier. "Flog me if you will--rather the componte than another night in those trenches. You know that old quinta?" "Where Pancho Cueto made a goat of himself? Perfectly. Do you mean to say that you saw old Esteban Varona walking with his head in his hands?" "No, but I saw that she-devil who fell in the well and broke her neck." "Eh? When did you behold this--this marvel?" "Two nights ago. She was there beside the well and her face shone through the night like a lantern. Christ! There was fire upon it. She came and went, like a moth in the lamplight. I tell you I repented of my sins. Some of the men laughed at me when I told them, as they had laughed at the others. But last night two of the doubters went up there." "Exactly. And they saw nothing." "Your pardon, my Colonel. They came back in a cold sweat, and they spent the night on their knees. The woman was there again. You have seen the salt sea at night? Well, her face was aglow, like that, so they said. They heard the clanking of chains, too, and the sound of hammers, coming from the very bowels of the earth. It is all plain enough, when you know the story. But it is terrifying." "This is indeed amazing," Cobo acknowledged, "but of course there is some simple explanation. Spirits, if indeed there are such things, are made of nothing--they are like thin air. How, then, could they rattle chains? You probably saw some wretched pacificos in search of food and imagined the rest." "Indeed! Then what did I hear with these very ears? Whispers, murmurs, groans, and the clinkety-clink of old Sebastian's chisel. For his sins that old slave is chained in some cavern of the mountain. Soundless! I'm no baby! I know when I'm asleep, and I know when I'm awake. That place is accursed, and I want no more of it." Cobo fell into frowning meditation, allowing his cigarette to smolder down until it burned his thick fingers. He was not a superstitious man and he put no faith in the supernatural, nevertheless he was convinced that his sergeant was not lying, and reference to Pancho Cueto had set his mind to working along strange channels. He had known Cueto well, and the latter's stubborn belief in the existence of that Varona treasure had more than once impressed him. He wondered now if others shared that faith, or if by chance they had discovered a clue to the whereabouts of the money and were conducting a secret search. It was a fantastic idea, nevertheless Cobo told himself that if people were prying about those deserted premises it was with some object, and their actions would warrant observation. The presence of the woman--a woman--with the glow of phosphorus upon her face was puzzling, but the whole affair was puzzling. He determined to investigate. After a time he murmured, "I should like to see this spirit." The sergeant shrugged. It was plain from his expression that he could not account for such a desire. "Another night is coming," said he. "Good! I shall visit the place, and if I see anything unusual I--well, I shall believe what you have told me. Meanwhile, go see your priest by all means. It will do you no harm." XXVI HOW COBO STOOD ON HIS HEAD All that day, or during most of it, at least, Rosa and O'Reilly sat hand in hand, oblivious of hunger and fatigue, impatient for the coming of night, keyed to the highest tension. Now they would rejoice hysterically, assuring each other of their good fortune, again they would grow sick with the fear of disappointment. Time after time they stepped out of the hut and stared apprehensively up the slopes of La Cumbre to assure themselves that this was not all a part of some fantastic illusion; over and over, in minutest detail, Johnnie described what he had seen at the bottom of the well. He tried more than once during the afternoon to sleep, but he could not, for the moment he closed his eyes he found himself back there in that pit upon the ridge's crest, straining at those stubborn rocks and slippery timbers. This inaction was maddening, his fatigue rendered him feverish and irritable. Jacket, too, felt the strain, and after several fruitless attempts to sleep he rose and went out into the sunshine, where he fell to whetting his knife. He finished putting a double edge upon the blade, fitted a handle to it, and then a cord with which to suspend it round his neck. He showed it to O'Reilly, and after receiving a word of praise he crept out-doors again and tried to forget how sick he was. Black spots were dancing before Jacket's eyes; he experienced spells of dizziness and nausea during which he dared not attempt to walk. He knew this must be the result of starvation, and yet, strangely enough, the thought of food was distasteful to him. He devoutly wished it were not necessary to climb that hill again, for he feared he would not have the strength to descend it. Luckily for the sake of the secret, Evangelina spent most of the day searching for food, while Asensio lay babbling upon his bed, too ill to notice the peculiar actions of his companions. It was with a strange, nightmare feeling of unreality that the trio dragged themselves upward to the ruined quinta when darkness finally came. They no longer talked, for conversation was a drain upon their powers, and the reaction from the day's excitement had set in. O'Reilly lurched as he walked, his limbs were heavy, and his liveliest sensation was one of dread at the hard work in store for him. The forcing of that door assumed the proportions of a Herculean task. But once he was at the bottom of the well and beheld the handiwork of Sebastian, the slave, just as he had left it, his sense of reality returned and with it a certain measure of determination. Inasmuch as he had made no visible impression upon the bulkhead by his direct attack, he changed his tactics now and undertook to loosen one of the jambs where it was wedged into the rock at top and bottom. After a desperate struggle he succeeded in loosening the entire structure so that he could pry it out far enough to squeeze his body through. "I have it!" he cried to Rosa. Seizing the candle, he thrust it into the opening. He beheld what he had expected to find, a small cavern or grotto which had evidently been pierced during the digging of the well. He could appreciate now how simple had been the task of sealing it up so as to baffle discovery. Rosa, poised above him, scarcely breathed until he straightened himself and turned his face upward once more. He tried to speak, but voiced nothing more than a hoarse croak; the candle in his hand described erratic figures. "What do you see?" the girl cried in an agony of suspense. "I--It's here! B-boxes, chests, casks--everything!" "God be praised! My father's fortune at last!" Rosa forgot her surroundings; she beat her hands together, calling upon O'Reilly to make haste and determine beyond all question that the missing hoard was indeed theirs. She drew perilously close to the well and knelt over it like some priestess at her devotions; her eyes were brimming with tears and there was a roaring in her ears. It was not strange that she failed to see or to hear the approach of a great blurred figure which materialized out of the night and took station scarcely an arm's-length behind her. "He intended it for his children," she sobbed, "and Providence saved it from our wicked enemies. It was the hand of God that led us here, O'Reilly. Tell me, what do you see now?" Johnnie had wormed his way into the damp chamber and a slim rectangle of light was projected against the opposite side of the well. Rosa could hear him talking and moving about. Don Esteban Varona's subterranean hiding-place was large enough to store a treasure far greater than his; it was perhaps ten feet in length, with a roof high enough to accommodate a tall man. At the farther end were ranged several small wooden chests bound with iron and fitted with hasps and staples, along one side was a row of diminutive casks, the sort used to contain choice wines or liquors; over all was a thick covering of slime and mold. The iron was deeply rusted and the place itself smelled abominably stale. O'Reilly surveyed this Aladdin's cave in a daze. He set his candle down, for his fingers were numb and unsteady. Cautiously, as if fearful of breaking some spell, he stooped and tried to move one of the casks, but found that it resisted him as if cemented to the rock. He noted that its head was bulged upward, as if by the dampness, so he took his iron bar and aimed a sharp blow at the chine. A hoop gave way; another blow enabled him to pry out the head of the cask. He stood blinking at the sight exposed, for the little barrel was full of coins--yellow coins, large and small. O'Reilly seized a handful and held them close to the candle-flame; among the number he noted a Spanish doubloon, such as young Esteban had found. He tested the weight of the other casks and found them equally heavy. Knowing little about gold, he did not attempt to estimate the value of their contents, but he judged they must represent a fortune. With throbbing pulses he next lifted the lid of the nearest chest. Within, he discovered several compartments, each stored with neatly wrapped and labeled packages of varying shapes and sizes. The writing upon the tags was almost illegible, but the first article which O'Reilly unwrapped proved to be a goblet of most beautiful workmanship. Time had long since blackened it to the appearance of pewter or some base metal, but he saw that it was of solid silver. Evidently he had uncovered a store of old Spanish plate. In one corner of the chest he saw a metal box of the sort in which valuable papers are kept, and after some effort he managed to break it open. Turning back the lid, he found first a bundle of documents bearing imposing scrolls and heavy seals. Despite the dampness, they were in fairly good condition, and there was enough left of the writing to identify them beyond all question as the missing deeds of patent to the Varona lands--those crown grants for which Dona Isabel had searched so fruitlessly. But this was not all that the smaller box contained. Beneath the papers there were numerous leather bags. These had rotted; they came apart easily in O'Reilly's fingers, displaying a miscellaneous assortment of unset gems--some of them at first sight looked like drops of blood, others like drops of purest water. They were the rubies and the diamonds which had brought Isabel to her death. O'Reilly waited to see no more. Candle in hand, he crept out into the well to apprise Rosa of the truth. "We've got it! There's gold by the barrel and the deeds to your land. Yes, and the jewels, too--a quart of them, I guess. I--I can't believe my eyes." He showed her a handful of coins. "Look at that! Doubloons, eagles! There appear to be thousands of them. Why, you're the richest girl in Cuba. Rubies, diamonds--yes, and pearls, too, I dare say--" He choked and began to laugh weakly, hysterically. "I've heard about those pearls," Rosa cried, shrilly. "Pearls from the Caribbean, as large as plums. Isabel used to babble about them in her sleep." "I found those deeds the first thing. The plantations are yours now, beyond any question." Rosa drew back from her precarious position, for she had grown limp from weakness and her head was whirling. As she rose to her feet she brushed something, somebody, some flesh-and-blood form which was standing almost over her. Involuntarily she recoiled, toppling upon the very brink of the pit, whereupon a heavy hand reached forth and seized her. She found herself staring upward into a face she had grown to know in her nightmares, a face the mere memory of which was enough to freeze her blood. It was a hideous visage, thick-lipped, fiat-featured, black; it was disfigured by a scar from lip to temple and out of it gleamed a pair of eyes distended and ringed with white, like the eyes of a man insane. For an instant Rosa made no sound and no effort to escape. The apparition robbed her of breath, it paralyzed her in both mind and body. Her first thought was that she had gone stark mad, but she had felt Cobo's hands upon her once before and after her first frozen moment of amazement she realized that she was in her fullest senses. A shriek sprang to her lips, she tried to fight the man off, but her weak struggle was like the fluttering of a bird. Cobo crushed her down, strangling the half-uttered cry. Terror may be so intense, so appalling as to be unendurable. In Rosa's case a merciful oblivion overtook her. She felt the world grow black, fall away; felt herself swing dizzily through space. O'Reilly looked upward, inquiring, sharply, "What's the matter?" He heard a scuffling of feet above him, but received no answer. "Rosa! What frightened you? ROSA?" There was a moment of sickening suspense, then he put his shoulder to the timbers he had displaced and, with a violent shove, succeeded in swinging them back into place. Laying hold of the rope, he began to hoist himself upward. He had gone but a little way, however, when, without warning, his support gave way and he fell backward; the rope came pouring down upon him. "ROSA!" he called again in a voice thick from fright. Followed an instant of silence; then he flattened himself against the side of the well and the breath stuck in his throat. Into the dim circle of radiance above a head was thrust--a head, a pair of wide shoulders, and then two arms. The figure bent closer, and O'Reilly recognized the swarthy features of that man he had seen at the Matanzas railroad station. There could be no doubt of it--it was Cobo. The men stared at each other silently, and of the two Cobo appeared to be the more intensely agitated. After a moment his gaze fixed itself upon the opening into the treasure-chamber and remained there. As if to make entirely sure of what he had overheard, he stretched his body farther, supporting it by his out-flung arms, then moved his head from side to side for a better view. He seemed to rock over the mouth of the well like a huge, fat, black spider. He was the first to speak. "Am I dreaming? Or--have you really discovered that treasure?" he queried. O'Reilly's upturned face was ghastly. He wet his lips. He managed to whisper Rosa's name. "The riches of the Varonas! Christ! What a find!" Cobo's teeth shone white in the grin of avarice. "Yes, I see now--a cavern in the rock. Well, well! And you are the spirit of Sebastian, chained in the bowels of La Cumbre. Ha! These are the ghosts--" He began to chuckle, but the sound of his malevolent merriment was like the hiccoughing of a drunken man. "Rosa! What have you done--" Cobo ran on unheeding: "It must be a great treasure, indeed, from all accounts--the ransom of a dozen kings. That's what Cueto said, 'The ransom of a dozen kings!' Those were his very words." The fellow continued to sway himself back and forth, peering as if his eyes were about to leave his head. For a long moment or two he utterly disregarded O'Reilly, but finally as he gained more self-control his gaze shifted and his expression altered. He changed his weight to his left arm and with his right hand he drew his revolver. "What are you doing?" O'Reilly cried, hoarsely. The colonel seemed vaguely surprised at this question. "Fool! Do you expect me to share it with you?" he inquired. "Wait! There's enough--for all of us," O'Reilly feebly protested; then, as he heard the click of the cocked weapon: "Let me out. I'll pay you well--make you rich." In desperation he raised his shaking hand to dash out the candle, but even as he did so the colonel spoke, at the same time carefully lowering the revolver hammer. "You are right. What am I thinking about? There must be no noise. Caramba! A pretty business that would be, wouldn't it? With my men running up here to see what it was all about. No, no! No gunshots, no disturbance of any kind. You understand what I mean, eh?" His face twisted into a grin as he tossed the revolver aside, then undertook to detach a stone from the crumbling curb. "No noise!" he chuckled. "No noise whatever." O'Reilly, stupefied by the sudden appearance of this monstrous creature, stunned by the certainty of a catastrophe to Rosa, awoke to the fact that this man intended to brain him where he stood. In a panic he cast his eyes about him, thinking to take shelter in the treasure-cave, but that retreat was closed to him, for he had wedged the wooden timbers together at the first alarm. He was like a rat in a pit, utterly at the mercy of this maniac. And Cobo was a maniac at the moment; he had so far lost control of himself as to allow the stone to slip out of his grasp. It fell with a thud at O'Reilly's feet, causing the assassin to laugh once more. "Ho, ho!" he hiccoughed. "My fingers are clumsy, eh? But there is no need for haste." He stretched out his arm again, laid hold of another missile, and strained to loosen it from its bed. "Jewels! Pearls the size of plums! And I a poor man! I can't believe it yet." He could not detach the stone, so he fumbled farther along the curbing. "Pearls, indeed! I would send a dozen men to hell for one--" O'Reilly had been standing petrified, his body forced tightly against the rough surface behind him, following with strained fascination the deliberate movements of the man above him; now he saw Cobo, without the least apparent reason, twist and shudder, saw him stiffen rigidly as if seized with a sudden cramp, saw his eyes dilate and heard him heave a deep, whistling sigh. O'Reilly could not imagine what ailed the fellow. For an eternity, so it seemed, Cobo remained leaning upon his outspread arms, fixed in that same attitude of paralysis--it looked almost as if he had been startled by some sound close by. But manifestly that was not the cause of his hesitation, for his face became convulsed and an expression of blank and utter astonishment was stamped upon it. The men stared fixedly at each other, O'Reilly with his head thrown back, Cobo with his body propped rigidly upon wooden arms and that peculiar shocked inquiry in his glaring eyes. But slowly this expression changed; the colonel bent as if beneath a great weight, his head rose and turned back upon his neck, he filled his lungs with another wheezing sigh. "Christ! O Christ--" he whispered. His teeth ground together, his head began to wag upon his shoulders; it dropped lower and lower; one hand slipped from its hold and he lurched forward. An instant he hung suspended from the waist; then he appeared to let go limply as all resistance went out of his big body. There came a warning rattle of dirt and mortar and pebbles; the next instant he slipped into the well and plunged headlong down upon O'Reilly, an avalanche of lifeless flesh. Johnnie shielded himself with his up-flung arms, but he was driven to his knees, and when he scrambled to his feet, half stunned, it was to find himself in utter darkness. There was a heavy weight against his legs. With a strength born of horror and revulsion he freed himself; then hearing no sound and feeling no movement, he fumbled for the candle and with clumsy fingers managed to relight it. Even after the flame had leaped out and he saw what shared the pit with him he could barely credit his senses. The nature of his deliverance was uncanny, supernatural--it left him dazed. He had beheld death stamped upon Cobo's writhing face even while the fellow braced himself to keep from falling, but what force had effected the phenomenon, what unseen hand had stricken him, Johnnie was at a loss to comprehend. It seemed a miracle, indeed, until he looked closer. Then he understood. Cobo lay in a formless, boneless heap; he seemed to be all arms and legs; his face was hidden, but between his shoulders there protruded the crude wooden handle of a home-made knife to which a loop of cord was tied. O'Reilly stared stupidly at the weapon; then he raised his eyes. Peering down at him out of the night was another face, an impertinent, beardless, youthful face. He uttered Jacket's name, and the boy answered with a smile. "Bring my knife with you when you come," the latter directed. "YOU!" The American's voice was weak and shaky. "I thought--" He set the candle down and covered his eyes momentarily. "That's a good knife, all right, and sharp, too. The fellow died in a hurry, eh? Who does he happen to be?" "Don't you know? It--it's Cobo." "COBO! Coby, the baby-killer!" Jacket breathed an oath. "Oh, that blessed knife!" The boy craned his small body forward until he was in danger of following his victim. "Now this IS good luck indeed! And to think that he died just like any other man." "Rosa! Where is she?" O'Reilly inquired in a new agony of apprehension. "Oh, she is here," Jacket assured him, carelessly. "I think she has fainted. Caramba! Isn't that like a woman--to miss all the fun? But, compadre--that was a blow for Cuba Libre; what? People will talk about me when I'm as dead as that pig. 'Narciso Villar, the slayer of Cobo'--that's what they'll call me." Jacket giggled hysterically. "I--I thought he would jump up and run after me, so I fled, but he tried to bury himself, didn't he? His flesh was like butter, O'Reilly." "Help me out, quick! Here, catch this rope." Johnnie managed to fling the coil within reach of his little friend and a moment later he had hoisted himself from that pit of tragedy. XXVII MORIN, THE FISHERMAN When Rosa Varona regained consciousness sufficiently to understand what had happened she proved herself a person of no little self-control. She went to pieces for a moment, as was only natural, but O'Reilly soon succeeded in calming her. Nor did he have to remind her twice that this was no time for weakness or hysteria; it was she, in fact, who first voiced the fear that Cobo dead was scarcely less of a menace than Cobo alive. "What are we going to do with him?" she inquired. Jacket, too, appreciated the dangers of the situation. "We must get rid of him quickly," said he, "for his men are close by; he will be missed and there will be a search." "I don't intend to make him a present of that treasure," O'Reilly said, grimly. "It is our only salvation." "But how are we going to hide him?" Jacket inquired. "One might as well try to conceal a church; oxen couldn't hoist him out of that hole." "Precisely! He has made our work easy for us. We can't take more than a small part of the money with us, anyhow; the rest will have to lie here until the war is over. Well! We shall leave Cobo on guard over what remains!" Jacket was immensely pleased with this idea, once he had grasped it. "What could be better?" he cried. "The man's spirit is evil enough to frighten people away and we will drop stones upon him, so that he can learn the taste of his own medicine. It suits me exactly to think of Colonel Cobo standing on his head in a hole in the ground for the rest of eternity!" O'Reilly was by this time suffering the full reaction from the events of the past half-hour and he was nearer exhaustion than he dreamed, but, conquering his repugnance for his unescapable task, he lowered himself once more into the well. His arms were weak, however, and his fingers numb, so he fell rather than slid the length of the rope. He managed to open the door of the treasure-chamber, then entered and loaded his pockets with gold. He sent up the jewel-box at the end of the rope, dragged the body of Cobo into the cave, then wedged the barricade back into place. It required the combined strength of Rosa and Jacket to help him the last few feet of his climb. "Now fetch stones, rubbish, anything--and throw it in there," he gasped. The boy and the girl fell to with a will, and after a time Johnnie joined them. Slowly, laboriously, the three of them carried debris from the edge of the quarry and bricks from the ruined house; they scraped up armfuls of leaves and trash--anything, in fact, which would serve to raise the bottom of the shaft and conceal the entrance to their enemy's resting-place. It was slavish work, but O'Reilly kept them at it until they were ready to drop. Daylight overtook them at their task. They were weak, sick, deadly tired; they could barely shuffle a few yards at a time when they finally reached Asensio's hut; nevertheless there was hope in their hearts, for O'Reilly's ragged clothes sagged with the weight of gold pieces and the little metal box he carried was heavy. Nor were they greatly concerned about the safety of the treasure they had left behind, for the entrance to the cavern lay deeply buried, and Cobo, the guerrilla, stood guard over the chests of plate and the casks of coin. Evangelina, vastly bewildered at the sight of the coin which was forced into her palm, went for food and spent most of the day in cooking it. The treasure-hunters alternately slept and ate. It was not until well along toward evening that Rosa and O'Reilly felt any desire to take stock of the contents of that jewel-box, but finally, with heads together and with backs to the door of the bohio, they made a furtive examination. It was a task that held them spellbound, for there were loose gems of many varieties, some well, some badly cut; there were pieces of antique Spanish jewelry, valuable mainly by virtue of their antiquity, clumsy settings of silver and gold containing dead, uninteresting stones; others of the finest and most delicate workmanship. Some of the pieces were like glittering cobwebs enmeshing sparks of fire and drops of blood. They found emeralds and sapphires the value of which they did not attempt to estimate; and, besides these, a miscellaneous assortment of semiprecious stones. There was a fine collection of opals of every size and color, among which were a number of huge flat black ones, indescribably gorgeous with their ever-changing peacock hues. But finest of all the lot were the pearls. Where old Don Esteban had secured these latter was a mystery, for he had not been a widely traveled man. They were splendid, unrivaled in size and luster. Some had the iridescence of soap-bubbles, others ranged from pink to deepest chocolate in color. To touch them was like sacrilege. O'Reilly realized vaguely that he held in his lap a fortune greater than his wildest dreams had ever compassed. These were the jewels of a rajah. It seemed incredible that this ragged girl beside him was a regal heiress, the possessor of a treasure such as kings might envy. After a time he realized that the mere possession of these gems constituted a new and overwhelming menace. All that evening he and Rosa cowered in the darkness, whispering furtively, their nerves on edge, their senses strained. It seemed to them that new and unsuspected perils stalked abroad through the night. Morning found all hands more nearly rational and feeling the first gnawings of a healthy hunger. Even Asensio confessed to a quite miraculous improvement. While Evangelina prepared breakfast the lovers agreed upon a story to explain the origin of that mysterious gold piece, and later Johnnie warned Jacket for a second time to keep his tongue between his teeth. "We will have to be doubly careful now," he told the boy. "An unguarded word or an incautious move would be the end of us." Jacket nodded his complete comprehension. "Sure! All Spaniards are robbers and they'd kill us for a peso. Yes, and the pacificos are no better. I tell you we need to get out of this place." "I intend to arrange it at once, but--the sight of those jewels has frightened me. If we are searched--if we are even suspected--" "Oh, Rosa wouldn't have any more use for her pretty trinkets. She'd be in heaven before you could scratch your nose." O'Reilly frowned. "She isn't at all strong yet. I'm wondering if she can endure the hardships we'll encounter when, or if, we get away." "Exactly what I was thinking. I've been considering another plan." "Indeed?" O'Reilly scanned the face of his young friend with interest. He was beginning to have a high regard for Jacket's capabilities, and the boy's exploit of the night before certainly entitled him to be heard upon any subject. "I told you about my friend at the market," the latter continued. "Well, he is a miserable Spaniard, but he has a son in the manigua." "One of us?" Johnnie was surprised. "Yes. The old fellow owns a volandra in which he brings charcoal from the eastward twice a month." There was a moment of silence; then O'Reilly said, slowly, as if hesitating even to voice such a suggestion, "You mean--he might take us out of here--on his schooner?" "Who knows? He's not a bad old fellow and he likes me. But there would be no place for women." "How well does he like you?" "Oh, we are like two thieves." After another period of thought O'Reilly said, "Take me to him, and remember I'm your brother Juan." The Matanzas market did not present a scene of great activity when the two friends slunk into it. It was midday, and what food had earlier been offered for sale had for the most part long since disappeared. All but a few of the stalls were empty, and a number of emaciated reconcentrados were searching listlessly among them for neglected scraps, or imploring aid from such marketmen as still lingered about. Like most Spanish markets, the building was far from clean and housed odors unpleasant even to starving people. In the smelliest section, at one of the fish-stalls, Jacket accosted a villainous old brigand in a rough Gallego cap, baggy blouse and trousers, and straw sandals. "Good day, my Captain," he cried, cheerily. The Spaniard raised his head, scowled ferociously, then waved a long, thin-bladed knife in menacing fashion. "Aha! So there you are, robber! Be off now before I slit your greedy little belly!" He spoke in an angry, husky voice. When Jacket stood his ground he reached for him with a hand upon which blood and fish-scales had dried. "Didn't I promise to give you to the soldiers if you came back to bother me?" Jacket was unabashed by this hostile reception. He grinned broadly and with an impudent eye he scanned the empty premises. "Where is my little fish?" he demanded. "As I live, I believe you have sold it! God! What a miser! For the sake of another centavo you would see me starve? There's a heart for you!" "YOUR little fish!" roared the brigand, clashing his blade on the filthy counter. "No shark ever stole so many fish as you. Come, I shall make an end of you, and have some peace. Starve? YOU? Bah! Your body is like a gourd." "Yes, and quite as hollow. I starve because you possess a heart of stone. One little fish, no longer than your finger. Just one?" "Not so much as a fin!" cried the man. "Can I feed all the rebels in Matanzas?" "One little fish," Jacket wheedled, "for the sake of Miguelito, who is bravely fighting in the manigua, to the shame of his miserly old father, fattening on the groans of good patriots like me! Must I remind you again that Miguelito was my brother? That I have robbed my own belly in order to give him food?" "Liar!" "It is true." "You never saw him." "Miguel Morin? With a scar on his neck? The bravest boy in all the Orient? Ask him about Narciso Villar. Come, give me my fish! Or must I lie down and die before your very eyes to prove my hunger?" "What a nuisance!" grumbled the marketman. He reached into a basket and flung a mackerel upon the table. "There! I saved it for you, and sent the good women of Matanzas away empty-handed. But it is the very last. Annoy me again and I shall open you with my knife and put salt on you." "Ah! You ARE my good captain!" Jacket cried in triumph, possessing himself of the prize. "Where would I have been but for you?" Turning to O'Reilly, who had looked on from a distance at this artificial quarrel, he said, "Captain Morin, this is that brother Juan of whom I have told you." Morin smiled at Johnnie and extended his dirty palm. "The little fellow can speak the truth when he wishes, it seems. I began to doubt that he had a brother. What a boy, eh?" Leaning closer, he whispered, hoarsely: "It is cheaper to give him a fish than to have him steal a whole basketful. But he is a great liar. Even yet I'm not sure that he knows my Miguelito." "You have a son with the Insurrectos?" "Yes." The fisherman cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. "He is a traitor of the worst sort, and I don't approve of him, but he's a brave boy and he loves fighting. Sometimes I get hungry to see him." "Why don't you go and fight by his side?" Jacket demanded. "God forbid!" Morin flung up his hands. "I'm a loyal subject." "Well, we are going back to fight. We are going to escape and join Gomez once more!" Jacket made the announcement calmly. "'S-SH! What talk!" Morin was in a nervous panic lest they be overheard. "As if anybody could escape from Matanzas! What made you come here if you are so eager to fight?" "I'll tell you." O'Reilly assumed direction of the conversation. "There are three of us brothers, we two and Esteban, a pretty little fellow. He was captured by Cobo's men and driven in, and we came to find him." "You came HERE--here to Matanzas?" Old Morin was incredulous. He muttered an oath. "That was a very nice thing to do. And did you find him?" "Oh yes! That was easy enough, for the lad is deformed." "Tse! Tse! What a pity!" "But he is sick--dying--" "Of course. They're all dying--the poor people! It is terrible." "We--" O'Reilly faltered slightly, so much hung upon the manner in which Morin would take what he was about to say. "We want to get him out of here--we MUST do so, or we'll lose him." Sensing some hidden significance, some obscure purpose behind this confession, the Spaniard looked sharply at the speaker. His leathery countenance darkened. "Why are you telling me this?" he inquired. "What makes you think I won't betray you?" "Something tells me you won't. You have a good heart, and you have kept Narciso from starving, for the sake of your own boy." "Well?" "Will you help us?" "_I_? In Heaven's name, how?" "By taking us away in your charcoal-schooner." "You're mad!" Morin cast another apprehensive look over his shoulder. "I'm a poor man. All I have is my two boats, the vivero, which brings fish, and the volandra, which sails with charcoal. Do you think I'd forfeit them and my life for strangers?" "There wouldn't be much risk." "Indeed? Perhaps I know something about that." O'Reilly leaned closer. "You say you're a poor man, I will pay you well." Morin eyed the ragged speaker scornfully; it was plain that he put no faith in such a promise, and so O'Reilly took a piece of gold from his pocket, at sight of which the fisherman started. "What kind of pacificos are you?" Morin queried. His mouth had fallen open, his eyes protruded. "I, too, am a poor man, but I'm willing to buy freedom for my little brothers and myself." "How many coins like that have you?" "Um--m--more than one; enough to pay you for several cargoes of coal." "And I have given you fish to eat!" Morin rolled his eyes at Jacket. He pondered the marvel of what he had seen, he muttered something to himself. "For the sake of Miguelito," Jacket urged. "CARAMBA! What a hard-hearted father begot that boy!" "Hush!" The fisherman was scowling. To O'Reilly he said, "You do wrong to tempt a poor man." "My brother Esteban is sick. He is a frail little lad with a crooked back. God will reward you." "Perhaps! But how much will YOU pay?" "Ten Spanish sovereigns like this--all that I have." "No! It is not enough." O'Reilly took Jacket's hand and turned away. "I'm sorry," said he. "I wish I might offer you more." He had taken several steps before Morin hailed him. "Come back to-morrow," the fisherman cried, crossly. "We will try to talk like sensible people." The brothers Villar were back at Morin's fish-stand on the following afternoon and they returned daily thereafter until they at last prevailed over the Spaniard's fears and won his promise of assistance. That much accomplished, they made several cautious purchases, a coat here, a shirt there, a pair of trousers in another place, until they had assembled a complete boy's outfit of clothing. At first Rosa refused absolutely to desert her two faithful negro friends, and O'Reilly won her consent to consider his plan of escape only after he had put the matter squarely up to Asensio and his wife and after both had refused to enter into it. Asensio declared that he was too sick to be moved, and asserted that he would infinitely prefer to remain where he was, provided he was supplied with sufficient money to cover his needs. Evangelina agreed with him. Then, and not until then, did Rosa begin her preparations. First she made Evangelina cut her hair, a sacrilege that wrung sighs and tears and loud lamentations from the black woman, after which she altered the suit of boy's clothing to fit her figure, or rather to conceal it. When at last she put it on for O'Reilly's approval she was very shy, very self-conscious, and so altogether unboylike that he shook his head positively. "My dear, you'll never do," he told her. "You are altogether too pretty." "But wait until I put that hideous hump upon my back and stain my face, then you will see how ugly I can look." "Perhaps," he said, doubtfully. A moment, then his frown lightened. "You give me a thought," said he. "You shall wear the jewels." "Wear them? How?" "On your back, in that very hump. It will be the safest possible way to conceal them." Rosa clapped her hands in delight. "Why, of course! It is the very thing. Wait until I show you." Profiting by her first moment alone--Evangelina and her husband being still in ignorance of the contents of the treasure-box--Rosa made a bundle out of the jewels and trinkets and fastened it securely inside her coat. After a few experiments she adjusted it to her liking, then called O'Reilly once more. This time he was better satisfied; he was, in truth, surprised at the effect of the disfigurement, and, after putting Rosa through several rehearsals in masculine deportment, he pronounced the disguise as nearly perfect as could be hoped for. An application of Evangelina's stain to darken her face, a few tatters and a liberal application of dirt to the suit, and he declared that Rosa would pass anywhere as a boy. There came a night when the three of them bade good-by to their black companions and slipped away across the city to that section known as Pueblo Nuevo, then followed the road along the water-front until they found shelter within the shadows of a rickety structure which had once served as a bath-house. The building stood partially upon piles and under it they crept, knee-deep in the lapping waves. To their left was the illumination of Matanzas; to their right, the lights of the Penas Alias fort; ahead of them, empty and dark save for the riding-lights of a few small coasting-vessels, lay the harbor. The refugees waited a long time; they were beginning 'to fear that old Morin's nerve had weakened at the eleventh hour, when they beheld a skiff approaching the shore. It glided closer, entered the shade of the bathhouse, then a voice cried: "Pset! You are there?" It was Morin himself. Hastily the three piled aboard. Morin bent to his oars and the skiff shot out. "You were not observed?" he inquired. "No." Morin rowed in silence for a time, then confessed: "This business is not to my liking. There is too much risk. Think of me putting my neck in peril--" "Ho!" Jacket chuckled. "It is just the sort of thing that I enjoy. If Miguelito was captain of his father's boat we'd been in Cardenas by daybreak." "When do you sail?" O'Reilly asked. "At dawn, God permitting. You will have to remain hidden and you mustn't even breathe. I have told my men that you are members of my wife's family--good Spaniards, but I doubt if they will believe it." "Then you are to be my uncle?" Jacket inquired from his seat in the bow. "Caramba! That's more than I can stand! To be considered a Spaniard is bad enough, but to be known as the nephew of an old miser who smells of fish! It is too much!" Badinage of this sort did not displease the fisherman. "It is not often they board us nowadays," he said, more hopefully, "but of course one never can tell. Perhaps we will sail out under their very noses." He brought the skiff alongside a battered old schooner and his passengers clambered aboard. There was a tiny cabin aft and on it, sheltered from the night dew by a loose fold of the mainsail, were two sleeping men. The new-comers followed Morin down into the evil little cabin, where he warned them in a stertorous whisper: "Not a sound, mind you. If any one comes aboard, you must shift for yourselves. Creep into the hold and hide. Of course, if we are searched--" He muttered something, then groped his way out on deck, and closed the hatch behind him. It was inky dark in the cabin; the occupants dared not move about for fear of waking the sailors overhead. Time passed slowly. After a while Jacket yawned and sighed and grumbled under his breath. Finally he stretched himself out upon a narrow board bench and fell asleep. O'Reilly drew Rosa to him and she snuggled comfortably into his embrace, resting her head upon his shoulder. It was their first real moment alone. Now that they had actually embarked upon this enterprise and the girl had given herself entirely into his hands, now that an imminent peril encompassed them both, Johnnie felt that Rosa belonged to him more absolutely, more completely, than at any time heretofore, so he held her close. He caressed her gently, he voiced those tender, intimate, foolish thoughts which he had never dared express. This velvet darkness, this utter isolation, seemed to unite them; to feel the girl's heart beating against his own and her breath warm upon his cheek was intensely thrilling. An exquisite ardor inflamed him, and Rosa responded to it. They resisted briefly, prolonging the delights of this moment, then her arms crept about him, her lips met his in absolute surrender. They began to whisper, cautiously, so as not to disturb the sleeping boy; they became unconscious of the flight of time. Rosa lay relaxed against her lover's shoulder and in halting murmurs, interrupted many times by caresses, she told O'Reilly of her need for him, and her utter happiness. It was the fullest hour of their lives. Sometimes he thought she must be dozing, but he was never sure, for she answered to his lightest touch and awoke to the faintest pressure of his lips. The night wore swiftly on, and it was not long enough for either of them. With daylight, Morin routed out his men. There was a sleepy muttering, the patter of bare feet upon the deck above, then the creak of blocks as the sails were raised. From forward came the sound of some one splitting wood to kindle the charcoal fire for breakfast. Other sailing-craft seemed to be getting under way, and a fishing-boat, loaded with the night's catch, came to anchor alongside. The three brothers Villar felt the schooner heel slightly and knew that she was stealing toward the Spanish gunboat which was supposed to be on guard against precisely such undertakings as this. A few moments, then there came a hail which brought their hearts into their throats. Morin himself answered the call. "Good morning, countryman! Have you caught any of those accursed filibusters since I saw you last? So? Cayo Romano, eh? Well, they come in the night and they go in the night. If I were the pilot of your ship I'd guarantee to put you where they'd fall into your arms, for I know these waters. What have I aboard?" Morin laughed loudly. "You know very well--cannon and shot for the rebels, of course. Will you look? ... No? ... Then a cup of coffee perhaps?" O'Reilly peeped through a dirt-stained cabin window and saw that the volandra was slipping past the stern of the ironclad, so he withdrew his head quickly. In spite of his hospitable invitation, Captain Morin made no move to come about, but instead held his schooner on its course, meanwhile exchanging shouts with the unseen speaker. It seemed incredible that Spanish discipline could be so lax, that the schooner would be allowed to depart, even for a coastwise run, without some formalities of clearance; but so it seemed. Evidently the Spaniards had tired of examining these small craft. It was typical of their carelessness. Of course this was but one danger past and there were many more ahead, for Morin's schooner was liable to be stopped by any of the numerous patrol-boats on duty to the eastward. Nevertheless, when an anxious hour had gone by and she was well out toward the harbor mouth, the refugees told one another they were safe. Morin shoved back the companionway hatch and thrust a grinning face into view. "Ho, there! my lazy little cousins!" he cried. "Wake up, for I smell Pancho's coffee boiling." XXVIII THREE TRAVELERS COME HOME Esteban Varona made slow progress toward recovery. In the weeks following O'Reilly's departure from Cubitas his gain was steady, but beyond a certain point he seemed unable to go. Then he began to lose strength. Norine was the first to realize the truth, but it was some time before she would acknowledge it, even to herself. At last, however, she had to face the fact that Esteban's months of prison fare, the abuse, the neglect he had suffered in Spanish hands, had left him little more than a living corpse. It seemed as if fever had burned him out, or else some dregs of disease still lingered in his system and had all but quenched that elusive spark which for want of a better name we call vitality. Esteban, too, awoke to the fact that he was losing ground, and his dismay was keen, for a wonderful thing had come into his life and he spent much of his time in delicious contemplative day dreams concerning it, waiting for the hour when he would dare translate those dreams into realities. It seemed to him that he had always loved Norine; certainly she had enshrined herself in his heart long before his mind had regained its clarity, for he had come out of his delirious wanderings with his love full grown. There had been no conscious beginning to it; he had emerged from darkness into dazzling glory, all in an instant. Not until he found himself slipping backward did he attempt to set a guard upon himself, for up to that hour he had never questioned his right to love. He found his new task heavy, almost too much for him to bear. That he attempted it spoke well for the fellow's strength of character. The time came finally when he could no longer permit the girl to deceive herself or him with her brave assumption of cheerfulness. Norine had just told him that he was doing famously, but he smiled and shook his weary head. "Let's be honest," he said. "You know and I know that I can't get well." Norine was engaged in straightening up the interior of the bark hut in which her patient was installed; she ceased her labors to inquire with lifted brows: "Tut! Tut! Pray what do you mean by that?" "There's something desperately wrong with me and I realized it long ago. So did you, but your good heart wouldn't let you--" Norine crossed quickly to the hammock and laid her cool hand upon the sick man's forehead. "You mustn't be discouraged," she told him, earnestly. "Remember this is a trying climate and we have nothing to do with. Even the food is wretched." Esteban's smile became wistful. "That isn't why my fever lasts. If there were any life, any health left in me you would rekindle it. No, there's something desperately wrong, and--we're wasting time." "You simply MUSTN'T talk like this," she cried. Then at the look in his eyes she faltered for the briefest instant. "You'll--undo all that we've done. Oh, if I had you where I could take proper care of you! If we were anywhere but here you'd see." "I--believe you. But unfortunately we are not elsewhere." "I'm going to take you away," she exclaimed, forcefully. Esteban stroked her hand softly. "You can't do that, Miss Evans. You have been wonderful to me and I can't begin to express my gratitude--" Norine stirred, but he retained his grasp of her fingers, gaining courage from the contact to proceed. "I have been trying for a long time to tell you something. Will you listen?" Norine possessed a dominant personality; she had a knack of tactfully controlling and directing situations, but of a sudden she experienced a panic-stricken nutter and she lost her air of easy confidence. "Not now," she exclaimed, with a visible lessening of color. "Don't bother to tell me now." "I've waited too long; I must speak." Norine was amazed at her own confusion, which was nothing less than girlish; she had actually gone to pieces at threat of something she had long expected to hear. "I know how tired of this work you have become," the man was saying. "I know you're eager to get back to your own work and your own life." "Well?" "You have stayed on here just to nurse me. Isn't that true?" She nodded somewhat doubtfully. "Now then, you must stop thinking about me and--make your arrangements to go home." Norine eyed the speaker queerly. "Is THAT what you have been trying so long to tell me?" she inquired. "Yes." "Is that--all?" There was a moment of silence. "Yes. You see, I know how tired you are of this misery, this poverty, this hopeless struggle. You're not a Cuban and our cause isn't yours. Expeditions come from the United States every now and then and the Government will see that you are put safely aboard the first ship that returns. I'll manage to get well somehow." Norine's color had returned. She stood over the hammock, looking down mistily. "Don't you need me, want me any more?" she inquired. Esteban turned his tired eyes away, fearing to betray in them his utter wretchedness. "You have done all there is to do. I want you to go back into your own world and forget--" A sudden impulse seized the girl. She stopped and gathered the sick man into her young, strong arms. "Don't be silly," she cried. "My world is your world, Esteban dear. I'll never, never leave you." "Miss Evans! NORINE!" Varona tried feebly to free himself. "You mustn't--" Norine was laughing through her tears. "If you won't speak, I suppose I must, but it is very embarrassing. Don't you suppose I know exactly how much you love me? Why, you've told me a thousand times--" "Please! PLEASE!" he cried in a shaking voice. "This is wrong. I won't let you--you, a girl with everything--" "Hush!" She drew him closer. "You're going to tell me that you have nothing, can offer me nothing. You're going to do the generous, noble thing. Well! I hate generous people. I'm selfish, utterly selfish and spoiled, and I don't propose to be robbed of anything I want, least of all my happiness. You do love me, don't you?" Esteban's cry was eloquent; he clasped his arms about her and she held him fiercely to her breast. "Well, then, why don't you tell me so? I--I can't keep on proposing. It isn't ladylike." "We're quite mad, quite insane," he told her after a while. "This only makes it harder to give you up." "You're not going to give me up and you're not going to die. I sha'n't let you. Think what you have to live for." "I--did wrong to surrender." "It was I who surrendered. Come! Must I say it all? Aren't you going to ask me--" "What?" "Why, to marry you, of course." Esteban gasped; he looked deeply into Norine's eyes, then he closed his own. He shook his head. "Not that," he whispered. "Oh, not that!" "We're going to be married, and I'm going to take you out of this miserable place." "What happiness!" he murmured. "If I were well--But I won't let you marry a dying man." Norine rose, her face aglow with new strength, new determination. She dried her eyes and readjusted her hair with deft, unconscious touch, smiling down, meanwhile, at the man. "I brought you back when you were all but gone. I saved you after the others had given you up, and now you are mine to do with as I please. You belong to me and I sha'n't consult you--" She turned, for a figure had darkened the door; it was one of her English-speaking convalescents who was acting as a sort of orderly. "Senorita," the man said, with a flash of white teeth, "we have another sick man, and you'd never guess who. It is that American, El Demonio--" "Mr. Branch?" "Si! The very same. He has just come from the front." "Is he sick or wounded?" Esteban inquired. "Shot, by a Spanish bullet. He asked at once for our senorita." "Of course. I'll come in an instant." When the messenger had gone Norine bent and pressed her lips to Esteban's. "Remember, you're mine to do with as I please," she said; then she fled down the grassy street. Branch was waiting at Norine's quarters, a soiled figure of dejection. His left arm lay in a sling across his breast. He looked up at her approach, but she scarcely recognized him, so greatly changed was he. Leslie had filled out. There was a healthy color beneath his deep tan, his flesh was firm, his eyes clear and bright. "Hello, Norine!" he cried. "Well, they got me." Norine paused in astonishment. "'Way, LESLIE! I was so frightened! But--you can't be badly hurt." "Bad enough so that Lopez sent me in. A fellow gets flyblown if he stays in the field, so I beat it." "Has your arm been dressed?" "No. I wouldn't let these rough-and-tumble doctors touch it. They'd amputate at the shoulder for a hang-nail. I don't trust 'em." "Then I'll look at it." But Leslie shrugged. "Oh, it's feeling fine, right now! I'd rather leave it alone. I just wanted to see you--" "You mustn't neglect it; there's danger of--" "Gee! You're looking great," he interrupted. "It's better than a banquet just to look at you." "And YOU!" Norine scanned the invalid appraisingly. "Why, you're another man!" "Sure! Listen to this." He thumped his chest. "Best pair of bellows in Cuba. The open air did it." "What a pity you were hurt just at such a time. But you would take insane risks. Now then, let's have a look at your wound." She pushed him, protesting, into her cabin. "It doesn't hurt, really," he declared. "It's only a scratch." "Of course you'd say so. Sit down." "Please don't bother. If you don't mind--" "But I do mind. If you won't trust me I'll run for a doctor." "I tell you I can't stand 'em. They'll probe around and give a fellow gangrene." "Then behave yourself." Norine forced the patient into a chair and withdrew his arm from the sling. Then, despite his weak resistance, she deftly removed the bandage. From his expression she felt sure that she must be hurting him, but when the injury was exposed she looked up in wonderment. "Leslie!" she exclaimed. "What in the world--" "Well! You insisted on seeing it," he grumbled. "I told you it wasn't much." He tried to meet her eyes, but failed. There was a moment's pause, then Norine inquired, curiously: "What is the trouble? You'd better 'fess up." Branch struggled with himself, he swallowed hard, then said: "I'm--going to. You can see now why I didn't go to a doctor: _I_ did it--shot myself. You won't give me away?" "Why--I don't understand." "Oh, I'm in trouble. I simply had to get away, and this was all I could think of. I wanted to blow a real hole through myself and I tried three times. But I missed myself." "Missed yourself? How? Why?" Branch wiped the sweat from his face. "I flinched--shut my eyes and pulled the trigger." Norine seated herself weakly; she stared in bewilderment at the unhappy speaker. "Afraid? You, El Demonio! Why, you aren't afraid of anything!" "Say! You don't believe all that stuff, do you? I'm afraid of my shadow and always have been. I'm not brave and never was. They told me I was going to die and it scared me so that I tried to end things quickly. I couldn't bear to die slowly, to KNOW that I was dying by inches. But, Lord! It scared me even worse to go into battle. I was blind with fright all the time and I never got over it. Why, the sight of a gun gives me a chill, and I jump every time one goes off. God! how I've suffered! I went crazy at our first engagement--crazy with fear. I didn't know where I was, or what happened, or anything. Afterward, when they hailed me as a hero, I thought they were kidding, that everybody must know how frightened I was. After a time I saw that I'd fooled them, and that shamed me. Then--I had to keep it up or become ridiculous. But it nearly killed me." "If you're speaking the truth, I'm not sure you're such a coward as you make out," Norine said. "Oh yes, I am. Wait! Before I knew it I had a reputation. Then I had to live up to it." The speaker groaned. "It wasn't so bad as long as I felt sure I was going to die, anyhow, but when I discovered I was getting well--" Branch raised a pair of tragic eyes, his tone changed. "I'll tell you what cured me. I SCARED myself well! Those bugs in my lungs died from suffocation, for I never breathed as long as there was a Spaniard in the same county with me. One day I found that I couldn't cough if I tried. I got strong. I slept well. And EAT? Huh! I gobbled my share of food and whined for more. I stole what belonged to the others. I began to enjoy myself--to have fun. Life opened up nice and rosy. I fell in love with my new self and the joy of living. Then I didn't want to die--never had, you understand, except to cheat the bugs; it gave me the horrors to think of the chances I'd taken. To be strong, to be healthy and free from pain, to tear my food like a wild animal, and to enjoy hard work was all new and strange and wonderful. I was drunk with it. To think of being cut down, crippled, reduced to the useless, miserable thing I had been, was intolerable. I was twice as scared then as I'd ever been, for I had more to lose. You understand? I forced myself to do the insane things expected of me, when people were looking--natural pride, I suppose--but when they weren't looking, oh, how I dogged it! I crawled on my belly and hid in holes like a snake." "How--funny!" Norine exclaimed. "You've got a blamed queer idea of humor," Branch flashed, with a show of his former irritability. "And so you shot yourself?" "Yep! I tried to select a good spot where it wouldn't hurt or prove too inconvenient, but--there isn't a place to spare on a fellow's whole body. He needs every inch of himself every minute. I was going to shoot myself in the foot, but my feet are full of bones and I saw myself on crutches the rest of my life." "Why didn't you resign from the service? You didn't regularly enlist and you've surely earned your discharge." Branch nodded. "I thought of that, but I've gained a reputation that I don't deserve and, strangely enough, I'm madly jealous of it. I thought if I were really shot by a regular bullet I'd be mourned as a hero and have a chance to walk out with colors flying. I want to tell my children, if I ever have any, what a glorious man I was and how I helped to free Cuba. Oh, I'd lie like a thief to my own children! Now you see why I don't want a doctor. There's only one thing I want--and that's--HOME." Leslie heaved a deep sigh. "Gee! I'm homesick." "So am I," Norine feelingly declared. "I think I understand how you feel and I can't blame you for wanting to live, now that you've learned what a splendid thing life is." "If O'Reilly had been with me I think I could have managed, somehow, for he would have understood, too. I--I'll never go back to the front, alone--they can shoot me, if they want to. Have you heard anything from him?" "Not a word. Cuba swallowed him up. Oh, Leslie, it is a cruel country! It is taking the best and the youngest. I--want to go away." He smiled mirthlessly. "I'm fed up on it, too. I want to be where I can shave when I need to and wear something besides canvas pajamas. I'm cured of war; I want a policeman to stop the traffic and help me across the street. I want to put my feet under a breakfast-table, rustle a morning paper, and slap an egg in the face. That's all the excitement I hunger for." Norine filled a basin with clean water and, taking a fresh bandage, wrapped up the self-inflicted hurt, Branch watching her anxiously. Now and again he flinched like a child when she touched his wound. At last he inquired, apprehensively, "Is it infected?" "No." "Lord! I'm glad! Wouldn't it be just my luck to get blood poisoning?" Norine surprised her patient by inquiring, irrelevantly, "Leslie, is there anybody here who can marry people?" "Eh? Why, of course!" Then suddenly his somber face lightened and he cried: "NORINE! DO YOU MEAN IT?" "Not you. I wouldn't marry you." "Why not? I'm perfectly well--" "Please answer me." Leslie settled back in his chair. "I dare say some of the Cuban Cabinet officers could put up a good bluff at a marriage ceremony." "A bluff wouldn't do." "Who's going to be married?" "I am." Branch started to his feet once more, his mouth fell open. "You? Nonsense!" When she nodded, his face darkened. "Who is he? Some Cuban, I'll bet--one of these greasers." "It is poor Esteban." "'Poor Esteban'! Damn it, they're all poor. That's the very reason he asked you. He's after your money." "He didn't ask me. I asked him. He's--dying, Leslie." There was a pause. "I'm going to marry him and take him home, where he can get well." "What will O'Reilly say?" "I'm afraid we'll never see O'Reilly again. Cuba frightens me. It has taken him, it will take Esteban, and--that would break my heart." "Do you love him as much as that?" Norine raised her eyes and in their depths Branch read her answer. "Well, that ends the rest of us," he sighed. "There's a Minister of Justice here, I believe; he sounds as if he could perform most any kind of a ceremony. We'll find out for sure." It so happened that the President and well-nigh the entire Provisional Cabinet were in Cubitas. Leslie and Norine went directly to the former. The supreme official was eager to oblige in every way the guest of his Government and her dare-devil countryman, El Demonio. He promptly sent for the Minister of Justice, who in turn gallantly put himself at Norine's disposal. He declared that, although he had never performed the marriage ceremony he would gladly try his hand at it. In no time the news had spread and there was subdued excitement throughout the camp. When Norine left headquarters she was the target of smiles and friendly greetings. Women nodded and chattered at her, ragged soldiers swept her salutes with their jipi-japa hats, children clung to her and capered by her side. It was vastly embarrassing, this shameless publicity, but it was touching, too, for there was genuine affection and good-will behind every smile. Norine was between tears and laughter when she ran panting into Esteban's cabin, leaving Branch to wait outside. At sight of her Esteban uttered a low cry of happiness. "Dearest! I've been lying in a stupor of delight. The world has become bright: I hear people laughing. What a change! And how is El Demonio?" "He's all right; he's waiting to see you, but first--I've arranged everything! The President and his Cabinet are coming to witness the ceremony." Esteban poised, petrified, upon his elbow, his face was a study. "What have you arranged?" he managed to inquire. "'Sh--h!" Norine laid a finger upon his lips. "The guest of the Republic is to be married to-day. Dignitaries, magistrates, nabobs, are turning out in her honor. They are shaving and borrowing clean shirts for the occasion. The Minister of Justice has a brand-new pair of tan shoes and he has promised to wear them, come rain or shine." "NORINE! Oh, my dear--" quavered the sick man. "I can't let you do this mad thing. Think! I'm ready for the grave--" "This will make you well. We're going away when the very next expedition arrives." But still Varona protested. "No, no! Who am I? I have nothing to offer, nothing to give. I'm poorer than a peon." "Thank goodness, I can do all the giving! I've never told you, Esteban, but I'm quite rich." Holding the man away, she smiled into his eyes. "Yes, richer than I have any right to be. I had no need to come to Cuba; it was just the whim of an irresponsible, spoiled young woman. I gave a huge amount of money to the New York Junta and that's why I was allowed to come." "You're not a--a trained nurse?" "Oh, dear, no! Except when it amuses me to pretend." "How strange!" The invalid was dazed, but after a moment he shook his head. "It is hard to say this, but I don't know whether you really love me or whether your great heart has been touched. You have learned my feelings, and perhaps think in this way to make me well. Is that it?" "No, no! I'm thoroughly selfish and must have what I want. I want you. So don't let's argue about it." Norine tenderly enfolded the weak figure in her arms, "You must, you SHALL get well or--I shall die, too." "I haven't the strength to refuse," Esteban murmured. "And yet, how can I leave Cuba? What right have I to accept happiness and leave Rosa--" This was a subject which Norine dreaded, a question to which she knew no answer. She was not in a mood to discuss it, and made no attempt to do so. Instead, she laid the invalid upon his pillow, saying: "Leslie is waiting to wish you joy and a quick recovery. May I ask him in?" She stepped to the door, only to behold her late companion making off down the village street in great haste and evident excitement. Surprised, offended, she checked her impulse to call him back. A moment, then she stepped out into the full sunlight and stared after him, for she saw that which explained his desertion. Approaching between the drunken rows of grass huts was a little knot of people. Even as Norine watched it grew into a considerable crowd, for men and women and children came hurrying from their tasks. There were three figures in the lead, a man and two boys, and they walked slowly, ploddingly, as if weary from a long march. Norine decided that they were not villagers, but ragged pacificos, upon the verge of exhaustion. She saw Branch break into a swifter run and heard him shout something, then through eyes suddenly dimmed she watched him fall upon the tallest of the three strangers and embrace him. The crowd grew thicker. It surrounded them. "Esteban!" Norine cried in a voice she scarcely recognized. She retreated into the doorway with one hand upon her leaping heart. "Esteban! Look! Some one has just arrived. Leslie has gone--" She cleared her vision with a shake of her head and her tongue grew thick with excitement. "They're coming--HERE! Yes! It's--it's O'REILLY!" Young Varona struggled from his hammock. "ROSA!" he called, loudly, "ROSA!" Norine ran and caught him or he would have fallen prone. He pawed and fumbled in a weak attempt to free himself from her restraining arms; a wildness was upon him; he shook as if with palsy. "Did he bring her with him? Is she here? Why don't you answer me? Rosa--" He began to mutter unintelligibly, his vitality flared up, and it was with difficulty that Norine could hold him down. His gaze, fixed upon the square of sunlight framed by the low doorway, was blazing with excitement. To Norine it seemed as if his spirit, in the uncertainty of this moment, was straining to leap forth in an effort to learn his sister's fate. The crowd was near at hand now. There came the scuffling of feet and murmur of many voices. Esteban fell silent, he closed his hot, bony hands upon Norine's wrists in a painful grip. He bent forward, his soul centered in his tortured eyes. There came a shadow, then in the doorway the figure of a man, a tattered scarecrow of a man whose feet were bare and whose brown calves were exposed through flapping rags. His breast was naked where thorns had tried to stay him; his beard, even his hair, were matted and unkempt, and the mud of many trails lay caked upon his garments. It was O'Reilly! He peered, blinking, into the obscurity, then he turned and drew forward a frail hunchbacked boy whose face was almost a mulatto hue. Hand in hand they stepped into the hut and once again Esteban Varona's soul found outlet in his sister's name. He held out his shaking, hungry arms and the misshapen lad ran into them. Dumb with amazement, blind with tears, Norine found herself staring upward into O'Reilly's face, and heard him saying: "I told you I would bring her home." The next instant she lay upon his breast and sobs of joy were tearing at her. XXIX WHAT HAPPENED AT SUNDOWN The story of Rosa's rescue came slowly and in fragments, for the news of O'Reilly's return caused a sensation. His recital was interrupted many times. So numerous and so noisy did these diversions become that Norine, fearing for the welfare of her patient, banished O'Reilly's visitors and bore him and Branch off to her own cabin, leaving the brother and sister alone. In the privacy of Norine's quarters O'Reilly finished telling her the more important details of his adventures. He was well-nigh worn out, but his two friends would not respect his weariness; they were half hysterical with joy at his safety, treating him like one returned from the dead; so he rambled disjointedly through his tale. He told them of his hazardous trip westward, of his and Jacket's entrance into Matanzas and of the distressing scenes they witnessed there. When he had finished the account of his dramatic meeting with Rosa his hearers' eyes were wet. The recital of the escape held them breathless. "As a matter of fact, our get-away was ridiculously easy," he said, "for we had luck at every turn--regular Irish luck. I'm sure Captain Morin suspected that Rosa wasn't a boy, but he was perfectly foolish about Jacket and tolerated us on his account. We owe everything to that kid; he's wonderful. I made Morin independent for life, but it wasn't the money, it was Jacket who induced him to bring us clear to Turiguano. He landed us one night, this side of the Moron trocha. Since then we've waded swamps to our armpits, we've fought the jungle and chewed bark--but we're here." Johnnie heaved a deep sigh of relief. "Where did you get the money to hire schooners and corrupt captains?" Branch inquired. "You were broke when I knew you." O'Reilly hesitated; he lowered his voice to a whisper. "We found the Varona treasure." Norine uttered a cry. "Not Don Esteban's treasure?" "Exactly. It was in the well where young Esteban told us it was." "Oh, Johnnie! You mean thing!" exclaimed the girl. "You promised--" "You'll have a chance to dig," he laughed. "We couldn't begin to bring all of it; we merely took the jewels and the deeds and what money our clothes would hold. The rest--" "Wait! WAIT!" Branch wailed, clapping his hand to his head. "'Merely the jewels and the deeds and what money our clothes would hold?' Bullets! Why, one suit of clothes will hold all the money in the world! Am I dreaming? 'Money!' I haven't seen a bona-fide dollar since I put on long pants. What does money look like? Is it round or--?" Johnnie produced from his pocket a handful of coins. Branch's eyes bulged, he touched a gold piece respectfully, weighed it carefully, then pressed it to his lips. He rubbed it against his cheeks and in his hair; he placed it between his teeth and bit it. "It's REAL!" he cried. "Now let me look at the jewels." "Rosa has them. She's wearing them on her back. Hunched backs are lucky, you know; hers is worth a fortune." "Why, this beats the Arabian Nights!" Norine gasped. "It beats--" Branch paused, then wagged his head warningly at the girl. "I don't believe a word of it and you mustn't. Johnnie read this story on his yachting-trip. It couldn't happen. In the first place there isn't any more money in the world; mints have quit coining it. Why, if I wrote such a yarn--" "It IS almost unbelievable," Johnnie acknowledged. "I found Aladdin's cave, but"--his face paled and he stirred uneasily--"it was nearly the death of all of us. I'll have to tell you the whole story now; I've only told you the half." While his hearers listened, petrified with amazement and doubting their ears, he recited the incidents of that unforgettable night on La Cumbre: how Cobo came, and of the trap he sprung; how Jacket stole upon the assassin while he knelt, and of the blow he struck. When Johnnie had finished there was a long moment of silence. Then Norine quavered, tremulously: "That boy! That blessed boy!" Branch murmured, feebly: "Dash water in my face, or you'll lose me. I--You--" He found no words to express his feelings and finally voiced his favorite expletive. "It's all too weirdly improbable," O'Reilly smiled, "but ask Rosa or Jacket--the boy is bursting to tell some one. He nearly died because he couldn't brag about it to Captain Morin, and there won't be any holding him now. I'm afraid he'll tip off the news about that treasure in spite of all my warnings. Those jewels are a temptation; I won't rest easy until they're safely locked up in some good vault. Now then, I've told you everything, but I'm dying for news. Tell me about yourselves, about Esteban. I expected to find him well. What ails him?" "Oh, Johnnie!" Norine began. "He's very ill. He isn't getting well." Something in her tone caused O'Reilly to glance at her sharply. Branch nodded and winked significantly, and the girl confessed with a blush: "Yes! You told me I'd surrender to some poor, broken fellow. I'm very happy and--I'm very sad." "Hunh! He's far from poor and broken," Leslie corrected; "with a half-interest in a humpful of diamonds and a gold-plated well, according to Baron Munchausen, here. This is the Cuban leap-year, Johnnie; Norine proposed to him and he was too far gone to refuse. You came just in time to interrupt a drum-head marriage." "Is it true?" When Norine acquiesced, O'Reilly pressed her two hands in his. "I'm glad--so glad." Tears started to the girl's eyes; her voice broke wretchedly. "Help me, Johnnie! Help me to get him home--" He patted her reassuringly and she took comfort from his hearty promise. "Of course I will. We'll take him and Rosa away where they can forget Cuba and all the misery it has caused them. We'll make him well--don't worry. Meanwhile, at this moment Rosa needs food and clothing, and so do I." As the three friends walked up the street they discovered Jacket holding the center of an interested crowd of his countrymen. It was the boy's moment and he was making the most of it. Swollen with self-importance, he was puffing with relish at a gigantic gift cigar. "I exaggerate nothing," he was saying, loudly. "O'Reilly will tell you that I killed Cobo, alone and unassisted. The man is gone, he has disappeared, and all Matanzas is mystified. This is the hand that did it; yonder is the weapon, with that butcher's blood still on it. That knife will be preserved in the museum at Habana, along with my statue." Jacket spied his chief witness and called to him. "Tell these good people who killed Cobo. Was it Narciso Villar?" "It was," O'Reilly smiled. "The fellow is dead." There was renewed murmuring. The crowd pressed Jacket closer; they passed the knife from hand to hand. Doubters fell silent; the boy swelled visibly. Bantam-like he strutted before their admiring glances, and when his benefactor had passed safely out of hearing he went on: "God! What a fight we had! It was like those combats of the gladiators you hear about. The man was brave enough; there's no denying his courage, which was like that of ten men--like that of a fierce bull; but I--I was superb, magnificent! The man bellowed, he roared, he grunted; he charged me, flinging the earth high with his heels, but I was banderillero, picador, and matador in one. I was here, I was there, I was everywhere; so swiftly did I move that no eye could follow me." Jacket illustrated his imaginary movements with agile leaps and bounds. "The terror of his name frightened me, I'll admit, but it lent me a desperate courage, too. I thought of the brave men, the good women, the innocent children he had slain, and I fell upon him from this side, from that side, from the front, from the rear. I pricked him, shouting: 'That for the people of Las Villas! This for the women of the San Juan. And once again for the babies you have killed.'" Jacket carried out his pantomime by prodding with a rigid finger first one, then another of his listeners. "Oh, he went mad, like a bull, indeed, but I was another Rafael Guerra. He shed rivers of blood, the ground grew slippery and the grass became red. He stood rocking in his tracks, finally; his breath was like a hurricane. He was exhausted, he was covered with foam, his limbs were made of lead. It was my moment. 'For all your sins!' I cried, and with that I drove yonder blade through his heart and out between his shoulders, thus! My brothers, his flesh was rotten, and the steel clove it as if it were butter." Jacket was more than gratified at the effect of his recital, for children screamed, women shuddered, and men turned shocked eyes upon one another. He realized that with a little further practice and a more diligent attention to detail he could horrify the stoutest-hearted listener, nay, cause hysterical women to swoon. He concluded his account in a studiously careless tone; "O'Reilly came, too late, but he helped me to bury the offal. We flung it head first into an old well and dumped rocks upon it. There it will lie until Cuba is free. That, my friends, was the end of Cobo, exactly as it happened." O'Reilly saw little of his sweetheart that day, for Norine promptly bore the girl off to her own quarters and there attended to her needs, the most pressing of which was clothing. Norine's wardrobe offered little to choose from, but between them they reduced a nurse's uniform to fit the smaller figure. Meanwhile, with a rapidity and a thoroughness delightful to both of them, the two girls came to know each other. While O'Reilly was similarly engaged in making himself presentable, he and Branch talked earnestly, with the result that they repaired later to General Gomez. The general welcomed them; he listened with interest to O'Reilly's story of the rescue, and to the account of conditions in Matanzas. O'Reilly concluded by saying: "I've done what I came to do, sir, but Miss Varona is badly shaken by all she has been through. She's very nervous and far from well. Esteban, too, isn't recovering." General Gomez nodded. "Miss Evans declares he must have a change, and we have arranged to send him out of the country. His sister, poor child, should go, too." "When can they leave?" "Who knows? Not for some time, certainly. Expeditions are irregular." "They should go at once," O'Reilly said, positively. "That's why we came to see you. Let us--Branch and me--take all three of them to the United States." "You, too, El Demonio?" inquired the general. "Yes, sir; if you please." "But how? How can you take two women and a sick man--" "We'll manage somehow," O'Reilly declared. "It isn't far across to the Bahama Banks." "True. That's the route of our underground--our undersea--railroad. As you probably know, there is a venturesome countryman of yours who carries our despatches by that way. He devised the scheme, to keep us in touch with our friends in New York, and he has done us great service. He comes and goes in a small boat, but how or when nobody knows. The Spanish patrols are on the lookout for him, and there's a price on his head, so you won't find it easy or safe to cross. Beware that you are not mistaken for him." "Do you mean that we may go?" Branch eagerly inquired. The general hesitated, whereupon O'Reilly spoke up: "For my part, I'll agree to come back if you so desire." Gomez shook his white head. "No! You came to find and to save your fiancee, and you volunteered to serve with us while you were doing so. We have no desire to keep any man against his will. Some one must escort Miss Evans, who is our guest. Why not you two? She has every confidence in you, and if she chooses to risk this enterprise rather than wait until we can guarantee her an easier trip we shall not restrain her. I shall see that you reach the coast safe and sound; beyond that you must trust in God." Branch was immensely relieved; he joined volubly in O'Reilly's thanks and became careless of his arm, which no longer appeared to pain him. Peace with honor, it seemed, was all that he desired. "I was looking forward to an interesting ceremony this afternoon," Gomez went on. "Has your arrival changed the plans?" "Oh no, sir!" O'Reilly said, quickly. "I'd like to make it doubly interesting, if Miss Varona will consent to such short notice." "Bravo! You have a way of doing the unexpected. Twin births, a double wedding! Why not? The sight of a little happiness will be good for all of us; we're apt to forget that life and the big world are going on as usual. I don't think Miss Varona will have it in her heart to refuse you anything." The old soldier was right. Rosa did not gainsay her lover, and toward sundown the city among the leaves witnessed an unaccustomed scene. The women of the camp, delighted at an opportunity of serving Norine, had transformed Esteban's poor quarters into a tiny bower of wild blossoms and green leaves; they likewise gathered flowers for the two brides-to-be, then joined with nimble fingers in adorning their costumes. When the girls came down the street, hand in hand, they received an ovation from men and women alike. Norine was pleased; she smiled and blushed and ran the gantlet bravely enough. But Rosa, sadly overwrought by the day's excitement, was upon the verge of a collapse. Nevertheless she was happy; her eyes were shining, her face was transfigured, her hand, when she took O'Reilly's, was cold and tremulous, but it warmed and grew steady under his grasp. Many people--all Cubitas, in fact--had assembled to witness the romantic double wedding, but few actually succeeded, for Esteban's hut was too small to accommodate more than the highest officials of the Provisional Government, so the others were forced to wait outside in the gathering dusk. And those Ministers, those secretaries of departments, those generals and colonels, what a motley crowd they formed! There was scarcely a whole garment among them. They were sunburnt, wind-browned, earnest men, the old ones grayed and grizzled from worry, the younger ones wasted from hardships in the field. But out of their rags and poverty shone a stately courtesy and consideration. They were gentlemen, men of culture and refinement, the best and oldest blood of Cuba. Both Norine and Johnnie had learned their gratitude, and the story of the Varona twins was typical of the island, nowadays, so they unbent and there were warm congratulaitons, well-turned Latin pleasantries, elaborate compliments upon the beauty of the brides. Then, afterward, there was a surprise--a genuine surprise--in the form of a banquet at the big mess shelter, with an orchestra concealed behind a screen of fresh-cut palm-leaves stuck into the soft earth. This was the men's part of the celebration, the official compliment to Cuba's guest. It was a poorly furnished banquet, with a service of tin and granite ware and chipped china, and there was little to eat, but the true spirit of festivity was present. The Lone Star emblem of the new Republic was draped with the Stars and Stripes, and there were many speeches. Norine's protests at leaving Esteban went unheeded, and Leslie Branch escorted her in place of the bridegroom, who lay blissfully dreaming in his hammock. Her amazement passed all bounds when, from the hidden recess behind the palm-leaves, came not the music of mandolins and guitars, but the strains of a balanced orchestra under the leadership of Cuba's most eminent bandmaster. Whence the players had come, where they had found their instruments, was a mystery, but they played well, divinely, so it seemed to the music-hungry diners. Such a banquet as that was! Some one had contributed a demijohn of wine, and there was coffee, too, at the last, made from the berries of some jungle plant. The chef, once famous at the Inglaterra, was forced to appear and take homage for this final triumph. Rosa, very dainty in her borrowed nurse's uniform, was round-eyed, timid; she evoked much admiration, but when she was addressed as Senora O'Reilly she blushed to the roots of her hair and shrank close to her husband's side. To feel herself secure, to see on all sides friendly faces, to know that these fine men and women--there were numerous good Cuban matrons present--were her own people and meant her well, was almost unbelievable. She had so long been hidden, she had so long feared every stranger's glance, it was not strange that she felt ill at ease, and that the banquet was a grave ordeal for her. Branch proved to be a happy choice as Esteban's proxy, for he relieved Norine's anxiety and smothered her apprehensions. When called upon to speak he made a hit by honestly expressing his relief at escaping the further hazards of this war. Prompted by some freakish perversity, and perhaps unduly stimulated by the wine he had drunk, he made open confession of his amazing cowardice. O'Reilly interpreted for him and well-nigh every sentence evoked laughter. El Demonio's heroic reputation had preceded him, therefore his unsmiling effort to ridicule himself struck the audience as a new and excruciatingly funny phase of his eccentricity. Encountering this blank wall of disbelief, Branch waxed more earnest, more convincing; in melancholy detail he described his arrant timidity, his cringing fear of pain, his abhorrence of blood and steel. His elongated face was genuinely solemn, his voice trembled, his brow grew damp with unpleasant, memories; he seemed bent upon clearing his conscience once for all. But he succeeded only in convulsing his hearers. Women giggled, men wiped tears from their eyes and declared he was a consummate actor and the rarest, the most fantastic humorist they had ever listened to. They swore that Cuba had lost, in him, a peerless champion. When he had finished they cheered him loudly and the orchestra broke into a rousing military march. Leslie turned to voice his irritation and surprise to Norine, but she had slipped away, so he glared at O'Reilly, wondering how the latter had so artfully managed to mistranslate his remarks. When Rosa and O'Reilly returned to Esteban's cabin they found Norine ahead of them. She was kneeling beside the sick man's hammock, and through the doorway came the low, intimate murmur of their voices. Rosa drew her husband away, whispering, happily: "He will get well. God and that wonderful girl won't let him die." XXX THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT The journey to the coast was made by easy stages and Esteban stood it fairly well. The excitement wore upon him, to be sure, and the jolting of his litter was trying, but Norine was always at his side where he could see her, and Rosa joined in the tender care of him. Guides, horses, and a tent for the sick man had been supplied, and over these O'Reilly exercised a jealous watchfulness, ably seconded by Branch. For once, at least, the latter lent himself to useful ends and shirked no duties. His wounded arm recovered miraculously and he exercised it freely; he skirmished industriously for food and he enlivened the journey by a rare display of good spirits. Jacket, of course, went along. Upon the announcement of O'Reilly's intended departure for the States he had promptly abandoned Cuba to her fate. He foreswore her utterly and declared himself a loyal American citizen. He made it plain once more, and for the last time, that where O'Reilly went, there went he, for they were one and indivisible. It dismayed him not at all to turn his feet to new pathways, his face toward new adventures. Relying upon the best information obtainable at Cubitas, O'Reilly had counted upon securing a sailboat from a certain fisherman whose sympathies were known to be loyal, but in this he was disappointed. The party arrived at its destination, a tiny clearing on an unfrequented part of the north shore, only to find it deserted and already grown to weeds. The house was empty, the boats were gone--all but one old hulk, too rotten to warrant moving, which lay high up on the sand, its planks worm-eaten, its seams wide spread by the sun. Having established Esteban in the hut, O'Reilly took counsel with his Cubans, but gained little satisfaction from them. They knew of no other fisherman in this vicinity; the nearest towns were in Spanish hands; they advised a return to Cubitas at once. This O'Reilly would not listen to. Sending them in one direction, he took Leslie and Jacket and rode away in the other. The trio followed the beach for several miles until they came to a vast mangrove swamp which turned them inland. This they skirted until the jungle became impassable and they were in danger of losing themselves; they returned at dusk, having encountered no human being and having discovered neither roads nor houses. The other expedition reported slightly better successes; it had located a small plantation some distance to the east, the owner of which had warned them against exploring farther, inasmuch as a strong Spanish patrol, on the lookout for that American despatch-bearer from Nassau, was operating in his neighborhood. It was these very troops, he announced, who had driven the fisherman from his home; he was sure there were no boats anywhere within reach. O'Reilly was in a quandary. He gravely doubted Esteban's ability to stand the rough return journey, and when he spoke to Norine of turning back she was panic-stricken at the suggestion. "No, no!" she cried, anxiously. "We MUST get him away. Oh, Johnnie, every day we lose by waiting lessens his chances! His heart is set on going through and it would--kill him to go back." "Then I guess we'll have to go through," he smiled. For the first time in their acquaintance Norine lost control of herself. "We simply MUST find a boat. All he needs is proper care, proper food, and medical attention. Here we can get nothing. Why, the disappointment alone--" Her voice failed her, tears started to her eyes, and she began to tremble wretchedly. "If he--If I--lose him I'll die, too," she sobbed. O'Reilly tried to comfort her and she bowed her head upon his shoulder. "Promise that you won't go back," she implored him. "Very well, if you'll consent to risk this miserable tub we found on the beach--" "I'll risk anything--a raft, even." "It is large enough to carry us if we can manage to make it hold water, but it won't be safe. The weather is good at this season and it shouldn't take us long to run across to Andros if we have luck. If we don't have luck--" Norine dried her eyes. "What would you do if you were alone? Would you dare try it?" He hesitated, then confessed, "I think I would, but--" "Is there an even chance of our getting across?" "Perhaps. It all depends upon the weather." "Can't we--build a boat?" He shook his head. "Even if we had lumber and tools it would take too long. Ten miles to the east there are Spaniards. We must do one thing or the other quickly, before they learn we're here." "Then let's go on. I'm sure Rosa will agree." Rosa did agree. When her husband put the question fairly to her she showed by the pallor of her cheeks and by the rekindling light of terror in her eyes how desperately she feared remaining longer in this land of hate and persecution. "Don't turn back," she cried. "I'm not the girl I was. I've endured so much here that--I'm always in fear. Anything would be better than going back." When morning came O'Reilly made a closer examination of the abandoned boat. The result was not encouraging, and when he told Leslie of his intention to make use of it the latter stared at him in open amazement. "Why, we'll all be drowned!" Branch declared. "You can return to Cubitas if you wish." "Yes, and fight some more! No, thank you! I've got a hunch that I'll be killed by the very next gun I see." "Then you'd better risk the sharks." Jacket, who was conducting an independent examination of the craft, made an encouraging report. "Ho! I'd go 'round the world in this boat," said he. "She's rotten, and you can stick your finger through her, but fish have no fingers. When the water comes in we'll dip it out." "Do you want to go with us?" Johnnie eyed the newspaper man curiously. "I--Y--yes!" Branch gasped. "I'll go, but it's a shame to lose all of Rosa's diamonds." O'Reilly and one of the guides rode away to the farmhouse discovered on the previous afternoon, and returned in a few hours with all the tools they could find, together with a bucket of tar and a coil of galvanized wire. Then work began. The wire, cut into short pieces, served as nails and staples with which to draw together the gaping seams. Old rags from the house and parts of the men's clothing supplied calking, upon which the tar was smeared. While one man shaped mast and oars, another cut Esteban's shelter tent into a sail, and fitted it. A stiff, sun-dried cowhide was wet, then stretched and nailed to the gunwales at the bow, forming a sort of forward deck to shelter the sick man from the sun and rain. Jacket climbed the near-by cocoa-palms and threw down a plentiful supply of nuts for food and water on the voyage. With so many hands the work went fast, and late that evening the crazy craft was launched. It was necessary to handle her gingerly, and when she took the water she leaked abominably. But during the night she swelled and in the morning it was possible to bail her out. O'Reilly had to acknowledge himself but poorly pleased with the boat. Branch called her a coffin and declared it was suicide to venture to sea in her, an opinion shared by the Cubans, but the girls were enchanted. To them this fragile bark looked stout and worthy; they were in a fever to be gone. On the second afternoon the trade-wind died to a gentle zephyr, so the cocoanuts and other food were quickly put aboard, a bed of bows was rigged beneath the rawhide forecastle and Esteban was laid upon it. Then adieux were said and a start was made. From the point of leaving it was perhaps five miles across the sound to the fringe of keys which in this neighborhood bordered the old Bahama Channel with its unplumbed depths of blue water. Here it was calm, so the run was soon made. The boat handled well enough, all things considered; nevertheless, to O'Reilly, her navigator, it was an anxious hour. Not only was he forced to keep a sharp lookout for blockading gunboats, but he feared he was doing wrong in committing his precious freight to the uncertainties of the Atlantic. Even had he been alone, with a crew of able sailors under him, this voyage would have daunted him, for it was without doubt the wildest adventure in which he had ever participated. When he hinted at these fears and put the matter before his companions for a final test, Branch refused to speak, but Esteban and the girls were earnestly in favor of pushing on. Jacket, of course, loudly seconded them. At sunset they entered a pass and ran between low mangrove banks. The tide was ebbing and it hurried them through and out into the open sea, where they felt the lift of the mighty ocean swell. Over these slow undulations the sailboat plowed, heading toward the empty northern horizon, with the kindling Pole Star as a beacon. The sky was clear, the sea was gently roughened by the night breeze, the constellations grew bright and appeared to hang low. When the coast-line of Cuba had become a blur astern Rosa crept back and seated herself beside her husband. "I breathe freely for the first time since that day when Don Mario came to offer me marriage," she told him. "The past is beginning to seem like a bad, bad dream and I feel a great hope, a great gladness. I am reborn, O'Rail-ye." "A few hours more and we can all breathe easy." He smiled down at her. She laid her small palm over his fingers which grasped the steering-oar, whereupon he cried with pretended sternness: "Avast there! Don't distract the attention of the skipper or he'll sail his boat in circles. Look out or he'll send you below." Rosa persisted mutinously, so he punished her with a kiss planted fairly upon her pouting lips, whereupon she nestled closer to him. "How much I love you," she whispered. "But I never can tell you, for we are never alone. Was there ever such a courtship, such a marriage, and such a wedding journey as ours?" "We're the owl and the pussy-cat who went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, 'With plenty of honey and lots of money, wrapped up in a ten-pound note.' Some day when we've settled down in our Harlem flat, and I'm working hard, we'll look back on this and consider it romantic, thrilling. Maybe we'll long for excitement." "Not I," Rosa shivered. "To be safe, to have you all to myself where I can spoil you, that will be excitement enough." "We'll rent that little apartment I looked at, or one just like it." "But, O'Rail-ye, we're rich." "I--I'd forgotten that. Then let's pretend to be poor. Think how our neighbors would talk about that pretty Mrs. O'Reilly on the fourth floor, and her magnificent jewels. They'd swear I was a smuggler." As the evening lengthened and the boat forged steadily ahead the two sat murmuring happily. Forward, another bride and groom were similarly engaged. Branch and Jacket took turns bailing. It proved to be a long, long night, for the boat, though roomy, was uncomfortable. O'Reilly steered as straight a course as he could without compass, but toward morning he saw that the sky was growing overcast and his apprehensions stirred anew. Daylight brought an increased breeze which heeled the boat further. She made better speed, but she likewise took more water through her seams and it became necessary to lend Leslie and Jacket a hand with the bailing. The deep channel was far behind now, and they were on the shallow Bahama Banks; beneath them they could glimpse beds of sponges, patches of coral, white bottom with occasional forests of brilliant-hued sea fans. The horizon still remained vacant and the tip of Andros lay far to the north. Fortunately the haze was not thick enough to wholly obscure the sun and so O'Reilly was enabled to hold his course. But he did not like the look of things. By ten o'clock the sea was tumbling and the worm-eaten hulk was laboring. It became necessary to shorten sail. Soon the bottom of the boat was awash and Esteban lay in a pool of brine. Even when the girls helped to dip it out they could not lower its level. The wind freshened steadily; all hands worked desperately, wet to the skin. In time there came a spiteful drizzle which completely hid the sun and left no indication of the course except the direction whence drove the rain. No one spoke now. Even Esteban lay silent, shivering miserably upon his sodden bed. In obedience to O'Reilly's command Jacket flung overboard all but a half-dozen of the remaining cocoanuts. Rosa finally straightened her aching back and smiled at her husband. "Are we going down?" she asked. "Oh no! This is merely a squall," he told her, with an assumption of confidence he was far from feeling. Johnnie tried to reason himself into a more hopeful frame of mind. He assured himself that he and his companions had survived too many perils to become the prey of an idle breeze like this; he argued that no fate could be so cruel as to cheat them when they were so close to safety. But this manful effort brought him little comfort in the face of the chilling rain and with the whitecaps curling higher. Deliverance came suddenly, and from the least-expected quarter. Out of the mist to starboard there materialized a shape, a schooner driving ahead of the wind. The refugees descried her simultaneously and stood ankle deep in the wash, waving their hats and their calabashes, and shouting crazily until she saw them and fetched up. Intense thanksgiving, a melting relief, robbed O'Reilly of half his strength; his hands were shaking, his muscles weak; he could barely bring his craft alongside. He saw black faces staring down, he heard cries of amazement and surprised inquiries, then a heaving-line came aboard and the leaky tub was drawn close. There was a babble of voices, shouted questions, hysterical answers. Rosa was weeping softly; Norine had lifted Esteban and now clutched him tight, while her tears fell upon his face. The schooner was a sponger bound for Nassau; its blackbird crew spoke English and they willingly helped the strangers overside, laughing and shouting in a child-like display of excitement. How firm, how grateful was the feel of that stout deck! How safe the schooner's measured roll! O'Reilly's knees gave way, he clutched with strained and aching fingers at the rigging to support himself, leaving Branch and Jacket to tell the surprising story of their presence here. Soon there was hot food and coffee, dry beds and blankets for those who needed them. Johnnie tucked his bride snugly into one of the hard berths, then stooped and kissed her. Rosa's teeth were chattering, but she smiled happily. "God's hand directed us," she said. "One only needs to pray long enough and strong enough and He will hear." It was a month later. Quaint old Nassau lay dozing under an afternoon sun. Its wide shell streets, its low houses, the beach against which it crowded, were dazzling white, as if the town had been washed clean, then spread out to bleach. Upon the horizon Jay tumbled, foamy cloud masses, like froth blown thither from the scene of the cleansing. A breeze caused the surface of the harbor to dance and dimple merrily, the sound of laughter came from the water-front where barefoot spongers and fishermen were busy with their boats and gear. Robust negresses with deep bosoms and rolling hips balanced baskets and trays upon their heads and stood gossiping with one another or exchanging shouts with their men across the water. There was noise here, but the town as a whole was somnolent, peaceful. It sprawled beside the sea like a lazy man lost in day dreams and lulled by the lapping surf and the hum of insects. Up from the beach came O'Reilly and his youthful alter ego, Jacket. They were clad in clean white clothes; a month of rest had done them good. Jacket was no longer wizened; he was plump and sleek and as full of mischief as a colt, while O'Reilly's leanness had disappeared and he filled his garments as a man should. They had spent the day fishing on the reefs and now bore home the choicest part of their catch. They turned in through a picket gate and up a walk flanked by flower-beds and outlined between rows of inverted glass bottles set side by side, the Bahama idea of neatness and beauty. At the end of the walk stood a cottage with wide porches hidden beneath jasmine and honeysuckle and morning-glory vines. O'Reilly's eyes were shining with anticipation; he yodeled loudly. But there was no need for him to advertise his return, for at the first click of the gate-latch a figure had started from the fragrant bower and now came flying to meet him. "Look, Rosa!" Jacket lifted the heavy string of fish. "We had stupendous luck." But Rosa was in her husband's arms and neither she nor O'Reilly had eyes for anything but each other. "You were gone for ages," pouted the bride. "You missed me, eh?" "See! I caught the biggest ones, as usual," Jacket boasted. "I'm a skilful fisherman and I talk to my hook, but O'Reilly sits dreaming about somebody while the little crabs eat all his bait." When this evoked no notice the boy shrugged in disgust and went on around the house, muttering: "Caramba! You'd think they'd get sick of so much billing and cooing. But no! I have to steal him away and take him swimming or fishing if I want a word alone with him. And the others are just as bad--another pair of pigeons. It's like living in a dove-cote." Rosa, too, had vastly changed. She was clad in a charming little muslin dress, there were dimples in her cheeks, she wore a heavy Mardchal Neil bud at her breast. O'Reilly held her off and devoured her with his eyes. "Sweetheart, you grow fresher and more beautiful every hour," said he. Rosa danced upon her toes, and tugged at him. "But come quickly and see the surprise we have. I've been wild for your return, so hurry." She led him swiftly up the steps, and there, standing beside a chair, was Esteban Varona. "He dressed himself and walked out here alone. HE'S WELL!" "Esteban! Really--" The brother nodded decisively. "It's true. I rebelled at last. To-morrow I'll walk to the gate and the next day we'll go fishing." "Jove! How splendid!" "Why, I'm as firm on my feet as a rock." Norine emerged through one of the French windows and explained: "He took advantage of me while I was gone for the mail, and now he's quite out of control. Here's a letter from Leslie, by the way. He's home and has a position and hopes we'll follow soon. There's one bit of news; he says the talk of intervention increases and he may have to return to Cuba as a war correspondent. Fancy! He's deathly frightened at the prospect." "Intervention! That would be fine," Esteban cried. O'Reilly nodded. "Oh, it's bound to come, and when Uncle Sam takes hold Cuba will be free." Norine agreed: "I'm sure of it. And then--we'll all go back to our rainbow's end and dig for that pot of gold." Esteban turned adoring eyes upon the speaker; he took her hand in his. "I've found my rainbow's end," said he. "And I've found mine," O'Reilly asserted. "I've gained your father's treasure, and more--I've found the prize of all the Indies." With his arm about Rosa he drew her into the house. Esteban lowered himself into his chair and Norine rested herself upon its arm. He lay back with eyes closed. From the regions at the rear came the voice of Jacket. The boy was in a declamatory mood. He had gathered an audience, as was his daily custom, and was addressing them in English: "I skilled more'n a dozen Spaniards at Pino Bravo. It was my day. By rights I should have been made a general, but--" THE END 
41463	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed. Some typographical errors have been corrected. No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the printed accentuation or spelling of Spanish names or words. (etext transcriber's note) [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ ENTRANCE TO HAVANA HARBOUR.] INDUSTRIAL CUBA BEING A STUDY OF PRESENT COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS, WITH SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE OPPORTUNITIES PRESENTED IN THE ISLAND FOR AMERICAN CAPITAL, ENTERPRISE, AND LABOUR. BY ROBERT P. PORTER SPECIAL COMMISSIONER FOR THE UNITED STATES TO CUBA AND PORTO RICO WITH MAPS AND 62 ILLUSTRATIONS G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1899 BY ROBERT P. PORTER Entered at Stationers' Hall, London The Knickerbocker Press, New York TO WILLIAM McKINLEY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION This volume deals with the living questions of Cuba--the questions which confront the United States in the reconstruction of the Island. It aims to give a description of Cuba as it appeared to the author when, as Special Commissioner of the United States, he was sent by President McKinley to report on its industrial, commercial, and financial condition, soon after the signing of the protocol of peace, August 12, 1898. It is the result of nearly seven months' inquiry and hard work, in which the Island has been visited three times, over five hundred witnesses have been examined, and innumerable statements have been studied and analysed. In the course of this inquiry the author has visited all the provinces and nearly all the principal cities and towns. The merit of the book lies in the freshness and originality of the material brought together, and the demerit in the fact that it has been written by one who was obliged to snatch a few hours at a time to map out or write a chapter. The author realises the defects and asks the indulgence of the reader on the ground that it is the first attempt to discuss the economic and political future of Cuba under its new form of government. Whatever the future may have in store for this wonderful and unfortunate Island, the author can truly say that the task allotted him by the President has, so far as Cuba and the Cuban people are concerned, been conscientiously and faithfully performed. The measures inaugurated for the government of the Island, which were based upon the author's reports, have been scrupulously framed in the interest of Cuba and not with a view of benefiting by discrimination the United States. The machinery of the new government has been set running in Cuba, and though some time may elapse before it is working as smoothly as we would wish, it has been inaugurated with the sole desire of doing the best possible by Cuba. Of the rest, the reader must judge for himself. The subject at least is interesting, even though its treatment here may be a little statistical. The account of the visit to General Gomez was deemed sufficiently interesting and important to give it in full, exactly as the report was made through the Honourable Secretary of the Treasury, Lyman J. Gage, to the President. Recognition is due to Mr. W. J. Lampton for his assistance to the writer. R. P. P. 36 EAST SIXTY-FIFTH STREET, NEW YORK. _February 9, 1899._ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I.--CUBA--POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC 1 II.--CONDITIONS WHICH CONFRONT US 14 III.--POLITICAL FUTURE OF CUBA 32 IV.--THE ENGLISH IN JAMAICA 47 V.--THE AMERICANS IN SANTIAGO 62 VI.--OUTLOOK IN CUBA FOR LABOUR 73 VII.--THE POPULATION OF CUBA 90 VIII.--SANITARY WORK IN CUBA 108 IX.--CITIES AND TOWNS OF CUBA 122 X.--HAVANA 139 XI.--COLONEL WARING'S SANITARY REPORT 154 XII.--MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS IN HAVANA 172 XIII.--BANKS AND CURRENCY 190 XIV.--PAYMENT OF INSURGENT SOLDIERS 204 XV.--THE REVENUE OF CUBA--CUSTOMS TARIFFS 211 XVI.--THE AMENDED TARIFF--OFFICIAL 221 XVII.--THE REVENUE OF CUBA--INTERNAL TAXES 248 XVIII.--HOW THE REVENUE WAS SPENT 256 XIX.--COMMERCE 267 XX.--SUGAR 281 XXI.--TOBACCO 302 XXII.--MINES AND MINING 318 XXIII.--AGRICULTURE AND STOCK 329 XXIV.--TIMBER AND FRUIT 338 XXV.--TRANSPORTATION 351 XXVI.--NAVIGATION 362 XXVII.--EDUCATION AND RELIGION 376 XXVIII.--A MEETING WITH GENERAL GOMEZ 390 XXIX.--CONCLUSION--THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE 408 [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ ENTRANCE TO HAVANA HARBOUR.] Illustrations PAGE ENTRANCE TO HAVANA HARBOUR Frontispiece SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF PINAR DEL RIO 8 SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCES OF HAVANA AND MATANZAS 16 BATEY OF SANTA CATALINA 22 SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF SANTA CLARA 28 SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF PUERTO PRINCIPE 38 SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA 44 ON THE ROAD TO CASTLETON, JAMAICA 50 CATHEDRAL STREET, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 66 From a photograph by J. F. Coonley, Nassau, N. P. CANE CUTTERS 76 A COUNTRY VILLA 92 CUBAN "GUARACHERO" (MINSTREL) 96 A NATIVE HUT 100 From a photograph by J. F. Coonley, Nassau, N. P. STREET VIEW, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 108 From a photograph by J. F. Coonley, Nassau, N. P. WATERMAN IN THE COUNTRY 112 MARIANAO WATER VENDOR 116 SQUARE IN FRONT OF GOVERNOR'S PALACE AT SANTIAGO DE CUBA 122 A MULE TRAIN, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 124 From a photograph by J. F. Coonley, Nassau, N. P. MATANZAS YUMURI RIVER AND ENTRANCE TO THE VALLEY 128 PANORAMA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAVES, MATANZAS 132 THE PLAZA, CIENFUEGOS 136 HAVANA, FROM ACROSS THE BAY 146 THE PRADO, HAVANA 150 YARD OF AMERICAN CLUB, HAVANA 156 THE PRADO AND INDIAN STATUE, HAVANA 166 HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT, HAVANA 180 TACON MARKET, HAVANA 186 FIRE DEPARTMENT, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 196 MORRO CASTLE, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 206 PALM TREE BRIDGE 220 AVENUE OF PALM TREES, PALATINO 238 ROAD IN A PINE GROVE OF YUELTA ABAJO 252 A COCOANUT GROVE 262 A SUGAR-CANE TRAIN 272 SUGAR-CANE SCALES 276 CANE FIELDS 282 CUTTING SUGAR-CANE 286 UNLOADING CANE AT A BATEY 290 CYLINDERS FOR GRINDING SUGAR-CANE 294 APPARATUS FOR PACKING SUGAR AT THE SAN JOSE CENTRAL 298 PLANTING TOBACCO 302 TOBACCO FARM AND DWELLING 304 WETTING THE TOBACCO LEAF 308 TOBACCO-DRYING HOUSE 310 BALING TOBACCO 314 OLD COPPER MINES AT LA COPERA 318 MINING CAMP AT FIRENEZA 322 ORE BANK OF JURAGUA MINES 326 OX CART 332 A FOWL VENDOR 334 ROYAL PALMS, YUMURI VALLEY 336 SAGO PALM 338 MAHOGANY CARRIED BY OXEN 340 CUBAN FRUITS 344 COFFEE MILL, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 348 A CONVOY IN THE HILLS 352 A CUBAN VOLANTE 354 CUBAN MULE CART 358 A CURVE ON THE YAGUAJAY RAILROAD 360 THE HAVANA FLOATING DOCK 364 A CUBAN FERRY 368 PIER OF THE JURAGUA IRON CO., LTD. 372 OLD ARCH OF THE JESUIT COLLEGE, HAVANA 378 OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH AT LA COPERA 380 THE CATHEDRAL, HAVANA 384 THE CATHEDRAL, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 388 SPANISH FORT ON RAILROAD TO JURAGUA MINES 396 MAP OF CUBA 416 INDUSTRIAL CUBA CHAPTER I CUBA--POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC A nation, like an individual, must be gauged by its endowments, its environment, its opportunities, and the various causes which from time to time accelerate or retard its progress. Cuba is richly endowed with natural resources, it is within a short distance of the best and most profitable market in the world, and its opportunities, under favourable conditions of trade, should have made its population contented and prosperous. Had it not been for the numerous causes which have retarded all progress in this Island, what would have been its industrial, commercial, and social conditions at the close of the present century? Numbering over a million population fifty years ago, the Island of Cuba, at the rate of growth common to the more prosperous countries of the western hemisphere, ought to number at the present time between four and a half and five millions of inhabitants. With this population, and a government giving everyone the right to the fruits of his own labour, Cuba's sugar crop alone would have been more than double the high-water mark of the last prosperous year, exceeding two millions of tons, with a value of one hundred millions of dollars. Tobacco, coffee, tropical fruits, iron ore, other minerals of various kinds, lumber, cattle, and innumerable other products which form the commercial wealth of this marvellous Island, would have increased the annual value of its products to figures ranging between two hundred and two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and thus more than doubled, perhaps trebled, its commercial importance. Laws favourable to trade, and a government interested in development of home industry would have retained for Cuba a large proportion of this wealth, and there would have sprung up an industrial system giving actual employment to as many people in the gainful occupations as will be found in all Cuba when the last Spanish soldier departs from the desolate and prostrate Island. Cuba should have developed some diversified industries, if only those branches of manufacture which are necessary to supply the requirements of its own population. In its mineral resources it has the basis for the manufacture of iron and steel and for the establishment of machine-shops to supply home demands. In its untouched forests of excellent hardwood, Cuba possesses the chief raw material for the manufacture of furniture and other articles for which the Spanish race are justly famous. With steel and wood for the first quality in abundance, and a water tonnage of considerable magnitude, there should have sprung up, in many of the unequalled harbours of the coast of Cuba, shipyards of no mean dimensions. Without becoming a manufacturing country, except in sugar and tobacco and a few other products in which Cuba excels, it might, under favourable conditions, at this period of its industrial history have been producing many articles of home consumption which, by reason of the unhappy management of its affairs, it has been compelled to purchase abroad. Not abroad in the open markets of the world, for that is another story; but of Spain, because the most infamous discriminating duties have shut Cuba out of the cheaper markets; and while thus gagged and bound, the Island has been plundered and despoiled by the mother country. In this manner have resources and revenue alike been drained away and nothing left, either for home enterprise or improvement, nor for reserve capital with which to do business. Cuba should have established a central railway system running the length of the Island from east to west, with branches extending on all sides, like its rivers, to the many good towns and harbours on both north and south coasts. Instead of this it has a little less than a thousand miles of line, operated by seven timid companies, extending in various directions, but leaving the two ends of the Island farther apart in actual days of travel than are New York and San Francisco. The capital city of Cuba, Havana, has within it the possibilities of a great and beautiful city; the commercial and industrial city of a prosperous country of five millions of people, and the winter health-resort for the rich and fashionable families of all North America. Its public buildings should have been of the best, its tropical parks and gardens the most fascinating in the world, its streets and pavements the most substantial, its healthfulness unquestioned, and its harbours and docks thronged with shipping and resonant with commercial activity. The merchants of Havana should rank among the richest and most prosperous in the world, and the business, manufacturing, and social interests of the place be equal to those of Boston or Baltimore or San Francisco. What applies to Havana applies only in a lesser degree to the other cities of Cuba, many of which are excellently located and should be important industrial and commercial centres, with numerous fields for the modern municipal enterprise which has done so much to improve the condition of the urban population of Europe and of the United States. Last, though not least, the Island should have been dotted over with the trinity of civilisation--the home, the schoolhouse, and the church. It is the lack of these three great elements of national strength and progress, underlying Cuba's ills, that is the cause of much of its misfortune. The building of the home, the establishment of the school, and the tolerance of religious worship in half a century changed Texas from a wilderness to a great and prosperous State, with the possibilities of an empire. These same forces, had full play been given them in Cuba during the same period, would have transformed that Island into all that has herein been depicted. Its resources are abundant to maintain five and even ten millions of persons, for only a small proportion of its area is populated. The climate is healthful and the dangers to those unacclimated which lurk in its seaport towns may all be controlled by sanitary and engineering science. That these possibilities have not been realised does not lie with Cuba itself, but is due to the numerous causes which have retarded and stopped its development, and which have finally, after years of strife and war, left the Island with population depleted, agriculture prostrate, industry destroyed, and commerce devastated. It may be necessary for a clear view of the subject in hand to review briefly the causes which have led to this unhappy end; but, happily, a work dealing with the rehabilitation or industrial reconstruction of Cuba does not require the author either to dwell long upon nor to emphasise the gloomy side of the picture. The results of Spanish robbery and misrule speak too plainly. The reader has seen what Cuba might have been under an honest, stable government, or under the protecting ægis of the United States. The picture presented is not exaggerated, but is coloured by a moderate brush. What Cuba is, alas! is too well known to American and English readers to call for more than a brief summary of conditions as they existed when the author was requested by the President of the United States to visit the Island, report upon its industrial condition, and suggest plans for the relief of the population and for the commercial and industrial reconstruction of the country. Visiting the Island immediately after the signing of the protocol of the cessation of hostilities between the United States and Spain, August 12, 1898, and again returning to Santiago in December after that province had been in charge of the United States military authorities for nearly six months, he had ample and satisfactory opportunity for the study of conditions and future needs of the people. Surely the horrors and the desolating hand of war were never laid more heavily upon a once prosperous country. Nearly a third of the population wiped out by battle, wholesale slaughter, starvation, exposure, or disease, and a large proportion of those left enfeebled by deprivation and too weak to take up their occupations; the cane-fields and tobacco plantations, which formed the basis of prosperity, burned, and whole sections of country swept of every vestige of civilisation; sugar-centrals, houses, and structures of all kinds destroyed, and inhabitants either dead or huddled half starved in miserable huts near the towns and cities; not a living creature to be seen where once browsed innumerable cattle, and death, destruction, and desolation spread throughout this land that should, and under ordinary circumstances would, be as full of life and prosperity as the richest agricultural section of our own country. Nor were the cities and towns exempted. Trade and commerce at a standstill; the few sickly manufacturing industries which at the best struggled under the most adverse conditions closed, the ruined buildings emphasising the scene of desolation. In Havana, the wharves and numerous large warehouses were empty, or converted into rendezvous and hospitals for Spanish troops. Hungry and discouraged, the native population stood listlessly on the streets and in the public places. At each station the railroad trains were boarded by half-starving women or children begging for bread or coppers. The principal signs of life were exhibited by the Spanish soldiers, who, with their blue cotton uniforms and Mauser rifles, seemed to form the greater part of the population of the cities and towns, while at the small country railroad stations the squads of woe-begone soldiers alongside the blockhouses comprised the only living relief to miles of waste. The Cuban railways, like all other implements of industry in the unfortunate Island, show evidences of the conflict. Stations burned, bridges destroyed, tracks torn up, freight-cars made into portable blockhouses, locomotives blown to pieces, and passenger-cars dilapidated and dingy. In short, a country more systematically pillaged, more infamously deprived of its resources, more wantonly plundered of its revenues, and a population more completely deprived of its rights by those who had every reason to foster and protect a valuable possession cannot be found recorded in ancient or modern history. Cuba, as it was left at the close of this year by the Spanish, who to the last moment seemed loth to leave the emaciated body which their inordinate greed had thus reduced, presents a picture so sad and sorrowful that, for the sake of our common humanity, it is better to draw a curtain over the past and direct attention to the happier omens which point to the possibilities of the future. The work of industrial, commercial, and social reconstruction of Cuba must date from the eventful day when the Stars and Stripes were unfurled above Morro Castle. It is with this work that the present volume deals. Whatever form the government of Cuba may take, the responsibility of the commercial and industrial rehabilitation of the Island must rest with the United States. The power that forced the Spanish to evacuate the Island is the power which the world will hold responsible for the future welfare of its people. The timid, the weak, and the craven-hearted who contend that the United States has no responsibility, after it has assumed all responsibility, are entitled to no voice in the disposition of Cuba. The cost to the United States cannot be put in the balance against the duty of the United States. The moral obligation, therefore, toward Cuba and humanity must come first. The war was a war of humanity and not of conquest. The same principle must guide those upon whose shoulders will fall the more difficult task of restoring peace, forming a stable government, and reviving commerce and industry. For the United States to desert Cuba in its hour of greatest need would be more inhuman than it would have been to have left it to Weyler and his policy of extermination. The plain duty of the hour, so far as the United States is concerned, and the best means of solving all political questions which may arise in connection with the Island, is to begin at once the work of economic or industrial reconstruction, postponing for future discussion all political questions. To this end the mission already referred to was projected. To this end a firm military government, capable of keeping law and order, will be established. To this end the attention of the people of Cuba should be at once directed toward the economic questions upon which depend the progress and prosperity of the population. The destruction and disorganisation brought about by the war will make the work of placing the Island in a favourable economic condition costly and protracted, and many years must elapse before Cuba will take its rightful place in the economies of the world. By this is meant the position to which its resources and location entitle it. If it is true, and I doubt it not, that the causes which have led to war, both in 1868 and in 1895, were more economic than political (and the greater importance of economic over political questions in such a colony of small and mixed population as Cuba is easy to understand), then Cuba to-day is free. The Spanish Government would have more willingly granted political freedom to Cuba had it not been for the well-grounded fear that economic concessions would have necessarily followed. Those United States officials who have been in Cuba since the signing of the protocol of peace understand this fully. The United States Military Commissioners, in their daily intercourse with Spanish officials, have found no sentiment of resentment toward the United States. The regrets have all been of a sordid character and may be summed up in loss of revenue and commerce for Spain. The war which has just been brought to an end really began in 1868. Although between 1878 and 1895 there was some appearance of peace, the real situation in Cuba during these seventeen years was one of silent economic struggle with Spain. The meaning of the peace of Zanjon (1878) was that Spaniards and Cubans were to be treated alike. The fact has been, however, that the Cuban native population has been kept in a condition similar to slavery. The means employed have been skilful and full of cunning. Leaving to the Cubans complete liberty of discussion by means of the press, the Government has felt itself powerful enough to despise them, and when warned of the danger of a new revolution, always considered impossible this last extremity. This feeling of absolute confidence and reliance on the military power of Spain has constantly been expressed in Madrid, both officially and privately, and also by the Spanish party in Cuba. During the years 1878-1895, a political organisation (the Autonomist party) was formed in opposition to the obstinate Spanish party. It would be too tedious to go now into the details of contemporary Cuban politics; it is enough to say that the Spanish Government has been to the last moment strenuously opposed to any plan of real autonomy, that is, to an autonomy that would grant industrial freedom to Cuba. Even the laws of autonomy actually conceded in 1897-1898, as a last and desperate resource against the revolution, were not granted in good faith, as is well known to those who have carefully watched the course of Cuban-Spanish politics. Therefore, although the Cubans knew very well how superior to their own strength was the Spanish power, and understood equally well how great and numerous were the dangers of a new insurrection, nevertheless the sufferings of the entire native population were such that the popular sentiment became irresistible, and after a few fruitless outbreaks the war was renewed in 1895. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF PINAR DEL RIO.] The long contest between Spain and Cuba has been finally decided by American intervention, without which the war must have been protracted until the Island was completely devastated and ruined; and even then Spain would never have given it up. Not from patriotic motives, but simply and solely because it yielded revenue to Spain's depleted treasury, and gave her sons an opportunity for pillage and plunder. The tenacity with which these officials have clung to the offices, and the difficulty which the United States Commissioners encountered in obtaining a relinquishment of the custom-houses, all point to the cupidity of the Spanish, and show that they were in Cuba for revenue exclusively. Considering now the political aspect of Cuban affairs after the protocol of August 12, 1898, it will be found that no well-defined scheme of political organisation exists in Cuba, and that the only really popular and, it may be said, unanimous feeling is that liberty, in all the legitimate meanings of this word, is necessary. The actual situation may be compared to an anarchy, for there is really no supreme authority. How to discuss and establish any political laws in the midst of this existing legal anarchy and complete lack of political experience, is the question confronting the United States Government. This situation and many other conditions that are the natural consequences of the last events point out the necessity of forming provisionally a strong government in Cuba, under the guidance and protection of the United States. Under such protection the work of rebuilding the industries destroyed, and of once more making productive the fields burned and the plantations dismantled and devastated, can be carried on, and in no other way. With these general conditions in mind, it may be well to ascertain if there exist any facts of a promising nature, which will contribute to make easier the work the United States has undertaken. It is undoubtedly true that the people of Cuba can be brought together on economic questions, if not on those of a political character. The United States has specifically disclaimed "any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island," except for "the pacification thereof." If, therefore, the pacification can be more easily and surely accomplished by giving Cuba industrial freedom,--the right to buy in the most advantageous markets in the world, and sell where the natural demands for its products exist,--the United States has the right before all the world to carry out that programme. Spain never granted this right to Cuba, not even in the alleged Autonomist Government wrung from Madrid when war with the United States seemed imminent and Spanish diplomacy was in the last ditch. The signs and omens for crystallising public sentiment in the Island of Cuba on all industrial questions are far more hopeful at the present moment than are those which indicate the possibility of establishing a stable government, and thus leaving the management and control of the Island to its people. There is now no opposition nor rivalry of different interests among the Cubans, as the strong and important industries in Cuba, most of them agricultural, are of such a nature that they may all thrive at the same time. Until now the condition has been different, because the prosperity of all Cuban industries has been thwarted and impeded by the protection and privileges which the Spanish Government had to grant to the Peninsular industries, whose interests (always in opposition to the legitimate wants of Cuba) have ever been systematically preferred to those most vital in the Island. Another fact is that the productive energy of Cuba and the fertility of its soil are so great, and the real needs of the population so very small, that the process of accumulating capital will become very rapid, after the worst results of the late war are over and a settled and stable government has been established. How far the natural resources of the country will contribute to this result will soon be understood and appreciated. Heretofore, the yearly increase of public wealth has been a very doubtful quantity, and it has never been possible to build any hope on that ground, because all industrial profits have been absorbed by Spain, without leaving any surplus to provide for the accumulation of capital and the material progress of the Island. The consequences of the Spanish colonial system have been such that even before the present war Cuba was already ruined. The 1895-1898 war has completed and aggravated to the utmost degree the material ruin of the Island. The ultimate result of this industrial thraldom has been the never-ending removal of Cuban wealth to Spain, without any return. The means employed for securing that object were numberless. The irresponsible methods of governing Cuba converted the Island into a powerful means of political influence in the hands of the Ministers. The most difficult political questions, either personal or otherwise, were usually decided at the expense of Cuba. Very often the single signature of a Minister of the Colonies was sufficient to make the fortune of a man for his whole life; and it is easy to understand that every political party in Spain would be opposed to any reform that should deprive it of such efficient means of influence and power. With very few exceptions, all the Spanish officials in Cuba, from the lowest to the highest, came from Spain. Their number was extraordinarily large, and their work, as a general rule, pitifully bad; their constant aim being to do as little work as possible, and to enrich themselves, at the cost of Cuba, as quickly as they could. The fleet of the Spanish transatlantic steamers was constantly employed in transferring impecunious officials from Spain to Cuba, and taking them back again with more or less wealth acquired during their residence in the Island, and sometimes with pensions during their lives and the lives of their widows and daughters. Even a share of the passage money of these officials "both ways" was paid by Cuba. Besides this salaried staff of officials, backed by the army and navy (which were wholly paid by Cuba), Spain depended for the support of its rule in Cuba on the so-called Spanish political party, known since 1878 as the "Union Constitutional." This party comprises the whole of the Spanish population in Cuba, which is very numerous; and the blind and unconditional support it gave to every measure of government, or of misgovernment, whether the ruling party in Spain was liberal or conservative, was paid for by the Government in many different ways, and in such a degree that whatever might be the economic situation of Cuba, the men belonging to the Spanish party had always the means of enriching themselves. To these causes of impoverishment must be added the results of the commercial policy of Spain; a subject which will receive attention later in this volume. In vain the productive classes of Cuba protested, during many years, against this deadly regime. It is no wonder, therefore, that the insatiable ambition of Spain should have led to such an antagonism of interests as to render a Cuban insurrection necessary, there being no peaceful means of convincing Spain of its folly. In the same measure as Cuba was reduced to utter bankruptcy and poverty, the importation of Cuban wealth into Spain, without any return, increased year after year. More particularly after the price of sugar fell permanently (in 1884) to about one-half of its former value, and after the complete abolition of slavery took place (in 1885), was the contrast strikingly manifested between the gradual exhaustion of Cuba and the ever-increasing exactions of the mother country. It may with accuracy be said that after the slavery of the negroes came to an end, Spain possessed the power of reducing to real slavery the whole native Cuban population, both white and black. For this systematic process of thorough draining, Prime Minister Canovas invented the name or appellation of _realidad nacional_ (national reality), meaning thereby that the necessity of maintaining the old colonial system could not be avoided, as it had become interwoven with the Spanish economics in such a degree as to make it impossible for any Government, either conservative or liberal, to interfere with it. The Cubans could not accept, without repeatedly protesting against it, the oppressive system of the "national reality," for which name they substituted, very properly and accurately, the denomination of "economical slavery." It is now useless to explain in how many forms, and how often, the Cubans have appealed to the Madrid Government, especially since 1890. But all their efforts failed, and the necessary outcome of those failures was war. Cuba, no more a European colony, will henceforth be an entirely American country. It is now completely ruined and devastated, and many years of peaceful industry will be necessary in order to convert its unhappy people into a prosperous nation. How that can best be accomplished is of far more importance to the people of Cuba at this time than the question of who shall administer the government. For the present, at least, if its people are wise, the Island will be content with the industrial freedom which has been accorded to it, and rejoice in the fact that it is an American country, and not a Spanish dependency. CHAPTER II CONDITIONS WHICH CONFRONT US To treat of Cuba as an American country is the purpose of this volume. If the people of the Island, regardless of nationality, will only postpone the question of the particular form of government for the present, and give all their attention to the new economic questions which confront them, the future will be full of promise. Cuba is no longer a European colony, but an American country, under the protection of the United States. So long as the Island is occupied and governed by the military forces of the United States, law and order will be maintained and equal rights will be granted to all the people. From an industrial point of view Cuba will have practically obtained what she has been fighting for for nearly a generation: namely, industrial and commercial freedom. The United States will administer the laws for the Cubans in the interest of Cuba. The United States asks nothing in return but the same opportunity for trade and commerce as is accorded to the other countries of the world. The Republic will levy no tribute, nor will it exact a dollar of taxation over and above the revenue necessary for protecting life and property, and the cost of inaugurating such works for the improvement of sanitation, or the carrying on of industries, as may become necessary. Many Cubans, and a very large number of Spaniards, who appeared before the author when in Cuba, for the purpose of giving testimony on industrial and commercial matters, took it for granted that the United States would, in making up the new fiscal laws for the Island, exact discriminating duties in favour of the United States and against European countries. When told nothing of the sort was contemplated, the Cubans were surprised and the Spaniards incredulous. Indeed, the latter were astounded, and seemed to wonder what the United States was in Cuba for. Even American citizens interested in pushing their Cuban trade have expressed surprise at the absolute freedom which has been allowed all fiscal legislation, and the scrupulous care exercised by our Government not to exact any right itself which is not accorded to other nations. In such matters we are of course bound by our international treaties, and so long as Cuba remains under the protection of the Republic, and not part of it, she must be treated, so far as customs regulations and navigation laws are concerned, as a free country. In the preliminary work of economic reconstruction these sound principles have been kept in mind and adhered to. In fact, the fullest and broadest plan was chosen by the Administration to secure information in Cuba; and the refrain of the instructions, both from President McKinley and his able and broad-minded Secretary of the Treasury, was, to spare neither time nor money to secure the views of all the people of Cuba; for whatever the United States Government finds necessary to do in the Island must be done, as far as possible, by the people of Cuba, for Cubans, and in the interests of Cuba. By this it must not be inferred that those of Spanish birth were to be excluded, but, on the contrary, that the views of all who proposed to remain in Cuba and help by their labour and thrift to build up the industry and commerce of the Island should be sought and considered. In following out the spirit of these statesmanlike instructions, the author invited, through the newspapers, all persons interested in the industry, trade, foreign commerce, and currency and banking system of Cuba to express their views on these and kindred topics. Many responded, and as may be imagined the information gathered took a wide range, and will, it is hoped, be of practical value in adjusting the questions with which the Government of the United States will have to deal during the military occupation of the Island. In the prosecution of this work, public hearings were given in Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago; and to committees of persons representing interests at Trinidad, Caibarien, Sagua la Grande, and other parts of the Island an opportunity was given to express their views as to the industrial necessities of their respective communities. In New York and Washington opportunity was given to those interested in Cuban commerce and such American citizens as represent large sugar estates, iron mines, and tobacco and fruit interests in the Island of Cuba, to present a full and free expression of their views on all topics included in the scope of the investigation. A large amount of information was thus obtained, and no inconsiderable assistance rendered by these gentlemen. With hardly an exception, such assistance has been rendered freely and disinterestedly, and the author takes this occasion to thank a large number of business men who have been found ready and willing to drop their business at any moment and devote much valuable time in an endeavour to elucidate the somewhat complicated conditions which surround the commerce and industry of Cuba. In Cuba every possible consideration was shown to the writer and no pains nor trouble were spared on the part of the Spanish officials and business men to give all required information and to aid in the inquiry undertaken. In this work neither political prejudice nor nationality took any part. The Spanish bankers and merchants, whose influence a few weeks previously had been arrayed against the United States, came forward and placed such information as they had at the disposal of the United States Government. The Cubans engaged in business, and the military commanders in the field, from Generals Gomez and Rodriguez down, have alike assured me of their sympathy in the work thus instituted by the United States, and proffered their services in its prosecution. The following expression from the veteran warrior, General Gomez, dated Boffill Plantation, October 3, 1898, will be read in this connection with interest: "I must congratulate you cordially for the high mission which you have had entrusted to you. I am completely identified in all and with all concerning it; I reserve for a better opportunity giving you my personal views on the matter.... On my side I am working in the same sense; I am doing all I can for the immediate reconstruction of the country; its wounds will heal with the rapid promotion of the work. This is the battle we are now fighting, and all men of good will should join us in our struggle. I avail myself of this opportunity to tender my services." The business men and merchants of Havana and other large cities, regardless of nationality, have rendered services of incalculable value to this inquiry, on the ground that the one thing that Cuba wants more than all else is, as General Gomez truly says, that its people should lay down their arms and take up the implements of peace. The Presidents of the Chambers of Commerce of Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago have all taken an interest in this work and elaborate reports were prepared by committees appointed especially to aid in gauging the industrial necessities of the Island. A similar report has been prepared for Matanzas. Whatever may be the shortcomings of this volume on _Industrial Cuba_, they must not be attributed either to lack of interest on the part of the people of Cuba, or to any failure on their part to give information, especially on all matters relating to foreign commerce. There is, of course, a dearth of statistical information, in consequence of which it has been difficult to work out certain fiscal statements and estimates with the degree of exactitude easily attainable on the same lines at home. The information which has been obtained, however, would seem to leave no room for doubt as to the wisest course for the United States Government to pursue in adjusting Cuban customs duties, in establishing a sound currency, in protecting the savings of the people, in preventing usury, in abolishing onerous and iniquitous taxation, in establishing free schools, in starting new and reviving the old industries of Cuba, in increasing commerce, in improving the sanitary condition of the cities, in distributing labour, and in the general industrial and moral upbuilding of the people. The present volume touches on all these topics, and endeavours to give the reader a clear and practical idea of the present industrial condition of Cuba. The present chapter aims to present in a concise form a few of the more important problems which the United States Government was called upon to face January 1, 1899, and with which it may have to grapple during the first years of the new century. No attempt is made to forecast the manner of their settlement. It is not, as a rule, wise to worry about how we are to cross a bridge until we get to it. Many Cuban economic problems which at a distance seem to be complicated, will simplify as we come within close range. Once the United States military authorities are in possession, ways and means will suggest themselves to overcome obstacles which now seem almost insurmountable. The most urgent needs of the Island, when it was turned over to our Government, were those briefly discussed in this review of the economic conditions of Cuba. First among these needs of the Island was a tariff that should bear lightest in directions where the people could least afford the burden of taxation, and heaviest on commodities which the well-to-do and those engaged in large enterprises required. The Spanish tariff was made by Spaniards, for Spain, in the interests of the Spanish. That seems to be the actuating principle of it. On any other theory it was inexplicable. In adopting, July, 1898, for an exigency measure, the rates of duty which Spain levied for her own commodities, the United States acted wisely. These rates, however, were full of inequalities, and were not levied on any sound principle, but on the "heads, Spain wins; tails, Cuba loses" idea which prevailed in the whole fiscal fabric. It was found that the only way to remedy these inequalities, equalise the rates of duties, improve the administration, and reduce the rates of duties on all articles of general consumption, was to frame a practically new tariff. This was done, and the new tariff now in force will undoubtedly do its share in the industrial reconstruction of Cuba. In this tariff it was not thought advisable to make radical changes in the administrative branches, nor to change weights and measures into United States equivalents, because the people of Cuba are accustomed to the metric system. As a rule, all duties in Cuba are levied by the kilo and hundred kilos. United States currency, however, was substituted for the Spanish _pesos_. This will simplify collection of taxes, as customs duties were collected by Spain in three different classes of currency: gold, silver, and bank notes, all (for the gold coins used in Cuba have fictitious values) fluctuating in value. The tariff adopted by the United States, when the military forces took charge of the custom-houses, reduced all duties about sixty per cent. on the old Spanish rate, and averages fully two-thirds less than the rates exacted by Spain in Cuban ports during the last five months of its occupancy of the Island. The reasons for these reductions, together with the reasons which led up to the decision of the President to admit cattle and agricultural implements free into Cuban ports in possession of the United States, are fully given in another chapter. Still another chapter will be devoted to an analysis and discussion of the Cuban Budget, in which the effect of the new tariff on the revenue of the country, together with the other sources of revenue, are explained and discussed. It will naturally be asked: With such a large reduction of duties, how does the United States expect to secure revenue for the purpose of administering the government of the Island? There are several answers to this question, and the facts bearing on the subject are given in full in the chapter on the Cuban Budget. The general answer is that by reason of fraudulent classification and smuggling, much of the revenue collected from the people of Cuba never found its way into the treasury of that Island, nor of Spain. The cupidity and rapacity of the Spanish officials in Cuba are beyond conception, and, if one may judge by the reports of the United States customs officials at Santiago, as much revenue will be received from a tariff whose duties are from a half to two thirds less than the Spanish tariff as was received under the iniquitous and exasperating law which has been abolished by the advent of the American forces. As the officials recommending the measure believed, the reduction to a reasonable rate of duty in certain schedules--such, for example, as those relating to machinery and railway supplies--would increase importation, and certainly the revenue would be greater than during the period of prohibitory duties. A railway company naturally hesitated to import a locomotive when the duty was equivalent to the value of the engine. With a revised tariff of twenty-five per cent. ad valorem, it may import two, or four, or even six. In adjusting such schedules, the revenue features alone need be considered, because Cuba has no locomotive works, or any iron or steel industry. The same is true of a variety of other articles. In all cases where there are home industries in Cuba capable of supplying a manufactured product made by home labour, care was exercised by those who framed this tariff (either by making free the raw material, or by not making a too radical reduction of duty) not to injure their prospects. In so doing, the Administration is only carrying out the policy which has been fruitful in developing the industries of the United States and in securing diversified employment for its labour. If honestly enforced, the new tariff established in Cuba by the United States will yield sufficient revenue, enable Cuba to buy in the cheapest markets of the world, and not compel her to purchase from Spain inferior commodities at a high price. In every section it is a Cuban measure, and in no single case can there be found a section that discriminates in favour of the United States as against any other market. The United States purposes to take its chances for the Cuban trade with the rest of the world. If Cuba can purchase cheaper and better articles on more favourable terms of the United States than of Europe, we shall secure the trade. If not, the Cuban consumer is free to purchase in the markets of the world. In this one act alone, conservative, thoughtful Cubans must realise that they have attained to the commercial freedom which some, not without reason, contend was the real object of the two insurrections. However that may be, Cuba has secured a right which England would never concede to Ireland, namely, a separate revenue system. In granting this economic freedom to her other colonies, England has strengthened their ties to the mother country. With industrial freedom assured, a colonial country may be indifferent to the form of its political government. Next in importance to the fiscal laws for the revenue of the Island comes the currency question. No country can be permanently prosperous unless its currency is sound and its credit good. Bad financial management of state affairs begets bad credit, and impaired credit is the forerunner of depreciated currency. Although Cuba is afflicted with many kinds of depreciated currency, the established basis is strictly gold, and in any commercial engagement the value is understood to be in Spanish gold, unless there is a specification to the contrary. Indeed, there is something almost pathetic in the manner in which Cuba, though plundered and depleted of her resources and wealth, has never wavered from the gold standard. The business interests of the Island are, as the author found, unanimously in favour of a continued gold basis; for the Cubans have suffered so much from Spain's various attempts to force upon the people a depreciated currency, both in the form of silver and bank bills, that they want no further experiments with the currency. The Spanish silver money current in the Island is taken at the daily value only, which is fixed, partly by the larger or smaller demand for wages and necessities of the Government to pay troops, but principally by the continually fluctuating value of the Spanish money in the European markets. As this Spanish silver is legal tender in Spain for its face value, it is able to maintain a fictitious value for purposes of shipment to that country. This silver dollar, therefore, fluctuates in value with the fitful changes in Spain's credit, and it is probable, should the United States establish American currency as sole legal tender for the Island of Cuba, that all the Spanish silver dollars will be shipped to Spain. There was in Cuba during the last months of Spanish control a margin of thirty per cent. on the silver dollars. It is not probable that these dollars will go down to a point where it will not pay to ship the Spanish silver to Spain and utilise the American dollar in Cuba. In this event the United States Government will, of course, ship its own silver dollars to Cuba; which, with the subsidiary coins, will be required for small payments. At Santiago the immediate disappearance of Spanish dollars and minor coins has made small transactions extremely difficult. Some think that the present stock of Spanish silver in the Island exceeds the necessities; but however this may be in the western part of the Island, it was evidently not the case in Santiago. [Illustration: BATEY OF SANTA CATALINA.] Besides the silver, there is a bank-note circulation, but that has no actual bearing on the question of currency, as the trade and business of the Island has refused to accept it, and the present quoted value is less than ten cents on the dollar. The greater part of this emission, which was a war issue made by the Spanish Government at Madrid through the _Banco Espanol de la Isla de Cuba_ (not _by_ that bank), is largely in the hands of speculators and government contractors. The only public application is for the payment in the custom-house of the so-called ten per cent. ad valorem duty assessed on the official value of imported merchandise in addition to the regular specific rate of duty exacted. The abolition of this duty, under the new tariff, ends the life of these bank bills. There still remains a question as to whether the Spanish Bank of Cuba was in any way responsible for these bills, and the question will come up for future adjustment. The Bank will probably deny responsibility and refer those who hold this depreciated currency to the Spanish Government at Madrid. It is an interesting fact in this connection that the credit of the Spanish Bank of Cuba is of a higher standard than the credit of the Spanish Government, for the Bank has never failed to redeem its own paper during nearly half a century of its existence, first as the Bank of Spain of Havana and subsequently under its present name. It has at times suffered embarrassment, but ultimately the bills of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba have always been redeemed. The gold coins current in Cuba are the Spanish and French coins, the bulk of which consists of Spanish twenty-five-_peseta_ pieces, so-called Alfonsinos, which for many years have been inflated by royal decree to $5.30, and the French twenty-franc piece, so-called Napoleons, which have also been given a legal value of $4.24 and decreed since the end of 1893 as legal money.[1] When the necessity for adopting and inflating another gold coin besides the Spanish Alfonsino was under discussion, the suggestion was made that the United States gold eagle would make an excellent coin for this purpose, as it would figure out almost exactly eleven dollars Spanish gold.[2] The idea was not entertained, because of the general distrust of Americans, and the fear lest the relations between the United States and Cuba should become too intimately interwoven. STATEMENT SHOWING VALUE OF UNITED STATES GOLD IN COMPARISON WITH SPANISH AND FRENCH GOLD ON THE BASIS OF PAR VALUE Spanish Alfonsino $5. French Napoleon 4. Spanish Alfonsino, value in Havana $5. Value in United States mint ($4.80 less shipping expenses, .024) 4.776 ------ $0.224. Exchange 4-11/16% French Napoleon, value in Havana $4. Value in United States mint ($3.84 less shipping expenses, .0192) 3.8208 ------- $0.1792 Exchange 4-11/16% Value of $5, less 1/2% shipping expenses $4.975. At 4-11/16% Quotations: £ Stlg., Spain, $39.40 currency in Havana, 10% £ in U. S. 4.84 STATEMENT SHOWING ACTUAL VALUE OF $1. SPANISH SILVER 100,000 dollars Spanish silver can be bought to-day here with $66,000 Spanish gold, equal to $60,000 U. S. currency. 100,000 silver dollars shipped to Spain after deducting 1% shipping expenses would produce $99,000. 99,000 dollars Spanish silver on Spain will buy at rate of £1, which is $7.88, £12,563. £12,563 would produce in the U. S. at $4.84, $60,804.92. Cost $60,000 Proceeds 60,804.92 ---------- $ 804.92, from which deduct commission, revenue stamp, interest, and profit. While the principal banking concerns are unanimous as to the gold standard, there is a difference of opinion in relation to the advisability of squeezing the inflation out of these gold coins. Some of the Cuban bankers and financiers contend that the United States Government should add another gold coin to the currency, namely, the American eagle; and, by maintaining the fictitious value given to the other two gold coins, leave it equivalent to eleven dollars in Cuba. This, it is claimed, will be a very easy way of leaving matters _in statu quo_, as it were, until such time as permanent government and laws shall be provided for the Island. They fear that to make the United States currency legal tender would work an injury to the creditor class, whose contracts would then be payable in gold worth six per cent. less than the gold specified in such contracts. There are others, whose opinions are equally worthy of consideration, who recommend as the only logical remedy for this situation the substitution of the American currency as sole legal tender. Such action on the part of the United States Government it is believed would not seriously interfere with present contracts, which are invariably expressed as payable in Spanish gold, and which might be arranged for accordingly. The premium on Spanish gold was never agreed to by the business people. Having thus arbitrarily put a premium on Spanish gold, the same authorities later put a premium on French gold, and to make the matter more complicated, the United States Government is now requested, by some of the Cuban financiers, to introduce another gold coin, which, practically, will be worth ten per cent. more in Cuba than in the United States; that is, a man owing $1,100 gold in Cuba may pay that debt with $1,000 gold in United States currency. As a temporary measure, and in view of the fact that this inflation so far as Spanish coin goes has been in force for over half a century, this may be justifiable. The process, however, is entirely artificial, and to continue it would certainly result in many complications. Some Cuban financiers think it inadvisable to introduce American money at this time, while certain planters are fearful lest their labourers should refuse to take one American silver dollar instead of two Spanish silver dollars. The latter looks larger in amount, it must be granted; but if the purchasing power of the American dollar, by reason of the sound credit of the United States, is double that of the depreciated dollar, with only Spain's guaranty between it and its intrinsic value of fifty cents, there will be no difficulty in the end. A country which is just now going through an operation involving its very existence will hardly be seriously affected by taking this fictitious value out of the gold coin and establishing once and for all a sound currency that will be good for a hundred cents on the dollar--no more, no less--the world over. Cuba has no banks in the national sense. There are some excellent private banks, and since its establishment, nearly half a century ago, the Spanish Bank of Cuba has cut an important figure in the finance of the Island. In another chapter, a brief history of banking in the Island from the earliest period to the present time will be given. For the present, the banking facilities are adequate to the business, because it would be extremely hazardous to loan money in Cuba on any kind of collateral or property. Upon the revival of business, however, the agricultural interests will require facilities for obtaining money in advance of the crops at reasonable rates of interest, and protection from the abominable usury which heretofore has blighted the strongest industries of the Island and added materially to the burdens of the Cuban planters. There are so many forms of obnoxious taxes in Cuba that even a brief description of them would occupy considerable space and convert this volume into a treatise on the evils of Spanish taxation. Foremost among the taxes which the United States will abolish is the "consumption tax," on the killing of cattle, which is an exaction that greatly increases the price of food to the people. This tax, like many others, was simply farmed out to private firms or corporations, whose emissaries in its collection became a constant menace to thrift and industry in their respective districts. Another tax, which will fall of its own weight, now that the United States forces control the Island, is the "cedula," or head tax, which varied in amount from a few cents to one hundred dollars, according to the rank and importance of the individual. Curiously enough, this tax, when not collected, became under Spanish rule a greater source of injustice and annoyance than when collected. It was generally allowed to run until some occasion came for the unhappy victim of Spanish rapacity to require a public document, a permit to bury a child or relative, a licence to marry, a transfer of real estate, or a notarial acknowledgment. Then it was that the petty rascals in charge of public business came down heavily, and unless the fines and back "cedula" and a handsome "gratification" to the official was forthcoming, the body must await interment, the marriage must be postponed, or the transaction be delayed. The United States Government will not continue taxes that yield nothing in revenue and were simply the means by which unprincipled officials whose cupidity seemed to know no bounds were enabled to plunder and distress the weak and the unfortunate. The "consumption tax," the "cedula," and the revenue from "lotteries," must necessarily disappear with the advent of United States administration of affairs. Until the tax laws of Cuba can be thoroughly revised, the revenue from customs, from the various forms of internal revenue (and there are many), and from the receipts from taxes upon municipal real estate will, if the strictest economy prevail, suffice for immediate wants, without resorting to measures of taxation which are alike debasing and tyrannical. It is impossible to make specific suggestions at this time in relation to a subject so hopelessly complicated. After the administration of affairs of the Island has been longer in the hands of United States officials, these matters may be carefully studied and adjusted on a basis of equality and justice to all concerned. The true inwardness of Spanish taxation, as developed in the Island of Cuba, can be studied and remedied only after time has elapsed and all the facts are in possession of those who have assumed the responsibility of control. The question of education is one that will receive early attention, and in which the President of the United States has personally evinced considerable interest. Free public schools exist, but the teachers have the right to take pay scholars, and naturally those who do not pay get little or no attention. In the cities from which data are available it was found that only a small portion of the school population attend school. There were 888 schools for boys and girls in 1893 and the amount paid for their support was $775,646. It is impossible even to approximate the situation at the present moment. In a general way, it may be described as simply deplorable. A free public-school system must be immediately established, for much of the misfortune and suffering Cuba has undergone may be traceable to the neglect of education. The number of people who are illiterate is very great. Some statistics show only one in forty of the labouring classes able to read and write. There can be no stable government in Cuba until this has been remedied. The reader familiar with Cuban history will remember that the first movement toward the emancipation of the slaves was the practical freeing of all children born subsequent to 1868, the year the revolution started which ended in the abolition of slavery. In the same way, the first act looking toward political emancipation should be the establishment of a free public-school system, which shall have for its aim the preparation of the young Cubans for self-government, whether exercised as part of a Cuban republic or part of the greater republic the basis of which is industrial freedom and the common school. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF SANTA CLARA.] Manufacturing in Cuba is limited to a few industries in Havana, to the manufacture of sugar and tobacco, and to machine-shops and small foundries scattered over the Island for the convenience of the railway companies, sugar-centrals, and harbours. The author visited all the manufacturing plants in Havana, some of which were located in quarters of the city reeking of filth and teeming with disease germs. There is little hope for industrial enterprise in the broader sense until the sanitary conditions have been improved in all the industrial centres of the Island. The fear of that deadly enemy to all enterprise and thrift, yellow fever, which lurks in the vicinity of the most flourishing industries of Havana, makes it dangerous for those unacclimatised to enter these occupations. The initiatory success of manufacturing in Cuba must depend upon the importation of skilled labour from the United States or Europe. With this invisible and deadly foe in the background, ready to strike when least expected, and against which, as a Confederate officer now in the United States Army at Havana said, "You cannot even raise an old-fashioned rebel yell," the outlook is far from attractive. Not only the commercial prosperity of Cuba, but to a considerable extent that of the southern portion of the United States depends upon the possibility of destroying the foci of yellow fever which exist in the larger cities and towns--especially in Havana and Matanzas--and which have been the cause of the epidemics of this disease which have occurred in the United States during the present century. It is believed that to destroy these germs is possible, and from a mere industrial and commercial point of view it would be a paying investment to spend several millions of dollars, if necessary, to effect it. Until this has been accomplished, and the centres of industrial activity of Cuba made safe for the influx of skilled artisans, whose advent alone will make it possible for Cuba to diversify its industries and elevate the condition of its labour, it will be vain to hope for the establishment of new manufactures. The importance of sanitation is so great and the subject of so much general interest to all those looking towards Cuba with the idea of residence or investment there, that considerable space in this volume will hereafter be devoted to a consideration of the subject. The railway system of Cuba, consisting of seven companies, the aggregate length of whose lines is only 1,467 kilometres, or 917 miles, is entirely inadequate in bringing the extreme ends of the Island together; Santiago and Havana in point of time being as far apart as San Francisco and New York, though only separated by a distance of a few hundred miles. The facts gathered on this subject and the maps presented elsewhere point to the advisability of immediately constructing a trunk railway from end to end of the Island, with branches extending north and south to the important cities and ports. From whatever standpoint it may be viewed, no one enterprise could do so much to improve the situation on the Island. No revolution could have existed in Cuba if such a railroad had been completed by the former Government, and nothing will so rapidly tend to the revival of commercial and general business as the facility for quick passage from one end of the Island to the other, and from the trunk line over branches to the seaboard cities. All political turbulence will be quieted thereby and prevented in the future. The entire country will be open to commerce; lands now of practically no value, and unproductive, will be worked; the seaport towns will become active and commerce between the Island and the United States will soon be restored to the former figures of approximately one hundred millions of dollars per annum. Business enterprise, ever alert to conditions such as herein described, has already surveyed the route, and there are several projects on foot looking toward prompt action in this direction. After a careful study of the situation, it would seem extremely doubtful if such an enterprise could be made a commercial success for many years to come, without material assistance from those responsible for the industrial future of Cuba. The questions arising in relation to navigation between Cuba and the United States are delicate, and involve, as does the question of discriminating duties in favour of the United States, in a greater or less degree our international relations with other countries. Those interested in American shipping suggest discrimination in favour of American vessels between Cuba and the United States, and some go so far as to indicate that a joint arrangement of the American and Cuban flags would be a solution of the problem. Much of this is mere speculation. We cannot discriminate in favour of American vessels in the trade between Cuba and foreign countries, just as we cannot do so in the case of American vessels in trade between New York and foreign countries, on account of our commercial treaties. The chapter on this subject has been submitted to Mr. Eugene T. Chamberlain, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation of the Treasury Department, and this experienced and efficient official has thrown considerable light on the subject which, it is believed, will be of value to the commercial interests of both Cuba and the United States. These are some of the most important economic questions with which the United States will be called upon to deal during its military occupancy of Cuba. That we are capable of dealing with them intelligently and satisfactorily can hardly be doubted. Questions of far greater magnitude are continually presenting themselves at home, and as a rule the people of the United States have been found equal to the task of adjustment. To doubt our capacity as a nation to bring about complete pacification of the Island, industrially and politically, is to throw a doubt on our most cherished institutions and to cast a shadow on the Republic itself. CHAPTER III POLITICAL FUTURE OF CUBA The political future of Cuba is a matter of much speculation and interest. Considerable will hereafter be said in this volume on the economic and industrial future of this wonderfully productive Island, and little doubt can be entertained that with an honest effort and stable government the commercial future of Cuba will be full of promise. What of the political future? The industrial independence of the Island attained, what, if any, steps are likely to be taken for the political independence? At the present moment, it is difficult to discern any nucleus around which is likely to crystallise sentiment strong enough to form, with any degree of unanimity, a cohesive, independent government. The strongest and uppermost sentiment in the Island, as I have found it since the close of the war, is for peace and reconstruction under the guidance of the United States. Those who have made the greatest sacrifice for independence are apparently willing to rest for a while and enjoy the glorious results of industrial and commercial independence and a release for ever from Spanish misrule. Let the future shape its own political policy, is the desire of all intelligent Cubans. In commercial and business circles (and it must be remembered that the author has, in the course of his inquiries, been very largely thrown in contact with business people), the desire for ultimate absorption or annexation by the United States is almost unanimous. Those who have property, those engaged in industrial pursuits, those carrying on commerce, those interested in affairs, regardless of nationality, see the greatest future for Cuba in ultimate annexation to the United States, and openly advocate that policy. There are others who advocate annexation on grounds of sentiment, and who take the stand that the degree of real freedom enjoyed by a State of the Republic is greater, and the advantages far in excess of those likely to accrue to the mixed population of Cuba by the establishment of any sort of independent government. This is not a matter for surprise when it is recalled that a large proportion of the most enlightened Cubans have been educated in the United States, while no inconsiderable number of the most active participants in the war for Cuban freedom carried individually, alike into battle and into conference, the grandest badge of freedom so far vouchsafed to mankind--United States citizenship. These ideas are admirably set forth in a pamphlet just written by Fran Figueras, who makes an eloquent plea for the annexation of Cuba to the United States. The title of the little book--for it is more than a pamphlet--suggests the line of argument: _Cuba Libre--Independence or Annexation_. Exactly! Cuba is free to-day! Liberty came when Spanish sovereignty ended. Adapting the lines of Kipling, the Cubans may truthfully say: "If blood be the price of liberty, Lord God, we ha' bought it fair." Liberty, therefore, has been won and paid for. By the very nature of things there can be no forcible annexation to the nation representing the absolute liberties of the people. If Cuba becomes part of the United States, it will be because the Cubans, having won their liberty, shall so decree. Intelligent Cubans understand this perfectly well and none better than the author referred to above. After reviewing the state of public opinion in Spain late in 1896 and the sentiments predominating in Cuba among the native population in regard to the mutual relations with the mother country, Mr. Figueras analyses the present situation, and considers that public opinion in Cuba is divided into three classes. Those wanting: 1. Immediate and absolute independence. 2. Independence under American protectorate. 3. Annexation, more or less immediate. He allows independence to be the ideal of all peoples, but considers Cuban independence to be still in embryo, and compares the sudden liberation of the island from Spanish dominion to a premature birth, brought on by American intervention and subject to the dangers attending its early advent at an unexpected time. The author contends that to form a nation it is important that the inhabitants shall have some common interests, usually apparent in countries where one element predominates. He finds that in Cuba there are three races equally strong: the autochthonic or white Cuban (pure white), the Cuban with unmistakable and acknowledged signs of black descent, and the white Spaniard; the first of which by its number, the second by its greater acclimation, and the third by its wealth preserve the balance. The fact that these people do not live in different provinces but in the same places makes this adjustment all the more noticeable. Sometimes in one house you will see a patriarchal Spanish father with conservative ideas in the same room with his son of high-flown, Robespierre-like ideas, convinced that a country progresses more in a year of revolution than in a century of peaceful campaigning; while in a dark corner the negro servant, a slave only yesterday, to-day free and taking an interest by no means meagre in the revolutionary legend, curses his colour but does not fail to realise how better fitted he is for rough work than his white neighbours. "And in the present situation which, pray, of these elements," the author asks, "is victorious? Which has conquered and is ready to take under its protecting ægis the other two? Is it perchance the revolutionary party that has had its work crowned with success and that can therefore force its criterion of independence on all the inhabitants? Facts answer this question negatively and it would be sheer madness to constitute one nation out of such heterogeneous elements." The author establishes comparisons with the other southern republics, contends that Cuba will be in a chronic state of revolution if left to herself, calls attention to the handicap to Cuban sugar, tobacco, and coffee industries by the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and asks if it is to be expected that the United States understands that her interest in Cuba's welfare is to justify damaging that of the new colonies for Cuba's exclusive benefit. Arguing against a protectorate, the author calls attention to the fact that Cuba has nothing to fear from foreign nations. Her dangers are at home; it is _pronunciamentos_ and the like that threaten, and a protectorate will not avoid this; it is only absolute annexation that will. "If before 1895," continues the author of _Cuba Libre_, "all Cubans were satisfied with a Canadian autonomy system given by Spain, why should the United States be refused a trust given to a nation like Spain, which has treated Cuba with injustice, bad government, and extortion, against the tested 'cash' good faith of the other?" Refuting arguments upon the offensiveness of annexation to Cuban dignity, the author calls attention to the fact that dignity does not always accompany independence, as, for example, it is often seen how an English, German, or Italian schoolship silences the dignity of some independent states by firing a few shots. In conclusion he says: "We Cubans have been tyrannised by an unscrupulous mother country and the proceeding has dishonoured the nation which did so, and we victims have withstood the humiliation with dignity. We stood with dignity when we were burdened with a system of colonial servitude, it was with dignity that we rebelled, staining the chains that bound us with our own and foreign blood; we have kept our dignity whilst the Americans have cut them for us; when to-morrow comes, and we ask for annexation to the United States, we shall do so with the same dignity." There is sentiment, force, and good hard business sense in this attitude. A flag, after all, is nothing in itself, but all in what it represents. The Stars and Stripes have for a century or more represented human liberty and have taken into their folds millions of the people of the old world. The historic flags of all nations have been fully and freely and joyously repudiated by them, in search of broader liberties, for that fascinating emblem of the people's rights; and under it scarred and impoverished Cuba may in truth rest with dignity and content. Adolfo Muñoz, one of the ablest and most thoughtful Cubans it has been my pleasure to meet, gave utterance to similar views in relation to the future of Cuba, though he approached the subject more from a commercial than a sentimental point of view. "A new community," said Mr. Muñoz to the author, "particularly a small one, after a long and destructive war, is always surrounded by many dangers, both internal and external; and the only safety Cuba may find against them is a close connection with the United States which will afford the immediate protection of the American Government. Cuba left alone could not enjoy a high credit, either public or private; neither could she build a respectable navy, which her geographical position renders necessary. In these, and in many other respects, Cuba has to depend exclusively on the United States. The political connection between both countries becomes consequently a matter of extreme importance, which cannot be discussed, and much less decided upon, in haste." Continuing, Mr. Muñoz said: "The liberty which, by the aid of the United States, Cuba has now conquered, will enable her to frame an entirely new tariff. This work, which must be done in accordance with other financial laws, will prove to be a rather easy task, because the commercial relations between Cuba and the United States are naturally beneficial to both countries. Perhaps the best arrangement, both on commercial and political grounds, would be to convert these relations into a coastwise trade, so that the productions of either country should be admitted free of duty in the other; provided that the question of the United States sugar industry could be settled by means of some compensation or otherwise. Cuba expects to be placed, in what respects custom duties, on the same footing as Puerto Rico; as it is necessary to save her sugar industry from its present depression and ruin." Here is annexation clearly marked out though not actually advocated. A country without credit cannot start up the machinery of government. To make the trade coastwise for Cuba, as we have already done in the case of Puerto Rico, means ultimate annexation. If, therefore, as Mr. Muñoz says, Cuba "expects to be placed on the same footing as Puerto Rico," she expects annexation--nothing more, nothing less. Attention is next directed to another, though not less interesting view of the future of Cuba. When in Cienfuegos the author had the honour and pleasure of meeting the Marquis de Apezteguia, President of the Conservative party, and, although a Cuban born, a strong sympathiser with Spain. There are few abler men in Cuba than the Marquis de Apezteguia. Educated in London, Paris, and Madrid, and at home in the best circles of New York, the Marquis is, in a sense, a cosmopolitan. His interests, however, are all bound up in Cuba. If Cuba once more flourishes the Marquis will become rich again; if it does not his large fortune will have gone, and he himself have been reduced to penury. Asked to give his opinion of the present and future condition of the Island of Cuba, the Marquis de Apezteguia did so without hesitation, clothing his thoughts in English so pointed and vigorous that it would be an injustice to the reader to abridge or change it, and it is therefore made part of this chapter. "In regard to the disposition of Cuba," said the Marquis de Apezteguia to the author, "you have first of all to consider the population of the Island, then you have its geographical position, which makes it of importance to the United States; nay, if there is anything in geographical position, which makes it dependent upon the United States. Key West is not an offensive position, it is simply a defensive position for the United States, because it commands the defence of the American coasts. The defence of your coast, with the Island of Cuba, is trebled with the same number of vessels, as its 750 miles practically makes the Gulf an inland sea, outside of the possibility of incursions from foreigners. Up to Cape Hatteras, Cuba defends your eastern coast. Therefore, to you as a military nation and as a naval power, Cuba is a necessity; without Cuba, you have simply Key West, and Cuba is an excellent substitute for Key West. Having this naval defence, which makes the United States non-attackable from Cape Hatteras to the Rio Grande, with how much more efficacy, and without danger, you can move your armies! Cuba is of immense value to the United States, and therefore from that point of view we will develop the others. Under the naval and military aspect in regard to the concentration of the army, we command the Gulf of Mexico as an inland sea of the United States, and we are the principal factor in the trans-oceanic traffic. "The Cuban question is not a difficult one, because there is an imposed issue. In commercial development, to all evidence, you have been a long time a borrowing country, but to-day you have great banking centres: New York, Philadelphia, and Boston constituting an eastern centre; Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati constituting another; with a smaller one at New Orleans, and a western one at San Francisco. Certain centres, such as the New York one, which has an excess of capital, will act in this annexation of Cuba as a multiple in the matter of capital. The capital will in preference come to Cuba, instead of going west. "In the political problem, the condition of the population of Cuba must be considered. It is not a new country, but four hundred years old,--a totally different nation, with different habits, ways, and languages. Then how can you profitably absorb that population as a State? You cannot afford to sacrifice the United States for Cuba, but must lend Cuba both moral and material riches without forgetting yourself. Is it profitable for the United States to absorb Cuba as a State? If I were an American, I would oppose it. I do not think the Cuban people have sufficient adaptation; in fact they will not Americanise for quite a while, and therefore you must create an empire and a public right that is not within the federal bounds. Your territorial laws pursue colonisation towards the end of absorption, and have placed in your Constitution a limit of population, which we initially possess. Were I an American, I would not be for annexation of Cuba as one of the units of the Union. I think there is a condition of injustice which would be felt by both parties, if you held Cuba in an inferior political state so close to Florida. I say that this is inevitably American, from the material defence which it procures to the United States, and it is a military necessity. It cannot, however, be absorbed and governed rapidly, and for a time you will have to create a new political right, for it is inevitable. You cannot absorb it without creating a different political right. "Now I have said that, in my belief, the issue is imposed and inevitable; Cuba has to be American territory, and cannot be anything else, with restringent or lax ties uniting it; but in the exterior life it will have to be American. You have no laws so far that can be established here; the new political right will have to be created because of the way in which you acquired the Island. You cannot govern it until you give it those things which have been assured it. You have acquired responsibilities which you are not at liberty to throw away and go back on; that is your position towards Cuba and towards the world, and therefore towards yourself. The American people must not feel that they are making of Cuba a business, but a necessity, to be maintained by force if necessary until evolution can be accomplished. "Since we see the problem is one with an imposed ultimate solution, the easiest way is to continue the same action that brought the Island. You need, as a guaranty to yourself, and to the Cubans not in arms (which are the majority), a material force here that cannot be disputed with any chance of success. After Spain has abandoned her sovereignty here you are under the responsibility of keeping a force here which will make it a crazy enterprise to dispute. This is a moral duty which you are obliged to fulfil; you cannot have the excuse of want of power that Spain had. The first element of success is the destruction beforehand of all insurgent or insurrection element. All minor things should be put aside and the American mind have a national policy toward the colonisation and final prosperity of Cuba. You do not want the Cuban question to become one of those burning questions of American politics; but it will, unless you have strength to determine it in the way it should go. If it is disputed now in the transient state, you will convert it into an interior American question, which would make things worse than if you had never come into the thing at all. It is the duty of your Administration to mark out these lines and tell the American people that it is a duty outside of small political lines. "What is the duty of the Cuban people? Your trouble comes from having to handle an unknown land. The business of the President is, not to show business people how they can make money, but to show the people their duty, and leave the rest to American ingenuity. The Cubans are a good people. The population is divided about equally between whites and blacks, and has decreased about one third during the war. I do not wish to discuss the inferiority of the black race, but, so far as I can see in this country from whatever cause, they do not meet worry. The act of force is the determining one with them, and in it they are of great value. In all other social determinations they count very little indeed. From this you derive two lines of conduct: you must try to satisfy the whites as far as possible, and you must content the black so that he will not lend his brutal force to the discontent of the white. The insurrection caused a great fraternity, that is to say, the distinction of race which existed before the war does not exist now. This is not, however, one of the elements that is going to cause trouble, if you do not let them conflict. The insurgents have fought many years for independence, making great sacrifices for the sake of it, and therefore they will not be satisfied with anything short of independence. If you leave them in the future to their own inferior force, I do not think there will be a strong fight towards acquiring total independence in the exterior world, because they recognise the fact that their country is comparatively small and the United States is large, but if these people see that this independence at any moment is not given to them, they will rise in arms--to what extent I do not know. A man who has lost family, suffered sickness, and has no interest now in the home where he was born, is a very reduced moral being. He has not the energies of a total being. The Island of Cuba has been debased by a war of extermination, brought about by its own manner of warfare, and by the Spanish warfare. The Island of Cuba is now totally inert and totally incapable of any governing faculties, not only because of the dead, but by making the rich poor, by making the poor indigent, and the indigent dying. You have in the Island of Cuba a reduced specimen both of material and moral wealth, and these individuals are not capable of determinations of value and worth towards the natural end of civilisation. You then see how much you can depend on the help of the individual. If you attempt to govern by carpet-bag legislation, you will bring on an insurrection. If you help the indigent, and bring them to a condition like they were before the war, you will do them no good. Therefore, you must have a force to establish an indisputable power, and then you must have a policy in which each one finds a solution to his own interest and welfare, under the idea that the Cuban people are unable to take care of themselves to-day, and that none of them have definite ideas or definite plans for their welfare. These plans must come through a strange guidance and not from the Cubans. I have on the Constancia in my care about five thousand people to-day, whom I have helped all I could. I shall have to employ means of coercion to throw these people outside of my house, so little is the sense of dignity in them to-day, and shall have to give them lands, and help them, in order to get them to find their own way in life. This is the real condition of things. The more energetic element is the one in the insurrection, but these on my estate are such as constitute the element which took no sides but suffered the distress of both. "The size of property was one of the causes of the war, together with the total neglect of the lower orders of population. "Of the element in arms, you have to distinguish between those who made the war and those who are wittily called the 'Veterans of 1898'--about one half are Veterans of 1898. These people have energy, and these people have accustomed themselves to that life of civil warfare, but their condition is very bad to-day, and because of this they would like to come into order, although they have great inclination to continue. This is about the only energy left here, but it will be of no use to you except by getting these people out of the way. They have gone to war and acquired honours and salary to the extent of probably $10,000,000. The only way you can do is to offer them the security of what they have acquired so far as material welfare is concerned,--that is, their salaries. It would be an error not to give it all to them. If you give them work in the face of that inert mass I have shown you, and let them see their superiority, giving them certain annuities or monthly payments, you can bridge over the troublesome part of this population, but you cannot do it through their moral nature. You will have to bridge over several months by a strong occupation, by destroying the insurgent energy, by helping the other people, and by drawing general lines which all parties in the United States will accept. You must outline a distinct American policy which must be followed by both parties, and which no party can differ from. With these conditions you will have no trouble in the Island of Cuba. "If you name your high officials Cubans, this will run off into Cuban solution, and not American. If the occupation is made by sufficient force, and you name only a few high officials who have the confidence of the Administration and have a general plan to carry through, and these appoint lower officials, taking the best class of Cubans and insurgents, the problem is solved. As a Spaniard born in Cuba and wishing this country all the good I can, I think it would be absurd to hope for the peace of the Island without a strong military force. The place must be occupied on strategic lines and not as Spain occupied it, and with good means of communication. This is the solution of the question. If this is not done, guerrilla warfare will have the advantage and it will be the same as when the Island was occupied by the Spanish forces; there were no enemies and no battles and it was like making a cavalry charge on a cloud or a mist." The above is a vigorous statement of the situation from the standpoint of one who has lost his all, not in fighting for independence, but in a contest for what he believed was a strong government. The Marquis wastes no sentiment. He tells some hard truths which all who know Cuba will recognise as such. Few foreigners know the United States better than the Marquis de Apezteguia and few have his ability of touching the weak spots in our armour. He tells us we cannot absorb Cuba, and as an American he would oppose annexation. These observations, as well as some others, will delight Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Edward Atkinson, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and other opponents of annexation. The talk of strategic necessity, the exertion of power, and the material force necessary to make Cuba American territory will give these gentlemen who have raised the anti-Imperialist cry sentences which will greatly increase their stock of phrases, but in no way solve the question of what shall be done with our new possessions. Indeed, the Marquis, consoling the so-called anti-Imperialists with his well turned sentences, offers them medicine more stringent and a remedy more drastic than annexation. The word "Empire" has no terror for this Cuban-born Spaniard. You must create an Imperialistic policy, or right, not granted in the Federal Constitution, you must maintain American ascendency at any cost, and do your duty toward the people of Cuba and the people of the world. Cuba must, for all time to come, be American territory. It is only by a policy of this sort the Marquis thinks we shall succeed. In carrying out this plan, we are warned not to allow the Cuban question to become a burning question of American policy, but we are enjoined to hold up President McKinley's hands in establishing a stable government in Cuba. It must not be made into a business, but a necessity. Carpet-bag legislation, he thinks, would bring on an insurrection. In this the Marquis is undoubtedly right. Lastly, he offers the good advice that something must be done and done quickly for the insurgents in arms, whose deplorable condition he vividly portrays. That these soldiers should be speedily paid off there can be no doubt, for until that is done, the rural districts of Cuba can never become productive. Presumptuous as it may be to pass judgment on the utterances of a man of such wide range of experience in Cuba as the Marquis de Apezteguia, I believe the President of the late Conservative party of Cuba underestimates the Cuban capacity, both for self-government and for annexation to the United States. The work of final absorption may take a generation, but it will surely come. Once annexed, Cuba would become an English-speaking country, and the alert Cuban mind would grasp those great principles of fundamental liberty with far greater alacrity than the Spanish. Let the word go forth to teach English in every schoolhouse in Cuba, and the work of amalgamation would be half done. The more the Cubans know of the United States and of our institutions, the better they will like us. As confidence takes the place of distrust in the minds of the population of Cuba,--native or foreign-born, black or white,--the sooner all will reach the conclusion that the most promising future for Cuba can only be attained by complete union with the greater Republic. In support of this opinion as to the political future of Cuba it is only necessary to quote the utterance of one whose opportunity for making such a forecast has been exceptional. Major-General Matthew C. Butler, of South Carolina, combines in his make-up and experience both soldier and statesman. The Confederate cause can point to no more brave and capable officer than General Butler. For sixteen years he represented his State in the United States Senate, and during that period grappled with all the important questions of the day. No man on the Cuban Evacuation Commission was so well equipped to study the political and economic side of the Cuban question as General Butler; and no man took so much pains to ascertain the facts in relation to the condition and sentiment of the people of Cuba. For a month last autumn the author was daily and closely associated with General Butler at the Vedado, near Havana, where the Military Commission had its headquarters. Between acquaintances of many years, in Washington, it is not strange that conversation during those long evenings at the Hotel Trotcha turned on the future of Cuba and that the exchange of thought was both free and frank. Summed up, the opinion of General Butler on the future of Cuba is as follows: "You ask an expression of my opinion before leaving Cuba as to the character of the people of the Island and their future prospects. If they will be patient, following the dictates of prudence, and trust the Government of the United States, a very prosperous and happy future awaits them. The process of rehabilitation may be slow, but by cordial co-operation of all classes it will be more certain and permanent. "The army of the United States is here to guarantee public order and enforce obedience to law. Its use will be controlled very largely by the conduct of the people themselves. If they uphold the law and insure public tranquillity, if each will respect the rights and persons of the other, there will be no occasion for interference by American troops. And you may take my word for it they will not interfere with the people in their peaceful vocations, if the conditions I have suggested prevail. "The officers and soldiers on duty in the Island of Cuba are American citizens as well as American soldiers, accustomed to rendering loyal obedience to law; and they will not abandon on this Island their devotion to the principles of American liberty regulated by law. I therefore repeat that the people of Cuba may safely trust the officers and soldiers of the United States to establish and maintain the principles of government as set forth in our Constitution and laws, which mean freedom, not licentiousness, and equality before the law for all. "We have no such thing as 'one man power' in the United States, and cannot so far depart from our devotion to popular liberty as to tolerate it here. So I say, if the people of Cuba (I include in the word 'people' all classes and conditions) will await with patience and resolution the establishment of good government, honestly and impartially administered, a brilliant future is in store for them. If, on the contrary, bickerings among themselves, unreasonable complaints, and demands in disregard of the rights of persons and property should lead to bloodshed and breaches of the peace and the disturbance of public order and tranquillity, as they most surely will, the day of their deliverance will be indefinitely deferred. "You ask me whether I think the people of the Island of Cuba capable of self-government. This is a very difficult question to answer. I may, however, say that I have no sympathy with the harsh and unjust judgments of those who condemn them without a hearing and settle in advance a problem which requires time for solution. "Officially I have no opinion to express as to the status of such a commonwealth, for that is a question to be settled by the people themselves in their aggregate capacity, but personally I should like to see Cuba a State in the American Union, enjoying all the rights of local autonomy and self-government on terms of equality with the other commonwealths of the United States. She would then have liberty, regulated by a written constitution, where the military is subordinate to the civil power, and where each of the three great co-ordinate branches of the government, legislative, executive, and judicial, execute the will of the people." The above statement, which, with General Butler's consent, is made part of this chapter, was prepared with great precision and care and only after long deliberation. Moreover, it was submitted to some of his colleagues, and the subject-matter fully discussed with the author, who is in full and hearty accord with the views expressed. Officially the author has no opinion to express as to the status of such a commonwealth, for the work committed to him was purely of an economic and fiscal and not of a political character. Personally, however, the author, with General Butler, looks forward to the day when Cuba will be a State of the Union, in the enjoyment of that full degree of liberty and self-government which is accorded the other commonwealths of the United States. CHAPTER IV THE ENGLISH IN JAMAICA Having sought light and information in relation to the future political government of Cuba from both Cuban and Spanish sources, for the Marquis de Apezteguia is more Spanish than Cuban, it may be well to ascertain if any useful lesson may be found in British colonial administration. With this thought in view, the author, after completing the work in Cuba, made a brief visit to the island of Jamaica. Through the courtesy of the American Mail Steamship Company, the S.S. _Admiral Sampson_ stopped at Santiago and thus enabled me to reach Port Antonio, Jamaica, in seven hours. At this point I met Captain L. D. Baker, the head of the vast American fruit interests of Jamaica, and with him visited Kingston and had an interview with the Governor-General of Jamaica, and with the heads of nearly all the Departments of Government. In this connection it affords me pleasure to mention the name of Dr. James Johnston, member of the Jamaica Council for St. Ann's Parish and member of the Commission now revising the revenue law of Jamaica. Dr. Johnston was a fellow-passenger on the S.S. _Sampson_, on its return voyage to the United States, and furnished much valuable explanatory information in relation to the government of Jamaica, for which this opportunity is taken to express thanks. The information thus obtained and the data gathered from the various blue books and the reports of the Royal Commission on the British West India Islands, all have a special bearing on the problem the United States is now confronting in Cuba, and hence on the political future of the Island. Better to appreciate the present aims of British administration in Jamaica, one should read the following extract from an article in the December number of _Scribner's Magazine_, by the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary: "In the first period of this eventful history the territories acquired by conquest or discovery were treated as possessions to be exploited entirely for the advantage of the occupying nation, and little or no thought was given to the rights or the interests either of the original inhabitants or of the colonists who had dispossessed them. This view of the relations between a state and its outlying territories continued more or less throughout the eighteenth century, although the War of Independence in America did much to modify and dispel it. The success of the Revolution not only destroyed the hope that colonies could be made tributary to the mother country, but led ultimately to the conclusion that, since they would never be a source of direct revenue, we should be better without colonies at all. Assuming that an entirely independent and separate existence was the ultimate destiny of all our possessions abroad, and believing that this consummation would relieve us of burdensome obligations, we readily conceded self-government to the colonies in the temperate zones, in the hopes that this would hasten the inevitable and desirable result. We found, not without surprise, that in spite of hints to this effect, our kinsfolk and fellow-subjects resented the idea of separation and, fortunately for us, preferred to remain, each 'daughter in her mother's house and mistress in her own.' Influenced by the same idea, we elaborated constitutions by the score for every kind of tropical dependency, in the vain expectation that the native population would appreciate forms of government evolved in our own civilisation, and would learn quickly to be self-supporting and to develop for themselves the territories in which we began to think we had only a temporary interest. We were disappointed, and we have had to recognise the fact that, for an indefinite period of time, the ideas and standards of our political and social order cannot be intelligently accepted or applied by races which are centuries behind us in the process of national evolution. The experience of Hayti and Liberia under independent native government, of many of the South American republics, of Egypt and of India, and the stagnation of all tropical countries, in regard to matters dependent on local effort, make it evident that wherever the white man cannot be permanently or advantageously acclimatised and wherever, therefore, the great majority of the population must always be natives, the only security for good government and for the effective development of the resources of the country consists in providing this native population with white superintendence, and with rulers and administrators who will bring to their task the knowledge derived from the experience of a higher civilisation; and, constantly changing, will be always under the influence of the standards and ideals which they have been brought up to respect. "This is the root idea of British administration in the tropics. At the same time we have abandoned forever any desire to secure tribute from these possessions, and we no longer seek any direct or exclusive advantage. "We find our profit in the increased prosperity of the people for whose interests we have made ourselves responsible, and in the development of, and access to, markets which we open at the same time to the rest of the world. Our primary obligation is to maintain peace, and safety of life and property, and equal justice for all irrespective of race or class. Subject to these conditions, we interfere as little as possible with native religions, customs, or laws; and under this system we are successfully administering the affairs of hundreds of millions of people of almost every race under the sun, with trifling cost to the British taxpayer, and with the smallest army of white soldiers of any of the powers of Europe. In India, where three hundred millions of people acknowledge the Queen as Empress, the total white garrison is only seventy thousand men; in Egypt, with a population of nine millions, the normal white garrison is thirty-five hundred men; while in Ceylon, the Straits Settlements and protected States, the West Indies, and West Africa not a single white regiment is stationed for the maintenance of our rule, which is secured entirely by coloured soldiers and police under British officers. Our experience should at least go far to satisfy the objections of those Americans who anticipate that the occupation of tropical countries would involve the retention of vast numbers of American soldiers in an unhealthy climate, and would lay an intolerable burden on the American treasury." The Spanish idea in its government of Cuba was purely and absolutely the idea of possession, and the facts pointing to this will be abundantly set forth in the several chapters in this volume relating to the fiscal, commercial, and industrial condition of the Island of Cuba. The work of reconstruction already so auspiciously begun by the United States Government in Santiago, and described in a subsequent chapter, is absolutely in line with what Mr. Chamberlain aptly terms the root idea of British administration in the tropics. The primary obligation of the United States in Cuba is to maintain peace, the safety of life and property, and equal justice for all, irrespective of race or class. The final instructions given by the President of the United States, last August, to the author, leaving for Cuba, were to the effect that the United States desired to secure no tribute from Cuba, that the work of reconstruction must be performed in the interests of the people of Cuba, only, and that the profit to the United States must come in the increased prosperity of the people of Cuba, and in the benefits accruing from a peaceful, instead of a constantly warring neighbour. According to Mr. Chamberlain, this is the fundamental principle underlying England's operation in her tropical colonies. [Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO CASTLETON, JAMAICA.] In comparing British administration in Jamaica with any possible operations of the United States Government in Cuba, the fact of the great difference in the population must be considered. In Jamaica not over 15,000 of the 700,000 population are white. When England began to treat this island as a trust, and not as a possession,--say about 1834,--the population was made up of 311,070 slaves, 15,000 whites, 40,000 coloured, or brown people, as they are called in Jamaica, and 5000 free blacks. In Cuba a majority of the population are white--the census of 1887 showing 1,102,889 white and 528,798 coloured--in all provinces; Matanzas, with forty-five per cent. coloured, and Santiago, with forty-two per cent. coloured, representing the strongest coloured sections of the Island. That half a century of British rule in Jamaica has improved the population of Jamaica, nearly all of whom were slaves when the work was begun, is self-evident, though it is equally true that similar government in Cuba would have resulted, by reason of the preponderance of white population, in more far-reaching results. That is, Cuba, under such a government as England has given Jamaica, would, in all reasonable probability, have numbered at this time a population of from four to five millions, with a greatly increased commerce, diversified industries, magnificent main and parochial roads, an adequate railway system, many prosperous and well-built cities, and a degree of prosperity and civilisation far in excess of that which the United States officials found when they took possession of the Island. With the disadvantages of race, with the scars of slavery, and, until recently, with the single industry of sugar and its allied product, rum, the policy set forth so clearly by Mr. Chamberlain has been successful in making habitable and law-abiding and measurably prosperous a tropical island which might have been in a condition little better than that of savagery. To be sure, England has not made Anglo-Saxons of these people, but it has made of them peaceful, law-abiding, and, in the main, self-respecting citizens. There is little doubt that the bulk of the inhabitants of Jamaica are in a position which compares not unfavourably with that of the peasants of most countries in the world. The facts given farther along show that the condition of the labouring classes of Jamaica is infinitely better than that of the labouring classes--especially the coloured population--of Cuba, who are in a deplorable state, even on plantations where work is abundant. The number of holdings in Jamaica is 92,979, of which 81,924 are under ten acres each. In 1882 there were only 52,608 holdings, of which 43,707 were under ten acres each. Even allowing for the fact that some persons may hold two or more plots of land, it is clear that the island already contains a very large and increasing number of peasant proprietors. The Crown Land Regulations offer facilities for the settlement of the labouring population on the land, and as sugar estates are abandoned some of them will probably fall into the hands of small cultivators. In the last ten years the number of savings-bank accounts of the amount of twenty-five dollars and under has nearly doubled. The census returns of 1891 show that in the ten years, 1881 to 1891, there had been an increase of thirty per cent. in the number of persons able to read and write. The acreage of provision grounds has increased more than thirty per cent. in ten years. There are 70,000 holdings of less than five acres. The area in coffee, usually in small lots, increased in ten years from 17,000 to 23,000 acres. More than 6,000 small sugar-mills are owned by the peasantry. The number of enrolled scholars was 100,400 in 1896, as against 49,000 in 1881; while the actual average daily attendance at schools had increased from 26,600 to 59,600. These facts indicate considerable advance, though no doubt in certain districts the people are poor. The Royal Commission appointed to investigate and report on the agricultural, commercial, and industrial condition of the West Indies came to the conclusion that the depression in Jamaica was the result of the almost entire dependence of the island on a single industry. Here is what they say: "The general statement regarding the danger of depending on a single industry applies with very special force to the dependence of the West Indian Colonies upon the sugar industry, for the cultivation of sugar collects together a larger number of people upon the land than can be employed or supported in the same area by any other form of cultivation. In addition to this it also unfits the people, or at any rate gives them no training, for the management or cultivation of the soil for any other purpose than that of growing sugar-cane. The failure, therefore, of a sugar estate not only leaves destitute a larger number of labourers than can be supported upon the land in other ways, but leaves them also without either the knowledge, skill, or habits requisite for making a good use of the land. In those colonies where the sugar industry cannot be carried on without imported coolie labour the position of dependence upon this one industry is still more dangerous. In these cases not only is there a yearly charge upon the public revenue to meet the cost of immigration, but a liability for back passages is incurred, which a failure of the industry would leave the colony without funds to meet. Whilst, therefore, the vital importance of the sugar industry to the present prosperity of nearly all the colonies is beyond dispute, we wish to observe that so long as they remain dependent upon sugar their position can never be sound or secure. It has become a commonplace of criticism to remark upon the perpetual recurrence of crises in the West Indian Colonies, and we submit that the repeated recurrence of such crises, as well as the fact that the present crisis is more ominous than any of the previous ones, illustrates the danger to which we have referred, and adds much force to our recommendations for the adoption of special measures to facilitate the introduction of other industries." The special remedies recommended were as follows: "1. The settlement of the labouring population on small plots of land as peasant proprietors. "2. The establishment of minor agricultural industries, and the improvement of the system of cultivation, especially in the case of small proprietors. "3. The improvement of the means of communication between the different islands. "4. The encouragement of a trade in fruit with New York, and, possibly, at a future time, with London. "5. The grant of a loan from the Imperial Exchequer for the establishment of central factories in Barbadoes. "The subject of emigration from the distressed tracts also requires the careful attention of the various governments, though we do not find ourselves at the present time in a position to make recommendations in detail." The fact is, Captain L. D. Baker, of the Boston Fruit Company, and the other companies engaged in the banana and orange business of Jamaica, have pointed a way out of the present difficulties, and that industry, in the course of a short time, bids fair to be as important as the sugar industry was in former times. Last year this single company shipped five million bunches of bananas to New York. There are now over one hundred thousand orange trees planted in Jamaica, which in a few years will be bearing finely and give additional prosperity to the country. With the American fruit market inadequately supplied, and the English market practically untouched, there is hope both in Jamaica and Cuba--especially Santiago province--for diversified industries created by rapid transportation. The recent establishment of a fleet of fast steamships between New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore, and the various ports of Jamaica, and the probability that these or similar lines will be established between the United States and Cuban ports, are all factors of promise for the industrial future of both the British and the American West Indies. While Jamaica is a well-governed country, and its revenue is all honestly expended for the public good of the people, it is far from an economically administered government. Order is thoroughly established, laws are obeyed, justice for the humblest is easily obtainable, education is general, sanitary matters admirably administered, roads maintained, the rights of all conserved, and the revenue honestly collected and expended. In these particulars the government of Jamaica differs widely from that which the author found in Cuba. In that unhappy Island all is absolutely the reverse of this. The cost of governing Jamaica, however, is nearly twenty-five per cent. of the value of its commerce, whereas the cost of governing Cuba--if gauged by the actual revenue raised--under Spanish rule ranged from 12-1/2 to 15 per cent. of the value of its commerce. The comparison, however, is of little value, because Cuba got nothing for the money exacted by taxation, while Jamaica not only gets all, but also the taxpayers are informed in advance of the purposes for which much of the money is wanted, and the sums thus raised are rigidly applied to the purposes for which they are appropriated. The most useful lessons for those responsible for administering the affairs of Cuba can be learned by a study of the Jamaica Budgets. The methods of raising the needed revenue are intelligent and simple, and the method of expenditure not only enables the authorities to get as much as possible for the money, but also makes possible the strictest accountability. The Legislative Council of Jamaica discusses every item of the budget as closely as the Town Council of Glasgow or the County Council of London, both model public bodies, so far as honesty of purpose goes, even if some of their legislative experiments fail. The humblest Jamaica negro, if he can read and write, may at least know the purposes for which the revenue he pays in taxes is expended. He may even have the pleasure of deciding which of these items of expenditure he regards the least important. At the present moment the annual cost of education, $350,000, is regarded as too high, and a proposition to reduce it to $250,000 is pending. The total expenditures of Jamaica have reached nearly $4,000,000 and additional revenue is necessary to meet these expenses. The customs tariff is in course of revision, with a view of increasing the revenue, and many articles formerly on the free list will have to be put upon the dutiable list, while the general ad valorem rates of duty must be raised from 12-1/2 to 16-2/3 per cent. Before going into the future sources of revenue, it may be well to look at the present sources, and for that purpose the subjoined table has been compiled from official sources: COMPARATIVE TABLE OF REVENUE OF JAMAICA, 1896-97 REVENUE. Pounds. Dollars. Customs 321,780 1,608,900 Excise 122,735 613,675 Licences 732 3,660 Stamps 23,947 119,735 Post-Office 24,072 120,360 Telegraph 5,364 26,820 Tax on Stock[3] Court Fees 8,284 41,420 Tax in lieu of Education Fees 11,243 56,215 Fines, etc. 4,412 22,060 Jamaica Railway 208 1,040 Reimbursements 35,969 179,845 Miscellaneous 13,992 69,960 Revenues now appropriated 181,663 908,315 Interest on Sinking Funds 14,199 70,995 Savings Bank 3,927 19,635 ------- --------- Total 773,527 3,867,635 IMMIGRATION REVENUE. Capitation Tax, etc., Laws 7 of 1878 and 14 of 1891, 1,476 7,380 Miscellaneous 205 1,025 ----- ----- Total 1,681 8,405 APPROPRIATED REVENUE. Poor Rates 39,339 196,695 Kingston Streets 4,354 21,770 Market Dues Pounds Main Road Revenue, Law 17 of 1890 28,091 140,455 Parochial Roads 45,538 227,690 Sanitary 7,862 39,310 Fire Rates, Kingston 1,561 7,805 Trade, Metal, Hawker, and Gunpowder Licences, Surplus Fund[4] 13,271 66,355 Gas Rates, etc. 3,793 18,965 Parochial General Purposes 4,503 22,515 Agricultural Produce Licences Law, 37 of 1896 3,685 18,425 Miscellaneous 8,544 42,720 Advances from General Revenue in aid of Funds 21,122 105,610 ------- ------- Total 181,663 908,315 Customs, excise, and appropriated revenue, as will be seen above, are the principal sources of income, while the expenditures for the same period are divided under the following heads: COMPARATIVE TABLE OF EXPENDITURE OF JAMAICA, 1896-97 EXPENDITURE. Pounds. Dollars. Charges of Debt ................................ 82,417 412,085 Governor and Staff ............................. 7,368 36,840 Privy Council .................................. 62 310 Legislative Council ............................ 2,469 12,345 Colonial Secretariat ........................... 5,612 28,060 Director of Public Works ....................... 17,979 89,895 Audit Office ................................... 3,629 18,145 Treasury ....................................... 4,634 23,170 Savings Bank ................................... 3,275 16,375 Stamp Office ................................... 1,106 5,530 Post-Office and Telegraphs ..................... 35,910 179,550 Revenue Departments ............................ 39,969 199,845 Judicial ....................................... 45,611 228,055 Ecclesiastical ................................. 2,927 14,635 Medical ........................................ 59,307 296,535 Police ......................................... 60,889 304,445 Prisons and Reformatories ...................... 27,836 139,180 Education ...................................... 67,540 337,700 Harbour-Masters and Harbours and Pilotage ...... 2,741 13,705 Colonial Allowances and Military Expenditure ... 12,814 64,070 Miscellaneous .................................. 29,571 147,855 Census ......................................... Steam Communication ............................ 1,800 9,000 Stationery and Printing ........................ 7,989 39,945 Library and Museum ............................. 2,404 12,020 Plantations and Gardens ........................ 6,484 32,420 Railway[5] ....................................... Main Roads and Buildings ....................... 80,467 402,335 Pensions, etc. 16,962 84,810 Purposes now supplied by Appropriated Revenue .. 135,842 679,210 -------- --------- Total Expenditure from Income ............ 765,607 3,828,035 Sinking-Funds, etc. ............................ 14,199 70,995 -------- --------- Total Payments from Income ............... 779,806 3,899,030 Less Debt Payments as above .................... 14,199 70,995 -------- --------- 765,607 3,828,035 Add Expenditures from Moneys raised by Loans ... 8,125 40,625 -------- --------- Total .......................................... 773,732 3,868,660 -------- --------- Immigration .................................... 979 4,895 A glance at the above tables and then a glance at the budget of Cuba, which will be found in a subsequent chapter, is all that is necessary to show the vast difference between the British and the Spanish methods of dealing with the fiscal interests of their colonies. The business-like methods of the one, and the blind, slip-shod methods of the other, are in sharp contrast. In dealing with Cuba, it may be difficult to follow entirely these English methods of accounting at once. The sooner, however, the United States inaugurates its own clear methods of national bookkeeping and official accountability, the quicker the people of Cuba will appreciate sound business principles in the conduct of their own affairs. It makes no difference whether Cuba is annexed to the United States or established as an independent government; these lessons must be learned in either event, or the Island will come to grief. It is hardly necessary to do more than call attention to the principal items of expenditure. First of all come roads. England has discovered that good roads are not only an important factor in mountainous countries in keeping order, but also the basis of industrial development and prosperity. In the budget given above the following items must be added together in order to ascertain the amount expended in 1897 for roads: Main Roads and Buildings $402,335 Parochial Roads 227,690 -------- $630,025 Here may be found a good illustration of England's policy which is a great contrast to the policy of Spain in Cuba. No money has been spent on the roads of Cuba, all of which are in a deplorable condition. Attention should at once be given to this important question and a liberal sum out of both local and general revenues of the Island set apart for this purpose. The debt of Jamaica is not excessive; it is in the neighbourhood of $10,000,000, with an annual charge of about $400,000. Police and medical charges are about the same, averaging about $300,000 each, or in all $600,000. In this connection attention is called to the annual expenditure on roads in Jamaica for fourteen years: EXPENDITURE FOR MAIN AND PAROCHIAL ROADS IN JAMAICA, FROM 1883-84 TO 1896-97, INCLUSIVE -----------+------------+-----------+------------------ Year. |Appropriated|Expenditure| |revenue for |for Main | Total. | Parochial | Roads and | | Roads. |Buildings. | -----------+------------+-----------+---------+-------- | Pounds | Pounds | Pounds |Dollars. |sterling. |sterling. |sterling.| 1883-84 .. |39,514 | 48,156 | 87,670 |438,350 1884-85 .. |40,496 | 47,614 | 88,110 |440,550 1885-86 .. |38,246 | 52,285 | 90,531 |452,655 1886-87 .. |39,670 | 48,080 | 87,750 |438,750 1887-88 .. |42,935 | 52,318 | 95,253 |476,265 1888-89 .. |42,146 | 57,632 | 99,778 |498,890 1889-90[6] |20,740 | 32,210 | 52,950 |264,750 1890-91 .. |50,317 | 91,659 |141,976 |709,880 1891-92 .. |44,845 | 91,659 |136,504 |682,520 1892-93 .. |48,520 | 83,718 |132,238 |661,190 1893-94 .. |50,169 | 58,460 |108,629 |543,145 1894-95 .. |47,111 | 65,647 |112,758 |563,790 1895-96 .. |48,398 | 68,654 |117,052 |585,260 1896-97 .. |45,538 | 80,467 |126,005 |630,025 -----------+------------+-----------+---------+-------- Total for | | |1,477,204|7,386,020 14 years | | | | Average | | | | per year | | | | 527,573 -----------+------------+-----------+---------+--------- The necessity of liberal expenditure for maintaining the health of the community is of first importance. A study of this budget may be found a preparation for the subsequent study of the Cuban budget, to which the reader's attention will be invited presently. The present Jamaica tariff was evidently framed with the two ideas of revenue for the island and a market for British goods. Food products, for example, such as bacon, beef, beans, bread, butter, cheese, corn, meats, oats, oil, pork, rice, salt, sausages, wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, and many other staple articles are all on the dutiable list, some paying a fairly stiff rate of duty. On the other hand, many articles of merchandise, bricks, bridges, carts and waggons, clocks, diamonds, machinery, locomotives, and a host of other things, which England supplies the island, are all exempted from duty. Under a general ad valorem clause, 12-1/2 per cent. is collected on all articles not enumerated. The enumerated list of the Jamaica tariff is not large, so a large amount of merchandise has been actually imported under this clause. The proposed new tariff, which will probably go into effect next year, takes many articles off the free list and puts them on the dutiable list. It also increases the ad valorem rate to 16-2/3 per cent. This has been found necessary because there has been a deficit in the revenue. The new tariff is expected to yield £400,000, or about $2,000,000, and from internal revenue or excise £150,000, or $750,000, and £250,000, or $1,250,000, from appropriated revenue which will really come from the land and householders. Here it is summarised: Revenue from Customs ......................... $2,000,000 " " Excise .......................... 750,000 " " Appropriated Revenue (land and household taxes, etc.) ........ 1,250,000 ---------- $4,000,000 If this amount can be secured, the revenue of Jamaica will be a trifle more than expenditure, and the result will be happiness. If not, expenses must be reduced. Some members of the Legislative Council favour this latter plan. The Commission has the whole fiscal question now in hand, and within a short time will probably reach conclusions. There is much more of interest that might be said about the present economic condition of Jamaica, but the points herein brought out appear to be the only ones that bear especially on the problem continually facing the reader in a volume dealing with the industrial and commercial reconstruction of Cuba. It will also be interesting to compare the British method of colonial administration with the idea set forth in the previous chapter by the Marquis de Apezteguia, whose point of view in such matters is wholly Spanish. That is, the idea of possession is paramount. The Marquis evidently has no faith in the ability of the United States to administer the affairs of Cuba as a trust. CHAPTER V THE AMERICANS IN SANTIAGO A visit to Santiago should give relief to those suffering from "the craven fear of being great," for there may be found much that is encouraging. In this province of Cuba may be seen in full operation the work which the Government of the United States has been impelled to undertake, and here may be studied the character of the forces upon which the people of the United States must rely in the work of reconstruction now in progress. The machinery of government is running with a fair degree of smoothness, and the men responsible for it, from the humblest official to the capable commander of the province, understand their business and are masters of the situation. It is a striking illustration of the marvellous adaptability of the American character. Every department of the public service is carrying on its work; the only difference apparent to one so recently in parts of Cuba still in possession of Spain being the absence of Spanish soldiers and the more businesslike methods of the officials. The disagreeable smells of the typical Cuban city are less pronounced in Santiago, and whitewash, limewash, fresh paint, and all sorts of disinfectants have deodorised the surrounding atmosphere and made the old town really habitable. The streets are no longer used as sewers, and the unhappy person who violates the law and escapes the lash of the Sanitary Commissioner's whip is compelled to work on the streets for thirty days. This official, Major George M. Barbour, with one hundred and twenty-five men, dressed in spotless white, and thirty-two good United States mule-teams and carts, having dug out from the streets of Santiago the filth of ages, is now able to keep them absolutely clean. Every day by the aid of that great disinfectant, petroleum, the garbage of the city is burned. The work of sanitation is not confined to the streets, but extends to the dwelling-houses, shops, and buildings of all kinds. Indeed, the campaign against dirt and disease has been as sharp and hot as the charge of San Juan Hill, and as productive of beneficial results. The resistance on the part of the native population was even more stubborn than that of the Spanish soldiers to our forces around Santiago. The doors of houses had to be smashed in; people making sewers of the thoroughfares were publicly horsewhipped in the streets of Santiago; eminently respectable citizens were forcibly brought before the commanding general and sentenced to aid in cleaning the streets they were in the habit of defiling. The campaign has ended in the complete surrender to the sanitary authorities, and the inhabitants of Santiago, regardless of class, have had their first object-lesson in the new order of things inaugurated by the war. Looking backward five months and picturing Santiago in July, and comparing it with the more hopeful condition existing on all sides at the present moment, it is easy to discern the omens which point to the coming prosperity of the whole Island under intelligent and honest government. Besides the improved sanitary conditions, there are many other indications of the good work of Major-General Leonard Wood and his capable corps of assistants. Several important thoroughfares have been repaved. All the public buildings have been thoroughly cleaned and put in good order, the work even extending to the large opera house, which is now ready for the opening performance under American auspices; for General Wood believes in furnishing decent amusements for the soldiers of his command. The law courts abolished when General Shafter took the city have been re-organised, and it was the privilege of the author to take part in the brief, simple ceremonies on December 1st, when in a modest speech the American commander turned over the legal business of the province to the judiciary and inaugurated the Supreme Court. This Court was composed of carefully selected Cuban judges, the appointees nominated wholly on account of legal attainments; the Bar Association of the province having been consulted as to the character and qualifications of the new judges. As the occasion of turning over the judiciary of the province to the people was one of considerable moment, a brief description may not be out of place. A committee selected by the Court called at the palace on the morning of December 1st, and after being presented to General Wood, escorted him to the Supreme Court Building. The room in which the Supreme Court of Santiago holds its sessions is one story up a rather rickety-looking stairway. It looks more like a long, narrow store than a court-room. At the far end is the bench where the Court sits. It was draped with scarlet cloth and the chairs are of dark oak. The courtroom was filled by interested spectators. General Wood appeared in a fatigue uniform, taking a position in the centre of the group of jurists, under the canopy over the seat of the Chief-Justice, and in a businesslike manner proceeded to state the object of the gathering. He told those assembled they had met for the purpose of starting up the judicial machinery of the province. While the military authorities still retained the power to revise all cases involving life and death, there was no disposition to interfere with civil matters. Innumerable cases had been piling up during the five months of military occupation, and it was time they were adjusted. He hoped the gentlemen appointed to this, the highest Court in the province, would prove equal to the trust. "Your enemies who say the Cubans cannot govern themselves," said General Wood, turning toward the Court, "will watch you critically, and your friends hopefully. Above and beyond all, be honest in your decisions, for absolute integrity must ever be the foundation of a fair and impartial judiciary. I pray you do not follow the example of those who have made the courts of Cuba a byword for corruption. With sincere hope for your success in dealing with these matters, and with assurance of all the assistance in my power, I hereby reinstate the Judiciary of the Province of Santiago de Cuba." Then the Chief-Justice, a man of fifty-five or sixty, attired in a rich black silk gown, with handsome white lace cuffs, arose, and in a few graceful words accepted the responsibility in the spirit in which it was tendered, and assuring General Wood of his fealty to the United States Government during the military occupancy, made a profound bow, and the ceremony was over. Two members of the Court then escorted General Wood and the author, who was invited to represent the civil authorities of the United States, to the top of the staircase, and with a cordial adieu the Military went out and the Judiciary came in and was reinstated. In a few moments the Court was in session. "Let me walk back," said General Wood, and the waiting carriage was dismissed. Passing the city jail, General Wood exclaimed to the author, "Take a look at the jail, and see the good work we are doing there." There were no prisoners, and it was evident the building was being renovated for some new and more inspiring purpose. There is no more practical man in the military service of the United States to-day than Major-General Leonard Wood. He is just the man to build up the city and the province of Santiago. Not only has the judiciary been reinstated, but also, in the same manner, local government has been restored, and native mayors and officials have been appointed; the only requirement being that persons accepting such offices shall take the oath recognising the military occupancy of the Island by the United States. They are in no way committed to any future form of government. The wisdom of this action cannot be doubted, and the moral effect upon the people of Cuba will be far-reaching.[7] In constant meetings between General Wood and the author, during the former's recent brief visit to the United States, he informed me that all arrangements have been completed for the spring elections of Santiago. Thus the next movement is towards a system of local self-government which the Cubans heretofore have never enjoyed. The Spanish, when in possession of Cuba, assumed absolute control not only of the judiciary, but also of the municipal government, the larger portion of the taxes raised for municipal purposes being diverted, with the other revenues, into channels which either led to Spain or into Spanish pockets. It will be even a greater stroke of wisdom if these taxes are hereafter used exclusively for local purposes, and, as far as may be deemed practicable, collected and disbursed by properly constituted local authorities. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL STREET, SANTIAGO DE CUBA. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.] There could be no wiser expenditure of local revenue for several years than upon the streets and sewers of the cities and towns of Cuba. For years the money which should have been used for these purposes has been drained away to Spain, and all local improvements shamefully neglected. The rural districts of Santiago de Cuba have been so depleted that it will be impossible to collect taxes over and above those needed for the bare necessities of schools, for the poor, and possibly, in small sums, for the improvement of sanitary conditions. The dawn of prosperity should, however, be the signal for inaugurating systematic work on the country roads. The province of Santiago de Cuba is similar in geographical and geological structure to the island of Jamaica, where, as is shown elsewhere in this volume, the good main and parochial roads have been the principal stay of the population. In another chapter will be found a brief history of the nearly two thousand miles of good roads in Jamaica, together with an account of the expenditure thereon and cost of keeping them in repair. The British Administration spends on an average annually for roads in Jamaica about $500,000. Without underestimating the strategical importance of a central railway from east to west in Cuba the immediate returns to the population from good roads would be far in excess of the more pretentious enterprise. The money thus expended, whether from the general funds of the Island, or from the local budgets, would come back a hundredfold, and make Santiago one of the richest sugar-, coffee-, and fruit-growing districts of the West Indies. Santiago Province should be a profitable producing country for bananas. It is good for the poorer classes to undertake the cultivation of this fruit. The banana takes only fourteen months to grow and therefore, unlike coffee and oranges, the cultivator does not have to wait several years for the crop. All the capital in this business can be turned quickly, and the banana can be planted near the hut of the small planter and attended easily. Banes, Sigua, and Baracoa are good ports to export them from. The Dumois family invested considerably in the business and used to ship to the United States. This business is soon to be revived on a much larger scale. The extension of good roads would largely increase the possibilities of this industry in many parts of Santiago Province. With quick transportation the market for bananas is rapidly extending to Europe, while the United States market is only partially supplied with this fruit and with oranges. The internal, industrial, professional, licensing, and other miscellaneous taxes have so far been remitted in this part of Cuba, but the military authorities are now preparing to enforce them. In this connection the author suggests that, now the customs tariff has been disposed of,[8] an immediate scheme be prepared for levying and collecting internal revenue taxes for the entire Island. The question of separating these taxes from purely municipal taxes should also be considered at the earliest possible moment, in order that no revenue shall be lost. Methods of local administration differ so greatly in different provinces in Cuba that the wisdom of appointing a governor or commander for each province is unquestioned. As much latitude as possible should be given to these officials. The provincial governors should have power to decide all questions appertaining to local matters, for the fewer the references to Havana the sooner the people of Cuba will realise the difference between Spanish possession and United States occupancy. For military purposes, the government of the Island may be easily vested in one central authority at Havana. For civil purposes, each province should be made as absolutely independent as is possible, with general supervision by the commander of the United States forces. The secret of General Wood's success in Santiago is entirely due to the fact that he has good judgment, the courage to use it, and full power in Santiago Province to exercise both. The supervising power over the civil department-commander should be made, as far as possible, advisory on such matters as relate to the general welfare of all the people of the Island, but all department questions should be scrupulously relegated to the provincial governors. There will of course have to be some general scheme inaugurated as to the collection and the expenditure of the general revenue, but before this can be intelligently arranged it will be necessary to designate what revenue shall be considered local, what, if any, for the exclusive use of the department, and what may fairly be regarded as revenue applicable for the general purpose of the whole Island. In thus distributing the revenue, the greatest care should be exercised not to hamper the provincial governor by an arbitrary division of the purposes for which the money must be expended, until he has been given ample opportunity to ascertain the needs of his department. A country undergoing such changes as Cuba is, cannot be judged by ordinary circumstances, and the most successful results will certainly be obtained by giving the generals in command of the several provinces the rein, and with the excellent example of the commander of Santiago before them tell them to go and do likewise. Apportionments and divisions of revenue will come later. The present emergency demands large sums for sanitary purposes, for cleaning up cities, for fighting disease, for renovating public buildings, for maintaining order, and for establishing a decent, efficient administration of public affairs. These operations must be done quickly and be planned chiefly by the judgment of the man on the spot, acquainted with local conditions. The results of a free hand are plainly visible in Santiago. The same policy must be followed elsewhere, or summer will bring dangers from which the unacclimatised population may well seek to escape. As this is being written, the first difficulty has arisen at Santiago in relation to the distribution of the customs revenue. The order of General Brooke to send the customs receipts to Havana has met with opposition. This is a natural result of the peculiar conditions existing there, and no one can be blamed for it. For nearly five months no municipal, internal, or local taxes have been collected; and with the exception of about ten thousand dollars collected by Mr. Donaldson as cemetery and meat taxes, the entire revenue of Santiago Province was derived from customs dues. This money has been expended, as above shown, by General Wood in cleaning up the city, in making new streets, in renovating public buildings, in fighting disease, and in many other ways, all with a view of benefiting the community. All this and much more was justifiable in the emergency with which he was confronted. Meanwhile the machinery for collecting local and other public dues was, for various reasons, not put in motion until a few weeks ago. The taxes from these sources rightfully belong to the municipality, and hereafter will be expended thereon. The Spanish authorities collected all the taxes, local and general, returning of the local taxes but a small percentage to the municipalities. There is no intention on the part of the military authorities of the United States in Cuba to use these local taxes for other than local purposes, but it stands to reason that the customs taxes must be collected by one central authority, equalised and expended for the general welfare of the whole community. The ports of Santiago Province, being practically the only ports in possession of the United States, naturally used all moneys collected. January 1, 1899, all other Cuban ports came into possession of the United States, and Santiago becomes again part of the Island of Cuba, and as such is entitled to equal, but not special consideration. The people of Santiago have had over one hundred thousand dollars of local taxes remitted, in consequence of the delay in getting the tax-levying and tax-collecting machinery at work. This has been saved to the community. All these taxes, being local, would have probably been spent on local works or would at this time have been available for such purposes. It is not the intention of the Government to have these sent to Havana, nor does the order include them. New York might as well demand that she be allowed to keep all the customs dues collected at that port, or, more to the point, Havana. Over sixty per cent. of all Cuba's customs dues are collected at Havana, but Havana will have to pool her receipts, just as New York does, and take back such portion as appropriations for public works as may hereafter be decided to be rightfully her share. There is really no need for the people of Santiago to get excited over the order, which is reasonable, just, and in the line of fair government. On the contrary, the people should rejoice to think they have had so much of the money expended in improving the city, and that for several months they have practically been relieved of local taxes. The Custom-House at Santiago the author found to be under very capable management. Mr. Walter A. Donaldson, who has had charge of the office, has performed the rather difficult initiatory duties devolving upon him with enthusiasm and ability. His knowledge of Spanish and his long training in the customs service of the United States have enabled him to recast the old Spanish methods and inaugurate the more businesslike methods of our own custom-house without much friction; and as a result we find to-day a complete organisation at Santiago, with branches at all the other ports in the province, working efficiently and collecting the revenue. While Mr. Donaldson has been able to dispense with about twenty of the seventy employees, he has retained fifty of the Cuban and Spanish already in the service, and with five United States officers is able to collect the revenues expeditiously and administer the affairs of the port with general satisfaction to the merchants and shippers of Santiago. Mr. Donaldson estimated, that at the end of December, the total custom-house receipts in his entire district would aggregate in the neighbourhood of four hundred thousand dollars. It is safe to say that the collections in this port for the twelve months under American administration will be twice the amount collected during the last twelve months of Spanish control. As the rates of the tariff have been reduced two-thirds this fact would seem to be a good sign alike for the interest of American administration and the possibilities of a low tariff for producing sufficient revenue. As is stated elsewhere in this volume, the hope of sufficient revenue to manage the affairs of the Island is largely--under greatly reduced taxation--based upon honest and efficient collections. If it were otherwise, the natural consequence of reducing the rates of duty by two-thirds (a measure which the President of the United States has authorised) in a tariff capable of producing a revenue of fifteen million dollars per annum, would mean a revenue of five million dollars per annum. To accomplish this feat and still have fifteen or even ten millions of revenue the future management of the custom-houses in Cuba must be more businesslike and more honest. The industrial importance of Santiago will be treated in the chapter on Mines and Mining, the idea of this chapter being to give a glimpse of some of the changes in this old city already brought about by American military occupancy. CHAPTER VI OUTLOOK IN CUBA FOR LABOUR That the wounds of Cuba will soon heal with the rapid promotion of work, is undoubtedly true. This is the struggle the United States is now entering upon, and the employment of the people should be the first aim of those responsible for the management of affairs. There will naturally be many disappointments, some disillusioning. The condition of labour in the Island requires the most serious attention of our Government. A brief history of it during the present century may elucidate the existing situation. In 1815, after the Napoleonic wars, the principal nations of Europe came together and agreed upon the Treaty of Vienna. An important provision of this Treaty was that henceforth slavery should be abolished. Spain, in common with other nations, signed this agreement, but, as is her habit, kept it not. The horrors of slavery were continued in her colonies, and in the middle of the present century almost reached the depths of inhumanity. At this time the population of Cuba was nearly a million people, and the traffic in human flesh and blood was a prosperous and profitable business. How long it would have continued is impossible to say, had not England interfered. After painful delays, much threatening, and innumerable broken promises on the part of Spain to observe the Treaty of Vienna, England agreed to give that country two millions of dollars to compensate those who owned "slave factories" in Havana, provided the nefarious business was stopped. Spain simply pocketed the money, told her noble sons engaged in the slave business in Cuba to look out for British cruisers when bringing slaves, assured them that no harm beyond the loss of cargo should come to them if caught--and the plantations of Cuba continued to be supplied as usual with slaves. Interesting facts in relation to conditions in Cuba during this period, when British cruisers kept watch of Spanish slave-ships, have been recently given in a series of articles in the _Century Magazine_, written in 1859. According to this chronicle, the Spaniards in Cuba were in open sympathy with the slave-dealers, and a story is told of a slaver chased by a cruiser into the harbour of Havana, the shores being lined with people cheering the slaver. The cruiser would have effected a capture, but the slaver, dodging into a corner of the harbour, came to anchor, and her officers told the slaves on board to jump overboard and swim ashore, as the British were cannibals and would eat them all if captured. The slaves escaped to the shore, where the Spaniards picked them up and laughed at the British and the trick. The same writer notes that by law the British must sell captured slaves by a mixed commission at fifty dollars each for a seven years' term of labour. These slaves were known as _emancipados_ and each wore a tin tag on his neck, showing the date of his sale and the date of the expiration of his slave service; but _emancipados_, strangely, seldom reached the end of their terms; the Spaniards prevented that, by taking the tag from an _emancipado_ whenever one of their slaves died and putting it on the corpse. This was sufficient evidence that the _emancipado_ was dead, and the Spanish owner had a new slave. As for the general condition of the _emancipado_, it was much worse than that of the real slave, for his master, knowing he must soon lose him, treated him cruelly, by overwork and starving, and when at last the poor _emancipado_ had his freedom, he had neither strength nor health to enjoy it. A Cuban gentleman, now over threescore years and ten, told the author, in Cuba, that nothing in ancient or modern history exceeded in horror the slave-trade of Cuba during this period. In spite of England's watchfulness, it could be made profitable, even if occasional mishaps sent a shipful of unhappy Africans, chained together below decks, to the bottom of the sea, or a catastrophe set fire to the load of writhing humanity, fettered to prevent escape. Naturally a large percentage died on the voyage, and the condition of those landed was so awful that a description would be impossible in these pages. It will suffice to say that upon one occasion a young Cuban, who had been sent down by his employer to land some of these unfortunate creatures, was so impressed by the awful spectacle that he shot himself through the brain with a revolver and died on the spot. So long as this traffic continued, and the plantations of the Island were supplied by the unhappy African victims of man's inhumanity to man, there was no labour trouble in Cuba. Under such conditions sugar-growing was a comparatively simple process, and those engaged in it became wealthy. The day of reckoning, however, was at hand. After repeated disappointments, England succeeded in absolutely stopping further importations of slaves into Cuba. Up to the time of the breaking out of the insurrection of 1868, black labour had been almost exclusively used on the sugar estates of Cuba. Bad as slavery is at the best, there was in Cuba probably the worst system ever known. The work was of the hardest, the climatic conditions severe, and the unhappy victims of cupidity were ill-treated and brutalised. With such a beginning, continuing in one form and another until 1885, how could such conditions produce aught but dissatisfaction and misery at the present time? The same causes demoralised the Cubans. They were reared in luxury and idleness and looked upon work as fit only for slaves. The owners of plantations were rich men, their children were educated abroad, and, as a rule, spent most of their time in foreign travel. A large proportion of them were simply alien landlords. Unskilled in business, when the change took place and the slaves were freed, these people were not prepared to meet the new conditions which confronted them and to adjust themselves to a new form of life. Here the Spaniard, who is always anxious for gain, took advantage of the situation, and at the end of the rebellion of 1868-1878 the Cuban planters, who were formerly rich, found themselves impoverished. Their slave labour had been taken from them, their opportunities for further employment of contract coolies had been lost, and they found themselves in need of outside assistance. The Spaniards and some others responded by advancing money to them at the current rate of interest (twelve per cent.), but the planters, unaccustomed to economise, could not pay expenses and interest, and year by year their debts grew heavier. Some managed to continue operations, but many broke down under their burdens and their plantations went to satisfy their creditors, chiefly Spaniards. Short of labour, the crops declined; and to add to their troubles, beet-sugar made its advent. The European beet-growers, with a clear knowledge of conditions in the Island, were quick to take advantage of them and push their product forward to supply the Cuban cane-sugar deficit, and so successful were they that at the end of the insurrection of 1868, say in 1878, Cuba was practically bankrupt. Competition with the European beet-growers was difficult, and it was impossible to induce capital from the United States to restore the sugar industry of Cuba, owing to a lack of confidence in the stability of the government of the Island. [Illustration: CANE CUTTERS.] During the ten years of rebellion, the planters were able to protect their property by paying regular taxes to the Spanish Government, and at the same time allowing a certain amount to the insurgents, who agreed for this not to destroy the plantations. During this period they employed slave and coolie labour; but they were then subject to the Moret law, which was, in effect, that each planter should liberate a certain number of his slaves each year, and this was to continue until slavery had disappeared. Before this occurred, however, the treaty of Zanjon was made, whereby all slaves were liberated. By the Moret law, numbers were given to the slaves by the municipality, the name and number of the slave written on a slip, which was put in a box and each year ten per cent. of the names were drawn out. The owners were then officially notified that certain slaves, giving their numbers, were free, and this was published in a local paper. Most of these slaves remained with the planters. This law had a very good effect. Returning for a moment to the outbreak of the rebellion of 1868, it is necessary to refer to another sad page in the history of labour in Cuba; namely, the introduction of coolie labour from China. In 1869 the importation of slaves into Cuba was stopped, and then commenced the traffic in coolies, who were shipped from China, cargoes of them being landed at Havana. They were brought over under a contract for eight years by a company in Havana which had its own line of steamers. The contracts were sold to anyone who wished to buy them, at from four hundred to five hundred dollars per contract. The conditions of a contract were that the Chinaman was to serve for eight years. He was to be paid at the rate of four dollars per month, with rations, and was to receive two suits of clothes and a blanket. If ill for fifteen days, his wages were to be deducted and his time lost. One of the conditions of the contract was that at the end of eight years he was to be considered a citizen of Cuba with such privileges as were extended to Spanish subjects. Before the expiration of the eight years, however, those holding these Chinese contracts were notified by the Spanish authorities that at the expiration of the contract of any coolie in their employ they were to deliver said coolie to the authorities of the locality where they were at work. Here, the authorities placed the coolie on public land, obliging him to work for the municipality, and held him there until someone offered to take him under a new contract. This was entirely by force and not optional on the part of the coolie. The conditions of the new contract were for four years more at seventeen dollars per month, twelve dollars of which were to be retained by the municipality, and five dollars were to be given to the coolie. At the expiration of the four years, if the coolie's conduct had been satisfactory to his employer, then the municipality was to return to the Chinaman the money it had retained. The treatment of these coolies was quite as severe as was ever meted out to an African, and when this condition of affairs was learned by the Chinese Government, a commission was sent to Cuba to investigate. A report was made to the Chinese Government, which resulted in the prohibition of further coolie emigration from China to Cuba. Confronted by the loss of his slaves and by the prohibition of further contracts for coolie labour, the Cuban was at a loss whither to turn for help. His only hope lay with the Spanish peasants and the Canary Islanders, and these, in as large numbers as could be secured, were imported. They were much more valuable than the slaves or the coolies, but jealousies arose among the Cuban labourers, and the newcomers, being less numerous, were unable to protect themselves and in many instances were forced into the towns for protection, thus leaving the planters quite as short of labour as before, and at the same time increasing the complications of the labour problem. In this condition we find Cuba to-day. The great problem will be how to obtain labour for the plantations, for the mines, and for agricultural purposes, in order to carry on the work of industrial reconstruction. All sorts of schemes have been suggested, but upon examination of the conditions in Cuba, it is feared they will prove impracticable. The life of the labourer, in consequence of the lack of diversified employment, and the fact that labour in Cuba is the severest kind of toil, has few attractions. If the Spanish soldiers are willing to remain and take up peaceful pursuits, it will aid in the solution of the problem. Possibly Italians may be induced to emigrate to Cuba, if assured of a stable government and plenty of work. The opportunity (small allotments and homes) is limited, and the drudgery on large plantations, without family life, is not likely to attract those from Europe who are ever eager to seek homes and broader opportunities in the United States. When in Cuba, the author visited many plantations and talked with many planters and overseers on the labour question. The extracts from notes taken on the spot will be found instructive on this point. The following excellent explanatory account of farm labour was prepared by an American who has spent the best part of his life on Cuban plantations and is now working a prosperous colona, or cane farm: * * * * * "From the 1st of December to the 1st of June an average of about 350 people were employed; of these ten per cent. were Canary Islanders or Spaniards, ten per cent. negro women and boys (white women do no field work), twenty per cent. native whites, and about sixty per cent. negroes and mulattos. From the 1st of June to the 1st of December an average of about 150 were employed. Women do no field work during this period. "During harvest I give the negro women preference and pay them the same salaries as the best male labour; they are more constant, their work is usually well done, and each one keeps her man straight, which is an appreciable item. "Next I prefer the negro, because he is, as a rule, a more faithful worker than either the native white or mulatto, the most of whom are addicted to gambling, and they cannot be depended on from one day to another. "For stowing cane on the cars, ploughing, ditching, road repairing, and railroad work, Canary Islanders and Spaniards are preferable; they are more used to this kind of work, more constant, and have fewer vices. "For cane cutting, carting, planting, and cultivating, native labour, in particular negro labour, is preferable; because the natives, being experts, work more rapidly, the cane plant suffers less injury, bringing in more remunerative returns, and its life is prolonged, which is a big item to the farmer; the natives are also much less addicted to smoking in the field, and danger from this source is materially reduced. But as a rule they are dishonest, and untruthful in the extreme, and this is general and applies both to whites and blacks, the latter being the champions. Canary Islanders and Spaniards are cigarette smokers and they are dangerous in the cane fields. "At the present time labour is very poor and very much demoralised. Many of the abler men are in the insurrection, a great number of those remaining have seen mothers, wives, and children dying a lingering death from hunger; some could obtain work for their food, while others earned a salary of from six to eight dollars per month in depreciated Spanish silver. Provisions were high, and the Government increased taxes on meats and other necessaries, until these poor ignorant people, bent down by great sorrow and seeing no help for themselves, gave up in despair and became indifferent. "During the past crop, as well as at the present time, I employ a considerable number of Asiatics, but many of these are opium smokers and much debilitated, and we calculate on sixty per cent. only being at work, while forty per cent. are resting in their barracon.[9] SALARIES "The average salaries paid by this colona during normal times, that is, previous to the insurrection, were about as follows: ALL THE YEAR Administration.........per month, $166.66 gold, and maintenance. Servant................ " " 30.00 " " " Overseer............... " " 85.00 " " " Second overseer........ " " 35.00 " " " Steward and bookkeeper. " " 50.00 " " " Assistant.............. " " 25.00 " " " Carpenter.............. " " 35.00 " " " Montero................ " " 25.00 " " " Assistant.............. " " 20.00 " " " Hostler................ " " 20.00 " " " Assistant.............. " " 15.00 " " " Pumping water.......... " " 6.00 " " " Cook................... " " 30.00 " " " Assistant.............. " " 25.00 " " " Night watchman......... " " 20.00 " " " Mounted field-guard.... " " 30.00 " " " " " " .... " " 25.00 " " " DURING CROP TIME Mounted field guard............. per month, $25.00 gold, and maintenance. " " " ............. " " 25.00 " " " Time-keeper..................... " " 20.00 " " " Waiter for operatives' table.... " " 15.00 " " " Vegetable gardener.............. " " 20.00 " " " Bueyero......................... " " 22.00 " " " Assistant....................... " " 16.00 " " " " ....................... " " 12.00 " " " Foreman with cartmen............ " " 30.00 " " " Assistant....................... " " 23.00 " " " Foreman with stevedores......... " " 28.00 " " " Cartmen......................... " " 23.00 " " " Ploughmen....................... " " 23.00 " " " Cane cutters.................... " " 21.00 " " " Cane lifters.................... " " 15.00 " " " Cane loaders (stevedores)....... " " 21.00 " " " "During the summer months wages for field labour averaged about $17 per month. Cost for maintaining labour averaged about $7.50 per month in gold; cost for maintaining overseers, foremen, carpenters, cooks, stewards, guards, etc., amounted to about $12 per month. "Rations for each man per day were as follows: "Clear beef, one pound, or its equivalent in tasajo or salt fish. "Rice, one pound, or its equivalent in beans, peas, macaroni, etc. "Lard, two ounces. "Coffee, one ounce. "Sugar, two ounces. "Bread, six ounces, or instead of bread, sweet potatoes, plantains, or melanga. "Sweet-oil, bacon, salt, and spices sufficient to season the food. "During the winter months, cabbage, tomatoes, and turnips are served every day without regard to rations. RULES AND REGULATIONS "When a labourer enters his name on the pay-roll he receives his machete or hoe, tin plate, tin dipper, and spoon, the same being charged to him and credited when returned. "Time-keeper makes his rounds twice every day. "Away from the batey[10] smoking is absolutely prohibited, and the penalty is immediate dimissal. "Salaries are paid any day between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M., Sundays excepted, to those who desire the money. "Except in case of sickness, meals are charged to those who are not at work. "To the sick such medicines as we have are given free; the most prominent of these is quinine. "If a man remains in the barracon sick for more than two days he is sent to his home, or to a hospital. If it is an injury received in the service of the colona, he is cared for until able to work again. "The bell tolls at 4 A.M. for the people to get up; at break of day, after having drunk a cup of coffee, they go to the field; at 11 o'clock they return to breakfast; at 1 o'clock they again go to the field; at 6 o'clock they come in to dinner, and at 8 o'clock the bell sounds silence, after which absolute quiet is enforced. The negro is fond of his music and dancing, and this is permitted at seasonable hours, and sometimes the overseer gives special permission to prolong their amusements beyond the usual hour. "Gambling is prohibited, but the rule cannot be successfully enforced. "In the dry season (at mid-day) when the people are in the batey, sentinels are stationed on the hills to give timely warning of cane fires. "Armed guards patrol the fields by day, and guard the cattle at night--this applies to times of peace. ADVANTAGES OF LARGE COLONAS OVER SMALL ONES "During my experience in this vicinity I have never known a single instance where a small colona prospered or was able to extricate itself from debt, and this condition is owing to various causes. A colona employing from three hundred to four hundred men can be carried on more economically than one employing from one hundred to two hundred men. The high-salaried men in the one are very nearly the same as in the other, but the small farmers with fifty or two hundred acres fare much worse. These purchase everything they require at retail, often paying from fifteen to thirty per cent. more than the large farmers, who purchase at wholesale and receive rebate for prompt payment. A small farmer employing ten men requires a cook; the larger, employing three hundred men, requires but two cooks. The small farmer is always cramped for money, has but a limited credit with the central, and outside of that none, except with an occasional country storekeeper, who may consider the risk and accommodate him by charging exorbitant interest. The money which ought to be expended on the cane fields goes to pay this interest, his fields get to such low ebb that the cane no longer pays the expense for harvesting, he can obtain no money for replanting, fails to pay his rent, and the owner of the land takes possession of what remains, resulting in some other poor fellow stepping in only to repeat his predecessor's experience. "The cost for preparing, breaking up, cross-ploughing, making, furrowing, seed cane, planting, cultivating, wear and tear to implements, and weeding one caballeria[11] of cane to maturity, and doing it well, is from $1400 to $1600, according to conditions of soil, salaries, etc., and under normal conditions will here require from three to four years before the farmer can see any profits, and then only by intelligent management and good soil; soil which requires planting every three to five years will ruin any man. "The average yield of cane per caballeria in Guabairo for 1895 was about 71,500 arrobas,[12] and the cost per one hundred arrobas for weeding, cutting, carting, and delivering to the central amounted to about $1.84. "During the crop time we employed from one hundred and fifty to two hundred Chinamen; of the balance of the labourers, probably there were more negroes than Spanish, with the white Cubans in a distinct minority. The Chinamen we have here now make very steady workmen, but they are weak, and not able to do as much work per day as either a negro or a Spaniard can do in the field. The best workmen we have, if we can get enough of them, are the negroes. One negro in cutting cane, can do as much as two of any other class; but I do not think this country is adapted for the American negro, from what I have heard of him, as he would have to put up with hardships here, and a style of eating and living which, I imagine, is not as good as he has in the southern part of the United States. The immigration of Chinese is prohibited, although a few manage to get in at a time. I do not know of any other restrictions on immigration. I do not believe the Jamaica negro would make a good workman; for, from what I have heard of him, he is very lazy, and would not be at all a desirable labourer. Thus our only hope for labour is to retain here the Canary Islanders, because they are harder working and can stand the climate better than others. They are men who can save money here, and that in itself is proof that they must be steady workmen, because they earn so little. Galicians are also good workers, but so far as I know of the men working here, the Canary Islanders are the best. The white men are mainly employed as stevedores in the batey, though they are also good labourers in the field. "As a rule the labourers are not married. The families of the married labourers live in the villages in the neighbourhood. The men must sleep in the batey at night. Sunday they work half a day, and get paid for a full day, provided they have worked five full days during the week; otherwise they only get half a day's pay. The men sleep in large rooms called barracones; sleeping in hammocks, and not taking their clothes off. Many of them possess but one suit, and on Sundays, after breakfast, they go to a stream, wash their clothes, lie around until they are dry, and then put them on again. For the better class of workmen, employed in the factory, the machinery helpers, etc., we have bath-houses. These men have rooms, and as a rule they are unmarried. Most of the labouring men, if they have families, when they are paid off, go away for a day, or a day and a half, and take their money to their families, and then come back to work. Those who are not married, keep on working or stay off a few days. It is quite uncommon to find a labouring man who can read and write. Their chief vice is gambling, the Cuban and Spaniard being similar about this, though we try on this estate to prevent gambling as much as possible. The Chinese gamble and smoke opium. The bell rings at 8 P.M., at which time the men are supposed to be in their barracones, and are not supposed to walk around the batey, this rule not being enforced except during the last two years. "The price of labour, in 1895, for cutting cane, etc., before the insurrection commenced, varied from fourteen dollars to twenty dollars per month, Spanish gold. This has fallen off to from twelve dollars to fifteen dollars, Spanish silver, paid during the past crop for the same labour--in American gold about fifty-five per cent. of this. The maintenance per month per man is nine dollars, Spanish gold. This fall in wages was necessitated by the fall in the price of sugar, and by the fact that but few plantations in the neighbourhood were able to continue working." * * * * * Labour seeking employment in Cuba must face these conditions. That the field will prove sufficiently attractive to tempt immigration in large numbers, even from the poorer sections of Europe, is doubtful. Still, with more prosperous times, the Canary Islanders may try their fortunes in the future as they have tried them successfully in the past; and so with Italians, Spaniards, South and Central Americans, and even the Southern negro of the United States, despite the fact, as stated above, that the American negro will not come to Cuba because the work is too hard and the food and accommodations too poor. But the American negro will, unwittingly, no doubt be the pioneer of a new labour era in Cuba. With the coming of the new order and new people, will come higher ideas of labour, and that which has ennobled labour in the United States will have its elevating influence among the labouring people of Cuba. Herding labourers in barracones like so many cattle, sleeping them, feeding them, bathing them, with less care than is shown to fine cattle, ruling them with whip and spur, making no provision or allowing no time for their mental or moral improvement, regarding them merely as so much live stock, but of less value than cattle, because when too old to work they cannot be slaughtered and eaten, it is small wonder that the crying need of the sugar-planter for two centuries has been sufficient and efficient labour. When the planter, under the newer influences which shall soon prevail, learns that by education, by the adoption and enforcement of sanitary regulations, by the establishment of homes, by the observance of the decent amenities of life, by the liberalising of religious belief, by the recognition of human rights, and by the general uplifting of the sentiment of work, a sufficiency of labour may be easily secured, and its efficiency guaranteed, the problem so long unsolved will be made as clear as day, and Cuba will enter an era of prosperity for all classes that will astonish and attract the world. There is at this time a steady increase in the demand for labour on plantations and, in Santiago Province, for the mines. While in Cuba the author received one cable despatch calling for fifteen hundred labourers for the mines, while three large planters stood ready, among them, to employ a thousand men to work in the sugar fields. In the neighbourhood of the sugar plantations all the able-bodied men had either been killed in battle, died of disease and starvation, or were still in a state of practical destitution, hidden away in the insurgent camps. Those who offered themselves for employment were, as a rule, too weak to endure the hard labour. Three years of privations and lack of food had destroyed their stamina. To be sure, there is surplus labour in Havana,--able-bodied labour,--but those who applied there had no means of transportation to the localities where they could obtain work. Through a suggestion made by the writer to an enterprising American concern, four hundred of these Havana labourers were sent to Santiago. It is estimated that at least three thousand additional labourers could be well employed in these mines at once, if it were possible to send them from the spots where starvation stares them in the face to the localities where work can be obtained for those able to endure, as already indicated, the hardest toil under trying climatic conditions. Many Spanish soldiers desire to remain in the Island. They have formed alliances in Cuba; some of them have married and have families there. These men have come before American officials and entreated them to aid in finding them employment of some kind, either as Civil Guards, in the mines, or on the plantations. As a rule they make industrious and faithful labourers. Attention is called to an extract from a letter written by a prominent business man of Havana,--the man, in fact, who in October was employed to send the four hundred labourers from that city to Santiago: "I advertised for labourers in the Santiago mines in our principal newspapers, and, in consequence, have had for the last three days at least one hundred and twenty men calling at my office for situations. They are willing to accept the price offered, but not one of them can pay the passage from this port to Santiago. "Lots of soldiers, lots of labourers, many of whom have already worked in the Santiago mines and know all about the work, living, and everything else, but were taken away from there as guerrillas, volunteers, and soldiers of some kind, are willing to go; but, as you will understand, the people here have been without work and the soldiers without any pay, and therefore nobody can pay the passage. "While I have been writing these lines several men have called on me, but it is the same thing over and over again; they need work, and are willing to work, but they have not got one cent to save their souls." It is believed this indicates clearly and without exaggeration the present conditions in Havana as regards would-be labourers and their suffering for want of work. During fifteen years' experience in operating iron mines in Cuba, those who know say, the labour question there has always been the unsolved problem, as never during that time have they been able fully to supply their wants in this direction. If the number of labourers has not in normal times been sufficient to satisfy the requirements of all industries in Cuba, how much will it fall short under the new conditions? The only hope for the renewal of prosperity in the Island is, first, the rehabilitation of the sugar industry; second, a revival of work on the tobacco plantations; and third, a full complement of men in the mining districts. These industries are the basis of the prosperity of the Island. A better distribution of labour will aid somewhat, and if this is accomplished intelligently by the United States Government, employment can be found for thousands whose presence in Havana without work is a menace to the city. It should be borne in mind that the Cuban harvest is in the winter months, and therefore plans should at once be inaugurated by which those who want work can be immediately brought to those anxious to give them employment. A small expenditure of money in this direction now will save a large expenditure in the future in some other and less desirable ways. It is useless to try to create new industries until the old and strong industries of the Island are re-established. If it is difficult, after the Spanish soldiers leave, to secure the necessary labour for the plantations, producing, as they will this year, a maximum of 400,000 tons of sugar for export, where are the labourers coming from to produce the high-water mark of 1,100,000 tons of sugar? The process of industrial reconstruction will necessarily be slow and depend in a large degree upon the stability of the Government and the rapidity with which the people settle down to work. There is no possibility, however, of a surplus labour supply. Work can be found for all capable and willing to perform hard labour now that the affairs of the Island have passed into the hands of the United States military authorities and the new customs tariff has gone into force. From this time the work of repairing the dismantled sugar plantations should go forward and thousands of labourers will be required. Whatever may be the future of Cuba, the present must be provided for and life and property and the right to labour be protected. The disposal of the insurgent troops is so intimately interwoven with the labour problem that it is difficult to separate the two. Some of the insurgent troops should be, and probably will be, utilised as Civil Guards, supplementing the United States forces; but those who are not needed for this purpose should be systematically aided as far as possible in any endeavours they may make to secure work. Men with hardly clothes to cover their nakedness, who have existed for three years on a diet that would kill the ordinary American labourer in three weeks, and who have practically foraged for their daily existence, must be helped a little before they can stand alone--helped at least to the extent of food and raiment and transportation to the locality where there is work in abundance. Lastly, in this connection, the need of homes in Cuba is one of the most pressing. The condition of those who labour on the plantations is truly deplorable. They literally have none of the necessities of civilisation. A complete state of savagery would be preferable to the condition of those employed on the sugar estates, who toil from early sunrise to sunset on rations of the plainest sort, and live in huts built of the bark of palm trees and thatched with the palm leaf. CHAPTER VII THE POPULATION OF CUBA The number and the characteristics of the people of Cuba are matters of doubt. If not of doubt exactly, at least there seem to be many discrepancies in relation to the numerical side of the problem, and great variation in opinion as to the qualities and peculiarities of the several classes of inhabitants which constitute the people of the Island. Before attempting to discuss the traits of the people, it may be advisable to ascertain, as far as practicable, the component parts of the population, and for that purpose recourse must be had to such statistical data as may be found available. The census report of Cuba can be obtained, but it is not issued, like our own, in book form, or even as printed reports. The results, moreover, are not worked out with any degree of detail as to age, sex, race, marital condition, occupation, and such other data as make an analysis of the population of the United States a comparatively easy task. The first census of Cuba was taken as far back as 1774, and since then the population has been enumerated at various periods, apparently when it suited the convenience or desire of the authorities at Madrid. The last count of the people was in December, 1897, but the returns from this enumeration have not been tabulated. The authorities admit they are imperfect in the four provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara, and that they lack entirely the population of Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba. It may, therefore, be expedient that this work should be abandoned and that the United States authorities should take a complete and satisfactory census of the Island in December (for it cannot be taken in the month of June), 1899, or December, 1900, either of which dates will be near enough to the date of our own Twelfth Census, which will be June 1, 1900--the earlier date will probably be better for Cuba and nearer our own census. Such an enumeration should elicit information in relation to occupations and such social topics as will aid in constructing a suitable government for the people of Cuba. The method of taking the Cuban census has been crude and the returns not very reliable. The organisation for the work has always been made in Spain and delegated to a Central Board in Cuba, which board is presided over by a Cabinet Minister--the last by Mr. Montoro, Secretary of State. The Secretary to this Board is the Director of Census. The schedules are then forwarded to the municipalities, who thus control their own enumerations. Fortunately for Cuba, there are no "boom towns," so the returns are not unduly padded. The schedules for the rural districts are handled from the capital of the province. When the schedules are filled, they are sent to Havana, where the work of tabulation is performed. The completed work is sent to Spain for approval and promulgation. The method seems roundabout and cumbersome and must result in a large percentage of errors. The official who had charge of the last census admitted it was not exact--excepting possibly for some places where the municipal authorities took pride in the work. This was the case in Matanzas, where a census was taken in 1893, which seems on the face to be careful statistical work. A study of the census columns of unfortunate Cuba reveals the story of that Island in unmistakable terms. (See table on page 92.) Disease and war have performed their fatal work and from time to time decimated the inhabitants. The cheerful side of the picture is the constant increase of population from 1852 to 1867. These few years were called the Golden Age of Cuba. The cholera visited Cuba at the end of the year 1868, and the Ten Years' War began October 10, 1868, at which time many Cubans emigrated. This will explain the decrease of the year 1869. From 1870 to 1877 Spanish soldiers poured into the country, and not less than 200,000 Spaniards were sent there to crush the insurrection of 1868 to 1878 (Ten Years' War). POPULATION OF CUBA AT THE SEVERAL ENUMERATIONS OF THE POPULATION OF THE ISLAND ----------------+-----------+-----------+---------- | | Increase | Decrease YEARS. | TOTALS. | Per cent. | Per cent. ----------------+-----------+-----------+---------- 1774 | 171,620 | .... | .... 1787 | 176,167 | 2.64 | .... 1792 | 273,939 | 55.49 | .... 1804 | 432,000 | 57.69 | .... 1810 | 600,000 | 38.88 | .... 1817 | 635,604 | 5.93 | .... 1819 | 553,033 | .... | 12.99 1825 | 715,000 | 29.28 | .... 1827 | 704,487 | .... | 1.47 1830 | 755,695 | 7.26 | .... 1841 | 1,007,625 | 33.33 | .... 1846 | 898,754 | .... | 10.80 1849 | 945,440 | 5.19 | .... 1850 | 973,742 | 2.99 | .... 1852 | 984,042 | 1.05 | .... 1855 | 1,044,185 | 6.11 | .... 1857 | 1,110,095 | 6.31 | .... 1859 | 1,129,304 | 1.72 | .... 1860 | 1,199,429 | 6.20 | .... 1862 | 1,396,470 | 16.42 | .... 1867 | 1,426,475 | 2.14 | .... 1869 | 1,399,811 | .... | 1.86 1874 | 1,446,372 | 3.32 | .... 1877 | 1,521,684 | 5.20 | .... 1887 | 1,631,687 | 7.23 | .... 1899 (est.) | 1,200,000 | .... | 2.65 ----------------+-----------+-----------+---------- [Illustration: A COUNTRY VILLA.] Then came the last war, which has been even more disastrous, and many competent authorities put the loss by disease, starvation, and slain at 400,000. It is impossible to verify these figures until we shall have an accurate enumeration of the population, so it must remain guesswork until then. Whatever the result of the next census may show, the fact remains apparent that the population of Cuba, by reason of its misfortunes, is far behind the natural increment; that is, the growth by excess of births over deaths. This is shown by the following table, giving the estimated population of the Island of Cuba from 1774 to 1894, by decades, taking the average rate of increase of the _native_ population in the United States by census decades: -------------------------+-------+------------|------------------- |YEAR. | Estimated | | |Population. | -------------------------+-------+------------|------------------- |1774 | 171,620 |As by Mr. Bonnet's |1784 | 216,928 |table as increased |1794 | 274,197 |by United States |1804 | 346,585 |census rates, |1814 | 438,083 |estimated averages. |1824 | 554,537 | |1834 | 700,934 | |1844 | 885,981 | From 1850 to 1890 native |1854 | 1,119,880 | and foreign were given |1864 | 1,459,204 | separately by census |1874 | 1,772,718 | takers; previously no |1884 | 2,336,442 | such count was made. |1894 | 2,869,150 | -------------------------+-------+------------+------------------- In the opening chapter of this volume the point was made that Cuba, had it been permitted to remain in peace and enjoy its advantages, should have had a population ranging from 4,500,000 to 5,000,000. That this statement is borne out may be noted in the subjoined table, which gives the estimated population of the Island of Cuba from 1774 to 1894, taking the average rate of increase of the _total_ population in the United States, by census decades: --------------------------+-------------|---------------------------------- YEAR. | Estimated | | Population. | --------------------------+-------------|---------------------------------- 1774......................| 171,620 | As per Mr. Bonnet's table. 1784......................| 231,687 } | 1794......................| 312,777 } | 1804......................| 378,460 } | 1814......................| 516,144 } | 1824......................| 686,832 } | Increased at United States census 1834......................| 917,264 } | rates for decades, estimated 1844......................| 1,216,934 } | averages. 1854......................| 1,653,448 } | 1864......................| 2,241,745 } | 1874......................| 2,749,051 } | 1884......................| 3,575,965 } | 1894......................| 4,464,950 } | --------------------------+-------------|---------------------------------- The rate of growth of the Western Hemisphere, had Cuba been allowed to enjoy her natural advantages, would have found her at the close of 1900 with close upon 5,000,000 population and a country as flourishing as that pictured in the early part of this volume. The population of the Island of Cuba, as enumerated on the 31st of December, 1887, was 1,631,687. This population was scattered over an area of about 122,606 square kilometres. These figures give an average density of population of 13.31 inhabitants to the square kilometre, the maximum of which appeared to be in the province of Havana (52.49), and the minimum in the province of Puerto Principe (2.10). CENSUS OF DECEMBER 31, 1887 ----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------- | | | Density per PROVINCE. | Number | Square | Square |Inhabitants. | Kilometres. | Kilometre. ----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------- Havana | 451,928 | 8,610 | 52.49 Matanzas | 259,578 | 8,486 | 30.59 Pinar del Rio | 225,891 | 14,967 | 15.09 Puerto Principe | 67,789 | 32,341 | 2.10 Santa Clara | 354,122 | 23,083 | 15.34 Santiago de Cuba | 272,379 | 35,119 | 7.76 |-------------+-------------+------------- | 1,631,687 | 122,606 | 13.31 ----------------------+-------------+-------------+------------- Distributed as white population and coloured people, the latter comprising negroes and half-breeds and Asiatics, the proportions were as follows: CENSUS OF DECEMBER 31, 1887 -----------------+-------------------+------------------+------------------ | NUMBER | DENSITY PER | | INHABITANTS. |SQUARE KILOMETRE. | PERCENTAGE. +---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+--------- PROVINCE. | Whites. |Coloured.| Whites.|Coloured.| Whites.|Coloured. -----------------+---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+--------- Havana | 335,782| 116,146 | 39.00 | 13.49 | 74.30 | 25.70 Matanzas | 142,040| 117,538 | 16.74 | 13.85 | 54.72 | 45.28 Pinar del Rio | 166,678| 59,213 | 11.14 | 3.95 | 73.79 | 26.21 Puerto Principe | 54,581| 13,208 | 1.69 | 0.41 | 80.52 | 19.48 Santa Clara | 245,097| 109,025 | 10.62 | 4.72 | 69.27 | 30.73 Santiago de Cuba | 158,711| 113,668 | 4.52 | 3.24 | 58.27 | 41.73 +---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+--------- |1,102,889| 528,798 | 9.00 | 4.31 | 67.59 | 32.41 +---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+--------- | 1,631,687 13.31 100. -----------------+--------------------------------------------------------- It will be observed that the number of whites is greatest in the province of Havana, but the highest percentage of whites is found in the province of Puerto Principe (80.52). The province of Matanzas shows the greatest number of the coloured race, which is explained by the fact that slavery prevailed more extensively in that province than elsewhere. The proportion of males and females was as follows: CENSUS OF DECEMBER 31, 1887 -------------------------+------------------------+------------------------ | NUMBER OF INHABITANTS. | PERCENTAGE. PROVINCE. +------------------------+------------------------ | Males. | Females. | Males. Females. +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ Havana...................| 243,966 | 207,962 | 53.98 | 46.02 Matanzas.................| 148,876 | 110,702 | 57.35 | 42.65 Pinar del Rio............| 122,829 | 103,062 | 54.38 | 45.62 Puerto Principe..........| 35,843 | 31,946 | 52.87 | 47.13 Santa Clara..............| 193,496 | 160,626 | 54.64 | 45.36 Santiago de Cuba.........| 137,590 | 134,789 | 50.51 | 49.49 +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ | 882,600 | 749,087 | 54.09 | 45.91 -------------------------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------ Notice that in each province, males are in excess of females. The immigration of women into Cuba has always been small. The proportion of males and females of the white and coloured races is as follows: CENSUS OF DECEMBER 31, 1887 -------------------------+------------------------------------------------- | WHITES. +------------------------+------------------------ | NUMBER OF INHABITANTS. | PERCENTAGE. PROVINCE. +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ | Males. | Females. | Males. | Females. +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ Havana...................| 188,269 | 147,513 | 56.07 | 43.93 Matanzas.................| 79,362 | 62,678 | 55.87 | 44.13 Pinar del Rio............| 91,627 | 75,051 | 54.97 | 45.03 Puerto Principe..........| 29,473 | 25,108 | 53.99 | 46.01 Santa Clara..............| 134,412 | 110,685 | 54.84 | 45.16 Santiago de Cuba.........| 84,044 | 74,667 | 52.95 | 47.05 +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ | 607,187 | 495,702 | 55.05 | 44.95 -------------------------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------ -------------------------+------------------------------------------------- | COLOURED. +------------------------+------------------------ | NUMBER OF INHABITANTS. | PERCENTAGE. PROVINCE. +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ | Males. | Females. | Males. | Females. +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ Havana...................| 55,697 | 60,449 | 47.95 | 52.05 Matanzas.................| 69,514 | 48,024 | 59.14 | 40.86 Pinar del Rio............| 31,202 | 28,011 | 52.69 | 47.31 Puerto Principe..........| 6,370 | 6,838 | 48.23 | 51.77 Santa Clara..............| 59,084 | 49,941 | 54.12 | 45.88 Santiago de Cuba.........| 53,546 | 60,122 | 47.20 | 52.80 +-----------+------------+-----------+------------ | 275,413 | 253,385 | 52.46 | 47.54 -------------------------+-----------+------------+-----------+------------ Notice that the proportion of males is larger in the white race than in the coloured. The enumeration of the population of Cuba in 1877 resulted as follows: CENSUS OF YEAR 1877 ----------------+-------------------+-----------------+------------------ | Number of | | | Inhabitants. | DENSITY. | PERCENTAGE. PROVINCE +---------+---------+-------+---------+--------+--------- | Whites.|Coloured.|Whites.|Coloured.|Whites. |Coloured. ----------------+---------+---------+-------+---------+--------+--------- Havana..........| 321,951| 113,945 |37.59 | 13.24 | 73.86 | 26.14 Matanzas........| 160,806| 122,315 |19.11 | 14.41 | 56.80 | 43.20 Pinar del Rio...| 128,986| 53,218 | 8.62 | 3.55 | 70.79 | 29.21 Puerto Principe.| 57,692| 11,553 | 1.78 | 0.36 | 83.32 | 16.68 Santa Clara.....| 219,294| 102,103 | 9.50 | 4.42 | 68.23 | 31.77 Santiago de Cuba| 143,706| 86,115 | 4.09 | 2.45 | 62.53 | 37.47 +---------+---------+-------+---------+--------+--------- |1,032,435| 489,249 | 8.42 | 3.99 | 67.85 | 32.15 +---------+---------+-------+---------+--------+--------- | 1,521,684 12.41 100 ----------------+-------------------------------------------------------- The increase in population from 1877 to 1887 was 110,003 individuals, or 7.23 per cent. The number of whites increased 70,454; the number of coloured people increased 39,549. Asiatics in this census, numbering 43,811, were included with the whites. [Illustration: CUBAN "GUARACHERO" (MINSTREL).] There are four classes of Cuban residents: the whites, the coloured, the blacks, and the Chinese. The whites comprise native Cubans, Spaniards, and foreigners; a certain proportion in the interior being Canary Islanders, who are fitted by constitution, habits, and tastes for farm work. The native Cuban is usually bright, and is gifted particularly with a remarkable memory. Children are very precocious, and, when given educational advantages, they develop into men of no mean ability. In addition to the intelligent Cubans residing in the Island, whose reputation in different branches of learning extends abroad, there are many who have attained honourable distinction in foreign countries, in competition with others whose advantages were conspicuously greater. Dr. Albarran, the well-known Paris physician, and Albertini, the violinist, are two of the many Cubans who have struggled and succeeded in Europe by dint of their individual exertions and natural talents. In America, a most distinguished professor of civil engineering, two leading civil engineers in the navy, and the most eminent authority on yellow fever in the country are native Cubans. Havana is the only city in Cuba where any instruction is obtainable, and it is noticeable there that even the boys of the poorer classes are anxious to follow the university courses after leaving school. In former days the sons of wealthy Cubans led the typical life of gentlemen of leisure. It was customary among them to take a profession, if that could be accomplished with little or no exertion. The remainder of their lives was usually spent in travelling through Europe. The present generation, however, is very different. It is composed of the sons of men who have been on the verge of bankruptcy for many years, owing to their thoughtless extravagance. They have had to work for their living from the moment they have left college, and, owing to the increasing poverty of the Island, they have never been able to reconstruct the fortunes ill spent by their forbears. The consequence is that one finds in Cuba the younger generation to be, as a class, vastly superior to the older men in principles, education, and working capacity. The Cuban is more analytical than inventive. His mind easily grasps subjects on which he has received very little information; but he is decidedly lacking in inventive and constructive power. The Cuban mother is very affectionate, but her maternal fondness often leads her into indulgence of the many failings of childhood, that, in later life, are impossible to overcome. Prevarication and pilfering are no uncommon failings of child-life in Cuba. Despite these weaknesses, children are so generous that their parents find it hard to prevent them from sharing their pocket-money with their young friends. Their politeness and affability are striking. Cuban hospitality is proverbial. In the old and prosperous days of wealth it was a common thing for whole families to constitute themselves guests at the country-house of some friendly sugar-planter, and spend Christmas or Holy Week there without having given the host a word of warning. The planter, far from resenting this proceeding, invariably provided entertainment for his self-invited guests in the shape of riding parties, picnics, and dancing, considering himself highly honoured by the unforeseen advent of his friends. Like most Southerners, the Cubans are musically inclined. They dance well, and prolonged dancing parties are a favourite form of amusement. There was an old Spanish law, in force up to some years ago, which entitled all suitors in marriage, whose proposals had been opposed, to demand that the lady's parents state before the courts the reasons of their objections. There are interesting cases recorded of proud young Cubans who, animated by a high sense of honour, have availed themselves of this harsh expedient, in preference to breaking their vows to their lady-loves. The opposition in most cases was due to the fact that the father of the young lady was Spanish and the suitor Cuban. There is an instance of a man prominent in Havana circles who, taking advantage of this privilege, married a lady, and refused to accept his wife's patrimony, and the father-in-law brought suit to compel him to do so. It was only after many years, when the allowance, handed periodically to the court, had accumulated to a considerable sum, that a compromise was reached and a reconciliation took place between the father and the married couple. Cubans are very much attached to family life. Deep affection usually exists among the members of families, and they follow each other's affairs with great interest, even after the families break up. In Cuban houses, the first morning meal, or "coffee" as it is called, consists of coffee and rolls; breakfast then follows at ten or eleven o'clock, consisting, usually, of fried eggs, hash, fried plantains, sweet potatoes, meat, and _café au lait_. Dinner takes place at six or seven o'clock. Occasionally fruit is served at two or three o'clock. Visits are exchanged in the evening; but ladies follow the European custom of calling in the afternoon. Most families have an "at home" one evening every week to receive their friends. Married ladies may go out shopping alone early in the day. Among intimate friends young men occasionally call on their young lady friends alone, but this is not general, European customs prevailing. The Cubans are very fond of fencing, and it is remarkable that the good fencers scarcely ever have duels, or seek quarrels. Duelling is practised _ad libitum_ in all Cuba among the upper class. Just before the war it had become an everyday occurrence; in fact, in one week as many as five duels took place between men well known in Havana society and clubs. As a rule the seconds manage to stop the fight after the first wound, even catching at the pretext of a flesh wound on the forearm; appealing to the attending surgeon to state whether he considers the wound will impair the free use of the arm, and also if there is any chance of nervous twitches setting in from the pain. It is unnecessary to add that the surgeon invariably finds that it is very likely that all of these contingencies may occur--thereby stopping the duel, and "honour is satisfied." Baseball, bull-fights, and cock-fights were the most popular entertainments until recently; cock-fights have waned now in popularity considerably, whilst bull-fights are patronised by the Spanish element exclusively. Baseball continues to hold public favour, and since its introduction some twenty years ago a taste for athletics has developed among the Cubans, which was lacking before. Horse-racing was in vogue while there was capital to import foreign half-breeds, but it has now completely died out. The foreign population of the Island is comparatively limited. A large number of German merchants are engaged in all branches of the tobacco business, which they practically control. It will be found that the knowledge and experience of the Germans in this respect have given them preferment in the direction and management of the largest syndicates and tobacco firms. A sprinkling of English, Americans, and French are to be found throughout the country. The coloured inhabitants of Cuba (mulattoes) are usually the children of black women and white fathers--the cases of a white woman having children with a black father being so rare as to be nearly unknown. In the cities the mulattoes are servants,--not hotel waiters, for they are all Spaniards,--barbers, and occasionally musicians. Mulatto women, though usually very statuesque in appearance, are unprincipled and insolent. [Illustration: A NATIVE HUT. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.] The Cuban negro inherits from his forefathers, the African slaves, a physique and a character strengthened and tempered by the toil of generations. During the sugar season he works steadily, from four in the morning until sunset every day, taking only two hours of rest with his meals. The coloured population shows no inclination to be on terms of equality with the white, and though under General Calleja's administration negroes and mulattoes were all granted the handle of "Don" (Mr.) to their names, and though the right to be recognised in hotels, theatres, street-cars, etc., on equal terms with the whites has been extended to them, they have not availed themselves of the privilege to any extent. The savagery of the African negro has, unfortunately, shown itself among his descendants in the Island. Some years ago a secret society called "�añigos" was introduced in Havana. These �añigos are divided into bands, whose object is to fight and kill each other. They commit all sorts of depredations and crimes. It has often been shown that the police have been in their pay. Some four hundred were banished some time ago to Spanish penitentiaries, together with political suspects, with whom they were chained in couples and marched through the streets of Havana prior to embarking. This is one of the many acts of refined cruelty that the Spaniards committed during the late insurrection; most respectable and honourable men, accused of sympathising in the cause of the rebellion, were chained arm to arm with negroes of the lowest caste, who, besides being convicted for crime, defiled the very atmosphere around them from the filth of their attire. The �añigos have lately been returned to Havana and set free, where they have lost no time in renewing their criminal work. The Chinese element was brought over by contract for working on sugar plantations. They were virtually slaves until the Chinese Government intervened in their behalf. The following extract from the comprehensive report of Mr. Robert T. Hill, of the United States Geological Survey on the Island of Cuba, may be considered as authority on the subject of population: THE CUBANS "Seventy-five percent. of the native population of the Island is found outside of the Spanish capital of Habana, which, being the seat of an unwelcome foreign despotism, is no more representative of Cuban life or character than is the English city of Hong Kong of the rural Chinese. While the Habanese have had the freest communication with the United States during the last three years of the revolution, Americans have had little opportunity to hear from the true white Cuban population. The Cubans are mostly found in the provinces and provincial cities, especially in Pinar del Rio and the eastern provinces of Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago. Although of Spanish blood, the Cubans, through adaptation to environment, have become a different class from the people of the mother country, just as the American stock has differentiated from the English. Under the influence of their surroundings, they have developed into a gentle, industrious, and normally peaceable race, not to be judged by the combativeness which they have developed under a tyranny such as has never been imposed upon any other people. The better class of Camagueynos, as the natives are fond of calling themselves, are certainly the finest, the most valiant, and the most independent men of the Island, while the women have the highest type of beauty. It is their boast that no Cuban woman has ever become a prostitute, and crime is certainly almost unknown among them. "While these people may not possess our local customs and habits, they have strong traits of civilised character, including honesty, family attachment, hospitality, politeness of address, and a respect for the golden rule. While numerically inferior to the annual migration of Poles, Jews, and Italians into the eastern United States, against which no official voice is raised, they are too far superior to these people to justify the abuse that has been heaped upon them by those who have allowed their judgment to be prejudiced by fears that they might by some means be absorbed into our future population. "Notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the Cubans have laboured, they have contributed many members to the learned professions. To educate their sons and daughters in the institutions of the United States, England, and France has always been the highest ambition of the creoles of Cuba and Porto Rico. The influence of their educated men is felt in many countries, the most distinguished professor of civil engineering, two leading civil engineers of our navy, and the most eminent authority on yellow fever in our country belonging to this class. Thousands of these people, driven from their beloved Island, have settled in Paris, London, New York, Mexico, and the West Indies, where they hold honourable positions in society, and even the exiles of the lower classes, with their superior agricultural arts, have been eagerly welcomed in countries like Jamaica, Mexico, and Florida, which hope to share with Cuba the benefits of its tobacco culture. "THE NEGROES "In addition to the white creole population, thirty-two per cent. are black or coloured--using the latter word in its correct signification, of a mixture of the black and white. This black population of Cuba has been as little understood in this country as has been the creole, especially by those who have alleged that in case Cuba should gain her freedom the Island would become a second Haiti. The black and coloured people of the Island as a class are more independent and manly in their bearing than their brethren of the United States, having possessed even before slavery was abolished on the Island the four rights of free marriage, of seeking a new master at their option, of purchasing their freedom by labour, and of acquiring property. While the negro shares with the creole the few local rights possessed by any of the inhabitants, their social privileges are greater than here, although a strong caste feeling exists. Miscegenation has also produced many mulattoes, but race mixture is no more common than in this country. "The coloured people of Cuba belong to several distinct classes. The majority of them are descendants of slaves imported during the present century, but a large number, like the negroes of Colombia and the maroons of Jamaica, come from a stock which accompanied the earliest Spanish settlers, like Estevan, the negro, who, with the two white companions of Cabeza de Vaca, first crossed the United States from the Gulf of Mexico to California in 1528-36. The amalgamation of this class in the past century with the Spanish stock produced a superior class of free mulattoes of the Antonio Maceo type, unlike any people in this country with which they can be compared. "The current expressions of fear concerning the future relations of this race in Cuba seem inexplicable. The slaves of the South were never subjected to a more abject servitude than have been the free-born whites of Cuba, for they at least were protected from arbitrary capital punishment, imprisonment, and deportation without form of trial, such as that to which all Cubans are still subjected, and the white race of this or any other country has furnished few more exalted examples of patriotism than the mulattoes Toussaint L'Ouverture or Antonio Maceo. "The experiences of the past have shown that there is no possibility of Cuba becoming Africanised without constant renewal by immigration. The 520,000 coloured people, one-half of whom are mulattoes, represent the diminished survival of over 1,000,000 African slaves that have been imported. The Spaniards had the utmost difficulty in acclimatising and establishing this race upon the Island. While Jamaica and other West India islands are a most prolific negro-breeding ground, the race could not be made to thrive in Cuba. "Those persons who undertake to say what the social conditions of Cuba would be under independence should look elsewhere than to Haiti for a comparison. Even were the population of Cuba black, as it is not, the island of Jamaica would afford a much better contrast. This island, only about one-tenth the size of Cuba, is composed of mountainous lands like the least fertile portion of Cuba; has a population wherein the blacks outnumber the whites forty-four to one; yet, under the beneficent influence of the English colonial system, its civilisation is one of which any land might be proud, possessing highways, sanitation, and other public improvements even superior to those of our own country, and such as have never been permitted by Spain in Cuba. Even though Cuba should become a second Haiti, which it could not, there is some satisfaction in knowing, in the light of historic events, that Haiti free, although still grovelling in the savagery which it inherited, is better off than it would have been had Napoleon succeeded in forcing its people back into slavery, as he endeavoured to do. "Another fact which will stand against the Africanising of Cuba is that it is highly probable that nearly one-half of these five hundred thousand coloured people have been destroyed during the present insurrection. A large number of them had but recently been released from the bonds of slavery, and were naturally the poorer class of the Island, upon which the hardships have mostly fallen, being generally the field hands in the sugar districts of Habana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara, where the death-rate of the terrible Weyler reconcentramiento has been greatest. Three hundred thousand of the five hundred thousand blacks belonged to these provinces, and of this number fully one-half have been starved to death. The population of Cuba has undergone great modification since the collection of the statistics given. What changes the deplorable conflict has wrought can only be surmised. Beyond doubt, however, the population has at least been reduced to a million inhabitants by emigration of non-combatants, destruction in battle, official deportation of suspects and political prisoners, and by the reconcentration. "The rural population of the four western provinces of Pinar del Rio, Habana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara has been totally obliterated. Estimates of this extermination are all more or less conjectural, but the Bishop of Habana is authority for the statement that more than four hundred thousand people have been buried in the consecrated cemetery." Mr. Charles M. Pepper, in one of his newspaper letters, speaking of the negroes in Cuba, cites instances of their industry and thrift, and says: "These notes are perhaps not conclusive, yet they have established in my own mind that the negro in Cuba is not an idler or a clog on industrial progress. He will do his part in rebuilding the industries of the Island, and no capitalist need fear to engage in enterprises because of an indefinite fear regarding negro labour. In the country, for a time, the black labourers may be in the majority. That is one of the results of the reconcentration. The blacks stood it better than the whites, and relatively a larger number of them are left for the work in the fields. When the present conditions are improved the question will arise over the immigration of labour. No need for discussing it has yet arisen. The leading blacks are opposed to the wholesale negro immigration to Cuba, and the mass of their people apparently agree with them. "On its political side the black population of Cuba has a definite status. Social equality does not exist, but social toleration prevails. There is no colour line. Visitors to the Island invariably remark this fact. In places in the interior I have seen the coloured serving-woman occupying a box at the theatre with the family, and no one seemed to be the worse for it. The custom is not general, yet the toleration of the white and black races is strong enough for an incident of this kind to pass without notice. I have heard Americans say it won't do at all after the Island is Americanised. One ambitious young fellow from a Southern State said to me that he was going back because the coloured race occupied too prominent a place in Cuba. He did not speak with bitterness or intolerance. He had been brought up under different conditions and felt that he would not be in harmony with such surroundings. Those who feel as he does had better stay away. "The part taken in the insurrection by the blacks has unquestionably strengthened their future influence. In order to depreciate the white Cubans the Spaniards were in the habit of giving all the credit for the warfare of the bush to the black insurgents. Some Americans have thereby been led into error. When the insurrection began the population of the Island was about two-thirds white and one-third black. That proportion was maintained among the insurgent troops. In some of the regiments more than one-half were black, but in others they did not amount to twenty per cent. In the beginning Maceo drew a large following in the eastern provinces, and this was almost entirely of blacks. "When the insurrection spread over the entire Island the disproportion between the two races was removed. Many of the officers among the insurgents to-day are blacks. They have few officers of the higher rank, because most of these were killed. Of all the insurgent generals who are seen in Havana--and there is a legion of them--the one who attracts the most attention from Americans is General Ducasse. He is a mulatto, and was educated, I think, at the French military school of St. Cyr. A brother, more famous than he, was killed during the last year of the insurrection in Pinar del Rio Province. This General Ducasse is of polished manners and undeniable force of character. A few weeks ago I read an address of his to the black insurgents, in which he counselled them with moderation, and impressed on them the duty of preparing for their new responsibilities. "These coloured Cubans have at no time been clamorous for recognition. They seem disposed to ask less than is due them. At least they are not forward in their demands. Back of all this is a consciousness of their own strength. In the States a jovial piece of advice used to be given the negroes--'Don't hit the white man, but if you do hit him, hit hard.' Such advice would be unnecessary in Cuba. It is not probable that a temporary influx of Americans with inherited race prejudices will ever succeed in creating a colour line in political affairs. If that should happen the black Cuban would not need to be advised about hitting the white man hard. He would hit both hard and quick, and it would be a long time before Anglo-Saxon civilisation recovered from the blow and proved its superiority. Fortunately, this is never likely to happen. The black man will share the future of Cuba with the white man. "The race has far more than its proportion of criminals. Some tendencies toward retrogression have to be watched. But in the midst of many discouraging circumstances the unprejudiced student must recognise the great advance that has been made. When Cuba has a system of common schools the advance will be greater. What is significant in the present is that the black man has been doing very well. He will continue to do well, and even better, if too many people do not stay up nights worrying other people with their fears of the future." CHAPTER VIII SANITARY WORK IN CUBA Underlying the prosperity and happiness of the people of any country is health, for without it there can be no strength, no energy, no success, even if all other conditions be favourable. This is true of every section of the world, and is notably true of Cuba, which with almost every advantage that nature could bestow has ever been feared for its malarious diseases, the fatal typhus, and the dreaded "yellow jack," which acknowledges no master save the frost. For years the world has quarantined against Havana, and other cities have drawn away from this sister in the tropics as from one plague-stricken. Yet this condition is not of nature's making, but of man's, and by man shall it be changed into something better. Spain in herself was a tyrant contagion and everything she touched became diseased and rotten to its vitals. And this terrible condition was not only physical, but moral, for moral uncleanness is sure always to follow physical uncleanness. This truth constitutes a corollary out of which has grown the maxim, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." The first consideration, then, with the American authorities who have undertaken to clean Spain's Augean Stables in Cuba is sanitation; and already the best thought and knowledge and experience we have are being brought to bear upon the stupendous task before us. [Illustration: STREET VIEW, SANTIAGO DE CUBA. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.] As has been stated, Cuba is not naturally unhealthful for a hot, wet country; and among the mountains in its interior and in many places along the coasts, removed from the filthiness of aggregated population, the average mortality is not higher than it is in lands of better repute for healthfulness, and the general health is quite as good. As might be expected, there is not that strength and robustness of physique characterising the people of the higher latitudes, nor is the climate conducive to the pink-and-white health of northerners; but though the people are less rugged of constitution and frame and lungs, and lack the outward signs of northern health, they are by no means constant subjects for physicians' care and they are anything but chronic candidates for the cemetery. Even in the nasty cities they are not all so, for there are many who are able to have their own houses well located, and to adopt modern methods of sanitation for their own private use. But the public health is not considered of importance, and there is not a city in Cuba which is not wofully lacking in good water, good drainage, and good health. One or two towns, which in America would have a contagion flag run up over them, are so much cleaner than the average that in every description of them by any writer appears the statement that they are said to be the cleanest towns in Cuba. It may be said in this connection that the towns are not large. Beginning with Havana, the capital of the country and the largest city in it, the stories of its great filthiness can scarcely be believed by those who have seen the place upon the surface and moved about in beautiful parks, in brilliant cafés, on the lovely drives, and elsewhere, among pleasure-loving people, all clothed in their clean white suits and smoking their dainty cigarettes. Yet Havana is viler than words can express; and the vileness has slopped over until her harbour is a veritable cesspool, whose waters are deadly, and whose bottom is so covered with filth that ships will not drop their anchors in it, because it is necessary to clean and disinfect them before they can be taken on board. Havana has been in Spain's possession for four hundred years, and that harbour is a typical result of Spain's good government. In the city itself the poor people are huddled in ill-built houses--there are only about eighteen thousand houses in the entire place--more densely than in any city of the world, on narrow streets without sewerage, upon the surface of which garbage and all kinds of refuse are thrown. No attention is paid to ventilation. The houses are built so low that the floors rest upon the soft, damp--in many places swampy--ground; the material is a porous conglomerate which absorbs moisture as a sponge does. Sinks are totally inadequate or absent. Water is not sufficiently supplied, and there is scarcely any effort by the authorities to exercise that care and provision for the public well-being which is characteristic of every properly governed city in the world. As an indication of what might be expected from such a condition of affairs the following table, prepared for American officials by the Havana Department of Sanitation showing the number of deaths for the first eleven months of 1898, is cited: January ................................ 1,081 February ............................... 1,518 March .................................. 1,500 April .................................. 1,411 May .................................... 1,298 June ................................... 1,129 July ................................... 1,381 August ................................. 1,975 September .............................. 2,390 October ................................ 2,249 November ............................... 1,828 ------ Total ............................ 17,760 And this out of a population of about 200,000, in which there were only a few, if any, _reconcentrados_ to starve to death. During this period there were only 2,224 births, showing a net loss of 14,336, or about seven per cent. of the population; a condition of health which would produce a panic in a northern city as soon as the figures were known. Speaking of these figures, Captain Davis, who has been inspecting hospitals, prisons, and public buildings under General Greene, says: "Vienna, with its million and a half of population, has been called the pest-hole of Europe, because of its death-rate of more than twenty-five to the thousand; yet Havana, with less than one-sixth of its population, has more deaths in one month than Vienna in twelve. The deaths this year in Havana will outnumber those in Chicago by probably five thousand, and will exceed the totals of Boston, St. Louis, Baltimore, and San Francisco combined." New York City at this rate would have a death-roll of 270,000 a year and London 450,000, and the deaths in the United States, which are now about 1,000,000 a year, would be about 7,000,000. Of course the figures for 1898 are greatly in excess of other years, owing to the war and the generally disturbed condition of affairs, but even in the healthiest years the death-rate was two or three times greater than the average of other cities. The leading diseases are consumption, a common disease in hot, wet countries; diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera infantum, and fevers, worst of which is the yellow fever, which is present in Havana every month of the year, although much worse at certain times than at others. It is said that portions of Havana are permanently infected by yellow-fever germs, but Surgeon-General Sternberg, Dr. Wyman, Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine Hospital Service, and other authorities say that by proper sanitary regulations and careful quarantining, the city may be made free of the disease and kept so, as is the case in Jamaica, where the English have had control for years. The work of sanitation will be difficult and expensive, and years will be required to accomplish it, but it must be done before Havana's future is assured. Sewers are few and far between, and those which exist are filled with refuse from the streets and are never cleaned, as the odours that rise from them constantly most disagreeably testify. They empty into the bay. Most of the drainage is surface, and as the city lies so low that a heavy wind across the waters of the bay will inundate many of the streets, it will be understood that the drainage is sluggish, and that what should be carried off by water is usually left to be rotted and dried by the sun--except in the rainy season, when it rots without drying. Much of the lower part of the city is built on swamp and "made-land," and what this means for the health of those who live upon it needs no elucidation. The following statement, made by José M. Yzquierdo, civil engineer, of Havana, under date of September 28, 1898, will throw some light upon street-sweeping contracts in Havana, show why the work cannot be properly done, and also indicate the part that the city authorities have always taken in the good cause: "I now have the contract for cleaning the streets and have been connected with the city government a long time. The present system of cleaning the streets is a combination of old and new. When I took up the work about five years ago, I ascertained that the system was very deficient, so I went to New York and studied up the matter. To begin with, the pavements were very bad. The automatic street-sweepers cannot be used to advantage, though I have two sweeping-machines. At night time my people go out with the sweeping-machines and a sprinkler and clean the streets, and from there the dirt is taken to the railroad cars and from the station about nine miles from here, and there I do some business with it; that is, I make a kind of fertilizer. I employ 230 men. We have no furnace to burn up the garbage. I am now going to make a proposition to the city council to clean the cities for the same price and use crematories, doing it on the American plan. For cleaning the city I am to be paid $2350.50 weekly, but I do not get the money; they owe me $180,000. A year or two ago, by giving ten per cent. to the city mayors, etc., I collected $20,000 in one week. Immediately after I got the contract the aldermen called upon me and directed my attention to certain articles in it, so that I finally had to take these aldermen into partnership in order to collect the money. [Illustration: WATERMAN IN THE COUNTRY.] "I have also had the slaughter-house privilege. I paid the city council $800,000 per year for the privilege of collecting the slaughter-house taxes, and one year I collected nearly $880,000, out of which, of course, I had to pay my men. This has fallen off a great deal. To slaughter cattle, you have to pay 4-1/2 cents per kilo, $1 per head for the corral, $1.25 to kill and dress it, and then 50 cents to take it to the market. The present slaughter-house is a new one, and not very efficient at present, but it could be made into a good one. All the refuse from the slaughter-house now goes into the bay." What is true of Havana is true in lesser degree of the other cities and towns of the Island, the degree being governed chiefly by the difference in size; the larger the town, the nastier it is. Cienfuegos, which, by the way, is the most promising town in the Island, in the commercial sense, is notoriously ill policed, and is a sprouting-ground for all manner of diseases. A report dated November 21, 1898, made by D. E. Dudley, Sanitary Inspector, U.S.M.H.S., notes the fact that its elevation above sea-level is only about eight feet and it is surrounded by a belt of lowlands from eight to ten miles wide. The streets are seventy feet wide, unclean, and out of repair, and in the wet season are fields of nasty mud. There are three sewers, one from the Hotel Union, and another from buildings in the same block, and the third and only public sewer is from the Civil Hospital. The first two of these sewers empty into the bay at the steamer wharf, about two feet above the water-line, and when the wind is in the right direction the gases and vile odours are blown back into the buildings, filling them with stenches. The Hotel Union, the Charity Hospital, and a few private dwellings have modern water-closets, but elsewhere over the city the houses have shallow privy sinks, which are emptied at night and the contents dumped against the cemetery walls. Around the cemetery is also the dumping-ground for garbage, dead animals, and all the refuse of the city, the disposal of which is not under any especial authority. This dumping-ground is a mile and a half from the Hotel Union. Dr. Dudley says: "Here in this garbage reservation can be seen large numbers of buzzards, feasting on dead horses or dogs, or perched on the cemetery walls, waiting for fresh consignments. Extensive lagoons and lakes of foecal matter taken from privy vaults lie spread upon the ground. A small section of this reservation faces the bay, and here the collector of the garbage has his living-quarters, in an old tumble-down hut. "The only cemetery is situated a mile and a half from the heart of the city. It is surrounded by a wall twelve feet high, which furnishes vault room. The cemetery is very small and the section reserved for paupers is more than overcrowded. During my visit ten graves were being dug. By actual measurement I found these graves three feet in depth. Coffins are loaned by the municipalities to paupers, and the bodies alone are buried. In these pauper graves three bodies are buried, one over the other; and then, in less than one year's time, they are reopened and made ready for new bodies. Portions of skeletons were thrown out of each of the ten graves I saw. In consideration of a dollar, a grave was opened for me, and I counted four skulls. In closing up the graves, these bones are packed around the new bodies. As a rule the topmost corpse is so near the surface that the earth has to be banked up a foot in order completely to cover it. "_Water._--This is one of the most serious problems which confront the municipal authorities of this city, and one of much concern to us, if American troops are to be quartered there. The supply is absolutely inadequate to the demands of the city. The hotels and a few residences have cement cisterns built in the ground and use rain-water; but the chief supply comes from a small (and said to be badly polluted) stream, the Jicotea River, a small branch of the Cannau. The water is pumped into two aqueducts; the principal one, which is called after the Jicotea River, holds four hundred thousand litres; a smaller one, the Bouffartique, holds three hundred thousand litres. Pipes from these two aqueducts run through a few of the streets, above ground, alongside the curbing. The gates are open only two hours daily. The hospitals use this water, after boiling. As a remedy for this condition, I am told, there was a project to bring water from a point twenty miles distant, from the falls of the Hanabanilla River, 1200 feet above the sea. Absolute freedom from pollution was claimed. It was abandoned on account of the war. The estimated cost for this work was $1,000,000. The Jicotea aqueduct is simply a large open cistern, built of rock and cement, attached to a brick building in which the Spanish quartermaster has his stores. There are about two hundred wells in the city, but infected, the privy sinks being within a few feet. "_Quarantine._--At a point nine miles from the city, on the western shore, I found, in my opinion, an ideal location for a quarantine station. The place, the Concha, owned by the Marquis de Apezteguia as a winter resort, can be purchased. The palace, built on a terrace near the water's edge, was burned by the insurgent forces. A pier thirty to fifty feet can be built so that steamers can have eight fathoms of water. An island about one-half a mile distant could be used, and a hospital for infectious and contagious diseases built. "In concluding this report I wish to call your attention to the probability of an extensive spread of smallpox in the interior. At a town eight hours' ride from Habana to Colon, I saw beggars convalescent from smallpox." During the first ten months in 1898 the total number of deaths in Cienfuegos was 3626, out of a population which before the war was 21,500; adding soldiers and _reconcentrados_, it might be said to be 25,000, and at these figures a monthly death-rate of 362 is something fearful to contemplate. Estimating the deaths for a year at 4144, we have a rate of 166 per 1000. In the ten years ending December 31, 1889, reported by Dr. Luis Perna, over fifty per cent. of the deaths were from infectious and contagious diseases due almost entirely to bad or no sanitation. During the same year the births exceeded the deaths by 1982, a much better showing than in Havana, the difference there being 12,433 against the population in four years, and in Matanzas, 2397 lost in eight years. Of the effect of proper sanitary regulations and personal attention on tuberculosis, Dr. Perna says: "There can be no doubt that the ravages of tuberculosis could be materially arrested by compliance with the laws of hygiene. Infractions of civil law may or may not be punished, but infractions of the laws of hygiene are inevitably paid for sooner or later. In combating tuberculosis we must consider the air we breathe, the food we eat, the roof that covers us, and the clothes we wear. The disease should be recognised as contagious. Phthisical patients should be kept in well-ventilated apartments; sputa should be disinfected, and clothing and utensils used by such patients should be disinfected." Matanzas is situated on high ground, with the rivers San Juan and Yumuri running through it, and the natural facilities for drainage are excellent; but only two streets have sewers, and these drains have few or no connections with buildings. The water supply is of excellent quality, from springs seven miles away; but only two thousand of the five thousand houses take it, and the majority of the people prefer to buy water from street vendors, who are quite as likely to get it from fever-infected wells as elsewhere. There are public fountains, but those who need Cuban water most are too lazy to carry it home. Privies and sinks are more numerous than modern closets, and are handled as elsewhere, with the usual results. The streets are narrow (thirty feet wide), dirty, and unpaved; in the wet season they are vile. The houses are built of porous stone, which absorbs the dampness; the floors, laid on the ground, are overflowed by the rains, and their smell at all times is difficult to describe and dangerous to health. The deaths per year for 1895 were 1465, with a nominal population of 50,000, although it was cut to 35,000 by the insurrection; in 1896, 2399; in 1897, 6795; and in 1898, to September, 3901--which fearful figures may be accounted for by the fact that Matanzas was the centre for _reconcentrados_, and they died like sheep--eighty per cent. of them from starvation. The only disinfection that could reach this condition was applied to Spain by the United States, and there will never be any more epidemics of starvation in Cuba, or any more _reconcentrados_, for that matter. But even without her _reconcentrado_ population, Matanzas is no health resort, and the cleansing hand must be applied to her early and rigorously. [Illustration: MARIANAO WATER VENDOR] Cardenas, a city of twenty thousand people, more or less, is set down in the midst of a swamp, rarely more than ten feet above sea-level, and oftener only three or four. Its narrow streets are lacking in pavements or sewers. Lying contiguous to the south-east side of the city are more than thirty thousand acres of swamp, a fecund breeding-ground for typhus-and yellow-fever germs. Twenty years ago a commission was appointed to inquire into the construction of a canal to drain this swamp into the Anton River, but at this present date no canal is in sight, and the fever germs go merrily on in their work of supplying the cemeteries with subjects. The water supply is good, but many of the people prefer to buy dangerous well-water from street vendors, because of its cheapness. At Cape Hicacos, near Cardenas, are extensive salt-pits, the chlorides of which are supposed to act as a disinfectant, and that immediate locality is said to be the most healthful along the coast. Puerto Principe, a town of forty thousand inhabitants, the largest of the inland cities, is situated on high ground, well watered and well drained, and though antiquated and utterly lacking in modern conveniences or sanitary regulations, as they are known among northern people, is so much more healthful than other Cuban towns as to warrant a milder animadversion than in the case of others. Yellow fever is only known sporadically, if at all, and contagion and infection are so much less flourishing than in the coast towns that Puerto Principe seems positively healthful in comparison, albeit in an American community the condition of the city would warrant the impeachment of any board of health having control of its sanitation. Santiago de Cuba, with a population of, say forty thousand, is next to Havana in importance among the cities of Cuba, and has been accumulating filth since 1514, when the first Spaniards settled there. Just what nearly four hundred years of Spanish sanitation means is better imagined than experienced. Moreover, its location is down among hills which shut off the breeze, and in summer the city becomes intolerably hot and dangerous to health. It is situated on a hillside, with a landlocked bay before it, removed from all sea or coast currents, and for 384 years the drainage of the town--not by sewers, for they do not exist--has gone into this bay, until its bottom and waters are vile beyond expression. In the city itself filth everywhere prevails--or did prevail until the United States authorities took charge, since which time Governor Wood and his assistants have done an amount of cleaning up that is as wholesome as it is difficult to accomplish. This work has been so vigorously prosecuted and the results so beneficial that a chapter has been devoted to the subject. It is said that in time man may become accustomed to any condition of life, and the dozen generations of Santiagoans seem to have got used to their town, for its ordinary death-rate was but 29.8 per 1000, with an increase to 33 to 35 when yellow fever or smallpox became more violent than usual. In 1895 the death-rate went up to 51.2 per 1000, and in 1896 to 82.77. Four thousand people died in that year, and this is the last record known. This large increase was due to the presence of unacclimated troops from Spain, and though it may explain the high death-rate, it scarcely can excuse a sanitary condition which is so fatal to Spanish soldiers, who have had experience with Spanish sanitary regulations in their own country until they ought to be almost used to it. In 1896 there were 372 deaths from yellow fever and 509 from smallpox. Santiago has one inventive sanitarian in the person of Dr. Garcia, who, five years ago, devised a "cold box" for the case of yellow-fever patients. As is known, the frost will kill the germs of yellow fever; and as natural frost is impossible in Cuba Dr. Garcia hit upon the idea of producing artificial cold. His device is simple enough. The main feature is a small house, say five feet by seven, and six feet high, which is practically a refrigerator, with double roof and walls for packing the ice. A window is put in for light, and the patient is laid in his bed in a temperature of about freezing. He has no attendants inside, except when needed, and he is watched through the window. This method usually kills or cures the patient in from twelve to thirty-six hours. At first the box was not successful, for condensation practically drowned the patient out; but that was remedied by draining the water off. There is a great difference of opinion in relation to the efficacy of this treatment; some physicians entirely disapproving it, while others as strongly recommend it. What may be done for the proper sanitary regulation of Santiago is a serious problem, as, owing to the distance from the sea and the landlocked character of the bay, the sewage, which may be easily drained down the sloping streets of the town, is bound to remain near the shore. For the present, Major Barbour, Superintendent of the Santiago Street Department, disposes of the sewage by sprinkling it with petroleum and burning it. Manzanillo, population nine thousand, with a large and beautiful military plaza, has filthy streets and no public improvements of any kind looking to the health or comfort of the people; and the people seem to like it. The streets are unpaved, and Manzanillo mud is an alliterative term which has become a household word for the nastiest mud on the Island. The town is twenty feet above the bay, with hills to the rear, and near it are great swamps filled with mosquitoes and malaria, which spread themselves abroad in every direction. Guantanamo, population nine thousand, seven miles inland, one hundred and fifteen feet above the bay of the same name, is situated on the river Guaso, and might be easily and thoroughly drained; but no efforts have been made in that direction, and malaria and fevers prevail. With any kind of decent care, the city could be made as healthful as any in the same latitude. Pinar del Rio, the capital of its province, with 5500 population, is situated 25 miles from the sea, 160 feet above it, and on a hill 70 feet high. It is in the midst of the famous Vuelta Abajo tobacco district, and it might be made a clean town; but its streets are narrow and filthy, its people are a mixture of French and African, and it is a reflection on the great American Republic, in that it was founded in 1776. Batabano, the southern seaport of Havana, thirty miles away, in its narrow, dirty streets presents a condition of neglect and nastiness suggesting that it is also a receptacle for the surplus refuse of the capital. Guanabacoa, a high and beautifully located city of twenty-five thousand people, just outside of Havana, several degrees cooler than the capital city, in the midst of pleasant breezes and cool groves, has narrow, filthy streets, no pavements, no public improvements, small houses with no modern conveniences, huddled together, and is a dozen times worse than if nature had not done so much for it. Güines and Marianao are so much cleaner and sweeter than any other towns as to make one wonder why they are the exception instead of the rule. Possibly it is hardly fair to call attention to or animadvert upon the sanitary regulations and conditions of Santa Clara, an inland city and capital of Santa Clara Province, seeing that in ten and a half months of 1897 there were over one hundred thousand deaths in the province, of which nearly one third occurred in Santa Clara district. These were chiefly _reconcentrados_, and show that there are some things Spanish even worse than Spanish sanitation. The town has a population of twenty thousand, is situated in a healthful locality, and while little has been done toward public health, there is no yellow fever. As with the cities and towns above mentioned, with the two exceptions named, so of all Cuban aggregations of population. Everywhere there is ignorance, carelessness, filth, disease, and death, and only education, care, and time can remedy the evil. It may not, cannot be that Cuba will ever enjoy the robuster health of the north, but she can be clean, and to that end must every ability of knowledge, labour, and means be directed, not only by those who are in authority, but by those whose direct welfare is at stake. Outside of the cities, conditions prevail which will be more difficult, if not in many cases impossible, to remedy. Much of the Island along the coasts is swampy; there malaria and fevers breed, and these sections, if not capable of drainage, must be deserted by man, and left to the alligators, toads, and lizards. Many of the swamps may be drained and the land converted into fields yielding rich harvests; these should be given the proper attention. In many places the tropical forests are of such dense and tangled growth that no sunlight ever penetrates them, and here, after nightfall, deadly miasmas arise, full of poison and disease. Vast areas of such forests are filled with valuable timber, and when these woods are cleared and converted into money, and the sunlight can get in and exercise its saving grace upon the land, a wonderful improvement will follow. Back from the coasts, particularly in the eastern part of the Island, the land is high and well drained, with mountains in some portions rising from five thousand to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. While the heat and humidity incidental to the latitude prevail all over the Island, they are much less in the uplands than along the coast, and the climate for half the year is very agreeable and the air has a brilliant clearness that has become famous. Over all these lands there should be in the future a population which should develop into a contradiction of the tradition that the people of the tropics live because they are too lazy to die. CHAPTER IX CITIES AND TOWNS OF CUBA The political divisions of Cuba, known as provinces, are six in number, and are named as follows, beginning at the west: Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba; the capital city of each bearing the same name as its province. Of the provinces it may be said that Pinar del Rio, with an area of 8486 square miles, has a population of 225,891 (167,160 white and 58,731 black), and is the centre of the tobacco industry, the famous Vuelta Abajo district lying within its limits; sugar, coffee, rice, corn, cotton, and fruits are also raised. Havana, with an area of 8610 square miles, has a population of 451,928 (344,417 white and 107,511 black). It is the centre of manufacture, the capital province, and the most populous province of the Island. Matanzas, with an area of 14,967 square miles, has a population of 259,578 (143,169 white and 115,409 black), and is the centre of the sugar industry; corn, rice, honey, wax, and fruits are produced and the province contains a deposit of peat and copper. Santa Clara, with an area of 23,083 square miles, has a population of 354,122 (244,345 white and 109,777 black), and it is rich in sugar, fruits, and minerals, including gold deposits in the Arino River. Puerto Principe, with an area of 32,341 square miles, has a population of 67,789 (54,232 white and 13,557 black), and is a mountainous region, with the largest caves and the highest mountains; building and cabinet woods and guava jelly are its chief products. Santiago de Cuba, with an area of 35,119 square miles, the largest of the provinces, has a population of 272,379 (57,980 white and 114,399 black), and not only possesses all the agricultural products found in the other provinces, but also has deposits of gold, iron, copper, zinc, asphalt, manganese, mercury, marble and alabaster, rock crystal, and gems, and its commerce is most extensive. [Illustration: SQUARE IN FRONT OF GOVERNOR'S PALACE AT SANTIAGO DE CUBA.] There are 115 cities and towns in the Island having an estimated population of 200 and upwards named as follows: CITIES. Population. | CITIES. Population. | Havana................... 200,000 | Macurijes................. 4,100 Matanzas................. 50,000 | Bayamo.................... 3,634 Puerto Principe.......... 40,679 | San Luis.................. 3,556 Santiago de Cuba......... 40,000 | San Cristobal............. 3,522 Cienfuegos............... 25,790 | Guira de Melena........... 3,500 Guanabacoa............... 25,000 | Morón..................... 3,017 Santa Clara.............. 24,635 | La Cruces................. 3,000 Cardenas................. 20,505 | Alfonso XII............... 3,000 Trinidad................. 18,000 | Arroyo Navanijo........... 3,000 Sancti Spiritu........... 17,540 | Sabanillo del Encomendador 2,991 Sagua la Grande.......... 14,000 | Palmira................... 2,987 Regla.................... 10,486 | Guanajayabo............... 2,879 Manzanillo............... 9,036 | Nueva Paz................. 2,737 Guantanamo............... 9,000 | Alquizar.................. 2,700 San Antonio de las Baños. 7,500 | San Felipe................ 2,311 San Juan de los Remedios. 7,230 | San Juan de las Yeras..... 2,267 San Fernando de Nuevitas. 6,991 | Jaruco.................... 2,200 San Julian de los Guines. 6,828 | San Jose de las Lajas..... 2,170 Colón.................... 6,525 | La Esperanza.............. 2,147 Bejucal.................. 6,239 | San Juan y Martinez....... 2,100 Jorellanos (Bemba)....... 6,000 | Corral Nuevo.............. 2,092 Santiago de las Vegas.... 6,000 | Consolacion del Sur....... 2,000 Guanajay................. 6,000 | Guines.................... 2,000 Pinar del Rio............ 5,500 | Santa Cruz................ 2,000 Holguin.................. 5,500 | Quemados de Guines........ 2,000 Caibarien................ 5,500 | Quivican.................. 1,950 Baracoa.................. 5,213 | Bahia Honda............... 1,889 Guira.................... 5,000 | Batabano.................. 1,864 La Isabela............... 5,000 | Bolondron................. 1,758 Artemisa................. 5,000 | Santa Domingo............. 1,750 Santa Isabel de las Lajas 4,924 | Mariel.................... 1,637 Guana.................... 4,650 | Cuevitas.................. 1,629 Gibara................... 4,608 | Cervantes................. 1,560 Macagua.................. 4,100 | Ranchuelo................. 1,533 Cabañas.................. 1,509 | Managua................... 896 San Antonio de Cabezas .. 1,500 | Ceiba del Agua............ 892 Zaza..................... 1,500 | Roque..................... 800 Calaboya................. 1,500 | Salud..................... 800 Cartagena................ 1,497 | Canasi.................... 700 Calabazar................ 1,481 | Caney..................... 700 Palmillas................ 1,471 | Jibacos................... 696 Aguacate................. 1,427 | Cidra..................... 695 San Diego del Valle...... 1,403 | Vereda Nueva.............. 672 Jiguani.................. 1,393 | Santa Maria del Rosario... 660 Mantua................... 1,380 | Rancho Velez.............. 656 Cayajabos................ 1,352 | Santa Ana ............ 601 Marianao................. 1,225 | San Jose de los Remos..... 570 San Antonio de Rio Blanco | Camarones................. 546 del Norte.............. 1,200 | Lagunillas................ 520 Candelaria............... 1,200 | Guane..................... 510 Ciego de Avila........... 1,167 | San Matias de Rio Blanco.. 400 Catalina................. 1,165 | Alto Songo................ 400 San Antonio de las Vegas. 1,136 | Limonar................... 330 Tapaste.................. 1,130 | Amaro..................... 320 San Nicolas.............. 1,100 | San Miguel................ 300 Melena del Sur........... 1,082 | Madruga................... 300 Santa Cruz del Sur....... 1,000 | Cimarrones................ 300 Bainoa................... 1,000 | Mangar.................... 209 Sagua de Tanamo.......... 981 | La Boca................... 200 Vinales.................. 925 | Alonso Rojos.............. 200 In addition to these are 132 places with less than 200 population, including railroad stations, bathing and health resorts, and farm hamlets. As will be observed by the student of municipal nomenclature, the Spanish were liberal to Cuba in christening the towns in the Island, however parsimonious the mother country was in respect of all other things; and many Cuban towns have more name than anything else. The oldest town is Baracoa, in the province of Santiago de Cuba. It was laid out in 1512. Its chief products are bananas, cocoa, and cocoa oil, and there are some remarkable caves near by, noted for beautiful stalactites and well preserved fossil human remains. The largest city in the Island is Havana, the capital, to which a chapter is devoted elsewhere in this volume. [Illustration: A MULE TRAIN, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.] FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P. Matanzas, in size the second city of the Island, and the capital of the province of Matanzas, is, in some particulars, the most attractive city of Cuba, although but one-fourth the size of Havana. It lies seventy-four miles by rail to the east of Havana, on the fine bay of Matanzas, with beautiful hills at its back. The town is divided into three parts by the rivers San Juan and Yumuri, two streams which water the valley of Yumuri, situated behind the hills of Matanzas, and presenting the most exquisite scenery in Cuba. The climate and soil of the valley make Yumuri, to Cubans, synonymous with poesy and Paradise. Notwithstanding the commercial importance of Matanzas, the Spanish authorities have neglected the wharves and permitted its harbour to become so filled with sediment from the river that ships are compelled to load and unload by means of lighters in the roadstead. The city was founded in 1693, and has paved streets, usually thirty feet in width, with three-foot sidewalks; interesting stuccoed houses of two stories, coloured drab and ochre, with balconies; pleasant parks, with fountains and flowers; a pleasure promenade and drive--the Paseo; one of the best hotels in Cuba; several theatres, among them the Esteban; some notable churches, including the Hermitage, on Mount Montserrat, at whose shrine marvellous cures are said to be effected. The people are well content. The leading industries are rum distilleries, sugar refineries, guava-jelly factories, machine and railroad-car shops. Shipments of sugar and molasses to the United States in 1891-95 were about $60,000,000. The city has gas-works and an electric-light plant, but no street-cars, and since 1872 it has had a fine water supply, though only about half the houses are connected with the water system, and many of the people still buy water of street vendors, without knowledge as to the source of supply or purity of the water. Sewers run through only two streets, though the location of the city is well adapted to secure excellent drainage. The suburbs, or rather divisions, of the city by the river are known as Versailles, on the north-east, and to the south-east, Pueblo Nuevo. Through the latter part of the city leads the road to the famous caves of Bellamar, three and a half miles, where many invalids resort for the health-giving qualities of the warm air of the caverns. The most beautiful and striking feature of Matanzas is the cañon of the Yumuri, a great gorge of perpendicular walls green-clad with tropical vegetation through which the rivers of the Yumuri Valley flow down to the sea. This is a constant resort for the pleasure-loving Matanzans, and they thoroughly realise its beauty and value to the city. There are many interesting drives and excursions by river and rail from Matanzas. The waggon roads extending into the interior, as everywhere in Cuba, are in wretched condition; the railroad connections by several routes are fairly good, the roads being equipped with American-cars and engines. Its population of fifty thousand is nominal, having been reduced about one-third by the war. The third city in the Island is Puerto Principe, capital of the province of Puerto Principe, and known to the natives as Camagüey, the original name of the town and province. It is forty-five miles from the south coast and thirty-five from the north, although it is forty-five miles from its seaport, Nuevitas, with which it is connected by its only railroad. It is located in the midst of what once was the grazing district,--though the cattle are now destroyed,--and being on a plain seven hundred feet above the sea it is a healthful place. Camagüey is a back-number town, so to speak, having narrow streets with narrow sidewalks, or none at all, old houses, old fashions, and fewer foreigners than any of the other Cuban towns. It is distinctively Cuban, and the new era of Cuba will no doubt work a long time on the good people of Camagüey before they set aside the old things and step out into the procession of progress, clothed in the uniforms of the modern "hustlers." In this city of over forty thousand people there is not a hotel, and the inhabitants are noted for their hospitality. Of great commercial significance is Cienfuegos, one of the south-coast cities, and in some respects one of the best towns on the Island. It is situated on the landlocked bay of Jagua, with one of the safest harbours in the world, and though built only since 1819, and restored after a hurricane in 1825, it has developed a spirit of energy and progress rare in Cuban cities. It has an extensive and growing commerce, with numerous wharves and piers for its shipping; a railroad 190 miles to Havana and one to Sagua la Grande on the north coast; electric lights and gas-works; 25,790 people; 3000 stone and wooden houses; the famous Terry theatre and one of the finest plazas in Cuba; a good location for drainage, but with stagnant water in the streets, and no sewers; much bad health, and one of the finest opportunities on earth to take advantage of the new order of things and convert its energy and youth into a power that will make Cienfuegos the Chicago of Cuba. There is one good hotel. The only serious strike that ever occurred in Cuba took place in Cienfuegos among the longshoremen, and resulted in the sending of all the recalcitrants by the authorities to the Isle of Pines as criminals. The bay of Jagua is noted for its beautiful clear blue water with a bottom of the whitest sand. The climate is more variable than that of Cuban coast cities as a rule, the mercury marking as high as ninety-three degrees in summer and going down into the fifties during the night in the rainy season. The Cuban city held to be the most healthful, though sanitary regulations are practically unknown, is Trinidad, in the province of Santa Clara. It is also one of the oldest, having been founded by Diego Velasquez in 1514. It is three miles in the interior from its seaport, Casilda, though coastwise vessels of light draft can approach it by the river Guaurabo. The town has a picturesque location, on the slope of La Vija ("Lookout"), a hill rising nine hundred feet above the sea. The harbour of Casilda is three miles long by one and a half miles wide, and has only about eleven feet of water. From this bay Cortez sailed for Mexico. There are several fine public parks and drives, and socially Trinidad in the winter season is one of the gayest cities on the Island. It is lighted by gas, and though it has no sewers, its location is such that the rains keep it washed clean. The population is eighteen thousand. In good times Trinidad has shipped to the United States $903,700 worth of sugar, mahogany, coffee, and honey in one year, but times have been poor in recent years, and Trinidad is one of the towns which will feel the reviving effects of the new era of prosperity. Santa Clara, the capital of the province of that name, has a population of twenty-five thousand, and is popularly known as Villa Clara. It was founded in 1689, and was once known for its great wealth and beautiful women; its glory in this latter regard still continues. It has one excellent hotel, kept in modern fashion, and a fine theatre. Its railway connections are excellent in all directions; indeed, it is the terminus of the Cuban system of railways. It is 248 miles by rail from Havana, and thirty miles from the north and forty from the south coast. Its location is high, and a fine grazing country surrounds it. Minerals also abound, and ten thousand tons of a fine asphaltum have been shipped in a year. Silver yielding as much as $200 per ton has been found, but the mines have not been worked. Evidences of natural gas are present near the town. Santa Clara has wide streets, and despite its healthful location, it is, by reason of poor or no sanitary regulations, an unhealthful place, though there is never any yellow fever. [Illustration: YUMURI RIVER AND ENTRANCE TO THE VALLEY, MATANZAS.] The capital of the province of Santiago de Cuba is Santiago de Cuba, generally known as Cuba to the natives and Santiago to foreigners. Owing to its war record it is the best-known town in the Island. It is situated on the south coast, one hundred miles from the west end of Cuba, and its harbour is one of the safest and finest in the world, having an opening into the sea only one hundred and eighty yards in width, extending back six miles into a beautiful bay, three miles wide at its greatest width. Santiago has a population of forty thousand (estimated sixty thousand in 1895), and is the second oldest city in Cuba, the capital having been removed thither from Baracoa in 1514 by Velasquez. It is historically the most interesting city in Cuba, and it promises to be for the future second in importance to none in the Island, except Havana. It became a bishopric as early as 1527 and is now the metropolis of the Catholic Church in Cuba, the Archbishop of Santiago being the Primate. The celebrations of church festivals are conducted with ceremonies more elaborate than those anywhere else in the Island, and the cathedral, in the Hispano-American style, is the largest in Cuba, if not the handsomest. It is said that in a Santiago theatre Adelina Patti made her first public appearance, at the age of fourteen years; Velasquez is buried in this city, and so is Antomarchi, the physician of Napoleon, who died, as his emperor did, upon a foreign island. Cuba's greatest poet, José Maria Heredia, was born here, as were Milanes, Dona Luisa Perez de Montes de Oca, Dona Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanda; and Placido, next to Heredia in merit, passed several years here. Although well located for drainage, Santiago is one of the most unhealthful towns in Cuba, and its beautiful bay is little better than a cesspool. Yellow fever and smallpox have been the prevailing epidemics for years, but under the new order a new condition will arise. Santiago, with very poor business houses and offices, does a flourishing trade, wholesale, retail, and in shipping. The surrounding country has many people employed not only in agriculture, but in mining as well, for Santiago is the centre of the mining district. Its railway facilities are practically nil, being located two hundred miles east of the last railway leading anywhere. The city is Moorish in its aspect. It is sufficiently ancient to be without hotels, though there are several clubs where civilised beings may be entertained comfortably. The fortifications about the city are interesting: the Morro,--which is one hundred years older than that of Havana,--La Socapa, La Estrella, and Smith Key--all these have received much mention during the late war. The mining interests of Santiago will be considered under a separate chapter. Cardenas may be said to be the newest town in Cuba, and is known as "the American city," owing to the fact that many Americans are located here in business, or make it their headquarters, with business interests elsewhere in the Island. It was founded in 1828, is a thriving town, with wide streets, numerous wharves, a plaza with a bronze statue of Columbus, and is a purely commercial city. The harbour is shallow, and the piers running into it are from three hundred to one thousand feet in length. Although without sewers and located on swampy ground, Cardenas is not unhealthful as the term is understood in Cuba. There are fine water-works, but many of the people still prefer to buy water of street vendors. Gas and electricity light the town. Its chief business is in sugar, but, unlike other Cuban cities, it possesses numerous and varied manufactures, producing liquors, beers, metal-work, soap, cigars, fabrics, etc. It has connection by steamer and rail with the chief points of the Island. The population is 20,505, over 15,000 of which is white. Cardenas exported goods in 1894 to the amount of $10,008,565, of which $9,682,335 was in sugar shipped to the United States, as against $10,000,000 the previous year. Her imports in 1892 were $4,900,000, and in 1895 the United States sent 32,283 tons of coal to this port. Situated in one of the richest agricultural sections of Cuba, Cardenas is also not poor in mineral wealth, notably asphalt. Peculiar mines of asphalt are found in the waters of the bay. The mineral is broken loose by bars dropped from ten to twelve feet through the water upon it, and the pieces are scooped up with a net. The supply of the mineral is renewed from some unknown source as fast as it is taken away. One of these mines has furnished as much as 20,000 tons, and the supply is inexhaustible. Asphalt of the first grade is worth from $80 to $125 per ton. Sagua la Grande, twenty-five miles from the mouth of the river of that name, is almost wholly a sugar town. It has a population of 14,000, and is the northern terminus of the Havana Railway system. Its seaport is La Isabela, with a poor harbour; and its exports in 1895 reached nearly $5,000,000--with a great falling off since, as it has suffered as much as any town in the Island from the insurrection. As an indication of this it may be said that immediately before the insurrection there were 23,500 cattle, 4500 horses, 4000 hogs, 700 sheep, and 450 mules in the Sagua district, practically all of which have been destroyed or stolen. Sagua has an ice plant whose product has sold at $3 per hundredweight. The railway from Sagua to Cienfuegos marks the boundary between the western and eastern districts of Cuba. Caibarien is another nineteenth-century town, having been founded in 1822. Its houses are of brick, and its warehouses of recent styles of architecture. Its population is fifty-five hundred, and it is said to be not unhealthful, though its general level is not much more than ten feet above the sea, and the country is swampy. Its chief industry is sugar, although recently an active business in sponges has grown up, principally of local consumption, the annual value approaching half a million of dollars. The harbour is extensive, but shallow and poor. A railway extends to San Andres, twenty-eight and one-half miles in the interior. Some waggon roads, unusually good for Cuba, connect it with various sugar estates. The future possibilities of Caibarien are numerous and great. Manzanillo is the best town on the south coast between Trinidad and Santiago, and was founded in 1784. It has a population of nine thousand, and is the seaport of several interior towns and a rich sugar district, and is also the gateway to the fertile valley of the Cauto River, the most important stream in the Island. It has a fine plaza, and numerous inferior houses on fairly good streets, wider than the usual Cuban street. There are no water-works, gas-works, electric lights, or street-cars. The town is one of the most unhealthful in the Island, and of Manzanillo mud the author has spoken in a previous chapter. The principal shipments are lumber, tobacco, sugar, honey, and wax. In 1892-93-94 four million feet of mahogany and two million one hundred thousand feet of cedar were exported. Pinar del Rio, the capital of its province, should be particularly interesting to Americans, as it was founded in 1776. It is a brick and stone town of 5500 population and is neither clean nor attractive. It has very few foreigners and is in no sense a modern place. It is, however, of commercial importance, being the centre of the famous Vuelta Abajo tobacco district, which produces the finest tobacco in the world. Pinar del Rio is essentially a tobacco town. It is connected with Havana by a highroad (_calzada_) and also by railway. The town is lacking in most of the modern conveniences, and the spirit of the people is not quick to respond to new notions. An alphabetical list of the lesser towns may serve a useful purpose to the reader whose geography of Cuba is as yet not complete. Artemisa (Pinar del Rio) is a town of five thousand people, with a paved road to Guanajay, nine miles, and a railway to Havana, thirty-five miles. It is in a fine tobacco and sugar district, and is a low and unhealthful place, but beautifully shaded with palms. [Illustration: PANORAMA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAVES, MATANZAS.] Bahia Honda (Pinar del Rio), with about two thousand population, is one of the chief seaports of the mountain coast; and although it possesses none of the visible evidences of future promise, still it is one of the places which impress the visitor with belief in its future greatness. Its population is largely black, its wharves are miserable, its houses are poor; though over one hundred years old, it is not a port of entry--and still Bahia is promising. The harbour is one of the finest on the coast, the surrounding country is rich in tobacco and sugar soil, the climatic conditions are favourable, and the new times will be good times for Bahia. Cabanas (Pinar del Rio), with a population of fifteen hundred, has a landlocked, shallow harbour, four miles by seven in extent, and its connections with the interior are bad. It came into prominence during the war, and was partly destroyed by General Maceo. Consolacion del Sur (Pinar del Rio) is, after Bahia Honda, the chief commercial town of the province. It has a population of two thousand, and is in the centre of the Vuelta Abajo tobacco district, with eight hundred plantations tributary to it. Guanajay (Pinar del Rio) has a population of six thousand, is the junction of several paved roads, and is considerably above the average interior town in progressive spirit. It is lacking, however, in modern conveniences and suffered by the war. San Cristobal (Pinar del Rio), though one of the oldest towns in the Island, is very enterprising and its people are energetic and prosperous. It has a railway and good waggon roads, and its thirty-five hundred people have a good climate and good health. It is in the midst of the Vuelta Abajo tobacco district. San Diego de los Banos (Pinar del Rio) is to be especially mentioned for its wonderful sulphur baths. In one enclosure there are four of these springs, having a temperature of ninety degrees, and they have effected cures in leprosy, other cutaneous diseases, and rheumatism which are passing belief. It has beautiful surroundings of hill and sea and its caves of Arcos de Carguanabo are famous. Vinales (Pinar del Rio), a small town of 925 people, is the interior terminus of the railroad running to the north coast and the celebrated San Vincente mineral springs. Batabano (Havana) is the southern seaport of the city of Havana, thirty-three miles to the north, and connected with it by rail and paved roads. The town, in two parts, La Plaza and Surgirdero, is meanly built, and has about nineteen hundred people. It has no harbour, but is the western terminus of the south-coast line of steamers. The waters about Batabano are notable for the beautiful submarine views they present to observers on steamers. Batabano is hot and unhealthful. Bejucal (Havana), built in 1710, has a population of six thousand two hundred, an elevation of three hundred feet, and a situation in the midst of pleasing scenery. The town itself is unattractive to the eye, but its health is good, the people being noted for their long lives. Cojimar (Havana), four miles from Havana, has a beautiful sand beach, the finest in Cuba, and in time will become a profitable seaside resort, though now unimproved. The British landed here in 1762. Guanabacoa (Havana) is practically a suburb of Havana and has a population of twenty-five thousand. With every opportunity and possibility of being a clean, modern city, it is quite the reverse. Güines (Havana), thirty miles from Havana over a fine waggon road, and forty-four by rail, has a population of about seven thousand, and one of the most desirable situations in the Island. It has bridges over the river Catalina, a good hotel, a fine railway station; about it lies a rich agricultural and grazing country, and the town is, in respect of health, thrift, and progress, a model town--for Cuba. Jaruco (Havana), with a population of two thousand two hundred, claims recognition chiefly because it is clean. Naturally its health is better than that of most Cuban towns. Madruga (Havana) is famed for its warm mineral springs. It is fifty-five miles from Havana by rail. Population three hundred. Marianao (Havana), a suburb of Havana six miles away, has a population of twelve hundred, and is said to be the cleanest and prettiest town in Cuba. Its people are entirely of the better class. Regla (Havana), a suburb of Havana, connected with the city by ferries, has the largest and finest sugar warehouses in the world and a bull-ring vying in popularity with those of Havana. San Antonio de los Banos (Havana), with seven thousand five hundred people, twenty miles from Havana, is the most popular mineral-springs resort in the Island and its climate is famous for its health-giving qualities. Colon (Matanzas), on the railway between Matanzas and Cardenas, in the heart of the sugar-producing district of this section, has six thousand five hundred people and is of much commercial importance. Like all the others, it needs public improvements. Jovellanos (Matanzas), also known as Bemba, is a coloured town, the bulk of its population being negroes, and its only hotel is kept by a Chinaman. Macagua (Matanzas) is noted for its extensive sugar estates. Some of the largest in Cuba are immediately around it. Population four thousand one hundred. It has a railway to Colon and Santa Clara. Calaboya (Santa Clara) has a population of fifteen hundred and possesses, in the bridge over the Calaboya River, the longest railway bridge in Cuba. Otherwise it is not important. La Cruces (Santa Clara) is a railway junction and was at one time actively engaged in shipping horses, cattle, and sugar. The people are active and energetic, and have been complimented with the name of the "Yankees of Cuba." La Isabela (Santa Clara), called also Concha and La Boca, is the seaport of Sagua la Grande, and has five thousand people. It is the shore terminus of the railway to Sagua and is of considerable commercial importance, with a cosmopolitan people. Remedios (Santa Clara), with a population of seven thousand, is in a fine country and is one of the cities of the future, naturally and logically. Sancti Spiritus (Santa Clara), also known as Santo Espiritu, founded in 1514, is one of the old towns of the Island. Despite its size (seventeen thousand), it is of no great commercial importance, and is a dirty town in a good location for cleanliness. Santa Isabel (Santa Clara), with a population of five thousand, does a good business in sugar and cattle. Cienfuegos is its seaport and is connected with it by a railroad twenty-five miles long. Tunas de Zaza (Santa Clara), with fifteen hundred population, is in such a poor country agriculturally and aquatically, that the railway has a monopoly in carrying vegetables and water supply to the people. The town is hot and healthful. It has shipped as much as half a million dollars' worth of sugar, mahogany, cedar, honey, beeswax, etc., to the United States in one year. Nuevitas (Puerto Principe), population seven thousand, is a town of promise and no public improvements. Water, in the dry season, commands nearly as high a price as whiskey. It is the seaport of Puerto Principe, Cuba's largest inland town, and is connected with it by forty-five miles of railroad. It has a fine harbour and a good location for drainage. It was at or near Nuevitas that Columbus first saw Cuba. Its annual exports to the United States have, in a good year, exceeded one million dollars. Banes (Santiago de Cuba) is noted for its fruit business, as many as 4,651,000 bunches of bananas having been exported since 1890. Thirty-two thousand pineapples were shipped in 1894, but the insurrection ruined the business in 1896. Baracoa (Santiago de Cuba) is the most eastern port of importance on the north coast. It is the oldest town in Cuba and formerly was the capital. It was founded in 1512 by Velasquez, whose house is still shown to the traveller. Baracoa is far behind the times, but it has all the potentialities for future greatness. The country along the coast is not healthful, but the interior is not only fine scenically but also excellent as to its health standard. There are no good roads and no railways of any kind. Baracoa imports about nineteen thousand pints of beer per annum from the United States, and Milwaukee sells at twenty-five cents a bottle. Copper, cocoanuts and oil, bananas, and cocoa constitute the exports. General Maceo and his followers inaugurated the last Cuban revolution in Baracoa, on the 20th of February, 1895, and within a year had marched through the Island to Mantua in the west of Pinar del Rio. [Illustration: THE PLAZA, CIENFUEGOS.] Bayamo (Santiago de Cuba), with a population of about 4000 and an age of about 350 years, is a Spanish relic city, being very like the earlier cities of the mother country. It has eleven churches. It has none of the modern conveniences and no railways, and its waggon roads are impassable in the wet season. Bayamo never had a boom. It was the cradle of the Ten Years' War. Cobre (Santiago de Cuba), founded in 1558, is famous for its copper mines. It has a magnificent sanctuary, in which is the little statue known as the _Virgin of Charity_, which is claimed to have effected miraculous cures of all kinds. Gibara (Santiago de Cuba), also spelled with a "J," is the seaport for Holguin, with which it is connected by a railroad seventeen miles long and by a very bad waggon road. It has a population of about five thousand. It is greatly in need of improvement. Guantanamo (Santiago de Cuba) has a population of nine thousand, and is the centre of the coffee district. Other agricultural products and minerals abound. It was founded in 1843, and still is not a modern town in the matter of conveniences. It is unhealthful because it has no sanitary provisions. It has a fine harbour and is of much commercial importance. It came into prominence during the late war. Holguin (Santiago de Cuba), with a high and healthful location and fifty-five hundred people, ought to be a much better town than it is, and will improve under the new order. It is fifteen miles from the north coast, and is in the centre of the hardwood industry. It was of great military importance during the late war. Jiguani (Santiago de Cuba), with a picturesque mountainous location, and an old castle in the vicinity, will be attractive to tourists and artists. Of the 570 islands, or keys, on the north coast of Cuba and the 730 on the south, the Isle of Pines is the only one of sufficient size to be of importance; its area being 1214 square miles to 1350 square miles for all the other 1299 Islands. The Isle of Pines belongs to the judicial district of Bejucal (Havana), and was first called "Evangelist Island" by Columbus, who discovered it in 1494. It has a population of 2000, of which 1800 is about equally divided between its two chief towns, Nueva Gerona and Santa Fe. The people are rather superior to those of the Island of Cuba, and the climate is drier and better than that of the main Island. Besides the pines which flourish on the island, there is a great quantity of mahogany, cedar, and other hardwoods. There are deposits of fine marble, as well as of silver, mercury, and iron, yet to be developed. Turtle fishing and pineapple raising flourish to some extent. The Isle of Pines is really two islands, separated by a tide-covered swamp, over which there is a causeway. The south portion is rough and barren, while the northern part is fertile and pleasing to the eye. The towns are poor. Its mineral waters are much recommended for affections of the stomach. A few of the other islands, or keys, are inhabited in a small way, and the largest of them, Cayo Romano, has an area of 140 square miles, with three hills rising from its flat plain. CHAPTER X HAVANA "Oh Queen of many-coloured garb And red-tiled crown!--in glory The poets who Have sung of you Have set your name and story. "No fairer Queen, they sing, than you, The fairest of the daughters Of Southern seas Who take their ease Beside the sunlit waters. "And I, as they, would sing thy praise As is to be expected; But ere I sing, Oh Queenly Thing, Won't you be disinfected?" W. J. LAMPTON. Whatever may be said of Havana, the capital city of the Island of Cuba, however sonorously its high-sounding name, San Cristobal de la Habana, may be rolled forth, what titles of Queen of the Antilles, Key of the New World, or other titular effervescence may be thrown about it by the sentimental Spaniard, or the vivid-minded visitor, the plain, prosaic fact remains that Havana for centuries has smelt bad, and man's other four senses are utterly routed from any field of enjoyment when his nose goes on the warpath. Unfortunately Havana has, for this reason, never been the city of delight that Nature intended it should be for at least one third of every year of its existence. In the great majority of instances bad smells arise from a condition of sanitary neglect which means bad health; and Havana has been, to all intents and purposes, a plague spot for centuries. Yellow fever is always present, malarial diseases of all kinds are prevalent, smallpox rings the changes at every opportunity, and every ill that tropic flesh is heir to has found a home and government encouragement in Havana. This chapter on Cuba's capital city is thus introduced because, before anything else is done looking to the reorganisation and the regeneration of the city and the Island, thorough measures for the health of the people must be formulated and put into immediate and active operation. With the new order must come thousands of new people; and if these newcomers, accustomed, as the poorest of them are, to better sanitary regulations and conditions than have existed in Havana and Cuba, are permitted to enter the Island and inhale its deadly stenches, Cuba will become an international cemetery and it will receive a backset worse than the worst Spain ever did for it. Whatever Havana is now commercially, the time was when it ranked eighth among the commercial cities of the globe, and the wealth of its people was of the fabulous kind which characterised everything in the New World. The city was founded about 1519, and it received its name, San Cristobal de la Habana, from a small town of that name established by Velasquez near Batabano, on the south coast. This was practically the first settlement, but the second town absorbed the settlers of the less important place. So large was the hope of a great future for the new town that Diego Velasquez, the first Governor of the Island, called it Lláve del Nuevo Mundo, the "Key of the New World." Later, Las Casas obtained a grant of civic rights for it, and it became the permanent capital. It was burned by the buccaneers in 1528 and was rebuilt by De Soto, who discovered the Mississippi, and he surrounded the city by well constructed fortifications. It was captured and sacked by the pirate Jacob Sores in 1556, but was refortified, and in 1573-1589 Philip II. built the castles, Morro and Los Tres Reyes, which still exist. In 1628 an attack of the Dutch fleet was repulsed, and in 1762 it was taken by the British. It was restored to the Spanish July 18, 1763, who held it until December 31, 1898, when it passed into the hands of the United States as trustee for the people of Cuba. The approach to Havana from the sea is most pleasing to the eye, the narrow entrance to the harbour (one thousand feet wide) being flanked on either side by castellated forts, the best known of which are Morro Castle and Cabañas, whose names are familiar to all Americans since the Spanish-American war. The harbour is three miles in length by one and one half miles in width, is naturally very fine and of ample capacity for the business of the port; but the Spanish authorities have, for four hundred years and more, permitted it to be filled with the filth of the city and the sediment from various small streams which empty into it, until now a large part of it is useless for navigable purposes, and it is a constant source of ill-health to both native and visitor. The natural depth of the harbour is forty feet, but it has filled up to such an extent that an available depth of only about eighteen to twenty feet is possible. The tide on the Cuban coast rises and falls only about two feet. The water-front of the bay, comparatively of small extent, is lined with docks and piers, some of them built of iron, and of the first class. Still, the bulk of the shipping business is done by lighters, and the harbour is alive with small boats. Two lines of ferry-boats connect Havana with Regla, across the harbour, where the principal coal docks are situated. The harbour sea-wall, which is backed by a wide street lined with parks and fine buildings, gives to the city a most attractive appearance from the water. Havana has a fluctuating population, variously estimated at from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand souls; at present it is probably not greater than the former number. The people represent the best there is in Cuba, in point of wealth, education, and progress, and they are largely Spaniards, either Spanish-or Cuban-born. The city is by far the largest and richest in the Island, and has always been to Cuba what Paris is to France. The city is especially noticeable in that its houses, built of the absorbent, porous stone of the Island, are painted in yellows and pinks and greens and blues and whites, with a prevailing red in the tiled roofs. Of the seventeen or eighteen thousand houses of the city, three-fourths are of one story and only about two dozen have four stories. The people live very closely together; the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, are strangely huddled, all of them more or less regardless of the simplest laws of sanitation. It is not so great a wonder that the health of the city is so bad, as that any health exists. Rents are high, with the result that as many poor persons as possible live in one house, and the moral health suffers no less than the physical. If any animals are owned--as, for example, horses--they find quarters on the ground floor. Except in the best houses (and some fine specimens of elegant homes exist in the city), modern conveniences are unknown. Iron bars take the place of glass in the windows and doors, and windows are always open in dry weather. The domestic life of the Havanese is an open book to all who wish to look upon it as they pass, for the houses open directly upon the street, and the lower story is on the street-level. Most of the floors are laid directly on the ground, and it would seem as if the people did all in their power to maintain a low degree of health. All the good houses have marble floors. Churches are numerous all over the city, the Cathedral in which the remains of Columbus are said to have reposed being the chief in point of interest.[13] The women of Havana constitute a large portion of the congregations; the men give little attention to church attendance. The Government buildings are numerous, but neither modern nor beautiful. The cigar factories and tobacco warehouses are commodious structures; indeed, some of the former occupy what were at one time official or private palaces. The retail stores are usually small places, with the stocks of goods mostly in the windows. There are numerous parks. The Parque Central, the first in importance, is the fashionable centre of the city. About it are hotels, theatres, public buildings, and cafés; a band plays there during certain evenings, and at night it is a blaze of light and alive with promenaders. The streets in old Havana, that portion originally within the walls, are very narrow; often the sidewalks are not wider than two feet, and sometimes they are entirely lacking. In the newer portions of the city the streets are thirty-three feet wide, with five-foot sidewalks. Some of the streets are paved with blocks of stone in poor fashion, and some are dirt roads which are almost impassable in the wet season. Naturally, this condition of the streets does not improve the public health. Some effort was making when the war began, looking to street improvement, and contracts were let to an American firm; but the war stopped all operations in that direction. The handsomest street in Havana is the Cerro, running up the hill back of the city, and lined with handsome villas in grounds and gardens of tropical loveliness. Here many of the aristocracy reside. Another fine public promenade-street is the Prado, which follows, as nearly as may be, the line of the old walls. The Prado, and the Paseo de Tacon, are the Champs �lysées of Havana, and on many nights the former is as brilliant as that famed Parisian promenade. Havana lies so low that a wind tide will inundate the streets near the water; and as much of that portion of the city is built on made-ground, the material being of the worst sort of refuse, it is scarcely to be expected that health will abound. Owing to the narrowness of the streets, the possibilities for street-railway building are small, although there are twenty-seven miles of track in the city, with cars run by horse power; in the suburbs by steam dummies. The field for development in this line presents especial attractions for American capital, and the future promises much. The cab system of Havana was unusually good before the war. At that time there were six thousand public vehicles, with a maximum fare of twenty cents, and many were so cheap that labouring people could afford to use them as street-cars are used in this country. The volante, once the national vehicle of Cuba, has been relegated to the rougher roads of the country districts. There is also a 'bus line, doing about three times the business of the street-cars. The sewerage system is in a deplorable condition, and the last effort made to improve it was stopped by the war. What should be done is a problem to be solved by American engineers, and had Colonel Waring, of New York, not fallen a victim to Havanese filth, he would no doubt have done for the city what Spain in all her years of possession failed to do. The task is now upon the shoulders of General Ludlow, whose efficiency is beyond question. The city is lighted by gas and electricity, the works being operated by a Spanish-American company, controlled from New York City. The water supply of the city has been excellent since the new aqueduct was completed, in 1893, after thirty-two years of delay. The water is gathered from about four hundred springs in the neighbourhood of Vento, ten miles from the city; it is calculated that they will yield nearly forty millions of gallons every twenty-four hours. The aqueduct, tunnel, and receiving basin cost $3,500,000. The reservoirs, four miles from the city, with a capacity of eight millions of gallons, cost $566,486, and the laying of pipes, etc., $1,566,374, or a total of over $5,000,000. The works are owned by the city. The telephone system, owned by the Government, is leased to the Red Telefonica de la Habana, and had, previous to the war, twenty-one miles of line and fifteen hundred subscribers. Two companies comprise the fire department of the city, and these are of the old-style "volunteer" variety. One of the companies is supported by the city, the other by private enterprise. Fires are rare and seldom extensive, the annual losses not aggregating half a million dollars, and insurance companies find Havana risks most desirable. The death-rate of Havana is about 33 per 1000, a figure 25 per cent. in excess of the majority of American cities. In one year (1893) there were 6610 deaths to 4175 births, showing a loss in population of 2435. While yellow fever and diseases due to lack of sanitation are the chief causes of death, it is noticeable that 20 per cent. of the deaths are due to consumption, a disease not generally understood to prevail in the soft air of the tropics. The proportion of illegitimacy, which is 147 per 1000 births in Austria, the leading European country in this regard, is over 250 in Havana among the whites. What it is among the blacks is unknown. There are 120 tobacco manufactories of the first class in the city, and many of lesser rank, and thousands of people find employment in them. Some of the larger factories employ between 400 and 500 hands each. The shipments of cigars from Havana from 1888 to 1896 reached the enormous total of 1,615,720,000; the United States taking 739,162,000, or somewhat less than half. Owing to the heavy tariff, the shipments decreased from 188,750,000 in 1888 to 60,000,000 in 1896 and for several years previously. Ninety-nine per cent. of the Cuban cigars received in the United States come from Havana. Havana easily leads the other seaports of the Island in commerce, about one-third of all the shipments from the Island coming from that port. An average of 1200 vessels a year clear from the port, with an aggregate tonnage of over 1,500,000. In 1894, 1309 foreign vessels entered the port, having a tonnage of 1,794,597 tons. Commercially, Havana occupies a most important position, and when by the adoption of modern ideas in all matters of progress she has regenerated herself, cleansed herself, rejuvenated herself, there is no doubt that she will take her place among the rich and powerful cities of the world. The Botanical Gardens are situated on the Paseo de Carlos III., next to the Captain-General's estate. They were originally intended for giving practical lessons in botany to the students of the University of Havana; but there was so much disorder during these lessons that they had to be suppressed. These gardens are on one of the most beautiful places in the outskirts of Havana and have been comparatively well kept. Some ten years ago a stone and iron wall that had surrounded the Campo de Marte was removed from there and placed around the Botanical Gardens. If the Spanish Government had attended to the cultivation and preservation of tropical plants and fruits in the way that has been done in the British colonies, especially in Jamaica, these gardens would be to-day of the greatest utility; but with the characteristic slackness that they have shown in all the branches of administration of public affairs they have neglected botany, and, from a scientific point of view, the gardens are of little or no value. Probably a scientist could find in some of the gardens for the cultivation and sale of flowers just as valuable material as he could here. Let us hope that under the new regime the necessity of studying the tropical flora will be realised. [Illustration: HAVANA, FROM ACROSS THE BAY.] Education in Havana and in all Cuba is in a very primitive condition--old-fashioned, theoretical systems are general, and the lack of practical applications of the different subjects taught is greatly felt. This difficulty is mainly due to the fact that the Government has hitherto controlled education in all its branches, and, far from applying to its improvement the receipts from other sources, it has attempted to arrange matters in such a way that the bulk of the expense should be borne by a portion of those receiving instruction. In the last Cuban budget the revenue from matriculation fees alone reached $90,000. These fees are paid by students of all schools which are not free. If to this the other items, as, for example, "examination fees" and "inscription of certificates," are added, the receipts will probably reach $150,000, nearly two-thirds of the total sum of $247,000 yearly appropriated for public instruction in the same budget. Under Spanish Government control all teaching is divided into three classes: first, or primary instruction; second, or elementary instruction; and professions. To follow these courses, a student must have matriculated and passed the examinations of the preceding ones, either in Spain or a Spanish Government college, no foreign titles being respected. There is only one examination required to pass from first to second instruction; the third instruction, however, is a five years' course, divided as follows: First year: Latin and Spanish grammar, geography. Second year: Latin and Spanish grammar, Spanish history. Third year: Arithmetic and algebra, universal history, rhetoric, French, English, or German. Fourth year: Geometry and trigonometry, philosophy (logic, ethics, and psychology), and languages (French, English, or German). Fifth year: Physics, chemistry, natural history, agriculture, physiology. After being examined in these each year, the student passes the Bachelor of Arts examination, which consists of two oral exercises on the subjects he has studied during the previous five years. To enter the professional courses at the University a candidate must show the title of A. B. It must be said to the honour of some schools, that, although they have been bound to follow the plan of studies ordered by the Government, they have not confined themselves to it strictly, and other courses have been taught in them in addition. The best schools in Havana are the Jesuits', the Pious schools, and one or two others of a smaller number of students. There is a class of cheap day-schools both in the city of Havana and throughout the Island which is very objectionable; the instruction given is very bad and the children are so neglected that they acquire in a very short period of time a number of vicious habits and lose all idea of morality and self-respect. Cuban children are generally gifted with remarkable memories, and this is taken advantage of by some of their teachers, who cram their heads with stuff which they cannot understand and which consequently proves utterly useless to them. The University of Havana is established in the old convent of Saint Dominic in the centre of the city, facing the back of the Governor's Palace. The building is over three hundred years old and is a typical specimen of the old Spanish monastical architecture; the quadrangles are surrounded by arched cloisters, the stone steps are long and wide, and the walls are six feet thick of solid masonry. All the mortar on the outer wall has long since fallen off, and the building has more the aspect of an old-fashioned fortress than of a peaceful temple of contemplation and learning. When the old Dominicans owned the convent they instituted a free school for children, and as the requirements of the city became more pressing they extended their teaching to other and higher branches of learning, among which the study of law, medicine, and philosophy was included. They also had an annex school for special instruction. At present the lectures are given by graduates of Spanish universities who have taken the degree of Doctor in the course they may have followed. The number of students, in some years, has reached two thousand. None of them sleep in the building. To be a professor it is necessary either to have acquired distinction in the vacant chair of the special profession, or to be the best in a public contest against all the others aspiring to the chair, or to be appointed by the Crown. The students of the Havana University wear no caps and gowns, but the professors on every official occasion appear in their "togas" and caps, which are black, with tassels, lining, and cuffs of the colour of their respective faculties. Medicine is yellow, Law is red, Science is dark blue, Philosophy and Letters, light blue. Pharmacy, purple, and so on. In spite of strict orders from the rectors and professors and covert threats from the Spanish Government officers, no student has attended lectures on the 27th of November since 1871, when seven students were unjustly accused by the Spanish Volunteers of having desecrated the tomb of a patriot. It was in vain that a brave Spanish officer, called Capdevilla, showed that the scratches on the glass of the coffin were covered with moss: all he succeeded in doing was to provoke the Volunteers, who did their best to kill him, and to spoil his career; he lived twenty-seven years more and was never promoted. He died in Santiago. The students were executed two days after their arrest. When the son of the man whose tomb had been the cause of so much villainy went to Cuba for his father's remains, twenty years after that event, a notary public attended the ceremony and the son was a witness to the declaration that all was in exactly the same condition as at the time of the burial. A monument was erected to the memory of the students after the Spanish Cortes had declared that they had been innocent of the charge that had been brought against them. There is a significant statue of a blindfold woman with broken scales in her hand on one side of the monument whilst History on the other side appears recording. After this disgraceful act it is not surprising that the students of Havana University furnished such a ready contingent to the ranks of the rebellion. When in Havana last September the author, accompanied by Admiral Sampson, paid a visit to the Boys' Technical School. It was just starting up again after the blockade, and though there were not many scholars, the opportunity was afforded to observe the possibilities of this admirable institution. Many specimens of the boys' work were given to the author, and on returning to the United States some of them were shown the President, who expressed gratification at these signs of industrial life and a hope that the school would be provided for in the new budget of the Island. The Havana Provincial School of Arts and Trades is an institution for the promotion of technical knowledge among workmen and the training of youths (preferably artisans' sons) in the theories and practice of trades. It is maintained at the expense of the Deputation of the Province of Havana. The first courses given in this school commenced in 1882. In 1889, thanks to the efforts of its founder, Don Fernando Aguado y Rico and some zealous assistants, some shops were added to the school. They succeeded in having an increase allowed in the appropriation voted by the Provincial Deputation. The present cost of the school is $16,350 a year. This school is absolutely a free school. The instruction is divided into day courses and night courses. In view of its limited resources, to provide for boarders in the institution has, thus far, been impossible, consequently all the pupils are day scholars. A good deal may be said of Mr. Aguado's work in this school. It is to be regretted that, like so many others who work for the public good, the results should not correspond to the labour. He conceived the idea of creating this school a few years after graduating from the University of Havana. After several unsuccessful attempts he managed to start his enterprise, and since then the improvement of the instruction and the general welfare of its scholars have been the main object of his life. The acquisition of a lot of ground and the building of a suitable house for the shops for mechanical training have been the most important steps taken since the foundation. The new building is outside the city and is high and airy. Part of the ground purchased will have a building erected for an agricultural and industrial museum. It is to be regretted that this school, which is the only one of its class in Cuba, should furnish accommodation for only the limited number of 491 pupils. A city of 250,000 inhabitants, like Havana, should be able to provide more for this object. It is to be remarked that, out of the number mentioned, as many as 316 take night courses. [Illustration: THE PRADO, HAVANA.] There is perhaps no branch of instruction that may lead to such important developments in Cuba as the training of her youths in the mechanical trades; the want has been felt for a long time, and with the only exception of this school no efforts have been made to alleviate it. The Cuban, being naturally quick, makes a good mechanic, but unless he is trained to his work and has some knowledge of technicalities he can never reach the degree of skill which the modern mechanic requires to master his trade. However bright a man may be he can never acquire perfection in any branch of industry if he confines himself to the results of individual practice and personal observation. In a place like Cuba, where the wealth and prosperity of the country depend materially on one industry like the sugar industry, which is worked with huge machinery, there is no excuse for bringing over every year foreign engineers and mechanics to oversee any important repairs that may be necessary, or to erect new plants. One would expect that being constantly on the ground, seeing daily the working of this machinery, those interested would acquire such complete mastery of the processes that, far from having to depend on outsiders, they would be making and suggesting improvements. The explanation is, as has been stated, merely the want of technical knowledge; give the Cubans complete mechanical instruction, technical and practical, and tangible results will be seen in a remarkably short period. Let us hope that Mr. Aguado will continue working with the zeal and ardour that he has shown heretofore, and that ere long he may enjoy the satisfaction of seeing his work completed in a way that may exceed his most sanguine expectations. Havana feels the want of good hotels. There are some where a certain degree of comfort may be had by paying high prices, but even then it falls short of what can be obtained in other places at very much lower rates. Travellers in Cuba have to be satisfied with taking what they can get in this respect, as among those of so-called first-class standard there is little difference between one hotel and another. Anybody who has been in Havana during the winter months can have no doubt how profitable an investment would be an hotel on American lines. As every steamer arrives there is a rush for rooms most uncomfortable for travellers, to say nothing of their disappointment after they have succeeded in securing what, judging by the rate, they expect to find an unusually fine apartment, and which actually turns out to be a small whitewashed den, with very second-rate furniture and an iron bed. No curtains, no carpets, and bare walls. The most frequented are the Inglaterra and Pasaje hotels. Besides these, there is the Louvre, which, though much smaller than the other two, is beyond comparison more comfortable and better furnished. There are several theatres in Havana. The Tacon, now owned by American capitalists, is the third largest in the world. The Church of the Merced (Mercy) is the most fashionable in the city. The Belen (Jesuit) is the most frequented. It has, connected with it, a school, a laboratory, an observatory, and a museum of natural history. More men go to the Church of Santo Domingo than to any other because more pretty women go there. Fine suburbs of hill and seashore hedge Havana in. Notable among these are Jesus del Monte, the highest point, 220 feet; Cerro, Chorreta Vedado (beautiful and fashionable), Marianao, eight miles out; Regla, across the harbour, famed for its bull-ring and large sugar warehouses; Guanabacoa, Casa Blanco, Playa de Marianao (seashore); La Cienaga, Puertos Grandes, and others of less importance. These places are of varying quality, from the very fashionable to the kind which exist because existence there is cheaper than in the city. The roads (_calzadas_) leading out of Havana are, as a rule, good, though, owing to the war, some are just now in bad repair. Weather observations have been made in Havana since 1859. The rainy season continues from June to November; the rest of the year is dry, although about one-third of the rainfall of the year comes in the dry season. The average rainfall is about 50 inches. The temperature varies from 64 degrees to 85 degrees, and the humidity, which rarely falls below 75, makes the heat most oppressive. The early morning and late afternoon and evening are the hours devoted to business and pleasure. The Jersey mosquito is a silken-winged messenger of mercy compared with his cousins in Havana. There are many asylums and hospitals in the city which are not lacking in funds or attention, but they are all conducted upon antiquated notions, which greatly lessen their usefulness. As in other Catholic cities, Sunday is the amusement day of the week, and all the Havanese are out in gala attire on that day after morning service at the churches. There are many parks and promenades. The Alameda, the Plaza de Armas, the Parque de Isabella, and the Prado are the chief places of resort. CHAPTER XI COLONEL WARING'S SANITARY REPORT When in October, 1898, the late Colonel George E. Waring, of New York City, who had been sent by the Government to investigate the physical condition of Havana, became the victim of the monster he had sought to throttle, he had already written a large portion of his report, and he left copious notes for the completion of it, from which his efficient secretary and assistant, Mr. G. Everett Hill, prepared a full report. From this report the following extracts are made: "The death-rate of the city has always been high. In five years (not consecutive) between 1800 and 1819, with a population less than one-third of the present number of inhabitants, 26,576 people perished from yellow fever alone. In 1832 the cholera killed 10,000. The official reports of the Spanish garrison show that up to January 16, 1896, more than 82 per cent. of the total losses were due to yellow fever. In 1897 the total mortality by disease in the Spanish army in Cuba was 32,534. "At present the death-rate in Havana is enormous. The mortality for the week ending October 6, 1898, was 536--an annual rate of 139.36 per cent. per 1000. Since then owing to the change of season and to the removal of certain contributing causes, it has fallen to 114.4. "The surroundings and customs of domestic life are disgusting almost beyond belief. Sixteen thousand houses, out of a total of less than 20,000, are but one story high, and at least 90 per cent. of the population live in these--averaging say 11 to each house. Usually the house covers the entire lot, so that there is no yard; though one or two courts are commonly included in the building. According to the general--almost the universal--plan, the front rooms are used as parlours or reception rooms. Beyond them is a court, on which open the dining-rooms and sleeping-rooms. Beyond these, on another court, are--I might say is--the 'kitchen, stable, and privy, practically all in one.'" In Colonel Waring's own words: "The characteristic feature of the whole establishment--perhaps the only feature which is conspicuous in every house without exception--is the privy-vault, and sometimes a second vault for kitchen waste. These occupy a space practically under and almost in the kitchen. It is very rarely, indeed, that a Cuban privy has a ventilating pipe, so it belches forth its nauseous odours throughout the house and pervades the streets." "There is no ordinance--at least none in force--requiring a householder to empty his privy vault. He uses it until it threatens to overflow; then he hires a night-scavenger, who comes with a cart, carrying the requisite number of barrels. These are filled through square holes at the top, and discharged through a plugged orifice at the bottom. "The workmen use tub-like ladles with long handles, with which they scoop up the filth. These they carry, dripping as they go, through kitchen, dining-room, reception-room, and hall to the street." "When the barrels are filled, the cart starts, ostensibly for the prescribed place of disposal; but often, in a dark street, the plugs come out, and, before the waggon has gone very far, the barrels are empty. "Lest the conditions above set forth should fail to do their appointed work of destruction, stimulus for their effectiveness is furnished by an extraneous source of malaria of the very worst character. "The southerly edge of the harbour is bordered by broad marshes, through which flow a number of watercourses, and to which these bring the offscouring of a very poor quarter of the town, and especially the effluent of the slaughtering-pens and of other foul establishments; while a large portion of the flat is used as a dumping-ground for garbage. "This intimate relation of marsh and filth is greatly aggravated by the admixture of fresh and salt water, by occasional floods, and by a daily scorching sun. "The vicinity of such marshes would be deadly in this climate, even to a veritable 'City of Hygeia.' Their proximity to this foul, fever-cursed town has always been recognised as disastrous, even by intelligent Habaneros themselves." The water supply of Havana is very pure and abundant,--more than two hundred gallons per head per day: "This and the winds of the Gulf save the city from being absolutely and unqualifiedly bad; but they are powerless to make it tolerable. It is a veritable plague-spot. "Its own people, largely immune though they are to yellow fever, which has prevailed here without interruption for one hundred and sixty-eight years, fall constant victims under the pernicious malarial and depressing influences to which they are always subjected; and it needs only the immigration of fresh material, which the enterprise of our population is sure to bring here, to create a sacrifice such as we have not yet known; while commerce will carry the terror and the terrible scourge of yellow fever to our shores, until we rise again in a war of humanity, and at all costs wipe out an enemy with which no military valour can cope. [Illustration: YARD OF AMERICAN CLUB, HAVANA.] "Can Havana be purified? And if so, will such purification result in the eradication of yellow fever and malaria? Both questions can be answered affirmatively and positively. Havana is no dirtier than many another city has been. In England, in the olden time, the earthen floors were strewn with rushes. When these became sodden with filth beyond all endurance, fresh rushes were thrown over the old ones, and these in turn were buried, until the foul accumulation was several feet deep. Excrement was allowed to remain in and around the houses indefinitely, or was thrown into the streets regardless of consequences. In London, the frequent cry of, 'Ware below!' indicated that the household slops were about to be poured from an upper window. These conditions remained until repeated visits of the great sanitary teachers--the plague, the black death, the cholera, and other pestilences, which devastated cities and swept whole villages out of existence--had taught their hard lesson. On the continent the ignorance and neglect were, if possible, even greater. We have profited by the bitter experience of our ancestors; and no intelligent person questions the merit of sanitary works. But their true value is not yet fully appreciated, even by educated men whose interests are at stake. "The poison of yellow fever is ponderable. It clings to low levels and usually follows the lines of greatest humidity. Like malaria, it is more active--or at least more to be feared--by night than by day. The danger from it in any quarter of an infected locality depends upon the presence primarily of filth, secondarily of dampness; and it increases in direct proportion to the confinement and stagnation of the air. Infected cellars are more dangerous than infected rooms. The holds of ships are notorious hotbeds of the disease. "In Havana the average height of the ground floor of a house above the soil is but six or seven inches; and this space is unventilated. The earth is not only damp, but is sodden with putrefying organic matter. The houses are closely built, without adequate space for ventilation between them. In the poorer quarters the population is crowded, a whole family often occupying a single room. The emanations from the cesspool and garbage-vault pervade, as has been stated, the kitchen and the sleeping-and living-rooms, even of houses of the better class. The standard of personal cleanliness is, necessarily, very low. These conditions, for which the citizens are responsible, are sufficient in themselves to transform the most healthy locality into a fever-nest. In the case of Havana, they are accumulated by climatic conditions favourable to, but in no case accountable for, the propagation of disease. No amount of rainfall, no high average of humidity, and no degree of temperature will cause zymotic pestilence, if cleanliness be secured and maintained, and proper drainage of the soil established." In the notes which Colonel Waring brought with him from Cuba, the following improvements are specified as absolutely necessary for the sanitary redemption of Havana: (1) The immediate organisation of a Department of Public Cleaning," under the full control of a single Commissioner experienced in the conduct of such work," who should have authority to act as occasion may require. The chief function of the Department would be the maintenance of a "constant state of cleanliness" in all the streets and places of public business or resort, including the abattoirs and markets. "It should also control the disposal of all wastes, except sewage--by cremation and otherwise." (2) The construction of a system of sewers "to receive the liquid wastes of all houses of the main city." The topography of the city divides it naturally into several districts. Each of these should be served by a distinct sewerage system, which should discharge directly into the harbour or the Gulf, as the case may be. " Before such discharge, the effluent should be effectively clarified by one of the various well known methods; so that it would carry only its dissolved impurities." The dilution would be immediate and more than sufficient; for the daily movement of sea water into and out of the harbour is about six thousand times as great as would be the day's discharge of clarified sewage from the harbour slope of the city. (3) The clearing out and filling with clean earth of all the cesspools and garbage-vaults, and the supplying to each house of a suitable water-closet connected with the public sewer system. The closets furnished should be practically automatic in operation, and not liable to damage from ignorance or carelessness. They should be made so that no foreign substance able to cause an obstruction in the house drain or the sewer could pass out of sight. If more elaborate plumbing be desired, this may be put in by the householder, under proper supervision, at his own expense. The immediate installation of the water-closet in each house is the only course which will make possible the annihilation of the cesspool; and Havana will not be a healthy city until this result is accomplished. The benefit that will be gained when it is done is out of all proportion to the insignificant cost of the doing. (4) The paving, or repaving, of all the streets with the best quality of asphaltum. Some form of artificial paving of the streets of cities is indispensable. Mr. Edwin Chadwick says that between the two divisions of a town population, similarly situated in general condition, one part inhabiting streets which are unpaved and another inhabiting streets that are paved, a difference of health is observed. He cites instances showing the sanitary benefit resulting from paving. Laying aside all considerations of comfort and economy, which in themselves are sufficient to warrant its construction, asphaltum is the best paving material from a hygienic standpoint. Being a monolithic sheet it is impervious alike to the rise of exhalations from the earth and the soakage of liquids into the earth. It is easily cleaned; and, as it can be cleaned without sprinkling, it can be cleaned dry. At intervals it can be thoroughly washed with a hose, and all surplus water removed immediately with a squeegee. The absence of dust and the minimising of noise are hygienic benefits of secondary degree. (5) The erection of a new abattoir, adequate to all the needs of the population, and furnished with modern appliances for the inoffensive utilisation of the entire animal, so that no refuse remains to be got rid of. (6) The construction of "a suitable and sufficient incinerating furnace, for the complete and inoffensive destruction of garbage and other refuse," including dead animals, street sweepings, mattresses, discarded clothing, rags, excelsior, paper, and similar substances, which might serve as vehicles of contagion. The experiments made by Colonel Waring while Street Cleaning Commissioner of New York, indicated that such a furnace may produce steam in quantities large enough to be valuable. (7) The reclamation and drainage of all the marshes, or at least of those bordering on the harbour on the south and west. "This reclamation to be made after the 'Polder' method of Holland--by diking out the harbour and the watercourses and removing the water by pumping." (8) The establishment of a "power-plant sufficient for this pumping, for pumping sewage where necessary, and for propelling the machinery of the abattoir." In concluding his paper, Mr. Hill says: "It may seem strange that no reference has been made to the dredging of the harbour--so urgently advocated by some advisers--or to any improvement of it, save such as would be effected by the withholding of solid organic matters from the abattoir, sewage, and dumping grounds, and by the construction of the dikes at its southern end. As has been said, the tidal flow is more than sufficient to effect the purification of the clarified sewage, which Colonel Waring proposed to empty into the harbour. So long as solid wastes are withheld, its surplus oxidizing power will gradually destroy the accumulation of putrescible material. "To dredge the harbour now would be dangerous work; for it would stir up and expose to the air vast quantities of putrid filth. Later, if Colonel Waring's recommendations should be carried out, it would mean only the removal of innocuous mud. Navigation is not yet impeded by the deposits; and the rate at which the harbour is silting up--one-third of one per cent. per year--makes it evident that a delay of even ten years would not be injurious to commerce. Long before this time has elapsed the harbour should be clean. "Havana can be freed from her curse. The price of her freedom is about $10,000,000. Can the United States afford to redeem her? For once humanity, patriotism, and self-interest should be unanimous, and their answer should be, Yes!" General Greene, U.S.A., has submitted an extended report on the city's condition. General Greene notes that about sixty per cent. of the street surface is not paved, and that which is paved is in very poor condition. In some streets are small drains, connecting by gratings with the gutters, but no official record is kept of them, and no city plat shows whither they go, but as in Havana all sewers lead to the bay, it is supposed that is their destination. Some few private houses have their own sewers, but no official knows anything further than that permits were granted to build them and they are never cleaned. In parts of the city a drain two feet deep and two feet wide, covered or uncovered, runs alongside of the streets and into these all manner of ill-smelling and nasty refuse is dumped and left to wash away by the rain or to rot in the sun. For four years previous to the war the authorities had been considering an elaborate plan of street improvement and sewerage system, submitted by an American contractor, but no action had been taken. The estimated cost was $7,000,000. For three hundred years or more house drainage has been discharged into cesspools, varying in size from three to ten feet in diameter, and from four to eight feet deep, closed at the top with a stone. While rules for taking proper care of these cesspools are plenty, enforcement of them is so neglected that some of them have not been cleaned in five years. They are not cemented inside and they drain off into the soil and rock, infecting everything in reach. The paved streets (surface) are cleaned by contract, by methods prevailing in this country twenty-five years ago, and the work is fairly well done. The cleanings are carried eight miles from the city, where they are dumped and left on the ground, and the condition there is fearful. During the blockade the authorities ordered the cleanings to be dumped into the marsh near the Christina Street station, and here in the wet soil they remain, a dangerous menace to health. The thousands of _reconcentrados_ and soldiers in the city used the unpaved streets as open privies, and when the Americans went into the city they found these streets utterly noxious and foul, and set to work at once to clean them, the street-cleaning contractor being permitted to continue his work on the paved streets. There is but one slaughter-house in the city and it is owned by the municipality. It is mortgaged, like other city properties, to the Spanish Bank. From three hundred to four hundred cattle are killed daily, and the offal, which might easily be saved, and is, in American slaughter-houses, is dumped into Chavez Creek, where it is left to rot in the sun. The construction of a new building in a different locality has been long discussed, but opposition has been made to it, and nothing has been done. In the meantime the dumping continues in Chavez Creek. The military hospitals have not yet been examined. Of the nine city hospitals, asylums, and homes examined by Surgeon Davis, three were in fairly good condition, two in bad condition, and four are most deplorable. Some of the houses are overcrowded and the inmates half starved. These hospitals can be put in good condition very soon. The two principal markets, the Colon and the Tacon, are owned by the city and mortgaged to the Spanish Bank. Their sanitary condition is bad as it can be, but it can be remedied easily and quickly. An elaborate code of Health Regulations, a volume of fifty pages, exists, but it is seldom or never referred to or its provisions carried out. Dairies prevail in many parts of the city, where twenty to thirty cows are kept in stalls in the same house where human beings live; livery stables are located in the most thickly settled parts of the city; dead dogs, cats, and other animals are left in the open streets for weeks; slops, filth, and night soil are thrown out of the windows and doors on the streets in the poorer localities and no kind of regard is paid to health regulations of any kind. The condition of the harbour is gone into at length, one new fact being noted, to wit: that the water is so foul that the bottom cannot be seen two feet below the surface, while at Marianao, eight miles away, the bottom at twenty feet is plainly visible. Both General Greene and Surgeon Davis are of the opinion that the harbour is not such a menace to health as are the cesspools, slaughter-house, and general filth of the city, and that it should come last in the cleaning process. In recapitulation, General Greene says: "From the foregoing it is apparent that the first steps toward sanitation are the improvement of the slaughter-house, the cleaning of cesspools, the inauguration of a proper system of street cleaning, and the devising and rigid enforcement of health regulations. I have therefore advised that immediately on taking possession of the city government a board be appointed, consisting of three army surgeons and two civilians--one from New York and one from Chicago--of long experience on the Health Boards in those cities; that this board study the sanitary conditions of the city and draw up a new code of sanitary regulations, including the management of the hospitals; and that this code be rigidly enforced by the new city police, assisted by such number of sanitary inspectors as may prove to be necessary. In this manner I believe that the sanitary conditions can be improved and the death-rate enormously reduced before the next rainy season sets in. The death-rate in October last was at the rate of 133 per 1000 per annum; in December it had been reduced to 106, and with only two deaths per week from yellow fever. "In order completely to stamp out yellow fever it will be necessary to destroy a limited number of the worst infected houses occupied by the poorest classes, to construct a system of sewers, and lay new pavements. This will involve a very large expenditure of money, and it is not at present clear how the city can raise this money. It is probable, however, that a feasible financial scheme could be devised after thorough study, and in the meantime a commission of engineers should be appointed to study the problem, and either acquire the existing surveys by purchase, at a fair valuation, or else make new surveys, and a definite report covering the whole ground, so that the matter may be intelligently considered." EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE HAVANA YELLOW FEVER COMMISSION, 1879 TEMPERATURE "This is conceded to be a climatic element of greatest importance, and the 'annual mean' to be the chief factor. Throughout the West Indies the mean annual temperature, near the sea, is from 78 degrees to 80, the mean daily range is only about 6 degrees, and the extreme annual range does not usually exceed 20 degrees. At Havana the mean annual temperature varies in different years from 77 degrees to 79; the mean temperature of the hottest months, July and August, varies from 82 to 85 degrees; and of the coldest months, December and January, from 70 to 76 degrees. The minimum temperature is very rarely as low as 50 degrees, and the maximum as rarely exceeds 100 degrees; in fact, the thermometer, in the shade, seldom rises above 94 degrees. There are no records nor any tradition of frost having ever occurred except on December 24 and 25, 1856. It is alleged that even in the sparsely inhabited mountains in the east of Cuba, where the Tarquino peak reaches an altitude of about 8000 feet, frost rarely occurs, and snow never." RAINFALL "During the sixteen years, 1859-74, the average number of rainy days at Havana was 113; the minimum number, 97 days, occurred in 1869, and the maximum number, 141 days, occurred in 1862. The average amount of rain for the sixteen years was 49 inches, the minimum was 42.5 in 1861, and the maximum was 70 inches in 1867. The maximum amount of rain falling in any one season is from May to September, inclusive, but especially during August and September. The rain then descends with such rapidity that it runs off in torrents; but, as is seen, the usual belief that the annual rainfall is excessive is erroneous. The annual mean relative humidity varies in different years from about 73 to 74.5, and that of the different months of the year from 66 to 79; the minimum, occurring in any day of the year, may be as low as 34, and the maximum as high as 96. Evaporation is extremely rapid." ANNUAL DEATHS IN HAVANA, 1870-79 ----+-----------+-----------+----------------------------------------------- | | | | Deaths | | DEATHS BY | by all | | | | | Diseases | Deaths by | YELLOW FEVER. | SMALL POX.| CHOLERA. | in the | all | | | | Military |Diseases in+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- | and Civil | the Civil | Military | | Military | Military |Population.|Population.| and Civil | Civil | and Civil | and Civil | | |Population.|Population.|Population.|Population. ----+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 1870| 10,379 | 9,451 | 665 | 277 | 681 | 1,655 1871| 9,174 | 8,290 | 991 | 796 | 1,126 | .... 1872| 7,031 | 6,036 | 515 | 372 | 174 | .... 1873| 7,755 | 6,932 | 1,244 | 1,019 | 47 | .... 1874| 9,604 | 8,523 | 1,225 | 1,236 | 772 | .... 1875| 8,390 | 7,044 | 1,001 | 94 | 711 | .... 1876| 9,122 | 7,438 | 1,619 | 904 | 160 | .... 1877| 10,217 | 7,139 | 1,374 | 567 | 97 | .... 1878| 11,507 | 8,594 | 1,559 | 758 | 1,225 | .... 1879| 9,052 | 7,826 | 1,444 | 737 | 523 | .... +-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- | 92,231 | 77,273 11,837 6,760 5,516 1,655 ----+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- "Spanish army losses to January 16, 1896: Killed in action and died from wounds......... 405 Died from yellow fever........................ 3,190 All other diseases............................ 282 ----- 3,877 "Total mortality of Spanish army in Cuba in 1897 (from Public Health Report, U. S. Marine Hospital Service, April 29, 1898): Died from yellow fever........................ 3,190 Deaths from yellow fever...................... 6,034 Deaths from enteric fever..................... 2,500 Enteritis and dysentery..................... 12,000 Malarial fevers............................... 7,000 All other diseases............................ 5,000 ------ Deaths from all diseases............. 32,534 "The above table ... clearly proves that 'the actual sanitary condition of the principal ports of Cuba' is very unfavourable, since, in recent years, their death-rates have ranged from 31.9 to 66.7. It also proves that the sanitary condition of the inland towns is very little, if at all, better than that of the seaports. The high death-rates of Guanabacoa and of Marianao are especially notable, because these suburban towns, within three and six miles of Havana, are summer resorts, and enjoy, especially Marianao, a high repute for salubrity. Taking a general view of the death-rates for the total population of all the twenty towns in the above list--towns selected solely because the only ones which furnish reliable official reports, though many others were solicited, it will be found that twenty-six death-rates are given; that these range from 23.5 to 66.7, and that, while only eight of the twenty-six are under 35, twelve of them are 50 or more." "The portion of the city in worst repute is the fifth district, and especially Jesus Maria, one of its wards. This is, to considerable extent, reclaimed swamp lands, filled in largely with street refuse and garbage. It fronts the bottom of the harbour. Its rough, unpaved streets are in many places almost impassable in wet weather, even to pedestrians. Great mud-holes, covered with green slime, and fit only for the abode of hogs, are numerous. The houses, as well as the streets, have an uncared-for, filthy, and disgusting appearance; and the sickly, anæmic residents look as dirty and cheerless as the streets and houses. "The Punta or Colon wards in the third district--at least the portions which immediately front the sea--have a reputation almost as bad as the Jesus Maria ward. The foundation rocks were, during the last century, excavated to build fortifications, and these excavations were filled up with street refuse and garbage; hence this ward is, like Jesus Maria, to some extent, reclaimed land. These portions are alleged to be very unhealthful, while houses only six or eight blocks distant are not so; comparatively light rains flood the _banquettes_ and run into the houses. The streets are wider and the houses better than in Jesus Maria. Some consider the location of the latter, at the bottom of the harbour, a chief cause for its unhealthfulness, but the unhealthy portion of the city now referred to fronts the sea. [Illustration: THE PRADO AND INDIAN STATUE, HAVANA.] "The Pueblo Nuevo ward, still farther to the west, also fronts the sea, and is built on a slope which attains an altitude of nearly seventy feet. Notwithstanding these advantages, it is very badly drained, and has, as it apparently deserves, an ill repute for healthfulness.... "The three suburban wards, Jesus del Monte, the Cerro, and Vedado, enjoy the best reputation for salubrity, and also for their freedom from yellow fever. Intelligent residents are readily found, who will assert with great assurance that no one is ever attacked in these wards except those who have been elsewhere infected. The summit of Jesus del Monte has an altitude of 67 meters, or 220 feet, the highest point in Havana, or its immediate vicinity. However, there are few, if any, houses about the summit; the average level of the ward is only 80 feet, and more inhabitants live below than above this level. The natural drainage is excellent, the houses in the elevated portion occupy more ground and are better ventilated than in Havana." GEOLOGICAL FORMATION "The surface soil of Havana consists for the most part of a thin layer of red, yellow, or black earths. At varying depths beneath this, often not exceeding one or two feet, lie the solid rocks. These foundation rocks are (especially in the northern and more modern portion of the city, towards the coast of the sea and not of the harbour) quarternary and especially tertiary formation so permeable that liquids emptied into excavations are absorbed and disappear. In the southern and greater portion of the city, these rocks are of cretaceous formation, and so much less permeable that sinks and other excavations readily fill to overflowing. About twenty thousand persons or one-tenth of the population, live on land reclaimed from the sea, in large measure, by dumping on garbage and street refuse. Much of this reclaimed land was formerly mangrove swamps, and Havana still lies adjacent to these breeders of malarial poison. There are few if any towns in Cuba which are not subjected to malarial effluvia from mangrove or other swamps, and many of these suffer to greater extent than Havana." Messrs. Ariza and Herrera reported a population of 3000 on the reclaimed parts of the first district, 5000 on parts of the third and fourth, 5000 on part of the fifth, and 600 on part of the sixth district. THE CLEANSING OF THE HARBOUR "The sanitarian cannot hesitate to advocate, for general reasons if not especially for yellow fever, the cleansing of the harbour, the cessation of daily additions to it of large masses of filth, and the replenishment of it by constant currents of pure water. To accomplish the last, it has been much insisted on, in the United States, as well as in Cuba, that canals should be dug. Out of Cuba it ought to be better understood that Havana is by no means deficient in highly educated, skilful, practical engineers, who are fully alive to the sanitary interests of the city, and to the merits of this especial subject. Among these, Colonel Albear stands pre-eminent, and in September, 1879, he delivered before the Academy of Sciences an extremely able address on this subject, which is so full of instruction, on other local conditions also of interest to the sanitarian, that this address has been translated and is presented, as a most interesting part of this report. Colonel Albear seems to have conclusively demonstrated the impracticability of these proposed canals; and my own conviction is that if practicable they could not possibly place the small harbour of Havana in as favourable sanitary conditions as are by nature the large harbour of Matanzas and of Cienfuegos, where yellow fever none the less prevails." DRAINAGE "In Cuban cities, generally, good drainage is not found except in such comparatively inextensive parts where nature required little or no assistance. Even in Havana, the oldest and wealthiest city, the visitor is often astounded, especially in the rainy season, by impassable mud-holes, and green, slimy, stagnant pools in the streets and in the backyards. This condition was found even in the Pueblo Nuevo ward, which is located so admirably for good drainage that little labour would be required to make it perfect. "Messrs. Ariza and Herrera reported: 'Havana has no sewers save in a few principal streets. These sewers have been built at interrupted intervals, without reference to any general plan for drainage. They are seldom cleaned and are generally obstructed in part or wholly with sediment or filth from the streets, and exhale offensive odours. As the sewers are few in number, the greater part of the water of the city empties through the streets, into the harbour or the sea; but the quantity flowing into the sea is comparatively small.' Mr. A. H. Taylor, a civil engineer, thoroughly informed on this subject, testified that the sewers of only three streets subserved any good purpose whatever, and that the remainder were so defective that the city would really be much better off without them. Through the gratings, which have large interspaces, the dirt and refuse of the streets find such ready entrance that a number of these sewers were soon filled up, with apparently solid materials, to within a few inches of the surface openings. Since very few houses or privies are connected with sewers, these are less offensive than they would otherwise be, but no one who has seen them can find any words except of unhesitating condemnation for their grossly defective structure." THE PAVING OF STREETS "Less than one-third of the population live on paved streets, and these are well paved and kept as clean, it is believed cleaner, than is usual in the United States. The remainder live on unpaved streets, which for the most part are very filthy. Many of these, even in old and densely populated parts of the city, are no better than rough country roads, full of rocks, crevices, mud-holes, and other irregularities, so that vehicles traverse them with difficulty at all times, and in the rainy season they are sometimes impassable for two months. Rough, muddy, or both, these streets serve admirably as permanent receptacles for much decomposing animal and vegetable matter. Finally, not less, probably more, than one-half of the population of Havana live on streets which are constantly in an extremely insanitary condition, but these streets, though so numerous, are not in the beaten track of the pleasure tourist, in which capacity the writer, in 1856, spent ten days in Havana without witnessing many of the evils now testified to with emphasis." DENSITY OF POPULATION "Of the various evils recounted in connection with the subject of houses, there are two which deserve special attention. Many facts, besides those associated with the holds of vessels, justify the belief that the growth of the poison of yellow fever is specially favoured in warm, moist, ill-ventilated places, where air is closely confined. The low-lying floors touching the earth, the small, densely packed houses, the unusually contracted ventilating space in their rear, the large unventilated excavation for privies and sinks, all furnish, as is firmly believed, the most favourable breeding-places for the poison of yellow fever. In addition, statistics prove that in great cities subjected to their ordinary unfavourable conditions, the denser their population the sicklier and shorter-lived their inhabitants. Common-sense and experience unite to teach that the denser a population the more widespread and frightful the havoc of diseases, especially of communicable diseases. Elsewhere will be found a special report on the density of the population of Havana compared with numerous other cities, and it therein appears that more than three-fourths of the people of Havana live in the most densely populated localities in the world. A tropical climate renders this enormous evil still greater. Not only in Havana but throughout Cuba the average number of inhabitants to each house is unusually great, and this fact enables us better to understand the great prevalence in Cuba of those communicable diseases which its climate and other local conditions favour. "The Registry Office in Havana reports that there are upwards of eighteen thousand fincas in this registry district, which comprises the village of Marianao in addition to the city of Havana. "A finca is a piece of land, with definite boundaries or limits whether large or small, and whether it has buildings on it or not. "Of the eighteen thousand fincas in the district about fourteen thousand have houses upon them, and the other four thousand being vacant lots in the city, or fincas rusticas, in the rural districts. "At least twelve in every thirteen inhabitants live in one-story houses; and as the total civil, military, and transient population exceeds two hundred thousand, there are more than twelve inhabitants to every house. Tenement houses may have many small rooms, but each room is occupied by a family. Generally, the one-story houses have four or five rooms; but house-rent (as also food and clothing) is rendered so expensive by taxation, by export as well as import duties, that it is rare for a workman, even when paid fifty to one hundred dollars a month, to enjoy the exclusive use of one of these mean little houses. Reserving one or two rooms for his family, he rents the balance. This condition of affairs is readily understood when it is known that so great a necessity as flour costs in Havana $15.50, when its price in the United States was $6.50 per barrel. "In the densely populated portions of the city the houses generally have no back yard, properly so called, but a flagged court, or narrow vacant space into which sleeping-rooms open at the side; and in close proximity with these, at the rear of this contracted court, are located the kitchen, the privy, and often a stall for animals." "Messrs. Ariza and Herrera report that in Havana the average height of the ground floor is from seven to eleven inches above the pavement, but in Havana, and more frequently in other Cuban towns, one often encounters houses which are entered by stepping down from the sidewalk; and some floors are even below the level of the streets. In Havana some of the floors; in Matanzas more; in Cardenas and Cienfuegos many, are of bare earth itself, or of planks raised only a few inches above the damp ground. "The privy and the sink for slops, the open kitchen shed, and the stable immediately adjoin each other, confined in a very contracted space close to sleeping-rooms. The privy consists of an excavation which often extends several feet laterally under the stone flags of the court. Even if the sides be walled, the bottom is of the original porous earth or subsoil rock, thus permitting widespread saturation of the soil." LA LUCHA OCTOBER, 21, 1896 "These houses are veritable pig-styes. Houses which rent from thirty to forty-five dollars per month--an extremely high price for a country where wealth has been destroyed by war--are devoid of all comfort. They are unhealthful habitations. A very distinguished stranger, who visited us some time ago, said of them: 'They are composed solely of four walls and a pavement which are stained with dampness and a privy whose fetid and constant emanations poison the air that must be breathed.'" CHAPTER XII MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS IN HAVANA The American authorities and American enterprise have jointly taken hold of the municipal problem of Havana with considerable energy. This subject is of such vital importance, not only to the industrial reconstruction of Cuba, but to the future of the Island itself, that no apology is necessary for devoting an entire chapter to it. The problems which General Ludlow, the present Governor of Havana, has taken up energetically are those relating to the reorganisation of the police force, public works, water and gas supply, fire department, and other branches of local government. Private enterprise, both English and American, has lost no time in securing the street-railway system and some of the public theatres, and in various ways engaged in semi-public enterprises, the result of which will be greatly to improve existing conditions, and make Havana a much more desirable city, both for business and residence. Next to the question of sanitary improvement, which is absolutely imperative unless the United States stands ready to sacrifice thousands of lives next summer, is the organisation of the police force for the preservation of life and property. For several years past it is said the attention of the police of Havana has been directed more to political arrests than to prevention of crime. Whether these rumours are well founded or not, General Greene, whose report upon the sanitation of Cuba was presented in the previous chapter, is not prepared to assert; but he contends that at the time he made his report, last December, the police force was completely disorganised. As it formerly existed, the police force of Havana consisted of two parts, namely: the Government police, under the direct orders of the civil governor of the province; and the municipal police, under the orders of the Alcalde, or Mayor. The functions of the latter were mainly those of inspectors, to look after the enforcement of city ordinances in regard to buildings, public health, and such matters. They numbered 200. The Government police consisted of a battalion called the _Orden Publico_, the colonel in command of which was chief of police. The battalion numbered about 1200 men, and was recruited from the Spanish army, among men who had passed through not less than six years' service, who held the grade of sergeant, and who had won certificates of perfectly good character. This force was disarmed and shipped to Spain in November, on the ground of alleged mutiny; the facts being that they claimed the money belonging to them which had been deposited with the regimental paymaster, and by him embezzled. In addition to the municipal police and the _Orden Publico_, there was a force, detailed from the _Guarda Civil_, whose total strength was about 3500 men. This force constituted the rural police of the entire Island, under the orders of the civil governor of each province. About 300 were used by the civil governor of Havana for duty in the suburbs of Jesus del Monte, Cerro, and other outlying neighbourhoods. At the time the control of the city passed from Spanish into American hands, the police force consisted simply of the municipal police, about 200 in number, with a few additions, all of whom were temporarily organised into a Government police force after the disarmament of the _Orden Publico._ The city, according to General Greene's report, is divided into ten districts, and these are still further subdivided into thirty-nine _barrios_, or wards. The _barrios_ correspond in a measure to the precincts in New York, and in each there was a _celador_, corresponding to a sergeant in New York. He received $100 per month, and had charge of the police in his _barrio_, or precinct. There were five inspectors, each of whom had two of the principal districts under his charge. They received $125 per month. They were in turn subject to the orders of the chief of police, and he to the orders of the civil governor. The appointments to all of the positions named were made by the Governor-General on the nomination of the Governor. Each inspector had an office on the ground floor of the house where he lived, and these were all connected by telephone, through the Telephone Exchange, with the Police Headquarters on Cuba Street, near Quarteles Street. Similarly, each of the _celadors_ had an office in his own house. There were a large number of details for special service at banks, theatres, public offices, and similar places, and while the nominal strength of the _Orden Publico_ was 1200, yet vacancy, sickness, and other causes reduced its effective strength to 800 or 900. According to this report, in the opinion of the civil governor, a force of 600 carefully selected men, thoroughly well organised, under proper officers, will be ample for the security of life and property in this city. The orders of the President of the United States authorised the organisation of a force of 1000 men. Subsequently the Secretary of War telegraphed General Greene to employ such number of men as was necessary. In the judgment of the commanding general the number authorised by the President was sufficient, and the proposed organisation, inaugurated by General Greene and just completed under the direction of General Ludlow, aided by ex-Chief of Police of New York City, McCullough, is as follows: Salary per month 1 Colonel (U. S. V.), Chief of Police.......... 1 Deputy Chief of Police....................... $250 1 Secretary Inspector.......................... 165 1 Chief of Detectives, Deputy Inspector........ 165 6 Inspectors, officers U. S. V................. 6 Deputy Inspectors............................ 150 12 Captains..................................... 115 48 Lieutenants.................................. 90 48 Patrol Sergeants............................. 65 10 Detective Sergeants.......................... 115 14 Detectives................................... 100 12 Detectives................................... 75 820 Patrolmen.................................... 50 1 Stenographer and Interpreter................. 150 6 Clerks....................................... 50 6 Drivers...................................... 40 12 Janitors..................................... 35 2 Surgeons..................................... 100 The total expenses for salary would be $56,360 per month, or $676,020 per annum. In addition there would be expenses for rent of office, telephone, telegrams, patrol service, 100 horses for use in suburban districts, and other expenses, which would bring the total cost of the police up to about $723,660 per annum. It is proposed to put the entire police management under charge of an officer of the volunteer army, and to give him a deputy chief, who shall be a resident of the Island, and, if possible, experienced in police matters. Similarly, to put officers of the army of junior rank as inspectors in the principal districts--six in number--and to give to each a deputy inspector, who will be a resident. At the beginning, it is deemed essential that the police management should be in the hands of army officers who can be relied upon, but each will have a deputy who will be a resident, and if possible thoroughly experienced in the police service. It may be necessary to change these resident officers once or more before the best men for the positions are finally found. After the system has been in operation, and the men have proved their efficiency, it will be possible for the army officers to be relieved, and the native or resident officers to assume full control. In his report on the organisation of the Havana police force General Greene says: "There are three sources from which the men can be obtained, namely, the existing police force, the Cuban troops under General Menocal, and the discharged Spanish soldiers. The President's instructions are positive that this force should be selected without reference to previous affiliations, either for or against the revolutionary movement, and by drawing from the three classes above named; these instructions will be carried out in letter and in spirit." In accordance with the President's instructions, every officer and member of the police force will be required to subscribe the following oath, which will be printed in both Spanish and English: "I do solemnly swear that I will bear true and exclusive faith and allegiance to the Government of the United States existing in the Island of Cuba, and that I will faithfully and obediently perform my duty as a member of the police force of Havana under the said Government. So help me God." The uniform of the new Havana police officer will consist of straw hat, dark blue blouse and trousers, tan-coloured shoes, and white gloves. The public works needed in Havana are sewers, pavements, a new slaughter-house, buildings for the police, fire, and health departments, and new hospitals. All of these will require a very large sum of money, and the ability of the city to raise this money is not yet evident. For the present, all that can be done is thoroughly to clean, disinfect, and repair the existing public buildings, either owned or rented, so as to make them habitable for the public officials, both American and native. The means of communication are entirely inadequate. They consist of lines of tramways running out to Jesus del Monte, Cerro, and the foot of the Principe Hill. The tracks are in bad order, the cars are old and dirty, and they are drawn by three horses each. The live stock is in bad condition, and the stables are filthy. These lines are owned by a company called the _Ferro Carril Urbano y Omnibus de la Habana_, under a concession granted February 5, 1859. The same company also runs, in the suburban districts, a few lines of very small omnibuses, drawn by two mules. The service is extremely bad. In addition to these facilities for transportation there is a "dummy" line, running from the centre of the city to the western end of the Vedado, a distance of about four miles. The track is in bad order, and the service is unsatisfactory. Undoubtedly one of the first enterprises that will be pushed to completion in Havana will be an entirely new tramway system, with mechanical traction. General Greene recognises the necessity of this when he says in his report: "There is a great need of a thorough and modern system of electric street railways in this city. While the streets are narrow, yet a single track could be laid on each street, near the curbstone on one side, in such a manner as not to impede traffic. It is a question, however, whether these tracks should be laid prior to the laying of the sewers, which would cause the tearing up of every street in the thickly populated portion of the city." General Greene is undoubtedly right in saying that the new sewerage, gas, and water pipes, tramways, and paving of Havana should all be done at one time. If a general plan of this sort were inaugurated, the streets could be taken one at a time and finished. It should be borne in mind that this sort of work cannot be done as it is done in American cities, by reason of the fact that the streets are so narrow that to pull part of them up and leave any room for traffic is impossible. Added to this, the paving which should be done in Havana is more like masonry work than ordinary paving, because in consequence of the tremendous rains in the rainy season when the streets practically become small rivers (for it is not an unusual thing to see small boys swimming in the street), the sort of pavements we are familiar with would be entirely inadequate. In the chapter on Havana mention was made of the excellent water supply. While the following description of the water supply of Havana by General Greene partially covers the statement already made, it brings out an interesting point in relation to the necessity of not only encouraging but also insisting on the additional use of water in Havana. It is nothing less than criminal for a city so abundantly supplied with magnificent spring water as is Havana not to insist upon its more liberal use. The waterworks themselves were built by American enterprise and there can be no doubt that those responsible for their management will be glad enough to increase the use of the water, and in so doing reduce the price to the consumer. However this may be, the water supply of Havana is so closely allied to its sanitary condition, that whatever the United States Government may decide to do in regard to its sewerage should be taken up in conjunction with the water supply. It is not a matter that should be left to the decision of the people of Havana themselves, but should be managed with no uncertain hand by those in authority, and the supply paid for by the city if the people are too poor or too indifferent to appreciate the necessity of cleanliness. Note what General Greene says on this point: "The present water supply of Havana is excellent, although it is used by only a portion of the population. It comes from enormous springs on the banks of the Almendares River, about eight miles due south of the city. These springs are inclosed in a masonry structure, about 150 feet in diameter at its base, and 250 feet at the top, and 60 feet deep. Masonry drains are laid around the upper surface to prevent any surface water from washing into the spring. At the base of this spring the water is constantly bubbling up, and appears to be of remarkable purity. The supply is so large that it more than fills all the present requirements, and a large portion of it runs to waste. From the spring the water is conveyed under the Almendares River by pipes situated in a tunnel, and from the north side of the river the water is conveyed in a masonry tunnel or aqueduct for a distance of about six miles, where it discharges into a receiving reservoir, the altitude of which is 35 metres, or about 108 feet, above the sea level. From the distributing reservoir the water is carried into the city by gravity in pipes, the highest point in the thickly populated portion of the city being, as already stated, 68 feet. The pipes in the streets are said to be small, and there is not sufficient pressure to carry the water to the upper stories of the small number of buildings which exceed one story in height. In these buildings pumping is necessary. "There are said to be about 18,000 houses in the city, and from a report made by the municipality in 1897 it appears that the number of houses directly connected with the water pipes is 9233. The poorer houses, which are not thus connected, obtain water either by purchase from the street vendors or by getting it from public taps, of which there are a certain number scattered throughout the city." Of the efficiency of the fire department, General Greene, in his report, said that he was unable to speak without further knowledge. "It is generally considered," he says, "to be very satisfactory, and the inhabitants of the city take great pride in it." The fire department of Havana appears to consist of two branches--the Municipal Fire Department and the Commercial Fire Department, the former being partly supported at public expense and the latter at the expense of private individuals. The Municipal Fire Department is organised as a battalion, as follows: 1 Colonel, Chief of Fire Department. 74 Corporals. 1 Lieutenant-Colonel, Deputy-Chief. 10 Cornets. 2 Majors 1531 Firemen. 1 Adjutant. 1 Chief Surgeon. 12 Captains. 4 Assistant Surgeons. 16 First Lieutenants. 1 Chief Apothecary. 13 Second Lieutenants. 2 Assistant Apothecaries. 44 Sergeants. The only paid employes, however, are a few machinists, drivers, clerks, and a telegraph operator. The entire expense in the budget of 1897-98 is as follows: For salaries.. $ 6,713 For materials. 7,062 ------- Total... $13,774 The apparatus consists of five steam fire engines in Havana, one in Jesus del Monte, and one in Marianao; two hose-carts, and one hook and ladder carriage. There are 78 fire-alarm stations and 356 water-plugs distributed in different parts of the city. The debt of the city of Havana on December 31, 1898, according to a statement signed by the Mayor and Controller, was as follows: Loan of April 22, 1889, fifty-year 6 per cent. bonds (mortgagee, Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba) $6,721,000.00 Loan of October 17, 1891, fifty-year 6 per cent. bonds (mortgagee, Bank of Commerce, United Railroads, and Regla Warehouses) 2,882,000.00 Notes 23,830,94 Floating debt for salaries, materials, interest, and sinking fund. 2,450,064.78 -------------- Total $12,076,895.72 By the end of this year the floating debt will be still greater, and the total obligations of the city at that time will probably be about $12,500,000. [Illustration: HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT, HAVANA] The mortgage for the loan of 1889 to the Spanish Bank is a document of 158 printed pages, including the index. It recites that in 1877 the city borrowed from the Spanish Bank a sum of money which, together with its interest, amounted in 1889 to $3,177,053.25; that the city was in arrears for interest and sinking fund, and that lawsuits have been in progress to compel the city to pay; that the city also desired funds for the completing the water-works and other purposes, and it was finally agreed that the city would issue $6,500,000 6 per cent. fifty-year bonds for the purpose of taking up the existing debt and completing the water-works, the expense of which was estimated at $1,850,000; and that the balance of the loan, which was taken at 90, was to be turned over to the city for general purposes. There was a further provision that the loan might be increased to $7,000,000 in case the city found it necessary, and this was done. The sinking fund provides for withdrawal by lot and payment of a certain number of bonds every three months during the fifty years, the amount at the end of the first quarter being $5000 and the last quarter $100,000. As security for the loan the city gave a first mortgage on the following property: Canal de Vento, valued at................ $5,030,000 The aqueduct of Fernando VII., valued at. 153,000 The Cristina market, valued at........... 103,000 The Tacon market, valued at.............. 960,000 The Colon market, valued at.............. 304,000 ---------- Making a total of.................. $6,550,000 together with all revenues and receipts from them during the period of the loan. In addition the municipality mortgaged as further security upward of fifty houses which it owns in various sections of the city. The amount of this loan was $7,000,000, which has been reduced by the operations of the sinking fund to $6,721,000. The mortgage of 1891 is also for fifty years and at 6 per cent., with the same property as security. The original amount was $3,000,000, which has now been reduced by the operations of the sinking fund to $2,882,000. The amount of arrears of interest and sinking fund on the two loans is $343,600.56, which figures as part of the floating debt first above stated. The floating debt of Havana arises from the failure to pay practically any salaries, contractors, or bills for materials during the whole of the year 1898, and for some debts contracted prior to this year. The items are given as follows: Salaries........................... $ 678,117.55 Supplies........................... 230,205.77 Materials.......................... 1,183,312.31 Public works....................... 2,568.59 Interest and sinking fund of debts. 343,600.56 Notes overdue...................... 12,160.00 ------------- $2,450,064.78 This is _prima facie_ a valid obligation of the municipality, and should be funded. But before making a new loan for the purpose of paying these debts it would be only proper to have a court of claims established, before which all the creditors of the municipality could appear and definitely prove the amount of their claims and the date at which they accrued. The debt question of Havana can not be disposed of lightly. In his instructive report on the municipal finances of Havana, General Greene gives it as his opinion that $12,500,000 is not excessive for a city of the size and wealth of Havana. Discussing the question with prominent financiers of Havana, the author found that these gentlemen agreed substantially with General Greene, some going so far as to declare the city could easily stand double the present debt, which would bring it up to $25,000,000. According to the last census, the only city comparable with Havana in the United States that carries a debt approaching this was Cincinnati, which had then a debt of $24,737,611. Cleveland, on the other hand, with a population about the same, had in 1890 a debt of only $6,143,206. The other United States cities of about the same population are respectively Pittsburg, debt, $10,026,806; Buffalo, debt, $10,843,029; Milwaukee, debt only $2,915,900; and San Francisco, less than $1,000,000 of municipal indebtedness. The debts of both Boston and Philadelphia were in 1890 less than $30,000,000. It will be bad financiering to burden Havana at present with more debt. When the budget is fully examined by expert accountants a large floating debt will be found, some of which it may be right and just to pay, and much of which is fraudulent. There will be long past-due gas bills, aggregating over $500,000; unpaid bills for street cleaning; salary accounts unadjusted, and a great variety of debts the validity of which may have to be tried in the courts. To meet current expenses the revenues of the city will have to be increased and honestly expended. Naturally, the city will have to bear its share of the important sanitary work which must be done in Havana, but as this work is for the general welfare of the Island, part of it may rightly be taken from the general funds. Judged from an American point of view, the municipal debt of Havana at the present moment is quite large enough, and great care should be taken not to increase it beyond the danger line. The revenue of the city is derived entirely from licences and indirect taxation. Real estate is not directly taxed, and the municipality does not receive directly anything from it. The Island of Cuba imposes, among other taxes, a duty of 12 per cent. on the estimated rental value of all houses in the city and country, and it pays over to the city of Havana 18 per cent. of the amount thus collected on rents within the city limit. The Island of Cuba also levies a tax on industry, commerce, and professions, and it pays over to the city of Havana 25 per cent. of all such taxes collected within the city limits. The other sources of city revenue, which are directly collected by the municipality, are the rent of houses owned by the municipality, revenues of the waterworks, slaughter-house, and markets, taxes on meat, coke, and wood, licences on factories and business of all kinds, and various minor licences. The total estimated revenue for the year 1897-98 is slightly in excess of $2,000,000, and the principal items, taken from the budget, are as follows: 1. Rent of houses owned by the city............. $159,598.16 2. Special taxes and licences: Street vendors............................. $ 15,000.00 Slaughter-house............................ 163,000.00 Water rents................................ 300,000.00 Tax on pleasure houses..................... 12,000.00 Tax on wood................................ 9,000.00 Tax on charcoal and coke................... 44,660.00 Licence on factories....................... 26,000.00 Licence on advertisements and signs........ 8,101.90 Sundry licences, etc. ..................... 12,496.00 -------------- 590,257.90 3. Charities--Income of legacies................ 4,000.00 4. Public Instruction--Income of legacies....... 1,138.80 5. Public Correction--Income from shops, private cells, etc. .......................... 30,638.42 6. Extraordinary Receipts: Building permits........................... $ 29,000.00 Fines, municipal ordinances................ 6,000.00 Special sewer tax.......................... 50,000.00 Replacing street openings.................. 22,258.57 Licence on cedulas......................... 28,000.00 Tax on business............................ 111,300.00 Tax on meat................................ 663,000.00 Special deposits........................... 20,000.00 Sundries................................... 3,300.00 -------------- 932,858.57 7. Contributions by General Government: Quota from real estate..................... $ 165,200.00 Quota from industry and commerce........... 206,700.00 -------------- 371,900.00 ----------- Total................................ $2,090,441.95 These receipts amount to something between $8 and $10 per head of a population estimated between 200,000 and 250,000. The expenses of Havana are such as are common in every city, namely: expenses of the Mayor and Council (Ayuntamiento), police, fire, health, schools, charities, correction, courts, street cleaning, lighting, repairs and paving, interest, and sinking fund. There is only one unusual item, namely: a contribution of $100,000 towards the expenses of the government of the province. The items are shown in the following statement, taken from the budget of 1897-98: 1. Council: Salaries................... $ 79,220.00 Materials.................. 9,792.00 Elections.................. 9,100.00 Cost of collections........ 49,500.00 Sundries................... 1,874.00 -------------- $ 149,486.00 2. Police: Mayor, deputies, etc. ..... $ 43,060.00 Salaries, municipal police. 99,470.00 Materials.................. 3,650.00 Fire Department............ 13,974.00 -------------- $ 160,154.00 3. Urban and rural police: Sundries...................$ 806.00 Street lighting............ 134,589.50 Street cleaning............ 125,577.28 Tree planting, etc. ....... 11,212.00 Slaughter-house............ 20,149.50 -------------- 292,334.28 4. Schools: Salaries...................$ 53,452.00 Materials.................. 13,890.00 Rents...................... 28,904.90 Sundries................... 300.00 -------------- 96,546.90 5. Charities.................... 177,308.80 6. Public works: Salaries................... $ 22,270.00 Labor, repair streets...... 170,000.00 Material, repair streets... 12,200.00 Sundries, repair streets... 4,500.00 -------------- 208,970.00 7. Corrections--Prisons......... 78,683.50 8. Trees........................ 1,000.00 9. Justice and Legal Credits: Interest and Sinking Fund.. 676,195.00 Provincial expenses........ 100,000.00 Repayment special deposits, etc. 26,950.00 Litigation...................... 11,000.00 Street condemnation............. 5,000.00 Subsidy in harbour works........ 5,000.00 Sundries........................ 9,013.47 ---------- 833,158.47 10. New Works: Ditches and Drains................... $45,000.00 Subscription private Fire Department. 2,400.00 ----------- 47,400.00 11. Contingencies: Public Calamities and unforeseen contingencies 45,400.00 ----------- Total..................... $2,090,441.95 The current annual estimated expenses of Havana, according to the printed budget, which the author has had translated for 1897-98, were $2,090,441.95, and the revenue, of course, is made to balance. This looks all right on paper, but it is exceedingly doubtful that the present authorities will find the real facts corresponding with these figures. The items that are excessively high are moneys spent for salaries, for office of mayor, for gas, for street cleaning, for charitable institutions, for paving, and for contingent expenses. By "excessive" is of course meant excessive when compared with what the city receives for the money thus expended. The officials do little or nothing for their salaries, the gas is wretched and intolerably expensive, the streets are not cleaned, only the vilest patchwork in the way of paving has of late years been done, and the charitable institutions, so called, are in a miserable and filthy condition. In spite of this, the city of Havana is mulcted to this extent for these purposes: Salary of employés and experts and expenses of mayor's office $120,000 Municipal lighting 134,000 Street cleaning 125,577 Charitable institutions 177,308 Pavements and paving and drains 208,000 Provincial contingent 100,000 --------- $864,885 If honestly and economically expended, these sums would produce good results without greatly increasing the taxes. The interest and liquidation of the debt makes an annual charge of $676,195, about one-third of the present total revenue of Havana; which, if not excessive, is quite enough under existing conditions of the population. General Greene thinks the revenues may be with safety increased, say to $3,000,000. There is force in this, but probably the better way would be before the debt and taxes are increased to try what an honest expenditure of the present revenue will do for the rehabilitation of Havana. Here is what General Greene says on this subject: [Illustration: TACON MARKET, HAVANA.] "I am inclined to think, although further study might modify this opinion, that the wealth of Havana is such that a judicious system of taxation would yield a revenue of $15 per head, or upward of $3,000,000, and this, if honestly and judiciously collected and expended, would probably be twice the actual net revenue now enjoyed by the city. The collection of taxes of all kinds is now farmed out on a basis of five per cent. commission for collection, which is added to the tax. The tax collector states that there are no arrears, but this statement is vigorously disputed. The whole system of taxation is radically different from that used in American cities, and the system has been so long in operation, and is so intertwined with the system of taxation for the Island, that it would probably be unwise to attempt to introduce American methods during the period of military occupation, the duration of which is so uncertain. It would seem that all that can be done is to make an honest collection, substantially on the basis of existing laws, increasing such items as in the judgment of the military governor can stand an increase without hardship. Such arbitrary changes would create no surprise, as the population has for generations been accustomed to having them made by the Spanish Governor-General." Arbitrary changes are the one thing the military authorities should avoid in Cuba, for therein lies our greatest danger with these people. The fact that the people were accustomed to such action under Spanish rule makes them far more sensitive to such action than they otherwise would have been. Note the flutter in Santiago because of the order to send the custom-house funds to Havana, a perfectly righteous order in itself, but promulgated in too arbitrary a manner. Notwithstanding this it created something akin to a panic in Santiago, principally because it reminded the people of that province of the high-handed Spanish way of doing things. It is not advisable to increase either the debt or revenue of Havana at present, but, in the opinion of the author, it would be far wiser to keep the total revenues about as they now exist. The sources of revenue may be changed, however, to great advantage; increased in some directions, reduced in others. For example, ordinances should be passed compelling the owners of all houses not having water supply (and, according to General Greene, there are about 18,000 of these) to put in a water supply immediately. If this were done the water tax could be spread over a larger number of population, the individual taxes reduced, and yet the revenue from this source measurably increased. A good water-works, like that of Havana, should be made self-sustaining, and under proper management the profits from this department could easily be made sufficient to pay all the expenses, and at the same time to take care of the interest and sinking fund of the water-works bonds. From the American point of view the most unwise tax in Havana is that which has made the slaughter-houses of that city a constant source of scandal. To-day every kilogram of meat killed and used costs the people of Havana 4-1/4 cents, and thus the cost of living of the poorer classes is greatly increased; yet the revenues of the slaughter-house are pledged to pay the interest on the water-works bonds, when the water-works themselves are ample security for this purpose. The real estate of the city should be reassessed fairly and justly, and a tax-rate arranged which would relieve many of the professions and industries of unnecessary taxation. It would seem from a glance at the budget of Havana that, if this were done, and the petty, annoying taxes abolished, sufficient revenue could easily be raised for all legitimate purposes. As a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the taxes collected for municipal purposes in Havana has been diverted from legitimate channels only to find its way into the pockets of those who have had charge of municipal affairs. According to the evidence of several witnesses who appeared before the author in Havana, a large amount of money was exacted from the people of the city by corruption, in the way of petty fines paid direct to officials, and not into the treasury of the state, and also large sums of money in the shape of payment for indulgences, much in the same manner as the Tammany officials exact tribute from those conducting illegitimate business or those engaged in breaking the ordinances of the city. Relief from this sort of exaction has been at once felt in Havana, but will not be fully appreciated until the present Governor of the city is able to ferret out and stop these several forms of imposition. CHAPTER XIII BANKS AND CURRENCY The heading of this chapter is somewhat misleading, for, strictly speaking, Cuba has neither banks nor currency--that is, of her own. The basis of the money which circulated in Cuba before the military occupation of the United States was Spanish gold, principally the _centen_, or twenty-five-_peseta_ piece, the value of which had been inflated to $5.30 by royal decree. Owing to the scarcity of this coin and to the fear that it might leave the Island, in 1893 the French louis, or twenty-franc piece was similarly inflated by royal decree and made legal tender in Cuba at $4.24. The silver coins of Cuba were of Spanish origin: the peso, or dollar, the _medio peso_, or half dollar, the _peseta_, twenty-cent piece, the _real_, or dime, and the _medio real_, corresponding to our nickel. There are also the usual bronze coins. The silver money of Cuba has for some time been worth only its market value, and that subject to daily changes. At various periods in the history of Cuba the Spanish Government at Madrid has attempted to force bank bills on the people of Cuba, and such attempts, as a rule, have ended disastrously to the people of the Island. The Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, a semi-official institution, whose governor was appointed by the Spanish Government, has also at times issued bank bills, and to the credit of this institution they have always been redeemed ultimately. As much cannot be said of the Government, whose repudiated bank bills, aggregating about $17,000,000, are at this moment only worth six or seven cents on the dollar. The passing of the control of the Island into the hands of the military authorities of the United States has happily ended all the currency complications of Cuba, and the order of President McKinley, which went into force January 1, 1899, will in a short time not only bring order out of confusion, but gradually reduce the currency systems of Cuba to a sound basis, making gold and silver alike worth one hundred cents the world over--no more, no less. The object of this order is not only to unify the Cuban currency, but in time to replace the present system by the monetary system of the United States. There is no need for entering further into the history of Cuban currency, but in the following pages will be given the reasons which led up to the Executive Order of December 28, 1898. Considering that the author was called upon by the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury to make a report upon this subject, and the report was subsequently adopted and acted upon, therefore the facts herein stated may be regarded as official. The real point at issue in relation to Cuban currency and the only one which caused the United States authorities any trouble was that arising from the inflation by royal decree of the Spanish twenty-five-_peseta_ pieces, popularly known as alfonsinos, or _centen_, and the subsequent inflation of the French twenty-franc piece, the so-called louis, which, as we have seen, were given a legal value of $4.24 and decreed since the end of 1893 as legal money. The Spanish authorities at Madrid, having thus inflated two gold coins six per cent. above their current value and about ten per cent. above their intrinsic value--for the mint value of these two coins at Havana is $4.776 and $3.8208 respectively--the United States authorities at Washington were now called upon to inflate a third gold coin and make the American eagle worth $11 in Cuba and our $5 gold piece current there at $5.50. As a temporary measure this might have had some justification, and the statements in support of it from Cuban bankers, planters, and business men had a certain degree of plausibility. The process, however, is entirely artificial, and whatever was done in this direction to-day must be undone some other day, and the only question the Administration had to decide was whether the inflation should be taken out when the United States authorities took possession or the operation postponed to some more opportune time. The danger in following the advice of some influential financiers of Havana lay in the adoption by the United States Government of a bad precedent in Cuban financiering, inaugurated by the Spanish Government, a precedent for which the United States was in no manner responsible. The reckoning day must come for all inflated values, whether of paper, of silver, or of gold; and when that day comes someone will suffer. Fortunately, in this case the degree of suffering was small, varying only from six to ten per cent. The practical question would seem to be how to disinflate these two coins with the least possible disturbance to mortgages, contracts, notes, and all classes of existing agreements to pay money. Current matters will adjust and take care of themselves. It is generally known that all transactions in Cuba since the close of the war have been made with the belief that the United States would not continue the royal decree of Spain, and that the inflations would collapse with the disappearance of Spanish rule. In Santiago the author found the bankers and financiers in favour of leaving matters as they existed and adopting similar methods in the rest of the Island, namely, reducing the $5.30 gold piece to $5. This was the view taken by Mr. Schuman, of Schuman & Co., Santiago. On this question the Chamber of Commerce of Santiago, in a thoughtfully prepared memorial, submitted to the President of the United States, say: "It is frequently difficult in this market to effect change, especially in small sales, for the want of fractional currency. As this makes considerable difference in transactions, the chamber considers it necessary for the American Government to remedy this difficulty by sending sufficient silver fractional money, utilising it to pay the army of occupation. "This chamber has heard that the administration of the custom-house of this port has solicited the Government at Washington to declare American money legal and obligatory tender in all transactions which take place in this territory, and we consider this movement premature, as the political situation of the country is not settled; and furthermore, prejudicial to commercial interests and to the public wealth by the depreciation it would cause in the Spanish gold in circulation and for the difficulty it will occasion through the lack of American money in sufficient quantity for these transactions. For this reason we beg that this petition will not be considered, it being even more inopportune, since the resolution of the civil governor of the province on the first of August last, establishing the legal value of Spanish gold, is just and has given satisfactory results." Speaking to the author on the same subject, Mr. Brooks, of Brooks & Co., Santiago, a careful financier and capable business man, said: "Regarding the currency question, we should also be inclined to support the opinion of the Chamber of Commerce, to leave matters as they are at present, _i.e._, the Spanish and French gold coins having been disinflated, to leave them as current circulating medium, including for the payment of custom-house duties. It is also always a small advantage for the sugar estates to pay their labour in Spanish gold as it represents a saving of three to four per cent. as compared with paying them in American money, as where a planter now pays $5 Spanish, he would, with a change in the circulating medium, have to pay $5 American, which would represent from three to four per cent. advance in wages without receiving any compensation from his sugar shipped to the United States, from which, in former years, and with inflated gold values, he derived an advantage of ten per cent." A partial adjustment of the question was suggested to the author by Dr. Antonio Jover, director of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, and as Dr. Jover is an authority on Cuban finances, the statement thus made is quoted in full: "The only way to settle all the difficulties of the present Spanish monetary state of things is to declare legal tender the American dollar and admit at par all Spanish gold coins. "1. Thus the onza should be worth $16; the medio onza $8; the doubloon, $4; the escudo, $2; the centen, $5--that is, pretty nearly its intrinsic alloy and weight value. "2. The English sovereign ought to be taken for $5, and the French louis (which circulates in Cuba in great numbers) for $4. "This arrangement, that slightly improves the value of the Spanish gold,--for the centen is worth in the New York market $4.87 or $4.90 at the utmost,--would tend to drive to Cuba the foreign coins of this country, perfectly useless for circulation. As for the Spanish silver, it is considered there almost as a merchandise or stock value subject to daily quotation, and it is really troublesome in its use. Therefore I would propose to give it a fixed value in American gold, thus-- Value. The peso....... $ 0.60 The medio-peso. .30 The peseta..... .12 The real....... .06 The medio-real. .03 "This value is a little less than the price of quotation to-day, but it is much more than it was a few months ago, but I do not think acceptable the use of any coin without a fixed, invariable value. Now, as the American currency and the American silver would stand at the par value, and, on the other hand, the Spanish silver is at the present quoted higher in Spain, there too would likely go a large quantity, if not all, Spanish silver coins; that nevertheless would not be objectionable, but rather convenient to both nations. Bronze or copper coins should be received just at half their face value; the _centavo_ for half a cent American gold, and the two-_centavo_ piece for one cent. But as this implies a change in the standard value of the Spanish gold dollar, which up to the present has been the basis of all contracts and dealings of the country, it will be necessary to fix a date to implant the new system, and that can be no other but the 1st of January next. Hence, from that date all money transactions will be understood to be on the basis of American gold, with American currency; Spanish, French, and English gold at par value; American silver to be accepted also at its full value only in quantities not exceeding $5; Spanish silver at the stated rate, and foreign silver coin as merchandise. "As for all contracts and stipulations in money matters standing at present to be fulfilled after the appointed date of the 1st of January, I believe it would be but right to be paid off with six per cent. discount, which would simply disinflate them, because they were made with the basis of gold coins which had six per cent. premium; and discounting the same six per cent. when they were settled with coins whose said premium had been taken off, although the intrinsic value of which coins had remained unaltered during the time, would only be common morality and fair equity. Lastly, all those who would attempt to alter the value of money ought to be severely punished, according to the law of the country." With these supplemental facts, the case is fully and impartially before the reader. To accept the proposition of the Havana bankers meant a continuation of the inflated value of ten per cent. To concede the proposition of Dr. Jover and the Santiago financier would reduce the inflation about six per cent., still retaining Spanish and French gold in circulation at a slightly increased value. (Dr. Jover even includes the British sovereign at $5.) The other and only remaining course would be to accept United States money at its full value for customs and taxes and the foreign coins at their intrinsic or mint value. After carefully considering all these facts, the Honourable Secretary of the Treasury, Lyman J. Gage, prepared and submitted to the President the following order in relation to the future currency of Cuba: "EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, December 28, 1898. "It is hereby ordered that on and after January 1, 1899, and until otherwise provided, all customs, taxes, public and postal dues in the Island of Cuba shall be paid in United States money, or in foreign gold coin such as the Spanish alfonsinos (centen) and the French louis, which will be accepted in payment of such customs, taxes, public and postal dues at the following rates: Alfonsinos (25-peseta piece) $4.82 Louis (20-franc piece) 3.86 "That all existing contracts for the payments of money shall be payable in the money denominated in such contracts, and where French and Spanish gold shall be the stipulated money of payment they shall be received in their present decreed inflated values, _i. e._, alfonsinos (25-peseta piece) $5.30; louis (20-franc piece) $4.24, or in United States money at the relative value set forth in the above table, namely, $4.82 for alfonsinos (25-peseta piece) and $3.86 for louis (20-franc piece). "It is further ordered that on and after January 1, 1899, and until further provided, the following Spanish silver coins now in circulation in the Island of Cuba shall be received for customs, taxes, public and postal dues at the following fixed rates in American money: The peso $0.60 The medio-peso .30 The peseta .12 The real .06 The medio-real .03 "Bronze and copper coins now current in the Island of Cuba will be received at their face value for fractional parts of a dollar in a single payment to an amount not exceeding 12 cents (1 peseta). "WILLIAM MCKINLEY." [Illustration: FIRE DEPARTMENT, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.] In signing and promulgating the above order, the currency question of Cuba has been settled for all time to come on a sound basis. In offering to accept for the present the Cuban peso or silver dollar for sixty cents, American money, the United States Government merely delays the migration of the coin to Spain. At this price it is profitable to ship them to Spain, but at fifty cents they would have disappeared so rapidly that a commercial disturbance might have followed on account of scarcity of silver dollars and fractional currency. It is not probable, nor is it asserted that this adjustment can be accomplished without hardship to some debtors and a slight financial disturbance. It is not, however, apprehended that the trouble will be as great as some have anticipated. In Santiago the first step to absolutely sound finance was taken last summer and six per cent. of the inflation squeezed out. The business interests in that part of the Island were opposed to a continuation of the ten per cent. inflation, and merely asked of the United States Government that the several gold coins in circulation should be left at their face value. As one of the evils arising from disinflation, certain Cuban bankers put forward the fact that it will mean an increase of from four to ten per cent. in the wages of labour, which Cuban industries cannot afford. Such a result, if true, cannot be regarded as an evil, but, on the contrary, a benefit to the poorer classes, whose condition in Cuba is deplorable beyond description. In the iron mines at Santiago the large American enterprises have already adjusted themselves to the new conditions and are paying their labour seventy-five cents per day American currency instead of a Spanish dollar worth sixty-five cents in Cuba and only sixty cents in exchange for United States currency. The author, when in the mining districts of this province, heard no complaints, either from the proprietors or the labourers. Stress was laid in the arguments before the President and Secretary Gage upon the loss to the debtor who has borrowed on a fictitious value and must pay the premium, and the unfortunate Cuban sugar-planter is especially singled out for sympathy. That the planter will suffer cannot be denied, but the advent of the United States into Cuba will lighten so many of his burdens that his condition is not without hope. All the customs duties on his imported food supplies, as will be seen in the chapter on the tariff, have been reduced, and many important commodities put upon the free list. The duty on his sugar machinery has been reduced to ten per cent. ad valorem; on his locomotives and railway supplies to twenty per cent.; and all along the line the taxes have been cut down. It is not probable that his land taxes will be collected during the present fiscal year, and the return of peace, establishment of law and order, and protection of property will immeasurably improve his lot. If, therefore, the sugar-planter of Cuba will gauge his present outlook by a glance backward and compare it with his condition last year at this time, he may face the new year with less gloomy premonitions as to his future than some of the testimony taken by the United States Government on the effects of disinflation would indicate. The action of the President, by and with the advice of the able financier at the head of the Treasury Department, will give Cuba a sound currency, which must be the foundation of her future fiscal prosperity. The proof of the poverty of Cuba is a scarcity of capital, manifest in many different ways. The difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of selling sugar plantations proves the scarcity of capital and at the same time the precarious situation of the sugar industry. The decrease in the price of property is a natural consequence of lack of disposable capital, and this is why the rate of money is so high; it can only be caused by lack of capital, and not of money, since scarcity or abundance of money has only a limited influence on rates of interest. Nearly all the banks established for the last twenty or thirty years in Cuba have disappeared, owing to the losses experienced by the gradual increase of the poverty of the country; the want of resources rendering it impossible to start these banks anew or establish new ones with Cuban capital. A few years ago there were in Havana, besides the Spanish Bank and the Bank of Commerce, the Industrial Bank, the San José, the Alianza, the Maritime Security Bank, and the Caja de Ahorros (savings bank). Excepting the first two, all have stopped working, and if the two surviving ones have outlived the others, it is because the Spanish Bank enjoys official privilege, and because the Bank of Commerce, though compelled twice to reduce its capital, owns valuable property, as, for example, the Regla warehouses and the United Railroads, which property, if the Island were prosperous, would be worth several millions more than it is to-day. It is almost incredible that, having such extensive relations with foreign countries, the condition of banks in Cuba should be so precarious, especially as the Island feels more every year the need of banking facilities, without which no modern country can prosper. Although not as important as regular banks, savings banks are a gauge of public wealth, since their object is to gather the economies of the working classes and create capital for the promotion of industries. The only savings bank in Cuba failed in 1884, ruining in its fall not only those who had deposited their funds, but also the shareholders; and to this day no other institution has been established to take its place, and at the present moment there is not a single public institution where money can be deposited in large or small quantities earning interest! In foreign countries the thrift of the working classes is the corner-stone of new industries. Are there in Cuba any economies or annual profits that can be capitalised? The sugar industry, the base of Cuban wealth, yields to-day no profit save in exceptional cases. The tobacco industry since 1895 has been in a critical condition, and as all the other industries depend on these two, or are of comparatively limited importance, it may be said that work and capital yield no profit in Cuba at present; since either no profits are realised, or, if they are, they leave the Island. This aspect of the present economic situation of Cuba is of immense importance and not only explains the actual situation at this moment, but shows that the hope of improvement alone lies in the prosperity of these industries. The history of banking in Cuba is sad with financial disasters. The only bank which has survived during half a century is the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba. This concern was originally chartered as the Spanish Bank of Havana, and although it was a private institution, owned by shareholders, the Spanish Government maintained the right of appointing the governor, and in many other ways controlled its actions. At various times this bank has itself issued bank bills, and at other times it has been the medium through which the Spanish Government endeavoured to circulate its own paper money. The notes of the bank itself, as already stated, have never been repudiated, though during hard times, as a result of the Ten Years' War, the bank bills of the Spanish Bank were at a small discount. Sixteen years ago the Spanish Bank of Havana was reorganised and the name changed to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba. At the present time this bank has no bills in circulation; the paper currency now valued at but a few cents on the dollar, which was issued during the war by the Spanish Government through the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, is not regarded by the shareowners of the bank nor by the public as the issue of the bank itself. The history of these bills is briefly as follows: In order to meet the expenses of the last war, the Spanish Government arranged to issue $20,000,000 worth of paper money. As a security and partial fund for redemption of the same, the Madrid authorities deposited in the vaults of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba $6,330,000 in silver against this issue. For a while this bullion, together with the mandate of the Spanish Government that these bills must be accepted as legal tender, kept the currency floating somewhat below par. The people of Cuba, however, had been deceived so many times in relation to paper money that they were suspicious of these bills from the beginning, and when in due course of time Spain gradually and dishonestly absorbed from the bank all silver upon which the paper money had been issued, the bills depreciated until they were absolutely refused in all business transactions. This entailed considerable loss, as the street railways and cabs of the city were compelled to take them in spite of this great depreciation in value. Finally, they were repudiated on all sides. A temporary value was given this paper by accepting ten per cent. in the payment of customs dues. This raised it up to twelve to fifteen cents on the dollar. Immediately upon the military occupancy of the United States the value of these bills fell still lower, and they are to-day worth but a few cents on the dollar, and are held chiefly by Government contractors and speculators. Realising that a decided change would take place in banking as soon as the United States took charge of affairs, the shareholders of the Bank of Spain met some months ago in Havana and reorganised the bank, making it a private concern, and changing its by-laws so that it could do business as a private institution, untrammelled by Government interference. Among other uses to which the Government of Spain put the Spanish Bank was that of a collecting agency for practically all taxes other than those of the custom-houses. The value of receipts for direct taxation that have been delivered for collection to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, from the fiscal year 1885-86, when this institution commenced the collection, with right of seizure, to 1894-95, both inclusive, actual amounts collected, deductions, and amounts pending collection as per vouchers, and accounts rendered to the Treasury by this institution, are as follows: ---------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+---------- | | |Deductions | |Per cent. Fiscal | Face Value. | Collected. |for which | Pending | of face Years. | | |Bank was not |Collections.|value un- | | |responsible. | |collected. ---------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+---------- | Pesos C.| Pesos C.| Pesos C. | Pesos C. | | | | | | 1885-86 | 5,021,271.25| 4,561,976.18| 438,029.78 | 21,265.29| 0.423 1886-87 | 5,240,651.50| 4,655,776.10| 547,435.19 | 37,440.21| 0.714 1887-88 | 5,386,627.83| 4,758,446.22| 575,840.11 | 52,341.50| 0.971 1888-89 | 5,316,367.75| 4,694,829.26| 549,628.25 | 71,910.24| 1.352 1889-90 | 4,878,047.21| 4,304,196.24| 497,220.89 | 76,630.08| 1.570 1890-91 | 5,336,611.25| 4,659,477.26| 571,994.17 | 105,139.82| 1.970 1891-92 | 4,242,982.34| 3,696,877.74| 428,374.80 | 117,729.80| 2.774 1893-93 | 5,357,928.97| 4,635,278.61| 572,890.51 | 149,759.85| 2.795 1893-94 | 5,092,200.41| 4,505,426.32| 432,163.62 | 154,610.47| 3.036 1894-95 | 5,163,321.70| 4,421,631.99| 534,492.41 | 207,197.30| 4.012 +-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+---------- |51,036,010.21|44,893,915.92|5,148,069.73 | 994,024.56| ---------+-------------+-------------+-------------+------------+---------- The above table gives a good idea of how this arrangement worked during normal times. There were two or three features in it, however, which were bad, and which the author is glad to notice that the United States Government in renewing the agreement of the Bank of Spain for the present fiscal year, that is, the year ending June 30, 1899, has obliterated. The Spanish Government paid the five per cent. on the receipts given the bank, and not on the money collected. This resulted in great abuses, because the delinquents during the years of war were fifteen, sixteen, and forty-three per cent. respectively. The punishment of delinquents has also been considerably modified by the United States authorities. The following table gives the receipts for direct taxation that have been delivered for collection to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba from the fiscal year 1895-96 to 1896-97, both inclusive, actual amounts collected, deductions, and receipts pending collection up to December 12, 1898, as per data at hand in the Spanish Bank: -------+---------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+--------- | | |Deductions |Pending |Per cent. FISCAL| Face Value. | Collected |for which |Collections. |of face YEARS.| | |bank not is | |value un- | | |responsible. | |collected. -------+---------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+--------- | | | | | 1895-96|$ 4,802,936.66 |$3,460,998.24|$ 579,002.52 |$ 762,935.90|15.88 1896-97| 4,589,735.08 | 3,283,286.51| 547,975.70 | 758,472.87|16.52 1897-98| 4,341,112.87 | 2,250,806.74| 223,119.47 | 1,867,186.66|43.01 +---------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+--------- |$13,733,784.61 |$8,995,091.49|$1,350,097.69|$3,388,595.43| -------+---------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+--------- This table and the one preceding it were prepared for the author by the governor of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba and differ from the table prepared by the Spanish authorities which will be found in the chapter on the revenue of Cuba. In the report furnished by the officials, the face value of the tax receipts is given in one column and the actual amount collected in another, the third column showing, under the caption of "Total Delinquent Taxes," the amounts uncollected, without any explanation as to why they were not collected. The governor of the Spanish Bank in the two tables given above includes a fourth column, namely, deductions for which the bank was not responsible. The bank authorities claim that the amounts represented in this column were receipts which were not valid, inasmuch as they were claims in many cases upon persons dead and upon property which had been destroyed by fire. The governor of the bank thinks it an injustice to the bank to add these under the general head of delinquent taxes, without this explanation. It is easy to enforce and collect the customs duties; but the collection of internal revenue taxes is a much more difficult matter. The United States authorities found, on coming into possession of the Island of Cuba, January 1st, that all the receipts of taxes for the present fiscal year were in the hands of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba; that this institution had not only six or seven branch banks in various parts of the Island, but also in the neighbourhood of 258 sub-district or collecting agencies. The bank assumed all the responsibility of these agencies, and it was decided to place in its hands for the present fiscal year this work, for the reason that it had all the machinery and there would be no loss in revenue. An agreement was entered into between the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba and the United States military authorities, and an order issued from Washington to the bank to make the collection, but the arrangement engendered such opposition among the Cubans that the order was revoked and the work was placed entirely in the hands of the American authorities under General Brooke. CHAPTER XIV PAYMENT OF INSURGENT SOLDIERS The question of the payment of insurgent soldiers and of certain legitimate indebtedness incurred by the insurgent government has an important bearing upon the civil, if not the industrial reconstruction of the Island of Cuba. This matter was referred to a commission of Cuban officers, consisting of General Garcia, General José Miguel Gomez, Colonel Manuel Sanguily, Colonel José Ramon Villalon, Dr. José Gonzales Lanuza, Señor Gonzalo de Quesada, and Mr. Horatio S. Rubens, who acted as interpreter. This commission came to Washington in November for the purpose of aiding in the pacification of the people of Cuba. General Garcia unhappily was taken ill of pneumonia and died. This delayed the work somewhat and took from the commission one of its strongest members. The commission had several informal interviews with the President, the members of the Cabinet, and finally with the author, who, as Special Commissioner for the United States to Cuba, took the testimony of these gentlemen and prepared a report on the subject for the consideration of the President and Secretary of the Treasury. The substance of this report is of permanent public interest, as it was the first official step towards the settlement of a question that must be adjusted before the entire Cuban army will disband and go to work. It also has considerable bearing upon the industrial future of Cuba. The gentlemen comprising this commission were briefly informed by the author as to the work committed to him, namely, an inquiry into the economic condition of the Island of Cuba and the recommendation of such measures for the commercial and industrial reconstruction of that country as might appear advisable after impartially consulting all interests. They were told that so far as the United States was concerned, Cuba had won her economic and industrial freedom. That the work had been performed with scrupulous regard to the interest of the people of Cuba. That the aim had been the rehabilitation of its industries and the building up of the country generally with as little friction as possible. That in accordance with instructions received from both the President and Secretary of the Treasury the tariff of Cuba had been framed so that there should be no discrimination in favour of the United States, and that the same tariff laws would be applied alike to all countries, so that Cuba was now free to purchase her supplies in the world's markets wherever they were best and cheapest, and not compelled to buy in a dear market, as under Spanish rule. They were furthermore informed that hereafter the revenues of the country were to be used exclusively for the economical and honest government of the Island and that the largest portion would not be drained away to pay the enormous interest charged (aggregating $10,500,000) upon an indebtedness which had unrighteously been saddled upon a people already bowed down under the double yoke of war and debt. Lastly they were asked to state fully and frankly, as citizens of Cuba, their views on any subject bearing upon the reconstruction of Cuba. In reply, these gentlemen said, in substance, that they were entirely satisfied with the course the Government of the United States had pursued in relation to these economic questions, and realised the fact that Cuba had become free, commercially and industrially. They then proceeded to discuss the important problem of how the existing transitory condition of the Island could best be changed to a permanent civil life, without friction in Cuba or trouble and annoyance throughout the United States. Their purpose, they avowed, was simply to co-operate with the United States toward the restoration of order, without which, in their opinion, there could be no reconstruction of industries and no return of prosperity. Their purpose was, they assured the author, to advise with the people of the United States, to the end that everything might be harmonious and that the people of Cuba might get to work as soon as possible. Speaking for all the gentlemen above named, Colonel José R. Villalon said: "The discharge of the army of Cuba is a very complex and difficult problem. It has to be done for humanity's sake, in one sense; those men who have been working and suffering have to be remunerated in some way. But that is not the only point of view. We have got to look towards the maintaining of order and we have got to give them compensation or gratification or a certain amount of money with which they can go back to their homes and their agricultural labours. In doing that we have a duty to our country so far as the Cubans are concerned, but, at the same time, it seems to me that it is a high political measure on the part of the United States to prevent now what would afterwards be very difficult to suppress. If we scatter these 30,000 men (approximately) throughout the country without any resources whatever--men who for the last two or three years have been accustomed to live upon the resources of the country or forage on the enemy and who are used to the hardships of the campaign--it will not be very difficult to foresee that in spite of the good nature and good disposition of the people these men will be forced to do what they do not wish to do by their nature. If the men are left as they are, with their present needs unsupplied, they will go to the woods and will be a source of disorder and brigandage, which will be very difficult for the United States to suppress; and for the sake possibly of saving a few million dollars now the nation will be obliged afterwards to spend many more millions, in addition to the sacrifice of many lives. It is an economic question. Unless something is done to relieve their needs the disorder of the Island will be prolonged indefinitely. As an example, I would call attention to the case of your Indians in this country, who now and then break away. In Cuba the condition will be worse, for there they would have the shelter of the woods, and besides the Americans would not be able to stand the climate as well as they stand their own. Ultimately, of course, they will succumb, but it will be at the cost of a great many lives and a great many millions of dollars. [Illustration: MORRO CASTLE, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.] "Besides, there is another thing; that if to-day we provide for their needs and restore order, it is the wish of every inhabitant of Cuba to contribute their share towards this. If these men are supplied now, they will not have the moral support of the people of Cuba should they not go to work; but the people of Cuba will see that they are punished. If, however, they had the moral support of the people of Cuba it would be difficult to punish them. "There is another point, and that is with regard to the amount of money required. Although they have not said anything about this, nevertheless, there is a tendency to lessen this amount. We want to say that although the measure, in principle, will be very good, even if it does not attend to all of the needs at present; though it will be a moral obligation from ourselves to the United States, it will not solve the problem, because the sum determined upon is not enough. If the revenues of the Island of Cuba ought to be mortgaged to repay whatever advances they have received from the United States now, it will not be a very difficult matter to make this amount a few millions more." The above gives a fair summary of the general tenor of the testimony taken, and it is believed fairly represents the views of these gentlemen. Testimony was also taken in relation to the payment of certain legitimate debts which, as these gentlemen felt, the good faith of the people of Cuba had been pledged to pay. On being asked the probable amount of this indebtedness, they said it was not in excess of $2,250,000 or $2,500,000. The first and most important matter and the one which, they insist, will have much to do with the pacification of the Island, is the payment of some sort of compensation to the impoverished Cuban soldiers. These gentlemen were asked if they had in their possession any estimate as to the number of soldiers, the length of service, and the amount of money necessary for the purpose they had in mind. An itemised account, they were told, would make a useful supplement to the interesting and instructive testimony given. In compliance with this request, these gentlemen prepared and presented certain tables, with additional verbal testimony. This testimony was subsequently reduced to writing. It purports to be a statement showing the number of officers and privates of the Cuban army and their time of service. On behalf of Cuba, these gentlemen informed the author that had Cuba been recognised as an independent nation, their first duty would have been to pay all legal obligations contracted during the struggle for independence. They request that the United States, acting as trustee for Cuba, will give this subject a careful hearing and enable the people of Cuba to disband the army and complete the pacification of the Island. They recognise the fact that $3,000,000 has been appropriated for a purpose similar to this, but regard it as inadequate. The figures submitted by these gentlemen, as representing the pay which the insurgent army, in their opinion, has earned, are somewhat startling. The summary is as follows: ESTIMATE FOR PAYMENT OF INSURGENT TROOPS 11 Major-Generals $ 179,450 19 Generals of Division 296,175 54 Brigadier-Generals 682,825 153 Colonels 1,491,750 290 Lieutenant-Colonels 2,362,800 578 Majors 3,870,240 965 Captains 4,561,800 1245 Lieutenants 3,763,800 1794 Sub-Lieutenants 4,952,880 2130 1st Sergeants 3,796,200 3123 2d Sergeants 4,605,600 4509 Corporals 5,238,240 30,160 Privates 21,502,620 ------ ----------- 45,031 $57,304,380 The pay promised the Cuban army is very much higher (except in the grade of generals) than the amounts actually paid the officers and men in the United States army, as will be seen from the following comparison of the salaries of the two armies: SALARIES PAID CUBAN AND UNITED STATES ARMIES PER MONTH United Cuban. States. Major-General. $500 $625 General of Division 450 -- Brigadier-General 400 458.33 Colonel 325 290.67 Lieutenant-Colonel 275 250 Major 220 208.33 Captain 130 150 Lieutenant 100 125 Sub-Lieutenant 90 116.67 1st Sergeant 60 25 2d Sergeant 50 18 Corporal 40 15 Private 30 13 It is not assumed by the gentlemen who prepared the above estimates that claims of such magnitude could be seriously considered by an independent Republic. The resources of the Island at present are entirely inadequate to shoulder such a debt. Upon the reduced basis of the salaries paid the United States soldiers, the reduction would be about one half, or less than $30,000,000, an equally impossible sum. On the other hand, that some aid should be rendered by the United States to enable these soldiers to disband and go to work would seem both feasible and just. It could easily be met by the revenue of the Island, and would have a decided effect in securing permanent peace and the early establishment of a stable government in Cuba. If done now under the guidance of the United States it would prevent excessive payment to the troops hereafter. In the same manner the liquidation of the small amount of outstanding obligation--not exceeding $2,500,000--might settle the debt question for all time to come. Especially if all other advances for these purposes were prohibited until such debt was adjusted to the satisfaction of the United States. In case the ultimate solution of the Cuban question should be, as it is quite within the range of probability, annexation, the independent government will not previously have had the opportunity of incurring improvident indebtedness, which ultimately may have to be assumed by the United States. In short, whatever may be done in this matter, or however it may be done, the United States should control and safeguard the finances of the Island for a considerable period. It has been very truly stated that should an independent government be established and recognised, the United States will no longer be able to control the financial legislation of the Island. It can, however, by the plan proposed, and very properly, not only save money for Cuba while under its military possession or control, but also prevent the making of unnecessary improvident or other loans by such independent government, except with the consent, or approval in advance, of the United States. This can be readily done, if, when making an advance for the benefit of Cuba, the right to apply the customs receipts and other revenues of the Island to the repayment of the principal and interest of such advance be reserved to the United States. In this way all reckless expenditure may be prevented and all speculative or independent bond issues be avoided and at the same time quick assistance be rendered those whose position at present is deplorable in the extreme. CHAPTER XV REVENUE--CUSTOMS TARIFF The revenues and expenditures of the Island of Cuba for the fiscal year 1898-99, according to the reports obtained by the author from the Secretary of the Treasury, Marquis Rafael Montoro, may be thus summarised: BALANCE OF THE ESTIMATED RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES OF THE BUDGET OF THE ISLAND OF CUBA FOR 1898-99 --------------------------------------+----------------------------------- Expenditures. Amount. | Receipts. Amount. --------------------------------------+----------------------------------- Sovereignty | Taxes and Imposts $ 6,142,500 Expenditure $22,500,808.59 | Custom-Houses 14,705,000 _Local._ | Internal Revenue 1,640,650 General Expenditures 159,605.50 | Lotteries 1,900,500 State-Church, Justice, | State Property 435,000 and Government 1,612,859.44 | Miscellaneous Revenue 1,536,000 Treasury 708,978.51 | ----------- Public Instruction 247,033.02 | Estimates of Total Public Works and | Revenue $26,359,650 Communications 1,036,582.10 | Agriculture, Industry, | and Commerce 108,178.52 | -------------- | $26,374,045.68 | Deduct Amounts not | Specified 17,314.27 | -------------- | Total $26,356,731.41 | Receipts $ 26,359,650.00 Expenses 26,356,731.41 --------------- Surplus $2,918.59 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- While the revenues are all derived from the various species of taxation exacted from the people of Cuba, the expenditures are divided into two important classes: those under the head of "Sovereignty Expenses," or expenses of the General Government, which, according to this estimate, aggregate $22,500,808.59, and those which, under the head of "Local Expenses" aggregating $3,873,237.09, constitute the expenditures for the immediate necessities of the Island. In order to obtain a clear view of the possibilities of revenue and the probable future expenses of the Island of Cuba, these receipts and expenditures should be further examined. Taxes in Cuba, as will be seen from the above exhibit, are collected under six general classifications, namely: (1) taxes and imposts, including excise and liquor taxes, and taxes on railway freight and passengers; (2) receipts from custom-houses, which include taxes on imports and exports, loading and unloading merchandise, fines and passports; (3) internal revenue, including stamped paper,[14] postage stamps, warrants for payment issued by the State, diplomas and titles, stamps on letters of exchange or deeds of transfer, on insurance policies, on matches, and on almost every other conceivable sort of deed and document; (4) lotteries, are put down in the above table as yielding $1,900,500; (5) revenue from State property, including rents and sale of lands and rent from docks; (6) revenue from miscellaneous sources, some of which seem somewhat mythical. These comprise the general sources of revenue which appear in this report, and from which the Secretary of the Treasury, Marquis Montoro, informed the author he hoped to secure for the fiscal year 1898-99 the following sums: Estimated Amount Sources of Revenue. Spanish Gold. Taxes and Imposts $ 6,142,500 Custom-Houses 14,705,000 Internal Revenue 1,640,650 Lotteries 1,900,500 State Property 435,000 Miscellaneous Revenue 1,536,000 ---------- Total Estimated Revenue $26,359,650 As to how much of this has been collected or how much can be collected, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Spanish official reports are not very reliable documents at the best, and during the last three years of internal dissensions, frequent changes in officials, and war, they appear to be at their worst. The only possible light on the subject which the author was able to obtain was a statement of the actual taxes as levied between 1887 and 1897, inclusive, and the actual amounts collected at the custom-houses and by the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, for under Spanish administration the latter institution collected all taxes other than customs. According to these figures, the custom-house receipts of Cuba fell from $14,708,509.10 in 1895 to $9,648,369.94 in 1897-98. While the value of the tax receipts handed to the Spanish Bank for collection for the fiscal year 1896-97 exceeded $5,000,000, the actual money collected was only $3,266,583.37, while for the next fiscal year, 1897-98, out of receipts aggregating in the neighbourhood of $4,500,000, only $2,377,742.21 was realised. The exhibits show that rural real estate, which, under prosperous conditions, should yield in taxes from $880,000 to $1,000,000, is incapable of paying anything. Out of receipts aggregating in 1897-98 over $800,000, the Spanish Bank only collected $89,661.98 from these properties. Nor will it be possible in the reconstruction of the Island to secure revenue from these sources, for the burned and destroyed estates are yielding nothing to their owners. City property which, in times of prosperity, should yield upward of $2,000,000, or even $3,000,000, in 1897-98 only yielded $1,140,230.12. This tax, however, and the receipts from customs will be the first to recover, as the immediate effects of permanent peace and honest government will be felt in the cities and towns and seaports. Lotteries will become a doubtful, if not impossible source of revenue. The collections from internal revenue may keep up to the estimate, though the income from State property and miscellaneous revenues seems upon examination a rather doubtful resource for the new government to rely upon. Judged from the actual revenue collected in 1897-98, had present conditions prevailed, it is extremely doubtful if the real revenue collected for 1898-99 would have reached more than half the rosy estimates put forth by the Marquis Montoro. The fact is apparent to those who know existing conditions in Cuba that the people of the Island are just now in such an impoverished condition that the agricultural interests are simply incapable of paying taxes. The cities will soon be all right again, and under honest municipal government, taxes on urban property will be paid. The influx of commodities of all sorts, to make up for losses and destruction by war and low stocks due to the blockade, will increase the custom-house receipts. The reduction of duties on machinery and railway supplies may increase the importations of these articles, and thus the lower rates of duty will yield a revenue which the present high rates, by making importations impossible, fail to do. By putting an end to smuggling, and by honestly administering the custom-houses, the United States Government may increase the revenue, but the proposed reduction of duties of the amended tariff in a measure offsets this. Unless, therefore, some new source of revenue is found practicable (and the Spanish seem to have exhausted all known means of raising revenue), reliance for the future will have to be on five of the six revenue sources above enumerated. If for the first year or two they should yield in all $15,000,000, it will probably be all the revenue that may safely be estimated. Much will naturally depend upon the foreign imports. The cable despatches from Havana, as this volume goes to press, indicate that the customs revenue will be fully up to the author's estimates. Aside from special imports, such as specie, leaf tobacco, etc., the value of the imports of merchandise proper into Cuba the last normal year (1895) was upward of $60,000,000. An average tariff rate of twenty-five per cent. on this valuation of imported merchandise would itself yield $15,000,000. As a matter of fact, the duties collected in 1895 were $14,587,920.57, on a total importation of merchandise other than specie of $61,443,334.65, or about an average of twenty-five per cent. To be sure, the nominal tariff rates were much higher in 1895 than they will be in 1899, but there is a possibility of making up for the loss by reason of lower duties by abolishing smuggling and honestly administering the custom-houses. It is impossible, however, to estimate on this, because, to do so with any degree of success, it would be necessary to reduce to figures the losses of revenue by smuggling, undervaluation, and misclassification. This is an impossibility. The tariff which the Spanish Government enacted and put in force in the Island of Cuba in September, 1897, and which, with modifications in the shape of war taxes, was in force in ports of Cuba in possession of the Spanish Government until the change of government, January 1, 1899, is based upon the preceding tariffs. Both this tariff and its predecessors seem to lack rational basis, so far as Cuba is concerned, the aim apparently being to secure, by the means of exorbitant customs duties revenue for the Spanish exchequer and profits for Spanish subjects, without the slightest regard for the welfare of the people of Cuba. While the duties seem to have been levied with this idea, the classifications and methods of administration are so complicated and obscure that they easily lend themselves to every known species of revenue fraud, from false classifications and undervaluations to smuggling of the most barefaced character. In fact, the author, after a careful inquiry into the Cuban tariff and an examination of several hundred witnesses in Havana and other cities of Cuba, reached the conclusion that almost every form of revenue iniquity has been perpetrated upon the people of this Island by the ruling powers. Not only was the tariff constructed in a way that compelled the Cuban producer to purchase the articles he needed and could not himself manufacture, of Spain, instead of in the cheaper markets, but also it levied almost prohibitive duties on such articles as Spain could not under any circumstances send to Cuba. For example, the Spanish exporter was able, by a discriminating duty of more than one hundred per cent. against other countries, to import from Minnesota to Barcelona American flour and reship it to Cuba at a price just below the price of the American article shipped direct to Cuba, upon which a duty nearly three times as great as that exacted from Spain had to be paid. On the other hand, Spain took little interest in such articles as machinery and railway supplies, including steel rails and locomotives, because she neither produced them nor could she purchase elsewhere and reship as Spanish production. The amended tariff for the Island, which went into force January 1, 1899, was framed on the general plan of the "open door" for all nations; that is, the merchandise of all nations will be admitted on an equal footing, or at the same rate of duty. There is but one uniform rate of duty, and that, as far as possible, a revenue, not a protective rate. In a few cases, a protective rate has been allowed, for the purpose of encouraging Cuban home industry, but as over half of all the imports into Cuba are food products, not produced to advantage in the Island, the rates of duty rarely exceed twenty-five per cent. ad valorem. In this connection, it will be interesting to note the value of the merchandise imported, divided by schedules or classes (page 217). It will be seen from the following exhibit that Schedule 12, "Alimentary Substances," covering all food products, is the most important of all the schedules, representing more than half the total imports into Cuba during 1895, and aggregating over $31,000,000. Next in importance to this is Schedule 4, "Cotton and Manufactures thereof," aggregating nearly $6,000,000, or ten per cent. of the total imports; Schedule 1, "Ores, etc.," aggregating in the neighbourhood of $4,750,000, ranking third, and so on through the list. TABLE SHOWING VALUE OF IMPORTS INTO CUBA BY TARIFF CLASSES FOR THE LAST NORMAL YEAR, 1895-96 ----------+---------------------------------------------+--------------- Number of | | Value Imports, Schedule. | Commodity. | 1895-96. ----------+---------------------------------------------+--------------- Class I. | Stones, earths, ores, etc. | $ 4,733,358.12 " II. | Metals, and manufactures of | 2,063,281.95 " III. | Pharmacy and chemicals | 2,166,414.92 " IV. | Cotton, and manufactures of | 5,908,202.23 " V. | Hemp, flax, jute, and other vegetable | | fibres and manufactures of | 3,587,713.23 " VI. | Wool, bristles, etc., and manufactures of | 1,060,192.13 " VII. | Silk, and manufactures of | 315,010.00 " VIII. | Paper and its applications | 1,257,132.94 " IX. | Wood, etc., and manufactures of | 2,054,057.57 " X. | Animals and animal wastes | 3,880,209.64 " XI. | Instruments, machinery, etc. | 2,123,315.43 " XII. | Alimentary substances | 31,179,289.98 " XIII. | Miscellaneous | 1,115,156.51 | +--------------- | | $61,443,334.65 ----------+---------------------------------------------+--------------- In conjunction with the above table, the following recapitulation of values of exports and reshipments into Cuba during 1895-96 is given: RECAPITULATION OF VALUES OF EXPORTS AND RESHIPMENTS IN CUBA DURING 1895-96 ------------+---------------+---------------+ | First | Second | Exports | Quarter | Quarter | ------------+---------------+---------------+ Classes of | | | goods: | | | Timber | $ 286,190.70 | $ 267,068.47 | Cigars | 6,616,458.97 | 4,374,938.70 | Sugar | 26,288,456.91 | 30,457,278.50 | Molasses | 427,886.11 | 1,010,657.35 | Rum and | | | liquors | 352,393.44 | 292,808.18 | Other | | | articles | 1,332,714.86 | 2,538,509.69 | +---------------+---------------+ Total | 35,304,100.99 | 38,941,260.89 | +---------------+---------------+ Reshipment: | | | Foreign | | | goods | 15,462.65 | 8,477.91 | Spanish | | | goods | 61,343.08 | 27,477.62 | +---------------+---------------+ Total | 76,805.73 | 35,955.53 | +---------------+---------------+ Special | | | exports | 207,477.55 | 166,881.15 | +---------------+---------------+ Grand | | | total |$35,588,384.27 |$39,144,097.57 | ------------+---------------+---------------+ ------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- | Third | Fourth | Exports | Quarter | Quarter | Total ------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- Classes of | | | goods: | | | Timber | $ 200,878.03 | $ 130,463.90 | $ 848,601.10 Cigars | 6,389,770.95 | 6,666,672.71 | 24,047,841.33 Sugar | 10,679,269.55 | 7,572,016.36 | 74,997,021.32 Molasses | 152,205.65 | 8,846.30 | 1,599,595.41 Rum and | | | liquors | 267,277.53 | 121,991.00 | 1,034,470.15 Other | | | articles | 2,738,024.01 | 1,112,242.44 | 7,721,491.00 +---------------+---------------+--------------- Total | 20,427,425.72 | 15,612,232.71 | 110,285,020.31 +---------------+---------------+--------------- Reshipment: | | | Foreign | | | goods | 17,567.05 | 27,524.08 | 69,031.69 Spanish | | | goods | 28,718.17 | 29,276.53 | 146,815.40 +---------------+---------------+--------------- Total | 46,285.22 | 56,800.61 | 215,847.09 +---------------+---------------+--------------- Special | | | exports | 2,092,960.13 | 153,326.30 | 2,620,645.13 +---------------+---------------+--------------- Grand | | | total |$22,566,671.07 |$15,822,359.62 |$113,121,512.53 ------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- The grand total of the trade of the Cuban ports for the last normal year was nearly $175,000,000. Perhaps with allowance for smuggling and undervaluations, this total may have reached $200,000,000; possibly it may have exceeded those figures. However this may be, Cuba, under a satisfactory government and normal conditions, may be easily said to represent from $200,000,000 to $250,000,000 in the world's commerce. This fact gives some idea of the vast trade possibilities of Cuba after a complete rehabilitation and industrial reconstruction of the Island. In the following table the author has carefully compiled from the several available sources of information the average receipts from 1886 to 1897, inclusive, of the several custom-houses of Cuba: TOTAL CUSTOM-HOUSE RECEIPTS IN ISLAND OF CUBA FROM 1886 TO 1897, INCLUSIVE ------------------------+-----------------+----------------+--------- | Total for | Average per | Ratio of Custom-Houses. | Twelve Years. | Year. | Total. ------------------------+-----------------+----------------+--------- Havana | $106,132,753.38 | $ 8,844,396.11 | 69.9 Cienfuegos | 13,691,144.65 | 1,140,928.72 | 9.0 Matanzas | 9,381,754.10 | 781,812.84 | 6.2 Santiago de Cuba | 7,668,501.66 | 639,041.81 | 5.1 Cardenas | 4,363,935.76 | 363,661.32 | 2.9 Sagua la Grande | 2,994,082.56 | 249,506.88 | 2.0 Caibarien | 1,705,523.71 | 142,126.97 | 1.1 Nuevitas | 1,564,595.30 | 130,382.94 | 1.0 Guantanamo | 1,380,693.44 | 115,057.79 | 0.9 Gibara | 1,186,480.34 | 98,873.37 | 0.8 Manzanillo | 913,896.91 | 76,158.07 | 0.6 Baracoa | 373,498.11 | 31,124.85 | 0.2 Trinidad | 194,656.85 | 16,221.40 | 0.1 Santa Cruz | 107,935.59 | 8,994.63 | 0.1 Zaza | 91,276.51 | 7,606.38 | 0.1 ------------------------+-----------------+----------------+--------- Total | $151,750,728.87 | $12,645,894.08 | 100.00 ------------------------+-----------------+----------------+--------- During the twelve years, it should be stated the largest amount of revenue was collected in 1886, when it was $15,330,778.96, and the smallest amount last year, namely, $9,648,369.94. The receipts show the working of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, which, while it greatly added to the prosperity of the Island, decreased the revenues which Spain sought to secure for herself. From the above table it will be seen that the total amount of revenue collected during these twelve years averaged $12,645,894.08 per year; that the custom-house of Havana collected 69.9 per cent, and Cienfuegos--which is an important city, and, in the opinion of the author, the city which, under the new conditions, will show the most rapid development--9 per cent., ranking second. In the custom-house district of Santiago, the average revenue receipts per year have been 5.1 per cent. The inclusion in this district of Guantanamo, Gibara, Manzanillo, and Baracoa will probably increase the collections for the province to nearly ten per cent. of the total revenue of the Island. The following is a similar table to that given above, but gives at a glance the customs receipts from imports and exports at each port: RECEIPTS FROM IMPORTS AND EXPORTS--1886-1897 ----------------+---------------------------+------------------------- | IMPORTS. | EXPORTS. +---------------+-----------+--------------+---------- | | | | | Average | Per Cent. | Average | Per Cent. Custom-Houses. | Twelve Years. | of Total | Twelve Years.| of Total | | imports. | | Exports. | | | | ----------------+---------------+-----------+--------------+---------- Havana |$ 7,882,855.48 | | $ 961,540.63 | Cienfuegos | 1,094,962.53 | | 45,966.19 | Matanzas | 723,978.04 | | 57,834.80 | Santiago de Cuba| 625,517.97 | | 13,523.84 | Cardenas | 297,738.05 | | 65,923.27 | Sagua la Grande | 207,422.23 | | 42,084.65 | Caibarien | 127,011.98 | | 15,114.99 | Nuevitas | 122,282.25 | | 8,100.69 | Guantanamo | 103,198.88 | | 11,858.91 | Gibara | 63,371.21 | | 35,502.16 | Manzanillo | 60,664.85 | | 15,493.22 | Baracoa | 31,122.49 | | 2.36 | Trinidad | 11,963.02 | | 4,258.38 | Santa Cruz | 4,679.98 | | 4,314.65 | Zaza | 4,520.12 | | 3,086.26 | ----------------+---------------+-----------+--------------+---------- Aggregate |$11,361,289.08 | 8.33 |$1,284,605.00 | 8.33 ----------------+---------------+-----------+--------------+---------- During the war, as already explained, the customs receipts have naturally declined, therefore the year preceding that has been selected as indicating the average revenue from custom-houses, when not disturbed by commercial treaty, such as that made in connection with the McKinley Tariff law of the United States, nor the other disturbances, such as civil war and subsequently the blockade of Cuban ports by the United States navy. The value of the following table is in the fact that it shows customs receipts from the several sources other than those which may be considered strictly import duties. CUSTOM-HOUSE RECEIPTS DURING 1895-96, SPECIFYING TAXES --------------+-------------+-------------+ | First | Second | Tariff | Quarter | Quarter | --------------+-------------+-------------+ Import Duties |$2,464,392.70|$2,387,357.28| Ten per cent. | | | on Imports | 272,162.34| 237,673.86| Provisional | | | fifteen per | | | cent. on | | | Imports | 84,126.55| 312,346.57| Export Duties | 344,850.62| 227,858.34| Navigation Tax| 2,539.75| 4,635.50| Loading Tax | 254,316.53| 346,953.59| Unloading Tax | 140,562.35| 128,938.58| Passenger Tax | 8,925.75| 7,808.00| Merchants' | | | Bonds | 332.05| 143.50| Fines | 18,308.40| 22,496.45| Interest on | | | Promissory | | | Notes | 695.03| ..........| Excise Tax | 333,003.78| 252,265.95| +-------------+-------------+ Totals $3,924,215.85|$3,928,477.62| ----------------------------+-------------+ --------------+-------------+-------------+-------------- | Third | Fourth | Tariff | Quarter | Quarter | Total --------------+-------------+-------------+-------------- Import Duties |$1,947,152.48|$1,977,028.01|$ 8,775,930.47 Ten per cent. | | | on Imports | 521,216.92| 209,483.87| 970,536.99 Provisional | | | fifteen per | | | cent. on | | | Imports | 302,821.71| 267,337.93| 966,632.76 Export Duties | 359,135.46| 369,237.95| 1,301,082.37 Navigation Tax| 6,232.50| 5,305.00| 18,712.75 Loading Tax | 124,242.98| 91,509.85| 817,022.95 Unloading Tax | 129,965.77| 112,984.47| 512,451.17 Passenger Tax | 6,190.25| 6,229.75| 29,153.75 Merchants' | | | Bonds | 208.56| 228.84| 912.95 Fines | 13,346.50| 16,663.15| 70,814.50 Interest on | | | Promissory | | | Notes | ..........| ..........| 695.03 Excise Tax | 333,525.56| 205,179.59| 1,123,974.88 +-------------+-------------+-------------- Totals $3,474,038.69|$3,261,188.41|$14,587,920.57 Having treated as fully as possible on the revenue of Cuba in the past from customs and made such forecasts as to the probable revenue as would seem warranted by the official figures, the next chapter will be devoted to a summary of the schedules of the amended tariff now in force, which will probably remain during United States occupancy the customs revenue law of the Island. [Illustration: PALM-TREE BRIDGE.] CHAPTER XVI THE AMENDED CUBAN TARIFF--OFFICIAL After a careful consideration of the facts given in the foregoing chapter, Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, William B. Howell, and the author recommended the adoption of the following amended tariff, the order for the establishment of which President McKinley signed on the 13th of December, 1898; and the tariff was promulgated and took effect in all Cuban ports in the possession of the United States January 1, 1899. The new tariff, at the time this volume goes to press, is reported by the several custom-houses of the Island as working smoothly, and yielding an amount of revenue equivalent to the estimates given in the chapters relating to the revenue of the Island. CUSTOMS TARIFF FOR PORTS IN CUBA FREE LIST The undermentioned articles may be imported into Cuba exempt from the duties stipulated in the tariffs on compliance with the prescribed conditions and the formalities established for every case in the customs ordinances: 346. Manures, natural. 347. Trees, plants, and moss, in natural or fresh state. 348. National products returning from foreign exhibitions, on presentation of the bill of lading or certificate proving their exportation from the Island and of satisfactory evidence attesting that such products have been presented and have been shipped to their point of departure. 349. Carriages, trained animals, portable theatres, panoramas, wax figures, and other similar objects for public entertainment, imported temporarily, provided bond be given. 350. Receptacles exported from Cuba with fruits, sugar, molasses, honey, and brandy, and reimported empty, including receptacles of galvanised iron intended for the exportation of alcohol. 351. Specimens and collections of mineralogy, botany, and zoology; also small models for public museums, schools, academies, and scientific and artistic corporations, on proof of their destination. 352. Used furniture of persons coming to settle in the Island. 353. Samples of felt, wall paper, and tissues, when they comply with the following conditions: (_a_) When they do not exceed 40 centimetres in length, measured in the warp or length of the piece, even when such samples have the entire width of the piece. The width shall, for tissues, be determined by the list, and for felts and wall paper by the narrow border which has not passed through the press. (_b_) Samples not having these indications shall only be admitted free of duty when they do not exceed 40 centimetres in any dimension. (_c_) In order to avoid abuse, the samples declared for free entry must have cuts at every 20 centimetres of their width, so as to render them unfit for any other purpose. 354. Samples of trimmings in small pieces, of no commercial value or possible application. 355. Archæological and numismatical objects for public museums, academies, and scientific and artistic corporations, on proof of their destination. 356. Works of fine art acquired by the Government, academies, or other official corporations, and intended for museums, galleries, or art schools, when due proof is given as to their destination. 357. Gold in bars, powder, or coined; also national silver or bronze coins. 358. Wearing apparel, toilet objects, and articles for personal use, bed and table linen, books, portable tools and instruments, theatrical costumes, jewels, and table services bearing evident trace of having been used, imported by travellers in their luggage in quantities proportionate to their class, profession, and position. 359. When travellers do not bring their baggage with them, the clearing of the same may be made by the conductor or persons authorised for the purpose, provided they prove, to the satisfaction of the customs, that the effects are intended for private use. 360. Stone, unwrought, for paving purposes. 361. Ploughs, hoes, hatchets, machetes, cane knives, etc., for agricultural purposes, and other agricultural implements not machinery. 362. Quinine, sulphate and bisulphate of, and all alkaloids or salts of cinchona bark. 363. Hemp, flax, and ramie, raw, hackled, or tow. 364. Abaca, heniquen, pita, jute, and other vegetable fibres, raw, hackled, or tow. 365. Single yarns made of jute for the manufacture of sugar bags only, to be imported by sugar-bag manufacturers only, the importer to give a bond to use the yarn exclusively for the manufacture of sugar bags. 366. Books, maps, and scientific instruments, for the use of schools. 367. Coal and coke. 368. Mineral, carbonated or seltzer waters, natural or artificial, root beer, ginger ale, and other similar non-alcoholic beverages, not otherwise provided for. 369. Fresh fish. 370. Second-hand clothing donated for charitable purposes to needy persons, and not for sale. 371. Articles of the growth, produce, and manufacture of the island of Cuba exported to a foreign country and returned without having been advanced in value or improved in condition by any process of manufacture or other means, and upon which no drawback or bounty has been allowed. IMPORT RATES OF DUTY ABBREVIATIONS EMPLOYED IN THE TARIFF G. W. = Gross weight. N. W. = Net weight. G. W.; T. = Gross weight or tare, as the case may be. T. = Tare. S. T. = Special tare. Kil. = Kilograms. Kilog. = Kilogram. Hectog. = Hectogram. Hectol. = Hectoliter. Duties shall be paid in United States money, or in foreign gold coin, such as the Spanish alfonsinos (centen) and the French louis, which will be accepted at the following rates: Alfonsinos (25-peseta piece), $4.82; louis (20-franc piece), $3.86. The following Spanish silver coins now in circulation in the Island of Cuba shall be received for customs at the following fixed rates in American money: Peso, 60 cents; medio peso, 30 cents; peseta, 12 cents; real, 6 cents; medio real, 3 cents. Bronze and copper coins now current in the Island of Cuba will be received at their face value for fractional parts of a dollar in a single payment to an amount not exceeding 12 cents (1 peseta). The metrical system of weights and measures is in use in Cuba. Importations from the United States are dutiable like other commodities. CLASS I.--STONES, EARTHS, ORES, GLASS, AND CERAMIC PRODUCTS GROUP I.--_Stones and earths employed in building, arts, and manufactures_ 1. Marble, jasper, and alabaster: _a._ In the rough or in dressed pieces, squared or prepared for shaping, G. W......100 kil. $0.50 _b._ Slabs, plates, or steps of any dimension, polished or not, G.W......100 kil. 1.00 _c._ Sculptures, high and bas-reliefs, vases, urns, and similar articles for house decoration, T......100 kil. 3.10 _d._ Wrought or chiselled into other articles, polished or not, T......100 kil. 2.00 2. Stones, other, natural or artificial: _a._ Slabs, plates, or steps, G. W......do. .50 _b._ Wrought into all other articles, T......do. 1.00 3. Earths employed in manufactures and arts: Cement, lime, and gypsum, G. W.....100 kil. .60 4. Gypsum manufactured into articles: _a._ Statuettes, T......do. 3.00 _b._ Articles, other, T......do. .75 GROUP 2. _Coal._ (See Free list). GROUP 3.----_Schists, bitumens, and their derivatives_ 6. Tar and mineral pitch, asphalts, bitumens, and schists, G. W.,.....100 kil. $ 0.60 7. Oleonaphtha, crude natural petroleum and crude oils derived from schists, G. W......100 kil. 1.40 _a._ Crude petroleum to be used exclusively in the manufacture of illuminating gas and only at gas works in Cuba, said gas works to be subject to inspection by the customs authorities, and to be used for no other purpose, provided that the importer gives such bond as may be regarded necessary by the acting collector, G. W......100 kil. .70 8. Petroleum and other mineral oils, rectified or refined, intended for illumination; benzine, gasoline, and mineral oils not specially mentioned; vaseline, G. W......100 kil. 4.70 _a._ A product from petroleum known under the name of cordage oil, imported by and used exclusively for cordage works in their manufacture of rope and cordage, provided that the importation be made at the direct demand of the president of the cordage company, and that the latter submit their works at all times to the inspection of the customs authorities, and that the importer give such bond as may be regarded necessary by the acting collector, G. W......100 kil. 2.35 GROUP 4.----Ores 9. Ores, G. W......100 kil. .10 GROUP 5.----_Crystal and Glass_ 10. Common or ordinary hollow glassware; electric insulators, T......100 kil. 1.00 Common bottles of glass, intended to contain beer, rum, and sparkling wines, manufactured with native fruit, and garrafones or demijohns and siphons to contain mineral, carbonated, or seltzer waters, shall enjoy a rebate of 60 per cent. of the duties stipulated in this number, when imported and declared in the custom-house by the manufacturers of said beverages. 11. Crystal, and glass imitating crystal: _a._ Articles, cut, engraved, or gilt, T......100 kil. 14.00 _b._ Articles, other, T......do. 7.00 12. Plate glass and crystal: _a._ Slabs, paving or roofing, T......100 kil. 1.65 _b._ For windows or in other articles, provided they be neither polished, bevelled, engraved, nor annealed, T......100 kil. 3.40 _c._ Window glass set in lead and polished, or bevelled plate glass, T......100 kil. $ 4.90 _d._ Articles, engraved or annealed, T......do. 9.80 13. Glass and crystal, tinned, silvered, or coated with other metals: _a._ Common mirrors not exceeding 2 mm. in thickness, coated with red or dark mercurial varnish, T......100 kil. 10.00 _b._ Mirrors, other, not bevelled, T......do. 15.00 _c._ Mirrors, bevelled, T......do. 18.00 14. Glass and crystal in statuettes, flower stands, and vases and similar articles for toilet purposes and house decorations; spectacle and watch glasses; imitations of precious or fine stones; enamel, T......kilog. .56 15. Incandescent electric lamps, mounted or not hundred. 2.50 GROUP 6.----_Pottery, earthenware, and porcelain_ 16. Bricks of clay, not glazed, for building purposes, furnaces, etc.; articles of fire clay, G. W......100 kil. .30 17. Roofing tiles of clay, not glazed, for building purposes, per square (10 by 10 feet) 1.50 18. Slabs or conduits of clay, glazed or unglazed, cement or stoneware, G. W......100 kil. .50 19. Ceramic tiles of all kinds and glazed roofing tiles, per square (10 by 10 feet) 2.50 20. Hollow ware, glazed or not, of clay or stoneware: _a._ Household and kitchen utensils, T......100 kil. .80 _b._ Dishes or other articles, provided that they be neither gilt, painted, nor ornamented in relief, T. .....100 kil. 5.50 _c._ Common bottles of earthenware, to contain beer, etc......do. 1.00 _d._ Articles, gilt, painted, or ornamented in relief, T......do. 5.60 21. Hollow ware or dishes of faience: _a._ Neither painted, gilt, nor in relief, T......do. 3.50 _b._ Gilt, painted, or with ornaments in relief, T......do. 6.40 22. Hollow ware or dishes of porcelain: _a._ Neither painted, gilt, nor in relief, T......do. 5.80 _b._ Painted, gilt, or with ornaments in relief, T......do. 9.30 23. Statuettes, flower stands, and vases, high and bas-reliefs, articles for toilet purposes and house decoration, of fine clay, faience, stoneware, porcelain, or bisque, T......kilog. .25 CLASS II.--METALS, AND ALL MANUFACTURES IN WHICH A METAL ENTERS AS A PRINCIPAL ELEMENT GROUP I.--_Gold, silver, and platinum, and alloys of these metals_ 24. Gold and platinum in jewelry or goldsmiths' wares, with or without precious stones or pearls; jewelry or wares of silver, with precious stones, pearls and seed pearls, not set, N. W. hectog. $7.50 25. Gold or platinum wrought in articles, other, of all kinds, N. W. hectog. $2.80 26. Silver in ingots, bars, plates, sheets, or powder, N. W. kilog. 2.60 27. Jewelry or wares of silver, without precious stones or pearls, N.W. hectog. 1.50 28. Silversmiths' wares, other, of all kinds, and platinum in ingots, N. W. .....kilog. 8.00 29. Plate, N. W......do. 2.40 GROUP 2.--_Cast iron_ (I) (I) Articles of malleable cast iron are dutiable as manufactures of wrought iron, Cast iron: 30. Pigs, G. W......100 kil. .10 31. Articles not coated or ornamented with another metal or porcelain, neither polished or turned-- _a._ Bars, beams, plates, grates for furnaces, columns, and pipes, G. W......100 kil. .50 _b._ Lubricating boxes for railway trucks and carriages, and railway chairs, G. W......100 kil. .35 _c._ Articles, other, G. W......do. .75 32. Articles of all kinds not coated or ornamented with another metal or porcelain, polished or turned, T......100 kil. 1.20 33. Articles of all kinds, enamelled, gilt, tinned, or coated or ornamented with other metals or porcelain, T......100 kil. 2.30 GROUP 3.--_Wrought iron and steel_ 34. Iron, soft or wrought, in ingots or "tochos"; steel in ingots, G. W., .....100 kil. .40 35. Wrought iron or steel, rolled-- _a._ Rails, G. W......do. .425 _b._ Bars of all kinds, including rods, tires, hoops, and beams, G. W......100 kil. .90 _c._ Bars of all kinds of fine crucible steel, G. W......do. 1.60 36. Sheets, rolled-- _a._ Neither polished nor tinned, of 3 millimetres and more in thickness, G. W......100 kil. 1.10 _b._ Neither polished nor tinned, of less than 3 millimetres in thickness, and hoop iron, G. W......100 kil. 1.20 _c._ Tinned and tin plate, G. W......do. 1.50 _d._ Polished, corrugated, perforated, cold-rolled, galvanised or not, and bands of polished hoop iron, G. W......100 kil. 1.30 37. Wrought iron or steel: Cast in pieces, in the rough, neither polished, turned, nor adjusted, weighing, each-- _a._ 25 kil. or more, G. W......100 kil. $1.00 _b._ Less than 25 kil., G. W......do. 1.35 38. Cast in pieces, finished-- _a._ Wheels weighing more than 100 kilograms, fish plates, chairs, sleepers, and straight axles; springs for railways and tramways; lubricating boxes, G. W......100 kil. .60 _b._ Wheels weighing 100 kilograms or less; springs other than for railways and tramways; bent axles and cranks, G. W. .....100 kil. 1.40 39. Pipes-- _a._ Covered with sheet brass, G. W......do. 1.40 _b._ Other, galvanised or not, G. W......do. 1.40 40. Wire, galvanised or not-- _a._ 2 millim. or more in diameter, T......do. 1.00 _b._ More than 1/2 and up to 2 millim. in diameter, T......do. 1.30 _c._ 1/2 millim. or less in diameter, and wire covered with any kind of tissue, T......100 kil. 1.60 41. In large pieces, composed of bars or bars and sheets fastened by means of rivets or screws; the same, unriveted, perforated, or cut to measure for bridges, frames, and other buildings, G. W., .....100 kil. 1.80 42. Anchors, chains for vessels or machines, moorings, switches, and signal disks, G. W......100 kil. .80 42_a._ Anvils, T......do. 2.50 43. Wire gauze-- _a._ Up to 20 threads per inch, T......do. 2.00 _b._ Of 20 threads or more per inch, T......kilog. .06 44. Cables, fencing (barbed wire), and netting; furniture springs, G. W., .....100 kil. 1.00 45. Tools and implements-- _a._ Fine, for arts, trades, and professions, of crucible steel, T. .....100 kil. 8.00 _b._ Other, T......do. 2.50 46. Screws, nuts, bolts, washers, and rivets; Parisian and similar tacks, T.....100 kil. 1.50 47. Nails, clasp nails, and brads, T......do. 1.00 48. Buckles: _a._ Gilt, silvered, or nickeled, T......kilog. .20 _b._ Other, T......do. .15 49. Needles, sewing or embroidering, pins, and pens; pieces of clockworks, N. W......kilog. .30 50. Crochet hooks and the like; hooks, hairpins, and surgical instruments, N. W......kilog. .30 51. Cutlery of all kinds; tailors' scissors; sidearms and pieces for same, T......kilog. .40 52. Firearms: _a._ Barrels, unfinished, for portable arms, G. W......kilog. $ .25 _b._ Small arms, such as pistols and revolvers, also their detached parts, T......kilog. 1.00 _c._ Sporting guns: Muzzle-loading, and detached parts thereof, T......kilog. .60 _d._ Breech-loading, and detached parts thereof, T......do. 2.50 53. Manufactures of tin plate, T......100 kil. 4.00 Wrought iron or steel: 54. Articles of all kinds not specially mentioned, common, even coated with lead, tin, or zinc, or painted or varnished-- _a._ In which sheet predominates, T......100 kil. 3.00 _b._ In which sheet does not predominate, T......do. 2.00 55. Articles of all kinds not specially mentioned, fine, i.e., polished, enamelled, coated with porcelain, nickel, or other metals (with the exception of lead, tin, or zinc), or with ornaments, borders, or parts of other metals, or combined with glass or earthenware-- _a._ In which sheet predominates, T......100 kil. 3.00 _b._ In which sheet does not predominate.....do. 3.00 GROUP 4.--_Copper and alloys of common metals with copper (brass, bronze, etc.)_ 56. Copper scales, copper of first fusion, old copper, brass, etc., G. W. .....100 kil. 3.00 57. Copper and alloys of copper in ingots, G. W......do. 4.00 58. Rolled in bars of all kinds, G. W......do. 4.50 59. Rolled in sheets, G. W......do. 5.00 60. Wire, galvanised or not-- _a._ 1 millimetre and more in diameter, T......do. 6.00 _b._ Less than 1 millimetre in diameter, T......do. 6.00 _c._ Gilt, silvered, or nickeled, T......kilog. .50 61. Wire covered with tissues or insulating materials; conducting cables for electricity over public thoroughfares, T......100 kil. 7.50 62. Wire gauze-- _a._ Up to 100 threads per inch, T......100 kil. 6.00 _b._ Of 100 threads or more per inch, T......kilog. .15 63. Pipes, bearings, plates for fireplaces, and boilermakers' wares partially wrought, G. W......100 kil. 4.50 64. Nails and tacks: _a._ Gilt, silvered, or nickeled, T......kilog. .20 _b._ Other, T......do. .12 65. Pins or pens, N. W......do. .60 Copper and alloys of copper: 66. Articles not specially mentioned, varnished or not, T......kilog. .20 67. Articles, gilt, silvered, or nickeled, not specially mentioned, T. .....kilog. .50 GROUP 5.--_Other metals and their alloys_ 68. Mercury, G. W......kilog. $ .20 Nickel, aluminium, and alloys having for a basis these metals: 69. In lumps or ingots, G. W.....100 kil. 3.00 Tin and alloys thereof: 70. In lumps or ingots, G. W......do. 4.00 Zinc, lead, and other metals not specially mentioned, as well as their alloys: 71. In lumps or ingots, G. W......100 kil. 1.00 Nickel, aluminium, and their alloys: 72. In bars, sheets, pipes, and wire, G. W.......do. 7.00 Tin and alloys thereof: 73. In bars, sheets, pipes, and wire, G. W.......do. 7.00 Zinc, lead and other metals: 74. In bars, sheets, pipes, and wire, G. W. 1.50 75. Tin hammered in thin leaves (tin foil) and capsules for bottles, T......kilog. .04 Nickel, or aluminium, and their alloys: 76. Articles of all kinds, T......do. .50 Tin and alloys thereof (Britannia metal, etc.): 77. Articles of all kinds, T......do. .50 78. Zinc, lead, and other metals, and their alloys: _a._ Articles, gilt, silvered, or nickeled, T......do. .30 _b._ Articles, other, T.....do. .15 GROUP 6.--_Wastes and scoriæ_ 79. Filings, shavings, cuttings of iron or steel, and other wastes of cast iron or from the manufacture of common metals, fit only for resmelting, G. W......100 kil. .15 80. Scoriæ resulting from the smelting of ores, G. W......do. .03 CLASS III.--SUBSTANCES EMPLOYED IN PHARMACY AND CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES, AND PRODUCTS COMPOSED OF THESE SUBSTANCES GROUP 1.--_Simple drugs_ 81. Oleaginous seeds, copra or cocoanuts, G. W......100 kil. $2.00 82. Resins and gums: _a._ Colophany, pitch, and similar products, G. W......do. .50 _b._ Spirits of turpentine, T......do. 2.50 _c._ Caoutchouc and gutta-percha, raw or melted in lumps, G. W......100 kil. 3.00 83. Extracts of licorice, camphor, aloes, and other similar vegetable juices, G. W......100 kil. 5.25 84. Tan bark, G. W.....do. .25 85. Opium, G. W......kilog. 6.00 86. Other simple vegetable products, not specially mentioned, G. W......100 kil. $2.75 87. Animal products employed in medicine, not specially mentioned, G. W......100 kil. 1.80 88. Natural colours, in powder or in lumps (ochres, etc.),.....do. .60 G. W. GROUP 2.--_Colours, dyes, and varnishes_ 89. Artificial colours of metallic bases: _a._ In powder or lumps, G. W.; T......100 kil. 2.55 _b._ Prepared in the paste, oil, or water; also lead or coloured pencils, G. W.; T......100 kil. 5.00 90. Other artificial colours, in powder, crystals, lumps, or paste, G. W.; T......kilog. .25 91. Natural dyes: _a._ Woods, barks, roots, etc., for dyeing, G. W......100 kil. .20 _b._ Madder, G. W......do. 4.50 _c._ Indigo and cochineal, G. W......kilog. .20 92. Artificial dyes: _a._ Extracts from logwood, archil, and other dyeing extracts, G. W.; T......100 kil. 5.00 _b._ Writing, drawing, or printing inks, G. W.; T......do. 3.00 _c._ Colours derived from coal, G. W.; T......kilog. .20 93. Varnish, G. W.; T......100 kil. 7.50 94. Blacking, G. W......do. 3.00 GROUP 3.--_Chemical and pharmaceutical products_ 95. Simple bodies: _a._ Sulphur, G. W.....100 kil. .15 _b._ Bromine, boron, iodine, and phosphorus. Phosphorus, T.; other, G. W......kilog. .18 96. Inorganic acids: _a._ Hydrochloric, boric, nitric, and sulphuric, also aqua regia, G. W......100 kil. .30 _b._ Liquid carbonic acid, N. W......do. 5.00 _c._ Other, G. W......do. 5.00 97. Organic acids: _a._ Oxalic, citric, tartaric, and carbolic, G. W......do. 1.00 _b._ Oleic, stearic, and palmetic, G. W......do. 1.40 _c._ Acetic, G. W......do. 6.00 _d._ Other, G. W......do. 5.00 98. Oxides and oxyhydrates: Of ammoniac, potash, and other caustic and barilla alkalies, G. W......100 kil. .25 99. Inorganic salts: _a._ Chloride of sodium (common salt), G. W......do. .50 _b._ Chloride of potassium; sulphates of soda, iron, or magnesia; carbonate of magnesia; alum, G. W......100 kil. $0.45 _c._ Sulphate of ammoniac; phosphates and superphosphates of lime; nitrate of potash and soda, G. W......100 kil. .03 _d._ Other salts of ammoniac, salts of copper, chloride of lime, sulphate of potash, hyposulphite of soda and borax, G. W.,.....100 kil. .75 _e._ Chlorates of soda and potash, G. W......do. 1.80 100. Organic salts: _a._ Acetates and oxalates, G. W......do. 2.50 _b._ Citrates and tartrates, T......do. 3.00 101. Alkaloids and their salts; chlorides of gold and silver, N. W.,.....kilog. 6.75 102. Chemical products not specially mentioned, G. W.; T......do. .05 103. Pills, capsules, medicinal dragees, and the like, T......do. .25 104. Pharmaceutical products not specially mentioned, T......do. .10 GROUP 4.--_Oils, fats, wax, and their derivatives_ 105. Vegetable oils: _a._ Solid (cocoanut, palm, etc.), G. W......100 kil. 2.50 _b._ Liquid, except olive oil, G. W......do. 3.00 106. Crude oils and animal fats: _a._ Cod-liver oil and other medicinal oils, not refined, G. W......100 kil. 1.47 _b._ Glycerin, olein, stearin, and spermaceti, crude, G. W......do. 1.40 _c._ Other crude oils and fats, G. W......100 kil. .50 107. Mineral, vegetable, or animal wax, unwrought, and paraffin in lumps, G. W......100 kil. 2.50 108. Articles of stearin and paraffin, wax of all kinds, wrought, T......100 kil. 2.40 109. Common soap, G. W.; T......do. 1.50 110. Perfumery and essences, T......kilog. .20 GROUP 5.--_Various_ 111. Artificial or chemical fertilizers, G. W......100 kil. .05 112. Starch and feculæ for industrial uses; dextrin and glucose, G. W.; T......100 kil. 1.40 113. Glues, albumens, and gelatin, G. W......do. 3.90 114. Carbons prepared for electric lighting, G. W......do. 3.00 115. Gunpowder and explosives: _a._ Gunpowder, explosive compounds, and miners' fuses, G. W.; T......100 kil. 4.00 _b._ Gunpowder, sporting, and other explosives not intended for mines, N. W......kilog. .20 CLASS IV.--COTTON AND MANUFACTURES THEREOF. GROUP 1.--_Cotton in the wool and yarns_ 116. Cotton in the wool and cotton waste, G. W......100 kil. $1.00 117. Cotton yarn and thread for crocheting, embroidering, and sewing; including the weight of reels, N. W......kilog. .33 GROUP 2.--_Tissues_ 118. Tissues, plain and without figures, napped or not, weighing 10 kilograms or more per 100 square metres, unbleached, bleached, or dyed, having: _a._ Up to 9 threads, N. W......kilog. .13 _b._ From 10 to 15 threads, N. W......do. .17 _c._ From 16 to 19 threads, N. W......do. .23 _d._ 20 threads or more, N. W......do. .35 118 _a._ The same tissues, printed or manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 30 per cent., N. W. 119. Tissues, plain and without figures, napped or not, weighing less than 10 kilograms per 100 square metres, unbleached, bleached, or dyed, having: _a._ Up to 6 threads, N. W......kilog. .15 _b._ From 7 to 11 threads. N. W......do. .20 _c._ From 12 to 15 threads, N. W......do. .27 _d._ From 16 to 19 threads, N. W......do. .37 _e._ 26 threads or more, N. W......do. .50 119 _a._ The same tissue, printed or manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 40 per cent., N. W. 120. Tissues, twilled or figured on the loom, napped or not, weighing 10 kilograms or more per 100 square meters, unbleached, bleached, or dyed, having: _a._ Up to 6 threads, N. W......kilog. .15 _b._ From 7 to 11 threads, N. W......do. .18 _c._ From 12 to 15 threads, N. W......do. .20 _d._ From 16 to 19 threads, N. W......do. .32 _e._ 20 threads or more, N. W......do. .42 120 _a._ The same tissues, printed or manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 30 per cent., N. W. 121. Tissues, twilled or figured on the loom, napped or not, weighing less than 10 kilograms per 100 square metres, unbleached, bleached, or dyed, having: _a._ Up to 6 threads. N. W......kilog. .18 _b._ From 7 to 11 threads, N. W......do. .23 _c._ From 12 to 15 threads, N. W......do. .32 _d._ From 16 to 19 threads, N. W......do. .43 _e._ 20 threads or more, N. W......do. .55 121 _a._ The same tissues, printed or manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissues, with surtax of 40 per cent., N. W. 122. Tissues for counterpanes, N. W......kilog. $ 0.24 123. Piqués of all kinds, N. W......do. .45 124. Carded tissues: _a._ Unbleached, half bleached, or dyed in the piece, N. W......do. .08 _b._ Bleached, printed or manufactured with dyed yarns, N. W.,.....kilog. .20 125. Velvety tissues, such as corduroys and velveteens; three-ply plush tissues, cut or not, N. W......kilog. .47 126. Knitted goods, even with needlework......do. .30 _a._ Undershirts and drawers of simple finish or rough sewing, N. W......kilog. .70 _b._ Undershirts and drawers of double sewing or fine finish, N. W.,.....kilog. .80 _c._ Stockings, socks, gloves, and other small articles of simple finish or rough sewing, N. W......kilog. .70 _d._ Stockings, socks, gloves, and other small articles of double sewing or fine finish, N. W......kilog. .90 127. Tulles: _a._ Plain, N. W......do. .70 _b._ Figured or embroidered on the loom, N. W......do. .92 128. Lace, blondes, and tulle for borders, of all kinds, N. W......do. 1.47 129. Carpets of cotton, N. W......kilog. .15 130. Tissues called tapestry, for upholstering furniture and for curtains manufactured with dyed yarns; table-covers and counterpanes of the same kind, N. W......kilog. .32 131. Wicks for lamps and candles, N. W......do. .15 132. Trimmings of cotton; ribbons and galloons, N. W......do. .52 CLASS V.--HEMP, FLAX, PITA, JUTE, AND OTHER VEGETABLE FIBRES, AND THEIR MANUFACTURES GROUP 1.--_Raw and spun_ 133. Twisted yarns of two or more ends (including the weight of the reels); also the fibres of abaca, heniquen, pita, jute, and other vegetable fibres, prepared for spinning, not otherwise provided for, N. W......kilog. $ 0.10 133_a._ Bags for sugar.....100 kil. 2.00 134. Rope and cordage: _a._ Twine or rope yarn and cord of hemp, not exceeding 3 millimetres in thickness, G. W......100 kil. 6.00 _b._ Cordage- and ropemakers' wares of hemp, exceeding 3 millimetres in thickness, N. W......100 kil. 6.00 _c._ Cordage- and ropemakers' wares of abaca, heniquen, pita, jute, or other fibres, N. W......100 kil. 6.00 GROUP 2.--_Tissues_ 135. Tissues of hemp, linen, ramie, jute, or other vegetable fibres, not specially mentioned, plain, twilled or damasked, weighing 35 kilograms or more per 100 square metres, unbleached, half bleached, or dyed in the piece, having: _a._ Up to 5 threads, N. W......100 kil. $2.00 _b._ From 6 to 8 threads, N. W......kilog. .05 _c._ 9 threads or more, N. W......do. .08 135_a._ The same tissues, bleached or printed: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 15 per cent., N. W. 135_b._ The same tissues, manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 25 per cent., N. W. 136. Tissues, plain, twilled, or damasked, weighing from 20 to 35 kilograms per 100 square metres, unbleached, half bleached, or dyed in the piece, having: _a._ Up to 5 threads, N. W......kilog. .06 _b._ From 6 to 8 threads, N. W......do. .08 _c._ From 9 to 12 threads, N. W......do. .12 _d._ From 13 to 16 threads, N. W......do. .16 _e._ 17 threads or more, N. W......do. .20 136_a._ The same tissues, bleached or printed: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 25 per cent., N. W. 136_b._ The same tissues, manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 40 per cent., N. W. 137. Tissues, plain, twilled, or damasked, weighing from 10 to 20 kilograms per 100 square metres, unbleached, half bleached, or dyed in the piece, having: _a._ Up to 8 threads, N. W......kilog. .08 _b._ From 9 to 12 threads, N. W......do. .12 _c._ From 13 to 16 threads, N. W......do. .18 _d._ From 17 to 20 threads, N. W......do. .25 _e._ 21 threads or more, N. W......do. .35 137_a._ The same tissues, bleached or printed: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 30 per cent., N. W. 137_b._ The same tissues, manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 50 per cent., N. W. 138. Tissues, plain, twilled, or damasked, weighing less than 8 kilograms per 100 square metres, unbleached, half bleached, or dyed in the piece, having: _a._ Up to 8 threads, N. W......kilog. .10 _b._ From 9 to 12 threads, N. W......do. .14 _c._ From 13 to 16 threads, N. W......do. .20 _d._ From 17 to 20 threads, N. W......do. .35 _e._ 21 threads or more, N. W......do. .06 138_a_. The same tissues, bleached or printed: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 30 per cent., N. W. 138_b_. The same tissues, manufactured with dyed yarns: Dutiable as the tissue, with a surtax of 50 per cent., N. W. 139. Velvets and plushes of linen, jute, etc., N. W......kilog. $0.20 140. Knitted goods of linen or hemp, mixed or not with cotton or other vegetable fibres, even with needlework: _a._ In the piece, jerseys, or drawers, N. W......kilog. .80 _b._ Stockings, socks, gloves, and other small articles, N.W......do. 1.00 141. Tulles: _a._ Plain, N. W......do. .60 _b._ Figured or embroidered on the loom, N. W......do. .75 142. Lace, blonde, and tulles for borders, N. W......do. 2.00 143. Carpets of jute, hemp, or other vegetable fibres without admixture of wool, N. W......kilog. .05 144. Tissues called tapestry for upholstering furniture and for curtains, mixed or not with cotton, figured or damasked, provided they be manufactured with yarns dyed prior to being woven; table- covers and counterpanes of the same kind, N. W......kilog. .28 145. Trimmings of hemp, jute, linen, ramie, etc.; ribbons and galloons, N. W......kilog. .40 CLASS VI.--WOOL, BRISTLES, HAIR, HORSEHAIR, AND THEIR MANUFACTURES GROUP 1.--_Raw and spun_ 146. Bristles, hair, and horsehair per cent. ad valorem 40 147. Wool, raw.....do. 40 148. Woollen yarn, unbleached, bleached or dyed, single or twisted per cent. ad valorem. 40 Woollen yarns mixed with silk shall be liable to the following surtaxes: When containing up to one-fifth of silk, per cent. ad valorem 22 When containing up to two-fifths of silk.....do. 50 When containing three-fifths or more of silk the yarns shall be dutiable as untwisted silk. GROUP 2.--_Tissues and fulled stuffs_ 149. Swanskin of pure or mixed wool per cent. ad valorem 40 150. Baizes: _a._ Of pure wool.....do. 40 _b._ Of mixed wool.....do. 40 151. Flannels, white or colored, for underclothing: _a._ Of pure wool.....do. 40 _b._ Of mixed wool.....do. 40 152. Blankets or counterpanes of wool, pure or mixed with other materials: _a._ Grey blankets ("pardas") per cent. ad valorem 40 _b._ Other.....do. 40 153. Astrakhans, plushes, and velvets of wool, pure or mixed.....do. 40 154. Cloths and other tissues not specially mentioned, of wool, hair, or flock wool, comprised or not in drapery, weighing per square metre: 300 grams or more: _a._ Of wool, hair, or flock wool, pure per cent. ad valorem 40 _b._ Of wool or hair, mixed.....do. 40 155. From 175 to 300 grams: _a._ Of wool, hair, or flock wool, pure.....do. 40 _b._ Of wool or hair, mixed.....do. 40 156. Less than 175 grams: _a._ Of wool, hair, or flock wool, pure.....do. 40 _b._ Of wool or hair mixed.....do. 40 157. Tissues of bristle or horsehair, with or without an admixture of cotton or other vegetable fibres per cent. ad valorem 40 158. Knitted stuffs, with or without an admixture of cotton or other vegetable fibres, even with needlework: _a._ In the piece, jerseys, or drawers per cent. ad valorem 40 _b._ In stockings, socks, gloves, and other small articles.....do. 40 159. Carpets of wool, pure or mixed with other materials: _a._ With uncut pile.....do. 40 _b._ Plushy or with cut pile.....do. 40 160. Tissues called tapestry, for curtains and uphol- stering furniture, of wool, pure or mixed with cotton or other vegetable fibres, even figured or damasked, weighing more than 350 grams per square metre; table- covers and counterpanes of the same kind per cent. ad valorem 40 161. Felts of wool, pure or mixed.....do. 40 162. Trimmings of wool; ribbons and galloons.....do. 40 CLASS VII.--SILK AND MANUFACTURES OF SILK GROUP 1.--_Yarns_ 163. Silk and floss silk, spun or twisted, in skeins per cent. ad valorem 50 164. Silk on reels, including weight of the reels.....do. 50 GROUP 2.--_Tissues_ 165. Tissues of unbleached silk per cent. ad valorem 50 166. Tissues of silk or floss silk: Not mixed with any other material-- Plain, not figured, twilled, or serged-- _a._ Black.....do. 50 _b._ Coloured.....do. 50 167. Figured, plushy or velvety.....do. 50 168. Mixed with another material: Plain, not figured, twilled, or serged-- _a._ Mixed with cotton or other vegetable fibres.....do. 50 _b._ Mixed with wool or hair.....do. 50 169. Figured, plushy or velvety.....do. 50 170. Knitted stuffs of boiled silk, of unbleached silk; or of floss silk, made up in any kind of article: _a._ Of pure silk per cent ad valorem 50 _b._ Mixed with other textile materials.....do. 50 171. Tulles of silk or floss silk, pure or mixed: _a._ Plain.....do. 50 _b._ Figured or embroidered on the loom.....do. 50 172. Lace tulles for borders and blondes, of silk or floss silk, plain or figured: _a._ Not mixed per cent ad valorem 50 _b._ Mixed with cotton or other vegetable fibres.....do. 50 173. Trimmings of silk.....do. 50 CLASS VIII.--PAPER AND ITS APPLICATIONS GROUP 1 174. Paper pulp, G. W......100 kil. $0.15 GROUP 2.--_Printing and writing paper_ 175. Paper, endless or in sheets, white or coloured, uncut and unprinted, for printing purposes, T......100 kil. 4.00 176. Paper, endless or in sheets, white or coloured, used for wrapping purposes, T......100 kil. 2.50 177. Paper in sheets, unruled, unprinted, and uncut, white or coloured, used for writing purposes.....100 kil. 8.00 GROUP 3.--_Paper, printed, engraved, or photographed_ 178. Books, bound or unbound, and similar printed matter.....100 kil. 1.25 179. Headed paper, forms for invoices, labels, cards, and the like, T......kilog. .10 180. Prints, maps, charts, etc., drawings, photographs, and engravings; pictures, lithographs, chromolithographs, oleographs, etc., used as labels and wrappers for tobacco or other purposes: _a._ Of a single printing and bronze or leaf, including labels printed only in bronze or leaf, T......kilog. .05 _b._ Of two printings and bronze or leaf, T......do. .20 _c._ Of three to ten printings (inclusive) and bronze or leaf, T......kilog. .40 _d._ Of more than ten printings and bronze or leaf, T......do. .80 GROUP 4.--_Wallpaper_ 181. Wall paper printed: _a._ On natural ground, T......100 kil. $4.00 _b._ On dull or glazed ground, T......do. 6.00 _c._ With gold, silver, wool, or glass, T......kilog. .27 GROUP 5.--_Pasteboard and various papers_ 182. Blotting paper, common packing paper, and sand or glass paper, T......100 kil. 1.75 183. Thin paper, of common pulp, for packing fruit, T......do. 2.30 184. Other paper not specially mentioned, T......do. 4.60 185. Pasteboard in sheets: _a._ Cardboard paper and fine, glazed, or pressed cardboard, T......100 kil. 3.50 _b._ Other pasteboard, T......do. 1.00 186. Manufactures of pasteboard: _a._ Boxes lined with ordinary paper, T......do. 1.00 _b._ Boxes with ornaments or lined with fine paper, T......kilog. .22 _c._ Articles not specially mentioned, T......do. .17 187. Paste and carton-pierre: _a._ In mouldings or unfinished articles, T......100 kil. 1.00 _b._ In finished articles, T......kilog. .15 CLASS IX.--WOOD AND OTHER VEGETABLE MATERIALS EMPLOYED IN INDUSTRY, AND ARTICLES MANUFACTURED THEREWITH GROUP 1.--_Wood_ 188. Staves thousand $0.80 189. Ordinary wood: _a._ In boards, deals, rafters, beams, round wood, and timber for shipbuilding, G. W. cubic metre .40 _b._ Planed or dovetailed, for boxes and flooring, broomsticks and cases wherein imported goods were packed, G. W......100 kil. .16 190. Fine wood for cabinetmakers: _a._ In boards, deals, trunks, or logs, G. W......do. 1.20 _b._ Sawn in veneers, T......do. 1.75 191. Coopers' wares: _a._ Fitted together, G. W......do. .65 _b._ In shooks, also hoops and headings, G. W......do. .36 192. Wood, cut, for making hogsheads or casks for sugar or molasses, G. W......100 kil. .06 193. Latticework and fencing, G. W......do. .60 [Illustration: AVENUE OF PALM TREES, PALATINO.] GROUP 2.----_Furniture and manufactures of wood_ 194. Common wood manufactured into joiners' wares, and articles of all kinds, turned or not, painted or not, varnished or not, but neither chiselled, inlaid, nor carved, T......100 kil. 4.75 195. Fine wood manufactured into furniture or other wares, turned or not, polished or not, varnished or not, and furniture and common wooden wares veneered with fine wood; furniture upholstered with tissue (other than with silk or stuffs containing an admixture thereof, or with leather), provided that the articles specified in this number be neither chiselled, carved, inlaid, nor ornamented with metal, T......100 kil. $15.00 196. Furniture of bent wood, T......do. 12.00 197. Battens: _a._ Molded, varnished, or prepared for gilding, T......100 kil. 5.05 _b._ Gilt or carved, T......kilog. .20 198. Wood of any kind manufactured into furniture or other wares, gilt, chiselled, carved, inlaid, or veneered with mother-of-pearl or other fine materials, or ornamented with metal, and furniture upholstered with stuffs of pure or mixed silk or leather, N. W. .....kilog. .68 GROUP 3.--_Various_ 199. Charcoal, firewood, and other vegetable fuel, G. W......1000 kil. 1.50 200. Cork: _a._ In the rough or in boards, G. W......100 kil. 1.40 _b._ Manufactured, T......do. 4.50 201. Rushes, vegetable hair, cane, osiers, fine straw, palm, and genista, raw, raw esparto, and baskets and other common wares of esparto, G. W......100 kil. 1.83 Baskets wherein imported goods were packed shall be dutiable according to this number, with a rebate of 60 per cent. 202. Esparto manufactured into fine articles; rushes, vegetable hair, cane, osiers, fine straw, palm, and genista, manufactured into articles of all kinds not specially mentioned, T......100 kil. 13.10 CLASS X.--ANIMALS AND ANIMAL WASTES EMPLOYED IN INDUSTRY GROUP 1.--_Animals_ 203. Horses and mares: _a._ Above the standard height.....each $10.00 _b._ Other.....do. 5.00 204. Mules.....do. 5.00 205. Asses.....do. 5.00 206. Bovine animals: _a._ Oxen.....do. 1.00 _b._ Cows.....do. 1.00 _c._ Bullocks, calves, and heifers.....do. 1.00 207. Pigs.....do. 1.00 208. Sucking pigs.....do. 1.00 209. Sheep, goats, and animals not specially mentioned.....do. 1.00 210. Singing birds, parrots, etc.....per cent. ad valorem .25 GROUP 2.--_Hides, Skins, and Leather Wares_ 211. Pelts in their natural state or dressed, G. W......kilog. $1.50 212. Hides and skins, green or not tanned, G. W......do. .02 Wet-salted hides and skins shall enjoy a reduction of 60 per cent. in respect of salt and moisture. Dry-salted hides and skins shall be allowed a rebate of 30 per cent. 213. Hides tanned with the hair, G. W......kilog. .20 214. Hides tanned without the hair: _a._ Cow and other large hides, whole, G. W......do. .15 _b._ Other and backs of large hides, G. W......do. .20 215. Hides and skins, curried, dyed or not: _a._ Sheepskins (basils), T......do. .20 _b._ Calf or goat skins, T......do. .25 _c._ Kid, lamb, or young calf skins, T......do. .36 _d._ Cow and other large hides, whole, T......do. .15 _e._ Backs of large hides and hides and skins not specially mentioned, T......kilog. .30 216. Hides and skins, varnished, satiny, grained, dulled, and hides and skins with figures, engravings, or embossed, T......kilog. .50 Leather cut out for boots and shoes or other articles shall be liable to a surtax of 30 per cent, of the respective duties leviable thereon. 217. Chamois leather or parchment of all kinds and gilt or bronzed hides and skins, T......kilog. .60 218. Gloves of skin, T......do. 3.50 219. Shoes of cowhide and similar leather: _a._ For men.....dozen 2.50 _b._ For women.....do. 2.00 _c._ For boys below size 4-1/2.....do. 1.50 220. Shoes of patent and similar leather: _a._ For men.....do. 2.75 _b._ For women.....do. 2.25 _c._ For boys below size 4-1/2.....do. 1.75 221. Boots of calfskin, with elastics, or for lacing: _a._ For men.....do. 5.00 _b._ For women.....do. 3.00 _c._ For boys below size 4-1/2.....do. 2.00 222. Boots of patent and similar leather: _a._ For men.....do. 6.00 _b._ For women, and top-boots ("polacas").....do. 7.00 _c._ For boys below size 4-1/2.....do. 5.00 223. Other boots and shoes, fancy.....do. 8.00 224. Riding boots.....pair 2.00 225. Sandals dozen .40 226. Saddlery and harnessmakers' wares; valises, hat-boxes, and travelling bags of cardboard or leather, T......kilog. $0.20 227. Other manufactures of leather or covered with leather, T......kilog. .40 GROUP 3.--_Various_ 228. Feathers for ornament, in their natural state or manufactured, N. W......kilog. 2.00 229. Other feathers and feather dusters, T......do. .40 230. Intestines, dried, N. W......do. 2.00 231. Animal wastes, unmanufactured, not specially mentioned, G. W. .....100 kil. .50 _Class XI._--INSTRUMENTS, MACHINERY, AND APPARATUS EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY, AND LOCOMOTION GROUP 1.--_Instruments_ 232. Pianos: _a._ Grand .....per cent. ad valorem .40 _b._ Other.....do. .40 233. Harmoniums and organs.....do. .40 234. Harps, violins, violoncellos; guitars and mandolins with incrustations; flutes and fifes of the ring system; metal instruments of 6 pistons or more; detached parts for wind instruments of wood or copper.....per cent. ad valorem .40 235. Musical instruments, other.....do. .40 236. Watches: _a._ Of gold; also chronometers.....per cent. ad valorem .40 _b._ Of silver or other metals.....do. .40 237. Clocks with weights, and alarm clocks.....do. .40 238. Works for wall or table clocks, finished, with or without cases .....per cent. ad valorem .40 GROUP 2.--_Apparatus and Machines_ 239. Weighing machines.....per cent. ad valorem .20 240. Machinery and apparatus for making sugar and brandy.....do. .10 241. Agricultural machinery and apparatus.....do. .10 242. Steam motors, stationary.....do. .20 243. Marine engines; steam pumps; hydraulic, petroleum, gas, and hot or compressed air motors.....per cent. ad valorem .20 244. Boilers: _a._ Of sheet iron.....do. .20 _b._ Tubular.....do. .20 245. Locomotives and traction engines.....do. .20 246. Turntables, trucks and carts for transshipment, hydraulic cranes and columns.....per cent. ad valorem .20 247. Machines of copper and its alloys; detached parts of the same metals.....per cent. ad valorem .20 248. Dynamo-electric machines: _a._ Exceeding 50 kil. in weight.....do. .20 _b._ Weighing 50 kil. or less; inductors and detached parts.....do. .20 249. Sewing machines and detached parts thereof.....do. .20 250. Velocipedes.....do. .20 251. Machines and apparatus, other, or of materials not specially mentioned, also detached parts of all kinds other than of copper or its alloys.....per cent. ad valorem .20 GROUP 3.--_Carriages_ 252. Coaches and berlins, new, used, or repaired: _a._ With four seats, and calashes with two "tableros," .....per cent. ad valorem .40 _b._ With two seats, with or without folding seat; omnibuses with more than 15 seats; diligences.....per cent. ad valorem .40 _c._ Four or two wheeled, without "tableros," with or without hood, irrespective of the number of seats; omnibuses up to 15 seats; carriages not specially mentioned. .....per cent. ad valorem .40 253. Railway carriages of all kinds for passengers, and finished wooden parts for same.....per cent. ad valorem .40 254. Vans, trucks, and cars of all kinds; miners' trolleys, and finished wooden parts for same.....per cent. ad valorem .40 255. Tramway carriages of all kinds, and finished wooden parts for the same.....per cent. ad valorem .40 256. Waggons, carts, and hand carts.....do. .40 256_a_. Salvage from wrecked vessels is _prima facie_ dutiable on appraised value according to its material. CLASS XII.--ALIMENTARY SUBSTANCES GROUP 1.--_Meat and fish, butter and greases_ 257. Poultry, live or dead, and small game, N. W.....kilog. $0.08 258. Meat in brine, N. W.: _a._ Beef, brine or salt, N. W.....100 kil. 2.80 _b._ Pork, brine or salt, N. W.....do. 2.80 259. Lard, N. W......do. 2.80 260. Tallow, N. W......do. 2.00 261. Bacon, N. W......do. 4.00 262. Ham, N. W......do. 5.50 263. Jerked beef ("tasajo"), N. W......do. 3.96 264. Meat of all other kinds, T.: _a._ Beef, canned, N. W......do. 5.00 _b._ Beef, fresh, N. W......do. 4.50 _c._ Mutton, fresh, N. W......do. $4.50 _d._ Pork, fresh, N. W......do. 4.00 265. Butter and oleomargarine, N. W.; T......do. 7.00 266. Cheese, N. W......do. 5.00 267. Condensed milk......per cent. ad valorem .10 268. Salt cod and stock fish, G. W.; T......100 kil. $2.00 269. Herring, pickled, smoked, salted, or marinated, and skate salted, N. W......100 kil. 1.00 270. Mackerel, pickled, smoked, salted, or marinated, N. W......do. 2.00 271. Salmon, canned, smoked, salted, or marinated, N. W......do. 5.00 272. Oysters of all kinds, and shellfish, dried or fresh, G. W......do. 1.00 273. Eggs (taken out of Group 7).....do. 5.00 GROUP 2.--_Cereals_ 274. Rice, husked or not, T......100 kil. 1.00 275. Wheat, N. W......do. .60 276. Cereals: _a._ Corn, N. W......do. .30 _b._ Rye, N. W......do. .40 _c._ Barley, N. W......do. .50 _d._ Oats, N. W......do. .40 277. Flour: _a._ Of wheat, T......do. 1.50 _b._ Of rice, T......do. 2.00 _c._ Of corn, N. W......do. .50 _d._ Of oats, N. W......do. 1.20 GROUP 3.--_Pulse, garden produce, and fruits_ 278. Beans, N.W......100 kil. 1.10 279. Pease, N. W......do. 1.10 280. Onions, N. W......do. .70 281. Potatoes, N. W......do. .50 282. Flour of pulse, T......do. 2.50 283. Fruits, fresh, T......do. .60 284. Apples, fresh, N. W......do. .60 285. Fruits, dried or drained, T......do. 1.50 286. Apples, dried, N. W......do. 1.50 GROUP 4.--_Seeds and fodder_ 287. Clover, N. W......100 kil. 3.60 288. Flax, N. W......do. .82 289. Timothy, N. W......do. 2.00 290. Fodder and bran.....per cent. ad valorem .25 GROUP 5.--_Preserves_ 291. Fish or shellfish, preserved in oil or otherwise, in tins .....per cent. ad valorem .25 292. Vegetables and pulse, pickled or preserved in any manner, .....per cent. ad valorem .25 293. Fruits, preserved: _a._ In brandy.....do. .25 _b._ Other.....do. .25 294. Alimentary preserves not specially mentioned; pork butchers' wares, truffles, sauces, and mustard.....per cent. ad valorem .25 GROUP 6.--_Oils and beverages_ 295. Olive oil: _a._ In receptacles of earthenware or tin, G. W.; T......100 kil. $2.40 _b._ In bottles, including the weight of bottles, G. W.; T......do. 3.00 296. Alcohol, S. T. ectol. 14.00 297. Brandy and all compound spirits not specially mentioned: _a._ In casks, S. T......do. 21.00 _b._ In bottles or flasks, S. T......do. 34.00 _c._ Rum, in casks......do. 18.00 _d._ Whiskies, in casks......do. 10.00 298. Wines, sparkling, S. T. liter. .85 299. Liqueurs and cordials: _a._ In casks or similar receptacles, S. T......do. .18 _b._ In bottles, S. T......do. .36 300. Wines, other: _a._ In casks or similar receptacles, S. T. hectol. 4.50 _b._ In bottles, S. T......do. 13.00 301. Beer and cider: _a._ Malt liquor, in casks. hectol. 3.30 _b._ Malt liquor, in bottles......do. 3.66 _c._ Cider......do. 1.60 GROUP 7.--_Various_ 302. Saffron, safflower, and flowers of "tobar".....per cent. ad valorem .25 303. Cinnamon of all kinds.....do. .25 304. Cinnamon, Chinese ("canelon"), cloves, pepper, and nutmegs, .....per cent. ad valorem .25 305. Vanilla.....do. .25 306. Tea.....do. .25 307. Coffee in the bean or ground; chicory roots and chicory, T. .....100 kil. 12.15 308. Cocoa of all kinds, in the bean, ground, or in paste; cocoa butter, T......100 kil. 20.25 309. Chocolate and sweetmeats of all kinds, including the immediate packages......per cent. ad valorem .25 310. Eggs. (See last item, Group I.) 311. Pastes and feculæ for soups and other alimentary purposes, .....per cent. ad valorem .25 312. Biscuits: _a._ Ordinary, T......100 kil. $0.60 _b._ Fine, of all kinds, including the immediate package, T. .....100 kil. 2.50 314. Honey. per gallon .20 315. Molasses......do. .06 316. Sugar, raw. per pound .015 317. Sugar, refined......do. .02 318. Saccharine......do. 1.50 CLASS XIII.--MISCELLANEOUS GOODS 319. Fans: _a._ With mountings of bamboo, reeds, or other wood, T......kilog. $0.15 _b._ With mountings of horn, bone, composition, or metal (other than gold or silver), N. W......kilog. .60 _c._ With mountings of tortoise shell, ivory, or mother-of-pearl; also fans of kid skin, silk tissue, or feathers, N. W......kilog. .80 320. Trinkets and ornaments of all kinds, except those of gold and silver, N. W......kilog. .75 321. Amber, jet, tortoise-shell, coral, ivory, and mother-of-pearl: _a._ Unwrought, N. W......kilog. 1.00 _b._ Wrought, N. W......do. 1.80 322. Horn, whalebone, celluloid, meerschaum, and bone; also compositions imitating these materials or those of the preceding number: _a._ Unwrought, N. W......kilog. .60 _b._ Wrought, N.W......do. 1.20 323. Walking-sticks and sticks for umbrellas and parasols......hundred 4.00 324. Buttons of all kinds other than gold or silver, N. W......kilog. .20 325. Hair, human, manufactured into articles of all kinds or any shape, N. W......kilog. 5.00 326. Cartridges, with or without projectiles or bullets, for unprohibited firearms; also primers and caps for such arms, T......100 kil. 30.00 327. Tarpaulins coated with sand, for vans; felts and tow, tarred or coated with pitch, G. W......100 kil. .28 328. Oilcloths: _a._ For floors and packing purposes, T......do. 3.00 _b._ Other, T......kilog. .06 Pads and brief cases of oilcloth shall be liable to a surtax of 40 per cent. 329. Cases: _a._ Of fine wood or leather, lined with silk; other similar cases, N. W......kilog. .75 _b._ Of common wood, cardboard, osier, and the like, N. W. .....kilog. .20 330. Artificial flowers of tissue, also pistils, buds, leaves, and seeds, of any kind of material, for the manufacture of flowers, N. W., .....kilog. $1.00 331. Matches of wax, wood, or cardboard, including the immediate packages, N. W......kilog. .20 332. Caoutchouc and gutta-percha manufactured in any shape or into any kind of article not specially mentioned, T......kilog. .05 333. Games and toys, other than those of tortoise shell, ivory, mother-of-pearl, gold, or silver, T......kilog. .10 334. Umbrellas and parasols: _a._ Covered with silk each .10 _b._ Other.....do. .05 335. Oil paintings.....per cent. ad valorem .25 336. Hats of straw or "guano" bast, straw of Curaçoa, and the like dozen $0.10 337. Hats of "yarey," leghorn or Indian straw, rice straw or esparto, and their imitations: _a._ Shaped or not, but without lining, ribbons, borders, or trimmings dozen .80 _b._ Finished, or with either of these accessories.....do. 1.40 338. Hats known as "jipijapa," having: _a._ Up to 4 straws, inclusive.....do. 4.50 _b._ Of from 4 to 6 straws, inclusive.....do. 8.00 _e._ More than 6 straws.....do. 30.00 339. Hats of woollen felt: _a._ Shaped or not, but without ribbons, borders, or lining, and shapes for the manufacture of these hats.....dozen .40 _b._ Finished, with ribbons, borders, or lining, with either of these accessories.....dozen .80 340. Hats of felt of hair, carded or not, and those of silk, velvet, cloth, cashmere, satin, or plush: _a._ Shaped or not, but without ribbons, borders, or lining, and shapes for the manufacture of these hats.....dozen .75 _b._ Finished, with ribbons, borders, or lining, or with either of these accessories.....dozen 1.00 341. Hats for ladies or children, with whatever kind of trimmings or accessories.....each .40 342. Caps of all kinds.....dozen .40 343. Waterproof and caoutchouc stuffs: _a._ On cotton tissue, T......kilog. .25 _b._ On woollen or silk tissue, T......do. .50 CLASS XIV.--TOBACCO 344. Tobacco: _a._ In cakes, so-called "breva," or in carrots.....100 kil. $10.50 _b._ In powder or snuff, or otherwise manufactured per lb. .12 _c._ Leaf tobacco, stemmed, or unstemmed, whether wrapper or filler, per pound $5.00 _d._ Cigars, cigarettes, cheroots of all kinds, $4.50 per pound and 25 per cent. ad valorem. Paper cigars and cigarettes, including wrappers, shall be subject to the same duties as are herein imposed on cigars. 345. On all other goods, wares, merchandise, and effects, not otherwise enumerated or provided for, except crude materials, .....per cent. ad valorem 25 345a. On crude materials, not otherwise enumerated.....do. 10 EXPORT RATES OF DUTY Tobacco: Manufactured-- _a._ Cigarettes in boxes thousand $ 0.90 _b._ Tobacco, cut.....100 kil. 3.75 _c._ Cigars.....thousand 1.35 In the leaf or filler tobacco-- _a._ Harvested in the Province of Santiago de Cuba and exported through the custom-houses of Santiago, Gibara, or Manzanillo .....100 kil. 2.20 _b._ Other.....do. 6.30 CHAPTER XVII REVENUE OF CUBA--INTERNAL TAXES In the two preceding chapters the attention of the reader has been called to the revenue of Cuba derived from custom-house receipts, which aggregates about $15,000,000 of the $26,000,000 required by the Spanish to pay the governmental expenses of the Island. Before ascertaining the way in which this money has been expended, and before making any suggestion as to possible division of revenue for the future, it may be well to pass briefly in review the other sources of revenue; and in this process the land, professional, and internal taxes come in for consideration. The Spanish Government estimated that the revenue from these combined sources for 1898-99 would be $7,783,150. This amount--when added to the customs, $14,705,000; the lotteries, $1,900,500; income from State property, $435,000; and miscellaneous revenue, $1,536,000,--practically completed the budget, as given in the opening of Chapter XV. Dismissing lotteries, the most important source of Cuban revenue has been from land and professional taxes, which should yield under normal conditions the following amount: TAXES AND IMPOSTS Sources. Dollars. Sovereignty taxes 650,000 Impost on mining property 10,000 Taxes on city property at 12 per cent. 1,600,000 Taxes on rural property, irrespective of cultivation, at 2 per cent. 150,000 Taxes on industry, commerce, and the professions, including 1/2 per cent. from contractors 1,400,000 Tax on personal drafts (cedulas) 150,000 Liquor consumption tax 1,300,000 Sale of liquor licences 120,000 Additional tax of 10 per cent. on transportation of passengers and 3 per cent. on that of merchandise 300,000 Discount on payments 70,000 Tax of 1 per cent. on payments 400,000 --------- 6,150,000 Deduct 5 per cent. commission for the collection of personal drafts (cedulas) 7,500 --------- Total 6,142,500 The following important statement in regard to the taxes of Cuba other than customs duties was prepared by José Anton Alcala, chief of the tax bureau of the Banco Español of Cuba, for Hon. Charles W. Gould, of the Department of Justice, and through the courtesy of Mr. Gould has been made part of this chapter: "We have selected for our explanations the collection of taxes during the year 1894 to 1895 because it is the latest year in which taxes were collected with regularity and the accounts of the yearly production to the State duly verified. In our statements appear only the sums belonging to the public Treasury and by no means the total amount of receipts collected. A reason for this is that with the exception of the capital of the Island all receipts of taxes in Cuba include, as an additional tax, the sums which belong to the municipalities. Both taxes and the agreed expenses for collection are perceived jointly. We hope thus to render clearer which are the real taxes, in behalf of the Treasury. Otherwise it would be necessary, in order to form a judgment, to make in each case a deduction of the sums belonging to the municipalities, which are of 18 per cent. over the Treasury taxes on the city real estates, of 100 per cent. for the country estates, and of 25 per cent. for the industrial taxes. As expenses for collection, 5 per cent. on the total amount belonging to the Treasury is charged. "Here is the rule followed to impose taxes for real-estate, city, and real-estate, country: "On city estate, 25 per cent. on the amount of the rent which the proprietor declares to perceive is discounted, and over the remaining 75, 12 per cent. is imposed. "On country estates, 2 per cent, is charged on the rent which the proprietor declares to perceive, without any previous discount. "The Industrial Subsidy affects every citizen who should exercise any industry, profession, trade, art, or employ. A relation of them is made, being arranged by tariffs, classes, and numbers, with expression of the portion anyone ought to satisfy according to the last Regulation and Tariffs approved by the Government on 12th of May, 1893. These relations, named _matriculas_, are made every year. "There are also the _patentes_ or receipts of taxes on certain industries which satisfy their duties per annum and in advance. If the industrial stops business before the year is over, he has no right to claim the balance. To this class belong certain shops, hawkers (_vendedores ambulantes_), veterinary surgeons, etc. The amount to be paid in each case is unchangeable and it is fixed in a special tariff for the _patentes_. "There are also receipts called of 'occasional amounts.' They include the receipts from the taxpayers who begin or stop business. As taxes as a rule are collected quarterly, these receipts are for the amount of time during the three months in which the taxpayer is a debtor to the Treasury. "'Occasional taxes' and _patentes_ amounted, for the whole Island, during the year 1894 to 1895, to the sum of $133,283.31 for the public Treasury. We do not include that total in our statements because it is collected only occasionally. "It is to be borne in mind that the total of taxes is never collected in Cuba, and that there is always a deficit, which has been less since the Spanish Bank is the collector. "Here is the total collection of taxes during the year 1894 to 1895: Havana Province 90.84 per cent. Matanzas " 89.72 " Santa Clara " 87.73 " Pinar del Rio " 78.34 " Santiago de Cuba " 66.59 " Puerto Principe " 93.65 " "The last-mentioned province gives such a good result (notwithstanding the very great difficulties in collecting, over only five municipal districts which are on a very large area of land), because the capital of the province and the city of Nuevitas afforded a splendid revenue. In the province of Santiago de Cuba the collection is harder than in any other, on account of the scarce and bad roads and means of communication. "In the lists of collection of 'Industrial Subsidy' in the province of Havana, there appears a great number of taxpayers who have not existed for many years and whom, nevertheless, the administration continues to keep on its records, because every new administrator is reluctant to confess that the taxpayers have decreased during his time of office. "There are reasons to suspect that there are concealments of taxpayers in the city estates list. A new record (_catastro_), made by an intelligent and honest administration, would surely give a rise in the collection of taxes. "The collection of taxes is in charge of the Banco Español de la Isla de Cuba, which has branches at Matanzas, Cardenas, Cienfuegos, Sagua, and Santiago de Cuba, and auxiliary offices at Puerto Principe and Pinar del Rio. "The Island has been divided into groups of towns near those cities. The representatives of the Bank collect the taxes themselves in the cities where they live, and by delegates in the other towns. "The actual contract signed by the Government and the Bank began in 1892-93, and holds good for ten years. The Bank receives as a commission 5 per cent. upon the total amount of the taxes to collect, presented by the public Treasury. As the Bank has no interference whatever, when the lists of taxes are made, it confines itself to collecting what the public Treasury declares in its own lists. The Bank, therefore, is merely an agent. "City and country taxes are collected quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. Industrial Subsidy is only collected by quarterly receipts. Annual receipts are applied to the estates whose taxes do not exceed the sum of eight dollars a year; the semi-annual are for those that do not exceed the sum of ten dollars a year. "The annual receipts and the receipts for the first six months of the year are collected jointly with the receipts for the first three months. The second six months' receipts are collected with the second three months'. This explains why there is an increase in the collection of taxes in some places, during the first and second three months of each year. Some sudden increases happen also in some places in the 'Industrial Subsidy' during certain quarterly collections. This is due to the collection of receipts from some corporations which pay 12-1/2 per cent. of their profits according to their balances. Railway companies pay 6-1/4 per cent. of their profits. State contractors pay 1/2 per cent. "Taxpayers who do not pay their taxes at the time fixed for it are subject to the procedure called _apremios_, according to the rules of May 15, 1885, approved by the Government. When _apremios_ are to begin, taxpayers are duly warned by mail, giving them time enough to pay their taxes before incurring trouble. "_Apremios_ are of three _degrees_: The first consists in an increase on the tax of 5 per cent.; the second consists in the seizure and afterwards the sale at public auction of chattel and live stock, besides a further increase of 7 per cent.; the third consists in the seizure and sale at public auction of real estate, besides a further increase of 9 per cent. "These rules embody many details. They are obscure and complicated. According to them, long proceedings are made against morose taxpayers, a characteristic of Spanish bureaucracy." The two tables which follow show the face value of the tax receipts placed in the hands of the Spanish Bank for a series of years and the actual amounts collected. They have been carefully compiled by the author from official sources and are believed to be reliable: TABLE I.----FACE VALUE OF TAX RECEIPTS HANDED TO SPANISH BANK FOR COLLECTION -------+---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- YEARS. | City | Rural Real| Taxes on | Minor | Total. | Property. | Estate. | Professions,| Taxes. | | | | Trades, etc.| | -------+---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- 1886-87|$ 2,520,061.51 |$ 507,739.70|$ 1,963,778.53|$ 249,071.76|$ 5,240,651.50 1887-88| 2,565,834.77 | 472,909.25| 2,090,306.46| 257,577.35| 5,386,627.83 1888-89| 2,633,491.17 | 510,456.81| 2,030,542.86| 141,876.76| 5,316,367.60 1889-90| 2,451,866.27 | 393,938.19| 1,895,638.08| 136,604.67| 4,878,047.21 1890-91| 2,498,060.52 | 693,323.04| 2,027,435.32| 117,792.37| 5,336,611.25 1891-92| 2,093,492.10 | 386,578.79| 1,654,306.58| 108,604.87| 4,242,982.34 1892-93| 1,989,290.65 | 784,943.09| 2,452,044.86| 131,650.37| 5,357,928.97 1893-94| 1,889,814.97 | 804,838.90| 2,183,355.47| 214,191.07| 5,092,200.41 1894-95| 1,884,766.87 | 814,006.33| 2,297,452.23| 167,096.27| 5,163,321.70 1895-96| 1,905,731.44 | 823,609.47| 2,073,581.75| 104,731.51| 4,907,654.17 1896-97| 2,060,263.25 | 880,946.21| 1,995,542.42| 105,453.12| 5,042,205.00 1897-98| 1,924,866.65 | 811,470.78| 1,609,094.32| 85,163.40 | 4,430,595.15 -------+---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- |$26,417,540.17 |$7,884,766.50|$24,273,078.88|$1,819,813.52|$60,395,193.13 -------+---------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- [Illustration: ROAD IN A PINE GROVE OF VUELTA ABAJO.] TABLE II.---- ACTUAL AMOUNT OF TAXES COLLECTED BY THE SPANISH BANK -------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- | City | Rural Real | Taxes on | Minor | YEARS.| Property. | Estate. | Professions, | Taxes. | Total. | | | Trades, etc. | | -------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- 1886-87| $2,275,853.10| $468,245.88|$1,662,664.91 | $249,071.76| $4,655,835.65 1887-88| 2,347,957.42| 436,222.17| 1,716,689.28 | 257,577.35| 4,758,446.22 1888-89| 2,380,545.54| 466,897.68| 1,705,509.13 | 141,876.91| 4,694,829.26 1889-90| 2,227,503.12| 363,222.63| 1,576,865.82 | 136,615.59| 4,304,207.16 1890-91| 2,227,217.01| 619,271.48| 1,695,196.40 | 117,792.36| 4,659,477.25 1891-92| 1,851,515.43| 345,743.88| 1,391,013.56 | 108,604.87| 3,696,877.74 1892-93| 1,789,106.74| 717,760.37| 1,996,761.13 | 131,650.37| 4,635,278.61 1893-94| 1,728,234.60| 722,572.96| 1,842,921.66 | 214,191.07| 4,507,920.29 1894-95| 1,703,327.71| 684,296.62| 1,870,617.89 | 167,096.27| 4,425,338.49 1895-96| 1,594,158.79| 371,845.50| 1,468,294.18 | 104,731.51| 3,539,029.98 1896-97| 1,523,368.43| 224,870.98| 1,412,890.84 | 105,453.12| 3,226,583.37 1897-98| 1,140,230.12| 89,661.98| 1,062,686.71 | 85,163.40| 2,377,742.21 -------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- |$22,789,018.01|$5,510,612.13|$19,402,111.51|$1,819,824.58|$49,521,566.23 -------+--------------+-------------+--------------+-------------+-------------- The following table is compiled from the totals of the detailed tables above, and shows the amount of the taxes collected by the Bank of Spain and the amount and percentage of delinquent taxes in each year for twelve years. It is probable that the amount for the half of the present fiscal year is relatively greater: TAX RECEIPTS HANDED TO SPANISH BANK FOR COLLECTION --------+---------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- | | Actual Amount | Total | Percentage of YEARS. | Face Value. | Collected. | Delinquent |Delinquent Tax | | | Taxes. | Each Year. --------+---------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- 1886-87 | $5,240,651.50 | $4,655,835.65 | $584,815.85 | 11.16 1887-88 | 5,386,627.83 | 4,758,446.22 | 628,181.61 | 11.66 1888-89 | 5,316,367.60 | 4,694,829.26 | 621,538.34 | 11.69 1889-90 | 4,878,047.21 | 4,304,207.16 | 573,840.05 | 11.76 1890-91 | 5,336,611.25 | 4,659,477.25 | 677,134.00 | 12.69 1891-92 | 4,242,982.34 | 3,696,877.74 | 546,104.60 | 12.87 1892-93 | 5,357,928.97 | 4,635,278.61 | 722,650.36 | 13.49 1893-94 | 5,092,200.41 | 4,507,920.29 | 584,280.12 | 11.47 1894-95 | 5,163,321.70 | 4,425,338.49 | 737,983.21 | 14.29 1895-96 | 4,907,654.17 | 3,539,029.98 | 1,368,624.19 | 27.88 1896-97 | 5,042,205.00 | 3,266,583.37 | 1,775,621.63 | 35.21 1897-98 | 4,430,595.15 | 2,377,742.21 | 2,052,852.94 | 46.33 --------+---------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- Total |$60,395,193.13 | 49,521,566.23 |$10,873,626.90 | 18.04 --------+---------------+---------------+---------------+--------------- Of course this difference does not absolutely represent the uncollected taxes, because the Government officials may have subsequently been able to secure collections from some of the delinquents. The delinquent column is also very greatly enlarged by reason of the fact that the Government authorities place in the hands of the Spanish Bank a large number of worthless receipts--that is, receipts in which the taxpayer is dead or the properties destroyed. This explanation, of course, exonerates the Spanish Bank, and shows that it collects the taxes in a businesslike way; but it does not change matters from a revenue point of view. That remains the same. It is probable, however, that under the new conditions it will be easy so to levy these taxes that they will yield annually from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 in revenue. In thus proceeding the United States authorities will unquestionably abolish some of the most onerous. The receipts from internal taxes are estimated as follows: INTERNAL REVENUE Stamped paper $350,000 Postage stamps 300,000 Stamped paper for payment to the State 250,000 Stamps for the same 50,000 Telegraph stamps 40,000 Bills of Health 3,000 Stamps for diplomas and matriculation 90,000 Stamped paper for municipal fines 1,000 Postal cards 2,000 Papal Bulls 1,000 Revenue stamps for drafts, etc. 60,000 " " " receipts, etc. 300,000 Stamps on policies 20,000 Revenue stamp on consumption of matches 260,000 ---------- $1,727,000 Deduct commission for sale of the above 86,350 ---------- Total $1,640,650 This source of revenue will be greatly increased under American control, though it will come from improved postal and telegraph facilities, increase in banking business, and other legitimate sources of internal revenue. The internal taxes of Cuba must be fully revised. If this work is intelligently performed, the same revenue can be obtained in a manner far less odious to the taxpayer. This table practically completes the sources of Cuban revenue, for the miscellaneous sources are of an intermittent character, and the lotteries revenue is not likely to cut any figure in the future finances of the Island. In the next chapter the author will briefly consider how the money has been expended and give some suggestions as to the future division of the funds collected. CHAPTER XVIII HOW THE REVENUE WAS SPENT In dealing with expenditures, the factors become more certain quantities than those present in the forecasting of possible revenue. The money collected from Cuba, whether it was $26,000,000 or more, has all gone, and nothing was found in the treasury when the United States forces took possession but numerous evidences of promises to pay, records of receipts given by the Government for goods not paid for, and debts of all kinds, including the salaries of a large number of the minor officials. The first and most important item of expenditure is, as has been said, for sovereignty expenses, and aggregates a sum exceeding $22,000,000. These expenses are subdivided as follows: I. Interest on Public Debt and General Expenses $12,574,709.12 II. State Church, and Justice 329,072.63 III. War 5,896,740.73 IV. Navy 1,055,136.13 V. Executive 2,645,149.98 -------------- $22,500,808.59 The largest single item in these expenditures is that of the interest on the public debt and general expenses, which aggregates $12,574,709.12. Of the total, about $10,500,000 undoubtedly found its way to Spain to pay interest and sinking-fund payments on the enormous debt which Spain had saddled upon Cuba. There has been much controversy over this debt, and as the discussion has ended by the American Peace Commission insisting on Spain's assuming the debt, and thus freeing Cuba forever from the legal obligation, a brief review of the subject will be of interest to the reader. Owing to the fact that Cuba has been, until United States occupancy, a colony without personality and without real representation, the question of the public debt was never properly settled. The Spanish Government, the Cubans contend, arbitrarily burdened the Island with the weight of the whole war debt of 1868-78. The Cubans have rightly taken the ground that this debt was Spanish, not Cuban. As a matter of fact, the Spanish Government, during the insurrection of 1868-78, never admitted that there was any war in Cuba, affirming, on the contrary, that the trouble was only a disturbance limited to some parts of the Island, and that the immense majority of the population of Cuba were loyal Spaniards. The conclusion to be drawn from this official fact and from its assertion by the Government was that Cuba was not bound to pay the expenses of that revolt. A somewhat similar instance occurred in the Peninsula at the same time. The Carlist War was likewise a very serious disturbance spread over some important provinces of Spain. The cost, however, of that war was not charged to the revolted provinces, but was considered a national debt. Besides, there are some items which have been held as forming part of the Cuban debt, which by no means can be accepted as such. Thirty or forty years ago Spain sustained war with Mexico, San Domingo, and Peru, the cost of those three wars having been charged to the Cuban Treasury, which, since then, has annually paid the interest thereon. In 1878 or 1879, a general liquidation of Cuban accounts took place, in which the "Banco Hispano-Colonial" of Barcelona assumed a very important position. Probably the cost of the three above-mentioned wars (in Mexico, San Domingo, and Peru) and some other accounts were then settled. Not even the smallest part of the whole debt has been employed in any kind of Cuban improvement. A memorandum prepared by the Cuban planters and addressed to Madrid in 1894 thus referred to the debt: "This debt has its origin in the extraordinary expenses of the civil war (1868-78), and it has since been increased, first by the administrative demoralisation which is so evident to all those who live in Cuba, and which has been so well described in the Cortes by ministers and by representatives belonging to all political parties; and secondly, by the deficits originating in the fiscal laws, the first object, or aim, of which has been (particularly since the year 1882), more than the regulation of public expenses, to secure an excessive protection to the Spanish industries. And, so formed, the public debt, which, as well in the years of insurrection as in the years of peace, has enriched so many people, represents the ruins of the war, the disorders of the public administration, and the injustice of the fiscal laws." During the discussion of the Cuban debt by the Peace Commission in Paris last autumn, the _Economiste Français_ contained an article by Paul Leroy Beaulieu, proposing an arrangement or compromise, with the bondholders, of part of the Cuban debt (about $140,000,000). The author of the article admitted that Cuba was not bound to pay the cost of the last insurrection (of 1895-98). As the _Economiste Français_ represents the interests of the French public and of the great French banking houses that have largely invested in Cuban bonds of the issues of 1886 and 1890, the inference to be finally drawn from the above-mentioned article is rather in favour of Cuba. If Spain thus lent her guarantee, she did so in obedience to a necessity and as a business convenience, in order to prop up her colonial and commercial system. The Spanish nation believed that her domination in Cuba would be lasting, and that the remote danger of being called upon to pay the Cuban debt was more than compensated by the enormous amount of wealth which she drew every year from the colony. If, instead of extorting, yearly, millions of dollars, the Government of Spain had applied the superabundant resources of the Island to the extinction of the debt, it is certain that in 1895 the whole of it would have been paid off. It may unquestionably be asserted that Cuba has, in many ways, from 1878 to 1895, spent enormous sums of money, millions of dollars, in payment of debts not really her own,--but with this difference, namely, that the whole of the money lost to the colony, instead of going to redeem the outstanding Cuban bonds, has been spent in Spain, either in a reproductive way, or otherwise. The amount in Spain of the manufacturing, commercial, and agricultural riches, dwelling-houses, and even palaces, country villas, and other investments, representing Cuban wealth which has been transferred without any return, is incredible. The magnificent fleet of steamers of the Transatlantic Company enters into this category. At the same time, the unhappy Cubans who produced that wealth suffered want and went into bankruptcy; for the Spanish exactions absorbed not only the profits of Cuban industries, but also a part of its gross production, and in that way encroached on the industrial capital of the Island. The encroachment was shown and evinced by the accumulation of public and private debts in all forms. The productive classes of Cuba have always, though in vain, protested against the injustice of having this burden thrown upon the treasury of the Island, which, as is shown above, has been compelled to pay more than $10,500,000 every year for the interest and sinking fund of this unrighteous debt. The debt which was, so far as Cuba is concerned, wiped out by the American Commission in Paris must have amounted to over $500,000,000. From a variety of rather scrappy data, obtained by the author in Havana, a brief statement of the Cuban debt has been made up. The debts of the Cuban Treasury before the war can be reduced to five. First: Spain's debt to the United States. Second: Redeemable debt of 1 per cent. per annum and 3 per cent. interest. Third: Annuity debt. Fourth: Mortgage notes of 1886. Fifth: Mortgage notes of 1890. The first debt, $600,000. is an engagement made by Spain and signed in Madrid on the 17th of February, 1834, to pay the United States the amount specified; it was confirmed by the minister of the Spanish Treaty in a royal order, dated April 8, 1841, ordering the payment to be made by the Havana Treasury. The second and third debts have been almost entirely converted into mortgage notes. The fourth debt: by a royal decree of May 10, 1886, 1,240,000 notes of 500 _pesetas_ each (about $124,000,000) were issued, redeemable by quarterly drawings and paying six per cent. per annum interest. The fifth debt: by a royal decree of the 27th of September, 1890, 1,750,000 mortgage notes of 500 _pesetas_ each (about $175,000,000), were issued, redeemable at par by quarterly drawings, and paying five percent. per annum interest. The notes of these last two emissions are placed in Paris and London, and the redemption and interest thereon are payable in gold or its equivalent. They are guaranteed by the customs, post-office, and stamp revenue of the Island of Cuba, and the direct and indirect taxes, and besides by the Spanish nation. Besides, during the last war, the Spanish Government made an internal loan against the Cuban Treasury of 400,000,000 _pesetas_ ($80,000,000) and another one of 200,000,000 _pesetas_ more ($40,000,000), guaranteed by the Spanish customs. The floating debt, caused by the war expenditure and payments of current appropriations in Cuba, was not less than $100,000,000. These are not exactly official statements, and yet they were obtained personally by the author from official sources, and come close to the mark. Tabulated, we have this: STATEMENT OF CUBAN DEBT, OCTOBER, 1898 Spain's debt to the United States $600,000 Notes by royal decree of May 10, 1886 124,000,000 " " " " " September 27, 1890 175,000,000 Internal loan against Cuban Treasury 80,000,000 " " " Spanish customs 40,000,000 Floating debt, war expenses, etc. 100,000,000 ------------ $519,600,000 Paul Leroy Beaulieu gives the bonded debt of Cuba as 2,032,000,000 _pesetas_, or $406,400,000. This evidently does not include the large floating debt included in the above estimate. So far as Cuba is concerned, this debt has been liquidated. It will, therefore, in the language of the French economist, be "absolutely necessary for Spain to meet the expenditure." Why not? Spain lost the game, therefore she must pay the cost. The largest expenditure, next to interest on debt, was for purposes of war, $5,896,740.73. The expenses of the navy aggregate $1,055,136.13, and of the executive department, $2,645,149.98. Under the last section will be noted the salary of the Cuban Governor-General, $40,000, and the expenses of his office, $46,450, aggregating $86,450. In this division, it appears, the Civil Guards were paid; this body of men received, in all, $2,095,221.12. The second largest item in this total is the subsidy to the Compañia Transatlántica, which amounts to $471,836.68. A study of these several items will at once show that the principal expenditures for the Island of Cuba are those which have, directly or indirectly, to do with the control of the Island by Spain. Ten and a half millions, annual charge for the debt; nearly $7,000,000, the combined cost of the army and navy; while upward of $2,000,000 of the total amount expended under the classification of executive went to the Civil Guards, who have been used for patrolling the various parts of the Island. Here, then, we have a total of $19,500,000 for extraordinary expenditures, the larger portion of which will be abolished now the public debt is wiped out and peace restored to Cuba. The second grand division of expenditure is the smallest, and represents the amount of money which was spent strictly for local affairs, and not in the defence of the sovereignty, in its possession of Cuba, and the payment of an unjust debt. One of the first items of expenditure under this latter head is the result of the concession last year by Spain of autonomy for the Island, and the round sum of $133,830 is paid under the head of "Colonial Legislature." The second section is for the church, justice, and executive; also for the courts of justice, expenses for prisons and charitable institutions. It aggregates $1,612,859.44. The next most expensive department of the Government seems to be that of the Treasury, the salaries of the secretary, sub-secretaries, and other officers aggregating $218,725. This does not include general expenses, which make another item of this department, aggregating $33,500. Under the head of contingent expenses may be found the various provincial administrations of the Treasury; the cost of administration of custom-houses and revenue marine, amounting to $472,370, giving a total for the department of $708,978.51. Public instruction fares badly in Cuba. Under this head, it appears, $247,033.02 were expended. The largest item in these expenditures seems to be for the University of Havana and its educational adjuncts, aggregating $172,840.80. The next largest item is the salary of the Secretary of Education and the inspectors of primary instruction, etc., aggregating $58,300. None of the total amount seems to go for common-school education, as it is understood in the United States. Under the head of "Public Works and Communications," $1,036,582.10 was expended. The proportion of this money which goes for salaries is very large indeed. The largest single item of expenditure is given under the rather dubious heading of "Communication," and aggregates $417,640. Repairs and care of public buildings, including rent of buildings, aggregates $79,500; postal communication, $114,514. Marine navigation, including docks and sheds, lighthouses and buoys, aggregates $98,058; and the construction of the San Cristobal bridge, $49,000. The care and repair of public roads cost $100,000; in all making the above-mentioned total. [Illustration: A COCOANUT GROVE.] The agriculture, industry, and commerce of Cuba, like the public instruction, in the broader sense of the word, comes in for a meagre share of the small amount of the total budget, which seems to be reserved exclusively for expenditures for the benefit of the Home Government. The aggregate under the title of "Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce" is $108,178.52, the most of which is used in salaries and expenses for the secretary's office, for which one-third of the total appropriation is expended. Under the head of "Local Fairs of Agricultural Industries," $40,000 is appropriated. The forest lands seem to come in for some attention; at least $16,175 is expended for inspection under this head. These form the chief items of expenditure for all purposes for the Island of Cuba. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say these are the estimates of the appropriations which the Secretary of the Treasury thought would be necessary to run the government on the present plan. It is only necessary to study these interesting tables in detail to see where a large amount of this expenditure can be reduced or abolished altogether. In doing this, however, it must be borne in mind that other expenses will be necessary in order satisfactorily and honestly to administer the affairs of Cuba in the interests of the people of the Island. At this moment it is impossible to make a satisfactory estimate of the new budget, nor can it very well be done until after the United States authorities have been in full possession for at least twelve months, and are thus able to secure complete data as to the pressing needs of the Government of Cuba. Of course, the large items, such as interest on the public debt and expenditures of Spain for the purpose of conquering the Island will have disappeared, making a reduction, if we include the Civil Guards, of $18,000,000 or $20,000,000. To forecast how much of this amount will be required for immediate expenditures under the new order of things is impossible. In recommending revenue laws for Cuba, the author was aided by the suggestions of Mr. Fran Figueras, who has given the subject intelligent consideration. To emphasise the importance of giving immediate attention to a careful division of the expenditures for the central government and the expenditures for local purposes (something the Spanish Government, in the whole history of its management of Cuba, has failed to do), the following is given from a statement made to the author by Mr. Figueras: "The right to impose customs duties has a rational and just limit; it is determined by the legitimate needs of the Treasury. All in excess of these needs converts tax into an unjust, and therefore insupportable exaction. With due attention to these considerations and bearing in mind that the customs duties are the real source of revenue in the Island of Cuba, it is indispensable to determine the total amount of expenditure which this revenue must liquidate. If these expenditures are those used for public defence, central government administration of post-offices, justice, public works, education, and any other which it would not be advisable to turn over to the municipal or provincial governments, we may safely consider that six million to eight million dollars annually would be quite sufficient. This is the largest revenue the American Government should expect from the administration of customs duties in Cuba." Another statement well worth attention in this connection is that of Mr. Philip Pelaez, a former official of the Spanish Government in Cuba, who said to the author when in Havana: "Neither in the administration of the islands, nor in the ministry of the colonies, are there any statistics with respect to the composition of the tariffs, and only a few data with regard to valuations. This is as much as can be stated precisely offhand concerning the said tariffs, an analysis of which, article by article, it would be very difficult to get, seeing that there are no statistics of the real importations. Even without asking these investigations, there remains for the Government of the United States the most interesting problem on the making of peace, with the cession of the two islands. Is free trade convenient? Is a simple tariff preferable? Would it not be more prudent to keep to the existing one? Free trade at the present time would impose the burden of the general expenses without any profit and with great dangers, the most immediate being the paralysation of business, the flight of existing capital, etc. The _ad valorem_ tariff diminishes the receipts and gives advantages to a multitude of foreign articles. The tariffs now in force would, with a few changes, suit the islands and the United States for a long time to come." This sets forth substantially what has been done. The United States Government has made no violent fiscal changes in Cuba. Where the old laws and methods and customs could be fitted to the new order of things, they have been so fitted. The first and only radical change in the revenue system of Cuba is the speedy and absolute separation of local and general revenue. That which is local should be collected by local authorities and regarded as municipal revenue, to be expended for municipal purposes; while that which is general should be levied and collected by general authorities and expended for the general welfare of the Island. The general fund, after careful consultation with the governor of each province, should be apportioned geographically, and also into funds, such as the following: _a._--Maintenance of the general government, 20 per cent. _b._--Sanitary and other improvements, and loans to cities therefor, 10 per cent. _c._--Public schools and education, 10 per cent. _d._--To pay the bonds and other obligations issued by the Provisional Government of Cuba and its duly authorised agents since February, 24, 1895, which in the aggregate must not exceed $2,500,000, and to pay amounts due the soldiers of the Army of Liberation, 20 per cent. _e._--Development of the Island by the building of railroads, properly constructed highways, and other means of communication, 25 per cent. _f._--The repayment of the cost to the United States of the temporary military occupation pending the establishment of the proposed stable and independent government, 15 per cent. As all the expenses of the municipal and local government can be readily provided from taxes on real estate, income tax, liquor licences, and other internal-revenue taxes, the customs revenue can, without embarrassment, be devoted to and amply satisfy all general governmental requirements as scheduled above. The percentages above suggested are, of course, tentative, and must not be regarded as more than a rough apportionment. The widest possible latitude should be given each provincial governor in the expenditure of the share of the general funds allotted him for sanitary and other improvements, public schools, for building railroads, and constructing highways. A study of the Jamaica budget, presented in Chapter IV., might help in a fair apportionment of funds for the new budget of Cuba. The subject has not yet been taken up systematically by the United States Government, but will soon need attention, or the old haphazard Spanish methods will receive a new lease of life. Such a contingency would indeed prove a misfortune. CHAPTER XIX COMMERCE Speaking in round numbers, the commerce of Cuba during the last normal year aggregated about $100,000,000 of exports and a trifle over $60,000,000 of imports. From these figures it would seem that the balance of trade is about $40,000,000 in favour of Cuba. But this is more apparent than real. In one way and another Spain has annually turned away from the Island $40,000,000, which, had it been expended in Cuba every year, would have added immeasurably to the prosperity of the country. This money went to Spain in a variety of ways. Ten and a half millions of it were used in payment of a debt which did not justly belong to Cuba, and with which the people of the Island had been arbitrarily burdened without their consent. Large sums also went to Spain through the constantly changing Spanish civil and military officials, who regarded Cuba as their legitimate field for plunder. It has been estimated elsewhere in this volume that the total commerce of Cuba, had the affairs of the Island been honestly and economically administered, would have reached from $200,000,000 to $250,000,000, so prolific is the country, and so valuable in the world's markets are its two staple productions, sugar and tobacco. To indicate more definitely the extent of Cuban commerce, the reports for 1893, which was a good year, are given below, presenting, among the principal exports from Cuba to the United States, the following: Fruits and nuts $2,347,800 Molasses 1,081,034 Sugar 60,637,631 Wood, unmanufactured 1,071,123 Tobacco, manufactured 2,727,030 Tobacco, not manufactured 8,940,058 Iron ore 641,943 ------------ Total $77,446,619 In the same year the principal exports from the United States to Cuba, aggregating $15,448,981, were distributed as follows: Wheat flour $2,821,557 Corn 582,050 Carriages and street cars 316,045 Freight and passenger cars (steam railroad) 271,571 Coal 931,371 Builders' hardware 395,964 Railroad rails 326,654 Saws and tools 243,544 Locomotives 418,776 Stationary engines 130,652 Boilers and engine parts 322,284 Wire 321,120 Manufactures of leather 191,394 Mineral oil 514,808 Hog products 5,401,022 Beans and peas 392,962 Potatoes 554,153 Planks, joists, etc. 1,095,928 Household furniture 217,126 ------------ Total $15,448,981 These tables show the extent of Cuban commerce with but one country, the United States; and though, naturally and logically, that is the country with which Cuba must always do the vast bulk of her business, the other countries of the world have not been shut out; the average annual amount of exports from the Island to foreign countries other than the United States fell between $13,000,000 and $15,000,000, and the imports were upward of $40,000,000, the most of which, of course, was compulsory commerce with Spain. A casual inspection of the above table of imports to Cuba, covering only a portion of the articles taken from us by the Cubans, shows at once what the demands of the Island are for even the simplest necessities beyond bare existence. The million and a half people of the Island want our flour, our lard and pork, our oil, our barbed wire--our soldiers found samples of it strung around San Juan hill,--our manufactures of leather, our household furniture of all kinds, our locomotives and cars and steel rails, our saws and mechanics' tools, our stationary engines and boilers, our lumber in its various shapes for framing and building, our locks and hinges and nails, our corn and beans and potatoes; our coal, our street cars and carriages, and any and every kind of the manifold things we produce in this country for the comfort and convenience and economy of mankind. In part exchange for these things, we get from Cuba sugar and tobacco, and control the markets of the world in these products; mahogany and all manner of beautiful hard woods; bananas and cocoanuts and fruits, pleasing to the palate and wholesome to the health; honey from the flowers; glycerine, no less sweet, from the fats of cattle; manganese and molasses; cigars and coffee; beeswax and birds, and the vast fields of tropical wealth and luxuries for the millions of our colder clime scarcely yet touched. The golden dream of Columbus and his followers, when they beheld for the first time the purple peaks of the strange land rising out of the sea before them, are as poverty and nightmare in comparison with what is actual and real, for the more material age of the twentieth century. The greatest obstacle in the way of Cuban commerce, and the peculiar disadvantage under which the Island laboured was in a large measure attributable to the fact that Spain compelled Cuba to purchase merchandise in Spain which could have been bought in other markets at prices far below the figures which Cuba was forced by these discriminating duties to pay to Spanish merchants and manufacturers. The most glaring illustration of this may be seen by reference to the following table of Spanish imports into Cuba in 1896, which the author has prepared from the report of the Bureau of Statistics in relation to Spanish trade with Cuba and the West Indies: ARTICLES. VALUE. Marble, and manufactures of $ ...... Mineral waters 29,031 Glass bottles, etc. 66,889 Bricks, tilings, mosaics, etc. 28,371 Earthenware 77,853 Lime and cement 5,036 Silverware and jewelry 6,800 Iron bars, etc. 176,719 Fire-arms 1,872,240 Copper, and manufactures of 15,772 Lead, manufactured 15,344 Zinc 6,373 Other metals 52,654 Oils and paints. 117,542 Salt 51,030 Chemicals, medicines, etc. 35,365 Soap 635,369 Wax and stearin 419,124 Perfumery, etc. 12,722 Cotton thread 67,451 Other manufactures 3,676,807 Flax, hemp, etc., and manufactures of 740,017 Woollen blankets 219,971 Other woollen manufactures 73,007 Silk goods 74,206 Paper in rolls 82,457 Writing paper 88,219 Smoking paper 377,046 Packing paper 284,047 Books, music, etc. 39,655 Other paper 107,917 Wood, manufactures of 451,568 Leather 110,955 Shoes of leather 3,449,952 Saddlery 102,122 Machinery and musical instruments ..... Hams and meats, salted, etc. 75,679 Butter 171,918 Rice 298,970 Corn 286,563 Wheat flour 4,065,376 Beans 375,604 Other dried vegetables 128,254 Onions, garlic, and potatoes 241,023 Almonds 80,298 Olives 121,765 Raisins 44,982 Saffron 234,252 Pepper, ground and unground 61,582 Oil, common 663,244 Wine, common 1,469,409 " other 18,752 Preserved food 948,472 Pressed meat 316,314 Soup pastes (vermicelli, etc.) 287,200 Sandals 2,686,702 Playing cards 34,345 Felt hats 28,079 Cartridges 69,719 All other articles 614,196 ------------ Total $ 26,892,329 ------------ Gold ..... Silver $ 24,288,640 The most casual observer and the person of the most superficial knowledge in trade matters must be well aware that Spain is by no means as good a market in which to purchase such commodities as are noted above as is the United States, or as is any other country, for that matter; yet Cuba, by reason of iniquitous discriminating duties, was forced to buy these commodities of the mother country, and to pay a higher price for them than that at which they could have been bought elsewhere. And not only was the price exorbitant, but the articles were of inferior quality, and, especially in the line of all machinery and the appliances of modern industrial progress, the types were primitive and the models were as old and ineffective as the workmanship and material were poor. To any Government seeking the best interests of the governed, these discrepancies would have suggested themselves; and in the logic of location and the invincible combination of first-class goods, low prices, cheap freights, and quick delivery, the trade of Cuba would have been turned to the United States. The Spanish Government would have been the gainer by the greatly increased prosperity, progress, and wealth of her Island dependency. But Spain pursued a different policy, and by the overwhelming force of natural laws, regulating the relation of the governing to the governed, she has lost not only the trade of Cuba, but also the Island itself, and by trade laws not less immutable than those of civil government, the compulsory commerce she exacted from Cuba goes freely, naturally, and logically, to the United States. It is scarcely necessary to say what the Great Republic will do in the premises. The youngest of nations, it stands to-day to the fore with the oldest and the greatest of the powers of the earth in every field of human intelligence, industry, and endeavour, and it will scarcely leave the great work it has undertaken in Cuba to others for that final accomplishment which it is best qualified to carry to perfect completion. Cuba looks to the United States for encouragement, for strength, for education, for development, for business--for union, shall we say?--and, as her nearest neighbour, the United States will pledge itself that the Queen of the Antilles shall not look in vain. [Illustration: A SUGAR-CANE TRAIN.] In strong and hopeful contrast with this compulsory commerce is the amended American tariff of Cuba, which makes no discrimination whatever against the Cuban purchaser; and now and hereafter, so long as the United States Government controls the affairs of Cuba, the Cuban producer may sell his sugar, tobacco, fruit, iron ore, hard woods, and all that he produces to whomsoever he will; and he may buy what he wants from whomsoever he thinks sells cheapest and best. He is in no way bound to the United States and its markets, but is perfectly free to buy his goods in England, or France, or Germany, or Kamschatka, or even in Spain herself, if he can there find the best return for his money. We of the United States shall not so much as expect that the Cuban may, from a sense of gratitude to us for services we have rendered, give his trade to us; but we shall teach him, by the invincible example of the very best goods at the very lowest prices, that the markets of the United States present to the buyer attractions possessed by no other markets of the world, and he will learn early that having been his benefactor in war, we are not less so in peace; and as we have made him free, we have no fear that he will use that freedom to his own disadvantage. Under the reciprocity of the McKinley Tariff law, Cuba and the United States were brought more closely together in commercial union than ever before in their history. No more competent testimony on this point can be adduced than the following extract from the report for 1892 of the British Consul-General at Havana: "It will be seen from the above article" [on the lack of reliable statistics] "that the difficulty--especially to a new-comer--of forming anything like a clear and accurate view of the commercial movement of the district is next door to impossible. But, unfortunately, there is one feature of a very unsatisfactory nature which stands out prominently and did not take long to discover, namely, that British trade with Cuba has almost become a thing of the past; and under the recent reciprocity treaty the United States of America practically supplies all the wants of the Island and receives all its produce.... "Machinery, which formerly was largely supplied by England, Germany, France, and Belgium, now nearly all comes from the United States; and the machinery required for the vast amount of sugar manufactured in Cuba is immense and of great value.... "The reciprocity treaty between Spain and the United States would appear to be mainly beneficial to the latter nation. Articles such as machinery, iron, steel, coal, etc., which formerly came principally from Europe and continue to pay duty when imported from those countries, are admitted free of duty when coming from America, so that the former trade is fast disappearing, although some articles of English manufacture and of superior quality are still able to compete, notwithstanding the duty. The free admission of flour makes bread cheaper, but this is the only article which seems reduced in price. The free admission of Cuban sugar into the large markets of the United States is, of course, the great inducement for Spain to enter into an arrangement by which she sacrificed a considerable portion of her customs revenue.... "The effect of the recent reciprocity treaty between the United States and Spain in regard to her West Indian colonies has been to throw nearly the entire Cuban trade into the hands of the United States traders, with whom importers of goods from less favoured nations cannot compete, having to pay, by the terms of such a treaty, higher import duties." As a further indication of the benefit of reciprocity between Cuba and the United States, and as a working suggestion of the commercial possibilities presented to the business interests of this country, the following extract from an article on the "Commercial Relations between Cuba and the United States," by Mr. E. Sherman Gould, in the _Engineering Magazine_ for July, 1894, is given: "The value of the sugar exported to the United States has no doubt frequently reached, if not surpassed, the sum of $60,000,000 in a single year. At any rate, it will surely be safe to estimate the total yearly value of all exports from Cuba to this country at that figure. This large sum must be paid back to Cuba either in money or in exchange of commodities. In regard to this alternative we must recall the fact that Cuba has no manufactures of any account except cigars; that all the implements and machinery used in sugar-making and all the textile fabrics used for clothing, and even many articles of food, such as breadstuffs, butter, salt meats, and 'canned goods' must come from abroad. That is to say, $60,000,000 worth of exports are sent by a country without manufactures to the greatest manufacturing country in the world, and one in which the danger of 'over-production' is supposed to be a standing menace. Under these circumstances the mere statement of the question, 'How should these imports be paid for?' carries its answer with it. "In this connection the following table, compiled from the records of the United States Treasury at Washington, and showing the total value of exports from the United States to Cuba for two different years will be of great interest, especially as it gives an idea of the varied character of American products which already find a market in the latter country. "This table shows that the balance of trade is largely against us, assuming our imports from Cuba to reach $60,000,000. There is evidently room in the Island for at least thirty millions more of American goods. The table shows also that about one-half of the value of our exports in 1893 consisted of breadstuffs, provisions, etc., while wood and woodwork amounted to about one-eighth, and coal, iron, hardware, and machinery entered the list for about a quarter of the total amount. VALUE OF EXPORTS FROM THE UNITED STATES TO CUBA IN 1889 AND 1893 DESCRIPTION. IN 1889. IN 1893. Agricultural implements $74,135 $130,341 Animals 14,264 39,401 Books 46,617 39,075 Brass manufactures 32,420 44,150 Breadstuffs 1,336,147 3,511,617 Bricks 4,922 95,489 Builders' hardware 80,285 395,464 Carriages 67,282 316,045 Car-wheels 1,908 18,073 Chemicals 223,784 386,562 Clocks and watches 17,399 26,551 Coal 581,094 931,571 Copper manufactures 13,692 48,656 Cotton manufactures 126,180 148,178 Cutlery 10,347 21,094 Fire-arms 3,030 3,055 Flax, hemp, and jute 301,290 86,478 Fruit 30,971 126,954 Glass 55,178 117,870 India-rubber goods 27,804 42,879 Iron manufactures, not otherwise specified 241,122 1,343,551 Lamp goods 28,326 51,389 Leather manufactures 166,334 181,476 Lime and cement 16,500 71,570 Machinery 965,242 2,792,050 Marble and stone 14,243 77,003 Nails and spikes 58,112 127,583 Oils 430,203 548,092 Paper 198,461 159,895 Provisions 3,267,883 5,611,076 Railway bars 20,240 327,411 Railway cars 127,533 271,571 Saws and tools 115,232 243,544 Scales and balances 35,406 62,561 Sewing-machines 42,571 95,630 Steam-engines 10,493 130,652 Sugar and candy 19,941 35,911 Tobacco, manufactured 59,658 61,494 Vegetables 380,802 978,261 Wire 118,214 321,120 Wood, and manufactures of 1,110,946 2,881,095 All other 820,987 701,656 ----------- ----------- Total $11,297,198 $23,604,094 [Illustration: SUGAR-CANE SCALES.] "The Western Railway of Havana, now in English hands, and recently extended from Havana to Pinar del Rio, in the heart of the finest tobacco region of the Island, has called largely upon the United States for its new work. Many hundred feet of iron bridging were furnished and erected by the Union Bridge Company of New York, the railway company being satisfied with the price, and their engineer, as well as the government inspectors, satisfied with the work. The cement used was also wholly or largely American, the American being adopted rather than the English, somewhat reluctantly, by their engineer, on account of the greatly reduced cost. The stone used for bridge-seats was American granite, and highly praised to me by the engineer, who, being a Scotchman, was naturally a good judge of the material. The fact merits attention, in estimating the value of the Cuban market, that the people are heavy buyers. There is very little saving practised. I do not think there is a single savings bank on the Island.... As a rule, all the money received is freely spent, particularly by the poorer and middle classes, who, of course, form the bulk of the population. Probably the pernicious system of government lotteries has something to do with the absence of saving, as the practice of purchasing tickets is as widespread among the poor as it is destructive and demoralising. Probably, too, the character of the climate and the consequent ease of living prevent people from devoting much forethought to a future that they do not dread, for there is really very little of that pinching want ever felt in Cuba which recent hard times have brought to notice in our own country. Be the cause what it may, the fact remains that all the Cubans are prodigal in their expenditures, which goes far to account for the immense quantities of goods consumed and paid for by a comparatively small population. "Enough has been said, I think, to show that Cuba offers a most inviting field for American enterprise. Her prosperity and even her very existence may be said to depend upon her commercial relations with the United States; the two are bound together by the strong ties of mutual interest, and everything points to the fact that, commercially, Cuba should be ours.... "I believe that if the trade, not only of Cuba, but also of the South American countries, were first poured into the United States as a receiving reservoir, it would be naturally distributed, directly or indirectly, over the world to better advantage than if distant and various nations were carrying on desultory and independent business relations with them. The purchasing power that would be gathered into and concentrated in the United States by such trade would be largely expended in procuring those requirements of an ever-advancing refinement and civilisation which Europe can, at present at least, furnish better than we can ourselves. We appreciate and want these things--none more so--and the wealth which a practical monopoly of the South American trade would give us would make us Europe's best customer for those things of which she is the best producer. But this is a digression. "The Cuban market, like all others, is governed largely by fashion. Hitherto all supplies, except perhaps locomotives and steam-boilers, which have for a long time been chiefly furnished by the United States, have come, for the greater part, from Europe. I think that both in Spain and in South America, French goods, as well as French manners and customs have the preference. Just as there is a certain tendency in the United States to admire and imitate that which is derived from English sources, so everything French is apt to 'go' in these countries. It naturally takes time to overcome such preoccupations, particularly as in many cases they are well founded. I have taken occasion elsewhere to call attention to the fact that American houses shipping goods to Cuba put themselves under quite unnecessary disadvantage by careless packing. In the case of many fancy articles the mere appearance of the package goes a great way, and in the case of all goods careless packing entails great loss from breakage. This loss is a twofold one for the American dealer. Not only does he have to make good the damage at his own cost, but he creates a prejudice against his goods and his ways of doing business. This brings up another important point. It is a great mistake to suppose that 'anything is good enough for Cuba.' On the contrary, the people there not only want the best, but they also know it when they see it, and, once deceived, they never have any further transactions with the deceiver. The market is perhaps a capricious one, but it is one that fully recognises and appreciates fair dealing, and there is no better or more paying advertisement than to enter it 'on the square.' "The market being such as it is, and, moreover, being for many classes of goods a new one, the agents employed in it should be carefully selected. Here, again, Americans are at a disadvantage. Very few of the commercial travellers who are sent out from the United States speak Spanish, whereas nearly all those representing foreign concerns do. The Americans are therefore obliged to put themselves entirely into the hands of agents and interpreters, which is always an unsatisfactory way of doing business. In view of the growing relations between the United States and the South American countries, it would seem as if Spanish should occupy a preferential place, in our educational institutions, over French or German. Our business is to invade the Spanish-speaking territories, whereas we are ourselves invaded by the European nations, and this fact necessitates a more perfect equipment on the part of our business agents entering the foreign field. "As regards the classes of goods most needed in Cuba it would be impossible and wholly unnecessary to particularise more fully in this paper. We may broadly say that everything needed in this country is needed in Cuba, within the limits imposed by the difference of climate. They want or can be led to want everything we can furnish that is good and cheap. "I may perhaps be here permitted another digression. We have heard a great deal in times past, and more particularly of late, of 'overproduction,' and it is supposed to account for many of our business troubles. Now overproduction is a strictly relative condition, and its remedy is either to produce less or to dispose of more. Political economists tell us that true material progress lies in commonising the good things of life, so that what to-day are the luxuries of the rich shall become to-morrow the ordinary possessions of the middle classes, who will, in their turn, relegate their previous simple comforts to the poor, thus establishing an ever-ascending scale of prosperity, and raising, as it were, the standard of poverty. It is impossible, I think, to deny the truth of this proposition, which dictates a _levelling up_, instead of the socialistic plan of _levelling down_. In this view it is plainly to be seen that we are not, and cannot be, in any danger from _overproduction_. What we and all the world are suffering from is _underdistribution_. The remedy, as far as the United States are concerned, is not to limit production, but rather to increase it even to its utmost possibilities and then launch out in quest of new markets. It is this policy which has given England her vast commercial supremacy in the past. She has never attempted to restrict the production of her manufactures, but her efforts have always been to open up new markets, until she has forced her way to the remotest regions of the earth. It is said that the sun never sets on the British flag; it certainly never sets on British manufactures. "In carrying out such a policy for the United States it is evident that the Spanish-American countries offer themselves to us as our natural field for enterprise. As already pointed out, our labours in this field would be of mutual advantage to them and to us, and in more ways than one. While receiving from us our labour-saving machinery and wonderful mechanical appliances of all kinds, they would also imbibe a portion of the spirit which led to their invention and use. We, on our part, would not only receive from them the rich products of their fertile soil, but might also catch, by contact with men of another race, something of that natural grace and refinement in which our national character is said to be deficient." Referring to the fact that the railways in Cuba under English control have had their machinery from the United States, the manager of the English railways in Cuba only so recently as October, 1898, informed the author that they had not only purchased of the United States in the past, but that they intended getting all their railway supplies for the future from the same source. Surely no higher tribute could be paid to the manufacturers of our country than this from an Englishman, whose people for hundreds of years have led all competitors in the industrial manufacturing of the world. And this is but a step in the giant strides of commercial progress the United States will make in Cuba, under the encouraging influence of a reasonable tariff, the abolition of all discrimination, the assurances of a stable government, and that proximity which makes Cuba one with us in temper, in trade, and in territory. CHAPTER XX SUGAR--HISTORY AND FUTURE OUTLOOK Of Cuba's 28,000,000 acres, about 2,000,000 are devoted to the raising of her sugar crop, which in amount is a little less than half of the entire cane-sugar product of the world. Historians differ as to when the cultivation of sugar began in Cuba, but in 1523 Philip I., King of Spain, allowed a loan of 4000 _pesetas_ to each person who would undertake to establish a sugar plantation; and although it appears that the people of San Domingo began cane farming about this time, it is not positively known that the industry had secured much of a hold in Cuba until sixty years later. Indeed, some writers assert that the first cane farm was established in Cuba in 1595. In any event, three hundred years--or, to be exact, two hundred and ninety-nine years--later, that is, in 1894, the year before the last rebellion, during which the sugar industry was almost wiped out, 1,054,214 tons of sugar were produced, the greatest quantity ever raised in any one year in the Island. Although it made so early a start in the history of American agriculture, the sugar industry in Cuba languished for two hundred years, the annual output during that time being only about 28,000 tons. A quarter of a century later it reached 75,000 tons; the middle of the nineteenth century saw it at 250,000 tons, and in 1894 it passed the million mark, with an impetus that would have sent it on the first quarter in the second million by the end of the century, if the wretched mismanagement and criminal culpability of Spain had not brought on the rebellion. With millions of acres of the richest and best cane land on the globe, yet untouched by the plough, with a climate unsurpassed for the growth and development of sugar cane, and with a prestige for Cuban sugar second to none in the markets of the world, the future of Cuba's sugar presents a possibility of wealth surpassing the richness of the gold and silver which came to Columbus in the marvellous tales of the interior of the magnificent Island which he had discovered. Recurring to the effect of the rebellion of 1895-1898 on the sugar industry, it is appalling to contemplate the dreadful decrease in a country's chief source of wealth and income to the government, as well as to the individual. In 1894, the output was 1,054,214 tons, and the following year, under the first touch of war and its alarms, the crop dropped off 50,000 tons, though it remained still above the million. This was the second year in Cuban sugar history that the million mark was passed. In 1896, the war was raging all over the Island, and with the Spaniards on one side, taking men and cattle, and the insurgents on the other, burning cane and buildings and stealing stock, the sugar planter was utterly obliterated in some sections, and so badly crippled in others that the output reached only 225,221 tons, the lowest figure known in fifty years. Nor was this astounding decrease a matter of gradual accomplishment, permitting the country, the business, and the people to accommodate themselves to the changed conditions, but it happened almost in a night, and an income from sugar of $80,000,000 a year dwindled on the instant to $16,000,000, a loss of $64,000,000 at once as the result of Spanish mismanagement. [Illustration: CANE FIELDS.] As a cane-sugar-producing country, nature has made Cuba superior to any competitor which may appear; but all sugar does not come from cane, and since 1840, when the first record of beet sugar appeared, with 50,000 tons for the year's output for the world, as against 1,100,000 tons of cane sugar, about 200,000 tons of which was raised in Cuba, the sugar growers of the Island have had their only dangerous rival. Beginning with the small production of 50,000 tons in 1840, principally grown in France, the beet-sugar production increased rapidly in Europe, reaching 200,000 tons in 1850; 400,000 tons in 1860; 900,000 tons in 1870; 1,860,000 tons in 1880; and in 1894 going to 3,841,000 tons. Cane sugar in the meantime only increased from 1,100,000 to 2,960,000 metric tons. Cuba in 1895 produced only 100,000 tons less than the world's entire output of all kinds of sugar in 1840. The total output of beet and cane sugars in 1893-1894 was 6,801,000 metric tons. The United States in 1894 produced 272,838 tons of cane sugar, 20,219 tons of beet sugar, 394 tons of sorghum sugar, and 3408 tons of maple sugar. With the growth of sugar production in Cuba have come newer and better methods; and whereas in 1825 the largest plantations rarely exceeded 1500 acres in extent, producing only 350 tons per year, with a total value of land, buildings, machinery, stock, and slaves, of, say, $500,000, with aggregate revenue of, say, $60,000, and expenses of $30,000, leaving a profit of $30,000,--in these later times there are plantations of 25,000 acres, representing an investment of $2,000,000 with an annual revenue of $1,000,000, expenses, say, of $800,000, leaving a profit of $200,000 per year. Contrasting the earlier figures with these later estimates, a profit of ten per cent. is shown in 1894 as against six per cent. in 1825. In 1840, it is estimated there were 1710 sugar plantations in Cuba; while in 1894 there were 1100. Sugar farms are upland soils, the cane requires to be planted only once in seven years, and no fertilizers are required. Many of the planters in later years are very enterprising, and the machinery they use is the best in the world. The outfitting of one central, or grinding plant, with a capacity of 1000 tons a day, costs $500,000. Houses and stores for the accommodation of the employes are provided; there are locomotives and cars for the miles of railway for bringing the cane to the mill from all parts of the plantations; as many as 2000 labourers are employed; 1000 cattle for work and beef are to be found on this place; and the _colonia_ is conducted upon the most economic, advantageous, and improved lines. This is a model _colonia_; but all Cuban _colonias_ are not models. To give the reader a somewhat more definite idea of a sugar farm, a statement by Mr. P. M. Beal, of Beal & Co., lessees of the _Colonia Guabairo_, owned by Messrs. E. Atkins & Co., of Boston, possibly the largest American proprietors in Cuba, is herewith appended. Mr. Beal says: "In 1889, when preparations for cane farming were commenced, the _Guabairo_ was mostly impenetrable forest, and not a building of any kind existed; the working people slept under a cart until temporary palm-leaf huts could be constructed to shelter them. At this time the _Guabairo_ proper contained 1333 acres; later some 1100 acres were hired or bought, and the _colonia_ increased in area to about 2433 acres, of which in 1895, at the breaking out of the insurrection, 1100 acres were planted with cane and the rest was pasture, woods, and waste lands. In 1895, at the breaking out of the insurrection, the 1100 acres under cane cultivation produced about 2,500,000 _arrobas_ (an _arroba_ is twenty-five pounds), and aside from this, a sufficient quantity of corn and vegetables were grown for all the requirements of the _colonia_, so we never had to purchase. From the 1st of December to the 1st of June, an average of about 350 people were employed; of these ten per cent. were Canary Islanders or Spaniards, ten per cent. negro women and boys (white women do no field work); twenty per cent. native whites, and about sixty per cent. negroes and mulattoes. From the 1st of June to the 1st of December, an average of about 150 were employed. Women do no field work during this period. "For agricultural purposes this _colonia_ keeps nearly 300 oxen and about 20 horses and mules; also a few cows for milk, and a number of animals for beef, which in normal times varies from 30 to something over 100. In normal times this _colonia_ slaughters on an average, about 22 animals per month, with an average dressed weight of about 200 kilos (450 pounds) per head. The cost for preparing, breaking up, cross-ploughing, marking, furrowing, seed cane, planting, cultivating, wear and tear to implements, and weeding one _caballeria_ (33-1/3 acres) of cane to maturity, and do it well, is from $1400 to $1600, according to conditions of soil, wages, etc., and under normal conditions will here require from three to four years before the farmer can see any profits, and then only by intelligent management and good soil. Soil which requires planting every three to five years will ruin any man. The average yield of cane per _caballeria_ in Guabairo for 1895 was about 71,500 _arrobas_, and the cost per 100 _arrobas_ for weeding, cutting, carting, and delivering to the central amounted to about $1.84." The concluding passage of Mr. Beal's statement indicates to some extent the effect of the war upon his plantation, which escaped happily as compared with hundreds of others. He says: "In 1896 we had some new plantings, and the crop was estimated at 2,700,000 _arrobas_; very nearly the whole of this was burned by the insurgents, some of the fields were burned twice and no crop was made. The horses were seized, cattle driven off, storehouses plundered repeatedly, and finally the manager had to flee for his life and seek safety in Cienfuegos; since then the fields have suffered repeated burnings and the crop has been reduced from 2,700,000 _arrobas_ to 1,400,000 _arrobas_, estimated. In 1897 and 1898 the crops were made under difficulties, the colonia employing a private armed force of sixteen men, and Colonel Luis Ramos Izquierdo kept a small garrison of his guerrillas in the _colonia_." Contrasting opinions as to the matter of profit in the production of sugar in Cuba, we present herewith two statements. The first is by Mr. William J. Clark, in his work, _Commercial Cuba_, and is as follows: "We have already seen that Mr. Gollan, the British Consul-General at Havana, estimates the factory cost of sugar in Cuba at the best managed centrals to be 2.50 cents per pound, although in exceptional cases it may be less. But during the month of October, 1898, the selling price of raw centrifugal sugar, 96 degrees test, in the New York market has ranged between 2.40 and 2.60 cents per pound, neglecting United States import duty, which is a fixed rate of 1.685 cents per pound. If we take this selling price at 2.50 cents per pound, and deduct .22 cents per pound freight, wharfage, and commission, we get 2.28 cents as the price paid for raw sugar free on board at Cuban ports. From this amount must be taken export charges of five cents per 100 kilos lighterage at the port of shipment, and the cost of transportation from the central to the seaboard. These together sum up not less than .10 of one cent, which would leave the net price at the central 2.18 cents. But we have already shown that the factory cost of the product has been as low as 1.99 in Trinidad, 1.94 in British Guiana, and 1.86 in Barbadoes. These three costs give an average of 1.93 cents. Deducting from 2.18 cents which we have calculated as the present selling price at the central, 1.93 cents, the present possible minimum cost of production, we shall get .25 cents, equal to 12.95 per cent. as the margin of profit." Mr. Clark takes New York prices in October, 1898. These prices were not under normal conditions, the current prices of the year being 2-3/8 to 2-1/2 cents for 96 centrifugals in bond. Mr. Clark gives cost of Muscovado sugars at the British islands of Trinidad and Barbadoes. These sugars test 89, and are worth seven cents less per pound in New York than 96 test centrifugals. He compares cost and values as if they were worth the same money. Properly compared, his profit changes into loss. In this connection the following figures, especially prepared by an expert for this work, may be of interest: THEORETICAL SUGAR CONTENTS OF 100 POUNDS CANE _Bagasse_ (dry fibre) 12 pounds Juice 88 " --- Total 100 " 88 pounds of juice containing 16 per cent. in sugar 14 " [Illustration: CUTTING SUGAR CANE.] THEORETICAL PURE SUGAR CONTENTS OF 100 POUNDS CANE "The practical results are difficult to obtain. The best of work seems to be about as follows: Per 100 pounds of cane: _Bagasse_ 30 pounds Juice (extracted) 70 " --- Total 100 " 70 pounds of juice at 16 per cent. sugar equal in pure sugar, 11.20" "This 11.20 pounds of sugar, less loss of working and less the sugar left in the final molasses, reduced the actual yield to about 10 per cent. of pure sugar, or 10-1/2 per cent. of commercial product, besides the mechanical difficulty of increased impurities, whose ratio increases rapidly with better milling, and the loss of fuel in the _bagasse_, which is an important consideration where such loss must be made up by imported coal. "With 30 pounds of _bagasse_ per 100 pounds of cane, no other fuel should be required. "The difficulty of increasing the sugar contents of the cane comes from the fact that cane, unlike beet, has no seed, and must be reproduced from cuttings. "Improvement in this line is quite possible, but must come from long years of study and experiment and will require the best attention of scientific minds." The expert who furnished the above, adds: "It will seem strange to the uninitiated that the manufacturers can afford to leave any sugar in the _bagasse_, if there is any possible method of getting it out; but with low prices for the sugar product and expensive coal it can be seen that there is a point beyond which it may not be profitable to pass. With cheap fuel and high-priced sugar products, the case might be different." The second statement, which is at considerably greater length, is by Mr. E. F. Atkins, who prepared the following especially for this volume: The total output of sugar in the world was for some years in excess of the requirements for consumption. This over-production and consequent accumulation of stocks brought prices down to a point which in all probability was considerably below the average cost of production. Germany, as the largest sugar-producing country, naturally fixes the market prices of the world. The refiner in New York will pay no more for sugars to be shipped from Havana than the equivalent of the price at which he can buy at Hamburg; difference of freight, duties, bounties, and quality, of course, considered. The present average cost of production of German raw sugar is said to be about 9_s._ per 112 pounds. At this figure the existing bounty upon exports would allow sales for shipment to England, where no duty is paid, as low as 8_s._= $1.71 per pound for 88 analysis beets; this, allowing for difference in values of the two grades, would be equivalent to $1.89 United States currency for 96 test Cuba centrifugals, under like conditions, viz.: f.o.b. at port of shipment, for any country such as England where the two grades enter upon equal terms. The effect of our countervailing duty assessed upon bounty-fed sugars under the Dingley Act of 1897, has been to raise the comparative value of cane sugar in producing countries, as against beet sugar, and to place Germany and other European sugar countries in exactly the same condition, so far as the United States market is concerned, as if no bounties were paid by them; thus in considering Germany's competition with Cuba in the United States markets, we may eliminate both bounties and countervailing duties as factors, and say that when Germany can sell to England at 8_s._ she must obtain 9_s._ from the United States to give her shippers an equal price; 9_s._ is equivalent to about $2.18 United States currency, for Cuba centrifugals, 96 test, f.o.b. Cuba. The export price of German sugar at Hamburg from January 1 to June 1, 1898 (a period covering the Cuban sugar crop season), ranged from 9_s._ to 9_s._ 9_d._ with an average of about 9_s._ 4-1/2_d._ Last crop prices gave the Cuban manufacturers an average of about 4-1/2 reals per arroba, say 2-1/4 cents Spanish gold, a price at which they could be laid down in New York slightly under the parity of European beets, duty paid. The imports of beet sugar from Europe into the United States, from January 1 to June 1, 1898, were 22,000 tons against 496,000 tons for same period of previous year; while imports of cane sugars showed an increase of some 60,000 tons; this change in source of supply being brought about by the countervailing duty. It is not possible to give any figures of the average cost of production in Cuba. In my opinion it is undoubtedly higher than the average of Germany. Of the 2-1/4 cents net obtained by the Cuban manufacturers, the cane (which is generally purchased upon a sliding scale based upon the current value of sugar) costs them from 1 cent to 1-1/4 cents per pound of sugar according to yield at the various factories. This would leave them but little over 1 cent per pound, average margin, to cover manufacturing expenses, salaries, maintenance and repairs, office expenses, interest, insurance, and freight to seaboard, and while some factories, thoroughly equipped as regards machinery, skilfully conducted as to business management, favourably located regarding inland transportation, and not dependent upon borrowed capital, have shown fair interest returns upon capital invested, very many have been operated at a loss (aside from such losses as arose from the war), and the margin of profit, both past and prospective, is not such as to invite any large investment of new capital in sugar manufacturing. The future values of sugar in Cuba are dependent, not upon cost of production in the Island, but rather upon the cost in Germany; and upon the extent to which free sugars are to be admitted into the United States from the Sandwich Islands, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. With new capital and skill the average cost of production in Cuba can be reduced, and with either free sugars or a uniform rate of duty in the United States, assessed upon all sugars (a countervailing duty to offset foreign bounties always maintained), she can hold her own and recover her prestige as a sugar-producing country, but the margin of profit in sugar manufacturing is so small, and the world's capacity for production so great, that Cuba cannot recover her prosperity in the face of any advantage to be given to sugars from other countries entering the United States. At current prices in Cuba cane is worth to the planter the equivalent of $2 to $2.50 per net ton, out of which price he must pay for his planting and cultivation, cutting, and delivery to factory or nearest railroad point. As the cost of cane production consists almost entirely of labour, and wages in Cuba, for some years previous to the insurrection, ranged about the same in Spanish gold as similar work commanded in the United States, the profits in this branch of the industry have not been great, and have been dependent upon skill in management, quality of lands, and proximity to the factories. The supply of labour and rates of wages in the future are now most serious questions to the sugar producer in Cuba, and present the greatest obstacle to reducing cost. For supplies of cane the manufacturer must depend either upon his own resources or upon large planters. Factories to be operated at a profit should be kept running day and night, and cane, owing to its nature, must be ground immediately it is cut. The grinding season in Cuba is limited to about one hundred and twenty working days, and small farmers, while they can generally find a market for their cane, cannot be depended upon for a constant regular supply. Had Cuba the power to dictate her own prices, she could maintain sufficient margin to overcome local difficulties, but that power has long since passed and future profits must be dependent upon her economies. The price of cane to her planters is dependent upon the price at which her manufacturers can sell their sugar, and this price in turn is dependent upon the price at which other sugar-producing countries (principally Germany, the great factor in the world's sugar trade) can place their goods, duty paid, in New York. If Cuba in the future should have to compete to any extent, in the United States, with free sugar from other countries, while a duty was exacted upon Cuban sugars, her case would seem to be hopeless. [Illustration: UNLOADING CANE AT A BATEY.] Another interesting and valuable statement was prepared for the author by Mr. Wm. Bonnet, of Havana, under date of October 8, 1898, and gives an array of statistical information which is as follows: The loss to Spain's dominion of the Mexican Territory (1821-1825) deprived the Island of a yearly allowance of about $1,000,000, which amount was drawn out of the Mexican budget for the needs of the Cuban administration. The Island, up to those days, was considered more as a penitentiary than as a productive colony; convicts were sent to Havana with the principal object of building good ships for the Spanish Armada. It was only after the loss to Spain of Mexico that Cuba began to improve her general production, and the efforts of the country in growing sugar and coffee were so successful that a few years later, with the help of the slaves that were again freely brought from Africa, and with the co-operation of immigrants that had come from Hayti, etc., the Island, besides covering all her expenses, was able to send large amounts of money to the mother country. From 1840 to 1850, the production of sugar increased gradually from 200,000 to about 300,000 tons. Prices of coffee began to decline owing to excess of production and competition of Brazil, and all the attention was given to cane growing, so much so that from 1853 up to 1868, the production was rapidly increased to the following figures: 1853................ 332,000 Tons. 1854................ 374,000 " 1855................ 392,000 " 1856................ 348,000 " 1857................ 355,000 " 1858................ 385,000 " 1859................ 536,000 " 1860................ 447,000 " 1861................ 466,000 " 1862................ 525,000 " 1863................ 507,000 " 1864................ 575,000 " 1865................ 620,000 " 1866................ 612,000 " 1867................ 597,000 " 1868................ 749,000 " This period of sixteen years was really the so-called Golden Age of Cuba. The Cuban budgets, although heavy at that time, were easily covered, and on this account extra taxes were imposed upon the Cuban people in excess of what the budgets called for and remitted to the mother country; such extra sums reaching as high as $5,000,000 per annum,--an erroneous and fatal system, the consequence of a mistaken policy, which then, as ever, led Spain to consider her colony as a source of income, forgetting that such excessive calls, constantly resulting in a deficit, clearly indicate bad administration. Cuba was overtaxed and nothing was done to help the growing of our fertile Island. In vain did the Cubans lay their claims for better administration. The mother country was deaf. Commissioners went to Madrid to represent, but they had to return, bringing back only many promises that were never fulfilled. No hope was left to the Cubans, and all these obstinate errors brought on the outbreak of October 10, 1868, which resulted in a civil war that lasted ten years, ending in 1878 with the so-called agreement of Zanjon. The war at first was not a drawback to sugar production, and the crops gathered during the Ten Years' War were: Called the { 1869 726,000 Tons. twin crops. { 1870 726,000 " 1871[15] 547,000 " 1872 690,000 " 1873 775,000 " 1874 681,000 " 1875 718,000 " 1876 590,000 " 1877 520,000 " 1878 533,000 " It is to be noticed that during the period of war the sugar production continued to increase at first, say from 1869 to 1875. Highly remunerative prices were then obtained for sugar; besides, from 1869 to 1870, $70,000,000 in paper money were issued, and money was easy. From 1876 to 1878, the production rapidly decreased. Mismanagement, enormous taxes to attend war expenses, and depreciation of paper money brought on national distrust and financial troubles. And with all this, the emancipation of slaves was carried through at that time, moreover, without any compensation of any kind to owners. Prices of sugar, up to the year 1880, were still remunerative (4 to 4-1/2 cents per pound, centrifugals 96 test); but the competition of beet sugars in Europe began to be felt more and more every day, causing a lower tendency towards the crisis in prices of the article which finally reached a value of only fifty per cent. of its former quotation. Under such difficulties Cuba struggled hard. The Cuban army was disbanded after the war, and many persons who had come to towns for safety went back to work their fields and became a new contingent of cane growers. The system of cane _colonias_ was started all over with marked success. Canes were sold to the mills at remunerative prices and fresh impulse was imparted to the country. In spite of all these efforts, Spain persisted in considering her colony a source of income. Our deputies to the Cortes went full of faith, but they came back fruitlessly as always. The same mistaken policy that ruled Cuba before was continued as ever, and the outbreak of February 24, 1895, was the inevitable result. The crops gathered from 1879 to 1898 were: 1879 670,000 Tons. 1880 530,000 " 1881 493,000 " 1882 595,000 " 1883 460,397 " 1884 558,937 " 1885 631,000 " 1886 731,723 " 1887 646,578 " 1888 656,719 " 1889 560,333 " 1890 632,368 " 1891 816,980 " 1892 976,960 " 1893 815,894 " 1894 1,054,214 " 1895 1,004,264 " 1896 225,221 " 1897 212,051 " 1898 300,000 " (about) Notice the decrease of production of the year 1896. We could have ground that year more than 1,100,000 tons of sugar, had it not been for the war. The amount of the coming crop will depend entirely on the greater celerity that is to be given to the so-wished for political change. Any delay will be of disadvantage to all our productions. The proper season for cleaning cane fields has already vanished, and besides cattle are badly wanted and very scarce. Training for working purposes requires time. If peace becomes a fact and all the available cane is ground, I would say that 500,000 tons might be reached. Now I will call your attention to the distribution of our crops these few years back. CROP OF 1893--815,894 TONS OF 2240 LBS. Exported to the United States 680,642 Tons. " " Canada 25,069 " " " Spain 9,448 " " " England 3,045 " Local consumption whole year 50,000 " CROP OF 1894--1,054,214 TONS OF 2240 LBS. Exported to the United States 965,524 Tons " " Canada 24,372 " " " Spain 23,295 " " " England 10,528 " Local consumption whole year 50,000 " CROP OF 1895--1,004,264 TONS OF 2240 LBS. Exported to the United States 769,958 Tons " " Canada 28,324 " " " Spain 28,428 " " " England 5,674 " Local consumption whole year 50,000 " CROP OF 1896--225,221 TONS OF 2240 LBS. Exported to United States 235,659 Tons " " Spain 9,969 " Local consumption whole year 40,000 " CROP OF 1897--212,051 TONS OF 2240 LBS. Exported to United States 202,703 Tons " " Nassau 83 " " " Spain 1,337 " Local consumption whole year 38,000 " [Illustration: CYLINDERS FOR GRINDING SUGAR CANE.] The stock of sugar left in store on December 1, 1897, was 1888 tons, the smallest stock held at an equal date since several years. The returns and distribution of this year's crop are not completed yet. Notice the proportion of exports to Spain in 1897 as compared with exports to the United States. Mr. Adolfo Muñoz del Monte, writing in the _Revista de Agricultura_, says: "During the thirty years before 1884 the following classes of sugar were made: "First. White sugar nearly refined, manufactured with the aid of vacuum pans, filtered through bone-black, and purified in centrifugal turbines; and the inferior products of this manufacture. "Second. White and brown sugar, manufactured and purified in forms. Some estates use vacuum pans for these sugars. "Third. Muscovado sugars manufactured directly from the cane juice. "The best sugars of these three classes were exported in boxes, and the inferior in hogsheads. "Fourth. Raw sugar, made in vacuum pans and crystallised immediately in centrifugal turbines, there being two varieties of this class of sugar, that extracted directly from the juice and the one extracted from the molasses resulting in the purification of the first product. "In the year 1857 there was a universal crisis and after that time planters considered that the first class mentioned was the most profitable, and machinery was improved at great expense for the purpose of manufacturing this grade of sugar. A plantation with this machinery could be improved only at great cost, and it would have been impossible to do so to any advantage had it not been for the reduced cost of labour owing to slavery, carried on at the time. "In the meanwhile, the beetroot-sugar industry was progressing both in its agriculture and manufacture. No one in Cuba foresaw the terrible revolution that this industry was to suffer in consequence. It first became apparent in the crisis in 1884, which may be considered the most important event in the history of the sugar industry. This crisis, which came in a most sudden and unexpected manner, caused the reduction in the price of sugar which, though a benefit to the poorer classes of the world, was the ruin of Cuba, as at the same time slavery was abolished without any compensation whatever, direct or indirect, at the time when the losses of a sanguinary civil war were being overcome. "It may be stated that absolutely no one could foresee, either in the present or in the past generation, the revolution that since 1884 has shaken the industry; though the French colonists, fearing the competition from the start, solicited the protection of their Government. "The French colonists feared this competition so much that fifty years ago they solicited from the French Chamber of Deputies a law prohibiting the cultivation of beetroot in French territories, offering to indemnify those who had commenced it. Experience has proved how just their fears were at that early date; but the French Government did not grant their petition, because it was adverse to favouring monopolies, and besides, because Germany, having no colonies, could promote that industry without fear of the rivalry which has proved of material benefit to all Europe, including France itself. "In the course of human events, time alone will cause considerable changes; just as before 1884 all planters firmly believed that greater profit was obtainable by the manufacture of white sugars than lower grades. They then realised that the unexpected improvements in the manufacturing and refining processes in Europe indicated the necessity of changing their system. Those countries which had, up to that time, imported fine grades of sugar from Cuba have been able since then not only to manufacture better sugar at lower cost for their own consumption, but also to export immense quantities of this article both raw and refined to the principal markets of the world. The production is to-day considerably greater than that of Cuba. "The change is so marked that there are no longer any estates in Cuba where the white sugar is manufactured which was so desirable from 1856 to 1884. "Instead of this high-grade sugar, planters are manufacturing the fourth of the above mentioned classes. The founding of these estates or _centrales_ requires investing considerable capital for the erection and running expenses of the works. These _centrales_ require excellent machines and apparatus, furnaces to burn the green _bagasse_, transportation facilities, usually narrow-gauge railroads, and fuel--without counting the necessity of having well-paid superintendents, aided by competent workmen. "Many will accuse planters of hasty action and imprudence for having invested so heavily in the sugar business, but this would be an unjust charge, since their object was to keep up an industry which was threatened with destruction, and which is the main source of wealth of the country. "The consequence is that since 1884 the general condition of planters, considering the circumstances, is remarkably better than it otherwise would have been, and had it not been for the numerous obstacles which have always prevented the growth and increase of Cuban wealth there is no reason why their work should not have been crowned with success. It is the obstacles that have been put in their way at the time when these changes were being carried out that made their work so much more difficult, but upon it depends the fortunes of the present generations. "It is the principle of accumulation of capital produced by work and thrift, put into effect during one century, which has created the colossal fortune and solid civilisation of the United States; and this simple and natural procedure is the only one that can produce in Cuba results of any importance tending to alleviate the present necessities. To organise a sugar factory of any importance it is absolutely necessary to invest a capital of, at the very least, one half a million dollars, and if the work is to be of great importance the first expense must be increased to from one million to two million dollars. The annual expenditure of the sugar estates can be divided into the following groups. "First. Cost of cane and its transportation to the mills, whether bought from outsiders or grown on the estate itself. This will absorb fifty per cent. of the gross receipts of each crop. "Second. Salaries and wages, ordinary and extraordinary. "Third. Interest, whether on mortgages, running expenses, or accounts current. "Fourth. Management and running expenses, which are so considerable that a statement of them would seem exaggerated. "Fifth. The redemption of loans invested therein, taking into account the wear and tear of the plant. "Sixth. The loss of interest of the capital invested in the lands, factories, and other works of the plantation. "The gross receipts of the crop are the source of the planter's income, and naturally the six items specified have been deducted therefrom before the net profit can be estimated. "In the above expenses no repair items have been included, since they are often virtually an increase in the value of the property and therefore merely constitute an additional amount of the capital invested. Although some companies insure parts of sugar estates, they only take limited risks; so many losses by fire, in addition to hurricanes, impair the value of the property. The fire insurance companies charge very high premiums for the insurance that they effect. "The result of the crop depends naturally on two factors--first, the quantity of sugar made; and second, the price at which it is sold. "Before the year 1884 the average price was eight rials the _arroba_ (equal to one dollar for twenty-five pounds) of cane sugar, number twelve, Dutch standard; or centrifugal sugar, 96 degrees polarisation; and when sold under this price the planter could not cover expenses. "Since 1884 the price of sugar has decreased so considerably that it has reached a ruinous figure. During the last ten years, as can be seen by official quotations, 96 degree centrifugal sugars have been quoted from four to five rials, and although from 1889 to 1893 the prices have several times exceeded eight rials, it has only been for a very short while. "At the end of 1893 and during 1894, the average price has been five and one-half rials, which is simply ruinous for the planters. "In Europe there are facilities for obtaining money; and besides, it happens that the beetroot only takes five months from its planting to the making of sugar, while sugar cane, besides having to struggle against many obstacles, requires fifteen months. [Illustration: APPARATUS FOR PACKING SUGAR AT THE SAN JOSE CENTRAL.] "The consequence is that the periods of high prices are always of short duration, since as soon as the prices commence to rise the sowings of beet increase, thereby causing an obstacle to the continuance of the rise. "The lack of capital makes the problem insoluble to the Cuban planter, and whatever means he can use to overcome his difficulties, the final result will always be the same, as he cannot reduce the expenses of his plantation beyond a certain limit. "There is no doubt that to-day (1894) the sugar estates do not cover expenses, and this fact is of immense importance, not only because it explains the present misfortunes, but because in it will be found latent the germs of many future misfortunes. "The causes of the dangerous situation have been well studied; some will be found in history and in the economic management of the Island and others in the effect of beetroot industry on cane. "Consequently, the unfortunate situation of the sugar industry in Cuba is due to three principal causes which by a strange coincidence have acted simultaneously, to wit: the economic régime in the Island, the abolishment of slavery without indemnifying the owners, and the great reduction in the price of sugar since 1884. "The efforts of the planters to save their industry have been interpreted by the Spanish Government as signs of prosperity, and that has based on this misunderstanding of facts the indefinite continuance of a disastrous economic system that is moulded on the old colonial system and is bound to ruin this Island, even if it were as rich and prosperous as the Government states that it is. "This official optimism is deplorable for more than one reason. It is to be noticed that as Cuba's poverty increases the pretensions of perpetual exactions are greater, and that the bulk is borne by the planters, who, together with the rest of the Cuban population, are possessors, judging by these exactions, of sources of unlimited wealth." This chapter may be fittingly concluded with the following table compiled by Messrs. Willet & Gray, January 5, 1899, giving the entire sugar production of all the countries of the world, including those crops which have heretofore been ignored in statistics. These figures include local consumptions of home production wherever known. -----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------- | 1898-99. | 1897-98. | 1896-97. | 1895-96. -----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------- United States: | Tons. | Tons. | Tons. | Tons. Cane | 270,000 | 310,000 | 282,009 | 237,730 Beet | 33,960 | 41,347 | 40,000 | 30,000 Porto Rico | 70,000 | 54,000 | 54,000 | 50,000 Canada--beets | 300 | 300 | 300 | 500 Cuba--crop | 450,000 | 314,009 | 219,500 | 240,000 British West Indies: | | | | Trinidad--export | 50,000 | 52,000 | 51,000 | 58,000 Barbadoes--exports | 47,000 | 52,000 | 58,249 | 47,800 Jamaica | 27,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 Antigua and St. Kitts | 22,000 | 25,000 | 29,000 | 24,000 French West Indies: | | | | Martinique--exports | 32,000 | 35,000 | 35,000 | 35,000 Guadeloupe | 40,000 | 45,000 | 45,000 | 45,000 Danish West Indies: | | | | St. Croix | 12,000 | 13,000 | 13,058 | 8,000 Hayti and San Domingo | 48,000 | 48,000 | 48,800 | 50,000 Lesser Antilles, not named above | 8,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 Mexico--exports | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 Central America: | | | | Guatemala--crop | 9,000 | 9,000 | 8,000 | 7,000 San Salvador--crop | 4,000 | 4,000 | 3,000 | 2,000 Nicaragua--crop | 1,500 | 1,500 | 500 | 500 Costa Rica--crop | 500 | 500 | 200 | 200 South America: | | | | British Guiana (Demerara)--export| 98,000 | 98,000 | 99,789 | 105,000 Dutch Guiana (Surinam)--crop | 6,000 | 6,000 | 6,000 | 6,000 Venezuela | | | | Peru--crop | 75,000 | 70,000 | 70,000 | 68,000 Argentine Republic--crop | 75,000 | 110,000 | 165,000 | 130,000 Brazil--crop | 165,000 | 195,000 | 210,000 | 225,000 +----------+----------+----------+--------- Total in America |1,546,260 |1,523,656 |1,469,405 |1,409,720 +----------+----------+----------+--------- Asia: | | | | British India--exports | 50,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 Siam--crop | 7,000 | 7,000 | 7,000 | 7,000 Java--exports | 635,000 | 541,581 | 473,420 | 605,025 Japan (consumption 125,000 tons, | | | | mostly imported) | | | | Philippine Islands--exports | 140,000 | 165,000 | 197,000 | 240,000 Cochin China | 31,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 +----------+----------+----------+--------- Total in Asia | 863,000 | 793,581 | 757,420 | 932,025 +----------+----------+----------+---------- Australia and Polynesia: | | | | Queensland | 65,000 | 65,000 | 70,000 | 60,000 New South Wales | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 Hawaiian Islands | 240,000 | 204,833 | 224,220 | 201,632 Fiji Islands--exports | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 +----------+----------+----------+--------- Total in Australia and Polynesia | 365,000 | 329,833 | 354,220 | 321,632 +----------+----------+----------+--------- Africa: | Tons. | Tons. | Tons. | Tons. Egypt--crop | 105,000 | 85,000 | 100,000 | 92,000 Mauritius and other | 150,000 | 120,000 | 150,000 | 140,000 British possessions | | | | Reunion and other | 45,000 | 45,000 | 48,000 | 44,700 French possessions | | | | +----------+----------+----------+--------- Total in Africa | 300,000 | 250,000 | 298,000 | 276,700 +----------+----------+----------+--------- Europe: | | | | Spain | 8,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 +----------+----------+----------+---------- Total cane-sugar production |3,082,260 |2,905,070 |2,887,045 |2,948,077 Total beet-sugar production |4,790,000 |4,825,529 |4,916,586 |4,285,429 (Licht.) | | | | +----------+----------+----------+---------- Grand total cane- and beet-sugar | | | | production |7,872,260 |7,730,599 |7,803,631 |7,233,506 Estimated increase in world's | | | | production | 141,661 | | | -----------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+---------- The above table shows the relative importance of the sugar-producing countries of the world. The time will come when Germany and the other continental countries will become tired of paying a bounty on the production of beet sugar. Then Cuba will take her rightful place as the greatest sugar-producing country of the world. If Cuba then belongs to the United States we shall control the sugar market of the world just as we now control the world's market in so many other staple products. CHAPTER XXI TOBACCO The companions of Christopher Columbus on the first voyage of discovery in 1492 found what has since been known as tobacco. Two weeks after sighting the first known land in the New West, that is to say, on the 27th of October, the ships of Columbus anchored off the shores of a great land, supposed to be the Kingdom of the Khan, to whose ruler Columbus bore letters of introduction from the King and Queen of Spain. Here--in the Island which is now called Cuba--exploring parties went ashore and proceeded into the interior seeking mines of gold and silver, which they had been told existed. They found no gold or silver, but many strange things, among them natives, with firebrands in their hands, and puffing smoke from their mouths and noses. After investigation into the nature of this peculiar custom the sailors tried it for themselves; but its adoption by the Spaniards was not immediate. The herb bore several names, but tabago, or tobago, or tabaco, seemed to be the one of most general adoption. It was the name of a peculiar-shaped implement, or pipe, which the natives used in smoking, and from this the name tobacco easily grew--though various European writers attempted to fix more romantic or poetic names upon the new narcotic. Although tobacco was first known to the Spaniards in 1492, it was not until 1560 that it was known at all in Spain, and not until 1586 that it was used in Europe, when Ralph Lane, sent out to Virginia as Governor by Sir Walter Raleigh, returned and smoked the first pipe in England. [Illustration: PLANTING TOBACCO.] Thence very quickly the habit grew, until in the middle of the seventeenth century tobacco was sought and fêted in every civilised country of the world. It may be appropriate in this connection to call the reader's attention to the fact that, although every known climate and soil of the earth have been tried in the cultivation of tobacco, Cuba, where it was discovered more than four hundred years ago, is still first in the quality produced, and Cuban tobacco need never fear a successful rival in excellence. The cultivation of tobacco in Cuba was not begun until 1580, when the Spaniards laid out small plantations in the neighbourhood of Havana. Three hundred years later there were over ten thousand tobacco plantations in the Island. These first plantations were located in or near the Vuelta Abajo (Lower Valley) to the south-west of Havana; and although even at that early period these plantations produced the best tobacco in the Island, the product of the Vuelta Abajo did not reach its world-wide fame until two hundred and fifty years later. Having once reached the summit of tobacco glory, however, the Vuelta Abajo product has never lost its proud position, and to-day ranks as the first tobacco in the world. This is due, of course, to soil and climatic conditions; for that peculiar skill or strange power, or whatever it may be, which the Cuban tobacco grower possesses is not more a characteristic of the Vuelta Abajo farmer than of other growers in the Island. Indeed, the Partidos leaf is larger in size, finer in texture, and richer in colour than its neighbour, the Vuelta Abajo, but it is lacking in the flavour which can only come from water, soil, and air. The Vuelta Abajo district occupies an area of about ninety miles in length by ten in width, and its province (Pinar del Rio) leads in the Cuban tobacco output, both as to quality and quantity. Tobacco is the second leading industry of Cuba, with sugar first, and its cultivation is considerably in advance of sugar as concerns not only profit to acreage, but conditions of plantations and labour. A sugar plantation is a wide waste of monotony in appearance; while a tobacco plantation, or _vega_, as it is known, with its kitchen garden, its _plantanos_ for feeding the hands, its flowering and fruit trees, its stone walls, its entrance gates and, pretty houses, is the most charming agricultural sight in Cuba except a coffee plantation. The average acreage of a _vega_ is, say, thirty-five acres, and from a dozen to forty men are employed in each _vega_, chiefly lower-class whites. More skill, too, is required in the cultivation of tobacco than sugar, and the class of labour is considerably superior to that employed in sugar planting. Only a small portion of the acreage of Cuba is occupied by tobacco plantations, notwithstanding tobacco is its second product in value. The bulk of it comes from the western end of the Island: the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, and Santa Clara. The following report on the tobacco product will show the amounts raised in each province, the grade, the amount consumed, and the amount exported: "The production of leaf-tobacco in the Island of Cuba before the revolution of the year 1894-95 amounted to about 560,000 bales, averaging about 50 kilos each, say 28,000,000 kilos or 62,173,800 pounds. Of this amount about 260,000 bales are harvested in the province of Pinar del Rio, known in the trade as Vuelta Abajo leaf, which is of the finest quality and of which about 140,000 bales are used by first-class cigar and cigarette manufacturers of Havana, the balance being exported to the United States of America and Europe. "The province of Havana on an average produced, before the war, only about 70,000 bales known as Partido leaf, one-fifth of which is used in Cuba for cheaper grades of cigars and cigarettes and the remainder exported to Key West, New York, and Europe. The quantity of tobacco grown in the province of Matanzas is so very insignificant that it is not known in the market at all. [Illustration: TOBACCO FARM AND DWELLING.] "The province of Santa Clara produces on an average about 130,000 bales, generally known as Remedios leaf, of which about 30,000 bales are used in that district and the neighbouring cities, and the remainder, 100,000 bales, goes to the United States; that is, the finer grades, for the lower grades are shipped to Germany, etc. The province of Puerto Principe produces little or no tobacco; nothing at least comes to the market. "El Oriente, or in other words the province of Santiago de Cuba, had a production of about 100,000 bales, generally called tobacco Gibara or Mayari, of which about 40,000 bales are consumed by the inhabitants of the district, and the remaining 60,000 bales are exported to those countries where a government monopoly of the tobacco industry exists, viz.: Austria, Spain, Italy, etc. This tobacco is very coarse and the greater part suitable only for pipe smoking. The price is in proportion to the quality; often not higher than twelve to fifteen cents a pound." While the methods of the tobacco grower differ in detail in the various provinces, in a general way one fairly broad description of tobacco raising will apply to all. The activity begins in September, at which time the seed is sown in the _semilleros_, or planting beds, which ordinarily lie higher than the common level of the farm. About the end of October, or say in fifty days, the young plants are transferred to a field prepared for them, and are set out at intervals of eighteen inches; great care being taken, as they are so delicate that a slight bruise upon their roots will kill them. The plants are removed from the nursery in the morning and set out in the evening. The growing plant is now carefully watched, the ground kept free from weeds, the tops of the plants pruned, and the suckers removed from the roots. The pruning is done with the thumb nail, as its dull edge closes the wound to the stem and prevents its bleeding. The three enemies to the plant are the common tobacco worm, a slug that destroys the leaf, and a butterfly from this slug, which lays its eggs on the leaves and kills them. These insects must be removed by hand, and the work is hard and disagreeable. The plant is ready for cutting in January, and after being cut the leaves are hung on poles and dried in the open air and in the drying-sheds. When thoroughly dry, the leaves are removed from the poles, sprinkled with water in which tobacco stems have been left until fermentation has taken place, and the tobacco is packed, first into bunches, then into bales of 110 pounds each. In this form it is ready for shipment. The tobacco is classed according to quality, which also fixes the price. Fertilisers are not often used, as they affect the flavour. One man can attend to 15,000 plants, which is about the product of two acres, and one acre has been known to yield a crop worth $3000, but, of course, quality, rather than quantity, makes such value. It is estimated that 80,000 persons are engaged in cultivating tobacco in Cuba. Although profits of from ten to thirty-five per cent. have been realised on tobacco-raising in Cuba, very few foreigners, excepting an occasional German, have undertaken it. English and German companies own the majority of the manufacturing establishments in Havana and elsewhere, but they have found that it is more profitable to buy the raw material than to raise it, although an English company, manufacturing in Havana, is reported to have paid $1,000,000 for 18,000 acres in the Vuelta Abajo district. Among the great Havana companies are the famous Henry Clay and Bock Company, Limited, with a capital of $2,500,000; the Partagos Company, of London, capital $1,500,000; H. Upmann & Company, a German corporation, and many others (120 in all), of varying nationalities; but no American companies.[16] Of the total exports of cigars and tobacco from Cuba, Havana ships by far the largest percentage, estimated at from ninety-five to ninety-nine per cent. of the whole. The largest number of cigars (188,755,000) were shipped in 1888, out of a total shipment to all countries of 219,892,000. In 1896, owing to the high tariff in the United States, the exports dropped to 60,000,000, estimated, and the entire shipments of Cuban tobacco to the United States decreased from 26,771,317 pounds, valued at $10,613,468, in 1896, to 4,410,073 pounds, valued at $2,306,067 for the first nine months of 1897. The tobacco interests of Cuba have suffered, as all others have, from Spanish greed, dishonesty, and misrule; and now that the new era is at hand, changed conditions for the better will develop at once. No more fitting conclusion to this chapter could be made than to present the following clear and comprehensive statement of Mr. Gustavo Bock, of the Henry Clay and Bock Company, Limited, of Havana, on the production of tobacco in Cuba, its manufacture, its necessities in the present difficult situation, and the quickest and best means of improvement. Mr. Bock prepared this valuable report especially for the author. "The war, with its sad and distressing consequences, has been the principal cause of the destruction of the farms employed in the cultivation of tobacco and the ruin of the tobacco industry. "The principal causes of destruction are three: 1st. Depopulation of the country. It is an undoubted and recognised fact that the scarcity of men employed in the country has greatly reduced the production of tobacco, limiting it to small zones, where at great expense and sacrifice a small production has been obtained. This reduction in the population is estimated at sixty-five per cent., as may be seen by the statistics of the districts of Guane, Remates, Grifa, Cortes, and Sabalo, in the province of Pinar del Rio, to which--not to make these notes too long--we will limit ourselves. Before the war there were 36,000 inhabitants in the province named, and the average production of leaf tobacco was 60,000 to 65,000 bales. To-day there are scarcely 6000 inhabitants, and the last crop was barely 6000 bales; and these were produced thanks to the efforts of a foreign syndicate, which, risking its capital, and with few hopes of future compensation, began the work of reconstruction, thereby saving thousands of families from a certain death. "2nd. Seizure of cattle. Cattle, which are the most important factor in agriculture, have been reduced to such small numbers that in some tobacco districts there are absolutely none, and in the few places where there are any left, they are entirely insufficient for the most urgent requirements. Cattle in this Island are of the first necessity. Without exaggerating the expression, oxen constitute the right hand of the farmer during the crop. Their work commences with the plough and continues without rest until the crop is gathered and taken to the seaboard. They cannot be replaced by any other animal, as has been proved by experience; practice having shown that horses and mules are unavailable in this service, in view of the special topography of the Vuelta Abajo district and the climate of the Island of Cuba. One of the chief reasons of this scarcity is the constant seizure of the cattle by the Government troops, carried on unmercifully. It is not necessary to prove that this state of affairs will bring about the complete annihilation of cattle, leaving the poor labourer and the majority of the inhabitants of the Vuelta Abajo in the most precarious circumstances. The consequence of this unjustifiable measure will affect not only those employed in the fields of that province, but also those who depend exclusively on the tobacco industry in the towns and in Havana. Without a crop, without raw material, the factories will have to close their doors, and the misery with all its horrors, brought about by the system of reconcentration, will only be renewed. "3rd. Loss of capital and credit. The disappearance of capital, and the consequent absence of credit, are due essentially to the above mentioned causes. It is unnecessary to prove this statement; it has been the inevitable. These are, I repeat, the principal causes which have brought about the disastrous condition of the tobacco industry. "That the reconstruction be permanent, it is necessary to give ample protection to the farmer, and for this we need: [Illustration: WETTING THE TOBACCO LEAF.] "1st. The promotion of immigration. All obstacles to the return of the white man to his labour in the fields should be removed. As the existing number of white labourers is entirely insufficient for the needs of the cultivation of tobacco, it is necessary to favour as much as possible the immigration of Canary Islanders, who constituted before the war the majority of the tobacco growers. Their knowledge and condition make them suitable for the working of these fields in preference to others. "2nd. Free importation of cattle. The immediate free importation of cattle is necessary, as only a few oxen and milchers are left. As I have already stated, oxen are the principal factors in the farmer's work in this district, and it is necessary to import them without delay, free of duty, as the farmer cannot afford to pay the exorbitant duties now enforced. Immediate attention should be given this subject in view of the fact that work on the next crop must begin in a very short time. "3rd. Inducement to capital and revival of credit. With the free importation of cattle, immigration of white labourers, and the establishment of a firm and stable government, undoubtedly this district would return to its former prosperous condition. Peace, order, and work would invite capital to lend a vigorous and impulsive hand to regain the district's lost wealth and credit. "4th. Construction of roads. The province of Pinar del Rio has always felt the want of communication with the commercial centres. After three years of war, between neglect and destruction, there are to-day practically no roads. This evil has caused an increase in freight rates, and in some cases the rates exceed the value of the goods. To promote the industry of the province, new roads should be built and the old ones reconstructed. "5th. Establishment of a corps of rural police. The establishment of a corps of police is an important point to the country districts. They should be organised under conditions similar to those now given to the Civil Guards, an armed force for the persecution of bandits and the maintenance of order in the country districts of Cuba. It is not to be expected that all the vagabonds, thieves, and bad characters who existed before the revolution have decreased in number, considering the irregular lives they must have been leading, and that, now peace is restored, they will become honest and good workmen. Protection against this class of people can be afforded the tobacco grower by a well constituted corps of rural police. "Protection and guarantee of the genuineness of Cuban tobacco. Now that we have pointed out the measures we consider most urgent to re-establish the industry of the tobacco provinces, we will mention what we consider necessary for the protection of the Vuelta Abajo tobacco leaf. It is not enough that the agriculture of the district should rise to its former state of prosperity; it is necessary, besides, to protect in some way the reputation of Cuban tobacco, and especially the Vuelta Abajo tobacco leaf, considered to-day without a rival in the world. These measures are purely economical. They concern an uncommon article, for the production of which means and expenses are used that entitle it to unusual protection, as will be shown by the following calculation: "To produce 100 bales of tobacco, of 50 kilos each, a farmer would rent one _caballeria_ of land (equalling 33-16/100 acres), one half of which he would employ for tobacco cultivation and the remainder for vegetables. Rent of land per year $ 300.00 250,000 plants @ $1.50 per thousand 375.00 6250 lbs. of Peruvian fertiliser 250.00 Hiring of oxen 102.00 Wages and maintenance of 12 men @ $25 per month each 3000.00 _Yaguas_, _Majaguas_, and expenses 300.00 Taxes, physicians bills and medicines, and living expenses of the planter 400.00 --------- Total $4,727.00 [Illustration: TOBACCO DRYING HOUSE.] "So that a planter would have to sell each 50 kilos of tobacco at $47.27 to cover the cost of production. The foregoing figures show clearly that the production of tobacco in the Island of Cuba is more expensive than that in any other part of the world, special attention being necessary to its raising from the day it is planted to the cutting of the leaf, besides the subsequent treatment necessary to obtain good results; which work goes on night and day, if a good quality is desired. The following measures are therefore necessary for the protection of the industry: "To insure a planter the sale of his crop at a price in proportion to the cost of production, it is absolutely indispensable that the present regulations prohibiting the importation and reimportation in this Island of all foreign manufactured or unmanufactured tobacco should continue in force; excepting only snuff and chewing tobacco, that have always been imported here and in no way hurt our trade or agriculture. Of the many laws and decrees which the Madrid Government has issued to favour this colony, none has been wiser than this prohibition of the importation of foreign leaf tobacco, thereby avoiding the importation of a leaf of inferior quality by unscrupulous persons, who after manufacturing the cigar in the way usual in this country, made perhaps with a small proportion of Cuban leaf, would export it as genuine Havana; a business which would prove most profitable to the adulterator, but which in time would totally ruin the reputation of our products, both agricultural and industrial, bringing about a decrease in prices which would eventually cause a cessation of the cultivation of tobacco. "Production of tobacco in the Island, local consumption, exports, particularly those to the United States. The production of tobacco in normal times is estimated at: In Pinar del Rio, called Vuelta Abajo 260,000 bales In Havana, called Partido 70,000 " In Las Villas Sta. Clara, called Remedios 130,000 " In the Eastern Provinces, called Mayiri y Gibara 100,000 " ------- Total 560,000 " or, on an average of 50 kilos per bale (110 pounds), 28,000,000 kilos, or 62,173,800 pounds. "Note.--In Vuelta Abajo there is a good deal of uncultivated land, and with permanent peace and a stable government, that could insure protection to capitalists, this production could easily be increased in Vuelta Abajo alone to 500,000 bales. The provinces of Havana, Las Villas, and the Eastern Provinces would increase in the same proportion. "In the manufacture of cigars, cigarettes, and packages of smoking tobacco for home consumption, the following number of bales of tobacco are used: Vuelta Abajo 140,000 bales. Partido 10,000 " Sta. Clara 30,000 " Gibara 40,000 " ------- Total 220,000 " and for export as follows: Vuelta Abajo 120,000 bales. Partido 60,000 " Sta. Clara 100,000 " Gibara 60,000 " ------- Total 340,000 " at 50 kilos per bale, 17,000,000 kilos or 36,956,000 pounds. "The United States has bought and imported from the Island of Cuba as follows: In the year 1893 21,694,881 pounds $8,940,058 In the year 1894 14,578,248 " 5,828,954 In the year 1895 20,175,620 " 7,271,794 In the year 1896 26,771,317 " 10,613,468 In the year 1897 4,410,073 " (6 mos.) 2,306,067 A total value of leaf exported is estimated per annum at $12,000,000 and the 220,000 bales for home consumption are valued at 10,000,000 ----------- Total $22,000,000 "Manufacturing: its importance and prospects. Having expressed our views concerning the production of leaf tobacco, we will now refer to its manufacture, an industry which has for several years dragged along, and which is of great importance and deserves the utmost attention. It is impossible to estimate how important an industry it would be to-day, if, instead of the setbacks it has received, its energies had been allowed to develop. The universal reputation which this leaf enjoys, owing to the excellency of its quality and the perfection of its manufacture, would increase threefold if the industry were promoted. In importance, it is to-day the second industry in the country, and in the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio it is the foremost. With 100,000 cwt. costing $4,000,000 in 1889, the following has been manufactured: For exportation 250,000,000 cigars $11,500,000 Local consumption 50,000,000 " 2,000,000 ----------- ----------- Total 300,000,000 " $13,500,000 "In addition to this, the manufacture of cigarettes represents from $3,000,000 to $4,000,000 per annum. However, the importance of this industry must not be gauged by these figures, but by the fact that the proceeds of this industry circulate rapidly and give life and movement to other industries that depend upon it, which in the city of Havana alone employ from 18,000 to 20,000 workmen, who, with their families, represent from 45,000 to 50,000 people. "We have cursorily glanced over its actual importance: let us study its future. Even if under the auspices of peace, with the adoption of proper measures for the future of the agriculture and production of tobacco a brilliant and promising future is assured, the same cannot be said, unfortunately, of its industry and manufacture. The future of the former is most promising; it has no rival in the world; there is only one Vuelta Abajo district. The latter, besides, handicapped as it is by excessive competition, has the insurmountable obstacle of being taxed by the treasuries of countries burdened by a heavy national debt; while other nations, like the United States, levy heavy duties on cigars to protect their national industry in its various phases. As a proof of what we say, we call attention to the following figures showing the gradual decrease of the manufacture of tobacco in this Island, a decrease which nearly reaches fifty per cent. of normal. The following will show how the exportation of cigars decreased from 250,000,000 in 1889 to 123,000,000 in 1897: EXPORTATION OF CIGARS IN NINE YEARS In 1889 250,467,000 In 1890 211,823,000 In 1891 196,667,000 In 1892 166,712,000 In 1893 147,365,000 In 1894 134,210,000 In 1895 158,662,000 In 1896 185,914,000 In 1897 123,417,000 "On the other hand, the exportation of leaf tobacco has increased fifty per cent.; from 177,000 bales exported in 1889 by the port of Havana, the exports in 1895 had increased to approximately 250,000 bales. It is easy, then, to understand the actual condition of the tobacco industry and its dependencies, and that of the numerous families who live by the work that this gives them; their future cannot be promising, unless laws are immediately enforced to protect them and raise them from the abject state in which they find themselves. [Illustration: BALING TOBACCO.] "Cause of decline. Besides the high customs tariffs on imported cigars abroad, among which we may mention those of the Argentine Republic, as well as the internal taxes of those countries where tobacco is a source of government revenue, one of the main reasons of the decline of the Cuban industry originated in the McKinley bill, which compelled many manufacturers to move their factories to the United States, owing to the want of protection on the raw material, thereby causing a considerable decrease in the production of the Island, and increasing in the same proportion that of the United States, in which country the manufacture has reached the enormous sum of 5,000,000,000 cigars per annum. EXPORTATION OF TOBACCO TO THE UNITED STATES In 1889 101,698,560 cigars $3,970,034 In 1890 95,105,760 " 4,113,730 In 1891 52,015,600 " 2,742,285 In 1892 54,472,250 " 2,859,941 In 1893 46,033,660 " 2,424,425 In 1894 40,048,330 " 2,131,981 In 1895 39,579,400 " 2,050,367 In 1896 40,601,750 " 2,091,856 In 1897 34,017,583 " 1,868,610 "Mode of protection. To protect and promote the prosperity of this industry it is necessary: 1st. To maintain the suppression of export duty on cigars ordered by the local Government of this Island on the 31st of last December, both on cigars and cigarettes and packages of cut tobacco, as well as on tobacco in fibre or powdered, which are considered as industrial products thereof. "2nd. To maintain to its full extent the export duty on leaf tobacco, ordered at the same time, of $12 per 100 kilos for that grown in the provinces of the west and centre of the Island (Vuelta Abajo, Partido, and Remedios). The following data will prove the justice of this step: to manufacture in the United States 1000 cigars weighing 12 pounds, sold in Havana, unstemmed, 25 pounds of filler, and 5 pounds of wrapper, we should arrive at the following results: For export duty on the leaf in Cuba, 30 lbs. of leaf at $12.00 per 100 kilos $ 3.60 Import duty in the United States on 25 lbs. of filler at 35 cents each 8.70 " " " " " " " 5 lbs. wrapper @ $2 each 10.05 ------ Total $22.35 The same 1000 cigars imported from Cuba, weighing 12 lbs., at $4.50 per lb. $54.00 Export duty 25 per cent. ad valorem, valued @ $60 per thousand 15.00 ------ Total $69.00 making a difference of $46.65 against our tobacco. "3rd. It is also indispensable that the prohibition of importing and reimporting all tobacco, whether prepared or in leaf, be maintained, and "4th. If, as is to be hoped, the commercial relations between this Island and the North American Republic continue in perfect harmony and well directed, we may soon expect to have complete reciprocity and free exchange of trade." In this connection it will be interesting to note the relative importance of the tobacco-producing countries of the world. The following table is the latest and most reliable obtainable: AVERAGE PRODUCTION OF TOBACCO Countries. Product in Pounds. United States of America 488,000,000 Mexico 5,600,000 Cuba 62,000,000 Puerto Rico 8,800,000 Santo Domingo 8,000,000 Brazil 33,000,000 Argentine 6,000,000 Austria Hungary 135,000,000 Russia 110,000,000 Turkey 80,000,000 Germany 72,000,000 France 50,000,000 Greece 18,000,000 Belgium 10,000,000 Roumania 8,000,000 Bulgaria 7,500,000 Bosnia 7,000,000 Netherlands 6,300,000 Italy 4,000,000 Switzerland 3,000,000 Servia 3,000,000 Sweden 2,200,000 Philippine Islands 45,000,000 British East Indies 370,000,000 Dutch " " 66,000,000 Japan 50,000,000 Ceylon 8,000,000 Cochin China 6,000,000 Algiers 10,000,000 Australia 10,000,000 China } 160,000,000 Paraguay } Sundries 55,000,000 ------------- 1,907,400,000 Thus the primary cost of the world's tobacco ranges from $200,000,000 to $225,000,000 per annum. It is not in quantity but in quality that Cuba leads the world. CHAPTER XXII MINES AND MINING The first questions asked the natives of Cuba by Columbus and his company concerned gold and silver, and they heard many tales of the riches of the unknown interior, but all their searching produced nothing of value, nor have the succeeding centuries added greatly to what was first discovered. Some little gold and silver was found, but it amounted to really nothing, and the mineral riches of the Island remained hidden until 1524, when copper was discovered near Santiago de Cuba; and here grew up the little mining town of Cobre (copper). Since that date deposits of asphaltum, iron, manganese, and salt have been found and have been worked, but not as they would have been in a well governed and progressive country. The mining districts of Cuba are confined almost exclusively to the mountainous or eastern end of the Island, and so far the province of Santiago is the chief producer. Its leading product is iron ore, mined principally by American companies with American corporations. The first real iron-mining in Cuba began about 1884, when 21,798 tons were shipped to the United States. This was the first Cuban iron ore received in this country, and was about one-twenty-third of the total iron ore importation. In 1897 we received 397,173 tons of Cuban ore, which was three-fourths of the ore imported. During the years 1884-1897 we received 3,401,077 tons of Cuban ore. [Illustration: OLD COPPER MINES AT LA COPERA.] The ore is a brown hematite, in large quantities, easy to work, of excellent quality, about sixty-two per cent. iron, and is especially adapted for the making of Bessemer steel. Though there are many mining properties, three American companies, the Juragua Iron Company, the Spanish-American Iron Company, and the Sigua Iron Company, do all the business. The Juragua does far more than all the others. Its shipments to the United States in 1897 were 244,817 (5932 tons, in addition, to Nova Scotia) to 152,356 tons by the Spanish-American Company, which made its first shipment in 1895, and none by the Sigua Company, which has shipped, in all, 21,853 tons. The Sigua began operations in 1892, the Spanish-American in 1885, and the Juragua in 1884. In 1897, the Spanish-American Company shipped 51,537 tons to foreign countries; bringing its total output for the year up to 203,893 tons. Although iron ore of the best quality outcrops in many places on the estates once devoted to coffee on the southern slope of the coast range, it was not until the year 1881 that the first claim was located, or "denounced." Since then more than a hundred locations have been denounced in this range (the Sierra Maestro), both to the east and the west of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Of these denouncements the most important, and in fact the only ones that have ever been worked, are to the east of the city, covering a distance of twenty odd miles along the range, a few miles in from the coast. The deposit is not continuous, but there are numerous separate deposits along this distance; some of them very extensive. In order to encourage the mining of this ore, the Crown of Spain issued, on the 17th of April, 1883, a royal decree to the following effect: That for a period of twenty years from that date, the mining companies should be free from all tax on the surface area of all claims of iron or combustibles; that ores of all classes should be free from all export taxes; that coal brought in by mining companies for use in their work should be free from all import taxes; that combustibles and iron ore should be exempted from the three per cent. tax on raw materials; that mining and metallurgical companies should be free from all other impost; that for a period of five years the mining companies should be exempt from the payment of duties on all machinery or materials required for working and transporting the ore; that vessels entering in ballast and sailing with ore should pay a duty of five cents per ton navigation dues, and that vessels entering with cargo destined for the mining companies should pay $1.30 per ton navigation and port dues on all such cargo, and on the remainder of the cargo as per general tariff. Under this charter the Juragua Iron Company, Limited, opened mines in Firmeza, laid a railroad twenty miles long from that point to La Cruz in Santiago Bay, where fine docks and piers were built, and, in 1884, shipped the first cargo of iron ore from Cuba. The company has a fine fleet of iron steamers. The mines of this company were extensively and successfully worked, and, encouraged by this, the Spanish-American Company and the Sigua Company purchased mines to the east of the Juragua properties and at once began the work of developing them. The Spanish-American Iron Company, incorporated under the laws of West Virginia, and owned entirely by American citizens, built four miles of standard-gauge railroad from its mines to Daiquiri Bay, about sixteen miles east of the harbour of Santiago de Cuba. Here the company constructed a steel ore-dock of 3000 tons capacity, a landing-pier, buoys, moorings, and other harbour improvements at a cost of $500,000. The work of preparing this harbour delayed the opening of the mines for shipment, and it was not until May, 1895, that the first cargo was cleared. The Sigua Iron Company built a standard-gauge road nine miles long from its mines to Sigua Bay, and there constructed a breakwater and a wooden ore-dock. This company during the first two years of operation shipped 21,853 tons. Later, the mines were closed, and during the war between Spain and the Cubans the dock, roundhouse, locomotives, and buildings of the company at Sigua Bay were entirely destroyed in the course of an engagement between the Spanish and the Cuban forces. The Spanish-American Iron Company and the Juragua Iron Company remained in operation during the entire war between Spain and Cuba, and, although located at the extreme outpost of the Spanish troops, with Cuban forces in the immediate vicinity, maintained throughout a strict neutrality, and continued shipping ore until they were closed by order of the Spanish authorities, after the declaration of war between the United States and Spain. The three companies, which are the only ones that have ever operated mines in the province, represent an investment of American capital of about $8,000,000, and the two still operating have paid into the Treasury of the United States more than $2,000,000 in import duties on iron ore. The following table shows the production of iron ore in the province from 1884 to 1897: ------+------------------------------------------------------ | PRODUCTION. YEARS.+----------+----------------+-------------+------------ | Juragua |Spanish-American|Sigua Iron | Total Tons. | Company. | Iron Company. | Company. | ------+----------+----------------+-------------+------------ 1884 | 23,977| .... | .... | 23,977 1885 | 80,095| .... | .... | 80,095 1886 | 110,880| .... | .... | 110,880 1887 | 94,810| .... | .... | 94,810 1888 | 204,475| .... | .... | 204,475 1889 | 255,406| .... | .... | 255,406 1890 | 356,060| .... | .... | 356,060 1891 | 261,620| .... | .... | 261,620 1892 | 320,859| .... | .... | 320,859 1893 | 334,341| .... | 12,000[1]| 346,341 1894 | 153,650| .... | .... | 153,650 1895 | 302,050| 74,992 | .... | 377,041 1896 | 291,561| 114,110 | .... | 405,671 1897 | 246,530| 206,029 | .... | 452,559 ------+----------+----------------+-------------+------------ Total | 3,036,314| 395,131 | [17] |3,443,444 ------+----------+----------------+-------------+------------ It is interesting to note that none of the mines are worked underground. The ore outcrops on the sidehills, and the mining is in the nature of quarrying. Daiquiri, the port of the Spanish-American Company, is the point at which General Shafter's army landed; and the dock, pier, mooring, buoys, and water supply of the place were of great value to the army and to the vessels of the navy. The Spanish forces, who abandoned Daiquiri when the United States troops landed, set fire to the shops, roundhouse, docks, pier, warehouse, and cars of the company. Through the efforts of the company's men, who were waiting in the hills and who returned as soon as the bombardment ceased, the fire was partly extinguished; but the locomotives, shops, some cars, and a number of buildings were a total loss. The hospital buildings and a number of dwellings at Daiquiri were afterwards burned by order of the United States officers commanding. At Siboney, the Juragua Company's village, a number of buildings were also burned by order of the United States officers in command. Rich deposits of iron ore of several varieties are found in the provinces of Santa Clara and Puerto Principe, and some work has been done in developing, but the war put an end to it. The following list of the mining properties, all in the province of Santiago, with the number of acres, condition, etc., may be useful as reference: Dorothea and Recrio 4 mines, 300 acres For sale Carpintero 9 " 1300 " " Bayamitas 5 " 925 " Guama 6 " 950 " Cuero 6 " 760 " For sale De la Plata 9 " 975 " Sigua Company Uvera and Jaqueca 12 " 1557 " 10 for sale Berracoe 4 " 502 " $150,000 refused Cajobaba 8 " ---- For sale Economia 19 " 2650 " " Providencia 3 " ---- " Madalena 8 " 1000 " 4 " Demajobo 1 " 150 " " Juragua Group 17 " 2500 " 11 " Sevilla 11 " 1300 " " [Illustration: MINING CAMP AT FIRENEZA.] All these mining properties are from two hundred to fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and though the climate is hot, the region is not affected by fevers or malaria, and it may be said to be the most healthful section of the Island. This location is excellent for mining and shipping also, being from five to sixty miles from Santiago; and nearly all of the properties have excellent outlets to the sea or are conveniently located to rail facilities. Nature as usual in Cuba has done her share, except in the production of man, and the most serious drawback to mining is the want of proper labour. The whites, except of the Latin races, are not equal to the work, and the blacks are inefficient as compared with the same class of labour in higher latitudes. The labour problem here, as in all other Cuban industrial fields, is the most serious which confronts capital, and its solution is to be reached only after careful study and continued experiment. All kinds of suggestions have been offered and many of them acted upon; but so far the problem is unsolved, and now capital looks most to the Latin races of Europe and the black race of the United States for assistance out of its difficulties. What inducements new Cuba offers to these people remains to be seen, but it is apparent that capital must do more in Cuba for labour, if it will secure what is best, than is done for it in those parts of the world where climate, disease, and social environments do not lay additional burdens upon the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water." Manganese, which is an essential raw material in the manufacture of Bessemer and open-hearth steel, is found in greater or less quantities in the province of Santiago de Cuba. The deposits lie in the San Maestro range on the south coast, extending over a distance of one hundred miles between Santiago and Manzanillo. As the demand in the United States for manganese was far in excess of the native supply, and the nearest known mines were in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea in Europe and in the northern part of South America, attention was at once drawn to the Cuban deposits and one American company was formed, known as the Panupo Iron Company, sixteen miles north of Santiago, with a railroad extending to that point. Other companies also began work, and the shipments from 1890 to 1893 inclusive amounted to 62,601 tons. In 1894 there was none, and in 1895-96 the total shipments were 750 tons. This decrease in business was due, in some measure, to low prices and to other causes than the insurrection and war, but that was the prime factor in the cause of the decrease, because already, with the promise of peace, mining has been resumed, with every prospect of continued increase and prosperity. Though only comparatively small efforts have as yet been made to develop the capacity of these mines, numerous properties have been staked off, and it is estimated that there are eighty-eight manganese mines in sight along the San Maestro range. The appended list names some of them: Hatillo 400 acres Cobre 2 mines, 425 " $50,000 refused Macio 4 " 4345 " Unopened Ramas 3 " 330 " For sale San Andres 5 " 440 " Santa Filomena 2 " 300 " Bueycito Manzanillo section Undeveloped Portillo 8 mines, 700 acres Discontinued Boniato 1 " 472 " Dos Bocas 11 " 905 " Margarita 4 " 1077 " Quemado 5 " 322 " Boston 10 " 665 " San Juan In the majority of these, no active mining operations have been carried on. Whatever conditions of taxation, duties, and other expenses on the production of manganese existed previously have been changed by the war, and entirely new conditions are presented now for the continuance of the work. It is believed that the mines are practically inexhaustible, and that the metal, while varying considerably in quantity, is in the main high grade and can be mined and shipped at prices which will extend the industry until the United States steel manufacturers will get their entire manganese supply from this nearest known manganese district. Copper. It is believed that the natives mined copper long before Columbus discovered the Island, for copper ornaments have been found, not only in Cuba, but in Florida, long antedating 1492. Whatever may have been true of prehistoric periods, it is known that the mines at Cobre in the province of Santiago de Cuba were opened as early as 1524 and became the greatest copper-producing mines of the world. As high as fifty tons of ore a day have been mined from them. Some of these mines were sunk to the distance of nine hundred to twelve hundred feet. Before the development of the great copper deposits in the United States, this country received the output of the Cuban mines, which were worked by English capital. From 1828 to 1840 between two million and three million dollars' worth of copper was annually shipped to this country, besides shipments to other countries. Owing to the fact that below three hundred feet these mines were beneath the level of the sea, the pumping problem was difficult of solution and expensive, and at last, in 1867, this hindrance, combined with the development of copper deposits in the United States, which cut prices materially, stopped work. The shafts filled with water and have remained so. The only work that has been done was an attempt by a Cuban company to work the copper found in solution in the water. It is believed that there are still rich and valuable deposits of copper in this section and that the time will come when the red glory of Cobre will again be restored to its ancient prestige. Gold and silver. Some discoveries of gold have been made in various parts of Cuba and in the Isle of Pines, and some placer mining has been done along a few of the rivers, but it is believed that the quantity found will scarcely justify the opinion that Cuban gold will ever make much of a showing in the world's product of the yellow metal. Silver appears far better. Deposits have been found in the provinces of Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago. Some silver has also been found in other parts of the Island and on the Isle of Pines. As early as 1827 silver was mined in the Manicaragua district, province of Santa Clara, said to yield seventy-five ounces per ton; and near the town of Santa Clara deposits yielding $200 per ton were prospected fifty years ago. In the lead mines of Santiago de Cuba, some silver has been found yielding nineteen ounces to the ton. More work was done in the Santa Clara mines than elsewhere; in fact little has been done in any of them, but the deposits in Santa Clara did not continue of sufficient richness to pay for working them, and in recent years nothing has been done in Cuban silver mining. Reaching a conclusion by way of the geology of Cuba and of the other West Indian islands, it may be safely predicted that the prosperity which is promised for Cuba, and which is sure to come soon, will raise the Cuban silver mines to their former productiveness. Lead. This metal, reported to exist in several localities, has had no development save in Santiago de Cuba, where two or three mines have been opened. One of them shows a twenty-inch vein, forty-six per cent. copper, with some silver and zinc and a trace of gold. The mines so far have been opened by American "boomers" for the purpose of bringing the properties into notice. Coal. A serious deficiency in Cuban products is mineral fuel; and although coal is said to exist and, again, said not to exist on the Island, Mr. Frederick W. Ramsden, late British Consul at Santiago, made the following report in 1895: "A deposit of coal has been found at five leagues of the Dos Caminos railway station, or about fifteen leagues north-north-west of Santiago. A sample sent to the United States analysed as follows: [Illustration: ORE BANK OF JURAGUA MINES.] Per Cent. Remarks. Moisture 13.20 Specific gravity 1.368. Volatile combustible 49.20 One cubic yard weighs 2303 pounds. Half sulphur 47.76 Fixed carbon 28.48 This sample is fairly black, and when powdered it contains visible layers of pyrites and no appreciable bitumen. Half sulphur 27.04 Ash 9.12 Sulphur 2.88 "I understand, however, that since this sample was taken the mines have been partially opened up and a better class of coal found lower down. No estimate has been formed as to the quantity of coal there, as no investigations have so far been made with this object. I am informed, however, that the geological formation is favourable." Some of the coal reported in other sections of the Island proves to be either a lignite or a hardened bitumen. Possibly workable deposits of coal exist somewhere, and efforts will be made to explore thoroughly every locality where there is the slightest coal prospect, as so much depends in the development of manufacturing industries upon contiguous and cheap fuel. Asphaltum. Asphaltum appears to be a very general product of the Island and of the water along its shores. Deposits of it show in every province, in some localities in inexhaustible quantities; the deposits at Cardenas and Santa Clara take the lead in development. As much as ten thousand tons a year have been shipped from Santa Clara. At and near Cardenas the deposits are found in the bottom of the bay, and the method of securing it is peculiar. A shaft eighty feet or more in depth below the surface extends into the sea-bottom; and into this the asphalt runs or filters. It is supposed that the supply is brought from the interior through the subterranean rivers which prevail in this locality,--from which, indeed, Cardenas gets its water supply. Over this shaft the ship is anchored; from her deck a heavy bar of iron attached to a rope is dropped, and the asphalt is broken from the sides of the shaft and falls to the bottom, where it is scooped up into a net and loaded into the vessel. As this work has been going on for years and the asphalt replenishes itself constantly, it is fair to suppose that the run will go on for ever. It is of such quality as to be worth from $80 to $125 per ton in New York, and a ship has gathered as much as three hundred tons in three weeks. This and two other mines, of not such good quality, are immediately in the bay of Cardenas; and near Diana Key is the great Constancia mine, covering a circumference of one hundred and fifty or more feet, from which twenty thousand tons have been taken; yet there is no diminution in the quality of the deposit. There are several other smaller deposits in this locality. As asphalt is so general in Cuba and the mines are so generous in their yield, even under the crude methods adopted, it is only to be concluded that the asphaltum industry of the Island has a bright outlook; and when it is understood what a fine paving material asphalt is, and how greatly paving is needed in the streets of Cuban towns, it seems to be almost providential that so sore a need has healing so close at hand, demanding only enlightenment and energy to apply it. Quicksilver is known to exist, though in small quantities, and as yet not enough has been found to pay for the working. Nickel is also said to exist. Petroleum is found in several parts of the Island, and in and near Manzanillo it comes out of the ground and rocks in a remarkably pure state. Natural gas may yet be found, for a gasoline mine near Santa Clara clearly indicates its presence. Marble of fine quality is reported in the Isle of Pines and in a number of localities in Cuba, but its superiority may be slightly doubted, as its grain is somewhat coarse and it lacks the proper density. The same may be said of such building stone as has been thus far produced. However, so very little has been done in developing any of these products and giving them fair tests, that definite conclusions as to quantity and quality cannot be justly reached at present. CHAPTER XXIII AGRICULTURE AND STOCK Data of any kind on the farming interests of Cuba are difficult to collect, and those obtained are, as a rule, meagre, indefinite, and unsatisfactory. Statements vary as to the acreage under cultivation, estimates vary from 2,000,000 to 9,000,000 of acres. One writer says there are 100,000 farms, plantations, and cattle ranches in the Island, valued at $20,000,000; and Cabrera, in 1862, gives these figures: 18 cocoa plantations, 35 cotton plantations, 782 coffee plantations, 1523 sugar plantations, 1731 bee farms, 2712 stock farms, 6175 cattle ranches, 11,541 tobacco plantations, 11,738 truck farms, and 22,748 produce farms, a total of 59,001. Spanish official figures show a total of 37,702 farms, cattle ranches, sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations. What these properties may be worth or valued at now cannot be stated; but before the war their value might be fairly estimated at from $275,000,000 to $300,000,000. The Cuban farmer, despite what nature had done for him in climate and soil, was never equal to his opportunities. True, the mother country, by taxation, had kept him over-burdened with debt, and by not giving him the benefit of progressive ideas had forced him to use only the most primitive implements and farm machinery. When he used these at all, they were of Spanish manufacture, the worst in the world; but even under such adverse circumstances he might have done much better than he did. That he did not is due largely to himself, for indeed there are thrifty Cuban farmers, who have good farms and do as well as farmers anywhere, all things considered. But they are not in a majority. As one evidence of the general lack of thrift, the Cubans imported from the United States in 1893, a good year, animal products (largely hogs), worth $5,718,101; bread stuffs, $3,164,541; provisions other than the foregoing, $1,315,097; a total value of over $10,000,000, all of which except, possibly, wheat flour, might have been raised at home, with a fair amount of care and industry, under a decent government. While all parts of the Island are not adapted to such agricultural development as is found in higher latitudes, nearly all the products of northern soil may be grown in Cuba. Our common corn is very generally raised, on the uplands especially, and two crops of it will grow yearly. It is smaller than the corn of the north, but is said to be more nutritious. It is fed to stock in the ear and as fodder. Wheat growing has never been attempted to any extent, and while the lowlands are impossible for it, in the mountain regions, according to theory, it might be accomplished successfully. However, all the chances are against Cuba's entering the wheat market against Minnesota and the Dakotas. Oats and barley are not in the list of Cuban products. A great deal of rice is raised in the lowlands along the coast; but the Cubans are great rice eaters and none is exported. A careful handling of the Cuban rice crop would bring it into the markets of the United States. Although, to insure good quality, seed potatoes must be brought to Cuba each year from the United States, the crops raised are enormous, and they come twice a year. We do not get new potatoes from Cuba in the spring, but there is no reason why we should not, if the farmer will raise them for export. The Cuban potato is worth considerably more in Havana than those imported. The sweet potato grows everywhere and anywhere, and is not only of great quantity but good quality. To Cuba it is almost what the white potato is to Ireland. The yam, another and larger form of the sweet potato, is prolific and prevalent. It is not cultivated for exportation. In fact it can scarcely be said to be cultivated at all in Cuba, so common is the growth. Beans are an article of import into Cuba, and the people consume great quantities of them, yet every variety of bean grows there rankly, and that they are not grown not only to meet the home demands but for export as well, is simply because of a lack of industry in their cultivation. Asparagus may be grown and greatly improved, as that now produced is small and inferior. Beets, as far as produced, show that by proper cultivation they might become a leading product. Cabbage, too, is so neglected that it is imported to meet the demand that Cuba easily could supply. Watercress of good quality grows along most of the streams. Spinach is found in the home market-gardens, but none is raised beyond that. The sago palm, furnishing sago flour, is neglected though it grows in profusion. Radishes grow all the year. Two crops a year of fine peanuts might be produced, but not enough for export are raised. So far the Cuban onion, though it flourishes with very little cultivation, is not in competition with the Bermuda onion, so popular in American markets. Lettuce is perennial and of the best quality. The cucumber is another vegetable growing profusely but never exported. Yuca is a root much used in place of potatoes. It is rendered palatable by pressure or by cooking. The sweet variety is used raw as a table vegetable. Bitter cassabe flour, made from yuca, when parched in pellets, is known as tapioca, and is a popular edible in various forms of soups, puddings, etc., in northern countries. Celery, which is found in the local gardens, is inferior by reason of neglect. Millet is raised for local fowl food. Cotton, although it is mentioned as an agricultural product of Cuba, is only a possibility, for its cultivation has been so slightly attempted as scarcely to warrant an opinion of what may be done in its cultivation. Sea-island cotton, which is of famous excellence in the United States, may be raised along the Cuban coasts; and there is no known reason why the general cultivation of cotton would not be fairly profitable. Whether or not it may be developed under the new order remains to be seen. The indigo plant grows easily, but it has never been cultivated profitably. The future may bring to its producers more knowledge and better methods than the past has known. Grasses grow rankly almost anywhere in the Island. In the province of Pinar del Rio one variety grows to the height of six feet; another is a bunch grass similar to our species. Of these two grasses stock is very fond, but a third variety has such sharp edges that stock cannot eat it. Little of this grass is used as hay, and the hay crop has not been of especial significance in Cuban agricultural products, but it might well be, if it were given proper cultivation and care. The fibre plants of Cuba are numerous, and many of them are of the best quality; moreover, they grow upon soil not very useful for any other purpose. The best known of them are the henequin, lanseveria, and lengua de vaca. The first produces from twenty-five to thirty leaves a year for twelve years, each leaf from five to nine feet long, weighing from four to seven pounds. So far as Spanish statistics may be correct, there were in Cuba in 1891 a total of 2,485,768 cattle of all kinds; but at the close of the war in August, 1898, it was estimated by American stockmen, who were apprised of the condition of affairs throughout the Island, that not over 75,000 head were left. For a number of years past, owing to excessive import duties and other exactions, shipments of cattle to Cuba have been kept far below the demand, not only for working, but for slaughtering purposes; and as the Cubans raised few cattle, though every natural condition of climate, forage, and water was favourable to grazing, there was never a surplus to meet any emergency. Therefore the result was that, when the war came the ports were blockaded and no new supplies could be brought in, the people, as well as the soldiers, had to be fed, and the cattle were slaughtered indiscriminately. It should be stated here that just prior to the war, cattle were admitted free, and the imports, chiefly from South American countries, reached from 70,000 to 80,000 head per month. These were nearly all beef cattle. From August, 1897, to May, 1898, 83,868 head of cattle were received at Havana, of which 37,129 came from the United States. These cattle came chiefly from Texas, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, for southern cattle are much better suited to the Cuban climate and conditions than northern or western cattle. The fact that cattle are bought by weight in the United States and sold by the head in Cuba has been against the American stockmen. [Illustration: AN OX CART.] From a report of a dealer in Havana, under date of October 5, 1898, these extracts are made: "The average of cattle weighs about seven hundred pounds, for which I get between $32 and $48. On these I have to pay all the freight and customs charges, etc., so that by the time that the meat gets into the butcher's shop, it is up to about 42 cents silver (say 38 cents gold) per pound, although it is the same that costs in the United States from 3 to 3-1/2 cents. Cottonseed-fed steers give between sixty-five and seventy per cent. of meat, nett; grass-fed cattle from the United States only nett fifty per cent. Tampico cattle give only about fifty per cent. There is no advantage in selling good cattle in Cuba, as they buy these by the head. On my St. Louis cattle I lost money, they weighing about fifteen hundred pounds and costing in the United States about $65, and I sold them for about $52. A good team (yoke) of oxen for working purposes is worth between seven and eight onzas (an onza equalling $17), and I give a statement of what it costs to get such a team into Cuba": Cost in Texas for one team of oxen $90.00 Freight to Havana 14.00 Exchange 11.40 Duty 20.00 Risk, about five per cent. 5.00 -------- $140.40 "Milk cows in Cuba are worth from $60 to $80 each and cost as follows: Cow costs in United States, with calf $40.00 Freight for the two 8.50 Exchange 2.50 Duty: cow, $8, calf, $4 12.00 Risk 2.50 ------ $65.50 "The food of cattle for the trip from the United States to Cuba costs about fifteen cents a head. We pay an extra twenty-five cents a head for the attention." Though Cuban estimates of the Island's cattle capacity are fanciful and unreliable (one estimate sets the "untilled land for cattle raising" at 28,300,000 acres, every acre of which when tilled will support at least one head), it is an undeniable fact that within a few years, by ordinary care in the selection and handling of stock, Cuba will be in a position to export cattle. The fact is worthy of American stockmen's attention that at least a million cattle of all kinds, for breeding, beef, and work, are needed in Cuba, that the best cattle so far received in Cuba have come from the United States, and that by contiguity and sentiment the United States is first choice against all South and Central American and Mexican competitors. It is as well worthy of the attention of the Government authorities that in restocking the Island with cattle, careful and scientific attention should be given to the class of cattle used for breeding purposes in order that the very best results be obtained. The estimate of a million head to meet the immediate demands may seem to be large, but when we come to consider that one sugar plantation of 3000 acres requires from 250 to 400 yoke of working cattle, not to mention cows and beef cattle,--and that there are thousands of sugar and tobacco plantations, besides other thousands of farms of various kinds,--and ox-carts for general transportation all over the Island, it will be seen that a million head will be scarcely enough. [Illustration: A FOWL VENDOR.] "Jerked beef" has been an important article of import into Cuba, and it may become still more so in the future, as Texas, with its millions of cattle, has a climate peculiarly adapted to the preparation of this form of beef product. On this subject a report made by Mr. Modesto Trelles of Cienfuegos, under date of September 19, 1898, may be of more than passing interest: "The Island of Cuba has about twenty-eight million acres of land. Under cultivation, producing sugar cane, there are 1,980,000 acres, about 1,000,000 in roads, towns, etc., and 1,500,000 acres of fallow land. The cattle here pay consumption duty of 5-1/2 cents per kilo. The jerked beef pays $3.96 import duty, per hundred kilos. The import duty on each head of cattle is $8. The consumption tax $5.50 a head. Buenos Ayres has been sending about 500,000 head of cattle to Cuba in the shape of jerked beef. The reason of this is a treaty between Spain and Buenos Ayres, obliging the latter to take in Spanish wines, in lieu of which provision Cuba was to import jerked beef. We have, therefore, been importing jerked beef to the extent of 500,000 head of cattle, owing to the advantages given Buenos Ayres. One of the secrets of this great importation has been that in the first place, when the Cuban merchant called for jerked beef, he went directly to Spain for it. Certain Spaniards sent a ship from Barcelona to Buenos Ayres, loaded with wine, etc., from which point the ship came here with a cargo of jerked beef. It lands the cargo here, and then goes north with a cargo of sugar; then takes a new cargo of cotton from New York to Europe, and goes back to the first point of shipment. This is one of the reasons why they had cheap rates on jerked beef. "The whole thing has been done to chastise the cattle breeding in Cuba, owing to this reciprocity treaty which Buenos Ayres had with Spain. One of the greatest errors Spain has made has been in killing the cattle breeding here by these great advantages given to foreign meat markets. I wish to open your eyes in regard to this, because if it remains as it is we will always be under the same disadvantage of importing jerked beef to the detriment of the cattle breeding. You must remember that jerked beef is a great detriment to salubrity, due to being salt, and obliges the people who eat it to drink large quantities of water which generally brings on anæmia. Of 1,500,000 inhabitants 1,000,000 have eaten jerked beef heretofore, and that is equivalent to the amount of 1600 head of cattle per day of three hundred pounds each, and naturally Cuba very well could produce this number of cattle with the utmost ease because the pastures are very good here. It will be an economy of $5,000,000 or $6,000,000 a year of what we pay here for the jerked beef to Buenos Ayres, and if the importation of this jerked beef is avoided an equal amount could be grown, and we would besides have the benefit of the hides, tallow, and the horns of the cattle, which constitute a big industry in itself. Naturally, with the breeding of cattle here, all this land which is now idle could be used, and in addition would give employment to many cowboys, etc. The people here are very fond of cattle raising. Under the basis of having all these farms in a condition to produce cattle, we could employ almost all our idle in this business." In 1891 it was estimated that there were 531,416 horses in Cuba and 43,309 mules, yet a report dated as late as October, 1898, is to the effect that there are practically no horses in the Island. The same authority states that there is a great demand for cheap horses, and that now, since the prohibitive duty of fifty dollars a head is gone with other Spanish customs, the American "plug horse" would bring a quick sale all over the Island. The Cuban horse, of Andalusian ancestry, is a fair average animal for a low, hot country, but great improvement could be made in the stock by careful selection and breeding. At present he is a substantial, small horse of the cob style, is very easy under the saddle, and does well in harness. Stallions and mares are needed, and the surplus horse-flesh of the United States, increased by the introduction of electricity as a street-car motor, might easily find profitable use in this new country. The Cuban horse will hardly achieve the proud position of the Arabian or Kentuckian, but he may be as useful in his humbler fashion. [Illustration: ROYAL PALMS, YUMURI VALLEY.] The mule in Cuba as elsewhere, "without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity," is a most patient and useful animal, and his virtues and his scarcity make him more valuable than the horse. A fine mule commands a fancy price, and a pair are worth from $600 to $800. What the mule raisers of the United States can do in Cuba is left for them to determine. Sheep of good quality are among the impossibles to Cuba, for the climate has the peculiar effect of straightening their wool into harsh hair, like that of the goat. Although Cuba has not only every facility for hog raising, including the palm, the seed of which is one of the finest hog-fatteners on earth, and although the people of the Island use more lard, bacon, hams, and pickled pork than any other meat product, nevertheless, instead of raising their own, they have received from the United States over $35,000,000 worth of pork in the ten years from 1887 to 1896. Some hogs are raised, but it is because of the energy of the hog, not of the Cuban. Wild hogs (_jabali_) prevail in many parts of the Island, and the boar hunts are sometimes exciting sport. The wild hog is merely the domestic hog run away and grown up in the woods. Poultry of all kinds similar to that found in the United States was common all over the Island before the war. No attention is paid to its cultivation, except in the matter of game-cocks. Cock-fighting is so wide-spread and popular that the game-cock may be well called the national bird of Cuba. Humboldt has said that the bee is not native to Cuba and came from Europe. However that may be, the busy little worker has found there a land of flowers, and his products of honey and wax are among the reliable exports of the Island. The value of honey shipped to the United States in 1893 was $39,712, and of beeswax, $45,504. The best honey comes from the uplands and the poorest from the swamp flowers. Agriculture in Cuba promises rich results in the future. CHAPTER XXIV TIMBER AND FRUIT TREES Of the approximately twenty-eight millions of acres in Cuba and its islands, it is estimated that from thirteen to fifteen millions of acres are covered with timber, the vastly larger portion of it yet untouched by the axe. Of this, mahogany and cedar lead in value as lumber, though, for the variety of its uses, the palm, of which there are thirty species in the Island, easily takes precedence. A notable peculiarity of tree growth in Cuba is the presence of the pine, a distinctively northern product, yet here it is found growing side by side with the mahogany; and on the Isle of Pines it is so plentiful as to have given the name to the island. The province of Pinar del Rio (River of Pines) also receives its name from the pines which are so numerous there. [Illustration: SAGO PALM.] Of the thirty varieties of palm, the first and foremost is the Palma Real, or Royal Palm, called also the "Blessed Tree" because of its manifold uses to man. This tree is common all over the Island, growing alike on hills and in valleys; but it is most frequent in the west, where the soil is generally richest and heaviest. It rises to a height of from sixty to eighty feet, like a tall shaft of rough, grey marble, and from its top springs a great tuft of green leaves. Its peculiar growth does not make it especially valuable as a shade tree, but an avenue of palms is unequalled in its impressive beauty. Of its uses in other respects an inventory can scarcely be made. Its roots are said to have medicinal virtues. The stem of its leaves, or _yagua_, often six feet in length, is like a thin board and can be used as a dinner plate by cutting it into shape; it may be folded like stiff paper when wet; and is bent into a _catana_, or basin, or a pot, in which food may be boiled, and there is sufficient salt in the wood to make the food palatable; it serves also as a basket for carrying farm products; it is said a dozen _catanas_ will produce a pound of salt. The seed of the royal palm furnishes an excellent "mast" for fattening hogs. Good weather-boarding is made from its trunk, and the lumber may also be made into plain furniture; its leaves form the roofs of houses; fine canes are made from the hard outside shell, which may be polished like metal; the bud of the tuft is a vegetable food much like cauliflower in taste, and is eaten raw and cooked; and hats, baskets, and even cloth may be made from its leaves and fibre. What further uses may be found for it, future Yankee ingenuity will develop. Of the other palms, the guano and yarey are valuable for their fibre, from which very fine hats and baskets are made for export; the guano de cana produces the vanilla-bean parasite and makes the best roofing material; the cocoanut palm is another variety, probably better known abroad by its product than any other; the guano de costa is noted for its elastic and waterproof wood. Mahogany is the most valuable wood for export, although Cuban cedar is probably better known, because so much more of it is shipped to the United States; for example, in 1894, a good year, 12,051 mahogany logs were received here, and 106,545 cedar logs. Cuban mahogany is the most valuable known in the market. The common variety is worth from $110 to $150 per 1000 feet, and the bird's-eye, or figured mahogany, commands almost any price. Ordinary prices for it run from $400 to $600 per 1000 feet, with more than double that for fancy varieties. Mahogany cutting in Cuba is done in the most primitive fashion and under numerous difficulties, and thus far it has been carried on in only the easily accessible places, leaving millions of feet yet standing in the dense forests of the interior. To begin with, the mahogany tree does not grow in groups, but takes its stand alone, a very monarch of the forest. Here it is found by the hunter, who sights its peculiar foliage from his lookout in some tall tree. Noting all the landmarks, he climbs down and cuts a path through the jungle to his prize, "blazing the way" for his companions. The trees are often large, sometimes thirty feet in circumference, and when they are very wide at the roots, the cutters build rude platforms of poles or saplings, called "barbecues," around them, and from these platforms the tree is cut from ten to fifteen feet up the trunk. Thus are wasted several hundred feet of the finest part of the wood about the gnarled and curly roots. It is fair to suppose that there are fortunes to-day in the mahogany "stumpage" of Cuba, and it is in the most accessible portion of the Island. A day's work for a man is to cut down two trees of from eight to ten feet in circumference; two men will cut three larger trees, and when a giant of a quarter of a hundred feet around is found, four men take the entire day, which is very short in the dense jungle, to lay it low. Great care is taken in felling the tree not to have it split or break and destroy its value. When the tree is down, all of it that is available for market is squared. It is hauled either to the nearest stream or to the coast or to a railroad station, as may be. Three hundred trees, averaging 2000 feet each, are a fair season's work for an ordinary camp. Notwithstanding the poor methods of getting out mahogany timber, the shipments to the United States alone since 1885 have been 235,000 logs, aggregating 35,700,000 feet, valued at upwards of $5,000,000. The following statement of the shipments since 1894 will show the disastrous effects of the war. 1894 12,051 logs 1895 20,388 " 1896 3,607 " 1897 757 " 1898 (to December) 738 " [Illustration: MAHOGANY CARRIED BY OXEN.] Although the mahogany tree in the wilds, when it reaches its best condition, reaches enormous growth, much of that coming to market is comparatively small. Some logs are not over two feet in circumference, but fine logs are five times that. It may be explained that the mahogany which gives prestige to the Cuban product and which commands the highest price, comes from the Santiago district. In other parts of the Island the timber is smaller, but it is noted for its hardness. The United States is most familiar with Cuban cedar in the form of cigar boxes. The shipments of cedar since 1885 have exceeded 700,000 logs containing over 70,000,000 feet, valued at $4,900,000, allowing $70 per 1000 as the average price in the market. Proportionately, cedar has suffered equally with mahogany by the war, as will be seen by the following table of shipments: 1894 106,545 logs 1895 61,888 " 1896 28,130 " 1897 4,055 " 1898 (to November) 5,204 " Of the supposed forty varieties of hard woods in the Cuban forests, lignum-vitæ is one of the hardest, and it grows fairly plentifully. Not a great deal of it has been shipped, and it is worth from thirteen to thirty dollars per ton according to quality. Cuban ebony is a fine wood growing generally about the Island, and is noted for its blackness. The majagua is a flourishing tree, forty feet in height at its best, and its bark produces a fibre which is made into rope equal to much of the hemp rope now in use. Its wood is also hard and durable. The baria is a fragrant flowering tree of hard wood, and the granadillo, though only a small tree of ten to twelve feet in height, produces a wood of great hardness and fine colour, from which handsome canes are made. The acana, roble blanco (white), roble amarillo (yellow), jique, and caiguaran are hard and durable woods, the last being especially useful for fence posts and other underground work, as it lasts like iron. The cuia is durable in water, and is useful for dock timber and such purposes. The caimitillo, yaya, moboa, and cuen are all useful woods in the making of house frames, furniture, barrel hoops, handles, and carriage shafts. The jaguey is a peculiar tree, beginning as a parasite on some other, from which it sends shoots to the ground, where, taking root, they grow up and choke out the parent tree, taking its place as a tree composed of innumerable stems or vines. It bears a fruit of which bats are fond, and they are thick in these trees in May. Its wood is used for walking-sticks and other small articles. The ceiba, cottonwood or silk-cotton tree, is a tree of beauty and size, and of very general growth. It bears a pod filled with beautiful white silk-cotton, used for stuffing pillows, but too short of fibre for spinning. One of the notable trees of the world that travellers tell us of is the great ceiba tree in the Plaza at Nassau, Jamaica. The rubber tree has been introduced, in addition to some native gum-producing trees, undeveloped; and though enough was done towards its cultivation to prove that it could be grown successfully, the usual fate of new industries in competition with the Spanish style of taxation proved too much for it, and the business was ruined. The sand box receives its name from the peculiar rattling of its pods as of dropping sand. The trumpet tree is so called because of its hollow trunk which produces a trumpet-like sound. The banyan tree is noticeable along the coasts, where it generally prevails. One specimen, near Marianao just outside of Havana, has hung its branches down and taken root until it covers four or five acres, and is a great curiosity to the traveller. Rosewood is plentiful in some parts of the Island, also logwood and other dyewoods, but little or nothing has been done to develop business in this direction, and they are holding their riches for the new discoverers from the north who shall explore the Island in good time. Concerning the practical side of the timber and lumber industry in Cuba, Mr. Charles M. Pepper, journalist, writes as follows: "I have heard a hint that some of the Pennsylvanians who know something of lumber have got ahead of the Michigan and Wisconsin lumbermen who were expecting to exploit the forests of the interior. It is of no consequence who does it so long as the industry is developed. A civil engineer came to me the other day to ask some points about reaching a certain part of the Island. He also wanted to know a good land-title lawyer. His plan was to take the lawyer along and close up purchases of timber lands at once. The men he represented must have had money or they would not have indulged in the luxury of a lawyer to accompany them to the wilds of the interior. But their idea was the right one. Their money is in Havana banks. When they find timber lands which suit their purpose they will buy the tracts instead of seeking options and going back to the United States to sell these rights. Options on land are hardly known in Cuba. Nobody is likely to make money by that means. "As to how far the woods can be cleared by native labor I asked the opinion of Major Van Leer, the government engineer who is superintending the construction of Colonel Hecker's little military railroad across the bay at Guanabacoa. He has had experience in South America, in Santo Domingo and in other parts of the West Indies. 'Native labor,' he said, 'will do for most everything except to boss the job and run the sawmills. They don't know much about sawmills in these tropical countries, but they quickly learn how to get out the timber. A few lumbermen from Michigan or Pennsylvania would be able to handle the work without trouble.' "The Cubans have already learned how to get out the mahogany, though only the edges of the forests have been touched. They have also learned something of sawmills, for in Pinar del Rio I have seen the tracts which they cleared of pine and cedar. "These remarks on lumber are a digression. They may be taken at sawdust value by real lumbermen who have been brought up in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. They are made because some folks with money have come to Cuba to buy timber lands. As long as it was only promoters forming companies for the exploitation of an unknown timber country it was not worth mentioning. Other phases of investment are becoming live topics for the same reason." Next in value to the lumber trees in Cuba are fruit-bearing trees of an almost innumerable variety, some of which are universally known in the United States. With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the highest development of all kinds of tropical fruits little has as yet been done, and what has been accomplished has not been by the natives. It is said of too many of them that when they are too lazy to pick the fruit nature so lavishly bestows upon them, they simply lie down under the trees and wait for it to fall. Though all kinds of southern fruits grow luxuriantly, the most valuable commercially thus far developed are bananas, cocoanuts, lemons, oranges, limes, and pineapples, and the north-eastern uplands seem to be, by climate and soil, especially adapted to the highest development. While some degree of progress has been made in the raising of bananas and cocoanuts, very little has been done with the other fruits, and the possibilities are wonderful. The banana, of which millions of bunches are shipped annually, easily leads its competitors, in point of value. It is scarcely necessary to comment upon a fruit so well known to every American. As usual with fruits shipped out of the latitude of their growth, the banana of commerce is not the banana of its native garden, although it suffers much less by the transition than other fruits, as it ripens almost as well off the tree as on. It is much more wholesome for the foreigner in his own home than in Cuba. The banana has three stages of usefulness: in the first, roasted or boiled, it is nourishing and a good substitute for bread; at three-fourths of its growth it is sweeter, but not so nourishing; and at last it takes on an acid, bitter taste, healthful and palatable. Bananas of various kinds grow wild in many parts of the Island, and the poorer people practically live upon them free of cost. The fig banana, which is much more delicate than the common kind, is used as a dessert everywhere, and is very fine, but it cannot be shipped. During the past eight years, shipments of bananas from the four ports handling the business were as follows: Baracoa 7,570,547 bunches Gibara 7,369,193 " Banes 4,751,000 " Cabonico 3,118,007 " [Illustration: CUBAN FRUITS.] The war wiped out the banana business at Baracoa. The shipments fell from 1,552,700 bunches in 1894, to 2000 in 1896; but at the other ports the effect was not so serious. Gibara sent away 1,305,000 bunches in 1896 to 1,671,000 in 1894; Banes, 755,000 in 1896, to 1,028,000 in 1894; and Cabonico, 550,000 in 1896, to 643,000 in 1894. The plantain, another variety, may be called the vegetable banana, and is of very general local use as a food. Cocoanuts are raised in the same north-eastern section, and Baracoa handles, or did handle, the business; 27,430,413 were shipped from 1890 to 1896. Here, again, the war laid its heavy hand, and shipments fell from 6,268,000 nuts in 1893 to 35,000 in 1896. Of cocoanut oil, 4672 barrels were shipped in 1890-1896, with the highest number of barrels, 1500, in 1896, as against 50 barrels in 1893. Shipments of cocoa in 1894-1896 were 2,930,445 pounds. The cocoanut palm rises to a height of fifty feet or more. The nuts grow in bunches in the tuft at the top of the trunk; bunches which often weigh as much as three hundred pounds. The nut furnishes meat and drink to the hungry native. The milk of the green cocoanut, a most palatable drink, is said to have valuable medicinal qualities in kidney troubles. A few other Cuban fruits are oranges, lemons, limes, mangoes, rose apples, pineapples, pomegranates, _sapotes_, tamarinds, citrons, figs, custard apples, guavas, and _aguacates_. Cuban oranges are considered by many experts to be the best and sweetest in the world and they are the favourite fruit of the better classes of Cubans. One orange and a cup of coffee in the morning to a Cuban is what a chew of tobacco and a drink of whiskey is said to be to a Kentuckian. Although little attention has been paid to the cultivation of oranges, except for local use, they still constitute the second most valuable fruit import from the Island. The United States received $530,680 worth from 1887 to 1896. The imports reached their greatest value ($97,078) in 1887; in 1896 the imports amounted to $58,612. Cuban oranges are of the seedless variety and are extremely cheap all over the Island. The possibilities of their cultivation are limitless, and it is safe to say that within a few years the production for export will be enormous. The lemon tree, with its white flower and its varicoloured fruit, is one of the prettiest trees to be found in Cuba. Its leaves are almost as fragrant as are those of our lemon verbena. The yield is continuous. Generally the fruit is of large size, though the finest lemons are rather small, juicy, thin-skinned, and of full flavour. The larger variety is thick-skinned. Little or no attention is paid to proper cultivation and no lemons are exported. The same is true of the lime, the fruit of which is very largely used, for its therapeutic qualities, in beverages of various kinds. The rose apple, or rose fruit, grows on a tree of remarkable symmetry, with glossy leaves, and is as large as a good-sized peach, smooth-skinned and cream-coloured; with an odour and taste of attar of roses, so strong in fact as not always to be agreeable after the first one is eaten. Cubans use it as flavour for soups and puddings. The mammee, or mamey, is an odd fruit, growing on high trees. It is as large as a muskmelon, with a firm texture and somewhat the taste of a peach. It is of no commercial value. The natives eat it, but it is not agreeable to foreign palates. The mango, of Oriental origin, flourishes everywhere in Cuba, growing on a tree similar to our apple tree. It is the size of a pullet's egg, yellow in colour, grows in long bunches, is very juicy when fully ripe, and is agreeable to most tastes. The natives are especially fond of it. Whether it can be grown for shipment remains to be seen. Dates and figs find a genial climate and a good soil, but so far they have been left to look out for themselves. The _sapotilla_ is a fine tree with a bell-shaped white flower, as fragrant as apple blossoms; and the fruit is the size of a peach, in a rough russet skin. When ripe it is delicious and melts in the mouth. The custard apple grows wild and is also cultivated. It is green in colour, tough-skinned, acid in flavour, and full of small black seeds. It weighs as much as a pound and a half, and is used for flavouring purposes. The star apple is so called because, when cut in half, a star appears in the centre. The meat is green in colour when the fruit is ripe. It is eaten out of the skin with a spoon, and has the flavour of strawberries and cream. The guava grows on a tree about like an American cherry tree, and though not eaten in its natural state, it is of universal use in making the well-known guava preserves and jelly. The guava has a peculiar odour which will scent a room for hours after the fruit is cut. The pomegranate is a bush fruit of handsome appearance not unknown in American hothouses and in southern localities, and though not at its best in Cuba, it is a great favourite, taking the place there that apples take in this country. The well-known citron, with many other Cuban fruits, is waiting for the care and attention that will make it a valuable commercial product. The tamarind grows in a pod-shape on a lofty shade tree, and when ripe is of the consistency of marmalade, and quite as toothsome. It is a sweet acid, and is used in making a favourite drink in tropic countries. The tamarind can be exported. The wild or bitter orange is used for hedges, and the thick skin of the fruit makes a sweetmeat of some commercial value. The _aguacate_, better known to us as the alligator pear, is a vegetable fruit and is used as a salad. The _guanabana_ is a green-skinned fruit with white meat, and is used chiefly for making a pleasant drink, although it can be eaten. Somewhat similar to it is the _anon_, a pulpy and rich fruit in great favour. Neither of these can be shipped out of the country. The bread-fruit is not a native Cuban, having been brought in about a hundred years ago. Little has been done in its cultivation. The cinnamon tree, introduced by Las Casas, will grow well, but nothing has been done towards its cultivation. Humboldt mentions the fact that in the early times the Spaniards made wine of Cuban wild grapes, but grape culture is not of any value, though some fine varieties are grown. The water-and muskmelon and cantaloup grow easily, but they need more care than they have to be equal in flavour and popularity to those raised elsewhere. The strawberry grows everywhere and produces two crops yearly, but the natives are too lazy to give it any attention. Strawberry culture in Cuba could be successfully carried on to supply the early markets of the United States. The zapote is a fruit of brown colour similar to our apple, and is not edible until it has rotted. Last but not least is that delightful fruit, the pineapple. There are several varieties growing wild in Cuba and cultivation greatly improves them. The fruit grows out of a bunch of great leaves, eighteen inches or two feet from the ground. Each plant bears one apple weighing from one to four or five pounds. The fruit stem matures in about eighteen months from planting, bears one apple, and will bear an apple annually after that for three or four years. The plant is raised from slips. Pineapples are chiefly grown in the Isle of Pines and Western Cuba. This latter section, however, takes the lead in all fruit-growing. Thirty-two thousand pineapples were shipped from Banes in 1894. As yet the Cuban pineapple is a weak competitor of the Bahama fruit. [Illustration: COFFEE MILL, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.] As may be readily seen, fruit-raising in Cuba is yet in its infancy, and inasmuch as there is no serious competitor in the American market, save Florida and Porto Rico, there is no reason why the future development should not be of the vastest proportions. Since the great frost in Florida, which killed out the orange trees and slaughtered fruit and vegetables generally, that garden spot has become more or less unreliable; and as Cuba has never known a killing frost, is not much farther from the markets than Florida, and has water communication from all points, it must be accepted that Cuba will control the future fruit supply of this country, and American capital will not be slow to avail itself of the opportunities offered. Authorities differ as to the introduction of coffee, which is not indigenous to Cuban soil. One sets the date as 1742, and asserts that the plant was imported from Haiti; another says it came in 1709 from Martinique; but, whenever it came, coffee culture grew at once into a flourishing industry, and in time Cuban coffee ranked with the best in the world. Sugar-growing first lessened its field for profit by showing larger returns with much less labour and care, always an object of first consideration with Cubans; and in 1843 and 1846 disastrous hurricanes destroyed many plantations. Later, Brazil and other coffee-producing countries came into the market with a product grown under more favourable circumstances of governmental liberality and new and improved methods and machinery, and Cuban coffee practically disappeared from foreign markets. Still there are several hundred coffee plantations, supplying the local demand, and the business is profitable. The eastern end of the Island is the coffee-producing section, and 14,048,490 pounds were raised in the province of Santiago de Cuba in 1890-1896. Shipments to Spain in 1891-1895 aggregated $322,266. There is no prettier sight than a coffee plantation. The trees are set out in rows with wide alleys between, where waggons may pass to receive the crop, and with other trees, of various kinds, to furnish the shade needed for the proper development of the berry. The berry or seed grows peculiarly. Instead of hanging from the boughs of the tree, it gathers in clusters along the trunk. The seed in its pod resembles some strange kind of parasite. The harvest extends from July to December; the plant is in the full glory of its blossom in February. Coffee-raising is a very pleasant occupation, for the plantations are in the uplands where the climate is good, and the work is much easier than that required either in sugar-or tobacco-raising. Naturally the condition of labour is considerably above the average, and a much better class of workmen is employed. All things considered, it is fair to conclude that coffee culture will receive more attention than sugar, tobacco, or fruit from the small farmers who migrate to Cuba from the United States; and in future the industry will be restored to the high place it once occupied, now that the burden of Spanish taxation is removed, and every encouragement will be given to all who undertake its cultivation. CHAPTER XXV TRANSPORTATION Though it has as poor a system of railway and waggon-road transportation as could be imagined, Cuba is by nature fitted for the very best system possible. With a length of over seven hundred miles a main stem of railway from end to end of the Island would have control of every shipping point on both coasts, by the extension of short branches to such of the harbours on either side (at the farthest not more than fifty miles away) as seem capable of development. With such a system of railways, the tributary waggon roads could be built at comparatively small cost, because at no point would long stretches of highway be necessary. But no such transportation facilities have been developed in Cuba; and, although there are about one thousand miles of railway and some few waggon roads, they are totally inadequate, even if they were of the highest type. As a rule, they are wretchedly poor, and the Island has suffered more, industrially, from bad roads than from any other cause except Spanish domination. Under the new régime, the necessity of a railway from one end of the Island to the other is so urgent, and its value as an investment is so apparent, that capital stands waiting to complete it at the very earliest opportunity. The waggon-road system of the Island, if there be any system, comprises a number of government roads, or "royal highways," which are royal chiefly in name. The best known is the _Camino Central_, or Central Road, extending from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, a distance of about six hundred miles. Most of it is little better than a very bad specimen of "dirt road," and none of it is _calzada_, or paved road (turnpike), except in the immediate vicinity of the better class of towns through which it passes. It has branches to the north and south, usually worse than the parent road. It is the national turnpike of Cuba, navigable only by mules in the wet season. It is said these sagacious creatures know the road so well that in particularly bad places they get out and walk along the stone walls by the roadside. Of the paved roads, or _calzadas_, other than mere local roads, leading out of the towns a short distance into the country, one from Coloma to Pinar del Rio is fifteen miles in length; one, the Western _Calzada_, from Havana to San Cristobal, sixty miles; Havana to Bejucal, the Southern _Calzada_, fifteen miles; Batabano to the beach, two miles and a half; Havana to Güines, the South-eastern _Calzada_, thirty miles; Havana to Santa Maria del Rosario, fifteen miles; Luyano to Guanabacoa, twelve miles; Nuñez to La Canoa, twenty-six miles; San Cristobal to Pinar del Rio, the South-western _Calzada_, thirty miles; Pinar del Rio to Colon, fifteen miles. This list includes all the roads in the Island, except those local outlets before mentioned, of which, though some are really good roads, the most are in bad repair. Of the country roads, known as "dirt roads" in our country, Cuba has specimens which, but for the patient mule, would not for weeks during the rainy season feel the weight of a passenger; and even the mule is barred at times. There is a legend to the effect that once upon a time a mule kicked over a Spanish saint, and, as a penance, he was sent to serve as a beast of travel on Cuban roads. Inasmuch as the mule was the only possible carrier for these roads, and as the worse the mud the greater would be his penance, it came to be deemed sacrilege by the pious Spaniards to improve the dirt roads of Cuba. Hence their condition. These roads are really not roads; they are nothing better than unpaved strips of the public domain in its natural state; in the wet season they are impassable by reason of the mud, and in the dry season are impossible by reason of the dust. Travellers who have tried these roads say they are worse than the yellow fever, because they are more lingering. [Illustration: A CONVOY IN THE HILLS.] Of wheeled vehicles on Cuban roads, the heavy, wooden-wheeled, primitive style, slow-going ox-and mule-carts take precedence as freighters, and for passenger transportation the _volante_ (flyer) takes rank of all others. Indeed, no other vehicle would be possible on many of the roads, not only because modern carriage building has not devised a vehicle strong enough to stand the strain, and light enough to be hauled, but because endurance in any of them for any distance would be impossible. The _volante_, drawn by one, two, or three horses, according to the exigencies of the highways, is the only possible form of vehicular travel. This vehicle consists of a two-seated bed, swung low on leather straps from the axle of two very large wheels, very wide apart, with shafts fifteen feet long. This peculiar gearing relieves the jolting, removes the danger of upsetting, and makes _volante_ riding really endurable on rough roads, and a languorous luxury where the roads are good and meander among the waving palms and tropical vegetation of the gently rolling valleys. The only street railways are to be found in Puerto Principe, where a short mule motor line exists, and in Havana, which has about twenty-seven miles of track, say about one hundred miles less than a city of over 200,000 population should have. Its power is principally horse, one route steam, and although it is badly managed, poor in service, and always in bad condition, its annual receipts are about $500,000. Under the new régime the opportunities for investment of American capital in street-railway building will be especially excellent, not only in the city of Havana, but in most of the towns of the Island. In the same field, on a more extended scale, will be the development of trolley lines through the interior, to take the place of the miserable roads which serve to retard the progress of the Island. There are, in round numbers, one thousand miles of steam railroad in Cuba, almost all of which is standard gauge, and the most of which is owned and controlled by English and Spanish companies. There is no great central system; the lines are independent, short roads. The leading combination is the United Railways Company, with five lines out of Havana: (1) to Matanzas, fifty-five miles; (2) to Batabano, thirty-six miles; (3) to Guanajay, thirty-five miles; (4) to La Union, seventy-seven miles; (5) to Jovellanos, eighty-eight miles; a parallel line runs between Matanzas and Empalme, joining the line again at Güines. These lines are in the main well built and ballasted, having steel rails, stone culverts, and iron bridges, and they pass through rich sections of agricultural and grazing country. The second in importance is the Western Railway, running to Pinar del Rio, 106 miles, and traversing the famous Vuelta Abajo tobacco district. The line next in importance is the Cardenas and Jucaro Railway, extending from Cardenas to Santa Clara, 110 miles, with branches to Montalvo from Jovellanos, twenty-seven miles; to Aguada from Cardenas, fifty-nine miles, to Itabo, thirteen miles; from Artemisal to Macagua, seventeen miles. These lines traverse a rich agricultural country, chiefly devoted to sugar-growing. [Illustration: A CUBAN VOLANTE.] The Matanzas Railway, from Matanzas to Cumanayagua, seventy-three miles, is a well-built road, through a rich sugar district. The Navajas-Jaguey branch extends from the main line at Montalvo, twenty-five miles, to Murga in the interior. The Sagua la Grande Railway extends from Concha, the seaport of Sagua, to Cruces, forty-eight miles, where it connects with the Cienfuegos and Santa Clara Railway. This is a generally stone-ballasted road through a rich agricultural and fruit-growing section. The Cienfuegos and Santa Clara Railway extends from Cienfuegos to Santa Clara, forty-two miles. A portion of the country along the line is rough, but there are many fine sugar farms. The Caibarien Railway Company has a local line extending to Placetas, thirty-three miles. The Puerto Principe and Nuevitas Railway, forty-five miles in length, connects Puerto with Nuevitas, its seaport. This railroad has paid the extraordinary dividends of fifteen to twenty per cent. The Guantanamo Railway is a profitable road, four miles long, connecting Guantanamo with Caimanera, its seaport. The Marianao Railway is a suburban line, eight and a half miles long, connecting Havana with Marianao and La Plaza. It carries about 800,000 passengers annually at a thirty-cent fare. The Regla and Guanabacoa Railway is a local line, two and a half miles long, connecting the two towns, and is owned by the proprietor of one of the ferries between Regla and Havana. It has valuable terminal facilities in Regla. The Encrucijada Railway extends from Sitiecito, on the main stem of the Havana line, to Encrucijada, a distance of twenty miles, through a rich sugar and stock district. The San Cayetano and Viñales Railway is a two-and-a-half-foot gauge road, fifteen miles long, from the port of San Cayetano to Viñales. The Casilda and Fernandez Railway extends from the seaport of Trinidad to Fernandez, twenty-two miles. The Las Tunas Railway extends from Zaza to Valle, twenty-four miles, and was built to connect Sancti Spiritus with the seaboard, though it is not yet completed. The Zaza Railway, of three-foot gauge, is a private road, and parallels the Caibarien United Railways to Placetas, twenty-one and a half miles. The Jucaro-Morón Railway is a military road on the line of the Jucaro Trocha, connecting Jucaro on the south coast with Estero on the north, passing through heavy forests of fine timber for nearly its entire length. The Gibara-Holguin Railway connects Gibara with Auras, a small town in the interior, nine and a half miles. It runs through a very rich fruit district and is intended to extend to Holguin. Penetrating thirty-three miles into the rich mineral and agricultural districts to the north of Santiago de Cuba, is the Sabanilla and Maroto Railway, a well-built standard-gauge road. A short branch extends to El Caney, famous in war history, and at Morón, twelve miles from Santiago, a new line branches to the north-east, passing through several unimportant villages and terminating at Sabanilla, six or eight miles away. The old line goes to San Luis, thirty-three miles from Santiago, passing Enramadas, twenty-one miles out; and from this point, or San Luis, it is proposed to extend the line to Manzanillo, a thriving town of 9000 people, the seaport for Bayamo and Jiguani, and the centre of a large lumber and sugar trade, as well as headquarters for the celebrated Yara tobacco leaf, grown along the Yara River, which empties into the sea a mile from the town. The Ponupo Mining and Transportation Company, which is practically the Juragua Mining Company, an organisation which has done more towards the industrial development of Eastern Cuba than all other agencies combined, proposes to assume all the responsibility and expense of building, equipping, and running a first-class road from Santiago to Manzanillo, a distance of 110 miles. Leaving Enramadas, or San Luis, the road will pass through the towns and villages of Paso del Corralillo, Palma Soriano, Arroyo Blanco, Fray Juan, Baire Abajo, Las Piedras, Jiguani, Santa Rita, San Antonio, Bayamo, Jucaibana, Barrancas, Jara, Palmas Altas, and thence to Manzanillo. At each of these points a substantial station will be built; all bridges will be of iron, and the entire construction will be on the best lines of modern railway building. The route extends through an almost undeveloped country, rich in the possibilities of wealth-producing. Fine grazing lands abound; the soil in many places is of the finest for cane-growing; much of the territory is covered with mahogany, cedar, and other hard woods; near Baire are iron and manganese deposits; at Guisa are thermal springs, famed for their medicinal virtues; about Bayamo, a city of 15,000 people, there are coffee and cocoa lands and manganese and zinc deposits; eight miles from Manzanillo are the broad fields where the famous tobacco grows, known as the Yara leaf, and in the vicinity of the city eight or ten large sugar plantations are in operation. Several rivers are crossed on the route, from which a vast water power may be secured for application to any kind of manufacture, and as the country is virtually new, the opportunities for settlers are unusually good. The company proposes to complete the road within five years at a cost of $2,100,000, and the facts that it has for a long time been successfully conducting the original road and that it is willing to spend its money in building the new line, are ample evidence that the road will fill a long-felt want and be a productive investment. Its construction should be encouraged in every way consistent with the best interests of all concerned, and that it will soon be a substantial fact, as well as a long step towards the consummation of a great trunk line running the entire length of the Island, goes without saying. The author visited the country along the line of this road and speaks from his own personal observation. Generally speaking, these roads are fairly well built, but are in poor condition, owing to neglect growing out of the war. They are largely equipped with American locomotives and cars, usually of lighter construction than those in the United States. Indeed the passenger cars are built for summer travel, with wicker seats and plenty of ventilation. While some heavy steel rail is used, sixty to eighty pounds, there is much lighter rail put down, with the result that riding on some of the Cuban roads is nearly as painful to the passenger as is riding on the dirt roads. Fair time is made on the best roads, and the service is much better than might be expected. The stations of the railways in the cities are often creditable in architecture and conveniences, but those in the small towns and the country need to be improved. It is more than possible that an earlier and more noticeable progress in Cuban railway matters will be made than in any other important department of industry in the Island. In addition to the railways herein noted, there are numerous private railways on sugar estates, ranging from one to forty miles in length. These are chiefly used in conveying cane to the mill, but in some instances they extend beyond the limit of the farm and serve a useful purpose in local transportation. These roads are not elaborately constructed or equipped, but they are ordinarily satisfactory to the owners and patrons. There are also a number of short lines in the mining district, connecting the mines with the seaboard or other shipping point. What margin of profit there may be in the railroad business of Cuba is not definitely known, as figures are not always accessible, though ten per cent. dividends and even higher have not been unheard of in the past. A table from which calculations may be made is presented below, covering the railways of the western part of the Island: Cuba has over 6,500 miles of coast-line, counting all the undulations of the coast, much of which is practically inaccessible from the outside by reason of long stretches of low-lying coral reefs; but within these natural breakwaters what is virtually inland navigation may be and is carried on by small coastwise vessels of all kinds. There are, however, many miles of open coast, and land-locked harbours, not excelled elsewhere, are frequent. There are fifty-four harbours in all. The best on the north coast are Bahia Honda, Cabanas, Havana, Matanzas, Sagua, Nuevitas, Gibara, Nipe, and Baracoa; and on the south, Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, Manzanillo, Trinidad, and particularly Cienfuegos, which has one of the finest harbours in the world. With so favourable a coast-line, added to the long and narrow shape of the Island, which brings points in the interior so near to the coasts, transportation by water is naturally given precedence, and the shipping trade is one of the most flourishing in the Island. Twelve hundred vessels, steam and sail, clear from Havana alone every year, while the tonnage of Havana and eight other ports in 1894 was 3,538,539 tons, carried in 3181 vessels. And yet with such a showing the policy of the Island with reference to its neighbouring islands has been such that if one wishes to go from Cuba to a near-by island, say a distance of seventy-five to one hundred miles, he must first go to New York, and reship to the point of destination. An account of the lines that connect Cuba with other countries and the ports of Cuba with one another appears in the following chapter on navigation. ----------------+-------+----------------------------------------------------------------- | | TRAFFIC. |Length +---------+---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+------- NAME OF ROAD. |in | |Number of| Number |Number |Number | | |Kilo- |Number of| Locomo- |Passenger|Goods |Passen- |Sugar, |Tobacco, |metres |Stations.| tives | Coaches.|Waggons.|gers. |Tons. |Tons. ----------------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+------- The Western | | | | | | | | Railways | | | | | | | | of Havana, Ld. | 175| 26 | 19 | 20 | 237 | 300,000| 10,000| 10,000 | | | | | | | | United Railways | | | | | | | | of Havana and | | | | | | | | Regla Warehouse,| | | | | | | | Ld. | 396| 56 | 80 | 73 | 1,738 | 688,000| 150,000| 5,800 | | | | | | | | Compania del | | | | | | | | Ferro Carril | | | | | | | | de Matanzas. | 230| 26 | 47 | 21 | 984 | 292,000| 130,000| .... | | | | | | | | Empresa Unida | | | | | | | | de los C. de | | | | | | | | H. de Cardenas | | | | | | | | y Jucaro. | 339| 35 | 49 | 40 | 1,123 | 360,000| 120,000| .... | | | | | | | | Compania del | | | | | | | | Ferro Carril | | | | | | | | de Sagua la | | | | | | | | Grande. | 137| 15 | 22 | 25 | 482 | 230,000| 70,000| 2,100 | | | | | | | | Compania de | | | | | | | | F. C. de | | | | | | | | Cienfuegos | | | | | | | | a S. Clara | 101| 13 | 19 | 28 | 438 | 220,000| 63,000| 1,600 | | | | | | | | Compania Unida | | | | | | | | de los F. C. de | | | | | | | | Caibarien. | 89| 11 | 17 | 24 | 583 | 200,000| 60,000| 2,800 ----------------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+------- | 1,467| 182 | 253 | 231 | 5,585 |2,290,000 603,000 22,300 ----------------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------+---------+--------+------- FISCAL STATEMENT ----------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+ | | |Proportion| | | |Interest| | Products. | Expenses. | of |Number | Share |Loans and | on | NAME OF ROAD. | | | Expenses.|Shares.| Capital. |Debenture.| Loans | ----------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+ | | | | | | | | The Western | | | | | | | | Railways | | | | | | | | of Havana, Ld. | $500,000 | $300,000 | 60% | 60,000| £600,000| £390,000| 6% | | | | | | | | | United Railways | | | | | | | | of Havana and | | | | | | | | Regla Warehouse,| | | | | | | | Ld. |2,792,000[1]|1,557,000[18]| 53% |154,000| 1,540,000|1,950,000 | 5% | | | | | | | | | Compania del | | | | | | | | Ferro Carril | | | | | | | | de Matanzas. | 1,250,000 | 610,000 | 49% | 10,000| $5,000,000| 50,000 | 6% | | | | | | | | | Empresa Unida | | | | | | | | de los C. de | | | | | | | | H. de Cardenas | | | | | | | | y Jucaro. | 1,470,000 | 870,000 | 59% | 15,582| 7,791,070| .... | .... | | | | | | | | Compania del | | | | | | | | Ferro Carril | | | | | | | | de Sagua la | | | | | | | | Grande. | 700,000 | 350,000 | 50% | 6,000| 3,000,000| 6,400 | 7% | | | | | | | | | Compania de | | | | | | | | F. C. de | | | | | | | | Cienfuegos | | | | | | | | a S. Clara | 600,000 | 400,000 | 66% | 5,000| 2,500,000| $795,000|7 and 8%| | | | | | | | | Compania Unida | | | | | | | | de los F. C. de | | | | | | | | Caibarien. | 450,000 | 310,000 | 69% | 4,542| 2,271,124| 285,000| 7% | ----------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+ | | | | | £2,140,000|£2,396,400| | | $7,762,000 | $4,397,000 | 56% |255,124+-----------+----------+ | | | | | |$20,562,194|$1,080,000| | ----------------+------------+-------------+----------+-------+-----------+----------+--------+ [Illustration: CUBAN MULE CART.] Notwithstanding the dangers of navigation among the keys, there are only nineteen lighthouses on the entire coast, or one for every three hundred and fifty miles, a scarcity that is too dangerous to be allowed to continue. Many of the harbours are badly neglected, being permitted to fill up with sediment; and where there is one good wharf, well conditioned and adequate to the demands upon it, there are a hundred which are not so. In this respect improvement is greatly needed, and American capital should make it. Although Cuba possesses hundreds of running streams, generally known as rivers, the narrowness of the Island necessarily curtails their length, and the longest, the Cauto, is but one hundred and fifty miles from its source to the sea. Others are considerably shorter than the Cauto; many of them are scarcely more than estuaries putting in from the ocean. The Cauto is navigable for light-draught boats over about six miles of its course, and some of the others will permit short navigation by light craft. The usefulness of these streams as means of communication and traffic with the sugar, tobacco, and other farms of the interior, and with the timber districts, may be greatly enhanced by proper attention from modern engineers and a more extensive acquaintance with River and Harbour Appropriations legislation. The lakes of the Island, which are numerous, are usually small, and if they are used at all for transportation purposes, it is by hunters and pleasure seekers, in canoes and small boats; though where it is possible to utilise them in rafting timber it is done. [Illustration: A CURVE ON THE YAGUAJAY RAILROAD.] As to the extent of the telegraph lines of Cuba, figures vary from 2300 to 2500 miles, but the latest Spanish report is to the effect that there are 2300 miles, with 153 offices, doing a business of 360,000 public messages a year. The lines have been controlled by the Government, and telegraphing has not been popular in Cuba, owing to the strict and annoying censorship of the Spanish authorities. There are about one thousand miles of submarine cable connecting Cuban towns; the International Ocean Telegraph Company has a line from Havana to Florida, connecting with the Western Union Telegraph Company; the Cuba Submarine Telegraph Company has a line from Havana to Santiago and Cienfuegos; the West India and Panama Telegraph Company connects Havana with Santiago, Jamaica, Porto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, and the Isthmus of Panama; the French Submarine Cable Company connects Havana with Santiago, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Venezuela, and Brazil. Nearly all of these cables were cut by the Americans during the war. The telephone system of Cuba, like the telegraph, is in Government hands, with the exception of the lines in Havana, which are leased by a private company, the Red Telefonica de la Habana. Telephones have been in use for some time, and they exist in many of the towns, but their use through the interior has not become general, for the long-distance telephone is scarcely known as yet, and American capital may have the opportunity of introducing and developing the system without fear of Government interference to control the business. It may be said, in explanation, in concluding this chapter, that the statistics herein presented refer to the time before the Hispano-American war, which naturally affected steamships, railways, and telegraphs more than any other business of the Island, owing to their semipublic character. Very radical changes may be made in the conditions hitherto existing, but it is safe to say that those changes will result in a vast improvement and extension of all these public conveniences and essentials to progress. CHAPTER XXVI NAVIGATION Navigation, with Cuba, may be considered under three division: _a_--Navigation between Cuba and foreign countries other than the United States. _b_--Navigation between Cuba and the United States, including Porto Rico. _c_--Navigation between Cuban ports. The most delicate problem connected with merchant shipping in Cuba during the military administration of the affairs of the Island by the United States, has been the regulation of the coasting trade. Under Spanish administration, transportation by sea from one port in the Island to any other Cuban port was restricted to vessels under the Spanish flag and of Spanish register. Some modification of this regulation became necessary immediately upon American occupation, for, after Spanish evacuation of the Island, the obligatory display of the Spanish flag in Cuban ports would have been obviously intolerable to the residents. Three courses were open to the authorities of the United States: first, the coasting trade of the Island could have been thrown open to the vessels of all nations without reserve; second, the coasting trade of the Island could have been restricted to vessels of the United States; and third, a temporary expedient could have been employed which would reserve the adoption of a navigation policy for Cuban decision, when an independent government shall have been established and its flag and sovereignty recognised. The first course involved the most radical departure from both the policy which always has obtained in Cuban ports and the policy which has always obtained in the United States, which had undertaken to restore stable government on the Island. Had the coasting trade of the Island been thrown open temporarily to vessels of all nations, a reversal of that policy in the future could be effected only with difficulty and would certainly provoke complaint from commercial nations, eager to insist that a temporary privilege, be it enjoyed for never so short a time, becomes a vested right. An independent Cuban government will undoubtedly decree that the coasting trade of the Island shall be confined to vessels of the Cuban flag. Such a measure is the easiest and quickest method to begin the creation of a national merchant marine, which will be a necessity to the insular republic. It is equally certain that in the event of the ultimate annexation of Cuba to the United States, the coasting trade of the Island will be confined to vessels of American register, in pursuit of the traditional policy of this country. The first course open was accordingly rejected. The proposition to confine the coasting trade of the Island to vessels of American register was entirely out of consonance with the declared purposes of the United States in going to war with Spain. That proposition would, not unnaturally, have been construed as notice to the world and to the Cubans themselves that it was our purpose to exploit the Island for the benefit of our own trade, a purpose entirely opposite to the views which have inspired the Administration and the great mass of the American people throughout all the stages of discussion and action upon the Cuban situation. Military exigencies made it necessary to provide that American vessels should engage in carrying, from one port in Cuba to another, in order to move men, supplies, and mails. In the restoration of trade to its ordinary channels, the employment of some shipping to fill the place vacated by Spanish shipping withdrawn was a necessity; and the shipping of the nation which had liberated and assumed tutelage of the Cubans was properly drawn upon for this purpose. More than this the authorities of the United States have not asked of the Island in the way of navigation privileges; less than this could not have been taken consistently with the purpose to restore order and normal trade conditions, necessarily preliminary to the establishment of an independent government. The regulation actually adopted and in force since the 1st of January contains the germs of a Cuban merchant marine. It is provided that any resident of Cuba, who owns a vessel, no matter where built, or under what flag, upon renouncing his allegiance to the King of Spain or any other foreign prince, state, or sovereignty whatever, may obtain from the military authorities of the United States in Cuba a permit entitling the vessel to engage in the coasting trade of the Island. It is thus within the power of any resident of the Island, who purposes to become a citizen of the future republic, to own as many ships as he has the money and inclination to buy. For the time being these ship-owners occupy the anomalous position of being men not without a country, but without an established form of government to which they can take allegiance. How long this anomalous condition shall continue rests to a very great extent with the Cubans themselves. Their shipping, too, is virtually without a flag. Yet in the designation of a distinctive signal--the blue flag with a white union--the authorities of the United States have more closely consulted historic and heraldic proprieties than did the Cubans themselves. The colours chosen are those adopted in different forms by Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, the former Spanish colonies on the Atlantic which won and have maintained independence. The cynical student of history cannot point to a lone star, and croak that we have imposed it on Cuba as a sign that the history of Texas is to be repeated. [Illustration: THE HAVANA FLOATING DOCK.] The same just policy, the same desire to consult the probable wishes of a future independent government, the same willingness to forego selfish advantages, have characterised the formulation of navigation regulations for the foreign trade as for the coasting trade of Cuba. Under the war power, as construed by the courts, the President could, without doubt, have so framed regulations as to divert forcibly to the United States, and to vessels of the United States, a large share of the commerce of the Island which now seeks other channels. Direct taxation is not the only form in which commerce can be made to pay its contributions toward the expenses of war. Disregarding narrow advice to create opportunities for American profit out of the Cuban situation, the President and his advisers have so framed the navigation regulations for foreign trade that not only is there no discrimination among nations in trade with Cuba, but also the opportunities for trade between the Island and Spain are greater even than they were under Spain's own rule; and the navigation and port charges imposed on ships and their cargoes have been materially reduced. These are the general features of the navigation policy which has been in force in Cuba since the 1st of January. It is believed that the history of colonies and dependencies furnishes no other instance where the governing power has asked less for itself, has sought more carefully to furnish every opportunity for the development of an independent mercantile marine and the extension of an independent foreign trade. The people of Cuba have it easily within their power to have within a year a national shipping as great as that of Argentina after ninety years of independence. Many ships, foreign and coastwise, ply between the ports of Cuba and every port of the world, especially American ports, and a number of lines have been long established, the most prominent of these being the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, better known as the "Ward Line," from its founder, James E. Ward. This company, which is incorporated under the laws of the State of New York, was organised in July, 1881. Its authorised capital stock is $2,500,000, of which $2,200,000 has been issued and paid in. At the time of organisation, the following steamers were bought of James E. Ward & Co., and operated: _Newport_ 2735 tons _Niagara_ 2265 tons _Saratoga_ 2820 " _Santiago_ 2359 " The following steamers have been acquired since organisation: _Cienfuegos_ 2332 tons _Seguranca_ 4115 tons _City of Washington_ 2684 " _Seneca_ 2729 " _City of Alexandria_ 2915 " _Vigilancia_ 4115 " _Yumuri_ 3497 " _Matanzas_ 3094 " _Orizaba_ 3497 " _Havana_ 5667 " _Yucatan_ 3525 " _Mexico_ 5667 " with a number of auxiliaries, etc., in list hereafter. The following have been lost and sold: _City of Alexandria_ Lost _Cienfuegos_ " _Newport_ Sold to Pacific Mail Steamship Company _Yumuri_ Taken by United States Government _Niagara_ Sold to United States Government The _Newport_ was sold in March, 1886, to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. In June, 1888, the vessels owned by the Alexandria Line, which operated steamers to Cuba and Mexico, were purchased and added to the fleet. The vessels were the _City of Alexandria_, lost in 1893, and the _City of Washington_, which was thoroughly overhauled, renovated, and in which were installed new boilers and engines in 1889. In 1890 the _Yumuri_, _Orizaba_, and _Yucatan_, all three of about equal dimensions and tonnage, were built and placed in the service. In July, 1893, the _Seneca_ was purchased of the Old Dominion Steamship Company and added to the fleet. In January, 1894, the _Seguranca_ and the _Vigilancia_, sister ships, built in 1890 for the Brazil Line, were purchased and added to the fleet. In 1897 contracts were awarded to the Messrs. Cramp & Sons, of Philadelphia, for the construction of two vessels of over 5000 tons each. One of the vessels, the _Havana_, has just been completed, made 18.46 knots on her trial trip in January, 1899, and is now in commission. The other, the _Mexico_, will be soon launched, completed, and placed on the regular route. Both of these vessels are built under the provisions of the Subsidy Act of March 3, 1891; both are of the second class, available as auxiliary cruisers, etc., and exceed in speed and tonnage the requirements of such class. In August, 1898, the Spanish steamer _Guido_, captured during the war with Spain, was purchased of the Government, renamed the _Matanzas_, and, under American register, placed in the service as an auxiliary steamer. In April, 1898, the steamer _Niagara_ was purchased by the Government for use as an auxiliary to the navy, and soon after the steamer _Yumuri_ was taken by the Government under the provisions of the Subsidy Act, to be converted into an auxiliary cruiser. The company has contracted with the British, Mexican, and United States Governments for service to and from and between ports in the Bahamas, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. The contracts with the United States were entered into with the Post-Office Department in 1892. These contracts call for regular service of ships, which under test come under the provisions of the Act of March 3, 1891, as third-class ships, to ports in Cuba and Mexico. Under the provisions of the Act above cited, American crews are employed and certain conditional requirements fulfilled. This especial service has been maintained uninterruptedly except during the Spanish war. In addition to its regular express service, the company operates a fleet of modern freight and combined freight and passenger steamers, which touch at the principal ports of the various routes, according to the demand of traffic. The line maintains a service on each of the following routes: New York to Havana, thence to Tampico, and return, via Havana, to New York. New York to Tuxpan, via Havana, Progreso, and Vera Cruz, returning via Frontera, Campeche, Progreso, and Havana to New York. New York to Nassau, thence to Guantanamo, Santiago, Manzanillo and Cienfuegos, returning via Santiago and Nassau. The sailing on these routes is on fixed schedule, as follows: To Havana and Tampico Saturdays To Havana and Mexico Wednesdays To Nassau and South Coast of Cuba alternate Thursdays Additional sailings are frequently made to the above ports by express ships, and it is contemplated to make such additional sailings fixed ones, subject to schedule, so that--so far as Cuba hereafter is concerned--in the near future, the south coast will have at least a weekly service, and Havana a tri-weekly service of fast express steamships. The principal ports of call in Cuba have been enumerated. Other calls are made from time to time when traffic demands it. The company operates, in addition to its Atlantic fleet, a number of steamers of suitable tonnage and speed to act as feeders to and from smaller ports in the Gulf of Mexico. These vessels act in combination with the larger ones of the fleet with which they connect, and in addition maintain a coastwise service. Lighterage plants at Havana, Santiago, Vera Cruz, Tampico, Progreso, and tugs at the principal ports, complete the list of floats, the property of the company. Their auxiliary vessels are the following: _Hidalgo_ 1128 tons _Atlantica_ (transfer) _Cometa_ 1151 " _Delenfeu_ (tug) _Manteo_ 584 " _Moran_ (tug) _Bailey_ 238 " _Francke_ (tug) The rates may vary, but slightly. The present rates, or rates now in force, are named in following tariff. [Illustration: A CUBAN FERRY.] EFFECTIVE FROM OCTOBER 17, 1898 First Class. First Class, Second Class. Excursion. To Havana $40 $ 70 20 " Progreso 55 95 35 " Vera Cruz 60 105 35 " Tuxpan 65 115 45 " Tampico 60 105 35 " Campeche 75 130 45 " Frontera 75 130 45 " Laguna 75 130 45 " Mexico City 65 115 45 " Guantanamo 60 100 30 " Santiago de Cuba 60 100 30 " Manzanillo 60 100 30 " Cienfuegos 60 100 30 " Nassau 40 70 20 These rates are for rooms on main deck. An extra charge of five dollars per berth will be made for all hurricane-deck rooms taken in any direction. "Stop-over" privilege, five dollars for each port. Children 3 to 12 years of age, half rates Children under 3 years of age, free Servants accompanying employers pay half rates. Another leading line is the Companía Transatlántica Español (Spanish Transatlantic Company), whose list of ships, taken from the British Lloyd's Register, 1898-99, including those vessels sailing to and from Spanish ports as well, is as follows: Net Net Tonnage. Tonnage. _Alfonso XII_ 3418 _Columbia_ 2299 _Alfonso XIII_ 3585 _Covadonga_ 3523 _Alicante_ 2865 _Don Alvaro de Basan_ 2898 _Antonio Lopez_ 2238 _Fernando Po_ 151 _Buenos Aires_ 3765 _Habana_ 1573 _Cataluña_ 2247 _Isla de Luzon_ 2580 _Ciudad Condal_ 1616 _Isla de Mindanao_ 3036 _Ciudad de Cadiz_ 1845 _Isla de Panay_ 2460 _Colon_ 3935 _Joaquin Piélago_ 390 _Larache_ 1009 _P. de Satrustegui_ 5090 _Léon XIII_ 3950 _Rabat_ 514 _Manuel L. Villaverde_ 951 _Reina Maria Cristina_ 3634 _Mexico_ 1366 _Reina Mercedes_ 2074 _Mogador_ 323 _San Agustin_ 1554 _Montserrat_ 2306 _San Francisco_ 1672 _Monte Video_ 3673 _San Ignacio de Loyola_ 2299 _Normannia_ 3054 This line runs its steamers from New York to Havana direct on the 10th, 20th, and 30th of each month. The Compania Transatlantica, which has always manifested a progressive spirit, will, as soon as the differences in the Spanish-American war are definitely settled, immediately begin the extension of its lines in the development of commerce between the West Indies and the Americas, and will seriously entertain the establishment of a line connecting the Philippines with San Francisco; and, as it has a sufficient number of steamers to meet the requirements, it will be prepared to inaugurate the service at once, especially if the United States Government will enter into an arrangement to grant it a mail service. This additional service will in no-wise affect the service between Spain and Cuba, which must continue for at least ten years, under a contract entered into with the Spanish Government. A third company is the Munson Steamship Line, which carries on an extensive and general transportation business in chartered steamers. Every Saturday a ship carrying passengers and freight leaves New York for Cuban ports, and others go at irregular intervals, carrying freight to every port of any importance in Cuba. The Munson vessels go from Philadelphia and Baltimore, carrying coal; others carry cattle from Mobile, Galveston, and other American ports, and a steamer goes once a month from Halifax. This line does the bulk of the cattle business to Cuba. Its general offices are in New York. There are a few unimportant, irregular lines, in addition to the three leading lines named, but they carry freight chiefly, and take their cargoes as they can get them. A large number of "tramp steamers" do business between various American and Cuban ports, coming and going as their work demands. In addition to ships from American ports, there are lines from Havana to Spanish ports; a monthly steamer between Vera Cruz and Southampton calling at St. Thomas and Havana; a French line runs from St. Nazaire to Havana, stopping at Santander; lines from Havana to Sisal and Vera Cruz; from Havana to Colon, calling at Nuevitas and Gibara; from Havana to Porto Rico, calling at all Cuban ports on the north coast; a French line from Havana to Vera Cruz and New Orleans; a German line from Havana to Hamburg; and the little steamers _Olivette_ and _Mascotte_ of the Plant Line, best known to Americans, who go from Tampa to Havana twice a week. In 1894, 1309 foreign vessels, having a tonnage of 1,794,597 tons, entered the port of Havana. Of these 603 were American and 409 Spanish, with a tonnage, respectively, of 776,229 and 677,907. Coastwise steamers are not included in these figures. These are numerous, and the service between Havana and other Cuban ports is much better than might be expected, due very largely to the fact that communication by road and rail between Cuban towns is so far below the standard, and in many instances entirely lacking by rail and practically lacking by highways. Since the occupation of Cuban ports by the United States authorities amended customs and port regulations have been adopted to meet the changed conditions of affairs in the Island. The following port regulations are taken from the latest report on the subject issued by the Treasury Department: "CUSTOMS PORTS: The port of Habana has been duly designated as the chief customs port of Cuba, and the following have been declared to be subports, viz.: Matanzas, Cardenas, Cienfuegos, Sagua, Caibarien, Santiago, Manzanillo, Nuevitas, Guantanamo, Gibara, Baracoa, Trinidad, Santa Cruz, Zaza, and Batabano, in the Island of Cuba, and the officer of the Army duly assigned to each of said ports as collector, will have general jurisdiction of the collection of customs at such ports respectively. Every collector stationed at a subport will make weekly reports to the collector at Habana of all transactions at his subport, with copies of all entries of merchandise duly certified, and all moneys collected at subports must be deposited with the duly designated officer, whose receipt therefor must be taken in duplicate. Any questions arising at any subport will be referred to the collector at Habana for his decision, from which there shall be no appeal, except in such cases as he may refer for decision to the Secretary of War. "ENTRANCE AND CLEARANCE OF VESSELS: Every vessel shall, on arrival, be placed under customs control until duly discharged. Passengers with no dutiable property in their possession may be permitted to land without detention. "If, upon the unlading of any cargo, there shall be found goods, wares, or merchandise not duly declared on the manifest, such articles in excess shall be required to pay additional duties of 25 per cent. on the regular duties. Should any packages or articles named on the manifest be missing on the arrival of the vessel, the latter shall pay a penalty of $1 per ton measurement, unless such deficiency shall be satisfactorily explained or accounted for. "Within twenty-four hours after the arrival of any vessel the master must, under a penalty for failure of $1 per ton registry measurement, produce to the proper officer a manifest of her cargo, with the marks, numbers, and description of the packages and the names of the respective consignees, which manifests, if the vessel be from a port in the United States, shall be certified by the collector of the port of sailing. If the vessel be from any other than a United States port, her manifest must be certified by the United States consul or commercial agent at such port; if there be no United States consul or commercial agent at such port, then by the consul of any nation at peace with the United States; and the register of the vessel shall, upon her arrival in Cuba, be deposited with the consul of the nation to which she may belong, if any there be; otherwise with the collector of the port, until the master shall have paid such tonnage taxes and other port charges as may be due under these regulations. [Illustration: PIER OF THE JURAGUA IRON CO., LTD.] "No vessel shall be allowed to clear for another port until all her cargo shall be landed or accounted for. All goods not duly entered for payment of duty within ten days after their arrival in port shall be landed and stored, the expense thereof to be charged against the goods. "Prior to the departure of any vessel from any of the ports herein designated, the master shall deposit with the proper officer a manifest of the outward cargo of such vessel, specifying the marks and numbers of packages, a description of their contents, with names of shippers and consignees, with a statement of the value of each separate lot; also names of passengers and their destination. A clearance will then be granted to the vessel. No prohibited or contraband goods shall be exported. "TONNAGE DUES: At all ports or places in Cuba there shall be levied the following tonnage dues, until further orders: Per Net Ton. (_a_) On entry of a vessel from a port or place not in Cuba $0.20 (_b_) On entry of a vessel from another port or place in Cuba, engaged at time of entry in the coasting trade of Cuba .02 (_c_) The rate of tonnage dues on a vessel which enters in ballast shall be one half of the rate imposed by subdivision (_a_) or (_b_), and one half the tonnage dues imposed on a vessel entering with cargo shall be refunded if the vessel clears in ballast. (_d_) A vessel which has paid the tonnage tax imposed on entry from a port or place not in Cuba shall not be liable to tonnage tax on entering another port or place in Cuba during the same voyage until such vessel again enters from a port or place not in Cuba. (_e_) The tonnage tax on entries of a vessel from a port or place not in Cuba shall not exceed in the aggregate $2 per net ton in any one year, beginning from the date of the first payment. The tonnage tax on entries of a vessel from other ports or places in Cuba, engaged at the time of entry exclusively in the coasting trade of Cuba, shall not exceed 40 cents per net ton in any one year, beginning from the date of the first payment. "The following shall be exempt from tonnage dues: "A vessel belonging to or employed in the service of the Government of the United States; or a vessel of a neutral foreign government not engaged in trade; a vessel in distress; or a yacht belonging to an organised yacht club of the United States or of a neutral foreign nation. "The tonnage of a vessel shall be the net or register tonnage expressed in her national certificate of registry. "LANDING CHARGES: The tax of $1 on each ton of merchandise imported or exported, hitherto imposed as a substitute for tonnage taxes, is abolished. "The present exemption of coal from this tax is continued. "The present export tax of 5 cents per gross ton on ore is abolished. "SPECIAL CHARGES AT SANTIAGO:[19] The harbour improvement taxes at Santiago de Cuba will continue to be levied, as at present, as follows: Each steamer entering $8.50 Each sailing vessel entering 4.25 Each ton of cargo landed from a steamer .25 Each ton of cargo landed from a sailing vessel .125 Each ton of coal landed from a steamer .125 Each ton of coal landed from a sailing vessel .10 "COASTING TRADE OF CUBA: To facilitate the occupation and control of Cuba by the military forces of the United States and the restoration of order, the laws now in force restricting the coasting trade of the Island to Spanish vessels are hereby modified as follows: "(_a_) Vessels of the United States may engage in the coasting trade of the island of Cuba. "(_b_) The officer of the Army of the United States in command at any port of Cuba in possession of the United States is empowered to issue a permit to a resident of Cuba who owns a vessel, which shall entitle such vessel to engage in the coasting trade of the Island: _Provided_, That the owner and master of such vessel shall upon oath before such officer entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to the King of Spain or to any other foreign prince, state, or sovereignty whatever. "Such permits shall first be approved by the general in command of the forces of the United States in Cuba. "Vessels entitled under this paragraph to engage in the coasting trade of Cuba shall carry a distinctive signal, which shall be a blue flag and the union of the flag shall be a white field. "The form and manner of the issue of permits provided for in this paragraph shall be prescribed by the Secretary of War." The following table of distances is given for reference: Key West to Havana 93 miles " " " nearest point on Cuban coast 86 " New York to Havana 1413 " New Orleans to Havana 475 " Cape San Antonio to Cape Catoche, Yucatan 125 " Santiago to Kingston, Jamaica 200 " Santiago to Greytown (entrance Nicaragua Canal) 700 " CHAPTER XXVII EDUCATION AND RELIGION Whatever the Cuban people may have thought of Spain and her methods, it is plain that in one regard, at least, the child deemed its mother a pattern of excellence and followed her example far beyond the pattern,--and that regard was education. Spain has always been at the head of the ignorant list among European countries, but Cuba is far worse, for she has the sloth of climate against her, in addition to other handicaps, and the people are slow to avail themselves of even such opportunities as they have. Indeed, the opportunities seem not to be lacking for a great many, for there are laws for general education, even compulsory education, and there are schools and colleges; but neither those for whose benefit the laws were made nor those to whom their execution is entrusted care to work any harder than is necessary, and the result is that the proportion of scholars to population, including all kinds of schools, is as 1 to 40. The rates in the United States are 1 to 4.39, except in the South, where they are 1 to 8. Nowhere in rural Cuba does the country schoolhouse prevail as we know it and feel its influence all over the United States, and possibly, quite surely indeed, it will never exist there as it does with us; but a great deal of improvement can be made, and to the 300,000 children of school age in Cuba who do not yet know their a, b, c's, may be given an opportunity to get, at least, a little sip at the fountain of learning. Although the country schoolhouse was entirely absent, in the city there was a pretence of having so-called "common schools," but their teachers were usually selected by politicians, and the pay was so small and precarious that even the political "scum" did not become school-teachers until every other chance was gone. What these teachers were like may be guessed at nearly. On the subject of common-school education, Mr. Charles M. Pepper, in a newspaper letter from Cuba, says: "It is tolerably clear that military control will not be able to do much for Cuba in the way of education. The most that can be done will be to encourage the reopening of municipal schools and to sustain the local authorities in rigorously enforcing the laws against truancy. The reconcentration has left large numbers of children on the streets. After a time, when homes are found for them, it will be important that they shall go to school. Before that the various towns will have to get the schools opened and provide means for keeping them open. That will come when the municipal revenues again appear, and these revenues will be slow in making their appearance. As for the teachers, there is little prospect for those from the United States. It is a common delusion that the need of Cuba is a school system of which the basis is the English language. One tongue is all that the mass of the children can use during their primary schooling, and that is the tongue which is heard all around them. Reading, writing, and arithmetic can be taught in Castilian as well as in English. The first two are taught the easier because in Spanish every syllable is pronounced as written. "A large number of young Cubans who have been educated in the United States are now wondering what they will do to earn a living. Most of them are thinking of getting office. The best office that they could seek would be that of schoolmaster. If any educational system can be provided under which they will find employment, their energies and their knowledge will not go amiss. Most of them are full of sentimental patriotism. They want to help raise their people above the plane to which Spanish rule had degraded the mass of the inhabitants. The schoolroom is the place in which to do it, and it is the only place. These educated young Cubans will be better employed in teaching than in talking politics or in fretting about the independence of the Island. "This is said only of the municipal schools. I do not know when a system of country schools can be established in Cuba. The present problem is to get what is left of the reconcentrado population back into homes in the country, and to raising crops which will support them. Some progress has been made. Next year they may all be back on their farms and on the plantations. Then it will be possible to plan schooling for the children of the fields. In the meantime the education of the few Cuban youths at American colleges does not solve the question. That is praise-worthy in its way, but the mass of children in Cuba cannot be transferred in a body to the States, nor is it desirable that they should be taken away. They have got to be given their schooling in the midst of the surroundings to which they are born. That can only be done by planting the schoolhouse. It will not be a little red one, most likely will not be painted at all, for the bamboo frames and the palm thatching do not need to be painted. When the country schoolmaster (or perhaps under the new conditions it will be the country schoolma'am) becomes part of the rural life of Cuba the future will no longer be blank." While it scarcely seems necessary to comment upon matters of the past, which will soon undergo such changes as scarcely to be recognisable, still history is interesting, and a short description of the University of Havana, the chief educational agency of the Island, its purpose and its future, by Dr. Joaquin Lastres, will not be inappropriate. It may be said of the University that it has branches in all the provinces, and numbered before 1898 about 3000 students, 1800 of whom were in Havana. Dr. Lastres writes as follows, under date of September, 1898, in Havana: [Illustration: OLD ARCH OF THE JESUIT COLLEGE, HAVANA.] "The University of Havana, which is the highest institution of instruction in the Island of Cuba, has, ever since its foundation in 1721, had a personality of its own, and consequently it has never been considered a property, or dependency of the State; but, like municipalities and deputations, has constituted an institution, self-supporting as regards the State. Since its foundation it has occupied buildings that have not been State property. At the beginning, its own property and income maintained it; but in 1842, without removing its own judicial individuality, the State undertook its maintenance in exchange for the confiscation of its property and income. The _Instituto de 2ª Enseñanza_ (The Institution of Elementary Instruction) is only a dependency of the University under the same judicial conception, owing to its having substituted the old College of the University, which in its turn was formed of several schools teaching different branches of learning, which were within the sphere of the University's jurisdiction at the time of its foundation in 1721. Consequently, this elementary school has to-day the same judicial character as the University. "The property and estate seized by the State in exchange for the obligation to maintain this institution were numerous and important; a full statement is to be found in the Treasury Department of this city. Among the properties may be mentioned quit-rents in favour of the University, the building occupied by the old College of Pharmacy, the building occupied by the University 'Instituto,' the important sums of money delivered to the State when it undertook the maintenance of the College, and several other effects. Some of this property has been already expropriated by the State partially or totally. "By the law of the 24th of March, 1883, published in the _Gacota de la Habana_ on the 5th of the following May, it was decided to construct a new University, the necessary funds to be raised by the sale of the building occupied by the University and Instituto, the sale of State property not yet expropriated originally occupied by the old city walls, provided this property be free of all incumbrances, the sale of other lands in Havana belonging to the State not yet disposed of, gifts and subscriptions that may be obtained for this object by the Governor-General of the Island, and the amount annually fixed in the budget of the Island as an appropriation to this end. The subscription was never started, nor was any appropriation made for it. The same law that assigned the means of raising the funds declared it a public benefit and liable to compulsory appropriation. "The royal decree of the 7th of July, 1883, ordered the Governor-General of this Island to commence the construction of the University building, and blocks eight and nine of the old city walls were chosen by the State architect. The corner-stone of this building was solemnly laid at 9 o'clock A.M. of the 23d of January, 1884, his Excellency, the Governor-General Don Ignacio-Maria del Castillo y Gil de la Torre, as President, in the presence of the authorities, corporations, civil functionaries, and a number of invited guests. This stone remains in the corner where it was placed in the grounds chosen for the new University. "By decree of the 9th of August, 1886, the Botanical Gardens of this city were ordered to be a dependency of this University, as they continue to be. "The scant scientific material of this University, and the valuable collections of the Havana _Instituto_, and also the modest appurtenances of the Matanzas Institution are all the exclusive property of the colleges in which they are, as they have been acquired by the same and they have the legal right to their possession. "The library belongs to the University, as nearly all the books came from the Pontifical Library; the appropriation made by the State in the annual budget for the University Library has scarcely sufficed to provide for its care. A good proportion of the books are donations of professors and private individuals, and are mostly valuable acquisitions. "As all the present furniture of the University is new and has been paid for with the proceeds of the academical dues of the different faculties, in other words, with the University funds, it must be considered as University property. The archives of the secretary's department referring to the files of those graduated from the University should be retained as the University has an individuality of its own, and these documents being purely of a personal character can have no interest for outsiders. Files of an administrative character and those relating to examinations and degrees should certainly be kept in the University archives. Those professors who decide to remain in Cuba should have their files kept in the secretary's department of this University; those who may wish to be changed to some university in Spain, or who may not renounce the Spanish citizenship, may obtain at their own expense a certified copy of their files or a certificate of their services duly legalized, the originals to be kept in the archives of this University so long as its individuality be retained. [Illustration: OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH AT LA COPERA.] "Such titles as may have been given during Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies should be respected, both in Spain and in Cuba and Porto Rico, without in any way interfering with such rights as may be acquired by those obtaining titles given after the cessation of Spanish sovereignty in Cuba, which will depend upon the laws which may be applied to both countries in this connection. "Cuban students, who have commenced their studies in Spanish universities, whether in Cuba or in Spain, after cessation of Spanish sovereignty, should be given credit for the courses of study followed whether in Cuba or in Spain, adapting their future studies, as much as possible, to any new plans adopted. It would be well to give a maximum limit of five years to those who may have commenced their studies under old plans, in which to finish them, whether such studies be elementary or superior. "All professors remaining in this Island should have all their rights respected, including promotions, prizes, and superannuations, which they may be entitled to, including _excedencia_. The Spanish sovereignty should also respect the rights of all professors who may go to other universities of the kingdom, whatever institution of this Island they may come from in order of antiquity." Dr. JOAQUIN LASTRES. Of more interest and of more future potency, scope, and applicability is the "Industrial School of Havana," by Director Fernando Aguado y Rico, who goes into details which are here given in full to show how elaborate are Spanish educational laws and details of instruction, and how very little more work in that line will have to be done by whatever American talent may be called upon to conduct an educational advance along these and other lines in Cuba. The Director says: "In regard to the origin of the school, one of the originators proposed to the city to establish this school, which proposition was accepted. We first began with night courses and then day and night classes and some workshops. We have not been able to keep the workshops going owing to lack of funds, but I think this school is a nucleus from which to enlarge this work. "We do not graduate civil engineers from our school, and our aim is to teach these boys carpentering, mechanical pursuits, and industrial chemistry, though the laboratories have not yet been established. There is a great lack of elementary schools here with industrial applications. This is something like a manual-training school, and like the one of arts and trades in Paris. I studied systems in France, Belgium, and the United States, and so far as possible have applied the best of these systems here. I graduated in 1881 in physical chemistry in the Department of Science in the University here, and the next year I commenced teaching. "It does not cost the pupil anything to attend this school. There is an absolute lack of anything between the higher engineer and the ordinary labourer. Mechanics, agriculturists, and industrial chemists are most needed here, and the aim of the school is to supply these. There are a good many architects here who build houses but know nothing about mechanics, and a good many engineers who do not know anything about a steam-engine, being merely copies of what they have seen other men do. There are absolutely no draughtsmen here, though there is a great demand for them. The school will be extended as soon as we have the means. "_The School of Arts and Trades_ is a public institution of instruction, depending on the Provincial Deputation of Havana, consistent with the rights which these institutions are entitled to by Article 147 of the present Plan of Studies (Educational Law). "The courses of instruction of this school are divided into two sections--day classes and night classes. Instruction is absolutely free and only day-scholars are allowed. "The day classes comprise: "Preparatory instruction for admission. "Technical industrial instruction. "The night classes are intended to give workmen opportunities to improve themselves in their trades, acquiring technical knowledge of their work. "These are divided into: "Oral instruction and drawing classes. "Graphical, numerical, and analytical exercises in connection with the above. "Assays, analysis, and manipulation. "Practical work in the shops of the school, giving instruction of a practical character and in connection with the theoretical courses, besides giving the ways of judging the quality of the raw materials; names, description, and use of different utensils and tools. "DAY CLASSES--PREPARATORY INSTRUCTION Writing Religion and Morals. Spanish Grammar and Spelling. Arithmetic. Geography and Spanish History. Elements of Geometry and Geometrical Drawing. "The foreign studies are adapted to those to be followed by the students in the other courses and which constitute the main object of the school. The students of these courses do some simple work in the shops. "To be admitted to the preparatory courses at the request of fathers, tutors, or trustees, it is necessary: "(1) To be at least eleven years old on the 1st of September. "(2) To know how to read and write well. "The admission term will be during all September. "The number of inscriptions for preparatory courses will be limited to 100, the most promising being selected from such as may apply, preference being given to the children of artisans. "Vacancies up to the end of December to be covered as they occur. "Examinations to take place during the last ten days of June. "Vacations will last from the end of the examinations to the 31st day of August. "In September, students who may have failed in previous examinations, those not yet examined, and new scholars will attend the courses. "Those who may have studied and passed the examinations in the school of the preparatory courses will be entitled to commence the technical courses. "TECHNICAL INDUSTRIAL INSTRUCTION "Young men wishing to be admitted to the courses of Technical Industrial Instruction at the request of their fathers, tutors, or trustees must: "(1) Be at least twelve years old on October 1st. "(2) Have followed the preparatory courses. "Examinations for admission to this section will take place on the 26th of September at 12 M. "Petitions for admission should be addressed to the Director, and will be received up to the previous day. "Both spoken and written exercises will be given in these examinations. "The written exercises will consist in: "(1) Dictation. "(2) A problem in Arithmetic. "(3) A problem in Geometry, applying the metric system. "(4) Free-hand croquis with boundaries. "The written exercises will be the same for all the applicants, and will be all on the same day and hour, which will be duly announced beforehand. "The Board of Examiners for admission will be constituted by the Director of the schools, the President, the Professors of Grammar, Geography, and History, one of Mathematics, one of Drawing, and the Instructor of the preparatory course, who will act as secretary. "Technical instruction will be divided into general and special for Constructors, Mechanics, and Industrial Chemists. "General instruction comprises the theory of the following subjects applied to Industrial Arts and the apprenticeship in the shops: "Spanish Grammar; Geography and History; Arithmetic; Geometry; Elementary Algebra; Trigonometry; Applied Geometry; Completion of Mathematics; Descriptive Geometry; Elements of Physics, with practical applications; Elementary Chemistry, with experiments; Elementary Mechanics, with practical applications; Elements of Hygiene; Notions of Accounting and Industrial Economy; Geometrical, Mechanical, and Applied Drawing; Ornamental and Decorative Drawing. "Woodwork: Carpenter's work and turning; models. "Metal-work: Mechanics; forge; adjusting. "The special studies comprise a separate course each as follows: [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, HAVANA.] { Applied Mechanics. Civil Constructors { Construction and Architecture. { Industrial Mechanics. Mechanics { Steam-Engines and Elements of Machine Construction. { Industrial Physics. Industrial Chemists { Industrial Chemistry Chemical Analysis. "The tuition of each special course is complemented with graphical work, applied drawing, plans, and practices. "Special studies cannot be followed unless the general courses have been studied. "The courses will commence on the first Monday of October and will close on the eve of the examinations, which will take place in June on the days and hours that may be chosen. "July and August are vacation months, but a limited amount of work in the shops will be continued, as may be determined by the Board of Professors. In September the extra examinations will take place. "NIGHT CLASSES "To be admitted to the night classes, it is necessary: "(1) To be at least twelve years old. "(2) To know how to read and write well and the rudiments of Grammar, Arithmetic, and Geometrical Drawing. "Those under fifteen must call accompanied by their fathers or tutors when applying for admittance. "Admittance examinations will take place in September. "The night classes comprise the following courses: Written exercises. Grammar. Arithmetic. Geometry with practical applications. Elementary Algebra. Physics with practical applications. Chemistry with practical applications. Mechanics with practical applications. Geometrical and Mechanical Drawing. Geometrical and Applied Drawing. Ornamental and Decorative Drawing. "In studying these courses the following rules shall be observed: "(1) Arithmetic and Geometry with practical applications shall precede all the oral courses, excepting Grammar. "(2) Geometrical Drawing shall precede Mechanical and Applied Drawing. "The term for inscribing in the night courses shall be during all September. "All persons soliciting matriculation in the night courses shall be admitted free of charge. "REGULATIONS: "All courses shall be public and anyone is entitled to attend with the sanction of the Director. No dues are charged for matriculation or the examinations that may be necessary to get a diploma. "New students are entitled to inscribe in the higher courses prior to payable examinations, once they show having followed the elementary courses in some other institution. "During the college term the classes will be suspended only on Sundays, holidays, Saints'-days, and birthdays of the King and Queen, All-Souls Day, from December 23d to January 2d, the three days of Carnival, Ash Wednesday and the last four days of Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. "The matriculation term shall be all of September. Applicants will solicit the same in printed forms furnished by the school, together with this prospectus. "DUTIES OF STUDENTS: Students will attend the courses punctually and with decorum; they will endeavour to benefit by the lessons of the professors, doing the work assigned to them in connection with their studies and the trade they may be following. They will use a special suit for working in the shops, a model of which will be furnished by the school. "Due respect will be shown the Director, professors, and the shop instructors. The file of each student will show the prizes he may be given, as well as the punishment he may receive. "Should a student commit some offence deserving special punishment, either the Director will be charged to administer it, or a 'Council of Discipline' as specified in the present Laws of Public Instruction. "The fathers, tutors, trustees of the students, will attend to being informed every month of the behaviour and progress of their charges, calling at the secretary's department where the information on the subject will be exposed for inspection. "EXAMINATIONS: Examinations for passing to higher classes are divided into ordinary and extraordinary. The former to take place in June, the latter in September. "In June such students will be examined as the professors may consider deserving it. Those failing to go to the examinations when called upon, may do so the next time the examiners meet if they justify their previous absence. "In September may be examined: "(1) Those included in these lists by the professors. "(2) Those who may have been absent at the June examinations. "(3) Those failing to pass in June. "(4) Those wishing to improve their record in the June examinations. "PRIZES: To encourage students, the School will distribute prizes every year, consisting of medals, books, instruments, tools, etc. "One prize will be given for every 25 students; "honourable mention" will besides be made of others. "Only those rated first-class in each course may be awarded prizes. "There will be extraordinary prizes, awarded by competition, during the first fortnight of September. "DIPLOMAS: Students will be given at the end of the third year a certificate or diploma of general instruction and apprenticeship of the trade they may have followed, if their practical work of the three years' course is considered satisfactory. "Those finishing a special course are entitled to a diploma, after a theoretical and practical examination. These examinations may be solicited at any time excepting during July and August. Those failing in their first examinations will have to wait at least two months before being examined again. "A certificate of the studies followed and practical work done by each student will accompany every diploma. "The Director, "FERNANDO AGUADO Y RICO. "HAVANA, August, 1898. "SCHOOL: _Diputacion Provincial_, 32 Empedrado St. "SHOPS: Belascoain St., between Maloja and Sitios Sts." The following figures indicate what amount of public money goes to the cause of education in Cuba: University $120,650 Department of Secretary of Public Instruction 58,300 Professional School 18,300 Drawing and Fine Arts School 8,750 Normal School for Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses 25,147 -------- Total $231,147 The municipalities in all the Island pay $775,646 for 888 schools for boys and girls (1893), four per cent. on all municipal taxes taken from this. The Provincial Elementary State Schools are paid by the _Diputaciones Provinciales._ (Paid out of _cedula_ tax.) In 1893 they (the _Diputaciones Provinciales_) paid: Havana $ 37,550 Pinar del Rio (closed) 12,650 Matanzas 14,650 Santa Clara 15,900 Puerto Principe 14,650 Santiago de Cuba 15,900 -------- Total $110,400 The religion of the Island is Roman Catholic, and no other religious bodies are permitted to exercise their belief in public, although no interference has ever been attempted with individual belief so long as the individual was careful not to interfere with the established religion. There are no churches of any kind except Catholic and Baptist. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.] From the beginning until 1788 the Island consisted of a single diocese with the seat of the bishop at Santiago de Cuba, which has always been the religious centre; but in that year the diocese of Havana was created, with a bishop in charge, and Santiago was erected into a bishopric with an archbishop. The religious festivals and celebrations at Santiago are observed with an attempt at magnificence nowhere else approached on the Island. The priests of the Island are appointed by the archbishop and bishop, and as a rule the Captain-General has not interfered to any extent with religious matters. Generally speaking, the Cuban men, outside of the profession of the Church, do not pay much attention to religious observances, leaving that duty mainly to the women. The Church has always been a State institution and receives its regular annual allowance in the budget, in addition to its private income, which is not small. In 1894 the amount given by the Government amounted to $385,588. Under the new order there will be no union of Church and State, neither will there be any interference with the religious belief and practice of the people. Every denomination will have equal rights in New Cuba. CHAPTER XXVIII A VISIT TO GENERAL GOMEZ "The following account of the author's official visit to General Gomez has an important bearing on the future of the Island, and is deemed of enough importance to insert here in full. WASHINGTON, D. C., February 6, 1899. _Hon. Lyman F. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, D.C._ SIR: Acting in accordance with your instructions, and after consulting, as you suggested, the President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of War, I proceeded on the afternoon of Friday, January 27th, to Havana. Arriving in Havana Monday morning, January 30th, I called upon Major-General John R. Brooke, Governor-General and Commander of the United States forces in Cuba, and presented the following letter from the Secretary of War: "WAR DEPARTMENT, "WASHINGTON, D.C., "January 27, 1899. "DEAR SIR: "Hon. Robert P. Porter, Commissioner appointed by the President to investigate and report upon the general tax questions of the Island of Cuba, goes to Cuba to investigate those matters further, and also to confer with you upon matters that he will suggest to you. "Mr. Porter has the entire confidence of the President, who directs that any subject he may bring to your attention shall receive your careful and immediate attention and co-operation. "Very truly yours, "R. A. ALGER, "Secretary of War. "Major-General J. R. Brooke, "Military Governor and Division Commander, "Havana, Cuba." General Brooke was informed that the President wished to bring about an informal and friendly conference between the commander of the United States army in Cuba and General Maximo Gomez, commander-in-chief of the Cuban forces, for the purpose of promoting harmony, disbanding the Cuban army, and aiding the people of the Island, now under arms, to return again to their peaceful occupations. General Brooke was furthermore informed that the sum of $3,000,000 was available for the relief of the Cuban army as soon as some practical plan could be arranged for its distribution; and that in this distribution it was the President's wish that General Gomez should be consulted. The question of the payment of the Cuban troops had been brought before your Commissioner by a commission of Cuban gentlemen, December 14th, and a report made thereon to you January 13th.[20] This report, together with the following memoranda left with the Secretary of War by the Secretary of the Cuban Commission, was submitted to General Brooke. "MEMORANDA "Suggestions presented by Colonel J. R. Villalon of the Cuban Commission regarding the distribution of funds appropriated and to be expended on behalf and for the relief of the Cuban army. "1. A Cuban officer should co-operate with the American disbursing officer for the distribution of funds. "2. The $100 to be paid per person is to be in part payment of his dues. "3. Cubans shall surrender their arms to the Cuban Assembly or its appointed representatives. "4. Immediate action is necessary. "WASHINGTON, D. C. "January 26, 1899." It was explained to General Brooke that the President did not wish this money or any part thereof to be paid out as part payment of salaries or dues, but simply as a relief to the army and an assistance to those willing to lay down their arms and return to peaceful pursuits. General Brooke entered cordially into these plans and said he would be glad to welcome General Gomez to Havana and avail himself of the General's co-operation in the manner suggested. To this end General Brooke gave your Commissioner the following letter of introduction to General Gomez: "HEADQUARTERS DIVISION OF CUBA. "HAVANA, January 30, 1899. _"General Maximo Gomez, "General-in-Chief of the Cuban Army._ "GENERAL:--I desire to introduce to you Honourable Robert P. Porter, Special Commissioner of the United States to Cuba, who desires to meet you and will explain his mission to you in person. "When you feel that you can find it convenient to come this way I shall be most happy to see you. "I am, General, "Very respectfully, (Signed) "JOHN R. BROOKE, "Major-General." General Brooke offered one or more members of his staff as escorts, and the services of Captain J. A. Campbell were accepted. With General Leonard Wood, who was in Havana, your Commissioner also had an informal conference, and was glad to learn that General Wood heartily approved of the plan of co-operation with General Gomez to aid in disbanding the army and in the reconstruction of Cuba. Lieutenant Hanna, of General Wood's staff, was also assigned to your Commissioner and instructed to convey the good wishes of the Governor of Santiago Province to the Cuban General. Tuesday morning, January 31st, at six o'clock, accompanied by Señor Gonzalo de Quesada, Cuban agent in Washington, and the representatives of General Brooke and General Wood, your Commissioner started for Remedios, the headquarters of the Cuban army. The manager of the United Railroads of Havana and Regla Warehouses, Ltd., Mr. Albert de Ximeno, kindly placed a special car at the disposal of the party, which enabled us to save considerable time and go through without change. From Havana to St. Domingo, nearly two hundred miles, your Commissioner went over the same route as that traversed last September; the difference, however, between the condition of the country now and the condition then is very marked. In September, the whole distance was one prolonged scene of desolation. There were literally no signs of life, human or animal, except at the railway stations, which swarmed with starving humanity. These unfortunate victims of misrule and war crowded into the cars in search of alms, and almost tore each other to pieces to obtain the small change and coppers thrown to them by sympathising travellers. Never was so much abject misery seen as then. To-day conditions have improved. There are beggars of the chronic sort, they are few, however, compared with the desperate starving women and children in all these towns at the close of the war. A decided change for the better is noticeable in the country itself. The people are beginning to work again. The quick-growing crops have been planted and some are ready for harvest. The sugar cane is being cut and taken to the centrals. Many fields of tobacco may be seen, especially in the Remedios district. Fields are in course of preparation for next year's crop. During ten hours of travel on this railroad in September but one yoke of oxen was seen. To-day draft-oxen, cows, and cattle are visible all along the route, and in some fields large herds of several hundred greeted the eye. This is the surest sign that Cuba is pacified, and that only a little friendly co-operation between the United States military authorities and the Cubans, who have manfully borne the heat and burden of this terrible and devastating war, is needed to bring about normal conditions. Sugar-houses have been restored, in some cases repainted and put in excellent condition, as though the owners were satisfied of a stable government. After a long journey of fourteen hours we arrived at Remedios, the centre of one of the richest sugar and tobacco sections of the Island. We were met by some of General Gomez's staff, and also by Major John A. Logan and a party of American officers who had thoughtfully made such arrangements as the place afforded for our comfort. The reception accorded Señor Quesada along the entire route demonstrated how much he is beloved by his countrymen. Word had been telegraphed in advance from Havana, and some of the railway stations were densely crowded by people anxious to see the second most popular of Cubans; for, next to General Gomez, Señor Quesada has undoubtedly the largest share of the affection of the people. At Remedios messages were received from General Gomez that he was with the Cuban army a few miles from town, but that he would be in Remedios early next morning to greet his old and trusted friend Quesada, and to meet the representatives of the President, of General Brooke, and of General Wood. The next morning, Wednesday, February 1st, General Gomez came into the town on horseback, escorted by a body-guard of about one hundred mounted men. He immediately repaired to a house he occupied in Remedios, and sent a social invitation for breakfast to his friend, Señor Quesada, and an invitation for your Commissioner to see him at twelve o'clock. A little before the appointed hour Señor Quesada and two of General Gomez's officers came over to the hotel and escorted the party to General Gomez's house, where we were cordially received by General Gomez and invited up-stairs to his private apartments, which consisted of a commodious front parlour opening into a comfortable bedroom, upon the immaculate white bed of which lay the General's hat, sword, and gauntlets. The interview, which lasted about an hour and a half, was agreeable and to the point. It opened by General Gomez assuring your Commissioner that he was welcome and that he had fully sympathised with the work of commercial and industrial reconstruction of the Island which had been carried on since the signing of the protocol of peace last August. He said he was completely identified in all and with all concerning it. On his side he was working in the same sense and doing all he could for the immediate reconstruction of the country, "Its wounds," he said, "will heal with the rapid promotion of work. This is the battle we are now fighting, and all men of good will should join us in our struggle. I avail myself of this opportunity to tender my services." General Gomez said he was all ready to see your Commissioner and discuss industrial matters last fall, but owing to the illness in the family of the Cuban gentleman who had promised to take your Commissioner to meet him, the visit was indefinitely postponed. After some other conversation of a general character, General Gomez was informed that the President had instructed your Commissioner to see General Gomez, express his friendly feeling, and to ascertain if the General was willing to co-operate in a friendly spirit with the United States in the pacification and upbuilding of the Island. To this General Gomez answered that he received your Commissioner in precisely the same friendly spirit in which he knew the President had sent him thither. He said that his friend, Señor Quesada, had explained to him the true attitude of President McKinley and the people of the United States towards Cuba, and he was satisfied that many of the rumours afloat were without foundation and absurd; that he had never entertained toward the United States anything but feelings of the most profound gratitude and admiration; that far from any desire to estrange himself and his followers from the United States, his sole desire was a closer union of friendship and co-operation; that now he was aware of the President's wishes, he was pleased and would gladly do anything in his power to promote them; that he was sure a friendly conference or getting together of the United States and Cuban officers would aid in making things go all right, and for his part he would willingly co-operate in such manner as the President might direct for the general welfare of Cuba. Thanking him for this assurance of confidence in the wisdom and intention of the President, your Commissioner directed attention to the present condition of Cuba with a view of emphasising the necessity of patience and forbearance on the part of all concerned. It was suggested that within only a few weeks the deadening hand of Spanish misrule had been lifted from this fair Island. That already he would see along the route between Remedios and Havana a great difference in the condition of the country now, compared with its condition last September. Then all was desolation: now people were more cheerful, and a glimmering of sunshine was visible, penetrating the drab skies of depression, ruin, and starvation which had so long enveloped the Island. It was true that some restless and impatient people were asking where was the promised liberty, where was the Cuban freedom, etc. The answer to this was that Cuba now possessed absolute commercial and industrial freedom. In framing the new tariff, the President and yourself directed that no discrimination in favour of the United States should be made; that you had repeatedly said the new tariff must be made in the interest of Cuba and not in the interest of the United States. Spain, on the contrary, had by outrageous discriminating duties compelled Cuba to purchase all sorts of commodities of her which could have been bought cheaper and better in other markets. All these changes, looking to a better condition, were promptly inaugurated on the day the United States began its military occupancy. Much of the criticism was unjust, not only to the Administration but to the military officials of the United States, who had undertaken the gigantic task of reorganising the country, of reforming its iniquitous tax system, of improving its sanitary condition, of building up its destroyed industries. Our military authorities had found Cuba without capital, with hundreds of thousands of people on the verge of starvation, to whom rations had to be furnished, and with the incubus of Spanish rule resting upon all branches of its government, municipal, provincial, judicial, and general. It was a great task, and one that must take time. There were still from twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand Spanish troops at Cienfuegos who had not gone home. [Illustration: SPANISH FORT ON RAILROAD TO JURAGUA MINES.] The President's idea, General Gomez was informed, was to build up the new government from the foundation by first organising the municipalities, and policing the Island, and that in all this work, including the judiciary, only Cubans would be employed. Under such conditions, your Commissioner frankly told General Gomez that the President needed and was entitled to the friendly co-operation of all interested in the future welfare of Cuba, and to his (General Gomez's) co-operation above all others, because the first problem to be confronted was the immediate disbandment of the Cuban army and the return of the men to work. To all this General Gomez listened with thoughtful attention, and replied that he realised the situation fully and appreciated all that had been said as to the condition of the country, and was willing to aid in any way the President might wish. The special mission, namely, the disbanding of the army, and the aid to Cuban soldiers willing to lay down their arms and go to work, was then discussed. A brief history of the facts was presented and the attention of General Gomez called to the report made to you, January 13, 1899, and submitted herewith. He was informed that the President would like his aid in the work of disbanding the Cuban army, in the distribution of the fund appropriated for the relief of that army, and in suggesting the most practical and efficient manner of policing the country. General Gomez said he would gladly aid in this manner and would go to Havana as soon as possible and confer with General Brooke to that end. He said that the amount was too small; but that was not his fault; that he was willing to co-operate in the distribution and make it go as far as possible. It was like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and he would aid in making the most of it. Your Commissioner informed General Gomez that no man in military history had done so much with such small resources as he, and hence his co-operation with General Brooke in this matter would bring good results. He (General Gomez) especially impressed upon your Commissioner that the money itself must be placed to the order of General Brooke. This General Gomez repeated three times, and he was evidently desirous of impressing your Commissioner that while he was willing to aid in any way possible in the distribution of the money, he did not wish to take personal responsibility for the money itself. The next question taken up was the method of distribution, and while General Gomez and your Commissioner reached no written agreement, the general plan verbally agreed upon was as follows: "Memoranda regarding the distribution of funds appropriated by the United States Congress to be expended on behalf of and for the relief of the Cuban army, as discussed at Remedios, February 1, 1899, by General Maximo Gomez and Robert P. Porter. 1. That a Cuban officer shall be appointed in each province to co-operate with the American officers in the distribution of funds; and furthermore, General Maximo Gomez, as commander-in-chief of the Cuban forces, is hereby named to confer with Major-General Brooke, U.S.A., in the selection of this committee on distribution. 2. That these officers shall immediately meet at some convenient point and decide as to how, when, and where this fund shall be distributed, and such other details as will assure a prompt distribution. 3. That the sum paid each man shall not be regarded as part payment of salary or wages due for services rendered, but to facilitate the disbandment of the army, and as a relief for the suffering, and an aid in getting the people to work again. 4. That Cubans shall surrender their arms to the Cuban Assembly, or its appointed representatives, or make such other distribution of the same as may be agreed upon by the aforesaid committee on distribution. 5. That the committee shall use its best endeavours in the payment of this fund to distribute the military population of the Island so that all may secure work and the wounds of war be healed as rapidly as possible. 6. That the money thus appropriated ($3,000,000) shall be placed subject to the order of the Governor-General, U.S.A., of the Island of Cuba. Immediate action is necessary." The appointment of a Cuban and a United States officer from each province will be necessary, because no fair distribution of this fund can possibly be made without a knowledge of local conditions and a personal acquaintance with the troops. In Santiago, for example, no two persons would be so well qualified to advise with General Brooke as Major-General Leonard Wood and General Castillo, and officers of similar experience in both armies will of course be called in from the other provinces. Another advantage of such a committee, and one which appealed to General Gomez, and subsequently, on your Commissioners returning to Havana, to General Brooke, is that the question of policing the Island can be taken up at the same time, and a plan agreeable to all concerned agreed upon. The men called together to deal with the disbandment of the army will be able to supply considerable information in relation to local conditions and to the needs of each community. This is a problem upon which General Brooke is at the moment seeking enlightenment, and a Cuban general from each province will be a valuable addition to his own sources of information. The utter impossibility of considering the payment offered by the United States, to help the Cuban army to disband and get to work, as part payment of salary or wages due for services rendered was explained by your Commissioner, and in response General Gomez said he understood the attitude of the President on that subject, and could make no objection. Other phases of the question were discussed, such as the advisability of making the payment absolutely on the per capita plan, or only to those who needed help. For example, many of the soldiers have already been provided for, notably in Santiago, and later in Havana, on the police force. These men are drawing good salaries from the municipality and are not the objects of State aid. There is no necessity to include such cases. This will leave more for those who must be helped back to the land. These questions of detail, however, it was finally agreed, should be properly left to the committee. As a matter of fact, the Cuban Commission only claimed 30,000 privates. The total pay earned by these privates, according to the Commission's report,--based on the same rate of pay as United States soldiers receive,--was a trifle over $9,000,000. It is not likely, however, that the committee to be called together by General Brooke will find anything like this number of soldiers who need the assistance herewith proffered. There is no controversy over the other paragraphs of the memoranda. The actual basis of distribution will undoubtedly be the most troublesome question to be adjusted by General Brooke and General Gomez and the officers of both armies called in to advise. It can be settled, however, with the proper local information, and settled to much greater advantage, in the opinion of your Commissioner, to the Island than by a payment of one hundred dollars all around. If, however, the committee cannot see their way clear to a more equitable distribution they can, of course, resort to the original proposition of the late General Garcia to the President of one hundred dollars all around to the privates; or, if the silver dollar is used--and that is still the basis of payment in Cuba for day labour--the $3,000,000 will take in all, including the commissioned officers.[21] The above was the sum and substance of the conference. General Gomez was exceedingly gracious, and several times said he had no doubt of the friendly attitude of the President toward Cuba and toward him personally, which good feeling, he said, was reciprocated. He sent the President and yourself his cordial wishes and thanks for the courtesy extended and said he would telegraph the President and General Brooke direct, and would accept the latter's invitation to see him in Havana at an early date. He wished your Commissioner to assure the President he would do all in his power to aid in the work of reconstruction of Cuba. Turning to Captain Campbell, he said: "Tell General Brooke that I am coming to Havana to see him, and that I will co-operate with him in every way in the world for the general welfare of Cuba--especially in getting these men disarmed, in aiding them in going to work, and in establishing law and order in every part of the Island." In concluding the interview, General Gomez said to your Commissioner: "Your visit has thrown light in our way, and all that we have said encourages me to approach Havana, that by coming to an understanding with General Brooke the affairs of this unsettled country may be better directed. "Please express to the President my gratitude for his attentions, informing him that I will do my utmost to maintain order, contributing to the definite constitution of the Republic, that Cuba may be really free and independent, thereby helping to your desires, which are mine." In response, your Commissioner thanked General Gomez for his offer to thus aid in the difficult work the United States had in hand in Cuba, and ventured to hope that the conference would result in a more complete understanding between the people of Cuba and the people of the United States. His cordial and prompt response to the wishes of the President he was told would be appreciated in Washington and was a good omen for the future prosperity of Cuba. General Gomez is a man of strong personality and great force. He is resourceful, clear-headed, and direct in dealing with men, and will make as potent a force in the civil work of government as he has been in the military. His word is his bond and must never be doubted. The only occasion in the conference when he showed the slightest feeling was on being asked to make his visit to Havana as soon as possible. "Do you doubt my activity?" he exclaimed. "Your enemies never did, General, and I come on a friendly errand," was the answer. When General Gomez was asked if your Commissioner might cable the President his promise of co-operation, he promptly answered: "I will cable both the President and General Brooke myself." Copies of the cable and letter in question were afterward sent over in the original Spanish to the hotel, and when translated read as follows: (1--CABLE) "REPUBLIC OF CUBA, "HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. "_President McKinley_, _Washington_: "It has afforded me great pleasure to have conferences with your Commissioner, Porter, introduced by my friend Quesada, and I am informed of and satisfied with your wishes. In a short time I will go to Havana to have conferences with General Brooke, that all may run smoothly, following your advices and gladly contributing to the reconstruction of Cuba. "MAXIMO GOMEZ. "REMEDIOS, February 1, 1899." (2--CABLE) "REPUBLIC OF CUBA, "HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. "_General Brooke_, _Havana_: "The conference with Mr. Porter, Commissioner for President McKinley, encourages me to proceed soon to Havana to come to an understanding with you and solve matters for the good of this country. I avail myself of this opportunity to inform you that you may rely on my consideration and distinguished affection. "GENERAL MAXIMO GOMEZ. "REMEDIOS, February 1, 1899." (3--LETTER TO GENERAL BROOKE) "REPUBLIC OF CUBA, "HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, "REMEDIOS, February 1, 1899. "_Major-General John R. Brooke_, _Havana_: "GENERAL,--Your courteous letter was presented to me by Hon. Robert P. Porter, Commissioner of President McKinley, and although I have telegraphed you that the conference with Mr. Porter encourages me to go to Havana in a short time and confer with you and resolve whatever be best for this country, I do it again through this letter. "I will be highly pleased to meet you soon. Meantime, I remain, "Respectfully yours, "GENERAL M. GOMEZ." In the afternoon word was sent over by General Gomez that arrangements had been made for a speech at the theatre by Señor Quesada, a reception to your Commissioner and the officers accompanying him, and a ball to which the representatives of the best families of Remedios had been invited. In the evening the little theatre was crowded. The boxes and orchestra were occupied by ladies in evening dress, and the other parts of the house were packed by earnest, intelligent people, intensely interested in the orator of the evening. In the middle of the stage a sort of pulpit had been placed, completely covered with the most beautiful tropical flowers. When Señor Quesada ascended the pulpit a shower of flowers fell from all parts of the house and covered the entire stage. General Gomez escorted your Commissioner to a box, and the General remained throughout an interested but silent spectator. The oration of Señor Quesada was an eloquent one and was devoted to an explanation of the real feeling of the United States towards Cuba. He thoroughly disillusionised the audience of any idea that the United States desired to annex Cuba against the will of the people, and assured them of the friendship of President McKinley and his advisers. These sentiments were loudly applauded, and it was evident the audience was at heart with the speaker. After the speaking came a reception, and then all adjourned to the ballroom, where General Gomez led off in the dance, and the festivities were kept up until the early morning hours. These facts are given for the purpose of showing the cordiality of the reception given the representative of the United States and as indicating that General Gomez more than met the informal overture of our Government in the spirit in which the recognition on our part was offered. On parting with your Commissioner General Gomez offered the services of Lieutenant Cornill, a brilliant young officer of his staff, as escort to Havana. Returning to Havana, all these facts were laid before General Brooke, and he expressed himself pleased with the results of the conference. The memoranda discussed and all despatches were placed in General Brooke's hands, and he desired your Commissioner to say he will be ready to take up the matter of distribution of the army relief fund next week with General Gomez in the manner herewith submitted. General Chaffee now has in hand the complete scheme for policing the Island, and the delay in carrying it out is partly due to the lack of funds and partly to the innumerable details necessary to meet the varied conditions of each province. It is more than probable that the convening of such an army relief committee as suggested in this report will have the effect of crystallising these plans and securing a general plan for the rural policing of the Island by native Cuban troops. The excellent condition of the Island throughout the most trying ordeal it has undergone--the passing of the Spanish control--has encouraged our military officials in the belief that the solution of the problem is local policing by Cuban troops. The present situation may be thus briefly summarised. Senator Proctor of Vermont, just up from the most western province, Pinar del Rio, says he has been with General Davis, who reports the most perfect order as being maintained by native troops, and that this has been done without money and without price. In fact, all the police work is now done by Cubans. In Havana Province General Lee has the entire confidence of the people, while a Cuban police force under General Menocal is being formed for Havana. This force is now drilling every day in the public square of Havana, and they appear to be a fine body of men. In Matanzas Province it was your Commissioner's good fortune to meet General Pedro Betancourt, who says all is tranquil throughout that province, a fact certified to by General Wilson in a despatch published Saturday. In Santa Clara Province General Monteagudo, in command of the Cuban forces, boarded the train, and in a conversation lasting nearly two hours explained the conditions in that province. He had nearly three thousand men who since January 1st have kept order and policed the entire province. He has a complete scheme for continuing this work with about half the number of men. This plan has been laid before General Bates, and by him referred to General Brooke at Havana. General Chaffee has the plan now before him with all the other plans, and it will be immediately considered and acted upon. In Puerto Principe the Cuban army has disbanded, law and order prevail, and the people are rapidly getting to work again. In Santiago General Leonard Wood and the Cuban General Castillo are masters of the situation. So great is General Gomez's confidence in General Wood that he expressed a hope to your Commissioner that General Wood would be in Havana at the conference of United States and Cuban officers, because he (General Gomez) wanted to consult him in relation to matters in that province. The situation may change, but the above represents the conditions at the present moment. Some of the leaders will object, for various reasons, some perhaps selfish ones, to the present attitude of General Gomez, but it is not likely that their views will prevail if once the United States and Cuban military leaders in each province can get together and meet around a table with General Brooke and General Gomez. If this can be brought about at an early date all outside opposition will surely disappear and the Cuban problem will be in a fair way of solution. The following message was sent to your Commissioner at Remedios, and was translated into Spanish and submitted to General Gomez: "_Hon. Robert P. Porter_, _Havana_: "The President sends his hearty congratulations and thanks for your despatch. Convey his cordial greetings to General Gomez and his grateful appreciation of the General's frank and friendly message. The co-operation of General Gomez in the pacification of Cuba will be of the greatest value for both peoples. "JOHN HAY, "Secretary of State." It is respectfully suggested, in view of the facts above given, that the sum of money ($3,000,000) assigned by the President for the relief of the Cuban troops and to aid in the disbandment of the army be at once placed at the disposal of General Brooke, Governor-General in command of the United States forces in Cuba. All of which is respectfully submitted, ROBERT P. PORTER, Special Commissioner for the United States to Cuba and Porto Rico. This chapter may be fittingly concluded with a few words as to the personality of General Gomez, who in appearance is as absolutely unlike the photographs of him as his manner and action toward strangers are unlike the accounts we have so often heard of him. The photographs published--and there is nothing General Gomez dislikes so much as having his photograph taken--are invariably harsh and belligerent looking; whereas the man himself, while in manner and expression a soldier, has a sympathetic side to him which makes him altogether a different being to the one so often pictured. This side came out at the ball, to which reference was made in the foregoing pages, when he was talking to twenty or thirty children prettily dressed, who carried bouquets of flowers and walked around the room. He had something to say to all these little misses, and was most affable to them. General Gomez is very fond of dancing; in fact, it is his chief recreation. He dances well and with great agility, enjoying it fully. The people of Remedios, men and women, are very fond of him, and his social side, which can be studied to advantage there, gives quite a new light to his character. CHAPTER XXIX CONCLUSION--A LOOK AHEAD In the opening chapters of this volume we have seen Cuba as it is and speculated on what it should have presented to the world at the close of the present century. The past, it is to be hoped, is a closed book. The future is more hopeful, perhaps, but replete with difficult problems and many dangers. The war has emancipated the people of Cuba from Spain, made them a self-governing people protected by a great nation, the flag of which is a symbol of freedom and a guaranty of the fruits of individual endeavour. The fate of Cuba and the Cubans no longer rests in the hands of a small cabal of mediæval and selfish statesmen at Madrid, intent only upon enriching the mother country. It rests with the people of the United States who are to-day actively and impartially discussing the future of the Island. The question is not how much the United States can make out of Cuba, but how best to make a prosperous, peaceful, and useful neighbour of an island within a hundred miles from the shores of the Great Republic. The people of Cuba must disabuse themselves of the idea that the future of their native land is in the hands of some one man or any set of men. They must comprehend, on the contrary, that it has been committed to the care of a liberty-loving people as jealous of popular rights as those Cuban patriots who, like Marti and Gomez and Maceo and Garcia and Quesada, risked their lives to make their country free. That the people of the United States will deal justly and fairly with the people of Cuba does not admit of doubt, and the closer the people of the two countries come together on a platform of mutual trust and confidence, the sooner a stable government will be established. It may be well for our Cuban friends to remember that a considerable number of the seventy-five millions in the American Republic have, themselves, exchanged for the Stars and Stripes flags that mean as much to them as the Cuban flag to the most patriotic Cuban, and around which cluster as tender memories as those which the flag of the Cuban Republic suggests. The great newspaper press of the United States is discussing all sides of the Cuban question as intelligently and vigorously, and as fairly and honestly towards Cuban interests, as it does our own important domestic questions, and no Cuban need for a moment fear that the conclusions reached will be other than for the best interests of all concerned. If, at the conclusion of military occupation, Cuba is made an independent republic, it will be because the people of Cuba and the people of the United States, acting jointly, so decide. If, on the contrary, the future of Cuba shall lie in the still greater independence of American Statehood, it will be by the mutual consent of the people of the two countries. There are no other possibilities in the final solution of the political future of Cuba. The more stable the government of Cuba, the more certain the industrial development. The closer and stronger the ties which bind Cuba to the United States, the greater the prosperity and the more rapid the reconstruction of the Island. To the outside world Cuba has become part of the United States, and the arrangements in respect of the government of the Cuban people a domestic affair. Whether the present government be termed Military Protectorate, Military Occupancy, or Statehood, the fact remains that the strength of Cuba to-day is in its close alliance with the United States. Commercially and industrially, as has been repeatedly shown in this volume, the two countries fit perfectly. The products Cuba produces can all find a market in the United States, while the needs of Cuba can all be supplied by its continental neighbour. The Cubans have had a taste of the prosperity which followed reciprocal commercial relations with the United States. The golden possibilities of absolute free intercourse between Cuba and the United States must be apparent to the more intelligent Cubans. That sentiment for a flag and a country is natural and laudable cannot be denied, but in the final and mutual coming together of Cuba and the United States, the single Star becomes not less bright by reason of association or companionship with the other Stars, together making an harmonious whole and representing all that is best and most hopeful for mankind. A great change has already taken place in Cuba in the six weeks of United States occupancy. The author has had opportunity to study three stages in the recent history of Cuba. He visited the four western provinces soon after the signing of the Protocol of Peace and before the Spanish had relinquished control. He was in Santiago after six months of American occupancy, and in the chapter on that province has made note of the good work inaugurated by Major-General Leonard Wood, Governor of the province. Again after six weeks of American control he travelled over much the same ground as in September and October, and has noted in the preceding chapter the improved condition. A good deal of honest and intelligent work has already been done by the United States for Cuba. A new tariff has been framed and put in operation by the War Department, aided by experienced officers from the Treasury Department. The Post-Office Department has inaugurated an improved mail service. The telegraph lines are rapidly being put in order. The United States sanitary authorities are laying their plans for a vigorous campaign against epidemic disease this summer. The governors of cities are as rapidly as possible cleaning up the streets and preparing plans for modern sewerage and drainage. Under the direction of General Brooke and the immediate supervision of General Chaffee, a complete system for policing the rural districts of the Island with Cuban police is in progress of organisation. For this purpose the Cuban army will be utilised as far as possible. The United States has abolished many onerous taxes, stopped the draining away to Spain of the resources and revenues of Cuba, and rigorously applied all available methods and instruments to build up the Island and to improve the condition of the people. It has endeavoured to establish the principle that the Island should be governed in the interest of Cuba, by Cubans, for the people of Cuba. There still remains a great deal of work to do. The thin end of the wedge of the stronger civilisation has been inserted, but time and patience and strength will all be required to drive it home. The programme mapped out is a long and expensive one and more money than is at present in sight will be required to carry it through. The building of public roads, the establishment of public schools, and the inauguration of sanitary work are three branches of the civil government that must be pressed forward with all possible vigour, immediately after the scheme for policing Cuba has been completed. The importance of teaching English in all Cuban public schools must not be overlooked, because the Cuban people will never understand the people of the United States until they appreciate our institutions. A complete reform of the judiciary must follow. The laws relating to ownership and transfer of property must be revised, safeguards added to the laws relating to mortgages, and some of the old customs repealed. Savings banks must also be established, for no people can become permanently prosperous where thrift is unknown and where there are no opportunities for saving the surplus earnings of the population. The Government of the United States, acting in conjunction with the Cuban people, has a serious and important work to perform. The Government, however, cannot be depended upon to do it all. The people must get to work again themselves and help in every possible way in the work of reconstruction. To be successful this work should be begun in the right way from the foundation up, or it will become top-heavy, and the second condition of the Cuban people will be worse and more helpless than the first. The population must be got to work again in its strong industries and the fields must be made to yield in abundance before enterprises, of which so much is heard, and the success of which depends so largely upon the prosperity of the people, can be made to pay. In the chapters on Sugar, Tobacco, Mining, Agriculture, Timber, Fruit-Production, and Miscellaneous Industries the reader may learn the true source of Cuban wealth. The industrial and commercial future of Cuba depends upon how thoroughly and how persistently these industries are worked, and not upon distribution of foreign capital in enterprises which in the end must be fed by the wealth coming from the soil. For judicious investment there is opportunity in Cuba, but the scramble for franchises of various kinds has inflated values, and unless conservatism prevails there is danger of repeating in Cuba some of the follies with which the New South is strewn. The basic industries must be vigorously worked in Cuba. Unless this is done the author sees only trouble and disaster ahead. To do this successfully the labour market must be enlarged by immigration, and to attract immigration the condition of the labourer must be improved. The chapter on Labour aims to give an idea of Cuban labour as it is. The picture is not attractive. Where is the labour to come from to build up the wasted fields of Cuba? It is a hard question to answer. Efforts are being made by those who best know the needs of Cuba to entice labour thither. They should be encouraged, for unless more labourers can be found the return of prosperity will be painful and prolonged over many years. The opportunities for American labour in Cuba are circumscribed. If the climate were more temperate and the dangers of disease less there would undoubtedly be an influx of labour from the United States. Just as the restless and hopeful population of the Eastern States has migrated westward and to some extent southward in our own country, so it would find its way to Cuba if conditions allowed of extensive settlement and home-making. In the opinion of the author they do not, and hence the industrial rehabilitation of Cuba must rely upon other sources than the United States for its supply of labour. Of course Americans will settle in Cuba and do business in Cuba and possibly make their fortunes in Cuba. Not in the way they have settled up our own unsettled area by purchasing farms and building homes, but in projecting and pushing enterprises. In Cuba, sugar production has become two distinct industries: one the sugar factory and the other the _colonia_, or cane-raising farm, or estate. The central, or sugar factory, often owns large areas of land, but does not depend wholly upon its own acres for cane. Some factories depend more largely upon the colonias, or small farms which supply the cane. This cane the central brings to the sugar-house by the aid of narrow-gauge railways, extending over the estate and into adjoining farms. There are opportunities for farm labourers who can withstand a tropical climate, to settle on small areas of land and raise sugar cane. Every possible encouragement will be given this class of immigrants. Mr. J. White Todd, who lived twenty years in Cuba, has informed the author that in his opinion industrious immigrants from Southern Italy and Southern Spain will find ample opportunities in Cuba to establish homes and make a profitable living raising cane for the sugar factories. If they are willing to work, the owners of the centrals or factories will gladly secure them the land and tide them over the first crop. This class of labour and the Canary Islanders are the only ones likely to take up and work small sugar farms in Cuba. Heretofore the experience with the negroes has not been satisfactory, though under a better system of government it may be different. The success of the sugar factory depends so largely upon the available sugar cane of the district that the central is always glad to aid a labourer likely to become a thrifty _colono_. In coffee and tobacco there are possibilities on a small scale, and also in fruit-growing, when roads and highways have been sufficiently improved to get the product to market. Herein lies the only feasible opportunity for small American capitalists who desire to live in a tropical climate. It is true, only a small portion of this wonderful Island is under cultivation. In time it might all be utilised, the larger part, of course, in sugar. In the chapter on Sugar the possibilities of this crop and its relation to the sugar-production of the world have been fully discussed. When continental Europe tires of paying a bounty for producing sugar, Cuba must take its place as the first sugar-producing country of the world; a place it would never have lost had it not been for misgovernment, war, and failure promptly to adopt modern methods when beet-sugar first became a factor in the world's supply. The particular lines in which the enterprise, ingenuity, and capital of the United States can be utilised in Cuba will undoubtedly be in the establishment of public and semi-public works and in the improvement of methods of production. Here are some of the enterprises likely to be taken up by American and English capitalists: Sanitary Improvements and Water-works. Street Railways and light railway transportation in suburban districts. Gas-works and Electric Lighting. Unifying and extension of railway system. Establishment of better facilities for coastwise transportation. Navigation between Cuba and the United States. Wharfage, Lighterage, and Public Warehouses. Telegraphic and Telephone Services. Public Roads and Highways. Savings Banks and Financial Institutions to aid commerce and industry. Places of Amusement, Tropical Gardens, and Hotels. The directing hand of American enterprise will be soon felt in these branches of modern endeavour, and the effect must be an improved condition of life and of morals. To make these enterprises profitable, however, the real productive forces of the Island must first be revived, and if possible increased. The strength of the building of our own nation lies in the fact that our productive powers were developed first and the modern improvements and conveniences have been gradually coming along in the proper order. Nothing could be more unfortunate for Cuba than a wild and speculative plunge in the above direction before the real strength of the Island is again concentrated and put in vigorous working order. In the first place, it would temporarily take away the working forces from the land. In the second place, these enterprises cannot be made self-sustaining until normal productive conditions are restored. The effect, therefore, would be loss of capital and disappointment. The objective and immediate point for good work should be the land. If the new industrial impetus shall be in this direction the Cuban problem will be simplified and the future of Cuba full of promise. INDEX Acana wood, 341 Adams, Charles Francis, 43 Agricultural products, imports of, from United States, 330 Agriculture and stock, 329-337 Aguacate, population, 124 _Aguacates_, 345 Aguado y Rico, Fernando, School of Arts and Trades, 150, 151; Industrial School. 381-388 Alameda of Havana, 153 Albarran, Dr., 97 Albear, Colonel, 168 Albertini, 97 Alcala, José Anton, statement in regard to taxes other than customs duties, 249 Alexandria Line of steamers, 366 Alfonsino, Spanish, value of, 23 Alfonso XII., population, 123 Alger, Hon. R. A., letter to Maj.-Gen. John R. Brooke, 390, 391 Alianza Bank, 198 Almendares River, 178 Alonso Rojos, population, 124 Alquizar, population, 123 Alto Songo, population, 124 Amaro, population, 124 Amended Cuban tariff, official, 221-247. Americans in Santiago, 62-72 American Mall S.S. Co., 47 Amusements, 100 Annexation, 32-36 _Anon_ fruit, 347 Annual deaths in Havana, table, 165 Antomarchi, physician of Napoleon, 129 Apezteguia, Marquis de, on future of Cuba, 37-42; 43, 47, 60, 115 Ariza and Herrara, 167, 168, 171 _Arroba_, 83 Arroyo Navanijo, population, 123 Artemisa, population, 123; description, 132 Asphaltum, 327, 328 Atkins, E. F., statement in regard to sugar, 287 Atkins & Co., Messrs. E., 284 Atkinson, Edward. 43 Autonomist party, 8 Auxiliary vessels N. V. and Cuba Mail S. S. Co., 368 Average production of tobacco of world (table), 316 _Bagasse_, 286, 287, 297 Bahia Honda, population, 123; description, 132 Bainoa, population, 124 Baker, Capt. L. D., 47, 53 Bananas, production of Santiago province, 67, 344; shipments of, 345 "Banco Hispano-Colonial," of Barcelona, 257 Banes, description, 136; exports of fruit, 136; shipments of bananas, 345; exports of pineapples, 348 Bank of Commerce, 198 Banking, history of, 199, 200 Banks and Currency, 190-203 Banks of Havana, list of, 198 Banyan tree, 342 Baracoa, population, 123; capital removed from, 129; description, 136; shipments of bananas, 345; production of cocoanuts, 345 Barbadoes, cost of Muscovado sugars at, 286 Barbour, Maj. George M., 62, 119 Baria wood, 341 _Barracones_, 80 _Barrios_, 173 Batabano, sanitary condition, 120; population, 123; description, 133, 140 Bates, General, 405 _Batey_, 82 Bayamitas iron mines, 322 Bayamo, population, 123; description, 137 Beal, P. M., statement in regard to sugar farms, 284, 285 Beal & Co., 284 Beans, 331 Beaulieu, Paul Leroy, on Cuban debt, 258, 261 Bees, 337 Beet-sugar competition, 76; production of, 283; comparative value, 288; imports from Europe into United States, 289 Bejucal, population, 123; description, 134 Belen Church of Havana, 152 Bemba (_see_ Jovellanos) Berracoe iron mines, 322 Betancourt, Gen. Pedro, 405 Bock, Gustavo, on production, manufacture, and necessities of tobacco in Cuba, 307-316 Bolondron, population, 123 Boniato manganese mines, 324 Bonnet, Wm., statement in regard to sugar, 291-294 Boston Fruit Company, 53; manganese mines, 324 Botanical Gardens of Havana, 146 Brazil Line of steamers, 367 British Colonial Government, article on, by Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, 48, 50, 51 British Consul-General at Havana on reciprocity, 273, 274 Brooke, Maj.-Gen. John R., 69; letter from Secretary Alger to, 390, 391, 399; letter and cable from General Gomez, 403 Brooks, Mr. (of Brooks & Co.), 193 Bueycito manganese mines, 324 Building stone, 328 Butler, Maj.-Gen. M. C., 44; on future of Cuba, 45, 46 Caballeria, 83, 310 Cabañas, fort of Havana, 141 Cabañas, population, 124; description, 133 Cabonico, shipments of bananas, 345 Cabrera, 329 Caibarien, population, 123; description, 131 Caibarien Railway, 355 Caiguaran wood, 341 Caimitillo wood, 342 Caja de Ahorros, 198 Cajobaba iron mines, 322 Calabazar, population, 124 Calaboya, population, 124; description, 135; River, 135 _Calzada_, 352 Camaguey (Puerto Principe), 126 Camarones, population, 124 _Camino Central_ (Central Road), 351 Campbell, Capt. J. A., 392, 401 Campo de Marte of Havana, 146 Canada, sugar exported from Cuba to, 1893-1897, 294 Canary Islanders, value as labourers, 78-80 Canasi, population, 124 Candelaria, population, 124 Cane, yield of, per _caballeria_, 83; theoretical sugar contents of one hundred pounds of, 286; theoretical pure sugar contents of one hundred pounds, 287 Caney, population, 124 Cannau River, 114 Canovas, Prime Minister, invented name "realidad nacional," 12 Capdevilla, 149 Capital, American and English, enterprises for, 414, 415 Capital, inducement to, and revival of credit, necessary to reconstruction of tobacco industry, 309 Cardenas, sanitary condition, 117; population, 123; description, 130; exports and imports, 130; minerals, 130; deposits of asphaltum, 327, 328 Cardenas and Jucaro Railway, 354 Carnegie, Andrew, 43 Carpintero iron mines, 322 Cartagena, population, 124 Casa Blanco, suburb of Havana, 152 Casilda, seaport of Trinidad, 127 Casilda and Fernandez Railway, 355 Castillo, General, 399, 406 Catalina, population, 124 _Catana_, 339 Cattle, 332, 334; cost of importing, 333; export possibilities, 334 Causes of unfortunate situation of sugar industry, 299 Cauto River, 131, 360 Caves, of Bellamar, 126; of Arcos de Carguanabo, 133 Cayajabos, population, 124 Cayo Romano, 138 Cedar, 341, shipments, 341 "Cedula" or head tax, 27 Ceiba del Agua, population, 124 Ceiba wood, 342 _Celador_, 173 _Century Magazine_, series of articles on slave trade in, 74 Cereals, 330 Cerro of Havana, 152; salubrity, 167 Cervantes, population, 123 Chadwick, Edwin, 159 Chaffee, General, 405, 406-410 Chamber of Commerce of Santiago, memorial to President, 192 Chamberlain, E. T., on navigation, 31 Chamberlain, Hon. Joseph, article on British Colonial Government, 48, 50, 51 Characteristics of people, 97-100 Chavez Creek, 162 Chinamen, comparative value of, as labourers, 83 Chinese coolie labour, 77 Chinese immigration prohibited, 84 Chorreta Vedado of Havana, 152; salubrity, 167 Church of the Merced, of Havana, 152 Cidra, population, 124 Ciego de Avila, population, 124 Cienfuegos, sanitary condition, 113; population, 123; description, 127; harbour, 358 Cienfuegos and Santa Clara Railway, 354 Cigarettes, value of manufacture of, per annum, 313 Cigars, exports from Havana, 306 Cigars, cigarettes, and packages of smoking tobacco for home consumption, 312 Cigars, exportation of, decrease from 1889 to 1897 (table), 314 Cigars, number manufactured in 1889 for exportation and local consumption, 313 Cimarrones, population, 124 Cities and towns, 122-138 _City of Alexandria_, 366 _City of Washington_, 366 City property, face value of tax receipts on, 1886-1898, 252; actual amount of taxes collected on, 253 Civil Guards, 261 Clark, William J., 285, 286 Coal, 326; analysis of, 327 Coasting trade, regulation of, 362 Coast line, 358 Cobre, description, 137, 318, 325 Cobre manganese mines, 324 Cocoa shipments, 345 Cocoanuts, 345 Cocoanut-oil shipments, 345 Coffee, 349, 350 Coins, gold, value of, 23, 190-192 Cojimar, description, 134 Collection of taxes other than customs duties by Spanish Bank, 252, 254 Colón, population, 123; description,135; market, 162 _Colonia_, 284 Colonia Guabairo, 284 Colonial government, Jamaica, 48 Columbus, Christopher, place of burial, 142; discovery of tobacco, 302 Commerce, 267-280; value of, 267 _Commercial Cuba_, quotation from, 285 "Commercial relations between Cuba and the United States," by E. Sherman Gould, 274-280 Commission of Cuban officers on payment of insurgent soldiers, 204 Compania del Ferro Carril de Cienfuegos a Santa Clara, traffic and fiscal statement (table), 359 Compania del Ferro Carril de Matanzas, traffic and fiscal statement (table), 359 Compania del Ferro Carril de Sagua la Grande, traffic and fiscal statement, 359 Compania Transatlantica, 261 Compania Transatlantica Español, 369, 370 Compania Unida de los Ferro Carril de Caibarien, traffic and fiscal statement (table), 359 Comparative value of cane sugar as against beet sugar, 288 Concha (_see_ La Isabela) Conclusion--a look ahead, 408-415 Conditions which confront us, 14-31 Consolacion del Sur, population, 123; description, 133 Constancia mine, 328 Construction of roads necessary to reconstruction of tobacco industry, 309 "Consumption Tax," 26 Coolie labour, 76; imported from China, 77 Copper, 325 Cornill, Lieutenant, 404 Corral Nuevo, population, 123 Cortes, district of, 307 Cortez, F., 128 Cost, average, of production of German raw sugar, 288 Cost of farming, 83 Cost of production of sugar in Cuba, 289 Cotton, 331, 332 Cramp & Sons, 367 Cuban debt, statement of (table), 259-261 Cuba Submarine Telegraph Company, 361 Cuen wood, 342 Cuero iron mines, 123 Cuevitas, population, 123 Cuia wood, 342 Currency question, 21-26 Custom-House receipts, 213; 1886 to 1897, inclusive, by custom-house districts (table), 218; during 1895-96, specifying taxes (table), 220 Customs of living, 98-100 Daiquiri, 322 Daiquiri Bay, 320 Davis, Captain, 110 Davis, General, 405 Davis, Surgeon, 162, 163 Death-rate of Havana, 145, 154 Deaths in Havana, first eleven months 1898, 110; rate in Havana compared with other cities, 111; table, 165 Debt of Cuba, 259-261 Debt of the city of Havana, 180-183; compared with United States cities, 182 Decline of Cuban tobacco industry, cause of, 314 De la Plata iron mines, 322 Delinquent taxes, total and percentage, 1886-98, 253; percentage of each year, 253 Demajobo iron mines, 322 Density of population of Havana, 169, 171 De Soto, 140 Destruction of tobacco industry, causes of, 307, 308 Diana Key, 328 Disbanding of army, discussion with General Gomez, 395, 398 Diseases, principal, 111 Distances, table of, 375 Distribution of fund for relief of army, memorandum between General Gomez and Robert P. Potter, 398, 399 Donaldson, W. A., 69, 71 Dorothea and Recrio iron mines, 322 Dos Bocas manganese mines, 324 Drainage of Havana, 168 Ducasse, General, 106 Dudley, D. E., report on Cienfuegos, 113-115 Duelling, 99 Dumois family in banana business, 67 Ebony, 341 Economic condition at time of signing of protocol, Aug. 12, 1898, 1-13 _Economiste Français_, article by Paul Leroy Beaulieu on Cuban debt, 258 Economia iron mines, 322 Education, public money for, 388 Education and religion, 376-389 Education under Spanish rule, 28 "_Emancipados_," 74 Empresa Unida de los C. de H. de Cardenas y Jucaro, traffic and fiscal statement (table), 359 Encrucijada Railway, 355 _Engineering Magazine_, article by E. Sherman Gould on "Commercial relations between Cuba and the United States," 274 England, sugar exported from Cuba to, 1893-97, 294 English in Jamaica, 47, 61 Enterprises for American and English capital, 414, 415 Equipment of railroads, 357 "Evangelist Island" (_see_ Isle of Pines), 138 Expenditure, annual, of sugar estates, 297, 298 Expenditures of Cuba, analysis of, 256-263; methods suggested, 265, 266 Expenditures of Jamaica, 57 Expense of producing one hundred bales of tobacco, 310 Expenses, sovereignty (table), 256 Expenses of Havana, 184-186; for salaries of police department, 174, 175 Exportation of tobacco to United States, 1889-97, 315 Export duty on leaf tobacco to be maintained, 315 Export price of German sugar, 288 Exports, from Cuba to the United States, 1893 (table), 268; from United Stales to Cuba, 1893 (table), 268; from United States to Cuba in 1889 and 1893, value of (table), 275, 276; of sugar to United States, Canada, Spain, and England. 294 Exports and reshipments, 1885-96, values of (table), 217 Face value of tax receipts handed to Spanish Bank for collection, 1886-98 (table), 252 Farm labour on _colonia_, 79-85 Fibre plants, 332 Figueras, Fran, on annexation, 33, 264 Fire department of Havana, organisation, 179; expense, 180 Firmeza, iron mines in, 320 Fiscal statement of railways of Western Cuba, 359 Foreign population, 100 Foreign tonnage of Havana, 371 Fortifications of Havana, 141 Free importation of cattle necessary to reconstruction of tobacco industry, 308, 309 French lines of steamships, 371 French Submarine Cable Company, 361 Fruit-bearing trees, 344-349 Fruit trees and timber, 338-350 Gage, Hon. Lyman J., order in relation to currency, 195; report in relation to visit to General Gomez, 390-407 Garcia, Dr., invented "cold box" in yellow fever, 118 Garcia, General, 204, 401, 408 Genuineness of Cuban tobacco, protection and guarantee of, 310 Geological formation of Havana, 167 German sugar, average cost of production of, 288; export price, 288 Gibara, population, 123; description, 137; shipments of bananas, 345 Gibara-Holguin Railway, 355 Gibara or Mayari tobacco, 305 Gold and silver, 325, 326 Gold coins, value of, 23 Gollan, British Consul-General at Havana, estimate of factory cost of sugar, 285 Gomez, General José Miguel, 204 Gomez, General Maximo, sympathy with United States, 16; letter from, 17; visit to, 390-407; letter from General Brooke, 392; memorandum regarding distribution of funds for relief of army, 398; cable from Secretary Hay, 406; personality of, 407, 408 Gomez de Avellanda, Dona Gertrudis, birthplace of, 129 Gould, Hon. Charles W., 249 Gould, E. Sherman, article on "Commercial relations between Cuba and the United States," 274-280 Granadillo wood, 341 Grasses, 332 Greene, General F. R., report on condition of Havana, 160-163, 172-175, 177, 182, 186 Grifa, district of, 307 Guama iron mines, 322 Guana, population, 123 Guanabacoa, sanitary condition, 120; population, 123; description, 134, 152; high death-rates, 166 _Guanabana_, 347 Guanajay, population, 123; description, 133 Guanajayabo, population, 123 Guane, district of, 307 Guane, town of, population, 124 Guano palm, 339 Guantanamo, sanitary condition, 119; population, 123; description, 137 Guantanamo Railway, 355 _Guarda Civil_, 173 Guaurabo River, 127 Guido, steamer, 367 Güines, sanitary condition, 120; population, 123; description, 134 Guira, population, 123 Guira de Melena, population, 123 Hanabanilla River, 114 Hanna, Lieutenant, 393 Harbour of Havana, cleansing of, 168 Harbours of Cuba, 358 Hard woods, varieties, 341 Hatillo manganese mines, 324 Havana, possibilities of, 3; sanitary condition, 109-113; population, 123; chapter on, 139-153; commercial importance, 140; history, 140; harbour, 141; churches, 142; parks, 143; street railways, 143; sewerage, 144; water supply, 144; telephone system, 144; fire department, 145; death-rate, 145, 154; commerce, 145; education, 146-151; hotels, 151; theatres, 152; suburbs, 152; weather observations, 152; municipal problems, 172-189 Havana Commercial Company, 306 Havana province, area and population, 122; tobacco production of, 304 _Havana_, steamer, 367 Hay, Hon. John, cable to General Gomez, 406 Hecker, Colonel, 343 Henequin, 332 Henry Clay and Bock Company Limited, 306, 307 Heredia, José Maria, birthplace of, 129 Hill, Mr. G. Everett, report on sanitary condition of Havana, 154-158, 160 Hill, Robert T., on population, 101-105 Hogs, 337 Holguin, population, 123; description, 137 Home consumption of tobacco, 312 Horses, 336 Hospitality, 98 Immigration, promotion of, necessary to reconstruction of tobacco industry, 309 Imports and exports, 1886-97, receipts from, by custom-house districts, average, 219 Imports from United States, agricultural products, 330 Imports of merchandise, value of in 1895, 214; value of by tariff classes, for 1895-96, 217 Indigo plant, 332 Industrial Bank, 198 Industrial School, 381-388 Ingleterra Hotel of Havana, 152 Insurgent troops, disposal of, 89; payment of, 204-210; 390-407 Internal revenue, receipts from taxes (table), 254 Internal revenue taxes, collection of, 203 Internal taxes, 248-255 International Ocean Telegraph Company, 361 Iron ore, production of in Santiago, 321 Iron-ore mining, when begun, 318; history, 318-321; mining properties, 322 Islands of Cuba, 138 Isle of Pines, description, 138; gold and silver, 325; production of pineapples, 348 Izquierdo, Colonel Luis Ramos, 285 Izquierdo, José M., in regard to street-sweeping contracts, 112, 113 Jagua, bay of, 127 Jaguey wood, 342 Jamaica, English in, 47, 61 Jamaica, revenue, 55, 56; expenditures, 57; roads, 58, 59; tariff, 59, 60 Jamaica negro, value as labourer, 84 Jaruco, population, 123; description, 134 "Jerked beef," 335, 336 Jesus del Monte, 152; salubrity and altitude, 167 Jibacoa, population, 124 Jicota River, 114 Jiguani, population, 124; description, 137 Jique wood, 341 Johnston, Dr. James, 47 Jovellanos, population, 123; description, 135 Jover, Dr. Antonio, 194, 195 Jucaro Morón Railway, 355 Juragua Group iron mines, 322 Juragua Iron Company, 319-322, 356 Keys, 138 La Boca (_See_ La Isabela), population, 124 La Cienaga of Havana, 152 La Cruces, population, 123; description, 135 La Esperanza, population, 123 La Estrella of Santiago, 130 La Isabela, population, 123; seaport of Sagua, 131; description, 135 La Plaza of Batabano, 133 La Socapa of Santiago, 130 La Vija, 127 Labour, outlook for, 73-89; increased demand for, 86; for mining, 323; opportunities for, 412, 413 Lagunillas, population, 124 Lakes, 360 Lampton. W. J., 139 Land and professional taxes, 248 Lane, Ralph, discovery of tobacco, 302 Lanuza, Dr. José Gonzales, 204 Las Casas, 140 Las Tunas Railway, 355 Lastres, Dr. Joaquin, on University of Havana, 378-381 Lead, 326 Lee, General, 405 Lemons, 346 Lengua de vaca, 332 Lighthouses, 360 Lignum vitæ, 341 Limonar, population, 124 Llave del Nuevo Mundo, 140 Logan, Major John A., 394 Los Tres Reyes of Havana, 141 Louvre Hotel of Havana, 152 Ludlow, General, 144, 172, 174 McCullough, ex-chief of police of New York, 174 McKinley, President, 43; order in regard to currency, 196; cable from General Gomez, 402, 403 McKinley Tariff law, reciprocity of, 273 Macagua, population, 123; description, 135 Maceo, General, inaugurated revolution, 137, 408 Macio manganese mines, 324 Macurijes, population, 123 Madalena iron mines, 322 Madruga, population, 124; description, 134 Mahogany, 339, 341; shipments to United States, 340 Majagua wood, 341 Mamey, 346 Managua, population, 124 Manganese, 323, 324; mines, list of, 324 Mangar, population, 124 Manicaragua district, silver in, 326 Mantua, population, 124 Manufacture of tobacco; importance and prospects, 313; number of workmen employed in Havana, 313; decrease, 314 Manufactures under Spanish rule, 29 Manufacturing establishments of tobacco owned by English, French, and German companies, 306 Manzanillo, sanitary condition, 119; population, 123; description, 131; exports of lumber, 132; petroleum in, 328 Marble, 328 Margarita manganese mines, 324 Marianao, sanitary condition, 120; population, 124; description, 134, 152 Marianao Railway, 355 Mariel, population, 123 Maritime Security Bank, 198 Marti, 408 _Mascotte_, steamer, 371 Matanzas, sanitary condition, 116, 117; population, 123; description, 125 _Matanzas_, steamer, 367 Matanzas Province, area and population, 122 _Matanzas_ Railway, 354 Mayari y Gibara tobacco, 305; production of, estimate, 311 Melena del Sur, population of, 124 Menocal, General, 176, 405 _Mexico_, steamer, 367 Milanes, birthplace of, 129 Mineral Springs of Madruga, 134; of San Antonio de los Banos, 135 Mines and mining, 318-328 Mining properties in Santiago, list of, 322 Moboa wood, 342 Monteagudo, General, 405 Montoro, Marquis Rafael, 91, 211, 212, 214 Moret law, 76, 77 Morion, population, 123 Morro, of Santiago, 130; of Havana, 141 Mules, 336, 337 Municipal problems in Havana, 172-189 Muñoz del Monte, Adolfo, 36; article in _Revista de Agriculture_, 295-299 Munson Steamship Line, 370 Muscovado sugars, cost of, 286, 295 �añigos, 101 Napoleon, French, value of, 23 Nassau, sugar exported from Cuba to, 1897, 294 Natural gas, 328 Navigation, 362-375 Navajas-Jaguey Railway, 354 Navigation policy of United States, 364, 365 Negro, Cuban, characteristics of, 101 _Newport_, steamer, 366 New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, 365; list of steamers, 366, 368; routes, 368; rates, 369 _Niagara_, steamer, 367 Nickel, 328 Nueva Gerona, 138 Nueva Paz, population, 123 Nuevitas, population, 123; description, 136; exports, 136 Oath for police force, 176 Obstacle to Cuban commerce, 269 Officers and soldiers of the Cuban army, number of, 208 Old Dominion Steamship Company, 366 _Olivette_, steamer, 371 Oranges, 345, 346 _Orden Publico_, 173 _Orizaba_, steamer, 366 Pacific Mail Steamship Company, 366 Palma Real, 338 Palmillas, population, 124 Palmira, population, 123 Panupo Iron Company, 324 Parque Central of Havana, 143 Parque de Isabela of Havana, 153 Partagos Company, 306 Partidos leaf, 303, 304 Partido tobacco, production of, estimate, 311 Pasaje Hotel of Havana, 152 Paseo de Carlos III. of Havana, 146 Paseo de Tacon of Havana, 143 Patti, Adelina, first appearance, 129 Payment of insurgent soldiers, 204, 210; suggestions in relation to, 391, 392 Peace Commission, 258 Pelaez, Philip, 264 Pepper, Charles M., on negroes of Cuba, 105-107; in regard to timber and lumber in Cuba, 343; on education, 377, 378 Perez de Montes de Oca, Dona Luisa, birthplace of, 129 Perna, Dr. Luis, on tuberculosis, 115, 116 Petroleum, 328 Philip I., 281 Pinar del Rio, sanitary condition, 119; population, 123; description, 132 Pinar del Rio Province, area and population, 122; tobacco production, 304, 307; grasses of, 332 Pinar del Rio (River of Pines), 338 Pineapple, export of, 348 Placido, 129 Plant Line, 371 Playa de Marianao of Havana, 152 Plaza de Armas of Havana, 153 Policy of United States toward Cuba, 15 Political condition at time of signing of protocol, August 12, 1898, 1-13 Political future of Cuba, 32-46 Ponupo Mining and Transportation Company, 356 Population, 90-107; 1774-1899 (table), 92; estimated, 93; total census, 1887, 94; by colour, 94; density of, 94; by sex, 95, 96; census, 1877, 96; of cities and towns (table), 123 Portillo manganese mines, 324 Port regulations, amended 371-374 Potatoes, 330 Poultry, 337 Prado of Havana, 143, 153 Price of sugar, average, 298 Proctor, Hon. R., 405 Production of iron ore in province of Santiago (table), 321 Prohibition of importing and reimporting all tobacco should be maintained, 316 Providencia iron mines, 322 Provinces, population and area, 122, 123 Public money for education, 388 Public works needed in Havana, 176 Puerto Principe, sanitary condition, 117; population, 123; description, 126 Puerto Principe, street railways in, 353 Puerto Principe and Nuevitas Railway, 355 Puerto Principe Province, area and population, 122; tobacco production of, 305; iron ore in, 322; silver in, 326 Puertos Grandes, suburb of Havana, 152 Quemado manganese mines, 324 Quemados de Guines, population, 123 Quesada, Señor Gonzalo de, 204, 393, 408 Quicksilver, 328 Quivican, population, 123 Railroads, steam, 354-358 Railways of Western Cuba, traffic and fiscal statement, 359 Railway supplies, obtained from United States, 280 Railway system, under Spanish rule, 30 Rainfall of Havana, 164 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 302 Ramas manganese mines, 324 Ramsden, Frederick W., on coal, 326 Rancho Velez, population, 124 Ranchuelo, population, 123 Rates, New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, 369 Rations, farm labourers', 81 Rebellion of 1895-98, effect of, on sugar industry, 282 Receipts and expenditures of the Budget of the Island of Cuba for 1898-99 (table), 211 Reciprocity, British Consul-General at Havana on, 273, 274 Reconstruction of tobacco industry, what is necessary for, 308-310 Red Telefonica de la Habana, 144, 361 Regla, population, 123; description, 134, 141, 152 Regla and Guanabacoa Railway, 355 Regulations for labourers, 81, 82 Relative importance of sugar-producing countries of the world, 301 Religion, 388, 389 Religion and education, 376-389 Remates, district of, 307 Remedios, population, 123; description, 135 Remedios leaf, 305 Remedios tobacco, production of, estimate, 311 Revenue, customs tariff, 211-220 Revenue, how spent, 256-266 Revenue of Cuba, internal taxes, 248-255 Revenue of Havana, 183, 184 Revenue of Jamaica, 55, 56 _Revista de Agriculture_, article by Adolfo Muñoz del Monte, 295-299 Rivers, 360 Roads, waggon, 351-353 Roads in Jamaica, 58, 59 Roble amarillo wood, 341 Roble blanco wood, 341 Rodriguez, General, sympathy with United States, 16 Roque, population, 124 Rosewood, 342 Routes of New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, 368 Royal Commission, report on condition of West Indies, 52, 53 Rubens, Horatio S., 204 Rural police, establishment of corps of, necessary to reconstruction of tobacco industry, 309, 310 Rural real estate, face value of tax receipts on, 1886-98, 252; actual amount collected, 253 Sabalo, district of, 307 Sabanilla and Maroto Railway, 356 Sabanilla del Encomendador, population, 123 Sagua de Tanamo, population, 124 Sagua la Grande, population, 123; description, 131 Sagua la Grande Railway, 354 Salaries paid Cuban and United States armies per month, 209 Salud, population, 124 Sampson, Admiral, 149 Sancti Spiritu, population, 123; description, 135 San Andres manganese mines, 324 San Antonio de Cabezas, population, 124 San Antonio de las Vegas, population, 124 San Antonio de los Banos, population 123; description, 135 San Antonio de Rio Blanco del Norte, population, 124 San Cayetano and Vinales Railway, 355 San Cristobal, population, 123; description, 133 San Cristobal de la Habana (_see_ Havana) San Diego de los Banos, description, 133 San Diego del Valle, population, 124 San Felipe, population, 123 San Jose Bank, 198 San Jose de las Lajas, population, 123 San Jose de los Remos, population, 124 San Juan de las Yeras, population, 123 San Juan manganese mines, 324 San Juan y Martinez, population, 123 San Luis, population, 123 San Maestro range, 323, 324 San Matias de Rio Blanco, population, 124 San Miguel, population, 124 San Nicolas, population, 124 San Vincente mineral springs, 133 Sanguily, Colonel Manuel, 204 Sanitary conditions, rural, 121 Sanitary report of Colonel Waring, 154-171 Sanitary work in Cuba, 108-121 Santa Ana, population, 124 Santa Clara, sanitary condition, 120; population, 123; description, 128 Santa Clara Province, area and population, 122; tobacco production of, 304, 305; iron ore in, 322; silver in, 326; asphaltum, 327 Santa Cruz, population, 123 Santa Cruz del Sur, population, 124 Santa Domingo, population, 123 Santa Fe, 138 Santa Filomena manganese mines, 324 Santa Isabel, population, 123; description, 136 Santa Maria del Rosario, population, 124 Santiago, Americans in, 62-72; Custom-House receipts, estimate of, 71 Santiago, Chamber of Commerce, memorial to President, 192 Santiago, iron mines near, 319 Santiago, sanitary condition, 117; population, 123; description, 128; fortifications, 130 Santiago de las Vegas, population, 123 Santiago Province, area, 122; population, 123; tobacco production of, 305; manganese in, 323; copper in, 325; silver in, 326; lead in, 326 Santo Domingo, Church of, Havana, 152 Santo Espiritu (_see_ Sancti Spiritu) _Sapotilla_, 347 _Sapotes_, 345 Savings banks in Cuba, 199 School of Arts and Trades, 382 Schuman, Mr., 192 _Scribner's Magazine_, article Hon. Jos. Chamberlain, 48 _Seguranca_, steamer, 366 _Semilleros_ (planting beds), 305 _Seneca_, steamer, 366 Sevilla iron mines, 322 Sheep, 337 Siboney, 322 Sierra Maestre range, iron mines in, 319, 323, 324 Sigua Bay, 320 Sigua Iron Company, 319-322 Silver, Spanish, value of, 24 Slave-trade, horrors of, 74 Smith Key of Santiago, 130 Sores, Jacob, 141 South-eastern _Calzada_, 352 Southern _Calzada_, 352 South-western _Calzada_, 352 Spain, sugar exported from Cuba to, 1893-97, 294 Spain's policy toward Cuba in relation to commerce, 272 Spanish-American Iron Company, 319-322 Spanish army, mortality, 1897 (table), 165 Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, 198, 199; branches of, 251 Spanish imports into Cuba, 1896 (table), 270, 271 Spanish peasants, value as labourers, 78 Steam railroads, 354-358 Steamers of Compania Transatlantica Español, 369, 370 Steamers of New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, list of, 366 _S. S. Admiral Sampson_, 47 Sternberg, Surgeon-General, 111 Stock, 329-337 Strawberry, 348 Street railways, 353 Streets of Havana, paving of, 169 Street-sweeping contracts, J. M. Yzquierdo in regard to, 112, 113 Sugar, production of, 1869-98 (table), 292; 1879-98 (table), 293; prices of, 293; local consumption, 1893-97, 294; distribution of crops, 1893-97, 294; classes made during thirty years before 1884, 295; left in store December 1, 1897, 295; history and future outlook, 281-301; total production of the world (table), 300; producing countries of the world, relative importance of, 301; beet, competition of, 293 Sugar, beet and cane, total production in 1893-94, 283 Surgirdero of Batabano, 133 Tacon market, 162 Tacon Theatre of Havana, 152 Tapaste, population, 124 Tariff, amended, how framed, 216; amended official rates, 221-247 Tariff of Jamaica, 59, 60 Tariff, Spanish, actuating principle of, 18 Tariff, Spanish, 215 Tax receipts delivered for collection to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba (tables), 201, 202 Tax receipts handed to Spanish Bank for collection, 1886-98, face value of (table), 252 Taxes in Cuba, classification, 212 Taxes collected during 1894-95, by provinces, per cent., 250 Taxes collected by the Spanish Bank, 1886-93, actual amount of (table), 253 Taxes and Imposts (table), 248 Taxes, minor, face value of receipts, 252; actual amount collected 1886-98, 253 Taxes other than customs duties, statement of José Anton Alcala, chief of tax bureau of Spanish Bank, 24 Taxes on professions, trades, etc., 1886-98, face value of receipts on, 252; actual amount collected, 1886-98, 253 Taylor, A. H., 169 Telegraph lines, 360, 361 Telephones, 361 Temperature of Havana, 164 Theoretical sugar contents of 100 pounds cane, 286 Timber and fruit trees, 338-350 Tobacco, 302-316 Tobacco, exports of, percentage shipped by Havana, 306; decrease in shipments to United States in 1897, 307 Tobacco, United States imports, from Cuba, 312 Tobacco, history of cultivation, 302, 303 Tobacco, leaf, exportation of, increase, 314 Tobacco manufacturing companies, list of, 306 Tobacco manufactories of Havana, 145 Tobacco production, report by provinces, grade, amount consumed, and amount exported, 304, 305; in eastern provinces, estimate, 311; in Havana Province, estimate, 311; in Pinar del Rio, estimate, 311; in Las Villas Sta. Clara, estimate, 311; in normal times, by provinces, estimate, 311; of the world, average (table), 316 Tobacco raising, methods of, 305, 306 Tobacco, yield per acre, 306; number of persons engaged in cultivating, 306 Todd, J. White, on labour, 413 Tonnage of Havana, foreign, 371 Tonnage of Havana and other ports, 358 Total delinquent taxes, 202 Trade of Cuban ports, 218 Traffic of railways of Western Cuba, 359 Tramways of Havana, 176, 177 Transportation, 351, 361 Treaty of Vienna, 73 Trelles, Modesto, statement in regard to "jerked beef," 335, 336 Trinidad, cost of Muscovado sugars at, 286 Trinidad, population, 123; description, 127; exports, 128 Tunas de Zaza, population, 124; description, 136; exports, 136 Union Bridge Company of New York, 276 United Railways Company, 354 United Railways of Havana and Regla Warehouse, Ld., traffic and fiscal statement (table), 359 United States, sugar exported from Cuba to, 1893-97, 294 University of Havana, 148, 378, 381 Uplands, climate of, 121 Upmann & Company, H., 306 Uvera and Jaqueca iron mines, 322 Values of sugar in Cuba, on what dependent, 289 Van Leer, Major, 343 Vegetables, 331 Velasquez, Diego, 127, 129, 140 Vereda Nueva, population, 124 Vienna, treaty of, 73 _Vigilancia_, steamer, 366 Villalon, Colonel José Ramon, 204, 206; regarding payment of army, 391, 392 Vinales, population, 124; description, 133 _Volante_, 353 Vuelta Abajo, tobacco district, 132 Vuelta Abajo tobacco, production of, e stimate, 303, 304, 308, 310-313, 315 Wages, farm labourers', 80, 81, 85 Waggon roads, 351-353 War, causes of, 7, 8 War debt, 257, 259 Ward, James E., 365, 366 "Ward Line," 365 Waring, Colonel George E., 144; sanitary report, 154-171 Water supply of Havana, 156, 177-179 Western _Calzada_, 352 Western Railway, 354 Western Railways of Havana, Ld., 276; traffic and fiscal statement (table), 359 West India and Panama Telegraph Company, 361 Willet & Gray, Messrs., total sugar production of the world (year 1895), (table), 299, 300 Wood, Major-General Leonard, 63-66, 68, 69, 392, 399, 408 Wyman, Dr., 111 Ximeno, Mr. Albert de, 393 Yaba wood, 342 _Yagua_, 338 Yarey palm, 339 Yellow fever commission, Havana, extracts from report of, 164-171 Yuca, 331 _Yucatan_, steamer, 366 Yumuri River, 125; cañon of, 126 _Yumuri_, steamer, 366, 367 Yzquierdo, José M., on street-sweeping contracts, 112 Zanjon, peace of, 8, 76 Zapote, 348 Zaza Railway, 355 * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: Banco Espanol de la Isla de Cuba=> Banco Español de la Isla de Cuba {pg 22} deadly miasms=> deadly miasmas {pg 121} neither chiselled, carved, inalid=> neither chiselled, carved, inlaid {pg 239} better know abroad=> better known abroad {pg 339} for fancy varietes=> for fancy varieties {pg 339} Wisconsin or Pennyslvania=> Wisconsin or Pennsylvania {pg 343} Compania Transatlantica Español=> Companía Transatlántica Español {pg 369} (_f_) The tonnage tax on entries=> (_e_) The tonnage tax on entries {pg 373} Yumuri River, 125; canon of, 126=> Yumuri River, 125; cañon of, 126 {index} Yzquierdo, Jose M., on street-sweeping contracts, 112=> Yzquierdo, José M., on street-sweeping contracts, 112 {index} FOOTNOTES: [1] The following shows the precise value of both the Spanish Alfonsino and the French Napoleon, with the inflated value. It also shows the cost of Spanish silver in Havana in September, 1898. These facts are necessary to a complete view of the subject of Cuban currency: STATEMENT SHOWING VALUE OF UNITED STATES GOLD IN COMPARISON WITH SPANISH AND FRENCH GOLD AT ACTUAL LEGAL-TENDER VALUE Spanish Alfonsino $5.30 French Napoleon 4.24 Spanish Alfonsino, value in Havana $5.30 Value in United States mint ($4.80 less shipping expenses) 4.776 ------ $0.524 Exchange 10-31/32% French Napoleon, value in Havana $4.24 Value in United States mint ($3.84 less shipping expenses) 3.8208 ------- $0.4192 Exchange 10-31/32% Value of $5, less 1/2% shipping expenses $4.975. At 10-31/32% .....$5.53 [2] Taking into account the weight of gold contained in the United States gold ten-dollar piece and in the Spanish Alfonsino or centen (5.30 Cuban dollars), the value of the American eagle is exactly 10.9875 Cuban dollars, or practically 11 Cuban dollars. There is a shade of difference, namely, $5.53, which would equal $11.06, for the American eagle in the estimate given in the former footnote, but the exchange is included in the calculation. As the matter now stands in Cuba, a ten-dollar American gold piece is worth 11 Spanish dollars in gold. [3] In this year there was no expenditure for this purpose. [4] Includes Market Dues and Pounds. [5] In this year there was no expenditure for these purposes. [6] Half-year. [7] A cable despatch to the New York _Sun_, dated Santiago, December 19th, a week after the author left Santiago, contains the information that General Wood has now completed his scheme of local taxation, and that the local machinery will soon be in running order. The despatch says: "A committee of the Chamber of Commerce met General Wood at the palace to-day and agreed to accept the scheme of municipal taxation arranged by the committee of American officers and Cubans. The scheme in operation the first year will yield annually $240,000, or sixty per cent. under the Spanish schedule. It is not retroactive. General Wood decided to-day, after consultation, that it will be impossible to make many merchants pay the back tax without litigation. The city loses nearly $100,000 by the ruling." [8] The amended Cuban tariff, prepared under the direction of the author of this book, went into force in all ports in Cuba, January 1, 1899. Elsewhere in the present volume will be found an epitome of the tariff, and also of the other forms of Cuban taxation. [9] Barracones are the buildings occupied by the working people. [10] Batey is the space occupied by the buildings. [11] A caballeria contains 324 cordeles or 33-1/3 acres. [12] An arroba is twenty-five pounds. [13] It is not certain that the remains of Columbus were in this Cathedral at the time of the supposed removal that lately took place; there are strong reasons to believe that his body is still at San Domingo. [14] In Cuba you must use stamped paper in writing to government officials. The higher the official, the more expensive the stamped paper to be used, and as only a certain number of words are allowed per sheet, correspondence with those in authority may become expensive. [15] The two hurricanes of October, 1870, were the cause of the short crop of 1871. [16] Since this chapter was written an American syndicate known as the Havana Commercial Co. has been formed. This company has absorbed some fourteen factories in Cuba. [17] Complete figures not obtainable. [18] Including the Regla Warehouses. [19] Since this chapter was written these charges have been extended to all Cuban ports. [20] See Chapter XIV. [21] The estimate of the Cuban Commission, as given to Commissioner Porter, aggregated, for commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates, 45,031 men, which, at 100 silver dollars each at the value established by order of the President (60 of U. S.), would aggregate 2,701,860 U. S. dollars, or nearly $300,000 less than the amount appropriated by Congress. 
46418	----	[Illustration: FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE BY PEDRO MELENDEZ, SEPTEMBER 8, 1565.] PETALS PLUCKED FROM SUNNY CLIMES. BY SILVIA SUNSHINE. With Illustrations. NASHVILLE, TENN.: SOUTHERN METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 1880. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by THE AUTHOR, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. [Illustration: text decoration] INTRODUCTORY NOTE. This book contains a brief account of the early settlement of Florida, and some of its Indian conflicts, together with many amusing incidents connected with its present history; also a new illustration, prepared expressly for this work--the whole being a collection of travels, and what is to be seen in various portions of Florida, Key West, and Cuba; with a Gazetteer and Florida Guide-book attached, designed for the use of tourists and settlers. [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] PREFACE. Writing, like other employments, furnishes a reward to those who are fond of it--elevates the mind to a higher and happier state of enjoyment than merely grasping for earthly treasure, a desire to discover something beautiful in our surroundings, a nobility of character in mankind, a grandeur in all God's works. My travels, both in Florida and Cuba, when not suffering from sickness, were an uninterrupted source of pleasure and entertainment, made thus by the smiles of friendship, intercourse among kind-hearted people, combined with the luscious fruits and delightful scenery by which I was almost constantly surrounded. In arranging the historical portion of this work, I have endeavored to sift conflicting events, at all times retaining those which were the most tangible, and rejecting many which have been received by superficial observers as consistent truths. I shall feel amply rewarded if any sad, sensitive heart, wounded in life's struggles, is cheered even for awhile in perusing these pages, or the consumptive invalid entertained with a pleasanter potion than his cod-liver and gloomy forebodings of future ill. [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.....17 Adieu to Atlanta and arrival in Macon--Early settlement of Savannah by General Oglethorpe--Met by the Yamacraw Indians with presents--Death of Count Pulaski--Bonaventure Cemetery--The inland route to Florida--Pass St. Simon's Island--Wesley visits Frederica to establish his faith--Cumberland Island, the home of Nathanael Greene--Olives--The scuppernong vine--Dungenness, the burial-place of Light-Horse Harry Lee--General Robert E. Lee visits the grave of his father--Amelia Island--Taken by filibusters--Their surrender--Fine beach and light-house--The turtle--Sea-shells--God's treasures--A resting-place for the weary. CHAPTER II.....28 Fate of the Spanish galleons--St. John's Bar and River--General remarks on Florida--Lumber-mills--Jacksonville--Grumblers--The invalid--Churches--Dr. Stowe preaches in the Methodist church--Mrs. Harriet Stowe goes to sleep--Sermon by a colored brudder--Journalism--Moncrief Springs--The invincibility of boarding-housekeepers--The cemetery--Too much delay with invalids before coming to Florida. CHAPTER III.....46 Jacksonville Agricultural Association, and its advantages--Exhibits of wine, perfume, and fruits--Industries of the ladies--Yachts--General Spinner--Steamer Dictator--Nimbus on the river--Mandarin--Employment of its inhabitants--Murder of Mr. Hartley by Indians--Weariness of war by the settlers--Fanciful names given to towns--Hibernia and Magnolia--Green Cove Springs--Fort at Picolata--Pilatka--Putnam House--The _Herald_, edited by Alligator Pratt--Colonel Harte's orange-grove--The Catholic Bishop as sexton--Ocklawaha River. CHAPTER IV.....55 No fossilized Spaniards on the Ocklawaha--Scenery on its banks--Thick growth of timber--Passengers amuse themselves killing alligators--Climbing asters--Air-plants--Water-lily--An affectionate meeting at Orange Springs--The deaf lady--Pleasure-riding in a cracker-cart--Northern and Southern crackers--March of improvement--Make fast!--Wooding up--Passengers take a walk--Night on the water--Surrounded by thickets--Our flame-lit craft moves on with its pillar of fire--Who!--Plutonic regions--Pyrotechnic displays. CHAPTER V.....69 Incident as we enter Silver Springs--A gentleman loses his grinders--The Mirror of Diana--Sunset--A beautiful legend of the Princess Weenonah--A scientific description by Prof. J. Le Conte--Vicinity of the springs--Improvements--Description of Ocala--Impressions of DeSoto--Public Square--Contented, hospitable people--Marion county the back-bone of the State--Matt. Driggers and his neighbors go on a mastodon hunt--Lakes and long prairie-grass above Silver Springs--The man who wanted a sheriff to marry him--Leesburg and its improvements--A dredging-boat mistaken for a cook-stove--Indian trails--Historic relics--Lake Dunham--Okahumkee--The Ocklawaha historic ground. CHAPTER VI.....90 Florida during the Indian war--Cumbersome movements of the troops--Cause of the war--Treaty of Payne's Landing--Birthplace of Osceola--Lives with his mother in Okefinokee Swamp--Afterward in the Big Swamp--Osceola expresses opposition to the "treaty"--Jumper unwilling to go West--Charlie Emaltha--Plea for remaining--Indian poetry--Appearance of Osceola--Hostility toward the survey force--Does not favor immigrating--Decision of Micanopy--Osceola in irons at Fort King--Sullen, then penitent--First hostile demonstration from the Indians--Murder of Private Dalton--Killing of Charlie Emaltha--Osceola seeks revenge in the assassination of General Thompson--Dade Massacre--Micanopy fires the first gun--More than one hundred whites killed--Depredations of daily occurrence--Battle of Withlacoochee--Captain Ellis, of Gainesville--Capture of Osceola by General Jessup--Imprisoned first in Fort Marion, afterward sent to Fort Moultrie--His death--Chechotar, his wife--Poetry by a friend--Sisters of Osceola now living in the West. CHAPTER VII.....105 Shores of the upper St. John's, where various kinds of timber grow, and bony stock range--Mounds and their contents--Their obscure origin--The chasm not yet bridged--Belief in the immortality of the soul--The mounds a shrine--Conduct of the Spanish invaders--Ancestral veneration--Articles for use deposited with the body--Unanswered questions--History of mound-building in its infancy--Found in Europe--Uses of mounds--Monumental mounds--The mystery shrouding their structure--Intrusive burial--The growth on Florida mounds, and the distinguishable feature of mound-builders--Mound near New Smyrna--Mounds in South Florida--The large one at Cedar Keys--Mounds for sacrifice--Description of a victim--Pyramid of Cholula--Mexican teocalli--Pyramids for kings--Mounts of ordinance--Sacred fires--Indians worshiped "high places"--The temple at Espiritu Santo--Residence of King Philip--Lake Jessup mound--Copper weapons--Indians worship the sun and moon--Burial urns--Pearls a heavenly product--The Indian empress a prisoner--Manufacture of beads from conch-shells--Pearls of no value found on the coast of Florida--Who were these architects?--A veil obscures our vision in trying to discover the engineers of these mounds--The key never found--_Tumuli_, mounds, and plateaus, all objects of interest. CHAPTER VIII.....121 A description of the animals and birds seen on the St. John's a century since--Lovely landscape--The happy family--Lake George--Enterprise--Mellouville--Sulphur Springs--Lake Harney and Salt Lake--Indian River--Settlers discouraged on account of the Indians--An order for blood-hounds--Battle of Caloosahatchee--Famished soldiers, and fidelity of the dog--Big Cypress Swamp--Locality of the chiefs--What the Indians cultivate--Their babies never cry--The Prophet, and his influence as a medicine man--Wild Cat in command of Fort Mellon--Speech of Sam Jones--Hanging of Chekika--Major Belknap takes his command into the Big Cypress--Country developed by war--Indian River after the war the sportsman's heaven--Game, oysters, and fish--Scientific theory on the formation of coquina--Fine products of the Indian River country--A resort for consumptives--Camp-cooking--Soothing influences from the surroundings--Coming down the St. John's--The sick man--Stewardess and "'gaitors"--Curious people with curious things--The chameleon--The fawn--The crane--The bug-hunter and his treasures--The many old people in Florida--The sportsman. CHAPTER IX.....139 Stop at Tocoi for St. Augustine--Scenery along the route--Stage-contractor's notice--Murder of Dr. Weedman--Cloth houses--Two mail-carriers murdered--The blood-hounds--Mr. Francis Medicis and four others shot--Remarks by a resident on witnessing the scene--Wild Cat the leader of this atrocity--The theatricals fill their engagement--Coacoochee admires himself in the glass, also one of General Hernandez's beautiful daughters--His capture and escape--His twin sister and her pearls--Returns, dressed in theatricals, for a parley with the whites--Starts West, and dies on the way. CHAPTER X.....154 St. Augustine described in rhyme--The old Spaniards--A place for stimulus of thought--Treachery of legends--Early settlers lured by tales of wealth--Historical antiquity--Astonished Seloes--Capture by Sir Francis Drake--St. Augustine, 1764--French privateers--Rory McIntosh the Don Quixote of the times--American flag raised in 1821--Freedom to worship God--St. Augustine archives--Dr. McWhir the founder of Presbyterianism in Florida--Appearance in 1834--The frost--Every thing shrouded in a kind of tradition--Fromajardis, or Garden Feast--Matanzas River--Nuns--Escribanio, or St. Mary's Convent--The ancient city sleeps all summer--The dear old folks from their Northern homes, and the young ones too--Curiosities--Crafts of all kinds--Gayety of the winter--Remarkable memory of the natives--Peaceful days--No welcome for adventurers--St. Augustine supposed to have been the residence of the Peri--Expressing an unfavorable opinion about Florida not popular here. CHAPTER XI.....173 The cathedral--Regular attendance of its worshipers--Harsh tones of the church chime--Early mass--Cathedral finished in 1793--Material employed--Moorish belfry--Irreverent visitors--Religion of the natives a part of their existence--The bishop regarded as a vicegerent--Mistaken conclusions of outsiders--Peculiar frescoes representing death--Christmas Eve--Ceremonial conducted by Bishop Verot--Administration of the sacrament--Tolemato Cemetery--Its custodian--Murder of Father Corpa by the Indians--Chapel dedicated to Father Varela--Tablet-inscriptions erased by time--A medallion supposed to have been worn by Father Corpa, which was brought from Rome. CHAPTER XII.....183 Castle San Marco--Indestructibility of the material employed--Commenced in 1565--Completed by Montiano, 1756, with the aid of Mexican convicts--Attacked by Oglethorpe--Appearance in 1740--Improper change of names--Description of Fort Marion--Its resemblance to Scott's Garde Douloreuse--The chapel and its holy mysteries--Iron cages--Caving in of the bastion--No cages sent to the Smithsonian Institute--The wooden machine--The old sergeant--Human bones not unusual in other ruins--Spaniards branded with the cruelties of the Inquisition--True version of the iron cages from Señor B. Oliveros--No nation exempt from cruelties during some period of their history--The Western Indians retained as hostages in the fort. CHAPTER XIII.....198 The sea-wall--when commenced--Material employed--Boulevard of the city--City gates and vandal visitors--Tapoquoi village--Murder of Father Rodriguez--La Sylphide rose--Fine pulpit talent--Sabbath in January--The Presbyterian Church--Flowers from the gardens of Messrs. Alexander and Atwood--Gushing young men--Dr. Daniel F. March and his words of comfort--A description of the Episcopal church--A curious question about disputed grounds--Dr. Root, the clergyman--A peculiar man and his dog, that walked into the church from habit--St. Augustine a restorer to both health and reason--Public reading-room--Circulating library--What shall we eat?--Ships constantly coming in with supplies--Fresh vegetables--Oranges--Hotels and fine boarding-houses--Growlers--Gratuitous hospitality now obsolete--The most eligible houses--Summer resort--Pleasant people found by the sea. CHAPTER XIV.....214 How they spend their time in the ancient city--A slight departure into history--Different kinds of visitors--Grand opening of the Lunch-basket on the North Beach--Music and moonlight on the water--The Indian buffalo-hunt near the old fort--Dancing inside by the Indian prisoners--Preparation for a gala day, March, 1877--Post-band--Yacht-race--A jockey-race--The hurdle--A foot-race by the Indians--Wheelbarrow contest--Victor and greenbacks--Ham and money--The cat a musical animal--St. Augustine Hotel, where music is made from their sinews. CHAPTER XV.....224 Longevity in St. Augustine--Manufacture of orange marmalade and wine--"El Pavo Real"--Genovar & Brother, wine-makers--Visitors leaving--A page from unwritten history--Tolling the bells for the pope--Grand illumination by the Yacht Club--The _ignes-fatui_ boats--String-band and dancing--Capricious weather a comfort to growlers--A change to balmy air and waving palms--The Indians leave--They have no use for Government clothes on the plains--Mrs. Black Horse and Mochi dressed in hats and plumes--The Indians leave their Moody & Sankey song-books--A picture written letter from the squaw of Minimic--These Indians differ from novel-writer characters--The strain of civilization during their stay being too great they mutiny, headed by White Horse--A squad of soldiers from the barracks search and iron four of them--Fort closed to visitors--They pine for home, the aristocracy of their nature scorning restraint--Money made by polishing sea-beans, etc.--Description of St. Anastasia Island--Ponies feeding on marsh-grass--Attack of General Oglethorpe in 1740--The old light-house built by the Spanish, and used as a fortress--Fresh water in mid-ocean caused from lime-sinks--Treaty of Fort Moultrie--Origin of the Seminoies. CHAPTER XVI.....235 Burning of the Spanish Governor's son by the Indians over a century since--The Great Spirit as arbiter--Fort Matanzas--Its age, use, present appearance--Entered by an escalade--New Smyrna settled by Dr. Turnbull with his Greek colony--They at first engage in the culture of indigo, which soon fails--Great dissatisfaction among the colonists, who are finally released, and retire to St. Augustine--The Douglass Dummit Plantation--Indian Key Massacre, August 15, 1840--Murmurings of the citizens. CHAPTER XVII.....245 The Everglades Expedition, under Colonel Harney, 1841--Preparations--Spanish Indians--Leave Fort Dallas, arriving at Chitto's Island--The bird flown--Sam Jones's Island, containing villages and pleasure-grounds--The soldiers greatly annoyed by roaches and musquitoes--Prophet's Island--Discovery by Indians--Sergeant Searles mortally wounded--Arrival at New River--Fort Dallas--General appearance and extent of the Everglades--Manilla hemp and the cotton-plant indigenous--Return of Colonel Harney--Grand ovation in St. Augustine--Sorrowful reflection on the situation--Present inhabitants of the Everglades--Old Tiger Tail--Intrenches himself in Mexico as brigand, afterward makes his way to Florida, and becomes chief of the Seminoles--Father Dufau goes to the Everglades as a missionary--"Two squaws no good"--Dress of the Indians--Everglade alligators and moccasins no respecters of persons--Primeval condition of the country, with its trees, birds, and native growth. CHAPTER XVIII.....260 From Jacksonville to Cedar Keys--The Florida Central--Baldwin--Alligators and moccasins--West India Transfer Railroad--Piney Woods--Trail Ridge--Lawtey--Starke--Turpentine distillery--Serenades--Waldo--Alachua county--Hummock-lands and phosphates--The indignant Boston lady--Alachua settled in 1750 by an Indian named Secoffe--Juggs or sinks--Approach to Gainesville--This town named for General E. P. Gaines--Accommodations for visitors--Tillandsia and its uses--Orange Lake the natural home of the orange--Budded trees--Eucalyptus-tree for malarial districts--Information on the subject of lands--Orange City, Arredondo, Albion, and other prospective cities--Bronson--Its good settlers--Otter Creek--"Great Gulf Hummock"--Its tropical growth. CHAPTER XIX.....270 Cedar Keys, the terminus of the West India Transit Railway--Extortion--Dr. McIlvaine's Hotel--Fourth of July toasts, 1843--Steamers from Cedar Keys to Manatee--Early settlement of Clear Water Harbor--The unfortunate Narvaez--Inaccessibility of South Florida--Manatee--Its dwellings embowered among orange trees--Tenacity of contesting Indians--Their independence subdued by association--The cactus pear eaten by Indians--Present population--Church privileges for worship--Schools--Good physicians--Sowing before reaping--Boarding-Houses kept as sanitariums--Pantry supplies--Fine fish--An Elysium for rheumatics--No starving--The grape-culture suggested--Also wine-making--A variety of crops--Sugar-cane ratooning for six years--Old-fashioned bees in gums--This locality a fine resort for those who wish to avoid cold--The sunny-side of nature turned out in February--Oleander and orange-buds bursting their pink and white petals--The banana--Spring flowers, etc.--Zephyr breezes--The rose--"A child of summer"--Historic records--Hon. Judah P. Benjamin--Remains of the mastodon and megatherium. CHAPTER XX.....285 Tampa--Undisturbed slumbers--First settlement by Narvaez--Poor Juan Ortiz!--His vigils among the dead--Espiritu Santo Bay--De Soto and his festive soldiers--Billy Bowlegs--Cedar and pine lumber-mills in Tampa--A school and its teacher--Old Tampa--Uses of the cabbage palm--Fort Brooke--Appeal of General Worth to the vanity of Coacoochee, which finally results in his band being sent West--An invocation to the Great Spirit during a storm. CHAPTER XXI.....296 Marooning from Tampa to Key West--Drum-fish--Loons--Acrobat fleas--Roaches--Bilge-water--The Methodist preacher and his children--Sailor's fare--Landing lady-passengers--Terrasilla Island and its products--Madam Joe--The romantic young couple--Sarasota Bay--Stock-raising--Health--Mangrove thickets--Perpetual verdure--Palmetta houses--Striking for fish--Varied amusements for visitors--Hunting deer--Bugs and butterflies--Egmont Key--Rare shells and a rarer Spiritualist, with his toothless wife--Professor Agassiz--Buccaneers--Jean Lafitte--Sunset at sea--Isles of the sea--Boca Grande--Felippe the Spaniard, and his Indian concubines--Polly goes West for money--Punta Rassa, the terminus of the International Telegraph. CHAPTER XXII.....313 Alone with God and the stars--Phosphorescent waves--Reefs and coral formation--Key West--Cocoa-trees--Chief of the Everglades--Dwellings--Inhabitants--Early settlers--Conchs--Their origin and occupation--Court of Admiralty--Wrecking--The International Telegraph Survey--Public schools--The sisters--Cigar-makers--Reading while working--Monkey-jugs and their use--Cochineal--Sponge and spongers--Fort Taylor and other fortifications--Curiosity-shop--Captain Dixon its Greek keeper. CHAPTER XXIII.....327 Middle Florida and South Georgia--Jealousy between Middle, and East Florida--Good landed titles in Middle Florida--Disappointment the result of overestimation--No spot with every thing desirable--Diseased people tinctured with a sullen melancholy--Lake City--Derivation of the name--The citizens--Style of architecture adapted to the climate--Products--Atmosphere for asthmatics--Monticello--Its people--Former wealth evidenced by the numerous freedmen--Good hotel here--The festive frogs: great variety, some with loud-sounding voices--The "pretty frog" that went to England--The singing-wasp--Tallahassee, where De Soto spends his first winter, 1539--The Spanish soldiers and their armor--Town incorporated, 1825--Corner-stone of the capitol laid, 1826--Situation of Tallahassee--Governor Reed's message, 1840--Blood-hounds and leash-men from Cuba--Two Indians caught by them--Bounties on heads--Indian scare--Only a goat--Indians attack wagons, relieving negroes of their clothing--Former wealth and culture in Tallahassee--Colonel Murat and his mother come to America--Visit the Catholic Bishop, but not in regal style--The neighbors are disappointed in a king's son--Birthplace, home, and early associations of the gifted authoress, Mrs. Mary E. Bryan--Wakulla Spring, with a beautiful description by Bartram--Chattahoochee--State penitentiary--Montgomery and Eufaula route to Florida--Town of Quincy--Mountain-streams with a musical cadence--Cuban tobacco and scuppernong grapes grown here--Stage communication between Quincy and Bainbridge--Cherokee rose-hedges--Bainbridge--Its decline on account of railway communication--Thomasville--Mitchell House--Gulf House--Embowered dwellings--Brisk trade--Newspapers--Female college--Churches--Former wealth of Thomas county--Colored politicians prefer speaking by proxy--No water communication from Thomasville--Wire grass country--Quitman--Home-like hotels--Cotton factory--Valdosta--Pine-trees--Plenty to eat--Valdosta editor--Crowds on public days--Trip on the Gulf road--The light-wood fires an epitome of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment. CHAPTER XXIV.....355 Pensacola musings--Its early settlement and capacious harbor--Origin of the name--The soil contains clay for brick and pottery--Casa Blanca--The city conquered by the Spaniards--Causes for its not competing with other Gulf cities--Description of Fort Barrancas--It is supposed to contain a dungeon--Fort Pickens--Fort St. Michael and Fort St. Bernard--Ten dollars offered for the scalps of colonists--General movements of General Andrew Jackson--Governor Callavea in the calaboose--Description of the old plaza--Present appearance of Pensacola--It contains no fabled fountains--A plank walk on which sailors reel like drunken elephants--Prosperity of the place dependent on the demand for lumber--Commotion on the arrival of a ship--Resinous wood and its light accompaniments--The Indians hated to leave it--Ferdinand Park and its rural scenery--The market-house--The singing fishermen--The proud fishermen with their big fish--An ox-horn announces the sales--Fresh-water wells--Drawers of water lose their vocation--Porpoises--Tropical fruit-culture not very successful here--The washing bayou and its water-nymphs--Florida hunters--The fleet-footed fawn a past record--The yellow-fever visitor--Perdido, or Lost Bay--Escambia Bay--The alligator: her nest, and her young--Churches--Free schools--Catholic schools--Episcopal school, and its founder, Mrs. Dr. Scott. CHAPTER XXV.....378 Leaving Pensacola--Contentment in our moving habitation--A calm--_Physalia utriculus_--A genuine nor'-wester and its accompaniments--A moment of terror--Morning at last--Isle of Pines and its products--Pirates--Water-spouts--Early history of Cuba--The Spaniards burn an Indian--Cienfuegos--The fort on the bay--Cuban houses--Clothing of the children--Cruelty to northern seamen--Mother Carey and her unlucky chickens--The fate of the insurgents, and their numerical strength--"La Purisima Conception"--Neglect of ceremonial duties--The church inside--Its lady-attendants furnish their seats--The slave receives a gentle admonition--The largest plaza on the island--The beautiful señoritas and the band-music. CHAPTER XXVI.....399 Distances from Cienfuegos to Havana--Railroads--Three classes of passenger-cars--Smoking--Rain-drops--Harvest--Lo! the poor ox--Goads--Sugar-cane in bloom--Cattle-herders--The war--Arabian stock of horses--Devastations by the insurgents--Vegetation and variety--Depots and drinking--Flowers--Fences from vegetation--Royal palm and its uses--Slaves gathering palm-fruit--Great variety of growth--Cactus family--Sugar and sugar-makers--Negro slaves and coolies--Their miserable quarters--Chicken-fighting--Inhuman treatment of the poor fowls--Matanzas--A Pentecostal illustration--"English and French spoken"--Dinner and its condiments--Matanzas Bay at night--The tough old tars--Their families on shore--The phosphorescent lights on the water--The plaza and hotel--Our French _valet de chambre_--_Siesta_--My _café_--_El volante_--Up the mountain-side--_El Cueva de Bellamar_, being a remarkable subterranean temple--Stalactites and stalagmites--Names given to the different formations inside the cave--Return to Matanzas. CHAPTER XXVII.....424 From Matanzas to Havana--Buzzards--Description of El Moro Castle, A.D. 1519--Captured, 1619, by Sir George Pocock--El Moro like the Venetian "Bridge of Sighs"--Havana a century since--Its harbor and fleet of ships--Architecture of the houses--Narrow streets--A view from El San Carlos Hotel--Beautiful moonlight on the bay--El Paseo--French coaches--Residence of the Captain-general--Ladies shopping in _volantes_--Market-house--Mules, panniers, etc.--Working-class receive an early supply of grace--No Sabbath here--"Lottera"--Beggars--Description of the cathedral--Bishop--Acolytes--Organ--Tomb of Columbus--Santo Christobal--His life and mission as Christ-bearer--Cemetario de Espeda--Its walls, vaults, tablets, inscriptions--Three bodies for sepulture--The poor without coffins--The Protestant dead not admitted in Catholic grounds--Fragility of promises in Cuba. A Ramble into the Early History of Florida.....439 Florida Gazetteer, etc.....481 Petals Plucked from Sunny Climes. CHAPTER I. A trip to Florida during the winter season is now the popular move for everybody, whether invalid or not, which those living in so close proximity as Atlanta find difficult to resist. Atlanta is a delightful summer resort, situated a thousand feet above sea-level, visited by healthful mountain breezes in summer, besides being blessed with the purest of freestone and chalybeate water in the world. The night passenger train leaves at 10 P.M. for Macon, one hundred and five miles distant. We arrive in Macon about 7 A.M., where, after being fortified with a good breakfast at the Brown House, the train departs for Savannah--Macon being the commencement of the mountain-slope which continues to the sea-shore. Many pleasant little towns are passed through on the route, most of which have never recovered from the devastating effects of the war. Savannah is at last reached, one hundred and ninety-two miles from Macon. To say that Savannah is a pleasant place conveys an indefinite idea of its attractiveness. Many persons stop to remain only a night, but are so much pleased they tarry a month before proceeding further South. The present site of Savannah is where General Oglethorpe was met, in 1733, by the Yamacraw Indians, who, after he had landed, presented him with a buffalo-skin, on the inside of which was painted the plumage of an eagle, accompanied with the following address: "The feathers of the eagle," said the chief, "are soft, and signify love; the buffalo-skin is warm, the emblem of protection; therefore love and protect our families." Oglethorpe, in coming to America, was stimulated with the desire of finding a home for the oppressed Protestants and bankrupt gentlemen of England. Upon the adjustment of terms with the Indians he proceeded to lay out the city of Savannah with the greatest regularity. It then contained ten public squares of two acres each, in which were trees, walks, and a pump. The number of squares has now been increased to twenty-four--the walks all being paved with granite, and swept daily. Forsyth Park is on a more extended plan than these small squares, containing a large fountain, fine flowers, magnolia grandiflora trees, a small zoölogical collection--all objects of interest, displaying the taste and refinement of a well-cultured people. Pulaski Square is named for Count Pulaski, who was mortally wounded during the American Revolution while in an engagement on the ground where the Central Depot now stands. He died on board the brig Wasp as she was leaving [Illustration: A SCENE IN FORSYTH PARK, SAVANNAH.] Tybee for Charleston, when his body was consigned to the sea. The citizens of Georgia, through their munificent bequests, have erected in Monterey Square a monument to Count Pulaski, the corner-stone of which was laid when General La Fayette visited America for the last time. Savannah has made another fine exhibit of her discriminating powers in selecting a retired and lovely spot, made sacred to them by depositing all that remains of the loved ones who have crossed the river a little before. They have christened it Bonaventure, derived from the Spanish, signifying, _Coming good_. Here rest, in the unyielding embrace of death, those whose warfare in life has ended, where the huge live-oaks, with overlapping limbs, entwine with their companions, forming natural triumphal archways, while the somber-hanging gray moss clings lovingly to its outstretched arms, waving in the winds like some weird fancy that lingers only on the brink of uncertainty. These beautiful grounds were once the home of the Tatnall family, but have now been purchased and devoted to the dwelling of the dead, whither the living can come and contemplate the change which awaits them all. Travelers, in leaving Savannah for Florida, can go outside by sea, or the inland route, many preferring the latter on account of avoiding sea-sickness, the passage being made between sounds, inlets, and islands, before Fernandina is reached. The inland steamers are first-class in every respect, and the long marsh-grass contains many of those colossal lizards called alligators. They crawl about fearlessly in their hiding-places, while the swamp blackbird whistles very sweetly for us as we pass along so quietly most of the time that we are not exactly certain of any movement, but ten miles an hour is the _pro rata_ of speed. We are now close to St. Simon's Island, where General Oglethorpe commenced another settlement in 1736, called Frederica. On this equable-tempered island they laid out a town, built a fort with four bastions to protect their palmetto cabins, which, as the historian describes them, appeared like a camp with bowers, "being covered with leaves of a pleasing color." Natural paths and arbors were found here by the English, as if formed by the hand of art, with the ripe grapes hanging in festoons of a royal purple hue. The settlements made by Oglethorpe in this portion of the country were the first formed in the true spirit of improvement and colonization. With him came the great founder of Methodism in America, Wesley, who planted his standard on this island, and mentions their object in the following manner: "It is not to gain riches and honor, but to live wholly to the glory of God, as we have come in the serene hour of peace, when the floods of controversy have subsided, to sow the gospel seeds." John Bartram visited St. Simon's Island in 1744, and makes the following record of his repast with a friend: "Our rural table was spread under the shadow of oaks, palms, and sweet-bays, fanned by the lively, salubrious breezes, wafted from the spicy groves. Our music was the responsive love-lays of the painted nonpareil and the alert, gay mocking-bird, while the brilliant humming-bird darted through the flowery groves, suspended in air, drinking nectar from the blooms of the yellow jasmine, lonicera, andromeda, and azalea." As we approach Fernandina we are nearing historic ground--Dungenness, once a most charming and attractive place, located near the southern extremity of Cumberland Island, the former home of Nathanael Greene, of revolutionary fame, where his last days were spent peacefully, of which pleasant period he thus speaks: "The mocking-birds that sing around me morning and evening, the mild and balmy atmosphere, with the exercise which I find in my garden culture." This locality seemed to have constituted a happy close to his eventful career. The English planted an olive-grove on this island that succeeded well, as though the trees were indigenous. They used the fruit in making pickles, which were considered very fine. Is it not the olive-tree which the Christian should love and venerate, even to the "hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as though the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it forever?" It was at the foot of the Mount of Olives, beneath the shadow of the trees from which it derives its name, that was selected for the most mournful of scenes--"The Saviour's Passion." The good and the wild olive-tree will flourish in this climate. It was these trees which furnished the Apostle Paul with one of his most powerful allegories. The wild olive blooms in March, producing a profusion of pink-tinted, white, star-shaped flowers, while its polished, evergreen verdure, remains all the year, affording a compact and beautiful shade. On this island, before the late war, was seen a scuppernong grape-vine, nearly three hundred years old, supposed to have been planted by the Spanish missionaries. It was then pronounced a prolific bearer, producing two thousand pounds of fruit per annum, and covering nearly three acres of ground. Here rests all that remains of Light-Horse Harry Lee, the gifted and honored dead. "Here his lamp of life flickered before being extinguished." He died March 25, 1818. The decaying marks of time, and the more ruthless destruction of war, have fearfully invaded and devastated this once revered retreat. "Silent though it be, there are memories lingering still vocal amid the mutations of fortune and the desolations of war--memories which carry the heart back to happy days and peculiar excellences which come not again." When General R. E. Lee last visited Savannah the burial-place of his illustrious parent was not forgotten. It was the only tribute of respect which his great feeling heart could bestow, the last mission of love he was able to perform. Did he think before spring should return again, decked in her gay robes, flinging ten thousand odors upon its balmy breath, that his grave would then be visited by weeping friends, and that loving hands should twine fresh flowers for his remains? How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By all their country's honors blest! We next pass the mouth of St. Mary's River, the source of which is a vast lake, where dwelt the far-famed beautiful women, or Daughters of the Sun. These were the last of the Yemassee tribe, who had intrenched themselves here for protection, all efforts to pursue them being like the enchanted lands, which receded as they were approached. Fernandina is situated on Amelia Island, which is eighteen miles in length and two in width. Vessels can approach the harbor any time without fear from shoals, as the water on the bar will always furnish an average of nineteen feet. Its first settlers, as of many other places in Florida, were Spaniards, a few of whom are remaining. During the movements of the Embargo War, together with the privateers and slavers, three hundred square-rigged vessels have been seen in this harbor at one time. Another settler mentions the mounds when the country was first explored by the Spaniards. General Oglethorpe, like other explorers in America, was impressed with the coast of Florida, and thus speaks of Amelia Island: "The sea-shore, covered with myrtle and peach-trees, orange-trees and vines in the wild woods, where echoed the sound of melody from the turtle-doves, nonpareils, red-birds, and mocking-birds." Different nationalities looked upon Amelia Island with longing eyes for many years, coveting it for their possession. In 1817, Gregor McGregor, a Scottish baronet--an enthusiast on the subject of contest--came, with only fifty followers, making proclamations and issuing edicts, of more magnitude than plans for their execution, but soon retired to the quieter quarters of his Highland home. Afterward came Commodore Aury, with one hundred and fifty men, on a filibustering expedition, and overpowered the Spanish troops. At this time it would have been a difficult task to find a more motley, medley crowd of residents in any country than upon Amelia Island, composed of English adventurers, Irish and French refugees, Scotch, Mexicans, Spaniards, privateers, natives, and negroes. Factions of such varied dispositions and inclinations were not designed to promote harmony in any community; consequently, riots and disturbances were of frequent occurrence. Previous to this movement by Aury, negotiations had been pending between the United States and the Spanish Government for Florida; consequently, President Monroe and his Cabinet looked upon the disputed property, in a manner, as their own possessions. These Spaniards, being unable to expel the privateering adventurers, President Monroe sent United States troops, which took possession of Fernandina without resistance, in the name of His Catholic Majesty of Spain. This event happened in the spring of 1818. On Amelia Island is situated a light-house, which exhibits a flash-light, one hundred feet above the level of the sea, visible sixteen miles. The tower is built upon a promontory which overlooks the surrounding country and the Atlantic as far as the eye can extend. At Fernandina the Atlantic Gulf and West India Transit Railroad commences, where the gentlemanly officers connected with and in charge of the road reside. The obliging superintendent is always in readiness here to give information upon the peculiar facilities resulting from living on this route, as a health-location, besides being so closely connected by steam-ships with all parts of the world. It now contains a population of about three thousand inhabitants, and, on account of the fine sea air, has been a resort for many years during the summer season by persons from the interior of the State. The misfortunes of our late war fell heavily on Fernandina, crippling its energies and crushing its present prospects for a time. The real estate of its residents was confiscated and sold for taxes. Some of it has been redeemed, and the remainder is passing through a series of lengthy litigations, which, when settled, are designed to decide the validity of tax-sales generally throughout the entire State. The present condition of affairs places the inhabitants in rather a Micawber-like condition, waiting for something to turn up in the future. As a resort far away from the busy, bustling cares of life, this place seems peculiarly fine. The island being entirely surrounded by salt-water, a delightful breeze visits the inhabitants at all seasons of the year--in summer, zephyry as the vale of Cashmere, or the soft winds which bore the silver-oared barge of Cleopatra through the Cydnus. The most attractive feature of all in this locality is the beautiful beach, connected with the town by a good shell-road two miles in length, bordering the island for twenty-one miles, and over two hundred yards in width. It is this unsurpassed drive about which the inhabitants love to entertain you at all times, until you can see it in your dreams. A good livery-stable is kept here, well filled with fine, fast horses, trained to trot, or wade in the surf, allowing visitors to admire the wonderful vastness of the most beautiful expanse of waters which wash the Atlantic shores. At ebb-tide the imagination cannot conceive of a finer place, the beach being so firm that a pair of horses and carriage scarcely make an indentation on the surface in passing over it. The pavement is God's own workmanship, being composed of white sand, occasionally interspersed with shells, many of them the tiniest in existence. Here the happy sea-birds ride on the silvery foam, or flit across the breezy water; the seagulls and pelicans luxuriate and flap their wings in peaceful quietude, while the sand-crab takes his walks, standing upright like a pigmy of the human species, presenting arms in a soldier-like manner, and never turning his back, however hotly pursued. These are in reality very curious little creatures, reminding us of the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels. Here the turtle comes to deposit her eggs beyond high-water mark, and when they are hatched returns to escort a family of one hundred and fifty babies to her home in the sea. Here the bright moonbeams dance upon the surface of the water, in silence and solitude, until it resembles the surface of a silver mirror. Many pretty shells are found on this beach, of various sizes and designs, with occasionally desirable cabinet specimens, which are thrown out when the waters become much agitated. This is the spot for the jilted lover to forget his idol, and the disconsolate lady her imaginary devotee; for those fretted by the rough edges of corroding care to retire and find a respite from their struggles; the bankrupt who has been conquered in the battles of brokerage, to visit and be reminded God has given us more treasures to delight us than the dross which passes from our grasp like a shadow, but which all are struggling and striving to win; the store-house of the fathomless deep, where we can contemplate that great image of eternity, "the invisible, boundless, endless, and sublime." [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER II. In leaving Fernandina we come out Amelia River, which is formed by the tide-water from the Atlantic. We pass Old Town, one mile from Fernandina, which has a look-out for pilots who take vessels across the bar, besides a few houses, the residence of Spaniards. Fort Clinch is the last noticeable point before we reach the St. John's River bar. It is the month of January--a bland breeze greets us, when our thoughts revert to the early settlement of this country, when the Spanish galleons--a strange-looking craft--navigated these waters; also ponderous old ships, with sailing figures of various devices carved on their prows, and high-peaked sterns, the timber used being mahogany and cedar, many of which were driven to pieces in a most merciless manner among the breakers, thus scattering their treasures of silver and gold on the strand, to tempt and satisfy the cupidity of those who found them. Vessels dread this bar, as those drawing only six feet of water are oftentimes detained when going and returning with their cargoes of lumber. The white caps wave their snowy plumes, as a warning, when the wind blows, which sends terror to the hearts of the timid, but the more daring exclaim, It looks grand! As we cross the bar we are in sight of two resorts--Mayport and Fort George Island--both places arranged for the accommodation of summer and winter visitors. Fishermen also live in these diminutive towns, and are engaged, like the apostles when their Saviour called them, in mending their nets. Shad-fishing is very profitable here during the season. Shad abounds in this river, and being a delicious fish, it is much sought after. The various descriptions published from the pens of those who visit Florida now are read by persons looking to this locality as a winter-resort, or in search of new homes and health, as items of unsurpassed interest. For this reason writers should be reliable in their statements. In many tourists the emotional current is created so far from the surface that it is a difficult matter for them to be impressed with external objects. For this cause we meet with a multitude of fault-finders. Settlers living in remote localities from the St. John's River complain because visitors resort there in preference to all other parts of the State. If the facilities and inducements were the same elsewhere, the desire to go would be equal; but it requires the fortitude of a Livingstone to commence a trip into many of the most attractive parts of Florida, with the indistinct prospect how they are to get away when inclined to make a change. The Americans are a restless, roving people, fond of varied scenery, and when confined where they cannot get away, manifest very much the disposition of caged captives. Laudonnière thus speaks of the St. John's River: "The place is so pleasant that those who are melancholy would be forced to change their humor." This stream, with its tributaries, is the great artery of the State, where the savage roamed at will for nearly three hundred years after its settlement by the Spaniards, who came in search of hidden treasures, its former history being a page in the past. Here this river glides before us, with its dark, coffee-colored waters, and no perceptible current except where the tide comes in, it being a remarkable stream, unlike any other in North America. The coloring matter it contains is not precipitated by standing, and for this reason is attributed to a colored earth through which it passes from the upper lakes, together with the different kinds of vegetation that environ it. It varies in width from one to three miles, and is thought by many to be an estuary. From the mouth of the St. John's to Pilatka there are numerous bluffs, some of them ten or twelve feet in height, with an under-stratum of shells, on which elevations the pine-tree flourishes. The cypress, ash, and cabbage-palmetto grow on the banks above Pilatka. The weeping cypress, with its leafless, conical excrescences, called knees, and dropsical feet, loves to be alone. It gives a friendly erecting to the gray moss, which lives and swings from its tallest limbs to the lowest twigs, furnishing a complete mantle of grace to the naked-appearing trees. This moss has no affinity for the pine or palm, which thrives in close proximity, colonizing and fraternizing in groups, oftentimes solitary, sighing or rustling as the sea-breeze comes to meet and kiss its feathery crowns and perennial foliage. A few of the trees are deciduous, as the swamp-oak, ash, and poplar; most of the others are persistent, the change of foliage occurring so quietly it is scarcely observed. The mistletoe, with its green, tufted foliage, fastens on the oak, and is a regular parasite--a thief--for it deprives the tree of vitality. The mistletoe seeds are used as an article of food by the birds, and, being thus transported to the forest-trees, adhere by means of a gluten until germination commences. The change of flags in 1821 produced a change with many of the citizens, when much local information connected with the history of Florida was lost. This province, when ceded to the United States, was divided in two parts, called East and West Florida. Petitions were then frequently forwarded to Washington, with a request to have it remain divided, as it was inconveniently large. During the war which soon followed, many new explorations were made in the hidden hummocks and intricate recesses of the State. The drinking-water used in Florida does not come from mountain-streams or arctic regions, but in summer, mixed with sugar and lemon-juice, or sour orange, forms a most palatable and healthful mixture. Land-snakes are not plentiful, as many have supposed, there being very few but water-snakes, which can be easily accounted for, as the intense heat from the fires which sweep through the long grass every year destroy them; then there are no rocks for their hiding-places, where they could rear patriarchal families. Musquitoes abound in some places on the coast, and to the dwellers in tents the impression has, no doubt, been received that the air was made of these insects. There is a due proportion of fleas in portions of Florida, but not more than in the sandy soil of other countries. The climate is constantly tempered by the Gulf Stream, that conducts away the tropical heat, returning in a submarine current, the cooler waters from the North thus producing an atmosphere of salubrious influences and life-renewing properties. No month is without its fresh products and fruits, while every warm day the mocking-bird sings above our heads on some airy perch. Many theories have been advanced in regard to the formation of _terra firma_ on our continent, the one most generally received being that it was all once submerged under water--as a proof of which shells and other marine fossils have been found in elevated positions, which only could have been placed there by the sea overflowing the land, and afterward receding. When this conclusion is attained, Florida cannot be included, as every year the land augments from the combined efforts of the coral insect, _limulus_, and barnacles, together with the _débris_ which is deposited upon them afterward. If the disturbing influences along the shores were less, the increase of land would be much greater, as winds and waves are as destructive to the prosperity of these subterranean architects as tornadoes and cyclones to the growth of fine forest-trees. The coral insect is constantly working in his briny bed, making masonry which resists the action of the element in which it is placed, thus laying the foundation for islands and continents. It is the work of these madrepores and polyps that form reefs which wreck so many vessels on its coast, thus making fortunes for those who follow salvage entirely for a support. The fact of Florida as a health-resort has long been established, the proof being furnished by the length of time consumptives who come for the purpose of lingering a little longer than they otherwise could North, and living in the enjoyment of sufficiently good health to pursue any lucrative vocation their tastes may decide, is sufficient evidence of the efficacy of the climate for pulmonic complaints. Exposure in Florida, as in other places, has its penalties affixed. Near bodies of water a chilliness pervades the air as soon as the sun sets, which is plainly perceptible to all delicate persons. No barometer was ever more sensitive to atmospheric variations than the feelings of a sick person; no magnet was ever attracted to steel more suddenly than their nervous sensibilities to an agreeable or disagreeable object. This prescribing invariable rules for every disease is all a humbug; the patient is usually the best judge. The resort for invalids, when the dew and shades of night are falling on the face of nature, is before a pleasant light-wood fire, surrounded by cheerful companions--remembering that an interview of the internal emotions frequently for the sick is not beneficial. Try and keep from thinking how badly off you really are, as much as practicable. Many have lived for years with only one lung. All sudden changes from heat to cold should be avoided: when you are cold, get warm as soon as possible, and when you are tired, stop--your life depends upon it. All invalids should select a locality which best suits their malady; then settle down, with the determination to extract all the sweets of contentment in store for them which the world contains, keeping their bodies comfortable in every respect, their minds free from all exciting or unpleasant thoughts, their hearts purified while living, and, if death comes, prepared to meet their Maker. About ten miles from the mouth of the St. John's Laudonnière established his Huguenot colony, building his fortification on a hill of "mean height," naming it Caroline, from their sovereign, Charles IX., of France, now known as St. John's Bluff. The former site of Fort Caroline can be traced with some degree of accuracy, from the fact of this being the first point on the river above its mouth where its banks are approached by the stream, besides being the only elevated spot where a fort could be built between the St. John's Bluff and the mouth of the river. As Fort Caroline was constructed more than three hundred years ago, from materials of so perishable a nature--being pine-logs and sand--none of it remains to be seen at the present day. The first lumber-mills on the St. John's are located near the estate of Marquis de Talleyrand, eight miles from Jacksonville. The busy hum of industry now echoes from the shores, where pine-logs are being sawed into material for making houses, not only in Florida, but in Boston and other Northern cities. Mr. Clark's mill, in East Jacksonville, received an order, after the big Boston fire, for a million feet at one time. These mills, besides being a source of revenue to the owners, furnish work for the poor, and the refuse pieces fuel, while in cold weather the big fires that consume the slabs afford a free lodging for benighted travelers; also for those who have no good houses, and would be unwelcome visitors in almost any place. Twenty-five miles from the sea, on the banks of the St. John's, once stood an insignificant place, known as Cow Ford, but now the line, thriving city of Jacksonville, named in honor of General Andrew Jackson. This city is the head-center of Florida, where visitors can come, and stay, with no prospect of starving, and from which place they can migrate when and where they please, with ample facilities furnished them at all times for the furtherance of their plans. A combination of singular emotions here seizes the Northern visitor, after being transported in midwinter from his frozen home to a clime where every thing is fresh and blooming, where the market is furnished with cabbages, sweet potatoes, lettuce, turnips, green peas, and radishes, just gathered, besides strawberries red as the blush of morn, with bouquets of rose-buds, upon which still lingers the morning dew-drop. Many persons come here with unhappy temperaments, to whom peace and contentment in any place, or under all circumstances, has been deficient, but always vainly expecting to find happiness hanging on every new object they meet, waiting for them to pluck; but, unfortunately, it hangs so high they can never reach it--when they commence abusing every thing with which they come in contact. We hear them constantly exclaiming, "Too much sand! too little to eat! too high prices for things!" Nothing can please them. Their faces are drawn up in disgust, and their tongues ready to strike with the venom of contempt, at every person who has a good word to say in favor of Florida. The unbroken quiet which has been with us since we left Savannah is interrupted as soon as the steamer touches the Jacksonville wharf. We are importuned and jostled on every side by black boys, dray and carriage-drivers, who worry us for our baggage, raising their whips with the imperious movement of a major-general, and suddenly lowering them at half mast when we say, No! Then the officious hotel-runners, who scream in our ears to patronize the houses that employ them, until we are on the verge of desperation, and feel as though the plagues of Egypt could not have been worse. Most of these public criers are dirty, ragged, and lazy, having no legitimate vocation, except what they can make from visitors, or in drumming for boarding-houses. This city has fine accommodations, and for that reason receives more envy than admiration from other Florida towns. It can furnish more than one hundred good places of entertainment, among which may be found several colossal hotels, capable of containing two or three hundred guests, also boarding-houses of less pretentious dimensions, where, no doubt, a nearer approximation to the acknowledgment for value received is oftener realized. Selections can be made where money may be expended rapidly or slowly, according to the inclination of the visitor. Here, as in other places, we meet with boarding-house complainers. This class of grumblers must remember that hotel-keepers stand fault-finding as quietly as a delinquent schoolboy his deserved punishment; they are used to it; they expect it, and would be disappointed if they did not get it. The influx of visitors commences sooner some seasons than others. The first cold blast from the North sends the feeble invalid South to bask in the summer sunshine of a milder atmosphere, and when spring comes he returns home like the migratory birds. Jacksonville and its adjacent towns number a population of over twelve thousand inhabitants, the whole area being three miles long and about two wide. The different names given to this small space of country looks larger on the map than in reality. These corporations are distinguished from each other by the names of Jacksonville, East Jacksonville, Brooklyn, La Villa, Riverside, Springfield, Hansom Town, etc.--each town containing, from fifty to fifteen hundred houses. The inhabitants say they were laid out into lots and named, with the expectation of a large increase of persons; consequently there are desirable building-spots in these surveyed sites for growing cities, for sale at all times upon moderate terms. Jacksonville makes a display of architectural skill, in which are seen the improvements of the nineteenth century. Yards and lawns are laid out fronting many of the residences, where the beauties of landscape gardening may be found blending in harmony with the artistically-arranged walks and pleasure promenades. The sidewalks are made of plank and brick, shaded and overhung with live-oaks, forming archways of inviting appearance, from which swings pendant moss, presenting a perennial, picturesque scene of nature's grandeur. There are over twenty church-edifices in and around the city, where both white and colored people come to worship in crowds. We are happy to state these statistics find the inhabitants in a much better spiritual condition than has been represented. However, we have no partiality for many of the doctrines preached by itinerant reformers who come here. We prefer our old orthodox faith, which made us contented while we lived, and carried us to heaven when we died. But these new isms, such as Spiritualism, Liberalism, Free-loveism, and every other species of modernized infidelity that is now gaining ground and receiving accessions from our Sunny South, are designed only to delude and drown the souls of their followers in eternal misery. The Churches here are representatives of various creeds and beliefs--Methodist, Presbyterian, Protestant Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic. The Sabbath dawns in Florida with its recreations and steam-boat excursions, well patronized by Northern visitors, as very few appear to bring their religion when they come South. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe is here to-day from her home in Mandarin, for the purpose of attending church. Dr. Stowe, her husband, accompanies her as he preaches. When they both entered the Southern Methodist church a slight rustle was heard in the congregation, and a few persons left the house. Mr. and Mrs. Uncle Tom were more than a Sabbath dose for some of the Jacksonville community. Harriet B. has no resemblance to a perpetrator of discord or scandal, or one who has swayed the divining-rod of Abolitionism with sufficient potency to immortalize herself for many coming generations, or probed the private life of a man who, during the period of his checkered existence, never carved out virtue for his shrine. The three snowy curls on each side of her face give her a matronly look, and her stout-built frame, well covered with flesh, a substantial appearance. The service was opened by a very long prayer from Dr. Stowe, after which he preached a purely orthodox sermon on the subject of godliness. Mrs. Harriet had confidence in the ability of her husband; she knew the discourse would be right without her vigilant eye, and she went to sleep. Like other sleepers, she nodded naturally; her digits were concealed beneath kid covers, and thrusting at no one. She looked the picture of content, and was no doubt dreaming of that far-off, beautiful country, where those who create dissensions and stir up strife can never enter. Places of worship have had an existence for both colors throughout the entire South since the country was settled, the negroes being naturally inclined to religion more than the whites. The African Church has always been a full-developed institution, attended with its peculiarities and noisy accompaniments, where the colored zealots could always give vent to their religious enthusiasm by howling their emotional feelings among others equally excited. The preacher usually leads the singing with his loud, soul-stirring strains, manifesting much fervor, sometimes improvising a strain or two with his own invention, if the rhyme and tune do not measure equal. The following is a correct copy of an original sermon delivered by a very black Baptist brother to a Jacksonville colored congregation a short time previous to the Freedmen's Bank explosion, which appears prophetic in regard to that swindling institution. The text was, "Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven": "MY DEAR BREDREN:--De Lord is here to-day, goin' from de African to de white folks church, ridin' on a milk-white steed in de air. He knows all yer hearts, and what you're thinkin' about. Ef yer hearts are not right, dey must all undergo a radical change until dey are made good. De Lord taught his disciples on de lake of Genesis, and I'm now telling you all de way do do. I 'spec you all cum to de house of de Lord just kase yer friends are here. While yer preacher is tryin' to permulgate de gospel, you is lookin' down de street to see what is comin', and den you're thinkin' about what you will wear to-night when you come to preachin', payin' no attention to me, who is tryin' to save yer souls. "O my bredren, dis is a fine new meetin'-house, but we should all seek a house whose builder and maker is de great Lord! Labor not for de perishin', spilin' meat! "Last night was Saturday, and you have spent most of yer week's wages and earnin's, dun put de rest in de Freedmen Savin' Bank, and you don't know as you'll ever see it any more in dis world! Somebody may git it, or you may die, and den you will leave it. How much did you bring here for de Lord? O my bredren, when dem jerudic angels come you will be sorry you haven't done more for de Lord! When dey come, ef you hasn't dun nothin' for yer blessed Jesus, den dey will not say, 'Come, ye blessed, home!' "You must do nothin' wrong ef yer want ter git up by dat great white throne among dem snow-white angels, and be one yerselves. You must never cuss or drink any whisky. Paul told Timothy his son to drink some wine when he had de stumak-ake. My bredren, don't think yer sufferin' when yer not, jest for an excuse to git a dram. Old Master in heaven knows when yer sure enuff sick! Can't fool him about nothin'!" Journalism in Jacksonville is commencing to rest on a firmer basis than heretofore. The present population demand more knowledge on the subject of the country, consequently papers and periodicals published in the interest of the State are much sought after. The _Semi-tropical_, a monthly established here, will be found to contain both readable and reliable articles on the climate and various products of Florida. The _Sun and Press_ is a daily democratic paper, unswerving in its efforts to inculcate correct principles among those in power. There were other organs whose politics was gauged for the season, and since the war until now have been on the winning side, the Republicans being in the majority. The ephemeral existence of newspapers has passed away here, and the morning news, fresh and well printed, containing the latest telegrams, are found lying on the breakfast-table, furnishing a potent auxiliary to the peace and happiness of the household. The privilege of doing as one pleases is not to be overlooked in Jacksonville. No costumes, however peculiar, appear out of style, or the wearers, as in some other places, obliged to seek protection from the police. Celebrities or millionaires walk the streets without creating any sensation. The Mormon, with his four or fourteen wives, can come from Salt Lake City, take rooms at the St. James, enter all the frequented resorts with the same fear from molestation that a genuine Floridian feels of being Ku-Kluxed. Any strong-minded market-woman can don the Bloomer costume, make and sell sugar, brown as her own bun-colored face, and peddle vegetables verdant as the idea which prompted her to forsake the flowing robes of her fair sisters, and assume the half masculine attire of the sterner sex, without attracting any more attention than the lazy loungers in the market-house. The citizens are so accustomed to sight-seeing that nothing would astonish them but an honest politician. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, this winter there is a large influx of men in search of employment, fifty looking for situations with only one vacancy. It is well to come prepared for all exigencies, and bring a tent to stop in, provided nothing better presents itself. The woods, waters, and oyster-bars are free to all; but boarding-house keepers, from the pressure of surrounding circumstances, have a peculiarly persistent way of watching strangers closely and _interviewing_ them frequently, particularly if there is a suspicion that funds are running low with them. Camping in the open air in this genial clime is pleasanter than would be imagined by persons not accustomed to it, and is accompanied with more peace of mind than being dunned for board-bills without money to pay them. Pleasant places of resort are springing up in the vicinity of Jacksonville, which furnish lovely drives behind some of the teams kept in the city. Moncrief Springs, four miles distant, now appears to be the most popular resort. Here the orange marmalade factory may be visited--a recently-developed branch of industry--making use of the wild oranges which flourish so abundantly throughout the State without culture. Many other improvements have been made at this place--bath-houses, bowling-alley, dancing-saloon, and restaurant--all of which contribute much to the diversion of strangers. Visitors always form an idea of the cultivation or ignorance of a locality by the manner in which the dead are cared for, together with the various styles of monuments, inscriptions upon the tablets, neatness and taste displayed in the surroundings. Upon this hypothesis a favorable conclusion would be formed in regard to the Jacksonville cemetery, which last resting-place of its citizens is pleasantly located on a slightly elevated piece of ground beyond the city. It was on the Sabbath we visited it, when all kinds of people were present. Some of them were much stricken with grief, while others came for recreation. It is really very surprising why so many persons of exceedingly low morals resort to grave-yards for the sole purpose of enjoyment, and the indulgence of obscene conduct and conversation. Certainly rude sounds must jar very inharmoniously upon the feelings of those who come to visit and weep over the remains of their departed friends. Too many invalids, before coming to Florida, wait until they have already felt the downy flappings from the wings of the unrelenting destroyer, and heard the voices from a spirit-land calling them, but come too late to be benefited and take a new lease on life. The climate should not be blamed because the sick will stay away until death claims them. Those who do not wait derive the same benefit in remaining that flowers receive from gentle rains in spring-time--the atmosphere being a tranquillizer, the pure sea-breeze on the coast a lotion and tonic to the lungs. God grant that the genial air which visits this peninsula may restore the health-seeking invalids to vigor, strength, and usefulness, that their presence may again gladden the hearts of those left at home, now saddened by their absence! [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER III. Every year, during the month of February, Jacksonville has an exhibit of industries, from all portions of the State, thus furnishing visitors an opportunity for seeing specimens of the best Florida products for themselves, before purchasing. Another advantage is the exchange of experience in growing the same things, besides receiving new suggestions in regard to those which may have failed, and, finally, it keeps up a friendly intercourse with old acquaintances, also enabling new immigrants to form pleasant associations, in the absence of those whom they have left behind--thus promoting harmony, not only in a community, but throughout the entire State. The weather--that important auxiliary--this year was unpropitious a greater portion of the week. Nature put on a wild, damp face, which chilled the ardor of many who had intended coming. However, the exhibit was very good, in every department. All kinds of semi-tropical fruits, from the most perfect pine-apple that has flourished in any clime, to the sweetest orange, whose cheek had been kissed by a golden sunbeam. Pure wines were not wanting to complete the conviviality of the occasion, or perfumes distilled from Florida leaves and flowers, to waft odors around us, sweet as the memory of a first love. The industrious ladies sent their needle-work, some of which looked as if wrought by fairy fingers, more than real flesh and blood. Each succeeding year this organization gathers strength as the State becomes more populous, and the necessity of comparing the products from different latitudes is made a criterion for those who wish to examine the local products of a country. In addition to what has already been done, there is much room for improvement, which will be accomplished as the necessities demand, until the Agricultural Florida Fair shall be numbered among the permanent institutions, where the ingathering harvest of tropical fruits every year will be a fixed fact, where immense crowds shall come to look, wondering at its magnitude, and silent with admiration before the grandeur of its extensive proportions. The future of the Fair, like that of the State, has not been attained. Another source of entertainment with many who come here is yachting. The white-winged little crafts are constantly flitting about the Jacksonville wharves, like summer songsters in a clear sky. The boats, in reality, have become quite indispensable to the excitement of visitors. Those that draw the least water, and make the best time, or with a fair wind can sail on a heavy dew, are the class of craft most in demand. General Spinner, formerly of the United States Treasury, has a fine little yacht, in which he takes pleasure-excursions, looking much happier than when the responsibility of a nation's finances rested on his movements. Our stay in Jacksonville has been very pleasant; but its surroundings furnish a poor criterion for the fertile lands lying in other parts of the State. The ocean steamer Dictator is waiting at the wharf for passengers, and we will be among the happy number to embark on this reliable-running craft. Her former efficient commander, Captain Coxetter, has gone where bars or rough waters never imperil his safety. However, his place has been supplied by a skillful seaman, thus placing the Dictator at the head of the list for palatial accommodations and attentive officers. The St. John's to-day appears overspread with a kind of semi-transparent mist, through which the sun shines with a nimbus of golden sheen, that fills the air and sky. Imagination could not paint the River of Life more beautiful. How smoothly we glide on its peaceful bosom, while fleecy clouds of unrivaled purity float over us like airy forms, which leave an indefinable idea of an invisible presence hovering near. The first noticeable landing, after we leave Jacksonville, is Mandarin, fifteen miles distant--the winter residence of Harriet Beecher Stowe--at which point many stop, as though she was expected to furnish a gratuitous exhibition of herself, designed for the benefit of those who walk her domains. Visitors come here thinking they are at the same liberty to inspect her person as though she were connected with a menagerie, and obligated to present herself for their entertainment. Very curious ones open her window-blinds if they cannot see her in any other way. These impudent violations of etiquette do not meet with her approval, while those indulging in them must take the consequences, remembering that although patience is a virtue, it is not always exercised. Mandarin is quite unpretentious in its general appearance. The inhabitants raise fine sweet oranges and other produce, which they bring down in little boats to market; this is the most perceptible stir made by any of its residents. Like many other localities in the State, historic records of tragic events, extending back to the Indian wars, are yet remembered by some of its old citizens. The following is dated December 25, 1841: "For some time the settlers in this section of the country had been lulled into apparent security, under the belief that there was no danger to be apprehended, since the notorious Wild Cat and his party were shipped to the West. "On Monday a band of twenty-one Indians approached the settlement of Mandarin, when, after capturing an old negro belonging to Mr. William Hartley, lay by until night, when they attacked the house of Mr. H., who was absent hunting. They murdered his wife and child, also Messrs. Domingo Acosta and William Molpus. These savages, after committing this foul deed, plundered the house and applied the torch. They then proceeded to the plantations of Nathan and George Hartley, and as the inmates had fled, they destroyed their homes. The Indians camped near until morning, when they released the old negro, and fled. Captain Hurry, of Mandarin, and a few other citizens, followed their trail the next day for some distance, but finally lost it." The settlers then gave expression to their feelings: "We, the citizens of Mandarin, cannot too strongly urge upon Col. Worth the propriety of keeping in this vicinity a force sufficiently strong to render to our citizens that protection to which they are justly entitled. Many of them had returned to their abandoned places, others making preparations for that purpose; but their plans are now frustrated, as there can be no possible security until the last Indian is hunted out of Florida; while our troops are operating in the South, they are murdering in our unprotected settlements. This is the seventh Christmas-day we have witnessed since the Indian war has been raging in our territory, it being now our painful duty to record it is far from being ended. The blood of our citizens is still warm upon the hillocks and turfs of Florida, and the wily savage roams undismayed, with his thirst for the blood of fresh victims unquenched." One noticeable feature in traveling through Florida is the fanciful names we hear given to unimportant places--the name being the most prominent point, the towns so diminutive that it is difficult to locate them with any degree of certainty. The first high-sounding ones, after Mandarin, are Hibernia and Magnolia, both little stopping-places, considered quite exclusive in their associations with the world in general and themselves in particular, where guests are so well contented they think the fabled land for which the Spaniards searched so long is at last reached. Green Cove Mineral Springs, thirty miles above Jacksonville, is a noted resort for those afflicted with rheumatism--the temperature of the water always being warm enough in winter to stimulate the system and give relief to pain. Many other diseases are also greatly mitigated. Very happy faces come down here to look at us, which is, no doubt, attributable to the exhilarating influences of the water and fine fare at the hotels. Picolata, forty-five miles above Jacksonville, on the east bank of the river, is more famous for what it has been than for what it is now, its former greatness having departed, leaving scarcely a shadow to guide us. This was formerly the stage terminus from St. Augustine, eighteen miles distant, and of some importance as a commercial point, with a weekly stage running to Tallahassee and St. Mark's. During Spanish times this place was called Fort Picolata, where once stood a very ancient fortress. The following is a description of its dimensions, written over one hundred years since: "It was constructed with a high wall, without bastions, about breast-high on the inside, with loop-holes, and surrounded by a deep ditch. The upper story was open on each side, with battlements supporting a cupola, or roof. These parapets were formerly mounted with eight four-pounders--two on each side. The works were built with hewn stone, cemented in lime. The shell-rock from which it was constructed was cut out of quarries on St. Anastasia Island, opposite St. Augustine." The object of this fort was to guard the passage of the river, and preserve communication with St. Mark's and Pensacola. As we propose describing Tocoi on our return, we will now proceed to Pilatka, the county-seat of Putnam, with a population of fifteen hundred inhabitants. The land on which the town stands is high, the soil being mixed with shells. The accommodations here for visitors are fine, where many come to stay all winter, in preference to any other place. The Putnam House is well kept, being refreshingly neat, and the whole premises in perfect order. It is now February, and the garden is producing peas, lettuce, radishes, Irish potatoes, and many other vegetables, from which the house is supplied. The tables groan with good things, while the proprietor tries to make everybody welcome. The politeness of the servants reminds us of the palmy days of the past, when they were trained for use, and not permitted to roam, as many do now, like untamed beasts, seeking something which they can kill and eat, or steal, and trade for money. The citizens are very industrious and law-abiding--the town having been settled thirty years--and never had a county jail until recently; but, in keeping with the improvements of the age, they have one now which is equal to any emergency. Among the various other buildings, we notice a court-house, several churches, and many boarding-houses. The principal industries are a moss-factory, sea-island cotton-gin, a steam grist-mill and saw-mill, also a guano fish-oil factory. Shad-fishing is profitable here in March, when large quantities are shipped. One paper--the _Pilatka Herald_--publishes all the news. The editor is called "Alligator" Pratt--he having obtained his title by giving descriptions of the immense numbers of alligators which frequented the streams, as recorded by the early settlers, but bringing it down to the present time, as a visible fact, which is not true, nor ever will be again, while so many are being killed every year. When we visited the _Herald_ office, two lads, sons of the proprietor, were working like busy bees, the youngest being thirteen, and the oldest seventeen, years of age. They said their father was in Tallahassee, and they were "getting out the paper." Such enterprise is commendable. Many of the tropical fruits are cultivated here, some of which grow to perfection, while others are experimental, but at present very flourishing. Ripe strawberries, luscious and sweet, are now ready for market, on Col. Hart's place--the fertilizer used being river-muck, which is inexhaustible. The weather is milder here than in other localities of the same latitude, not on the river, which is accounted for by the waters of the St. John's flowing from a milder clime, thus checking any proposed invasion from Jack Frost. A very amusing circumstance happened here this morning. The Catholic bishop from St. Augustine being in town, according to his usual custom, proposed to have early morning mass. On repairing to the church, and finding none of his members in attendance, and not being inclined to say mass for the repose of their souls and bodies while in bed, as a gentle reminder of their duties he commenced pulling vigorously at the bell-rope. The jingling at so early an hour caused a consternation among the inhabitants, who supposed it to be a fire-alarm, and, thinking the safety of their dwellings in danger, rushed from every street in hasty-made toilets, looking for the conflagration. However, on quiet being restored, the affair was considered a good joke. Pilatka is the head of navigation for ocean steamers, the river narrowing so rapidly soon after leaving here that they cannot run any farther. Parties going up the Ocklawaha must always stop at this point, as steamers made, for no other purpose leave here daily. No Florida tour would be complete without a trip up this narrow, tortuous stream, which turns its course so often the wonder is that it does not forget which way it was going to run. The name of our boat is Okahumkee, which bears a slight resemblance to the pictures designed to represent Noah's ark, but only in shape, not in size or age. On account of the obstacles she has to meet in navigation, there can be no surplus work or embellishment on her; but she is clean and comfortable, the fare good as on any river-craft. The propelling power is at the stern, and sends the steamer ahead at the rate of eight miles an hour. The owner, Col. Hart, is a man of undaunted energies, whose pioneer movements in navigating this river will ever remain a monument worthy of emulation. Twenty-five miles above Pilatka the Ocklawaha comes in, which name signifies boggy river, or turgid water, so called by the Indians. CHAPTER IV. While in Florida, if tourists wish for a variety, let them travel up the meandering course of that peculiar stream, the Ocklawaha. There is no signaling here, as at other rivers in the State, for fossilized Spaniards to take us over the bars. After describing a triangle, we enter its dark waters without obstacle or interruption, when our steamer glides along easily, if not quickly, as a Florida sun behind the horizon. The Ocklawaha is the largest tributary of the much-admired St. John's River. It is only from fifty to seventy-five feet in width at any point, and navigable all seasons of the year. Its banks are lined with "forests primeval," while its crooked course can only be traced by a seat upon the decks of its steamers. The banks are low, with an occasional bluff, accompanied by a wildness of scenery not so unvaried as to become monotonous. The river runs through heavily-timbered lands, consisting of sweet-gum, sweet-bay, and live-oak, from which hangs a drapery of long moss so dense it is only visited by zephyr breezes. The swaying of this pendant growth appears like the movements of magic, preparing a revelation from the secret abodes of wood-nymphs, or a _début_ from the weird form of some dark-eyed Indian maid. The cypress-trees grow here to the height of two hundred feet, some of them being twenty-four in circumference, and eight feet through at the base. From this kind of timber spars for vessels are made, which excel in durability any other in use. The trees on the banks are set closely as a cane thicket, thus obscuring all view of the surrounding country as effectually as if it were a thousand miles distant. It is to this point the sportsman resorts to indulge his propensity for killing birds, which sing songs of joy as we pass; but when wounded, their helpless bodies fall into the turbid waters--the last that is seen of them being a fluttering pinion, signaling their sinking condition, with no one to pity or rescue. The click of the rifle is heard on every side from the hands of passengers, with the exciting remark: "O there is another alligator! Sight him quick! Kill him!" Although this seems to be great sport for the huntsman, it is not always death to the game. As we approach the source of the river the scenery is constantly changing, like a kaleidoscopic view, and although it is mid-winter the river-banks are lined with flowers in full bloom, as though Jack Frost was not abroad with his withering breath, and had killed many of their companions far away, and buried them under his white covering, bound with icy fetters. Among the most conspicuous plants which we see now is the aster, climbing twenty or thirty feet, forming bowers filled with blooms, supported by woody stems, sending forth their fragrance to gladden the senses of those who love perfumery made in nature's laboratory. The water-lily, enthroned on her emerald seat, sits like a queen, spreading a snowy crown in every quiet corner of the stream; while the air-plants, with a more ambitious turn, are clinging to the trees, with their pink petals bursting into bloom, as the wild oranges and scarlet berries combined form a panorama which creates new-born emotions of happiness in the minds of all who look on their beauties and retain in imagination their charms. Captain Rice, who has charge of the steamer Okahumkee, is the alpha and omega of the inhabitants on this river. He supplies all their wants, makes all their contracts, and sells all their produce. The men expect him to furnish them with whatever they need, from a sugar-mill to a plug of tobacco. From this portion of the country are shipped sea-island cotton, moss, oranges, vanilla, chickens, and eggs. These are sold in Jacksonville to obtain their family supplies. The Captain goes shopping for the young ladies, buys their pin-backs, tilters, face-powder, and sometimes snuff--for their mothers only! For these numerous services he rarely ever receives any thing but a smile! No wonder the man looks thin, fed on such intangible substance! Orange Springs, thirty-five miles from the mouth of the river, is our first landing-place. This was formerly a resort for invalids, on account of the mineral properties contained in the water. Here we witnessed an affectionate meeting between a husband and wife. The lady had just returned from Jacksonville on the steamer. When she stepped on shore, and saw her husband waiting for her, she threw her arms around his neck and cried. Some of the experienced passengers said she wept because she thought of all that old fat bacon she would have to eat after feasting so high in Jacksonville. A log is something which our boat appears to understand. It leaps over at a single bound, then goes crashing against the large limbs, which sounds like the rattling of musketry, or crashing of a cyclone. We met a lady on board who, since her last visit up the Ocklawaha, has been deprived of her hearing. Not aware of the great change through which she had passed, she quietly inquired if the obstructions had not all been removed from the river. The sound, then, of big limbs rasping across the boat, which had been crushed by coming in contact with it, resembled thunder. The Captain changed his seat very suddenly to go forward, while the passengers were all busy looking after birds and alligators; but no one asserted that navigation was without impediments, so far as last heard from. "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." On this river is the home of the genuine crackers. You can see them come to the steamer when it lands; and clever people they are, too. They appear to come from nowhere, their first appearance being on a _bateau_, or little platform, by the river-banks, where are seen standing specimens of humanity so thin a musquito would be doing a bad business in trying to obtain sustenance from their bloodless bodies. Hoping that the mind of the public may be relieved of the impression that a kind of hybrid bipeds circulate through the South entirely unknown in other localities, called crackers, I herewith append a description of the Northern crackers, in connection with our Southern product, taken from my own observation. [Illustration: PLEASURE-RIDING IN A CRACKER CART.] From the Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania to the sands of Florida there exists a certain class of the _genus homo_, defined by different names, but possessing traits of character nearly allied, called in the North "the lower class," in the South "crackers." In the Northern States these poor, uneducated creatures ruminate without restraint. The localities they prefer are removed from the principal towns and cities. During the summer they spend a portion of the season in raising a little corn and potatoes, together with other "garden sass," which is consumed by their numerous families to sustain them during the cold winter weather. The little attention this crop receives is when they are not working out as the hired help, in assisting their neighbors through "hayin' and harvestin', or diggin' taters." Many of them never "hire out," but subsist entirely by hunting, fishing, or gathering berries, for which pursuits their wild natures and unsettled habits well adapt them. They excel in the piscatorial profession, studying the habits of the finny tribe during their various stages, together with their times of ascending and descending the streams. Sometimes the city folks come out to spend a few days with tent and reels, which movement these self-constituted sovereigns of the soil regard as a direct innovation of their rights; and if the supposed intruders escape without their tent being burned, or their clothes stolen, during the day when they are absent, it may be regarded as a fortunate circumstance. Many of these "lower class" specimens of humanity cannot read or write, while those who can do not often imbibe orthodox opinions in their religious belief, but embrace theories mapped out by New England fanatics, upon which they try to make an improvement during the cold winter days when they cannot be "stirrin' out doors." If a thaw comes they hunt deer and other wild game, which is bartered for groceries. Hogs with them, as most other people, are an important item for winter food. These animals manage to live tolerably well during the summer on grass, besides occasionally breaking into a neighbor's field of corn or potatoes, and fattening in the autumn on wild mast, which is plentiful. This "lower class" have never been credited with being strictly honest, and frequently a stray sheep, calf, or turkey, makes an important addition to the family larder, which is eaten by all without any scruples, no questions being asked. Generosity cannot be classed among their virtues. If a benevolent impulse ever forces its way into their stingy souls, it is soon frozen out for want of sustenance. Never a weary wanderer rests upon their beds, or is fed from their table, unless pay is expected for it, nor a drop of milk given to pleasure-excursionists without collection on delivery. Their clothes are made mostly of wool, it being a home product, and the winters so severe they are obliged to be protected. The "wimmen folks" weave the cloth, then color it blue or red, and when the garments are made they are worn through all seasons--in winter to keep out the cold, and in summer the heat. There is no changing of raiment, nor any record kept of the time each garment is worn, it being only removed when patching becomes necessary, and a Joseph's coat among them is not an uncommon sight. They are not remarkable for their powers of articulation, but communicate with a peculiar twang through their noses, as though that was the design of the organ. Cow is pronounced as though it was spelled "keow;" how, "heow." "Awful" is their principal adjective, upon which they ring changes at all times: "Awful mean!" "Awful good!" Conversation through the nose for the old women is a difficult experiment, as they deposit large quantities of snuff in that organ, whether for disease, or to fill a vacuum in their _crania_, has never been determined, but it is really a most disgusting and filthy practice to witness. The above is a correct description of the Northern crackers, of which some scribblers seem to have lost sight in their unfeeling efforts to abuse the South, and impress the world with the idea that crackers and poor whites are entirely of Southern origin, and only found in that locality, they being the outgrowth of a slave oligarchy. That indigenous class of persons called Southern crackers receive names according to their locality. In South Carolina and South Georgia they are called "Poor Buckra," and in Florida "Sand Lappers," or "Crackers." The Florida crackers are supposed to be named from the facility with which they eat corn, it being their chief article of diet, while some few contract the habit of dirt-eating, and have been named "Sand Lappers." The true derivation of cracker, notwithstanding all the evidence given before on the subject, is the original word for Quaker, which in Spanish is _cuacero_, first changed into _cuaker_ by the English, and again into cracker. From this we may learn that neither cattle-whips nor corn-cracking had any thing to do with the naming of these people. These crackers have few local attachments; moving twice in a year does not inconvenience them; indeed, no earthly state of existence can be imagined freer from care and less fraught with toil than the one they lead. When settled, they are not fastidious about their habitations, as the mild climate does not require close quarters; a good shelter will subserve their purpose. Like birds of the air, they only want a roosting-place when night overtakes them. Their houses are mostly made of logs, notched to fit at the corners, the floors being oftentimes of earth, but usually boards sawed by hand. These tenements are scoured once a week, when the beds are sunned, and every thing turned out. The men are not always dressed in "store-clothes," with a corresponding outfit, but usually country-made cotton home-spun. The genuine cracker wears a broad-brimmed hat, braided from palmetto, a brown-jean coat and breeches, a deer-skin vest with the fur left on, and a pair of stout, useful cow-skin boots, or shoes. He supports a very unkempt mustache and whiskers, before which a Broadway dandy would shrink with the most intense disgust. This natural growth obscures a mouth well filled with teeth, which were nature's gift, and the handiwork of no dentist--from whence is kept a constant ejecting of tobacco juice. He always has a body-guard of dogs whenever and wherever you find him, the number varying according to his condition in life--the poorer the man, the larger the number of canines. These animals are very thin, whether from a deficiency in their master's larder, or the constant rambling life they lead, has not been exactly determined. Around his master's neck is suspended a flask of shot and powder-horn, while in his hands is a rifle named "Sure-fire," which he says was never known to flicker, warranted to bring down any game within a range of two hundred yards, running or flying. These people, like the patriarchs of old, have large families, which require about the same attention as puppies or kittens. When night comes the children curl up in almost any corner to sleep, and at dawn of day, when the early songsters dash the dew-drops from the grass and flowers, they are out hunting for berries, or watching the birds building their nests, that they may know where to find the eggs, in which enterprise they are experts. The cracker has a hearty welcome for the stranger, which puts the blush of contempt upon those claiming a much higher degree of civilization. Every thing the house contains is free to visitors. Although the bill of fare bears no resemblance to the St. James Hotel or Carleton House in Jacksonville, yet quantity will make up for quality. Chickens are always killed for company, without counting the number of Christmas holidays they have seen. Your plate is piled with sweet potatoes and corndodger bread, or ash-cake, to be washed down with strong coffee, which they always manage to keep on hand for special occasions. The old folks are very attentive; but where are the children? Run away like wild rabbits. They are out taking a view of the company. Watch, and you will soon see curious little eyes looking through the cracks, or slipping around the corners. These crackers are a very communicative class of persons, always full of information pertaining to Florida, and as ready to talk as a freshly-wound, well-regulated Yankee clock to keep time. The father of the family is called "dad," the mother "mam." The husband speaks of his wife as "the old woman," the wife says "old man," while the children are always called girls and boys. Women among no class of people in the South, however poor, are ever called "heifers," as one Northern writer has represented, unless by their conduct they are lost both to virtue and shame. The cracker exercises his prudential care by always keeping hogs. It is the main support of the family; and these razor-backed tourists are constantly going on voyages of discovery, either by land or sea. They often excite the sympathies of visitors on account of their thin bodies, but they possess more self-sustaining qualities than those who are sorry for them, showing what hogs can do as well as people, when thrown on their own resources. The sea-shore swine, which receive sustenance from the beach, can feed twice in twenty-four hours, when the tide recedes, and no depleted stores tell the amount of fish, oysters, and other marine morsels, which are deposited within their bony frames. The above is a true statement in regard to the Southern crackers, which excites the commiseration of so many people who know nothing about them, and would, no doubt, be greatly benefited by reserving their concern for themselves, remembering, "Where little is given, little is required." Civilization has commenced making its mark on the Ocklawaha, and the march of improvement, which never tires in its efforts, is leaving its foot-prints here. These new developments are visible from the various landings which the steamer makes, as it advances through the rapid current. In order to effect a landing, the bow of the craft is run against the shore, when the command is given by the Captain, with as much authority as though a ship from England had arrived on foreign shores, "Make fast!" This order is executed by putting a hawser an inch in circumference around a stake driven in the ground. Here are two cords of wood waiting to be loaded, called in cracker vernacular "light-wood," filled with turpentine, from which the article of commerce is manufactured. The vender of this commodity is on shore, waiting for an opportunity to dispose of his pile when "the charcoal sketches" commence "wooding-up." Nearly all the passengers improve the time by taking a walk on shore to see the country while the hands on board are working. A countryman is trying to sell a bear-skin to some of the crowd. These Floridians always ask more than they can get, to see what visitors will stand. The sun has set, and we are now entering upon a night of darkness, in a wilderness of leaves and blooms, on the water, near thickets where the hungry wolf lurks for his prey, and the bear growls from his covert of security; where the wild deer nips the grass and feasts from herbage green, frequenting haunts where the hounds lose their trail, and the foot of the civilized hunter has never trod. A bright blaze, made from light-wood knots, is placed in a frame on the bow of our craft, and, like the "pillar of fire" which preceded the Israelites through the wilderness, is our guide. Here, encircled by trees whose long limbs overlap each other so thickly that only a glimmer of dawn is seen through the small openings, our flame-lit craft winds up the serpentine stream, and our night-fires send out a glare which illumines the darkness far as the eye can see, while on the boughs above our heads in silence sits the owl, with only an occasional "Who!" to let us know vitality is not entirely extinct in these wilds. [Illustration: WHO!] The queer, dusky-looking figures, moving about with their pine torches, flashing through the darkness, and yelling at each other in cases of emergency, when our boat appears trying to climb a tree, remind us of the historic plutonian regions. As we glide along, our pathway is marked by volumes of pyrotechnic showers more numerous and brilliant than can be conceived, which burst from the smoke-stacks, and fall on the water before they are extinguished. Phantom-like we move, while weird forms retire before us, but still clinging to our boat as the connecting-link between civilized and savage life, a thoughtless move from it in any direction being a dangerous and hazardous experiment. Every landing has its name, kept up as a mark of distinction by the boatmen and settlers, but unknown to history. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER V. Many incidents of travel are related by different _savants_, and those of humbler pretensions, who circulate through the country for various purposes; but the following stands without a parallel as a genuine fact, so far as last heard from, in the wilds of Florida. As we entered the famous Silver Springs this morning, about 4 o'clock, on the steamer Okahumkee, another boat that had arrived slightly in advance of us was anchored very near our stopping-place. Upon the bows of each were burning large light-wood fires, the reflection on the water being only comparable to the magic movements of enchantment, while the shore, encircled with tall forest-trees, embowered the whole in a sylvan retreat, where Diana herself might repose, and be refreshed for the more exciting amusements of the chase. One of our gentlemen-passengers, upon being suddenly aroused from his sound slumbers, opened his blind for the purpose of taking observations of the outside world. At the same instant a very fresh morning breeze fanned his brow, causing him to make a most convulsive sneeze--which effort being too much for his artificial superstructure, all his upper teeth were ejected from his mouth into the water. Upon the return of his wandering thoughts from the vision of beauty before him, he was again apprised of the stern realities which would have to be met and faced without the valuable accessories for administering to his comfort--particularly in the mastication of Florida beef--teeth. Soon as day dawned, sympathetic friends gathered around him with words of condolence, while the services of all experts in the art of descending into the watery fluid, without being drowned, were called into requisition. They all went down repeatedly, and returned without the lost treasures. Poles were spliced, armed with instruments of various designs, with which they raked and dredged for hours, with toothless success. Large rewards were offered, while hope in the heart of the owner sunk below zero, and expectation stimulated the movements of only one artisan, who finally succeeded in securing the truant grinders by fastening a tin scoop on the end of a forty-foot pole, and bringing them out, amid the congratulations of friends and the great joy of the owner, who gave the persevering negro his proffered reward--ten dollars. The first investment made by the colored individual was two bits for tobacco, which he could chew without the aid of foreign intervention. The most noticeable point on the Ocklawaha is the Mirror of Diana, or Silver Springs, which is the source of this river, where, from the depths of some invisible cavern, boils up a large body of water, gathered from far away, forming a succession of springs nine miles in length, with an average depth of thirty-five feet. These waters rise from the subterranean depths of the earth, with their crystal streams pure as an angel, clear as the noonday sun, bright and beautiful as the radiance of heavenly light. This spring is to the campers and movers who travel through the country what Jacob's Well was to the land of Samaria. It is entirely surrounded by trees, forming columns unknown to drafts or plans of architectural skill, except the great Architect of the universe. More than thirty years since, the land around this spring was entered as a homestead by a relative of that memorable martyr, John Rogers. Mr. Rogers, with whom we had the pleasure of conversing, said its present appearance was the same as when he first saw it--the water being so clear that looking down in it appeared like the sky above it: he could see no difference in depths, look which way he would, up or down. The basin is lined with a grayish limestone, which lies in ledges on the bottom, from under the crevices of which dart out patriarchal fish of immense size; but no hook, however delicately baited and concealed, can lure them to bite. They are occasionally captured with lines by striking, which custom was practiced by the Indians, "while graceful poised they threw the spear." At midday the sunbeams kiss the placid surface of this crystal fluid, while they are reflected by the transparent waters, which tremble and shimmer with resplendent glories. A sunset viewed from this Mirror of Diana fills the imagination with emotions of grandeur, to be remembered as past joys, where descriptive powers are inadequate to the task. The parting rays of old Sol shine upon the vast forest of tall trees, draped with Spanish moss suspended in mid-air, resembling the fragile texture of some fairy realm more than a tangible substance; or when twilight deepens, then the stars raise their eyelids, and peep into the depths of this land-locked mystery, which reveals nothing of its past history, age, or origin. The following legend, which appeared in the _National Repository_, seems so much in keeping with what might have been a reality, we have copied it for the benefit of those who are fond of legendary tales: "A long time ago, when Okahumkee was king over the tribes of Indians who roamed and hunted around the South-western lakes, an event occurred which filled many hearts with sorrow. The king had a daughter named Weenonah, whose rare beauty was the pride of the old man's life. Weenonah was exceedingly graceful and symmetrical in figure. Her face was of an olive complexion, tinged with light brown, her skin finely transparent, exquisitely clear. It was easy to see the red blood beneath the surface, and often it blushed in response to the impulses of a warm and generous nature. Her eye was the crystal of the soul--clear and liquid, or flashing and defiant, according to her mood. But the hair was the glory of the woman. Dark as the raven's plume, but shot with gleams of sacred arrows, the large masses, when free, rolled in tresses of rich abundance. The silken drapery of that splendid hair fell about her 'like some royal cloak dropped from the cloud-land's rare and radiant loom.' Weenonah was, in truth, a forest-belle--an idol of the braves--and many were the eloquent things said of her by the red men, when they rested at noon, or smoked around the evening fires. She was a coveted prize, while chiefs and warriors vied with each other as to who should present the most valuable gift, when her hand was sought from the king, her father. But the daughter had already seen and loved Chuleotah, the renowned chief of a tribe which dwelt among the wild groves near Silver Springs. "The personal appearance of Chuleotah, as described by the hieroglyphics of that day, could be no other than prepossessing. He was arrayed in a style suitable to the dignity of a chief. Bold, handsome, well-developed, he was to an Indian maiden the very ideal of manly vigor. But it was a sad truth that between the old chief and the young, and their tribes, there had long been a deadly feud. They were enemies. When Okahumkee learned that Chuleotah had gained the affections of his beloved child, he at once declared his purpose of revenge. A war of passion was soon opened, and carried on without much regard to international amenities; nor had many weeks passed away before the noble Chuleotah was slain--slain, too, by the father of Weenonah. "Dead! Her lover dead! Poor Weenonah! Will she return to the paternal lodge, and dwell among her people, while her father's hand is stained with the drippings of her lover's scalp? No; she hurries away to the well-known fountain. Her heart is there; for it is a favorite spot, and was a trysting-place, where herself and Chuleotah met. Its associations are all made sacred by the memories of the past, while on the glassy bosom of the spring the pale ghost of Chuleotah stands beckoning her to come. 'Yes, my own, my beloved one, I come. I will follow where thou leadest, to the green and flowery land.' Thus spake the will, if not the lips, of the maiden. It is not a mere common suicide which she now contemplates; it is not despair, nor a broken heart, nor the loss of reason; it is not because she is sick of the world, or tired of life. Her faith is, that by an act of self-immolation she will join her lover on that spirit-plain, whose far-off, strange glory has now for her such an irresistible attraction. "The red clouds of sunset had passed away from the western skies. Gray mists came stealing on, but they soon melted and disappeared, as the stars shone through the airy blue. The moon came out with more than common brilliancy, and her light silvered the fountain. All was still, save the night-winds, that sighed and moaned through the lofty pines. Then came Weenonah to the side of the spring, where, gazing down, she could see on the bottom the clear, green shelves of limestone, sloping into sharp hollows, opening here and there into still profounder depths. Forty feet below, on the mass of rock, was her bed of death--easy enough for her, as before she could reach it the spirit must have fled. The jagged rocks on the floor could therefore produce no pain in that beautiful form. For a moment she paused on the edge of the spring, then met her palms above her head, and with a wild leap she fell into the whelming waves. "Down there in the spring are shells, finely polished by the attrition of the waters. They shine with purple and crimson, mingled with white irradiations, as if beams of the Aurora, or clouds of a tropical sunset, had been broken and scattered among them. Now, mark those long, green filaments of moss, or fresh-water algæ, swaying to and fro to the motion of the waves; these are the loosened braids of Weenonah's hair, whose coronet gives us such beautiful coruscations, sparkling and luminous, like diamonds of the deep, when in the phosphorescence of night the ocean waves are tipped with fire. These relics of the devoted Indian girl are the charm of Silver Springs. But as to Weenonah herself--the real woman who could think and feel, with her affections and memory--she has gone to one of those enchanted isles far out in the western sea, where the maiden and her lover are united, and where both have found another Silver Spring, amid the rosy bowers of love eternal." Thus runs the Indian legend of Silver Springs, in Florida. The following description of Silver Spring, written by Prof. John Le Conte, although entirely divested of myth and mystery, contains truthful facts that continue to invest it with a charm which stirs the current of our thoughts as no other natural scenery in the State: "This remarkable spring is situated near the center of Marion county, in the State of Florida, in latitude 29° 15´ north, and longitude 82° 20´ west. It is about five miles north-east of Ocala, the county-seat, and nearly in the axis of the peninsula, being equally distant from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Its waters are discharged by a short stream bearing the same name, which, after running about six miles, unites with the Ocklawaha, a tributary of the St. John's River. The stream takes its origin in a deep pool, or head-basin, which is called the Silver Spring. This basin is nearly circular in shape, about two hundred feet in diameter, and surrounded by hills covered with live-oaks, magnolias, sweet-bays, and other gigantic evergreens. The amount of water discharged is so large that small steamers and barges readily navigate the Silver Spring, up to the pool, or head-spring, where there is a landing for the shipment of cotton, sugar, and other produce. These steamers and barges make regular trips between the Spring and Pilatka, on the St. John's. The boatmen informed me that at its junction with the Ocklawaha more than one-half the water is contributed by the Silver Spring stream. This stream, for about two miles from its source, varies in breadth from forty-five to one hundred feet, and its depth in the shallowest parts from ten to fifteen feet, its average velocity being about two miles per hour. The fluctuations of water-level in this spring seem to be connected with the season of rains, but never varying more than two feet. The commencement of the rainy season changes from the 15th of June to the 15th of July. The waters of the spring begin to rise about the middle of the season of summer rains, and attain their maximum height about its termination. The maximum depth of water in the basin constituting the head of the spring was found to be not more than thirty-six feet in the deepest crevice from which the water boils up; the general depth in the central and deep parts of the basin was found to be about thirty feet. Inasmuch as accurate quantitative determinations, however easily applied, are seldom resorted to by the unscientific, we need not be surprised that its real depth falls very far short of its reputed depth. In South Carolina, the reported depth was variously stated at from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty feet, while the smallest estimate in the vicinity of the spring was forty-five feet! This affords an illustration of the general law, that the accuracy of popular statements bears an inverse proportion to the distance from the point of observation--probably, like all emanations from centers, following the law of inverse squares. "Doubtless, the greater portion of the water which flows in the Silver Spring River is furnished by this principal or head-spring; but there are several tributary springs of similar character along the course of the stream, which contribute more or less to the volume of water. These usually occur in deep basins, or coves, along the margin of the stream. The depth of one of these coves, situated about two hundred yards below the head-spring, was found to be thirty-two feet in the crevice in the limestone bottom from which the water boiled; in other deep parts of the basin the depth was about twenty-four feet. The 'Bone-yard,' from which several specimens of mastodon bones have been taken, is situated two miles below the head-spring, it being a cove, or basin, measuring twenty-six feet. "The most remarkable and really interesting phenomenon presented by this spring is the truly extraordinary transparency of the water--in this respect surpassing any thing which can be imagined. All of the intrinsic beauties which invest it, as well as the wonderful optical properties which popular reports have ascribed to its waters, are directly or indirectly referable to their almost perfect diaphaneity. On a clear and calm day, after the sun has attained sufficient altitude, the view from the side of a small boat floating on the surface of the water, near the center of the head-spring, is beautiful beyond description, and well calculated to produce a powerful impression upon the imagination. Every feature and configuration of the bottom of this gigantic basin is as distinctly visible as if the water was removed, and the atmosphere substituted in its place. "A large portion of the bottom of this pool is covered with a luxuriant growth of water-grass and gigantic moss-like plants, or fresh-water algæ, which attain a height of three or four feet. The latter are found in the deepest parts of the basin. Without doubt, the development of so vigorous a vegetation at such depths is attributable to the large amount of solar light which penetrates these waters. Some parts are devoid of vegetation; these are composed of limestone rock and sand, presenting a white appearance. The water boils up from fissures in the limestone; these crevices being filled with sand and comminuted limestone, indicate the ascending currents of water by the local milk-like appearance produced by the agitation of their contents. "These observations were made about noon, during the month of December--the sunlight illumining the sides and bottom of this remarkable pool, brilliantly, as if nothing obstructed the light. The shadows of our little boat, of our hanging heads and hats, of projecting crags and logs, of the surrounding forest, and of the vegetation at the bottom, were distinctly and sharply defined; while the constant waving of the slender and delicate moss-like _alga_, by means of the currents created by the boiling up of the water, and the swimming of numerous fish above this miniature subaqueous forest, imparted a living reality to the scene which can never be forgotten. If we add to this picture, already sufficiently striking, that objects beneath the surface of the water, when viewed obliquely, were fringed with the prismatic hues, we shall cease to be surprised at the mysterious phenomena with which vivid imaginations have invested this enchanting spring, besides the inaccuracies which have been perpetuated in relation to the wonderful properties of its waters. On a bright day the beholder seems to be looking down from some lofty air-point on a truly fairy scene in the immense basin beneath him--a scene whose beauty and magical effect is vastly enhanced by the chromatic tints with which it is inclosed. "Popular opinion has ascribed to these waters remarkable magnifying power. In confirmation of this, it is commonly reported that the _New York Herald_ can be read at the deepest parts of the pool. It is almost needless to state that the waters do not possess this magnifying power; that it is only the large capitals constituting the heading of this paper which can be read at the bottom, and that the extraordinary transparency of the water is abundantly sufficient to account for all analogous facts. A variety of careful experiments were made, with a view of testing this point, by securing printed cards to a brick attached to a fathoming-line, and observing at what depth the words could be read when seen vertically. Of course, when looked at obliquely, the letters were distorted and colored by refraction. Numerous comparative experiments were likewise executed in relation to the distances at which the same cards could be read in the air. The results of these experiments may be announced in a few words--namely, that when the letters are of considerable size--say a quarter of an inch or more in length--on a clear, bright day, they could be read at about as great a vertical distance beneath the surface of the water as they could in the atmosphere. In some instances cards were read by those ignorant of the contents at depths varying from six to thirty feet. The comparative experiments in reading the cards in air and water serve to convey a more distinct idea of the wonderful diaphanous properties of the latter than any verbal description. "Some have thought there was something mysterious in the fact that objects beneath the surface of the water, when viewed obliquely, are fringed with prismatic hues. It is unnecessary to remind the physicist that such a phenomenon is a direct physical consequence of the laws of dispersion of light by refraction. Observation has proved that white objects on a dark ground were fringed with blue at the top, with orange and red at the bottom, while the color of the fringing was reversed for dark objects on a white ground--this being exactly in accordance with recognized optical principles. In the present case, the phenomenon is remarkably striking and conspicuous, probably from two causes: first, because the extraordinary transparency of the water rendered subaqueous objects highly luminous; and secondly, because the gigantic evergreens which fringed the pool cut off most of the surface reflection, which would otherwise have impaired the visual impression produced by the more feeble refracted and dispersed rays proceeding from the objects--the shadow of the surrounding forest forming a dark background, analogous to the black cloud on which a rainbow is projected." The land improvements near the springs are not particularly fascinating. There are two landings about one-half mile distant from each other, called Upper and Lower. At the Lower Landing is a large turpentine distillery, the property of Messrs. Agnew & Co., where thirty barrels of turpentine and one hundred of rosin are manufactured monthly. The Upper Landing has a large ware-house, usually well filled with goods from steamers, to furnish the back country, together with produce for shipment to New York and many other points. Mrs. F. A. House has a dry-goods store in the vicinity, and a small orange grove of very promising appearance. A boarding-house is kept open in the winter, but we are unable to state what benefit could be derived in drinking the strong limestone water from the spring, unless the scenery would compensate for the lack of life-giving properties in the transparent fluid. A bar-room is kept here by a man with much-inflamed eyes, which are, no doubt, caused by imbibing his villainous compounds too freely, in the absence of better-paying customers. Tourists wishing to visit Ocala can be accommodated with a conveyance on reasonable terms. Ocala is a nice little town, six miles distant, nestled among the hummocks, embowered in a growth of grand water-oaks, orange-trees, and ornamental shrubbery. It is the capital of Marion county. A good hotel is kept here by Mr. E. J. Harris, where about forty boarders can be accommodated. In the center of the park stands a very creditable court-house, while churches of various creeds are located in the suburbs. It is a central business resort for the country people many miles around. This locality is described by De Soto as being "a fertile region of country where maize is abundant, also acorns, grapes, and plums." Near here the Spaniards entered upon the territory of a chief called Vitachuco, who received them with demonstrations of hostility; "where a bloody battle was fought between two lakes on a level plain, when two hundred warriors plunged into the water, and there remained without touching land for twenty-four hours." Ocala has a population of several hundred inhabitants, which have more the appearance of enjoyment than those of any other town in the State. The climate being so mild, no arrangements are made in the stores and offices for warming; consequently when a cool morning comes, little camp-fires are built around the public square, before which are gathered many happy, contented-looking faces, of all professions, accepting things as they find them, taking a cool breeze with the firmness of a Stoic, knowing it is only of short duration--a kind of Northern aggression, which the warm sunshine will soon waft away. As the fragments of lost fortunes float by them, they do not settle into apathy and despair over the wreck, but all seem resigned to their fate, trying to be as happy as the force of circumstances will permit. They are mostly persons of fine mental culture, besides being the best, most hospitable people in existence; indeed, their society seems like an oasis in the desert of this cold, selfish world. The lands around are gently undulating, with an abundance of rolling hummock and first-class pine. It was formerly considered the most productive county in the State, containing the best orange groves, and before the war raising the largest amount of sea-island cotton, besides oranges, sugar, and sirup in abundance. Many planters became discouraged during the late war on account of inability to work their large plantations, and abandoned them. These fertile tracts are for sale now in lots to suit colonists, or accommodate single settlers. An average of two thousand pounds of sugar to the acre can be produced here. The soil is dark, alluvial, and porous, containing phosphate of lime and other fertilizers, which possess the power of recuperation when not being cultivated. Lime-rock abounds, covering the earth in the form of bowlders and drifts, indicating a clay soil. Good lands can be purchased at from five to ten dollars per acre. Marion county is called the back-bone of the State--it being the center from which the waters recede on each side, until what was the ocean's bed is now cultivated land. This theory is confirmed from the fact of numerous fossil remains to be seen on the surface, consisting of fish, birds, alligators'-shells, oysters, together with the bones of an animal unknown to the present generation; but if his voice was proportionate to his body, he must have made the earth tremble with sound. The following amusing story is related in reference to this mammoth animal during the pioneer movements of boats which first navigated the Ocklawaha River: One morning early, as the gray dawn was stealing through the shades of night, the inhabitants were aroused from their slumbers by an unusual noise. An old hunter named Matt. Driggers, whose ear was ever on the alert for the scream of the wild cat, the howl of the wolf, the yell of the panther, or the growl of the bear, rushed out, exclaiming, "What on airth is that?" The sound was repeated, when Matt. convulsively grasped his hunting-horn, and blew a blast from his stentorian lungs which echoed through a vast extent of country. His faithful hounds came whining about him, anxious for the hunt. Taking down his rifle "Dead Shot" from the hooks, he mounted his lank steed, and rode with haste to the nearest neighbor, Pat Kennedy. "Hellow, Pat! you in thar asleep, and the devil unchained in the swamp! Hark! now don't you hear him?" "O Matt., that's nothin' but one of those old masterdons! You know we dun seed his bones where he was drowned in the Wakulla Spring." "I dunno, may be so; one thing sartain, he's a mighty big varmint, an' his voice is curoser than any thing I ever hearn afore in my time." "But," says Pat, "one thing sure: there is nothing ranges these parts but what my dogs and 'Kill Quick' can bring down." Summoning all his dogs, he was soon on his way with Matt. Driggers to the house of the next frontiersman. Attracted by the baying of hounds and the blowing of horns, the excitement ran like wild-fire throughout the entire neighborhood, until all the settlers were collected. After reviewing his comrades and counting his dogs, Matt. Driggers, confident that the full force of the country was mustered, then rode bravely through bushes and swamps, fording creeks and swimming lagoons, in pursuit of the great "varmint." When he imagined they were sufficiently near, he ordered the dogs to be put on the trail. Simultaneous with this movement came another shrill echo from the supposed huge monster, which sent the dogs cowering to their masters, at the same time unnerving the courage of the bravest hunter. A look of superstitious awe was depicted upon every countenance, and none dared advance a step farther except Matt. Driggers, who, bolder than the rest, led the way, saying, "Come, boys; if the dogs are scared, we will follow by the sound!" Winding their course cautiously through the valley, they followed in the direction of the strange sound, until they reached the basin of Silver Springs, where they found a curious-looking craft discharging cargo. The hunters commenced making inquiries if they had heard that great monster while passing through the valley, at the same time describing, and trying to imitate, its voice to the best of their ability. The Captain, to their great satisfaction, then told and illustrated to them that the great noise about which they were so much excited was only a _steam-boat whistle_! Sometimes, the water being too low for steamers above Silver Springs, visitors are deprived of a great pleasure in not seeing this portion of the country, barges and slow coaches being the only medium of communication. However, this inconvenience will soon be overcome by a contemplated railroad. Large portions of the country in this locality are yet open to homestead settlers, where all good people will receive a hearty welcome. As we leave the river and springs, the scenery changes from trees and foliage to fertile prairies and long marsh-grass, which sways in the breeze like troubled waves. Here the huge alligators luxuriate and crawl about in peaceful security, swallowing their light-wood knots before commencing to hibernate in winter, which precaution is said to be necessary, that their diaphragms may not contract during this torpid state. In these wilds the palmetto rears its crowned head in solitude, and the wild orange matures its golden fruit, kissed by an eternal spring-time. This is the home of the curlew, plume-crane, blue heron, fish-hawk, royal king-fisher, mocking-bird, paroquet, red-bird, blue-peter, water-turkey, limkin, and duck--all of them God's free birds. Our steamer has now commenced making its pathway through wide, deep lakes, and we are one hundred and fifty miles above Pilatka. In these waters are found a great variety of fish--pike, trout, bream, perch; while in the surrounding country live the black bear, wild cat, deer, gray fox, squirrels of all kinds, and wild hogs. The first body of water is Lake Griffin, twelve miles long; Lake Eustace, of less dimensions; then Lake Harris, fifteen miles in length, seven miles wide, with an average of water thirty feet in depth. The tide of immigration is concentrating on this lake very rapidly. The following incident is related as having occurred among the primitive inhabitants in this portion of the country, when priests were not always waiting in the church to administer the rites of matrimony to willing lovers: A devoted suitor, having made the preliminary arrangements for the celebration of his nuptials, set out in search of an official to perform the ceremony. He, never having been initiated into the mysteries of matrimony before, ignorantly inquired of the first person he met where he could find a sheriff. The man replied there was no sheriff nearer than Pilatka. "Why do you wish for him?" "I'm going to be married, sir." "O you want the squire, or preacher." "Do you know where a preacher lives, then? I thought the sheriff would do as well." "The preacher has gone on the circuit." Knowing a good deacon lived near, he repaired thither as a last resort. Finding the deacon at home, he related to him, in tremulous tones, his disagreeable condition. The deacon informed him that marrying did not come within the pale of his jurisdiction. "But I must be married," replied the intended bridegroom. The deacon replied, "Impossible, sir!" "Well, deacon, can't you marry us just a little till the preacher comes home?" Leesburg, fronting partly on Lake Harris, is a thriving town; has a post-office, court-house, Masonic hall, hotel, private boarding-houses, church, steam cotton-gin, grist-mill, lumber dressing machine, etc. A sugar-cane mill is in operation, connected with which is a centrifugal sugar-dryer, the only one in the State. This mill can turn out fifteen barrels per day. Every thing produced here finds a ready market, as boats pass almost daily, which enables the settlers to change all their surplus into money, from a bale of cotton or moss to a dozen eggs. When Colonel Hart's little open boat and engine first came up to dredge out the barnets and swamp-grass, the natives gathered around him, thinking it was a cook-stove. The Indians traveled through these swamps by wading in the water, and using a cow-hide fastened at the ends to transport their provisions, women, and children, which they drew after them, thus making a trail that lasted several days, which enabled their friends or foes to follow them. In this vicinity we find historical relics, and approach tragic grounds. A portion of the cypress log mentioned by De Soto in his travels through Florida is still to be seen; also an artificial causeway, several hundred yards in length, made of shells from which the Indians extracted food and pearls, near which yet remains a portion of one of those immense mounds, supposed to be the residence of the Cazique. Lake Dunham is the last in the chain of these inland waters, upon which is situated Okahumkee, two hundred and twenty-five miles above Pilatka. It is the terminus of navigation. The Ocklawaha River was the memorable place where the Payne's Treaty Landing was drawn up, and between the terminus of this chain of lakes and the Withlacoochee River are located the tragic grounds of General Thompson's murder and the Dade Massacre. CHAPTER VI. The early history of Florida Territory, soon after it came into the possession of the United States, being written in characters of blood for years, it is considered both appropriate and interesting to intersperse a sprinkling of historical facts in this work, to the authenticity of which some now living can testify. The Indians were intensely opposed to emigrating West, as that country offered them no such means of idleness as Florida, where they lived with as little solicitude as the buzzards that lazily flew above their heads--while in Arkansas they would have to work. They were a race of hunters and fishermen, with no habits of industry, gliding on the surface of lakes and rivers, with as little idea of locating as the watery inhabitants they captured. The movements of the Indians and American troops, encumbered with their wagons, or a field-piece, compared unfavorably with the agile foe they had to meet in warfare, who could swim the streams and leap over the logs of the wide forest, and vanish, like the whooping crane, that made its nest at night far from the spot where it dashed the dew from the flowers and grass in the morning. One of the occasions of the Seminole war, like our own late struggle, was on account of the fugitive slaves, which the Indians harbored, instead of returning to their owners, or permitting their masters to come and get them. The following is a correct copy of an interesting document, to which frequent reference was made during the Florida war, as a compact which had been violated. We have transferred it as an item of interest. As the whites found the Indians becoming troublesome neighbors, this treaty was drawn up in order to rid the country of them--its violation the true cause of the war: _Treaty of Payne's Landing, concluded May 9, 1832, and ratified April 12, 1834._ ARTICLE I. That the Seminole Indians relinquish to the United States all claim to the lands they at present occupy in the Territory of Florida, and agree to immigrate to the country assigned to the Creeks, west of the Mississippi River--it being understood that an additional extent of territory, proportioned to their numbers, will be added to the Creek country, and that the Seminoles will be received as a constituent part of the Creek Nation, and be reädmitted to all the privileges as a member of the same. ART. II. For and in consideration of the relinquishment of claim in the first article of this agreement, and in full compensation for all the improvements which may have been made on the lands thereby ceded, the United States stipulate to pay to the Seminole Indians fifteen thousand dollars, to be divided among the chiefs and warriors of the several towns, in a ratio proportioned to their population, the respective portions of each to be paid on their arrival in the country they consent to move to: it being understood their faithful interpreters, Abraham and Cudjo, shall receive two hundred dollars each of the above sum, in full remuneration for the improvements to be abandoned, now cultivated by them. ART. III. The United States agree to distribute, as they arrive at their homes in the Creek Territory, west of the Mississippi River, a blanket and home-spun frock to each warrior, women and children, of the Seminole tribe of Indians. ART. IV. The United States agree to extend the annuity for the support of a blacksmith, provided for in the sixth article of the treaty at Camp Moultrie, for ten years beyond the period therein stipulated; and in addition to the other annuities secured under that treaty, the United States agree to pay three thousand dollars a year for fifteen years, commencing after the removal of the whole tribe--these sums to be added to the Creek annuities, and the whole sum to be divided, that the chiefs and warriors of the Seminole Indians may receive their equitable portion of the same, as members of the Creek Confederation. ART. V. The United States will take the cattle belonging to the Seminoles, at the valuation of some discreet person appointed by the President, and the same shall be paid for in money to the respective owners, after their arrival at their new homes; or other cattle, such as may be desired, will be furnished them, notice being given through their agent of their wishes on this subject, before their removal, that time may be afforded to supply the demand. ART. VI. The Seminoles being anxious to be relieved from certain vexatious demands for slaves and other property, alleged to have been stolen and destroyed by them, so that they may remove unembarrassed to their new homes, the United States stipulate to have the same property investigated, and to liquidate such as may be satisfactorily established, provided the amount does not exceed seven thousand dollars. ART. VII. The Seminole Indians will remove in three years after the ratification of this agreement, and the expenses of their removal shall be paid by the United States; and such subsistence shall also be furnished for a term not exceeding twelve months after their arrival at their new residence, as in the opinion of the President their numbers may require, the emigration to commence early as practicable in A.D. 1833, and with those Indians at present occupying the Big Swamp and other parts of the country beyond, as defined in the second article of the treaty concluded at Camp Moultrie Creek, so that the whole of that proportion of Seminoles may be removed within the year aforesaid, and the remainder of the tribe, in about equal proportions, during the subsequent years 1834 and 1835. Done at Camp at Payne's Landing, on the Ocklawaha River, in the Territory of Florida, May 9, 1832. JAMES GADSDEN, Commissioner, [L. S.] and fifteen Chiefs. Osceola figured very conspicuously during the early history of our Florida troubles; indeed, we consider the following statements connected with his movements as items of unsurpassed interest to those who are more fond of facts without fiction than the wondrous legends of any day-dreamer. The mother of Osceola belonged to the Red Stick tribe of Indians, a branch of the Creeks. She was married to Powell, who was an English trader among the Indians for twenty years, and for this reason he is sometimes called Powell instead of Osceola. He was born in the State of Georgia, on the Tallapoosa River, about the year 1800. In 1808 a quarrel occurred among the Indians of the Creek tribe, when the mother of Osceola left, taking him with her, and retiring to the Okefinokee Swamp. Powell remained in Georgia, with his two daughters, and emigrated to the West with them. In 1817 Osceola retreated before General Jackson, with a small party, and settled on Pease Creek. A few years afterward he removed to the Big Swamp, in the neighborhood of Fort King, uniting himself with the Micosukees. The greater portion of his life was spent in disquietude, when there was neither peace nor war, but depredating in various ways. He was opposed to the Payne Treaty, declaring he would fight before signing it, or kill any of his followers who made a move toward its ratification. When the Indians held a council at Fort King, consisting of thirteen chiefs, only eight of them were willing to leave for the West. Hoithlee Mattee, or Jumper, a sworn enemy of the whites, who was called in their language "The Lawyer," and for whom General Jackson had offered a reward of five hundred dollars, rose in their council, with all the dignity of a Roman orator, after which he announced his intention in thundering tones: "I say there is no good feeling between Jumper and the white man. Every branch he hews from a tree on our soil is a limb lopped from Hoithlee's body. Every drop of water that a white man drinks from our springs is so much blood from Hoithlee's heart." After the return of Charlie Emaltha from the West, who was the most intelligent of their chiefs, he met with the whites in council, that he might give expression to his opinion: "Remain with us here," said he to the whites, "and be our father; the relation of parent and child to each other is peace--it is gentle as arrow-root and honey. The disorderly among us have committed some depredations, but no blood has been spilled. We have agreed that if we met a brother's blood on the road, or even found his dead body, we should not believe it was by human violence, but that he had snagged his foot, or that a tree had fallen upon him; that if blood was spilled by either, the offender should answer for it." Previous to this period the Indians were lords of the soil, and considered themselves located in a land of undisputed titles, as entirely their own property, by right of possession, as though they held registered deeds. The following is an effort at Indian poetry, descriptive of their condition previous to hostile demonstrations: We were a happy people then, Rejoicing in our hunter mood; No footsteps of the pale-faced men Had marred our solitude. Osceola was not tall, but of fine figure and splendid _physique_, his head being always encircled with a blue turban, surmounted by the waving _tafa luste_, or black-eagle plumes, with a red sash around his waist. He was a time-server, a self-constituted agent, and a dangerous enemy when enraged. In 1834 the United States survey corps, while camping at Fort King, was visited by Osceola, Fred L. Ming being the captain. Indians always show their friendship by eating with their friends. On this occasion he refused all solicitations to partake of their hospitality, and sat in silence, the foam of rage resting in the corners of his mouth. Finally he rose to retire, at the same time assuming a menacing manner, and, seizing the surveyor's chain, said: "If you cross my land I will break this chain in as many pieces as there are links in it, and then throw the pins so far you can never get them again." Like most of his race, he was possessed of a native eloquence, the following of which is a specimen, after the Payne's Landing Treaty was framed and signed by some of the chiefs: "There is little more to be said. The people have agreed in council; by their chiefs they have uttered it; it is well; it is truth, and must not be broken. I speak; what I say I will do; there remains nothing worthy of words. If the hail rattles, let the flowers be crushed; the stately oak of the forest will lift its head to the sky and the storms, towering and unscathed." The whites continued urging the stipulations of the treaty to be enforced, while the Indians continued opposing it in every way. It is a law of our nature that the weak should suspect the strong; for this reason the Seminoles did not regard the Creeks as their friends, but feared them. Captain Wiley Thompson, the Agent, kept reminding the Indians that they had made a promise to leave for the West. Messages were also sent to Micanopy, who, after much debating, said he would not go. Some time afterward General Thompson ordered Osceola to come up and sign the emigration list, which request moved the indignation of this savage to the highest pitch of desperation, and he replied, "I will not." General Thompson then told him he had talked with the Big Chief, in Washington, who would teach him better. He replied, "I care no more for Jackson than for you," and, rushing up to the emigration treaty, as if to make his mark, stuck his knife through the paper. For this act of contempt he was seized, manacled, and confined in Fort King. When Col. Fanning arrested him he was heard to mutter, "The sun is overhead, I shall remember the hour; the Agent has his day, I will have mine." After he was first imprisoned he became sullen, but soon manifested signs of penitence, and called the interpreter, promising, if his irons were taken off, to come back when the sun was high overhead, and bring with him one hundred warriors to sign the paper--which promise was fulfilled. The great mistake was made in releasing him from Fort King. If he had then been sent West, much blood and treasure would have been spared. He had one talk for the white man, and another for the red--being a strange compound of duplicity and superiority. After his release he commanded his warriors to have their knives in readiness, their rifles in order, with plenty of powder in their pouches, and commenced collecting a strong force, not eating or sleeping until it was done. The first direct demonstration of hostility was on June 19, 1835, near what was called the Hogg's Town settlement, at which time one Indian was killed, another fatally injured; also three whites wounded. The fray commenced by some whites whipping a party of five Indians, whom they had caught in the act of stealing. Private Dalton, a dispatch-rider, was killed August 11, 1835, while carrying the mail from Fort Brooke to Fort King. This was an act of revenge for an Indian killed in a former encounter. Dalton was found twenty miles from Fort King with his body cut open and sunk in a pond. The Indians commenced snapping their guns in the face of the Government, at the same time expressing their contempt for the laws, and threatening the country with bloodshed if any force should be used to restrain them. November 30, 1835, the following order was issued by the Agent: "The citizens are warned to consult their safety by guarding against Indian depredations." Hostilities were soon inaugurated in a most shocking manner, with a tragedy of deep import--the killing of Charlie Emaltha, November 26, 1835--which act was only a cold-blooded murder, Osceola heading this band of savages. Charlie Emaltha was shot because he favored immigration, and was preparing to move West. Osceola afterward selected ten of his boldest warriors, which were to wreak vengeance on General Thompson. The General was then camping at Fort King, little dreaming that the hour of his dissolution was so near, or that Osceola was lying in wait to murder him. Although a messenger was sent to tell Osceola of the Wahoo Swamp engagement being in readiness, no laurels won on other fields had any charms for him until Thompson should be victimized by his revengeful machinations. After lingering about for seven days, the opportune moment presented itself, when Thompson was invited away from the fort. On the afternoon of December 28, 1836, as he and Lieutenant Smith, who had dined out that day, were unguardedly walking toward the sutler's store, about a mile from the post, the savages discovered them. Osceola said, "Leave the Agent for me; I will manage him." They were immediately attacked by these warriors, when they both received the full fire of the enemy, and fell dead. Thompson was perforated with fourteen bullet-holes, and Smith with five. The Indians then proceeded to the store, where they shot Rogers and four others. After the murder they robbed the store and set fire to the building. The smoke gave the alarm, but the garrison at Fort King being small, no assistance could be rendered them. On the same day (December 28), and nearly the same hour, Major F. L. Dade, when five miles from Wahoo Swamp, was attacked while on his way from Fort Brooke to Fort King. The Indians were headed by Jumper, who had previously warned those who were cowards not to join him. Micanopy, their chief, who was celebrated for his gluttony, like the Trojan heroes, could eat a whole calf or lamb, and then coil up in a snake-like manner for digestion. On a previous occasion, when an appeal was made to him by the argument of bullet-force, he replied, "I will show you," and afterward stationed himself behind a pine-tree, awaiting the arrival of the Fort Brooke force, while his warriors lay concealed in the high grass around him. When Major Dade arrived opposite where the chief and his men were ambushed, Micanopy, in honor of his position as top chief, leveled his rifle and killed him instantly. Major Dade was shot through the heart, and died apparently without a struggle. The savages rushed from their coverts, when Captain Frazier was their next victim, together with more than a hundred of his companions. The suddenness of the attack, the natural situation of the country, with its prairies of tall grass, each palmetto thicket being a fortress of security from which they could hurl their death-dealing weapons, were all formidable foes with which the whites had to contend. Within a few hours' march of Fort King, under the noonday splendor of a Florida sun, were one hundred and seven lifeless bodies, which had been surprised, murdered, and scalped, with no quarter, and far from the sound of human sympathy. The night after the "Dade Massacre" the Indians returned to Wahoo Swamp with the warm life-current dripping from the scalps of those they had slain. These scalps were given to Hadjo, their Medicine Man, who placed them on a pole ten feet high, around which they all danced, after smearing their faces with the blood of their foes, and drinking freely of "_fire-water_." One instance is mentioned worthy of remark, in regard to finding Major Dade's men with their personal property untouched. Breast-pins of the officers were on their breasts, watches in their places, and silver money in their pockets. They took the military coat of Major Dade, and some clothing from his men, with all the arms and ammunition, which proved they were not fighting for spoils, but their homes. The "Bloody Eight Hundred," after they had committed the murder, left the bodies unburied, and without mutilation, except from scalping. They were buried by the command of Major-general Gaines, who also named this tragic ground "Field of the Dead." Fights now followed each other in rapid succession. Long-impending hostilities burst upon the white settlers, who in turn sought every opportunity of gratifying their revenge for outrages committed. No person was safe; death lurked in every place, and there was security in none. Acts of fiendish barbarity were of common occurrence; houses burned--the labor of years gone forever--while many of the missing were consumed in the flames of their own dwellings, the savages dancing around the funeral-pile. The Indians appeared seized with a kind of desperation which knew no quarter, and asked for none, constantly posting themselves in the most frequented highways, with the intention of slaying or being slain. On the 31st of December, same year, the Indians, receiving information that the troops under General Clinch were approaching, and would cross the Withlacoochee, posted themselves at the usual fording-place for the purpose of intercepting them. General Clinch was surprised by them, as they had greatly the advantage, being among the trees, while the troops were in an open space, with only an old leaky canoe to cross in, under constant fire of the enemy, some of them being obliged to swim. The soldiers accustomed to Indian warfare never forded twice in the same place. Captain Ellis, now a worthy citizen of Gainesville, Florida, who commanded a company during the Seminole war, being present when this attack was made, says: "I was so much afraid the war would be over before I had a chance to be in a fight, I was glad when I saw the Indians coming, but I got enough fighting before it was through with." When he saw the savages at the commencement of this engagement, not knowing of the "Massacre," he said, "Boys, the Indians have been killing our men, for they have got on their coats." Osceola was the prime leader in this first battle of Withlacoochee, and although whole platoons were leveled at him, from behind the tree where he was stationed he brought down his man every fire to the number of forty, while he ordered his warriors not to run from the pale faces, but to fight. The contest was a close one, but General Clinch held his ground. After the Indians retreated the troops buried their dead, and built log-fires over their remains to keep the enemy from digging them up and scalping them. During September, 1837, Osceola sent in negotiations of peace to General Hernandez through an envoy, accompanied with presents of a bead pipe and white plume, as an assurance that the path of the pale face was peaceful and safe. General Hernandez, with the sanction of General Jessup, returned presents and friendly messages, requesting the presence of Osceola, with the distinct understanding that it was for the purpose of making arrangements for the immigration of his people. The messenger returned in accordance to his previous contract, reporting that Osceola was then on his way to St. Augustine with one hundred warriors. Osceola had never heretofore regarded the sacredness of a flag of truce as binding, besides being engaged in the abduction of Micanopy and others, who would otherwise have complied with the terms of the treaty. General Jessup intended before his arrival to have him detained. General Hernandez, who was the soul of honor, remonstrated with him, when he replied, "I am your superior; it is your duty to obey." General Hernandez met them at Fort Peyton, near Pelicier Creek, about seven miles south-west of St. Augustine. From the inquiries of General Hernandez in regard to the other chiefs and their locality, Osceola soon comprehended the situation; and when asked for replies to the General's questions, he said to the interpreter, "I feel choked; you must speak for me." The place where they were assembled for parley being surrounded by a detachment of dragoons, they closed in on them, capturing the whole band without firing a gun. This strategy in taking Osceola did not tarnish the laurels of General Jessup in the least; a much greater blunder was committed in turning him loose after his first capture. Those who have condemned him must think of the anxiety by day and horrors at night through which these poor settlers struggled, when time passed like a bewildering dream of terrors, improvement of all kinds languishing with a sickly growth, while the dragon of war sowed the seeds of discord, and desecrated the golden fleece of the harvest with a bloody hand. When Osceola was first captured he was imprisoned in Fort Marion, but was afterward removed to Sullivan's Island, where his wife and child accompanied him. He was a sad prisoner--never known to laugh during his confinement, but often heard to sigh. During his last illness he had the best medical attention from Charleston, whose skill he refused, believing they intended poisoning him. To one of his wives he was much attached, and his spirit passed away while leaning on her bosom. He died in 1838, from an inflammation of the throat. The eagle plumes droop o'er his piercing eyes, The fire of youth was there! Osceola had always lived among the Seminoles, and regarded their lot as his. The name of his wife was Chécho-ter, or Morning Dew. She was a Creek, and their family consisted of four children. The following lines were composed after his death by one of his friends in Charleston: The rich blue sky is o'er, Around are tall green trees, And the jasmine's breath from the everglades Is borne on the wand'ring breeze. On the mingled grass and flowers Is a fierce and threat'ning form, That looks like an eagle when pluming his wing To brave the gath'ring storm. We recently conversed with a missionary from the Creek Nation, who had been preaching among the Indians in that locality, who says Osceola has two sisters living there, both exemplary Christians, upon whom the serpent's trail had evidently rested very lightly. CHAPTER VII. As we approach the upper shores of the St. John's River, extensive swamp-lands, overgrown with various kinds of timber, are seen, where very bony-looking stock eke out a spare subsistence during a portion of the year, but commence recruiting as soon as the grass begins to grow, in February. Habitations are not frequent, the only variations being mounds, or bluffs, as they are usually termed. Many of these voiceless monuments of the mute past, around which cluster records of deep import, are found scattered throughout various portions of Florida, as in many other localities, furnishing food for the thoughtful, and conjecture for the inquiring mind. All efforts heretofore made to enlighten the world, or explain these curious structures, are founded upon the diversity of opinion and research of the different writers. Their appearance sheds sufficient light on the subject for us to know they are the cemeteries of an early, though partial, civilization--probably a relic of the Mexican race--from which we may derive illustrations of the habits, manners, and ideas of a people, "on whose graves the firmly-rooted oak has so long kept its dominion that it seems to the Indian supplanters to have been the first occupant of the soil." Although we have no means left us of determining the cause by which the change was produced, the day dawned on them not less abruptly than that of the Aztecs of Mexico, or the Incas of Peru, when their sacred fires were extinguished, their altars desecrated, and the "primeval forest slowly resumed its sway over the deserted temples and silent cities of the dead," thus leaving glimpses of an unwritten history, full of interest, even in a tantalizing form. The remains of the American mound-builders are replete with surprise for us, which the magnificence of Montezuma's capital throws in the shade; and, while reading with implicit faith the narrative of the conqueror, we cannot but think the age of America's infancy lies buried in these older mounds. The chasm between these monumental mounts and the present time has never been bridged by any historian, however well versed in archæological records, or chronological _data_--except their belief in the resurrection of the body, which may be inferred from the careful manner in which they disposed of their friends after death. It is within the remembrance of some persons still living that tribes of Indians now extinct have been seen passing through the country on pilgrimages to the graves of their sires, where they regard the earth that entombs the dust of their friends as too sacred for any thing but a shrine. When the Spanish invaders came to conquer Mexico, they disinterred the bones from the mounds, when the Indians entreated them to desist, "as their owners would not find them together when they returned." "Ancestral veneration was a peculiar trait belonging to the aborigines, which is shadowed with an air of melancholy." In these _tumuli_ were deposited all the implements which the departed were supposed to require on their entrance into the unexplored regions. Here we find the ax upon which months and years had been expended in reducing to useful proportions, attrition being the only means employed; also the mortar and pestle, to pound their maize; the stone spear and arrow-head, to kill game; the bone fish-hook, to seize the astonished finny tribe as they swam though the purling streams of the newly-found paradise; the calumet, to be used while communing face to face with the Great Spirit; the pearl ornaments, to deck their persons in a becoming manner for their new position; the essential wampum, that no reflections could be cast as to their former condition in life, as lacking the important requisite to become a member of the _élite_ society in the "long-fancied mild and beautiful hunting-grounds." Mausoleums reared with many hands, inscriptionless monuments, tombs without epitaphs! Whose ashes rest beneath your storm-beaten, time-scarred surfaces? what prowess could you boast beyond your peers? was it the hand of violence or disease that severed the silver cord, and ushered you into the presence of the Great Spirit? We may continue to question, but the locked secrets of by-gone deeds will be borne on no zephyr, however soft, to gratify the longings of those who try to lift the misty veil of obscurity. When searching for a record of the architects of these pyramidal structures, we find our mind drifting upon the quicksands of instability. That the archæological history of the mound-builders in America is in its infancy cannot be doubted, although some imagine they have probed it to the foundation, as they have stood where a few bones, beads, and pottery were thrown out. Mounds are not limited to America, but are found in Europe and Asia, although dignified by different titles--as barrows, moat-hills, and cairns--all belonging to the same family as our earth-mounds. The Indians say that before the "pale faces" scattered them, they had mounds erected for different purposes--for sepulture, for sacrifice, for signals, for refuge in war, and the residence of the cazique. The first and most frequent of these was for sepulture. Homer and Hesiod both speak of monumental mounds over the graves of heroes. While surveying these colossal works, reared by hands of clay, a wonder seizes our minds how the almost nude aborigines, with so limited a number of implements, could collect so much material, and fashion it into any form adapted to their necessities. It is true, they had some knowledge of the manner in which stone could be utilized, as chert and flint have both been found in the oldest earth-works, several feet below the surface--from which also can be deduced facts with reference to their roving habits of life, as this formation does not exist naturally in Florida. The strong argument against Florida not having been the first location of the inhabitants who built these earth-works, is their tendency toward the West, not being found on the Atlantic coast, showing the course of emigration to have been from the West to the South. These structures also indicate strength, and not the hasty work of a nomadic tribe, having once been the site of a vast population. The Florida mounds, unlike those of the Mexicans, bear no marks of magnificence or grandeur, but are of gigantic proportions, in consideration of the appliances with which they had to work, not having either plow or draft animals. They are the only records left us for determining the habits, occupation, and manner of living, of its former residents, which, if more enduring, are scarcely less satisfactory than a foot-print in the sand, as a guide to the pursuits and inclinations of its owner. Intrusive burial has, without doubt, been practiced in Florida, as mounds which have been fully excavated furnish evident marks of burial at different periods, the lower strata having hardly a vestige of ossified substance, with only a few shells or stone implements remaining. The forest-growth on these mounds dates farther back than the earliest settlement of America, but anterior to that leaves us sailing upon the sea of conjecture. Whatever may be said in regard to the aborigines manifesting a natural instinctive downward tendency in the erection of earth and shell, they developed a different direction--that of elevating their residences while living, and having their remains above a common level after death. Here may not the question be asked, If the pyramids of the East, erected to the memory of kings, and those of America have not a connection, or common origin? A distinguishable feature has been observed in regard to the ancient mound-builders, different from the other Indians, in having their skulls flattened--only one of which has ever been exhumed whole. The largest sepulchral mound of which we have any knowledge, on the upper St. John's, is located in the vicinity of New Smyrna, containing the remains of the Yemassees, who were slain by the Creeks--a fierce, warlike tribe--they being driven into a point of land, where they became an easy prey to their enemies. Thirty of these burial-mounds were seen here by Bartram, more than a century since, covering an area of two or three acres. Their form was oblong, being twenty feet in length, and ten or twelve in width, varying from three to four in height, covered with a heavy growth of laurels, red-bays, magnolias, and live-oaks--all composing a dark and solemn shade. Many burial-mounds, three or four feet in height, can be seen now in South Florida, as we have been present when excavations were made in the vicinity of Tampa and Manatee, where beads, pottery, and well-preserved _tibia_ of both sexes, were dug out. These bodies had been buried with their heads all toward a common center, with the greatest regularity. The cranium seems to crumble more than any other ossified portion of the body--the jaw-bones being very perfect, teeth much worn, having belonged to old persons in whose service they had been employed for many years. Firmly-rooted oaks of ancient date were resting on these graves, and spreading a mantle of green for several feet around them. The large mound at Cedar Keys, about which so much has been said, has trees growing on it of immense size, which the winds and tempests of that boisterous coast have rocked for five centuries; but no one, however shrewd or learned, has ever been able to elicit a single historical event from them, during that lapse of years, their age only being determined from the rings, or exogenous growth, of their trunks. This mound is taller than most of those found in Florida, no doubt produced in part by the action of the tides and waves which have washed the earth away from the base. Solid mounds have been opened which contained no bones, and, on account of their peculiar structure, were no doubt used for sacrifice, where human beings had been offered, their enemies being the victims. The following is a record taken from an ancient Spanish author in regard to the manner of sacrifice by an extinct tribe of Indians: "They laid him on a great mound of earth, with the sacred fire burning at his head, in a large vessel of baked clay, formed with a nice art by the savages, on the outside of which was painted the mystic figure, with the bloody hand. His garments were removed, and his limbs fastened separately to stakes driven in places about the mound. Thus were his hands and legs, his body, and his very neck, made fast, so that whatever might be the deed done upon him, he was unable to oppose it, even in the smallest measure." The stupendous sacrificial pyramid of Cholula, bearing a resemblance to the Egyptian structures, but larger, is probably the most remarkable specimen extant. Its form, like that of the other Mexican teocalli, was a truncated cone. The following description, taken from Prescott, will enable us to form an idea of its gigantic proportions: "Its greatest perpendicular is one hundred and seventy-seven feet, the base one thousand four hundred and twenty-three feet--twice the length of the Cheops pyramid--this temple being dedicated to the god of the air." High over all rose this grand structure, with its undying fires, flinging their radiance far and wide around the capital, thus proclaiming to the nations that there was the mystic worship. It covered forty-four acres at its base, and the platform on its summit more than one acre. The effect, when the sun shone on these dazzling splendors with such bright effulgence, was the eclipsing of every other object but the reflection of the grand luminary--which caused a saying among the Indians, that "gold was the tears wept by the sun." On these altars horrid deeds of darkness were perpetrated, inhuman butcheries enacted, to appease the war-god of the Aztecs, who was supposed to delight in offerings of human hearts, torn fresh from the helpless victims, guilty of no crime but self-defense against blood-thirsty persecutors. The teocalli found in the City of Mexico was unsurpassed in grandeur, but of less dimensions, being three hundred feet square and one hundred in height, on the summit of which was an altar for human sacrifices. They ascended by flights of steps on the outside, each flight extending to a platform, which reached quite around the structure--the exhibition of pageant on State occasions being terribly imposing, conducted by priests and victims, marching around their temple, rising higher on the sides as the place of inhuman sacrifice was reached, amid the shouts of a gazing and excited throng. Before each of these altars burned the undying flame, the vestal lamp, whose pale, constant light boded good while burning, but ill when extinguished. In other parts of Mexico Cortez found monuments dedicated to the sun and moon, with lesser ones to the stars. For many years it had been supposed all pyramids were hollow, but discoveries have been made of some with only a small opening, which, like the one in Egypt, no doubt contained the bones of a king. Another class of mounds held in much veneration by the early tribes of Florida Indians were the sacred mounds, or mounts of ordinance, only used on certain occasions, when the Medicine Man, after ablutions similar to those practiced by the Rabbis before entering the temple to offer sacrifices for sin, ascended to commune with the Great Spirit, like Moses, the lawgiver, on Sinai. He was always accompanied by a few of his warriors, whom he took to witness the descent of sacred fire which he invoked and they obtained by vigorous efforts with flint and steel. This ceremony was conducted during the month of July, when the maize, being in the milk, the heavenly fire was procured for cooking that product, it being held in high esteem as their chief article of sustenance. The Peruvians procured these fires by the use of a concave mirror of polished metal, the sacred flame being afterward intrusted to the Virgins of the Sun. It was a natural feeling with the Indians to worship on "high places;" for this reason temples were built over their dead, where they might come to give expression to the reverence with which they regarded the departed ones. Images for worship were sometimes placed on the pinnacle of these temples, as the one mentioned by De Soto near Espiritu Santo Bay, upon which was found a painted wooden fowl with gilded eyes, containing choice pearls. Near the outlet of Lake Harney was located the residence of King Philip, a Seminole cazique, on a shell plateau in rear of which is a burial-mount, twelve feet high, surrounded by a trench. The following graphic description, taken from Professor Wyman, will enable us to form an idea of its extent: "This shell-mound is about four hundred and fifty feet in length, with an average of one hundred and twenty in breadth. It stretches nearly at right angles to the river, borders a lagoon on the south, and on the north merges into cultivated fields, over which its materials have become somewhat scattered--its greatest height being about eight feet. Fragments of pottery may be found anywhere on the surface, and with these the bones of various edible animals. Excavations were made at many points, from a few inches to several feet in depth, to ascertain if similar objects were within its interior. The most unequivocal evidence that this mound, while in process of erection, had been occupied by the aborigines was obtained from a pit four or five feet in diameter, and from five to six feet deep, which was dug near the center. Not only were fragments of pots and bones found at all depths, but at the distance of three feet the remains of an old fire-place were uncovered, consisting of a horizontal layer of charcoal, beneath which were perfectly calcined shells, and near these others more or less blackened with heat. Still farther off were fragments of the bones of deer, birds, turtle, and fish--all just as they would naturally have been left around a fire where cooking had been done for some time. In addition it may be mentioned, as a matter of negative evidence, that not a single article was discovered which could have been attributed to the white man." Near the outlet of Lake Jessup are the remains of a mound nine hundred feet in length, with an average width of one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet. This structure has been much wasted by the river, but originally it must have been among the largest in the State. That the Indians confined their encampments, or at all events their cooking, almost entirely to these mounds, is proved by the fact that fragments of pots were found in large quantities along the shore wherever the shells are seen in the bank, and not elsewhere, though careful search was made for them. Fragments of deer-bones, turtle, and alligator, were also seen. The shells forming these mounds were chiefly _paludinas_, or fresh-water snails, although _unios_ and _apellarias_ are met with also. Mounds on the sea-shore are composed entirely of marine shells, also containing clay-ware, ashes, and charcoal. On the St. John's, at different times, and by various naturalists, over fifty mounds have been explored, in some of which were seen human bones having the appearance of violence. As so few remains were found during these excavations that had the appearance of being subjects of regular interment, the question is suggested, What disposition was made of their dead, unless all the numerous vessels seen, which could not have subserved for cooking, contained the ashes of their friends which had been cremated? Mounds have been opened in various portions of the State abounding in fluviatic muscles and clams, the inference being that they contained pearls, and for that reason had been opened. These mounds can be accounted for in two ways--the first and most important: they consumed the contents of these shells, of which they were very fond; the last was the necessity for elevated plateaus to protect them from the sudden inundation of streams when they were traveling through the country camping, consequently they utilized the _débris_ as a prevention against accidents. In their journeyings they depended entirely upon the products of the forest and streams for sustenance, and for this reason followed the water-courses, stopping, like the migratory birds, wherever night overtook them. Many copper weapons of warfare have been discovered in these earth-works, the metal of which was brought from the mines of Lake Superior, when the Indians followed the great river to the sea, three thousand years ago. These faint traces of mechanical and architectural skill favor the idea of a more enlightened race than that which possessed the soil when first discovered by the Spaniards--a society which, no doubt, sank amid storms, overthrown and shattered by unavoidable catastrophes. In Florida no discoveries have been made which evidence marks of a great nation, while in Mexico and on the Pacific coast, south, they increase. The Creeks, Cherokees, and Seminoles all agree in attributing the mounds of Florida to a race anterior to their own, as their traditions are handed down "that they were here when their ancestors took possession of the country." It is also asserted that the Florida Indians formerly worshiped the sun, which fact has been ascertained by their heraldic devices; also the location of their temples in such a manner that the first morning ray from this rising luminary would flash upon their sacred edifice--the Medicine Man, or High-priest, being in attendance to present his invocations with symbolic gestures, whose mysteries were a sealed book to all those around him, but supposed to be well understood by the Great Spirit, whose favor they wished to obtain. The Everglade Indians now venerate the moon, which can be seen from the silver crescent ornamental emblems with which they deck their persons. Like the ancient Greeks, they deposited the remains of their dead in burial urns, the difference being that the Greeks always prepared the bodies by cineration, when the ashes only were entombed, while the entire bodies of Indian children have been discovered in clay vases in the Florida _tumuli_. In sepulchral mounds about Tampa were discovered large quantities of the heaven-born product called pearls, which created much interest and more cupidity among the Spanish settlers than we could well imagine. It is Pliny who tells us that dew-drops distilled from the heavens, or falling into the mouths of oysters, in certain localities, were converted into pearls. The Florida coast was looked upon by the adventurers who first landed here as the long-sought-for country which contained these treasures. After the arrival of De Soto on the coast of Espiritu Santo they were welcomed by the Empress, who presented them with pearls as the most costly offering from her domains, for which kindness these cruel creatures dragged her about as a hostage for their own security. However, when an opportune moment presented itself, she succeeded in making her escape, at the same time recovering large quantities of imperforate pearls which the Indians through fear had permitted them to rob from their dead. However much evanescent satisfaction these newly-found treasures supplied them with, history makes no mention of Spanish officials being enriched by the discovery. The enormous size which the fertile imagination of those explorers mention them does not come within the present limits of these precious gems of commerce. The Indians understood the method of making beads from the conch-shells, their novelty and delicate color attracting the Spaniards--the size being equal to an acorn, and larger. The natives persisted in boring the pearls with a heated copper spindle, that they might be worn as ornaments for the neck, arms, and ankles, which rendered them valueless for other purposes. Pearls are frequently found now on the south coast of Florida the size of an English pea, and less. Some of these are taken from clam-shells of immense size, weighing two or three pounds; also found in the oyster. These are all opaque, some of them slightly pink, a dull white, or the usual pearl color. Those examined by connoisseurs have never been considered of any positive value in the manufacture of jewelry. Both from study and observation we are led to the conclusion that, whatever might have been the impression received by the overwrought imaginations of the Castilian explorers, no pearls of great price, fed by heavenly dews, have ever existed or been discovered on the Florida coast. Let us now pause and inquire, Who were the architects of these earth-works? What was their fate? and whither did they flee when overpowered? We have only proof that a nation has perished, leaving no record or history but these monuments. They must have had some knowledge of engineering, or they never could have reared such enduring, well-proportioned structures. While the subject furnishes food for reflection, the dark curtain drawn over their obscure presence has never been raised; however great the effort made by those who have desired to penetrate their unyielding secrets, the key to open these hidden mysteries has never been found. Whether called _tumuli_, plateaus, or mounds, they are objects of interest, in whatever locality they may be seen, of sufficient importance to engage the attention of the scientist when generations yet unborn shall walk the earth, and vainly try to pierce the portals of the silent past. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER VIII. The upper St. John's commences after we pass Welaka, opposite the mouth of the Ocklawaha. Steamers leave the wharf at Jacksonville daily for this attractive portion of the country. An early traveler thus speaks of the wild animals he saw in this portion of the State, also the birds: "The buffalo, the deer, the puma, and the wild cat; the bear, the wolf, the fox, the wandering otter, the beaver, the raccoon, the opossum, and many smaller animals; large flocks of water-fowl, the white and great blue herons, and their allied species, in large numbers standing along the shores; the wary turkey with his brilliant plumage; the roseate spoon-bill, sometimes seen, and the flamingo, once a rare visitor, but now no longer found; the wood ibis, the whooping crane, whose resonant notes are heard far and wide; the stupid and unwary courlan, disturbing sleep with its night-long cry; the loathsome buzzard, circling, at times, gracefully among nobler birds, or, oftener and truer to its nature, quarreling with its kind as it gluts itself over disgusting food; also the snake-bird, of peculiar make and habit; the fish-hawk, whose massive nests of sticks and moss crown many a dead and shattered cypress; the bald eagle, soaring in the upper atmosphere, or robbing, in mid-air, the fish-hawk of its prize; the migratory birds, collecting in thousands for their journey northward; the alligator, drifting lazily with the current, or lying in his muddy wallow, basking in the sun." [Illustration: THE SAURIAN.] All of these were seen during the visit of Bartram the elder, which must have made the St. John's one of the most beautiful and remarkable rivers in America. It is now February, and a soft, blue mist frequently fringes the distant landscape, diffusing itself through the atmosphere, subduing the dazzling sunlight, when the sky and water appear to blend in one grand archway, like a half-veiled beauty whose charms are then most lovely. A very happy family is on board to-day, and the lady has just remarked, "O we have a house on the steamer, taking it up to Mellonville for us all to live in!" She was a genuine Florida settler, who could look at the sand and say, If it can grow such immense trees and big weeds, it can produce food for us all to eat. On our way we pass Lake George, eighteen miles long and ten miles wide, which the Indians called "Little Ocean," on account of the high, swift waves that are frequently seen here, attributable to the open country by which it is surrounded. Many other interesting places, where new settlers are constantly making improvements, are seen before we arrive at Enterprise, the terminus of navigation proper on the river, two hundred and thirty miles from St. John's Bar. A good hotel is kept here, while sportsmen find the vicinity attractive on account of the game and good fishing. Mellonville, on the right bank of Lake Monroe, was named for the brave Captain Mellon, who was killed here while at his post of duty during the Seminole war. He was buried with the only tribute he could then receive: "A soldier's tears and a soldier's grave." Sulphur springs are numerous on the upper St. John's; one in the vicinity of Lake Monroe, several hundred yards in length, while at its source the water bubbles up like a fountain--a strong sulphurous odor being perceptible for some distance. The frightened alligators that retire here from their pursuers make terrible dives to hide, while in the transparent waters fish are seen distinctly as though going through the air. All of these upper lakes contain clear water, but none of it very deep. The next waters are Lake Harney and Salt Lake. These are not the head-waters of the St. John's, but its source is farther on, down deep in some unexplored marsh or subterranean fountain. It requires a little patience to reach Indian River, either by rowing or overland, but hundreds of people are going there every year. During the Florida war the vicinity of Cypress Swamp and this river were some of the lurking-places in which the savages intrenched themselves, and from this point kept making incursions on the white settlements, which filled them with constant terror for their safety. In 1839 the citizens living in Florida prayed for peace, looked and hoped for it. They wanted rest, that favorite position of the Grecian sculptor's statuary, and when they thought it nearest then it receded again, flitting on the margin of their expectations like the _ignis-fatuus_ which glimmered through the marsh. The Everglades furnished a natural fortress for the Indians, who were said to have been left there by General Jessup, as though one general was more to blame than another for their presence and murderous conduct. No confidence could be placed in the Indian promises; no security that the settlers could sow and harvest; all pledges given by them had been violated, and where should the line of their banishment be drawn, which would not be crossed by the murderous Seminoles, thirsting for human gore? Every person was indignant at the farce enacted by General Macomb, swallowing it as a sickening dose, or an amnesty with a cage of tigers. All projects for terminating the Indian war had failed, and the wail of woe went through the land, while the blood of murdered fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, cried for vengeance. As a supposed last resort, the bloodhounds, which had terminated the Jamaica war, were now sent for to Cuba by order of General Call. The Indians waged a warfare accompanied with so many irregularities that no tactician could designate or describe its method of attacks or retreats. To be always in danger of falling, but not on the field, and then being devoured by vultures, was not sought for by those who had dreamed of gory battle-fields, as there was glory in that. Affairs with the settlers had assumed so formidable an appearance that they did not think it necessary to be very scrupulous about the mode by which the warfare should be carried on against the Seminoles. Great horror was expressed in different portions of the States on account of the bloodhounds, which were going to "eat the papooses and squaws--then taking the 'breechless knaves,' whose tougher fibers would only be a last resort." In August, 1839, a battle was fought on the Caloosahatchee River, between Colonel Harney and the Indians. All of the troops were killed but the colonel and fourteen men. Seventeen days afterward a detachment was sent out by General Taylor to bury the dead, when two of the missing troops were found alive. After the fight they remained concealed during the day in a mangrove thicket, and at night crawled to the margin of the river and ate sea-fiddlers. They died soon after being discovered. An Irish greyhound was also found, barely alive, which belonged to Colonel Harney. He had stayed to watch over the remains of Major Dallam, whose body was untouched, although the rest were much mutilated. The following statement in regard to the Big Cypress Swamp and its occupants in 1841 will, no doubt, be an item of unsurpassed interest to those wishing to penetrate the Everglades, whether in imagination or reality: The commencement of this swamp is thirty or forty miles south of the Caloosahatchee, extending within twenty miles of Lake Okachobee to the Gulf. On approaching the lake it terminates in thick mangrove bushes, uninhabitable for Indians. Between the Caloosahatchee the country is wet pine barren, with occasionally dry islands. On the south it is bounded by the Everglades, through which the Indians pass in canoes to the great cooutie-grounds on the Atlantic, south of the Miami River. This is a belt from five to eight miles in width and twenty miles long. To travel directly through the swamp to the Everglades from Fort Keas, which is upon the north margin, the distance is about thirty miles. Directly south of the fort, in the heart of the swamp, is the council-ground. South-east and south-west from this are the towns of the principal chiefs, Sam Jones living twenty-five miles and the Prophet within two miles of him. Trails communicate with their towns, but none with Fort Keas, the Indians knowing that would be the first point to which the whites would come. The entrance from the pine barrens to the swamp is twenty miles farther south-east. Within the swamps are many high pine islands, upon which the villages are located, being susceptible of cultivation. Between them is a cypress swamp, with water two or three feet deep. Many have cultivated outside toward Lake Thompson, as the fertility of soil and sun-exposure insured better crops. The first reliance of the Indians is on their crop--peas, pumpkins, corn, and beans; next, roots, cooutie, and berries. They are now, in a measure, deprived of game, the powder being retained in the hands of their chiefs for defensive movements. When troops are in the vicinity, they reveal their hiding-place by firing guns, which, in a country so marshy, can be heard a great distance. Their babies never cry when the whites are near, but, as if by instinct, crawl away and hide in the long grass like partridges. Fish, when the streams on the coast can be reached, afford them subsistence, but the movements of the troops deprive them of this luxury. Among them are a large number of horses, ponies, some hogs, and a few cattle. The dry goods obtained from the massacre of Colonel Harney's men, and bartered by others who obtained a large quantity, clothe them richly as they desire. The specie has been sold, and manufactured into head-bands, breast-plates, or gorgets and bracelets. Among those Indians I have seen more rich ornaments than among any other Indians in Florida. Even in this murderous and lamentable massacre, when they all stood by each other, shoulder to shoulder, the same avarice and selfishness governed their actions. No feeling of friendship binds them to each other but the feudatory of Sam Jones and the necromancy of the Prophet. There is, no doubt, much cause of dissatisfaction among them, from which they cannot escape. Their imperious laws, if violated, is followed by instant death, without the benefit of judge or jury. If one of their number evinces kindness toward the whites, the Prophet visits him or her, and, by various tricks with roots, a blow-pipe, and water, proclaims the designs of the individual. In some cases instant death has followed. The Prophet is a runaway Creek, not fifty years of age. He escaped from the Creek country six years ago, and relates a long story of bad treatment from the whites. He has great influence over those around him, caused by his making known the approach of troops, healing the sick, finding game, and controlling the seasons. It is doubtful whether he has ever been in battle. In a garrison so well regulated as the one over which he presides, he must be of vast service, not only on account of his pretended ability to commune with the Great Spirit who controls their destinies, but for his happy talent as staff-officer, frequently feeding his followers on _faith in his necromancy_, when other troops, under similar circumstances, might demand "a more substantial article of diet." He has sufficient tact, as a Medicine Man, to convince his followers that he is, of necessity, a non-combatant. Sam Jones is a distinguished Medicine Man, belonging to the Mikasukie tribe. He has numbered four-score years, and, for his age, is strong and active. He has great influence over his adherents, who respect his acts and obey his mandates with a religious sense of duty. His venerable appearance and bitter hostility to the whites have a tendency to elevate him in the estimation of his tribe. He plans attacks, fires the first gun, and retires to attend the wounded, leaving the head-warrior to fight the battle. He instigated the attack on Fort Mellon, performed his duty as head-man, and retired to execute the kind offices of his profession. The command devolved upon Wild Cat, who continued to fight until obliged to retire for want of ammunition. Sam Jones says he is advanced in years; that his hair is white; that Florida belongs to his kindred; beneath its sands lie the bones of his people. The earth to him is consecrated; he has hallowed it with the best blood of his braves, and while his heart beats he will maintain his present position. His people were once numerous as the trees of the forest; they received and welcomed the white man, who, in return for kindness, have, it is true, extended the apparent hand of friendship, but within its grasp the glittering blade is clutched; dark stains are upon it, dyed by the blood of his children, who are now roaming abroad in the land of the Great Spirit, calling upon him to avenge them. "I am now old; in a few more moons I shall set out on the long journey; but I will not desert the land of my fathers. Here I was born, and here I will die!" The hanging of Chekika and other Indians by Colonel Harney aroused the anger of the chiefs, who have declared hostility and savage brutality to any white man that came within their reach. Chekika was captured after being pursued through the grass-water until exhausted. He was six feet high, and weighed over two hundred pounds; considered the strongest man of his tribe. "We," said Sam Jones, "give them a decent death. We shoot them, or quietly beat out their brains with a pine-knot; never hanging them like dogs." The Indians which Colonel Harney's men left suspended were taken down by Sam Jones's men and buried. The Cypress band is composed of the reckless, unbending spirits of the Seminoles, Mikasukie, and Creek tribes. The Mikasukie are the most numerous. They now mingle more harmoniously than at any previous period of their history, and willingly accept all others who will subscribe to their laws, and believe in Sam Jones as a wise man, doctor, and prophet--one who holds communion with invisible things, and controls their destinies. He is a skillful navigator of the Everglades; goes from the Cypress to the Atlantic in four days; knows all the great passages, and cultivates in their vicinity. He bestows blessings similar to the patriarchs. He has about one hundred and fifty warriors. Persons prowling through the Big Cypress Swamp in search of pleasure will have some conception of the perils through which soldiers in search of Indians had to pass. "_Dec. 23, 1841._--The command under Major Belknap has just returned from a scout of seven days' duration in the swamps of the Big Cypress. The column was attacked by the foe on the 20th, who ambuscaded the trail on which it was advancing, in a cypress swamp two feet deep with water, when two men of the advance-guard were instantly killed. The Indians, as usual, fled immediately beyond our reach. The camps of the hostiles were near, and still smoking with their fires. They would, no doubt, have been surprised and captured, but for the stupidity of a flanker, who, being lost a few hours before, discharged his musket repeatedly--thus alarming the enemy, only two or three miles distant. The result of this scout has been, however, most important, in pointing out the hitherto mysterious position of the Prophet and his party, which enables us to entertain hopes that our forces may yet scour that country, so as to render their submission certain, even if they should fail in any attempt to surprise them. They have been trailed to their most favorite and secret fastnesses, and should now be soon harassed into submission. It is the belief of all, including some who have seen the most arduous service in Florida, that no march in this Territory has been attended with equal, or, at least, greater, severity than this. All pack-mules being left behind, officers as well as men carried their rations on their backs. The movements of the troops were amphibious rather than otherwise--marching in mud and water more than knee-deep from morning till night. The character given to this marvelous region of country has not been exaggerated, so far as the condition of its swamps is concerned. It is difficult to conceive of a region more admirably calculated for concealment than such a mass of dense hummocks and seemingly impenetrable swamps. Some of these waters have a perceptible current, thus being the heads of streams rather than swamps. The ax of the pioneer would never be attracted to this wet and mud-encircled region, and it may be fairly presumed that, so far as a knowledge of its topography is concerned, war has done more to expose it to our gaze than civilization would have accomplished in a century." _Indian River._--The following letter, dated Indian River, July 3, 1843, will give an idea of the impressions received by tourists from this river over thirty years since--coming to this place then being an enterprise of too much magnitude for any one to undertake but well-armed soldiers: "This noble sheet of water is now constantly whitened by the sail of the emigrant in pursuit of land, and the stillness of its solitude broken by the splash of the oar, echoed by the merry songs of boatmen. At night the camp-fires of the adventurers are kindled on its banks, after which preparation is made for the evening repast, when, amid conversation and laughing, the toils of the day are lost in sleep. Refreshment ensues, and the morning finds them on their way, vigorous in frame and sanguine in spirit. Game abounds on its banks--the deer break through the thick growth on the margin of the river, and gaze with wonder at the visitors; the curlews give their short whistle and wing their way from the near approach of the intruders; the wild ducks, quietly feasting on the grass, take note of your approach, perhaps, to a place of greater security. Splash, splash goes the water. That's a mullet jumping at the prospect of being caught by us, or perhaps exerting its utmost activity to escape a hungry bass. If you are furnished with a harpoon or barbed piece of iron, you can have a fine supply of fresh fish every day during your voyage. Oysters are the staple of the stream, the banks being as numerous as though an improvident Legislature had created them, although they never suspend payment or protest a draft for want of funds. The lands north and south of Fort Pierce are rapidly filling up, and thus far, with the exposure of boating, felling timber, planting, and the thousand troubles of an emigrant's life, the best of health is enjoyed by all. Doctors are at a discount, and among the least useful things on the river." Among other local peculiarities found near the Indian River is a kind of shell-sand, which hardens by exposure. The following is an interesting statement, made by a member of the engineer corps, who visited there in 1858: "While we were surveying a point between the St. John's, near Lake Harney, and Indian River, when watching the excavation of one of these pits, I carefully rolled a ball together from what appeared to be sand taken from the pit, and then threw it on the grass. Upon examination a few hours afterward, it was found to be extremely hard, and the surface covered with those minute shells, which is the principal component of the coquina-rock. Between Musquito Lagoon and Indian River there is a small artificial canal cut through the coquina, the portion exposed being very hard, while the submerged part is crumbling into sand." It is an established fact that certain localities on the coast of Florida contain sand which concretes when exposed to the atmosphere. What the component parts of this cement contain no one has satisfactorily determined. It is certain all localities do not possess the same kinds of sand. The lands in the vicinity of Indian River will produce bananas, pine-apples, oranges, sugar-cane, lemons, limes, strawberries, blackberries, grass, corn, indigo, sweet potatoes, garden vegetables, and tomato-vines that bear for three years, and bird pepper-plants which will grow into little trees, bearing all the time. Hunters live well here on the wild game, while those in the first stages of consumption almost invariably fatten and recover on the diet and atmosphere combined. The following is a favorite dish: Take a fresh fish, without dressing; wrap in a damp paper; then place in the hot ashes; when cooked, pull off the skin while warm; season and eat. It is better than cod-liver oil, and can be swallowed without any winding up of the courage whatever, previous to making the attack. Is it not pleasant for those who can, whether invalids or not, to spend a part of their winters, at least, in this portion of the State, where we are surrounded by trees clothed in perpetual verdure, loaded with native fruits, to refresh us when wearied with sight-seeing, and sated with tales of the marvelous, with which this country abounds? It is from association with scenes like these that a new impulse is given to our thoughts, which confinement within brick walls, with the smoke and changing temperature of coal-fires, cannot furnish. There is nothing like the soothing influences connected with letting our thoughts wander away with our eyes among the light, vapory clouds, that flit across the sky like floating islands, while we are inhaling an atmosphere soft as the dream of childhood's innocence, that can warm and stimulate vegetation into maturity at all seasons. Tourists who go up the St. John's River, on returning always bring back something in accordance with their varied tastes. Imagine yourself a passenger on the Hattie Barker, a steamer of somewhat smaller dimensions than the Great Eastern, which can do more traveling in the way of making a fuss than any boat on the river, her progress being never less than four miles an hour. All kinds of travelers are returning from the upper St. John's--those who have trodden the wine-press of bitterness with suffering, and some who have sailed over the summer sea of life without a ripple. Prompted by the impulses which induce all tourists to bring something back when they return home, a quantity of curiosities sufficient to start a small museum has been obtained. No small steamer could ever have contained a larger number of tourists, with a greater diversity of tastes. Here is the sick man, with his nervous system, sensitive as the mimosa, who shrinks at the slightest harsh sound, and continues scolding about "such a crowd on the boat," as though some of them should have remained that he might have more room to fret and scold at his patient wife. Then there come the father and mother, with four little boys and two girls, besides the tiny baby and two nurses. How they rush about their limited boundaries! What a restless family of children, with the ruddy glow of health, keeping the parents and nurses in a constant state of trepidation for fear they will fall into the water! This family has no curiosities. With a long journey to their home in Canada before them, their hearts are full without other incumbrances. Two ladies sitting near us have a chameleon in a pickle-jar; one of them is catching flies for its dinner. What a pleasure it appears to give them when, darting out its coral-colored tongue, and winking its bright eyes, it gobbles them up so quickly! There is a lad, with two young alligators, who persists in taking water from the ice-cooler, to pour on them for fear they might die. The stewardess is on the alert to thwart his movements, by telling him, "Dat cooler-water is for de folks, and not dem ole black 'gaitors." The lad retorts by saying the water isn't clean. The stewardess says, "Yes, 'tis only a few settlements in de bottom." A sound comes from one of the staterooms, which is unmistakably made by young turkeys going North, in March. How the keen winds up there will pierce their downy coats! They had better save their voices for the cries they will have to utter then. The ornithologist is also represented, with his stuffed birds, having a flamingo, a plume-crane, an owl, eagle, and living red-bird. Another has paroquets, which he imagines, by some mysterious manipulations, can be made to talk like a South American parrot. One man, from Indian River, has an immense pelican, with an enormous flat bill, below which is a pouch attached, containing its rations. Some of the anxious mothers have heard it eats children. What terrible looks they give this poor fellow with the big bird, who appears so happy in the possession of his newly-found treasure, because to him it is so remarkably curious! Another has a blue crane, belonging to the order _Grus cinerea_, standing erect on its stilts, showing fight. How it snaps every thing which approaches it, like some crabbed people in the world! A young man has a slender, not grown, animal, which he informs us is a _Cervus Virginius_, or fawn, that he proposes taking to a friend. Among the number is an archæologist, who has been exploring the mounds of Florida, and procured a trophy from the recesses of a long-since departed Indian's grave. It is a stone hatchet, which was designed to hew trees and make boats, that the deceased might move not only with unrestrained freedom through the lands of the Great Spirit, but also across his pure streams. The most entertaining and original tourist of all is an unmistakable Dutchman, from Indiana, born on the River Rhine. He is a "bugologist," or beetle-gatherer. Hard-backed bugs and fresh-water shells are his hobby. He has collected and sent a barrel of specimens home in advance of him, and now he is carrying a big box, strapped tightly with the same care as a returned miner would his nuggets of gold. For our amusement he opened his treasure-box. The toilet articles of no lady were ever arranged with more care. Shells odorous with the remains of their former tenants, wrapped in cotton and tissue-paper, bugs and beetles with alcohol on them, or fastened to a card with long, tiny pins made for that purpose, and, last of all, a quinine-bottle in his pocket, in readiness to capture any stray bug that might happen to be out on an excursion. Numerous cages, containing young mocking-birds and red-birds, are sitting around, while the tables are piled with palmetto, air-plants, and American pitcher-plants. Every available space is occupied--baskets stuffed with oranges, lemons, and grape-fruit, while gray moss fills the interstices. Many of the best people in our country are found traveling over Florida during the winter--some looking for homes, and others only pleasure-seeking, a few for health. The number of old people with whom we meet while traveling here is quite remarkable. Some have sweet, sunny faces; others look as though life had been a continued struggle with them until now, when their solicitude was on the _qui vive_ for fear they should get in behind time, or some impending danger might befall them, they do not exactly know what. The indefatigable sportsman in Florida is ubiquitous: With gun in hand, he is constantly watching for game. If many a bird at which he aims flies away unharmed, the excitement of shooting with unrestrained freedom appears to give satisfaction, if nothing is killed. CHAPTER IX. In coming down the river, we land on the east bank at Tocoi, for St. Augustine. There are no hotels here, as the cars always make close connection with the daily line of boats for the ancient city. Much ink and paper has been wasted about this unpretentious town on account of its unattractive appearance; but it is only a starting-point for St. Augustine, this point being more on an air-line than any other place on the river. The distance to St. Augustine is fifteen miles, the scenery along the route varied, being interspersed with long-leafed pines, hummock-lands, with its heavy undergrowth, live-oaks, and wild orange-trees; the cypress, trimmed with its crisping, curling, waving gray whiskers, swinging and dancing in the sunlight of noonday, or resting in the somber shades of night, thus giving that grace and beauty to the landscape which is only seen in our Sunny South. A short ride on the railroad enables us to see the country; and what mistakes some settlers make in planting orange-trees on hummock-lands without proper drainage, where the poor strangers, being neither amphibious nor aquatic, droop and die from wet feet! Travelers, who imagine themselves greatly inconvenienced, and have so much to complain about for more profitable employment, after riding in the pleasant steam-cars from Tocoi to St. Augustine, will peruse the following, from which they can form some idea of the contrast within forty years in Florida: "December, 1840--Notice to Travelers--St. Augustine and Picolata Stage.--The subscriber has commenced running a comfortable carriage between St. Augustine and Picolata twice a week. A military escort will always accompany the stage going and returning. Fare each way five dollars. The subscriber assures those who may patronize this undertaking that his horses are strong and sound, his carriages commodious and comfortable; that none but careful and sober drivers will be employed; also every attention paid to their comfort and convenience. Passengers will be called for when the escort is about leaving the city." We have selected from among the many, one of the atrocious acts of violence committed by the savages previous to this arrangement, upon a worthy and respected citizen, Dr. Philip Weedman, whose three most estimable daughters are still living in St. Augustine: "November 25, 1839.--Shortly after the mail-wagon left the city, Dr. Philip Weedman, sr., accompanied by his little son, a lad about twelve years of age, both in an open wagon, with Mr. H. Groves on horseback, left also for the purpose of visiting his former residence, now occupied as a garrison by a part of Captain Mickler's company. On arriving at the commencement of Long Swamp, without any previous warning, he was tired upon and killed, having received two balls in his breast; his little son was wounded in the head, baring his brain; also cut with a knife. The mutilated youth, with the remains of the dead father, were brought in town to-day. The express, returning for medical aid, caused the Indians to run, as the wagon containing the mail was fired into, wounding Captain Searle, and killing a Polander who was riding horseback." "Tuesday, November 26, 1839.--The funeral of Dr. Philip Weedman took place to-day, attended by all of our citizens, who sympathize deeply with his numerous family." The Polander, Mr. Possenantzky, was buried the same day according to the Hebrew form. The Indians continued firing on the covered wagon-trains, calling them "cloth houses," their object being to obtain supplies, when a proposition was made to have fortified wagons. Hostile Indians were something which could not be worked by any rules; they were the exceptions. On Saturday, February 15, 1840, we find a record of two mail-carriers having been murdered, one seven and the other nine miles distant--G. W. Walton, from South Carolina, while on his way to Jacksonville, and Mr. J. Garcias, near Live Oak Camp. The letters were undisturbed, although carried some distance. Both of the murdered young men were buried in St. Augustine. Afterward the mail was accompanied by an escort of five men. We have tried to hold up some cause with the semblance of a shade to delude us into the belief that the Indians have less activity and enterprise than the white men, but facts stand forward in bold relief denying us even the poor consolation which such delusions might afford us. The lifeless bodies of our brethren speak trumpet-tongued in favor of their removal, and the wail of hearts blighted by their successes is stronger and more piercing than the fictitious surroundings of excited fancies. Here is another thrust at the bloodhounds: "These distinguished auxiliaries have received more attention than their services deserve, while great apprehension fills the minds of many for fear they should perchance bite a Seminole. We would state as a quietus that a competent tooth-drawer will accompany them, entering upon his dental duties very soon." Another shocking murder occurred between Picolata and St. Augustine, before the St. John's Railroad was surveyed between Tocoi and St. Augustine. "May 29, 1840.--On Friday last a carriage and wagon had been obtained to proceed to Picolata, for the purpose of bringing in some baggage and gentlemen connected with the theatrical company of W. C. Forbes, from Savannah. Leaving Picolata on Saturday morning, May 23, in addition to their own party they were joined by Messrs. D. G. Vose, of New York, and Miller, of Brunswick, who all reached the eleven-mile military post in safety. When within seven miles of St. Augustine they were fired upon by Indians, severely wounding Vose, Miller, and Wigger, a young German musician. While this work of death was going on, a wagon which had left the barracks that morning was seen approaching. It contained three persons besides the driver--Mr. Francis Medicis, of St. Augustine, Mr. A. Ball, and Mr. Beaufort. The Indians fired upon them near the six-mile post, when Mr. Beaufort and the driver escaped. The mules ran away with the wagon. The firing being heard at the little garrison of seven men, they turned out, when they saw distinctly twenty Indians. News having been received in town by a lad coming in on one of the horses, a party of gentlemen repaired thither. On reaching the ground, there lay Mr. Ball dead, while farther on was the body of Mr. Medicis, lying on his side, his hands clenched, as if in the attitude of supplication, his right shirt-sleeve burned with powder, and his face covered with blood. Mr. Francis Medicis was murdered the 23d of May, 1840, between the hours of eleven and twelve o'clock. The bodies of Messrs. Medicis, Ball, Vose, and Miller, were brought in at dusk, that of Mr. Miller about nine o'clock. The bodies of the strangers were placed in the Council Chamber. Mr. Forbes and his company passed over the Picolata road on the 22d of May, except Messrs. Wigger, German, and Thomas A. Line. Mr. Wigger was murdered. Thomas A. Line hid himself in a swamp, sinking up to his neck, and covering his face with a barnet-leaf, which he raised, to the great surprise of his companions, when they were searching for the survivors and gathering up the wounded." The old citizens in St. Augustine now say that when Mr. German, vocalist, one of the theatricals, arrived in the city after his escape, his hair was standing perfectly erect on his head, and in twenty-four hours turned entirely white. As the Indians rifled the baggage-wagon, they carried off a considerable portion of the stage-dresses and other paraphernalia. Now, we can peruse these tragic events as the vision of some wild romancer, or relate them to children as nursery tales, partaking enough of the terrible to excite a desire for the wonderful. Wearied with waiting, and heart-sick of bloody murders, we find the following piece of composition written on this solemn occasion: "How long shall the earth drink the blood of our women and children, and the soil be dyed with the ebbing life of manhood? Could they have looked with us upon the mangled corpses of Indian wrath, as they were laid upon the public highway, or gone to the council-room and surveyed on its table, where side by side the marble forms of four men lay, who a few hours before were looking to the future as filled with bright enjoyment, they would then have whistled their philanthropy to the winds, and cried aloud for vengeance. That was a sight never to be forgotten. We have seen men killed in battle, and perish by disease on the ocean, but amid the many affecting and unpleasant incidents that have met our gaze we have never seen a spectacle like that. Here in the rigidity of death lay the youthful German, on whom manhood had just dawned: also the compact forms of muscular health, with the less vigorous frames of more advanced years. A casual glance might mistake it for a mimic scene, where Art had exhausted her powers in its production. But there was the pallid hue of faces; there was the gash the knife had made in its course to the heart; the cleft forehead parted by the tomahawk in its descent to the brain; and there the silent drop, dropping of crimson fluid to the floor--while our Secretary, with his usual imbecility, issues orders to 'muzzle the bloodhounds.' The funerals of these unfortunate victims took place on Sunday, attended by a large concourse of people, who expressed the keenest indignation at the repetition of such a scene so near our city. Wild Cat was the leader of this band, as he stopped afterward at the plantation of E. S. Jenckes, Esq., and told the servants he had committed the murder." The troupe filled their engagement at St. Augustine, as only a musician had been killed from their number. History says, "The sterling comedy of 'The Honeymoon' was performed to a crowded house." Afterward the following notice appeared: "During the winter months we have no doubt that a troupe, embodying the same amount of talent which the present company possess, would find it profitable to spend a month with us each season." Coacoochee, or Wild Cat, was captured with Osceola in 1836, and afterward made his escape, or he never would have been permitted to commit such a series of appalling atrocities as those which we have recorded. Wild Cat frequently visited the residence of General Hernandez, who lived on Charlotte Street. He also very much admired one of his beautiful daughters, and, like lovers at the present day, wanted an excuse for returning; consequently, on going away he would leave one of his silver crescents, which he wore on his breast as a defense and for ornament, to be polished, and when he returned, take the one he left before, and leave another. He delighted to stand in front of a large mirror which General Hernandez had in his parlor, and admire his person. He said if Miss Kitty Hernandez would be his wife, she should never work any more, but always ride on a pony, wherever she went; that Sukey, his present wife, should wait on her, but Miss Kitty would be queen. He frequently made assertions of his friendship for the family. When on one occasion some of them remarked that he would kill them as quick as anybody if he should find them in the Indian nation, he replied: "Yes, I would; for you had better to die by the hand of a friend than an enemy." The following is an account of Coacoochee's escape and recapture: In all ages of the world there have lived those who laugh at iron bars, and defy prison doors--among whom we find the Seminole, Wild Cat, who appeared to be proof against bullets, with a body no dungeon could hold. He was very indignant on account of his imprisonment, denouncing his persecutors in no measured terms. He said the white man had given one hand in friendship, while in the other he carried a snake, with which he lied, and stung the red man. While in Fort Marion he planned his escape in a most remarkable manner. He complained of illness, at the same time manifesting signs of indisposition, and made a request that he might be permitted to go in search of a curative agency. Accompanied with a guard, he was again permitted to breathe the pure air of his native home, but not in freedom. This movement furnished him with an opportunity for reconnoitering, and measuring with his eye the distance, outside the fort, from the loop-hole of his cell. After his return he resorted to the use of his herbs, and abstained from food, which had the effect of materially reducing his size. He selected a stormy night for the undertaking, when his keepers would be the least inclined to vigilance, and commenced making preparations by tearing his blankets into ropes, which he made fast inside his cell, and, by working a knife into the masonry, formed a step. This, with the aid of his companion's shoulders, enabled him to reach the embrasure--a distance of eighteen feet--through which he escaped by taking a swinging leap of fifty feet into the ditch, skinning his back and chest effectually. His companion, Talums Hadjo, was less fortunate than himself. After a desperate effort to get through, he lost his hold, and fell the whole way to the ground. Wild Cat thought him dead; but his ankle was only sprained, and, after enlisting the services of a mule grazing in the vicinity, he was soon far away from bolts and bars, which could restrain his wild, free-born movements. Wild Cat had a twin sister, to whom he was much attached. He said she visited him after her death, in a white cloud, and thus relates her appearance: "Her long black hair, that I had often braided, hung down her back. With one hand she gave me a string of white pearls; in the other she held a cup sparkling with pure water, which she said came from the fountain of the Great Spirit, and if I would drink of it I should return and live forever. As I drank she sung the peace-song of the Seminoles, while white wings danced around me. She then took me by the hand, and said, 'All is peace here.' After this she stepped into the cloud again, waved her hand, and was gone. The pearls she gave me were stolen after I was imprisoned in St. Augustine. During certain times in the moon, when I had them, I could commune with the spirit of my sister. I may be buried in the earth, or sunk in the water, but I shall go to her, and there live. Where my sister lives game is abundant, and the white man is never seen." This chieftain was afterward induced to come in for a parley, to a depot established on the head-waters of Pease Creek. The following is a description of his appearance on that occasion: About midday on March 5, 1841, Wild Cat was announced as approaching the encampment, preceded by friendly Indians, and followed by seven trusty warriors. He came within the chain of sentinels, boldly and fearlessly, decorated, as were his companions, in the most fantastic manner. Parts of the wardrobe plundered from the theatrical troupe the year previous were wrapped about their persons in the most ludicrous and grotesque style. The nodding plumes of the haughty Dane, as personated in the sock and buskin, boasting of his ancestry and revenge, now decorated the brow of the unyielding savage, whose ferocity had desolated the country by blood, and whose ancestors had bequeathed the soil now consecrated with their ashes, which he had defended with unswerving fidelity. He claimed no rights or inheritance but those he was prepared to defend. Modestly by his side walked a friend wound up in the simple garb of Horatio, while in the rear was Richard III., judging from his royal purple and ermine, combined with the hideousness of a dark, distorted, revengeful visage. Others were ornamented with the crimson vest and spangles, according to fancy. He entered the tent of Colonel Worth, who was prepared to receive him, and shook hands with the officers all around, undisturbed in manner or language. His speech was modest and fluent. His child, aged twelve years, which the troops had captured at Fort Mellon during the fight, now rushed into his arms. Tears seldom give utterance to the impulse of an Indian's heart; but when he found the innate enemies of his race the protectors of his child, he wept. With accuracy and feeling he detailed the occurrences of the past four years. He said the whites had dealt unjustly by him. "I came to them; they deceived me. The land I was upon I loved; my body is made of its sands. The Great Spirit gave me legs to walk it, hands to help myself, eyes to see its ponds, rivers, forests, and game; then a head with which to think. The sun, which is warm and bright, as my feelings are now, shines to warm us and bring forth our crops, and the moon brings back the spirit of our warriors, our fathers, wives, and children." Wild Cat admitted the necessity of his leaving the country, hard as it was. After remaining four days, he returned, with his child, to his tribe. General Worth commanded the army in Florida at this time. He established the head-quarters of his command in the saddle--only asking his troops to follow where he should lead. Wild Cat had a subtle, cunning disposition, which gave the whites much trouble. They had deceived him, and his confidence in the pale faces was much shaken; but, being induced by General Worth, he was prevailed upon to meet in council. The General made a direct appeal to his vanity, by telling him he had the power to end the war if he chose, as they were all tired of fighting. Wild Cat was finally captured during the month of June. His camp was thirty-five miles from Fort Pierce, on the Okachobee Swamp. He had abandoned the idea of emigration, and his name was a terror to all the white settlers. He agreed to leave with the Seminole and Mikasukie tribes, who elected him their leader. His parting address, as he stood upon the deck, was as follows: "I am looking at the last pine-tree of my native land; I am leaving Florida forever. To part from it is like the separation of kindred; but I have thrown away my rifle. I have shaken hands with the white man, and to him I look for protection." Wild Cat, after being sent to New Orleans, was brought back to Tampa, that he might have a talk with his band, who numbered one hundred and sixty, including negroes. He was too proud to come from the vessel with his shackles, but when they were removed he talked freely with his people, and wanted all to be sent West without delay. He died on the way to Arkansas, and was buried on the bank of the Mississippi River. War to him was only a source of recreation. The following spicy letter was written thirty-eight years since, contrasting the seasons in New York City with those in St. Augustine; also, a comparison can be drawn between the entertainments of the two places. In Florida Indian massacres were realities, and in New York they dramatized them for the amusement of pleasure-seekers and idlers: "December, 1841.--A winter here in New York, and one with you, are very different matters; and were you disposed to question the orthodox character of my position, you need only make an attempt to promenade in Broadway now with thin breeches, to have this general relation of fact converted into a self-evident axiom. The wind searches you, sharp as the gaze of a jealous politician--every defect in your wardrobe--and, with a freedom which the other must sigh to attain, blows upon your person its icy breath, until the warm current of life feels almost frozen in its citadel, and your legs are scarcely able to perform the duties of their creation. Such is the difference of temperature with you and in this metropolis." The same correspondent describes the manner of dramatizing the Florida Indian murders. _Scene_--Capture and killing of the mail-rider and wife in Florida: "Having at one time witnessed some of the handicraft of our red brethren, I thought I would step in, and lo! the room was filled with some three hundred persons, anxious to behold this scene of blood. The Indians were veritable, stout, murderous-looking rascals; the mail-rider, a six-foot youth--oiled locks, beautifully parted, elegantly-combed mustache, white pantaloons, straps, and boots. This was the grandest specimen of a mail-rider ever seen in Florida. He might have personated some of those fictitious pretenders of gentility which sometimes visit you--but for a letter-carrier--Heaven save the mark! The wife was a pretty, plump, well-fed girl of sixteen, dressed in all the simplicity of girlhood, before fashion had desecrated its pure feeling with _tournures_, converting the human form divine into a monstrosity. Well, the chase was interesting; our six-footer stretched his legs and black coat-tails with effect. When fairly caught by his pursuers, he was bound, and his wife was likewise brought in captive. Then rose the loud and fierce yells of these demi-devils. The mimic scene was one of intense interest, and the quick dispatch of life argued something in favor of the captors, until the process of scalping commenced, when the blood rushed in gushes on the bosom of the girl, as her tresses were held up amidst the fiendish hurrahs of the Indians. Here there was a pause; the imagination had been wound up to the highest pitch, when something of a less gloomy character was furnished the audience." It was then the Florida settlers prayed for the peace we now enjoy--when their streams should have the dreary solitude broken by the splash of the oar, and their moss-covered banks send back the song of the contented boatmen--when their tranquil surface should be rippled by the freighted bark, with white canvas bending before the breeze, sailing out to the ocean--when the watch-fires of their foes should be extinct, and the yell of murder give place to the melody of grateful hearts, as their songs of praise should rise from the hummocks and plains; that the land might be indeed the home of the Christian, the abiding-place of happiness and contentment. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER X. Far in ether stars above thee Ever beam with purest light, Birds of richest music love thee, Flowers than Eden's hues more bright, And love--young love, so fresh and fair-- Fills with his breath thy gentle air. Many writers who come to Florida copy an abstract of the most interesting portions contained in the guide-books, besides what they can hear, afterward filling up the interstices from their imaginations. We look to the old Spaniards for information, but, alas! they are like the swamp cypress which the gray moss has gathered over until its vitality has been absorbed--age has taken away their vigor. This point appears to be a favored place for the stimulus of thought, where inspiration can be gathered from atmospheric influences, and not the heat of youth or the vapor of strong drink. Daily we are more impressed with the fact how treacherous are the links which connect the chain of tradition in a country where its earliest history is mingled with a record wonderful as the champions of knight-errantry who figured in the pages of romance. The early settlers were lured here by legends of a fairy realm, where youth and beauty held perpetual sway, and mountains of gold reared their shining peaks. (See Frontispiece.) From the 28th of August, 1565, when Pedro Melendez planted the broad banner of Spain with its castellated towers in the lonely settlement of Seloe, beside the waters which our Huguenots had previously dignified with the title, "River of Dolphins," to the present time, imagination has been on the alert to penetrate the past history of this country. On the site of the present plaza was celebrated the first mass in America by Mendoza, the priest, assisted by his acolytes. The minds of the Seloes were much exercised with the appearance of their new visitors, the impression being received that they were immortal, with their steel-covered bodies and bonnets, which flashed like meteors in the sunlight, while music, more enchanting than any which had ever filled their most fanciful imaginations, floated on the silent air. During the early history of St. Augustine it appeared to be disputed ground for all explorers--French, Spanish, and English. Sir Francis Drake in 1586 drove the Spaniards from here during the war with Spain, the Spanish retiring so hastily they left fourteen brass cannon, besides a mahogany chest containing two thousand pounds in the castle. During 1665, Davis, the buccaneer, captured the town again. In 1762 a writer describes it as being at the foot of a hill, shaded with trees, the town laid out in the form of an oblong square, the streets cutting each other at right angles. In 1764 the Spanish left the town, and the English took possession, when we find this graphic account, from which observant visitors can note the changes: "All the houses are built of masonry, their entrances being shaded by piazzas, supported by Tuscan pillars, or pilasters, against the south sun. The houses have to the east windows projecting sixteen or eighteen inches into the street, very wide and proportionally high. On the west side their windows are commonly very small, and no opening of any kind to the north, on which side they have double walls six or eight feet asunder, forming a kind of gallery, which answers for cellars and pantries. Before most of the entrances were arbors of vines, producing plenty and very good grapes. No house has any chimney for a fire-place; the Spaniards made use of stone urns, filled them with coals, left them in the kitchens in the afternoon, and set them at sunset in their bedrooms, to defend themselves against those winter seasons which required such care. The governor's residence has both sides piazzas, a double one to the south, and a single one to the north; also a Belvidere and a grand portico decorated with Doric pillars and entablatures. "The roofs are commonly flat. The number of houses in the town are about nine hundred. The streets are narrow on account of shade. In a few places they are wide enough to permit two carriages to pass abreast. They were not originally intended for carriages, many of them being floored with artificial stone, composed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock, no other vehicle than a hand-barrow being allowed to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the wheels of the carts and carriages introduced by the new inhabitants. The old houses are built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of small shells, which overhang the streets with their wooden balconies; and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the pomegranate and of the orange-tree now fragrant with flowers, and rising yet higher the leaning boughs of the fig with its broad, luxuriant leaves. Occasionally you pass the ruins of houses--walls of stone, with arches and stair-cases of the same material, which once belonged to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange language. These are the remains of the Spanish dominion inhabitants, speaking the language of their country." In 1757 no vessel could approach the coast of St. Augustine without running the risk of being taken by the French privateers. It has not always been the home of Spanish Dons and guitar-playing, as in 1777. Captain Rory McIntosh, the Don Quixote of the country, lived here, and paraded the streets in true Scottish style, dressed in the Highland costume. His home was with Mr. Archibald Lundy, then a merchant of St. Augustine. He was present at the taking of Fort Moosa, under command of General Oglethorpe, and mentions his share in the fight with characteristic bravado: "I am a scoundrel, sir! At Fort Moosa a captain of Spanish Grenadiers was charging at the head of his company, and, like a varmint, sir, I lay in the bushes and shot the gallant fellow." On June 17, 1821, the American flag first floated from Castle San Marco. A meeting was afterward held in the governor's palace, where the exercising of a right was declared which had banished the Huguenots from the soil centuries before: "Freedom to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience." The archives of St. Augustine were said to have been delivered to the United States Collector. They were sealed in eleven strong boxes, for the purpose of being sent to Cuba, but detained by Captain Hanhan, and afterward forwarded to Washington. Dr. McWhir, an Irish Presbyterian preacher, visited Florida in 1823 and 1824, preaching at St. Augustine and Mandarin. He organized the first Presbyterian Church in the State, located at Mandarin. It was also mainly through his influence that the Church in St. Augustine was founded. In 1834 St. Augustine answered to the following description: "Situated like a rustic village, with its white houses peeping from among the clustered boughs and golden fruit of the favorite tree, beneath whose shade the invalid cooled his fevered brow and imbibed health from the fragrant air." It was, indeed, a forest of sturdy orange-trees, whose rich foliage of deep green, variegated with golden fruit, in which the buildings of the city were embowered, and whose fragrance filled the body of the surrounding atmosphere so as to attract the attention of those passing by in ships at sea, and whose delicious fruit was the great staple of export. The plaza then contained many orange-trees, one of which was over a century old, producing, in a single season, twelve thousand oranges--more than eight thousand being nothing unusual for many of the trees in a year. However, in 1835 there came a change over the dreams of these independent, happy people, when their source of income was gone in a single night--a calamity caused by a cold, heartless invader from the North, King Frost, which made them a brief visit, and froze the trees to the ground. From an income of more than seventy thousand dollars per annum, the amount was decreased to nothing. Their trees, being well matured, had produced an average of five hundred oranges annually. We feel as though, in trying to describe this place, we were hovering on the brink of uncertainty, and drifting along its shores, not knowing where to land, that we might find the stand-point to commence our task. It is here we realize a kind of traditional flickering between the forgotten and neglected past, shrouded in awful obscurity, with an intervening veil of myth and mystery--a pilgrim shrine for those wanting relics to visit, where many times large drafts are drawn upon the bank of their credulity, which look genuine if not honored with credence, or added to the store-house of useful information. Here we see more objects tottering upon the verge of existence and nonentity than at any other point in the State. The most venerable houses are built of tabby and coquina. Tabby, or concrete, is composed of two parts lime and coquina six parts, thoroughly mixed, and then placed in position between two planks, held together by iron bolts until dry. Walls of this kind were used as a means for defense in the days of Hannibal and Scipio, they being sufficiently strong to withstand the ancient battering weapons used in warfare. Before the forest-trees which covered the grounds upon which New York City now stands were felled, St. Augustine was the seat of power. The streams of wealth, and vast fortunes to be made as if by magic, had induced the adventurer to leave his home, and the pampered sons of power to pass the dangers of the deep. It is here, as in no other place, that two forms of civilization find a foothold--the Spanish dwellings of over a century, with the modern Mansard-roofs of recent date, all subserving the purpose of substantial residences. Many of the early settlers came like wandering sea-birds, wearied with their night, and looking for rest. This city is like ancient Rome, with which many found fault while there, but, from some kind of fascination, they always returned again. The inhabitants residing in other portions of the State formerly resorted to St. Augustine during the months of July, August, and September, that they might avoid malaria from the marshes. The fresh sea-breeze which comes out every morning they called "The Doctor," whose presence was hailed on account of its healthful influences. Its fine climate and orange-groves have always rendered it celebrated, although it has no fertile back country. The powerful chemical ingredients, which exist in the atmosphere on the sea-coast, act as a neutralizer to disease. The chloride of sodium, compounded in the laboratory of the great saline aquarium and respired without effort, is freighted with the germs of health, which are productive of beneficial effect in many forms of pulmonic complaints. During the Spanish rule, it was a place of importance as a military post, being the Government head-quarters, then containing a population of five thousand inhabitants. As we look upon these old Spaniards our thoughts go back to the days of their sires, whose minds were ever on the alert in search of some new sources from which would flow fresh streams of amusement. Their manners, habits, and customs were once varied as their origin--having descended from the Spanish, Italians, Corsicans, Arabs, and French, possessing the peculiar traits of these nationalities. The carnivals, posy balls, and many other amusements in which they formerly indulged, have now in a great measure been absorbed by the Yankee element. The holiday processions no longer march around the plaza, bearing their bright banners and escutcheons blazoned with the ensigns of their kings, or with the names of their favorite patron saints. The night before Easter in St. Augustine the observance of a peculiar custom is still retained, which the early settlers brought from Spain with them: it is that of the young men going around to the houses of their friends singing a song called Fromajardis. What a strange sensation steals over us to be awakened just before the old cathedral bells have chimed twelve by the sound of musical instruments, accompanied with singing, in a foreign tongue, a song which has echoed through the same town for more than three centuries! It indicates that the Lenten season is now over, and the young men are anxious to participate in feasting. Although it is customary, they are not always invited to partake of a bountiful collation after their song is finished, but are prepared to do so when the opportunity presents itself. The extreme poverty of the old citizens now renders it impossible for them to conform to the customs of palmier days, when large amounts of money were received from Cuba by the soldiery, and the labor of slaves furnished many with a genteel support. From these people we can see with what tenacity they cling to their home associations; although misfortune has crushed their spirits, and poverty lessened their desire for enjoyment, yet in their hearts still lingers the memory of a festive past, which now cheers them on through adverse fortune, and lightens life of half its burdens. Most of the old inhabitants are persons of very moderate means, moderate ability, and moderate their wishes by surrounding circumstances--who apparently live and grow old, ripen and die, with as little effort toward great designs or grand projects as the sweet potato in the hill. Many of them live seventy or eighty years, are born and die in the same house without forming any foreign attachments or associations--the machinery of their human frames not being moved with as much rapidity here as North. On account of their early training being impregnated with superstition, the imaginary ghost that moves gloomily around at midnight is always their terror. The tongue or pen of critics is never prostrated when in search of material for feasts of fault-finding--a multitude of remarks being made with reference to the apparent indolence of the natives, not thinking that the atmosphere by which they are surrounded is in no way conducive to great physical exertion. The inhabitants follow hunting and fishing, besides cultivating their gardens, while some of them have cow-pens for their cattle, and land outside the city, which they till. They are a quiet, frugal people, retiring in their manners, and simple in their ways--the very opposite in every respect of the grasping, bustling, overreaching Yankee--devoted Catholics, warm in their friendship, but timid toward strangers. The young girls in the community have a type of feminine beauty which can be seen at no other place, except on the shores of the Mediterranean, or in the Madonnas of the Italian masters--in short, St. Augustine is an Italian town on the shores of America, and in that respect differs from any on the Western Continent. The language spoken by their progenitors is supposed to have been identical with that used in the Court of Spain before the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. It has the terseness of the French, without the grandiloquence of the Spanish, being derived directly from the Latin. There is nothing now remaining of courtly splendors. A few only of the ancient tenements are left, some of them tumbling down by degrees; those having occupants are a class of persons struggling for an existence, with adverse circumstances surrounding them which cannot be overcome, but must be borne in silent submission. Our imagination before visiting declining architecture is always to conceive that they have an air of the picturesque--a softness reflected on them by moonlight, or a panorama with dulcet strains floating somewhere in our fanciful dreams. All visitors come with an object, well or ill defined--the student to look, the historian to gather dates and make records, while the restless spirit that roves everywhere is here in search of something new or wonderful for his eyes to rest on a brief period of time. At this place there is an unchanging serenity of sky, a clear and harmonious blending of two colors--white and blue--with a soft shading, and the line of distinction lightly drawn. Long level stretches of sandy country lie before us on the beach, covered by the canopy of heaven, and lighted by the luminary of day. The Matanzas River is ever in view, and, like other waters, has its moods, with its surface sometimes smooth as the downy cheek of infancy, then wrinkled as the brow of age, or stirred like the impulses of an enraged partisan in a political contest. Every morning the same sun rises over Anastasia Light-house, and beams across the waters like burnished steel; the curtain of nature rises on the same scene, the early dawn brings the same worshipers; the priests read the sacred service, and we find it an easy task to banish bad thoughts, and become purer and better, if only for the time being. A procession of nuns from St. Joseph's Academy, conducted by the Mother Superior, passes along daily, silently as the flight of a feather through the air. They have charge of two schools in St. Augustine for both white and colored pupils, which are well patronized, where much instruction, like the Jews of old, is given in the ceremonials of the ritualistic law. Their new coquina convent is pleasant, and the display of fine laces, made by their busy fingers, incomparable. The little chapel within the convent is very neat, containing a statue of their patron, St. Joseph, watching over it. They exhibited to us a shred of the Virgin Mary's dress, also a piece of the cross on which the Saviour was hung; but it required a greater stretch of our imagination than we were able to command to perceive the resemblance, particularly as we had never seen the original, or had any description of it. The religion here is that which sprang into existence during the Middle Ages, when the minds of the people were unable to comprehend a disembodied spirit, an intangible, ideal substance somewhere; for this reason images were introduced to address their supplications. It is now the pomp of pontifical splendor, and not the strength of persuasive eloquence, that overawes the assembled multitudes--a scenic display metamorphosed into a religious drama, where "monks and priests are only players." St. Augustine, unlike the European cities, bears no record of great prosperity or vanished splendors in the display of colossal buildings, or fine scientific skill, as the present period boasts of more fine houses than at any time anterior to this. What a host of past memories rise before us on every side as we walk its narrow streets, overshadowed by mid-air balconies! Here are the old palace-grounds, where the Dons from Spain paraded their troops, and exhibited them, with burnished armor and crimson sashes, before a queenly array of beauty seated on the verandas of the old Spanish governor's head-quarters. It is here the fierce and warlike Seminoles made furious assaults, and were held in check until the women and children could take refuge in the castle. The Seminole Indians lurked in the vicinity of St. Augustine during all the seven-years' struggle, but never, except as prisoners or to make purchases, did they enter it, which was quite different from other settlements which they depopulated and then destroyed. It is for this reason we see so many older buildings here than in other Florida towns, among the most ancient of which is the Escribanio, now called St. Mary's Convent, west of the cathedral. It was built for and occupied as El Escribanio, or business department of the governor. It was built of coquina and concrete, with a tile floor, much of the material used being brought from Cuba, and of the most durable quality. All business connected with the Government was transacted here. It was the annex building of the palace, but afterward occupied as a private residence until 1852, when it became church-property, being then purchased by Father Aubril. In 1858 Bishop Verot took charge of it, and then it was used only temporarily as a convent by the Sisters of Mercy, an order of French nuns. The tale that is told of hard floors being for penance, where nuns had kneeled until the brick was worn away, is only a fabrication. The floor, like all those laid in Cuba, was the best burnt tiles. Also, that the groans of unhappy nuns who had died here from too much abstinence had been heard echoing through the arches at unseasonable hours, when spiritual visitants are supposed to be moving around, is another intangible story with which visitors are entertained who hanker after the mysterious. No nuns died in that convent, as the time they occupied it was too brief for any marked mortality. This silent old town appears to sleep all summer, with an occasional lucid moment, when an excursion comes in for a day's recreation, until winter, when every thing is brought into requisition, with which a dime or a dollar can be turned from a visitor's pocket. It is then the dear old folks from a colder clime come to sit and sun themselves on the sea-wall, or balconies, while the young people walk, ride horseback, take moonlight strolls, and sail on the quiet bay or restless sea, talking, laughing, and singing as they go. The hotel-keepers look cheerful again, the Spanish señoras smile sweetly as they exhibit their palmetto hats and grasses, while an orange stick and an alligator are the aspiration of the lads--the latter being a marvel to Northern visitors. When a genuine, live alligator cannot be obtained, a photograph has to suffice, taken after the animal has been captured and tied, to be made to sit for his picture. It is true, many complain of the manner in which they are annoyed by all kinds of professions, from the boot-black--who screams in your ears, "Shine, sah!" until you feel like elevating him somewhere among the shining orbs, from which point he would not soon return--to the hotel bills. "Four dollars a day, sir; if no baggage, in advance." Then the carriages--"Ride, sir? take a nice ride?" The pleasure-yachts come in for their share of attention--"Take an excursion over on the beach? I takes over pleasure-parties." These all swoop down on the defenseless travelers, like birds of prey over a fallen carcass, to the amusement of some, and the annoyance of many more. There is no lack of attention from interested parties, if you have the money to spend. During the winter the old wharf, which shakes as though it had the palsy whenever a dog trots over it, has men and boys throwing out lines with a simple hook, and others with elaborate reels and silver hooks, amusing themselves; while the old Spaniards bask in the sunshine, on the sea-wall, resting from their night of toil in fishing on the rolling waves, as a means of support, like the apostles of old. A good cart was formerly the highest ambition of the natives, while now elegant carriages, with liveried drivers, roll around the streets, decked with the trappings of wealth and show of fashion. It is very amusing, many times, to hear the uncultured youths, reared in St. Augustine, make remarks in regard to the appearance and dress of visitors, frequently mocking them when they are speaking, particularly if the language is a little more refined than that to which they have been accustomed; but the most astonishing thing of all is the mysterious manner with which the natives come in possession of your name, the facts connected with your movements, where you stay, and, more than all, if you have any money. If you are not flush and free with funds, you can rest from any annoyances, except boarding-house keepers, who have adopted the motto, "Pay as you go, or go away." The celebrated Florida curiosities are a great source of traffic, from the June-bugs to the head of a Jew-fish, including stuffed baby alligators that neither breathe nor eat, tusks from the grown ones, mounted with gold; birds of beautiful and varied plumage, relieved by the taxidermist of every thing but their coat of feathers and the epidermis, looking at you from out glass windows, through glass eyes; screech-owl tails and wings; pink and white curlew-feathers; saws from sword-fish of fabulous length; sharks' heads; sea-beans, supposed to have grown on Anastasia Island, but drifted from the West Indies; and the palm, wrought in so many varied and fanciful forms of imaginary and practical utility as scarcely to be identified as a native of the Florida wilds, whose rough and jagged stalks seem to defy an assault from the hand of the most expert explorer, being upheld by its roots of inexplicable size and length. Most visitors think their tour incomplete without a palmetto hat; but who of the many that purchase asks, or cares, where these home-made articles were produced--what thoughts were woven by the light-hearted workers--what fancies flitted through the brain of the dark-eyed maiden, in whose veins flows the blood of a foreign clime. The Florida pampas-grass, gathered from the surrounding swamps, is much used in ornamenting China vases and ladies' hats, together with the excrescent growths from the tall cypress-trees. Each countryman's cart has a marsh-hen, blue crane, or a box of live alligators, seeking to make money and divert the attention of curiosity-seeking persons. All visitors will, no doubt, be solicited, freely and frequently, by the different crafts, to make an investment; but it is all nothing. Everybody has to make a support in some way--as the little boy replied to the Northerner who asked him how the people all lived down here in this sandy country. The lad replied, "Off from sweet taters and sick Yankees." It has hitherto been a prolific source of entertainment for those who have been here to listen to the narrations of old settlers. The tide of memory never fails them. They can relate things that occurred long anterior to the current of their existence, with the same unbroken connection of circumstances as though they were among the events of yesterday. Most of the old settlers are dead now; but the legends live with the younger ones--the legendary transfer having been made without any apparent diminution of the marvelous. Our days here pass in peaceful quietude, the time moving on with imperceptible speed; but the daily records would not fill a page in history, or supply material for a romance. An incident occasionally takes place, which stirs the under-current of life a little--as the capsizing of a yacht, catching a big fish, shark, or alligator. Adventurers who come here seeking employment do not receive a hearty welcome. The natives look upon that class of persons as a kind of interlopers, who want to suck the sweets from their oranges, and lick the sirup from their bread, without paying them for it. Persons here from Northern climes are expected to spend the winter in breathing the balmy air, canopied with skies clothed in the softest radiance of a summer sun, and praising every thing they see. If they have any doubt in regard to what they hear, let them lock it in secret, and keep silent until they leave; for the inhabitants think that this was once the paradise of the Peri, which will some day be restored to its pristine loveliness. Visitors who are always ventilating their prejudices and preferences too freely, in any place, make enemies. Let none presume to tread upon the dangerous ground of expressing an adverse opinion with reference to what they see, in any of the small settlements with which Florida is filled, or in the larger towns either, if they wish to be fanned by the breath of popular favor. Always take the spirit of volatile indifference with you, to waft you through all the little inconveniences which you may have to encounter, resolving to accept and submit to every thing just as you find it, or fold up your blanket and steal quietly away where you can regulate things to your liking. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XI. The old St. Augustine inhabitants are very regular in their attendance at the cathedral exercises, which, during the Holy Days, appear to be their sole employment. The first sound that greets us in the morning is bells for mass. How those harsh tones, jingling like fire-bells run mad, break in upon our soft repose! The alarming speed with which they are rung attracts no attention, this being all the excitement we have in the way of a noise. The earliest sunbeams shine upon groups of worshipers going to offer oblations, while the shades of twilight deepen before vespers are over, and the throng of satisfied penitents move to the quietude of their homes. The most devoted are said "to live in the church." Surely their lives must pass peacefully, "Mid counted beads and countless prayers." The cathedral is an object of interest on account of its ancient architecture more than age, having been commenced in 1793. The church in use previous to its erection was located on the west side of St. George Street. The engineers and officers belonging to the Government--Don Mariana and Don P. Berrio--directed the work, it being completed at a cost of over sixteen thousand dollars. During the many improvements made in the city, the main part of the cathedral has remained the same for nearly the past century, while time has touched it lightly--thus forming a link with the present in a useful state of preservation. The walls are built of coquina of no modern thickness, but as if designed to resist a siege. Its Moorish belfry with four bells, and the town-clock, form a complete cross. One of these bells was taken from Tolemato Chapel, it having been originally brought from Rome, as the lettering indicates. It bears the following date and inscription: "_Sancte Joseph, Ora pro nobis, 1682_." The cathedral also contains a crucifix, which is brought into requisition once every year on Good Friday, it being a relic from "_Nuestro Cano de la Leche_," which is all that remains. The front doors of the cathedral are now kept locked, as it has been a resort for so many inconsiderate persons, who went there smoking and talking in loud, irreverent tones, as though it was a theater, where some kind of daylight drama was being enacted, instead of a house devoted to worship, and entered with purity of feeling, if not according to prescribed rules, which the faith of everybody induces them to adopt. To the minds of these Church-devotees all other pageant fades into insignificance before the festivities and solemnities of the Holy Days connected with their Church-services, and the veneration due to their patron saints. Whatever vicissitudes or changes may take place with them in other respects, their religion remains the same; it is, indeed, a part of their being, without which their lives would be considered incomplete, their existence blank as the brutes, which die that others may live. Some of the worshipers rush to the cathedral with the rapidity of an opera-goer, who is afraid the seats will all be taken before he arrives, but enter with the same degree of veneration as the pilgrims who visit and kiss the statue of St. Peter--still clinging to their catechism and creeds firmly, as a part of their life, while their well-learned prayers are repeated as a talisman against temptation and violent death. These old cathedral walls have witnessed stately ceremonials, heard the prayers and confessions of many penitents, whose troubled consciences and sin-burdened hearts could find no relief except at the confessional. The bishop is regarded by the Catholics as the Vicegerent of Heaven. He lives in the greatest seclusion and simplicity--never appearing in public except amid the glitter and grandeur of a ceremonial, but always accessible to those wishing the administration of Church-rites. Many outsiders regard the adoration rendered to the priesthood as homage to man. This conclusion is incorrect--"all this effort at splendor and magnificence being wholly and purely a tribute of man to honor the religion which God in his love and mercy has given, and no part of it designed for man's honor." As evidence of this, none of the priesthood ever approach the tabernacle, or other holy symbols, except with marked demonstrations of the most profound reverence and uncovered head--thus rendering the same veneration to Christ which he requires from the people. With an utter disregard for the fitness of things, on exhibition in this cathedral are two frescoes--one representing the "Death of the Wicked," the other the "Death of the Good." The good man appears perfectly composed, as though he were about to survey one of his Father's mansions, well prepared for the coming change, only waiting for the gates of glory to be opened for his entrance, when the words of welcome would resound through the peaceful abodes of the just made perfect, "Enter into the joy of thy Lord." "The Death of the Wicked!" Where the idea of so much that is horrible could have been conceived is difficult to be accurately determined. It has been conceded by all that there is nothing like it in Rome or the Vatican. Dante, with his vision of demoniac spirits, is not a rival. How these devils grin! How they stare at the distorted features of the poor, dying man, who anticipates soon taking a leap into the dark abode of these exultant beings, who are delighted at the prospect of having one more victim to slake their sleepless thirst, or on which to experiment with some newly-suggested torture! Travelers, in coming here, must not imagine they can regulate the standard of religion in all climates by their own. The old, time-honored custom, in Catholic countries, of spending a portion of Christmas Eve in prayer and praise to God for the unspeakable gift of his Son Jesus Christ, is still observed here with all the accompanying ceremonies of ancient times pertaining to the Holy Order of St. Augustine, transmitted, through the priesthood, to the present generation. The high windows, which are nearer the roof than any other part of the building, will never draw wandering thoughts from their devotions, as their altitude would preclude any but angel eyes from looking through them. The modernized, cushioned, upholstered seats, upon which registered Church-members, with gilt-edged hymn-books in their hands, expect to slide from into the portals of glory, are not found here, but the genuine, old-time wooden benches, with a thick plank to sit on, and another to support the shoulders. No velvet foot-stool to kneel upon, but the bare floor for penitents to bend in their devotions, and the sin-stricken to derive comfort and seek forgiveness for their misdeeds. Outside the chancel, on the right of the altar, in a niche, is a statue of the Madonna, life size, with the God-child standing beside her, both looking very benignly. Beneath the niche is a representation of the lamb, of which our Saviour is the antitype. On an altar below this was a miniature stable, with an inside exposure, containing figures of the infant Jesus in a manger with Mary and Joseph, the whole surrounded by oxen, beasts of burden, and other things connected with the humble furnishings of a stable, while bending in front of all were the wise men worshiping. In rear and above the grand "high altar" stands the figure of St. Augustine, dressed in all the insignia of rank belonging to his holy order, decked in azure, with gilt trimmings, above which is inscribed, "_Sancte Augustine. Ora Pro Nobis!_" On each side of this are two other saints with the same petition over them. The altars were all dressed in an appropriate manner, with evergreens and flowers that never fade. The choir made a fine exhibit of their musical skill, singing "_Miserere Nobis_," "_Gloria in Excelsis_," very finely, with the organ accompaniment. On this Christmas the cathedral was filled with a remarkably quiet, well-deported audience, composed of citizens and strangers. The services were conducted by Bishop Verot, who has ministered to them in holy things for nearly twenty years. At this time he was dressed with more than usual display, it being the crowning day of all holy days--Christmas. His sacerdotal robes were of costly materials, over which was worn the chasuble, elaborately embroidered with designs of the finest needle-work, wrought in gold, and interspersed with numerous precious stones, while upon his head rested a miter of corresponding elegance; in his hand he held a crozier of costly and curious pattern. He was assisted in the service connected with the ceremonies by two other priests, also twelve acolytes. Bishop Verot made some very appropriate remarks upon charity and the Redeemer's birth. He said that no earthly king had ever made his appearance in so humble a manner, and he was greater than all kings or princes in the world. Softly fell the rays of light from six tall wax candles, supported by metal of ancient date, surrounded by many lesser ones that lent their luster to reflect the solemnity of the scene. Heavenly thoughts should visit us when associated with so many holy emblems. Amid the stillness of midnight, surrounded by the symbols of this most fascinating religion, before the grand altar kneeled twelve nuns, draped and veiled with the sable-hued garments, indicating their abandonment of all worldly display. Before the tabernacle stood Bishop Verot, with a massive golden chalice in his hand, while slowly and distinctly from his lips were echoed the solemn words of the Lord Jesus, "_Hoc est enim corpus meum_," as each communicant received the blessed wafer. A visit to Tolemato Cemetery, situated at the north end of Tolemato Street, is in reality going to a "garden of graves," on account of the large number of interments which have been made there. It was the Sabbath when we went, and, contrary to the usual custom in most towns and cities, there were no loafers prowling about the grounds, or sitting on the tablets reading novels, thus committing an act which in itself partakes so much of daring desecration. The custodian of the gate was a lizard, that lives in the lock, and crawls with astonishing rapidity to his hiding-place on application of the key. When the gates are open we enter "God's acre," where rest the remains of those who have lived and died for the past three centuries--priests and people, all sleeping side by side, awaiting that summons of which Gabriel will be the herald. Since the settlement of St. Augustine this cemetery has been the scene of a tragic event, which occurred in 1567, when Father Corpa, influenced by a desire to rescue the souls of the savages from the lurid flames which he imagined would hover around the delinquents in purgatory, rebuked them for their hostile and polygamic customs. His pearls were cast before swine, as the untamed red men had no prescribed rules from the Great Spirit in regard to their conduct. They could not adopt this new _régime_, and the propagator must be silenced. A council was called--the Sanhedrim of the savage--when a yell of triumph which penetrated the portals of prayer rang out upon the stillness of midnight. It was then the edict went forth, irrevocable and sanguinary as the laws of Draco, Father Corpa must die; and who should strike the fatal blow? Whose unflinching arm can rid us of this our peace-destroyer? The athlete of his tribe replied, "It is I!" Stealthily and silently they stole into Tolemato Chapel, where, kneeling before the altar, with a lone taper, whose feeble rays served as a guide, was Father Corpa. A single flash from the warrior's steel gleamed through the darkness; a single stroke sufficed. Tolemato Cemetery now marks the spot where this act was perpetrated, baptized with the blood of its first missionary. The remains of this chapel have long since disappeared, except the bell, which hangs in St. Augustine cathedral. Another chapel stands within the cemetery now, erected to the memory of Father Varela by his beloved pupils in Cuba. The architecture is Corinthian, while above the doorway is the following inscription: "_Beati mortui qui in Domino morientur_." This vault, when opened, is in reality a dark, chilly, awe-inspiring place, where service is held on "All Souls' Day," when Catholic devotees are assembled to repeat prayers for the repose of the souls whose bodies lie buried here. The following Spanish register is made upon the marble tablet which covers his remains: "ESTA CAPILLA, FUE, EREGIDA, POR, LOS, CUBANOS, EL ANO 1853, PARA, CONSERVAR, LAS CENIZAS DEL PADRE VARELA." Hanging over the emblematical representations standing upon the mahogany altar is a copy from Raphael's sublime painting, "The Ascension." The ravages of time have destroyed all the inscriptions upon the tombs which were placed here previous to 1821. One of the tablets being moved back from the top of the vault, a portion of the coffin was exposed. We concluded it might be the perpetuation of a time-honored superstition, which favored the idea that the soul visited the body, and watched over it after death. "_Vida Robles_"--a life of troubles--was inscribed on another tablet. From this epitaph a stranger would naturally suppose life had very few charms for the body deposited beneath it, and death a welcome messenger, that gave the care-worn frame a blessed rest. A few years since, some workmen being employed to dig among the ruins where Tolemato Chapel once stood, discovered a medal, or medallion, in _basso-rilievo_, bearing the inscription, "_Roma_." This sacred relic is supposed to have been attached to the rosary worn by the priest at the time when he was victimized before the altar. On one side of this medal is a kneeling figure, with an infant in his arms, around which is engraved, "SANCTUS JOANNES DE DEO"--St. John of God. C--who was born in 1495, a founder of the Order of Charity, and father of the eminent saints that flourished in Spain during the sixteenth century. His motto was, "Lord, thy thorns are my roses, and thy sufferings my paradise." On the opposite side is engraved "S. CHRISTOFORUS"--St. Christopher--represented bearing the Christ-child. This ancient relic comes to us blessed by the Pope, and in a remarkable state of preservation. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XII. Can volume, pillar, pile, preserve thee great? Or must these trust tradition's simple tongue? The ancient fortress of Castle San Marco, the name of which has been improperly changed to Fort Marion, is considered one of the most attractive and interesting objects in St. Augustine. It was constructed in the style of the strong castles in Europe during the Middle Ages, after the design of military engineering employed by Vauban. In 1762 it was called St. John's Fort, or San Juan de Piños, afterward San Marco, which name it retained until the change of flags in 1821, when it received the title of Fort Marion, in honor of General Marion, of Revolutionary fame. Its form is that of a quadrilateral, or trapezium, with bastions at each corner, the wall being twenty-one feet in height. Its extreme age, together with the durability of material employed, would be a subject of more interest to ancient architects, could they return, than to any of the present generation. The battery is the boulevard of the city, where we can come and listen to the sea beating its great heart against the rocks, and see the snowy sails that glide so swiftly out to the solemn seas, while the white clouds float gracefully in their blue vault over our heads, like doves through the air, as the clear waters from the inlet flash in the bright sunlight, like burnished armor for a gala-day parade, and a pensiveness steals over our senses, which makes all earthly scenes vanish, like shadows in the distance at breaking of day. We also find this a favored place for receiving serious impressions--this structure, formed by long-forgotten hands, which was a fortress of strength for the defenseless, a prison for treacherous captives, where they could pine and die far from the sound of human sympathy, with the gates of mercy forever sealed to them. The mind embalms pleasant memories from this peculiar spot, when the skies are bright, bursting upon our vision like that day of which we read, whose "morning will dawn without clouds." This structure was commenced in 1565, by the Spaniards, as a defense against the Indians. In 1732 Don Manuel Montiano, being appointed Governor of Florida, made application to the Captain General of Cuba for means to strengthen the fort, also more artillerymen, which were granted, the work being done under the direction of Don Antonio de Arredonda, a competent engineering official. In response to his request, two hundred convicts from Mexico being furnished him, six casemates were finished, of which there are eighteen in all, the remainder having been completed in 1756. The impress of two eighteen-pound shot, low down on the eastern curtain, are now to be seen, [Illustration: LAND APPROACH TO FORT MARION.] made from a battery placed on Anastasia Island by General Oglethorpe, who attempted by a regular siege to take the city. The bombardment was continued twenty days; but, on account of the lightness of the guns, and the distance, little damage was done. The siege lasted thirty-eight days, when the Americans withdrew their troops, and returned to Georgia. General Oglethorpe returned two years after this, taking Fort Moosa, four miles distant, upon a broad river flowing under the fort; then advanced to the gates of St. Augustine, where he gave the garrison an invitation to march out and fight, which they declined. In 1740 the castle is described as "being built of soft stone, with four bastions, the curtains sixty yards in length, the parapet nine feet thick, the rampart twenty feet high, casemated underneath for lodgings, arched over and newly made bomb-proof; and they have for some time past been working on a new covert way, which is nearly finished. The ordnance consisted of fifty pieces of cannon, sixteen of which were brass twenty-four-pounders. Thirteen hundred regular troops composed the garrison, also militia and Spanish Indians. In addition to this, the town was intrenched with ten salient angles, on each of which were cannon." In 1769 it is again described as being completed "according to the modern taste of military architecture, and might be justly deemed the prettiest fort in the king's domain. It is regularly fortified with bastions, half-bastions, and a ditch; has also several rows of Spanish bayonet along the ditch, forming so close a _chevaux-de-frise_ with their pointed leaves as to be impregnable. The southern bastions were built of stone." The fort now, as then, is situated in the north-eastern extremity of the old town, directly fronting the entrance to the harbor. On the west side is a broad and deep trench, or moat, connected with the moat around the castle extending across the town to the St. Sebastian River. This trench was used to flood the moat around the fortress, from the St. Sebastian River, and also to be filled with water when required, in order to obstruct the approach of assailants from the southern direction. On the south side of this trench very strong earth-works were erected, continuous with portions of massive walls on each side the city gate, which is now the best relic that exists in Europe or America--thus acknowledged by tourists who have visited St. Augustine. The form of the work is a polygon, consisting of four equal curtains, on the salient angles, on three of which are bastions, or turrets, the one at the north-east corner having disappeared. The moat around the castle is inclosed by the internal barrier, a massive wall of coquina, which also extends around the barbacan, following its entrant and reëntrant angles. An outer barrier extends around the inner, following in parallel lines the various flexures. Although a mound of earth is now raised against this outer barrier, inclosing the fort, there is little doubt, from observation of the remains, that the approaches to the castle were guarded, as in the Middle Ages, by an abatis, scarp and counter-scarp, frise, and all the defenses then employed, the traces of which are still extant. The barbacan in front of the entrance--called in modern phraseology the sally-port--is the only remaining specimen of a defensive work of the kind in this country, and to the present time has been an enigma to all visitors, which some tourists have committed the blunder of calling a demi-lune. This particular will be recalled by a reference to Scott's "Betrothed," which describes the castle of the "Garde Douloreuse." Traces of the "outer barrier gate" remain, also the draw-bridges, and machinery by which they were worked. Every thing is preserved but the "Warder's Tower" over the gate; the steps remain to prove the former existence of the tower. The draw-bridge, and even the pulleys by which it was raised, are there; also the ponderous portcullis, as an illustrated monument of Sir Walter Scott's description in regard to ancient castles. The following Spanish inscription is to be seen over the sally-port in _alto-rilievo_: REYNANDO EN ESPANA EL SEN^{R} DON FERNANDO SEXTO Y SIENDO GOV^{OR} Y CAP^{N} DE ES^{A} C^{D} S^{AN} AUG^{N} DE LA FLORIDA Y SUS PROV^{A} EL MARISCAL DE CAMPO D^{N} ALONZO FERN^{DO} HEREDA ASI CONCLUIO ESTE CASTILLO EL AN OD 1756 DIRI^{G}ENDO LAS OBRAS EL CAP. INGN^{RO} DN PEDRO DE BROZAS Y GARAY. _Translation._--Don Ferdinand VI. being King of Spain, and the Field Marshal Don Alonzo Fernando Hereda being Governor and Captain General of this place, St. Augustine, of Florida, and its Province. This fort was finished in the year 1756. The works were directed by the Captain Engineer, Don Pedro de Brazos y Garay. Every year hundreds of visitors rush into Fort Marion, and then the dungeon, with an awe-stricken feeling, as though the imaginary groans which are said to have been uttered here centuries since were ready to burst through the rocks and echo again, like the words of Plato, which his friends said froze in the winter, but on the return of spring thawed out again. Several years after the cession of Florida to the United States the north-east bastion of this fortress caved in, immediately under the highest tower, disclosing a dungeon fourteen feet square. On the same day was made the discovery of a square rock, cemented in an opening similar to those in the casemates, only much less, which was undoubtedly the entrance. A tempest there you scarce could hear, So massive were the walls. Some human bones and hair were then discovered and seen by volunteers from the ship Dolphin--a published account of which was forwarded to Washington, and deposited in the Congressional Library. The Smithsonian Institute has no knowledge of these cages, bones, or any thing pertaining to them ever having been placed there--which forever silences all inquiries in that direction. They told us, while in Washington, that when visitors came to the Institute asking information about them, the Professors were at a loss to know what they implied by their interrogations. It has long been a demonstrated fact that some of the St. Augustine natives have a way of answering questions asked about them in accordance with their impressions, regardless of dates or historic records. The following description of the old fort mysteries is a change from the iron cages--the writer having visited the dungeon before the cage tale had been invented: "We were taken into the ancient prisons of the fort-dungeons, one of which was dimly lighted by a grated window, the other entirely without light, and by the flame of a torch we were shown the half-obliterated inscriptions scratched on the walls long ago by prisoners. But in another corner of the fort we were taken to look at the secret cells which were discovered a few years since in consequence of the sinking of the earth over a narrow apartment between them. These cells are deep under ground, vaulted over head, and without windows. In one of them a wooden machine was found, which some supposed might have been a rack, and in the other a quantity of human bones. The doors of these cells had been walled up, and concealed with stucco, before the fort passed into the hands of the Americans." Many things, when related about it far away, sound tame, but have an awe-inspiring effect if surrounded by its grim walls, listening to the grating of rusty bolts, or the clanking of iron chains, and looking through the uncertain glare of the old sergeant's candles as he finishes his well-learned tale of horrors, in subdued tones, with the final paragraph, "_It may be so, or it may not; I cannot tell_." That human bones have been discovered in the ruins of old churches and structures of various other kinds, placed there for sepulture, is a well-authenticated fact. While constructing the wall around the light-house at St. Mark's, Florida, in tearing down the old Spanish fort, a tomb was found beneath a tablet, containing a single body of much greater size than any living in the country at the present day. In the walls of the State-house, at Nashville, Tennessee, a niche was planned by the architect to contain his body, where his bones are now sealed in. The iron cages about which so much has been said and written have come before the public with the enormous cruelties of the Inquisition and the mysteries of an almost-forgotten past. Many statements have been made and published in regard to them, without the shadow of truth for a basis. There are old citizens now living in St. Augustine, between eighty and ninety years of age, who saw those cages when discovered, and heard their parents state where they first saw them. The following is, no doubt, the true version of the man-cages, direct from a most authentic source: About sixty years since, while some workmen were engaged outside the city gates in making post-holes for a butcher-pen, when in the act of digging, they struck a hard substance resembling iron, which excited their curiosity. They continued working until they uncovered two cages, made of wrought iron, welded together in a manner somewhat resembling the human form, and containing a few decomposed human bones. None of the New Smyrna refugees were then living, but there are those alive now who remember having heard their parents say that "two cages containing the remains of some pirates were hanging outside the city gates when they came to St. Augustine from Smyrna, after the English left it, and buried them just in the manner they were found by the butchers." Although many inhuman acts have been committed by the Spaniards, they are not chargeable with all the atrocities perpetrated in the world. Señor B. Oliveros thus relates what he saw on the day they were dug out: "One evening, a little before sunset, I noticed a number of persons collected around the city gates, and proceeded there to ascertain the cause of so many people, when I spied the two cages standing against the city gate-posts." He, being a gunsmith, succeeded in obtaining one, which he said was most excellent wrought iron, of which he made good use. The other cage was taken in charge by the Spanish officers, and locked in the fort for safe keeping until it could be sent to Spain as a relic, where old persons now living here saw it with feelings of terror--they then being children. Thus, instead of being exhibited as a relic of the Spanish Inquisition at Washington, as has been represented so frequently, it is retained in Madrid as a specimen of English barbarity. The cages were no worse punishment than that of the old English law for aggravated offenses: "That the perpetrator be drawn and quartered alive." And who can number those that have perished in the English pillories? No nation of people in the world can wash their hands entirely from cruel conduct, or show a clear record for the humane deportment of all its ancestry, remembering infallibility has left its impress nowhere except on the works and ways of God. Some of those people usually designated as Indians, whose isolated existence is concealed in mystery, are here in Fort Marion, fettered with the forms of civilization, to which their adaptability of character conforms them with as good a grace as the circumstances will permit. That these tawny-skinned creatures have constitutions of iron there is no doubt, as their general appearance indicates a life of fatigue to which ease is a stranger. They are subjected to much exposure in pursuing the wild herds that rush with the precipitancy and speed of the mountain torrent, together with the days and weeks they spend with only the canopy of heaven for a covering, which increases their powers of endurance. Many times they retire supperless, and, when game is abundant, gorge themselves to gluttony, after which, like the stupid anaconda, they roll up for digestion, to supplant the place of more moderation. It is the testimony of all those who have lived among the Indians, that there exists a natural feeling of opposition to civilization, when not weakened by wars, or overpowered with superior numbers. Did it ever occur to us highly enlightened people, while looking at the native dress of these savages, wrapped in their blankets, that clothing for the lower limbs was of but recent origin? Trousers were never worn by the Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans. The idea is said to have originated with the Gauls, the source from which our fashions are now received. The garment worn by the ancients was woven in one piece, about twelve feet in length and half the width, fastened on the right shoulder. It was secured with a girdle in folds at the waist when they started on long journeys, which was termed "girding the loins." This seamless coat was never out of fashion, and worn, if no accident happened to it, for generations. Think of a young man now wearing his father's coat, to say nothing of his great-grandfather's! It would be regarded as a synonym of extreme poverty, however rich the fabric from which it was formed might be woven. The locality from which these Indians were brought was formerly designated The American Desert, located beyond the Arkansas River; but, as no remarkable barren country has been found there, the name was changed to Plains. The aborigines first found on the discovery of America, and those roaming through the Western wilds, are of quite different material. Those on the Atlantic coast were planters--cultivators of the soil. The Western Indians range through an area of two thousand miles in extent, with no abiding-place but the camp-fires, around which they gather at night to rest, after shooting during the day the buffalo that supplies all their necessities--clothing, tent-covers, shoes, and strings for their bows; also an article of commerce for trafficking with the whites. An attempt at a treaty with these children of nature would have never been productive of any good. The most feasible plan for the present has been adopted--to capture a portion of them, which will have a tendency to awe the remainder. Force is the only weapon to be used. They are the Ishmaelites of the West. The names of the tribes represented here are the Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and Arapahoes. The Comanches are the most numerous of any tribe now existing, and have for many years been a terror to Texas and frontier settlers. Entire districts have been depopulated by them. While they exert a sleepless vigilance over their own possessions, they are constantly making predatory incursions upon their neighbors. The Texas Rangers acquired the great skill, of which we saw such frequent exhibits during the war, in spending a portion of each day skirmishing with these Indians. They are bold and warlike, with a home on the grassy plains, whose kingdom is conquest, their throne a horse, upon which, when once seated, with their arrows and lasso, they acknowledge no umpire but death. More than three hundred years since, when first discovered, they had dogs for beasts of burden--horses never having been used among them. Plunder is what they live for, and trophies what they fight for--it is considered disgraceful for them to return to camps empty-handed: no glory then awaits them, or words of kindness. The Cheyennes have a rude system of representing their ideas by picture-writing, which may be traced up to the highest type of communicating thought by letter-writing. In this manner they have preserved legends, written history, and recorded songs. The pantomimic movements of these Indians are all the language of signs. Each yelp has its import, by which means they can converse with one another, although their dialect may differ. Riding with the tails of their ponies braided is a key-note to hostilities. It is a remarkable peculiarity, in regard to their language, that they have retained it, however much associated with other tribes, which is illustrated by the Arapahoes and Cheyennes living in close proximity, indulging in freaks of fighting and friendship, as their inclination dictates, communicating with each other only by gestures or interpreters. They inhabit the valley of the Platte River, always ready to receive presents, talk in good faith of peace, but hardly have the words ceased to echo from their lips before they are holding a council of war, and making preparations for a descent upon any thing of value they may have discovered during their parley. They eat the flesh of canines with a relish that places all Government rations at a discount. Their visitors are expected to partake with them as a mark of friendship. The Kiowa and Arapahoe tribes appear to have oratorical powers not possessed by the others, and their native eloquence has never been improved by education. Sa-tan-ta, a former chief of the Kiowas, when taken by the Government for numberless depredations, pleaded his own cause with such powerful effect he was dubbed "The Orator of the Plains." There is no doubt that the patriarchs among them prefer peace, but the young warriors are fond of fighting. With them it is an inborn instinct, like a bird for the air. No life can be imagined fraught with greater dangers and privations than that of soldiers in search of Indians, to be found lurking with their missiles of destruction behind trees, grass-blades, or in any covert from which they can discharge these death-dealing weapons, in real or fancied security. The wild animals, driven by necessity, are always in readiness to pluck the bones of the first object they see, whether man or beast. Then the terrible thirst the poor soldiers endure, to be slaked with bitter waters, which destroy instead of refreshing them; the starving mules and horses of uncertain ages, whose flesh they have devoured like hungry dogs; the frosted limbs upon which they have limped until life seemed a burden. The fate of those who have preceded them is constantly in view; their companions are found lying near the last Indian trail with their bones bleaching, or their bodies filled with arrows, according to the number present when they were killed--no warrior is satisfied until he has pierced his bleeding, quivering flesh with a barbed point. Many of the arrows used have been poisoned by dipping them in the decayed hearts and livers of the buffaloes they have killed and then dried--a wound from one of them being equally as fatal in its effects as the virus from a dissecting knife. During the stay of these red men efforts have been made to teach them the use of boots and breeches, but the practical utility of either is of little import to them. Their first movement on returning West will no doubt be to drop their Government clothes, and resume the blanket and leggins. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XIII. During the year 1690, after the appointment of Don Quiroga Loada as Governor of Florida, the water was discovered to be making encroachments from the bay into the town. A proposition was then made to the residents that a wall should be constructed from the castle to the plaza. At this time the sum of eight thousand dollars was raised, and a wall of coquina built, a portion of which can yet be seen. The present sea-wall, which is nearly a mile in length, extending below the barracks, was commenced in 1837, completed in 1843, at an expense of one hundred thousand dollars, the entire foundation being of coquina, mounted with a coping of granite, four feet wide. It is here young lovers delight to promenade in mid-winter, breathing words of tenderness and love, while the bright moonbeams silver the waves beneath their feet. On the north side of the town, near the fort, stands what is left of the city gates, the most interesting relic that remains from a walled city. The gates are gone, the architecture of the two towers, or pillars, remaining being purely arabesque, surmounted by a carved pomegranate. Like the relics at Mount Vernon, if a protection is not built around these pillars, the hand of vandalism will soon have [Illustration: REMAINS OF THE ST. AUGUSTINE CITY GATEWAY.] them destroyed, as so many careless visitors are constantly chipping off fragments. The sentry-boxes are much defaced, their foundation being a cement, the art of making it now being lost. North of the fort, about one-quarter of a mile, on a slightly elevated plat of ground, there stood over three hundred years ago an Indian village, called Tapoquoi. Upon this spot now remains the foundation of a church, known as "_Nuestra Señora de la Leche_." Two hundred and seventy-five years since a most inhuman act was committed here by the Indians. Father Blas de Rodriguez, a Franciscan friar, having administered reproof to a young chieftain for indulging in practices which did not belong to his profession, was warned in a menacing manner to prepare for death. He remonstrated with the Indians, trying to dissuade them from their wicked designs. However, all his tears and entreaties were unavailing. Finally, as a last request, he asked the privilege of celebrating mass before being forced to try the realities of another world. His fiendish, blood-thirsty persecutors crouched during the service like beasts of prey, waiting for an opportune moment to seize their innocent victim. Hardly had the words of supplication ceased for his enemies, before his murderers, as if impatient for the sacrifice, rushed upon him with their war-clubs, crashing him in a most shocking manner, bespattering the altar with his blood, while streams of his life's-gore covered his snowy vestments. They threw his mutilated remains into the field, but nothing disturbed them until a Christian Indian gave them sepulture. An emotion of sadness is produced in the mind of the sensitive visitor while surveying the ruins of this chapel--"fragments of stone, reared by hands of clay"--isolated from human habitation, where no sounds now break the silence but sighing winds and surging waves from a restless sea. The fact has long since been demonstrated beyond a doubt that St. Augustine is the home of the rose as well as the orange, which can be seen from the following description of one called "La Sylphide," which grew in the yard of Señor Oliveros, on St. George's Street: "This remarkable rose-tree before its death attained to the height of about twenty feet, the main stalk being fifteen inches in circumference and five inches in diameter, the whole covering an area of seventeen feet, yielding annually between four and five thousand beautiful buds. But its glory has now departed. While crowds gathered to admire it, a worm was eating at the heart, thus withering its creamy petals, blighting the tender buds, which never opened their velvet coverings to greet the sunlight, or kiss the morning breeze, as it came from its home in the sea." Many who have never spent a winter in Florida think there is no religion, or churches either, which is quite the reverse, as the finest pulpit-talent in the North visit St. Augustine during the winter to rest and prepare for the arduous and responsible duties which await them on their return. The change of scenery and surroundings give these clergymen inspiration, when visitors often listen to some heavenly sermons. Imagine a Sabbath here in January, pleasant as a June holiday, North, among the roses, with a soft air floating through the house, which much resembles a new-born spring. The Presbyterian church is a good, old-fashioned, well-preserved specimen of coquina walls. Many pleasant faces, whose homes are far away in icy regions, worship here every Sabbath. The table in front of the pulpit has a tall vase filled with the most beautiful flowers that ever bloomed in any clime--rose-buds, tinted like the sunset sky, orange-blooms, pomegranates, and snowy jasmines, all fresh from their bath in the morning dew, exhaling their sweet odors, mingled with the pæans of God's people--thus giving a holy peace to this blessed hour. The flowers are from the gardens of Messrs. Atwood and Alexander, who both have a cultivated taste for the beautiful. Two young men have just walked in, who are obliged to talk, whether they say any thing of importance or not. One of them remarked, "I think flowers in a church look too gushing!" This house, which is capable of containing over four hundred people, is filled nearly every Sabbath. Dr. Daniel F. March, the author of "Night Scenes in the Bible," preached to-day. He always tells us something sweet to think of during the week, to lighten life of half its burden, that we can take along and travel its rough, rugged paths, singing instead of sighing. While associated with so much that is pleasant, the earth appears like a purified pedestal to a higher life, rather than a vale of wickedness. Dr. March has given a dissertation to-day upon small matters, which make up the great sum of life. He says: "Thousands of homes in our land might be made heaven by kind words. One little pleasant sentence spoken in the morning will ring all day in a sensitive heart like the song of a seraphim." The Episcopal church, situated on the plaza, is a neat Gothic structure, with stained glass windows of exquisite design, which resemble the inner furnishing of an elegant city church more than a little chapel down by the sea. It was commenced in 1827, and consecrated in 1833, by Bishop Bowen, of South Carolina. This church owns beautiful grounds, filled with a tropical growth, adjoining it, on the south-west side of the plaza. The land formerly belonged to the Spanish Government, whose claim ceased when the province was ceded to the United States. This property, then, by a special act of Congress, was given to the Church, to be under the control and management of the wardens and vestry, the act being confirmed February 8, 1827, when, in 1857, it was leased to a private party for the term of twenty-five years. It is a piece of property that involves a curious question--the Spanish or English measurement of a few feet of ground, which takes in or leaves out the veranda from the front of the most desirable residence in the city, formerly owned by Dr. Bronson. The question has never been decided who owns the veranda, but the Church, having no use for it, has never issued a possessory warrant. Dr. Root, a venerable and most exemplary clergyman, is their pastor now, who ministers to them in holy things. At no place in the world can a greater variety of peculiar people be seen during the winter, with their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities cropping out, for the amusement of some, and the annoyance of others, than at St. Augustine. One of these peculiar folks, of the masculine gender, can be seen every Sabbath morning in one of the churches. His devotions during the service are profound--his spiritual nature appears absorbed in humble confessions. At his side, on the cushion, reclines his constant companion--a little, black, shaggy dog, fastened to the seat. His master, having an aversion to strangers sitting by him, places his dog there as a protection against intruders. At the close of the service, the dog and master both leave the church with a regularity that has been remarked by all those who attend this place of worship. It was one Sabbath morning in March of 1878, while the orange-blossoms were exhaling their fragrance, the birds singing their songs of joy, combined with the perfection of a day which increased the desire for a stroll to the woods, and far away, that this dog and his master were seen approaching. The dog turned into the church, when the master stopped, beckoned, and tried to call him out, but all in vain--no effort could dissuade the dog from his regular custom of church-going, and the master had to attend church also, but against his own inclination on this occasion. This man is one of those harmless eccentrics whose freaks no one would think of interfering with, or trying to deprive him of, more than the crutch of the aged, or the spar from a drowning man. The most remarkable part of this story is yet to be told. His acquaintances in the North, who, seven years since, knew that he was an inmate of a lunatic asylum in New York, and supposing him there now, could scarcely credit the statement that he had been spending seven delightful winters in St. Augustine, chaperoning the ladies, with whom he is a great favorite, although the current of his matrimonial felicity has been stirred to the foundation, and never yet settled. From the above facts, it can be seen that St. Augustine was not only supposed to contain the fountain of youth, but has, in reality, by its equable atmospheric influences, deprived the lunatic of his madness. Among other attractions, St. Augustine contains a Public Reading-room and Circulating Library, both being the enterprise of kind-hearted, benevolent citizens and visitors, among the most prominent of whom we find the name of J. L. Wilson, Esq. The Reading-room is furnished with daily and weekly papers, together with periodicals from all parts of the United States, where time can be passed very pleasantly in obtaining a knowledge of the events taking place in the outside world. The Library contains about two thousand judiciously-selected volumes--most of them being late and standard works, from the best authors, in both Europe and America. Library-books are lent to responsible persons, who will return them within a prescribed time without injury. All contributions, either in books or money, will be thankfully received and properly used. [Illustration: A SEA-CRAB.] The important question with most visitors wherever they go is, What do we have to eat? as though the sole object of their lives was gormandizing. The market in St. Augustine is well supplied with eatables. Vessels from New York arrive weekly with groceries consigned to one or more of the various firms of Messrs. Hamlin & Co., Genovar & Brother, Lyon & Co., large wholesale and retail dealers, which are furnished to their customers on more reasonable terms than purchasers would think possible. During most of the winter months fresh strawberries, cabbage, and lettuce, sparkling with the morning dew, are sold on the streets, besides celery, turnips, sweet and Irish potatoes, wild turkeys and ducks, together with plenty of venison and beef. It is a treat to visit the fish-market at early dawn, and see the boats come in with their live fish of various kinds--drum, mullet, flounder, sheep-head, red bass, crabs, etc. Fine Matanzar oysters are kept for sale in or out of the shell, as the purchaser may choose. If any appearance of starvation has ever faced visitors here, no one has perished here from hunger. It is true, there have been times when the demand for certain articles has exceeded the supply a day or two only, but now good, palatable, life-sustaining food can be obtained; also fresh milk, as some of the citizens are making dairies a specialty. Very sweet oranges are sold from Dr. Anderson's grove by the cart-load, while some others have almost every variety produced, including the Lisbon, Chinese, Maltese, Tangerine, Seville, and Mandarin, or Clove orange. Hotels here, with high-sounding names and inviting appearance, are well kept. The St. Augustine, Magnolia, and Florida Houses, have the most rooms, while the Sunnyside has taken a front seat for first-class accommodations with all its patrons. Nearly every house rents rooms or takes boarders, and many of them feed well--among whom we find the names of Mr. George Greeno, Mr. Medicis, and Miss Lucy Abbott, as extremely popular. Some who visit Florida expect gratuitous offerings from the residents for the great favor shown them in coming, and when they find every thing is cash on delivery, a general fault-finding is commenced on extortion--this exercise being the only escape-valve for their bottled wrath. The far-famed hospitality of the Southern people is a record of the past, from the force of surrounding circumstances, now obsolete, as Webster says with regard to some of his Dictionary words: with most of them it is a question of bread, and whatever produce or fruit of any kind is raised--from a ground-pea to a ripe sweet orange--the question is asked, How can I turn it into something by which my family may be supported? The South has now neither wealth nor much leisure to spend without value received. The inhospitality in not giving fruits is only one of the many sources of complaint--the boarding-houses and hotels being the most prolific cause for disagreeable remarks. The most eligible houses of entertainment, with scarcely an exception, are kept by Northern people, who have charged two dollars for a dinner with the most unblushing effrontery, while the Floridian is satisfied with fifty cents for a square meal. There are also those reared here who ask whatever they think visitors will stand, regardless of principle, but they always bear brow-beating, when they come down to prices within range of any ordinary purse. Many speak of this favorably as a summer-resort, but when the season advances into May, the winter-visitors all leave. Then a painful silence pervades every thing, unbroken only by an occasional yawn from the residents, who are tired doing nothing. These demonstrations sound sad, as if from the tomb, and where the echoes cease to reverberate we have never been able to determine. The climate, from its insular exposure, is said to be lovely even in August. We are now enjoying moonlight nights, about which so many have so much rhapsodized. There is no doubt that the nocturnal appearance of the heavens in this latitude contrasts with a Northern one in the same manner that two paintings differ--the warmth, richness, and brilliancy of the one being in opposition to the poverty and indistinctness of the other. On account of the latitude, there is no twilight--the "fairy web of day is never hung out"--but from blazing sunshine into darkness we are at once precipitated--no witchery or poetry to be found between the magic hours intervening. Every season finds a large number of nice people at this place, who require a change of climate, from the severity of cold, piercing winds, to the blandness of an Indian summer. The care-worn come to rest, writers to find inspiration; for here, fanned by the sea-breeze, does not "light-winged fancy" travel at a swifter pace in the daylight? and when night comes, lulled by the surf, we can listen to the "great sea calling from its secret depths." The inquiry is often made by those who have never visited here, How do you kill time in that ancient city? To the historian, there is no spot so well adapted to meditation on the past, where associations are awakened with greater rapidity, when the Indians held undisputed sway, only dreaming of plenty and the happy hunting-grounds beyond; but, suddenly as the Montezuma monarch, their territory was wrested from them by the Spaniards, whom these unlettered savages at first regarded as children of the Great Spirit; but when the ensigns of authority were unfurled, their country overran by myrmidons, and the power of their cazique sneered at, then the illusion vanished--the truth dawning that they were only sojourners whose presence did not add to the happiness of the newly self-constituted sovereigns of their country. Three distinct classes of visitors come here--the defiant, the enthusiastic, and the indifferent. The defiant spend their time in assailing, "with vehement irony," every thing with which they are placed in contact, ringing changes upon any thing disagreeable to them, until their companions are wearied beyond measure. The enthusiastic rise more or less on the wings of their fertile imagination, when exaggerated accounts, highly colored, are written about Florida as it appeared to them--the change from the North to a land clothed in the perpetual verdure of spring-time being so great, they were enraptured in a manner that others of less delicate susceptibilities have failed to realize. The indifferent tourist is an anomaly to everybody. Why he ever thought of leaving home to travel, when with his undemonstrative nature he appears so oblivious to all scenes and sights around him, is an unsolved problem. He maintains an unbroken reticence on every occasion, the mantle of silence being thrown about all his movements, while his general appearance evinces the same amount of refinement as a polar bear, his perceptive powers the acuteness of an oyster, his stupidity greater than Balaam's saddle-animal. _St. Augustine_, 1876.--The minds of the citizens and visitors in the city have been on the _qui vive_ for several days, in anticipation of witnessing the realities, in miniature, connected with a buffalo-chase on the prairies, in which princes from Europe have participated, regarding it as the crowning feat of their exploits in the New World. For days previous ladies were discussing the propriety of their presence, as the animal might be so unmanageable as to imperil their safety; very brave lads, who have been sufficiently courageous to fire a pistol at an alligator while in Florida, thought they might be safe in the fort if they were to climb upon the walls, and very small boys concluded their fathers would keep the buffalo from hurting them. Long before 3 o'clock the fort was enlivened by those bent on sight-seeing. Here were the richly-dressed ladies and their escorts, with New-York-style mustaches, where only a restricted smile ever rested, gazing through their eye-glasses toward every thing that came near enough for them to take sight at, as though a fixed stare through optical instruments was more excusable and allowable than with the naked eye. Children of all sizes and colors came in crowds. There were more old people present, whose silvery hair looked like a "crown of glory," than could be seen in any other town at once in the United States. Like Ponce de Leon, they visit St. Augustine in search of the famous waters which would give back their youth, restore and strengthen their feeble limbs with renewed vigor, that would be perpetual as the verdure and beauty by which they are surrounded. Nor are they disappointed in all respects; for if they do not grow younger, they prolong their days to enjoy more of God's pure air and sunlight, mingled with the perfume of flowers and singing of sweet birds, than they would in their own homes. As the time for the chase approached, painted Indians peered from every part of the fort, most of them dressed in full costume, their heads trimmed with feathers from birds of varied plumage, the most conspicuous of which was the American turkey-tail. They were wrapped in gaily-colored blankets, profusely trimmed with beads, all of which trailed in a very _negligee_ manner, while they seemed as much excited with the surroundings as any of the spectators. The Indians regard death with much less terror than do the whites. They say that if in hunting a horse falls and kills them, they will go where game is abundant, always living there--thus, like the Christian, making death the golden gate to glory. No bugle echoed through the woodlands wild as a signal for the chase to commence, nor well-trained dogs, with the lead-hound barking fiercely from the excitement of a fresh trail which indicated a near approach to game. Their captain, to whom real buffalo-hunts on the boundless prairies are no novelty, led the van, followed by four painted, gaily-dressed, full-rigged Indians. They all rode as though their homes were in the saddle, and swiftly as if bright visions of fleet-footed game were feeding in green fields, only waiting to be captured by being shot at with their well-aimed arrows. They made some fine exhibitions of horsemanship, peculiar to their methods of warfare and hunting. In riding, they described circles, as if surrounding a foe in ambush, at the same time discharging their arrows, at a distance of two hundred yards, with great accuracy, while their horses were running at full speed. Their arrows perforated a small building, which they used as a target, penetrating so far they could not be removed without being broken. Gathered in groups outside the fort, near the hunting-ground, were many boys and young men of the more daring class, who displayed their bravery by a foot-race which put Weston, or any other walker, in the shade, whenever the buffalo looked toward them. Every thing was a success, except the buffalo, which was a small steer, that would not scare on any account. He was entirely too gentle for the fever-heat of excitement to which the feelings and imagination of the crowd had been wrought up. He shook his head once or twice, and started as though he might create a sensation, but would not keep far enough ahead for the hunters to make any thing like a good charge on him. Finally an arrow, sped from the bow of White Horse, pierced his vitals to the depth of four or five inches, killing him instantly. His throat was then cut, after which he was dressed and hauled into the fort, where ample preparations were made for his reception, with immense fires and kettles of hot water. Some of the Indians ate the heart and liver raw, which process did not look very appetizing to a delicate stomach. They always cook their food before eating it when in their native wilds, except the heart and liver, which they sometimes consume as a medicine. At a given signal among themselves, those not engaged in cooking commenced dancing. In their movements the poetry of music, or motion, has no votaries; but a slight approach toward it is made, as they all take the Grecian bend, and keep it, while going through their gyrations. When weary they group together around the fires, turning their right foot on the side, and seating themselves with an ease no studied art could teach them, and then they rest more free from care than the heart that beats beneath ermine, or reclines on velvet cushions. When their meat was cooked they terminated the day's exercise with a feast, which they all seemed to enjoy very much, each Indian consuming about four pounds of flesh, with a greedy gusto before which an epicure would retire in disgust. The grand war-dance of the season came off after dark, when prisoners were captured and treated with sham hostilities. The mind of the imaginative could portray what would be done in reality to a helpless captive in their power. We regard these poor savages as only a connecting link between the herd that roams the "verdant waste"--who see the Great Spirit in clouds, and hear him in the crashing storms--and ourselves. May we not inquire if their condition cannot be improved, and their voices, which only shout for conquest over a vanquished enemy, or in the chase while victimizing the huge buffalo with bleeding, gaping wounds, be taught to sing the songs of redeeming grace for a ransomed world? CHAPTER XIV. At no other town in the State is the entertainment for visitors more of a success than here, and one of those pleasant occasions brought a large number of happy hearts together, to witness a grand opening of the Lunch-basket on the North Beach. Many have been the devices, in all ages of the world, by every nation peopling the habitable globe, for a relaxation from the sterner duties of life. Among the first to which persons of various tastes have resorted is archery, which was practiced by that wild outcast, Ishmael, "whose hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him." We also read in the Pentateuch of a great and mighty hunter named Nimrod; while conspicuously prominent among the biblical characters Job poetizes upon drawing large finny monsters from the deep waters, and at a later date in the same profession of the apostles. Many monks of the Middle Ages in France are said to have delighted more in the chase at times than the "trumpet of the gospel." Bull-fights, as an amusement, are supposed to have originated with the Moors, and are still practiced by the Spaniards, many of them being of Moorish origin. Grounds in the vicinity of St. Augustine have been located, beyond a doubt, where this cruel and barbarous custom was indulged in by early Spanish settlers. Archery has been the most popular pastime here this season. The Indians have made the bows and arrows for compensation and employment--more arrows having been thrown by the "sons of the forest" than hurled from the shafts of Cupid. We can produce, as patrons of the hook-and-line art, prophets and apostles in ancient times, kings of more recent date, and Izaak Walton, who lived nearly two hundred years ago, down to the truant boy that throws his bent pin, baited with an innocent worm, or fly, into the clear running brook, at which an old fish looks, as if about to nibble, then wags his tail and sails away in search of something that he can take in without being taken himself. A very worthy divine, Bishop Hall, has wisely remarked: "Recreation to the mind is like whetting to the scythe. The mind that is always mowing becomes dull for the sharpening which relaxation affords it; so the blade that is always cutting is blunted for the want of an edge that grinding can give." The above remarks on recreation were suggested by an attendance upon the opening of the Lunch-basket on the North Beach, opposite Anastasia Island, at a place called by the classic name of Parathina, from Homer's "Iliad": _Eban kerukes para thina tou poluphloisboio thalassees_--"The heralds went to the beach of the high-sounding sea." A long-looked-for and much-needed means of conveyance--a nice little steamer, called the Mayflower--has made us happy already by its presence and business-dispatching movements. She is a light-running little craft, that glides gracefully as a swan. Sailing and rowing are now lost sight of by visitors wishing to take a little ride on the water, as the wind never dies out and leaves them, or the oar-hands grow weary, on a steamer. The two first trips she carried over seventy passengers, which made the day pay very well. Mr. J. F. Whitney, who, like all the editorial fraternity, is ever busy in trying to suggest something for either mind or body, being the prime mover in this undertaking, has erected four pavilions, and a cook-room, with a range. One of the smaller pavilions is carpeted, supplied with periodicals, rocking-chairs, and a bed for the sick to rest. The largest pavilion is nearly two hundred feet in length, and over twenty feet wide; in front is an extended view of the beach, beyond which the restless sea is rolling up new-born waves at every influx of its waters. Here are also detached dining-tables for the accommodation of parties coming together. The floor is level and smooth as it can be made, where, it has already been whispered, ---- youth and pleasure meet, To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. The bill of fare for the occasion was equal to any New York restaurant. Broiled oysters vanished with the ejaculation, "Splendid!" All eatables shared a similar fate, with a superlative adjective attached, as the only one which could express the gratification of the guests. Champagne-bottles were relieved of their sparkling contents in a brief period of time. Ice-cream and pound-cake were soon reckoned among past pleasures, while everybody was eloquent on the subject of the surroundings. The North Beach has now more attractions and amusements than any other point in the State, and when the arrangements are completed with a stud of riding and driving horses, it may well be styled the Newport of the South. Like Scipio the Great, after the repast many wandered by the "murmuring sea," and gathered shells to take home with them as mementoes of pleasant memories in a sunny clime. When refined hearts and well-cultivated minds meet in a spot made grand by the great Maker of all things, and rendered comfortable to our wants by the hand of Art, where only God and his heavenly wonders have dwelt in solitude for so many years, may we not say Scripture is being fulfilled--that "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad?" Yes, glad with happy voices in congenial companionship, and joyous with the sweets of social intercourse. It is, indeed, "a well in the desert"--a place provided, where persons in the pursuit of pleasure can assemble and forget all adverse religious tenets, political differences, or personal animosities--where secret and selfish purposes in life are lost sight of--whether gold is up or down, what are the last figures on the bulletin-boards of the "bulls and bears," the fractional variations of upland or sea-island cotton, being among the subjects absorbed in the enjoyment of the hour. [Illustration: FLORIDA RAY-FISH, OR SKATE.] Among others came the never-tiring fisherman, with reel and fancy bait, who appeared much delighted with an opportunity of having sea-room for the exhibition of his skill. He did not have to follow the old rule of "fishing inch by inch," with an indefinite idea of when he would have a nibble. Here is an illustration of his first bite, which caused him to retire, dragging his prize to shore, thinking, perhaps, he might have captured some Pythagorean metamorphosis, as it resembled neither fish nor flesh. Upon summoning those present to his relief, the following decision was rendered: A ray-fish, or skate, having a cartilaginous body, of nearly a white color, with pectoral fins largely developed, the caudal extremity being elongated into a whip-like form, armed with spine, which makes it an ugly customer for collision. The female, being oviparous, is provided with parchment-like cases, forming an extension, called by seamen "sailor's purses." The moon rose that night and looked down upon a joyous crowd seated on the Mayflower, with a fine band from the St. Augustine Hotel. Music on the water--who can describe its enchanting influences! It was high tide when we arrived on the North Beach, when planks were put out for the party to walk on, while the gentlemen and steamer-crew assisted them to the shore. One lady remarked, in crossing, "Sometimes I take a black hand, and then a white one." We were not particular about color then; it was strong hands we wanted to keep us from falling in the water, as the waves were washing over our feet. The band played sweetly, the dancing was graceful, the refreshments abundant. When returning, the last trip, the steamer grounded on a sand-bar, as it was ebb-tide, when the Captain of the Bache Survey steamer kindly sent his long-boat and brought us all to the wharf. _St. Augustine_, March, 1877.--The work of enlivening the old town, for the delectation of visitors and excursionists from other points, was undertaken here to-day. Everybody was merry, and it was almost incredible to see the number of dignified persons, on other occasions, so completely carried along with the tide of simple sight. All, apparently, had their laugh set on trigger, ready to go off with the slightest vibration in the air. The streets and sea-wall of St. Augustine, together with the balconies, windows, and doors, in the vicinity, were the scene of preparation for a grand gala-day of sight-seeing. The vessels in the harbor were dressed in flags of every nationality, and waved free as the winds that tossed them to and fro. The post-band played stirring strains, containing more sound than sweetness, to quicken the impulses of the occasion. At a given signal, cannons were fired, when a fleet of snowy sails shot out from the wharf, resembling a flock of sea-gulls. The yacht-racing opened the day's sport. They all sailed swiftly when first under way, but one after another kept falling off and dropping behind, until the Wanderer and Seminole were left alone to decide the contest. They moved like something possessed with life, more than canvas spread to the breeze for power to propel them. Finally the Wanderer won, amid the wildest shouts of joy from every side, and many congratulations for the owner. The cannons fired with as much demonstration as though a great battle had just been decided. A horse-race was announced as the next excitement. Eight jockey-dressed men and boys of different hues, mounted on bare-backed horses of undistinguishable pedigree, but marsh tackey predominant, were ready for the curriculum. They darted off with the speed of a Grecian hippodrome, when they imitated the gait of almost every untrained quadruped. On the home-stretch two of the riders rolled off easily, as though it was a portion of the programme for which they were prepared. Then came the hurdle-race, with the hurdles woven from cedar and scantling. The running was sport, but the jumping was without comparison. One of the horses caught his feet and plunged over, rider and horse together, but, neither being hurt, everybody shouted with glee. Another of the Arabian steeds carried the hurdles off victorious with his hind feet, but did not fall. A foot-race by the Indians was then declared with as much gravity as though a Grecian contestant, after all the abstinence and training of an ancient athlete, proposed to try his strength and speed for a victor's crown. Three or four big Indians, dressed with fancy caps and moccasins, walked to the pedestrian race-grounds, after which one started to run, but fell. The crowd was too big for them, and the reward too small. Two of the natives took their places, and made very good time, but not quite equal to a professional walker. Then came the hand-barrow race, with that unhistoric vehicle about which poets never sing. Ten black boys, with ten bright bandages over their eyes, started to run a race across the east side of the plaza. They all commenced at the word three, the band played, the people shouted, while the boys ran; the wheel-barrows were running a race, and so was everybody else. One boy went into the river-basin before he could be stopped; another rushed against a carriage, and set the horses to kicking and the ladies to screaming; a man was knocked down and run over--he was a prim, particular bachelor, with fine estates, whose birthday is best known to himself--it required the combined efforts of two servants to brush the sand from his clothes and place him in presentable trim again. Everybody in the vicinity was liable to be under moving orders without a moment's warning. Finally the race ended, and the victor crowned with greenbacks, which he could appreciate more highly than the laureate wreath of a conqueror, fresh from the goal with his coronet of fading glories. The last performance was the greasy pole, with a fat ham on the top of it, placed in the center of the plaza. What a climbing, scrambling, and tumbling down, amid exclamations from the boys: "Bob, what made you let go?" "Tom, go up, and I will hold you!" "Put on more sand, and then we can climb!" The plaza was crowded with spectators--scores of grandparents, all clapping their hands and laughing--large families, with all their children, were there. The scene before them required no explanation. Finally, after a struggle of two hours, the ham and money were won, when all retired from the varied and innocent sports of the day. St. Augustine demonstrates the fact, beyond a doubt, that the cat is a musical animal. They sit under your windows, climb on the neighboring roofs, scream in any strain, from the lowest bass to the loudest soprano, and never tire until the stars pale in the sky; do not become dismayed because a few pieces of coquina are thrown at them, glass bottles, or old boots--that only causes a change of position, when the voice rises an octave higher, on account of the escape from a little adventure. Here they congregate in crowds; they rehearse their exploits in excited strains, with untiring assiduity, for the entertainment of visitors, to prevent their receiving the impression that _St. Augustine is a dull old place_. Then the digestive organs of the departed are manufactured, and made to imitate the same dulcet tones in the halls of mirth, where so many derive pleasure, by turning themselves into more shapes than a captured sea-eel. At the St. Augustine Hotel they swallow all kinds of condiments to the sounds coming from these membranous strings, stretched beyond all marks of their former identity. With a satisfied smile, and no fears from indigestion, the invalid or consumptive consumes every variety of food, whether from land or sea, compounded into the latest styles of the _cuisine_, to the music of "_Il Bachio_," or "A place in thy memory, dearest!" while ice-cream vanishes like dew to the melody, "Thou art so near, and yet so far!" or "Some one to love me!" CHAPTER XV. The longevity for which the inhabitants of St. Augustine have been remarkable is a proof of its healthfulness; indeed, the tenacity with which they cling to life, as well as the uncomplaining manner in which they endure every thing, is really wonderful. Several years since, an aged lady, who had been helpless for years before her death, remarked that Death seemed to have forgotten her--she remained here so long. Some who have heretofore imagined that St. Augustine had no attractions but its antiquity must remember that new industries are constantly being developed, among the most recent of which is the manufacture of marmalade and wine from the native wild orange fruit. We had the pleasure of visiting both these enterprising establishments--first the marmalade factory, in charge of Señor S. B. Valls, a Cuban exile. His father, Señor Jose Valls, under the well-known brand of "El Pavo Real, Fabricada de Dulces," or Sweetmeat and Guava Jelly-maker, in Havana, has won a world-wide reputation, having received the Paris Exposition medal, 1867. His method is original, and his sweetmeats better adapted to the American taste than those of Scotch make. The enterprise has met with great success, the demand always exceeding the supply, and the moderate charges being also an attractive feature. He preserves lemons, limes, and figs in such a manner that they will keep for years. He makes an orange-bloom cordial, which must be, without doubt, the original nectar of the gods; for certainly there is nothing like it, the flavor perfectly resembling the odor of the orange-blossom; the sensation produced in swallowing it is like sailing on a summer sea. The orange-wine manufactured by Genovar & Brother well deserves to supplant the miserable, adulterated, yeasty preparations which are sold and drunk daily by those whose minds are afterward in a constant state of doubt as to the amount of harm incurred by the potion imbibed. It is April, and the season has arrived when visitors commence leaving; all amusements in which they delighted have become stale--even the yacht-races, which contributed so largely to the entertainment of those fond of boating; while outsiders are constantly under the impression that the boats are trying to tack for another course, making an effort to anchor, or turning in for a nap. The Southern Indians imprisoned here for the past three years have been a subject of comment and amusement for most of the visitors, while their presence in the city was any thing but desirable to certain aggrieved persons, who succeeded in obtaining an escape-valve for their feelings by the following expressions, printed in the _Savannah Morning News_, entitled, "A Page from the Unwritten History of the Ancient City": "_St. Augustine, Fla._, March 4, 1878.--While the prominent points in St. Augustine, which present themselves to visitors, are written threadbare, there is an undercurrent, although felt by the suffering, that has never been stirred by the anxious inquirers after information. It is God's poor--those reduced by circumstances over which they have no control. Many exclaim, Lo! the poor Indian; but none consider the avenues to employment which the presence of these scalping, murdering, human heart-eaters, are causing in this water-locked city by the sea. When teaching the Indian to appreciate the value of a Government which proposes to protect them, at the same time enabling them to participate in all the privileges of an enlightened organization, why cannot they be made self-sustaining, and hired out, as other convicts? What heroic deeds of greatness have they ever achieved, that they should be treated like prisoners of State, instead of inhuman fiends, at whose record of crime Satan would grin with delight? Many of them are permitted to roam with freedom, not only in every portion of the city, but in the country around, thus terrifying timid citizens with their presence, causing them to change their habitations to the town for protection. While they are fed and clothed by the Government, free, they hire themselves out at lower wages than poor laborers can work for, and be sustained. This has become a great source of grievance to the community, which they desire to have redressed by their removal. Much of the money they make is only to buy food for a pampered taste, which has been acquired since they came here, and not to sustain their existence. If labor has to compete with crime, the hand of industry with the bloody hand, where is the hope on which honesty is to hinge and work its way through the world? The whole can be told in a few words: While these sixty savages are here being employed in every department of manual labor, thus taking the bread from the mouths of dependent women and children, it is productive of suffering in our midst, whilst those advanced in life look in vain for a support to their sons, whose hands are tied by these savage oppressors." Two weeks after the news of the pope's death had been received in other cities, and the drapery of mourning become dusty, the cathedral bells here commenced tolling at sunrise, and continued the entire day until dusk. The chimes in Rome were never struck with more regularity, and when the sun sank to his home in the west a sigh of relief was felt, that every thing has an end. If the day was spent by the Catholics in mourning for the pope, the night was spent by the visitors in giving expression to the most jubilant demonstrations of joy--the festivities being gotten up by the Yacht Club, which appears to be the only central live-figure head-light in the city now. On this occasion the Yacht House was illuminated with Chinese lanterns, which encircled it over the water's edge; calcium lights blazed with overpowering brilliancy, and the most dazzling rockets shot through the air like meteors, while the brass band discoursed very loud, stirring strains, and the little boats glided about on the bay, like _ignes-fatui_, with lights suspended on their masts or on their bows, glittering through the darkness, resembling a distant constellation. With the freedom of uncaged birds, fresh from bondage, every one appeared buoyant, giving themselves up to the pleasure of the hour with a kind of _abandon_ as if, after all, it might be a panoramic view produced by some Eastern Magi. After the illumination on the water was ended, the string-band commenced playing, when busy feet kept time to the harp and viol, without a thought of the confessional which would have to be met before the next sacrament. For a few days past the weather has been rather capricious, the sunshine hidden behind damp clouds, and the wind more boisterous than sight-seekers enjoy. We imagine some of the tourists' note-books are full enough of complaints. The weather is delicious now, the air all balm, the sky all blue, the bananas waving in the gentlest of breezes, the sea heaving softly under the sunlight. We shall miss this changeful sea at St. Augustine, the reviving air, the lovely palms, the mocking-bird upon whose happiness the day closed too soon, as from his perch in a neighboring orange-tree he trills his song of joy until the night is far spent. _St. Augustine_, April, 1878.--The Indians have gone! Yes, the pets of some and the pests of others have left St. Augustine amidst the sympathetic demonstrations of a crowd, followed by the best wishes of all, that they may arrive safely at their points of destination. The marks of improvement are evident on the outside of them; but none need nurse the delusion that it has struck in. On being asked what they were going to do with their clothes when they went West, they replied, with a symbolic jerk, "Tear them off, and throw them away!" Think of Mrs. Black Horse and Mochi, with their heads dressed in fashionable Mother Goose hats, with plumes and white tissue veils, that had been given them by lady-visitors, their bodies rolled up in a buffalo-skin, before a campfire, after a long march in the rain, or fresh from a war-dance, with the dripping scalps of white men hung from their waists as trophies of bloody triumphs! They were delighted at the prospect of freedom; beating against rock walls and prison-bars was too much pressure for them--to which they yielded in sullen despair. They left their literature--religious picture-books and buffalo-hunts not being in harmony--"Moody and Sankey" song-books suddenly losing all charm for them, "Hold the Fort" being changed to "Leave the Fort." They said, "Me man, no school." Some of them could speak Spanish, and while here learned a little English. They corresponded with their kindred on the plains by picture-writing. A lady-visitor wished Minimic, or Eagle's Head, to give her a letter written him by his wife, when he replied, "What white squaw do with my squaw's letter?" The poetry of the idea was evidently lost on him. The "noble red man" of the novel-writer and these coarse savages, whose rough nature repels all polish, are quite different. Three of these Indians, who have taken to the customs of the whites more kindly than the others, are to be sent North and educated, the expense incurred being the enterprise of private individuals. A year previous to their departure, while the work of civilization was supposed to be progressing very rapidly, in the midst of untiring efforts on the part of Church-missionaries to convert them, one of the tribes was discovered plotting mutiny. They could not endure the strain of civilization--it was too much for them. White Horse, chief of the Kiowas, reckoning the number of moons long past since he had the promise of freedom, excited an insurrectionary movement among the Kiowas, twenty-four in number. When their intentions were manifested by insubordination, a squad of armed soldiers were ordered from the barracks to seize them after they had entered their mess-room in the casemate. The Indians were marched out in pairs, and searched, to which they submitted without resistance. A number of barbed, steel-pointed arrows, and pistols, were found on their persons. They did not intend a general massacre; only those who opposed them in their efforts to escape were to be murdered. The fort was closed for a day or two only, when White Horse and his principal accomplices--Lone Wolf, Woman's Heart, and To-Zance--were put in irons. These Indians pined for their homes; their lofty, aristocratic natures revolted against the discipline to which they were subjected, as unmanly and unsuited to the dignity of a warrior, who had roamed with unrestrained movements over the plains, free as the herd which he killed. Most of the Indians, while here, employed their time in making bows and arrows, and polishing sea-beans, while the women worked over old bead moccasins, and freshened them up with new soles and buckskin linings, all of which were bartered to visitors--thus making their bondage more endurable, besides furnishing themselves with pocket-money. As in time past, the old fort, that has lifted its turrets unmoved for centuries to the fierce gales which visit the coast, will again become the home of the lizard, a resort for bats, the abode of the owl, whose shrill screechings and weird movements make the darkness of night more suggestive of a ghoul-haunted castle, where unhappy spirits are supposed to assemble, when "coarser spirits wrapped in clay" are snoring to the ascending and descending scale of unwritten sounds. Opposite St. Augustine is situated St. Anastasia Island, which was named for a celebrated saint in the Roman calendar of favorites. On this island is found the coquina, or shell-rock, from which the fort and many of the houses were built; here also roam the fleet-footed deer, catamount, and wild hog. At low tide the ponies and marsh-cows resort here to feed upon the long grass which grows so luxuriantly at all seasons. The cattle, while in pursuit of it, frequently become bogged, and die; but the horses, when reared here, are not so unfortunate, being lighter and more nimble-footed; when they get beyond their depth, and are sinking, they throw themselves on their sides, and commence floundering and rolling until they find a surface sufficiently solid to sustain their weight, when they rise and quietly resume eating, as though nothing had occurred. Like all other places in this vicinity, it has historic records. It was here, in 1740, General Oglethorpe erected a battery of five pieces, four of which were eighteen-pounders. When he had made the preparations necessary for an attack on St. Augustine, he gave the Spanish Governor an invitation to surrender. General Oglethorpe received the reply that he would "be glad to shake hands with him in the castle." The new light-house stands on this island--being constructed because the old one was found to be undermining by the action of the waves. The old coquina light-house was designed to subserve the double purpose of a fortress and a beacon, having strong walls and loop-holes, with a cannon on its summit, to be fired as a signal on the approach of a vessel. At night a light-wood fire was kept burning, which could be seen by vessels at sea for several miles. On the coast below St. Augustine, surrounded by the briny waves, some distance from shore, bursts up a fresh-water spring, from which ships can obtain their supplies before going to sea. This remarkable fountain of fresh water is produced from one of those subterranean currents so frequent throughout the State, north of the Everglades, coming to the surface only when they reach a point considerably below the level of their sources, sometimes forming lakes, and at others channeling their way to the sea. The coral reefs, so abundant in Florida, are the [Illustration: FLORIDA REEF CORAL.] work of a tiny insect which operates only under water, after which the water deposits the lime that constitutes the limestone of Florida--many portions of the State having been subject to upheaval since the deposit of lime between the coral reefs. This lime formation being undoubtedly very recent, and having little solidity, is entered by the surface-water, which forms channels through it; thus, by the force of accumulated waters, it reaches the sea, these channels being constantly enlarged by the lime combining with the water, together with the abrading action of the currents; and when the rock is so weakened as to be unable to support the weight above, it falls, and the lime-sink is formed, or fresh-water springs, with no feeders on the surface, but supplied from below, burst up in mid-ocean, with sufficient force to displace the denser salt-water, or change the position of a vessel. About sixty miles below St. Augustine, at Fort Moultrie, a council was held by the whites, in 1823, for the purpose of limiting the movements of the Seminoles to the southern portion of the State, thus interposing a white element between them and the Georgia Indians, to prevent an alliance in the event of war. The Indians were the Nimrods of our country; they did not require large bodies of land for culture. The murder of McIntosh, in Georgia, caused many of the Indians to leave that State for Florida. Here they were called Seminoles, or runaways, being only refugees and fugitives, without a country or language. They adopted a dialect resembling the four Southern Indian tongues of which they formed a part--it being still retained by the remnant of the tribe inhabiting the Everglades. CHAPTER XVI. From the following account we can imagine under what difficulties young men went on hunting-excursions a century since in Florida: "The Spanish Governor's son, living in St. Augustine, together with two other young men, arranged a trip on the coast for the purpose of hunting and fishing. Being provided with a convenient bark, ammunition, fishing-tackle, etc., they set sail, directing their course south, toward the point of Florida, putting in to shore and sailing up rivers, as a conveniency or the prospect of game invited them. The pleasing rural and diversified scenes of the Florida coast imperceptibly allured them far to the south beyond the fortified post. Unfortunate youths! regardless of the advice of their parents and friends, they entered a harbor at evening, with a view of chasing the roebuck, and hunting up the sturdy bear, or solacing themselves with delicious fruits, and reposing under aromatic shades, when, alas! cruel and unexpected event--in the beatific moments of their slumbers they are surrounded, arrested, and carried off by a band of predatory Creek Indians, who are proud to capture so rich a prize. They are hurried into bondage, being conducted, by devious paths through dreary swamps and boundless savannahs, to the Nation." It was at this time the Indians were at furious war with the Spaniards--scarcely any bounds set to their cruelties on either side; in short, the youths were condemned to be burnt. An attempt was made to rescue them, by some English traders, from their unrelenting persecutors, who petitioned the Indians in their behalf, offering a great ransom for their release, acquainting them, at the same time, that they were young men of high rank, and one of them the governor's son. Upon this the head-men or chiefs of the whole Nation were convened, and, after solemn and mature deliberation, they returned the traders their final answer and determination, which was as follows: "Brothers and Friends:--We have been considering upon this business concerning the captives, and that under the eye and fear of the Great Spirit. You know that these people are our cruel enemies; they save no lives of us red men who fall in their power. You say that the youth is the son of the Spanish Governor. We believe it--we are sorry he has fallen into our hands, but he is our enemy. The two young men are equally our enemies--we are sorry to see them here, but we know no difference in their flesh and blood; they are equally our enemies. If we save one, we must save all three; but we cannot do it. The red men require their blood to appease the spirits of their slain relatives; they have intrusted us with the guardianship of our laws and rights--we cannot betray them. However, we have a sacred prescription relative to this affair, which allows us to extend mercy to a certain degree: a third is saved by lot. The Great Spirit allows us to put it to that decision; he is no respecter of persons." The lots are cast. The governor's son was taken and burnt. Hunters now go on excursions down the Florida coast as a pleasant pastime, with no fear from human foes, and no inconvenience, save a few musquitoes and sand-flies, which furnish a feast of merriment for their friends when they relate their adventures after returning. There is a decided difference between coming here in 1774 and 1874. Matanzas is situated eighteen miles below St. Augustine, at the mouth of the Bloody Matanzas River. In the vicinity a boarding-house has recently been erected, for the accommodation of visitors. The echoes from busy life are so faint and far away, and so long in reaching us here, that we feel as though we were in another state of existence--the outside world only affecting us like a spent wave, as it dies away on the shore. The fishing-boats steal slowly by with nets and lines; the fishermen are silent, although their lives are not sad; but they snare the voiceless dwellers of the deep, which have peculiar habits to be studied, and baited for with cautious movements, before they can be captured. There is no crowding, no jostling, no dust--all is peace, and the pure air is life. An occasional schooner approaches from New York; it comes like a good angel on a mission of mercy, laden with stores for the sustenance of citizens and strangers. Fort Matanzas, although cracked and seamed from turret to foundation, is ever redolent of past memories. It is about twenty feet in height, and formerly had brass cannon mounted on the ramparts, designed to command Matanzas Bar. During the Spanish rule of 1800, to the time of its cession to the United States, it was occupied by a company of soldiers, who guarded the entrance to St. Augustine; also for the punishment of officers or soldiers who had been drunk, or wandering from the path of duty in any way. Its last commander was Captain Christobal Bravo, whose son, bearing the same name, is now a worthy citizen of St. Augustine, and can relate incidents which occurred during the time his father was stationed there. This fortress, inferring from facts furnished by the old French records, is, no doubt, the one commenced by the two hundred who escaped the night previous to the fatal massacre by Melendez. It never had a portcullis, or sally-port, but was entered by an escalade from the outside, after which the ladder was drawn up and dropped down inside, where were casemates for the soldiers' quarters and rations, also an ordnance department, and lock-up for delinquents to cool off from their potions and meditate upon the uncertainties of all earthly pleasures--particularly that of taking a glass too much! It is partly concealed by vines and foliage--reminding us that Nature, when not interrupted, comes to close the yawning gaps of busy-fingered Time, planting a twining ivy, a hardy cactus, or a climbing rose, covered with blooms and verdure--thus teaching us the lesson of resignation, which clothes our misfortunes in the garments of grace, producing the flowers of fragrance, although the jagged edges of rough, rugged paths surround us. Here we have a fine view of the sea, where the sun rises fresh every morning as the day after its creation; and we can imagine Aurora scattering flowers before his chariot as the fleecy clouds, decked with the purity of the day-dawn, burst upon our delighted vision. NEW SMYRNA.--Dr. Turnbull obtained a grant from the English Government for settling a Greek colony in Florida, which had been ceded to them by Spain in 1763. He sailed to Peloponnesus, and obtained permission from the Governor of Modon, for a consideration, to convey to Florida a large number of Greek families. In 1767 he sailed with one small vessel from Modon; putting in at the islands of Corsica and Minorca, he recruited his numbers to fifteen hundred. He agreed to give them a free passage, furnish them in good provisions and clothing; at the end of three years' service to give each family fifty acres of land, and in six months after their arrival, if they were discontented, to send them back. Many of the old people died during the voyage of four months. Sixty thousand acres were granted them by the Governor of Florida. As it was then winter, they built huts of palmetto to shelter them, and the following spring commenced planting their gardens. This settlement was about sixty miles south of St. Augustine--they named it New Smyrna, for a Grecian city from which they came, in Peloponnesus, where they all contended Homer was born, but, unlike its namesake--being ten times destroyed, always rose from her ruins--it has never been rebuilt since the indigo speculation proved a failure. The first year they engaged in the culture of indigo, when the crop amounted to nearly forty thousand dollars, but the price declining so rapidly, it was soon abandoned. Turnbull did not treat them kindly; he appointed drivers from the Italians, reducing them to the lowest slavery, when they were assigned tasks and drew weekly rations. When the clothes they had brought with them were worn out, they were furnished with a suit of osnaburgs, giving the men shoes, but the women none, although many of them were accustomed to affluence in their own country. This servitude continued for nine years. The cruelties exercised over them were equal to those of the Spaniards of St. Domingo. For the most trifling offense they were cruelly beaten, negroes being chosen mediums for this torture. If they ran away, they were brought back, the one who returned them receiving a reward. At the termination of nine years, only six hundred remained of the fifteen hundred brought over. Finally three of them escaped, and, after swimming the Matanzas River, arrived in St. Augustine, when they made known their business to Colonel Yonge, the Attorney-general of the Province, who gave them protection. A change of governors had taken place, Grant being superseded by Tonyn. Grant was supposed to have been connected with Turnbull in the speculation. Tonyn interfered in their behalf, setting them at liberty. Mr. Pallicier was chosen their leader when they marched out of bondage, like the children of Israel, from what to them had been an Egypt. The governor treated them kindly on their arrival in St. Augustine, giving them lands in the north part of the city, where they built houses and cultivated gardens, which are occupied by their children to this day. Not far from this we find the Halifax River country, near which is Daytonia and other settlements, said to be remarkable for the selectness of its settlers, no rough adventurers having drifted in there. Below New Smyrna is the famous Colonel Douglass Dummit plantation, from which, a half century since, he raised and manufactured two hundred barrels of sugar in one season, which he sent to the city of Boston, Mass., and sold for eleven cents per pound. It was only rich planters, then, who could afford to buy seed and pay three or four thousand dollars for an engine to make sugar. An acre of cane here has been made to produce three thousand pounds of sugar in one year. INDIAN KEY MASSACRE.--Adjectives expressive of the horrible were exhausted in Florida during the Indian war. Some of the contemporaries of the Indian Key murder are still surviving in St. Augustine, and to hear them relate its terrors produces a chilliness which to us is quite overpowering. _August 15, 1840._--The steamer Santee arrived on Wednesday--Captain Poinsett commanding--bringing the family of Dr. Perine. They were living on Indian Key, a small spot not over seven acres in extent, situated near Matacomba Key, about thirty miles from the mainland, on the Southern Atlantic coast. When the attack was made by the savages, seven of its inhabitants were murdered, the island plundered, and its buildings burned. About three o'clock on the morning of the 7th instant a Mr. Glass, in the employ of Mr. Houseman, happening to be up, saw boats approaching, after which, on closer inspection, it was discovered they were Indians. They immediately commenced firing on the residences of Mr. Houseman and Dr. Perine, the former of whom, with his family, and that of Charles Howe and family, succeeded in escaping to boats and crossing over to Teable Key. The family of Dr. Perine passed through a trap-door into their bathing-room, from whence they got into the turtle-crawl, and by great effort removed the logs, and secreted themselves among the rocks. The bathing-house above them was set on fire by these fiends, when with the greatest efforts only they were kept from being roasted alive by putting mud on their heads and cheeks. Mr. Motte and wife, and Mrs. Johnson, a lady seventy years of age, fled into an out-house, from whence Mrs. Motte was dragged by an Indian, and while in the act of calling on her husband, "John, save me!" was killed. Mr. Motte shared the same fate, and was scalped. The old lady, as she was dragged forth, suddenly broke his hold, and escaped under the house. Her granddaughter, a child of Mrs. Motte, aged eleven years, was then killed with a club--the infant strangled and thrown into the water. This was seen by Mrs. Johnson from her hiding-place; but the Indians fired this building, when she was again obliged to flee, escaping to Maloney's wharf, where she secreted herself until she was finally rescued. Joseph Sturdy, a boy twelve years of age, concealed himself in the cistern under the residence of Mr. Houseman, and was scalded to death by the burning building heating the water. The remains of an adult skeleton were found among the ruins of Dr. Perine's house, supposed to be the doctor--also a child, thought to have been a slave of Mr. Houseman. The perpetrators of this deed were Spanish Indians, headed by Chekika, the same who made the attack on the Caloosahatchee. They obtained a great amount of plunder from the houses and stores, and whilst engaged in obtaining these articles Mrs. Perine, with her two daughters and little son, reached a boat partially loaded, and put off to the schooner Medium, lying at some distance. On Mr. Houseman reaching Teable Key, Midshipman Murray, U. S. N., started with his only available force of five men and two swivels, hoping to cut off the boats, and thus prevent the escape of the Indians. On the second fire of his guns they recoiled overboard, when the Indians commenced firing on his boat from a six-pounder belonging to Mr. Houseman, charged with musket-balls, driving back the officer. Dispatches were sent to Key Biscayne, but the Indians had retreated, after holding possession of the island twelve hours, carrying off large quantities of powder and other things, besides laying a little settlement in ashes. This act was regarded as among the boldest feats of the war--that a force of seventeen canoes, with five Indians in each, should make a voyage thirty miles from the mainland, plunder, murder, and retire in perfect safety! Dr. Perine was a man of learning, a botanist, whose observations and notes on Florida will be a great loss. We see daily in our streets armed men in the employ of the Government, we hear of company after company being formed, and why are not operations commenced against the enemy? [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XVII. The Indians inhabiting the Everglades before the Seminole war had been driven there from the adjacent islands by conquest. They did not belong to this tribe. They spoke Spanish, and many of them had been baptized in Havana. Their pursuits were quite different--they fished and followed the sea as a means of support, having never been ten miles from the shore. No account has ever been written by modern explorers in that region which gives the reader as correct an idea of the topography of the country as the one given by the engineer who accompanied Colonel Harney, Jan. 1, 1841. Those who visit there now and return, appear to have a commingling of scenery--the flowers, the grass, and water, all being blended, the quantity of each not designated. This grass-water country is said to be like no other place in the world--a sea of water filled with grass and green trees, that can only be approached by canoes, which must be pulled through the mud and saw-grass, and then paddled when the water is of sufficient depth, with a black soil of measureless extent. The following interesting extracts will enable us to form an idea of the energy and enterprise required during the Seminole war to penetrate the fastness of a country where the foes intrenched themselves, and from which they made sallies upon the unwary more to be dreaded than any disease which visited them. The expedition was conducted by Colonel W. S. Harney. His forces were distributed in four or five large canoes, carrying from six to ten men each; the greater number went in boats made for the purpose, containing five men each. Orders were given that every man should be provided with twenty days' rations, sixty rounds of ball and cartridge, with the necessary blankets, etc. The most perfect silence was to be observed by all; orders communicated by signal-whistles, with which the officers were supplied; the boats moving in single file, twenty paces apart, every man ready to drop his paddle and seize his gun at a moment's notice. The dragoons were armed with Colt's repeating rifles, and, being under command of Colonel Harney, formed a well-tried band of experienced Indian-fighters. Half an hour after sunset, and during a shower of rain, the command left Fort Dallas, which is situated on the bay at the mouth of Indian River, eight miles above Kev Biscayne--Colonel Harney in advance, with Mico as guide, and negro John as interpreter, the army next, and the navy in the rear. After passing up the bay seven miles, they entered the mouth of Little River, a tortuous and extremely rapid outlet from the Everglades, where they struggled against the current until after midnight, when they reached their first resting-place--the site of an old plantation--where they landed. _January 2._--The guide says that by not starting from here until toward night, we will reach Chitto--Tustenuggee's Island--an hour or two before daybreak to-morrow; we therefore retained our position as much as possible in the grass and thickets until 4 P.M., when we started, but in reversed order--the colonel in advance, the navy next, and the army in the rear. After passing up a few miles of swift rapids, we entered the Everglades at sunset, and, skirting along a projecting elbow of the pine barren for two miles, lay concealed behind the point of it until quite dark. We then moved forward swiftly and noiselessly, at one time following the course of serpentine channels opening out occasionally into beautiful lagoons, at another forcing our way through barriers of saw-grass. After several hours of hard paddling, we came in sight of Chitto's Island, when the signal was passed "to close up." Moving cautiously, we took our positions around the island, and lay in anxious expectation of the signal to move up and effect a landing. An advance-guard, having been sent in to reconnoiter, after some time reported that the enemy had left the island, and, in a tone of bitter disappointment, the colonel gave the word, "Move up and land; the Indians have escaped." _January 3._--Chitto--Tustenuggee's, or Snake Warrior's Island--is a most beautiful spot, containing from eighteen to twenty acres; the soil is extremely rich, and about two feet deep, with a basis of rotten limestone. The center is cleared, but the circumference is well protected by immense live-oak and wild fig-trees, with an almost impenetrable thicket of wild mangroves. There are two towns, two dancing-grounds, and one council-lodge, on this island. With the exception of the dancing-ground and a small patch of fine Cuba tobacco, the whole clearing is overrun with pumpkin, squash, and melon vines, with occasionally Lima beans in great luxuriance, and of a most excellent quality. The Indians have been gone at least two weeks, having left behind them all useless articles, such as war-dance masks, supernumerary baskets, kettles, fishing-spears, etc. At 11 o'clock the colonel dispatched a small force to reconnoiter Tuconee's Island, which lies about three miles west of us. They returned at 4 P.M., reporting recent signs of a woman and child. The only trophies they obtained were some ears of green corn and a few stalks of sugar-cane. _January 4._--Started this morning for Sam Jones's Island. He is said to hold a strong position, having seventy warriors with him; the only fear entertained by officers or men is that he may have left the island and gone to Big Cypress. After paddling until 3 P.M., we reached a small cluster of trees, from the tops of which the guide said that Sam Jones's camp was visible; he was accordingly sent aloft to make an observation, and soon pronounced the place deserted. This information changed the colonel's programme, and, instead of waiting until night should conceal his movements, he advanced immediately toward the island; however, not omitting to send out flanking parties, and an advance-guard to reconnoiter. Before sunset we had all landed, and were enjoying our biscuit and bacon, in the midst of an Indian village. _January 5._--Sam Jones's possessions consist of a group of several islands, differing in size and separated by narrow sluices. Upon the largest of these, which is about one hundred and fifty yards in width and half a mile in length, are three villages and dancing-grounds, the general features being the same as Chitto's Island, but the soil sandy. There are no villages on the other islands, but they have been cleared in the center and planted with pumpkins, melons, and corn, which were all destroyed. Our greatest annoyance at this place was the immense number of fleas, cockroaches, and musquitoes. Every thing you touched--even the ground--was alive with the former, which, with the musquitoes, attacked our persons, while the roaches luxuriated on our provisions. The whole group of islands, called Army and Navy Group, is nearly a mile and a half in length, and presented no recent signs of Indians. _January 6._--At 8 A.M. passed over three miles to the Pine Keys, and scoured the whole extent; returned at night, hungry and fatigued, to Sam Jones's camp. Started early the next morning for the Prophet's Island, which, according to Mico, is two suns from there. At 11 A.M. stopped and destroyed a flourishing crop of young corn. At 3 P.M. came to another small island uncleared: upon sending John up a tree to look out, he reported two Indians in canoes, two miles distant, approaching us. Orders were given to lie close, as they were evidently coming to the island. In a few minutes John reported they had seen us, and were going back. The colonel gave chase, but, finding there was not water enough for his large canoe, transferred the guide to Captain McLaughlin's boat, and directed him to move on in pursuit--the light-boats of the artillery to accompany the captain and his command. The colonel, with the large canoes, returned to the island, and sent up a lookout, who reported the Indians not visible, but our boats still going at speed, and rapidly nearing a small island about three miles distant. Colonel H., becoming impatient, and feeling confident that he could find a passage across without any guide, left for the other island, and reached it just as some of the advance boats flushed a party consisting of four warriors, five squaws, and two children; each warrior had a separate canoe, containing his family and worldly possessions. They left the boats to the care of the women, and took to the grass-water, loading and firing as they ran. Three of the warriors were soon shot, three squaws and one child taken, and the other drowned by its mother to prevent its cries leading to her detection. Night approaching, one warrior and two squaws, favored by the darkness, escaped. Only one soldier was slightly wounded in this enterprise. Early this morning Colonel H. sent out a small force to follow the trail of the other warrior, and endeavor, if possible, to take him alive, as he had ascertained from the squaws it was Chia, one of the best guides in the whole Territory. After following the trail five miles, they came up with a squaw (Chia's wife), and took her; a few yards farther beyond, on hearing a rustling in the grass, several of the men leaped into the water, when one of the marines, in the act of springing from the boat, was shot in the side by the Indian, who ran a few paces, reloading his rifle, and, as Sergeant Searles, of the Third Artillery, rushed toward him, he turned and fired at only five paces, wounding the sergeant mortally, who, however, did not retreat. Chia then struck at him with his rifle; but, blinded and fainting as he was, from loss of blood, he quickly rallied for a last effort, and threw himself upon the Indian's neck, crying, "I have him!" Chia then drew his knife, and was about to stab his captor, when a soldier arrested his murderous hand. After securing the captive, the sergeant was lifted into a canoe and brought back to the island, where his wounds were examined and dressed by the medical officer. The ball was found to have passed through the right arm, entered the right side, breaking a rib, opening the right lung, and passing into the liver. _January 9._--Last night we were obliged to sleep in our boats, and, in addition to this discomfort, it rained hard, with a cold south wind all night. Chia says that Sam Jones, on hearing of Colonel Harney's first expedition, had sent over to the Seminoles for powder and lead, saying that he would go into the Big Cypress, where, if pursued, he would fight until death. Chia and his party were going to join him, and he (with a gallows in prospective, should he prove false) promises faithfully to guide us thither. In consequence of this information we returned to Sam Jones's Island, which we reached at noon. _January 10._--The description given of Sam Jones's present position is such as would intimidate almost anybody from attempting to dislodge them but Colonel Harney. At 8 A.M. we started for the head-waters of New River, which we reached at sunset, and passed down the stream to Fort Lauderdale, where we arrived at midnight. _January 11._--Having disposed of the wounded men and female prisoners, we left Lauderdale at sunset, and ascended the New River, entering the Everglades by the right-hand branch, an hour before sunrise. _January 12._--After allowing the men two hours' rest, we moved to a group of keys, lying between the expanse of the Everglades and the edge of the Big Cypress. It was here that Chia expected to find the main body of the enemy; but, upon examination of the signs, he pronounced that they had gone on to Okee-cho-bee. With a heart full of disappointment, Colonel Harney found his schemes thwarted by the cowardice of the Indians, who had fled panic-stricken upon hearing of Chai-kai-kee's fate, and deserted their inaccessible retreats. At noon the navy left us, taking with them Mico and negro John as guides across the Everglades, in the direction of the first expedition. After dinner we bore away for Lauderdale, and, aided by the swift current of New River, reached our destination at 8 P.M. _January 13._--Colonel Harney this morning started with twenty men to search for a reported passage from the New River into the Hillsboro Inlet; the low stage of the water proving an insurmountable obstacle, he returned at sundown, giving orders to prepare for moving homeward to-morrow. _January 15._--At early dawn the canoes were hauled over from the beach into the bay, when, in passing down it, we reached Fort Dallas at noon. The Pay-hai-o-kee (grass-water, or Everglades) comprises a large portion of Southern Florida, lying south of the twenty-seventh degree of latitude, and separated from the Atlantic, or Gulf of Mexico, by a pine barren, varying in width from five to twenty or more miles. There are a number of outlets on the eastern, or Atlantic coast, while on the western, or Gulf coast, there is only one, now named after its first navigator, Harney River. The appearance presented upon entering the Everglades is that of an immense prairie, stretching farther than the eye can reach, covered by thick saw-grass, rising six feet above the surface of the water, which it conceals--the monotony varied by numerous snake-like channels and verdant islands, scattered few and far between--the average depth of water over the whole extent being from two to four feet. The channels vary in width from ten to twenty feet above the usual water-level, though, no doubt, in very wet seasons occasionally overflowed--the water all being clear and wholesome--and even where no current was perceptible there was no appearance of stagnation. The results of this expedition, although apparently not very brilliant, have only been surpassed in usefulness by those of the first Everglade expedition, undertaken and prosecuted with such untiring energy and eminent success by Colonel Harney. The knowledge acquired of the nature of the country, the localities of the lands, and strength of the positions, occupied by two of the most formidable chiefs, is of itself ample reward for the privations and sufferings necessarily encountered during a movement in open boats, with no tents, a limited supply of blankets and provisions, exposed to the sun by day and the dew at night, to the drenching rain and chilly blast, but rarely allowed the luxury of fires, and eating food which it required a strong appetite to relish. The Everglades extend from the head of the St. John's, on the north, to within ten or fifteen miles of Cape Florida, on the south. This land is believed to be twenty or thirty feet above the level of tide-water, and is susceptible of being rendered perfectly dry by deepening and widening the various outlets or rivers that flow through it, from the lakes to the sea. The lakes near the center of the Everglades are deep and navigable, connecting with one another throughout the entire distance. The tropical region of the peninsula reaches from Cape Florida about two hundred miles north. The soil of the country has been pronounced by all explorers very rich, it being only covered with water in the rainy season. When the resources of this tropical region are utilized, the importance of Florida can hardly be appreciated too highly. Besides the growth of cultured fruits, the Manilla hemp is one of the indigenous products of the soil; the Indians used it in making ropes and mats, and formerly supplied the Spaniards with halters, lines, and bed-cords, at cheap rates--it was called grass-rope. The cotton-plant found here is the same as that raised on plantations, differing only in the smallness of the leaf and pod, length and fineness of the fibers--it produces two or three years without being replanted. _January_, 1841.--Colonel Harney has been on two expeditions in the Everglades; captured thirty-nine Indians; pressed into service a slave, formerly the property of Doctor Cruise, as a guide, he having been in the hands of the enemy. He conducted the colonel to a camp where the Indians were assembled, who fought, but were soon overpowered, when Colonel Harney hung ten of the warriors, Chekika among the number, who led the attack on Indian Key. _St. Augustine_, January, 1841.--An ovation was given to General Harney, after his return from the Everglade expedition, when the St. Augustine Market-house was brilliantly illumined. A large transparency bore the inscriptions, "Lieutenant-colonel W. S. Harney, Everglades!" "No more Treaties!" "Remember Caloosahatchee!" "War to the Rope!" with the device of an Indian suspended from a tree. A band of music played in the plaza, cannon were fired, together with many other loud demonstrations of joy at the prospect of peace. The few may have smiled, but the many wept in tears of blood, and wailed in sackcloth and ashes, over the long train of evils that followed the Treaty of Payne's Landing--a compact of which many had never heard until they began to suffer under the ineffectual attempts to carry it into execution. What a tale of sorrow could the poor, suffering soldiers unfold, who had to march through the saw-grass and saw-palmetto, with their serrated edges, which seized their clothes and flesh as they passed, marking their pathway with tatters and blood! In South Florida, bounded on the north by Lake Ogeechubee--the largest body of water in the State, it being fifty miles in length, and twenty in width--is a tract of country known as the Everglades, comprising an area of six hundred miles. Here dwells the remnant of a race of men which required more time to subdue, and cost the Government more money, than the Colonial war with Great Britain. They are ruled by chiefs, according to their ancient patriarchal custom, the royal line being transmitted from parent to child, as in monarchical governments. Old and young Tiger Tail are both living now, the senior chief being almost a century of age. It was his father that built an Indian village where Tallahassee now stands, and in which place he first saw the light. Old Tiger Tail murdered his sister, who favored emigration, to which he was opposed. After going to the West he became much dissatisfied, when he made his way to the wilds of Mexico, where he intrenched himself in the natural fastness among the mountains. From this fortress he made frequent sallies upon the inhabitants, killing when he met resistance, and carrying away whatever plunder of value he could seize upon. He was joined by others, who were living as outlaws in their own country, thus combining the cunning of the Indian with the brigand spirit of the Mexican, forming an alliance more to be dreaded than the wily movements of the Chieftain Osceola. He is a battle-scarred warrior, and can relate with much accuracy every different engagement where he was wounded. He is friendly with some visitors; has a summer and winter home, where he camps each season. The Indians visit Fort Pierce, on the Indian River, as a trading-point, when they bring buckskins, potatoes, pumpkins, and honey, to sell. The wild honey brought to market from all parts of the State is a sufficient proof of its adaptability to the production of that commodity for settlers to engage in the enterprise of bee-culture. In addition to the blossoms of annuals and orange-trees, a honey-dew exudes from some of the trees at certain seasons--the magnolia, poplar, wahoo, and sweet-gum--from which the bees can gather largely. Father Dufau recently visited the Everglades as a missionary, but, meeting with poor encouragement, returned. He does not bring favorable reports in regard to their mental or spiritual improvement. The Indians regard the "pale faces" with suspicion and distrust. They have been duped so often by the whites that their chief forbids the females speaking to them. They have no forms of religion, but worship the Great Spirit and planets, wearing devices of the moon. Father Dufau had a pair of silver ear-rings, made by them, the pendant portion resembling a crescent. These were formerly owned and worn by Tiger Tail, who sold them for whisky. Slaves are still regarded as property with them, the difference in caste between master and servant not being distinguishable. Polygamy is becoming unpopular with them now. Tiger Tail has two wives; but the oldest squaw claims priority, causing the stream of harmony to flow in divided currents. She says, "Two squaws no good." The soil teems with verdure all the year, and they live without solicitude, either temporally or spiritually. In hunting, they require neither guns nor dogs, but imitate whatever beast or bird they propose to capture, and when their prey approaches near enough, shoot it with arrows. The water found in the Everglades is very clear, thus enabling them to fish without hooks or nets, by shooting the fish, which they do with great skill. The men dress in deerskin breeches, wearing calico coats, with long skirts, and various patterns sewed on them. The squaws are all clothed like our cracker country females--the younger ones displaying their fondness for beads by wearing four pounds around their necks. The funniest of all is how they received that irrational style of having their hair _banged_ like white girls, and surprises visitors very much. Some of the younger warriors expressed a desire to be taught to read, measure, and weigh. They speak little English, but communicate mostly by signs. Father Dufau had to walk wherever he went, after leaving Key Biscayne Bay, his speed at times being accelerated more than was agreeable by water-moccasins and alligators. The Everglades still retain their primeval state, guarded with ample care by towering live-oaks, the majestic grandiflora, and the aromatic bay, from which the yellow jasmine swings her airy bowers, and where the polyglot bird trills his joyful notes, the velvet-plumaged paroquet chatters to his mate, and the red-bird whistles shrill sounds of joy, while high above all, swinging in mid-air, the golden oriole is listening from her pendent bower for the first sounds of vitality which will echo from her nestlings. The foot of man, in his march of progress, has never penetrated these wilds of natural beauty--a solitude tempered by sea-breezes, unvisited by wintry winds, where moonbeams sleep on glassy waters, unmoved by the tempest's roar or the trident of Neptune. CHAPTER XVIII. In leaving Jacksonville for Cedar Keys, we first take the Florida Central Road, which is thought by some to ride very rough, but the controlling element which had it in charge treated it rougher than any jolt which passengers receive in riding over it. Soon as the road can recover from the raids upon its earnings, preparations will be made to accommodate the traveling public so well that they will always prefer riding on the Florida Central from choice. Baldwin is the first noticeable station on the road, twenty miles from Jacksonville. We arrive here in time for breakfast, which the vigorous ringing of bells indicate--the Berger Family is nowhere in comparison to the noise they make. As we had no free feeds, we are not obligated to puff the eating-houses; but the moderate charges and fine fare constitute an attractive feature to the hungry traveler. The depot and telegraph-office windows are said to furnish amusement for the agent and operator, where they can spend their leisure in fishing. The attractive alligators and moccasins are hibernating now, as it is February; occasionally a stray one comes out, like Noah's dove, to see if winter has gone. The junction of roads is what makes the town--the A. G. & W. I. T. Co. Road is taken here, in order that the Mexican Gulf, one hundred and seven miles distant, may be reached. Northern passengers complain of the snail-pace by which the trains are propelled, but no accident ever occurs to endanger life or limb. The piney-woods scenery predominates, which gives the country a very unpicturesque appearance; and the land, that in some places appears poor enough to make squirrels sad, changes as we advance toward the Gulf. Trail Ridge is noticeable for its high location, being over two hundred feet above sea-level, always celebrated for its healthfulness and pure water. Lawtey, four miles from Trail Ridge, has recently received a large accession of immigrants from Chicago. The lands are considered among the best in the interior of the State. One great advantage in living on the Transit Road is free transportation for self and family, together with the superior facilities for sending produce to market. Starke, seventy-three miles from Fernandina, is a place of some importance, containing a lumber-mill, turpentine distillery, and several stores, besides boarding-houses. What a multitude of disagreeable sounds break upon our morning slumbers in these plank habitations! The cats, which have been vigorous in their serenading during the night, now prepare to quit the field by a final contest, which Dinah interrupts with the broom. The pigs, that lay piled in the yard so quietly during the night, are calling for their rations, while the chickens have been cackling a chorus in advance of the supplies which they will furnish for hungry visitors. Never, apparently, did dinner-pots require such a vast amount of scraping. Then the old coffee-mill sounds like a ten-horsepower flouring-mill. These little innovations upon our morning nap are soon forgotten after we have eaten our breakfast, and witnessed what a beautiful day is before us. Waldo now appears to be settling more rapidly than Starke. A large hotel, called the Waldo House, has been built here, which is well kept. Croquet-grounds are laid out, shade-trees planted, in a tasteful manner, presenting an inviting appearance to travelers as they approach the town. This station is destined to be a place of prominence. A canal is in process of construction to Lake Santa Fe, four miles distant, thus connecting it with the main artery of communication in the State. This region of country is attracting no small amount of attention at present, the high ground it occupies being one of its most desirable features--which fact is demonstrated by the waters, instead of settling, flowing east and west, then emptying into the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. This lake contains nearly thirty square miles of water, being about nine miles in length, its greatest width four miles. The depth of the water is from twenty to sixty feet, being pure freestone, palatable all the year with a little ice. Superior inducements are offered to those who wish to come as actual settlers, fine lake-sites being very reasonable, and the present inhabitants the best of people. We next come to Alachua county, the richest and now the most important on the route, containing hummock-lands, covered with phosphates, indicating a fertility of soil, where the long staple will flourish, and silken cotton-bolls open their tributes of wealth to reward the industrious planter. Tiny floating islands are visible on each side of the track, while the lily rises from the dusky waters of the morass, as though upheld by some invisible hand. Long-legged Florida cattle are grazing upon the fresh grass, while the yearlings run races with the cars, to the annoyance of all concerned. Visible signs of impatience are manifested by the lady-passengers, when the following colloquy takes place between a Bostonian and a very black train-hand: _Lady_--"Say, sir! are there no refreshments coming in soon?" _Negro_--"What is dem, Miss?" _Lady_--"Why, something to eat." _Negro_--"I reckin dar'll be some groun'-peas gwine 'roun' 'fore bery long, or some cane-stalks." _Lady_ (very indignant)--"I wish you to comprehend I came from _Boston_; we don't eat such things up there in our part of the country!" During the year 1750 a Creek chief retired from his nation, named Secoffe, and settled in Alachua, he being attracted by the game and natural fertility of soil. He was a sworn enemy of the Spaniards, but a friend to the English up to 1784. He visited St. Augustine on hearing that Florida had been sold to the English, at which time, not thinking himself treated with due deference to his rank in life, he returned, swearing vengeance to all the whites. He died soon afterward, which frustrated his projects of revenge. Before dying he called his two sons, Payne and Bowlegs, to whom he intrusted the mission of killing fourteen Spaniards, which, added to eighty-six--the number already killed by himself--would make one hundred--the requisite amount which the Great Spirit had revealed to him would insure happiness to his soul. His sons, not being of a revengeful spirit, lived in peace with the Spaniards, and died much respected. Another band came in 1808, under Micco Hadjo, settling near Tallahassee--from this date the Florida Indians were called Seminoles, or Runaways. This county contains a great sink, called by some a lake, in which congregate during the dry weather large quantities of alligators, together with fish of all sizes, that cannot escape into the subterranean rocky passage. This sink is situated in a savanna about fifteen miles in length. The Indians formerly had a town near this locality, which they moved on account of the stench from decayed fish in summer, that had been driven there by the alligators. These Indian settlers were busy during the war, like their companions. The following are some of the fruits of their conduct: "The Rev. McRae, a Methodist preacher, and two other persons, while riding from Waccahootee to Micanopy, when at the Juggs, within three miles of the fort, were fired upon by a party of fifteen or twenty Indians. Mr. McRae's horse was wounded and fell, when he was overtaken and scalped by the Indians, but his scalp was left on the ground. The others escaped with four balls in their clothes. In five more days a citizen and soldier were murdered within four miles of Fort Micanopy, their hearts taken out, and their bodies horribly mangled." June 5, 1839, on the Newnansville road, Mr. Ostein, Mr. Dell, and Miss Ostein, were killed. After this tragic event, the following notice speaks in trumpet tones: "The injuries of the citizens of Alachna and Columbia counties have been of a nature that can never be forgotten or forgiven. The white man and the Indian can no longer occupy the same territory in peace; one or the other must be removed or annihilated, and the General Government will justly decide the question. FRANCIS R. SANCHEZ." During this year all flags of truce and peace movements were lost sight of, as Indian murders were every day occurring. At this time two volunteers were killed near Micanopy, their bodies much mutilated, and their tongues cut out. General Jackson at this time estimated a force "of four hundred Indians, which could be whipped out by a battalion of women armed with broomsticks." The approach from the depot to Gainesville is very unattractive, particularly in the winter season, having the appearance of being inaccessible either by land or water. Black, marshy-looking places, containing a muddy fluid, fail to give travelers a pleasant impression, and for this reason draining should be commenced by building causeways to the city and the frequented places in the vicinity. They have not put the best side out here. Gainesville was named for General Edmund P. Gaines, a Florida Indian-war veteran. Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines, who for many years has been litigating for a portion of the ground on which New Orleans stands, was his wife, who by a special act of Congress receives a pension, whether married again or remaining his widow. Many invalids have a preference for Gainesville, on account of its even temperature, over localities on the bays, rivers, or lakes. It has fine accommodations, containing two good hotels, besides comfortable boarding-houses of various dimensions. The Arlington House is first-class in every respect, being new, while Oak Hall, for good eating, cannot be outdone. The dining-room serving-man has waited here for twenty years, which is very remarkable in consideration of the various vicissitudes through which that race has passed. The quiet of country life is found in this locality; the sound of wheels is hushed in the streets, the sand being so deep it has no echo when wheels pass over it. Protestant Churches are well represented in numbers and houses of worship. The Presbyterian pastor, the Rev. Mr. McCormick, has ministered to his people for a quarter of a century. Through what numerous changes has he passed! What sad memories linger around his ministrations, but sometimes mingled with joy when a sinner for whom he had long been solicitous has been born into the kingdom! More of the _Tillandasia_, or hanging moss, which sometimes grows ten or fifteen feet in length, is found here than in most other portions of the State. Two moss-factories, preparing it for commerce, are doing a thriving business. It closely resembles horse-hair when properly cleaned and curled--is quite elastic and inodorous. It is used extensively in upholstering, and is quite profitable to those engaged in the enterprise. Dry-goods stores, groceries, and drug-stores all do a lucrative business with the people living in the back country. Lands lying in the vicinity of Gainesville are very fine, one acre of ground being capable of producing fifteen hundred pounds of sugar and three hundred gallons of sirup. By taking the stage at Gainesville, Orange Lake, "the natural home of the orange," is easily reached. This lake is a vast lime-sink, draining a large extent of country, having no visible outlet. The inducements and facilities for orange-culture are probably unsurpassed in any other locality. One man owns over a hundred thousand budded trees, and a million more yet remain in a state of nature. The native orange-growth has been a source of wonder to all modern explorers. Nothing can be imagined more beautiful than one of these natural groves in March--the golden orbs in a setting of green, while creamy blossoms, like clouds of incense, rise in overpowering sweetness to welcome us with their choicest oblation. The whole forest has a tropical luxuriance, the abundant vegetation being well sustained by a rich soil of sandy loam, with a layer of marl and decomposed shells. Besides the orange, we see the live-oak, magnolia, hickory, bay-tree, and many other native woods, interspersed with grape-vines measuring three feet in circumference, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees, forming a dense shade, where sunbeams can rarely or ever penetrate. As we walk between its stately colonnades, our minds revert to the silence of "God's first temple." It is in this vicinity lime-sinks abound, which are formed from subterranean streams of water constantly flowing, thus washing away the sand, which causes the coral formation supported by it to fall, frequently exposing large lakes of immense depth, many of them containing fish. Malaria is said to prevail here sometimes, "although it is perfectly healthy." Let settlers plant the _Eucalyptus_-tree, which is no experiment, but a success, in other places, being a powerful absorbent of miasm, converting sickly, malarious localities into healthful, happy homes. A seedling orange-tree is considered the most hardy, and will produce in five years, while a budded tree bears in two or three years. It is well to have both kinds, in order to fully realize the golden dreams of a successful investment. The manufacture of citric acid from the wild orange has been attempted here several times, without any great results as yet, but marmalade is a decided success. All information on the subject of groves in this locality can be obtained by addressing John F. Dunn, Ocala, Marion county, Florida. There are many homesteads in all parts of the State. For particulars address United States Land Agent, Gainesville, Florida. After leaving Gainesville, before reaching the Gulf, several places are passed, bearing important names, their locality and present appearance of thrift now giving promise of future prosperity. Cities in the prospective: Orange City, Arredondo, Battons, Archer, and Albion--all stopping-points and new settlements. Albion has been settled mostly by young Englishmen, who have come here to engage in grape-culture--these being the first invoice of a large colony from Europe. Bronson appears to have a larger population than any of the other towns, except Gainesville. It is the county-seat of Levy, where can be found among the actual settlers energetic Christian people. A diversity of crops can be obtained from this soil, much of the land inclining to an undulating surface. Otter Creek, one hundred and thirty-four miles from Fernandina, is the dinner-station, kept by a most worthy gentleman--Captain Mason, formerly of the United States Army Indian war service. We are now entering the great Gulf Hummock, the vegetation changing from a semi-tropical to an entirely tropical character. Here the cabbage-palmetto and hard-wood trees rear their tops high in the air--a characteristic of the rich hummock soil. We see no trailing vines killed every winter by frost, but giant climbers twining around tree-trunks so closely they appear like a portion of them. This heavy growth converts the route here into an interminable forest, where only occasional spots or fragments of sunshine peep through slight openings, that appear to be at no greater distance than the tree-tops over our heads. These fertile lands are awaiting the muscular development which has been productive of such marked results in almost every portion of the State. CHAPTER XIX. Cedar Keys is the terminus of the West India Transfer Railroad--that comfortless, unlovely, much-abused sand and water place--where people always heretofore have paid a big price for a small equivalent. There is life in the old town yet. She supports a newspaper now, and has a good hotel, kept by Dr. McIlvaine, who knows how to serve the traveling public, without robbing them, when they are in his power. The memory of the fresh fried fish, they can serve up so fresh and hot, will make visitors who go once have a desire to return. Then, to think of oysters twenty-one times in a week! Consider on it, those who never ate enough fine, first-class bivalves in their lives. Visitors who come here will find sailing and fishing very fine amusement. Cedar Keys is going to have a big hotel--then everybody will want to come, if they can only regulate the prices according to the amount of accommodation. There is, no doubt, a bright future before her yet. For the benefit of those who imagine Cedar Keys never had a citizen in it with an idea much above an oyster, I have copied the following, which is a specimen of the toasts drunk by the patriotic to the military, July 4, 1843. They contain something so genuine, in the way of word-selecting find arranging, that it really reads refreshing in these days, when such a surfeit of fulsome flattery is considered the only current coin of the day: "Mr. Speaker. Freedom's Anniversary: The wilds of Florida, where echoed the Indian's war-whoop and the revengeful battle-strife, to-day bring forth their festive offering. We celebrate a new jubilee. "By Mr. Thompson. The champions of Florida's restoration from the desolations of war--Generals Jessup and Worth. "By Mr. Brown. Colonel Belknap: The red man's friend in peace--the terror of the savage in war. "By William Cooley. Colonel Wm. S. Harney: The brave and gallant avenger of savage atrocity and barbarity. "By Augustus Steele, Esq. General Worth: The peaceful fields we till, the quiet roads we travel in happy security, the waving corn and lowing herds that gladden our senses, bespeak our remembrance and admiration of the skill and intrepidity, also the indomitable perseverance which, under difficulties little less than insurmountable, have secured us these blessings." The "moving impulse" from Cedar Keys for a long time was in a weak condition, the H. Cool being the only craft to convey passengers from here to Manatee and Tampa. However, now two regular steamers, with good accommodations, are to be had, without the prospect of a dive beneath the briny waves. Many imagine that a trip to South Florida is an enterprise which would require the fortitude of a Stanley to undertake. It is true, the inaccessible position of some localities in this portion of the State would be rather impracticable for feeble invalids; but what more could craving humanity demand than a climate where the thermometer never rises over ninety, and rarely descends lower than sixty? By taking a creditable steamer at Cedar Keys, we can reach Manatee, the point of our destination. Sometimes the gulf is a little rough, but very often smooth as a mill-pond, when we glide along gently as a sail across a summer sea. Clear Water Harbor, the last point before Manatee, was first explored by Narvaez, whom the Indians received without demonstrations of fear or hostility. After the Spaniards landed, they were attracted by the gold worn upon the persons of the Indians, which they said came from the far North. These Spaniards, being both sailors and soldiers, wearied with maritime pursuits and fighting, now resolved to try their fortunes on land. They started with three hundred men, in a north-west course, to search for the mountains of gold. In their travels they discovered nothing but fatigue, privation, disappointment, and death, wherever they went. But four of the number survived, who became medicine men among the Indians--finally making their way to Mexico, after an absence of six or seven years. Nothing of particular interest occurs to break the monotony during our voyage to Manatee, one hundred miles distant from Cedar Keys. It is situated on a river of the same name, fifteen miles from the gulf. It was named from the sea-cow, which was found there, and used as an article of food. Visitors or immigrants may have the fondest dream of their imagination realized in finding here all the natural accompaniments for a pleasant home. The view of Manatee, as we approach the town, is not particularly imposing--the houses being scattered in every direction, like the forces of a retreating army, while each settler appears to have taken possession of what land he could cultivate as he came. The dwellings are embowered in orange-trees, which in March freight the air with a perfume that permeates our very existence, producing a kind of luxurious rest, when time and all objects around us move as though in dreamland. Perennial spring-time keeps vegetation growing all winter. The _Palma Christi_, in this locality, becomes a large tree, yielding its beans perfectly every year; while tomato-vines grow to an immense size, twining into shady bowers, fruiting, without cessation, until three years old, when the tomato has a strong flavor, resembling the vine. The guava, from which the jelly of commerce is manufactured, grows spontaneously, and it is said the mamma of all in South Florida still flourishes at this place. The lands in the vicinity are pine, hummock, and prairie. The pine-land requires fertilizing--the hummock, clearing and ditching--when two hogsheads of sugar and seventy five gallons of sirup are the average product of an acre, which, to those who never in their lives had as much sugar as they could eat, is a sweet item. The prairie-lands furnish sustenance for the lowing herds, which are wild as deer. They are captured by a song the "cow-boys" sing, resembling nothing else in the world. Where it originated, none can tell; but the cattle gather from afar whenever it is sung, and are then driven at will by those long rawhide lashes that pop like pistols, many times cutting out pieces of quivering flesh, at which the sight of humanity would shrink. The lusciousness of oranges produced here is incomparable, particularly when contrasted with those sour, stringy products of commerce. We have tasted this fruit from every clime, but never have the Manatee oranges been excelled. How ripe and delicious they grow on those tall trees, where they hang constantly exposed to the rays of a tropical sun until March! Messrs. Gates, Whittaker & Lee have old bearing groves, while hundreds of others are coming on. When we reflect upon the superabundance of natural products that flourish in this locality, with which to supply the necessities of life, can we wonder why one of the wrecks of once powerful tribes so long resisted the encroachments of white settlers, contesting for territory until nearly extinct, many of them suffering with the calmness of Christian martyrs, or the bravery of Roman heroes--thus regarding death with a lofty disdain? The Indians, like the wild beasts in whose skins they were clad, have been driven, by the march of civilization, farther and farther into the grass-water country, where, like a lion deprived of his claws, resentment has died for want of strength to assert its prowess, while, by contact with an enlightened race, their original independence has been brought into a state of subjugation. In this portion of Florida the cactus-pear grows to an immense size. History mentions a peculiar tribe of Indians who once lived here with as little solicitude for their support as the birds of passage, especially in the pear-season, which was hailed by them as a period of feasting--their only labor being to obtain the pears, which they afterward peeled and roasted for present use, or dried and packed like figs, to eat on their journeys, while the remaining portion of their time was passed in the observance of their various festivals and dancing--their houses being made of palm-matting, which they carried on their backs--thus moving their habitations, every three or four days, without the slightest inconvenience. The inducements for immigration here are equal to any in the State. Adventurers do not flourish on this soil, the residents, taken as a mass, being the best that can be found. Many of them from the Southern States, uprooted from their old homes by the reverses of war, but not disheartened, have come down here to take root and thrive again. Church privileges are enjoyed, in a church where quiet Christian people assemble for worship. Also three well-taught schools in the town and vicinity. Two good resident physicians, but dependent on visitors for a support--one of them from a malarious country, who came here to escape death. Here, as in other localities, settlers have to sow before they can reap, but the natural growth in the hummocks evidences great fertility of soil. The Manatee boarding-houses are sanitariums, where more trouble is taken to please visitors, at less expense, than at almost any other place in the State. The tables are supplied with food visitors can eat, that will nourish them--not what the host chooses to furnish. I well remember with what a troubled look Mrs. Gates took me into the larder one day after having dined on lemonade. There was a quantity of provisions to gladden the hungry: almost an entire roasted wild turkey, stuffed quarter of venison, fresh-baked fish, home-made light-bread and biscuits, pound-cake, rich lemon pies--any of which would tempt an epicurean taste. "You are eating nothing hardly," said she; "now, whenever you wish, come and help yourself." The remoteness of this point from the principal resorts is the only objection. Every one who comes says the climate is perfect. The streams and gulf swarm with fish. Visitors sit on the wharf and recreate in catching twenty-pound snappers, while at low-tide the rheumatic old men wade about in the warm salt-water, happy as boys just entering their teens. Let all those who dream of sand-hills, and only starvation staring them in the face while in Florida, come to Manatee. A pure sea-breeze pervades the whole surrounding country, the evenness of temperature producing a very genial and happy influence in pulmonic diseases, more than all the drugs compounded by any pharmaceutist in the world. The moon here shines with a clear, luminous light of two common moons--an indescribable brilliancy that transforms the darkness of night almost into a continued day, which has a tendency to bewilder, and make us think we are in a land of fabled beauty, more than a troubled world, to be tossed again by the tempests incident to life. This appears to be the native home of the grape-vine, where all varieties flourish finely. Think of the money that is expended every year in sending to foreign countries for the one article of wine, and what a miserable, adulterated mixture is brought over, only dashed a little with pure grape-juice, while the drugs introduced would cause any one with delicate sensibilities to shrink from the thought of swallowing! If a reliable firm were to come here and undertake the culture of vineyards, manufacturing pure wines, it would be found more remunerative than orange-growing, the risk being not half so great, as the wine is improving with age, while fresh fruits decay very rapidly, when being transferred. Invalids, in coming to Florida, bring their wines; whereas, if they could be furnished with a better article at much less rates, they would soon find it more advantageous to patronize a home-product, the compounding of which they knew to be genuine as the far-famed vintage of the Rhine. Wine has always been in use from the days of Noah to the present time, although brigades of men and women-crusaders have screamed themselves hoarse in proclaiming its evils and wicked influences. If the manufacture of wines from pure grape-juice was encouraged, this beastly drunkenness from strychnine whisky would very soon be abandoned. Sometimes here, as in other places, the laborer is not rewarded in his efforts to raise a good crop, which, in this far-famed country for fertility and productiveness, is pronounced a fraud practiced by somebody in holding out inducements for them to come to Florida and starve. No person has ever been known to suffer for food in this portion of the State--as an illustration of which, one man has lived in the vicinity nearly thirty years, reared a large family, and none can testify to his having done a whole day's work during that time. The safe way is to cultivate a variety of vegetables and fruits--something will thrive. Sweet potatoes are indigenous, and never fail, making fine food for man and beast. Sugar-cane is a sure crop, ratooning without replanting for six years, if properly cultivated, and, as it is never injured by frost, blooms and perfects seed. Bees can be successfully kept, on account of the mild climate, as they can work all the year. Much wild honey has been taken from trees, which is a proof of their adaptation to this place. Patent hives have not been introduced, or perhaps these old-fashioned bees would not fancy so many apartments in their palaces; but it would, no doubt, be worth the experiment to try them. Bee-gums made from a hollow log, set flat on the ground, are principally in use. A good swarm is said to yield seventy-five pounds of honey in a season. No apiarian societies have been yet established, and very little attention is given to the bee industry in any way. Some planters have twenty-five or fifty colonies. Bee-culture will be introduced as the industry of the country is developed, and the sweet tastes of the people demand it. "When you are asked by the Floridians if you will take "long sweetenin'" or "short sweetenin'" in your coffee, remember the "long sweetenin'" is honey, and the "short" sugar. Let all those who wish to avoid the long, dreary, drizzly days during March and April, in more Northern latitudes, when the warm current of life is almost chilled into frigidity, come to South Florida, and roam by the river-side, or glide across the quiet lakes in light canoes; ply the oar at night, when the bright moonbeams kiss the parting waves, or while the iridescent rays of dancing sunbeams shimmer under the brightness of a tropical sky. It is now the last of February, and the sunny side of nature is beaming upon the oleanders that are bursting their pink petals, while the orange-trees are sending forth fresh leaves that envelop the germs of the far-famed Hesperidean fruit. The wild orange is in bloom, which freights the air with delicious odors, although the fruit is only used for making beverages and marmalade. The banana, which is cultivated as corn is farther North, has commenced putting up fresh shoots, whose leaves are to take the place of those rent in shreds by the rude winds that have spent their fury on this coast during the Northern winters. The air is now soft as a sleeping zephyr on a summer sea, while the earth is covered with a fresh carpet of green, mingled with white and blue violets, the tiny forget-me-not, the wild verbena, the purple and yellow crocus, and other flowers of less humble growth, and more varied hues than can be described, deck the landscape with beauty, gemming the wild woods with loveliness, and filling our hearts with delight. Sounds of melody echo from sunlit bowers, where birds of song flit on airy wings, and the gentle cries of fledglings arouse the maternal instincts to greater exertion. Every settler is busy gathering oranges, which will be ruined if left on the trees when they commence blooming, as the juice is required to perfect the future blooms. Young trees are being transplanted, palmettoes dug out, cows penned for milking, calves caught and marked--as no one can recover the value of a stolen animal not branded. Poets have called the rose "a child of summer." Those rhyme-writers never visited Manatee, where new-born roses open every day, and summer lingers all the year. This vicinity, like most other places, has its historic record of various _data_. It is here the pirates Ambroister and Arbuthnot were captured, and afterward hanged by order of General Jackson. These lands were once the hunting-grounds of Billy Bowlegs, who defeated General Taylor at Ocheechobe Lake, during the Seminole war. When Bowlegs was being taken through the Capitol-building in Washington, he gave only a stupid stare or grunt at all other objects except an oil-painting, where, among other figures, was General Z. Taylor, at which he grinned with a look of satisfaction, exclaiming, "Me whip!" The old chieftain was a great hunter. When expostulated with for hunting game on Sunday, he very promptly replied, "White man have good book to read, and he work on Sunday." From this place Hon. Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of the Confederate States, now Solicitor-general for the Queen of England, made his escape. Here he remained six months under an assumed name, with the pretext of desiring to purchase hummock-lands. During his stay newspapers were shown him by his friends, in which were large rewards offered for his capture; but his protectors scorned treachery for gold. He left Manatee, disguised as a cook, on board a sloop. Before they reached Key West their little craft was overhauled by a United States revenue-cutter. The powerless foe for whom they were searching, not being recognized in his galley disguise, ran the gauntlet in safety. While on his way to Nassau the schooner in which he was sailing, not being able to resist the heavy seas that it had to encounter, sunk, when he was shipwrecked, losing all his personal effects, and was rescued from drowning only by escaping to a small boat, from which he was afterward picked up by an English vessel. He was recently solicited to write an account of his adventures before escaping to Europe, but replied, "It is too soon." In this portion of Florida have been discovered bones of immense size, belonging to an order of animals now extinct--these being fragments of the [Illustration: MASTODON GIGANTICUS.] mammiferous mastodon and megatherium, which furnish material for study that takes us back to the earliest history of the world, before giants lived, or Adam was made out of the red clay, to enter Eden and participate in its primeval glories. When those creatures, that now only excite our wonder, walked the earth, covered with their piles of flesh, moving with majestic tread the uninhabited globe, the sloth was then the size of an ox, the bear as large as a horse. Portions of vertebræ belonging to the mastodon _giganticus_--a race of elephants that lived during the tertiary period--have been discovered here, measuring eleven feet in height, with a body seventeen feet in length, and a huge tail over six feet long. The bones of this animal, when exhumed, were found in marl-pits, or salt-licks containing saline matter, to which may be attributed their remarkable preservation. Their grinding-teeth were adapted to a much coarser article of diet than that consumed by elephants of the present period. They have also been called "the hairy elephant." Was it not the mammoth megatherium that furnished the aborigines with material for pointing their spears and manufacturing their bone implements, the remains of which are now frequently found beneath the _tumuli_ of Florida? The megatherium was a contemporary of the mastodon--a few bones having been exhumed in South Florida; but Skiddaway, on the coast of Georgia, has furnished remains of the most perfect and interesting specimens of this animal ever found in North America, discovered in 1855. This herbivorous creature belonged to an extinct species of sloth, which had ribs measuring more than three inches in width, and teeth nine inches long, its thigh-bones being three times the thickness of those of the largest elephant, with fore-feet one yard in length, a body eighteen feet long, and its massive tail two feet in diameter, which enabled the animal to balance its body while feeding, and also use it as a weapon of defense. The weight of its hind-legs and tail prevented it from somersaulting while cutting down trees with its teeth. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XX. Forty miles from Manatee is to be seen the remains of Tampa. Your morning slumbers will not be interrupted here by the hammers of rude workmen, who are usually so inconsiderate for the comfort of others in their noisy movements. During the Florida war this town boasted more prosperity than at any subsequent period. It was then a military station for the soldiers, and depot for army supplies; also a kind of central point for this portion of the State. Here the Indians were ordered to report before being sent West. Its early settlement was commenced under difficulties by Navaraez, who, in 1828, landed at Tampa Bay, and, after penetrating some portions of the interior, returned and sailed for Cuba, leaving one of his companions--Juan Ortiz--whom the Indians had captured without his knowledge. The extreme youth of Ortiz excited sympathy among the Indian women, who rescued him from being burned, but the men made him feel the bitterness of bondage, until his life became a burden. They required him during their festal-days to run the gauntlet for their amusement, his celerity on these occasions saving him from death. As a variety in his servitude, he was employed to watch through long, wearisome nights in the graveyard. The Indians then buried their dead above ground in boxes, placing only a rock on the lid--the bodies being frequently dragged out by animals. Poor Ortiz had been so miserable while among the living that he now looked to the dead for an amelioration of his condition. Armed with his bow and arrow, he stood as sentry over the silent slumberers, when, unfortunately, one night he sunk into a somnambulistic state himself. The body of an infant was missing, the falling lid awakening him. Ortiz followed in the direction of the retreating footsteps, when he discovered a panther, which he instantly shot, and secured the corpse. For this act of bravery he was taken into favor by the Indians, and soon afterward rescued from their caprices and cruelties by De Soto, who landed in 1539, he having sailed from Cuba. He came with more display of pageantry than America had ever seen before, entering the waters of Tampa Bay on Whitsunday--hence he named it Espiritu Santo. The geography of the country fought against those who tried to penetrate its recesses--passing through morasses below sea-level was accompanied with greater difficulties than they had imagined before trying the experiment. After their arrival, most of their time was spent in feasting and rioting, more becoming a returning triumph than an entrance into a new country. The Indians made a descent on them one night after a bacchanalian revel, wounding three of their number, notwithstanding the heavy armor in which their bodies were incased. De Soto soon left this country in search of other conquests and greater treasures than awaited him here. On account of the remoteness of Tampa from the other early settlements in the State, it was occupied almost entirely by Indians until during the Florida war. Billy Bowlegs was chief of the tribe here, but lived near Manatee. His last visit to the commander was performed under great difficulties, the army head-quarters being in Tampa. He was permitted to remain in the territory, on account of his peaceable inclinations, after his tribe had been ordered to the West. Such was the desire and anxiety of this aged chieftain to see the military commandant face to face, and give him renewed assurances of fidelity to his engagements, in hope of silencing the clamors of white alarmists, a report of which had reached him, that the weight of infirmities under which he was laboring was insufficient to stop him, the journey being performed under circumstances that gave conclusive evidence of his peaceful intentions. So great, indeed, was his decrepitude, that during his last days--being wholly unable to travel, even on horseback--he was borne on a litter on the shoulders of his men. In consideration of the fine timber which surrounds Tampa, two mills are employed--one in sawing cedar, the other pine. The cedar here is of much finer quality than the upland, containing more oil. At the mill it is sawed into pencil-lengths, after which it is packed in boxes, and shipped to New York, and other points, for making pencils. The cabbage-palm grows in the vicinity, and is much used in building wharves--it not being effected by the sea-water, and resisting the attacks of the _Teredo Navalis_, which destroys the hulls of vessels when made of any other timber but this, which it never molests. The schools here are not considered by many as important institutions, consequently are in rather an embryo condition. We visited one taught in the court-house. This structure, not unlike many others in the vicinity, is among the things that lack symmetry and sound timbers. The present incumbent in charge of this school is a genuine specimen of the Illinois backwoods race. His visage looked blank as the door before which he sat chewing the Virginia weed, and firing jets of juice, evidently making a bigger effort with his jaws than his brains. His pupils were undergoing a heavy cramming process. Meaningless, incomprehensible words were being wedged into their heads so tightly they never could be got out, either for use or ornament. How those bright-eyed little boys were martyring auxiliary perfect passive participles and verbs! One fact was evident: if they had a better auxiliary to instruct them, they would have a more luxuriant growth of intellect than they were obtaining under the present regimen. We do not take leave of this place as of a dear friend. Its deep sandy sidewalks are any thing but inviting for promenaders. The decaying structures and dilapidated fences remind us of old age, "when the keepers of the house shall tremble." The place looks discouraged from sheer weariness in trying to be a town. The hotel-keepers are wishing for a few guests which they could relieve of three dollars _per diem_. The merchants appear anxious, as though they wanted somebody to come and make purchases. They are of that class which look at everybody with an eye to business, wondering how much money they can grind out of each customer in a given space of time. Old Tampa, many years ago, was considered a famous resort for consumptives. Persons advanced in life, from all parts, now speak in glowing terms of the uniform temperature of its atmosphere. But indifferent houses of entertainment, charging exorbitant rates, will soon ruin the popularity of any place. Fort Brooke, of Indian fame, is found here. It was originally designed as a means of defense during the Florida wars. It is now a desolate, tumble-down old place. The fine site it occupies, together with some ancient-looking water-oaks, standing like sentinels, is all that is to be seen in the least degree attractive. The Federal Government has been paying eighteen hundred dollars per annum to keep the place from being destroyed, while no one would be willing to make an investment of that amount for the entire contents, land and all. When Coacoochee was captured the last time, he was brought to Tampa. General Worth, on receiving the information that Wild Cat was a prisoner, visited him, with a number of his officers, for the purpose of an interview. The general, with his staff, appeared in full uniform, that the scene might not be lacking in pageant. They met upon the deck of the vessel, and, taking the chief by the hand, General Worth spoke as follows: "Coacoochee, I take you by the hand as a warrior and a brave man. You love your home as we do; it is sacred to you; the ashes of your countrymen are dear to you and the Seminole. These feelings have caused much bloodshed, distress, and horrid murders: it is time now the Indian felt the power of the white man. Like the oak, you may bear up for many years against the strong winds, but the time comes when it must fall--it has now arrived. You have withstood the blasts of five winters, and the storms of thunder, and lightning, and wind, for five summers; the branches have fallen, and the tree burnt at the roots is prostrate. Coacoochee, I am your friend; so is your Great Father at Washington. What I say to you is true. My tongue is not forked like a snake's. My word is for the happiness of the red man. You are a great warrior; the Indians throughout the country look to you as a leader; by your counsels they have been governed. Much innocent blood has been shed. You have made the ground and your hands red with the blood of innocent women and children. This war must end now, and you are the man to do it. I sent for you, that through the exertions of yourself and your men you might induce your entire band to emigrate. I wish you to state how many days it will take to effect an interview with the Indians in the woods. You can select three or five of these men to carry your talk: name the time, it shall be granted. But I tell you, as I wish your friends told, that unless they fulfill your demands, yourself and these warriors now seated before us shall be hung to the yards of this vessel when the sun sets on the appointed day, with the irons upon your hands and feet. I tell you this, that we may well understand each other. I do not wish to frighten you; you are too brave a man for that; but I say what I mean, and I will do it. It is for the benefit of the white and red man. _The war must end, and you must end it!_" A profound silence pervaded the company after the general ceased speaking, when Coacoochee arose and replied in a feeling tone: "I was once a boy; then I saw the pale face afar off. I hunted in these woods first with a bow and arrow, then with a rifle. I saw the white man, and was told he was my enemy. I could not shoot him as a wolf or bear; yet, like these, he came upon me: horses, cattle, and fields, he took from me. He said he was my friend; he abused our women and children, and then told us to leave the land. Still he gave me his hand in friendship; we took it; while taking it he had a snake in the other; his tongue was forked; he lied and stung us. I asked but for a small piece of these lands--enough to plant and live upon, far south--a spot where I could place the ashes of my kindred, a spot only sufficient where I could lay my wife and child. This was not granted me. I was put in prison; I escaped. I have been again taken; you have brought me back; I am here; I feel the irons in my heart. I have listened to your talk. You and your officers have taken us by the hand in friendship. I thank you for bringing me back. I can now see my warriors, my women and children; the Great Spirit thanks you--the heart of the poor Indian thanks you. We know but little; we have no books which tell us all things, but we have the Great Spirit, moon and stars--these told me last night you would be our friend. I give you my word; it is the word of a warrior, a chief, a brave; it is the word of Coacoochee. It is true I have fought like a man--so have my warriors--but the whites are too strong for us. I wish now to have my band around me, and go to Arkansas. You say I must end the war! Look at these irons! Can I go to my warriors? Coacoochee chained! No; do not ask me to see them. I never wish to tread upon my land unless I am free. If I can go to them _unchained_, they will follow me in; but I fear they will not obey me when I talk to them in irons. They will say my heart is weak--I am afraid. Could I go free, they will surrender and emigrate." General Worth then informed him that he could not be set at liberty, nor would his irons be removed, until his entire band had surrendered; but that he might select three or five prisoners, who should be liberated and permitted to carry his talk, with a respite of thirty or fifty days, if necessary. "Lastly, I say if the band does not submit to your last wish, the sun, as it goes down on the last day appointed for their appearance, will shine upon your bodies hanging in the wind." Coacoochee selected five of his warriors to carry this message to his band, making the following appeal to them: "My feet are chained, but the head and heart of Coacoochee reaches you. The great white chief will be kind to us. He says when my band comes in I shall again walk my land free with them around me. He has given you forty days to do this business in; if you want more, say so--I will ask for more; if not, be true to the time. Take these sticks; here are thirty-nine--one for each day; this, much larger than the rest, with blood upon it, is the fortieth. When the others are thrown away, and this only remains, say to my people that with the setting sun Coacoochee hangs like a dog, with none but white men to hear his last words. Come, then, come by the stars, as I have led you to battle. Come, for the voice of Coacoochee speaks to you." The five Indians selected were started on their mission, accompanied by old Micco. Before the month expired, seventy-eight warriors, sixty-four women, and forty-seven children were brought in. Coacoochee was relieved when told his band had arrived. "Take off my irons," said he, "that I may once more meet my warriors like a man." Upon the removal of his irons, he gave one wild whoop, and rushed on shore. "The rifle is hid," said he, "and the white and red man are friends. I have given my word for you; then let my word be true. I am done." The appeal of General Worth to the vanity of Coacoochee was more efficient in closing the war than all other moves from its commencement. Wild Cat was more cunning than brave--strategic than bold and daring; but a vulnerable chord had been struck, and he responded with apparent alacrity. Many Seminole Indians were shipped from here to the West at the close of the war. The following anecdote is related of Wild Cat after he left Fort Brooke, to be banished forever from his home in Florida: The steamer James Adams encountered rough weather as soon as she was outside the bay. The waves of the sea rose to a great height, the steamer labored much, and four feet of water was reported in her hold. Every thing that was on deck was cut loose and cast into the sea. The faces of the crew became paler than usual. Wild Cat was on deck, an attentive observer of the increasing consternation of the white men, when suddenly he accosted the officer in these words: "Be not afraid. The Great Spirit will not suffer me to die with the pale faces in the manner you now apprehend. Tell me from what quarter you wish the wind to blow, in order that the big water may become quiet and the fire-canoe paddle on." The officer, although attaching little importance to what the chief said, complied with his request to keep him quiet. He was taken to the binnacle and shown the compass, by which means he was made to understand from what quarter the wind must blow in order to produce a calmer sea. Thereupon, Wild Cat commenced making signs in the air, and other demonstrations. Fifteen or twenty minutes elapsed, when, to the astonishment of all the whites, the storm abated, the winds hushed and almost lulled. The exertions of the crew stopped the leaks, and enabled the boat to proceed in safety. We do not ask you to believe in the power of Wild Cat to control the elements; but this anecdote shows at least self-possession, and the desire of distinction, and reverence for the Great Spirit, to be prominent traits in the savage character, where others would only think of the peril before their eyes. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXI. Meantime the steady wind serenely blew, And fast and falcon-like the vessel flew. Does any one know what a sailing-voyage, in a coasting-vessel, from Tampa to Key West--a distance of two hundred and fifty miles--implies? Some may suppose it to be a kind of flying motion through the air, or skimming swiftly over the waters, like a sea-gull in rough weather; but those who have tried the experiment find it quite the reverse. It means a little good sailing, an occasional fine breeze thrown in, with many disagreeable things to be encountered and forgotten as soon as possible. For instance, the first night after leaving, under favorable appearances, the wind dies out, the mainsail hangs flabby as a beggar's rags in a thunder-shower; the sailors lower the canvas, put out the anchor, and all retire. Numerous drum-fish select the hull of the vessel as their camping-ground, where they serenade us all night with a peculiar drumming noise, while the loon from the shore catches the refrain, and utters its unearthly screams, which disturb our repose, mingling with dreams of hideous mien. The mattress is hard as Pharaoh's heart. Bilge-water keeps the cabin supplied with an odor resembling sulphur-spring surroundings. Fleas enter the list of perplexities, to draw rations from our perishable nature, run races, and practice acrobatic movements on our bodies, with astonishing facility. Roaches as long as your little finger look at us as if meditating a fierce attack, which, if executed, must result in our annihilation. Three small children lying close by are screaming alternately, from interrupted slumbers, caused by advances from the insect tribe. Their father, who is a Methodist preacher, applies hand-plasters, which silence the batteries temporarily. This will be found a charming place for the exercise of patience, without the fortitude of Job to endure trials. Day dawns, and with it comes breakfast. Strong coffee, seasoned with highly-colored sugar, the mixture stirred with a table-knife, and drunk from a tin cup, together with well-salted meat, fried eggs, and hard-tack, furnish the repast. Unpalatable as this food appears to an epicurean taste, the sailors devour it with a relish, as it gives them strength to endure many hardships. The morning wind is fair, although light, and we are sailing again toward Terrasilla Bay, which is a portion of Tampa, bearing another name. The sugar-crop is waiting for shipment to Key West, and our invoice not being full, we stop for freight. Numerous bars line this bay, where oysters of a delicious flavor, and clams of immense size--some of them weighing three pounds, with the shell--are obtained at low tide without dredging. For the benefit of those lady-passengers who, perchance, may travel this way, and have never been borne in arms since they were children, we can tell you there are no wharves here, no throwing out of planks, no stopping-places for ladies, between water and land. The vessel sails as near the shore as possible without grounding, and then the passengers on board are carried to _terra firma_. This is done by two sailors, who make a kind of seat by clasping their hands together, after which they receive the living freight. You put out each arm, and clasp your improvised sedan around their necks, to keep from falling. Sometimes one of the sailors is as black as tar; but it makes no difference--"civil rights" is not the question at issue now. You cannot wade, or wet your feet, and they will carry you safely, this being a portion of their duties, for which they are paid. Terrasilla Island is one of those charming spots which all admire, but none can describe. The principal inhabitant is Madam Joe, a German lady, celebrated for her hospitality. Here she came, with her husband, after the Florida war, to occupy lands given them by the Government. An adventure of some kind was then of daily occurrence. Nature poured forth her beauties in solitude, and from the dark recesses of the primitive forest-wilderness were echoed and reëchoed the war-whoop of the Indian, the howl of the jaguar, the scream of the catamount, and the threatening growl of old bruin. The rough hands, stalwart frame, and nut-brown face of this lady, indicate a life to which ease and idleness are unknown. Her home is now transformed from a wilderness to a place which recalls our youthful images of fairy-land. Here you constantly feel as though you were having a beautiful dream, which may be dissipated by some external irruption, and the spell broken. How delightful to any one who has a constant warfare with life to keep himself master of the situation is a visit to this beautiful island, where only the winds and waves strive for victory, and the excesses practiced in refined society are unknown! where orange-trees grow as tall as Lombardy poplars, and are laden with fruit hanging in luxuriant loveliness, designed to delight all those who partake. It is now February; new Irish potatoes, tomatoes, with green peas, and egg-plants, are abundant. Fresh flowers are in their bloom and beauty; the earth is enameled with the white petals of the forget-me-not, in lieu of the snow-banks which cover the ground farther North. Roses of immense size are open, together with verbenas of varied hues, geraniums, salvias, periwinkles, and corkwood-trees, all exhaling their fragrance in the open air. Here in this beauteous bower Madam Joe, after her day's duties are done, walks, with the bright moonbeams shining on her pathway, singing those German patriotic melodies so dear to the heart of every wanderer from the historic shores and vine-clad hills of the River Rhine--thus forming a symphony with the ebbing tide of briny waters by which her home is surrounded. A young couple from Alabama are staying here, who have come with the intention of settling. Romance has never written any thing more rural, nor the imagination of a poet conceived thoughts which savor more of poesy, than the real life which they lead. He lost an arm while battling for his country, but his courage has never failed him. With a little assistance he has built a palmetto and pole house, which subserves the purpose of sitting-room and bed-room. The white sand blows in sometimes, during the day, from the beach, falling on the bed, converting the pillows into friction-brushes, and the young wife's temper into an irritated condition. She cooks their food under rustling palms, while he reads to her from some interesting book. She accompanies him in his hunting expeditions, to carry home the game, which is their principal subsistence. Adam and Eve, when first placed in the garden of Eden, were not less solicitous for a support than this couple appear in their rustic home. The land bordering on Sarasota Bay contains some portions of country as uncivilized as when the savage glided across its green waters, or his voice rang through its uncultured forests. The climate is delightful beyond description--the air "soft as the memory of buried love." Here, in appearance, must be located the Enchanted Isles, where cold, heat, or hunger were unknown, where roamed the white deer, which the red man worshiped as a god, that lived and fed from the delicate mosses, silken as a mermaid's hair, slender and feathery as a pencil of light when it first reaches the earth at the early blush of morn. Some old fogies, who have lived here for many years, express opposition to new settlements being made, and say "it will spile their cattle-range." Stock-raising has been the only money-making employment of the population since they lived here. They are not informed with regard to other branches of industry, or their successful prosecution. Broad acres, with pastures green, on which range the wild herds, have been the standard of their wealth heretofore. Persons wishing to settle in a country always inquire about its healthfulness. There exists no malaria, or disease of any kind. The settlers live mostly on the bay, where, from constant evaporation, the waters are more briny than the Atlantic. The land is interspersed with rich hummock, underlying which is a stratum of marl. A great variety of wild fruits are found in the woods, the principal kinds being the fox-grape, octagonal cactus that produces a delicious fruit, tamarinds, sugar-apples, poporea, and sea-grape--all indigenous. The Lima bean bears during the entire year. The pine-apple culture has proved a success. The _Palma Christi_ and bird-pepper grow into perennial plants, living and producing many years. The change of seasons in South Florida is imperceptible, while in more Northern clinics autumn, with stately tread and Tyrian-dyed train, assumes her sway, bearing fruits of scarlet and gold, that are gathered in haste, for fear the rude blasts will freeze out their luscious, juicy qualities; but here there is no suspense of vegetation. Many times during the winter months a soft haze, accompanied by a more tender and less glaring light, over-spreads the land and sea, when the sun shines as it shines in the Northern Indian summer. It is during these halcyon days, when nature appears transfigured for a time into an abode fit for angels, that we love to sit and muse upon this lovely scene, with feelings too sacred for confidants, too pure for earth. Many tourists, in traveling, expect all their schemes to roll on electric wheels, without rocks or ruts in the roads, or any hilly eminences to impede them; but we must all remember that patience is a plant which flourishes in a pure atmosphere, with its petals fanned by the breath of heaven, while its roots are nourished by the great moral principles that radiate from a pure heart. As the motive-power that takes visitors through and about this country bears no resemblance to a "lightning express," many exclamations are made by those who have to endure these irregularities incident to a new country that would read badly in print. Off the shore of Sarasota Bay fishing-smacks are engaged at all seasons in obtaining supplies for the Havana market. These little vessels contain a well where the water can be changed, and the fish kept alive until sold. The most delicious fish of all found in these waters is the pompano, which resembles the California salmon, both in color and flavor. It is only taken at night by striking with a harpoon. In some portions of the bay the finest oysters grow that are found on any coast. Mangrove-thickets also abound, which in some places form an almost impassable barrier to navigation. This tree resembles the banyan of India, in throwing out stolons, besides the leaf-bearing limbs, that incline downward, thus taking root, and producing other plants, which grow into trees. They are only natives of a tropical shore, where they root in the mud and form a dense thicket to the verge of the ocean. Oyster-shells and sea-urchins attach themselves, hanging in clusters, which form an unapproachable defense. New settlers are frequently found here, living in palmetto-houses. Think of a family composed of ten persons staying in a house made of leaves, with a finely surf-beaten shell-floor, the whole structure nearly fifty feet long, twelve feet high, divided into rooms by pieces of sail-cloth, the roof impervious to water, and no rude winds to blow on them. We have wandered far to find the home of contentment, and here it dwells. How heartily they all eat fish, clams, and oysters! How soundly they sleep on their mossy beds! How happy they appear, building boats or cultivating their lands! How merry they whistle when starting out to fish, or strike in their little canoes! They look exceedingly picturesque gliding about with their torches in the bow of the boat, resembling _ignes-fatui_ more than tangible substance. When they approach the shore the hogs, dogs, and cats all run to meet them, knowing their supplies are coming. Hogs are fattened on fish, and penned a month before killing, when they are given other food to prevent the meat having a fishy flavor. Here conchologists, and persons fond of shell-hunting, can be gratified. After you pass the keys which abound in this bay, you come to a wide beach of snowy whiteness, formed from the _débris_ of shells and coral, worn by the waves which open to the Gulf of Mexico. There is no place in Florida which has such a variety of rare and beautiful shells. Here are also numerous layers of rock, extending into the water, very nearly resembling the St. Augustine coquina, which is used in building chimneys, also house-foundations. All visitors that come to Florida, who are not confirmed invalids, have their hobby, or favorite amusement, with which they propose to be entertained during their stay. Some love to fish, and require choice morsels to tempt their prey. No rivulet, however remote, if a minnow moves in its sluggish waters, is proof against their explorations. The crabs are pulled out with a celerity that astonishes their crustaceous lordships. The sea-fiddlers cannot come from their holes for a quiet dance on the beach without being jerked up to a tune they never heard before. These are all used for bait, which delights the silly fish very much, until he finds himself a captive in an element which relieves him of vitality. Others are fond of capturing alligators, and many an unfortunate animal is found lying on his back, with his teeth drawn out, his head cut off, and skin missing. The deer-hunter is in for his share of amusement: he loves to camp at night, and, when he can "shine the eyes" of the unsuspecting animal, send a bullet with unfailing certainty through his head. The most indefatigable, persistent, unrelenting, and unyielding, to any obstacle, is the naturalist. No mire or mud, filled with shapes however monstrous or ugly, is proof against his encroachments. The eagle in her eyrie, with a nest built on the tallest pines, is reached with ropes, the young eaglets captured, to be cut in pieces, their wings measured from tip to tip, feathers counted, and bodies embalmed. Mr. and Mrs. Snake have no privileges, except in their dens, but that of being gobbled up in a very unceremonious manner, their striped hides taken off and stuffed, then carried to the Smithsonian, or some other museum of less celebrity. The ugliest and most repulsive-looking worms have no chance to measure their length outside their dark places of repose with the prospect of ever returning. No butterfly, if discovered, is permitted to pass through its transitions in freedom, for oftentimes, before its wings are spread to the breeze, it becomes a helpless, hopeless prisoner, where in its captivity it can metamorphose much as it pleases, and then yield its life a sacrifice to science. The bugs, with their various shapes and sizes, cannot try the strength of their wings, or compare their green, velvety jackets, with their more plainly-dressed neighbors, without being seized like culprits, and pinned to pasteboard. Sailing and stopping, how care is lightened of its burden in the life we are now pursuing! There is nothing expected of us, but we are anticipating a great deal of pleasure from the trip. We are now landing at Egmont Key, which is an insular domain--a kingdom bounded by deep waters--a residence among turtles and birds of varied notes. This island is five miles in circumference, and seven from the mainland, commanding the entrance to Tampa Bay. Latitude--north, 27° 36´; longitude--west from Greenwich, 82° 45´. A light-house was erected upon this island in 1848. It is built of brick, and is eighty-six feet above sea-level--lens of the fourth order--the light being a fixture, visible twelve miles. The high tower looks as though it was trying to reach the sky, which overhangs its solitary turret. In this retired spot the ocean-birds resort to build their nests, or rest their pinions for longer flights; and the turtle comes to deposit her eggs, to be fostered by sunbeams, and afterward caressed in emerald waves, when their maternal shells are broken. Here the most frequent sounds are from sighing waves and heavy seas; but, when the weather is calm, feathered songsters of varied notes come from their coverts of safety to sing songs of joy. Naturalists from every State visit this point--among the number the late lamented Professor Agassiz ranked as the most distinguished. Among the many marines with whose habits we have become conversant, the hermit-crab, also called the soldier-crab, appears the most peculiar. At low tide we saw a large mollusk-shell traveling toward the shore, and wondered why such unaccustomed speed in its movements. We soon discovered crab-claws projecting from its shell, and recognized it as a hermit-crab, an original freebooter. How strangely he looked, with his confiscated house on his back, moving about like a sailor in his boat, using his claws for oars! When the shell he is occupying gets too small for him, like a land-liver he goes house-hunting. If he finds one tenanted which will answer his purpose, he pulls out the occupant with as little ceremony as a fellow-man kicks his drunken brother into the street. He then darts into the shell with great speed, leaving his companion, bruised and homeless, to die at his leisure, or secure another, if he is able. In this favored spot the eagle teaches her eaglets to face the sun and soar from sight, while the seagulls flap their wings in silence, the cormorant gorges himself to gluttony, and the pelican takes on her cargo of fish, which she carries to a platform raised in front of her nest, that the fledglings may draw their rations without leaving their downy beds, where they remain until they are grown. [Illustration: A FISH-HAWK FORAGING FROM A PELICAN.] Rare sea-shells are found on this beach, and rarer birds; but the rarest of all that is seen on this island is the light-house-keeper, Captain Coons, who is a Spiritualist, a curiosity, a mixture of singularities combined, an enigma of the human species. His presence reminds one of a moving panorama, or kaleidoscope, with a great variety of coloring and adaptations, always changing, and designed to please the crowd before which it is placed. He has much versatility of talent--can scrape almost any old-fashioned tune out of catgut, blow plaintive notes from a flute, and draw "Yankee Doodle" from that unclassic instrument upon which we never read of David the son of Jesse having performed--an accordion. Spirits of persons that have been drowned in the vast deep are said to visit this island more than others: perhaps the proximity favors their coming; and sailors, never remarkable for their piety, while wandering in darkness, and weary of the gnashing teeth in their unhappy abodes, if they do come, it is only seeking rest. This point is the best for spiritual circles that could be imagined--no affinities that are inharmonious to come in, and prevent those mystic rappers which have been promising to benefit the world so wonderfully for more than twenty years, but never, as yet, developed any important truths. The united family live here. The spirits have revealed to the husband that in another world "they will be married, as in this." He says "he never wants another wife but the one he has got." His well-chosen consort has lost nearly all her teeth, and the spirits which she has interviewed on the subject of dentistry have promised her a "new set" when she commences her spiritual life. If all the toothless people in the world were to wait for a new supply of grinders until they arrived in another world, the dentists would soon starve out in this. No part of the world furnishes a greater variety of the finny tribe than this coast, and fisheries are being established in the vicinity. Sharks, sixteen or eighteen feet in length, make their appearance in company with devil-fish of enormous size. Jew-fish, weighing three or four hundred pounds, together with tarpons of one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds, are quite common. Schools of mullet swarm in these waters, constituting an article of commerce. Green and loggerhead turtle are taken, and form a lucrative traffic. An old Spanish sailor on duty tells us he can remember when the buccaneers landed on this island with their stolen goods and secreted them. This class of people were descended from the French, and subsisted upon a kind of smoked meat called boucan, from which they derived their name. These buccaneers assumed martial names, known only among themselves. Their clothing was of a most repulsive character, consisting of a filthy shirt, colored with the blood of animals they had killed, belted with a leather-thong over trousers to match, while hung to their belts were Dutch knives and a saber; a brimless hat and hog-skin shoes completed their toilet. They never attacked vessels on their way to America, but on their return, grappling the largest and firing into their port-holes with such accuracy the gunners were unable to return the fire. They cherished a great antipathy to the Spaniards, because they had captured the portion of country from them that they claimed. They were a terror to all commercial enterprises in the Spanish Colonies, also crippling the agricultural prospects. Jean Lafitte, their leader, died at Appalachicola, where his body lay in state several days, when it was visited by many people from long distances. The breeze is now freshening a little: raise the foresail, mainsail, and jib, when we are moving at the rapid rate of a mile in two hours. Even in midwinter, at noonday, the merry sunshine comes beaming down in this latitude with intense fervor. Finally a dead calm ensues, and we are prisoners on the high seas. The zephyrs are nooning in their sylvan bowers, while the heat has to be endured peaceably as possible--like all other things, it terminates. The great orb of day has performed his duty well--resembling a successful conqueror, he descends triumphantly, in his chariot of fire, beneath the briny waves--a golden train of glory is left behind him, while the charming blue sky and sunset are mirrored upon the sea, each alternate wave being a reflection from the sunbeams. Poets may sing, "Beautiful isles of the sea," but before they had spent much time in this desolate spot, it would be, "Lonely isles of the sea, when shall I be where the face of human beings will gladden my heart, and the smiles of friendship beam upon my pathway again?" We are hopeful yet, as Boca Grande is reached--the entrance to Charlotte Harbor--then Point Blanco, afterward Point Kautivo, where a poor preacher was captured and murdered for money. Now we are sailing through seas once the hiding-place of pirates, where much gold is said to be buried which was captured from a frigate on her passage to France. One of these numerous islands is now the residence of a professional privateer in by-gone days, but who has since returned to private life, pursuing a civilized vocation. On another island in the vicinity lived Felippe, a Spaniard, with his three Indian wives. After the close of the last Seminole war, when orders were issued by the Federal Government for the savages to leave Florida, his wives, belonging to the tribe, were included in the edict. The Federal officers induced Felippe to leave home, that they might rob him of his concubines and fourteen children. After his departure all were more easily persuaded than Polly, his last love, whom he had seduced from an Indian guide. However, after much persuasion, she was reconciled by a purse being made up for her benefit. When Felippe returned he was perfectly inconsolable for the loss of his wives and children, and, on being informed Polly was prevailed upon to go by giving her money, he replied, "O Polly go to hell for money!" Punta Rassa, our landing-place now, is situated over one hundred miles from Key West, and twenty-two miles from Fort Myres, opposite Synabel Island. The waters of the gulf here, being confined in a small compass, rush with fearful rapidity during a gale. The Federal Post was destroyed in 1844. From this point also were collected and shipped, during the Florida war, many of the wives and children of the Seminoles. Here the land part of the International Telegraph Line terminates--the wire leaping from mid-air into the Gulf of Mexico, to remain in old Neptune's bed, undisturbed by winds or waves, and only agitated by the most important events taking place in the world. There is but one house here of any size, built by the Government during the late war for commissary stores, and now occupied by the telegraph company. The musquitoes are so thick the clerks have an operating-room, partitioned off in the center of the building with thin domestic, containing their apparatus. These insects being of such gigantic proportions, and making such vigorous moves, netting would offer no obstruction to their blood-thirsty operations. They can jump through an ordinary net as easily as a frog breaks a spider-web. Here is a signal-station, the agent stopping in a tent. All that induces any of the operators to remain is the high wages they receive, which compensates them in a manner for the deprivations they suffer in the loss of society. From this point large quantities of cattle are annually shipped to Cuba, the facilities for loading being superior to any on the coast. CHAPTER XXII. The sun now rose upon the right-- Out of the sea came he, Still hid in mist, and on the left Went down into the sea. We have been sailing near land since we left Tampa Bay, but now we are in water sixty fathoms deep, and past wading or swimming out, let what will happen to us. We leave Ten Thousand Islands and Cape Roman without landing, as they are uninhabited, and so lonely it seems God alone visits them. A night on the water alone with God and the stars, who can describe it? The sun has left his sentinel, Venus, soon to descend, with her evening charms, after delighting her admirers only a short while. The atmosphere at sea being so pure, this planet looks as though it had silver steps leading to its portals, upon which fancy might climb without wings, or the Muses catch inspiration without effort. What a grand sight to watch those far-off worlds, as they silently rise before our unobstructed vision, gemming the canopy of heaven with their grand glories for a few hours, and then retiring, while others take their places to dispel the darkness with their continuous rays! We read of golden waves, and silver waves, but phosphorescent waves exceed all. When the salt-waters of the Gulf are much agitated, and the vessel plows the "breaking foam," it appears surrounded with a sea of most brilliantly-lighted waves, extending far as the agitation reaches. The lead and line, when dropped in the water, is followed by a flash resembling electricity from the clouds. The luminous particles which compose this light are found floating in the water when it is dipped up in buckets, and adheres to the sides of any vessel in which the water is placed. It is produced from a species of animalcule called _arethusa plegica_, and when collected in large masses resembles flashes from an electric body, or balls of fire. Sailors regard the passing of these lights under the hull as ominous of adverse winds, and danger of being swamped from heavy seas. We are nearing Sand Key Light, seven miles from Key West, and sixty from Cape Sable. From Punta Rassa to this place nothing breaks the monotony of our movements but the sea-monsters darting under and around our vessel--sometimes a whale, spouting water; a dolphin, playing hide and seek with his companions--all enjoying the freedom of their native element near the surface, as though the great luminary and smooth waters had charms for these voiceless denizens of the deep as well as ourselves. Here we see the Southern Cross just above the horizon, although many suppose it visible only south of the equator. The principal stars composing it are very bright and unmistakable as the constellation of Ursa Major. The coral formations in these waters are what make sailing dangerous and shipwrecks frequent. Many a vessel in sight of port, with golden prospects before them when they should anchor in the harbor, and reap a rich reward for their toil, has sunk or stranded here, and then been robbed by men unsympathizing as Hottentots. The early records of Key West say that it was inhabited by a different tribe of Indians from those on the mainland, in evidence of which human bones of a larger size than those belonging to the present race of red men have been discovered here in ancient fortifications and mounds. The Indians living on these islands and along the coast visited the mainland for the purpose of hunting, when a dispute arose between them, which resulted in war. The Indians on the mainland, being the most numerous, pursued those from the islands, until they were obliged to take refuge on Key West. Here they were compelled to make a stand, where they had a battle which nearly exterminated them--a few only escaping to Cuba in boats, and it is said were seen there during the early settlement of the island. As the conquerors did not remain to bury their enemies, the ground was strewn with bones; hence the Spanish name _Cayo Hueso_, rendered by the Americans Key West. It is called the "Gem of the Sea," and distant from Cuba ninety-seven miles--latitude, 24° 32´ north. The lands are of coral formation, consequently very sterile, although presenting a verdant appearance, caused by artificial fertilizers. Tropical fruits grow the entire year without interruption. Here we find the sugar-apple, alligator-pear, sapodilla-guava, limes, lemons, tamarinds, bananas, and plantain--the cocoa-nut tree, with her tessellated leaves, fanned by the breath of eternal spring-time, and ripening its refreshing fruits to nourish the thirsty residents, who would languish were they not supplied with the juices from fruits. The cocoa sheds its fruit when ripe, endangering the heads of those passing. Parents having children who play under the trees are constantly uneasy, as a full-grown cocoa-nut, falling forty feet, would nearly annihilate a child. They are gathered by means of long poles, attached to the end of which is an iron hook--sometimes with ladders and ropes. To a person who has never visited this island it is almost impossible to imagine that only sixty-five miles from the mainland of Florida is a city so nearly in appearance resembling the Spanish dominions of the Old World--where hardly a sentence of English is heard, business transactions conducted in a foreign language, produce bought and sold, together with fruits from the adjacent islands cried in Spanish by the auctioneers. The wharf is a busy place. Here are vessels from various ports, with the ensigns of different nationalities--schooners, ships, and steamers, carrying from ten tons to many thousand, loaded principally with provisions and lumber. The chief of the Seminoles is among the traders, from his Everglade home, inhabited by the deer, which leaves its "delicate foot-prints" on the margin of the streams, or the "slow-paced bear," which drinks and then leaps across the lagoons in search of prey, or to be captured by his savage enemies. Tiger Tail has come to market with sweet potatoes, pumpkins, cabbages, venison, honey, and buckskins. The honey is in one of nature's own receptacles--a deer skin, taken from the animal whole, one of the fore-legs being used as a mouth for this natural bottle, containing the captured sweets. He does not cultivate the soil in person. His wives, together with his two negro women, who have never heard of the "Emancipation Act," raise the vegetables, while he and his warriors engage in combat with the untamed beasts that roam in their native wilds, or wage destruction upon the finny inhabitants of the dark, sluggish waters. The population of Key West numbers seven or eight thousand. The streets indicate a populous place--the number of inhabitants having been greatly increased since the insurrectionary movements in Cuba. Cleanliness is a prevailing characteristic of the streets, there being no deposits of _débris_ permitted. As there are few vehicles, and no sidewalks, pedestrians use the center of the street for promenading. The ladies do not wear covering for their heads, except a few, who use thin black lace veils: all wear their dresses trailing a long distance behind them, presenting a most _dolce far niente_ appearance walking about in the golden sunlight, fearless of its burning rays as the eagle which gazes upon its dazzling splendors. Many new houses are in process of erection upon the island, and the march of improvement is making rapid strides among the vacant lots. The architectural style of these buildings is adapted only to the necessities of a tropical clime--a shelter from the heat and rain. They have no chimneys, consequently no bright, cheerful firesides, with their fanciful shapes described in the curling smoke, leaping flames, or expiring coals, about which poets love to write and dream. Conchs were the original English settlers of this place, who came here from New Providence and the adjacent islands of the Bahama group. "Conch" is not, as many suppose, a term of contempt, but a local distinction. When the first regiment of colonial militia was organized at Nassau, they adopted the figure of a coach-shell in gold, with a blue field, for their regimental colors, thereby declaring the protection of their natural position; from this the term is applied more particularly to those from that city. They are a temperate, frugal, industrious class of persons, accustomed for generations to procuring a living from the sea; but many of them on this island have turned their talents in other directions, controlling a large part of the commercial business of the place. The greater portion of them are engaged in wrecking, sponging, or fishing for the Havana market, many owning fine vessels, and being men of respectability, although belonging to those classes whose names, to one not acquainted with them, appear an equivalent to buccaneers or pirates. Wrecking was conducted for many years at Key West in a most ungenerous manner, with the old adage, "Freight is the mother of wages." Wholesome laws have since been enacted for the protection of the unfortunate owners who are stranded; also for compensation of wreckers who come to the rescue. Many of these accidents occurred from preconcerted action between the sailing-master and the wreckers, or carelessness in crossing the reefs, together with the changing currents. Now, a forfeiture of license for frauds in accounting for goods, embezzling, or bad sailing, has produced a stringency which precludes dishonesty. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida holds its sessions here, and is constantly open for the adjudication of cases in Admiralty. Scarcely a week passes but its services are called for in deciding the claims of some salvor against property which has been rescued from peril. Over seven hundred cases in Admiralty have been heard and decided within the last year. Judge Locke, who wears the ermine gracefully, is the presiding official in these courts, dealing out justice according to the judicial requirements of the applicants. The International Telegraph has its principal head-quarters at this point. Among the many facilities for the union of interests, and the transmission of news, this route is considered the most important. The survey was commenced from Jacksonville to Miami, from Miami to Key West, inside of the reef; afterward from Gainesville to Cape Roman found the route to Punta Rassa the best, following far as known the Washington meridian. The cable from Havana to Punta Rassa _via_ Kev West was laid in August and September, 1867. In 1869 a second was laid. During May, 1871, one of the working cables failed between Key West and Havana. In attempting to pick up the end in five hundred fathoms of water, they caught the working cable and broke it, after which the International Company had a dispatch-steamer running regularly, carrying messages to and from Havana. Several efforts have been made to pick up and repair the broken cable, spending over $150,000 without success. A new cable now, however, obviates all difficulties. This connects the United States with Cuba, running to all the West India Islands. There are also other cables laid along the south coast, by which means the United States Government communicates with its vessels of war and consular agents in the West Indies, also Spain and the colonies. The "Conchs" heretofore have not been interested in general education; but recently a desire for the knowledge of something besides reefs, keys, sponges, and turtles, has rapidly increased, while general intelligence and "book-learning" are now considered as among the essential requisites. The public-school system has been introduced with excellent results, and two flourishing schools are continued for ten months each year, where the common and higher English branches are taught, and Latin. There are other schools of lower grades, besides several private schools, and the Sisters of Mary and Joseph. Cigar-making is extensively carried on in Key West, thus giving employment to hundreds of exiled Cubans. The establishment of Seidenberg & Co. is the largest in the city, employing six hundred operatives. Upon the first floor are seated eighty females, engaged in stripping tobacco from the stems. Here mother and daughter work side by side, the daughter earning five dollars per week on account of her more nimble fingers, and the mother three. The daughter puffs a delicate cigarette, while the mother smokes a huge cigar, it being considered a disgrace for the young ladies to use--only cigarettes. Two hundred and fifty men are occupied in one room upon the second floor, all forming those cylindrical tubes through which is to be drawn so much enjoyment in the present, while a perfect _abandon_ of all anxiety for the future is felt. These operatives employ a reader, who reads aloud from newspapers printed in Spanish, while they are working, for which luxury each one bears his proportion of the expense. When any news favoring the cause of the insurgents is read, the house echoes with shouting and stamping of feet. The remaining laborers are employed in assorting and packing the cigars for market. Only the choicest tobacco is used in this factory--each first-class cigar made here being warranted equal to any Havana brand. Thirty-five thousand cigars are manufactured daily, consuming thirty thousand pounds of tobacco monthly. The most amusing sight of all is to see these workmen drink water: it is contained in a kind of earthenware vessel which they call a "monkey-jug," made from a porous earth obtained in Cuba, and shaped something like our American gallon-jug, only the orifice is on the side. These jugs are suspended by a cord in some cool place, where the air circulates most freely, a slight percolation constantly taking place from the water inside. When they drink, the vessel is raised to an angle of twelve degrees above their mouths, and, after setting their heads back on their shoulders, with their months wide open, they turn the water down their throats, without any perceptible act of deglutition. After they have finished drinking, they close their mouths with a peculiar "umph," at the same instant exclaiming "_Ave Maria!_" to indicate the act is finished, and returning thanks to the Virgin for the privilege. The cochineal insect is indigenous here, and is found upon the _Cactus opuntia_. In appearance it resembles a tiny ball of cotton attached to the plant; but, on being pressed, a scarlet fluid exudes, which is the life-blood of the insect, produced by the colored cactus-fruit upon which it feeds. This furnishes the beautiful dye of commerce, for which it yields its life. Sponging is another important branch of industry centering here--the entire coast being composed of reefs and keys. The numerous sounds and inlets abound with sponges of an excellent quality, one class of which has won an established reputation in commerce, being known as the "Florida Sheep's wool." The cheaper qualities are the "Yellow-boat," "Glove," and "Grass"--the last two being the kinds used particularly by the American Sponge Company, very extensively, in the manufacture of upholstery. Many tons of these sponges are shipped annually for that purpose. This product of the sea is found growing in water from ten to twenty-five feet deep. It is detached from the bottom, and brought to the surface by means of iron hooks fastened to long poles. When first found they are solid, and resemble a jelly-fish. They are then thrown on the deck of the vessel until they die, when they are beaten, washed and wrung out, leaving, as it were, but the skeleton of the original article--this constitutes the sponge of commerce. The amount realized from the sale of sponges gathered and sold at this place, yearly, exceeds one hundred thousand dollars, which costs nothing but the labor of gathering, cleaning, drying, and packing. The rough life these people lead does not make them appear as though they had been fed on mountain-dew, or nurtured on the wings of love; however, they are kind-hearted creatures to their friends. Key West being the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, it is well fortified by Fort Taylor, thus using every precautionary measure for its protection. Here stands this fort, with its frowning battlements, upon which are mounted the most formidable artillery used in modern warfare. The construction of this fortress was commenced in 1845, and it now protects an important harbor and naval depot. It is built entirely of brick, with two tiers of casemates, and one in barbette. The most exposed and weaker parts of the walls have been strengthened by making them twelve feet thick--solid masonry--which has prepared it to resist any thing but a continued bombardment. There are now mounted for action one hundred and thirty guns; three three-hundred-pound Parrot, thirty ten-inch Rodman, and two fifteen-inch Rodman guns have been placed in position on the barbette tier, in the form of a trapezoid, with bastions at the four angles. The remaining; guns are of smaller caliber. The defenses have recently been increased by two land-batteries, exterior to the fort, commanding the western and northern approaches. One of these batteries mounts twelve, and the other seventeen, fifteen-inch Rodman guns, with magazine traverses. There are also two towers, with casemated batteries, in which are twelve ten-inch guns, to prevent boats landing. All these works are under the supervision of a most accomplished engineer--Colonel Blount, of the United States Navy. Key West is also fortified with a Curiosity Shop, in the event of an attack from curious people in search of something to gratify their tastes in that direction. The name was adopted from Dickens--the difference being that one existed in the imagination of the writer, and the other is a reality. Here we find the _fac-simile_ of the veritable clock which ticked the hours away, mentioned by Dickens. In appearance, it has size enough to be a "bed by night and clock by day." May it not have the misfortune of its namesake to time the sheriff's entrance, and keep tally to the auctioneer's hammer! Also a pair of andirons, said to have been used by George Washington. Imagine him and Martha in front of these grotesquely-patterned fire-supporters, the general just returned from Yorktown, Virginia, and relating the news of the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis. The sword of General La Fayette graces the rubbish of this curious medley, instead of a brave general's side; pistols a century old; cannon of four-pound caliber, which were used anciently to announce the Fourth of July; flint-lock muskets, of Revolutionary fame; flags that have floated over victories, and surrendered with defeat; silver coin made in 1799; gold coins of 1803, together with coins of all nations and dates, from Julius Cæsar down; Russian signal-lanterns; a model of the steamer Sumter; a bird-cage, Gothic style, containing nearly five thousand pieces; turbot-skins; horned frogs; chicken-spurs, the property of a warrior never beaten; skeletons of sea-horses and sea-cows; sharks' teeth; books two hundred years old; a parrot speaking Spanish; the devil in a bottle, besides a thousand other things too numerous to mention. When you survey all you can see, and don't discover what you want, call for the owner, John Dixon, who is more of a curiosity than any thing his shop contains. He is a genuine Greek, born on an island of Greece. Is it an impossibility that the same crimson current which courses through his veins may not have descended from Solon or Socrates? Perhaps his ancestors might have been among the brave number who opposed Xerxes in his efforts to subjugate Greece--may be a relative of the cynic philosopher, Diogenes, whom he more nearly resembles in his peculiarity of independence and contempt for common things in general, or any thing which is not extremely old or curious. He has for a sign a full-sized ship's figure-head of the Virgin Mary, on which the gilding is much defaced, it having been washed ashore many years since from the wreck of a Spanish ship. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXIII. Soft the shadows slowly creeping Through thy dim and spectral pines; Pure thy lakelets, calmly sleeping, Save a few light rippling lines, When the water-lilies move, And fairies chant their early love. After leaving the St. John's River and traveling westward, we approach what is called Middle Florida, fanned by the gulf breezes, and protected from the northern blasts with heavily-timbered lands. The first town of importance through which we pass is Lake City, fifty-four miles from Jacksonville, this being the county-site of Columbia. This city was named from the beautiful sheets of water by which it is surrounded, where naiads and fairies could come to dwell, and lovers do resort to whisper. These lakes are distinguished by the names of De Soto, Isabella, Hamburg, and Indian. The waters abound in fish, while alligators are daily seen, plunging about in them, as happy persons are rowing in light canoes upon their smooth surfaces. The population numbers about two thousand. It has eight churches of various denominations, a creditable court-house, and three hotels--the Thrasher House being the most agreeable and roomy in every respect. A weekly paper is published here. It is also the terminus of the submarine telegraph, and contains an "old probability" office. The citizens are refined, intelligent, and friendly toward strangers. The architectural style of dwellings in Lake City are more truly Southern summer-residences than any other city in the State. They are built up from the ground, with a wide passage separating the two apartments--the floors being made of pine plank, which the combined efforts of woolly artisans with shucks and sand manage to keep invitingly clean. This style of structure, to an artistic taste accustomed to the modern cottages, dormer-windows, and pigeon-like apartments, covered with slate-roofing, thus converting the upper story into a fiery furnace after a hot day, suggests a kind of rudeness, characteristic of the locality, which is quite the reverse: like the whispering gallery, they are made to catch the slightest agitation in the atmosphere, it being duplicated, within this long receptacle, into a most grateful breeze. However, here, as in other tropical climes, it is observable at noon, each day, that the softest winds are lulled to rest, when a general stagnation steals over every thing, from the house-dog to the tallest pine, with its green plumes kissing the midday sunbeams; but after the day commences to decline, a breeze springs up, which enables us to appreciate its presence and survive better during its absence. The soil in the vicinity is fertile--thus enabling the inhabitants to engage largely in the culture of early vegetables and strawberries, which are shipped North. Oranges weighing a pound are not uncommon. Many invalids find the atmosphere of Middle Florida exceedingly conducive to their comfort, as the temperature is less variable than many other points in the State, and for this reason fine for asthmatics, who say they can sleep all night here, while in most other places day dawns with no perceptible transition into a somnambulic state. The strong scent of resin from the pineries, after we leave Lake City, is quite perceptible, it being a fine lotion for weak lungs. Malaria visits some portions of Middle Florida, where, anterior to the recent immigration, it was almost unknown. This has been the history of all newly-settled countries--the decomposition of much vegetable matter producing chills and fever. West of the Suwanee is usually designated as Middle Florida, it formerly being more densely populated than now, evidence of which is furnished us from the ruins of buildings. For many years a jealousy existed between the settlers of East and Middle Florida, in regard to their landed estates. The commissioners in East Florida were more interested in selling than settling the country--the lands in Middle Florida being considered superior for agricultural purposes, and the titles good, which is more than can be said of all the East Florida lands even now. Some have looked upon this portion of the State as a kind of lottery, the value of which would be realized after the drawing had occurred, while there are those who come to stay, and when they find the visionary ideal dream in which they have indulged is not realized to its fullest extent, then they are ready to say, "We have been inveigled here." These should remember, "There is no spot which combines every desirable characteristic, with the absence of all that is undesirable. It not unfrequently occurs in life, when unhappy spirits, chained in diseased bodies, which cause them to settle into a sullen melancholy, whose presence would discolor the face of all nature, and tinge with a sickly hue the flowers of paradise, or the glories of the eternal throne." After leaving Lake City, the next town of note before Tallahassee is Monticello, one hundred and thirty-eight miles from Jacksonville, situated at the terminus of the Monticello Branch Road, four miles distant from the main line. It is the county-site of Jefferson, surrounded by fertile farming-lands, this being the head-center of traffic for a large extent of country. A population of not quite two thousand inhabitants reside here, with every appearance of content. Good churches of various creeds are well attended when open for service. The former wealth of this county cannot fail to impress visitors who happen here on Saturday, when great numbers of freedmen, formerly owned in this locality, from habit leave their work and come to town for a holiday. They go marching about the streets orderly as a procession, or file into the stores until there is scarcely standing-room, getting on very quietly until late in the day, when some of them, while under the influence of badly-adulterated whisky, become noisy and obstreperous--thus ending their day's frolic in the lock-up. A good hotel is kept here, where bountiful tables, well patronized by appreciative guests, daily attest its merits. [Illustration: MIDDLE FLORIDA MUSICIANS!] After sunset the frogs will be found the most demonstrative inhabitants, at times, on the route to Tallahassee, which, strange as it may seem, almost drown the car-whistle with their croakings--thus reminding us that happiness, with some creatures, is not yet extinct in the world. Probably no place can furnish a greater variety of frogs belonging to the same genera, among which we find the bell-frog, speckled frog, green frog, some of them being nine inches in length, measuring from the tip of the nose to the terminus of the hind-foot toe, which amphibious quadruped, when full grown, will weigh over a pound. The bell-frog is supposed to have been named from the voice, which is fancied to be exactly like a loud cow-bell. The following statement from a naturalist on frogs will give us an idea of his impressions: "The bell-frogs being very numerous, and uttering their voices in companies, or by large districts, when one begins another answers--thus the sound is caught and repeated from one to another a great distance, causing a surprising noise for a few minutes, rising and sinking with the winds, then nearly dying away, or is softly kept up by distant districts--thus the noise is repeated continually, and as one becomes familiarized to it, the sound is not unmusical, though at first, to strangers, it seems clamorous and disgusting." Englishmen sent them home, more than a century since, as Florida curiosities. The following is taken from the record of one's arrival: "The pretty frog came safe and well, being now very brisk. Some more of these innocent creatures would not be amiss. But pray send no more mud-turtles--one is enough. The water-turtle is a pretty species--came very well." Here is what Bartram wrote about our dirt-daubers, which build their nests in the crevices and corners of every neglected tenement: "I have sent you a variety of the clay cells which the singing wasps built last summer, that I consider very curious." All tourists have made Florida a point of scientific research, in various ways, for many years. Far in ether, stars above thee Ever beam with purest light; Birds of richest music love thee, Flowers than Eden's hues more bright; And love, young love, so fresh and fair, Fills with his breath thy gentle air. Tallahassee cannot be pointed out as the place where great literary works first saw the light--such as the Commentaries of Cæsar, or where Cicero rounded his periods, or Horace gave the last polish to his Odes, or Milton conceived the grand idea of his Paradise Lost; but from its choice shrubbery the golden oriole trills its melody, and the mocking-bird warbles in the sky and on the house-tops, or fills the air with song from neighboring trees at night. De Soto, after discovering Espiritu Santo Bay in 1539, came through the country to an Indian village called Auhayca, now the site of Tallahassee--the name signifying "old field "--where, with his army, he spent the winter. While here he secured the services of an Indian guide, who proved to be "a most elaborate liar on various occasions," in regard to gold-mines which only existed in his imagination. The Spanish soldiers accompanying De Soto were encased with armor, which creates a wonder in the minds of all who have seen it, how they were able to march through a country offering so many obstacles, with such an immense weight on their bodies. One winter's sojourn in this locality was sufficient to satisfy De Soto that no treasures could be discovered hidden away in the hills around Tallahassee; consequently, the following spring he left. Tallahassee is situated in the center of the State. The first house erected after the cession of Florida to the United States was in 1824, the Legislature convening there the following winter. In 1825 it became an incorporated town. In January, 1826, the corner-stone of the State-house was laid, and one wing of the building erected during the year. The growth of this town, after its incorporation, equaled any in America. It was situated on an eminence which commanded a fine view of the surrounding country, with picturesque scenery, and on a stream of water fed by bold springs. The State Governor speaks of its early American settlement as a place "where the emigrants crowded, the rising walls of the capitol being the attraction"--"the woods yielding their shade to the saw, and their silence to the hammer"--the vicinity rapidly changing from native forest-land to well-cultured fields. On account of being situated twenty miles from the Gulf, the prospect of its ever becoming an important commercial point for business was not anticipated. The surface of the country around Tallahassee changes from the flat lands of Florida to an elevated and undulating country, and from sand to red clay. A gentleman-passenger who had retired to sleep during the night where the land was level, on awaking in the morning, and noticing the change in the surface of the country, called out to the conductor, "Look here, boss! haven't you got this machine turned around, and taking us back into Georgia?" Persons perusing the following will be enabled to see the material of which Governors' messages were made, in the Executive Department, during the Indian war in Florida: "_Tallahassee_, February, 1840.--Since you have been in session a number of our people--among them a woman and children--have literally been butchered by the Indians, many of whom occupy the swamps and other fastnesses of Florida, from the Appalachicola to the Suwanee, while in East Florida the murder of the mail-carriers within a few miles of St. Augustine, proves how unavailing has been every effort to restrain the enemy in that quarter. Indeed, it would seem that the cruelties of these wild beasts--for so they deserve to be regarded, and their thirst for blood places them beyond the pale of humanity--are becoming more and more audacious, their deeds of horror rather accumulating than diminishing. They venture to assail houses, and appear in our public roads in the open day; they press beyond military posts to perpetrate their murderous purposes, starting up like evil spirits when least expected to appear, destroying the brave, virtuous, and innocent. Their numbers can only be conjectured: it is not doubted that some sent to the West have returned; but be the number great or small, every thicket and deep forest is liable to be occupied by them; they elude pursuit; driving them from one place to another is impracticable, as within the past year they have planted near military posts. Our situation is desperate; men sleep with arms under their pillows; a sense of insecurity accompanies the traveler in his journey on the highway; every neighborhood has its tale of blood, and those in authority look around them in pain and distress, because they are powerless to afford an adequate remedy for the evils thronging around them in every direction. This is no exaggerated picture of our present condition. Romance lags for behind the realities we daily witness, and it becomes our duty to consider what shall be done for the relief of the country. No occasion has yet occurred for testing the usefulness of the dogs brought from Cuba. It is still believed, however, that they may be used with effect; and why should they not be used? If robbers and assassins assail us, may we not defend our property and our lives, even with bloodhounds? Shall we look upon our ruined dwellings--upon the murdered and mangled remains of men, women, and children--then meekly say, 'The poor Indians have done this; we must be merciful and humane to them; we will not set our dogs upon them. O no! that would be more horrible than these butcheries.' Those who are safe from Indian alarms, in distant cities and peaceful lands, may indulge in gentle strains of humanity and brotherly love--were they dwellers in the log-cabins of Florida, they would attune their notes to harsher measures. Let these men, in whose hearts there is such a gush of the milk of human kindness, consider attentively a scene recently exhibited upon the Appalachicola. Mr. Harlan's dwelling was burned, and his family murdered, in the afternoon of the 20th of last January. Mr. H. was absent, and the following is from an eye-witness: 'On arriving at the spot, we found every house reduced to ashes--at the kitchen-door the bones of a human being, nearly consumed. Upon examination, we saw the track of the moccasin. On the trail, not far off, we saw articles of clothing, potatoes, and papers, dropped. Soon afterward about twenty-one armed persons arrived from Iola, among them Mr. Harlan, who in a wretched state of feeling proceeded to examine the burnt bones, believing them to be the remains of his wife and son, whose knife he found amongst them. One of the men, in searching behind a tree about one hundred yards distant, called out, "Come here, Harlan! here is your wife." Joy sprang to my bosom as I ran to see the dead come to life; but there was Mrs. H., with her throat cut, a ball shot through her arm, one in her back, and a fatal shot through her head. Her youngest son, eight years of age, lay near her side, with his skull fractured by a pine-knot. He exhibited signs of life, and I had him carried to a shelter, water given him, and his feet, which were cold, bathed in warm water; slight hopes are entertained of his recovery. Had you witnessed the heart-rending sight--the father embracing and calling his son, "Buddie! Buddie!" with the solemn sound of parental affection, sunk to the lowest ebb of dejection, and then running to his wife, with his arms around her, shrieking, "My wife! my wife!"--I know your feelings would have given way, as mine did. I had heretofore felt a sympathy for these savages, but my mind then assumed a stern fortitude foreign to its nature, and I felt not like leaving an Indian foot to make a track in the desolation they had caused.' Who can witness such atrocities without admitting it to be lawful to use blood-hounds against such hell-hounds? It is my solemn conviction that the only mode of conquering the Indians is to hunt and pursue them, in every direction, with a competent force of brave and hardy men devoted to the service, and generously rewarded by their country for the perils and privations they endure. R. R. REED, _Governor_." "GENUINE BLOOD-HOUNDS.--_Tallahassee_, January, 1840. The blood-hounds, with their twenty leash-men, have arrived from Cuba, and are landed in Tallahassee. They have been tried, and follow a trail with accuracy twenty-four hours old." "_November_, 1840.--On last Monday one more of these animals arrived from Cuba. He is mouse-colored, strong-limbed, and with a nose that could scent the trail of a butterfly. He was whelped and raised in the mountains on one of the sugar-estates, and is known to be of the best pedigree. His propensities for blood are of the highest order, having slain and eaten two negroes entire, besides one-third of his own tail--a mistake which has somewhat marred the beauty of the graceful appendage. Two Indians were caught in the neighborhood of Tallahassee with the blood-hounds. They, no doubt, have not had a fair trial." The poor blood-hounds were ridiculed on every side--read the following: "Seven peace-hounds left Black Creek for the Ocklawaha on Thursday." The whole country at this time was in a state of trepidation; the feelings of the people could not be described; but an order was republished which had been issued during a similar exigence, in the year 1764, by. William Penn: "BOUNTIES ON HEADS.--Whereas the Six Nations of Indians have been at amity with Great Britain, but now, having broken their most solemn treaties," etc., "for the scalps of every male Indian, above the age of ten years, produced as evidence of their having been killed, one hundred and thirty-four pieces of eight, or Spanish dollars. God save the king!" Some amusing incidents are related in connection with the Florida war, as well as those not so very ludicrous. In Tallahassee they were subjected to frequent scares from the Indians. The approach of the foe was to be announced by the ringing of the Planter's Hotel bell, the only one then in the town. This bell was the tocsin for an instant assembling in the market-house of the Home Guards, let the hour be midnight or noonday. These Guards held a convocation every night at 8 o'clock, to receive orders and be detailed for duty--each sentry to stand guard four hours, being at his post by 9 o'clock, and a corporal appointed to go on a tour of inspection, to see if the men on duty were not asleep. Each object that moved or breathed was magnified into a wily Indian. A gentle William-goat could not graze in peace after nightfall without being in danger of receiving a bullet for his temerity. The following incident is the most stupendous scare of the war: Mr. T. Barnard, being on duty one night, saw a dark object approaching, which, from its cautious tread, he was certain could be nothing but the long-looked-for and much-dreaded savage. According to a previous arrangement, the enemy's approach was to be announced by the firing of a gun. He fired, then followed a terrible tramping, which he considered unmistakable evidence of a retreating foe. When day dawned the citizens were in a state of great fear, which was much increased after a moccasin track had been seen marked with blood. Armed men patroled the streets, while women, children, and servants, were rushing, in the wildest confusion, to the State-house, as the only place of safety. When the truth became known, and the facts explained, everybody had a good laugh over their fright. The sentinel, having lost his shoe the night before in his encounter with a goat, returned to search for it, when he saw the track made by himself in the soft sand while in his sock-feet, the impress resembling an Indian moccasin, the ground having been stained by a lame mule in cropping the herbage. Besides the constant state of alarm in which the citizens lived, there were tragic occurrences happening in their midst too true for jesting, and too shocking for sensitive nerves to hear related, without shuddering for their own safety. We find this one, among others, bearing date January 22, 1842: "On Sabbath a band of Indians, supposed to number thirty-five or forty, attacked two wagons loaded with salt, whisky, etc. They stripped the negroes of their clothes, except their shirts, taking every thing from the wagons. Whilst engaged in their work of plunder, Mr. Solomon Mather rode up, when the Indians pursued him, firing five or six times, wounding him slightly in the shoulder. In the meanwhile the negroes put whip to their mules and escaped. This affair took place at the Flat Branch, on the Magnolia Road, about fourteen miles from Tallahassee, near the residence of Mr. J. H. Byrd." The lands lying around Tallahassee evince marks of taste, having been inclosed by the Cherokee rose, which forms a fine hedge, whose evergreen foliage lives all the year, while its snow-white blooms crown it with beauty in their season. The magnolia grandiflora, queen of the forest, with its smooth, glossy, green leaves and immense flowers, grows without culture; while the sickly, dwarfed oleander and cape jasmine, of Northern culture, is used here to shade the avenues of pleasure-grounds. The fine brick residences, of extensive proportions, add testimony in confirmation of its past prosperity. Churches of different denominations, substantially built, speak for the morals of the community, while the kind-hearted people can speak for themselves. The installation of the first Presbyterian minister in Florida took place on the 28th of March, 1841, in Tallahassee. Although many persons have lived here who were, no doubt, celebrated, in their own estimation, yet none of royal blood has ever been traced with certainty but Colonel Napoleon Achilles Murat, whose last residence was about one and a quarter miles from town--the place now being owned by ex-Governor Bloxham. He was a son of Joachin Murat, King of Naples, who was shot in Castle Pizzo for insurrection. When required to meet his doom, a chair was offered him, and a bandage for his eyes, to which he replied, "I have braved death long enough now to face it with my eyes open and standing." Achilles Murat, with his mother, came to America in 1821, settling near Monticello, Florida, naming his plantation Liponia, but afterward retired to Bellevue, near Tallahassee, where he lived several years, with his wife, who was a relative of General Washington. Having witnessed the vanity of pomp and display in his youth, he assumed very little style during the last days of his life. A short time previous to his death, the bishop from Mobile made a visit to Tallahassee, he being apprised of the fact that upon a certain day Colonel Murat would make him a visit, dressed in his robes of State, to receive princely blood, as officers of both Church and State are entitled to a certain amount of consideration, from each other, in keeping with the dignity of their position. The morning advanced until nearly midday, with no appearance of Colonel Murat, when finally a thin, bony old horse, with a thinner, more shadowy old man on his back, was seen approaching the avenue to Dr. Barnard's residence, accompanied by his body-guard, a very black negro named William, who was walking. The colonel was attired in country home-spun, known as brown jean, in Southern vernacular. His hat and shoes both indicated marks of wear, while age had robbed him of all desire for pageant, as the day had dawned when priests and princes were alike, in his estimation. After a long interview with the bishop, Colonel Murat retired to his rural home. Mrs. Murat was much annoyed with the irregularities and eccentricities of his conduct during the last years of his life, which, in common people, would have been termed craziness, but in royalty, or genius, it is relieved with a border, and termed peculiarities, or idiosyncrasies. Many amusing anecdotes are related in regard to the common people who lived near Colonel Murat. Having been informed that a king's son lived not for from them, they often went purposely to see him, relating the object of their mission as soon as they arrived. When they found the colonel dressed in country clothes and cowhide boots, his rustic visitors were unable to discover any apparent marks of royalty, and invariably, after entering his domains, asked to see Prince Murat. On being told that he was the man, they would respond, "Why, you don't look like a king." Colonel Murat died suddenly, April 15, 1847, on his plantation, and was buried near Tallahassee, in the cemetery, without ceremony. His wife survived him several years, living in town. In Leon county, sixteen miles from Tallahassee, Mrs. Mary E. Bryan, one of our best Southern writers, was born. She was the daughter of Major John D. Edwards, one of Florida's first and most honored members of the Legislature. Her father, being a man of wealth, wished every thing in keeping with his position; for this reason he reared a mansion, known as "Castle Folly," on account of its immense size and costly material, the woodwork inside being of solid mahogany, its location almost isolated from all other residences even of humbler pretensions. Her early life was not spent in a wicked city, where the morning papers teemed with sad tales from the depths of depravity, fished up from the slums of vice, which keep high carnival under cover of darkness, hiding their foul forms in the glare of sunlight, and holding their fetid breaths when the dewy freshness of morn wafts its odors on the new-born day; but where the gay pomegranate glistened, with its pendant flaming bells, and the snowy tribute of cape jasmine, loaded with its perfume of overpowering sweetness; while, like a shower of heavenly blessings upon every zephyr, was borne the fragrant treasures from the orange-blooms, gentle as a pure spirit in a holy trance, which leaves our minds in a blissful, dreamy state, as though we were floating in mid-air. Her home was one around which childhood loves to linger, environed by primeval forests, where the placid waters of the land-locked lakes reflected the fitful shadows of the towering pine, or wide-spreading live-oak, where the graceful vine hung in festoons, or the gray, swaying moss hung from its drooping limbs, and danced to the music of the soft-sighing winds, as they swept through the evergreen foliage and died away in the dense thickets. It was when, from one of those crystal lakes, she saw the evening star, as it stole through the gleam of the dying day, reflecting its pale, trembling light alone, that she felt the throbbings of unrest stirring the depths of her soul. In these placid waters the virgin lilies bathed their beautiful heads, while the golden gates of day were closed, and the voices of night whispered themselves to rest on the balmy breezes. Many of her happy girlhood-days were spent in "Salubrity," the home of her aunt, Mrs. Julia McBride, whose many Christian virtues and philanthropic acts still live in the memory of those who knew her. However, the longings of her thirsty soul were never satisfied until she had held communion with the spirits of those whose grand thoughts she found recorded in the volumes of her uncle's library. It was while reading from the pages of classic lore, or the more enchanting strains of poetic rhythm, during the absence of Colonel R. B. Houghton, her mother's brother, that a happiness unknown to coarser clay was realized, and her spirit found repose. Mrs. Bryan is one of those flexible, trusting spirits, equal to any emergency in the struggles of life, which sorrows, however deep, may bend for a time, but, like the flower too much freighted with rain-drops, only bows its head until the sunshine comes with its welcome beams to kiss away the moisture, when its bright petals open, and again it looks heavenward. A presence diffuses itself in all her writings sweet as the perfume by which she was surrounded in her own lovely home, pure as the heavenly-lustered orbs that overshadowed her pathway. At twilight, when Venus, robed in clouds of rosy hue, Flings from her golden urn the vesper dew, she rises on the wings of fancy, and the rich, mellow streams of thought flow freely, buoyed up by visions which shadow no tumultuous cares, or sounds of woe, the fires of genius burning brightly on the altar of thought, as the blazing meteor which, at God's command, guided the wandering Israelites to their promised rest. The versatility of talent she exemplifies so remarkably is really wonderful, while she may be classed among that gifted number who, in spite of prejudice or criticism, fastens the minds of her readers, taking them captive at will. She is now the star of the _Sunny South_, published in Atlanta, Georgia, from whose columns her pure thoughts are sparkling every week, to illumine the home circles of many Southern families. All her writings are characterized by that chaste freshness of originality, that earnestness of feeling, emanating from a truly pure heart, which have been poetically and truthfully described in the following lines: Bryan! hers the words that glisten, Opal gems of sunlit rain! So much the woman, you may listen, Heart-beats pulsing in her brain! About sixteen miles from Tallahassee has been discovered another of those remarkable springs found in Florida. In order to reach it, we take the St. Mark's train, sending a carriage in advance to meet us at Oil Station, six miles from Wakulla Spring. Few objects of interest are seen on the way; but here, where the woodman's ax and the turpentine still are not silencing the sounds that have echoed through the airy forms of these forest-trees, which have stood as sentinels for centuries, we can listen to the music among the pines--a strange, unearthly moaning, vibrating movement of lanceolate leaves, the sound produced being attributable to the loose manner in which they are attached to the bark of their stems. You may as well forbid the mountain-pines To wag their high tops, and to make no noise When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven. The spring is reached at last, where we can feast our eyes with its pearly hues and changing, shimmering waters, dancing in the sunlight. It is about seventy-five yards wide and sixty in length, its greatest depth being one hundred and twenty-five feet. The water is blue limestone, but looks green from reflection, and very cold, said to produce a numbing effect upon those who try bathing in its transparent depths. It is the head-waters of Wakulla River, forming a bold stream at a single bound from its subterranean home. The following description of this spring, by a writer who visited it over a hundred years since, will give the reader a more correct idea than any recently-published articles, although many who visit it now think they have the keys of all knowledge in delineation, and a vast amount of wisdom will cease to illumine the world when their existence is extinguished: "This charming nympheum is the product of primitive nature, not to be imitated, much less equaled, by the united effort of human power and ingenuity. As we approach it by water the mind of the inquiring traveler is previously entertained, and gradually led on to a greater discovery--first, by a view of the sublime dark grove, lifted up on shore by a range or curved chain of hills at a short distance from the lively green verge of the river on the east banks, as we gently descend floating fields of the nymphea in lumbo, with vistas of the live-oak, which cover a bay or cove of the river opposite the circular woodland hills. It is amazing and almost incredible what troops and bands of fish and other watery inhabitants are now in sight, all peaceable, and in what a variety of gay colors and forms, constantly ascending and descending, roving and figuring among one another, yet every tribe associating separately. We now ascended the crystal stream, the current swift; we entered the grand fountain, the expansive circular basin, the source of which rises from under the base of the high woodland hills, near half encircling it, the ebullition being astonishing and continual, though its greatest force or fury intermits regularly for the space of thirty seconds of time--the ebullition is perpendicular, upward, from a vast rugged orifice, through a bed of rocks a great depth below the common surface of the basin, throwing up small particles or pieces of white shells, which subside with the waters at the moment of intermission, gently settling down about the orifice, forming a vast funnel. After those moments when the waters rush upward the surface of the basin is greatly swollen, and then it is impossible to keep the boat, or any other floating vessel, over the fountain; but the ebullition quickly subsides--yet, before the surface becomes quite even, the waters rise again, and so on perpetually. The basin is mostly circular, sending out a constant stream into the river fifteen yards wide, and ten or twelve in depth. The basin and stream are both peopled with prodigious numbers and variety of fish and other animals, as the alligator, manatee, or sea-cow, in the winter season: part of the skeleton of one, which the Indians had killed last winter, lay upon the banks of the spring; the grinding teeth were about an inch in diameter, the ribs eighteen inches in length, and two inches and a half in thickness, bending with a gentle curve--these bones being esteemed equal to ivory. The flesh of this creature is considered wholesome and pleasant food. The hills and groves environing this admirable fountain afford amusing subjects of inquiry." At this time it was called by the Indians Manatee Spring. Twenty miles west from Tallahassee on the railroad we arrive at the town of Quincy, situated on a hill commanding a fine view of the surrounding country. The population numbers about twelve hundred; the houses are built of wood, painted very white, which gives them a refreshingly-neat appearance. The citizens have a welcome for visitors which is home-like. On account of the undulating surface of the lands a diversity of scenery is found here not seen in other portions of the State--numerous streams, which flow with a musical cadence from their homes under the hillsides, running far away to swell the streams that are soon lost in the great gulf below them. During the early settlement of this portion of the State cotton-planters were not attracted to it, as the broken lands were not as favorable for its culture as the more level--for this reason: we find an independent class of settlers who raised what they consumed, never buying meat or bread from abroad. Those who have tried growing cotton were successful, the long staple producing very well. Before the war Cuban tobacco was cultivated with a rich reward, as they supplied dealers from New York, also a foreign commerce. The scuppernong grape is commencing to receive attention, for which enterprise the adaptability of the soil is favorable--wine having been produced here equal to the famous California product. Twenty miles west from Quincy, situated on a river of the same name, is the town of Chattahoochee, this being the terminus of the Mobile & Pensacola Railroad. The State Penitentiary is located here, but the convicts are farmed out. The rough condition of the railroad has been a barrier to travelers going there much since the war; but a prospective change, when effected, will make it more agreeable for all parties concerned. The region of country below contains some fine orange groves. Those shipping oranges say they prefer Columbus or Atlanta to New York, on account of more rapid transit and less expense. The route through Eufaula and Montgomery, North, taking a steamer at Chattahoochee, is becoming more popular every year, as tourists are fond of variety. A line of stages connecting Quincy with Bainbridge, a short day's ride, enables those desirous of locating to see the country to better advantage. The overland passage appears robbed of its monotony by the long hedges of Cherokee rosebushes, crowned with their pink and white petals, which lend a brilliancy to the country through which we pass, not soon forgotten. Yards, gardens, and avenues, dressed in floral robes, are frequent; but miles of roses who can describe! The lands on our route are diversified, also the timber, but the yellow pine predominates. Bainbridge is at last reached, when a wonder fills our minds. What made this town so big? It was once the center of trade for a large, fertile country around the Appalachicola River, this place being the medium of communication where fine steamers could be seen loading the wealth of a prosperous people. The war came and robbed them of their labor--the railroads then turned the tide of communication in another direction, leaving them above high-water mark. However, the trade is now reviving, as proof of which it is a favorite resort for commercial tourists of all kinds. Thomasville, about twenty-five miles west of Bainbridge, is a pleasantly-located town, where visitors can be accommodated with most of the modern improvements in hotel-keeping; also palatable, toothsome dishes, which finely-pampered appetites require. The Mitchell House makes Florida tourists a specialty, this being a point where they can come to inhale the healing, balsamic odors from the surrounding pines, and refresh their perishing natures with the good things raised from the best of lands by a most excellent people. The Gulf House has an old and honored reputation for fine fare, also a kind-hearted host, who anticipates the wishes of his guests. The town is substantially built--laid out tastefully and elegantly--the dwellings being models of neatness and culture, embowered in emerald retreats of perennial foliage, which, seen from the cleanly sidewalks, cause many strangers to sigh for a welcome which they could not expect while far from home. The yards teem with flowers in mid-winter, blooming from rockeries, mounds, and twining vines, where occasionally an artificial fountain, with its sparkling silver veil, echoes its cooling voice as it falls into the reservoir below. Trade is brisk here--large stores, well filled with costly goods, find ready purchasers from a well-to-do people living in the town and country. The town can boast two newspapers and one periodical--indeed, we have heard it whispered that some of these writers think they have the keys of knowledge on certain facts pertaining to agriculture, etc. A female college has been established in this vicinity for many years, which has sent from its halls of learning many creditable scholars, who are now filling important stations in the spheres allotted them. Several tall-spired churches of various denominations have been erected in this community, where gifted heralds of the cross proclaim the glad tidings of salvation to large, attentive audiences, which is a good key-note to their spiritual condition. Thomas county made an exhibit of its former wealth immediately after the war, in a representation entirely of colored members--the white population being so greatly in the minority they could not elect one of their own color. But the ambition of colored politicians in this section is visibly on the decline, most of them having such thick lips, and, like Moses, "slow of speech," they now prefer speaking by proxy in the legislative halls. Thomasville has no facilities for water communication with the outside world, but, being located on the Atlantic and Gulf Road, should therewith be content, as a few hours' ride will furnish them an opportunity of taking a steamship for England or any part of the world. As we leave Thomasville going east, we pass through the wire-grass country of South Georgia, containing towns, if not of great importance in external appearance, contain the best of citizens with the kindest of hearts. Quitman comes first, with its plank walks, shaded by live-oaks, its home-like hotels, and hospitable, law-abiding people. A paper is published here which would do credit to a place of more note. A cotton factory is in operation; indeed, every thing in the town moves around with the vivacity of college-students out taking their first holiday. Valadosta is the last town of any size before Savannah. The soil looks so sandy, the grass so wiry, the pine-trees so tall, with such mournful music sighing through their airy forms, awakened by the slightest zephyr that passes, which produces a kind of melancholy in our minds as to whether we should have any thing to eat or not if we stopped. All fear of starving can be dispelled, as the country in the vicinity produces well, which can be proven by the immense sweet potatoes on which we are fed, and the well-grown sugar-cane for sale, from which sirup and sugar are made. A very newsy weekly is published in Valadosta, the editor being the author of the Okafinokee Swamp Expedition, which trip has furnished him with material to fill out many an interesting column in his inimitable paper. On public days such a crowd comes to town, the mystery is, Where do they all stay? In pleasant homes scattered through the country, where happy hearts beat with much less struggling than those in higher life, boasting greater attainments. A trip on this road at night is not unpleasant, as so many light-wood fires are burning bright near the track, kept up by the lumbermen and signals for the switch-tenders. Collisions from sudden curves never occur on this road, it being built so much on the air-line that the head-light can be seen in many places over twenty miles distant. Frequent repetition with familiar surroundings blunts the accuracy of the perceptive powers; but the first time I traveled this route it appeared like a kind of unreal scene, as the moon shone with an apparently unwonted brilliancy that changed all external objects into an epitome of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainment." CHAPTER XXIV. Many other places may possess their varied amusements, but Pensacola can be reckoned among the cities having attractions sufficient to render a sojourn very agreeable. It is here the sun gently declines, leaving a train of glory behind. The clouds then loom up lazily in serried ranks, and the breakers from Fort Pickens roar in the distance, like unhappy spirits of strife, when a swift breeze comes from the surrounding forest, and warns the sails to come to their moorings for safety. While we are impressed with the thought that this has been a spot around which many historic records have clustered--that the days of its departed grandeur are forever gone--still an invisible presence encircles it, which appears sacred, while a solemn echo comes from the remembrance of past pomp, that reminds us of the perishable nature of all earthly pageant. Pensacola was first explored, and a settlement commenced, by De Luna, in 1561, who landed on the bay as it now appears, naming it Santa Maria. This feeble colony, on account of hardships, became discouraged and returned home. The first permanent settlement was made by the French in 1691. The present city of Pensacola stands on a bay of the same name, which contains a safe and capacious harbor, where vessels drawing twenty-one feet of water can enter at low-tide, and find shelter and fine facilities for anchorage. It was formerly named Ochusa, from a tribe of Indians who lived here. Where the city is now built it is fine siliceous sand, supported by an understratum of clay, which is of varied colors. This clay is manufactured into brick, from which some of the houses are built, also pottery, and the monkey-jug, or water-cooler, so much used among the Spaniards in Cuba and Key West. The present plan of the city was laid out by the English in 1763, after they took possession of it. The streets cross each other at right angles, making squares of two hundred and fifty by four hundred feet, with a bay front of nearly a thousand feet. Many fine buildings were erected at that time--among which might be mentioned Casa Blanca, the residence of the Governor. The gardens attached to the city lots, the strong fortifications, and the edifices of different designs which graced the streets and squares, were the pride of Florida. The Governor rode in his chariot, making pleasure-trips to his landed estates, six miles from town, escorted by his postilions, and surrounded by his companions in authority, thus deporting himself like a genuine scion of royalty. During these days of prosperity Pensacola was attacked and conquered by the Spaniards under Count Galvez, in 1781. The place was defended by General Campbell; but the magazine at Fort St. Michael being blown up, resistance was useless, and the town surrendered. This event marked the commencement of its decline; the work of twenty years was blighted, and the prosperity of the city waned. When Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States, St. Augustine in East Florida, and Pensacola in West Florida, were the only towns of any importance in the State. The country about the city was poor, the good lands of the interior being occupied by the Indians; besides, the original settlers were not as enterprising a class of people as those in East Florida. The above considerations, together with disease, fierce contests with foes of other nations, its inaccessibility, and no large water-course connecting it with the interior fertile cotton-lands, are the combined reasons why Pensacola is not equal in size to any town on the Gulf. Fort Don Carlos de Barrancas--the word Barrancas signifying _broken ground_--was so named on account of the rugged appearance of the site on which the fort stands. The first fortification is supposed to have been built by a commander named Auriola, in 1687, as a defense against the French. It was a square, with bastions, situated near the site of the present Fort Barrancas. What remains of the ancient fort was built by the Spaniards--it being a tetragon, with salient angles at each corner, and formerly had a tower one story higher than the curtains, which served as a point for reconnoisance. It has an outer scarp, or glacis, surrounded by a barbette twenty-two feet wide. It contains an embrasure, the firing being done from the loop-holes and parapets with flank defenses. The barbette is overgrown with weeds and cactus, all armed with projectiles more to be dreaded than any other weapons of warfare in position here now. A deep dry-well is visible near one corner of this barbette, supposed to contain the buried treasure of the Spanish Governor, and for which it is said he ordered three of his men to be killed to prevent their divulging the secret. No guns are mounted on the parapet but two Rodmans of one hundred pounds caliber. The entrance to the old fort is through a scarp gallery several hundred feet in length. At the terminus are three arched rooms, the arches constructed without nails, from native pine boards, the grooves being fitted to each other. Here was the Governor's chamber for council, the ordnance department, and barracks. The materials employed for the walls were only brick and mortar, both in the old part built by the Spaniards, and the new constructed by the Americans. From the form and thickness of one part of the fort, it is supposed to contain a dungeon, but no efforts have yet been made at excavation, to explore its hidden secrets. The entire fortress, both ancient and modern, is surrounded by a dry moat, the main entrance having a portcullis. The present fortification of Fort Pickens was built in 1830. It is situated on a strip of land fifty miles in length, and only one-half mile in width, called Santa Rosa Island. This ground has been the scene of various conflicts during its early settlement, of which we have a record for nearly two centuries. The contests between the Spanish and French were always severe, the victor destroying the forts and devastating every thing within reach--which accounts for the disappearance of the ancient landmarks. Fort St. Michael and Fort St. Bernard were other works of defense built in the rear of Pensacola, but designed originally to protect the town and harbor, and also to serve as a safeguard against the Indians. The principal fort, St. Michael, was attacked in 1781 by Don Galvez, when a bomb-shell struck the eastern glacis of Fort St. Bernard, and, in rebounding, blew up the magazine, destroying the principal redoubt, which compelled the garrison to surrender by capitulation. It is but little more than half a century since Colonel Nichols, a British officer, came to Pensacola, and issued his proclamation, offering a reward of ten dollars each for the scalps of colonists. However, the career of this bold usurper and ambitious adventurer was soon terminated by General Andrew Jackson and his brave men, who marched into the town, then defended by a fleet of seven armed vessels, three forts, block-houses, and batteries of cannon defending the streets. The center column of Jackson's army was composed of regulars, and presented as formidable a front in appearance and strength as the ancient Grecian phalanx. The battery was stormed by Captain Laval, who, although severely wounded in the engagement, afterward recovered from his injuries. The Spanish Governor, Marinquez, met the American forces, and begged that quarter might be shown the citizens. To this proposition General Jackson acceded, protecting individual property as far as possible. At this time Fort Barrancas was blown up, all the guns being spiked but two. This enabled Colonel Nichols to escape with his fleet. All the fortifications being now destroyed, General Jackson left, after holding the place two days. The Spaniards then commenced building Fort Barrancas, when Colonel Nichols proffered his aid; but the Governor refused, telling him his friend General Jackson would do better. In 1818 Jackson received information that the Spanish would not permit supplies for his troops to ascend the Escambia Bay, while the Indians were supplied from Spanish stores. The Governor warned General Jackson against making an attack, saying he would be opposed by all their forces; but, with his usual go-ahead zeal, he marched in and took possession of the town without opposition. The Governor had taken refuge in Fort Barrancas, whither Jackson proceeded during the night, and commenced erecting breastworks. The Spaniards fired upon them, which was returned with good effect by a howitzer. In a few hours the fortress surrendered, and, by the terms of capitulation, the garrison was sent to Havana. Soon after Jackson came into possession of Pensacola, he was told that the Spanish Governor, Callavea, was in the act of sending papers relating to land-titles away to Cuba, in direct violation of the treaty. General Jackson demanded these documents, and, upon being refused, he ordered Callavea into the calaboose, but released him on the papers and boxes being returned. Afterward several of the Spanish officers, suffering from outraged feelings, sent a remonstrance to General Jackson on account of this unheard of indignity toward the Spanish Governor. For this movement twelve of them were banished, thus establishing the authority of Old Hickory beyond a doubt. The old camping-ground of General Jackson is still pointed out as historic ground. It was situated on what was known as the Blakely Road, which passes the old sites of St. Bernard and St. Michael. Pensacola once contained a plaza, which was an ornament to the city and the admiration of all visitors. The grounds were in a high state of cultivation where flourished the orange, lemon, olive, banana, guava, and Japan plum-trees, ornamented with pleasure-walks, where the gay cavaliers promenaded and made love to the beautiful señoritas, where the delicate nonpareil displayed her painted plumage, the gay mocking-bird sang her songs of joy, and the humming-bird sipped honey from nectarine flowers, whose petals perfumed the air with fragrance. But stern want, whose decrees are as unyielding as the Medean and Persian edicts, was staring the Spanish garrison in the face at this time, and the commissary stores being exhausted, the largest portion of these beautiful grounds were sold to furnish the army with supplies. All that remain vacant are the extremities of the old plaza, which form two squares, known as Ferdinand and Seville, that are as barren of ornament as the municipality of means to appropriate for its embellishment. It is singular that a country whose original settlers were celebrated for their chivalric daring and romance should preserve no vestige of their former characteristics or peculiar nationalities. It is thus with the present appearance of Pensacola. One portion indicates the march of improvement, while the other, near the bay, has a faded appearance of weather-beaten plank, except out on the wharves, where may be seen many new buildings used for various purposes connected with shipping operations. There are no fine blocks of elegant stores among the number, but many one-story houses, some containing two, and a few three. The old houses now standing are decidedly of Spanish architecture, with the long verandas in front, accessible only at the ends by steps, the jail-like double doors being made of wood, riveted with iron bolts, not designed to look beautiful, but to be very substantial, or resist a siege of small arms. The dormer-windows are frequent, while a few old roofs are covered with tiles. A wide, substantial walk is built through a portion of the town, stopping at no place in particular, but a favorite promenade for ungallant sailors, where they reel like drunken elephants, seven abreast, sometimes elbowing other pedestrians into the marsh. A few brick pavements have been made, but the bricks present their edges and ends uppermost as often as the flat sides, while sand-wading, in many places, is the only alternative, street-crossings being an unknown luxury. Pensacola is almost the only town in Florida where no fabled fount is supposed or represented to exist, whose waters heal all infirmities and rejuvenate declining years--where no tales are told of elysian elegance to fascinate visitors into their houses of entertainment, or invitations given to take strolls on the beach, and breathe the sea-air with its breezy freshness, always warranted more beneficial to the invalid than all other atmospheres that ever fanned a hectic cheek, or had been inhaled by consumptives, that will enable them to recover sooner than any other influence by which they could be surrounded. The principal employment of persons here is maritime, from the fisherman, who spreads his tiny sail and dances on the waves, fearless as a sea-gull, in his bateau that looks only a speck on the waters deep and wide, to the full-rigged ship which plows the angry waves, and "thrills the wanderers of that trackless way." The prosperity of this place is dependent upon the adventitious condition of the changing and fluctuating trade in other places, together with a demand for their only commodity--lumber. No appearance of pomp in fine turnouts is seen--no matched spans or grand phaetons. Those who ride go in one-horse vehicles, which move noiseless as the midnight assassin, through sandy streets of an uncertain depth. A majority of the people are both plain and practical in all their movements. Their misfortunes seem to have soured them, embittered their lives and saddened their hearts, making them sullen, while others converse as though they had settled into an apathetic despair, mingled with clouds of darkness, and peopled by phantoms of pinching want. This season business is terribly dull. Stevedores without employment are as abundant as plank without purchasers, and uneasy as a mullet out of water. The profession of gambling is well filled, which can be seen by the glare of diamonds and watch-chains on suspicious-looking men, with no vocation but to come here and prey on the hard earnings of poor, unsuspecting sailors. A ship coming in the bay creates as much commotion as a big wreck in Key West. Unoccupied boarding-houses for workingmen are numerous. What is lacking in accommodations can be supplied in charges. There are one or two boarding-houses, called hotels, designed for the better class, charging three dollars _per diem_. Visitors, or persons of leisure, do not often come here to remain long, consequently no grand hotels for their entertainment. But there is one attractive feature in Pensacola even now, and that is the bountiful supply of rich pine. "What a beautiful fire!" we hear every one exclaim, as the boarders take their seats in the recently-illumined parlor after supper, when all without is dark and drear. Then they give us wood in our rooms, where any one can make a fire in a minute, when sickness drives away sleep. How it lights up the pale faces of our friends, as though the glow of health had suddenly wafted her magic touch over them, dispelling the pallor of disease and marks of suffering! How it softens the gloom of night and diverts our minds with its cheerful blaze, as it permeates every thing like the visit of a bright messenger, when the winds howl as if they were demons from the realms of Erebus! What a cheerful greeting it gives us from the old fire-place, with its burnished massive fender and brass andirons! Then it flashes and faints on the wall, or in the corners, hides in the curtains, to be replaced with another flash, followed by a report like the distant roar of artillery. The Indians loved to dance around its bright light in celebrating their fiendish orgies, or howl their rude songs of welcome for the return of harvest, as the well-filled ears of maize roasted before their camp-fires of resinous wood. With what lingering looks of sadness did they see the last spark waft its tiny ray into the heavens, as the morning dawned and the night-shades fled away, on which they were to bid farewell to the happy home of their birth they loved so well, and relinquished with such reluctance, when they thought of the grand old _lightwood_ fires which had glistened away the gloom of dense forests, or rendered powerless the malaria of swamps, and kept the approach of wild beasts at bay! All day constantly before our eyes is Ferdinand Park, which manifests visible signs of a decline. Four old Spanish pieces of artillery are planted in the center, and fastened with ropes, to balance the standard-bearer of a powerful nation, and place in position, high in mid-air, a pole, on which to unfurl the ensign of a great country. The park-inclosure is dropping down as quietly as a rose-leaf in May. Here stock ramble to graze with their bells on, presenting a rural landscape of rustic life, and tired, bony old horses stray for sustenance; hogs, with very thin sides and bristling backs, root about for herbage, or roam through the streets, gathering, with eager haste, any thing like a decayed apple or potato, of which some kind-hearted huckster has relieved his stall or cart; while the cows wander in front of dry-goods stores, trying to replenish the well-springs of vitality with stray wisps of straw, bits of paper, or pasteboard, which have been swept out. The lacteals of the poor brutes receive a small amount of sustenance from such an uncertain source of nutritive matter--for that cause nearly everybody in this region uses condensed milk. The William-goats promenade with unrestrained freedom, giving concerts with their loud treble voices, while the refrain is echoed by the young ones, resembling the cries of a baby. If these sights and sounds, with variations, do not always give pleasure to visitors, they break the monotony and furnish a variety. This town boasts a very substantially-built market-house, the material used being brick. Only a few of the stalls are occupied, as the produce is hauled about the streets in huckster-carts and sold, or kept in stores by provision-dealers. During the lenten season, fishermen go out soon in the morning, and, when they are successful, return singing, by which means those wishing supplies can come and buy; but when they have taken nothing, they row silently to shore, looking as though they had toiled in vain. Sometimes the fish are too large to be conveyed whole, when they are cut up and sold by the pound. Frequently two fishermen are seen carrying a fish suspended between them, a portion of it trailing on the ground. What a triumphal entry they make! What a proud look they have, as they find themselves "the observed of all observers!" They could not be induced to change places with the governor. Smaller fish are carried in tubs, swung on a pole suspended between the shoulders of two very brawny-looking men. They announce their approach by blowing a large ox-horn, which is heard in the streets on Sabbath as other days. The minister, invoking a blessing on his worshiping congregation, is liable to have the interludes filled with the echo of trafficking trumpets. Common fish are cheap. The pompano and red snapper, being the choicest, are held at high prices. Beef and venison are plentiful, but the beef is of rather a sinuous texture. Most vegetables would flourish here during the winter, but, from a lack of enterprise, they are not much cultivated. The only dream of prosperity ever indulged by these people is ships coming in from foreign parts for lumber. One thousand feet from low-water mark in Pensacola Bay is found fresh water, which is obtained by boring or driving iron tubing through the salt water and several strata of earthy deposit. The upper stratum is composed of sediment, the second of quicksand, the third of blue clay, the fourth of coral, the fifth of gravel, in which is found pure freestone water, unadulterated with foreign matter, and clear as crystal. This water is obtained at a distance of seventy feet below the surface of the earth. These fresh-water fountains are of recent date, having made their appearance among other improvements which are constantly being discovered in this progressive age. These wells possess many advantages over the old custom of hauling water from the springs in barrels through the streets by hand, which furnished a means of support for those employed to deliver water on the wharves for sale to ships, it being their only vocation. The barrel was prepared by inserting a piece of wood outside the head, in which were placed iron pivots. Two iron rings were attached to the end of a rope that revolved upon these pivots. The water-hauler threw the rope over his head and shoulders, then marched along with the speed of an Andalusian pony--the barrel following like a cart. A few water-barrels are to be seen rolling about the streets now, but it constitutes only a precarious means of support to the "drawers of water," when compared with the past. Porpoises--belonging to the class _Phocoeena_--abound in the vicinity of Pensacola. They range with other monsters of the deep, sporting in the shoals, and playing around vessels anchored near the wharf, at times approaching the shore gentle as cats. They are said to take their prey by strategy, darting under an unsuspecting school of fish, and with one stroke of their tail stunning enough to furnish them a fine repast. The astonished fish is soon swallowed by the porpoise, without perceiving the change that has taken place in his existence, when, instead of searching for nourishment himself, he has commenced to sustain another. Porpoise-oil contains the same properties as sperm, but porpoises are not killed here, they being very harmless, and are said to act as a protection against sharks to persons who bathe or fall in the bay. The culture of tropical fruits has never been a success in Pensacola, since so much of the timber has been destroyed. The few orange-trees here have a stinted appearance in comparison with those in other portions of the State. A constant strife is going on between the north-west and trade-winds, the former sweeping down from the Rocky Mountains, freighted with frost, which destroys the fruit and foliage of the orange-trees. However, a suitably-arranged grove, with only a southern exposure, would bear under ordinary treatment. Persons now owning bearing-trees say they have been killed down three or four times. The winds are too rude for the banana--it grows here only in summer, with winter sheltering. A little stream, called the "Washing Bayou," winds its way through the town, gurgling as it rushes among the bushes, and noiseless as the flight of an arrow when it glides over the snowy sands. Tiny fishes live here unmolested, sporting in its clear waters, until they leave the quiet home of their birth and go into the great sea, where many of them are eaten by the big fishes that are constantly on the alert. Besides the poetry in this musical stream, there is much practical utility connected with its presence, as it subserves the purpose of city laundry, where most of the soiled clothes are cleansed. More than a hundred barefooted women can be seen at one time here, with short dresses, standing in the water, their wide tables in front of them, battling with unclean linen. After the garments are washed in this water, which is said to possess peculiar cleansing properties, they are spread on the green grass and bleached. No ordinary agitation affects the stream, or makes the waters turbid, while it remains clear and warm during the whole winter. Here Spanish, French, Creole, and _L'Africane_, all combine together, working in harmony. Patrons to this branch of industry can have their apparel manipulated in such language as they prefer, or whatever shade of color belonging to the human species they hold in the highest esteem. Hunters resort to this portion of the country, where they spend weeks in camping and killing game. Every one who comes to Florida imagines the supply of fish and flesh inexhaustible, notwithstanding the heavy drafts that are made every year. Complaint was made by the Indians of game becoming scarce within certain localities during 1835, and the wonder is now that any thing remains to be killed. Ribaut, while describing his travels in this State, mentions the waters of a great river as "boiling and roaring through the multitudes of all kinds of fishes." Thoughtless persons having heretofore caused such a wanton destruction of deer, laws have now been passed for their protection. The method adopted mostly among hunters of running game with hounds until exhausted, has a tendency to terrify the poor scared animals, thus making them more shy, and retire farther into the fastnesses of a country to a place of greater security. Old hunters say they would just as soon eat a piece of dog-meat as deer killed when overheated. The Indians resorted usually to still-hunting, taking the stag-heads and hides to conceal themselves, and, with the use of their imitative powers, induced many a thoughtless animal to approach them, when the well-aimed arrow secured the victim as a prize to their skill. The murderous guns now in use will soon destroy all the wild game in Florida, as in other old-settled places, when stories of the nimble-footed fawn, that gamboled with the calves and cattle while feeding side by side, will be related as tales of the past history of this country. Several times since Pensacola has been in possession of the United States, that malignant form of disease known as yellow fever has made it some unwelcome visits. During 1822 it was terribly fatal, taking whole families and streets. It spread at this time like wild-fire, and was supposed to have originated from a cargo of spoiled cod-fish! In 1853, 1866, 1873, and 1874, it returned. Its last appearance--in 1874--took them all by surprise. It commenced in August, and continued until December. Different reasons have been assigned for its last calamitous visit in 1874. Some say it was brought from Cuba; others, that it was occasioned by the removal of a hospital from the navy-yard, where yellow-fever patients had been sick. It was no respecter of persons. The boatman in his bateau, the guard at his post of duty, the soldier on drill, the colonel commanding, or the commodore with his floating navy, all yielded to the fell destroyer. Three Sisters of Mercy died in one day, the highest number of deaths during the space of twenty-four hours in the city being ten. Persons who occupied houses that had been closed and vacant during the fever, sickened and died after the disease had subsided. The quarantine regulations now are inefficient, while filth from every street and alley lies undisturbed, thus inviting disease. The municipal authority is now thoroughly Africanized, consisting of mayor, aldermen, and police force, while a negro postmaster bears unblushingly the honors and emoluments connected with his position. Before the last war (1861) many orange and fig-trees were growing in private yards; but the Federal forces destroyed nearly all of them, together with many of the houses and fences. The squares--most of them--are now grown with opopanax, yapon, scrub, and live-oak, while the twining grape-vine, climbing above its evergreen foliage, produces a nearer resemblance to hummocks than the surroundings of civilization which characterize refined life. Perdido, or Lost Bay (so called from the bar at its entrance being closed by quicksands), is thirty miles in length--the main tributary of this bay being a river of the same name, whose banks are covered with inexhaustible pine forests. This river furnishes excellent communication with Perdido Bay, upon which are built several fine lumber-mills. These mills are a recent enterprise, having been in operation only about four years, thus giving employment to many operatives, and furnishing an article of commerce to every part of the world. During the winter of 1873 one hundred and fifty square-rigged vessels could be counted loading with lumber, also spars over one hundred feet in length, to assist in floating ships from every part of the world. Wild game is abundant in the forests about Perdido River, such as panthers, deer, black bears, wild ducks, and turkeys. Escambia Bay is another of the beautiful sheets of water by which Pensacola is surrounded. It is eleven miles in length, and four in width. It has a tributary of the same name, which courses through rich hummock-lands, until it reaches the clear waters of the bay. The lagoons and marshes that lie near this river abound in the remarkable amphibious animals called alligators. The roaring of these creatures in spring-time is deafening. They are of slow growth, but eventually attain an immense size--a full-grown one being fifteen or twenty feet in length, with an upper jaw, which moves, three feet long, the lower jaw remaining stationary. Their skin is impenetrable to a ball, the whole body being covered with a kind of horny plates, but the head and under the fore-legs is vulnerable, and not bullet-proof. They build nests in the form of a cone, three or four feet high, and five feet at the base. They commence these nests by making a floor upon which they deposit a layer of eggs, then a stratum of mortar, seven or eight inches in thickness, then another layer of eggs, until the whole, superstructure is completed. They are said to deposit over one hundred eggs in a nest. These are hatched by the heat of the sun, together with the fermentation of vegetable matter produced in the hillock. The mother-alligator watches near during the period of incubation, and has been known to attack persons who interrupted her embryo. When her young are hatched she marches them out like a hen with her brood, leading and protecting them, while they whine and bark around her like young puppies. Their mother belongs to the cannibal species, eating up her young in their babyhood, which precludes but few of them attaining their full size. They move rapidly in water, although clumsy on land, wallowing in mud-holes like a hog. There are five churches in Pensacola for public worship--Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Episcopal. No other town in the State can produce so large a number of old members as the Catholics in Pensacola. During the early history of this country the devotees of this faith made pilgrimages to the Convent of St. Helena, a religious order established by the Franciscan Friars. They spent weeks in performing the journey to St. Helena, in St. Augustine. It was to them what Jerusalem was to the Jews, or Mecca to the Mohammedans--their holy city, their revered shrine for worship, where the "_Ego te absolvo_" gave solace to the troubled conscience, and comfort to the sin-burdened heart. The demand for schools in the Pensacola market has hitherto been limited; consequently the quality is not always of a superior kind. The free schools are avoided by all who can do better. They are now under the supervision of George W. Lindsley, county superintendent. He belongs to the African class of humanity, and acquired his education while acting in the capacity of body-servant to Judge Plantz, of the First Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida. Four schools are supported here by the public fund--two for each sex and color. The one for white boys is taught by an old man who has evidently lost his temper and outlived his days of usefulness as an instructor. His pupils looked spiritless and indifferent to any thing like mental effort. They recited badly, and appeared stupid. The female department is taught by a lady of youthful and humble appearance. The timid little girls came to recite with the admonition, "Now, if you don't know this lesson, I will switch you." Numerous rods were lying about the floor, as though warfare had been progressing, with weapons of very ancient date, recommended by Solomon. The rooms occupied for the schools are two apartments in an old private residence, the building in about as waning a condition as the popularity of the institutions. Fifty children, all told, comprise the number in this metamorphic condition. The citizens say they are taxed beyond endurance to support schools, but never know what becomes of the money. Perhaps they never try to ascertain in the right place, or at the proper time, what disposition is made of the funds. Two colored schools here are supported by the public funds. The building in which they are taught was erected for the purpose--light, airy, and roomy--more provision being made for the education of the colored race, all over the State of Florida, than for the white. The great difficulty now is to have the negroes brought up to the standard of appreciation. Only a few can be prevailed upon to attend the schools provided for them, and they belong mostly to a class of numskulls whose heads are so thick that an idea could not get into their brains unless it was shot there with bullet-force. Both the male and female schools have colored teachers. The copy-books were handed me for inspection. Here is a specimen of the copies: "Virtue is the persute," etc.; "Do a good child tell stories?" The chirography was unmistakably original and inimitable, but the spelling was not from Webster, nor the grammar of Butler's approval. The pupils were in tolerable order--the secret of which, no doubt, lay on the table, in the form of a huge leather strap--that relic of barbarism revived--and a piece of plank for the more incorrigible cases. The Catholics have two separate schools for the education of males and females, besides a mixed school for colored children. The female school, containing about sixty pupils, is under the direction of the Dominican sisterhood. The children all arose and bowed politely when I visited them; but no opportunity was offered for ascertaining their method of teaching, or the proficiency of the young ladies, although I politely asked to hear them recite. These wimpled teachers veil their movements also. The Catholic school for boys is under the tutorage of an old gentleman of the Irish style, whose looks resemble the description given by Goldsmith of the "village school-master." The children were talking aloud, caricaturing on slates, and exhibiting it to their companions, whistling, and shaking their fists behind the teacher's back, these employments being the principal exercises during my visit. The teacher was energetic in his efforts to preserve order and hear the recitation. He placed one offender on his knees for penance, and struck some more of them with an immense ferule which he carried in his hand. When the din and confusion drowned his voice, he resorted to jingling a bell and screaming "Silence!" He evidently had a bigger contract than he knew how to manage. The Pensacola boys are said to be very bad, whether from association or the original sin born in them, has not been decided--probably a combination of both. Let no one imagine that in all this dross there is no pure gold. Mrs. Scott, wife of the present rector of Christ Church, teaches a parochial school, patronized by all, irrespective of creeds or forms of worship, being always open to inspection for the friends of education. The pupils exhibited a thoroughly progressive knowledge of all the branches which they were studying. This school is governed by a direct appeal to the elevating and moral qualities of the heart and soul, which lead the mind upward, thus restraining their natural impulses. The pupils evinced a surprising familiarity with blank verse, by transposing and parsing lines from Paradise Lost--the work of that colossal mind whose soul, illumined with inward light, soared beyond the star-lit domes of space, to commune with chaos and the great mysteries of its unrevealed depths. CHAPTER XXV. To walk upon the beach and see the bright golden waves rolling beneath our feet on a sunny day, and hear the gentle surge moving like the soft cadence of dying echoes, creates in us a desire to be wafted into other climes, where we can see untold wonders, and be regaled with something new to feast our senses. It was from the promptings of a restless spirit that we embarked on a fine sailing vessel for Cuba as the morning tide was receding. An escort of sea-gulls, with their white pinions and unwearied wings, followed us far from land, as messengers of peace, wishing us a _bon voyage_. We soon commenced to feel contented in our isolated moving habitation, with its strong canvas buoying us up in the breeze, like a huge bird of passage in its aërial flight, and we looked out on the "waste of waters" as only an untried experiment, about which very fearful things had been said, but not so bad after all. While we were watching for new wonders, the sun sunk into the sea, and the stars came out one by one from their canopied homes in the blue sky, the larger, brighter ones rising first, like the stronger spirits in life, which leave their beds with the dawn, to make preparation for the feebler little footsteps that now open their eyes [Illustration: PORTUGUESE MAN-OF-WAR] timidly on the great world into whose magnitude and mysteries they are just entering. The monotony of a sea-voyage is always broken by the daily revolutions of the earth on its axis, if not more stirring events. Our second morning at sea the winds and waves were hushed quietly as the calm which pervades a sinner's sensibilities when the angel of peace first speaks comfort to his sin-burdened soul. Our sails hang loosely as a gambler's conscience, while the surge swings us around freely without taking us forward. The spars squeak, twist, and groan, as though in distress at our condition. The sailors are busy tying up ropes, mending sails, and climbing about in the rigging like cats. A kind of sea-polyp, _Physalia utriculus_, or Portuguese men-of-war, which move passively on the surface of the water, have been in sight all day, with their bubble sails of rainbow hue, supported by emerald hulls, with their anchors steadying them in their swift, uncertain voyage over the sea. How fragile and ethereal they look! These little creatures only trim their sails in fine weather, but when the wind blows they descend into more quiet quarters. The sailors look with suspicion upon their movements, as they say their appearance indicates foul weather. They present a concave surface above the water of three or four inches that is guided by purple rudder-bands, which descend about two feet into the sea. These filaments are very poisonous when handled--the sailors, while in bathing, being sometimes stung by them, which is accompanied with a very painful burning sensation, like the nettle. They may be classed among the many other curious and wonderful beings that inhabit the great deep, of which we know but little or nothing. The old tars have been singing to-day, Mackerel skies and mares' tails Make lofty ships take in their sails. Last night, as we were retiring, the sky was banking up black clouds, which indicates a nor'-wester. Now, when we look across the crested surface of the deep, dark sea, our thoughts are too sacred for bosom-confidants, and too serious to bear much sounding by ourselves, being shadowed by forebodings, not unmixed with melancholy, when we think on the fate of many who have sailed before us. Our rough old captain, who commences his day's duties before sunrise by giving the steward a cursing for what he has done or left undone, as a kind of recreation when he is drinking his coffee, has been giving his oracle, the barometer, some mysterious looks all day. The sun has gone to her home in the west, and we now feel that a night of darkness--it may be destruction--has drawn her deepest shadows over us. The wind is blowing a gale, above which is heard at the wheel aft the same cross old captain screaming his orders through the storm-trumpet, which sound dismal as death: "Lower the foresail!" "Take down the topsails!" "Put out a watch!" "Let her drive before the wind!" Old Neptune has commenced his fearful frolics in earnest, rolling the white caps in every direction. The vessel has commenced plunging through a trackless pathway, while the sea boils like a pot. And whistling o'er the bending mast, Loud sings the fresh'ning blast. It is when messengers from the realms of King Storm are abroad in the land--when the sea rises at his call, and the winds meet from their hidden coverts, to exercise their strength and contend for victory--that the poetry of sailing on deep water vanishes, and we look stern reality in the face, and feel the danger of being swallowed up, which overbalances all the adventurous spirit for sight-seeing. The tempest which was now shrieking and howling in its fury bore no resemblance to any thing disagreeable enough by which a comparison could be made, except falling clods upon the coffin of an only friend and protector, or the click of a pistol that sends a soul into eternity. In imagination I could hear the gnashing teeth of fighting fiends, in reality the roaring thunders, threatening with their stunning proximity, while torrents of water were descending--thus bringing a yawning abyss before us under circumstances of appalling nearness, when the sea, in its fiercest moments of fury, has often plunged the ship and mariners into an open chasm, with cold, cruel waves for a winding-sheet, while the winds sung a requiem. It was an epoch in the history of my life, when I felt my grasp upon tangible substance weakening, and at any moment that I might be hurled into that shoreless, fathomless depth, from whose uncertain soundings and unexplored domains there would be no return. As the wind increased the sea commenced washing over decks, which movement would not be mistaken, for purling streams meandering through green lawns and "flowery meads." The pantry contributed its share to the general din--the plates all falling down, the tumblers, cups, and bowls, never ceasing to roll over--at the same instant a big wave coming in washed the tinware from the galley, while the cook-stove, with its legs nailed fast to the floor, remained a mute spectator. The chairs gathered in groups and skated across the oil-cloth at each lurch of the vessel. Nothing revealed those terrible troughs in the sea before us but the vivid lightning, which also enabled the sailors to see the spars, and keep a portion of the sails reefed. The deep waters resembled liquid mountains piled in pyramidal forms, dissolving like dew with every wind that passed, at which we were not dismayed while the vessel could leap over them. Meanwhile there came a heavy sea that shipped down the gangway and commenced washing out the cabin--at the same instant a gust extinguished the binnacle lamp. As a precautionary movement, to keep the mast from being jerked out, the foresheet was secured. The beating billows, rattling chains, and inky darkness, combined, were suggestive of a passage contained in the Epistle of Jude, where the fallen spirits are spoken of as "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." The hour of midnight, when the clock shall have struck twelve, is looked for with much solicitude during a gale. How the men worked! How the pumps groaned! Our vessel was only a toy with which the waves were playing as a pastime, whose angry waves we were willing to appease by a promise that we would come no more, if only spared from a dive beneath their surface. Storms and adversity are both great levelers in life. How all social barriers of distinction vanish as we feel our dependence upon the roughest tar that climbs the mast at sea, or rolls like a swine in the gutter on shore! With what eagerness we notice every movement of the officers in times of peril, and listen for their foot-fall on deck, or the rustle of their rough-weather tarpaulins, as they walk through the cabin, watching to see that fire does not break out from the lamps, or spontaneous combustion take place in the hold, which then severs the last gleam of hope, except that which awaits us beyond a grave in the sea when we sink beneath the waves, where all is peace! While we are certain a commander, in times of danger, will do all in his power to save the lives of those on board, is it not then we should lean on that One all-powerful to aid, and feel for the Hand "that holds the waters in its hollow?" A little after midnight the captain, worn out with his duties, "had turned in." The winds seemed to lull, and except very heavy seas, a fair prospect of peace overshadowed us. However, we soon afterward found we had been nursing a delusion, as a little before 2 A.M. the breeze freshened; it came in gusts, increasing in severity, and the vessel becoming unmanageable, the captain was called on deck, while the mate rushed forward to take in sail. He had proceeded but a short distance when a heavy sea struck the ship, and the bow-hatches were five feet under water, with the mate swimming against the deck-railings, and the trumpet-toned commands issued to a powerless crew. It was a fearful moment, never to be forgotten in the history of a lifetime, when all hopes, joys, sorrows, and past recollections, are merged into an instant of time, to be swept away by a breath. A little after daybreak we sighted an English vessel on her course for South America. She sailed swiftly, never stopping to tell us the danger she had passed, as a chopped sea was running, which denoted the expiring struggle through which it was passing in trying to calm its fury. The sun rose at last, and our rent sails were all that told the perils we had encountered; for the same Voice that could command "the winds and the sea" to obey was with us, and we were saved. About midday we passed the Isle of Pines, whose proximity our quadrant indicated before we saw it. In making for the south side of Cuba, this land is all we see during the passage. It is said rain falls here when the weather is pleasant in every other place--to which is attributable its unusual appearance of verdure and its fine streams of fresh water, which first attracted the attention of the early Spanish settlers. The large amount of rain which falls here is accounted for by the trade-winds in these seas blowing from the north-east. Marble and jasper of various colors are found on this island. It was formerly frequented by pirates, the last of whom was Bernardo del Soto, who was a Spaniard, and commanded the band. They named their cruising-ship the "Pinta," which in Spanish implies a point. Their closing exploit was robbing and destroying the brig Mexican, near Cape San Antonio. All the crew were murdered except two, who were spared on condition they would join the pirates. These two unfortunate survivors afterward escaped to the United States, when they gave information in regard to their companions who had been so cruelly murdered, and also the rendezvous of these high-sea pirates, which led to their capture by the brig Summers. The buccaneers were taken to Boston, and tried for murder, of which they were all convicted and executed, except the commander, whose wife came from Cuba and interceded with President Van Buren, that the life of her husband might be spared. Her entreaties were not unavailing, and his existence was prolonged, only to reward her solicitude by murdering her in a fit of passion, for which crime he soon atoned with his life. _Mexican Gulf._--Soon after dinner we noticed an unusual appearance in the sky, like fog and mist. The sailors, with a terrified look, were standing in a group together on deck, while the captain took the helm. A storm on ship-board, strange as it may appear, develops more profanity than reverence among sailors; but water-spouts are something with which they never presume to trifle. Two of these were plainly visible. One passed aft the vessel, missing it about fifteen feet; the other presented a most peculiar phenomenon, which is said to be caused by the reciprocal attraction of the cloud above and the sea beneath. The water rises toward the cloud, which elongates itself in the form of a tube to meet and receive the fluid below--this ascending column resembling in form a speaking-trumpet, with its base uppermost. They were called _presters_ by the ancients, which word in the Greek denotes an igneous fluid--the more singular on account of those who applied the term having no knowledge of electricity. These terrible missiles of destruction often annihilate every thing in their pathway, although only a few drops of water reached us from these. They are fearful objects, unlike most others which come clothed in darkness, they being only veiled in thin mist, rising like a mysterious presence from the depths of the sea to join the forces in the air, thus making the combined influences doubly formidable. The ship had been tacked to port side just as the water-spouts had been discovered, and we were sailing southward away from them. They may be properly termed "sea-cyclones, carrying up drops of water which they have separated from the surface of the waves." The beauty, terror, and grandeur accompanying these visitants can never be imagined by one who has not witnessed them, much less definitely described by a terrified spectator. The sun shone brightly during the time, as though the storm-fiend was not abroad in his chariot, riding swiftly on wings of wind, ready to hurl the missiles of death at any hapless mariner who crossed its pathway. Ever shall I remember how utterly undone those poor sin-hardened, rough sailors appeared while waiting for orders that would give expression to their feelings, no words coming from those uncultured lips which could furnish any conception of their mental agitation. _Cuba_, February 28.--The most precious jewel of the Antilles is the Isle of Cuba, which we are now approaching. It is about seven hundred and ninety miles in length, its greatest width being one hundred and seven miles. The mountains add beauty and boldness to its scenery, the highest elevation on the island being about eight thousand feet. It was first discovered by the famous Columbus, in 1492, but not conquered from the Indians until 1511, at which time the Spaniards killed nearly five hundred thousand of the natives. From the following well-authenticated account we may be enabled to form some idea of the barbarity which characterized these movements: "One morning, as the Spaniards were tying an Indian cazique to the stake for the purpose of burning him alive, a Franciscan Friar approached, and informed him that if he would embrace their religion he should go to heaven, but if not he must burn in hell forever. The prince then asked him if there were any Spaniards in heaven. The friar responded in the affirmative--to which he replied, 'If that be so, I would rather be with the demons in hell than the Spaniards in heaven; for their cruelty is such that none can be more miserable than where they are.'" The cause of the Indians being so cruelly destroyed by the Spaniards was their covetous wish to possess the entire island, with its supposed wealth in silver and gold. Unfortunately, after they had murdered the Indians, their visionary dreams of vast fortunes were never realized, as very little precious metal was discovered, which many have supposed was a judgment on them for their cruelty. The soil in Cuba is itself a mine of wealth, on which can be produced from five to seven crops yearly, spring-time and harvest continuing all the season. There are mines of copper ore here, from which the early settlers made their cannon. About two hundred miles from Cape San Antonio Light, upon the south side of Cuba, is an entrance called Fernandina Del Jauga Bay, the coast being lined with rocks of a coral formation. Ten miles from the Mexican Gulf, at the head of this bay, surrounded by a country of unsurpassed fertility, is the city of Cienfuegos, named in honor of the general to whom its present prosperity is in a great measure attributable. The fort which guards the entrance to this town impresses us with its entire inefficiency to resist an attack from our modernized implements of warfare, or to even make a show of strength for any length of time during a siege. One lone sentinel rushes upon the parapet, and presents arms, when a vessel approaches, as though he had a hundred-pound ball, which could be sent with sufficient force to sink any ship that should make an attempt to enter the port. The harbor upon which the town is situated is commodious and safe. Two gun-boats are anchored here, which, judging from their shape and size, look as though they would require assistance to advance, but are said to make six miles an hour when under full headway. They are not regarded as formidable by military men. The report from the guns would, no doubt, be more demoralizing than the effect. The houses in the city are built mostly of brick and concrete. They have no yards in front, the walls of the residences being even with the streets, only a narrow sidewalk sometimes intervening. The buildings are painted blue or green, straw-color, and white--the doors being differently colored from the houses. The windows have no glass, as it would make the dwellings warmer, and the ladies could not look from the folds of their curtains into the streets so easily without being seen as they do now. The windows are protected by iron rods and bars, which give them a cage-like appearance--the houses have no chimneys or fire-places, and the apartments are furnished in a very simple manner. The floors are made of marble and tiles--the carpet is only a large rug in the center of the room, upon each side of which are placed two rows of chairs, most of them being willow-work rocking chairs; also a center-table and sofa, with a willow back and seat, sometimes a piano, embrace the list of parlor fixtures. At night the doors and windows are thrown open for ventilation, the rooms being lighted by gas chandeliers--every thing can be seen, even to the beds on which the family sleep. The bedsteads are made of iron, and are very light, upon which is placed a wooden frame with a piece of canvas tacked across it. There are no mattresses or feather-beds used. A sheet of Canton-flannel is the first appearance of bedding, over which are spread linen sheets of snowy whiteness, pillows filled with cotton or moss--the whole being overhung with pink and white-lace curtains, to keep out the musquitoes, that never leave on account of climatic changes. But few of the dwellings are more than one story high. If the ancient Spanish custom were to be observed here--that the rent of the first floor was for the king--there would be no income left to the owners. Many of these structures have ceilings twenty feet in height. They build them as airy as possible, and afterward dedicate them to the god of the winds, whose presence is many times oftener invoked than received. However, the land-breeze at night, and the sea-breeze during the day, render the climate more delightful than can be imagined by one who has never visited here. In this locality days and weeks steal imperceptibly away, leaving no visible impress except a feeling of repose, as though earth had no cares or pains which would ever torture our minds again with their unwelcome visitations. The great amount of leisure every one appears to command is really surprising. The rich enjoy their condition to the fullest extent of the term--no titled lords or ladies have more courtly grace and elegant manners. The poor ape the rich in their movements, as though it were undignified to be brisk, or manifest any haste, going about quietly as though at peace with all the world. Every thing in their houses is exceedingly neat, the lower part being stuccoed several feet from the base with designs, no doubt intended as the escutcheons of royalty. The floors are also laid in tiles, ornamented with flowers of sapphire color, being connected with each other by patterns which, when in position, are plainly seen. May not these be identified with the sapphire foundations of which the Prophet Isaiah speaks? Among the recent discoveries made in the Moorish ruins of Italy are also found similar floors. It is a novelty to look in the houses and see the family circles gathered in their homes, all smoking and talking but the babies. The cares of life apparently rest very lightly on them, while their clothing is more airy than all--the little baby-girls with only a pair of ear-rings, the boys dressed in the shadow of the nurse, or night falling softly on them. What a multitude of unformed thoughts enter our minds as we look at the novel sights appearing before us, where only a foreign language is sounding in our ears! They all speak the Spanish, which is derived mostly from the Latin, and resembles it, except some words from the Arabic, which came into use with them after Spain was conquered by the Moors. The pantomimic efforts made by salesmen and servants, in trying to make us comprehend that they would like to be attentive and please us, is very amusing. The marketer explains the price of his fruits by showing us a corresponding piece of silver. If we shake our heads, he reduces the amount, and writes it down in figures. Although we can feast our eyes on the various scenes which come before us while in Cuba, we must remember the natives are looking at us, uttering a jargon of words, not much of which we can comprehend, except _Americano_ and _sombrero_, which implies that we are Americans, and wear hats. The Spanish ladies wear veils, the men only wearing hats. Cruelty to seamen while in Cuban ports is an evil which needs reforming. The vessels in whose service they are engaged are mostly from a frozen clime, that return loaded with cargoes of sugar and molasses. The change of climate to a person of leisure is very perceptible, but when required to perform the heaviest of labor under a tropical sun, it is too overpowering--it is cruelty! The sailor is frequently sent aloft to grease the mast at midday, when he is overpowered by heat, and drops on the decks, gasps once, and is gone! Poor fellow! Only a man! There is an Irishwoman living in Cienfuegos, called by the sailors "Mother Carey," and the duped sailors her chickens. She is married to a Spaniard, and keeps a Sailor's Home, or saloon. She employs runners to inveigle mariners into her shop, and then for fifty cents' worth of whisky will take a good pair of boots, or any kind of clothing, from the stupid wretches. After robbing them in this unfeeling manner she turns them out, to find their way back to the ship as best they can. The sailor has few inducements for doing right, but the avenues for his destruction are never closed night or day. Cuba has been on the altar for sacrifice several years. The United States have been looking for some time toward the event of its severance from Spain, when it would gravitate toward her for protection. The present movement is being made because the people have no voice in their own government; they are overburdened with taxes to support declining royalty from Spain, for the purpose of making laws and administering them. Would an embassy of Americans, with authority from Washington, be more acceptable to the Cubans than their present rulers? Does our administration now evince that efficiency, justice, and prowess to protect the unprotected, and strengthen the weak, which would encourage a feeble foreign principality to seek an asylum beneath the "stars and stripes," where a shelter free from discord and contention could be furnished as a refuge in times of danger? Does not the successful warfare in which it has been engaged for a number of years indicate the first fundamental principles of self-government and defense? How terrible the fate of all insurgents when captured, at the sight of which humanity sickens! and yet they neither appear intimidated nor appalled. The victim for execution is led out at the dawn of day, with no escort but the priest and executioner. Upon his bended knees he repeats his prayers after the padre. The condemned man is then shot in the back, his head cut off, his body thrown in a cart, and carried to a pit, where it is tumbled in and left. No words of extenuation, no excuse or quarter, is tolerated for an instant. Within twenty miles of Cienfuegos, among the mountains, there has numbered a force of rebels somewhere in the vicinity of twelve thousand. Their movements show both strategy and strength--their mode of warfare the guerilla. Over a month since four hundred troops were landed here from Spain, and shortly afterward ordered into an engagement, or to make an attack upon the insurgents. They were not regulars--some of them beardless youths. When the fray was over, it is said but one escaped, because he had a better horse than his pursuers. The destruction of this force was only a before-breakfast pastime for the rebels. They are now constantly making incursions upon the planters, firing fields of cane, sugar-mills, and, before the work of destruction is half finished, they are miles away, strewing desolation wherever they pass. The Cuban rebellion is no longer of infantile growth; the entire inefficiency of the volunteers, who go racing about the country, is plainly to be seen. Every thing pertaining to military movements is shrouded with an air of mystery. When the wounded and dying are brought in on the cars, guards are placed at the doors--no person but surgeons admitted, no questions answered, or satisfaction given to outsiders. It is shocking to see a country of such luxuriance and beauty fall a prey to the unrelenting hand of war, which gluts itself with human gore, and is only satiated when the fiend of destruction has no more blood to shed, or conquests to make. "La Purisima Conception" is the name of the only church in the city. It has two towers and ten bells. The tallest tower was erected to contain a clock, and afterward the church was built around it, thus rendering the style of architecture any thing but imposing. The materials used are stone and brick, with marble floors. It is singular to see a people among whose progenitors in Spain the Christian religion was first planted by the apostles themselves, cherish so little zeal in regard to the observance of its ordinances in any way. The congregation outside is larger than the number of worshipers inside, on Sabbath morning. The men stand about the entrance, and make remarks about those going into church, as though they were engaged in the path of duty. Their conduct is a reminder that the chivalric days of elegant address and lordly demeanor are passing away from the Spanish people who reside this side of the water. At 8 o'clock A.M. the best society residents come out to worship. In a population of ten thousand souls a goodly number might be expected to witness the imposing ceremonial of a high mass on Sabbath morning. The church has an elegant interior, the architecture being Doric, the arched roof supported by numerous pilasters. At the terminus of the nave is placed the grand altar, ornamented with images of dazzling brightness and golden candlesticks of gigantic proportions, containing immense wax candles, which, when lighted, shed a star-like luster. There are also eight other altars of less dimensions, where the more humble kneel to receive consolation. The priest looks as ancient as the religion he represents, and chants mass with an intonation that would be creditable to one less in years. With fine music, choice paintings from Spanish and Italian masters, representing saints preceded by a record of unsullied purity, upon which were beaming subdued rays of light through stained glass of rare design and workmanship, besides all that could be attractive in a church and service combined, there were only about fifty persons present, including white and black. The edifice was designed to seat only a few of the congregation. A noticeable peculiarity in attending worship here is that each lady-worshiper is accompanied by a servant, who carries a low cane-seated chair for her mistress to occupy during service, and an elegant rug made of long, soft cashmere goat's hair, beautifully dyed, which is placed in front of the chair. On this mat the mistress kneels to repeat her devotional exercises, with an ease which would have been considered quite sacrilegious by St. Francis, or any of those old hair-shirt-wearing friars. The servant in attendance, if young, kneels by the side of her mistress upon the marble tiles, where she is expected to repeat all the prayers connected with the ritual. If she is seen gazing about, as an admonition to give attention to her religious duties, she receives a tap on the head from her mistress's hand, which causes her lips to move again, and her eyes to cease their voyages of discovery. Old servants kneel behind their mistress, and go through the forms of worship as a religious duty and safeguard against sin. At 11 o'clock A.M. the poor people attend church in the same place; the heat is too fervent for the rich to venture out then. Spiritual consolation is a commodity not much sought after in this market by rich or poor, if the numbers in attendance are any criterion. What few are assembled go through the service in a hurried, business-like manner, which has no soul in it. The plaza in Cienfuegos is the largest on the island. It is kept in order by the coolies--a race of people brought from the mountains of Asia, which forms the most numerous servile population in the country. At night it is the scene of a grand display, or military parade. The band comes from the barracks, surrounded by a military escort, near which no one is permitted to pass. The guards are all extremely tall, dark, well-formed men, being of Moorish origin. While on duty they stand as mute and motionless as statuary, with their guns pointing upward, but ready for instant action at the word of command. It is here the chill winds never come, and drape the foliage in somber hues--the flowers are always blooming, sweet as dreams borne on angels' wings. To this plaza, at night, the entire population of the city resort for recreation, and to breathe the fresh air. The grounds are divided into parterres, laid out at right angles, through which are wide avenues, paved with flat rocks. In the center is a fountain and grotto, near which are four marble statues representing the seasons. No fabled habitation of the genii, or enchanting description of the Isle of Calypso, could fill the imagination with more delightful emotions than the real scene before us. The bright moonbeams come stealing softly through the scarlet hibiscus, and feathery palms wave their graceful wands above our heads, while the most gentle zephyrs fan our brows with their blandest breeze, and every thing seems tipped with silver sheen, and too unreal for earth. The gay and beautiful señoritas soon commence promenading, many of them dressed in white, with long, starched trains to their robes, and skirts that swept over the paved boulevards with a rushing sound, like the waves plashing against a vessel, although the accompaniment of shuffling sandals and slip-shod slippers of the men make a grinding noise nothing suggestive of grace or elegance. The music soon struck up, with its most fascinating strains; everybody seemed to partake of its harmonious cadence, and commenced moving about with the grace of sylphs. The soldiers and police, with their _brusquiere_ movements, were the only ones present not given up to the most perfect _abandon_ for enjoyment. Among other choice and beautiful pieces, the band played _Il Trovatore_. The melody seemed intensified by the same pathos that seized the mind of the great composer when he wrote it; and as its sounds died away among the moonbeams and perennial foliage, while its echoes lingered in the air, the surroundings appeared too beautiful for any thing but the culmination of all on earth that might be termed grand. CHAPTER XXVI. Seeking information with reference to distances while in Cuba will be found an adventurous enterprise. The answer you receive is, "Far as the voice of a countryman, or the crowing of a cock," which you find after traveling two or three leagues just beyond. The following are the correct distances across the island by railway: From Cienfuegos to Cruces, nineteen miles; from Cruces to Santo Domingo, twenty-four miles; from Santo Domingo to Matanzas, eighty miles; from Matanzas to Havana, sixty-six miles. Many suppose Cuba has no railroads, except some on which an attempt to ride would imperil their safety, which is a great mistake. The roads are in the hands of the Government, being well built, and the speed all that could be desired. Three kinds of passenger-cars are placed at the disposal of travelers--first, second, and third class. The first class are not cushioned, but have willow-wrought backs and seats to make them cool. Few, except foreigners, ride in them. The second class have cushioned seats, and more passengers. The soldiers also ride in these. The third class cars have seats without backs or cushions on them. The majority of Cubans have no pride in regard to their mode of traveling. These uncomfortable cars are literally packed. Here we see the elegantly-dressed lady, with her crape shawl and embroidered veil--gentlemen-planters, coolies, the blackest slaves on the island--all listening to the blind musician playing on his guitar, while his wife and he are singing their Spanish melodies and gathering up the _dinero_ which the kind-hearted people give them. The smell of garlic and tobacco are two odorous substances with which travelers in Cuba must become accustomed. Passengers all smoke in every car--the interrogation never being used, Is smoking offensive? Everybody seems trying to pull the greatest possible amount of pleasure from the Havana weed. A vast number of cigars and cigarettes vanish in a short space of time. As the train started from Cruces, a quiet shower distilled itself. It rains in Cuba without threatening skies or any visible preparation. There is no rolling up of squadrons into threatening ranks, the moisture appearing to come from nowhere. The shower was like beauty blushing through tears, the skies were so lovely, and the rain-drops very gentle. It is harvest-time now on the island. Every thing is hurry and rush, while both men and beasts are, many of them, driven to death. When we stopped at the first station it was early in the morning, and day was breaking. Carts, drawn by oxen and loaded with sugar-hogsheads which had come from miles away, were standing there. Poor brutes! What a look of subjugation they all have, with an immense ring through their noses, and no yoke around their necks but a small one fastened to their heads and horns, by which the loads are drawn! These oxen are of immense size, with tremendously long horns. They are not the Florida stock of cattle, but brought from Mexico. They drive them with goads, or sharpened pieces of iron, which are very severe. Nothing is treated so badly here as the patient ox, the mortality among them being greater than all the other animals combined. Acres of sugar-hogsheads now cover the grounds around the depots. The wealth of the country--that before which all other products sink into insignificance--is the rich sugar-cane, supplying more than half the world with its saccharine deposits. The cane raised here is three per cent. richer than that raised in the Southern States. It grows from four to eight feet in height, according to the fertility of the soil. It is now March, and the summit of the cane is crowned with its useful blooms, which are gathered and dried for upholstering purposes, while the leaves are cut and used for the sustenance of stock, which are herded, watched, and fed, night and day, when not working. In passing through the country we frequently see, remote from any dwelling, small tents stretched over a cot-bed. Here is where the coolie cattle-herder sleeps. The heavy dews, with the hot sunshine at midday, to which they are exposed, must finish out the existence of these poor wretches very soon. The mornings being a little airy now, the agents come out, on the arrival of the train, dressed in the _capa parada_, or long brown cloth cloaks, with capes which hang over their shoulders. Below is seen a pair of legs dressed in white, supported by a pair of feet covered with their birthday stockings and leather sandals. This constitutes the uniform of both agents and loafers, worn by them when making their _début_ from a hasty morning toilet. Travelers, in going through the country now, pass the day in varied vicissitudes of thought and feelings. It is no secret that a war is progressing in Cuba which may end in a Santo Domingo massacre, or, like the Kilkenny cats, continue fighting until they destroy each other. More soldiers are traveling on the trains than citizens--their uniforms being made of light-blue striped linen, with scarlet cuffs, and their hats of Panama, turned up on the left side, on which is fastened a red and yellow cockade. This style of dress seems to be intended as a mark of loyalty to the Spanish Government, used more for a badge of their principles than a uniform designed for those in actual service, as it is worn by men too old for duty, and boys too young for enlistment. The men are all armed with guns, knives, and pistols, until they look like moving arsenals, Barracks are stationed on the railroad at every town of any size, while cavalry soldiers, armed with carbines, go dashing about in all directions. The Cuban saddle-horses are evidently related to the Arabian stock brought from Spain; they are pretty, graceful, docile, easy-gaited creatures. The cavalry braid their horses' tails, then tie them to the saddles with red and yellow ribbons. When they ride up to a store or hotel, they hitch them under the front veranda. A Spaniard told me "that it was because they were too lazy to walk, and they rode into the house." The insurgents are more to be dreaded, in the adoption of their present tactics, than regularly organized troops. They are acquainted with every portion of the country--all its defiles and elevations--with their methods and places for secure retreat always selected. They dart about like sunbeams, dealing destruction to every thing in their reach with the celerity of hurricanes. The regular vocations of life are interrupted--all the energies of the nation being expended on arms, and not on arts, which has already sounded the death-knell to their national prosperity. Many Spaniards are now nursing the delusion of peace, but it is only a shadow, evanescent as the gorgeous hues which deck their evening skies. Foreigners, as they pass through the country, feel some anxiety for their safety when they approach the track of the insurgents so close as to see the smoking ruins of burning sugar-houses. Strangers who visit here now, with proper passports and correct deportment, will be protected. Persons who either cannot or will not give any account of themselves are regarded with suspicion, which is the same in all countries that are in a state of insurrection. In traveling two hundred miles we change cars four times. On the trains we have none of those insinuating, untiring, vigilant, prize-candy boys, to thrust their wares in our faces, just as our nerves are settling from the last jolt, to worry us until we have to make an investment in their sweet flour-paste and brass jewelry, to be rid of them. The coolies seem to do the peddling at the stopping-places. They have for sale sponge-cakes, peeled oranges, bananas, goat's-milk cheese, and guava-jelly. What a medley of all nations is seen when we halt! There is something in the atmosphere opposed to silence, yet everybody keeps in a good humor. When the train stops there is no hurry or bustle--all the ladies sit down, while the men walk up to the bar for a drink. The favorite beverage is made from the _penalis_, or "_long kiss_"--a hollow-shaped banana, molded from sugar, mixed with wine and water. There is no drinking behind screens--it is all public, in a large room, with seats for passengers to sit on. The Cubans drink small quantities each time, yet no one gets drunk, the wines being so light and pure. Each departure of the train is announced by the ringing of a large dinner-bell held in the hands of a negro. The coolies are employed on the cars, both as firemen and brakemen. Our coolie brakeman went to sleep between each stopping-place, but never was behind time when the engine whistled down brakes. The depots are not large; but each one has a flower-yard, or garden, attached, arranged with taste, where the scarlet hibiscus blooms with its showy petals, that flame like "mimic suns." They gave us flowers freely when we motioned for them; but they gave us looks too, as the inhabitants in the center of the island are not much accustomed to seeing foreigners. Although it is only the first day of March, every thing has on a midsummer dress--all the flowers, like the national colors, are of the grandest hues. The favorite shade-tree is the orange, of which nearly every cabin, however humble, has a few. One arbor had tomato-vines trained over it, hanging full of scarlet fruit, forming a fine contrast with the green leaves. Miles of banana-trees are passed on every side, maturing rapidly. Immense fields of corn give promise of an abundant harvest. The plantations are inclosed by hedges of Campeachy and Brazil wood, besides sessile hemp, Spanish bayonet, and cactus, while some have rock walls. The hedges formed from vegetation are constantly clothed with verdure and flowers: any attempt to penetrate them would be a hazardous enterprise for man or beast, as well as a damaging encounter for all fleshly or furry coverings. The tropical atmosphere which pervades this island is favorable to the growth of plants of various species from all parts of the world. The royal palm, with its curling plumes, rearing its lofty head two hundred feet in the air, stands in rows on each side of the avenues that lead to the dwellings. Its leaves are used in thatching houses, its fruit in fattening hogs, and its stately trunk for troughs. By means of ropes these immense trees are climbed by the natives, with the celerity of monkeys. The acacia-tree also sheds its fragrance in the woods and cultured gardens. The virgin forests are teeming with such a superabundance of vegetation, it has no room for development. The trunks of the trees are covered with moss, ferns, and parasitic plants, which perfume the air, and delight us with the most exquisite odors, while above [Illustration: NATIVES GATHERING PALM-FRUIT.] all climbs the convolvulus to dizzy heights, interweaving and forming arches to crown the rank growth with its perpetual-blooming, campanulated flowers. Here the cactus family, with its collaterals, assume immense proportions, armed with weapons, the appearance of which is sufficient to fill the mind of any explorer with terror. The old man's beard, with its swinging pendants hanging from the tall trees at the mercy of the winds, flourishes as though its resting-place was something more substantial than the caprice of every fickle breeze. There are no large streams of water flowing through the country; but springs abound, some of which are supposed to possess curative properties. The most airy tales emanating from the pen of the wildest romancer have never equaled the real beauties of this modern Eden. It seems to have been designed as a haunt for the Muses, or a resting-place for ethereal messengers, where they could meet and hold converse before proceeding on their missions of mercy, in administering comfort to the afflicted. The residents of such a land, instead of destroying each other, and manifesting the unfeeling, restless disposition which we see here, should be as contented as crickets, to feed upon dew-drops and bask in sunbeams. That slave-labor is employed here, and slavery exists, we have sufficient proof in traveling through the country. Negroes being naturally a discontented race, they run away whenever an opportunity presents itself. One planter left us with a black slave at Colon. She had a rope tied around her waist, with which her master was leading her. She was well dressed, had some bundles in her arms, and looked very indifferent, generally. The laws forbid their being whipped; but the plantation-drivers all have huge lashes, which, when popped, sound like the distant report of fire-arms. The slaves are formed into ranks when they go to and return from their work; sometimes a hundred are seen in a drove, composed of both sexes. They are now employed in cutting cane, and load from thirty to fifty wagons at once before they move them to the mills for grinding and boiling. The mules grind the cane with veiled faces and sour looks for such sweet work. Cane only requires renewing here once in five or ten years; consequently, but few are planting or plowing. We visited one plantation for the purpose of seeing them work. Every thing was in a rush. Some had on chains for bad conduct; but their tasks had to be performed all the same. One coolie was pointed out as having been run away two years, hidden out at work with the colliers in the mountains. He was kept in the stocks at night, and made to work with his chains on during the day, of which he complained to the overseer's wife. She replied, "If they give you liberty you will go away again." He responded, "I will." The slaves were never treated with half the severity in the States which they receive here. Their quarters are miserable thatched huts, with earth floors, furnished with only an inclined plank for a bed, sick or well. Their principal food is rice and cassava-root, ground and baked in thin cakes. Slave-property has depreciated very much in Cuba since the insurrectionary movements, and at present none appear anxious to make investments in such precarious property. The importation of more coolies has been forbidden. Negroes from Africa have been landed here this winter. The coolies cannot learn to speak English well, but catch the Spanish language directly. Small negroes are plentiful; they all come around us, with their rude, naked, black bodies and woolly heads, to steal a sly glance at the strangers, and then run away. Many traveling monkeys look brighter, and manifest more signs of intelligence, than these creatures. As soon as they can walk they receive about the same attention as puppies--upon which they thrive very well. There is no Sunday on sugar-plantations, and all the slaves look as though they did not have sense to comprehend it, if any one should tell them they had a soul. They are only taught to work, and if they refuse, the stocks and chains are ready for them, and other punishments too, although the laws make a pretense of redressing their wrongs and ameliorating their condition. Chicken-fighting is practiced in Cuba as a means of subsistence. When a young man forsakes the paternal roof in the States, to engage in games of chance, he usually carries a pack of playing-cards in his pocket, which are not seen. The young Cuban leaves home attired in his best clothes, with a thorough-bred fighting-cock under his arm, from the body of which all the feathers have been plucked, his wings and tail-plumage only remaining. These chickens are carried with an evident feeling of pride, and for the purpose of display, as an American jockey would show a fine horse. The owners have an ear of corn in their pocket, with which they feed them. When the cars stop they always crow, as if trying to challenge a champion for fight. These fights are not considered disgraceful here, as in other countries, and hundreds of dollars are bet on a single chicken. The Cubans laugh when any thing is said about cruelty to chickens, and reply, "No law has yet been passed here for the prevention of cruelty to animals." When Bergh visits Cuba, no doubt, his first and warmest sympathies will be enlisted in behalf of the poor chickens, with their bare backs deprived of the natural covering to prevent others with which they fight from holding them by their feathers. The Spaniards, being a nation of strong passions, require something more than mental exhilaration to stimulate and satisfy them--hence the resort to chicken and bull-fights. Matanzas is situated on the north-west coast of Cuba, latitude 23° north, and sixty-six miles from Havana. The sea-approach to Matanzas Bay is indicated by two singularly shaped hills, called The Pan of Matanzas, which appear to stand like sentinels guarding the entrance. The harbor is fine, affording protection from all winds but the north-east. The surrounding elevations of land give the city the appearance of an amphitheater, or half circle. The soil in the vicinity is the richest in Cuba. The range of mountains here evidences marks of convulsions in nature, and they have, no doubt, been the seat of volcanic action. The rocks forming the basis of these mountains are limestone--some of them containing caves, one of which is said to extend under the town. As we approach the depot, what a medley we see! A regular Pentecostal illustration of olden times, where every one hears his own tongue spoken! We noticed an official on duty whose services are much needed in many places. It was a man with a moderate-sized rod, which he used in clearing the car-shed of idle boys and lazy servants--making porters, carrying bundles, move with accelerated velocity. A subordinate race here has no show for the development of their slothful proclivities; the authorities arrest them when discovered, and, without any appeal, send them to work, miles away, on the sugar-plantations--vagrancy and vagabondism being dangerous experiments in Cuban cities. I am unable to explain the cause, but all the Cuban men wear visages as though their bodies were the abode of numerous pains, which distorted their facial nerves, while their attenuated limbs look like the home of rheumatics, whose frequent twitchings had absorbed the flesh, leaving only a little parchment-covered bone and muscle, resembling a has-been foundation of an aristocratic family. No smile sleeps or wakes on their faces; if one should, perchance, light on them, it soon leaves, for want of encouragement. The ladies all look plump and well kept as any scions of royal blood. Care rests lightly on them as their clothing, which entire outfit resembles the lace and gauzy drapery for the more substantial ornamenting of an American lady's toilet. Here we see the coolies engaged in all kinds of servitude--cooking, waiting on tables, attending in sleeping-apartments--always moving in that snail-pace which, apparently, nothing less than a tornado would cause them to vary. What a sad, solitary, sullen-looking race they are, with a cloud of discontent always hanging over their faces, rarely, if ever, engaging in pleasantries with their companions but always creeping around with a shadowy frown, which resembles a graveyard-parting more than any thing with which we are familiar! A pleasant look on their features would be as foreign to them as a ray of sunshine to their hearts. When we pass the gateway through which all passengers are required to enter and surrender their tickets, how reviving the prospect to strangers the notice, "English and French spoken," which enables them again to hold intelligent communication with the outside world, after spending a whole day in a crowd, with only their own thoughts and suppositions on subjects and novel sights, surrounded by a Babel of unmeaning sounds! The above direction, designating the languages spoken, is the only requisite sign for a hotel. As we enter, a reception is given us by the proprietor, who is a keen, sharp, smiling French Creole, with the clearest of ideas in regard to the amount of funds he can extract from every guest. A lovely and refreshing breeze passes through the house, coming from both mountains and sea. Here it meets us like a welcome friend, to fan the warm and refresh the weary traveler with its combined influences. Let all the contracts of those who come to Cuba be made in advance; it will save much unpleasantness, as the proprietors charge in proportion to their avarice, if no previous terms have been agreed upon by both parties. Four dollars per day, in gold, will give a guest the full benefit of all accommodations furnished, including wine for dinner. You can receive your attentions in Spanish, French, or English. Dinner commences at 4 P.M., of which we will now avail ourselves at a later hour. The table is spread with a white linen cloth and damask napkins. The little ants have been inspecting the premises, and many of them are still exploring the precincts. Some have selected the caster as the most prominent point for reconnoitering, where they are still taking observations. These are all soon brushed away by the waiter without ceremony, and then comes the repast. The cooking is on the French restaurant order. The savory odor of onions and garlic exhales from soup and meat on every side--chickens cooked in all styles that a connoisseur could invent--beef, mutton, Irish potatoes, tomatoes, and squashes, besides other vegetables of all kinds. After having our plate changed ten times, the meats are all removed for dessert, which consists of cheese, guava jelly, cocoa-nut grated and cooked in sirup--the meal concluding with a cup of _café noir_. The Cubans laugh at the Americans for mixing flour and sugar into pies and sweet-cakes. After dinner we went to visit some friends on the bark Adelaide, anchored in Matanzas Bay. The process of being pulled on board from a small boat would be a hazardous experiment for those whose arms were not well fastened. It makes a consequential person feel very diminutive, as though he were about the same size and importance as any other fish, dangling at the end of a line, previous to being taken in and served up for chowder. Over eighty vessels are anchored in the bay--all waiting for cargoes of sugar and molasses. The captains are complaining on account of the low bids made for freights. Every day fifty of them can be seen in the consigning-office of Mr. Sanchez. They all have an anxious, care-worn look, and some of them so old, seasoned, and toughened, by hardships and exposure, that, if they were to fall overboard, the shark that would have the temerity or skill to seize them, would never survive a similar experiment, unless a Jonah miracle were wrought in him. Each captain, as he arrives, gives the morning salutation by asking his companions in turn, "Is your vessel entered?" "Are you chartered?" "Where you going to sail for?" Most of the vessels are from Maine and Massachusetts. Strange as it may appear, many of these captains have their entire families with them. The ladies, while in port, extract some sweets, despite the rough life they lead, in making calls, visits, and even giving dinners and concerts--all the invitations being limited to their maritime acquaintances from the four quarters of the globe. Then they take little excursions, in their long-boats, up the beautiful and historic valley of Yumori, or walk to the city in crowds of fifteen or twenty, accompanied by all the children who are not too small to go with them. Batteries of black eyes are leveled at them, as they pass, from every side. No hippodrome, in making its grand entree, was ever scrutinized more closely. Clerks leave their counters to gaze at them; servants forget their business; pack-mules endanger the wares of their owners; coolies drop their cakes of ice in the river when unloading vessels, as the foreigners cross the bridge, while idle boys and girls follow them, to take a good look! The gratification is mutual--each gazer is happy, and, apparently, satisfied in the enjoyment of sight-seeing. Some of these ladies have sailed with their husbands for years, under stormy skies, or crossing polar seas. A few of them have learned how to compute latitude and longitude by the quadrant. They speak of wrecks as we would heavy thunder-showers on land. The time for leaving the bay soon arrived. Nature had veiled her face, like the Cuban beauties, with a tissue so transparent that, instead of concealing her charms, they were only increased. The darkness seemed like a mist, produced by the enchanting movements of some invisible spirit, more than the shades of night in other places. The lights beamed from the shore in the distance. All the ships had their signals, of varied hues, burning brightly, while the stars shone with, the same unfading, brilliant luster as when their first song echoed through the ethereal vaults of heaven, and "all the sons of God shouted for joy." The process of being returned into the little boat, at night, appears like a leap in the dark, as I stepped backward down a rope-ladder until the pilot says, "Let go," when my hands unclasp; at the same instant a very uncertain hold is taken, with my feet on something that moves, but I am safe. Before us lies a scene in which our imagination has reached its culminating point, where enthusiasm gains the ascendency, when an approach is made toward extravagance in the use of language--the barge of Cleopatra, borne on the placid Cydnus--which, in musical cadence, echoed no more sweetly than the plash of our oars with the brilliant phosphorescent light by which each stroke was followed, and the train of silvery waves that marked our movements through the illumined waters of Matanzas Bay. Near the wharf we obtained a carriage, without difficulty, that conveyed us to the plaza, and, afterward, to the hotel. The plaza resembled a panoramic view, drafted from the imagination by some skilled artist--the beautiful señoritas, with no dull, meditative moods in their eyes, but merry flashes of the sunshine, in which they spend their lives, reflected back to beautify the world in which they live. Decked in their pink and creamy robes, floating through the avenues among gorgeous flowering plants, they resembled a festival in fairy-land more than the enjoyments incident to real life. Our hotel is soon reached, where quiet rules the hour, all the inmates having gone to the plaza, or slumbering in the arms of tired repose, but the majoral and a few of his assistants. A tall, ebony-colored servant conducts us to our apartments, and turns on the gas, which, in the jail-like rooms, is much needed. I commenced speaking English to the _valet de chambre_, when he looked at me as if in distress, and said, "_Pourquoi ne vous me parlais en Francais!_" "_Vous parlez Francais!_" I relieved his anxiety by giving all our orders in French, to which he responded with much alacrity. The bolting of blinds and doors, combined with the high, substantial brick and mortar walls which surround us, savors very much of captivity--all the oxygen we have at night passing through a small square made in the apertures of the blinds. The canvas-framed stretchers, designed for reclining, and the accommodation of only one person, are canopied over with beautifully-wrought lace, looking both clean, cool, and inviting, to our weary frames. The atmosphere at this place is said to be conducive of sleep. Every thing sleeps, no difference when or where. The driver nods on his cabriolet, which might be attended with direful consequences, but the poor brutes are so jaded they are sleepy too. The salesman snores on his stall, sometimes stretched out full length. The cooly nods over his chopsticks and rice, after he has eaten his dinner, while the more elegant matron inclines her head gracefully, saying, _Siesta_. Morning dawns, leaving no marks of intervening space, but every thing is full of life and business. The butler's voice is heard above the din of dishes and kettles, giving orders, while his busy hands are preparing delicate loin-steaks, mutton-chops, and veal-cutlets, for broiling, and 9 o'clock train from Havana. The coffee is prepared on a separate range near the dining-tables, close to the call of every new applicant for the delightful beverage; it comes steaming out into the big China cups, the servant holding in one hand a kettle of boiling milk, and one of coffee in the other, furnishing us milk and coffee, or _vice versa_. "_Mi café_," at six or seven in the morning, accompanied with a small French roll, fortifies the inhabitants for any movements which they wish to make until breakfast-time. While drinking our coffee the porter, hat in hand, announces _El Volante_, which we had ordered the night before for the purpose of visiting the cave. All efforts to describe that curious conveyance must fail, when compared to the reality of riding in one--it being a vehicle of Cuban origin, not in general use on the island now, except in the country. It is drawn by two horses, one placed between the shafts, the other on the left in rear of the first, upon which a booted, liveried postilion, called a _calesero_, is seated in a diminutive saddle. The center of gravity is nowhere in a _volante_, while it swings and vibrates along softly as a boat on smooth water. When the wheels strike a rock it is accompanied with no unpleasant jolts, like our American carriages. Fancy could not conceive of spirits borne on the wings of an ethereal messenger being wafted more gently. As I was carried through clouds, illumined by the morning sun, which ascended sweetly as incense from the altar of devotion, I was seized with indescribable sensations, elevating emotions, comparable to nothing--partaking of no other event of which history has any record, except the transit of a perfect man, who passed beyond the realms of space, and never returned. It is materialized enjoyment, the realization of momentary happiness, at peace with all the world; our feelings are pure like the air that surrounds us, which comes direct from its heavenly home on cloud-like wings. If permitted to live longer, I feel prepared to tread paths of life with fortified strength, meeting ing its exigencies "with a more calm and virtuous majesty." If the angel of death were to come, he would find me ready in feelings--the mowing-blade of Time could cut me down and swing me off without a pang. Every sound appears harmonious, from the bird-orchestra, tuned by the voice of God, to the cricket that chirps from the rock-wall as we pass. That remarkable cavern of _El Cueva de Bellamar_ was discovered over twenty years since, under the following circumstances: A slave, having been engaged in the preparation of a lime-kiln, accidentally dropped one of his tools in a cavity near the place where he had been collecting rock. Hoping soon to recover it, for fear of punishment, he commenced reaching where he had last seen it. All his efforts proved useless. He then threw in rocks, which were a long time finding soundings. The next day excavations were made, which revealed a cave over two hundred feet perpendicular below the surface of the earth, and a mile in length. This remarkable subterranean passage has, no doubt, been the work of centuries, the water dripping on the lime-rock, which dissolved it--all these beautiful transformations taking place in midnight darkness, under the guidance of the great Architect whose omnipotent hand formed all things, whether above or under the earth. While descending the steps which lead into the cave, a singular phenomenon is observable. It is an intense, stifling heat, which increases as we advance, and oppresses us until we become accustomed to it. This descent may be compared to an approach into the lower regions--the torches in the hands of our guides flickering and snapping like fiery serpents. Any fears of having found the realm of his Satanic majesty are soon dispelled by the prismatic view presented to us. As we enter the cave two avenues describing a triangle are seen, it being the commencement of an apex with converging lines, which terminate not in regions _inferno_, but the "Devil's Gorge," near which stands _El Organ_, with its silent pipes reaching to the dome. We come in contact with rough edges on every side, while narrow passes almost obstruct our progress, when suddenly we are ushered into _El Cathedro_, forty feet in height, and nearly the same in length, with a variable width of twenty feet. Here is found the basin of holy water, blessed by no earthly priest, fed by a fountain whose innermost recesses have never been penetrated, or measureless depths fathomed. The palace halls of princely dwellings, decked with costly gems of priceless value, shine with no more dazzling luster than the icicle-shaped pendants of snowy whiteness hanging from the arch and sides of this remarkable underground temple. The stalactites in many places form solid columns of transparent crystals, which meet the stalagmites, and extend to the earth. Oyster-shells and sea-urchins of immense size are found imbedded in the rocks, which demonstrate that this has been the home of the restless sea, where old Neptune combed his "hoary locks," and beat his foaming billows. To enter this subterranean cavern seems like standing on the brink of a volcano, our only hope of escape, being a fickle flame extinguished by a breath, looking into the domains of futurity, not knowing how soon we might be called upon to try its realities. No one can conceive the period of time which has been consumed in the production of this remarkable formation--a drop of water, containing the fractional part of a grain of lime, leaving an imperceptible deposit in its downward course, thus forming the stalactites and stalagmites of fantastic forms and delicate proportions, which the ingenuity of no human hand, however skillful, can imitate. A kind of awe-inspiring sensation seizes our minds while surrounded by the oppressive stillness in these depths, where mighty forces are fulfilling their great purposes in producing mountains by infinitesimal accessions. As we approach the lake, the atmosphere becomes cooler, when a virgin sheet of water presents itself, on whose surface no heavenly zephyr has ever danced, or rude winds plunged into maddening strife. Here, stretched before us, is a body of water nearly two hundred feet long, thirty feet in width, and eighteen feet in depth; while firmly attached to its bed are blooms perennial as the plants of paradise, resembling double dahlias, not less than eight inches in circumference, with variegated petals of delicate pink, violet, and straw color--the coloring attributable, no doubt, to the mineral deposit contained in the waters which trickle from above. As we gaze into its pearly depths, we are impressed with the thought that here all is peace. Many visitors who come here have the grasping relic-hunting propensity so strongly developed for wanting every thing attractive which they see, that they can only be restrained from breaking the finest stalactites by the guides threatening to extinguish the lights, which is sufficient to terrify into submission the stoutest sea captain that ever walked the quarter-deck of a vessel, or any of his _attachés_. As in other explored caverns, names have been given by the natives to the different formations found here, which so nearly resemble English that they can be readily translated. The resemblance of these curious figures to the objects indicated by the names they bear are sufficiently striking to produce an increased emotion of admiration: "Cathedral de San Pablo." "Manto de la Virgen." "La Sagua bordado." "El Organ." "El baño de la Americana." "Los Apostles." "El Altar de la Virgen." "El Confessionario." "La Boca del Diablo." The almost overpowering glare of sunshine, accompanied with other unpleasant sensations, resulting from a return to the outside world, was a disagreeable reminder that I had not been translated, or presented with a new body which never ached, or a heart that always beat in harmonic measures to the tasks imposed on it. Persons must never imagine that no rough places are to be gone over, or fatigue endured, when exploring the recesses of this wonderful cavern; but all slight obstacles overcome will amply repay those who make this cave a visit. It is about a league distant from Matanzas, accessible by land or water. We will now have to descend upon our light wings of ecstatic admiration and delight to the plainer realities of earth. The bay, like a restless spirit, always in motion, rolls up its deposits of seaweed and shells almost under the _volante_ wheels as we pass, while the golden waves of borrowed brightness, reflected from the shining orb of day, rise to recede again, and keep time to the evolutions of the great universe, of which they form a part. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXVII. We departed from Matanzas shortly after our return from the cave. The scenery along the route to Havana leaves the impression that the country is declining. The buzzards fly close to the train, apparently gentle escorts, and sufficiently numerous to be the national emblem--a heavy fine being the penalty for injuring one of these scavengers. They are styled the red-crested vultures of Cuba, for grandeur. The island is surrounded by a chain of keys, reefs, and shoals, which make it inaccessible except to the experienced pilot. Havana was permanently settled by Velasquez, and named in 1519. At the point of entrance to the bay is a rock on which stands El Moro, or Castellos de los Santos Reyes, the light-house, and signal-station, where an excellent, revolving light can be seen from a distance of more than twenty miles. The following description is given of Moro Castle when it was first built: "It was of triangular shape, containing some heavy pieces of ordnance, which produced a perceptible quaking in the vicinity when fired." Forty pieces of cannon, of twenty-four pounds each, were mounted on the parapet. From the main castle there runs a line, or wall, mounted with twelve very long pieces of cannon, lying almost level with the water. These are all thirty-six-pounders, and most of them brass, being called "The Twelve Apostles" by way of eminence. At the point between this castle and the sea stands a tower having a round lantern at the top, where a sentinel is constantly on duty to see what ships are approaching the harbor, of which he signals by hoisting as many flags as they are in number. In 1691 the whole fort was surrounded by a moat filled with water, when it was captured and destroyed by an English fleet under Sir George Pocock, after a siege of twenty-nine days, at which time a thousand Spaniards were killed. The present Castle del Moro guards the bay on the east side, and is able to resist all attacks by sea, having two bastions toward the water, and two on the land side. Around this old structure lingers as many unpleasant memories as the Venetian Bridge of Sighs, which led from the palace to the prison--it being the prevailing opinion that whoever crossed it never returned. Those against whom any accusation can be brought of sufficient magnitude to thrust them in the Moro will find the chances greatly against their ever seeing the outside world again, or enjoying their freedom. Another castle, built opposite this, is called El Punta. This communicates with the city, and is usually well filled with soldiery. It has four regular bastions, and a platform mounted with sixty pieces of brass cannon. The city of Havana, a hundred years since, was the most important port in America for the Spanish commerce, where a thousand ships could anchor in nearly forty feet of water, it then being a rendezvous for other fleets when coming from the Spanish possessions of the Western Continent. All the Spanish galleons and merchant-ships met at this point every year, in September, to obtain supplies and water, that they might return to Spain together. They held a kind of carnival during their stay, which lasted until a proclamation from the governor was issued, forbidding any who belonged to the ships remaining in the city on pain of death, and at a given signal they all retired on board. This fleet was regarded the richest in the world, carrying several million pounds sterling. They came from Spain laden with merchandise, and were frequently attacked by pirates and buccaneers. These galleons were only factors for the other countries among which this wealth was distributed when they made a successful voyage. In 1796 the Santo Domingo massacre drove twelve thousand families to Havana, which now has a population of two hundred thousand. The dwellings are built entirely of rock, or brick, which is furnished from the island. The substantial manner in which the most common tenements are constructed is really remarkable, looking as though they were designed to last forever. The style of architecture now in use was originally of Moorish origin. The windows descend from the ceiling to the floor, with iron rods extending the whole length, more nearly resembling cages for wild beasts, but are retreats from which beauty casts many sly glances. In private residences curtains are drawn during the day, but in stores and market-houses the windows and doors are closed only at night, thus exposing the inside movements of the occupants all day. The dwellings for private residences have only one entrance for man or beast. The mistress and _volante_ come in together, when the horse is stabled on the first floor, and the lady walks up-stairs to her parlor. The narrow streets and narrower sidewalks keep the minds of visitors in a constant state of trepidation for fear of seeing some one crushed under the fast-moving vehicles. The mules, while waiting for a load, turn their heads from instinct, to let conveyances pass. Gradually the city proper has crossed the old wall boundaries, and now the outside is more attractive in appearance than inside. Soldiers are seen all about the city, but they are very peaceable. A censorship is kept over the newspapers, and letters from way-stations are delivered into the hands of the mail agent, instead of bags, while a dark veil conceals its politics and movements, in every way cherishing with jealous care the condition of all its internal troubles. El San Carlos is situated nearest the bay, and most convenient for travelers. This hotel is four stories high, commanding a fine view of the city and Moro, where we are now promenading for the purpose of sight-seeing. The roofs of the houses are mostly flat, and a favorite resort after sunset. The surrounding scenes entertain us. Children and chickens are seen in close proximity on the neighboring house-tops, where they live and sport apparently happy and hearty in their contracted boundaries. This resort being protected by a high wall around the outside, which prevents any accident to the occupants, whole families resort here to smoke and talk, it being more private than any fresh-air resort on the premises. The rear of all the residences is a kind of labyrinthian retreat of avenues, accessible by an indescribable variety of movements, together with flights of steps of different altitudes. In these coverts swarms of human beings are born, live, and die, in this condensed condition, regardless of comforts. At night, when the curtains are raised, heads are seen in these tenements as thick as rows of pins in a paper. Neither stoves nor fire-places are used in Havana: the cooking is done on a furnace in the back-yard--charcoal, made by the colliers in the mountains, being the only fuel required. The firing of heavy cannon from the English man-of-war anchored in the bay, and echoed by the Moro guns, agitate our thoughts and break the quiet of the dying day. The panorama before us is changing. An invisible hand behind the scene has dropped a shadow over the light of day draped in its brilliant and gorgeous glories. When the curtain rises again, the Queen of Night, more lovely than any queen of kingdoms, arrayed in her robes of royalty--for God has dressed her with the glories of heaven--appears, reflecting her full orb in the water, when an unbroken trail of silvery light apparently connects the two worlds. El Paseo, where the wealth and fashion of the city come at the close of the day for an airing, where are seen the beautiful señoritas, their eyes sparkling with the bright thoughts of their hearts, giving signals to their friends and lovers with their fans, which are readily comprehended and returned, although not a word has been spoken. The liveried postilions, with jack-boots, bare legs, brass buttons, and blue coats, accompany the Cuban _volantes_ in which they ride. This vehicle has been superseded to a considerable extent by a lighter conveyance known as "El Coche," or the French coach. This coach is capable of containing two persons with ease; sometimes three are seen riding in it. A screen of canvas, buttoned to the back of the driver's high seat, and then fastened to the top of the conveyance, excludes the rude gaze of the vulgar, gaping throngs, through which we are driven. The residence of the Captain-general is situated on the edge of El Paseo Militaire. Here, amid the song of birds from the aviary, the falling waters of the cascade, cooling echoes from the numerous _jets d'eau_ and fountains, the sweet odors that freight the air from the flowers, and the picturesque landscape over which the royal palms watch with their waving wands, we should expect to find the home of happy hearts. It is quite the reverse: the general has a care-worn visage, beneath which beats a troubled heart. He rides in a fine coach drawn by matched iron-grays, and guarded by armed postilions. He walks with an escort, for his kingdom is filled with insurrection. He is invested with almost unlimited power, being in command of the civil, military, and religious authorities, and from his decision there is no appeal. Many tourists appear desirous of getting over the greatest amount of space in the least possible time. It was that class of persons composed our party in visiting this object of interest. How they rushed about as though a policeman was on their track, in hot pursuit, and they could not stop to look at any thing! "O supper will be ready!" they kept constantly exclaiming, as though eating was the sole object of their existence. El Salle de los Mercaderes is the street on which the banks are located, the ladies resorting there only in their _volantes_ and coaches for the purpose of shopping. They never display their charms by alighting; it would be considered immodest: all goods which they wish to examine are brought to them while seated in their conveyances. The prevailing religion here is Catholic. Several years since this city contained more priests than people, more holidays than working ones--this kind of government basis requiring indulgence in order to insure allegiance. The scenes enacted on Sunday in the market-house are the same as on other days. The cobbler, seated on his bench at the door, made fun of us as we entered, thinking we could not comprehend him. "_Sombreros Americanos!_" said he. I looked at him, repeating the words, "_Vaya usted_"--Begone! when, as if taken aback, he ceased his impudence and commenced sewing. What a profusion of fruits is seen here! bushels of oranges, immense bunches of bananas, cocoa-nuts by the wagon-load, plantains--until we wonder what will be done with them all--but when fried they form an important article of diet among the Cubans--besides many fruits for which we cannot find a name or use. Meats of any kind were not exposed in quantities, but much fish, among which the gar appeared most abundant. Much of this produce is brought here in panniers on the backs of mules or horses, while long lines of moving [Illustration: A CUBAN ORANGE-MARKETER.] bundles come filing in, with the animals that bear them invisible, except their legs. These pack-mules are more used than wagons, on account of the narrow streets, the danger in passing being less than with loaded vehicles. The amount sold to each purchaser appears small: a piece of meat wrapped in a paper, and a little fruit tied up in a handkerchief, is all. When a purchase is made a present is expected, which they call _cuntra_. In proceeding to the cathedral we pass the stores and shops, all of which are open. The tailor sits, with his legs crossed, sewing as earnestly as though he was repeating his _Paternoster_. They are all Roman Catholics, who have already been to receive the supposed requisite supply of grace for the week, and have now returned to their business vocations. The drinking-saloons are open, with their patrons in full view, seated at the marble-topped tables, chatting with their friends, their favorite beverages in front of them, while the blind beggar, with his wife, stands outside singing Spanish ballads. The drays and wagons are not running, which is all the contrast between work-days and Sunday in Havana. The proximity between wealth and misery here is close, and the contrast so visibly marked that the impression received is more lasting than in America. Beggars expostulate and importune us until our hearts sicken with the sight of our surroundings. "_Lottera!_" is cried on every side by miserable-looking men and women selling tickets, which may be blanks or prizes, to be tested in the great Havana Lottery. The cathedral occupies a fine position in the city, being located in the _Calle del Ignacio_. It has stood so long, and withstood so much, that it has become an historic record, uniting the past and present. Here happy hearts have plighted their vows, and many times the last tribute of tenderness rendered to loved ones. Here the faithful follower of this religion has counted her beads, while the penitent knelt, confessing his crimes, and tarried for absolution. It contains numerous altars devoted to different saints. In rear of the cathedral is a monastery for the Padres. The cathedral, with its mystical scenes, causes our thoughts to revert to the times of Aaron, when, with his priestly vestments trimmed with tinkling bells and pomegranates, he stood before the altar and burned incense as an oblation for the sins of the people. The plate and ornaments of the main altar are silver and gold. The candelabra are of the most curious workmanship--some of them weighing nearly a hundred pounds. The bishop, assisted by twenty-four fathers and acolytes, conducted the service. Mass was read in Latin, the acolytes composed the choir, the members responding audibly. Worship, like other things in Cuba, is conducted with a zest. The number of worshipers in attendance was small. Those who came assumed the most devotional of attitudes, kneeling, during the entire service, in a promiscuous manner, on the hard tiles, if they had not provided themselves with soft rugs for the occasion. I could not determine where the line of distinction in color was drawn--white and black all supplicating together. The most elaborately-dressed señoras and señoritas bend before the confessional. A poorly-dressed Cuban woman, among the number, kept prostrating herself lower and lower until she kissed the marble tiling, when she rose with a look of satisfaction, as though the act of humiliation had unburdened her soul. The organ sent forth its thundering tones from behind the colossal pillars, playing the "_Te Deum_" and "_Miserere_"--thus enabling us to comprehend, to a certain extent, the grandeur of the music at St. Peter's Church in Rome. On the right of the main altar is a tablet, on which is engraved the following inscription: "_O restos è y imagen del grande Colon! Mil siglos duraran guardados en la urna y en la remembranza de nuestra nacion._" "O ashes and image of the great Columbus! You will be guarded for a thousand centuries in the tomb and in the heart of our nation." The great injustice done him while living cannot be atoned for now when dead by dragging his remains about the world. He died in Valladolid, Spain, where he was buried. His body was exhumed and taken to Seville, then to Santo Domingo--afterward, with great ceremony, to Cuba, and deposited in the cathedral, where it will, no doubt, be kept until some other idea seizes the minds of his impulsive countrymen. The cathedral walls are hung with the choicest of peaceful, benign portraits, of their glorified saints, looking with calmness upon us. Among the number is a life-size, finely-executed painting of St. Christopher, or Santo Christobal, who flourished during the third century A.D., and is the guardian saint of Havana. Immense statues of St. Christopher are still to be seen in many cathedrals. He is always represented as girded, with staff in hand, for a journey, which gives expression to his allegoric wanderings through the sea of tribulation, by which the faithful intended to signify the many sufferings passed before he arrived at the Eternal Gate. This saint was formerly implored against pestilential misfortunes or distempers. He adopted the name of St. Christopher as an inestimable treasure. His martyrdom is commemorated on the 9th of May. Many paradoxical things are related of him: "That he was a giant with a dog's head, and devoured men, but a transformation occurred when he believed on Christ. He is said to have been instructed from heaven in the way of right; that he was baptized by the moisture in a cloud which came from the sky, an invisible voice uttering the sacramental words." He is related as having had numerous contentions with Satan--his majesty's presence only being kept at bay by crossing himself. He was advised by a hermit, as an act of penance, to pray. "That I cannot do," he replied. "Then you must carry travelers over deep rivers." While performing his assigned tasks a child applied to him, to whom, when seated, he said, "You seem heavy as the whole world." The child replied, "I created the world, I redeemed the world, I bear the sins of the world." Then Christopher saw that he had borne Christ over the river, and for this reason he is always represented with the infant Jesus on his shoulders. It was common, during the Middle Ages, to place effigies of him in statuary outside the gates of a city, as he who looked on this figure of St. Christopher was safe from sudden death that day. The following inscription accompanies the figure of St. Christopher: Christophori sancti faciem quicumque tuetur. Illa nempe die non morte male morietur. Monday morning I ordered a coach for the purpose of visiting Cemetario de Espeda, named for an ancient bishop in Havana. The entrance to this cemetery is through a fine rock archway, designed only for pedestrians, and not carriages. The office has to be passed, and money handed in, before any corpse has a Christian burial in these consecrated grounds. Whatever might have been their virtues while living, the dead one here is to have wealth to take the body into a vault and the soul through purgatory. This cemetery contains not less than fifty acres of ground, around which is built a rock wall eight feet in height and about the same thickness. These walls are made of well-dressed rock, in which are vaults for interment. Inside the main inclosure are built other high walls for the same purpose. Paved walks cross each other through the grounds, covered with square-cut rock, which give a hollow echo when stepped upon, and, no doubt, contain other tombs. Vaults of sufficient size to admit a coffin are made in all these walls, which are afterward sealed, then a tablet of marble is fitted in, being secured with mortar, on which is placed the inscription, chiseled in Spanish. This tablet is arranged in accordance with the taste of the friends of those deceased who survive them. Some contain glass cases, with pictures of the Virgin; others, wreaths of black beads strung on wire, hung over the tomb. In one I saw a chameleon cozily ensconced, as though the wreath was made for him. Lizards were crawling in all directions; harmless little creatures, they liked the retirement of death's victims! The inscriptions were mostly very simple. Here are two of them: "A NUESTRO QUERIDO, HIJO TOM." "To our beloved son Thomas." "HIJA, MIA." "My beloved daughter." No mounds of earth mark the resting-place of any. Many birds of varied plumage were singing their songs among the roses, cape jasmines, pride of China, and mimosa trees. As we alighted, two bodies had just preceded us into the cemetery for deposit--a rich and a poor man, distinguishable by distinctions in death as in life. The rich man was in a fine casket, with his name engraved on the lid, and six silver handles, borne by liveried attendants, dressed in black clothes, trimmed with wide white stripes. No women were present, but a large number of dignified-looking Spanish gentlemen. The casket was placed in a vault, after which workmen, with brick and mortar, commenced closing up the orifice, which was witnessed by those in attendance until it was finished, when they retired with the same manifestations of grief as though a dead leaf had dropped from a tree. The poor man was borne on the shoulders of four rough-looking fellows, who grunted as though the body might have weighed a ton. They trotted away into a corner with the bones, and no mourners, as if it were a log, instead of a human being, where once dwelt the breath and likeness of the Eternal God. A hundred dollars is considered a remuneration for the use of a vault twenty years--at the expiration of which time, if there is no renewal of funds, the remains are taken out and thrown into a common pit, or potter's-field, where the poor are buried without coffins. The corpse of a pretty little girl, dressed in white, her head wreathed in flowers, was brought in a coffin with no cover, accompanied by a few poor, sad friends, when a rock tablet was raised by means of ropes drawn through iron rings, and the child's body thrown into a deep pit--the coffin being taken away, which could be used again in bringing many more poor children for burial. Protestants are not permitted sepulture here, on any consideration, if the fact is known to those in charge. We retired from this "garden of slumberers" to the entrance, where sat the Padres, one of whom smiled and called _el coche_ with a peculiar p-s-t-s-c-h, which sound goes whizzing through the air like a rocket. There are persons with whom we meet in life whose smile means mischief, whose friendly grasp is a covering for treachery, which fact is, alas! true in regard to the Cubans, for they rarely mean what they say to you. Ah! it was only a promise. Then there is so little manifestation of repentance with them, if you are disappointed. They pile up excuses for all untoward acts until you are led to believe it was not a reality--only a mistaken idea of your imagination. It is thus in Havana. Orders are given to be called in time for the early train. Soon after retiring, peaceful slumbers possess your body and pleasant dreams your mind, until finally, on awakening, you come to realize the facts that too much time has passed, the train gone, and a day longer before you, where the thought of remaining had not crossed your mind. It appears to be a preconcerted plan, on the part of landlords, to retain paying patrons. Persons having a large amount of patience will find frequent exercise for it while traveling in Cuba. A Ramble into the Early History of Florida. In trying to ascertain the distribution of tribes during the early explorations of the Florida settlers, we feel as though the veil of obscurity had never been lifted. However, three divisions have been traced, with some degree of certainty, after the extinction of the original Caribs, or Cannibals, whose works are seen so extensively on the St. John's and sea-coast of Florida. In the northern part lived the Temuncas, on the eastern coast the Ais, and the Cobooras on the south-western. It was these Indians who were found occupying the soil when the Spanish and French explorers first landed on the new continent. Their presence in this country was, and still continues to be, an unsolved mystery. Different tribes have their peculiar legends, which date back for centuries. Some of them say their ancestors walked out from a cave; others, that they came from the clouds, consequently were of heavenly origin. Whatever may have formerly been the difference of opinion in regard to the first discoverer of Florida, the honor is now awarded to Sebastian Cabot, who was born in Bristol, England, A.D. 1477. He was the son of John Cabot, a Venetian pilot, who in the pursuit of his vocation spent a portion of his time in Italy, but his home was in England; hence the erroneous statement made by writers that he was a Venetian. The fact has been well authenticated that the continent of America was discovered by Cabot, 1497, although Columbus first landed on some of the islands. England poorly requited Cabot for the great discovery of the New World. Henry VII.--whose ruling passion was parsimony--then being king, could not comprehend the magnificent prize which lay within his grasp by right of discovery. It is stated Cabot died about 1557, aged eighty years. During his last illness, just before his spirit took its flight, his mind being illumined with the radiance of another existence, he remarked that "Divine revelation was an infallible method of ascertaining the longitude he could then disclose to no one." After this great discovery of Cabot the adventurers returned with tales of the wonderful, before which fiction paled into insignificance. They all thirsted for riches, and the wildest fantasies of the imagination could not keep pace with their golden dreams, to be realized in this far-away El Dorado. The sojourners at home seized upon the information with the same avidity as the explorers. The discovery of Florida has usually been given to a companion of Columbus, Ponce de Leon, a daring cavalier, whom fortune had favored in all his undertakings. Having been promoted to the highest official position on the island of Porto Rico, his declining strength was a bitter potion, which remained in the cup of his closing life. Failing in the realization of his golden dreams in the new country, he afterward heard of an immortal fountain toward the setting sun, called Bimini, whose waters not only gave youth and beauty, but a perennial existence. It was before this much-coveted prize the glory of all earthly honors faded into shadows. The traditions of these wonderful rejuvenating waters had lived among the Carib Indians for many years, and from the fact that those who journeyed thither had never returned, the conclusion was inferred that they were roaming through the newly-found Elysian Fields, so delighted they did not wish to leave their new home, never imagining they could have perished by the hand of violence. Ponce do Leon had no difficulty in obtaining companions for this visionary voyage. He fitted out three vessels for the expedition, which sailed from the port of St. Germain, March, 1512, when, steering westward, they landed a little to the north of St. Augustine, March 27, 1512, on Palm Sunday, naming the country _Pascua Floridas_, which it still retains. Ponce was much charmed with the general appearance of every thing he saw. The number of streams which he drank from is unknown, but as none of the fabled waters imparted fresh vigor to his worn, battered body, made thus from age and toil, he returned home, if no younger, wiser on the subject of adventurous enterprise. After his arrival in Cuba he reported his discovery to Ferdinand, who conferred on him the title of _Adelantado_, which would immortalize him on the records of history after death, if no rejuvenating waters could affect him while living. Hardly had he returned and recovered from the toils of his discovery before information was received that the Caribs were encroaching upon the island of Porto Rico, capturing the Spaniards and carrying them away, and, as they were never seen afterward, it was inferred they had been eaten by these cannibals. An expedition was soon sent out to conquer them, commanded by Ponce de Leon. He landed first on the island of Guadalupe, when he sent his men on shore for wood, and the women to wash their clothes. The hostile Indians made a descent on them, killing the men, and carrying off the women prisoners to the mountains. This movement was a heavy blow to the ambitious Ponce, whose health and spirits both commenced declining. The squadron, on his return from Porto Rico, was taken charge of by one of his captains. After remaining on the island for several years, still retaining the office of governor, he was told the land he had discovered was not an island, but portion of a large unknown country. The fame of Cortez, who was then winning laurels in the conquest of Mexico, reached the ears of Ponce de Leon, who, not wishing to be considered the least among the conquerors, fitted out another expedition of two ships at his own expense, which sailed from Porto Rico, 1521, for the purpose of making farther explorations in the new continent. A bird of ill omen appeared to perch on his pennons from the time he left port. Heavy seas assailed him on every side, tossing his frail bark like a feather on their creamy crests, threatening destruction at every moment. He finally landed at the nearest point on the coast of Florida, being in the vicinity of St. Augustine, where he proclaimed himself governor and possessor of the soil. The Caribs, thinking themselves unauthorized in the recognition of any power outside of their own race, met him with fierce opposition, showering their arrows upon the astonished Spaniards, killing several of them, and mortally wounding Ponce de Leon. He was carried to the ship in a helpless condition, and from thence to Cuba. A Spanish writer makes the following remark upon the visionary scheme in which this unfortunate adventurer had embarked: "Thus fate delights to reverse the schemes of men. The discovery that Juan Ponce flattered himself was to be the means of perpetuating his life, had the ultimate effect of hastening his death." The last undertaking closed his earthly career, and found for him a grave on the island of Cuba. The following is a correct copy of the epitaph placed upon his tomb, translated into Spanish by Castellano: Aequeste lugar estrecho Es sepulchro del varon Que en el nombre fue Leon, Y mucho mas en el hecho. When rendered into English, means, In this sepulcher rest the bones of a man who was a lion by name, and still more by nature. The failure of Ponce de Leon did not deter other explorers, thirsting for glory and gain, from trying their fortunes in this unexplored paradise. These, like many settlers in a new country the present day, had miscalculated the toils and privations to be endured, the dangers to be faced, the labors performed, the foes, whose cunning in the use of death-dealing missiles would take their lives with the same freedom they did the snake that sung the siren song of death to the thoughtless victim that crossed his pathway. The names of De Ayllon, Miruello, Cordova, Alaminos, Verazzano, Pamfilo de Narvaez, and Cabeca de Vaca, all come to us covered with defeat and loss of life while attempting to inhabit a country so uncivilized that they had never been able to imagine even its real condition. Mountains of gold, mines of silver, and rivers of pearls, was the Aladdin's dream that lured them from home, and left them to perish on the sands of an inhospitable shore. Nearly twenty years had elapsed since the demise of Ponce de Leon, when Hernando de Soto, an officer second in rank to Pizarro the Conqueror, having accompanied him during his Peruvian conquests, had entered the temples of the Incas, whose brightness was only eclipsed by the great luminary of day, while the Aztecs rendered him the honor that belonged to their gods. De Soto still thirsted for conquest, and Florida was a new field for the gratification of his adventurous schemes and visionary enterprises. He consumed much time on the island of Cuba in recruiting soldiers and sailors who were willing to serve under him, and follow where he would lead. Finally, after his preparations were completed, he sailed, on the 15th of May, 1539, under the ensign, "Possunt quia posse videntur" (They are able, because they seem to be able), arriving at Espiritu Santo Bay on Whitsunday, May 25, with a larger fleet, than had ever landed on the shores of Florida before. De Soto was certain he had found "the richest country in the world," where the cupidity of his companions could be gratified to satiety; where precious metals lined the temples, and more precious gems sparkled from their high altars, before which the priests, clad in robes of royal purple, chanted their orisons in the presence of worshiping crowds who, free from solicitude for all worldly possessions, poured their surplus riches from their well-filled coffers into the store-house of the Great Spirit, as an expiatory offering for their misdeeds. It cannot but be conceded that a more industrious, ubiquitous traveler than De Soto ever entered Florida. We are certain, if the courage of his men was unfailing, that their fine, costly apparel, becoming the knighthood of a chivalric age and people, was much shorn of its distinguished ensigns; also, the richly-caparisoned horses of their gaudy trappings, while exploring the wilds of Florida. Each day their hopes were renewed by something they saw, or heard from the Indians, who, being anxious to get rid of their troublesome intruders, entertained them with tales of unexplored territory containing vast treasures just beyond them. Thus they traveled from Tampa to Ocala, thence to Tallahassee, Rome, Georgia, the Cumberland, in Tennessee, finally crossing the Mississippi River near Memphis. Worn out with wandering, disappointed in not finding the El Dorado of his ambition, he calmly met and faced his last foe on the banks of the great Father of Waters, as one writer has remarked, "finding nothing so wonderful as his own grave." Thus ended the career of a man, representing himself to be a child of the sun, in search of the fairest land in the world, and himself the greatest lord that ruled this unexplored region. The Indians had become wearied with these children of the sun, whose presence had given them neither peace nor plenty, as they had killed all who opposed them; besides, these celestial visitants appropriated all their stores for the sustenance of themselves, thus leaving them only the prospect of extra exertion, to which their heretofore easy, idle habits of living had rendered them averse. With the recollection of these events, the natives, fresh from their former experience, could hardly be expected, when the messengers of peace came to Florida, as they saw no difference in their external appearance and that of their predecessors, besides being goaded with the memory of their wrongs, that they would be prepared to give them any thing but a cruel reception. For this reason the beautiful bay of Espiritu Santo, which years before had witnessed the pageant of a far-famed conquering general among peaceful people, now saw the war-clubs descend with fearful force upon the defenseless heralds of the cross, who had come in good faith to convert them. Afterward appeared Señor Don Tristan de Luna, from Mexico, landing at Santa Maria, or Pensacola Bay. The only remaining record of his exploits is the fact of a Spanish settlement having been established on the shores of Pensacola Bay, in 1561, and that numerous explorations were made through the country at the same time, as they remained four years, but became discouraged and left the country, which had been to them only a scene of reverses, and returned to more friendly climes, leaving the glory of establishing the first permanent settlement on the shores of America to another. During the religious differences which harassed the Huguenots in the reign of Charles the IX. of France, Coligny, a convert, conceived the project of seeking an asylum in the New World, where God could be worshiped in accordance with their received opinions of his attributes. King Charles required no importuning for the furtherance of this plan, it being a matter of indifference to him whether they succeeded or failed, as he would be rid of these troublesome Protestant subjects, whom he both feared and hated. Jean Ribaut sailed from France in February, 1562, landing first on the south side of Anastasia Island, near the present site of St. Augustine, naming the inlet River of Dolphins, which they could not cross with their large ships because of the bar at its mouth. The river is now called Matanzas. They then sailed in a northerly direction from this point, naming the present St. John's May River, from the month in which they first discovered it. The French historian thus glowingly describes their impressions of the country: "The weather being fair, we viewed the lands as we passed, sparkling with flowers and verdure, the vast forests, the unknown birds, the game which appeared at the entrance of the glades and stood fearlessly gazing at the apparition of man." They entered a large inlet, ninety leagues north from Dolphin River, which Ribaut named Port Royal. On a small island they built a fort, and named it, Charles, or Carolus, in honor of the French king. For three years this colony existed through hardships, but without persecution. However, unfortunately, the material they had enlisted to found a Reformed Church on foreign shores was mixed with dross--men without character or principle, whose vices were not improved by transplanting. Thus, the first endeavors made by persecuted men to seek an asylum in the New World, were attended with events too true to be disputed, and almost too tragical to receive credence. They present a striking instance of the chivalrous spirit which animated the reformers of that day, also the sanguinary disposition with which they were harassed by religious bigotry. After Ribaut had settled this colony, consisting of twenty-five men, in charge of Captain Albert, he sailed for France, to relate his discoveries and receive assistance. The captain, being on friendly terms with the Indians, went on expeditions through the country, one of which was to Onade, or Savannah River, where the Indians gave him pearls, gold, and crystals in which the ore was found. They also informed him that it was ten days' journey distant to these treasures, which were no doubt the mountains of Georgia now, then a portion of Florida. Ribaut was detained on his voyage to France by alternate storms and calms, until his ship-stores became exhausted, when they resorted to leather as a means of subsistence, and finally sacrificed one of their number to sustain life in the surviving ones. When he arrived in France, a civil war being in progress between the Catholics and Huguenots, no opportunity presented itself for fitting out an expedition, or sending relief to the little band at Port Royal. In consequence of this neglect they built themselves a mere shallop, in which they started for home. On the voyage they mutinied, killing their commander, and were finally, in a starving, sinking condition, taken on board an English vessel. A portion of them were landed in France, and the remainder on the shores of England. Those in the English dominions were brought before the king, where they related their adventures in the New World, which narration first turned the attention of the English to this country. The command of the second expedition was given to one of Ribaut's companions, Laudonnière. They again landed south of the River May; but having received the news that Port Royal was abandoned, and being saddened from old associations, they determined to settle near the mouth of May River, it having presented the most attractions to them on a former visit, as here they had been supplied with more corn and grain, besides gold and silver, than at any other place. In the month of June, 1564, they commenced building a fort, felling trees, clearing away undergrowth, hewing timbers, and throwing up intrenchments. The form of this palisade was triangular, on two sides of which were a trench and walls of earth, with retreating angles and platforms for admitting four cannons; the other side was constructed of heavy timbers locked together. This structure was built on the present site of St. John's Bluff, the land being claimed by an Indian chief who rendered them good service in its construction, also in erecting their store-houses and buildings. The Indians were easily remunerated for their labor, being satisfied with a few trinkets, toys, or hatchets. The roofs were of palm-leaves, ingeniously woven together after the Indian method. The French took possession of the country in the name of King Charles, their sovereign, calling their new fort Caroline also. The Indians entertained their visitors with marvelous tales of "a nation who covered their bodies with gold and silver plates when they fought, which protected them from the arrows of their enemies, shot from the largest bows." This information inflamed the ambition of the Frenchmen so much that, as soon as the fort furnished a defense for them, the ships departed for France, leaving supplies with the colony for nine months. The new settlers again became restless, not hearing from those who had sailed, receiving no assistance from France, and as provisions were failing also, they commenced building a vessel for their return. In this extremity they were visited by Captain Hawkins, who had sailed from the West Indies--his object in entering the river being to obtain a supply of fresh water. Seeing what would be the result of their undertaking, he dissuaded them from going to sea in their dangerous craft; he also sold them a vessel and provisions, which produced a reconciliation in their ranks. A fleet of seven vessels sailed from the port of Dieppe, May 22, 1565, landing, three months from that date, on the coast of Florida. Laudonnière, at first, thought them his enemies, who had mutinied and left for France, where they had been circulating evil reports in regard to his judicial character, but was much pleased to find Ribaut had returned, who then took command of Fort Caroline, and Laudonnière commenced making preparations for sailing to France, where he had been ordered. In the meantime information had been received by the Spanish monarch of a Huguenot settlement on the coast of Florida. It was the religious, and not the political, zeal of the Spaniards, as circumstances go to prove, that moved them to plan the destruction of this infant colony. Pedro Melendez de Avilez, a marine officer in the time of Philip II. of Spain, importuned the king, on account of his desire for worldly honors, to be sent to the then wilds of Florida. For the furtherance of his plans he made the following plea as the philanthropic design of his unselfish motives: "Such grief seizes me when I behold this multitude of wretched Indians, that I should choose the conquest and settling of Florida above all commands, or offices and dignities which your majesty might see proper to bestow." His commission was received without difficulty, when he adopted the motto, "Plunder from heretics is good for the soul as well as the purse." On the 4th of September, 1565, six vessels were seen coming from the sea, which dropped anchor near the four large vessels of Ribaut. They were recognized as Spanish galleons, and the French were hailed to know "what they were doing in the dominions of King Philip." No other demonstrations were then made, except that he was their enemy. The enterprise of Melendez had now assumed an appearance of more dignity; it became a crusade, and the eager impulse of ambition was stimulated by all the usual arguments in favor of a religious war. The extirpation of heresy was an object equally grateful to the legitimates both of France and Spain, Charles IX. cheerfully yielding up his Protestant subjects in Florida to the tender mercies of Spanish propagandists. Melendez came to Florida as a conqueror, and to convert the Indians. In consideration of his bearing a greater portion of the expense, he was styled the Adelantado of the Floridas. During the voyage they encountered storms which decreased their numbers nearly one-third. Having heard of the colony being reënforced, doubts were entertained of their strength to attack it, and Melendez appealed to them in the following manner: "The Almighty has thus reduced our force, that his own right arm might achieve the work." The French were unprepared for the rapidity of the progress made by the Spaniards, and when the galleons anchored Ribaut was at La Caroline. Fortunately, they did not reach May River until near night, when darkness prevented an attack, which was the occasion of their civility. They lowered sail, cast anchor, and forbore all offensive demonstrations. But one circumstance confirmed the apprehensions of the Frenchmen: in the brief conversation which ensued between the parties on the arrival of the Spaniards, was their inquiries after the chief captains and leaders of the French fleet, calling them by their names and surnames, thus betraying an intimate knowledge of matters which had been judiciously kept secret as possible in France, showing conclusively that before Melendez left Spain he was thoroughly informed, by those who knew, of the condition, movements, and strength of Ribaut's armament. Why this information, unless there were some designs for acting upon it? The French officers compared notes that night, in respect to these communications, concurring in the belief that they stood in danger of an assault. They accordingly made preparations to leave with the dawn. At an early hour the Spaniards begun to draw near the French, but the sails of these were already hoisted to the breeze. Their cables severed at the first sign of hostility, when the chase begun with the greatest animation. If the Huguenots were deficient in force, they had the advantage in swift sailing. They suffered nothing from the distant cannonading, although the chase lasted all day. At the approach of night the Spaniards tacked ship and stood for the River Selooe, named by the French Dolphin, a distance overland of but eight or ten leagues from La Caroline. Finding they had the advantage of their enemies fleetness, the French vessels came about also, following at a respectful distance. After having made all the discoveries possible, they returned to May River, when Ribaut came aboard. They reported to him that the great ship of the Spaniards, called "The Trinity," still kept the sea--that two ships had entered Dolphin River, and three remained at its mouth, while the Spaniards had evidently employed themselves in putting soldiers, with arms, munitions, and provisions, upon shore. Emoloa, one of the Indian kings in amity with the French, sent them word "that the Spaniards had gone on shore in great numbers, and that they had deprived the natives of their houses at that village." Generals Patino and Vicente had taken control of a huge barn-like structure, formerly occupied by the Indian Cazique, which was constructed from the trunks of large trees, and thatched over with palmetto. They begun work on this newly-captured fortification by intrenching with sand, employing the negroes they had brought with them, this being the first introduction of slave-labor into the United States. This Indian council-house, used as a fortification by Melendez, was destroyed by fire. Twenty years afterward another structure of logs was reared on the same spot, in the form of an octagon. It was finished in 1722, the design being to impress strangers and frighten savages. It was christened San Juan de Pinas. After some preliminaries, preparatory to a formal reception, the Spaniards took possession of the country amid the firing of cannons, flourishing of trumpets, and flinging of banners to the breeze. The priest Mendoza, with his acolytes, met Melendez with all the pomp of a conquering prince, chanting the "_Te Deum Laudamus_," when the Adelantado and his companions kneeled, kissing the crucifix, while the Indians assembled, gazing in silent wonder, as the solemn mass of "Our Lady" was performed, and the foundation of St. Augustine laid. Thus was planted by Pedro Melendez the broad banner of Spain, with its castellated towers, in the lonely Indian village of Selooe, beside the river which the Huguenots had previously dignified with the title of "La Riviere des Dolphins." It was on the 28th of August, 1565, the day on which the Spaniards celebrate the Feast of St. Augustine, that the Adelantado entered the mouth of the Selooe River, being attracted by the general appearance of the country, and resolved to establish a town and fortress. Having previously come on shore with a portion of his forces, he found himself welcomed by the savages, whom he treated kindly, and who requited him with the assurances of friendship. Mendoza, the priest who accompanied the Adelantado, kept a journal of their movements both on the voyage and after landing in America. If he had been a man of more intelligence, posterity would now be greatly benefited by his records, as they are so closely connected with the birth of our great republic. Ribaut, concluding that the Spaniards designed to assail the settlement of La Caroline from this point, with a view of exterminating the colonists from the country, boldly conceived a move for taking the initiative in the war. He first assembled his chief captains in the chamber of Laudonnière, that official being ill. He compared the relative condition of their own and the enemy's strength, concluding that he could embark with all his forces and seek the fleet of the Spaniards, particularly at a moment when it was somewhat scattered--with only one great ship at sea, and the rest not conditioned to support each other in the event of a sudden attack, as the troops of the Adelantado, with a portion on shore and the remainder on board their vessels, would not be ready for immediate action. Laudonnière was entirely opposed to the scheme of Ribaut, representing the defenseless condition of the fortress and the dangers of a fleet at sea, particularly during a season distinguished for storms and hurricanes. Ribaut, being an old soldier and sea-captain, was too eager for an engagement to heed any arguments that partook of cowardice. He ordered all the soldiers subject to his command to board their vessels. Not satisfied with this force, he lessened the strength of the garrison by taking a detachment of its best men, leaving few to keep the post but invalids. On the 8th of September, 1565, he left in pursuit of the Spaniards, and Laudonnière never saw him again. Nature put on her wildest moods, and the skies were swallowed up in tempests. The storm continued so long that Laudonnière mustered his command and proceeded to put the fortress in the best possible condition for defense. Work advanced slowly in consequence of the continued bad weather. The whole force left in the garrison consisted of but eighty-six men capable of bearing arms. Ribaut, relying upon the impression that he should find his enemy at sea in full force, stripped the garrison of its strength. His vessels being swifter than those of the Spaniards, he was certain that if any demonstration should be made against La Caroline, he could interpose. He made no calculation for the caprices of the weather and cool prudence of Pedro Melendez. He intended first to destroy the fleet of the enemy, and then make a descent upon the troops on land before they could fortify their camps, thus overcoming them with his superior and unembarrassed forces. The condition of things at La Caroline when Ribaut took his departure was deplorable enough, but rendered still more so by a scanty supply of food for the helpless who remained. Laudonnière proceeded to assume the defensive attitude in the event of an attack; but at the recurrence of stormy weather they ceased work, supposing the Spaniards would not expose themselves during the severity of an equinoctial gale. While Melendez was busy with the preliminaries incident to founding a new settlement, having celebrated the divine mysteries in a manner both solemn and ostentatious, the fleet of Ribaut made its appearance at the mouth of the inlet. His extreme caution in sounding the bar to which his vessels were approaching lost him two precious hours, but for which his conquest must have been certain. Had the two remaining vessels been captured, and Melendez made prisoner, then a descent upon the dismayed troops on shore, not yet intrenched, when the annihilation of the settlement must have ensued: thus the whole destiny of Florida would have been changed, the Huguenot colonies established upon the soil, a firm possession of the land given to the French, that might have kept the _fleur-de-lis_ waving from its summit to this day. At the very instant when the hands of Ribaut were stretched to seize his prize, the sudden force of the hurricane parted them--the trembling ships gradually disappearing with their white wings in the distance and darkness, like feeble birds borne onward in the wild fury of the tempest. Meanwhile the mind of Melendez was not idle; a bright thought had flashed across his pathway which opened daring exploits. His officers were summoned to a council of solemn debate and deliberate action in regard to their future movements. It was midnight when the assemblage of the Spanish captains took place in the great council-house of the savages of Selooe. Rude logs strewn about the building, even as they had been employed by the Indians, furnished seats for the Spanish officers. They surrounded a great fire of resinous pine, which now blazed brightly in the apartment. Silently the Castilian noblemen took their seats. Melendez encouraged an immediate attack on Fort Caroline while weakened by the absence of Ribaut and his forces. His arguments and inflexible will silenced opposition, when all the council gradually became of his mind--the whole scene closing with a benediction from Father Salvandi. Every preparation being completed, Melendez, with five hundred picked men, commenced an overland march to Fort Caroline. It was on the night of the 19th of September, 1565, Monsieur de La Vigne, being appointed to keep guard, with his company, and having a tender heart for the men in bad weather, pitied the guards so much he permitted them to retire to their lodgings, and also went himself. Foul weather appeared to agree with the Spaniards, who enjoyed the showers from which the French retired so willingly, and that night found them in readiness for an attack on the Huguenot colony. The surprise being complete, all show of resistance was useless. "Slay! smite! and spare not!" was the dreadful command of Melendez. "The groans of the heretic make music in the ears of Heaven!" Laudonnière, with eighteen of his companions, succeeded in escaping. Among this number was the celebrated painter Le Moyne, whom we owe much for illustrations of Floridian scenery, lineaments, and costumes, preserved in De Bry and other collections. These sailed out the River May, and, after numerous adventures and detentions, arrived on the coast of England. The most cruel portion of this drama is the last act in regard to the fate of the wretched Huguenots taken at the capture of La Caroline, and the dark deed by which the Spanish chief tarnished the record which might have immortalized his name. All resistance having ceased on the part of the Huguenots at Caroline, the standard of Castile was unrolled from its battlements, instead of the white folds and the smiling lilies of France. The name of the fortress was solemnly changed to San Matheo--the day on which they found themselves in its possession being dedicated to the honor of that saint. The arms of France, and also of Coligny, which surmounted the gateways of the fort, were erased, and those of Spain graven instead. The keeping of the fortress was assigned to a garrison of three hundred men, under the command of Gonzalo de Villaroel. These services occupied but little time, not interfering with other performances of the Adelantado, which he thought not the less conspicuous among the duties required at his hands. The surviving prisoners were brought before him, among whom were many women and children. Besides those rescued by Laudonnière, several had fled to the forests, taking shelter with the tribes of neighboring Indians, who in some instances were protected by them with fidelity, but in the greater number of cases, terrified by the sudden appearance and strength of the Spaniards, they yielded up the fugitives at the fierce demand of the Adelantado. Others of the unfortunate Huguenots, warned by the Indians that they could no longer harbor them, were shot down by their pursuers as they fled through the forests. The sight of weeping and trembling women and children, of naked captives, worn, exhausted, enfeebled by years, by disease, and cruel wounds, all pleading for his mercy, only seemed to strengthen him in his most cruel resolutions. "Separate these women from the other prisoners!" This was done. "Now, detach from these last all children under fifteen years." His command was obeyed. The women and children thus set apart were consigned to slavery: the younger ones were more readily persuaded to the Catholic altars, and thus finally achieved their deliverance. The more stubborn perished in their bonds, passing through various grades of degradation. With reference to the remainder history is terribly definite. Fixing his cold, dark eye upon the male captives, of whose fate he had said nothing, he demanded: "Is there any among ye who profess the faith of the Roman Catholic Church?" Two of the prisoners replied in the affirmative. "Take these Christians away, and let their bonds be removed. The holy Father Salvandi will examine them in the faith of the Mother Church. For the rest, are there any among ye, seeing the error of your faith, will renounce the heresy of Luther, and seek once more communion with the only true Church?" A dread calm ensued, the captives looking mournfully at each other and the Adelantado, in whose face there was no encouragement, and nothing but despair in the appearance of their companions. "Be warned!" continued the Adelantado. "To those who seek the blessings of the true Church, she generously openeth her arms; to those who turn away indifferently, or in scorn, are decreed death, both temporal and eternal. Hear ye, and now say!" The silence was unbroken. "Are ye obdurate? or do ye not comprehend that your lives rest upon your speech? Either ye embrace the safety which the Church offers, by an instant renunciation of that of the foul heretic, Luther, or ye die by the halter!" One sturdy soldier advanced from the group--a bold, high-souled fellow--his brows lifted proudly with the conscious impulse which worked within his soul. "Pedro Melendez, we are in your power. You are master of our mortal bodies; but with the death before us that you threaten, know that we are members of the Reformed Church of Christ, which ye name to be of Luther, and, holding it good to live in this faith, we deem it not amiss to die in it." Then the speaker looked around him into the face of his fellows, as they lightened up with a glow of cheerfulness and pride, though no word was spoken. "Speak this man for the rest of ye?" demanded Melendez. For a moment there was silence. Finally a _matelot_ advanced--a common sailor--a man before the mast. "Aye, aye, captain! What he says we say, and there's no use for more palaver. Let there be an end of it. We are of the Church of Monsieur Luther, and no other. If death's the word, we're not the men at the end of the reckoning to belie the whole voyage!" "Be it even as ye say!" answered Melendez, coldly but sternly, and without change of action or show of passion. "Take them forth, and let them be hung to yonder tree!" The air was rent with the shrieks of women and cries of children--women endeavoring to save their husbands, and children clinging to the knees of their doomed sires, all of which produced no relentings--the parties being separated by a strong hand, and the doomed men hurried to the fatal tree, the priest standing ready to receive their recantations. Exhortations were not spared--soldier and sailor had equally spoken for the martyrdom of the whole--the reverend father preaching and promising all in vain. Amid cries and shrieks, the victims were run up to the wide-spreading branches of a mighty oak, disgraced in its employment for such a purpose, where they perished with fidelity to the faith which they professed. Their bodies were left hanging in the sun and wind, destined equally as trophies of the victor and warnings to the heretic. Melendez caused a monument to be raised beneath the tree, upon which was printed, in large characters, "These do not suffer thus as Frenchmen, but as heretics and enemies to God." Melendez thus became master of Fort Caroline, wresting a country from the Huguenots which they had acquired through so many vicissitudes. Before leaving he lingered to review the garrison, and founded with his own bloody hands a church dedicated to the God of mercy. He then departed with a small body of troops, arriving at his camp in safety. He was received as the vanquisher of heretics. After this slaughter the victors entered St. Augustine in solemn procession, with four priests in front, chanting the _Te Deum_ in triumph. However, his victory was not without its disquietude, having heard of Ribaut somewhere on the coast, and his own shipping destroyed. The unfortunate Ribaut, driven before the hurricane, had been wrecked with all his squadron upon the bleak, unfriendly shores of Cape Cannaveral, his troops being saved, but the crew drowned. On the 28th of September, when the weary Adelantado was taking his _siesta_ under the sylvan roof of a Seloy, a band of Indians came in with news that quickly roused him from his slumbers: "A French vessel had been wrecked on the coast toward the south. Those who escaped from her were some four leagues off, on the banks of a river, or arm of the sea, which they could not cross. Melendez immediately sent a detachment of men to reconnoiter. They rowed along the channel between Anastasia Island and the main shore. After landing they struck across the island on foot, traversing plains and marshes, reaching the sea toward night. Craftily concealing his troops on the opposite shore, he climbed a tree for the purpose of reconnoitering. From this point he saw the dismayed band of Frenchmen grouped together, about two hundred strong, and, on account of rough waters, were unable to cross in a raft they had constructed." We have now seen how, when Jean Ribaut was making an attack on the Spaniards, his plans were thwarted by a storm of strange fury. One of the ships was wrecked at a point farther northward than the rest, and it was her company whose camp-fires were seen by the Spaniards at their bivouac among the sands of Anastasia Island. They were attempting to reach Fort Caroline, in regard to whose fate they knew nothing, while Ribaut, with the remainder, was farther southward, struggling through the wilderness toward the same goal. Of the fate of the former party there is no French record. Solis, the priest and brother-in-law to Melendez, was eye-witness to the following scenes, a report of which was sent to Spain: When the Adelantado saw the French fires at a distance, he dressed in the garb of a common sailor, and rowed toward the shipwrecked men, the better to learn their condition. A bold Gascon succeeded in making the passage by swimming, when Melendez demanded, "Who are you?" The Frenchman replied, "We are the people of Ribaut, Captain-general of Florida." "Are you Lutherans?" "We are Lutherans." "Gentlemen," continued Melendez, "your fort is taken, and all in it put to the sword, save the women and children under fifteen years of age." In proof of which he caused articles of plunder from Fort Caroline to be shown to the unhappy Frenchmen. He then left and went to breakfast with his officers, first ordering food to be set before his petitioners. Having eaten, he returned to them. "Are you convinced, now, that what I have told you is true?" The French captain assented. "But assist us to leave--that is, in truth, what we demand." "Demand nothing of me, for I tell you, as a gentleman and an officer, holding a high commission from the Court of Spain, that, if the heavens were to mingle before my eyes, the resolution I once make I never change. If you were Catholics, and I had ships, I would help you, but I have none." The supplicants expressed a hope that they would be allowed to remain with the Spaniards till ships could be sent to their relief, since there was peace between the two nations, whose kings were friends and brothers. "We are men made equally in the image of Deity, and serve the same God, if not at the same altars." "If you will give up your arms and banners, and place yourselves at my mercy, you may do so, and I will act toward you as God shall give me grace. Do as you will, for other than this you can have neither truce nor friendship with me." One of the Frenchmen recrossed to consult with his companions. After two hours he returned, offering a large amount for their lives, which was not accepted. Privations had demoralized these starving Frenchmen, who then gave credence to vain hopes which they would not have entertained from an enemy at any other time. They had no other resource but to yield themselves to his mercy. The boat was again sent across the river, and returned laden with their banners and weapons of warfare. The Adelantado ordered twenty of his men to bring over ten Frenchmen at a time. He then took the French officers aside, and, with a semblance of courtesy on his lips and murder in his heart, he said: "Gentlemen, I have but few men, and you are so many, that, if you were free, it would be easy for you to take your satisfaction on us for the people we killed when we took your fort; therefore it is necessary that you should go to my camp, four leagues distant from this place, with your hands tied." Accordingly, as each party advanced, they were led out of sight behind the sand-hills, and their hands tied behind them with the match-cord of the arquebuses, though not before they had been supplied with food. Twelve Breton sailors professed themselves Catholics, together with four carpenters and calkers, "of whom," writes Melendez, "I was in great need," who were put on a boat and sent to St. Augustine. The remainder were ordered to march thither by land. The Adelantado walked in advance until he came to a lonely spot not far distant among the bush-covered hills. Here he stopped and drew a line in the sand with his cane. Not one of this wretched company, not being Catholics, was allowed to cross, and the whole two hundred perished. Again Melendez returned to St. Augustine, gloating over his success. Great as had been his victory, he still had cause for anxiety, as Ribaut could not be far off. On the next day Indians came with the tidings that on the spot where the first party of the shipwrecked Frenchmen had been found was now another still larger party. The murder-loving race looked with great respect on Melendez, for his wholesale butchery of the night before was an exploit rarely equaled in their own annals of massacre. Melendez doubted not that Ribaut was at hand. He started on a march thither immediately with one hundred and fifty men, reaching the inlet at midnight, when, like a skulking savage, he intrenched himself on the bank. After daybreak flags of truce were displayed on both sides, when La Caille, Ribaut's sergeant-major, informed Melendez that the French were three hundred and fifty in number, on their way to Fort Caroline, and, like the former party, begged for boats to aid them in crossing the river. Melendez gave them assurances of safety, and sent for Ribaut and six of his companions. On their arrival he met them courteously, caused wine and preserved fruits to be placed before them, and next led Ribaut to the reeking Golgotha, where, in heaps upon the sand, lay the corpses of his slaughtered followers; but he would not believe Fort Caroline had been taken until part of the plunder was shown him. Ribaut then urged that the kings of Spain and France were brothers and close friends, and begged that the Spaniards would aid him in carrying his followers home. Melendez gave the same unequivocal answer as before to the other party. Ribaut, after three hours' absence, came back in the canoe, and told the Adelantado that some of his people were willing to surrender, at discretion, but many refused. "They can do as they please," was the reply of Melendez. Ribaut offered large rewards for those who had surrendered. Melendez replied, "I have great need of the money," which gave the French encouragement, when they asked permission to cross the river. In the morning he returned, and reported that two hundred of his men had retreated from the spot, but the remaining one hundred and fifty would surrender. At the same time he gave into the hands of Melendez the royal standard and other flags, his sword, dagger, helmet, and the official seal given him by Coligny. Melendez entered the boat and directed his officers to bring over the French by tens. He next led Ribaut among the bushes behind the neighboring sand-hills, when he ordered his hands to be bound fast. Then the scales fell from his eyes, and face to face his fate rose up before him. The day wore on, and, as band after band of prisoners were brought over, they were conducted behind the sand-hills, out of sight from the farther shore, like their general. "Are you Catholics or Lutherans? and are there any among you who will go to confession?" asked Melendez. Ribaut answered, "I and all here are of the Reformed faith," at the same time intoning the psalm, "_Memento, Domine._" A few were spared. "I saved," writes Melendez, "the lives of two young gentlemen about eighteen years of age, besides the fifer, the drummer, and trumpeter; but I caused Jean Ribaut, with all the rest, to be put to the sword--judging this to be expedient for the service of God our Lord and your majesty." As each successive party landed, their hands were bound fast behind their backs, when they were driven, like cattle, toward the fort. At a signal from drums and trumpets the Spaniards fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds. Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath. By his order, a soldier plunged a dagger into the French commander's heart, when Ottigny, who stood near, met a similar fate. The head of Ribaut was then hewn into four pieces, one part of which was displayed on the point of a lance at each corner of the fort in St. Augustine. Great fires were kindled, and the bodies of the murdered burned to ashes. At night, when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine, there were some who blamed his cruelty, but many applauded. A few days after, the remainder of the shipwrecked Frenchmen were discovered by the Indians, who again informed Melendez. In all haste he dispatched messengers for a reënforcement of one hundred and fifty men from Fort Caroline. On the 2d of November he set forth with such merciless energy that some of his men dropped dead with fatigue. When, from their frail defenses, the French saw the Spanish pikes, they fled, panic-stricken, taking refuge among the sand-hills. Melendez sent a trumpeter, summoning them, also pledging his honor for their safety. Some of them sent word they "would rather be eaten by savages than trust themselves to Spaniards," and, escaping, fled to the Indian towns. The rest surrendered, and Melendez kept his word. Those of high birth ate at the Adelantado's table. The captives' fate may be learned from a reply to one of Melendez's dispatches. "Say to him," writes Philip the Second, "that, as to those he has killed, he has done well, and, as to those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys." Melendez, although victorious over the unfortunate Frenchmen, had other troubles to contend with at St. Augustine and San Mateo. The Spaniards became restless, mutinied, and deserted, leaving his forces much weakened. In addition to this, a hostile cazique lived between the two forts--thus cutting off all communication by land between them. Melendez made an attack on this chief, in which he was repulsed--thus compelling him to act on the defensive. As these improvident Spaniards consumed every thing, and raised nothing, the Indians became weary feeding them without any reward: for this cause Melendez was forced to sail for Cuba to obtain supplies. During his absence a Spanish fleet arrived, bringing both men and provisions, which gave them much encouragement. The missionaries heretofore meeting with such rough treatment, some time had elapsed since any new arrivals. However, three Jesuit priests were discovered off the coast, near the mouth of San Mateo River, making inquiries for the fort. These were the first of that Order that had ever come to America, the others being Franciscans. One party of Indians directed them, while afterward they were murdered by another on St. George's Island, at the entrance of San Mateo River. Melendez now sailed for Spain, to interest the crown in behalf of his colony. After a prosperous voyage across the sea, he landed on the shores of Spain, where he was received with a great display of empty honors, which did not satisfy the cravings of his ambition. It was money he wanted, to strengthen his newly-acquired territory, build up his dominions, and with them a great name for himself. He was also impatient and apprehensive in regard to a threatened revenge which the French had proposed taking into their own hands. In vain had petitions been sent by the relatives of the slain, but never, until a new Cavalier entered the field, as contestant, in the person of the daring Chevalier de Gourgues, did injured humanity find an avenger, or outraged France a champion. De Gourgues, being of gentle birth, according to the chivalrous custom in those days, was educated to the profession of arms. He entered upon his duties as a private, but was soon promoted on account of laurels won in battle, being afterward commissioned to an office of distinction, as captain in the regular army. He was given the command of a fortress, which, being attacked by a greatly superior number of Spaniards, compelled him to surrender; his men were all killed, and himself made prisoner and condemned to servitude on the galleys. Fortunately for himself, the vessel on which he worked was shortly afterward captured by the Turks, which enabled him to obtain his liberty. Activity being his motto, he sailed on an expedition to Brazil, from which enterprise he realized a considerable fortune. On the return of De Gourgues to France, and hearing of the cruelties committed against his countrymen, the iron of revenge was driven deep into his soul, not only for their mistreatment, but the indignity he had suffered from the Spaniards himself. He accordingly fitted out two vessels and a tender, obtaining a charter without difficulty, under the pretext of going to Africa and bringing back slaves. He communicated his plans to no person, but secured the services of one of Laudonnière's men, who had remained in Florida long enough to have some knowledge of the country and the language of the natives. He also enlisted the services of one hundred and fifty picked men, and set sail from Bordeaux August 2, 1567. In order to better conceal his plans, he first landed on the coast of Africa, where he encountered some of the natives, whom he repulsed--afterward, sailing westward, he came in port for repairs and supplies at Santo Domingo. When he reached this point he revealed to his crew the design of his long and perilous voyage. He depicted, in glowing colors, the wrongs sustained by their countrymen, which yet remained unavenged. The crew, with one voice, replied that they would sustain him in the undertaking. The voyage was soon completed, and so entirely unsuspecting were the Spaniards of an attack that, on passing Fort Caroline--now Fort San Mateo--De Gourgues was honored with a salute of two cannon, supposing them to be of their own nation. He entered the mouth of the Altamaha, and, as his galleys drew but little water, and were provided with oars, he had no difficulty in ascending that river. The natives received them kindly, and the soldiers of Laudonnière being recognized, their mission was not regarded as a friendly one. Immediate preparations were made to attack the fort, as one of the officers had reconnoitered its strength. These works had been much improved by the Spaniards, to which were added two other forts, the whole garrison consisting of four hundred men. Its present condition was their boast. The priest, Mendoza, said, "Not half of France could take it." De Gourgues formed an encampment twelve miles north of the mouth of a small river. The whole affair was conducted in a most skillful and secret manner, he using the Indians as valuable accessions in the enterprise, they being no friends to the Spaniards. The French approached the fort at dawn, but remained concealed until the tide receded, that they might reach the island on which it stood. They made the attack at midday, when the two small forts were carried by direct assault, killing nearly all the men, about sixty in number, while the avenues of escape loading from Fort Mateo were guarded by the Indians. Fort San Mateo alone remained, which was three miles above. Among the prisoners saved was a sergeant, who knew the heights of the ramparts, and could draw a plan of the fort. While ladders were being prepared to scale the works, the garrison precipitated its fate by a sally, afterward making an attempt to gain the woods. The thickets were filled with exasperated Indians, and not one Spaniard escaped. A few prisoners were taken, which De Gourgues suspended on the same tree that had borne his countrymen; and for the monument and inscription of Melendez was substituted a pine plank with this inscription: "Not as Spaniards, or mariners, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers." To render this work of destruction more complete, they entirely demolished the forts. When returning to his ships, he exclaimed, "All that we have done was for the service of the king, and for the honor of the country!" His soldiers, flushed with victory, proposed an attack on St. Augustine, but De Gourgues felt that his resources were insufficient. For some time subsequent to this period the Spaniards retained Florida, although their forts had been destroyed on San Mateo River. After the arrival of De Gourgues in his own country the French Government persecuted him, and the Spanish pursued him until his death. He died deeply involved from the expense connected with his expedition. Thus terminated all dispute in regard to French Florida--the question then to be decided was between the British and Spaniards. Melendez, after making other efforts to Christianize the Indians, having brought over more missionaries, which they murdered without distinction, regarding the priests and people as sworn enemies, abandoned the enterprise, and turned his attention entirely to arms. However, in the midst of his career, he was cut down by death, at Santander, a town situated on the northern coast of Spain, A.D. 1574, after having received the appointment of Captain-general over a Spanish armada of three hundred vessels. From the above history it will be seen that Florida remained for many years disputed ground, the scene of numerous conflicts from different sources. Whether the priest with his cross, or the warrior with his sword, they all came to vie with each other in the establishment of creeds and division of spoils. It was in 1564 Sir Walter Raleigh, who, being present when the men from Fort Caroline, or Port Royal, were received by the queen, was thus stimulated with a desire to visit this newly-explored country. This feeling was increased by De Morgues, the companion and artist who came with Laudonnière, and had furnished them with beautiful drawings of his travels in these far-off lands. It was the intention of Sir Walter, besides making discoveries, to capture Spanish galleons, which would satisfy his desire for gain. This plundering policy, which had been pursued so extensively by all the adventurers, was in no way designed to promote the welfare of a new settlement. Under the auspices of the English throne an expedition was sent, commanded by Sir Walter Raleigh, which landed on the coast of Florida, as the division of the country was then recognized. After his arrival he thus mentions the Indians: "These people were most loving and faithful, such as lived after the golden age." He was also much impressed with the land along the shores as they passed. "The fragrance," he says, "was as if they had been in the midst of some delicate garden, with all kinds of odoriferous flowers." Raleigh also visited the Indies, and on his return succeeded in capturing a ship richly laden with Spanish treasures, after which he sailed for England, where a warm welcome awaited him. Contrary to his expectations, on his arrival he became too much occupied with affairs of a different nature to visit America again. However, other expeditions were fitted out, which settled in different parts of the country. It was in 1586 that Sir Francis Drake, the English adventurer, while coming from the West Indies, discovered the lookout at Anastasia Island, which commanded the approach to St. Augustine harbor. He landed, bringing a piece of ordnance, from which, after planting, he fired two shots, one of them damaging the Spanish standard, and the other striking the castle. The next day they renewed the attack, with no return of hostilities from the shore, and on landing found the town deserted. In the fort they discovered the mahogany treasury-chest, containing two thousand pounds sterling, designed for paying the troops, which Sir Francis confiscated. The castle at this time was the foundation of the Selooe defense, repaired by Melendez. It was constructed from the trunks of pine-trees planted upright, similar to our stockades of the present day, without ditches. Trunks of trees were laid across the whole structure, after which it was covered with earth. The works, being unfinished, were incapable of resisting a naval attack. An English officer, while pursuing the Spaniards, was shot, for which act the English sacked and then burned St. Augustine. It is said this town then contained a monastery, church, and hall of justice--certainly very little to tempt the cupidity of a West Indies privateer. Sir Francis made this expedition on the ground that Spain had damaged the English commerce during their troubles. In 1603, more than a hundred years from the discovery of Cabot, and twenty years from the time Raleigh sent out his first expedition, not an Englishman remained in the New World. In 1702, Spain and England not being friendly, Governor Moore, of South Carolina, proposed an expedition against St. Augustine, for the purpose of displaying his military prowess, capturing Indians, or enriching himself with plunder. Colonel Daniel took charge of the land portion of the enterprise, which ascended the St. John's, crossed over the country from Picolata, entered the town without resistance, and sacked it. The inhabitants, being warned of their intentions, had supplied themselves with four months' rations, and taken refuge, with their gold and valuables, in the castle, from which place they could not be dislodged. When Governor Moore landed and saw their position, he sent to Jamaica for cannon and mortars. Before their arrival the Spaniards received assistance by a fleet coming from Havana. On their appearance Governor Moore became panic-stricken, left his vessels, and fled by land to Carolina. On the return of Colonel Daniel, he, not knowing the siege had been raised, narrowly escaped falling into the hands of his enemies. The besieged prisoners now came from the castle, after a stay of three months, to find their pleasant homes destroyed. During 1715 Florida received a new accession from the Yemassees. These Indians were found in Florida when the Spaniards first landed, but deserted the country on account of efforts being made to convert them to Christianity. They took refuge in Carolina, where, after remaining awhile, they massacred some of the English colonists, and then retreated to St. Augustine for protection. Here they were received with marked demonstrations of kindness, accompanied by the ringing of bells and firing of cannon. The Spaniards in Florida, having had a respite from troublesome invaders for some time, were progressing prosperously, until after the arrival of General Oglethorpe from England. In 1737, hostilities having commenced between Spain and England, Oglethorpe, fearing an attack from the Spaniards, planted a battery on Cumberland Island as a defense. This movement was productive of dissension among the settlers. England claimed as far as the St. John's, on account of discoveries made by Sir Walter Raleigh, while the Spanish sent a commissioner for the English to abandon all the territory south of St. Helena's Sound, which they refused to relinquish. When the Spanish ascertained that Oglethorpe had taken command of the English forces, a party from St. Augustine garrison advanced as far as Amelia Island, killed two Highlanders, and then cut off their heads. The English pursued them to San Mateo, on the St. John's, drove in the Spanish guards, and then sailed up the river as far as Cavallas. After the return of Oglethorpe he commenced recruiting from the Creek and Cherokee Indians, thus making active preparations for blockading St. Augustine before men and supplies could arrive from Havana. Don Manuel being governor then, he was ready for defense. General Oglethorpe did not succeed in capturing the town, although he invested three fortifications, advancing with his forces to its gates, killing several Spanish troops under the walls of the fort. Fort Diego, twenty-five miles from St. Augustine, Fort Francis de Pupa, seventeen miles, and Fort Moosa, two miles north, commonly called Negro Fort, where the runaway slaves were harbored, all surrendered. In 1748 a treaty of peace was concluded between Spain and England, which left Florida in the quiet possession of the Spaniards for many years. [Illustration: text decoration] FLORIDA GAZETTEER OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS IN THE STATE. ABE'S SPRING.--The county-seat of Calhoun, 104 miles south-west from Tallahassee. ADAMSVILLE.--A small settlement in Sumter county, 5 miles west of Leesburg, containing a post-office. ALACHUA COUNTY.--County-seat, Gainesville. ALAFIA.--A settlement on Alafia River, in Hillsboro county, containing a post-office. ALIQUA.--Settlement on a river of the same name, in Walton county, West Florida, where, it is said, the houses were forty miles apart. ALMIRANTE.--Walton county, West Florida, near the Alabama line. ANCLOTE RIVER.--A tributary of Clear Water Harbor, in Hillsboro county. ANDERSON.--In Santa Rosa county, West Florida. APOPKA.--Near Lake Apopka, in Orange county, containing a post-office. The name implies "Potato-eating Town." APPALACHICOLA.--Contains a post-office, and is situated at the mouth of a river of the same name. It was formerly a prosperous city, but, on account of the cotton being taken by the railroads, has declined. ARCHER.--Post-office. A town in Alachua county, 41 miles from Cedar Keys. ARLINGTON.--In Duval county, opposite Jacksonville. ARREDONDO.--Post-office. A station 54 miles from Cedar Keys, in Alachua county. ASPALAGA.--In Gadsden county, on Appalachicola River. AUCILLA.--Jefferson county, on the Pensacola and Mobile Railroad. AUGUSTA.--On the hack-line from Gainesville to Tampa. BAGDAD.--On Pensacola Bay, Santa Rosa county, West Florida. BAKER COUNTY.--Celebrated for its timber, turpentine, and agricultural productions. In East Florida. BALDWIN.--Post-office and telegraph-station, 20 miles from Jacksonville, on the Pensacola and Mobile Railroad. BANANA RIVER.--A branch of the Indian River. BARRANCAS.--A fort commanding the entrance to Pensacola Bay. BARRSVILLE.--In Columbia county, south of Lake City. Post-office. BARTOW.--County-seat of Polk county, South Florida. BATTON.--A station on the West India Transit Railroad. BAYPORT.--Post-office. A town in Hernando county. BEAR CREEK.--Near St. Andrew's Bay. BEECHER.--A steamboat-landing in Putnam county, on the east bank of the St. John's. BELLVILLE.--Post-office. A settlement in Hamilton county. BENELLA.--On the St. John's River, 120 miles above Jacksonville. BENTON.--Post-office, in Columbia county, on the upper waters of Suwanee River. BISCAYNE.--County-seat of Dade county, formerly called Miami. BLACK CREEK.--A tributary of the St. John's River, near Magnolia. BLACK POINT.--A steamboat-landing, 10 miles above Jacksonville. BLACKWATER RIVER.--A tributary of Pensacola Bay, in Santa Rosa county, West Florida. BLOUNT'S FERRY.--On the Suwanee River, in Columbia county. Post-office. BLUE CREEK.--Liberty county, near Gadsden. BLUE SPRING.--Jackson county, west of Marianna. BLUE SPRING.--Post-office, Volusia county. BLUNT'S TOWN.--Calhoun county, West Florida. BRADFORD COUNTY.--On the West India Transit Company Railroad. County-seat, Lake Butler. BREVARD COUNTY.--Lies on both sides of the Indian River. Fort Pierce, the county-seat. BRISTOL.--County-seat of Liberty county. Post-office. BRONSON.--County-seat of Levy county. Post-office. On the West India Transit Railroad. 12 miles from here is a bed of iron ore. BROOKLYN.--A town near Jacksonville. Rather prospective. BROOKSVILLE.--County-seat of Hernando county. Post-office. On the Tampa stage-line. BROTHER'S RIVER.--In Calhoun county, West Florida. BUFFALO BLUFF.--On the west bank of the St. John's, in Putnam county. Post-office. BULOW'S CREEK.--In Volusia county. BUNKER HILL.--Near Lake Miccosukee, Leon county. BURRIN.--Bradford county. On the West India Transit Railroad. CABBAGE BLUFF.--On the east bank of the St. John's, 162 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. CALHOUN COUNTY.--West Florida. County-seat, Abe's Spring Bluff. CALLAHAN.--On the West India Transit Railroad, 27 miles from Fernandina. Post-office. CALOOSAHATCHEE RIVER.--A navigable stream which empties into Charlotte Harbor. CAMPBELLTON.--A settlement in Jackson county. CAMP IZARD.--In Marion county, on the Withlacoochee River. Post-office. CEDAR KEYS.--In Levy county. Terminus of the West India Transit Railroad. Post-office. CEDAR TREE.--In Hernando county, south of Brooksville. CENTERVILLE.--Near Tallahassee, Leon county. Post-office. CERRO GORDO.--The county-seat of Holmes county. Post-office. CHALK SPRING.--Santa Rosa county, West Florida. Post-office. CHARLES FERRY.--On Suwanee River, in Suwanee county. CHATTAHOOCHEE.--The terminus of the Jacksonville, Pensacola, and Mobile Railroad. In Gadsden county. Post-office, Penitentiary, Lunatic Asylum. CHIPOLA RIVER.--A tributary of the Appalachicola River. CHOCTAWHATCHEE RIVER.--Flows into a bay of the same name, in West Florida. CIRCLE HILL.--Near Marianna, Jackson county. Post-office. CLAY COUNTY.--County-seat, Green Cove Spring, on the St. John's. CLAY LANDING.--In Levy county, on the east bank of the Suwanee, near its mouth. CLEAR WATER.--Post-office. On the Gulf coast, Hillsboro county. CLIFTON.--A town in Madison county. COCOANUT GROVE.--In Dade county. COLUMBIA COUNTY.--County-seat, Lake City. COOK'S FERRY.--A landing on Lake Harney, 224 miles above Jacksonville. CORK.--In Hillsboro county. Post-office. CORKSCREW RIVER.--Monroe county, South Florida. COTTON PLANT.--A settlement west of Ocala, Marion county. Post-office. CRAWFORDSVILLE.--County-seat of Wakulla county. Post-office. CRESWELL.--In Leon county. CRYSTAL RIVER.--A clear stream of water flowing through Hernando county, emptying into the Gulf. DADE COUNTY.--County-seat, Key Biscayne. DANCEY'S PLACE.--A landing on the St. John's, 65 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. DANIEL.--A settlement near the mouth of Suwanee River, in Levy county. DARBYVILLE.--Near Baldwin, Baker county. Post-office. DAVIS.--A station on the railroad, near Chattahoochee. DAYTONIA.--A settlement on Halifax River, in Volusia county. In very flourishing condition. DEEP CREEK.--A tributary of Lake Harney. DELK'S BLUFF.--A steamboat-landing on the Ocklawaha River, 100 miles from its mouth. DRAYTON ISLAND.--On the St. John's, in Lake George, Marion county. DUMMITT'S GROVE.--A noted orange-grove, in Volusia county, on the northern end of Indian River. DUNN LAWTON.--A portion of the Turnbull Swamp, in Volusia county. DUNN'S LAKE.--A small settlement in Volusia county. Post-office. DURISOE.--A steamboat-landing, 89 miles above the mouth of the Ocklawaha River. DUTTON.--A station 32 miles from Fernandina, on the West India Transit Railroad. DUVAL COUNTY.--On the St. John's. County-seat, Jacksonville. EAU CLAIRE.--A colony from Wisconsin, near Mellonville, Orange county. EAU GALLIE.--On Indian River, in Brevard county, near Lake Washington. Post-office. ECONFINA.--In Washington county, West Florida, on a river of the same name. Post-office. EGMONT ISLAND.--Situated in the Gulf of Mexico, at the entrance of Espiritu Santo Bay. ELBOW CREEK.--Rises in the swamps near Lake Washington. ELLAVILLE.--A station on the Jacksonville, Pensacola, and Mobile Railroad, 95 miles from Jacksonville. ELLISVILLE.--A place without much celebrity at present, in Columbia county. EMANUELS.--A landing-place on the St. John's, 184 miles above Jacksonville. ENTERPRISE.--The county-seat of Volusia county since 1854. Situated 205 miles beyond Jacksonville. Post-office. ESCAMBIA COUNTY.--Situated in West Florida, bordering on the Gulf. This county was first incorporated by order of General Jackson, July, 1821. ESCAMBIA RIVER.--A tributary of Escambia Bay, West Florida. EUREKA.--Two points in Florida bear this popular name. One is on the Ocklawaha, 60 miles above its mouth, in Marion county; the other, on the upper St. John's, in Orange county. FEDERAL POINT.--Situated on the east bank of the St. John's, 60 miles above Jacksonville, in Putnam county. FLEMINGTON.--Post-office. A small town on the Gainesville stage-route. FORT BROOKS.--A steamboat-landing on the Ocklawaha River, near Orange Springs. FORT GATES.--A steamboat-landing, 110 miles from Jacksonville, on the St. John's River, in Putnam county. FORT GEORGE ISLAND.--Situated near the mouth of the St. John's River. Contains a good hotel, with accommodations for winter and summer visitors. FORT MEAD.--On Pease Creek, 80 miles above its mouth. In Polk county. Cattle-sales are its principal commerce. FORT PIERCE.--Situated on Indian River. County-seat of Brevard county. FORT REID.--Post-office. An enterprising, growing town, in the neighborhood of Mellonville, on the St. John's. FORT TAYLOR.--Post-office. In Hernando county. FRANKLIN COUNTY.--Near the mouth of Appalachicola River. County-seat, Appalachicola. FREEPORT.--Post-office. Located in Walton county, West Florida. GADSDEN COUNTY.--County-seat, Quincy. GAINESVILLE.--A large, flourishing town on the West India Transit Railroad. Post-office, churches, good boarding-houses. GEORGETOWN.--A steam beat-landing on the east bank of the St. John's, in Putnam county, 117 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. GORDON.--The terminus of the semi-weekly hack-line from Gainesville. In Alachua county. GORES.--A landing on the Ocklawaha River, 83 miles above its mouth. GRAHAM.--On the Ocklawaha, 84 miles above its mouth. GREEN COVE SPRINGS.--A noted resort on the west bank of the St. John's, 30 miles above Jacksonville. County-seat of Clay county. Post-office. GREENWOOD.--A town in Jackson county, near Marianna. Post-office. HALIFAX RIVER.--In Volusia county. It is formed by the junction of the Haulover and Bulow Creeks, and the Tomoka River. It is a mile wide, and 30 miles in length, running nearly parallel with the coast. HATCHEE RIVER.--Rises in Manatee county, and flows into Charlotte Harbor. HAMBURG.--A town of small note, near Madison, Madison county. HAMILTON COUNTY.--On the Georgia line. Contains an area of about 400 square acres. HAMOSASSA.--A settlement in Hernando county, near the Gulf coast. HANSON TOWN.--Named from the late Surgeon Hanson. Located in the vicinity of Jacksonville. HATCH'S BEND.--Settlement near the Santa Fe River, in La Fayette county. Post-office. HAULOVER CREEK.--A branch of Halifax River, in Volusia county. HAWKINSVILLE.--A landing on the west bank of the St. John's, 160 miles from Jacksonville, in Orange county. HAW CREEK.--A tributary of Dunn's Lake, Volusia county. HAYWOOD'S LANDING.--On Chattahoochee River, Jackson county. HERNANDO COUNTY.--County-seat, Brooksville. HIBERNIA.--A pleasant stopping-place, in Clay county, on the St. John's, 22 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. HICKORY HILL.--Near Marianna, Washington county, West Fla. HILLSBORO COUNTY.--Celebrated for cattle-raising. Tampa is the county-seat. HILLSBORO RIVER.--A favorite name for rivers in Florida--the first Hillsboro being a tributary of Tampa Bay; the second, Hillsboro River in Dade county, on the Atlantic coast; the third, a lagoon in Volusia county. HOGARTH'S LANDING.--On the east bank of the St. John's, 36 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. HOLMES COUNTY.--Near the Alabama line. County-seat, Cerro Gordo. HORSE LANDING.--On the St. John's River, 94 miles above Jacksonville, in Putnam county. HOUSTON.--On the Jacksonville and Pensacola Railroad, in Suwanee county. Post-office. IAMONIA.--In Leon county, on a lake of the same name. Post-office. INDIAN RIVER.--A body of salt-water 100 miles in length--more properly a bay, as it has no current except when agitated by the wind. IOLA.--The name of two places--one in Calhoun county, containing a post-office--the other, on the Ocklawaha River, 50 miles above its mouth. ISTEEN HATCHEE RIVER.--In La Fayette county. JACKSON COUNTY.--Located in West Florida. County-seat, Marianna. JACKSONVILLE.--The commercial mart, or great _entrepôt_, of Florida. In Duval county, on the St. John's River. JASPER--County-seat of Hamilton county. Post-office. JEFFERSON COUNTY.--County-seat, Monticello. JENNINGS.--In Hamilton county, near the Georgia line. Post-office. JUPITER NARROWS.--On the Atlantic coast, near New Smyrna. KEY LARGO.--The longest on the coast of Florida. KEY WEST.--County-seat of Monroe county. Post-office. KEY BISCAYNE.--Small settlement. County-seat of Dade county. Post-office. KING'S ROAD.--Built by Governor Grant, from New Smyrna to St. Mary's, _via_ St. Augustine and Jacksonville. KISSIME RIVER.--In Brevard county. KNOX HILL.--A Scotch settlement in West Florida. Post-office. LA FAYETTE COUNTY.--In South Florida, bounded by the Suwanee River. County-seat, New Troy. LAKE BUTLER.--County-seat of Bradford county. LAKE CITY.--A place of resort for asthmatics. County-seat of Columbia county. Post-office. LAKE EUSTIS.--In Orange county. Post-office. LAKE GRIFFIN.--Near Leesburg, on Lake Griffin. Rapidly improving. Post-office. LAKE HARNEY.--A resort in midwinter for excursionists, located partly in Volusia and Orange counties. It is 225 miles above Jacksonville. LAKE OKEECHOBEE.--The largest lake in Florida, extending over an area of more than 65 square miles. LAKE VIEW.--On the east bank of Lake George. Post-office. LAKE WORTH.--Near the Atlantic coast, north of Miami River. LAWTEY.--Near Trail Bridge. The Chicago Colony has located here, established a hotel, built many residences, planted orange-groves and other fruits. LA VILLA.--A suburban town near Jacksonville. LEESBURG.--County-seat of Sumter county. A fine, thrifty, growing place. LEON COUNTY.--County-seat, Tallahassee. LEVY COUNTY.--Borders on the Gulf. County-seat, Bronson. LEVYVILLE.--In Levy county, west of Bronson. LIBERTY.--In Hamilton county, near the Georgia Line. LIBERTY COUNTY.--A tract of land known as the Forbes Purchase, bounded west by the Appalachicola River. LITTLE RIVER.--In Gadsden county. LIVE OAK.--In Suwanee county, its principal importance being attributable to the junction of railroads. Post-office, telegraph-station. LOTUS.--In Jackson county, south of Marianna. LOWER WHITE SPRING.--On the Suwanee River, in Hamilton county. Remarkable for its medicinal properties in curing gout and rheumatism. MADISON.--County-seat of Madison county. Post-office, telegraph-station, good accommodations. MADISON COUNTY.--Belongs to the undulating portion of the State. County-seat, Madison. MAGNOLIA.--A winter-resort on the St. John's, 28 miles above Jacksonville. In Clay county. MANATEE.--A very nice, flourishing town, on the Gulf coast, in Manatee county. Post-office. MANATEE COUNTY.--County-seat, Pine Level. Celebrated for its extensive cattle-ranges. MANATEE RIVER.--A short, navigable stream, in Manatee county. MANDARIN.--Located on the east bank of the St. John's, 15 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. MARIANNA.--County-seat of Jackson county, 30 miles west of the Chattahoochee River. MARION COUNTY.--One of the central counties of East Florida. Noted for its fertility of soil and superabundance of hummock-lands. MAYPORT.--Situated at the mouth of St. John's River. It was named from May River, so called by the French. MARY ESTHER.--Small settlement in Santa Rosa county, West Florida. Post-office. MATANZAS INLET.--A body of water separating Anastasia Island from the main-land. MELLONVILLE.--On the St. John's River (here called Lake Monroe), 200 miles above Jacksonville. MERRITT'S ISLAND.--In Volusia county, and remarkable for the mildness of its climate. MIAMI RIVER.--In Dade county. Has its source in the Everglades, and empties into Biscayne Bay. MICANOPY.--On the back-line, 15 miles from Gainesville, in Alachua county. Supposed to occupy the site of the ancient village, Cuscowilla. MICCOSUKEE.--Situated in Leon county, near a lake of the same name. MIDWAY.--A lumber port in Gadsden county, West Florida. Post-office. MILLWOOD.--On the Chattahoochee River, in Jackson county. MILTON.--County-seat of Santa Rosa county. Post-office. Fine facilities for loading ships with lumber. MITCHELL.--In Escambia county, near the Alabama line. MOLINA.--Situated on the Escambia River, West Florida. Post-office. MONROE COUNTY.--County-seat, Key West, Gulf of Mexico. MONTICELLO.--County-seat of Jefferson county. Post-office, telegraph-station. Near this town was located the old Murat plantation, called "Liponia." MONTICELLO JUNCTION.--Where a branch road connects with the Jacksonville and Pensacola Railroad. MOSS BLUFF.--A landing on the Ocklawaha River, 140 miles from its mouth. MOUNT ROYAL.--A landing on the east bank of the St. John's, 109 miles above Jacksonville. MOUNT VERNON.--At the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers, in Jackson county. MULBERRY GROVE.--In Duval county, 11 miles above Jacksonville, on the St. John's River. MUSQUITO INLET.--Near Indian River, in Volusia county. MYAKKA.--A small stream of water in Manatee county, South Florida. NASSAU COUNTY.--Includes Amelia Island, on which is located Fernandina. NEAL'S LANDING.--A commercial point on the Chattahoochee River. Post-office. NEWNANSVILLE.--An old settled town in Alachua county. Stage-line from Gainesville. Post-office. NEWPORT.--In former times a trading-point, 3 miles from Wakulla Spring. NEW RIVER, or SANTA FE.--Rises in Santa Fe Lake. It forms a natural bridge by sinking into the earth and rising again. NEW SMYRNA.--On the Halifax River, in Volusia county. Post-office. NEW TROY.--A small settlement on the Suwanee River, and county-seat of La Fayette county. Post-office. NORTH RIVER.--An inlet forming a part of the harbor at St. Augustine. OAK BLUFF.--Near Leesburg, Orange county. Post-office. OAKFIELD.--In Escambia county, West Florida, on the Florida and Alabama Railroad. OCALA.--Near the old Indian settlement of Ocali, mentioned by De Soto. County-seat of Marion county. Post-office. OCKLAWAHA RIVER.--A narrow stream formed from springs and lakes, which discharges its waters into the St. John's, 25 miles above Pilatka. OKAHUMKEE.--The terminus of navigation on the Ocklawaha River, 275 miles above Pilatka. Post-office. OLD TOWN.--A settlement in La Fayette county, on Suwanee River. Post-office. OLUSTEE.--In Baker county, on the railroad. Post-office. In 1864 a battle was fought here between the Federals and Confederates, resulting in the defeat and loss of 1,200 Union troops. ORANGE BLUFF.--A landing on the St. John's, 140 miles above Jacksonville. ORANGE COUNTY.--County-seat, Orlando. It is situated partly on Lake Monroe. ORANGE MILLS.--A landing on the east bank of the St. John's, in Putnam county, 64 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. ORANGE POINT.--In Putnam county, on the St. John's, 103 miles above Jacksonville. ORANGE SPRING.--A sulphur spring in Marion county, on the Ocklawaha River, 35 miles above its mouth--formerly a resort for the afflicted. Post-office. ORLANDO.--County-seat of Orange county. Post-office. OTTER CREEK.--Station and eating-house on the West India Transit Railroad, 19 miles from Cedar Keys. Post-office. PALMETTO.--A station on the West India Transit Railroad, Levy county. PALMETTO LANDING.--On the Ocklawaha River, 78 miles above its mouth. PEASE CREEK.--A large, navigable stream, flowing into Charlotte Harbor, on the Gulf coast. PENSACOLA.--County-seat of Escambia county. Post-office. PERDIDO MILLS.--A new settlement in the pine-woods, which promises to be the finest lumber-mart in the South. PERDIDO RIVER.--A tributary of Perdido Bay, in West Florida. PICOLATA.--A landing on the St. John's River, 45 miles above its mouth. Post-office. PILATKA.--On the west bank of the St. John's River, 75 miles above its mouth. County-seat of Putnam county. Post-office. PINE LEVEL.--County-seat of Manatee county. Post-office. POLK COUNTY.--County-seat, Bartow. PORT ORANGE.--In Volusia county, between Halifax River and the Atlantic Ocean. Post-office. PORT WASHINGTON.--In Walton county, on the south side of Choctawhatchee Bay. POWELLTON.--Station on the Florida Railroad, Escambia county, West Florida. Post-office. PUNTA RASSA.--On the Gulf coast, in Monroe county. Post-office and submarine-telegraph station. PUTNAM COUNTY.--County-seat, Pilatka, through which the St. John's River flows. QUINCY.--County-seat of Gadsden county, where a case of hydrophobia has never been known, nor an instance of sun-stroke occurred. Post-office and telegraph-station. REMINGTON PARK.--A resort on the east bank of the St. John's, 25 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. RIVERSIDE.--A finely-located, prospective city, on the St. John's, near Jacksonville. ROSE HEAD.--Located in Taylor county. Post-office. ROSEWOOD.--On the West India Transit Railroad, 10 miles from Cedar Keys. Post-office. SALLIE'S CAMP.--Landing on the upper St. John's, 229 miles from Jacksonville. SANDERSON.--County-seat of Baker county. Post-office, telegraph-station. SANDY BLUFF.--Landing on the Ocklawaha River, 68 miles above its mouth. SAND POINT.--Seven miles from Salt Lake, on the St. John's, and 30 miles from Canaveral Light-house. SANFORD.--It is 199 miles from Jacksonville. Contains a sanitarium, besides all necessary comforts for the sick and well. Post-office. SAN MATEO.--In Putnam county, on the St. John's, 80 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. ST. SEBASTIAN RIVER.--An estuary which is crossed in going from the depot to St. Augustine. SANTA FE.--A settlement in Bradford county, near Starke. Post-office. SANTA FE RIVER.--A tributary of the Suwanee River. SANTA ROSA COUNTY.--County-seat, Milton. Contains large milling interests. SARASOTA.--In Manatee county, on the Gulf coast, 12 miles from Manatee, South Florida. SHADY GROVE.--A settlement in Taylor county. Post-office. SHARP'S FERRY.--Landing on the Ocklawaha River, 114 miles above its mouth. SHELL BANK.--Landing on the St. John's, 193 miles above Jacksonville. SHOAL RIVER.--A stream of water in Walton county, which empties into Pensacola Bay. SILVER SPRING.--A most remarkable phenomenon in nature--the principal source of the Ocklawaha River, 100 miles from its mouth. In Marion county. Post-office. SOPCHOPPY.--In Wakulla county. Post-office. SPRING HILL.--In Hernando county, west of Brooksville. SPRUCE CREEK.--In Volusia county, 8 miles from Smyrna. STARKE.--In Bradford county, 73 miles from Fernandina, on the West India Transit Railroad. Post-office. STARK'S LANDING.--On the Ocklawaha River, 155 miles above its mouth, in Sumter county. ST. AUGUSTINE.--In St. John's county. Remarkable for being the first settled town in the United States. Post-office. ST. JOHN'S COUNTY.--County-seat, St. Augustine. Bounded on the west by the St. John's River. ST. JOHN'S RIVER.--A remarkable stream of water, which has its source in the Everglades of South Florida. It is about 350 miles in length, flowing north to Jacksonville, where it makes an abrupt turn to the east, and discharges into the Atlantic Ocean. ST. JOSEPH'S.--In Calhoun county, West Florida. ST. LUCIE SOUND.--A name given to a portion of Indian River, in Brevard county. ST. MARK'S.--Terminus of the Pensacola and Mobile (St. Mark's Branch) Railroad. It is in Wakulla county, at the head of Appalachee Bay. Post-office. ST. MARK'S RIVER.--Considered by most persons to be the reäppearance of Lake Miccosukee which loses itself in the earth. ST. MARY'S RIVER.--Rises in the enchanted land of the Yemassee Indians, forming a short boundary-line between Georgia and Florida. SUWANEE COUNTY.--County-seat, Live Oak. Well timbered with pine. Has marl shell-beds and white clay. In the center of the county is a white stone, soft when dug, but hardening on exposure to the air--used for chimney-backs and furnaces. SUWANEE RIVER.--Rises in Southern Georgia, and empties into the Gulf, near Cedar Keys; navigable for small steamers as far as Troy. SUWANEE SHOALS.--In Columbia county. Post-office. TALLAHASSEE.--Capital of the State. County-seat of Leon county. Located by Governor Walton, and named by his daughter Octavia. The State-house and Court-house were built by the United States Government. TAMPA.--County-seat of Hillsboro county. On Tampa Bay. Terminus of the tri-weekly hack-line from Gainesville. TAYLOR COUNTY.--On the Gulf coast, south of Madison. TEMPLE.--Station on the West India Transit Railroad, 78 miles from Fernandina. TITUSVILLE.--A flourishing settlement in Volusia county, on the west bank of Indian River. It contains a fine sanitarium for invalids. Post-office. TRAIL RIDGE.--The highest point on the West India Railroad, 62 miles from Fernandina. TOCOI.--Landing on the east bank of the St. John's, 52 miles above Jacksonville. Post-office. UCHEEANNA.--County-seat of Walton county, West Florida. Post-office. UCHEE VALLEY.--Named from the Uchee tribe of Indians, who formerly occupied it. In Walton county. VALLOMBROSA.--Settlement in Washington county, West Florida. VERNON.--County-seat of Washington county, West Florida. Post-office. VOLUSIA.--Landing on the east bank of the St. John's, 137 miles above Jacksonville. In Volusia county. Post-office. VOLUSIA COUNTY.--County-seat, Enterprise. WACAHOOLA.--A settlement near Flemington, Marion county. Post-office. WACASSA RIVER.--Meaning "Cow Range River"--a corruption of Indian and Spanish. In Levy county. WACASSA RIVER.--A stream flowing through Jefferson county, and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. WAKULLA COUNTY.--In this county is the celebrated Wakulla Spring. The principal settlements are St. Mark's, Crawfordsville, and Sopchoppy. WAKULLA RIVER.--Rises in Wakulla Spring, and flows into the Gulf, near St. Mark's. WALDO.--On the West India Transit Railroad, in Alachua county, 12 miles from Gainesville. Post-office. WALTON COUNTY.--County-seat, Ucheeanna, West Florida. WARRINGTON.--On Escambia Bay, 7 miles from Pensacola. Post-office. WASHINGTON COUNTY.--County-seat, Vernon, West Florida. WAUKEENAH.--Settlement in Jefferson county. WEBBVILLE.--A settlement in Jackson county, near Marianna. WEELAUNEE.--Located in Jefferson county. Post-office. WEKIVA.--Settlement in the Sanford Grant, on the upper St. John's. Post-office. WEKIVA RIVER.--A stream in Orange county, flowing into the St. John's. WELAKA.--Landing on the east bank of the St. John's, 100 miles above Jacksonville, opposite the mouth of the Ocklawaha River. Post-office. WELLBORN.--On the Jacksonville, Pensacola, and Mobile Railroad, 94 miles from Tallahassee. Post-office. WITHLACOOCHEE RIVER.--Rises in Sumter county, and empties into the Gulf, near Cedar Keys. WOODLAND.--In Putnam county, on Dunn's Lake. Post-office. WOOLSEY.--A settlement on Escambia Bay, in Escambia county. WYOMING.--A suburb of Jacksonville, Duval county. Unimportant. YELLOW RIVER.--Rises in Walton county, and empties into Pensacola Bay, near Milton, West Florida. THE END. * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: changeful sea at St. Agustine=> changeful sea at St. Augustine {pg 228} in which they are are taught=> in which they are taught {pg 375} El bano de la Americana=> El baño de la Americana {pg 422} rescued by Laudonnèire=> rescued by Laudonnière {pg 460} 
4210	----	PICTORIAL HISTORY OF OUR WAR WITH SPAIN A THRILLING ACCOUNT OF THE LAND AND NAVAL OPERATIONS OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND SAILORS IN OUR WAR WITH SPAIN, AND THE HEROIC STRUGGLES OF CUBAN PATRIOTS AGAINST SPANISH TYRANNY. INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF CUBA, SPAIN, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, OUR ARMY AND NAVY, FIGHTING STRENGTH, COAST DEFENSES, AND OUR RELATIONS WITH OTHER NATIONS, ETC., ETC. BY TRUMBULL WHITE, THE WELL KNOWN AND POPULAR AUTHOR, HISTORIAN AND WAR CORRESPONDENT. ELABORATELY ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS OF BATTLES, ON SEA AND LAND, WAR SHIPS, ETC., FROM LIFE. FREEDOM PUBLISHING CO. Dedicated To Our American Volunteers PREFACE. Information concerning the island of Cuba has been of an exceedingly unsatisfactory character until the search-light of American inquiry was thrown upon it from the beginning of the war for Cuban liberty early in 1895. Although our next-door neighbor to the south, with a perfect winter climate and a host of interesting and picturesque attractions for travelers, tourists had been comparatively few, measured by the numbers that might have been expected. All of the reasons for this were those which naturally followed the characteristic Spanish rule of the island. Publicity was not welcomed, inquiry was not welcomed, travelers were not welcomed. The cities and the accommodations they offered were in many ways far behind those of like age and size in the other countries of the globe. Railway construction and the making of highways had lagged disgracefully, because the exorbitant taxes collected were looted by the officers of the government as their own spoils. No other country so near to the highways of ocean commerce and so accessible from the United States was so little known. A few travelers had journeyed to Cuba and had written books descriptive of their experiences, which were read with interest by those who had access to them. But these books were usually simply descriptive of the people, the manner of life, the scenery, and the things of surface interest. It is proverbial that Spanish rule conceals the resources of a country instead of exploiting them. The person of inquiring mind had no way in Cuba to obtain prompt information concerning the material facts of the island's wealth of resource, because the Spanish authorities themselves knew nothing about it. Spanish statistics are notoriously unreliable and incomplete. No census of Cuba worthy the name ever has been taken, and there are few schools and few sources of accurate information. With all this handicap it was a foregone conclusion that the casual traveler should confine himself to the things that were visible and that were near to the usual paths of travelers. So until the beginning of the Cuban war for liberty no books could be obtained which told the things which one really cares to know. Picturesque descriptions there were, more than one, of considerable interest, but the information was scattered. Demand always creates supply, even if material is scant. When the war began, the people of the United States wanted to know something of the people who were striving for their freedom, of their characteristics, their conditions and their personality. Moreover, it was an immediate necessity to know the geography of Cuba, its history, its natural conditions, its material resources, and a host of things that unite to make a comprehensive knowledge of any country. There were men who knew Cuba from years of residence there in industrial and commercial enterprises. They were drawn upon for their knowledge. Then the newspapers of the United States gave another demonstration of their unvarying enterprise and covered the points of interest in the insurrection most exhaustively. Their correspondents shared the camps of insurgent chiefs, witnessed the daring machete charges of the Cubans, saw every detail of armed life in the field. Others kept close watch of the movements of the Spanish forces in Havana and the fortified towns, as well as in the field. One was shot in action. Another was macheted to death after his capture, by a Spanish officer who waited only to be sure that the prisoner was an American before ordering him to death. Others were incarcerated in Morro and Cabanas fortresses and in the other Spanish prisons in Cuba because they insisted on telling the truth to America and the world. They were the ones who told of the horrors of reconcentration under that infamous order of Captain General Weyler. They have been the real historians of Cuba. It is to all of these sources and others that the information contained in the present volume is owed. The writer takes pleasure in acknowledging the courteous permission to use salient facts contained in some volumes of merit published prior to this time. But more than all the obligation is to the newspaper correspondents who worked with him in Cuba in the days when the war was but an insurrection and afterward when the insurrection became our own war against Spain for the liberty of Cuba. They are the ones who have gathered the most exhaustive information on the whole subject of Cuban affairs. They have been able by virtue of their intimate knowledge of Cuba and the Cubans to be of invaluable assistance to the commanders of army and navy alike, not only in advice as to the forming of plans, but in executing them. One who has seen the things knows that to exaggerate the horrors of Spanish cruelty and the oppression of Spanish rule in Cuba is an impossibility. No newspaper could have printed the plain truth of a score of shocking affairs, simply because the public prints are no place for the exploiting of such tales of vicious crime against humanity as have been perpetrated. The most sensational tales have never reached the limits of the truth. It is hoped that the reader will find in this volume not only a comprehensive current history of our war with Spain for Cuba's freedom, but also much of the other matter that will be of interest and value in considering the future of the liberated island. Its history, its people, its resources and other salient subjects are included, with certain matter on Spain and her own affairs, with Puerto Rico and the Philippine islands, which chapters serve to make the volume a work for general reference and reading on the whole subject of the war. TABLE OF CONTENTS. I. A War for Liberty and Humanity II. How Columbus Found the "Pearl of the Antilles" III. Spain's Black Historical Record IV. Buccaneering in the Spanish Main V. Commercial Development of Cuba VI. Beauties of a Tropical Island VII. Wealth from Nature's Store in the Forest and Fields of Cuba VIII. The Cubans and How They Live IX. Havana, the Island Metropolis X. The Cities of Cuba XI. Mutterings of Insurrection XII. Outbreak of the Ten Years' War XIII. Massacre of the Virginius Officers and Crew XIV. Operations of the Ten Years' War XV. The Peace of Zanjon and Its Violated Pledges XVI. Preparations for Another Rebellion XVII. The Cuban Junta and Its Work XVIII. Key West and the Cubans XIX. Another Stroke for Freedom XX. Jose Marti and Other Cuban Heroes XXI. Desperate Battles with Machete and Rifle XXII. Filibusters from Florida XXIII. Weyler the Butcher XXIV. Cuba Under the Scourge XXV. Fitzhugh Lee to the Front XXVI. Americans in Spanish Dungeons XXVII. Maceo Dead by Treachery XXVIII. Weyler's Reconcentration Policy and Its Horrors XXIX. American Indignation Growing XXX. Outrages on Americans in Cuba XXXI. McKinley Succeeds Cleveland XXXII. The Case of Evangelina Cisneros XXXIII. Work of Clara Barton and the Red Cross XXXIV. The Catastrophe to the Maine XXXV. Patience at the Vanishing Point XXXVI. Events in the American Congress XXXVII. President McKinley Acts XXXVIII. Strength of the Opposing Squadron and Armies XXXIX. Battleships and Troops Begin to Move XL. Diplomatic Relations Terminate XLI. First Guns and First Prizes of the War XLII. Declaration of War XLIII. Call for the National Guard, Our Citizen Soldiery XLIV. Blockade of Cuban Ports XLV. Spanish Dissensions at Home XLVI. The Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Other Colonies of Spain XLVII. Progress of Hostilities XLVIII. Sea Fight off Manila, Americans Victorious XLIX. Hawaii, and Our Annexation Policy L. Continued Success for American Soldiers and Sailors LI. The Invasion of Puerto Rico LII. The Surrender of Manila LIII. Victorious Close of the War LIV. Personal Reminiscences INTRODUCTION. When, on the 22d day of April, 1898, Michael Mallia, gun-captain of the United States cruiser Nashville, sent a shell across the bows of the Spanish ship Buena Ventura, he gave the signal shot that ushered in a war for liberty for the slaves of Spain. The world has never seen a contest like it. Nations have fought for territory and for gold, but they have not fought for the happiness of others. Nations have resisted the encroachments of barbarism, but until the nineteenth century they have not fought to uproot barbarism and cast it out of its established place. Nations have fought to preserve the integrity of their own empire, but they have not fought a foreign foe to set others free. Men have gone on crusades to fight for holy tombs and symbols, but armies have not been put in motion to overthrow vicious political systems and regenerate iniquitous governments for other peoples. For more than four centuries Spain has held the island of Cuba as her chattel, and there she has revelled in corruption, and wantoned in luxury wrung from slaves with the cruel hand of unchecked power. She has been the unjust and merciless court of last resort. From her malignant verdict there has been no possible appeal, no power to which her victims could turn for help. But the end has come at last. The woe, the grief, the humiliation, the agony, the despair that Spain has heaped upon the helpless, and multiplied in the world until the world is sickened with it, will be piled in one avalanche on her own head. Liberty has grown slowly. Civilization has been on the defensive. Now liberty fights for liberty, and civilization takes the aggressive in the holiest war the world has even known. Never was there a war before in which so many stimulating deeds of bravery were done in such a short time, and this in spite of the fact that the public has been restless for more action. It is almost worth a war to have inscribed such a deed of cool, intelligent heroism as that of Hobson and his men with the Merrimac, in the entrance to the harbor of Santiago de Cuba. That is an event in world history, one never to be forgotten, and in the countries of Europe quite as generously recognized as by our own people. There is a word to say for the Spanish admiral. In his chivalry after that act of heroism, Cervera proved himself a worthy adversary, who could realize and admire bravery in a foe, even when it had been directed against himself with such signal success. Not every commander would be great enough in that circumstance to send a flag of truce to the opposing admiral, in order to inform him that his brave men were safe and that they were honored as brave men by their captors. Of another sort was the bravery of Dewey at Manila, more notable in its results but in no other way surpassing that of Hobson and his men. Dewey went forward in spite of unknown dangers of torpedoes, to engage an enemy in the place it had selected as most favorable for Spanish arms, an enemy with more ships, more men, more guns than had the American. A day later the nation was at the feet of Dewey and the United States had taken a position among the powers of the world never before admitted by them. In larger degree than ever before, from that moment the United States became a factor in the international history of the world. At this writing one cannot tell what will be the end of the relations of the United States to the Philippines and the Orient, but the solution cannot fail to be of profit to this nation. This was a holy war for the liberty of Cuba, but like many another good deed it is bringing its additional rewards. Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and the Caroline islands are to be liberated, four colonies of Spain instead of one, and the direct and indirect profit, looked at from a purely commercial basis, will be far more than enough to compensate the United States for the cost of the war. The annexation of the Hawaiian islands as a war measure must be credited to the same cause, for the success of that effort under any other circumstances was problematical. Yet another sort of bravery was that in the harbor of Cardenas when the little torpedo boat Winslow lay a helpless hulk under the rain of fire from the shore batteries, without rudder or engine to serve, and the Hudson, a mere tugboat with a few little guns on deck, stood by for forty minutes to pass a hawser and tow the disabled vessel out of range. Both were riddled, the Winslow had half her total complement of men killed and wounded by a single shell, but there was no faltering, and they all worked away as coolly as if nothing were happening. If one started to catalogue the instances of personal bravery that the war brought out in its first few months, the list would be a cumbersome one. It is enough here to say that there have been a hundred times when personal courage was needed to be shown, and never a moment's hesitancy on the part of any man to whom the call came. Furthermore, in every case in which a particularly hazardous undertaking was contemplated, and volunteers were called for, the number offering has been in every instance far more than was needed. This was eminently notable on the occasion of Hobson's sinking of the Merrimac, when more than a thousand in the fleet volunteered for a service requiring but six, and from which it seemed impossible that any could come out alive. The public must know all about the war, and the only avenue of information is the press. Never before has any war been covered as to its news features with the accuracy and energy which have characterized this. American journalism has outstripped the world. The expense of a news service for this war is something enormous, with little return compensation. Yet the work is done, metropolitan papers have from ten to twenty correspondents in the field, and the public has the benefit. Dispatch boats follow the fleets and are present at every battle. They must be near enough to see, which means that they are in as much danger at times as are the ships of the fighting squadron, far more if one remembers that the former are in no way protected. Some of them are heavy sea-going tugs and others are yachts. The expense of charter, insurance and running cost amounts to from $200 to $400 a day each, and yet some metropolitan newspapers have fleets of these boats to the number of six. All the foregoing facts are related in detail in the volume which these paragraphs introduce. The only object in reiterating them here is that they are entitled to emphasis for their prominence, and it is desired to call special attention to them and their accompanying matter when the book itself shall be read. The number of those who believe we are engaged in a righteous war is overwhelming. The records of the brave deeds of our men afloat and ashore will inspire Americans to be better citizens as long as time shall last. The country has proven its faith in the cause by giving to the needs of war hundreds of thousands of young men to fight for the liberty of others. From every corner of the land regiments of volunteer soldiers have sprung in an instant at the call of the President, while as many more are waiting for another call to include those for whom there was not room the first time. The country which can show such an inspiring movement has little to fear in the race of progress among the nations of the world. OUR WAR WITH SPAIN. CHAPTER I. A WAR FOR LIBERTY AND HUMANITY. Again at War with a Foreign Power--Spain's Significant Flag-- Three Years Without an American Flag in Cuban Waters--Visit of the Maine to Havana Harbor--The Maine Blown Up by Submerged Mine-- Action of President and Congress--Spain Defies America--Martial Spirit Spreading--First Guns Are Fired--Cuban Ports Blockaded-- Many Spanish Ships Captured--Excitement in Havana--Spain and the United States Both Declare War--Internal Dissension Threatens Spain--President McKinley Calls a Volunteer Army. Civilization against barbarism, freedom against oppression, education against ignorance, progress against retrogression, the West against the East, the United States against Spain. In this cause the flag of freedom was again unfurled in the face of a foreign foe, and our nation entered war against the people of another land, carrying the star spangled banner through successive victories in the name of liberty and humanity. It is a proud banner, which stands the whole world over for freedom and right, with few stains of defeat or injustice upon its folds. The great heart of the nation swelled with pride at the righteousness of the cause, with an assurance that eternal history would praise America for the unselfish work. On land and sea the boys in blue gave new fame to the flag, and their proud record in the past was more than justified by the honors that they won. Two wars with Great Britain and one with Mexico were the more notable predecessors of this conflict with Spain. If to these should be added the hostilities between the United States and the Barbary pirates of Algiers, Morocco and Tripoli, and the scattered brushes with two or three Oriental and South American countries, the list might be extended. But those affairs are not remembered as wars in the true sense of the word. Except for protection against Indian outbreaks, the United States had been at peace for thirty years, when the war cloud began to loom in the horizon. It was with a full realization of the blessings of peace that the American people yielded to the demands, of humanity and righteous justice, to take up arms again in the cause of liberty. There was no haste, no lack of caution, no excited plunge into hostilities without proper grounds. The nation made sure that it was right. An intolerable condition of affairs resulting from years of agony in a neighbor island, with half a dozen immediate reasons, any one sufficient, was the absolute justification for this holy war. Spain is the Turk of the West. Spain is an obsolete nation. Living in the past, and lacking cause for pride to-day, she gloats over her glorious explorations and her intellectual prowess of the middle ages when much of Europe was in darkness. Then Spain's flag led pioneers throughout the world. But her pride was based on achievements, many of which, to the people of any other nation, would have been the disgrace of its history. No indictment of Spain can ever be more severe, more scathing, if its true significance be considered, than the famous phrase which one of her proudest poets created to characterize her flag of red and yellow. "Sangre y oro," he said, "blood and gold--a stream of gold between two rivers of blood." It is almost a sufficient characterization to indicate the whole national spirit of Spain, to recall that this phrase is the proud expression used by the Spanish people to glorify their own flag. That sentiment is in no stronger contrast to the American phrase, "the star-spangled banner," than are the people of Spain to the people of the United States. "REMEMBER THE MAINE." From the day of the outbreak of the Cuban revolution, early in 1895, until nearly the end of January, 1898, there had been no flag of the United States seen in any harbor of Cuba except upon merchant vessels. Always before, it had been the policy of our government to have ships of war make friendly calls in the harbors of all countries of the world at frequent intervals, and Cuban waters had shared these courtesies. So careful were the officers of the Cleveland administration to avoid the appearance of offense or threat against the authority of Spain, with which we were living in amity, that immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities in Cuba this practice was suspended, so far as it applied to that island. Our ships cruised through the oceans of the world and called at all ports where they were not needed, but the waters of Havana harbor for three years were never disturbed by an American keel. Out of deference to the expressed wishes of the local Spanish authorities in Havana, Dr. Burgess, the splendid surgeon of the United States Marine Hospital service in Havana, who for thirty years has guarded our southern ports from the epidemics of yellow fever and smallpox, which would invade us annually as a result of Spanish misgovernment in Cuba, except for his watchfulness, ceased flying the American flag on his steam launch, by means of which he carried out his official duties in those foul waters. The American flag was a disturbing influence upon the minds of the Cubans who might see it flashing in the clear sunlight of the tropic sky, suggested the Captain General. It must have been the language of diplomacy that was in mind, when the satirist explained that "language was intended as a medium for concealing thought." President McKinley, in his message to Congress transmitting the report of the naval board concerning the catastrophe to the Maine, explained that for some time prior to the visit of the battle-ship to Havana harbor, it had been considered a proper change in the policy, in order to accustom the people to the presence of our flag as a symbol of good will. The decision to send the vessel to that harbor was reached, it was explained, after conference with the Spanish minister, and, through our diplomats, with the Spanish authorities at Madrid and Havana. It was declared that this intention was received by the Spanish government with high appreciation of the courtesy intended, which it was offered to return by sending Spanish ships to the principal ports of the United States. We are bound to accept this expression from the officials on both sides as frankly indicative of their feelings. But it is just as necessary to recognize that to the mass of the people in both countries, the significance of the Maine's courtesy call was very different. Americans believed that it indicated a changed policy on the part of the national government at Washington which would be more strenuous and more prompt in resenting outrages against the life and property of American citizens in Cuba. The people of the Cuban republic believed that the change meant an expression of sympathy and friendship for their cause, with probable interference in their behalf, and took courage from that sign. Finally, the people of Spain resented the appearance of the Maine in the harbor of Havana as an affront, and a direct threat against them and in favor of the insurgents. If the policy of making frequent calls in warships had never been interrupted, they would not have had this sentiment in the matter, but the resumption of the practice after three years' cessation, carried a threat with it in their minds. TREACHEROUS DESTRUCTION OF THE MAINE. The Maine entered the harbor of Havana at sunrise on the 25th of January and was anchored at a place indicated by the harbor-master. Her arrival was marked with no special incident, except the exchange of customary salutes and ceremonial visits. Three weeks from that night, at forty minutes past nine o'clock in the evening of the 15th of February, the Maine was destroyed by an explosion, by which the entire forward part of the ship was wrecked. In this frightful catastrophe 264 of her crew and two officers perished, those who were not killed outright by the explosion being penned between decks by the tangle of wreckage and drowned by the immediate sinking of her hull. In spite of the fact that the American public was urged to suspend judgment as to the causes of this disaster, and that the Spanish authorities in Havana and in Madrid expressed grief and sympathy, it, was impossible to subdue a general belief that in some way Spanish treachery was responsible for the calamity. With the history of Spanish cruelty in Cuba before them, and the memory of Spanish barbarities through all their existence as a nation, the people could mot disabuse their minds of this suspicion. One month later this popular judgment was verified by the finding of the naval court of inquiry which had made an exhaustive examination of the wreck, and had taken testimony from every available source. With this confirmation and the aroused sentiment of the country concerning conditions in Cuba, the logic of events was irresistibly drawing the country toward war with Spain, and all efforts of diplomacy and expressions of polite regard exchanged between the governments of the two nations were unable to avert it. For a few weeks, history was made rapidly. Conservative and eminent American senators visited Cuba in order to obtain personal information of conditions there, and upon their return, gave to Congress and to the country, in eloquent speeches, the story of the sufferings they had found in that unhappy island. The loss of the Maine had focused American attention upon the Cuban situation as it had never been before, and though there were no more reasons for sympathetic interference than there had been for many months, people began to realize as they had not before, the horrors that were being enacted at their thresholds. The sailors who died with the Maine, even though they were not able to fight their country's foes, have not died in vain, for it is their death that will be remembered as the culminating influence for American intervention and the salvation of scores of thousands of lives of starving Cuban women and children. Vessels were loaded with supplies of provisions and clothing for the suffering and were sent to the harbors of Cuba, where distribution was made by Miss Clara Barton and her trusted associates in the American National Red Cross. Some of these vessels were merchant steamers, but others were American cruisers, and Cubans were not permitted to forget that there was a flag which typified liberty, not far away. The strain upon the national patience increased every day, and was nearing the breaking point. PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS ACT. After a period of restlessness in Congress which was shared by the whole country, the President finally transmitted an important message. It included a resume of the progress of the Cuban revolution from its beginning and considered in some detail the workings of that devastating policy of General Weyler, known as reconcentration. The message related the progress of diplomatic negotiations with Spain, and disclosed a surprising succession of events in which the Spanish government had submitted to various requests and recommendations of the American government. The message ended with a request that Congress authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of the intolerable conditions on the island of Cuba. Having exhausted the powers of the executive in these efforts, it was left to the legislative authority of the American people to establish such policies as would be finally efficient. Congress rose to the occasion. The facts were at command of both houses, their sympathies were enlisted at the side of their reason and there was little time lost in acting. The House and the Senate, after mutual concessions on minor details, passed as a law of the land for the President's signature, an act directing him and empowering him to require Spain to withdraw her troops and relinquish all authority over the island of Cuba. The President was authorized to employ the army and navy of the United States for the purpose of carrying into effect this instruction and the interference was directed to be made at once. Best of all, from the point of view of the Cuban patriots, the act declared that the people of Cuba are and ought to be free and independent. But a few days more of diplomacy, and war was to begin. SPAIN DEFIES AMERICA. It was hardly to be expected that the Spanish government and the Spanish people would yield to the demands of the United States without a protest. So feeble is the hold of the present dynasty upon the throne of Spain, that it was readily understood that any concession upon the part of the Queen Regent would arouse Spanish indignation beyond the limits of endurance. The Queen-mother had to think of her baby son's crown. If she were to yield to the superior power of the United States without a struggle, Spanish revolutionists would overthrow the dynasty before he could come to the throne. However well she might know that the logical outcome of a war would be overwhelming defeat to Spanish arms, political necessities compelled her to take the position dictated by Spanish pride. The Spanish Cortes met in special session at Madrid, and on the 20th of April the Queen Regent delivered her speech before that legislative body and declared that her parliament was summoned in the hour of peril to defend her country's rights and her child's throne, whatever sacrifice might be entailed. It was on that same day that President McKinley presented the ultimatum of the United States to Spain, in language diplomatic in form, but carrying with it a definite notice to yield Cuba's freedom and relinquish her pretense of authority in that island without delay. A copy of the ultimatum was forwarded to the Spanish ambassador at Washington, Senor Polo y Bernabe, who responded by asking for his passports and safe conduct out of the country. Having reached the point where diplomacy no longer availed, the Spanish government for the first time made an aggressive move against the United States. Instead of waiting for the transmission of the ultimatum by American Minister Stewart L. Woodford, the ministry forestalled him and dismissed him from Madrid without affording him an opportunity to present that important document. It had been transmitted to Madrid by cable from the Spanish Minister in Washington, and the government felt no need to wait for formal messages from the enemy's representative in Spain. Minister Woodford left Madrid without delay, and finally reached the French frontier, after being subjected to many insults and attacks upon his train during the journey from the Spanish capital. MARTIAL SPIRIT SPREADING. A wave of national patriotic enthusiasm swept over the United States. North and South, East and West, there was hardly a discordant note in the great chorus of fervent applause which rose when it was understood that at last the forces of the nation were to be united in the cause of liberty and humanity. But sentiment could not fight battles, unless backed by material equipment. The nation was preparing for war. From all parts of the United States the troops of the regular army were hurried by special trains southeastward to camps at Chickamauga and Tampa. In every navy yard work was hurried night and day upon all incomplete battleships and cruisers. Already the fleets of the American navy had been concentrated at points of vantage so that little was left to be done on that score. Congress lost no time in providing the sinews of war by generous appropriations for the regular channels of supply, in addition to one passed by unanimous vote of both houses granting $50,000,000 as a special fund to be at the disposal of the President. The war appropriation bill and the naval appropriation bill carried with them emergency clauses. Preparations were made for the reorganization of the regular army to more than double its normal size, and the President was authorized to call for a volunteer army of 125,000 men. Looking to the future, and the possibility of a long and expensive conflict, financial measures were prepared which would raise war revenues through the regular channels of taxation and the issue of bonds. Americans were ready to put their hands in their pockets and pay for the privilege of teaching a worthy lesson to the world. American sense of humor never fails, and even in this period of stress the people took time to smile over the story of the Spanish Minister's journey from Washington to Canada. In Toronto, Senor Polo sought to discredit the assaults that had been made on Minister Woodford's train in Spain, and related that he himself had been the victim of assaults at two or three important cities on his journey through New York, which threatened great danger to himself and the train on which he was riding. Upon inquiry it was revealed that the assaults which had aroused his fear were not quite as hostile as he believed. At the division stations on the line, the railway employees, according to custom, passed along the cars, tapping the tires of the wheels with steel hammers to test them for a possible flaw or break in the wheel, and it was this that made the Spanish Minister believe that he was the victim of an American outrage. FIRST GUNS ARE FIRED. The United States cruiser Nashville of the North Atlantic squadron, with headquarters at Key West, had the honor of firing the first shot in our war with Spain. Early on the morning of Friday, April 22, the American fleet sailed from Key West, and, steaming southward across the straits of Florida, came in sight of Havana and the frowning fortifications of Morro Castle before six o'clock the same afternoon. The sailing of the fleet, as dawn was creeping over the Florida keys, was a beautiful sight and a significant one, for from the time the first signals were hoisted until many days after, there was hardly an hour of inactivity. It was at three o'clock in the morning that the signal lights began to flash from the New York, Admiral Sampson's flagship. Answering signals appeared on the warships all along the line, and in a few moments black smoke began to belch from the funnels of all the ships and the crews woke from quietness to activity. As soon as day began to break, the cruisers and gunboats inside the harbor hoisted anchors and moved out to join the big battleships which were already lined outside the bar. At five o'clock, when all the fleet were gathered around the battleships, Captain Sampson signaled from the New York to go ahead. The formation of the line had been agreed upon some time before and each vessel was in position for line of battle, the New York in the center and the Iowa and Indiana on either beam. The ships presented a most beautiful appearance as they swept out on the ocean without a vestige of anything not absolutely necessary on the decks. They were stripped of all useless superstructure, awnings, gun-covers and everything that goes to adorn a ship. Officers paced the bridge, marines were drawn up on deck and every man was at his post. They appeared as they were, grim fighting machines, not naval vessels out on cruise nor a squadron of evolution and maneuver, but warships out for business. FIRST SPANISH SHIP CAPTURED. The fleet had proceeded twelve miles from Sand Key Light, which lies seven miles southeast of Key West, when the Nashville signaled the flagship that a vessel flying the Spanish colors had been sighted. Admiral Sampson signaled from the New York for the Nashville to go and take it. The Nashville bore down on the Spanish ship and fired a blank shot from the port guns aft. This did not stop the Spaniard, and, to give a more definite hint, a solid shot was fired close over its bows. The Spanish ship immediately hove to and waited to know its fate. The vessel proved to be the Buena Ventura, with a crew of about thirty men, bound from Pascagonla to Rotterdam with a cargo of lumber, cattle and miscellaneous freight. As soon as possible a boat was lowered from the Nashville and an officer was sent aboard the Buena Ventura. When the Spanish captain was informed that his ship could not proceed, he took his capture gracefully, shrugged his shoulders, and said he supposed it was only the fortune of war. It was suggested to him that the capture of a ship bearing that name, which, translated, means "good fortune," as the first prize of the American fleet in the war, seemed to be a striking coincidence. A prize crew of marines under Ensign T. P. Magruder was placed aboard, and, with the Nashville in the lead, both ships set out for Key West. Inasmuch as the Buena Ventura was the first capture by the American navy in the war, it had a more definite interest than a success of the same sort would have a few months later. The first shot was fired by Gunner Michael Mallia of the Nashville, who therefore has the distinction of firing the first shot in the war. The prize was a rich one, estimated to be worth, including vessel and cargo, nearly $500,000, and the prize money resulting became a tempting amount. Captain Washburne Maynard, commander of the Nashville, who gained the distinction of making the first capture, is a native of Knoxville, Tenn. He is a son of former United States Senator Horace Maynard, and at the time of the capture was about fifty years old. He entered the Annapolis Naval Academy at the age of seventeen and graduated at the head of his class. He was for a number of years stationed in Alaska, and at the time of gaining his present distinction had been in command of the Nashville for four years. BLOCKADE OF HAVANA BEGUN. After the Nashville left the fleet to return to Key West with its prize, the remaining vessels of the squadron steamed onward toward the Cuban coast. Coming within fifteen miles of Morro Castle, the fleet scattered in a more open line of battle, some of the vessels turning to the east and others to the west, and making the blockade of the port complete. No ship could enter or leave the harbor, and every day brought new prizes to the vessels of the blockading squadron. The blockade of the Cuban metropolis was well in progress by the time the formal notification of it was issued. The President issued warning to the nations of the world that the Cuban ports were sealed by the authority of the United States, in the following formal proclamation: BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A PROCLAMATION. Whereas, By a joint resolution passed by the Congress and approved April 20, 1898, and communicated to the government of Spain, it was demanded that said government at once relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba, and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters; and the President of the United States was directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States to such extent as might be necessary to carry said resolution into effect; and Whereas, In carrying into effect this resolution the President of the United States deems it necessary to set on foot and maintain a blockade of the north coast of Cuba, including all ports of said coast between Cardenas and Bahia Honda and the port of Cienfuegos, on the south coast of Cuba; Now, therefore, I, William McKinley, President of the United States, in order to enforce the said resolution, do hereby declare and proclaim that the United States of America has instituted and will maintain a blockade of the north coast of Cuba, including ports on said coast between Cardenas and Bahia Honda, and the port of Cienfuegos on the south coast of Cuba, aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States and the law of nations applicable to such cases. An efficient force will be posted so as to prevent the entrance and exit of vessels from the ports aforesaid. Any neutral vessel approaching said ports, or attempting to leave the same, without notice or knowledge of the establishment of such blockade, will be duly warned by the commander of the blockading forces, who will indorse on her register the fact and the date of such warning, where such indorsement was made; and if the same vessel shall again attempt to enter any blockaded port she will be captured and sent to the nearest convenient port for such proceedings against her and her cargo as prize as may be deemed advisable. Neutral vessels lying in any of said ports at the time of the establishment of such blockade will be allowed thirty days to issue therefrom. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington this 22d day of April, A. D. 1898, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-second. By the President: WILLIAM McKINLEY. JOHN SHERMAN, Secretary of State. MORE SPANISH PRIZES TAKEN. The blockade was not a mere paper blockade, but an exceedingly effective one. Before two days had passed, the prizes taken began to multiply in numbers and in value. The second capture was the Spanish freighter Pedro, of Bilboa, which was taken by the New York in the afternoon of the first day's cruising. When the fleet approached the Cuban coast and spread out for patrol duty, the New York turned eastward for her own watch, not knowing what might be found in the neighborhood. Far off against the dim, vague background of Cuban hills, half seen, half guessed, could be traced a faint film of gray smoke, the one visible evidence of a Spanish freighter striving vainly to race out the day without being discovered by the great gray monsters that blackened the sky to the west with a solid mass of black cloud from their roaring furnaces. Vainly the Spaniard raced. Charging along at trial test speed, the New York soon lay across the bows of the Spanish ship, and the crashing challenge blazed from the deck of the cruiser. A huge puff of white smoke rolled out from the side of the flagship, and far off, just in front of the Spaniard, a fountain of white foam leaped into the air. In a moment the course of the strange Spaniard was changed, and she hove to. Shortly after, the New York led her prize further out from shore and laid her to. Crew and captain could be seen rushing about the deck of the ship like a nest of ants, hiding their valuables and striving to avert some impending fate they could only guess at in their ignorance. As she came around her name could be clearly read on her stern, Pedro of Bilboa. As soon as she was laid alongside, the Pedro was boarded by Ensign Frank Marble of the New York. Ensign Marble led a prize crew, consisting of a file of marines and seamen. With great formality the ensign swung aboard and assumed command. A burly, bare-footed American tar shoved the Spanish quartermaster away from the wheel and began to set the course of the Spaniard. The Spanish crew gathered in a terrified huddle near the forecastle and awaited developments. Hardly had the prize crew been put on board before another freighter was seen going down the coast to the eastward. The New York, leaving the captured Spanish craft in charge of the prize crew, drew across the bows of the stranger and sent a shot into the water directly in front of her bows. She paid no attention to the challenge, but kept steadily on, and a few seconds later another shot was sent hurtling across the water in front of her. After this hostile demonstration she hauled up and soon followed the New York out to sea. It was discovered, however, that she flew the German flag, and consequently was permitted to proceed. The prize crew from the New York took the captured vessel into port at Key West under its own steam. The ship was bound from Havana to Santiago with a valuable cargo of rice, iron and beer. On the same day two other captures were made, one by the torpedo boat Ericsson, which seized a fishing schooner under the very guns of Morro Castle and by the torpedo boat, Porter, which took the Spanish schooner, Mathilde, after a lively chase and a number of shots. Both of these prizes were taken to Key West to join their unfortunate friends. EXCITEMENT IN HAVANA. It was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon of that lucky Friday, when the semaphore by the lighthouse in Morro Castle signaled to the people of Havana that a fleet had been sighted. It was said to be without any colors to show its nationality. At that time La Punta, the fort on the side of the harbor opposite Morro Castle, was crowded with curious people, including many ladies. In addition, crowds of people could be seen at various points of vantage, many of them gathering on the roofs of houses. At 6 p.m. the semaphore signaled that it was the United States fleet which was in sight, and at 6:15 p.m. a red flag was run up at the signal station, warning guns were fired from Morro Castle, and afterward from Cabanas fortress, adjoining it. This caused excitement throughout the city, and was the first real note of war. When the first signal came from the semaphore station a British schooner which was in the harbor put to sea. She was immediately followed by the German steamer Remus. Some time afterward the American steamer Saratoga put to sea. The cannon shots from the fortresses stirred up the regular troops and volunteers throughout Havana and its vicinity and there was a rush to quarters. The signal guns from the fortifications echoed to the palace and through the streets, causing people to rush from their houses, with the result that all the thoroughfares were soon crowded with excited inhabitants. Captain General Blanco heard the shots while at the palace, to which place the generals and commanders of the volunteers promptly reported, full of excitement and warlike enthusiasm. Some time afterward the Captain General, accompanied by his staff, the generals and others, left the palace and was warmly acclaimed by the soldiers and populace. The General then made a brief final inspection of the fortifications and went to a spot from which he could see the approaching fleet. There was no sign of alarm anywhere. The Spaniards were confident that Havana was prepared for any eventuality, and they had great faith in the strength of their forts, batteries, etc., and in the effectiveness of their heavy artillery. In fact, there was a feeling of satisfaction at the warlike tremors which spread everywhere when it was seen that the hour of battle was apparently approaching and that the Spaniards were soon to give battle to their enemies. As the time passed, more people crowded to the spot from which the fleets could be most favorably seen. By 8:30 p.m. there was a great movement of the masses through all the streets and on all the squares. The coffee-houses and clubs were crowded with excited people, discussing the arrival of the American war ships. The Spaniards expressed themselves as anxious to measure arms with the "invaders," and there was no expression of doubt as to the result. The civil and military authorities of Havana were in consultation at the palace, and every precaution possible to the Spaniards was taken to guard against a night surprise and to resist an attack if the bombardment commenced. SPAIN'S DAYS OF GRACE EXPIRE. When President McKinley sent his ultimatum to Spain, he indicated that it was to expire at noon on Saturday, April 23, and at that time the period allowed Spain to give up Cuba peacefully was ended. Spain, however, had not waited to take advantage of this time limit, but by her own preparations during the days that had passed, as well as by her diplomatic actions, had indicated plainly that war was to come. The action of Minister Polo in demanding his passport and leaving the United States, and the action of the Spanish government in ejecting Minister Woodford, were sufficient notifications of the policy which was to be pursued. It had been unnecessary, therefore, for the fleet to wait for a more explicit answer before investing Havana. Not until the expiration of the time allotted by President McKinley to Spain, did he take definite action which committed the country to a distinct war policy in advance of the declaration of war by Congress. But at noon on Saturday the President issued the following proclamation calling for 125,000 troops to serve two years if the war should last so long: BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A PROCLAMATION. Whereas, by a joint resolution of Congress, approved the 22d of April, 1898, entitled "Joint resolution for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba, to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect," and, Whereas, by an act of Congress, entitled "An act to provide for the increasing of the military establishment of the United States in time of war and for other purposes," approved April 22, 1898, the President was authorized in order to raise a volunteer army to issue his proclamation calling for volunteers to serve in the army of the United States. Now, therefore, I, William McKinley, President of the United States, by the power vested in me by the constitution and laws, and deeming sufficient occasion to exist, have thought fit to call for and hereby do call for volunteers to the aggregate number of 125,000, in order to carry into effect the purpose of the said resolution, the same to be apportioned, as far as practicable, among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia, according to population, and to serve for two years unless sooner discharged. The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the proper authorities through the war department. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at Washington this 23d day of April, 1898, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-second. By the President: WILLIAM McKINLEY. JOHN SHERMAN, Secretary of State. STATES BEGIN TO COLLECT THEIR TROOPS. Although it was decided that formal notification to the Governors of the states of the call for volunteers should not be made until the following Monday, the first step was taken immediately after the signing of the proclamation, by the issuance of orders to the organized militia of the District of Columbia. Before dinner time the drums were beating and the roll was being called within sight and sound of the White House, and before night the drum beats were heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. There was no interruption in the sequence of captures by the American fleet around Havana, and two prizes of considerable value were added to the list. On Saturday the gunboat Helena took the big steamer Miguel Jover, a vessel of more than 2,000 tons, with a full cargo of cotton and staves on board. The prize was worth not less than $400,000. Friday night the Helena left Key West to follow the main fleet, but instead of sailing directly for Havana, turned westward toward the west end of the island of Cuba. The dark, cloudy night had barely broken to a brilliant Cuban sunrise, when the Helena saw smoke on the western horizon and gave chase. It was soon evident that the quarry had sighted the hunter and was making a run for it. The freighter was no match in speed for the gunboat, however, and the Helena was soon near enough to fire a shot. Only one blank shot was required. The fugitive steamer shook out the Spanish flag and hove to. When the Helena came up the captain tried to talk Captain Swinburne out of his prize. He urged that he was from an American port, New Orleans, and knew nothing of a declaration of war. The talk did him no good. He was taken on board the Helena and a prize crew of a dozen sailors and sixteen marines, under Ensigns M. C. Davis and H. G. McFarland, was put aboard the Jover. The first the fleet knew of the capture was when the Helena came steaming up with her prize and signaled the flagship. The other ships cheered and the Helena, started off for Key West, the Jover being worked by its own men, superintended by the prize crew. VALUABLE PRIZE CAPTURED. The most valuable prize yet taken was the transatlantic liner, Catalina, which was taken by the Detroit. The vessel's tonnage was 6,000, and with its general cargo the prize was considered worth nearly $600,000. The big ship was bound from New Orleans to Barcelona, via Havana, with a large general cargo. Twelve miles before making port the steamer was stopped by two shots, and a prize crew under Ensign H. H. Christy, consisting of sixteen men from the Detroit and New York, was put on board to take the vessel back to Key West. In addition to these notable captures the torpedo boat, Porter, took the Spanish schooner, Antonio, laden with sugar for Havana, and the revenue cutter, Winona, added the Spanish steamer Saturnine to the list. If it had not been for the excitement of taking occasional prizes, the blockading of Havana would have been dull business for the Jack Tars aboard the North Atlantic squadron. Saturday night they had to listen to the roar of the guns of Morro Castle and see the flashes of fire from their muzzles, without a reply from the fleet. Havana officials have declared that the discharge of those guns was only for signaling purposes and was not an attack on the fleet, but it would be difficult to make the sailors believe that Spanish marksmanship was not responsible for the fact that no balls fell near them. SPAIN DECLARES WAR. The Spanish government did not wait for further aggression on the part of the United States, but herself made the next formal move by issuing a declaration of the fact that war existed, and defining the conditions under which the Spanish government expected to carry on the conflict. This decree was gazetted in Madrid on Sunday, April 24, in the following terms: Diplomatic relations are broken off between Spain and the United States, and the state of war having begun between the two countries numerous questions of international law arise which must be precisely defined chiefly because the injustice and provocation come from our adversaries and it is they who, by their detestable conduct, have caused this grave conflict. We have observed with strictest fidelity the principles of international law and have shown the most scrupulous respect for morality and the right of government. There is an opinion that the fact that we have not adhered to the declaration of Paris does not exempt us from the duty of respecting the principles therein enunciated. The principle Spain unquestionably refused to admit then was the abolition of privateering. The government now considers it most indispensable to make absolute reserve on this point in order to maintain our liberty of action and uncontested right to have recourse to privateering when we consider it expedient, first by organizing immediately a force of cruisers auxiliary to the navy, which will be composed of vessels of our mercantile marine and with equal distinction in the work of our navy. Clause 1--The state of war existing between Spain and the United States annuls the treaty of peace and amity of Oct. 27, 1795, and the protocol of Jan. 12, 1877, and all other agreements, treaties, or conventions in force between the two countries. Clause 2--From the publication of these presents thirty days are granted to all ships of the United States anchored in our harbors to take their departure free of hindrance. Clause 3--Notwithstanding that Spain has not adhered to the declaration of Paris the government, respecting the principles of the law of nations, proposes to observe, and hereby orders to be observed, the following regulations of maritime law: 1. Neutral flags cover the enemy's merchandise except contraband of war. 2. Neutral merchandise, except contraband of war, is not seizable under the enemy's flag. 3. A blockade to be obligatory must be effective--viz.: It must be maintained with sufficient force to prevent access to the enemy's littoral. 4. The Spanish government, upholding its right to grant letters of marque, will at present confine itself to organizing, with the vessels of the mercantile marine, a force of auxiliary cruisers which will cooperate with the navy according to the needs of the campaign and will be under naval control. 5. In order to capture the enemy's ships and confiscate the enemy's merchandise and contraband of war under whatever form, the auxiliary cruisers will exercise the right of search on the high seas and in the waters under the enemy's jurisdiction, in accordance with international law and the regulations which will be published. 6. Defines what is included in contraband of war, naming weapons, ammunition, equipments, engines, and, in general, all the appliances used in war. 7. To be regarded and judged as pirates with all the rigor of the law are captains, masters, officers, and two-thirds of the crews of vessels which, not being American, shall commit acts of war against Spain, even if provided with letters of marque issued by the United States. Following is a summary of the more important of the five clauses outlining the rules Spain announced she would observe during the war: THE UNITED STATES MAKES REPLY. It took the House of Representatives just one minute and forty-one seconds on Monday to pass a declaration of war which replied to that of Spain. The Senate acted almost as promptly, and their respective presiding officers and the President of the United States signed the Act of Congress immediately, so that it became at once a law of the land. The declaration of war was passed by Congress in response to a message from the President requesting that action in the following terms: TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I transmit to Congress for its consideration and appropriate action copies of correspondence recently had with the representative of Spain in the United States, with the United States Minister at Madrid, and through the latter with the government of Spain, showing the action taken under the joint resolution approved April 20, 1898, "for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect." Upon communicating with the Spanish Minister in Washington the demand which it became the duty of the executive to address to the government of Spain, in obedience to said resolution, the said Minister asked for his passports and withdrew. The United States Minister at Madrid was in turn notified by the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs that the withdrawal of the Spanish representative from the United States had terminated diplomatic relations between the two countries, and that all official communications between their respective representatives ceased therewith. I recommend to your special attention the note addressed to the United States Minister at Madrid by the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs on the 21st inst., whereby the foregoing notification was conveyed. It will be perceived therefrom that the government of Spain, having cognizance of the joint resolution of the United States Congress, and in view of things which the President is thereby required and authorized to do, responds by treating the representative demands of this government as measures of hostility, following with that instant and complete severance of relations by its action whereby the usage of nations accompanies an existent state of war between sovereign powers. The position of Spain being thus made known, and the demands of the United States being denied, with a complete rupture of intercourse by the act of Spain, I have been constrained, in exercise of the power and authority conferred upon me by the joint resolution aforesaid, to proclaim, under date of April 22, 1898, a blockade of certain ports on the north coast of Cuba lying between Cardenas and Bahia Honda, and of the port of Cienfuegos on the south coast of Cuba; and further, in exercise of my constitutional powers, and using the authority conferred upon me by the act of Congress approved April 22, 1898, to issue my proclamation, dated April 23, 1898, calling for volunteers in order to carry into effect the said resolutions of April 20, 1898. Copies of these proclamations are hereto appended. In view of the measures so taken, and with a view to the adoption of such other measures as may be necessary to enable me to carry out the expressed will of the Congress of the United States in the premises, I now recommend to your honorable body the adoption of a joint resolution declaring that a state of war exists between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain, and I urge speedy action thereon, to the end that the definition of the international status of the United States as a belligerent power may be made known, and the assertion of all its rights and the maintenance of all its duties in the conduct of a public war may be assured. WILLIAM McKINLEY. Executive Mansion, Washington, April 25, 1898. WAR IS DECLARED. The formal declaration of war as passed by the houses of Congress was short and pointed, worthy of recollection as a model for such unpleasant documents. It read as follows: A BILL DECLARING THAT WAR EXISTS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE KINGDOM OF SPAIN. Be it enacted, etc.: First--That war be and the same is hereby declared to exist and that war has existed since the 21st day of April, A. D. 1898, including said day, between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain. Second--That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States to such extent as may be necessary to carry this act into effect. Diplomacy was still taking a hand in the war. Spain was indignant at the attack on Spanish possessions and endeavored to arouse sympathy among her European neighbors. The Queen Regent addressed telegrams to all the sovereigns of Europe protesting against the vitiation of the rights of Spain by the United States, and declaring that her government was firmly resolved never to yield until crushed. This was a personal communication from one sovereign to her brother sovereigns of the continental kingdom. At the same time there was made public Spain's memorandum to all the European powers which was an official utterance of the Spanish ministry and signed by Senor Gullon, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs. The memorandum began by recording the "moral and material aid the Cuban rebels have received from the United States" in filibustering expeditions and the operations of the junta. It mentioned Spain's repeated and positive denials to the allegations of cruelty toward the Cubans, and laid great stress upon President Cleveland's dispatch of Dec. 7, 1896, to the effect that peace would be possible if Spain gave a sufficient autonomy to Cuba. The memorandum contended that, in the face of the new liberal constitution granted Cuba, which "has already borne fruits," it was difficult to understand why President McKinley, in his message of Dec. 6, 1897, and General Woodford, in the note of Dec. 20, 1897, should still doubt Spain's loyalty. The document then spoke at some length of the Maine accident, and asserted that the Americans, under the pretext of the extra territoriality of the vessel, never allowed the Spanish authorities to visit the wreck for purposes of investigation; and it most solemnly asserted the absolute innocence of Spanish officials and of Spanish subjects generally. The fairness and loyalty of Spain were then shown by a reference to the equitable treatment which American filibusters, more especially those of the Competitor, received at the hands of Spain, and in order to show more fully how pacific and correct have been the attitude of the Spanish government the memorandum enumerated the four clauses of the Spanish proposals. They were: PROPOSALS OF SPAIN. 1. An offer to submit all questions arising from the Maine affair to arbitration. 2. An order to Governor-General Blanco to retire into the western provinces and to apply 3,000,000 pesetas for the relief of the agricultural population, with an acceptance by the Spanish government of relief for Cubans sent by the United States, provided such relief were sent in merchant vessels. 3. The co-operation of the Cuban parliament in formulating the extent of the powers to be reserved for the central government. 4. In view of the Cuban parliament not meeting before May 4, the proclamation of an immediate armistice. The memorandum proceeded to declare that the United States had not accepted even these far-reaching concessions, and that the good offices of the pope had been equally unavailing. It asserted that the Maine accident was used by political parties in America as a means of hurling "most gratuitous and intolerable calumnies at the Spanish government," and yet, the document said, Mr. Olney, in an official note dated April 4, 1896, to the Spanish minister in Washington, himself expressed very serious apprehensions lest the only existing bond of union in Cuba should disappear in the event of Spain withdrawing from that island. Mr. Olney, as the memorandum argued, feared at that time that a war of races would ensue, all the more sanguinary in proportion to the experience and discipline acquired during the insurrection, and that two republics would at once be formed--one white, the other black--the upshot being that one of the two would swallow the other. The grave view thus taken by Mr. Olney of the future of Cuba freed from Spain's rule was then enlarged upon, and inevitable racial wars were foreshadowed, which were "certain to wreck the existence of Cuba as a state, should Spain be deprived of sovereignty" over the island. Thus, being convinced, as Spain was, that right and equity are on her side "she will not and cannot surrender her sovereignty in Cuba." TROUBLE FOR SPAIN AT HOME. Spain's embarrassments at home were multiplying, and threatening danger only less than that from the hostilities of the United States. Twenty thousand republicans of all shades of opinion in Madrid signed and addressed to Senor Castelar, the republican leader, under the pretext of congratulating him upon his recovery from recent sickness, but in reality offering him their services if he would proclaim a republic. At the same time Don Carlos, the pretender to the Spanish throne, was a disturbing element, threatening a revolution against the present dynasty if an opportunity were to offer. During all these complications, which included at one time even a threat that the Spanish ministry would resign, there was no discordant note of any sort in the United States. Secretary of State John Sherman and Postmaster General Gary resigned from President McKinley's cabinet because of ill health, in order that the government might be in no way handicapped during the time of emergency. Secretary Sherman was succeeded by Assistant Secretary Judge William R. Day of Canton, Ohio, who had displayed remarkable aptitude for the office during his term of service, while Mr. Gary's successor was the Honorable Charles Emory Smith, of Philadelphia, a newspaper editor and formerly ambassador to Russia. ALONG THE CUBAN COAST. It was the torpedo boats which kept things exciting during the early blockade of Cuban ports. They are like hornets, which travel faster than anything that tries to escape them, sting when they strike, and vanish in an instant. Two of these brisk fighters distinguished themselves on Sunday, while the diplomats were busy in the cabinets of the world. The torpedo boat Porter, which is as fleet as an express train, has a dare-devil crew and an intrepid commander with an honored name. He is Lieutenant John C. Fremont, a son of the famous "Pathfinder," who himself never hesitated to lead the way, whether in wilderness exploration or any other duty that came before him. Lieutenant Fremont, with the Porter, made a landing on the north coast of Cuba with a small force of his men, in search of certain information which was desired by Admiral Sampson for the guidance of his plans. It was a dangerous undertaking, for the squad might have been wiped out in spite of their readiness to fight, if they had stumbled upon Spanish troops. None were met, however, the journey was made in safety, and the landing party returned to the fleet in triumph with the distinction of being the first actual invaders of the Cuban soil in this warfare. Earlier in the same day the torpedo boat Foote, in command of Lieutenant W. L. Rogers, was directed to take soundings of the approach to the harbor of Matanzas, an important city on the north coast of Cuba fifty miles east of Havana. The Foote drew the first fire definitely known to be directed against the blockading squadron. The little scout was taking soundings within three hundred yards of shore, when a Spanish masked battery on the east side of the harbor, commanding the entrance, fired three shots in quick succession. They all went wide of the mark, striking the water nearly a quarter of a mile away from the boat. The officers and men were momentarily startled by the volley, and then continued their observation. The cruiser Cincinnati, which was not far away, was hailed by the torpedo boat and Lieutenant Rogers reported his experience. The orders of Captain Chester, in command of the Cincinnati, did not permit him to shell Matanzas, so the fire from the masked battery was not returned. THE CALL TO ARMS. It was on Monday, the 25th of April, that the national authorities notified the governors of each state that they would be expected to furnish volunteers for our war with Spain. The response was immediate. In every state of the Union the call to arms was heard with delight and troops gathered at their armories for prompt enlistment. The speed and facility with which a trained and efficient army could be mobilized was an amazement to those who had not been familiar with the details of the organization of the National Guard of America. Within twenty-four hours after the receipt of the order, thousands of troops were moving to the state encampments where they had been directed to gather. Illinois was an example of this promptness, in sending nearly 5,000 men out of Chicago without delay, but this was no more notable than the record made by many other states in every part of the Union. The cheers and the blessings of hundreds of thousands of loyal citizens stimulated those who were to go to the front with the banner of freedom, and they realized that they were representing the sentiment of a united nation. Those days near the end of April were exciting times. The whole nation was keyed up to a nervous tension of anxiety to know what would be the next event recorded on land or sea. The armies of the United States were preparing for the struggle, the coast defenses were brought to completion, and the government was ready for any emergency that might arise. Admiral Sampson's splendid North Atlantic squadron was blockading the ports of Cuba. Admiral Schley, with the flying squadron at Hampton Roads, was ready for prompt action in any direction where it might be effective, whether to protect the Atlantic coast cities from a threatened assault by Spanish warships, or to descend upon the Spanish fleet for a naval battle. Admiral Dewey with the Asiatic squadron had been driven out of Hong Kong by application of the neutrality laws, and international obligations might embarrass him unless he took the aggressive, and made for himself a base of supplies in the Philippine Islands. It was expected every day that he would make an assault upon Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and that the first naval engagement of consequence in the war would be with the Spanish fleet in those waters. No one doubted that the Asiatic squadron would be able to give a good account of itself, although the fleet which was to oppose it did not lack efficient guns and fighting strength. The capture of that valuable Spanish colony, in which rebellion against the government was in progress, would be not only a severe blow to the Spanish arms, but would also strengthen the position of the United States in the Orient by the capture of large supplies of coal and naval equipment, as well as a splendid base of operations. But while these preparations were going on for the conflict which was destined to cost Spain her possessions in the western world, there were a few individuals who were still making desperate efforts to induce the administration at Washington to effect a compromise at any cost. Not even the actual declaration of war, and the call for volunteers, could bring the members of this peace-at-any-price party to a realization of the fact that patience has ceased to be a virtue, that we could no longer turn a deaf ear to the appeals of an oppressed people, and that the brave men who went down with the Maine must be avenged. Every true American felt that the hour had come when we must defend the honor of our great nation, and it was evident to all that the time was near at hand when actual warfare was to begin both on land and sea. The insurgents in Cuba, who have been struggling against almost overwhelming odds for so many months, received the glad tidings of American intervention with unbounded joy, and at once sent representatives to the United States to arrange for co-operation in the invasion of Cuba, and to assist in planning a systematic campaign against the Spanish forces. Every arrangement was completed for final action and with men and money, munitions of war and ships, all in ample supply, it was evident that the crucial test was soon to come, and that war was at last an actual fact. CHAPTER II. HOW COLUMBUS FOUND THE "PEARL OF THE ANTILLES." In gratitude of Spain to the Great Discoverer Who Gave Her a New World--How Spain's Evil Colonial Policy Lost the Western Hemisphere to That Obsolete Nation--Early Settlement of Cuba-- Character of the Natives at the Time of the Discovery--Founding of the First Cities--Havana Becomes the Island Capital--Docility of the Natives and Their Extermination by Spanish Oppressors. Cuba and Columbus are names inseparably connected. This largest and most fruitful island of the Spanish Main was discovered by the great navigator himself on the 28th day of October, 1492, only a short time after his first landing upon the soil of the western hemisphere on the island of San Salvador. There is a sentimental association to Americans in the thought that the discovery of our own continent was due to the pioneer expeditions sent from Spain. But any regret in one's mind that animosities have risen between the two nations, may be mollified by the memory that Columbus was himself an Italian, that it had required years of his efforts to induce sufficient interest on the part of Spanish monarchs to father his undertaking, and that his life in the service of Spain was marred by the basest ingratitude on the part of those whom he had served. Upon the handsome monument erected to the memory of Columbus in Seville by Ferdinand and Isabella, is the simple inscription, "A Castile y Leon, nuevo mundo dio Colon"--"to Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a new world." This was the tardy recognition granted to the discoverer by those to whom he had made the marvelous gift. Recognition had been denied him in his life, except after years of persistent urging, second only to those years he wasted in his effort to arouse Spanish interest and enterprise. Once he was removed from his West Indian governorship and returned to Spain in chains. The titles and honors which had been promised him before, were denied after he had earned them. He was a victim of foul ingratitude, and no American need permit sentiment to blind him for the sake of Columbus. The splendid new world which Columbus gave to Spain, was the most marvelous addition of territory that has ever come into the possession of any nation upon earth. It included the whole of South America, except Brazil, which was acquired by Portugal, and the small colonies known as British, Dutch and French Guiana. It included the whole of Central America and Mexico. It included the whole of what is now the United States west of the Mississippi river. It included the whole of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the peninsula of Florida to the southern limit of Alabama and Georgia, and except for a few scattered islands, it included every foot of land in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea, all the coral rocks, as well as the greater islands of the West Indies and the Antilles. To-day not a foot of all that enormous possession remains to Spain undisputed, except the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico. These hundreds of thousands of square miles are inhabited by a free and peaceful people, most of them as republics, and the few exceptions under civilized and liberal colonial policies. Spain's hold on Cuba has vanished and Puerto Rico is slipping away. Spain could not preserve the gifts of Columbus. SPAINS COLONIAL POLICIES. The logic of events and the progress of civilization have commanded that Spain should withdraw from her possessions in the western hemisphere. Never has there been such a record of ferocity and barbarity in conquest, as that which blackens the pages of Spanish history in connection with Spain's acquisition and subjection of her newly discovered territories. Whether it was the peaceful Indians of the Antilles, the highly civilized Aztecs of Mexico, or the Incas of Peru, the policy pursued was always the same. First, treacherous friendship, then robbery and massacre, then slavery, and finally extermination, was the unvarying programme. And so, instead of winning favor and loyalty with their consequent happiness and prosperity from the native tribes, Spanish conquerors implanted in the possessors of the country an over-mastering and ineradicable hatred, which grew with association, until in colony after colony the bonds were burst by violence. When Great Britain lost her American colonies by reason of her misgovernment and oppression of them, it was a lesson which her people never forgot. From that day, the colonial policy of the British government was altered, and the spirit of liberality and generosity began to dominate. To-day, every colony of Great Britain that enjoys representative government--Canada, Australia, Cape Colony and many others, owes to the United States the liberty which Great Britain grants. But Spain could learn no such lessons. Her cruelty and misgovernment aroused colony after colony to rebellion ending in freedom, but her policies remained unaltered. One by one possessions of fabulous wealth dropped away until at last this old crone of nations has been left to shiver alone by her fireside, abandoned in her misery by all the children whose memory of her is nothing but that of vicious cruelty. The only pity to which Spain is entitled, is the pity that is due for her ignorance and her mistakes, not pity for the penalties that these have brought upon her. Spain was once the intellectual leader of the world, as well as the pioneer of discovery. Spanish universities were centers of learning long before northern Europe had its intellectual birth. Spanish mariners sailed every sea and Spanish adventurers explored every land. If learning and advancement bring obligations, as they are admitted to do, it was Spain's obligation to be a leader in strife for liberty of mind and body, but the two most notable things in her history are the Spanish inquisition against freedom of thought, and the Spanish ferocities which enslaved a new world for many a year. Now she has reaped the harvest of her own misdeeds. THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF CUBA. Every one knows that Columbus was not looking for a western hemisphere, but for the Orient, and that when he found Cuba he believed he had reached the East Indies and the islands of gold and spice which had been reported from that mysterious land. His first island discoveries he believed to be the outlying portions of that eastern archipelago and when the natives told him of a greater land near by, which he reached a few days later, he believed that at last he had reached Cipango, as Japan then was called. The first name given to the island was Juana, in honor of Prince Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile. After Ferdinand's death, in his honor the name was changed to Fernandina. Still later it received the name of Santiago, as a mark of reverence for the patron saint of Spain, and another change was made a few years afterward, when the inhabitants, as a proof of their piety, called it Ave Maria, in honor of the Holy Virgin. In spite of all this effort at establishing a Spanish name, the original Indian name of Cuba, which it bore when the great navigator first landed on its shores, has asserted itself triumphantly through all the centuries and is now ineradicable. According to the accounts given by Spanish writers who were contemporary with the discovery, and the century immediately following, the aboriginal inhabitants of Cuba were a generous, gentle, hospitable people, by no means energetic, but heartily cordial and courteous to the strangers who reached their shores. The mildness of their climate did not stimulate them to much activity in cultivation of the soil, because tropical fruits and vegetables came with scarcely an effort on the part of the natives. Their implements and utensils were crude and their life simple. The system of government was by no means complicated. The island was divided into nine independent principalities, each under a Cacique, all living in harmony, and warfare being almost unknown. Their religion was a peaceful one, without human sacrifices or cannibalism, but the priests had great power through their pretense of influence with spirits good and evil. Of all the people discovered by the Spanish in their colonization of the western hemisphere, the Cubans were the most tractable to the influences of Christianity so far as their willingness to accept the doctrines was concerned. Christianity, as practiced by the Spanish conquerors, was scarcely that of the highest type of the faith, and the inducements to accept it were somewhat violent. Nevertheless it must be noted that it is from Spanish sources this testimony as to the docility of the Cuban natives comes. Under these circumstances it becomes a magnified crime that the Spanish conquerors absolutely exterminated the hundreds of thousands of native Cubans whom they found at the time of the discovery, and that within little more than a century, there was absolutely not a trace of native stock to be found anywhere in the island. When Columbus first rested his eyes on the island of Cuba it seemed to him an enchanted land. He was charmed with its lofty mountains, its beautiful rivers, and its blossoming groves, and in his account of the voyage he said: "Everything is green as April in Andalusia. The singing of the birds is such that it seems as if one would never desire to depart. There are flocks of parrots that obscure the sun. There are trees of a thousand species, each having its particular fruit, and all of marvelous flavor." Columbus was first of the opinion that he had found an island, but after following the shores for many miles he concluded that it was a continent. He retained the latter belief until his death, for it was not until 1508 that the island was circumnavigated, when it was discovered that it was of about the same area as England. In a subsequent expedition he reached the coast of South America, but he had no appreciation of the magnitude of that continent, and to him Cuba was the grandest of his discoveries in the New World. Cuba was twice visited by Columbus after its discovery, in April, 1494, and again in 1502, and these visits but confirmed his first opinion regarding the salubrity of the climate and the wealth of the soil. His sailors wrested from the natives large sums of gold and silver, and this led to the mistaken belief that mines of great richness were within their grasp. SPAIN'S HEARTLESS TREATMENT OF COLUMBUS. Biography furnishes no parallel to the life of Columbus. Great men there have been who have met with injustice and disappointments, but there is perhaps no other instance of a man whom disappointments and injustice did not dishearten and disgust; who had his greatness recognized in his lifetime, and yet was robbed of the rewards that it entitled him to. It is probable that before his death Columbus confided his belief in the wealth to be found in Cuba to his son Diego Columbus, for in 1511 the latter fitted out an expedition for the purpose of colonizing the island. This company consisted of about 300 men, under Diego Velasquez, who had accompanied the great explorer on his second voyage. The first settlement was made at Baracoa, in the extreme eastern section, and this village was regarded as the capital of the colony for several years. In the meantime extensive settlements had been made by the Spaniards in the island of Jamaica, and in 1514 the towns of Santiago and Trinidad were founded on the southern coast of Cuba, in order that the inhabitants of the two colonies might be brought into closer communication. As immigration increased, other towns of importance sprung up, and the island became the base for the various operations against Mexico. Baracoa grew largely in population, and the towns of Puerto Principe and Sancti Espiritus were established in the central section, and San Juan de los Remedios on the north coast. In July, 1515, the city of San Cristobal de la Habana was planted, deriving its name from the great Discoverer, but this name was transferred in 1519 to the present capital, and the original town was called Batabano. In 1518 the capital was fixed at Baracoa, which had by this time become a city of considerable importance, and the diocese of the colony. In 1522 both the seat of government and the bishopric were removed to Santiago de Cuba. In 1538 Havana was reduced to ashes by a French privateer; and to prevent a similar disaster in future, the Castillo de la Fuerza, a fortress which still exists, was built by Fernando de Soto, governor of Cuba, and afterwards famous for his explorations in the southern and western portions of North America, as well as for the discovery of the Mississippi. Using a modern expression, this great fortress, added to her almost perfect harbor, gave Havana a wonderful "boom," and the city experienced a remarkable growth. The Spanish merchantmen were actively employed in carrying the wealth of Mexico to the Peninsula, and Havana was a convenient port for them to secure supplies of provisions and water. In 1549 Gonzales Perez de Angulo was appointed governor of the island, and he was so impressed with the beauties of the city, that he chose it as his residence. Several of his successors followed his example, and in 1589 it was legally made the capital of Cuba. EARLY GOVERNMENT OF CUBA. The early records of the island were kept in so imperfect a manner that it is not possible to give an accurate account of the early governors and their lieutenants. It is certain, however, that the seat of government was at Santiago de Cuba, and that Havana and other towns of minor importance were ruled by lieutenants. In 1538, Hernando de Soto, adelantado of Florida, and also governor of Cuba, landed at Santiago, and remained a few days before proceeding to the mainland. On his departure he left the government of the island in charge of a lady, Dona Isabel de Bobadilla, and gave her for a colleague Don Juan de Rojas, who had at one time been lieutenant governor of Havana. It is from this date that the gradual transference of the seat of power from Santiago to Havana may be said to have arisen. Don Antonio de Chavez assumed the government in 1547, and he it was who gave Havana its first regular supply of water, bringing it a distance of about six miles from the river Chorrera. The early settlers devoted themselves principally to the raising of cattle, paying very little attention to agricultural pursuits, or in fact to any means of livelihood that called for manual labor. Much time and money was wasted in explorations for gold and silver, but these were invariably unsuccessful, for while the precious metals have occasionally been found in the island, the quantity has never been sufficient to repay the labor of the search. A LETTER WRITTEN BY COLUMBUS. Nothing more interesting for the conclusion of this chapter can be offered than Columbus' own account of his first view of the island of Cuba. It is as follows "When I reached Juana, I followed its coast to the westward, and found it so large that I thought it must be mainland, the province of Cathay; and as I found neither towns nor villages on the sea coast, but only some hamlets, with the inhabitants of which I could not hold conversation, because they all immediately fled, I kept on the same route, thinking that I could not fail to light upon some large cities or towns. At length, after the proceeding of many leagues, and finding that nothing new presented itself, and that the coast was leading me northwards (which I wished to avoid, because the winter had already set in, and it was my intention to move southwards; and because moreover the winds were contrary), I resolved not to wait for a change in the weather, but to return to a certain harbor which I had remarked, and from which I sent two men ashore to ascertain whether there was any king or large cities in that part. They journeyed for three days, and found countless small hamlets, with numberless inhabitants, but with nothing like order; they therefore returned. In the meantime I had learned from some other Indians, whom I had seized, that this land was certainly an island; accordingly, I followed the coast eastward for a distance of 107 leagues, where it ended in a cape. From this cape I saw another island to the eastward, at a distance of eighteen leagues from the former, to which I gave the name of La Espanola. Thither I went and followed its northern coast, (just the same as I had done with the coast of Juana), 118 full miles due east. This island, like all others, is extraordinarily large, and this one extremely so. In it are many seaports, with which none that I know in Christendom can bear comparison, so good and capacious that it is a wonder to see. The lands are high, and there are many lofty mountains, with which the islands of Tenerife cannot be compared. They are all most beautiful, of a thousand different shapes, accessible, and covered with trees of a thousand kinds, of such great height that they seem to reach the skies. I am told that the trees never lose their foliage, and I can well understand it, for I observed that they were as green and luxuriant as in Spain in the month of May. Some were in bloom, others bearing fruit, and others otherwise, according to their nature. The nightingale was singing, as well as other little birds of a thousand different kinds, and that in November, the month in which I was roaming amongst them. There are palm trees of six or eight kinds, wonderful in their beautiful variety; but this is the case with all other trees and fruits and grasses. It contains extraordinary pine groves and very extensive plains. There is also honey and a great variety of birds, and many different kinds of fruits. In the interior there are many mines of metals, and a population innumerable." CHAPTER III. SPAIN'S BLACK HISTORICAL RECORD. Present Men of Prominence Are Types of Those Who Were Infamous Years Ago--Roman Rule in Spain--Weakness of Spanish Power of Resistance--Discoveries in America--Horrors of the Inquisition-- Spanish Rule in Holland--Expulsion of the Moors--Loss of American Colonies--Later History of Spain. The signal fact that will present itself to the student of Spanish history is that from the earliest times the country has been in a continual state of conflict, internal, with its colonies, and with other nations; and seldom has it been a war of defense. In almost every instance Spain has been the aggressor. The Spaniard has ever been perfidious, avaricious, ferocious. In his veins still flows the blood of Ferdinand, of Torquemada, and of Philip II. Weyler is a prototype of Alva, and in Blanco we find another Antonio de Mendoza. Spain is the China of modern Europe. Her spirit is still the spirit of the inquisition. Her policy is not to conciliate, but to coerce; not to treat justly, but to rob and enslave; and her dependence is the ignorance and superstition of her people. All reforms wrung from rulers must first be baptized in blood, and it is possible that the end of the present century may see a new nation, built on the ruins of the old, which will be a credit to civilization, instead of a disgrace. ROMAN RULE IN SPAIN. Prior to the first war between Rome and Carthage, which ended 241 BC, there is little or no authentic information regarding the history of the country now known to the world as Spain. To the ancients it was a land of mystery and enchantment, the home of the setting sun; and Iberia, as they called it, was but a name for an indefinite extent of territory in the far west, peopled by barbarous Celts and Iberians, with a few Phoenician settlements, for the purposes of trade, on its southern coasts. At the close of the first Punic war, Hamilcar Barca, at the head of a Carthaginian host, crossed the strait of Gibraltar and commenced the conquest which his son Hannibal completed, and which resulted in the undisputed supremacy of Carthage throughout almost all of Spain. This brings us to 218 B. C. and marks the beginning of the second Punic war, when the Roman legions first entered Spain. After a struggle which lasted for thirteen years the Carthaginians were completely routed, and the country was conquered by the arms of Rome. It was many years, however, before the inhabitants were really subdued, but eventually they became more completely Romanized than any province beyond the limits of Italy. When brought under the iron rule of the Empire they were forced to desist from the intestinal wars in which it had been their habit to indulge, and adopting the language, laws and manners of their conquerors, they devoted themselves to industrial pursuits, and increased remarkably both in wealth and numbers. Their fertile fields formed for a considerable time the granary of Rome, and from the metal-veined mountains an immense amount of gold and silver flowed into Roman coffers. However, these were not voluntary offerings of the natives. They were compelled to labor in the mines for the benefit of strangers, and thus Spain, in the early ages, was the type of Spanish America in the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, with the difference that in the first case the Spaniards were the slaves, and in the second they were the slave-holders. For more than 300 years Spain remained under Roman rule, until in 409 AD, hordes of barbarians crossed the Pyrenees and swept over the Peninsula. Suevi, Alani and Vandals ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open country, and brought the inhabitants to the lowest depths of misery. They were finally subjugated by a Visigothic host, and in 415, Walia, a war-like and ambitious chief, established the West-Gothic kingdom in Spain, on the ruins of the old Roman province. Walia concluded a treaty with the Emperor Honorius, and, putting himself at the head of the brave Goths, in a three-years' war he destroyed or drove the barbarians from the land. Spain, thus reconquered, was nominally subject to Rome, but soon became really independent, and began to be the seat of a Christian civilization. This West-Gothic kingdom lasted for about three centuries, from 418 to 711, when it fell before the Moorish invasion. WEAKNESS OF SPANISH POWERS OF RESISTANCE. Few things in history are more remarkable than the ease with which Spain, a country naturally fitted for defense, was subdued by a mere handful of invaders. The misgovernment of the Visigoths, the internal factions and jealousies, and the discontent of numerous classes, notably the Jews, co-operated to facilitate the conquest and to weaken the power of resistance. These conquerors were of the Mohammedan faith, but while they were united by religion, they were of different races. Besides the Moors there were the Arabs, the Egyptians and the Syrians, and when the task of conquest was achieved, and the need for unity removed, quarrels arose between them. So difficult was it to prevent these quarrels, that it was found necessary to subdivide the conquered territory, and to allot separate settlements to the different tribes. During the period of Moorish domination a number of small independent kingdoms were formed in opposition to Moslem rule. These comprised Castile, Leon, Navarre and Aragon, and sometimes separately, sometimes in combination, they were in constant war with the common enemy. The age of the great crusades came, and all Christendom was absorbed in the struggle against the infidel, both in the East and West. Spain, like Palestine, had its crusading orders, which vied with the Templars and the Hospitallers both in wealth and military distinction. The decisive battle was fought in July, 1212, when the combined forces of Castile, Leon, Navarre, Aragon and Portugal met the Mohammedan army, and gained the most celebrated victory ever obtained by the Christians over their Moslem foes, the latter losing, according to the account transmitted to the pope, 100,000 killed and 50,000 prisoners. The king of Grenada was speedily forced to become a vassal of Castile, and from this period all danger from Moorish rule was over. Following this time until the different kingdoms became as one, there is nothing in their history deserving a detailed account. The history of Spain as a united state dates from the union of Castile and Aragon by the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand, the respective rulers of those kingdoms, in 1469. Grenada, the last remaining possession of the Moors, fell before the Spanish forces in 1492, and Navarre was acquired in 1512. DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA. The year 1492, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, witnessed the discovery of America. Spain had become consolidated into one empire from the Pyrenees to the strait of Gibraltar, and civil wars were at an end. Maritime exploration was the task of the age, and under the patronage of Isabella, Columbus planted the flag of Spain in the West Indies. This grand achievement led to the opening of a splendid continent, teeming with riches, for Spanish adventure and despoliation. In 1498, Columbus landed on the continent of South America, and in a few years the entire western coast was explored by subsequent adventurers. In 1512, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida, and the following year, Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and gazed for the first time upon the Pacific. The history of Spain, in connection with its discovery and settlement of the New World, is one long record of revolting crime. New England was settled by a people who came to turn the wilderness into a city, but the Spanish invaders went to the southern shores to turn the cities of the natives into a wilderness. In Mexico and Peru they found a civilization the equal and in many respects the superior of their own. With cross and sword in hand, in the name of religion, but with the lust for gold in their hearts, their coming was invariably a signal for every kind of attack that malignity could devise or avarice invent. Wherever they went, desolation followed them. They looted the towns, pillaged the cities, murdered the people; they burned alike the hovels of the poor, and the palaces of the rich. The value of the treasure that Spain secured from Mexico and Peru never can be known accurately; but it is certain that within sixty years from the time of the landing of Columbus she had advanced to the position of the richest and most powerful nation in Europe. Victorious in Africa and Italy, Philip II, who was then the reigning monarch, carried war into France, and ruled in Germany, as well as in those provinces now known as Belgium and Holland. The money necessary to carry on these vast wars of conquest was undoubtedly acquired in the New World. When Cortez approached the palace of Montezuma, the King's messengers met him, bearing presents from their lord. These gifts included 200 pounds of gold for the commander, and two pounds of gold for each of his army. Prescott, in his "Conquest of Peru," says that when the Spanish soldiers captured the capital of that country they spent days in melting down the golden vessels which they found in temples and palaces. On one voyage a single ship carried to Spain $15,500,000 in gold, besides vast treasures of silver and jewels. THE HORRORS OF THE INQUISITION. The Inquisition was a tribunal in the Roman Catholic church for the discovery, repression and punishment of heresy and unbelief. It originated in Rome when Christianity was established as the religion of the Empire, but its history in Spain and her dependencies has absorbed almost entirely the real interest in the painful subject. As an ordinary tribunal, similar to those of other countries, it had existed there from an early period. Its functions, however, in those times were little more than nominal; but early in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, on account of the alleged discovery of a plot among the Jews to overthrow the government, an application was made to the Pope to permit its re-organization. But in reviving the tribunal, the Crown assumed to itself the right of appointing the inquisitors, and of controlling their entire action. For this reason Catholic writers regard the Spanish inquisition as a state tribunal, and refer to the bull of the Pope, Sixtus IV., protesting against it. Notwithstanding this protest, however, the Spanish Crown maintained its assumption. Inquisitors were appointed, and in 1483 the tribunal commenced its terrible career, under Thomas de Torquemada. The inquisition arrested on suspicion, tortured for confession, and then punished with fire. One witness brought the victim to the rack, two to the flames. The prisoner was not confronted with his accuser, nor were their names ever made known to him. The court was held in a gloomy dungeon at midnight, a dim light gleamed from smoking torches, and the grand inquisitor, enveloped in a black robe, glared at his victim through holes cut in the hood. Before the examination, the accused, whether man, maid or matron, was stripped and stretched upon the rack, where tendons could be strained without cracking, bones crushed without breaking and the body tortured without dying. When the prisoner was found guilty, his tongue was cut out, so that he could neither speak nor swallow. On the morning of the execution a breakfast of rare delicacies was placed before the sufferer, and with ironical invitation he was urged to enjoy his last repast. Then the prisoner was led to the funeral pyre, where an address was given, lauding the inquisition, condemning heresy, and commanding obedience to the Pope and the Emperor. Then, while hymns were sung, blazing fagots were piled about the victim, until his body was reduced to a heap of ashes. Some conception of the appalling cruelty of the inquisition under Torquemada may be formed from the statement that during the sixteen years of his tenure of office nearly 10,000 persons were condemned to the flames, and the property of 97,000 others was confiscated. SPANISH RULE IN HOLLAND. Horrible as the atrocities of the inquisition were in the mother country, it is doubtful if they ever reached the acme of savage cruelty that they attained during the period when Spain was seeking to strengthen the fetters with which she nominally held Holland in her grasp. The Spanish government, from the time when it first acquired a place among nations, has never been satisfied with a reasonable tribute from its dependencies. Its plan ever has been to exact all, and leave nothing to supply more than a miserable existence. So it was in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Philip II., greedy of the treasures of Holland, determined to spoil them of their wealth, and planned to establish the inquisition among them by the sword. The duke of Alva, already famous for his harshness and bigotry, was named commander of the forces, with almost unlimited powers. He entered the Netherlands with about 20,000 tried troops, ready for cruelties, and all hopes of peace or mercy fled before them. There was a great and desperate exodus of the inhabitants; thousands took refuge in England, Denmark and Germany, and despair and helplessness alone remained to greet the cold Spaniard and his train of orthodox executioners. The Council of Troubles--the "Blood-tribunal"--was immediately established, and the land was filled with blood. In a short time he totally annihilated every privilege of the people, and with unrelenting cruelty put multitudes of them to death. The more the peasants rebelled, the crueler were the methods of Alva. Men were tortured, beheaded, roasted before slow fires, pinched to death with hot tongs, broken on the wheel, flayed alive. On one occasion the skins of leaders were stripped from their living bodies, and stretched upon drums for beating the funeral march of brethren to the gallows. During the course of six years Alva brought charges of heresy and treason against 30,000 inhabitants, and made the infamous boast that, in addition to the multitudes killed in battle and massacred after victory, he had consigned 18,000 persons to the executioner. This unholy war with the Netherlands lasted with occasional cessations of hostilities for eighty years, and during its progress Spain buried 350,000 of her sons and allies in Holland, spent untold millions in the attempted destruction of freedom, and sunk from the first power in Europe, an empire whose proud boast it had been that upon her possessions the sun never set, to the level of a fourth-rate country, cruel in government, superstitious in religion, and ever an enemy to progress. EXPULSION OF THE MOORS. In addition to the terrible drain upon the country from losses in war, the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors was productive of the direst results. In 1609 all the Moriscoes were ordered to depart from the Peninsula within three days. The penalty of death was declared against all who failed to obey, and against any Christians who should shelter the recalcitrant. The edict was obeyed, but it was a blow from which Spain never recovered. The Moriscoes were the back-bone of the industrial population, not only in trade and manufactures, but also in agriculture. The haughty and indolent Spaniards had willingly left what they considered degrading employment to their inferiors. The Moors had introduced into Spain the cultivation of sugar, cotton, rice and silk. In manufactures and commerce they had shown superiority to the Christian inhabitants, and many of their products were eagerly sought for by other countries. All these advantages were sacrificed to an insane desire for religious unity. The reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. witnessed a fearful acceleration in the decline of Spain by the contests with the Dutch and with the German Protestants in the Thirty Years' War, the wars with France, and the rebellion of Portugal in 1640, which had been united to Spain by Philip II. The reign of Charles II. was still more unfortunate, and his death was the occasion of the war of the Spanish succession. Under Charles III. (1759-1788), a wise and enlightened prince, the second great revival of the country commenced, and trade and commerce began to show signs of returning activity. Previous to his accession to the throne, Spain appeared to be a corpse, over which the powers of Europe could contend at will. Suddenly men were astounded to see that country rise with renewed vigor to play once more an important part on the international stage. Commerce and agriculture were developed, native manufactures were encouraged in every way possible, and an attempt was made to remove all prejudices against trade, among the nobles. Meritorious as these reforms were, it would give a false impression to represent them as wholly successful. The regeneration of Spain was by no means accomplished, and many of the abuses which had been growing for centuries, survived the attempt to effect their annihilation. One of the chief causes of this failure was the corruption and ignorance of the lower officials; and a large portion of the population remained, to a great extent, sunk in sloth and superstition, in spite of all that was done in their behalf. During the inglorious reign of Charles IV. (1788-1808), who left the management, of affairs in the hands of the incapable Godoy, (at once the queen's lover and the king's prime minister), a war broke out with Britain, which was productive of nothing but disaster to the Spaniards. Charles finally abdicated in favor of his son, the Prince of Asturias, who ascended the throne as Ferdinand VII. Forced by Napoleon to resign all claims to the Spanish crown, Ferdinand became the prisoner of the French in the year of his accession, and in the same year, Joseph, the brother of the French emperor, was declared King of Spain, and set out for Madrid to assume the kingdom thus assigned him. But Spanish loyalty was too profound to be daunted even by the awe-inspiring power of the great Napoleon. For the first time he found himself confronted, not by terrified and selfish rulers, but by an infuriated people. The rising on Spain commenced the popular movement which ultimately proved fatal to his power. In July, 1808, England, on solicitation, made peace with Spain, recognized Ferdinand VII. as king, and sent an army to aid the Spanish insurrection. Joseph invaded the country on July 9, defeated the Spaniards at Rio Seco, and entered Madrid on the 20th. But the defeat of Dupont at Baylen by the veteran Spanish general Castanos somewhat altered the position of affairs, and Joseph, after a residence of ten days in his capital, was compelled to evacuate it. Meanwhile Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, at the head of the British auxiliary force, had landed at Mondego bay, and began the Peninsular war by defeating the French at Roliza and Vimiero. In November, 1808, Napoleon, who had been preceded by Ney with 100,000 men, entered Spain and assumed the command. For a time his armies were completely successful. In less than a week the Spanish forces were broken through and scattered, and Joseph was returned to Madrid. The victory was a short-lived one, however, for, in April, 1809, General Wellesley arrived in Portugal and at once commenced operations. By dint of masterly generalship and bold enterprise he finally succeeded in driving the French from the country. Napoleon, loth to lose his hold in the Peninsula, sent Soult, his most trusted general, to stop the ingress of the British into France, but the battles of the Pyrenees, (24th July 1st August, 1813), and of the Nivelle, Orthez, and Toulouse, in the beginning of 1814, brought to a victorious conclusion this long and obstinate contest. LOSS OF AMERICAN COLONIES. After the convulsions it had endured, Spain required a period of firm but conciliatory government, but the ill fate of the country gave the throne at this crisis one of her worst rulers. Ferdinand VII. had no conception of the duties of a sovereign; his public conduct was regulated by pride and superstition, and his private life was stained by the grossest dissipations. For six years Spain groaned under a "Reign of terror," and isolated revolts only served as the occasion for fresh cruelties. The finances were squandered in futile expeditions to recover the South American colonies, which had taken advantage of Napoleon's conquest of Spain to establish their independence. In his straits for money, Ferdinand ventured to outrage national sentiment by selling Florida to the United States in 1819. Louisiana had been ceded to France in 1803, and when Mexico gained her independence in 1822, the last of the territory under Spanish rule in North America was lost to her. The reign of Ferdinand's daughter, Isabella II., was disturbed by the Carlist rebellion in 1834-1839, in which England aided the Queen with an army commanded by Sir De Lacy Evans. Spain, under Isabella II., presents a dismal picture of faction and intrigue. Policies of state had forced her into a distasteful marriage with her cousin, Francis of Assisi, and she sought compensation in sensual indulgences, endeavoring to cover the dissoluteness of her private life by a superstitious devotion to religion. She had to contend with continual revolts, and was finally compelled, in 1868, to abdicate the throne and fly to France for her life. A provisional government was formed with Serrano as President, and a new constitution was formed, by which an hereditary king was to rule, in conjunction with a senate and a popular chamber. The throne was offered to Amadeus of Aosta, the second son of Victor Emmanuel, in 1870, and he made an honest effort to discharge the difficult duties of the office. But he found the task too hard, and too distasteful, and resigned in 1873. A provisional republic was then formed, of which Castelar was the guiding spirit. But the Spaniards, trained to regard monarchy with superstitious reverence, had no sympathy with republican institutions. Don Carlos seized the opportunity to revive the claim of inalienable male succession, and raised the standard of revolt. Castelar finally threw up the office in disgust, and the administration was undertaken by a committee of officers. Anarchy was suppressed with a strong hand, but it was obvious that order could only be restored by reviving the monarchy. Foreign princes were no longer thought of, and Alfonso XII., the young son of the exiled Isabella, was restored to the throne in 1874. His first task was to terminate the Carlist war, which still continued in the North, and this was successfully accomplished in 1876. He died in 1885, and the regency was entrusted to his widow, Christina of Austria. On May 17th, 1886, a posthumous son was born, who is now the titular King of Spain. CHAPTER IV. BUCCANEERING AND THE WARFARE IN THE SPANISH MAIN. Spain's Stolen Treasures from Mexico and Peru Tempt Her European Rivals--The Spanish Main the Scene of Piratical Plundering for Many Years--Havana and Other Cities Threatened--Great Britain Takes Santo Domingo--American Troops from the British Colonies Capture Havana--Victory on Land and Sea Is Saddened by Many Deaths of Brave Americans from Fever--Lessons of the First Capture of Havana. After the acquisition of rich and populous countries in the western hemisphere had begun, Spain discovered that her new-found wealth was not to be hers without a struggle. From the harbors of Mexico and Peru, Spanish galleons sailed with their loads of treasure, stolen from the Montezumas and the Incas. Year after year, rich argosies, laden with gold and silver to replenish the extravagant treasury of the Spanish crown, crossed the seas. The Atlantic ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea were furrowed with the keels of Spanish fleets, at a time when the European nations scarcely maintained the pretense of friendship with one another. It was hardly to be expected that these rich prizes should go unmolested. England and France knew quite well that they were plundered from the native treasuries of the new world, and no reason appeared why Spain in turn should not be robbed of her plunder. So the Spanish Main, the Caribbean sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the adjacent waters, became the haunt of buccaneers and pirates, some under flags of European nations, and others under the black flag. Desperate fights were the lot of almost every Spanish galleon that sailed those seas, and fabulous prizes sometimes were taken under the skull and crossbones. Spanish men of war sailed back and forth to convoy the merchant fleets, but their protection was not always sufficient. Pirates could obtain frigates with guns as good as those of Spain, and with the temptation of wealth before them they braved conflict whenever it was necessary. The harbors of Key West, the Dry Tortugas and others along the Florida keys, as well as many of those in the Bahamas, the West Indies and the Antilles, were the haunts of buccaneers and privateers who careened their ships on shore for repairs, or held high revel on the beaches after their triumph over some Spanish treasure fleet. Those were bloody days, full of dramatic excitement. From them some of the most notable writers of fiction have drawn their tales, which entertain readers of to-day. What was done with all the gold thus garnered in sea fights before it reached the ports of Spain, is hard to know. Sometimes mysterious strangers appeared in the seaport towns of France and England and even the American colonies in their younger days, to spend money lavishly for a short time and then disappear as mysteriously as they came. These men were reputed to be pirate chiefs seeking relaxation from their customary life. Others of the buccaneers hoarded their wealth in hiding places known only to themselves, the secret of which must have died with them, while the gold remains undiscovered. All through the Florida keys and the West India islands, as well as along the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas, traditions still exist in relation to these treasure hoards. Sanguine people are still digging in the sands of these beaches, in the hope that some day they will unearth a sea chest full of Spanish doubloons, or the golden ornaments stripped from Aztec idols. Some finds indeed have been made, but those who make them are not apt to reveal the secret which might guide another to a successful search. PIRATICAL RAIDS TROUBLE HAVANA. Having discovered the wealth that could be obtained by attacks upon the Spanish fleets, the pirates began to think of the cities which were themselves the source of much of this wealth. The result of this was that they began to make descents upon the coasts, not only of Cuba, but of the neighboring islands of Jamaica and Santo Domingo. The expense occasioned by the attempts to suppress these incursions became so great toward the end of the sixteenth century, that it became necessary to impose a special tax to cover it. Fortresses at all the fortified harbors were improved, and the power of the military officials increased as their importance increased, and that of the civil governors diminished. It was as a direct result of these conditions that the office of Captain General was created, in which the governor shared military and civil authority alike. Havana fortifications were hastened to completion and the preparations for defense began, which never have been materially improved to this day. The three fortresses of El Morro, La Punta and La Cabana were built before the end of the sixteenth century and still were standing as the most effective defenses of Havana when our war with Spain began. It was during the same period, that African negroes were first introduced into Cuba. Slavery had proved so severe upon the aborigines, that their numbers had almost reached the vanishing point, and there was a lack of sufficient labor for the cultivation of tobacco and sugar cane, the chief products of Spanish agriculture in the island. It was to promote the production of these new luxuries that the African slave trade was begun. A royal license from the King of Spain was obtained to guarantee the privilege of importing negroes. Then began that foul commerce which was another black stain on the history of Spanish colonization of the western hemisphere. Spanish ships descended upon the African coasts and kidnapped thousands of negroes for service in the Cuban cane and tobacco fields. The horrors of the trade cannot be magnified and are too distressing for repetition. It is sufficient to say that in Havana it is understood that the harbor was free from sharks which now swarm there, until they followed the slave ships from the African coasts in multitudes, for the feast of slaves who were thrown overboard on the long voyage. Scores and hundreds of Africans died during the journey, from the hardships they were compelled to undergo, and Havana harbor itself was the last grave of many of these hapless ones. GREAT BRITAIN THREATENS SPANISH POSSESSIONS. It was just after the middle of the seventeenth century and during the rule of Oliver Cromwell in England, that the Spanish governors of Cuba began to fear an attack by a British fleet. A squadron sailed in 1655 with the design of capturing Jamaica, a purpose which was easily accomplished. That island was taken by Great Britain, the Spanish forces defending it were utterly defeated, the governor was killed, and many of the inhabitants removed, in consequence, to Cuba. From Jamaica the same fleet sailed for Havana, but the attack was repulsed and the ships abandoned the attempt. Except for the encroachments of the French upon the island of Santo Domingo, and the continual piratical incursions of French and English buccaneers, the Spanish in the West Indies were not threatened with any more hostilities except by their own internal dissensions until 1762. At that time Spain and England were at war, Spain in alliance with the French, and it was decided by the British government that Cuba was a vulnerable possession and a valuable one that ought to be taken. The capture of Havana by forces under the English flag fills little space in the history of England and Spain, because of the magnitude of the interests involved elsewhere. It is almost forgotten in America, in spite of the bearing of all its contemporary incidents upon the rapidly approaching revolution, and yet it was an achievement of the colonial troops and consequently the first assault upon Cuba by Americans. It was an event of the first importance in its own day and contained lessons of the first moment for the guidance of those who had to plan the conduct of the war against Spain in 1898. It proved that American troops under efficient officers could take the field with success against double their number of Spaniards fully provisioned and strongly intrenched. It proved that Havana could be successfully assaulted by a combined military and naval force, regardless of her picturesque but obsolete fortifications. Spain's lack of administrative ability in the later war as well as in the first, destroying any advantage to be derived from balls and cannon. On the other side it proved that Americans had to look forward to a considerable loss of life as a result of climatic conditions, if they attempted to conduct hostile operations in Cuba during the summer season. The utter incapacity for straightforward, pertinacious fighting, which both Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington found in the Spanish army during the Peninsular war, was as conspicuous fifty years before, when the Americans took Havana, and may rightly be argued as perpetually inherent in the national character; for though the annals of Spain are filled with instances of individual courage of the first rank, demoralization sets in as soon as they come together in numbers in the face of a civilized foe. Their chief maneuver in the course of a century and a half, has been just plain running away. The victorious Wellington, seeing his Spanish allies running for dear life just after he had whipped the opposing French line in the last battle of the peninsular campaign, was moved to remark that he had seen many curious things in his life, but never before 20,000 men engaged in a foot race. Yet the fight made by the Spaniards in Havana during the attack of the British and colonial forces in 1762 is the one notable instance of a prolonged struggle between men who speak English and men who speak Spanish. History may be searched in vain, either in the old or new world, for a defense as able in point of generalship or as stubborn in resistance as the Spaniards made at the siege of Havana. In all other cases, from the Elizabethan campaigns in Holland to the war with Mexico, the men educated in the Spanish school of arms have been content to spend their energies upon a single assault and then flee, sometimes even when the odds were greatly in their favor. The English Armada left Portsmouth on March 5th, 1762, under the command of the gallant Admiral Pococke and Lord Albemarle, the force moving in seven divisions. It consisted of nineteen ships of the line, eighteen frigates or smaller men-of-war, and 150 transports containing about 10,000 soldiers, nearly all infantry. At the Island of Hayti, then called Hispanola, the British were joined by the successful expedition from Martinique. Together they sat down before Havana, July 6th, 1762. SPAIN'S INTELLECTUAL DRY ROT. Spain, suffering, as it suffers to-day, from intellectual dry rot, had known for weeks of the intended beleaguerment. Then, as now, nothing adequate was done to meet it. The Governor of Havana, the Marquis de Gonzalez, was a gallant soldier, as he was to prove; but that ounce of prevention which is proverbially worth more than the pound of cure, was not taken by him, and the British found the fortifications in a partially ruinous condition, and the fourteen ships of the line which were lying in the harbor before the city in such a state that they could hardly be called in commission. The Spanish army of defense numbered 27,000 men, and was in better condition; but the Spanish sailors were utterly demoralized by the granting of too much shore liberty, and the best use the Spaniard could put his fighting ships to was by sinking them at the entrance to the anchorage to prevent the entrance of the British fleet. Once the enemy was before the city, however, all was activity. The fortifications, which were too newly erected to be quite incapable of repair, were set in order, the guns of Morro Castle and of the fort known as the Puntal, across from it, were trained on the advancing foe, and the Spanish ships were sunk, as has been said. Those familiar with the history of English administrative methods during this period will find little to choose between them and the methods of Spain. The season of the year most unwholesome to the inhabitants of a temperate climate had already set in, with all its train of pestilences, when the British arrived. Though deluged by the tremendous rains of the tropics from day to day, the water supply was wholly insufficient, and the little obtainable was so tainted as to make its use fraught with danger. There was no pilot who knew the roadstead in order to lead the ships against the Morro and the Puntal for many days. In throwing up the parallels and approaches to the walls of the city on the landward side, the soldiers found such scarcity of earth, the blanket over the rocks being of the thinnest sort, that this necessary material for covering an attack had to be brought from a distance. Then, too, it was charged with the germs of disease, and all who handled it suffered extremely. Despite all the precautions of the officers, the sanitary condition surrounding the camp was horrible, and the troops died like dogs. YANKEES IN CUBA. Meanwhile there was a large force of British regulars in North America, stationed there ever since the fall of the French empire in the new world in 1760. Four thousand of these soldiers were gathered in New York City. To them the colonies of East and West Jersey added a regiment of 500 men, New York another of 800, while Lyman raised a full thousand in Connecticut. When these, too, had been assembled in New York, Lyman was made Brigadier General of the colonial troops, and his Lieutenant Colonel, Israel Putnam, was made Colonel of the Connecticut soldiers in his stead. This was the same Putnam who fought the wolf single-handed in its cave, and who was to take that breakneck ride a few years later to escape the very troops with whom he was now associated. The entire force of 2,300 provincials under General Lyman's command was not a mere bevy of raw militia. Nearly all of them had seen service against the French in those well trained and active forces which were given the general name of "Rangers;" the officers especially, of whom Putnam was hardly more than a type, being men of extended experience. The fact that so many men were willing to volunteer in this arduous and, as it turned out, desperate service for the King, speaks volumes for what could have been done with such men had Pitt and not Bute been at the head of the English nation at that time. The advices from Havana showed that the army there was in great need of reinforcements, so by great efforts the regulars and provincials were stowed way in fourteen transports, and with an escort of a few frigates they set sail for the South about the middle of May. There were the usual shouts of an admiring populace and the tears of sweethearts and wives; but it is easy to say that there would have been no rejoicing if the people of Connecticut, the Jerseys, and New York could have foreseen that hardly one of every fifty of their volunteers would see his home again. AMERICANS WERE WRECKED. Just before the arrival of these welcome reinforcements on July 20, some English merchantmen had come along with cargoes of cotton bags, which were pressed into immediate use for the lines which were now closing around Havana; and in the ships were also found several pilots. Then the forces from the North came amidst general rejoicings, but without Putnam and 500 of his Yankees. These, in a transport which was skirting the dangerous coast much too closely, were shipwrecked on one of the treacherous shoals thereabouts. Putnam, with true New England fertility of resource, extemporized rafts from the fragments of the vessel and got all his men ashore without the loss of a life. They landed near the City of Carthagena, threw up breastworks, and were found ready to repel a force of thousands of Spaniards when the ships from before Havana arrived for their rescue, their own companions wisely pressing on and sending aid back from the headquarters. The American troops went bravely to work, engaging themselves chiefly with the undermining of one of the walls. To reach this it was necessary for them to pass along a narrow eminence where they were in plain view and easy range of the Spaniards. A number were lost in this dangerous enterprise, but their valor was dimmed neither by this nor by the still heavier losses which came upon them through the diseases prevalent in every portion of the British camp. Though men of such hardiness that they must have been equal in resisting power to the British, their losses were comparatively much greater, proving that they occupied positions of greater danger, either from bullets or the fevers of the region. MORRO CASTLE TAKEN. Five days after the arrival of the reinforcements, Lord Albemarle judged himself sufficiently strong to assault Morro Castle, and the word was accordingly given. The sunken ships were blown up early on the morning of July 25, and the British ships sailed into the fury of the Spanish cannon, belching shot from all along the shore. The big guns of the ships could not be elevated sufficiently to silence the fire from Morro Castle, and this was accordingly left to be carried by assault. The Puntal was silenced, troops landed, and after five days of ferocious fighting, in which the British and American losses were enormous by reason of their exposed position, and where every one concerned exhibited the utmost valor, Morro Castle was carried by the bayonet. The fighting within its walls after an entry had been made was exceedingly fierce. The Marquis of Gonzalez was killed by his own cowardly men for refusing to surrender. The cannon from the other Spanish batteries were turned upon the Morro as soon as the Spanish flag had been lowered, and the British ensign run up in its place; and then the slow and disastrous work of the siege was taken up again. As the lines grew nearer and nearer, and the last hope of the Spaniard for relief was given up, there was the usual attempt made to buy the attacking party off. Though it would have been a hopeless undertaking at any time, the amount offered for the ransom of the city was so far below the treasure which was known to be in the town that the offer was made a subject for derisive laughter. Fifteen days after Morro Castle had fallen, though the mortality in the trenches was so great that a few weeks more must have seen the abandonment of the enterprise, the city fell, the garrison stipulating for a passage out with all the honors of war, which was freely accorded them, owing to the climatic predicament in which Lord Albemarle found himself. It was also stipulated that private property should be respected. This was strictly observed, though Spain had set repeated examples of giving a captured city over to plunder in the face of a stipulation to the contrary. August 14, 1762, the British entered, the glory of their victory over such heavy odds even then dimmed by the enormous mortality. It was reckoned that the few days of August had wrought more damage to the invading forces than all the weeks of hard labor and open assault which had gone before. In the city--the Havannah, as it was then called--treasure was found to the amount of $7,000,000, much of it in such shape that there had been abundant time to withdraw it either to Spain or into the interior of the island, had there been any other than Spaniards at the head of affairs. The occupancy of the British and colonial forces lasted but a few months. Lord Albemarle, with $120,000 of the prize money as his personal share, received notice of the conclusion of the treaty of Paris and withdrew his army to Great Britain. A single ship sufficed to remove the shattered remnant of the soldiers from Connecticut, the Jerseys, and New York. Twenty-three hundred sailed; barely fifty returned. It was a part of the good fortune of America--all of the good fortune, to be exact--which brought Colonel Israel Putnam safely home again, though the paralysis which shortened his labors not many years after the Declaration of Independence was unquestionably due to his exposure to the vertical sun of Cuba and to the poisons of its pestilential coast. In the hands of George III., then King of England, all this suffering and deprivation amounted to virtually nothing. He was a coward at heart, a man who could not even avail himself of such hardly gained victories. The peace of Paris was signed, and by its terms George yielded up Cuba and the Philippines again to the power that has never ceased to misuse the advantages so obtained. The belief gained ground in Havana, in 1807, that the English government again contemplated a descent on the island; and measures were taken to put it in a more respectable state of defense, although, from want of funds in the treasury, and the scarcity of indispensable supplies, the prospect of an invasion was sufficiently gloomy. The militia and the troops of the garrison were carefully drilled, and companies of volunteers were formed wherever materials for them could be found. The French, also, not content with mere preparations, made an actual descent on the island, first threatening Santiago, and afterwards landing at Batabano. The invaders consisted chiefly of refugees from St. Domingo; and their intention seems to have been to take possession with a view to colonize and cultivate a portion of the unappropriated, or at least unoccupied, territory, on the south side of the island, as their countrymen had formerly done in St. Domingo. Without recurring to actual force, the captain-general prevailed on them to take their departure by offering transportation either to St. Domingo or to France. CHAPTER V. COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF CUBA. Efforts of the Early Governors to Encourage Trade--Cultivation of Sugar One of the First Industries--Decree Defining Powers of the Captain General--Attempted Annexation to the United States--The Ostend Manifesto--Its Wonderful Predictions, in the Light of Later Events--Exports and Imports Between Cuba and Spain--The Future of Commercial Cuba. The commerce of Cuba has grown in spite of the limitations that have been placed upon it and not because of any encouragement that has been given to it. Columbus called Cuba the most beautiful land that eyes had ever seen. Its resources, granted by a generous nature, have enabled it to recuperate after destructive warfare with a rapidity simply amazing to those accustomed only to the climate and the soil of the temperate zone. The immense industries of Cuba have been hampered from the beginning by Spanish oppression and the fact that they have flourished under such unfavorable conditions is a striking evidence of what may be expected under a policy of encouragement and freedom. Sugar, tobacco, and other tropical products have made fortunes for Cuba every year, only to have them stolen by Spanish officeholders, sent there to plunder all they could get their hands upon. With peace assured, the opportunities for the extension of industries in the "Pearl of the Antilles" will be enormous. The commercial development of Cuba has come through centuries of disturbance, warfare, and oppression. A simple catalogue of all the evils with which the Cubans have had to contend would fill a volume. All that can be done here is to indicate briefly some of the more notable events in the history of the island after the British conquests and the relinquishment of the prize to the Spanish authorities upon the return of peace. Near the end of the last century there came a period which offered more encouragement to the hope of permanent prosperity in Cuba than had been offered before. The successive governors appointed varied in character, it is true, but several of them were liberal minded, public spirited men who gave to the colony far better administration that it had been accustomed to. One of these was Luis de Las Casas, who imparted a new impulse to the agriculture and commerce of the island. It was under his guidance that trade with the United States began to assume importance, and to his efforts was due the transfer of the remains of Columbus from Santo Domingo to their present resting place in the cathedral at Havana. He encouraged literature, science, the fine arts and the erection of various public charitable and educational institutions. He was the founder of the first public library and the first newspaper which had existed in the island. He showed his ability as an executive by restraining the restless population under the excitement which accompanied the revolution in the neighboring colony of Santo Domingo, which ended by the loss to Spain of that island. One of the earliest causes of ill feeling between the islanders of Cuba and the people of Spain occurred just at the end of the administration of Las Casas in 1796. In the seventy years prior to that time a great navy yard grew up on the Bay of Havana, and 114 war vessels were built there to convoy the Spanish treasure ships. All at once this flourishing industry was closed on the demand of the ship-builders of Spain that the work should be done in the mother country. As might have been expected, this aroused great indignation among a large number of people in Havana who had been dependent upon the industry. It was about the same time, or just a hundred years before the outbreak of our war with Spain, that sugar became an important article of general commerce. Even then, however, it was not an article of common consumption, and was held at extravagantly high prices, measured by the present cheapness of the article. Market reports of the time show that the price approximated forty cents a pound, and this at a time when the purchasing power of money was at least twice as great as it is now. As the price has fallen, the product and the consumption have increased, until of late years it has been an enormous source of revenue to the Island of Cuba. When Napoleon Bonaparte abducted the royal family of Spain and deposed the Bourbon dynasty in 1808, every member of the provincial counsel of Cuba took an oath to preserve the island for their legitimate sovereign. The Colonial government immediately declared war against Napoleon and proclaimed Ferdinand VII. as king. It was by this action that the colony earned its title of "The ever-faithful isle," which has been excellent as a complimentary phrase, but hardly justified by the actual facts. For some years following this action, affairs in the island were in an embarrassing condition, owing to the progress of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, which kept all trade disturbed and Spain in a constant condition of disorder. If it had not been for the fortunate election of one or two of the governors things might have been even worse than they were, and it was considered that Cuba was enjoying quite as much peace and prosperity as were her neighbor colonies and the mother governments of Europe. In 1812 a negro conspiracy broke out and attained considerable success, and as a result of it the Spanish governors began to be more and more severe in their administrations. Under the influence of the spirit of freedom which was spreading all around them, Cubans became more and more restless. The revolutionary movements in Spanish America had begun in 1810, and after fourteen years of guerrilla warfare, European power had vanished in the Western hemisphere from the Northern boundary of the United States to Cape Horn, except for the Colonies of British Honduras and the Guianas, and a few of the West Indian Islands. In 1821, Santo Domingo became independent, and in the same year Florida came into the possession of the United States. Secret societies, with the purpose of revolution as their motive, began to spring up in Cuba, and the population divided into well-defined factions. There was indeed an attempt at open revolt made in 1823 by one of these societies known as the "Soles De Bolivar," but it was averted before the actual outbreak came, and those leaders of it who were not able to escape from Cuba were arrested and punished. It was as a result of these successive events that the office of Captain General was created and invested with all the powers of Oriental despotism. The functions of the Captain General were defined by a royal decree of May 28, 1825, to the following effect: His Majesty, the King Our Lord, desiring to obviate the inconveniences that might in extraordinary cases result from a division of command, and from the interferences and prerogatives of the respective officers; for the important end of preserving in that precious island his legitimate sovereign authority and the public tranquillity through proper means, has resolved in accordance with the opinion of his council of ministers to give to your Excellency the fullest authority, bestowing upon you all the powers which by the royal ordinances are granted to the governors of besieged cities. In consequence of this, his Majesty gives to your Excellency the most ample and unbounded power, not only to send away from the island any persons in office, whatever their occupation, rank, class, or condition, whose continuance therein your Excellency may deem injurious, or whose conduct, public or private, may alarm you, replacing them with persons faithful to his Majesty and deserving of all the confidence of your Excellency; but also to suspend the execution of any order whatsoever, or any general provision made concerning any branch of the administration as your Excellency may think most suitable to the Royal Service. This decree since that time has been substantially the supreme law of Cuba, and has never been radically modified by any concessions except those given as a last and lingering effort to preserve the sovereignty of Spain, when after three years' progress of the revolution she realized that her colony had slipped away from her authority. The decree quoted in itself offers sufficient justification for the Cuban revolution in the name of liberty. ATTEMPTED ANNEXATION TO THE UNITED STATES. During the present century there have been a number of attempts on the part of men prominent in public life, both in the United States and Cuba, to arrange a peaceable annexation by the purchase by this country of the island from Spain. Statesmen of both nations have been of the opinion that such a settlement of the difficulty would be mutually advantageous, and have used every diplomatic endeavor to that end. During Thomas Jefferson's term of office, while Spain bowed beneath the yoke of France, from which there was then no prospect of relief, the people of Cuba, feeling themselves imcompetent in force to maintain their independence, sent a deputation to Washington, proposing the annexation of the island to the federal system of North America. In 1854 President Pearce instructed Wm. L. Marcy, his Secretary of State, to arrange a conference of the Ministers of the United States to England, France and Spain, to be held with a view to the acquisition of Cuba. The conference met at Ostend on the 9th of October, 1854, and adjourned to Aix-la-Chapelle, where notes were prepared. Mr. Soule, then our Minister to Spain, said in a letter to Mr. Marcy, transmitting the joint report: "The question of the acquisition of Cuba by us is gaining ground as it grows to be more seriously agitated and considered. Now is the moment for us to be done with it, and if it is to bring upon us the calamity of war, let it be now, while the great powers of this continent are engaged in that stupendous struggle which cannot but engage all their strength and tax all their energies as long as it lasts, and may, before it ends, convulse them all. Neither England nor France would be likely to interfere with us. England could not bear to be suddenly shut out of our market, and see her manufactures paralyzed, even by a temporary suspension of her intercourse with us. And France, with the heavy task now on her hands, and when she so eagerly aspires to take her seat as the acknowledged chief of the European family, would have no inducement to assume the burden of another war." The result of this conference is so interesting in its application to present conditions that its reproduction is required to make intelligible the whole story of Cuba, and we give it here: THE OSTEND MANIFESTO. Sir: The undersigned, in compliance with the wish expressed by the president in the several confidential despatches you have addressed to us respectively, to that effect, we have met in conference, first at Ostend, in Belgium, on the 9th, 10th, and 11th instant, and then at Aix-la-Chapelle, in Prussia, on the days next following, up to the date hereof. There has been a full and unreserved interchange of views and sentiments between us, which we are most happy to inform you has resulted in a cordial coincidence of opinion on the grave and important subjects submitted to our consideration. We have arrived at the conclusion, and are thoroughly convinced that an immediate and earnest effort ought to be made by the government of the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain at any price for which it can he obtained, not exceeding the sum of $... The proposal should, in our opinion, be made in such a manner as to be presented through the necessary diplomatic forms to the Supreme Constituent Cortes about to assemble. On this momentous question, in which the people, both of Spain and the United States, are so deeply interested, all our proceedings ought to be open, frank and public. They should be of such a character as to challenge the approbation of the world. We firmly believe that, in the progress of human events, the time has arrived when the vital interests of Spain are as seriously involved in the sale, us those of the United States in the purchase, of the island, and that the transaction will prove equally honorable to both nations. Under these circumstances we cannot anticipate a failure, unless possibly through the malign influence of foreign powers who possess no right whatever to interfere in the matter. We proceed to state some of the reasons which have brought us to, this conclusion, and for the sake of clearness, we shall specify them under two distinct heads: 1. The United States ought, if practicable, to purchase Cuba with as little delay as possible. 2. The probability is great that the government and Cortes of Spain will prove willing to sell it, because this would essentially promote the highest and best interests of the Spanish people. Then, 1. It must be clear to every reflecting mind that, from the peculiarity of its geographical position, and the considerations attendant on it. Cuba is as necessary to the North American republic as any of its present members, and that it belongs naturally to that great family of states of which the Union is the providential nursery. From its locality it commands the mouth of the Mississippi and the immense and annually increasing trade which must seek this avenue to the ocean. On the numerous navigable streams, measuring an aggregate course of some thirty thousand miles, which disembogue themselves through this magnificent river into the Gulf of Mexico, the increase of the population within the last ten years amounts to more than that of the entire Union at the time Louisiana was annexed to it. The natural and main outlet to the products of this entire population, the highway of their direct intercourse with the Atlantic and the Pacific States, can never be secure, but must ever be endangered whilst Cuba is a dependency of a distant power in whose possession it has proved to be a source of constant annoyance and embarrassment to their interests. Indeed the Union can never enjoy repose, nor possess reliable security, as long as Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries. Its immediate acquisition by our government is of paramount importance, and we cannot doubt but that it is a consummation devoutly wished for by its inhabitants. The intercourse which its proximity to our coast begets and encourages between them and the citizens of the United States, has, in the progress of time, so united their interests and blended their fortunes that they now look upon each other as if they were one people, and had but one destiny. Considerations exist which render delay in the acquisition of this island exceedingly dangerous to the United States. The system of immigration and labor lately organized within its limits, and the tyranny and oppression which characterize its immediate rulers threaten an insurrection at every moment, which may result in direful consequences to the American people. Cuba has thus become to us an unceasing danger, and a permanent cause of anxiety and alarm. But we need not enlarge on these topics. It can scarcely be apprehended that foreign powers, in violation of international law, would interpose their influence with Spain to prevent our acquisition of the island. Its inhabitants are now suffering under the worst of all possible governments, that of absolute despotism, delegated by a distant power to irresponsible agents, who are changed at short intervals, and who are tempted to improve their brief opportunity thus afforded to accumulate fortunes by the basest means. As long as this system shall endure, humanity may in vain demand the suppression of the African slave trade in the island. This is rendered impossible whilst that infamous traffic remains an irresistible temptation and a source of immense profit to needy and avaricious officials, who, to attain their ends, scruple not to trample the most sacred principles under foot. The Spanish government at home may be well disposed, but experience has proved that it cannot control these remote depositaries of its power. Besides, the commercial nations of the world cannot fail to perceive and appreciate the great advantages which would result to their people from a dissolution of the forced and unnatural connection between Spain and Cuba, and the annexation of the latter to the United States. The trade of England and France with Cuba would, in that event, assume at once an important and profitable character, and rapidly extend with the increasing population and prosperity of the island. 2. But if the United States and every commercial nation would be benefited by this transfer, the interests of Spain would also be greatly and essentially promoted. She cannot but see that such a sum of money as we are willing to pay for the island would affect it in the development of her vast natural resources. Two-thirds of this sum, if employed in the construction of a system of railroads, would ultimately prove a source of greater wealth to the Spanish people than that opened to their vision by Cortez. Their prosperity would date from the ratification of the treaty of cession. France has already constructed continuous lines of railways from Havre, Marseilles, Valenciennes, and Strasburg, via Paris, to the Spanish frontier, and anxiously awaits the day when Spain shall find herself in a condition to extend these roads through her northern provinces to Madrid, Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, and the frontiers of Portugal. This object once accomplished, Spain would become a center of attraction for the traveling world, and secure a permanent and profitable market for her various productions. Her fields, under the stimulus given to industry by remunerating prices, would teem with cereal grain, and her vineyards would bring forth a vastly increased quantity of choice wines. Spain would speedily become what a bountiful Providence intended she should be, one of the first nations of continental Europe--rich, powerful and contented. Whilst two-thirds of the price of the island would be ample for the completion of her most important public improvements, she might with the remaining forty millions satisfy the demands now pressing so heavily upon her credit, and create a sinking fund which would gradually relieve her from the overwhelming debt now paralyzing her energies. Such is her present wretched financial condition, that her best bonds are sold upon her own bourse at about one-third of their par value; whilst another class, on which she pays no interest, have but a nominal value, and are quoted at about one-sixth of the amount for which they were issued. Besides, these latter are held principally by British creditors, who may, from day to day, obtain the effective interposition of their own government for the purpose of coercing payment. Intimations to that effect have already been thrown out from high quarters, and unless some new sources of revenue shall enable Spain to provide for such exigencies, it is not improbable that they may be realized. Should Spain reject the present golden opportunity for developing her resources and removing her financial embarrassments, it may never again return. Cuba, in her palmiest days, never yielded her exchequer, after deducting the expense of its government, a clear annual income of more than a million and a half of dollars. These expenses have increased to such a degree as to leave a deficit, chargeable on the treasury of Spain, to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars. In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, the island is an encumbrance instead of a source of profit to the mother country. Under no probable circumstance can Cuba ever yield to Spain one per cent, on the large amount which the United States are willing to pay for its acquisition. But Spain is in imminent danger of losing Cuba without remuneration. Extreme oppression, it is now universally admitted, justifies any people in endeavoring to relieve themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. The sufferings which corrupt, arbitrary and unrelenting local administration necessarily entail upon the inhabitants of Cuba cannot fail to stimulate and keep alive that spirit of resistance and revolution against Spain which has of late years been so often manifested. In this condition of affairs it is vain to expect that the sympathies of the people of the United States will not be warmly enlisted in favor of their oppressed neighbors. We know that the President is justly inflexible in his determination to execute the neutrality laws; but should the Cubans themselves rise in revolt against the oppression which they suffer, no human power could prevent citizens of the United States and liberal-minded men of other countries from rushing to their assistance. Besides, the present is an age of adventure in which restless and daring spirits abound in every portion of the world. It is not improbable, therefore, that Cuba may be wrested from Spain by a successful revolution; and in that event she will lose both the island and the price which we are now willing to pay for it--a price far beyond what was ever paid by one people to another for any province. It may also be remarked that the settlement of this vexed question, by the cession of Cuba to the United States, would forever prevent the dangerous complications between nations to which it may otherwise give birth. It is certain that, should the Cubans themselves organize an insurrection against the Spanish government, and should other independent nations come to the aid of Spain in the contest, no human power could, in our opinion, prevent the people and government of the United States from taking part in such a civil war in support of their neighbors and friends. But if Spain, dead to the voice of her own interest, and actuated by a stubborn pride and a false sense of honor, should refuse to sell Cuba to the United States, then the question will arise, What ought to be the course of the American government under such circumstances? Self-preservation is the first law of nature with States as well as with individuals. All nations have, at different periods, acted upon this maxim. Although it has been made the pretext for committing flagrant injustice, as in the partition of Poland and other similar cases which history records, yet the principle itself, though often abused, has always been recognized. The United States has never acquired a foot of territory except by fair purchase, or, as in the case of Texas, upon the free and voluntary application of the people of that independent State, who desired to blend their destinies with our own. Even our acquisitions from Mexico are no exception to this rule because, although we might have claimed them by right of conquest in a just way, yet we purchased them for what was then considered by both parties a full and ample equivalent. Our past history forbids that we should acquire the island of Cuba without the consent of Spain, unless justified by the great law of self-preservation. We must, in any event, preserve our own conscious rectitude and our own self-respect. Whilst pursuing this course we can afford to disregard the censures of the world, to which we have been so often and so unjustly exposed. After we have offered Spain a fair price for Cuba, far beyond its present value, and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question, does Cuba, in the possession of Spain, seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union? Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain, if we possess the power; and this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home. Under such circumstances we ought neither to count the cost, nor regard the odds which Spain might enlist against us. We forbear to enter into the question, whether the present condition of the island would justify such a measure. We should, however, be recreant to our duty, be unworthy of our gallant forefathers, and commit base treason against our posterity, should we permit Cuba to be Africanized and become a second San Domingo, with all its attendant horrors to the white race, and suffer the flames to extend to our own neighboring shores, seriously to endanger, or actually to consume, the fair fabric of our Union. We fear that the course and current of events are rapidly tending toward such a catastrophe. We, however, hope for the best, though we ought certainly to be prepared for the worst. We also forbear to investigate the present condition of the questions at issue between the United States and Spain. A long series of injuries to our people have been committed in Cuba by Spanish officials, and are unredressed. But recently a most flagrant outrage on the rights of American citizens, and on the flag of the United States, was perpetrated in the harbor of Havana under circumstances which, without immediate redress, would have justified a resort to measures of war in vindication of national honor. That outrage is not only unatoned, but the Spanish government has deliberately sanctioned the acts of its subordinates, and assumed the responsibility attaching to them. Nothing could more impressively teach us the danger to which those peaceful relations it has ever been the policy of the United States to cherish with foreign nations, are constantly exposed, than the circumstances of that case. Situated as Spain and the United States are, the latter has forborne to resort to extreme measures. But this course cannot, with due regard to their own dignity as an independent nation, continue; and our recommendations, now submitted, are dictated by the firm belief that the cession of Cuba to the United States, with stipulations as beneficial to Spain as those suggested, is the only effective mode of settling all past differences, and of securing the two countries against future collisions. We have already witnessed the happy results for both countries which followed a similar arrangement in regard to Florida. Yours, very respectfully, JAMES BUCHANAN. J. Y. MASON. PIERRE SOULE. HON. WM. L. MAECY, Secretary of State. Unfortunately for Cuba the suggestions offered by this commission were not acted upon, although it is not probable that Spain, ever blind to her own interests, would have admitted the justice or reason of the argument, had the offer to purchase been made to her. EXPORTS AND IMPORTS. A table showing the amount of trade between Cuba and Spain during the year 1894 (the last authentic report), is instructive: Importations in Cuba from Spain $ 7,492,622 Exportation from Cuba to Spain $23,412,376 ----------- Difference in favor of export $15,919,754 THE FUTURE OF COMMERCIAL CUBA. Under happier conditions, there can be no doubt that Cuba will speedily attain a much higher state of commercial importance and prosperity than it has yet enjoyed. Great as its productiveness has been in the past, well-informed writers assert that proper development of its resources will increase the value five-fold, and a liberal system of government will enable it to take advantage of its admirable position to gain greater prominence in the commercial world. CHAPTER VI. BEAUTIES OF A TROPICAL ISLAND. A Delightful Climate--Grand Scenic Surprises--The Caves of Bellamar--The Valley of the Yumuri--Under Nature's Dome--Gorgeous Sunsets--The Palm Tree Groves--The Home of Fruits and Flowers-- The Zodiacal Light. When the little island of Cuba, "The Pearl of the Antilles," was assigned a place upon the terrestrial globe, Nature must have been in her most generous mood. Certainly no land beneath the skies was given a more perfect combination of mountains and rivers, forests and plains. Situated within and near the border of the northern tropical zone, the temperature of the low coast lands is that of the torrid zone, but the high interior of the island enjoys a delightful climate, and the verdure-clad hills, with the graceful palm and cocoa tree clear against the pure blue sky, may be seen at all seasons of the year. As in other countries on the borders of the tropics, the year is divided between a hot and wet season, corresponding to the northern declination of the sun, and a cool and dry period. The months from the beginning of May to October are called the wet season, though some rain falls in every month of the year. With May, spring begins in the island, rain and thunder are of almost daily occurrence, and the temperature rises high, with little daily variation. The period from November to April is called the dry season by contrast. On a mean of seven years the rain-fall at Havana in the wet season has been observed to be 27.8 inches, of the dry months, 12.7, or 40.5 inches for the year. July and August are the warmest months, and during this period the average temperature at Havana is 82 F, fluctuating between a maximum of 88 and a minimum of 76. In the cooler months of December and January the thermometer averages 72, the maximum being 78, and minimum 58. The average temperature of the year at Havana on a mean of seven years is 77. But in the interior, at elevations of over 300 feet above the level of the sea, the thermometer occasionally falls to the freezing point in winter. Frost is not uncommon, and during north winds, thin ice may form, though snow is unknown in any part of the island. The prevailing wind is the easterly trade breeze, but from November to February, cool north winds, rarely lasting more than forty-eight hours, are experienced in the western part of the island, to which they add a third seasonal change. Hurricanes may occur from August to October, but they are rare and sometimes five or six years pass without such a storm. GRAND SCENIC SURPRISES. Many "globe-trotters" who have never included this little corner of the world in their itinerary, do not appreciate the fact that nowhere under the sun can be found a more perfect climate, grander mountain scenery, more charming valleys, more picturesque ruins, and fertile fields than Cuba offers to their view. In another portion of this work will be found descriptions of the cities of Cuba, and brief mention here of some of the beauties of the country may not be amiss. One of the grandest bits of scenery in the known world is to be found in the valley of the Yumuri, rivaling in sublimity the far-famed Lookout Mountain view and the Yosemite of the Sierra Nevadas. The journey leads over a winding trail, easily traversed by the native horses, up a steep hill, until, after a continuous climb of an hour and a half, the road turns around the edge of a grassy precipice, and the beautiful valley, with its patches of green and gold, spreads away in the distance. The little river of Yumuri winds its way through its flower-decked banks until it reaches the bay beyond, while in the distance rise the mighty mountains, clod in their coats of evergreen, and over all the fleecy clouds, and the sky of azure blue. In this vicinity an opportunity is given the sight-seer to visit a sugar house and gain an idea of the sugar-making process, though on a very small scale, and enjoy a half an hour in the study of the natives, and their home life. A traveler, in writing of this place, says: "Our interview with the little black 'ninos' was highly amusing. On entering the court yard of the negro quarters, a dozen little black imps, of all ages and sexes and sizes, perfectly naked, rushed towards us, and crossing their arms upon their breasts, fell upon their knees before us, and jabbered and muttered, out of which could be distinguished, 'Master, master, give us thy blessing,' which we interpreted to mean 'tin;' whereupon we scattered sundry 'medios' among them! Hey! presto! what a change! The little black devils fell over one another, fought, tugged, and scrambled to secure a prize, while anyone who had been lucky enough to obtain a coin, marched off in a state of dignified delight, his distended little stomach going before him like a small beer barrel, while the owner of it kept shouting out, 'Medio, yo tengo medio' (five cents, I have five cents)." THE CAVES OF BELLAMAR. One of the most interesting trips that can be made is to the "Caves of Bellamar," which may be found about two and a half miles southeast of the city of Matanzas. The journey takes the traveler up a winding and rugged road to the top of a hill, where the "Cave house" is reached, a large frame structure built over the entrance, and containing, among other objects of interest, a large collection of beautiful crystal formations found in the cave. Here the tourist enters his name in the visitors' register, pays his dollar, and follows the boy guide down the stairs into the cave. About one hundred and fifty feet from the entrance a small bridge is crossed, and the "Gothic Temple" is reached. The only light comes from a few scattered lanterns, and is consequently very obscure, but one can see the millions of crystals, the thousand weird forms, and realize that it is surpassingly beautiful. The temple is about two hundred feet in length and seventy feet in width, and while it does not equal in size or solemn grandeur the temple of the same name in the Mammoth cave of Kentucky, it greatly excels it in the richness and splendor of its crystal formations and beautiful effects. The spectator possessed of strongly developed imaginative powers cannot fail to feel himself in fairy land. From the gloomy corners come gnomes and demons, and in the crystal shadows he sees sprites and lovely fairies, keeping gay revel to dreamy airs, played on invisible strings by spirit hands. One of the most beautiful objects in the cave is the "Fountain of Snow," a name given to one of the great pillars, called by the natives the "Cloak of the Virgin." Others are known as "Columbus Mantle," "The Altar," and "The Guardian Spirit." "Who has not seen the Caves of Bellamar has not seen Cuba." UNDER NATURE'S DOME. One of the most vivid pieces of descriptive writing, referring to the beauties of Cuban skies, is from the pen of James M. Phillippo: "The splendor of the early dawn in Cuba, as in the tropical islands in its vicinity, has been referred to. The whole sky is often so resplendent that it is difficult to determine where the orb of day will appear. Small fleecy clouds are often seen floating on the north wind, and as they hover over the mountains and meet the rays of the sun, are changed into liquid gold and a hundred intensely beautiful dyes more splendid than the tints of the rainbow. During the cooler months, the mornings are delightful till about ten o'clock, the air soon after dawn becoming agreeably elastic, and so transparent that distant objects appear as if delineated upon the bright surface of the air; the scenery everywhere, especially when viewed from an eminence, is indescribably rich and glowing; the tops of the rising grounds and the summits of the mountains are radiant with a flood of light, while the vapor is seen creeping along the valleys, here concealing the entrance to some beautiful glen, and there wreathing itself fantastically around a tall spire or groves of palm trees that mark the site of a populous village. "The finest and most gorgeous sunsets occur in the West Indian Archipelago during the rainy seasons. The sky is then sublimely mantled with gigantic masses of cloud, glowing with a thousand gorgeous dyes, and seeming to collect at the close of day as though to form a couch for the sun's repose. In these he sinks, flooding them with glory, touching both heavens and earth with gold and amber brightness long after he has flung his beams across the other hemisphere, or perhaps half revealing himself through gauze-like clouds, a crimson sphere, at once rayless and of portentous size. "The azure arch, which by an optical illusion limits our view on every side, seems here, and in the tropics generally, higher than in England, even higher than in Italy. Here is seen, in a perfection compared to which even Italian skies are vapid and uninteresting, that pure, serene, boundless sky, that atmosphere of clear blue, or vivid red, which so much contributes to enrich the pencil of Claude Lorraine. The atmosphere of Cuba, as everywhere within the tropics, except when the high winds prevail, is so unpolluted, so thin, so elastic, so dry, so serene, and so almost inconceivably transparent and brilliant, that every object is distinct and clearly defined as if cut out of the clear blue sky. All travelers agree in praising the calm depths of the intensely blue and gloriously bright skies of inter-tropical latitudes. In the temperate zone, it is estimated that about 1,000 stars are visible to the naked eye at one time; but here, from the increased elevation and wider extent of the vault, owing to the clearness of the atmosphere, especially as seen from a high mountain chain, the number is greatly augmented. If, however, these luminaries may not be seen here in greater numbers, they certainly shine with greater brilliancy. The different constellations are indeed so greatly magnified as to give the impression that the power of the eye is increased. Venus rises like a little moon, and in the absence of the greater casts a distinguishable shadow. "The Milky Way, which in the temperate zone has the appearance of a luminous phosphorescent cloud, and, as is well known, derives its brightness from the diffused light of myriads of stars condensed into so small space that fifty thousand of them are estimated to pass across the disc of the telescope in an hour, is here seen divided into constellations, and the whole galaxy is of so dazzling a whiteness as to make it resemble a pure flame of silvery light thrown across the heavens, turning the atmosphere into a kind of green transparency. Besides this, there are vast masses of stellar nebulae of indefinite diversity and form, oval, oblate, elliptical, as well as of different degrees of density, diffused over the firmament, and discoverable through a common telescope, all novel to an inhabitant of temperate climes, and recalling the exclamation of the psalmist: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, ... the firmament showeth forth His handiwork.' "'The stars Are elder scripture, writ of God's own hand, Scripture authentic, uncorrupt by man.' "An interesting phenomenon sometimes occurs here, as in other islands of the West Indies, which was long supposed to be seen only in the eastern hemisphere. A short time before sunrise or sunset, a flush of strong, white light, like that of the Aurora Borealis, extends from the horizon a considerable way up the zenith, and so resembles the dawn as to prove greatly deceptive to a stranger. As he watches the luminous track he sees it decrease instead of becoming more vivid, and at length totally disappear, leaving the heavens nearly as dark as previous to its appearance. This is the zodiacal light." CHAPTER VII. WEALTH FROM NATURE'S STORES IN THE FORESTS AND FIELDS OF CUBA. The Palm Tree, the Queen of the Cuban Forests--Sugar Cane and Its Cultivation--The Tobacco Industry--Tropical Fruits and Flowers-- Beauties of a Garden in Cuba--Enormous Shipments to Spain--The Wealth of the Island. The forests of Cuba are of vast extent, and so dense as to be almost impenetrable. It is estimated that of about 20,000,000 acres of land still remaining perfectly wild and uncultivated, nearly 13,000,000 are uncleared forest. Mahogany and other hard woods, such as the Cuban ebony, cedar, and granadilla, valuable for manufactures, cabinet work and ship building are indigenous, and are exported to a considerable extent. The palm is the queen of the Cuban forests and is its most valuable tree. It grows in every part of the island, but especially in the west, giving at once character and beauty to the scenery. The royal palm is the most common variety, and frequently grows to a height of one hundred and twenty feet, the branches numbering from twenty to twenty-five, in the center of which are the hearts or buds of the plant, elevating themselves perpendicularly with needle-like points. This heart, enveloped in wrappers of tender white leaves, makes a most delicious salad, and it is also boiled, like cauliflower, and served with a delicate white sauce. The trunk of the palm is composed of fibrous matter, which is stripped off and dried, forming a narrow, thin board, which the natives use for the walls of their cottages. The boughs are sometimes made to serve for roofing, though palm leaves are usually used for this purpose, as well as for the linings of the walls. "El yarey" is another variety of the palm tree that is of great utility. From it the native women make the palm leaf hats that are worn by almost all the villagers and country people of Cuba. TROPICAL FRUITS IN ABUNDANCE. The fruits of Cuba are those common to the tropics. Bananas, pineapples, oranges, lemons and bread-fruit all grow in abundance, delicious to the taste and delightful to the eye. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., after returning from a vacation trip to Cuba, wrote a charming description of a fruit garden that it was his good fortune to visit there: "The garden contained a remarkable variety of trees, including some thrifty exotics. Here the mango, with its peach-like foliage, was bending on the ground with the weight of its ripening fruit; the alligator pear was marvelously beautiful in its full blossom, suggesting, in form and color, the passion flower; the soft, delicate foliage of the tamarind was like our sensitive plant; the banana trees were in full bearing, the deep green fruit (it is ripened and turns yellow off the tree), being in clusters of a hundred, more or less, tipped at the same time by a single, pendent, glutinous bud, nearly as large as a pineapple. The date palm, so suggestive of the far east, and the only one we had seen in Cuba, was represented by a choice specimen, imported in its youth. There was also the star-apple tree, remarkable for its uniform and graceful shape, full of green fruit, with here and there a ripening specimen; so, also, was the favorite zapota, its rusty coated fruit hanging in tempting abundance. From low, broad spreading trees depended the grape fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. The cocoanut palm, with its tall, straight stem, and clustering fruit, dominated all the rest. Guava, fig, custard apple, and bread-fruit trees, all were in bearing. "Our hospitable host plucked freely of the choicest for the benefit of his chance visitors. Was there ever such a fruit garden before, or elsewhere? It told of fertility of soil and deliciousness of climate, of care, judgment, and liberal expenditure, all of which combined had turned these half a dozen acres of land into a Gan Eden. Through his orchard of Hesperides, we were accompanied also by the proprietor's two lovely children, under nine years of age, with such wealth of promise in their large black eyes and sweet faces as to fix them on our memory with photographic fidelity. Before leaving the garden we returned with our intelligent host once more to examine his beautiful specimens of bananas, which, with its sister fruit, the plantain, forms so important a staple of fruit in Cuba and throughout all tropical regions. It seems that the female banana tree bears more fruit than the male, but not so large. The average clusters of the former comprise here about one hundred, but the latter rarely bears over sixty or seventy distinct specimens of the cucumber-shaped product. From the center of its large, broad leaves, which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or fifteen feet, there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, this sheltering leaf drops off, and another unfolds, exposing its little brood of fruit; and so the process goes on, until six or eight rings of young bananas are started, forming, as we have said, bunches numbering from seventy to a hundred. The banana is a herbaceous plant, and after fruiting, its top dies; but it annually sprouts up again fresh from the roots. From the unripe fruit, dried in the sun, a palatable and nutritious flour is made." THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY. Cuban tobacco is famous throughout the world, and is one of the most profitable of all its products. Prior to 1791 the crop was sent to the national factories in Spain, by the "Commercial Company of Havana," under government contract, but during that year the "Factoria de Tobacco" was established in Havana by the government. The tobacco was classified as superior, medium and inferior, and was received from the growers at fixed prices. In 1804 these were six, five and two and a half dollars per arrobe (a Spanish unit of weight, subject to local variations, but averaging about twenty-seven pounds avoirdupois). By comparing the different prices with the quantity of each class of tobacco produced, we find that the "Factoria" paid an average price of $16 per hundred pounds for the leaf tobacco. With the expense of manufacture, the cigars cost the government seventy-five cents per pound; snuff, fine grain and good color, forty-three cents, and common soft, or Seville, nineteen cents a pound in Havana. In good years, when the crop amounted to 350,000 arrobes of leaf, 128,000 arrobes were manufactured for Spain, 80,000 for Havana, 9,200 for Peru, 6,000 for Buenos Ayres, 2,240 for Mexico, and 1,100 for Caracas and Campeachy. In order to make up the amount of 315,000 arrobes, (for the crop loses ten per cent. of its weight, in loss and damage in the transportation and manufacture) we must suppose that 80,000 arrobes were consumed in the interior of the island; that is, in the country, where the royal monopoly did not extend. The maintenance of 120 slaves and the expenses of manufacture did not exceed $12,000 yearly; but the salaries of the officers of the "Factoria" amounted to $541,000. The value of the 128,000 arrobes of tobacco sent to Spain, in the abundant years, either in cigars, leaf or snuff, at the customary prices there, exceeded the sum of five million dollars. It is surprising to see in the returns of the exports from Havana (documents published by the Consulado), that the exports for 1816 were only 3,400 arrobes; for the year 1823, only 13,900 arrobes of leaf tobacco; and in 1825 only 70,302 pounds of cigars and 167,100 pounds of leaf tobacco and strips; but we must remember that no branch of the contraband trade is more active than that in cigars. The tobacco of the Vuelta de Abajo is the most celebrated, but large quantities are exported which are produced in other parts of the island. The cultivation of tobacco has been one of the most uncertain branches of industry in Cuba. Trammeled by restrictions and exactions, it was confined almost entirely to the poorer classes of the population, who were enabled to raise a scanty and uncertain crop through the advances of capital made them by the "Factoria." Since the suppression of this monopoly, it has had to contend with the more popular and profitable pursuit of sugar planting, which has successfully competed with it for the employment of the capital, skill and labor of the island. SUGAR CANE AND ITS CULTIVATION. Maturin Ballou, in his "Cuba Past and Present," published in 1885, when the sugar industry was in its best days, writes an interesting account of cane cultivation: "Sugar cane is cultivated like Indian corn, which it also resembles in appearance. It is first planted in rows, not in hills, and must be hoed and weeded until it gets high enough to shade its roots. Then it may be left to itself until it reaches maturity. This refers to the first laying out of a plantation, which will afterwards continue fruitful for years, by very simple processes of renewal. When thoroughly ripe the cane is of a light golden yellow, streaked here and there with red. The top is dark green, with long, narrow leaves depending, very much like those of the corn stalk, from the center of which shoots upward a silvery stem, a couple of feet in height, and from its tip grows a white fringed plume of a delicate lilac hue. The effect of a large field at its maturity, lying under a torrid sun, and gently yielding to the breeze, is very fine, a picture to live in the memory ever after. "In the competition between the products of beet-root sugar and that from sugar cane, the former controls the market, because it can be produced at a cheaper rate, besides which its production is stimulated by nearly all of the European states, through the means of liberal subsidies both to the farmer and to the manufacturer. Beet sugar, however, does not possess so high a percentage of true saccharine matter as the product of the cane, the latter seeming to be nature's most direct mode of supplying us with the article. The Cuban planters have one advantage over all other sugar-cane producing countries, in the great and inexhaustible fertility of the soil of the island. For instance, one or two hogsheads of sugar to the acre is considered a good yield in Jamaica, but in Cuba three hogsheads are the average. Fertilizing of any sort is rarely employed in the cane fields, while in beet farming it is the principal agent of success. Though the modern machinery, as lately adopted on the plantations, is very expensive, still the result achieved by it is so much superior to that of the old methods of manufacture, that the small planters are being driven from the market. Slave labor cannot compete with machinery. The low price of sugar renders economy imperative in all branches of the business, in order to leave a margin for profit. "A planter informed the author that he should spread all of his molasses upon the cane fields this year as a fertilizer, rather than send it to a distant market and receive only what it cost. He further said that thousands of acres of sugar cane would be allowed to rot in the fields this season, as it would cost more to cut, grind, pack and send it to market than could be realized for the manufactured article. Had the price of sugar remained this year at a figure which would afford the planters a fair profit, it might have been the means of tiding over the chasm of bankruptcy which has long stared them in the face, and upon the brink of which they now stand. But with a more than average crop, both as to quantity and quality, whether to gather it or not is a problem. Under these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally suppressed upon the island, under the bane of civil laws, extortionate taxation, and oppressive rule. "The sugar cane yields but one crop a year. There are several varieties, but the Otaheitan seems to be the most generally cultivated. Between the time when enough of the cane is ripe to warrant the getting up of steam at the grinding mill, and the time when the heat and the rain spoils its qualities, all the sugar for the season must be made, hence the necessity for great industry on large estates. In Louisiana the grinding lasts but about eight weeks. In Cuba it continues four months. In analyzing the sugar produced on the island, and comparing it with that of the main land, the growth of Louisiana, chemists could find no difference as to the quality of the true saccharine principle contained in each. "The great sugar estates lie in the Vueltra Arriba, the region of the famous red earth. The face of this region smiles with prosperity. In every direction the traveler rides astonished through a garden of plenty, equally impressed by the magnificent extent, and the profuse fertility of the estates, whose palm avenues, plantain orchards, and cane fields succeed each other in almost unbroken succession. So productive are the estates, and so steady is the demand for the planter's crop, that the great sugar planters are, in truth, princes of agriculture. "The imposing scale of operations on a great plantation, imparts a character of barbaric regal state to the life one leads there. Looking at them simply as an entertainment, the mills of these great sugar estates are not incongruous with the easy delight of the place. Everything is open and airy, and the processes of the beautiful steam machinery go on without the odors as without the noises that make most manufactories odious. In the centrifugal process of sugar making, the molasses passes into a large vat, by the side of which is a row of double cylinders, the outer one of solid metal, the inner of wire gauze. These cylinders revolve each on an axis attached by a horizontal wheel and band to a shaft which communicates with the central engine. The molasses is ladled out into the spaces between the external and internal cylinders, and the axes are set in motion at the rate of nineteen hundred revolutions a minute. For three minutes you see only a white indistinct whirling, then the motion is arrested, slowly and more slowly the cylinders revolve, then stop, and behold! the whole inner surface of the inner cylinder is covered with beautiful crystallizations of a light yellow sugar. Watching this ingenious process, I used to fancy that somewhat in this wise might the nebulae of space be slowly fashioning into worlds." HOW CUBA HAS BEEN ROBBED BY SPAIN. Some knowledge of the enormous wealth that has accrued to Spain from her Cuban possessions may be gained from the following quotation from "Cuba and the Cubans," published in New York in 1850 by Raimundo Cabrera: "Oh, we are truly rich! "From 1812 to 1826, Cuba, with her own resources, covered the expenditures of the treasury. Our opulence dates from that period. We had already sufficient negro slaves to cut down our virgin forests, and ample authority to force them to work ... "By means of our vices and our luxury, and in spite of the hatred of everything Spanish, which Moreno attributed to us, we sent, in 1827, the first little million of hard cash to the treasury of the nation. From that time until 1864 we continued to send yearly to the mother country two millions and a half of the same stuff. According to several Spanish statisticians, these sums amounted, in 1864, to $89,107,287. We were very rich, don't you see? tremendously rich. We contributed more than five million dollars towards the requirements of the Peninsular--$5,372,205. We paid, in great part, the cost of the war in Africa. The individual donations alone amounting to fabulous sums. "But of course we have never voted for our own imposts; they have been forced upon us because we are so rich. In 1862, we had in a state of production the following estates: 2,712 stock farms, 1,521 sugar plantations, 782 coffee plantations, 6,175 cattle ranches, 18 cocoa plantations, 35 cotton plantations, 22,748, produce farms, 11,737 truck farms, 11,541 tobacco plantations, 1,731 apiaries, 153 country resorts, 243 distilleries, 468 tile works, 504 lime kilns, 63 charcoal furnaces, 54 cassava-bread factories, and 61 tanneries. To-day I do not know what we possess, because there are no statistics, and because the recently organized assessment is a hodge podge and a new burden; but we have more than at that time; surely we must have a great deal more. "For a very long time we have borne the expenses of the convict settlement of Fernando Po. We paid for the ill-starred Mexican expedition, the costs of the war in San Domingo, and with the republics of the Pacific. How can we possibly be poor? While England, France and Holland appropriate large sums for the requirements of their colonies, Spain does not contribute a single cent for hers. We do not need it, we are wading deep in rivers of gold. If the fertility of our soil did not come to our rescue, we must, perforce, have become enriched by the system of protection to the commerce of the mother country. ... The four columns of the tariff are indeed a sublime invention.. Our agricultural industries require foreign machinery, tools and utensils, which Spain does not supply, but, as she knows that we have gold to spare, she may make us pay for them very high. And since our sugar is to be sold to the United States .. never mind what they cost. When there are earthquakes in Andalusia and inundations in Murcia, hatred does not prevent us from sending to our afflicted brethren large sums ... (which sometimes fail to reach their destination.) "We are opulent? Let us see if we are. From the earliest times down to the present, the officials who come to Cuba, amass, in the briefest space of time, fortunes, to be dissipated in Madrid, and which appear never to disturb their consciences. This country is very rich, incalculably rich. In 1830 we contributed $6,120,934; in 1840, $9,605,877; in 1850, $10,074,677; in 1860, $29,610,779. During the war we did not merely contribute, we bled. We had to carry the budget of $82,000,000. "We count 1,500,000 inhabitants, that is to say, one million and a half of vicious, voluptuous, pompous spendthrifts, full of hatred and low passions, who contribute to the public charges, and never receive a cent in exchange, who have given as much as $92 per capita, and who at the present moment pay to the state what no other taxpayers the world over have ever contributed. Does anyone say that we are not prodigiously, enviably rich?" CHAPTER VIII. THE CUBANS, AND HOW THEY LIVE. Life in the Rural Districts--A Cuban Bill of Fare--The Amusements of the Country People--Sports of the Carnival--Native Dances--An Island Farm--Fruit Used for Bread--Cattle Ranches and Stock Farms --Population of the Island--Education and Religion--Railways and Steamship Lines. The traveler from the north, landing for the first time on Cuban shores, will discover his greatest delight in the radical changes he finds from everything he has been accustomed to in his own land. If he has read Prescott and Irving, he knows something of Castilian manners and customs in theory, but as the peculiarities of the people, their home life, their amusements, their religious observances, and their business methods are brought before him in reality, he is impressed with the constant charm of novelty. In times of peace, the native of Cuban soil in the rural districts knows nothing of the struggle for existence which faces the majority of mankind in colder climes. He "toils not, neither does he spin," for the reason that nature provides so freely that very little exertion is necessary to secure her gifts. Occasionally he may plow, or sow a little grain, or even pick fruit, but, as a rule, he leaves the labor to the negroes. If he lives on a main-traveled road, he may possibly provide entertainment for man and beast, where he delights in gossiping with all who come his way, and is ready to drink whenever invited. Neither does his raiment possess the glory of Solomon's, for it generally consists of a pair of loose trousers, belted with a leather band, a linen shirt of brilliant hue, frequently worn outside his pantaloons, a silk handkerchief fastened about his head, a palm-leaf hat, and bare feet encased in leather slippers. He is astute, though frank, boastful, though brave, and superstitious, if not religious. Gambling is his chief delight, and his fighting cocks receive more attention than his wife and family. His better half is more reserved than her lord, especially with strangers. She is an adept horse-woman, though she sometimes shares the animal's back with her husband, riding in front of him, almost on the neck of the horse. Her dress is the acme of simplicity (sometimes rather too simple to suit conventional ideas), and consists of a loose frock, and a handkerchief tied around her neck. Like her husband she dispenses with stockings, except on occasions of ceremony. Her pride is her hair, on which she bestows a great deal of attention, and she delights in displaying it at every possible opportunity. A CUBAN BILL OF FARE. The mode of life among the people of these rural districts is entirely unlike that of the residents of the cities. This difference extends even to their food and the manner of preparing it. In the populous centers, especially among the better classes, the table service is of the French mode, but among the country people will be found the real Cuban cuisine. The morning meal usually consists of fried pork, of which they are very fond, boiled rice, and roasted plantain, which serves them for bread. Beef, birds or roast pork are served for dinner, together with plantains and a stew composed of fresh meat, dried meat, green plantains, and all kinds of vegetables. These are cooked in a broth, thickened with a farinaceous root called malanga, and flavored with lemon juice. Rice is a staple article of diet, and no meal is complete without it. RURAL AMUSEMENTS. It is not in gastronomy alone that the Cubans of the country districts differ from their city cousins. They have their special amusements, some of which seem cruel to people of refinement, but it may be said in their defense that football is not a popular game on the island. Cock fighting is the national sport, and men, women and children will wager their last possession on the result of an encounter between chickens of fighting blood. The goose fight is another cruel sport. Two poles are placed in the ground, with a rope stretched between them, on which a live goose is hung with its feet securely tied, and its head thoroughly greased. The contestants are on horseback, and ride at full speed past the goose, endeavoring to seize its head and separate it from the body as they pass. The fowl usually dies before the efforts are successful, but the rider who finally succeeds in the noble endeavor gains the glory and the prize. There is a patron saint for every village, for whom there is a feast day, which is celebrated by masses at the church, and afterwards by games and dances. A procession is always arranged on this day, in which a little girl, dressed as an image, rides in a wagon, decorated with banners and flowers. Men in costumes of Indians lead the way, followed by others clad as Moors. A band is a necessary adjunct, and bringing up the rear are the inhabitants, marching and singing to the music of the band. When the church is reached, the people gather about the child, and she recites a composition written for the occasion. During carnival time, processions of mountebanks, cavaliers, dressed as knights of old, on horses splendidly adorned, races, masques, balls and all manner of revelries are indulged in. Dancing is a universal accomplishment, in which the young and old find enjoyment in all places and at all seasons. The Zapato, a dance peculiar to Cuba, is performed to the music of the guitar, accompanied by the voices of the dancers. It consists of fantastic posings, fancy marches, and graceful figures, and resembles in some details the "cake walks" of the negroes of our own country. AN ISLAND FARM. In the neighborhood of the larger cities are hundreds of "Estancias," which correspond to what are known as market gardens in the United States. These farms usually consist of less than a hundred acres each, and on them are raised vegetables, chickens, small fruits and other table delicacies, for the city trade. Properly looked after, this business might be one of great profit, but the land is, as a rule, cultivated by tenants, who pay a rental of about five dollars per acre a year, and who are too indolent to give it the care necessary to gain lucrative returns. The principal vegetable raised on these farms is the sweet potato, of which there are two varieties, the yellow and the white. The soil and the climate are not favorable to the cultivation of the Irish potato, and it is necessary to import this luxury, which accounts for the fact that they are seldom seen outside the cities. Plantains are raised in large quantities. This product is to the Cuban what bread is to us, and may be characterized as the standard article of food. Though less nutritious than wheat or potatoes, it is produced in vastly larger quantities from the same area, and with far less effort. It closely resembles the banana, and is in fact often regarded as a variety of that fruit. A fanciful name for it among the natives is "Adam's apple," and the story is that it was the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden. On a number of these places the business of farming has been entirely abandoned, and kilns built, where the burning of lime is carried on extensively. CATTLE RANCHES AND STOCK FARMS. The raising of cattle is one of the important industries of Cuba, and as it costs comparatively nothing to fit the stock for the market, handsome profits are realized. Herds of vast numbers roam over the prairies, receiving no attention from their owners, and are sold without any preliminary fattening. Fabulous prices are received for the fierce bulls which are used for the bull fights in the cities, and the breeding of these animals brings large returns. Hides are one of the principal exports of the island, and bone black, prepared from the bones, is sold in immense quantities to the sugar-makers, for use in the manufacture of that article. The finest horses raised in Cuba come from Puerto Principe, and magnificent specimens of the noble animal they are. They are noted for their powers of endurance, and can journey day after day, covering sixty to seventy miles, at an easy gait, without showing signs of fatigue. As horses were unknown to the original inhabitants of the island, it is supposed that the Cuban horse of to-day comes from Spanish stock, and the fact that it differs so greatly from those animals, both in appearance and quality, is explained by the changed climatic conditions in its breeding. Whatever its origin may be, it is certain that there are no finer specimens of horse flesh than are to be found in Cuba, and the natives take great care of them, almost regarding them as belonging to the family. Like the Irishman who "kept his pig in the parlor," the Cuban often stables his horse in a room of his house. PECULIAR FUNERAL CEREMONIES. One of the strangest customs that is likely to be observed by the tourist in the interior sections, is the ceremony attendant on the burial of the dead. First come small boys, with white linen gowns over their clothes, short enough to display their ragged trousers and dirty shoes. A boy in the center bears a tall pole, upon the top of which is a silver cross, partially draped, while each of the other boys carries a tall candlestick. Behind them comes the priest, in shabby attire, in one hand his prayer book, from which he is chanting from time to time, while in the other hand, the sun being hot, he carries an umbrella. Following him, a venerable old man comes tottering along, personating the acolyth, the bell-ringer, the sacristan, or other church dignitary, as may be necessary, croning out in his dreary voice, as he swings the burning censor, the second to the chants of the priest. The coffin then makes its appearance, made of rough boards, but covered with black paper muslin, and borne upon the shoulders of four villagers, a crowd of whom, all uncovered, bring up the rear. Here, as in all other Catholic countries, the spectators uncover their heads at the passing of a funeral cortege. At the church are ceremonies of reading prayers, burning candles, and sprinkling the coffin with holy water, after which the priest goes his way, and the procession takes up its line of march for the newly-made grave, in the dilapidated and neglected cemetery, where the coffin is deposited without further ceremony. No females are present during the whole affair. A family in mourning in Cuba, not only dress in dark clothes, upon which there is no luster, but they keep the windows of the house shut for six months. In fact, by an ordinance of the government, it is now prohibited to display the corpse to the public through the open windows, as was formerly done, both windows and doors being now required to be shut. AN HOSPITABLE PEOPLE. The Cuban of the better class is noted for his hospitality. His door is always open to receive whomsoever calls, be he acquaintance, friend or stranger. There is a place at his table for the visitor at all times, without money and without price, and no one having the slightest claim to courtesy of this kind need hesitate to accept the invitation. There is little travel or communication on the island, so even if the guest be an entire stranger, his host will feel amply repaid for his hospitality by the news the traveler brings from the outside world. There is a good old custom among the Danes, that when the first toast is drunk, it is to the roof of the house which covers everyone in it, meaning thereby it is all one family. This same custom might appropriately be kept up amongst the Cuban planters, for when one takes his seat at the table, he is immediately installed as one of the family circle. EDUCATION AND RELIGION. Education is woefully backward on the island. In the absence of recent statistics it is estimated that not one-tenth of the children receive lettered education of any kind, and even among the higher classes of society, liberal education is very far from being universally diffused. A few literary and scientific men are to be found both in the higher and middle ranks, and previous to the revolution, the question of public instruction excited some interest among the creole population. At Havana is the royal university with a rector and thirty professors, and medical and law schools, as well as an institution called the Royal College of Havana. There is a similar establishment at Puerto Principe, in the eastern interior, and both at Havana and Santiago de Cuba there is a college in which the branches of ecclesiastical education are taught, together with the humanities and philosophy. Besides this there are several private schools, but these are not accessible to the masses. The inhabitants can scarcely be said to have any literature, a few daily and weekly journals, under a rigid censorship, supply almost all the taste for letters in the island. To show how little liberty of opinion the newspapers of Cuba enjoy, we quote a decree issued by General Weyler, formerly Captain-General of the island: Don Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, Marquis of Tenerife, governor-general, captain-general of the Island of Cuba, and general-in-chief of this army. Under the authority of the law of public order, dated the 23rd of April, 1870. I Order and Command, 1st. No newspaper shall publish any news concerning the war which is not authorized by the staff officers. 2nd. Neither shall be published any telegraphic communications of a political character without the authority given by the secretary of the governor general in Havana, or by the civil officers in the other provinces. 3rd. It is hereby forbidden to publish any editorials, or other articles or illustrations, which may directly or indirectly tend to lessen the prestige of the mother-country, the army, or the authorities, or to exaggerate the forces and the importance of the insurrection, or in any way to favor the latter, or to cause unfounded alarm, or excite the feelings of the people. 4th. The infractions of this decree, not included in Articles first and sixth of the decree of February 16th last, will make the offenders liable to the penalties named in Article 36, of the law of the 23rd of April, 1870. 5th. All persons referred to in Article 14 of the Penal Code of the Peninsula, which is in force in this Island, will be held responsible for said infractions in the same order as established by the said Article. 6th. Whenever a newspaper has twice incurred the penalty of said offense, and shall give cause for a third penalty, it may be then suppressed. 7th. The civil governors are in charge of the fulfillment of this decree, and against their resolutions, which must be always well founded, the interested parties may appeal within twenty-four hours following their notification. VALERIANO WEYLER. Havana, April 27, 1896. POPULATION OF THE ISLAND. Conflicting accounts render it impossible to arrive at anything like a certainty as to the number of inhabitants in Cuba at the time of its conquest, but it may be estimated at from 300,000 to 400,000. There is but little doubt, however, that before 1560 the whole of this population had disappeared from the island. The first census was taken in 1774, when the population was 171,620. In 1791 it was 272,300. Owing to the disturbed condition of the island, no census of the inhabitants has been taken since that of 1887, when the total population was 1,631,687. Of this number, 1,111,303 were whites, and 520,684 were of negro blood. These figures make questionable the claim that the war for liberty is simply an insurrection of the colored against the Caucasian race. CHAPTER IX. HAVANA, THE METROPOLIS OF THE ISLAND. Havana and Its Attractions for Tourists--How to Reach Cuba-- Description of the Harbor of Havana--How the Proverbial Unhealthfulness of the City May Be Remedied--Characteristics of the Business Quarter--Residences and How the People Live--Parks and Boulevards--Other Features of Life in the City. In spite of the little encouragement which American tourists have had for visiting the city of Havana, for many years it has been a popular place of resort for the few who have tried it or have been recommended to it by their friends. With the attractions it has had during Spanish administration, when an air of constraint and suspicion marked the intercourse with every American, it will not be surprising if under changed auspices and in an atmosphere of genuine freedom, Americans will find it one of the most delightful and easily accessible places possible for them to visit. It is not all pleasant, but the unpleasant things are sometimes quite as interesting as the pleasant ones. If the traveler forms his judgments according to the actual comforts he may obtain, he will be pleased from beginning to end of his stay. If the measure of his good opinion is whether or not things are like those to which he is accustomed, he will be disappointed, because novelty reigns. But novelty does not necessarily mean discomfort. Havana may be reached by a sea voyage of three or four days from New York, on any one of several excellent steamers under the American flag, and even in winter the latter portion of the voyage will be a pleasant feature of the journey. Or the path of the American invading squadron may be followed, and the traveler, after passing through Florida by rail, may journey from Tampa by the mail steamers, and touching at Key West for a few hours, reach Havana after a voyage of two nights and a day. The Florida straits, between Cuba and the Florida keys, which were the scene of the first hostilities of the war, are but ninety miles wide, and the voyage is made from Key West in a few hours. The current of the gulf stream makes the channel a trifle reminiscent of the English channel, but once under the lee of the Cuban coast the water is still and the harbor of the old city offers shelter. In the days before the war, Morro Castle had an added interest to the traveler from the fact that behind its frowning guns and under the rocks on which it was built, were the cells of scores of sad prisoners, some of them for years in the dungeons, whose walls could tell secrets like those of the inquisition in Spain if they could but speak. Between Morro Castle and its neighbor across the way, La Punta, the vessels steam into that bay, foul with four hundred years of Spanish misrule and filth, where three hundred years of the slave trade centered, and into which the sewers of a great city poured their filth. Once inside the harbor, Cabana Castle frowns from the hills behind Morro, and on the opposite shore rise the buildings of the city itself. The harbor always has been a busy one, for the commerce of the island and of the city has been large. In times of peace, scores of vessels lie at anchor in the murky waters. The American anchorage for mail steamers for years has been in the extremest part of the bay from the city of Havana itself, in order to avoid the contagion which was threatened by a nearer anchorage. Until the Maine was guided to her ill-fated station by the harbor master, it had been long since any American vessel had stopped in that part of the harbor. PERFECT SANITARY CONDITION EASILY CREATED. The shallow harbor of Havana has its entrance from the ocean through a channel hardly more than three hundred yards wide, and nearly half a mile long, after which it broadens and ramifies until its area becomes several square miles. No fresh water stream, large or small, flows into it to purify the waters. The harbor entrance is so narrow, and the tides along that coast have so little rise and fall, that the level of water in the harbor hardly shows perceptible change day after day. The result of this is that the constant inflow of sewage from the great city pouring into the harbor is never diluted, and through the summer is simply a festering mass of corruption, fronting the whole sea wall and throwing a stench into the air which must be breathed by everyone on shipboard. There is one part of the harbor known as "dead man's hole," from which it is said no ship has ever sailed after an anchorage of more than one day, without bearing the infection of yellow fever among its crew. Along the shores of this very harbor are great warehouses for the sugar and tobacco shipped into the United States by the thousands of tons every year. To preserve our national health, our government has maintained an expensive marine hospital service and quarantine system along our southern ports which trade with Havana, in addition to supporting a marine hospital service under the eminent Dr. Burgess in Havana itself. To the rigid enforcement of this system, and the untiring vigilance of Dr. Burgess, must be credited the immunity which the United States has had from annual epidemics of yellow fever and smallpox. The guilt of Spain in permitting this shocking condition to continue, cannot in any way be palliated. For four hundred years she has had sway in the island, free to work her own will, and drawing millions of dollars of surplus revenue out of the grinding taxes she has imposed. The installation of a sanitary system of sewage, which should discharge into the open sea instead of into this cesspool which lies at the city's feet, would have been the first solution of the difficulty. The threat of danger would have been finally averted by the expenditure of a few hundred thousand dollars, which would open a channel from the further extremity of the harbor to the ocean eastward. The distance is but a few miles and the engineering problem a simple one. This and the construction of a jetty northwestward from the point on which Morro Castle stands, would divert a portion of the current of the noble gulf stream into the harbor entrance, and the foul pond of to-day would be scoured of its filth by a perennial flood which could never fail. Vera Cruz, on the Mexican coast, has proven that it is possible to exterminate yellow fever, and it is a duty owed to civilization that Havana shall follow along the same path. If all other excuses were to be ignored, the United States for years has had ample cause for intervention in Cuban affairs, as a measure of safety to the health of her own citizens, as truly as one man may complain to the authorities if his neighbor maintains a nuisance in the adjoining yard. THE BUSINESS QUARTERS OF HAVANA. Once anchored in the safest place in the harbor, the mail steamers are surrounded without delay by a fleet of peculiar boats of a sort seen only in the bay of Havana. For a bit of silver, the traveler is taken ashore, the journey to the landing stage being a matter of but a few moments. The journey through the custom house is not a formidable one, for unless there is suspicion of some contraband goods, the customs officers are not exacting upon travelers. At the door of the custom house, or aduana, wait the cabs, which are cheaper in Havana than in any other city of the new world, and they serve as a conveyance to the hotels, which are all grouped in the same neighborhood. The streets through which the traveler passes are picturesque, but hardly practical, from the American point of view. Some of them are so narrow that carriages cannot pass, and all traffic must go in one direction. Nearly all of the business streets have awnings extending from one side to the other, between the roofs, as a protection from the tropic sun. The sidewalks on some of the most pretentious streets are not wide enough for three persons to walk abreast, and on others two cannot pass. On every hand one gets the impression of antiquity, and antiquity even greater than the four hundred years of Spanish occupancy actually measures. Spanish architecture, however modern it may be, sometimes adds to that impression and one might believe himself, with little stretch of the imagination, to be in one of the ancient cities of the old world. The streets are paved with blocks of granite and other stone, roughly cut and consequently exceedingly noisy, but upon these narrow streets front some shops as fine as one might expect to discover in New York or Paris. It is true that they are not large, but they do not need to be, for nearly all are devoted to specialties, instead of carrying stocks of goods of the American diversity. The one who wants to shop will not lack for temptations. The selection is ample in any line that may be named, the styles are modern and in exquisite taste, and altogether the shops are a considerable surprise to one who judges them first from the exterior. Stores devoted exclusively to fans, parasols, gloves, laces, jewels, bronzes, silks and the beautiful cloth of pineapple fiber known as nipe cloth, are an indication of the variety that may be found. The shoes and other articles of men's and women's clothing are nearly all direct importations from Paris, and where Parisian styles dominate one may be assured that the selection is not a scanty one. Clerks are courteous even to the traditional point of Castilian obsequiousness, and altogether a shopping expedition along this Obispo street is an experience to be remembered with pleasure. HAVANA HOMES. You notice that everything is made to serve comfort and coolness. Instead of having panes of glass, the windows are open and guarded by light iron railings, and the heavy wooden doors are left ajar. You see into many houses as you pass along, and very cool and clean they look. There are marble floors, cane-seated chairs and lounges, thin lace curtains, and glimpses of courts in the center of each building, often with green plants or gaudy flowers growing in them between the parlor and the kitchen. You find much the same plan at your hotel. You may walk in at the doors or the dining room windows just as you please, for the sides of the house seem capable of being all thrown open; while in the center of the building you see the blue sky overhead. Equally cool do all the inhabitants appear to be, and the wise man who consults his own comfort will do well to follow the general example. Even the soldiers wear straw hats. The gentlemen are clad in underwear of silk or lisle thread and suits of linen, drill or silk, and the ladies are equally coolly apparelled. Havana is a dressy place, and you will be astonished at the neatness and style to which the tissue-like goods worn there are made to conform. But come and see the apartment you are to rest in every night. Ten to one the ceiling is higher than you ever saw one in a private house, and the huge windows open upon a balcony overlooking a verdant plaza. The floor is of marble or tiling, and the bed is an ornate iron or brass affair, with a tightly stretched sheet of canvas or fine wire netting in place of the mattress you are used to. You could not sleep on a mattress with any proper degree of comfort in the tropics. There is a canopy with curtains overhead, and everything about the room is pretty certain to be scrupulously clean. Conspicuous there and everywhere else that you go is a rocking chair. Rocking chairs are to be found in the houses, and in regiments in the clubs. Havana is the metropolis of the West Indies. It has more life and bustle than all the rest of the archipelago put together. If you are German, English, Scotch, Dutch, American, French or whatever you are, you will find fellow countrymen among its 250,000 souls. There is a public spirit there which is rare in these climes. The theaters astonish you by their size and elegance. The aristocratic club is the Union, but the popular one is the Casino Espanol, whose club house is a marvel of tropical elegance and beauty. Nearly all these attractions are on or near the broad, shady and imposing thoroughfare, the Prado--a succession of parks leading from the water opposite Morro Castle almost across the city. In one or another of these parks a military band plays on three evenings of the week, and the scene on such occasions is wholly new to English eyes. It is at such times that one may see the beautiful Spanish and Cuban women. They do not leave their houses in the heat of the day unless something requires them to do so, and when they do they remain in their carriages, and are accompanied by a servant or an elderly companion. So strict is the privacy with which they are surrounded that you shall see them shopping without quitting their carriages, waited on by the clerks, who bring the goods out to the vehicles. But when there is music under the laurels or palms the senoritas, in their light draperies, and wearing nothing on their heads save the picturesque mantilla of Old Spain, assemble on the paths, the seats, the sidewalks and in their carriages, and there the masculine element repairs and is very gallant, indeed. Here you will listen to the dreamy melody of these latitudes, Spanish love songs and Cuban waltzes so softly pretty that you wonder all the world does not sing and play them. On other nights the walk or drive along the Prado is very interesting. You pass some of the most elegant of the houses, and notice that they are two stories high, and that the family apartments are on the upper stories, so that you miss the furtive views of the families at meals and of the ladies reclining in the broad-tiled window sills that you have in the older one-story sections of the city. CHAPTER X. THE CITIES OF CUBA. The Harbor of Matanzas--Sports of the Carnival--Santiago de Cuba and Its Beautiful Bay--Cardinas, the Commercial Center--Enormous Exports of Sugar--The Beauties of Trinidad--Other Cities of Importance. The city of Havana may be said to stand in the same relation to Cuba that Paris does to France, for in it are centered the culture, the refinement, and the wealth of the island, but there are several other towns of considerable importance, and many of them have become places of interest since the struggle for liberty has attracted the attention of the civilized world. Chief among these is Matanzas. This city, with a normal population of about 60,000, is situated fifty miles east of Havana, with which it is connected by rail and water. Its shipping interests are second only to those of the capital, as it is the outlet of many of the richest agricultural districts of the island. The city is situated on the flats on both sides of the San Juan river, which brings down large quantities of mud and greatly impedes inland navigation. As an offset the bay is spacious, easy of access and sheltered from the violent gulf storms which prevail at some seasons. This makes the port a favorite with marine men. A large amount of money has been spent by the government to fortify and protect the city, and it has been connected by rail with all the principal towns and producing centers of the provinces. Thus it is a particularly favorite port of entry for all the supplies required in the plantations--food staples and machinery. Its exports consist principally of sugar, coffee, molasses, tobacco, honey, wax and fruits. The city is built principally of masonry and in a most substantial manner, though little effort has been made to secure architectural beauty. The pride of the city is the new theater, which is pointed out as the handsomest building in Cuba. The Empresa Academy also takes rank equal with any for the excellence of its educational facilities. There is no more charming spot in Cuba than Matanzas. The bay is like a crescent in shape, and receives the waters of the Yumuri and Matanzas rivers, two small unnavigable streams. A high bridge separates them. On this ridge back of the town stands a cathedral dedicated to the black virgin. It is a reproduction of a cathedral in the Balearic Islands. The view from its steeple is magnificent. Looking backward the valley of the Yumuri stretches to the right. It is about ten miles wide and sixty miles long, dotted with palms, and as level as a barn floor. The Yumuri breaks through the mountains near Matanzas bay something like the Arkansas river at Canon City. Carpeted with living green and surrounded with mountains this valley is one of the gems of Cuba. About ten miles from Matanzas, on the left of the road, stand what are known as the Breadloaf Mountains. They rise from the plain like the Spanish peaks in Colorado. These mountains are the headquarters of General Betancourt, who commands the insurgents in the province. The Spaniards have offered $1,000 reward for his head. Several efforts have been made to secure it, but in all cases the would-be captor has lost his own head. In accordance with the Weyler edict 11,000 reconcentrados were herded together at Matanzas, and within a year over 9,000 of them died in the city. In the Plaza, under the shadow of the Governor's residence, twenty-three people died from starvation in one day. The province of Matanzas is not larger in area than the state of Delaware, yet 55,000 people have perished from starvation and incident diseases since the order went into effect. But all the people of Matanzas are not reconcentrados, and even in the midst of war's alarms they find time for amusement, as the following description of a carnival ball will prove: "It was our good fortune to be in Matanzas during the last three days of the Carnival; and while the whole time was occupied by noisy processions and grotesque street masqueraders, the crowning ceremonies were on the last Sunday night. Then the whole town used every effort to wind up the season in a 'feu de joie' of pleasure and amusement. In almost every town of any importance there is an association of young men, generally known as 'El Liceo,' organized for artistic and literary purposes, and for social recreation. A fine large building is generally occupied by the association, with ample space for theatrical representations, balls, etc.; in addition to which there are billiard rooms, and reading rooms, adorned, probably with fine paintings. In Matanzas this association is known as 'El Liceo Artistico y Literario de Matanzas,' and is a particularly fine one, being composed of the elite of the city, with a fine large house, to which they made an addition by purchasing the 'Club,' beautifully situated upon the Plaza. "Thanks to our letter of introduction, we were, through the kind offices of the members, permitted to enjoy the pleasures of their grand ball, called the 'Pinata,' which was indeed a very grand affair, attended by the beauty and fashion of Matanzas. The ball commenced at the seasonable hour of 8 o'clock in the evening; and at entering, each one was required to give up his ticket to a committee of managers, who thus had a kind of general inspection of all those admitted. "The ball room was a long, large hall, at the other end of which was a pretty stage for theatrical representations; on each side of the room was an arched colonnade, over which were the galleries, where the band was posted. Hanged in double rows of chairs the full length of the room in front of the colonnade, sat hundreds of dark-eyed angels, calm, dignified, and appearing, most of them, to be mere lookers on; not a black coat among them. All of these, with the exception of a few courageous ones that were facing all this beauty, were huddled together at the other end of the room, wanting the courage (it could not be the inclination) to pay their respects to 'las Senoritas.' "What is exactly the trouble in Cuba between the gentlemen and the ladies I never have been able to quite understand. The men are polished and gentlemanly, as a general thing--sufficiently intelligent, apparently; while the ladies are dignified and pretty. And yet I have never seen that appearance of easy and pleasant intercourse between the sexes which makes our society so charming. "I am inclined to believe that it is the fault of custom, in a great degree, which surrounds women in Cuba with etiquette, iron bars and formality. This would seem to apply to the natives only, for nothing can be kinder, more friendly and courteous than the manners of the Cuban ladies to strangers, at least, judging from what is seen. It may be as a lady with whom I was arguing the point said: 'It is very different with strangers, Senor, and particularly with the Americans, who are celebrated for their chivalric gallantry to ladies.' Now I call that a very pretty national compliment. "Taking the arm of my friend, we walk up and down to see, as he expresses it, 'who there is to be presented to,' and faith, if beauty is to be the test, it would seem to be a hard matter to make up one's mind, there is so much of it, but after a turn or two around the room, this form is gone through with, and one begins to feel at home and ready to enjoy one's self. "When one finds ladies (and there are numbers) who have been educated abroad, either in the United States or Europe, he finds them highly accomplished and entertaining. Several that I had the pleasure of meeting on this and other occasions spoke French perfectly, some English, and one or two both of these in addition to their native tongue. "But let us return to the ball, which is all the time going on with great eclat. It opens with the advent upon the stage of a dozen or more young men, under the direction of a leader, in some fancy costume very handsomely made, who, after making their bow to the audience, go through some novel kind of a dance. The performers take this means of filling up the intervals of the general dance, and amusing the audience. "It is now getting late, and the rooms are terribly warm. The fans of the long rows of lovely sitters, who have not moved out of their places the whole evening, keep up a constant flutter, and one begins to sigh for a breath of fresh air, and relief from the discomforts of a full dress suit. But the grand affair of the evening is yet to come off, we are told, so we linger on, and are finally rewarded by the grand ceremony of the 'Pinata,' from which the ball takes its name. This word I can hardly give the meaning of as applied to this ceremony, which consists in having pendent from the ceiling a form of ribbands and flowers, the ribbands numbered and hanging from the flowery the rights to pull which are drawn like prizes in a lottery. Of these ribbands, one is fastened to a beautiful crown of flowers, which, when the ribband to which it is attached is pulled, falls into the hands of the lucky person, who has the privilege of crowning any lady he may deem worthy of the honor 'Queen of the Ball,' to whom every one is obliged to yield obedience, homage, and admiration. There is, also, the same opportunity afforded to the ladies to crown a king. The whole ceremony is pretty, and creates much merriment and amusement. "This ceremony over, at midnight we sally out into the open air. But what a sight greets us there! Lights blaze in such profusion that it seems more than day. Music and dancing are everywhere. Songs and mirth have taken complete possession of the place, while people of all ages, sexes and colors are mixed together, in what seems inextricable confusion, intent upon having a good time in the open air while their masters and betters are doing the same thing under cover. This is a carnival sight indeed, and only to be seen in a tropical clime." GUANTANAMO, THE HOME OF THE PIRATES. Approaching Cuba as Columbus did--across the narrow stretch of sea from San Domingo--you first sight the long, low promontory of the eastern tip, which the discoverer named Point Maysi. So different is the prospect from that seen at the other end of the island, as you come down in the usual route from New York or Florida, that you can hardly believe it is the same small country. From Maysi Point the land rises in sharp terraces, backed by high hills and higher mountains, all so vague in mist and cloud that you do not know where land ends and sky begins. Coming nearer, gray ridges are evolved, which look like cowled monks peering over each other's shoulders, with here and there a majestic peak towering far above his fellows--like the Pico Turquino, 11,000 feet above the sea. Sailing westward along this south shore, the "Queen of the Antilles" looks desolate and forbidding, as compared to other portions of the West Indies; a panorama, of wild heights and sterile shores, and surge-beaten cliffs covered with screaming sea birds. At rare intervals an opening in the rock-bound coast betrays a tiny harbor, bordered by cocoa palms, so guarded and concealed by hills, and its sudden revelation, when close upon it, astonishes you as it did the first explorer. According to tradition, everyone of these was once a pirate's lair, in the good old days we read about, when "long, low, suspicious-looking craft, with raking masts," used to steal out from sheltered coves to plunder the unwary. Each little bay, whose existence was unknown to honest mariners, has a high wooded point near its entrance, where the sea robbers kept perpetual watch for passing merchantmen and treasure-laden galleons, their own swift-sailing vessels safe out of sight within the cove; and then, at a given signal out they would dart upon the unsuspecting prey like a spider from his web. Among the most notorious piratical rendezvous was Gauntanamo, which our warships are said to have shelled two or three times of late. In recent years its narrow bay, branching far inland like a river, has become of considerable consequence, by reason of a railway which connects it with Santiago, and also because the patriot army, hidden in the nearby mountains, have entertained hopes of overcoming the Spanish garrison and making it a base for receiving outside assistance. Before the war there were extensive sugar plantations in this city, now all devastated. The Cobre mountains, looming darkly against the horizon, are the great copper and iron range of Cuba, said to contain untold mineral wealth, waiting to be developed by Yankee enterprise. In earlier days $4,000,000 a year was the average value of Cuba's copper and iron exports; but in 1867 6,000,000 tons were taken out in less than ten months. Then Spain put her foot in it, as usual. Not content with the lion's share, which she had always realized in exorbitant taxes on the product, she increased the excise charges to such an extent as to kill the industry outright. For a long time afterward the ore lay undisturbed in the Cobre "pockets," until the attention of Americans was turned this way. Their first iron and copper claims in these mountains were recognized by the Cuban government about seventeen years ago. Three Yankee corporations have developed rich tracts of mining territory hereabouts, built railways from the coast to their works on the hills and exported, ore to the United States. The oldest of these companies employed 2,000 men, and had 1,600 cars and a fleet of twenty steamers for the transportation of its output. The Carnegie Company, whose product was shipped to Philadelphia, also employed upwards of a thousand men. SANTIAGO DE CUBA. At last an abrupt termination of the stern, gray cliffs which mark this shore line indicates the proximity of Santiago harbor, and a nearer approach reveals the most picturesque fort or castle, as well as one of the oldest, to be found on the western hemisphere. An enormous rounding rock, whose base has been hollowed into great caverns by the restless Caribbean, standing just at the entrance of the narrow channel leading into the harbor, is carried up from the water's edge in a succession of walls, ramparts, towers and turrets, forming a perfect picture of a rock-ribbed fortress of the middle ages. This is the famous castle of San Jago, the Moro, which antedates the more familiar fortress of the same name in Havana harbor by at least a hundred years. Words are of little use in describing this antique, Moorish-looking stronghold, with its crumbling, honey-combed battlements, queer little flanking turrets and shadowy towers, perched upon the face of a dun-colored cliff 150 feet high--so old, so odd, so different from anything in America with which to compare it. A photograph, or pencil sketch is not much better, and even a paint brush could not reproduce the exact shadings of its time-worn, weather-mellowed walls--the Oriental pinks and old blues and predominating yellows that give it half its charm. Upon the lowermost wall, directly overhanging the sea, is a dome-shaped sentry box of stone, flanked by antiquated cannon. Above it the lines of masonry are sharply drawn, each guarded terrace receding upon the one next higher, all set with cannon and dominated by a massive tower of obsolete construction. It takes a good while to see it all, for new stories and stairways, wings and terraces, are constantly cropping out in unexpected places, but as it occupies three sides of the rounding cliff and the pilot who comes aboard at the entrance to the channel guides your steamer close up under the frowning battlements, you have ample time to study it. Window holes cut into rock in all directions show how extensive are the excavations. A large garrison is always quartered here, even in time of peace, when their sole business is searching for shady places along the walls against which to lean. There are ranges above ranges of walks, connected by stairways cut into the solid rock, each range covered with lolling soldiers. You pass so near that you can hear them chattering together. Those on the topmost parapet, dangling their blue woolen legs over, are so high and so directly overhead that they remind you of flies on the ceiling. In various places small niches have been excavated in the cliff, some with crucifixes, or figures of saints, and in other places the bare, unbroken wall of rock runs up, sheer straight 100 feet. Below, on the ocean side, are caves, deep, dark and uncanny, worn deep into the rock. Some of them are so extensive that they have not been explored in generations. The broad and lofty entrances to one of them, hollowed by the encroaching sea, is as perfect an arch as could be drawn by a skillful architect, and with it a tradition is connected which dates back a couple of centuries. A story or two above these wave-eaten caverns are many small windows, each heavily barred with iron. They are dungeons dug into the solid rock, and over them might well be written, "Leave hope behind, ye who enter here!" A crowd of haggard, pallid faces are pressed against the bars; and as you steam slowly by, so close that you might speak to the wretched prisoners, it seems as if a shadow had suddenly fallen upon the bright sunshine, and a chill, like that of coming death, oppresses the heart. Since time out of mind, the Moro of Santiago has furnished dungeons for those who have incurred the displeasure of the government infinitely more to be dreaded than its namesake in Havana. Had these slimy walls a tongue, what stories they might reveal of crime and suffering, of tortures nobly undergone, of death prolonged through dragging years and murders that will not "out" until the judgment day. Against that old tower, a quarter of a century ago our countrymen of the Virginius were butchered like sheep. Scores of later patriots have been led out upon the ramparts and shot, their bodies, perhaps, with life yet in them, falling into the sea, where they were snapped up by sharks as soon as they touched the water. The narrow, winding channel which leads from the open sea into the harbor, pursues its sinuous course past several other fortifications of quaint construction, but of little use against modern guns--between low hills and broad meadows, fishing hamlets and cocoanut groves. Presently you turn a sharp angle in the hills and enter a broad, land-locked bay, inclosed on every side by ranges of hills with numerous points and promontories jutting into the tranquil water, leaving deep little coves behind them, all fringed with cocoa-palms. Between this blue bay and a towering background of purple mountains lies the city which Diego Velazquez, its founder, christened in honor of the patron saint of Spain, as far back as the year 1514. It is the oldest standing city in the new world, excepting Santo Domingo, which Columbus himself established only eighteen years earlier. By the way, San Jago, San Diego and Santiago, are really the same name, rendered Saint James in our language; and wherever the Spaniards have been are numbers of them. This particular city of Saint James occupies a sloping hillside, 600 miles southeast from Havana, itself the capital of a department, and ranks the third city of Cuba in commercial importance--Matanzas being second. As usual in all these southern ports, the water is too shallow for large vessels to approach the dock and steamers have to anchor a mile from shore. While waiting the coming of health or customs officials, these lordly gentlemen who are never given to undignified haste, you have ample time to admire the prospect, and if the truth must be told, you will do well to turn about without going ashore, if you wish to retain the first delightful impressions--for this old city of Spain's patron saint is one of the many to which distance lends enchantment. Red-roofed buildings of stone and adobe entirely cover the hillside, with here and there a dome, a tower, a church steeple shooting upward, or a tell palm poking its head above a garden wall--the glittering green contrasting well with the ruddy tiles and the pink, gray, blue and yellow of the painted walls. In the golden light of a tropical morning it looks like an oriental town, between sapphire sea and turquoise mountains. Its low massive buildings, whose walls surround open courts, with pillared balconies and corridors, the great open windows protected by iron bars instead of glass, and roofs covered with earthen tiles--are a direct importation from Southern Spain, if not from further east. Tangiers, in Africa, is built upon a similar sloping hillside, and that capital of Morocco does not look a bit more Moorish than Santiago de Cuba. On the narrow strip of laud bordering the eastern edge of the harbor, the Moro at one end and the city at the other, are some villas, embowered in groves and gardens, which, we are told, belong mostly to Americans who are interested in the Cobre mines. The great iron piers on the right belong to the American mining companies, built for loading ore upon their ships. CARDINAS. Fifty miles east of Matanzas is the city of Cardinas, the last port of any consequence on the north coast of the island. It has a population of 25,000, and is the capital of a fertile district. It is one of the main outlets of Cuba's richest province, Matanzas, and is the great railroad center of the island, or, more properly speaking, it ought to be, as the railroads of the country form a junction fifteen miles inland, at an insignificant station called Jouvellenes. In time of peace Cardinas enjoys a thriving business, particularly in sugar and molasses, its exports of the former sometimes amounting to 100,000 tons a year. To the west and south stretch the great sugar estates which have made this section of Spain's domain a prize to be fought for. The water side of the town is faced with long wharves and lined with warehouses, and its extensive railway depot would do credit to any metropolis. There are a few pretentious public buildings, including the customs house, hospital and college. Its cobble paved streets are considerably wider than those of Havana, and have two lines of horse cars. There is gas and electric light, and more two-story houses than one is accustomed to see on the island. But, notwithstanding the broad, blue bay in front, and the Paseo, whose tall trees seem to be touching finger tips across the road, congratulating each other on the presence of eternal summer, Cardinas is not an attractive town. One misses the glamor of antiquity and historic interest which pervades Havana, Matanzas and Santiago, and feels somehow that the town is new without being modern, young but not youthful. OTHER CITIES OF IMPORTANCE. Puerto Principe, or to give it its full name in the Spanish tongue, Santa Maria de Puerto Principe, is the capital of the Central department, and is situated about midway between the north and south coasts, 305 miles southeast of Havana, and forty-five miles southwest of Nuevitas, its port, with which it is connected by railroad. Its population is about 30,000 and it is surrounded by a rich agricultural district, the chief products of which are sugar and tobacco. The climate is hot, moist and unhealthy. It was at one time the seat of the supreme court of all the Spanish colonies in America. One of the most attractive cities of Cuba is Trinidad, which lies near the south coast, three miles by rail from the port of Casildas. It is beautifully situated on high land overlooking the sea, and on account of its mild and very equable climate it is a favorite resort for tourists and invalids. Nuevitas, Sancti Espiritu, Baracoa and Cienfuegos are all centers of population with many natural advantages, and with a just form of government, and the advent of American enterprise and capital, they might become prosperous, attractive, and of great commercial importance. CHAPTER XI. MUTTERINGS OF INSURRECTION. Slavery in Cuba--Horrible Tortures Inflicted--The Conspiracy of Lopez--The United States Interferes--Lopez Captured and Executed --Seizure of American Ships--Our Government Demands and Secures Indemnity From Spain--Enormous Salaries of Cuban Officials-- Oppressive Taxation. Slavery was a demoralizing influence to Cuba as it has been, to every other country in which the system has existed, and to its presence was traced one of the most sensational episodes in all the sensational history of the unhappy island. It is impossible to know to what extent the suspected insurrection of slaves on the sugar plantations about Matanzas was an actual threat. So horrible were the charges made by the accusers that it is almost impossible to believe them. At any rate, such an insurrection was anticipated, and the authorities took measures to crush it out, more severe than any such governmental movement has been since the days of the Spanish Inquisition itself. It was impossible to obtain witnesses by ordinary methods, so the most shocking forms of torture were employed. Those who refused to confess whatever charges happened to be brought against them were tortured till they did confess, and then probably executed for the crimes which they admitted under such circumstances. By such "judicial" processes, 1,346 persons were convicted, of whom seventy-eight were shot and the others punished less severely in various ways. Hundreds of others died from the tortures to which they were subjected, or in the foul prisons in which they were confined, and of these we have no record. Of those convicted and punished under the alleged forms of law, fourteen were white, 1,242 were free negroes, and fifty-nine were slaves. The negroes of Cuba have never forgotten the barbarities to which their parents were subjected in that trying year. The most notable outbreak of Cuban insurrectionary forces prior to that of the Ten Years' war, which began in 1868, was that known as the conspiracy of Lopez. As early as May, 1847, Narcisso Lopez and a number of his associates who had planned an insurrection in the central part of the island, were pursued to the United States by Spanish agents, who had kept track of their conspiracy. The Lone Star Society was in close sympathy with these refugees, and to a certain extent the two were co-existent. Lopez, in 1849, organized a military expedition to invade Cuba. By the exertions of the officers of the United States government the sailing of the expedition was prevented. Notwithstanding the activity of the government, however, Lopez, in the following year, got together a force of 600 men outside of the United States, shipped arms and ammunition to them from this country, and on May 19, 1850, made a landing at Cardenas. The United States authorities had put the Spanish government in Cuba on the alert for this expedition. President Taylor had issued a proclamation warning all citizens of the United States not to take part in such an expedition or to assist it in any way. The expedition was driven out to sea from Cardenas a few days after it landed, sailed for Key West, and there disbanded. Meantime there were a number of uprisings in the island between groups of unhappy natives who had not the wisdom to co-operate in the effort to resist the oppressive hand of the Spaniards. In August of 1851, Lopez eluded the United States authorities at the port of New Orleans, and sailed out into the Gulf of Mexico with an expedition 450 strong. His lieutenant on this expedition was a Colonel Crittenden, a native of the State of Kentucky. They landed near Bahia Honda, about thirty miles west of Havana, and found the government forces waiting for them. Colonel Crittenden, with a subdivision of 150 men, was compelled to surrender, and the rest were scattered. Lopez, with fifty others, was captured, taken to Havana, and there executed. The circumstances attending the Lopez failure, and several Spanish outrages against American citizens and vessels, aroused deep feeling in the United States, and the sentiment was growing rapidly that it was a national duty to our own peace, to do something that would make the troublesome neighbor a pleasant one. It was fifty years before action was taken, but, once begun, it was well done. It was in 1848, prior to the Lopez invasion, that President Polk made the first approaches to the Spanish government with a suggestion to purchase the island for $100,000,000, but was refused with scant consideration. A few years later came the succession of attacks on American merchant vessels by Spanish ships of war, on the pretext that the intercepted craft were in filibuster service. Some of these were fired on, and the American mail bags opened, the steamships Falcon and Crescent City being in this list. The most flagrant case was that of the Black Warrior, a large steamer in coasting trade between New York and Mobile. In February, 1850, while in the harbor of Havana, she was stopped, her cargo confiscated, and a fine of twice its value declared. Her captain hauled down the colors, and taking them with him, left the vessel as a Spanish capture. After five years of "diplomacy," Spain paid an indemnity of $300,000 for the outrage. It was in 1852 that the governments of Great Britain and France tried to draw the United States into an agreement on the question of Cuba, which was happily refused on genuinely American grounds. It was suggested that all the parties should be bound not to acquire Cuba themselves, nor to permit any other power to do so. Our government gave the proposal respectful consideration, but declined to enter into any such arrangement, on the ground that we prefer to avoid entangling foreign alliances, that it would be unwise, if not unconstitutional, to tie our hands for the future regardless of what might happen, and that on geographical grounds, while England and France were making very slight concessions, we were asked to make a very important one. The United States came as near to the purchase of Cuba in 1854 as it ever was, but Spain gave the plan little encouragement. Three American ministers to European countries, Messrs. Buchanan, Mason and Soule, met at Ostend and formulated a plan for the purchase, signing and issuing what came to be known as the Ostend manifesto. They recommended the purchase of the island for $120,000,000, and that in no event should it be allowed to come under the power of any other European government than the one by which it was held. At this time, and afterward, while filibustering expeditions were frequent and disorder constantly threatening in Cuba, the subject of the acquisition of Cuba was discussed in Congress, but no headway was made in the matter. At last, conditions in the island became intolerable to the patriots there, and the Ten Years' war began. It is necessary at this point to relate some of the causes of the frequent disorders and uprisings in the island of Cuba. Some of the features of Spanish misgovernment in the colony have been named, but the catalogue is far from complete. The most judicial writers, however bitterly they condemn Spain, admit that that peninsular kingdom has itself suffered and that the people have suffered almost beyond endurance themselves. Cuba is not the only land with which we may share a little of our sympathy. But sympathy for Spain must come from other things than oppression from without. Her oppression is within her own borders, and her authorities have tried to shift the burden of it to the colonists across the sea. The debt of Spain has reached enormous proportions, and having fallen from her high estate as a commercial nation, it has become impossible for the great interest charges on her floating debt to be paid by ordinary and correct methods. Says one writer: "To pay the interest necessitates the most grinding oppression. The moving impulse is not malice, but the greed of the famishing; and oppressor and oppressed alike are the objects for sympathy." The annual revenue raised in the island of Cuba had reached nearly $26,000,000 by the time of the outbreak of the Ten Years' war, and preparations were in progress for largely increasing the exactions. The large revenue raised was expended in ways to irritate the Cubans or any one else who had to help pay it. The annual salary of the captain general was $50,000, when the president of the United States was getting only $25,000 a year. Each provincial governor in Cuba got a salary of $12,000, while the prime minister of Spain received only half that. The bishop of Havana and the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba each received a salary of $18,000. All offices, civil, military and ecclesiastical, were productive of rich perquisites, except in those cases where stealing was simpler. Wholesale corruption in the custom houses was generally known and admitted by all. The thefts in the custom houses in Havana was estimated at forty per cent, and in Santiago at seventy per cent of the entire revenue. All offices except the very lowest, in church and state alike, were filled by men sent from Spain, with the frank understanding that as soon as he could, each new appointee could garner a fortune by fair means and foul combined, he should retire and let another be sent over to have a turn at the plunder. The result of this was that strangers were always in authority, men with no sympathy for local need, and no local reputation to sustain. It is perfectly obvious what sort of a public service such conditions would create. As might have been expected, the result was the growth of two parties, one the native-born Cubans, and called the insulares, the other of those from Spain, and their adherents, known as the peninsulares. The line between them has been sharply drawn for many years, and they are on opposite sides of everything. It is from the ranks of the continentals that the volunteer corps of Cuba has been drawn, one of the most aggravating and threatening of all influences against peace in Cuba. Spain imposed differential duties in such a way as to virtually monopolize the trade of the island. At the same time the prices of all imports to Cuba were forced, to an unnatural figure, to the great distress of the people. Petty oppression in postage and in baptismal fees multiplied, so that instead of petty it became great. The increase in taxation of Cuba for use in Spain in two years prior to the outbreak of the Ten Years' war was more than $14,000,000, and the next year it was proposed to increase it still more. The cities were hopelessly in debt and unable to make the most ordinary and most necessary public improvements. What few schools there had been were nearly all closed. Lacking insane asylums, the unfortunate of that class were kept in the jails. The people saw a country separated from them but by a narrow stretch of water, where freedom reigned. They saw that they were being heavily oppressed with taxation for the benefit of the people of Spain, and that, in addition, they were being robbed mercilessly for the benefit of the authorities who were placed over them temporarily. If the money collected from them had been expended for their benefit in the island, or had been expended honestly, the case might have been different. As it was, however, an intolerable condition had been endured too long, and they rose against it for the struggle known to history as the Ten Years' war. CHAPTER XII. OUTBREAK OF THE TEN YEARS' WAR Cuba Again Stirred to Turmoil--The Taxes of the Island Increased --A Declaration of Independence--Civil Government Organized-- Meeting of the Legislature, and Election of Officers--The Edict of a Tyrant. Before the outbreak of the Ten Years' War, the reform party in Cuba, which included all the most enlightened, wealthy and influential citizens of the island, had exhausted all the resources at their command to induce Spain to establish a more just and equitable administration of affairs, but all to no avail. It was proposed that Cuba receive an autonomist constitution. The abolition of the supreme power of the Captain General, the freedom of the press, the right of petition, the regulation of the chief frauds by which elections were so arranged that no Cuban could hold government office, the right of assembly, representation in the Cortes, and complete local self-government were among the reforms asked for. The plans were considered in Spain and were reconsidered, and considered again, and that was about all that ever came of them, except that in June, 1868, Captain General Lersundi was permitted to raise the direct taxes on the island ten per cent. Finally, driven to a point where they could endure it no longer, they made the start for freedom, and began to fight for it, as brave men should do and have done through the history of the world. Several months before the revolution in Spain and the abdication of Isabella, measures had been taken to prepare for the effort to achieve independence. At last matters progressed so rapidly in the mother country that the Cubans dared not wait for the completion of their plans, but on October 10, 1868, began the hostilities. On that day, Carlos M. de Cespedes, a lawyer of Bayamo, took the initiative with 128 poorly armed men, and issued a declaration of independence at Yara. This declaration justified itself by referring in the following terms to the grievances that have been outlined: "In arming ourselves against the tyrannical government of Spain, we must, according to precedent in all civilized countries, proclaim before the world the cause that impels us to take this step, which, though likely to entail considerable disturbances upon the present, will ensure the happiness of the future. ... And as Spain has many a time promised us Cubans to respect our rights, without having fulfilled her promises; and she continues to tax us heavily, and by so doing is likely to destroy our wealth; as we are in danger of losing our property, our lives and our honor under Spanish dominion," etc. Within a few weeks Cespedes was at the head of 15,000 men, ill-prepared for war, so far as arms and equipment were concerned, but well provided with resolution, bravery and a just cause. A civil government was organized, and a constitution drawn up, providing for an elective president and vice-president, a cabinet, and a single legislative chamber. It also declared the immediate abolition of slavery. This constitution was promulgated at Guaimaro in Central Cuba, on the 10th of April, 1869. The legislature met soon after, and elected Cespedes president, and Francisco M. Aguilero vice-president. This insurrection soon assumed formidable dimensions, and the following edict was issued by General Balmaceda: Inhabitants of the country! The reinforcement of troops that I have been waiting for have arrived. With them I shall give protection to the good, and punish promptly those that still remain in rebellion against the government of the metropolis. You know that I have pardoned those who have fought us with arms; that your wives, mothers and sisters have found in me the unexpected protection that you have refused them. You know, also, that many of those we have pardoned have turned against us again. Before such ingratitude, such villainy, it is not possible for me to be the man I have been; there is no longer a place for a falsified neutrality; he that is not for me is against me; and that my soldiers may know how to distinguish, you hear the order they carry. 1st. Every man, from the age of fifteen years upward, found away from his habitation (finca), and who does not prove a justified motive therefor, will be shot. 2nd. Every habitation unoccupied will be burned by the troops. 3rd. Every habitation from which does not float a white flag, as a signal that its occupants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes. Women that are not living in their own homes, or at the houses of their relatives, will collect in the town of Jiguani, or Bayamo, where maintenance will be provided. Those who do not present themselves will be conducted forcibly. The foregoing determinations will commence to take effect on the 14th of the present month. EL CONDE DE BALMACEDA. Bayamo, April 4, 1869. Even Weyler, the "Butcher," has never succeeded in concocting a manifesto that surpassed this in malicious excuses for the ancient Spanish amusements of pillage, incendiarism and murder. THE CAUSE A JUST ONE. It is now conceded by high Spanish authorities that the insurgents had just grounds for this revolt, and Senor Dupuy de Lome, formerly the Spanish minister to the United States, admits in a letter to the New York Herald that a very large majority of the leading citizens of the island were in sympathy with the struggle for liberty. The new government received the moral support of nearly all of the South American republics, but as many of them were troubled with internal dissensions, and uncertain of their own security, they were not in a condition to furnish assistance of a more practical nature, and the revolutionists were left to work out their own salvation. In an exhaustive review of the trouble between Spain and her Cuban possessions, published in 1873, the Edinburg Review said: "It is well known that Spain governs the island of Cuba with an iron and bloodstained hand. The former holds the latter deprived of civil, political and religious liberty. Hence the unfortunate Cubans being illegally prosecuted and sent into exile, or executed by military commissions in time of peace; hence their being kept from public meeting, and forbidden to speak or write on affairs of state; hence their remonstrances against the evils that afflict them being looked upon as the proceedings of rebels, from the fact that they are bound to keep silence and obey; hence the never-ending plague of hungry officials from Spain to devour the product of their industry and labor; hence their exclusion from public stations, and want of opportunity to fit themselves for the art of government; hence the restrictions to which public instruction with them is subjected, in order to keep them so ignorant as not to be able to know and enforce their rights in any shape or form whatever; hence the navy and the standing army, which are kept in their country at an enormous expenditure from their own wealth, to make them bend their knees and submit their necks to the iron yoke that disgraces them; hence the grinding taxation under which they labor, and which would make them all perish in misery but for the marvelous fertility of their soil." CHAPTER XIII. THE MASSACRE OF THE VIRGINIUS OFFICERS AND CREW. Excitement in the United States over a Spanish Outrage of Twenty-five Years Ago--The Virginius a Blockade Runner--Severity of the Spanish Court Martial--Insolence to the American Consul--Indignation in the United States--Negotiations Between Washington and Madrid--Settlement an Unsatisfactory One to Most People--No Just Retribution Ever Made. It was less than twenty-five years before the destruction of the Maine, that another vessel whose crew met its fate in a Spanish port in Cuba was the subject of as intense public interest in the United States as that created by the catastrophe of 1898. The hopeful progress of the Cuban revolution of 1868-78 had stimulated their friends in the United States to aid the insurgents in every way possible, by money, men and the munitions of war. Filibustering was constant and scarcely discouraged by the people of the United States, in spite of the protest of Spain. It was as a result of this condition that the terrible affair of the Virginius occurred. The case of the Virginius had in it elements of tragedy that made it more spectacular and dramatic than that of the Maine, and American spirit was worked to an even higher tension than it is now, before diplomacy and caution averted a war between the United States and Spain. In the case of the Virginius the facts of Spanish aggression were in no way denied, but, on the contrary, avowed for a time with pride, until the authorities at Madrid subdued their people, who were making a settlement more difficult by their talk. The only controversy was as to whether or not Spain's action in the matter was within its rights. But the settlement, however it might have left the rights of the vessel still unsolved, was a rebuke to Spain, and for its execution of American citizens with scarcely a formality of law Spain has never been forgiven by those who remember it, whatever diplomacy decided as to being satisfied. The Virginius was originally an English-built sidewheel steamer called the Virgin, and during the war between the States was one of the most famous of blockade runners until captured by a vessel of the United States. In 1870 she was sold in Washington to an agent of the Cuban Junta at New York, her name was changed to Virginius, and she cleared for Curacoa in the West Indies. From that time till her unhappy fate she was never in United States waters. At Aspinwall and in the ports of Venezuela and the West Indies she was known for three years as the most daring and the most successful of filibusters, making repeated landings on the Cuban coast with supplies of arms, ammunition, food and clothes for the insurgents who were then fighting the Ten-Years' war. In all her filibustering it was claimed, however, that the Virginius never lost her character as an American ship, though the Cuban flag was kept at the masthead whenever that practice served any good purpose. The vessel sailed on the fatal voyage from Kingston, Jamaica, October 23, 1873, having cleared at the United States consulate as a United States vessel bound for Port Simon, Costa Rica. The commander was Captain Joseph Fry, a citizen of the United States. The cargo was made up of munitions of war for the Cuban insurgents, and the crew was part of Cuban and part of American citizens. There were also on board a number of enlisted men on their way to join the insurgent army. It was not until October 31 that the Virginius approached the coast of Cuba to make her landing, and was intercepted by the Spanish gunboat Tornado. The Tornado had been built by the same English firm that constructed the Virginius, also for blockade running, but in the race that followed the Virginius was unable to equal the speed of her Spanish pursuer. The chase lasted eight hours. Finally, at 10 o'clock at night, the Virginius was stopped and surrendered in response to the cannon shots of the Tornado, which had come in range. The captain protested that his papers were regular and that the Virginius was "an American ship, carrying American colors and papers, with an American captain and an American crew." In response he was told that he was a pirate, his flag was lowered and trampled upon, and the Spanish flag was hoisted in its place. During the chase after the Virginius, the passengers and crew of the fated vessel were in a state of panic. The cargo, which was made up of war material, was thrown overboard, and all persons on the vessel emptied their trunks of whatever might be considered suspicious. Almost from the instant of the capture the fate of the unfortunate men was assured, and they soon realized the extent of the danger that threatened them. VERDICT OF THE SPANISH COURT-MARTIAL. When the Tornado and the Virginius reached Santiago de Cuba the next day the 155 men captured were placed in close confinement and a court-martial was convened at once. The various courts-martial condemned most if not all of the prisoners to death, this summary proceeding being, as was alleged, in accordance with Spanish laws, so far at least as the character of the court and the nature of the judicial forms were concerned. The first executions were on the morning of November 4, when four men were shot, one of them being Brigadier Washington Ryan, who claimed British citizenship, as a Canadian, although he had served in the Union army during the late war. The victims were shot in the back, and their bodies were afterward beheaded, the heads displayed on spikes and the trunks trampled by horses. George W. Sherman, the correspondent of the New York Herald, tried to sketch the scene and was imprisoned for four days for his attempt. A guard kept the American consul in his house, so he could not appear to protest. As the Virginius had displayed the American colors and was chartered and cleared as an American vessel, she had a prima facie claim to protection as such, until her right should be disproved. Hence Mr. E. G. Schmitt, the American vice-consul at Santiago, was prompt and urgent in demanding access to the prisoners, with a view to protecting the rights of the vessel and any on board who might be American citizens. He was treated with great discourtesy by the provincial governor, who told him in effect that it was none of his business, and persisted in declaring that they were all pirates and would be dealt with as such. Mr. Schmitt was even refused the use of the submarine cable to consult with the consul at Kingston, Jamaica. He would thus have been left entirely helpless but for the friendly aid of the British and French consuls. On the 8th of November twelve more men were executed, and on the 13th thirty-seven were executed, this last batch including the officers and crew of the Virginius and most of the American citizens. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon the condemned men were marched to the place of execution, passing and saluting the American consulate, where the flag was not flying from its staff. Captain Fry was shot first, and was the only man, though the soldiers stood but ten feet away, who fell dead at the first volley. The majority of the poor fellows, as the firing continued, were wounded, and killed as they lay on the ground by the usual Spanish fashion of firing rifles in the mouths of those who were disabled. The second engineer of the Virginius was among those executed. He had made a declaration to the Spanish that he had tampered with the engines and cut down the speed of the vessel so that she could be captured, and was marched with the rest to prevent his comrades from knowing that he was to be spared. He was shot by mistake while making frantic protests and explanations, but, as he was a traitor in one way or the other, his death was the only one of all that was never regretted. PROTESTS WERE UNHEEDED. During all this time the consuls at Santiago were not idle, but they were helpless. E. G. Schmitt, the American vice-consul, and Theodore Brooks, the British vice-consul, made all sorts of protests that were unavailing. Schmitt was not permitted to see the prisoners before or after the court-martial, until the very end, when he reached Captain Fry and signed his protest with him. He was not permitted the use of the telegraph in order to communicate with the government at Washington by way of Kingston, Jamaica. He wrote repeated notes to Gen. Burriel, the Spanish commander at Santiago, getting no answer to them, until at last an answer came that was more irritating than silence. Burriel told him that he should have known that the previous day was a day of religious festival, during which he and all his officers were engaged in "meditation of the divine mysteries," and could not consider temporal affairs. He also informed the consul that he might be expelled from the island for trying to embroil the United States and Spain in difficulties if he were not careful. Then came the only bright spot in the whole affair. News of what was going on reached Jamaica, and the British gunboat Niobe, Captain Sir Lambton Lorraine, left for the scene of massacre, sailing in such a hurry that he left some of the crew ashore. The Captain landed at Santiago before his ship was anchored, and demanded that the slaughter be stopped instantly. He declared that he represented the United States as well as England, and that he would bombard the city if there was another American citizen executed. Ninety-three men were under sentence of death, many of whom were Americans, but the sentences were immediately suspended and the lives were saved. The Spanish afterward asserted that the executions were stopped because of orders received from Madrid. The next time Sir Lambton Lorraine was in New York he was offered a reception, which he declined. He was presented, however, with a silver brick, on which were engraved the words: "Blood is thicker than water." A resolution of thanks to him was laid on the table in the House of Representatives and never passed. AMERICAN DEMANDS FOR VENGEANCE. When the news of all this reached the United States, public indignation rose rapidly. Mass-meetings were held demanding vengeance on Spain. President Grant sent special messages to Congress, and the state department began diplomatic negotiations. Hamilton Fish, secretary of state, declared that the Virginius, having been registered as an American vessel carrying official documents regular upon their face and bearing the United States flag, was entirely beyond the jurisdiction of any other power on the high seas in the time of peace; that if she had secured fraudulent entry or committed any other fraud against the laws of the United States it was for her to be turned over to the United States courts for punishment, and not for her to be captured and punished by some other power. The Spanish minister of foreign affairs at that time was Admiral Polo de Bernabe, father of the new Spanish minister who succeeded Dupuy de Lome. He wanted to submit the matter to arbitration, and Secretary Fish replied to him that the "United States was ready to refer to arbitration all questions properly subjects for reference, but that the question of an indignity to the flag of the nation and the capture in time of peace on the high seas of a vessel bearing that flag and having also the register and papers of an American ship, is not deemed to be one referable to other powers to determine. A nation must be the judge and custodian of its own honor." Most of the men were executed after protests to Madrid began to be made. Madrid mobs made a demonstration against the American minister, General Sickles. November 4, Secretary Fish cabled Sickles: "In case of refusal of satisfactory reparation within twelve days from this date close your legation and leave Madrid." Ten days later, when the executions were over, he telegraphed: "If Spain cannot redress these outrages, the United States will." Ten days after that he wired: "If no settlement is reached by the close of to-morrow, leave." Next day Spain became tractable and war was averted. By his conduct in Madrid at that time General Sickles made many friends of those Americans who wanted to see energetic action, and many enemies among those who wanted peace at any price. It was alleged afterward that the latter influence became dominant, and that his recall from that post was the result of their work to punish him for his energy that was not always diplomatic in its forms. SETTLEMENT OF THE TROUBLE. The terms of settlement of the trouble were that the Virginius should be surrendered to an American warship, with the survivors of those who had been captured with her, and that on December 25 the United States flag should be saluted by the Tornado. The surrender was made in the obscure harbor of Bahia Honda, December 16, the Spanish having taken the Virginius there to avoid the humiliation of a surrender in Santiago or Havana, where it should have been made. Captain W. D. Whiting, the chief of staff of the North Atlantic Squadron, was appointed to receive the surrender of the Virginius, and the gunboat Dispatch was sent to Bahia Honda with him for that purpose. Lieut. Adolph Marix was the flag lieutenant of the Dispatch, the same who was afterwards the judge-advocate of the court of inquiry on the Maine disaster. The Virginius was delivered with the flag flying, but she was unseaworthy, and, struck by a storm off Cape Hatteras, was sunk on her way to New York. The salute to the flag that had been arranged was waived by the United States because the attorney-general gave an opinion that the Virginius had no right to fly the American flag when she was captured. Major Moses P. Handy, afterwards famous as a journalist, was present at the surrender of the Virginius to the American men of war in the harbor of Bahia Honda, and gives a graphic account of the circumstances attending that ceremony. In concluding the tale he says: "The surrender of the surviving prisoners of the massacre took place in the course of time at Santiago, owing more to British insistence than to our feeble representation. As to the fifty-three who were killed, Spain never gave us any real satisfaction. For a long time the Madrid government unblushingly denied that there had been any killing, and when forced to acknowledge the fact they put us off with preposterous excuses. 'Butcher Borriel,' by whose orders the outrage was perpetrated, was considered at Madrid to have been justified by circumstances. It was pretended that orders to suspend the execution of Ryan and his associates were 'unfortunately' received too late, owing to interruption of telegraph lines by the insurgents, to whose broad and bleeding shoulders an attempt was thus made to shift the responsibility. "There was a nominal repudiation of Borriel's act and a promise was made to inflict punishment upon 'those who have offended,' but no punishment was inflicted upon anybody. The Spanish government, with characteristic double dealing, resorted to procrastination, prevarication and trickery, and thus gained time, until new issues effaced in the American mind the memory of old wrongs unavenged. Instead of being degraded, Borriel was promoted. Never to this day has there been any adequate atonement by Spain, much less an apology or expression of regret for the Virginius massacre." The amount of money paid to the United States government for distribution among the families of American sufferers by this affair was $80,000. And that is the extent of the reparation made for the shocking crime. The Virginius, although the most conspicuous, was not the only American victim of Spanish misgovernment in Cuba during the Ten Years' war. In 1877 the three whaling vessels, Rising Sun, Ellen Rizpah, and Edward Lee, while pursuing their legitimate business under the American flag, outside of Cuban waters, were fired upon and detained for days, with circumstances of peculiar hardship and brutality. The United States government investigated the outrage with care, and demanded of Spain an indemnity of $19,500. The demand, however, was not enforced, and the sum of $10,000 was accepted as a compromise settlement. CHAPTER XIV. OPERATIONS OF THE TEN YEARS' WAR. The Two Wars Compared--The Havana Volunteers--The Slaughter at the Villaneuva Theater--The Court Martial of the Students--A Holiday in Havana--The Close of the War--The Treaty of Zanjon. The reader who has watched closely the struggle in Cuba for the past three years need not be told that Spain has had every advantage in men, money, arms and ammunition. The same state of affairs existed during the Ten Years' War. In fact, the inequality was even greater, for the Spanish army was then composed of experienced soldiers who were well fed, well clothed and paid regularly. In the present conflict many of them are boys who have been sent from home to make targets for insurgent bullets. They know comparatively nothing of military tactics, they have not been paid for months, and they lack food and clothing. The equipment of the insurgent forces in the former rebellion was even more limited than it has been in this one. While they did not experience serious difficulty in obtaining food, the implements of war in any quantities were beyond their reach. But the same spirit that gave courage to our American heroes in revolutionary times was in them, and for ten years they struggled bravely against overwhelming odds. It is not possible to tell in detail of the monstrous cruelties practiced by the Spanish army during those years of carnage. Here is the testimony of one officer: "We captured seventeen, thirteen of whom were shot outright; on dying they shouted, 'Hurrah for Free Cuba, hurrah for independence.' A mulatto said, 'Hurrah for Cespedes.' On the following day we killed a Cuban officer and another man. Among the thirteen that we shot the first day we found three sons and their father. The father witnessed the execution of his sons without even changing color, and when his turn came he said he died for the independence of his country. On coming back we brought along with us three carts filled with women and children, the families of those we had shot, and they asked us to shoot them, because they would rather die than live among Spaniards." Another wrote: "Not a single Cuban will remain in this island, because we shoot all that we find in the fields, on the farms and in every hovel. We do not leave a creature alive where we pass, be it man or animal. If we find cows we kill them, if horses, ditto, if hogs, ditto, men, women or children, ditto. As to the houses, we burn them. So every one receives his due, the men in balls, the animals in bayonet thrusts. The island will remain a desert." In the cities, outrages equally barbarous were committed. THE HAVANA VOLUNTEERS. The Havana volunteers, made up of the Spanish-born residents, in whose favor the government of the island has always been arranged, took possession of Havana, and put it under mob rule. In May, 1870, they marched out in front of the Villaneuva theater and fired volleys into the crowds that were entering. They had reason to believe, some of them said, that the performance to be given there was to raise funds for the insurgent cause. So powerful was this organization that shortly after this outrage they placed the Captain-General of the island under arrest, and finally shipped him to Spain, sending word to the home government that he was not severe enough in his rule to suit their views, and suggesting that in case there were no Peninsulars who had the necessary stamina to govern Cuba according to their ideas, they might feel it advisable to assume command themselves. On another occasion the dead body of one of these volunteers was placed in a public tomb in Havana, and the repository was found to have been defaced by scurrilous writing on the glass of the door. For no known reason, except a blood-thirsty desire for vengeance on someone, no matter whether guilty or innocent, it was claimed that the outrage was committed by some of the students of the university, and on complaint of the volunteer corps, forty-three of these young men were arrested. They were arraigned before the military tribunal, and so manifestly unjust was the accusation that an officer of the regular army of Spain volunteered to defend them. There was absolutely no proof against them, and they were acquitted. But the volunteers were determined that their victims should not escape, and taking advantage of the fear in which they were held, even by the Havana officials, they forced the Governor-General to issue an order for a second courtmartial. At this examination they manipulated matters so that two thirds of the members of the trial board were connected with their organization, and a verdict of guilty was quickly rendered against all of the prisoners. Eight of them were sentenced to be shot, and the others to long terms of imprisonment at hard labor. The day of the execution was a holiday in Havana. Bands of music paraded the streets, followed by the volunteers, 15,000 strong, while behind them, bound in chains, and under military guard, came the eight boys who had been condemned to die. Conscious of their innocence of any crime, they did not falter, but marched bravely to the place of execution, where they faced their murderers and fell, riddled by bullets from the rifles of the volunteers. The report of this affair sent a thrill of horror throughout the whole of the civilized world, and the perpetrators of the outrage were severely censured by the Spanish Cortes, but there was no attempt at punishment, nor were the ones who had been imprisoned released. Meantime the war was being carried on in the provinces with varying success, but dissensions finally arose between the civil and military authorities of the republic of Cuba, and as "a house divided against itself cannot stand," the effectiveness of the campaign was destroyed, and, in 1878, concessions were offered by the Spanish government, which were accepted by the revolutionists, and the struggle was abandoned. What the outcome of the contest might have been, could it have been continued with the leaders united for its success, is an open question. As the years went by the rank and file of the Cuban army seemed to be more determined than ever to throw off the yoke, and the government in Spain became less prompt in sending supplies of men and money to carry on the war. They eagerly seized the opportunity to bring it to a close, and the treaty of Zanjon, which was signed by General Martinez Campos, the Spanish Governor-General of the island, and General Maximo Gomez, Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban army, promised many reforms, and gave amnesty to all who had taken part in the rebellion. CHAPTER XV. THE PEACE OF ZANJON AND ITS VIOLATED PLEDGES Spanish Hypocrisy and Deceit--Cubans Denied Representation-- Increase of Taxation--The Royal Edicts--A Plausible Argument, Which Is Not Borne Out by Facts--Spain's Promises Always Broken. If Spain had been sincere in the promises of reform she made her Cuban colony when the treaty of Zanjon was signed, it is probable that the present war would have never occurred. For while a few of the leaders--notably General Maceo--refused to become pacified, the great majority of the better classes were glad to accept a peaceful settlement on terms that gave them, in fact, if not in name, nearly every concession for which they had fought. But it did not take them long to learn that they had been duped. Spain granted to Cuba the liberties of Puerto Rico, which had none. On this deceitful ground was laid the new situation, through which ran a current of falsehood and hypocrisy. Spain, whose mind did not change, hastened to change the name of things. The captain-general was called the governor-general. The royal decrees took the name of authorizations. The commercial monopoly of Spain was named coasting trade. The right of banishment was transformed into the law of vagrancy. The brutal attacks of defenseless citizens were called "componte." The law of constitutional guarantees became the law of public order. Taxation without the consent or knowledge of the Cuban people was changed into the law of estimates (budget) voted by the representatives of Spain. The painful lesson of the Ten Years' War was entirely lost on Spain. Instead of inaugurating a redeeming policy that would heal the recent wounds, allay public anxiety, and quench the thirst for justice felt by the people, who were desirous to enjoy their natural rights, the Peninsula, while lavish in promises of reform, persisted in carrying on, unchanged, its old and crafty system, namely: to exclude every native Cuban from every office that could give him any effective influence and intervention in public affairs; the ungovernable exploitation of the colonists' labor for the benefit of Spanish commerce and Spanish bureaucracy, both civil and military. To carry out the latter purpose it was necessary to maintain the former at any cost. Mr. Clarence King, a recognized authority on political subjects connected with Cuban affairs, says: "The main concession for which the insurgents accepted peace was the promise of constitutional reform. As a matter of fact, there promptly followed four royal edicts as follows: June 9, entitling Cuba to elect deputies to the Cortes, one for each 40,000 people; June 9, dividing the island into the present six provinces; June 21, instituting a system of provincial and municipal government, followed on August 16 by the necessary electoral regulations. But the system was immediately seen to be the shadow without the substance of self-government. The Provincial Assembly could nominate only three candidates for presiding officer. It was the inevitable governor-general who had the power to appoint, not necessarily one of the three nominees, but any member of the Assembly he chose. But all this provincial machinery is in reality an empty form, since expressly by law the governor-general was given the power to prorogue the assemblies at will. The deputies have never been able to accomplish anything in the Cortes. Moreover the crux of the whole financial oppression--tariff, taxes, and absolute control and expenditure of the revenue--remained with Spain." The loyal Spaniard insists that every agreement entered into by his government was faithfully carried out; that the Cubans were given from time to time even greater liberties than the treaty promised them; and that in several matters of importance, immunities have been granted them that the people of the mother country did not share. The Assistant Colonial Secretary of Spain concludes a voluminous defense of the policy of his government in Cuba as follows: There is thus no reason in Cuba to complain of the illiberality of the laws. If there has been any shortcoming in respect to morals, the nation is not to blame; none but the colonial provinces are to blame for this; if we proposed to seek comfort in comparisons, it would not be necessary to look for them in South America, in the countries that have emancipated themselves from the Spanish mother-country, because examples (some of them very recent) of acts of violence, anarchy and scandalous outbreaks could be found in the States of the Union itself. In respect to another matter, a great deal of foolish talk is indulged in. From the statements of some people it would appear that Cuba does nothing but contribute, by the taxes which it pays, to alleviate the burdens of the peninsular treasury, whereas, in reality, just the contrary is the truth. The nation has, of late, guaranteed the conversion of Spanish debts in Cuba, which took place in 1886 and 1890. Owing to these operations, and to the fact that all taxes which did not have to be met directly by its government have been rigorously eliminated from the budget of Cuba, it was possible to reduce the Cuban budget from forty-six and one-half million dollars, which was its amount at the close of the former war (for the fiscal year of 1878-79) to a little more than twenty-three millions of dollars, as appears from the budget of 1893. The financial laws have been assimilated, and if the system of taxation has not been entirely assimilated, this is because of the fact that direct taxes are very repugnant to the popular feeling in Cuba, especially the tax on land, which is the basis of the Peninsular budget. It appears, however, that our Cuban brethren have no reason to complain in this respect. The direct tax on rural property is two per cent, in Cuba, whereas in Spain it is seventeen, and even twenty per cent. It is evident that every budget must be based on something; in Cuba, as in all other countries in which the natural conditions are similar, that something must necessarily be the income from customs duties. Notwithstanding this, it may be remarked that in the years when the greatest financial distress prevailed, the Spanish Government never hesitated to sacrifice that income when it was necessary to do so in order to meet the especial need of the principal agricultural product of Cuba. Consequently the Spanish commercial treaty with the United States was concluded, which certainly had not been concluded before, owing to any fault of the Spanish Government. Under that treaty, the principal object of which was to encourage the exportation of Cuban sugar, which found its chief market in the States of the Union, many Spanish industries were sacrificed which have formerly supplied the wants of the people of Cuba. That sacrifice was unhesitatingly made, and now that the treaty is no longer in force, is due to the fact that the new American tariff has stricken sugar from the free list. Attention may also be called to the fact that the colonial provinces alone enjoy exemption from the blood tax, Cuba never having been obliged to furnish military recruits. The disqualifications of the Cubans to hold public office is purely a myth. Such disqualifications is found on the text of no law or regulation, and in point of fact there is no such exclusion. In order to verify this assertion it would be sufficient to examine the lists of Cuban officers, especially of those employed in the administration of justice and in all branches of instruction. Even if it were desired to make a comparison of political offices, even of those connected with the functions which are discharged in the Peninsula, the proportion would still be shown in which Spaniards in Cuba aspire to both. The fact is that a common fallacy is appealed to in the language habitually used by the enemies of Spain, who call persons "Peninsulars" who were not born in Cuba, but have resided there many years and have all their ties and interests there, and do not call those "Cubans" who were born there and have left the island in order to meet necessities connected, perhaps, with their occupation. This was done in the Senate, when the advocates of the separation of Cuba only were called "Cubans," while those only who refused allegiance to the Spanish mother-country were called patriots. In conclusion, I will relate a fact which may appear to be a joke, but which, in a certain way, furnished proof of what I have just said. When Rafael Gasset returned from Habana, he came and asked me for some data showing the proportion of Cubans holding office under our Government. I asked him, as a preliminary question, for a definition of what we were to understand by "Cuban" and what by "Peninsular." He immediately admitted that the decision of the whole question was based upon that definition, and I called his attention to the fact that here, in the Ministry of the Colonies, at the present time, there are three high governmental functionaries. One is a representative from Habana, being at the same time a professor in its University, and another, viz., your humble servant, is a Spaniard because he was born in Habana itself. Is the other man a Peninsular, and am I not a Cuban? GUILLERMO. Assistant Colonial Secretary of Spain. This is the argument from the Peninsular standpoint, and it is probably made in good faith. But while the Spanish rule in Cuba may seem to be just and equitable in theory, it is oppressive and tyrannical in fact. While the government may have partly carried out the letter of its promises, there has been no effort to fulfill the spirit of the compact in the slighest degree, and the violated pledges of the treaty of Zanjon only add new chapters to the long record of Spanish treachery and deceit. CHAPTER XVI. PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER REBELLION. Spain's Policy of Distrust--The Cost of the Ten Years' War--Work of the Cuban Exiles--Revolutionary Clubs in the Western Hemisphere--An Expedition Checked--Heroism of Cuban Women--The Struggle Begun. Ever since Spain lost her colonies on the American continent the Cubans have striven to gain their independence. The Ten Years War cost the mother country 300,000,000 pesetas and 100,000 men, most of them victims of yellow fever. When slavery was abolished in 1880 fresh disturbances ensued. The majority of slave holders, who received no compensation, joined the party of independence. Spain, adhering to her old policy of distrust, retained a large army in Cuba and a navy round about her shores, the expenses of which caused the budget to amount to $46,594,000 at a time when two-thirds of the island was nothing but a mass of ruins, and when Cuba was beginning to feel the effects of the competition with other sugar-producing countries. While the European manufacturers received important bounties those of Cuba had to pay export duties on their sugar, and the importation of all agricultural and industrial implements was subjected to a tariff almost prohibitive. Two laws were enacted in 1882 to regulate commerce between Cuba and Spain. By the provisions of these laws the import duties on all Spanish products were to be gradually diminished until their importation in Cuba became entirely free, while the Cubans had to pay on their imports to Spain duties which practically closed the Spanish market to all their products. Spanish goods, as a rule, are much inferior to those of English, French or American manufacture, but the Cuban consumer was forced to buy Spanish goods or pay an exorbitant price for those which he would have preferred to buy at a fair price. An instance will suffice to illustrate this: When the present war began in 1895 the duty on a hundred kilogrammes of woolen cashmere was fifteen dollars and forty-seven cents if Spanish, three hundred dollars if foreign. These differential duties opened a reign of prosperity for industry in Spain, where foreign goods were imported or smuggled, to be later sent to Cuba as Spanish. The injustice of these commercial laws was so evident and so detrimental to the interests of Cuba that in 1894 the Planters' Association, the president of which, the Count de Diana, was a Spaniard, referred to them as "destructive of our public wealth, a source of inextinguishable discontent and the germ of serious dissensions." The insular budgets could never be covered, and the result was that the public debt was kept on the increase. The expenditures were classed as follows: For army and navy, 36.59 per cent of the budget's total; for the debt, 40.89; for justice and government, 19.77, and for public works, 2.75. No public work of any kind was begun in the seventeen years which intervened between the two wars. The Cuban Treasury, between 1823 and 1864, sent to Spain $82,165,436 in gold. This money entered the Spanish Treasury as "Colonial surplus," but as a Spanish writer (Zaragoza) says in his book, "Las Insurrecciones de Cuba," it was absurd to speak of a surplus when not even the opening of a bad road was undertaken. Politically, the condition of the Cubans after the restoration of peace in 1878, was as bad as it had been before. Laws existed which might lead unobserving persons to believe that the Cubans enjoyed every liberty, but as a matter of fact the Cubans were kept under the most unbearable vassalage. The Spaniards in Cuba before this war numbered only 9.30 per cent of the island's population, but, availing themselves of a law which gave to them a majority in the electoral census, they were to return twenty-four of the thirty deputies which the island then sent to the Spanish Cortes. So restrictive was the electoral law that only 53,000 men were qualified to vote in the entire island, although its population was 1,762,000. In the municipal district of Guines, with a population of 12,500 Cubans and 500 Spaniards, the electoral census included 400 Spaniards and thirty-two Cubans. This is one among many similar instances. The Board of Aldermen in Havana, the capital city of the island, has for years been made up entirely of Spaniards, and the same may be said of Cienfuegos and other important cities. Despite all constitutional provisions the governor-general of the island had the power to deport from the island, without a trial, any person whose presence there he considered dangerous to the security of the State. The island was at peace when Cepeda, Lopez de Brinas and Marquez Sterling, all journalists, were deported. The liberty of the press was and still is a myth. El Pais, the Autonomist organ, was criminally prosecuted in 1889 because it denounced the appointment of one of the sons of the president of the Havana Court of Appeals to a place which he could not lawfully hold. What liberty of association the Cubans enjoyed may be judged from the fact that a delegate of the government had to be present at their meetings, with power to dissolve them whenever he saw fit to do so. No Cuban was able to obtain a place in the administration unless he was rich enough to go to Madrid and there become acquainted with some influential politician. Even so, Cubans seldom succeeded in being appointed to places of importance. The Cuban exiles in Key West, New York and other cities in the United States, and in Costa Rica, Honduras, Santo Domingo and other parts of Spanish America, had been planning a new uprising for several years. The desire of the Cubans for national independence was quickened by what they suffered from Spain's misgovernment. For two or three years the exiles in the United States and Spanish American countries, veterans of the war of 1868-78, and younger champions of free Cuba, organized clubs, collected a war fund, purchased munitions of war and laid plans with their compatriots in Cuba for a new struggle for independence. There were 140 revolutionary clubs in North and South America, Cuba and other West India islands, affiliated under the name of the revolutionary party, ready to support an uprising with financial and moral aid. Cuban workingmen in the United States promised to contribute a tenth of their earnings, or more if necessary. There were firearms on the island that had remained concealed since the former war, some had been bought from corrupt custodians of the government arsenals, who, finding it impossible to get pay due them from Spain, took this method of securing what was rightfully theirs. AN EXPEDITION CHECKED. An expedition that planned to sail in the yacht Lagonda from Fernandina, Fla., on January 14, 1895, was broken up by the United States authorities. General Antonio Maceo, its leader, with Jose Marti, the political organizer of the new government, went to Santo Domingo, where they could confer with the revolutionist leaders living in Cuba. There Marti found Maximo Gomez, the veteran of a dozen struggles and a brave and able soldier, and offered him the command and organization of the army. Gomez accepted and began at once to arrange his programme. The plan of the revolutionists was to rise simultaneously in the six provinces on February 24. The leaders on the island and the organizers abroad had a thorough understanding. HEROISM OF CUBAN WOMEN. The men of Cuba were not alone in their plans for independence, for their wives and sisters, mothers and sweethearts, were enthusiastic and faithful allies. The island was full of devoted women reared in indolence and luxury who were tireless in their successful efforts to get word from, one scattered rebel band to another, and to send them food, medicines and clothing. These women were far better conspirators than their fathers and brothers, for Cuban men must talk, but the women seem to know the value of silence. Beautiful and delicate senoritas would disguise themselves in men's attire and steal out at night to the near-by haunts of lover or brother in the "Long Grass," as the insurgents' camps are called, with food secreted in false pockets, or letters, whose envelopes had been dipped in ink, hidden in their black hair. Medicines were carried in canes, and cloth for clothes or wounds was concealed in the lining of coats. One girl, disguised as a vender, frequently carried to the woods dynamite in egg shells deftly put together. She had many thrilling experiences, but her narrowest escape was when a Spanish soldier by the roadside insisted on taking from the basket an egg, to let its contents drop in a hot and ready pan. He was with difficulty persuaded to forego the meal. The dynamite was made by another woman, who carefully obtained the ingredients at various times and at widely scattered drug stores. And so, with almost every Cuban man, woman and child united in a fixed determination to make the island one of the free and independent nations of the earth, the final struggle was begun. CHAPTER XVII. THE CUBAN JUNTA AND ITS WORK. Organization Which Has Represented the Insurgents in the United States--Splendid Work Done by Senor Tomas Estrada Palma and His Staff--Sources of the War Funds--Generosity of Cuban Cigar Makers Who Have Supported the Revolution--Liberal Gifts from Americans-- Some Inside Facts about Filibustering--American Sailors Do Not Like to Capture Insurgent Supplies--Palma's Address to the American People. From the moment of the first outbreak of insurrection in Cuba, in February, 1895, the name of the Cuban Junta has been a familiar phrase to everyone in the United States, and yet its functions and its organization have been by no means well understood. There have been those in Congress and elsewhere who have spoken of it slightingly as an organization banded together for its own profit in some way, not realizing that its members were the trusted representatives abroad of the whole Cuban people. The parallels between the Cuban insurrection and that of the American colonies against Great Britain in 1776, are far more numerous than has been recognized. The Cuban army has been poorly clothed and scantily fed at times, and equipped with all sorts of obsolete weapons of offence. But these things are m> disgrace, and indeed are the basis of much of the pride that Americans take in the splendid work which their ancestors did in that other insurrection, which, having resulted successfully, is now known as the American Revolution. There have been sneers at the government of the Cuban republic because its officers have had to move from place to place at various times, in order to avoid threatened capture by the Spanish forces. But was there ever a more peripatetic national government than that of the American colonies during the Revolution, when the legislature and its officers sat successively in Philadelphia, Germantown, Princeton, New York and several other places, driven out of each in turn by the same fear of capture by British troops? Finally, it ought to be remembered, though it may not be, that the colonies maintained an organization exactly similar to that of the Cuban Junta in New York, for the purpose of securing money and support from the people and the governments of Europe, to whom they were accredited. The only country which gave them welcome encouragement was France. But Benjamin Franklin's position in Paris as the head of what was virtually the American Junta, was then and is now an honor to his name and his countrymen. It enlisted the same aid from France and French citizens that the Cuban Junta in New York has enlisted from the United States and American citizens, and there is no reason to form any less creditable judgment of the latter enterprise than the former. CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF THE JUNTA. The Junta is the organization through which Cuba's friends reach the Cubans in the field. In many places these friends are banded together and work for the Cuban cause as organizations. In the United States and Europe there are 300 Cuban revolutionary clubs, with a membership of more than 50,000. These clubs were the outcome of a suggestion originating with Jose Marti, and their organization has been accomplished by the delegation, with whom they are all in closest touch, to whom they all account, and through whom they all make contributions in money, clothing, provisions, arms, and munitions for those who are enduring the hardships of the war. Before the revolution began these clubs had $100,000 in bank as a war fund. These most vital contributions must reach the army in the field, and it is the business of the delegation to see that they get there. And they have been getting there under most adverse and trying circumstances, and amid perils of land and sea where enemies are watching and where a friendly government has had to guard against the violation of neutrality laws. For accomplishing its work the Junta has in no way been restricted in authority, the Cuban government having even granted special authority allowing Mr. Palma to issue a limited amount of bonds, coin money, and grant letters of marque. It has further been the business of the Junta--attended by risk of life to its agents--to keep in communication with the insurgents. This has been done by secret agents who come and go from New York to Key West, from Key West to Havana, from Havana into Spanish cities of Cuba and through the provinces of the island. The headquarters of the Junta bears no outward sign except that the stars and stripes and the single starred flag of Cuba wave from the third-story window, where is Mr. Palma's office. A narrow hall and tortuous stairs lead to the office of the delegate, where on every side are signs of active business, with shelves, tables, and desks holding heaps of letters, books of accounts, and documents of various sorts. Here the delegate works, receives his friends, coworkers, and agents. Off the main room is a private office, where secret agents report and are instructed, and where councils of moment are held and decisions of vital import to the Cuban cause reached, to be followed by orders that are of immense importance to the army of liberation. The Cuban Junta, with its headquarters, represents the legation of the Cuban republic abroad, and the head of the Junta, as it is called, is T. Estrada Palma. Properly speaking he is the delegate, and with the members of his ministerial and diplomatic household constitutes the delegation of the Cuban republic. The term "Junta" has been applied because such a body or council was attached to the diplomatic department of Cuba during the Ten Years' war. As the authority of the Junta frequently restricted the action of the delegate, the promoters of the present revolution decided to eliminate it; yet the name remains, and is used and accepted to designate Mr. Palma and his associates. AUTHORITY OF THE JUNTA. This Junta, as the representative of the Cuban republic, acts on high authority, for the delegation was appointed on September 19, 1895, by the Constituent Assembly that formed the government and commissioned Maximo Gomez chief commander of the Cuban army. At the same time it made Mr. Palma delegate and Cuban representative abroad, with authority to appoint ministers to all governments and to have control of all of Cuba's diplomatic relations and representatives throughout the world. Besides this, Mr. Palma is the duly accredited minister from Cuba to the United States, and in the event of the Cuban republic being recognized would be received as such. Under his authority Mr. Palma has appointed sub-delegates, or diplomatic agents, in France, Italy, Mexico, and the Central and South American republics. Cuba's independence not being acknowledged by these nations, her ministers are not officially recognized, but are often unofficially received at the "back door," and exert an influence for the benefit of Cuba in the countries to which they are appointed. Mr. Palma is in reality the head of the Cuban revolutionary party abroad, which is one of the three departments of the Cuban revolutionary government, the two others being the civil government and the army of liberation. This Cuban revolutionary branch was founded by Jose Marti, who is regarded by the Cubans as the apostle and master mind of the Cuban revolution. Mr. Palma is not only the head and front of the Junta, but he is the one person in whom its authority is centered. He was born in Cuba about sixty years ago, and in his tender youth imbibed the spirit of liberty for the island, a spirit which grew with him until it influenced his every word and act, and finally received his entire devotion. So direct, gentle, yet determined are his methods, and so unassuming and plain is he in speech and manner that he soon became known as the "Cuban Franklin," and more firmly has the name become attached to him since the potent influence of his policy has been felt throughout the world. During the Ten Years' war Mr. Palma was President of the Cuban republic; was made prisoner by Spanish troops, and sent to Spain, where he was imprisoned until the close of the conflict. While in Spain, absolutely suffering under the hardships of imprisonment, he was offered freedom if he would swear allegiance to the Spanish crown. "No!" was his answer. "You may shoot me if you will, but if I am shot it will be as the President of the Cuban republic." Besides Mr. Palma, the only members of the delegation appointed by the Cuban government are: Dr. Joaquin D. Castillo, the sub-delegate; Benjamin J. Guerra, treasurer of the republic abroad, and Gonzalo de Quesada, charge d'affaires at Washington. Dr. Castillo is vice-delegate and would take Mr. Palma's place in case of his death or inability to act. SOURCES OF THE WAR FUNDS. The Junta, whose duty it has been to provide the funds for the carrying on of the war, has had various sources of income, all of them distinctly creditable, both to the integrity of the Cuban authorities and to the sentiments of those who have contributed the money. The larger portion of the cash has come in small contributions from Cubans living in the United States. The cigarmakers of Key West, Tampa, Jacksonville, New York and other cities where large Cuban colonies have congregated, have proven their patriotism and their adherence to the cause by giving more generously of their earnings than has ever been done before by the people of any country struggling for freedom. There is scarcely an exception to the assertion that every Cuban in America has shared in contributions to the war fund. The minimum contribution has been ten per cent of the weekly earnings, and this has brought an enormous sum into the coffers of the Junta for war purposes. It is true that a war chest of $50,000 or $100,000 a week would be hardly a drop in the bucket for the conduct of the war after the established methods of organized armies. But this has been a war for liberty, and the conditions have been unique. No soldier in all the armies of Cuba Libre has ever drawn one dollar of pay for his service. Thousands of them have been fighting from the first outbreak of insurrection, without receiving a cent of money for it. If the pay of an army be deducted from the expenses of a war, the largest item is saved. Nor has it been necessary to purchase many clothes, owing to the mildness of the Cuban climate, which fights in favor of those who are accustomed to it. The commissary department, too, has been almost non-existent, and the soldiers in the field have lived by foraging and by collecting the vegetables and fruits saved for them by the women and children, whose hearts are as deep in the conflict as are their own. The principal demand for money has been to procure arms, ammunition and medical and surgical supplies. In addition to the contributions which have come from patriotic Cubans, another large source of income to the Junta has been the silent liberality of many American citizens, who have proved their practical sympathy to the cause of freedom by giving of their wealth to aid it. Outside of these sources, the only income has been from the sale of bonds of the Cuban republic, a means of obtaining money which has been used conservatively, so that the infant republic should not be saddled with a heavy debt at the outset of its career as an independent nation. Aside from the contributions of money to the Cuban powers, enormous quantities of medical and surgical supplies and hospital delicacies have been offered by the generous people of the United States, organized into Cuban Auxiliary Aid Societies in the various cities of the country. American women have taken a prominent part in this movement and have won thereby the undying gratitude of the Cubans. SOME FACTS ABOUT FILIBUSTERING. The sailing of vessels from New York and other ports with cargoes of supplies for the Cuban revolutionists has been a frequent occurrence, far more so than has been known to the public. Filibustering is a phrase that has gained honor during these three years, such as it never had before. Carried on in the cause of humanity and liberty, its motives justified its irregularities, and there have been few to condemn the practice. In the fogs of an early morning, some fast steamer would slip away from an Atlantic port, loaded with arms, ammunition, quinine, and all sorts of hospital, medical and surgical supplies, accompanied usually by a band of Cuban patriots, seeking the first opportunity to return to their beautiful island and take up arms for its liberation. There have been a few such expeditions captured, but for everyone captured a score have reached their destination on the Cuban coast without interruption, and have landed their cargo in safety in insurgent camps. The United States government, in recognition of its diplomatic obligations, spent millions of dollars prior to the outbreak of our war with Spain, in carrying on a patrol service of the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico, to prevent the sailing of filibustering expeditions. Now that the day of such patrol service in the aid of Spain is ended forever, there can be no harm in telling some of the details that might have been compromising before. American cruisers and gunboats were stationed in the harbors around the coast, from New York to New Orleans, and particularly on both sides of the Florida peninsula. To one of these vessels would come the news that a suspected filibustering craft was likely to sail from a certain place at a certain time, and orders would be given to intercept the rover if possible. To one who did not know the temper and the spirit of American sailors from highest to lowest in the service of the navy, the actions that followed might have been puzzling. In spite of the proverbial alacrity and readiness with which an American vessel can make sail, there was always a delay at such times. It was almost certain that something would be wrong that would require some time to correct before the anchor could be weighed. It might be necessary to buy provisions or to take on coal before sailing, and then, more than once after the anchor was weighed and the actual start begun, it would be discovered that some minor accident had occurred to the machinery, which would require another halt to repair it. Finally at sea, the cruiser would steam away at full speed in the direction of the reported filibuster, until her hull and even her smoke disappeared far down in the horizon. CAPTURING OF FILIBUSTERING VESSELS. What happened after that no one ashore could know. But more than once there were grave suspicions that other delays occurred as goon as the vessel was well out of sight, or that the course was changed in pursuit of some other passing vessel, until after a few hours' chase it would be discovered to be an unoffending craft, and the course would be resumed towards the goal, as first ordered. However these things may be, it is certain that the capture of a filibustering vessel before her cargo was discharged was an almost unknown event, and that the capture of such a craft after her cargo was discharged could in no way be disastrous to the Cuban cause when nothing could be proved against the boat or her men. Certain it is that no officer or sailor in the American navy ever wanted to capture a filibuster. To an American it was a blot on the honor of the ship that it should be used to intercept arms and ammunition on their way to an oppressed people struggling for their freedom. It is safe to say that the two or three captures which were made of filibusters at such a time that their confiscation and the conviction of their officers could not be avoided, was a distinct grief to every man who participated in the chase and the punishments that followed. No one can deny the integrity or the ability of the men who are enlisted in the cause of Cuba as the New York Junta, who knows the facts as to their personality and the work they have done. Some of the diplomatic and state papers which have been issued by Senor Palma are worthy to take rank with the utterances of any American who has gained fame in national history for similar work. A notable instance of the dignity and the eloquence with which he speaks, is found in the proclamation to the people of the United States which he issued but a few weeks before the outbreak of our war with Spain. He said: SENOR PALMA ON THE SPANISH CONCESSIONS. "The persistency with which the American press has during the last few days been treating of supposed administrative reforms to be introduced in Cuba by the government of Spain, compels me to request the publication of the following declarations, which I make in behalf of my government, of the army of liberation of Cuba, and of the Cuban revolutionary party. "The question of the proposed reforms is not a matter which at all concerns those who have already established an independent government in Cuba and have resolved to shrink from no sacrifice of property or life in order to emancipate the whole island from the Spanish yoke. If the Spanish residents of the island who are favored by the Spanish government with all sorts of privileges and monopolies, and if the handful of Cubans, too pusillanimous or too proud to acknowledge their error, or a few foreigners guided only by selfish interests, are satisfied that Cuba should remain under Spanish domination, we who fight under the flag of the solitary star, we who already constitute the Republic of Cuba, and belong to a free people with its own government and its own laws, are firmly resolved to listen to no compromise and to treat with Spain on the basis of absolute independence for Cuba. "If Spain has power to exterminate us, then let her convert the island into a vast cemetery; if she has not and wishes to terminate the war before the whole country is reduced to ashes, then let her adopt the only measure that will put an end to it and recognize our independence. Spain must know by this time that while there is a single living Cuban with dignity--and there are many thousands of them--there will not be peace in Cuba, nor even hope of it. "All good causes must finally triumph, and ours is a good cause. It is the cause of justice treated with contempt, of right suppressed by force, and of the dignity of a people offended to the last degree. "We Cubans have a thousandfold more reason in our endeavors to free ourselves from the Spanish yoke than the people of the thirteen colonies had when in 1776 they rose in arms against the British government. COMPARISONS WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. "The people of these colonies were in full enjoyment of all the rights of man; they had liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, liberty of the press, the right of public meeting and the right of free locomotion; they elected those who governed them, they made their own laws and, in fact, enjoyed the blessings of self-government. They were not under the sway of a captain-general with arbitrary powers, who at his will could imprison them, deport them to penal colonies, or order their execution even without the semblance of a court-martial. They did not have to pay a permanent army and navy that they might be kept in subjection, nor to feed a swarm of hungry employes yearly sent over from the metropolis to prey upon the country. "They were never subjected to a stupid and crushing customs tariff which compelled them to go to the home markets for millions of merchandise annually, which they could buy much cheaper elsewhere; they were never compelled to cover a budget of $26,000,000 or $30,000,000 a year, without the consent of the tax-payers, and for the purposes of defraying the expenses of the army and navy of the oppressor, to pay the salaries of thousands of worthless European employes, the whole interest on a debt not incurred by the colony, and other expenditures from which the island received no benefit whatever; for out of all those millions only the paltry sum of $700,000 was apparently applied for works of internal improvement and one-half of this invariably went into the pockets of the Spanish employes. "We have thrown ourselves into the struggle advisedly and deliberately; we knew what we would have to face, and we decided unflinchingly to persevere until we should emancipate ourselves from the Spanish government. And we know that we are able to do it, as we know that we are competent to govern ourselves. "Among other proofs which could be adduced of the ability of the Cuban white and colored to rule themselves, is the strong organization of the Cuban revolutionary party in America. It is composed of more than 20,000 Cubans, living in different countries of the new world and formed into clubs, the members of which yearly elect their leader. This organization has been in existence over five years, during which every member has strictly discharged his duties, has respected without any interruption the regulations and obeyed the elected delegate loyally and faithfully. Among the members of the clubs there are several Spaniards, who enjoy the same rights as the Cubans, and who live with them in fraternal harmony. This fact and that of the many Spaniards incorporated into our army, fully demonstrate that our revolution is not the result of personal hatred, but an uprising inspired only by the natural love of liberty and free institutions. The war in Cuba has for its only object the overthrow of Spanish power, and to establish an independent republic, under whose beneficent laws the Spaniards may continue to live side by side with the Cubans as members of the same community and citizens of the same nation. This is our programme and we strictly adhere to it. "The revolution is powerful and deeply rooted in the hearts of the Cuban people, and there is no Spanish power, no power in the world, that can stop its march. The war, since General Weyler took command of the Spanish army, has assumed a cruel character. His troops shoot the Cuban prisoners, pursue and kill the sick and wounded, assassinate the unarmed, and burn their houses. The Cuban troops, on their part, destroy, as a war measure, the machinery and buildings of the sugar plantations and are firmly resolved not to leave one stone upon another during their campaign. "Let those who can put an end to this war reflect that our liberty is being gained with the blood of thousands of Cuban victims, among whom is numbered Jose Marti, the apostle and martyr of our revolution. Let them consider that before the sacred memory of this new redeemer there is not a single Cuban who will withdraw from the work of emancipation without feeling ashamed of abandoning the flag which on the 24th of February, 1895, was raised by the beloved master. "It is time for the Cuban people to satisfy their just desire for a place among the free nations of the world and let them not be accused if to accomplish their noble purpose they are obliged to reduce to ashes the Cuban land. Tomas Estrada Palma." CHAPTER XVIII. KEY WEST AND THE CUBANS. Cuban Refugees in Key West--Their Devotion to the Cause-- Peculiarities of the Town--Odd Sights and Sounds--Filibusters and Their Work--The First Authorized Expedition--It Is a Failure--The Second More Successful--Landing Supplies for the Insurgents-- Captain Jose Lacret, and Some of His Adventures. The island of Key West lies sixty miles south of Cape Sable, the most southerly point of the mainland of Florida, and is seven miles long and from one to two miles broad. The city covers nearly one-half of the island and has a population of about 25,000. Key West has been described as being "to Cuba what Gibraltar is to Ceuta, to the Gulf of Mexico what Gibraltar is to the Mediterranean." It is one of the chief naval stations of the United States and is strongly fortified. The most important industry is the making of cigars, which gives employment to thousands of Cubans, who make up a large majority of the population, and many of whom are refugees, charged with political crimes, with a price set upon their heads. One of the most important divisions of the Cuban Junta of the United States has its headquarters here. Almost every Cuban in Key West gives regularly a portion of his earnings to the cause, and many cargoes of arms, ammunition and supplies have been sent to the insurgents by their brethren on this little island. The city is unique in many respects. It is made up of innumerable little wooden houses, without chimneys, but crowded in irregular groups. Many of the houses have wooden shutters in place of glass windows. On most of the streets there are no sidewalks, but people stumble over the jagged edges of coral rock. There are a great number of public vehicles, and one can be hailed at any corner and engaged for 10 cents. Some of these carriages are quite respectable in appearance. They are generally double-seated affairs, which have been discarded in the north. The horses are wrecks, and they show by their appearance that fodder is dear and that they are not half fed. One of the sounds of Key West is the whacking of the horses which draw the carriages and the mules which move the street cars from place to place. The street cars look as if they had been dug up from the neighborhood of the pyramids. Ropes are used for reins, and the only substantial thing about the whole outfit is the great rawhide whip, with which the street-car driver labors incessantly. The people, as a rule, are opposed to excessive exertion, but they make an exception in the case of labor with a whip. JOURNALISM, CLIMATE AND DOGS. The town has one struggling newspaper, which is worthy of a better support. It is told of the editor that he came to Key West a barefooted boy from Georgia, and worked his way up to his present eminent position of instructor in etiquette and ethics to the four hundred. Hundreds of dogs, cats, roosters, goats, and "razorbacks" run at large through the streets, and the three former combine to make night hideous. In the early evening the sound of negro meetings and jubilations predominates. Then the cats begin where the shouters leave off. Later, the dogs, sneaking and sore-eyed, and more numerous than any other species, take up the refrain. They howl and bark and keep on howling and barking, until sleep seems impossible. At last, when the wakeful man thinks the row is over, the roosters, the meanest, skinniest, loudest-mouthed roosters in the world, continue the serenade until death seems a welcome, especially the death of the roosters. NEGROES ALONE ARE PATRIOTIC. There is a strange mixture of races at Key West, but the negroes are the most patriotic class. They alone celebrate the Fourth of July and other national holidays. While the town has its enlightened and respectable people, it also has a shoddy class, whose ignorance of the rest of the world carries them to grotesque extremes in their efforts to proclaim their greatness. Even in its schools Key West is peculiar. The schoolhouses are built like cigar factories, and each has mounted upon the roof the bell of an old locomotive. When the school bells are ringing it is easy to close your eyes and imagine yourself in one of the great railway depots of the north. THE FIRST AUTHORIZED EXPEDITION. Prior to the commencement of our war with Spain the United States authorities kept a close watch on the Cubans in Key West, and made every effort to prevent the shipment of supplies to the insurgents. But as soon as the conflict was begun there was a change in the policy and the government assisted the work in every possible way. The first expedition was a failure. Under command of Captain Dorst of the United States army the transport steamer Gussie sailed from Key West with two companies of infantry on board, in charge of 7,000 rifles and 200,000 rounds of ammunition, intended for the insurgents of Pinar del Rio. The supplies were to be conveyed to General Gomez by a force of insurgents encamped three miles back from the coast. But the cargo was not landed, for the reason that the insurgents were unable to meet the landing party at the rendezvous, and Captain Dorst was compelled to return to Key West with his cargo. The second attempt was more successful. Nearly 400 men, with a pack train and a large quantity of arms and ammunition, sailed on the Plant line steamer Florida from Key West, on the night of May 21. These men and the equipment constituted an expedition able to operate independently and to defend itself against any body of Spanish troops which might oppose it. The expedition was under the command of Captain Jose Lacret, formerly insurgent commander in Matanzas province. He assumed the direction of affairs immediately on the landing of the expedition. Until then General Joaquin Castillo was in control. In the landing of the expedition the United States army was represented by Captain J. A. Dorst, and Tomas Estrada Palma was represented by J. E. Cartaya, who has been the landing agent of nearly every filibustering expedition for more than a year. Messrs. Castillo, Cartaya and Dorst returned to Key West. General Julio Sanguilly, on his way to report to General Maximo Gomez, was also on the boat. MOST POWERFUL OF THEM ALL. This was the most powerful anti-Spanish expedition sent to Cuba up to that date. About 300 of the men were Cubans, the others Americans. The engineer corps of the expedition was composed entirely of Americans under Aurelian Ladd. The men were dressed in canvas uniforms furnished by the United States government, and the commissary department had rations enough to last fifteen days after the landing. The pack train consisted of seventy-five mules and twenty-five horses. The expedition carried 7,000 rifles and 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition for General Calixto Garcia. GENERAL SANGUILLY'S RETURN. General Sanguilly's return to Cuba is a remarkable incident in his extraordinary career. His gallant services in the Ten Years' War, his arrest in Havana at the beginning of the present insurrection, his sentence to death and his release at the intercession of Secretary Sherman on a promise to remain outside of Cuba have made him a conspicuous man. The expedition was convoyed by the cruiser Marblehead, the torpedo-boat destroyer Eagle and other warships. Two younger brothers of the late General Nestor Aranguren are with the expedition. SOME OF LACRET'S ADVENTURES. When the present revolution in Cuba began General Jose Lacret Morlot, by which title he is popularly known, secured passage on the steamer Mascotte for Jamaica on his way to Cuba. The English government had information regarding Lacret's movements and prevented his sailing for Cuba from Jamaica. He then went to Mexico and later to New York. At the latter place he consulted with the junta and returned to Tampa. Here he embarked on the steamer Olivette for Havana in the garb of a priest. Still in this disguise he boarded a train for Sagua la Grande. Accompanying him were a large number of Spanish soldiers. His being highly educated, a man of good presence and a "padre" were sufficient to give him entrance into the best Spanish society of Sagua la Grande. Lacret stopped at the finest hotel, and when in the cafe sat at the alcalde's right hand. After communicating with the insurgents the "padre" suddenly disappeared from the hotel. He joined the insurgents, and, throwing off his priestly disguise, has since performed valorous service for the cause of Cuban freedom. He was transferred to the province of Matanzas soon after his arrival, and his career there will form an interesting chapter in the history of Cuba. From Matanzas province he was sent to the eastward as a delegate to the assembly held in Puerto Principe last February, at which the new government was formed. From this assembly he was directed to come to this country as a bearer of dispatches to the junta. When the Florida, escorted by the Osceola, drew up close to the shore at the place selected for the landing, she sent scouts to see if all was clear. These scouts were greeted by Generals Feria and Rojas, with about 1,500 armed insurgents. Therefore, far from there being any hostile demonstration upon the part of the Spaniards, the landing of the expedition was in the nature of a triumphal invasion. The Cubans, who were in waiting for the party, had a brass band and welcomed the newcomers with national airs. The work of unloading the cargo of the Florida was promptly begun and carried on by the 432 men composing the expedition. There was nothing in the nature of interruption and the work was soon finished. HAD IT ALL THEIR OWN WAY. While the cargo was being unloaded the Osceola, an auxiliary gunboat, with her guns ready for action, scouted about the vicinity looking for an enemy. But the Spaniards apparently had no suspicion of what was taking place. So easily was the dangerous mission accomplished that while some members of the party were getting the supplies ashore others were providing themselves with fruit, sugar and other products of the landing place, a large stock of which was brought back for Key West friends. The moment the work was concluded the Florida and the Osceola slipped away, leaving the insurgents to convey their re-enforcements into the interior, which was done without any casualty. The returning members of the Florida party brought with them several hundred private letters, which give a complete insight into the conditions prevailing in the blockaded island. CHAPTER XIX. ANOTHER STROKE FOR FREEDOM. The Beginning of the Revolt--Martial Law Declared in Santiago and Matanzas--Arrival of Campos--The Blacks as Soldiers--No Caste Prejudices--General Santocildes Killed--A Story of Maceo--Campos' Campaign Fails--He Returns to Spain. It was the intention of the insurgents to begin operations in the six provinces on the same date, but at the appointed time three of them failed to carry out the plan, and in only one was the aspect at all threatening. In Havana and Matanzas the Spanish officials had no difficulty in suppressing the insurrectionists, and the leader in the former province, the editor of a newspaper, accepted a pardon and returned to his work. In Santiago, however, which is thinly settled, the movement gained ground steadily. The landing of a party of revolutionists from San Domingo aroused the patriots, and were welcomed warmly, being supplied with re-enforcements wherever they appeared. The government professed to be merely annoyed, nothing more, and pretended to look upon the patriots as mere brigands. Calleja became alarmed at last when the determination of the insurgents became known, and proclaimed martial law in Santiago and Matanzas, and sent forces to both provinces. He could put only nine thousand men in the field, however, and had only seven gunboats for coast duty at his command. The commissary arrangements were miserable, and frequently caused the interruption of important movements. The insurgents were most ubiquitous, and would appear here and there without the slightest warning, making raids on plantations, which they plundered, and from which they enticed away the laborers, disappearing in the swamps, where pursuit was impossible, and appearing again in a day or so in some unexpected spot, and repeating the same maneuvers. In this manner they terrorized the loyalists, and ruined their prospects of raising a crop, and as many depended solely upon the soil for their living this method of warfare struck them a vital blow. At the end of March, 1895, Antonio Maceo, with sixteen comrades, sailed from Costa Rica and landed at Baracoa, on the eastern end of the island. They were surprised by a Spanish cavalry, but kept up an intermittent fight for several hours, when Maceo managed to elude his enemies and escape. After living in the woods for ten days, making his way westward, he met a party of rebels, was recognized and welcomed with great enthusiasm. He took command of the insurgents in the neighborhood and began to get recruits rapidly. He engaged in several sharp encounters with the Spanish and did such effective service that the moral effect was noticed immediately. He and his brother Jose were made generals. About the middle of April Maximo Gomez and Jose Marti landed from San Domingo at about the same point where the Maceos had landed. For days they were obliged to secrete themselves in a cave on account of the presence of the enemy's pickets, but they finally reached an insurgent camp, and Gomez entered upon his duties as commander-in-chief. The insurgents now had an experienced leader at their head, re-enforcements poured in, and they soon had a force of six thousand men. ARRIVAL OF CAMPOS. The government had issued new calls for troops, and in April no less than twenty-five thousand men were raised. Martinez Campos came over from Spain, arriving at Santiago on April 16, and went at once to Havana, where he relieved Calleja as captain-general. Campos was a veteran, and expected to crush the insurrection at once, but day by day his task grew more difficult. Gomez and Maceo, instead of being driven hither and thither, led Campos a dance, and he was prevented from solidifying the two trochas he had formed. Gomez never attempted pitched battles or sieges, but harassed the enemy in every way possible, cutting off their convoys, picking them off in detail, getting up night alarms, and in every way annoying them. His hardened soldiers, especially the negroes, could stand hardships and still keep in good fighting condition, but with the Europeans, what between yellow fever and the constant alarms of war, it was a different story. No European soldier could live under the hardships and exposures which seemed to put life into the negro soldiers. NO CASTE PREJUDICES. It must be understood that there is no caste feeling between the negro and the pure-blooded Cuban. They march, eat and sleep side by side. Moreover, the negroes make excellent soldiers, with finer physique than the Cubans themselves, and equal powers of endurance. The Cuban is small in stature compared to the American soldier, but he is well set up, wiry, and apparently has unlimited staying powers. He frequently lives on one meal a day, and that a poor one, but he shows no signs whatever of being ill-fed; in fact, he seems to thrive on it, and he has an uncomfortable habit of marching six hours in the morning on an empty stomach, which would be fatal to the ordinary Anglo-Saxon. About the first of July, Maceo, still in the province of Santiago, concentrated the forces in the Holguin district and moved against Bayamo, capturing one provision train after another that were en route to that place. Campos took fifteen hundred men, with General Santocildes second in command, and went to the relief of Bayamo. About the middle of July he was attacked several miles from Bayamo by Maceo with twenty-seven hundred rebels. He and his entire staff narrowly escaped capture, and only the bravery of General Santocildes averted this catastrophe. The brave general lost his life and the Spaniards were forced to fly, after having fought for five hours, surrounded on all sides by the rebels. They finally made their escape to Bayamo, the rear guard covering their retreat with great difficulty. Flor Crombet had fallen in battle several weeks before this fight and Marti had been killed in an insignificant fight at Dos Rios. Gomez had passed into Camaguay to add fire to the insurrection and Maceo had been left in command in the province of Santiago. To him was Campos indebted for his defeat. He escaped capture as if by intuition. A new snare had been spread for him by Maceo after the death of Santocildes, and he was already within its meshes, when, intuitively divining the situation, he came to an about face and fled to Bayamo by an unused road, covered by impassable thickets in the rear of Maceo's victorious troops. The Spaniards were rapidly re-enforced after the escape to Bayamo, and Maceo, with Quintin Bandero, began to fall back to his impregnable mountain retreat at Jarahuica. This was in the heart of Santiago de Cuba, over a hundred miles east of Bayamo and twenty-five miles northeast of the port of Santiago. His war-worn army needed rest, recruits, and supplies. Once in his mountain fastness, he was perfectly secure, as no Spanish army would trust itself in the rocky range. News of his movements had reached Santiago and a strenuous effort was being made to head him off at San Luis, a railroad town fifteen miles north-west of that city. Nothing, however, escaped the observation of the Cuban general. With wonderful prescience he anticipated the movements of the Spaniards. His troopers were armed with machetes and the infantry with rifles and ammunition captured at Paralejo. Bandera commanded this band of blacks. The march had been terrific, and horses and men were nearly fagged. With sparse supplies the pace had been kept up for hours. The sun had gone down and the moon was flooding the fronds of the palms with pale, silvery light. Maceo held a short conference with Quintin Bandera, and not long afterward the blacks wheeled in column and disappeared. Meantime the Cuban cavalry continued its course. By midnight it had reached Cemetery Hill, overlooking the town of San Luis. The moon was half way down the sky. Maceo sat upon his horse surveying the scene below him long and silently. The little town was aglow with electric lights and the whistle of locomotives resounded in the valley. Over three thousand Spanish troops were quartered in the town and their movements were plainly discernible. Trains were arriving hourly from Santiago, bearing strong re-enforcements. Through a field-glass Maceo watched the stirring scene. He turned the glass beyond the town and gazed through it patiently, betraying a trace of anxiety. Finally he alighted and conferred with Colonel Miro, his chief of staff. A moment afterward came the order to dismount. Three hundred troopers obeyed and were about to tether their horses when they were called to attention. A second order reached their ears. They were told to stand motionless, with both feet on the ground, and to await further orders with their right hands' on their saddles. In the moonlight beneath the scattered palms they stood as silent as if petrified. A STORY OF MACEO. Among them there was a newspaper correspondent who had known Maceo many years, and who had parted with him at Port Limon, in Central America, a few months before. He had joined the column just after the battle of Paralejo. In obedience to orders he stood with his arm over the back of his horse, blinking at the enlivening scene below him. Exhausted by the day's march, his eyes closed and he found it impossible to keep awake. A moment later he fastened the bridle to his foot, wrapped himself in his rubber coat, placed a satchel under his head, and fell asleep in the wet grass. The adjutant soon awoke him, telling him that he had better get up, as they were going to have a fight. He thanked the adjutant, who told him there were over three thousand Spanish soldiers in San Luis and that it was surrounded with fourteen blockhouses. The correspondent soon curled himself on the grass a second time and was in a sound slumber, when he was again aroused by the adjutant, who told him he was in positive danger if he persisted in disobeying the order of General Maceo. A third time his heavy eyelids closed and he was in a dead sleep, when startled by a peremptory shake. Jesus Mascons, Maceo's secretary, stood over him. "Get up this instant," said he. "The general wants to see you immediately." In a few seconds the correspondent was on his feet. The whistles were still blowing and the electric lights still glowing in the valley, and the moon was on the horizon. He went forward in some trepidation, fancying that the general was going to upbraid him for disobeying his orders. He was surprised to find him very pleasant. Maceo always spoke in a low tone, as he had been shot twice through the lungs. "Are you not hungry?" he asked. "No," the correspondent replied, wondering what was in the wind. "I thought possibly you might want something to eat," General Maceo said, with a smile. "I have a boiled egg here and I want to divide it with you." As he uttered these words he drew out his machete and cut the egg straight through the center. Passing half of it to the correspondent, he said: "Share it; it will do you good." The newspaper man thanked the general and they ate the egg in silence. He said afterward that the incident reminded him of General Marion's breakfast with a British officer. He had read the incident in Peter Parley's history of the revolution, when a schoolboy. Marion raked a baked sweet potato out of the ashes of a camp fire and divided it with his British guest. The officer regretted the absence of salt, and the correspondent said he experienced the same regret when he ate his portion of General Maceo's egg. After munching the egg both men sat for some time observing the stirring scene in the valley below them. The moon had gone down, but in the glow of the electric lights they could see that the activity among the Spaniards was as great as ever. Suddenly Maceo turned to the correspondent and said abruptly: "Were you asleep when Jesus called you?" "Oh, no," the correspondent replied, "I was not asleep; I was only just tired--that was all." The general looked at him searchingly and then said: "Don't worry; it is all right. We are going through that town in a few minutes. There may be a fierce fight, and you will need a clear head. The egg will give you strength." Within twenty minutes the little columns of three hundred men were on the move. They led their horses down the hill about an hour before daybreak, with the general in the lead. Silently and stealthily they entered the outskirts of the town. The columns passed two blockhouses without being observed and at the break of day were beyond the town on the main road to Banabacoa. Meantime the Spaniards had discovered them. The town was aroused and a hundred and fifty Spanish cavalry headed the pursuit. The road wound through fields of cane. A strong column of Spanish infantry followed the cavalry. Maceo held his men in reserve and continued his march, the Spanish troopers trailing after them like so many wildcats. Suddenly, to their astonishment, Quintin Bandera's infantry arose on either side of the road and almost annihilated the pursuing column. Those who escaped alarmed the columns of infantry, who returned to San Luis to fortify themselves. Maceo and Bandera camped on the estate of Mejorana, about six miles away. It was here that Marti, Gomez, the two Maceos, Crombet, Guerra, and Rabi met not long before this to inaugurate the new revolution. Bandera and Maceo found plenty of provisions at the estate, but no bread. A small Cuban boy was sent to the Spanish commander at San Luis with a note requesting him to be so kind as to send some bread to visitors at the Mejorana plantation. The boy delivered the note and the Spanish commander asked who sent him. Without a moment's hesitation he replied: "General Maceo." The Spanish official laughed and replied: "Very well, a supply of bread will be sent. It will not be necessary for Maceo to come after it." What is more remarkable is the fact that Maceo told the correspondent beforehand that the bread would be sent, as the Spaniards had been so frightened by Bandera on the previous day that they did not want to invite another attack. That very evening the boy returned, conveying many bags of bread. The Spaniards remained within the town until Maceo had rested his army and departed for Jarahuica. CAMPOS' CAMPAIGN FAILS. Before the end of the year Campos' campaign was admitted to be a failure. He could not depart from his humane policy, however, and at the beginning of the year 1896 he returned to Spain. The rabid Spaniards of Havana, having compelled Campos to tender his resignation, demanded from Canovas a captain-general framed in the old iron cast of the Spanish conquerors, not to fight battles and risk his life in the field, but to exterminate the native population. In their belief, women, children, everyone born in Cuba, should be held responsible for the situation. They did not like a soldier with a gallant career and personal courage. They wanted an executioner. Canovas satisfied them and appointed Don Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau to succeed Martinez Campos. The question may be asked why the insurgents after so many victories did not invest the city of Havana, and end therewith the Spanish dominion. The answer is very clear. After the battle of Coliseo General Gomez reviewed his troops and found that each soldier had only three cartridges. The Cubans in the United States were making vain efforts to send a big expedition to the insurgents, but the policy of our government was non-interference, and they were checked in their plans. At Guira de Helena, on January 4, 1896, the Cubans had to fight with their machetes to enter the Province of Havana. If history does not afford a parallel of the stern resolution displayed by the Cubans to die or to win in a struggle with all the odds against them, neither does it present a case of stubborn resistance to justice and human rights, and of barbarous cruelty, which equals the record of Spain in Cuba. CHAPTER XX. JOSE MARTI AND OTHER CUBAN HEROES. A Cuban Patriot--A Life Devoted to the Cause--First Work for Cuba--Banished From His Native Land--He Returns to Fight for Freedom--His Death--Maximo Gomez, General-in-Chief of the Cuban Forces--His Methods of Warfare--Antonio Maceo, the Colored Commander--Other Military Men of Note in the Cuban Army. When the day comes that Cuba shall take her place among the free and independent nations of the earth, Jose Marti, who probably did more than any other one man to arouse the insurgents to make the final struggle for liberty, will not be among them to share their triumphs. Struck down, by a Spanish bullet, almost at the commencement of the last revolution, he sleeps beneath the, southern skies, and neither the clash of swords nor the thunder of the cannon over his grave can disturb his rest. Born in Havana, the son of a Spanish army officer, he was taught from his childhood days that the friends of Cuba's cause were rebels, deserving of death. But as he grew older he commenced to think for himself, and the more he learned of Spanish robbery, injustice and cruelty, the more determined he became to devote his life to the cause of his native land. While yet a mere boy, he began the work. He published clandestine circulars, he wrote a play in which he depicted the wrongs inflicted upon the island people; "Free Cuba" was his thought by day, his dream at night. Through imprisonment and exile, in Spain, Mexico and the United States, every action of his life was guided by the one ambition. On April 14th, 1895, in company with Maximo Gomez, Marti landed on the coast of Cuba, at Cobonico. His coming gave the insurgents new courage, and their numbers increased rapidly. He was made a Major General of the army, and in company with Gomez, who had seen service in the previous campaign, he led a number of successful attacks against detachments of the Spanish forces. After organizing an expedition that was to march to Puerto Principe under Gomez's command, Marti intended to go to the seacoast in order to return abroad and continue his work there in favor of the secessionist revolution. About this time a man named Chacon was captured by Colonel Sandoval, of the Spanish forces, and letters from the rebels were found in his possession, and some money with which he was going to make purchases for the insurgent chiefs. This man gave information regarding the enemy's location, and acting upon this knowledge, Colonel Sandoval, on the 19th of May, brought his army to La Brija. The Hernan Cortez squadron, under Captain Capa, was in vanguard, and attacked a band commanded by Bellito, which had come to meet the column. When Colonel Sandoval heard of it, he advanced up to the plain of Dos Rios, and ordered his infantry to open fire. A spirited combat ensued, with fatal results to the insurgents, as the Spanish guide, Antonio Oliva, running up to help a soldier who was surrounded by a large group of the enemy, fired his rifle at a horseman, who fell to the ground, and was found to be Jose Marti. Captain Enrique Satue was the first to recognize him. A fight took place upon the spot, the rebels trying hard to carry the corpse away, but they were repulsed. Maximo Gomez was wounded in the encounter, which for some days led to the belief that he too was dead. According to one narrative, Gomez was in the midst of the battle from the beginning, and while hurrying to recover the corpse of Marti, he was slightly wounded. Others say that the famous chief, had already taken leave of Marti to go to Camaguey, when, passing at some distance from Dos Rios, he heard the report of musketry. He imagined what was happening, and ran to rescue the civil chief of the revolution, but when he arrived, Marti had been killed. Gomez being wounded, Borrero took him on his own horse, and in this manner carried him to a place of safety. The Spaniards, after their victory, moved to Remanganagaus, where the corpse of Marti was embalmed. From the latter town it was taken to Santiago de Cuba, and while on the way there, the troops had to repel an attack from the rebels, who intended to carry off the coffin. On arriving at the city, the remains of Marti were exhibited at the cemetery. Colonel Sandoval presided over the funeral ceremonies, and the dead leader was given a decent resting place. Here are Sandoval's words on the occasion: Gentlemen:--In presence of the corpse of him who in life was Jose Marti, and in the absence of any relative or friend who might speak over his remains such words as are customary, I request you not to consider these remains to be those of an enemy any more, but simply those of a man, carried by political discords to face Spanish soldiers. From the moment the spirits have freed themselves of matter they are sheltered and magnanimously pardoned by the Almighty, and the abandoned matter is left in our care, for us to dispel all rancorous feelings, and give the corpse such Christian burial as is due to the dead. MAXIMO GOMEZ, THE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF. The General-in-Chief of the Cuban forces is Maximo Gomez, a man of scholarly attainments, great intellect, and long experience in military affairs. Formerly an officer of Spain, he explains his present position in the following words: "When I gave up, in 1868, my uniform and rank as a Major of the Spanish Army, it was because I knew that if I kept them. I would have some day to meet my own children in the field, and combat against their just desire for liberty. Now, with my many years, I have come to lead and counsel the new generation to ultimate victory." Of his methods in war, Thomas Alvord says: "General Gomez never has more than 300 or 400 men with him. His favorite camp is near Arroyo Blanco, on a high plateau, difficult to approach, and covered with dense thicket. He posts his outer pickets at least three miles away, in directions from which the enemy may come. The Spaniards, whenever possible, march by road, and, with these highways well guarded, Gomez sleeps secure. He knows that his pickets will be informed by some Cuban long before the Spanish column leaves or passes the nearest village to attack him. A shot from the farthest sentry causes little or no excitement in Gomez's camp. The report throws the Spanish column into fears of attack or ambush, and it moves forward very slowly and carefully. Two pickets at such a time have been known to hold 2,000 men at bay for a whole day. If the column presses on, and General Gomez hears a shot from a sentinel near by, he will rise leisurely from his hammock and give orders to prepare to move camp. He has had so many experiences of this kind that not until he hears the volley-shooting of the oncoming Spaniards will he call for his horse, give the word to march, and disappear, followed by his entire force, into the tropical underbrush, which closes like curtain behind him, leaving the Spaniards to discover a deserted camp, without the slightest trace of the path taken by its recent occupants. "Sometimes Gomez will move only a mile or two. The Spaniards do not usually give chase. If they do, Gomez takes a keen delight in leading them in a circle. If he can throw them off by nightfall, he goes to sleep in his camp of the morning, happier than if he had won a battle. The Spaniards learn nothing through such experiences. Gomez varies the game occasionally by marching directly towards the rear of the foe, and there, reinforced by other insurgent bands of the neighborhood, falling upon the column and punishing it severely. While his immediate force is but a handful, the General can call to his aid, in a short time, nearly 6,000 men." A COLORED COMMANDER. As soon as the rebellion had assumed such proportions as to make it possible to arrange a regular military organization among the insurgents, Antonio Maceo was made the second in command, under General Gomez, with the title of Lieutenant General. He had risen from the ranks to the position of Major General in the Ten Years' war, where, notwithstanding his colored blood, he had shown unusual ability as a leader of men. Sons of the first families of Cuba were proud to enlist under his banner, and to recognize him as their superior officer. Space is devoted in another part of this volume to an account of the treacherous manner of his death. The following letter, written by him to General Weyler, soon after the arrival of the latter named in Cuba, shows that he could fight with his pen as well as with his sword: Republic of Cuba, Invading Army. Second Corps, Cayajabos, Feb. 27, 1896. General Valeriano Weyler, Havana: In spite of all that the press has published in regard to you, I have never been willing to give it belief and to base my judgment of your conduct on its statements; such an accumulation of atrocities, so many crimes repugnant and dishonoring to any man of honor, I thought it impossible for a soldier holding your high rank to commit. These accusations seemed to me rather to be made in bad faith, or to be the utterances of personal enmity, and I expected that you would take care to give the lie in due form to your detractors, rising to the height required of a gentleman, and saving yourself from any imputation of that kind, by merely adopting in the treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war, the generous course that has been pursued from the beginning by the revolutionists towards the Spanish wounded and prisoners. But, unfortunately, Spanish dominion must always be accompanied by infamy, and although the errors and wrongful acts of the last war seemed to be corrected at the beginning of this one, to-day it has become manifest that it was only by closing our eyes to invariable personal antecedents and incorrigible traditional arbitrariness that we could have imagined Spain would forget forever her fatal characteristic of ferocity towards the defenseless. But we cannot help believing evidence. In my march during the period of this campaign I see with alarm, with horror, how the wretched reputation you enjoy is confirmed, and how the deeds that disclose your barbarous irritation are repeated. What! must even the peaceful inhabitants (I say noticing of the wounded and prisoners of war), must they be sacrificed to the rags that gave the Duke of Alva his name and fame? Is it thus that Spain, through you, returns the clemency and kindness with which we, the redeemers of this suffering people, have acted in like circumstances? What a reproach for yourself and for Spain! The license to burn the huts, assassinations like those at Nueva Paz and the villa El Gato, committed by Spanish columns, in particular those of Colonels Molina and Vicuna, proclaim you guilty before all mankind. Your name will be forever infamous, here and far from here, remembered with disgust and horror. Out of humanity, yielding to the honorable and generous impulses which are identified with both the spirit and the tendency of the revolution, I shall never use reprisals that would be unworthy of the reputation and the power of the liberating army of Cuba. But I nevertheless foresee that such abominable conduct on your part and on that of your men, will arouse at no distant time private vengeances to which they will fall victims, without my being able to prevent it, even though I should punish hundreds of innocent persons. For this last reason, since war should only touch combatants, and it is inhuman to make others suffer from its consequences, I invite you to retrace your steps, if you admit your guilt, or to repress these crimes with a heavy hand, if they were committed without your consent. At all events, take care that no drop of blood be shed outside the battle field. Be merciful to the many unfortunate citizens. In so doing you will imitate in honorable emulation our conduct and our proceedings. Yours, A. MACEO. This letter could have been written by none but a brave and honorable soldier, resolved to present the cause of the oppressed non-combatants, even when he probably knew that his appeal was powerless to lessen their sufferings in the slightest degree. LOVE AND WAR. Among the many brave leaders of the insurgents there is perhaps none who has shown more heroism than young De Robau. After the breaking out of the revolution he was one of the first to join the standard of independence. At that time he was engaged to be married, yet with him the call of duty was paramount over every selfish consideration. After having served for some months with conspicuous credit, he was sent with his command into the neighborhood of his fiance. The men hitherto, it may be imagined, had not paid much attention to their appearance, but now there was a regular conventional dress parade. A barber was requisitioned, accoutrements were furbished up, and weather-beaten sombreros were ornamented with brilliant ribbons. When the metamorphosis was complete, De Robau placed himself at the head of his dashing troop, and went in state to call upon the lady of his affections. His march was a triumph, as everywhere he was attended by crowds of enthusiastic people, who had long known him, and who now hailed him as a distinguished champion. How he sped in his wooing may be gathered from the fact that an orderly was soon dispatched for the villa cura, and that there was a wedding which fairly rivaled that of Camacho, so often and so fondly recalled by the renowned Sancho. Since then the Senora de Robau has accompanied her husband throughout the campaign, sharing the hard fare and the dangers of the men, and adding another to the noble band of patriotic Cuban women, who vie with their husbands and brothers in fidelity to their native land. OTHER COMMANDERS OF NOTE. The cause has many other brave leaders, among whom may be mentioned General Calixto Garcia, General Serafin Sanchez, Francisco Corrillo, and Jose Maria Rodriguez. They are all veterans of the war of 1868-1878, and are ready to sacrifice their lives in the struggle for liberty. CHAPTER XXI. DESPERATE BATTLES WITH MACHETE AND RIFLE. The Sword of Cuba--Battle Cry of the Revolutionists--Cavalry Charges--The Strategies of War--Hand-to-Hand Encounters--Maceo at the Front--Barbarities of the Spanish Soldiers--Americans in the Cuban Army--A Fight for Life--A Yankee Gunner--How a Brave Man Died. There is a story told of a great Roman General who, after having conquered in many battles, beat his sword into a plowshare, and turned from war's alarms to the peaceful pursuit of agriculture. The Cuban has reversed the story. When he left his labors in the forests and fields to fight his oppressors, he carried with him the implement with which he had cut the sugar cane on his plantation, and made paths through dense tropic vegetation. The machete is the sword of the Cuban soldier, and it will be famous forever. Its blade is of tempered steel, curved slightly at the end, with one edge sharp as a razor. It has a handle of horn, and is carried in a leather scabbard, attached to a narrow belt. The weapon in the hands of one who understands its use is terribly effective. Instances have been known where rifle barrels have been cut in two by it, and heads have been severed from their bodies at a single stroke. Its name, shrieked in a wild ferocious way, is the battle cry of the insurgents, and when shouted from an hundred throats, it carries with it so awe-inspiring a sound, that it is little wonder that the enemy is stricken with fear, for it means in reality "war to the knife." CAVALRY CHARGES. The Cubans are among the most skillful and daring rough riders of the world, the equals of the cowboys of our western States, and the far-famed Cossacks of Russia. The horses' backs have been their cradles, and here they possess a decided advantage over their Spanish foes, who know as little of the equestrian art as they seem to understand of other's rights, or the amenities of war. A mounted band of insurgents, rushing down on a detachment of the enemy, waving aloft the terrible machete, will carry with them terror and death, and conquer twice their number. The heroic mulatto brothers, Antonio and Jose Maceo, adopted this manner of fighting on every possible occasion, and it is a coincidence worthy of note that they both met their death while leading machete charges against their hated foes. LACK OF AMMUNITION IN THE CUBAN RANKS. The lack of ammunition is one of the weaknesses of the insurgents. Courage, ability and men they possess in abundance, but the lack of cartridges has interfered with many of their best laid plans, and has often prevented them from availing themselves of favorable opportunities. Three or four rounds a man is nothing in action, especially when the Spaniards are always so abundantly supplied. However they are determined, and as Spanish incapacity becomes daily more apparent, they feel that it is only a question of a few months until the cause for which they have so long and bravely fought will be gloriously won. MACEO AT THE FRONT. Within three months of the time that Gomez and Maceo landed at Baracoa they had all Santiago and Puerto Principe in a state of insurrection. They started out with comparatively a handful of men. The most reliable sources agree that there were not more than 300, but they were quickly joined by thousands of Cubans, who brought out from hiding places arms and ammunition which they had been collecting and concealing for years. General Campos, the Spanish commander, had declared that Puerto Principe would never rise against Spain, and he proposed at once a plan to make it doubly sure. He procured special concessions from Madrid for the foreign railroads, permitting them to import iron bridges to replace their wooden structures, and pledging them $20,000 a month until they had extended their lines and made connections to complete a continuous road through the country, using the money to employ the natives. This was to insure the peace of Puerto Principe and Santa Clara, both considered conservative, and to prevent the people joining the revolutionary party. After the plan was announced, the revolutionists burned out the wooden bridges, tore up the tracks in many places, and the roads have been, for all practical purposes, in their hands ever since. Campos, meantime, to prevent Gomez moving eastward, placed 10,000 troops on the border between the provinces of Puerto Principe and Santiago, but Gomez crossed the line on May 19th, after a battle at Boca del Dos Bios, where a loss was suffered in the death of General Marti, which was so great a blow to Cuba that Campos announced that the "death blow to the bandits had been struck." In Puerto Principe Gomez captured every town he attempted to take, among them Alta Gracia, San Jeronimo and Coscorro. He took Fort El Mulato, and in all the places secured large quantities of ammunition. So enthusiastic was his reception in the provinces of Puerto Principe and Santa Clara that in the latter 400 Spanish volunteers joined him with their arms. The most important battle of the summer occurred at Bayamo in July, just as Gomez was near the Spanish line between Santa Clara and Puerto Principe, where, in an engagement between the two armies, with about 3,000 men on either side, the Spanish forces were completely routed. From that time on through the summer and far into the autumn, every day was marked by skirmishes, the taking of important places, and the threatening of the larger towns. It kept the Spanish columns moving constantly, and the exposure in the rainy season killed thousands. Maceo now separated his forces from Gomez's command, and marched westward, fighting as he went, and everywhere meeting with success. He established the new government in the cities and towns of Mantua, San Cristobal, Remates, Palacios, Paso Real de San Diego, Guane, Consolacion del Sur, Pilotos, Alonso de Rojas, San Luis, San Juan y Martinez, and others of less importance. Pinar del Rio City, the capital of the province, was the only city of importance that held out, but it was cut off with communication with its port, Colon, and was short of provisions. One supply sent by the Spanish for its relief, 100,000 rations, fell into Maceo's hands. In San Cristobal the Spanish flag on the government building was replaced by the emblem of the new republic, a mayor and city officials were appointed, resolutions were adopted by the new authorities, and, after all the arms in the town had been collected, Maco remained a day to rest his men and horses, and moved on the following morning at daybreak. Generals Navarre and Luque were ordered to crush the insurgent army at all hazards. Their combined forces consisted of 5,000 infantry, 200 cavalry, and 11 pieces of artillery. After a two-days' march they were joined by General Arizon's command, which had encountered Maceo's rear guard the previous day, with disastrous results. Near Quivera Hacha, Navarre's skirmishers encountered a small band of insurgents, and fearing that all of Maceo's army was near, lines of battle were quickly formed. The engagement lasted for less than half an hour, when the insurgent forces withdrew, without serious losses on either side. General Navarro finally discovered that the principal part of Maceo's forces was at the Armendores estate, and the seat of operations was changed. General Luque succeeded Navarro in command, and several days now passed without any conflict of note. Finally Luque led a charge upon Maceo's vanguard, in the vicinity of Pinar del Rio, but the moment the attack was made he found himself under fire from the top of low hills on both sides of the road, where the insurgents were well protected, and he sustained severe losses without inflicting much injury upon the enemy. So hot was the encounter that Luque withdrew and prepared to charge upon two points where the enemy were making a stand. He held the road with one battalion, sending a detachment to the right, and another to the left. The attack was successful. The Spanish made a magnificent effort under withering fire, and swept Maceo's forces before them, not, however, until they had left the field scattered with their own dead and wounded. For some reason the cavalry had not been used. The artillery was just coming up when the action had reached this point. The Spanish found that the enemy had, instead of being routed, simply fallen back and taken a position on another hill, and scattered firing went on for a considerable time, while Luque prepared to attack again. Then, against 2,000 of Maceo's men, was directed all of Luque's command, over 4,000 infantry, 200 cavalry, and eleven pieces of artillery. At least half of Maceo's army, certainly not less than 2,000 cavalry, had been moving up to Luque's rear and came upon him, surprising him just as this second attack was being made. For a time it was a question whether Luque's command would not be wiped out. They were practically surrounded by Maceo's men, and for fully an hour and a half the fighting was desperate. It is impossible to unravel the stories of both sides so as to arrive at a clear idea of the encounter. When the cannonading ceased, four companies of infantry charged up the hill and occupied it before the insurgents, who had been driven out by the artillery, could regain it. Shortly the hill on the left of the road was taken in the same way, and Luque, although at a great loss, had repelled Maceo's attack from the rear. The battle had lasted for a little over two hours. Maceo had about forty of his men wounded and left four dead on the field, taking away ten others. Twenty or more of his horses were killed. The Spanish reported that he had 1,000 killed, the next day reduced the number to 300, and finally to the statement that "the enemy's losses must have been enormous," the usual phrase when the true number is humiliating. Luque's losses have never been officially reported, but it is variously estimated at from seventy-five to a hundred men. THE WORK OF FIENDS. The Cubans give horrible details of a battle at Paso Heal, between General Luque's army and a division of Maceo's forces under Bermudez. Witnesses of the encounter claim that the Spaniards invaded the hospital and killed wounded insurgents in their beds, and that, Bermudez, in retaliation, formed a line, and shot thirty-seven Spanish prisoners. Luque says in his report of this engagement: "The rebels made a strong defense, firing from the tops of houses and along the fences around the city. The Spanish vanguard, under Colonel Hernandez, attacked the vanguard, center and rear guard of the rebels in the central streets of the town, driving them with continuous volleys and fierce cavalry charges into the outskirts of the town. Up to this point we had killed ten insurgents." The people of Paso Real say this report is true, as far as it goes, but that Luque neglects to add that he then attacked the hospital, and murdered twenty-eight wounded men, firing at them as they lay on their cots, through the windows, and finally breaking down the door, and killing the rest with the bayonet. Under date of February 8th we have an account of the operations of the Spanish General Sabas Marin, who left Havana a short time before. His campaign in search of General Gomez was disastrous, and the official reports of Spanish victories were misleading. There were losses on both sides, but Marin accomplished absolutely nothing of what he intended to achieve. The first misfortune which overtook the Spaniards was the rout of Carnellas, on the very day on which Marin left Havana, Gomez sent a detachment under Pedro Diaz to intercept him, and this force reached Saladrigas in the early morning. In this section the country is cut into small fields, divided by stone fences, and facing the road there is a high fence, with a ditch in front of it. Diaz placed 400 infantry behind this fence, and waited himself with 1,000 cavalry back of a hill close by. When the Spanish forces appeared, the advance guard was allowed to pass, and as soon as the main body was fairly in the trap, volleys were poured into them, literally mowing them down. At the sound of the first gun, Diaz led his thousand horsemen upon the enemy's flank and rear. The charge was irresistible. Half of Diaz's men did not even fire a shot, but yelling "machete," they rode furiously upon the Spanish lines, cutting their way through, and fighting with terrible effect. The Spanish issued no official report of this battle. So far as the records show, it never occurred. One of the Spanish officers, who fought in it, conceded a loss of 200 men, but it is probable that twice that number would be nearer the correct figure. AMERICANS IN THE CUBAN ARMY. Colonel Frederick Funston, who returned to New York in January, 1898, told an interesting story of brave Yankee boys serving under General Gomez and General Garcia in Eastern Cuba, and also gave an account of the sad death of W. Dana Osgood, the famous football player, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania. Colonel Funston was with Gomez's army when they attacked Guimaro. They had with them a twelve-pound Hotchkiss rifle and four American artillerymen, Osgood of Pennsylvania, Latrobe and Janney of Baltimore, and Devine of Texas. They attacked Guimaro in the morning, at ranges of from 400 to 600 yards, the infantry being protected by a breastwork of earth, in which openings were left for the guns. The Spanish garrison consisted of 200 men in eleven forts, and they maintained a hot fire all day. Gradually, however, the Hotchkiss rifle, the fire of which was directed by Osgood, made the largest and nearest fort untenable, and it was abandoned by the garrison. No sooner had the Spanish forces left it than a band of the insurgents took possession, and from this point of vantage the fighting was continued with renewed vigor. As soon as darkness came on one of the Cuban guns was moved forward and stationed in this fort, and on the following day a storm of shot and shell was directed at the other forts. Naturally the rifles of the garrison were trained most of the time upon the man sighting the Hotchkiss in the captured fort, and there, leaning over his gun in the early morning, the intrepid Osgood was shot through the head. He was carried off by his comrades under fire, and died four hours later. The death of this gallant young soldier was universally lamented, and the Cubans honor his memory as one of the first Americans to give his life while fighting for their cause. With Gomez, with Garcia, and with Maceo, in every insurgent camp, there were brave men, American born, who fought for the flag of Free Cuba, side by side with the native soldier, and who gave their lives in the war against Spanish tyranny and misrule. CHAPTER XXII. FILIBUSTERS FROM FLORIDA. First Expeditions--Expense to the United States--President Pierce's Action--The Uprising in 1868-The Patrol of the Coasts--An Expedition on the "Three Friends"--Arms and Ammunition for the Insurgents--Desperate Chances--A Successful Landing. The record of the last fifty years is the clearest and most convincing evidence that can be offered against the Spanish contention that the United States is not concerned with the question of government in Cuba, and has not been tremendously injured by the inability of Spanish administration to furnish the Cubans with a peaceful and satisfactory government. The first bit of evidence to be submitted comes from away back in 1848, when President Polk, on behalf of the United States, announced that while the United States was willing that Cuba should be continued under Spanish ownership and government, it would never consent to the occupation of the island by any other European nation. It was pointed out at that time by the American government that were the United States to admit that Cuba was open to seizure by any government that was able to throw Spain out the fact that it was nearly surrounded, in Central and South America and in other West Indian islands, by territory belonging to twelve other nations would make it the ground of interminable squabbles. And these squabbles were not matters which would be without interest and damage to the commerce and peace of the United States. This was followed by an offer of $100,000,000 to Spain for the island of Cuba. The offer was promptly declined, and the United States was informed that Cuba was not on the market. FIRST FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITION. Nevertheless, there was formed in the United States the Lone Star Society, which had as its object "the acquisition of the island of Cuba as part of the territory of the United States." The "Conspiracy of Lopez," which is fully treated of in previous pages of this work, was the first filibustering expedition that attracted particular attention from the authorities, and it was hoped that its disastrous end would deter others from like attempts. But the hope was a vain one, for within two years a similar expedition, led by General Quitman of Mississippi, was organized in the United States. Many men were enlisted and vessels chartered, but the expedition was suppressed by the government of the United States. EXPENSE TO UNITED STATES. It will thus be seen that the fact that Spain had not been able to govern Cuba peaceably has caused the United States great expense and irritation for a much longer period than is usually taken into consideration in these days. It is not the fault of the United States that its citizens have been stirred to sympathy with the victims of the Spanish policy of government by robbery and murder. It is not the fault of the United States that this country has been the refuge of men who have been outlawed from the country of their birth because their presence there meant the irrepressible working in them of a desire for freedom, a desire intolerable to Spanish institutions. It is not the fault of the United States that these refugees, living in the land of civil liberty, should desire to return to their native country and drive out those who made it miserable. But it would have been the fault of the United States, under international law, if these exiled Cubans were permitted to carry out their very natural and laudable desire in concert with the Americans whose sympathy had been stirred by the story of Spanish wrongs. To ferret out the plans for expeditions conceived with such determination and perseverance was not only a task requiring tremendous expenditure of money and energy, but it was a miserably disagreeable and unpopular work for the government to engage in. On the 31st of May, 1854, President Pierce issued a proclamation instructing citizens of the United States as to their duties in refraining from encouragement, aid, or participation in connection with the Cuban insurrections. THE UPRISING IN 1868. In the fall of 1868, after scattering uprisings and several battles during the preceding year, plans for a concerted insurrection were arranged. The plan was discovered and the insurrection was started prematurely. There followed a campaign in which Spanish forces, amounting to 110,000 men, were unable to hold in check the Cuban force of about 26,000. In May the filibustering expeditions, that were to prove such an immense expense and annoyance to the United States, began again. The Spanish navy co-operated with the United States government in the efforts to suppress these expeditions, but many of them eluded the authorities, and aided the insurgents with arms and provisions. This was irritating to Spain and the United States alike, because it cost just as much to keep up an unsuccessful anti-filibustering patrol as it did actually to catch filibusters, and, moreover, every successful expedition weakened the authority of the Federal government. That authority in the Southern States just after the war was none too strong, and it was not a good thing that the spectacle of defiance to the United States should be flaunted along the Southern coast. From 1878 until 1895, when the present insurrection gained strength to become openly active, the island is supposed to have been at peace, but in the latter year the open war and filibustering expeditions began again. The name of President Cleveland was added to the list of Presidents whose duty it was to interfere with efforts to aid Cuban liberty. He issued appropriate proclamations on June 12, 1895, and July 30, 1896. Revenue cutters and warships constantly patrolled the Florida coast and, indeed, all the waters of the gulf, and sometimes New York harbor, to head off filibustering expeditions. It is said to have cost more to suppress the natural desire of citizens of the United States to relieve the political distress in Cuba than it has cost to enforce customs regulations from the same territory. THE VOYAGE OF THE "THREE FRIENDS." As evidence of the fact that Cuban sympathizers have been successful in escaping the patrol on American coasts and the enemy's battleships in Cuban waters, we give the report of one of many expeditions that have been made during the past three years. The steamer "Three Friends," of Jacksonville, Florida, in command of Captain Napoleon B. Broward, returned to Jacksonville on March 18th, having succeeded in landing in Cuba, General Enrique Collazo, Major Charles Hernandez, and Duke Estrada, besides fifty-four men taken off the schooner "Ardell" from Tampa, and the entire cargo of arms and ammunition of the schooner "Mallory" from Cedar Key. It was by long odds the most important expedition that has set out from this country, and the Cubans at Jacksonville, when they learned that the "Three Friends" had safely fulfilled her mission, shouted "Viva Cuba!" until they were hoarse. They declared that it would change the character of the whole war, as the unarmed men would now be armed, and that Maceo, who had before been wary and cautious, would be more aggressive than he had ever been before. The cargo of arms landed by the "Three Friends" and the "Mallory" was as follows: 750,000 rounds of cartridges, 1,200 rifles, 2,100 machetes, 400 revolvers, besides stores, reloading tools, etc. The "Three Friends" met the "Mallory" at Alligator Key. The "Ardell" had just finished transferring the men to her. While they were rendezvoused there behind the pines in a deep coral-walled creek, three big Spanish men-of-war steamed slowly by, but they did not discover that there was anything suspicious looking in shore, although with a glass men could be seen in their look-outs scanning the horizon, as well as searching the shore. Sunday, about noon, no vessels being in sight, the "Three Friends" took in tow the "Mallory" and steamed southward under a good head of steam. The "Three Friends" is a powerful tug, and by Monday night was close enough to the Cuban shore to hear the breakers. Several shiplights to the west were seen, one of which was evidently a Spanish man-of-war, for she had a search-light at her bow, and was sweeping the waves with it, but the "Three Friends" was a long way off, and had no light, and so was out of the neighborhood of the Spaniard. A SUCCESSFUL LANDING. At ten o'clock that night, by the aid of a naphtha launch and two big surf boats, which had been taken out of Jacksonville, the "Three Friends" landed the men and ammunition from her hold, and from that of the "Mallory." It took four and a half hours to complete the job. There were hundreds of men on shore to assist, and they did it silently, appreciating the peril of the position. The Cubans on shore recognized General Collazo immediately, and no words can describe their joy on seeing him. He is a veteran of Cuban wars, and one whom Spain fears. In fact, it is known that during his sojourn in Florida he was shadowed by detectives, who had been instructed to spare no expense to keep Collazo from reaching Cuba. When it was whispered that Collazo was really among them, they seemed not to believe their ears, but came forward and looked, and, seeing that there was really no mistake, threw up their arms and wept for joy. Major Charles Hernandez and Duke Estrada were also enthusiastically welcomed. It was reported that night that Maceo had received the arms of the first expedition that set forth three days before the "Three Friends" landed. They were not from the "Commodore," for they reported that they were now on the lookout for that vessel. They said, too, that at the end of the week four expeditions were afloat. Two, including the "Three Friends," had landed, and two more were on the way. Tuesday morning, as the "Three Friends" was returning, she sighted a steamer that answered to the description of the "Commodore." She was headed southward, and pushing along apparently at the rate of fifteen knots an hour. Here is the story of the capture of an expedition, by Commander Butron, of the Spanish gunboat "Mensagera": "The 'Mensagera' was directed to watch the coast between Cayo Julia and Morrillo, about one hundred miles. It was heard on the afternoon of April 25 that a suspicious schooner had been seen near Quebrados de Uvas. The gunboat followed, and found the 'Competitor.' The usual signals were made, but the schooner tried to get closer in shore, so as to land a rapid-fire gun. "The 'Mensagera' was then moved forward and fired a shot, which struck the schooner and exploded a box of cartridges which the men were trying to take ashore. Several occupants of the schooner became alarmed, and threw themselves into the water, fearing an explosion of dynamite. The gunboat's crew seized rifles and began shooting, killing three men. Several others reached shore. "Three men were aboard the schooner when it was overhauled, and they surrendered without resistance. Among them was Owen Milton, editor of the Key West Mosquito. Sailors were sent ashore to capture the arms landed. In the skirmish, two men, supposed to be filibusters, and a horse were killed. They secured several abandoned cases of cartridges. A body of insurgents had come to watch the landing of the boat's crew. The 'Mensagera' came to Havana with the arms and prisoners, who were very seasick. The schooner was towed to Havana by the gunboat 'Vicente Yanez.' It is regarded as an object of great curiosity by the crowds. It had the Spanish flag floating when captured. It is a neat, strong boat, and looks fast. One of the prisoners captured steadily refuses to give his name." An account of the trial, as sent from Havana, May 8th, reads as follows: "The court opened at the Arsenal. The prisoners were Alfredo Liaborde, born in New Orleans; Owen Milton, of Kansas; William Kinlea, an Englishman, and Elias Vedia and Teodore Dela Maza, both Cubans. Captain Ruiz acted as president of the court, which consisted of nine other military and naval officers. The trial of the five filibusters captured aboard the 'Competitor' was proceeded with against the formal protest presented by Consul General Williams, who declared that the trial was illegal and in violation of the treaty between Spain and the United States. "The prisoners were not served with a copy of the charges against them and were not allowed to select their own counsel, but were represented by a naval officer appointed by the government. They were not permitted to call witnesses for their defense, the prosecution calling all the witnesses. Owen Milton, of Kansas, testified through an interpreter that he came on the expedition only to correspond for a newspaper. William Kinlea, when called, was in his shirt sleeves. He arose and said in English, 'I do not recognize your authority, and appeal for protection to the American and English consuls.'" Fortunately for these prisoners, the United States government interfered, and they were eventually released. CHAPTER XXIII. WEYLER THE BUTCHER. His Ancestry--A Soldier From His Youth--He Succeeds General Campos--A Master of Diplomacy--A Slave of Spain--His Personal Appearance--His Interview With a Woman--His Definition of War-- His Resignation. Early in 1896, when the Spanish government began to realize that the insurrection was assuming serious proportions, arrangements were made for the recall of General Campos, then Governor-General of the island, and General Weyler was sent to assume the duties of the office. It was the opinion in Spain that Campos was too mild in his treatment of the rebels, and as Weyler was known to have no lamb-like qualities, he was regarded as the ideal man for the position. That he did not succeed in putting down the rebellion was certainly not due to any lack of extreme measures on his part. He is known as the "Butcher," and his management of affairs in Cuba certainly gives him every right to the title. Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, to give him his full name, is only half a Spaniard. His father was a Prussian, though Weyler himself was born in Cadiz in 1839. His parents were in very moderate circumstances and not of noble birth. What Weyler has won he has acquired through his own efforts. He has made his way single-handed. He graduated from the infantry school at Toledo in 1857 and was at once sent to Cuba as a subaltern. He was quickly made a captain and his first work was to subdue a small revolt in San Domingo. He rose rapidly in rank, and during the first Cuban revolt he was in command in the province of Santiago, where he earned the title that has since made him famous in the eyes of his supporters, but infamous from a civilized point of view. But he put down the revolt. He was rewarded with the appointment of captain general of the Canary islands. His administration was so successful that he was created Marquis of Tenerife. He was then barely thirty-nine years old. He distinguished himself in the Carlist war and at its conclusion he was made captain general of the Philippines, where he quelled an insurrection and admittedly gave the islands the best administration they had ever known. He returned to Spain in 1889 and was in command at Barcelona until the present Cuban revolution began. Here is a mental photograph of him by a newspaper correspondent: "Most men resemble their reputations, and if a life famously spent is in the mind of one who visits a character of world-wide repute, he quite naturally discovers peculiarities, of facial expression and physique which appear to account for the individuality of the man, fighter, philosopher, criminal, reformer or whatever he may be. "All this is true of General Weyler. He is one of those men who create a first impression, the first sight of whom can never be effaced from the mind, by whose presence the most careless observer is impressed instantly, and yet, taken, altogether, he is a man in whom the elements of greatness are concealed under a cloak of impenetrable obscurity. Inferior physically, unsoldierly in bearing, exhibiting no trace of refined sensibilities nor pleasure in the gentle associations that others live for, or at least seek as diversions, he is nevertheless the embodiment of mental acuteness, crafty, unscrupulous, fearless and of indomitable perseverance. "I have talked with Campos, Marin and Weyler, the three Captain-Generals to whom Spain has intrusted (thus far unsuccessfully) the reconquest of Cuba. Reconquest seems an ill-chosen word, but one of General Weyler's staff has so denominated this war, and Cuban revolutions can be settled only by conquests, Campos was an exceptional man. Marin was commonplace. Weyler is unique. Campos and Marin affected gold lace, dignity and self-consciousness. Weyler ignores them all as useless, unnecessary impediments, if anything, to the one object of his existence. Campos was fat, good natured, wise, philosophical, slow in his mental processes, clear in his judgment, emphatic in his opinions, outspoken, and, withal, lovable, humane, conservative, constructive, progressive, with but one project ever before him, the glorification of Spain as a mother-land and a figure among peaceful, enlightened nations. "Weyler is lean, diminutive, shriveled, ambitious for immortality, irrespective of its odor, a master of diplomacy, the slave of Spain, for the glory of sitting at the right of her throne, unlovable, unloving, exalted, and doubtless justly, in self-esteem, because he is unmistaken in his estimation of his value to his Queen. His passion is success, per se, foul or fair consequences or the conventional ideas of humanity notwithstanding. "He is a little man. An apparition of blacks--black eyes, black hair, black beard, dark, exceedingly dark, complexion, a plain black attire, black shoes, black tie, a very dirty shirt and soiled standing collar, with no jewelry and not a relief from the aspect of darkness anywhere on his person. "It is not remarkable that I momentarily hesitated to make certain that this was actually Weyler. Doubt was dispelled with a look at his face. His eyes, far apart, bright, alert and striking, took me in at a glance. His face seemed to run to his chin, his lower jaw protruding far beyond any ordinary sign of firmness, persistence or willpower. His forehead is neither high nor receding, neither is it that of a thoughtful or philosophic man. His ears are set far back, and what is called the region of intellect, in which are those mental attributes that might be defined as powers of observation, calculation, judgment, and execution, is strongly developed. The conformation of his head, however, is not one that is generally accepted as an indication of any marked possession of philoprogenitiveness or its kindred emotions and inclinations. His nose is aquiline, bloodless and obtrusive; When he speaks it is with a high nasal enunciation that is not disagreeable, because it is not prolonged, and his sentences justify every impression that has already been formed of the man. They are short, crisp, emphatic and expressive. "'I have an aversion to speech,' he said. 'I am an enemy of publications. I prefer to act, not to talk. I am here to restore peace. When peace is in the land I am going away. I am a soldier. When I am gone, politicians will reconstruct Cuba, and probably they will upset things again until they are as bad as they are now. I care not for America, England, anyone, but only for the treaties we have with them. They are the law. I observe the law, and every letter of the law. I have my ideas of Cuba's relation to Spain. I have never expressed them. Some politicians would agree with them, others would not. No one would agree with all of them. I know I am merciless, but mercy has no place in war. I know the reputation which has been built up for me. Things that are charged to me were done by officers under me, and I was held responsible for all things in the Ten-Years' war, including its victorious end. I do not conceal the fact that I am here solely because it is believed I can crush this insurrection. I care not what is said about me, unless it is a lie so great as to occasion alarm. I am not a politician. I am Weyler.'" A WOMAN'S INTERVIEW WITH WEYLER. The following interview with the "Butcher" is by Mrs. Kate Masterson, who bearded the lion in his den for an American newspaper: "His Excellency, Captain-General Weyler, graciously gave me an audience to-day. He received me with most charming courtesy, escorted me through his apartments and presented me with a bunch of roses from his own table. Before I left he had honored me with an invitation to dine with him at the Palace. "'Your Excellency,' I said to him through my interpreter, 'the American women have a very bad opinion of you. I am very much afraid of you myself, but I have come to ask the honor of an interview with you, in order that I may write something which will reassure the women of America that you are not treating women and children unmercifully.' "'I do not give interviews,' he said. 'I am willing, however, to answer any question you wish to ask.' "'In the United States,' I said, 'an impression prevails that your edict shutting out newspaper correspondents from the field is only to conceal cruelties perpetrated upon the insurgent prisoners. Will your Excellency tell me the real cause?' "'I have,' replied the General, 'shut out the Spanish and Cuban papers from the field, as well as the American. In the last war the correspondents created much jealousy by what they wrote. They praised one and rebuked the other. They wrote what the prisoners dictated, instead of facts. They even created ill-feeling between the Spanish officers. They are a nuisance.' "'Then I can deny the stories as to your being cruel?' "The General shrugged his heavy shoulders as he said carelessly: 'I have no time to pay attention to stories. Some of them are true and some are not. If you will particularize I will give direct answers, but these things are not important.' "'Does not your Excellency think that prisoners of war should be treated with consideration and mercy?' "The General's eyes glinted dangerously. 'The Spanish columns attend to their prisoners just as well as any other country in time of war,' he replied. 'War is war. You cannot make it otherwise, try as you will.' "'Will not your Excellency allow me to go to the scene of battle under an escort of soldiers, if necessary, that I may write of the situation as it really is, and correct the impression that prevails in America that inhuman treatment is being accorded to the insurgent prisoners?' "'Impossible,' answered the General. 'It would not be safe.' "'I am willing to take all the danger, if your Excellency will allow me to go,' I exclaimed. "General Weyler laughed. 'There would be no danger from the rebels,' he said, 'but from the Spanish soldiers. They are of a very affectionate disposition and would all fall in love with you.' "'I will keep a great distance from the fighting, if you will allow me to go.' "The General's lips closed tightly, and he said: 'Impossible! Impossible!' "'What would happen,' I asked, 'if I should be discovered crossing the lines without permission?' "'You would be treated just the same as a man.' "'Would I be sent to Castle Morro?' "'Yes,' he replied, nodding his head vigorously. That settled it. I decided not to go. "'Why,' I asked him, 'is the rule incommunicado placed upon prisoners? Is it not cruel to prevent a man from seeing his wife and children?' "'The rule incommunicado,' said the General, 'is a military law. Prisoners are allowed to see their relatives as a favor, but we exercise discretion in these cases.' "'There are stories that prisoners are shot in Castle Morro at daybreak each morning, and that the shots can be plainly heard across the bay. Is this true?' "The General's eyes looked unpleasant again. 'It is false!' he said shortly. 'The prisoners go through a regular court-martial, and no one could be shot at Morro without my orders, and I have not given orders to shoot anyone since I have been here.' "'Do you not think it very cruel that innocent women and children should be made to suffer in time of war?' "'No innocent women and children do suffer. It is only those who leave their homes and take part in battle who are injured. It is only the rebels who destroy peaceful homes.' "'It is reported,' I said, 'that thirty women are fighting under Maceo. Is this true?' "'Yes,' replied the General. 'We took one woman yesterday. She was dressed in man's clothes and was wielding a machete. She is now in Morro Castle. These women are fiercer than men. Many of them are mulattoes. This particular woman was white.' "'What will be her fate?' "'She will go through the regular form of trial.' "'Will no mercy be shown her?' "'Mercy is always shown to a woman. While the law is the same for both sexes, there is a clause which admits of mercy to a woman.' "'There are several Cuban women insurgents in Morro and the Cabanas. Would your Excellency,' I asked, 'allow me to visit them?' "'No,' he said. 'There is a law that no foreigner shall enter our fortresses. It is a military law. We can make no exceptions. You understand that I do not wish to be discourteous, senorita.' "'Some of these women,' I continued, 'are said to be imprisoned for merely having Cuban flags in their homes. Is this possible?' "'Treason,' exclaimed the General, 'is always a crime, punishable by imprisonment.' "'There is a newspaper correspondent at present in Morro. What was his crime?' "The General shrugged his shoulders again. 'I know nothing about him,' he said. 'I think he has been freed.' "'Do you not think the life of a newspaper correspondent in Havana is at present a most unhappy one?' "'I think it must be, for they make me unhappy. If they were all like you it would be a pleasure.' "'Is it true that thumbscrews are used to extort confessions from prisoners?' "'Not by the Spaniards. Rebels use all these things, similar to those that were used in the Inquisition tortures.' "'What does your Excellency think of the Cubans as a race? Do you not think them progressive and brave?' "'With the progress of all nations the Cubans have progressed,' he replied. 'There are many Cubans in sympathy with Spain, but this insurrection is a blot upon the Cuban race which nothing can ever erase. It is a stain made with the blood of the slain and the tears of the women. It injures the Cubans themselves more than any other.'" In spite of Weyler's boasts when he assumed command of the Spanish forces in Cuba that he would quickly put down the insurrection, his failure was as complete as that of General Campos had been, and his recall was finally demanded. In his letter of protest to the home government he said: "If the functions with which the government had entrusted me had been merely those of Governor General of Cuba, I should have hastened to resign. But the twofold character of my mission and my duty as commander-in-chief in the face of the enemy prevent my tendering a resignation. "Nevertheless, although I can rely upon the absolute, unconditional support of the autonomist and constitutional parties, as well as upon public opinion, this would be insufficient without the confidence of the government, now more than ever necessary to me after the censure of which I have been made the object by the members and journals of the Liberal party and by public opinion in the United States, which latter is largely influenced by the former. This confidence would be necessary to enable me to put an end to the war, which has already been virtually concluded from our lines at Jucaro to Cape Antonio." Senor Sagasta replied: "I thank you for your explanation and value your frankness, I wish to assure you that the government recognizes your services and values them as they deserve, but it thinks a change of policy. In order to succeed, requires that the authorities should be at one with the ministry." CHAPTER XXIV. CUBA UNDER THE SCOURGE. The Civil Guards and Their Crimes--Horrible Murder of Eight Innocent Men--A Man After Weyler's Own Heart--How the Spanish Gain "Victories"--Life, Liberty and Property Sacrificed--The War Not a Race War--Resistance to the Bitter End. Cuba has been under martial law for over fifty years, and its enforcement by the Civil guards (as the officers appointed by the Spanish government are called) has been responsible for innumerable outrages against the lives and property of the inhabitants. These officials have been guilty of every crime in the calendar, but protected by their positions they have escaped legal punishment, and it has only been on occasions when, driven to desperation, the people have acted as judges and executioners by taking the law into their own hands that any redress has been possible. If for any reason these guards wish to persecute a man, the fact that he is a non-combatant is no protection to him, nor to his family. They have been the means of adding to the ranks of the insurrectionists, for frequently the man who has seen his relatives and friends shot before his eyes, to satisfy some personal spite, or in order that some officer may get credit for a battle, has left his fields and gone to strike a manly blow for his country and his home. The story of eight peaceable white men, who were shot without trial, at Campo Florida, near Havana, will serve as an example of the work of these fiends. These poor fellows were arrested, their arms were tied, and they were taken to the police station. One of them had just completed a coffin for a woman, and he was dragged to the station with a rope about his neck. The next day, without even the pretense of a trial, they were taken two at a time into a ravine near the fort, where a trench had been lately dug, and in spite of the most pitiful pleas for mercy, they were shot down in cold blood by the cruel guards, who seemed to take fiendish delight in their work of blood. The following statement was seat by Cuban, patriots, with the request that it be given the widest publicity possible, among the people of the United States: "If the government that unhappily rules the destinies of this unfortunate country should be true to the most rudimentary principles of justice and morality, Colonel Jull, who has been recently appointed Military Governor of Matanzas province, should be in the galleys among criminals. It is but a short time since he was relieved by General Martinez Campos of the military command at Cienfuegos, as he had not once engaged any of the insurgent forces, but vented all his ferocious instincts against innocent and inoffensive peasants. "In Yaguaramas, a small town near Cienfuegos, he arrested as suspects and spies Mr. Antonio Morejon, an honest and hard-working man, and Mr. Ygnacio Chapi, who is well advanced in years, and almost blind. Not being able to prove the charge against them, as they were innocent, he ordered Major Moreno, of the Barcelona battalion, doing garrison duty at Yaguaramas, to kill them with the machete and have them buried immediately. Major Moreno answered that he was a gentleman, who had come to fight for the integrity of his country, and not to commit murder. This displeased the colonel sorely, but, unfortunately, a volunteer sergeant, with six others, was willing to execute the order of the colonel, and Morejon and Chapi were murdered without pity. "The order of Jull was executed in the most cruel manner. It horrifies to even think of it. Mr. Chapi, who knew the ways of Colonel Jull, on being awakened at three o'clock in the morning, and notified by the guard that he and Morejon had to go out, suspected what was to come, and told his companion to cry out for help as soon as they were taken out of the fort. They did so, but those who were to execute the order of Jull were neither moved nor weakened in their purpose. A HORRIBLE SIGHT. "On the contrary, at the first screams of Chapi and Morejon they threw a lasso over their heads, and pulled at it by the ends. In a few moments they fell to the ground choked to death. They were dragged on the earth, without pity, to the place where they were buried. All this bloody scene was witnessed by Jull from a short distance. Providence had not willed that so much iniquity should remain hidden forever. In the hurry the grave where these two innocent men were buried was not dug deep enough, and part of the rope with which they were choked remained outside. A neighbor, looking for a lost cow, saw the rope, took hold of it, and, on pulling, disinterred the head of one of the victims. He was terror stricken, and immediately gave notice to the judge, who, on ascertaining that the men had been killed by order of Colonel Jull, suspended proceedings. "The neighbors and all the civil and military authorities know everything that has been related here, but such is the state of affairs on the island that General Weyler has no objection to appointing this monster, Colonel Jull, Military Governor of Matanzas. Such deeds as those enumerated are common. The people of the town of Matanzas, with Jull as Governor, and Arolas at the head of a column, will suffer in consequence of their pernicious and bloody instincts. "That the readers may know in part who General Arolas is, it may be well to relate what has happened in the Mercedes estate, near Colon. It having come to his knowledge that a small body of rebels was encamped on the sugar estate Mercedes, of Mr. Carrillo, General Arolas went to engage them, but the rebels, who were few in numbers, retreated. Much vexed at not being able to discharge one shot at them, he made prisoners of three workmen who were out in the field herding the animals of the estate and without any formality of trial shot them. When the bodies were taken to the Central they were recognized, and to cover his responsibility somewhat, General Arolas said that when he challenged them they ran off, and at the first discharge of musketry they fell dead." LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY SACRIFICED. Life, liberty and property have all been sacrificed by these determined patriots for the sake of the cause they love. Their towns have been burned, their homes pillaged, their wives and children starved, and in many sections of the island nothing but ruin and waste meets the eye. Even their sick and wounded are not safe from the oppressor's sword, and wherever the insurgents have a hospital, they have a garrison to protect it. Each of the six provinces has an insurgent hospital, with a staff of physicians and nurses, and a detachment of the army. The largest of these lies in that part of Santa Clara called the Isthmus of Zapata. It is a wild, swampy region, through which the natives alone can distinguish those precarious tracks, where the slightest deviation means being engulfed in the treacherous morass. A DETERMINED RESISTANCE. A prominent Cuban, who may be said to speak for his entire race, makes this declaration: "The population of the island is, in round numbers, 1,600,000, of which less than 200,000 are Spaniards, some 500,000 are colored Cubans, and over 800,000 white Cubans. Of the Spaniards, a small but not inconsiderable fraction, although not taking an active part in the defense of our cause, sympathize with, and are supporting it in various ways. Of the Cubans, whether colored or white, all are in sympathy with the revolution, with the exception of a few scattered individuals who hold positions under the Spanish government or are engaged in enterprises which cannot thrive without it. All of the Cubans who have had the means and the opportunity to join the revolutionary army have done so, while those who have been compelled for one reason or another to remain in the cities are co-operating to the best of their abilities. If the people of the small section of the western part of the island, which yet remains quiet, were supplied with arms and ammunition they would rise, to a man, within twenty-four hours. "This revolution of the whole Cuban people against the government of Spain is what the Spanish officials are pleased to describe as a disturbance caused by a few adventurers, robbers, bandits, and assassins! But they have a purpose in so characterizing it, and it is no other than to justify, in some way, the war of extermination which the Prime Minister of Spain himself has declared will be waged by his government against the Cuban people. They are not yet satisfied with the rivers of human blood with which in times past they inundated the fields of Italy, of the Low Countries, of our continent of America, and only a few years ago, of Cuba itself. The Spanish newspaper of Havana, 'El Pueblo,' urges the Spanish soldiers to give no quarter, to spare no one, to kill all, all without exception, until they shall have torrents of Cuban blood in which to bathe themselves. It is well. The Cubans accept the challenge, but they will not imitate their tyrants and cover themselves with infamy by waging a savage war. The Cubans respect the lives of their Spanish prisoners, they do not attack hospitals, and they cure and assist with the same care and solicitude with which they cure and assist their own, the wounded Spaniards who may fall into their hands. They have done so from the beginning of the war, and they will not change their humane policy. "The Spanish officials have also attempted to convince you that the Cuban war is a war of races. Of what races? Of the black against the white? It is not true, and the facts plainly show that there is nothing of the kind. Nor is the war waged by Cubans against the Spaniards as such. No. The war is waged against the government of Spain, and only against the government of Spain and the officials and a few monopolists, who, under it, live and thrive upon the substance of the Cubans. We have no ill feeling against the thousands of Spaniards who industriously and honestly make their living in Cuba. "But with the Spanish government we will make no peace, and we will make no compromise. Under its rule there will be nothing for our people but oppression and misery. For years and years the Cuban people have patiently suffered, and in the interests of the colony, as well as in the interests of the metropolis, have earnestly prayed for reforms. Spain has not only turned a deaf ear to the prayers, but instead of reforming the most glaring abuses, has allowed them to increase and flourish, until such a point has been reached that the continuation of Spanish rule means for the Cuban people utter destruction." CHAPTER XXV. FITZHUGH LEE TO THE FRONT. Importance of the American Consulate at Havana in a Critical Time--General Fitzhugh Lee the Man for the Place--Sketch of the Life of Lee--A Nation's Confidence in Its Popular Hero--How He Left Havana and How He Promised to Return Wife and Family of General Lee--His Place During the Early Period of the War. Never was there a more genuine and typical American gentleman in a difficult position where a genuine and typical American gentleman was needed, than Fitzhugh Lee, the American consul-general at Havana during the most critical time prior to the outbreak of our war with Spain. The Cuban consul generalship is an office of much greater importance than others of the same name in other countries where diplomatic representatives are maintained. It includes the obligations of diplomacy as well as those of commerce, and Lee was the man for both. His predecessor in the office, Ramon Williams, had held the position for many years and it was recognized by him as well as by the authorities at Washington that a change should be made because of the unusual demands upon the office. His long and faithful service in the tropical country had undermined his health so that his energies were lessened thereby, at a time when they were most needed for the safety of American interests. It was in the spring of 1896 that President Cleveland, believing that a man of unusual ability should represent the United States at Havana, chose Fitzhugh Lee for the post. The selection was approved from the first by everyone who knew him, and not many months had passed until General Lee became an idol and a hero of the whole American people. His Havana record has been no surprise to those who knew of his exploits during the war, or of his family. Blood will tell, and it has told in the case of General Lee. His family has always been famous in American history. How could the grandson of "Lighthorse Harry, the Revolutionary hero," or the nephew of Robert E. Lee, be anything else but courageous and possessed of tact and common sense? The son of a naval officer, he preferred the army as a career. Graduating from West Point, he fought on the frontier for six years before the opening of the Rebellion, and was engaged in several desperate encounters with the Comanche Indians in Texas. On one of these occasions he was pierced through the lungs by an arrow, but he lived to tell the story. On another occasion he grappled with a big Indian in a hand-to-hand encounter, threw his antagonist on the ground and killed him. Though only twenty-seven years of age, Lee was an instructor in cavalry tactics at West Point when the war broke out. He "followed his State" into the secession movement. His war record is a matter of pride to every Virginian. The dashing young officer was an ideal trooper, fearing nothing and loved by his men. He was modest, too. After some brilliant movement of personal valor his brigade formed in a body and determined to serenade him at his headquarters, expecting, of course, a speech. But Lee got an inkling of the matter, and when he saw them coming he slipped out of his tent and hid in the bushes. After the disappointed troopers had called for him in vain and dispersed he peeped furtively from his hiding place, and in a subdued tone asked, "Have they gone?" COMPOSURE IN BATTLE. General Lee possessed remarkable composure in battle. He never got the least rattled under the most trying conditions, except at Saylor's Creek, on the retreat from Petersburg; he never betrayed anxiety, and, though often under a rattling fire, no one ever saw him dodge. This cannot be said of many of the bravest men. Sometimes a bullet will unexpectedly whizz close to one's head, and the impulse to dodge is almost irresistible, though it never did anybody any good. One of the officers with him said once that the only time he had been moved by the enemy's fire was at the battle of Winchester. He and General Early met under an apple tree near the summit of a hill and in a very exposed place. There was no firing at the time, but while the two generals, still on their horses, were intently examining a map, one shot was fired. It fell short and they paid no attention to it. But lo! another came, struck the apple tree just above their heads, and as the apples rained down on them they concluded the map could be better examined in a less exposed position--a conclusion in which all others agreed with remarkable unanimity. And nobody stopped to get any apples. General Lee is a superb horseman. He rode a splendid mare named Nellie. She had the form, the strength, the nimbleness of limb, the tapering neck, the alert poise of the head, the bright and intelligent eyes that made her a model worthy to bear any master. She was all grace and beauty. When the confederate columns were broken in the same battle and the rout began, for it was little less, General Lee was at a very exposed point. The fire of thirty pieces of artillery was directed against it. The air was full of exploding shells; horses were plunging about on three legs, neighing piteously for a place of refuge; others were disemboweled by the furious shot; others were loose, running to and fro, bewildered by the terrible havoc, while the mutilated bodies of men could be seen on every hand; numbers who were crippled were hobbling away, and all seemed doomed to death. It was here that the beautiful Nellie was gored by one fragment of shell and her master's leg torn by another. He was noted for his geniality and jollity. He loved humor and fun, and got all there was to be had in those trying times. But his cheerfulness failed at Appomattox. There he cried. After the war had ended, General Lee settled in Stafford County as a farmer and miller. His life was the quiet and uneventful one of a country gentleman, caring for nothing but his wife, whom he married in 1871, and his children. About 1875 he began to take an active part in politics, and he attended the national convention of 1876 as a delegate. In 1885 he was elected governor of Virginia. It was then that he again became conspicuous. General Lee headed the southern division of the inauguration parade, and his handsome presence and splendid horsemanship forced the men on the sidewalks to cheer him with more vim than they did anyone else. A similar demonstration occurred when, four years later, General Lee led the Virginia troops in the Washington centennial parade in New York to the stirring tune of "Dixie." On both of these occasions he sat in the identical saddle which his uncle, General Robert E. Lee, had used on his familiar gray war horse, Traveler. Who could occupy it more worthily? Any one who has seen "Fitz" Lee mounted like a centaur on a Virginia thoroughbred is certain to have in memory ever afterward an ideal figure of a knightly "man on horseback." Afoot he is not so imposing, being only of medium stature, and, of late years, quite portly. He has a fine head and face, with frank steel blue eyes and a ruddy complexion, set off by his now almost white hair, mustache and imperial. His bearing is alert and military. Altogether, he does not look, and probably does not feel, his sixty-two years. During Mr. Cleveland's second term he was made collector of internal revenue at Lynchburg, Va. THE MAN FOR THE PLACE AT HAVANA. Once settled in his position in Havana, General Lee's fame began to multiply. The American opinion of him was voiced immediately after the destruction of the Maine, by L. P. Sigsbee, the brother of the commander of that ill-fated ship, when he said: "There's a man down there looking after the interests of this country who cannot be blinded. He has more sand than anybody I know of, and if there's anything treacherous in this explosion we'll know of it without delay. The man I mean is General Fitzhugh Lee." The same thought occurred to every American who had watched his career. From first to last everybody had confidence in his Americanism, his bravery and his cool-headedness. He held his office through merit alone, no politician gaining any success in the effort to win from him that position of distinction and profit, after the change of administration when President McKinley assumed the executive chair. The nation recognized that he was first an American and an interference with him on partisan grounds would not have been tolerated. Jealous of American honor, and firm in insisting upon the rights of his countrymen, he has always kept cool. Courteous and polite as well as courageous, he has never blustered and he has won the respect and admiration of the Spaniards as well as their fear. Throughout his service in Cuba, General Lee's figure was a familiar one in Havana, and even by those most antagonistic to him because of their official position, he was heartily admired. No matter what the threat of violence from hot-headed Spaniards, when the relations were most strained between the two countries, General Lee never admitted the slightest danger to himself and refused to accept any guard except that which he himself was able to maintain for himself. Upon the streets and in the hotels and cafes he was exempt from disrespect by the sheer force of his splendid personality. And never until the last day of his stay in Havana when all diplomatic relations were severed, did the Spanish authorities in that city omit any of the forms of courtesy. GENERAL LEE PROMISES TO RETURN. On that day, when in company with the British Consul General he went to bid farewell to Captain General Blanco, the latter refused to see him upon the excuse that he was too busy. When the homeward voyage was actually begun, in the little boat that carried to the steamer the Consul General and the last newspaper correspondents who remained in Havana till the end, the malice of the Spanish onlookers at the docks could restrain itself no longer. With imprecations and scornful and insulting epithets they raised their voices against him. With proper dignity General Lee ignored it all, except to say in one definite last message, that he would be back again before long with troops to stand by him. In his office in the consulate at Havana, General Lee gained the admiration and the confidence of every American who had occasion to meet him. Brave as an American should be, and equally gentle and tender-hearted, he was the man for the place. The Spanish outrages upon American citizens roused in him but two sentiments. One was sympathy and grief for those who suffered. The other was indignation and enmity against those who were guilty. To the extent of all his power he guarded and aided those for whom that first sentiment was roused. He left Cuba with an accumulation of detestation for Spanish outrages in that unhappy island against Americans and Cubans, that would stimulate to deeds of valor through whatever warfare might follow in which he should be a leader. With a great heart, a brilliant mind and a magnificent physique, General Lee combined all the qualities which made him worthy of the American pride which was centered upon him. CHAPTER XXVL AMERICANS IN SPANISH DUNGEONS. Spanish Hatred of the American Nation--Instances of Injustice-- The Case of Dr. Ruiz--His Death in a Dungeon--Julio Sanguilly-- Action of the United States Senate in His Behalf--A Correspondent in Morro Castle--Walter Dygert's Experiences--General Lee Shows His Mettle in the Case of Charles Scott. Not content with their cruel and inhuman treatment of Cuban patriots, the Spanish officials have seemed to take special satisfaction in imprisoning and even murdering American citizens on the slightest pretext. The object of their most bitter hatred is the insurgent, but if they are to be judged by their deeds, it would appear that the American occupies a close second place in their black-list. Time and again our government has been compelled to interfere to save the lives of its citizens, and unfortunately this interference has on several occasions been too late. It is not possible to present a list of all the men and women of American birth who have lost life, liberty and property by Spanish authority, from the massacre of the crew of the Virginius to the wrecking of the Maine, but a few instances may be mentioned, which will prove conclusively that the retribution, of which the glorious victory in Manila bay was but the commencement, came none too soon. THE CASE OF DR. RUIZ. One of the most flagrant of these outrages was the imprisonment of Dr. Ricardo Ruiz, a Cuban by birth, but a naturalized citizen of the United States. He was a dentist by profession, having studied in a Pennsylvania dental college, and after receiving his diploma, he returned to his native country to practice his profession. He was accused of being in sympathy with the revolutionists, arrested and kept in prison for two years, when he died, probably from violence. In the following letter, written from Havana, regarding the case, will be seen the reasons for this supposition: "Ruiz died, according to the surgeons, from congestion of the brain, caused by a blow or blows. When General Lee and Mr. Calhoun visited the jail in Guanabacoa, they were shown the cell in which the Spanish say that Ruiz died. The guard explained to General Lee and Mr. Calhoun that he heard thumping on the inside of the door, and when he opened it and went in, Ruiz was running at the heavy door and butting it with his head. Ruiz had only one wound on the top of his head. Had he butted this door, as the jailer says, his scalp must necessarily have been lacerated in several places." Julio Sanguilly is another American citizen who was tried for treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment. This case attracted a great deal of attention in the United States, and a resolution was passed by the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, making a demand on the Spanish government for his release. During the debate on this resolution, Senator Daniel, of Virginia, said: "Two years ago yesterday, Julio Sanguilly, an American citizen, was thrown into prison. Two years have gone by and this government has done practically nothing for this citizen. Great Britain would have released him as soon as one of her battleships could reach Havana. He has been brutally treated and condemned on unsworn testimony before military tribunals. This country and all civilization have been disgraced by the treatment meted out to this unfortunate man. Every citizen of this country would have patriotically applauded the President if he had sent a fleet of American battleships and compelled the release, of this American citizen, whose country has been insulted by the treatment accorded to him and to our representative in Cuba." The Prime Minister at Madrid, realizing that trouble of a serious nature was likely to come from this affair, cabled Weyler to discharge the prisoner from custody, and banish him from the island. Sanguilly immediately came to the United States, where he was warmly received by his friends, and he has since been actively engaged in work for Cuba's freedom. Charles Scott, an employe of the American Gas Company, was arrested at Regla, charged with having Cuban postage stamps in his possession. He was in solitary confinement, in a damp, empty cell, five feet by eleven, for fourteen days. Once during his imprisonment he was left for two days without even a drop of water. General Lee, then United States Consul at Havana, cabled to Washington, asking that arrangements be made to send war vessels to Havana, in case of necessity, and declaring that unless his requests were complied with, he would leave the island. In this affair, as in many others, General Lee proved that he was the right man in the right place, for it was due to his efforts in Scott's behalf that he was finally given his liberty. Mr. Charles Michaelson, a newspaper correspondent, and his interpreter, were imprisoned, in Morro Castle as suspects. It required fine detective work to discover this fact, for they were missing for some time before it was definitely known that they were in the clutches of Weyler, but the "Butcher" finally admitted it, and after a short delay was persuaded by the United States Consul to release them. Mr. Michaelson's treatment was almost brutal in its nature. The interior of the castle is like a dungeon, and he was compelled to sleep on the floor, as a hammock sent to him by friends outside was not given to him till the day of his release. His food was thrown to him through the bars of the door, and meals sent in to him were eaten by the guards. Rats were his constant companions, and when, occasionally, he would sink into a light slumber, he would be suddenly awakened to find one of the animals in his hair, another burrowing under his coat, and still another making a meal on his shoes. On one occasion he threw a shoe at a rat, which struck the door of his cell, whereupon the guard threatened to punish him for a breach of prison discipline, the noise being against the rules. Walter Dygart relates his experience while the enforced guest of the Spanish government. It is evident that the keeper of a prison in Cuba has a profitable occupation. "A child may weep at brambles' smart, And maidens when their lovers part; But woe worth a country when She sees the tears of bearded men." "These lines by the poet, Scott, recurred to me when I saw aged men weeping and heart-broken at being separated from their families and shut up in this hell. But why does the Spanish government shut up helpless cripples and non-combatants? This is a question that puzzled me for some time, but I finally solved it, and will answer it after I have described the food and water. "A little after six in the morning we were, each of us, given a very small cup of coffee. The first meal of the day, if it could be called a meal, came after nine o'clock. It consisted of a little rice, which was generally dirty, a few small potatoes, boiled with their skins on, and often partly rotten, a little piece of boiled salt beef, or beef cut up in small bits, with soup, just about half enough, and of the poorest quality. The meat was often spoiled and unfit for anything but a vulture to eat. The second and last meal of the day came about four in the afternoon, and was the same as the first. "I had no opportunity to count the prisoners, but I learned that there were about 180 on the average confined there. I learned as definitely as I could, without seeing the contract, that a certain party had the contract to feed these prisoners at twenty-five cents each per day. Thus he gets $45 a day, and I learned that the food costs him only $7 to $8 a day, and, as some of the prisoners did the cooking, his profit can be readily seen. On such a contract he could afford to divide with the judge and army officers to keep the prison full." A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL IN MORRO CASTLE. The Southern Baptist Missionary Society has a mission in the city of Havana, and it was formerly in charge of Rev. Alberto J. Diaz, whose home is in the United States. Ever loyal to his flag, and believing in the institutions of his country, he lost no opportunity to preach civil as well as religious liberty, and though often warned to desist, by the Spanish authorities, he continued the course which he regarded as his solemn duty. He gives particulars of his arrest as follows: "About three o'clock one morning I was aroused by a knock at the door of my house, and when I opened it I saw some fifty or sixty Spanish soldiers, with their guns leveled at me. I quickly shut the door and talked through it. The captain said he must search the house, and I consented to let three men come in. They spent seven hours looking through two trunks full of sermons, and other papers, and when the search was completed they had found no incriminating documents." Nevertheless, both Dr. Diaz and his brother were imprisoned in Morro Castle. They were tried for treasonable utterances and sentenced to death. Fortunately one of the sentries of the prison was a member of Dr. Diaz's church, and through his kind offices, a message was sent to the president of the Southern Baptist Missionary Society in Atlanta. He communicated with the authorities at Washington. This resulted in the execution being postponed, and the brothers were accorded more humane treatment than they had received heretofore. Dr. Diaz now addressed a telegram to our Secretary of State, giving the particulars of the arrest, trial and conviction, and appealing to him to demand their immediate release. The message was smuggled on board a boat bound for Key West, and Weyler, hearing of it, at once cabled to Washington that Diaz had been released. He, with his brother and his family, was compelled to leave the island by the first steamer, and they returned to the United States. In our treaty with Spain, which was in force up to the time of the declaration of war, was the following clause: "No citizen of the United States, residing in Spain, her adjacent islands, or her ultramarine possessions, charged with acts of sedition, treason, or conspiracy against the institutions, the public security, the integrity of the territory, or against the supreme government, or any other crime whatsoever, shall be subject to trial by any exceptionable tribunal, but exclusively by the ordinary jurisdiction, except in the case of being captured with arms in hand." This treaty was supposed to protect American citizens from trial by martial law, but it was disregarded by Spanish officials in Cuba time and again, and, in fact, up to the time of General Lee's arrival in Havana, an American citizen had very little advantage over a Cuban insurgent, when the safety of his property or his person was concerned. CHAPTER XXVII. MACEO DEAD BY TREACHERY. A Great Leader in a Great Cause--A Modern Judas--The Worthy Son of a Noble Sire--The Farewell Letter--An Estimate of Maceo's Character--Rejoicing Among Spanish Supporters--Their Mistaken Belief--Patriotic Ardor of the Insurgents. In the death of Antonio Maceo the Cuban cause lost one of its strongest defenders. Besides being a man of acute intellect, and a general of great military skill, he had the rare gift of personal magnetism, and no one ever followed his leadership who did not feel for him the devotion which often gives courage to cowards and makes heroes in the time of need. That his death was due to treachery there is little doubt. Doctor Zertucha, his physician and trusted friend, is accused of having betrayed him to the Spaniards. An Insurgent officer, who was with the general when he received his death wound, says that they heard gun shots in the vicinity of Punta Brava. Zertucha galloped into the brush a short distance and returned, calling to them to follow him. Maceo at once put spurs to his horse, and, followed by his aides, rode swiftly after the physician, who plunged into the thick growth on the side of the road. They had ridden only a short distance, when Zertucha suddenly bent low in his saddle and swerved sharply to one side, galloping away like mad. Almost at the same moment a volley was fired by a party of Spanish soldiers hidden in the dense underbrush, and Maceo and four of his aides dropped out of their saddles mortally wounded. The single survivor, the one who tells this story, managed to make his way back to his own men, and brought them up to the scene of the tragedy, but the bodies had been removed, and when they were finally discovered, they had been mutilated in a most shocking manner. It was then learned that one of the victims was Francisco Gomez, a son of the Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban army, who was one of Maceo's aides. It seems that his wound was not necessarily a fatal one, but he refused to leave his dying commander, and rather than to fall alive in the hands of his foes, he committed suicide. This letter was found in his hand: Dear Mamma, Papa, Dear Brothers: I die at my post. I did not want to abandon the body of General Maceo, and I stayed with him. I was wounded in two places, and as I did not fall into the hands of the enemy I have killed myself. I am dying. I die pleased at being in the defense of the Cuban cause. I wait for you in the other world. Your son, FRANCISCO GOMEZ. Torro in San Domingo. (Friends or foes, please transmit to its destination, as requested by one dead.) Dr. Zertucha surrendered to a Spanish officer shortly after Maceo was killed. He said that the dead leader was discouraged by the continual failures of the insurgents to make any headway against their foes; that, on account of his color, the subordinate officers in the Cuban ranks did not show proper respect for him, or obedience to his commands, and that he had purposely placed himself in range of the enemy's rifles, deliberately seeking death. These statements are manifestly false, and go far to confirm the belief that the coward who made them had a guilty knowledge concerning the manner of the death of the brave soldier he maligned. AN ESTIMATE OF MACEO'S CHARACTER. A gentleman who made Maceo's acquaintance in Havana, prior to the present insurrection, gives this estimate of his character: "Maceo was a natural politician in that he had the genius of divining popular opinion, and taking the leadership of popular movements. He was in Havana at that time sounding men and scheming for the present revolution. He was always of the sunniest disposition, closely attaching all people to him, and a man of the strictest moral integrity. He never drank wine, he never smoked, and that in a land where tobacco is as common as potatoes in Ireland, and he never played cards. He had a great abhorrence of men who drank to excess, and would not tolerate them about him. "He always dressed, when in Havana, in the most finished style. His massive frame--he was about five feet ten inches in height and unusually broad shouldered--was displayed to advantage always in frock coat, closely buttoned, and he usually wore a silk hat. He was neat, even to fastidiousness, in his dress. He usually carried a cane. "When Maceo took the field, however, he roughed it with his men, and dressed accordingly. When in battle he carried a long-barreled 38-caliber revolver with a mother-of-pearl handle, and a Toledo blade made in the form of a machete. The handle of this machete was finely wrought silver and turquoise shell, and had four notches in it, into which the fingers could easily fit. Maceo always had three horses with him on his marches, the favorite being a big white one." Probably no event in the war up to that time caused such general satisfaction among the supporters of the existing government, both in Cuba and in Spain, as the death of Maceo. When Jose Marti was killed, they were certain that the loss of that leader would compel the insurrectionists to abandon hopes of success. On the contrary, it inspired them with greater determination than before. But the Spanish sympathizers learned nothing from that experience, and when it was definitely known that Maceo was no longer to be feared, they were unanimous in the belief that the end of the struggle was at hand. Subsequent events have shown how little they knew of the kind of men with whom they were at war. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," and every Cuban patriot who has fallen in this conquest of extermination has but added fuel to the fires of liberty, which are sweeping Spanish rule from the island, leaving the tyrants nothing but the ashes of their hopes. CHAPTER XXVIII. WEYLER'S RECONCENTRATION POLICY AND ITS HORRORS. The Object of the Plan--Slaves of Spain--The Massacre of the Innocents--Deserted Fields and Farms--A Fearful Mortality--The Cubans the Oldest Americans of Caucasian Blood--Women and Children Doomed to Die--An Appeal for Help--Our Manifest Duty. When General Weyler promulgated his policy of reconcentration he hypocritically claimed that it was intended to protect the non-combatant peasantry of the island, but his sole object was to compel them to put themselves wholly in the power of the Spanish officials. No one knew better than the "Butcher" that the Cuban peasant, no matter what he might publicly profess, was bound with all his heart to the cause of free Cuba, and that he never lost an opportunity to aid the insurgents by every means in his power. And when he formulated the plan compelling them to abandon their homes in the rural districts, and to herd like sheep in the cities and towns which were still under his rule, it was to prevent them from giving aid and information to the rebels. He must have known that the enforcement of this edict meant certain starvation to thousands of the inoffensive inhabitants, but no thought of the misery and injustice which he thus wrought upon them deterred him in his determination to crush the unhappy people, and keep them still the slaves of Spain. The order found a very large proportion of the working classes absolutely destitute of money, and the men, knowing there was no work for them in the towns, hesitated about going with their families, while they did not dare to remain in their poor homes, where, at least, they could be sure of food. The consequence was that thousands of homes were deserted. The women and children were sent to the towns to look out for themselves as best they could, while the men joined the insurgent army. In a number of cases wives refused to be separated from their husbands, and followed them into the ranks of the revolutionists, where they fought like the Amazons of old. Some of them found a melancholy pleasure in nursing the sick and wounded, others fought side by side with the men, and the fear of death was not half as strong as the thoughts of the horrors which awaited them at their homes, or among the reconcentrados in the towns. Marriages have been solemnized, and children have been born upon the fields of battle. Spain is nursing a forlorn hope when she counts on subduing patriots like these. WOMEN AND CHILDREN DOOMED TO DIE. Hon. C. W. Russell, an attache of the Department of Justice of the United States, went to Cuba shortly after the order for reconcentration went into effect. It was his purpose to learn by personal observation how much or how little truth there was in the reports that had come to this country regarding the terrible suffering among the reconcentrados. He states the result of his investigations as follows: "I spent just two weeks in Cuba, visited Havana, went south to Jaruco, southwest to Guines, northeast to Matanzas, eastwardly about two hundred miles through the middle of the country to San Domingo, Santa Clara and Sagua la Grande. I visited Marianao, a short distance west of Havana, and saw along the railroad thirty or forty towns or stations. In Havana I visited the Fossos, the hospital prison at Aldecoa, where I talked with the father of Evangelina Cisneros, and a place called the Jacoba. I found reconcentrados at all three places, and begging everywhere about the streets of Havana. "The spectacle at the Fossos and Jacoba houses, of women and children emaciated to skeletons and suffering from diseases produced by starvation, was sickening. In Sagua I saw some sick and emaciated little girls in a children's hospital, started three days before by charitable Cubans, and saw a crowd of miserable looking reconcentrados with tin buckets and other receptacles getting small allowances of food doled out to them in a yard. In the same city, in an old sugar warehouse, I saw stationed around the inside walls the remnants of twenty or thirty Cuban families. "In one case the remnant consisted of two children, seven or eight years old. In another case, where I talked to the people in broken Spanish, there were four individuals, a mother, a girl of fourteen, and two quite small girls. The smallest was then suffering from malarial fever. The next had the signs on her hands, with which I had become familiar, of having had that dreadful disease, the beri-beri. These four were all that order of concentration had left alive of eleven. At San Domingo, where two railroads join, the depot was crowded with women and children, one of the latter, as I remember, being swollen up with the beri-beri, begging in the most earnest way of the few passengers. "San Domingo is little more than a railroad station in times of peace, but at present it has a considerable population, living in cabins thatched with the tops of royal palm trees, composed of the survivors of the reconcentrados. The huts are arranged close together in a little clump, and the concentration order required and apparently still requires these people to live within a circle of small block houses, commonly dignified in the dispatches by the name of forts. They had no work to do, no soil to till, no seed to plant, and only begging to live on. I do not know the exact measure of the dead-line circle drawn around them, but there was certainly nothing within it upon which a human being could subsist. Practically they were prisoners. At every one of the numerous stopping places along the road a similar collection of huts could be seen, and at most of them beggars, often nice looking women and beautiful children, invaded the cars. Between the stations, although I traveled always by daylight, as the trains do not run at night, and I was observing as carefully as possible, I saw no signs of the reconcentrados going away from the forts. If they had gone, it takes seed, instruments, land, and three or four months to raise the vegetable which could be soonest produced, and nowhere away from the block houses was there any sign of vegetables growing. Near the larger towns the circle of concentration seemed to be somewhat larger, and some planting of vegetables, tobacco, etc., seemed to be going on. At this a very few persons, possibly some of the reconcentrados, found employment. DESERTED FIELDS AND FARMS. "All along the railroad, as far as could be seen, were stretches of the most fertile and beautiful country, with very few trees, even on the low mountains, and most of these royal palms. I saw many dozens of burned canefields, and one evening, going from Guines to Havana, saw the sky all lighted up along the road with fires, principally of the tall grass of the country, but partly of cane. The whole land was lying perfectly idle, except that I saw two or three or four sugar mills where cane was growing, but in all such instances the mill and cane were surrounded by forts, manned by soldiers, who are paid, I was told, by the owners. Except in the cities, I saw no indication that any relief whatever was being afforded to the starving people. Neither in Havana nor elsewhere did any priest, religious woman or other person seem to be paying any attention to the wants of the starving, except that at the Fossos, and some other places, charitable Cubans were nursing the sick. The Church, being a state institution, was, so far as I could see, leaving the victims without either bodily or spiritual relief. In fact, the general air of indifference to suffering which seemed to prevail everywhere was astonishing. A FEARFUL MORTALITY. "As the country was stripped of its population by the order of concentration, it is easy to believe that 400,000 persons were gathered behind the forts without being given food, medicine, or means of any kind to earn a living, except where in the larger cities some few could find employment in menial offices. Judging by the orphans I was shown at Jacoba, Aidecoa and elsewhere, and from all I saw and heard, I believe that half of the 400,000 have died as the result of starvation. I know from the official register of the city of Santa Clara, which ordinarily has a population of about 14,000, that the deaths for November were over 1,000, and the number of deaths for December was over 900, and showed an increase, considering the loss of the former 1,000, from its total population. The exact figures for December are 971. At that city the government was distributing 500 single rations per day out of a total appropriation for the purpose of $15,000. This was not relief, but a mere prolongation of the sufferings of a small part of the reconcentrados of the city. "So far as any evidence of relief was visible to my eyes or was even heard of by me in all my talks on the island, the surviving 200,000 people are in the same condition and have the same prospect of starvation before them as had their kindred who have died. There is as much need of medicine now as food, and they are getting neither. The reason given by the Spanish sympathizers in Cuba is that the troops must be first fed, and it is certain that many of the soldiers are sick and suffering for want of proper food. I saw many myself that looked so. I was informed on all sides that they had not been paid for eight months, and that most of the civil officials had not been paid for a similar period. It is, therefore, most probable that Spain is practically unable to supply the millions which are immediately necessary to prevent the death of most of the surviving reconcentrados, but this leads to political questions, which I desire to avoid. OUR MANIFEST DUTY. "I wish merely to state in such a way as to be convincing that in consequence of the concentration of the people, some 200,000 Cubans are daily suffering and dying from diseases produced by a lack of nourishment, in the midst of what I think must be the most fertile country in the world, and that something must be done for them on a large scale, and at once, or a few months will see their extermination. So far as I could see, they are a patient, amiable, intelligent set of people, some of them whom I saw begging having faces like Madonnas. They are Americans, probably the oldest Americans of European descent. Constant intercourse with the United States has made them sympathize with and appreciate us, who are but six hours by boat from them, if we do not sympathize with or care for them. No order or permission from General Blanco can save the lives of many of them. Indeed, many are too far gone to be saved by the best care and treatment. "There was no indication of a cessation of hostilities by the insurgents. If they do not voluntarily cease, their tactics are such that Spain cannot conquer them, if at all, before the reconcentrados will have had the finishing stroke. But even the speedy termination of the war would not save many of them. What they need is instant pecuniary assistance to the extent of $20,000 a day, distributed by our consuls. Private charity, it seems, will hardly produce the amount. Twenty thousand dollars would be but ten cents apiece for medicine, clothes and food. When I left Havana I was informed that Consul General Lee had received $5,000 and some hundreds of cans of condensed milk. As there are about 30,000 sufferers in Havana alone, the inadequacy of such contributions is manifest. Whether Congress should make an appropriation, as in the case of the San Domingo refugees and other cases, it is not for me to say, but I beg the charitable to believe the statement of facts which I have made, and try to realize what they mean." A correspondent in Cuba gives an interesting account of a case that came under his notice among the reconcentrados in the town of Guadaloupe. It is substantially as follows: In all misery-ridden Cuba there is no town in which the reign of misery is so absolute as in Guadaloupe. Even the situation of this place might be said to be in "the valley of the shadow of death." It is not upon the earth's surface, but far below, in a broad, deep hole. The all-surrounding hills are not green, but black. For these up-sloping fields, upon which many a rich tobacco crop has been raised, lie now under blackening ashes--the work of insurgent torches. In this low-lying town 3,000 reconcentrados are naked, shelterless and starving. That aid has not come to them till now is because of the ingratitude and treachery of two of their own number. As the two guilty ones have just paid the penalty of their crime, the Red Cross Society will probably have a relief corps in Guadaloupe by the time this letter is printed. The tragedy of Guadaloupe, to the denouement of which I was an eyewitness, shows that the insurgents have learned the art of butchery as taught by the Spanish, and that a reconcentrado will sometimes betray the Samaritan who helps him. A faithful mule carried me into Guadaloupe at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the siesta hour. I had come from the coast many miles away, over the hills. As I rode into the town, I said to the mule: "The next artist who is given an order to illustrate Dante's 'Inferno' ought to come here. He could draw from life, pictures more infernal than a mere human mind could conceive." Reconcentrados lay everywhere under the broiling sun. The mule picked his way between human heaps that looked like so many little mounds of rags. Skeleton legs and arms protruded from out the heaps. Soft moans of mothers and the wailing of little children gave evidence of so many living deaths. ONE KIND-HEARTED SPANIARD. I presented my credentials to the commandante. He was the most genial Spanish official I had met between Havana and Guadaloupe. When he smiled, his face was all kindness. When he spoke of the reconcentrados, tears welled from his eyes. Yet around his mouth and chin were the cruel lines of a nature as stern as it was commiserative. He told me that the hospital was full, always full; there was room in its wards for only 200 patients, and only one doctor for all. All who entered that place of sickness came out of it, not cured, but dead. Three thousand human beings, mostly women and children, had passed away in that town in three months. Nearly all had died of starvation and exposure. When the cemetery was full, they began burying in the still burning tobacco fields on the hillsides. But it was the siesta hour. The commandante excused himself, saying he would rest awhile and advised me to do the same. The commandante's house was in the center of the town. Round about was a circle of the houses of those who had owned the tobacco fields. Beyond these homes of the well-to-do were hundreds of huts. In these lived the reconcentrados, several families in each, or as many as could huddle within and not pull the roughly constructed frame of palm stalks down about their heads. Outside the circle of huts were the blackened fields and hills. On the tops of the hills, at intervals of 200 yards, was a circle of small houses that looked like sentry boxes. They were really little forts, with four soldiers in each. Beyond the forts were, heaven only knows how many, insurgent guerillas, lynx-eyed human watch dogs, always lurking and waiting for a chance to swoop upon one of the little forts, slay the garrison of four and dash back into the bushes. A SOLDIER'S GHASTLY BURDEN. At this moment not a soldier was in sight. Perhaps all were sleeping, like the commandante. Or perhaps the soldiers always remained inside the barricades surrounding their forts, fearing that to step outside would be to attract the bullets of the lurking insurgents. For such is warfare in Cuba's hills to-day; much the same sort of warfare our American forefathers knew when each man who stepped from his doorway was likely to become a target for the arrows of the lurking and invisible redskins. I was making a mental note of this picture of war and misery, when suddenly I saw a human form on the hilltop over which I had just come. The peculiar shape of the white hat worn by this apparition told me it was a soldier. In the middle of the white road he stopped, lowered a burden from his shoulders to the ground. What was that soldier doing there and what was the nature of his apparently heavy burden? From my perch on the balcony I beckoned to the sentry, who was pacing up and down in front of the commandante's house. The sentry came up to the balcony, took one look in the direction of my pointing finger, and then rushed into the house. The next moment the commandante appeared. With a field glass he surveyed the figure on the hilltop. "He is carrying something," I said, as I watched the man in the distance reshoulder his burden and begin descending the hill. "A dead man," said the commandante. And he closed the glasses, thoughtfully. Then he gave me a long black cigar. We waited. At the end of half an hour the soldier approached the house. Yes, on his back he was carrying a corpse. TELL-TALE SCRAP OF PAPER. He laid his burden down in the road and saluted the commandante. A group of officers and soldiers had gathered round. The body was that of a noted insurgent captain. A scrap of paper was produced. It had been found in the dead man's pocket by the soldier who had carried the body into town. The commandante read the paper. His brow contracted. Now he was all sternness. "Bring the man, Jose Manual, here," he said to a sergeant. Five minutes later an old man, all bones and skin, stood before us. The miserable man trembled as with the palsy. "Si, senor, I did it. I ran over the hill. I informed. I alone am to blame." Evidently the wretch knew of what he was accused. It was also apparent that he was not the only guilty one. "Who wrote this for you?" the commandante asked. "I did, senor; I wrote it." "The man lies," murmured one of the officers. "Bring hither the son of Jose Manual," was the next order. With that, another skeleton, a young one, stepped forward. "I am here, senor, and I wrote the note. That is all. We two, senor. I wrote and my father ran. He was stronger, that day, than even my younger bones." The commandante compressed his lips. He turned to the sergeant and said: "At sunset have these two men shot." The two men merely spat upon the ground. For them death evidently had no terrors. As they were led away they made the sign of the cross again and again upon their naked breasts. A hundred starving wretches followed them in silence. When we were again alone on the balcony--a broad, square balcony it was--the commandante noticed my look of inquiry. "The story can be briefly told," he said. "You are simply the witness of a tragedy that had its beginning on this very balcony one month ago. I sent word by the priest to a lady in Havana--an English lady--that we had 4,000 starving people in this town. Could she help us? Always generous, beneficent, self-sacrificing, the lady responded in person. She came by the coast steamer, landed at broad noon, traversed the two miles over which you came a few hours ago from the coast, bringing with her seven ox-cart loads of provisions, clothing and medicine. With her came her daughter, a young girl just over from England. Their charity was distributed from this very balcony to the starving people. The distribution occupied two entire days. Out of 4,000 people, 2,000 were given food and clothing and medicine. She promised the other half equal relief as soon as she could go to Havana and return again with the stores. On the night before she was to leave us the ladies and gentlemen of the leading families here, together with the officers of my staff, proposed to give the good Samaritans a banquet. The proposal was accepted. All gathered for the banquet on this balcony. I draped the front of the house in the Spanish colors, and hung out all the available lamps. That illumination was our ruin. Thirty-four sat down to dine. Only thirty lived through the first course. Of a sudden a hailstorm of bullets was poured into our midst. A bottle of wine in front of me flew into bits. Not a whole plate or a whole glass was left. We sprang up and fled into the house. Not all of us, though. No. Three men-- three of my best officers--had fallen from their chairs, dead. The other--oh, God!" ENGLISH SAMARITAN MURDERED. The commandante could not continue. He made a gesture indicating that I was to step into the house. In his room he opened a huge wardrobe and took out a jacket, a tiny coat, such as might be worn by a soldier boy. The sleeves were loaded with the gold lace and golden stars of a colonel in the Spanish army. On the left side of this jacket or coat was a ragged hole. "The bullet entered here," the commandante said, sorrowfully. "It pierced her heart. The poor mother carried her dead back to Havana. That is all." I understood. A fatal volley had been poured into that dinner party by insurgents on the hilltops. The house was in the center of the town, and the lamps illuminating the Spanish colors had rendered the balcony the best of targets. These Spanish officers and an innocent young English girl, a Samaritan, were murdered. And by whom? By the insurgents, who were guided to the hilltops by two of the very reconcentrados whom the victims had saved that day from starvation. One had written a note informing the insurgents of the circumstance, time, and place of the banquet. The other had delivered the note to one of the murderers. Father and son were equally guilty of ingratitude and treachery. The incriminating note had been found on the dead body of the insurgent captain, carried into town by the soldier of Spain. THE SAD FINAL SCENE. At sunset a squad of twenty men, armed and in charge of a first lieutenant, filed out of the barracks. In front of the squad marched the two prisoners, their arms tied together above the elbows, behind their backs. Behind the soldiers came perhaps a thousand of the wretched and starving. No murmuring, no uplifting of arms, nothing but solemn silence. In front of a wall, lining one of the blackened fields, the prisoners were made to kneel down. A priest stood over them speaking the last consoling words. Out of the squad of twenty soldiers, eight stepped forth and leveled their rifles at the kneeling father and son. The eight shots sounded as one, and one of the blackest crimes of this atrocious war was expiated. CHAPTER XXIX. AMERICAN INDIGNATION GROWING. The American People Favor Cuba--Influence of the Press--Hatred of Weyler--General Lee's Reports of the Horrors of the War--The Question of Annexation--Spanish Soldiers Oppose American Aid for the Suffering--Consular Reports From the Island. The people of the United States, from the commencement of the war, have been deeply interested in the success of the Cuban cause. The leading journals, with hardly an exception, have upheld the revolutionists, and have been largely instrumental in arousing our government to action. The following editorial is one of many on the subject which voiced the popular feeling, and gave hope to the struggling band of patriots, both in the United States and Cuba: "Cuba bleeds at every pore, and Liberty goes weeping through a land desolated by cruel war and throttled by the iron hand of a foreign despotism. We hold that this government would be justified not only in recognizing Cuban belligerency, but also in recognizing Cuban independence, on the sole ground of the rights and claims of outraged humanity. ... In consequence of Weyler's barbarous decrees the most harrowing scenes of savagery and brutality are of almost daily occurrence in this beautiful island, which is situated a hundred miles from our Florida coast line. In the midst of these horrifying and terrorizing spectacles Cuba extends her hand in supplication to this land of boasted freedom, asking only for a kindly glance of friendly recognition. "Shall we refuse this small crumb of comfort from our bounteous board? Spain may have the right to expect American neutrality, but she has no right to demand indifference on our part to the fate of a brave people, whose territory almost touches our own, and is nearer to our national capital than are a number of the States of the Union, and whose heroic struggle for liberty was largely inspired by our glorious example of beneficent free institutions and successful self-government. "Spanish rule in Cuba has been characterized by injustice, oppression, extortion, and demoralization. She has fettered the energies of the people, while she has fattened upon their industry. She smiled but to smite, and embraced but to crush. She has disheartened exertion, disqualified merit, and destroyed patience and forbearance, by supporting in riotous luxury a horde of foreign officials at the expense of native industry and frugality. "Irritated into resistance, the Cubans are now the intended victims of increased injustice. But the inhuman design will fail of accomplishment. Cuban patriotism develops with the growth of oppression. The aspiration for freedom increases in proportion to the weight of its multiplied chains. The dawn of Cuban liberty is rapidly approaching." CONSULAR REPORTS OF SUFFERING IN THE ISLAND. General Lee's reports cover the period from November 17, 1897, to April 1, 1898. Much of the correspondence is marked confidential. Only excerpts are given in many instances. General Lee's first dispatch related to the modifying of General Weyler's concentration order by General Blanco. In his communication he says: "First. The insurgents will not accept autonomy. "Second. A large majority of the Spanish subjects who have commercial and business interests and own property here will not accept autonomy, but prefer annexation to the United States rather than an independent republic or genuine autonomy under the Spanish flag." The remainder of the letter is devoted to plans for the relief of the reconcentrados. "In this city," he writes, "matters are assuming better shape under charitable committees. Large numbers are now cared for and fed by private subscriptions. I witnessed many terrible scenes and saw some die while I was present. I am told General Blanco will give $100,000 to the relief fund." ANNEXATION DESIRED. General Lee writes on December 13: "The contest for and against autonomy is most unequal. For it there are five or six of the head officers at the Palace and twenty or thirty other persons here in the city. Against it, first, are the insurgents, with or without arms, and the Cuban non-combatants; second, the great mass of the Spaniards bearing or not bearing arms--the latter desiring, if there must be a change, annexation to the United States. Indeed, there is the greatest apathy concerning autonomy in any form. No one asks what it will be, or when or how it will come. "I do not see how it could even be put into operation by force, because as long as the insurgents decline to accept it, so long, the Spanish authorities say, the war must continue." General Lee then describes the efforts to form an autonomistic cabinet in Cuba and the public disapprobation of the people. On January 8 General Lee makes the following report: "Sir--I have the honor to state, as a matter of public interest, that the reconcentrado order of General Weyler, formerly governor-general of this island, transformed about four hundred thousand self-supporting people, principally women and children, into a multitude to be sustained by the contributions of others, or die of starvation or of fevers resulting from a low physical condition and being massed in large bodies, without change of clothing and without food. "Their homes were burned, their fields and plant beds destroyed, and their live stock driven away or killed. "I estimate that probably two hundred thousand of the rural population in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara have died of starvation or from resultant causes, and the deaths of whole families almost simultaneously, or within a few days of each other, and of mothers praying for their children to be relieved of their horrible sufferings by death are not the least of the many pitiable scenes which were ever present. In the provinces of Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba, where the 'reconcentrado order' could not be enforced, the great mass of the people are self-sustaining. ... "A daily average of ten cents' worth of food to two hundred thousand people would be an expenditure of $20,000 per day, and, of course, the most humane efforts upon the part of our citizens cannot hope to accomplish such a gigantic relief, and a great portion of these people will have to be abandoned to their fate." ... On January 12, 13, 14 and 15 General Lee sent brief cablegrams to the department in regard to those rioting and the demonstrations against autonomy and Blanco and the three newspaper offices. January 13 he said some of the rioters threatened to go to the United States consulate. "Ships," he said, "are not needed, but may be later. If Americans are in danger ships should move promptly for Havana. Uncertainty and excitement widespread." The rioting ceased the next day and General Lee reported all quiet. On March 1 General Lee reports that the distribution of food, medicines, and clothing to the destitute is proceeding satisfactorily. The work, he says, has been well organized and systematized under the supervision and direction of Miss Clara Barton, president of the Red Cross of the United States, and her active, able, and experienced assistant. He inclosed a letter on March 14 from Consul Barker, of Sagua, who requests him to transmit the following letter, which is addressed to him (General Lee): "Dear Sir--I will thank you to communicate to the department as quickly as possible the fact that military commander and other military officers positively refuse to allow the reconcentrados, to whom I am issuing food in its raw state, to procure fuel with which to cook the food. "In addition, they prohibited this class of people (I am only giving food to about one-fifth of the destitute--the authorities have quit altogether) from gathering vegetables cultivated within the protection of the forts, telling them 'the Americans propose to feed you, and to the Americans you must look.'" General Lee reports on March 28 that "instructions have been given, by the civil government of Havana that the alcaldes and other authorities shall not give out any facts about the reconcentrados, and if any of the American relief committees should make inquiries concerning them, all such inquiries must be referred to him." General Lee's dispatches end with a dispatch under date of April 1, transmitting the decree of the governor-general terminating the concentration order. CONSUL BARKER'S REPORT. Consul Barker covers the conditions existing in Santa Clara province in several communications, beginning on November 20, 1897, and closing on March 24 last. His letters constitute one long story of distress, of sickness, destitution and death, until, indeed, the picture, even as drawn in the plain language of official communications, is revolting. Mr. Barker devoted comparatively little space to political questions. Only one or two of his letters are along these lines. Probably the most notable of these is his communication of January 10 last: "When Spain will admit defeat," he writes, "no mortal, in my humble judgment, dare predict. That her plan of settlement-- autonomy--is a failure, and that with this failure passes from under her dominion the island, is not to be questioned. Pending this admission on her part thousands of human beings, guiltless of bringing on or having any part in the insurrection, are dying for want of sustenance." Mr. Barker then suggests that residents in Cuba be allowed to take out first papers under the naturalization laws before a consul in Cuba, and that by this scheme, he thinks, Spain will be rebuked and change her laws. He adds that the relief from the United States must be continued or the people must starve, so long as there is an armed Spanish soldier in the country, "since these people, for fear of being murdered, do not go to their country homes." On January 15 Mr. Barker writes: "In this consular district a reign of terror and anarchy prevails, which the authorities, if so disposed, are utterly powerless to control or in any measure to subdue. Aside from the suffering and desperation caused by the unparalleled destitution, I regard the situation as rapidly assuming a critical stage. As stated heretofore, in no way have the authorities departed from the policy pursued by the late, but not lamented, General Weyler. Spanish troops, as well as the guerrillas under the cruel chiefs Carreraz, Clavarrietta, and Lazo, continue to despoil the country and drench it with the blood of non-combatants. Although the 'bando' of the captain-general provides that laborers may return to estates, it restricts their operations to those having a garrison. Last week a number belonging to the 'Sta. Ana' estate, located within a league of Sagua, and owned by George Thorndike of Newport, were driven off after returning, and refused a permit as a protection by the military commander, Mayor Lemo, one of the trusted officers under the Weyler regime." Mr. Barker says that from February 15 to March 12 he cared for twelve hundred persons, increasing the number on the relief list after that date to two thousand. On March 24 Mr. Barker increased his estimate as to the amount of food necessary to keep life in the people of that province. He said that one hundred and fifty tons a month were needful for that time, and that the distress was far greater than his former reports had shown. In the letter of this date he recounts the particulars of a visit to Santa Clara, where, he says, he learned from his own agents and also from the governor of the province that the number of persons in actual want exceeded any estimate which he had previously sent to the government He had said only three days before that he thought twenty tons a month should be added to the eighty tons previously suggested. In a communication of March 20 Mr. Barker says: "The distress is simply heart-rending. Whole families without clothing to hide nakedness are sleeping on the bare ground, without bedding of any kind, without food, save such as we have been able to reach with provisions sent by our own noble people; and the most distressing feature is that fully 50 per cent are ill, without medical attendance or medicine." SOLDIERS OPPOSE AID. Mr. Barker adds that if $5,000 could be sent to Consul General Lee, blankets, cots, and medicines could be purchased in Santa Clara, and thus save thousands who must die if compelled to await the sending of these supplies from the United States. "I have," he says, "found the civil governor willing to lend every aid in his power, but he admits that he can do nothing but assist with his civil officers in expediting relief sent by the United States. The military obstruct in every way possible." CONSUL HYATT'S REPORT. Writing on December 5, Mr. Hyatt said: "The reconcentration order is relaxed, but not removed; but many people have reached a point where it is a matter of entire indifference to them whether it is removed or not, for they have lost all interest in the problem of existence. A census of the island taken to-day, as compared with one taken three years ago, I feel confident would show that two-thirds of the residents are missing, and the Spanish army would make no better showing." On December 14 Mr. Hyatt wrote: "The order of reconcentration practically has been wiped out, and, so far as the Spanish government is concerned, men go about nearly as they please. The insurgents and their sympathizers will unquestionably take advantage of the revocation to get from the towns and cities what they need and otherwise strengthen their cause. The effects on agricultural pursuits will be disappointing, because the great majority of those who would or should take up the work joined the insurgent forces when compelled to leave their homes, and the portion which came within the lines of reconcentration are women, children, old and sickly people, most of whom seem to have little interest in the problem of life. There is no one to take these people back to the fields and utilize their remaining strength. Their houses are destroyed, the fields are overgrown with weeds, they have no seeds to plant, and, if they had, they could not live sixty or eighty days until the crop matured; which, when grown, would more than likely be taken by one or the other of the contending parties." DYING AT HIS DOOR. "As I write," Mr. Hyatt closes this communication, "a man is dying in the street in front of my door, the third in a comparatively small time." Mr. Hyatt's letter of December 21 deals largely with the sickness and the death rate on the island, which he characterizes as appalling. "Statistics," he says, "make a grievous showing, but come far short of the truth. The disease is generally brought on by insufficient food. It is sometimes called paludal fever, and at others la grippe, and it is epidemic rather than contagious. From 30 to 40 per cent of the people were afflicted with it." He also reported smallpox and yellow fever as prevailing, and said that out of a total of sixteen thousand soldiers recently sent to Manzanillo, nearly five thousand were in hospitals or quartered on the people. He says that Dr. Gaminero, United States sanitary inspector, reported at that time that there were more than twelve thousand people sick in bed, not counting those in military hospitals. This is at least 35 per cent of the present population. Mr. Hyatt adds that quinine, the only remedy of avail, is sold ten times higher than in the United States. He says that steamers coming into port give out soup once a day to the waiting throngs, and that fresh meat sells at from 50 cents to $1 a pound. CONDEMNED TO A LIVING DEATH. Every ten days or so crowds of handcuffed men are driven through the streets of Havana, which they will never tread again, on their way to the transport ship which will convey them to the penal settlements on the African coast. Many of these men represent the elite of Cuban society. Seldom is a direct charge brought against them. Police spies denounce them as Cuban sympathizers. They are given no trial, that they may prove the charges false. On administrative order they are sentenced to exile for life, and frequently the source of their misfortune can be traced to private revenge or personal feeling. Since the beginning of the war at least ten thousand prominent citizens have been torn from their native island, families and friends, and sent to life exile in the filthy, overcrowded, deadly swamps of Fernando Po. With a little money and good health it is possible to survive in Ceuta, but none ever returns from Fernando Po. On the 23d of March a large party of citizens of the Matanzas district passed through Havana on their way to the transport. It was a sad procession. Hopeless, jaded, despairing men, with arms tied behind them and feet shackled, forced to leave Cuba and face a slow, horrible death. On the train from Matanzas two of these unfortunates were literally shot to pieces. The guards reported they tried to escape and were shot in the attempt. Their fellow-prisoners told a different story. "The two men were deliberately taken out on the platform between the cars and fired upon. And the soldiers would give no reason." The action could likely be traced to personal revenge. For three-quarters of a century the misgovernment of Spain in Cuba was a neighborhood shame and scandal to the people of the United States. Warning off the interference of any other foreign nation, under the policy known as the "Monroe Doctrine," the American people witnessed the repeated efforts of a less favored nation of this hemisphere to release itself from the grasp of the oppressor. They witnessed at the periods of each of these revolts their own ships of war patroling the southern coast and the waters adjacent to Cuba to intercept any young Americans whose sympathies might lead them to join the Cuban cause, and they acquiesced, because the law as it stood exacted it. They witnessed in more than one of these revolts, when some young Americans, who had eluded the vigilance of United States cruisers, landed on the island and were captured by Spanish troops. These young men stood against the walls of Morro Castle and were shot like dogs, because their government was powerless under the law to aid them. They witnessed the offers on the part of their government at various times to terminate the continued scandal upon civilized government at one of the doorways of their country by the purchase of the island for a generous sum of money, and the rejections of such propositions by Spain. The American people finally realized that peace could never come to Cuba until it was imposed by the action of the United States, and the opinion gradually grew that neither international obligations nor a desire for the maintenance of friendly relations with Spain could justify our government in permitting these outrages to continue at our doors. CHAPTER XXX. OUTRAGES ON AMERICANS IN CUBA. How Spain Pays Her Debts--An Old Soldier's Experience--The Case of Pedro Casanova--Destruction of Property--Robbery and Murder--A Cruel Attack--The Insurgents to the Rescue--Hiding in a Cane Field--The Appeal to the Consul--Intervention Justifiable. Many American citizens in Cuba have been confined in Spanish prisons, a number have been sent to the penal colonies, the property of some has been confiscated, and others have been murdered in cold blood. A celebrated case, which shows how slowly the wheels of justice sometimes revolve, was that of Antonio Maximo, a naturalized American citizen. He was condemned to death, and his estates declared the property of the government, by order of a court-martial, in 1870. He was charged with participating in the revolution then going on in Cuba and convicted, in spite of the fact that he was not residing on the island. The United States demanded restitution and indemnification, and in 1873 the Spanish republic admitted that the claim was just. The decree was confirmed in 1876 by the royal government, but the authorities in Cuba delayed its execution until the estates were in ruins. Spain finally offered the sum of 1,500,000 pesos as indemnity, and this offer was accepted in 1886. The Cortes, however, made no appropriation for the payment, and in 1888 the Spanish minister of state attempted to affix to the agreement the new condition that certain claims of Spanish subjects should be adjudicated and settled simultaneously. Secretary Bayard rejected the proposition, and our government continued to urge the Spanish authorities to fulfill their contract. On June 12, 1895, Secretary Olney instructed Hannis Taylor, United States minister at Madrid, to ask Spain to give assurances that she would settle the claim within two months. The Spanish government then offered to pay the principal of the claim, and the claimant agreed to forego the interest. On September 14, the original claimant having died, the Spanish government paid $1,499,000, equal to 1,500,000 pesos, in settlement of the long-standing claim. AN OLD SOLDIER'S EXPERIENCE. William Ewing, of Buffalo, New York, served in the Seventeenth United States infantry all through the civil war, and is a member of the G. A. R. He went to Cuba, and invested $7,000, all the money he had, in a sugar plantation, and with his wife and daughter and his brother-in-law, William Hamilton, he took up his abode on the island. Finally, owing to the unsettled conditions resulting from the war, he sent his family back to the United States, and joined the insurgent army. His brother-in-law also espoused the Cuban cause, and was killed in battle. Discouraged by his reverses, he decided to return to his native land, and made his escape from the island by boarding a blockade runner, which landed him at Atlantic City, from where he walked to New York. Grand Army comrades gave him food and shelter, and assisted him to reach his family. This man has a personal interest in the success of the cause, for when that time comes he hopes to regain possession of his property. THE CASE OF PEDRO CASANOVA. Pedro Casanova, a citizen of the United States, resided near the little railway station of San Miguel de Jaruca with his family, which consists of his wife and three children and his nephew, the latter born in the United States. He told the story of his wrongs at the hands of the Spaniards to a representative of the New York Herald in the following words: "I have suffered great outrages from the Spanish soldiers. The soldiers recently passed on the road, and my wife called my attention to the fact that they had broken into a vacant house where valuable property was stored, and were pulling things in pieces. Just then I saw two officers coming toward the house. I was very glad, and went out to meet them, and invited them to enter the house and refresh themselves. They accepted, and said they liked coffee. While they were drinking, one or two soldiers came and spoke to the captain, who asked me, 'Who are the men in the sugar house?' 'My employes,' I replied, 'including one engineer. The others are engaged in repairs.' "The captain said: 'I hear rebels are hidden there. I must take the men before the major for examination; the major himself will be here to-morrow.' "After he left I found the door of the house on the hill broken open. A quantity of bottled beer had been taken, also my saddles and bridles, and many other things. Gloves and other articles of woman's apparel were tossed in the yard. I went to the station. The drug store looked as if it had been visited by a mad bull. All the shelves and drawers were thrown out and smashed. An empty store opposite was in the same condition. The counter was thrown down and the door posts hacked by machetes. The large coffee mill was broken, and all was in disorder. An account of this work was what the soldiers had whispered to the captain. The officer had remarked to me with a sneer: 'The insurgents are very kind to you, as no harm has been done here.' "I was surprised on the following Wednesday morning to hear shots as of several volleys of musketry. About three hundred soldiers-- infantry and cavalry--were, in fact, outside, having surrounded my house. More soon appeared under command of Captain Cerezo Martinez. In most brutal and vulgar terms he ordered all in the house to go outside. The soldiers rushed in and dragged me out by the coat collar. My wife, with her baby, was taken out, a rifle being pointed at her breast. Eleutrie Zanabria, a negro servant, who was badly frightened, tried to hide. He was pulled to the front, and before my eyes a soldier struck him a heavy blow with his machete, cutting him deep in the head and arm, leaving a pool of blood on the floor. The wound was serious. "An order was then given to take into custody all men on the estate. Near a tree beyond the hill, one hundred yards from the house, I stopped, about forty paces from the others, to talk to the captain, who had been at the house the week before. At that moment a young negro, Manuel Febels, made a dash to escape. Some cavalrymen rushed after him, firing. He fell, and they mutilated his body, taking out his eyes. The officer, enraged at the negro's flight, pulled out his sabre, and shouted to the others of the party: 'Get down on your knees!' They obeyed and he had them bound and kept in that position a quarter of an hour. "While I was talking to the captain my wife and five-year-old child were begging for mercy for me. The cavalrymen helped themselves to corn for their horses, and finally started. The officers told me that my nephew's life and my own were only spared because we were Americans, and they did not want to get into trouble with the United States. They then ordered me to leave San Miguel without waiting a moment. "Their explanation of the raid was that the rebels had fired upon the troops, and that they saw one man run, as he fired, into my house, and that, under the major's instructions, the whole family should have been killed. My wife and children were in agony while I was away. My employes were all taken away by the troops. "An officer of high rank in the Spanish army passed my place after I left, came to me here, and said: 'I know what has happened. The man in command is unfit to be an officer of Spain.' I heard that my men had been taken to the Spanish camp and shot while eating breakfast." DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. The brothers Farrar, in presenting their claim for indemnity, made the following statement: "On Saturday, March 21, the dwelling house of the coffee plantation Estrella was the object of a wanton attack by the column of Gen. Bernat, operating in that region. The said building received cannon shots of grape and cannister, breaking the door, one window, several piazza columns, and greatly endangering the lives of the families of my brothers, Don Tasio and Don Luis Farrar, both American citizens. There were two small children in the house. From my information it appears that the troops mentioned had sustained fire with a rebel band in Paz plantation, a quarter-league from Estrella. The rebels having fled to Pedroso and Buena Esperanza plantations, the government troops advanced toward Estrella in quite an opposite direction from that taken by the rebels. On arriving at the borders of Estrella plantation the Spanish column began firing cannon at the dwelling house, and it was immediately invaded by the soldiers, who ransacked it, carrying off wardrobes, all jewelry and men's clothing which they contained, as well as the sum of about $60 in money. They also took away everything found in workmen's dwellings, arresting at the same time twelve of the occupants, whom they conducted to Alquizar as insurgents. It should be observed that the cannon were fired solely at the dwelling house of the owners, although there were twenty other buildings on the plantation, and the place was entirely clear of insurgents. "In consideration of all the above, and particularly on account of the danger to which his relatives were exposed, and also for the unjustifiable looting on the part of the regular troops in the service of a constituted government, the undersigned does most solemnly protest, and asks an immediate indemnity for the damages suffered, which he values at $5,000, as all work has been stopped on the plantation and everything abandoned." A CRUEL ATTACK. The case of Dr. Deligado is a particularly pathetic one. His home was in New York, where he was a practicing physician, but he went to Cuba to take possession of some property which he had inherited. His father told the story of their sufferings to a correspondent, and his account was supplemented by additional particulars from the doctor himself. The elder gentleman said: "Our plantation is called Dolores, the old name being Morales. It was about half past one on the 4th day of March when a regiment of rebels, about four hundred or five hundred men, invaded the place. They told us they were Maceo's men, and soon after them came Maceo, with twenty-four women, sixteen whites and eight mulattoes. I understood that these women were the wives of the officers. "Maceo shook hands politely and asked if I would allow them to take breakfast with us. Of course there was nothing to do but say yes, and the men spread themselves over about seventy acres of the plantation, the officers and ladies coming into the house. They had provisions with them, but desired to cook and serve them, which they did. They sat down at the table and were soon joking and laughing. Suddenly we heard rifle shots. Hernandez yelled to his wife to hand him his machete. Then all went out and found that the firing had come from what seemed to be an advance guard of the Spanish troops. There was some skirmishing at a distance, and the insurgents rode away. They did not wish to fight on the plantation, as they were on another mission. "The Spaniards had fired the cane, thinking there were other insurgents hiding there. Spanish bullets rattled on the tiled roof of the house, and farm hands who were plowing back of the house got frightened and wished to come in. "After a while I opened the window to see how matters stood and saw two cavalrymen and a captain, with two soldiers. My son and the farm hands went out toward the burning cane in an attempt to save some oxen that were near the cane. When the captain saw them he shouted: 'Who are those people?' I told him they were our workmen, and he then gave orders to clear the house. They rushed their horses right through the house, the captain leading them. I took out my American papers and showed them to him to prove that I was a peaceful citizen. 'They are the worst documents you could have,' said the captain. They answered my son in the same way, and the captain repeated the order to clear the house. Then they ordered us to march on as prisoners and told the women to stay back. My son asked them to let me stay back with the women, and they allowed me to do so. Of course the women were panic-stricken and screaming when they saw their husbands being taken away. "We heard shots and then a second volley. One of the women cried out: 'They have killed my husband!' Her words were true. After about three hours I ventured out, and I saw coming towards the house the old farm hand, a man of about seventy. He seemed to be holding a red handkerchief over his arm, but when I got nearer I saw that it was covered with blood. He cried out when he saw me: 'They have killed them!' 'My son! My son!' I cried. 'He was the first one they killed,' he said. "I took the man in the house and tried to bind up his arm, which had been shattered by a bullet. I endeavored to pacify the women, and told them they should go to the nearest neighbors for help. The two white farm hands, who had been hiding in the cane, then came over toward the house, while I was trying to quiet the women. They were afraid to move, panic-stricken, and would not go for help. "Suddenly a young man dashed up to the house at full gallop. He drew his revolver and told the farm hands to get cots and pillows and medicine to bring to the missing men in case any of them should be still alive. He said he would shoot them if they disobeyed, and they did as he directed. They made up a litter, and we walked on till we found the place where the men lay in a pool of blood. "I looked into my son's face and cried out: 'My son, my son!' He opened his eyes and whispered: 'Father, they have killed us.'" The old gentleman broke down in a passion of weeping at these recollections of the awful scene, and the son gave his account of the horrible butchery: "They marched us along," said the Doctor, "and I spoke to the general: 'General, I am an American citizen, and here are my papers from Mr. Williams.' 'They are the worst things you could have,' he said. 'I wish the Consul were here himself, so that I could treat him thus,' and he struck me three times in the face. Then he sounded the bugle calling the volunteers, and ordered us taken to the rear guard. Of course, we knew that this meant death. They tied us in a line with our hands pinioned. I knew the sergeant and said to him: 'Is it possible that you are going to kill me?' 'How can I help it?' he answered. Then the order was given and the soldiers rushed upon us with machetes. Their knives cut our ropes as we tried to dodge the blows, and the soldiers fired two volleys at us. The first shot grazed my head, and I dropped to the ground as though dead. The old farm hand also threw himself to the earth. This act saved our lives. "The other four men who tried to fight were killed. At the second discharge a bullet pierced my side. When we all lay as though dead they came up and turned us over and searched our pockets--mine first, of course, as I was better dressed than the other men. One of the soldiers noticed that my breast moved and shouted out: 'This fellow is not dead yet. Give him another blow,' and he raised his machete and gave me a slash across the face and throat. Then I became unconscious." Delgado's father took up the story as his son left off: "The brave young man who brought us to the place where my son was, now jumped from his horse and gave orders to the men to lift my son on the litter, as we found he was the only man still living. We put a pillow under his head, and the two farm hands lifted the litter and carried it into the cane field. Meanwhile the women relatives of the dead men came up and began to wail and cry. The young man, whom we afterwards found was an insurgent leader, told them they should be quiet, as their lamentations would bring the Spanish troops upon the scene again. "Then the litter was carried into the cane field. This young man said: 'You must immediately write to the American consul. I will furnish you with a messenger, and you may rest safely in this cane field with your son. I will put a guard of 500 men around it so that they cannot burn it, as they do when they know people are hiding in the cane.' "For five days I was in the cane field with my son. It rained upon us, and then I put the pillows over my son's chest, in order to protect him. I suffered greatly from rheumatism. Only the young man appeared and said that General Maceo had sent a guard to escort me back to my home. With my boy we were taken there and guard kept around our house. The messenger came back from the Consul, and I came on to Havana to see General Weyler, who had my son brought here to the city." Stories of outrages on Americans that are unquestionably true might be furnished in numbers sufficient to more than fill this entire volume, but enough have been given to convince the most skeptical that the demand for intervention was justified on our own account, as well as for the sake of the people of Cuba. CHAPTER XXXI. McKINLEY SUCCEEDS CLEVELAND. The Cuban Question Not a New One--The Efforts of Former Administrations to Bring About a Settlement--President Cleveland's Message--Recommendations of President McKinley--The Spanish Minister's Insulting Letter--His Resignation Accepted--The Apology of the Spanish Government. For more than ninety years the United States government has been confronted with a Cuban question. At times it has disappeared from our politics, but it has always reappeared. Once we thought it wise to prevent the island from winning its independence from Spain, and thereby, perhaps, we entered into moral bonds to make sure that Spain governed it decently. Whether we definitely contracted such an obligation or not, the Cuban question has never ceased to annoy us. The controversies about it make a long series of chapters in one continuous story of diplomatic trouble. Many of our ablest statesmen have had to deal with it as Secretaries of State and as Ministers to Spain, and not one of them has been able to settle it. One President after another has taken it up, and every one has transmitted it to his successor. It has at various times been a "plank" in the platforms of all our political parties--as it was in both the party platforms of 1896--and it has been the subject of messages of nearly all our Presidents, as it was of President Cleveland's message in December, 1896, in which he distinctly expressed the opinion that the United States might feel forced to recognize "higher obligations" than neutrality to Spain. In spite of periods of apparent quiet, the old trouble has always reappeared in an acute form, and it has never been settled; nor has there recently been any strong reason for hope that it could be settled merely by diplomatic negotiation with Spain. Our diplomats have long had an experience with Spanish character and methods such as the public can better understand since war has been in progress. The pathetic inefficiency and the continual indirection of the Spanish character are now apparent to the world; they were long ago apparent to those who have had our diplomatic duties to do. Thus the negotiations dragged on. We were put to trouble and expense to prevent filibustering, and filibustering continued in spite of us. More than once heretofore has there been danger of international conflict, as for instance when American sailors on the Virginius were executed in Cuba in 1873. Propositions have been made to buy the island, and plans have been formed to annex it. All the while there have been great American interests in Cuba. Our citizens have owned much property and made investments there, and done much to develop its fertility. They have paid tribute unlawful as well as lawful, both to insurgents and to Spanish officials. They have lost property, for which no indemnity has been paid. All the while we have had a trade with the island, important during periods of quiet, irritating during periods of unrest. TROUBLE NOT A NEW ONE. The Cuban trouble is, therefore, not a new trouble, even in an acute form. It had been moving forward toward a crisis for a long time. Still, while our government suffered these diplomatic vexations, and our citizens these losses, and our merchants these annoyances, the mass of the American people gave little serious thought to it. The newspapers kept us reminded of an opera bouffe war that was going on, and now and then there came information of delicate and troublesome diplomatic duties for our Minister to Spain. If Cuba were within a hundred miles of the coast of one of our populous States, and near one of our great ports, periods of acute interest in its condition would doubtless have come earlier and oftener, and we should long ago have had to deal with a crisis by warlike measures. Or if the insurgents had commanded respect instead of mere pity, we should have paid heed to their struggle sooner; for it is almost an American maxim that a people cannot govern itself till it can win its own independence. When it began to be known that Weyler's method of extermination was producing want in the island, and when appeals were made to American charity, we became more interested. President Cleveland found increasing difficulty with the problem. Our Department of State was again obliged to give it increasingly serious attention, and a resolute determination was reached by the administration that this scandal to civilization should cease--we yet supposed peacefully--and Spain was informed of our resolution. When Mr. McKinley came to the Presidency, the people, conscious of a Cuban problem, were yet not greatly aroused about it. Indeed, a prediction of war made at the time of the inauguration would have seemed wild and foolish. Most persons still gave little thought to Cuba, and there seemed a likelihood that they would go on indefinitely without giving serious thought to it; for neither the insurgents, nor the Cuban junta, nor the Cuban party in the United States, if there was such a party, commanded respect. PRESIDENT McKINLEY'S MESSAGE. President McKinley sent a message to Congress a few weeks after his inauguration, in which he recommended the appropriation of $50,000 for the relief of American citizens in Cuba. It read as follows: "Official information from our Consuls in Cuba establishes the fact that a large number of American citizens in the island are in a state of destitution, suffering for want of food and medicines. This applies particularly to the rural districts of the central and eastern parts. The agricultural classes have been forced from their farms into the nearest towns where they are without work or money. The local authorities of the several towns, however kindly disposed, are unable to relieve the needs of their own people, and are altogether powerless to help our citizens. The latest report of Consul-General Lee estimates that 600 to 800 are without means of support. I have assured him that provision would be made at once to relieve them. To that end I recommend that Congress make an appropriation of not less than $50,000, to be immediately available for use under the direction of the Secretary of State. "It is desirable that a part of the sum which may be appropriated by Congress should, in the discretion of the Secretary of State, also be used for the transportation of American citizens who, desiring to return to the United States, are without means to do so." The joint resolution offered by Senator Gallinger, which embodied the recommendations of President McKinley, passed both Houses without a dissenting vote. An influential journal printed the following editorial concerning this measure: "It is an essentially new departure in international affairs, and it is in order for the sticklers for precedent to enter fussy protestation, as they did in connection with the Venezuelan question, against the Monroe doctrine, declaring it was not to be found in the code of international law. It is certainly very unusual, if not unprecedented, for the government to make a relief appropriation for its own people in some foreign land. The truth is, this Cuban situation is wholly exceptional. Here is a little island in a state of civil war. It is largely a sectional war, one part of the island being in possession of one of the belligerents, and the other section in possession of the other belligerent. "Several hundreds of our American citizens are in that section of the island occupied by Spanish armies, and are suffering, in common with the Cubans themselves, from a deliberate policy of starvation. Weyler is trying to conquer by famine. That is his fixed purpose, and, from the nature of the case, no discrimination is made between Spanish subjects in rebellion and American citizens sojourning in the island. If the policy of starvation cannot be maintained without this indiscrimination then so much the worse for Weyler and his policy. Congress has only to make the appropriation asked for, and the relief will go forward, without regard to any collateral consequences." DE LOME'S INSULTING LETTER. One of the most sensational incidents in connection with Spanish affairs prior to the destruction of the Maine was the publication of a letter, which fell into the hands of the Cuban Junta, written by Senor Dupuy De Lome, the representative of the Spanish government in Washington, to the editor of a newspaper at Madrid. A translation of the letter is given: My Distinguished and Dear Friend: You need not apologize for not having written to me. I ought to have written to you, but have not done so on account of being weighed down with work. The situation here continues unchanged. Everything depends on the political and military success in Cuba. The prologue of this second method of warfare will end the day that the Colonial Cabinet will be appointed, and it relieves us in the eyes of this country of a part of the responsibility of what may happen there, and they must cast the responsibility upon the Cubans, whom they believe to be so immaculate. Until then we will not be able to see clearly, and I consider it to be a loss of time and an advance by the wrong road, the sending of emissaries to the rebel field, the negotiating with the autonomists, not yet declared to be legally constituted, and the discovery of the intentions and purposes of this government. The exiles will return one by one, and when they return will come walking into the sheepfold, and the chiefs will gradually return. Neither of these had the courage to leave en masse, and they will not have the courage to thus return. The President's message has undeceived the insurgents, who expected something else, and has paralyzed the action of Congress, but I consider it bad. Besides the natural and inevitable coarseness with which he repeats all that the press and public opinion of Spain has said of Weyler, it shows once more what McKinley is--weak and catering to the rabble, and, besides, a low politician, who desires to leave a door open to me and to stand well with the jingoes of his party. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, it will only depend on ourselves whether he will prove bad and adverse to us. I agree entirely with you that without military success nothing will be accomplished there, and without military and political success there is here always danger that the insurgents will be encouraged, if not by the government, at least by part of the public opinion. I do not believe you pay enough attention to the role of England. Nearly all that newspaper canaille, which swarm in your hotel, are English, and while they are correspondents of American journals, they are also correspondents of the best newspapers and reviews of London. Thus it has been since the beginning. To my mind, the only object of England is that the Americans should occupy themselves with us and leave her in peace, and if there is a war, so much the better. That would further remove what is threatening her, although that will never happen. It would be most important that you should agitate the question of commercial relations, even though it would be only for effect, and that you should send here a man of importance, in order that I might use him to make a propaganda among the senators and others, in opposition to the Junta and to win over exiles. There goes Amblarad. I believe he comes too deeply taken up with political matters, and there must be something great or we shall lose. Adela returns your salutation, and we wish you in the new year to be a messenger of peace and take this new year's present to poor Spain. Always your attentive friend and servant, who kisses your hand, ENRIQUE DUPUY DE LOME. As soon as this letter was made public, De Lome cabled his resignation to the Spanish government, and withdrew his passports from the State Department in Washington, thus saving himself the mortification of a dismissal. The Spanish government at Madrid sent the following communication to Minister Woodford regarding the affair: The Spanish Government, on learning of the incident in which Minister Dupuy De Lome was concerned, and being advised of his objectionable communication, with entire sincerity laments the incident, states that Minister De Lome had presented his resignation, and it had been accepted before the presentation of the matter by Minister Woodford. That the Spanish Ministry, in accepting the resignation of a functionary whose services they have been utilizing and valuing up to that time, leaves it perfectly well established that they do not share, and rather, on the contrary, disauthorize the criticisms tending to offend or censure the chief of a friendly State, although such criticisms had been written within the field of friendship and had reached publicity by artful and criminal means. That this meaning had taken shape in a resolution by the Council of Ministers before General Woodford presented the matter, and at a time when the Spanish Government had only vague telegraphic reports concerning the sentiments alluded to. That the Spanish nation, with equal and greater reason, affirms its view and decision after reading the words contained in the letter reflecting upon the President of the United States. As to the paragraph concerning the desirability of negotiations of commercial relations, if even for effect and importance of using a representative for the purpose stated in Senor Dupuy De Lome's letter, the government expresses concern that in the light of its conduct, long after the writing of the letter, and in view of the unanswerable testimony of simultaneous and subsequent facts, any doubt should exist that the Spanish Government has given proof of its real desire and of its innermost convictions with respect to the new commercial system and the projected treaty of commerce. That the Spanish Government does not now consider it necessary to lay stress upon, or to demonstrate anew the truth and sincerity of its purpose and the unstained good faith of its intentions. That publicly and solemnly, the Government of Spain contracted before the mother country and its colonies a responsibility for the political and tariff charges which it has inaugurated in both Antilles, the natural ends of which, in domestic and international spheres, it pursues with firmness, which will ever inspire its conduct. CHAPTER XXXII. THE CASE OF EVANGELINA CISNEROS. A Martyr to the Cause--Filial Devotion--Spanish Chivalry--In a Spanish Prison--An American Rescuer--Yankee Pluck Against Brute Force--The Escape--Arrival in New York--Enthusiastic Reception--A Home in the Land of Liberty. Spanish officials in Cuba have always denied the charge that they made war on women, and have insisted that the tales of persecution of the weaker sex that have reached this country were inventions of the insurgents, published to gain sympathy for their cause. In direct contradiction to this claim is the story of Evangelina Cisneros, the niece of the president of the Cuban republic. Her father, a Cuban patriot of prominence, was banished to the Isle of Pines, and she showed her filial devotion by leaving a luxurious home to share his exile. While there, her beauty attracted the attention of a Spanish General, who tried by every means in his power to gain her favor. It was natural that she should despise anyone who wore the hated uniform of Spain, and, because she rejected his advances, she was charged with conspiring against the government, and sent to a jail in Havana. Her unhappy fate attracted the attention of Mr. W. R. Hearst, the proprietor of the New York Journal, and he, actuated no doubt by philanthropic motives, as well as the desire to advance the interests of his paper, determined to make an effort for her release. How this was accomplished is best told by Mr. Karl Decker, who was Mr. Hearst's representative in carrying out the plot. "I have broken the bars of prison and have set free the beautiful captive of Monster Weyler, restoring her to her friends and relatives, and doing by strength, skill and strategy what could not be accomplished by petition and urgent request of the Pope. Weyler could blind the Queen to the real character of Evangelina, but he could not build a jail that would hold against enterprise when properly set to work. "To-night all Havana rings with the story. It is the one topic of conversation. Everything else pales into insignificance. No one remembers that there has been a change in the Ministry. What matters it if Weyler is to go? Evangelina Cisneros has escaped from the jail, thought by everyone to be impregnable. A plot has been hatched right in the heart of Havana--a desperate plot--as shown by the revolver found on the roof of the house through which the escape was effected, and as the result of this plot, put into effect under the very nose of Spanish guards, Evangelina is free. How was it done? How could it have been done? DETAILS OF THE ESCAPE. "These are the questions asked to-night by the frequenters of the cafes throughout the city, where the people of Havana congregate. It is conceded by all, by the officials of the palace included, to be the most daring coup in the history of the war, and the audacity of the deed is paralyzing. No one knows where Evangelina is now, nor can know. "To tell the story of the escape briefly, I came here three weeks ago, having been told to go to Cuba and rescue from her prison Miss Cisneros, a tenderly-reared girl, descended from one of the best families in the island, and herself a martyr to the unsatisfied desires of a beast in Spanish uniform. I arrived at Cienfuegos late in September, telegraphed to a known and tried man in Santiago de Cuba to meet me in Havana, and then went to Santa Clara, where I picked up a second man, known to be as gritty as Sahara, and then proceeded to Havana. "Here I remained in almost absolute concealment, so as to avoid the spies that dog one's steps wherever one may go, and make impossible any clever work of this kind. Both the men who accompanied me, Joseph Hernandon and Harrison Mallory, pursued the same course, and remained quiet until all plans had been completed. "The fact that Miss Cisneros was incommunicado made the attempt seem at first beyond the possibility of success, but we finally, through Hernandon, who was born on the island, and speaks Spanish like a native, succeeded in sending a note to her through an old negress, who called upon one of her friends in the prison. A keeper got this note through two hands to Miss Cisneros, and three keepers later got to her a package of drugged sweets. Having established communication with her, we began work without losing a day." THE PRISON LEFT BEHIND. Mr. Decker then tells hew he rented a house adjoining the prison, and instructed Miss Cisneros to give the drugged candies to the other women who were in the prison with her. As soon as the drug produced the desired effect on them, the bars of the prison were cut from the outside, and Miss Cisneros was assisted through the window, onto the roof of the house Mr. Decker had rented, kept in concealment for two days, and then smuggled on board a ship, bound for the land of liberty. Her arrival in New York is thus described: "Evangeline Cisneros, one week ago a prisoner among the outcast wretches in a Havana prison, is a guest at the Waldorf hotel. Surrounded by luxury and elegance, she is alternately laughing and crying over the events of one short week. One week ago last night a correspondent broke the bars of her cell and led her to liberty over the flat roofs of the Cuban capital. It is the memory of those thrilling few minutes that meant for her a lifetime of captivity or a future of peace and liberty that most often occurs to her now. "She arrived to-day on the Ward liner, Seneca, and was taken from the steamer by a boat at quarantine, thanks to the courtesy of the Government and the quarantine authorities. When the Seneca sailed from Havana there figured on the passenger list one Juan Sola. A girl who signed the name of Juana Sola to the declaration, exacted by the Custom House officers, was the nearest passenger to making good the lost one. Her declaration was that she brought nothing dutiable into the country. "If ever that declaration was truthfully made, it was made in the case of this brown-eyed, chestnut-haired girl, who was so anxious to please the man who made her sign. All she had was the simple red gown she had on her back and a bundle that contained a suit of clothes such as a planter's son might have worn. "Those were the clothes that Juan Sola wore when he ran up the gang-plank in Havana, with a big slouch hat over the chestnut hair, that even danger of discovery could not tempt her to cut, and a fat cigar between a red, laughing pair of lips that accidentally, maybe, blew a cloud of smoke into the face of the chief of police, who was watching that plank, and made the features of the young man very indistinct indeed. "There was no reason why the chief of police should scan too closely the young man with the big cigar. Juan Sola's passport had been duly issued by the Spanish government, and as far as the papers showed, there was no reason to suspect him. "Of course Juan Sola was the girl the correspondent had rescued from prison, and the fame of whose escape was on every tongue in Havana, the girl for whose capture the police had for three days been breaking into houses and guarding the roads, and yet she passed under their noses with no disguise but a boy's suit of clothes. "Miss Cisneros did not court any more danger than was necessary, and at once went to her cabin. The next day, however, when Morro Castle was left far behind, she appeared on deck, transformed into Senorita Juana Sola, alias Evangelina Cisneros. "When the ship sighted Cape Hatteras light the young woman asked what light it was, and when told that it was an American beacon, she knelt down in the saloon and prayed. After that she wept for joy. She must have been all strung up with excitement over her experiences, and when she saw the light she could contain herself no longer, but simply overflowed. "Nothing could be seen of the Cuban girl as the Seneca slowed opposite quarantine to permit the boarding of the health officer. The other passengers, after the habit of ocean travelers, grouped amidships to scan the vessel of the tyrant, who had it in his power to lock them all up in quarantine. The girl was hidden away in her stateroom, wondering what reception awaited her in the big city whose sky-line broke the horizon ahead. "The people on board were kind to her from the moment she revealed her identity, but at this moment when she had reached the haven of refuge, to gain which she and her gallant rescuers had risked death itself, she fled from the new-found friends and would not even look out of the door of her stateroom." Miss Cisneros was given a great reception in Madison Square garden, during her stay in New York, where many noted men and women congratulated her on her happy escape, and welcomed her to "the land of the free, and the home of the brave." Since then she has become the protege of Mrs. John A. Logan, widow of the famous General, and is now a member of her family. It is suspected that General Weyler connived at the escape of Miss Cisneros, as it is not probable that it could have been accomplished without the knowledge of the prison officials, and as they were not called to account for their negligence, it would seem that they were simply obeying orders in keeping their eyes conveniently closed. The Military Judge of Havana issued a proclamation commanding Miss Cisneros to return to prison, but it was evident that this was merely a legal formality. There were men in Cuba, occupying high official positions, who could not afford to have the story of the persecutions of which she was a victim, while in voluntary exile with her father in the Isle of Pines, made known, for it would have gained for them the scorn and contempt of the civilized world. Her case had attracted the attention of men and women of prominence, not only in our own country, but in England, France and Germany as well, and it was likely to become an international affair, and Weyler probably decided to escape these complications by allowing her to be "rescued" from her prison cell. While all the details of the affair go to prove that this supposition is correct, all concerned have guarded the secret well, and it is but just to state that there is no direct proof to support the theory, and both the man who planned and the one who executed deserved all the honors they received. CHAPTER XXXIII. WORK OF MISS CLARA BARTON AND THE RED CROSS. The Geneva Conference--Miss Barton's Work in the War of the Rebellion--Organization of the American Red Cross--The Work in Cuba--Appeal to the Public--A Floating Hospital--Correspondence with Admiral Sampson--The Spanish Prisoners in Key West, and What the Red Cross Did for Them. Many attempts have been made to bring about an international agreement for mitigating the horrors and mortality of battle. The first successful movement of this kind was started at the same time that the civil war was raging in the United States. A conference of jurists and others interested in humanitarian work was held in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1863. They drew up an international compact, which was approved by the Swiss government, and the support and sanction of the French empire were won. It was several years, however, before the articles of agreement were signed by all the civilized nations of the world, and, strange to relate, the United States was the last of the great powers to officially recognize the rights to special protection secured to the bearers of the Red Cross symbol. In the autumn of 1881 a final effort was made to gain the agreement of the United States to the stipulations of the convention of Geneva, and assurances were given by President Arthur of his willingness to accede. The President and the Senate subsequently formally recognized the association, and the treaty was signed March 16, 1882. Pending this action by the government, a national society was formed and incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia, bearing the name of the American Association of the Red Cross. By this international treaty the Red Cross society is given peculiar privileges in times of war, and its agents and officers are permitted to carry on their work without hindrance from either of the belligerents, but they are prohibited from having anything, however remote, to do with military or naval operations. They deal exclusively with the means provided to aid the wounded, relieve the suffering, and care for the sick, in all of which the Red Cross agents know neither friend nor foe. In case of a battle the ambulances, surgeons and nurses of the society go upon the field at soon as it is possible for them to do so and carry out the work of mercy that has been undertaken. The American society has been generous in extending its aid to other countries in times of war, and during the Franco-Prussian hostilities in 1870-71 it sent to Paris from its own funds $120,000, while the French branch expended $2,500,000. Even the Spanish branch contributed to the humanitarian work of that war in the sum of $4,000. In the Turko-Russian, the Tunisian, the Tonquin, the Madagascar, the Greeco-Turkish and several other wars the Red Cross has carried on its work of mercy. MISS CLARA BARTON. When the war of the Rebellion begun Miss Clara Barton was a clerk in the Patent Office in Washington. She resigned her position to devote herself to the care of wounded soldiers on the field of battle. In 1864 she was appointed by General Butler "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front of the Army of the James. In 1865 she was sent to Andersonville, Georgia, to identify and mark the graves of Union soldiers buried there, and in the same year was placed by President Lincoln in charge of the search for the missing men of the Union army, and while engaged in this work she traced out the fate of 30,000 men. In 1873 she inaugurated a movement to secure recognition of the Red Cross society by the United States government, and finally, during the administration of President Arthur, she saw her labors rewarded. She naturally became President of the American branch of the society, which was founded in 1882, and she still holds that honored office. WORK IN CUBA. After Weyler's infamous order of reconcentration went into effect the Red Cross society was not long in realizing that it had work to do among the suffering people of Cuba. An appeal was made to the public, and an expedition was dispatched to the island, with Miss Barton at its head. In speaking of her work during that reign of terror, Senator Proctor said in the course of his address to the Senate: "Miss Barton needs no endorsement from me. I have known and esteemed her for many years, but had not half appreciated her capability and her devotion to her work. I especially looked into her business methods, fearing here would be the greatest danger of mistake, that there might be want of system, and waste and extravagance, but I found that she could teach me on all those points. I visited the warehouse where the supplies are received and distributed, saw the methods of checking, visited the hospitals established or organized and supplied by her, saw the food distributed in several cities and towns, and everything seems to me to be conducted in the best possible manner." When diplomatic relations were broken off between our country and Spain, and the American consuls in Cuba were recalled, it was deemed advisable that the representatives of the Red Cross then in Cuba should come with them. Miss Barton and her assistants returned to New York and immediately commenced the work of preparation to follow our army into Cuba. The following appeal was issued: The American National Red Cross Relief Corps, acting under the auspices of American National Red Cross, has for its objects the collection of funds for providing medical and surgical attendance, nursing, medical supplies, food, clothing, and such necessary assistance as may be required by the American National Red Cross, upon call of the United States government, in order to unify all endeavors to that end during the present war. Under the provisions of the Geneva conference, from which every National Red Cross society derives its authority, the American National Red Cross is directed to provide such relief as may be required by all, without recognition of friend or foe, who may suffer from the calamities incidental to war, pestilence or famine. The Red Cross here, and throughout the civilized world, by a wide and varied experience in recent wars, recognizing by international treaty the sacred obligations of helpfulness for the suffering, wherever found, has so perfected its organization that it becomes the recognized and legitimate channel for contributions from all classes of individuals, and every variety of auxiliary association. For the purpose of properly systemizing the benevolent impulses of the general public, and of giving proper direction of efficient Red Cross work, the committee solicits the co-operation of individuals and auxiliary associations throughout the country, confident that through such means the various funds and articles collected can most safely and most directly reach their ultimate destination. The steamer State of Texas was chartered and loaded with food, medicines and hospital supplies, and headquarters were established at Key West. When Miss Barton joined the State of Texas at Key West on the 29th of April, there seemed to be no immediate prospect of an invasion of Cuba by the United States army, and, consequently, no prospect of an opportunity to relieve the distress of the starving Cuban people. Knowing that such distress must necessarily have been greatly intensified by the blockade, and anxious to do something to mitigate it--or, at least, to show the readiness of the Bed Cross to undertake its mitigation--Miss Barton wrote and sent to Admiral Sampson, Commander of the Naval Forces on the North Atlantic Station, the following letter: S. S. State of Texas, May 2, 1898. Admiral W. T. Sampson, U. S. N., Commanding Fleet before Havana: Admiral--But for the introduction kindly proffered by our mutual acquaintance Captain Harrington, I should scarcely presume to address you. He will have made known to you the subject which I desire to bring to your gracious consideration. Papers forwarded by direction of our government will have shown the charge intrusted to me; viz., to get food to the starving people of Cuba. I have with me a cargo of 1,400 tons, under the flag of the Red Cross, the one international emblem of neutrality and humanity known to civilization. Spain knows and regards it. Fourteen months ago the entire Spanish government at Madrid cabled me permission to take and distribute food to the suffering people in Cuba. This official permission was broadly published. If read by our people, no response was made and no action taken until two months ago, when, under the humane and gracious call of our honored President, I did go and distribute food, unmolested anywhere on the island, until arrangements were made by our government for all American citizens to leave Cuba. Persons must now be dying there by hundreds, if not thousands, daily, for want of the food we are shutting out. Will not the world hold us accountable? Will history write us blameless? Will it not be said of us that we completed the scheme of extermination commenced by Weyler? Fortunately, I know the Spanish authorities in Cuba, Captain-General Blanco and his assistants. We parted with perfect friendliness. They do not regard me as an American merely, but as the National representative of an international treaty to which they themselves are signatory and under which they act. I believe they would receive and confer with me if such a thing were made possible. I should like to ask Spanish permission and protection to land and distribute food now on the State of Texas. Could I be permitted to ask to see them under a flag of truce? If we make the effort and are refused, the blame rests with them; if we fail to make it, it rests with us. I hold it good statesmanship at least to divide the responsibility. I am told that some days must elapse before our troops can be in position to reach and feed these starving people. Our food and our forces are here, ready to commence at once. With assurances of highest regard, I am, Admiral, Very respectfully yours, [Signed] CLARA BARTON. At the time when the above letter was written, the American Red Cross was acting under the advice and direction of the State and Navy Departments, the War Department having no force in the field. Admiral Sampson replied as follows: U. S. Flagship New York, First Rate, Key West, Fla., May 2, 1898. Miss Clara Barton, President American National Red Cross: 1. I have received through the senior naval officer present a copy of a letter from the State Department to the Secretary of the Navy; a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to the Commander-in-Chief of the naval force at this station; and also a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to the commandant of the naval station at Key West. 2. From these communications it appears that the destination of the S. S. State of Texas, loaded with supplies for the starving reconcentrados in Cuba, is left, in a measure, to my judgment. 3. At present I am acting under instructions from the Navy Department to blockade the coast of Cuba for the purpose of preventing, among other things, any food supply from reaching the Spanish forces in Cuba. Under these circumstances it seems to me unwise to let a ship-load of such supplies be sent to the reconcentrados, for, in my opinion, they would be distributed to the Spanish army. Until some point be occupied in Cuba by our forces, from which such distribution can be made to those for whom the supplies are intended, I am unwilling that they should be landed on Cuban soil. Yours very respectfully, [Signed] W. T. SAMPSON, Rear-Admiral U. S. N. Commander-in-Chief U. S. Naval Force, North Atlantic Station. After this exchange of letters Miss Barton had a conference with Admiral Sampson, in the course of which the latter explained more fully his reasons for declining to allow the State of Texas to enter any Cuban port until such port had been occupied by American troops. On the 3d of May Miss Barton sent the following telegram to Stephen. E. Barton, Chairman of the Central Cuban Belief Committee, in New York: Key West, May 3, 1898. Stephen E. Barton, Chairman, etc.: Herewith I transmit copies of letters passed between Admiral Sampson and myself. I think it important that you should present immediately this correspondence personally to the government, as it will place before them the exact situation here. The utmost cordiality exists between Admiral Sampson and myself. The Admiral feels it his duty, as chief of the blockading squadron, to keep food out of Cuba, but recognizes that, from my standpoint, my duty is to try to get food into Cuba. If I insist, Admiral Sampson will try to open communication under a flag of truce; but his letter expresses his opinion regarding the best method. Advices from the government would enable us to reach a decision. Unless there is objection at Washington, you are at liberty to publish this correspondence if you wish. [Signed] CLARA BARTON. On May 6 the Chairman of the Central Cuban Relief Committee replied as follows: Washington, D. C,, May 6, 1898. Clara Barton, Key West, Fla.: Submitted your message to President and Cabinet, and it was read with moistened eyes. Considered serious and pathetic. Admiral Sampson's views regarded as wisest at present. Hope to land you soon. President, Long, and Moore send highest regards. [Signed] BARTON. Under these circumstances, of course, there was nothing for the Red Cross steamer to do but wait patiently in Key West until the army of invasion should leave Tampa for the Cuban coast. Meanwhile, however, Miss Barton had discovered a field of beneficent activity for the Red Cross in Key West, where there were nearly 200 Spaniards, mostly fishermen, prisoners on vessels captured while running the blockade, and without means of subsistence. Most of these unfortunate men lived on fish after they were captured and none of them had a chance to obtain other food, as under the law they were not permitted to leave their vessels. The naval officers had no authority to supply the captives with food from the ships in the harbor, so their lot was far from being enviable. When Miss Clara Barton received word of their plight she sent Dr. Egan, the chief medical officer of the expedition, with several attendants, around among the fleet of prizes to distribute food. On one of the larger smacks Dr. Egan found that the crew had had nothing but fish to eat for several days. The well in the boat, in which there were hundreds of live fish, contained also a large number of dead ones, which were putrefied and were rapidly polluting the living ones. The physician immediately ordered the dead fish removed and fresh water pumped into the well. He then furnished bread, potatoes and salt meat to the crew, so that, the continuity of Friday diet might be changed. The Red Cross relief boats made a complete and accurate list of the Spanish prizes in the harbor--twenty-two in all--with the numerical strength of every crew, the amount of provisions, if any, on every vessel, and the quantity and kind of food that each would require. This was at once provided, and thus almost the first work done by the Red Cross in our war with Spain was the feeding of representatives of a nation that had forced us into war mainly because of its policy of starvation of the people of Cuba. On the morning of June 20, the Red Cross steamer State of Texas left Key West for Santiago, stocked with food and medicines, and having on board Miss Barton, Mr. Kennan, and a complete working force of doctors and nurses. They were warmly welcomed on their arrival on Cuban shores, and the State of Texas was the first American ship to enter the harbor of Santiago after the surrender. The Red Cross has done a grand work on many battlefields in every quarter of the globe, but never has it rendered more efficient aid to suffering humanity than it did on the southern shores of the island of Cuba. On the battlefield, braving the bullets of the foe, in the hospitals, ministering to the wants of the wounded and the dying, among the wretched non-combatants, giving food to the starving, and nursing the fever-stricken refugees, these noble men and women were ever ready to answer to the cry of the needy and the helpless. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CATASTROPHE TO THE MAINE. The Board of Inquiry in Session--Its Report Received by Congress --Spanish Officials in Cuba Show Sympathy--The Evidence of the Divers--A Submarine Mine--The Officers and Men of the Maine Exonerated--Responsibility Not Fixed. The story of the destruction of the battleship Maine has already been told in these pages. The Naval Board appointed to inquire into the causes of the disaster was composed of the following officers of the United States Navy: Captain Sampson, of the Iowa; Captain Chadwick, of the New York; Captain Marix, of the Vermont, and Lieutenant Commander Potter, of the New York. After an investigation which lasted for more than three weeks, this Board of Inquiry sent its report to President McKinley, who transmitted it to Congress, accompanied by the following message: To the Congress of the United States: For some time prior to the visit of the Maine to Havana harbor our consular representatives pointed out the advantages to flow from the visits of national ships to the Cuban waters, in accustoming the people to the presence of our flag as the symbol of good will and of our ships in the fulfillment of the mission of protection to American interests, even though no immediate need therefor might exist. Accordingly, on the 24th of January last, after conference with the Spanish Minister, in which the renewal of visits of our war vessels to Spanish waters was discussed and accepted, the peninsular authorities at Madrid and Havana were advised of the purpose of this Government to resume friendly naval visits at Cuban ports, and in that view the Maine would forthwith call at the port of Havana. This announcement was received by the Spanish Government with appreciation of the friendly character of the visit of the Maine, and with notification of intention to return the courtesy by sending Spanish ships to the principal ports of the United States. Meanwhile the Maine entered the port of Havana on the 25th of January, her arrival being marked with no special incident besides the exchange of customary salutes and ceremonial visits. The Maine continued in the harbor of Havana during the three weeks following her arrival. No appreciable excitement attended her stay; on the contrary, a feeling of relief and confidence followed the resumption of the long interrupted friendly intercourse. So noticeable was this immediate effect of her visit that the Consul-General strongly urged that the presence of our ships in Cuban waters should be kept up by retaining the Maine at Havana, or, in the event of her recall, by sending another vessel there to take her place. At forty minutes past nine in the evening of the 15th of February the Maine was destroyed by an explosion, by which the entire forward part of the ship was utterly wrecked. In this catastrophe two officers and two hundred and sixty-four of her crew perished, those who were not killed outright by her explosion being penned between decks by the tangle of wreckage and drowned by the immediate sinking of the hull. Prompt assistance was rendered by the neighboring vessels anchored in the harbor, aid being especially given by the boats of the Spanish cruiser Alphonse XII., and the Ward Line steamer City of Washington, which lay not far distant. The wounded were generously cared for by the authorities of Havana, the hospitals being freely opened to them, while the earliest recovered bodies of the dead were interred by the municipality in the public cemetery in the city. Tributes of grief and sympathy were offered from all official quarters of the island. The appalling calamity fell upon the people of our country with crushing force and for a brief time an intense excitement prevailed, which in a community less just and self-controlled than ours might have led to hasty acts of blind resentment. This spirit, however, soon gave way to the calmer processes of reason and to the resolve to investigate the facts and await material proof before forming a judgment as to the cause, the responsibility, and, if the facts warranted, the remedy. This course necessarily recommended itself from the outset to the Executive, for only in the light of a dispassionately ascertained certainty could it determine the nature and measure of its full duty in the matter. The usual procedure was followed, as in all cases of casualty or disaster to national vessels of any maritime state. A Naval Court of Inquiry was at once organized, composed of officers well qualified by rank and practical experience to discharge the duties imposed upon them. Aided by a strong force of wreckers and divers, the court proceeded to make a thorough investigation on the spot, employing every available means for the impartial and exact determination of the causes of the explosion. Its operations have been conducted with the utmost deliberation and judgment, and while independently pursued, no source of information was neglected and the fullest opportunity was allowed for a simultaneous investigation by the Spanish authorities. REPORT OF THE BOARD RECEIVED. The finding of the Court of Inquiry was reached after twenty-three days of continuous labor, on the 21st of March, and having been approved on the 22d by the commander-in-chief of the United States naval forces of the North Atlantic station, was transmitted to the Executive. It is herewith laid before Congress, together with the voluminous testimony taken before the court. Its purport is in brief as follows: When the Maine arrived at Havana she was conducted by the regular government pilot to Buoy No. 5, to which she was moored in from five and one-half to six fathoms of water. The state of discipline on board and the condition of her magazines, boilers, coal bunkers and storage compartments are passed in review, with the conclusion that excellent order prevailed and that no indication of any cause for an internal explosion existed in any quarter. At eight o'clock in the evening of February 15th everything had been reported secure and all was quiet. At forty minutes past nine o'clock the vessel was suddenly destroyed. There were two distinct explosions with a brief interval between them. The first lifted the forward part of the ship very perceptibly; the second, which was more open, prolonged and of greater volume, is attributed by the court to the partial explosion of two or more of the forward magazines. The evidence of the divers establishes that the after part of the ship was practically intact and sank in that condition a very few minutes after the explosion. The forward part was completely demolished. Upon the evidence of a concurrent external cause the finding of the court is as follows: At frame seventeen the outer shell of the ship, from a point eleven and one-half feet from the middle line of the ship, and six feet above the keel, when in its normal position, has been forced up so as to be now about four feet above the surface of the water; therefore about thirty-four feet above where it would be had the ship sunk uninjured. The outside bottom plating is bent into a reversed V-shape, the after wing of which, about fifteen feet broad and thirty-two feet in length (frame 17 to frame 25), is doubled back upon itself against the continuation of the same place extending forward. At frame 18 the vertical keel is broken in two and the flat keel bent into an angle similar to the angle formed by the outside bottom plate. This break is now about six feet below the surface of the water and about thirty feet above its normal position. A SUBMARINE MINE. In the opinion of the court this effect could have been produced only by the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship, at about frame 18 and somewhat on the port side of the ship. The conclusions of the court are: That the loss of the Maine was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on the part of any of the officers or members of her crew; That the ship was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of two or more of her forward magazines; and That no evidence has been obtainable fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the Maine upon any person or persons. I have directed that the finding of the Court of Inquiry and the views of this Government thereon be communicated to the Government of Her Majesty, the Queen Regent, and I do not permit myself to doubt that the sense of justice of the Spanish nation will dictate a course of action suggested by honor and the friendly relations of the two governments. It will be the duty of the Executive to advise the Congress of the result, and in the meantime deliberate consideration is invoked. (Signed,) WILLIAM McKINLEY. Executive Mansion, March 28, 1898. REPORT OF THE INVESTIGATING BOARD. The text of the report of the Board of Investigation was as follows: U. S. S. Iowa, first rate, Key West, Florida, Monday, March 21, 1898. After full and mature consideration of all the testimony before it, the court finds as follows: 1. That the United States battleship Maine arrived in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, on the twenty-fifth day of January, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-eight, and was taken to Buoy No. 4, in from five and a half to six fathoms of water, by the regular Government pilot. The United States Consul-General at Havana had notified the authorities at that place the previous evening of the intended arrival of the Maine. 2. The state of discipline on board the Maine was excellent, and all orders and regulations in regard to the care and safety of the ship were strictly carried out. All ammunition was stowed in accordance with prescribed instructions, and proper care was taken whenever ammunition was handled. Nothing was stowed in any one of the magazines or shell rooms which was not permitted to be stowed there. The magazine and shell rooms were always locked after having been opened, and after the destruction of the Maine the keys were found in their proper place in the Captain's cabin, everything having been reported secure that evening at eight P. M. The temperatures of the magazines and shell room were taken daily and reported. The only magazine which had an undue amount of heat was the after 10-inch magazine, and that did not explode at the time the Maine was destroyed. The torpedo warheads were all stowed in the after part of the ship under the ward room, and neither caused nor participated in the destruction of the Maine. The dry gun cotton primers and detonators were stowed in the cabin aft, and remote from the scene of the explosion. Waste was carefully looked after on board the Maine to obviate danger. Special orders in regard to this had been given by the commanding officer. Varnishes, dryers, alcohol and other combustibles of this nature were stowed on or above the main deck and could not have had anything to do with the destruction of the Maine. The medical stores were stored aft under the ward room and remote from the scene of the explosion. No dangerous stores of any kind were stowed below in any of the other store rooms. The coal blinkers were inspected daily. Of those bunkers adjacent to the forward magazines and shell rooms four were empty, namely, "B3, B4, B5 and B6." "A5" had been in use that day and "A16" was full of new river coal. This coal had been carefully inspected before receiving it on board. The bunker in which it was stowed was accessible on three sides at all times, and the fourth side at this time, on account of bunkers "B4" and "B6" being empty. This bunker, "A16" had been inspected Monday by the engineer officer on duty. The fire alarms in the bunkers were in working order, and there had never been a case of spontaneous combustion of coal on board the Maine. The two after boilers of the ship were in use at the time of the disaster, but for auxiliary purposes only, with a comparatively low pressure of steam and being tended by a reliable watch. These boilers could not have caused the explosion of the ship. The four forward boilers have since been found by the divers and are in a fair condition. On the night of the destruction of the Maine everything had been reported secure for the night at eight P. M. by reliable persons, through the proper authorities, to the commanding officer. At the time the Maine was destroyed the ship was quiet, and, therefore, least liable to accident caused by movements from those on board. 3. The destruction of the Maine occurred at 9:40 P. M. on the 15th day of February, 1898, in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, she being at the time moored to the same buoy to which she had been taken upon her arrival. There were two explosions of a distinctly different character, with a very short but distinct interval between them, and the forward part of the ship was lifted to a marked degree at the time of the first explosion. The first explosion was more in the nature of a report, like that of a gun, while the second explosion was more open, prolonged and of greater volume. This second explosion was, in the opinion of the court, caused by the partial explosion of two or more of the forward magazines of the Maine. The evidence bearing upon this, being principally obtained from divers, did not enable the court to form a definite conclusion as to the condition of the wreck, although it was established that the after part of the ship was practically intact and sank in that condition a very few minutes after the destruction of the forward part. 4. The following facts in regard to the forward part of the ship are, however, established by the testimony: That portion of the port side of the protective deck which extends from about frame 30 to about frame 41 was blown up aft, and over to port, the main deck from about frame 30 to about frame 41 was blown up aft, and slightly over to starboard, folding the forward part of the middle superstructure over and on top of the after part. This was, in the opinion of the court, caused by the partial explosion of two or more of the forward magazines of the Maine. 5. At frame 17 the outer shell of the ship, from a point eleven and one-half feet from the middle line of the ship and six feet above the keel when in its normal position, has been forced up so as to be now about four feet above the surface of the water, therefore, about thirty-four feet above where it would be had the ship sunk uninjured. The outside bottom plating is bent into a reversed V-shape, the after wing of which, about fifteen feet broad and thirty-two feet in length (from frame 17 to frame 25) is doubled back upon itself against the continuation of the same plating extending forward. At frame 18 the vertical keel is broken in two and the flat keel bent into an angle similar to the angle formed by the outside bottom plating. This break is now about six feet below the surface of the water and about thirty feet above its normal position. THE OFFICERS OF THE MAINE EXONERATED. In the opinion of the court this effect could have been produced only by the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship at about frame 18, and somewhat on the port side of the ship. 6. The court finds that the loss of the Maine on the occasion named was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on the part of the officers or men of the crew of said vessel. 7. In the opinion of the court the Maine was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of two of her forward magazines. 8. The court has been unable to obtain evidence fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the Maine upon any person or persons. W. T. SAMPSON, Captain U. S. N., President. A. MARIX, Lieutenant-Commander U. S. N., Judge Advocate. CHAPTER XXXV. PATIENCE AT THE VANISHING POINT. Our Former Troubles with Spain Recalled--The Verdict of the People--Spanish Rule a Blot on Civilization--The Attitude of Other Nations--The Necessity for Delay--The Message to Congress-- "The War in Cuba Must Stop!" The American people did not wait for the report of the Naval Board to form an opinion as to the cause of the tragedy. The masses think in events, and not in syllogisms, and this was an event. This event provoked suspicions in the public mind. The thought of the whole nation was instantly directed to Cuba. The fate of the sailors on the Virginius, twenty-five years ago, was recalled. The public curiosity about everything Cuban and Spanish became intense. The Weyler method of warfare became more generally known. The story of our long diplomatic trouble with Spain was recalled. Diplomacy was obliged to proceed with doors less securely shut. The country watched for news from Washington and from Madrid with eagerness. It happened to be a singularly quiet and even dull time in our own political life--a time favorable for the concentration of public attention on any subject that prominently presented itself. Leslie's Weekly voiced the popular sentiment in its issue of April 14 in the following language: "If the report of the board of inquiry is accepted as final, then the destruction of the Maine was an act of war. The Maine was in a Spanish harbor on a peaceful errand. Its location was fixed by the Spanish authorities, and if a mine was planted in the harbor, it could only have been planted by the Spaniards. To think otherwise is to discredit the official report. The verdict may be challenged by the Spanish government. Spain may insist on the raising of the wreck and upon an expert examination. If such an examination is made, and if the weight of evidence controverts the verdict, our position will be humiliating. We take it, therefore, that our government is entirely satisfied with the examination, and that it accepts the verdict of the court of inquiry as final and without appeal. This verdict makes Spain responsible for the loss of the Maine, the sacrifice of the lives of 266 heroes, and for all the consequences involved. The indictment must be answered. Any other nation than this would have demanded an immediate answer. We can wait. On the answer made by Spain the issues of the future must depend. No policy of evasion such as Spain has pursued in all her dealings with us will enable her to escape. She is at the bar of judgment with bloody fingers, and must plead guilty. No other plea can be accepted. And the punishment must fit the crime." CAUSES LEADING TO STRIFE. The better the condition of Cuba was understood, the more deplorable it was seen to be; the more the government of the island was examined, the wider seemed the divergence between Spain's methods and our own; the more the diplomatic history of the case was considered, the plainer became Spain's purpose to brook no interference, whether in the name of humanity or in the name of friendly commercial interests. The calm report of the naval court of inquiry on the blowing up of the Maine and Senator Proctor's report on the condition of Cuba put the whole people in a serious mood. These and more made their contributions to the rapidly rising excitement. But all these together could not have driven us to war if we had not been willing to be driven--if the conviction had not become firm in the minds of the people that Spanish rule in Cuba was a blot on civilization that had now begun to bring reproach to us; and when the President, who favored peace, declared it intolerable, the people were ready to accept his judgment. Congress, it is true, in quiet times, is likely to represent the shallows and the passing excitement of our life rather than its deeper moods, but there is among the members of Congress a considerable body of conservative men; and the demand for war was practically unanimous, and public opinion sustained it. Among the people during the period when war seemed inevitable, but had not yet been declared--a period during which the powers of Europe found time and mind to express a hope for peace--hardly a peace meeting was held by influential men. The President and his Cabinet were known to wish longer to try diplomatic means of averting war, but no organized peace party came into existence. Except expressions of the hope of peace made by commercial and ecclesiastical organizations, no protest was heard against the approaching action of Congress. Many thought that war could be postponed, if not prevented, but the popular mood was at least acquiescent, if not insistent, and it eventually became unmistakably approving. Not only was there in the United States an unmistakable popular approval of war as the only effective means of restoring civilization in Cuba, but the judgment of the English people promptly approved it--giving evidence of an instinctive race and institutional sympathy. If Anglo-Saxon institutions and methods stand for anything, the institutions and methods of Spanish rule in Cuba were an abomination and a reproach. And English sympathy was not more significant as an evidence of the necessity of the war, and as a good omen for the future of free institutions, than the equally instinctive sympathy with Spain that was expressed by some of the decadent influences on the continent; indeed, the real meaning of the American civilization and ideals will henceforth be somewhat more clearly understood in several quarters of the world. American character will be still better understood when the whole world clearly perceives that the purpose of the war was only to remove from our very doors this cruel and inefficient piece of medievalism which was one of the great scandals of the closing years of the century. Notwithstanding the fact that we were on the very verge of war, with all its horrors, all its possibilities of destruction to life and happiness, the nation pursued its accustomed way, transacted its business by day, and slept peacefully at night. Upon the shoulders of the Chief Executive rested the gravest of all responsibilities, and the nation trusted to him to carry it safely. Rash and impetuous demands for hasty and hostile action were heard. Congressmen, under the pressure of their constituents, filled the air with cries for speedy action, but amid all the tumult the President stood serene. He realized, what the country, strangely enough, had not comprehended, that we were drifting into a conflict with a nation that was on a war footing. He knew that we were totally unprepared for war. Munitions, ships, stores, supplies, of vast amount and infinite variety, were absolutely required before a step could be taken. Harbor defenses, a closer connection between exposed points, and the installation of modern armaments--a thousand things had to be done, and done at once. Modern guns required supplies of modern ammunition, of which there was scarcely any to be obtained on this side of the water. This was the situation, as the President, the heads of the army and the navy, and the Cabinet saw it, and it was left discreetly undisclosed to the world. They understood the necessity of delay as well as the necessity for statesmanship of the highest quality in dealing with the Cuban question. We lost nothing by their delay. We gained untold advantages by their prudence, a prudence that never forsook them, even when the preparations for war were completed. The message to Congress was a calm, dispassionate, judicial presentation of the case, and upon that presentation of facts and of evidence we went before the jury of the nations of the world. There could be but one verdict rendered that the American people could accept, and that verdict, whether it came by peace or war, was, in the language of the President's message, that "the war in Cuba must stop!" CHAPTER XXXVI. EVENTS IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. Cuba's Friends in Congress--Senator Proctor's Address to His Colleagues--A Notable Exhibition of Patriotism--An Appropriation for the National Defense--Relief for the Survivors and Victims of the Maine--The Recognition of Cuban Independence. From the date of the first attempt of the people of Cuba to secure their independence from Spain, they have had advocates in the American Congress who have worked with voice and vote in their behalf. After the commencement of the revolution in 1895 these champions gradually increased in numbers and influence, until at the time of Mr. McKinley's inauguration they included in their ranks many of the leaders in both houses. In February, 1898, several Senators and Representatives went to Cuba for the purpose of studying the conditions on the island, and to gain a personal knowledge of the results of Spain's policy of rule or ruin. Senator Proctor was one of this committee, and after their return to the United States, in a speech to his colleagues, he made the strongest argument in favor of intervention in behalf of Cuba that was ever made in the Senate of the United States. He had carefully prepared his address, and he delivered it as an official report of what he had observed on the island. He gave no opinion of what action should be taken by the government. He said the settlement "may well be left to an American President and the American people." But while he did not make a recommendation in so many words, he left the impression with all who heard him that he favored a declaration by our government of the independence of Cuba. He declared that he was opposed to annexation, and, while many Cubans advocated the establishment of a protectorate by the United States, he could not make up his mind that this would be the best way out of the difficulty. He told his associates that he believed the Cubans capable of governing themselves, and reinforced this statement by the assertion that the Cuban population would never be satisfied with any government under Spanish rule. The senator's remarkable speech undoubtedly had a powerful effect, both in influencing congressional action, and in swaying public opinion. As an able and responsible member of Congress and an ex-secretary of war, his words would carry weight under any circumstances, but apart from these considerations, the speech was notable because of its evident fidelity to facts, and its restraint from everything resembling sensationalism. A NOTABLE EXHIBITION OF PATRIOTISM. There was never a more notable exhibiton of harmony and patriotism in any legislative body in the world than occurred in the House of Representatives when Congressman Cannon presented a bill appropriating $50,000,000 for the national defense and placing this amount in President McKinley's hands, to be expended at his discretion. Party lines were swept away, and with a unanimous voice Congress voted its confidence in the administration. Many members who were paired with absent colleagues took the responsibility of breaking their pairs, an unprecedented thing in legislative annals, in order that they might go on record in support of this vast appropriation to maintain the dignity and honor of their country. Speaker Reed, who as the presiding officer, seldom voted, except in case of a tie, had his name called and voted in his capacity as representative. The scene of enthusiasm which greeted the announcement of the vote--yeas, 311; nays, none--has seldom been paralleled in the House. The bill passed the Senate without a dissenting vote, and, on March 9, the President signed the measure, thus making it a law. RELIEF FOR THE SURVIVORS OF THE MAINE. On March 21, the House unanimously passed the bill for the relief of the survivors and victims of the Maine disaster. The bill reimbursed the surviving officers and men for the losses they sustained to an amount not to exceed a year's sea pay, and directed the payment of a sum equal to a year's pay to the legal heirs of those who perished. When the President sent to Congress the report of the Naval Board of Examiners the feeling of that body at once found open expression in resolutions proposing a declaration of war, recognition of the independence of Cuba, armed intervention, and other decisive and warlike steps against Spain. Every group of senators talked of Cuba. Constant and continual conferences were held, and all recognized the seriousness of the occasion. On the House side it was apparent that the majority could no longer be controlled by what was known as the conservative element, led by the speaker. Groups of members in a state of excitement were to be seen on every hand. It was generally acknowledged that a serious condition had arisen, that a crisis was at hand. On April 11 the long expected message was received. In it the President asked Congress to authorize him to take measures to secure a termination of hostilities in Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable form of government, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as might be necessary. The message was received in silence. The most notable criticism made was the entire absence of any reference to Cuban independence. The admission in the message that the President had proposed an armistice to Spain until October provoked vigorous comment. But conservative members were highly pleased with the position taken by the President, and many still hoped that war might be prevented. However, this did not prevent the purchase of a number of armed cruisers from foreign powers, which were transferred to the United States flag. The ships of several passenger and mail lines were also purchased, or leased as auxiliary cruisers, and were at once remanned and put in commission. The most notable examples were the two American built ships, St. Patil and St. Louis of the American line. The new purchases were fitted for their new uses at once, and the preparations for war went on without delay. Congress, taking its cue from the President, united upon the following resolutions which were signed by the President on April 20: Joint resolutions for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba demanding that the government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba, and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect. Whereas, The abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian civilization, culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a United States battleship, with 260 of its officers and crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and cannot longer be endured, as has been set forth by the President of the United States in his message to Congress of April 11, 1898, upon which the action of Congress was invited; therefore, be it resolved; First--That the people of the island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent. Second--That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the government of the United States does hereby demand, that the government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba and Cuban waters. Third--That the President of the United States be, and hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States to such an extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect. Fourth--That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people. The Spanish government was deluded by the belief that in the event of war our country would not be able to present a united front, and that sectional animosities would weaken our strength. The action of Congress from the time of the first rumors of war to the end of the session snowed how little ground there was for this belief. The representatives of the people from all sections of our broad land gave President McKinley loyal support in every undertaking, and the South vied with the North, the East with the West, in expressions of devotion to our nation and our flag. CHAPTER XXXVII. PRESIDENT McKINLEY ACTS. The Message to Congress--Loss of American Trade--Terrible Increase in the Death Rate--American Aid for the Starving--The President's Proposition to Spain--Grounds for Intervention--The Destruction of the Maine--The Addenda. With the press and public of the entire country at a fever heat of indignation, and the evident determination on the part of a large majority of the members of the Congress of the United States to bring matters to a crisis, it was evident to all that the time for action had arrived. The President yielded to the popular demand, and on April 11 he sent to Congress the following message: To the Congress of the United States: Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which commands the President to give from time to time to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, it becomes my duty now to address your body with regard to the grave crisis that has arisen in the relations of the United States to Spain by reason of the warfare that for more than three years has raged in the neighboring island of Cuba. I do so because of the intimate connection of the Cuban question with the state of our own Union, and the grave relation the course of which it is now incumbent upon the nation to adopt, must needs bear to the traditional policy of our Government if it is to accord with the precepts laid down by the founders of the Republic and religiously observed by succeeding administrations to the present day. The present revolution is but the successor of other similar insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a century, each of which during its progress has subjected the United States to great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and commerce, caused irritation, annoyance and disturbance among our citizens, and by the exercise of cruel, barbarous and uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked the sensibilities and offended the humane sympathies of our people. Since the present revolution began, in February, 1895, this country has seen the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged by fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequaled in the history of the island, and rarely paralleled as to the number of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution of modern times, where a dependent people striving to be free have been oppressed by the power of the sovereign State. Our people have beheld a once prosperous community reduced to comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thousands from hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves constrained in the observance of that strict neutrality which our laws enjoin, and which the law of nations commands, to police our waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans. LOSS OF AMERICAN TRADE. Our trade has suffered, the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of our people have been so seriously tried as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens, which has inevitably found its expression from time to time in the National Legislature, so that issues wholly external to our own body politic stand in the way of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes's self-contained commonwealth, whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of all foreign entanglements. All this must needs awaken, and has indeed aroused, the utmost concern on the part of this government, as well during my predecessor's term as in my own. In April, 1896, the evils from which our country suffered through the Cuban war became so onerous that my predecessor made an effort to bring about a peace through the mediation of this government in any way that might tend to an honorable adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolted colony, on the basis of some effective scheme of self-government for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty of Spain. It failed, through the refusal of the Spanish Government then in power to consider any form of mediation, or, indeed, any plan of settlement which did not begin with the actual submission of the insurgents to the mother country, and then only on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant. The war continued unabated. The resistance of the insurgents was in no wise diminished. The efforts of Spain were increased, both by the despatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase, happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation and concentration by the Captain-General's bando of October, 1896, in the province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military operations. The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops. The raising and moving of provisions of all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in short, everything that could desolate the land and render it unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or the other of the contending parties and executed by all the powers at their disposal. By the time the present administration took office a year ago, reconcentration--so-called--had been made effective over the better part of the four central and western provinces, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana and Pinar del Rio. The agricultural population, to the estimated number of 300,000, or more, was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions. As the scarcity of food increased with the devastation of the depopulated areas of production, destitution and want became misery and starvation. TERRIBLE INCREASE IN THE DEATH RATE. Month by month the death rate increased in an alarming ratio. By March, 1897, according to conservative estimate from official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados, from starvation and the diseases thereto incident, exceeded 50 per centum of their total number. No practical relief was accorded to the destitute. The overburdened towns, already suffering from the general dearth, could give no aid. In this state of affairs my administration found itself confronted with the grave problem of its duty. My message of last December reviewed the situation, and narrated the steps taken with a view to relieving its acuteness and opening the way to some form of honorable settlement. The assassination of the Prime Minister, Canovas, led to a change of government in Spain. The former administration, pledged to subjugation without concession, gave place to that of a more liberal party, committed long in advance to a policy of reform involving the wider principle of home rule for Cuba and Puerto Rico. The overtures of this government made through its new Envoy, General Woodford, and looking to an immediate and effective amelioration of the condition of the island, although not accepted to the extent of admitted mediation in any shape, were met by assurances that home rule, in an advanced phase, would be forthwith offered to Cuba, without waiting for the war to end, and that more humane methods should henceforth prevail in the conduct of hostilities. AMERICAN AID FOR THE STARVING. While these negotiations were in progress, the increasing destitution of the unfortunate reconcentrados and the alarming mortality among them claimed earnest attention. The success which had attended the limited measure of relief extended to the suffering American citizens among them by the judicious expenditure through the Consular agencies of the money appropriated expressly for their succor by the joint resolution approved May 24, 1897, prompted the humane extension of a similar scheme of aid to the great body of sufferers. A suggestion to this end was acquiesced in by the Spanish authorities. On the 24th of December last I caused to be issued an appeal to the American people inviting contributions in money or in kind for the succor of the starving sufferers in Cuba, followed this on the 8th of January by a similar public announcement of the formation of a Central Cuban Relief Committee, with headquarters in New York city, composed of three members representing the National Red Cross and the religious and business elements of the community. Coincidentally with these declarations, the new Government of Spain continued to complete the policy already begun by its predecessor of testifying friendly regard for this nation by releasing American citizens held under one charge or another connected with the insurrection, so that, by the end of November, not a single person entitled in any way to our national protection remained in a Spanish prison. The war in Cuba is of such a nature that short of subjugation or extermination a final military victory for either side seems impracticable. The alternative lies in the physical exhaustion of the one or the other party, or perhaps of both--a condition which in effect ended the Ten Years' War by the truce of Zanjon. The prospect of such a protraction and conclusion of the present strife is a contingency hardly to be contemplated with equanimity by the civilized world, and least of all by the United States, affected and injured as we are, deeply and intimately by its very existence. Realizing this, it appeared to be my duty in a spirit of true friendliness, no less to Spain than to the Cubans who have so much to lose by the prolongation of the struggle, to seek to bring about an immediate termination of the war. To this end I submitted on the 27th ultimo, as a result of much representation and correspondence through the United States Minister at Madrid, propositions to the Spanish Government looking to an armistice until October 1, for the negotiation of peace with the good offices of the President. THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSITION TO SPAIN. In addition I asked the immediate revocation of the order of reconcentration so as to permit the people to return to their farms and the needy to be relieved with provisions and supplies from the United States, co-operating with the Spanish authorities so as to afford full relief. The reply of the Spanish Cabinet was received on the night of the 31st ultimo. It offers as the means to bring about peace in Cuba, to confide the preparation thereof to the Insular Parliament, inasmuch as the concurrence of that body would be necessary to reach a final result, it being, however, understood that the powers reserved by the Constitution to the central government are not lessened or diminished. As the Cuban Parliament does not meet until the 4th of May nest, the Spanish Government would not object, for its part, to accept at once a suspension of hostilities if asked for by the insurgents from the General-in-Chief, to whom it would pertain in such a case to determine the duration and conditions of the armistice. The propositions submitted by General Woodford and the reply of the Spanish Government were both in the form of brief memoranda, the texts of which are before me, and are substantially in the language above given. There remain the alternative forms of intervention to end the war, either as an impartial neutral by imposing a rational compromise between the contestants, or as the active ally of one party or the other. As to the first, it is not to be forgotten that during the last few months the relation of the United States has virtually been one of friendly intervention in many ways, each not of itself conclusive, but all tending to the exertion of a potential influence toward an ultimate pacific result just and honorable to all interests concerned. The spirit of all our acts hitherto has been an earnest, unselfish desire for peace and prosperity in Cuba, untarnished by differences between us and Spain and unstained by the blood of American citizens. The forcible intervention of the United States as a neutral, to stop the war, according to the large dictates of humanity and following many historical precedents where neighboring States have interfered to check the hopeless sacrifices of life by internecine conflicts beyond their borders, is justifiable on rational grounds. It involves, however, hostile constraint upon both the parties to the contest, as well to enforce a truce as to guide the eventual settlement. GROUNDS FOR INTERVENTION. The grounds for such intervention may be briefly summarized as follows: First. In the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable to or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and is therefore none of our business. It is specially our duty, for it is right at our door. Second. We owe it to our citizens in Cuba to afford them that protection and indemnity for life and property which no government there can or will afford, and to that end to terminate the conditions that deprive them of legal protection. Third. The right to intervene may be justified by the very serious injury to the commerce, trade and business of our people, and by the wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island. Fourth. Aid which is of the utmost importance. The present condition of affairs in Cuba is a constant menace to our peace and entails upon this Government an enormous expense. With such a conflict waged for years in an island so near us, and with which our people have such trade and business relations; when the lives and liberty of our citizens are in constant danger and their property destroyed and themselves ruined; where our trading vessels are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door by warships of a foreign nation, the expeditions of filibustering that we are powerless altogether to prevent, and the irritating questions and entanglements thus arising--all these and others that I need not mention, with the resulting strained relations, are a constant menace to our peace and compel us to keep on a semi-war footing with a nation with which we are at peace. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MAINE. These elements of danger and disorder already pointed out have been strikingly illustrated by a tragic event which has deeply and justly moved the American people. I have already transmitted to Congress the report of the Naval Court of Inquiry on the destruction of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana during the night of the 15th of February. The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation. The Naval Court of Inquiry, which, it is needless to say, commands the unqualified confidence of the Government, was unanimous in its conclusions that the destruction of the Maine was caused by an exterior explosion--that of a submarine mine. It did not assume to place the responsibility. That remains to be fixed. In any event the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that, is intolerable. That condition is thus shown to be such that the Spanish Government cannot assure safety and security to a vessel of the American navy in the harbor of Havana on a mission of peace and rightfully there. Further referring in this connection to recent diplomatic correspondence, a despatch from our Minister to Spain, of the 26th ultimo, contained the statement that the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs assured him positively that Spain would do all that the highest honor and justice required in the matter of the Maine. The reply above referred to of the 31st ultimo also contained an expression of the readiness of Spain to submit to an arbitration all the differences which can arise in this matter, which is subsequently explained by the note of the Spanish Minister at Washington of the 10th instant as follows: As to the question of fact which springs from the diversity of views between the report of the American and Spanish boards, Spain proposes that the fact be ascertained by an impartial investigation by experts, whose decision Spain accepts in advance. To this I have made no reply. In view of these facts and these considerations, I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquillity and the security of its citizens as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes. And in the interest of humanity and to aid in preserving the lives of the starving people of the island, I recommend that the distribution of food and supplies be continued, and that an appropriation be made out of the public treasury to supplement the charity of our citizens. The issue is now with Congress. It is a solemn responsibility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors. Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the law, I await your action. THE ADDENDA. Yesterday, and since the preparation of the foregoing message, official information was received by me that the latest decree of the Queen Regent of Spain directs General Blanco in order to prepare and facilitate peace, to proclaim a suspension of hostilities, the duration and details of which have not yet been communicated to me. This fact, with every other pertinent consideration, will, I am sure, have your just and careful attention in the solemn deliberations upon which you are about to enter. If this measure attains a successful result, then our aspirations as a Christian, peace-loving people will be realized. If it fails, it will be only another justification for our contemplated action. (Signed,) WILLIAM McKINLEY. Executive Mansion, April 11, 1898. CHAPTER XXXVIII. STRENGTH OF THE OPPOSING SQUADRONS AND ARMIES. Growth of the White Squadron in a Single Decade--Progress of Our Navy a Gratifying Ode after It Was Fairly Started--How the United States Stands in Comparison with the Other Nations of the World-- List of Ships in the American Navy--List of Ships in the Navy of Spain at the Beginning of the War--Interest of All Countries Centered on the Result of Our Naval Battles--Modern Guns and Projectiles--The Armies of the Two Combatants--Coast Defenses of the United States. Three elements enter into the fighting efficiency of nations at war: the strength of their navies, the strength of their armies and the condition of their coast defences. For the first time in many years general attention of the people of the United States was centered upon these conditions when the outbreak of hostilities began to threaten. Inasmuch as it was an admitted fact that most of the fighting would be done at sea, or at least that the efficiency of our fleets would be the most important factor, most of the attention was directed to a study of the navy. The constructions of what we call the new navy of the United States, "the white squadron," which has placed us sixth in the rank of the naval powers of the world, instead of so far down that we were scarcely to be counted at all, has all been done in less than twelve years. It may be that to stand sixth in rank is not yet high enough, but the progress of a single decade certainly is remarkable. After the Civil War, when hostilities on our own coast and complications abroad seemed to be at an end, the care of the navy was abandoned and ships were sold with scarcely a protest, almost as entirely as had been done eighty years before, at the end of the Revolution. There was even less reason for this policy, because in 1785 the country was poor and needed the money the ships brought, while in the twenty years following the Civil War there was no such excuse of national poverty. By 1885 there was no United States navy at all worthy the name, for the wooden vessels on the list, with their obsolete guns, were of no value whatever in the event of hostilities with a foreign power that had kept up its equipment with rifled guns and ironclads. The movement to repair the decay began when, in 1881, Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt appointed the first advisory board, presided over by Rear-Admiral John Bodgers, "to determine the requirements of a new navy." This board reported that the United States should have twenty-one battleships, seventy unarmored cruisers of various sizes and types, twenty torpedo boats, five rams and five torpedo gunboats, all to be built of steel. The report was received by Congress and the country with the attention it merited, but to get the work started was another matter. POLICY OF THE ECONOMISTS. The economists had been praising the policy of idleness in naval construction, claiming first that we were at peace and did not need to spend money on expensive vessels and, next, that naval construction was in an experimental stage and that we should let the European nations go to the expense of the experiments, as they were doing, and when some result had been reached, take advantage of it, instead of wasting our own money in work that would have to be thrown away in a few years. When the country became convinced that a navy was needed, it was found that we could not follow out that pleasant little theory. Our naval authorities could not obtain the facts and the experience they wanted from other nations, and our shipyards could not build even one of the armored ships. We could not roll even the thinnest of modern armor-plates, and could not make a gun that was worth mounting on a modern vessel if we had it. The shipyard of John Roach did the first work on the new navy, and during Secretary Chandler's term of office built the Chicago, the Boston, the Atlanta and the Dolphin. Instead of battleships, the first of the fleet were third-rate cruisers. Armor-plate was bought in a foreign market, and we actually went abroad for the plans of one our largest cruisers--the Charleston. In 1885 the navy department came under the administration of Secretary William C. Whitney, and it was beginning with his years of service that the greatest progress was made. While our shipyards were learning to build ships, the gunmakers and the makers of armor-plate were learning their craft too, so that progress was along parallel lines. In 1886 the sum of $2,128,000 was appropriated for modern rifled guns. The first contract for armor-plate was signed in 1887. Since that time the plants for construction have been completed and armor-plate equal to the best in the world turned out from them. Ten years of apprenticeship have taught us how to build whatever we need to carry on naval warfare. TAKES THE RANK OF SIXTH. By 1894 the United States had risen to the sixth among the naval powers of the world, the first ten and their relative strength expressed in percentage of that of Great Britain being as follows: Great Britain 100 United States 17 France 68 Spain 11 Italy 48 China 6 Russia 38 Austria 5 Germany 21 Turkey 3 Since that time the relative position of the leaders has not materially changed, although some estimates are to the effect that Russia and Italy have changed places and that Spain has gained slightly on the United States. Of the ones at the foot of the procession all have dropped below the station assigned them, by the advance of Japan, which has come from outside the file of the first ten and is now eighth, ranking between Spain and China. The estimates are based on a calculation of all the elements that enter into the efficiency of the navies, such as tonnage, speed, armor, caliber and range of armament, number of enlisted men and their efficiency. Such calculations cannot be absolute, for they cannot measure at all times the accuracy of the gunnery of a certain vessel. The human equation enters so prominently into warfare that mathematical calculations must be at all times incomplete. Americans will be slow to believe, however, that they are at any disadvantage in this detail, whatever their material equipment may be. The following table shows the strength of the navy of the United States. In that part of the table marked "first rate" the four ships placed first are first-class battle ships, the Brooklyn and New York are armored cruisers, the Columbia, Olympia and Minneapolis protected cruisers, the Texas a second-class battle ship and the Puritan a double-turret monitor. Among the second-raters all but the Miantonomah, Amphitrite, Monadnock and Terror (monitors) are protected cruisers. The newly bought boats, New Orleans and Albany, belong in this class. The third-raters are a heterogeneous lot, consisting of cruisers, gunboats, old monitors and unprotected cruisers. Of the fourth raters, Vesuvius is a dynamite ship, the Yankee and Michigan are cruisers, the Petrel, Bancroft and Pinta are gunboats and the Fern is a transport. The remaining classes of the table are homogeneous. The government has recently purchased numerous tugs and yachts not accounted for in the table: FIRST RATE. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Iowa 11,340 18 12,105 Steel Indiana 10,288 16 9,738 Steel Massachusetts 10,288 16 10,403 Steel Oregon 10,288 16 11,111 Steel Brooklyn 9,215 20 18,769 Steel New York 8,200 18 17,401 Steel Columbia 7,375 11 18,509 Steel Minneapolis 7,375 11 20,862 Steel Texas 6,315 8 8,610 Steel Puritan 6,060 10 3,700 Iron Olympia 5,870 14 17,313 Steel SECOND RATE. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Chicago 4,500 18 9,000 Steel Baltimore 4,413 10 10,064 Steel Philadelphia 4,324 12 8,815 Steel Monterey 4,084 4 5,244 Steel Newark 4,098 12 8,869 Steel San Francisco 4,098 12 9,913 Steel Charleston 3,730 8 6,666 Steel Miantonomah 3,990 4 1,426 Iron Amphitrite 3,990 6 1,600 Iron Monadnock 3,990 6 3,000 Iron Terror 3,990 4 1,600 Iron Lancaster 3,250 12 1,000 Wood Cincinnati 3,213 11 10,000 Steel Raleigh 3,213 11 10,000 Steel Atlanta 3,000 8 4,030 Steel Boston 3,000 8 4,030 Steel THIRD RATE. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Hartford 2,790 13 2,000 Wood Katahdin 2,155 4 5,068 Steel Ajax 2,100 2 340 Iron Canonicus 2,100 2 340 Iron Mahopac 2,100 2 340 Iron Manhattan 2,100 2 340 Iron Wyandotte 2,100 2 340 Iron Detroit 2,089 10 5,227 Steel Montgomery 2,089 10 5,580 Steel Marblehead 2,089 10 5,451 Steel Marion 1,900 8 1,100 Wood Mohican 1,900 10 1,100 Wood Comanche 1,873 2 340 Iron Catskill 1,875 2 340 Iron Jason 1,875 2 340 Iron Lehigh 1,875 2 340 Iron Montauk 1,875 2 340 Iron Nahant 1,875 2 340 Iron Nantucket 1,875 2 340 Iron Passaic 1,875 2 340 Iron Bennington 1,710 6 3,436 Steel Concord 1,710 6 3,405 Steel Yorktown 1,710 6 3,392 Steel Dolphin 1,486 2 2,253 Steel Wilmington 1,392 8 1,894 Steel Helena 1,392 8 1,988 Steel Adams 1,375 6 800 Wood Alliance 1,375 6 800 Wood Essex 1,375 6 800 Wood Enterprise 1,375 4 800 Wood Nashville 1,371 8 2,536 Steel Monocacy 1,370 6 850 Iron Thetis 1,250 0 530 Wood Castine 1,177 8 2,199 Steel Machias 1,177 8 2,046 Steel Alert 1,020 3 500 Iron Ranger 1,020 6 500 Iron Annapolis 1,000 6 1,227 Comp Vicksburg 1,000 6 1,118 Comp Wheeling 1,000 6 1,081 Comp Marietta 1,000 6 1,054 Comp Newport 1,000 6 1,008 Comp FOURTH RATE. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Vesuvius 929 3 3,795 Steel Yantic 900 4 310 Wood Petrel 892 4 1,095 Steel Fern 840 0 0 Wood Bancroft 839 4 1,213 Steel Michigan 685 4 365 Iron Pinta 550 2 310 Iron TORPEDO BOATS. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower 1-Gushing 105 3 1,720 Steel 2-Ericsson 120 3 1,800 Steel 3-Foote 142 3 2,000 Steel 4-Rodgers 142 3 2,000 Steel 5-Winslow 142 3 2,000 Steel 6-Porter 0 3 0 Steel 7-Du Pont 0 3 0 Steel 8-Rowan 182 3 3,200 Steel 9-Dahlgren 146 2 4,200 Steel 10-T. A. M. Craven 146 2 4,200 Steel 11-Farragut 273 2 5,600 Steel 12-Davis 132 3 1,750 Steel 13_Fox 132 3 1,750 Steel 14-Morris 103 3 1,750 Steel 15-Talbot 46 1/2 2 850 Steel 16-Gwin 46 1/2 2 850 Steel 17-Mackenzie 65 2 850 Steel 18-McKee 65 2 850 Steel 19-Stringham 340 2 7,200 Steel 20-Goldsborough 247 1/2 2 0 Steel 21-Bailey 235 2 5,600 Steel Stiletto 31 2 359 Wood TUGBOATS. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Fortune 450 0 340 Iron Iwana. 192 0 300 Steel Leyden 450 0 340 Iron Narkeeta 192 0 300 Steel Nina 357 0 388 Iron Rocket 187 0 147 Wood Standish 450 1 340 Iron Traffic 280 0 0 Wood Triton 212 0 300 Steel Waneta 192 0 300 Steel Unadilla 345 0 500 Steel Samoset 225 0 450 Steel SAILING SHIPS. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Monongahela 2,100 4 0 Wood Constellation 1,186 8 0 Wood Jamestown 1,150 0 0 Wood Portsmouth 1,125 12 0 Wood Saratoga 1,025 0 0 Wood St. Mary's. 1,025 0 0 Wood RECEIVING SHIPS. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Franklin 5,170 4 1,050 Wood Wabash 4,650 0 950 Wood Vermont 4,150 0 0 Wood Independence 3,270 .6 0 Wood Richmond 2,700 .2 692 Wood UNSERVICEABLE. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower New Hampshire 4,150 .6 0 Wood Pensacola 3,000 0 680 Wood Omaha. 2,400 0 953 Wood Constitution 2,200 4 0 Wood Iroquois 1,575 0 1,202 Wood Nipsic 1,375 4 839 Wood St. Louis 830 0 0 Wood Dale. 675 0 0 Wood Minnesota 4,700 9 1,000 Wood UNDER CONSTRUCTION. NAME Displacement Guns in indicated Hull (tons) main battery horsepower Kearsarge 11,525 22 10,000 Steel Kentucky 11,525 22 10,000 Steel Illinois 11,525 18 10,000 Steel Alabama 11,525 18 10,000 Steel Wisconsin 11,525 18 10,000 Steel Princeton 1,000 6 800 Comp Plunger 168 2 1,200 Steel Tug No. 6 225 0 450 Steel Tug No. 7 225 0 450 Steel Training ship. 1,175 6 0 Comp SPAIN'S NAVY IS A WEAKER ONE. Spain's navy is decidedly weak when compared with that of the United States. A mere glance at the two tables will be sufficient to show the difference. Spain's list of unarmored cruisers is long, but four of our battle ships or swift, modern, armored cruisers could blow the lot out of the water. In torpedo boats we compare favorably with Spain. In one respect Spain is stronger, that is in her six speedy torpedo boat destroyers. This table accounts for every war ship Spain has, to say nothing of the few antique merchantmen of the Spanish liner company which can be turned into cruisers. FIRST-CLASS BATTLE SHIPS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Pelayo 9,900 22 17.0 Steel Vitoria (inefficient)7,250 0 11.0 Iron OLD BATTLE SHIPS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Numancia 7,250 10 11.0 Iron FIRST-CLASS ARMORED CRUISERS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Carlos V 9,235 28 20.0 Steel Cisneros 7,000 24 20.0 Steel Cataluna 7,000 24 20.0 Steel Princess Asturias 7,000 24 20.0 Steel Almirante Oquendo 7,000 30 20.0 Steel Maria Teresa 7,000 30 20.0 Steel Vizcaya 7,000 30 20.0 Steel Cristobal Colon 6,840 40 20.0 Steel SECOND-CLASS ARMORED CRUISERS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Alfonso XII 5,000 19 20.0 Steel Lepanto 4,826 25 20.0 Steel UNARMORED CRUISERS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Reina Christina 3,520 21 17.5 Steel Aragon 3,342 24 17.5 Steel Cartilla 3,342 22 17.5 Steel Navarra 3,342 16 17.5 Steel Alfonso XII 3,090 23 17.5 Steel Reina Mercedes 3,090 21 17.5 Steel Velasco 1,152 7 14.3 Steel C. de Venadito 1,130 13 14.0 Steel Ulloa 1,130 12 14.0 Steel Austria 1,130 12 14.0 Steel Isabel 1,130 15 14.0 Steel Isabel II 1,130 16 14.0 Steel Isla de Cuba 1,030 12 16.0 Steel Isla de Luzon 1,030 12 16.0 Steel Ensenada 1,030 13 15.0 Steel Quiros 315 0 0 Iron Villabolas 315 0 0 Iron ---- 935 5 0 Wood TORPEDO BOATS. [Footnote: Armed with two and four torpedo tubes, six quick fire and two machine guns.] NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Alvaro de Bezan 830 0 20.0 Steel Maria Molina 830 0 20.0 Steel Destructor 458 0 20.0 Steel Filipinas 750 0 20.0 Steel Galicia 571 0 20.0 Steel Marques Vitoria 830 0 20.0 Steel Marques Molina 571 0 20.0 Steel Pinzon 571 0 20.0 Steel Nueva Espana 630 0 20.0 Steel Rapido 570 0 20.0 Steel Temerario 590 0 20.0 Steel Yanez Pinzon 571 0 20.0 Steel GUNBOATS. [Footnote: There are eighteen others of smaller size, which with the above were built for service in Cuban waters, and are now there.] NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Hernon Cortes 300 1 12.0 Steel Pizarro 300 2 12.0 Steel Nunez Balboa 300 1 12.5 Steel Diego Velasquez 200 3 12.0 Steel Ponce de Leon 200 3 12.0 Steel Alvarado 100 2 12.0 Steel Sandoval 100 2 12.0 Steel TORPEDO BOAT DESTROYERS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Audaz 400 6 30.0 Steel Furor 380 6 28.0 Steel Terror 380 6 28.0 Steel Osada 380 6 28.0 Steel Pluton 380 6 28.0 Steel Prosperina 380 6 28.0 Steel SMALL TORPEDO BOATS. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Ariete 0 0 26.1 Steel Rayo 0 0 25.5 Steel Azor 0 0 24.0 Steel Halcon 0 0 24.0 Steel Habana 0 0 21.3 Steel Barcelo 0 0 19.5 Steel Orion 0 0 21.5 Steel Retamosa 0 0 20.5 Steel Ordonez 0 0 20.1 Steel Ejercito 0 0 19.1 Steel Pollux 0 0 19.5 Steel Castor 0 0 19.0 Steel Aire 0 0 8.0 Steel GUN VESSELS (SO-CALLED). NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. General Concha 520 0 0 Steel Elcano 524 0 0 Steel General Lego 524 0 0 Steel Magellanes 524 0 0 Steel BUILDING. (Battle ship.) NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. ---- 10,000 0 0 Steel (Armored cruisers.) NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. ---- 10,500 0 0 Steel Pedro d'Aragon 6,840 0 0 Steel (Protected cruisers.) NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Reina Regente 5,372 0 0 Steel Rio de la Plata 1,775 0 0 Steel (Torpedo boats.) Five of Ariete type and one of 750 tons. LINERS FOR CONVERSION. NAME. Tonnage. Guns in Speed in Hull. Batteries. knots/hour. Magellanes 6,932 0 17.0 Steel Buenos Aires 5,195 0 14.0 Steel Montevideo 5,096 0 14.5 Steel Alfonso XII 5,063 0 15.0 Steel Leon XIII 4,687 0 15.0 Steel Satrustegui 4,638 0 15.0 Steel Alfonso XIII 4,381 0 16.0 Steel Maria Cristina 4,381 0 16.0 Steel Luzon 4,252 0 13.0 Steel Mindanao 4,195 0 13.5 Steel Isla de Panay 3,636 0 13.5 Steel Cataluna 3,488 0 14.0 Steel City of Cadiz 3,084 0 13.5 Steel INTEREST IN THE WORKING OF MODERN WAR SHIPS. The puzzle that was troubling every naval authority as well as every statesman in the civilized world, at the outbreak of the war between the United States and Spain, was what would be the results of a conflict at sea between the floating fortresses which now serve as battle-ships. Since navies reached their modern form there had been no war in which the test of the battle-ship was complete. Lessons might be learned and opinions formed and prophesies made from the action of battle-ships in the war between China and Japan, the war between Chili and Peru, and from the disasters which had overtaken the Maine in the harbor of Havana and the Victoria in her collision with the Camperdown, as well as the wreck of the Reina Regente and others. But in all these, combine the information as one might, there was insufficient testimony to prove what would happen if two powers of nearly equal strength were to meet for a fight to a finish. Whatever was uncertain, it was known at least that there would be no more sea fights like those of the last century and the first half of this, when three-deck frigates and seventy-four-gun men-of-war were lashed together, while their crews fought with small arms and cutlasses for hours. Those were the days when "hearts of oak" and "the wooden walls of England" made what romance there was in naval warfare, and the ships of the young United States won respect on every sea. In the fights of those days the vessels would float till they were shot to pieces, and with the stimulus of close fighting the men were ready to brave any odds in boarding an enemy's craft. It was well understood that the changed conditions would make very different battles between the fighting machines of to-day. That a naval battle between modern fleets, armed with modern guns, would be a terribly destructive one both to the ships and to the lives of those who manned them, was conceded by all naval authorities. The destructiveness would come not only from the tremendous power and effectiveness of the guns, but also from the fact that the shell had replaced the solid shot in all calibers down to the one-pounder, so that to the penetrating effect of the projectile was added its explosive power and the scattering of its fragments in a destructive and death-dealing circle many feet in diameter. MODERN GUNS AND PROJECTILES. The modern armor-piercing shell, made of hardened steel, and with its conical point carefully fashioned for the greatest penetrating power, has all the armor-piercing effectiveness of a solid shot of the same shape, while its explosiveness makes it infinitely more destructive. For the modern shell does not explode when it first strikes the side or armor of an enemy's ship, but after it has pierced the side or armor and has exhausted its penetrative effect. The percussion fuse is in the base of the shell, and is exploded by a plunger driven against it by the force of the impact of the shell on striking. The time between the impact of the shell and its explosion is sufficient for it to have done its full penetrative work. It first must be understood that all modern guns on ships-of-war are breech-loading and rifled, and that the smooth bore exists only as a relic, or to be brought out in an emergency for coast defense, when modern guns are not available. From the thirteen-inch down to the four-inch, the guns are designated by their caliber, the diameter of their bore, and the shot they throw, while from that to the one-pounder they take their name from the weight of the shot. Everything below the one-pounder is in the machine-gun class. The base of rapid-fire work is the bringing together in one cartridge of the primer, powder, and shell. When the limit of weight of cartridge, easily handled by one man, is reached, the limit of rapid-fire action is also reached; and, although the quick-moving breech mechanisms have been applied abroad to guns of as large as eight-inch caliber, such guns would rank as quick, rather than rapid firing, and would require powder and shot to be loaded separately. On the modern battleships the function of the great guns is the penetration of the enemy's armor, either at the waterline belt or on the turrets and gun positions, while that of the rapid-firers is the destruction of the unarmored parts or the disabling of the guns not armor protected. The six, three, and one-pounders direct their rain of shots at the turret portholes, gun shields, or unprotected parts of the ship, having also an eye to torpedo-boats, while from the fighting tops, the Gatlings rain a thousand shots a minute on any of the crew in exposed positions. With such a storm of large and small projectiles it would seem to be rather a question of who would be left alive rather than who would be killed. The guns in use in the United States navy are the 13-inch, 12-inch, 10-inch, 8-inch, 6-inch, 5-inch, 4-inch, 6-pounders, 3-pounders, 1-pounder, Hotchkiss 37 mm. revolver cannon, and the machine guns. In the following table is given the length and weight of these guns, as well as of the shell they carry: Length Powder weight of gun, charge, of shell, GUNS. feet. pounds. pounds. One-pounder 5.1 .3 1 Three-pounder 7.3 1.7 3 Six-pounder 8.9 3.0 6 Fourteen-pounder 11.6 8.0 14 Four-inch 13.7 14.0 33 Five-inch 17.4 30.0 50 Six-inch 21.3 50.0 100 Eight-inch 28.7 115.0 250 Ten-inch 31.2 240.0 500 Twelve-inch 36.8 425.0 850 Thirteen-inch 40.0 550.0 1,100 HOW THE BIG GUNS ARE USED. The 14-pounder, although not included in the navy armament, is given for the purpose of comparison, since it is with guns of this caliber that some of the Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers are armed. The largest gun as yet mounted on our largest torpedo-boats is the 6-pounder, while a single 1-pounder is the gun armament of the ordinary torpedo-boat. The Hotchkiss revolver cannon is not given in the table because its caliber, etc., is the same as that of the 1-pounder, and, in fact, the latter has superseded it in the latest armaments, so that it is now found only on the older ships of the modern fleet. The machine guns are not given because their effective work is practically the same. The Gatling is of 45-caliber, and uses the government ammunition for the Springfield rifle. A look over the table shows some general principles in the matter of powder and shell used. The powder charge is about half the weight of the shell, while the length of the shell is a little over three times its diameter. To attain its extreme range a gun must be given an elevation of about fifteen degrees. The greatest elevation given any of the guns on shipboard is about six degrees. This limit is made by two factors--the size of the portholes or opening in the turrets for the larger guns, and the danger of driving the gun backward and downward through the deck by any greater elevation. The practical range of the great guns of a ship, the ten, twelve, and thirteen-inch, is not, therefore, believed to be over five or six miles, and even at that range the chances of hitting a given object would be very small. A city could, of course, be bombarded with, effect at such a range, since a shell would do tremendous damage wherever it might strike, but a city to which a ship could approach no nearer than say seven miles would be safe from bombardment. The muzzle velocities given the shells from the guns of the navy are something tremendous, while the muzzle energy is simply appalling. The shell from the thirteen-inch gun leaves the muzzle at a velocity of 2,100 feet a second, and with an energy of 33,627-foot tons, or the power required to lift one ton one foot. From this velocity the range is to 1,800 feet a second in the one-pounder, although from the three-pounder at 2,050 feet it averages about the same as the thirteen-inch. The five-inch rapid-fire gun has the greatest muzzle velocity at 2,250 feet. The muzzle energy is, of course, small in the smaller guns, being only twenty-five-foot tons in the one-pounder and 500 tons in the fourteen-pounder. The power of penetration has already been given in a general way, but the power of penetration of steel is much greater. At its muzzle velocity the thirteen-inch shell will penetrate 26.66 inches of steel, the twelve-inch, 24.16 inches; the ten-inch, 20 inches, and the five-inch, 9 inches. The one-pound shell bursts in piercing one-fourth and nine-sixteenths-inch plates, scattering its fragments behind the target. It may be interesting to note that the cost of one discharge of a thirteen-inch gun is $800, and that when a battleship like the Massachusetts lets loose her entire battery, both main and secondary, the cost of a single discharge is $6,000. CHAPTER XXXIX. BATTLESHIPS AND TROOPS BEGIN TO MOVE. The North Atlantic Squadron Sent to Key West--Commodore Schley at Hampton Roads--The Voyage of the Oregon--The Camp at Chickamauga-- Where the Initial Work of Mobilizing the Troops Was Done--Life at Camp Thomas--Life on the Famous Battle Field--Rendezvous at Fort Tampa--The Great Artillery Camp. Immediately following the action of Congress authorizing the President to call into service the army and navy of the United States, the North Atlantic squadron, under command of Captain Sampson, was mobilized at Key West. It consisted of the following vessels: Battleships Iowa and Indiana, armored cruiser New York, the monitors Puritan, Terror and Amphitrite, the gunboats Nashville, Castine, Machias, Wilmington and Helena, the cruisers Detroit, Cincinnati and Marblehead, and the torpedo-boats Cushing, Ericsson, Dupont, Foote, Winslow, Porter and Mayflower. These comprised a hard fighting aggregation under a cool and daring fighter. The two first-class battleships were not equaled in fighting power by anything in the Spanish navy, and the New York was one of the best fighting ships of her kind in the world. Commodore Winfield Scott Schley and the fighters of his flying squadron were gathered at Hampton Roads, impatient for orders from Washington to face the foe. Far away in Pacific waters Commodore Dewey was cabled the command to hold himself in readiness to proceed to Manila, and the good ship Oregon, under command of Captain Clarke, was steaming her way around Cape Horn to join the fleet in Cuban waters. In the army equal activity was shown. THE CAMP AT CHICKAMAUGA. Chickamauga Park, near Chattanooga, Tenn., was the point of concentration for the regular troops which were gathered for the war with Spain. It was the initial camp where the mobilization took place, and from which soldiers and supplies were dispatched to seacoast towns within easy striking distance of Cuba. When orders went out from army headquarters at Washington for the movement of the regulars to Chickamauga a thrill of soldierly pride swelled the breast of every man who wore Uncle Sam's blue uniform, and there was a hasty dash for the new camp. There is nothing an army man, officer or private, dislikes so much as inactivity. Fighting, especially against a foreign foe, suits him better than dawdling away his time in idleness, and word to "get to the front" is always welcome. For nearly three weeks troops poured into Chickamauga on every train. They came from all parts of the country, and from every regiment and branch of the service. There were "dough-boys" and cavalry-men, engineers and artillerymen; some regiments were there in force, others were represented by detachments only. There were companies and parts of companies, squadrons and parts of squadrons, batteries and parts of batteries. It was a bringing together of Uncle Sam's soldier boys from all conceivable sections of the country. They came from posts in California and Texas, from Wyoming and Maine, from Colorado and Minnesota. In time of peace the regular army is badly scattered. It is seldom that an entire regiment is stationed at one post, the companies being distributed over a wide area of territory. A mobilization, therefore, like that at Chickamauga, tended to consolidate and put new life into commands which had been badly dismembered by the exigencies of the service. Old comrades were brought together and there was a sort of general reunion and glorification. Men who had been doing police duty near big cities met those who had been watching Indians on the plains, or chasing greaser bandits on the border line. They exchanged stories and prepared for the stern realities of war with a vigor which boded ill for the foe they were to face. Uncle Sam's soldier is a great grumbler when in idleness. He finds fault with his officers, his food, his quarters, his clothing, his pay, and even with himself. Nothing pleases him. He records big, sonorous oaths about his idiocy in swearing away his liberty for a term of years. But let the alarm of war sound, show him active preparations for a scrimmage with the enemy, and the "regular" is happy. This was the condition which prevailed at Chickamauga. The men were full of enthusiasm and worked as hard as the proverbial beavers. Drills once distasteful and shirked whenever possible were gone through with alacrity and the "boy in blue" was a true soldier, every inch of him. There was war in sight. LIFE AT CAMP THOMAS. On one point at least there was an accord of opinion in rank and file--the camp was well named. "Camp George H. Thomas" they called it, in memory of old "Pap," the hero of Chickamauga, and men and officers alike took a very visible pride in being residents of the tented city. The establishment of the community at Camp Thomas was much like the establishment of a colony in an unsettled land, in so far as domestic conveniences were concerned. Everything had to be taken there, and each regiment, which was a small canvas town in itself, had to depend entirely upon its own resources. Dotted here and there throughout the entire expanse of the fifteen-mile reservation, these cities of tents were seen, and the brave men who lived in them depended upon themselves and each other for what little entertainment they got. A description of the quarters of one officer will serve for all. An "A," or wall tent, 10 by 12 feet, and some of them a size smaller, was his house. On one side a folding camp cot, with a thin yet comfortable mattress and an abundance of heavy, woolen army blankets. A table about twenty inches square, with legs that fold up into the smallest possible space, stood near the door at the foot of the cot. A folding chair or two for his visitors, a large valise or a very small trunk, a bit of looking glass hanging from a tent pole, a tubular lantern, or, if the tenant of the tent was not so fortunate as to possess such a modern light, then a candle attached to a stick in the ground beside his bed. Tie strings attached to the rear wall of the tent afforded a hanging place for "his other shirt" and a pair of extra shoes. His leggings and boots were on his feet, and his belt, pistol and saber stood in a corner. A pad of writing paper, pocket inkstand, a razor strop, unless he had foresworn shaving, a briar or corn-cob pipe, and a bag of tobacco completed the furnishings of his house. Commanding officers, at regimental headquarters, had an extra roof, or "tent fly," as an awning in front of their quarters, but otherwise lived as other officers did. The enlisted men, quartered in the conical wall tents now adopted by the army, bunked with heads to the wall and feet toward the center, from nine to twelve in a tent Their bedding and blankets were good and they were as comfortable as soldiers could hope to be in the field. Some of the regiments from the remote Northwest had the Sibley conical tent, which has no wall, but which has a small sheet iron stove. These were more than appreciated during the cold, rainy weather that prevailed at Camp Thomas. The mess tents and cookhouses are about alike in all the arms of the service. The "cuddy-bunk" oven, made of sheet, iron, bakes well and looks like two iron pans fastened together, one upon the top of the other. Men detailed as cooks and waiters, or "kitchen police," as they are denominated in the posts, attended to the preparation and serving of the meals, and the soldiers lived well, indeed. Field rations were used when in transit from point to point, but when in camp the company or troop mess purchased fresh meats, vegetables, eggs, fruits, etc., and lived high. RENDEZVOUS AT FORT TAMPA. Twenty-eight batteries of artillery, almost the entire complement of this branch of the United States army, were in camp at Port Tampa, Fla., awaiting orders to make a descent upon the Spanish forces in Cuba. This great gathering of artillery was the feature of the camp. Infantry and cavalry troops were held there also, and their number increased every day, but it was in the artillery that the civilian spectators took the most interest. This may be said without disparagement of the "dough boys" and "hostlers," notwithstanding the fact that there were some of Uncle Sam's most famous fighters in both lines of service stationed at Tampa, among them being the Ninth cavalry, and the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Thirteenth and Twenty-fourth infantry. No cavalry regiment has a finer record than the Ninth, the "buffalo" troopers, who gave the Sioux and Apaches more fighting than they wanted, but Southern people have no use for negro soldiers, and their laudations went to the white artillerymen. No such aggregation of light and heavy artillery has been gathered before at any one city in the United States, even in war time. Life in camp at Tampa was much the same as at Chickamauga, except that the weather was much hotter. To offset this, however, the boys had fine sea bathing, good opportunities for sailing parties, and the best of fresh fish with which to leaven their rations of salt horse and hardtack. It is astonishing how quickly a man learns to forage and cook after joining the regular army. Three months of service will transform the greenest of counter-jumpers into an expert in the art of enticing chickens from their coops and turning them into savory stews. One of the troopers of the Ninth cavalry was called "Chickens," from his predilections in this line. There were orders against foraging, of course; there always are in friendly territory, but they never amount to much. The officers knew they were disobeyed, but they winked the other eye and said nothing. It is hinted that in this course may be often found an explanation of the lavishness with which the officers' mess is served. One night Major--was smoking a nightcap cigar just outside his tent, when he caught sight of "Chickens" stealing past in the shade of the trees. "Chickens" of course was halted and asked why he was prowling around at that time of night. Before the culprit could frame an excuse the Major noticed a suspicious bulging of the front of the trooper's blouse, and an uneasy, twisting motion within. It was plain to him that "Chickens" had been foraging, and was getting back into quarters with his plunder. "Been foraging, hey?" said the Major. "Don't you know it's against orders?" "Chickens" stammered out a denial, when the Major, making a sudden grab at the front of his blouse, tore it open, and out fell two plump pullets. "Stealing hens, hey?" said the Major. "You'll go to the clink for this." "Ah didn't dun steal 'em, Majah," said "Chickens," with brazen effrontery. "Ah 'clar to goodness Ah didn't know dem pullets was dar. Mus' have crawled into mah blous t' keep wahm, Majah." The reply tickled the veteran so much that he let "Chickens" pass, and the next morning there was one officer at the post who had stewed pullet for breakfast. One of the most famous regiments of infantry at Tampa was the Thirteenth. It has the well-earned reputation of being a good fighting body. Some of the most distinguished officers of the army have been on its rolls in time past, among them Sherman and Sheridan. The history of the Thirteenth goes back to May 14, 1861, when President Lincoln directed its organization. The first colonel was William T. Sherman, who re-entered the army after a number of years engaged in banking and the practice of law. C. C. Augur was one of the majors, and Philip H. Sheridan was a captain. Sheridan joined the regiment in November, 1861, but was soon appointed chief commissary and quartermaster to the Army of Southwest Missouri, which practically severed his connection with the regiment. In 1862 the first battalion of the regiment entered on active service in the Mississippi valley. It engaged in the Yazoo expedition under Sherman, who was by that time a major-general of volunteers, and took part later in Grant's operations around Vicksburg. The battalion won for its colors the proud inscription, "First Honor at Vicksburg," and lost 43.3 per cent of its force in the attack on the Confederates. Among the dead was its then commander, who died on the parapet. Sherman's nine-year-old son, Willie, who was with his father at Vicksburg, was playfully christened a "sergeant" of the Thirteenth battalion, and his death of fever in October, 1863, called forth a sorrowful letter from General Sherman to the commander of the Thirteenth. "Please convey to the battalion my heartfelt thanks," he wrote, "and assure each and all that if in after years they call on me or mine, and mention that they were of the Thirteenth regulars when Willie was a sergeant, they will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it has; that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust!" After the war the regiment was transferred to the West. It was employed in Kansas, Montana, Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and elsewhere until 1874, for a large part of the time serving almost continuously against hostile Indians. In 1874 it was moved to New Orleans, and was engaged on duty in the Department of the South for six years. During the labor riots of 1877 all but two companies were on duty at Pittsburg, Scranton, Wilkesbarre and other points in Pennsylvania. Then back to the West it went again, and, with some slight vacations, remained on the frontier until October, 1894, when it was transferred to various posts in New York State. CHAPTER XL. DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS TERMINATE. Grave Responsibilities Bravely Met--The Ultimatum to Spain--The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Sends Minister Woodford His Transports--Our Consuls in Cuba Leave the Island--Fate of Americans Left Behind--Spanish Spies at Work--Playing a Desperate Game. None but those who were close to the men at the head of our Government just prior to the commencement of the war with Spain can realize with what solicitude they watched the development of the preliminary proceedings. With full appreciation of their grave responsibilities, knowing the power inherent in their positions to effect results, and yet cognizant as the days went by of their inability to prevent the fulfillment of fate, they endeavored to guide events so far as they could in a course which will hold them and the people blameless in the sight of the world for whatever might follow. That they withstood the strain so well bears testimony to their mental poise and strength of character. The President's demeanor underwent a noticeable change. The affable, cheery mood which formerly characterized him, gave way to a sternness of manner which befits a humane but just judge called upon to execute a righteous sentence. A curious illustration of Mr. McKinley's temperament was shown in the difference in his bearing after the passage of the resolutions which made war inevitable. So long as there was the slightest chance for peace the pressure of uncertainty bore heavily upon him, and his face assumed a wan and haggard look. That look did not entirely disappear, but it was no longer marked by anxiety. From the moment the decision was reached which imposed upon him the leadership of a nation at war, he seemed to have experienced a sense of relief, for he saw his pathway straight before him, no matter how rough it might be. Immediately after signing the resolutions declaring for intervention by our Government, the President sent an ultimatum to Spain, quoting the act of Congress, and notifying her that her army and navy must be withdrawn from Cuba by noon of April 23. The Spanish Minister, Polo y Bernabe, at once applied for his passports, and left the country. The Spanish Government, without waiting for Minister Woodford to deliver the ultimatum of the United States Government, sent him his transports, thus taking the initiative and practically declaring war against this government. The official notification to General Woodford, from the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, was as follows: Dear Sir: In compliance with a painful duty, I have the honor to inform you that there has been sanctioned by the President of the Republic a resolution of both chambers of the United States which denies the legitimate sovereignty of Spain, and threatens immediate armed intervention in Cuba, which is equivalent to a declaration of war. The Government of Her Majesty has ordered her Minister at Washington to retire without loss of time from the territory of North America with all of the personality of the Legation. By this act the diplomatic relations which formerly existed between the two countries, and all official communications between their respective representatives cease. I am obliged to inform you, so that on your part you can make such arrangements as you believe convenient. I beg that at a suitable time Your Excellency will acknowledge receipt of this and take this opportunity to reiterate the assurance of my most distinguished consideration. PIO GULLON. General Woodford then turned over the Legation to the care of the British Government, and ordered all American Consuls in Spain to cease their offices and leave the country at once. He then made his own preparations to leave and started for Paris without delay. CONSULS IN CUBA LEAVE THE ISLAND. Anticipating the action taken by Congress, a peculiar form of notice had been agreed upon between Consul-General Lee and the Consuls some weeks previously. The telegram notifying them to leave the island was to be in these words: "Appropriation for relief of American citizens is exhausted." This form was devised for a reason which had its bearing upon the unhappy fate of the Americans left on the island. Spaniards of the vindictive class never got over the action of the United States in undertaking the support of its citizens in Cuba. That action was in striking contrast "with the course of the Spanish Government. The Spaniards lost no opportunity to show their resentment toward the Americans. When local measures of relief were planned, the Americans were taunted, and told to look to the United States for help and protection. The charity extended by the United States brought upon the beneficiaries persecution at the hands of the Spaniards. General Lee, realizing the strength of this unworthy sentiment, thought that a message in the language quoted would be so grateful to Spanish eyes that it would be put through to the Consuls without delay. He was right about that. The government attempted to make provision for the removal of the Americans on the island at the same time that the Consuls were notified to withdraw. Results showed that only a comparatively small number availed themselves of the opportunities to go. A ship made its way along the south coast of Cuba and removed from Santiago, Manzanillo and Cienfuegos between 200 and 300 refugees, conveying them to Jamaica. This was hardly one-half. From the northern coast the number taken off the island was much smaller. At Havana there were on the rolls of the Consulate over 600 Americans, of whom perhaps 200 elected to take passage on the ships sent by the United States. At Matanzas, Consul Brice had about 400 Americans. Consul Barker, at Sagua, had about the same number, while Consul Hance, at Cardenas, had about 100. Very few of these wanted to leave their interests and relatives. All of them were utterly destitute. They did not know what they could do if they landed in the United States without friends. Many of them were Cubans, who had lived in the United States only long enough to obtain American citizenship. All their ties were in Cuba. They believed that the warships would come quickly with provisions. And so they chose to stay. When the Consuls left they put food enough in the possession of these Americans to last them from ten days to two weeks. The fate of these unfortunates can only be imagined. From the prejudice which existed toward the American reconcentrados the Consuls know that they would be the last to receive any consideration when the blockade began to bear heavily. SPANISH SPIES AT WORK. Just prior to the breaking out of actual hostilities between this country and Spain the military attache of the Spanish legation at Washington was compelled to leave this country, because it was known he had been seeking to learn certain facts relative to the strength of our forts and their defensive equipment. This man was Lieutenant Sobral, and in plain and uncompromising English, he was a spy, or member of the Spanish secret service, which implies the same thing. Before he left this country he had been ejected from several forts along the South Atlantic coast, where he had been found endeavoring to gain access to those mysteries which no man, unless he wears the blue of the United States army, can righteously know aught of, even in times of peace. This was the first intimation this country had that Spain would introduce here the same system of espionage she employs at home. Following Sobrap's expulsion from the country came the knowledge that Spanish spies were working in Washington, watching every move made there; that they swarmed in Key West and in New York city, where they maintained a strict surveillance over the members of the Cuban Junta. Many of these spies were American citizens, or at least nominally so, for their work was done under the direction of a well-known detective agency, acting, of course, with the Spanish representatives here. These men were principally engaged in preventing the shipment of stores and arms to Cuba. At one time it was impossible to enter or leave the building where the Junta had its headquarters without observing one or more men hanging about the place, apparently with nothing to do and making a vain effort to do it as gracefully as possible. These were thrilling times in the annals of the Junta, when Rubens, Palma and Captain O'Brien were regularly followed to and from their homes to their headquarters. These were good times, too, for the American detective agency. But all this was mere clumsy work, more of an annoyance than anything else, and scarcely any hindrance to the shipping of arms and stores when the Junta was fortunate enough to have the arms and stores to ship. But after the declaration of war, the spy question assumed an aspect as serious as it was unlocked for. Spain worked silently, secretly and through one of the best-handled branches of her government and with all the Latins' natural love of intrigue. She no longer paid much heed to Palma or Rubens, or to Captain O'Brien. She was playing a bigger game. American detectives no longer represented her interests here--an impossibility under existing conditions, of course. Under Polo was established a most complete department of espionage, which he controlled from the refuge Canada offered him. The gathering together of information and those facts which usually concern the operation of secret service of civilized countries seemed to be a side issue with this particular department. The scope of its operations was along different lines from those usually followed by the mere spy. Polo's intention appeared to be to carry the war into America in a new and startling manner--startling, because his movements could not be seen or foretold until the blow was struck. He made use of the corps under his control to place the bomb of the anarchist and apply the torch of the incendiary under our arsenals and to those buildings where the government stored its supplies for the army and navy. For a time he was successful in his cowardly scheming and his emissaries celebrated his success with many tons of good American gunpowder, and at the cost of some good American lives. Bombs were found in the coal reserved for use aboard our men-of-war. They were even taken from the coal bunkers of our ships and they were found in certain of the government buildings at Washington. Indeed, the situation became so serious that finally strangers were not allowed to visit a man-of-war or enter a fort. It must be remembered that there are in America thousands of Spaniards who, unless they commit some overt act of violence, can enjoy all the privileges accorded to a citizen. This, together with our mixed population, in many quarters made up largely of the peoples of Southern Europe, all more or less of one type, all speaking languages which, to untrained ears at least, are almost identical one with the other, gave the Spanish spy in America a protection and freedom from suspicion and surveillance he would hardly meet with in any other country, and which, by the inverse, offered no opportunity for the American spy in Spain, had we chosen to make use of the same methods. PLAYING A DESPERATE GAME. These Spaniards were playing a desperate game, however. It was literally at the peril of their necks, for should a man be apprehended, there would be no possibility of escaping the ignominious death that usually awaits on such services. Sobral was allowed to go, though there was no question but that his conduct was so incriminating that he was liable to arrest, trial, and, if convicted, death, had this country cared to hold him. His fate abroad would be easy to foretell. His guilt was almost as great as that which brought Major Andre to his death in the times of the Revolution. CHAPTER XLI. FIRST GUNS AND FIRST PRIZES OF THE WAR. Capture of the LaFayette--The Government Orders Her Release-- Towing Prizes Into Key West--The Spanish Set a Trap--The Vicksburg and the Morrill Take the Bait--The Spanish Gunners Poor Marksmen-- Another Narrow Escape. Shortly after the proclamation of the blockade of Cuban ports a capture was made which threatened international complications. The French mail steamer LaFayette was held up almost under the guns of Morro Castle. The Annapolis hailed her in the harbor offing and receiving no answer but a show of the French tricolor plumped a six-pounder across her bows and brought her up standing. PRAYERS AND TEARS IN STATEROOMS. Of the 161 cabin passengers on the steamer eighty were women and children. They locked themselves in the staterooms when the warning shot was fired and the Annapolis and Wilmington approached, and gave themselves up to prayers and tears. Most of the passengers were Spaniards or Cubans, and there were a few Mexicans. Nearly all were bound for Havana. The steamer was filled to the hatches with medicines, provisions, wines and cotton goods consigned to merchants in Havana and Vera Cruz, Mexico. It is estimated that the value of the ship's cargo was nearly $500,000. Her net tonnage is 4,000 tons. She hails from Santander, France, and cleared from Corunna, Spain, April 23, two days after the President issued the blockade proclamation, although Captain Lechapelane declared he was not notified. As soon as official notice of her capture reached Washington telegrams were sent ordering immediate release. The explanation for this action on the part of the administration is given in the statement which follows and which was issued from the White House: "The LaFayette was released in pursuance of orders which were issued by the Navy Department previous to her seizure, but which had not been received by the commanding officers of the vessels that made the capture. The facts are that on April 29 the French Embassy made an informal inquiry as to whether the LaFayette, which left Saint Nazaire, France, for Vera Cruz, by way of Havana, before war was declared or information of the blockade was received, would be allowed to land at Havana certain passengers, her mail bags and the dispatch bag of the Consulate-General of France and take some French passengers on board. An assurance was given that, if this privilege should be granted, the steamer would be forbidden by the French Consul to land goods. "The matter was duly considered and it was decided that, without regard to the strict law of blockade and as an act of courtesy, the request of the French Government should be acceded to. Orders were accordingly sent on the 2d of May. When information was received of the capture of the steamer and of her having been brought to Key West, these orders were communicated to the captors, with instructions to release the steamer and see that the orders were duly delivered, so that they might be carried into effect. No demand was made, either by or on behalf of the French Government, directly or indirectly, for the steamer's release. The Wilmington will escort the LaFayette to Havana to-night." On May 8th the British tramp steamer Strathdee, Captain Currie, attempted to run the blockade, but was overhauled by the gunboat Machias. The Captain of the Strathdee claimed that the vessel was loaded with sugar and that he had on board a number of Spanish refugees from Sagua la Grande. He also said that the steamer was bound for Matanzas, where it was desired to disembark some of the refugees. The commander of the Machias was skeptical of the story, however, and warned the Captain of the Strathdee that if he attempted to take the vessel into Matanzas she would be fired on, whereupon the Strathdee put about and steamed away in the direction of New York. THREE SMALL PRIZES TOWED INTO KEY WEST. Three prizes were brought in May 9th. They were the brigantine Lorenzo, taken by the Montgomery near Havana, on Friday, while bound for Rio de la Plata with a cargo of dried beef. The Espana, a little fishing sloop, was taken by the Morrill about three miles off Mariel just after a sharp engagement. The Newport was close at hand at the time, and a prize crew made up from both ships brought the capture in. The third vessel taken was the schooner Padre de Dios, Master Mateo Herrera, laden with fish. It was taken by the Newport off Mariel, and was brought in by a petty officer and a prize crew. All three accepted one blank shot apiece as sufficient. MAKING HER PRIZE WORK AS TOWBOAT. One captive was seen taking another to port on the morning of May 9th. Both are prizes of the gunboat Newport, and were captured between Mariel and Havana. It was about sunrise, just after an inexplicable shot had been fired from a Havana battery, that a dispatch boat off Morro Castle sighted the Newport with a big Norwegian tramp steamer, the Bratsberg, following obediently. Suddenly the Newport's stack blew clouds of black smoke, and, looking for the cause, a pretty two-masted schooner was seen, her sails wing and wing, flying from the northwest for Havana. A blank shot sounded over the waters. The schooner stood no chance, but she kept her course until a solid six-pounder from the Newport skimmed across to her, and dropped ahead of the bowsprit. Then she dropped her jib and came about quickly, sailing toward the warship, as one has seen a dog run to his master at the snap of a lash. She was the Fernandito, avaricious of the bounty Captain-General Blanco offered for fish delivered to hungry Havana. A line was put aboard her, and the Bratsberg was compelled to take the other end and go to Key West. The Spanish set a trap one day during the blockade. The wily Spaniards arranged a trap to send a couple of our ships to the bottom. A small schooner was sent out from Havana harbor to draw some of the Americans into the ambuscade. The ruse worked like a charm. The Vicksburg and the Morrill, in the heat of the chase and in their contempt for Spanish gunnery, walked straight into the trap that had been set for them. Had the Spaniards possessed their souls in patience but five minutes longer, not even their bad gun practice would have saved our ships, and two more of our vessels would lie at the bottom within two lengths of the wreck of the ill-starred Maine. Friday evening the Vicksburg and the Morrill, cruising to the west of Morro Castle, were fired on by the big guns of the Cojimar batteries. Two shots were fired at the Vicksburg and one at the Morrill. Both fell short, and both vessels, without returning the fire, steamed out of range. It would have been folly to have done otherwise. But this time the Spaniards had better luck. The schooner they had sent out before daylight ran off to the eastward, hugging the shore, with the wind on her starboard quarter. About three miles east of the entrance to the harbor she came over on the port tack. A light haze fringed the horizon and she was not discovered until three miles off shore, when the Mayflower made her out and signaled the Morrill and Vicksburg. THEY TAKE THE BAIT. Captain Smith, of the Morrill, and Commander Lilly, of the Vicksburg, immediately slapped on all steam and started in pursuit. The schooner instantly put about and ran for Morro Castle before the wind. By doing so she would, according to the well-conceived Spanish plot, lead the two American warships directly under the guns of the Santa Clara batteries. These works are a short mile west of Morro, and are a part of the defenses of the harbor. There are two batteries, one at the shore, which has been recently thrown up, of sand and mortar, with wide embrasures for eight-inch guns, and the other on the crest of the rocky eminence which juts out into the water of the gulf at the point. The upper battery mounts modern 10-inch and 12-inch Krupp guns behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which are twenty feet of earthwork and a belting of railroad iron. This battery is considered the most formidable of Havana's defenses except Morro Castle. It is masked and has not been absolutely located by the American warships. It is probably due to the fact that the Spanish did not desire to expose its position that the Vicksburg and Morrill are now afloat. The Morrill and Vicksburg were about six miles from the schooner when the chase began. They steamed after her at full speed, the Morrill leading until within a mile and a half of the Santa Clara batteries. Commander Smith, of the Vicksburg, was the first to realize the danger into which the reckless pursuit had led them. He concluded it was time to haul off and sent a shot across the bow of the schooner. NEARLY HIT BY SHRAPNEL SHELLS. The Spanish skipper instantly brought his vessel about, but while she was still rolling in the trough of the sea, with her sails flapping, an 8-inch shrapnel shell came hurtling through the air from the water battery, a mile and a half away. It passed over the Morrill between the pilothouse and the smokestack and exploded less than fifty feet on the port quarter. The small shot rattled against her side. It was a close call. Two more shots followed in quick succession, both shrapnel. One burst close under the starboard quarter, filling the engine room with the smoke of the explosion of the shell, and the other, like the first, passed over and exploded just beyond. The Spanish gunners had the range and their time fuses were accurately set. The crews of both ships were at their guns. Lieutenant Craig, who was in charge of the bow 4-inch rapid-fire gun of the Morrill, asked for and obtained permission to return the fire. At the first shot the Vicksburg, which was in the wake of the Morrill, slightly in-shore, sheered off and passed to windward under the Morrill's stern. ANOTHER NARROW ESCAPE. In the meantime, Captain Smith also put his helm to port, and was none too soon, for as the Morrill stood off a solid 8-inch shot grazed her starboard quarter and kicked up tons of water as it struck a wave 100 yards beyond. Captain Smith said afterward that this was undoubtedly an 8-inch armor piercing projectile, and that it would have passed through the Morrill's boilers had he not changed his course in the nick of time. All the guns of the water battery were now at work. One of them cut the Jacob's ladder of the Vicksburg adrift, and another carried away a portion of the rigging. As the Morrill and the Vicksburg steamed away their aft guns were used, but only a few shots were fired. The Morrill's 6-inch gun was elevated for 4,000 yards and struck the earth-works repeatedly. The Vicksburg fired but three shots from her 6-pounder. The Spaniards continued to fire shot and shell for twenty minutes, but the shots were ineffective. Some of them were so wild that they roused the American "Jackies" to jeers. The Spaniards only ceased firing when the Morrill and Vicksburg were completely out of range. If all the Spanish gunners had been suffering from strabismus their practice could not have been worse. But the officers of both the Morrill and Vicksburg frankly admit their own recklessness and the narrow escape of their vessels from destruction. They are firmly convinced that the pursuit of the schooner was a neatly planned trick, which almost proved successful. If any one of the shots had struck the thin skin of either vessel it would have offered no more resistance than a piece of paper to a rifle ball. The accurate range of the first few shots is accounted for by the fact that the Spanish officers had ample time to make observations. The bearings of the two vessels were probably taken with a range-finder at the Santa Clara battery, and, as this battery is probably connected by wire with Morro, they were able to take bearings from both points, and by laborious calculations they fixed the positions of the vessels pretty accurately. With such opportunity for observation it would have been no great trick for an American gunner to drop a shell down the smokestack of a vessel. As soon as the ships sheered off after the first fire, the Spanish gunners lost the range and their practice became ludicrous. If they had waited five minutes longer before opening fire, Captain Smith says it would have been well-nigh impossible to have missed the target. Prior to the invasion of Cuba by our army large stores of arms and ammunition were sent to the insurgents. One of the most notable of these expeditions was made by the tug Leyden, which carried 50,000 rounds of rifle cartridges and two chests of dynamite. She left Key West with Colonel Acosta and some twenty-five other Cubans on board, who were to join General Gomez in Santa Clara Province. The tug reached the Cuban coast and after landing her passengers in safety steamed to a point seventeen miles west of Havana, where she was met by General Perico Delgado with about 100 Cubans on the beach. The Leyden's crew began landing the ammunition, when a small body of Spanish cavalry appeared some little distance back from the shore, and, dismounting, began firing upon the Leyden. Several bullets had penetrated the tug's smoke-stack, when the boat drew off the shore some three miles, where it met the gunboat Wilmington. Returning under the protection of the gunboat, the Leyden again began landing its cargo. The Spaniards soon returned, and, ignoring a lively fusillade from Degaldo's insurgents, resumed their attack on the Leyden. The Wilmington, which had taken up a position further off shore, sent a three-pound shell into the midst of the cavalry, wounding several of them and putting them to flight. The Leyden then finished the work of landing the ammunition, and returned to Key West. CHAPTER XLII. DECLARATION OF WAR. The Spanish Minister in Washington Demands His Passports-- Minister Woodford Leaves Madrid--Formal Declaration of War--Our Government Declares Its Intentions--The War Feeling in Spain-- Effect of the Declaration in Cuba--Opinion of the Vice-President of the Cuban Republic. Spain was given until Saturday, April 23, at noon, to answer the demand of our government expressed in, the joint Cuban resolutions, passed by both Houses of Congress, and signed by the President. In default of an answer by that time, the President declared his intention to carry out the purpose of the ultimatum. A copy of this ultimatum was delivered to Senor Polo, the Spanish Minister at Washington. Senor Polo instantly demanded his passports, declared all diplomatic relations between himself as Minister and the United States no longer possible, and within a few hours was on his way to Canada. At Madrid, before our Minister could comply with his instructions, he was notified by the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs that diplomatic relations were at an end. He at once asked for his passports, and the same day left for Paris. President McKinley rightly regarded the conduct of Spain in breaking off diplomatic intercourse and refusing even to receive his demand, as an equivalent to an absolute refusal. There remained no reason to await action till Saturday noon, as no possible reply could be expected to a demand the very presentation of which had been positively rejected. In short, Spain instantly showed that it regarded the act of Congress and President as practically a declaration of war, and there remained no resort except to arms. On Monday, April 25, the President sent to Congress a message asking for a joint resolution declaring that a state of war existed between Spain and the United States, and a bill was at once introduced into the House declaring that war did exist, and had existed, since and including April 21, which passed in less than two minutes. The Senate promptly concurred and the bill became a law. While the United States was not a party to the Declaration of Paris, the government made known its intention to maintain its four cardinal principles: (1) Privateering abolished. (2) Neutral flags to exempt an enemy's goods from capture, except contraband of war. (3) Neutral goods under an enemy's flag not to be seized (4) Blockade to be binding must be effective. Spain, on her part, issued a decree recognizing the fact that a state of war existed, breaking off all treaties with the United States, and promising to observe the rules just given, except that she maintained her right to grant letters of marque to privateers. But this exception was modified by Spain's declaring her intention to send out only auxiliary cruisers taken from the mercantile marine and kept under naval control. One consideration which may have influenced this decision was the self-evident fact that the European Powers would certainly interfere, in the event that Spain attempted to carry on privateering under the old methods. THE WAR FEELING IN SPAIN. In Spain the war feeling was high. The Queen Regent, in her speech to the Cortes, declared "the unalterable resolution of my government to defend our rights, whatsoever sacrifices may be imposed upon us in accomplishing this task." She said further: "Thus identifying myself with the nation, I not only fulfil the oath I swore in accepting the regency, but I follow the dictates of a mother's heart, trusting to the Spanish people to gather behind my son's throne and to defend it until he is old enough to defend it himself, as well as trusting to the Spanish people to defend the honor and territory of the nation." THE POLICY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. The President and Congress undoubtedly acted on the lines of good policy in making a formal declaration of war. As Mr. McKinley said in his message to Congress, the trend of events compelled him to take measures of a hostile kind. A blockade had been established and Spanish vessels had been captured. While every civilized power on earth immediately learned the facts, there still remained the necessity of going through the formal act of notifying them of this government's intentions. In this instance, as in others in the nation's history, the actual hostilities were begun before it seemed necessary for the government to make a formal declaration. According to the authorities on international law, "a declaration may be necessary, but is not essential." In this case, when it became so evident that a general conflict was imminent, the administration did fairly by the commercial nations of the world in formally stating its position, and giving them all warning as to the consequences which might follow in the case of vessels attempting to enter Cuban waters. The resolutions were admirably brief and concise, merely declaring the existence of a state of war, and authorizing the President to do whatever he thought best with the army and the navy. By this act, while the situation was in itself no way changed, the nation assumed a definite diplomatic status as a power at war, and was free to proceed to any such acts as came within the laws of civilized nations in time of war. EFFECT OF THE DECLARATION IN CUBA. When the news of the action of the administration reached the insurgents in Cuba it caused great rejoicing among them, for they felt that the hour of their deliverance was at last at hand. In speaking of it, Dr. Capote, Vice-President of the Cuban Republic, said: I desire to thank the great American people and their government for the resolution they have made to free us from the tyrannical rule of Spain. The people of Cuba believe in the good faith of the people of America. They believe in their honesty of purpose to free Cuba and are confident of their ability to do so; but it must be borne in mind that the loadstar of the Cuban is not merely freedom from the dominion of Spain, but independence from outside control, however beneficent that control might be, and absolute non-interference by others in the management of our own affairs. "Cuba free and independent" is the watchword of Cuban liberty. The Cuban commanders await some decisive step on the part of your generals. If you can open up and maintain communication with the Cuban armies, and give us a plentiful supply of arms and ammunition, we will free Cuba without the loss of an American soldier. Our position on the field is precarious. For lack of supplies, we cannot concentrate our troops. Our camps shift from place to place, according to food conditions. We are hampered and embarrassed for lack of ammunition. We cannot arm the men we are able to put in the field. Open up communication, give us arms and supplies, and we ask no more. As to the eventual settlement of the island, when the war is ended and when the last Spanish soldier has left Cuba, the work of the provisional government will be ended. The people of Cuba, whatever the class or sympathy, will then say how we shall be governed. There will be no reprisals, no confiscation, no distinctions. CHAPTER XLIII. CALL FOR THE NATIONAL GUARD, OUR CITIZEN SOLDIER. Enthusiastic Answer to the Call--Requirements of the War Department--Who May Enlist--How the Army was Formed--In the Training Camps--The American Makes the Best Soldier--The "Rough Riders"--Cowboys and Society Men--Their Uniforms and Their Weapons--Their Fighting Leaders. If all the men who showed a desire to answer the call to arms had been accepted, no nation in the world could have boasted of a larger army. The demand was so limited and the supply so great that many more had to be refused than were accepted, and many of the National Guard, who were given the preference in all the States, were rejected at the final examination, because they lacked some of the qualifications necessary in a soldier of the United States. According to the requirements of the war department applicants for enlistment must be between the ages of 18 and 35 years, of good character and habits, able-bodied, free from disease and must be able to speak the English language. If one is addicted to the bad habit of smoking cigarettes it is quite likely that he will not pass the physical examination. A man who has been a heavy drinker is apt to be rejected without ceremony. Married men will only be enlisted upon the approval of the regimental commander. Minors must not be enlisted without the written consent of father, only surviving parent, or legally appointed guardian. Original enlistment will be confined to persons who are citizens of the United States or who have made legal declaration of their intention to become citizens thereof. These requirements fulfilled a man is permitted to take the physical examination. Few understand just how rigid this examination is. Many have been rejected who thought that they were in perfect physical condition. A number of applicants who were confident that they would be allowed to enlist were rejected by the physicians on account of varicose veins. Varicose veins are enlarged veins which are apt to burst under the stress of long continued exertion. Closely allied to this is varicocele, which threw out a surprisingly large proportion of the National Guard and the recruits. After a man is weighed and his height taken, he is turned over to the doctor, who places the applicant's hands above his head and proceeds to feel his flesh. If it is soft and of flabby fiber the physician is not well pleased and if he finds that the bones are too delicate for the amount of flesh he turns the applicant down. Fat men, however, get through if their bones are solid and there is no organic weakness of any description. To discover the condition of the heart the applicant is made to hop about five yards on one foot and back again on the other. The doctor then listens to the beating of the heart. He lifts his head and says to some apparently fine-looking specimen of manhood the simple word: "Rejected." This man has heart trouble, and, strange to say, he does not know it. If a man be of a pale complexion or rather sallow, the doctors will question him with regard to his stomach. Of course the lungs are thoroughly tested. It is not often, however, that any one presents himself who is suffering from lung trouble. One man in particular was rejected because of the formation of his chest. He was what is commonly known as "pigeon-breasted." The doctors said that there was not enough room for air in the lungs, and yet the rejected applicant was a well-known athlete. But after all organic centers have been found in excellent condition several things yet remain to be tested. A man's feet must not blister easily. His teeth must be good, because bad teeth interfere with digestion and are apt to develop stomach troubles. Of course other things taken into consideration a particular defect may be overlooked according to the discretion of the doctor. A man with his index finger gone stands no show. A bow-legged man will be accepted, but a knocked-kneed man rarely. The final test is of the eyes. At a, distance of twenty feet one must be able to read letters a half inch in size. Many tricks were played to read the letters when the eager candidate could see only a blur before him. The favorite method was to memorize the letters from those who had taken the examination and knew in just what order the letters were situated. HOW AN ARMY IS FORMED. The making of an army--that is what it means to turn men of peace to men of war, to fit the mechanic or the business man, the farmer or the miner, for a passage at arms with a foreign foe--has been for the present generation a matter of conjecture and of lessons drawn from previous passages in the nation's chronicles. In our war with Spain it became a fact, and the progress made in the various stages forms a chapter in the public history which is as interesting as any of those conquests of either peace or war which brighten for every American the pages of the achievements of the Union of the States. It is impossible to tell just how an army is made. During the long debates which preceded the declaration of war, eloquent men on both sides of the chambers of Congress pictured the strength of American arms, the shrillness of the scream of the eagle, and the sharpness of his talons, and applauding galleries saw in the coming combat little but the calling out of the vast body of the reserve strength of the American people, its marching upon the enemy, and return, bearing captured standards and leading prisoners in chains, to the music of the applauding nations, and the thanksgiving of a people made free by their struggles. The other side was never touched. The nights of toil by staff officers, the multiplied forces of mills and factories, the shriek of the trains crossing the continent, bearing men and munitions, and the hours of waiting for the completion of those warlike implements which the peaceful American has never before contemplated in the expansion of his industrial institutions, were entirely overlooked. Not by all, however, for, from the moment the conflict seemed inevitable, stern-eyed men who had fought before began to count, not the cost, but the hours between the giving of an order and its fulfillment, between the calling and the coming, and finally when the results of their labors were completed the story of what they did may be partly told. All the processes of making a soldier are as distinct as are those which mark the seed time and the harvest, the milling and the making of the loaf. It can be readily seen that in a country where the standing army is but 25,000, and the militia forces of the various States bears such a slight proportion to the population, that manufactures of materials of use only in time of war could not flourish. Thus it was that at the time of the commencement of hostilities there was available in the United States equipment for an army of less than one-fifth the size of that which afterwards took the field, and patriotism and fidelity were shown as much in the outfitting of that force, as can be shown in actual battle by any volunteer or regular officer, whether he be posted in fort or field, and win glory by brilliant dash, or simply doing his duty by holding his post. The ready response to the President's call for volunteers was sufficient to prove that the people were eager to take up arms and ready to go to the front. But enthusiasm, patriotism and readiness never make an army. An army is a great machine, of which each individual is a part, and there even the militia men of the various States, who had spent so much time in preparing themselves for just such a struggle, lacked the one great element without which no army can hope for success: the capacity to move in unison. Few of the States had given their men the training which makes of the simple company or regiment a wheel in the brigade or division. In the great camps at Chickamauga, at Camp Alger, at Tampa, and at San Francisco the task of making an army from men who a month before had been working in the store, the mill or the field, went on. This meant long, thorough drilling under competent instructors. Careful study of the tactics and intelligent comprehension of the meaning of an order makes the soldier. It is not possible to imagine anything more difficult than the thorough training of the arms bearer, and for this task the American seems better fitted than the men of any other country. In an analysis of the soldiers of the world an authority would place the American, combining as he does the blood of nations, at the head of the list, for the reason that with his finer sensibility, his greater capacity to think while acting and to act while thinking, all tend to produce in him that character capable of high and perfect development in the soldier. At Chickamauga, under General Wade; at Washington, under General Graham; at Tampa, under General Shafter; at San Francisco, under General Merriam, and on the New York and New England coasts under brigadiers who had served East and West, the raw material was formed, until at length the perfect soldier was produced, the soldier of whom it could be said: "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die." ABOUT THE ROUGH RIDERS. Those who are acquainted with the nature of the service usually required of cavalry in time of war will not question the usefulness of the cowboy regiment--rough riders as they are called--that were raised in the West to take part in the invasion of Cuba. The cowboy is a rapidly passing type. Barbed wire, the fencing in of the range, together with the irrigation and cultivation of those regions which were once marked as deserts on the maps--have been responsible for his undoing and he has made what may prove to be his last stand, as a soldier. The cowboy regiment was the idea of the assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who had had some experience himself as a cowboy on his Wyoming ranch and who was an expert in such matters as branding, rope-throwing, broncho breaking and those other practices which are peculiar to the "cow-puncher." Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt's regiment, which figures on the army records as the "1st regiment of rifle rangers," but which the general public from the first preferred to call "Roosevelt's rough riders," or more simply still, "Teddy's terrors," was made up almost entirely of cowboys, with a small sprinkling of society men, who had both a fondness and an aptitude for horsemanship, which had found no other outlet than that offered by the hunting field and the polo ground. MADE UP ALMOST ENTIRELY OF COWBOYS. In organization the regiment was not widely different from the famous Texas Rangers, but the uniform was the same as that of the cavalrymen of the regular army, slightly modified. Its personnel, with the exception of the millionaire members--was about the same, however, as that of the Rangers. It included men from almost every State in the Union, and they could one and all ride well, and shoot well, and many of them smelled powder in more than one Indian war. While Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt took the most active part in its formation, he did not command the regiment. That responsibility was delegated to Colonel Wood, who was almost as well known in the West as Roosevelt was in the East. He entered the army as a surgeon, but he probably had much more to do with the making of wounds than their healing. It is said of him that when he was first assigned for duty to an Arizona post he arrived at the post one night at 7 o'clock, and the next morning at 4 was in the field and at work. This was during the Apache campaign in 1885, and Surgeon Wood soon won for himself the name of the fighting doctor. He was conspicuous in the famous Geronimo outbreak, having command at various times of the infantry and scouts engaged in the chase after that wily savage. The regiment was armed with the Krag-Jorgensen carbine and revolvers, without which no cowboy would be complete even in time of peace. And instead of the regular cavalry sword, which is a rather unwieldy instrument except in the hands of men trained to its use, the rough riders adopted the Cuban machete, which even the inexperienced can use successfully; but it was not intended that they should be swordsmen; their reliance was on the rifle and revolver. The machete was carried merely as a possible dependence should ammunition fail, or a hand-to-hand encounter with the cavalry of the enemy occur. In the development of this plan of action it can be seen that Colonel Wood and Lieutenent-Colonel Roosevelt in the tactics they employed followed closely those used by the mounted riflemen of the revolution. It was a band of this sort that after a ride of sixty miles the last day met and utterly routed the English under Colonel Ferguson. CHAPTER XLIV. BLOCKADE OF CUBAN PORTS. Contraband of War--Confiscation of Cargoes--Establishment of a Blockade--Notice to Other Nations--Prizes, Lawful and Unlawful-- Privateering Abolished--Distribution of Prize Money--The Use the Government Makes of Its Share. While the great blockade was in progress the air was full of talk about "prizes," "contraband," "search," and "seizure," and some of the terms proved rather puzzling to the average citizen who had never had occasion to study the rules of war. First about "contraband." It is one of the strictest rules of war that neutral nations must not interfere nor in any way give help to either party. To furnish ships or arms or ammunition might greatly prolong the conflict or even change its result, especially where this assistance is extended to a nation--like Spain to-day-- ill supplied and of small resources. This would be manifestly unfair, and for a neutral to offer or abet such aid is a grave offense. For remissness in an aggravated case of this sort (that of the Alabama) England was forced to pay us heavy damages. Neither national sympathy nor national interests afford any excuse. That is why we restrained and punished those who organized expeditions to help the Cubans while we were still at peace with Spain. But nations engaged in war must not ask too much. They may insist that a neutral shall allow no hostile operations to be carried on within its territory, but they have no right to demand that it shall punish its private citizens for engaging in trade in articles that may be helpful to the enemy, for that would be imposing too much trouble and expense upon a nation which has no concern in the quarrel. Such trade is punishable, but it is the business of the nation injured by it to catch the ships engaged in it and enforce the penalty--which is usually confiscation of the goods as "contraband of war." To do this it may stop and search any ships--except warships--which it finds at sea; and so long as no outrages are committed the neutral must submit and has no ground for complaint. Trade in contraband goods is tolerated, but it is carried on at the trader's own risk. His government will not undertake to protect him from the legitimate consequences of his venture. As has been stated, the contraband goods are confiscated by the captor. The vessel, however, must be captured while the guilty goods are still on board; to seize the proceeds after the cargo has been sold and landed is not allowable, though it has sometimes been done. If the ship belongs to the same owner as the forfeited goods, it, too, is confiscated; otherwise it goes free after the goods are taken off. It is very important to know just what articles are contraband and what are not; but this is often hard to decide. There is no question about weapons, military equipments and ammunition. These are plainly contraband, and the materials from which they are made are classed with them whenever they seem intended for military uses. Thus sulphur and saltpeter are always contraband. The detached parts of cannon and naval engines do escape by the trick of separation. Cloth is not contraband in itself, but if of a quality evidently designed for the manufacture of uniform it would probably be seized. Horses are so useful in war that most nations treat them as contraband--though, oddly enough, Russia has never done so. Still more objectionable, nowadays, is coal, which will never be allowed to reach the bunkers of hostile warships if it can be prevented. This shows plainly how uncertain and changeful is the list, for fifty years ago coal was as free as provisions, though even food must not be run through the lines of a blockade. Articles, such as coal, which are of great value in war, but are also largely used for peaceful purposes, are called "occasional contraband" and their seizure has given rise to endless disputes. There is no justice in treating them as contraband except when they are obviously destined for hostile use. Sometimes, in doubtful cases, such goods, instead of being confiscated, are seized and paid for to prevent their reaching the enemy. This is called "pre-emption;" but, fair as it seems, there is much danger that it will be made a pretext for appropriating goods which ought to go quite free, and the practice is generally condemned. Search at sea is extremely annoying, and ships entirely innocent of contraband are often subjected to great inconvenience. That must be endured; to attempt to resist or escape would make them liable to confiscation, whatever their cargo might prove to be. Only properly commissioned vessels, however, are entitled to hold up merchantmen for this purpose. Another kind of meddling in war for which a neutral citizen may be punished by confiscation, but for which his government is not held responsible, is blockade running. A blockade, such as we maintained around Cuba, is established by stationing war vessels at the entrances of harbors and at intervals along the blockaded coast. Its purpose is to cut off supplies and stop all communication with the enemy by sea. The merchant ships of all nations are therefore forbidden to pass or even to approach the line, and the penalty for disobedience is the confiscation of both ship and cargo--whether the latter is contraband or not here makes no difference. If the ship does not stop when hailed she may be fired upon, and if she is sunk while endeavoring to escape it is her own fault. And unlike vessels merely guilty of carrying contraband, she is no less liable to seizure on her return voyage, after her cargo has been disposed of. Altogether, blockade running is perilous business. It is usually attempted under cover of night or stormy weather, and it is as full of excitement and adventure as war itself. The motive is usually either to take advantage of famine prices, or to aid the enemy by bringing supplies or carrying dispatches. Neutral ships, however, are entitled to some sort of warning that a blockade exists. Notice is therefore sent to all neutral governments, announcing the fact and stating exactly the extent of coast covered. Besides this, until the blockade has lasted for some time and thus has become generally known it is customary for the officers of the blockading fleet to visit and warn every ship that approaches, the warning, with the date, being entered upon her register. If, after that, she approaches the forbidden coast, she is liable to confiscation--though possibly great stress of weather might excuse her provided she landed no cargo. Instructions of this sort were issued by President McKinley to our squadron blockading Cuba. A reasonable time, also, was granted to ships that were lying in the blockaded ports at the time when the blockade was declared, to make their escape. President McKinley allowed thirty days for this purpose, which was unusually liberal. Nations engaged in war have sometimes assumed that they could establish a blockade by simply issuing a proclamation forbidding neutrals to approach the enemy's coast, without stationing ships to enforce it. For example, during the Napoleonic wars, France declared the whole coast of England to be blockaded at a time when she scarcely dared send out a ship from her ports, having been soundly thrashed at Trafalgar. But these "paper blockades" are a mere waste of time and ink. They are not valid, and except in the way of angry and contemptuous protest, no nation would consider them worthy of the slightest attention. If Spain, for instance, should attempt a desperate game of bluff by declaring New Orleans, New York and Boston under blockade, all neutral ships would come and go just the same, and she would meddle with them at her peril. This question--if it ever was a question--was finally decided by the epoch-making convention of the powers at the close of the Crimean war (treaty of Paris, 1856), which, along with other rules that have revolutionized naval warfare, declared that "blockades in order to be binding must be effective." This means that they must be maintained by a force actually stationed on the blockaded coast, strong enough to make it decidedly dangerous to attempt to run through. The temporary absence of some of the ships, however, either in pursuit of an enemy or on account of a violent storm, would not invalidate the blockade, and ships seeking to take advantage of such an opening would be liable to the full penalty if caught. And now a few words about "prizes"--a particularly interesting and timely theme, for during the very first week of the war our fleet captured no fewer than fifteen of them. In time of war properly commissioned ships are entitled to capture not only the armed vessels but also the helpless merchantmen of the enemy. It does seem a good deal like piracy, but it has been the universal practice from time immemorial. These captured vessels are taken to some convenient port of the captor's own country that the courts may pass judgment on them, and if there has been no mistake made in the seizure they are forthwith condemned as "lawful prize." Then they are sold, and "prize money" is awarded the captors in proportion to the value of the prize. The cargo is treated in the same way, unless it happens to belong to a neutral, in which case it is free; though the owner must put up with the inconvenience and delay resulting from the seizure, since he deliberately took that risk when he placed his goods in a hostile craft. Formerly his property was sometimes confiscated under these circumstances, but the treaty of Paris, already mentioned, put a stop to that. Formerly, too, the goods of enemies could be taken from neutral ships and confiscated in the same manner as contraband of war, but the treaty of Paris made an end of that also. Another excellent rule adopted on that notable occasion abolished privateering. Privateers were armed ships belonging to private citizens who had obtained from their own government a commission (letter of marque) which authorized them to make prize of the enemy's merchant vessels and appropriate the proceeds. The abolition of privateering was a long step in the right direction, for the privateer's motive was mainly plunder, and the whole business was really close kin to piracy. Neither the United States nor Spain signed the original agreement, but both have acceded to it now--Spain, evidently, very much against her will, for her citizens thirsted for the rich booty of our commerce, a fact which makes supremely ridiculous her crazy ravings against our legitimate captures as "American piracy." DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZE MONEY. The prize money adjudged to captors is distributed in the following proportions: 1. The commander of a fleet or squadron, one-twentieth part of all prize money awarded to any vessel or vessels under his immediate command. 2. To the commander of a division of a fleet or squadron, a sum equal to one-fiftieth of any prize money awarded to a vessel of the division under his command, to be paid from the moiety due the United States, if there be such moiety; if not, from the amount awarded the captors. 3. To the fleet captain, one-hundredth part of all prize money awarded to any vessel of the fleet in which he is serving, in which case he shall share in proportion to his pay, with the other officers and men on board such vessel. 4. To the commander of a single vessel, one-tenth of all the prize money awarded to the vessel. 5. After the foregoing deductions, the residue is distributed among the others doing duty on board, and borne upon the books of the ship, in proportion to their respective rates of pay. All vessels of the navy within signal distance of the vessel making the capture, and in such condition as to be able to render effective aid if required, will share in the prize. Any person temporarily absent from his vessel may share in the captures made during his absence. The prize court determines what vessels shall share in a prize, and also whether a prize was superior or inferior to the vessel or vessels making the capture. The share of prize money awarded to the United States is set apart forever as a fund for the payment of pensions to naval officers, seamen and marines entitled to pensions. CHAPTER XLV. SPANISH DISSENSIONS AT HOME. Spain Threatened with Interior Difficulties--Danger that the Crown Might Be Lost to the Baby King of Spain--Don Carlos and the Carlists Are Active--Castelar Is Asked to Establish a Republic-- General Weyler as a Possible Dictator--History of the Carlist Movement and Sketch of "the Pretender." While these events were in progress in the international relations of the United States and Spain, with a threat of a hopeless war hanging over the latter, the embarrassments of the government of the peninsular kingdom as to the conflict of its own affairs at home multiplied daily. Altogether aside from the prospective operations of the war itself the Queen Regent and her Ministry had more than one local difficulty to face. It was frankly recognized in their inner councils that a succession of Spanish defeats, in all probability, would lose the throne to the dynasty and that the boy king would never wear the crown of his father. A second threat of danger was that in the midst of difficulties abroad there would be an uprising of the adherents of Don Carlos "The Pretender," who would take advantage of the situation to start a civil war and seize the authority. In addition to all this, the republicans of Spain, growing more restless under the misgovernment they saw, united in an address to Castelar, who was formerly the president of the Spanish republic, urging that he declare the republic again established and promising to support him in such a movement. The names of 20,000 of the best citizens of Spain were signed to this request, and it was an element of danger to the monarchy that was well recognized. Finally, the partisans of General Weyler, who comprised a large element of the proudest and most influential people of Spain, showed distinct signs of a desire to establish a dictatorship with that ferocious general as the supreme authority. He had been recalled from Cuba as a rebuke and in order to alter the policies which he had established there. His friends were ready to resent the rebuke and offer him higher place than he had had before. DON CARLOS AND THE CARLISTS. Spain has been the scene of many revolutions, a fact easily understood when the character of the government is known. Dishonesty and oppression in an administration always breed the spirit of rebellion. Don Carlos, who regards Alfonso as a usurper, and believes himself the true King of Spain, issued, April 13, from his retreat in Switzerland, a manifesto to his supporters. In this he arraigned the government, sought to inflame the excited Spanish populace against the Queen Regent, her son and her ministers, and declared that they had permitted the Spanish standard to be dragged in the mud. He said in part: Twenty years of patriotic retirement have proved that I am neither ambitious nor a conspirator. The greater and better part of my life as a man has been spent in the difficult task of restraining my natural impulses and those of my enthusiastic Carlists, whose eagerness I was the first to appreciate, but which nevertheless I curbed, although it rent my heart to do so. To-day national honor speaks louder than anything, and the same patriotic duty which formerly bade me say "Wait yet a while," may lead me to cry, commanding the Carlists, "Forward," and not only the Carlists, but all Spaniards, especially to the two national forces which still bravely withstand the enervating femininities of the regency, the people and the army. If the glove which Washington has flung in the face of Spain is picked up by Madrid I will continue the same example of abnegation as before, wretched in that I cannot partake in the struggle other than by prayers and by the influence of my name. I will applaud from my soul those who have the good fortune to face the fire, and I shall consider those Carlists as serving my cause who embark in war against the United States. But if everything leads me to fear that the policy of humiliation will again prevail, we will snatch the reins of government from those who are unworthy to hold them and we will occupy their places. While their leader was talking in this strain, his supporters were preparing to act. They believed that the conditions for a revolution were more favorable than they had been for years, that the present dynasty was doomed, and that Spain would be forced to choose between republicanism and Don Carlos. The only chance, they said for the retention of the present dynasty, would be for Spain to defeat the United States, and they were not so blind as to believe that such would be the outcome of a war between the two powers. READY FOR ACTION. Don Carlos himself believed that the time had come to act. He journeyed to Ostend, where he consulted with Lord Ashburnham and other Catholic Englishmen who were his supporters, and mapped out a plan of campaign. He stood ready at any convenient moment to cross the frontier and place himself at the head of his supporters. Never since there was a pretender to the throne of Spain, and Don Carlos is the third of the name, had the outlook been so favorable for the fall of the constitutional monarchy. Discontent has been widespread in Spain and it has been fomented by the Carlists, with a splendid organization, with more than 2,000 clubs scattered in various parts of the kingdom. Causes for discontent have not been lacking, and the Cuban and Philippine revolts, together with the threatened trouble with the United States, were not the only reasons for popular dissatisfaction. Spain was bankrupt and found it difficult to borrow money from the money lenders of London and Paris. With the increased expenses due to the revolution there had been a decrease in receipts for the same cause--the usual revenues from Havana being lacking. The people were poor and thousands of them starving. Additional taxation was out of the question, for the people were taxed to the limit. These were the causes to which the strength of the Carlist agitation was due. And that it was strong there can be no doubt. The birthday of Don Carlos, March 30, was celebrated this year with an enthusiasm and unprecedented degree of unanimity throughout the kingdom, and the government did not feel itself strong enough to interfere with them. TOASTED AS KING. There were hundreds of fetes in cities, towns and villages, and many of them were held in the open air, where the pretender was toasted as "El Key" or "the king," and Alfonso was ignored. This inaction could be due only to the fact that the government was powerless. To say that they did not fear Don Carlos would be ridiculous, as the latest manifesto of Don Carlos was suppressed, and the government was really in fear and trembling. A more plausible reason would be that the ministry wished to be in the good graces of Don Carlos should he win, and they were not ready to trust themselves to absolute loyalty to the present dynasty. Meanwhile, as this chapter is written, reports from Spain tell of unprecedented Carlist activity. They are arming themselves. Arms are pouring across the frontier in such quantities as to show that the Carlists are preparing for an early rising, and all of the actions and utterances of the leader show that they are only waiting for a favorable opportunity to begin the revolution. Strong proof of this is to be found in the fact that since Don Carlos secured his second wife's vast fortune he has been penurious, and it is not believed that he would spend money in arms unless he believed the expenditure would bring about some practical advantage to his cause. His agents have been working among the army officers, and it is said that they have secured many recruits for their cause. The throne of Spain, like the throne of Russia, during the last century, or that of Borne in the days of the empire, rests largely upon the army, and if the army, discontented and dissatisfied as it certainly is, were to revolt, Don Carlos' success would be almost certain. Ever since his marriage in 1894 with the Princess de Rohan, who brought him a large fortune, Don Carlos has been watching a favorable opportunity for a coup. There cannot be a better one than that which will be offered when Spain is defeated by the United States, and it would not be surprising to see Don Carlos unfurl his banner to the breeze and call for troops to rally to his standard. Those who are supporters of the pretensions of Don Carlos believe they have right on their side. His supporters love him with the loyalty of the legitimists to the house of Stuart during the period before the restoration in England. His personality is attractive. He has all the elements of personal popularity with the masses. He is brave and dashing. He does not sit and weep over the fallen glories of his race, but he is always ready for action. He is ready at any moment to lead an army in a forlorn cause and will fight, for what he believes to be his rights. FLOWER OF SPAIN. The position occupied in Spanish affairs by Don Carlos is similar to that occupied by Prince Charles Edward toward the throne of Great Britain during the last century. His family has been dispossessed for about the same length of time and he has made a fight just as romantic, but with more brilliant prospects, and at the head of the heroic highlanders, dwellers in the Basque mountains. His followers are the flower of Spain, the most aristocratic families in the kingdom, willing to risk all in his support, setting property and life itself as worth naught compared with their honor. There have been three Carlist pretenders to the throne of Spain. The first was Carlos V., born in 1788. He laid claim to the throne on the death of his brother, Ferdinand VII., in 1833. Ferdinand had had a stormy reign, torn by dissensions between the court and the popular party. Napoleon compelled him to resign in favor of Joseph Bonaparte, but he returned to the throne of his ancestors upon the fall of Bonaparte. During twenty-eight years he married five wives in succession. By four of these he had no children, but a daughter was born to the last, who had been Princess of Naples. She secured an absolute mastery of the king, who was an imbecile unfitted to reign. The heir apparent to the throne was the grandfather of the present Don Carlos, Carlos V., the brother of Ferdinand. Between Carlos and his brother there had been a long enmity. Christina used her influence with her husband to persuade him to disinherit his brother. By the Salic law females were excluded from inheriting the throne of France. But through the influence of Ferdinand and his spouse the cortes was persuaded to repeal the law, the more willingly since Carlos was in favor of absolutism, while with a woman as ruler the chances would be better for the perpetuation of constitutionalism. The Carlists claim that during the last days Ferdinand repented his act and issued documents which would have established Carlos' right to the succession, but that these were suppressed. However that may be, upon the death of Ferdinand his baby daughter was declared Queen of Spain, with her mother as regent. For five years there was civil war. The youth and weakness of the baby queen proved her strength. The liberals believed that with her as the nominal ruler the continuance of the constitutional monarchy would be assured. For the same reasons France and England supported Isabella. These were odds against which Carlos could not effectually fight, and in 1869 he retreated from Spain, and the historians treat the succession as settled in favor of the young girl, who even at that time was not in her teens. QUEEN ISABELLA'S REIGN. Isabella II., or rather her mother, for the latter was the real ruler, did not rule with prudence. Scandals disgraced the reign, and led to the regent's removal from the regency. Queen Isabella's ill-fated marriage and other intrigues led to domestic disturbances which kept alive the pretensions of the Carlists. Upon the death of the first pretender, in 1853, a second arose in the person of his son, Don Carlos, Count de Montemolim. He attempted to cause a revolution in 1860, but was arrested with his brother, and they were not liberated until they had signed a renunciation of their claims to the throne. The second pretender died in 1861, and then the present Don Carlos arose. He was the son of Don Juan, and a brother of the two who had renounced their claims to the Spanish throne, and he claimed that their renunciation could not be binding on him. This was the Don Carlos who is now the leader of the legitimists, and he has never renounced his claim to the throne of his ancestors. His name in full is Don Carlos de los Dolores Juan Isidore Josef Francisco Quirino Antonio Miguel Gabriel Rafael. He was born in the little village of Laibach in the Austrian Alps, while his parents were on a journey through the country, and from his infancy his career has been surrounded with a romance which has endeared him to the hearts of his followers. His father, Don Juan, was an exile from Spain and a royal wanderer seeking a place where he could end his life in peace. He and his wife were befriended by the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, who placed the young Don Carlos under the care of a Spanish priest, who educated him for the priesthood. Even in his infancy he cared nothing to become a priest in spite of his devout devotion to the Roman Catholic faith, but dreamed of the day when he would rule as King of Spain. Don Carlos was only seventeen years of age when he met and fell in love with Margaret, the daughter of the Duke of Parma. She was only fourteen, and the mother of the young prince persuaded them to postpone the marriage for three years. With his wife the pretender received a large fortune and he has been able to maintain a court in the semblance of royalty for several years. Thirty years ago Carlos might have been king. The crown was then offered him by Prim and Sagasta, who journeyed to London for the purpose. They said it should be his if he would support the liberal constitution proposed for the country and would favor the separation of church and state. It was the latter idea that led to his rejection of the proffered honor. His strict Roman Catholic training made him refuse, for religion was more to him than anything else. CARLOS' SCORNFUL REFUSAL. "When I come to my throne," he declared, "I shall rule my land as I see fit." These were the words with which he scornfully spurned their offer. The republicans never forgave him, and later when, after the dethronement of Isabella, his name was again proposed in the cortes by his supporters, Prim and Sagasta were his most bitter enemies. On Don Carlos' behalf, insurrections--speedily repressed--took place in 1869 and 1872. But the insurrection headed by him in person in 1873 proved much more formidable and kept the Basque provinces in a great confusion till the beginning of 1876, when it was crushed. Before the commencement of the war of 1872-76, Don Carlos defined clearly his position and views in various manifestos addressed to the people of Spain. He declared that with him the revolutionary doctrine should have no place. What Spain wanted, said Don Carlos, was that no outrage should be offered to the faith of her fathers, for in Catholicity reposed the truth, as she understood it, the symbol of all her glories, the spirit of all her laws and the bond of concord between all good Spaniards. What Spain wanted was a real king and a government worthy and energetic, strong and respected. The opportunity for Don Carlos was found in the troublous times that led to and followed the abdication of Amadeo I., Duke of Aosta, who had been elected by the cortes. The four years' war commenced in spring, 1872, and a year later Amadeo abdicated in a message saying that he saw Spain in a continual struggle, and the era, of peace more distant; he sought remedies within the law, but did not find them; his efforts were sterile. Thereupon the two chambers combined as the sovereign power of Spain and voted for a republic. The two years of the republic were the stormiest in Spanish history, and it was then that the Carlists made the greatest progress. They numbered probably one-third of the people of Spain. A republic was not suited to the disposition of the Spaniards, and Castelar, who had the helm of the ship of state, gave up his task in disgust. Then Alfonso XII., son of the exiled Isabella, was proclaimed heir to the throne. Alfonso XIII., is his son. Alfonso XII.'s first task was to suppress the Carlists, and in this he succeeded. The people were tired of the continual strife. Royalists and republicans alike welcomed the new monarch. The number of his followers gradually dwindling and finding that continued resistance would be unavailable, Don Carlos was finally convinced that it would be useless to continue the struggle. So early in 1876 his army disbanded. Accompanied by his bodyguard he crossed the Pyrenees. As he stepped his foot on French soil he turned as if to bid farewell to Spain, but his last words, energetically pronounced, were: "Volvere, volvere! I will return, I will return!" And it is the belief of his followers that his time is near at hand. HIS LOYAL FOLLOWERS. No man has more devoted followers. The army that fought for him during the Carlist revolution was one of the most heroic that has ever been gathered together. To his standard came young men of good family from every nation. He was regarded as the representative of the old regime of monarchists, and in his ranks were those who hoped for the re-establishment of the now obsolete divine right of kings. He was the head of the house of Bourbon in all Europe. Except for the existence of Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand of Modena, married the Prince Louis of Bavaria, Don Carlos would be the legitimate representative of the royal house of Stuart, and, barring the English act of settlement, King of Great Britain and Ireland. This fact may have had something to do with the cold shoulder that was turned to him by all of the powers of Europe. Don Carlos was regarded as the representative of the half-dozen pretenders to the throne who live in exile amid little courts of their own and build air castles peopled with things they will do when they mount the thrones of which they believe themselves to have been defrauded. The Carlists believe that with the support of one of the great governments they would have won. But they could obtain no recognition even of their belligerency, and that was in spite of the fact that, as early as 1873, the president of the Spanish Republic has declared in the cortes: "We have a real civil war. ... It has a real administrative organization and collects taxes. You have presented to you one state in front of another. It is in fact a great war." Yet in spite of this declaration and in spite of the fact that the five successive heads of the Madrid government recognized the belligerency of the Carlists by conventions; that treaties were made for the running of railroads and for other purposes, and that the Carlists, had a mint, postoffice and all of the equipments of a regular government, recognition was withheld by the powers. Everything depended upon England, and General Kirkpatrick, a brigadier general in the civil war, who represented the Carlists as charge d'affaires at London, was unable to secure that boon from Gladstone, and none of the continental powers would act until England had led the way. After his retirement from Spain, when the war had exhausted his resources, Don Carlos lived humbly and quietly at Paris. He had ceased to love his wife and they led a miserable domestic life. He would sell his war horse and fling the money to her on the bare table, telling her to buy bread with it. Then his friends would buy the horse back again. Once he disposed of the badge of the Order of Golden Fleece that had decorated the son of his illustrious ancestor, Charles V. The discreditable part of this action was not so much in the actual act of pawning as that he put the blame for it on an old general who had served him with fidelity for twenty years. He claimed that the general had stolen it, imagining that the old soldier's devotion to his interests would induce him to remain silent. But the general at once told all of the facts in the case, and also told how Don Carlos had used the money to satisfy the demands of a notorious demi-mondaine. His financial difficulties came to an end with the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Chambord, who bequeathed the larger part of their immense wealth to their favorite niece, wife of Don Carlos. The duchess kept the money in her own hands, but gave him all he needed. At her death she was quite as provident, leaving the money in trust for her children and giving only a small allowance to her husband, from whom she had lived apart for fifteen years. MARRIED A FORTUNE. This threw the pretender again into financial straits, for he has expensive tastes which require a large fortune to support. So he looked around for a bride. His followers were startled to hear of his marriage to the wealthy Princess Marie Berthe de Rohan. The marriage took place April 29, 1894, and, although she was handsome and exceedingly rich and a member of the illustrious Rohan family, which alone of all the noble families of France and Austria has the privilege of calling the monarch cousin--it was regarded as a mesalliance by all of the Carlists in Spain and legitimists everywhere. They believed that Don Carlos should have not married any but the scion of a royal house. By his first marriage Don Carlos had five children, among them Don Jaime, now in his twenty-eighth year, who is regarded as heir to the throne by the Carlists. Don Jaime is said to possess to a high degree the strength of will and the determined character of his father. He was educated in England and Austria, and is now serving in the Russian army. Military science is his hobby, and he will be able to fight for his throne, as his father has done, if it becomes necessary. Don Carlos is now in Switzerland, that home of the exiled from other lands, and where he spends his summers. His winter residence is at the Palais de Loredane in Venice. At the present date the Carlist party is one of the strongest political parties in Spain. This does not appear in the representation in the Spanish cortes, for under the present system the right to exercise the franchise freely is a farce. There is no doubt that Don Carlos' popularity is greater than that of the little king. The queen is regarded as a foreigner and the king is too young to awaken any admiration in spite of the fact that every opportunity is taken to make him do so. To popularize the little king the queen regent promenades the poor child through the provinces. He makes childish speeches to the populace, touches the flags of the volunteers and in every way seeks to revive the enthusiasm for the house of Austria. But without avail. The wretched peasants, ground down by taxes, find little to stir them in the sight. On the contrary, Don Carlos is a great military hero, whose actions have stirred the people to admiration in spite of his many bad qualities. That the present dynasty will endure when all of the evils from which Spain suffers are considered, seems hard to believe. Unless a miracle happens or the powers bolster up the throne of the little king, the people are likely to turn to Don Carlos for relief. There are those who believe that republicanism is also rampant and that the Carlist agitation masks republican doctrines, and that Weyler will be dictator. This may be. But Don Carlos seems nearer the throne than he has been at any time during his career. CHAPTER XLVI. THE PHILIPPINES, PUERTO RICO, AND OTHER COLONIES OF SPAIN. The Philippines Another Example of the Shocking Misgovernment of Spain's Outlying Possessions--Interesting Facts About the Philippines--Spanish Oppression and Cruelty--Manila, the Capital of the Islands--Manufactures and Trade of the Eastern Archipelago--Puerto Rico and Its History--The Products and People --Spirit of Insurrection Rife--The Colonies Off the Coast of Africa Where Spain Exiles Political and Other Offenders--The Canaries, Fernando Po and Ceuta. From the very beginning of our war with Spain the peninsular kingdom had reason to fear that the loss of Cuba would be but one of the disasters to befall it in the war with the United States. It was recognized in all quarters that the Queen Regent would have been willing to let the Cuban insurrectionists have their island without further protest, had it not been for the fact that giving up probably would have incited an insurrection at home, resulting in a loss of the crown to her son before he should have a chance to wear it. It was quite well understood as a like probability that the Philippine islands, that splendid colony of Spain in the East Indies, would be lost to Spanish control at the same time, and that the island of Puerto Rico, the last remnant of Spain's great colonial possessions in the Western hemisphere, after Cuba's loss, would gain its freedom too. The Queen Regent having spurned the only course in Cuban affairs which the United States would permit, with American war-ships threatening Manila, it became immediately apparent that the other horn of the dilemma which had been chosen was as fatal to Spanish sovereignty as the first would have been. Even Cuba, with all its abominations, scarcely afforded so remarkable a picture of Spanish oppression, miscalled government, as may be seen in the Philippines. It is only the remoteness and isolation of these unhappy islands that has prevented the atrocities there perpetrated from arousing the indignation of the whole world. Readers are familiar enough with the shocking barbarities practiced in times of disorder by the Spanish authorities, and they do not need to be multiplied here, but in the Philippines is demonstrated the utter incapacity of the Spanish for the exercise of civilized government over a dependent province even in times of so-called peace. The Philippines are extremely interesting in themselves, but are seldom visited by tourists, partly in consequence of their lying out of the ordinary lines of travel and partly because of the policy of Chinese seclusion cultivated by the government. The climate, too, is unhealthy, even beyond what is usual in the tropics, and the unsettled state of the country, swarming with exasperated savages and bandits of the worst description, makes excursions beyond the limits of the principal cities very perilous. About 600 islands are included in the group, and the total area is considerable--some 150,000 square miles, three or four times that of Cuba, Exact data, however, are difficult to obtain. There are a multitude of insignificant islets hardly known except upon the charts of navigators; but Luzon almost equals Cuba in extent. Altogether the islands probably contain less than 8,000,000 souls; so that Spanish cruelty finds plenty of raw material to work upon. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POPULATION. And most of it is raw to the last degree--a medley of diverse and hostile races, ranging from the puny and dying remnant of the Negritos, who live like wild beasts in the highlands, subsisting upon the roots which they claw out of the ground, to the fierce and unsubdued Mohammedan tribes that still keep up the bloody war of creeds which raged in Spain itself for so many centuries. These latter are chiefly of Malay origin and many of them are professional head-hunters, well qualified to retort Spanish outrages in kind. There are also Chinese in large numbers and half-castes of all varieties. The proportion of Europeans is small, even in the cities. The resident Spaniards are all soldiers or officials of some sort and are there simply for what they can make by extortion and corrupt practices. The Philippine islands were discovered in 1521 by Magellan, the circumnavigator, and were conquered by Spain and made a colony in the reign of Philip II., for whom they were named, half a century later. Spanish sway never has extended over more than half of the 1,400 islands of the archipelago, the others remaining under their native wild tribes and Mohammedan rulers. The conjectural area is about 120,000 square miles, and the estimated population about 7,500,000. About half this area and three-quarters of this population are nominally under Spanish rule, but the insurrection has left things in a good deal of doubt. The remainder of the people are governed according to their own customs, by independent native princes. Education is exceedingly backward. The Roman Catholic clergy have been industrious, and probably 2,500,000 natives are nominal converts to the Christian religion; but education has advanced very little among them. There is a Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila, besides three bishops. The history of the Philippines has included a succession of revolutions against Spanish authority, put down by ferocious warfare and cruelty on the part of the victors. The conversion and subjugation of the islands were not accompanied by quite the horrors that characterized the Spanish conquest of South America, but the record is second only to that. Manila was captured by the English in 1762 and was held by them for two years until ransomed by the Spanish by a payment of 1,000,000 pounds. Contests with rebellious tribes, attacks by pirates, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tornadoes help to break the monotony of the history. MANILA, THE CAPITAL OF THE COLONY. Manila, the capital city of the colony and of Luzon, the largest island, lies 628 miles, or sixty hours' easy steaming, southeast of Hongkong, and twice that distance northeast of Singapore. The population of the city is about 330,000, of whom only 10,000-- including troops, government officials and clergy--are Europeans, and not more than 500 are English-speaking people. A few American houses have branches in Manila, so that there is an American population of perhaps 100. The city faces a fine bay, into which flows the River Pasig. Most of the Europeans live in Binondo, a beautiful suburb on higher ground, across the river. There are many native dialects, but the social, official and business idiom is Spanish. The army of Spanish civil, religious, military and naval officials is a leech on the people in the same fashion as it was in Cuba. All the places of profit are monopolized by them, appointments to choice offices in the Philippines being given to those whom it is desired to reward for service to the government in Spain. It is quite well understood that such an appointee is expected to gain a fortune as rapidly as he can, by any method possible, so that he may give way for some one else to be brought over from Spain for a similar reward. The policy is the same as the colonial policy of Spain in Cuba was, and the same results have followed. But, indeed, pillage of the wretched natives is the almost open aim of the government--the sole end for which it is organized and maintained; so why should petty officials be scrupulous? It is the old Roman provincial system, denounced by Cicero 2,000 years ago, but in Spain unforgotten and unimproved. What other use has she for dependencies, except as a source of revenue wrung by torture from the misery of slaves, and incidentally as a battening ground for her savage war dogs? Here the detestable Weyler is said to have accumulated a fortune of several millions of dollars in three years--more than twenty times the whole amount of his salary! The methods employed in this legalized system of robbery are medieval in character, but often highly ingenious. One of them is the "cedula personal," a sort of passport. Every person in the islands and over eighteen years of age and accessible to the authorities is required to take out one of these documents; even the women are not exempt. The cedula must be renewed annually and the cost is from $1.50 to $25, according to circumstances--the chief circumstances being the victim's ability to pay. This in a country where wages sometimes fall as low as five cents a day! And any one who holds a cedula costing less than $3 is further required to render the government fifteen days of unremunerated labor. INSTANCES OF PETTY EXTORTION. But the cedula is only one device out of many for extracting gold from the refractory ore of poverty. A hungry native cannot kill his own hog or buffalo for meat without a special permit--which, of course, must be paid for. He is not allowed to press out a pint of cocoanut oil from the fruit of his own orchard until he has obtained a license, and this also has its price. The orchard itself is taxed; everything is taxed in the Philippines. The resident Chinese are further subjected to a special tax-- whether for existing or for not being something else is not stated. They are not popular and are treated with the most shameless injustice. This the following incident will illustrate: Fires are very frequent in Manila and very destructive, most of the houses being of wood, while the poorer districts are a mere jumble of bamboo huts, thousands of which are sometimes consumed in a day without exciting much comment. A fire in the business portion, however, arouses more interest; it affords opportunities that are not to be neglected. On one such occasion, where the scene of conflagration was a quarter chiefly occupied by Chinese shops, the street was soon thronged with an eager mob. The poor Chinamen, acting much like crazed cattle, had fled into their upper chambers and locked the doors, apparently preferring death by fire to the treatment they were likely to receive outside. But there was no escape. The "rescuers"--Spanish soldiers--quickly broke in with axes and after emptying the money boxes, hurled the wretched Mongolians and all their goods into the street, to be dealt with at discretion. It was a mere pretext for robbery and outrage, as many of the shops were remote from the fire and in no danger. The next morning the middle of the street was piled high with soiled and broken goods; and any one who cared to bribe the sentries was allowed to carry away as much as he pleased. All day long the carts went to and fro, openly conveying away the plunder. The owners were not in evidence; what had become of them is not recorded. Such is the "fire department" in Manila. Taxes are imposed for "improvements," but no improvements are permitted even when backed by foreign capital. The roads remain impassable canals of mud, education is a farce, the introduction of machinery is frowned upon and progress is obstructed. The natural resources of the Philippines are very good, and under a civilized administration these islands would be rich and prosperous. But the mildew of Spanish misgovernment is upon everything and its perennial blight is far more disastrous than the worst outbreaks of savagery in time of war. His total inability to maintain an endurable government in time of peace is what marks the Spaniard as hopelessly unfit to rule. Manila has cable connection with the rest of the world, and regular lines of passenger steamers. The European colony has its daily papers, which are, however, under strict censorship, religious and military, and keeps up with the news and the fashions of the day. Until the insurrection of the last two years, the army, except two Spanish brigades of artillery and a corps of engineers, was composed of natives and consisted of seven regiments of infantry and one of cavalry. There was also a body of Spanish militia in Manila, a volunteer corps similar to the one which was always maintained in Havana under Spanish rule, which could be called out by the captain-general in the event of need. SPAIN'S FEEBLE CONTROL OF THE ISLANDS. When the latest insurrection began, Spain shipped to its far-off colony all the men who could be spared from service in Cuba, and after a few months of fighting it was announced that the rebellion was crushed. As a matter of fact, however, Spain has control of but a comparatively small part of the islands, and the natives elsewhere are as free from obligation to pay Spanish taxes as they were before the discovery. Trade restrictions have hampered the commercial progress of the colony, but in spite of that fact their trade with the outside world is a large one. For many years after the conquest but one vessel a year was permitted to ply between Manila and the Spanish-American port of Acapulco. Then the number was increased to five. Then a Spanish chartered company was given a monopoly of the trade of the islands. When that monopoly expired, other houses began business, until finally many large English and German firms shared the trade, while American houses and American ships were by no means at the foot of the list. The total volume of the exports and imports is about $75,000,000 annually. The manufactures of the Philippines consist chiefly of textile fabrics of pineapple fiber, silk and cotton; hats, mats, baskets, rope, furniture, pottery and musical instruments. Vegetable products of great value are indigo, cocoa, sugar, rice, bamboo, hemp and tobacco. Coffee, pepper and cassia grow wild in sufficient quantity and quality to provide a living for those who wish to take advantage of what nature has provided. Coal, gold, iron and copper are mined with profit. The soil is exceedingly fertile, and although the climate is tropical, with little change except between wet and dry seasons, it has not been difficult for Europeans to accustom themselves to it. The largest island is nearly 500 miles long and 125 miles wide, while others are more than half as large. It must be remembered that the interior of these great islands, and the whole of hundreds of the smaller ones, are unexplored and almost unvisited by travelers from civilized lands, as Spanish exploration has been of little practical value to the rest of the world or to science. PUERTO RICO. Puerto Rico, the smaller of the two islands which Spain held in the West Indies, was discovered by Columbus in 1493 and occupied by soldiers under Ponce de Leon early in the sixteenth century. It lies well outside the Caribbean sea, in the open Atlantic, and for this reason it is not at all affected climatically, as Cuba is, by proximity to the continent. Its climate is determined mostly by the ocean, whose breezes sweep constantly over the entire island, tempering deliciously the tropical heat, of the sun. The surface of the island is equally favorable to excellent climatic conditions. It has no mountains, but it has hills that extend from end to end of it and form a perfect watershed and afford drainage for plains and valleys. Thirteen hundred rivers, forty-seven of them navigable, drain 3,500 square miles of territory, a territory as large as the state of Delaware. All over its extent are, besides the principal range of hills that are by some called mountains, round-topped hills of finest soil, which are nearly every one cultivated. In summer the heat is not excessive in the valleys and in winter ice never forms oil the hills. It is a purely agricultural country and the great majority of the natives are farmers. In the population of 810,000 are 300,000 negroes, who are now free, and since their freedom have gone into the towns and cities and found work in the sugar mills and at similar employments. The native Puerto Ricans adhere to the soil. Their labors are not severe where the soil is loose and rich, as it is every where except near the seashore, and for reasons already stated the climate is very favorable to a comfortable existence. The only drawback perhaps to this comfort for dwellers on the island is lack of substantial bridges over the many streams and the absence of good roads. There are a number of extensive forests on the island, and while they resemble in their main outlines those of the other West India islands, certain varieties of trees and shrubs exist there that are not seen elsewhere. Baron Eggers, who in 1883 had a coffee farm of 2,000 acres just coming into bearing, found leisure from his other employments to explore some of the forests and--he being an authority on the subject--the facts he discovered and reported have been regarded of interest by travelers and students. He found palms and a strange variety of orchid, but the palms were not so lofty, nor the orchids so rich as they both are on the Caribbean islands. But he found trees of great beauty and great utility in manufactures that are not abundant on the other islands, if, indeed, they are ever found on any of them. The Baron describes with rapture the sabino, so called by the natives, but by him called the talauma; it is from fifteen to twenty feet high, with spreading branches, having large silvery leaves and bearing immense white, odorous flowers. The hietella is another tree that has remarkable leaves and yields beautiful crimson flowers. He describes still another tree, without naming it, as having orangelike foliage, large purple flowers, and as having in its neighborhood other trees, different from it, but resembling it and evidently allied to it. This tree, he says, is not found elsewhere. Still another tree, the ortegon, whose flowers are purple spikes a yard long, and whose wood is used for timber, is common on the high lands near the coast. And there are dye woods, mahogany and lignum vitae. Hence it is seen that the forests of Puerto Rico are generally beautiful, and strange in some of their features. The words Puerto Rico are, when translated, Rich Port, and they are very applicable to this snug spot in the Atlantic ocean, only a short distance off the United States coast. Every variety of soil is adapted to the growth of a particular kind of crop. The highest hills, as the lowest valleys, are cultivated with reference to what they will best produce. On the hills, rice; in the valleys, coffee, cotton and sugar cane; on the rising grounds between the valleys and hills, tobacco. Puerto Rico rice, unlike that of the Carolinas, grows on dry lands, even on the highest hills, without watering. It is the staple food of the laborers. The consular report to Washington for 1897 says the product of coffee that year was 26,655 tons; of sugar, 54,205 tons, and of tobacco, 1,039 tons. The number of bales of cotton is not given, but the consul expatiates on its fine quality. The richness of the sugar lands may be judged from this item in the report: "Three hogsheads of sugar is an average yield per acre, without using fertilizers of any kind." Puerto Rico is one of the finest grazing countries in the world. Its herds of cattle are immense, and from them are supplied cattle of a superior quality to the other West India islands. Great quantities of hides are shipped to various countries. Though richly agricultural as the island is, and entitled as it is to be regarded as exclusively agricultural, in past times considerable mining was done there, in gold, copper and salt. Indeed, copper is still mined to a small extent, and salt is still so plentiful that the government finds a profit in monopolizing the sale of it. Puerto Rico is only 100 miles in length and from fifty to sixty miles in breadth, and as square as a dry-goods box. East and west and north and south its coast lines run almost as regularly as if projected by compass. It is the delight of the sailorman, as its fertile soil is the joy of the agriculturist. The harbor of San Juan is the chief in Puerto Rico, and one of the best of its size in the Caribbean sea. It is safe and sheltered, large and land-locked, and though the entrance is somewhat "foul," ships drawing three fathoms can enter and find anchorage within, good holding ground being had at any depth up to six fathoms. The bay is broad as well as beautiful, and opens toward the north, so that a vessel laying her course from New York could, if there were no obstructions en route, sail directly into the harbor. The fortifications which surround the city of San Juan are, like the Spanish pedigrees, ancient, flamboyant, beautiful to look at, but as worthless withal. This city of about 25,000 inhabitants is completely inclosed within imposing walls of stone and hardened mortar from 50 to 100 feet in height. They have picturesque gates and drawbridges, portcullises and demilunes, quaint old sentry boxes projecting into the sea, frowning battlements, and all that; but most of their cannon date back from the last century. In ancient times the chief fort or castle was called the "morro," or Moorish tower, because it was generally round; and San Juan, like Havana, has its Morro as the most prominent point of its fortifications. It stands on a bluff jutting out from the city walls and has a lighthouse immediately in the rear of it. Against the seaward front of the massive walls the ocean pounds and thunders, but the landward harbor is quiet and safe for any craft. A broad parade ground is inclosed within the walls, westward from the citadel, and not far off is the oldest house in the city, no less a structure than the ancient castle of Ponce de Leon, one-time governor here and discoverer of Florida. His ashes are also kept here, in a leaden case, for Ponce the Lion-Hearted was a great man in his day and cleaned out the Indians of this island with a thoroughness that earned him an exceeding great reward. Just under the northern wall of the castle is the public cemetery, the gate to it overhung by an ornate sentry box, and the bones of evicted tenants of graves whose terms of rental have expired, are piled in the corners of the inclosure. The prevailing winds by day are from the sea landward; by night, from the inland mountains toward the coast. Far inland rises the conical summit of the great Luquillo, a mountain about 4,000 feet in height, and from whose sides descend streams that fertilize the island. It is about ninety miles from San Juan to Ponce, the southern port, by a fine road diagonally across the island. The Spaniards generally are poor road-builders, but in this island they have done better than in Cuba, and one may travel here with a fair amount of comfort to the mile. There are several lines of railroads building, a system being projected around the island 340 miles in length. The city of Ponce is the largest, with a population of about 38,000 and an export trade of vast extent. It is the chief sugar-shipping point, though it has no good harbor, and lies nearly three miles from the sea. It is a rather fine city, with a pretty plaza and a grand cathedral, and its houses, like those of San Juan, are all built of stone. Other harbors are: On the east coast, Fajardo and Humacao; on the north, besides San Juan, Arrecibo; on the west, Aguadilla and Mayaguez, at the former of which Columbus watered his caravels in 1493, and where the original spring still gushes forth. Going with Puerto Rico are two small islands called Culebra and Vieque, mainly inhabited by fishermen, but with fine forests of dye and cabinet woods to be exploited. The commerce of the island is mainly with the United States. We gained $1,000,000 a year in exports to this island for the last ten years, and nearly $3,000,000 in imports. With a staple government and under wise control, Puerto Rico will more nearly attain to its full productiveness. The annual sugar yield is estimated at near 70,000 tons; that of coffee, 17,000 tons; bananas, nearly 200,000,000; cocoanuts, 3,000,000, and tobacco, 7,000,000 pounds. Gold was originally abundant here, and copper, iron and lead have been found. With enterprise and protection to life and property they will be profitably exploited. COLONIAL POSSESSIONS OF SPAIN. The loss of Cuba and Puerto Rico did not leave Spain without colonial possessions, as the subjoined table will show: Area--English Possessions in Asia square miles. Population. Philippine Islands 114,326 7,000,000 Sulu Islands 950 73,000 Caroline Islands and Palaos 560 36,000 Marianne Islands 420 10,172 ------- --------- Total Asiatic possessions 116,256 7,121,172 Possessions in Africa Rio de Oro and Adrar 243,000 100,000 Ifni 27 6,000 Fernando Po, Annabon, Corsico, Elobey, San Juan 850 30,000 ------- ------- Total African possessions 243,877 136,000 The Sulu archipelago lies southwest of the Island of Mindanao, and directly south of Manila and the Mindora sea. The chief island gives its name to the group, which extends to the three-mile limit of Borneo. The area of the whole is estimated at 950 square miles; the population at 75,000 Melanesians. The Caroline and Marianne, or Ladrone Islands, are more numerous, but scarcely as important or as populous as the Sulu group. They belong to what is sometimes known as Micronesia, from the extreme diminutiveness of the land masses. The two groups are east and northeast of the Philippines, and in easy sailing reach from Manila. From east to west they are spread over 30-odd degrees of longitude, and from north to south over 20 degrees of latitude. The inhabited islands are of coral formation, generally not over ten or twelve feet above high water mark. They are, in fact, heaps of sand and seaweed blown over the coral reefs. Most of these islands are narrow bands of land from a few yards to a third of a mile across, with a lagoon partly or wholly inclosed by the reef. Cocoanuts and fish are the chief reliance of the natives, who are an inferior species, even for Polynesians. First and most attractive of the African dependencies, both by reason of natural resources and of their advantages as a naval base, are the Canaries, which are regarded as a part of the Spanish kingdom proper, so long and so secure has been the hold of Spain upon them. More extensive in area, if not more attractive for residence purposes, is the sandy, partially desert stretch bearing the names of Rio de Oro (River of Gold), and Adrar. The imaginary line familiar to schoolboys under the name of the Tropic of Cancer has an especial fondness for this region, passing near the north and south center. The district is close to the Canaries on its northern edge, and it is ruled by a sub-governor under the Governor of the Canaries. There are two small settlements on the coast The only glory Spain gets from this possession is that of seeing its color mark on the maps of Africa. Of the other African possessions enumerated some are hardly big enough to be seen on an ordinary map without the aid of a microscope. Corisco is a little stretch of coast around an inlet just south of Cape St. John, near the equator. Fernando Po Island will be found right in the inner crook of the big African elbow. Annabon Island is off Cape Lopez. Another possession or claim of the decadent peninsula monarchy remains to be catalogued--the country on the banks of the Muni and Campo rivers, 69,000 square miles, and containing a population of 500,000. The title to this section is also claimed by France. CHAPTER XLVII. PROGRESS OF HOSTILITIES. Eagerness to Fight--Matanzas Bombarded--Weyler's Brother-in-law a Prisoner of War--The Situation in Havana--Blanco Makes a Personal Appeal to Gomez--The Reply of a Patriot--"One Race, Mankind"--The Momentum of War--Our Position Among Nations. The striking peculiarity at the commencement of the war was the general eagerness to fight. There have been wars in which there was much maneuvering and blustering, but no coming to blows. There have been campaigns on sea and land in which commanders exhausted the devices of strategy to keep out of each other's way, but in this war the Americans strained strategy, evaded rules, and sought excuses to get at the Spaniards. Given a Spanish fortified town and an American fleet, and there was a bombardment on short notice. Given a Spanish fort and a Yankee gunboat, and there was a fight. There were no "all-quiet-on-the-Potomac" or "nothing-new-before-Paris" refrains. The Americans knew they were right, and they went ahead. MATANZAS BOMBARDED. The first actual bombardment of Cuban forts took place on April 27th at Matanzas, when three ships of Admiral Sampson's fleet, the flagship New York, the monitor Puritan, and the cruiser Cincinnati, opened fire upon the fortifications. The Spaniards had been actively at work on the fortifications at Punta Gorda, and it was the knowledge of this fact that led Admiral Sampson to shell the place, the purpose being to prevent their completion. A small battery on the eastern side of the bay opened fire on the New York, and the flagship quickly responded with her heavy guns. Probably twenty-five eight-inch shells were sent from the battery at our ships, but all of them fell short. A few blank shells were also fired from the incomplete battery. One or two of those whizzed over Admiral Sampson's flagship. After completing their work the ships put out to the open sea, the flagship returning to its post off Havana, while the Cincinnati and the Puritan remained on guard off Matanzas. While the flagship New York, her sister cruiser, the Cincinnati, and the monitor Puritan were locating the defenses of Matanzas harbor the batteries guarding the entrance opened fire on the New York. Their answer was a broadside from Admiral Sampson's flagship, the first fire being from the forward eight-inch gun on the port side. The monitor attacked the Point Maya fortification, the flagship went in close and shelled Rubalcaya Point, while the Cincinnati was soon at work shelling the fortification on the west side of the bay. In less than twenty minutes Admiral Sampson's warships had silenced the Spanish batteries. The explosive shells from the forts fell wide of the ships. The last one fired from the shore was from Point Rubalcaya. The monitor Puritan let go with a shot from one of her twelve-inch guns, and its effect was seen when a part of the fortification went into the air. The battery at Maya was the stronger of the two and its fire more constant, but all its shells failed to hit our ships. The target practice of the flagship was an inspiring sight. At every shot from her batteries, clouds of dust and big pieces of stone showed where the Spanish forts were suffering. The New York, after reducing the range from over six thousand to three thousand yards, fired shells at the rate of three a minute into the enemy's forts, each one creating havoc. The Puritan took equally good care of Point Maya. When she succeeded in getting the range, her gunners landed a shell inside the works at every shot. When permission was given to the Cincinnati to take part in the first battle between Yankee and Spanish forces, the cruiser came up to within 2,000 yards of the shore, and almost immediately her guns were at work. Cadet Boone on the flagship fired the first gun in answer to the Spanish batteries. The Spanish mail steamer Argonauta, Captain Lage, was convoyed into Key West harbor by the United States cruiser Marblehead on May 3. Colonel Vicente De Cortijo of the Third Spanish cavalry, who, with nineteen other army officers, was taken on the prize, is a brother-in-law of Lieutenant General Valeriano Weyler. Colonel De Cortijo and the other officers were transferred to the Guido and the privates to the Ambrosio Bolivar, two other trophies of the first week of the war. The Argonauta herself was no mean prize, being of 1,000 tons burden, but the value of the capture was mainly in the prisoners of war and the mail matter going to General Blanco. Her cargo was general merchandise, with a large quantity of ammunition and supplies for the Spanish troops in Cuba. THE SITUATION IN HAVANA. A correspondent wrote from Havana, on the 3d of May, as follows: "The dispatch boat succeeded again to-day in opening communication with Havana, and your correspondent brought away with him the morning papers of yesterday. "The City of Havana is a sad sight. There are still a few of the reconcentrados about the streets now, but starvation has ended the misery of most of them, and their bones have been thrown into the trenches outside of the city. "Starvation now faces the Spanish citizens themselves. Havana is a graveyard. Two-thirds of the inhabitants have fled. The other third is beginning to feel the pangs of hunger. "The prices rival those of Klondike. Beefsteak is $1 a pound. Chickens are $1 each. Flour is $50 a barrel. Everything is being confiscated for Blanco's army. Sleek, well-fed persons are daily threatened with death to make them divulge the whereabouts of their hidden stores of provisions. "Several provision stores in the side streets have been broken into and looted. General Blanco is being strongly urged to sink artesian wells to provide water in the event of a siege, as a joint attack by the Cuban and American forces would destroy the aqueduct. It is not thought that Blanco will attempt this, as he will not have sufficient time. "A bulletin posted on the wall of the palace this morning announced that the mail steamship Aviles from Nuevitasa and the Cosme Herra from Sagua arrived last night. It is also stated that the Spanish brig Vigilante arrived at Matanzas from Montevideo with food supplies for the government. "The palace of the Captain General is practically deserted since the blockade began. Blanco has personally taken command of Mariena battery, and is directing the erection of new sand batteries all along the water front west of the entrance to Havana Bay. Lieutenant General Perrado is making Guanabacoa his headquarters, and is planting new batteries and strengthening the fortifications as much as possible. Over 300 draymen are engaged in the hauling of sand from the mouth of Almandres for use in the construction of the earthworks along the coast, and in the city suburbs all draymen have been ordered to report for volunteer duty with their drays. The streets are riotous with half-drunken Spanish volunteers crying for American and Cuban blood. "At night the city is wrapped in darkness, all gas and electric lights being shut off by order of Blanco. Spanish soldiers are taking advantage of this to commit shocking outrages upon unprotected Cuban families. In spite of these direful circumstances Blanco has ordered the decoration of the city, hoping to incite the patriotism of the populace." BLANCO MAKES A PERSONAL APPEAL TO GOMEZ. On May 4 General Blanco made a supreme effort to win over the Cuban forces, writing a letter to General Gomez. A copy of this letter and the answer of General Gomez were found upon Commander Lima, who was picked up by the Tecumseh fifteen miles from Havana. The letter of General Blanco was as follows: General Maximo Gomez, Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Forces: Sir--It cannot be concealed from you that the Cuban problem has radically changed. We Spaniards and Cubans find ourselves facing a foreign people of different race, of a naturally absorbent tendency, and with intentions not only to deprive Spain of her flag over the Cuban soil, but also to exterminate the Cuban people, due to its having Spanish blood. The supreme moment has, therefore, arrived in which we should forget our past misunderstandings, and in which, united by the interests of our own defense, we, Spaniards and Cubans, must repel the invader. General, due to these reasons, I propose to make alliance of both armies in the City of Santa Clara. The Cubans will receive the arms of the Spanish army, and with the cry of "Viva Espana!" and "Viva Cuba!" we shall repel the invader and free from a foreign yoke the descendants of the same people. Your obedient servant, RAMON BLANCO. To this General Gomez replied as follows: Sir--I wonder how you dare to write me again about terms of peace when you know that Cubans and Spaniards can never be at peace on the soil of Cuba. You represent on this continent an old and discredited monarchy. We are fighting for an American principle, the same as that of Bolivar and Washington. You say we belong to the same race and invite me to fight against a foreign invader, but you are mistaken again, for there are no differences of races and blood. I only believe in one race, mankind, and for me there are but good and bad nations, Spain so far having been a bad one and the United States performing in these movements toward Cuba a duty of humanity and civilization. From the wild, tawny Indian to the refined, blond Englishman, a man for me is worthy of respect according to his honesty and feelings, no matter to what country or race he belongs or what religion he professes. So are nations for me, and up to the present I have had only reasons for admiring the United States. I have written to President McKinley and General Miles thanking them for American intervention in Cuba. I don't see the danger of our extermination by the United States, to which you refer in your letter. If it be so, history will judge. For the present I have to repeat that it is too late for any understanding between my army and yours. Your obedient servant, MAXIMO GOMEZ. ONE RACE--MANKIND. The reply of Gomez to Blanco will live in history. Blanco's strange appeal to the Cuban general was characteristic of a Spaniard. It would seem that an intelligent man would not have made such an appeal, well knowing that it would be useless. For three years Gomez had waged what to many seemed to be a hopeless fight. After these years of sacrifice he obtained the United States as an ally, an acquisition that assured him of final success. Under these circumstances Blanco, the representative of the forces against which Gomez had been contending, appealed to Gomez to join with him in an effort to repel the United States forces. Such an appeal under the circumstances, in view of the fact that Blanco was regarded as an intelligent man, showed the Spaniard to be incapable of appreciating the sentiments which prompted a people to maintain a struggle for liberty. General Blanco based his appeal upon the claim that the Cuban and the Spaniard belonged to the same race and worshiped at the same shrine. He sought to stir up within Gomez' breast racial and religious prejudices, and went so far as to suggest that in the event Gomez united his forces with those of Blanco, Spain would give liberty to Cuba, and would "open her arms to another new daughter of the nations of the new world who speak her language, profess her religion and feel in their veins the noble Spanish blood." Gomez' letter was interesting for several reasons. To those who had pictured him as a coarse, illiterate man this letter was a revelation. It was not, however, a surprise to those who had carefully studied Gomez' career and who understand that he was a scholarly man as well as a thorough soldier. "I only believe in one race, mankind," said Gomez, and that sentence will occupy a conspicuous place in the history of this continent. "From the wild, tawny Indian to the refined, blond Englishman," said Gomez, "a man for me is respectful according to his honesty and feelings, no matter to what country or race he belongs or what religion he professes. So are nations for me." Such excellent sentiments were doubtless wasted on the Spaniard, but men of all civilized nations, even we of the United States, may find great value in these splendid expressions by the Cuban general. The man who believes that there is but one race to whom we owe allegiance, that that race is mankind, and that to that race he owes all allegiance, must have his heart in the right place. The man who discards the consideration of accident of birth and, apart from patriotic affairs, applies the term "comrade" to all of God's creatures, that man has not studied in vain the purposes of creation. The man who forms his estimate of individuals according to the manhood displayed by the individual, banishing from his mind all racial and religious prejudices, must certainly have studied the lesson of life to good advantage. "I only believe in one race, mankind." That is a sentiment that the religious instructors and the sages have endeavored to impress upon us. But the combined efforts of all the instructors and all the sages in teaching of the brotherhood of man have not been so impressive as was the simple statement of this splendid patriot wherein he repelled the temptation to racial and religious prejudice. Mankind is the race, and the honest man's the man, no matter to what country he belongs or what religion he professes. That was a sentiment of Maximo Gomez, the Cuban patriot, the clean-cut American, a sentiment to which the intelligence of the world will subscribe and in the light of which prejudice must finally fade away. THE MOMENTUM OF WAR. As far as the American people were concerned, the destruction of the Maine was the beginning of hostilities. The Nation dropped, on the instant, the slow-going habits of peace, and caught step to the intense and swift impulse of war. Great events crowded one another to such an extent that we made more history in sixty days than in the preceding thirty years. The movement was not a wild drifting, but was as straight, swift, and resistless as that of a cannon ball. There was an object in view, and the government and the people went straight at it. When the Maine was destroyed our navy was scattered, our army was at thirty different posts in as many States, there were no volunteers in the field, no purpose of war in the minds of the people. The Spanish hold on Cuba seemed secure; no one thought of Spain's yielding Puerto Rico or the Philippine islands. The people could not be brought to serious consideration of the Cuban question, and they were indifferent to the fate of Hawaii. They held back when any one talked of our rights in the Pacific, and had little enthusiasm in the plans to strengthen our navy and our coast defenses. All these questions were urgent, but the people hesitated and Congress hesitated with them. The explosion that destroyed our battleship and slaughtered our seamen cut every rope that bound us to inaction. In a week the navy was massed for offensive movement. In three weeks $50,000,000 had been placed at the disposal of the President to forward the preparations for national defense. In a month new war vessels had been purchased, the old monitors had been repaired and put in commission, the American liners had been transferred to the navy. In two months war had been declared, the reorganized North Atlantic squadron had blockaded Cuban ports, and the regular army was moving hurriedly to rendezvous in the South. In another week 125,000 volunteers were crowding the State capitals. Under the momentum of war we swept forward in a few weeks to the most commanding position we had ever occupied among nations. Without bluster or boast we impressed the world with our strength, and made clear the righteousness of our cause. We proved that a republic wedded to peace can prepare quickly for war, and that a popular government is as quick and powerful as a monarchy to avenge insult or wrong. CHAPTER XLVIII. SEA FIGHT OFF MANILA, AMERICANS VICTORIOUS. The Eyes of the World Fixed on the First Great Naval Battle of Our War with Spain--Asiatic Waters the Scene of the Notable Conflict--Importance of the Battle in Its Possible Influence on the Construction of All the European Navies--Bravery of Admiral Dewey and the American Sailors of His Fleet--A Glorious Victory for the Star-Spangled Banner--Capture of Manila and Destruction of the Spanish Fleet. Seldom has the attention of all the world been so directed upon an expected event in a remote quarter of the globe, as during the few days at the end of April when the American fleet in Asiatic waters was steaming toward an attack on Manila, the capital of the Philippine islands. The eyes of every civilized country were strained to see what would be the result of the encounter which was certain to come. It was recognized frankly by the authorities on warfare everywhere, that the outcome of this first great naval battle would go far toward deciding the fortunes of the entire war. But the importance of the event from this point of view was less than that from another which interested the governments of all Europe. This first test of the modern fighting machine at sea was expected to furnish lessons by which the merits of such vessels could be definitely judged. It might be that they would prove far less efficient than had been calculated by the lords of the admiralty, and that the millions and millions invested in the fleets of Europe would be found virtually wasted. It was this, quite as much as its bearing on the war, that made universal attention direct itself upon the meeting of the squadrons in the Philippines. All America rejoiced at the news that came flashing over the cables on Sunday, May 1, when the first word of the battle reached the United States. Even Spanish phrases could not conceal the fact that the encounter had been a brilliant victory for the valor of American sailors, and the strength of American ships. A Spanish fleet of superior size virtually annihilated, a city in terror of capture, the insurgent armies at the gates of Manila, the losses of Spanish soldiers and sailors admittedly great, and finally the sullen roar of discontent that was rising against the government in Madrid--all these things indicated that the victory had been an overwhelming one for the Asiatic squadron under Admiral George Dewey. As the details of the engagement began to multiply, in spite of Spanish censorate over the cables, which garbled the facts as generously as possible in favor of the Spanish forces, the enthusiasm of the people throughout the cities and villages of America swelled in a rising tide of joy and gratitude for the victory that had been given to them. From Eastport to San Diego, and from Key West to Seattle, flags flashed forth and cheers of multitudes rose toward the sky. Around the newspaper bulletins, throngs gathered to read the first brief reports, and then scattered to spread the news among their own neighbors. Seldom has an event been known so widely throughout the country with as little delay as was this news of an American victory in the antipodes. There was a sense of elation and relief over the result, and an absolute assurance grew in every one's mind that no reverse to American arms could come in the threatened conflicts ashore or at sea. A NATION IN SUSPENSE. But after the first news of victory was received there came a period of delay. It was learned that the cable between Manila and Hongkong had been cut, and the only means of immediate communication was suspended. Then came fretful days of waiting and not a word further as to the great battle. To add to the anxiety, from time to time came ugly rumors about Admiral Dewey being trapped, and when all the circumstances of the case were considered it is not strange that something like a chill of apprehension began to be felt as to the fate of the American fleet and its gallant commander. Manila bay was known to be mined, and electric connections might again have been made. The guns of the forts on the land-locked bay might not have been silenced, and Spanish treachery and guile might have accomplished what in open battle Spain's fleet had been unable to do. But the morning of the 7th of May brought word from Hongkong that sent a thrill of patriotic pride through all America. Our Yankee tars had won the fight, and won it without the loss of a man. Even those who witnessed the overwhelming victory could scarcely understand how the ships and the men of Admiral Dewey's vessels came out of the battle unhurt and practically unmarked. Soon after midnight on Sunday morning, May 1, the American fleet, led by the flagship Olympia, the largest vessel among them, passed unnoticed the batteries which were attempting to guard the wide entrance to the harbor. Each vessel had orders to keep 400 yards behind the preceding one, and as there were nine vessels, including the two transports and colliers Nanshan and Zafiro, in the American fleet, the line was nearly a mile and three-quarters long, and at the rate of steaming it was perhaps three-quarters of an hour from the time the Olympia came within range of the shore batteries until the two transports were safely inside the harbor. The Olympia, Baltimore, Raleigh, Petrel and Concord passed in safety and the land batteries might never have suspected the presence of the fleet but for a peculiar accident on the McCulloch. The soot in the funnel caught fire. Flames spouted up from it, and the sparks fell all over the deck. The batteries must have been awake and watching. Five minutes later, or just at 11:50, signals were seen on the south shore, apparently on Limbones point. The flying sparks from this boat made her the only target in the American line. She continued to steam ahead, and at 12:15, May 1, just as she came between the fort at Restingo and the batteries on the island of Corregidor she was fired upon by the fort at the south. The Boston, just ahead, had her guns manned and ready, and she responded to the shore fire with great promptness, sending an eight-inch shell toward the curl of smoke seen rising from the battery. This was the first shot fired by the Americans. It was not possible to judge of its effect. There was another flash on shore and a shell went singing past, only a few yards ahead of her bow. If it had struck fairly it would have ripped up the unarmored cutter. This was the McCulloch's only chance to get into battle. She slowed down and stopped and sent a six-pound shot at the shore battery and followed immediately with another. The Spaniards answered, but this time the shot went wild. The McCulloch then sent a third shell, and almost immediately, the Boston repeated with one of her big guns. After that the shore battery ceased, and the last half of the fleet steamed into the bay without further interruption. At no time did the batteries on Corregidor fire. All the firing by the Spanish came from the south battery, which was much nearer. Five or six shells were fired by the Americans, and the Spanish shot three times, doing absolutely no damage. There were conflicting reports among the naval officers as to the firing at the entrance to the bay, but it is certain that the McCulloch fired three shots. During this firing, the chief engineer of the McCulloch died of nervous shock. WHEN SPANISH SHIPS WERE SIGHTED. After passing through the channel the American line moved very slowly. The men on the McCulloch were in a fighting fever after the brush at the entrance to the harbor, and were expecting every minute to hear cannonading from the heavy ships ahead. The fleet crept on and on, waiting under the cover of darkness, and not certain as to their location or at all sure that they would not run into a nest of mines at any moment. It was nearly 1 o'clock when they were safely in the bay. Between that hour and 4:30 the fleet, moving slowly in a northeasterly direction, headed for a point perhaps five miles to the north of Manila. After covering about seventeen miles, and with the first light of day, the Spanish ships were sighted off to the east under shelter of the strongly fortified naval station at Cavite. The batteries and the town of Cavite are about seven miles southwest of Manila, and are on an arm of land reaching northward to inclose a smaller harbor, known as Baker bay. From where the fleet first stopped, the shapes of the larger Spanish cruisers could be made out dimly, and also the irregular outlines of the shore batteries behind. It was evident, even to a landsman, that the Spanish fleet would not fight unless our vessels made the attack, coming within range of the Cavite batteries. The signaling from the flagship and the hurried movement on every deck showed that the fleet was about to attack. In the meantime the McCulloch received her orders. She was to lie well outside, that is, to the west of the fighting line, and protect the two cargo ships, Nanshan and Zafiro. The position assigned to her permitted the American fleet to carry on their fighting maneuvers and at the same time to keep between the Spanish fleet and the three American ships which were not qualified to go into the battle. GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S PROCLAMATION. Shortly before 5 o'clock Sunday morning and when every vessel in the fleet had reported itself in readiness to move on Cavite, the crews were drawn up and the remarkable proclamation issued by the governor-general of the Philippine islands, on April 23, was read to the men. Every American sailor went into battle determined to resent the insults contained in the message, which was as follows: Spaniards! Hostilities have broken out between Spain and the United States. The moment has arrived for us to prove to the world that we possess the spirit to conquer those who, pretending to be loyal friends, have taken advantage of our misfortune and abused our hospitalities, using means which civilized nations count unworthy and disreputable. The North American people, constituted of all the social excrescences, have exhausted our patience and provoked war with their perfidious machinations, with their acts of treachery, with their outrages against laws of nations and international conventions. The struggle will be short and decisive, the God of victories will give us one as brilliant and complete as the righteousness and justice of our cause demand. Spain, which counts on the sympathies of all the nations, will emerge triumphantly from the new test, humiliating and blasting the adventurers from those states that, with out cohesion and without history, offer to humanity only infamous tradition and the ungrateful spectacle of chambers in which appear united insolence, cowardice and cynicism. A squadron, manned by foreigners possessing neither instructions nor discipline, is preparing to come to this archipelago with the ruffianly intention of robbing us of all that means life, honor and liberty. Pretending to be inspired by a courage of which they are incapable, the North American seamen undertake as an enterprise capable of realization the substitution of protestantism for the Catholic religion you profess, to treat you as tribes refractory to civilization, to take possession of your riches as if they were unacquainted with the rights of property, and kidnap those persons whom they consider useful to man their ships or to be exploited in agricultural or individual labor. Vain design! Ridiculous boasting! Your indomitable bravery will suffice to frustrate the attempt to carry them into realization. You will not allow the faith you profess to be made a mockery, impious hands to be placed on the temple of the true God, the images you adore to be thrown down by unbelief. The aggressors shall not profane the tombs of your fathers. They shall not gratify their lustful passions at the cost of your wives' and daughters' honor or appropriate the property that your industry has accumulated as a provision for your old age. No! They shall not perpetrate the crimes inspired by their wickedness and covetousness, because your valor and patriotism will suffice to punish and abase the people that, claiming to be civilized and cultivated, have exterminated the natives of North America instead of bringing to them the life of civilization and progress. Men of the Philippines, prepare for the struggle, and united under the glorious Spanish flag, which is ever covered with laurels, let us fight with the conviction that victory will crown our efforts, and to the calls of our enemies let us oppose with the decision of the Christian and patriotic cry of "Viva Espana." Your governor, BASILIO AUGUSTIN DIVILIO. EXPLODING THE MINES. If the cry of "Remember the Maine" were not enough to put the American sailors in a fighting mood as the warships moved forward in battle line, the memory of this insulting proclamation helped to put them on their mettle. The Olympia headed straight for the Spanish position a few minutes before 5 o'clock. She was moving at moderate speed. The other vessels followed in the same order which had been observed in entering the bay. The Spaniards were impatient and showed bad judgment. At 5:10 o'clock there was a puff of smoke from one of the Cavite batteries and a shell dropped into the water far inshore from the flagship. Several shots followed, but the range was too long. While the American ships continued to crowd on, two uplifts of the water far in the wake of the Olympia, and off at one side, were seen. Two mines had been exploded from their land connections. They did not even splash one of our boats, but those who were watching and following behind, held their breath in dread, for they did not know at what moment they might see one of the ships lifted into the air. But there were no more mines. The Spaniards, in exploding them, had bungled, as they did afterward at every stage of their desperate fighting. Already there was a film of smoke over the land batteries and along the line of Spanish ships inshore. The roar of their guns came across the water. Our fleet paid no attention. The Olympia, in the lead, counted ten Spanish warships, formed in a semi-circle in front of the rounding peninsula of Cavite, so that they were both backed and flanked by the land batteries. The ten vessels which made the fighting line were the flagships Reina Christina, the Castilla, the Antonio de Ulloa, the Isla de Cuba, the Isla de Luzon, the El Correo, the Marquis del Duero, the Velasco, the Gen. Lezo and the Mindanao, the latter being a mail steamer which the Spaniards had hastily fitted with guns. The Castilla was moored head and stern, evidently to give the fleet a fixed spot from which to maneuver, but the other boats were under steam and prepared to move. The Olympia opened fire for the American fleet when two miles away from the enemy. She began blazing away with her four eight-inch turret guns. The thunders of sound came rolling across the water and the flagships were almost hidden in smoke. Now our ships circled to the north and east in the general direction of the city of Manila. That is, the American fleet circling toward the northeast and further in toward shore all the time, turned and came back in a southwesterly direction, passing in parade line directly in front of the Spanish fleet and batteries, so that the first general broadside was from the port side, or the left of the ships as one stands on the stern and faces the bow. The McCulloch had taken its position so that the fleet, in delivering this first broadside, passed between it and the enemy. The McCulloch and the Nanshan and Zafiro played in behind the heavy line like the backs of a football team. Having delivered the port broadside, the American fleet turned, heading toward the shore, and moved back toward the northeast, delivering the starboard broadside. As our ships passed to and fro, the stars and stripes could be seen whirling out from the clouds of smoke, and as the line passed the second and third times without a sign of any ship being injured, the sailors began to feel that the Spaniards were not so formidable after all. Their shots went tearing away over our ships or splashed the water farther in shore. Some of the men who fought at the guns said that after the first general broadside, the sailors laughed at the wild shots, and exposed themselves recklessly, feeling that they were in no particular danger. The story of the first general engagement is that the Americans moved in front of the Spanish line five times, pouring in broadsides with all the available guns. Each time the fleet drew nearer to shore, and each time the firing became more terribly effective, while the Spaniards failed to improve in marksmanship. Our gunners fired first the port broadsides, then the starboard, then the port again, then the starboard and then the port guns for a third time, and at this last, or fifth, return for an engagement along the line they were within 1,500 yards of the Spanish position. Our whole line was choked with smoke, but still unhurt. The Spanish fleet was already wounded beyond recovery. DUEL OF THE FLAGSHIPS. It was during the delivery of this last attack that the Reina Christina made a valiant attack. Up to that time not a Spanish ship had left the line of battle. As the Olympia approached, Admiral Montejo gave orders, and the Reina Christina moved out from the line to engage the big flagship of the American fleet. Admiral Dewey's boat welcomed the battle. Every battery on the Olympia was turned on the Reina Christina. In the face of this awful fire she still advanced. The American sailors had ridiculed the gunnery of the Spaniards, but they had to admire this act of bravery. She came forward and attempted to swing into action against the Olympia, but was, struck fore and aft by a perfect storm of projectiles. With the Olympia still pounding at her, she swung around and started back for the protection of the navy yard. Just after she had turned a well-aimed shell from one of the Olympia's eight-inch guns struck her, fairly wrecking the engine-room and exploding a magazine. She was seen to be on fire, but she painfully continued her way toward the shelter of Cavite and continued firing until she was a mass of flames. It was during this retreat that Captain Cadarso was killed. The bridge was shot from under Admiral Montejo. The Spanish sailors could be seen swarming out of the burning ship and into the small boats. Admiral Montejo escaped and transferred his pennant to the Castilla. He had been on the Castilla less than five minutes when it was set on fire by an exploding shell. Toward the close of the decisive engagement, and just after the Reina Christina had been sent back, hammered to pieces and set on fire, two small torpedo boats made a daring attempt to slip up on the Olympia. A pall of smoke was hanging over the water. Taking advantage of this, they darted out from the Spanish lines and headed straight for the American flagship. They were fully 800 yards in advance of the Spanish line (or more than half of the way toward the Olympia) when they were discovered. Admiral Dewey signaled his men to concentrate all batteries on them. Every gun on the port side of the Olympia was leveled on the two little craft which came flying across the water. A fierce fire was opened, but they escaped the first volley and came on at full speed. The flagship stopped. A second broadside was delivered. The torpedo boats were either injured or else alarmed, for they turned hastily and started for the shore. An eight-inch shell struck one. It exploded and sunk immediately, with all on board. The other, which had been hit, ran all the way to shore and was beached. These were the only two attempts the Spanish made to offer offensive battle. It would be difficult to describe in detail these first two hours of terrific fighting. The sounds were deafening, and at times the smoke obscured almost the whole picture of battle. The American commander himself could not estimate the injury to the enemy until after he had withdrawn from the first general engagement and allowed the smoke to clear away. Unfortunately, our fleet had no supply of smokeless powder. All during the fighting of Sunday morning, Admiral Dewey stood with Captain Lambertson on the forward bridge of the Olympia. He was absolutely exposed to the heaviest firing, because the Spanish fleet and the land batteries as well continually made a target of our big flagship. Captain Wildes, on the Boston, carried a fan as he stood on the bridge, and at one time drank a cup of coffee while continuing to give orders to his gunners. It was 7:45 when the American fleet withdrew out of range, not because it had suffered any reverses, but merely to ascertain the damages and hold a consultation. Not until the commanders had reported to Admiral Dewey did he learn of the insignificant loss which his fleet had sustained. Not one man had been killed and not one vessel was so badly injured but that it was ready to put to sea at once. Through the glasses it could be seen that the Reina Christina and the Castilla were burning. The smaller vessels had taken refuge behind the arsenal at Cavite. The Mindanao had been driven ashore. Already the victory was almost complete. The American sailors were wild with enthusiasm. Although hardly one of them had slept the night before, and they had been fighting in a burning temperature, they were more than anxious to return to the engagement and finish the good work. It was thought best, however, to take a rest for at least three hours. The decks were cleaned and the guns readjusted, and after food had been served to the men, the fleet formed and headed straight for Cavite again. The remnant of the Spanish squadron offered very little resistance, but the forts at Cavite continued their wild efforts to strike an American warship. MAKING THE SECOND ATTACK. This time the Baltimore was sent in advance. She headed boldly to within range of the Cavite batteries. By this time the Americans had a contempt for Spanish marksmanship. The Baltimore opened fire and pounded away for thirty minutes. At the end of that time every gun of the batteries had been silenced. Of the Spanish war-ships the Antonio de Ulloa was the only one which came out of refuge to offer battle with the Baltimore and she met with horrible punishment. Her decks were literally swept with shell, but even after she was apparently wrecked her lower guns were used with wonderful persistence. The Baltimore, having silenced the forts, turned all her guns on the Spanish cruiser and actually riddled her. She sank and all her crew went down with her. That was the end of Spanish resistance. Admiral Dewey ordered his light-draught vessels to enter the navy yard and destroy everything that might give future trouble. The Boston, the Concord and the Petrel were detailed for this duty, but the Boston, drawing twenty feet, ran aground twice, not knowing the shoals, and had to leave the work to the Petrel and Concord. By the time these two vessels reached the navy yard they found the vessels there abandoned and most of them on fire. They destroyed the fag end of the Spanish fleet, and when Sunday afternoon came there was nothing left above water to represent the Spanish naval force in Asiatic waters except the transport Manila. The arsenal had been shelled to pieces. At 12:45 o'clock the signal was given that the Spanish had surrendered. The word was passed rapidly from ship to ship. The American sailors were crazy with delight. There was tremendous cheering on every ship. The enthusiasm became even greater when the word was passed that not one of our men had been killed and not one American vessel had been injured. The eight men who were hurt by the explosion on the Baltimore continued to fight until the end of the battle. The Boston was struck once and the officers' quarters set on fire. For some reason the Spanish gunners seemed to think that the Baltimore was especially dangerous, having the general build of a battleship, and, next to the flagship, she had to withstand the greatest amount of firing, and was struck several times, with no great damage. Except for the torn rigging and a few dents here and there few signs could be discovered that the vessels had engaged in one of the most decisive naval battles of modern times. The Concord and the Petrel were not hit at all, although the latter went deeper into the enemy's position than any other vessel in our fleet The Olympia made a glorious record. She was struck thirteen times, counting the shells which tore through her rigging, but she came out as good as she went in. LOSS OF THE SPANISH. Compared with these trivial losses the damage done to the Spanish was fearful. Five hundred and fifty of them were killed and 625 wounded. Eleven of their ships were totally demolished, and the Americans captured one transport and several smaller vessels. Their money loss by reason of the battle was not less than $5,000,000. During the naval action a battery of 10-inch guns at Manila opened an ineffectual fire on our fleet as it was moving into action north of Cavite. The admiral did not return' the fire out of mercy for the people of Manila, as any shots passing over the shore batteries would have landed in a populous portion of the city. On Monday, May 2, the Raleigh and Baltimore were sent to demand the surrender of the forts at the mouth of the bay. These forts were taken without resistance. The troops had fled and only the commandant remained to surrender himself. In regard to the cutting of the cable, Admiral Dewey regarded the action as necessary. He sent word to the governor by the British consul that if he was permitted to send his dispatches to the United States government the cable would not be cut. The governor refused to promise and Admiral Dewey decided to stop all communication between Manila and Madrid. On Monday, when the cable was cut, the commander established a marine guard at Cavite to protect the hospitals and the Spanish wounded. Surgeons and the hospital corps of the American fleet were detailed to care for the wounded Spaniards, and they cared for them as tenderly as if they were brothers in arms instead of enemies. On Wednesday, May 4, several hundred of the wounded Spaniards were conveyed under the Red Cross flag to Manila and were cared for in the hospitals there. The Spaniards in Manila no longer feared the Americans, but they were in dread of capture by the insurgents. The rebels were over-running Cavite and pillaging houses. The country back of Manila was full of burning buildings and wrecked plantations. The reckless insurgents were applying the torch right and left. ADMIRAL MONTEJO'S PRIVATE PAPERS. The most interesting capture made by the Americans was a bundle of private papers belonging to Admiral Montejo. One of these communications, bearing his signature, showed that it was his intention to have a general review and inspection of the fleet at 7 o'clock on Sunday morning. This proves that he was not expecting the American fleet so soon. Other papers showed that it had been his intention at one time to intrust the defense of Manila to the land batteries and take the fleet to Subig bay, north of Manila, believing that he could there take up a strong position and have an advantage over an attacking fleet. According to the reports from Manila the admiral first went ashore at Cavite and had his wounds dressed. He succeeded in evading the insurgents, who wished to capture him, and arrived in Manila twelve hours after the fight. There are some very interesting figures as to the amount of firing done by our ships during the battle. The Olympia fired 1,764 shells, aggregating twenty-five tons in weight. The Baltimore did even heavier firing, being called upon to reduce the forts after the first engagement, and sent no less than thirty-five tons of metal into the Spanish ships and the land batteries. The remainder of the fleet shot a total of eighty tons of metal, making a grand total of 140 tons. The Spanish officers attributed the American victory to the rapidity and the accuracy of our fire rather than to the weight of projectiles used. Also, the fact that the American ships were painted a lead color and did not stand out boldly against the water made them very unsatisfactory targets and kept the Spanish gunners guessing as to the correct range. In spite of his overwhelming defeat Admiral Montejo did not forget the courtesies of the occasion. On Monday he sent word by the British consul to Admiral Dewey that he wished to compliment the Americans on their marksmanship. He said that never before had he witnessed such rapid and accurate firing. Admiral Dewey, not to be outdone in the amenities of war, sent his compliments to the Spanish admiral and praised the Spaniards very highly for their courage and resistance. He said that the Spanish force was stronger than he had believed it would be before his arrival at the harbor, and he had really expected a shorter and less stubborn battle. It is said that this message, although complimentary to the Spanish, did not give Admiral Montejo any real comfort. The Spanish ships destroyed were: The Reina Christina, flagship of Admiral Montejo; Cruiser Castilla (wooden); Cruiser Don Antonio de Ulloa; Protected Cruiser Isla de Luzon; Protected Cruiser Isla de Cuba; Gunboat General Lezo; Gunboat Marquis del Duero; Gunboat El Cano; Gunboat El Velasco; the Steamer Mindanao, with supplies, burned. These were captured: Transport Manila, with supplies; Gunboat Isabella I; Cruiser Don Juan de Austria; Gunboat Rapido; Gunboat Hercules; two whaleboats; three steam launches. Secretary Long sent this dispatch immediately to Acting Admiral Dewey: The President, in the name of the American people, thanks you and your officers and men for your splendid achievement and overwhelming victory. In recognition he has appointed you Acting Admiral, and will recommend a vote of thanks to you by Congress as a foundation for further promotion. DEWEY'S NEW RANK. The Senate unanimously confirmed the President's nomination making George Dewey a rear admiral in the United States navy. Congress made the place for him, and the President promoted him. He bears on his shoulders two stars and an anchor instead of two anchors and a star. His pay has been increased from $5,000 a year to $6,000 a year, while at sea and until he retires. He was presented with a sword, and medals were struck for his men. His elevation in rank, his increase in pay, are gratifying tributes to his greatness. But there is a rank to which the President could not elevate him, a position that Congress could not create, for he created it himself. In the hearts of the people Admiral Dewey is the Hero of Manila, holding a place prouder than a king's, a place in the love and admiration and gratitude of a great nation. Greater than Farragut, greater than Hull, greater than Hawke or Blake or Nelson, Dewey is the greatest of fleet commanders, the grandest of the heroes of the sea. It will be recorded of him that he was faithful to duty, true to his flag, magnanimous to his enemies and modest in the hour of triumph. CHAPTER XLIX. HAWAII, AND OUR ANNEXATION POLICY. Location of the Islands--Their Population--Honolulu, the Capital and the Metropolis--Political History--The Traditional Policy of the United States--Former Propositions for Annexation-- Congressional Discussion--The Vote in the House of Representatives--The Hawaiian Commission. A work of this character would be incomplete without mention of the Hawaiian Islands, and their intimate political and commercial connection with our own country. For many years prior to the commencement of the war with Spain there had been a growing sentiment in favor of their annexation to the United States, and events in Washington during the first month of that conflict showed conclusively that a large majority of the members of both houses of Congress were strongly in favor of the measure. The Hawaiians are a group of eight inhabited and four uninhabited islands lying in the North Pacific Ocean, distant from San Francisco about 2,100 miles, from Sidney 4,500 miles, and from Hongkong 4,800 miles. They are the most important in the Polynesian group, and were discovered by Captain Cook in 1788. Their combined area is 6,640 square miles, and their population is about 85,000. The islands are to a great extent mountainous and volcanic, but the soil is highly productive. Sugar, rice, and tropical fruits grow in abundance, and over ninety per cent of the trade is with the United States. FORTUNES EASILY MADE. The world knows comparatively nothing about the great fortunes that have been amassed in Hawaii in the last thirty years. The children of the Yankee missionaries who sailed from Boston and Gloucester around the Horn to carry the gospel to the Sandwich islands in the '30s and '40s are the richest and most aristocratic people in Honolulu. For mere songs the sons of missionaries obtained great tracts of marvelously fertile soil for sugar planting in the valleys of the island, and with their natural enterprise and inventive spirit they developed the greatest sugar cane plantations in the world. When the United States gave a treaty to the Hawaiian kingdom putting Hawaiian raw sugar on the free tariff list, the profits of the sugar planters went up with a bound. For twenty-five years the dividends of several of the Yankee companies operating sugar plantations and mills on the islands ranged from 18 to 30 per cent a year. The Hawaiian Commercial Sugar Company paid 25 per cent dividends annually from 1870 to 1882. The world has never known productiveness so rich as that of the valleys of Maui and Hawaii for sugar cane. The seed had only to be planted and the rains fell and nature did the rest. One tract of 12,000 acres of land on Maui was given to a young American, who married a bewitching Kanaka girl, by her father, who was delighted to have a pale-faced son-in-law. It was worth about $200 at the time. The tract subsequently became a part of a great sugar plantation. It was bought by Claus Spreckels for $175,000 and is worth much more than that now. The Spreckles, Alexander, Bishop, Smith and Akers accumulated millions in one generation of sugar cultivation in the Hawaiian islands. HUNDREDS OF VOLCANOES. The volcanoes of Hawaii are a class by themselves. They are not only the tallest, but the biggest and strangest in the whole world. Considering that they reach from the bottom of the Pacific ocean (18,000 feet deep here) to over 15,000 feet above sea level, they really stand 33,000 feet high from their suboceanic base to their peaks. The active craters on the islands number 300, but the dead craters, the ancient chimneys of subterranean lava beds, are numbered by the thousands. The islands are of lavic formation. Evidences of extinct volcanoes are so common that one seldom notices them after a few weeks on the islands. Ancient lava is present everywhere. The natives know all its virtues, and, while some ancient deposits of lava are used as a fertilizer for soils, other lava beds are blasted for building material and for macadamizing roads. Titanic volcanic action is apparent on every side. Every headland is an extinct volcano. Every island has its special eruption, which, beginning at the unfathomable bottom of the sea, has slowly built up a foundation and then a superstructure of lava. On the island of Hawaii and on Molokai are huge cracks several thousands of feet deep and many yards wide which were formed by the bursting upward of lava beds ages and ages ago. The marks of the titanic force are plainly visible. Mark Twain is authority for saying that the two great active volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii, are the most interesting in the world. Certainly they are the most unique. Mauna Loa is 14,000 feet above sea level. Every six or seven years there is an eruption from its sides and several times the flow of lava has threatened the ruin of the town of Hilo, thirty miles away. The crater on Mauna Loa is three miles in diameter and 600 feet deep. Over the crater hangs an illuminated vapor which may be seen at night over 200 miles distant. When Mauna Loa is in violent eruption a fountain of molten lava spouts every minute over 250 feet in the air, bursting into 10,000 brilliantly colored balls, like a monstrous Roman candle pyrotechnic. Then there is Kilauea--a shorter and flatter volcanic mountain sixteen miles distant. It has the greatest crater known--one nine miles across and from 300 to 800 feet deep. And such a crater! In it is a literal lake of molten lava all the time. At times the lava is over 100 feet deep and at other times it is 200 feet, according to the pressure on it deep in the bowels of the earth. Signs of volcanic activity are present all the time throughout the depth of the molten mass in the form of steam, cracks, jets of sulphurous smoke and blowing cones. The crater itself is constantly rent and shaken by earthquakes. Nearly all tourists go to see the marvelous eruptions on Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Hotels have been built on the mountain sides for the accommodation of sightseers, and there are plenty of guides about the craters. Oahu has many places of interest outside of Honolulu. One may visit the sugar plantations, rice farms, and may go to Pearl harbor or the Punchbowl. The latter is an extinct volcano rising a few hundred feet above the town. Another resort is the Pali, the highest point in the pass through the range of mountains that divides Oahu. It is the fashion, and a very good fashion it is, to see the Pali and praise its charms. It is the Yosemite of Hawaii. The view from this height sweeps the whole island from north to south. In the direction of the capital the land slopes to a level two miles from the sea and then spreads flatly to the shore. The hillsides are not, as a rule, in a state of cultivation, although the soil is fertile. The land is now cumbered with wild guava, which bears fruit as big as the lemon, and with the lantana, the seeds of which are scattered broadcast by an imported bird called the minah. On the lower ground small farmers, mostly orientals, make their homes, and there are several cane plantations. Honolulu, the capital and chief city, has a population of about 25,000, and presents more of the appearance of a civilized place than any other town in Polynesia. Although consisting largely of one-story wooden houses, mingled with grass huts half smothered by foliage, its streets are laid out in the American style, and are straight, neat and tidy. Water-works supply the town from a neighboring valley, and electric lights, telephones, street car lines, and other modern improvements are not lacking. The arrangement of the streets in Honolulu reminds many Americans of those in Boston or the older part of New York. All the streets are narrow, but well kept, and, with a few exceptions, they meander here and there at will. A dozen thoroughfares are crescent shaped and twist and turn when one least expects. All the streets are smooth and hard under a dressing of thousands of wagon loads of shells and lava pounded down and crushed by an immense steam roller brought from San Francisco. THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE ISLANDS DECLARED. In 1843 the independence of the Hawaiian Islands was formally guaranteed by the English and French governments, and for a number of years they were under a constitutional monarchy. On the death of King Kalakaua in 1891, his sister, the Princess Liliuokalani, succeeded to the throne, and soon proved herself to be an erratic and self-willed ruler. She remained constantly at variance with her legislature and advisers, and in January, 1893, attempted to promulgate a new constitution, depriving foreigners of the right of franchise, and abrogating the existing House of Nobles, at the same time giving herself power of appointing a new House. This was resisted by the foreign element of the community, who at once appointed a committee of safety, consisting of thirteen members, who called a mass meeting of their class, at which about 1,500 persons were present. The meeting unanimously adopted resolutions condemning the action of the Queen, and authorizing a committee to take into further consideration whatever was necessary to protect the public safety. The committee issued a proclamation to the Hawaiian people, formed itself into a provisional government, took possession of the national property, and sent commissioners to the United States inviting this republic to annex the islands. The United States did not respond, but continued the old relation of friendly guarantor. A constitutional convention held session from May 20 to July 3, 1894, and on July 4 the constitution was proclaimed, the new government calling itself the "Republic of Hawaii." In refusing to grant this appeal for annexation, the officials at the head of the United States government at that time were of the opinion that such action would be in direct opposition to our traditional policy, and the same argument has since been advanced by the opponents of the plan. We were thus brought face to face with the question, "What is American policy?" Many statesmen of recent years have declared that our great growth and increasing importance among nations imposed obligations which should force us to take greater part in the affairs of the world. Following the lead of European statecraft, they also asserted that we should adopt this policy to encourage and protect our expanding commercial interests. Not only were we facing problems the war directly presented, but other nations seemed to think that we were about to cast aside the advice of Washington concerning entangling alliances, and establish the relation of an ally with Great Britain. Edward Everett foresaw the extension of the republican idea, and declared that "in the discharge of the duty devolved upon us by Providence, we have to carry the republican independence, which our fathers achieved, with all the organized institutions of an enlightened community--institutions of religion, law, education, charity, art and all the thousand graces of the highest culture-- beyond the Missouri, beyond the Sierra Nevada; perhaps in time around the circuit of the Antilles, perhaps to the archipelagoes of the central Pacific." The treaty of 1783 with Great Britain defined the western boundary of the United States as the Mississippi river, down to the Florida line on the 31st parallel of north latitude. The original colonies comprised less than half of this area, the rest being organized several years later as the Northwest Territory. In 1803 the United States purchased from Napoleon for $15,000,000 the province of Louisiana, over 1,000,000 square miles in area, including Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian Territory, most of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and most of Wyoming. With this cession came absolute ownership and control of the Mississippi. By the treaty of February 12, 1819, with Spain, Florida was next acquired, and Spain abandoned all claims upon the territory between the Rocky mountains and the Pacific, embraced in the Louisiana purchase. Texas was annexed in 1845. Under the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, in 1848, which ended the Mexican war, California, Nevada, parts of Colorado and Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona became a part of the United States. The Gadsden purchase of 1853 acquired the portion of this territory south of the Gila river. Fourteen years later the territory of Alaska was purchased from Russia. Territorial acquisition has been the policy of successive periods of American politics. Hitherto annexation has been confined to contiguous territory, except in the case of Alaska, separated only by narrow stretches of sea and land. But in the case of the Hawaiian Islands an entirely different problem confronted us. HAWAIIAN ANNEXATION IN HISTORY. The question of annexation of the Hawaiian Islands has been before the American people in some form for nearly fifty years. In 1851 a deed of provisional cession of the islands to the United States was executed by King Kamehameha Ill., and delivered to the United States Minister at Honolulu--the act being subsequently ratified by joint resolution of the two Houses of the Hawaiian Legislature. In 1854 a formal treaty of annexation was negotiated between King Kamehameha and the Hon. David L. Gregg, in the capacity of commissioner, and acting under special instructions of Secretary Marcy, then Secretary of State under President Pierce. The King died, however, before the engrossed copy of the treaty had been signed, which prevented the completion of the act. But for this there is every reason to believe that annexation would have been an accomplished fact at that time, as the administration of President Pierce was thoroughly committed to it. The policy then distinctly enunciated was not to have the islands come in as a State but as a Territory. President Grant was a zealous advocate of annexation, and in 1874 a reciprocity treaty with the islands was entered into by Secretary Fish, under which the Hawaiian government bound itself not to "lease or otherwise dispose of or create any lien upon any port, harbor, or other territory ... or grant any special privilege or right of use therein to any other government," nor enter into any reciprocity treaty with any other government. Thirteen years later (1887), under the administration of President Cleveland, there was a renewal of this treaty, to which was added a clause giving to the United States authority for the exclusive use of Pearl River (or harbor) as a coaling and repair station for its vessels, with permission to improve the same. Article IV of this treaty bound the respective governments to admit certain specified articles free of duty and contained the following provision: "It is agreed, on the part of his Hawaiian Majesty, that so long as this treaty shall remain in force he will not lease or otherwise dispose of or create any lien upon any port, harbor, or other territory in his dominions, or grant any special privilege or rights of use therein, to any other power, state, or government, nor make any treaty by which any other nation shall obtain the same privileges, relative to the admission of any articles free of duty, hereby secured to the United States." This treaty was to remain in force seven years (until 1894), but, after that date, was declared to be terminable by either party after twelve months' notice to that effect. There have been two treaties relating to annexation before Congress within the last five years, the first negotiated by Secretary of State John W. Foster during the administration of President Harrison in 1893, the other by Secretary Sherman under the McKinley administration on the 16th day of June, 1897. The first was withdrawn by President Cleveland after his accession to the Presidency. Both were ratified by the Hawaiian Legislature in accordance with a provision of the constitution of the republic, and that body, by unanimous vote of both Houses, on May 27, 1896, declared: "That the Legislature of the republic of Hawaii continues to be, as heretofore, firmly and steadfastly in favor of the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States of America, and in advocating such policy it feels assured that it is expressing not only its own sentiments but those of the voters of this republic." The necessity for a closer relation of the two republics than that provided for by a commercial treaty, terminable at the pleasure of either, has been recognized by nearly every President and Secretary of State from John Tyler down to President McKinley, by none more strongly than by Daniel Webster in 1851 and by Secretary Marcy in 1854, while like views have been favored by Secretaries Seward, Fish, Bayard, Foster, and Sherman since. The strategic value of the islands in case of war and their commercial value at all times are so bound up together that it is impossible to separate them. The former has been testified to by such eminent military and naval authorities as General J. M. Schofield and General Alexander of the United States army and Captain A. T. Mahan, Admiral Belknap, Admiral Dupont, and George W. Mellville, Engineer in Chief of the United States navy, and many others. Their commercial value is demonstrated by the fact that their trade with the United States for the fiscal year, ending June, 1897 (amounting to $18,385,000), exceeded that with either of the following States and confederations: Argentina, Central America, Spain, Switzerland, Venezuela, Russia, or Denmark; was more than twice that with Colombia or Sweden and Norway; nearly three times that with Chile; four times that with Uruguay; nearly four times that with Portugal; nearly seven times that with Turkey; ten times greater than that with Peru, and greater than that of Greece, Peru, Turkey, Portugal, and Sweden and Norway combined. VOTE FOR ANNEXATION. By a vote of 209 to 91 the House of Representatives on the afternoon of June 15 adopted the Newlands resolutions, providing for the annexation of Hawaii. The debate, which was continued without interruption for three days, was one of the most notable of Congress, the proposed annexation being considered of great commercial and strategic importance by its advocates, and being looked upon by its opponents as involving a radical departure from the long-established policy of the country and likely to be followed by the inauguration of a pronounced policy of colonization, the abandonment of the Monroe doctrine and participation in international wrangles. More than half a hundred members participated in the debate. Notable speeches were made by Messrs, Berry, Smith and Hepburn for, and by Messrs. Johnson and Williams against the pending measure. Few members were upon the floor until late in the afternoon and the galleries had few occupants. As the hour of voting drew near, however, members began taking their places and there were few more than a score of absentees when the first roll call was taken. The announcement of the vote upon the passage of the resolutions was cheered upon the floor and applauded generally by the spectators. The resolutions adopted in a preamble relate the offer of the Hawaiian republic to cede all of its sovereignty and absolute title to the government and crown lands, and then by resolution accept the cession and declare the islands annexed. The resolutions provide for a commission of five, at least two of whom shall be resident Hawaiians, to recommend to Congress such legislation as they may deem advisable. The public debt of Hawaii, not to exceed $4,000,000, is assumed, Chinese immigration is prohibited, all treaties with other powers are declared null, and it is provided that until Congress shall provide for the government of the islands all civil, judicial and military powers now exercised by the officers of the existing government shall be exercised in such manner as the President shall direct, and he is given power to appoint persons to put in effect a provisional government for the islands. Mr. Fitzgerald spoke against the Newlands resolutions. In the course of his speech he emphasized the failure of the majority of Hawaiians to express their desire relative to annexation. He insisted that every people had the right to the government of their choice. Speaking further, Mr. Fitzgerald opposed annexation on the ground that an injurious labor element would be brought into competition with American laborers. Supporting the resolution Mr. Berry devoted much of his time to showing that annexation was in line with democratic policy. He reviewed the territorial additions to the original states to show that practically all had been made by democrats. Mr. Berry digressed to speak of the Philippine situation, and while not advocating the retention of the islands he declared the United States should brook no interference upon the part of Germany. He said America should resent any intervention with all her arms and warships. Mr. Berry's remarks in this connection were applauded generously. William Alden Smith, member of the committee on foreign affairs, advocating annexation, said: "Annexation is not new to us. In my humble opinion the whole North American continent and every island in the gulf and the Caribbean sea and such islands in the Pacific as may be deemed desirable are worthy of our ambition. Not that we are earth hungry, but, as a measure of national protection and advantage, it is the duty of the American people to lay peaceful conquest wherever opportunity may be offered. "It has been argued that our constitution makes no provision for a colonial system, but if President Monroe had been merely a lawyer, if he had contented himself by looking for precedent which he was unable to find, if he had consulted the jurisprudence of his time and planned his action along academic lines the greatest doctrine ever announced to the civilized world, which now bears his name, though in unwritten law, but in the inspiration, the hope, the security of every American heart, would have found no voice potent enough and courageous enough to have encircled the western hemisphere with his peaceful edict. "Precedent, sir, may do for a rule of law upon which a fixed and definite superstructure must be built, but it is the duty of statesmanship to cease looking at great public questions with a microscope and sweep the world's horizon with a telescope from a commanding height." Mr. Johnson then was recognized for a speech in opposition. He laid down the three propositions that annexation was unnecessary as a war measure in the present conflict with Spain; that annexation was unnecessary to prevent the islands from falling into the hands of some other power to be used against us, and that the proposition to annex was inherently wrong and was the opening wedge upon an undesirable and disastrous policy of colonization. Advancing to the danger of annexation being the first step in colonization, he said gentlemen could not deny that the holding of the Philippines was contemplated already. What was more deplorable and significant, he said, was the expressed fear of the President lest Spain should sue for peace before we could secure Puerto Rico. Mr. Johnson said men were already speaking disparagingly of the Cubans and their capacity for government, and it was useless to attempt to hide the truth that American eyes of avarice were already turned to Cuba, although but two months since action was taken to free and establish that island as independent. REPLY BY MR. DOLLIVER. Mr. Dolliver, speaking in support of the resolutions, complimented the speech of the Indiana member, but suggested its success as an applause-getter would be greater than as a maker of votes. "I cannot understand," declared Mr. Dolliver, "how a man who distrusts everything of his own country can fail utterly to suspect anything upon the part of other great powers of the world." Concluding, Mr. Dolliver refuted the charge that annexationists had any hidden motives looking to colonial expansion. As to the future of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, he declared that he knew nothing, but he had faith that in the providence of God the American people would be guided aright and these questions would be met and disposed of properly when occasion should arise. Mr. Cummings, in a ten-minute speech, supported annexation and indulged in severe denunciation of former President Cleveland for his effort to re-establish the monarchy in Hawaii and the hauling down of the American flag by Commissioner Blount. Mr. Hepburn was recognized to conclude in support of the resolutions. He believed the people of the country were familiar with the issue involved, and the time was opportune for a vote and final action. Answering the claim that annexation would mean launching upon colonization, he disavowed any such understanding. He said he hoped to see every Spanish possession fall into the possession of this country in order to contribute to the enemy's injury, and that being accomplished the question of their disposition would arise and be met when the war should end. The House resolution extending the sovereignty of the United States over Hawaii was adopted in the Senate by a vote of forty-two to twenty-one, and President McKinley's signature added that country to our possessions. The President appointed as commissioners to visit the islands and draw up for the guidance of Congress a system of laws for their government, the following gentlemen: Senator Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois; Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama; Representative Robert R. Hitt, of Illinois; President Sanford B. Dole, of Hawaii; Justice W. F. Frear, of Hawaii. CHAPTER L. CONTINUED SUCCESS FOR AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND SAILORS. The Bombardment of San Juan--The Engagement at Cardenas--The Voyage of the Oregon--The Battle at Guantanamo--Santiago Under Fire--Landing the Troops in Cuba--The Charge of the Rough Riders --The Sinking of the Merrimac--The Destruction of Cervera's Fleet-- The Fall of Santiago. On the morning of May 12, a portion of the fleet, commanded by Admiral Sampson, made an attack on the forts of San Juan de Puerto Rico. The engagement began at 5:15 a. m. and ended at 8:15 a. m. The enemy's batteries were not silenced, but great damage was done to them, and the town in the rear of the fortifications suffered great losses. The ships taking part in the action were the Iowa, Indiana, New York, Terror, Amphitrite, Detroit, Montgomery, Wampatuck, and Porter. At 3 o'clock in the morning all hands were called on the Iowa, a few final touches in clearing ship were made, and at 5 "general quarters" sounded. The men were eager for the fight. The tug Wampatuck went ahead and anchored its small boat to the westward, showing ten fathoms, but there was not a sign of life from the fort, which stood boldly against the sky on the eastern hills hiding the town. The Detroit steamed far to the eastward, opposite Valtern. The Iowa headed straight for the shore. Suddenly its helm flew over, bringing the starboard battery to bear on the fortifications. At 5:16 a.m. the Iowa's forward twelve-inch guns thundered out at the sleeping hills, and for fourteen minutes they poured starboard broadsides on the coast. Meanwhile the Indiana, the New York, and other ships repeated the dose from the rear. The Iowa turned and came back to the Wampatuck's boat and again led the column, the forts replying fiercely, concentrating on the Detroit, which was about 700 yards away, all the batteries on the eastward arm of the harbor. Thrice the column passed from the entrance of the harbor to the extreme eastward battery. Utter indifference was shown for the enemy's fire. The wounded were quickly attended, the blood was washed away, and everything proceeded like target practice. Morro battery, on the eastward arm of the harbor, was the principal point of attack. Rear Admiral Sampson and Captain Evans were on the lower bridge of the Iowa and had a narrow escape from flying splinters, which injured three men. The Iowa was hit eight times, but the shells made no impression on its armor. The weather was fine, but the heavy swells made accurate aim difficult. The broadsides from the Iowa and Indiana rumbled in the hills ashore for five minutes after they were delivered. Clouds of dust showed where the shells struck, but the smoke hung over everything. The shells screeching overhead and dropping around showed that the Spaniards still stuck to their guns. The enemy's firing was heavy, but wild, and the Iowa and New York were the only ships hit. They went right up under the guns in column, delivering broadsides, and then returned. The after-turret of the Amphitrite got out of order temporarily during the engagement, but it banged away with its forward guns. After the first passage before the forts, the Detroit and the Montgomery retired, their guns being too small to do much damage. The Porter and Wampatuck also stayed out of range. The smoke hung over everything, spoiling the aim of the gunners and making it impossible to tell where our shots struck. The officers and men of all the ships behaved with coolness and bravery. The shots flew thick and fast over all our ships. The men of the Iowa who were hurt during the action were injured by splinters thrown by an eight-inch shell, which came through a boat into the superstructure, and scattered fragments in all directions. The shot's course was finally ended on an iron plate an inch thick. At 7:45 a. m. Admiral Sampson signaled "Cease firing." "Retire" was sounded on the Iowa, and it headed from the shore. After the battle was over Admiral Sampson said: "I am satisfied with the morning's work. I could have taken San Juan, but had no force to hold it. I merely wished to punish the Spaniards, and render the port unavailable as a refuge for the Spanish fleet. I came to destroy that fleet and not to take San Juan." The man killed by the fire from the forts was Frank Widemark, a seaman on the flagship New York. A gunner's mate on the Amphitrite died during the action from prostration caused by the extreme heat and excitement. The Iowa, Indiana, New York, Terror, and Amphitrite went close under the fortifications after the armed tug Wampatuck had piloted the way and made soundings. The Detroit and Montgomery soon drew out of the line of battle, their guns being too small for effective work against fortifications. Three times the great fighting ships swung past Morro and the batteries, roaring out a continuous fire. Whenever the dense smoke would lift, great gaps could be seen in the gray walls of Morro, while from the batteries men could be seen scurrying in haste. The Spanish fire was quick enough, but ludicrously uncertain. This was shown after Admiral Sampson had given the order to cease firing and retire. The monitor Terror evidently misunderstood the order, for it remained well in range of the Spanish guns and continued the bombardment alone. The few guns still served by the Spaniards kept banging away at the Terror, and some of the shots missed it at least a mile. It remained at its work for half an hour before retiring, and in all this time was not once hit. THE FIRST AMERICANS KILLED. America's first dead fell on the 11th of May in a fierce and bloody combat off Cardenas, on the north coast of Cuba. Five men were blown to pieces and five were wounded on the torpedo boat Winslow. The battle was between the torpedo boat Winslow, the auxiliary tug Hudson, and the gunboat Wilmington on one side, and the Cardenas batteries and four Spanish gunboats on the other. The battle lasted but thirty-five minutes, but was remarkable for terrific fighting. The Winslow was the main target of the enemy, and was put out of service. The other American vessels were not damaged, except that the Hudson's two ventilators were slightly scratched by flying shrapnel. The Winslow was within 2,500 yards of the shore when the shells struck. How it came to be so close was told by its commander, Lieutenant John Bernadou. He said: "We were making observations when the enemy opened fire on us. The Wilmington ordered us to go in and attack the gunboats. We went in under full steam and there's the result." He was on the Hudson when he said this, and with the final words he pointed to the huddle of American flags on the deck near by. Under the Stars and Stripes were outlined five rigid forms. List of the killed: Worth Bagley, ensign; John Daniels, first-class fireman; John Tunnel, cabin cook; John Varveres, oiler. The wounded: J. B. Bernadou, lieutenant, commanding the Winslow; R. E. Cox, gunner's mate; D. McKeowan, quartermaster; J. Patterson, fireman; F. Gray. STORY OF THE FIGHT. The story of the fight, as told by the Hudson's men, is as follows: The Winslow, the Hudson, the Machias, and the Wilmington were among the ships off Cardenas on the blockade, the Wilmington acting as flagship. The Machias lay about twelve miles out. The others were stationed close in, on what is called the inside line. At a quarter to 9 o'clock the Hudson, under Captain F. H. Newton, was taking soundings in Diana Cay bars and Romero Cay, just outside Cardenas, so close to shore that it grounded, but it floated off easily into the shallow water. At half past 11 the Wilmington spoke the Hudson and the Winslow and assigned them to duty, the Winslow to start to the eastern shore of, Cardenas Bay and the Hudson to the western shore, while the Wilmington took its station in mid-channel. This work occupied two hours. Nothing was discovered on either shore, and the boats were approaching each other on their return when a puff of smoke was observed on shore at Cardenas, and a shell whistled over them. The Winslow was on the inside, nearer the shore. The Hudson and the Winslow reported to the Wilmington, and orders came promptly to go in and open fire; but the Spaniards had not waited for a reply to their first shot. The Cardenas harbor shore had already become one dense cloud of smoke, shot with flashes of fire and an avalanche of shells was bursting toward the little Winslow: This was at five minutes past 2 o'clock, and for twenty minutes the firing continued from the shore without cessation, but none of the shots had at that time found their mark, though they were striking dangerously near. Meanwhile the Hudson's two six-pounders were banging away at a terrific rate. How many of the torpedo boat's shots took effect is not known. The first two of the Hudson's shells fell short, but after these two every one floated straight into the smoke-clouded shore. The Spaniard's aim in the meantime was improving and it was presently seen that two empty barks had been anchored off shore. It was twenty-five minutes before 3 o'clock when a four-inch shell struck the Winslow on the starboard beam, knocking out its forward boiler and starboard engine and crippling the steering gear, but no one was injured. Lieutenant Bernadou was standing forward watching the battle with calm interest and directing his men as coolly as if they were at target practice. By the one-pounder amidships stood Ensign Bagley, the oiler, the two firemen, and the cook. The little boat gasped and throbbed and rolled helplessly from side to side. Lieutenant Bernadou did not stop for an examination. He knew his boat was uncontrollable. The Hudson was a short distance off still pounding away with her guns. It was hailed and asked to take the Winslow in tow. It was a vital moment. Guns roared from shore and sea. Lieutenant Scott, in charge of the Hudson's aft gun, sat on a box and smoked a cigarette as he directed the fire. Captain Newton stood near Lieutenant Meed at the forward gun and watched its workings with interest. Chief Engineer Gutchin never missed his bell. A group of sailors was making ready to heave a line to the Winslow, and Ensign Bagley and his four men stood on the port side of the latter vessel, waiting to receive it. A vicious fire was singing about them. The Spaniards seemed to have found the exact range. KILLED BY A BURSTING SHELL. There was a momentary delay in heaving the towline, and Ensign Bagley suggested that the Hudson's men hurry. "Heave her," he called. "Let her come; it's getting pretty warm here." The line was thrown and grabbed by the Winslow's men. Grimy with sweat and powder, they tugged at it and drew nearer foot by foot to the Hudson. Almost at the same instant another four-inch shell shrieked through the smoke and burst directly under them. Five bodies went whirling through the air. Two of the group were dead when they fell--Ensign Bagley and Fireman Daniels. The young ensign was literally disemboweled, and the entire lower portion of the fireman's body was torn away. The other three died within a few minutes. A flying piece of shrapnel struck Lieutenant Bernadou in the thigh and cut an ugly gash, but the Lieutenant did not know it then. With the explosion of the shell the hawser parted and the Winslow's helm went hard to starboard, and, with its steering gear smashed, the torpedo boat floundered about in the water at the mercy of the enemy's fire, which never relaxed. The fire of the Americans was of the usual persistent character, and the nerve of the men was marvelous. Even after the Winslow's starboard engine and steering gear were wrecked the little boat continued pouring shot into the Spaniards on shore until it was totally disabled. Meanwhile the Wilmington from its outlying station was busy with its bigger guns and sent shell after shell from its four-inch guns crashing into the works on shore, and their execution must have been deadly. Not a fragment of shot or shell from the enemy reached the Wilmington. The Hudson quickly threw another line to the Winslow, and the helpless torpedo boat was made fast and pulled out of the Spaniards' exact range. The tug then towed it to Piedras Cay, a little island twelve miles off, near which the Machias lay. There it was anchored for temporary repairs, while the Hudson brought the ghastly cargo into Key West, with Dr. Richards of the Machias attending to the wounded. Not until this mournful journey was begun was it learned that Lieutenant Bernadou had been injured. He scoffed at the wound as a trifle, but submitted to treatment and is doing well. When the Hudson drew up to the government dock at Key West the flags at half mast told the few loiterers on shore that death had come to some one, and the bunting spread on the deck, with here and there a foot protruding from beneath, confirmed the news. Ambulances were called and the wounded were carried quickly to the army barracks hospital. The dead were taken to the local undertaker's shop, where they lay all day on slabs, the mutilated forms draped with flags. The public were permitted to view the remains, and all day a steady stream of people flowed through the shop. The American boats made furious havoc with Cardenas harbor and town. The captain of the Hudson said: "I know we destroyed a large part of their town near the wharves, burned one of their gunboats, and I think destroyed two other torpedo destroyers. We were in a vortex of shot, shell and smoke, and could not tell accurately, but we saw one of their boats on fire and sinking soon after the action began. Then a large building near the wharf, I think the barracks, took fire, and many other buildings were soon burning. The Spanish had masked batteries on all sides of us, hidden in bushes and behind houses. They set a trap for us. As soon as we got within range of their batteries they would move them. I think their guns were field pieces. Our large boats could not get into the harbor to help us on account of the shallow water." Amid a perfect storm of shot from Spanish rifles and batteries the American forces made an attempt to cut the cables at Cienfuegos, on the 11th of May. Four determined boat crews, under command of Lieutenant Winslow and Ensign Magruder, from the cruiser Marblehead and gunboat Nashville, put out from the ships, the coast having previously been shelled, and began their perilous work. The cruiser Marblehead, the gunboat Nashville and the auxiliary cruiser Windom drew up a thousand yards from shore with their guns manned for desperate duty. One cable was quickly severed and the work was in progress on the other when the Spaniards in rifle pits and a battery in an old lighthouse standing out in the bay opened fire. The warships poured in a thunderous volley, their great guns belching forth massive shells into the swarms of the enemy. The crews of the boats proceeded with their desperate work, notwithstanding the fact that a number of men had fallen, and, after finishing their task, returned to the ships through a blinding smoke and a heavy fire. Two men were killed, and seven wounded by the fire of the enemy. Captain Maynard had a narrow escape from death. A rifle shot hit his side close to the heart, but caused only a flesh wound and he kept at his post to the end. The officers of the Windom were enthusiastic over the work of the men in the launches. They fired in regular order and shot well. The Windom demolished the lighthouse, which was in reality a fort, and not one stone was left standing upon another. On May 14 Admiral Sampson ordered Captain Goodrich to cut the French cable running from Mole St. Nicholas, Hayti, to Guantanamo, Cuba, about thirty miles to the eastward of Santiago. In compliance with this order the St. Louis and the Wampatuck appeared off Guantanamo about daylight, and the Wampatuck, with Lieutenant Jungen in command and Chief Officer Seagrave, Ensign Payne, Lieutenant Catlin and eight marines and four seamen on board, steamed into the mouth of the harbor, and, dropping a grapnel in eight fathoms of water, proceeded to drag across the mouth of the harbor for the cable. About 150 fathoms of line were run out when the cable was hooked in fifty fathoms of water. This time the lookout reported a Spanish gun-boat coming down the harbor and a signal was sent to the St. Louis, lying half a mile outside. She had already discovered it, and immediately opened fire with her two port six-pounders. The Wampatuck then commenced firing with her one three-pounder. The gunboat, however, was out of range of these small guns and, the shells fell short. The Spaniards opened fire with a four-inch gun, and every shot went whistling over the little Wampatuck and struck in the water between her and the St. Louis. Being well out of range of the six-pounders the gunboat was perfectly safe, and she steamed back and forth firing her larger guns. For about forty minutes the tug worked on the cable, while the shells were striking all around her, but she seemed to bear a charmed life. Captain Goodrich, seeing that he could not get the gunboat within range of his small guns, while that vessel could easily reach the St. Louis and Wanipatuck with her heavier battery, signaled the tug to withdraw. The grappling line was cut and both vessels steamed out to sea, leaving the cable uncut. As the tug turned and started out it was noticed that riflemen on shore were firing at her. Lieutenant Catlin opened up with the Gatling gun mounted aft and the Spaniards on shore could be seen scattering and running for shelter. The French cable was cut the next morning off Mole St. Nicholas, well outside of the three-mile limit. Lieutenant Catlin was formerly on the battleship Maine, and perhaps he took more than ordinary interest in firing his guns. "You could tell by the grim smile on his face as he fired each shot," one of his brother officers said, "that he was trying to 'get even,' as far as lay in his power, for the awful work in Havana harbor." SECOND CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS. The President issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 more volunteers on May 25. This made the total army strength, regular and volunteer, 280,000. The official call issued by the President in the form of a proclamation was as follows: Whereas, An act of Congress was approved on the 25th day of April, 1898, entitled "An act declaring that war exists between the United States of America and the kingdom of Spain," and, Whereas, By an act of Congress, entitled "An act to provide for temporarily increasing the military establishment of the United States in time of war and for other purposes," approved April 22, 1898, the President is authorized, in order to raise a volunteer army, to issue his proclamation calling for volunteers to serve in the army of the United States, Now, therefore, I, William McKinley, President of the United States, by virtue of the power vested in me by the constitution and the laws and deeming sufficient occasion to exist, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, volunteers to the aggregate number of 75,000 in addition to the volunteers called forth by my proclamation of the 23d day of April, in the present year; the same to be apportioned, as far as practicable, among the several States and Territories and the District of Columbia, according to population, and to serve for two years unless sooner discharged. The proportion of each arm and the details of enlistment and organization will be made known through the war department. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 25th day of May, in the year of our Lord, 1898, and of the independence of the United States, the 122d. WILLIAM McKINLEY. By the President, WILLIAM K. DAY, Secretary of State. RUNNING DOWN HIS PREY. Four weeks after the victory of Rear-Admiral Dewey at Manila, Commodore Schley, in command of the flying squadron, had his shrewdness and pertinacity rewarded by finding the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba. For ten days he had, in the face of conflicting rumors, insisted that the ships of Spain were trying to make a landing on the southern coast of Cuba. This was evidently not in consonance with certain official information and his opinion was not given much weight. The captain of the British steamer Adula, who was interviewed at Cienfuegos, told of seeing the Spanish fleet in the vicinity of Santiago de Cuba, evidently awaiting an opportunity to get in. Captain Sigsbee of the St. Paul related how he had captured a Spanish coal vessel going into the harbor of Santiago, and Commodore Schley argued from these two incidents that the fleet of Spain was waiting in some haven near by until such time as a visit, fruitless in its results, should be made there by the Americans when, upon their departure, the Spanish fleet would run in. Consequently, Commodore Schley determined to find it. Himself in the lead with the flagship, he started toward the harbor. The Spanish troops at the works and batteries could be seen, through glasses, preparing in haste to give the American ships as warm a reception as possible. When about five miles from the batteries the lookouts reported the masts of two ships, and Flag Lieutenant Sears and Ensign McCauley made out the first to be the Cristobal Colon. Two torpedo boats were also made out and a second vessel of the Vizcaya class was seen. All this time Commodore Schley was upon the afterbridge of the Brooklyn making good use of his binoculars. Arrived at the harbor entrance, when the ships were sighted from the deck, he turned his eyes from the glasses long enough to wink and say: "I told you I would find them. They will be a long time getting home." THE VOYAGE OF THE OREGON. The voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Florida is a matter of historic interest, for it was the first craft of the kind to weather the famous cape. When it anchored off Sand Key, Fla., it had completed the longest trip ever made by a battleship. Altogether she sailed 18,102 miles in eighty-one days, and this includes the days she spent in coaling. Prior to this trip the record for long voyages had been held by a British flagship, which steamed from England to China. The distance from Puget Sound to Sand Key is more than two-thirds the circumference of the earth. The big trip was a record of itself, and it included within it several minor records for battleship steaming. For example, the Oregon ran 4,726 miles without a stop of any kind for any purpose. Such a run is longer than the voyage from New York to Queenstown or to Bremen or to Havre. It is comparable with the great runs of the magnificent merchant ships of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Navigation Company from London to Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It was a triumph for any kind of a ship, but it was a wonder for a battleship. The Oregon left Puget Sound March 6, left San Francisco on March 19 and drew up at Sand Key, Fla., on May 26. Everything on board of her was shipshape. Her engines, of 11,111 horse power, were bright and fresh and ready for another voyage of 17,000 miles. Not a bolt was loose; not a screw was out of order. HOBSON WINS FAME. On Thursday, June 2, Admiral Sampson decided to send the collier Merrimac into the bay of Santiago and sink it in the channel's narrowest part, for the purpose of holding Cervera and his fleet in the harbor, until the time when their capture or destruction seemed advisable. He called for volunteers, explaining that it was a desperate mission, death being almost certain for all those who ventured in. Then the navy showed the stuff of which it is made. Admiral Sampson wanted eight men. He could have had every officer and man in the fleet, for all were more than ready. Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson was selected to command the expedition, and Daniel Montague, George Charette, J. C. Murphy, Osborn Deignan, George F. Phillips, Francis Kelly and B. Clausen were detailed to accompany him. Just before 3 o'clock on the morning of the 3d the collier, deeply laden with, ballast material and some coal, was headed without preliminary maneuver straight for the entrance, over which the remaining batteries from Morro frowned from one side, and those from Socapa from the other. In the darkness of the early morning the Merrimac, without a light showing anywhere, dashed within the line of the forts before it was discovered, Sampson's ships thundering at the enemy's batteries to divert their attention from the collier. The Spaniards soon detected it, however, and brought every possible gun to bear. In the face of a terrific fire of shot and shell from Spanish guns the Merrimac ran into the narrow channel, where it was swung across and anchored. Then Lieutenant Hobson blew a hole in the ship's bottom and with his seven men took to a boat. They first made an effort to row out of the harbor and regain the American fleet, but soon realizing that, to attempt to pass the aroused batteries would mean certain death to all, they turned and rowed straight towards the Spanish squadron, and surrendered to Admiral Cervera, who held them as prisoners of war. The Spanish commander sent his chief of staff, Captain Oviedo, under a flag of truce to Admiral Sampson, bearing the information of the safety of the heroes. The Spanish officers were enthusiastic in their praise of the bravery shown by Hobson and his men, and looked upon them with amazement as heroes whose gallantry far exceeded any Spanish conception of what men might do for their country, and it was with great chagrin that Admiral Cervera was prevented by the Madrid authorities from returning the heroic young officer and his brave men to Admiral Sampson, but was compelled to deliver them to the military authorities ashore as prisoners of war. THROWN INTO A DUNGEON BY LINARES. General Linares, with the brutal instinct that had marked his conduct of Cuban affairs already intrusted to him, deliberately placed Hobson and his men in Morro Castle as a shield against the fire of Sampson's squadron. Here Hobson was locked up for five days in solitary confinement in a filthy dungeon under conditions which must have soon resulted in his serious illness and perhaps in death. The treatment he received and the scanty food given him were no better than that accorded to a common criminal condemned to execution. This punishment, however, was of short duration on account of the vigorous protest which was made through a neutral power to Spain, coupled with Admiral Sampson's notice to the Spanish admiral that he would be held personally responsible for Hobson's welfare. Under these circumstances Admiral Cervera interposed his influence with General Linares; and Hobson, with his men, was transferred to the barracks in the city. Here his solitary confinement continued, but he could look out of a window to the hills on the east and see the smoke from the American rifles of General Shatter's men firing from their intrenchments with the consolation that his captivity would be of short duration. After the assault on Santiago arrangements were made by the commanders of the two armies for the exchange of Lieutenant Hobson and his men for Spanish prisoners held by the Americans, and a truce was established for that purpose. The place selected for the exchange was under a tree between the American and Spanish lines, two-thirds of a mile beyond the intrenchments occupied by Colonel Wood's Rough Riders, near General Wheeler's headquarters, and in the center of the American line. The American prisoners left the Reina Mercedes hospital on the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba, where they had been confined, in charge of Major Irles, a Spanish staff officer, who speaks English perfectly. The prisoners were conducted to the meeting place on foot, but were not blindfolded. Colonel John Jacob Astor and Lieutenant Miloy, accompanied by Interpreter Maestro, were in charge of the Spanish prisoners. These consisted of Lieutenants Amelio Volez and Aurelius, a German, who were captured at El Caney, and Lieutenant Adolfo Aries and fourteen non-commissioned officers and privates. Lieutenant Aries and a number of the men were wounded in the fight at El Caney. The Spanish prisoners were taken through the American lines mounted and blindfolded. The meeting between Colonel Astor and Major Irles was extremely courteous, but very formal, and no attempt was made by either of them to discuss anything but the matter in hand. Major Irles was given his choice of three Spanish lieutenants in exchange for Hobson, and was also informed that he could have all of the fourteen men in exchange for the American sailors. The Spanish officers selected Lieutenant Aries, and the other two Spanish officers were conducted back to Juragua. It was then not later than 4 o'clock, and just as everything was finished and the two parties were separating Irles turned and said, courteously enough, but in a tone which indicated considerable defiance and gave his hearers the impression that he desired hostilities to be renewed at once: "Our understanding is, gentlemen, that this truce comes to an end at 5 o'clock." Colonel Astor looked at his watch, bowed to the Spanish officer, without making a reply, and then started back slowly to the American lines, with Hobson and his companions following. The meeting of the two parties and the exchange of prisoners had taken place in full view of both the American and Spanish soldiers who were intrenched near the meeting place, and the keenest interest was taken in the episode. SANTIAGO UNDER FIRE. On the morning of June 6 the American fleet engaged the Spanish batteries defending the entrance of the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, and, after three hours' bombardment, silenced nearly all the forts, destroyed several earthworks, and rendered the Estrella and Cayo batteries, two of the principal fortifications, useless. The fleet formed in double column, six miles off Morro Castle, at 6 o'clock in the morning, and steamed slowly 3,000 yards off shore, the Brooklyn leading, followed by the Marblehead, Texas and Massachusetts, and turned westward. The second line, the New York leading, with the New Orleans, Yankee, Iowa and Oregon following, turned eastward. The Vixen and Suwanee were far out on the left flank, watching the riflemen on shore. The Dolphin and Porter did similar duty on the right flank. The line headed by the New York attacked the new earthworks near Morro Castle. The Brooklyn column took up a station opposite the Estrella and Catalina batteries and the new earthworks along the shore. The Spanish batteries remained silent. It is doubtful whether the Spaniards were able to determine the character of the movement, owing to the dense fog and heavy rain which were the weather features this morning. Suddenly the Iowa fired a twelve-inch shell, which struck the base of Estrella battery and tore up the works. Instantly firing began from both Rear-Admiral Sampson's and Commodore Schley's column, and a torrent of shells from the ships fell upon the Spanish works. The Spaniards replied promptly, but their artillery work was of a poor quality and most of their shots went wild. Smoke settled around the ships in dense clouds, rendering accurate aiming difficult. There was no maneuvering of the fleet, the ships remaining at their original stations, firing steadily. The squadrons were so close in shore that it was difficult for the American gunners to reach the batteries on the hilltops, but their firing was excellent. Previous to the bombardment, orders were issued to prevent firing on Morro Castle, as the American Admiral had been informed that Lieutenant Hobson and the other prisoners of the Merrimac were confined there. In spite of this, however, several stray shots damaged Morro Castle somewhat. Commodore Schley's line moved closer in shore, firing at shorter range. The Brooklyn and Texas caused wild havoc among the Spanish shore batteries, quickly silencing them. While the larger ships were engaging the heavy batteries, the Suwanee and Vixen closed with the small in-shore battery opposite them, raining rapid-fire shots upon it and quickly placing the battery out of the fight. The Brooklyn closed to 800 yards and then the destruction caused by its guns and those of the Marblehead and Texas was really awful. In a few minutes the woodwork of Estrella fort was burning and the battery was silenced, firing no more during the engagement. Eastward the New York and New Orleans silenced the Cayo battery in quick order and then shelled the earthworks located higher up. The practice here was not so accurate, owing to the elevation of the guns. Many of the shells, however, landed, and the Spanish gunners retired. Shortly after 9 o'clock the firing ceased, the warships turning in order to permit the use of the port batteries. The firing then became a long reverberating crash of thunder, and the shells raked the Spanish batteries with terrific effect. Fire broke out in Catalina fort and silenced the Spanish guns. The firing of the fleet continued until 10 o'clock, when the Spanish ceased entirely, and Admiral Sampson hoisted the "Cease firing" signal. After the fleet retired the Spaniards returned to their guns and sent twelve shots after the American ships, but no damage was done. In fact, throughout the entire engagement none of our ships was hit and no American was injured. One purpose of Admiral Sampson, it appears, was to land troops and siege guns at Aguadores, after reducing the defenses of the place, and then make a close assault upon Santiago, which, in view of the present condition of its fortifications, may be expected to yield soon. A landing of American troops was effected near Baiquiri, some distance east of Aguadores, and near the railroad station connecting with Santiago de Cuba. Later an engagement took place between the American force and a column of Spanish troops which had been sent against the landing party. The Spaniards were driven back. THE MARINES AT GUANTANAMO. Lieutenant-Colonel R. W. Huntington's battalion of marines landed from the transport Panther on Friday, June 10, and encamped on the hill guarding the abandoned cable station at the entrance to the outer harbor of Guantanamo. On Saturday afternoon a rush attack was made on them by a detachment of Spanish regulars and guerrillas, and for thirteen hours the fighting was almost continuous, until re-enforcements were landed from the Marblehead. The engagement began with desultory firing at the pickets, a thousand yards inland from the camp. Captain Spicer's company was doing guard duty and was driven in, finally rallying on the camp and repulsing the enemy at 5 o'clock. The sky was blanketed with clouds, and when the sun set a gale was blowing out seaward. Night fell thick and impenetrable. The Spanish squads concealed in the chaparral cover had the advantage, the Americans on the ridge furnishing fine targets against the sky and the white tents. The Spaniards fought from cover until midnight, discoverable only at flashes, at which the marines fired volleys. Shortly after midnight came the main attack. The Spaniards made a gallant charge up the southwest slope, but were met by repeated volleys from the main body and broke before they were one-third of the way up the hill; but they came so close at points that there was almost a hand-to-hand struggle. The officers used their revolvers. Three Spaniards got through the open formation to the edge of the camp. Colonel Jose Campina, the Cuban guide, discharged his revolver, and they, finding themselves without support, beat a hasty retreat down the reverse side of the hill. During this assault Assistant Surgeon John Blair Gibbs was killed. He was shot in the head in front of his own tent, the farthest point of attack. He fell into the arms of Private Sullivan and both dropped. A second bullet threw the dust in their faces. Surgeon Gibbs lived ten minutes, but he did not again regain consciousness. Four Americans were killed and one wounded in this engagement. Sunday brought no rest. Every little while the p-a-t of a Mauser would be heard, and a spatter of dust on the camp hillside would show where the bullet struck. During the day the enemy kept well back, scattering a few riflemen through the trees to keep up a desultory fire on the camp. There was no massing of forces, evidently for fear of shells from the Marblehead, which lay in the harbor close by. But when night came on again the Spanish forces were greatly augmented and in the dark were bolder in their attacks. Lieutenant Neville was sent with a small squad of men to dislodge the advance pickets of the enemy, and his men followed him with a will. The Spaniards, who had been potting at every shadow in the camp, fled when the American pickets came swinging down their way. As the Americans pressed along the edge of the steep hill, following a blind trail, they nearly fell into an ambush. There was a sudden firing from all directions, and an attack came from all sides. Sergeant-Major Henry Good was shot through the right breast and soon died. The Americans were forced back upon the edge of the precipice and an effort was made to rush them over, but without success. As soon as they recovered from the first shock and got shelter in the breaks of the cliff their fire was deadly. Spaniard after Spaniard went down before American bullets and the rush was checked almost as suddenly as it was begun, causing the enemy to fall back. The Americans swarmed after the fleeing Spaniards, shooting and cheering as they charged, and won a complete victory. The Spanish forces left fifteen dead upon the field. The American loss was two killed and four wounded. The night attack was picturesque, and a striking spectacle--the crack of the Mausers, tongues of fire from every bush encircling the camp, the twitter of the long steel bullets overhead, while the machine guns down on the water were ripping open the pickets, and the crash of the field guns could be heard as they were driving in canister where the fire of the Spaniards was the thickest. Then there was the screech of the Marblehead's shells as she took a hand in the fight, and the sharp, quick flashing of the rapid-firing one-pounder guns from the ships' launches. On Tuesday the brave marines, who had been exposed for three days and nights to the fire of a foe they could but blindly see, weary of a kind of warfare for which they were not trained, went into the enemy's hiding place and inflicted disastrous punishment. The primary object of the expedition was to destroy the tank which provided the enemy with water. There are three ridges over the hills between the camp from which the Americans and their Cuban allies started and the sea. In the valley between the second and third was the water tank. The Spanish headquarters were located at cross-roads between the first and second ridges, and it was against this place that a detachment of fifty marines and ten Cubans under Lieutenants Mahoney and Magill was sent. Their instructions were to capture and hold this position. Captain Elliot with ninety marines and fifteen Cubans went east over the last range of hills, and Captain Spicer with the same number of men went to the west. A fourth party of fifty marines and a Cuban guide under command of Lieutenant Ingate made a detour and secured a position back of Lieutenant Mahoney. The first fighting was done by the men under Lieutenant Magill with the second platoon of Company E. These parted from the others, going over the first hill to the second one. They had advanced but a short distance when they came to a heliograph station guarded by a company of Spaniards. Shooting began on both sides, the Mausers of the Spanish and the guns of the Americans snapping in unison. Our men had toiled up the hillside in the boiling sun, but they settled down to shooting as steadily and as sturdily as veterans could have done. The skirmish lasted fifteen minutes. At the end of this time the Spaniards could no longer stand the methodical, accurate shooting of Magill's men, and they ran helter-skelter, leaving several dead upon the field. Lieutenant Magill took possession of the heliograph outfit without the loss or injury of a man. But this was in truth only a skirmish, and the real fighting was at hand. Captains Spicer and Elliot and Lieutenant Mahoney led their men up the second range of hills. A spattering of bullets gave note that the news of their coming was abroad, but they toiled up to the top of the hill. Here they found the Spanish camp situated on a little ridge below them. There was one large house, the officers' quarters, and around this was a cluster of huts, in the center of which was the water tank which they had come to destroy. Quickly they moved into line of battle, and advanced down the mountain, the enemy's bullets singing viciously, but going wildly about them. Gradually the Americans and Cubans descended the slope, shooting as they went, and closing in upon the enemy in hiding about the huts and in the brush. Then the order came to make ready for a bayonet charge, but it had scarcely been given when the Spaniards broke from cover and ran, panic-stricken, for a clump of brush about one hundred yards further on. Then there was shooting quick and fast. There were dozens of Spanish soldiers who did not reach the thicket, for the American fire was deadly, and man after man was seen to fall. The fighting blood of the Americans was up. Elliot's command made straight for the thicket to which the Spanish had fled, routed them out, and drove them on before. Up the ridge they forced them, shooting and receiving an answering fire all the way. Pursuers and pursued moved on over the crest of the hill, and there the Spaniards received a new surprise. Lieutenant Magill and his men had made a detour and were waiting for them. As the enemy came within rifle shot over the hill and started to descend Lieutenant Magill's men emptied their rifles. The Spanish turned back dismayed, and wavered for a time between the two fires of our troops, uncertain which way to turn. Then they assembled at the top of the hill. This was a fatal mistake, for the Dolphin had taken up a position to the sea side of the hills in the morning, and the moment her commander espied the Spaniards on the summit of the ridge he opened fire upon them. The slaughter was terrific, but it is but just to record the fact that the enemy made a brave fight. They would not surrender, and made an attempt to fight their way along the summit of the ridge, but they were routed and ran in all directions to escape. While the Americans were destroying the blockhouse, tank and windmill the Cubans rounded up a Spanish lieutenant and seventeen privates. These were spared and compelled to surrender. The lieutenant gave the Spanish loss in the battle at sixty-eight killed and nearly 200 wounded. Not an American was killed, and no one seriously wounded. TRANSPORTS FILLED WITH TROOPS. After weeks of waiting and preparation the first army of invasion to start from the eastern shores of the United States departed under the command of General Shatter on the morning of June 14 at 9 o'clock. The fleet of transports consisted of thirty-five vessels, four tenders and fourteen convoys. The actual embarkation of the troops began on Monday, June 6. The work proceeded diligently until late on Wednesday afternoon, when, after the departure of several vessels, an important order came, calling a halt in the proceedings. The alleged cause of the delay was the report that the Hornet while out scouting had sighted several Spanish war vessels. Like a wet blanket came the order to halt. Cheerfulness was displaced by keen disappointment. Two questions were on every tongue--"Has Spain surrendered?" "Has our fleet met with a reverse?" The former met with the readiest belief, many believing the words in the order "indefinitely postponed" meant peace. General Miles and his staff went to Port Tampa Sunday morning at 6:30' to deliver parting instructions. During a heavy rain squall on Saturday night at 8 o'clock while the transports were straining at their cables the little tug Captain Sam steamed from ship to ship megaphoning the order: "Stand ready to sail at daylight." Above the roar of the storm wild cheers were heard and a bright flash of lightning revealed the soldiers standing in the rain waving their wet hats and hurrahing. When the morning broke, piers were lined with transports, the docks were crowded with box cars, flat cars, stock cars, baggage and express cars. Most of these were crowded with soldiers who were cheered until their ears ached, and who cheered in return until hoarse. Bright-colored dresses and fragile parasols in the crowds of blue-coats indicated the presence of the fair sex. Horses and mules were kicking up clouds of dust and the sun poured down its hot rays on the sweltering mass of humanity. Thus Sunday passed, the transports at the docks and those in midstream receiving their quotas of men and the necessaries to sustain them. STIRRING SCENES CONTINUED. General Miles again went to the port on Monday on the early train. The stirring scenes continued; the mad rush had not abated. General Miles from the observation end of his car watched the crowd as it passed near him. The transports swinging at their moorings were plainly in view, as were also many of those at the docks. The embarkation of animals was progressing satisfactorily. Shortly after 9 o'clock the funnels of the transports began to pour forth volumes of black smoke. The Olivette, Margaret, Mateo and Laura were visiting the fleet, giving water to one, troops to another, animals and equipments to another. Along the pier could be heard the voices of the transport commanders as they gave their orders to cut loose. The gangplanks were pulled in, the hatchways closed, lines cast off and the engines were put in motion. The vessels backed into the bay and anchored to await the order to sail. The Matteawan hove her cable short at 10 o'clock. All eyes were riveted on the Seguranca, the flagship, and when the final signal came a mighty cheer arose. From the lower row of portholes to her tops hats waved in wild delight. The anchor was quickly weighed and the great vessel pointed her prow down the bay. In a few minutes the City of Washington, Rio Grande, Cherokee, Iroquois and Whitney followed. As these boats picked their way through the anchored fleet men shouted and bands played. Every vessel elicited a wild display of enthusiasm. These were the only vessels to depart in the forenoon, some of them going over to St. Petersburg to procure water. General Miles, evidently becoming impatient, embarked on the Tarpon at 12:30 and went out among the fleet, going as far down the bay as St. Petersburg and not returning until 4 o'clock. In the meantime other transports were steaming down the bay. In the afternoon the Morgan cut a path of white foam down the channel, and her lead was followed by the Vigilance, San Marcos, Clinton, Yucatan, Stillwater, Berkshire, Olivette, Santiago, Arkansas, Seneca, Saratoga, Miami, Leona, Breakwater and Comal. By the time these vessels had moved away darkness had enveloped the remaining ships, from whose sides glimmered long rows of lights. The Knickerbocker, numbered thirteen, and the Orizaba had much to take on during the night. The last to load were eager to complete the task for fear they might be left. By daylight all the ships except the Seguranca had moved down the bay. At 9 o'clock the Seguranca, amid cheers and the blowing of whistles, followed. General Shatter and his staff were the last to leave. The last orders were handed to Lieutenant Miley, an aid to General Shafter, and immediately the flagship started. SAMPSON AGAIN SHELLS SANTIAGO. Rear-Admiral Sampson's fleet bombarded the batteries at Santiago de Cuba for the third time at daylight on the morning of June 16. For hours the ships pounded the batteries at the right and left of the entrance, only sparing El Morro, where Lieutenant Hobson and his companions of the Merrimac were in prison. As a preliminary to the hammering given the batteries the dynamite cruiser Vesuvius at midnight was given another chance. Three 250-pound charges of gun cotton were sent over the fortifications at the entrance. The design was to drop them in the bay around the angle back of the eminence on which El Morro is situated, where it was known that the Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers were lying. Two charges went true, as no reports were heard--a peculiarity of the explosion of gun cotton in water. The third charge exploded with terrific violence on Cayo Smith. From where the fleet lay the entrance to the harbor looked, in the black night, like a door opening into the livid fire of a Titanic furnace. A crater big enough to hold a church was blown out of the side of the Cayo Smith and was clearly seen from the ships. Coffee was served to the men at 3:30 in the morning, and with the first blush of dawn the men were called quietly to quarters. The ship steamed in five-knot speed to a 3,000-yard range, when they closed up, broadside on, until a distance of three cable-lengths separated them. They were strung out in the form of a crescent, the heavy fighting ships in the center, the flagship on the right flank and the Massachusetts on the left flank. The line remained stationary throughout the bombardment. The Vixen and Scorpion took up positions on opposite flanks, close in shore, for the purpose of enfilading any infantry that might fire upon the ships. When the ships got into position it was still too dark for any firing. The Admiral signaled the ships not to fire until the muzzles of the enemy's guns in the embrasures could be seen by the gun captains. Fifteen minutes later, at 5:25 am, the New York opened with a broadside from her main battery at the works on the east of the entrance to the harbor. All the ships followed in red streaks of flame. The fleet, enveloped in smoke, pelted the hills and kicked up dirt and masonry. Though the gun captains had been cautioned not to waste ammunition, but to fire with deliberation, the fire was so rapid that there was an almost continuous report. The measured crash of the big thirteen-inch guns of the battleships sounded above the rattle of the guns of the secondary batteries like thunder-claps above the din of a hurricane. A strong land breeze off the shore carried the smoke of the ships seaward, while it let down a thick curtain in front of the Spanish gunners. The dons responded spiritedly at first, but their frenzied, half-crazed fire could not match the cool nerve, trained eyes and skilled gunnery of the American sailors. Our fire was much more effective than in preceding bombardments. The Admiral's ordnance expert had given explicit directions to reduce the powder charges and to elevate the guns, so as to shorten the trajectory and thus to secure a plunging fire. The effect of the reduced charges was marvelous. In fifteen minutes one western battery was completely wrecked. The Massachusetts tore a gaping hole in the emplacement with a 1,000-pound projectile, and the Texas dropped a shell into the powder magazine. The explosion wrought terrible havoc. The frame was lifted, the sides were blown out and a shower of debris flew in every direction. One timber, carried out of the side of the battery, went tumbling down the hill. The batteries on the east of Morro were harder to get at, but the New Orleans crossed the bows of the New York to within 500 yards of shore and played a tattoo with her long eight-inch rifles, hitting them repeatedly, striking a gun squarely muzzle-on, lifting it off its trunnions and sending it sweeping somersaults high in the air. When the order came, at 6:30, to cease firing, every gun of the enemy had been silenced for ten minutes, but as the ships drew off some of the Spanish courage returned and a half-dozen shots were fired spitefully at the Massachusetts and Oregon, falling in their wakes. WENT ASHORE WITH A RUSH. Sea and weather were propitious when, on June 22, the great army of invasion under General Shatter left their transports in Baiquiri harbor, and landed on Cuban soil. The navy and the army co-operated splendidly and as the big warships closed in on the shore to pave the way for the approach of the transports and then went back again, three cheers for the navy went up from many thousand throats on the troop-ships and three cheers for the army rose from ship after ship. The Cuban insurgents, too, bore their share in the enterprise honorably and well. Five thousand of them in mountain fastness and dark thickets of ravines, lay all the previous night on their guns watching every road and mountain path leading from Santiago to Guantanamo. A thousand of them were within sight of Baiquiri, making the approach of the Spaniards under cover of darkness an impossibility. There is a steep, rocky hill, known as Punta Baiquiri, rising almost perpendicularly at the place indicated. It is a veritable Gibraltar in possibilities of defense. From the staff at its summit the Spanish flag was defiantly floating at sunset; but in the morning it was gone, and with it the small Spanish guard which had maintained the signal station. Between nightfall and dawn the Spaniards had taken the alarm and fled from the place, firing the town as they left. The flames were watched with interest from the ships. Two sharp explosions were heard. At first they were thought to be the report of guns from Spanish masked batteries, but they proved to be explosions of ammunition in a burning building. Three hours' waiting made the men on the transports impatient to get ashore and in action, and every move of the warships was closely watched by the soldiers. A little before 9 o'clock the bombardment of the batteries of Juragua was begun. This was evidently a feint to cover the real point of attack, Juragua being about half-way between Baiquiri and Santiago. The bombardment lasted about twenty minutes. The scene then quickly shifted back again to the great semi-circle of transports before Baiquiri. At 9:40 o'clock the New Orleans opened fire with a gun that sent a shell rumbling and crashing against the hillside. The Detroit, Wasp, Machias and Suwanee followed suit. In five minutes the sea was alive with flotillas of small boats, headed by launches, speeding for the Baiquiri dock. Some of the boats were manned by crews of sailors, while others were rowed by the soldiers themselves. Each boat contained sixteen men, every one in fighting trim and carrying three days' rations, a shelter tent, a gun and 200 cartridges. All were ready to take the field on touching the shore should they be called upon. The firing of the warships proved to be a needless precaution, as their shots were not returned and no Spaniards were visible. General Shafter, on board the Seguranca, closely watched the landing of the troops. Brigadier-General Lawton, who had been detailed to command the landing party, led the way in a launch, accompanied by his staff, and directed the formation of the line of operation. A detachment of eighty regulars was the first to land, followed by General Shafter's old regiment, the First infantry. Then came the Twenty-fifth, Twenty-second, Tenth, Seventh and Twelfth infantry in the order named, and the Second Massachusetts and a detachment of the Ninth cavalry. The boats rushed forward simultaneously from every quarter, in good-natured rivalry to be first, and their occupants scrambled over one another to leap ashore. As the boats tossed about in the surf getting ashore was no easy matter, and the soldiers had to throw their rifles on the dock before they could climb up. Some hard tumbles resulted, but nobody was hurt. At the end of the pier the companies and regiments quickly lined up and marched away. General Lawton threw a strong detachment for the night about six miles west, on the road to Santiago, and another detachment was posted to the north of the town among the hills. The rest of the troops were quartered in the town, some of them being housed in the buildings of the iron company. Some of the troops were quartered in deserted houses, while others preferred the shelter of their tents in the adjoining fields. The morning's fire, it was seen, had destroyed the roundhouse, the repair shops and several small dwellings. The town was deserted when the troops landed, but women and children soon appeared from the surrounding thickets and returned to their homes. Part of the sun-bronzed troops quickly searched the buildings and beat up the thickets in search of lurking foes and then at nightfall marched into the unknown country beyond, with long, swinging strides and the alert bearing of the old frontier army men, ready to fight the Spaniards Sioux-fashion or in the open, wherever they could be found. The landing was accomplished without loss of life, the only accident being the wounding of an insurgent on the hills by a shell from one of the warships. VICTORY IS DEARLY BOUGHT. On Friday morning, June 24, four troops of the First cavalry, four troops of the Tenth cavalry and eight troops of Roosevelt's Rough Riders--less than 1,000 men in all--dismounted and attacked 2,000 Spanish soldiers in the thickets within five miles of Santiago de Cuba. A bloody conflict ensued, and the Americans lost sixteen men, including Captain Allyn M. Capron and Hamilton Fish, Jr., of the Rough Riders. Practically two battles were fought at the same time, one by the Rough Riders under the immediate command of Colonel Wood, on the top of the plateau, and the other on the hillsides, several miles away, by the regulars, with whom was General Young. The expedition started from Juragua--marked on some Cuban maps as Altares--a small town on the coast nine miles east of Morro Castle, which was the first place occupied by the troops after their landing at Baiquiri. Information was brought to the American army headquarters by Cubans that forces of Spanish soldiers had assembled at the place where the battle occurred to block the march on Santiago. General Young went there to dislodge them, the understanding being that the Cubans under General Castillo would co-operate with him, but the latter failed to appear until the fight was nearly finished. Then they asked permission to chase the fleeing Spaniards, but as the victory was already won General Young refused to allow them to take part in the fight. General Young's plans contemplated the movement of half of his command along the trail at the base of the range of hills leading back from the coast, so that he could attack the Spaniards on the flank while the Rough Riders went off to follow the trail leading over the hill to attack them in front. This plan was carried out completely. The troops left Juragua at daybreak. The route of General Young and the regulars was comparatively level and easy of travel. Three Hotch-kiss guns were taken with this command. The first part of the journey of the Rough Riders was over steep hills several hundred feet high. The men carried 200 rounds of ammunition and heavy camp equipment. Although this was done easily in the early morning, the weather became intensely hot, and the sun beat down upon the cowboys and Eastern athletes as they toiled up the grade with their heavy packs, and frequent rests were necessary. The trail was so narrow that for the greater part of the way the men had to proceed single file. Prickly cactus bushes lined both sides of the trail, and the underbrush was so thick that it was impossible to see ten feet on either side. All the conditions were favorable for a murderous ambuscade, but the troopers kept a close watch, and made as little noise as possible. The Rough Riders entered into the spirit of the occasion with the greatest enthusiasm. It was their first opportunity for a fight, and every man was eager for it. The weather grew swelteringly hot, and one by one the men threw away blankets and tent rolls, and emptied their canteens. The first intimation had by Colonel Wood's command that there were Spaniards in the vicinity was when they reached a point three or four miles back from the coast, when the low cuckoo calls of the Spanish soldiers were heard in the bush. It was difficult to locate the exact point from which these sounds came, and the men were ordered to speak in low tones. CHARGE THE ENEMY As soon as the enemy could be located a charge was ordered, and the Americans rushed into the dense thicket regardless of danger. The Spaniards fell back, but fired as they ran, and the battle lasted about an hour. The Spaniards left many dead on the field, their loss in killed being not less than fifty. The Spanish had carefully planned an ambush and intended to hold the Americans in check. They became panic-stricken at the boldness of the rush made by the invading force. The position gained was of great advantage. Where the battle took place a path opens into a space covered with high grass on the right-hand side of the trail and the thickets. A barbed wire fence runs along the left side. The dead body of a Cuban was found on the side of the road, and at the same time Captain Capron's troops covered the outposts the heads of several Spaniards were seen in the bushes for a moment. It was not until then that the men were permitted to load their carbines. When the order to load was given they acted on it with a will and displayed the greatest eagerness to make an attack. At this time the sound of firing was heard a mile or two to the right, apparently coming from the hills beyond the thicket. It was the regulars replying to the Spaniards who had opened on them from the thicket. In addition to rapid rifle fire the boom of Hotchkiss guns could be heard. Hardly two minutes elapsed before Mauser rifles commenced to crack in the thicket and a hundred bullets whistled over the heads of the Rough Riders, cutting leaves from the trees and sending chips flying from the fence posts by the side of the men. The Spaniards had opened and they poured in a heavy fire, which soon had a most disastrous effect. The troops stood their ground with the bullets singing all around them. Private Colby caught sight of the Spaniards and fired the opening shot at them before the order to charge was given. Sergeant Hamilton Fish, Jr., was the first man to fall. He was shot through the heart and died instantly. The Spaniards were not more than 200 yards off, but only occasional glimpses of them could be seen. The men continued to pour volley after volley into the brush in the direction of the sound of the Spanish shots, but the latter became more frequent and seemed to be getting nearer. Colonel Wood walked along his lines, displaying the utmost coolness. He ordered troops to deploy into the thicket, and sent another detachment into the open space on the left of the trail. Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt led the former detachment and tore through the brush, urging his men on. The shots came thicker and faster every moment, and the air seemed filled with the singing and shrieking sound of the Mauser bullets, while the short pop of the Spanish rifles could be distinguished easily from the heavier reports of the American weapons. Sometimes the fire would come in volleys and again shots would follow each other in rapid succession for several minutes. Captain Capron stood behind his men, revolver in hand, using it whenever a Spaniard exposed himself. His aim was sure and two of the enemy were seen to fall under his fire. Just as he was preparing to take another shot and shouting orders to his men at the same time, his revolver dropped from his grasp and he fell to the ground with a ball through his body. His troop was badly disconcerted for a moment, but with all the strength he could muster he cried, "Don't mind me, boys, go on and fight." He was carried from the field as soon as possible and lived only a few hours. Lieutenant Thomas of the same troop received a wound through the leg soon afterward and became delirious from pain. ROOSEVELT'S NARROW ESCAPE. The troops that were in the thicket were not long in getting into the midst of the fight. The Spaniards located them and pressed them hard, but they sent a deadly fire in return, even though most of the time they could not see the enemy. After ten or fifteen minutes of hot work the firing fell off some, and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt ordered his men back from the thicket into the trail, narrowly escaping a bullet himself, which struck a tree alongside his head. It was evident the Spaniards were falling back and changing their positions, but the fire continued at intervals. Then the troops tore to the front and into more open country than where the enemy's fire was coming from. About this time small squads commenced to carry the wounded from the thicket and lay them in a more protected spot on the trail until they could be removed to the field hospital. It was not long before the enemy gave way and ran down the steep hill and up another hill to the blockhouse, with the evident intent of making a final stand there. Colonel Wood was at the front directing the movement and it was here that Major Brodie was shot. Colonel Wood and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt both led the troops in pursuit of the fleeing Spaniards and a hail of bullets was poured into the blockhouse. By the time the American advance got within 600 yards of the blockhouse the Spaniards abandoned it and scattered among the brush up another hill in the direction of Santiago, and the battle was at an end. During all this time just as hot a fire had been progressing at General Young's station. The battle began in much the same manner as the other one, and when the machine guns opened fire the Spaniards sent volleys at the gunners from the brush on the opposite hillside. Two troops of cavalry charged up the hill and other troops sent a storm of bullets at every point from which the Spanish shots came. The enemy was gradually forced back, though firing all the time until they, as well as those confronting the Rough Riders, ran for the blockhouse only to be dislodged by Colonel Wood's men. General Young stated afterwards that the battle was one of the sharpest he had ever experienced. It was only the quick and constant fire of the troopers, whether they could see the enemy or not, that caused the Spaniards to retreat so soon. General Young spoke in the highest terms of the conduct of the men in his command, and both Colonel Wood and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt were extremely gratified with the work done by the Rough Riders on the first occasion of their being under fire. When it became evident that the Spaniards were giving up the fight, searching parties went through the thicket and tall grass, picking up the dead and wounded. The latter were carried to a field hospital half a mile to the rear and all possible attention was given them, while preparation was made to remove them to Juragua. ARMY IN A BAPTISM OF FIRE. After a period of comparative idleness the campaign was opened in earnest Friday, July 1, when General Shafter's army began an attack at dawn upon the Spanish fortifications. Shatter had come from Cuero to El Caney with his army, making headquarters at Siboney. From these points the Spanish troops under General Linares had retreated a short distance and taken San Juan hill, from which they had accurate range of the American batteries. Shafter's forces were without sufficient guns, while the Spaniards had more and of a heavier caliber than was anticipated. The American army slept Thursday night within sight of its battlefield of the morrow. At daylight Friday morning the forward movement began. Hard fighting was expected at El Caney, guarding the northeastern approach to Santiago, and against this position were massed the commands of Generals Lawton and Wheeler, supported by Capron's battery of light artillery. Both General Wheeler and General Young were sick, so General Sumner was assigned to the command of the former and Colonel Wood of the Rough Riders was placed in command of General Young's cavalry brigade. Colonel Carroll of the Sixth cavalry took General Sumner's place at the head of the First brigade of cavalry. Under General Lawton were three brigades--Colonel Van Horn's, consisting of the Eighth and Twenty-second infantry and the Second Massachusetts volunteers; Colonel Miles', consisting of the First, Fourth and Twenty-fifth infantry, and General Chaffee's, consisting of the Seventh, Twelfth and Seventeenth infantry. On the eve of battle Colonel Van Horn was replaced by General Ludlow. Under General Sumner were four troops of the Second cavalry and eight troops of the First volunteer cavalry; under Colonel Wood the Rough Riders, the Tenth cavalry and four troops of the First cavalry. These two cavalry commands occupied the left of the San Juan plain for the attack on the blockhouse at that point. They were supported by Colonel Carroll's brigade, consisting of the Third, Sixth and Ninth cavalry, and by Captain Grimes' battery of the Second artillery. The southeastern approaches to the city were commanded by General Kent's division. His First brigade was commanded by General Hawkins and consisted of the Sixth and Sixteenth regular infantry and the Seventy-first New York volunteers. Colonel Pearson commanded the Second brigade, composed of the Second, Tenth and Twenty-first regular infantry, while the Third brigade, commanded by Colonel Worth, consisted of the Ninth, Thirteenth and Twenty-fourth regular infantry. Aguadores was their objective point. Grimes' battery of artillery and the Rough Riders were to support General Kent in his attack on Aguadores, while General Duffield, with the Thirty-third and a battalion of the Thirty-fourth Michigan volunteers, was in advance of Kent's left. CAPTAIN CAPRON OPENS THE FIGHT. The first shot of the engagement came at 6:45 o'clock Friday morning. It was fired by Captain Allyn M. Capron's Battery E of the First artillery. The privilege of opening the engagement was granted this officer because of the killing of his son among the Rough Riders who fell near Sevilla. The Spanish answered the challenge from their forts and trenches about Caney, and immediately the battle was on. The Spaniards for a time fought desperately to prevent the town from falling into the hands of our forces, but before the fighting had been long under way the Americans and Cubans under Garcia gained advanced ground. Foot by foot the enemy was driven back into the village. The enthusiasm of the American forces was intense and their spirit quickly spread to the Cuban troops. At one time during this fight one of the big military balloons used by the signal corps for reconnoissance hung over San Juan, not over 500 yards from the enemy, and for five minutes the Spaniards below tried to puncture it, but they were unable to get the range. This balloon proved of inestimable service in the engagement. It floated just over the tree tops, and was easily guided along three miles of the road toward the lines of the enemy. Whenever it halted for the purpose of taking a photograph of the fortifications below, the Spaniards seized the occasion for taking pot shots. In the fighting at San Juan a Spanish shell two and a half inches in diameter burst in the midst of Captain Puritier's Battery K of the First artillery, wounding several. Among those injured was. Private Samuel Barr. Roosevelt's Rough Riders were also in this fight and bore themselves with as much credit as in the battle of last Friday in the bush. Several of the Rough Riders were wounded. THE FIGHT BEFORE CANEY. Meanwhile the battle was raging fiercely at Caney and Aguadores. In General Lawton's division the Second Massachusetts up to the middle of the day sustained the heaviest loss, although other regiments were more actively engaged. During the afternoon the fight for the possession of Caney was most obstinate, and the ultimate victory reflects great credit upon the American troops. It was a glory, too, for Spain, though she never had a chance to win at any time during the day. Her men fought in intrenchments, covered ways and blockhouses, while the American forces were in the open from first to last. The Spanish soldiers stuck to their work like men, and this, the first land fight of the war, may well cause Spain to feel proud of her men. The American soldiers attacked the intrenchments through open ground, and, from the firing of the first shot until they were on the hills above Caney, they fought their way forward and the Spanish were driven backward. General Chaffee's brigade held the right of the line with the town of Caney. General Ludlow's division was in the center and Colonel Miles held the left. The firing at times was very heavy during the morning, but the Spaniards in the covered way made a most obstinate defense and refused to yield an inch. Time and again the shells from Captain Capron's battery drove them to cover, but as soon as his fire ceased they were up and at it again. Despite the heavy firing of the American troops they were able to make but little apparent progress during the morning, although eventually they steadily drew in and inclosed the town on all sides. At noon it became evident that the fire from the covered way could not be stopped by the artillery alone and that no permanent advance could be made until the place was taken, and General Lawton decided to capture it by assault. Accordingly he sent a messenger to General Chaffee, with instructions to take the position by a charge. General Chaffee thereupon closed in with his men rapidly from the north, while Captain Capron maintained a heavy fire on the fort, keeping the Spaniards in the covered way and putting hole after hole into the stone walls of the fort. Shortly afterward he threw a shot from the battery, which tore away the flagstaff, bringing the Spanish flag to the ground. From that time no banner waved above it. No finer work has ever been done by soldiers than was done by the brigades of General Ludlow and Colonel Miles as they closed in on the town. The Spanish blazed at them with Mausers and machine guns but without effect. Nothing could stop them and they pushed in closer during the afternoon, and by the time General Chaffee's men were in form Miles and Ludlow were in the streets of the town, holding with tenacity the Spaniards from retreating toward Santiago, while Chaffee closed in on the right. The fighting for hours in front of Colonel Miles' line at a hacienda known as "Duero" was very fierce. The Spanish defense was exceedingly obstinate. The house was guarded by rifle pits, and as fast as the Spaniards were driven from one they retreated into another and continued firing. When the final closing-in movement was begun at 6 p.m. the town of Caney was taken and a large number of prisoners was captured. The Spanish loss was 2,000 in all. ATTACK ON AGUADORES. The only movement of the day which did not meet with success was General Duffield's attempt to occupy the sea village of Aguadores. The New York, the Suwanee and the Gloucester shelled the old fort and the rifle pits during the forenoon, drove all the Spaniards from the vicinity and bowled over the parapet from which flew the Spanish flag; but, owing to the broken railway bridge, General Duffield's troops were unable to get across the river which separated them from the little town, and were compelled to go back to Juragua. Saturday at dawn the Spaniards, encouraged by Linares at their head, attempted to retake San Juan hill. Hotchkiss guns mowed them down in platoons. They were driven back into the third line of their intrenchments, and there their sharpshooters, reported to be among the finest in the world, checked the Americans. The batteries of Grimes, Parkhurst and Burt were compelled to retire to El Paso hill. Lawton came with the Ninth Massachusetts and the Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Michigan and the Spaniards began to retreat. Sampson then began bombardment of the outer forts of Santiago. The Oregon shot down Morro's flag and battered the old castle into dust. The batteries at Punta Gorda were blown up by the Oregon and the Indiana. Not one of the American ships was hit by the Spanish fire. At Guantanamo the Cuban forces under Garcia and Castillo killed 300 Spanish soldiers and routed the enemy's army there. Castillo's forces forced their way to within five miles of Santiago. SHATTER'S REPORTS OF THE FIGHT. The nation was thrown into a fever of excitement Friday when the following bulletin was posted at the War Department, in Washington: Camp, Near Sevilla, Cuba 5--Action now going on. The firing only light and desultory. Began on the right near Caney, Lawton's division. He will move on the northeast part of the town of Santiago. Will keep you continually advised of progress. SHAFTER. For several hours this was the only information from the seat of war, but later a dispatch came from Colonel Alien, in charge of the signal station at Playa del Este. He said that the fight was growing furious in all directions. At the time he sent the telegram eight Americans and nine Cubans had been wounded. All through Saturday rumors of American reverses were rife, and to make public information definite, so far as it went, the War Department thought it wise to post a dispatch which it had received early that morning. This was as follows: Siboney, via Playa del Este, July l.--I fear I have underestimated to-day's casualties. A large and thoroughly equipped hospital ship should be sent here at once to care for the wounded. The chief surgeon says he has use for forty more medical officers. The ship must bring a launch and boats for conveying the wounded. SHAFTER, Major-General. The next message made public sent a wave of apprehension over the country. The text was as follows: Camp Near Sevilla, Cuba, via Playa del Este, July 3.--We have the town well invested in the north and east, but with a very thin line. Upon approaching it we find it of such a character and the defense so strong it will be impossible to carry it by storm with my present forces. Our losses up to date will aggregate 1,000, but list has not yet been made. But little sickness outside of exhaustion from intense heat and exertion of the battle of day before yesterday and the almost constant fire which is kept up on the trenches. Wagon road to the rear is kept open with difficulty on account of rains, but I will be able to use it for the present. General Wheeler is seriously ill and will probably have to go to the rear to-day. General Young is also very ill, confined to his bed. General Hawkins slightly wounded in the foot during sortie enemy made last night, which was handsomely repulsed. The behavior of the troops was magnificent. General Garcia reported he holds the railroad from Santiago to San Luis and has burned a bridge and removed some rails; also that General Pando has arrived at Palma and that the French consul, with about 400 French citizens, came into his line yesterday from Santiago. I have directed him to treat them with every courtesy possible. SHAFTER, Major-General. General Miles sent the following dispatch to General Shafter: Headquarters of the Army, Washington, D. C., July 3.--Accept my hearty congratulations on the record made of magnificent fortitude, gallantry, and sacrifice displayed in the desperate fighting of the troops before Santiago. I realize the hardships, difficulties, and sufferings, and am proud that amid those terrible scenes the troops illustrated such fearless and patriotic devotion to the welfare of our common country and flag. Whatever the results to follow their unsurpassed deeds of valor, the past is already a gratifying chapter of history. I expect to be with you within one week, with strong reinforcements. MILES, Major-General Commanding. General Shafter's reply was as follows: Playa, July 4, Headquarters Fifth Army Corps, Near Santiago, July 3--I thank you in the name of the gallant men I have the honor to command for splendid tribute of praise which you have accorded them. They bore themselves as American soldiers always have. Your telegram will be published at the head of the regiments in the morning. I feel that I am master of the situation and can hold the enemy for any length of time. I am delighted to know that you are coming, that you may see for yourself the obstacles which this army had to overcome. My only regret is the great number of gallant souls who have given their lives for our country's cause. SHAFTER. In the light of these sorrowful, if triumphant, facts it must not be forgotten that the enemy also suffered a terrible loss. In the fatuous sortie upon the American position on the night of July 2 General Linares, commanding in Santiago, was wounded in the foot and shoulder and 500 of his soldiers died upon the field. Scarcely a man in our intrenchments was hurt. Of the Spanish 29th battalion defending El Caney less than 100 survived. General Vara de Rey, its commander, was buried with military honors, General Ludlow taking possession of his sword and spurs. The Spanish fought stubbornly throughout, and their retreat, though steady, was slowly and coolly conducted. They contested every inch of the way and fought with unexpected skill, their officers handling the troops with bravery and good judgment, and demonstrating that in them our boys in blue were fighting with foemen worthy of their steel. The gallantry of the American officers was conspicuous throughout the battle. Major-General Wheeler, who was seriously indisposed and suffering from an attack of fever, ordered an ambulance to convey him to the front, where the sound of fighting seemed to give him new life, and in a short time he called for his horse and personally directed his division in the attack. General Hawkins, commanding the First Brigade, Ninth Division, was conspicuous for the manner in which he exposed himself to Spanish bullets. After taking the redoubt on the hill with his command he stood for a long time on the summit watching the fight. A heavy fire at times was concentrated on the spot, but he surveyed the field of battle while the bullets were whizzing past by hundreds. SHAFTER DEMANDS THE SURRENDER OF THE CITY. On July 3 General Shafter sent the following communication to General Toral, commanding the Spanish army in the province of Santiago: Headquarters of United States Forces, Near San Juan River, Cuba, July 3, 8:30 A. M.--To the Commanding General of the Spanish Forces, Santiago de Cuba--Sir: I shall be obliged, unless you surrender, to shell Santiago de Cuba. Please inform the citizens of foreign countries and all women and children that they should leave the city before 10 o'clock to-morrow morning. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, W. R. SHAFTER, Major-General, U. S. A. General Toral made this reply: Santiago de Cuba, July 3, 2 pm.--His Excellency, the General Commanding the Forces of the United States, San Juan River--Sir: I have the honor to reply to your communication of to-day written at 8:30 A. M. and received at 1 pm, demanding the surrender of this city; on the contrary case announcing to me that you will bombard the city, and asking that I advise the foreign women and children that they must leave the city before 10 o'clock to-morrow morning. It is my duty to say to you that this city will not surrender and that I will inform the foreign Consuls and inhabitants of the contents of your message. Very respectfully, JOSE TORAL, Commander in Chief, Fourth Corps. The British, Portuguese, Chinese, and Norwegian Consuls requested that non-combatants be allowed to occupy the town of Caney and railroad points, and asked until 10 o'clock of the next day for them to leave Santiago. They claimed that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 people, many of them old, whose lives would be endangered by the bombardment. On the receipt of this request General Shafter sent the following communication: The Commanding General, Spanish General, Spanish Forces, Santiago de Cuba--Sir: In consideration of the request of the Consuls and officers in your city for delay in carrying out my intention to fire on the city, and in the interest of the poor women and children who will suffer greatly by their hasty and enforced departure from the city, I have the honor to announce that I will delay such action solely in their interest until noon of the 5th, providing during the interval your forces make no demonstration whatever upon those of my own. I am with great respect, your obedient servant, W. R. SHAFTER, Major-General, U. S. A. On July 6 the flag of truce which had been flying over Santiago for a day or two was still displayed, but a smaller flag was presently seen coming from the city in the hands of a man in uniform. A party was sent from General Shafter's headquarters to receive the bearer of the flag. It was found that he was a commissioner from General Toral. He announced to those who met him that he had an important communication to deliver to the commander of the American army, coming direct from General Toral, and he desired to be taken to General Shafter. Ordinarily such a messenger going through the lines would be blindfolded. Our position was so strong, however, and our offensive works so impressive, that it was decided to give the commissioner the free use of his eyes, so that he might see all the preparations that have been made to reduce the city. The siege guns and mortar batteries were pointed out to him, and he was entertained all the way to head-quarters with a detailed explanation of the number of our forces, our guns, and other matters that must have been of interest to him. In fact, he was very much impressed by what he heard and saw. Arriving at General Shafter's headquarters the communication from the Spanish commander was delivered with some ceremony. It was quite long. General Toral asked that the time of the truce be further extended, as he wanted to communicate with the Madrid government concerning the surrender of the city. He also asked that cable operators be sent to operate the line between Santiago and Kingston. He promised on his word of honor as a soldier that the operators would, not be asked to transmit any matter except that bearing on the surrender, and that he would return them safe to El Caney when a final reply was received from Madrid. This request for operators was made necessary by the fact that the men who had been operating the Santiago cable were British subjects, and they had all left the city under the protection of the British consul when the Americans gave notice that the city would be bombarded unless it surrendered. The commissioner said that General Toral wanted to consult with the authorities in Madrid, for the reason that he had been unable to communicate with Captain-General Blanco in Havana. It was finally arranged that the truce, which expired at four o'clock on the 6th, should be extended until the same hour on Saturday, July 9th. The commissioner was escorted back through another part of the camp which was filled with bristling guns. The British consul having given his consent to the operators returning to the city, messengers were sent to El Caney to learn if the men would go. They expressed their willingness, and were escorted to the Avails of the city, where they were met by a Spanish escort and taken to the office of the cable company. DESTRUCTION OF CERVERA'S FLEET. On the morning of July 3, Admiral Cervera, commander of the Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, made a bold dash for liberty by a desperate attempt to break through the American line, in the hope of reaching the open sea. In the face of overwhelming odds, with nothing before him but inevitable destruction or surrender if he remained any longer in the trap in which the American fleet held him, he made a dash from the harbor at the time the Americans least expected him to do so, and fighting every inch of his way, even when his ship was ablaze and sinking, he tried to escape the doom which was written on the muzzle of every American gun trained upon his vessels. The Spaniards made a daring venture, and with a less vigilant foe they might have succeeded. It was known in the fleet that General Shatter was closing in on the city and that Admiral Cervera's position was desperate, but it was supposed that he would remain in the harbor and train his guns on the American land forces as long as possible, and that he would blow up his ships rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the enemy. It is certain that Admiral Sampson did not expect Cervera to make a break for liberty, although the American commander has known for several days that the sinking of the Merrimac did not completely block the channel entrance to Santiago harbor. At 9:35 on Sunday morning the flagship New York, with Admiral Sampson on board, was many miles to the eastward, bearing the admiral to a conference with General Shafter. The fleet as a whole was much farther off shore than usual. Any one looking seaward from Morro Castle and seeing the distant specks on the water would not have realized that the port was effectively blockaded. Evidently the Spaniards had been waiting for the American fleet to become thus scattered. They thought our fleet was napping, and that this was the time to make a quick exit and start homeward. Very soon after the New York had started to Siboney the shore batteries opened fire on the American fleet. As the vessels were practically out of range and not in the usual line formation this firing from the shore caused some surprise. In the first place, these batteries had been shelled the day before, and it was supposed that they had been silenced, and in the second place it seemed foolish of the Spaniards to undertake haphazard firing. At that time the vessels of the blockading squadron were at varying distances of from three to ten miles from the harbor entrance. Most of the American cruisers were at the usual Sunday morning quarters, and not one ship was really prepared for immediate action. Almost as soon as the batteries opened fire a Spanish cruiser, the Cristobal Colon, was seen to emerge from the channel entrance and head toward sea, firing her forward battery as she came. Then the signals hurried from one ship to another, and on every American vessel there was a rush of activity. In every engine room there was a signal for full speed. The entire fleet began to move in toward the shore, heading for the channel entrance. At 9:45 the Oquendo slipped out of the channel. By this time the Cristobal Colon had turned to the west, and with a good headway was attempting to slip past the blockaders. The Maria Teresa, the Vizcaya, the two torpedo-boat destroyers, the Furor and the Pluton, and a gunboat were all clear of the channel entrance and racing for liberty when the American vessels opened fire at long range. The Brooklyn, Massachusetts, Texas, Oregon and Iowa bore down upon the Spaniards and opened fire, but they were too far away to get a good range. As for the Spaniards, they began to shoot as soon as they came out of the harbor and continued to blaze away until they were utterly defeated, but they showed poor judgment and bad marksmanship. THE GLOUCESTER'S GOOD WORK. As the Americans came in closer and closer the fighting became general. The Gloucester had been lying off Aguadores, three miles east of Morro, when the Spaniards came out. She hurried to join in the attack, and at first opened fire on one of the large cruisers. Already they were being pounded with terrific effect by the battleships, however, so the little Gloucester turned her attention to the two torpedo-boat destroyers which had slipped out of the harbor behind the cruisers. The Gloucester was one of the swiftest boats in the navy, and although she was equipped with nothing heavier than six-pound guns she made a resolute attack on the two destroyers, and the chase began. They headed to the west at high speed, and she flew after them, pouring shot after shot with such wonderful accuracy, that by the time the destroyers were five miles to the west of Morro both were on fire and plainly disabled. They had persistently returned the fire, and a shower of little shells fell around the yacht, but once more the American gunners showed their superiority, for the Gloucester was comparatively unhurt. The Furor turned at last and gave battle to the Gloucester. Here was another instance of American good luck and Spanish inefficiency. The Furor sent torpedoes against the Gloucester, but they failed to explode. As soon as the Spanish destroyer stopped the Gloucester simply raked her fore and aft with rapid-fire guns, and the Furor again headed west to escape the terrible punishment. The smoke was pouring out of her sides, and soon she turned in toward shore, evidently in a sinking condition. The members of the crew flocked to the small boats and abandoned their craft. Later on most of them were taken prisoners on shore. The Furor was floating about, a mass of flame. The Pluton also was disabled, and headed for the shore. She was beached under a low bluff, where a heavy sea was running, and was soon pounded so that she broke in two in the middle. Only about half of the crew reached the shore alive. Having disposed of the two destroyers the Gloucester lowered her small boats and sent them ashore to rescue the Spanish sailors. The Furor drifted about until the fire reached her magazines, and then there were two terrific explosions which shattered her hull. Her stern sunk quickly, and as it went down her bow rose until it stood almost straight up in the air, and in this position she disappeared from sight. TEST OF BATTLESHIPS. While the little yacht had been gaining this notable victory over the two famous destroyers the big battleships had been following the line of Spanish cruisers and pounding them with great persistence. The four Spanish cruisers were under the direct fire of the Brooklyn, and the four battleships, the Massachusetts, the Texas, the Iowa and the Oregon. It was the first time that any first-class battleship had ever been put to the test in a naval battle. The huge fighting vessels kept close after the fast cruisers and fired their big guns with deadly certainty. The American fire was so rapid that the ships were surrounded by clouds of smoke. The Spanish gunners seemed unable to get the proper range and many of their shots were very wild, though a number of them fell dangerously near to the mark. Two guns of the battery just east of Morro also took part in the game and their shells fell around the American ships. Many of them struck the upper works of the fleeing Spaniards and must have resulted in killing and wounding many of their men. The Spanish ships had now reached a point about seven miles west of Morro and a mile or two beyond the place where the Furor was burning and the Pluton broken in two against the cliff. The flagship and the Oquendo were the first to show signals of distress. Two thirteen-inch shells from one of the battleships had struck the Maria Teresa at the water line, tearing great holes in her side and causing her to fill rapidly. The Oquendo suffered about the same fate and both ships headed for a small cove and went aground 200 yards from the shore, flames shooting from them in every direction. The Gloucester, after sending a boat ashore to the Pluton, steamed along the coast to where the armored cruisers were stranded and went to their assistance. There was danger from the magazines, and many of those on board jumped into the water and swam to the shore, though a number were unable to reach the small strip of sandy beach in the cove and were thrown against the rocks and killed or drowned. Many of the wounded were lowered into the ships' own boats and taken ashore, but this task was a most difficult one. The Gloucester had all her boats out and one seaman swam through the surf with a line from the Maria Teresa, making it fast to a tree on the shore. By this means many on the flagship, including Admiral Cervera, lowered themselves into the Gloucester's boats. The wounded were taken to the Gloucester as rapidly as possible, and the lower deck of the yacht was soon covered with Spanish sailors mangled in limb and body by the bursting of shells. CHASE OF THE CRISTOBAL COLON. The Brooklyn, Oregon, Massachusetts and Texas and several smaller vessels continued the chase of the Cristobal Colon, and in less than an hour were lost to view of the burning ships on shore. The Iowa and Texas both gave assistance to the imperiled crew of the Vizcaya. Her Captain surrendered his command and the prisoners were transferred to the battleship. The Vizcaya probably lost about sixty men, as she carried a complement of 400 and only 340 were taken aboard the Iowa. Soon after Admiral Cervera reached the shore and surrendered he was taken to the Gloucester, at his own request. There was no mistaking the heartbroken expression upon the old commander's face as he took the proffered hand of Captain Wainwright and was shown to the latter's cabin, but he made every effort to bear bravely the bitter defeat that had come to him. He thanked the Captain of the Gloucester for the words of congratulation offered on the gallant fight, and then spoke earnestly of his solicitude for the safety of his men on shore. He informed Captain Wainwright that Cuban soldiers were on the hills preparing to attack his unarmed men and asked that they be protected. For hours after Admiral Cervera went aboard the Gloucester the Infanta Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo and Vizcaya continued to burn and every now and then a deep roar, accompanied by a burst of flame and smoke from the sides of the ships, would announce the explosion of more ammunition or another magazine. It may be mentioned as a coincidence that Lieutenant-Commander Wainwright, the Commander of the Gloucester, was executive officer of the Maine at the time of the disaster, and, although he remained in Havana harbor two months after the explosion, he lived on board the dispatch boat Fern and steadfastly refused to set his foot within the city until the time should come when he could go ashore at the head of a landing party of American blue jackets. To-day it was his ship that sank two Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers and afterward received the Spanish Admiral aboard as a prisoner of war. From his position on the bridge of the Gloucester Lieutenant-Commander Wainwright watched the flames and smoke as they enveloped the decks of the three greatest warships of the Spanish navy, which were soon to be reduced to nothing but shattered masts and twisted smokestacks protruding above the water. The prisoners of war included the captains of both boats. None offered any resistance and all were glad to go to the Gloucester, as they feared an attack from the Cubans. When asked to make some statement in regard to the result of the battle Admiral Cervera said: "I would rather lose my ships at sea, like a sailor, than in a harbor. It was the only thing left for me to do." The work of the American battleships was as rapid as it was terrible. At 9:35 the first vessel headed out past Morro Castle. At 10 o'clock the two destroyers were wrecked and deserted. At 10:15 the Oquendo and Maria Teresa were encircled by the Iowa, Indiana and Texas. At 10:40 both were on the rocks. A few minutes later the Vizcaya was abandoned. The Cristobal Colon, having the lead, ran farther along the coast before the persistent firing by the Brooklyn and Massachusetts brought her to a stop. She fought for twenty minutes. At noon she was on the rocks, perforated and tattered. Spain's greatest fleet was destroyed in about three hours. Chief Yoeman Ellis of the Brooklyn was the only American killed In three hours of incessant fighting, while the Spanish loss reached 600 killed, 400 wounded and 1,100 taken prisoners. ADMIRAL SAMPSON'S OFFICIAL REPORT. Following is the official report sent by Admiral Sampson to the navy department at Washington: United States Flagship New York, First Rate, Off Santiago de Cuba, July 15, 1898.--Sir: I have the honor to make the following report upon the battle, with the destruction of the Spanish squadron, commanded by Admiral Cervera, off Santiago de Cuba on Sunday, July 3, 1898: The enemy's vessels came out of the harbor between 9:35 and 10 am, the head of the column appearing around Cayo Smith at 9:31 and emerging from the channel five or six minutes later. The positions of the vessels of my command off Santiago at that moment were as follows: The flagship New York was four miles east of her blockading station and about seven miles from the harbor entrance. She had started for Siboney, where I intended to land, accompanied by several of my staff, and go to the front to consult with General Shafter. A discussion of the situation and a more definite understanding between us of the operations proposed had been rendered necessary by the unexpectedly strong resistance of the Spanish garrison of Santiago. I had sent my chief of staff on shore the day before to arrange an interview with General Shafter, who had been suffering from heat prostration. I made arrangements to go to his headquarters, and my flagship was in the position mentioned above when the Spanish squadron appeared in the channel. The remaining vessels were in or near their usual blockading positions, distributed in a semi-circle about the harbor entrance, counting from the eastward to the westward in the following order: The Indiana, about a mile and a half from shore; the Oregon--the New York's place between these two--the Iowa, Texas and Brooklyn, the latter two miles from the shore west of Santiago. The distance of the vessels from the harbor entrance was from two and one-half to four miles--the latter being the limit of day--blockading distance. The length of the arc formed by the ships was about eight miles. The Massachusetts had left at 4 A. M. for Guantanamo for coal. Her station was between the Iowa and the Texas. The auxiliaries Gloucester and Vixen lay close to the land and nearer the harbor entrance than the large vessels, the Gloucester to the eastward and the Vixen to the westward. The torpedo boat Ericsson was in company with the flagship, and remained with her during the chase until ordered to discontinue, when she rendered very efficient service in rescuing prisoners from the burning Vizcaya. The Spanish vessels came rapidly out of the harbor at a speed estimated at from eight to ten knots and in the following order: Infanta Maria Teresa (flagship), Vizcaya, Cristobal Colon and the Almirante Oquendo. The distance between these ships was about 800 yards, which means that from the time the first one became visible in the upper reach of the channel until the last one was out of the harbor an interval of only about twelve minutes elapsed. Following the Oquendo at a distance of about 1,200 yards came the torpedo-boat destroyer Pluton, and after her the Furor. The armored cruisers, as rapidly as they could bring their guns to bear, opened a vigorous fire upon the blockading vessels and emerged from the channel shrouded in the smoke from their guns. The men of our ships in front of the port were at Sunday "quarters for inspection." The signal was made simultaneously from several vessels, "Enemy ships escaping" and "general quarters" was sounded. The men cheered as they sprang to their guns, and fire was opened probably within eight minutes by the vessels whose guns commanded the entrance. The New York turned about and steamed for the escaping fleet, flying the signal "Close in towards harbor entrance and attack vessels," and gradually increased her speed, until toward the end of the chase she was making sixteen and a half knots, and was rapidly closing on the Cristobal Colon. She was not at any time within the range of the heavy Spanish ships, and her only part in the firing was to receive the undivided fire of the forts in passing the harbor entrance and to fire a few shots at one of the destroyers, thought at the moment to be attempting to escape from the Gloucester. The Spanish vessels, upon clearing the harbor, turned to the westward in column, increasing their speed to the full power of their engines. The heavy blockading vessels, which had closed in toward the Morro at the instant of the enemy's appearance and at their best speed, delivered a rapid fire, well sustained and destructive, which speedily overwhelmed and silenced the Spanish fire. The initial speed of the Spaniards carried them rapidly past the blockading vessels and the battle developed into a chase, in which the Brooklyn and Texas had at the start the advantage of position. The Brooklyn maintained this lead. The Oregon, steaming with amazing speed from the commencement of the action, took first place. The Iowa and Indiana, having done good work and not having the speed of the other ships, were directed by me, in succession, at about the time the Vizcaya was beached, to drop out of the chase and resume the blockading station. The Vixen, finding that the rush of the Spanish ships would put her between two fires, ran outside of our own column, and remained there during the battle and chase. The skillful handling and gallant fighting of the Gloucester excited the admiration of every one who witnessed it and merits the commendation of the navy department. She is a fast and entirely unprotected auxiliary vessel--the yacht Corsair--and has a good battery of light rapid-fire guns. She was lying about two miles from the harbor entrance, to the southward and eastward, and immediately steamed in, opening fire upon the large ships. Anticipating the appearance of the Pluton and Furor, the Gloucester was slowed, thereby gaining more rapidly a high pressure of steam, and when the destroyers came out she steamed for them at full speed and was able to close at short range, where her fire was accurate, deadly and of great volume. During this fight the Gloucester was under the fire of the Socapa battery. Within twenty minutes from the time they emerged from Santiago harbor the careers of the Furor and the Pluton were ended and two-thirds of their people killed. The Furor was beached and sunk in the surf, the Pluton sank in deep water a few minutes later. The destroyers probably suffered much injury from the fire of the secondary batteries of the battleships Iowa, Indiana and the Texas, yet I think a very considerable factor in their speedy destruction was the fire at close range of the Gloucester's battery. After rescuing the survivors of the destroyers the Gloucester did excellent service in landing and securing the crew of the Infanta Maria Teresa. The method of escape attempted by the Spaniards--all steering in the same direction and in formation--removed all tactical doubts or difficulties and made plain the duty of every United States vessel to close in, immediately engage and pursue. This was promptly and effectively done. As already stated, the first rush of the Spanish squadron carried it past a number of the blockading ships, which could not immediately work up to their best speed, but they suffered heavily in passing, and the Infanta Maria Teresa and the Oquendo were probably set on fire by shells fired during the first fifteen minutes of the engagement. It was afterwards learned that the Infanta Maria Teresa's fire main had been cut by one of our first shots and that she was unable to extinguish the fire. With large volumes of smoke rising from their lower decks aft, these vessels gave up both fight and flight and ran in on the beach-the Infanta Maria Teresa at about 10:15 A. M. at Nima Nima, six and one-half miles from Santiago harbor entrance, and the Almirante Oquendo at about 10:30 A. M. at Juan Gonzales, seven miles from the port. The Vizcaya was still under the fire of the leading vessels; the Cristobal Colon had drawn ahead, leading the chase, and soon passed beyond the range of the guns of the leading American ships. The Vizcaya was soon set on fire, and at 11:15 A. M. she turned in shore and was beached at Aserraderos, fifteen miles from Santiago, burning fiercely, and with her reserves of ammunition on deck already beginning to explode. When about ten miles west of Santiago the Indiana had been signaled to go back to the harbor entrance, and at Aserraderos the Iowa was signaled to "resume blockading station." The Iowa, assisted by the Ericsson and the Hist, took off the crew of the Vizcaya, while the Harvard and the Gloucester rescued those of the Infanta Maria Teresa and the Almirante Oquendo. This rescue of prisoners, including the wounded, from the burning Spanish vessels was the occasion of some of the most daring and gallant conduct of the day. The ships were burning fore and aft, their guns and reserve ammunition were exploding, and it was not known at what moment the fire would reach the main magazines. In addition to this a heavy surf was running just inside of the Spanish ships. But no risk deterred our officers and men until their work of humanity was complete. There remained now of the Spanish ships only the Cristobal Colon, but she was their best and fastest vessel. Forced by the situation to hug the Cuban coast, her only chance of escape was by superior and sustained speed. When the Vizcaya went ashore the Colon was about six miles ahead of the Brooklyn and the Oregon, but her spurt was finished and the American ships were now gaining upon her. Behind the Brooklyn and the Oregon came the Texas, Vixen and New York. It was evident from the bridge of the New York that all the American ships were gradually overhauling the Colon, and that she had no chance of escape. At 12:50 the Brooklyn and the Oregon opened fire and got her range, the Oregon's heavy shell striking beyond her, and at 1:10 she gave up without firing another shot, hauled down her colors and ran ashore at Rio Torquino, forty-eight miles from Santiago. Capt. Cook of the Brooklyn went on board to receive the surrender. While his boat was alongside I came up in the New York, received his report and placed the Oregon in charge of the wreck to save her, if possible, and directed the prisoners to be transferred to the Resolute, which had followed the chase. Commodore Schley, whose chief of staff had gone on board to receive the surrender, had directed that all their personal effects should be retained by the officers. This order I did not modify. The Cristobal Colon was not injured by our firing, and probably is not much injured by beaching, though she ran ashore at high speed. The beach was so steep that she came off by the working of the sea. But her sea valves were opened and broken, treacherously, I am sure, after her surrender, and despite all efforts she sank. When it became evident that she could not be kept afloat she was pushed by the New York bodily up on the beach, the New York's stem being placed against her for this purpose--the ship being handled by Capt. Chadwick with admirable judgment--and sank in shoal water and may be saved. Had this not been done she would have gone down in deep water and would have been to a certainty a total loss. I regard this complete and important victory over the Spanish forces as the successful finish of several weeks of arduous and close blockade, so stringent and effective during the night that the enemy was deterred from making the attempt to escape at night and deliberately elected to make the attempt in daylight. That this was the case I was informed by the commanding officer of the Cristobal Colon. It was ascertained with fair conclusiveness that the Merrimac, so gallantly taken into the channel on June 3, did not obstruct it. I therefore maintained the blockade as follows: To the battleships was assigned the duty, in turn, of lighting the channel. Moving up to the port at a distance of from one to two miles from the Morro--dependent upon the condition of the atmosphere--they threw a searchlight beam directly up the channel, and held it steadily there. This lighted up the entire breadth of the channel for half a mile inside of the entrance so brilliantly that the movement of small boats could be detected. When all the work was done so well it is difficult to discriminate in praise. The object of the blockade of Cervera's squadron was fully accomplished, and each individual bore well his part in it --the commodore in command on the second division, the captains of ships, their officers and men. The fire of the battleships was powerful and destructive and the resistance of the Spanish squadron was in great part broken almost before they had got beyond the range of their own forts. The fine speed of the Oregon, enabled her to take a front position in the chase, and the Cristobal Colon did not give up until the Oregon had thrown a 13-inch shell beyond her. This performance adds to the already brilliant record of this fine battleship and speaks highly of the skill and care with which her admirable efficiency has been maintained during a service unprecedented in the history of vessels of her class. The Brooklyn's westerly blockading position gave her an advantage in the chase, which she maintained to the end, and she employed her fine battery with telling effect. The Texas and the New York were gaining on the chase during the last hour, and had any accident befallen the Brooklyn or the Oregon, would have speedily overhauled the Cristobal Colon. From the moment the Spanish vessel exhausted her first burst of speed the result was never in doubt. She fell, in fact, far below what might reasonably have been expected of her. Careful measurements of time and distance give her an average speed from the time she cleared the harbor mouth until the time she was run on shore at Rio Tarquino--of 13.7 knots. Neither the New York nor the Brooklyn stopped to couple up their forward engine, but ran out the chase with one pair, getting steam, of course, as rapidly as possible on all boilers. To stop to couple up the forward engines would have meant a delay of fifteen minutes--or four miles--in the chase. Several of the ships were struck, the Brooklyn more often than the others, but very slight material injury was done, the greatest being aboard the Iowa. Our loss was one man killed and one wounded, both on the Brooklyn. It is difficult to explain this immunity from loss of life or injury to ships in a combat with modern vessels of the best type; but Spanish gunnery is poor at the best, and the superior weight and accuracy of our fire speedily drove the men from their guns and silenced their fire. This is borne out by the statements of prisoners and by observation. The Spanish vessels, as they dashed out of the harbor, were covered with the smoke from their own guns, but this speedily diminished in volume and soon almost disappeared. The fire from the rapid-fire batteries of the battleships appears to have been remarkably destructive. An examination of the stranded vessels shows that the Almirante Oquendo especially had suffered terribly from this fire. Her sides are everywhere pierced and her decks were strewn with the charred remains of those who had fallen. W. T. SAMPSON, Rear Admiral United States Navy, Commander in Chief United States Naval Force, North Atlantic Station. The Secretary of the Navy, Navy Department, Washington, D. C. BURNING OF THE ALFONSO XII. Two batteries silenced; two gunboats put to flight; the Alfonso XII., a transport of 5,000 tons, loaded with ammunition, beached and burned; those were the Spanish losses in the second battle of Mariel on Wednesday, July 6. The Hawk, Prairie and Castine fought it, destroying the most valuable ship and cargo that Spanish daring employed to run into Havana's relief after the blockading squadron stationed itself before Morro. The Hawk began the battle Tuesday night off Havana. Lieutenant Hood had taken his destroyer yacht far in under the guns to watch the western approach to the harbor. Twenty minutes before midnight he reached the eastern limit of his patrol, six miles west of Morro, and went about, swinging farther in shore as he turned. The Hawk had not finished circling when the forward lookout sighted a huge four-masted steamer creeping along in the shade of the shore a quarter of a mile nearer the beach, a mile to the westward. His "sail ho" warned the master of the steamer that he was discovered and he put about at the cry and steamed furiously away toward Mariel. Lieutenant Hood was after him in an instant. Eastward within call lay six warships, but Lieutenant Hood wanted the steamer for his own prize, and started after her without calling for aid. Mile after mile the two vessels reeled off, the Hawk waiting to get its prey well away from the squadron before striking. Twenty miles from Morro the steamer began drawing away from the destroyer. The Hawk's men were at their quarters, and when Lieutenant Hood saw his prize slipping from his grasp his forward six-pounders began to speak. Some of the shells must have landed, for the Spaniard ran for shoal water, apparently hoping to catch the Hawk among the rocks. Lieutenant Hood was game, however, and the light-draught Hawk kept hammering away with her rapid-fire guns and burning signals for help from the bridge. Two miles east of Mariel the hunted Spaniard broke for the narrow harbor mouth, and Lieutenant Hood's jackies, pumping steel across the moonlit waters, groaned in the fear that she might escape. The raining six-pound shells upset the pilot, however, and the fleeing ship struck hard on the bar at the west side of the entrance and stuck fast. With wild cheers the Hawk's crew tumbled into the boats and boarded the prize, but the steamer's rail was lined with riflemen and the popping Mausers drove the Hawk's tars back to their ship. The Hawk guarded the prize till morning and then, seeing her fast aground, ran back to Havana to report to the fleet and to ask help in taking her. The Castine was sent down to aid in the work, but the shore batteries opened on the ships when they appeared. After two hours' fruitless fighting the Hood went back to the fleet for re-enforcements. The Prairie, manned by Massachusetts reserves, was dispatched to engage the batteries, and at 1 o'clock in the afternoon Captain Train took a position two miles from Martello tower and began pitching six-inch shells into the tower and sand batteries. Ten shells silenced the three guns in the tower and sent the artillerymen streaming back over the hill toward the city. Two gunboats inside the harbor poured five-inch shells at the Prairie, but nine shells from that ship routed them and drove them back to the city. The sand batteries were harder to silence, but fifteen shells did that work and wrecked the barracks besides. The infantry in the rifle pits supporting the batteries were driven out by five-inch shells from the Castine, which fired during the morning and afternoon 250 shots. The Prairie used thirty-eight of her six-inch shells and about 100 six-pounders. The Castine and Hawk had taken the steamer, and the Hawk then reported to the fleet at Havana. The Spanish vessel was so badly riddled that the name could not be deciphered. GENERAL MILES ASSUMES COMMAND IN CUBA. On July 13 General Miles arrived at the front and assumed personal command of the army around Santiago. Negotiations for the peaceful surrender of the city had been going on for several days between General Shafter, commander of the American forces, and General Toral of the Spanish army, but it was not until the 16th that a final agreement was reached. On this date conditions of surrender were offered, the principal articles of which were as follows: First, that all hostilities shall cease pending the agreement of final capitulation. Second, that the capitulation includes all the Spanish forces and the surrender of all war material within the prescribed limits. Third, that the transportation of the troops to Spain shall be furnished at the earliest possible moment, each force to be embarked at the nearest port. Fourth, that the Spanish officers shall retain their side arms and the enlisted men their personal property. Fifth, that after the final capitulation the Spanish forces shall assist in the removal of all obstructions to navigation in Santiago harbor. Sixth, that after the final capitulation the commanding officers shall furnish a complete inventory of all arms and munitions of war and a roster of all soldiers in the district. Seventh, that the Spanish general shall be permitted to take the military archives and records with him. Eighth, that all guerrillas and Spanish irregulars shall be permitted to remain in Cuba, giving a parole that they will not again take up arms against the United States unless properly released from parole. Ninth, that the Spanish forces shall be permitted to march out with all the honors of war, depositing their arms to be disposed of by the United States in the future, the American commissioners to recommend to their Government that the arms of the soldiers be returned to those "who so bravely defended them." By the terms of this agreement the southeastern end of Cuba--an area of about 5,000 square miles--the capital of the province, the forts and their heavy guns, and Toral's army, about 25,000 strong, passed into our possession. The ceremony which sealed the capitulation of Santiago was simple and short. Promptly at 9 o'clock in the morning all division and brigade commanders and their staffs reported to General Shafter at his headquarters. With Major-General Wheeler at his left, General Lawton and General Kent behind, and the other officers, according to rank, following, the little cavalcade, escorted by a detachment of Rafferty's mounted squadron, rode around the base of San Juan hill and west on the royal road toward Santiago. Just about midway between the American and Spanish lines of rifle pits stands a lordly ceiba, 125 feet high to the crown, nearly 10 feet in diameter at the trunk and spreading 50 feet each way from the polished tree shaft. Under this tree General Toral and a score of his officers awaited the Americans. As General Shafter came down the slope toward the tree General Toral advanced a few feet and raised his hat. General Shafter returned the salute, and then the quick notes of a Spanish bugle, marking the cadence of a march, sounded on the other side of the hedge which bordered the road, and the king's guard, in column of twos, came into view. Before they arrived on the scene the American cavalrymen had lined up with drawn sabers at a carry, each man and horse motionless. The Spanish soldiers came through a gap in the hedge in quick time, the Spanish flag leading the column and two trumpeters sounding the advance. The soldiers marched in excellent order, but as they passed General Shafter their eyes moved to the left and they glanced curiously at the men who had served as their targets only a few days before. About 200 soldiers and officers were in the king's guard, and the little command, after moving down the entire front of the detachment of cavalry, countermarched, and, swinging into line, halted facing the Americans, about ten yards distant. For a few minutes Americans and Spaniards faced each other, silent and motionless. Then the two trumpeters gave tongue to their horns again; a Spanish officer shouted a command; the Spanish colors dipped in a salute; the Spanish soldiers presented arms and the Spanish officers removed their hats. Captain Brett's quick, terse command, "Present sabers," rang over the hillside, and American swords flashed as the sabers swept downward. General Shafter removed his hat, and his officers followed his example. For half a minute--and it seemed longer--the two little groups of armed men, each representing an army, remained at "the salute." The Spanish officer in command of the king's guard was the first to break the silence. His commands put the Spaniards in motion, and they again passed before the Americans, who remained at "present arms" until the last of the guard had marched by. The Spaniards marched back toward Santiago a few hundred feet, halted, stacked their Mauser rifles and then, without arms or flags, filed back of the American lines and went into camp on the hill just west of San Juan hill. The formal part of the proceedings came to an end with this little ceremony, then Spanish and American officers mingled, shook hands and exchanged compliments. While the king's guard and the American cavalrymen were saluting each other the 5th army corps stood on the crest of the parapet of the rifle pits, forming a thin line nearly seven miles long. Only a small part of the army could see the groups of Spanish and American soldiers under the ceiba tree, but every one of the men who had been fighting and living in our trenches strained his eyes to catch a glimpse, if possible, of the proceedings which put an end to hostilities in this part of Cuba. ON THE WAY TO SANTIAGO. After a few minutes of informal talk General Toral and his officers escorted General Shafter and his military family to Santiago. General Shafter's entrance was hardly the triumphant march of a victor, for the procession of Americans and Spaniards ambled quietly and unostentatiously over the cobble and blue flag stones, around the little public circles and squares, past ancient churches and picturesque ruins of what once were the homes of wealthy Spaniards, through narrow, alleylike streets to the Plaza de Armas, with the cathedral, the Cafe de Venus, the governor-general's palace and San Carlos club facing the square. General Toral was the first to spring from his horse, and he held out his hand and welcomed General Shafter to the "palace." This was a few minutes after 10 o'clock. Here General Shafter received the local council and other civic officials, and the governor, seeking to do the honors properly, gave a luncheon to the general and his principal officers. By this time the 9th infantry had marched into the square and formed two lines, facing the palace, and the band had taken its station in the center of the broad walk, with the American officers grouped in front. Just five minutes before noon General Shafter, General Wheeler, General Lawton and General Kent came from the palace and joined the officers, and Lieutenant Miley, General Shafter's chief aid-de-camp; Captain McKittrick and Lieutenant Wheeler, General Wheeler's son, swarmed over the red roof tiles to the flagstaff. Then followed five long, expectant, silent minutes. Some of the officers held watches in their hands, but most of them kept their eyes on the little ball of bunting which cuddled at the foot of the flagstaff. General McKibben, his long, slim figure erect, stood before the 9th regiment, and when the first stroke of the cathedral clock bell sounded from the tower he whirled around and gave the command "Present arms." The final word was spoken just as the flag fluttered up toward the tip of the staff, and the crash of hands meeting rifle butts and the swish of sweeping sabers came with the opening notes of the "Star-Spangled Banner," and every American there saluted our flag as the wind caught the folds and flung the red, white and blue bunting out under the Cuban sun and over a conquered Spanish city. And when the last notes of the national air died away and the rifle butts had come to an "order" on the pavement, and the sabers had been slipped into their sheaths, men whose faces and throats were deep brown, whose cheeks were thin, whose limbs trembled with fatigue and Cuban fever, whose heads wore bandages covering wounds made by Spanish bullets, but who stood straight, with heads erect, were not ashamed to wipe from their eyes the tears which came when "old glory" spread its protecting folds over Santiago. YELLOW FEVER IN SHAFTER'S ARMY. Yellow fever broke out in the army on July 11, spreading with frightful rapidity among the men, but it fortunately proved to be of a mild type, and in comparatively few instances was the dreaded disease attended with fatal results. When the landings at Baiquiri and Juragua were made there were many men to be handled, the facilities were limited and the landings were made in great haste. No building was burned, no well was filled, no sink was dug. Several of the enthusiastic young aids seized pretty vineclad cottages as headquarters for their respective generals. Cubans and Americans filed into the empty houses of the town without inquiry as to their antecedents. Major LeGarde, in charge of the beach hospital, recommended earnestly on landing that every building be burned. Major Wood and Colonel Pope indorsed this, but the recommendation went by default. The camp was established in the heart of the Spanish town and the first yellow-fever case was that of Burr McIntosh, the actor and newspaper man, who had been sleeping at General Bates' headquarters in one of the pretty vine-covered cottages mentioned. Dr. Lesser and his wife, "Sister Bettina," the New York workers of the Red Cross, were among the first victims, and Katherine White, another Red Cross nurse, was also sent to the yellow-fever camp. After the fever was discovered every effort was made to check it and stamp it out, but the camp had already been pitted with it. Cases were taken out of the surgical wards of the hospital tents and out of the officers' tents, General Duffield being one of the victims. Owing to the unhealthful climate and the lack of proper food, medicines, clothing, and shelter, the army was soon threatened with an epidemic of disease, and it was evident that the detention of the troops in Cuba would result in loss of life to thousands of brave men. In order that the authorities at Washington might have a thorough understanding of the situation, the officers of the 5th army corps united in the following letter which was addressed to General Shafter, and which was transmitted by him to the war department in Washington: We, the undersigned officers commanding the various brigades, divisions, etc., of the army of occupation in Cuba, are of the unanimous opinion that this army should be at once taken out of the island of Cuba and sent to some point on the northern seacoast of the United States; that it can be done without danger to the people of the United States; that yellow fever in the army at present is not epidemic; that there are only a few sporadic cases; but that the army is disabled by malarial fever to the extent that its efficiency is destroyed, and that it is in a condition to be practically destroyed by an epidemic of yellow fever which is sure to come in the near future. We know from the reports of competent officers and from personal observation that the army is unable to move into the interior and that there are no facilities for such a move if attempted, and that it could not be attempted until too late. Moreover, the best medical authorities of the island say that with our present equipment we could not live in the interior during the rainy season without losses from malarial fever, which is almost as deadly as yellow fever. This army must be moved at once or perish. As the army can be safely moved now the persons responsible for preventing such a move will be responsible for the unnecessary loss of many thousands of lives. Our opinions are the result of careful personal observation, and they are also based on the unanimous opinion of our medical officers with the army, who understand the situation absolutely. J. FORD KENT, Major-General Volunteers, Commanding First Division Fifth Corps. J. C. BATES, Major-General Volunteers, Commanding Provisional Division. ADNA R. CHAFFEE, Major-General Commanding Third Brigade, Second Division. SAMUEL S. SUMNER, Brigadier-General Volunteers, Commanding First Brigade Cavalry. WILL LUDLOW, Brigadier-General Volunteers, Commanding First Brigade, Second Division. ADELBERT AMES, Brigadier-General Volunteers, Commanding Third Brigade, First Division. LEONARD WOOD, Brigadier-General Volunteers, Commanding the City of Santiago. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Colonel, Commanding Second Cavalry Brigade. As a result arrangements were completed as quickly as possible for the transportation of the troops to the United States, and immunes were sent to Santiago for garrison duty in their places. ANOTHER NAVAL ENGAGEMENT. On the morning of July 18 the vessels on blockade duty in the vicinity of Manzanillo approached the harbor of that city from the westward. The Wilmington and Helena entered the northern channel towards the town, the Scorpion and Osceola the mid-channel, and the Hist, Hornet and Wampatuck the south channel, the movement of the vessels being so timed as to bring them within effective range of the shipping at about the same moment. An attack was made on the Spanish vessels in the harbor, and after a deliberate fire lasting about two and a half hours, three transports, El Gloria, Jose Garcia and La Purrissima Concepcion, were burned and destroyed. The Pontoon, which was the harbor guard and storeship for ammunition, was burned and blown up. Three gunboats were destroyed, one other was driven ashore and sunk, and another was entirely disabled. No casualties occurred on board any of the American vessels. The Spanish loss was over 100 in killed and wounded, and the Delgado, Guantanamo, Ostralia, Continola and Guardian, gunboats of the Spanish navy, were sent to join Cervera's fleet. CHAPTER LI. THE INVASION OF PUERTO RICO. General Miles' Landing at Ponce--The American Army Received with Cheers and Open Arms by the Native Puerto Ricans--News of Peace Stops a Battle and Brings Hostilities to a Close. The United States military expedition, under command of Major-General Nelson A. Miles, commanding the army of the United States, left Guantanamo bay on the evening of Thursday, July 21, and was successfully landed at the port of Guanica, island of Puerto Rico, on July 25. The ships left Guantanamo bay suddenly Thursday evening with the Massachusetts, commanded by Capt. F. J. Higginson, leading. Captain Higginson was in charge of the naval expedition, which consisted of the Columbia, Dixie, Gloucester and Yale. General Miles was on board the last-named vessel. The troops were on board the transports Nueces, Lampasas, Comanche, Rita, Unionist, Stillwater, City of Macon and Specialist. As soon as the expedition was well under way General Miles called for a consultation, announcing that he was determined not to go by San Juan cape, but by the Mona passage instead, land there, surprise the Spaniards and deceive their military authorities. The course was then changed, and the Dixie was sent to warn General Brooke, who was on his way with his army from the United States, with instructions to meet General Miles at Cape San Juan. Early on the morning of July 25 the Gloucester, in charge of Lieutenant-Commander Wainwright, steamed into Guanica harbor in order to reconnoiter the place. With the fleet waiting outside, the gallant little fighting yacht braved the mines which were supposed to be in the harbor, and found that there were five fathoms of water close in shore. The Spaniards were taken completely by surprise. Almost the first they knew of the approach of the army of invasion was in the announcement contained in the firing of a gun from the Gloucester, demanding that the Spaniards haul down their flag, which was floating from a flagstaff in front of a blockhouse standing to the east of the village. The first couple of three-pounders was fired into the hills right and left of the bay, purposely avoiding the town, lest the projectiles should hurt women and children. The Gloucester then hove to within about 600 yards of the shore, and lowered a launch having on board a Colt rapid-fire gun and thirty men under the command of Lieutenant Huse, which was sent ashore without encountering opposition. Quartermaster Beck thereupon told Yoeman Lacy to haul down the Spanish flag, which was done, and they then raised on the flagstaff the first United States flag to float over Puerto Rican soil. SPANIARDS OPEN FIRE. Suddenly about thirty Spaniards opened fire with Mauser rifles on the American party. Lieutenant Huse and his men responded with great gallantry, the Colt gun doing effective work. Almost immediately after the Spaniards fired on the Americans the Gloucester opened fire on the enemy with all her three and six pounders which could be brought to bear, shelling the town and also dropping shells into the hills to the west of Guanica, where a number of Spanish cavalry were to be seen hastening toward the spot where the Americans had landed. Lieutenant Huse then threw up a little fort, which he named Fort Wainwright, and laid barbed wire in the street in front of it in order to repel the expected cavalry attack. The lieutenant also mounted the Colt gun and signaled for re-enforcements, which were sent from the Gloucester. Presently a few of the Spanish cavalry joined those who were fighting in the street of Guanica, but the Colt killed four of them. By that time the Gloucester had the range of the town and of the blockhouse and all her guns were spitting fire, the doctor and the paymaster helping to serve the guns. Soon afterward white-coated galloping cavalrymen were seen climbing the hills to the westward and the foot soldiers were scurrying along the fences from the town. By 9:45, with the exception of a few guerrilla shots, the town was won and the enemy was driven out of its neighborhood. The Red Cross nurses on the Lampasas and a detachment of regulars were the first to land from the transports. After Lieutenant Huse had captured the place he deployed his small force into the suburbs. But he was soon re-enforced by the regulars, who were followed by Company C of the 6th Illinois and then by other troops in quick succession. All the boats of the men-of-war and transports were used in the work of landing the troops, each steam launch towing four or five boats loaded with soldiers. But everything progressed in an orderly manner and according to the plans of General Miles. The latter went ashore about noon, after stopping to board the Gloucester and thank Lieutenant-Commander Wainwright for his gallant action. On Wednesday, July 27, the Wasp, Annapolis, and Dixie steamed from the port of Guanica to Ponce, prepared, if necessary, to shell the town. The Wasp was the first to arrive, and she found the people of the town waiting, as the news of her coming had preceded her. The Spanish garrison, 350 strong, was paralyzed with fear and wished to surrender or leave, but Colonel San Martin, who was in command, declared that he could not surrender. The Wasp steamed up close to the shore, with all her guns bearing on the town, and found, instead of an enemy prepared to give battle, a great congregation of people awaiting their arrival. Lieutenant Ward and Executive Officer Wells sent Ensign Rowland Curtin with four men ashore, bearing a flag of truce. They suspected treachery on the part of the Spaniards, and the gunners of the Wasp stood ready to fire at a second's warning. Ensign Curtin put for the beach as though he had no suspicion of treachery, and as he stepped from the boat the people crowded around him, forcing presents upon him and his men, and welcoming them with rousing cheers. A message was sent to the Spanish commander, demanding the immediate and unconditional surrender of the city, and Ensign Curtin returned to the Wasp for instructions. In a short time a reply was received from Colonel San Martin, offering to surrender upon the conditions that the garrison should be permitted to retire; that the civil government remain in force; that the police and fire brigade be permitted to patrol without arms, and that the captain of the port should not be made a prisoner. He also imposed the condition that the American soldiers should not advance from the town within forty-eight hours. Commander Davis, who was anxious to complete the surrender, accepted these conditions and the armor-plated soldiers and policemen then fled to the hills. The Spaniards left 150 rifles and 14,000 rounds of ammunition behind them. Lieutenant Haines, commanding the marines of the Dixie, went ashore and hoisted the American flag over the custom-house at Port of Ponce amid the cheers of the people. After this Lieutenant Murdoch and Surgeon Heiskell got into a carriage and drove to the city proper, two miles distant, where they received a tremendous ovation. The streets were lined with men, women and children, white and black. Everybody was dancing up and down and yelling: "Viva los Americanos!" "Viva Puerto Rico Libre!" The storekeepers offered their whole stock to the officers, and declared that they would take no pay for anything. In the Plaza of Justice the people tore down the wooden-gilded crown and would have trampled upon it if the officers had not interfered and saved it as a souvenir. When General Wilson landed, the firemen lined up to receive him, and the local band played "The Star-Spangled Banner." Everybody took off his hat and cheered. The custom-house was taken for the American headquarters. The troops landed during the day were the Second and Third Wisconsin and the Sixteenth Pennsylvania regiments. When the ships arrived all the people who could get small boats rowed out to them and offered to pilot them in. General Wilson at once started in to learn the condition of affairs. He sent men into the town immediately and put a sentry at each foreign consulate. He also detailed a detachment of soldiers to the work of guarding the roads. General Wilson and General Miles agreed that the conditions of the surrender relating to the movement of troops were not binding. Despite the arrival of the troops the celebration in the town went on. All the Spanish stores were closed, but the Puerto Ricans and the foreigners kept open house. Women and men alike were all dressed in their finest attire. MILES ISSUES HIS PROCLAMATION. At 10 o'clock General Miles issued his proclamation to the inhabitants, which was as follows: In the prosecution of the war against the kingdom of Spain by the people of the United States, in the cause of liberty, justice and humanity, its military forces have come to occupy the island of Puerto Rico. They come bearing the banners of freedom, inspired by a noble purpose, to seek the enemies of our government and of yours and to destroy or capture all in armed resistance. They bring you the fostering arms of a free people, whose greatest power is justice and humanity to all living within their fold. Hence, they release you from your former political relations, and it is hoped this will be followed by your cheerful acceptance of the government of the United States. The chief object of the American military forces will be to overthrow the armed authorities of Spain and give the people of your beautiful island the largest measure of liberty consistent with this military occupation. They have not come to make war on the people of the country, who for centuries have been oppressed, but, on the contrary, they bring protection not only to yourselves but to your property, promote your prosperity and bestow the immunities and blessings of our enlightenment and liberal institutions and government. It is not their purpose to interfere with the existing laws and customs which are wholesome and beneficial to the people so long as they conform to the rules of the military administration, order and justice. This is not a war of devastation and desolation, but one to give all within the control of the military and naval forces the advantages and blessings of enlightened civilization. In the afternoon General Miles and his staff were invited to the city hall to see the city officials. The city hall was surrounded by a vast crowd of people, and a band was stationed in the park. When the carriages of General Miles and his staff appeared the band played "Lo, the Conquering Hero Comes." General Miles appeared upon the balcony of the city hall and took off his hat. The crowd cheered him wildly, and the band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Marching Through Georgia," and other patriotic airs. General Miles talked to the officials and told them to remain in office. He said he wanted things to go on just as before, but there must be no oppression. He repeated the words of his proclamation, and said that Spaniards who had arms must give them up; if not, they would be regarded as bandits, and not as soldiers, and treated accordingly. On August 5 the city of Guayama, the principal port on the southeastern coast, was captured after a sharp skirmish with 400 Spaniards. The 4th Ohio, Colonel Coit, and the 3rd Illinois, Colonel Bennitt, with two dynamite guns, all under command of General Haynes, composed the expedition which marched against the town from headquarters at Arroyo. When the Americans had reached a point about three miles from the latter place they were viciously attacked on both their right and left flanks. Colonel Coit's Ohio troops, who were leading the advance, were splendidly handled and did telling work against the enemy. The Spaniards for a time managed to conceal themselves behind barricades, but the Americans soon got at them and poured a terrific fire in their direction. It was impossible for the Spaniards long to withstand this fire, and they soon retreated. As the American troops entered the town they found it practically deserted. All of the houses had been closed, and the Ohio regiment raised its colors over the town hall. A crowd of citizens soon gathered about the invading troops and welcomed them with enthusiasm. While this demonstration was under way the Spaniards returned, making a heavy attack on the town from the north. The Fourth Ohio was sent out to engage the enemy and a hot fight between the two bodies of troops took place during the next two hours. Two dynamite guns finally were put in position by the Americans and five shots were fired. These completely silenced the enemy and they withdrew, leaving the town in possession of our forces. Coamo was captured on August 9, after a dashing fight, in which the 16th Pennsylvania volunteers won honors, holding the lead in General Wilson's advance on the town. The skirmishing with the enemy's outposts began at 8:30 o'clock in the morning. The American troops were armed with Krag-Jorgensen rifles and were supported by artillery. They went into the fight with spirit under the eye of General Ernst, and routed the enemy, killing twelve of them, including the Spanish commander, Colonel Illeroa, capturing the town, and taking 200 prisoners. No Americans lost their lives, but six were wounded, one seriously. General Wilson's troops destroyed the Spanish batteries on the heights facing Aibonito, on Friday, August 12, after a brilliant advance of the artillery. The first firing by the battery was at a range of 2,300 yards, which silenced the Spanish guns. Then a portion of the battery, under Lieutenant John P. Haines, of the 4th artillery, was moved forward within 1,000 yards of the enemy's rifle pits and there drove them out and captured a blockhouse. The firing of the Spanish riflemen and artillerists was very wild, reaching the American infantry in the hills instead of the attacking battery. Corporal Swanson of the 3rd Wisconsin volunteers was killed by a shell which fell in the midst of the Wisconsin men, and the same missile wounded three others. NEWS OF PEACE STOPS A BATTLE. The news that peace was at hand reached Guayama on August 13 just in time to interrupt a battle. General Brooke's force, in three strong columns, had begun an advance toward Cayey to form a junction there with General Wilson's division, which had been making its way along the main road from Ponce to San Juan. Three miles out General Brooke's troops came upon a force of Spanish occupying strong intrenchments on the top of a mountain. Light battery B, Pennsylvania artillery, unlimbered its guns, loaded them with shells and had just received the order to commence firing when a message from General Miles announcing peace was received on the field over a military telegraph wire. The battery immediately was signaled to cease action, to the surprise of all the men, who were keyed up for battle. The news that the war was over spread rapidly among the soldiers, causing general disappointment, for the officers could do nothing but leave the battle unfought and withdraw their troops. All returned to their former camp at Guayama. The signing of the treaty of peace by the United States and Spain came too soon to suit the commanders of the invading army in Puerto Rico. Their plans had been perfectly formed and were almost executed. The simultaneous advance of the four divisions toward San Juan was interrupted in the very midst of the successful movement. If it could have been carried out as contemplated it would have been an invaluable lesson to the Puerto Ricans, quelling such pro-Spanish sentiment as existed and rendering American occupation and government of the island a comparatively simple matter. General Miles felt this and regretted that he was not permitted to complete the masterly military movement so carefully begun and so successfully carried forward. The occupation of Puerto Rico was made with a loss to the Americans of two killed and thirty-seven wounded. CHAPTER LII. THE SURRENDER OF MANILA. Landing of General Merritt at Manila--The German Fleet Warned by Admiral Dewey--The Ladrone Islands--Fierce Battle in Darkness and Storm--Foreign Warships Notified of the Attack--Combined Assault by Dewey and Merritt--The City Surrenders. In the meantime, far away in the Philippines, Admiral Dewey was sustaining the reputation he made at the outbreak of hostilities. After the battle of Manila there remained but three Spanish warships in Pacific waters. One of them was in dry dock at Hongkong and the two others were in hiding in the waters of the Philippine group. The admiral dispatched the gunboat Concord and a cruiser to locate and destroy the two Spanish vessels. The Concord soon discovered the Argos, and after a lively battle lasting thirty minutes the Spanish ship was sunk with all on board and her colors flying. Not a man was lost or injured on the Concord, nor did the ship sustain any damage. The first American army to sail for foreign shores left San Francisco May 25. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon Brigadier-General Anderson signaled from the Australia for the City of Pekin and the City of Sydney to get under way. The signal was seen from the shore, and the waiting crowds cheered wildly. No time was lost on board the transports. The crews worked with a will and in a short time the anchors were up and the vessels were under way. Then the 2,500 soldiers who had been impatiently awaiting the signal to start climbed to the rigging and swarmed all over the big ships, shouting and cheering like mad. The big transports steamed slowly along the water front, and the crowd on shore raced along to keep them in sight. The noise made by the patriotic citizens on sea and shore was something terrible. Every steam whistle in the city appeared to be blowing, cannon were fired, and the din lasted fully an hour. The three transports carried close on to 2,500 men. The expedition, which was under the command of Brigadier-General Anderson, consisted of four companies of regulars, under command of Major Robe; the First Regiment California Volunteers, Colonel Smith; the First Regiment Oregon Volunteers, Colonel Summers; a battalion of fifty heavy artillery, Major Gary; about 100 sailors, and eleven naval officers. The fleet was loaded with supplies to last a year, and carried a big cargo of ammunition and naval stores for Admiral Dewey's fleet. Four transports bearing about 4,000 men passed through the Golden Gate shortly after 1 o'clock on the 15th of June, amid scenes of great enthusiasm and patriotism unequaled in the history of San Francisco. The four vessels which carried the troops were the China, Colon, Zealandia and Senator. The fleet was accompanied down the bay by a large number of tugboats and bay steamers. It was a few minutes past 1 o'clock when the China hoisted the blue Peter and warned the fleet to get under way. The Senator had slipped into the stream and straightened out for the run to Manila. When she reached the stream the China swung away from her anchorage and started down the bay, followed by the Colon and Zealandia and a long line of tugboats and steamers. At 1:30 p.m. the fleet was off Lombard street and a few minutes later it was steaming past Meiggs' wharf. Thousands of people, attracted by the blowing of whistles, rushed to points of vantage on the city front and cheered the departing boats. Soldiers crowded the fort at the point and shouted and waved their hats as the squadron passed out through the Golden Gate. A heavy fog lay outside the bar, and before 2 o'clock the transports were lost in the mists. Assigned to the China, General Greene's flagship, and the largest, finest and fastest vessel of the fleet, was the First Regiment Colorado Volunteer Infantry, 1,022 men; half a battalion of the Eighteenth United States Infantry, 150 men, and a detachment of United States engineers, 20 men. The Colon took four companies of the Twenty-third Infantry and two companies of the Eighteenth Infantry, both of the regular army, and Battery A of the Utah Artillery. In the battery were twelve men and in each of the infantry companies seventy-five men, besides the officers, making less than 600 military passengers. The control of the ship was given to Lieutenant-Colonel Clarence W. Bailey, of the Eighteenth Infantry. On the Zealandia were the Tenth Pennsylvania Volunteers and part of Battery B of the Utah Volunteer Artillery. With the gunners went two Maxim fighting machines, which as a precautionary measure were placed ready for action in the bow of the vessel. In all there were 640 privates and 60 officers on board. On the steamer Senator was the First Regiment of Nebraska Volunteers, numbering 1,023 men and officers. TOOK THE LADRONES. The United States cruiser Charleston, with the troopships City of Sydney, City of Pekin and Australia, arrived off Cavite on the 30th of June. They left Honolulu, June 4, with sealed orders from Washington to capture the island of Guam, chief of the Ladrone Islands, and the seat of Spanish government. The American cruiser and the transports arrived at Guam on the morning of June 20. They passed the unoccupied Fort Santiago and advanced opposite Fort Santa Cruz. The Charleston then fired twelve shots, but, receiving no response from the fort, it steamed on to Port Luis de Appa, where Agana, the capital of the Ladrone Islands, is situated. That afternoon the captain of the port and the health officer came aboard the Charleston and were informed to their astonishment that they were prisoners of war. They had not heard that war existed between the United States and Spain, and they had thought the firing by the Charleston was a salute of courtesy. They said Governor Marina regretted that he had no powder for his cannon with which to return the salute. Those surprised Spaniards were thereupon sent ashore to request the Governor of the islands to come on board the Charleston. In reply the Governor sent his official interpreter and secretary to say to the Americans that the Spanish laws forbade him to leave the shore during his term of office. However, he invited Captain Glass of the Charleston to a conference on shore the next morning and guaranteed his safety. Captain Glass sent Lieutenant Braunersreuther to meet the Governor and deliver an ultimatum demanding the surrender of the Ladrones, giving the Governor thirty minutes in which to consider the matter. Lieutenant Braunersreuther was accompanied by two companies of Oregon Volunteers. The governor surrendered gracefully within the allotted time. Thereupon forty-six marines from the Charleston landed and disarmed the 108 Spanish soldiers, confiscated their 116 rifles and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The natives were allowed to retain their weapons. They all showed delight in renouncing Spanish authority, and tore off the Spanish regalia from their uniforms with many expressions of satisfaction. General Merritt arrived in Manila bay on July 25, and after reporting to Admiral Dewey assumed command of the American troops in the Philippines. He lost no time in making himself familiar with the situation, and established headquarters at the Cavite arsenal. THE GERMAN FLEET AT MANILA. As soon as the American blockade of Manila was declared, Germany began to enlarge her fleet in those waters until all but three of the German men-of-war on the Asiatic station were either in Manila bay or its vicinity. The German naval officers took pains to show particular friendliness towards the Spaniards, as for example in saluting the Spanish flag at Manila on the arrival of every additional ship. The German officers visited the Spanish fortifications and trenches, and the Manila newspapers asserted that the presence before the city of so many German ships enabled the Spanish authorities and the people of Manila to regard the American fleet with complacency. On June 27 the McCulloch met the Irene, one of the German fleet, at Corregidor island, preparing to enter the bay, and signaled to her: "We wish to communicate with you." The Irene paid no attention to the signal, and proceeded on her way until a small boat was sent out to her from the McCulloch. The captain of the Irene explained the matter by saying that he had misunderstood the signal. The action of the Irene in interfering with the attack by the insurgent vessel, Filipinas, on the Spanish garrison at Isla Grande, in Subig bay, was in line with the attitude adopted by the German naval officers. The Filipinas, a steamer of about 700 tons, loaded with a half cargo of tobacco, was in hiding in the coves around Subig bay. She was owned and officered by Spaniards, but her crew was a native one. The crew mutinied and killed the twelve officers. They then took charge of the ship and hoisted the insurgent flag. On the shore of Subig bay, and chiefly in the town of Subig, were 400 Spanish soldiers. As the insurgent forces on the land began to close in on them they fled in a body to the Isla de Grande, near the mouth of Subig bay, taking with them 100 sick and about 100 women. They retained their small arms and had only one Maxim gun. The insurgents hoped to starve them into submission. About this time the Filipinas incident occurred, whereby she passed from the Spanish to the insurgents. Two hundred insurgent soldiers took the ship and approached the island and fired on the Spaniards. Their firing was ineffective, but after awhile the Spaniards, probably realizing the ultimate hopelessness of their position, hoisted the white flag. At almost the same time the German cruiser approached from within the bay and the Spaniards hauled down the white flag, for they evidently had reason to hope for interference by the Germans. The German ship at once advanced to the Filipinas and said that the flag she flew was not recognized, and if it were not at once hauled down and a white one substituted she would be taken with her crew to Manila as prisoners. The Filipinas at once hauled down the insurgent flag, hoisted the white one and started immediately south to Manila bay. All this happened July 6. She arrived off the American flagship late in the evening and the insurgents at once reported the matter to the admiral. DEWEY PROTECTS THE INSURGENTS. Admiral Dewey sent the insurgent ship into a safe anchorage. At 12 o'clock midnight the Raleigh and Concord quietly drew up their anchors and left the bay. They proceeded at once to Subig bay, fired several times on the island, where the Spaniards were, and the latter promptly surrendered. The Irene had disappeared when they arrived, although she had been in Subig bay for several days for the expressed purpose of protecting German interests. The Concord then returned to report to Admiral Dewey and find out what should be done with the 600 Spaniards captured. The Raleigh remained at Subig on guard. During the 7th the insurgent leader, Mr. Seyba, came out to the flagship for permission to take the Filipinas and go to Subig for the purpose of capturing the island. The admiral told him that it had already been done. Seyba went aboard the Filipinas with a strong force of men and left the harbor. The Concord, when she returned to report the matter to the admiral, bore a letter from Captain Coghlan of the Raleigh begging that the Spaniards captured be made American prisoners, and that they be not turned over to the insurgents, as Admiral Dewey's original orders demanded. The Concord was sent back with instructions to turn the prisoners over to Aguinaldo, but he exacted an ironclad promise that they should be well and carefully cared for. Finally Admiral Dewey sent an officer to the German flagship with a request that Admiral Diederichs make a statement of the German attitude in the matter of the blockade of Manila. The German admiral sent an immediate explanation. Two days later, however, he sent a protest to Admiral Dewey against the action of American officers in boarding German ships coming to Manila from Marivles. He cited the incident of the McCulloch and the Irene at Corregidor. Admiral Dewey replied to this very courteously but very firmly. He pointed out to the German admiral that international law gave to the commander of a blockading fleet authority to communicate with all ships entering a blockaded port. As international law permitted warships to fly any flag they chose in order to deceive the enemy, the nationality of vessels entering the bay could not be absolutely determined without communicating with them. For the German admiral's further information Admiral Dewey told him that if Germany was at peace with the United States the German naval officers would have to change their methods, and that if Germany was at war with his nation he desired to know it at once in order that he might act accordingly. The Philippine insurgents under Aguinaldo continued their savage attacks, and gradually closed in on the city of Manila. They were working independently of the American forces under General Merritt, and it was apparent that they did not intend to recognize American authority. The Spanish residents of Manila, fearing that the capture of the city by Aguinaldo would be followed by pillage and slaughter, appealed to the captain-general to surrender to the American forces, but that official was determined to resist, in the face of the fact that resistance could only delay defeat. BATTLE IN A STORM. On the night of July 31 the soil of the Philippines was drenched with American blood. Our troops were strengthening their position near the Spanish fort guarding the southern approach to Manila, in the suburbs of that city. The Spanish, knowing their situation to be growing every day more hopeless, made a concerted sortie on the American right flank, held by the 10th Pennsylvania troops. The scene of the battle was at a place called Malate, which is located half way between Cavite and the city of Manila. Here General Greene was in command of 4,000 men. The arrival of the third expedition filled the Spaniards with rage, and they determined to give battle before Camp Dewey could be re-enforced. In the midst of a raging typhoon, with a tremendous downpour of rain, 3,000 Spanish soldiers attempted to surprise the camp. The American pickets were driven in and the trenches assaulted. The Pennsylvania troops did not flinch, but stood their ground under a withering fire. The alarm spread and the 1st California regiment, with two companies of the 3rd artillery, who fought with rifles, were sent up to re-enforce the Pennsylvanians. The enemy was on top of the trenches when these re-enforcements arrived, and never was the discipline of the regulars better demonstrated than by the work of the 3rd artillery under Captain O'Hara. Nothing could be seen but the flash of Mauser rifles. The Utah battery, under Captain Young, covered itself with glory. The men pulled their guns through mud axle deep, and poured in a destructive enfilading fire. The enemy was repulsed and retreated in disorder. Our infantry had exhausted its ammunition and did not follow. Not an inch of ground was lost, but the scene in the trenches was one never to be forgotten. During the flashes of lightning the dead and wounded could be seen lying in blood-red water, but neither the elements of heaven nor the destructive power of man could wring a cry of protest from the wounded. They encouraged their comrades to fight and handed over their cartridge belts. The fighting was renewed on the night of August 1, and again the following evening, but the enemy had been taught a lesson, and made the attacks at long range with heavy artillery. The total American loss was fourteen killed and forty-four wounded. The Spaniards had 350 killed and over 900 wounded. On August 5 the Spaniards again attacked the American outworks. The trenches were occupied by a battalion each of the 14th and 23rd regulars and Nebraska volunteers, the latter holding the extreme right and a company of regulars the extreme left. They returned the Spanish fire and the battle lasted for a half an hour. Three Americans were killed, and eleven wounded, four of them seriously. THE CITY SURRENDERS. Admiral Dewey and General Merritt sent an ultimatum to the authorities in Manila on Monday, August 8, notifying them that at the expiration of forty-eight hours the land and naval forces of the American army would attack the city, unless they surrendered before that time. When this time had expired the Spaniards asked an extension of one day more, in order that they might remove their sick and wounded and the women and children and non-combatants. This request was granted. The foreign warships in the bay were notified of the attack, all of them withdrawing out of range. The English and Japanese warships joined the American fleet off Cavite, and the French and German warships steamed to the north of the city, where they were out of range. The attack was arranged for the 9th inst, but at the last minute General Merritt requested that the fleet postpone the bombardment until his lines could be extended farther around the city. Then Admiral Dewey informed the Spaniards that the attack would be made on Saturday; that he would destroy Fort Malate and shell the trenches, thus destroying the opposition to the land forces entering the city; that he would not fire on Manila unless their guns opened on his ships, in which case he would destroy the city. At 9 o'clock on the morning of Saturday the American fleet, with battle flags flying at every masthead, left Cavite, the band on the British warship Immortalite playing "El Capitan" at the departure. The agreement between Dewey and Merritt was to get under way with the fleet standing toward the city at the same time the troops pressed forward ready to force an entrance when the ships had destroyed the forts. With the fleet the Olympia led the way, attended by the Raleigh and the Petrel, while the Calloa under Lieutenant Tappan and the launch Barcolo crept close inshore in the heavy breakers. Perfect quiet prevailed in the lines on both sides as the great ships, cleared for action, silently advanced, sometimes hidden by rain squalls. The Monterey, with the Baltimore, Charleston and Boston, formed the reserve. At 9:35 a sudden cloud of smoke, green and white against the stormy sky, completely hid the Olympia, a shell screamed across two miles of turbulent water and burst near the Spanish fort at Milate San Antonio de Abad. Then the Petrel and Raleigh and the active little Calloa opened a rapid fire directed toward the shore end of the intrenchments. In the heavy rain it was difficult to judge the range, and the shots at first fell short, but the fire soon became accurate and shells rendered the fort untenable, while the four guns of the Utah battery made excellent practice of the earthworks and swamp to the east of the fort. The Spaniards replied with a few shells. Less than half an hour after the bombardment began General Greene decided that it was possible to advance, although the signals to cease firing were disregarded by the fleet, being invisible on account of the rain. Thereupon six companies of the Colorado regiment leaped over their breastworks, dashed into the swamp and began volley firing from the partial shelter of low hedges within 300 yards of the Spanish lines. A few moments later the remaining six companies moved along the seashore, somewhat covered by a sand ridge formed by an inlet under the outworks of the fort, and at 11 o'clock occupied this formidable stronghold without loss. Meanwhile the fleet, observing the movement of the troops along the beach, withheld its fire. The bombardment had lasted exactly an hour and a half. An hour later General Greene and his staff proceeded along the beach, still under a hot infantry fire from the right, where the Eighteenth regulars and the Third regular artillery were engaging the enemy, and directed the movement for an advance into Malate. The vicinity of the fort was uncomfortable on account of numbers of sharpshooters in the buildings on both sides, 200 yards distant. The forward movement was therefore hastened, and in a few minutes the outskirts of the suburb were well occupied and the sharpshooters were driven away. As the Californians under Colonel Smith came up the beach their band played the national air, accompanied by the whistling of Mauser bullets, and during the sharpshooting continued to encourage the men with inspiring music. Each regiment carried its colors into action. There was considerable street fighting in the suburbs of Malate and Ermita, but the battalion of Californians pushed into the Luneta, a popular promenade within two hundred yards of the moat of the citadel. Then the white flag was hoisted at the southwest corner of the walled town. General Greene, with a few members of his staff, galloped along the Luneta, under a sharp scattering fire from the houses near the beach, and parleyed with an officer who directed him along to the gate, further east. At this moment the Spanish forces, retreating from Santa Ana, came into view, fully 2,000 strong, followed by insurgents who had eluded General McArthur's troops, and now opened fire for a brief period. The situation was awkward if not critical, both sides being slightly suspicious of treachery. The Spanish troops lining the citadel ramparts, observing the insurgents' action, opened fire on the Californians, killing one and wounding three. The confusion, however, soon ceased by the advance of the retreating Spaniards to the esplanade, when General Greene ordered them to enter the citadel. Soon a letter was brought from the captain general requesting the commander of the troops to meet him for consultation. General Greene immediately entered with Adjutant General Bates. Meanwhile, according to arrangement, the moment the white flag was shown, General Merritt, who occupied the steamer Zafiro as temporary corps headquarters, sent General Whittier, with Flag Lieutenant Brumby, ashore to meet the captain general and discuss first a plan of capitulation. General Whittier found the officials much startled by the news that the attack was still vigorously continuing along the whole line, the American troops even threatening the citadel. SPANISH TROOPS MASSED. All available Spanish troops were immediately massed in the vicinity of the palace, awaiting the succession of events, concerning which a certain degree of anxiety was evident. General Merritt entered with his staff at 3 o'clock. The situation was then better understood, and a conference with General Jaudenes was held. The terms agreed on were as follows: An agreement for the capitulation of the Philippines. A provision for disarming the men who remain organized under the command of their officers, no parole being exacted. Necessary supplies to be furnished from the captured treasury funds, any possible deficiency being made good by the Americans. The safety of life and property of the Spanish soldiers and citizens to be guaranteed as far as possible. The question of transporting the troops to Spain to be referred to the decision of the Washington government, and that of returning their arms to the soldiers to be left to the discretion of General Merritt. Banks and similar institutions to continue operations under existing regulations, unless these are changed by the United States authorities. Lieutenant Brumby, immediately after the terms of capitulation had been signed, hurried off to lower the Spanish flag--in reality to lower all Spain's flags in the Philippines by taking down one. He was accompanied by two signal men from the Olympia. This little party found its way after great difficulty into Fort Santiago in the northern portion of the walled city. There a large Spanish flag was flying. Grouped about it were many Spanish officers. Brumby's presence there in the victorious uniform attracted a crowd from the streets. RAISES THE STARS AND STRIPES. They hissed as he approached to haul down the flag. Then the stars and stripes rose in place of the other. Many of those present wept bitterly as the flag of the victorious stranger climbed into place above the fort. Fearing that the crowd might lower "old glory," Lieutenant Brumby asked an American infantry officer to move up a detachment to guard it. Fortunately, he met a company coming up with a band. The infantrymen presented arms and the band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," accompanied by the cheers of the soldiers, in which many of the residents of the city joined. The total American loss in the day's battle was eight killed and thirty-four wounded. The Spaniards had 150 killed and over 300 wounded. The Americans took 11,000 prisoners, 7,000 being Spanish regulars; 20,000 Mauser rifles, 3,000 Remingtons, eighteen modern cannon and many of the obsolete pattern. Great credit was given to General Merritt for his plan of attack, which was successfully carried out in every detail under unusually complicated conditions. Nor was commendation withheld from Chief of Staff General Babcock for his expert co-operation in the admirably conceived strategy. Prompt action and strictly following fully detailed orders resulted in every case in the immediate settlement of every difficulty, however threatening. The conduct of the Spanish was in a few cases reprehensible, such as their setting fire to the gunboat Cebu and the destruction of several armed launches and boats after the capitulation had been agreed upon. It fell to the lot of Admiral Dewey to open and to close the active operations of the war. His destruction of the Spanish fleet was the first engagement of the war. After fighting had ceased in the western hemisphere, under instructions from the President in accordance with the peace agreement, Admiral Dewey forced Manila to surrender under fire of the guns of his fleet. CHAPTER LIII VICTORIOUS CLOSE OF THE WAR Spain Sues for Peace--President McKinley's Ultimatum--French Ambassador Cambon Acts on Behalf of Spain--The President's Proclamation--The Protocol--Spanish Losses in Men, Ships and Territory--Appointment of the Evacuation Committees and the Peace Commission. On Tuesday, July 26, the Spanish government took the first well defined step to bring about a cessation of hostilities. The French ambassador, accompanied by his secretary of embassy, called on President McKinley, and under instructions from his government and at the request of the Spanish minister of foreign affairs, opened peace negotiations by declaring that Spain was ready to consider terms. The proposition submitted by the ambassador acting for the Spanish government was in general terms, and was confined to the one essential point of an earnest plea that negotiations be opened for the purpose of terminating the war. Owing to the importance of the communication the ambassador adopted the usual diplomatic procedure of reading the communication from the original, in French, the translation being submitted by M. Thiebaut. In the conversation which followed the reading of the proposition neither the president nor the ambassador entered upon the question of the terms of peace. The instructions of the ambassador had confined him to the opening of peace negotiations, and it was evident that the President desired to consider the proposition before giving any definite reply. It was finally determined that the President would consult the members of his cabinet, and after a decision had been arrived at M. Cambon would then be invited to the white house for a further conference and for a final answer from the United States government. Before the call closed a brief official memorandum was agreed upon in order to set at rest misleading conjecture and to give to the public information on a subject which had advanced beyond the point where diplomatic reserve was essential. After cabinet discussions on Friday and Saturday regarding the concessions which should be demanded from Spain a definite agreement was reached, and the French ambassador was notified that the President was prepared to deliver his ultimatum. The demands made by the President were briefly as follows: 1. That Spain will relinquish all claims of sovereignty over and title to Cuba. 2. That Puerto Rico and other Spanish islands in the West Indies, and an island in the Ladrones, to be selected by the United States, shall be ceded to the latter. 3. That the United States will occupy and hold the city, bay and harbor of Manila pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace, which shall determine the control, disposition and government of the Philippines. 4. That Cuba, Puerto Rico and other Spanish islands in the West Indies shall be immediately evacuated, and that commissioners, to be appointed within ten days, shall within thirty days from the signing of the protocol meet at Havana and San Juan, respectively, to arrange and execute the details of the evacuation. 5. That the United States and Spain will each appoint not more than five commissioners to negotiate and conclude a treaty of peace. The commissioners to meet at Paris not later than October 1. 6. On the signing of the protocol hostilities will be suspended, and notice to that effect will be given as soon as possible by each government to the commanders of its military and naval forces. Spanish diplomacy was as usual in evidence, and attempts were made by the Madrid administration to modify the terms, so as to relieve the Spanish government of at least a portion of the Cuban debt, but the authorities in Washington were firm and insisted that no such suggestion could be considered, and that there could be no further discussion until the Spanish flag had been withdrawn from the West Indies. On August 12 Ambassador Cambon received official notice from the administration at Madrid that his action in agreeing to the terms of the protocol was approved, and he was authorized to sign it, as the representative of the Spanish government. Accordingly, at four o'clock on the afternoon of that day, he presented himself at the President's mansion, in company with his first secretary, M. Thiebaut, where he was met by President McKinley, Secretary of State Day, and Assistant Secretaries of State Moore, Adee and Cridler. Two copies of the protocol had been prepared, one in English for preservation by this government, and the other in French for the Spanish government. The signatures and seals were formally attached, Secretary Day signing one copy in advance of M. Cambon, the order being reversed on the other. The President then congratulated the French ambassador upon the part he had taken in securing a suspension of hostilities and thanked him for the earnest efforts he had made to facilitate a speedy conclusion. M. Cambon then bowed himself out of the room and left the white house with the copy of the protocol, which he will forward to Spain. The seal used by the French ambassador was that of Spain, which had been left with him when the Spanish minister withdrew from Washington. FULL TEXT OF THE PROTOCOL. His Excellency, M. Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republic at Washington, and Mr. William Day, Secretary of State of the United States, having received respectively to that effect plenary powers from the Spanish Government and the Government of the United States, have established and signed the following articles which define the terms on which the two governments have agreed with regard to the questions enumerated below and of which the object is the establishment of peace between the two countries--namely: Article 1. Spain will renounce all claim to all sovereignty over and all her rights over the Island of Cuba. Article 2. Spain will cede to the United States the Island of Puerto Rico and the other islands which are at present under the sovereignty of Spain in the Antilles, as well as an island in Ladrona Archipelago, to be chosen by the United States. Article 3. The United States will occupy and retain the City and Bay of San Juan de Puerto Rico and the Port of Manila and Bay of Manila pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace which shall determine the control and form of government of the Philippines. Article 4. Spain will immediately evacuate Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the Antilles. To this effect each of the two governments will appoint commissioners within ten days after the signing of this protocol, and these commissioners shall meet at Havana within thirty days after the signing of this protocol with the object of coming to an agreement regarding the carrying out of the details of the aforesaid evacuation of Cuba and other adjacent Spanish islands; and each of the two governments shall likewise appoint within ten days after the signature of this protocol other commissioners, who shall meet at San Juan de Puerto Rico within thirty days after the signature of this protocol, to agree upon the details of the evacuation of Puerto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the Antilles. Article 5. Spain and the United States shall appoint to treat for peace five commissioners at the most for either country. The commissioners shall meet in Paris on Oct. 1 at the latest to proceed to negotiations and to the conclusion of a treaty of peace. This treaty shall be ratified in conformity with the constitutional laws of each of the two countries. Article 6. Once this protocol is concluded and signed hostilities shall be suspended, and to that effect in the two countries orders shall be given by either government to the commanders of its land and sea forces as speedily as possible. Done in duplicate at Washington, read in French and in English by the undersigned, who affix at the foot of the document their signatures and seals, Aug. 12, 1898 JULES CAMBON. WILLIAM R. DAY. The President immediately issued the following proclamation: By the President of the United States of America--A Proclamation. Whereas, By a protocol concluded and signed Aug. 12, 1898, by William R. Day, Secretary of State of the United States, and His Excellency Jules Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of France at Washington, respectively representing for this purpose the Government of the United States and the Government of Spain, the United States and Spain have formally agreed upon the terms on which negotiations for the establishment of peace between the two countries shall be undertaken; and, Whereas, It is in said protocol agreed that upon its conclusion and signature hostilities between the two countries shall be suspended, and that notice to that effect shall be given as soon as possible by each government to the commanders of its military and naval forces: Now, therefore, I, William McKinley, President of the United States, do, in accordance with the stipulations of the protocol, declare and proclaim on the part of the United States a suspension of hostilities, and do hereby command that orders be immediately given through the proper channels to the commanders of the military and naval forces of the United States to abstain from all acts inconsistent with this proclamation. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 12th day of August, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety-Eight, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-third. WILLIAM McKINLEY. By the President: WILLIAM R. DAY, Secretary of State. In accordance with the proclamation issued by the President orders were issued to the naval commanders at the several stations in the United States, Cuba and the Philippines carrying into effect the directions of the proclamation. The navy department not only transmitted the President's proclamation in full to the several commanders in chief, but also directions as to the disposition of their vessels. Navy Department, Washington, D. C., Aug. 12.--Sampson, Santiago: Suspend all hostilities. Blockade of Cuba and Puerto Rico is raised. Howell ordered to assemble vessels at Key West. Proceed with New York, Brooklyn, Indiana, Oregon, Iowa and Massachusetts to Tompkinsville. Place monitors in safe harbor in Puerto Rico. Watson transfers his flag to Newark and will remain at Guantanamo. Assemble all cruisers in safe harbors. Order marines north in Resolute. ALLEN, Acting Secretary. Navy Department, Washington, D. C., Aug. 12.--Remey, Key West: In accordance with the President's proclamation telegraphed you, suspend immediately all hostilities. Commence withdrawal of vessels from blockade. Order blockading vessels in Cuban waters to assemble at Key West. ALLEN, Acting Secretary. Similar notification was sent to Admiral Dewey, with instructions to cease hostilities and raise the blockade at Manila. The orders to General Merritt to suspend were as follows: Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, D. C., Aug. 12, 1898.-- Merritt, Manila: The President directs all military operations against the enemy be suspended. Peace negotiations are nearing completion, a protocol having just been signed by representatives of the two countries. You will inform the commanders of the Spanish forces in the Philippines of these instructions. Further orders will follow. Acknowledge receipt. By order of the Secretary of War. H. C. CORBIN, Adjutant-General. The orders sent to General Miles and General Shafter were identical with the above save as to names. Senor Palma, the head of the Cuban Junta, sent the following cable by way of Santiago: Bartolome Maso, President Cuban Republic, Santiago, Cuba; I have this 13th day of August, 1898, accepted, in the name of the Cuban provisional government, the armistice proclaimed by the United States. You should give immediate orders to the army throughout Cuba suspending all hostilities. Preliminary terms of peace, signed by representatives of Spain and the United States, provide that Spain will relinquish all claim over and title to Cuba. T. ESTRADA PALMA. On August 16 the President appointed as military commissioners Major-General James F. Wade, Rear-Admiral William T. Sampson, and Major-General Matthew C. Butler for Cuba, and Major-General John E. Brooke, Rear-Admiral Winfield S. Schley, and Brigadier-General William W. Gordon for Puerto Rico. As soon as General Shafter received the President's proclamation for the cessation of hostilities he took steps for the immediate notification of the Spanish commanders in the vicinity, and also the insurgent leaders. The proclamation was received in Santiago with the greatest enthusiasm, the officers and men of the army being alike supremely satisfied with the definite declaration of peace. After the fall of Santiago a period of uncertainty and inactivity had had its effect upon the soldiers stationed there. The weary waiting for new developments, weakened by the enervating climate, watching the insidious ravages of disease, sapped the spirits of all, and the news that brought to them a near prospect of home was like a bracing breeze that swept through the camp, giving new courage to all. THE END OF THE WAR. Thus came to a close our war with Spain for Cuba's freedom. Commenced in a spirit of vengeance for the destruction of a battleship, the war was conducted with singular freedom, all the circumstances considered, from vindictiveness. We struck hard, but quickly. We compelled victories, destroyed fleets, but were merciful and considerate towards the captured. There was singularly little revilement of the Spanish enemy and the bravery of the Spanish soldier and sailor was freely admitted. But mere personal valor could not supply the place of skill and discipline. In all history there is not an instance of such unchecked successes as attended our military operations. For us the encounters were not bloody, the victories were not dearly purchased. At sea we destroyed squadrons without the loss of a man or a ship; on land we compelled the surrender of garrisons strongly intrenched. In Puerto Rico our march was a triumphal procession. Spain, for the sake of false pride, bigotry, politics and a child king, buried in the depths of the sea thirty-five vessels of her navy, valued at $36,500,000. By their rusting hulks lie the bodies of more than a thousand gallant tars. She surrendered in territory to the United States directly Cuba, with a population of 1,500,000 and an area of 45,000 square miles, and Puerto Rico, with a population of 810,000 and an area of 3,670 square miles. Her total direct loss of territory in square miles was 48,670, and loss in population 2,310,000. She also jeopardized, probably beyond all future control by her, the Philippine islands, with a population of 8,000,000 and an area of 114,326 square miles. So that in the end it appears the Spanish kingdom for the sake of the wrong gave up 163,000 square miles of territory and over 10,000,000 of tax-paying population. This loss was the gain of the United States, which, to bring it about, placed in service a first-class navy, with 10,000 men and fifty effective vessels, and a volunteer and regular army of 278,500 men, of which New York gave the largest number, Pennsylvania next and Illinois the third. When the present century began Spain was mistress over nearly all of the southern continent of America and over a good share of the northern continent. With the exception of Brazil, to which the Portuguese held title, practically all of South America was Spanish. So was Central America, the present Mexico, and nearly a million square miles of the southwestern part of the United States. The revolutions of the early decades of the century stripped off much of that domain, and now the last shreds of it are also gone. The same policy of persistent greed and of deadly disregard to the interests of the governed that caused the early revolutions has also caused the later ones, for the sake of which the United States began its interference in the Antilles. Now nothing is left to the former queen of all the empires and kingdoms which once were subject to her and brought her glory and power among the nations. Her own sons have read to her the lesson that exploitation cannot continue forever, and that unless the conqueror has regard for the interests of the conquered the seeds of disruption will surely be sown. CHAPTER LIV. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. Telling How Our Soldiers Lived--What They, Saw--How They Fought--Hardships Endured--Bravery Shown in the Face of the Deadly Mauser Bullets as Well as Fever-Stricken Camps, Etc., Etc. Charles E. Hands, writing from Santiago to the London Mail, says of the wounded after the battle of July 1 and 2: There was one man on the road whose left foot was heavily bandaged and drawn up from the ground. He had provided himself with a sort of rough crutch made of the forked limb of a tree, which he had padded with a bundle of clothes. With the assistance of this and a short stick he was paddling briskly along when I overtook him. "Where did they get you, neighbor?" I asked him. "Oh, durn their skins," he said in the cheerfulest way, turning to me with a smile, "they got me twice--a splinter of a shell in the foot and a bullet through the calf of the same leg when I was being carried back from the firing line." "A sharpshooter?" "The son of a mongrel was up in a tree." "And you're walking back to Siboney. Wasn't there room for you to ride?" I expected an angry outburst of indignation in reply to this question. But I was mistaken. In a plain, matter-of-fact way he said: "Guess not. They wanted all the riding room for worse cases 'n mine. Thank God, my two wounds are both in the same leg, so I can walk quite good and spry. They told me I'd be better off down at the landing yonder, so I got these crutches and made a break." "And how are you getting along?" I asked. "Good and well," he said, as cheerfully as might be, "just good and easy." And with his one sound leg and hist two sticks he went cheerfully paddling along. It was just the same with other walking wounded men. They were all beautifully cheerful. And not merely cheerful. They were all absolutely unconscious that they were undergoing any unnecessary hardships or sufferings. They knew now that war was no picnic, and they were not complaining at the absence of picnic fare. Some of them had lain out all the night, with the dew falling on them where the bullets had dropped them, before their turn came with the overworked field surgeons. CAPTAIN PADDOCK TELLS OF THE FIGHTING BEFORE SANTIAGO. On the Battlefield, One Mile East of Santiago, Sunday, July 3. My Dear "Jim": I have passed safely through the most horrible three days imaginable. We marched nearly all night Thursday (June 30), to a point about one and a half miles east from here, and then waited for morning. About 5 o'clock we started again, and at 6 A. M. our extreme right opened, the fight. The center (our front) and the left moved into position, and at 8 o'clock the Spanish artillery opened on us from the position we now hold. We deployed as skirmishers and advanced through woods and brush, a perfect thicket; our artillery was hard at work behind us, but we with our small arms could not do much, as the Spanish were perfectly intrenched for a mile or more along our front. We kept pushing along, although their fire, both shrapnel and small arms, was murdering us; but on we came, through the tropical underbrush, and wading a stream up to our chests, firing when we could see the enemy. We reached the first line along a hillcrest and drove them out; then the next line, and they then started back to the city. The fighting was fast and fearful and never slackened until dark. The second day (Saturday) was a continuous fight again till dark; but our loss was small, as we simply held our position, having driven them all in; at night, however, they made a furious attack and attempted to retake the place. We were not surprised, and drove them back, with small loss on our side. To-day was like the second day up to 12:30 o'clock, when a truce was made. Up to now (5 o'clock P. M.) there has been no firing since then, but I don't yet know what the result of the conference was. We offered the truce after the naval battle. I only give a brief outline, as the papers have told everything. I am unhurt and perfectly well. TOLD FROM THE TRENCHES-COUNCIL BLUFFS BOY DESCRIBES THE FIGHTING BEFORE SANTIAGO. The following letter was written in the trenches before Santiago the morning after the attack: Heights Before Santiago, July 8. Dear Father: I have not been hurt and am fully convinced that Providential protection alone took me through it. Contrary to all principles of tactics, but unavoidably, the Twenty-fourth infantry was marched for three miles in a flanking fire from artillery, and when we were within about one and a half miles from the first Spanish position we were hemmed in a narrow road and subjected to a hail of fire from two blockhouses and intrenchiments on the hills on our right. We waded about 400 yards down a stream up to our shoulders under protection of its banks and charged across a field of bull grass as high as our heads for about 600 yards, and then up the hill about 200 feet and drove the Spaniards out of their fort. The one we took is called San Juan. We lost terribly. Lieutenants Gurney and Augustine are dead. Colonel Liscum, Captains Ducat, Brett and Burton and Lieutenants Lyon and Laws are wounded. We lost about 100 men, but the fight is virtually won. During the engagement I threw away my sword. I saw the colonel fall and I gave him my canteen and he soon revived. We occupied the hill by the blockhouse. We are within about 400 yards of the city and they have put up a flag of truce. They want until 10 A. M. July 9 to hear from Havana. We have them sewed up tight. I have a piece of an eight-inch shell which tried to get me, but struck the parapet of my trench. Will try to send it home. No one except those thoroughly acquainted with this country will ever know how dreadfully desperate the fight and charge were. It is a mistake that the Spaniards won't fight. The Spaniards have their barracks and other buildings covered with the Red Cross and abuse all the established principles of 'warfare. They put their men in trees hidden with leaves and bark and they pick off officers, surgeons and men of the hospital corps. Finally it became necessary to systematically hunt these down, and this has been done with considerable success. The night of the 4th Sampson began countermining, and the dynamite made such a racket that the Spanish officers ran out under a flag of truce about 11:30 P. M. and wanted to know what we meant by firing under a flag of truce. It did not take us long to tell them that our flag of truce did not include the navy. Now, about 9 am, I hear the guns of the navy and Morro castle exchanging compliments. Of all the precautions advised before we started for Cuba I could follow but few. I wear my woolen bandages, but in wading the stream I was unable to put on dry clothes again. In fact, for seventy-two hours we were under fire without sleep and thirty-six hours without water or food of any kind. Bacon and hard bread are fine. I sleep on the side of San Juan hill in a ditch, so I won't roll out. I have a raincoat, blanket and shelter half. This is the most beautiful country I have ever seen, and if we should have peace I know of no place I would rather live in. I have seen enough of the horrors of the war, but am proud of the gallant boys of the Twenty fourth. The fighting is practically over, so have no fear. Your son, WILL. COLONEL WOOD WRITES OF HIS BATTLE--ROUGH RIDERS' LEADER DESCRIBES THE AMERICAN ATTACK AT LA QUASINA. Camp First United States Volunteer Cavalry, Six Miles Out of Santiago, June 27, 1898. Dear General: Thinking that a line about our fight and general condition would interest you, I take this opportunity to drop you a line. We are all getting along very comfortably thus far and find the climate much better than we expected; also the country, which, aside from being awfully rough and full of undergrowth, is rather picturesque and attractive. We commenced our advance from our first landing place on the 23d, and that night General Young and I, as second in command of the Second Cavalry brigade, had a long war talk about taking the very strong Spanish position about five miles up the road to Santiago. He decided that he would make a feint on their front and hold on hard, while I was to make a detour by trail under a couple of Cuban guides and take them in flank and try to get them out of their strong position, which was in the wildest and roughest part of the trail toward the town. Our little plan worked. I located the Spanish outpost and deployed silently and when in position fired on them. Shortly after I opened I could hear Young on the right, down in the valley. FOUGHT TWO HOURS AT CLOSE RANGE. The fight lasted over two hours and was very hot and at rather close range. The Spanish used the volley a great deal, while my men fired as individuals. We soon found that instead of 1,500 men we had struck a very heavy outpost of several thousand. However, to cut a long story short, we drove them steadily but slowly, and finally threw them into flight. Their losses must have been heavy, for all reports coming out of Santiago show a great many dead and wounded and that they, the Spanish, had 4,000 men and two machine guns (these we saw) and were under two general officers, and that the Spanish dead and wounded were being brought in for six hours; also that the garrison was expecting an assault that night; that the defeated troops reported they had fought the entire American army for four hours, but, compelled by greatly superior numbers, had retreated and that the army was coming. My men conducted themselves splendidly and behaved like veterans, going up against the heavy Spanish lines as though they had the greatest contempt for them. Yours sincerely, LEONARD WOOD. To General B. A. Alger, Secretary of War. WIRT W. YOUNG OF CHICAGO TELLS OF THE DESTRUCTION OF CERVERA'S FLEET JULY 3. We have seen some hot times since the Harvard left Newport News with the Ninth Massachusetts and the Thirty-fourth Michigan on board. We landed them about six miles from Santiago at a little town called Siboney, or Altares, and laid there four days unloading stores. On the morning of the 3d I was lucky enough to row in the boat that the officers took to the shore. The ship was lying about one and a half miles from shore, and you can bet it is no Sunday-school picnic affair to pull a twenty-foot oar back and forth all day. When we landed the officers one of them said: "Wait for me." We waited three hours. Then we saw the New York come on the line. We made for the boat, so as to reach it before the lieutenant. Just as he got in the Harvard flew the recall signal. When we reached her we heard that the New York had said that the Spanish ships had left the harbor and that the Harvard was to join the Iowa. We cleared for action and went up past Morro castle. Away up on the coast we could see great columns of smoke. The Spaniards had come out and started to run, but the Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Gloucester and the rest of the fleet were waiting, and in an hour the two Spanish torpedo-boats were blown out of the water. The Infanta Maria Theresa and Oquendo were beached and on fire close together, and the Vizcaya the same about a mile farther down. It was about 3 o'clock when the Iowa signaled the Harvard to take the Spanish sailors from the burning ships and from the shore. Before the first boat was lowered it had grown quite dark and the sea was running high. THE SIGHT OF A LIFETIME. The sight of those magnificent battleships burning and the magazines exploding one by one as the flames reached them, made an impression upon me I will never forget. They called for volunteers to man the boats, as it was dangerous work. We did not know whether the Spanish sailors on shore would show fight or not. There is a cadet on board named Hannigan, from Chicago, who will always show his boat's crew any fun there is going on. Arling Hanson and I determined to get in his boat, and we did. We made for the Vizcaya, and as we neared her we could see men hanging to ropes down the sides. The ship was on fire from stem to stern, and any moment the magazines were likely to explode. If they had while we were pulling the Spaniards off, there would have been several Chicago naval recruits missing. The surf was running high and made the work dangerous and difficult, but we made connections and brought off over 600 men. They were all naked and almost dead. The only light we had was from the burning ships, and the scene was one of great confusion. Officers shouted orders, Spaniards running up and down the beach and the magazines exploding one by one as the fire reached them. And to crown all a party of Cubans came down from the hills and announced their intention of "making angels" of all the helpless Spaniards. Whereupon the American naval officers said if they tried anything like that "there would be some strange Cuban faces in hades." The Cubans thought better of it and stood and watched us. I have got the dagger and sheath of the Spanish officer Francisco Silvia. He was pretty near gone, and when he had almost reached the boat he let go of the line. I swam out, held to the line, and just as he swept by me, caught him by the belt and got him up to the boat. He got me around the neck in the struggle, and once I was so full of salt water I thought I should never see Chicago again. He wanted to give me anything he had. He had only his belt and cap, so I chose his dagger. MUTINY AMONG THE PRISONERS. I suppose you have by this time got the report of the mutiny on the Harvard and the killing of eight and wounding of twenty-five of the Spaniards. Jones from Auburn Park, Hanson and I were on guard with some marines and soldiers. We heard the signal, a long-drawn hiss, and in an instant the "push" was up and at us. They had about ten feet to come, however, and not one of them ever reached us. There was a hot time for a few minutes. It was shoot as fast as you could throw up your gun. We did not stop to pick our men, but fired at the crowd; and when a Winchester or a Springfield bullet hits a man at ten or twelve feet he is going to stop and go the other way. There has been a burial at sea for the last five days. When the bugle sounds "taps" over the place where the bodies are thrown into the sea it seems to make your blood come to your face with a rush. There is something solemn in it, and a man who dies and is buried with his country's flag around him and the bugle and guns to do him honor is lucky. TOWN OF SANTIAGO DESCRIBED BY ONE OF OUR BOYS. Santiago, August 6. A peculiarity of the climate here is that it is the hottest in the morning. The sun rises hot; in fact, the heat is most severe from sunrise to 10 am, when the sea breezes set in and make the situation more endurable. If it remained as hot all day as it is at 9 A. M. our condition would be unbearable indeed. The ocean helps us out, however, and by noon we have a very refreshing and cooling air stirring. The sickness in the company is on the decrease. On some days only about half the men were fit for duty, but they are all doing nicely now. The same proportion obtained throughout the whole regiment. Not all of the disabled were sick, but some were recovering, while others were sick and thus we had from 25 to 40 per cent. of the men under the weather, and it took those who were well to care for the sick. I was at Santiago the other day with Colonel Dick. We called on General Shafter and had a very nice chat with him. He showed us a message from the Secretary of War directing that the Eighth Ohio be closely isolated for a period of ten days and if at the end of that time no yellow fever appears in our ranks we are to be put on transports and sent away from here. Santiago is a queer place. We approached the city along the road that passes by our camp. The street was narrow--not more than twenty-five or thirty feet wide--not wider than the paved portion of the street in front of our house. Many are much narrower--mere alleys in fact--but people living all along them. Across the streets trenches had been dug by the Spanish troops and barbed wire netting in front of the trenches. There were many trenches, showing what preparation they had made for a desperate resistance to our advance. The houses are nearly all one-story and have brick or stone floors. Few have wood floors and all seem dirty. No glass is used in the windows, and very little window glass is seen in the city. The window openings are grated on the outside and have a sort of portiere or wooden shutters on the inside. The streets are not straight, but wind and turn until one loses the points of the compass. The houses are built out even with the streets, no front yards and no spaces between the houses. Houses are mostly covered on the outside walls with plaster and roofs of red tile. The city is very old and the houses show it. We went into the cathedral, an old building. They rang the bells and rang them again, but so far as we could see no one came to worship. The janitors and priests lounged about--the latter saluted us. We strolled all about the interior of the structure with our spurs on our boots and wearing cartridge belts and revolvers. The American soldier goes about where he pleases in the city. Of course we recognized the character of the building and removed our hats when we went in. The interior was adorned like most Catholic churches, with pictures and altars and other regalia of the Catholic service. Quite a nice picture of the Virgin appears in the ceiling, and a number of good pictures are found about the walls. We also went into the "palace," now used as General Shafter's headquarters. It is one of the best buildings in the city, but doesn't compare with the more ordinary public buildings in our country. There are no street cars--few, if any electric lights, and the surface of many streets is so rough and uneven that you can have no conception of them. The few that are better than others are paved with cobblestones, but these are few. Most streets are full of loose stones and not paved, and little, if any, pretense at grading. The dirt lies in the streets and side streets are filthy. In fact, it looked to me like the greater the stink the better the people like it. My sense of smell was too acute to relish it. Our troops have gathered up large numbers of Cubans and put them to work cleaning up the streets, and the prospects for cleanliness are better. I don't believe, however, that the Cuban and Spanish residents will profit by it unless they are absolutely compelled to avoid throwing rubbish in the streets. They have no cellars and no sewers. The people themselves have very little regard for the ordinary proprieties of civilized life and children run stark naked on the streets. The following letter has been received from Claude Neis of Company G, First District of Columbia volunteers: Santiago de Cuba, Aug. 9, 1898. You said that Mr. Balcke's son was killed in Santiago. If so, I must say that I saw his ghost on the wayside in a cluster of woods. I remember seeing the name. His first name was Charley, if I am not mistaken. I feel very sorry to have heard of his death, but I know that he perished for a noble cause and fought gallantly as any soldier could. Lon White is all right, and this trip is doing him a great deal of good, only he has had an attack of malarial fever lately. It seems to affect all the boys, and if they do not take us out of this place, since peace is virtually declared, we all will have a harder fight to contend with the yellow fever than we had with the Spaniards. It has already broken out among several regiments and we have lost two men already. Last Friday the First battalion was ordered to guard the Spanish prisoners, 7,000 in number, and my four days' expedition with them has made me conceive very readily that they are superior to what I expected. I made friends with Captain Garcia, a very fine-looking man and a very gentle sort of a fellow. We were forbidden to talk, receive or give anything from or to them, but a soldier in these circumstances disobeys a minor order like that, I was invited to take dinner with the captain and his two lieutenants, Menez and Hernandez, two very nice sort of Spaniards. Though prisoners, they are more cordial than our own officers. The bill of fare and manner of eating was as follows: 1. Bean soup with rice, well seasoned with pepper a la Mexicano. 2. Fish, with the best sauce ever tasted since I left home. 3. Fried eggs and potatoes. (Eggs in the market here are 10 cents apiece.) After each intermission a glass of claret wine. 4. Rice and roast meat a la Francaise. 5. Rice pudding. 6. Coffee (Francaise), bread and butter. 7. Fruit. Glass of good Spanish rum a la rhum. I have quite a few souvenirs from them and some Spanish buttons for sister. We are situated on top of a mountain while the Spaniards are down in the valley. They bring quite a number of sick people out every morning. I have even become so acquainted with the men of the-- battalion, Captain Garcia commanding, that they call me Senor Neis. I have named one, who is the real picture of an Irishman of the Mick type, "Mickey," and his comrades call him such. They carry my water for me and seem to be willing to do anything I ask them. The majority of them are very illiterate, very few intelligent privates, comparatively speaking. I have a young fellow about my age to teach English, and I am attempting Spanish. Both of us are getting along fairly well. I can make myself understood. While I was dining with Captain Garcia his orderly was fanning the flies away from me. The country is beautiful, nothing but mountains and valleys. With American people here it will be worthy to have the island called the Gem of the Antilles. I can thank God that I have had the best of health and only two of us in the company have not had the fever. I seem to have gained in weight and full flushed in the face. This letter was written just before the battle of Santiago: Ten Miles North of Baiquiri, June 29, 1898. Dear Jim: I am writing this on picket. My troop was sent to the front and we are bivouacked in the woods. Oranges, lemons and cocoanuts are plentiful, and every trooper has his canteen full of lemonade all the time. We were seventeen days on the transport, but did not suffer. Every one is in good spirits and anxious to get at the dons. DICK. The following breezy letter was written by a Washington lad in the trenches around Santiago: Siboney, July 7. My Dear General: Have really been too busy to write. Have been in a real nice, lively battle, and wasn't a bit scared and didn't run. The poor old Twenty-fourth. Markley commands the regiment now, and temporarily the brigade. He is a daisy. He really ought to get something. So ought every one. It was glorious. Only so many were killed and wounded. Poor old Shafter. Everybody is roasting him because he was lying on his back in the rear having his head rubbed, which isn't my idea of what a commander should do. About myself: I was upset by a shell back of Grimes' battery July 1, which killed some people. Very miraculous. Only I didn't get a scratch to show for it, and, although I most conscientiously wished for a bullethole, didn't get one the rest of the fight. I overdid the business a little, rode to the rear twice that day and back, and then walked after they shot my mule. Well, anyway, July 2 I was with Blank when he was forced back from San Juan hill. He told me it was the hottest fire any artillery has had to stand in modern times. Then he pulled out. Well, the fever came on the 3d, and I have been sort of half crazy and delirious the last four days. It isn't yellow fever, though, although it probably will be. I'll cable if it gets serious. Really, I have distinguished myself, and, if I pull out, may lead a fairly decent life and be rather a credit. If anything does happen to me I'll feel like such an ass for not being bowled over like a gentleman in the battle last week. Love to all. CHARLIE. P. S.--This is a little disconnected on account of forty grains of quinine to-day. MEMBER OF THE HOUSTON POST RIFLES PAINTS A ROSEATE PICTURE. Santiago de Cuba, August 6, 1898. Dear Mother: I am now in Cuba. I like Santiago; it is much cooler here than at Camp Caffery. The Cubans all talk Spanish and I am learning to talk Spanish fast. We are now camped at the city park on the harbor. I saw the smokestack of the Merrimac when we came through the neck of the harbor. The Merrimac was sunk right near Morro castle. Morro castle is almost at the top of a mountain and is made of white stone. Santiago is surrounded by water and mountains. There is not a case of yellow fever here at all. The only kind of sickness here is malarial fever and wounded soldiers. The fever was caused by laying in trenches for seventeen days during battle on light rations. I like Cuba better than Texas. I can sit right here and see where all the fighting was done. The Rough Riders are here. General Shafter is here also. There are enough rations in the city to feed the volunteer soldiers for one year, and our money is worth twice as much as Spanish money. We do not want for anything. We get more to eat here than at Camp Caffery and have less sickness, and the weather is not as hot here as it was there. We have pretty brown duck and also blue flannel suits. It is fun to see us buy from the Cubans and get the right change back. The sailors that were captured off of Cervera's fleet are here. They can go anywhere they want to in the city, and the rest of the Spanish prisoners are here also, and we have charge of them. There are about fifty or seventy-five men in the guardhouse at present for drinking rum and eating fruit. We can buy anything we want except liquors and fruit. I have seen a number of Spanish war vessels that are half sunk, and there are lots more out of sight. On our trip to Cuba we crossed the Caribbean sea. Tell Ernest that there is a fellow here by the name of Parsons that he knows. This man Parsons was on guard duty at the warehouse and a fellow came prowling around and Parsons told him to leave, but he would not and he charged bayonets on him and run him out. The next day he found out that this man was his brother that he had not seen for five years. The poor class of people are almost starved. They come around and beg scraps to eat. Cuba has the richest land I have ever seen; pretty shade trees and everything that it takes to make a country look fine. The city of Santiago is laid off like an old Mexican town. It does not rain here as often as at Camp Caffery and not so hard. There are lots of cocoanut groves around here and no monkeys. There were only five or six houses that were hit by the bombshells during the war. I have a Cuban sweetheart already. It is nothing to see the poor class half naked. Cuban children sleep wherever night overtakes them and eat where they can find scraps. The Red Cross ladies that stay in the hospitals are so good and kind to us. We only have to drill one hour a day here. A few of the boys on the trip got seasick. Colonel Hood has water boiled every night and next morning we put ice in it to drink. We have fresh meat packed in ice shipped by the Armour Packing Company. Fried steak every morning, roast or stew for dinner and bacon for supper. We eat lightbread and not hardtack now. There are a good many transports laying in the harbor here. There is a basin here in the park like the one in the market house there at home, which we use to bathe our face and hands in. This letter might be a long time in coming, as the boat does not run regularly. Well, I will close for this time. With much love for you and the rest, I remain your affectionate son, PAGE LIGON. BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL NICHOLAS SENN, U. S. V., CHIEF OF OPERATING STAFF WITH THE ARMY IN THE FIELD AT SANTIAGO. Headquarters Fifth Army Corps, Before Santiago, July 12. As the hospital ship Relief came in sight of the seat of war every one of its passengers watched with interest and anxiety the indications of the present status of the conflict. When we sailed from Fortress Monroe Sunday, July 3, fighting was in progress, and, not having received information of any kind since that time, we were impatient for news. On reaching Guantanamo we came in sight of a number of warships floating lazily on the placid ocean like silent sentinels some six to eight miles from the shore. The little bay was crowded with empty transports, all of which indicated that we were not as yet in possession of Santiago. The pilot of a patrol boat finally, in a voice like that of a foghorn, communicated to us the news that the greater part of the Spanish fleet had been destroyed and that the Spanish loss in dead, wounded and prisoners was great. Among the most important prizes of the naval battle was the heroic admiral of the Spanish fleet, who was then a prisoner on board of one of the men-of-war. The land forces were near the city making preparations for the first attack. A partial if not a complete victory had been won, and we had the consolation of knowing that we had not come in vain. RED CROSS FLAG FLYING. Our captain was directed to bring his ship to anchor near Siboney. When we came in sight of this little mining town we saw on shore rows of tents over which floated the Red Cross flag, showing us that we had reached the place for which we had been intended. The little engine of a narrow-gauge mining railroad was puffing and screeching up and down along the coast, conveying supplies from the landing to the camp. On the side of a hill were the shelter tents of a company of infantry on detail for guard duty. On the crest of a number of high hills which fringe the coast could be seen blockhouses recently vacated by the Spaniards. A grove of palm trees in a near valley reminded us that we had reached the tropical climate. The steamer Olivette, floating the Red Cross flag, anchored near the shore. Major Appel, surgeon in charge of this hospital ship, was the first person to board our vessel, and gave us the first reliable account of the recent battle. His appearance was enough to give us an insight into his experiences of the last few days. He was worn out by hard work and his anxiety for the many wounded under his charge. The camp is on the shore in a limited plateau at the base of the mountain rising behind the little mining village. The condition of the wounded men furnished satisfactory proof that good work had been done here, as well as at the front. On my arrival many of the wounded had already been placed on board a transport ship, but more than 400 remained in the general hospital. On the whole the treatment to which the wounded were subjected was characterized by conservatism. Only a very small number of primary amputations were performed. Bullets that were found lodged in the body were allowed to remain unmolested unless they could be removed readily and without additional risk. A number of cases of penetrating wounds of the abdomen and chest were doing well without operative interference. Penetrating gunshot wounds of the skull were treated by enlarging the wound of entrance, removal of detached fragments of bone and drainage. Several cases in which a bullet passed through the skull, injuring only the surface of the brain, were doing well. With a few exceptions wounds of the large joints were on a fine way to recovery under the most conservative treatment. BULLET WOUNDS RAPIDLY HEAL. A study of the immense material collected at the station convinced the surgeons that the explosive effect of the small-caliber bullet has been greatly overestimated. The subsequent employment of the X ray in many of these cases will undoubtedly confirm the results of these observations. The battle at Santiago resulted in 157 killed and over 1,300 wounded. Nearly all wounds of the soft parts heal rapidly--suppuration in these cases was the exception, primary healing the rule. The day after my arrival I went to the front, about ten miles from Siboney. A colored orderly was my only companion. He rode at a respectful distance to the rear. The whole distance the road was crowded with mule teams, soldiers and refugees. The latter made a seething mass of humanity from start to finish. At a low estimate I must have passed on that day 2,000 souls, including men, women and children and naked infants. The day was hot and the suffering of the fleeing inhabitants of Santiago, the besieged city, and adjacent villages, can be better imagined than described. Indian fashion, the women walked, while some of the men enjoyed the pleasure of a mule or donkey ride. Most of them were barefoot and dressed in rags; children and infants naked; dudes with high collars, white neckties and straw hats were few and far between. An occasional old umbrella and a well-worn recently washed white dress marked the ladies of distinction. Their earthly possessions usually consisted of a small bundle carried on the head of the women or a wornout basket loaded with mangoes or cocoanuts. The color of the skin of the passing crowd presented many tints from white to jet black. The women were noted for their ugliness, the men for their eagerness to get beyond the reach of guns. VIEW ON CUBAN SOLDIERS. Little squads of Cuban soldiers were encountered from time to time, apparently anxious to get only as far as the rear of our advancing army. These men display an appearance of courage just now that is marvelous. Before the bluecoats came here they infested the inaccessible jungles at a safe distance from the Spanish guns, making an occasional midnight raid to keep the Spaniards on the lookout. Now they can be seen on the roads in small groups relating to each, other how they cut down the Spanish marines with their national weapon on reaching the shore after their vessels were demolished by our navy. The ragged refugees, fleeing in all directions and mingling freely with our troops, as they do, carry with them the filth of many generations and a rich supply of yellow fever germs which will ultimately kill more of our men than will the Spanish soldiers. On reaching General Shafter's headquarters I reported to Lieutenant Colonel Pope, chief surgeon of the Fifth army corps, for duty. At head quarters is the principal field hospital, in charge of Major Wood, a graduate of Rush Medical College, ably assisted by Major Johnson and a corps of acting assisting surgeons. At the time of my arrival sixty-eight wounded officers and men were under treatment. Lieutenant Pope has worked night and day since the troops landed here. He has done all in his, power to make his limited supplies meet the enormous demands. PERFORMS AN AMPUTATION. At this hospital Major Wood kindly invited me to perform an amputation of the thigh for gangrene caused by a gunshot injury which had fractured the lower portion of the femur, and cut the popliteal artery. Here I found many interesting cases on the way to recovery in which the nature of the injury would have been ample excuse for rendering a very grave prognosis, among them a number of cases of penetrating wounds of the chest and abdomen. In the afternoon I was accompanied to Canea by Acting Assistant Surgeon Goodfellow. The trip was made for the purpose of taking charge of sixteen wounded Spaniards we were to transfer to the Spanish army. On the way to Canea we found many recent graves and numerous dead horses, covered only with a few inches of dirt. The stench from this source was almost unbearable. The little village of Canea is located on the summit of a hill, with an old, dilapidated church as its center. The public square and the few streets are thronged with refugees--from 8,000 to 10,000 in number. Crowds of refugees were also seen in the woods around the village gathering mangoes and cocoanuts, about the only food supply at the time. In the only room of the church we found a representative of the Red Cross Association dealing out hardtack and flour to the hungry multitude. The wounded Spaniards were lying in a row on the floor of the church--one of them in a dying condition. All that could be transported were conveyed in four ambulances under a small detachment of troops to our fighting line. Here a flag of truce was secured, which was carried by an orderly. The detachment was left behind and we passed our line. IN SPANISH LINES. As soon as the Spanish intrenchment came in sight the signal was given and was promptly answered by the enemy. Two officers with a flag of truce advanced toward us, and we were halted at a little bridge very near Santiago and below the first intrenchment. We were received very courteously by the officers and asked to a seat upon the grass in the shade of a clump of trees. Rum, beer and cigarettes were furnished for the entertainment of the callers. The object of our visit was explained, whereupon a hospital corps of about thirty men with sixteen litters in charge of a captain of the line and a medical officer made their appearance. The wounded were unloaded from the ambulances and conveyed in litters to within the Spanish line. The visit was such a cordial and pleasant one that we found it very difficult to part from our newly made friends. After bidding the officers a hearty adieu and mounting my horse I was urged to dismount and say another farewell--a request which was responded to with pleasure. The two little parties then separated and made their way in a slow and dignified manner in the direction of the respective breastworks. TELLS OF BOMBARDMENT. The first armistice expired at noon July 11. In the afternoon a heavy cannonading commenced and was kept up until late in the evening. Next morning it was resumed, however, with less vigor. During this bombardment the Spaniards renewed their recently gained reputation as effective marksmen. One of our best cannon was hit and literally lifted into the air. An officer was killed and a-- number of men injured. During the afternoon, while cannonading was still going on, I went to the front, but on reaching our line the bombardment was discontinued, and under a flag of truce the commanding generals met and held a conference. The result of this interview remains a secret at this hour. Major-General Miles and staff reached Siboney yesterday on the steamer Yale, and to-day he proceeded to headquarters. The appearance of yellow fever at different places occupied by our army has made our troops more anxious than ever to complete their task. The frequent drenching rains and inadequate equipments have also done much to render the men restless and anxious to fight. W. B. Collier of the Second United States cavalry, in a letter dated August 3, describes his part in the fight on San Juan hill and the scene when the American flag was flung to the breeze in captured Santiago. He says: We have our 2 o'clock rains each day and then the sun comes out and just burns. This is a good climate for snakes, lizards, etc. Many of the boys have died, but, thank God, I am still in the land of the living. Words are inadequate to express the feeling of pain and sickness when one has the fever. For about a week every bone in my body ached and I did not care much whether I lived or not. The doctor shoved quinine into me by the spoonful until my head felt as if all the bells in Chicago were ringing in it. I could hear them, even when delirious. The news that we are to go back to the United States in a few weeks has saved many a boy's life. FEAR YELLOW FEVER. I was scared at first when I was ordered to the yellow fever hospital I thought my time had come, but they examined me and pronounced my case some other than yellow fever. The boys fear yellow jack like a rattlesnake. When I return I will know how to appreciate my country. I am very weak and sick, but I think I will be well in a short time after I get home. With all I have suffered I am ready for more if Uncle Sam wants me. As to the fight, our four troops of the Second United States cavalry were the only mounted troops in Cuba. We were the staff escort. I tell you, it is worth all the trials, and hardships, and sickness which I underwent, when I contemplated the scene of the surrender of Santiago. When Old Glory went up I cried and felt ashamed and looked around to see if any of my comrades had noticed me. I found they were all crying. Then we began to laugh and yell again so we would not be babies. I tell you, it was the proudest moment of my life. PICKS OFF SPANIARDS. I was in the San Juan hill fight. We were used mostly as scouts. I know there are two or three poor Spaniards killed or in hospitals. I took it coolly and just shot at every Spaniard I could see, far or near. I aim sure I dropped three. It is quite ticklish at first to be under fire, but the novelty soon wears off. JUST BEFORE THE BATTLE AT MANILA. A. J. Luther, second lieutenant of the First Colorado volunteers, writes as follows, dated Camp Dewey, July 27: You may talk about your Cuban war and all other wars, but you may rest assured that the Philippine war is no snap, either. All the land around us for miles and miles is nothing but deep jungles and swampy ground. On our west lies Manila bay, 100 yards from our camp. On the north, for four miles, to Manila, in fact, a jungle and swamp, while on the east it is swamp and on the south more swamp. Our camp is on a long strip of land between a heavy jungle on all sides. It is a good camp, considering the location which is made necessary by the position of the Spaniards. I am reliably informed that the natives of these islands are no farther advanced in civilization than they were 300 years ago. They live in old boats on the water, in palm trees, in bark huts, or wherever they can hold on long enough to live. Their life is one of degradation and four-fifths of them have noxious diseases. You can imagine what a nasty mess we have got into. They wear for dress very thin cheesecloth and they keep that scanty raiment as clean as any class of people on earth, but their bodies do not seem to amount to that much trouble in their eyes. From the way they take care of themselves I imagine that they consider their clothes the only essential part of their exterior that ought to be kept clean. We have not gone into Manila yet and I cannot say just when we will, but you will know through the papers when we do. I want you to send me all the papers you get hold of which contain anything relating to the Manila troops. We have a lot of correspondents with us and between them you can glean all the news of importance. We have only been called out once since our arrival here and nothing happened then. I have been under the enemy's fire three times, shot landing all around me. Major Moses, Captain Taylor, Captain Grove and Lieutenant Lister, with an interpreter, were detailed to make a special reconnaissance of the country and the position of the enemy. They went within 300 yards of the Spanish intrenchments and were sighted by the enemy's patrol. Captain Taylor was standing on the top of a brick wall when they let fly at the party and one bullet hit about ten inches under his feet. The other day I was put in charge of the company to repair roads along behind the insurgents' line, and we were only 300 yards from the enemy's line all the time, so you can see how near to the jaws of danger we work. Our camp is under the range of their big guns, but they have never thrown any shells into us yet. While working on the road they kept up a fire at us, however, and one large cannonball plowed up the road not twenty-five feet away. It whistled through the air like a nail when thrown from the hand. At the same time you could hear Mauser balls whistling around us. This is a warm country. One especially feels that way when the bullets come zipping around as they did when we were on the road. The insurgents and Spaniards keep up continual volley firing all day and night. Neither side knows as much about a gun as a baby. They fire into the air and expect the balls to light on the heads of the enemy. When the Spaniards run up against us, I think they will find a different game. We won't play horse with them nor shoot up into the air, but will get right into direct aiming distance and make them dance. DIGGING GRAVES IN CUBA--WALTER ZIMMER OF FIRST ILLINOIS VOLUNTEERS WRITES FROM SIBONEY. Siboney, Cuba, Aug. 17. Dear Sister and Brother: Received your kind and welcome letter last evening and was glad to hear from you. We are expecting to get back to the States any day, as they are shipping the army as fast as possible. I am now on a detail at the yellow fever hospital. This is tough work, digging graves and planting the dead. The men are dying at the rate of about ten a day. A lot of the boys in my company died of yellow jack. I am all right at present. We had a lot of fun chasing Spaniards. Some of them got after a crowd of Cubans and killed them. We scoured the woods and located the Spaniards and fired a few volleys at them, killing and wounding a number of them. Jimmy Edgar is dying. He has been out of his head for a week. I saw him last night and he did not know me. Out of the regiment there are about 400 in the hospital. We have a little graveyard on the hill they call the Chicago cemetery. It is only three weeks old and there are about 100 graves. Santiago is a dirty place. All the sewers are on top of the ground. This is Siboney, the town we burned about five weeks ago to keep out the fever. I have a few souvenirs I hope to take back to the States with me--two Spanish gold pieces, one machete, a Krag gun, a set of prayer beads, and a piece of shell that struck me in the hip. I was laid up only two days. The shell struck a tree and bounded off, hitting me. The tree broke the force. If I ever get out of Cuba I do not want to see it again, even on the map. By the time you get this I expect to be on Long Island, New York. Hinton went back to the States a few days ago. Edgar was too weak to go. About 500 convalescents went home, and there are about 1,000 of the boys here too weak to go. It is pretty tough to see the boys dying here. Our detail has to dig graves. My back is nearly broke from digging and using the pick. If you do not dig fast the major orders your arrest and off to the guardhouse you go. YOUR BROTHER. James Purcell, Company G, Eleventh Infantry, writes the following interesting letter: Camp Ponce, Between Town of Ponce and Shipping Port, August 6. Dear Ones and All: I hope you received my letter from Samono Bay and that you are all well. I am fine, as well as ever I have been. We arrived here last Monday and landed on Tuesday. We were on the water eleven days and it was a grand trip and all enjoyed it greatly, but if would have been much better if we had good food. What we ate consisted of canned beef, hardtack, canned beans and tomatoes with coffee twice a day. Well, now to tell you something about this place. It is without exception the prettiest place I ever saw. We have about five hundred Spanish prisoners here in this camp and leave to-night by train to cross the mountains and clear the road for the main body of troops, which will advance on San Juan. You will probably know the outcome long before this letter reaches you. We are camped on the roadside. The thoroughfare is macadamized from one end of the island to the other, and as fine a road as one ever saw. It would be a grand place to have a bicycle. Our camp is always crowded with hungry, starving Cuban men, women and children, some of them naked and the rest only partially clothed. They will do almost anything for our hardtack, for some of them never had any flour, and when we purchase we have to pay two cents for a small roll, but while we are in camp we make our own bread and they go crazy for some of it. There is plenty of tobacco here and the way we get it is to give one hardtack for a cigar. The men and women are all cigarmakers, and, as our commissary is not yet open, we have to make native cigars. All the people here seem glad to have the Americans take the island. Wine and rum costs two cents a drink and an American dollar is worth $1.80 in Spanish money. Our regiment and the Nineteenth are the only regiments of regular infantry on the island. All others are volunteers excepting one or two regiments of cavalry and artillery, so we are likely to get the brunt of all the battles. We had a little scrimmage yesterday, but it did not amount to much. Now I will try to tell you a little about the island before I run out of paper. Cocoanuts grow in abundance here, with all other kinds of tropical fruit. As yet we have not been near the banana or pineapple district. The roads are all shaded with trees, and if I could get at a desk for a short time I would write a better letter. This one is only to let you know I am alive and well and as soon as the affair is over I think I'll buy a farm here,--etc. LETTERS FROM JOE BOHON. Ponce, Porto Rico, Aug. 4, 1898. I suppose you know by this time where we are. I have written several times to the folks and different ones, but have received no mail for twenty days. We landed at Guanica July 25 and were the first troops on the island. We had considerable music from our gunboat escorts there. You could see them going over the hills in droves. We stayed there three days, then Company H and one company from Massachusetts Regiment marched to Yauco. We looked for trouble there but were disappointed. We stayed there three days, then started to march for Ponce. It took us two days to come a distance of thirty-five miles. We were in heavy marching order with an extra 100 rounds of ammunition. Its weight was between 80 and 100 pounds. This is a town of 35,000; they have banks, electric lights, telephones and an ice plant. There are some English-speaking people here. I was down town yesterday. The hotels and restaurants are all run by French people. It's a wonderful sight how the natives respect us. They take off their hats and say Viva Americana (long live America). If one of them can get hold of a blue shirt or pants or a small flag they are the envy of every one of their people. Our company have four with us since we landed. They wash our dishes, carry water and make themselves useful. There are all kinds of reptiles and varmints. Hamilton and I have killed three centipedes in our tent. The natives say their bite will kill, but our doctors say not; several of our boys have been bitten; none died so far. A soldier of the Third Wisconsin shot and killed one of the regulars. The wealthy class of people here dress like us; have fine carriages, but their horses are all small and pace. They raise hogs and their cattle are Jerseys. They do all their work with oxen and large two-wheeled carts. The oxen pull with their horns and you would wonder at the load they pull. The poorer class of people are nothing better than slaves. From ten to thirty will live in one small house. I have not seen a window glass or chimney on a house since being on the island. They build their fires in small stoves and cook their grub in kettles. They raise bananas, oranges, limes, the same as lemons, cocoanuts, pomegranates, mangoes, etc. They also raise melons, tomatoes, cucumbers and such vegetables. Think of getting those things fresh the year round. They wear as few clothes as possible. You see children as old as four years without a stitch of clothes on. I mean the poor, and none of the older wear shoes; their endurance is wonderful, and they don't perspire like us. They all smoke either cigars or cigarettes. We see children four years old smoking cigars. You can buy as good a cigar here for 1 cent in their money as we can buy at home for 5 cents. One dollar in our money is equal to two dollars in theirs. So we get our smoking pretty cheap. Fruits are sold accordingly. We are to turn our Springfield guns in this morning and get the Krag-Jorgensen; they are much lighter and their bullets are not near so heavy. Hope this will be of interest to you. Don't forget to send the Times as we have not seen a paper since leaving Charleston. Regards to all. In the course of an interesting letter written by James Burns of the Twenty-seventh battery, Indiana volunteers, to his mother, and dated August 15, at Guayama, Puerto Rico, he said that the news of the cessation of hostilities was received by courier only a short time before the battery expected to get actively into battle. Most of the boys, he said, were anxious to return home. For himself, he expressed a desire to remain for the reason that the country there is very rich, the climate healthful and the possibilities to make money in the future, through American push and energy, the best in the world. Speaking of the daily routine of the battery boys he said: Every man cooks his own meals and we get plenty of good food, such as bacon, potatoes, beans, onions, hard-tack, canned corn beef, canned roast beef, canned tomatoes and the like. The climate is the finest I ever experienced. While the temperature is very high, still the strong trade winds render it always agreeable, the hottest day being far more pleasant than at home. Water is pure and plentiful. The country is cut up every quarter mile or so by limpid mountain streams and the beach on this, the south side of the island, is as fine as any in the world. Palms abound in profusion and the most beautiful flowers and ferns cluster and grow delightfully everywhere. The cocoanut, mango, bread-fruit, banana, lemon, lime, sago, prickly pear, mangrove and bay trees grow luxuriantly about our camp. The natives here are of small stature. They are black-haired and have bright, sparkling eyes. They are all of a mixture of either the French or Spanish with the negro. There is a large population of French and Portuguese, the pure Spanish being but little more than one-sixth of the entire population. The natives are a bright, intelligent class. There are few public schools, education being given to children at their homes by traveling teachers and governesses. There are but few Protestants or Protestant churches, the Catholic being the prevailing religion, and their churches being much more magnificent than any you have at home. The priests constitute the ruling force among the people. Children run naked until they are six years old. Every one wears white linen clothing and most, of the people go bare-footed. The men wear straw hats and the women go with their heads uncovered. There are not a few English and Americans here, and they scrupulously maintain the Anglo-American costumes. News does not reach us for ten days or more after you read it in the newspapers in the States. We are just reading the Indianapolis papers of July 31 and August 1, and the news is perfectly fresh to us. The marriage rite here is a very loose affair. A man may have one or two families, as he may elect. One of these may include the progeny of a wife of his own class and the other by a negro woman or half-breed. All he has to do is to pay the prescribed duty. There are no bad fevers here, but small-pox sometimes is prevalent in certain localities, although they have not had the scourge for three years. Leprosy, elephantiasis and diseases arising from a bad condition of the blood prevail to some extent. Ruins of sugar mills and plantations abound on every side, once great money-producing establishments, but destroyed by Spanish avarice and the American tariff. Cattle-raising, fruit-growing, coffee, and rice culture furnish the principal money-making vocations in Porto Rico. There are no railroads that amount to anything. The wagon roads are all military roads and the freighting is carried on with pack mules and bull-carts. The latter are of the clumsiest character, the yoke resting on the horns of the animals instead of upon their necks, as in the old farm districts in the United States. They carry from two to three tons or more at a load. The horses and mules are small, but willing and patient animals. The natives are sharp traders and boys of from six to ten years of age can drive close bargains. One of our American dollars will purchase exactly twice as much as a Spanish dollar. The one particularly cheap product is the cigars. "Smokes" of a good quality sell for one cent each. Bananas and lemons are cheap, and of the latter fruit we partake plentifully. Cocoanuts sell for five cents each; milk, five cents; bread, twenty cents, and sugar, four cents. These prices are on a basis of the Spanish money. This letter was written by one of the soldiers of the Sixteenth infantry, five captains of which led the particular charge in which this regiment participated: July 24, 1898. We are in bivouac near our trenches, within half a mile of Santiago. The fighting is all over and we are just waiting for something to happen. The latest newspaper we have seen was that of July 3, so you see I write like a person of the past generation. We have had a hot time. The Spanish got drunk and put up a pretty good fight. At least I have heard they were all drunk in the battle of the 1st. I don't know whether it is true or not, but I do know that they did not run as quickly as we wished them to do. FIRING BEGUN. We left camp on the 1st about daybreak, but we did not know we were going into battle. We got into the jungle, after marching for a while, and then heard firing, apparently all around us. Then our men began to fall, and we realized we were in it. We kept struggling through the dense underbrush, first to the right, then to the left, and then to the front, as fast as we could find openings. Everything was confusion. Orders could not be given or obeyed. Companies, battalions, regiments and brigades were all jumbled up. We did not fire, for we could not see ten feet in any direction on account of the dense thickets in the jungle. Finally I found myself with my company and part of the regiment in a trail or road by a broad, open field, across which, about 700 yards on a steep bluff, were the Spaniards, strongly entrenched. We opened fire and kept it up for a while, but the road rapidly filled up with our soldiers, and it became too crowded to do anything. There was a six-strand barbed-wire fence along the hedge between the road and the open. All at once we began to try to tear it down and get at the enemy. Captain Leven C. Alien, Captain W. C. McFarland, Captain Charles Noble, Captain George Palmer and Captain William Lassiter were close together with their companies (all of the Sixteenth infantry). I was in the front, just behind my captain. Officers and men dashed savagely at the fence, tore it down and leaped into the open field, the captains calling to their companies to "come on!" "Now we have a chance at them! Come on!" A HAIL OF BULLETS. The companies, or so much of them as heard the call, sprang into the field, the men following the five brave captains, and away we went in a terrible and most desperate charge. The bullets hailed upon us, but when the old Sixteenth gets its "mad up" there is no use trying to stop it. We had about two hundred men with us, five captains in the front line. But soon others began to follow us, and the field was full of soldiers, all moving to the front, firing as they went. We saw the enemy jump and run just before we reached the foot of the steep slope leading up to the crest. Then one of our batteries began firing over our heads, and when we got near the top the shells began striking the ground between us and the crest, but we did not stop. On we went, climbing on our hands and knees, when suddenly there arose a great shout down on the plain behind us, "Come back! Come back!" The trumpets sounded "recall," and our men, who had followed their captains so bravely, hesitated, stopped and began drifting back down the slope. In vain our brave leaders swore at the loud-mouthed skulkers below. They had suddenly become fearful for our safety--they were afraid we would be hit by our own shells. We settled reluctantly back near the foot of the slope. ALLEN LEADS HIS MEN ON. Captain Allen told his men to lie down and get their breath. Then he called our attention to Captain McFarland, who was with some men about thirty yards to our right and up on the slope. He was waving his hat and the shells were bursting around him. Captain Allen called out to us: "Look at Captain McFarland and E company! Who of C company will go with me to the top of the hill in spite of danger?" We who were near him sprang to our feet and up we went. MCFARLAND WOUNDED. But Captain McFarland had been wounded and his men were going down. Our little group became too small for a further attack. "Come back! Come back!" was shouted from below. Captain Allen stood alone for a minute and then we went back to the foot of the slope and waited until our battery stopped firing. Then we all went forward again, and the Sixteenth infantry colors passed up to the works and were planted there. COLOR-BEARER SHOT. The color-bearer was shot, but Corporal Van Horn took the flag and carried it forward. Hundreds of officers and soldiers of other regiments came across the field while we were waiting, and they went up with us. And now they all claim that they were in that charge. We men and those five captains I have named know who were in it, and that our captains began it without orders, and we are entitled to all the credit. The fight was led by captains, and no one else of higher rank had anything to do with it. Our colonel and major now say that they did not see the charge, and therefore can make no recommendations for distinguished gallantry. Well, it is proposed to fight it out and to have our claims heard. A TERRIBLE FIGHT. The position we took was San Juan and was the key to the Spanish position. We have heard that there were 3,000 Spaniards in the works. I do not know what the loss was. I know that as I jumped over their trench I noticed that it was level full of dead and dying Spanish soldiers. It was a terrible sight. We had more fighting that afternoon, and that night we moved forward, and the Sixteenth entrenched 475 yards from the main works. We held this under heavy infantry fire and a terrible enfilade artillery fire all day of the 2d and 3d, while our right wing was swinging around to envelop the city. MOVED TO THE RIGHT. On the 10th we were moved to the right wing and I think it was intended for us to make an assault on the city and wind up the business. We could have done it in fine shape, and all were anxious for a chance. Our artillery got into place on the 11th at 4 pm, and we opened up along the whole line and soon silenced every gun and rifle they had. THE SPANISH WEAKENED. Next morning at daylight we resumed our work and the Spanish weakened. They did not wait for the assault--the jig was up. Nearly half the command is sick. We have only short rations of hard bread, bacon and coffee. We have no shelter except dog tents, and they are no good in such a climate as this. We have no vegetables, and of course we will all be sick. We are living miserably. There are thousands of supplies of all sorts in the harbor and on the landing, but they are not sent to us. The army is in a disabled condition for want of food and shelter. A box of hardtack and a piece of fat bacon thrown on the ground has been considered enough for the soldiers and officers who are in the trenches. Somebody will hear from this. Our government intends its soldiers to be well treated, but our supply department here in the field lack experience. Day before yesterday Clara Barton sent each company twenty-five pounds of corn meal and seventeen pounds of rice. It was a blessing, I tell you. We all got a spoonful of mush, and it was the best thing I ever tasted in my life. If we could only get our rations, just the regular ration and our tents, we would be willing to take our chances with the climate. There will be enough go by the board, even if we get our supplies. The soldiers have fought bravely and won the victory. Keep out of the war. Whole armies will be lost by disease and mismanagement. If we stay here under the present layout not one in four will ever see the United States again. We could not go into another campaign now, and unless matters improve very much we may as well be counted out for the summer. HOW A WAR BALLOON CAME DOWN AFTER BEING PIERCED MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED TIMES. Sergeant Thomas C. Boone of company K, Second regiment, wrote a thrilling letter. Mr. Boone's letter in part says: I have not told you of my accidents before while in Cuba, because I did not care to arouse the anxiety of my friends at home, and, although I have been unable to walk for some time, still I did not consider my condition as serious as the surgeons here claim it to be. I will tell you how I got hurt. It was a streak of continuous bad luck. On the 1st of July I went up in the balloon on the battlefield at 7 am, and the balloon was being moved all over the field when shot to pieces eighty yards from the Spanish line at 1 p.m. We thought our height, together with their bad marksmanship, afforded us protection. We were badly mistaken. At least 200 bullets and four shrapnel shots went through the inflated bag, allowing the gas to escape, and we came down with a rush, striking the top of a tree alongside of a creek, throwing us out. In falling I was caught in the abdomen by a point of the anchor of the balloon, was suspended for a moment--it seemed a lifetime--then dropped into the creek, with the water up to my shoulders. I was badly bruised and shaken up, but, owing to the excitement of the time, I did not notice the pain. Three of our detachment were killed and four wounded out of twenty-one men, which shows that we were in a pretty warm place. Well, I did not go to the hospital about my injury until July 14, and I was then so weak I could scarcely walk. The surgeons at the field hospital placed me in an old army wagon without springs at 9 o'clock one night to be taken to another hospital seven miles away, over the worst road in the world, without doubt. We had gone about half a mile when the wagon turned completely over, the wagon body catching my neck under its side and the corner of a box striking me in the abdomen. I was unconscious for two hours. My neck is still very sore. When I regained consciousness I was placed in the wagon, but the bumping over ruts and rocks fairly drove me mad, and I said I could not stand it. I was told that I could walk, which I did. The wagon went on. I reached the hospital at 7 o'clock the next morning after a night of agony. At this hospital I was told that I was injured internally and that they could do nothing for me, that I would have to go to the United States for an operation, and here I am. I hope to be in Springfield soon, but I am as weak as a child and cannot walk fifty yards. On top of my accidents I had a case of bilious fever and was shoved into the yellow fever hospital for several days. Bilious fever is a nasty thing, although not dangerous. There are thousands of cases of it in our Cuban army. It arises, I believe, from sleeping on the rain-soaked ground and in wet clothing night after night. There was not a day while I was in Cuba, with the exception of time spent in the hospital, that I was not soaked through from rain. Mosquitoes at night and flies during day make life unbearable here. They are a thousand times worse than any I ever saw. I am bitten from head to foot. They bite clear through the clothing. When Captain Capron was killed at the battle of La Quasima Lieutenant Thomas became the commander of the troop. He was on the point of leading the fierce charge against the Spaniards when shot down by a Mauser bullet passing through his right leg below the knee. He gives the following interesting account of his personal experience and observations: Our trip from the point of landing to Siboney, a distance of about eleven miles, took about three hours, and was over a trail that was very muddy in parts and crossed a number of streams. Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt on this trip had his mount, but as we were not mounted he walked over the trail with us, leading his horse along. That was a simple act, but it indicated a feeling of comradeship he had for the members of the regiment and it touched a tender place in the men's hearts. NO GLIMPSE OF SPANIARDS. Lawton's command had gone over this trail before us and the Spaniards had retreated so that we did not get a glimpse of the Spaniards on that march. A few men who had been ill on shipboard with measles, and had recovered only a short time before, were still weak and had to drop out of the line, but they reached Siboney a little while after the main body of our regiment got there. We got to Siboney on the evening of June 23, and with our shelter tents were very comfortable until the next morning, although it rained. We were up at 4 o'clock, had breakfast at 6, and then, on the morning of June 24th started from Siboney across a high hill leading to La Quasina, where the regiment had its first fight. The battle lasted two hours and forty minutes, though to those who took part in it it appeared a very much shorter time. As we were advancing we were constantly expecting a fire from the Spaniards. We were not ambushed at all. After we had gone about two miles on that trail we came across the body of a Cuban, and after that we kept an especially sharp lookout. Troop L formed the advance guard, and we had skirmishers out ahead of us and to both the right and left. The skirmishers ahead of us were about 250 yards from the main body of our men, and it was one of these advanced skirmishers who discovered the Spaniards. Thomas E. Isbell, a Cherokee from Vinita, I. T., was the one to make the discovery of the Spanish force. He fired the first shot in that battle and dropped a Spaniard. Isbell was wounded seven times and then managed to walk back to the field hospital, two and a half or three miles away, to get his wounds dressed. HARD FIGHTING AHEAD. As soon as we learned that the Spanish were in advance of us we deployed the men six feet apart, advancing into the firing line. The Spaniards had some machine guns ahead of us, and our men received the full force of this fire. There was also firing from the right and the left. We were at this time upon the knoll of a hill, the Spaniards being about us at lower elevations. Before Isbell discovered the Spaniards a blockhouse had been seen, and we knew what was ahead of us. It was probably half or three-quarters of an hour after the firing began that Captain Capron was killed, and perhaps twenty minutes after that I was struck as we were about to make a charge. Our men had been instructed to save their ammunition and not shoot unless they saw something to shoot at. Our men and the Tenth infantry afterwards buried about 100 Spaniards, and great numbers of their killed and wounded among them were carried to the rear, so that the fire on our side must have been pretty accurate. When asked to relate some of the scenes taking place about him before he was struck, he replied: One of the worst things I saw was a man shot while loading his gun. The Spanish Mauser bullet struck the magazine of his carbine, and going through the magazine the bullet was split, a part of it going through his scalp and a part through his neck. This was Private Whitney, and from his neck down he was a mass of blood. He was taken back of the firing line, and had recovered before we left Siboney and was again back in the ranks. Captain Capron showed great pluck on the field of battle, and refused to leave even when he was mortally wounded. We were at that moment deploying and lying down. He was struck in the left shoulder, the ball coming out of his abdomen. He lived one hour and fifteen minutes after being shot. He was taken back to the field hospital by some of our men. About twenty minutes after that a Mauser ball struck me in the leg. SENSATION OF BEING WOUNDED. When asked what the sensation was at the time of being wounded he replied: My leg felt as if it had been struck by some heavy body. It felt paralyzed, and then I fell to the ground. There was no great pain experienced at the time, but fifteen minutes later the pain was very great. A very touching incident happened during the fight. Captain McClintock was struck in the left leg, two Mauser bullets entering his leg just above the ankle. A private who had been sick for some days, seeing Captain McClintock lying on the field, crawled up to him, and lying beside the captain between the latter and the firing line, said: "Never mind, Captain, I am between you and the firing line. They can't hurt you now." Ed Culver, a Cherokee Indian, showed himself particularly brave during the fight. He was alongside of Hamilton Fish when the latter was shot. When Fish was hit he said: "I am wounded." Culver called back: "And I am killed." Culver was shot through the left lung, the ball coming out of the muscles of the back. He believed he was dying, but said if he was to die he would do the Spaniards as much damage as possible before leaving this world. He continued to fire, and sent forty-five bullets at the enemy before being taken away. At first, after receiving his wound, he was in a dazed condition, but after he recovered somewhat he shot straight. Hamilton Fish died a few minutes after receiving his wound. I passed him just after he was shot, and directed some of the skirmishers where to move. He thought I was speaking to him, and, raising himself on his elbow, said: "I am wounded; I am wounded!" and died a few minutes after that. We thought at first that the Spaniards were using explosive bullets, but we found they were merely brass-covered bullets. A detailed description of the Santiago fight is told by the Gloucester crew, which was first to sight Cervera's fleet as it steamed out of the harbor on the morning of Sunday, July 3. Ensign Sawyer's letter reads: Last evening we went into Guantanamo and saw the camp where our marines had so gallantly held their own. The Marblehead, with McCalla, was there, also the New York, the Iowa and that hero of the battle, the Oregon. The Gloucester also was there. The greatest desire naturally possessed us to hear the details of the wonderful battle in which the Cape Verde fleet was destroyed. The Gloucester's story, though we had but a few moments, was most interesting so far as we have heard. She was lying closest to the entrance, and had just finished Sunday morning inspection when the lookout hailed: "They're coming out!" ORDER OF THE EXIT. Instantly all eyes were directed on the familiar harbor mouth, and they could hardly believe their eyes to see those magnificent ships standing out in broad daylight. The Maria Teresa, Vizcaya, Oquendo and Colon swung to the windward, and not a shot was fired at the Gloucester. Evidently she was too small to waste shell on, or else all eyes were on the larger vessels. Following those grand ships came the destroyers Pluton and Furor, which have been so much dreaded. The Gloucester immediately stood for them full speed and opened fire, the Pluton and Furor firing rapidly, but not striking. The Gloucester finally got in between them and rained shell upon them from her rapid-fire guns. The Iowa also let go her battery, and one of her large shells literally tore the stern out of the Furor. The Gloucester simply overwhelmed the Pluton with her shells, and a white flag was shown, whereupon Lieutenant Wood went over as quickly as possible to save the lives of the crew. She was a perfect hell on board. On fire below, one engine was still going, and there were only eight men not killed. He put these in the boat, tried to go below to save the vessel if possible, but could not on account of the fire. The boat shoved off to transfer the men to his vessel, when the Pluton blew up with a terrible explosion and sank. The boat was just a few feet clear when the magazine or boilers exploded. Meantime the armored cruisers of the enemy stood to the west and were engaged by the Brooklyn, Oregon, Texas, Indiana and Iowa. The Maria Teresa and Oquendo were run ashore, burning fiercely, five and one-half or six miles west of the harbor. The Vizcaya and Colon engaged in a running fight with the Oregon, Texas and Brooklyn, but the first was practically destroyed and run ashore thirty-four miles west, and the latter surrendered sixty miles west of Santiago. It was a terrible battle, and our escape from terrible loss is nothing short of miraculous. The Spaniards were really fighting four ships against five, and the superiority of the Americans was due more to their skill than material. If the Americans had manned Cervera's fleet the victory would have been ours just the same. The Massachusetts and Newark were at Guantanamo coaling. The New York had gone five miles farther to the east than her usual station to allow the admiral to communicate with Shafter. The Oregon distinguished herself by overhauling and passing the Brooklyn and forced the Colon's surrender. We have not yet seen any of the fellows on the vessels that took part in the pursuit. Our heavy work now commences in landing troops. The First Illinois, under Colonel Turner, is among our convoy, and if the boys fight the way they cheer there will be no question of the result. THE PEACE COMMISSION President McKinley appointed William K. Day, Secretary of State; George Gray, United States Senator from Delaware; Cushman K. Davis, United States Senator from Minnesota; William P. Frye, United States Senator from Maine, and Whitelaw Reid, formerly United States Minister to France, to represent the United States at the Paris conference. The Spanish commissioners being Senor Montero Rios, President; Leon Castillo, representing the political side; Senor Villarrutia, diplomacy; Senor Montero the judicial, and General Cerero the military. The United States commissioners do not have to be confirmed by the Senate, as is usually the case with presidential appointments. PEACE REIGNS. Nearly a quarter of a million soldiers again resume civil life--a nation of fighters when called upon to protect the Stars and Stripes, yet as kind and considerate as a brother when strife ceases. Many of our brave soldiers left our shores never to return--some were killed in battle; some were stricken down with fever; others who were at the front and saw Old Glory proudly afloat over the once helpless and downtrodden subjects of Spain started homeward but failed to reach their loved ones through disease contracted while performing their duties on the field of battle. Such is War. The whole nation will cherish the memory of the dead and ever extend gratitude to those who safely returned.